Religion

State Religion – II

State Religion – II on December 10, 2011

According to the religion of liberalism – it cannot be said too often that liberalism serves as a substitute religion – it is absolute heresy to declare that every State on earth should support and protect the Catholic religion. Yet if God exists, if Jesus Christ is God, if any natural society of human beings, such as the State, is a creature of God, and if Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church as his one and only instrument for the saving of men from the eternal fires of Hell, then unless a State wants to be an enemy of mankind, it is bound to favour and protect the Catholic Church. But there are objections to this conclusion. Let us look at three of the most common:—

First objection: Our Lord himself said to Pontius Pilate (Jn. XVIII, 36) that his Kingdom was not of this world. But the State is of this world. Therefore the State should have nothing to do with his Kingdom or his Church.

Solution: Our Lord was telling Pilate that his Kingdom and the State are distinct but he was not saying that they should be separate. A man’s soul is distinct from his body, but to separate them is the death of the man. Parents are distinct from their children, but to separate them (as Child Agencies today are liable to do) is the death of the family. Church and State are as distinct from one another as life on earth is distinct from eternal life, but to separate them is to put a gulf between the first and the second, and it is to increase greatly the number of citizens who will fall into Hell.

Second objection: The Catholic religion is true. But Truth can be left to make its own way. Therefore the Catholic religion needs no coercive power of the State to help it, such as the suppression in public of the practice of all other religions. Solution: In itself, indeed “The truth is mighty and will prevail,” as the Latins said, but amongst us men it will not prevail easily, because of original sin. Were all human beings (except Our Lord and Our Lady) not afflicted ever since the Fall with the four wounds of Ignorance, Malice, Weakness and Concupiscence , then much less would get in the way of truth prevailing, and Thomas Jefferson might be right in proclaiming that truth needs only to be exposed in the market-place to prevail. But Catholics know what the Church teaches, namely that man remains even after baptism subject to the downward drag of original sin, so that to find that truth without which he cannot save his soul, he needs all reasonable help from his State. That reasonable help excludes the State’s trying to force anyone to be Catholic, but it includes the State’s keeping dangerous anti-truths out of Jefferson’s market-place.

Third objection: Great power can be greatly misused. Now the union of Church and State is very powerful for them both. Therefore it can do great harm – just see how the Conciliar Church and the secular New World Order are empowering one another! Solution: “Misuse cannot stop use,” said the Latins. Should Our Lord not have given us the Holy Eucharist on the grounds that it can be gravely misused? The Conciliar Church re-uniting with the liberal State is a powerful misuse of the union of Church and State, but it proves the wrongness of liberalism, not the wrongness of the union of Catholic State with Catholic Church.

Kyrie eleison.

State Religion – I

State Religion – I on November 26, 2011

What part should the State play in protecting or promoting the Catholic religion? Any Catholic who knows that Catholicism is the one true religion of the one true God can only answer that the State, being also a creature of that God, is bound to serve as best it can his one true religion. On the other hand any liberal who believes that the State is incompetent to tell which is the true religion because, for instance, religion is in any case the individual’s business, will answer that the State must protect the right of all its citizens to practise the religion of their choice, or none at all. Let us look at the Catholic arguments.

Man comes from God. His nature comes from God. Man is by nature social, so his socialness comes from God. But the whole man, not just part of him (First Commandment), owes worship to God. So the socialness of man owes worship to God. But the State is nothing other than the society formed by the socialness of all its citizens joining together in their body politic. Therefore the State owes worship to God. But amongst all different worships necessarily contradicting one another (otherwise they would not be different), maybe all are more or less false but certainly one alone can be fully true. So if there is such a worship, fully true and recognizable as such, that is the worship which every State, as State, owes to God. But Catholicism is that worship. Therefore every State, as State, owes Catholic worship to God, including even today’s England or Israel or Saudi Arabia!

But an essential part of worship is to render to God the service of which one is capable. Of what service is the State capable? Of great service! Man being social by nature, his society has a great influence on how he feels, thinks and believes. And a State’s laws have a decisive influence on moulding its citizens’ society. For instance, if abortion or pornography are made legal, many citizens will come to think that there is little or nothing wrong with them. Therefore every State has in principle a duty by its laws to protect and promote Catholic faith and morals.

