Memo to the Bishops and John Kerry

As is well-known, I carry no brief for President George W. Bush. While I pray for him and for his family, especially for their conversion to the true Faith, my unstinting criticism of him and his administration is founded in a commitment to upholding the principles of Catholic doctrine and social teaching as the only basis of just public policy, especially as it relates to fundamental matters of justice. I have detailed all of this endlessly in the past five years, including a two-part article, "We Have Learned Nothing," that appeared recently in The Remnant, and had appeared in its original form in late 2002 on the Internet and in the printed pages of the formerly printed journal, Christ or Chaos, which is now on line at www.christorchaos.com .

To cite just one example, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, signed into law by President Bush on Thursday, April 1, 2004, reflects the absurdity of establishment "pro-life" efforts to convince good people that "progress" is being made in the defense of innocent life. There is no question but that debate on this matter helped to highlight the humanity of the preborn child, and that is certainly a good thing. Nevertheless, the bill itself contains the absurd contradiction that while it is a crime for someone other than the mother to harm or to kill a preborn child, the mother has the "right" to kill the child herself if she "chooses" to do so. This is a remarkably absurd proposition. To put it this way: Scott Peterson, who is alleged to have murdered his wife Laci and preborn son Connor, has no right to harm or kill his preborn son; his wife would have had this right if she had chosen to seek an abortion. How can one claim he is defending innocent life when the inviolability of such life depends upon whether a mother does or does not want her child? Civil law can never recognize legitimately any such provision that makes an innocent life dependent upon its acceptance by someone else. This is not a pro-life victory at all. It is another pro-life defeat.

There are countless other such examples, including the silence about private funding for stem-cell research and cloning by many members of the President's Bioethics Commission. How does a "pro-life" president appoint individuals to a bioethics commission who do not understand the basic facts about biology and natural law morality, to say nothing of the binding precepts of the Divine positive law as explicated by Holy Mother Church? And should it pointed out that the "pro-life" president is supporting the re-nomination of the rabidly pro-abortion Senator Arlen Specter, who faces a challenge from a "conservative" who is partially opposed to abortion (but also partially supportive of it in certain circumstances)? To repeat other things would be to duplicate work of mine that has been published elsewhere. President Bush and his mutually contradictory policies and actions are all the fruit the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the rise of the evil entity known as the modern nation-state, founded in the belief that the Incarnation of the God-Man and His Redemptive Act are irrelevant to the right ordering of men and their societies.

To note all of this, however, does not mean in the slightest that I am giving any pro-abortion Democrat a pass, including this party's putative presidential nominee, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry. John Kerry is a reprobate who has betrayed his Faith as a veritable Pontius Pilate, deferring to the dictates of the crowd and political expediency as he washes his hands of the blood of the innocent preborn. John F. Kerry does not acquit himself by making reference to the late "saint" of Hyannisport, John F. Kennedy. The mere fact that Kennedy embraced the false notion of the separation of Church and State, which is a concept born of the Protestant Revolt and Freemasonry, does not mean that those who are following his exercise in self-justification and political expediency are thereby indemnified from criticism as willful heretics who are willing to sacrifice the truth on the altar of their own craven career ambitions.

If the taking of innocent human life is wrong in all circumstances without any exception whatsoever, then no amount of public opinion or unjust court decrees can make it otherwise. A Catholic in public life has the obligation—at the peril of the loss of his own immortal soul—to convince his fellow citizens that the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law exist independently of public acceptance. A Catholic in public life must be willing to run the risk of electoral rejection in order to defend the truth, understanding that there is a blessed reward that awaits him at the moment of his Particular Judgment if he has been willing to forsake momentary popularity and the false allure of political power. A Catholic in public life who speaks lovingly and convincingly about the inviolability of all innocent human life from the moment of conception through all subsequent stages until natural death without any exception can do far more in the course of a campaign to change hearts and minds than he might ever be able to do if actually elected to office. Indeed, a woman considering murdering her preborn child might be convinced by listening to such a courageous defender of truth to refrain from having an abortion.

