Trampling Our Lord and the Preborn With Perfect Impunity

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Utterly without shame, the retiring Archbishop of Washington, D.C., Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, is leaving office, in good standing, of course, after having invoked the name of the false god "Allah" in the presence of King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan last year and after having said quite clearly to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "civil union" status for homosexual and lesbian couples was needed:

"I think basically the ideal would be that everybody was -- was able to enter a union with a man and a woman and bring children into the world and have the wonderful relationship of man and wife that is so mutually supportive and is really so much part of our society and what keeps our society together. That's the ideal.

"If you can't meet that ideal, if there are people who for one reason or another just cannot do that or feel they cannot do that, then in order to protect their right to take care of each other, in order to take care of their right to have visitation in a hospital or something like that, I think that you could allow, not the ideal, but you could allow for that for a civil union."

McCarrick tried to "clarify" his remarks by saying that he had misspoken. Given his own public statement in 2002 that homosexuals should not be excluded from ordination to the priesthood, among other things that have been alleged in at least one lawsuit, it is clear that Theodore McCarrick meant to appeal to a false sense of "compassion" for those who "love" each other outside of the context of marriage.

Well, further fueling the flames of his own self-destruction (perhaps he watched too much television news coverage of Buddhist "monks" immolating themselves on the steps of the presidential palace in Saigon, Republic of Vietnam, back in the early-1960) in full public view, McCarrick, who is within days of ceding his ecclesiastical office to Donald Wuerl, whose own assaults against the Faith were chronicled by Mothers' Watch in 1996, has said that bishops who had said that they would refuse Holy Communion to Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts, a pro-abort and invalidly married) and to any and all other pro-abortion politicians had engaged in "partisan politics." Here are his exact remarks:

My concern is the fear that the intense polarization and bitter battles of partisan politics may be seeping into the broader ecclesial life of our Catholic people and maybe even of our Conference.

McCarrick, who chaired the "task force" created by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that studied the issue of whether to deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians and public officials, made his comments as the task force's two-year study was released. This gigantic waste of time  and money (how much of the faithful's money was spent on the personnel who worked on it, to say nothing of paper and supplies and phone calls) resulted in a decision to leave the matter of denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians and public officials to each individual bishop.

Thus, McCarrick is outraged not at Catholics who have sold out their baptismal birthright for thirty pieces of silver, acting as Judases in order to support the destruction of the innocent preborn under cover of law, but at his brother bishops who understand that no one who supports procured abortion is qualified to hold any office of public trust, whether elected or appointed. No one who denies the absolute supremacy of the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law over matters of public policy can be any sort of instrument of "justice" or can in any way contribute to the common good of society.

If bishops such as Raymond Burke and Fabian Bruskewitz and Charles Chaput and Michael Sheridan, can be criticized at all it is for their failure to point out that no one who supports any abortion under any circumstances, whether Republican or Democrat, is fit to receive Holy Communion, no less the votes of Catholics. No one who supports as an executive or votes as a legislator to promote so-called "family planning" programs is fit to receive Holy Communion or to receive the votes of those Catholics who still labor until the misapprehension that we are going to stop contraception and abortion politically or legally or constitutionally, which we are not, at least not in this Masonic system that denies the rights of Christ the King and of the authority of His true Church to interpose herself, yes, as a last resort following the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to nullify laws and edicts contrary to the good of souls.

As far as they went back in 2004, however, the aforementioned bishops who spoke out against the distribution of Holy Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians were seeking to protect the integrity of the Blessed Sacrament, not to engage in partisan politics. Alas, you see, this is where the whole ethos of conciliarism, which is in large measure a product of the multithreaded hydra known as Modernism, of which Americanism plays a important role, makes it impossible for well-meaning prelates to defend the Faith. The novelty of episcopal collegiality, which McCarrick himself just violated by criticizing the bishops who were trying to protect the Blessed Sacrament from being sacrilegiously received by apostate Catholic politicians, makes it impossible for the Vatican itself to impose a hard and fast policy.

The confusion is such that Catholic bishops and priests and laymen whose "true church" is the Democratic Party, outside of which there is no secular salvation, can make inanely stupid remarks on this matter without any one one voice, say, someone from Rome, contradicting them. Some Democratic Party apologists have said over the past few years that those who supported the American invasion of Iraq, which the Vatican opposed, and who support the death penalty, which the Vatican opposes in most instances, ought to be denied Holy Communion as well as those who support abortion. The sensus Catholicus is gone, a double-victim of Americanism in this country and the ethos of conciliarism that has undermined the Faith and put into place a counterfeit religion that enshrines "democracy" as the only form of government that can guarantee the heresy of "religious liberty." Only a handful of Catholics, relatively speaking, are left who understand willful murder is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance and that those who support the killing of the preborn are modern-day Herods who traffic in the blood of the innocent so as to acquire and/or retain their own political power.

