The Full Faith Must be Taught

As I note in the piece I posted late in the evening of May 8, 2004, "For True Love of Country," many believing Catholics get lost in the trees of petty politicians and our vast and seemingly endless ecclesiastical problems that they cannot see the forest of darkness that has descended upon us as a result of the forces of modernity, which have been enshrined in the very ethos of the conciliarist era within the Church herself. Although it is essential to combat the evil of child-killing, whether by surgical or chemical means, it is just as important to realize that child-killing under cover of law, as heinous as it is, is one of the many manifestations of the rotten fruit that has been visited upon the world by the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King by revolutionaries from without the ranks of the Catholic Church. Sad to say, however, that the perpetuation of child-killing under cover of law in this country alone since 1967, when California, Hawaii, and Colorado "liberalized" laws then on the books that restricted child-killing to various instances of "necessity," has been abetted by the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions that have shaken the foundations of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

That is, although there were certainly cultural forces at work in the world for nearly five centuries that brought us to the renaissance contemporaneously of the decadence of the final centuries of the secular Roman Empire, those forces could not have been as successful as they have been if the members of the hierarchy of the true Church in this country and elsewhere had actually taken seriously their responsibility to see to it that the fullness of the Catholic Faith was taught to the flocks entrusted to their pastoral care. With a few notable exceptions, for example, the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King was never taught from Catholic pulpits or in Catholic schools in the United States of America. The common view was that held by the first American bishop and archbishop, John Carroll, and one of his successors as Archbishop of Baltimore, James Cardinal Gibbons, that the American founding and the Catholic Faith were perfectly compatible, and that it was the goal of the Catholic hierarchy in this nation to conform the Faith to the American constitutional framework.

Consider the words of Cardinal Gibbons on the centenary of Carroll's death:

The dominant idea in the mind of Bishop Carroll, who was as great a statesman as he was a churchman, an idea that has remained the inspiration of the Church, and has dictated all her policy of the last century . . . was absolute loyalty to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of the United States.

Bishop Carroll did not wish to see the Church vegetate as a delicate exotic plant. He wished it become a sturdy tree, deep rooted in the soil, to grow with the growth and bloom with the development of the country, inured to its climate, braving its storms, invigorated by them and yielding abundantly the fruits of sanctification. His aim was that the clergy and the people should be so thoroughly identified with the land in which their lot is cast; that they should study its laws and political constitution, and be in harmony with its spirit. (James Cardinal Gibbons, A Retrospect of Fifty Years, pp. 248-249)

This view was not atypical of the American hierarchy in the 1920s. It is not atypical of the American hierarchy today, most of whom, including the bishops who are willing to stand up to pro-abortion public officials, have not a blessed clue or have rejected as absolutely irrelevant the immutable Catholic doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. That is, the American hierarchy has fallen repeatedly for the lie of the American founding, refusing to accept the fact that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are based in an absolute rejection of the necessity of belief in the Incarnation of the God-Man and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross for there to be order in the souls of men and thus in the larger life of the nation itself. Most members of the American hierarchy refuse to see the simple truth that a failure to subordinate a nation's civil order to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it is exercised by His true Church results inevitably in the triumph of the tyranny of the majority. No matter the intentions of those who devised a complex scheme of governance designed to make such a tyranny of the majority difficult to form and to become institutionalized, the lack of an ultimate governing authority, namely, the Church, to serve as a brake on civil office holders leads logically to total social chaos and disorder.

The American founding occurred in the wake of the Protestant Revolt. One of the fundamental tenets of Protestantism, apart from the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King, is the assertion that each individual is his own interpreter of the only source of Divine Revelation that is admitted to exist: Holy Scripture. As Protestantism rejects a divinely instituted authority, namely, the Catholic Church, that is the ultimate repository and explicator of Divine Revelation, each individual becomes his own pope, thus paving the way for mutually contradictory conclusions about the meaning of what is contained in the passages of Holy Writ. Well, if one can come to mutually contradictory conclusions about the meaning of Scripture passages as a result of there being no authority above him to say definitively what those passages truly mean, then is it not going to be the case also that mutually contradictory conclusions about a civil constitution can arise and multiply in the circumstances when that same definitive authority's guidance is rejected entirely? Why should we be surprised that the plain words contained in a constitution are subject to debate and deconstructionism when the Bible itself has been so subjected for the past five centuries? The individualism of Protestantism is a major contributing factor to the errors of modernity, including the modern state.