Such is the clear principle. But does that principle mean that every non-Catholic should be rounded up by the police and burnt at the stake? Obviously not, because the purpose of worshipping and serving God is to give him glory and to save souls. But inconsiderate action on the part of the State will have the opposite effect, namely of discrediting Catholicism and alienating souls. Therefore the Church teaches that even a Catholic State has the right to abstain in practice from taking action against a false religion when taking that action would cause a still greater evil, or hinder a greater good. But every State’s duty in principle to protect Catholic faith and morals remains intact.

Does that mean forcing Catholicism on the citizens? Not at all, because Catholic belief is not something that can be forced – “Nobody believes against his will” (St Augustine). What it does mean is that in a Catholic State where taking such action may or should not be counter-productive, the public practice of all religions other than Catholicism may or should be prohibited. This logical conclusion was denied by Vatican II, because Vatican II was liberal. Yet it was common practice in Catholic States before the Council, and it will have helped many souls to be saved.

Kyrie eleison.

Virtuous Pagans

Virtuous Pagans on October 22, 2011

On reading (EC 221) how the music of Brahms is proof of a certain greatness of soul, a young Brazilian reader asks if the wick smouldering in Brahms was not smouldering better than it does in a lukewarm Catholic (cf. Mt.XII, 20). The contrast is designed to highlight the virtue of the pagan and to question the virtue of “warm, lazy” Catholics. Of course pagan virtue is praiseworthy and Catholic lukewarmness is blameworthy, but a greater question lies behind: just how important is it to be a believing Catholic? How important is the virtue of faith? The answer must remain, it is as important as eternity is long.

That faith is a virtue of supreme value is evident from the Gospels. How often does Our Lord, after working a miracle of physical or spiritual healing, tell the person involved that it is their faith that obtained for them the miracle, e.g. for Mary Magdalene (Lk.VII, 50). Yet Scripture makes it equally clear that this meritorious faith is something deeper than just an explicit knowledge of religion. For instance, Roman centurions can have known little to nothing of the true religion in its day, the Old Testament, yet of one of them Our Lord says he has not found so great faith in Israel (Mt.VIII, 10), another of them recognizes as the Son of God the crucified Jesus whom the experts in religion had done nothing but mock (Mt.XXVII, 41), while a third, Cornelius, blazes the trail for all Gentiles who will enter the true Church (Acts, X, XI). What did these pagan centurions have that the priests, scribes and ancients did not have, or no longer had?

From beginning to end of all men’s life on this earth, pagans and non-pagans alike are constantly confronted with a variety of things good, all coming ultimately from God, and of things evil, coming from the wickedness of men. But God himself is invisible while wicked men are all too visible, so it is all too easy to disbelieve in the goodness or even existence of God. However, men of good heart will believe in the goodness of life while discounting, relatively but not absolutely, the evil, whereas men bad of heart will discount the good that is all around them. Now neither may have any explicit knowledge of religion, but whereas good-hearted men, like the centurions, will pick up on it as soon as it crosses their path, the bad-hearted will scorn it, more or less. Thus the innocent Andrew and John picked up immediately on the Messiah (Jn.I,37–40), whereas the learned Gamaliel took rather more time and persuading (Acts V, 34–39). Let us say then that at the heart of the explicit and knowing virtue of faith lies an implicit trust in the goodness of life and in whatever Being lies behind it, a trust that can be undermined by false doctrine or shaken for instance by scandal.

If we return to the case of Brahms, the question then becomes, did he have at least this implicit trust in the goodness of life and of the Being behind it? Surely the answer is no, because he spent the whole second half of his life in what was then the capital city of music, Catholic Vienna. There the beauty of his music must have led numerous friends and even priests to urge upon him the explicit fulfilment of that beauty in the profession and practice of Vienna’s religion, but all such appeals he must have refused. Therefore it seems all too possible that he did not save his soul . . . God knows.

Nonetheless we thank God for his music. As St Augustine marvellously said, “All truth belongs to us Catholics.” Likewise all beauty, even if crafted by pagans!

