Rotten to the Core

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The following report was carried by on the Zenit service yesterday, January 10, 2006:

An Iraqi bishop says his faithful were faced with a "nightmare" after hard-line Muslims claimed victory in the country's general elections.

Adding his voice to widespread allegations of fraud in the Dec. 15 polling, Auxiliary Bishop Andraos Abouna of Baghdad described how the hopes of the country's Christians were dashed after the elections.

Iraqi Christians, victims of random kidnappings, bombings and intimidation, had hoped that the elections would signal the end of instability and halt Iraq's slide into an Islamic theocratic state, the Chaldean prelate told the charity Aid to the Church in Need.

Instead, however, despite reports of a good electoral turnout of Sunni Muslims, the religious Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC) is thought to have won almost half of the 230 parliamentary seats, raising the prospect of am alliance with the UIC's nearest rival, the Kurdistan Alliance.

After winning just three seats, the Christians are unlikely to have much say in the new Parliament.

In the interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Abouna, 62, explained how Christians felt "caught in the middle" amid complaints of intimidation tactics and tampering with election ballots. He described how the election was blighted by "mistakes" and "cheating."

"How can you build a government on a false election?" he asked. "If you want to build democracy, the results should be clear and beyond doubt."

Bishop Abouna, who is assistant to the Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, said: "It is really a nightmare. The Christians here … have been waiting so long to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They are now very sad. They are just asking: 'When will the country be stable?'"

Bishop Abouna's comments come as international monitors announced they were preparing to visit Iraq, an initiative backed by the United States and the United Nations.

If the results are confirmed, the Unified Iraqi Coalition is likely to push ahead with a dramatic Islamization of the country, increasing the likelihood of the introduction of Shariah, Islamic law.

Lost in the desire of American policy-makers to export the false gospel of American constitutionalism and "religious freedom" to Iraq is the fact that no country can provide its citizens justice or be reasonably secure from internal threats absent a confessional recognition of the right of the Catholic Church to exercise the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. No, possessed of the spirit of the late Woodrow Wilson, who believed that American political "values" would provide the salve to produce domestic political stability and international peace in Europe following the end of the First World War, contemporary American policy makers believe that their bombs and brute force can bring about a stable "democratic" system that will prevent another brutal tyrant such as Saddam Hussein from emerging on the scene in Iraq again. Disregarding the instability and chaos that have been produced as a result of the American invasion of nearly three years ago, which has cost this nation dearly in terms of monetary outlays and the needless, senseless loss of American lives and the lives of countless numbers of innocent Iraqis, American policy-makers believe that the recent elections in Iraq are the start of the "stabilization" of that country. The plight of Catholics in Iraq means little to these policy-makers, intent on trying to stem the daily violence in Iraq so as to claim that their goals have been achieved.

Obviously, one can expect little else from men who believe in their own redemptive powers. The entire ethos of the American Constitution is premised upon the false belief that it is possible for men to pursue the common good without referencing for one moment the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted solely to the Catholic Church and that men can pursue "civic virtue" in their own lives without having belief in, access to, and cooperation with sanctifying grace. A veritable cottage industry has sprung up to defend this diabolical scheme. Even Catholics, including some who assist at the Traditional Latin Mass, participate in the spreading of the lie that the American system of government, premised upon the lies of religious indifferentism and cultural pluralism, is the model for all other peoples in the world. Bombarded endlessly with the myth of the "goodness" of the American system of government, many Catholics take all leave of the sensus Catholicus in order to serve as apologists for Americanization of the world, even if this means that their co-religionists in places like Iraq must suffer in the process.

What is even more saddening, however, is the fact that the entire ethos of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar era that has been spawned in its dreadful wake is itself an accommodation to the spirit of 1787 and 1789. As I noted in Upholding the Revolution last month, our current Holy Father wrote that the Second Vatican Council was a "Counter-Syllabus of Errors" and represented the Church's accommodation with the "Principles of 1789." Writing as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger late in the year 2004, the current Holy Father praised the American system as a model for "laicism," which he has termed as the concept of "healthy secularity" at various points in the nearly nine months of his pontificate. The Holy Father, therefore, reaffirms Catholics who have embraced the false, diabolical premises of the American regime, thereby consigning the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King to the Orwellian memory hole.