Pope Leo XIII, writing to James Cardinal Gibbons, the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, in Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899, understood clearly the dangers posed to the Faith or ordinary Catholics in the United States by the ethos of American pluralism.

But in the manner of which we are now speaking, Beloved Son, the project involves a greater danger and is more hostile to Catholic doctrine and discipline, inasmuch as the followers of these novelties judge that a certain liberty ought to be introduced into the Church, so that, limiting the exercise and vigilance of its powers, each one of the faithful may act more freely in pursuance of his own natural abilities. They affirm, namely, that this is called for in order to imitate that liberty which, though quite recently introduced, is now the law and the foundation of almost every civil community. On that point, We have spoken very much at length in the Letter written to all the bishops about the constitutions of States; where We have also shown the difference between the Church, which is of divine right, and all other associations which subsist by the free will of men.

Pope Leo XIII understood that Catholics in the United States were in a far more dangerous situation than had faced their predecessors in other parts of the world at different points of history in the past. The Roman Emperors and their factotums attacked the Church head on. Luther and Calvin just frankly rejected Catholicism. King Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth I attacked the Church violently, as did the French Revolutionaries. The Church in the United States, Pope Leo understood, was being eaten away in an indirect, insidious manner by the cultural milieu in which she found herself. For the first time in the history of the Church, the Holy Father saw so prophetically, Catholics had found themselves in a hostile cultural environment that there were not seeking to convert but were in the process of being converted by. He knew that Catholics in the United States would want over the course of time to have the Church adopt the schema of "liberty" and "egalitarianism" that was part and parcel of American civil life. It was impossible to retard the influence of these false ideas into the Church as long as Catholics, starting with most of their bishops and priests, did not understand that they had the obligation to plant the seeds for the conversion of the nation. True, many individual converts were made to the Faith in the nineteenth century. However, the life of the Church was indeed being eroded by the embrace of the American spirit, to such an extent that Catholics in the United States rejoiced when this country went to war against Catholic Spain and introduced Protestant and Masonic influences in Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Philippines. After all, these backward people had to be Americanized, right?

Furthermore, Pope Leo XIII knew that the rush of partisan politics was diverting the attention of Catholics from the business of Catholicizing their nation. As I have noted on many occasions, Catholic immigrants and their successors developed a slavish attachment to the Democratic Party at a time when the Republican Party was in the hands of nativist anti-Catholics. Believing that it was important to achieve material and economic success through the political process, Catholics plunged headlong into the clubhouses of the Democratic Party, which is why so many Catholics are reflexively Democratic today. Accepting, however, the framework of a two-party system in a Constitutional framework inimical to the Faith, the lion's share of Catholics in the United States believe that the only way to make "progress" on a particular issue, including pro-life, is to be an adherent to a particular political party, ignoring how that political party endorses candidates who are fundamentally opposed to the primacy of the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law, to say nothing of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. Our salvation does not come from secular politics. It comes from the Church Our Lord founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Pope Leo knew that while it was important for Catholics to be involved in the civic process, he insisted that they be involved as Catholics to defend Catholic truth, no matter what might befall them electorally. However, if the only thing that matters is electoral success as an end in and of itself, then it is easy to eschew the truths of the Faith by claiming to represent and to defend the American way of pluralism and consensus.

Pope Leo XIII wrote the following in Sapientiae Christianae, 1890:

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

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. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent.

Ultimately, the embrace by many American bishops and laity of the republican spirit has indeed infected the Church as Pope Leo knew in his day that it would. Many bishops believe that their leftist statements on matters of prudential judgment are absolutely binding on the faithful while the great encyclical letters of the past are shunted down the Orwellian memory hole. Lay people should direct and control the "liturgy," which is nothing more than the community love-feast, not the unbloody re-presentation of Calvary. The priest is merely the presider, not even the first among equals in most instances. Simply a master of ceremonies who reads from a script. The shopworn canards of feminism are embraced wholeheartedly. Sentimentality replaces the Deposit of Faith, as is witnessed over and over again by the likes of Theodore McCarrick and Roger Mahony. And Catholics are led by their bishops and priests to believe that there is nothing they can do in their personal lives that can cause them to lose their salvation, thus aping the "universal salvation" of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the mentor of that admirer of the American system of cultural pluralism and "religious liberty," Benedict XVI. The only sins are "social" sins which call for structural reform in society, not the reform of individual lives effected by the graces won for us by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on Calvary. As a species of Modernism, we can see how Americanism has infected the Church on a worldwide basis, especially in the conciliar and postconciliar years.

