Fr. Lawrence Smith - Distributism For Dorothy

Distributism for Dorothy
Or
The Economy of Salvation and other Exhortations
to Dethrone the Great God Mammon
by Father Lawrence C. Smith

Sacerdos vagus
Loreto Publications
Fitzwilliam, NH 03447
AD 2014
Dedicated to the Second Person
Of the Most Holy Trinity Incarnate
Jesus Christ
From the Novena to the Immaculate Conception
O Mother of the King of the universe, most perfect member of the human
race, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast,” we turn to thee as mother, advocate, and
Mediatrix. O Holy Mary, assist us in our present necessity. By thy Immaculate
Conception, O Mary conceived without sin, we humbly beseech thee from the
bottom of our hearts to intercede for us with thy Divine Son and ask that we be
granted the favor for which we now plead… (State your intention here.*)
O Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Mother of Christ, thou hadst influ-

ence with thy Divine Son while upon this earth; thou hast the same influence now
in heaven. Pray for us and obtain for us from Him the granting of our petition if
it be the divine will. Amen.
*That the United States of America will recognize and obey the sovereignty of
Jesus Christ our King, Our Lady and patroness, the Immaculate Conception our
Queen, the primacy of St. Peter and his successors, and thus strive to bring about
the triumph of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Heart by the power of the
Holy Ghost to bring us the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ’s Sacred Heart for the
glory of God the Father. Amen.
Contents
Part One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Preface: “Distributism for Dorothy”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Bad News for Modern Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
Sensus Catholicus with Father Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Reflections on Belloc’s On Usury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
Father Smith Presents a Layman’s Explanation of Usury . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Money Does Grow on Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Leaping into the Handbasket Bound for Hell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
An Epilogue to Belloc’s Europe and the Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Re-establishing Christendom I: In the Faithful Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Re-establishing Christendom II: In the Homes of Holy Families . . . . . 99
Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Introduction: A Skunk by any Other Name Still Stinks . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Dissolution of Church and State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193
3 April, Jubilee Year—4th Monday of Lent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .201
Fanfani and Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Dear Editor (SeattleCatholic.com) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213
Father Smith’s Epistle to a Rich Young Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
The Fate of False Infallibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .221
Defining Distributism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229
Where Does the Remnant Live? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243
In Time of Advent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
The Two Faces of the City of Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257
The Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .267
15 November 2001: Saint Albert the Great: Albertus Magnus . . . . . .271
Saint Joseph the Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
21 June 2001—Feast of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Introduction to Distributist Perspectives Volume I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .287
The Economy of Salvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .295
Sensus Catholicus with Father Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Part Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

Preface to Volume III:
Three Months of Christmas and the Holy Rosary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Wandering Back from the Desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Re-establishing Christendom III: In the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Defining our Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
Regnum Christi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .467
Part One
3
Preface: “Distributism for Dorothy”
What follows in the next two-thirds of a ream of thoughts trying to get unjum-
bled is not an apologia for distributism. The intent is to emphasize the necessity of
bringing back sanctity, as revealed by God and taught by the Catholic Church, to
the heart of man’s existence on earth. That is, the necessity of doing so for those
who wish to have a life that does not simply cease (or more accurately, descend
into the inferno—and stay there) when existence on earth ends. Distributism is,
in the estimation of the author of the present collection, the best summation of
what had once been the common sense of Christendom, which is to say what
formerly was the set of assumptions of all who arranged their economic lives in
keeping with their profession of faith within the Church founded by Jesus Christ
on the Rock of St. Peter. Different names for, descriptions of, or perspectives on
the same subject are possible, but the point is that man lives or dies, not by bread
alone, but to the extent that he embraces the wood of the Cross—or not.
The title of this initial series of recollections is chosen for reasons wholly unre-
lated to what would be expected if economics were the only subject at hand. Three
reasons especially recommended themselves to the author as he decided upon the
title for this preface: 1) he likes alliteration 2) said title is reminiscent of titles of
not entirely dissimilar works by G.B. Shaw () and Hilaire Belloc () and 3) at the
conclusion of this preface are answers to a set of questions posed by a nice lady
named “Dorothy”. That is her real name, and if this work had not already been
dedicated to the second person of the Most Holy Trinity incarnate, it would have
been given to her. Dorothy, good Catholic that she is, does not mind being Miss
First Runner-Up when the winner is Jesus.
4 Distributism for Dorothy: Part I
That said, let us into the breach…

Karl Marx made the gross mistake of predicating his edifice of thought on
all-out class struggle. Adam Smith’s theories lead to the absurd assertion that
self-interest motivates man’s every economic action. Some contemporary Catho-
lics posit their observation of the faith on the idea that as long as they attend the
immemorial Mass, little heed need be given to how they earn their daily bread.
Others aver that to earn one’s daily bread is tantamount to a spiritual experience.
All of these positions are wrong, if not actually all wrong. That’s the problem with
error, its love-hate relationship with the truth. Heresy courts orthodoxy seeking
only a marriage of convenience; divorce is inevitable.
In the inimitable Latin of St. Thomas Aquinas: Bonum est ex integra causa,
malum ex quocumque defectu. In the vulgar idiom of 21st century America, one
might paraphrase that to mean, “Being a little wrong is like being a little preg-
nant—either you are or you aren’t!” To be a bit more refined, we might put it thus:
“That which is good is wholly good, the bad is so because of any defect.” A miss
is as good as a mile. Moral theology is a far more exact science than horseshoes,
hand-grenades, or nuclear weapons.
Catholic faith is catholic in the realm of dogma. It is catholic in its transcen-
dence of history. It is catholic in its ubiquity in geography. It is catholic in its
applications to the multitudinous disciplines of human thought. And it is catholic
in its presence in the daily life of the home, which is the simple way of saying in the
economy.
Economics is not about nation states. Economics is not about money. Eco-
nomics is not about production. Economics is not about consumption. Econom-
ics is about justice, in which man receives his due by first seeking to render God
his due. The arena where just desserts are made, received, and enjoyed is the
home. Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” The corollary to that in ethics
is, “All economics is domestic.”
When one says home, one indeed means “homeland”, but not exclusively.
One means, primarily, the place where the hearth is warm and the heart is kept.
Fundamentally and ultimately, however, reference is made to a different, a better,
a permanent home. Our Lord referred to this place as My Father’s house. Therein
is found the many mansions where the children of God live forever. That house is
established on the faith taught by the body of Christ, the Catholic Church, whose
bedrock and visible head is St. Peter and his successors, the Popes. That house is
built to attain the lofty height of being a house of prayer.
Preface: Distributism for Dorothy 5
But since God is not a monomaniac, more goes on than just prayer. Mass
is the focal point, source, means, and goal, of all that contributes to eternal life.
An authentic devotion to that truth allows, encourages, and expects much more
than just a Sunday experience. Three-score and ten is a matter of far more than
merely 3,640 hours, give or take a few hours considering leap years and the length
of Father’s sermons. Thus, the economy of salvation is the home, the nation, the
Church, the mind, the body, the soul, discipline, recreation, art, science—all that
is human seeking the one true God. Distributism does the least bad job of provid-
ing a material context for such a vast undertaking.
It is Sunday, August 15th, 2004. Mr. Johnson has just gone to Mass at the lo-
cal traditional chapel. He has returned home, where he is going to spend the rest
of the day and late into the night finishing up the end-of-the-fiscal-year reports
that have to be finished in the next ten business days. His wife and his children
know that this two-week period in August every year is very stressful, and they are
not to disturb him at all—no phone calls, no meals together, no squabbles over
whose turn it is to get to play a video game. The family also knows that a similar
period happens at tax time in late March. And, of course, the Christmas rush is
a nightmare as well. Mr. Johnson hates his job, but it puts food on the table and
supports his family.
It is Sunday, January 27th, 1996. The Super Bowl is being played today. Mr.
Thomas and ten of his best buddies are skipping Mass to make a day of it. They’re
going to play a round of golf in the morning, get a pizza and beer for lunch at the
local pub, and then spend the whole evening at the Thomas house watching the
game. Mrs. Thomas makes him feel guilty about this every year. But it’s just once
a year. And he always confesses it the next week anyway, so what’s the big deal?
It is Sunday, April 16th, 1950. Mr. Brown went to Mass a week ago. It was
Easter. His wife made him go. Today he gets to sleep in. He gets to sleep in for the
next eight months until the ol’ battleaxe makes him go again for Christmas. She
can be awful pushy when she wants to be.
It is Saturday, December 23rd, 1922. This is the last shopping weekend be-
fore Christmas. Mr. Green is opening early and closing late to take advantage of
the booming business. He probably won’t get home until after midnight, and
then he’ll be back first thing on Sunday to do the books. Mass just won’t fit in.
The Jews down the street don’t take Sunday off—or Saturday for that matter. If Mr.
Green is going to stay in business and get ahead, a few things have to be sacrificed.
It is Tuesday, September 12th, 1816. Mr. Dillon is lying in bed dying. His
frantic wife doesn’t know what to do. There isn’t a priest within a hundred miles.
Her grandmother had always told her to pray for a holy death and to beg Our
Lady to make sure a priest was nearby at the hour of death. Mrs. Dillon, sitting
at the side of her husband’s deathbed, cannot hear his labored breathing over the
sound of the memory of her grandmother’s sobs back in the old country begging
her not to go to a foreign Godless land where there were no priests, no sacraments,
and no faith—just savages, mosquitoes, and heretic protestants. With four small
children and no money, Mrs. Dillon is thinking about leaving the Illinois Territo-
ry and going back to Europe after Mr. Dillon passes away.
It is the morning of October 5th, 1582. Monsieur Gilson doesn’t care what
that fool of a man Gregory xiii says. You can’t rob a man of ten days of his life and
walk off like nothing happened. This was just further proof to Monsieur Gilson
that the Church was a gaggle of thieves and liars. Ever since his brief seminary
days in his early adulthood he had told everyone who would listen for three min-
utes how far gone things were. Not that the English or the Germans had it right,
but no self-respecting Frenchman would look to an Italian for sense and reason.
The Mass and priest-craft and prayer and all were just that much idiocy to keep
honest men down and keep fiends in power. Monsieur Gilson is not fooled by it
all. His calendar is not going to move for anything or anyone.
It is Thursday, February 23rd, 1516. Father Luther has just finished cele-
brating Mass. He is fretting that he should have gone to Confession first. That is
usually the first thought he has as he makes his thanksgiving after Mass each day.
Of course, there are days when his confessor tells him that he should have gone
to the sacrament much sooner, but Father Luther doesn’t put much stock in that
old man’s old ideas about what constitutes sin. Father Luther doesn’t know how
much longer he can put up with his own interior doubts and the anger he feels
toward his superiors.
It is Wednesday, January 1st, 1250. There was no Mass in the village this
morning. The priest died two days ago in the outbreak of the plague that has been
raging for two months. Most of the others who had died were buried by the priest
and a few other brave souls. No one is there to bury the priest. Quite a few of the
people still alive have said out loud that there is no reason to bury the damned
anyway. If there were a God, they say, He wouldn’t let so many innocent people
die so horribly. And if there weren’t a God, nothing but nothing, or hell itself,
awaited them. Life with the plague is hell enough.
It is the end of the world, December 31st, 999. The Cathedral is filled to over-
flowing with people praying, dozens of Masses are being offered, and hundreds
of people are in line to go to Confession. With only a few hours to live, everyone
wants to get his life in order. The scene in one week will be quite different.
It is Thursday, March 24th, 33. Mass is not yet over, but one of the at-
tendees has left already. He has some business to transact. Judas has a pressing
appointment with the Jews. The profits from the exchange, he is sure, will go
to a good use.
Ladies and gentlemen, sin and error were not invented in 1969, 1962, 1917,
1717, 1517, 900, or before dessert at the Last Supper.
Those who come from some kind of a Catholic background that allows them
to adhere fervently to the immemorial teachings, practice, and worship preserved
by the one true Church, have no fear that dancing girls will be at Mass on Sun-
day bringing the various and sundry items forward in the procession during the
preparation of the altar and gifts. There will be no lector hectoring in some mod-
ern translation of English noted for its “inclusive” language style. And of all of
those privileged to assist at the immemorial Mass of permanent tradition, only
the priest will lay hands on the Blessed Sacrament, receiving no assistance from an
army of “Extraordinary” Ministers of the Eucharist.
However, there a few other pressing problems among the people who attend
chapels dedicated to preserving permanent Catholic traditions. There is a plague
of Lexi—or whatever the plural of Lexus might be—infesting parking lots across
the land. Parishioners face attack on a daily basis from gargantuan, soul-eating
home-entertainment systems that have invaded their living rooms. Almost all of
the men have succumbed to the allure of a seductress, resulting in their infidelity
to the sacrament of Holy Matrimony through a very public and scandalous love
affair with wage slavery. Everyone in the community docilely accepts oppression
from their fellow citizens in the world by way of court-mandated, legislature-ap-
proved, and executive-enforced endorsement of divorce, sodomy, abortion, usury,

and pornography. This state of affairs is so typical as to admit of no exceptions.
There is an urgent need to recognize that the Novus Ordo Missae is not just a
liturgical rite, but a way of life. Thanks be to God, it is still possible to worship ac-
cording to the constant mind of the Church. However, precious few live accord-
ing to a thorough sensus Catholicus, and even fewer know what the ramifications
for that would be today.
To put it very simply: it must be understood that this is decidedly not a Cath-
olic world. It is not Catholic in its faith. It is not Catholic in its understanding of
the family. It is not Catholic in its economics. It is not Catholic in its philosophy.
It is not Catholic in its systems of government. It is not Catholic in its applica-
tion of science. It is not Catholic in its recreation. It is not Catholic in its artistic
aesthetic. It is not Catholic in its morality. It is not Catholic in how it educates
the young. It is not Catholic in anything at all. Modernity is a completely, wholly,
entirely non-Catholic, anti-Catholic, Catholic-hating world.
What even Catholics faithful to the Church’s traditions of dogma and
worship seldom understand properly is that the Catholic faith, expressed in
the Mass, gave us Christendom, a Catholic culture; modernism and aposta-
sy steeped in humanism and hedonism inform the Novus Ordo Missae. The
strength of Western history was not a culture that supported the faith. Chris-
tendom’s former strength was an unwavering faith that flowered in a wonderful
culture. What ails the world today is not a horrible liturgy that has created a
woeful society. The current mess is due to having a Godless and even demonic
world that has given rise to a set of liturgical principles that have been brought
to bear on worship.
What is needed to strengthen the Church today is the same as what was need-
ed in Imperial Rome, barbaric Europe, the complacent Renaissance, the insanity
of the protestant revolt, the chaos of the French Revolution, the terror of two
World Wars, and the uncertainties of most folk during young adulthood: Faith
must come first!
It is imperative to live the faith in everything, not just in the Mass on Sun-
day. A vibrant faith can heal a terminally ill culture. No culture in and of itself
can produce authentic faith. This culture is actively hostile to the true faith.
The ultimate goal is not to reproduce the culture of our fathers, but to receive,
nurture, and hand down the faith of our fathers. The culture that springs from
such a renewal will bear some resemblance to the past, but will also benefit
from the fact that the Master of the house of God has treasures both new and
old that he will bestow on his family.
Often it is said that what matters is the Mass. Even Vatican II acknowledges
that the Mass must be the source and summit of the life of Catholics. What is
needed today is a conviction to carry on the work of our fathers in the faith,
particularly the martyr-saints. As they died in order to preserve the faith inviolate
from sin, heresy, and apostasy, today’s Catholics are called to live. The faithful
must the Mass.
They must live for the Mass. They must live from the Mass. They must devote
the entirety of life to making Christ all in all through worshipping him in his
Mass, or else the faith will die as surely as it did for millions of people just before
and after the Council. They must live true to the fullness of the faith in every
aspect of life, or whatever of heart, mind, soul, and strength that is not given to
God will die as surely as the Church has died out in Northern Africa, Western Eu-
rope, and most of the Americas. Eternal life depends on the whole of this earthly
life being united to Jesus Christ in His perfect sacrifice on the cross: as He gives
absolutely everything of Himself to the Church on Calvary through the Mass, the
faithful are to give absolutely everything—government, work, recreation, fami-
lies, homes, heart, mind, soul, and strength—to Him through the Mass.
Do not feel awkward for feeling out of sorts in reading thus far. Others before
you have felt at sea among such sentiments. For instance:
Dear Father,
To the extent I am able, all your poems are appreciated. I
very much liked “Tuba Mirum”, and that you composed it while
waiting for penitents in the confessional. As telling as the sound
of a trumpet is the final couplet:
This wondrous scene once more will come to pass

as I ascend the altar at the Mass.
Thank you very much for sending “Where Does the Rem-
nant Live?” I think I understood a great deal of it. There are a
few questions: Could you elucidate a little on modern employ-

ment and modern politics? You have spoken on this but it is not
clear. Did not saints come from families with sainted mothers
and fathers who live much like us, with mother toiling at home
and father going out to work to earn a living for his family? Did
not kings who lived regally and did the lavish things kings do,
become saints, while loving God and giving generously to the
Church? All saints did not live an agrarian life. How do super-
highways, condos, and IRAs “pose grave dangers to the sancti-
fication of souls?” Condos are useful when the old family home
becomes too large for the couple living in it and downsizing
seems sensible. As you do, we must travel the freeways to get
from place to place. You mention some of the great religious
orders of the Church. Well and good, but are they not the shep-
herds of which Our Lord speaks and we, the sheep who follow
in the particular vocation that is ours? . . . I believe my favorite
lines are “We must be easy marks, vulnerable to the lions, the
scoundrels, and the pagan who wants a handout without realiz-
ing that his only satisfaction—and our only gift—is Christ and
Him crucified.”
Could you and would you, Father, construct an imaginary
“Joe Bloe,” a guy right out of today’s world here in America,
and give us specifics as to how he might extricate himself from
ordinary life as we know it, to live the Christ-life in the way you
say we must? Take him through all those facets of his existence
which you enumerate and move him from what we normally do,
thinking it acceptable to God, to the changes he must make to
live a truly Catholic life. If you could do that, perhaps we could
understand exactly what you mean. Modernism in e.g. music,
theater, or education, is easily understood, but other areas, some
of which I have mentioned, are unclear.
Most of us are followers. Our Lord called us “the sheep.”
[author’s deletion of an overly kind compliment]. May he sus-
tain you.
With a prayer,
Dorothy
It is the task of the essays and articles in this book to attempt to clarify
things for people like Dorothy. In case the reader has not the time in the next
few minutes to examine three-hundred pages of explanation, the next several
pages might sustain until sufficient time is available for a more thorough ex-
ploration. Thus, to answer Dorothy, and in so doing to provide a synopsis for
things to come...
Joseph and Colleen Bloe live in Urbandale, Iowa. Their four grown children
live in Minnesota, Hawaii, France, and Dubuque. Joseph is a recently retired
insurance company middle-manager. Colleen began their married life working
as a teacher, then stayed home when the children came along, went back to work
when the youngest entered grade school, and now she is two or three years from
her own retirement. Mr. and Mrs. Bloe are “old-timers” in their neighborhood—
they have lived in their house for twenty-three years. The home in which they
lived until several years after the last of their four children was born had been built
by Colleen’s grandfather in what used to be the country, but is now a strip mall
on the outskirts of Des Moines. That mall prompted them to build the house in
which they now live, but which they are seriously considering selling in favor of
a smaller, cheaper condo.
Colleen is away for a long five-day weekend. Her dear cousin, born a mere
two days before her, is very ill. Colleen is taking time off from work to visit her
“other-sister”, as she calls her. Joseph is left to fend for himself. He has lots of time
on his hands and thoughts on his mind.
More than twenty years ago, Joseph had his mid-life crisis—he and his mar-
riage both survived. Thus, he does not consider his current angst to be of the geri-
atric-adolescent sort. But he is doing a lot of thinking with Colleen away. Joseph
is being plagued by thoughts of what might have been.
Many years ago, many more than when the mid-life crisis occurred, Joseph
was a young man, a teenager, entering the seminary. It was an amazing time. He
learned many things that have floated in the back of his mind for decades. This
was the heady time before and during the Council. Lots of speculation about the
nature of the Church, the role of the priest, and the status of the laity was in the
press and in the classroom.
Joseph was not touched by any of that. He had as a spiritual director and
professor a priest who was about 1800 years old, not quite apostolic, but close
enough. Father Phillips was probably named after St. Philip the Deacon, who was
in all likelihood Father Phillips’ father’s catechist.
Father Phillips taught Joseph. The Archbishop, the Rector, and the Academic
Dean thought that Father Phillips was teaching philosophy. What Joseph discov-
ered to his enduring delight was that Father Phillips had played his superiors a
bait-and-switch. Joseph and his classmates learned not philosophy from Father
Phillips. They learned a love of wisdom!
Lady Wisdom! She was their paramour. They wooed her. They quested in her
honor. They slew dragons that menaced her. Father Phillips tried each of his stu-
dents by fire, and those who overcame the ordeal, he knighted with the Sword of
Truth! Joseph was privileged to be among those whose shoulders were so tapped.
But he also was among the fallen. Holy Orders was the Quest, and he was not
up to the task. Torn between his budding love for Lady Wisdom and the allure of
the world offered in the wake of the Council, Joseph succumbed to the wiles of
modernity. Perhaps Colleen never realized how broken was the man she married
five years after he left the seminary.
Joseph constantly fretted within himself about the direction his life had tak-
en. It was not just his anxiety over whether he had failed God by refusing to fully
pursue the priesthood. That was involved. But even more Joseph wondered about
the “success” he had had in the world. He was not a millionaire or a captain of
industry or a celebrity darling. His house was not quite paid off—nor were their
two cars and the boat sitting in dry dock. When Colleen retired they would not
starve, unless they both lived thirty more years.
It profits a man nothing to gain the world while losing his soul. A man can
not serve two masters. Joseph Bloe felt that he had served no one. He feared that
God was not pleased with him. His bosses were never terribly impressed. None
of his family looked to him as a model to emulate. Even Joseph could not muster
esteem for Joseph. Worse than trying to serve God and mammon was serving
neither God nor mammon. It was to be vomited out of the mouth of the Lord for
being lukewarm.
One nice thing about their suburban home was the deck over the back
yard. Joseph grabbed the special box of stout beer that he kept aside for when
he treated himself to his guilty pleasure of idling, drinking, smoking a pipe,
and brooding. The deck was the perfect setting for his vices. No reminders of
chores undone, no cops waiting to give tickets to fools behind the wheel, and
no stern looks about making the living room smell like a saloon. In Joseph’s
mind, it was a pleasant trip from the salon to the saloon, but Colleen rarely was
amused by his plays on words.
So Joseph retired to the private security of his redwood enclosure. Alone with
his thoughts he started an examination of conscience according to the principles
he learned so long ago from Father Phillips. Joseph was not only taking stock of
his life, but of life itself.
Life on earth had not always been as it was in modern greater Des Moines.
Joseph remembered his own father and the farm where he grew up in far north-
western Iowa, which was where his Dad grew up, which was where his Dad
grew up. Joseph and his five brothers decided that none of their sons would
be farm boys. His two sisters married farm boys who also refused to raise any
more of the vermin.
Grandpa used to tell the boys about his childhood. The farm was like a little
city all to itself. They grew what they ate, his mother and sisters spun and weaved,
and the house and barn and the outbuildings were all built with nothing more
than the manpower generated by the family itself. Going to town was a blue-
moon event. There was not much they could afford there, few things that they
really needed, it was hard to get there, and, frankly, Grandpa’s Dad didn’t like the
looks of the folk who lived there.
In those days Grandpa and his brothers and sisters did not have to walk five
miles through snow uphill both ways to get to school. Boys and girls learned their
letters and numbers from mother. Father taught the boys the million-and-two
things that a farmer had to be good at, and the girls learned the extra million
things that mother took care of around the house. The older brothers and sisters
took on some of the teaching responsibilities when they reached their teen years.
On Sundays all of the children would be drilled ruthlessly in their catechism
by Father. They had no parish church back then, and Mass happened only infre-
quently when a mission priest was spared to visit the nether regions of Iowa. There
were not a lot of Catholics in northwestern Iowa, and families had to learn and
preserve the faith pretty much on their own. Grandpa’s Dad made sure that his
children knew how to get to heaven. Part of the lesson that they learned was the
taste of hell they got if they answered a question incorrectly, incompletely, or less
than immediately.
Joseph thought of his own catechesis as a child. He always loved the lives of
the saints more than anything else. It seemed to him that between the Bible and
the saints of God, you had all you needed to know about being Catholic. For
reasons that remained unclear to Joseph even now, he was particularly drawn to
royalty who became saints. Somehow kings and queens being that good struck
Joseph as being proof of what Jesus said about camels and the eyes of needles and
the impossible being possible with God.
Later on in seminary, Father Phillips helped Joseph organize in his own
mind how Europe was shaped by these royal saints, princes and princesses of
the kingdom of heaven. Practically every European nation had a king or queen
or both who attained great sanctity by insisting that their realms receive and
practice the one true faith. Bavaria had St. Henry and St. Cunegunda. England
had St. Edward the Confessor. Scotland had Queen St. Margaret. Portugal and
Hungary each had a St. Elizabeth for a queen. St. Louis ruled France and re-
ceived the Crown of Thorns for his efforts. St. Bridget gave great example and
great wealth to the faithful in Sweden. Hungary can also claim King St. Stephen
and Poland boasts St. Casimir. And quite a few other regal saints grace the local
churches of Christendom.
Noblesse oblige meant for these holy men and women that the royal purple was
to be set aside frequently in favor of the hairshirt, the penitent’s tears, the alms
required by the poor, the justice due to the oppressed, and the piety owed to God.
They established the natural foundations for great nations and the supernatural
foundations for the growing body of Christ. Cities sprang up near monasteries;
universities were endowed within newly erected dioceses; and armies marched
forward to protect the realm from invasion and the faith from heresy.
The sainted kings and queens of Europe left a legacy that can be measured in
roads and architecture and enduring culture. They also humbly offered their gifts
in creating a legacy of faithful souls around the world whose only measure is in
the mind of God. Many have sought the wealth of bad monarchs; too few have
begged the poverty of spirit for which good monarchs long. It has been decades
since Europe has had a monarch with real power, but centuries since Europe has
produced a monarch worthy of being raised to the altar of God. Precious few
Catholic Prime Ministers or Presidents have had or seem likely to have a desire
for heroic sanctity.
What his grandfather described and what Father Phillips helped to put in
context were of a piece as far as Joseph was concerned. The family farm and the
kingdom are differences in degree, not of kind. Each is a society, the family in
small, the kingdom in large. Fathers and kings must protect and provide for the
material and spiritual well being of their respective societies. Mothers and queens
must nurture and nourish the bodies and souls in their care. Fathers as kings of
the home castle would not get such a bad reception in the modern mind if kings
had taken more seriously their role as fathers to their countries. A queen who
does not understand her dignity as mother to her people will be as ineffective
as a mother who does not teach her children to respect the sacred nature of the
authority of mother and father in the home.
Within a kingdom, on a farm, and in the home it is possible to accom-
plish what is impossible by a secular constitutional democracy, in the city, and
among the nomads of the modern economy. God makes things grow naturally
where a people is united by the faith, in bringing forth the fruits of the earth,
and in raising up children to praise God on earth and to share His glory in
heaven. There is something real and organic about a kingdom that speaks to the
heart much more profoundly than the synthetic reality that produces creatures
like the Soviet Union or the European Union or the United States of America.
A family knows who they are if they are Russian or Portuguese or Hawaiian.
What does one call a citizen of what used to be the Soviet Union or will be the
European Union or still is the United States—and what do those names mean?
A “Soviet” is not a description of a human being, but a mechanism of a form
of government. “European” denotes a continental land mass, not the identity of
the flesh and blood who live thereon. And “American” can be applied equally to
the residents of two different continents containing three-quarters of a billion
people and dozens of nation states.
There used to be a common sense of nationality. Language, a monarch, and
the faith made a people one, informed the people of their identity, and formed
the people in a living culture. Modern nation states deny all three of those reali-
ties. International languages are not meant to bind nations together as sovereign
equals, but to blur the distinctions between nations. Monarchs vanished with the
passenger pigeon, replaced by governing entities wherein small groups of people
are elected by large groups of people to rule over mammoth groups of people
according to the dictates of what small groups of people wrote on pieces of paper.
These pieces of paper and the people responsible for them forbid that faith of any
kind be present as a principle to direct the laws governing people, to guide the
morals of a people, or to check the hubris of the people.
Joseph stood up abruptly. He dumped the cold ashes from his pipe over the
edge of the deck and filled his mug with more stout, slightly emptying it before
sitting down again. For a minute he stopped thinking so as to catch his breath.
Tamping new tobacco into the bowl was a welcome respite from his mental toil.
Concepts can be every bit as exhausting to stack up as bales of hay.
That was what it was like when he worked. He never broke a sweat or a bone
or any ground, but he came home a physical, emotional, and mental wreck every
night. Cajoling salesmen, calming customers, and compromising with other man-
agers was a far cry from his grandpa’s descriptions of planting and harvest times,
but Joseph thought his Dad always looked healthier at the end of the farm day
than how he felt in what passes for rush hour in Des Moines.
For the life of him Joseph could not at that moment remember what he
thought was so awful about growing up on the farm that made him frantic to
move to the city, first as a seminarian and then as a husband and a father. He won-
dered about his own boys and why they stayed in town in spite of their constant
complaints about what that entails. What was so awful about their parents that
made all of his children want to live so far away from home?
Suddenly Joseph leapt from his chair again. He threw open the deck door and
dashed into the house. So frenzied was his motion that he did not even notice the
still smoking pipe in his mouth filling the living room, then the family room, then
the hallway, then the basement stairwell with a delightful aroma grown only in
Virginia. In seconds Joseph was through the house and down the stairs, rushing
to a pile of boxes, and tearing through one of the most deeply buried. It did not
take long for him to find what he was looking for. Putting the boxes back where
he found them, minus a sheaf of papers held as firmly in his hand as his pipe in
his teeth, Joseph then flew back up the stairs two steps at a time. Returning to his
redwood throne he began to read:
Modernity: A Diagnosis of What Ails Us
A thesis never intended for publication or completion, by Father Scott Phillips
I. Introduction
Urban Renewal
Sion
The walls of cities once were havens
for unarmor’d man and helpless wife,
within which noble hearts, ne’er cravens,
serv’d their lords and prais’d the Lord of life.
Inside their walls both great and lowly

gave their all for fam’ly, king, and God;
to die for these made sinners holy
and the land, both graves and homestead’s sod.
Babylon
No longer cities boast of mortar
pil’d against invading armies’ might,
for now the foe is given quarter
in the streets, more dark by day than night.
What present threatens is not warfare

come from foreign soldiers’ fill’d with lust,
but faceless neighbors for whose welfare
laws are built, protecting by distrust.
A love for strangers is the dearer

for the undefended city’s souls
who lie beseig’d behind the mirror’s
prison walls, whose locks bear keyless holes.
New Jerusalem
With New Jerusalem descending
will be power, light, and glory’s weight
bestow’d upon the saints unending,
safe behind twelve open city gates.
At last the wall will more a window

be, but clean; and then horizon’s ends
be seen—not own’d but here to borrow,
and forever there to share with friends.
Amen.
When New Jerusalem is established, when the former heaven and the for-
mer earth pass away, when all things are made new again, Eden and Sion will be
surpassed, the Lord’s own city will rule supreme, and the tree of life will flower
in the midst of all. God will dwell with man and man will call on God as Father.
Nothing will exist that could diminish, threaten, or mar the security of the heav-
enly city. All will be devoted to the worship of God, and He will share the fullness
of His glory with all the elect. There will be one God, one people, and one home
where only life, love, and peace are found.
‘Til this comes to pass, the Kingdom is in our midst even now as the mys-
tical Body of Christ, the Catholic Church, endeavors in the project of building
the Kingdom according to the will of God, by grace of Christ crucified, in the
power of the Holy Ghost mediated through the sacraments. There is far more to
the Kingdom than human eyes now can see, but everything now in communion
with Christ’s Church, his Bride, will be present to enjoy beatitude when God’s
plan of salvation reaches fruition with the end of time. Indeed, the end of time,
its proper purpose and goal, is the perfection of the saints, the submission of all
creation to God the Father, and Christ the King of the universe being acclaimed
as all in all by all.
The Book of the Apocalypse by St. John the Beloved tells us that the New
Jerusalem is massive, beautiful, and impregnable. Those who dwell there with
God in light are perfect, participate in the divine Sonship of Christ as reigning
heirs with Him, and are united to God and one another in the unbreakable
bonds of the Spirit of Love. All that is in the New Jerusalem is good, and all
good shall be forever there. Outside the city is darkness and evil, sinners unre-
pentant, and death and the devil. What is outside the city can never enter in,
‘tho’ the gates stand open, for they are powerless to do so, and they desire sin
and separation from God.
Earth serves as analogue to the New Jerusalem and the city of the damned.
It is the proving ground where souls are tested in their worthiness of beatitude or
perdition. This world is also the field of battle where the hosts of heaven under St.
Michael the Archangel defend the divine honor against the powers and principal-
ities doomed to utter and eternal defeat for their rebellion.
History experiences two aspects of the city of man, one in league with the dev-
il, the other obedient to the will of God marching beneath the banner of Christ
crucified. The world succumbs to the appetites of mere flesh and thereby comes
under the devil’s sway. The Church Militant joins with St. Michael and the good
angels in allegiance to God. Hell does battle against Heaven even as men contend
on earth allied with Christ or against Christ. There is no compromise possible, no
treaty offered, no quarter given where these warring armies are in strife.
Eden offers no home to man. Cast out of Paradise, mankind is in the wil-
derness, exposed to physical want and the spiritual malice of the devil. Men have
sought haven behind the walls of fortified cities from the threats posed by strife be-
tween tribes and nations, by material dearth, and by the chaos of the unredeemed
world. Strong walls raised against foes, fertile farmlands surrounding them, and
organized rule under a sovereign authority have been the hallmarks of civilization
by which the city of man has sought to overcome the ravages of original sin. The
city stands as a symbol of man’s ascendancy over mere animals; it is his citadel
against enemies both material and spiritual; and it is the mark of identity prized
by those privileged to possess the title “citizen”.
No earthly city, however, is equal to the task of mounting a continuing, fo-
cused, and effective defense against the many enemies of mankind, the ultimate
opponent being death. By war, by murder, by disease, by mishap, by age, death
comes to every man. The ultimate cause of death, sin, is the birthright of every
child born of man and woman, of flesh and blood, of mortal will. No wall, no
army, no rule has ever brought death to bay.
This is seen in the tragic irony of the modern city. Where cities once gave
haven to populations fleeing hunger, disaster, or invasion; where cities once
stood as emblems of pride and accomplishment; where cities once were the
home where a man was amongst his own family and familiars; the modern city
is a veritable prison. Teeming masses languish within cities without productive
work, basic human hygiene, or hope of material improvement. Those neither
very wealthy nor very poor flee the city, while the impoverished remain behind
incapable of escape, and the rich enjoy an otherworldly existence unlike anything
attainable by the middle class or conceivable to the poor. Strangers surround the
inhabitants of cities, danger walks the streets, and armed force is directed at the
citizenry rather than at marauding hordes from foreign lands. Once the ideal of
mystics, the boast of kings, or the dream of engineers and statesmen, the city
has become a nightmare for its residents, a source of embarrassment for govern-
ments, and an unbearable burden to the resources and spirit of those who cling
to the memory of better hopes. Perversely, cities and their problems continue to
grow; and where a central city might be shrinking, still the urban area of which
it is the hub explodes in size and population.
For a brief moment in human history, it seemed that a city had been built
that would satisfy all of man’s wants. Milk and honey flowed in the lands
around it. A philosopher-king wrote poetry and sang and danced while effecting
his just rule. God Himself dwelt in the midst of its citadel, calling the people
His own, delighting in them and their praises, and blessing the works of their
hands. Alas! Sion stands no more, cast down in its pride, condemned for its
faithlessness, doomed to exile for having abdicated the right to be a people
bound as one under God.
A people who were not a people became a people, but then lost their nation
and their national identity. What makes a people one? Who decides to bring them
together? How do they maintain a common patrimony? Why should other people
recognize them, respect them, or reject them?
In the case of the Jews, it is all about God. He chose, He gathered, He com-
manded, He loved, and He punished. Abram was called from pagan stock. Moses
guided the people whom God raised from Abraham’s seed. Saul was chosen to
lead the nation when they were unsatisfied to have God as king.
Saul, the first king of the Jews after the Jews rejected God as King, was reject-
ed by God for his unrighteousness. God then anointed David to be the new king,
calling him son, and promising to give his people an eternal kingship. But David’s
immediate descendants were unfaithful and led the people in idolatry. God took
from them both their king and their kingdom, allowing them to be ruled by for-
eign powers much like they had been oppressed in Egypt by Pharaoh. Eventually
they were in the thrall of Rome and many had become enslaved to sinful passions,
giving in to the practices of the pagans who surrounded and ruled them. From
pagan stock to deliverance from slavery to divine anointing, the Chosen People
delivered themselves back to slavery and thence to a virtually pagan state. Yet God
did not abandon them, nor did He forget His promise to establish an eternal
realm and undying kingship.
Jeremiah (31:31–34) prophesied that the sins of Israel would be forgiven and
that the very hearts of the people would be inscribed with the divine Law. Stone
tablets—and stony hearts—would be replaced by flesh infused with the Breath
of God. Ezekiel (34:11–16) foretold that the wandering sheep of Israel would no
more be guided by faithless shepherds, and a faithful flock would take the place of
the wayward sheep. God Himself would shepherd His people. St. John (10:1–18;
1:1–18) relates that Jesus is the Son of God, the King to come, the Good Shep-
herd who knows and is known by His sheep. No longer would lying wolves attack
the sheepfold, nor would the sheep succumb to the seduction of the wolves’ lies.
Our Lord also reveals in St. John’s Apocalypse (21:1–4, 22-27; 22:1–5) that in the
new Kingdom, God will once again dwell with men, His people will be His sons,
and nothing will ever again imperil His children.
Since the Ascension, men have cooperated with God’s plan to greater or lesser
degrees, with varying results depending on their degree of cooperation. Catholics
have expressed their faith through national identity and ethnicity, obeying God
thereby, and receiving blessing and divine favor. Sinful Catholics and non-Cath-
olics have established nations hostile or indifferent to the Faith, and thus have
sown apostasy, depravity, and fratricide among men. A people joined together to
manifest and spread the one, true Faith will find their natural identity preserved
and elevated. Faithless people ignorant of, or excommunicated from, the Church
will discover dissension in their midst, use force to impose a false peace, and lose a
proper sense of human dignity capable of pursuing common purpose or agreeing
on the nature of good and evil.
The final fruit of original sin is the loss of knowledge of God, the loss of the
knowledge of the difference between good and evil, and an ignorance of a means
to life wholly preserved from death. Nations founded in apostasy or in ignorance
of Christ are powerless to avoid the full measure of the wages of original sin: moral
depravity, human degradation, and eternal death. Without the light of the Faith,
man is plunged into darkness inescapable.
Supernatural grace is necessary for a nation to be pleasing to God and to be of
worth to man. Such grace is built on a multitude of natural blessings from God.
Perhaps the most obvious natural element of a national identity is language. Ha-
waii is the place where the people speak Hawaiian, Denmark is where Danish is
spoken, and Arabia where Arabic is the lingua franca. Babel demonstrates that the
division of languages brought the division of peoples, but sin results in division
even among peoples of a common language. Where faith does not forbid the use
of forked tongues, tongues will fork to divide people or divided peoples will use
forked tongues against each other.
A world war was fought, in part, because one group of German speakers in
Germany decided that users of that language in the Sudetenland, Poland, and
Austria, among many other places, should belong in one sovereign German-speak-
ing nation, whether they wanted to be or not. Cultural battles are waged between
the native English speakers on either side of the border between Canada and the
United States, with the Canadians mostly on the losing side, seeming to be a
cultural colony or suburb or wholly-owned subsidiary of America. China and Tai-

wan have not come to blows—yet—but neither has their sharing of the Chinese
language forged a sense of national unity between them.
Converse to the phenomenon of a common language failing to create a single
nationality out of two nations is that of a single nation divided internally by two
languages. Flemish-speaking Walloons lose little love for their French-speaking
brother Belgians. The Québecquoi would prefer that English and its speakers in
the rest of Canada would allow them to dwell at peace alone in a French-speak-
ing enclave sovereign unto itself. Spaniards must ask themselves every now and
then why they are so insistent that the obscure, rugged, and exotic Basque region
should remain attached to a nation with which all agree Basque-speakers have
nothing in common except physical proximity. Language by itself has insufficient
power either to forge or to dissolve a nation’s identity.
Military might can force together, for a time, people who would otherwise de-
sire permanent separation from, if not subjugation of, the others. Ideology backed
by military force created the France of the Revolution, preserved the American
“union” under Lincoln, and sustained the Soviet Union until it collapsed beneath
the weight of its Gallic internal contradictions and the refusal by Gorbachev to
apply Lincoln’s solution to the Slavic problem. Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian,
Roman, Chinese, Aztec, and British emperors have discovered the challenges,
wealth, and futility of building empires from disparate peoples.
Efforts to bind as one the many different aspects of human culture evident in
human history have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous to the tragicomic.
Hellas did not succeed, although its profound influence is felt even to the present.
Maximilian was taken seriously by none other than himself, with the possible ex-
ception of his wife. Napoleon inspired armies, symphonies, and contempt, seem-
ingly invincible in the field, yet doomed almost from the start by the limitations
besetting him from politics, military vagaries, and his own ego. Coca Cola has
conquered for America in lands her armies will never see.
The one means to bring many together into a real unity that has real hope to
succeed is the one means forbidden by modernity. Holy Mother Church would
call all mankind her children, but most men prefer to be orphans. Be it a luke-
warm lip service to faith or a specious separation of the state from the Church or
an outright atheism, not one nation in the modern world admits that Christ is
King, Sovereign not only over believers, but over all men, all nations. Rather than
dwell together as one sharing a single faith that enriches diverse cultures, modern
men chase a chimera falsely promising to preserve the cultures that multinational
corporations dissolve, to make peace among the cultures whose profound differ-
ences multiculturalism exaggerates, and to synthesize as one the cultures that are
informed by multitudinous faiths in a multiplicity of gods. All the while Homo
modernus shouts, “Peace! Peace!” as he denies the meaning of peace, the source of
peace, the Prince of Peace.
If one Faith, one Baptism, one Lord, one Church, is acknowledged, then one
people can be formed. This is so even if many nationalities are involved. The mys-
tical Body of Christ has many members through which the fullness of truth can
be expressed. A variety of nations in agreement on one Church can live together
and be mutually supportive. A variety of faiths in false gods can never be one, will
agree on nothing, and will seek only mutual destruction.
Alas! man is rarely put off by the irrational or the impossible.
Modern man has reached something of a consensus about God: He does
not exist. Perhaps a few individuals here or there, or even a few hundred million
scattered around the world, still believe in Him, but the universal agreement on
which almost all men act is that collectively we operate on the premise that there is
no God sovereign over the universe. If indeed He is out there somewhere, He has
no vote or voice in modern democracies.
Instead, modern men have elected a demigod to worship. Some call it the
euro, some adore the almighty dollar, but all pay homage—and high interest
rates—to mammon. There are myriad sects or rites given over to this false wor-
ship. Some revere consuming and owning things, others venerate raw power over
people, and the cult of controlling thought possesses practically all of the high
priests of the temple of secular humanism-materialism-rationalism—call it what
you will, its name is Legion. Among the favored means of oblations in modern
idolatry are usury, sexual license, and the murder of innocents. It is no accident
that the stock-in-trade of modern irreligion consists largely of the sins that cry to
heaven for vengeance.
Very likely it would come as a surprise to most people to realize that the
European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, the World Bank and International Monetary
Fund, and the International Olympic Committee all share a common goal. Each
seeks in its own peculiar way to advance the hegemony of a few men over all
men. C.S. Lewis asks in his book, The Abolition of Man, who and on what basis
will decide how men are to live, which men will be allowed to survive, and what
constitutes worth in a man. These pan-national entities hold billions—of people

and of dollars—in their sway. They or their successors provide an answer to Lewis’
extraordinary question.
The European Union destroys national sovereignty as it pertains to govern-
ment structure. nato destroys national sovereignty as it pertains to military secu-
rity. opec destroys national sovereignty as it pertains to issues of trade. The imf
and World Bank destroy national sovereignty as it pertains to finance, debt, and
currency. The Olympic “movement” combines a bread-and-circus mentality with
big business and a pseudo-religious mythos to bring nations to war on playing
fields while refraining from disputes on matters of meaning.
Yes, that is an oversimplification. For the purposes of this argument this over-
simplification is sufficient to illustrate how the average nation-state is accepting
the premise that none can feed itself, fuel itself, protect itself, fund itself, or define
itself. Nations that attempt any kind of self sufficiency are bombed (Iraq), tariffed
(the United States), refused existence (Israel), embargoed (Cuba), culturally colo-
nized (everyone by America), morally assaulted (Ireland and Malta by the eu), or
isolated into irrelevancy (the Vatican by itself ).
There are no good guys in this, as Psalm 13 says:
The fool hath said in his heart:

There is no God.
They are corrupt and are become abominable in their ways:
There is none that doth good, no, not one.
The Lord hath looked down from Heaven
Upon the children of men,
To see if there be any that understand
And seek God.
They are all gone aside; they are
Become unprofitable together:
There is none that doth good, no, not one.
All modernity has conspired in apostasy by the wretched principle of de-

nying God’s kingdom pride of place over the state. Or to put it perhaps more
palatably to modern ears, the state has been set adrift with no place for it within
the Church. A foolish, lamentable, diabolic inversion has taken place: from an
acknowledgement of God’s Kingdom reigning over all and man’s states finding a
home in God’s many mansions, we have devolved to seeking one world-encom-

passing state within which national sovereignty, individual conscience, and Christ
the King will receive toleration without recognition.
Brothers, this is not the shape of things to come. This hellish future is now.
Already our governments, corporations, and wealthy individuals operate along
transnational lines. Legal jurisdictions, commercial incorporations, and citizen-
ship already assume entities occupying multiple national residencies. Throughout
the fabric of modern life runs the thread of understanding that legal and business
interests span the globe, but faith in God stops at the lip service he is paid.
We have come to this pass along a path stretching back eight centuries. Iron-
ically, the first salvo of mammon’s increasingly successful rebellion against the
perfect society of the Church was launched during the zenith of Christendom in
the thirteenth century. The Magna Carta established the unintended precedent
that a monarch could be bullied in law. At each step since then the very concept
of authority has been attacked with the aim of limiting all authority. Christ has
been the victim throughout, for all authority is His. To undermine authority is
to attack Christ. The process begun in the Magna Carta of negotiating the rights
of sovereignty and monarchy has culminated in the regicide of Christ the King.
The separation of the state from the Church, so dear to modern man’s concept of
freedom, is an eerie echo of that bellowing shout from nearly two-thousand years
ago: We have no king but Caesar!
Within three centuries of the Magna Carta, Christ was attacked directly in
the person of His Vicar. Sola Scriptura assaults the spiritual rule of Christ the King
as His temporal rule is challenged by separating governance from divine law. De-
mocracies elected to be under no king and to have no God above the sovereignty
of the people; Luther wanted no regent of the supreme monarch over him. The
anarchy of democracy is the result of several centuries of dilution of the acceptance
of God’s ultimate sovereignty invested in any governmental form, particularly in a
monarchy. The revolting protestants of the sixteenth century contributed to that
anarchy and to the weakening of the Church universal by the rejection of absolute
truth regarding salvation. Christ’s sovereignty is rejected on the natural level by
states whose notion of sovereignty is self-created; He is rejected on the supernat-
ural level by heretics and apostates whose notion of salvation acknowledges no
concrete connection between the will of God and the actions of man.
Christ in His kingship and Christ in His Body the Church received whole-
sale rejection in the atheistic Constitution of the United States of America.
England’s barons kept the faith but imperiled the state. Luther’s minions found
succor in thrones but denied the throne of Peter. America wanted no king,
including Christ, and no church, including Christ’s own Body. At present, the
United States of America has the dubious distinction of being the longest-lived
nation ever to exist entirely without an acknowledgement of some kind of
divine suzerainty.
This may be remedied eventually by the Charter of the United Nations, of
which the United States is a signatory and a permanent member of its governing
Security Council. It seems that protestantism believes that individual men de-
termine truth, while democracy asserts that collectives of individuals determine
truth; but the un is predicated on the notion that collections of nations are the
final arbiters of truth. Man’s truths come not from God nor from the individual
nor from the sovereign nation, but from the world convened in New York City to
render judgment, at last, on Pilate’s age-old query, “What is truth?” The United
States demonstrates how to synthesize a nation from nothing, the euro proves
that currency can be synthesized from nothing, and the United Nations is sure
that global sovereignty and economy can be synthesized from nothing as well. All
that is necessary is for the interested parties to be convinced to believe in nothing.
Vatican ii has given permission for this final abomination to occur. Dignitatis
Humanae gives free rein to religious liberty. Lumen Gentium allows for the efficacy
of grace totally independent of the Church. The new catechism and innumerable
papal statements and encyclicals from Pope John Paul make it abundantly clear
that modern Churchmen do not believe that the Church is necessary for salva-
tion. Christ was dethroned by democracy, excommunicated by Luther, exiled by
the u.s. Constitution, and ignored by the un Charter; now He appears to have
abdicated by the words and actions of his own vicar!!
What is needed is not fear, but trust. Among the three permanent things that
last, the modern world is most in need of supernatural Hope. Let us consider the
good as it comes from God, as it is assailed by man, and as it can be—and will
be—re-established by and in the Church. Those who trust in the Lord will know
His goodness in the land of the living. In trust in the Lord’s goodness abides cer-
tain hope.
II. When Saints and Sages Rule

Moderns tend to think that as things are now, they ever have been and always
will be. This is a curious irony given the fact that with the exception of the culture
shaped by apostasy and modernism, all human cultures really were the matter of
centuries if not millennia of unchanging stability. Sovereignty did not fluctuate
except by military conquest, a man’s sons would follow their father’s profession, a
family resided on the land for generations.
Contemporary lifestyles assume that personal mobility is a virtue as it regards
place of residency, employment, and conjugal relations. Technology requires per-
sonality shifts, upheavals in labor forces, and the revamping of legal codes on an
almost annual basis. Immigration, refugee movement, and international business
commuting have resulted in countries losing their ethnic focus and in individuals
denying a specific racial, national, or ethnic identity. But somehow in the midst
of this dizzying flux, modern man has convinced himself that such a state is nor-
mal, typical, and constant, indeed, modern man considers himself the measure by
which the human is judged. As he is now, all men wanted to be, or strove to be,
or assumed they were. We have lived to see most interesting times.
Americans have exercised a sovereignty over themselves, the natural law, and
being itself unparalleled in human history. Diversity is the hallmark of the novel
rule gripping this nation. Liberals, conservatives, protestants, Catholics, pagans,
Jews, the rich, the poor, native-born North Americans, and immigrants from the
world’s four corners are in absolute agreement: of the people, by the people, and for
the people need not and should not defer or refer to physical realities, moral veri-
ties, or divine commandment. The government of the United States is answerable
only to itself, a prerogative once held only by God.
Of course, loud and unceasing vitriol is spilled by various interests begging to
differ with their enemies of the moment (who tomorrow, you can be sure, will be
embraced as allies of longstanding) over just who has the right to pull the levers
of power and set the agenda for the next assault on the moral law, social custom,
economic common sense, or all of the above. What few people seem to notice is
that no matter how embittered a given battle might be while it is waged, a sur-
prisingly short time is necessary for the warring parties to abandon their strife and
laud the latest novelty as a human necessity recognized by all men since before
Adam. Who argues anymore about the gold standard? Where is the neanderthal
who takes exception to women voting? How can anyone suggest with a straight
face that stores should be closed on Sunday?
It is the very fluidity that emboldens purveyors of change for the sake of
change. Sure, they say, this new thing is a stretch for you, but so was desegrega-
tion a challenge for your grandparents. The temporary foes of whatever modernist
depravity is under consideration veritably wilt at the prospect of impeding prog-

ress, of being reactionary, of seeming behind the times changed at the whim of
the winds of carnal appetites, intellectual sloth, and spiritual hubris. The spirit
of the age presents as a fait accompli the notion that then was always wrong and
now is forever right. Timid and undependable defenders of timeless Truth bow to
the inevitability of their current defeat in much the same manner as their fathers
capitulated to modern errors, with one exception—the sons are much quicker to
surrender than were their sires.
And then to join in the revolution. If you can’t beat them, be them! We are
not seeing noble struggles in which the vanquished vanish. No, the conquered
today will conquer tomorrow on the side of their conquerors. These are not strug-
gles over lands and thrones and seaports, but conflicts with the end of possessing
the opponents’ very souls. After all, our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with
powers and principalities, and the spoils of this war are the hearts, minds, and
souls of the defeated converted to the lifestyle, mindset, and faith of the victors.
All-out war in ancient times meant looting the town, burning the buildings,
and killing or enslaving the inhabitants—and then going home. Most warriors
were lovers, not fighters. They fought viciously because they loved honor, life, and
home. Fighting was a means to securing those things (and some booty to boot).
Exile was one of the harshest punishments of antiquity, surpassed if at all only by
enslavement or death. Occupying a conquered foe was seen by the men in arms
as a lesser form of exile.
With the advent of modernity giving rise to the Roman empire (!), things
changed. Empire ceased to mean subject peoples paying tribute to their conquer-
ors. Citizenship became, at least in part, a legal reality, not just an ethnicity or
accident of birth. Losing in war no longer meant merely to lose one’s life. One
lost one’s identity…
Father Phillips’ great-nephew and namesake, Father Phillips, took about as

many prisoners as the original. Joseph had gotten a hold of this paper when he
heard that Father Phillips, a son of one of Joseph’s classmates at seminary who was
the nephew of the elder Father Phillips, had been killed in a car accident. Evident-
ly, Father Phillips the younger was working on this piece when he died. It was the
content, not the subtitle, which was meant to be prophetic.
When Joseph had begun his examination, the sun had just begun to climb
past noon. Now the day was well on its way to evening, still quite bright out, but
the hours left to this day were numbered by the fingers of one hand. Joseph did
not mind. He could think by starlight as well as by daystar light. Or again, his
native irresolution could be reinforced in the dark with no less success than the
waywardness of his days.
That, Joseph was increasingly convinced, had been his lifelong problem. He
disliked the farm, not because it was dislikeable, but because his older brothers
told him it was no fun. He soured on seminary and the priesthood, not because
he felt no call, but because everything and everyone around him—except Father
Phillips—was calling into question the very nature of the priesthood. He raised
four boys to loathe the idea of country living and to be constantly discontent in
the city, not because his own experience in the country had been bad or that he
had ever really given the city a chance, but because he had nothing else to offer
them. He had never embraced a summum bonum, so the best he could give his
sons was a sense that nothing was quite good enough. But he never told them to
keep looking, or what to look for, or why it might be worth looking. How could
he? He did not know himself—nor did he know anything other than his own
self-ignorance.
Joseph had no sense of direction in his life. The roads he had driven, the pro-
motions he had sought, the investments that provided his retirement income were
never meant for anything. Interstate 35 connected Kansas City and Minneapolis
by way of Des Moines. Why? Anyone who has visited Minnesota and Missouri
knows that it is not worth a six-hour drive through Iowa to see either. What was
the point of becoming district vice president for sales of an insurance company?
His customers never wanted to use his product, he tried to dissuade the customers
who needed his product from using it, and his success depended to a great extent
upon laws that coerced the public to buy his product whether they wanted to or
not. His company and his retirement portfolio prospered not because their capital
was employed in enriching the world with useful products, but because they were
rather shrewd at choosing the issuers of stock certificates most adept at producing
more stock certificates.
In this the last third or so of his life, Joseph could point to nothing of lasting
value created by ten hours a day in the office, forty-thousand miles a year on the
road, and twenty-six years rising slowly to the middle ranks of a multi-national
conglomerate. He had not even the memories of individual days that could be
described as enjoyable for their own sake. No fellow citizen could point to Joseph
and his profession and say with gratitude that life was improved for everyone be-
cause of their strenuous efforts.
Some men consigned themselves to this kind of meaningless existence for the
sake of the family. Joseph had not seen his second son in ten years, and the four
boys had not all been in the same room together in around twenty years. Was that
what was supposed to be produced by the life that Joseph had led—and taught
them to lead?
Here was another bone of contention in Joseph’s internal conflict. Father
Phillips had waxed rhapsodic and vehement in his endorsement of what is now
called homeschooling. Back then Father just called it handing down the truth.
This is what the Church meant by tradition. What the Pope and the bishops in
union with him were responsible for giving to the whole world, parents bore the
obligation of ensuring was received in their own homes. Joseph was shamed more
than Colleen was ever going to know that his own wife was a professional teacher
of other women’s children. Colleen, as a faithful union member, constantly advo-
cated smaller class sizes of fifteen to twenty pupils. It never dawned on her, and
Joseph never raised the subject, that they had a class of four which they exported
to become members of classes of thirty.
Where had they gone wrong, gone so, so wrong?
Joseph put down his pipe and his mug and got down on his knees. He prayed
the Memorare. He invoked his patron, the foster-father of the Son of God. He
called on his guardian angel, St. Philomena, and Father Phillips. He begged for an
answer, for some answers.
And his prayers were heard.
Joseph stood again. He retrieved his pipe and emptied it overboard once
more. For a few moments he stared into the darkening distance of the late af-
ternoon sky. He went to take a drink from his mug, only to discover that it was
empty. How had that happened? Joseph wondered, amused and irked. He sat
back down to fill both his pint and his pipe and to allow his mind to fill with the
fruit of his answered prayers.
Faith must come first! Such a simple concept expressed in such a simple
sentence. Joseph could hear Father Phillips even now repeating it again and
again as he lectured on history on politics on economics on morality on cul-
ture on philosophy on sitting around and properly doing nothing. Faith must
come first!
Indeed, it must, but Joseph was keenly aware at the moment that he had not
put the Faith first for most of his adult life. He and Colleen had not thought in
those terms for their marriage. They had not raised their boys with that in mind.
Certainly the many children they prevented after their youngest was born were
not testaments to the Bloe family’s faith in Christ and His Church. And no one
ever pretended that the insurance business had anything to do with faith—except
in the conviction that horrible things were just about to happen and usury was
the only way to defend oneself. “In God we trust” was an insufficient safeguard for
the cash of the insurance man. His money was in the care of compound interest
and quarterly dividends.
Joseph got up from his seat, slowly this time, but still with his smoking pipe
between his teeth. He went back inside the house. In the gathering gloom he felt
his way to the master bedroom. Joseph went to his side of the bed and picked up
from the nightstand the Bible that served as a shelf for his glasses each night. With
the book in hand, he returned to the deck.
Tucked inside the back cover, just after God cursed all who dared add to or
subtract from Sacred Writ, was a yellowed sheet of paper. Joseph grinned at his
own handwriting, unchanged after so many years. The page had the hastily re-
corded notes that he had made during one of his first spiritual direction sessions
with Father Phillips. They were rules intended both to ease the transition of the
new seminarian from the world into the life of the priest, and to offer the priest
advice that would help his parishioners in but not of the world. At the time that
Joseph was preparing to leave the seminary, Father Phillips went back over them
with him. Father Phillips, extremely disappointed with Joseph’s decision, wanted
the young man to have some means to preserve his faith against a hostile world.
With just barely enough light to see by, he read:
A few simple principles for the spiritual life:

1) Daily prayer (daily Mass is the supreme example of this)
2) Weekly Confession and Sunday Mass [Holy Days]
3) A monthly day of recollection
4) Annual retreat
Daily prayer must include the Rosary (fifteen decades), mental prayer, and
spiritual reading (especially from the Bible). The writings of St. Theresa of Avila
on mental prayer are must reading and re-reading. Of course, the cleric prays the
Divine Office throughout the day. This is a laudable practice for the laity who are
able to do so, even if only a portion of the Divine Office, or the Little Office of
the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Visit Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament whenever you possibly can. Every-
one should arrive at Mass early enough to spend ample time in prayer with Him
before the Sacrifice begins. This goes double for the priest. Jesus is the source par
excellence of the spiritual life. No one advances in sanctity without spending lots
of time with Him. Do not expect to enjoy an eternity with Jesus if you find spend-
ing extra time with Jesus unpleasant, unfair, or uninviting. Get used to spending
lots of time with Jesus so that spending eternity with Him will be a pleasant expe-
rience of Heaven being just like earth.
Structure in your life is a must. The monks have it right. Work is done to
support prayer, not prayer to support work. Thus, plan your day as a day of prayer
in which you take time periodically to do a little work when needed.
When you leave home, adhere to your normal daily schedule. Do not allow
exceptions to your life of prayer to become the rule. Your life of prayer is the
rule to which you allow occasional exceptions for your duties in the world. This
is the mindset that must be cultivated from the first, not so as to make you
irresponsible toward your daily duties, but to remind you of their context and
the reason for which they are undertaken. You should begrudge the world every
moment it takes away from your time spent with God. Your life should be a
reminder to people in the world to seek time with God—and thus be judged
worthy to spend eternity with God.
Your only goal is to spend eternity with God, without exception; loving
Him with your whole heart, whole mind, whole soul, and whole strength is
the only way to accomplish that goal. Your whole heart, whole mind, whole
soul, and whole strength requires you to want to spend your whole life, every
minute of it, with God. If that is not at least your desire on earth, you have
no hope of achieving it when this life is over. If you do not want to spend all
of your time with God on earth, you do not want to spend all of your eternity
with Him in heaven.
God makes allowances for your need to attend to secular duties, but the Saint
directs those chores toward God and finds them endurable only insofar as they
can lead to beatitude. “Seek ye first, therefore, God and his righteousness, and all
these things shall be added unto you!” Anything that can not be made to assist
in the endeavor of gaining Heaven is happily cast aside by the saint. “Go, sell all,
give to the poor, and come, follow me!” Saint Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney said,
“Anything that can not be offered to God is wasted!”
Set a bedtime for yourself based on when you need to rise in the morn-
ing. Determine the times throughout the day at which you will pray. Give
thought to the intentions for which you will offer your frequent prayers. Be
definite about the types of prayers that you will engage each day. Write all of
these things down and look at the list at the end of each day as part of your
examination of conscience. Once all of this is in place, then insert the other
activities of the day into your calendar. You will find that little time is left over
to do unnecessary things—like television, idle gossip, newspapers, trash novels,
and trips to the fetid cinema—but you will have more than enough time, and
desire, for truly worthwhile things. Please do not approach getting to Heaven
with less fervor, single-mindedness, and tenacity than athletes seek gold medals,
or bankers seek millions, or sinners seek hell.
For your nightly examination of conscience, use the Ten Commandments,
the Six Commandments of the Church, and the Two Great Commandments of
Our Lord as your basis for answering these four questions:
1) Where has God offered His grace to me today?

2) Where has God received my cooperation with His grace to-
day?
3) Where has God been denied my cooperation with His grace
today? (This becomes the matter for your next Confession.)
4) Where does God desire me to make use of His grace tomor-
row?
Remember, God knows you better than you do. He is the one offended by
your sins. Ask Him what most bothers Him about you. Sin is all about you—
thinking of ourselves is what gets us into trouble in the first place, it is the source
of sin. Our desire for God’s mercy must not be about us, but about Him. Do not
make the examination of conscience or Confession yet another example of our
self-centeredness. Make it about God and His will, His will to be merciful, His
will to love us. Your worst sins are not the ones that bother you most or cause you
the most embarrassment; your worst sins are those that offend God the most and
contributed most to the Cross of His Son. Look to Him to know the difference.
Specifically, invoke God the Holy Ghost in this task. All knowledge comes to man
from the Spirit of God; knowing God and knowing yourself requires you to seek
knowledge from the Spirit who knows all of God and all of men. The more you
gain knowledge in the Spirit, the more that what bothers God will bother you—
and you’ll stop doing it!
Keep Our Lord, Our Lady, and the saints ever on your lips. Make little aspi-
rations throughout the day: “Jesus! Mary! Joseph!” “My Jesus, mercy!” “Immac-
ulate Heart of Mary, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death!” “O Mary,
conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!” “Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost!” “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, make
my heart like unto Thine!” Love the things of Heaven and their Lord in life on
earth, and the Lord of Love will judge you to be a welcome participant in life with
Him in heaven forever and ever. Amen.
Joseph was ashamed at how quickly after he left Father Phillips’ influence
he had dropped any pretence of trying to live according to these principles. By
the time he met Colleen several years after seminary, she had no hint that piety
had any place in his day. Sunday Mass two or three times a month was what they
taught their sons made them “good” Catholics. And, of course, the “Catholic”
school at which Colleen taught and which their sons attended disabused all in-
volved of any need for regular Confession. That was all “old school”. It did not
take long before Joseph stopped biting his tongue when such things were said in
his presence, and when it healed, he lent his tongue to spreading the good news
of freedom from guilt.
Step one, then, for Joseph as he decided to repair his ramshackle life was
to get a spiritual life. Boy, this was going to be hard. Colleen would probably
start looking for a doctor willing to prescribe Prozac or something for him. He
determined that he would apply himself to a new structure of discipline in his
own life for thirty solid days, and then break the news to Colleen—she was
going to join him!
Which provided the segue to step two. Colleen did not need to work two
or three more years. She already was committed to the current academic year, so
in fairness to everyone, she needed to finish it out. But Joseph was certain that a
big chunk of what was necessary was for the two of them to reshape the way they
approached their domestic economy.
He was going to sell one of the cars. Colleen could drive to school each day.
Joseph would walk wherever he needed to go and wait until the evening if he
needed the car for any reason. If push came to shove, he could drive Colleen to
school in the morning on the odd days that he might need transportation when
her car would otherwise be sitting in the parking lot collecting snow, graffiti, or
high temperatures depending on the season: summer, winter, or football.
That would be just this year, anyway. Because next summer they were going
to move. He and Colleen were already agreed upon the idea of moving when she
retired. They were thinking of a condo in Florida, or some kind of controlled
community for “active” retirees. Joseph had a better idea.
With their two pensions, his stock, and the sale of their house, they had more
than enough money to live on and to buy a smaller place in which to live. Buying
something in Iowa would be far cheaper and stretch their household dollar farther
than going to the sunbelt. But Des Moines and Iowa City were the two most pop-
ular and most expensive places to live in the state. So Joseph decided to go where
it was a buyer’s market—Buffalo!
Several years ago he had visited a friend there and was charmed by the sign
that read, “Welcome to Buffalo, Iowa: Scott County’s oldest city!” It was clean,
safe, and affordable. He and Colleen could buy an acreage near town, plant a gar-
den, save a fortune on property taxes and mortgage payments, and he even had a
name for the new homestead: Breezy Acres, by J. & C. Bloe. A man is allowed to be
corny when he is pushing seventy.
They needed to cook more at home. It was high time that they entertained
one another rather than spending so much time and money buying their enter-
tainment on the town. He and Colleen really had not talked in years. They be-
came strangers long ago, during his midlife crisis. Joseph worried that these ideas
might be a bit too strange for her to handle at this late date.
But was life meant to be just a constant struggle to get money so as to pay
taxes and usurers? Was man’s only purpose to support the military-industrial
complex and receive high-tech bread-and-circuses in exchange? If he wanted to
assert his freedom of religion, that was fine so long as he did not interpret that
to mean freedom from the rule of people who condone the slaughter of infants,
who never utter the Holy Name in any way other than blasphemies, and who
insist on their right to make your private business smoke-free while you have
no right to make a public school pornography-free. Surely Colleen could un-
derstand the stakes, couldn’t she?
Well, Joseph was going to try. Next weekend he would treat Colleen to a ro-
mantic car drive on county roads out to Omaha. They would have a nice stay in
a hotel, do dinner and a show of some kind, and then attend the Latin Mass on
Sunday morning before heading back to Des Moines. When they moved to the
other side of the state, they would have to spend their weekend getaways in Peoria
for the Mass there. Maybe he was going to have to bring Colleen up to speed
sooner than in a month’s time.
The other thing Joseph was going to do was to invite all four of the boys
and their families to visit early next year to celebrate Christmas together as a
family reunion. Most of the cousins had never met each other. Joseph would
have to telephone the sons living in France and Hawaii, but he was going to
drive to Dubuque and the Twin Cities next week to invite the other two in
person. He and Colleen could afford to help any of them who pleaded poverty.
It seemed to Joseph that he was responsible for explaining to his sons what he
was coming to understand so that maybe, just maybe, they might understand
sooner than he did. And possibly raise their children better than he and Col-
leen had raised theirs. Ouch.
Father Phillips was fond of saying that it was always about the cross, all
about the cross, and the cross hurts. Joseph was anticipating quite a bit of pain
in the offing. No one was going to understand this. They would say that it won’t
work and that nothing would change and that the world is just too big to take
on by one man.
True, perhaps, but Joseph realized that his life was not working at present. If
he was going to be miserable anyway, he should at least be allowed to live with
himself without the shame of giving up. He was not trying to change the world,
just himself and his family. One little house and a couple dozen people were not
too much for one man to whip into shape. Could one man, his wife, four sons,
and ten grandchildren really be that disruptive of the status quo? Would mammon
really see them as such a threat? Why would anyone fear the effort toward sanctity,
the attempt at poverty, and the desire for real love in the family of just one simple,
average Joe Bloe?
Joseph got down on his knees again. He had no Rosary—he’d have to go out
and get one first thing tomorrow—but he had fingers, the Rosary God provides
at the factory. Sighing deeply, contentedly, determinedly, he began:
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Credo in Deum, Patrem Omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et

terrae; et in Jesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nos-
trum, qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine,
passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus; descendit
ad infernos; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; ascendit ad caelos; se-
det ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; inde venturus est iudicare
vivos et mortuos. Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam Ecclesiam
Catholicam, Sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum,
carnis resurrectionem, et vitam aeternam. Amen.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adve-

niat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Pa-
nem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimmite nobis debita
nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas
in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mu-

lieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesu. Sancta Maria, Mater
Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
Amen.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto! Sicut erat in princip-

io, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
O, mi Jesu, indulge peccata nostra. Conserva nos ad igne in-

fernum. Duc omnes ad caeli gloriam, praecipue tua misericordia
indigentes.
Salve Regina! Mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nos-

tra, salve! Ad te clamamus, exules filii Hevae. Ad te suspiramus, ge-
mentes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. Eia ergo, advocata nostra,
illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Iesum benedictum
fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. O clemens, O
pia, O dulcis, Virgo Maria! Ora pro nobis sancta Dei Genetrix, ut
digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi. Amen
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
…I have always thought the only salvation for our civilization is in going back; not
so much going back to former conditions as going back to first principles.
– G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, 25 May 1929
39
Bad News for Modern Man