The Church's accommodation to the prevailing spirit of the world is rotten to the core. It has helped to embolden the enemies of the Church to let loose all manner of evil schemes as the foundation of civil law and popular culture. The refusal of one pope after another to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message has made more and more nations susceptible to violence from within and invasions from without. All of the talk of "peace and justice" that have emanated from the Holy See have been no more effective in producing true peace and justice, which are found only in Our Lord as we go to Him through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, than the aphorisms and John Lennon and the empty words of those who belong to Pax Christi, a leftist organization that has done much to promote the heresy of "liberation theology." There can be no peace and justice without Our Lord and without a firm reliance upon His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Thus, the sorry spectacles of baby-killing at home and carnage abroad in senseless, unjust wars will continue unabated.

The Revolution of Modernity and the Revolutions of Modernism have more in common than one might suspect. Although there were many, complex, inter-related forces, including the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Freemasonry, at work that brought about Modernity, there is a common thread about these forces: that man can be indifferent to the Incarnation of the Word as Flesh in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb and know personal happiness and social justice in this mortal vale of tears. I have discussed the influence of John Locke upon the modern mind in Minds Locked Up. Another important influence on the mind of modern man, including the mind of Modernist theologians, was that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Father Denis Fahey, writing in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, summarized the essence of Rousseau's narcissistic world view:

Rousseau carries on the revolution against the order of the world begun by Luther. Luther’s revolt was that of our individuality and sense-life against the exigencies of the supernatural order instituted by God. It was an attempt to remain attached to Christ, while rejecting the order established by Christ for our return to God. Rousseau’s revolt was against the order of natural morality, by the exaltation of the primacy of our sense-life.

The little world of each one of us, our individuality, is a divine person, supremely free and sovereignly independent of all order, natural and supernatural. he state of Liberty or of sovereign independence is the primitive state of man, and the nature of man demands the restoration of that state of liberty. It is to satisfy this-called exigency that ‘Father of modern thought’ invented the famous myth of the Social Contract.

The Social Contract gives birth to a form of association in which each one, while forming a union with all the others, obeys only himself and remains as free as before. Each one is subject to the whole, but he is not subject to any man, there is no man above him. He is absorbed in the common Ego begotten in the pact, so that obeying the law, he obeys only himself. Each citizen votes in order, that by the addition of the number of votes, the general will, expressed by the vote of the majority, is, so to say, a manifestation of the ‘deity’ immanent in the multitude. The People are God (no wonder we have gotten used to writing the word with a capital letter). The law imposed by this ‘deity’ does not need to be just in order to exact obedience. In fact, the majority vote makes or creates right and justice. An adverse majority vote can not only overthrow the directions and commands of the Heads of the Mystical Body on earth, the Pope and the Bishops, but can even deprive the Ten Commandments of all binding force.

To the triumph of those ideals in the modern world, the Masonic denial of original sin and the Rousseauist dogma of the natural goodness of man have contributed not a little. The dogma of natural goodness signifies that man lived originally in a purely natural paradise of happiness and goodness and that, even in our present degraded state, all our instinctive movements are good. We do not need grace, for nature can do for what grace does. In addition, Rousseau holds that this state of happiness and goodness, of perfect justice and innocence, of exemption from servile work and suffering, is natural to man, that is, essentially demanded by our nature. Not only then is original sin nonexistent, not only do we not come into the world as fallen sons of the first Adam, bearing in us the wounds of our fallen nature, is radically anti-natural. Suffering and pain have been introduced by society, civilization and private property. Hence we must get rid of all these and set up a new form of society. We can bet back the state of the Garden of Eden by the efforts of our own nature, without the help of grace. For Rousseau, the introduction of the present form of society, and of private property constitute the real Fall. The setting up of a republic based on his principles will act as a sort of democratic grace which will restore in its entirety our lost heritage. In a world where the clear teaching of the faith of Christ about the supernatural order of the Life of Grace has become obscured, but were men are still vaguely conscious that human nature was once happy, Rousseau’s appeal acts like an urge of homesickness. We need not be astonished, then, apart from the question of Masonic-Revolutionary organization and propaganda, at the sort of delirious enthusiasm which takes possession of men at the thought of a renewal of society. Nor need we wonder that men work for the overthrow of existing government and existing order, in the belief that they are not legitimate forms of society. A State not constructed according to Rosseauist-Masonic principles is not a State ruled by laws. It is a monstrous tyranny, and must be overthrown in the name of "Progress" and of the "onward march of democracy.’ All these influences must be borne in mind as we behold, since 1789, the triumph in one country after another or Rousseauist-Masonic democracy.

Whether or not men are conscious of Rousseau's influence on them, it is nevertheless true that Rousseau's belief that democracy represents the onward "march of progress" is the essence of both the Americanist heresy and the evils of the French Revolution. Indeed, this is what we are seeing at present with the American approach to "world peace" based on the perverse model provided by the American Constitution, which has no room for Our Lord or His true Church. And it is no exaggeration to state that Rousseau's thought influences our contemporary churchmen today, many of whom believe that "democracy" is indeed the sign of the full "development of peoples" and their nations.