Without a strong interior life that is fed by frequent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, even a Catholic politician with the best of intentions might get so wrapped up in the vortex of career ambition that getting elected to office is the worst thing that can happen to him, coming to postpone "difficult" decisions that might cost him votes because of the "next" election. Once that mentality takes hold, you see, a man is compromised; there will always be a "next" election to consider. One who is worried about the next political election and his survival therein forgets that he has been elected in the baptismal font to bear an uncompromising witness to the true Faith, no matter what might befall him in this world as a result, including torture and death, no less the loss of career goals, including elected office.

"And fear not them that kill the body, and cannot kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body as well." (Mt. 10:28)

"Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father, who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father, who is in heaven. . . . He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it." (Mt. 10:32-33; 39)

"If the world hates you, know ye that it hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word, that I said to you: the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also." (Jn. 25:19-20)

"Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, entreat, rebuke with all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and will turn away indeed their hearing from the truth but will be turned to fables." (2 Tim. 4:2-4)

John F. Kerry has decided that there is profit for man who betrays Our Lord by seeking to justify the slaughter of the preborn in their mothers' wombs under cover of law. He has decided that he, a contingent being whose body will one day know the corruption of the grave and whose soul will have to render an account its infidelities at his own Particular Judgment, is the arbiter or right and wrong, of good and evil. He has decided to play God with the lives of innocent human beings, ignoring the simple fact that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity deigned to be conceived as a helpless embryo in his Blessed Mother's virginal and immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost, thereby placing Himself in solidarity with every child in every mother's womb for all eternity.

Pope John Paul II has given a number of exhortations in recent years about the duties of those in public life to defend the binding precepts of God's commandments, especially concerning the inviolability of the sanctity of innocent human life. A document issued by the Vatican in early 2003 dealt with the responsibilities of politicians to defend the fullness of the Faith no matter what might befall them as a consequence. While these exhortations are well-intentioned, they lack the clarity and total lack of ambiguity found in Pope Leo XIII's Sapientiae Christianae, issued in 1890. If John Kerry wants to be so arrogant as to ignore the Successors of Saint Peter they pronounce on matters that are contained immutably in the Deposit of Faith, then he imperils his own soul, scandalizes fellow Catholics, and harms the common good of the country whose chief executive he aspires to be. Let him ignore the following words of Pope Leo XIII at his own peril:

"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."

John F. Kerry, these words apply to you. Unless you publicly repent of your support for the evils of abortion and contraception, you must be subjected to solemn excommunication by Holy Mother Church for the good of your own soul, for the safeguarding of the integrity of the Holy Eucharist, which you receive sacrilegiously as an unrepentant pro-abort, and for the good of the souls who are misled by you scandalous bad example in support of evils that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

Alas, John F. Kerry's current arrogance is the result of the embrace of John F. Kennedy's false notions of the separation of Church and State in 1960, false notions that found their way enshrined into Dignitatis Humanae in 1965, courtesy of the lobbying efforts of the late Father John Courtney Murray, S.J. The failure of American bishops to excommunicate the first generation of Catholic politicians who embraced the heinous decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade in 1973 has resulted in the proliferation of such politicians, extending to both major political parties at present. Growing is the list of Republican Catholic pro-aborts in public life who have joined their Democratic counterparts, understanding that the bishops will do nothing to them just as they have done and continue to do nothing to the Democratic pro-aborts.

Although Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke of St. Louis has issued there the same edict banning pro-abortion politicians from the reception of Holy Communion that he issued in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, before being installed as the Metropolitan of the Province of Saint Louis, Missouri, his courageous and much-needed example has been met with stony silence by most of his brother bishops. Indeed, an article in The New York Times on Friday, April 2, 2004, indicated that a lot of bishops are in a "quandary" as to what to do about Kerry's pro-abortion stance. Some said that a public censure of him would be "counterproductive." What rank hypocrisy and craven cowardice.