Notes from an Inmate of Prison Earth—An Honest Assessment for the Stout of Heart
Fifty dollars is all I have ever received for any of my articles, essays, or
whatnots. That was about five years ago. Not a dime before, not a penny since.
About six years ago, three of my poems were chosen as winners in a small
contest, for which I received a check for six dollars, two dollars per prize. So,
my grand total of remuneration for my artistic, philosophic, and polemic ef-
forts comes to fifty-six dollars u.s. Don’t laugh—rendered in pounds sterling or
euros it’s even more pathetic.
This does not bother me. I write because I have something on my mind that I
want to get off of my chest. If others are foolish enough to pay for it, so much the
better. Perhaps it is a comfort to the world to know that such foolishness has hap-
pened but rarely. If others are dumb enough actually to print my rantings, that is
just an indication that insanity indeed can be contagious. My spread of infection
more than counterbalances the aforementioned lack of folly among editors and
comptrollers of periodicals and other publications.
An instance of the virulence of the contagion of which I am a carrier is the
recent request from a friend to allow some of my writings to be posted on his
website. Several friends have asked this sort of thing over the years. In addition,
no fewer than five periodicals have had me as a regular contributor, gratis, to their
pages at various times in the last decade.
While mulling in my mind whether or not I wanted to mount the effort

needed to compile the sort of things this friend might find worthy of cyber-space,
that is, meritorious of being given room on the web, it occurred to me that this
particular friend actually makes some money from his site. He wants me to pro-
vide content for which he will be compensated by his readers. It then dawned on
me that the same has been the case for my diocesan newspaper, local newspapers
for which I have written in parishes where I have been assigned, and the hand-
ful of conservative and traditional papers and magazines that have featured what
passes for thought from me. No one has gotten rich off of me, but all of these en-
tities have infinitely more money pass through their hands due to their publishing
activities than I receive for my contributions thereto. Even a penny is infinitely
more than a nothing.
Now, it is not lost on me that costs must be covered, salaries paid, and proper
postage affixed. I do not begrudge these people making a living. It just happened
that this morning it popped into my head that what I have always done for fun,
for interest, or for the purpose of disturbing the consciences of my fellow men, is
undertaken by others for monetary gain. Maybe they do not gain much by way
of cash, true, but I assist them more toward accomplishing that end than any of
them have shown a desire to aid my attempts at pleasure, intellectual stimulation,
and/or inflicting my afflictions and discomfiting the conformable.
Priests are more than well fed, adequately housed, and easily garbed. It does
not come into my mind to refuse to write something for someone when I am
asked. It is yet further from my mind to expect that they will pay me. It is as far
from my mind as a geocentrist is from a heliocentrist in their worlds-view to think
to ask to be paid for my writing. Besides, what I print on paper is worth just as
much as what the Federal Reserve prints on paper.
What hit me in considering my friend’s request was that he and many in my
acquaintance loathe what they must do in order to get by in the world. They do
not want jobs, mortgages, and property taxes/income taxes/sales taxes infesting
their lives. Quite a few of them mount some kind of money-making venture or
wage-slavery so as to get the prince of this world and his minions off their backs,
allowing them two or three minutes a week to love their wives, play with their
children, and think two thoughts back to back.
It was in contemplating this reality, not with a small amount of pity, that I
had what the trite and modern would call an “Aha!” moment. Buddhists and new-
agers might term it a small enlightenment. For me, it seemed more a realization
Bad News for Modern Men 41
of just how bad things are. This is a relief. I’m glad to know that I am not so crazy
as not to recognize insanity when it assaults me. This it has been doing for almost
forty years, and for most of that time I have made others mad by calling the mad
world mad. The more I call it what it is, the more I see it for what it is. This place,
ladies and gentlemen, is a loony bin.
For those of you yet only partially convinced, let me try to lessen your insani-
ty by demonstrating the ubiquity of insanity in our lives. Only the blind, willfully
insane, and comatose will fail to understand. Only the demented will fault me.
Only the devil’s own will argue with me.
1) Moderns Can Not Feed Themselves: Money does not grow on trees, but food does!
Until roughly 1950, most Americans lived on farms or in rural towns. For
three-quarters of our country’s history, most of the, ahem, citizens, I use that word
under the duress of not having just one word that can encompass slave-subject-fel-
on, grew food, ate food that they grew, and sold food that they grew that they
could not eat. Included with that number were the tradesmen and laborers who
directly supported food-growing and food-selling activities.
Since the middle of the just ended and benighted twentieth century of un-
happy memory, things have changed. For the period from about 1950 until about
1980, most Americans called a city home. A shift occurred in the last two decades
or so in which suburbia overtook urbia, resulting in most Americans moving back
in the direction of the country, while bringing all of the amenities of the city with
them. Where farms and farmers once flourished, one now can find pavement,
malls, and high crime statistics. Replacing the quaint customs of barn-raising,
hay-baling, and skinny dipping in the local water hole is an epidemic of metham-
phetamine labs, drunken hot-rodding, and fallow land making a “profit” by dint
of the government paying the (corporate) farmer not to farm.
Most Americans do not know where their next meal is going to come from.
No, there is not a famine o’er the land. This ignorance is from the fact that most
American meals are pre-packaged, highly processed, ready-to-eat travesties; or
expensively advertised, really fattening, barely nutritious fast-food; or chemical-
ly-engineered, industrially produced, largely tasteless offerings from Agri, Inc.
Twinkies do not fit into one of the four food groups; Big Macs, Buckets of Orig-
inal Recipe, and Thirty-Minute-Delivery guarantees do not have their corollaries
in memories of Sunday dinner at Grandma’s; and Mother Nature never intended
tomatoes to be available year-round. The average American lives a life of thrill-
ing spontaneity, wondering in what neon shade his next bottle of catsup will be,
which summer blockbuster will be served with his oversized fries, and how much
more he will pay for his wine to cover the litigation costs over copyright infringe-
ment alleged by the blush-grape-growing region of South Madagascar against the
pastel-grape-growing region of Old Prussia.
Mystery meat is not the only mystery in Americans’ quest for sustenance.
Not only does one have difficulty knowing what one is eating, whence it came,
and who created it, but one is in a constant dither about whether or not and how
much one should eat of any given food. Coffee drinking both hurts the heart and
increases intellectual acuity—bad for the heart, good for the head. Fat contributes
to high blood pressure but a high-fat/low-carb diet helps with weight loss, which
in turn reduces high blood pressure—bad for the heart, good for the hips which
is good for the heart. Leafy green vegetables should be eaten in greater quantities
unless they are doused with chemical pesticides that might cause cancer, in which
case one should eat organically grown produce, but that costs more, so one might
not be able to eat as much of them, leading to cancer anyway and expensive che-
motherapy treatments that one can not afford unless one gives up food, which
is typically fatal—cancer costs lives but fighting cancer costs bucks, and without
bucks no one can live in this topsy-turvy world.
It is distressing to realize that poor people eat poorly because affordable food
is generally less nutritious. The poor disproportionately patronize fast food estab-
lishments where the food is notorious for its lack of nutritive value. To increase
the earning power of poor people, entry-level positions are created in fast food
establishments. In order to provide these jobs, marketing campaigns are mounted
to increase the attractiveness of fast food, usually by offering larger or free serv-
ings. Poor people are especially attracted by these campaigns because their food
dollar can be stretched further. Fast food establishments do quite well for their
bottom lines, and thus are able to hire more poor people at entry-level positions.
Until it is seen how sick and fat people are becoming because of their horribly
unhealthy diets. Fast-food establishments will be taken to task for their marketing
schemes and for their veritably poisonous menus. The lawsuits shut down quite
a few restaurants. Closed restaurants fire entry-level employees. Fired employees
are poor. The poor are left with little money with which to purchase any food,
healthy or un.
Government and industry attempt job-training programs. Food stamps and
welfare checks are doled out. Schools have their curricula beefed up. Small busi-
nesses are encouraged. Tax incentives are given to women and minorities to go
into the service sector or middlemen retail ventures. Surplus food is given away.
Charitable organizations open up food pantries. Supermarkets, restaurants, and
food processors are begged not to throw away unsaleable food, but to donate it
instead to the needy. All in an effort to find work for people so that they can find
food for themselves, or just to hand the food to the helpless. Thus far it has not
occurred to anyone in the modernist world that having people farm for themselves is
perhaps the most efficient way to get food to the hungry.
2) Moderns Can Not House Themselves: Don’t buy a house for the family to live in if
buying the house kills the family!
Houses generally are built of wood, stone, brick, or in combinations thereof.
Houses generally are built on lots slightly bigger than the houses themselves, al-
lowing in most instances space for but a modest yard. Houses generally are built
to ward off the ill effects of the elements, to provide security for the dwellers
therein, and to promote a sense of happiness and wellbeing.
As well, houses generally are built for the occupants to use for, on average
these days, five years. Houses generally are built for the profit of developers, con-
struction companies, and banks. Houses generally are built at a cost that results in
the buyer spending thirty years paying off the principal and the interest and the
total they pay usually amounts to three times or more what the original principal
was. Houses generally are built with the idea in mind that the debtor will leverage
his debt into a larger house one day, or that he will utilize the “equity” in the home
to enter into greater indebtedness as the years go by. Houses generally are built as
part of the engine driving a boom economy. Houses generally are not built when
the economy goes bust.
Another way in which houses generally are not built is by their occupants.
Most home “owners” do not know the first thing about drywall and laying
foundations. Houses generally are not built for the use of people who will do
much more with them than sleep in them and argue over them in divorce
proceedings. Houses generally are built for use by people who spend a third of
the day at work or school, an eighth of their waking hours in various modes of
transportation, a quarter of the day in some kind of “recreational” activity more
often than not involving inordinate attention being given to lights dancing
across a screen of some sort, and the bulk of any remaining time complaining
about all of the things that need to be done around the house that never seem
to get done. Additionally, these people who have mortgaged themselves to an

enormous debt for the house, who work ridiculously long hours to service the
debt for the house and to meet life’s other pressing needs, and who point to
their “dream home” with great pride and a sense of accomplishment long before
the bank surrenders title to them—these people go to malls, amusement parks,
and wilderness areas because home is so boring.
Some people in human history have had the novel idea of building houses in
the country. There they build their dream homes themselves, according to their
specific needs and abilities, not according to a developer’s set of variations on a
theme. These houses are situated on land that is ample enough to offer an acreage
for growing food, space for children to run about in, and for untamed environs
where animals, creeks, and curious humans can roam about unfettered.
Houses built under these conditions are not subject to a tyranny known in
the United States of America as the property tax. Productive land might well have
a levy placed on the produce, but none of the inhabitants of places where such
houses are welcome would dare think that land can be taxed just for being landed
on by a house and family. A house constructed in these circumstances is consid-
ered the property of its builder, who is not to be reduced to being the renting
tenant of a government entity in perpetuity.
And as the property of their builders, these houses are at the disposal of
said builders. If one of them would like to add a room, he may do so without
consulting the local owners’ association. If one of them would like to drain a
marsh so as to plant corn, he may do so without asking the permission of a
government bureaucrat in charge of wetlands, deserts, and the oppression of
citizens. If one of them would like to stay in the house his whole life and hand
it down to his eldest son to hand to his eldest son, then he may do so without
worrying that the exercise of the absurdity of eminent domain will result in
his back forty becoming the fast lane on the new highway to MegaMall usa. If
one of them would like to build his house in such a way that it would require
his three older boys to take turns carrying Grandma up and down three flights
of stairs to and from her bedroom each day, he may do so and his sons should
thank him in his dotage for teaching them to honor their elders and to be con-
scientious in performing the corporal works of mercy.
Boredom is not allowed in houses built to these specifications. The land needs
care. The buildings need maintenance. The people need not look far to see the
next thing that needs doing. One of the delightful things that will need doing on
a regular basis will be the spontaneous decision, over which no one has veto except
one’s own common sense, to do absolutely nothing right now.
What is allowed in these houses and their environs is their full use. Hunting
and fishing need no permits. Campfires can not be forbidden. Cottage industry
carries no regulation. The castle’s king, the husband/father, has no royal oversight
commission empowered by his fellow kings from their neighboring castles—nor
does he exercise such interference in their domains.
There are historians who can tell tales of a time when the peasantry abode
in such circumstances. It will be pointed out that vermin frequently shared
space with families—much like the lice that run through third grade classrooms
in our day or the legendary sewer rats of New York City terrorizing the inatten-
tive or the gads of termites fumigated every five years in posh suburban homes
near Los Angeles. It is a fact that the average medieval peasant lived in what
would now be called a hovel, resembling in most respects the public housing
available in big cities throughout the United States—with the major difference
being that the medieval peasant owned his hovel and could not be put out of
it. Marauding hordes might beset a medieval village from time to time, true,
but there was never a knight on every street corner inspecting each passing
donkey cart for hemlock or eye-of-newt—gang graffiti, the highway patrol, and
home (in)security systems attest to a different reality in the twenty-first century.
Peasants were indeed bound to the land, but they also knew nothing of rifs,
outsourcing, or chapter 11 reorganization.
Modernity is rather unimaginative. Suggestions that our society might return
to the medieval understanding of property rights is met with an instantaneous
dismissal as if such would mean a return to medieval understanding of indoor
plumbing. The medieval man would not have balked at modern notions of “home
improvement”. It is very sad that modern man thinks that not owning, not using,
and not building his own home is an improvement. Such modern ideas of “prog-
ress” are to any but the modern mind unimaginable.
Exile was among the worst of nightmares for the medieval man. To lose one’s
home, family, and friends was to lose one’s identity, one’s very self. The little boy
growing up in the modern suburban dream home dreams of the day when he can
finally escape and be on his own in an apartment in the big city. The little girl
growing up in the modern dream home in the big city dreams of the day when
she can finally have a family in the suburbs. The woman commuting from the
suburban dream home to her office tower downtown dreams of the promotion,
coupled with alimony, that will allow her to move her two children and herself to
a condo uptown. The man out of work and living in an apartment complex has
dreams of selling his suburban dream home so as to move the ex and the two kids
to a cheaper place and ease his support payments. When one has no home, one
likely will have no family, no friends, and no sense of self to lose.
3) Moderns Can Not Dress Themselves: Trust not the cravings of an impure heart!
Few have commented on the power exerted by women over the ages by virtue
of the old saying “clothes make the man”. This is less an issue of clothes making
the man than of the woman making the clothes. From infancy, women dress men
to suit their tastes. It is Mommy who chooses Junior’s jump suit. It is Mom who
sewed his first pair of pants or brought him clothes shopping before kindergarten.
It is fear of underwhelming the girls in the sophomore class that prompts Junior
to have Big Sis show him which jeans to buy at the mall. His lovely bride picks
out the wedding tux, vetoes the striped-and-polka-dotted tie he wanted to wear
to the office, and burns those old jeans that are so yesterday’s cool. And she will
have Grandma knit a new jump suit for Junior just like the one in Junior’s baby
pictures that make him look so adorable.
Feminists, however, are abdicating almost all of the power that women once
wielded over the closet. Women do not sew. Women are at the mercy of designers
and department stores when it comes to sizes and styles available for themselves,
their children, and the men for whom they shop. Women dress like men—either
looking like slobs in the home, or mimicking men in the corporate boardroom
where they claim to want to bring a feminizing element to humanize business.
Women dress not like ladies, but like ladies of the evening when it comes to so-
cializing, and then wonder why men treat them like so much flesh whose only
purpose is for the pleasure of men, free to discard any woman—girlfriend, wife,
or mistress—when something fresher comes along.
When women did sew, they chose the fabrics, designs, colors, and styles of the
clothing for everyone in the family. The one exception to this would be tailored
men’s suits, which change their overall appearance about as often as the moon
changes its mind about which side should face the earth. Now that women do not
sew, they, and everyone else, must buy clothes. Clothes, as with all other consum-
ables these days, are made to the order of mega-corporations. These corporations
are dominated by men. These men decide what “decisions” are available for wom-
en to make when dressing themselves and dressing their men.
A slight tangent is necessary here. The kind of men making these choices are
not the kind of men that would satisfy most women. The fashion “industry” is
not noted for its emphasis on the masculine. This would not be remarkable were
women to dominate fashion as they dominate nursing. What should concern
more people than it does is the fact that America is being dressed by men whose
primal urges tend in directions that healthy people would find disturbing, dis-
tasteful, and disoriented.
Here is a slightly different tangent to the tangent. The mega-corporations
producing the clothes no longer sewn by women do so in most unwomanly ways.
Slave labor makes production costs very low and profit margins very high, while
doing little or nothing to reduce retail costs. A large proportion of the slaves
laboring for these corporations are children. Women in America buy clothes for
their children made by other women’s children whose monthly income would
be insufficient to purchase a pair of shoes. The ability to make such purchases,
rather than the necessity of providing such items herself, makes it possible for the
American mother to be away from her family and at work (although this work is
no longer in the American garment and textile industry, now virtually extinct).
This is a reality she does not share with the Third World slave mothers because
their children are just a few benches down in the same sweat shop, happy that the
family has attained full employment.
Women are told that they should aspire to be mathematicians and sci-
entists. In happier, healthier days of Western civilization, a far higher pro-
portion of women excelled at dressmaking and sewing—highly skilled arts—
than their husbands were able to find success as rocket scientists or doctors.
Women are encouraged to go into business and politics. They often pursue
careers in business wherein they appeal to women’s homemaking skills; in
politics they frequently emphasize the importance of the home and family;
and in both instances they miss the irony that they no longer nurture their
own nurturing skills and hire some other mother to mother their children.
Women in the workplace and in government are supposedly the repositories
of a mystical feminine key to universal beatitude. They discard the very
things most readily recognizable as feminine—dress, homemaking skills, and
empathy—in favor of participating in the very things that destroyed the tra-
ditional husband and father—unprincipled competition, displaced priorities,
and exile from the home. Blurring the line between men and women has
not brought a more feminine touch to commerce nor a stronger masculine
presence in the home, but has dehumanized most aspects of modern public
life and has all but crippled the modern family.
“Dressing for success” has come to mean that women wear pants-suits and
that men have forgotten how to put—or keep—their pants on. Women now see
men as competitors and men see women as threats. Women have ceased to look
to men as providers and companions while men no longer seek wives for them-
selves or mothers for their children. Women are replacing men in office suites
and the corridors of power and men have absented themselves from the home
and the responsibilities of fatherhood. “Unisex” does not mean that sex roles are
interchangeable; it means that one of the sexes, the female, has come to usurp the
position of the other, the male, and the male has taken advantage of the situation
to be as demanding as the female has become. Women are demanding a right to
help rule the world. Men are demanding the right to live in a world without rules.
This is a world without real men or real women. Females now lack husbands,
fathers, and helpmates, having instead bosses, employees, and clients. Males now
lack wives, mothers, and helpmates, having instead one-night stands, mistresses,
and old girlfriends. Children are thus taught never to grow up, continuing the
childish insistence on having one’s own way in imitation of the females in their
lives, or continuing the childish insistence on instant gratification in imitation of
the males in their lives. Somehow, this does not seem what St. Paul had in mind
in Galatians 3:26-29 or in Ephesians 5:22-24.
4) Moderns Can Not Rule Themselves: When majority rule descends into mob justice,
how does one overthrow the tyrant?
This is a free country. Russia is now a free country. China is on the way to
being a free country. Things are so free in Sweden as to make it a libertarians’
paradise. Canada has recently codified in law certain practices which render our
neighbors to the north a veritable libertines’ paradise.
What do these and so many countries around the world have in common
bringing them such wonderful freedoms? Democracy! And where there is no de-
mocracy, there is Free Trade! Even China now recognizes private property! The
Age of Aquarius must be just around the corner!
Kings quickly become tyrants, we are told. Aristocracy is by definition unjust,
it is preached. And heaven help the nation afflicted with a theocracy governed by
priests! None but the citizen has the right to rule. Democracy, of the people, by
the people, for the people, must reign.
It is the common man wherein wisdom truly resides. The sagacity of the
common folk is unsurpassed by academe. If one seeks common sense, one
should look no further than in the community. Elites are selfish where they are
not being unjust. Only in the mob, I mean, in the majority are rights to be
found and preserved.
In our infinite collective wisdom we have discerned the justice of finding and
preserving the right to commit child murder. Attempts to limit the most outra-
geous forms of abortion are underway, but little is done to insist that abortion is
absolutely forbidden by divine Law. The piecemeal approach to legislation that
would reduce the number of abortions or make obtaining an abortion more dif-
ficult leaves in place the fundamental demonic principle that a child’s life may be
destroyed by his mother.
Common sense, as wielded by the common man, has determined that sodomy
should be illegal. However, several governmental units have extended to practi-
tioners of unnatural acts the same legal privileges that are properly the domain of
Holy Matrimony. This has been done repeatedly in the name of the citizens of this
country without any consistent, broad-based, or effective opposition from voters.
Further efforts in this depraved direction are promised and inevitable. Provision
in American jurisprudence for the allowance of sins that cry to heaven for ven-
geance is part of a larger assault against Holy Matrimony that includes self-abuse,
fornication, contraception, and divorce.
Mr. and Ms. J.Q. Public have decided to make God illegal. Legislators, ex-
ecutives, and judges have colluded in passing, enforcing, and interpreting laws
that result in the elimination of an acknowledgement that God is sovereign
over all creation, including the United States of America. Either through direct
legislation that attacks the Faith, or through appointing judges known to be
hostile to the Faith, or through a legal positivism condemned by the Faith, the
people of this country have countenanced a power grab in their name, deposing
God as the ultimate Lawgiver and Judge, and placing in His stead the sinful
mandates of mankind.
We the people of this country have irrational priorities. Fiscal concerns, en-
tertainment activities, and immoral behavior can move citizens to recall officials,
boycott corporations, and/or demand the passage of laws at odds with reason
and sanctity. However, the fact that 4,000 children are murdered daily through
legalized abortion causes barely a stir in the public debate, private consciences, or
the activity of the Catholic Church. Sixty million Catholic Americans, given three
decades to do so, have been utterly impotent to recall one sitting governor or Pres-
ident because he favors child murder. No outcry is heard from bishops and priests
about the decadent morality that permits sodomites to form curricula offered to
children, even in Catholic schools. Businesses such as the Walt Disney Corporation
feel no pressure from Catholics to alter their policies about immoral content in
movies, music, and television. The National Education Association with around
two million members is more effective in advancing its agenda than is the Catho-
lic Church claiming more than thirty times that many members.
Concerned citizens seem unconcerned that the politician kissing their babies
today would have helped them kill those babies before, or as, they were born. The
lips that made the promise to make abortions available to every mother are the
same lips we let kiss our babies. Those same lips assure us that he has our best in-
terests at heart, that he cares about the future of our babies, that we have the right
to kill every baby to come if we so desire.
What happens, then, if one of the plain Janes or simple Joes would like to
run for and hold elective office at the state or national level and bring some real
common sense to governance? S/he has no money. S/he has no name recognition
nor money to gain access to the advertising by which s/he could increase name
recognition. The media charging those large amounts for advertising would spon-
sor news reports criticizing Jane or Joe for lacking practical experience or sophisti-
cation or expertise. Laws, drafted by incumbents of the two major parties, make it
difficult for anyone without a major-party affiliation to get on the ballot.
Then, of course, there is the problem of plain Jane’s and simple Joe’s fellows
in the unwashed masses. They will be dubious that either has much of a chance
of actually winning. The bulk of the electorate does not vote anyway. Those
who do stubbornly cling to their party affiliations, and overwhelmingly reelect
incumbents at every level. And no one pays much attention to the fact that
practically every politician who wins office to serve in Washington, d.c., either
goes in or comes out a millionaire several times over, in a rather significant
contrast to the hordes back home in their tract houses, minimum-wage jobs,
and children in public schools.
If Jane or Joe wants to win, one of the major parties must be embraced.
To embrace party politics is to toe the party line. Toeing the party line will
mean that “some day”, when enough power is had to effect real changes, never
comes, because the party only lets those have power who will keep things un-
changed. Both parties draw the line at controversy—elective politics these days
are a tweedledee/tweedledum affair. Do you want abortion on demand or just

up until the third trimester? The populace wants it that way, never wasting a
vote on that insignificant third-party candidate who “has some good ideas, but
he has no chance of winning”. “Throw the bums out!” always means the other
guy’s bums—my bums are great.
American citizens are admonished that small steps are necessary to make
changes. Roe vs. Wade puts the lie to that. The American electorate is told that
given time, decent candidates will use the system to make changes. Indeed,
things have changed, from anti-sodomy laws on the books in every state in the
Union fifty years ago, to the United States Supreme Court last year striking
down as unconstitutional Texas’ anti-sodomy law. Americans are encouraged to
be patient as little by little the moral center of the nation shifts, which it in fact
has. No-fault divorce, the Patriot Act, and interference with home-schooling
families demonstrate that Americans en masse are more than willing to permit
the dissolution of the family, to allow the government to trample on individ-
uals’ rights, and to condone the seizure of children from their homes for state
indoctrination of them in mores opposed by their parents. As is always the case
with conservatism, what is occurring is not a repeal of the liberal revolution, but
its codification and the window-dressing necessary to make it look respectable.
Abortion remains legal, sodomy is now formalized, and divorce is commonplace
among the commoners, I mean, citizens.
The issue of the issues is an international phenomenon. Most Americans
claim that abortion is a bad idea, but no serious challenge to it has been mounted
in thirty-one years. It is unlikely that the average Russian is happy with the orga-
nized crime pervading the country as a law unto itself, but Russian law pretends
that graft, bribes, and intimidation do not affect government in the least. China
and Sweden share the curious trait of their respective inhabitants possessing very
little by way of private property, though such ownership is perfectly legal in both
countries. In China, there simply is not much produced for the Chinese to pos-
sess, almost everything of worth being exported; in Sweden, the taxman takes so
much for the state that next to nothing is left over for the citizens.
Abortion is bad, but it’s not going anywhere. Crime is despicable, but it is
dangerous to attack it. We’re not rich, but we’re fed. What can one person do
about such big issues? The government says they’re OK, so who am I to object?
You can’t fight city hall. All politicians are corrupt. No one pays any attention to
the little guy, anyway.
It is the common man wherein wisdom truly resides. The sagacity of the
common folk is unsurpassed by academe. If one seeks common sense, one
should look no further than in the community. Elites are selfish where they are
not being unjust. Only in the mob, I mean, in the majority are rights to be
found and preserved.
I stand corrected. It is only in the mob, I mean, in the majority that rights
are to be neglected and relinquished. The people have spoken: it’s just the way of
the world…
5) Moderns Can Not Teach Themselves: Children should not be taught by people who
do not teach their own children!
Poor celibate priests are to be pitied because we can not marry and have ba-
bies. The joys of parenthood are denied presbyters by the oppressive patriarchs of
the Catholic Church, presbyters to a man and men to a man. A Catholic priest
might suffer from feelings of inadequacy and disappointment when reaching mid-
life without some kind of patrimony to whom to pass on his genes, his wisdom,
his personality quirks.
Moms and Dads, on the other hand, have the blessing of having as many
children as they want, one or two at the most. Families have the invaluable gift
of youthful energy and curiosity filling the home, except for the eight to ten
hours each day that they are in daycare while the parents are at work. Married
couples have the opportunity to share with the next generation all of the won-
ders and insights gleaned over the years, an opportunity promptly turned over
to the public schools.
Perhaps you have noticed the hullabaloo over the last decade or so about
the possibility of computers making it possible for employees to earn their slave
wages at home via the internet. Along those same lines, maybe you have heard
the breathless reports this last year that internet commerce, by which people
shop at home, now constitutes almost five percent of the entire behemoth that
is the American economy. If you, unlike me, do not live your life with your
head in the cultural sand, then you are surely aware that various digital tech-
nologies now permit your living room to be turned into a home theatre thanks
to the dvd, plasma televisions, and a plethora of content providers including
cable, satellite, and fiber optics.
One would think that the prospect of working at home, shopping at home,
and going to movies at home would portend the resurgence of other home activ-
ities. But, as our friends the French say, Mais non, mon ami! Americans are not
flocking back to their dining rooms for family meals. There is not a shortage of
front porches available for the latest McMansions. Caller id features, answering
machines, and cell phones multiplying ad nauseam are not a sign that Americans
have taken to cocooning from the madding crowd in the comfort of their parlors,
dens, and rec rooms.
Many would assert that the option of being at home or of being on the go is
the blessing of modern technology. These proponents of man mechanized would
aver that it is a token of a newfound freedom that one can choose either to work
late into the night, or to interact with one’s children from the supermarket, or
to record a favorite television program without commercials, or all of the above.
Modernity has seemingly solved the problem of being in two places at once by
bringing thousands of places into the home, the auto, or the symphony concert
during the slow movement.
Such freedom is oddly lacking in one rather particular, prominent, and pro-
found area of modern American life. For reasons I wish did not so readily lend
themselves to conspiracy theories, Americans of a singularly broad variety are
against people bringing the education of their children into the homes of their
children. Homeschooling has become the contemporary version of the family in
the fifties without a car, the family in the seventies without cable, the family in the
nineties without a divorce. A bizarre peer pressure is being applied to get people
to do things that are definitely unnecessary and arguably lethal, such as going into
debt for transportation, importing moral pollution into the family room, rending
asunder what even God is incapable of destroying, and exposing one’s offspring
to the secondhand irresponsibility of the parents who send their children to the
average public, private, or parochial school.
This is even more strikingly strange when one considers the explosion of
materials available for the rare occasion of couples wishing to conceive, bear to
term, and raise children. One can serenade a tot in utero with the melodies of
Mozart, acclimate her budding genius to mathematics in the crib, and prepare
his major league career shortly after his first step with the help of thousands of
dollars’ worth of home educational supplies easily had at Walmart, fao Schwarz,
or eBay, depending on your socioeconomic-technologic abilities. Loving, caring,
materialistic parents will find support in catalogues, tax breaks, and the neighbors’
competition in the task of readying their little ones to rush out into the world to
be just like everyone else in the name of freedom, individuality, and self-assertion.
Other parents, however, are decidedly left out in the cold when they decide
that they know best when it comes to forming their children more perfectly in the
image and likeness of God as the Lord has commanded us to do. It is not only the
sneers of employees of the sundry educational special interests besetting the soci-
ety that pose obstacles to parents who desire to school their children themselves.
Mothers who teach in the home must endure the pitying gaze of their sisters in
the womanhood who can not fathom why any modern, liberated woman would
prefer her own flesh and blood to the blood and guts of the corporate board
room. Fathers heading families where the children are not primarily, but solely,
in the care of their parents find it necessary to learn how to fend off attacks from
government bureaucracies, interference from directors of religious education, and
parish priests reluctant to offer the sacraments to children who have not been sub-
jected to the whims of persons of whom parents do not approve. Children who
are schooled in the home must overcome the disadvantage of…
Would someone please tell me what the disadvantage of raising, educating, and
loving your own children would be?!?
Perhaps some parents object to the idea of their children being deprived of
the chance to learn gang sign language. Maybe it is the case that there are par-
ents who wish to be grandparents so badly that they will try anything, including
exposing their kindergartners to “health” classes that amount to how-to courses
in conceiving babies. It could be, I suppose, that the hearts growing fonder from
prolonged absences demonstrate their parental affection by increasing those ab-
sences so that the children will experience that much more love when they see
Mommy and Daddy for their half-hour of “quality time” before bed on alternat-
ing Tuesdays and Thursdays. Possibly parents are succumbing to peer pressure:
since step-Mom and Dad Jones get to be wage slaves and have no means to work
productively from the home, it is only fair that Mom and step-Dad Brown should
be allowed to drop their blended family at the school bus stop with a group hug
at the beginning of each day. Or, dash it all, it must be that public schools are just
such swell places that the children are simply dying to get in—and out.
6) Moderns Can Not Entertain Themselves: If you can not stand to spend time alone
with yourself, do not inflict that company on anyone else!
The most oppressive rule in that most oppressive of rule-making bodies is
the Catholic Church’s enforcement of God’s Third Commandment: Remember
to keep holy the Sabbath. This means that one may not do servile work on Sun-
day, including dashing off that little report left over from Friday needed for
Monday’s meeting. This means that Holy Days of Obligation are to be observed
in the same manner as Sundays, including the prohibition of servile work, such
as doing the week’s shopping instead of going to Mass. This includes under-
standing that the Lord’s Day is not an odd celestial phenomenon in which a
rotation of the earth occurs within the fifty-nine minutes of the early Low Mass
with Father’s abbreviated sermon; but the acknowledgement that twenty-four
hours do a day make. This means, on pain of mortal sin, that you will pray,
you will rest, you will enjoy your family and yourself and not tucker yourself
out on needless work and worry! What tyranny!
It is ironic to the point of hysteric bitter laughter that Holy Mother Church
is accused of impinging on men’s freedoms. She requires that at least one day in
seven be spent in quiet, rest, recreation with the family, and communion with
the All-Loving God. She has as one of her primary obligations the comforting
of those whose lives are disordered, burdensome, and hopeless. Her highest law
is that of charity, which commands that whatever a brother in need asks, for
mind, body, or soul, must be given, at the risk of the selfish being damned for
all eternity. She calls her children to imitate her Lord, who teaches that perfect
love offers all of life and receives the reward of endless life, complete joy, and
the vision of infinite glory.
This, however, does not satisfy the modern sophisticate. He would rather
have his boss insist that he miss his daughter’s fifth birthday so that he can play
golf with the big client being wooed in New York. His equally sophisticated live-
in mate, the mother of his daughter, is upset, not because her unhusband is miss-
ing their child’s birthday party, but because she can’t find a new job. She wants to
quit her current job because the couple’s two-week old “accident” can’t get into
daycare until he’s three months old, and her boss won’t give her paid leave to stay
with the baby until he’s older. Without the job they can’t afford daycare, which
they need so that she can work. And she’s not thrilled with her boyfriend right
now, not because he’s going to New York to play golf on their child’s birthday,
but because he wants her to have her tubes tied but refuses to have a vasectomy.
She thinks it only fair that both of them end up mutilated. He thinks that even
though she might not want to bear more children, he might still want to make
some with another woman some day. That part about another woman bothers her
less than having him miss their daughter’s fifth birthday. After all, she can always
get another guy, but their daughter will only turn five once.
Other examples of liberated, freethinking modernism include the

hordes of people walking around with wireless chains attached to their
ears. Butlers to the king of England answered bells at odd times, in in-
convenient moments, and for strange demands. This is considered servile
and undignified in contemporary society. No self-respecting, twenty-first
century empowered citizen would willingly stoop to such depths of ser-
vitude. Instead, in the middle of meals, a bell goes off and they leap to
respond to whatever command issues forth on their text-messaging service.
A different bell goes off, the opening strains of Beethoven’s Fifth Sym-
phony, for instance, and the modern freeman rushes to find out which
out-of-state client desires him to leave the orchestra concert to discuss
what was discussed in the conference call this afternoon. Yet another ring
happens, and an emancipated denizen of modernity stops her friend in
mid-sentence to speak on the telephone to the friend who isn’t speaking
to the friend that she is speaking to over coffee.
In the home, the family exercises a newfound freedom unknown before elec-
tricity. “Daddy, tell me a story.” “Sure, sweety. Bring me the dvd box and let’s
choose a movie.” “Mommy, sing me a song.” “Of course, dear. Let Mommy find
our favorite cd and pop it in the computer.” “Big Brother, come and play with
me.” “Sure, squirt. Let’s go downstairs and get out the video games.”
Some demur and say that not everyone, for example, sings well, thus, record-
ed music is a real help for them. To this I respond, “Then stop doing anything for
your children!” If only the best is good enough for little Jane and Joe, then they
will hear nothing but the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for bedtime lullabies,
Sir Lawrence Olivier must act out the Brothers Grimm on rainy days, and Julia
Child will prepare their afternoon snacks. I am firmly convinced that every child
believes that his Mommy’s voice is the prettiest, her face the most beautiful, and
her cooking the tastiest in the whole wide world! The only children who think
otherwise were taught such lies by their own parents mouthing foolishness like, “I
can’t sing” or “I’m too fat” or “My cooking is awful”.
A bizarre phenomenon is occurring in our day. Everyone mouths platitudes
about family values, but when it is suggested that people actually spend time with
their families unimpeded by electronic devices, admission fees, or interstate-high-
way travel, suddenly the members of the family bear a familial resemblance to a
herd of deer staring down a pair of headlights on the aforementioned interstate.
No one has anything to talk about with their loved ones. No one has any common
interests with their loved ones. No one knows their loved ones—and everyone
shows very little interest in curing their mutual ignorance.
Why not cook a meal from scratch together? How about a game of tag? Per-
haps it would be fun to pop popcorn—in a skillet with oil on the stove!—and tell
ghost stories in the dark. When was the last time you built a neighborhood of card
houses? Wouldn’t it be great if Mom, Dad, and the kids spent more time enjoying
each other’s company than in the company of ogres at work, bullies at school, and
strangers in the living room?
7) Moderns Can—and Do—Worship Themselves: Smart men think the world is gov-
erned by impersonal laws of physics; wise men know the world is governed by the law
of Love!
White-lab-coated men scurry to various archaeological dig sites or stoop over
microscopes or squint into the eyepieces of giant telescopes intoning arcane dog-
mas, such as the tautology “survival of the fittest”, or the oxymoronic “multiple
infinities”, or the non sequitur “with so many stars in the universe, life must exist
on other planets besides earth”. Their acolytes are bound to receive, embrace, and
parrot these and myriad other like phrases on pain of losing research dollars, being
denied tenure, and having the epithet “medieval” hurled at them in polite scien-
tific journals and the popular press. The faithful place credence in the doctrine
of trained skepticism, applying to all assumptions except their own a blistering
demand for proof of first principles. No one seems interested in the question,
“Why should materialism be the governing philosophy of modern science?” And
with that in mind, “Why should science, and thus materialism, govern the life of
man, who is spirit embodied?”
For some strange reason, actually in lack thereof, modern man prefers to live
in a universe which is, in the estimation of many respected scientists, a random oc-
currence. Modern man finds comfort somehow in the idea that his own existence
is the result of billions of years of flukes that resulted in his evolving. An origin
in inorganic matter becoming so much mold transformed into giant ferns related
somehow to jellyfish whose ancestors at some remove slithered through forests
giving birth eventually to mouse-like beasties who one day ascended the trees who
changed their minds and descended into subways, satisfies modern man’s curios-
ity about whence he came. Whither all this leads is left unanswered—and by the
rules set down by the randomness of physics, chemistry, and biology running the
evolutionary processes, that curiosity is unanswerable. Men who rebel at the idea
of obeying the dictates of divine commands humbly acquiesce when they are told
that they must evolve or become extinct.
If pond scum can become a sequoia, who knows what man might evolve into?
I do! Evolution, if it is true, will result in man evolving into something
inhuman! Proof of the moral truth of this is available in today’s newspapers.
The scientists tell me that the material proof of this is available in the hu-
man genome recently deciphered. My proof is a bit more accessible. And
believable. And provable.
The modern Godless approach to science is a regression to pantheism.
Man is deferring to the elements, to the matter of creation, to faceless forces,
and assumes their incontrovertibility in making his laws, raising his children,
and understanding himself and his plight in the universe. The ancients perhaps
appealed to Zeus or to fire or to the All. Moderns do the same by different
names, calling their gods dna, or the nuclear weak force, or string theory. An-
cients and moderns alike see themselves as the subject of fate and determinism
and just dumb luck.
Impotence is the result. Moderns can not feed, house, clothe, rule, teach, or
entertain themselves. Nor can they understand themselves. And, oddly enough
in a worldview predicated on evolutionism, moderns can not change themselves.
Hurtling down a road to who-knows-where, armed with all of the material might
the latest science can offer, equipped with every kind of freedom that hubris can
imagine, modern men are convinced that man does not change, that greed will
rule his economics, that hate will rule his relations with other nations, that lust
will rule his libido, that envy will rule his notions of self worth, that naked desire
will rule his aesthetics, that despair will be his end.
An epidemic of depression sweeps modernity. Pills are prescribed. None
seems inquisitive about the cause of the worldwide sadness besetting us. Oh,
yes, people talk about overbearing mothers and distant fathers and repressive
cultures and oppressive economics and being potty trained too early, but what
the final cause of all that might be is unaddressed. There is plenty of food to
go around, if we would but share it. Technology allows for ease in construction,
transportation, and medicine which could relieve the physical suffering of vir-
tually everyone on earth. The sun is as beautiful today as it was for St. Francis,
swinging on a swing is as thrilling now as it was when Grandma was a girl,
falling in love happens more often in real life than in the movies. So, what is
missing? Why is there so little happiness?
Each man worships nothing or himself. There is no will to feed the hungry,
to house the homeless, to clothe the naked. There is no will to rule one’s own
passions, to learn the true Faith, or to face the specter of the void that we have
created in the very heart of the world made in our own image and likeness. A
universe which is its own god has no god outside of itself, thus one must look
within to see god. When modern man looks within himself, he sees a black
hole, a vacuum, a pit. Nothing.
So he turns on the PC, takes another Prozac, and continues to refuse to pray.
This place, ladies and gentlemen, is a loony bin. But it is not filled with Napo-
leons, fruit bowls, or men from mars. It is the abode of the enraged, the fright-
ened, and the suicidal.
Anyone care to join me in a jail break?
Father Smith, Sacerdos vagus
15 July 2004: St. Henry of Bavaria

61
Sensus Catholicus with Father Smith

May one advertise Viagra (if the ads are modest)? Is it possible to be modest
in such an advertisement? There seems to be a legitimate use for the drug for
couples having difficulty conceiving because of male impotency, isn’t there? (PQ,
Boise, id)
Dear PQ and all Readers,
Perhaps you have seen the latest uproarious advertisement airing in prime
time marketing the newest version of the primary product manufactured by Grav-
ity, Inc.? As you motor home after a hard day at the office, you might look up,
while stalled in traffic, to be startled by the daring billboard now in national dis-
tribution by the conglomerate that holds the copyright and patent for the most
advanced model of that excellent innovation known by the trade-name Property
Tax. And, of course, everyone is familiar with the radio campaign with endorse-
ments from all of the nationally syndicated talk-show hosts extolling the wonders
of Food-Shelter-Clothing.
Advertising comes in three basic designs: alerting you to the consequences
of what will happen if you do what you may not (drink and drive, exceed the
speed limit, fail to buckle up); cajoling you to do what you ought not (borrow
money, tattoo your child, vote for crooks); or convincing you to do what you
otherwise might not (eat at Joe’s instead of Jack’s, drink beer instead of wine,
wear sandals instead of boots). All advertising works, to the extent that it does,
because it is dealing with options. One can speed if he so chooses and he is
willing to brave the ticket; one can elect not to mutilate his child’s body, there-
by condemning said offspring to ridicule amongst the “in” crowd at the local
purveyor of indecency and illiteracy known as the school; and one can purchase
footwear for comfort, for beauty, or for neither. Nothing absolutely obligatory
needs be advertised—you will note the absence of promos from the Association
to Increase Respiration (air).
Appetite and the passions are behind advertising, and such is also the driving
force of American commerce. Appeals are made to lust, to gluttony, to fear, to
pride, to envy, to sloth, to greed, to lust, to lust, to lust—did I mention lust? Sane
people would not succumb to advertising. They would understand that advertis-
ing makes everything more expensive. For instance, pharmaceutical companies
spend around 14% of their annual budgets on r&d and about 25% of their an-
nual budgets on marketing, reaping a profit margin of about 17%. In modern
economics it is less important to have a good product than to have a campaign
calling the product good. Savvy customers would pay less attention to celebrity
shills and more heed to the implications of planned obsolescence.
But an even better defense against advertising than saving money is the desire
to save one’s soul. Someone bent on sanctity will not fall for the gimmicks of
advertising. My car drives just fine after 150,000 miles. New models with more
leather and higher tech and bigger sticker prices can not convince me that my car,
well maintained these last seven years, is suddenly unable to locomote from point
a to point b. Detroit, however, counts on millions of people worrying about de-
preciation of trade-in value, cd-player capacity, and self-esteem to sell unneeded
cars—while neglecting in its huge advertising campaigns to point out that gm and
Ford make far more money on the interest paid on car loans than on the actual
purchase of the cars. As automobile manufacturers, the biggest two of the Big
Three are really big banks.
If buyers paid off their cars in four or five years, kept the cars for another five
years, and each month saved the money that used to go to car payments, they
could buy new cars with cash when their old cars finally gave out, thereby sav-
ing thousands in interest payments, reducing their exposure to avarice and envy,
and frightening the beejeebies out of the car makers, banks, and oil companies.
Car makers, and every other business, count on the fact that customers are not
actually customers, but consumers. Car owners are not interested in owning the
car or in reliable transportation as such. They have image in mind; they do not
understand the devastation of compound interest and chronic debt; and they have
not learned the spiritual virtue of being satisfied with sufficiency rather than be-
ing anxious over what the next guy has that they must have next. Salesmen know
Sensus Catholicus With Father Smith 63
that their commission depends on the weakness of their marks, I mean, of their
clients. There is little profit to be made among the spiritually poor, regardless of
how much money they might have in the keeping of usurers.
But what of the appropriateness of the advertising of certain chemicals to
facilitate that which should not be discussed in print? If indeed said product is
of help for a medical condition that prevents the accomplishment of the primary
good of Holy Matrimony—which is never mentioned in the ads—then use of the
product is licit. It is unfortunate, unseemly, and unspeakable how the actual ad-
vertising is entirely about pursuing fleeting pleasures as a kind of summum bonum
without which life loses meaning.
However, it might well be that difficulty in obeying God’s first command-
ment to mankind could be aided by medicine. A doctor who discovers what such
medicines might be, by way of public advertising, is a specialist who goes by the
technical name of quack. A patient who continues to rely on the skills of a doctor
who receives his continuing education from his patients’ exposure to the idiot
box will soon contract the fearful illness known in the medical field as death. The
JAMA, The Lancet, and Popular Science agree: a billboard in center field does not
constitute a peer-reviewed study.
Do not go to doctors who depend on drug companies’ advertising to stay on
top of the latest advances in their discipline. Find a doctor who delights in reading
the best research concerning his patients’ recurring conditions. Ask your doctor
how often he visits medical libraries versus time spent in front of the boob tube.
A doctor who is not committed to learning as much as possible about what his
colleagues are developing as options for treatment is to be trusted no more than a
priest who does not pray all of his Office every day. Would you want a confessor
who picked up his best spiritual advice on Oprah?
Ecclesiasticus 38:1–15 has some wonderful advice about the esteem with
which doctors should be held. Ask your doctor if he is familiar with that passage.
A doctor’s office sporting a framed copy of that text would be immensely more
comforting than one in which the Hippocratic Oath is proudly displayed. Hip-
pocrates admonished: “Do no harm! “ Jesus son of Sirach explains of the physician
that he was created by the most high, and all healing is from God! Hippocrates sets a
fairly low bar in comparison.
The product in question is not advertised because doctors do not know about
such things. Any competent gp, much less a specialist, would have access to in-
formation on the subject without needing recourse to thirty-second spots during
drive time. Its manufacturers are not endeavoring to strengthen the conjugal
bond. What is used in its promotion is an emphasis on gratification in the act
with absolutely no reference whatsoever to the purpose of the act.
These people are not interested in health or in holiness. They are unabash-
edly engaged in inciting people to unleash their passions, to place a premium on
physical pleasure, to reduce society’s threshold for the discussion of such delicate
matters—and to make a buck. Frankly, it is astonishing that the spouses of the
celebrity spokesmen for such products are able to show themselves in public. It
is astonishing that the celebrity spokesmen can show themselves in public. It is
astonishing that the public agrees to listen to descriptions of such unmentionable
topics in public.
While one is inquiring into the frequency of one’s doctor’s use of the window-
on-hell, the patient would do well to examine his own (ab)use of the demon box.
Couch potatoes are not the healthiest specimens of human vigor. It could be, in at
least some instances, that conjugal difficulties are a matter of plain old being out
of shape. Getting up from the divan and diving into an exercise regimen might
not correct the problem per se, but certainly both physical and spiritual health
would improve. This should be a goal with or without having prescriptions filled.
Blessed is the man that hath not slipped by a word out of his mouth and
is not pricked with the remorse of sin. Happy is he that hath had no sadness of
mind, and who is not fallen from his hope. Riches are not comely for a covetous
man and a niggard. And what should an envious man do with gold? He that gath-
ereth together by wrongdoing his own soul, gathereth for others: and another will
squander away his goods in rioting. He that is evil to himself, to whom will he be
good? And he shall not take pleasure in his goods…The eye of the covetous man
is insatiable in his portion of iniquity: he will not be satisfied till he consume his
own soul, drying it up. An evil eye is toward evil things: and he shall not have his
fill of bread, but shall be needy and pensive at his own table. My son, if thou have
any thing, do good to thyself, and offer to God worthy offerings… Give and take,
and justify thy soul. Before thy death work justice: for in hell there is no finding
food. — Ecclesiasticus 14:1-17.
God bless you,

Father Smith
26 August 2004: Pope St. Zephyrinus

65
Reflections on Belloc’s On Usury

This is the house that debt built.
These are the cards that make up the house that debt built.
Here are the banks that issue the cards that make up the house that debt built.
We are the spendthrifts who beg from the banks that issue the cards that
make up the house that debt built.
There is the interest that’s paid by the spendthrifts who beg from the banks
that issue the cards that make up the house that debt built.
Here is more interest on top of the interest that’s paid by the spendthrifts who
beg from the banks that issue the cards that make up the house that debt built.
But wait! More interest is owed over interest on top of the interest that’s paid
by the spendthrifts who beg from the banks that issue the cards that make up the
house that debt built.
That’s the default that must come when more interest is owed over interest
on top of the interest that’s paid by the spendthrifts who beg from the banks that
issue the cards that make up the house that debt built.
Here’s the recession that’s caused by defaults that must come when more
interest is owed over interest on top of the interest that’s paid by the spend-
thrifts who beg from the banks that issue the cards that make up the house
that debt built.
Where is the money to end the recession that’s caused by defaults that must
come when more interest is owed over interest on top of the interest that’s paid
by the spendthrifts who beg from the banks that issue the cards that make up the
house that debt built?
It’s not in the cards that collapsed on the banks that issued the cards to spend-
thrifts on credit who lost all their jobs that came from the companies that owe
to the banks more interest o’er interest on top of the interest that now they can’t
pay ‘cause recession stops spendthrifts from working and begging but not from
defaulting and frightening their banks who foreclose on the companies who fire
the spendthrifts who get no more credit from banks, no more lending to dead
beats and blue chips unless and until the Fed raises their interest by raising the
interest that’s paid to the banks who at last will proclaim the recession is over and
start to rebuild the house of their dreams by issuing cards that bring on new debt
for spendthrifts like us excited to hear that all is forgiven…so we can come home!
Brother, can you spare a dime?
The latter half of the Chesterbelloc is the leading thinker in the cause of dis-
tributism. (I am annoyed that the moronic spell check in my computer does not
know how to spell distributism.) It was while reading Chesterton’s wonderful, The
Outline of Sanity—a definite must read—that I became aware of this. I have read
probably ten books by Chesterton for each of Belloc’s with which I am familiar.
To date I have read two by Belloc, The Great Heresies and Essays of a Catholic. It is
in one of the essays from the latter book that I wish here to rejoice, although each
and all merit praise.
When I was in seminary, a popular phrase used by our pastoral counseling
professor (yes, such things exist outside of nightmares) was, “Insanity is doing
the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results each time.” This was
propounded as a means to illustrate to disturbed souls that Shakespearean truism,
“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Chesterton’s Out-
line is a brilliant description of this, as well as a remedy.
Belloc’s On Usury demonstrates how the mechanism of usury is the economic
equivalent of the serpent devouring its own tail. Frankly, his indictment of mod-
ern finance points to the conclusion that the United States is the pinnacle of a
monstrous pyramid-scheme fraud. The wonder is not that we have been foolish—
and greedy—enough to buy into the scam; the wonder is that any of us manage
to stave off bankruptcy.
Such may yet be our common destiny. The recent debacles at Enron (the
largest bankruptcy in u.s. history) and K-Mart (the largest retail bankruptcy ever)
Reflections on Belloc's "On Usury" 67
threaten to become the norm. What is still ignored, to the peril of all things mam-
mon, is that Amazon.com (the largest e-trade enterprise) and Walmart (the largest
retailer on earth) point to identical fates.
Both Amazon.com and Walmart remain successful at what K-Mart and En-
ron failed to do. All four of these companies became behemoths without produc-
ing one product, lacking any tangible assets unique to themselves, and banking on
a mix of marketing and market manipulation to increase profits. K-Mart and En-
ron failed spectacularly at this; Amazon.com has just barely managed its first-ever
profitable quarter (while awash in two-billion dollars of debt); and Walmart is
now the world’s largest corporation as calculated by annual revenue.
Does it not worry anyone else that none of these companies actually makes
anything? Most of the American economy is consumer-driven retailing, and most
Americans work in the so-called “service” so-called “industry”. Where does our
money come from? Why are we paid for doing whatever it is we are doing? What
do we have to show for our absurdly long work week?
Some would argue that ideas, software, and marketing are the new American
“cash crops”. The problem with these is that they can be mimicked, stolen, and
readily replaced. If you build widgets, your widget can be proved yours, unique,
and state-of-the-art. If you sell corn, no one can counterfeit your commodity, and
you can eat it even if no one else will. If you manufacture vaccines, no one will
wait to buy it until your competitors come out with next year’s model.
But ask the recording “industry” how they feel about mp3 technology. Or
discern the difference between a sandwich at the Bovine-Patty Sovereign and one
from the Celtic Auric Vaults. Or explain the purchase of expensive clothing with
a logo (manufactured by slave labor) in favor of inexpensive clothing without a
logo (manufactured by slave labor).
Throughout the 1990s the American workforce was congratulated on leaps
in productivity, information was designated an essential just below air and above
nutrition, and investors laughed at being chided for “irrational exuberance” in
running stock prices through the roof. This is odd. Nay, insane.
Manufacturing tanked in the United States as a procession of factories moved
to the Third World—so what is now produced by all of our vaunted productivity?
Our glut of information is inflicted by way of computer (one of the culprits in
the phantom productivity increase), but no one has explained why a billion bits
of inaccessible information on the computer improves life more than a thousand
well-written words in pen on paper. As for stock prices, it has yet to be made clear
where the wealth of K-Mart and Enron came from, why it was accepted as legal
tender while it supposedly existed, and where it is now.
So far as I can make out, it was all on paper. Seems to me that a stockholder
who gets back his original investment has lost nothing but time, a false sense of
security, and perilous pride. Since our ultimate home is eternity, all of those “loss-
es” can be transformed into real, profound gains.
I am afraid, however, Belloc’s diagnosis and Chesterton’s prescription not-
withstanding, what ails us will not be recognized by the bulk of us for the disease
that it is. Modern materialist man is more likely to take the hemlock of “the hair
of the dog” than to swallow the bitter pill of sanity. This culture is addicted to
debt; an unpleasant reality of addiction is the preference for self-destructive plea-
sure over self-improving pain. Play money and playing with money feel good,
though they are bad for us, so we insist on an endless play time that can not work.
Sacrifice and discipline feel bad, though they are good for us, but few of us will
admit the need to do real work before we go out to play.
In a mad world, the sane seem crazy. In a mad world, the insane are crazy.
Ours is to choose the madness disdained by the mad!
Let us not be in debt. Let us buy from need from those who make—and let us
be among the makers more than of the consumers. Let us measure our wealth less
in things had than in gifts shared. Let us put a stop to the insanity, not by forcing
sanity on the mad, but by joyfully offering a vision of the bliss possible only to
the sane. It’s such a crazy idea that it might appeal even to the terminally insane.
Father Smith
5 February 2002, St. Agatha

Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace
Clinton, Iowa
69
Father Smith Presents a Layman’s

Explanation of Usury
Usury is not, as assumed erroneously by the uncritical, the charging of exces-
sive interest. Usury is the unjust imposition of debt, frequently involving excessive
interest, in which “wealth” is created without true labor and often without the
fruits of labor attached to it. To illustrate, here are two scenarios, the first licit, the
second usurious:
1) Mr. Jones is a farmer. He wants to plant an extra crop of barley this
year. He does not have seed or money to purchase the seed. Mr. Brown lends
him $100 for that purpose. At harvest, Mr. Jones has a yield worth $350. Mr.
Brown receives $225, which represents his principle plus a 125% profit on his
investment, 50% of the total profits. Even though 125% seems to be a high
return, it is just because he incurred the risk and Mr. Jones still receives a fair
share of the increase of real property. Mr. Jones now has $100 for next year’s
crop and $25 for his costs of living as well. You will notice that the return on
the investment is based on the profit made.
2) Mr. Jones is a farmer. He wants to plant an extra crop of barley this
year. He does not have seed or money to purchase the seed. Mr. Brown lends
him $100 for that purpose. Half-way through the growing season, a plague of
locusts descends and devours the whole crop. Mr. Brown demands that Mr.
Jones pay back the $100 principle plus $8.50 in interest. Mr. Jones mortgages
his house to raise the money to pay back Mr. Brown, but now Mr. Jones has
no crop this year, no money for seed for next year, and his house is mortgaged
for thirty years at 6% interest, resulting in payments over the life of the mort-
gage that will be several times the amount of the initial principle. Mr. Jones
eventually gets out of farming and takes a job in the tech sector to be able to
pay his mortgage, buy health insurance, and put food on the table. He also will
need extra money for property taxes since in selling the farm to a developer,
the land on which his house sits increases in value ten-fold and the tax rate
rises commensurately.
Basically, usury is making something out of nothing. This is impossible
unless you are God, and I know that you are not God. Usury is based on the
idea of generating capital, not on generating real property, real products, or real
wealth. Money exchanged at usury demands an increased return no matter what
the circumstances of the investment might be. It is just to gain a return on an
investment that yields a profit, but unjust to demand a return on an investment
that either loses money or, more importantly, generates no wealth whatsoever.
Houses, cars, meals bought at restaurants do not generate income. To demand
interest on money lent to purchase those things is unjust regardless of how low
that interest might be. Conversely, a fair return on a truly successful investment
might result in a very high rate of interest paid back, but it is fair given the
increase of wealth that occurred.
Food, shelter, and clothing are necessities. If someone is in need of these
things and can not provide them for himself, Christian charity demands that they
be given to him. If he is later in a position to be able to pay back the generosity,
justice requires him to pay back the actual cost of the charity, no more. A spirit of
generosity might result in the charity case offering more as a sign of gratitude, but
the creditor is not just in demanding that extra.
In business, risk is involved in investing. To make an investment (such
as lending money to a family for a home) that generates no wealth—and in-
volves no risk—does not entitle the creditor to a profit. When Mr. Jones buys
a house, the bank is guaranteed to receive back its principle, plus many times
more than that in interest. If, God forbid, he defaults on the loan, the bank
keeps whatever Mr. Jones already paid in principle and interest, and gets the
house to boot, which it can turn around and sell to someone else at yet higher
interest rates. This is utterly unjust.
Houses do not generate income. When you buy your house, you will dis-
cover that it does not grow tennis courts in a year, a gazebo after five years,
Father Smith Presents a Laymen's Explination of Usury 71
and a swimming pool when a decade has elapsed. Your property taxes, howev-
er, continue to increase because the government assumes that property values
will go up as your neighborhood becomes increasingly fashionable with your
presence there. The government assumes that this makes you wealthier, thus,
able to pay higher taxes. This “wealth”, however, only comes if you sell your
house at a profit or take out another mortgage on it. If you sell your house at
a profit, you will need to buy a more expensive house (and mortgage) in order
to avoid disastrous capital gains taxes. If you mortgage your house again, far
from having greater wealth, you will be deeper in debt.
According to modern economics, your home loan translates into home
equity which translates into more wealth for you. That same loan represents
wealth for the bank, which claims your loan as an income-generating source
of wealth. The government claims that wealth is increased because you are a
homeowner, the bank is making a profit, and tax revenues increase. Supposedly,
you are wealthier because you have borrowed money, the bank is wealthier be-
cause it has lent money, and the government taxes all of this new wealth. Your
increase of wealth is based on the hope that you can sell your house to the next
man at a profit, the bank’s increase in wealth is based on the necessity of your
employment generating more income than your debt burden can consume, and
the government counts each loan, each interest payment, and each paycheck as
part of a growing economy.
But this is all smoke and mirrors. All of this “wealth” is based on debt. The
original loan, say $100,000, comes from the bank out of other peoples’ accounts.
They are making interest on their savings accounts. The bank then lends their
money to you, charging higher interest from you than it is paying to its deposi-
tors. The same $100,000 is claimed by the depositors at the bank, the bank itself,
and you through your mortgage.
Now you must service the interest on the loan, pay back the principle,
pay taxes, maintain the house, feed your family, and take care of all the other
costs of living. You must have a job which pays enough cash to make all of this
happen. The company for which you work borrows heavily to make payroll,
buy its own stock, pay taxes, and service interest on said loans. Since most of
the American economy is no longer propelled by manufacturing but is based
upon the “service industry”, the dollar is not backed by gold, and debt is several
times higher than the worth of the annual economy; all of this financial activity
is based on “wealth” on paper. “Money in the bank” is not in the bank, it is
not backed by gold, and it is not generated by production. It is almost entirely

a matter of interest compounding for no other reason than that investors expect
every investment to yield a high return.
This is obviously insane. Not all investments yield returns. Those that do will
not yield enough to cover those that fail. What is happening is an enormous pyr-
amid scheme where the idea is to get your money out at the highest profit before
the thing collapses.
The stock market from 2000 on, Enron, and now Parmalat, are just the latest
and biggest examples of what usury does. In each of those instances, “wealth” was
used to purchase real property. Eventually it became evident that the “wealth”
never existed. Overnight, billions of dollars just vanished. Many people count as
“wealth” the fact that they hold stock or are creditors of large corporations. When
stock prices plunge or companies go bankrupt, the real money that was invested is
destroyed along with the unreal companies or investment vehicles that produced
no wealth except on paper, or at least much less wealth than was represented on
paper. And, of course, money is only so much paper.
Fundamentally, a just economy is predicated on everyone making a living by
producing a necessary product or service. An increase in wealth needs to be an
increase in real property. And everything needs to be motivated by a love of God,
expression of holy poverty, and the sanctification of man’s activities in keeping
with the Kingdom of Heaven. Usury (a.k.a. modern capitalism), communism,
and socialism are materialistic, avaricious, and atheistic. Not only do they not
give God His due, they make it impossible for men to receive their due. The love
of money is the root of all evil; the love of money is at the root of the modern
economy. What do you suppose that makes the modern economy? Hmmmm...?
Father Smith,
Sacerdos vagus
5 January 2004
The Vigil of our Lord’s Epiphany
73
Money Does Grow on Trees

It is made of paper, after all.
In the aftermath of Christmas, the biggest binge of buying of the consumerist

year, it is convenient to reflect on just what money is. At rock bottom, it is paper.
Yes, it has pretty pictures, colorful inks, historic scenes, but it is just so much
paper. With some cotton fiber, if I remember correctly. And fancy holograms and
what-nots nowadays.
But a ream by any other name would shred as fine…
A friend has directed me to a website called Norfed.com, the internet venue
of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the In-
ternal Revenue Service. Their desire is to get Americans to assert their sovereignty
by participating in an alternative monetary system. Rather than dealing with the
Federal Reserve Notes—dollar bills of various denominations—issued under the
patronage of the United States Government, Norfed would have us circulate what
it calls “Liberty Dollars”.
These are certificates attesting to the existence of a certain amount of silver
which, I suppose, but could not be sure of from their explanation, could be re-
deemed on demand. The idea is that the Liberty Dollar has an objective worth,
based on the tangible value of a precious metal, in this case, silver. Normal dollar
bills commit the unforgivable sin against civil liberty of having no concrete value,
nor a consistent means to measure its worth. Norfed refers to modern money as
fiat currency. I share with them their concern over a merely human item being
invested with a divine potency.
There is, however, a set of difficulties in the philosophical position of Nor-
fed and their ilk in the world that is no different from the mammon-and-mo-
loch-worshipping denizens of the American body politic. They are correct in their
identification of the symptoms which plague us, but their diagnosis is wrong,
indeed, their prescription will exacerbate the condition. Secularism and a naïve,
blind patriotism are the least of their problems. Norfed, the government, and
modernity at large do not understand the true nature of wealth, nor do they have
a proper appreciation of property.
Gold and silver are property, but they are not wealth. They do have limited
and restricted practicality in a narrow field of human activity, most of them
luxuries, but the majority of men can live from cradle to grave without them
and never miss them. Objectively speaking, they are no more “valuable” than
a Stradivarius violin, Babe Ruth’s baseball bat, or a ten-thousand dollar bill.
Any worth attached to them is arbitrary, subjective, and wholly dependent on
the mutual agreement of the parties involved. If you are a philatelist, certain
postage stamps will move you to offer pounds of silver for them, and more if
they have never been used; if you are a tree-hugger, no amount of gold tonnage
will convince you that mailing letters is worth the loss of one termite-ridden
Joshua tree, especially if it is useless for any purpose other than hugging it and
the termites themselves are a threatened species.
True wealth consists of those things upon which man’s very life depends:
food, shelter, clothing—and salvation. Money might be a convenient conveyance
to exchange for material sustenance, but in itself it is entirely without use to man.
In a manner of speaking, money is entirely worthless because by definition it is a
medium that the spender is willing to part with. Money is worth less to its owner
than anything for which the owner finally divests himself of the money. If the
money were truly worth anything, one would part with it no more than with air,
water, or bread. By this measure, even barter systems deal with items for trade that
the trader deems worth less than that for which he trades. All currency is based on
the idea of giving something that one finds expendable, or of which there exists a
surplus, for something that one finds invaluable, or that is in short supply. It goes
without saying that cash is of even less value in the eyes of God.
Advocates of the Liberty Dollar and like alternative currencies are doing the
precisely same thing for which they excoriate the Federal Reserve. They assign a
value to a thing of worth, not according to its value in the hands of the possessor
thereof, but in terms of a commodity in the keeping of an elite who produce
neither the thing by which value is measured, nor the thing whose worth is being
measured thereby. You will notice that the federal government neither operates
the banks of the Federal Reserve system whence comes our cash, nor does it pro-
Money Does Grow on Trees 75
duce the goods and services it taxes in order to force the exchange of said notes for
its own benefit (which benefit is money to intrude ever further into the lives of the
peasantry, I mean, citizenry). Those who mint coinage do not create gold or silver,
nor do they show much interest in growing food, building houses, or weaving
cloth. People with money want to buy things, not make things.
In the happier days of kings, the monarch had lands like any other nobleman
by which he was expected to provide for his reign; if his lands did not produce
sufficiently, he had to tax and borrow like any other of his class. The medieval
ideal was that the king’s primary income came from his working land; inadequa-
cies were made up for by set taxes and borrowing (without usury). Custom and
tradition forbade the king from raising taxes beyond historic levels, inflation was
unheard of, usury was (and is) mortally sinful.
Our federal government does have productive lands and incomes from
some fees, but the overwhelming majority of its money comes from taxes, first
and last, with borrowing everywhere in between. The money that it borrows is
paid back by further taxing the populace. This costs the serfs, I mean citizens,
twice: first in competing with the government for loans at usury, resulting in
higher interest rates for everyone; and, second, in paying the taxes that pay for
the loans that require higher interest payments that necessitate higher taxes that
further depress the economy that is weakened yet more by a need for borrow-
ing that drives up interest rates that causes the government to raise taxes, ad
infinitum, ad nauseam…
Be very careful of middlemen. Liberty Dollars, Federal Reserve Notes, and
mutual funds are predicated on someone holding the silver, or the levers on
interest rates, or the telephone sending the buy and sell orders. That someone is
not you, nor is it the person from whom you buy things with Liberty Dollars,
Greenbacks, or equity from your second mortgage. Whoever holds the silver,
the Fed, or Chase-Manhattan is the one getting “rich” off of those whose only
wealth is on paper.
Hug a tree if you love money.
Speculation is behind all monetary exchanges. Gold and silver change hands
not because of their objective worth, but because speculators are convinced that
they will increase in worth. They will increase in worth because of speculation.
The fluctuations of the dollar’s worth versus precious metals in the 1970s cited by
the Norfed site, were caused and worsened by gross manipulation of the markets,
particularly in the case of silver by the Hunt brothers of Texas.
Precious metals can be manipulated with the same ease as money. In good
times a bushel of corn is worth, say, an ounce of silver. Famine does not change
the need for food, but commodity speculation banks on that constant need to de-
mand more silver. That silver is of worth to them only insofar as they can demand
other goods for it. The farmers’ greed drives up the “value” of silver; the specula-
tor’s greed makes the procurement of corn more difficult without more silver; the
family’s need makes them desperate to get more silver in order to get even a small
amount of corn. They might well sell themselves into slavery to survive.
Farmers wanting more silver does not change the worth of corn to the family.
Speculators demanding more interest on lending their silver does not change the
worth of the corn to the family. The only thing of value to the family is the corn,
but the farmers and the speculators are most pleased by, and find the most value
in, the family’s dearth. The realization of this dynamic at work has given rise to the
modern phenomenon of dealing in shortages, and creating them if necessary. This
in turn has led to a modern slavery wherein families are mortgaged for thirty years
to their house payments, fifty years to an employer, and a lifetime to the taxman.
What is needed here is not more silver for the family or lower interest rates or even
more corn; what is lacking is the spiritual virtue of charity.
Lest any think that farmers are here undeservedly singled out for greed, it
must be remembered that the capital that provided the funding for the industrial
revolution came in no small measure from the landed gentry of England. Farmers
as the holders of the greatest wealth were replaced by industrialists. Turnabout
being fair play, industry made possible the amazing technological advances of the
twentieth century, and it is the manufacturing sector in our economy that is hurt
the most by that shift in the global shape of things that came. At present even
high-tech is limping along and none can say if it will recover or what might come
in its stead. You will notice that at each step along this trail of tears of economic
misery, I mean history, the moneylenders wielding the rod of usury have been
present, have prospered, and have set the terms for what constitutes success.
But in the world, under the rule of mammon, bereft of fealty to Christ the
King, what ends up being of value is not human labor nor the produce of the land
nor, ironically, the money that purchases both. What ends up having the highest
value, greatest power, supreme sovereignty is control of the money supply (it is not
for nothing that Alan Greenspan, responsible for controlling America’s money
supply, is called the most powerful man in the world). Money measured in cash
or precious metals or loans is immaterial (literally, and in regard to the philosoph-
Money Does Grow on Trees 77
ical principle at hand). The issue is that a synthetic, unnatural, capricious set of
strictures is placed on human commerce.
Some would say that the shortage of corn in the above-mentioned scenario
accounts for the shifting values experienced. That makes sense only in a Godless,
faithless society. People need food. Raising prices does not change that fact. Rais-
ing prices will cheapen human life. Raising prices will make some people “wealth-
ier” than they might otherwise have been, but it will make more people deader
than they might otherwise have been—death to the body through famine, death
to the mind through relativism, or death to the soul through apostasy and heresy.
Higher costs for many result in artificial wealth for a few, but they feed no one,
shelter no one, and clothe no one.
Money, precious metal, and human labor have no objective, absolute value.
Attempting to base an economic system on them will create nothing but gross
injustice. As one’s whims, appetites, and crop yields change, one will coddle, tor-
ture, or ignore human beings accordingly. Liberty Dollars divorced from Cathol-
icism produce no more freedom than Federal Reserve Notes in a state separated
from the Church. Any freedom experienced is of the kind mentioned in the Nor-
fed site: illusory, and the worst form of enslavement.
The only solution to what ails man is a two-fold affirmation of the divine or-
der of things. On a natural level, men must be free to own property, earn a living
by the labor of their own hands, and produce tangible, necessary goods for society.
On the supernatural level, all men must be Catholic. The first level is essential to
the maintenance of life on earth. The higher level is essential to ordering earthly
life to its proper end of eternal life. Without Catholicism, there is no motivation
(doing God’s will), means (Christ and him crucified), and medium (his body, the
Church), for man to be anything but inhuman, unjust, and unkind to his fellow
man and to himself.
Do not forget: the love of money is the root of all evil. (1 Tim. 6:10) The
measure with which you measure will be measured back to you. (Mt. 7:2) You
can not serve God and Mammon. (Lk. 16:13) Liberty does not come from a love
of money or metal or mammon. Freedom is to know, love, and serve God in this
life so as to be happy with him forever in heaven!
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
19 December 2003: Ember Friday
79
Leaping into the Handbasket Bound

for Hell
[Gerald M.] Levin, who provided plenty of access to the authors of all three of the
books on the [aol-Time Warner] merger, does not come off well in any of them, but
he reserved his flakiest comments for Munk: “It’s absolutely true that I plotted the
departure of Nick Nicholas after working with him for twenty years.” Levin told her
about the palace coup that got him the top job at Time Warner in 1992. “And I don’t
have justifications for it other than that I’m a strange person.” He did cite Albert
Camus by way of explanation. As he explained to Munk in another context, his own
philosophy was rooted in what he learned from Camus: “That we impute meaning
and purpose to things that are totally adventitious or accidental; that there is no God;
that there just is; that there’s no life after death.” Fine for grad school, and probably
true, but not exactly suited to the boardroom.—Adam Liptak, “The Making and
Taking of aol-Time Warner”, New York Times, 18 January 2004
Where and how does one begin when everything around him is ending?
The above quote is a sign of the times, a portent of the dissolution of all
things. It is not necessary to go into detail about the substance of the article
whence the quote came. The writer is waxing indignant that there are greedy peo-
ple operating in corporate America—imagine that!
None but the delusional believed that the “wealth” with which aol “pur-
chased” Time Warner existed anywhere but in the dreams of stock options danc-
ing in the heads of the major players. Of course, in 2000 and 2001, much of Wall
Street and Main Street was delusional, caught in the grip of what the primary
inmate guarding the insane asylum known as capitalism, Alan Greenspan, called
“irrational exuberance”. A media goliath was formed worth dozens of billions of
dollars, only to be brought down (in stock price, that is) by the David of reality
rearing its ugly head, namely, that businesses are expected to post profits at some
point, and actually producing a product is not a bad idea, either. aol was (is) so
woefully inadequate at profits and production that its very name is now expunged
from the Time Warner corporate identity. It is perhaps only a matter of time
before Time Warner sells its purchaser to one of its competitors—for a sizeable
quantity of stock options and a business plan to be named later.
But the best story involved in this story is the reporting thereof. Read the
quote again. I’ll wait a few minutes to give you a chance.
Do you see the problem? If not, you, too, can be a part of the parade to per-
dition. For those of you who caught the absurdity, please be patient with your
slower fellows as I attempt to illustrate what is contributing to the destruction of
mankind in our day.
Fine for grad school, and probably true, but not exactly suited for the board-
room. That might as well be the epitaph of modernity. The barons of capitalism
run this country (into the ground). They do so without reference to God or to
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or to His body, the Catholic Church. Their
willing minions, sometimes known as wage slaves, blithely play along and sell
themselves to the bidder who is least likely to fire them before they get a chance
to refinance their mortgages. What’s good for gm is good for America, or maybe
the new summum bonum is Walmart, or perhaps Microsoft.
At any rate, the writer in the offending article says that the boardroom,
the habitat of the captains of industry, the masters of our destiny, is not a
place suited for the expression of what he considers to be “probably true”. This
probable truth, that there is no meaning, purpose, God, or afterlife, just an
amorphous “is”, evidently can satisfy graduate students, treacherous friends,
and newspaper reporters, but is to be disdained by men responsible for trillions
of dollars and billions of people.
It does not seem to occur to many people that if there is no meaning, no
purpose, no God, and no afterlife, then there is also no such thing as good or evil.
There just is. Whatever is is. Bill Clinton, eat your heart out!
Which leads one to wonder why, then, must anyone get upset over a few bil-
lion dollars changing hands among our corporate keepers? If there is no right or
Leaping into the Handbasket Bound for Hell 81
wrong, no God, no meaning, and no purpose, just an is happily being whatever

an is can be, then no one needs to complain, no one needs to attempt correction,
none needs to hesitate to rip off stock holders whenever one lacks justification
beyond being “a strange person”. It should surprise no one that a self-described
strange person, capable of betraying a business associate of twenty years’ standing,
would feel few if any qualms about gambling with billions of dollars of other
people’s money, playing fast and loose with thousands of people’s livelihoods, and
walking away after it all, satisfied that his ego has been gratified.
For if the truth is that there is no meaning, no purpose, no God, and no af-
terlife, one should not hold one’s breath seeking virtue in the boardroom. There
is a quaint old idea among us moralists that truth is a virtue. The reporter in the
New York Times story tells us that truth has no place in the boardroom, or, to put
it quaintly, that virtue has no place in the boardroom. It would be foolhardy, then,
to think that a room full of people lacking virtue, disdaining truth, are going to
be champions of fair play, the little guy, or, indeed, honesty.
It could be my mistake, however. Perhaps the writer is saying that there is
no place in the boardroom for such grievous relativism and nihilism. Could it be
that he is suggesting that a better truth to be employed in the boardroom would
be God and His greater glory in all things? It would be amusing to believe so,
but one would need to be delusional to the point of looking for wealth in stock
markets and non-productive “industries”. Delusional people are rarely amused or
amusing, for which reason they are called in better English, mad.
Minds should be boggled at the challenge of explaining how a reporter goes
from averring that eternal life, meaning, purpose, and God are expendable realities
for the boardroom, to then asserting that the tycoons inhabiting said boardrooms
should respond to a sense of responsibility to someone beyond themselves. Why
should they? Lacking judgment, meaning, purpose, and an all-powerful God,
one is left with only the court system and federal prisons for ultimate protection.
Anyone with a modicum of consciousness is aware that hard time is rarely done
by “white-collar” criminals. And on top of that, what was done to and at aol-
Time Warner broke no human laws and, given the premise at hand, there being
no God, no divine laws were broken, either.
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Corporate America has
convinced Americans that a business approach to all things—government, fam-
ilies, even the Church—is the most efficient, reasonable, and mutually agreeable
means to maintaining social order. The loss of meaning, purpose, God, and the
afterlife from the boardroom, it would seem, would result in a concomitant and
parallel denial of such in the business savvy politics exercised in Washington, dc,
and in statehouses around the country; in the personal economies of individuals
and families throughout the land; and among those congregations fond of the
modernist aphorism, “No margin, no mission”.
Partisan gridlock, divorce, and the plummeting of numbers of people attend-
ing any kind of religious activity on a regular basis strongly suggest that meaning-
lessness, purposelessness, Godlessness, and hopelessness are endemic among us.
This writer is at a loss as to how one keeps a “truth” of the magnitude that God,
meaning, purpose, and the afterlife do not exist from invading simply every as-
pect of one’s life. Admitting that “truth” is not seen as problematic by the modern
mind. Acting on that truth seems to have become something of a reflex in the
modern person. If indeed one can expunge that “truth” from the boardroom, and,
presumably, from government, the home, and religious entities, one would think
that some kind of improvement would result.
Two questions come to mind, then. First, do Americans indeed believe that
God gives purpose and meaning to man, and can be trusted to provide for him
after this life is over? And, second, if they do indeed believe that He is provident,
loving, and involved, what sign can modern Americans offer that they are acting
on that belief?
aol-Time Warner, the war in Iraq, abortion, divorce, sodomy, and blind con-
sumerism seem to indicate that American conviction lies more along the lines
of Camus, Levin, and the Times reporter, than in keeping with Christ and Him
crucified. How does one convince a culture, so far gone, to go back the other way?
What can one do to convince his fellows of the peril of their ends when they do
not think there is any end beyond “there just is”?
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
18 January 2004
The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Rome
83
An Epilogue to Belloc’s
Europe and the Faith
Hilaire Belloc summarizes the lynchpin by which the disaster of the “reforma-
tion” was able to establish a lasting foothold within the European heartland of the
faith as the “Defection of Britain”. This defection of an ancient Roman province
from the fold of the true flock of Christ into heresy provided a voice, stability, and
prestige to what might otherwise have been a more or less short-lived insurrection
by disordered, disaffected, disjointed malcontents. Belloc describes a tripartite
complex of phenomena that comprise the dynamic which largely explains how
such a defection, unique in Christendom, could have occurred.
This complex was the interaction between wealthy men, whose faith ran
tributary to material lusts; an open commerce of ideas decreasingly subject to
an arbiter exercising authority in the name of objective truth; and a fetish for
government as the medium of absolute power in all things temporal, spilling
over into things eternal. Wealth and power more than error served to give mo-
tivation to those who became the servants of rebellion within the Church. Ul-
timately, however, it was not wealth and power that survived the ignominious
period when sons of the Church foully shunned their mother. The wealthy and
the powerful eventually made war on one another as they had against Truth
and His Chosen, the Church, Peter’s Barque. Error became sovereign in the
hearts of foolish men who thought to usurp the authority of God’s Kingdom
and its Vicar on earth, the Pope.
It is readily evident that the so-called “reform” of the revolutionaries produced

not renewal, but anarchy. The body—of truth, of doctrine, of Christ—which they
abandoned, was replaced by something not reshaped, but misshapen. Rejecting
the dogmas and formulas of the immemorial faith, they brought forth doubt and
formlessness to cloud men’s minds. The hundreds, nay, thousands of pretenders to
be the authentic Church of Christ are separate incarnations of a shared condem-
nation: a house divided against itself can not stand. The various protestant sects
can not stand: against the Catholic Church, to face the truth, or to endure the
teachings and company of their fellows in rebellion.
Nigh on a half of a millennium has transpired since Luther’s revolt. Mother
Church has continued to stave off the attacks from without: error in doctrine,
secularism, indifferentism, materialism, and persecution. This last half century,
however, has exposed a longer process in which she seems to be succumbing to
destruction from within.
Pope St. Pius x gave definition to the most pernicious of these perils by his
condemnation of modernism in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane.
This was perhaps the high point, certainly the crystallization, of a succession of
papal rebukes of encroaching errors within the Church dating back to the eigh-
teenth century. St. Pius endeavored to make a definitive end to the modernist
complex of heresies by imposing the Oath Against Modernism on all holding any
teaching or pastoral positions within the Church.
Pope Leo xiii attempted, as had Pope Pius ix, to shield the Church from the
ill-disguised malice of various nation-states. The mid-to-late nineteenth century
until the early twentieth century was a period of “cold war” between the Church
and secular governments. No quarter was asked, or given, as the Church refused
the overtures of various secular powers to cooperate in the expanding hegemony
of earthly rule denying reference to divine sovereignty.
Pope Leo also delineated a Catholic vision of society where material sufficien-
cy is not an end in itself, but a means toward eternal beatitude. Through the still
untried principles of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo gave the world an
alternative to a warped communist mercy that would offer justice to the poor by
impoverishing all; and a twisted capitalist liberty offering all an equal opportunity
to defraud, oppress, and exploit their neighbors—or themselves to be so abused.
Rerum Novarum presented a Catholic via tertia that allows communal security
and personal sufficiency, i.e., a commonweal securely founded on the creativity,
initiative, and sanctity of men seeking God’s will.
An Epilogue to Belloc's "Europe and The Faith" 85
Here, at the threshold of the twenty-first century, only the blind, self-delud-
ed, or pitifully ignorant fail to see how the efforts of Pius ix, Leo xiii, and Pius x
are being unraveled. The modernist demand for the magisterium to have an open
mind regarding error has resulted in the faithful being subjected to an open sewer
of heresy, immorality, and apostasy. Cold war between God’s sovereign on earth,
the pope, and the princes of the world (all too often in league with the prince
of the world, satan), has given way to a détente in which the Holy See appeases
demands for the Church to acquiesce in the passage of immoral laws, covert per-
secution of the faithful, and the outright denial of a place for God and His rule
in the world. The few who dared dream that a just society might be effected by
men of the true faith, now share in the common nightmare of wealth absurdly
mal-distributed, greed vaunted as virtue, and poverty misunderstood as synony-
mous with impoverishment.
Indeed, the three elements of the dynamic that led to the defection of Britain,
and, thus, the entrenchment of protestant error, undue wealth, unreined skeptical
speculation, and untrammeled secular power; are now fully visible and at work
in Rome and throughout the Church. So dire are the current circumstances that
Catholics, lay and clergy, are angered at authentic doctrine and insistent on em-
bracing protestant untruth. If Britain’s defection made possible protestantism’s
grip on modernity, what will come to pass should the forces that brought about
Britain’s apostasy be allowed to run their course within Rome?
St. Matthew 16:16–18 is solace to all. There is no cause for fear; what is need-
ed is trust. Christ our Lord has promised that Peter shall stand, that his Bride is
inviolable, that hell is utterly defeated.
The question for each and all also comes from the mouth of Our Lord: “Will
you leave me as well?” (St. John 6:68). Many—the eastern schismatics, protestants,
Mohammedans, Jews, the worldly—have turned their backs on Jesus, on salva-
tion. There is but one legitimate response to Christ’s question—Peter’s: “Lord, to
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!” (St. John 6:69–72).
That word has its fullness only within Catholicism. Problems within the
Church have no solution outside of the Church. Her enemies, within or without,
are vanquished only by the deposit of the indefectible faith found only within the
unchanging Church. Members of the body might be cut off, but the body united
with its head shall ever perdure in truth.
Certitude of Christ and the Church’s final victory notwithstanding, integrity
requires an honest appraisal of where we stand vis a vis the historic forces con-
spiring against orthodoxy. Britain’s defection was unprecedented, thus, few might
have foreseen it, understood the gravity of its occurrence, or found adequate voice
to convince their fellows of the peril. Five centuries subsequent, Britain’s failure
offers the Church an invaluable lesson in the nature of this dynamic, how it pro-
ceeds, and where hope of staving off a second, far worse, disaster lies.
A hardly exhaustive list of the error current in minds within the Church
would include men such as Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, all of whom have a con-
tinuing, profound affect on modern(ist) thought. To that list should be added
Darwin, Freud, and Marx, whose mistaken notions or the mistakes of whose
followers have caused untold misery to mankind. More recently the likes of Teil-
hard, Rahner, and Bugnini have more directly protestantized Catholic morality,
thinking, and worship.
Academic freedom is a bizarre principle by which the Catholic academy is ad-
monished to admit thinkers demonstrably in error and frequently explicitly at war
with the Church. The filth in the electronic media, the abandonment of the In-
dex, and the refusal of proper authority to condemn heterodoxy are an outgrowth
of four centuries of licentious philosophical speculation, laxity in devotional life,
and desire for popular, rather than divine, approval. Led by the community of the
intelligentsia—rather than seeking the Communion of Saints—clergy and laity
have ceased to think in Catholic categories and, instead, have made gods of their
bellies, their loins, or their egos.
Error as such is not the motivation in these men and their followers, willing
or unwitting as they may be. Man must have reason or go mad. Modernism pro-
vides a matrix, somewhat internally consistent, that allows sufficient rational justifica-
tion for aberrant behavior, the true goal of this enterprise.
These people do not intend to think badly, they insist on doing bad. It is not
their minds that are deceived, but their wills that have been darkened by the will-
ful abandonment of the faith. It is faith alone that illuminates the heart so as to
ensure the mind follows the right direction; refusing the faith, these men fall into
the clutches of sin, and seek not to be justified sinners through repentance, but to
justify their obstinacy in sin.
Homosexuality, contraception, divorce, self abuse, abortion, cohabitation,
and fornication (among adults and children) are the manifestations of conscienc-
es formed by persistent sinners. Modernism is the system by which sinners make
sense of disordered lives. It attempts to give rational form to the chaos of sensu-
alism. If this list seems heavily weighted toward sins of the flesh, it is not because
such appeals to the minds of those decrying error, but because such sins are the
masters of those who propound error. It is a (mill)stone’s throw from the abom-
inations and depravities approved at present in the world, and the eventual de-
mand that all license be allowed.
Already there are calls to permit the violation of children, the use of ani-
mals for carnal purposes, and “marriages” between three or more parties. The
unthought capable of enshrining in law the absurdity of “no-fault” divorce, the
perversity of homosexual unions, and the unspeakably evil act of abortion, is in-
capable of forbidding any sin of whatever magnitude on any grounds. Make no
mistake: the desire of the propagators of errors is not to mislead the gullible into a
false estimation of sanctity and the telos of the human being; they desire only that
none forbid them whatever earthly appetite in which their lust, gluttony, hatred,
apathy, impiety, avarice or pride wishes to indulge at any given moment.
Not unrelated to the phenomenon of error-rationalized immorality is the
astonishing wealth of the Church. Since the Second World War the Church has
become a middle-class entity. Though surely the Third World has seen the ma-
jority of the numerical growth for the Church, it has been the Western industrial
(now technological) world that has had an inordinate influence on the thought,
morality, and rituals of the universal Church. “Liberation” theology is imported
from Europe into Latin America. “Gay rights” is not an issue indigenous to Af-
rica. The outlawed Church in China is not agonizing over women’s ordinations.
Much of what passes for theological controversy among the disaffected in
the Church is predicated on the leisure necessary to invent problems. Agrarian
societies dependent on human labor will not look kindly on the sterility born of
homosexuality, contraception, and easy divorce. Those who brave bullets in the
Sudan to celebrate Mass will not be terribly concerned about “inclusive” language.
Interestingly, the so-called vocations “crisis” has been markedly less felt in areas
of the world where opportunities for self-indulgent material excess do not exist.
It is the hallmark of the wealthy to attend more to luxuries than to basics.
Americans are more concerned with the price of gas than about the fact that
corporations are systematically monopolizing the food supply-and-distribution
mechanism of the economy. The French expend more energy resisting the
encroachments of English on their language than on teaching the classical
literature of Latin which gave birth to their language. Western middle-class
Catholics are equally apathetic about attending Sunday Mass, believing in tran-
substantiation, and electing legislators who sanction millions of child murders
each year. Modernism dissolves the traditional standard by which priorities can
be ordered. Material wealth establishes the most forceful appetite as the new
standard for setting priorities.
Wealthy, middle-class Catholics the world over, far the most influential force
in the Church, have a negligible appetite for sanctity. Attaining Heaven and
avoiding hell are not among their hungers. What moves the materially endowed
is the acquisition of more material wealth and the (vain) pursuit of happiness
thereby. The poor merely want enough; the rich want to have it all.
This body of souls within the Church sees her teachings not as a means to
their desires, but as obstacles thereto. These people have amassed their wealth by
removing obstacles to their desired ends. Part of the dynamic by which they live
comfortably is to define an obstacle to their desires as being a personal enemy.
Holy Mother Church is in the eyes of many of her children an enemy, even the
enemy. It is morally licit to go to war against a mortal enemy, thus destroying him;
ergo, it is a moral good in the eyes of the wealthy, modernist Catholic to attack
and destroy the Church as she is—and to refashion it as a means conducive to
materialist and modernist ends.
When one is at war, one seeks allies. An ever ready and willing adversary of
Holy Mother Church is the world. Satan is the prince of the world. By enlisting
the aid of the world against the Church, some of her children have leagued them-
selves with the devil. In fact, in this is seen that the ancient struggle of the Church
against the world is part and parcel of the war between Heaven and hell, of the
absolute denial of satan’s temptations by Christ the Lord. (“For our struggle is
not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the powers and principalities,
against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of
evil…”—Ephesians 6:12.) The Church must utterly reject the world. In doing
so, she not only lights the way to Christ, preserving and proclaiming truth to the
nations, but she shares in Christ’s triumph over satan.
Nonsensical constructions such as “separation of Church and state” are a
lamentable indication that not all of the children of the Church would fight
for her. The astounding and shameful silence of the faithful on the matter of
abortion is de facto submission to the tyranny of sin. State usurpation of parents’
roles by way of the policies that govern public education is an open attack by
Caesar against the things of God.
All of this would be an unimaginable terror if imposed by an alien, military
power. The shock and scandal inherent in how the Church now interacts with the
world is that the ubiquitous confiscation of the Catholic patrimony by the state is
largely unresisted. Most of this phenomenon occurs in nations that fancy them-
selves democratic, representative, popularly elected, and/or republican. Catholics
suffer the distortion of their faith not only willingly, but joyfully. In many instanc-
es Catholics lead the way—e.g., in the United States Congress—voting to kill
babies, licensing indecency, oppressing Catholic schools.
“You can’t fight city hall” is an American truism. Alongside of this is heard,
“You can’t legislate morality.” In the same breath often is declared, “You can’t im-
pose your religion on others.”
This mentality (can’t-can’t-can’t) means that the populace are not citizens, but
slaves. Human interaction is not a concourse of equals sharing justice, but a mob
restrained by force and fear of force. Jesus Christ is not God but a liar in exhort-
ing His Apostles to “teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!” (St. Matthew 28:19) Such are the direct
results of immersion in error, materialism, and deifying temporal powers. Such is
not of God; it is unmistakably, undeniably, unremittingly of the devil.
There is a cogent argument that the South had constitutional grounds for
its secession. Some would argue that the sovereign majesty of England could
take the realm out of the Church just as lawfully as Clovis brought all of Gaul
into the Church. Both of these principles rely on the notion that what a man
has done a man can undo.
Nothing of the kind applies to divine truth. The Church herself, parish-
ioners, priests, and popes alike, can no more deny eternal truths in doctrine,
morals, or worship than a man can change the fact of the father who con-
ceived him and the mother who bore him. The Church is not an institution
of human origin. The Church is the Body of Christ begotten of water and
the Holy Spirit (“…born, not of blood or the will of the flesh or the will
of man, but of God”— St. John 1:13). No power exists to alter who she is,
to change her nature, to rescind the divine mandate to preach nothing but
Christ and Him crucified.
Belloc did not live to see the defection of Britain become the motive force
of Catholics around the world. He did, however, foresee the implications of
error wherever it might lie. At present Catholics seem loath to apply to the
Church the honest analysis Belloc applied to history. None knew in the six-
teenth century where the road to disaster on which Europe embarked would
lead. None now can pretend not to know what lies in wait for those who con-
tinue to tread that road. As Belloc predicted, “Europe [indeed, all the earth]
will return to the faith or…perish.”
Thou art Peter, and on this rock I shall build my church, and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it! (St. Matthew 16:18)
Without the gates of the city are dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers
and idolaters and every one that makes and loves lies. (Apoc. 22:15)
Blessed are they that wash their robes in the Blood of the Lamb: that they may
have a right to the tree of life and may enter in by the gates into the city! (Apoc. 22:14)
Father Lawrence C. Smith