Rousseau's attempt to recapture his mythical "State of Nature" also has a bearing on the attempts of Modernist theologians to recapture what they believe to have been an earlier period of "simplicity," both liturgically and doctrinally. Committed to the error of Antiquarianism, which is the projection back onto the past of one's revolutionary schemes for the future in order to assert that one is indeed recapturing the "essence" of that non-existent past, Modernist theologians reject all "accretions," as they see them, such as the beauty of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and dogmatic pronouncements that they believe are somehow opposed to the spirit of "true" Christianity. People possessed of such an erroneous mindset have convinced themselves that the Church survived under the Roman Emperors despite their episodic persecutions, indicating that the Church can accommodate herself yet again to a situation in which she does not enjoy the favor and the protection of the State, as Pope Leo XIII insisted throughout his pontificate was the Church's right. The era of Christendom is over, never to be recaptured, they assert. It is thus necessary to deal with the "reality" of the Modern State without seeking to have a "nostalgia" for a bygone era.

As I have noted before, the assertion that the era of Christendom is over and never to be recaptured is as false as it would be to assert that one who falls from a state of sanctifying grace can never recapture that state after he has lost it. He must simply "move on" and deal with the reality of a post-Christian life. Pope Leo XIII wrote in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus in 1900 that the life of a nation is very much like that of the life of the soul:

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.

It is rather ignorance than ill-will which keeps multitudes away from Jesus Christ. There are many who study humanity and the natural world; few who study the Son of God. The first step, then, is to substitute knowledge for ignorance, so that He may no longer be despised or rejected because He is unknown. We conjure all Christians throughout the world to strive all they can to know their Redeemer as He really is. The more one contemplates Him with sincere and unprejudiced mind, the clearer does it become that there can be nothing more salutary than His law, more divine than His teaching. In this work, your influence, Venerable Brethren, and the zeal and earnestness of the entire Clergy, can do wonders. You must look upon it as a chief part of your duty to engrave upon the minds of your people the true knowledge, the very likeness of Jesus Christ; to illustrate His charity, His mercies, His teaching, by your writings and your words, in schools, in Universities, from the pulpit; wherever opportunity is offered you. The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God. That the time is suitable is proved by the very general revival of religious feeling already referred to, and especially that devotion towards Our Saviour of which there are so many indications, and which, please God, we shall hand on to the New Century as a pledge of happier times to come. But as this consummation cannot be hoped for except by the aid of divine grace, let us strive in prayer, with united heart and voice, to incline Almighty God unto mercy, that He would not suffer those to perish whom He had redeemed by His Blood. May He look down in mercy upon this world, which has indeed sinned much, but which has also suffered much in expiation! And, embracing in His loving-kindness all races and classes of mankind, may He remember His own words: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself" (John xii., 32).

The failure of the Church to proclaim the Social Reign of Christ the King has emboldened the scions of the Revolution to create a world that has no room for Our Lord and, indeed, makes war upon Him at every turn. The blithe acceptance of the compatibility of the "Principles of 1789" with the Faith has blinded popes and cardinals and bishops about the necessity of reminding one and all that there can be no peace absent a return of all men to membership in the Catholic Church and a fervent, lived cooperation with the graces she makes present in the world by means of the sacraments entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom. A reflexive commitment to the errors of ecumenism and religious liberty has prevented one pope after another from taking the step that Heaven itself has given us to secure a certain period of peace in the world before the devil's final battle, that is, of fulfilling Our Lady's Fatima Message by the consecration of Russia by a pope with all of the world's bishops to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

The principles of Modernity in the world and their mutations expressed by Modernists in the Church are just rotten to the core. Sister Lucia told us that entire nations would be annihilated if the consecration of Russia was not done. The tragedy in Iraq, which may well end up with a wanton slaughter of Catholics there, is simply one of many tragedies that could have been avoided entirely in the Church in her human elements continued to hold fast to the fullness of her divinely received Tradition--and if popes had simply done the simple thing that Our Lady says will provide us with the fruit of the Triumph of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

We must, as always, keep on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament and beseech Our Lady in her Most Holy Rosary to help us be some small instruments of planting the seeds for the day when the rotten principles of Modernity and Modernist will be swept away and all things will be restored in Christ under the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us and protect us.

Saint Edward the Confessor, pray for us.

Saint Henry, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory VII, pray for us.

Saint Thomas a Becket, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

The North American Martyrs, pray for us.

Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Blessed Emperor Charles, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.