Most of the bishops in this country have no hesitancy at all about exercising the full weight of their episcopal powers to govern in a most unjust manner traditional Catholics, both priests and laity, imposing upon them all manner of disciplinary measures to reprimand them for holding fast to their baptismal birthright, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Bishops will warn Catholics about the "dangers" of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X and independent chapels. They have used the full weight of powerful attorneys to attempt to browbeat parents of children who have been abused by sodomite priests. They have disparaged and ridiculed, sometimes from the pulpit and in newspaper articles, parents and groups, such as Mothers' Watch, which have complained about the rot that is all forms of sex-instruction. They have turned a blind eye to doctrinal heresy contained in textbooks and/or preached from their pulpits by priests or taught in their "educational" institutions. The bishops who have browbeaten and denounced "fundamentalist" Catholics and "reactionary" traditionalists have at the same time either turned a blind eye to or actually encouraged the sodomite and feminist agendas in the Church, participated actively in all manner of liturgical abuses, even going so far as to preach or write actual heresy (as Bishop Patrick McGrath of the Diocese of San Jose did recently when writing that the Gospels do not contain an historical accounts of Our Lord's Passion). Some went to great lengths to criticize Mel Gibson before the release of The Passion of the Christ, which was been disparaged by Roger Cardinal Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles. The bishops do not want to do anything "counterproductive" by disciplining John F. Kerry? Most of them have been promoting things that are counterproductive to the Catholic Faith and to the glory of God, starting with their false assertions that the Mass of Tradition is somehow a "privilege" reserved to them to "permit" as they see fit, consigning the words of Pope Saint Pius V in Quo Primum to the dust bin of history and to the Orwellian memory hole. Some of our bishops are craven cowards; others are enemies of the Faith who consort openly with enemies of Truth Incarnate such as John F. Kerry.

Having noted all of this, I must reiterate the fact that there is no salvation in politics. As bad as John F. Kerry is—and as culpable as our bishops are for not excommunicating him, this does not mean that we can turn a blind eye to the anti-life policies of Kerry's fellow statist and big-spender, George W. Bush, who is Kerry's brother in Yale's Skull and Bones secret society. We are not solving our problems politically. Indeed, the John F. Kerrys of this world are used by the Devil to scare us into accepting anyone who appears to be the slightest bit better, thereby blinding us to the fact that evil is being advanced in a Republican administration while most good Catholic pro-lifers think that the truth is otherwise. The more we accept the "lesser of two evils," you see, the higher and higher becomes the dose of the so-called "lesser" evil over time. If a constitutional amendment is proposed by Congress and ratified by thirty-eight state legislatures to enable a naturalized citizen to qualify for the presidency, do not be surprised to find in 2008 that the Republican national ticket will consist of Rudolph William Giuliani for President and Arnold Schwarzenegger for Vice President. What will reflexive Republican apologists say then, that Republican pro-aborts are less evil than Democrat pro-aborts (either "President" John Kerrry or the likely 2008 Democrat nominee if he is defeated this year, Hillary Rodham Clinton)? This is how the Devil works, my friends. John F. Kerry and George W. Bush are simply two sides of the same coin minted by Martin Luther and put into production by the Freemasons two centuries later.

For myself, I will cast my vote of conscience, trusting that Our Lady will use it as she sees fit for the greater honor and glory of God and for the Catholicization of this world, including this country. We must, as I note in a piece on my own web site ("Passing Over from Death to Life"), speak and act and think always as Catholics, looking not for any measure of earthly success. Looking for such earthly success is, if you think about it, a quintessentially Calvinist and Dewey pragmatist way of looking at the world. We must understand that all of our inter-related ecclesiastical and social problems will not be ameliorated until and unless some Pope actually consecrates Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. The fruit of the Triumph of the Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will be the restoration of Tradition within the Church and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the world. When that occurs, malicious men such as John F. Kerry and ignorant and uninformed men like George W. Bush will fade into oblivion. We will once again have rulers such as St. Louis IX, King of France, who keep in mind God's laws and the salvation of souls as they govern in the place of Christ the King, trusting in the intercessor power of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

They did not!

As regards the substance of the problem, the point should be made that, while the papal documents up to Leo XIII insisted more on the moral duty of public authorities toward the true religion, the recent Supreme Pontiffs, while retaining this doctrine, complement it by highlighting another duty of the same authorities, namely, that of observing the exigencies of the dignity of the human person in religious matters, as a necessary element of the common good. The text presented to you today recalls more clearly (see nos. 1 and 3) the duties of the public authority towards the true religion (officia potestatis publicae erga veram religionem); from which it is manifest that this part of the doctrine has not been overlooked (ex quo patet hanc doctrinae partem non praetermitti). (Bishop Emil de Smedt, Acta Synodalia vol. IV, part VI, p. 719)

Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ. (D.H. §1)

Like many radical traditionalists, he is probably a monarchist, who would do away with republican government.

