"This is the Charity of God, That We Keep His Commandments"

Part Four

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. (1 John 5: 1-3)

Our love for God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church impels us to obey His Commandments. One of the ways that we prove our love for God is to obey those who have authority over us. That is, we are called to obey the commands of all legitimate authority in those things that pertain to the competence of the one commanding and that do not require us to sin. Unjust commands, even if issued by one who has lawful authority, never compel obedience. Indeed, unjust commands require us to resist and to defend the fullness of truth no matter what consequences might befall us. We must be so properly formed in our Catholic Faith that we never give unjust commands and that we we are able to recognize without difficulty and to resist without delay such unjust commands.

The Fourth Commandment is:

Honor thy father and thy mother.

The precepts of the Fourth Commandment extend to all lawful authority. That is, we are to render obedience in a spirit of humility and docility to all lawful authority, recognizing that we are under the authority of God Himself at all times. It was to teach us this lesson definitively that Our Lord placed Himself as One subordinate to the authority of His own creatures, Our Lady and Saint Joseph, in the Holy Family in Nazareth. Our Lord taught us in the Holy Family that each of us is to live in the context of the visible, hierarchical structure that is Holy Mother Church herself. Hierarchy is part of the Order of Creation and the Order of Redemption.

A man and a woman join together in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to bring forth children and to educate them in truths of the Faith. A father and a mother thus become the figures of Saint Joseph and Our Lady. Children must be taught that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man Himself, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, submitted Himself in humility to the authority of His Most Blessed Mother and His foster-Father, good Saint Joseph. Children must submit themselves in humility to their parents in all things that do not pertain to sin, recognizing that they are following the example of Our Lord Himself.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by being ready and docile students, learning about the Faith and temporal matters from their first and principal educators, that is, their parents.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by performing the household chores that are assigned to them, offering all of their daily penances to the Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by being attentive and well-behaved at Mass, remembering that they are in God's house and that they represent their parents to others, desiring to demonstrate how much the honor their parents by respecting their authority outside of the home, especially during Holy Mass.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by coming to understand that their parents have an obligation to shield them from bad company and from those aspects of popular culture that are deleterious to their immortal souls.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by listening to their advice as they grow into their teenaged years, understanding that their parents care about the welfare of their souls unto eternity and want them to choose a state-in-life that will help them get home to Heaven.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by listening to their advice as to where to study (say, at Christ the King College) after their home-schooling days have been completed.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by keeping close to them, spiritually and temporally, after they have moved out on their own, remembering them in their prayers, especially in the Memento for the Living during the Canon of the Mass and in our daily Rosaries, and having Masses said for them while they are alive.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by having Masses said for their deceased parents until they themselves have been called to the moment of their own Particular Judgments. None of us knows for sure whether we have gained a plenary indulgence for another soul (and those of us who are totally consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart give her all of the merits we earn during the course of a day, including those that are assigned to our indulgenced acts) as none of us knows for sure whether we are really completely detached from our past sins. Thus, we keep praying Rosaries and having Masses said for them for as long as we ourselves are alive. My own late parents' immortal souls are uppermost in my prayers every day.

Children honor their fathers and mothers by providing them with the physical care and financial support that they might require in their elderly years. This is not an obligation of the civil state or of the Shady Rest Nursing Home. This is an obligation of the Fourth Commandment. Children are required to give back to their parents the same physical care and financial support that their parents gave to them when they were totally dependent upon them as newborns--and throughout the course of their tender years--for food, shelter, clothing, love, and spiritual nourishment. This is a point worth elaborating upon for a moment.

One of the chief goals of Judeo-Masonry has been to destablize and break-up the domestic cell of the Church that is the family. This has been done in numerous, inter-related ways. One of the most effective means of destabilizing and breaking up the family has been the imposition of a mandatory retirement age and the creation of state-sponsored and funded Social Security programs.