The failure of the American bishops to excommunicate members of the Democratic Party in the 1970s who supported abortion, changing their own positions in many instances (Edward Moore Kennedy, Mario Matthew Cuomo, Joseph Biden) in the wake of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe v. Wade, has emboldened Catholics in the Republican Party to do likewise and to remain "Catholics" in good standing (George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani, Rick Lazio, Susan Collins, Tom Ridge, Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al.). About the only Catholics today who are not in "good standing" are those bishops and priests and laity who reject conciliarism completely and refuse to permit their immortal souls--and the souls of those whose pastoral care unto eternity has been entrusted to them--to be influenced in any way by concepts alien to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord entrusted solely to the Catholic Church. Anyone else, including the likes of Theodore McCarrick, can do and say whatever they want, even as they deny the use of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception not to the "schismatic" Society of Saint Pius X but to that "dangerous" group known as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. Pro-abortion politicians, yes; priests who are in "good standing" to offer the Mass of Tradition, no. The hypocrisy of those who trample on Our Lord in His Real Presence and who think that the killing of the preborn is just "one issue among many" is plain for all who have the grace to see it. (See a 1998 article I wrote about McCarrick, No Big Deal.)

While recognizing that the Church can indeed adapt herself to various systems of civil governance as long as the civil state recognizes her as the one and true religion and looks to her for guidance in matters pertaining the good of souls, Pope Leo demolished the lie of Modernist Catholics, whether in the United States or elsewhere, that one's "private views" have no bearing on one's public actions. Writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Pope Leo noted:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue.

Pope Saint Pius X further repudiated the view held by many American bishops throughout the course of this country's history, that the "separation of Church and State" is in the best interests of both the Church and the State. Using Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, to critique the Modernist view of the relationship between Church and State, Pope Saint Pius wrote:

But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.

Although I know I sound like a broken vinyl record (remember those?), we must always remember that the destruction of the innocent preborn in their mothers' wombs, whether by surgical or chemical means, is but the logical consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King as a result of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Freemasonry, the witches' brew that gave rise inexorably to the Modern State, founded in religious indifferentism and cultural pluralism. Although we must do what we can as citizens to limit the evils being promoted in our midst, we must also recognize that these evils are increasing their hold on peoples and nations precisely because those who hold ecclesiastical power within the Catholic Church at present have embraced the very false presuppositions that have helped to spawn these evils. It will not be until the novelties of conciliarism, which are nothing other than the repackaged elements of Modernism, are swept away by some pope's consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the world's bishops.

Until that time, we must pray and fast, beseeching Our Lady as her consecrated slaves to help us to keep her Divine Son company as His Mystical Bride, Holy Mother Church, is crucified at the hands of all men, including ourselves, but especially those who hold ecclesiastical power but who are really agents of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Silverius, pray for us.

Saint Juliana Falconeri, pray for us.

Saint Gervase and Protase, pray for us.

Saint Jerome, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us.

Saint Peter Canisius, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius Loyola, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Claude de la Colombiere, pray for us.

Saint Peter Julian Eymard, 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 Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Edward the Confessor, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Casimir, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, 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 Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.  

A Prayer in Preparation for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

O most holy Heart of Jesus, fountain of every blessing, I adore Thee, I love Thee and with a lively sorrow for my sins, I offer Thee this poor heart of mine. Make me humble, patient, pure and wholly obedient to Thy will. Grant, good Jesus, that I may live in Thee and for Thee. Protect me in the midst of danger; comfort me in my afflictions; give me health of body, assistance in my temporal needs, Thy blessing on all that I do, and the grace of a holy death. Within Thy Heart I place my every care. In every need let me come to Thee with humble trust saying, Heart of Jesus help me. 

Merciful Jesus, I consecrate myself today and always to Thy Most Sacred Heart. 

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus I implore, that I may ever love Thee more and more. 

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in Thee.

 

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! 

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I believe in Thy love for me. 

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus Thy Kingdom Come. 

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, convert sinners, save the dying, deliver the Holy Souls in Purgatory.