13 March 2002
(visiting) St. Joseph Rectory

Pilot Grove, Missouri
91
Re-establishing Christendom I:
In the Faithful Heart
15 August 2005: The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Deo gratias! Alleluia! Jubilate Deo, omnis terra! This day made by the Lord is
one of great rejoicing. Our Lady, the Queen of Heaven and earth, the Mother of
God, the Blessed Virgin Mary is come into the fullness of glory. God our Father,
Jesus Christ our Savior, and the Holy Ghost our Life now welcome home the
Daughter of Sion, the Font of Grace, the Spouse of Love. We are pleased by divine
indulgence to be on hand to join in this Feast of victory by humility over pride,
Our radiant Mother’s triumphant Assumption into heaven!
Let us contemplate and celebrate this wondrous truth through the lens of
Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, the Heart of a faithful Daughter, the Heart of a
generous Mother, the Heart of a devoted Wife. Today is the Feast of the Holy
Family reunion, in which the Father is pleased to acknowledge his truest Daugh-
ter, wherein the Son is delighted to reward his devoted Mother, and through
which the Holy Ghost exalts his beloved Bride. And, too, it is the satisfaction
of the profound desire of the Handmaid of the Lord to embrace once more and
forever her chaste companion on earth, St. Joseph, and to renew and to receive
the perfection of the bond she has known since her very conception with her di-
vine Son. Her loyal subjects, the Angels and Archangels, Thrones and Powers and
Virtues, Dominions and Principalities, all the Cherubim and Seraphim, thun-
derously praise God with unimaginable Hosannas! for the incredible gift He has
given them of their majestic Queen. The Saints of the Church Triumphant give
her thanks for bestowing on them the bounty of graces flowing from the Cross of
Christ; the Poor Souls of the Church Suffering in Purgatory look on with longing
as she stands before the Throne as the promise of Mercy pledged and fulfilled
to those who rush to stand by her at the foot of the Cross of Christ; and we her
children in the Church Militant on earth kneel in humble awe at the realization
of the tremendous spectacle of her beautiful foot crushing the head of satan by the
power of the victory won beneath the Cross of Christ.
Deo gratias! Alleluia! Jubilate Deo, omnis terra! our Father’s house’s many man-
sions are now adorned with the glory of the Lady who is their Mistress. Our
Savior, who has prepared a place for each of His elect, bestows upon His most
steadfast, most deserving, most blessed disciple pride of place as being the very
dwelling of Him whom the heavens can not contain. The Holy Ghost receives her
who received His fullness of grace, He accepts for eternity the body and soul of
her who accepted the sweet yoke of bearing the Body-Blood-Soul-and-Divinity of
Life Himself, and he hearkens to the prayers of her who served as man’s advocate
on His behalf in moving heaven’s King to serve His subjects the miraculous wine
that served as the sign of the blood which serves to transform sinners into Saints.
Where Mary goes, all her faithful children hope to follow. She believed and
so conceived her Lord within her spotless womb. She trusted and did not despair
at the humiliation of Calvary. She loves and thus reigns with the Triune Love who
made the heavens and the earth. We must believe as we approach the sublime
Presence who desires to fill us through our communion with Him. We must trust
as we take up each day the crosses imposed upon us by the world, the flesh, and
the devil, so that we may participate in the victory of Him who humbled death,
conquered sin, and cast out the prince of this world. We must love our neighbor
and our enemy for the sake of God alone if we are to be made perfect as our Father
is perfect, holy as He is holy, divine by grace as He is divine by nature.
Deo gratias! Alleluia! Jubilate Deo, omnis terra! On this great festive day we
share in the exaltation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The separation she felt when
St. Joseph died in the blessed presence of his mother and his Savior is now healed.
The sorrow she endured when she stood as witness to the immolation of her Son
on the cross is transformed into glory as she beholds Him reigning from His eter-
nal throne. Having served the divine omnipotence of God the Father throughout
Re-establishing Christendom I: In The Faithful Heart 93
her life on earth, willing only what He wills, asking only that which pleases Him,
doing nothing but what gives Him glory and brings salvation to the world, Our
Lady now reigns with Him wielding His omnipotence through the power of her
perfectly efficacious prayer.
We benefit in unimaginable ways from the divine favor showered on the
Queen of Heaven and earth. St. Joseph prays that we receive the benefit of the
holy death which God granted him in the presence of Jesus and Mary. Our Lord
daily renews His immolation on Calvary through His immolation in the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass, so that we are privileged to stand beneath the true cross in
faithful witness beside Our Mother. Our Father in Heaven refuses nothing to us
when we beg His grace through the intercession of Mary, in whom the fullness of
God’s grace is pleased to dwell. All the good that Heaven has to give is given to
Mary, for she has embraced Jesus Christ in His fullness, Body-Blood-Soul-and-
Divinity. All the good that earth can think to ask for is given through Mary, for
she is the gate through which passes God Incarnate, Jesus Christ.
In this Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we see the
union of the perfection of Heaven and the perfection of earth. God in His
perfection is united with His perfect creature. He who wills that the whole
of the human heart, the whole of the human soul, the whole of the human
mind, and the whole of human strength be given Him in love by each of the
persons who desires to be called His child, receives in Heaven as He did on
earth the unsullied will of the Mother of God, the brilliant sanctity of the
lowly Handmaid of the Lord, the pure contemplation of the Seat of Wisdom,
and the stainless desire of the Immaculate Conception. Our beloved Lady is
set before us as the sign of the perfection of what we are to be in Christ, and
as the beacon of hope that the promises of God indeed reach perfection in
His creatures. Generous with the generosity of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary
desires for us the beatitude begun in her on earth and brought to perfection
on this glorious day in Heaven.
If we are to succeed in obeying the will of God and receiving the reward
whose fullness is given to the Mother of God, then we must do as she has done.
Love that shuns the world with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole mind,
and the whole strength, must be given instead to God the Father in obedience, to
God the Son in humility, and to God the Holy Ghost with all the piety possible
in the whole of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength reflecting the very love of
God Himself. Nothing may be left out of the offer of ourselves which we make
to God, for He has offered all of himself without exception for our sake. Divine
justice finds its perfection in the human soul willing to give as God gives, wholly,
humbly, and sacrificially.
This sublime call was answered and fulfilled by Our Lady as she served as
the heart of the Holy Family at Nazareth. She persevered in faith by exposing her
Mother’s Heart to the seven swords of sorrow prophesied to her by St. Simeon, in
which she was wounded with the sufferings of Christ as only a mother can experi-
ence. Her Heart now lies open to us so that, by her prayers, our hearts’ desire to be
at peace with Our Lord can be made known through our faith in Christ crucified,
our hope in the resurrection in which He has proceeded us, and our love by which
the glory of Christ in Heaven is shared even now on earth.
How might we accomplish our Father’s will in imitation of our Mother? Sev-
en words will suffice to describe the labor that lies before us: Go home. Slow down.
Be quiet. Now!
Lest any be foolish enough to succumb to the temptation of interpreting
those directions to mean that Mass is over, please keep in mind that Mass is where
the faithful are most at home. It is in the Mass that time not only slows, but stops
entirely so that eternity may enter into us and we may enter into eternity. In the
Mass we experience the silence that will suffuse Heaven just before the sound of
the last trumpet heralding the Judgment on the world which leads to the final
triumph of the Kingdom of God. Even now we are blessed and privileged to be
on hand for this exquisite reality, the ultimate reality where the world is entirely
thrust aside and only God and that which gives Him glory is present.
Such is to be the desire of the whole of our lives: to do nothing but give God
glory and to be sanctified by His merciful grace. We are meant to leave the hostile
world behind us after we have entered through the waters of Baptism into the
sanctuary of the Church. As Jesus came unto his own and His own knew Him
not, we understand that we, too, are exiles among those who will not welcome us.
We have here no abiding place, but Jesus has gone before us to prepare a place for
us in His Father’s house. That house is the Church, and the Church is our home
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Thus, on earth, we must ever be endeavoring to Go home! The houses
where we live with our families are but temporary dwellings to shelter us as we
endeavor to spend as much time as possible in our true home, the House of
God. Everything about our lives in the secular society is to be directed toward
the ideal of sustaining our lives of prayer, our striving for sanctity, our journey
to Heaven. We eat in order to preserve these mortal bodies long enough for
them to benefit from receiving the immortal Body of Christ. We maintain our
houses so that we can share love with our brothers whom we can see, the love
commanded by the God we can not see in our houses on earth, but whom we
hope to see in His House in Heaven. We dress modestly at all times in order
to preserve and express the blazing purity given us at Baptism and with which
we wish to be clothed in the glory of Heaven.
Our Lady dwells in Heaven for eternity in the presence of Him with whom
she dwelt during her time on earth. Jesus Christ was at the center of the home
of the Holy Family in Nazareth. He is meant to be at the center of the homes
we have established around us. First and foremost in making this happen is the
necessity of spending time with Jesus in His Eucharistic presence. Our home life
should be centered around the time we spend in keeping holy the Lord’s Day
before, during, and after Mass. Our home life should be structured in such a way
as to make it possible to visit Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament during the week
on a regular basis. Our home life should be so wedded to loving Our Lord present
in the tabernacle that visitors to our homes will experience there a fundamental
difference from the houses of unbelievers or of those weak in faith, because of the
constant prayer taking place in our homes. Our houses are to bear a profound
resemblance to the house of prayer which is the church building.
One of the most noticeable attributes of a church building where Our Lord
is reserved in the Blessed Sacrament and given due honor by the faithful, is the si-
lence that pervades the building. A house of prayer is to be a house of silence. The
real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament demands a real quiet in the hearts
of the people who come to adore Him, and a real quiet in the physical building
where their worship takes place.
The quiet in the hearts of the faithful who come to adore the Lord must be
fostered in a sense of quiet within their own homes. Those homes must allow for
frequent reminders of the presence of Our Lord within the hearts of his faithful
disciples. This is accomplished by fathers and mothers establishing a pattern of
prayer in their family life. Days should begin with prayer: the morning offering,
acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and appeals to Guardian Angels. Each meal
should be preceded and followed by prayers of thanksgiving. The Angelus at least
once a day is the quintessentially Catholic means of reminding us of the truth of
the Incarnation of Christ. No family will ever be holy without reflecting on the
life of Christ through the eyes of His Mother by faithful and fervent recitation of
the Rosary every day. Before goodnight kisses are given and received, there should
be prayers and blessings, an examination of conscience and act of contrition, and
a commendation to Our Lord of all that the day brought and of the soul about to
endure death’s symbol in sleep.
The Cross of Calvary is at the very heart of everything that it means to be
Catholic. The Mass is the means by which the Cross of Calvary is made present
now. Reception of the Holy Eucharist is the consummation of our act of faith
in the power of Christ crucified to forgive and destroy sin in us, to save us from
everlasting death, and to bestow upon us eternal life.
Catholic families, then, must place the Cross of Calvary at the very heart of
everything they endeavor on earth. Daily and Sunday Mass are the structuring
principle of the rhythm of life in a Catholic home. Preparation for the reception
of Holy Communion for the Catholic family is a matter of ongoing prayer, fre-
quent and thorough Confession, and time spent in adoration before the Blessed
Sacrament in the tabernacle. Fathers, as the head of Catholic families, must ex-
amine every aspect of their domestic life in light of the question, “How does this
activity, purchase, conversation, book, or friendship flow from, and lead to, the
perfection in this family of the merits of grace won for us by Christ on the cross
and experienced so perfectly by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?” Mothers as the heart of
Catholic families must nurture the peace of their homes in light of the question,
“How does this activity, purchase, conversation, book, or friendship lend itself to
the expression of the sacrificial love given by Christ on the cross and shared so
perfectly between Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?”
When a family is resolved to live in such a way, there will be a balance in
their home wherein peals of laughter will happily reside next to a tangible silence
bespeaking peace in the hearts of each member of the family yearning to be shared
with all the members of the family. Families intent on imitating the sanctity of the
Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, will cultivate frequent periods of silence
wherein they can listen to the will of God the Father whispering in their hearts,
they can hear the assurances of God the Son urging them to trust Him as they
obey the Father, and they can pay heed to God the Holy Ghost speaking on their
behalf the prayers to the Father which words are powerless to express, but which
find their ultimate articulation in the silence of the divine. That silence will in
turn bear fruit in family relationships where each person is desirous to hear the
needs of all in the family, and each person is willing to sacrifice his own comforts
in order to offer selfless love to the flesh and blood relatives made yet closer to
him by the Faith, Hope, and Charity binding them together in the larger family
of the house of God.
Accomplishing these ideals requires a commitment manifested by Jesus Him-
self in the words, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”
This business has nothing to do with the busy-ness criticized by St. Paul as being
the work of busybodies. No, it is the business of laboring for Food of which the
world knows nothing. It is the business of storing up treasure in Heaven free from
the assaults of time, moths, and rust. It is the business of attending to the better
part, seeking the one needful thing, and resting confidently in the knowledge thus
had that it can never be taken away. Our Lady evidenced this toil when she pon-
dered within her heart the mysteries revealed to her at her Son’s Birth, in finding
Him in His Father’s house about His Father’s business, and standing with Him
unafraid as they together battled satan and won the victory of Calvary.
Quiet can not come to a heart ignorant of prayer and distracted by unneces-
sary and frivolous diversions. Quiet can not come to a home where anxiety about
the things of this passing world erodes trust in the King of the world that will
never end. Quiet can not come to a family if the father and mother do not heed
the example of the simple and humble work of St. Joseph, the piety radiating from
the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the zeal for His Father’s house which Jesus brought
to the home at Nazareth. All given to the glory of God means that nothing can
be accepted which would detract attention from that highest good. Souls wedded
to serving this proper end of holy religion will not allow within their hearts, their
homes, or their loved ones any desire that breeds frenzied dissatisfaction or any
people who disrupt the pursuit of sanctity or any thing that can not be used for
the greater glory of God.
Thus, if as Our Lord teaches even eyes, hands, and feet should be abandoned
if they impede progress toward Heaven, how much more so should the internet,
movies, immodest clothing, television and radio, adversarial athletics, oppressive
employment, and impious persons be removed from family life. Eyes, hands, and
feet are gifts from God. Modern media and entertainment are very windows on
hell, piping the sewage of perdition into the hearts and minds of their victims.
Avaricious commerce and Godless government destroy family stability and erect
false gods that blind the intellect, bind the will, and enslave mankind to depraved
passions. Games have ceased to be sources of enjoyment and have become instead
gladiatorial combats waged by children to enflame pride in their hearts, encour-
aged by parents seeking self-fulfillment through the degradation of their children’s
innocence, and transformed into multibillion-dollar corporations fueling hatred,

violence, and disregard for the duties owed the home, the dignity of the human
person, and the worship of God at Sunday Mass and Holy Days. An absurd tol-
erance warps social mores so that families who school their children in the home
are held in suspicion, but the highest respect and the highest offices are given to
fiends who butcher children in the womb, who attack the principles given in the
natural law and taught by Holy Mother Church, and who blaspheme our Blessed
Mother, the Saints of Heaven, and God Himself. Families who would be holy
must eliminate all such from their midst, they must denounce it to whomever
defends depravity, and they must be willing to suffer at the hands of the faithless
whatever crosses come their way because of the faith in the Cross of Christ man-
ifested in the sanctity of their homes.
Our Lady assumed into Heaven is the triumph of the heroism of humili-
ty. She counted herself and the world as nothing in her pursuit of the will of
God. The Blessed Virgin delighted in nothing except contemplating her Lord
in prayer, serving her Lord in sacrifice, and loving her Lord with all her heart,
with all her soul, with all her mind, and with all her strength. Far from needing
to gouge out an eye or chop off a hand or dismember a foot, Mary Immaculate
beholds the Beatific Vision in all of its splendor, she sings the glory of her Savior,
she is the sweetest fragrance of human love desired by God, she reigns from the
throne nearest her divine Son, she magnifies the Lord with every fiber of her
being. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on earth is certain for she
has ascended on high where her will for our salvation is at one with the will of
God to bring souls to Heaven.
Let us now, today and every day, renew the consecration of our hearts to the
protection and guidance of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. Let us dedicate our
families and our homes to the mission of sanctity given its finest expression in the
home of Nazareth where the Immaculate Heart of Mary beat in perfect tandem
with the Sacred Heart of the Son of God, her own Son. And let us seek the peace
which this world can not give by dwelling ever in our homes in keeping with the
silence, the prayer, and the tranquility of our Father’s House, where He has pre-
pared a place for us forever in Heaven.
Father Smith
Holy Family House, Silver Cliff, Wisconsin

99
Re-establishing Christendom II:

In the Homes of Holy Families
Introductory Apologies
You must accept your cross; if you bear it courageously, it will bear you to heaven! –
St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Jacob is sorry. It is his fault that this is before you. Many months ago Jacob
asked me to put together suggestions for activities suitable for family recreation.
The fact that this mound of words awaits your wading through it is a result of my
honoring his request. Once more is demonstrated the prudence of careful consid-
eration of one’s desires lest they be granted.
Jacob is sorry. As noted just above, he asked me for this many months ago. I
thought I had responded within days of his petition. Jacob insists that I merely
showered on him a lofty excursus on the nature of engaging home life in a healthy
fashion. He is sorry to have had to exercise so much patience, only to have the
present far-longer treatise delivered as a consequence of relying on me for guid-
ance. It is also lamentable that my poor memory, which failed to satisfy his need
in a more timely manner, did not succeed in preserving him from the infliction of
this very involved solution to his simple problem.
Jacob is sorry. Now that the months have gone by, the ink is spilled, and my
work in this regard is complete, he has the dreary duty of doing something with,
about, and in spite of it all. Some of the readers, innocent of any responsibili-
ty for the production of this compendium, are perhaps familiar with the story
of the woman whose home harbored a mouse. To rid her house of the mouse,
she procured a cat. To rid herself of the mangy, noisy cat, she obtained a dog.
To rid herself of the flea-ridden, ill-tempered dog, she took in a wolf. To rid her-
self of the ravenous, unmanageable wolf, she unleashed a lion. To rid herself of
the man-eating, petunia-disturbing lion, she engaged an elephant. To rid herself
of the unwieldy, home-wrecking elephant, she invited back the cute little mouse.
Jacob may decide that, after reading what lies ahead, this unfamiliar set of cures is
more trouble than the disease to which he has grown accustomed.
On the off chance that he and my other poor readers are willing to try any-
thing, including listening to me, to improve their efforts at obeying God, sancti-
fying the family, and thus contributing to a better society, I offer these thoughts
with my apologies. I do not pretend to have exhausted the subject. Although
theology is engaged herein, this is by no means a scholarly work. It is to be hoped
that the teachings of Holy Mother Church are not done violence by my effort,
yet none should attach any of her authority to what I confess is no more than a
collection of my opinions on how to apply her wisdom. And, of course, anything
unhelpful may be ignored, cast aside, ridiculed, held in contempt, and consigned
to the bottom of the birdcage without offense or notice being taken by the admit-
tedly fallible author of these contents.
My prayer is that Jacob will accept my apology to him for putting words in
his mouth regarding the apologies which served as prelude to this sorry excuse for
intelligent discourse. I beg that as a token of my contrition, he and his sweet wife,
Bethany, accept this feeble attempt at assistance in dedication to them and their
happily growing family. Please pray that the power of the Holy Ghost amend my
faults through enlightening the minds of my readers open to His grace. Beseech,
please, St. Joseph, the head of the Holy Family, to guard the homes of all Catho-
lics from the assaults of this fallen world. Seek the guidance of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, our Mother and the Heart of the Holy Family, as she crushes the head of
satan and brings back to the safety of her mantle the children who have wandered
from the example given so perfectly at Nazareth. And may our Lord Jesus Christ,
the joy, the purpose, and the creator of the Holy Family bring peace, salvation,
and eternal life to every Catholic family of the Church Militant, to the glory of
God the Father, now and forever. Amen.
Several years ago, I taught an introductory-level course in theology to under-

graduates at a Catholic college. The students were assigned, among many other
Re-Establishing Christendom II: In the Houses of Holy Families 101
things, to read Josef Pieper’s essay, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. It is my custom
whenever I teach at whatever level to complete the same assignments which I give
my students at the same time they are doing the work. This keeps me honest as a
teacher in ensuring that I continue to engage the subject matter, resist repeating
myself (from sloth as opposed to repetition mothering learning), avoid growing
stale, and preclude complaints from the students that they can not do my assign-
ments on top of all of their other pressing duties. I place myself in the same boat
with my students with the admonishment that the boat is the best place to be if
one does not want to have to choose between sinking and swimming. Of course,
as the final arbiter of the grades, I have my hand alone on the wheel. I do the work
that the students do, but the students are not permitted to do the work that I do.
I might be fair, but I am no fool. OK, I might be a fool, but I’m not crazy.
Anyway, the students having read Pieper were then obliged to write a sum-
mary of his thesis. I, too, wrote a summary. Below I reproduce in its entirety my
version of that assignment. It will serve as a theoretical foundation for the later
portions of this work, which will be far more concrete in nature. But, as every
good philosopher knows, form does not follow function, but matter follows form.
Logos precedes Fiat. Or, less philosophically and more clearly, read the instructions
before you assemble the bookcase…
A Succession of Not-So Random Thoughts on the Subject of Work and Leisure

It is unlikely that either G.K. Chesterton or Hilaire Belloc was familiar with
the writings of Josef Pieper. I am not sure, but I think it equally unlikely that
Pieper would have considered himself a distributist. All three, however, are in
utter agreement that the mercantile mindset of modernity is such that the human
person stands little chance of being respected or even preserved when in conflict
with the profit motive.
Both Belloc and Chesterton understood that there were practical difficulties
to be confronted when attempting to merge the economics of distributism with
the realities of men in disagreement on matters of faith. The philosophy of Pieper,
very much in keeping with Thomism, provides a basis for describing the desired
goals of economic man in the abstract. From such abstractions it can be hoped
that tangible results can be achieved.
Pieper relates in his essay, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, the imbalance between
the servile arts (the functional) and the liberal arts (the free) within modern West-
ern civilization. This is not an attempt to pit the human activities of sustaining life
and enriching life against one another. Quite to the contrary, Pieper is attempting
to illustrate how vital each sphere of human endeavor is to the fulfillment of the
whole human person.
“Servile” is not intended to devalue the worth of labor. What is meant is that
such activity is for the service of a greater good. Work is not to be an end in itself.
It is necessary for the human person to determine goals for existence and then to
establish the best practical means of reaching them. The servile arts contribute to
satisfying the demand for practical efforts to reach goals that transcend descrip-
tions of “practical” and “impractical”.
An old saying can demonstrate this point: “Man eats to live, he does not live
to eat.” It is fitting and proper for life that people seek food. It is a distortion of the
human condition when life becomes, on the one hand, an impoverished struggle
for minimal nutrition, or, on the other hand, the hedonistic consumption of del-
icacies costing far more than the worth of the nutritional value they provide. In
both dearth and wealth it is possible to warp a servile activity in such a way that
the good of the human person suffers.
Lacking a means of identifying what constitutes a life lived well, humanity
easily falls into the trap of making quotidian affairs the whole of human existence.
There needs to be some notion of the transcendent in the mores of society in order
for that society to be able to avoid sinking into animalistic savagery or Epicurean
decadence. In simpler terms, men are neither beasts seeking only food and re-
production, nor are they angels without need of the goods of the material world.
Pieper suggests that the rush of late-twentieth century Western civilization
toward work as sole good stems in large part from an inability to define and agree
upon transcendent reality. Modern philosophy has placed much less emphasis on
spiritual matters and is suspicious of claims that absolute knowledge is possible.
With this the case, empiricism has become the major means of verifying reality.
Work is eminently suited for quantification and, thus, increasingly has been ad-
vanced as the best measure of the quality of a human life.
This is in stark contrast to the classical view of human existence which
accepts that the material world is in communication with a discernible spiritual
order. Pieper sees leisure as the foundation of the human person’s ability to sus-
tain contact with an overarching raison d’etre. It is not possible for that which is
merely physical to meet the needs of that which is spiritual in nature, therefore,
it is necessary for human fulfillment that time be available to search out and
experience spiritual reality.
Leisure is more than rest and relaxation, although they contribute to its at-
tainment. The human at leisure is doing more than just getting the physical en-
ergy to do more work. He is setting about finding those things within himself,
within the human race, and within the whole world that will accomplish a fuller
understanding of his place in the universe.
The fruits of this search might be borne by the creation of art, the establish-
ment of political systems, or the simple interactions between persons. Liberal arts
are so called because they are free in their pursuit, in the means by which they are
perfected, and in the arenas where they can be brought to bear. The liberal arts
are not dependent upon some greater good for their justification, but are ends in
themselves—at least provisionally.
When a person is at leisure there is a sense of timelessness at work. The
benefits stemming from leisure are themselves outside of a temporal nature. A
poem, a piece of music, a mother rocking her baby, or the discussions within a
theology course are not predicated on how much time is needed to make them,
nor are they concerned with how long they will be functional. It is sufficient
that the endeavor is undertaken.
It is in leisure that the human person finds those things that make life
worth living, rather than those things by which someone makes his living.
When the age-old question is asked, “What is the meaning of life?” the best
responses come not from the world of work, but from the realm of leisure.
Life finds purpose not so much in what is produced as in the motivation that
makes production desirable.
The peril to modernity is the increasing willingness of men of all stripes—
professors, politicians, priests, and ordinary people—to reach the conclusion that
there is no ultimate purpose of life. There is a growing desire amongst men to
reduce the description of a good life to eating, drinking, and making merry. A life
lived well is almost the stuff of fantasy.
There is certainly an alternative to this nihilism, as both history in the concrete
and philosophy in the abstract can demonstrate, but whether or not that alterna-
tive is desired by the mass of men remains to be seen. At present quiet desperation
is all the rage. But if we decide not to be satisfied with unchanging change, if we
learn to appreciate leisure as more than fruitful boredom, we might just discover
that more and better awaits man. We might discover changeless truth, the eternal
God, and, God willing, man himself.
It is vital to understanding the human person that one engages the entire
breadth of man’s experience. Neither can one know man by merely looking at the
things he produces; nor can man know himself without recourse to productive
work, if for no other reason than that he will starve to death before learning any-
thing of worth. Productive work and creative leisure are differences that require
distinctions to avoid being turned into different forms of slavery. It is in their
being distinguished one from the other that they become essential means to man’s
fulfilling his purpose in life.
A means of contrasting work with leisure is in attempting to provide adequate
compensation for the products from the respective activities. Truck drivers can
calculate mileage, the price of gas, maintenance costs, and the amount of time on
the road in order to ask a fair living wage. This calculus means absolutely nothing
when applied to activities such as child rearing, listening to the problems of a
friend, or devoting a life to finding a cure for cancer. Work implies pay; leisure is
done because it should be done.
Where a society loses—or abandons—such an understanding of the inter-
relationship between work and leisure, two fundamental problems arise. First,
there is the very real danger that people will become bound to lives without rest.
Work as the sole or highest good becomes slavery in the end. People in salaried
positions in today’s service industry often complain that they are expected to put
in several times more hours at work than hourly employees, without the benefit
of overtime pay. This is understood to be a condition for advancement within the
business world. There also is a point, quickly reached, when pay is inadequate to
compensate for mandatory overtime. No amount of money can buy a life’s time.
What modern economists call either the work ethic proper to the managerial
class, or the “benefits package” of the laborer class, involves the use of coercion
to get work out of supposedly free men. Management staff who refuse to do the
extra work will be passed over for promotion. Wage earners can be fired for refus-
ing overtime. The full weight of the law allows this ubiquitous practice of forced
labor. Earlier in American history it went by a different name: slavery.
The second and more insidious evil that is visited upon a society incapable
or unwilling to properly value and balance work and leisure, is the deception
that certain kinds of frivolity are the same as healthy leisure. Television, gam-
bling, spectator sports, video games, and shopping are examples of how mod-
ern Americans spend their unscheduled time seeking leisure without gaining
perspective on their own lives. Asked to define leisure, people frequently will
respond with these sorts of activities. Asked to explain the motivations behind
their life choices, many if not most are reduced to saying, “It feels right,” or
“It’s just what I do,” or “I don’t know.”
Work is helpful because it provides the basis for seeking further good. Leisure
is meant to help the person seek the greatest good. Much of what passes for leisure
in modern society not only fails to assist a person in this search, it is completely
ignorant that such is even a valid question. Leisure that is incapable of leading
beyond the concerns of everyday life ultimately becomes merely an escape and a
waste of time.
Provisionally, leisure is seen as an end in itself. When leisure is pursued well,
there comes a realization that it, too, points beyond itself. What is lacking in the
values of modern Western civilization is an admission that something other than
man is the measure of man. The idea that God is dead is no longer reserved to the
nihilists, but has entered into debates on the U.S. Constitution, astronomy, and
biology. Leisure without a moral compass sinks back into mere work insofar as
there remains an inability to see outside the limits of the material world.
For leisure to work (ha, ha) it is necessary to orient its pursuit toward the
spiritual underpinnings that make leisure different from work. It is in the timeless,
priceless, spiritual quality of leisure that the distinction from work lies. Leisure
itself, then, must move in the direction of the eternal, boundless, and divine.
The person of God must become the ultimate object of the search for leisure.
One who would become free of the shackles of mortality, who is desirous of the
perfection of leisure, needs to wrestle with the foundational issue of faith. Where
faith exists, man has hope to be in communion with the source of the spiritual ba-
sis for leisure. Without faith, there is no spiritual reality to be engaged, hence no
spiritual rationale for leisure. At that point, only work, only mortality is available
as the end of human life.
Belloc did a fine job of describing the effort necessary to prevent the servile
state from imposing a genteel slavery on mankind. He failed, however, to convey
the importance of a point made by Chesterton in The Everlasting Man: “Even
those dry pendants who think that ethics depend on economics must admit that
economics depend on existence. And any number of normal doubts and day-
dreams are about existence; not about how we can live, but about why we do. And
the proof of it is simple—as simple as suicide.”
Distributism was rejected in the early twentieth century in part because of

Belloc’s theoretical lacuna about why man is to live, and in part because of Ches-
terton’s charming inability to be practical. But distributism still offers a tremen-
dous opportunity to wed work and leisure. Particularly in its agricultural aspects
it holds the promise of man finding in his daily activity a vitality, a sense of pur-
posefulness, and a freedom unimaginable to the wage slave.
It is the work done in the home and for the family that comes closest to
combining the material necessities of life on earth with the transcendent meaning
of life that is a gift from God. At home, through work, and in leisure, man can
discover the truth of Him who said, “In my Father’s House, there are many man-
sions,” and “My yoke is sweet, and my burden light.”
What follows is my response to a request to aid a family in finding good recre-

ational activities and doing them well. Leisure can not happen without reference
to labor. Labor must have leisure to provide it direction. All work and no play
make Jack a dull boy, true, but also true is the wisdom of St. Jean-Marie Baptiste
Vianney: Like the saints, let us be very zealous in fulfilling our duties; let the devil
never find us doing nothing, lest we should yield to temptation. What St. Jean said
about work, Do your work, not in order to grow rich or to win the approval of men,
but for God’s sake, has a real application to recreation as well.
Structure, Pacing, Scheduling: Martha and Mary

At the beginning of the day, I endeavor to unite myself closely with Jesus Christ,
and then I do the next thing, with the thought of this union in mind.—St. Jean-Marie
Baptiste Vianney
Boring is good. Boring is good, that is, when boring means predictability,
stability, and intentionality. Boring is good when one flies across the Atlantic on a
jet airplane. One does not wish to have his pilot over-stimulated by masked men,
low fuel, or sweet dreams. A boring roller coaster is something of an oxymoron,
but a boring home life should be something of a redundancy.
Every time the “Fasten Seat Belts” lights go on, everyone on board is relying
on the laws of physics remaining boring. That is, they want the predictable lift
that comes with acceleration and flaps in the right position. They want the stable
relationship between thrust and gravity. No one wants to hear the exclamation
“Oops!” from the cockpit, followed by nervous laughter. It is also desirable that
the rotation of the earth maintain its constancy so that England stays in place and
the flight does not unaccountably come to an end in the Alps.
Certainly it is true that the boring elements of jet travel provide excite-
ment for those unaccustomed to such marvels. Small children, poor people,
and homebodies have few opportunities to partake of the commonplaces
of the jet set. Thus, if they are given the chance to be hurled at dizzying
speeds, miles above the ground, surrounded by large people and canned air,
then they likely will experience something of a thrill. That being said, the
most jaded business frequent-flyer does not appreciate such sentiments in the
maintenance crew, the designing engineers, or air traffic controllers. Needless
to say, not many first-time travelers would be comforted at the thought that
the man at the wheel was so light-headed and fearful of heights as to require
Dramamine by the fistful.
Getting out of bed does not strike many people as the adventure of a life-
time. For those unfortunates plagued by such cynicism, an antidote to their
calloused sense of joie de vivre might be had in considering the concept of the
“heroic minute”. That is the instant of coming to consciousness after a restful
night’s sleep, resolving to begin the day, and leaping from bed. It is a fact that all
of the most invigorating and edifying experiences of all of human history have
occurred after the participants abandoned the reclined position. Outside of the
occurrence of mystic visions in a small number of Saints, all of the best examples
of God’s will for man’s salvation unfolded in the lives of people who bothered
to wake up in the morning.
No, no one sings “Alleluia!” at the prospect of brushing his teeth, true. But
no one can expect anything any more lively while remaining in a somnambu-
lant stupor in his jammies. Labor supports the life of leisure. Alertness makes
possible the life of labor. Before one may play, one must work. Before one can
work, one must wake.
Upon waking, many extraordinary delights can be had. There is the wonder
of the sunrise or the sweetness of an April rain. Birds might be singing or perhaps
the ocean waves lap the sands of the backyard. Some people have the perfect
spouse, that is, a wife or husband who rises yet earlier to put the coffee on. And,
joy of joys, there are teeth to brush! (If you doubt the intensity of this pleasure,
talk to someone who fishes his molars out of a glass every morning.)
Children offer Moms and Dads incentive to get up every day. Who knows
what amazing things the little ones will do on a given day, what insights they will
glean from the example of their parents, what needs being satisfied will confirm
Mom and Dad as heroes of the universe in the sight of those trusting eyes? Each
day is an opportunity for Moms and Dads to gather more proof for their families
and neighbors of the unparalleled perfection present in their progeny, of which
all the rest of mankind has been deprived until the very now. Ain’t life grand! And
what kind of life would it be without fluffing the pillows, smoothing the quilt,
and getting first dibs on the hot water in the shower?
There are, of course, unimaginative souls who are not convinced by this
description. These scenes depict not peace, security, and affection, but tedium,
paralysis, and imprisonment. For them, perhaps, it would be better that, rather
than a pleasant ascent to consciousness at 5:30am, the excitement of fire en-
gines at 1:30am jolted them to panicked attention. Instead of the refreshing
sound of water in the basin, they would prefer the silence beseeched by the
aftermath of that fifth martini. And there are sure to be wags who brag that
they get their best work done late at night, but other wags might point out
that such a time and such circumstances are not the best for being able to
recognize the color of one’s wife’s eyes or the sounds of one’s children’s voices
or the consequences of missed opportunities dying, not in the dead of night,
but at sunup, while the children play in the yard, and when the wife wants to
hear sweet nothings after dinner and before bed.
One might be spared the sound of fire engines at 1:30am if one does not
forget to turn off the oven left on after the midnight snack. Fifth martinis can
not cause hangovers when the nightcap is something one wears or is merely
the second glass of wine with dinner. And who but a vampire, a denizen of
the devil in hell, would wish to describe himself as a “night person”? Night is
when Judas betrayed Our Lord. Night is when the fiercest animals stalk their
victims. Night is what Grandma meant when she scolded, “Nothing good ever
happened after 9pm!”
The key to the good life, the life of goodness, the life lived well, is getting
off to a good start at the start of the day. To start the day well it is necessary to
get to bed at a decent hour. Bedtimes are not just for children. Moms and Dads
need them, too. If you ever wonder why children are so much cuter than adults,
remember that children usually get more rest than grownups. It’s not for nothing
that it is called beauty rest.
Bedtime is determined by the time that one must get up in the morning.
The time at which one must get up in the morning (translation for really per-
snickety grammarians: The time up at which one must get in the morning) is de-
termined by obeying the will of God. The will of God is that all of man’s life is
to be guided by prayer. The supreme prayer is the Mass. Thus, one rises in time
to prepare for Mass, one goes to bed at an hour that allows for sufficient rest to
be able to rise to prepare for Mass.
If daily Mass is seventy-nine miles away in another state and a December
blizzard raged overnight, then one must get to bed at 5:45pm the previous eve-
ning in order to be able to rise at 1:45am, make a morning offering with the
family, wash and dress the children, clear the driveway, and be on the road by
4:15am for the 7am Mass.
Okay, I admit, that’s the plan for the advanced, canonized Saint-track family.
For the rest of us for whom Purgatory is still too good—but we’ll take it!—one
endeavors to live in a community where daily Mass is more readily available.
Preparation for Mass includes a morning offering, Acts of Faith, Hope, and Char-
ity, and any of the many prayers composed to dispose the laity to a worthy partic-
ipation in the Sacrifice and reception of Holy Communion. Your fellow attendees
at Mass would also appreciate some basic hygiene beforehand.
So, for instance, if your daily Mass is at 7am, it is a good idea to have every-
one out of bed by about 5:30am. This should permit ample time for prayer first,
followed by hygienic necessities, followed by a quiet, prayerful trip (walk?!) to
Mass. Give or take an hour, depending on age and health, eight hours of sleep is
a typical amount. That means, then, getting to bed the night before by 9:30pm.
Small children need more sleep and should be in bed earlier.
After Mass, time should be given for a fervent thanksgiving. Most missals
have very good prayers for both preparation for and thanksgiving after Mass.
These can be prayed either individually or as a family. Please refrain, however,
from offering your family preparatory or thanksgiving prayers within the nave of
the church. Father promises when he visits your home not to preach in your living
room if you promise not to conduct the louder portions of your family life while
others attempt to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
In addition to one’s morning prayers and Mass, other prayers and devo-
tions should be spread throughout the day. The monks got it right. Life is one
long prayer, with brief interruptions allowed for work from time to time. One
works to support one’s prayer; one does not pray to improve one’s work, except
insofar as working better will help one to pray better. Each home, just like the
home at Nazareth given to poverty, chastity, and obedience, is meant to be a
small religious community. The rhythm of prayer in our homes guides all of
the other activities of our lives. Prayer gives form to the life lived in pursuit,
not of excitement, but of sanctity.
It is assumed by the author at this point that the Marthas and Marys in var-
ious families are now glaring at each other, ready to do battle about practicality
versus perfection. It is eminently practical to seek perfection. Perfection can not
be had without some practicality. So long as the practice involved is sanctity and
the perfection bears good fruit in the practice of an orderly life, there really is no
conflict here. Tension, to be sure, but no conflict.
Dom Prosper Guéranger in his stupendous magnum opus, The Liturgical
Year, tells of St. Francis de Sales instructing St. Jane Frances de Chantal to,
“Do all things without haste, gently, as do the Angels; follow the guidance of
the divine movements, and be supple to grace; God wills us to be like little
children.” I am frightfully unafraid to embellish the words of my betters. St.
Francis is telling St. Frances, in effect, to do nothing: do nothing hurriedly, do
nothing without introspection, do nothing other than what God wants, when
He wants, as He wants, because He wants. This is not a matter of fast or slow,
much or little, significant or unnoticed; this is all about absolute submission
to the will of God. Fool is he who thinks that such absolute submission is
reserved for Saints or vowed religious or priests only. Absolute submission to
God, with the love of one’s whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole
strength, is commanded for everyone with a rational soul united to a material
body. This means you!
Chores I: Prayers, Devotions, Eucharistic Piety

In the Sacraments, it is God Himself who comes to annihilate our enemy. The
devil, seeing Him in our hearts, throws himself despairingly into the bottomless pit;
which explains why he does all that he can to draw us away from them, or to make us
receive them badly.
– St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Jesus knew that His teachings would meet with opposition. He declared
that some would demand, “Physician, heal thyself!” The events of Easter Sunday
should have silenced the naysayers. Alas! cleansing lepers, casting out demons,
and raising the dead convinced none of the cold-hearted. They did not believe
when He raised someone from the dead, nor when He rose from the dead.
There are perhaps some who, upon reading thus far, would be tempted to de-
mand of me, “Father, have you ever changed a diaper?!” It has occurred to me that
a soul or two might consider my suggestions up to this point a bit pie-in-the-sky.
Anyone who has ever served me banana cream or blueberry knows that the sky
is no place that I wish my pie to be served. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
If God is capable of pardoning sins; triumphing over the world, the flesh,
and the devil; of being incarnate, suffering, dying, rising on the third day,
and re-presenting His Passion on Calvary every day in the Mass; of making
the likes of liars like St. Peter, murderers like St. Paul, wantons like St. Mary
Magdalene and St. Augustine of Hippo, innocents like St. Aloysius and St.
Thérèse the Little Flower, and unknowns like St. Philomena saints in glory,
then He is up to the task of waking us on time through the prayers of St.
Vitus, preserving our purity through the intercession of St. Thomas Aquinas,
warding off temptation by the protection of our Guardian Angels, teaching
us eternal truth through the proclamations of St. Pius x, and making us his
brothers through the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All things,
even my salvation, are possible with God. If we can put a man on the moon,
then we can put our trust in God.
Loving God with one’s whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole
strength is a full-time occupation. Other occupations that preoccupy daily
life must defer to this one needful thing, the better part, the business of
Heaven. Being about our Father’s business means spending time, lots of it, in
our Father’s house of prayer. The many mansions of His House are designed
to provide a place for the houses here on earth where we spend our time in
prayer yearning for the presence of our Father looking forward to an eternity
spent in that same presence. If all the drudgeries of the home, the daily grind
of the office, and the pressures of modern life seem to make it impossible
to attend to our true work, then we are to do all in our power to remove
those obstacles to cooperation with divine grace. If we are to find a place
prepared for us by Jesus in His Father’s House, then we must find time to
give pride of place to Him and His Father to make a home with us in our
houses on earth. Do not expect to enjoy eternity with someone with whom
you found spending a few minutes on earth distasteful, inconvenient, or not
worth the time and effort.
Slow down.
No, slow down more than that.
Even slower.
Time is not a renewable resource. There is no substitute for it. Every moment
given to something or someone other than God is irretrievably lost. Forever. Bet-
ter planning, a three-day weekend, and the best minds of science are impotent
before the impossibility of gaining back a second lost in the world, to sin, or by
inattention. Your glory in Heaven, if not entirely forfeited by infidelity on earth,
is diminished to whatever extent your whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and
whole strength do not seek the greater glory of God in all things. Just what part of
all don’t you understand?
Well, if you’re like me, the better part. Prayer does not come to us nat-
urally. Practicing the presence of God takes practice. It takes grace. We also
require the aid of the Holy Ghost who “helpeth our infirmity, for we know
not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself asketh for us
with unspeakable groanings.”
God is not a bully. God is a gentleman. If we do not wish to spend time
or eternity with him, we are free to go elsewhere. After life, the only where else
we can go than heaven is hell. This life on earth devoid of prayer will be a fore-
taste of hell. The newspapers bear this out. Our homes should not be a part of
the list that includes schools, government laws, and commercial establishments
where the name of Jesus, invocation of the Most Holy Trinity, due reverence
to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, and filial affection for Holy Mother
Church and the Holy Father the Pope are not welcome, rarely witnessed, and
seen as embarrassing superstitions.
The pace of the day is set by the prayer of the day. As one prays more, the
day slows more. As one prays less, the day goes faster. Fast-paced days accomplish
more for mammon. Slow-paced days build up treasure in the Kingdom of Heav-
en. What is accomplished for mammon bears absolutely no good fruit. Treasure
fit for Heaven does a world of good for those in the world but not of the world—
and it helps the world become less worldly.
Too oft we practical types are willing to sacrifice time spent in prayer in order
to meet the demands of mammon. Far rarer are those occasions when we will let
mammon go to the devil so that we can make a sacrifice of praise to Our Lord. Ev-
ery now and then it would be good to pause to consider what it means to assume
that mammon is less forgiving than God. Were this to be true, then we should be
loath to indenture ourselves to such a harsh taskmaster. If it is mistaken in some

respect, then we might wish to re-evaluate our attitude.
God is indeed more forgiving than mammon. He tolerates indifference, in-
attentiveness, and frailty, pardoning our sins of omission as readily as a mother
will kiss a skinned knee. Mammon, on the other hand, audits tardy tax returns,
docks wages of employees late for work, and fires tens of thousands of wage
slaves whenever the god “free market” demands. Mammon’s punishments are
as fleeting as an eight-hour day, more or less with overtime. Offending God,
though, trying His patience past its breaking point, results in penalties of a bit
lengthier nature. And being “fired” by God is a lot more painful then getting
fired by your boss.
Beset by the flesh, the world, and the devil, we sinners have very few places
where we can safely place our trust. Our senses betray us with desires that are
physically, as well as spiritually, destructive. The prevailing culture confuses us
into believing lies to be true, thereby convincing us that somehow good can come
from obeying the dictates of our appetites. Satan has his way with us whenever we
give into his temptations and choose to prefer pleasure to health and sanctity, lies
over truth, and infernal tyranny instead of heavenly freedom.
Let me say that a bit more simply. Original sin has rendered our bodies,
minds, and wills defective. We see things in distortion, we are numb to things that
should stimulate us, we feel desire to embrace things that should repulse us, we
pay heed to noise as if it were music, we cover our ears to the sweet sound of piety,
we demand bites from forbidden fruit, we are inured to the stench of death in the
Godless life we pursue. And on top of that, we justify, rationalize, and philoso-
phize ourselves into the conviction that if it feels good it is good; that genes have
more to say about choices than the common sense God gave to turnips; that a col-
lection of people enslaved to lethal desires are qualified to determine how best to
make the world a fit place for human beings to find happiness. But, wait! There’s
more! All the while our bodies twist reality into a mad dash for ever more physical
pleasure and our twisted minds argue against any suggestion that restraint of the
body is a noble and human goal, we insist that the ways of righteousness are unfair
and unfree, but that liberty is to be had in obeying the demands of a society built
around the motto, Non serviam!
Hmmm…Perhaps I am still a bit unclear. Let’s try it this way: Folks, stomachs
can’t think! Thinking requires more than merely parroting advertising slogans and
the cant out of political parties! And the devil does not like you, he does not want
your happiness, and anyone who does not look to God as the absolute ruler of the
universe wants what the devil wants, namely, to hate you and to see you unhappy!
Myopic eyes tell the brain that the world is fuzzy and that there is no car in
the next lane that you want to swerve into. The brain that accepts the data of my-
opic eyes assumes that you can safely swerve, and if you bump into anything, you
won’t be hurt by the fuzzy, soft objects all around you. People with wills untrained
to correct bad thinking based on erroneous data go ahead and swerve into the
SUV passing them on the right at eighty-five miles per hour.
People sitting at intersections might get rather impatient if the little old lady
at the head of the line doesn’t leap on the gas the instant that the light changes
from red to green. It might seem reasonable to the tattooed, hemp-smoking biker
babe to get really ticked off after three seconds have elapsed. Perhaps the pistol in
her pocket will wake Granny up.
Doing what comes naturally is a beautiful way to live a life, according to the
society fond of family planning, intact dilation and extraction, and euthanasia.
So, when Mr. Brown and Mrs. Jones exchange meaningful glances across the bar,
who (besides Mrs. Brown and Mr. Jones) can blame them for feeling that spark
that calls from the depths of each of their impassioned hearts through their soulful
eyes? None but a stone-hearted ogre would begrudge them the next four hours
spent in a rented room.
Ahem… Senses are not infallible. Even correct data are useless without proper
interpretation. Understanding what one senses accomplishes little where the use
of sensory and rational faculties do not lead to acting on a good decision. We en-
counter the world through our senses. Our minds sort through the information
gained thereby. The will is then engaged to persevere in doing that which is good
based on what is known to be true. Sometimes the mind must correct the senses.
Sometimes the will must override the passions. Sometimes the senses strengthen
the resolve of the will. Sometimes the mind revolts against a weak will. Sometimes
the will insists on pursuing a good beyond the capacity of the senses to perceive
or of the mind to comprehend.
He who does not see, does not know; he who does not know, does not love;
he who does not love God, loves himself, and at the same time loves his plea-
sures.—St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Just because you are hungry does not mean that you have to eat this very
instant. Just because you think someone insulted you does not mean that you
have to belt him one. Just because you are afraid to lose your job does not mean
that you need to miss Mass on the Feast of All Saints, even if the Department of
Maintaining Slavery, I mean, the unemployment insurance officials declare that
it is a just termination.
Prayer is how the senses are healed of the infirmities inherent in fallen flesh.
Prayer is how the intellect is enlightened to overcome the concupiscence of the
flesh and the ill effects of original sin. Prayer is how the will is emboldened to
resist lies, the passions, and assaults from the devil and his human minions. With-
out the help of God, we are victims of the world, the flesh, and the devil, by which
our senses, our sense, and our sensibility become the instruments of our own de-
struction. Prayer brings down the graces which repair what is damaged, resist that
which attacks, and impel the heart to do that which is best.
Even more and even better, prayer is how the human will overcomes temp-
tation, seeks the will of God, and becomes united with the divine will. Saints at
prayer learn to deny the wants of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Saints at
prayer learn to want the will of God. Saints at prayer learn to want with the will of
God. Such is the progress from the purgative to the illuminative into the unitive
stage of the spiritual life.
Prayer gives form to the material of life. It is the primary labor of the life lived
in consonance with the will of God. Prayer is the rest given to the good laborer.
Prayer fulfills and transcends the labor of this life and crowns with peace the desire
of the soul for holy rest. Prayer is the labor done by love. Prayer is the labor that
is done for the beloved. Prayer is the labor done alongside the beloved. Prayer as
union with the beloved is the desire of love.
And, of course, the supreme prayer, the perfect prayer is the Mass. It is in
the Mass that all which must be done is accomplished: God is glorified and
man is sanctified. Martha is happy to work very hard at a worthy labor for her
beloved, and Mary is happy to contemplate the fruits of this labor with her
beloved. Martha and Mary agree that we are not to do nothing but prayer, but
that we are to do nothing without prayer. Yet, love finds that the more one
prays, the more one wants to pray. The more one prays, the less one wants to
do anything other than pray. Eventually the lover of prayer, the lover at prayer,
will seek to remove everything in life that is an obstacle to prayer, a distraction
from prayer, or forbidden by prayer.
Families in love with prayer, who share their love through prayer, who love
to pray together, will set aside ample time to pray their daily Rosary, to attend
daily Mass, to pray the Stations of the Cross (they’re not just for Lent anymore!),
to visit the Blessed Sacrament and make a holy hour as a family, to be on hand
for the parish’s weekly Benediction, to recite various litanies for Saints’ Feasts and
during appropriate seasons, to read the Bible as an aid to all of their devotions.
Parents will give their children prayer cards of the Saints as gifts, having their chil-
dren pray them for one another as they grow up (and praying the prayers to and
for the children before they learn to read). Statues and images of Our Lady and
the patron saints of the family will adorn the walls and flat surfaces of the house,
being the occasion of frequent invocations of their heavenly assistance. The home
will have an altar wherein the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart
of Mary are enshrined as proof of the family’s consecration to them. Prayer will
guide such families before, during, and after all family activities, and prayer will
be the primary activity of the family.
Chores II: Housekeeping.

It is God’s will that on Sundays we should occupy ourselves only with what has to
do with His service and the salvation of our souls. By doing so, we draw down blessings
on our work during the week.
—St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa, Father!

It is obvious that I have never changed a diaper, isn’t it?
Skeptics are going to be asking, “How in heaven’s name is anything to be
accomplished in a family like this, that makes the Carthusians look like beatniks?”
Practical people will say that this emphasis (obsession?) on prayer is impracti-
cal. Au contraire, mes frères! Prayer is the most practical of all practices.
Take changing diapers (please). Moms and Dads, why do you change diapers?
Because the babies are crying. Wrong. Because the babies smell bad. Wrong. Because
Father Smith won’t do it for us. Right, but wrong.
You change diapers because your love of God results in loving your babies.
If you stop loving God, you will stop changing your babies’ diapers. If you stop
praying you will stop loving God. If you stop praying, you will stop changing
your babies’ diapers.
Well, Father, lots of unbelievers or weak Catholics who don’t pray still change
their babies’ diapers and love them.
That is true. You can find individual parents who somehow find it possible
to ignore God but to love the two-point-seven children they deign to bring to
term. However, if you look across time and around a society you will find that
where a significant minority or, God forbid, a majority of parents abandon
true worship, there is a pronounced increase in the refusal to diaper babies, to
conceive babies, to marry before having babies, to stay married after having
babies, to engage in natural relations capable of conceiving babies, to allow the
babies to live long enough to need diapers. A culture that comes to hate God
will eventually hate its children. Not praying is deadly to the bodies and souls
of babies and their faithless parents.
If you want babies’ diapers to be changed, you need to pray. You need
to pray to have babies. You need to pray to be able to provide diapers. You
need to pray to love your babies enough to want to work to provide diapers,
and to love your babies enough to take on a task as thankless and messy
as changing babies’ diapers is by definition. Diaper-changing is not for the
faint of heart. A fair amount of fortitude is necessary. Fortitude is a gift of
the Holy Ghost, granted in the Sacrament of Confirmation and maintained
and increased through prayer, which, again, is the work of the Holy Ghost,
who frowns on those who ignore Him through their refusal to pray to Him
and by His power.
But for those parents who do pray, who do love God, who do love their ba-
bies, who love to change their babies’ diapers, more is wanted. Those parents will
want their babies to grow out of diapers, to grow to love their parents, and to grow
to love God and to grow in their love of God. Parents who want to love their chil-
dren will want their children to love their parents and to love God their Father.
Thus, loving parents will want their children to learn to pray. They will want their
children to learn to pray from them, with them, and for them.
A delightful fringe benefit of learning to pray and learning thereby to love,
is that children so raised will learn to love to take out the garbage, wash the
dishes, make their beds, do their homework, play properly with their brothers
and sisters, dust the furniture, and mow the lawn almost as much as Mom and
Dad loved changing diapers. People who love God know that they must love
their neighbors as themselves. The very first neighbors given everyone are their
families. The first recipients of the grace of obeying God’s command to love
Him above all things, expressed by love of neighbor, is the family for whom
each member happily will do whatever labor is needed in the home to make it
possible to get back to the business of praying, so as to increase and experience
that love of God and love of neighbor.
Children need chores. No, not just because Mom and Dad want to take it
easy. Children need chores as a means to grow in humility, to express their love for
God and His gifts to them of their families, and as a real participation in making
the homes where their families live a product of and a place for prayer. Where
a family values prayer, they will value those things which make prayer possible,
seeking the opportunities to accomplish them as well and as quickly as possible
so as to have yet more opportunities to pray well and to pray often. Children
need prayer, thus they need to do the chores by which the family’s life of prayer
is supported. If children are to grow up to teach their own children the value of
prayer, they must learn as children how to go about establishing a home where
prayer can happen.
Such a home has swept floors. It has clean linens. Windows are transparent.
The roof does not leak. Snow is kept off of the sidewalk. Its inhabitants know their
catechism. And smelly diapers receive prompt and loving attention.
There is a peril that wealthy families have in this vein. They can afford to pay
others to do all of these things. Children raised under this condition might grow
up without a proper appreciation of humility, service, and a grateful dependence
on God for all things. Spoiled children make rotten children of God. Even where
the means exist to hire others to do the housekeeping, families should insist on
doing their own housework. Boredom never strikes where there are floors to be
mopped, bathtubs to be scrubbed, and Rosaries to be prayed.
Families of limited means encounter a different peril. Bodies worked to the
point of exhaustion mopping some other family’s floor, picking their fruit, or
increasing their capital will lack much spirit to pray a fifteen-decade Rosary at
the end of a fifteen-hour day. Anxiety about paying the rent, fending off the rats,
or purchasing medicine is relieved by prayer, but prayer requires relief from work
before it can be offered by anxious hearts and tired bones.
Rather than employing the poor to clean the homes of the rich, the rich
should employ their wealth to aid the poor in becoming owners of productive
property. Rather than envying the rich their wealth, the poor should offer their
wealth of suffering and privation to ease the peril of the camel-sized souls stuck
outside the needle-sized gate of Heaven. The poor need the rich to show com-
passion on their material dearth. The rich need the poor to pity their spiritual
destitution. Rich employers should close their businesses on Sundays and Holy
Days so that their poor employees can go to Mass with their families and keep the
Lord’s Day holy. Families of poor employees and their rich counterparts need to
take advantage of days off on Sundays and Holy Days to go to Mass and keep the
Lord’s Day holy. Poor and rich need to more highly esteem the treasures built up
in Heaven by a life of prayer spent on earth.
Chores III: Feast Days, Anniversaries, Vacations

Never pass a day without thanking Jesus Christ for all He has done for you during
your life.—St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
May 23rd, December 12th, March 17th, May 12th, and May 17th. August 10th,
March 19th, December 27th, March 7th, August 11th. September 8th, October 7th,
July 16th, December 8th, December 12th. December 25th, January 1st, July 1st, the
last Sunday in October, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day
of spring. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
I was baptized May 23rd (St. John Baptist de Rossi), received First Holy Com-
munion December 12th (Our Lady of Guadalupe), was confirmed March 17th
(St. Patrick), received diaconal Orders May 12th (Sts. Pancras, Nereus, Achilleus,
and Domitilla), and received presbyteral Orders and celebrated my First Mass
May 17th (St. Pascal Baylon and the Vigil of Pentecost). St. Lawrence was grilled
on August 10th (nine months and two weeks before May 23rd). St. Joseph was
born into Heaven on March 19th. St. John the Beloved was reunited with his
best friend on December 27th. St. Thomas Aquinas entered glory on March 7th.
St. Philomena overwhelmed pagan might through her virginal power on August
11th. The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, was born on September 8th.
She defeated satan in the Mohammedans on October 7th. Her Carmelite children
especially exult on July 16th. The Immaculate Conception took flesh on December
8th. And the Empress of the universe is celebrated as the Empress of the Ameri-
cas on December 12th (a day doubly blessed for yours truly). God was born on
December 25th. He was circumcised on January 1st. The Blood first spilled at that
Circumcision is adored in its fullness on July 1st. Jesus Christ is honored as King
of the universe on the last Sunday of October. His glorious triumph over satan,
sin, and death is lauded in Heaven and on earth the first Sunday after the first
full moon after the first day of spring. All and each of these events contribute to
the honor and glory of God as He is worshipped in spirit and in truth on every
altar of the world where the Body-Blood-Soul-Divinity of Jesus Christ is offered
to the Father every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday in time, and for all eternity in Heaven.
Part of the excitement of the boredom of routine is the regularity of occasions

on which to thrill with the joy of knowing the saving power of God. A day does
not go by when He does not do something worth praising. In a family of, say, ten
children with their Mom and Dad, there are more than a month’s worth of days
scattered throughout the year when they can give good reason for declaring feast
days. Twelve Baptisms, twelve First Holy Communions, twelve Confirmations,
and a wedding anniversary just for starters. Throw in twelve Name Day Feasts,
twelve feasts of Confirmation patrons, the Guardian Angels, the patron Saint of
the local parish, the Patron Saint of the local diocese, and the Feast of the Holy
Family. Then there are the Feasts of the universal Church, a dozen smaller feasts
of Our Lady, St. Joseph’s two Feast Days, the Immaculate Conception and Our
Lady of Guadalupe as the patronal Feasts for the United States, and all of the
extra days of feasting on the various octaves involved with many of the great
Feasts—and the entirety of the Seasons of Christmas and Easter. The family who
is in circumstances which permit attending daily Mass is blessed to be beset by an
embarrassment of riches.
But this is serious business. Confession is necessary to be properly disposed
to all of the graces flowing so abundantly. Imagine, with so many Feasts popping
up so frequently, how frequent must be the reception of the Sacrament of Pen-
ance to arrive at each festive day with one’s wedding garment in good order. Then
there are the family devotions maintained throughout the year in honor of the
various Saints and the Mysteries revealed through the Faith. And, to enflesh the
wonderful spiritual bounty present, there should be meals worthy of the name of
feast to complement the spiritual banquets spread out by Holy Mother Church.
And, of course, prayer, daily prayer, family prayer, individual prayer, prayer at
church must happen ceaselessly as a response to and as a condition of all of this
celebratory profundity.
Read The Roman Martyrology and a lives of the Saints every day so as
to know who are the heavenly companions accompanying your family on
the way from earth to the Kingdom of God. Ignore the silly, masonic ac-
tivities around the fourth Thursday of November, the last Monday of May,
and the first Monday of September, and instead gather family and loved
ones for prayer, the Mass, and a meal at home to commemorate the glories
of salvation history, both in the universal Church and in the particulars of
your family life. Plan your family vacations around the octaves of Christmas,
Easter, and Pentecost.
If you are an unfortunate in the bondage of wage slavery, when it comes time to
beg days off from servile duress, consult the liturgical calendar and ask for a day or two
on either side of any significant Feast Days, especially Holy Days of Obligation, that
land during the work week. When you do take vacation time away from home, go
where daily Mass is available and, instead of seeing some monument to American
rejection of the social reign of Christ the King, visit the tomb of a Saint, e.g., St.
Rose Philippine Duchesne in St. Charles, Missouri, or St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
in Emmitsburg, Maryland, or the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New
York. Several other locales around the country boast the relics of holy men and
women whose causes for canonization are underway. Pray in those places, both
that the people in question might be raised to the altar in accordance with the
will of God, and for their heavenly patronage to protect and sanctify your family.
Chores IV: Fasts, Lent and Advent, Retreats

In the morning we should behave towards God like an infant in his cradle.
As soon as he opens his eyes, he looks quickly through the room to see his moth-
er. When he sees her, he begins to smile. When he cannot see her, he cries.—St.
Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work leads to an
early grave. The soul every bit as much as the body needs to rest. In between all of
the joyous extravagances of the Church’s frequent Feasts, we require regular and
sincere fasts.
Saints are odd people. Where we typical sorts (notice, I say “typical”, not
“normal”—the Saints are normal, we are typical; there are more of us, but we
should be more like their norm) flee pain and suffering, the Saints go looking for
it. They have come to the wonderful realization taught by the science of the Faith
that the Cross is what all of life is all about. The Cross is the new Tree of Life. If
we are to live, we need to partake of its Fruit, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity
of Jesus Christ. The Saints are in love with Him, thus they seek Him where He
is to be found, on the Cross. Would that we were as odd as they are, and that the
Saints were as typical as they are normal.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen said in his reflections on the Stations of the Cross
that “the Cross frightens more in its splinters than in its beams”. At a distance the
Cross looks imposing, fearful, dreadful. We shrink from proximity to it. What the
Saints have learned, and what we would do well to learn from them, is that the
nearer one comes to the Cross, the nearer one grows to Christ, both in being close
enough to touch Him and in bearing His image on one’s heart, soul, mind, and
body. That is the image of love, and love is Cross-shaped.
If going to the Cross hurts, good! Pain should hurt. Bodies that don’t feel
pain when something painful happens are experiencing either poor circulation
through the limbs, shock, paralysis, or death. It never ceases to amaze me how it
never ceases to amaze me that sacrifices are unpleasant. I once said that God is full
of surprises, like these:
The Son he sent;

the joy of Lent.
That blue can fly

in eyes and sky.
Wherever earth
has given birth
to fish in seas
or birds in trees.
The wet of rain

and crosses’ pain.
Pain is the body’s way of saying, “I’m still here!” If you hit your thumb with a
hammer and you’re not a leper but it doesn’t hurt, there is something rather wrong
going on. Unrepentant gluttons eat to the point of obesity and don’t notice it—
something is rather wrong here. Unrepentant fornicators contract gonorrhea, her-
pes, and aids, and think the cure lies in medications—something is rather wrong
here. Unrepentant apostates think the Lord’s Day belongs to them and spend it at
the mall or on the golf course—something is rather wrong here.
By the same token, the conscience prompting us to seek penance and mor-
tification is the soul’s way of telling us that we aren’t in hell. If you sin or if you
claim to be perfect, and you don’t go to Jesus on the Cross, there is something
rather wrong going on. No pain, no gain goes for the spiritual exercises no less
than for physical exercises. Marines say that pain is the feeling of weakness leaving
the body; the Church might say that pain is the way to keep the Saint’s soul from
leaving the Body of Christ.
Sinners need Jesus and the Cross in order to be forgiven. Saints are kind
enough not only to spend time with Jesus on the cross to atone for their sins,
but for ours as well. Any of you who think that you are finished atoning for
all of your sins, and that you have attained perfect sanctity, do the rest of us a
favor and join Our Lady and Our Lord in doing what perfect souls do to ex-
press their sanctity and charity. The rest of us will happily accept the generous
fruits of your efforts.
Well, Father, that’s all well and good and nice and easy to say, but it sounds aw-
fully hard to do. And painful, too, by the way.
Here is what I once said to someone else who wanted a bed of roses for a life:
At the risk of sounding flippant, I point out that roses also have thorns! Difficult as
the gift may be, the thorn may be of more value than the bloom. St. Thérèse certainly
recognized that the Little Flower had many thorns to endure, many weeds trying to
choke her off, many droughts trying to wither her, many pests trying to devour her,
many storms trying to uproot her—but perhaps I have taken the metaphor far enough.
At any rate, St. Thérèse embraced all of her little crosses lovingly because she ac-
knowledged them as gifts from her Beloved. And her Beloved would never give her any-
thing bad for her, anything unlovable, anything not to be grateful for. And she believed
fervently that all of the challenges which she overcame made her more beautiful in the
eyes of her Beloved. And she was sure that accepting all of her trials were sure-fire ways
of pleasing her Beloved and making her way home to Him.
I strongly encourage you to ask the Little Flower to help you see the beauty attached
to the thorn, the bloom rising above the stem. Also, along with the Apostles before the
Sanhedrin, ask the grace to be able to “give thanks for being found worthy of ill treat-
ment for the sake of the Name of Jesus”. Those who endure their sufferings with and for
Our Lord should “rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven!”
Remember that you are made in the image and likeness of God. This means not
only that you look like God in the spirit, but that you look like God in how you perceive
the world. It is not merely a matter of how you are seen, but of how you see; not just of
how you look, but of that for which you seek. It is the nature of your search, the means
by which you search, and the goal for which you search. Imago Dei is man’s being and
action—just like God!!!
You see with the eyes of the Lord. The son resembles the father not only in how he
looks to the world, but in his worldview. To have your Father’s eyes is not just to look
like Him, but to see like Him, to learn to recognize what the Father reveals as good
and true. That is the gift of the sons of God in the Faith: to see even as they are seen.
Do not look at the Cross as do the faithless, with despair. Look on the Cross
and see man’s greatest and only hope. This is the love that St. Thérèse experienced
in bearing all for Christ.
To shift the metaphor a bit, keep in mind that the thorn on the rose serves a won-
derful purpose: to protect the blossom. The thorns you receive may well be God’s call to
you to suffer with Christ so as to win souls through your willingly embracing the trials
others reject or can not bear.
St. Thérèse frequently offered her sufferings for missionaries spreading the Faith,
walking another step in the midst of her consumption for the missionary consumed
in the tropical heat. You may well be preserving a soul from disaster when you
accept mortification and “misfortune” with the same charity with which Our Lord
accepted the Cross. He saved those who could not save themselves. You can pray for
those who need prayers—and pray instead of those who do not pray—through your
patient endurance.
If you have not read St. Thérèse’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul, I strongly
recommend you do so. If you have read it before, it sounds like now would be a time
to refresh your memory. And one last thing: sometimes the best way to receive a rose
is to give a rose. The rose that you give away is not yours to have, but the Beloved to
whom you give it will make it yours to share. The blessing with which you bless will
be measured back to you, full measure, pressed down, and overflowing. God is not
outdone in generosity!
I give my best advice when I steal from the saints. St. Jean-Marie Baptiste
Vianney said, “The Saints did not complain.” I am no Saint, but I quote them in
my writings.
The cross needs to be a common thing, a typical thing, a normal thing in our
daily lives. Praying the Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Ro-
sary, and the Gospel accounts of the Passion are immensely helpful in instilling in
us a love for the Cross, a love of sacrificial love. Stopping whatever might be going
on at 3pm and contemplating the terrible yet wonderful words, Consummatum
est! is something else to do along the way of falling in love with the Cross. It is a
good idea to extend the notion of taking up the cross each day and following Our
Lord in love to keeping certain days of the week as penitential days, Wednesdays,
Fridays, and/or Saturdays, for instance. Of course Advent and Lent lend them-
selves marvelously to a penitential way of life, being penitential seasons and all.
Something else I once said was that it is
…Advent always, ‘til the Time when times

become no more, releasing claims on Past’s
iniquities, repenting Future’s crimes.
‘tis Christmas never while this world still lasts,

where we will find no room within our hearts
to offer Him whose Heart receives us all.
Yet Easter ever fosters faith which starts

us on the Way that rises o’er the fall,
and lifts the craven soul above fear’s pain.
But yet a little longer Lent must be,

for ‘tho’ First Sin is conquer’d, sins remain
uncrucified upon an x-mas tree.
We shan’t the Truth of Advent grasp until

we grow beyond the Crib and climb the Hill.
The cold of winter, the heat of summer, the muck of spring are built-in
penances. If you live in southern California, meteorological perfection is your
cross. Trust me, there definitely is such a thing as too much of a good thing
when it comes to cloudless skies, mild temperatures, and palm trees. The only
perfection that comes close to being complaint-free is autumn in deciduous
forests, except for the fact of the winter that always ends them. But, anyway,
mother nature gives us easy opportunities—like aging, the flu, and each oth-
er—to have things to offer up for atoning for own sins, making reparation for
the horrid sins of the world, and to ease the sufferings and hasten the glory of
the Poor Souls in Purgatory.
Keep in mind, also, that fasting as a means to sacrifice can mean more
than not eating, although that is certainly to be embraced as well. In addition
to keeping one’s mouth closed at lunch, one might try a fast of keeping one’s
mouth closed rather than engaging in idle conversation. Instead of remaining
fast asleep a full eight hours, one might fast from sleep by rising early to offer
some extra prayers for the conversion of sinners.
I once suggested to a group for whom I was giving a spiritual conference to
take up “Life in the Fast(ing) Lane”. The idea was to designate each Saturday of
the month as an occasion to fast from something in the home. For example, first
Saturdays would be a Sleep Fast, in which on Friday night all stay up one hour lat-
er than usual in order to do an extended examination of conscience in preparation
for going to Confession and Mass as part of fulfilling the Fatima Five First Sat-
urdays devotion. Second Saturdays of the month would be a Talk Fast, in which
little or nothing would be said for a predetermined period of the day, or even all
day. Third Saturdays of the month would experience an Electric Fast, in which
no electric appliances of any kind would be used. Fourth Saturdays of the month
would be the day to Travel Fast, that is, to not travel at all, but to stay in the home
and its grounds enjoying the company of one’s family. The fifth Saturday when it
occurs would be a Fast Fast on which to throw a feast, abstaining from abstaining
for the day and perhaps inviting another family into the home to share in the joy
of being redeemed in Christ crucified.
These are just suggestions. A few brains, a few minutes, and a few trials and
errors will prompt a bunch of other possibilities to be attempted. The key is
to get started. As Sam Gamgee quoted his Gaffer as saying, “It’s the job that’s
never started that takes longest to finish!” You will not get to Easter without
walking the Via Dolorosa. Earthly life can not get to Heaven until Heaven’s life
is embraced on earth.
Wait a second, Father. Your ignorance of diapers is showing again. Can you imag-
ine trying to accomplish all of this with all of the other things that a family has to
manage?
Yes, I can—priests grow up in families, not in ecclesial greenhouses. So I
realize that it is a tall order, just like Archbishop Sheen said; “difficult from
a distance”. The closer you come to doing it right, the easier it will be to
do it better. But, because I have seen how challenging it is for families to
do all the doing that needs to be done, several years ago I put together a
model for how a weekend retreat for the family might be engaged where
the parents can’t get away to do a retreat themselves, or the children are too
young for it, or wage slavery or public brainwashing, I mean, public school
will not allow. It looks like this:
The Holy Family Retreat

Overview: This is intended for participation by a family or a group of families.
It is not necessary for a priest to be involved, but it is encouraged at least for the
initial preparations.
Each member of the family must clear his calendar from Friday morning
through Sunday evening. (If families enduring the curse of children in schools can
get the children out of school for vacations, dentist appointments, and sporting
events, they can get them excused to keep an appointment with God.) It would
be most appropriate to choose a weekend wherein some significant Church Feast
or family event is to be celebrated. These could include the Feast of the Holy
Family during the Christmas season, the Easter Triduum, March 19 (Feast of St.
Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary), August 15 (Feast of the Assumption
of Mary), March 25 (Feast of the Annunciation), a wedding anniversary, or other
date holding some special meaning for a given family.
Do not make this a time of family vacation. The idea of the Holy Family
Retreat is to engage in spiritual renewal, whereas vacation is for recreation and
relaxation. Care should be taken to ensure that the family has both retreat time
and vacation time scheduled separately each year. If you can’t do both, skip
the vacation.
Preparation for this retreat should include a habit of family prayer, individual
prayer among the family members, regular assistance at Sunday Mass (and dai-
ly Mass where that is possible), and preparation for the Sacraments appropriate
to each member of the family. Ongoing spiritual direction of individual family
members would be a great asset, but not a necessity. Home life should be such
that a pattern of eating meals together, conversing, recreating, praying, and social-
izing are a matter of course. If this does not already exist in the family structure,
the retreat will aid the family in establishing them, but attention should be paid
to continuing the work of building up the family once the retreat is over.
Only those chores necessary to be done on a daily basis should be part
of the weekend. Any other chores should be done ahead of time or put off
until the retreat is completed. Examples of daily chores acceptable during
the retreat would include preparation of meals, washing dishes, making beds,
and personal hygiene. Those which should be done before or after the re-
treat would include laundry, dusting, yard work, and any chore that would
consume more than an hour of effort. The retreat is not a chance to catch
up on housework or maintenance.
Every family member should make participation in the retreat a high

priority. Time off from work and school should be arranged well in advance.
Nothing short of illness should keep any member of the family from being a
part of this experience.
Friday: St. Joseph

5am—Family Prayer: Dad leads all in the Our Father
Mom reads St. Matthew 11:25-30
Silent time
Morning Offering and other prayers
5:30am—6:30am: Quiet Time
6:30am: Breakfast Preparation
7:15am: Breakfast
9:30am: Family Walk
12:00 Noon Prayer: Dad leads all in Nicene Creed
Mom reads the Apocalypse 19:5-10
Silent time
Angelus and fifteen-decade Rosary
1:15pm: Lunch Preparation
2:00pm: Lunch
3:15pm: Dad leads Stations of the Cross
4:00pm: Quiet Time
5:30pm: Dinner Preparation
6:15pm: Dinner
7:pm: Family Recreation
8pm: Night Prayer: Dad leads all in three Hail Marys
Mom reads St. Luke 2:25-40
Children offer intercessions
8:30pm: Examination of Conscience and Bedtime
Saturday: Blessed Virgin Mary

5am—Family Prayer: Dad leads all in Our Father
Mom reads St. John 2:1-11
Silent time
5:30am—6:30am: Quiet Time

7:15am: Breakfast
9:30am: Family Walk
12:00 Noon Prayer: Dad leads the Angelus and fifteen-decade Rosary
12:45pm: Lunch Preparation
1:30pm: Lunch
2:30pm: Mom & Dad lead examination of conscience
3:00pm: Family goes to church for Penance
4:00pm: Quiet Time
5:00pm: Dinner Preparation
6:15pm: Dinner
7:00pm: Recreation
8pm—Night Prayer: Dad leads all in three Hail Marys
Mom reads St. Luke 1:46-55
Sunday: Jesus
6am—Family Prayer: Dad leads all in Our Father
Mom reads St. Mark 14:22-25
Silent time
8:00am: Mass
10:30am: Breakfast
12:00pm: Dad leads Angelus and fifteen-decade Rosary
12:30pm: Family Walk
2:00pm: Dinner preparation
5:00pm: Dinner
7:00pm: Recreation
8pm—Night Prayer: Dad leads all in three Hail Marys
Mom reads Genesis 1:26-31
Retreat Ends
Chores V: Visitors
“When I am about to talk to anybody,” said a young village girl, “I picture to my-
self Jesus Christ and how gracious and friendly He was to everyone.”—St. Jean-Marie
Baptiste Vianney
A nifty thing happens whenever I visit a brother priest. Almost the very first
thing we do is visit Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in the church—or, for
some particularly blest rectories, right there in the house. Then he, the priest,
shows me around: the altar, the sacristy, the confessional (which we frequently
make use of for each other), the stained glass and statuary, and the parish hall. I
rarely see the rectory rec room or how much shelf space is in the closets or how
many gizmos are attached to the big-screen tv. God is good.
Sometimes when I visit lay people, there are other people already there or
who arrive after me. Nervous smiles and inane small talk ensue. I do not expect to
be taken to the family’s private chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. It
would be nice, however, to be told the name of the stranger staring at me, the odd
man dressed all in black. And, I hazard to guess, the stranger would like to know
my name and why I dress so unusually.
Please, people, when you are hosts in your home or if you bring guests to
someone else’s home, begin right away with introductions. Hospitality includes,
among many other things, making guests feel welcome. It is hard to feel welcome
when everyone in the room is still a stranger. Making oneself at home is difficult
if one must refer to the other inhabitants of the home as “Hey you”.
Train your children to answer the door. Countless times I have been greeted
by short people on thresholds with eyes agape in wonderment and awe at the
splendor of my visage. It seems to me a bit forward to stride across declaiming the
right of entrance and seeking liquid refreshment without so much as a “Howdy
do!” Instruct your little ones to say, “Good evening, Father. We are expecting you.
Please come in. May I take your hat? Have a seat here where it’s most comfortable.
Mother and Father are finishing preparations for the evening. They send their
greetings and will be here soon. We have water, pop, beer, wine, or tea. What
would you like? Here is the life of St. Jean Vianney to browse while you wait. I
will be right back.”
Okay. If that actually happened, I might be a bit taken aback. But do your
best to approximate it.
People visiting your home should receive the hospitality of the house. That
means that you offer them what you have to give them. If they come to dinner
and you normally eat bread and water on Fridays in Lent, they should not turn
their noses up at it. (I admit that inviting someone to your home on a fast night
would be a bit rude on your part, but I think you understand my point.) By the
same token, if you are in the habit of praying before and after meals, as I’m sure
you are, then do not be shy about doing so with your guests in attendance. You
have a choice to make: deny your guest the right to have you apostatize in your
own home, or deny your Lord in your house and risk never seeing the inside of
His house. For those families who have the laudable habit of praying the Rosary
after dinner, such would be a most edifying experience for one’s house guests.
We should give our guests the best we have to offer. There is nothing better than
honoring Our Lord with the prayer given us by Our Lady. Your guests should feel
honored to be a part of something so truly good.
On many occasions I have been asked by parents what to do about their
children’s little friends from down the street being raised by bad parents. It is ap-
propriate to tell the wee one, “Mary may not visit you in your house, but you are
welcome here when we let her invite you so long as you obey our family’s rules.” If
little Hunter from down the block spews profanities, dresses like a midget harlot,
and/or can not be entertained without the aid of the grid, Hollywood moguls,
and software programmers, then some other family will need to be her savior, un-
less Hunter’s Mom and live-in unDad allow you to correct her errant ways. Any
of you who imagine that Mary might be permitted to visit Hunter under these
circumstances are invited to pay me a visit for re-education at my dungeon spa
for moronic parents.
Your home needs to be a place where you and your family enjoy spending
lots of time. If it is not, do not be surprised that your guests make odd excuses
to spend as little time there as possible. Before you ever invite anyone into your
home, you need to make Jesus the primary resident therein. If He feels at home
in your home, the only people who would not feel at home there are people
you don’t want there anyway. With Jesus at the center of your home, you will
be able to offer your guests the same solicitude that you offer their brother Je-
sus, who will reward you and your family for showing Him hospitality through
the kindness given your guests.
Having a comfortable home means having a home where everyone living
there feels comfortable with family life. Your guests will feel out of place if your
suggestion to pray the Rosary is met with audible sighs from your spouse and chil-
dren. There will be embarrassment all around the table if you begin the thanks-
giving after meals and no one knows the words, including you. If I come into one
more home and see a tv before I am introduced to anyone, well, let’s just say that I
know how to make Holy Water and how to put it to good use—by the bucketful.
Holiday visits often coincide with Holy Days. It pains me greatly to hear
Confessions from people telling me that they missed Sunday or Holy Day
Masses because they felt uncomfortable inviting their out-of-town guests. Call
me strange, but I feel uncomfortable inviting people into my home for days at a
time who find it unpleasant to be around God. If the notion of a priest having
Godless friends strikes you as disturbing, well and good; it should be almost
as disturbing that the priest would have parishioners who keep Godless friends
around. Do not maintain contact with people who shun contact with God
and His Church. Visitors to your house should be willing to accept invitations
to God’s house—after all, your home is merely a small corner of His house.
Whatever a faithless soul finds unpleasant in church, other than the Blessed
Sacrament Himself, should be present in your home as well. Silence, prayer,
and love belong in God’s house and in His children’s houses. Catholic families
should be every bit as adamant about fidelity to Our Lord in their homes as
they expect their priest to be when he is away from home.
There are times, of course, when you will find yourselves guests in others’
homes. Be polite. Eat what is set before you. Compliment the cook, if not on the
flavor, at least on the generosity of the meal. Send withering looks—full of promis-
es of further retribution to be exacted once you are at home—to any of your chil-
dren who dare to act anything other than monumentally grateful for every morsel
set before them. If the family does not offer grace and thanksgiving out loud, in-
struct your children to bless their food silently and to give thanks afterwards. Your
hosts will notice without you making mention of it. Should conversations veer in
directions lacking discretion, change the topic with a lighthearted laugh and a firm
sense of purpose. Should you discover that your hosts are quite different from your
family in their life of faith, thank them at the earliest possible moment after dinner,
assure them of your prayers, and get home asap, saying a decade of the Rosary for
them during the trip home. Say a second decade for your family, thanking God
for the gift of the faith, asking for the grace to persevere in the faith, and begging
forgiveness for the many times when your own family fell short of the example of
the Holy Family. And then, once home, spank the children who whined about any
part of the rolled-turnip-casserole dinner you all just ate.
Remember, Jesus is not a visitor in your home. He is not the guest of honor
in your home. Jesus is the Landlord, the Breadwinner, the central Resident in
your home. You live there by His grace. Raise your children from infancy with
this awareness. Rejoice in the warmth and affection you will be able to offer your
actual visitors when they partake of the hospitality of Heaven within the home
Jesus shares with you on earth. Rejoice that much more in realizing that sharing
this wonderful home with Him on earth is the palest reflection of the home he
desires to share with you forever in Heaven. When Jesus says, Mi casa, Su casa! He
means it more than our frail minds can imagine. Try to convey that meaning to
the neighbors whom you seek to love in your home. Trying oh-so-hard but failing
to live up to Our Lord’s impossibly high standard will be one of the greatest de-
lights you can impart on your visitors. You’ll have a nice time, too.
Playing: Games, Outings, Meals

Oh! how I love those words said the first thing in the morning: I will suffer every-
thing this day for the Glory of God…nothing for the world or personal interest, all to
please my Savior!
– St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Jacob? Jacob? Jacob, are you still there?