That is, the Church teaches us perennially that we are supposed to work hard at something as long as we are physically and/or mentally able to do so. Even people who choose to retire from some kind of strenuous physical labor must continue to labor hard for the salvation of their immortal souls--and for the souls of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The concept of  mandatory retirement age, 70, and then relying upon the civil state for one's financial security was the brainchild of the Freemason named Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor first of Purssia--and then of Germany after its "unification" following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, from 1862-1890. A gigantic income redistribution program was created to fund Social Security in German in the Nineteenth Century, thus alleviating grown children of the principal responsibility of caring for their elderly parents.

Social Security, which was adopted by the government of the United States of America in 1935 as one of the chief policies of the Freemason Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" program, violates the natural law principle of subsidiarity that is derived from the Fourth Commandment. Holy Mother Church teaches us that human needs are to be provided by the institution closest to the person who is in need, starting with the family. The ultimate "social security" program for the elderly is to be found in a large family of grown children who share the financial costs of caring for their elderly parents, and for whatever other relatives who happen to be in need at any given time.

If, say, "Uncle Louie" is a little shiftless and can't hold a job, it's the responsibility of his extended family to care for him, not the civil state. Here is where the lie of Social Security, born of a Freemason in Germany who waged war against the Catholic Church by means of his Kulturkampf and instituted in this country by a Freemason who was aided and abetted by sycophantic Catholic bishops eager to silence Father Charles Coughlin's criticisms of Roosevelt's policies as being violative of subsidiarity, meets the lie of contraception and divorce.

Contraception produced smaller families, thus making it more difficult, especially during an era of excessive confiscatory taxation, for children who want to care for their elderly parents and other relatives to do so. Contraception made it more possible for husbands and wives to be unfaithful to each other, leading to divorce and the abandoment of children to day-care and after-school programs in many instances. Contraception, an expression of selfishness and narcissism and a contempt for the law of God, helped to foster a spirit of materialism and self-indulgence to the exclusion of providing for the needs of others. Thus, selfish people who had become accustomed to sating their every physical desire and material want came to believe that it was the civil state's responsibility to provide for the needs of parents and other relatives, not theirs.

Pope Pius XI noted this principle of subsidiarity in Quadragesimo Anno, 1931:

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of "subsidiary function," the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State.

Thus, grown children have the obligation to care for their parents, both spiritually and temporally. So what if grown children who have been successful financially must sacrifice some of their free time and savings to care for their parents? So what? Providing for the spiritual and temporal needs of one's elderly parents (or other relatives) is, first of all, an obligation of filial piety that proceeds from the Fourth Commandment itself. Providing for the spiritual and the temporal needs of one's elderly parents (or other relatives) stores up treasure for oneself in Heaven. Providing for the spiritual and temporal needs of one's elderly parents (or other relatives) provides a salutary example for one's own children to follow when they are grown and we are the ones in need of care and support. This is how, as Saint Peter indicates, we become living stones to build up Church Militant on earth.

As will be developed in a bit more detail in tomorrow's installment in this series, the selfishness bred by contraception and materialism has made grown children more likely to take active measures to put their elderly or disabled parents (or spouses, in some instances) to death. After all, why should one see the suffering of Christ Himself in the persons of our spouses or children or parents or other relatives and loved ones when one comes to view the world in terms of Calvinist self-interest? Why should one make all manner of sacrifices to help victim-souls in order to help Our Lord redeem the world when one has had no time to give to a large family of his own? Why should one seek to bear the Cross of the Divine Redeemer in his own life when he has been brought up and sustained in an atmosphere of endless self-indulgence? Oh, yes, the ramifications of violating just one aspect of the Fourth Commandment as it pertains to families are staggering for the souls of individual people and for their nations. For the Fourth Commandment really concerns how to embody the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King in families and in nations.

