Minimizing Evil Is Itself Evil

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Here is an assignment for you. Please read the following article, Silence, before reading this article.

All right? Have you completed the assignment?

We have been told by many "conservative" enablers of the conciliar revolution that we have to be "quiet" about the abuses extant in the liturgical abuse par excellence, the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service.

We have been told by many "conservative" enablers of the conciliar revolution to give the conciliar "popes" a "pass" as they have engaged in the travesties of inter-religious "prayer" meetings, including the infamous Assisi gatherings.

We have been told by some traditionally-minded Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including the bishops and priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, that it is not "prudent" in light of Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, to refuse to highlight--or even mention (!)--Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's esteeming the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands and his praying as a Jew at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and his calling mosques as "sacred" and/or as "jewels" that stand out across the face of the earth. The very same people who howled and bayed at the moon when Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II did such things have learned how to be silent when the alleged restorer of "tradition" has done them, playing right into the false "pontiff's" hands as he seeks to "break down" a spirit of "obstinacy and narrowness" that he perceives them as possessing.

This is what Ratzinger/Benedict himself wrote in his letter to the world's conciliar "bishops" on the remission of the "excommunications" of the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X:

"So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who 'has something against you' and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents - to the extent possible - in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and, with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. (LETTER ON REMISSION OF EXCOMMUNICATION LEFEBVRE BISHOP)

 

Here we see Ratzinger/Benedict boasting of having tamed the "one-sided positions" and "rigidity" of those belonging to communities that fell first under the Ecclesia Dei ad afflicta motu proprio of Wojtyla/John Paul II and are now established under the authority of Summorum Pontificum. It is indeed the case that many formerly outspoken priests/presbyters in the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, for example, have been rendered deaf and dumb as the honor and majesty and glory of God have been blasphemed by the sacrileges committed repeatedly by Ratzinger/Benedict. These priests/presbyters have been joined in the recent past by the bishops and priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, most of whom have been largely silent about Ratzinger/Benedict's acts of blasphemy and sacrilege. To speak out in defense of the honor and majesty and glory of God is now considered to be a "evil" rather than a virtue. . 

Similarly, many, although far from all, "conservatives" and their relatively freshly-minted allies in the "resist and recognize" movement have believed it be in the service of "peace" to be silent about the scandals in the conciliar structures that came to full public light in 2002 as the files of the Archdiocese of Boston were released even though some of us had been reporting about these matters in the Catholic media in the 1990s.

"Silence," we were told. "Silence." "Keep the peace." "Don't disturb anyone's peace." "Don't scandalize the faith of the weak." This is what I was told by a well-meaning true priest in the conciliar structures who had been persecuted mercilessly by a conciliar "bishop" until some members of the laity, believing in all good faith that the conciliar structures to represent the Catholic Church, refused to be silent in 1983 and took the pastor's case to Rome, where Silvio Cardinal Oddi came down hard on the 'bishop" and defended the pastor. This same man, who had stood up against the injustice that was to be visited against him reverted to "silence" in the fact of the scandals that were brought about by the very same sorts of "bishops" who had sought to do him in some two decades before.

Yes, these were among the things that I was told when reporting on abuses in the Novus Ordo and the writings of the conciliar "pontiffs" during my conservative/indulterer years. These were among the things that I was told when reporting on how the conciliar "bishops" were seeking to browbeat the victims of perverted priests/presbyters by claiming that they, the victims, were disturbers of the peace and the sources of scandal by refusing to "forgive" the offenses committed against them as their abusers were indemnified and reassigned to other positions without other potential victims being warned of the dangers to which they were being exposed so needlessly.

Lost in all of the sloganeering used to try to silence criticism of the abuses in the Novus Ordo and the words and actions of the conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" was the simple fact that it is a moral obligation to speak out against moral evils if they are not being redressed, if they are being left to fester over the course of time, if those responsible for their commission and/or indemnification go on about their business quite merrily by wrapping themselves up in the mantle of "victimhood" as they refused to take any just criticism for their actions that have wounded justice and thus disturbed the common good.

Truth in the doctrinal realm needs to be defended. Truth in the moral order needs to be defended. It is a sin against both charity and justice to let the innocent be calumniated and castigated for daring to speak the truth about moral crimes that have continued for years without being rectified. Saint Francis of Assisi himself, was stirred to indignation when truth and justice were impugned. Saint Francis of Assisi believed in true peace, not a false peace that sought to excuse and indemnify moral crimes that have continued unabated for years.