This section is actually the raison d’etre of this whole endeavor. Jacob want-
ed ideas for fun and games for his family. Father Smith, a.k.a. Father Ogre, is
such a stick-in-the-mud that he made all of you wade through a million words
before getting to the good stuff. I trust that you all did read every word before
coming to this point. If not, we will go no further until you read about your
chores. I’m waiting…
. . .Three years later…
Okay. Now that our work is finished we can play! Yayyy! Anyone know any
good games?
See, that’s the problem that got us here in the first place. A lot of people don’t
know how to play simple games. Not the kind that take batteries, extension cords,
and advanced degrees from mit. You know the world is in real bad shape when
people have to ask a priest of all things for ideas on how to have fun. When I de-
cided to amass this magnum opus, it struck me that I’m the most exciting person I
know. Thus, it would be really easy to answer Jacob’s question about how to have
fun. All I need to do is describe a typical day in my life. Just do what I do, folks,
and you’ll never know a dull moment. So, without further ado, here is a schema
of my actual daily life of fun and games in the vineyard of the Lord:
ca. 8:30pm—Bedtime (this is actually a little later than I like, but I pray the
Rosary every night at 8pm with the Lexow family)
ca. 3:30am—Waking (but I linger in sloth for a bit, mentally arranging the
day, wondering where the night went)
4:00am—Rising (are we having fun yet?): this is when I pray my Morning
Offering and several other devotional prayers
4:15am–4:45am—Hygiene: Make bed, brush teeth, shave, wash body, dress
4:45am–5:45am—Matins and Lauds
5:45am—Joyful and Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, open chapel and pre-
pare altar
6:45am—Mass
7:30am—Thanksgiving, Prime, Glorious Mysteries
8:00am—Correspondence (I confess—this is usually electronic in nature)
9:00am—Terce
9:30am–Noon—Study, writing, domestic stuff, various interruptions from
around the country
Noon—Angelus and Sext
Noon:15—Lunch and spiritual reading
1pm–5pm—This period varies wildly depending on who needs what and
where; today, for instance, I am writing this. If the devil stays away I am able to
pray Nones at 3pm along with mental prayer. It is during this period that I am
able to see people, go into town, see my confessor, attend to courses I am prepar-
ing and offering, get a little exercise, and/or whatever else is needful.
5:15pm—Vespers, personal devotions, quiet time/mental prayer
6:00pm—Supper
7:00pm—Relax a bit
8:00pm—Rosary and Compline
Now, catch your breath, everyone! If merely reading it leaves you so winded,
imagine what the actual experience must be like! Keep in mind, I am a trained
professional. Do not attempt this at home, especially with little children!!! Should
any of you foolishly seek to inflict this regimen on a child, you stand in peril of
hearing the two fatal words from him most to be feared by parents: Nursing. Home.
To avoid this fate I offer these following alternatives to the clerical state much
better suited for the family with many children. Remembering all that has been
said thus far about structure in life, prayer, and domestic chores, these more friv-
olous activities are possibilities for ways to glorify God through recreation. It is
hard for me to fathom something more recreational than writing a sonnet or
reading an ancient manuscript or praying Terce, but I am told that many people
actually do find those diversions less than diverting. Go figure.
1) Take a hike! A long one. Walking is good. The body needs it. The mind
can wander all the while. It can be done alone, in groups, by couples, in silence,
chit-chatting about nothing in particular, raising profundities, offering a Rosary.
Our Lord did a great deal of this: In Our Lady’s arms to Egypt and to Nazareth,
around Galilee, upon the Via Dolorosa, on the way to Emmaus, and beside the
Saints on their way to Heaven. Families could do a whole lot worse than this.
2) Go fly a kite! When I was young and unattached, I made a habit of ob-
serving the first fair days of March each year by flying a kite. I was never good at
it, but, boy, did I have a good time! One of the best days I remember from my
youth is when my Dad took my two brothers, my sister, and me to a Davenport
Parks and Recreation Department day-class on kite making. I did not learn to
make kites well, but I learned that I loved the chance to do it badly. Long before I
ever read G.K. Chesterton, I knew what he meant when he said, “Anything worth
doing is worth doing badly.”
3) Paper airplanes are even better than kites. Not as spectacular, but far more
accessible. My brothers and sister and I used to experiment with different designs.
Some of them flew straight ahead and swiftly. Others could do loop-the-loops.
Many of them dropped like so much lightweight lead, but they were sweet to
look at. We had models that required tape, others that were meant to have rips
in the paper to change their aerodynamics, and some bordered on origami in the
complexity of the folds necessary to make them flight worthy.
4) Poker was big in my house on Saturdays. No, silly, I didn’t play. My Dad
and his beer-drinking buddies took turns in each other’s houses. But the fact that
my Dad was one of the boys—they would call him “Chief ”, a term of endearment
dating back to their high school days when my Dad was one of the Big Men on
Campus—meant that there were always cards in a drawer in the kitchen. The
kitchen table served as the poker table on the Saturdays when my Dad played host
to his friends. At other times, those cards just sat in a drawer next to masking tape
and screw drivers and barbecue tongs, begging to be built into houses! When we
built card houses, we bent, twisted, and marked the cards in such a way as to make
them useless as poker decks. So my Dad would have to buy more cards. Which
meant that we had more building materials. Which meant that we wrecked more
decks. Which meant that Dad had to buy more cards. Which meant that we had
more building materials. Before long, we weren’t building card houses, but card
cities! You simply have not lived until you have rebuilt Chicago after the great Fire
of 1871 on a rainy day, preferably one involving severe thunderstorm warnings
and a screened-in front porch. Ah, youth!
5) It’s sundown on a February evening. Cover the windows with blankets.
Turn out the lights. We’re going to play hide-and-seek. You’re it! If I have to ex-
plain further, there is no hope for you.
6) My mother was the queen of popcorn. Here my diaper-changing igno-
rance is going to surface again. Do they still make popcorn that understands what
to do in a covered saucepan coated with butter on medium heat? My Mom used
to make vats of the stuff. Anyone who does not think this is a game has never done
the requisite shaking, listened to the percussion of grain on metal, and watched
the top rise as the treasure spills out onto the stovetop. Then you get to shake salt
on it, dump melted butter all over it, and start the next batch! The corollary to this
late-winter activity was the late-autumn chore of doing the same thing sans melt-
ed butter and salt in preparation for strings to wrap around the Christmas tree.
The needle and thread wielded by young hands “accidentally” and “lamentably”
created many edible mistakes,
7) Pure water fights are not a matter of water quality but of ammunition.
Buckets, balloons, and rubber hoses are the weapons of preference for purists.
Where there is a need to make a purchase at a store—alas! for the loss of the likes
of W.T. Grant, Turnstile, and Hester’s “bug store” (that’s a local, family, inside
joke)—no cost in excess of coins that can be found in pants at the bottom of the
closet, deep within cushions in the davenport, and pilfered from Mom’s dresser
top should be incurred. Spray bottles for misting Mom’s potted plants or Tuesday
ironing are bigger prizes than anything in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. My brothers
and sister and I and our friends had several creeks available where our war games
could be conducted, and flailing hands and arms could serve as defensive weap-
ons of last resort. Lest any be foolish enough to think that such campaigns are
mounted only after the midyear solstice, contemplate for a moment the effect of
a garden hose on a backyard hill after the first good snowfall. Mother did and was
not pleased with our pleasure.
8) Baseball, football, and basketball are fun only where there are no refs, no
scoreboards (only the disputed reckoning of the combatants), no uniforms, no
stands, and no rules, more or less—fouls are a matter of taste, for which there
is no accounting, only arguments won by sheer decibelage. What kind of game
demands participation fees, tickets, insurance waivers, doctors’ physicals, cheer-
leaders, bands, painted yard lines, foul lines, or three-point lines? In Davenport
we played a variant of baseball called “pickle”, but, I am told, is called “hot box”
or “base running” in other regions of the country. It takes only two bases, two
basemen, a runner, and a front yard. One-on-one to one-hundred by ones was an
endurance event my childhood best friend, Pat Kakert, and I used to play at Jef-
ferson School Park from June through August—full court. Lafayette Park was the
scene of epic battles of pick-up basketball played from before noon until just after
sundown by scores of boys coming and going, shifting sides, and teams varying in
size from two to ten. The Assumption High School Band used to play halftimes
on Friday nights for the Knights at John O’Donnell Stadium. The same group of
musicians would then gather on Saturday afternoon at Junge Park for a far more
raucous game before repeating the pizza outing that is the obligatory end to all
football contests. By the way, when Mr. Dugan tried to teach us soccer one day of
junior high at Holy Trinity in 1977, we rebelled. He did not make that mistake
again. I never touched another European “football” again until I subbed one day
for the seminary team in 1996. Off-sides still makes no sense to me—or to the
refs at the World Cup.
9) Pity the people who live where there is no spring to follow winter because
there is no winter. They don’t get to rake leaves and then pile them and then spend
hours jumping in the piles and then stand around them as they burn giving the
night a sample of the day it never gets to see. Those poor souls don’t know the
wonder of watching green metamorphose into hues no rainbow ever imagined.
They also have no concept of what the Latins mean when they call spring la
primavera or les printemps. There is a quality to the green of spring that shocks
the sight every time it is seen for the first time no matter how many decades over
the span of a life it is seen. Snowmelt on the bluffs of the Mississippi spawns
thousands of little rivers looking for their father. Those miniature torrents can
be dammed, splashed, or just followed downhill until there is no more street or
there is a sewer grate, whichever comes first. March is the only time of year when
icicles become popsicles. They’re edible, don’t you know. Certain houses in older
neighborhoods unknown to suburbia but the very stuff of which Davenport-be-
low-the-hill is constructed are veritable icicle factories. Some creative sorts actu-
ally added sugar to them. Walking to and from school in the spring is a frolic in
itself as the hoarfrost of the morning gives way to the puddles of the afternoon,
as the first kite breezes blow in March, as the first days fit for bike riding come,
as the lilies-of-the-valley first peek out in May. One of the things we always used
to do in the springtime was to make soap bubbles out of Ivory Liquid and use all
manner of household items as bubble molds for blowing globes, globs, and other
indescribable shapes occurring only for a moment, only with just the right air
pressure, only now, alas, in memory. I feel the urge to run some water and squeeze
a bottle just thinking about it.
10) I was the most pathetic Cub Scout in the world’s most pathetic Scout
Troop with the best Den Mother in history. Mrs. Martin hosted our lame meet-
ings. We stumbled through the oath, begged forgiveness for not doing whatever
project was necessary for whichever merit badge we weren’t going to ever get, and
then went sledding in the Martin’s two-block long, downhill back yard (we did
not feel the need or the courage to apply the garden hose to that mini-mountain).
Having our fill of snow down our shirts, bent sleds, and bruised butts, we rushed
back indoors to hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies. I am sure that we
met at times other than winter, but all I remember from my scouting days, my
scouting six months I should say, is those winter romps and yummy goodies. The
great part of this is that such joys can be recreated without the muss and fuss of
sewing on patches or memorizing masonic pledges or feeling ashamed for feeling
no shame at the Jamboree. Any Mom can bake, any child can sled, and any time
of the year is fair game for child’s play.
Picnics were always a favorite pastime of my Mom’s family. Our regular haunt
near, but outside of, town was Scott County Park. That’s where there were the best
trails through the woods (this is a bit of a play on words, my Mom’s maiden name
being “Woods”), horses available for riding, and a huge swimming pool. When
Mom’s nine brothers and sisters wanted to get together with their cousins from
Fort Madison, Iowa, we would meet halfway in Muscatine, Iowa. There we would
spend the day at Weed Park, which had a zoo, a great view of the Mississippi,
and a swimming pool with the highest high-dive around. When we picnicked in
town, we frequently went to Fejervary Park, which was also the site of our annual
school picnic for Holy Trinity. Fejervary Park (not to be confused with Fejervary
Health Care Center—by the way, the ‘v’ is pronounced as a ‘w’—my first place of
steady employment) had a children’s zoo with burro rides, an infamous monkey
exhibit, and, in my youth what was merely a swimming pool, but now, I un-
derstand, is an aquatic center. La-di-dah. You might sense from this list that my
family was not unfond of swimming. We ate a lot on those picnics, too, always, of
course, an hour at least before going swimming.
When I was growing up (those who know me well wonder if that part of the
sentence should be framed in the past tense), our family spent a lot of time in
conversation. Later in life, in high school and college, some of my friends were
a bit surprised, if not nervous, at the freewheeling debates that would take place
in our house. All subjects were fair game. I am not entirely a fan of the idea of
children engaging in the conversations with adults—seeing children is far more
pleasant than hearing children—but we were allowed to jump in and opine with
the worst of our elders. The down side of this was an emphasis on winning debate
points rather than ascertaining truth. The up side was the sharpening of wits, the
improvement of vocabulary, and the love of thought that it engendered. If my
family had applied the same verve to discussing the truths of the Faith that we
offered to current events, I would be a Saint already.
One of the primary places where these all-out verbal wars took place was the
dinner table. I come from a broken home. But one thing my imperfect parents
taught well to their imperfect brood was how to behave at table. At an early age
we were expected to know how to handle utensils, how to handle serving dishes,
and how to handle an argument founded on a false premise.
It was during this time that I had the experiences that led to my principles
of life: It is impossible to overdress; fashion is not always in good taste, but good taste
is always in fashion; and ditch-digging clothes are forbidden at five-star restaurants,
but formalwear can not be banned from ditches. As a student in Catholic schools
from age five to thirty-two, I became accustomed to dressing for dinner, for class,
for mowing the lawn. Some have asked if I now own a pajama cassock. I’m not
saying, but I will say that I did not own a pair of jeans until I was a sophomore
in high school, purchasing them with my own money from the aforementioned
part-time job at Fejervary Health Care Center. They were worn only on week-
ends. John Steinbeck once had a character say something to the effect that “you
have to be very rich to dress like a slob.” I think he had my Mom as a ghostwriter.
A central element in this education was eating whatever was put in front of
us on pain of never seeing another meal again. This was in harmony with the
principle of following whatever conversation was raging. If you didn’t like what
was for dinner tonight, Mom was going to make something different tomorrow
night because there weren’t going to be any leftovers—right?! If you didn’t like
the current topic of conversation, that was fine because it was going to shift and
shimmy in the next ten minutes anyway.
We were better behaved in restaurants. Mom and Dad took us out for meals
on special occasions, birthdays, and on family vacations. (A quick aside: in my
youth, “family vacation” always meant the annual family reunion on the second
weekend of August—no national parks, amusement parks, or rv parks for the
Smith family, just the city park in whichever city was hosting the reunion that
year. We never flew, always drove. And every fifth year we went nowhere because
the reunion was hosted in Davenport.) As children we were taught to use a menu,
how to spread a napkin, proper etiquette for summoning a waiter, the fine art
of calculating a tip, and the wonders of the Kiddy Kocktail. The rarity of these
occurrences made them particularly special when they did happen. A corollary to
the whole family eating out was the unexpected phenomenon at great intervals of
Dad bringing home Sandee’s hamburgers and shakes or Mr. Quick hamburgers
and onion rings. Every now and then Dad took leave of his senses (oddly perfectly
coinciding with nights when Mom didn’t want to cook), and fed us enough fat
and oil to clog our arteries to the age of a hundred and three, if we should live
so long. I remember when Burger King still gave cardboard crowns just for the
asking. Well, maybe Dad did have to pay for them. I really don’t know—they just
magically appeared from time to time.
That magical happenstance is a big part of what Moms and Dads should be
trying to effect for their children. One need not spend a bunch of money or travel
far to make a special occasion for a child. Parents should plan before conceiving
their first child how the discipline of the house is going to be maintained. Re-
member, “discipline” is different from “punishment”. Punishment is what hap-
pens when things go wrong. Discipline is what is necessary to keep things going
right. Thus, planning discipline in the home means knowing when the prayers are
going to be prayed, when bedtime will be, when it will be time to get up, what the
chores are, when they will be accomplished and by whom, and what will happen
if there is a failure or breakdown in the system.
But the real delight of being parents, the real delight of growing up in a
home where sanctity is the main event of daily life, is what comes when every-
one obeys the will of God, the will of Mom and Dad, and the will to love every-
one nearby. The example I like to give is the third Tuesday of months without
an ‘r’ in them. Mom and Dad should explain to the children very clearly what
is expected of them. When things go wrong, correction is in order and often

punishment is necessary. When Mom and Dad see things going right, they des-
ignate the third Tuesday of the months without an ‘r’ as the moment for rewards
to be received. This is not a random occurrence, but a well-planned response to
the merits earned by the children. Punishments should be spelled out in great,
excruciating, vivid, minute, delicious detail before the fact; rewards should seem
to be lightning from a blue sky to the children, but the ordinary progression of
the nature of things to the parents.
It might be the day when ice cream sundaes come after dinner or everyone
gets to go for a boat ride at the local lake or the chance to visit Grandma for
milk and her world famous peanut butter cookies (grandmas love being in
on this kind of surprise). The children should not know that something good
is coming or when, only that good things come when they are good. When
children grow up realizing that good behavior brings down wonders and thrills
without being asked for, they will do all they can to be wonderfully good and
thrillingly obedient to hasten the arrival of those delights without being asked
twice to be good. Moms and Dads should wish to be able to mete out more
rewards than punishments. They should establish a home life where the good
is far better by way of joy than the bad obtains pain by way of punishment. A
child growing up like this will not be surprised to find that divine providence
has plans for his comfort, not affliction, and life on earth moving toward Heav-
en is a real swell place to spend his time.
Boring is good. A Mom and Dad who make it their life’s work to provide
structure, sanctity, and sanity to their children will be magnificently predictable
in their expectations, in the daily activities arranged for their children, and in the
way they engage the perils of the world. Excitement will come to the children in
discovering anew each day how God will work in their lives, through the affairs of
the family, in the deeper appreciation of the heavenly value given earthly things
when they are given to the attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven. “Been there,
done that” will not be part of the vocabulary of a saintly child when he considers
things like the family Rosary, evening meals, All Saints’ Day costume parties at
church, learning to mow the grass the very first time, watching little sister receive
her First Holy Communion, riding the pony at the state park, or the fact that
these are meant to be foretastes of Heaven by virtue of the love wherewith they
are shared. Heaven has nothing worldly in it. Those who would arrive in Heaven
must live in the world in such a way that what pleases Heaven provides them their
greatest pleasures. Nothing pleases Heaven more than seeing the Holy Family
imitated in families striving to be holy.
Miscellaneous: Conversation, Singing, Hobbies, Written Words, the Art of
Virtuously Doing Nothing
We must take care never to do anything before having said our Morning Prayers…
The devil once declared that if he could have the first moment of the day, he was sure
of all the rest.
But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an
account for it in the Day of Judgment.—St. Matthew 12:36
That is one of Father Ogre’s favorite sayings of Jesus. It also scares him to no
end. I am not one given to remembering my own advice: two ears, one mouth—
use them in proper proportion!
We all would do well to spend more time in silence. As I like to say, if you
don’t enjoy spending time quietly alone with yourself, please do not inflict that
company on anyone else. Believe it or not, not every one of our thoughts or opin-
ions merits immediate dissemination to all within earshot.
You should talk, Father.
That’s exactly the kind of thing I mean.
Just because we think it doesn’t mean that we should say it. And, by the way,
an awful lot of what we think, once we say it, is described by those unfortunate
to hear it as being singularly thoughtless, inconsiderate, and mindless. It’s not a
bad practice to think before speaking. It is a better practice to pause after thinking
and before speaking. Even better is to pray before thinking before pausing before
speaking. Slow-speaking, quiet types are often thought of as deep thinkers and
people hang on every one of their few words. Loud-mouthed, non-stop boors
have many poor souls doomed to hear them, but are rarely asked their opinion.
Of course, I like balancing the old saying, Still waters run deep, with the equally
ancient gnome, A man of no words has expressed the extent of his wisdom.
Try to make the first thing you say to someone something positive. This is
especially easy if you just begin with a hearty, “Good morning!” Don’t gossip. If
Fred didn’t tell you to tell Mildred what he said to George, even if it’s just that
water is wet and the sky is blue, keep the incredible news to yourself. Find topics
of conversation that obey St. Paul’s instructions to the Ephesians: Say only the good
things men need to hear. Emphasize the good and the needful.
Preaching to the choir is boring—and I mean that in a bad way—to them and
should be tedious to the preacher. When you are with like-minded folks, don’t op-
erate on the assumption that great minds think alike. Instead, fear and tremble on
the way to salvation that fools seldom differ. Rather than regaling your friends with
how wise all of you agree all of you are, encourage one another to work that much
harder to know the good and live it better. Actually attempting to accomplish that
worthy goal leaves little time to discuss how much they—and you know who they
are—have gotten everything wrong.
The longer you live, the longer can be your romps down memory lane. Work
on telling the same old stories in ways that bring out a different aspect of their
mirth or wisdom or the personalities involved. Tell the same stories, but tell them
in different ways. Not only will you prevent the rolling of the young folks’ eyes at
the eighteenth hearing, but you won’t have to listen to yourself ask the nineteenth
time, “Have I told this story before?” If you really consider the events of your life
and continue to learn from your past lessons, the old news can offer new insights.
Ask others about their lives, especially older people. When you ask, don’t ask
yes-or-no questions. Don’t say, “Grandpa, did you have fun as a little boy?” Ask
instead, “Grandpa, what happened the day you turned thirteen, same age as me?”
Please, please, please do not imitate the idiots who do media interviews, asking
questions that would take three pages of print to transcribe. Ask open-ended
questions that obviously wish to learn what others have to say rather than convey-
ing your conviction that what you mean simply must be expressed for the salva-
tion of the world. You will know that you are failing at this if the man whose hand
you are shaking as you explain your desire to know how he feels about your latest
profound insight into the political process, begins gnawing his own arm from his
shoulder while you are giving the background to the question you want him to
answer. Simply never say the words, “Now I’ve said enough about me—what do
you think of me?”
When you run out of things to say, there is always a song worth singing! Beer
helps improve everyone’s voice, so if you’re asked to sing but you think you can’t
sing, drink a couple, and then you’ll be convinced that Caruso would have been
jealous of you—and no one will ever ask you to sing again.
But seriously, singing is a good thing, done by Moms to babes in arms, done
by Our Lord after the Last Supper, done in Heaven by the choirs of Angels and
Saints for all eternity. As I like to say to children, get used to singing—that’s what
you’ll be doing forever if you make it to Heaven. Encouragement of a profound
kind can be found in the words of St. Augustine: He who sings prays twice! Another
less lofty incentive is had by reminding God: Lord, this is the voice you gave me; this
is the voice you’re going to get praised with!
Learn to sing by teaching your children to sing. They don’t know a good
voice from a bad one at first, and by the time they know the difference, your voice
will be much improved by much practice. A great help to this is to stop listen-
ing to recorded music. Electronic devices of various sorts have convinced us that
only the perfect can entertain us. Wrong. Somehow song was heard, dance was
danced, jokes were told before there ever was a gramophone, Rockefeller Center,
or foul-mouthed tv special. It is bad enough that they—and you know who they
are—have convinced everyone that they can’t teach their children, walk a block,
or grow a crop; don’t let them tell you that you can’t sing even if the shower is five
rooms away.
A great hobby to support your singing is taking up the piano or other musical
instrument. When you have family gatherings or other guests, a sing-along can
be great fun. If your guests plead that they can’t sing or don’t know the songs, you
teach them as readily as the fiends wish to teach your children the wonders of “al-
ternative lifestyles” or the federal government wants to teach foreign countries the
marvels of the “free” market system (which is neither inexpensive nor unrestricted
nor liberating). My parents forced me to take up the cornet at the age of eight. I
went on to master the tuba, more or less, and got a degree in music. Now I am a
priest! No, I don’t offer that progression as an example of things gone wrong, but
of the applicability of such endeavors throughout life, regardless of what one’s ma-
jor duties might be. One does not pursue skills exclusively nor even primarily to
make a living. One is to live one’s life well and take on the skills that will improve
one’s chances for success as defined, not by mammon, but by Heaven.
So, one might take up philately or numismatics or iambic pentameter. Every-
one knows what philately and numismatics are, but on the off chance that some
of my readers are unfamiliar with how to measure feet and frame metaphor, I will
demonstrate such with an example of my own avocational pursuit:
Quallington Carpenter
It almost seems upon a time before
a visit to thy dwelling I have made,
for not unlike thy sturdy, humble door
are many others’ who have plied thy trade.
Hast thou a Son who learn’d in eager youth

to value ere the saw has bitten deep
the tree in bloom unknowing winter’s ruth
at lacking tears as sweet as willows weep?
Do I remember right His Mother’s face
within His own, reflecting naught of thine,
suffused with peace and filled with simple grace
whose sight distills the truth that gladdens wine?
My feet have never had the heart to roam,
yet only now my eyes have seen a home.
Hobbies are engaged not because you will find a publisher or will win a
blue ribbon at the county fair or because anyone else even knows that you do
it. Hobbies are those little delights that are first had alone and then shared with
an understanding friend or two. Hobbies are something that everyone should
have, but that should not be shared with everyone. You don’t need to know
where Quallington is or what prompted me to rhapsodize its local carpenter.
I don’t ask people why they collect Nativity Scenes from around the world. It
is enough that one gains enjoyment and peace. It is asking too much to want
everyone else to be as thrilled about it as you, but it is nice to find one other
soul silly enough to like what you love. What you find interesting may not
interest anyone else, but it will help you to be a more interesting person, one
who is capable of being interested in others, knowing how deep is the human
craving to find a sympathetic heart and ear.
An offshoot of the lost-and-fine art of conversation and of the treat which is
singing, is the written word. No, you don’t have to take up sonnets, craft charming
short stories, or pen the great American novel. It would be neat, however, if more
people put down the computer and took up the ballpoint, or, as I prefer, the foun-
tain pen and wrote letters that require philatelist’s stock in trade purchased with
that which makes a numismatist’s heart go pit-a-pat. Write your grandmother a
letter and mail it. See, I do speak English.
People who paint, who write poems, who send letters, who hum tunefully,
or who have a generous ear understand the importance of doing nothing. One
can not paint a landscape until one has seen it. There is no poem worth reading
that was not first an unheard gasp within the heart. Mail from home takes time to
arrive, and the answer to that treasured note does not come until after the silent
waiting has happened. Whistling while you work is the compliment paid by at-
tentive laborers to the birds that serenade them on the way to the office or field or
factory. Many people just sit there and don’t hear a word you are saying, but what
a prize to have a friend who sits near and listens even to what you leave unsaid.
Remember back almost thirty pages ago. Prayer is the labor of love, the labor
that lovers share, the reward of those who labor at love. Another word for prayer is
contemplation. Prayer is the contemplation of the things of heaven. Art and the
hobbies that contribute to it are the contemplation of things of the earth whose
beauty, truth, and goodness comes from and leads to Heaven. The artist and the
mystic need quiet and the opportunity to do the nothing which leisure seems to
be. Once given that chance, they leap to work and seemingly effortlessly accom-
plish stupendous feats glorifying God and enriching man. Time to do nothing but
contemplate on the way to productive labor comprises the moments of morning
prayer, the Angelus, fast days, Advent and Lent, retreats, and that final reflection
which is the prayer of commendation offered for the dying soul. From that noth-
ing, God creates through man the worship in spirit and truth which is the Mass
of the Church, the sanctity which binds the family in love, and the nature born
on earth on which is built the grace which comes to fruition in Heaven. Creation
ex nihilo is a divine prerogative which finds its proper reflection in the prayers of
men adorning home life, lending beauty to the society, giving glory to the Author
of all, our Father in Heaven.
Concluding Plea: Caritas super omnia!

There is hardly a day when we shall not be obliged to make some sacrifice to God,
if we want not to displease Him and if we want to love Him.—St. Jean-Marie Bap-
tiste Vianney
I am sorry that I had to write this. Oh, please don’t misunderstand me. It has
been quite an enjoyable romp for me. My sadness comes from the fact that we
live in such a fractured world that it is necessary actually to explain how to enjoy
God, His creation, and us His children. This has almost been like trying to tell a
bird what to do with his wings, or a fish the value of gills, or a lily the difference
between May and December. For those with the Faith, no explanation is necessary;
for those without the Faith, no explanation is possible.
We live in a ruthlessly faithless world. The men of faith, therefore, need expla-
nations. The necessity of this is not a matter of the grace denied, either by God in
offering, or in men accepting. No, it is a matter of men receiving the gift without
much by way of direction accompanying it. As the Eunuch said to St. Philip: How
can I understand unless some man shewest me?
We have fully two generations who have grown to adulthood in a culture
not only lacking the Faith, but attacking the Faith. What is before us is the task
of re-establishing a Catholic culture based on the immemorial teachings of the
Church, but now in a context far worse than the original pagan milieu of the time
of the Acts of the Apostles. We are not dealing with pagans who never knew the
Faith, but with apostates who were given the Faith and have willfully rejected the
Faith. It is not easy to bring an apostate to repentance. History is of no help to us
in showing how to re-establish a Catholic culture where one has been cast aside.
This is an era utterly without precedent.
But spring still springs and birds still sing and the laughter of children still
rings. God loves us. We are to love Him with our whole hearts, whole souls, whole
minds, and whole strengths. Where there is love, there is life. Where there is life,
there is hope. Where there is hope, there is joy, because we…
Hope in the Lord. One of the little graces that God is giving me as life as I have
known it unravels, is a delightful sense of proportion, detachment, and trust. It
has occurred to me on any number of occasions that there is no virtue involved in
resisting temptations that are not happening. The hand of God is at work when
temptation strikes and the sinner calls on the Lord to aid him in fending off the
attacks of the devil.
In the same vein, while life goes well, one can not claim that one is placing
trust entirely in the Lord. One might honestly say that he gives the Lord credit for
the good that is happening, but it is not accurate to describe that situation as one
requiring trust. Reliance on the Lord comes into play at all times, of course, but
it is most in evidence and requires the greatest exercise of human will and faith in
times of distress.
This means that the proof of the pudding of faith is tasting the bitter hurts
that worldly life slings at us and insisting in the midst of it that the sweetness of
the Cross is present (see St. Matthew 11:30). The will toward God’s will demands
that one does not pretend that the challenges of life on earth are irrelevant or in-
significant, but that the Lord is more than a match for the worst that the world,
the flesh, and the devil can throw at us. When the Lord comes through for us,
part of our thanksgiving, paradoxically, is for the cross that made our faith so
necessary. O happy fault of Adam that won for us so great a Redeemer! O joyful
rent-payment-due when the paycheck is not coming that results in utter confi-
dence in the God who saves!
Our hope in the Lord is not a groundless delusion in which we assume that
nothing bad will ever happen. The theological virtue of hope, the grace from God
that is hope, is founded on our own experience that God has preserved us in all
the trials of our lives thus far. Even more, however, we know of hope because of
what the Father did for the Son in the midst of the worst that has ever happened
in the history of creation. When the Son was handed over to evil men in the ser-
vice of satan, the Father glorified the Son’s obedience on the Cross and raised Him
in the power of the Spirit on the third day. The small crosses we bear in the image
and imitation of our Savior’s Cross result in the same exercise of the divine power,
mercy, and love on our behalf on the last day.
It is not in spite of trials that we hope, but in the face of and because of trials
that we hope. Hope is not in what is seen but in what is invisible. Hope exists
not in what is unknown but in what is known. We do not see our salvation, but
through faith we know and are certain that salvation has been won for us. We do
not see the future manifestation of our salvation, but we have seen the fruits of
salvation from the Cross Our Lord endured for us in time. Hope does not deny
the reality of pain and suffering on earth, but lives in the confident expectation of
the beatitude of Heaven. The hopeful neither lack reason to seek God’s aid, nor
do they lack reason to trust that He will be true.
Despair is the antithesis of hope, but it is also a sin against faith and charity.
Despair denies what the faithful know, that God is faithful and keeps all of His
promises. Despair refuses to reach out to the beloved, accusing the beloved of
failing in His love. Despair is an act of the will, in which the faith experienced in
history, and the charity promised as reward, are rejected in favor of the present
danger. Rather than remember the mercies of the Lord from the past and the di-
vine pledge of eternal joy, the despairing look only to what now assaults, believing
only in the power of the world to oppress, the flesh to betray, and the devil to
tempt and to destroy.
Pride and despair are close kin. The devil likes nothing better than to con-
vince a soul that everything is about human suffering rather than about divine
mercy. The devil frequently brings proud souls to despair by seducing them into
the pleasures of the flesh, lust for power, and avarice for possessions, only to aban-
don those souls to the futility of their hardened hearts’ desires, which have abso-
lutely no power to satisfy human need. The proud soul begins by doubting the
ability of God to bring him happiness, and ends with the certitude that nothing
will bring him happiness.
Humility is essential to hope. First is the humility of God who places Himself
at the disposal of those who hope in Him. Then is the reflection of the divine hu-
mility in the hearts of the hopeful when they call on the Name of the Lord, certain
that where the man is incapable of saving himself, God can do all things for those
who love Him as He has loved them. The union of the divine humility with its
image in man’s humility is the Cross of Christ, where God humbles Himself to
accept the punishment of sinners and where sinners humbly admit their need for
salvation from sin and death. Man’s hope is Christ’s Cross.
Thus it is imperative that we do not flee the trials and sufferings of this life,
for it is in those very hardships that the Cross has the only opportunity to bring
the graces of Faith, Hope, and Charity to the soul. The Cross is the sign of unseen
Faith, wherein lies the proof that the Word of God does not abandon his own.
The Cross is the sign of invisible Hope, wherein the Word of God is wholly given
that God can be trusted to deliver His own from any attack the devil can mount.
The Cross is the sign of the Love before all creation that has the power to repair
what sin has marred, to remake what death has destroyed, to glorify what God
has called very good.
Faith in God requires that we believe that on the cross we meet the Lord.
Hope in the Lord requires that we act on the knowledge that through the Cross
all can be forgiven, endured, and renewed. Love of God requires that we receive
the Cross in the same spirit in which it is given—with the intention of offering all
that can be offered in humility, trust, and generosity. As the Cross accompanied
Jesus from Pilate to Calvary, so our crosses accompany us from Baptism ‘til death.
We eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, Jesus Christ crucified, in Holy Communion
with Him in the Mass; in doing so we rise with Him who lives and reigns with the
Father and the Holy Ghost, one God forever and ever. Amen!
At the risk of repeating myself, Please pray the Holy Ghost enlighten our minds
and hearts through his gifts of grace. Beseech, please, St. Joseph, the head of the Holy
Family, to guard the homes of all Catholics from the assaults of this fallen world. Seek
the guidance of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our mother and the heart of the Holy Family,
as she crushes the head of satan and brings back to the safety of her mantle the children
who have wandered from the example given so perfectly at Nazareth. And may our
Lord Jesus Christ, the joy, the purpose, and the creator of the Holy Family bring peace,
salvation, and eternal life to every Catholic family of the Church Militant, to the glory
of God the Father, now and forever. Amen.
Father Smith.
25 August 2005: St. Louis IX, King of France
For us as Catholics, the Distributive State (i.e., the state in which there are as
many owners as possible) is not something which we discuss, but something we have
to propagate and institute. No advance in social thought or social action is possible if
we are seeking to prove to ourselves as a theory what we should be trying to realize as a
fact.—Father Vincent McNabb, OP, The Church and the Land
Part Two
153
Introduction: A Skunk by any Other

Name Still Stinks
In their foundational principles, capitalism and communism do not differ
much in how they understand the nature of things. This is because they agree
that things are the only things that matter. The political and economic systems
adhering to either capitalism or communism are always rooted in materialism.
Distinctions between how the various mechanisms play out are touted as dif-
ferences by the partisans on each side, but in the end matter is all that matters
to both the market and to the classless society. Bourgeois capitalist pigs and
the red menace are equally averse to fulfilling the responsibility to conform the
world of the flesh to the Kingdom of Heaven and, thus, are equally subject to
the ultimate rule of the devil.
Karl Marx and Luke Skywalker have an odd thing in common—both have
fathers of whom they should not be terribly proud. Karl Marx’ Darth Vader is
none other than Adam Smith. Were it not for the untrammeled capitalism in
the name and at the behest of Adam Smith that roared through Europe gener-
ally and England particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
there would have been no ogre for Karl Marx to inveigh against, no proletariat
to pay him heed, nor a comfortable middle-class background safely from which
to launch his revolution (from London, by the way) in the name of the un-
washed masses in which he and his family shared no part. Keep in mind that
Luke Skywalker obeyed his Jedi master no more than Darth Vader had obeyed
his. Playing by the enemy’s rules results in not only acting like the enemy, but
also in becoming the enemy.
154 Distributism for Dorothy: Part II
This comparison is no mere literary gimmick or exercise in anachronism.

The much-vaunted “force” inspiring so many of the feebleminded to sing the
praises of the stunted mythology of George Lucas’ Star Wars series suffers from
the same malady inherent in the faux debate between capitalists and communists,
namely, the absence of an objective truth by which to define that which is good,
to condemn that which is evil, and to distinguish that which is “light” from that
which is “dark”. George Lucas is not able to explain why Darth Vader should not
destroy the rebellion, nor can Adam Smith explain why Karl Marx should not lead
history’s inexorable revolution against capital toward the workers’ paradise. The
“force” is merely all that is, and evil is part of what is; history is merely man’s life
through time, and capitalism is part of that life—for better or for worse depends
not on the estimation of impersonal history, but on the personal experience of the
individual man. No way out of this meaninglessness exists without an appeal to
something absolutely outside of the categories in question. There is no final sepa-
ration between one element of the “force”, the light side, and another element of
the same “force”, the dark side; there is no final separation between one mode of
materialism, capitalism, and its materialistic alter ego, communism.
Capitalism, communism, and science fiction comic books all deny Him who
is outside, beyond, and transcendent of time, space, and the human mind. God-
less economics, Godless politics, and Godless literature appeal to man’s “better”
angels in vain; if there is no God, there is no spirit, and if there is no spirit, there
are no Angels. Man is on his own, which is just where materialists want him to
be. Rules are only as good as the rule maker and are meant for the benefit of both
the ruler and the ruled. God sets rules for His greater glory and for the sanctifi-
cation of man. Fallen man, rejecting redemption in the Son of God and the Son
of Mary, Jesus Christ, wants to eliminate that middle Man, electing instead to
have man make his own rules. Godless commies no more than Godless democrats
play by the rules made of the people, by the people, and for the people. The dirty
little secret kept tightly behind the zipped lips of the powers-that-be within both
communism and capitalism is that no one ever bothers to explain just who “the
people” are. God, of course, wants His people to include every person on earth,
both in terms of obeying His rules and by sharing in eternal rule with Him. Men,
on the underhand, are a bit more exclusive.
“The people” in the average democracy are subject to the forces of “the mar-
ket”. “The market” has no face, obeys no man, and is never liable for malpractice.
“The people” in the average communist workers’ paradise are subject to the force
Introduction: A Skunk by Any Other Name Still Stinks 155
applied by the thought and the arms of “the party”. “The party” has no face, obeys
no man, and is never liable for malpractice. Neither “the market” nor “the party”
is on record as having brought even one man to eternal happiness. And although
both “the market” and “the party” have slaughtered men by the millions, not one
advocate of the “free” market has ever chosen freely to lay down his life for his
friends in the name of “the market”, nor has there ever been a selfless leader of
the “peoples’” party willing to sacrifice his personal interests in favor of the larger
interest of the people and at the expense of “the party”.
Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, is the face of God in the flesh. He obeys not the
whims of sinful man, but the divine truth of God the Father. He has laid down
His life for enemies chained to sin so that their sins may be forgiven and they
might become His friends. His face, witnessed by faith on earth, is the same face
which is the very definition of eternal beatitude in Heaven. He “thought it not
robbery to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men . . . becoming obedient unto death, even to the
death of the cross.” Neither capitalists nor communists are shy about rejecting this
set of truths as their guide in pursuing ends entirely antithetical to the great com-
mand that man should “love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with
thy whole mind, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength”. Whether
one is a ward of the state in the United States of America or a non-person in the
Peoples’ Republic of China, Jesus Christ is not acknowledged as Sovereign over
the market, the party, or the nation’s security.
This fact of life is a deadly reality. It leads to the death of the unborn, the ill,
and the elderly. It has perpetrated the annihilation of Western civilization. It is
wholly indifferent to the destruction of billions of human souls through unre-
pented mortal sins. The false masonic ideal of the “brotherhood of man” is upon
us in the form of the whole world devoted to becoming more and more like Cain
and silencing the blood of Abel crying out from the earth to God. But God hears
all, and on the last day, none will avoid hearing His awful judgment. Cain re-
ceived mercy after murdering his brother. Mankind at the end of time can expect
nothing but justice when it is tried for the fratricide committed against bodies,
souls, and the Son of God.
Worst things first: God is excised (Democracy is the deity it deserves)

The Fulang Gong in China is a recent poster-child for sensitive Westerners
bewailing the lack of religious liberty within communist states. The ferocity of
the government’s prohibition against the members of the Fulang Gong publicly
performing something as simple and peaceable as their aerobic meditation is rem-
iniscent of the fervor with which the aclu (The American Civil Liberties Union)
attacks nativity scenes in city parks. What neither Mao’s nor J. E. Hoover’s phil-
osophical descendents seem to understand, however, is that the same rationaliza-
tion gives (il)legitimacy to the findings of both the Central Committee and of
the Supreme Court. Communist men decided that the gods of the Fulang Gong
should be forbidden a public platform; capitalist men decided that God Incarnate
should be forbidden a public platform even as the majority of that public cele-
brates His Birth in time. Both sets of men, communist and capitalist, share a com-
mon atheism, equally hostile to the false gods and to the one, true God. Without
God’s rules, man rules. Men have ruled that the gods and God are unwelcome.
Religious liberty in the largest part of the former Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics has taken the form of allowing all religions other than the Russian
Orthodox schismatic church equal opportunity to be banned. Religious liberty
in the formerly Catholic nation of France, once hailed as the eldest daughter of
papal Rome, now means that all religions have the right to be excluded from dis-
playing their distinctive garb in school settings. What moderns, either capitalist
or communist, seem incapable of fathoming is that freedom of religion never
means to practice whatever faith pleases you; but always means that you may not
practice a faith displeasing to the faithless. Freedom of religion invariably devolves
to freedom from religion and then to a religion-free state. Any who deny this fact
are invited to name one example of a nation that once held firmly to an official faith,
which then abandoned that faith in the name of religious liberty, and now pursues a
secular program which the formerly official faith would not find objectionable. Reli-
gious liberty is merely a nice name for the more accurate term apostasy.
Canada and Sweden allow religious liberty. They also allow libertine practices
among those who engage in the sin of Sodom. Where liberties conflict, priority is
given to that liberty held most dear by the society, to that liberty which is deemed
to be more important, more fundamental to the rights of man, and just more
true. In both Canada and Sweden at this writing, various religionists are discov-
ering that their liberty to express their firmly held religious belief that God finds
sodomites abominable is considered an abomination by their ever so tolerant gov-
ernments. Harsh penalties await ministers of different and conflicting faiths who
agree with each other that man and woman are made for one another, but who
have incurred the wrath of the all-powerful state begging to differ with this esti-
mation. Men may bed with men in direct disobedience to God, according to the
rule of man, but men may not disobey human caprice so as to submit themselves
and their laws to divine rule. Curiously, communist countries are not quite so
“advanced” in their take on sodomy; many still imprison and/or torture deviants
guilty of this sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. The “virtue” of tolerance in
the West on the subject of sodomy, supposedly illustrating yet another superiority
of capitalist democracy over socialist communism, is akin to tolerating a tumor in
one’s brain as an enlightened statement about the ubiquity of the life force present
in every life form.
There will surely be protestations against these incontrovertible truths from
those who insist that with all their flaws, democracies such as capitalist America
have kinder, gentler governments than communist regimes capable of imprison-
ing peaceful worshippers, banning religious symbols freely displayed by citizens,
and torturing advocates of “alternative lifestyles”. Let us set aside exceptions to
this exceptional rule of the just such as what was done at Waco under the Clinton
Administration in the 1990s,what the Supreme Court ruled in the early 1960s
regarding school prayer, and what was experienced by the various sovereign In-
dian nations within United States territory during the last half of the nineteenth
century at the hands of the United States Army. We will ignore as a mere aberra-
tion the conditions of black slaves imported to these shores as property accord-
ing to the constitutionally-guaranteed right for Americans in the North and the
South. Nothing will be said of the treatment given Catholic immigrants legally
arriving in America, but denied work because of their religious background. And,
of course, Americans of Japanese descent have nothing to complain about when
remembering their ordeal in the wake of the perils facing the United States after
Pearl Harbor—and other citizens, naturalized, second, or even third-generation,
need never worry that their property, freedom, and lives will be forfeit without
due process in time of national hysteria, I mean, national emergency.
But let us soberly consider a sobering fact: more citizens are incarcerated in
the United States of America than in any other nation in the world. Of course, the
United States has the third-largest population of any nation on earth at present,
so in absolute numbers it is not remarkable that most other nations do not have
the same quantity of inmates as the United States. However, America also has a
higher proportion of prisoners in the penal system relative to the general popu-
lation than either Russia or China, both countries with deep communist roots,
and China having a population over three times greater than that of the United
States. What accounts for this sizeable group of men in bondage within the land
of the free? How is it that America wins the dubious distinction of outperforming
communist China and oppressive Russia in the practice of placing its citizens
under armed guard?
Is it religious oppression of adherents to fanatical sects preaching problematic
gospels of social upheaval? No. China is unparalleled in that respect. Could it be
the case that Russia and others kill more than they imprison? Unprovable, though
quite likely, but something else is at work. What then? America does not incar-
cerate because of the religious beliefs of criminals. America does not execute its
criminals for their religious beliefs. America has a huge prison population because its
criminals have no religious beliefs.
Hand it to the communists. They are honest. They hate God and they say
so. If you say that you like God, they will throw you in jail. If you still like
God after that, they will kill you. They make no apologies, offer no explana-
tions, other than to say that God is not allowed. They got rid of God from
their countries, and if you want to stand by God, then, by golly, they will get
rid of you, too.
Americans, on the other hand, are hypocrites. We spew platitudes about reli-
gious liberty, and the pilgrim fathers seeking a land to practice their faiths freely,
and in God we trust, and all that. Then we ban prayer from the schools and pass
civil laws offensive to the divine law expressed in the natural law and self-censor
ourselves so that businesses will not mention Christ at Christmas. After having
given lip service to God and then silencing him in the schools, in the public
square, and in the marketplace, we then are shocked to find that there are fiends
among us who take us at our word. Our Godless rhetoric produces men who
behave Godlessly!
So we put them in jail. By the busload. We preach incessantly that none needs
adhere to any given faith. We legislate with the ideal in mind that no absolute
norm exists for human behavior. We train our children to value diversity. So,
some men act on the faith that they may help themselves to other men’s prop-
erty—and we imprison them. Other men follow the relative law that what feels
good is good—and we imprison them. There is a diverse mode of thought among
us that has decided that your life is worth less than the thirty-seven bucks in your
pocket—and we imprison such freethinkers on death row for twenty years before
finally getting around to killing them so that they will kick the bucket before their
Social Security benefits would have kicked in.
Our government should be impeached. Not for high crimes and misdemean-
ors, but for malpractice. Having rid us of the scourge of God, our government
has imposed on us the scourge of the Godless. Whether it is the fear of being
mugged or the risk of having one’s life savings wiped out in a multibillion-dollar
pyramid scheme concocted by a “white-collar” crook or the danger inherent in
turning over the levers of power to amoralists bent on violating the sixth and
ninth Commandments, our nation has fallen into the hands of bandits. The fools
who claimed that they could bring men more happiness apart from God should
at least have the decency to admit that their Godless form of happiness bears a
strange resemblance to what earlier and saner eras called misery. The fools who
swallowed this lunacy should demand their tax money back, apologize to the chil-
dren they have permitted to be warped by this childish refusal to obey authority,
and then beg that divine authority to restore order, not at the point of a gun, but
upon bended knees below bowed heads.
What few in the nation are willing to admit, however, is that our government
is ourselves. As the wise wag once said, a democracy gets the government it de-
serves. The misery, insanity, and willfulness afflicting us is self-inflicted. Man can
make a mess like this, but man unaided by grace can not clean up this kind of a
mess. As long as God is denied any part in the governance of a nation, that nation
will be ungovernable—the behavior of children in schools, of spouses in marriag-
es, and of gangs on the streets is testimony to how the ungovernable will conduct
themselves in the absence of external discipline and self-control.
Godless crooks are in jail because they are Godless. Godless governments
are in power because Godless citizens put them there. Godless citizens are
Godless because they have apostatized from the Catholic Church. Apostates
who will not repent will get their wish—living a life in time on earth without
God will result in an eternity in hell without God. If you do not want God
to rule your country, you will find yourself under the rule of the Godless, now
and forever. Whether in time or in eternity, the only alternative to the rule of
God is being ruled by satan. Hence, the evil empire, Godless by definition,
holds soil from the Atlantic to the Gobi, from Norway to the Veldt, from the
Land of the Midnight Sun to the land of penguins, and from sea to shining
sea. There is a prison without walls, a prison far larger than a whole continent,
a prison from which there is no escape—and a Judgment from a Judge from
whom there is no appeal. Obey any rule other than His, and discover the true
meaning of justice. Obey Him and know mercy.
2. My belly and my god: Materialism as the measure of man

“Blessed are the poor.” “The poor you will always have with you.” “There is no
man who hath left house or brethren or sisters or father or mother or children or
lands, for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall not receive an hundred times as
much, now in this time: houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children
and lands, with persecutions: and in the world to come life everlasting.”
Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, said all of those things. Ordinary people with
ordinary lives and ordinary attitudes about life heard Jesus say those things with
their own ears. What they did not hear was the poor being cursed for their failure
to be rich. God did not direct His hearers to seek wealth as the supreme blessing,
and eradicating the poor as being the greatest service possible for man. The reward
promised by the Lord Jesus did not omit reference to the ordinary reality of hu-
man suffering while in this world.
By way of warning, Jesus also said, “A rich man shall hardly enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven.” He explained that Dives received good things in his life,
but after death was subject to unrelieved torment. The Son of God made it abun-
dantly clear that the whole world is too small a paycheck for one’s immortal soul.
Capitalism’s insatiable lust for riches and communism’s demand that a
paradise for workers exist on earth, can only make sense in a universe bereft of
God. If the highest good is the possession of material goods, then the disdain
in which rich capitalists hold the poor and the crime of poverty punished by
the communists are defensible attitudes and policies. If, on the other hand, God
is, then no amount of labor to gain property and no extremity of effort to re-
distribute property is of ultimate worth. At best such labors and efforts may be
used in the service of aiding men to gain a claim among the poor whose inher-
itance is the Kingdom of Heaven, and to assist nations in sharing their wealth
so as to be counted among the peoples who shall enter the New Jerusalem on
the Last Day. But the raw material of capitalists’ capital and the communists’
community property is the stuff of which moths make meals, rust devours, and
time will utterly consume in its own end.
This is a harsh reality which, if confronted too directly, results in despair
among those who have no spiritual lodestar. So in order to take their minds off
being moth fodder, rust bait, and temporary workers of the most fleeting kind,
capitalists and communists turn their attention to eating: filling their bellies with
food and drink, filling their eyes with immodesty, filling their minds with lying
philosophies, filling their hearts with passing passions based in the flesh, and fill-
ing their days with distractions from the inescapable horror of filling their graves
with themselves. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and a chase after the wind” ap-
plies to whatever has no existence beyond this world and everything attached to it.
“Sin” is a word exiled from the speech of free marketers and party members
alike. “Crime”, however, is on the lips of legislators, secular moralists, and con-
cerned citizens in whatever conversation pertains to the obstacles to rebuilding
Eden in our day. Criminals in this mindset do not harm the soul or pose a threat
to salvation; it is the body and the body politic which is to be safeguarded. Infrac-
tions against the social code, as opposed to the offenses against the divine majesty
which constitute sin, are the ills to be remedied, the evils to be rooted out, and
the injustice to be punished.
Contrary to the errors of the materialists, however, crime is not a symptom
of poverty. Communists seek to eradicate poverty as a contradiction to socialist
perfection, while capitalists excoriate the poor for having a lack of initiative, want-
ing in character, and simply being lazy. Communists and capitalists agree that the
contrarian and the unmotivated will descend to lives predicated on harming true
believers and the industrious. The poor are criminalized among communists as
a threat to right thinking, and among capitalists as a drag on the juggernaut of
the consumerist economy. In both instances, poverty is attacked as an evil to be
ruthlessly expunged.
What each set of errors, capitalist or communist, fails to realize is that it is
not poverty which leads to ill thinking or lethargy in production. The existence
of poor men who grow up to be wise men and rich men who grow up to be
embezzlers is proof positive that the material dearth of the home is not what
determines moral fiber or worth to mankind. Yes, there are fools who are poor
and philanthropists with the means to execute their beneficence, but neither the
idiocy nor the largesse depends upon a material source. What the fiend lacks or
the philanthropist possesses has nothing to do with property, and everything to
do with the soul.
Extolling material sufficiency as an end in itself results in both the communist
and capitalist systems ignoring the necessity of a spiritual component by which
to direct the production and distribution of material goods. Without that com-
ponent, i.e. , the true Faith of the Catholic Church, not only will production be
stymied, as happens in socialist economies, and consumption become cancerous,
as occurs in capitalist economies, but charity will wither, as is seen in the innu-
merable nations of the earth, neighborhoods of cities, and refugee camps in the
middle of nowhere where homeless families starve in body and soul. Men without
a transcendent raison d’etre will not labor with their life’s blood for transitory
goods; they will not hesitate to inflict suffering on other men who stand in the
way of enjoying whatever material goods they do posses.
The fall of the Soviet Bloc occurred in large part because its economic system
collapsed beneath the weight of material demands without a means of supply, and
spiritual demands that none would acknowledge. The capitalist world is being
consumed from within by a glut of material commodities utilized increasingly as
impersonal means to exert power over persons who are ever on the edge of rioting
in the schoolyard after lunch, in the streets after a sports team wins a champion-
ship or on the grounds of the courthouse when an unfavorable verdict is rendered.
The communists could not keep control by starving their populations, while the
capitalists are finding it ever harder to maintain control over a citizenry of addicts
who are ravenous for bigger and bigger fixes.
Love of money motivates the capitalist. Love of the things that only money
can buy motivates the communist. The root of capitalism’s lust after capital and
communism’s lust after capital’s harlot mother, the means of producing capital,
is that which is the root of all evil, i.e., the love of money. All economic systems
demand capital as a means for pursuing the ends of what humans call good. Only
materialism in its fraternal-twin guises of capitalism and communism pursues the
means as an end in itself. Capitalism exists to produce ever more capital; commu-
nism exists to posses ever more control over the means that produce capital and
its bastard offspring.
Industry, science, and market manipulation are employed by communist and
capitalist alike in order to attain their common end of capital and the fruits of
capital. Industry is developed so that more things might be produced. Science is
advanced so that the production of things might be improved and increased. The
market is controlled so that the production of things and things themselves might
be more readily distributed with an eye toward creating more demand and/or de-
pendence on things and their production. Whether it is a five-year plan of a soviet
co-op or a multinational corporation’s r&d budget, the end result desired is the
same: to ensure that things are made, that the production of things increases, and
that things do not lose their hold on the appetites of the men that use the things,
make the things, and beg for more of the things.
Soviet Russia could legitimately propagandize about the surfeit of luxury
cars on the streets of America while on the sidewalks alongside those streets
homeless men looked at gutters as their commode. Americans could honestly

critique the failures of the Soviet system by pointing to the state-of-the-art
weapons systems deployed throughout Europe and Asia while Muscovites stood
on line for hours at a time to buy bread. The things that either communism
or capitalism produce in largest numbers and at the greatest profit or with the
highest priority are rarely the things most conducive to human enrichment.
Soviet unmanned space craft are quite a bit more reliable than the American
space shuttle has proved to be, but the post-Soviet states know little about
how to encourage private citizens to fend for themselves to produce the most
basic of daily needs. American schools have few peers around the world in the
achievement of generating athletes who will go on to become multimillionaires
in professional sports, but few industrial countries are as embarrassed as is
America at the dearth of high school graduates able to relate data pertaining to
national history, to compute basic algebra equations, or to express themselves in
a language other than their native tongue. And what truly unites nations East
and West in the modern world is a refusal to see that regardless of scholastic
aptitude, technological prowess, or commercial influence on popular culture,
nothing is of any worth where the human person is reduced to a collection of
physical demands, emotional appetites, and intellectual delusions predicated on
defining human beings as merely physical, emotional, and mortal.
Where God is denied, the merely human provides no acceptable alternative.
The loss of a sense of the spiritual is not compensated by overemphasizing the
material. Without an absolute measure of that which is good and right and true,
all human endeavors will decay into a disordered pursuit of the ephemeral, the
unsatisfying, and the deadly. In fact, the inescapable conclusion to be reached by
a materialist estimation of reality is that death is the ultimate reality. The death
of God proclaimed by Friedrich Nietzsche was not imposed upon the Omnipo-
tence. When men decided that God’s condition was terminal, man was dealt a
death sentence. God is wholly unaffected by the disease of apostasy, but men who
succumb to this illness rarely recover. It remains to be seen if the remedy of repen-
tance will be taken by either the apostates adhering to the atheism of the market
or by the apostates who offer atheistic worship to the labor of the worker. Death
is the only outcome when faith in the living God no longer lives in the hearts of
men. Men who have no faith in God can not but lose the will to live and will end
by dismissing the good of, having a disdain for, and being disgusted by life itself.
3. When you’re tired of God, you’re tired of life: Abortion for all ages
Communism as a political system depends upon socialism as an economic
system. The two are inseparable. No communist state exists that is not a socialist
economy; no socialist economy is wholly free of communist elements in the body
politic. Few remember or admit that the Nazi government headed by Adolf Hitler
was a socialist regime, the National Socialists. The fact that Stalin and Hitler hated
one another, demons never get along, lulls most uncritical thinkers into the fallacy
that the two despots held antithetical beliefs on matters of human governance.
No, Virginia, there is no third way between the antipodes of Christ and antichrist.
Hitler’s socialists and Stalin’s socialists did not get along because of a small adver-
bial distinction: Hitler wanted a socialism predicated on a pan-Germanic Aryan
supremacy, which is to say national socialism; Stalin desired a socialist workers’
paradise exported without heed of borders or nationality, that is, international
socialism. Neither wanted free markets or capitalist magnates or private property
or interests beyond socialism or obeisance paid to God almighty and His one true
religion, Roman Catholicism.
Oddly enough, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not disagree with this set of
undesirables. Nor have any of his successors in the Oval Office these last sixty
years. Nor was there much by way of opposition in the fifty or so years prior to
the New Deal to the notion of materialist, modernist, and Godless government
of men, by men, and for men. In the period that produced Lenin, Stalin, and
Hitler, the United States of America imposed the Federal Reserve system, the
federal income tax, the Social Security pension, and a foreign policy based on the
exportation of the principles which produce such results, all at the expense of the
preservation of states’ rights, property rights, individual rights, and the rights of
God and the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother Church.
National Socialists manipulated borders and moved populations in order to
establish the lebensraum demanded by the Aryan birthright. International social-
ists manipulated borders, moved populations, and erected puppet governments
to guarantee the hegemony of the ideals at home in Moscow over all of Eastern
Europe and most of Asia. The United States of America utilized the positivistic
assertion of Manifest Destiny to eliminate American Indians as sovereigns over
their ancient homelands; upheld the Constitutional provision of owning men
as chattel to relocate millions of Africans to the New World to provide cheap
labor, then violated Constitutional principles to force states to free the slaves; and
interfered repeatedly in the affairs of governments throughout the Western Hemi-
sphere from its intrusions into Mexico throughout the nineteenth century and
continuing in America’s unhelpful actions in Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Grenada,
Panama, Nicaragua, and Haiti.
Hitler re-established Germany’s military, modernized and rebuilt its industry,
and projected its worldview and will far beyond its borders. The Soviets’ milita-
rism was second to none. They developed industry to support their military even
at the expense of producing food for their large population, and gained influence
in every country on earth by dint of their philosophical, economic, and sociologi-
cal novelties in opposition to and contempt for Western civilization as nurtured in
Christendom. America’s military defeated Hitler’s; its industry out-produced the
communist world in toto; and Christ the King receives no more respect or obedi-
ence in the laws that come from Washington than from the tyranny that spewed
from the Kremlin. The thousand-year reign of the Reich perdures in America;
the errors of Russia are firmly embraced by Americans. Any who think that Our
Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Heaven and earth, and Our Lady the Blessed Vir-
gin Mary, the Queen of Heaven and earth, are any more pleased at the policies
and actions of the United States than with the evil and errors of the Nazis or the
Soviets is either delusional, ignorant, or imbued with the atheism that denies Our
Lord and Our Lady.
Abortion, vivisection, forced sterilization, experimentation on unwitting hu-
man subjects, and euthanasia were part of the horrors of the Nazi era in Germany.
Abortion, vivisection, forced sterilization, experimentation on unwitting human
subjects, and euthanasia were part of the horrors of the Soviet Union. Abortion,
vivisection, forced sterilization, experimentation on unwitting human subjects,
and euthanasia were part of the horrors pursued by state and federal authorities
in the United States during the period of Nazi ascendance and Soviet aggres-
sion. Abortion, vivisection, forced sterilization, experimentation on unwitting
human subjects, and euthanasia are not repudiated in principle by the govern-
ments housed in Berlin, Moscow, or Washington here at the beginning of the
twenty-first century. Abortion, vivisection, forced sterilization, experimentation
on unwitting human subjects, and euthanasia are legal or tolerated in Germany,
Russia, and the United States of America even now.
Through the penal system, medical research, and phantom rights within con-
stitutional law, moderns in nations founded on either capitalist or communist
ideologies have no problem taking innocent life, mutilating the healthy, sacrific-
ing the weak to save the strong, embracing death in the pursuit of life, or com-
mitting self-murder as a means to assert self-dignity. Nothing within the tenets of

capitalism or communism forbids such actions. Everything within communism
and capitalism is meant to support the attainment of human willfulness regardless
of its cost in human life. Capitalism and communism do not differ in the slightest
detail in their refusal to accept a higher law from God to place restraints on the ac-
tions that men deem legal though the divine law calls them abominable. Inalien-
able rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness bereft of belief in God and
His supreme law of love have unarguably resulted in a world made miserable by
its misdefining of the nature of happiness; a veritable police state in which one’s
spouse and children, other citizens, and terrorists from points unknown are the
enemies from which the government is incapable of protecting anyone except by
depriving all of liberty by assuming everyone is a felon; and an ubiquitous attack
on life in the womb, on life within weak bodies, and on life at its end in old age.
Why do materialists, whether communist or capitalist, who agree on so lit-
tle, agree that babies can be aborted, sick and old people can be eliminated, and
healthy people can be mutilated in obedience to a parent’s will, the government’s
will, or their own will? The final cause that leads in this dance with death is dis-
belief in God. Materialists, socialists of whatever gradation toward communism
or capitalism, serve a variety of efficient causes in the accomplishment of their
common final cause of atheism. These efficient causes amount to differences in
means, not ends. They are distinctions without differences.
Nazis killed people because they did not like them. It was eminently per-
sonal. Hitler did not like to share the earth with Jews, Catholics, blacks, sick
people, and non-Aryans. So he had them offed. Since he was of the semi-divine
race, he was able to execute his vicious will in the name of virtue. The Soviets
in the forties and fifties and the Chinese today saw, and see, certain classes of
weak, unproductive, disbelieving malcontents as a threat to the perfection of the
workers’ paradise, so the party decreed and decrees their destruction. Sometimes
it is babes in the womb, sometimes it is girl babies outside of the womb, and
always it is someone who is simply in the way, so they are removed. The com-
munist attitude toward them is almost something of an afterthought: obstacles
are not to be hated, but simply overcome. That attitude is seen by some as an
improvement over Nazi hatred.
If indeed such an attitude is an improvement, its consummation is found in
the anti-life ethos of the West, also known as the culture of death. Planned Par-
enthood kills babies—for a profit. Governments and research universities kill ba-
bies—for a profit. Adult children kill their enfeebled parents—for a profit. Spous-
es kill their incapacitated mates—for a profit. The despondent, the terminally
ill, and the mistaken kill themselves—for a profit. “Profit” might be quarterly
dividends, donations from true believers, scientific “advances”, peace of mind,
votes, an insurance policy, a house bequeathed in a will, the ability to remarry, or
to escape from the demands that life places on beings with free will. Regardless of
how “profit” is defined in this mindset, it has nothing whatsoever to do with that
which pleases God. It is simply business. Nothing personal, Sir, it’s just business.
Death in the modern world is nothing but simply business as usual. There is no
reference here to the Lord of life, to choosing life, to eternal life and its Author,
God. life, on earth and in Heaven, is not the highest good. All is determined by
a strange and fervent pursuit of the grave. Life is expendable and debatable, but
absolute laws are passed to forbid any from standing in the way of sending some-
one prematurely to the tomb.
This universal acquiescence to death is not a personal vendetta. None claims
to hate children. None admits to hating his dying mother. None suggests that
the comatose patient is the object of contempt. All aver that love or at least com-
passion is operative. All protest a desire for nothing but what is best for every-
one involved. Note that hatred of God, hatred of life, and a hatred for bearing
one another’s burdens are in no way disallowed by this impersonal approach to
compassion, love, and dealing death. The “fetus” is not a person, the patient in
a “persistent vegetative state” is not a person, the Creator of Heaven and earth is
not a person. None of this desire for death should be taken personally, because the
unborn, the dying, and the Lord of life are not to be regarded as persons. The only
persons to be addressed are those whose wish is to rid themselves of the presence
of the non-persons in the womb, in the ICU, in the Synagogue, in the Gulag, and
on the throne of Heaven.
4. The Fifty-Percent Solution: Marriage is Made in Heaven. Divorce is Made in