The Social Reign of Christ the King is embodied in the family by the recognition that parents are the principal educators of their children. Working in concert with traditional Catholic priests, parents have the obligation to keep their children out of the clutches of the educational appartus of the civil state, as I noted recently in "America's Concentration Camps." Pope Pius XI put it this way in Divini Illius Magistri in 1929:

The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.

That this right is inviolable St. Thomas proves as follows:The child is naturally something of the father . . . so by natural right the child, before reaching the use of reason, is under the father's care. Hence it would be contrary to natural justice if the child, before the use of reason, were removed from the care of its parents, or if any disposition were made concerning him against the will of the parents.

And as this duty on the part of the parents continues up to the time when the child is in a position to provide for itself, this same inviolable parental right of education also endures. "Nature intends not merely the generation of the offspring, but also its development and advance to the perfection of man considered as man, that is, to the state of virtue" says the same St. Thomas.

The wisdom of the Church in this matter is expressed with precision and clearness in the Codex of Canon Law, can. 1113: "Parents are under a grave obligation to see to the religious and moral education of their children, as well as to their physical and civic training, as far as they can, and moreover to provide for their temporal well-being". . . . From this it follows that the so-called "neutral" or "lay" school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education.

The civil state has zero role to play in the education of the young, especially a state that is rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King and is antipathetic to the true Faith in its very inception and organic documents.

Nevertheless, the civil state is a necessity of the Order of Creation. Thus, the Fourth Commandment deals also with the respect that we owe the just laws of the civil state. Even those of us who live under the yoke of unbelievers in a governmental system that rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King must obey just laws and to work for the common good as best we can in the framework of a fatally flawed regime. Catholics who lived in the first centuries of the Church had to endure the yoke of the Roman Empire, which engaged in fierce and brutal persecutions of Holy Mother Church episodically between 67 A.D. and 313 A.D. Those first Catholics obeyed just laws. Some even did their military service. What they would not do, however, is to yield on any point of Faith and morals to the civil state, including refusing to worship the emperor as God and refusing to deny the Faith when called upon to do so. The blood shed by the millions of martyrs who were put to death by the Roman Empire in the first centuries of the Church made possible the flowering of Christendom during the Middle Ages, a time, although far from perfect and full of faults and defects (as Father Denis Fahey pointed out in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World and as Pope Pius XI noted in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio and Pope Pius XII noted in Summi Pontificatus) when Our Lord was recognized as the King of all men and nations.

Althoug the ethos of conciliarism eschews the Social Reign of Christ the King in favor of a "healthy secularity," we nevertheless have an obligation to plant the seeds, starting in our own families, for the restoration of Christendom. A state organized according to Catholic principles is one that can this or that form of internal governmental organization, noting that the Church has always preferred the monarchical system but that she can adapt herself to any legitimate system of governance provided that a system of governance recognize, frankly and confessionally, the rights of the Catholic Church to exercise the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ when circumstances warrant.

That is, Catholic leaders such as Saint Henry and Saint Stephen of Hungary and Saint Louis IX, King of France, recognized that there were limits that existed in the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law that circumscribed their actions in civil governance. Mindful of the fact that they would be judged by Christ the King Himself at the moment of their Particular Judgments, these great rulers understood that they had the obligation to rule according to the Mind of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to help to foster those conditions in civil society wherein their subjects could better sanctify and thus save their souls as members of the Catholic Church. The fundamental, indispsensable prerequisite for a just society is for those who comprise that society to be in states of sanctifying grace, eager to please God with every beat of their hearts, consecrated as those hearts must be to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There can be no civil peace or justice in any state that does not profess Catholicism as its state religion and that is not comprised of Catholics seeking to save their souls by persisting in states of sanctifying grace until the moment of their dying breaths. Pope Leo XIII pointed this out in Tamtesi Futura Prospicientibus, Novemer 1, 1900:

From this it may clearly be seen what con sequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.

