Posted on 04/05/2004 12:00:25 PM PDT by Grey Ghost II
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.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: 'Behold, here are two swords' [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: 'Put up thy sword into thy scabbard' [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered _for_ the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.
However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: 'There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God' [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other. (Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam)
Secondly, as I have already shown, the doctrine was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. Thirdly, it is in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2105 The duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ."30 By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live."31 The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church.32 Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.33
2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a "public order" conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.39 The "due limits" which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."40
30 DH 1 § 3.
31 AA 13 § 1.
32 Cf. DH 1.
33 Cf. AA 13; Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 3,17; Pius XI, Quas primas 8,20.
34 DH 2 § 1.
39 Cf. Pius VI, Quod aliquantum (1791) 10; Pius IX, Quanta cura 3.
40 DH 7 § 3.
The Catechism cites Immortale Dei and Quas Primas, showing that these teachings are not out of date. It also cites Quod aliquantum, the condemnation by Pius VI of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And of course, Quanta Cura will stand untouched and irreformable forever because it is an ex cathedra decision.
As to evangelization, the way the church evangelizes makes no sense either. I don't understand it. A lot of it sounds like gobbledygook.
From what I am able to grasp, what you say sounds coercive and oppressive. It sounds like the catholic version of those Islamic mullahs.
I looked up about the two swords. The Lord said "That is enough" and went on to something else.
I like to be able to choose whether I will take to heart what the church teaches or not. I do not want to be forced to live by church teachings. This is a slippery slope, where to draw the line.
It's not just impractical. It's not desireable, ever, no matter how society is constituted.
WHAT KIND OF BIGOT IS THIS GUY????
President Bush is already a Christian.
Who does the author think that he is when he writes such tripe .... the GRAND INQUISITOR OF ROME???
Yes he does. In fact, he'd be the first in line, if there were such a job.
BTTT
Seeing as Protestants are heretics, they do not hold the "true Faith":
I likewise undoubtedly receive and profess all other things delivered, defined, and declared by the sacred Canons, and general Councils, and particularly by the holy Council of Trent, and by the ecumenical Council of the Vatican, particularly concerning the primacy of the Roman Pontiff and his infallible teaching. I condemn, reject, and anathematize all things contrary thereto, and all heresies which the Church hath condemned, rejected, and anathematized.
This true Catholic faith, outside of which no one can be saved, which I now freely profess and to which I truly adhere, inviolate and with firm constancy until the last breath of life, I do so profess and swear to maintain with the help of God. And I shall strive, as far as possible, that this same faith shall be held, taught, and professed by all those over whom I have charge. I N. do so pledge, promise, and swear, so help me God and these Holy Gospels. (Creed of Pius IV)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.