...
Hell is not displeased that man has decided that Holy Matrimony is no lon-
ger understood by man to be primarily for the begetting and raising of children
for the glory of God. It would appear to be the case that most of mankind is not
displeased by this paradigm shift in man’s belief on the nature of the fundamental
human society. If the primary fruit of marriage, children, and the subjects who
effect marriage, adults, and the beneficiaries of the unconditional love nurtured in
marriage, the aged, can be eliminated by abortion and euthanasia, then, of course,
marriage itself can be eliminated by divorce, cohabitation, homosexuality, self-
abuse, polyamory, contraception, and fornication. The popular stat is that half
of the time, married couples find some excuse, though little reason, to terminate
their unions. The other half of the time, married couples accept deadly divorce as
a viable alternative should married life become unendurable. Rather than the di-
vinely revealed duty to remain married, the capricious demand for the right to be
divorced is defended by the state, by divorcing couples, and even by most couples
who remain married. “The fifty-percent solution” ending half of all new marriages
in divorce is a remedy concocted by the half-witted.
Life itself if not inviolate means that all manifestations of life are subject to de-
struction under whatever conditions are deemed acceptable by the self-appointed,
non-divine arbiters of life. If babies can be killed, then old people can be killed.
If babies can be killed in the search for cures for incurable illnesses, then victims
of incurable illness can be killed when a cure is lacking. If the fruit of marriage is
expendable, then marriage itself is expendable. Neither is life that flows from the
married state an absolute necessity, nor is the married state as a way of life neces-
sarily an absolute. Babies’ future birthdays and future anniversaries of a marriage
may both be terminated before they arrive. The infants’ life may be ended before
it reaches fruition and so may be the couple’s life in common before it reaches its
conclusion. Death may come to the bond before death parts husband and wife.
Divorce is the abortion of a person. The two-who-become-one is destroyed.
Before man was comfortable with massacring babes in wombs, he had to get used
to the idea of slaughtering wedded bliss in homes. Just as abortion is advocated
as a means for freedom for men and women to pursue their personal desires, di-
vorce is advocated as a means for society to pursue its desire that the state, not the
family, be the indissoluble bond that forges unity among men. In fact, abortion is
a means to this end of family bonds as dispensable aspects of human life and the
absolute power of the state as indispensable to the experience of mankind. Killing
babies is just another way that the Godless state accomplishes its desire to kill
marriages and thus to kill families. Divorce kills a person and makes the killing
of persons—the wedded couple, the couple’s family, and the unborn, the ill, and
the aged—palatable as an ordinary way of life for the society that accepts such
atrocities. Divorce is part of the culture of death.
Abortion is the most extreme ill that breeds in the sterility of the family
destroyed by divorce. Before abortion comes from divorce, another ill besets mar-
riage with its deadly effects. The couple willing to kill their babies before they are
born are willing to prevent those babies from being conceived. Abortion is the
last resort of the contraceptive mentality. Most couples or individual women who
elect to kill babies were quite comfortable with the idea of depriving their children
of life before life could begin long before the decision to abort was made. The idea
that human life does not begin until after birth is dependent upon the lie that
human life is not worth beginning. Whether that beginning is prevented at con-
ception or in the birth canal is moot once it is acceptable to believe that human
life is better not to have been in the first place. The prophylactic is no less deadly
to human bodies and the human spirit than is the saline solution or the forceps
or the suction device. No one could kill a baby who exists who was not convinced
that a baby should not exist in the first place. It is not at all rational for an aborting
couple or individual to refuse to contracept a child; the contraceptive mentality
can not in the least object to the conclusions reached by those who desire abortion
on demand. If life is not an absolute good to be received regardless of the diffi-
culties it might present, then ending that life before it begins at birth is no more
to be refused than ending that life before it begins at conception. If life is a good
that may not be deprived actively by abortion, then it is not to be denied through
contraception, and is instead a good to be pursued actively in the conjugal act.
Objectivists, Democrats, Republicans, Anglicans, Lutherans, atheists, and
communists all agree that what man has joined man may put asunder. They all
agree that what man has joined is not accomplished by the irreversible will of
God. There is no nation on earth that accepts divorce that has not come to em-
brace abortion. The few nations that held out against divorce were those that
longest rejected abortion. Their acceptance of divorce in the civil law has led to
at least a tolerance if not an encouragement of abortion in the laws of the state.
Neither capitalism nor communism, not democracy or totalitarianism, no “high”
church or “low” church has been equal to the task of keeping divorce on demand
from leading to abortion on demand. None of the systems of modern thought is
in the least committed to eliminating divorce as an ill that erodes social bonds and
harms individuals. Quite the opposite, divorce is demanded as a right, celebrated
as a matter of public policy, and in at least one case offered as the justification for
a schism within Christendom leading to national apostasy and heresy.
The state is human society writ large. The family is human society expressed
in its fundamental and essential unit. Human society can exist without the state,
but is inconceivable without the family. The well-being of the state depends upon
the health of the family. Divorce, contraception, and abortion are nothing less
than suicidal policies pursued by both elements of human society, the state and
the family. Where the state inflicts or tolerates divorce, contraception, and abor-
tion on the family, there is an attack on the common good which should be resist-
ed by every man who would not be a slave. Where the family surrenders to this
attack or, God forbid, joins in this attack, not only will there be nothing left of the
family, but the state itself will eventually cease to be. In its place will be anarchy,
brute force, and the tyranny of sin and its wages, death.
This writer labors under the notion that whether the nation involved is Swe-
den or China or the United States, both the attack and the surrender described
in the paragraph immediately preceding this one is very much underway. He is
not averse to correction. That correction would need to explain the principles of
communism or capitalism, in democracy or despotism, in atheism or religious
indifferentism that forbid divorce, contraception, abortion, and their attendant
destruction of the human family to the detriment and final destruction of human
society. Said correction would be received as valid if even one example can be
shown where a capitalist or communist, a democratic or totalitarian, humanist
or ecumenical entity of any kind was able to advance its philosophy successfully
without appeal to the divine absolute and still preserve human life in all stages, the
inviolability of the family, and human liberty within the state. Please offer some
indication that somewhere within modernity there is an absolute refusal to call
innocent life dispensable, to see marriage as onerous, and the state as all-powerful.
As of this writing, the United States of America has enacted policies on a
national level within the last two years that determine that sodomites may enter
into the institution formerly known as matrimony, that caregivers may starve and
dehydrate persons in their care with a will toward active euthanasia, and that the
tax dollars paid by citizens to the federal government may be used to fund the
destruction of infant children for the purposes of medical research. Stalin had no
problem with in utero infanticide. Hitler did not balk at medical experiments on
unwilling subjects and state-sanctioned starvation of non-persons. And now the
United States Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence vs. Texas has officially con-
doned the sin of Sodom, declaring it a civil right. A sin that cries to Heaven for
vengeance, on earth clamors for - and is granted - a marriage license.
Families whole, intact, and suffused with love echo the reality of the natural
law, the authority of the Catholic Church, and the revelation of God’s salvific will
for the good of mankind. None in the family so devoted to truth and ultimate re-
ality would desire anything that would result in diminution, harm, or destruction
of the family. Members of the family might be persuaded to accept some of the
principles or provisional goals of capitalism or communism, but would disavow
them at the moment it became evident that such principles and goals were at
enmity with the family, in denial of the natural law, disobedient to the Church,
or offensive to the Divine Majesty. Because this frame of mind is the necessary
condition of healthy family life, the family is beyond the pale according to the
fiends who direct and populate the modern nation state. Whether in the name of
the Constitution, the party, or the market, modern men will feel no compunction
about sacrificing the interests of the family if they come into conflict with the
self-interest of homo divinus. A holy family understands that the state, the econ-
omy, and social welfare are meant to nurture the home. The unholy minions of
capitalism and communism demean the family as being merely elements in eco-
nomics, as being as ephemeral as the walls of the houses in the subdivisions where
they are confined, and as being ultimately expendable to the caprices of immoral-
ity, government policy, and whatever progress might mean tomorrow. Neither the
communist nor the capitalist can pretend to conceive the family in the context
of the Kingdom of God on earth destined for eternal life in Heaven; neither the
communist nor the capitalist desires as motivation, method, or meaning for the
conduct of life on earth the goal of living forever in Heaven.
Apologists for modernity and capitalism within the Catholic Church insist
that capitalism is compatible with defined dogmas declared by the magisterium,
with the tenets of natural law, and with the incontrovertible truths expressed in
the divine positive law. Catholics such as this writer are insulted with the epithets
of “socialist” or “unpatriotic” or “ignorant” for failing to see the good brought by
modern democracy, for calling into question the nature of the supposed freedoms
granted by governments elected through popular sovereignty without reference
to Christ the King and His Vicar the Pope, and for insisting on a return to an
understanding of human life predicated on the essential nature of the human
family and divine worship to the happiness of man on earth and his beatitude
in Heaven. This writer is waiting for an explanation of how the separation of
the state from the Church has lent support to the absolute sanctity of life from
conception to natural death. He desires to see proof that democratically elected
governments and their citizens are committed to prohibiting divorce and the de-
struction of the family as mandated by God when He physically walked this earth
two thousand years ago. Where is town life seen as dependent on, supportive
of, and enriching to the agrarian norm that was operative throughout the whole
world until the middle of the twentieth century, rejected simultaneously then by
capitalist democracies and totalitarian communist states alike? If indeed there is a
difference on the moral plane between capitalist consumption of goods and com-
munist redistribution of goods, it is high time that man be given evidence of the
existence of this singular truth which heretofore has been an amazingly well kept
secret. Other than the fact that both communists and capitalists seek to produce
as many material things as possible with the capitalists having far more success
thereat, none has convincingly demonstrated that aught else separates the two
systems in their impact on the understanding of the sanctity of human life, the
controls placed on the conduct of human life, and the ultimate end of human life.
In short, it needs to be shown whether and how communism and capitalism differ
in their ability to make known the Kingdom of God at hand now and which, if
either, is pursuing the same goals revealed by Jesus Christ, offered by the Holy
Ghost, and taught within the immemorial doctrines of the Bride of Christ, the
Catholic Church.
5. If only ignorance were bliss: Compulsory education

Many moderns would hear sinister overtones in the old Catholic axiom,
“Give me your child for twelve years and he will be mine for life.” To the progres-
sive sophisticate of the contemporary age, such seems steeped in brainwashing
and coercion. The fact that the Church taught the child to think for himself in ac-
cordance with the beliefs revealed by God is received with a large dollop of skep-
ticism in today’s freethinking minds. It is not admitted that education according
to this bent producing the likes of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante,
Shakespeare, Palestrina, Michelangelo, and Paschal is thus vindicated. Instead,
the modern cynic would pretend that the accomplishments of such accomplished
men were made in spite of, rather than because of, the cultural patrimony trans-
mitted through the Catholic Church and their personal response to the Faith
taught by the Apostles and their successors in the episcopate.
Setting aside the astronomical illiteracy rates, the metal detectors and armed
guards, and the unwed pregnancies commonplace in the average big-city school
in the United States of America at the dawn of the twenty-first century, one still
is to be humored for wondering whether or not modernity can hold its own in a
competition with antiquity in the task of producing men of letters, cultivating a
culture enriching not only to the learned but to the simple, and recognizing and
surviving its own vices. Keep in mind that George Washington was not taught in
a public school nor was Karl Marx the product of an egalitarian university open to
all regardless of ability to afford tuition. Many have commented on the alarming
reality that modernity is living off of the capital inherited from its forebears in an-
tiquity, that moderns, lacking principles to live by, have exhausted their principle
and are consuming, not increasing, the capital. The question for the immediate
future is whether or not the period since the end of Christendom has produced
new principle, new principles, indeed, new capital, in the realm of ideas and ideals
from which posterity may draw in the centuries to come.
St. Augustine writing against the Manicheans, St. Thomas’ employment of
the scholastic method of objections and responses, Paschal’s need to demonstrate
the rationality of the Faith all point to the fact that the Church has never enjoyed
a monopoly on occupying the public platforms of the public discourse on truth.
Catholic thinkers have always engaged atheists, heretics, and doubters honestly
and openly. The very nature of that which Catholicism seeks to share and that
which she must combat requires the ability to address that which falls outside
of Catholic categories. The Catholic Church is catholic not only in its extent
through history, through geography, and through political systems, but she is
catholic in her applicability to every problem, proposed solution, and challenge—
intellectual, emotional, physical, or spiritual—that has ever been part of the hu-
man experience. Not art, not science, not poetry, not government, not industry,
not romance, not war, not death, not theory, not practice, not God Himself are
outside of what the Catholic Church is able to engage in, expound upon, and
educate about, for, to, and with her children.
When modern education declares that the Church and her Lord are off lim-
its, practically all else must be jettisoned as well. None can pretend to understand
the merits and demerits of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis without first appreciating
what Christ established as the Mass for all time on Holy Thursday. Islam’s threat
to the West in the early twenty-first century makes no sense to anyone who does
not study the origins of Islam in war, avarice, and Mahomet’s unbelief in Jesus
Christ and His Body the Catholic Church in the seventh century. The peculiar
period of German history under the Nazis is an enigma without a key unless one
gives heed to the rebellion of the Catholic priest Martin Luther four centuries
before the rising of the Fuhrer. Dubbing the Woolworth’s building in New York
a “cathedral of commerce” is absurd when one has seen the light through the
windows at Chartres, walked beneath the dome in Florence, paused in prayer on
the piazza at St. Mark’s in Venice, felt vertigo while contemplating the heights of
the cathedral in Ulm, or touched the bronze foot of St. Peter in Rome. Pilgrims
seeking to establish their shining city on the hill in New England would have
known nothing of such imagery unless the Catholic Church had transmitted with
authority the full canon of Sacred Scripture which the pilgrims held in a degraded
state. The workers’ paradise sought in the communist world owes much to the
original paradise lost by the first Adam and restored by the second Adam on the
Cross and through His Body, the Catholic Church—unless the workers’ paradise
denies the Father of both Adams, in which case something far different from par-
adisal bliss awaits party members in eternity.
It is a firmly held belief and teaching of the Catholic Church that the primary
teachers of children are their parents. The ultimate goal of parental guidance of
children is to make them fit for Heaven, or as everyone remembers from his cate-
chism, to know, love, and serve God in this life so as to be happy with Him forever in
Heaven. Within the Rite of Baptism, through a variety of authoritative encyclicals
of the Popes, and Catholic common sense—sensus Catholicus—members of the
Body of Christ are assured of, admonished to, and assisted in the fulfillment of
their responsibility to foster the adopted children of God with the same solicitude
and care with which the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph attended to the
only-begotten Son of God. This is a truth rooted in the natural law, expressed in
ecclesial law, and reflective of divine law. No human power has the authority to
usurp parents’ right to educate their children, and indeed, nature, the Church,
and God Himself are powerless to rescind this law.
Collectivist Training Center 1515/b and P.S. 101 endeavor to do that which is
impossible for God. Compulsory education in the modern world not only means
that children must receive an education and that children must leave their homes
to receive it, but that children must be educated in ways and in content foreign
and repugnant to their parents. Communists used to have re-education centers to
make sure that adults with ideas deviant from the approved norm would see the
error of their ways and seek conformity—on pain of being reformed in the gulag
instead. School boards in the United States simply ignore parents who object to
the filth and foolishness being inflicted upon their children. Neither the Soviet
Union offered, nor do most American parents seek, an alternative to the coerced
indoctrination of the impressionable minds entrusted to them.
Soviet children and parents at least had the bad excuse that they would be
slaughtered, disappeared, starved, or all of the above if they did not toe the party
line. American parents subscribe to a system of government that allows for private
and parochial schools (which cost additional tuition on top of the taxes for the
public schools they find offensive), parent and citizen oversight of school boards,
and an elective process designed to remove officials who fail to effect the will of
the voters and taxpayers. Why, then, American parents docilely submit themselves
and their children to a range of options veritably Stalinistic in its breadth is a
question that defies rational explanation.
For most modern parents and children anywhere in the entire world today, it
is inconceivable to the imagination that education means something other than
an institutional setting wherein the parents are tolerated bill payers rather than at
least active participants or, as was once the case, the central authority and provider
of the educational process. Homes wherein children are discouraged or forbidden
from being educated are taxed in perpetuity to force those children—and their
children’s great-grandchildren—to be brainwashed apart from their parents. Lax-
ity in morals and manners, which would be severely punished by parents in those
homes, is taught as objective good to their children in the schools by teachers
about whom one wonders whether or not their own children are raised with such
dearth of courtesy and common sense. The notion of good and evil is, simultane-
ously and oxymoronically, taught as a matter of relativity, allowing then for the
teaching of laxity as an objective good.
Despair, drunkenness, and depravity swamped the communist world as a re-
sult, leading to its economic, though not ideological, dissolution. Despair, drunk-
enness, and depravity swamp the capitalist world, able to fend off economic dis-
solution so long as no one asks the dangerous question of what is produced by a
“service” “industry” and how capital is generated when few citizens are engaged
in the production of actual consumer goods for consumers who largely receive
their income from jobs in the “service” “industry”. Are third-world slave labor-
ers producing in sufficient quantity to be able to supply the demands of service
sector employees in the West, who buy the slave-produced wares that make the
magnates rich, who then pay slave wages to their servants in the service sector
who by their insatiable consumption perpetuate the slavery of their third-world
counterparts? Ask employees, shareholders, and pensioners of K-Mart, Enron,
WorldCom, Parmalat, Tyco, Global Crossing, United Airlines, and the Social Se-
curity Administration what they think. Never ask an accountant for an accurate
rendering of a corporation’s profits. Never rely on the accounting of a system—
economic, philosophical, or theological—that explains away the sin of usury.
It is no accident that Soviet ideology pertaining to the state providing all

for all citizens has become the “social safety net” in the capitalist West to hedge
against the weaknesses of the free market system. It is no accident that the former
Soviet Union is now counted among the world’s democracies and that Maoist
China has formally endorsed private property as an element within its communist
ideal. Modern earth is now plagued with the inhuman ideology of the Soviets
grafted on the Godless economics of the West. Your children are in school so that
they may become accustomed to this foul reality and learn to like it, demand it,
and defend it to the death—of its enemies—if need be. The fact that the Rus-
sians, the Chinese, and the Americans all subscribe to these perverse ideals while
still remaining the most friendly of enemies should disturb anyone who prefers
freedom to servitude, thought to propaganda, and the human condition to bestial
and ignorant bliss.
Children throughout the world are being trained in the skills and indoc-
trinated in the ideas that will make their own servitude not only palatable but
preferable to real freedom. Ultimate truth, immaterial reality, and God Himself
are actively denied in the secular governments and educational systems of every
nation on earth—with the alarming exception of the Mohammedans adhering to
their false worship taught by their false prophet Mahomet in the name of their
false god Allah. East and West ignore at their own peril the threat posed by their
indifferentism’s inability to confront Mohammedan fervor and furor. Without an
appeal to absolute truth from the one true God, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ,
through His Body the Catholic Church, mankind is vulnerable not only to the
inhuman horrors of materialism, but to the demonic fury of the jihad. Servitude
will be the final condition regardless of the form of apostasy embraced by what
was formerly Christendom: either to succumb to the brute force of the scimitars
from the mosques, or to bow to the brute force of mindless liars insisting that
bread and circuses are the best that men can expect in this, their one and only life.
Discovering that man has another way of true life, Christ and Him crucified, is
the only hope for moderns. It will be far too late to repent when the dead learn
the harsh lesson that a very different experience awaits the men who placed their
faith in the hopeless and loveless promises of mammon on earth.
6. Su casa, mi casa: The myth of private property in modernity

Freed slaves rarely got their forty acres and a mule after the American Civ-
il War, a.k.a. the War of Northern Aggression, better described as the Framers’
Hens Came Home to Roost War. Comrades in Soviet Russia and girl babies in
Red China and wage earners the world over have never had promised much less
obtained that much property for their own personal use—six feet by three feet by
six feet is about all the real estate they will ever be able to call their own, though
but briefly. The ancient wisdom expressed in the phrase, “You can’t take it with
you,” has undergone a metamorphosis in modernity into, “You won’t get any in
the first place.” Pretty much the only modern entity that can say “I got mine,” is
governments and the cabals that run them. Thems that gots from thems that’s got
not rule according to the principle, “It is better to give—a beating with a stick—
than to receive—the short end of that stick.”
Few imagine that Pemex, the Tokyo Post Office, and the Green Bay Packers
share a great deal in common, i.e. , they are a lot alike and they have a sweetheart
arrangement for doing their business. Pemex in oil, the Tokyo Post Office in bank-
ing, and the Green Bay Packers of the NFL in football are government-owned
corporations, supported by taxes, which directly compete with private businesses.
Green Bay, Wisconsin, makes millions from the Packers, the nation of Mexico
reaps billions from Pemex, and the people of Japan have trillions tied up in the To-
kyo Post Office. Pemex was created by a socialist seizure of oil fields, the Packers
perdure as a shameless concession to the socialist demand of government provi-
sion of everything imaginable including entertainment, and the socialist-minded
Tokyo Post Office is considering going private—which could well destroy most of
its competition due to its sheer size, remaining socialist in act if not in fact.
Americans are taught as mother’s milk the civic virtue of free enterprise—ex-
cept when it comes to Amtrak. No one in the land of the free and the home of the
brave would countenance a government destruction of legal businesses—unless
the businesses operated to make a profit on alcohol in the 1920s. Red-blooded
Yankees insist that monopolies bear bad blood for the economy—making allow-
ance, of course, for the entity of which the New York Yankees is the wealthiest
single franchise. Only the thought police, never our leaders obeying our sacred
Constitution, would ever retroactively penalize corporations that benefited the
federal government with hundreds of billions of tax dollars for decades—pay no
attention to that tobacco-industry lawsuit settlement behind the curtain. And it
is unthinkable that the objective, neutral, disinterested authority emanating from
Washington and the various state capitols would ever allow foreign sovereigns to
operate, at a profit, types of businesses that American citizens are forbidden to
engage—all those Indian casinos along the interstate are either figments of your
imagination or elaborate fundraisers for textbooks at the local elementary school,

kinda like a numbers racket, I mean, a lottery would be if such things existed.
Bolshevists not only erected collectivist enterprises, they not only seized pri-
vate enterprises, they not only destroyed private enterprise, they managed to sap
the enterprising spirit of what had once been an energetic and prosperous people.
Vladimir Putin now reigns over a population that found distasteful the mouthings
of pseudo-democrats like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, finding satisfaction instead in
the re-establishment of despotism beneath the direction of the kgb. Thuggery in
Soviet Russia was presided over by the state; the new thuggery is a matter of the
mob. Either way, Russians are producing much less than their lands or factories
are capable of, live in fear, and become angry at the suggestion that they have not
stumbled onto the best way to live a life.
In China today, there is an enormous reserve of foreign currency in the con-
trol of the government. The average citizen, especially in the rural regions, still
lives a positively third-world existence, but it seems that change is on the way.
Those reserves of foreign currency are allowing the Chinese to buy consumer
items in quantities heretofore unthinkable in communist Asia—automobiles,
modern media entertainment, ibm computers. No, not a pc here or there, but
the entirety of ibm; Big Blue is going red. All of this activity of allowing private
property in principle but discouraging its acquisition in practice, of producing
private property with an end in mind of producing hard currency, and of ac-
quiring private property to the detriment of private competitors of China, Inc.,
is a matter of the very public Peoples’ Republic of China seeking to increase, not
repent, socialism. Red China is managing to accomplish through market acumen
what Stalin never dreamed possible with tanks and missiles: defeating America
at its own game. And should China determine that America will not acquiesce
to the weapons of interest rates and currency devaluations, they have tanks and
missiles, too. ibm computers are handy to have around when computing targets
for leveraged stock buyouts, commodities futures trading, and the annihilation of
population centers on distant continents.
Graft and corruption were veritably synonymous with being a Soviet appa-
ratchik. Little has changed since Russia exchanged a government that used the
kgb to terrorize its citizens for a government run by a kgb agent whose citizens
perpetrate, gladly tolerate, or seek to rationalize the terror of the mob. Business in
the aftermath of the dissolution of communism has not diminished the inefficien-
cy of socialism nor removed the shackles from people who might wish to pursue
their livelihood without undue interference from malign authorities, threats from
lawless thugs, or the still-present specter of being incarcerated and having one’s
goods confiscated for running afoul of the political and/or economic interests of
the powers-that-be. Free enterprise has not brought freedom to Russia. The free
market, to the extent that it operates at all in Russia, has not brought about dis-
cernible differences in the daily life of most of its citizens, does not seem to wish
to acknowledge its essential impotence to establish justice without a set of phil-
osophical principles that encompass more than the merely technical applications
of economics, and receives but weak criticism from its free-market, democratic
counterparts in the West.
This might be the case because no more than a Russian citizen can start
a business without budgeting bribes as an operating expense can an American
home “owner” with a house in an historic district choose the color of that
house’s exterior or the configuration of the walls in its interior without permis-
sion from bureaucrats. Americans might be loath to point fingers at the limited
property rights of Russians when looking at what happens to private energy
companies in the United States that desire to drill for oil offshore or to refine
oil near urban centers or to reduce dependence on oil with nuclear power or
coal mining. Neither Soviet nor post-Soviet Russia has risen to the levels of
food production accomplished there under the Czars; nor can American farm-
ers sell their produce for prices sufficient to sustain a family, relying instead on
government subsidies to compensate them for land left intentionally fallow, to
keep prices artificially low (at about the same levels as they stood a half cen-
tury ago), and to enable gargantuan corporations the opportunity to become
the only profitable players in agriculture. Serfs forced from the land under the
Czars and forced back on the land by the Soviets were no worse off by way of
property rights than are “owners” of real estate in jurisdictions throughout the
United States who stand to lose their properties under various court rulings
that allow the exercise of eminent domain to seize private property for the pur-
pose of increasing tax revenues for government entities by selling that property
to other private citizens for development. It would seem that the free market is
not the overarching principle guiding these activities, nor the rights of citizens,
nor a search for ultimate truth and justice, but instead the through line is a
matter of the state invading the home, sacking industry, sapping initiative, and
grabbing land for no other reason than that it can and no one can stop it.
Strangely enough, this governmental hubris is witnessed in communist states
like North Korea, capitalist states like Japan, democratic states like Canada, and
transnational states like the European Union, despotic states all.
Any political or economic system that recognizes Jesus Christ and His Body
the Catholic Church under His Vicar the Pope as its ultimate authority provides
the individual with an appeal to justice entirely independent of human error and
caprice. Systems in denial of this truth leave the individual vulnerable to whoever
gets his hands on the levers of power. Communists and capitalists claim to do all
they do in the name of and for the sake of the people. When it comes right down
to it, however, if the people have a grievance against what the communists or the
capitalists decree is for their own good, the people find themselves voiceless and
powerless to sue the state, to remove the politicians unjustly wielding the power
of the state, or to convince their fellows in society of the tyranny they have un-
wittingly and faithlessly inflicted on themselves. The man of faith subjected to
injustice on earth can hope for justice and mercy before the throne of God on
Judgment Day; the faithless man and the society he establishes refuses justice in
this, the only life recognized, and the victims of injustice have no recourse other
than to docilely submit or to rebel. Alas! rebels are what created this morass in
the first place. Rebellion by the faithless against the faithless will achieve no more
justice than was obtained when the faithless rebelled against the Faith. Without
that Faith, man has no hope for justice. To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc, the nations
must come to the Faith or the nations will perish.
7. Rendering unto Great Caesar’s Ghost!: The state’s claim of the right to tax
everything
Throughout the twentieth century communists seized railroads, mines, farms,
palaces, universities, churches, and lives in the name of the all-powerful state. That
ubiquitous entity then went on to enforce its malign will on industry, agriculture,
governance, education, religious expression, and the family. The result was depres-
sion, famine, despotism, error, atheism, and death. Russians have not stigmatized
Stalin, the Chinese have not disavowed Mao, and Western intellectuals still cast
in their lot with Castro. Not content with holding all the cards in terms of power,
with keeping a stranglehold on the instruments of communicating truth, and
beholding all opposition as fair game for destruction, the communist world has
sought to increase its hold on the hearts of fools who refuse to come to grips with
the commission of nigh on two-hundred million murders, the wanton annihila-
tion of whole cultures, and the assault on God Himself in the desecration of altars
and sacrileges against the Blessed Sacrament as the price to be paid for the brave
new world created in the image and likeness of godless men who would make
themselves gods.
When the English colonists revolted against King George iii, the effective
tax rate was well under twenty percent. The English subjects under the Crown
of Elizabeth ii at one point were subjected to tax rates approaching eighty
percent. Rather than revolting against such injustice, the English wealthy took
their wealth elsewhere.
For instance, tax exiles from England came to the United States. The home
of that historic tax revolt of the eighteenth century received with open arms the
separated brothers fleeing still more tyranny in the mother country. Where the
colonists found twenty percent or less inflicted by a foreign power an onerous and
outrageous burden, their descendants saw fit to tax themselves as much as fifty
percent during a period of tax relief mounted in the 1980s.
Taxes have been described as one of the two sure things in life, the other
being death. This is not true. Where death levies are placed against the dead
through estate taxes, taxes themselves never die. Death is subject to taxes, but
taxes are immune to death. Even at the time of this writing there is an existing
tax on telephone service in the United States that was established, in time of
war, to defray the costs of national defense. The tax was imposed as a tempo-
rary measure, to be lifted when hostilities ceased. Indeed, hostilities ceased in
the Spanish-American War more than a century ago, but that “temporary” tax
has not been repealed. Neither has Congress tried very hard to end that tax,
nor has the citizenry risen up against it. The more things change, the more
they stay the same—when it comes to taxes and their increase. What simply
does not change is the capacity of some men to convince other men to harm
themselves for the profit of rogues, liars, and politicians.
Real estate used to be understood as the condition for wealth. If one had
land, one had a place to build one’s house. If one had land, one had the materials
available to build one’s house oneself. If one had land, one had the means to feed
oneself. If one had land, one had the resources to feed animals and raise crops
suitable for providing clothing for oneself and one’s family. It did not take much
land for a man and his family to be self sufficient, enriching to his neighbors, and
able to pay fixed taxes.
Wealth in the modern age has been redefined to mean income. This might
come from wages, from interest on loans (productive or usurious), from stock
investments, from one’s own business in trade, or from a combination of all

of these. Real estate is not eliminated from this mix, but is much reduced in
its relative worth within the economy. The idea of being “land rich and cash
poor” only has significance where income has usurped the place of real estate
as the condition for wealth.
Many modern economists insist that this is a change for the better insofar as
it allows for an immense increase in wealth and in the numbers of people with
access to it. Land is a strictly finite quantity. Cash and the activities that produce
it are virtually infinite in their potential for growth.
Virtual reality far predates the digital age.
This thirst for ever more “wealth” on paper is tenable as long as there is
something tangible being produced on the land. Where industry declines and
production of durable goods decreases, and where the agrarian way of life be-
comes unsustainable and the production of fungible goods no longer profitable
in terms of producing cash, there is a profound probability that a crisis of some
kind will arise. If there are not real goods backing up the cash in circulation,
then paper money will become less valuable than the trees that made possible
the printing of the currency—it is far easier to heat one’s house by chopping
down one’s tree than by emptying one’s wallet. The Soviet Union experienced
frequent famines, largely self-inflicted through economic ineptitude and wishful
thinking, because of an unwillingness to accept that nothing can replace actual
production of goods for human consumption. The United States of America in
the 1870s, the 1930s, and the 1970s discovered what happens to the value of
cash when there is an imbalance between what is produced and what is avail-
able for consumption, an imbalance caused by speculators exhibiting economic
ineptitude and wishful thinking. Enron is the poster child of the early twen-
ty-first century for ineptitude wedded to wishful thinking out of sheer greed.
The more things change…
Shifting the economy from a basis in real estate to a foundation on currency
directly leads to the modern penchant for confiscatory taxes and the oppression
they invariably bring. If the king wants to place a levy on the wheat you produce,
he can take only so much before you die, before his granaries are full, and before
the population rises up against him—depriving him of wheat to eat, a means to
pay the soldiers to put down the peasantry, and, quite likely, the idiot head that
prompted his tyranny in the first place. It simply is physically impossible to take
forty, fifty, eighty percent of a landed estate—or a rundown hovel for that matter.
But when a man’s wealth is tied up in stocks, bonds, certificates of deposit,

savings accounts, and a weekly paycheck, it is only a small matter of manipulating
numbers in a ledger, filing some forms, or making an electronic transfer to relieve
him of as much of his “wealth” as the government desires. The Sheriff of Notting-
ham would stand in awe at the ability of the irs to take from the rich and give to
the richer. No income is too large or too small to be entirely free from the rapine
of Uncle Sam and his relatives in parliaments, juntas, and peoples’ assemblies
around the world. No self-respecting man of the middle ages, be he a peasant or
a duke, would have stood by as the king attempted to take a third of his wealth
from him, his cattle, his barns, his house, his fields. Modern men meekly fill out
their documents of self-incrimination and pray that the government will merci-
fully permit the family to retain two-thirds of their paycheck, a bit of tax-deferred
retirement savings, and a small write-off for their indentured servitude to the
bank holding their mortgage.
When the king’s men came at tax time, they came understanding that the
productive property being taxed belonged to the subjects and the king had a
right only to a relatively small levy for the purpose of maintaining his just
rule in the kingdom. Most high-tech serfs do not realize that the income they
call their own is the property of the government. Federal Reserve notes—dol-
lar bills—are promissory notes from the United States government to private
bankers. When the government needs to pay on those notes, it will demand
from the income earner whatever the government deems necessary to meet
its obligations. The government borrows to put money in circulation, prints
the money in circulation, owns the money in circulation, and determines the
value of the money in circulation. It is a federal crime not only to counterfeit
the government’s money, but to destroy the government’s money. No one, no
matter how wealthy, not Bill Gates himself, has money to burn, because it is
not his to burn, but the government’s to take when, as, and in the amounts
it pleases.
From this shift in the understanding of wealth has grown a subservience to
government unknown in the pre-modern world. It used to be the case that a man
could feed, house, and clothe his family at will, owing the government no more
than a predetermined amount that likely was the same in absolute terms as was
paid by his great-grandfather. In time of national emergency, the government had
to make a case that an extraordinary levy was in order and convince the taxed
population that its new demands were just, reasonable, and temporary. The former
norm was that a man could go about his business and the government would have
to explain its interference, if any, in his private affairs.
Now the man who would mind his own business will go to prison or suffer
very heavy fines if he were to tell the irs that it is none of its business how much
a private citizen might be worth. Instead of the government receiving its funds
through taxes based on readily understood principles obvious to all involved, now
the government decides how much money it wants to spend, demands that mon-
ey from the taxpayer, creates a positively Byzantine apparatus to calculate and
collect the money owed by the taxpayer, and punishes the taxpayer if he fails to
convince the government that his efforts at self-incrimination are satisfactory. No
longer does the government have to present a case to justify its demands, but the
citizen must present a case that the demands have been met. The burden of proof
is not on the government to demonstrate that it is warranted in intruding into
the lives of the citizens; the burden of proof is on the citizen to demonstrate that
he has not hidden any aspect of his life from the scrutiny of the government. The
modern citizen is burdened with regulation, ordinances, and taxes that the hum-
blest peasant under the cruelest king would have believed deserved only by the
foulest criminals and the damned in hell.
Whether it is one-hundred percent stolen by the communists or more than
half coerced by the capitalists, property, wealth, and income are no longer under-
stood as a fundamental right to the citizen, but instead are seen as the fair object
of confiscation by government taxation. The industrialization, urbanization, and
secularization of modernity have removed the only defense of the citizen against
such government tyranny. Without the sufficiency that comes from feeding,
housing, and clothing one’s own family, the citizen is vulnerable to economic ma-
nipulation, political exploitation, and legalized injustice. Landed wealth provides
a firm foothold from which the individual and the family can preserve the right
to live according to the goods discerned in natural law, taught in the doctrines of
the Catholic Church, and revealed in God’s plan of salvation. Men without pro-
ductive skills, political voice, economic acumen, land of their own, and the faith
will ever be in fear of starvation, homelessness, oppression, imprisonment, and an
unmourned death.
A healthy economy conducive to holiness possesses balance and proportion.
There is a ruling class and a free citizenry whose rights the rulers defend. There is
an active exchange between town and country, where raw materials are produced,
skilled labor adds value, and all people may be enriched by the products thus
made available. There is a mix of economic activities predicated not on the de-
mands of some phantom market, but on the real needs of human beings, laboring
on the land, performing skilled crafts, practicing professional disciplines, engag-
ing in honest trade, and offering all aspects of their livelihood faithfully to God.
There is a sense of social responsibility among the wealthy who offer assistance to
the poor out of a sense of charity that lives in their hearts as a virtue before it takes
on flesh as an alms. There is sympathy for the poor, free from the contempt that
comes from hubris, and instead remembering the words of the greatest poor man
ever to live, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!”
Such poverty is not the impoverishment inflicted by economic injustice, political
tyranny, and faithless pride, but is a gift to be sought from God, who tells us that
we are meant to be His sons, and He wishes us to call on Him as Father.
Conclusion: Ten Commandments or Ten Irrelevancies? God decides.

Aristotle could be adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas because truth is in no
way foreign to God’s revelation. Romanesque architecture was assimilated by the
Roman Church while Roman mythology was rejected, because the buildings of
Rome could house the truths of the Faith but there was no room for that truth to
live alongside of pagan lies. Polyphony is not a repudiation of chant, but rather
an extension and complement to it. Much that is not explicitly a matter of reli-
gious belief has been “baptized” by the Church without diminishing the deposit
of Faith or doing violence to the disciplines, cultures, and art forms founded in
natural virtue and the natural law. The Catholic Church is the home for anything
that is true, good, beautiful, truly human, and receptive of the true God.
As the Book of the Apocalypse relates, however, all that comes from “the fear-
ful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and
sorcerers and idolaters and all liars” shall have no place in the heavenly city, but
instead will be cast into the lake of fire to suffer forever the second death. On earth
that heavenly city has its gates at the doors of the Catholic Church. Those who
seek entrance into Heaven can do so only through entering the Catholic Church.
And no more will the Catholic Church allow in the “fearful and unbelieving and
the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and
all liars,” than will Christ her King admit such filth into His Kingdom in Heaven.
There is no principle within either communism or capitalism, the two faces of
materialism in modern economics, that mandates obedience to all ten of the Ten
Commandments, to each of the Six Commandments of the Catholic Church, or
to both of the two Great Commandments affirmed by Jesus Christ of loving God
above all things and one’s neighbor as oneself. The vast bulk of communist and
capitalist theory is dismissive of such considerations as impertinent to the ends
they seek. Almost the entirety of communist and capitalist practice is a violation
of the majority, if not all, of the divinely revealed, ecclesially binding, and natu-
rally established laws given for the protection, guidance, and perfection of man.
Precious little would be left of either communism or capitalism as a viable system
by which to order man’s economic life, if all of what is offensive to God were to
be removed. What few things in either system are not wholly repugnant to an
authentic sensus fidei upon a very brief examination would be discovered to be
generic principles found in practically every economic system, all of philosophy,
and plain old common sense.
Furthermore, whereas philosophical truths from Greece, engineering from
Rome, and musical principles developed in Christendom were brought into the
Church by the faithful and in consonance with all else already present within the
life of the Church, capitalism and communism came in the midst of a roiling
storm of rebellion against the Faith and the faithful. The Church did not need
to tear down buildings, to contradict truth, or to reinvent sound when accepting
influences from outside of the Faith into the fold of Christ. Capitalism and then
communism have destroyed society’s commitment to a harmonious interaction
between the Church and the state, to the family as the fundamental unit of so-
ciety, and to the Faith as the ultimate means of man’s ordering earthly life in
obedience to and in hope for God’s will to bring man to Heaven. It can not be
demonstrated that any nation has ever embraced either capitalism or communism
in such a way as to extend the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother Church, to
advance the cause of the Kingdom of Christ, and to bring men to Heaven.
Capitalism and communism actively disobey the Church in principle as well
as in practice. The fact that there are materialists who do not desire to kill babies
in the womb, divorce their wives in order to pursue adulterous affairs, and burn
down convents filled with contemplatives, is a manifestation of laudable restraint
on the part of many materialists who have yet to take their Godless principles to
their logical conclusions. Capitalists and communists have been able to pursue
such dastardly ends—and continue to do so—precisely because they have estab-
lished nations with no reference to God and His law. True, not every communist
or capitalist is an outright fiend, any more than every Catholic is prime material
for canonization. However, there is nothing within communism or capitalism
forbidding the fiend from being a fiend while remaining a materialist in good and
law-abiding standing. Saints, on the other hand, must conform to a far higher
standard than the license permitted by materialism:
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage: thou shalt not have strange gods before me…
This prohibition would also apply to the idea of having no faith in the true
God. Communism is in outright denial of the existence of God. It is hostile to the
immemorial need of man to worship something other than himself. Capitalism
does not require atheism, but its fervent indifferentism results in a practical athe-
ism no less abominable than what happens in communist practice. Communists
do what they do for the exaltation of the worker. Capitalists do what they do for
the bottom line. Neither seeks to glorify God in all things, and in fact prefers to
glorify God in nothing, essentially believing that God is nothing.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Modernity, thy name is blasphemy. Our Lord is dishonored in His own Name
by rock stars hubristically claiming more influence on mankind than our Savior
Himself. He is dishonored in the deliberations of the European Union which
desires to expunge His very memory from their falsified account of the history of
Western civilization. He is dishonored in the Name of his Blessed Mother being
attached to a play common in the game of American football. He is dishonored
in the fact that using His Name as an epithet is a matter of protected speech when
it comes to Hollywood films and television, but is a matter of violations of the
same Constitutional principle when applied to the decorations appropriate to the
celebration of His Birth. He is dishonored in the fact that His Name is utterly
unknown in the communist world and so few Catholic missionaries are willing
or able to enter to amend this foul state of affairs. By way of reparation here, let
me say, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost! As it was in
the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. O most Sacred
Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and
at the hour of our death. Amen.
Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath-day.

Part of the depravity that the French embraced in 1789 involved renaming
the months of the year and the days of the week. Secularists ever since have had it
in mind to ignore the sovereignty of God not only over human activity, but over
time itself. The Lord’s Day is no longer His, but merely another day to work for
the workers’ paradise. That same description applies in capitalist lands where 24/7
means access to frivolous consumption, immoral entertainment, and ceaseless la-
bor. Once upon a time, the suggestion that Holy Days should be formal holidays
would have been met with derisive laughter. Now after decades upon decades of
apostasy under the tyranny of materialism, such a suggestion would be met with
a puzzled frown—no one knows what a Holy Day is anymore.
Honor thy father and mother . . . that thou mayst live a long time, and it may be well
with thee in the land, which the Lord thy God will give thee.
There is a new definition for the reward understood as part of this command.
Rather than receiving the good that God intends, the modern child looks forward
to the insurance policy that will pay out after he unplugs his dying father. Of
course, mother and father should not be so shocked at such treatment from their
surviving brood, given how their older brothers and sisters fared at the hands of
the politicians, doctors, parents and grandparents who made it possible for the
woman’s “right” to choose to be exercised. The generation gap has guaranteed a
world where children dismiss their parents as irrelevant and parents view their
children as alien threats. Popular culture is riddled with examples of disrespect
from the young directed toward the old, and of the old victimizing the young
through actions of base selfishness. Divorce is no way to engender respect in one’s
children, nor is respect offered by children rejecting their parents mores and way
of life. In the communist world, the perception of children as a threat takes on a
very physical reality—children are set to spy on their parents so that the police can
have yet more excuses to eliminate undesirables from the society.
Thou shalt not kill.

Among the undesirables so deemed by both communist and capitalist soci-
eties are the aforementioned infants in wombs, geriatrics in wheelchairs, and the
injured on respirators. Billions of dollars exchange hands as a hideously misnamed
“healthcare” system profits from its justifications to end life just begun, to declare
life ended before death, and to assert an authority over such decisions to which
judges and lawyers, governors and presidents, and even some bishops feel the
need to submit. Gulags and concentration camps the world over have murdered
in the name of the state. The American federal government and several state gov-
ernments are allocating tens of billions of dollars to murder babies in the name of
research for “healthcare”. Euthanasia is increasingly accepted in many parts of the
world, and inflicted involuntarily, as has been confessed by some of those guilty
of murder under that guise of false compassion.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Divorce is legal in essentially every nation on earth. Fornication is an un-
remarkable commonplace among children, adolescents, and supposed adults.
Psychologists insist that self-abuse is a “natural” part of childhood develop-
ment. Sodomy has gained legal status in most of the Western world. Lawyers,
websites, travel agencies, entertainment companies, and insurance firms profit
from the decriminalization and tolerance of these heretofore forbidden activi-
ties. Divorce and fornication were part of the communists’ agenda to dissolve
the bonds that traditional morality once held on the psyches of the citizens.
Immodesty and impurity are the life’s blood of modern advertising, of the
entertainment industry, the internet, literature, and clothing. Driving down
a highway has become a veritably x-rated experience given what is brazenly
displayed on billboards selling movies, casinos, tv shows, candy, toys, and po-
litical ideologies, among other things. Las Vegas sells bodies and bills itself as
a “family destination”.
Thou shalt not steal.

Communism could not have happened without theft on a scale unequaled
in the history of mankind. Property taxes and other restrictions on property
rights in the West amount to uncompensated confiscations of property, render-
ing claims of ownership by citizens laughable. Stop paying the property taxes
on your house (before or after you finish paying off the mortgage, if ever)
and you will discover who really owns your property. The attitude of many
employees toward giving their employers eight hours of work for eight hours
of pay betrays a larcenous heart at the center of capitalism. It is reflected in
the attitude of those employers about their responsibility to compensate those
employees for overtime and to offer the same loyalty to keep them employed
that the employer expects from the employee to remain in his employment. Of
course, neither the employee nor the employer wants to admit that everyone
would be better off if more people were able to provide a living for themselves
and their families without recourse to wage slavery. Employers rob employees
of the same freedom to exercise economic freedom that the entrepreneur craves.
Employees rob themselves by denying the desire to have such freedom, and
fleeing from it on the rare occasions that it might be offered.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.

The propaganda machine of any nation violates this commandment with im-
punity. Often to do so they employ the expertise of professional liars who sell their
wares on Madison Avenue. Kuwait hired a pr firm to convince the world to go to
war on its behalf against Iraq. China sends museum exhibits of its ancient culture
around the world to put a soft and pretty face on its ugly contemporary reality. The
advertising budgets of corporations such as Proctor and Gamble, General Motors,
and Coca Cola approach the size of the foreign reserves of some third world nations.
Capitalists could not sell all that they sell without convincing people to buy things
that they did not need and would not have wanted unless someone spent a lot of time
and money to persuade them that life was diminished without yet another fashion to
pursue until the next one comes along. No one should be subjected to the efforts of
someone encouraging them to make purchases for the sake of making purchases any
more than the world should be subjected to the spectacle of rogues from tyrannous
regimes trying to convince us that they come in peace.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife… [nor] his goods.
Envy makes the modern world of money go around. The very words “trophy
wife” scream an intention to instill a sense of envy and the presence of envy prior
to bagging the “trophy”. It is a foul and demeaning fact that the notion of the
“trophy wife” is part of the description of the man who has arrived at a certain
high level of achievement while yet striving for further heights. Such a woman
is merely a commodity procured along the way, likely to be replaced by a later
model, very possibly an actual fashion model, when the mood strikes. Feminists
are pleased that “trophy wife” has its mirror image in the sick expression “boy
toy”. The communist world seems less intent on such depravity given its loose un-
derstanding of the matrimonial bond right from its beginnings. What it lacks in
envying wives, however, it makes up for in its penchant for envying the neighbors’
goods. That neighbor might be the party member higher up in the politburo than
oneself, or it might be the perks of the foreman at the factory whose equal status
among the comrades is a bit more equal than the rest, or it might be the envy of an
entire nation directed at the material wealth of an entire other nation reaping the
benefits of keeping up with the Joneses. It has been said that the besetting sin of
communism is envy while the besetting sin of capitalism is greed. An example of
an envious man who lacked greed does not exist in the wild, but perhaps one day
he will be produced in a genetic-engineering laboratory. What is certain is that
neither the envious nor the greedy man understands the supreme virtue of charity.
It goes without saying that this wanton disregard for God’s Ten Command-
ments results in an utter rejection of the Six Commandments of the Church and
the two Great Commandments taught by Our Lord. Catholics do not endeavor
to make excuses for communism, so nothing needs to be said about the foul
fruits brought about by the errors of Marx; they are in no way compatible with
the Faith. Many Catholics, however, insist that capitalism is capable of being
grafted into a Catholic understanding of man’s life in society. Fully two centuries
have elapsed since capitalism began to be utilized on the national level around
the world. It is this writer’s contention that capitalism can not be shown, even in
principle, to be neutral toward the Faith, and is in practice actively hostile to it.
Beyond that is the question of whether or not capitalism is friendly to, helpful
for, and respectful of the faithful individual Catholic. Where is the evidence that
capitalism, as such, has been useful as a tool to make men holy? What specifically
capitalist principles and activities actually contribute to personal piety and the
strength of the Church Militant? How can the capitalist fixation on the market,
market share, and the bottom line be reconciled with the virtues of humility, sim-
plicity, and charity? In what way can the desire for greater capital—money—as
the driving force and ultimate good of capitalism be reconciled with the beatitude
promised to the poor, and with the warning against the evil of loving money? And
where, pray tell, are the people actually accomplishing such feats of sanctity in our
midst today? It does not seem that the capitalist world is any more apt to produce
a capitalist saint than the communist world will produce a communist saint—un-
less that saint is martyred by either capitalists or communists for knocking down
the idols of materialism.
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
27 May 2005: The Second Day of Corpus Christi (St. Bede the Venerable)
Capitalism: An economic system designed for the maximizing of political power in

the hands of those in favor of private theft.
Communism: A political system designed for the maximizing of economic power
in the hands of those in favor of public theft.
Fascism: A system for the maximizing of power in the hands of those in favor of
theft.
Anarchy: The power of theft.
Sin: The theft of power.
193
Dissolution of Church and State

Revolution vs. Evolution
I operate on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and
intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there
not be, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government
can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or
happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient
virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these
men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put our confidence in our rules,
but in the people who are to choose them.—James Madison
Dr. Thomas E. Woods in The Latin Mass, Spring 2003 issue, makes a com-
pelling argument that a fundamental difference separates what the United States
effected through the war of 1776–1781 and the events in France circa 1789. The
latter, according to Dr. Woods, was a revolution, the former an appeal to tradi-
tion. Dr. Woods avers that freemasonry produced the revolution, but had little
effect on the proponents of tradition.
His assessment is correct in the particulars, but fails to see a broader connec-
tion between the Gallic rebels and the Yankee “traditionalists”. True, the Amer-
icans did not seek to overthrow tradition in taxation, the penal code, or trade.
They did, however, do the very things Dr. Woods described the French revolu-
tionaries as having done, establishing “new governing structures, new provincial
boundaries, a new ‘religion’,” albeit without the threat of the guillotine hanging
over anyone’s head. Pardon the pun.
The United States Constitution abolished the monarchy, erected a sovereign

nation entirely disassociated from its mother country, and forbade a state religion.
This last flies in the face of the natural law, the above statement from Madison,
and the remarks of James Otis quoted by Dr. Woods: “There must be in every
instance, a higher authority, viz. GOD” (emphasis in the original).
It is in the abandonment of a shared faith that America’s revolution truly lies.
Without common worship, virtue can not be agreed upon, rendering Madison’s
warning prophetic insofar as ours is a singularly vicious society. Without common
worship, sovereignty rests not in God, but in the very legal positivism Dr. Woods
quite correctly illustrates formed part of the founding fathers’ rationale for resist-
ing Britain, but was also operative in Revolutionary France, and is corrupting the
American court system even now by way of jurists’ declarations of the newfound
‘rights’ to murder babies in the womb and/or birth canal and for sodomites to
wed with the blessing of the state. Without common worship, novelty and inno-
vation become a phenomenon not only within liturgical experience, but in juris-
prudence, economics, politics, and even science. Without God as the absolute
guarantor of any human enterprise, disorder is inevitable.
An argument can be made that the United States Constitution intends to
preserve tradition. This is best seen in the explicit reservation to the states of all
powers that are not defined for the federal government. It is the violation of this
fundamental principle, the encroachment of the central government on states’
and individuals’ rights, that constitutes the evolution of the American experiment
from a defensible assertion of human rights in the face of tyranny, to the inde-
fensible and at times demonic (cf. Roe vs. Wade) assertion of human willfulness
over divine law.
It is a curious irony that many, who so stridently insist on federal protec-
tion of child murderers in the face of states that would pass laws limiting or
eliminating the foul practice, are among the most vocal proponents of states’
rights when said states wish to sanction the union of sodomites in blasphe-
mous “marriages”. Legal positivism destroys the very grounds for passing, en-
forcing, and interpreting the law. Brute force, either by militia or by majority,
is the final arbiter of what is legal. This is impossible to avoid when the good
is intentionally rejected as the measure of what is allowable and desirable in
a society. The American Constitution appeals not to God as its summum bo-
num, but “the people of the United States” as sovereign, as lawgiver, as judge
of man and men.
Dissolution of Church and State 195
What is worst about the Constitution is not what it contains. The Consti-
tution’s primary fault lies in the absence of precisely that which James Madison
insisted was necessary for the people who would implement it. As is so with
an alarming proportion of our citizens, the Constitution ignores God and thus
lacks virtue. It is powerless to prevent the very injustice which it ostensibly was
crafted to alleviate. It is powerless to give our sovereign God the honor due
Him according to justice.
A House Divided
Thomas Jefferson paraphrased Locke’s enumeration of inalienable rights as
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment to the Constitution was meant to safeguard an individual’s right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness against the government’s infringements
on matters of religion. It is a cruel irony that this vital element in the Constitution
has had exactly the opposite effect.
Abortion denies the right to life to the unborn citizen. Prohibitions against
prayer in schools deny the right to liberty of religious expression to parents, stu-
dents, and teachers. And the general disavowal of a place for God in the public
discourse denies man’s supreme raison d’etre, to know, love, and serve God in this
life so as to be happy with Him forever in eternal life. Separation of the state from
the Church has resulted in a nation ignorant of Christ and thus incapable of life,
liberty, and happiness. For to know Christ is to be free (St. John 8:32), to know
Him is to have life (St. John 17:3), and to know Him is to experience perfect
beatitude (St. Matthew 5:12).
Two rulings from the Supreme Court in the year 2000 point out the glaring
contradiction between faith as it is taught and faith as it is practiced. In virtually the
same breath the majority of the justices claimed that the Constitution forbids prayer
in public school football stadiums and allows babies to be impaled at birth. Our
courts would rob our children of public expressions of faith and the right to life.
We are setting a precedent by which future generations (if any survive our rapacious
license) will be able to rationalize a denial not only of God and physical security, but
of every guarantee that justice is anything but the arbitrary whim of those in power.
The United States of America has been called the most religious nation on
earth. But how can we separate Church and state when we are the Church and
we are the state? A house divided against itself must fall. What if a man in himself
is divided?
Decisions of the Supreme Court have provided some indication of what

many think the relationship between these two spheres of experience should be.
A ‘high wall’, a term coined by Jefferson, characterizes the boundary cleaving the
ecclesiastic and the political realms. Some have described the recent protections of
freedom for religion as being freedom from religion.
Advocates of lowering the wall frequently point out that the Constitution’s
framers did not envision a public forum without a religious presence. It is clear
that the early philosophers of American democracy took for granted a rather
strong involvement of the Church in matters of state. Concurrently, the state was
seen as a protector and endorser of religious life.
Modern interpretation of the Constitution denies that the Establishment
Clause means more than an allowance for religious affairs to be conducted by in-
dividuals and groups within narrowly set bounds. The body politic can not accept
(or reject) the idea of a spirit politic. Each must make these determinations on his
own and then act according to conscience. The government is not permitted to
impede or to assist this process.
These arguments for and against constitutional readings on freedom of reli-
gion miss an extraordinarily important point. Groups can define the scope of law,
the reach of free expression of faith, and terms for interaction between moral and
legal entities. It is impossible for an individual to demarcate where the soul ends
and secular interests begin.
Put aside the legal questions stemming from the Constitution. Explain in-
stead how a person determines for himself when he is being a man of faith and
where he is exercising his rights as a citizen. What kind of integrity can be expect-
ed from a society of people able to separate love from justice?
It seems disingenuous to couch the debate on religious freedom in cultural
terms. No one, not God Himself, can deny a man’s faith. Whether or not a nation
decides to have a large amount of religious freedom is not for the government to
mandate. A nation has as much religious freedom as its citizens dare to exercise.
Laws can neither restrict nor guarantee love.
Yet our society denies definitive good and evil. If there is neither good nor
evil, there can be no virtue. If there is no virtue, there is no virtuous electorate.
If there is no virtuous electorate, there will be nothing but panderers and dema-
gogues to be elected by the selfish and the amoral. Injustice will be championed
by Supreme Court justices.
You can not legislate morality, true, but you can hide behind laws to rational-
ize injustice. The Faith does not need a constitutional amendment. It only needs
human hearts willing to believe. Between right and rights there is no separation.
An Ounce of Prevention
Where Dr. Woods is most unintentionally correct is in his assertion that the
founding fathers desired to preserve tradition. What Dr. Woods fails to see is that
the “tradition” in question was in no way Catholic. It did have freemasons, even
more it had protestants, but above all it was secularist, which is much the same
as saying protestant which is a short trek to freemasonry (basically the path from
1517 to 1717). The founding fathers, through the Constitution, carried on the
denial of Catholic philosophy, theology, and morality begun in the “enlighten-
ment” and ending all around us in a great apostasy.
Americans have a penchant for mimicking their “betters” across the pond.
This is a time-honored weakness and insecurity within our national psyche. The
old saw that America is a rush from barbarism to decadence without an interven-
ing culture has caused untold hand-wringing among the European wannabes of
the American “intelligentsia”.
Having said this, the more down-to-earth among us have a snobbishness
against snobbery. One of the worst things of which to be accused by a good
ol’ boy is the crime of putting on airs. One of the best ways to get elected by a
populace of good ol’ boys is for a multimillionaire to put on jeans and get pho-
tographed glad-handing at the union hall—a hall likely laid under siege by the
millionaire’s usurious ancestors against uppity union-card-carrying wage slaves.
We want wealth and all of its trappings, but none of its hierarchy. We want
learning and all of its privileges, but none of its discipline. We want to have and
eat the cake that Marie Antoinette offered the mob in vain—and we want the
mob to bake the cake for us. We want to be of the mob but not in the mob.
Not so long ago, in the last decade of the last century of the last millennium,
we impeached a president of the United States. One of the defenses offered for
him was that the Europeans found little or nothing of note in his adulterous
fornication. For the French, it was said innumerable times, a man’s mistress is his
wife’s business and no one else’s. Opponents of the Chief Executive were accused
of voyeurism, political character assassination, and intellectual troglodytism.
Many of the same imperial defenders are now criticizing the current occupant
of the Oval Office for his warmongering on the grounds that our friends abroad
think ill of the effort. The very people who would pooh-pooh the moral rein that
is the sentiment, “What would the neighbors think?” now insist that what the
neighbors think should be what we think, even if the neighbors are not thinking
so clearly. Even when the neighbors are moral troglodytes.
And here we come to the real peril engendered by the European penchant for
revolution that gave us the twentieth century, the bloodiest century man has ever
known. It was not the concentration camps. It was not the wholesale executions
and the concentration camps. It was not the internal exiles. Europe’s horror was
none other than the European mind, indeed the loss thereof.
These past five-hundred years and more, the minds of Europe have embarked
on the systematic dismantling of all that has made European culture. The Church,
objective truth, and the affirmation of human rights in the context of a com-
monwealth of citizens obedient to God, have given way to atheism, skepticism,
and the diminishment of man to a status of less worth than the average beast on
the endangered species list. Refusing God, doubting reality, and glorifying nature
while insisting that man is neither natural nor supernatural, Europe has set about
the task of destroying itself.
This can be seen in the abysmally low birth rate on the continent. It is
witnessed in the zeal for casting aside the sovereignty of nations in favor of a
common currency on the way to a common law. And nowhere is it more in
evidence than in the moribund state of the Church, whose history is denied
by most Europeans, denounced by others, and despised by what passes for Eu-
ropean thinkers. A day approaches when asked to define a European, one will
find no individual who demonstrates the reality, no nationality that embodies
its characteristics, and no belief that it ever existed. Soon, no one will know
what Europe is, least of all the Europeans.
America is not far behind on this road to nowhere. Political elements within
this country are conspiring to bring the Balkans to the Midwest. Whether by lan-
guage, by customs, or by skin color, Americans are being cajoled, legislated, and
seduced into believing that to be an American can mean an infinitude of things.
The definition of America being offered derides, denies, and defies definition.
So long as one thing, one thought, does not inform a people of its identity,
that people is no people. Europe grew from the unity of the Catholic Church.
When that unity was cast aside in the protestant revolt of the sixteenth century,
Europe began to unravel. Petty feuds between feudal lords grew into kinstrife
between competing creeds. Rivalry about material wealth was warped into op-
pression based on the material origins of mankind. The Faith that transcends
all racial and ethnic distinctions was banished in favor of the modern pastime
of ethnic cleansing.
America’s founding was more synthetic, less organic. It is hard to put one’s
finger on exactly what makes the pluribus unum. In fact, the loyalists of the Revo-
lutionary War period, the Confederacy in the War Between the States, the consci-
entious objectors from both World Wars, and the protesters against the Vietnam
War give stark expression to the fact that there has been plenty of pluribus in our
history. One would be harder pressed to show where the abiding unum that is
supposedly America subsists.
That America explicitly abstained from a creedal confession at its founding
is the true source of the problem. The contemporary mania for separating the
state from the Church to the point of persecuting the faithful is the fruit of
the founders’ original reticence. Many would say that the Constitution nev-
er intended that freedom of religion would become freedom from religion.
Neither the framers nor the adherents to that position understand the law of
unintended consequences, well described in the ancient saying, “The road to
hell is paved with good intentions.” It strains credulity to attempt to embrace
the idea that the Constitution’s explicit rejection of the true Faith and the true
Church has a source in Heaven.
And what is more, it is absurd to believe that the masonic notion of separation
of the state from the Church advanced by the freemasons at the Constitutional
Convention was conceived as a means to advance the claims of Christ the King.
It was masons who concocted the idea of a Godless state, masons who expunged
God from the American Constitution, and masons who have influenced modern
political structures from Philadelphia in 1776 to Paris in 1789 to Moscow in
1917 to the founding of the United Nations at San Francisco in 1948. It is only
either willful blindness or ineptitude that would fail to see that masonic philoso-
phy embodied in masonic documents crafted by masons would result in an entity
entirely at odds with the will of God.
At some point Americans will need to come to terms with the fact that, as
a nation, we began where Europe has ended, with a denial of God. Those who
are not for Him are against Him. The American Constitution, in a pre-echo of
post-modern European rebellion, gives God no place in the fabric of the national
soul. At best He is ignored, but more often He is insulted. Such an attitude to-
ward the greatest of all beings does not bode well for the treatment that can be
expected toward the greatest of all created beings. Where God is disdained, one
can have no hope that His creature will be reverenced.
Our current state was not the matter of a deliberate revolution occurring rap-
idly. We are the result of two-and-a-quarter centuries of inattention to the natural
law, our Mother the Church, and God our Father. Independence Day is an annual
and brutal irony. Yes, we are independent of Great Britain, but we are enslaved to
a violent government, a consumerist economy, and sinful passions.
Perhaps the freemasons are not wholly to blame, but one can be forgiven
his profound doubts that they are displeased. Dr. Woods’ analysis is perceptive,
but his conclusion is wrong. The Godless revolution of the French does have a
common pedigree with the Godless Constitution of the United States of America:
apostasy from Christ and His Body the Catholic Church.
Father Smith
4 June 2003, St. Francis of Naples: Iowa City, Iowa
26 February 2004, St. Caesarius of Nazianzus: Tustin, California
201
3 April, Jubilee Year—4th Monday of

Lent
A Tale of Two Cities Revisited
Observers seem to be of the opinion that the city of God, New Jerusalem,
is in need of urban renewal. Catholicism is accused of being all promise and no
fulfillment. As in the days when Jesus walked among us in His earthly life, a sign
is demanded to establish belief in the claims of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Christ’s contemporaries were witnesses to miraculous signs and wonders. Je-
sus made the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead live. He turned water to wine
and fed thousands with a few loaves. Ultimately, He was seen alive after His death
by those who knew Him best. They went forth proclaiming this greatest sign as
the basis for their firm faith.
We who are the inheritors of this mission of evangelizing are asked for a sim-
ilar sign. People wonder where are the dead raised in our day. Prayers seem to go
not only unanswered but unheard. There seems to be little of that original fervor
left in the Church, when martyrs rather than bureaucrats reigned.
Before we are taken to task by our detractors, too many of whom claim to be
Christians themselves, we should call to mind what Jesus actually said. He told us
that we are to take up the cross each day and follow Him. We are to sell all, give
to the poor, and follow Him. We are to lay down our fishing nets and follow Him.
When we do as He says, i.e. follow Him, He makes several other promises.

He tells us that death will not conquer us. We are assured that the words we need
to speak will be given us. And He warns us that persecutions, besides all other
things, will be ours as well.
In the simplicity of our lives, by the prayer and love we share within the
Church and outside of the Church, and through the Sacraments, particularly the
Mass, we do the will of God and follow Christ. Lent is an opportunity to reflect
on this ongoing reality and to remember what it means to be about our Father’s
business. The knowledge that this good work is being accomplished in us by the
power of the Spirit of God results in the peace which this world can not give, in
the joy known only by those who believe that they are truly God’s children.
This is what it means to be a sign of contradiction to the worldliness of our
times. When asked for a sign that the Kingdom is at hand we show the cross
and ourselves on it. We proclaim the joy of those who are confident that sin and
death are conquered. We respond to doubt as saints always have, by revealing in
ourselves Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Those who continue to disbelieve the cross seek a further sign. Jesus tells us
that the sign of Jonah is what is forthcoming. Remember the repentance of the
people of Nineveh. That is the sign we should offer to our friends who seek the
glory before realizing the Way. God does indeed heal the sick and raise the dead.
His primary work, however, is to forgive sins.
The common gift to those who are cured of both physical and spiritual infir-
mity is the gift of Faith. They believe that God does hear, and He responds with
the grace of salvation. To see this glory the disbeliever must first renounce the
blindness of his own sin. This sign will result in rejoicing in Heaven and in the
heart of the forgiven sinner.
Some will dismiss all of this as pie in the sky. They will say that here and now
is all that they seek. Their home is Babylon.
We should be critical of ourselves as we journey through Lent. We should ask
ourselves where our faith is wanting. We should insist that our own hearts more
fully embrace others in love.
But we should not yield to the criticisms of the world without demanding
fair time. If indeed the promises of God and His Kingdom do not ring true to
skeptics, we can ask whether or not the promises of this world are kept any better.
We live in a time of unparalleled prosperity. The United States is the most
powerful nation ever, anywhere. Economic nirvana has been promised to those
3 April, Jubilee Year—4th Monday of Lent 203
who believe in the profit motive, who call themselves consumers, who drive the
engine of the economy by being in a state of perpetual desire.
What is the fruit of this faith? Do people have a sense of peace in building
a bigger house and attendant mortgage? Are schools better places to learn now
that moral doctrine has been replaced with metal detectors? Will families become
closer as Mom and Dad spend more time at work, the children at daycare, and
no one at the heavily mortgaged house? How happy will senior citizens be when
Social Security is fully funded and they live the ends of their longer lives in very
expensive nursing homes, never visited by their children and grandchildren who
are out worshipping at the altar of eternal youth?
The promises of the world always wait for another day. You will be happy
after you buy this product, after you get the promotion, after you graduate, after
the kids leave the house, after the government increases your cola, after the Dem-
ocrats/Republicans leave office. After tomorrow the good times and good ol’ days
will never end…
God’s promises are now. We can love one another as brothers and sisters in
Christ now. We can simplify our lives now. We can repent and forgive sins now.
We can experience the joy of the saints in Heaven now—and forever.
It is curious how the most successful people according to the world’s measures
apostatize their faith once they have “made it”. Ask the wealthy businessman what
he will do with his fortune and frequently he will speak in terms of philanthropy.
Ask the politician or athlete why he is retiring and more often than not it is to be
able to spend more time with family. Ask the value-free artist why he creates and
he will respond with idealism about a desire to express ephemeral, transcendent
beauty or truth or fundamental reality. When the true believers from Babylon
seek fulfillment, they don’t talk about acquiring more wealth, power, or prestige;
instead they seek things that are found only in New Jerusalem.
The Catholic who has embraced suffering, forgiveness, and mercy, does not
seek wealth, power, and prestige. He seeks to share peace and joy, reconciliation
and love. The worldly are ever after something they can’t quite grasp now; the
Catholic is satisfied so long as he has Christ.
Many are confused about the difference between Babylon and New Jerusalem
because there seem to be a lot of similarities. Pain, sin, and death are common
to both. The faithful of both cities seem inconsistent in their beliefs. A question
provides a simple way to distinguish the one from the other: Where do you want
to live forever?
If faith in God can not bring the promised peace of New Jerusalem into our
midst, the citizens of Babylon who claim to be in possession of the secret of future
happiness need to give the rest of us a sign that it is worth the wait.

Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace Parish
Clinton, Iowa
205
Fanfani and Friends

Rambling reflections on a subject much too large for a mere book review
By all means, it is worth reading Amintore Fanfani’s 1934 treatise, Catholi-

cism, Protestantism, and Capitalism (republished in 2003 by IHS Press). Howev-
er, it should not be undertaken without the firm resolution to be fair-minded.
An additional requirement, then, is that one endeavor to examine Leo xiii’s
Rerum Novarum, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capital-
ism, Michael Novak’s The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Pius xi’s
Quadragesimo Anno, and John Paul ii’s Centesimus Annus. One would do well
to include a healthy dose of Belloc, a sprinkling of Chesterton, and a helping
of Father Vincent McNabb. Room should be made as well for Adam Smith,
Edmund Burke, Milton Friedman, Karl Marx, and John Keynes. David Stock-
man, anyone? So many words to read, so little stomach to swallow them all.
Ezechiel (3:1-3) had a much better diet.
This reviewer is trying to be fair, but finds it difficult, seeing how the various
antagonists in the ongoing debate between the Faith and mammon stack the deck
not only against one another, but against justice. The virtue of justice is expressed
in the will to render each his due. The multitudinous champions of the legion of
economic schools strive mightily to give their viewpoints due credit for all that is
good in the world. They attempt to ascribe all that is ill to the adherents of com-
peting philosophies, and they even give the devil his due by averring frequently
that economic principles need not be drawn from the deposit of faith.
And here is where the grossest injustice is seen. Weber wants to show how
the virtues of protestantism brought the world the wonders of capitalism. Novak
would have us believe that capitalism is to be lauded as the firstfruits of Catholi-
cism. Fanfani works at that most necessary and least accomplished of philosoph-
ical skills, making a distinction. Protestantism and capitalism share roots in a
Catholic culture and the Catholic culture finds itself in the intolerable position of
tolerating both protestantism and capitalism. This is far from an ideal situation,
morally and economically.
Perhaps the strongest aspect of Fanfani’s historical survey is pressing home
the fact that one can not understand protestantism without reference to the
Catholicism of which it is a set of heresies. He also does an admirable job
of reminding the reader that capitalism grew out of deviations from Catholic
norms of social justice, deviations stemming both from legal allowances and
from sinful manipulation of markets by greedy merchants in tandem with em-
inently corruptible rulers (even, gasp, princes of the Church). Neither protes-
tantism nor capitalism can serve to prove true the fallacy of evolution. Catholic
doctrine did not evolve beyond itself to give the world a fitter set of religious
dogmas manifested in the plethora of protestant sects. Capitalism does not
represent the finest survivor of a pantheon of Catholic social and economic
systems wherein inadequate material and financial methods gave way before the
inexorable triumph of market forces. Protestantism is a rejection of Catholic
truth; capitalism is Catholic social teaching gone awry.
Fanfani did not use terms quite so harsh. His analysis, however, makes
clear his conviction that capitalism can not be described as a system or a
spirit wholly in consonance with authentic Catholicism. Furthermore, to an
extent much greater than either Weber or Novak, Fanfani is willing to admit
that capitalism holds implications beyond its mere methodology. There is a
moral element involved in any economic system. Fanfani remembers what
so many have forgotten: economics is a subset of ethics, not a science unto
itself. Economics is to be used to render justice, not to acquire things. And
insofar as justice is pursued, the final end to be sought is the divine justice
that offers man the mercy of the forgiveness of sins and the attainment of
the Kingdom of Heaven. Capitalism goes much further down the road of
encouraging sins than of renouncing them. Capitalism is infinitely more bent
on the things of this world than it is conducive to the contemplation of that
which is beyond this world.
Fanfani and Friends 207
Still, Fanfani falls prey to the same error that most commentators on capital-
ism have made. Capitalism is largely critiqued in terms of its effects on produc-
tion, consumption, and the chimerical standard of a people’s standard of living.
(Novak devotes a large section of The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to
the question of how virtue can serve capitalism, but says little or nothing about
how capitalism contributes to sanctity). Fanfani seems blind to the idea of ap-
plying to an economic model such statements as “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt.5:3); and “Son, remember that thou
didst receive good things in thy lifetime… but now… thou art tormented” (Lk.
16:25); and “He that cometh from Heaven is above all” (Jn. 3:31). Has no one
ever thought to make the social reign of Jesus Christ the King the lynchpin of his
understanding of developing the fruits of the earth in obedience to the wonderful
command, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over
the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move
about upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28)?
Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Long after Adam made a botched mess of things,
a tremendous man by the name of Benedict of Nursia put into practice a way
to “love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and
with thy whole mind and with thy whole strength… [and] love thy neighbor as
thyself ” (Mk. 13:30-31). Under the marvelous banner of Ora et Labora! St. Ben-
edict and his monks established a habit of discipline conducive to personal piety,
communal fraternity and order, and, as a nice fringe benefit, the nurturing and
developing of animal husbandry, agriculture, and the domestic arts. St. Benedict
and his children that followed for centuries after knew and understood that if one
seeks “first the Kingdom of God and His justice, all these things shall be added
unto you” (Mt. 6:33). Pursuing the pearl of great price, beatitude in Heaven, the
monastic communities in league with Catholic princes gave rise to the burgeon-
ing civic centers of medieval Europe, preserved and extended the patrimony of
learning all but lost elsewhere after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and
cultivated art, music, and architecture that has proved of permanent value regard-
less of the vicissitudes of history.
Some likely would object that a monastic model is hardly fitting for married
couples and families, international trade, and technological advancement. One
measure of the superiority of the monastic model to the current economic chaos is
that the family, trade, and scientific discovery flourished as a result of what sound
Catholic principles of economic life provided. It is telling that the modern world
has made it next to impossible for authentic monastic communities to grow their
own food, build their own chapels, and train their own novices.
The Catholic ideal allows man to improve his lot, both materially and spir-
itually. The economic models which have emerged since the abandonment of a
strictly Catholic understanding of man and his call to holiness above all things,
have led to the destruction not only of individual men’s ability to own property
and pursue private economies, but the Church has succumbed to a like impo-
tence. Husbands and fathers are reduced to virtual serfdom, bound to mortgages,
property taxes, and wage-slavery; dioceses manage multimillion-dollar usurious
pension funds for priests; orders of religious women sell hospitals for hundreds
of millions of dollars, and cease to care for the aged and infirm; and monks are
reduced to producing computer graphics to support themselves. The twenty-first
century has no prospects of producing a Book of Kells, Ambrosian Chant, or a
Summa Theologica. It is all that most modern Church institutions can do to mar-
ket their facilities as meeting centers, send religious as consultants to social service
agencies, and rely on revenues from college football programs to fund the acqui-
sition of big-name coaches who will attract star high school talent to improve the
team which in turn will swell gate receipts giving rise to higher concession income
resulting in the increase of football revenues…
Lest any others object that the above-mentioned chimera, the standard of
living, was far lower in the days when monasticism and feudalism were de ri-
gueur, keep in mind that the good life most desired was not to be found here on
earth at all. It was not found in personal transportation, access to information,
or employment at the expense of the family. Instead, the bulk of the population
took pride in the beauty of the local cathedral, learned their catechism in keeping
with their state in life, and worked in the home and its attendant fields without
anxieties attached to the specter of unemployment, foreclosure, and bankruptcy.
Those were the days when the days were spent wending one’s way to Heaven, not
through lines at Disneyland. None questioned the wisdom or truth of the words,
“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of
his soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul? (Mt. 16:26).” Alas! there
are souls among us who would find their answer in the New York Stock Exchange.
Yes, infant mortality was high in earlier centuries, but not as common as
abortion is today. Yes, many died of injuries incurred in accidents, but not
nearly so often nor as horrifically as the roughly fifty thousand who die each
year in automobiles on this nation’s highways. Yes, it was rare to find an adult
who could read or write in the days when kings reigned, but the current state of
“democratic” education for the masses can boast little better after all these years
of trying and billions of dollars levied in taxes. “Nasty, brutish, and short,” was
the verdict pronounced on life before modernity by a wit of the modern age.
Another talented mind nurtured in the enlightened ethos of the “post-Christian”
era observed of his fellows, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
The primary difference between these two assessments is that the objects of the
first could understand their plight in the context of much better promised af-
terwards, a better that was hastened indeed by the brevity of the nastiness and
brutishness. The objects of the latter assessment only grow more desperate as
they come to believe that “this is as good as it gets.”
But back to Fanfani…
He was surely aware that Pope Leo xiii in the encyclical Rerum Novarum
offered solutions to the problems raised by capitalism. Pope Leo advocated a just
wage, not as a goal, but as the means to assist workers to acquire property of their
own and to become free of the bonds imposed by the factory system still in use
even today, though now also applied to office complexes. Pope Pius xi issued his
encyclical Quadragesimo Anno less than a half decade before Fanfani’s Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Capitalism. It was plain to the Pope as well as to experts and
even to the common man that capitalism had produced grave ills far worse than
were extant in Leo’s day. War, depression, hyper-inflation, civic unrest, and the
advocacy of even more Godless economic systems than capitalism, i.e., socialism
and communism, were in the ascendancy when Pius and Fanfani wrote. Both the
Pope and the professor recognized the multitude of dangers facing the men of
their day and spoke against them. None of those banes, veritable horsemen of the
Apocalypse, has yet ceased to afflict the world.
What Fanfani did not address, but what lay at the heart of the Popes’ messag-
es, was that all of the principles, methods, and means employed in understanding
and implementing man’s economic life must be tributary to his ultimate need for
salvation. Fanfani, Weber, Novak, and every one of the minds pursuing the disci-
pline of economics from the modern standpoint ignore the fact that where num-
bers, commodities, and supply chains might be value neutral, the men who make
them, the men who use them, and the men who labor to design them are moral
agents. It is irrational to assume that any system that includes a human element is
fool-proof, beyond sabotage, or an effective barrier against sin. It is not merely the
case that where garbage goes in, garbage comes out. Man can take what was either
good or neutral and make it bad; he can twist what was designed to create and use
it for destruction; he can subvert that which is meant for the commonwealth to
the increase of his personal wealth. In short, he can do practically anything except
make what is bad into good, turn his ill will into justice, or exercise vice to the
same effect as virtue.
Such, however, is exactly what capitalism attempts. Dealing in shortages is
stock-in-trade for the shrewd businessman, where Christian charity dictates shar-
ing with those who have not enough. Advertising does not blush at abusing the
truth in order to move merchandise, where honesty demands that personal loss is
preferable to committing fraud. Pride, lust, avarice, envy, gluttony, sloth, and an-
ger motivate producers, distributors, and consumers alike; where the imitation of
Christ is accomplished only by those who are humble, pure, generous, fraternal,
temperate, diligent, and meek. What God instilled as attributes in His Prophets
would never satiate the lust for profits in mammon.
Jesus impoverished Himself of His divinity. He was born a poor child, in
a poor family whom our Faith names Holy. He lived His life among the poor,
whom he called blessed. He died a poor man, literally deprived of the shirt on His
back. He was interred in a borrowed tomb. The love which moved Him to suffer
such is more than compensation for what the world would call lacks. This humil-
ity is the natural basis on which is built the glory revealed in His Resurrection.
Jesus Christ is the model for all that is Catholic. Any economic system that
would beg acceptance by Catholics must seek compatibility with the person of
Christ. No Catholic should be satisfied with an economic way of life that ob-
scures, much less denies, Our Lord.
The herd of economists, past and present, who look to social salvation in capi-
talism look in vain. Economists inured to the excesses of capitalism at the expense
of human dignity and divine law, especially as it regards usury, are willfully blind.
Apologists for capitalism who champion it as better than socialism and com-
munism have eyes in need of beam removal. Fanfani is a bit better than most in
that he acknowledges some of the historical implications pointing to capitalism’s
dubious pedigree of heresy and avarice, of error and iniquity, of apostasy and vice.
He, too, however, is senseless to capitalism’s abject failure to render unto Caesar
without stealing from God.
Capitalism is not a system based on a science whose principles work inde-
pendently of the Faith. Capitalism is an economic system designed, managed, and
used by men who countenance the sin of usury, who pursue wealth for its own
sake, and who construct laws in society that diminish the place of the authentic
worship of God. Capitalism can not be made to work among men who fear mor-
tal sin in the soul more than death in the body, who woo Lady Poverty with a
lover’s heart, and who desire nothing more from this life than to live it in such a
way as to glorify God now and thereby please Him enough to be rewarded to do
so forever in Heaven.
Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus.
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
30 June 2004: The Commemoration of St. Paul the Apostle
From the Roman Martyrology for the Thirtieth Day of June: At Rome, St. Lucina,
a disciple of the Apostles, who relieved the necessities of the saints with her goods, visited
the Christians detained in prison, buried the martyrs, and was laid by their side in a
crypt which she herself had constructed…
213
Dear Editor (SeattleCatholic.com):