The Catholic Church has the right, exercised as a last resort following the use of her Indirect Power of preaching, teaching and exhortation, to declare civil laws that grievously violate God's laws and are thus injurious to the good of souls null and void. She has the right to call upon her children to resist and to disobey the unjust laws of the civil state. This is what Pope Leo XIII wrote in Diuturnum Illud, 1881:

The one only reason which men have for not obeying is when anything is demanded of them which is openly repugnant to the natural or the divine law, for it is equally unlawful to command to do anything in which the law of nature or the will of God is violated. If, therefore, it should happen to any one to be compelled to prefer one or the other, viz., to disregard either the commands of God or those of rulers, he must obey Jesus Christ, who commands us to "give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," and must reply courageously after the example of the Apostles: "We ought to obey God rather than men." And yet there is no reason why those who so behave themselves should be accused of refusing obedience; for, if the will of rulers is opposed to the will and the laws of God, they themselves exceed the bounds of their own power and pervert justice; nor can their authority then be valid, which, when there is no justice, is null.

Pope Leo XIII elaborated on this theme nine years later in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890. Noting that we are called to love our countries, Pope Leo explained that we must will the good of our countries, which means to Catholicize every aspect of their national lives without any exception whatsoever. Everything in a country must be confessionally Catholic at all times. This requires us to go against the grain and to resist those things that are unjust and thus dangerous to the eternal welfare of souls:

Moreover, if we would judge aright, the supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle, since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other. We can, certainly, and should love ourselves, bear ourselves kindly toward our fellow men, nourish affection for the State and the governing powers; but at the same time we can and must cherish toward the Church a feeling of filial piety, and love God with the deepest love of which we are capable. The order of precedence of these duties is, however, at times, either under stress of public calamities, or through the perverse will of men, inverted. For, instances occur where the State seems to require from men as subjects one thing, and religion, from men as Christians, quite another; and this in reality without any other ground, than that the rulers of the State either hold the sacred power of the Church of no account, or endeavor to subject it to their own will. Hence arises a conflict, and an occasion, through such conflict, of virtue being put to the proof. The two powers are confronted and urge their behests in a contrary sense; to obey both is wholly impossible. No man can serve two masters, for to please the one amounts to contemning the other.

As to which should be preferred no one ought to balance for an instant. It is a high crime indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men, an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or, under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church; "we ought to obey God rather than men." This answer, which of old Peter and the other Apostles were used to give the civil authorities who enjoined unrighteous things, we must, in like circumstances, give always and without hesitation. No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church.

Hence, they who blame, and call by the name of sedition, this steadfastness of attitude in the choice of duty have not rightly apprehended the force and nature of true law. We are speaking of matters widely known, and which We have before now more than once fully explained. Law is of its very essence a mandate of right reason, proclaimed by a properly constituted authority, for the common good. But true and legitimate authority is void of sanction, unless it proceed from God, the supreme Ruler and Lord of all. The Almighty alone can commit power to a man over his fellow men; nor may that be accounted as right reason which is in disaccord with truth and with divine reason; nor that held to be true good which is repugnant to the supreme and unchangeable good, or that wrests aside and draws away the wills of men from the charity of God.

Hallowed, therefore, in the minds of Christians is the very idea of public authority, in which they recognize some likeness and symbol as it were of the Divine Majesty, even when it is exercised by one unworthy. A just and due reverence to the laws abides in them, not from force and threats, but from a consciousness of duty; "for God hath not given us the spirit of fear."

But, if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition; for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused, but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, venerable brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who, in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are "to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word," at once adds: "And to be ready to every good work." Thereby he openly declares that, if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner, the Prince of the Apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: "If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard."

Wherefore, to love both countries, that of earth below and that of heaven above, yet in such mode that the love of our heavenly surpass the love of our earthly home, and that human laws be never set above the divine law, is the essential duty of Christians, and the fountainhead, so to say, from which all other duties spring. The Redeemer of mankind of Himself has said: "For this was I born, and for this came I into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth." In like manner: "I am come to cast fire upon earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?'' In the knowledge of this truth, which constitutes the highest perfection of the mind; in divine charity which, in like manner, completes the will, all Christian life and liberty abide. This noble patrimony of truth and charity entrusted by Jesus Christ to the Church she defends and maintains ever with untiring endeavor and watchfulness.