Should Catholics yet attached to the conciliar structures have remained "silent" as conciliar "bishops" and their chancery factotums conspired with attorneys to stonewall victims of perverted priests/presbyters? Should Catholics in Ireland be "silent" about the scandals that have been sanctioned by their "bishops" and by their "pope," who was put in charge of handling these matters by Wojtyla/Paul II in 2001?

Should Catholics who find themselves in a chapel whose celebrity founder parades around with a woman who is not his wife--and is the mother of his illegitimate child--remain "silent" as the founder scandalizes Catholics and non-Catholics alike by means of his public violations of the Sixth Commandment and by his use of a security company to screen congregants before they enter the chapel for Holy Mass?

Should the late Father Denis Chicoine and those within the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen associated with him have remained "silent" in the face of the abuses of power and violations of the moral law committed by the congregation's founder, the late Bishop Francis Schuckhart, in the early-1980s? Were they correct to confront Schuckhart once the charges against him had broken in the secular media?

Should Catholics remain silent in the face of character assassinations, some made directly from the pulpit and others under the cover of anonymity on a website that twisted facts and distorted reality, upon innocent people whose only crime has been to seek to protect the innocence and the purity of children, whose tender ears have been assaulted repeatedly by obscene language and who have been terrorized by thuggish actions that have been minimized by their clerical enablers?

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ remained silent as He sat accused before the Sanhedrin. It is a virtue to remain silent in the face of unjust attacks upon ourselves. It is not a virtue to remain silent in face of offenses against the Faith. It is not a virtue to remain silent as our brothers and sisters in Christ are smeared and actually mocked and reviled from the pulpit or in other forums for seeking to defend the innocence and the purity of the young.

There are those in the conciliar structures who have tried to assuage themselves with the contention that the sort of offenses that Ratzinger/Benedict has committed against the honor and majesty and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity are "no big deal," that they do not require anyone to speak out against them.

Guess again.

Pope Leo the Great taught us that those who are silent in the face of blasphemy are themselves guilty of the blasphemy:

But it is vain for them to adopt the name of catholic, as they do not oppose these blasphemies: they must believe them, if they can listen so patiently to such words. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, Epistle XIV, To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica, St. Leo the Great | Letters 1-59 )

 

Another Pope Leo, Leo XIII, taught the same thing in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

 

Catholics are never silent in the face of apostasy and betrayal and sacrilege and blasphemy.

Catholics must never be silent in the face of moral evils whose gravity is minimized by clerics and as the victims themselves are castigated for seeking justice for those who commit them. 

Just look at how so many Catholics have been silent about the moral evils in the conciliar structures and about moral evils in the world. It is because Catholics have been silent about the moral evils of the today that they have grown to accept them, participate in them and to consider to be irrelevant that they are protected under cover of the civil law and spread so widely in popular culture that those who are steeped various evils are considered to be worthy of emulation, if not election to public office as they relish with delight in their sinful lifestyles.

Sentimentality, one of the enduring effects of the Protestant Revolution that is part and parcel of the Americanist heresy, thus triumphs little by little as parents look the other way as their children watch television programs and motion pictures that promote licentiousness, as their children fall away from the Holy Faith, as their children marry outside of the Faith, as they do and say things that would make a hardened sailor blush. "You can't criticize my child. I love my child. He can do anything he wants." It's a short step from that to actually applauding clerics steeped in immorality (see Weak In Mind, Weakest Yet In Faith) to doing pitched battle with anyone who criticizes a favored politician or some other personage in whom one has invested a good deal of time and emotion and support.

Lost upon us as a result, therefore, are these words of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:

And when there is question of the divine honour, we should not be frightened by the dignity of the man who offends God; let us say to him openly: This is sinful; it cannot be done. Let us imitate the Baptist, who reproved King Herod for living with his brother's wife and said to him: "It is not lawful for thee to have her"--Matt., xiv. 4. Men indeed shall regard us as fools, and turn us into derision; but, on the day of judgment they shall acknowledge that they have been foolish, and we have shall have the glory of being numbered among the saints. They shall say: "These are they whom we had some time in derision. . . . . We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints"--Wis., v. 3, 4, 5. (Sixth Sunday After Easter: On Human Respect.)