Here are just a few thoughts on the subject of taxation, broad in nature, appli-
cable to the particulars of the conversation in question, but not restricted thereto:
1) Before Caesar receives his due, God must be given His due. Yes, Our Lord
tells us to render unto Caesar that which is his. He also tells us to render unto God
that which is His. What belongs to God is our whole heart, whole mind, whole
soul, whole strength.
2) We are never to participate in a known evil. Period. That is absolutely
forbidden. Not only does St. Thomas Aquinas affirm this, but so also does St.
Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Augustine, and the entire patrimony of the Church’s moral
theology.
3) Sovereign nations which elect to participate in an evil, with full knowledge
and intent, are subject to correction by the Church. It has happened frequently in
history that our Mother has had to place a monarch and/or nation under interdict
due to violations of the law, either the natural law or divine law.
4) In a more Catholic era, a nation that imposed the murder of children as a
burden to be supported through the taxation of its subjects or citizens would be
judged to be in flagrant disobedience to God’s law. That nation would be placed
under interdict. With that having occurred, the subjects or citizens of that nation
would be dispensed from offering support in material goods or labor to the way-
ward sovereign. Taxes would be expected to be withheld, as would any service in
the military. Other Catholic princes would be permitted to assist the Church in
removing the blameworthy parties from power.
5) To be specific to the question at hand, one writer suggested, in effect, that

the bishops of the United States should find the government of the United States
in breach of the moral order for its advocacy of child murder (or how about sod-
omy, or divorce, or usury). It would be appropriate, then, for them to place the
nation under interdict. Part of the interdiction would be the withholding of the
payment of taxes to the offending entity.
6) The fact that our bishops have not done so, nor has the Holy See under
five popes in succession, leaves the faithful in a moral quandary. Should one con-
tribute to the slaughter of innocents or not? The hierarchy is silent on the subject.
7) The trump card lies in the first seven words of the Preamble to the Consti-
tution: We, the People of the United States... Ladies and gentlemen, the purveyors
of government-funded child murder are not some amorphous “they” out there.
The government of the United States of America is none other than the people
thereof. Those who sanction child murder through election, legislation, and tax-
ation, are you and I.
8) This nation was founded on the notion of self-determination in govern-
ment. The Declaration of Independence lists a litany of grievances that included
the unjust imposition of foreign laws on an unwilling populace. The effective
tax rate was under ten percent. The king of England was charged with coercing
a disenfranchised population through legislation passed by an unrepresentative
governmental assembly.
9) Abortion in any form is foreign to the Kingdom of Heaven. Americans pay
upwards of fifty percent of their annual income in taxes. The president, congress,
and courts of the United States of America enforce laws allowing child murder
in opposition to the will of a plurality of the citizens of this country. Thomas
Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration of Independence, an influential
thinker during the time of the drafting of the American Constitution, and the
third president of the republic, suggested that a healthy democracy might need a
revolution every twenty years or so. It is not unreasonable to posit that he would
consider the obliteration in the womb of millions of human beings each year the
proper matter of a citizen uprising.
10) The Constitution which enshrines the income tax also is interpreted by
due authority, namely, the Supreme Court, to mandate a separation of the state
from the Church, the allowance of sodomy, and, yes, the vacuuming, eviscerating,
and scalding of infants in their mothers’ wombs. No Catholic at all, under any
circumstances, can be obliged to acquiesce to such blatant, arrogant, blasphemous
Dear Editor (SeattleCatholic.com) 215
denials of our true sovereign, Jesus Christ the King of the universe. Those who
elect to resist such injustice against themselves and against their Lord are on very
firm moral ground, and the laws of the land by which they will be persecuted, far
from binding any to obedience, will, in their rejection, be the instrument of the
raising up of new martyrs for the Church.
To give the Lord our God the whole of our hearts, minds, souls, and strengths,
includes our material possessions. First among those possessions in the social
realm is our nation herself. One must ask, not whether blood money is due to
Caesar for the extermination of “fetal tissue”, but whether God will be pleased
with the offering from us to Him of His slaughtered children before they have a
chance at Baptism, the Faith, and life itself.
God bless you,
Tustin, California
January 13, 2004—The Octave of the Epiphany of Our Lord (and His Bap-
tism, too!)
P.S. One of the participants in this conversation stated that those in conse-
crated life are not subject to taxes. Two clarifications are in order: 1) religious
men and women who labor for their communities and receive paychecks thereby
do indeed have taxes withheld by the government; and 2) secular priests are con-
sidered to be “independent contractors” for the purposes of income taxes. Reli-
gious brothers and sisters and secular priests pay into the Social Security system
and receive benefits from it. Additionally, every parish in the country incurs ad-
ministrative and clerical costs in providing parishioners with tax statements each
year. In effect, there is a tax on contributions to the Church in that it costs extra
money to service the government regulations attached to the contributions. It is
the matter of another letter to explain why it would be best if the faithful just
offered their charitable contributions without seeking tax breaks after the fact.
In short, let us just say that it is better to be rewarded by our heavenly Father
than by Uncle Sam. LCS.1
1 Editors Note - While many churchmen and religious do volunteer to

pay the "income" tax and Social Security/Medicare taxes, they are not required
to, nor are most working Americans for that matter required to pay these "in-
come taxes", which are in reality excise taxes on the excercise of a federal priv-
ilege. ObamaCare falls under this rubric as well. Please see www.losthorizons.
com and the book Cracking the Code for a fuller treatment of this subject.
217
Father Smith’s Epistle to a Rich

Young Man
Your question is not in the least bit obtuse. In fact, it is quite valid. A few thoughts
that will, I hope, help to clarify things for you and perhaps others as well:
1) The Church has always advocated private property, which is one of the
many reasons why she condemns communism.
2) So long as a successful businessman earns his money honestly, there is
nothing wrong with him having lots of it—the caveat being that it is incredibly
difficult to earn lots of money in the modern system without inflicting injustice
on someone somewhere (beginning with oneself ), but if one can manage that
then…
3) One has the obligation in charity to give thanks to God by being gen-
erous with his fellow man. God has lifted up many saints and entrusted them
with wealth, because He knew that they could be counted on to put material
blessings to good use. The rich man must contend with that proportion prob-
lem between camels and needles’ eyes, but if he navigates life well, with ample
help from the grace of God, his sanctity will be enormous, of far greater worth
than his bank balance.
4) Still, the bottom line is that holy poverty—not the impoverishment that
comes from injustice, but voluntary poverty for the sake of the Kingdom of Heav-
en—is the Catholic norm. In this as in all things, Jesus is the model. Capitalism
requires an inordinate attention to material things and is thus very dangerous to
the soul. It is not impossible to be a holy businessman, but it is very perilous. The
normal way to Heaven leads through the narrow gate.
5) Remember also that great wealth is allowed by way of what amounts to a
dispensation. If one is burdened with the skills that make it possible to get on well
in the world, then God permits one to make use of the skills, with the proviso that
their fruits are then used, not for self-aggrandizement, but for the common good.
6) All wealth is kept in stewardship. No one “makes” wealth. Food comes
from trees, shelter is built from the bones of the earth, clothing comes from
the backs of animals. All of our raw materials are in the public domain. No
one can really claim to own them. Each of us, however, must have what
should be a considered a fair share to steward for the sake of pleasing God,
enriching the society, and providing for our proper responsibilities according
to one’s state in life.
7) The problem with someone who has great wealth is a matter of asking
“Why?” Why would someone feel the need to have more money than some na-
tions possess? Why would someone feel the need to work in such a way that others
are oppressed? Why would someone feel the need to control properties scattered
around a nation or around the world? Why would someone feel the need to have
hundreds if not thousands of other people subservient to him? If one can answer
these questions in keeping with the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, then wealth
can be the means to sanctity and thus to Heaven. It takes a fair amount of sanctity
to begin with to come up with acceptable answers to such questions in keeping
with the life of virtue. Someone with that kind of sanctity to begin with rarely has
the urge to exercise it in the amassing of a fortune. It can be done, but instances
of such are notable mostly for their rarity.
You will notice that the average rich saint spends quite a bit of energy in get-
ting rid of his wealth. The average not-rich not-saint spends a lot of energy trying
to figure out why it would be okay to get a lot of wealth. The rich saint expends
himself on becoming holier, frequently by way of divesting himself of wealth. The
normal sinner expends himself on getting along in and with the world, making
sanctity an afterthought, if given any thought. Most of us putting sanctity at the
forefront of our thoughts will find that being good before one becomes rich often
Father Smith's Epistle to a Rich Young Man 219
precludes becoming rich. The sinner who becomes rich first rarely feels much de-
sire to become holy after the fact. That in a nutshell illustrates the tension.
One could remain chaste while frequenting brothels, but that is an unwise
habit to get into. One could remain faithful while reading heretical writings reg-
ularly, but that is imprudent. One can remain poor in spirit while being rich in
pocketbook, but that is a risky business. Near occasions of sin constitute actual
sins for most of us. The wiser route is to humbly acknowledge our weakness and
not put the ourselves needlessly to the test—a test we are more than likely to fail.
If one can be holy without wealth, why go to the bother of

getting wealthy?
If one can be holy without wealth, one can help other poor
people to be holy without the bother of making them wealthy.
The man who makes aid to the poor dependent on his

wealth suggests that the poor themselves are incapable of charity.
God makes sanctity sweet and easy—even the poor can at-
tain it (Mt. 11:25-30).
Great wealth coupled with great sanctity is difficult, not be-

cause God makes holiness hard, but because man makes wealth
hard-hearted.
God bless you,

Father Smith
July 16, 2004: Our Lady of Mount Carmel

221
The Fate of False Infallibilities

Holy Mother Church is infallible. She is truly infallible. The bride of Christ is
infallible because she preaches nothing but Christ, her Groom, Truth Incarnate,
and Him crucified. Infallibility inheres in our Mother and Teacher; whenever she
proclaims divine wisdom as it touches on the faith and morals of mankind, she is
without flaw. She can not err in declaring what is required of man for his salva-
tion, nor in explaining what is expected of man as he cooperates with grace in the
project of obeying God’s will. No stain of falsity taints the mystical Body of Christ
as Peter guides the Church in knowing, loving, and serving Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, today, and forever. The gates of hell, the father of lies, the powers of the
world can not prevail against the Barque of Peter, nor snatch away that which the
hand of God the Father has claimed for His own, nor overcome those on whom
the Son has sent the Spirit from the Father.
God has spoken His truth in Sacred Scripture. He can neither deceive nor be
deceived. Nothing contained in the Bible is subject to human error. The Church
is the authentic interpreter of God’s word as it appears in the canon authorita-
tively delineated by the fathers of the Church and her solemn magisterium. What
God has said to man in Holy Writ is true, expresses His will, and is given to the
Church that she might make known divine revelation for the benefit of mankind.
God does not, can not, and will not deny or contradict Himself. His Church
does not, can not, and will not deny or contradict her Lord as she makes clear
the meaning God has expressed through the Prophets, Apostles, and Evangelists.
Quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus creditum est! is the articulation by St.
Vincent of Lerins of the means of being certain of Catholic truth. The sensus fidei,
the sense of the faith, is the enduring gift of God to His people in which they are
able to judge the vagaries of the world against the eternal and immutable truth
of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:10-16). The sensus Catholicus, the catholicity of the
members of the Body of Christ, is the indwelling of the Holy Ghost by which the
One Church is united in the One Faith given in the One Baptism through which
the soul participates in the Cross of the One Lord, Jesus Christ (cf. Ephesians
4:1-31). The sensus fidelium, the sense of the faithful, is the assent of the stead-
fast children of the Church as they resist satan and sin, embrace the cross, and
bear witness through sanctity to the omnipotence of divine charity overcoming
the world, casting out the devil, and acknowledging God as Father (cf. St. John
16:25-33; St. Mark 8:34-38; and 1 Corinthians 13:1-13). What is always be-
lieved, everywhere, by all the faithful members of the flock as it has been handed
down in tradition, taught by the authentic magisterium, and revealed by Sacred
Scripture is safe and worthy of belief for all time. Nothing at dissonance with the
immemorial teachings of the Church is true. All that the Church propounds to
the faithful for their willing assent is true.
When in his capacity as universal shepherd under Christ, speaking to
all the faithful with the intention of defining truth in the matter of faith or
morals, the pope declares a teaching to be held by the Church with faithful
obedience, that teaching is ipso facto infallible. God the Holy Ghost guarantees
that nothing contrary to the Faith will ever be promulgated by the Church’s
magisterium. It is not the person of the Pope who enjoys this divine protec-
tion, but the formal and official teachings that flow solely from the papacy. By
extension this charism of dogmatic inerrancy is shared by the full magisterium
when convened under the pope in an ecumenical council in which dogmatic
statements are defined. His Holiness is privileged by divine providence to be
so endowed with the grace of infallibility insofar as he offers the faithful only
that which has been transmitted through tradition; proceeds from the princi-
ples inherent in previous dogmas, traditions, or divine revelation; and/or adds
nothing to or subtracts anything from those things which already belong to the
patrimony of the Church in such wise that alien elements are introduced or
essential elements are diminished.
Some would beg to differ that divine revelation, constant tradition, or the
authentic magisterium are sources, examples, or guarantors of infallible truth. The
modern world has become a parrot of Pontius Pilate, asking incessantly, “Truth?
What is truth?” In fact, asking questions has entirely supplanted efforts made at
arriving at definitive answers to questions. Strangely, however, modern man has
placed a premium on certain authorities as the de fide sources of such provisional
answers as will not offend the modernist’s relativistic sensibilities. Modernity is
absolutely certain that Holy Mother Church is incapable of defining absolute
The Fate of False Infallibilities 223
truth, while simultaneously asserting that self-admittedly limited secular insti-

tutions and disciplines can flawlessly lead man to the little truth of which he is
temporarily capable of knowing.
American jurisprudence might claim for its battle cry, “Credo nihil sed quod
credo!” Having denied the establishment of a state religion through the Con-
stitution and erecting a positivist wall to separate the state from the Church
through judicial fiat, modern America, indeed, the whole modern world, has
made impossible any kind of shared belief. What “I” believe is all that is be-
lievable for me. “You” believe only those things credible to you. As a nation,
“We” believe nothing; “we” believe in nothing. Our laws are predicated on
the notion of creating domestic tranquility by allowing no one to say, do, or
legislate anything offensive to anyone else.
What, pray tell, might qualify as speech, action, or law on which all might
agree? Such agreement flows from a common faith. In what do Americans place
their faith as a people? By Constitution, through litigation, and in law, Americans
have agreed as a people to believe in nothing, to have faith in nothing, to be a
people without a shared faith. What modern Americans are discovering is that
they can say, do, and legislate nothing that will not offend someone.
Acknowledgement of this national paralysis is seen in areas as disparate as
what one calls the period between the fourth Thursday in November and the first
day of January, what is allowable in the content of broadcast entertainment, and
what makes valid the distinction between a teen girl’s right over her own body to
terminate a pregnancy and her teen boyfriend’s inability to stunt the growth of
his body by the purchase and use of tobacco products. Political correctness cor-
rects no one, but terrorizes everyone. It has no absolute measure of what makes a
statement, an activity, or a political position “correct”, but modernity is rife with
people seeking to please the mandates of the politically correct. Not everyone is
politically correct, but most everyone fears not being politically correct. Few peo-
ple would admit to wanting to be politically correct, but even fewer people would
dare the peril of being habitually incorrect.
There is no high priestess dictating what constitutes acceptable speech,
behavior, and political activity, so when Americans fail to police themselves
adequately through self-censorship and political pandering, the courts are pe-
titioned to pronounce judgment on whether or not a given citizen or group
of citizens have broken the sacred commandment, “Thou shalt not believe too
boldly!” May a mother ascertain whether or not her daughter of thirteen has
sought an abortion? The courts have said no. May school children invoke God
as they pledge allegiance to the flag of their homeland? The courts have said
no. May a town display images of Christ during the seasonal celebration of His
birth? The courts have said no.
Americans through their courts have declared that they do not know where
babies come from, therefore, tissue growths in women’s wombs may be destroyed
even as what appears to be an infant’s head begins to emerge from the birth canal.
Americans through their courts have declared that they do not know the differ-
ence between boys and girls, therefore, sodomy is permissible as an alternative
“lifestyle”, complete with insurance policies, employee benefits, and Disneyland
holidays for the exclusive enjoyment of persons desirous of committing unnatural
acts. Americans through their courts have declared that they do not know what
private property is, therefore, cities restrict home “owners” in their choices of
paint color for their houses, states tax citizens so that private corporations can
build sports arenas for their own profit, and the federal government confiscates
income from employees during their working years only to tax it again when the
money is returned to retirees as a socialist pension.
No consensus exists among Americans about the moral law, the proper limits
of government, and the justice of economic systems. Because Americans have no
common set of absolute principles to which to appeal for resolution of conflicts, they
have sullenly agreed to allow judges to serve as referees in the daily warfare that is the
American body politic. How do judges judge? Constitutional law, juridical prece-
dents, and common law philosophy require interpretation in their application. An
individual judge or the Supreme Court justices all bring to their work personal weak-
nesses, political inclinations, and the zeitgeist surrounding all but perceived by few.
The air we breathe by which moral, political, and social convictions are voiced
is a scientific methodology guided by a materialist philosophy. Empiricism gov-
erns how modern man sets about knowing. A relativistic subjectivism rules mod-
ern man’s understanding of what is true and why he should act on truth in any
given way. The here and now, the tangible, the measurable is the lowest common
denominator on which the majority of men will agree as a shared context of life.
Anything beyond the material world capable of empirical analysis is a matter of
faith, and modern men have agreed that as a group we can believe nothing to-
gether. Faith is out of bounds; only what is knowable is admissible in the court of
modern thought. Epistemology far more than theology is the metaphysical arena
of exploration for modernity.
For a scientific age that is etymologically appropriate. “Science” is the search

for knowledge, “epistemology” is the study of knowing and what is knowable.
What does science know and how does the epistemologist know that it knows it?
Each scientific discovery is a veritable proclamation that what is known is that
we were wrong about what we knew. Newton yielded to Einstein. The horse gave
way before the horseless carriage, which in its turn is brought to bay by gridlock,
a victim of its own success. The campfire was dimmed by radio, itself outshone by
television, eclipsed now by the variety of entertainments available via computer.
Medical science vacillates constantly about whether or not and how much wine,
butter, and coffee are good for you.
Progress as measured by science is an evolution from the unknown into the
less known. Scientific knowledge is an absurdly boastful assertion that nothing
can be known fully, nothing can be known finally, and nothing can be known
fundamentally. All of this would be woefully depressing were it not for the phil-
osophic fact that proof of a universal negative is impossible. Thus, science can
not know for certain that its claimed impossibilities are indeed impossible. Sci-
ence declaring that faith in nothing is reasonable in deference to the effort to
know something, is brought up short by the scientific and rational inability to
demonstrate that God is part of the nothing that can be believed or is a kind of
something that can not be known. Perhaps the man of faith is to be doubted for
his lack of physical proof of the existence of the object of his faith, but the man of
science is not to be believed when he insists that one take him on faith when he
denies the capacity of the subject of faith to know something simply because sci-
ence is self-admittedly agnostic on the matter. What is not known by science far
exceeds what science knows for sure; what is not known by science is a matter of
the inadequacy of scientific means to certain knowledge, not of the impossibility
of certitude in knowledge.
Any decent, honest scientist admits this. As a thermometer has nothing to say
about the height of the man whose temperature it is taking, science has nothing to
say about the soul of the man that divines knowledge of the divine person who is
the sole measure of man. It is not an insult to say of science that it is ignorant of
the realm of spirit. It is the highest compliment to science to employ its tools in
allowing the spirit of man to strive for true freedom. Man bound only to matter
and only for death is in the bonds of slavery. Man striving to ken the fullness of
truth is set free by the knowledge that a life in the spirit can be at least rationally
posited. Science in denial of that possibility is in self-denial: science of itself can
neither affirm nor reject faith, and in attempting to do either makes not only faith
impossible, but science dies as well.
If man depends only on science for his knowledge of the world and of
himself, then he will find himself trapped by science’s inherent inability to
know anything definitively. The paradox of science is that the first thing known
must be the fact of ignorance. Unless an ultimate source and object of knowl-
edge (God) exists, then science is reduced to being an ever-expanding arena of
subjects for a never-ending increase of ignorance thereof. The key that unlocks
this prison of pure reason is the Faith. Man electing to disregard faith is choos-
ing to remain imprisoned in his senses, utterly unable to make ultimate sense
out of what he perceives. Science might answer what, how, where, and when,
but science knows nothing of who and why. In an exclusively material universe,
there is no such thing as an “I” to be the subject of knowledge, there is no
“Thou” to be the object of knowledge, there is no “We” to share knowledge (or
faith, or hope, or love), and there is no purpose for the existence of knowledge
nor for the seeking of knowledge.
So if faith in nothing is the mutual agreement of society, and knowledge of
nothing is the ultimate verdict of science as to man’s ability to judge his own pur-
pose or raison d’etre, what, then, is man to do with himself during his very limited
(spiritually, rationally, physically) time on earth? It would appear that modern
man has fallen back on an ancient resolution to his quandary—eat, drink, and be
merry, for tomorrow we die!
Modern man seeks solace in the marketplace. Not the marketplace of
ideas—that would require knowledge or faith, of which he is entirely bereft,
but the marketplace of money. Morning, noon, and night, twenty-four-seven,
without respite for worship, family, or terrorist attack, modern America is ad-
monished to labor for the almighty dollar. It is imperative to understand that
the fruit of modern labor is not daily bread, but cash (although known all the
same in 1960s parlance as “bread”). At the end of the day, on payday, in the
endless days of retirement, the American laborer has not things made by his
hands, crops from the ground he sowed, nor a patrimony for him to hand
on to his sons and their sons; but a check, debts to diminish it, and taxes to
remind him of the source of all “wealth”.
Usury is the lifeblood of modern economics. Wealth is no longer measured
in acreages, heads of cattle, or objects manufactured. Instead, liquid assets, in-
terest payments, and stock options are the possessions of the modern materially
endowed. No more is wealth threatened by plagues of locusts, marauding hordes,

or droughts and floods. The bane of modern mammon is falling consumer confi-
dence or tight money policy or protectionism among foreign competitors.
It is no little irony that in an age when human wealth is controlled by
human decisions as has never happened in human history, man’s economic se-
curity is fragile as never before. A man once knew how much he could expect
an acre to yield, what a bushel would fetch at market, the amount he would
owe in taxes, the habits of pestilence and vermin in his homeland, and that
his son would have a stake on which to build his fortunes. Now a family must
contend with employment decisions made in New York, tax policy made in
Washington, market instability in Brazil, subsidies approved in Brussels, and
promotional discounts out of Tokyo.
A thirty-year mortgage allows a family to pay for its home three times over.
Property taxes permit them to rent from the government indefinitely. Loans
against home equity provide liquidity for the family through the illusion of real
estate generating income by just sitting there and appreciating in value for no
apparent reason. The witch doctors of modern finance insist that all of this cash
changing hands represents growing wealth, when in reality all that is happening
is that more money is being printed. A house resting on its foundation is not
working capital. It does not produce a crop. It can not give birth to garages, boat
houses, or gazebos.
When Enron, K-Mart, and Global Crossing went belly-up, nothing tangible
was destroyed. When the booming stock market of the 1990s went bust after
2000, a couple of trillion dollars vanished without a trace. When property values
in big-city downtowns plunged, office space remained but developers and spec-
ulators skipped town with phantom profits while tenants paid real rents, cities
paved real streets, and banks held real bad loans.
The modern economy is increasingly a matter of financial speculation, usu-
rious lending, and conspicuous consumption to keep it all going. Money is used
to breed money. The provision of unnecessary services provides employment for
people whose livelihood depends on the misdirected industry of other people, and
those other people must eat, wear, and upgrade all manner of goods that they do
not need in order to pay their credit card debts, provide employment for other
wage slaves, and give them something to do to take their minds off of their faith-
less, confusing, purposeless existence. An increase of wealth in the modern world
is not an increase in crop yield, industrial production, or personal autonomy;
modern economics depend upon borrowing capacity, market manipulation, and

financial policy by governments over which individuals have almost no control.
Modern man does not believe in God. He does not know why he exists. He
will not look to the Church for answers. Instead, modern man places his social
welfare in the hands of judges who make life and death decisions about morality;
he desires a scientific measure to determine the good, the true, and the real by
which life decisions are to be made; and he lives a life ruled by the vagaries of
an economic system that no one understands, no one controls, and no one can
escape. Modern man rejects the love and care of a provident God within the com-
munity of a faith-filled Church in favor of a universe judged by men who agree on
nothing, know nothing of ultimate meaning, and erect lives built on the pursuit
of things that have no lasting value.
An economy based on real property is almost immune from usury. An econ-
omy based on cash is an invitation to usury that becomes slavery to usury. A
cashless economy, the boast of the prophets of future profits, devolves into a bar-
ter system where the commodities are not things grown, things built, or things
traded, but the time, presence, and autonomy of people. What is the value of those
people, the use of those people, the purpose of those people? To make things, to
consume things, to be things that make and consume things that will decay or
become obsolete, requiring more things to be made and consumed, which decay
and become obsolete and require more things to be made and consumed.
Why? Because the market wants nothing other than consumption, consum-
ables, and consumers. Because science knows nothing that can not be made or
consumed. Because we the people have agreed to believe in nothing but what we
can make and consume. We the people have built a world where nothing exists
but consumption, the consumed, and consumers. What, then, does that make
of the people? An existence of being made for consumption and consuming, and
when all are consumed then comes the night, the nothing of which we have made
of ourselves, that we know of ourselves, that we believe about the life we have
given ourselves.
Such is the fate of those who know nothing of reason, of faith, or of God.
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus 15 November 2003: St. Albert the Great
see Romans 6:23; Psalm 113:1-8; 3 Kings 18:17-40
229
Defining Distributism
Part 1: What it is not

Did you ever wonder how the Chicago Cubs baseball team has managed
such consistent mediocrity for the better part of a century? Systematic futility is
made, not born, and the primary locus of production for Northside-Chicago mis-
placed hope is none other than the capital of my home state, Des Moines, Iowa.
The Iowa Cubs are the triple-A farm affiliate for the Chicago Cubs. A lot of the
well-honed talent for disappointment experienced in the Friendly Confines was
trained and perfected right here in Iowa.
Did you ever wonder who was the first person to receive the application of
the principle that a bone-crunching “adjustment” of the back would lead to over-
all physical wellbeing? When you think about it, having somebody shove down
hard with both hands on your spine is right up there with being the first guy to
jump out of an airplane in flight or joining the first crew on a nuclear submarine
spending six months underneath the arctic ice cap. Well, the first wise fools of
chiropractic blazed their trail in my hometown, Davenport, Iowa.
Did you ever wonder where the likes of Pepsi or Froot Loops or Twinkies get
the stuff that makes their products so enticingly sweet? Sugar gets a bad rap in
the American diet, but corn syrup is used a whole lot more than plain old sugar
to satisfy our collective sweet tooth. Few people realize just how complicated and
industrial our food delivery system is, but if you ask the people of Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, or Decatur, Illinois, they can attest that corn processing is right up there
with steel mills and oil refineries for negative olfactory effect on local air quality.
Not many places can boast a world-class corn processing operation, a huge beef
by-products rendering plant, and a state-of-the-art chemical production facility
within the city limits, but my current home in Clinton, Iowa, can.
So, if you wonder about how I come up with my peculiar take on the Ches-
terbelloc-inspired economic system of distributism, remember that mediocrity,
medical adventurousness, and municipal stench are my birthright, mother’s milk,
and the air I breathe. But I blame neither heredity nor environment. I take full
responsibility for the succeeding explanation of distributism.
Iowa will serve well to illustrate some of the aspects that help to define dis-
tributism. This is because Iowans both practice distributism and are ignorant of
distributism. Iowa has an economy with a good cross-section of business, indus-
try, and agriculture. And Iowa allows me to obey the writer’s first commandment:
Write what you know!
Let us be clear from the start about what we are not talking about when we
talk about distributism. Distributism is not Walmart, it is not Social Security, it is
not 9-to-5 on the factory floor. Distributism is certainly not capitalism, it is most
definitely not socialism, and absolutely not communism. Distributism is not an
answer, it is not a solution, it is not a raison d’être. Distributism is many things,
but it is not most of the things with which we are familiar, distributism being
mainly the things we find particularly special.
Well into the 1970s, the economy of Iowa was based on an interplay be-
tween family farms and the industry that supported them and grew from them.
Most Iowans, for most of its history, have been farmers. Sometime in the latter
half of the twentieth century that changed. Today, the biggest employers in the
state are Hy-Vee Food Stores and John Deere Manufacturing. Mass employ-
ment is not distributism.
Winter in Iowa can see snowfalls of fifteen inches at a time, and wind-chill
factors as low as fifty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Summer in Iowa can be-
gin in March and last into November (though April and October can be winter
months), and temperatures can spend weeks at a time leaping toward one hun-
dred degrees Fahrenheit. Oddly enough, such weather extremes do not keep Iowa
from having one of the oldest populations in the country. Schools in Iowa consis-
tently graduate over ninety-percent of their students, standardized test scores are
Defining Distributism 231
among the highest in the nation, and the three state universities have world-class
programs in a variety of disciplines. Notwithstanding all of this, Iowa experiences
a severe brain drain each year as high school graduates flee the state to pursue
work, education, and self-finding elsewhere. Population instability and demo-
graphic imbalance is not distributism.
People used to think that metropolitan Davenport (known as the “Quad-Cit-
ies” of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline in Illi-
nois) had a “recession-proof ” economy. This was because the biggest employers
in town made machines that harvest food. Since people always eat, it was figured
that building food-plucking gadgets was as stable as being a doctor, mortician, or
tax collector. The Quad-Cities lost twenty-thousand people during the farm crisis
of the 1980s. Much of that population has been regained, but the manufacturing
jobs were replaced by retail and service “industry” positions. Such reliance on
factory labor and non-productive employment is not distributism.
Capitalism, socialism, and communism are the unholy trinity of materialism.
By differing means they bring about the common end of asserting life on earth as
the only life there is. Whether one is a “consumer” in capitalism, a “ward of the
state” in socialism, or a “worker” in communism, one exists to get things, grant
things, or make things. Things are the thing in materialism. Things contribute to
distributism, but things are not the point of distributism.
The true distributist does not want to convince, coerce, or conspire for the
cause of distributism. A distributist does not consider distributism to be much of
a topic of conversation, much less the matter of crusades against other abstrac-
tions. There is no distributism in Heaven.
At present, it is very likely that you participate in quite a few activities that
are at home in distributism. Equally likely is the probability that these activities
are directed by something decidedly other than distributism. This is because the
world around you is out of its mind. Insanity is not distributism.
So what is distributism? Please read Defining Distributism, Part 2: What it is.
If you do not like what distributism is not, then I think you will really like what
distributism is!
Part 2: What it is
John Steinbeck described a father preparing a son for distributism in the no-
vella, The Red Pony. (For a wonderful paean to distributism in another Steinbeck
work, read the one-page chapter thirteen of his epic masterpiece, East of Eden.)
There are some who will object that Steinbeck was a socialist in his early adult-
hood and probably never heard of distributism. That is quite possibly the case.
But one need not understand the principles of counterpoint to enjoy “Row, Row,
Row Your Boat”. Steinbeck knew not Chesterton nor distributism, but he liked
them both.
In The Red Pony, a father decides that his son is ready for greater responsi-
bility. He sends the boy with a mare to a neighboring farm to have its stallion
provide stud services. The pony that is born is to be the boy’s responsibility—and
property.
That father (and Steinbeck) has an intuitive understanding of distributism.
Distributism works on the principle that someone has the right to own his own
property—and does own it. This sounds simple, but the concentration of prop-
erty in the hands of a minority of citizens common in capitalism (five percent
of Americans own well over half of the liquid assets in the United States); the
concentration of public lands and taxing authority possessed by the state in so-
cialist systems (state and federal governments hold title to as much as one-third
of several western states, and individual Americans pay as much as one-half of
their income in local, state, and federal property and/or income taxes); and the
concentration of agricultural and industrial means of production under direct
government control inherent in communism (one hundred percent in theory, in
excess of eighty percent in practice) are testimonies to how pervasive is the attack
on private property throughout the world.
Distributism insists and assumes that ordinary people are able to feed, clothe,
and shelter themselves. Furthermore, the distributist society expects that the food,
clothing, and housing are direct products of the ordinary people who use them.
Unlike the capitalist baron, a successful distributist would rarely desire, much
less possess, more than one house. Unlike in the well-run socialist nanny state, it
would be unusual for a man to ask a distributist government to employ him or
to shoe his children. Unlike the omnipresent communist Rube Goldberg night-
mare, distributists do not pretend to be able to determine in advance the size of
a harvest, its price per bushel, or the number of dinners a family will eat at home
in the next year.
Neither the warped “justice” of a few people owning everything, nor the twist-
ed “fairness” of nobody owning anything occurs in distributism. The distributist
system operates on the principle that each man has a right to his own things. He
does not have a right to his neighbors’ property. His neighbors collectively have
no right to his property. Distributism allows for the possession and exchange of
property, and asserts that a balance between the two is essential.
Family-sized portions are the norm in distributism. What a family needs to
feed itself, produce a living, and make a home are the rights acknowledged by the
distributist community. The family farm, the family business, and the family seat
form the nucleus of activity among distributists. The family is both efficient cause
and penultimate end of distributism (a discussion of its final cause and ultimate
end comes in Parts 4 and 5).
Thus described, as being between causes and ends, distributism can be under-
stood as an intermediate good. It comes from a good and tends toward perfection.
Materialist economic systems are self-contained. Neither the faceless market, nor
the nameless state, nor the heartless revolution look outside themselves for direc-
tion or justification. Materialism is its own reward (and ultimate punishment).
And thus another aspect of distributism is brought into relief. It is not
an explanation nor an abstraction nor an absolute. Distributism is a means, a
method, and a mood. It is not so much a way of life as it is a way to get out
of the way of living one’s life. It is not so much a set of instructions for what
is required for the good life as it is acting on the conviction that life is good.
It is not happiness as such, but it is how happy people choose to conduct their
public and economic affairs.
Unhappy people do not make good distributists. By the same token, dis-
tributism will not and can not make anyone happy. Distributism understands
what materialist economics does not: one eats to live, not lives to eat. Distributism
is neither a point of departure nor a destination. It is eminently liminal, of and
from the earth, but meant for the purpose of what lies beyond this life.
Iowa, my home, has some marvelously distributist elements in its perso-
na. Each midsummer one can delight in hundreds of roadside stands, often
manned by children, where fresh sweet corn is available. (I’ve seen a couple
where the corn was free!) There are innumerable inns (disguised as bed-and-
breakfasts) throughout the state, where guests and hosts share living quarters,
meals, and pleasant company. And no state surpasses Iowa for the abundance
of county fairs and the State Fair (they made a movie musical about it), where
handcrafts, livestock, and produce are displayed by the men, women, and chil-
dren—families—who labored on them.
Early Iowans (the state was admitted to the Union in 1846) never heard
of distributism. All the same, the heavy emphasis on agriculture, small towns,
and trades made Iowa much more the inheritor of the patrimony of medieval
Europe (the vast majority of Iowa settlers were German, English, and Slavic)
than the creature of the industrial revolution occurring as Iowa grew. Medieval
Europe counted wealth in acres, whereas modern America counts wealth in
stock shares. Most of Iowa for most of its history has stored its assets in silos
before anything was in a bank. By contrast, only one Fortune 500 company is
headquartered in Iowa.
This is not to say that Iowa is a distributist heaven. Iowa is just Iowa. It does
serve, however, as a demonstration that distributism is not the pipe dream its
critics believe it to be. Distributism might not be all around us, but we certainly
have it within us. Distributism might not be here presently, but its roots run deep
into our past. Distributism might not be probable, but our own experience shows
us that distributism is definitely possible.
Part 3: What it looks like

Several subversive septuagenarians sat in my office one morning. These were
pillars of our community, rocks upon which their families were built, grandmas
to a woman. And they were talking revolution!
Some of the ladies had granddaughters who were causing them distress. Each
had experienced the same offense in the midst of Sunday Mass. All wanted some-
thing done about it.
The beauty of their ire was that they had no desire for government interven-
tion. They did not expect the priests to address the situation from the sanctuary.
There was no outcry for a petition drive or legislation.
These grannies wanted action. They were going to do it themselves. They were
going to sew some dresses!
What had happened was the ever-growing phenomenon of immodesty. My
parishioners were weary of the weekly invitation to impurity being witnessed
at Mass. But the women were astute enough about the local economy to know
that few, if any, opportunities exist to buy actual dresses for girls. The gods of
fashion don’t allow that. My septuagenarian radicals also understood enough
about young people and the feminine psyche to realize that a problem with
vanity had a better chance at a solution through an appeal to beauty than
through lecturing or criticizing.
Thus, the women thought of making some dresses for their granddaughters.
Then they would “market” them as one-of-a-kind Grandma Originals for birth-
day and Christmas gifts. The piece de resistance was the decision to try to persuade
the girls to learn to sew!
Time will tell whether or not the dresses are made or ever worn, but the dis-
tributist key is that our women did not surrender to the market. They did what
they did, not to make a buck nor to spend a buck. They embarked on the project
of making garments in order to clothe and adorn the human body!
But, Father, isn’t that what all clothes are for?
In a word, no. Walmart sells clothes for a profit. Americans buy clothes be-
cause they can, and they buy them to make various meaningless statements about
themselves. Third-world slaves make clothing to postpone death by starvation
(after all, they are sewing, not sowing).
Obviously no economy restricts itself to the production and acquisition of
clothing, but this serves as a good example of how distributism distinguishes it-
self. The distributist is motivated by a real human need, attempts the direct and
personal satisfaction of that need, and is able to understand the need, the attempt,
and the satisfaction. Distributism allows material goods to be used for human
needs, toward human ends, on a human scale.
Chesterton mentions in The Outline of Sanity that one step toward dis-
tributism is to give one’s custom to local, privately owned establishments. The
final step of becoming a distributist is in being an establishment of that kind. In
between these two steps is nothing.
Well, actually, not nothing, but less. The American committed to the
distributist model needs to redefine his understanding of economics. His first
step in that direction is to redefine his understanding of his own place in the
economy. The very first step, then, is to demand to be freed of the inhuman
label of “consumer”.
Babies can not conceive of a difference between “need” and “want”. When all
one needs are dry diapers, mother’s milk, and hugs and kisses, one’s wants need
not be denied. Not long into life, however, the child learns that there are lots of
nice things to want. Temper tantrums ensue. The project of reaching adulthood
includes distinguishing between needs and wants and learning how to sacrifice
wants at need. Full maturity is learning to want only what is needed.
The consumer is in a perpetual state of immaturity. Our retail economy is
predicated on businesses creating, not products, but artificial needs. These same
businesses then offer the perfect product to satisfy the recent need. Of course,
the businesses stay in business, not because they make such good products, but
because they make such convincing pitches to the immature inability to know
need from want.
A fully distributist economy has no consumers. Services are provided by the
competent person to the person unable to perform the service himself, rather
than a surly employee “helping” a lazy or harried consumer. Being cured of be-
ing a consumer entails the decision to go without as much as possible, refusing
to rely on the work of wage slaves, the toxic beneficence of big business, or
the smothering largesse of government. One can not make a national economy
distributist over night, but one can certainly make his personal economy more
distributist each day.
Economic activity in the distributist community would be poorer than in
capitalism, but not impoverished as in communism, or stagnant as in socialism.
What’s more, the lessening of macro-economic activity would be balanced to a
healthy degree by an increase in micro-economic activity. There might be fewer
billions of dollars going overseas for cheap electronic products, but quite likely
a greater number of musicians, actors, and other entertainers would find local
audiences desirous of their talents. Even better, the populace at large would have
incentive and opportunity to learn to sing, dance, and amuse themselves with-
out binary or mechanical assistance. Fewer people would be celebrities, but most
people would be able to offer positive contributions to the social, economic, and
artistic life around their own homes.
It must be remembered and emphasized that poverty is relative. Distributists
are not consigned to dearth, nor are they (as are capitalists) chained to an ev-
er-growing demand for excess. The distributist economy can be maintained by the
ordinary people in such wise that the level of technological infringement on nor-
mal life, the extent of international trade, and the quality and quantity of material
goods are chosen variables, not the happenstance of the market or the arbitrary
determination of the government.
But many will be unconvinced by these explanations. The beauty of dis-
tributism is that to a large extent I can do it without permission. Capitalist con-
centration of wealth, socialist taxation of income, and communist confiscation of
property destroy fundamental freedom. As an illustration of this, I leave you with
a question: “Considering all of the arguments against an individual’s ability to
establish a personal distributist economy, what does that say about the existence
of true freedom of self-determination in modern America?”
Part 4: What it is for

Perhaps I will be vilified by my fellow distributists for saying so, but in the
interest of honesty and full disclosure, I must reveal that distributism produces
poverty. This more than anything else, I think, explains why distributism goes un-
tried. Capitalism brazenly lusts after wealth. Socialism proudly passes the wealth
around. Communism pretends there is no wealth. All three consider poverty an
embarrassment, a failure, a sin. Distributism cultivates poverty.
Or, to put it positively and actually more accurately, poverty and a desire
thereof produce distributism. Distributism then dutifully provides a structure
wherein the poor can pursue their real love: the Kingdom of Heaven.
Distributism is not about things. It is about people. It is even more about
each person. And most of all, it understands that social justice renders not only
man his due, but God receives His due as well. Distributism recognizes that God
is people, too.
The major activity of man is not economic, nor is man meant only to attend
to his own concerns. Man is created in the image and likeness of God. That cre-
ation, that gift, is intended for the purpose of man’s perfection through his knowl-
edge of his origins and the revelation of his ultimate end. The distributist realizes
that distributism is woefully inadequate to reach such a goal.
So distributism is about getting out of the way. Crops are planted to feed peo-
ple, not to stock mega-supermarket shelves. Houses are built to keep the rain out
and the coziness in, not to spark speculation about the neighbors’ annual income.
Clothes are made to draw attention away from nakedness and to permit natural
movement, not to arouse baser instincts or prevent locomotion.
And man eats to live, not lives to eat. Man, not the mortgage or the tax col-
lector, is the king of his castle. The man is not made by his clothes; a man is their
maker and wearer.
Knowing this about himself, man is free to keep his economic concerns at the
minimum they deserve. The whole point behind distributism is human freedom.
Man is most free when he contemplates God.
That contemplation takes many forms. Perhaps its primary condition is si-
lence. The distributist needs to be a man of silence. His ears should be attuned to
his neighbor, to nature, and to the voice of God in prayer. Thus, distributism can
use machinery at need, but will limit its use so as to limit its noise.
Contemplating God is a joyful reality. Angels and saints break into song because
of their proximity to the divine. The good distributist will revel in his own shouts
of exaltation and in the tunes he hears when his friends are moved in like manner.
Distributism prefers melodies from the heart and out of the mouth, and so places
a premium on opportunities for people to gather and serenade God, His creation,
and each other. This might be Mass on Sunday, so the distributist society would re-
strict custom on the Lord’s Day to allow everyone to worship. The observance might
be secular, but the distributist government would not refuse God the opportunity
to speak at the event. The family has frequent cause for celebration, and so God,
as the central member of the family, would be a primary participant in the activity.
But life can not be an endless party. The healthy man will need time alone. He
will need to cultivate silence with God. He will need to hone those skills, perfect
those talents, and reflect on those insights that will be his gift of self to God and
neighbor. A man who can not stand to spend time alone with himself should not
inflict that company on anyone else.
Solitude is not a matter of inactivity. Much of the distributist’s solitude is
found in his daily work. Sweat equity and intellectual labor offer both an oppor-
tunity at individual effort and the chance to share one’s labor and its fruit with
others. Work in a distributist community is necessary and self-evidently so. The
worker and his work are needed and properly valued by his peers.
Corollary to this is putting work in its place. This is perhaps at the heart of
understanding distributism. Material goods are sought as means, not ends. The
distributist labors so as to engage in what labor makes possible: prayer, solitude,
silence, song, and communion. The distributist does not rest so that he can work
harder, he works that he might have leisure to live.
Distributism is a means in a fallen world to seek what can not fall. It sees the
world as fallen, but not irredeemable. Indeed, it is the reality of its redemption
that shows it fallen. The distributist knows himself to be part of the world’s fall.
He also is certain that God has made each man to be a contributor to salvation.
Distributism is an economic means for each man to participate in the salvation
of all men.
This is, in a word, sanctity. Distributism does not sanctify, but the distributist
craves sanctity. He uses distributism as a tool to arrange his life so that material
needs contribute to spiritual imperatives. The distributist uses the things of this
world in keeping with the laws of the world to come. The distributist need not be
holy yet, but he needs to want to be holy now.
To ask a capitalist what he is doing is to invite the answer, “Making money.”
If one asks a socialist what he is doing, he will say something like, “Making a fair
world for all.” The communist asked that question will respond, “Making the
workers’ paradise.” The only explanation for a distributist’s motivation is, “Mak-
ing my way to Heaven!”
He does this fully cognizant that the only things he makes are of this world
with his own hands. The beauty of the distributist’s awareness that lifts him above
materialist despair, is his faith that the way to Heaven has been opened to him.
It is open to all who are willing to leave all things behind and follow Christ. Dis-
tributism is the economic means to free oneself from the material chains of this
world, to build up the treasured capital of the spiritual world, and thus be able to
afford the Pearl of Great Price.
And here we come to the place whence all Chestertonian paradoxes emanate.
For this wonderful Pearl is already paid for. The man who can afford the Pearl is he
who understands that it is the gift of life given by Jesus Christ on the Cross. Faith
in the Cross allows purchase without payment. It is the debt forgiven though the
full price is paid.
Thus, distributism is indeed poverty, the poverty of complete self-emptying.
It takes for its model and its motive force the cross of Calvary. Not all Catholics
are distributists, but every distributist must be above and before all things, Catho-
lic. No greater wealth exists in the universe!
Part 5: What it does

Jesus Christ was holy. People want to be like Jesus. Jesus Christ was merciful.
People want to be like Jesus. Jesus Christ was loving. People want to be like Jesus.
Jesus Christ was poor. People want to be different.
Oops.
Distributists need to believe, understand, and accept that distributism is dif-
ferent from the difference of the world. Imitating Christ, distributism is different
from the world in its assumptions, its rationale, and its motivations. Distributists
need to be prepared to think differently, to act differently, and to be different.
A big distributist difference is to cease desiring to make a difference. Dis-
tributism is not market manipulation, social engineering, or ushering in the reign
of ubermensch. To be a distributist is not to embark on an evangelizing crusade.
There is only one Gospel worthy of evangelizing others; Distributism is its ser-
vant, not its replacement.
This, I think, needs to mark the distributist’s attitude. Distributism is how I
live. I think it is one good way to live, even the best way, but surely it is not man-
datory. After all, Jesus was not a distributist, but a mendicant.

Here lies an important distinction between distributism and materialist
economics. Distributism humbly pursues a way of life, inviting and welcom-
ing others to join in. Capitalism, socialism, and communism proudly export
themselves. Where preaching does not work, they are not shy about exerting
political force. Failing that, capitalism and communism will resort to gun-boat
proselytizing.
Do not confuse humility with timidity. No one can pursue distributist free-
dom without a healthy ability to take risks and to be brave in resistance. A suc-
cessful distributist might not convince any by his actions, nor persuade by his
arguments, but he certainly will not shy away from a debate. Nor will he let the
materialist draw him into a quarrel.
Fear not, friends! Simply because one’s motivation is other than making a dif-
ference does not mean that being a distributist makes no difference. Distributism
is not an exercise in futility. It remembers the admonition of Mother Teresa of
Calcutta: “We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful!”
The faithful distributist will be different. That difference will have effects.
Some no one will notice. Others can not but be noticed.
A few facts:
• the United States of America accounts for fully one-half of

worldwide economic activity
• two-thirds of the American economy is retail-related
• about sixty-percent of all retail activity occurs during the sea-
son-formerly-known-as-Christmas
• most Americans claim to be Christians
• most American Christians celebrate the season-former-
ly-known-as-Christmas by going on an orgy of gross material
consumption
If the Christians who desire distributism would refrain from insulting the
honor of Christ with wanton greed, a great difference would occur. Advent, the
traditional four-week period of penance before Christmas, would be spent in
prayerful preparation, not on shopping frenzies. Christmas would be observed as
a season extending well into January or even February, not an anticlimax ending
abruptly and disappointingly on New Year’s Day. Generosity to the poor rather
than the overindulgence of the rich would mark the festivities commemorating
the Incarnation of the holy, merciful, loving, poor Son of God.
And a lot less money would exchange hands!
Instead, the emphasis would be on piety directed to God and charity given
to neighbor. Families would be brought together around the icon of the Holy
Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, rather than being driven apart to the mall, by
depression, and in forgetfulness of the real gift of Christ at Christmas. Approach-
ing the celebration for faith, not for profit, would profit the spiritual well-being
of everyone concerned.
But bottom lines would suffer. Remember, though, that distributism is not
motivated by making a difference. Being different at Christmas is meant for the
purpose of acknowledging Christ’s coming into the world to be its Savior. The
cumulative weight of a lot of distributists being different might—or might not—
result in other people realizing that something and someone has changed. Such a
change no Christian could pretend would not be for the better.
Always keep in mind, however, that distributism is about life on a human
scale. What the distributist does is quite hands on. Why he does it should be
equally applicable to the individual. A good distributist motto could be: “Avoid
solutions that require more work for others than is demanded of you.” Improve-
ments in moral character, diminishment of faults, and overall betterment of the
person should be most immediately seen in the mirror of the soul.
At first, a distributist might feel all alone. This is not because distributism is
permission to indulge in individualism. Quite to the contrary, family, communi-
ty, and the Church are the primary context of human life, and thus of distributive
life. Nonetheless, the initial distributist experience might be an article in a mag-
azine or a site on the web or a work of the Chesterbelloc. Appetite thus whetted,
the burgeoning distributist might be on fire to do something.
That is admirable and to be nurtured. But whether one’s distributist commu-
nity is a family, a farm co-op, or a monastery, one proceeds comfortable with the
reality of remaining a minority. This is not defeatism. This is just the fulfillment
of the distributist’s dream: a world wherein a family can rule its own, not a family
seeking to rule the world.
For some who are looking for the ideal of distributism there is a temptation
to investigate scholarship on the subject. Others might visit various distributist
communities scattered here or there. I am not much of an idealist. Realism makes
more sense to me. Toward that end, I encourage you to read the most realistic
description of a distributist personality that I know. You will find it—Surprise,

surprise!—in a work of Chesterton. The story is Manalive, and the man living the
distributist ethos to the hilt is Innocent Smith.
I like that name!
Father Smith
12 September 2002: The Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Lunardi’s Restaurant and Barnes and Noble Café, Davenport, Iowa
243
Where Does the Remnant Live?

Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God: believe also in me. In my Father’s
house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare
a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will
take you to myself: that where I am, you also may be. And whither I go you know:
and the way you know.—Jn. 14:1-4 (see chapters 13-17)
Parishioners of a certain age in towns where I served back in Iowa relate

stories of their childhood during the Great Depression. Everyone was poor, but
no one knew it, because they had plenty to eat from the farms where they lived,
sturdy clothing made by their mothers, and simple yet comfortable homes built
by their grandfathers in the days when their fathers could only watch or get in
the way. The men that everybody knew were poor were the hobos. They did not
call them “homeless” back then. “Bindlestiffs” or “vagabonds” or “bums”, but not
homeless. They had homes wherever they laid themselves down for the night after
a day or three of riding the rails.
Hobos had quite a set of survival techniques. They could be day laborers
if need be. They did not shun petty larceny when the opportunity presented
itself. And they networked with a panache that would make a Harvard Busi-
ness School honors student blush. This networking might be communicating
where a particular sheriff was particularly careful about keeping the letter of the
law, or places that had especially inviting wages for temporary workers, or the
names and descriptions of their fellows who were not to be trusted to tell their
real name, or share fairly around the campfire, or keep laws that only devils
can imagine can be broken.
One other kind of networking in their repertoire was a kind of semaphore
or sign language or secret code known only to the initiated. This involved
marking houses along the rail lines where a man could be pretty sure of getting
a good sandwich by asking politely. The families who lived in these places, with
good and big hearts, did not always understand why it seemed that their doors
received knocks so much more often than their neighbors’ ever did. It turns out
that the hobos had a system for leaving telltale signs, readable by other hobos,
near the houses where they had found succor. Their fellows coming after looked
out for those signs, and, finding them, allowed their more fortunate brothers
and sisters yet more opportunities to exercise the virtue of charity by corporal
works of mercy. Such benevolence—by both parties—has rarely been seen in
the world since.
But I think that lately I have been privileged to participate in a renaissance of
Depression-era social exchange. Several people have rung my doorbell in the very
recent past. They are what moderns call “disadvantaged youth”, ranging in age
from fifteen to thirty years old. Perhaps I am being paranoid and/or cynical, but I
think the last three are a direct result of my having been kind to the first one. The
arcane symbol by which my house is designated as housing an easy mark remains
obscure to me, as is, I am sure, its intended effect, but it has served its purpose of
drawing these needy souls to my front door.
“Monique” is a black woman of thirty. She grew up in the Watts section
of Los Angeles. Two children call her “Mom”, but they call two different men
“Dad”—if they ever see them. “Monique” wants to improve the conditions of
her children’s upbringing, and to better herself. She wants out of the Novus Ordo.
“Anita” is a fifteen-year-old girl of Latin descent from Compton. College is
her goal in life at this point in her life. Anita did not know what Latin was when
I offered to give her a blessing in our Mother Church’s mother tongue. She wants
out of the Novus Ordo.
“Darrell” is a Chicago native. In his mid-twenties, he describes himself,
thumping the book in his pocket, as a Bible-believer. Darrell grew up in the Afri-
can Methodist-Episcopal sect, fell into gang activity, escaped the gangs and eluded
arrest, and now he wants out of the Novus Ordo.
Where Does the Remnant Live 245
“Tanya” is the granddaughter of a Navajo medicine man. She grew up on

the reservation, joined the marines, had three children, and now, at twenty-three,
Tanya wants more for herself, her babies, and her people. She wants out of the
Novus Ordo.
Monique, Anita, Darrell, and Tanya did not find their way to my threshold
in order to repent their past errors of beliefs contrary to the immemorial deposit
of faith transmitted under the authority of St. Peter and his successors. None of
them is in the least aware of what has gone on in the Body of Christ since the Sec-
ond Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. The last thing that any of them expected
was to be greeted by a Catholic priest. They were more confused than angry or
disappointed at my explanation for why I considered their efforts to be counter-
productive to their supposed goals. All that they wanted to do was to generate
points for advancement in their organization by selling magazine subscriptions.
In other words, they all want out of the Novus Ordo.
Many of my readers perhaps share with Monique, Anita, Darrell, and Tanya
a complete lack of understanding of what I am talking about. Setting aside my
intentional and infuriating obscurity of expression, that lack of understanding
is probably my gravest concern for the future of the Church as it is being ap-
proached by Catholics committed to her traditional Mass. God be praised for the
traditional Mass, but if Catholics do not come to understand that the Novus Ordo
is far more than merely the Novus Ordo Missae, there is a frightening possibility
that the Faith will be destroyed even amongst the faithful who cling to true doc-
trine, unsullied Sacraments, and the belief that the mystical Body of Christ is the
Catholic Church under His Vicar, the Pope.
When I resolved to cease celebrating the Novus Ordo Missae, there were
hundreds of people whom I met willing to support me in pursuing my priestly
ministry in keeping with the Church’s constant patrimony. I was congratulated
frequently for having “converted”. I can not count the number of people who
have assured me of their prayers, offered me material assistance, and thanked
me for making myself available to bring the Sacraments and the Faith to hun-
gry Catholics.
What seems to be misunderstood is the nature of what I left behind. Of
course, I did not want to participate in Eucharistic sacrileges where Our Lord’s
Precious Blood was poured down the sink. No priest wants to stand idly by when
a deacon preaches heresy during Sunday Mass. Neo-conservative and traditional
Catholics alike can tell innumerable horror stories of abuses in marriage prepara-
tion, seminary training, and sex education in the schools. Legion is the name of
the problems plaguing the Church Militant in modernist hands.
Modernism, however, goes far beyond just what takes place on Sunday in the
sanctuary or in the sacristy. The Novus Ordo mentality, i.e. the heresy of modern-
ism, has indeed given us a Mass devoid of continuity with the roots of our faith,
dismissive of the rights of the faithful to receive the fullness of the Faith as it
always has been taught, and designed to propagate disinformation in the name of
dialogue, ecumenism, and empowerment. The modern hierarchy has been eager
to implement a détente with the world in which a readily recognizable Catholic
ritual for worship is replaced by a protestant-friendly, man-centered, commit-
tee-created fellowship meal.
All of this has happened in the context of a society imbued with sixty years
of degraded morality, a century and a half of the deification of science, two hun-
dred years of materialist economics, four centuries of atheistic philosophy, and a
half-millennium of apostate and heretic “theology” assaulting the doctrines, ritu-
als, practices, and authority of the Church. Add the two or so centuries necessary
to prepare the ground of the protestant revolt and you are confronted with the
reality that for seven hundred years the faithful have lived in a milieu actively hos-
tile to everything holy. It began slowly, with both the Church and Catholic states
opposing the attacks, but over the centuries the degradation has accelerated and
the havens for orthodoxy have become fewer and more besieged.
The result of this three-quarters-of-a-millennium battle royale has been the cod-
ification in the laws of veritably every nation on earth of contraception, divorce,
sodomy, abortion, and usury. Most Catholics committed to the immemorial tra-
ditions of the Church have no problem understanding that the Novus Ordo Missae
is problematic, in part, because it does not pose a sufficient barrier to these crimes
against God and His Church. These same Catholics, however, have neglected to
realize that pursuing the traditional Sacraments, morality, and Mass of the Church
requires that modernism in its every aspect be shunned. It is not enough to flee the
modernist Mass. Modernist music, employment, politics, child-rearing, recreation,
courtship, and education must also be absolutely rejected.
Absolutely.
Constantine the Great permitted the true Faith to come to a people who then
were moved to examine everything about their way of life and to change that life
in keeping with their new found gift of Catholic truth. Pagans approaching the
Church for the Sacraments were initiated not only into a body of belief, but into
a way of living out that belief. Hence, marriage practice changed, abortion and
child exposure ended, the vomitoria were closed, sodomy was denounced, and,
yes, oblations to the Caesar were forbidden. Prior to Constantine’s official tolera-
tion of the Church, Catholics did not stand idly by and suspend certain elements
of the practice of their faith until a favorable emperor seized power. They joyfully
adhered to the Faith even though they were robbed of their goods, branded as
traitors, and thrown to the lions.
This joyful adherence caused many pagans to ask how it was that these strange
people were able to accomplish this amazing thing, and how it was they loved
each other so. The pagans were not starving only for the truths that come from
and lead to Heaven. The pagans also knew that life on earth had become unbear-
able. Catholics offered them truth that transformed the man in such wise that
nothing was capable of diminishing the certitude that this life could indeed lead
to eternal life. All that was necessary was for this life to be laid down in favor
of that promised life, for one’s friends, for one’s enemies, and for the one God
through His one Church.
Here is where Catholics of the modern day fall down. We know the Faith. We
celebrate the Mass. We teach the truth. But we cling to this life. The suggestion
that superhighways, condominiums, iras, movies, and sports teams can pose grave
dangers to the sanctification of souls is met with skepticism and ridicule even
among Catholics for whom traditional practices are otherwise habitual. A near
rebellion arises among faithful Catholics when they are exhorted to trust that they
need not succumb to the false dichotomy between the Republicans and Demo-
crats, both of which champion materialism, contraception, divorce, sodomy, and,
in most cases, abortion. It is not the mouths of lions that bring us terror, but the
possibility of empty mouths, empty wallets, and empty churches.
Quite a few times in the past, the Church has risen above such perils. At Tha-
bor, Chartreuse, Citeaux, and Mount Alverno, men and women have imitated
the ark of Noah, the community of St. John the Baptist at the Jordan, and Our
Lord Himself before He began His public ministry. From centuries past, the Car-
melites, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and the Franciscans offer the Church in
our day a reminder and a model of how God takes His own from the world in
order to prepare them for the task of transforming the world. Never in the history
of the Church has the Kingdom of Heaven been advanced by men acquiescing
to the ways of the world or making accommodations for the world within the
Church or admitting that the world has any chance of overcoming the Church.
Our constant example has been one of boldly displaying the Faith as the great sign
of contradiction.
So, indeed, Catholics following the traditions of the Church must refrain
from participating in a ritual that is informed by worldly sensibilities. Yet more,
however, the immemorial Mass presents the challenge to the faithful of receiving
the graces flowing from Our Lord’s pierced side and distributed from the Altar of
the Cross, and conforming their lives in secular society to the death of Our Lord
on Calvary. It does no good to strain at the camel of the Novus Ordo Missae only to
swallow the twin camel of rock music, modern cinema, teen dating, the American
Constitution, rising real estate values, the newest suv, and the stock portfolio that
only Bill Gates would pity.
It is not only our in-laws still at the Novus Ordo parish we used to attend who
stand in need of the fullness of Catholic truth. It is our boss at work. It is the
banker holding our mortgage. It is the nice waitress at our favorite chain restau-
rant. It is the man in the Oval Office. It is the talk show host we almost always
agree with. It is ourselves still wedded to modernism in our economics, our pol-
itics, our recreation, our understanding of history, and our neglect to be perfect
as our heavenly Father is perfect, to be holy as God is holy, to love God with our
whole heart, whole mind, whole soul, and whole strength. We must love God in
our whole lives, not just during the hour spent on Sunday at the traditional Mass.
Anita received the fullest version of this tirade, though Monique, Darrell, and
Tanya also got an earful. Each of them said they had not thought of things quite
like this before. They were grateful that I took some time with them. I seriously
doubt that any of them will be at my Mass this coming Sunday. But I have placed
them in Our Lady’s care with the prayer that she will bring them a tad bit closer
to abandoning the Novus Ordo world where the Novus Ordo Missae is so much at
home. If and when they leave that world, they will be homeless. Our task is to
make sure that we have a home ready for them in which they, the Faith, and the
traditional Mass and Sacraments feel absolutely at home.
But that can not happen unless and until we ourselves have utterly left the
Novus Ordo Missae and the new world order for which it was concocted. We
must have visible signs that our homes are places where the needy and hungry
can receive their fill of what only the true Faith can provide. We must be
easy marks, vulnerable to the lions, the scoundrels, and the pagan who wants
a handout without realizing that his only satisfaction—and our only gift—is
Christ and Him crucified.
No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the
other, or he will sustain the one and despise the other. You can not serve God and
mammon. Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat,
nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the
body more than raiment?...Be not solicitous, therefore, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’
or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘Wherewith shall we be clothed?’ For after all these
things the heathen seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these
things. Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these
things shall be added unto you. – Mt. 6:24-34

5 February 2004: St. Agatha
251
In Time of Advent
This therefore I say, brethren: the time is short. It remaineth that they also who have
wives be as if they had none. And they that weep, as though they wept not. And they
that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not. And they that buy, as though they possessed not.
And they that use this world, as if they used it not. For the fashion of this world
passeth away.—1 Cor. 7:29-31
Some have suggested that a legitimate expression of patriotism and love of

country would be to spend lavishly on gifts during the “holiday” season. The
minions of mammon are very concrete about what it means to be faithful to the
service of their highest good. As of this writing, the prophets of the pursuit of
profits are predicting an almost six percent increase in oblations to the almighty
dollar this year over last year. Unemployment is down, the stock market is up, and
interest rates are low as the year of consumption 2003 draws to a close. Hopes
are high that 2004 will see a continuation of the American penchant for buying
things they do not need from people who did not make them with money they do
not have. The American economy is addicted to marketing, retailing, and credit.
None seems to notice, much less care, that our “wealth” is founded on generating
a sense of need out of uncontrolled desire; establishing riches on the principle of
low profit margins for the producers of goods, high profit margins for the dis-
tributors of goods, and minimal wages for the workers who labor for no reason
but to consume goods they can not afford; and everyone from governments at all
levels to multinational corporations to individuals without incomes funding their
excesses by borrowing and lending at usury.
If money makes the world go ‘round, and the love of money is the root of
all evil, and money can not buy happiness, then it is not unreasonable for the
man of faith to consider how money—cold, hard cash—might be of value in the
Kingdom not of this world and how money can be used, without being loved, and
whether and what happiness can be had at no cost. Most of the world economy
is spending the time from late November to late December spending money. It
is eminently appropriate and morally necessary for the Catholic to examine what
currency he is spending and on what he is spending it.
“Durable goods” are those wares in the economy expected to last three years
or more. Census data in the United States tell us that it is common for people
to move every five years or so. Treasury bills, mortgages, and young adults reach
maturity after about thirty years. Mammon has definite expectations about how
long its investments will perform and what kind of commitment it can expect
from its thralls. Jesus Christ, the King of the universe, must deal with far greater
uncertainty when it comes to ruling His subjects.
Lenten resolutions rarely last forty days. Advent does not even start before
the debauchery of “holiday” celebrations is under way. The pristine soul washed
clean of sin at Baptism is given infrequent and irregular opportunity to retrieve
her original purity once First Confession and First Communion are made.
Workers work five days out of seven, eight hours out of twenty-four, forty-four
years out of seventy; but prayer and the life of faith receive maybe one hour
out of the week, and most often just one or two hours—at Christmas and/or
Easter—out of the whole year.
Stockholders, employers, and the tax man demand constant, increasing, and
disproportionate returns on their investments. As a result of their demands being
met, the world has hundreds of billionaires, thousands of millionaires, and bil-
lions whose countries are in debt for trillions of dollars. The world of cash and
credit is awash in money and interest payments. Wealth as defined by consum-
er goods, consumer debt, and consumers consuming is growing worldwide. Yes,
poverty still exists, but all the world is strongly resolved to convert everyone to
the rolls of employees, taxpayers, and mortgage holders. The gospel according to
mammon is alive and well and spreading to the ends of the earth.
God, however, has a really hard time convincing anyone to labor in His vine-
yard with an eye toward increasing in sanctity and inheriting an everlasting reign
in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is not only a matter of fewer people believing
in God, fewer believers going to church, and fewer Sacraments being offered by
In the time of Advent 253
God’s true Church shepherded by St. Peter’s successor the Pope. It is a sad reality
that even those who go to Mass, receive absolution in the Sacrament of Penance,
and strive to obey the moral law do nothing to conform their personal economics
to the Christian ideal of holy poverty. The faithful do even less by way of efforts to
convert the world’s economy in the direction of divine justice and charity.
Perhaps the most distressing and egregious example of the dearth of fidelity
in the faithful is the participation by Catholics in the frenzy of “holiday” activities
during the season of Advent. Rather than a quiet, prayerful, and sacrificial time
of penance and preparation for our Savior’s coming at Christmas, Advent has
become a period of undisguised greed, shameless consumption, and scandalous
inattention to the spiritual life. Catholic parishes throw Christmas parties before
a week of Advent is completed. Catholic families spend huge sums of money
on one another with but the slightest nod in the direction of the child Jesus on
Christmas Day, and totally ignoring its Octave, relegating Epiphany to an af-
terthought, and forgetting Candlemas and the Purification in the rush towards
(Saint) Valentine’s Day. One shudders in revulsion and dismay in contemplating
the number of sacrilegious communions made on December 24th and 25th in
“honor” of Jesus on His Birthday.
It has been pointed out to this writer for years that parishes and families are
constrained by schedules beyond their control, that school pageants and concerts
need to take place before the vacation period, that families are best able to travel
before Christmas in order to be together. The problem is not that exceptions need
to be made in unusual circumstances. The problem is that the worldly consider-
ations of shopping, sales, and schedules rule the entirety of our culture’s approach
to Advent. The problem is that nothing is done to celebrate Our Lord’s birth once
the 25th has come and gone. The problem is the utter unwillingness of individual
Catholics, Catholic families, and Catholic parishes to make sacrifices so as to give
God the honor which is His due as He deserves and in the way the Church, not
the secular society, shows Him homage.
No effort is being made by Catholics to change the worldly disgrace that has
been heaped upon the celebration of Christmas. Instead, Catholics have changed
to conform to the world’s calendar and customs. This is entirely unnecessary.
There is nothing to keep a parish from celebrating its Christmas festival on the
Saturday nearest the feast of the Epiphany. There is no reason that a family can
not have its gathering for Christmas on the Feast of the Holy Family—a Sunday.
There is really good cause for an individual Catholic to take advantage of the
Feast of Our Lady’s Purification as a time of reflection on how well his Advent
resolutions have taken hold, and what Lenten resolutions might be in order to
build on them.
Where unique circumstances present themselves, then allowances can be
made. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. An impending
death, military service, a baby on the way, employment by the fire department,
or some other situation impossible to change might make it necessary to move
Christmas festivities into Advent. But the wealth of opportunities provided by the
Season of Christmas renders such necessity the exception, not the rule. In fact,
observing Advent and Christmas according to the practice of the Church allows
far more time for preparation and celebration, costs far less, and honors Our Lord
with poverty and simplicity rather than insulting Him with greed and excess.
How should Advent be spent? Like Lent, but with a difference. Penance and
mortification are common to both Advent and Lent. Prayer and fasting are ap-
propriate to each of the seasons. The distinction between them lies in how God’s
grace is at work in the faithful.
Advent is the time to make ready for Christ to live with us. Lent is the time
to make us ready to die with Christ. Advent makes Lent possible, Lent makes
salvation possible. Advent is the time when eternity approaches earth. Lent is the
time when time reaches consummation in Christ’s eternal Sacrifice to the Father.
Advent leads to Christ’s life in time on earth. Lent leads to Christ’s eternal life
in Heaven. The Cross—through the Mass, penance, and mortification—is the
bridge connecting Advent and Lent, Christ and His Church, man and God.
Each of the Church’s penitential seasons is a dying to the world with the goal
of attaining new life in Christ. As life in Christ is absolutely different from life
in the world, the life of the Catholic should be different having been immersed
in the grace of the penitential seasons. This Advent should begin holier than last
Advent and end holier than it began. Next Lent is the platform on which to build
the better Lent that will come a year later. Last Advent or Lent might well be my
last Advent or Lent, so I should make each Advent and Lent the best season of my
life until that time.
These considerations are not just liturgical niceties and the rantings of a ru-
brical purist. Advent each year is a microcosm of the whole life of faith. As our
annual Advent disciplines are proximate preparation for the commemoration of
our Savior’s Incarnation, we spend our whole life from birth to death preparing
for Our Lord’s Second Coming and our final Judgment.
In the time of Advent 255
It is hardly to be expected that the man incapable of four weeks of vigil while
awaiting Christ’s Birth will be able to sustain an effort requiring seventy years or
more. If we would not hope in vain to be ready to meet Our Lord when we come
to judgment, then we must be ready to labor now in anticipation of celebrating
His coming among us in the flesh. Jesus humbled Himself to share His glory with
the faithful; we who desire to receive that glory must first join Him in humility.
It is ours to choose whether our humbling will be our choice for a time on earth,
or God’s Judgment against us for all eternity. Or to put it in mammon’s language,
“you can pays me now or you can pays me later, but youse gonna pay”.
“Christmas comes but once a year,” says the sappy, secular song. Jesus has
promised that he who welcomes Him in his heart will receive the Father and the
Son as guests forever. Christ approaches even now; let us use this Advent as the
time when we go out to meet Him. But to meet Him we must seek Him where
He lives: in poverty, simplicity, and humility. The pure of heart, they who seek
only God and utterly reject the world, will see God face to face and be made at
home with Him forever in Heaven.
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
1 December 2003: The First Monday of Advent

Vinyamar, Tustin, California
see St. Luke 16:8–16

257
The Two Faces of the City of Man

Heads, I win: There is no sin in the world.
Why should anyone respect the laws which have you as their source
if you will not respect the laws which have God as their source?
Freedom of the press is ensconced in the Bill of Rights amended to the Con-
stitution of the United States of America, guaranteeing citizens’ activity in the
marketplace of ideas without undue government interference. Notwithstanding
the license some have taken to indulge in obscenity, incendiary polemics, and
demagoguery, Americans hold sacred the right to print, broadcast, or transmit
whatever is of moment, of interest, or of profit to society. The power of the word
both to reflect and to shape reality is acknowledged as a fundamental principle of
this and most democracies.
Children frequently are introduced to the concept of press freedom by way
of examining the elements of journalistic reporting and storytelling. The “who-
what-where-when” complex of questions is presented to students to help them
learn the skills of observation and the rules of rhetoric and articulation. So deeply
ingrained in our social psyche is this approach to understanding our world that
the products of such analysis are assumed to be accurate, self-evident, and incon-
trovertible. If it appears in print, on the air, or referenced at an official website,
then it must be true. Violations of this trust can result in public shaming, lawsuits,
and even incarceration.
Untrammeled freedom to express in public whatever is on one’s mind is pred-

icated on the notion that either truth is the subject being propagated or the object
being sought. It is no accident that such is the national attitude in the United
States, given that this is a decidedly materialist culture, devoted to the advance-
ment of science as final arbiter of reality, and dedicated to empiricism and technol-
ogy as the means to explore, comprehend, and subdue the natural world. Truth as
concrete reality is a primary good, hence, the expression of ideas consonant with
or desirous of truth serve the good. A free press can not (and may not) hurt any-
one, because truth is its matter and the truth ultimately is good to know and to
share. Thus, lies and liars receive no protection under the principle of a free press.
But is a half-truth true?
America is rife with sources of information concerning “who-what-where-
when” things happen in society. Raw data inundate our every day. How, however,
is one to sort through and organize all of the facts, distinguish the falsehoods
therefrom, and then determine the nature of the truth being espoused and one’s
response thereto?
Or more simply put, why do things happen?
It is the policy of reputable disseminators of information to restrict them-
selves to reporting verifiable, objective matters in the body of their stories. In oth-
er words, “who-what-where-when” is all that is considered—just the facts, ma’am.
Speculation is not deemed appropriate in a reportorial venue.
Why is considered under the heading of editorials and opinions. Theoretically,
everyone can agree on the facts, or at least on establishing a means to determine
their veracity. What requires further thrashing out is explaining their origins, their
ramifications, and their relative importance.
As an aside, it is curious how much of newspapers, the broadcast media, and
the internet is given over to advertisements. If truth is the ultimate goal of the
press, one wonders what truth is held dearest by commercial interests. Those eager
to point out that making money in homage to the almighty dollar is the major
motivator of business would do well to ask whence comes the profit made by
capitalists, and what motivates the customers of said capitalists to agree to supply
them with so much capital. Who can be most trusted with discerning truth: ma-
nipulators of the market, or those in the market so manipulated? How can one be
sure that a free press is free from manipulation?
But that aside aside, the content of the media—whether print, broadcast, or
electronic—conveys a certain image of the world. There is crime in the streets,
Two Faces of the City of Man 259
corruption in government, and concupiscence in the population. What sells

newspapers, boosts ratings, and generates website hits is the sensational, the in-
tense, and the violent. What drives disagreements in specific controversies far
exceeds the attention given whatever general principles on which parties agree
that could provide a context for conflict resolution. Pornography is peddled, high
culture is applauded, and Americana is celebrated—indiscriminately and in fairly
equal amounts.
Why does all of this get ink, air time, and downloads?
Because businesses make money that way. Or because that’s what the public
wants. Or because the government is oppressive. Or because our schools are inad-
equate. Or because that’s the way of the world.
But why?
What no one seems willing to admit is that the press is free to report any fact
and to editorialize any explanation—except that mankind is wallowing in sin.
Imagine this as the beginning of a newspaper article: “Two men were convict-
ed today of committing the sin of theft by robbing a bank . . .” Or this for the lead
story on the evening news: “A new poll released today indicates that Americans
consider the sin of adultery to be much more harmful to society than the sin of
fornication. . . “ Or a website with this on its home page: “Earn the highest pos-
sible returns on usurious investments in the Third World by taking advantage of
loopholes in the tax code explained by our trained professionals . . .”
It will be pointed out that bank robbery is defined as a felony, not as a sin.
That not everyone agrees that fornication is immoral. That one man’s sin of usury
is another man’s just return on a capital investment.
But why?
Are there no media executives who understand and accept the moral law? Is
there no audience among the God-fearing who desire a no-holds-barred approach
to describing the state of the world? Would the government persecute this kind
of press freedom?
An odd self-censorship is operative in America. No laws forbid describing
illegal or immoral behavior as sins. The Establishment Clause applies to govern-
ment (and schools and public squares and the politically correct), but not to me-
dia outlets. Yet the public forum is utterly devoid of a daily accounting of world
events from the perspective of the Faith. The descriptions of reality ignore God,
thus explanations, blame, and solutions for the ills of the world ignore God.
But why?
The aforementioned Establishment Clause is interpreted in such a man-

ner that the muzzle intended for government is self-imposed on the citizenry.
Obeying the law of unintended consequences, our sinful elimination of God
from the workings of government has resulted in the elimination of God in the
workings of American life, including the expression of truth through the press.
Fittingly, we neither admit the sin that removed Our Lord from our Constitu-
tion, nor the sins riddling our hearts. The Constitution is silent on the subject
of God and the government is silent on the subject of God. We the people are
the government, silent on the subject of God in our laws, our press, and in our
understanding of the truth.
So long as God’s sovereignty is denied by our nation, our facts will be half-
truths at best, and wholly useless toward attaining our supposed goals of life,
liberty, and happiness. We deny life to the unborn, the ill, and the old. We are
enslaved to bodily appetites, oppressed by one another’s greed, and impotent to
understand why. We have more money, more gadgets, and more health than any
other civilization in history, and our whole economy is predicated on the idea that
it is not enough, that better things will replace these things, that satisfaction and
contentment with a sufficiency is impossible.
Without God, neither we nor the world make sense. If there is no God defin-
ing sin as an offense against His Majesty, then there is no sin, we all are good, and
our world is filled with the fruits of our goodness...?!?! Or if it is true, as the news-
papers sometimes imply, that bad things happen now and then, then the denial
of God and His absolute goodness operative in the world leaves one wondering
about the wisdom of giving selfish, shortsighted, and sometimes silly people like
us the right to say, print, or believe whatever we want. How can one account for
evil in the world without a God forbidding it, or for good in the world without a
God mandating it, or for truth in the world without a God revealing it?
There are those who would tell us that all that is necessary is the “who-what-
where-when” approach to reality. Therein, in the material, tangible, objective
world, lies truth and our ability to recognize it and to agree on it. No more can be
reasonably expected in a pluralistic and free society.
So much, then, for a free press. The only purpose for having a free press is to
allow the free exchange of ideas. These ideas can be tolerated so long as they pur-
sue truth. Ideas can not be measured by, contained in, or subjected to instruments
designed for empirical evaluation. If the only truth acknowledged is material,
there is no need for free speech, free press, or free religion. All that is necessary
then would be scientists, recording devices, and no-nonsense news readers to give
us just the facts—a town crier would do the trick.
But if ideas are good and what makes them good is their truth, then God must
be acknowledged. This acknowledgement must be in the citizenry, in the press,
and, yes, in the Constitution. Or put another way, God must be loved with one’s
whole heart, whole mind, whole soul, and whole strength. Denial of our obligation
to obey this greatest Commandment accounts for our denial of the second great-
est Commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Evidence of this two-fold
denial is in each day’s news.
Denying God and neighbor, why should anyone believe in democracy and
democratic rights? Why should citizens obey the laws of the land? Why should the
government allow the press, the citizenry, or the faithful any freedom at all?
Sin confessed tells us who is wrong: the sinner. Sin confessed tells us what is
wrong: offending God. Sin confessed tells us where it leads: hell. Sin confessed
tells us when the remedy will come: with repentance. And the final mystery is
revealed in why repentance is possible: because Christ Jesus loves us unto death,
even death on the Cross.
Perhaps this makes no sense to empiricists and leaves them unsatisfied. To the
world immersed in the senses and the nonsense of sin, grace is unfathomable. This
world, our culture, is self-admittedly attached to satisfying perpetually insatiable
appetites. Those who insist on nothing but physical existence as the meaning of
life have the whole of their physical lives to pursue such happiness. At the end
of this life, they will come to an end of happiness, and they will discover to their
eternal horror that they forfeited their liberty when they exercised their “right” to
be “free” from God. In the parlance of Madison Avenue, you can have it all—but
you can’t take it with you. C.S. Lewis put it very aptly when he wrote, “In the end
there are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’, and those
to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’”
Will someone please explain how the First Amendment obeys the First Com-
mandment?
Tails, you lose: There is no grace in the home.
What makes you think that tomorrow will fulfill your present hopes any better
than your present has fulfilled the hopes of yesterday?
Modernity has expelled God from the body politic. This should not sur-
prise anyone. God has also been made unwelcome in his own house, the
Church. This should not surprise anyone. Most people have kept God out of
their houses. Jesus could find no room in the inn, but at least Mary and Joseph
were able to give Him a home in Nazareth. The modern world has made Our
Lord homeless again.
Since the Second Vatican Council there has been an ongoing and explicit
effort to render mundane the Church’s approach to worship, to ecclesial structure,
and to activity in the world. Stencils, statues, steeples, organs, and communion
rails have been removed from old church buildings or eliminated in the design
of new buildings. Priests forego vestments in the sanctuary, Roman collars on the
street (much less cassocks), and formal titles of address. Rock music, laymen, and
protestants have entered the sanctuary, while priests, altar boys, and the Blessed
Sacrament have left the sanctuary. Bishops’ conferences speak out vociferously on
the subjects of Third World debt, aids, and refugees, but have very little to say
to heterodox clergy, disobedient religious communities, or the laity absent from
Sunday Mass, meeting with equally dismal results in their efforts to convert the
ways of the world and to correct wayward Catholics.
At the same time that priests refuse to wear priestly garb, lay “ministers”
don albs and perform functions proper to the clerical state. Houses with “cathe-
dral” ceilings are popular just as church buildings are constructed without vaults,
arches, or acoustics. Homilies must not be given with references to “political”
matters, but parishes must give parishioners irs-mandated contribution records,
observe ada requirements for building construction and renovation, and at times
participate in insurance programs that fund contraception and abortion.
Two recent Popes have addressed the United Nations, a body advocat-
ing abortion, contraception, and the masonic ideal of Church-state separation
within a globalist governmental system, without taking the un to task for
propagating error and immorality. Bishops in Germany make regular and bel-
licose demands for open communion with protestants. Canadian bishops have
mounted but tepid opposition to their government’s imminent codification in
federal law of sodomite unions. Not one bishop in the United States has yet
disavowed the usccb’s (informal) declaration that Jews need not acknowledge
Jesus Christ for salvation. Liturgical innovations and abuses such as Com-
munion on the hand, altar girls, and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist
remain exceptions de jure but are habitual de facto.
Many, most, Catholics perceive none of these things as problematic, heretical,

or of much importance. In fact, it is the tenor of the times that the Church has
not gone far enough fast enough down this road of ecumenism, lay empower-
ment, and dialogue with the world. Any urge to criticize the Church on these
issues is motivated by a desire for more of the same and for more radical changes
in keeping with the times.
There are members of the Church who laud the Church’s direction as progres-
sive, if perhaps pusillanimous, and at times too attached to tradition. Overtures
by the Church toward the world, some think, will allow the Gospel to be spread
where the Church’s past rigidity and reaction made her incomprehensible, if not
repugnant, to non-Catholics. By listening to the world, so goes this reasoning,
the Church is opening up a two-way communication by which Our Lord will be
heard by people and in ways never before possible.
Certainly the world is being heard more by the Church. The Second Vatican
Council’s declarations on religious liberty and ecumenism, and the post-conciliar
Mass are permeated with American sensibilities, modernist philosophy, and prot-
estant spirituality. It has yet to be seen how the United States, the World Council
of Churches, or academia have embraced Christ as King, transubstantiation, and
objective truth as expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas.
But what of ordinary Catholics? They have at last been “empowered” to bring
their gifts to liturgy, church governance, and ministry in the community. No lon-
ger is Father’s the only voice in the parish, or Sister’s the only voice in the school.
The laity have come of age. What affect has this had on Catholics at home?
Declining attendance at Sunday liturgy is a well-documented phenomenon in
the post-conciliar Church. The “Table of the Lord” has ever fewer people dining
at it. They are sleeping in, golfing, playing soccer, shopping, doing the household
chores left over from the work week. Although the people who are at Sunday litur-
gy do not understand that it is supposed to be a sacrifice, for the expiation of man’s
sins, to satisfy divine justice, it is claimed that their qualitative participation in litur-
gy is deeper, better, and more understood than before the Council. It is lamentable
that so many miss Sunday liturgy, but it is not a mortal sin, so we are told.
Sunday dinner is a rare occurrence in an increasing number of homes, as are
family meals during the week. Mom is tired, the kids are at the mall, and Dad
is watching football. Or during the week, Mom and Dad are working, Junior is
at the library, and Julie is at soccer practice. When the family gets together for
“quality” time or at the holidays, the fact that the television is going, the in-laws
do not speak to each other, and much of the food was catered, elicits but a pass-
ing nostalgia from the grown-ups about how much things have changed (for the
better, for worse, who knows?) since they were kids. It is lamentable that families
are together so rarely, so briefly, but there is nothing wrong with two-income
households, electronic entertainment, and families with only one or two children,
so we are told.
That families eat together infrequently does not bespeak of impending star-
vation. Americans are sedentary, eat junk food, and eat too much. They do not
persevere in exercise regimens, diets, or refraining from fast food. Although they
eat alone, on the road, and not nutritiously, Americans eat very often, and while
growing fatter Americans seem to miss neither their meals nor their families.
Fewer and fewer Catholics go to Sunday Mass. More and more Catholics go
to Communion at every Mass they attend. Fewer and fewer Catholics go to Con-
fession. More and more Catholics are confused about what constitutes a mortal
sin. Sunday Mass is likely a cesspool of sacrileges being committed.
An odd phenomenon has resulted from this morass of inattention, misinfor-
mation, and lies. On the one hand, the lack of good Confessions has resulted in
a spiritual tapeworm in the body of Christ. Our Lord is being consumed, but his
graces are refused by unrepentant sinners. Spiritual nourishment can not come to
those attached to mortal sin. Starvation threatens in the midst of plenty.
On the other hand, many are becoming puffed up with pride, spiritually obese
from an inflated sense of self. No longer is Holy Eucharist an incredible mercy
from God to man, but the nonchalant conclusion to an over-familiar experience.
Communion is seen as something “owed” to those who attend Mass, rather than
the astounding offer of God’s grace to unworthy men. Those who “minister” do so
with a sense of entitlement, instead of recognizing that only rarely and in unusual
circumstances should the laity enter the sanctuary, and never touch the Blessed
Sacrament. God’s offer of His Eucharistic graces so often received unworthily has
resulted in the diminishment of pious humility, and a surfeit of profane hubris.
Immense efforts are expended to recruit lay “ministers” for the Mass, or for
“ministry formation” programs. More and more laity are sought for work in the
sanctuary and the chancery, but much less is done to draw the absent laity back
to the pews. Still less energy is devoted to filling seminaries with men called to
the priesthood.
Thus, Father is not in his place as the head of the household. Women step in
to fill the paternal role and leave the maternal role unfilled, ill-defined, and unap-
preciated. It is a scandal that such descriptions can be used to describe both mod-
ern Catholic homes and parishes. If it is the estimation of some that women as
mothers have not received their due recognition from the Church and in society,
will that recognition be more forthcoming when women devalue maternity and
succumb to the same milieu productive of and caused by insensitive, competitive,
promiscuous men? Will the forces that viciously drove men from the family farm
and family business be revealed as somehow benign in driving mothers from the
family hearth?
The spiritual reality in the Church where Father is absent from and/or mar-
ginal in the family, mother is bent on replacing Father, and both are indifferent
to the presence and rearing of children is reflected in the contraceptive mentality
embraced by married Catholics. The institutional Church appears to be undis-
turbed by empty pews, closed parishes, sold hospitals, foundering schools, shrink-
ing seminaries, abandoned confessionals, and invalid conjugal bonds. Likewise,
Catholic parents live in ever bigger houses with ever fewer children, just like their
non-Catholic counterparts. Parish halls, gathering spaces, and office buildings are
being built by parishes that have closed their schools, convents, and sodalities.
Catholic couples boast of homes that accommodate as many cars as children, use
contraception with no more qualms than their pagan neighbors, and divorce at
the same rate as their protestant friends.
In the average Catholic home in America there is no holy water, no statue
of Our Lady, no Crucifix. The Rosary is not a family devotion. Grace is not said
before or after the rare family meals. What is present is the spirit of the world.
Electronic equipment brings in pornography over the air and online, conversation
does not avoid the indelicate or immodest, and purity is an unknown concept
from a disregarded past.
America is a new world wherein God may be denied, the Church may
be denied, and children may be denied. There is an oft-repeated litany among
parents today who have denied their children conception, birth, and an intact,
two-parent home. Modern parents insist that children are not respectful, lack
discipline and direction, yet can think for themselves and make good decisions.
These same parents deprive their children of the guidance of Mother Church
in matters of respect, discipline, and moral choices. Parents and children both
have calculated that this equation adds up to pleasing the God they gave
themselves permission to deny. He, they think, would never deny them their
heavenly reward.
The Kingdom of Heaven welcomes the humble, the contrite, and the pious.
Prayer and praise constitute the joy of the saints. God’s children are those that
accept their need for the Cross of Christ, and bear their own crosses with Him in
obedience to our Father.
The modern world is proud, brazen, and blasphemous. Men of the world seek
pleasure, convenience, and wealth. Man on earth has wrought a world of barren
marriages and orphaned children, where death reigns, mercy is unknown, and
justice is reduced to brute force.
Whether or not a particular individual in the world is judged by God to merit
the Kingdom of Heaven is in the providence of God alone. Each of us, however, is
effecting now the raw material out of which our eternity will be made and judged
damned or saved by God. One may be forgiven for honestly wondering if those
who like modernity, license, and the cult of man can ever learn to like unchanging
truth, self-sacrifice, and the eternal reign of Christ the King.
Modernity has shown repeatedly an antipathy for the full message of the Gos-
pel. What sign can these times give us that they believe, speak, and live the truth?
The Church has many members willing to be thoroughly worldly; dare we think
the world will ever return the favor and return home to the Church by returning
the Church to the home?