Furthermore, as is noted in "For True Love of Country," the ethos of Freemasonry asserts as a virtue the evil of religious indifferentism, an evil that is accepted more or less unthinkingly by the large preponderance of the world's bishops, including those in the United States. Papal approbation for the lie of ecumenism, a heresy that was condemned in no uncertain terms by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928, has only encouraged bishops worldwide, including here in the "pluralistic" United States of America, to act and to speak as though the Incarnation of the God-Man and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross are irrelevant to the right ordering of the civil state, if not an actual cause of embarrassment with those who outside of the Church, especially to Jews and Mohammedans. Thus, the Holy Name is ignored, sometimes in the very midst of our own cathedrals and churches, while the names of false gods, such as Allah, are invoked. This makes it more and more possible for the Masonic concept of human self-redemption to take hold among Catholic bishops and priests and laymen, undermining if not entirely vitiating a Catholic sensus fidei of the necessity of relying upon the graces received in the sacraments to live a life in full accord with the Deposit of Faith Our Lord has entrusted to His true Church.

Thus, we see some of the successors of Archbishop John Carroll and James Cardinal Gibbons acting as though the daily slaughter of over four thousand innocent babies in their mothers' wombs by surgical abortion alone, to say nothing of the thousands more who die each day as result of abortifacient contraceptive pills and devices, was simply one among many things that Catholic should weigh before their exercise their duties as citizens. This is the case with Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was rightly taken to task for his own attitude in this regard in a full page advertisement in The Washington Times sponsored by the American Life League on Friday, May 7, 2004. And we see also the incredible spectacle of other bishops, such as Edward Cardinal Egan, the Archbishop of New York, embracing pro-abortion Catholics of both major political parties, no less having said publicly in 2001 before a meeting of Catholics in the Mid-Hduson Valley region of his archdiocese that it is not known when human life begins. The presumption must be for life, Egan said, but we really do not know when life begins. This is not only a denial of what it is taught by the Church in the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Incarnation, it is a denial of the facts of simple biology. In other words, it is utter stupidity and ignorance.

There are other archbishops and bishops, however, who are stiffening their spines and talking about the primacy of the life issue above all others. These statements are welcomed. In particular, I want to note that of my former vocations director when I studied briefly for the priesthood for the Diocese of Peoria in 1981 (having taken a leave of absence from teaching at Nassau Community College at the time), the now Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, the Most Reverend John Myers. I had taken His Excellency to task recently for failing to act before the fact to prevent an honor from being bestowed by the pro-abortion Sandra Day O'Connor to another pro-abortion judge, Maryanne Trump Barry, at Seton Hall University's law school on April 16, 2004. Archbishop Myers did issue, as I predicted he would, a strong statement after that outrage, indicating that he shared the outrage of those who had complained to him. These statements are certainly quite welcomed and are to be applauded for as far as they go.

Nevertheless, I am afraid that Archbishop Myers may not be willing to admit publicly the simple truth that these statements are going to fall on the deaf ears of many Catholics precisely because the fullness of the Catholic Faith, including the Social Reign of Christ the King, has never been taught in this country. The Church was coopted in this country from the very beginning by the heretical nature of the first fully secular government in the history of man, that created by the Constitution of the United States of America. (Even the Roman Empire had a form of pietas or state sponsored worship. It was false worship, replete with its own liturgy and liturgical ceremonies. However, it was a recognition that the state had to recognize formally some type of religion, not be content with a spirit of religious indifferentism.) Even when the basics of the Faith were being taught relatively well, equipping people with the necessity of climbing the heights of sanctity and saving their souls, there was almost no understanding on the part of the Catholic lay faithful as to how they were being coopted by an essentially Calvinist and Masonic political and economic system into viewing the Church through the eyes of the world rather than by viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith.

