Lawless and Rootless
“The
race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the
Giver of heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil,' separated
into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends
for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to
virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely,
the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart
to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve
God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire
will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control
are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our
first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law,
and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims
also against God.”
Pope
Leo XIII put the matter very clearly in the opening paragraph of his
encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus , in 1884.
If the civil state does not acknowledge the primacy of the Social Reign
as it is exercised by Holy Mother Church, then it follows quite logically
and quite inexorably that its citizens will live in a state of lawlessness
and rootlessness under the yoke of Satan himself. There is no middle
ground. It is indeed either Christ or chaos, as the then Monsignor Fulton
J. Sheen noted in 1931 in his “A Plea for Intolerance.” That is why
it is essential for Catholics to know and to remember the simple fact
that all of the problems of modernity have their proximate roots in
the violent overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that began
with the Protestant Revolt in 1517 and the rise of modern nation-state.
The overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King was further institutionalized
and taken to its logical conclusion–the deification of man and his “rights”–with
the rise of Freemasonry in England in 1717 and the various revolutions
inspired by the assertion of man's ability to remake the world without
acknowledging the Incarnation, the authority of the one, true Church
Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and the Deposit of
Faith he entrusted to her, and by categorically rejecting the absolute
necessity of sanctifying grace as the foundation of personal sanctity
and hence all social order.
The
American founding is the product of the Protestant Revolt and the rise
of Freemasonry. Some protest by saying that some of the founders believed
in God generically and that most believed in some sort of Protestant
Christianity. Well, you see, a generic belief in God is not good enough.
The pagans of antiquity believed in the “gods.” God happened to bother
about becoming Flesh in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb at the
Incarnation so as to reveal to all mankind for all eternity the reality
of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that it would
be through the Son's self-sacrifice to the Father in Spirit and in Truth
on the wood of the Holy Cross that the power of sin and eternal death
would be forever crushed and the blood debt of human sin would be repaid.
No, a generic belief in “God” is not good enough, folks. All men in
all places at all times are called upon to recognize and to publicly
acknowledge the true God as He has revealed Himself through His true
Church. And the fact that some of the founders were Protestants and
that the culture of the first thirteen states and adjacent territories
was primarily Protestant does not redeem the founders or the founding
as Protestantism is based on a rejection of the totality of the Deposit
of Faith Christ Himself revealed and entrusted to His true Church. This
is but a summary of a number of points I made in a piece published on
the Seattle Catholic website last year, “God is More Powerful than Liars.”
Pope
Leo XIII put it this way in his encyclical letter on the Christian constitution
of states, Immortale Dei , in 1885:
“To
hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion
between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each
other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion
in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism,
however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the
existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and
to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine
worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important
points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable
to God.”
Any
nation founded in the belief that it is possible to ignore the Deposit
of Faith Our Lord entrusted to His true Church as the basis of both
personal and social order is bound to generate to the point where atheism
is considered to be the lowest common denominator. It is a short step
from atheism for a society to descend to barbarism. It was from barbarism
that the first Catholic missionaries converted the tribes of Europe.
It was from barbarism that Our Lady of Guadalupe called the peoples
of the Americas. A return to barbarism is but the logical and unstoppable
progression of demonic forces that take hold of a de-Catholicized world
where Satan is enthroned with all of his empty works and pomps.
Again,
turning to Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei :
“So,
too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one
likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which
society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head
and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence
should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of
goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one
and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the
mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after
what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must
fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever,
therefore, is opposed to virtue and 1truth may not rightly be brought
temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor
and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven,
whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against
the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion
and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the
practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God
Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic
society is a grave and fatal error . A State from which
religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps
more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called
civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true
and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves
in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting
forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn
away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that
are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.”
A
nation that does not recognize the primacy of the true Church and her
authority to discipline civil rulers who attempt to make or enforce
laws or edicts contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive
law and the natural law–and/or injurious to the salvation of human souls–is
destined for the dustbin of history. Merely recognizing this primacy
is no guarantor of personal sanctity or social order, to be sure. However,
a recognition of the primacy of Christ the King as He has revealed Himself
through His true Church is the necessary precondition for social order.
If men are not taught to believe the Deposit of Faith whole and entire
without one whit of dissent–and if they do not have access to, belief
in, and cooperation with sanctifying grace, the nations in which they
live will come to endorse every manner of sin and perversion imaginable.
Thus,
the spectacle we are witnessing in the United States of America at present
of the “marriage” of homosexual and lesbian “couples” is but another
in the logical degeneration of events in a country that is rootless
as a result of its defective founding. Why should we be surprised that
the Mayor of the City of San Francisco, California, or California Superior
Court judges or the Clerk of Sandoval County, New Mexico, or the justices
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supreme Court have taken it upon
themselves to endorse the perverse concept of practicing sodomites and
lesbians getting “married” as a matter of “liberty” and human rights?
If we can endorse the overthrow of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity
and fecundity of marital relations by means of contraception, if we
can slaughter the unborn both by means of chemical and surgical abortion,
if we can declare that marriages between a man and woman are dissoluble,
if we can say that pornographers and the producers of obscene and lewd
music and films have the “right” to ply their wares, then by what exercise
of logic can sodomite and lesbian “marriages” be stopped? Either we
obey God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church or we descend
quite naturally to the reign of Satan.
President
George W. Bush, who has quite characteristically said some contradictory
things about this matter (opposing “same-sex marriages” but stating
that states should be permitted to endorse “civil unions”), is both
a product of the errors of modernity and a propagator of those errors.