 

Those who do not think that the honor of God is offended as clerics demonstrate diffidence, if not open mockery, in the face of offenses against the innocence and the purity of the young and as lies are told openly from pulpits and in other forums to seek to discredit those who are rightly and justifiably outraged by these offenses has no right to criticize anyone in the Novus Ordo structures for doing the exact same thing.

Although each of us is a sinner in need of the healing balm of Divine Mercy in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance as an alter Christus applies the merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus on our immortal souls after we make a good, integral confession of the sins we have committed since our last confession, we are, however, to recognize that moral crimes that go uncorrected time and time again do indeed require us to speak out as we refuse to enable these crimes or those who are silent about them. If this is not the case, then none of us had any business criticizing the late Edward Moore Kennedy and the conciliar "bishops" who enabled him throughout his long career of supporting the slaughter of the innocent preborn.

Although Pope Pius VI was addressing the Catholic bishops of the world in his first encyclical letter, Inscrutabile, December 25, 1775, his words have application to us all when we are face to face with intractable evils that remain uncorrected after all private efforts to seek redress have failed:

The bishop should not fear since the anointing of the Holy Spirit has strengthened him: the shepherd should not be afraid since the prince of pastors has taught him by his own example to despise life itself for the safety of his flock: the cowardice and depression of the hireling should not dwell in a bishop's heart. Our great predecessor Gregory, in instructing the heads of the churches, said with his usual excellence: "Often imprudent guides in their fear of losing human favor are afraid to speak the right freely. As the word of truth has it, they guard their flock not with a shepherd's zeal but as hirelings do, since they flee when the wolf approaches by hiding themselves in silence.... A shepherd fearing to speak the right is simply a man retreating by keeping silent."

 

Father Frederick Faber, writing in The Dolors of Mary/The Foot of the Cross explained that the world and those Catholics formed by its notions of sentimentality will never understand us when we oppose heresy or sacrilege or profane words as offensive to Our Lord and thus injurious to the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross:

The love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of man. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself? ( (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-294.)

 

We must never be as dismissive of blasphemies and apostasies and sacrileges as are so many "conservative" and, at least of late, so many traditionally-minded enablers of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and we must never be dismissive of moral crimes, including those of the repeated use of profanities within earshot of children, that remain uncorrected by clergymen who say that they are opposed to the conciliar revolution. Both sets of crimes are offensive to God. Those who are responsible for them must be held to account publicly if they persist in minimizing or justifying them.

We can never retreat from the truth no matter what it may cost us, remembering always to pray for those who have committed or suborned or sought to minimize grave moral evils, understanding we are indeed sinners ourselves who must seek to live more penitentially each day of our lives in order to try to make more and more reparation for our own sins as we accept with joy and gratitude each of the sufferings of the present moment as coming from the loving hand of God Himself, Who desires that we return whatever merit we might earn from our patient endurance of them to Him through the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother.

Today, Ember Wednesday in Advent, provides us with a perfect opportunity to offer up our fasting and partial-abstinence from meat, joined together with our prayers before Our Lord in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and to the Mother of God, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, in reparation for our sins and for the conversion of those who minimize crimes against Faith and Morals.

There may not be, as I noted in an article on November 8, 2009, "happy recaps" as the problems of conciliarism and the conflicts of the present moment that exist in certain underground venues get "resolved" all to our satisfaction in the shortest amount of time possible. No, it may very well be God's Holy Will for us to suffer from the effects of conciliarism and to be estranged from former friends all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide for some time to come. In the midst of these problems, however, we remember to lift high the Cross, to pray for those from whom we are separated in this life so that we can be united happily together at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead on the Last Day.

Christmas joy awaits us in but nine days. The days of the "O" antiphons begin tomorrow. We must see the hand of God present in all of our sufferings and tribulations, remembering these words of Pope Pius XI that he wrote in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:

We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men's faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before.

 

May these Ember Days of penance help us to prepare for the coming of Our Lord on Christmas Day and to be more prepared to receive Him every day in Holy Communion as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit.

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Eusebius, pray for us.

Saint Alice (Adelaide), pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?