But with what bitterness and in how many guises war has been waged against the Church it would be ill-timed now to urge. From the fact that it has been vouchsafed to human reason to snatch from nature, through the investigations of science, many of her treasured secrets and to apply them befittingly to the divers requirements of life, men have become possessed with so arrogant a sense of their own powers as already to consider themselves able to banish from social life the authority and empire of God. Led away by this delusion, they make over to human nature the dominion of which they think God has been despoiled; from nature, they maintain, we must seek the principle and rule of all truth; from nature, they aver, alone spring, and to it should be referred, all the duties that religious feeling prompts. Hence, they deny all revelation from on high, and all fealty due to the Christian teaching of morals as well as all obedience to the Church, and they go so far as to deny her power of making laws and exercising every other kind of right, even disallowing the Church any place among the civil institutions of the commonweal. These men aspire unjustly, and with their might strive, to gain control over public affairs and lay hands on the rudder of the State, in order that the legislation may the more easily be adapted to these principles, and the morals of the people influenced in accordance with them. Whence it comes to pass that in many countries Catholicism is either openly assailed or else secretly interfered with, full impunity being granted to the most pernicious doctrines, while the public profession of Christian truth is shackled oftentimes with manifold constraints.

13. Under such evil circumstances therefore, each one is bound in conscience to watch over himself, taking all means possible to preserve the faith inviolate in the depths of his soul, avoiding all risks, and arming himself on all occasions, especially against the various specious sophisms rife among non-believers. In order to safeguard this virtue of faith in its integrity, We declare it to be very profitable and consistent with the requirements of the time, that each one, according to the measure of his capacity and intelligence, should make a deep study of Christian doctrine, and imbue his mind with as perfect a knowledge as may be of those matters that are interwoven with religion and lie within the range of reason. And as it is necessary that faith should not only abide untarnished in the soul, but should grow with ever painstaking increase, the suppliant and humble entreaty of the apostles ought constantly to be addressed to God: "Increase our faith.''

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.

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error.

It is a sin against the Fourth Commandment, therefore, to deify the state and to glorify its national myths, especially when those national myths are founded on the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic lies of the separation of Church and State. We must work--and work very hard--to convert men and their nations to the truths of the true Faith, founded by Our Lord Himself upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Any law or policy promulgated by any government that puts into question the rights of the Church and the good of souls must be resisted, starting with prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and to the Mother of God, with all of the strength that God can give us.

How sad it is, therefore, that EWTN (Eternally Wishful Television Network) refused to broadcast live and unedited into Canada a program that contained criticisms of those steeped in perverse acts in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. One junior producer, Andrea Zea, said the following in response to a question posed by LifeSiteNews.com:

"I apologize that you didn't get the show that you were expecting.  Due to the new hate crimes regulations in Europe and Canada, it is against the law for us to air shows whose main topic deal with same sex attraction." 

EWTN's Vice President for Communications, Scott Hults, said that Miss Zea was mistaken, that the network was just being "cautious," especially after it had defended, successfully, a complaint filed in the United Kingdom against it for airing a program critical of perversity. Thus we have the spectacle of a supposedly "Catholic" television network, which is the subject of Christopher A. Ferrara's excellent EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong, being "cautious" about offending the government of a country where a provincial judge in Alberta has just ruled that it is not illegal for an adult to engage in graphic discussions of matters pertaining to personal purity with minors on the telephone or over the internet. This is not exactly the spirit of the Catholic martyrs who defied the Roman emperors. This is not exactly the spirit of the Catholic martyrs who gave up their lives to promote the Faith in the midst of the Protestant Revolt in England. This is not exactly the spirit of the Catholic martyrs who gave up their lives at the hands of the French Revolutionaries of the Bolsheviks or the Masons in Mexico and Italy or the Communists in Spain. This is the spirit of conciliarist appeasement of the state in order to keep oneself in "good standing." It is the exact same phenomenon that keeps "conservative" Catholics from disobeying the unjust and illicit decrees of ecclesiastical officials, which are no more binding upon souls than the unjust decrees of the civil state.