In comments made in a photo-opportunity on February 18, 2004, President
Bush said that he was “troubled” by activist judges who were re-defining
marriage. However, he also said that it was up to the people to decide
the issue, not judge. First Lady Laura Bush echoed those sentiments
on the same day, saying: “I think people ought to have that opportunity
to debate it, to think about it, to see what the American people really
want to do about the issue.” The President is wrong. His wife is wrong.
The “people” en masse have no more of a “say” about defining
marriage than judges, activist or otherwise. Marriage is defined by
God. Period. End of argument.
President
Bush reiterated these shallow remarks on February 24, 2004, when announcing
his support for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union
between a man as husband and a woman as wife, while leaving the states
“free to define legal arrangements other than marriage:”
“On
a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard.
Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we are to
prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation
must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America.
Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine
marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout
the country.”
The
“voice of the people” must be heard? What about the voice of God? Alas,
people who are themselves defined by the ethos of Protestantism and
the mythology of popular sovereignty wind up undermining whatever inchoate
opposition they might have to certain moral evils precisely because
of the inherent contradictions upon which both Protestantism and the
modern state are founded. A “firm” stand against “same sex marriages”
that winds up permitting “civil unions” is absurd. Of course, equally
absurd is Senator John Kerry's wanting us to be believe that he couldn't
comment on the events in San Francisco because he had not heard about
them. Sure, right.
Pope
Leo XIII spoke forcefully on the false belief that it is the “voice
of the people” that matters. Referring to the political goals of Freemasonry
in Humanum Genus , Pope Leo wrote:
“Then
come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down
that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal
and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has
the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require
men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves.
According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people;
power is held by the command or permission of the people, so that, when
the popular will changes, rulers may lawfully be deposed and the source
of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude or in the
governing authority when this is constituted according to the latest
doctrines. It is held also that the State should be without God; that
in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have
precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.
“That
these doctrines are equally acceptable to the Freemasons, and that they
would wish to constitute States according to this example and model,
is too well known to require proof. For some time past they have openly
endeavored to bring this about with all their strength and resources;
and in this they prepare the way for not a few bolder men who are hurrying
on even to worse things, in their endeavor to obtain equality and community
of all goods by the destruction of every distinction of rank and property.
“What,
therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears
sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas
are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can
be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which
God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His
protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the
manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety.
Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate
the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for
individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits
which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity,
are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see
the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself
is inflamed against Jesus Christ. -- So also the studious endeavor of
the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty,
and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals,
to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful
ruin of the human race.
“The
evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic
and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown, in marriage, according
to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and
religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not
be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made
dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result,
the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without
protection as to their interests and well being. -- To have in public
matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration
of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist,
is a rashness unknown to the very pagans ; for in their heart and
soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so
firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without
foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which
by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature;
and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their
strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds.
As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship
God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that
is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States
are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would
absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also
with ignorance and folly.”
The
“people” are not “sovereign.” Christ the King alone is the Sovereign
and Holy Mother Church is His chosen instrument to enforce His sovereignty
over men and their nations, something that almost all of popes and the
bishops of the past forty-five years have ignored, trying to emphasize
a most novel and modernist concept of the “civilization of love” rather
than the “divisiveness” associated with rank denominationalism. And
it is these popes and bishops, therefore, who are really far more to
blame for what is going on in San Francisco and Massachusetts and Vermont
and New Mexico than empty-headed politicians who don't understand First
Principles. It is precisely because the Church herself has abandoned
the proclamation of the Social Reign of Christ the King that the errors
of modernity have been permitted to spread in an almost unchecked manner,
especially in the past forty years or so. To my knowledge, not one bishop
has thus far called sodomy by its proper name and stated publicly that
it is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Not
one bishop has stated publicly that those who persist unrepentantly
in any mortal sin, including sodomy, until the moment of their dying
breaths risk the fires of Hell for all eternity.
One
of the ways that the devil has worked to undermine the authority of
the Church is by convincing bishops and priests and theologians that
sodomy is not one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance
and that those who are inclined to acts against nature are not disqualified
from ordination to the priesthood. The now two year old flood of news
stories in the secular media about matters well known to Catholics who
read reports of the sodomite scandals in The Wanderer and
who have followed the work of Roman Catholic Faith, Incorporated, is
being used with special delight by the Adversary and his minions to
silence the Church at a time when her voice is needed to denounce clearly
and unambiguously the spectacles taking place in San Francisco and New
Mexico at present.
There
is only one antidote to all of this--and it is not a constitutional
amendment that illicitly permits state legislatures to permit “civil
unions.” We have to think as Catholics, folks, not as secularists who
want to pretend that the Incarnation did not occur or that it does not
matter. The only antidote to the poisons that have been coursing through
the world at such a rapid pace for the past five centuries now is for
some pope to actually consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
along with all of the other bishops in the world. The errors of Russia,
which are really the composite of the errors of modernity, founded as
it is in a rejection of the Incarnation, will then cease to spread both
in Church and in the world at large. Christ will reign as King and His
Immaculate Mother will reign as our loving Queen. Although we must combat
the evils that are in our midst as best we can by proclaiming the truths
of the true Faith and by working for the restoration of the Traditional
Latin Mass, which most perfectly and completely expresses the fullness
of the Faith without any dilution or hint of compromise, we must also
be aware that the evils we are fighting need first to be fought in the
midst of our own personal lives by means of personal sanctity. If the
Kingship of Christ does not reign in our own hearts, minds, and souls,
then it will have less of a chance to reign triumphantly in society
as it did during the Middle Ages.
Entrusting
all to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we pray for our own conversion
on a daily basis, the conversion of this nation and the world the Social
Reign of Christ the King, and to the conversion of all men and women
steeped in unrepentant sin and the conversion of those who enable them
to remain unrepentant and exultant in that which is harmful to themselves
and to their societies.
Our
Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.