Kyrie eleison.

Ancestral Pride

Ancestral Pride on October 15, 2011

In his second volume on the life of Jesus published several months ago, Pope Benedict XVI made remarks enabling journalists to jump to the conclusion that the Jews must no longer be held responsible for deicide, i.e. the killing of God. Worse, on May 17 the executive director of the US Bishops’ Conference’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs said that one cannot charge the Jewish people with deicide at any time in history without falling out of communion with the Catholic Church. Against what many people today want to believe, it is time to recall, however briefly, what the true Church always used to teach on the judicial murder of Jesus.

Firstly, the killing of Jesus was truly “deicide,” i.e. the killing of God, because Jesus was the one of the three divine Persons who in addition to his divine nature had taken a human nature. What was killed on the Cross? Only the human nature. But who was killed on the Cross in his human nature? None other than the second divine Person, i.e. God. So God was killed, deicide was committed.

Secondly, Jesus died on the Cross to save all of us sinful human beings from our sins, and in this sense all men were and are the purpose of his death. But only the Jews (leaders and people) were the prime agents of the deicide because it is obvious from the Gospels that the Gentile most involved, Pontius Pilate, would never have condemned Jesus to death had not the Jewish leaders roused the Jewish people to clamour for his crucifixion (Mt. XXVII, 20). Certainly the learned leaders were more guilty than the unlearned people, says St Thomas Aquinas (Summa III, 47, 5), but they all cried together for Jesus’ blood to come down upon them and their children (Mt. XXVII, 25).

Thirdly, at least Pope Leo XIII considered there to be a real solidarity between the Jews clamouring then for Jesus to be killed and the collectivity of Jews of modern times. Did he not in his Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus have the entire Church, from the end of the 19th century onwards, pray to God that he turn his “eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once God’s chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Saviour; may it now descend upon them a laver (i.e. washing) of redemption and life”?

But Leo XIII is by no means alone in observing such a continuity amongst Jews down the centuries. Do they themselves not lay claim today to the land of Palestine on the grounds that it is theirs by right from the God of the Old Testament? Has there ever been a race-people-nation on the face of the earth more proudly self-identifying as identical down the ages? Originally raised by God to cradle the Messiah, alas, when he came they refused, collectively, to recognize him. Collectively also, meaning there are always noble exceptions, they have remained faithful to that rejection, so that they changed their religion from that of Abraham and Moses and the Old Testament to that of Anas, Caiphas and the Talmud. Tragically, their very messianic training by God drives them to go on rejecting the one whom they hold to be a false messiah. Until they convert at the end of the world, as the Church has always taught they will do (cf. Rom. XI, 26–27), they seem bound to choose to go on acting, collectively, as enemies of the true Messiah. How can the Pope let go of such ancient truths?

Kyrie eleison.

Atheists’ Theism?

Atheists’ Theism? on October 8, 2011

There is a fascinating quote of the famous German composer, Johannes Brahms (1833–1899), which shows how a man may have no religious faith at all, yet still recognize that there is an objective order. Such a recognition is a handle on reality, and it gave to Brahms access to a great deal of beauty, shown forth in his music. The crisis of countless modern souls is that they are convinced that there is nothing objective at all. They are imprisoned within their own subjectivity, which makes for a very bare prison, and for suicidal music!

In 1878 Brahms wrote for an outstanding violinist, his friend Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), one of his loveliest and most beloved works, the Violin Concerto in D. When he heard Joachim play it, he said, “Hmm – yes . . . it could be played that way.” In other words while Brahms was composing the Concerto, he had been hearing it in his mind’s ear being played in such and such a way, but he recognized that the somewhat different use that somebody else might make of his composition was also legitimate.

Now undoubtedly there are ways of performing the Concerto which Brahms would not have accepted, but so long as a performer made use of his composition to approach by a different way the goal he had himself approached in composing, then Brahms felt no need to insist on his own approach. The objective goal mattered more than the subjective approach, so that if by composing he had provided all kinds of performers with an access to that goal, then – within certain limits – they were all of them welcome to play the Concerto how they liked. Object above subject.