When the Church herself, however, began to embrace the individualism and relativism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council and the synthetic entity known as the Novus Ordo Missae, many millions of Catholics in this country and around the world quit the practice of the Faith altogether or were confirmed in their embrace of the spirit of the world from the pulpits and in the confessionals and in every level of Catholic education. This triumph of the spirit of Modernity and Modernism within the Church is what makes it so difficult for those bishops who want to do something to oppose currents that support the taking of innocent human life in the womb and that promote the perversion of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments to even have a ghost of a chance, humanly speaking, to be heard by the sheep entrusted to their pastoral care.

One of the ways that the currents of the world have been most influential in the life of the Church is through the institutionalized of the ideology of sex-instruction in all levels of Catholic education, becoming as it has a standard prerequisite in sacramental preparation programs. This evil practice has helped to further undermine the innocence and the purity of the young, accepting as a given that we need to confront the vulgarities of our age with "explicit materials" so as to equip the young with the means to make "informed" decisions. This is naturalistic nonsense, condemned in no uncertain terms by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, which was issued in 1928:

Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.

Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.

In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by [Silvio Cardinal] Antoniano cited above, when he says: Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.

All forms of classroom sex-instruction were thus specifically prohibited by Pope Pius XI. Well, haven't things changed since then? Don't we have to do something? Again, a quintessential Modernist and Americanist view of things, one that rejects the sufficiency of the Deposit of Faith and of the graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood to help us to love God entirely, avoid evil, and to grow in sanctity.

No, we do not have to have any form of sex-instruction programs, including "chastity-based abstinence" programs. We do not have to have "murder education programs" or "theft education programs" to instruct people about how they can kill or steal from others in order to help them avoid doing such things. Although human nature is weak, all that is needed to equip the young to keep any of the Commandments, including the Sixth and the Ninth, is to teach them to love God as He has revealed Himself through the true Church, to cooperate with the graces made available us by the working of the Holy Ghost in the sacraments, and to be thus able to resist the near occasions of sin when we are tempted thereby. If these efficacious remedies are ignored by one intent on disobeying God, then he must be taught to seek out the absolution available in the Sacrament of Penance and to resolve to sin no more. If the graphic talk and explicit images that are used in today's Church-sponsored sex-instruction programs were placed before the eyes of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, for example, she would have run away in horror and denounced them as abhorrent to both God and man. Why do we think that we are more immune to their horror and harm than her?

Thus, to retard the evils of modernity and Modernism, you see, we more than very welcomed statements by archbishops and bishops. We need Catholic Action. We need the fullness of the Catholic Faith and the fullness of Catholic Worship, expressed most beautifully and perfectly in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Indeed, it was because the Traditional Latin Mass is such a full and beautiful and perfect expression of the Faith that Catholics in this country remained faithful to Sunday Mass attendance until the floodgates of Vatican II and the new Mass were opened despite the many subtle ways that the relevance of the Faith to social and political life were being undermined in our country prior to that time. Catholics at least had authentic worship to help them to save their souls. They did not have to contend with a liturgy that was founded on an acceptance of many of the premises of modernity, as Father Romano Thomassi is proving in his groundbreaking research into the minutes of Annibale Bugnini's Consilium.