It's a gut reaction probably based on my protestant ancestry.

What is this Christ the King business? I first thought it sounded innocuous enough, but the more I got into their mindset, it sounds like some kind of totalitarianism.

Yes, he would definitely do away with a republican form of government. I don't know where he gets these ideas, probably from old church writings which have to be taken with a grain of salt, but a lot of that thinking seems to come right out of private revelations of various mystics, the Great Monarch, etc., and old Catholic Europe which really only worked for the rich and elite, just like things seem to be moving toward here.

Even Kerry has to submit to the reality of separation of church, which in and of itself, is neither good nor evil.

It gets too confusing to sort out sometimes, but let's just say that things worked rather well up until we had the scientific knowhow and legalization to dabble with life. Before that, most Christians were on the same page as to basic moral issues.

Even Kerry has to submit to the reality of separation of church, which in and of itself, is neither good nor evil.

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him....Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error." (Pope St. Pius X, Vehementer Nos (On the French Law of Separation))

55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. (Bl. Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors)

77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. (ibid.)

Anyone who tries to make Christ more than a spiritual King is deluding himself. Jesus Himself said "My kingdom is not of this world."

He undoeth that which Pilate for a while had feared, namely, the suspicion of seizing kingly power, "Is then His kingdom not of this world also?"45 Certainly it is. "How then saith He it `is not'?" Not because He doth not rule here, but because He hath his empire from above, and because it is not human, but far greater than this and more splendid. "If then it be greater, how was He made captive by the other?" By consenting, and giving Himself up. But He doth not at present reveal46 this, but what saith He? "If I had been of this world, `My servants would fight, that I should not be delivered.'" Here He showeth the weakness of kingship among us, that its strength lies in servants; but that which is above is sufficient for itself, needing nothing. From this the heretics taking occasion say, that He is different from the Creator. What then, when it saith, "He came to His own"? (c. i. 11.) What, when Himself saith, "They are not of this world, as I am not of this world"? (c. xvii. 14.) So also He saith that His kingdom is not from hence, not depriving the world of His providence and superintendence, but showing, as I said, that His power was not human or perishable. What then said Pilate? (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John LXXXIII)

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood And hath made us a kingdom, and priests to God and his Father. To him be glory and empire for ever and ever. Amen. (Revelation of St. John 1:5-6)

17. It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. (Pope Pius IX, Quas Primas (On the Feast of Christ the King))

Theocracies have traditionally punished anyone who doesn't agree with the religious worldview of the theocrat.

From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."...
Therefore, by our Apostolic authority, we reprobate, proscribe, and condemn all the singular and evil opinions and doctrines severally mentioned in this letter, and will and command that they be thoroughly held by all children of the Catholic Church as reprobated, proscribed and condemned. [This fulfills the conditions for an ex cathedra definition] (Bl. Pius IX, Quanta Cura)

That is exactly my take on it. I don't know who originated that idea.

Oh, just Gregory XVI, Bl. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI. Guess we can just ignore all of them, right?

The republican form of government has nothing to do with the Social Kingship of Christ or the repression of religious error which is injurious to the common good and is not opposed to it.

14. Various political governments have succeeded one another in France during the last century, each having its own distinctive form: the Empire, the Monarchy, and the Republic. By giving one's self up to abstractions, one could at length conclude which is the best of these forms, considered in themselves; and in all truth it may be affirmed that each of them is good, provided it lead straight to its end—that is to say, to the common good for which social authority is constituted; and finally, it may be added that, from a relative point of view, such and such a form of government may be preferable because of being better adapted to the character and customs of such or such a nation. In this order of speculative ideas, Catholics, like all other citizens, are free to prefer one form of government to another precisely because no one of these social forms is, in itself, opposed to the principles of sound reason nor to the maxims of Christian doctrine. (Leo XIII, Au milieu des sollicitudes)

But the Declaration on Religious Liberty did recognize the value of the traditional teaching on the Kingship of Christ, as I have pointed out above.

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