Ultimately that means God above man, yet Brahms was no believer. The Catholic Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak (1841–1904), friend and admirer of Brahms, once said of him, “What a great man! Such a great soul! And he believes in nothing! He believes in nothing!” Brahms was no Christian – he deliberately left out of his German Requiem any mention of Jesus Christ. Nor did he admit to being any kind of believer – he said that the Bible texts he had used in the Requiem were there for their expression of feeling rather than for any profession of religion. Subject above object. And to this professed disbelief on the part of Brahms corresponds, one may hold, the lack of a certain spontaneity and joy in much of his music.

But how much autumnal beauty it contains, and carefully crafted order! This craftsmanship and reflection of the beauties of Nature, for instance in the Violin Concerto, call to mind Our Lord saying how there are souls that deny him in word but honour him in deed (Mt.XXI, 28–29). Today when almost all souls deny him in word, how many there are that still in some way or other, for instance in music or in Nature, honour at least the order that Our Lord has planted throughout his universe. Such faithfulness is by no means yet that Catholic Faith which alone can save, but it is at least that smouldering wick which should not be extinguished (Mt.XII, 20).

Let all Catholics gifted with the fullness of the Faith have discernment for such souls around them, and let us have compassion on the multitudes being led away from God by his enemies, in music and in all domains (Mk.VIII, 2).

Kyrie eleison.

Tenth Anniversary

Tenth Anniversary on October 1, 2011

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 came and went on September 11, three weeks ago. Apparently in the US media there was such a downpour of sentimentality for the occasion as to make the recent torrential rains on the eastern seaboard look like a light shower. However, before it becomes “anti-semitic” even to raise the question, let us with an American commentator of indisputable intelligence and integrity ask just what was the reality of that event.

The commentator is Dr Paul Craig Roberts who announced several months ago his retirement from writing. He was discouraged by the lack of readers interested in the truth. Fortunately his retirement did not last long. He is a truth-teller, and there are too few of them around. “In America Respect for Truth is Dead” is the title of his Sept. 12 article, published on infowars.com. As he suggests, the loss of truth is the real drama, both of 9/11 and of the ten years succeeding, not only in the USA, but in fact all over the world.

Dr Roberts has himself a scientific background, and as such he says he was wholly persuaded by the scientific evidence presented in a Sept. 8–11 meeting held in Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, on the 9/11 events. In the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists, scholars, architects and engineers presented the fruit of their research into the 9/11 events (their findings may still be accessible at http://​www.​ustream.​tv/​channel/​thetorontohearings). Dr Roberts writes that their researches “proved that the WTC7 building was a standard controlled demolition and that incendiaries and explosives brought down the Twin Towers. There is no doubt whatsoever about this. Anyone who declares the contrary has no scientific basis on which to stand. Those who believe in the official story believe in a miracle that defies the laws of physics.”

Dr Roberts quotes a few of the many scientific proofs presented in Canada, for instance the recent discovery of nano-thermite in the dust produced by the fall of the Towers, but he writes that “the revelation of malevolence is so powerful that most readers will find it a challenge to their emotional and mental strength.” Government propaganda and the “Presstitute media” have such a grip on minds that most people seriously believe that only “conspiracy kooks” challenge the government’s story. Facts, science and evidence no longer count for anything (somebody I know has run into that!). Dr Roberts quotes a Chicago and Harvard law professor even proposing that all fact-based doubters of government propaganda should be shut down!

G.K.Chesterton once famously said that when people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing, they will believe in anything. Gravest of all amongst the many millions of 9/11 truth-losers are the Catholics who cannot or do not want to see the evidence for 9/11 being an inside job, who cannot or do not want to see the truly religious dimensions of the worldwide triumph of such a mind-bending lie as 9/11 represents. Let such Catholics beware. It may seem a wild exaggeration to say that they risk losing the Faith, but do we not have the terrifying example of Vatican II just behind us in time? Did not in the 1960’s far too many Catholics take such a sympathetic view of the modern world as to think that their Church should be adapted to it? Was not Vatican II the result? What did it do to their Faith?

Kyrie eleison.