We have the obligation under the Fourth Commandment to disobey all unjust decrees, including those issued by people who hold various offices legitimately but who do not have any right found in the Divine positive law and the natural law to command evil and to proscribe the good from opposing that evil. Here is one of those intersecting many lines where the lies of Modernity in the world meet the lies of Modernism in the Church. At a time when defenders of the Novus Ordo Missae trumpet the fact that almost the entire Bible is read in the course of three years of daily Masses, one little inconvenient fact is omitted: direct condemnations of perversity in the New Testament, such as the one found in Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans, are nowhere to be found:

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.  (Romans 1:26-32)

Must this passage from Sacred Scripture, which is the Word of God, not be proclaimed so as to avoid offending those steeped in unrepentant sins of perversity and/or so as to avoid offending governmental leaders in nations where perversity, along with child-killing and the usurpation of the rights of parents to educate their children, has received the protection of the civil law? What sense of the Fourth Commandment is possessed by the fools who think that they must be "cautious" so as to preserve themselves or their institutions? Is this the sensus Catholicus that built Christendom? Is this the sense that the Apostles had when the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity descended upon them in tongues of flame on Pentecost Sunday in the same Upper Room in Jerusalem where Our Lord Himself had instituted the Eucharist and ordained them to the priesthood fifty-three days before? No one can claim to know the Catholic Faitih and refuse to proclaim the truth because they fear some sanction being imposed upon them or their organization by the civil state.

As noted earlier, what applies to the civil state applies to the Church in her human elements. While recognizing the authority of the postconciliar popes and cardinals and bishops--and praying for them fervently every day, one has the duty nevertheless to resist anything they command that has not been taught always and believed by everyone and everywhere. Popes and cardinals and bishops and priests are bound to observe the Church's perennial teaching in the manner that teaching has been handed down, as Vatican I noted:

Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema.

It is no more an act of "hate" for our Holy Father or the other members of hierarchy to resist their erroneous novelties than it is to "hate" a parent when he commands us to do wrong. It is no more an act of "hate" for the Church or to be be in schism from her to recognize the actual state of the Church in her human elements than it is to "hate" one's nation when her civil leaders decree things and/or enact legislatiion contrary to God's laws and thus to the good of souls. We are called by the Fourth Commandment to be respectful of duly constituted authority and to obey just commands promptly. We are not called by the Fourth Commandment to suspend our Catholic reasoning processes in order to pretend that things contrary to Tradition and Truth are from God and not from the devil himself.

To honor our fathers and mothers--and to respect all duly constituted authority in the Church and in the civil state, therefore, we must think as Catholics at all times. Parents must will the good of their children, seeking to upbraid them for straying from the Faith no matter how old they get. Children must will the goodo of their parents, seeking to upbraid them if they have strayed from the Faith lest their perish outside of the Church's maternal bosom, quite possibly to their eternal perdition. Citizens must will the good of their nations, seeking to resist injustice and to plant the seeds for the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. The sheep of the true Sheepfold of Christ must pray for the conversion of the wolves in shepherds' clothing, praying partcularly that the Diabolical Disorientation from which the Church is suffering in human elements will be ended swiftly by a prompt fulfillment of Our Lady's Fatima Message.

We honor God when we obey all just commands issued by duly constituted authority. We dishonor him when we give credence of any kind to that which is opposed to His eternal laws and thus our own eternal salvation.

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. (1 John 5: 1-3)

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrerr, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damien, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

 

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.