In case the Holy Father or any archbishop or bishop wants some unsolicited advice as to how best to retard the evils of modernity, here it is:

1) Permit the Traditional Latin Mass to flower as it was intended by Pope Saint Pius X's Quo Primum. Although the Traditional Latin Mass does not need any papal or episcopal approval for its being offered by a validly ordained priest, the ordinary Catholic is under the misapprehension, fed by the Vatican and by local chancery offices, that the Immemorial Mass of Tradition is somehow a special grant of permission offered in a sort of noblesse oblige on the part of the Church. This false spirit must be corrected. All stigma attached to the assisting at the Mass of our fathers must be removed. All of the unjust conditions attached by the Holy See to such assistance at the Traditional Latin mass must be removed. As Michael Davies has noted, the Traditional Latin Mass is the birthright of all Latin Rite Catholics. The Novus Ordo Missae must be suppressed in order to advance the greater honor and glory of God and to advance the sanctification and salvation of human souls, thus redounding to the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

2) Restore the fullness of the Catholic Faith as the foundation of the Church's missionary work. Admit that the past forty to forty-five years have been an unmitigated disaster for the Church--and hence for individuals and the nations in which they live. Restore the complete patrimony of the Church, including all of her dogmatic councils, including the Council of Trent, as normative in the life of the Church.

3) Stop the heresy of ecumenism. Consider the words of Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos and measure them against the rotten fruit of the last four and one-half decades:

Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is "the root and womb whence the Church of God springs," not with the intention and the hope that "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail. Would that God our Savior, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," would hear us when We humbly beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the Church! In this most important undertaking We ask and wish that others should ask the prayers of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of divine grace, victorious over all heresies and Help of Christians, that She may implore for Us the speedy coming of the much hoped-for day, when all men shall hear the voice of Her divine Son, and shall be "careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

This clear and unambiguous statement of authentic Catholic teaching, which was not at all in question until the pontificate of Pope John XXIII, needs to be embraced by the Church once more.

4) Preach the Social Reign of Christ the King. Work to expedite the day when some pope will actually consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, the ultimate fruit of which will be the restoration of Christendom. Oppose all sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance with great vigor.

5) Hire only those Catholics who are completely faithful to the Deposit of Faith and to the Church's actual Tradition. Fire anyone who is not. Restore Catholic educational institutions and hospitals and charitable efforts to their Catholic foundation, rejecting all forms of naturalism and adherence to political ideologies of any stripe whatsoever.

6) Stop the evil of sex-instruction. Exhort everyone of all ages to pursue sanctity and to be totally consecrated to the Mother of God. Exhort both men and women to adhere to Our Lady's Fatima dress code.

7) Encourage home-schooling parents to educate their children to be faithful Catholics. Do not even attempt to intimidate them into cooperating with evil, naturalistic programs in order for their children to receive the sacraments.

7) Excommunicate those in public life who support and promote grave evils under cover of law.

8) Exhort Catholics to stop participating in our culture of eternal death. Encourage to abandon the watching of television, to abandon the patronage of all but those motion pictures that feed the Holy Faith, to never again listen to anything that borders on the evil known as rock music, to pay not one dollar to sporting events in which evil images are displayed and sounds blared forth from public address systems, and to stop participating in the lie of consumerism and materialism

9) Exhort Catholics to be prepared at all times for the moment of their own Particular Judgments, teaching them to think and to speak and to act always in light of our First Cause and Last End.

Obviously, it is not only a pope and his bishops and priests who must do things to make sure that the fullness of the Catholic Faith becomes once again the foundation of everything in a nation's popular culture. We must be consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, conscious of our own need to make reparation for our sins, to avail ourselves frequently of the soothing balm available to us in the Sacrament of Penance, to spend much time on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer, to read the Scriptures, to read good solid books about the saints and the authentic history and tradition of the Church, to foster such a supernatural outlook on life that everything we do is meant to redound to the greater honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity through the Immaculate Heart.

Yes, statements are wonderful. Unless, the Church rejects the novelties of the past forty years, however, the statements of archbishops and bishops who are concerned about the problems that plague us will have no more lasting effect upon souls than the mindless blather that passes for "discussion" on talk radio. Such statements will go in one set of ears and out another. We need the fullness of the Catholic Faith.

Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for the restoration of the fullness of the Catholic Faith and Catholic Tradition as the only way to combat evils that have their origin in the rejection of the same by both social and ecclesiastical revolutionaries.