26 October 2003: The Solemnity of Christ the King
A culture has no place in liturgy and the faith, if liturgy and the faith have no
place in that culture.
267
The Feast of
Saint Barnabas the Apostle
I could begin a homily about St. Barnabas by talking of the fact that he was
the fifteenth Apostle. Remember, there were the original twelve, then St. Matthi-
as, St. Paul, and, lastly, St. Barnabas. But I am not going to talk about that.
We could explore his missionary activity from Cyprus to Jerusalem and
back to Cyprus, with many stops all around and in between. St. Barnabas was
a companion with St. Paul on many journeys throughout the ancient world, a
tremendous advocate for the Faith in the early Church. But I am not going to
talk about that.
Instead, let’s look at martyrdom, both in the sense of St. Barnabas spe-
cifically, and the martyrs in general. Obviously, all the martyrs sacrificed their
lives with, and for, Christ. But there are practically as many ways of dying a
martyr’s death as there are martyrs who have died. There are, however, several
very important things that all of the martyrs share, and which we would do
well to imitate in our own lives, even if a violent death is not asked of us in
giving witness to the Faith.
Here I am going to offer Father Smith’s “Five Acts of Dying to Self.” These
are five things that every martyr, indeed, every Catholic who desires sanctity, en-
counters as part of bearing witness to Christ and Him crucified. All Catholics are
called to embody these actions, but these actions do not always result in a bloody
martyrdom. These actions require the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which any
Catholic can accomplish them; actual martyrdom requires not only the willing-
ness of the martyr, but the assistance of his oppressors. These “Five Acts of Dying
to Self ” can work whether or not we have anyone nearby ready to ill-treat us for
the sake of the Faith.
First, to die to self, one must love the life God has given him. The gift of self
to God is not a matter of some worthless thing being offered as an insult back to
the original giver. No, life is a precious gift from God, of such great moment that
God counts it worth His trouble to send His Son to redeem mankind. This is not
because we are so wonderful in ourselves, but because human life comes from
God in the first place. It is not that we first loved God, but that He has first loved
us. Because of His love, we can love what He loves. The lives that we offer to God
are of infinite value because of God’s love, Christ’s Cross, and the Spirit’s gifts.
Second, having learned the love of self that flows from the first great
Commandment to love God above all things, and which is the predicate of
the second great Commandment to love our neighbors, to die to self one must
accept the necessity of death. This comes both from acknowledging our own
sinfulness and the death which sins deserve and, far more, the realization that
it is not our own life which we crave, but the divine life which alone is capable
of satisfying us. Paradoxically, once one understands how tremendous is the gift
of human life, one comes to a deeper understanding of the source of that life,
God Himself. We love our human life, but we love the Giver of that life all the
more. And as God has given us that life, we seek to do the same. Made in His
image and likeness, we imitate His generous giving. God gives us human life
with the promise that divine life will follow; we offer our human life in faith
that He will keep His promise and bestow on us far more. He will bestow on
us divine life.
Third, knowing that the divine life is our ultimate desire, to die to self re-
quires that we learn to deny the self. Human life, the pleasures of this world, and
the beauty of creation cannot fulfill man’s true desires. The comforts we seek, the
ease we pursue, the luxuries with which we surround ourselves are ultimately, in
the words of St. Paul, just so much rubbish. At best created beings point beyond
The Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle 269
themselves to the Creator. At worst, creatures can become obstacles that first ob-
scure and then prevent the vision of God for which they, and we, are made. At
their best and at their worst, creatures must be eschewed by him who would know
and possess God and only God. Once the sign reveals the reality, the sign passes
away. Once the veil is removed, it is no longer perceived. Once love is embraced,
faith which points to it and hope which seeks it out are consumed in glory. This
creation is passing away, and the man who would die to himself allows the passing
glories of the world to pass him by.
Fourth, the self denial that is capable of resisting the temptation to comfort
and luxury and even licit pleasures bears fruit in a further willingness to take on
suffering. Ours is to take up our crosses each day and follow Christ. The cross is
not only about dying and death, it also is about suffering. There is no cross with-
out suffering, no Golgotha until a Via Dolorosa, no passion bereft of pain. We
must keep in mind that to embrace the cross is to embrace all of Christ’s Passion,
which will of necessity include intense suffering. It is typical of us Americans
to flee from pain, but that flight is not compatible with discipleship. Perhaps it
will help if we remember that although suffering hurts, it is not fatal, and it is
supposed to hurt. When the cross brings pain, there is nothing wrong. The cross
entails a sacrifice not only of life, but of well-being and of physical peace. This
presents maybe the hardest challenge in the project of sanctity. The idea of losing
one’s life is approachable by many; it is while the life is being lost that many of us
draw back in fear. Christ’s words bring comfort: “Do not fear the world. I have
overcome the world!” This world includes pain and suffering, thus, we need not
fear them in Christ.
Fifth, having learned to love the life that God has given, desiring all the more
the life of God from whom our lives proceed, releasing our claim to comfort in
this life, and embracing the suffering by which salvation is signified as a con-
tradiction to the world, at last we say to God, “Lord, I don’t care!” This is not
apathy, but a holy indifference. We acknowledge that God, His life and love, is
our only need. As such we do not care at all what else comes, so long as by it God
is received. There is no joy to which we cling, no pain from which we recoil on
our way to union with Christ and Him crucified. At the same time, there is no
joy that we will lack nor pain that can harm us so long as we are in communion
with Christ and Him crucified. We are ultimately indifferent to all things, caring
only for the Creator of all things. If we have Our Lord, nothing else can move us,
nothing else will overwhelm us.
Jesus in the Beatitudes tells us, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they
shall see God!” It is this vision of God that provides the motivation for dying
to self. The soul who wants to see God, wants to see only God. In that search
for God in this life on earth, all things are set aside that do not lead directly
to God. And once the vision of God is approached, all other things fade away.
The mission of the Apostles and martyrs is to bear witness to Christ and Him
crucified. That is our mission as well. The successful saint is he who accepts
nothing but the vision of Christ in himself, and having that glimpse of Jesus,
shows nothing but Christ to the world.
One can not give what one does not have. To bear witness to Christ, one
must have experience of Christ. The fundamental way of knowing Christ is to
know Him in the Eucharist, in the Breaking of the Bread—which is another
way of saying to know Him crucified. What the Apostles and martyrs show
to the world is Christ on the Cross in their hearts. That is all they can see, so
that is all they can show.
To the extent that the vision of God is our sole desire here on earth, we
will be rewarded with that vision. Through a glass darkly at present, Jesus is
revealing Himself to us in our lives, in our suffering, and in our death to sin
and self. On the Last Day, God will reveal Himself in the fullness of glory, the
sight of which is our whole Faith, whole Hope, and whole Love. In that vision
we will have life and have it abundantly. We who have died to self on earth
will live in Christ forever in Heaven.
Father Smith
Prince of Peace, Clinton, Iowa
271
15 November 2001: Saint Albert the

Great: Albertus Magnus
See Wisdom 7:22-8:1 & Lk. 17:20-25
St. Albert the Great was very, very smart. One could argue that he was the
smartest man alive for at least part of his life. Certainly he was one of the top ten
minds of the 13th century in Europe.
This aspect of the person of St. Albert reminds me of something that Jesus
said. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter eleven, he calls out, “Father, Lord
of Heaven and earth, to you I offer praise, for what you have hidden from the
learned and the clever, you have revealed to the merest children!” St. Albert defi-
nitely qualifies as being among “the learned and the clever”. Does this mean, then,
that he is among those from whom the mysteries of God have been hidden?
By no means! Jesus tells us that those who are like little children are those who
appreciate and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. St. Albert, though a brilliant man,
maintained that childlike quality that alone is able to grasp the inner life of those
in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.
It is important to make a distinction between “childlike” and “childish”. St.
Albert, as is the case with all who attain the Kingdom of Heaven, cultivated a
childlike trust and love of God. There is a contrary attitude among those who
wish to seem sophisticated and wise—that is, learned and clever—that really is
childish, even though they desire to appear worldly and mature.
Think of it this way: childlike wonder, trust, and love is evident in the son
who goes up to his father and says, “Daddy, why is the sky blue?” This child is
amazed at what he sees, really wants to understand it better, and is convinced that
his Dad is the person who can tell him the truth. This child expects and believes
that his Dad knows everything and is happy to receive the wisdom that his Dad
will pass on to him.
There are childish people who approach their parents with skepticism and
cynicism. They ask questions like, “Okay, Dad, can God make a rock too big
for Him to lift?” This sort of child doesn’t really want an answer—he thinks he
already knows it all. He already has dismissed the existence of God. His real goal
is to put Dad in his place. He doesn’t think his Dad knows everything—in fact,
he is more convinced that his Dad knows nothing.
Childlike people look around them and are awestruck at how wonderful cre-
ation is. They delight in its beauty. For them, the whole world points to a God
who loves, who brings joy, who makes Himself known through everything there
is. Such childlike people are certain that God is to be experienced through the
things that God has made. They eagerly seek out more of His creatures, not to
glory in the art, but to catch a glimpse of the exquisite vision of the Artist.
The Book of Wisdom tells us that it is through His Wisdom that God has
endowed His creation with knowledge of His love. Wisdom pervades all that God
has made. Those who seek to perceive this gift become wise themselves, reflecting
the glory of God in their own lives. St. Albert understood this. He sought deeper
and deeper into the natural sciences, not to make a god out of nature, but to see
more clearly how nature reveals the maker who is God. St. Albert was convinced
that the more one knows of the natural order, the more one’s faith is confirmed
that it is God who has ordered all things.
Childish sorts figure they know not only better, but they know best. Iron-
ically, the word “science” comes from a Latin word that means “to know”. Our
modern science, falsely divorced from faith, insists that ultimately we can not
know. Each scientific discovery reveals not that there is a point to their searching,
but that there is ever more that is unknown and unknowable. It is an endless quest
that results in a sense of futility.
Quasi-scientists deny that God exists, and thus deny that there is a principle
that gives order to the universe. They end up by denying the very means that
they have of understanding their own discipline. Without God there is no order.
Without order there can be no predictability, only randomness. If all is primarily
15 November 2001: Saint Albert the Graet: Albertus Magnus 273
random, then science can not make any definitive statements about the universe
that it seeks to explain.
If the universe can not be explained, then mankind and the individual life
have no explanation, no meaning, no purpose by which to set one’s goals. No
one can understand the universe, his neighbor, himself. A universe where people
believe like this explains things like war, school shootings, lonely grandparents,
unwanted children, and unredeemed death.
St. Albert and all good scientists realize that God has made Himself known in
all creation. Rather than deny that science has an authentic relationship to faith,
the good scientist allows science to confirm his faith in a God who loves His cre-
ation so much that He is present everywhere in it. The wisdom that pervades all
things is a sign of God who has made all things. The goal of science is to gather
knowledge that leads to wisdom that believes in God and returns His love.
We live in an age of science. Often science sounds like a god. Things are
condemned if they do not “obey the laws of science”. Appeals are made to believe
something because “that’s what science tells us”. Scientists begin to sound like
pagan priests as they arbitrate for the “uninitiated” what it means to be a human
being, what the purpose of life is, where life comes from, how it is to be lived.
Because of this fawning on science, we would do well to follow the lead of
St. Albert the Great. He understood that science is for something. It is meant to
guide us to God. It does not end in a dispassionate objectivity, but results in a
passionate love for creation, a joyous experience of God’s highest creation, man,
and an intimate unity with God the Creator.
Too often we let our science get ahead of us and control us. Our wealth,
technology, and medicine frequently surpass our ability to understand them. We
lose sight of what they are for and the fact that we actually create and control
them, not they us. In our rush to make things that more and more imitate human
beings, we have made human beings to imitate things. Voice synthesizers replace
talking on the front porch, eating in the car replaces dining with the family in the
dining room, internet sites replace sharing a hug after a long absence.
What’s worse, however, is reducing human beings to numbers in measure-
ments of productivity based on units manufactured. Names are lost amid the
cacophony of pins and Social Security numbers and passwords for the pcs so
common in homes and offices. We are on the threshold of using technology to
manufacture human bodies for the express purpose of using them as replacement
parts for other human beings.
Before us are three options. One is that which we seem to be choosing

right now, to hurtle down the road of gadgetry, technology, and false conve-
nience. Our machines will become more and more human and our people will
be more and more dehumanized. Science as it is so often practiced today offers
no reason why this should not be. This is because such is a moral issue and
moral issues can only be resolved by an appeal to absolute truth, but absolute
truth relies on the existence of an absolute God and this bad science denies
the existence of God.
Another option is to flee the monster of science which we have created. We
can, as the Amish do, throw out novelties because we do not understand them and
it is hard to control them. This risks the error of condemning certain creatures as
inherently evil. Such would be a denial of our longstanding Catholic perception
of the divine acclamation concerning creation: “And God looked on all that he
created and called it Very Good!” The Manichaeans, the Zoroastrians, and the
Puritans had an unhealthy disdain for the material world. King David in the
Psalms, St. Francis in the “Canticle of the Sun”, and St. Albert in championing
the study of the natural sciences would strenuously beg to differ with that kind of
attitude. The God who has revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, His Incarnate
Son, seems to like the idea of being united with the material world.
The third option, the correct option, is to embrace the intellect which
is truly a gift from God. We are to use this intellect in such a way that the
objects of its study help us better to appreciate the God who made all things.
We are to enjoy these creations and rejoice in the love of their Creator. Using
them to excess, as modernity would have us do, ends in the destruction of
the relationship between men and the world, between humans and each other,
between man and God revealed in Jesus Christ. To reject their use entirely, as
overly spiritual philosophies would suggest, results in the diminishment of the
human, contempt for the nature of which man is a part, and a denial of God’s
own word calling all creation good.
It is for us to use restraint and to utterly reject those things of science which
are bent on destruction. We must take time to understand the complicated things
that science discovers, eschewing their use until we are morally fit to control them
instead of being overwhelmed by them. We need to support one another in times
of sacrifice and self-denial—such as Advent, Lent, and all Fridays—when we vol-
untarily set aside our material wealth in order to appreciate better the tremendous
spiritual blessings to which the earth and all it contains is pointing us. To celebrate
15 November 2001: Saint Albert the Graet: Albertus Magnus 275
with one another, in our parish community, in the secular society, and within the
eternal Church that Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us.
He has chosen to be with us as the transcendent Creator of all, as imma-
nent in all creation, united with us in the Blessed Sacrament wherein the
Body-Blood-Soul-Divinity of Jesus Christ makes the new creation a marriage be-
tween earth and Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is not to be seen with the eyes
of a telescope or microscope, to be declared present there in the stars or there in
the test tube. The Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst, surrounding us, within our
hearts, uniting us with God who loves us, now and forever.
Father Smith
Clinton, Iowa
P.S. The answer to the question, “Can God create a rock so heavy that he can’t
lift it?” is “Purple and isosceles!” This is a contradictory, nonsensical question. It
is akin to asking, “Should a circle have four corners or five?” Having said this,
however, there is someone who can make a rock too heavy for God to lift: man.
Each individual has the power to make of his God-given heart a stony deadness
which God, respecting the free will of all men, can do nothing about. Not until
the sinner lifts his stony heart to God is God able to give him instead a heart of
flesh, bursting with divine love. God can not thwart Himself, but man can refuse
and reject the power of God—rejecting love and life in the bargain.
277
Saint Joseph the Worker

Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior, chose to be born of the immaculate flesh
of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God from God, the eternal Word begotten of the
Father before all ages, Jesus took on the burden of mortality, dwelling in the flesh
as a man among men. The Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity deigned in
perfect humility to be received in the womb of His glorious Mother, who obedi-
ently cooperated in the divine plan of salvation at the message of the Archangel
Gabriel. God’s Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin, Christ was conceived, and
the Word became man. His dwelling place among us was Nazareth, the home of a
descendant of David, the chaste spouse of the Mother of God, Joseph.
Jesus learned from Joseph to work honestly, to hearken to God in silence, and
to rejoice in God’s bounty in the midst of material poverty. The hands that lifted a
dead girl from sleep, whose touch gave sight to the blind, whose strength cleansed
His Father’s house of thieves, sought never to create wealth or to indulge in friv-
olous comforts or to assert the desires of the flesh over the will of God. Joseph
instilled in Jesus an awareness that sufficiency is a greater bounty than plenty, that
God is heard best when all else is silent, that the craft of man imitating God’s act
of creation builds an edifice not of perishable matter but of imperishable spirit.
Jesus was mistaken for “the carpenter’s son”. The people around Him are to be
excused if in looking on Jesus they recognized in Him more of His Foster-father
than of God the Father. In merely natural terms it is likely that His physical man-
nerisms resembled the man responsible for teaching Him what it means to be a
child of God. We hear His mother’s influence in Gethsemani when He submitted
to the will of God: “Not my will, Father, but your will be done!” (Lk. 1:38). We
“hear” Joseph echoed in the silence of Christ before Pilate (Jn. 19:9).
But, of course, in all things Jesus came only to do the will of Him who sent
Him. Jesus had work to do: to enkindle a flame upon the earth, to preach the
good news to the lost sheep of Israel, to give sight to the blind, to overcome the
world, to lay down His life for His friends. Joseph’s work ethic proves invaluable
in accomplishing God’s plan of salvation.
From the very first, both the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph sought to obey
God. They submitted to Him the firstfruits of their loving obedience as prescribed
in the law. It was their constant care to raise Jesus to be a man of righteousness
and holiness.
Modernity needs to learn from the example of St. Joseph in imitation of the
humble willingness of Our Lord. The work of the hands of St. Joseph was directed
by his knowledge that they served the greater purpose of performing the work of
faith. He did not labor as a carpenter for its own sake, but for the sake of his wife,
their Child, and his obedience to God.
Jesus spoke and did those things which gave glory, not to Himself, but to His
Father. Both Jesus and Joseph knew that the dignity of work comes not from the
raw act of labor, but from the end to which it is directed. Work meant merely for
monetary or egoistic gain is impoverishing and demeaning to the laborer. Work
done at the direction of God and for His glory alone bears fruit that nourishes the
laborer in this life and unto eternal life.
Faith makes it possible for man to order his priorities properly. By faith man
knows that his ultimate end is union with God; by reason man knows that all
natural activities must then be placed at the service of this supernatural goal. By
love is accomplished the task of submitting what reason teaches to the direction
of what faith promises in the confident hope that God will perfect the work He
has begun in man and in which man is called to cooperate.
It is impossible to describe the scandal and shame in which the faithlessness
of modern society now wallows. Lacking faith, man has disordered his world
such that work is no longer placed in the service of a greater end, but is become
an end in itself. The family, once the beneficiary of work, has become the prime
victim of employment. Where once rest was considered the appropriate reward
for ample work well done, leisure is now confused with sloth. Once play was
the province of children in neighborhoods, but now it is hyper-organized by
adults enrolling children in leagues for athletic activities requiring hundreds of
dollars’ worth of fees and equipment, long hours practicing, and travel between
cities and across states.
Saint Joseph the Worker 279
Far from enfleshing the words of Isaiah repeated by Christ proclaiming liber-
ty to slaves, the modern approach to work does not embolden the freedom of the
children of God, but results in invisible chains and monstrous burdens. The arena
where the faithful are permitted to exercise devotion to God is shrinking. The
social stigma attached to seeking treasure that does not rust or rot is becoming
harsher. The fruit borne of labor without reference to God is wicked, violent, and
deadly. And rest, peace, and silence are being banished from the face of the earth.
Jesus tells us that we can not serve both God and mammon. That He chose
to be born in poverty and raised in the house of the simple worker Joseph, tells us
that God places a premium on work done by those satisfied with a minimum of
worldly wealth and receptive of the bountiful grace of Christ. That so many of us
would be hard pressed to describe our jobs as being in harmony with serving God
alone tells us whom we actually serve.
Modern economics, modern employment, and modern desires do not in-
clude a place for God. St. Joseph gives us an example of what happens when God
receives pride of place in the human heart: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my
word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our
abode with him” (Jn. 14:23). In the hearts of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Jo-
seph, Jesus found great love. In the home of Nazareth the Father’s will was obeyed
by all; the Son was the center of the life they shared; and the Holy Spirit filled
their hearts with a passion for prayer, the willingness to sacrifice, and the power to
live as children of God—on earth, laboring in the Lord’s vineyard, and in Heaven,
resting forever in the bosom of the Father.
Jesus comes to dwell with us, Body-Blood-Soul-Divinity, in the Mass. Of His
fullness, grace upon grace, we are privileged to receive. We are called to set aside
even that work which does not interfere with God’s will in order to obey His Son’s
command to eat His Body and to drink His Blood, that we might have abundant
life. At Mass we have a momentary foretaste of that life with Christ no longer
obscured by the trammels of mortal life. At Mass we can see—and taste—the
fruit of the work of God’s salvation in us. No longer do we eat the fruit of the
tree of knowledge and receive death. We eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life—Jesus
crucified— and receive knowledge of God!
St. Joseph the worker reminds us to honor honest work. More than that,
however, he illustrates that the laborer is to be valued more than his labor. Still
more, St. Joseph guides us to the realization that Christ is the focus of all our
efforts on earth. In Christ we are given a Mediator by whom God the Father is
offered the work of our hands, the love of our hearts, and the whole of our lives.
Jesus Christ takes away the sins of the world that those who believe in Him and
in His cross can find a dwelling place in His Father’s house—as He dwells among
us so shall we dwell with Him, now and forever.
Father Smith

Clinton, Iowa
281
21 June 2001—Feast of Saint

Aloysius Gonzaga
I knew that the Church has a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame
with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if
this love were extinguished, the Apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer,
the Martyrs would have shed their blood no more . . . Then, nearly ecstatic with the
supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: “O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my
calling: my call is love. Certainly, I have found my proper place in the Church, and
you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will
be love, and thus I will be all things as my desire finds its direction.”
—St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Love! Then do what you will.—St. Augustine of Hippo
Love is not an emotion. I often find myself telling this to people (myself
among them) who are struggling with the virtue of charity. They nod their heads
and mumble agreement. Their mouths say, “Yes, yes, yes!” but their eyes say, “Say
what?!”
Most people think that love is an emotion, a feeling, a reaction to a person.
When we think of the people we love or of being in love, we think of lumps in
our throats, of flutters in the stomach, a skip in our step. We call that love. This is
simply incorrect. There is a huge difference between love and the emotions.
Think about it this way: emotions are reactions to circumstances in life. Get-
ting cut off in traffic makes you angry, finding a twenty-dollar bill that you forgot
in a suit jacket makes you happy, hearing of the death of an old friend makes you
sad. These are appropriate responses to things outside of you. What you feel cor-
responds to what has happened.
Love is the fulfillment of commands from God. That is not the same thing as
an emotion. Fulfilling the command is not a reaction to an external event. Love is
an act of the will in obedience to the source of all love, God.
God says, “Love with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength!” That is a
command. Your emotions don’t work that way. If I order you right now to have
emotions, nothing will happen. Watch: be happy! Now stop. Now I order you to
be sad! Now stop. Now I order you to be angry. Now stop. Now be happy again!
See. No one can order you to have an emotion. Emotions happen from the
outside in. It is not for nothing that we call them feelings. Emotions work in the
mind the way nerves work in your skin. If I slap you across the face, you feel pain.
If I dump a bucket of water on you, you will feel wet. If I turn the air conditioning
off, you will feel warm.
When people are mean to us, we feel angry. When a dog jumps up and starts
barking at us, we feel fear. When a friend calls on the telephone, we feel happy.
These emotions are like the pain, the wet, and the warmth. We feel them because
something outside of us affects us and it is registered inside of us.
Now, we might feel something and not react to it. I might hold my anger
in traffic and not honk my horn at the person who cut me off. You might just
stand there and let me punch you in the mouth. You might not complain if the
temperature rises without the air conditioning turned on. Our reaction doesn’t
change the feeling. The feeling is there. We have no control over it. We have total
control over what we do with it.
God tells us to love. All the time. Not just when we feel like it or when it feels
good or when we feel motivated. We are to love with all that we have and all that
we are: heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love is not something from the outside
in, but from the inside out.
God has first loved us. He writes his law, the law of love, on our hearts. We
are able to obey His law of love, not because there are nice people around, or be-
cause we will get a reward for it, or because we feel good today, but because God
the Holy Spirit dwells in us. He has made us His temple. He has made us living
vessels of love. The Kingdom of Heaven—of Love—is within us!
Because of that love inside of us, we can give the love away. We can give that
love back to God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to our
neighbor as Jesus has loved us. We can offer ourselves on the cross out of love, not
because we need to, or because we are forced to, or because someone else has asked
for it or deserves it. We love as God loves, because God is within us. God has
21 June 2001—Feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga 283
chosen. We love because we choose to love. It is done on purpose, not as a reaction,

but as a gift. Just like God’s love to us is a gift in the first place.
Loving actions are not themselves love. St. Paul tells us that we can preach,
move mountains, and offer our bodies to be tortured, but without love, those ac-
tions are noisy gongs gaining nothing and being nothing. The love that is patient,
kind, pleased with the good, forbearing, and eternal is the motive force that makes
all loving actions worthwhile. We do not love by doing good things; we do good
things by the power of love. As God has loved us first and makes it possible for us
to return His love and pass it on to others, our own love makes it possible for us
to perform the mighty works of God, the acts of faith, the signs of the Kingdom
that Jesus has promised us.
The greatest sign of love is life. He who loves lives. God is love and God is
life. He who dwells in love dwells in God and shall dwell with him forever. The
living are able to feel. This is where love and emotions come together. Because
God has loved us we can love in return. Because we love we are alive. Because
we are alive we can feel. Because we feel we can be angry or sad or frightened or
joyful or delighted. The person who does not love is not alive, has no feeling. He
is hardhearted and lacks compassion.
Love is not an emotion. It is the condition for all of the emotions. Without
love all the emotions die. Without love the human person is dead. We see the
living dead around us (and in the mirror) when we see hatred present and mercy
missing, when there are hungry people in the midst of plenty, when faith is denied
to those desperately in need of knowing God. Our lack of love can kill both the
body and our souls.
The living love of Christ was moved to action by everything around Him.
The merciless hatred of the Scribes and Pharisees moved Jesus to anger as He
denounced them in public. The hunger of the multitudes in the desert places
moved Jesus to pity, so He fed them with the five loaves and two fish. The
faithless sinning of mankind moved Jesus to compassion as He obeyed his
Father, ascended the Cross, and said, “Forgive them, Father; they know not
what they do!”
All things are not love, but love is all things. Love can do all things: it can
be joyful, sorrowful, angry, playful, and awesome. These things without love
either die or destroy their victims. Love is the blank slate, the tabula rasa, the
white page on which all being is writ. Love is the grounds for life, the grounds
for acquittal from sin, the grounds surrounding the royal court of the King of
Heaven. The capacity for emotion is not the prerequisite of love; love is the
necessity that allows emotions to be shared.
Love does not feel good. Love does not feel bad. Love feels—and it is good
that it feels, that it is not dead to pain or joy. Love does not feel right. Love does
not feel wrong. Love is right at all times in all circumstances for all people. Love
utterly rejects, renounces, and refuses wrong—i.e. , sin—at all times in all circum-
stances for all people.
God dwelling in our hearts gives us the command to love. We are to love
our enemies, lay down our lives for our friends, and proclaim the Gospel—not
because our enemies are nice, or because we owe our friends, or because anyone
asks to hear the Gospel. We do these things simply because the will of God is
writ upon our hearts. God loves. We love. It has nothing to do with you or
me or with circumstances. Love is not about us; love is all about God. Because
God loves and God dwells in our hearts, we love—completely, constantly, and
unto the end of our lives!
Love is not accidental to God. Love is of the essence of God. It is His very
nature, like water being wet, sugar being sweet, and fire being hot. Love is all that
God does. As water would not be water if it were dry, God would not be God if
He were not love. In accepting the Lord of love into our hearts, we become like
Him. We take on love. In taking on love we are embracing the divine nature.
We become one with God in response to Christ’s becoming one with us. God
became man that man might become God! That is why receiving Christ in the
Sacraments, especially at Mass, is so important. Jesus is how the love of God lives
in us and we in Him.
Jesus shows the greatest love by going to the Cross for us. He did not sin. He,
as the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, is not mortal. He did not need to
die. But because He loves us, He chose to give us Himself—His love, His mercy,
His life—on the Cross. He did this so that we in turn could imitate Him in whose
image and likeness we are intended by God. We are to choose the cross, to choose
life, to choose love for God through our obedience, and love for our neighbor
through our compassion.
St. Aloysius is a wonderful example of this obedience and compassion. He
was a wealthy nobleman who put aside his fortune in order to obey God and join
the Jesuits in poverty. He was a healthy young man who imperiled his health by
assisting victims of the plague. He chose to follow Jesus to the cross and die in
service to his brothers who could not help themselves.
St. Aloysius is noted for purity, innocence, and charity. He accused himself
of being a sinner. This accusation was not believed by his contemporaries and
strikes us as being rather improbable. What St. Aloysius understood that we
lesser folk need to heed is that the love shown us by Christ is willing to take on
all of the infirmities of the beloved. St. Aloysius not only took on the burden
of the physical debilitation of the plague, but he did penance not only for his
own sins, but for the sins of all of the people whom he loved. In this he was a
true imitator of Christ, who for our sake took on the burden of all of our sins
and carried them to the Cross.
God is love. God is omnipotent. Love is omnipotent. In receiving and
accepting God’s love, by obeying His command to love, we participate in the
all-powerful divine will. Our obedience to the command to love with our
whole heart, whole mind, whole soul, and whole strength is the source, means,
and goal of our free will.
Human freedom depends on the obedience that is possible only through love.
Without loving obedience from God within the heart, man is reduced to reacting
to the power of the world. Unless he is set free by love, man is a slave to hunger,
cold, fear, lust, anger, hatred, pride, oppression, greed, injustice—in a word, man
becomes a slave to sin. Without love man merely reacts to all things, but he is
able to do nothing and to gain nothing—except sin, i.e. , he is a clanging cymbal
reduced to being nothing.
No power in the universe can conquer you if you love. Because God is
love, your desire to love shares in His unconquerable power. Nothing can over-
come God, nothing can overcome His love—God Himself can not keep you
from loving, for God is love and He will never deny Himself. If you love, God
will never deny you.
Love is the power from God to act rather than to react. It is the union of
being and will that makes all things possible. Love is the difference between the
lifeless pursuit of the appetites common both to animals and the faithless; and the
power over death manifested on the Cross—where love, obedience, and life are
bound together in perfect communion.
It is on the Cross that we see love perfected. It is an act of the will, not of
necessity. It is an act of the heart, not a reaction of the body. It is the power of
love bringing life where all is dead, compassion winning over hatred, and mer-
cy consummating all justice. Let us approach the Altar of God and receive this
tremendous Sacrament of love. Let us offer it in union with Jesus in this Mass
on earth, that we might come to share in the life of which it is the sole means to
receive the bliss of Heaven…
Father Smith
Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm: for love is strong as death,
jealousy as hard as hell. The lamps thereof are fire and flames. Many waters can not
quench charity, neither can the floods drown it: if a man should give all the substance
of his house for love, he shall despise it as nothing!—Canticle of Canticles 8:6-7
287
Introduction to
Distributist Perspectives Volume I
Chicago is my hometown. Not in the sense that I was born there and can
claim lifelong residency. In fact, I lived there but five years during and after col-
lege and visit now but briefly every two years or so. Chicago can claim, however,
to be the context where I started growing up and reached my majority, if not my
maturity. Alas! that process continues to madden my friends and family even now.
No, Chicago is my hometown not because I am from there, but because I
found home there. Not a home, mind you, but all the elements that constitute
home for us transients living on this sad rock of earth.
In Chicago are neighborhoods every bit as parochial as the smallest European
hamlet. One can find art as sublime as anything wrought by man’s imagination
at any time. Chicago’s reputation for crime, in the courthouse as much as in the
courtroom, towers as tall as its skyscrapers. The cooks who cook home-cooked
meals there might have made a journey across time zones, through war zones, or
braved no-parking zones to find the cozy hearth where dinner is enjoyed. Wheth-
er prairie, ocean, or desert says home to you, Chicago can be your home for as long
as you are looking for one.
One can even recognize a bit of Davenport, Iowa, my birthplace, in Chicago.
In the Loop one might see a chiropractor’s office—a product of the science devel-
oped in the 19th century by a Davenport man. Under an El platform, one might
dream of the romance of trains that radiate from Chicago to all points of the
compass, heading west thanks to the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi at
a site near Rock Island, Illinois—opposite Davenport. On a summer afternoon in
Lincoln Park, one might delight in the scent of fresh-mown grass, cut, perhaps, by
a tractor built by John Deere’s company—headquartered next door to Davenport

in Moline, Illinois. There is a lot in Chicago to remind you of somewhere else,
practically anywhere else.
Decades of planning and improvement have caused this phenomenon. Hogs
are not butchered there these days, pace tanti viri Carl Sandburg. State Street, that
great street, has been revitalized according to the principle by which Carson’s and
Field’s were melded into conglomerates whose interests extend far beyond the
shores of Lake Michigan. And, as is so typical of 21st-century American metrop-
olises, more “Chicagoans” live in the ‘burbs than between Evanston and Calumet
City and Oak Park and the Lake. Chicago today has better air, better water, better
paving (if not better traffic), and better race relations than a century ago.
One thing about Chicago most certainly is not better. Chicago is not very
good at being Chicago. It can do a passable impression of New York. There are
hints of Paris about it in the springtime. Beijing can be seen peeking out of por-
tions of the near-south side. But the je ne sais quois that makes a city unmistakably
itself is being lost in Chicago—and everywhere else.
The fact that behemoths like Chicago are finding their identities submerged
by the multinational juggernaut of modern economics is the surest sign that the
hydra of materialism—capitalism, socialism, and communism—is every bit as
virulent and deadly as described by Pope Leo xiii and all other clear thinkers.
Man’s peril is revealed by the destruction of the great no less than the small.
The “global village” creates not a small world, but a hideously misshapen,
cancerous, ravenous grotesque posing as Main Street. A world shrunken to the
size of a town would be suffocating; a town swollen to the size of a planet is the
stuff of nightmares. Who wants an elephant-sized amoeba in his intestine, or a
potted Sequoia in the living room? What is sorely needed is a sense of proper
proportion, indeed, a sane and human perspective.
Elsewhere than in the essay included in this collection, G.K. Chesterton says
that the madness of the mathematician is the attempt to draw a map of the uni-
verse—to scale. More sane is the artist’s effort merely to render reality in a picture.
The eight writers in this collection paint pictures of the human project from a
variety of perspectives. No one of them is complete, and taken together they are
hardly exhaustive of the many facets through which man sees and is seen by the
world around him. But their sketches give good glimpses of who man is and what
he might be, warts and all. It must be kept in mind that capturing the “warts” is
far easier than encompassing the “all”.
Man is more than man knows. His knowledge of the universe is only partial,
and his knowledge of that part of the universe which is himself is even smaller.
We see as through a glass, darkly. Only God is far enough away from man to be
able to get the proper perspective so as to know all of man. God is the true artist
who alone has a mirror big enough to hold up to His creation, by which man, the
greatest of His creations, is rightly seen.
Thus, if man is to know anything of himself, he must seek a God’s-eye view.
Any intellectual endeavor trying to grasp the truth of man, any science seek-
ing knowledge of man that omits mention of man made in the divine image
is doomed from the start. At best the intellect will grasp the body and miss the
spirit, the science will find itself knowing more of ignorance than of truth. In both
cases, the part that is known will be neither the larger nor the better part.
There is all the difference in the world between the doctor performing an
autopsy and the cadaver that is its victim. Modern man examines man the corpse
and learns deadly things. There is a place for autopsies, namely, learning which
things are deadly to life; however, an autopsy is a woefully bad way to learn about
how to live. A more wholesome desire is to contemplate human life and the final
causes that make it worth living.
George Maxwell, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Eric Gill, Harold Rob-
bins, Arthur J. Penty, Harold J. Massingham, and Commander Herbert Shove
lived in times of unprecedented social trauma. Their essays in this collection
reflect an effort to shine a light into the morass that the unbridled greed of
capitalism and the reactionary socialism of their day had created, threatening
to destroy completely the humanity of man. These men and many of their
contemporaries saw dark days ahead.
Darker than anything they could have imagined has been our past, which
was their future. Men of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could
not have envisioned the madhouse that modernity has become. Theirs was a
world where beauty still had a place, man was yet believed to be at the pin-
nacle of creation, and God was held by most men to be Lord over all. Sanity
was taken for granted almost as much as was common sense. Unnoticed at the
time was the peril to common sense posed by the economic attack being waged
against the common man.
The recent report from the field of psychology that rest makes some people
sick underlines the point made by George Maxwell in “The Truth About Work”.
That point, in short, is that work must come to an end because work is not an
end in itself. Contemporary workers, nonetheless, have been conditioned to the

reality that work is their life. Malaise, both physical and psychological, is setting
in among some workers on their days off or holidays because the end of work
seems to them to be the end of life. This is because the insane economic situation
trapping mankind has made work the end, i.e. , the purpose, of life. Retirement
is no longer about resting but has become an excuse to find (or has created the
necessity of finding) a new and different job.
Life has not always ended thus. One who is intent “On Knowing the Past”—
the title of Belloc’s contribution to this collection—will find that once upon a
time oppressed people were seen by themselves and by their oppressors as unfor-
tunate. Modern man, almost wholly ignorant of the history that was necessary
to make him, now applauds the wage slave as the dawning of a new economic
day. “Full employment” is a statistical fantasy, but, all the same, employment is
everyone’s dream. It does not occur to employees that something better has ever
existed for the ordinary man’s living than to provide extraordinarily wealthy men
with their wealth.
A serf might not have known where his next meal was coming from, but he
knew his origin in the Creator and his final destination of Judgment Day. Wage
slaves are assured of three hots and a cot, as prison inmates describe such a plight,
but have almost totally abandoned belief in a transcendent goal for man. Serfs
obedient to the Faith and wage slaves submissive to the almighty dollar would
agree, for wildly different reasons, on one thing: the serf is better off dead. The
smug wage slave does not realize that his peak salary signifies his highest accom-
plishment. His life insurance policy and 401(k), however, leave him, after death,
worth significantly more to the taxman than at any time in his working life.
“Economies of scale” is the catchphrase that rationalizes this vision of
disposable people, worth more in their absence than in their presence. It is
embodied in the trend toward larger and larger corporations with fewer and
fewer employees. Hordes of men are vital to the conglomerate, but any given
man is entirely expendable.
There is a colossal contradiction between the ideal in the law where each
man is held sacred and the practical life of economics where any man can be dis-
posed of at will. In the name of individual children, we herd them into ever-larger
schools, while demanding smaller class sizes, overpaying teachers who insist they
are poorly paid, and seeking to slash education budgets—for schools that should
not exist in the first place. In the name of customer service, we build ever larger
“big box” retail stores, whose corporate headquarters are far from the customer,
who is himself subjected to survey-tested, market-driven, mass-distributed mer-
chandise tailored to his individual tastes. In the name of more efficient govern-
ment, we pay for it with a tax code that requires a multibillion-dollar industry to
decipher it each year; we enslave “citizens” for forty percent of the year to pay their
tax burden; and we, the people, habitually elect the kind of person who thinks
this state of affairs needs only repairing, not replacing. Chesterton was able to wax
humorous and ironic about this, laughing before he was driven to weep in his
essay “On Organization and Efficiency”.
This laughable lunacy caught Eric Gill’s attention in his speech “Painting and
the Public”. The fact that a modern employee is actually penalized if he thinks
without permission, indeed, if he thinks at all, would not have surprised Mr. Gill.
We have come to a pass where workmanship is exiled to the domain of the very
wealthy or the rather eccentric. The average American eats food processed by adm
and served by McDonald’s; he lives in a house gift-wrapped in materials from
Alcoa and sold by Century 21; he wears clothes slave-manufactured by Nike and
peddled at Walmart; and he pays for all these “quality” products with the wages
begrudged him by gm or money lent him at usury by Bank of America. It would
be the work of a doctoral dissertation to describe how we came from the art of the
artisan to the product of the production line—and called it “good”.
In our day no less than in that of Harold Robbins, “nothing has been done
at all” to remedy the perverse economic and moral situation in which the world
languishes. It is the unwillingness of many men, and the inability of most, to
recognize the dire straits of materialist economics that make a cure not just
unlikely, but impossible. Robbins’ essay, “The Buttress of Freedom”, ends with
the diagnosis that man formerly enjoyed a more evenly distributed economic
power, but that political power was exercised almost exclusively by the rich.
Modern man enjoys an even more distorted distribution of economic power
amid a mere chimera of political power for the mass of men. What political
power the common man now has is employed to ensure that he remains an
employee—with his vigorous consent.
Arthur J. Penty wrote what amounts to the distributist “Declaration of In-
dependence” just before he died in 1937. “Distributism: A Manifesto” is a clarion
call exhorting men who would not be slaves to throw off their shackles, all too
often self-imposed. The specific points of the Manifesto are testimony to the fact
that much of the enslavement of wage slaves is intellectual, moral, and spiritu-
al. Wrong thinking throughout society has resulted in one part of society, the
wealthy, oppressing and exploiting the other part of society, the working and
middle classes—with the explicit permission of the oppressed.
Certainly there is a necessity to plainly lay down the nature of the grievanc-
es held by those who wish human freedom against those intent upon human
bondage. Missing, however, is sufficient and explicit reference to the role played
by God and the Faith in effecting man’s freedom. The greatest slavery is not to
matter, but to sin. Both the American Declaration of Independence and the dis-
tributist Manifesto suffer from the failure to insist on God’s part not only as the
origin of freedom, but as the object of freedom. Unless and until man desires free-
dom not for his own sake nor for the sake of freedom, but for the glory of God
alone, he will find that his most fervent efforts move him all the farther from both
goals—both the one he wrongly pursues and the one he was created to attain.
Materialists of all stripes, whether they are the oppressed or the oppressor,
have acquiesced to a common system. It is not until someone is able to insist that
he desires something entirely different that a difference will be made in how life
is lived. To quote from Harold J. Massingham’s essay, “And his Mental Exodus”:
“Become different from your enemy; do not, under another name, manifest him
in yourself.” It is not systems that need to change, but the hearts of men that need
to be converted through the love of God, by the Love who is God.
Captain Herbert Shove begins his essay, The Growth of Industrialism, with
a quote from Pope Leo xiii’s encyclical Rerum Novarum. This is a terrific point
of departure. Captain Shove recognizes that in the wholesale departure from a
commerce governed by a Catholic ethos lies the ills of materialism. Industrial-
ism as such is not the problem. Machines and industry are no worse than the
men running them. The problem is the materialist indifference, which almost
inevitably grows into hostility, to the Faith. Men without a moral compass will
make a mess of whatever they touch, no matter how good the material with
which they work.
Perhaps it is because I am a priest that I am fervent in my hope that dis-
tributism can find a home in our lives. Perhaps it is because I am a priest that I
am not at all sanguine about the potential in contemporary society for making
the profound changes which distributism would demand of it. The man of faith
knows nothing if not the wonder of the hand of God at work in the world. The
man of faith is painfully aware of how hard-won true repentance must be. Hope
and realism meet on the Cross of Christ.
And that, of course, is the crux of the matter. Man is God’s mirror. The works
of man, therefore, must be godly, for their only proper object is divine. The ul-
timate success, wherein man achieves union with the divine, is the obedience of
Christ crucified. The will of God and its reflection in man, the artistry of God and
its perfection in man, are united on the Cross. It is there that the two orders, Cre-
ator and the created, are made one, the one bringing the other to the fulfillment
for which it was made. Distributism must be above all other things an effort to
order human living according to that which it is called to imitate: the living God.
Conversations about distributism with trained and professional economists
invariably slide into other subjects, as the “experts” despair of ever making clear to
the distributist that he is not being practical, that he is ignorant of the incredible
complexity of the mechanics of economics, that normal people do not desire the
good sought by distributism. Distributists, we are told ad nauseam, do not under-
stand the facts. There are technical elements within economics that distributism
simply can not address.
With all due respect to economists who merely know more: Poppycock! They
might know more, but they surely do not know better. Faith informs both dis-
tributism and the distributist who endeavors to implement it. The love of money,
the root of all evil, informs materialist economics and, all too often, its practi-
tioners. A wise judge can overcome his worst errors of fact, but a corrupt judge
does all the more evil as his facts improve. One would be hard pressed to demon-
strate that the practical ends of materialism demonstrate anything other than the
final degradation of the human person.
Distributism has as its ultimate goal the elevation of the human person
from his fallen state into union with God. It is certainly possible to argue about
whether or not distributism is fitted to attain this goal. The difference between
distributism and materialism is that the distributist will defer to a superior
means to his exalted end, whereas, obviously, the materialist will cling to his
money until his bitter end.
This conversation is finally one of morality. St. John Vianney said, “The eyes
of the world see no further than this life, while the eyes of faith see deep into
eternity.” The perspective proper to man is not one that focuses upon himself, for
in such a case he will find himself blind, seeing neither himself in his myopia nor
the world in his disdain.
Man’s proper perspective is one of seeking God; and in seeking Him, finding
Him; and in finding Him, seeing Him; and in seeing Him, being able at last to
see himself as he is meant to be: In action like an angel, in apprehension how like a
god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! In short, man will see himself
at last in Heaven. Materialism ends in this world. Distributism seeks life in a
world that will never end. That is, indeed, the long view, and one of a better—the
best— home!
Father Smith
September 2003
Crickhollow, Newton, Iowa

295
The Economy of Salvation

How the Son of God Employs Fathers in the Work of Building the Kingdom of God
Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you
shall eat, nor for the body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more
than meat and the body more than raiment? Behold the birds of the
air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor do they gather into
barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much
more value than they?... Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow: they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you that not
even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the
grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow cast into the oven,
God doth so clothe, how much more you, O ye of little faith! Be not
solicitous, therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or, What shall we
drink: or, Wherewith shall we be clothed. For after all these things
do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of
all these things. Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God and His
justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.—Mt. 6:25-33
Introduction: Una Voce

Catholics are not supposed to be protestants. This should be a painfully obvi-
ous statement, particularly in regard to ecclesial governance, theology, and morali-
ty. But, although many are uncomfortable in the period since the Second Council
of the Vatican with the lines that are being blurred between Rome and the rest
of those claiming belief in Christ, none seems to take exception to an issue of far
longer standing and perhaps even more deeply ingrained in Western man’s collec-
tive psyche. Whether or not Catholics and protestants should share administrative
structures, forms of worship, and proscriptions on certain behaviors, all tend to
agree that the way men make a living is pretty much the same, differences of faith
notwithstanding. No matter what it might mean to seek the Bread of Life in Holy
Communion, daily bread is a common need met by practically all moderns of any
or no faith by means of capitalism.
The assumption that Catholics and protestants do not and need not have
differences of approach to understanding man’s pursuit of sustenance on earth is
seriously flawed. First and foremost must be recognized the fact that there is no
single voice that can define just what it means to be authentically protestant. This
leaves the door open for “protestant” economic practices profoundly at variance
not only with Catholicism, but with other forms of protestantism. The Amish
sheep farmer and the Calvinist manufacturer will have very little to claim for
mutual principles guiding their respective decisions on pursuing a livelihood, ex-
ercising worship, and declarations on the nature of sin. Curiously enough, the
Amish farmer can find at least a limited affinity with the detachment of St. Francis
of Assisi, while the Calvinist industrialist would take no exception to the work
ethic of St. Joseph.
At the very root of the protestant understanding of the human person in
whatever aspect of mortal experience is being discussed, is the assertion of the
right of the individual to determine his own course. This is not merely a matter of
Martin Luther parting ways with the Holy See, but of, for example, the aforemen-
tioned Amish being “divorced” by the followers of Menno Simon, or John Wesley
finding the retooled faith of Elizabeth I too confining, or the leaders of Anglicans
throughout the Third World vilifying Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. In ad-
dition to this shared protestant penchant for seeking communion apart from one
another, they share another, rather ironic pedigree. All protestants can look to the
Catholic Church as their origin.
Amintore Fanfani in his 1934 treatise, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capi-
talism, spells out very well how Catholics tolerated, then pursued, and then man-
dated practices that brought the world what became modern capitalism. In the
same vein, it was from a unified Catholic culture and ethos that the protestant
multiplicity arose. This simultaneous set of departures by Catholics from Catholic
ethics of economics, orthodoxy in doctrine, and adherence to ecclesial order did
more than produce rival claimants to the name “Christian”. Divergent under-
standings of faith and how it is played out in daily life also produced a dichotomy
between Catholics and protestants not only of what is permissible, but of what
is meritorious in man’s economic activities. It is not possible to make a final de-
termination of which activities in modern economics would be acceptable to all
protestants, but it is very easy to demonstrate how often modernity veers from
definitive Catholic teaching on ethics, morals, and justice.
One can not overemphasize how crucial to questions of social and economic
justice is the inability among protestants to clearly define what is forbidden, what
is allowed, and what is virtuous, in the human person. Multitudinous opinions
on these issues carry ramifications far beyond who becomes rich or who remains
poor. These are life and death realities. Men sharing mores and a worldview will
meet with certain difficulty and probable failure in offering their fellows a fair
opportunity to produce food, shelter, and clothing. Men without a common set
of truths out of which to pursue their livelihoods guarantee that many men will
exploit other men, and the exploited will have no principle by which to correct their
oppressors. Appeals to sentimentality and emotionalism will be made on the one
hand, and on the other will be violent struggles to take for the deprived what they
perceive was stolen by the privileged. Neither sentiment nor violence is a basis for
a rational resolution to social injustice, and neither emotionalism nor strife can be
the basis for an ongoing effort to preserve civilization.
Where no protestant is able to speak for all protestants about what con-
stitutes fundamental departures from an “orthodox” sine qua non, the Cicar
of Christ on earth, the Pope, holds an Office whose responsibilities include
teaching definitively what is authentic to the Gospel, what is required for
salvation, and what will lead to damnation. It is the matter of a wholly other
work to describe how this aspect of papal authority has been muted in regards
to economic matters. What is of importance here is to acknowledge the power
of the papacy to provide a consistent and coherent body of doctrines useful
in man’s daily life, and to outline several of the most egregious ways in which
modern capitalism violates Catholic dogma, natural law, and the divine will.
This capacity to articulate for all believers what is of the Faith and that which
is antithetical thereto is an inherent and irreconcilable difference between the
Catholic Church and protestant sects. The failure of Popes to fully exercise
this capacity coupled with the protestant impotence to agree with one another
about matters of truth has resulted in the extraordinary economic and social
injustices rampant in the modern capitalist world.
Pride, lust, avarice, gluttony, envy, anger, and sloth are the seven deadly sins.
They feed off of and lead toward each other. In a variety of ways, capitalism en-
courages men to cultivate these sins. Protestants have no agreed-upon set of prin-
ciples to counter capitalism’s claims of the legitimacy of various vices at work in
man’s economic life. Catholicism has defined over the centuries many principles
that clearly condemn fundamental activities within capitalism that nonetheless
have become commonplace in the average man’s daily experience.
Humility is not an attribute of a capitalistic society. No one strives through
capitalism to be the least important, the most serving, or the greatest in generos-
ity as expressions of success. If you’ve got it, flaunt it is far more indicative of the
capitalist ideal. It is telling that modern capitalism has replaced the charitable
hospital run by women religious vowed to poverty with the multibillion-dollar
healthcare conglomerate; eliminated the family farm of a hundred acres or less
in favor of agri-industry behemoths with properties counted in the millions of
acres; and created fortunes of staggering size for speculators who produce nothing
but stock portfolios. America’s three largest private fortunes, Microsoft, Walmart,
and Berkshire-Hathaway, were unapologetically accomplished—and continue to
grow—by way of the caprices of Wall Street. This has been done through an in-
tentional disparity between the value of what they “produce” versus the going rate
of their stock certificates. An identical understanding of such ephemeral “wealth”
is what funds pension funds, mutual funds, and the Social Security “trust” fund.
Once upon a time, to know one’s place meant to contribute to the order of
society, to benefit from the stability of society, and to offer tangible and necessary
goods to society. Capitalistic pride has resulted in a society predicated on markets
whose primary trait is chaos, workers who can not predict where they will live
or how they will make a living ten years into the future, and labor whose fruits
are intended to become obsolete within the time-frame of an ever-quickening
business cycle so as to require the purchase of other equally short-lived “services”
or commodities of dubious worth in producing good citizens, happy people, or
sanctity. All of this is done by the mechanisms of and in enslavement to the sin of
usury. Jesus Christ said, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek
and humble of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is sweet and my
burden is light (Mt.11:25-30).
It hardly needs to be pointed out that the modern world is awash in the filth
of carnality. Within living memory popular culture once forbade the use of the
four-letter expletive referent to the eternal condemnation of the immortal soul.
As things stand at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there are media easily
available even to children wherein no word is censored, no action is veiled, no
violence disdained, no depravity beyond bounds, and no irreverence rebuked. The
internet is predominately an information superhighway for access to immorality.
Billboards, advertisements in magazines, television programs, motion pictures,
radio broadcasts, sporting events, and political fundraisers have become venues
for squalor that would make Caligula blush—or drool. Jesus Christ said, Babylon
the great is fallen, is fallen: and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of
every unclean spirit and hateful bird: because all nations have drunk of the wine of
wrath of her fornication; and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with
her; and the merchants of the earth have been made rich by the power of her delicacies
(Apocalypse 18:2-3).
Houses have gotten larger while families have grown smaller. Cars have lower
gas mileages just as the price of oil is perceived as poised to set new highs. Cor-
porate executives in the United States have salaries several hundred times greater
than their average employees; those average employees make in six months what
some Third World garment makers earn in ten years fabricating the clothes worn
by Americans—jet-setters and laborers alike. Lotteries, riverboat casinos, and the
city of Las Vegas attest to the insatiable desire of Americans to get something for
little or nothing, constant failure notwithstanding. The oft-lamented phenome-
non of grade inflation in academics is a subtler version of the American craving
for ever more, gained honestly or not. Greed breeds injustice as well as ever greater
insensitivity to one’s own unjust wants. Those who have less do not care whether
or not they have enough, they just want more. It does not occur to the avaricious
that their unhappiness is caused by being unhappy over what they do not have,
rather than being grateful for what they do have. If enough is not enough, more
will never be enough. Jesus Christ said, remember that thou didst receive good things
in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art
tormented (St. Luke 16:25).
Compare such phrases as “super-sized”, “all-you-can-eat”, “we never close”,
“no-risk trial period”, “make thousands part-time”, “earn a degree on your week-
ends”, and “two-for-one” with Jesus Christ saying “enter through the narrow
gate”; “these demons can be cast out only with prayer and fasting”; “he who saves
his life shall lose it”; “better to enter paradise lame than to be cast into Gehenna
with both feet”; “from those who are given much, much is expected”; “go, sell all
that you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me”; and “it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom
of Heaven”. The 401(k), double coupon days, and the frequent need for garage
sales are testimonies to the insecurity of modern men, disbelieving that He who
upholds the sparrows and counts the hairs on heads will also feed His children
(the Bread of Life) today, house them (in His many mansions) tomorrow, and
clothe them (in His glory) forever. Somehow, Providence is not enough for those
intent upon eating, drinking, and making merry today, for tomorrow they die.
This spiritual malaise is not unrelated to America’s ongoing weight problem. Yet
ignored today, as it was by the original example to whom it was applied, are the
words of Jesus Christ in the parable, Fool, this very night thy soul shall be demanded
of you! And whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? (St. Luke 12:20)
When the Browns are having trouble keeping up with the Joneses, visa is hap-
py to lend a helping hand—repaid at the rate of an arm and a leg. When daughter
is in anguish over her lack of the latest fashions, Mom is more than willing (with
the help of MasterCard) to remedy the situation with a day-trip to the mall.
When Junior is cut from the team, Dad demands (with the backing of American
Express) that he prepare for next season at the local health club. When the current
administration learns from intelligence sources that a banana republic’s dictator
might be developing the bomb, the citizenry is pleased to mortgage themselves
and their grandchildren to yet another weapons system. When someone shouts
that he deserves the same things as the next man, the faithful ear might catch the
intense whisper of Jesus Christ saying, None is good but God. (Mt. 19:17)
Union and management do not negotiate, they posture. The customer service
department renders less service than it gives and receives customer abuse. Ad-
vertising has given us “cola wars”, “price wars”, and “The Battle of the Network
Stars”. It matters not whether the preservation of the family, customer satisfac-
tion, or promotional bragging rights are on the line, winning is everything, the
only thing, and, most of all, my thing. To prevail, to vanquish, to overwhelm in
the name of merely material gain is a perilous dismissal of Jesus Christ’s warning
that whoever is angry with thy brother is in danger of the judgment… and whoever
shall say, ‘Thou fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. (Mt. 5:21, 22)
Don’t feel like making dinner? The microwave will do it for you. Don’t want
to think about the paper due tomorrow? Spend your evening instead arranging
your address book with the new software your Dad just bought. Want to go for
a walk? You have to drive ten miles to the trail just built along the old railroad
right-of-way. Don’t want to feel guilty about how self-serving your life is? Then
just forget that Jesus Christ told St. Martha, One thing only is needful, and Mary
hath chosen the best part, which will not be taken away from her. (Lk. 10:42)
In addition to the seven deadly sins, capitalism makes room as well for the
four sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance. Murder, sodomy, defrauding the la-
borer, and oppressing the widow and the orphan have their places on Wall Street,
not to mention Main Street. Abortion feathers the nests of doctors, employs ac-
tivists, and motivates career politicians under the cover of federal law. Munici-
pal, state, and federal governments have sanctioned perversion, mandating that
privileges heretofore reserved to Matrimony be given to perpetrators of unnatural
acts—with a significant financial incentive involved through taxes, expenditure
of disposable income, and the sale of pornography. Obligatory Social Security
payments, auto insurance, and non-cash employee benefits take money from the
pockets of the poor and middle class, expose them to double taxation, reward
obscenely wealthy conglomerates, reduce the buying power of the populace, and
subject the common man to a wage slavery from which his paycheck deductions
offer no opportunity of escape. Wage slavery effectively creates orphans by wrench-
ing both the father and the mother from the home (an injustice which should be
visited upon neither sex), exposes children to unfit surrogate parents through the
public school system, and contributes to the breakup of the family with the dev-
astation of divorce, which disproportionately harms women and children. As the
final insult added to these injuries, usurious loans, property taxes, and unstable
employment render home ownership either an impossible pipe dream or a cruel
delusion for the majority of moderns.
There is not space here to go into all the details of how modern capitalism
thrives on the hubris, concupiscence, appetite, greed, jealousy, hate, and despair
native to unredeemed man. Suffice it to say that looking out for number one,
being liberated and uninhibited, getting the most toys, being first on the block,
taking the last cookie, tasting the sweetness of revenge, and grabbing the gusto
are predicated on a worldview that champions material acquisition, while being
dismissive of or hostile to a spiritual reality superior to merely physical concerns.
Billions are invested, trillions exchanged, and incalculable losses incurred based
on an exclusively this-worldly understanding of man’s ultimate purpose.
Is that, then, the last word on what should occupy the space between the
womb and the tomb? Heavens no! God has much more to say to man than Mad-
ison Avenue might offer. Our Lord gets His word out through His vicar, through
His clergy, and through His sons who head the families where He is made at home.
Feed My Sheep!: How the Holy Father and the Bishops can help Jesus save the
world.
From Paragraph 83 of Leo xiii’s Rerum Novarum: “… let

them not cease to impress upon men of all ranks the principles
of Christian living as found in the Gospel; by all means in their
power let them strive for the well-being of people; and especially
let them aim both to preserve in themselves and to arouse in
others, in the highest equally as well as in the lowest, the mis-
tress and queen of the virtues, Charity. Certainly, the well-being
which is so longed for is chiefly to be expected from an abundant
outpouring of charity; of Christian charity, We mean, which is
in epitome the law of the Gospel, and which, always ready to
sacrifice itself for the benefit of others, is man’s surest antidote
against the insolence of the world and immoderate love of self,
the divine office and features of this virtue being described by
the Apostle Paul in these words: ‘Charity is patient, is kind…
seeketh not her own… beareth with all things… endureth all
things’” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).
Jesus Christ came not to be served, but to serve. His mystical body, the Cath-
olic Church, continues His work. It is not the place of the Church to change eco-
nomics; it is the place of the Church to announce the Good News of salvation.
Those who hear the Good News will live lives according to its mandates. It is not
for the world to dictate how the Gospel is to be tolerated in men’s lives, but for
the Gospel to mold a world in keeping with the obligations that lead to eternal
life. His Holiness the Pope and the bishops in union with him have the charge
from God Himself to offer food to His flock in such a way as to free them to do
the work of building up the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s law, the natural law, and
the laws of the Church are not intended to restrict the citizens subject to Christ
the King, but to provide for them a context in which to exercise the freedom of
the sons of God.
Toward that end, the hierarchy of the Church would do well to refrain from
offering yet another encyclical letter on social justice or a pastoral letter on human
rights or, heaven forfend, a blue-ribbon committee to study the problem with
secular and religious leaders. Instead, what the Church and the world need to hear
is the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ—and to hear that the leaders of the
Church are taking it seriously. This is to say that as spiritual leaders they set the
tone for the conversation. It is not so much an estimation of the state of things
at present that requires exposition, but a constant iteration of eternal things put
before the minds of men. Our work in this passing world must ever be directed
by a desire to live in the world that will never end.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, is the patrimony of the
Church. His birth in Bethlehem forms the basis for our understanding of how
a life pleasing to God looks. Jesus was born a poor child, in poor circumstances
to a poor family. He lived His life among poor people and proclaimed the Good
News that the poor are blessed! Jesus died a criminal’s death literally lacking the
shirt on His back.
In that death, His crucifixion on Calvary Hill, Jesus empties Himself of
all human dignity, of creaturely life, of the honor due Him as God. He is left
with absolutely nothing. The very torments of hell become His sole possession.
During His teaching ministry He stressed that it is only through the Cross that
God’s will is accomplished, that life is preserved, and that the sinner shows him-
self a true disciple.
Consummating all creation on Good Friday, Jesus then takes up His life again
on Easter Sunday. He enters into his Father’s glory on Ascension Thursday. One
day—soon, let us pray—He will return in that glory to judge the living and the
dead. Those who would go on living are commanded to do as the Lord of Life has
done: to lay down this life; to reject the allurements of the world, the flesh, and
the devil; and to trust in the providence of God to provide all that is needed; food,
shelter, clothing, and life itself.
The Pope is the successor to St. Peter and the bishops are the successors to
the other Apostles. As the original Twelve went forth to the ends of the earth and
proclaimed the Kingship of Christ crucified and risen, each succeeding generation
of the magisterium is charged with carrying on the labor of spreading the Gospel.
Jesus did not wield a kingship shaped of things of this world. The princes of the
Church, although also stewards of material goods, have as their primary authority
the power of binding and loosing on earth and in Heaven. Their sons and daugh-
ters in the clergy and laity stand in profound want of the voice of Christ calling
mankind to sanctity in every aspect of earthly life. As such, the preaching task, far
more than cares of administration, is at the heart of the role of shepherd given to
the Pope and the bishops in communion with him.
Christendom was not the matter of a wonderful economic policy put in place
that then supported nice people who ended up becoming holy. The Social Reign
of Christ the King was pursued in the daily life of countless Martyrs, Confes-
sors, and Virgins, who through their tireless witness to Christ and Him crucified
gave birth to a society predicated on perfecting man through the grace of God
mediated through the Sacraments of the Church. Our bishops would do well to
remember this as efforts are made to confront a world grown Godless once more.
The world will not be met and defeated on its terms, but by bringing to bear the
power of grace, the gift of the Sacraments, and the wealth of divine charity shared
among the children of God. Truly the best service that the hierarchy could offer
the Church is not to dictate what we are to do, but to articulate why the Church
exists on earth: Jesus Christ is Lord of all! He has given us an example of holy poverty.
He has promised a reward to those who sacrifice all with Him. And He commands all
to love as He loves, unto death, to new life, forever and ever. Amen!
I won’t charge a royalty if they use those lines in their sermons.
Do this in memory of me! The role of the parish priest in Christ’s work in the
world.
From Paragraph 77 of Leo xiii’s Rerum Novarum: “It is

clear, however, that moral and religious perfection ought to be
regarded as their principal goal, and their social organization as
such ought above all to be directed completely by this goal…
Therefore, having taken their principles from God, let those as-
sociations provide ample opportunity for religious instruction
so that individual members may understand their duties to God,
that they may well know what to believe, what to hope for, and
what to do for eternal salvation, and that with special care they
may be fortified against erroneous opinions and various forms
of corruption. Let the worker be exhorted to the worship of
God and the pursuit of piety, especially to religious observance
of Sundays and Holy Days. Let him learn to reverence and love
the Church, the common Mother of all, and likewise to observe
her precepts and to frequent her Sacraments, which are the di-
vine means for purifying the soul from the stains of sin and for
attaining sanctity.”
On the subject of sermons, but two words are necessary for the faithful to
hear from their priests in the pulpit in order to understand how best to conform
their economic lives to their faith: Go home! Where will we find the means to
transform the world from the den of mammon to the house of God? Go home!
How can we make a difference in such a large economy to bring greater justice
to bear on our economics? Go home! Who is responsible for ensuring that the
Gospel is at the heart of how we make decisions that affect our material well
being? Go home!
Perhaps the most devastating aspect of the ills wrought on the world by a
worldly understanding of economics is the ongoing and accelerating destruction
of the family. Parishes throughout the world, it is sad to say, are contributing to
this phenomenon. Whether it is the extraordinary expense of the physical plants
that are being built, or the immense size of staffs doing work of dubious worth, or
a chaos of activities that demand the presence of parishioners at meetings, fund-
raisers, and, every now and then, Mass, the parish has become a true burden to
the average family. Add to all of this the dizzying array of events attached to the
few remaining and barely Catholic schools, and it becomes evident that the family
spends more time at work, at school, and at socializing than with one another.
An irony in this age of lay “empowerment” is that the activities of the Church
have become tied up with a physical location. The parish hall, the rectory, and the
school have replaced the front porch, the back yard, and the kitchen as the places
where most Catholics engage one another. Since parishes are so rarely neighbor-
hood realities in the twenty-first century, the only time that parishioners see one
another is on Sunday. Thus, coffee-and-doughnuts hour becomes the primary
context for the majority of the laity to learn to love their fellows sufficiently to sell
all and give to the poor, to lay down their lives for their friends, and to take up
their crosses each day and follow Jesus.
Father needs to tell everybody to just Go home!
The parish should not become a surrogate living room. Prayer and glorifying
God should be the emphasis when the parish priest is exhorting his parishioners
to greater efforts at sanctity, not appeals for capital campaigns, or selling candy for
new school computers, or raffling off cars or cash to beef up the endowment. Fa-
ther should not encourage consumerism and materialism in the name of advancing
the work of God. The parish priest should set the tone that the children of God in
their parish family live in a house devoted to prayer. Anyone can show hospitality
in his own home. The unique role of the Church is to bring the people together to
receive from God what He has to offer—Christ crucified—and to offer in return

humble thanks, joyful praise, and reverent awe.
Then, when everybody does Go home! the fruits of the gifts of God can be
shared. It is in the home that the lessons learned in the Church are applied. We
are here, not to buy more things or to have “better” things or to earn more to have
more things. The tone set by the parish priest will go a long way toward reminding
parishioners that, as Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, His flock is laboring
for a reign not of this world. But if the parish is caught up in frenetic activity,
material acquisition, and misplaced priorities that neglect the spiritual altogether,
then when it comes to personal decisions on purchases, employment, and invest-
ment, it is not to be expected that suddenly a flock whose shepherds have never
guided them in a sense of holy poverty and focus on God, will suddenly insist
that their houses, cars, home-entertainment systems, Disneyland vacations, and
usurious credit cards will reflect a desire to imitate Jesus.
Insofar as the parishioners are at the church, they will be in need of their
priests being at the altar, in the confessional, and on their knees. It is absurd to
think that the lay faithful at work in the world will, on the whole, be more spir-
itually centered and fervent than their priests are. Like fathers, like sons. Parish
priests who set an example of worldly anxiety, committee-driven decision making,
and material avarice will have a parish full of worried, tired, and unsatisfied—and
unsatisfiable—basket cases. The priest who leads in prayer, who demonstrates a
desire for sanctity, who joys in holy poverty sets a standard for his people that, if
they strive to meet it, will result in a peace that this world can not give.
Father Pastor is not an administrator. He is not a businessman. He is not an
employer. Father is ordained in persona Christi to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass, to forgive sins, and to mediate grace to a sinful world. The priest who makes
prayer, penance, and service in love of God above all things and neighbor above
himself will go far toward helping his people escape the trap set by the world. As
Dorothy Day said, “The less one takes from Caesar, the less one must render to
Caesar!” The parish priest can offer a tremendous gift to his parishioners by mod-
eling for them and exhorting them to a life given to laying up treasures in Heaven,
where neither rust, moth, nor thief—nor inflation—can diminish them.
… as Christ also loved the Church and delivered Himself up for it.: Holy fathers
at home.
From Paragraphs 18-21 of Leo xiii’s Rerum Novarum:

“Rights of this kind which reside in individuals are seen to have
much greater validity when viewed as fitted into and connected
with the obligations of human beings in family life… No law of
man can abolish the natural and primeval right of marriage, or in
any way set aside the chief purpose of matrimony established in
the beginning by the authority of God: ‘Increase and multiply’
(Genesis 1:28). Behold, therefore, the family, or rather the soci-
ety of the household, a very small society indeed, but a true one,
and older than any polity! For that reason it must have certain
rights and duties of its own entirely independent of the State…
As already noted, the family, like the State, is by the same token
a society in the strictest sense of the term, and it is governed by
its own proper authority, namely, by that of the father… To de-
sire, therefore, that the civil power should enter arbitrarily into
the privacy of homes is a great and pernicious error… Paternal
authority is such that it can neither be abolished or absorbed by
the State, because it has the same origin in common with that
of man’s own life… Inasmuch as socialists, therefore, disregard
care by parents and in its place introduce care by the State, they
act against natural justice and dissolve the structure of the home.”
It is in the home that the freedom of the sons of God is exercised by the laity.
At work the boss is in charge. In government, nobody, everybody, and somebody
else is in charge. And even in these days of frowning on clericalism, when it comes
to being on the parish grounds, Father or the oligarchy running things with him
is in charge, not the average parishioner. But even in this benighted age, a man’s
home is still his castle. No one can keep a father from exercising paternal service to
his little flock, the family, in perfect conformity with the teachings of the Church,
the message of the Gospel, and the example of Our Lord.
Husband-fathers hold a priestly role in the home. They are nourished by
sound teachings, strengthened by sacramental grace, and encouraged by their
priests’ examples to guide their families in emulating the Holy Family of Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph. Dad is the go-to man responsible for insisting that the fami-
ly’s home is a house of prayer. That Jesus is the primary member of the family.
That the honor due to mother and father flows from placing God the Father at
the head of the family and obedience to Him in all things as the fundamental
rule of the house. The Fourth Commandment is dependent on adherence to
the First Commandment.
Fathers are given to families for leadership. Of utmost importance is their
leadership in striving for Heaven. The Dad should lead the family daily Rosary.
The Dad should gather the family to go to frequent Confession. The Dad should
prepare the family at home in prayer on Sunday and Holy Days before heading
to church for Mass. The Dad should be insistent on having time each day to nur-
ture his own spiritual life in private prayer, as well as making time in the family’s
schedule for retreats, pilgrimages, and pursuing the corporal and spiritual works
of mercy. The Dad should speak frequently to his children about the vocation
to which God is calling them, and he should cleave faithfully to his wife as they
together fulfill their vocation as parents and spouses.
Embracing such spiritual disciplines will bear fruit in filial piety, love of God,
and confidence in His promise of salvation. A family led in this way will not want
television polluting their home. They will hold popular music, material acquisi-
tiveness, immodesty, profane language, and irreverence in utter disdain. Christ-
mas will be preceded by a holy Advent bent on the penitential preparation for re-
ceiving God’s Son into their midst, not a feeding frenzy at the trough of mammon
to fuel a bloated economy. Such a family will be bound together so strongly that
the children growing up will not have an uncontrollable urge to leave home, but
will instead understand that their family is always their home, and the next gen-
eration will be lovingly received into the bosom of a group of people who know
themselves, who know who they are as a family, and who know a well-founded
hope for achieving their ultimate goal of living together forever in Heaven.
Before the revolution is mounted to sweep away the excesses of capitalism
and make the world safe for whatever it is a revolution of that kind would deem
worthwhile, it must be considered what kind of men are making things change.
Good men will help make changes for the better, bad men will make changes for the
worse, and men without a sense of good and bad and insistent that no one else should
impose such sentiments on others will be the most evil. Too much time is lost, too
much breath is wasted, and too much energy dissipated waiting for the “system”
to change. Beyond the fact that no “system” has a will to change and is entirely at
the behest of its human creators and users, is the fact that only a fool would leave
something as important as his immortal soul—and his family’s immortal souls—
in the hands of bureaucrats, politicians, and “market forces”.
True power lies in each man governing his own affairs in keeping with the
universal call to holiness. The Browns have no control over whether or not the
Joneses will cooperate in building the Kingdom of Heaven, but both the Browns
and the Joneses have absolute control over what happens in their respective homes.
The key to transforming the world is to transform the individual soul and then
the family. It is the father within the family who must decide the direction such
a transformation takes. There is no coincidence in the fact that the destruction of
the family began not with forcing women into the workplace, or putting children
in compulsory public schools, or taxing income and nonproductive real estate,
but in removing the father from the family farm or the family trade. Much of the
cure to what ails us is dependent on returning the father to his proper place at the
head of the family and in the home.
Pride is at work among those who ignore the essential work of making fam-
ilies holy under the headship of the father. The mindset that sees such efforts as
inconsequential encourages the very problems attacking the family. Strong fam-
ilies are not a by-product of good economics or social theory. Mankind must
strengthen the family or all economics will be a matter of slavery and the commu-
nity will be that of inmates in prisons. It is not a waste of time or a distraction to
begin the task of correcting the imbalances in macro-economics by focusing on
the domestic economy.
Setting priorities is not one of modernity’s strong suits, hence, it is forgotten
that the macro-economy exists to support the home economy, and the home
economy exists to support the needs of the body in service to spiritual perfection.
Families are not made for work, but work is meant to nurture the family. Prayer is
not intended to sustain man in his daily life of toil, but his daily life of toil makes
sense only as a means to sustain the effort to attain eternal life. We do not work
all day and grudgingly give a little time to prayer at infrequent intervals. We pray
each day and throughout the day, taking time periodically to do the work that
makes prayer possible. People incapable of ordering their lives toward the eternal
will find themselves laboring for that which is ephemeral, dehumanizing, and,
ultimately, deadly.
So, the father in a family must be keenly aware of his responsibility to
guide his little flock to good pastures. Where he interacts on a community
level, it will be with the desire and understanding that public efforts are
intended for the preservation and enrichment of his family and all families.
The common good is not merely a matter of what is good for all, but seeks
to gain what is good for each. A collection of people inattentive to being

good at home will not accomplish any good together. Conversely, a society
of strong families has a firm foundation on which to increase justice, peace,
and, in proper proportion, prosperity.
Conclusion: A (very) few practical considerations

From Paragraphs 80 and 82 of Leo xiii’s Rerum Novarum:
“Through past events we can, without temerity, foresee the fu-
ture. Age presses hard upon age, but there are wondrous simi-
larities in history, governed as it is by the providence of God,
who guides and directs the continuity and the chain of events
in accordance with that purpose which He set before Himself
in creating the human race… And since religion alone, as We
said in the beginning, can remove the evil, root and branch, let
all reflect upon this: First and foremost, Christian morals must
be re-established, without which even the weapons of prudence,
which are considered especially effective, will be of no avail to
secure well-being.”
Everybody likes concrete suggestions for solutions to problems. Here are a

few suggestions for the Catholic who desires to serve God more than mammon:
Believe what Jesus teaches through His Church, pray fervently and constantly,
and spend more time at home than you spend anywhere else. These will likely be
thought too vague and general by most people. It is an indication of our collective
paucity of imagination and the decline of the sensus Catholicus that such simplic-
ity is thought to be too little to be effective. The lack of a simple life, of simple
desires, of simple work is what has gotten us into the morass where now we live.
We have forgotten that searching the depths of the Wisdom of God is denied
to the learned and clever, but revealed to the merest children, of whom is made
the Kingdom of Heaven. In its typical penchant for contrariness, modernity also
balks at explanations that require thought, study, and discipline. Sometimes you
can’t win for losing.
Sigh… To be a bit more specific, then, a suggestion for the hierarchy to take
to heart: Declare a Holy Year to celebrate the primary truths of Catholic faith.
Begin in Advent with an emphasis on Emmanuel, God with us, particularly in
His Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Encourage the faithful to
bring the reality of Our Lord’s loving abiding with us to the end of time from the
Church to the home out into the world. Celebrate the Christmas mystery around
the sacred mysteries of the Mass and throughout the entirety of the Christmas
season right up to the feast of the Presentation.
Continue the Holy Year observance with an emphasis on Our Lord’s Sacrifice
at Calvary. Shift the focus in the Mass from Our Lord being with us, to his salv-
ific action in our midst. Approach Lent having received the awe-inspiring gift of
Christ in the Incarnation with the intent of returning that gift through sacrifice,
penance, and mortification. Allow the Lenten disciplines to be an expression of
the willingness to love as Jesus loves, to obey the Father as Jesus obeys Him, and
to offer all in sacrifice along with the perfect holocaust of Good Friday.
From Easter through the time after Pentecost is an opportunity to empha-
size in the Mass how the Cross accomplishes the forgiveness of sins, and how
the gifts of the Holy Ghost bear fruit in the hearts, minds, souls, and bodies
of those who conform themselves entirely to Jesus. It is during this period of
the year that witness is given by the faithful to the world that indeed the Lord
Jesus saves and that real hope is present that fallen man can rise above his mis-
erable state in the world and dare to claim unity with God Himself! The glory
of God in Christ is present in the Mass where the work of salvation goes on
unceasingly and bears fruit in the Body of Christ bringing His offer of eternal
life to the whole world.
Once the hierarchy has declared this Holy Year, the parish priest has an out-
line for the work ahead of him in the local community. In addition to observing
the universal Church’s celebration of the Holy Year, the parish priest can use it
as an opportunity to make permanent changes in the spiritual lives of his flock.
One simple yet profoundly significant gesture would be to change the parish’s
fiscal year to reflect the liturgical year. This would allow all of the parish’s material
labors to refer back to their spiritual bases and more readily reflect the truer goals
of parish activities.
Thus, the period of Advent and Christmas would become a time to focus the
parish on examining how they go about their work, examining themselves for
adherence to lives that are receptive of Christ in all things. As the calendar year
comes to an end, and the liturgical year begins, the world becomes quieter, darker,
and more introspective. This is a great context for whatever might be necessary
by way of preparing the parish for appeals to support the material needs of the
parish and broader community. Christmas, then, becomes a time to rejoice in
what God has given, rather than in offering more of the same of what the world
calls wealth. The parish should never descend into being self-serving, but should
always be on the lookout for how better to be of service in assisting one another to
be holy, providing for the poor, and making converts to the Faith to join the parish
in its service. The new year should be the time the parish renews its resolve to be
holy as God is holy, to be perfect as the Father is perfect, and to be compassionate
as the Lord is compassionate.
That resolve becomes the basis for the Lenten sacrifices that follow shortly
after the Christmas Season. Sacrificial giving, both in terms of the corporal and
spiritual works of mercy, prayer, and material goods, can form part of the parish’s
collective taking up of the cross with Jesus. If indeed it is necessary to ask for
money beyond what is offered in the weekly collection (and this need should be
examined for its underlying cause, for such need should be rare), then Lent lends
the proper focus for why to give, how much to give, and how to make use of what
is given. Far more than parish needs, however, the priest should encourage and
guide his people toward finding needs outside of their immediate community, so
as to broaden the scope of the true mission of the Church to preach the Gospel,
offer the Sacraments, and save souls.
In the time of Easter and after Pentecost this work of seeking souls to bring
to Christ’s salvation becomes the heart of the life of the parish. Having recognized
the immensity of the gift of Christ at Christmas and rallying the parish to offer
themselves with Him at Lent, the parish then can burst forth from their “Upper
Room” and live out what they believe and what they have promised. This will bear
fruit in the homes of the parish, in the sacramental life of the community, and in
their willingness to give witness to the desire of the Church to bring Christ to the
whole world. These efforts flow much more soundly from the liturgical calendar
than from a fiscal calendar or a school calendar, and the parish thus gives a far
stronger message about their priorities built on God and His providence rather
than the arbitrary dictates of man.
Lastly, and mostly, this will to receive Christ, to unite His body more firmly
to Him as the Head, and never to rest until every soul on earth is a member of His
Body, finds its most far reaching effects in the homes of the faithful. Individual
souls, not parishes or dioceses or episcopal conferences are given salvation. Those
individuals are born to, raised in, and learn from families in the home.
Most learning should be in the home. Mothers and fathers are the first and
primary teachers of children. Collective education in the modern world is noth-
ing short of abominable. Those who insist that somehow other people’s children
will benefit from being subjected to the indifference and neglect which the av-
erage parent inflicts on his children, the hostility to good sense and morals in
school bureaucracies, and the outright Godlessness of most curricula, probably
claim never to have inhaled, that they never look at the pictures but only read
the articles, and always obey the speed limit. In a world where second-hand cig-
arette smoke is attacked with a vengeance not seen since the Salem witch hunts,
it is obscene to suggest that any parent should allow his child’s body, mind, and
soul to be exposed to the filth spread among children in schools, the warped
philosophy among teachers, and the malignancy of the government entities that
set school policy.
Fathers can do little that would be more beneficial for their families than to
establish the home as the locus for all activities. If at all possible, he should work
for the family’s sustenance from the home. The mother should be the primary
caretaker of the home. And the children should receive instruction, play, and
learn to pray in the home. The family should do nothing elsewhere that it does
not do in the home.
There is an especially important lesson that fathers and mothers should en-
deavor with all their skill, imagination, and prayer to impart on their children
as they introduce the little ones to the wonders of life, the responsibilities of
being in a family, and the joys of serving and loving God with one’s whole heart,
mind, soul, and strength. Children should have an understanding from a very
early age that to live differently from the Catholic ideal is abnormal, self-destructive,
and against common sense as well as deleterious to a saintly life. The child raised in
a Catholic home should understand that God comes first, that the Church is a
generous Mother, that the family is a tremendous gift always to be treasured, and
that the things of this world are subservient to the needs of supporting the family,
becoming holy, and obeying God. Modern man needs to teach his children the
life lesson that modern life has gone horribly awry. The Catholic family needs to
revive the tradition of proclaiming Jesus Christ as sovereign King—so that gener-
ations to come will not find that to be an extraordinary assertion, but the truest
and happiest statement of simple fact.
Perseverance
No matter how the night oppresses, I

will always make my way back home to Dawn;
regardless how the dark might make me cry
in pain, through pain to Day I press anon.
Undaunted by the wounds of mounting years
and heedless of my ever waning youth,
no ancient terror nor my childish fears
shall stop my search for Heaven’s deathless truth.
Although assail’d by sins’ temptations fierce
when naught seems hidden but the help of grace,
the veil that veils the nations I shall pierce
until at last I see God’s holy Face.
Take this to be the declaration for
my part ‘gainst hell in righteous, ruthless war.
Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace,
but a sword! – Mt. 10:34 —see also Eph. 6:10-20
Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all
these pages, is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and
begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl’s hair. That I know is a good
thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty
of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the
touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must
go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws
and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter
I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because she should have clean hair,
she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean
home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a
free and leisured mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there
should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property;
because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.
That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling
past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not
be cut short like a convict’s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked
about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around
her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be
shaken, and the roofs of the ages come rushing down; and not one hair of her
head shall be harmed.
– G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World
Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered, therefore, fear not!—Lk. 12:7

10 August 2004: The Feast of St. Lawrence
317
Sensus Catholicus with Father Smith

I confess, Father—I am bored because I am boring. How can I lead my family in
pursuing the faith with greater zeal, while spending more time at home and making
it the place where we grow in knowledge and love of God and each other?—Bored in
the Lower Peninsula
Dear Bored and all Readers,

I call my answer to this vital question:
In Love with Lady Poverty
Music is always an ensemble experience. It requires a composer, a composi-

tion, a performer, an instrument, and an audience. Composer, performer, and
audience must accomplish the distinct yet interrelated tasks of composing, per-
forming, and listening. To attain their goals as creator, interpreter, and apprecia-
tor, composer, performer, and audience share a common responsibility: to practice.
In addition to the human participants in this artistic enterprise, two indispens-
able inanimate objects are employed, a piece of music and a musical instrument.
The piece of music’s quality will reflect the skill of the composer, while the quality
of the performance depends to a fair degree on the excellence (or lack thereof ) of
the instrument. Thus, a fourth human agent is introduced into the equation, that
of instrument maker. Three of the four human agents, composer, performer, and
instrument maker, rely on the competence of the other two for their overall suc-
cess. At the same time, an outstanding effort by one or two of these three can be
rendered utterly futile if the work of even one of his fellows is wanting in polish.
The performer to a great extent can compensate for his collaborators’ shortcom-
ings, but a good listener will recognize an enfeebled composition or an inferior
instrument even when a virtuoso attempts to overcome such imperfections.
Practice is absolutely necessary for each of the human members of this en-
semble. Composers must master music theory. Performers must master their in-
struments. Instrument makers must master the skills of design and craftsmanship
according to the demands of their specialties. The audience must have a sense of
the philosophical significance of music, the attributes of good musicianship in
live performance, and the aesthetic qualities which make certain sounds and not
others pleasing to the ear. With so many potential pitfalls, it is little wonder that
some musical experiences are little more than grating. The greater wonder is that
any music is ever executed expressive of beauty, truth, and goodness at all.
Besides mere competency of skills, there are two other essentials to an edify-
ing musical endeavor. The lesser, ‘tho’ of immense importance, is a passion for the
art. Composer, performer, instrument maker, and audience need to care about
what they are doing. Indifference is deadly to art. Commercialism represents a
passionate interest—in money—but is fatally indifferent to transcendence. Good
art is indifferent to material return, but is passionately devoted to an immanent
experience of the attempt to express transcendent reality.
Most vital to this complex dynamic is a unity of vision regarding meaning.
All parties to this group effort must have an identical understanding of what
they are doing. A shared aesthetic is absolutely necessary for composer, performer,
instrument maker, and audience all to be satisfied. Each will be frustrated if his
fellows seek an end divergent from his own. Bach would be appalled at the idea of
his compositions rendered on the kazoo. Stradivarius would cringe at the notion
of one his instruments in the hands of a high school marching band. Toscanini
would be insulted to be asked to accompany the rides at an amusement park.
No one would pay for tickets to hear Muzak performed by an all-flute orchestra
staffed by the local biker gang.
This consideration of meaning in the artistic venture is directed not only by
what (the composition) is performed, by how (the instrument) it is performed,
and by whom (the performer) it is performed, but, more than all of the above,
by why it is performed. Here thought must be given to the aspirations of each
member of the ensemble in question. Why do composers compose, performers

perform, instrument makers make, and listeners listen? What is being communi-
cated, who is to say it, how does he say it, and for whom is it a valuable statement?
Composers must have something to say. Performers must have the power of
speech by which to say it. Instrument makers must be able to fashion suitable
voice boxes. Audiences must be in possession of the faculty of understanding
abstract speech. Fail at any one of these and virtual silence—even unmeaning and
gibberish—is the result.
God the most holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is the single instance
of this artistic endeavor perfectly accomplished. The Father conceives the Word
from all eternity. The Son is that Word, eternally uttered by the Father. The Holy
Ghost is the very uttering of the Word by the Father for all eternity. The Father is
Who says, the Son is What is said, and the Holy Ghost is the eternal Saying—and
God the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is the eternal Audience among
whom is shared the Conception, the Word, and the Utterance. All else is mere,
pale, and wildly inadequate analogue. Creation mutters the thundering proclama-
tion of its Creator: god is!
“Good art is indifferent to material return, but is passionately devoted to an
immanent experience of the attempt to express transcendent reality.” God is the
Artist par excellence, and as such pursues this very goal. The Incarnation of the
Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity in the womb of His Blessed Mother, the
Virgin Mary, is the immanent encounter of the Transcendent: God Himself. Not
only does God become one with man, but men meet God man-to-Man/God.
God does precisely what St. Paul describes in the Second Epistle to the Corinthi-
ans: He does not desire what is ours; He desires us. And in the same vein, He does
not offer what is His; He gives himself!
And here—at long last—we come to a love affair with Lady Poverty.
Poverty is the mode in which God speaks to man: Jesus took on the form of
a slave. Poverty is what God has to say to man: Jesus became obedient. Poverty
is the enfleshment of the Word of God: even unto death, death on the Cross.
From His poor birth in a cave, into the poor family of Mary and Joseph, among
the poor people of Nazareth and Galilee, unto His poor death on Calvary, Jesus
manifested the will of God as an embracing of humility. Even more than the
acknowledgement by the great saints of their inherent lowliness before the Lord,
the Incarnation is God’s own choosing to be humbled, and by that choice to exalt
those who admit the utter humility of their being.
If indeed the perfect musical dynamic is Father-Son-Holy Ghost Conceiving,

Being, and Uttering the Word for all eternity, then the best analogue of that reality
in creation, short of the Incarnation itself, is the heart of the saint in submission,
begging to be a vessel in which this sublime truth might be made manifest among
men. Who better to compose this magnum opus than the Father, what better me-
dium to express it than the Son, how better to render their perfection than the
Holy Ghost? Thus, the saint gives his mind and will to the Father to believe and to
know the truth—Ecce Ancilla Domini! He offers through, with, and in Christ the
voice given him by the Father to proclaim the truth—Fiat mihi secundum verbum
tuum! And in the power of the Holy Ghost, his heart bears and his lips proclaim
nothing but the Sign of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the world—Mag-
nificat anima mea Dominum!
Caritas, charity, love is at the core of all of this. Love of God above all
things is the greatest Commandment, followed by love of neighbor as the self.
The Cross, to be taken up daily in pursuit of Christ, is the Way to His Truth
that Life is won thereby. Essential to a life lived on the cross in obedience to
loving God through neighbor as self, is the willingness, eagerness, and selfless-
ness that is found only in holy poverty.
Those who love God love only God and God’s. They will keep nothing that
is not acceptable to God. They will seek nothing that does not lead to God. They
will love nothing that does not allow for love of God. For them who would have
the love of God, nothing is loveable apart from God.
Holy poverty is the cross by which the soul is crucified to the world and
the world to the soul. Holy poverty is the humbling of the heart admitting an
absolute need for God’s mercy, grace, and love. Holy poverty is the gift, the only
gift, of the child of God to his brothers hungry for what the world is powerless to
provide. Holy poverty is the condition necessary, the space required, within the
heart, mind, soul, and strength of the man who would dare to invite the Lord of
lords to be the Guest abiding with him forever.
Holy poverty is the amazing symphony whose first chord is Fiat lux! Holy
poverty is the unparalleled virtuoso who alone can perform such a work unto its
final cadence, Consummatum est! for He was with the Composer from the very
start, In principio erat Verbum! And holy poverty alone has cultivated an apprecia-
tive ear who can tell the difference between a Judgment upon a Dies irae, dies illa,
and the commendation, Euge serve bone, et fidelis!
In other words, vulgar in the best sense, to be poor is to give. God gives.
He gives creation as Creator. He gives to creation by way of grace. He gives in
creation as its Savior.
Impoverishment is not the same as being poor. The impoverished are victims,
the oppressed. The blessed poor will their poverty. They either sell all and give, or
they take up a daily and chosen cross, or they give their last two cents from want
never having known a surplus.
Modern men discerning the compatibility of modern economics—in the
home or in the nation-state—with eternal truth, would do well to reflect on this.
Materialism in its three dominant forms of capitalism, socialism, and commu-
nism do not give. Capitalism takes as much as is arbitrarily deemed legal. Social-
ism takes whatever the caprices of a ruling elite deem necessary. Communism
takes everything. One might say that pure capitalism is heartless, pure socialism is
mindless, and pure communism is soulless. That leaves nothing but the strength
of men to render some kind of worship, and the strength of the masses subject to
materialism, i.e. , the world, the flesh, and the devil, is then compelled to serve
the minority of men who are strong.
The Catholic ideal is to give all—heart, mind, soul, and strength—to the
invisible God, and to do so through the visible brother. It is no accident that
Holy Scripture frames all of this in terms of love. This is not a matter of balancing
consumption and production. This is not an issue of supply and demand. This is
not an equation seeking abstract justice. Bookkeepers, bean counters, and statisti-
cians are not needed when the only sum in use is all. Saints do not count the cost
because the price is beyond calculation: infinite love.
What God has demonstrated, time and again, throughout salvation history,
is a will toward communion. Communion is like conception—either it is or it
is not. God is emphatic about His covenant as an all-or-nothing proposition.
Everything short of Catholicism, everything short of the Cross, leaves something
outside the offering of all to God. For some the market is Godless. Some would
have a Godless government. Still others limit God even in their religions. Only in
Catholicism is Christ all in all.
Anyone who would bring the Faith from the Mass to the capitol to the mar-
ket and to the home, must first desire the truth of the Mass above the state and
mammon and even the hearth. He who has God, has all. He who has all without
God, has nothing. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all other
things shall be added unto you.
Wife and husband, parents and children, present things and future things
must be relinquished. The passing things of this world must be reckoned dung.
The world and all its wonders are to be forfeited for the one needful thing: con-
templation of Christ and him crucified.
The Cross! The Cross! The Cross!
Until and unless the Cross is loved, Christ is yet distant. If Christ is distant,
one can not please His Father. If the Father is not pleased, hell, not Heaven, is
man’s final home.
Short of active persecution, lacking calumny and dispossession of goods, de-
nied the gift of martyrdom, far the majority of Catholics, especially in the West-
ern world, have only what was rejected by the sad, rich, young man—poverty for
the sake of the Kingdom. Most of us must embrace the cross by humbly, obedi-
ently, and, finally, joyfully, wooing Lady Poverty. To gain salvation is to love Jesus;
to love Jesus is to love His cross; to love His cross means, for most of us, to love
Lady Poverty.
How does one love Lady Poverty, love the cross, love Jesus? One wills it! Love
is never describable as “falling” in love. One falls into mud, into sin, into perdi-
tion. Love elevates, exalts, and excels. To fall is to become less. To love is to be
made more.
We are loved by God, even unto death, death on the Cross. The Cross is the
way God chose to love us. We must choose to love even as we are loved, for it is
not that we loved God, but that God first loved us. What pleases our beloved is
the Cross. To please Him is not to take what we want, but to give what satisfies
Him. Perfect satisfaction is given God the Father by God the Son giving Himself
on the Tree of the Cross. We can do no better than that, and, for most of us, willed
poverty is the most direct way to accomplish it.
This is a love song. The very theme of love comes from the Mind of God. The
Word of this song is the Son of God. The Melody in which it is sung is the Spirit
of God. And the beloved delighting in this exquisite performance is the Blessed
Trinity.
Sit down. This is important: the instrument on which this sublime masterpiece is
performed is the human soul, crafted by God, perfected through holy poverty, premiered
in the concert hall of the cross, and, after the intermission of death, an endless encore
is given in Heaven!
“Stop, Father!” the critics complain. “This is all lovely and poetic—but you
were asked to be practical!”
Ladies and gentlemen, Bored in the Lower Peninsula and everywhere else,
Faith must come first! You need to believe that God is! That Jesus died and lives!
That the Cross is the means to glory! That Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary are
not anomalies, but the norm of those who belong to Christ.
Folks, do you or do you not trust, believe, and love Jesus Christ, the Incarnate
Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Head whose Body is the Catholic
Church?
If so, then love His poverty, love His humility, love His Cross! Love of Christ
can not depend on feeling good about suffering and death. Loving Christ must
acknowledge the necessity of willing the good of suffering and death.
Too often, I am afraid, husbands and wives “love” one another more ac-
cording to their feelings than in accord with the will—not of blood, not of
flesh, not of the will of man, but born of God! To be a child of God is to do
His will. His will is that adoption comes through Baptism. Baptism is a partic-
ipation in the Cross of Christ, whose Flesh and Blood, real Food and Drink,
bring eternal life. Love of husbands and wives reflects God’s love as revealed in
Christ Jesus. To love Him and His cross is to believe Him when He says to take
up a daily cross, to give to the poor, and to render heart-mind-soul-strength to
God, and the leftovers to Caesar. Nobody feels like doing this—it hurts—unless
and until they WILL to do it!
And, much like childbirth for both the mother and the child, once the pain
is endured, it is forgotten in the glory of living.
Marriage based on the passions rather than on the Passion is demeaning to
both parties. St. Paul tells us to love the husband by obedience, and to love the
wife through total sacrifice. Is it conceivable that Christ loves His Bride less than
St. Paul instructs mere mortals to love one another? Is it anything short of blas-
phemy to suggest that a bride owes her husband more than the human soul owes
her Lord? Bride and groom are one, ergo, the poverty of Christ the Groom as
Head must be shared in a mutual offering of poverty from the Bride, the Body of
Christ, the Church and her members.
The passions must give way to the Passion of Christ. His Passion is not for
the satisfaction of carnal appetites. Jesus thirsts and hungers for souls. The faith-
ful Catholic, then, must learn to crave what our Savior craves. To do this means
to believe Him when He tells us that the Cross is obligatory. Holy poverty is an
encounter with the Cross in which Jesus is present to crucify worldly wants in
the soul, and to raise to new life souls intent upon nothing but the Bread of Life.
Bored people are full—of things, of debts, of themselves. Boredom is the re-
sult of unworthy appetites filled beyond capacity. For the bored worldling, noth-
ing entices, nothing excites, nothing satisfies because he wants for nothing.
Holy poverty cleanses the palate and makes room in the heart for an infinite
hunger. This hunger can only be satisfied by Christ and Him crucified. Souls hun-
gry for Christ burn with a zeal to receive Him, and in receiving Him they desire
yet more. Thanks be to God, this infinite hunger has at its disposal the infinite
satisfaction of the Cross, wherefrom is harvested the Fruit of the Tree of Life, the
Body of Christ, whereby man has hope of the never-ending satiation of all desire
in the Beatific Vision.
Anyone whose passion is aflame for Lady Poverty does not stand idly by while
others ignore her. He wants his queen spoken fair by all. He wishes her delights to
be shared by all. He demands that her loveliness be acknowledged by all.
Lady Poverty is realized as this fairest maiden in the revelation of the love of
God by Christ crucified. To love God is to love His Son. The Son shows His love
by dying on the Cross. The Cross is embraced by releasing one’s own claims on
the wealth of this world in favor of obtaining the Pearl of incalculable price. Lady
Poverty is loveable because she helps us to love Christ. We love Christ because
He first loves us. He loves us because He is God and God is Love and the love of
God the Father-Son-Holy Ghost is an abundance surpassing the capacity of all
creation to contain. Such love is a spendthrift, scoffs at mere gold, and laughs cash
unto scorn. The lover of God, in imitation of his beloved Lord, paupers himself in
order to give no less than everything so as to share far more than all.
God Himself gives Himself, not for lands or jewels or “precious” metals. His
only want is the human heart, mind, soul, and strength. Salvation comes to those
who seek a fair exchange with God: of self for Self, of all time for all eternity, of
passing life for endless life. This is not a project for businessmen or for thrill seek-
ers or for the timid. Only lovers need apply.
What a long answer to a short question of fifty words or less. And I still have
not told you how to do it. But I have told you what to do: Love the Lord thy God
with thy whole soul, with thy whole heart, with thy whole mind, and with thy
whole strength; and love thy neighbor as thyself! As well, I have told you why to
do it: Not that we first loved God, but that God has first loved us. If you believe
that He loves, then act on His love.
God is in love with poverty: the poor, the poor in spirit, the humble, the
meek, the pure, the persecuted, and the self-sacrificing friend. Before anything
else is attempted in the spiritual life, one must first take God at His word: that He
loves us, forgives us, and will never abandon us. When that truth is all in all for
us, then life begins. Our souls, our homes, our work, our nation, our world will
be directed toward only those things reflective of the divine will that every knee in
Heaven, on the earth, and under the earth bow and proclaim that the Lord Jesus
Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Amen!
Lovers of Lady Poverty ruthlessly remove whatever comfort or luxury or seem-
ing necessity is not in keeping with such homage. Lady Poverty’s lovers delight in
whatever cross, sacrifice, or inconvenience allows them to offer such homage. All
wealth blushes before the splendor of Lady Poverty, and no dearth is noticed in
the Presence of the Lord whose beloved is Lady Poverty.
Are people in love ever bored?
God bless you,

Father Smith
In Love with Lady Poverty
In Heaven’s vaults for all to see I keep

a gem of gold and one of silver hue;
the lesser gilds the treasures dreamers reap
while greater gleams the jewel where all comes true.
Poor Solomon the king wore naught but rags
where beggared minds thought glory was revealed;
each guest who visits me goes home and brags
of bedclothes spun from lilies of the field.
In love with Lady Poverty I gain
a wealth unmeasured but by mortal tears
of joy that taste as sweet as summer rain
on youth that grows the finer with the years.
The only thing which I would count as loss
is life or death without our Savior’s Cross.
27-28 September 2004

Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and St. Wenceslaus
Demiceli’s Ristorante, Garden Grove, California; and Vinyamar, Tustin, CAf
For us as Catholics, the Distributive State (i.e. , the State in

which there are as many owners as possible) is not something which
we discuss, but something we have to propagate and institute. No
advance in social thought or social action is possible if we are seeking
to prove to ourselves as a theory what we should be trying to realize
as a fact.
—Father Vincent McNabb, OP, The Church and the Land
Part Three
329
Preface to Volume III: Three Months

of Christmas and the Holy Rosary
21 November 2009: The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God
Today is the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to God in
the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Our Lady is like Our Lord in all things, including
in this anticipation of the Mystery of His Presentation roughly twelve years before
the first Christmas. Just as Jesus is offered by His parents on earth to His Father
in Heaven within the sacred precincts of the house of God, so also Mary is offered
by her parents on earth to Our Father in Heaven within the sacred precincts of
the house of God. Saint Joachim and Saint Anne presented Mary to God in an
action that prefigures the Presentation of the Son of God by the Blessed Virgin
Mother of God and Saint Joseph. In each instance, the child is given to God with
no reservations, holding nothing back, desirous of nothing other than that God
receive not only the best from His creatures, but that God receive everything His
creatures have to offer. Mary is given to God wholly and entirely, Jesus is given
to God wholly and entirely. Saints Joachim and Anne had nothing better to give
to God than the Immaculate Conception, so they rendered her to Him with the
love of their whole hearts, whole souls, whole minds, and whole strength. Mary
and Joseph had nothing better to give God than the Son of God, so they rendered
Him to Him with the love of their whole hearts, whole souls, whole minds, and
whole strength.
330 Distributism for Dorothy: Part III
The result of the perfect offering by a creature to his Creator is simply life.
After the gift of Our Lady was given by Saints Joachim and Anne to God, Our
Lord blessed them with the fulfillment of His salvific will that God become a man
in the life-giving womb of the Mother of God, the daughter of Saints Joachim
and Anne, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saints Joachim and Anne gave their child
to the Father, and the Father gave His child to their child. Several years later
this exchange was repeated in a far greater way. Now the Mother of God and
the foster-father of God gave their child to God, and the Father blessed that gift
with the bestowal of eternal life on them who would accept the Son as truly sent
by the Father. The gift of Saints Joachim and Anne led to the life of man shared
with God in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy and Blessed
Trinity. The gift of Mary and Joseph led to the life of God shared with man in the
Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Son of God. The Presentation of Mary and
the Presentation of Jesus are part of an unfathomable and eternal gift exchange—
man is graced to be the sustenance of life for God in time, and man is graced to be
sustained in the life of God for eternity. In that sense, in the sense of an exchange
of gifts, the life of faith on earth and the eternal life of Heaven are an experience
of a permanent Christmas.
Advent and Lent present to us Mysteries overflowing with revelations of
life in the midst of death. Jesus is born, beginning His visible life on earth, in
the depths of lifeless winter. Jesus rises to new and eternal life in His glorified
body, having died the death on the threshold of the dawn of life in the season
of spring. All of the life of Jesus is a manifestation of the Mystery of the Cross,
the great Sign of Contradiction. He begins life in the dead of winter; He dies
on the cusp of spring wherein life bursts forth anew. But, too, Jesus enters His
life on earth having abdicated His claims to the glory of Heaven, beginning
His life with us in an act of Sacrifice, dying, as it were, to His almighty power
as the Son of God in order to become a helpless child of man. Then at the
end of this earthly life Jesus introduces the sublime treasure of the Bread of
Life, His very Body and Blood, to the astonished Apostles on Holy Thursday,
inaugurating the tremendous acts of His immolation and death on the Cross
with the offering of unending life to His friends.
In the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we see echoes and pre-echoes of the
transcendent will of God that life overcome death by death. Mary is the only
child of a couple thought by all to be incapable of childbearing, first because of
barrenness, and then because of advanced age. God brings forth the life of His
Preface to Volume III: Three Months of Christmas and the Holy Rosary 331
supreme creature from a womb thought to be lifeless. Later God outdoes Himself
by bringing forth the life of God manifested in man by the prodigy of a virgin
conceiving and bearing a son, the Son of God. God reveals life to the eyes of faith
where the faithless see only death. Mary is the instrument of the Sign of Contra-
diction, the instrument of the Cross, in her every thought, word, and deed. She
thinks and knows herself to be the lowliest of creatures, yet she believes on the
word of the angel that she is to be the very Mother of God, while still remain-
ing a virgin! She knows that the hour of Jesus is not yet come, but on her word,
Our Lord performs His first miracle, making the savorless water yield splendid
wine! Mary is the Cause of Our Joy, bearing the Son of God in the flesh; Mary
is the Mother of Sorrows, offering her Son Body-Blood-Soul-and-Divinity on
the Cross. Mary is the daughter of God who is the Mother of God. Mary is the
Mother of God who is the Spouse of God. Mary is the Spouse of God who is the
Handmaid of the Lord. Mary is the Handmaid of the Lord who is the Queen of
Heaven and earth. Mary is the Queen of Heaven and earth, Commander of the
hosts of Heaven and Mistress of the saints from earth, who is at the same time
the gentle Mother of the Church. Mary is the Mother of Mercy whom God has
ordained from all eternity to be the instrument by which the head of the serpent
is forever crushed underfoot!
At the heart of the reconciliation effected by the Sign of Contradiction
which is the Cross, which is the life of Mary, which is the life of Jesus, is the
meeting between mercy and truth, the kiss shared by justice and peace. The
truth of man’s condemnation is met by the mercy of God manifested on the
Cross of Christ. The justice of the divine wrath is satisfied by the peace of
God poured out from the outstretched arms of Jesus on Calvary. It is true that
man deserves damnation because of Adam, but the Mother of Mercy, Mary,
has been found acceptable among the orphans of Adam and Eve to receive and
to dispense the infinite clemency of the Father. It would be just for God to
destroy the world forever in retribution for the unspeakable offenses thrust in
His face by his human creatures, but the Queen of Peace has sued for terms
with the offended majesty and won for man, not a Judge, but a Savior. The
courtship of truth and mercy has flowered in the nuptials of justice and peace,
and from this union life springs forth both divine and human from the womb
of the blessed Mother of God. In Mary truth can not deny mercy, nor can
justice reject peace, for in Mary the creature is like unto her Creator in all
things, and the Creator well pleased in His handiwork loves her and desires her
to be in perfect communion with Him. Life is the result, the life of the Son of
God in time on earth, and the life of the Kingdom of God forever in Heaven.
Alas! In time not all have been willing to be a part of what our Blessed Mother
so perfectly accomplishes in her heart, soul, mind, and body. Rather than offering
themselves wholly and entirely as Mary is offered wholly and entirely in the love
commanded by God, most men have chosen instead to retain all claims to their
own so-called right to nefarious and false freedom. From Adam and Eve, through
Cain, down to the apostasy among the Jews fought so valiantly by the Machabees,
men have demanded to be ruled by lies, yielding to a merciless thirst for each
other’s blood. They have denied all justice, warring instead on all that is good,
true, beautiful, weak, and poor. Tyranny beyond description has been the realm
established by man under satan in foul opposition to the freedom of the sons of
God willed by Our Father, offered by His Son, received in the power of the Holy
Ghost by any man willing to set aside the frauds of the world, the deceits of the
flesh, and the lies of the devil. But the mass of men have lived lives wholly and
entirely in pursuit of the selfish desires of their depraved hearts, and instead of
bearing fruit in the divine life whose perfection is the Son of God born from the
womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, these fiends do the works of death. Life not
given wholly and entirely to God is dead and deadly.
What follows are four examples of the deadly works of men divorced from
the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the life of Christ manifesting the will
of God…
1517, 1536, 1587: Martin Luther had been an Augustinian priest before
apostasizing, marrying a disgraced nun, and dying a broken man. Henry VIII
of England had been a Catholic monarch defending the one true Faith before he
succumbed to the passions of the flesh, submitted his will to the tyranny of pride,
and destroyed faith in the realm he had been consecrated to protect and increase.
Between Luther the wretch and Henry the cad, an unholy communion existed
from which there issued a foul daughter, Elizabeth I. This person was physically
deformed, morally degenerate, and spiritually defunct. These facts have not pre-
vented the British people, who followed her in apostasy and heresy, from dub-
bing her “the virgin queen”, in blasphemous mockery of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Queen of Heaven and earth. Among Elizabeth’s uncounted travesties of justice
was the sin of regicide. Frightened that her status as an illegitimate daughter of
Henry VIII would result in Mary Stuart successfully asserting her authentic claim
to the English throne, Elizabeth had Mary executed to consolidate her tyranny
and to put an end to any hope of restoring England to the Catholic Faith. Eliza-
beth’s descent into heresy led directly to the crime of murder, and the especially
reprehensible crime of regicide, the killing of the legal monarch.
apostasizing, marrying a disgraced nun, and dying a broken man. France had been
a Catholic nation, indeed, the oldest of Catholic nations, honored with the title,
The Eldest Daughter of the Church, producing saints, emperors, and a thorough-
ly Catholic culture over the course of almost one thousand years. Then France
abandoned her faith in Jesus Christ and in her Mother the Catholic Church and
embarked on the madness that culminated in the Reign of Terror. Luther and
France consorted in an unholy communion wherein the evil men of freemasonry
were spawned to the destruction of the kingdom. Having thrown off allegiance to
the Pope in the sixteenth century, Luther and his spiritual offspring endeavored
in the eighteenth century to divest themselves of loyalty to the Church herself,
denying not only the Head but also the Body. The result was the mob. Revolution
swept across France from the 1780s,through the nineteenth century, and contin-
ues to this day. Millions of men were slaughtered in the name of liberty. Millions
of women were violated in the name of equality. Millions of children were denied
access to the grace of the Faith, and thus denied salvation, in the name of frater-
nity. One man in particular was the victim of this debauched frenzy of hatred, his
Royal Highness Louis XVI. The headless mob set about beheading the populace,
reaching the climax of its bloodlust in regicide, beheading the king as if he were
just one other commoner among the millions of commoners so treated.
apostasizing, marrying a disgraced nun, and dying a broken man. Karl Marx had
been the son of a Jew before the family made a sham conversion to a sham sect,
Methodism. Living off the income from his family’s comfortable bourgeois hold-
ings, Marx wrote ridiculous tracts in opposition to private property, the bourgeois
culture, and faith in God. Luther and Marx conspired across the centuries in the
person of Vladimir Lenin to produce the world’s first communist government.
That government was founded on the graves of the Russian royal family of Czar
Nicolas II. In the name of freedom, Luther, Marx, and Lenin seized all property
from the serfs and the aristocracy for the sole use of the government. In the name
of a better life, Luther, Marx, and Lenin systematically starved various segments
of the population of the Soviet Union over the course of thirty years. In the name
of religious liberty and atheism, Luther, Marx, and Lenin imposed a government
with a satanist, Lenin himself, at its head. Luther was not satisfied with denying
papal authority that he screeched during the sixteenth century. From 1517 on
his evil brood of philosophical descendants thought it insufficient to jettison the
principle of a unified church organization, the position championed by the deni-
zens of freemasonry beginning in 1717. Their ideal was not realized until the rev-
olutions in Russia in 1917, when the very idea of God was expunged from politcal
theory, from cultural institutions, from the very minds of the subjects of the new
order of things. And, yet again, this revolt against truth was accomplished and
crowned with regicide, this time not a Cathoic head of state being dethroned, but
a schismatic. All the same, the people had determined to have no king, no caesar,
other than themselves—and the evil men leading them in such determinations.
apostasizing, marrying a disgraced nun, and dying a broken man. George
Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson had been subjects of
the crown of Great Britain. With the mandate of a very small minority of the
colonial population of North America, Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson
were among a vanguard of rebels who presumed to declare war on their king.
That revolution, begun in 1776, continues unabated to this day. Whether
overthrowing their own revolutionary ideal of resisting taxation without rep-
resentation when Washington led U.S. government troops against American
citizens staging a tax revolt; or overthrowing the ideal of liberty from unwanted
sovereigns when Lincoln led the largest war-time slaughter of American citizens
in American history (that number pales in comparison to the millions killed in
the once-peaceful womb); or overthrowing the ideal of freedom for all regard-
less of ethnic background when Franklin Roosevelt interned tens of thousands
of citizens for the crime of having ancestors from Japan—in all of these and
many other instances, the principle of denying the past, improvising principles
in the present, and rewriting history when future events make the past incon-
venient has been an essential element in the American experiment. As with
the Luther-inspired rebels in England, the Luther-inspired rebels in France,
and the Luther-inspired rebels in Russia, the Luther-inspired rebels in Wash-
ington, d.c., and their subject peoples continue the commission of the crime
of regicide even to the present hour. Elizabeth I killed one queen. The mob in
Paris killed one king and one queen. The Soviet communists killed one czar,
his czarina, and their children. You will notice that the numbers involved have
increased with the centuries. Keep in mind that the self-appointed monarch of
the United States of America is We the People…That being the case, regicide
in these United States can not be limited to a man, to a man and his wife, or
to a man and his wife and their children. The “royal family”, so to speak, in
the United States at present numbers something over three hundred million
souls. Daily, the regicide involves four thousand infant heirs to the throne,
stretching back in legal precedent thirty-six years now, and between fifty and
one hundred million executions depending on how one interprets the data. In
addition, countless thousands of monarchs are slaughtered by family members
for the crime of age, illness, or injury. Beyond all of that are the other millions
of monarchs of America who have lost the will to reign, and have abdicated
their thrones voluntarily by sacrificing themselves on the altar of self-murder.
Indeed, all of these regicides are a type of suicide, for when one is the king and
one kills the king, one is committing suicide. Americans must at some point
wake up to the idea that they are following a truly suicidal path.
Elizabeth killed the queen in the hope of remaining the queen; she died child-
less, the murdered queen’s son inherited the throne, and the grandson of that king
was deposed within three years of being crowned, and England has had no sover-
eign monarch ever since. Indeed, within a century of Elizabeth’s death, England
ceased to be, subsumed in the modern concoction known as the United Kingdom
of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, a.k.a., Great Britain. The
kingdom of England is dead. Long live the Parliament.
The mob killed the king and the queen in the hope of usurping their power
and receiving the favored treatment once reserved for the royals. Instead, the mob
unleashed the reign of terror on itself, murdering untold millions of commoners
in their rage against the throne. After the riots of the revolution became too much
to stomach, the French welcomed an emperor to bring peace to its lands, and to
bring war to the whole of Europe. The First Republic did not last. The Napoleanic
Empire did not last. The Second Republic did not last. The Third Republic did
not last. The Fourth Republic did not last. The Fifth Republic will not last. The
French killed France, and the French are now busy going about the work of con-
tracepting the French out of existence.
Communists declared God dead. As of this writing, God is very much alive,
but communism is ashamed to call itself by name, even though its corpse contin-
ues to haunt the modern world. When the Soviets killed the czar, Russia lost its
identity, its history, its very name. The thing called Russia today is a doppelganger,
an imposter, a figment. Russia, like England and France, is gone, never to return.
France, England, and Russia owed their establishment to the Catholic Faith
and to the institutions and authority of the Catholic Church. When they cast
aside their obedience to the Vicar of Christ, then the Church of Christ, and
then the Father of Christ, France, England, and Russia committed corporate
suicide. The United States of America never acknowledged God as sovereign.
The United States of America has never accepted Christ as King. The United
States of America has never professed Catholicism as the true Faith by which the
laws and customs of this society are to be directed. In the absolute denial of the
God of life, the United States of America is a stillbirth, never born, never alive.
Contraception, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, and sodomy are the policies of the
death wish that is America. That the government of the United States of America
and the governments of its constituitive states mandate the adovcacy for, the sub-
sidizing of, and the acquiesence to the abominations of contraception, abortion,
euthanasia, suicide, and sodomy is not surprising—he who overthrows Christ
as king elects death as master. Death rules the United States of America. If you
doubt that fact, ask the African slaves brought to these shores, or the American
Indians confined on reservations, or the innumerable families destroyed by easy
divorce, or the babies slaughtered legally by their mothers, or the unspeakable
number of souls languishing in hell even now because they put being an Amer-
ican above, before, and instead of being Catholic. England killed its king, and
England is no more. France killed its king, and France is no more. Russia killed
its king, and Russia is no more. America is killing its kings, one family, one forni-
cation, one sodomizing, one contraception, one suicide, one infant, one citizen,
and one soul at a time—and it is only a matter of time before there are no more
Americans left for Americans to kill.
Such is what comes of keeping all for oneself, rather than giving one’s all
to God as Saint Joachim and Saint Anne gave Mary to God, and as our Blessed
Mother and Saint Joseph gave Jesus to God. He who gives all to God, gains life.
He who keeps all for himself, buys death.
Last week I warned you that this week’s sermon would be decidedly neg-
ative. In that same vein, then, we conclude with the eighth of our reflections
on the connections between Advent and Lent, between the Crib and the cross,
between Christmas and Easter. There will be, however, one bright ray of hope
at the very end even though we are considering 8) Herod—Judas: Herod was
not the king of the Jews. Herod was not even a legitimate Jew. Herod was a
puppet of the hated Roman overlords. Herod knew this. The Jews knew this.
The Romans knew this. Only the Romans liked that state of affairs, and, in-
deed, on a political level, only the Romans benefitted from that state of affairs.
Herod desired to legitimize his rule as much as possible, for reasons of vanity
as much as for reasons of social order. It galled Herod to know that everyone
knew that he was not only not the legitimate ruler of Israel, but that all of his
supposed power was actually in the keeping of the Romans. Thus, when word
began to circulate that a true King of the Jews was born, Herod wasted no
time in attempting to shore up his grip on power. Kings are meant to enforce
justice, so it is not surprising that a false king utilized injustice in his exercise
of power. Herod sought to kill the newborn King of the Jews, unjustly, and did
so by ordering the murder of dozens of other innocents in an act of depravity
aggravating the inherent injustice. Herod failed. The murders instigated by
Herod resulted in the slain boys being exalted to the altar of God as martyrs in
the cause of divine justice. The kingdom Herod sought to maintain by murder
ceased to exist less than seventy years after Herod’s abomination. And the King
whose blood Herod lusted after was indeed shed, but that did Herod no good,
for Herod was a lying murderer denied entrance to the Kingom where no lies
nor lovers of lies nor murderers are admitted. In other words, Herod showed
himself a minion of the father of lies and the first murderer, the devil, and so
won for himself, not a crown of glory, but eternal bondage in the servitude of
the damned. Even now the King whom Herod would deny reigns and shall
reign forever and ever. Satan, however, has other minions. As Herod sought
the Blood of Christ at the beginning of the life of Jesus, so, too, did Judas
seek the Blood of Christ at the end of the mortal life of Jesus. Where Herod
was an illegitimate king, Jesus had raised Judas to be a true prince, willing for
the Iscariot a seat from which to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. Judas was
among the number God had called to be His instruments to proclaim the
Good News of salvation to the ends of the earth. The love of Christ did not
motivate Judas. Receiving an everlasting reward did not motivate Judas. Seeing
the victory of God over satan did not motivate Judas. Instead, Judas denied
justice and all that is owed to God, seeking for himself the satisfaction of his
pride, the indulgence of his own will, the attainment of thirty pieces of silver.
Judas gained thirty pieces of silver, inadequate for the purchase of the world,
much less the acquisition of one’s soul. From Judas neither Judas nor God was
given justice. Rather we understand whence Judas received his orders and to
whom he gave his allegiance when we remember the name Jesus gave the trai-
tor: son of perdition. Judas did not reign with God the Father in Heaven, but
descended to the infernal throne of his father in hell. Herod’s treachery was a
part of the destruction of Israel, whose king he desired to be. Judas’ treachery
did not result in the destruction of the Kingdom of Heaven, whose King Judas
refused to serve. The treachery of Judas led directly to the destruction of the
kingdom whose king can claim Judas as son, the kingdom of the damned, the
kingdom of hell, the kingdom of perdition, whose lord is satan, whose son is
Judas. Judas killed himself, committed suicide, and deprived his father of an
heir—the kingdom of hell is at an end, not so much because Judas and satan
have conspired in their own defeat, but because Jesus Christ, born of Mary, has
overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, sitteth at the Right Hand of the
Father, and of His Kingdom there shall be no end!
20 November 2009: Saint Felix of Valois

All Saints House, Silver Cliff, Wisconsin
Addendum—Three deaths of abominators separated from the mercy of God:
Judas (betrayer of God the Son): suicide by hanging, wherein his bowels burst
asunder
Arius (heretic priest and cause of massive apostasy): bowels burst asunder before
desecrating a church with his presence
Luther (heretic monk and cause of massive apostasy): lifelong dyspepsia and con-
stipation
Mob coups through salvation history—A genealogy
Let him who would understand these presents hearken to the Word of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St. Matthew, chapter the first, verses one
through sixteen; according to St. Luke, chapter the third, verses twenty-three
through thirty-eight; according to St. John, chapter the first, verses one through
eighteen; and of the same beloved disciple, chapter the eighth, verses thirty
through fifty-nine.
Heed ye also the testimony of the Prophet Isaias, in whose mouth the Lord
God hath been pleased to place the prophecy of the reign of the Messias thus:
Her time is near at hand, and her days shall not be prolonged. For the Lord will
have mercy on Jacob, and will choose out of Israel, and will make them rest upon their
own ground: and the stranger shall be joined with them, and shall adhere to the house
of Jacob. And the people shall take them, and bring them into their place: and the
house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids:
and they shall make them captives that had taken them, and shall subdue their op-
pressors. And it shall come to pass in that day, that when God shall give thee rest from
thy labor, and from thy vexation, and from the hard bondage, wherewith thou didst
serve before, thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and shalt say:
How is the oppressor come to nothing? the tribute hath ceased? The Lord hath broken
the staff of the wicked, the rod of the rulers, that struck the people in wrath with an in-
curable wound, that brought nations under in fury, that persecuted in a cruel manner.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? How art
thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations? And thou saidst in thy heart:
I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in
the mountain of the Covenant, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the height
of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell,
into the depth of the pit…
Behold the Lord shall lay waste the earth, and shall strip it, and shall afflict
the face thereof, and scatter abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be as
with the people, so with the priest: and as with the servant, so with his master: as
with the handmaid, so with her mistress: as with the buyer, so with the seller: as
with the lender, so with the borrower: as with him that calleth for his money, so
with him that oweth. With desolation shall the earth be laid waste, and it shall
be utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word. The earth mourned, and
faded away, and is weakened: the world faded away, the height of the people of
the earth is weakened. And the earth is infected by the inhabitants thereof: because
they have transgressed the laws, they have changed the ordinance, they have broken
the everlasting covenant.
Therefore shall a curse devour the earth, and the inhabitants thereof shall sin:
and therefore they that dwell therein shall be mad, and few men shall be left. The
vintage hath mourned, the vine hath languished away, all the merry-hearted have
sighed. The mirth of timbrels hath ceased, the noise of them that rejoice is ended,
the melody of the harp is silent. They shall not drink wine with a song: the drink
shall be bitter to them that drink it. The city of vanity is broken down, every house
is shut up, no man cometh in.
There shall be a crying for wine in the streets: all mirth is forsaken: the joy of the
earth is gone away. Desolation is left in the city, and calamity shall oppress the gates.
For it shall be thus in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the people, as if a few
olives, that remain, should be shaken out of the olive tree: or grapes, when the vintage
is ended. These shall lift up their voice, and shall give praise: when the Lord shall be
glorified, they shall make a joyful noise from the sea. Therefore glorify ye the Lord in
instruction: the Name of the Lord God of Israel in the islands of the sea.
From the ends of the earth we have heard praises, the glory of the Just One. And I
said: My secret to myself, my secret to myself, woe is me: the prevaricators have prevari-
cated, and with the prevarication of transgressors they have prevaricated. Fear, and the
pit, and the snare are upon thee, O thou inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to
pass, that he that shall flee from the noise of the fear, shall fall into the pit: and he that
shall rid himself out of the pit, shall be taken in the snare: for the flood-gates from on
high are opened, and the foundations of the earth shall be shaken. With breaking shall
the earth be broken, with crushing shall the earth be crushed, with trembling shall the
earth be moved. With shaking shall the earth be shaken as a drunken man, and shall
be removed as the tent of one night: and the iniquity thereof shall be heavy upon it,
and it shall fall, and not rise again.
And it shall come to pass, that in that day the Lord shall visit upon the host of
Heaven on high, and upon the kings of the earth, on the earth. And they shall be gath-
ered together as in the gathering of one bundle into the pit, and they shall be shut up
there in prison: and after many days they shall be visited. And the moon shall blush,
and the sun shall be ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Sion, and
in Jerusalem, and shall be glorified in the sight of His ancients.
Thus saith the Lord.
God is.
God is the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent Creator of all.
God is the King of the universe.
God is absolutely just in the exercise of his sovereignty over His creation.
God is Unending, Uncreated, and Unchanging.
God is forever as he has ever been: Almighty, Sovereign, and Perfect.
God is.
Lucifer was.
Lucifer was created as an exquisite angel of light by God.
Lucifer was offered the choice to honor God as his Creator.
Lucifer in his unspeakable pride denied the sovereignty of the almighty.

Lucifer became an angel of darkness, a demon.
Lucifer, in rejecting the rule of God, sought to establish his own rule in God’s
creation.
Lucifer failed.
In his rejection of the sovereignty of God, his attempt at dominion, and his
failure thereat, Lucifer became the enemy of God, the personal manifestation of
evil itself, satan.
Satan and his legions of fallen angels refused God’s just sovereignty and em-
braced instead the injustice of anarchy, for where God is not acknowledged as
Lord, none can rule in His stead.
God is.
God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
God the Father through God the Son in the power of God the Holy Ghost
wills to create man.
God the Father wills to create man.
God the Son is the Word through whom man is created.
God the Holy Ghost is the vivifying power by whom man lives.
God is.
Adam was created by God in the divine image and likeness.

Adam was set as sovereign king by God over God’s creation in the Garden of
Eden.
Eve was given to Adam to be his queen and to share in his rule.
satan in the guise of a serpent deceived Eve.
Adam hearkened to Eve, fell prey to satan’s deceit, and embraced the pride of
the fallen, losing sovereignty, kingship, and kingdom.
satan rebelled against God.
Eve rebelled against God and against Adam.
Adam rebelled against God, against justice, and against himself.
Adam and Eve rejected the just rule of God, in which Adam was sovereign
beneath the sovereignty of God, and entered into the anarchy of the dominion of
satan in the world.
Subjected to the rule of satan, Adam and Eve ruled neither creation nor them-
selves.
God is.
God is merciful.
God in His mercy assured Adam and Eve, even as He sent them into exile,
that a victorious enemy of their enemy would come one day.
God in His mercy spared Noah.
God in His mercy made a covenant with Abraham.
God in His mercy called Moses His friend.
God in His mercy gave Himself to Israel to bring them justice, to give them
order, to be their King.
God is.
Israel, in its faithlessness, demanded to have a man as king like all the nations
of men had kings.
Samuel reminded Israel that they had God as their King.
Israel insisted that they wanted a man for a king.
Samuel warned them that men as kings would be oppressors, unjust, and
disordered.
Israel rejected God as King, and begged for a man to be their king.
God is.
God chose Saul to be king over Israel.
God was displeased with Saul’s faithless injustice.
God raised up David to be a king after His own heart.
God called David His son.
God promised that the line of David will never end.
God is.
The sons of David were faithless.

The sons of David worshipped idols.
The sons of David refused to keep their covenant with God.
The sons of David oppressed Israel.
The sons of David were defeated by Assyria.
The sons of David lost Jerusalem and were sent into exile in Babylon.
The sons of David returned to Jerusalem, only to return to faithlessness.
God is.
God in His providence from all eternity chose a remnant out of Israel.
God chose a righteous Daughter of Sion of the house of David from among
the faithful remnant of Israel to be the bearer of glad tidings to His people.
God formed this Daughter from the very womb to be sinless, to be pure, to
be full of His grace.
God in the fullness of time sent forth the Archangel Gabriel unto the Blessed
Virgin Mary to proclaim to her the presence of the Lord.
God the Holy Ghost, pleased to hear her humble submission as the hand-
maid of the Lord, overshadowed her, and thus she conceived in her inviolate
womb the very Son of God!
God is.
Jesus Christ is God.

Jesus Christ is Lord.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Son of Mary.
Jesus Christ is the King of Kings.
Jesus Christ is the King of the Jews.
Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.
Jesus Christ was condemned to die on the Cross by the Jews, who shrieked,
“Crucify him!...We have no king but Caesar!”
God is.
God heard Adam reject Him as King and cast him out of Eden.
God saw the wickedness of Noah’s time and sent the flood to erase man from
the earth.
God was stayed in His anger at Aaron and all Israel by Moses who pleaded
that He spare them for their faithlessness in the desert.
God condemned Saul for his unrighteousness and took the kingship from his
house and established the house of David forever.
God sent His Son Jesus Christ to restore kingship to Israel, only to hear the
foul words, “We have no king but Caesar!”; Israel is dispossessed of priest, proph-
et, and king until the will of God is fulfilled just before the Son of Man, Jesus
Christ, the King of Kings, returns.
God is.
Jesus Christ is risen!

Jesus Christ has given the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven to His Vicar on
earth, St. Peter.
Jesus Christ has guided His Flock, His Body, His Bride, the Church, the
Barque of Peter through the Holy Ghost from the time of Linus through Sixtus ii
through Siricius through Leo i through Gregory I through Leo ix through Grego-
ry vii through Pius v through Pius x, and shall unto the end of time.
Jesus Christ has commanded the Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven now
at hand be proclaimed through the Office of His Vicar wielding the Keys of Peter
to bind and loose on earth and in Heaven.
Jesus Christ has promised Peter that the devil desirous of him shall not have
him, that the gates of hell assailing him shall not prevail, that the Church has in
him a rock foundation.
God is.
God maintains His children on the way where apostasy would lead them
astray.
God upholds His truth where heresy would deny Him.
God preserves His Church in sanctifying grace where schism would kill the
life given by the Holy Ghost.
God is the Lord of history, even and especially where His sovereignty is re-
jected by the world.
God exercises his sovereignty in history through His Church, given to man
that all men might come to know God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.
God is.
St. Peter anointed Charlemagne to succeed Constantine the Great in govern-

ing the nations in the Name of Christ.
St. Peter received the willing acquiescence of Edward, Louis, Henry, Stephen,
Wenceslaus, Helen, Cunegunda, Margaret, Elizabeth, Bridget and numer-
ous others to be anointed and to reign in the Name of Christ.
St. Peter has been pleased to raise King Edward, King Louis, King Henry,
King Stephen, King Wenceslaus, Queen Helen, Queen Cunegunda, Queen Mar-
garet, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Bridget, and numerous others of the royal state to
the Altar of God.
St. Peter enjoyed no less than a thousand years from Constantine until Charles
V an unquestioned acknowledgement that the Christian state is in service to the

Kingdom of Christ.
St. Peter was defended by Catholic monarchs from the heretics following the
errors of Mahomet.
St. Peter was supported in orthodoxy against the schismatics adhering to the
rebellion of Photius.
St. Peter has never been defeated in his defense of the sovereignty of Christ
the King before the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
God is.
God the Son is present in the world in His Body the Catholic Church.
God the Son rules through His Body the Catholic Church.
God the Son has chosen nothing other than the Catholic Church to be His
bride.
God the Son has no sheep in His Flock who do not belong to the Catholic
Church.
God the Son does not know anyone who is not a member of His Body, who
is not a child of His Bride, who is not within the Fold of the Catholic Church.
God is.
Martin Luther rejected St. Peter as the Vicar of Christ on earth.

Henry VIII rejected St. Peter as the vicar of Christ on earth.
George Washington rejected the Body of Christ as the only legitimate context
for the rule of men on earth.
Napoleon Bonaparte rejected the Body of Christ as the only legitimate con-
text for the rule of men on earth.
Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro re-
jected God as Sovereign of the universe.
The United Nations Charter, The United States Supreme Court, and the Eu-
ropean Union Constitution reject God as Sovereign of the universe.
Not one nation on earth in the 21st century, including the Vatican City State,
demands that Jesus Christ be recognized as sovereign King of all nations.
God is.
God was rejected as King by satan.
God was rejected as King by Adam.
God was rejected as King by Israel.

God was rejected as King by the heretic Mahomet.
God was rejected as King by the schismatic Photius.
God was rejected as King by the apostate Henry.
God was rejected as King by the modernist Washington.
God was rejected as King by the atheist Marx.
God was rejected as King by the secularist UN, EU, and US Supreme Court.
But God still is i am!
‘tho’ demons deny Him, God is.

‘tho’ pagans are ignorant of Him, God is.
‘tho’ Jews refuse Him, God is.
‘tho’ Mohammedans blaspheme His Son, God is.
‘tho’ Photians rebel against His Son’s Vicar, God is.
‘tho’ protestants revolt against His Truth, God is.
‘tho’ democracies dethrone Him, God is.
‘tho’ communists and socialists denounce Him, God is.
‘tho’ modernity desires to do without Him, God is.
There is no justice without God.

There is no rule without God.
There is no order without God.
There is no truth without God.
There is no freedom without God.
There is no authority without God.
There is no sovereignty where God is not King.
Jesus Christ must be King.

Jesus Christ must be Lord.
Jesus Christ must be the only Name by which men are saved.
Jesus Christ must be the name at which every knee in Heaven, on earth, and
under the earth bends.
Jesus Christ must be the Head and his Body must be the Church.
Jesus Christ must be the Living Bread come down from Heaven, without
which none comes to Heaven, with which the soul comes to eternal life.
Jesus Christ must be all in all,
For Jesus Christ is God.
Where Jesus Christ is not acknowledged as God,

Where the Body of Christ the Church is not acknowledged as His Bride,
Where the successor of St. Peter is not acknowledged as His Vicar,
There is no faith, no justice, no order;
There satan wields dominion over the lesser creatures rebelling against God;
There sin and death hold sway without any hope of an overthrow of their
tyranny;
There man forfeits all claim to kingship, sonship, and sovereignty, succumb-
ing instead to the everlasting anarchy of the torment of satan.
God is.
Is He recognized by the un, the eu, or the us as sovereign over all?
Is He deferred to by science?
Is He the goal of economics?
Is He honored by false religions separated in any way from the Catholic
Church?
Is He, acknowledged as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the central resident in
every home on earth?
Is He worshipped in spirit and in truth through the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass on every altar in the world by the authentic priesthood of Jesus Christ?
Is He given Honor, Glory, and kingship through Catholic sovereigns, over
Catholic nations, under the Roman Pontiff serving as Vicar of Jesus Christ until
He comes again to judge the living and the dead?
Is He your Lord, your God, your King, now and forever?
Regardless of your answer
God is.
Psalm 84
Lord, Thou hast blessed Thy land; Thou hast turned away the captivity of
Jacob.
Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people: Thou hast covered all their sins.
Thou hast mitigated all Thy anger: Thou hast turned away from the wrath of
Thy indignation.
Convert us, O God our Savior: and turn off Thy anger from us.
Wilt Thou be angry with us forever? Or wilt Thou extend thy wrath from
generation to generation?
Thou wilt turn, O God, and bring us to life: and Thy people shall rejoice in
thee.
Shew us, O Lord, Thy mercy; and grant us Thy salvation.
I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me: for He will speak peace unto
His people.
And unto His saints: and unto them that are converted to the heart.
Surely His salvation is near to them that fear Him: that glory may dwell in
our land.
Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed.
Truth is sprung out of the earth: and justice hath looked down from Heaven.
For the Lord will give goodness: and our earth shall yield her fruit.
Justice shall walk before Him: and shall set his steps in the way.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost! As it was in the
beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
349
Wandering Back from the Desert

Finding our lost Sensus Catholicus
Father ~
Thank you. There are so very many sites and sources available that discuss
“Tradition,” that knowing which ones are best is difficult. If there are any you
would be comfortable suggesting please do so.
On the same subject any direction on how best to re-educate our misled
minds would be helpful. I suppose it is our own “re-education camp” but Catholic
instead of communist.
Question about purity and chastity—the homeschooling group is planning
a Prom for high school aged kids. We have no intention of participating as we
are confident that this is inappropriate for our 10th grader. The question arises,
though, about when it is appropriate. What advice is offered by the church Fa-
thers and saints? I do not even know where to begin looking for the answers. We
can keep following our parental instincts for now but that will not work into their
twenties.
Please keep us in your prayers,

KV November 2005
Several Preludes
6 November 2002: St. Felix of Tunis

Dear A –,
This is actually the second letter I’ve written you from Amsterdam. The first,
penned yesterday, was consumed in flames. While in the midst of working on
the third and last page, I inadvertently allowed the other two to fall into a small
candle on the table where I was writing. What was left of the paper was insuffi-
cient for the task of filling a dust pan, much less being capable of conveying any
meaning to you.
There is a candle at this table, but I’m keeping my eye on it—and the letter
away from it.
At present I am at lunch at a small café called Frenzi. It is a quiet place, so I
assume the Dutch word means something other than the same sounds made in
English. So I hope. It is possible that Frenzi waits ‘til the night to be frenzied. I’ll
not be here long enough to find out.
Amsterdam is experiencing my presence due to the fact that I am too nice
for my own good. This trip is being made at the behest of my older sister, who is
a resident of the city and, as of late last year, a citizen of the Netherlands. She ca-
joled and harangued my father and stepmother, my brother and his wife and son,
and me to make a family visit together. Were I truly the ogre many impugn me to
be, I would have told my sister et al that I wished not to waste the time, money,
or patience such a trip costs. Alas! I, too, fall victim to the temptation to be nice
at any cost. Grinning and bearing it can be offered as a mortification… Can’t it?
Bearing it in part means enduring the Godlessness that is Holland, Europe,
and all the Western world. Really there is no difference between American agnos-
ticism (atheism in practice) and Dutch disbelief (“humanism” being the current
euphemism). What is different here from home (or my unreal and unreasonable
facsimile thereof in Clinton) is that Europeans long ago abandoned any pretence
of faith. The Dutch were early, vocal, and belligerent apostates. They’ve been at
undoing the divine for nigh on a half millennium.
So I don’t like this place.
Don’t get me wrong, though. The people are friendly, the streets clean and
safe, my hotel quaint and charming. They know how to cook, to entertain, and to
build. The one thing they will not do is worship something other than man and
man’s. This is not a pleasant place for a priest.
But as I said, the Dutch really don’t differ from Americans in this. In fact,
the Dutch possess a certain almost-refreshing honesty. They really reject God, and
Wandering Bck from the Desert 351
that is that. Americans cling to an hypocrisy wherein one is not sure which they
believe: their Sunday words or their Monday-through-Saturday actions. One is
not sure, but one has strong suspicions. I know where I stand with the Dutch. I
suspect that Americans in general and my parishioners in particular can not stand,
would not bear the fullness of our faith.
My father is rather Dutch. Obviously not in genealogy, but in ideology. He
and I had a somewhat lengthy conversation last night in a pub not far from
the infamous Amsterdam red light district. Dad listens politely, disagrees, and
then dismisses. He then asks for further clarification of my views with a view
toward incorporating them in a novel he’s writing. Truth for him is not some-
thing to be sought, found, held, and made war over; but a mater for dialogue,
dialogue, dialogue, and then denial. Not denial of the terms of the debate or
of one position instead of another, but of the existence, perceptibility, and
acceptability of truth itself.
That’s my Dad. Imagine a whole nation founded on that notion. You need
not imagine it. You live in it. Some have called the era of Christendom the age of
faith. The enlightenment is misnamed the age of reason. Modernity is lamented
as the age of anxiety. The post-modern world (please ask no one for a definition
of it—there isn’t one) might be “christened” (bad pun, I know) the age of doubt,
or better, the age of confusion.
Wisdom was once the virtue of holding one’s tongue until knowing some-
thing true and truly worth saying. Modern wisdom, such as it is, is the presump-
tion to declare one’s ignorance a universal phenomenon. Not universal in the
sense that one humbly admits to fundamental ignorance in need of knowing; but
one proclaims one’s ignorance as indicative of an ontological reality in man, in-
deed, the universe. It is a laughable pride. Someone admitting his own ignorance
should not have the cheek to presume he is equipped to judge another’s knowl-
edge. It would be folly to allow him to speak. It would be a greater folly to agree
with him. Such is the folly of our time.
But what else would one expect from the ignorant?
It just occurred to me how one might have described the progression (regres-
sion, really) from faith through rationalism through anxiety through confusion.
Ancient man applied capital punishment for both murder and blasphemy. Mod-
ern man executes only for murder. Post-modern humanity aborts the unborn.
Ancient man waged war for God and country. Modern man fought for empire
and/or democracy. Post-modern humanity euthanizes the old and weak. Ancient
man rejoiced in the birth of a son. Modern man labored in the science of med-
icine to reduce infant mortality. Post-modern humanity seeks to reduce human
populations and maximize plant and animal populations. Ancient man believed
in a provident God profoundly concerned with man on earth. Modern man grew
amazed at man’s ability to place man and earth in a cosmic context. Post-modern
humanity thinks man a plague, believes the universe indifferent to him, and wants
to colonize other planets once earth is outgrown.
In short, ancient man discovered man loveable by virtue of a loving God.
Modern man discovered powers in man once attributable only to God.
Post-modern humanity is discovering that without God, impotence and
death reign.
Post-modern humanity has nothing to live for. It has abandoned modern
man’s willingness to embrace causes to die for. And it has rejected ancient man’s
zeal for truth worth killing for. Man without passion is reduced to a lifeless hu-
manity. Man without Christ’s Passion does not merit the name man, for without
God there is no image of the divine, no transcendence, no mind beyond the ani-
mal’s refusal to die but ignorant of why life is lived.
All of this stems from denying absolute truth. Without truth, one can not
know sin. Ignorant of sin, man will not beg mercy and redemption. All that is
left is sin’s wages: death. Truth’s opposite is the lie. Man is in the midst of denying
truth, embracing sin, and demanding death. God gives His Son to be our truth,
to give us Sacramental grace, and to show the way of the Cross, the Tree of Life.
One would look far these days to find many (any?) who believe this. But after all,
Jesus Himself asked, “When the Son of Man returns, will He find any faith upon
the earth?” If the Son of God finds it necessary to have to search for faith, how
much more must my sin-riddled eyes make that search. Pray God that the light
of faith shines in me, in you, in the visible Church on the last day. That day, at
today’s sunset, is yet one day the nearer. Maranatha!
God bless you, (signed) Father Smith
P.S.—One final thought: The Church condemned as mortal sins euthanasia,

suicide, and abortion. Today, apostate mankind would make euthanasia mercy,
suicide an illness, and abortion a human (woman’s) right. Where faith teaches that
murder is always wrong, modernity would have us believe that it is permissible
to murder a sick person, one’s own person, or what society deems a non-person.
All of this murder of real human beings in the name of man, of being humane,
of “advancing” humanity beyond religious “restrictions”. Religious restrictions
which taught life are abandoned in favor of ever more available access to death.
Some progress, huh? LCS.
6 November 2002: St. Felix of Tunis

Dear J –,
Here in the midst of Amsterdam I sit on a barstool within the Balmoral Pub.
I drink a Beamish Stout. Chesterton is the literary fare. Other than my thoughts
and Chesterton’s words, English is not spoken here.
It is perhaps unfair to expect my mother tongue to be available to nurse me
in this foreign land. But I stopped here because the bright sign outside promised
English and Scottish ales, stouts, and lagers. Imagine my surprise when on my en-
tering I saw a dozen-and-a-half oriental faces staring at me in neither English nor
Dutch. Evidently, the Balmoral dining room is available to let for private parties.
The only room in the inn is at the bar.
I never sit at bars. But never is now no more. Was it ever possible for man?
With man, yes; with God, no.
So, by God’s grace I sit at the bar, imbibing Beamish, brooding indoors in
consonance with the North Sea drizzle outdoors. This simply must be of God
because God knows I would not choose such circumstances as these. A good
philosopher would point out that my own free will brought me here: I chose to
take this ill-starred family trip, I chose to take the walk tonight, I chose to take the
turns that took me to the Balmoral.
But I, too, am a philosopher. I am but an efficient cause within God’s prov-
idence. He it is who has arranged the universe for me to be able to participate in
this evening. Without Him, I would be busy not being rather than idly being in
Amsterdam. Final causes trump efficient causes every time. Of such is Judgment
Day made.
This night is doomed to fall short.
One nice thing about the Dutch: they still smoke. When I order my second
pint, I will stoke my pipe and banish the two bartenders’ infernal cigarette fumes.
Pipes have far greater capacity for making a smoke-filled room full than do cancer
sticks. And pipes smell much better.
At times mind-reading would be a handy skill. I wonder what the locals
make of a tall, black, fountain-pen wielding, bright red-and-white argyle sweat-
er-vest wearing, Roman Catholic priest drinking stout and puffing a pipe. In
England, people asked. In Holland, people stare. I’m in a bad mood. I smile
broadly to them.
The world has really changed (for the worse) since Chesterton. Gilbert found
an excuse for delight in the midst of rather drear circumstances. He was a better
man than I, but my world is far worse than his. It’s not so much that there is less
delight, but so much more that is dreary. By the time I get past the drear and am
ready for delight, it’s time for bed.
It probably is my own fault. I should just find a nice cell, pray my Office,
study St. Thomas, celebrate the real Mass, and prepare my soul for the aforemen-
tioned Day of Judgment. My paranoia insists that I am not allowed this because
the cosmos is designed to send me towards odd pubs and away from peace and
quiet. After all, my plan would keep me out of everyone’s way. Obviously the
universe is not constructed to minimize my adverse impact, but to maximize its
capacity to irritate me. The silver lining to my cloudy Day of Judgment is that if
I endure this earthly travail with a modicum of patience, my salvation will have
been wrought not by an heroic sanctity, but by an ironic absurdity.
O.K. It’s time for a new Beamish. At this point the bar has received a half
dozen authentic English speakers. Real English speakers. With accents and ev-
erything. And one of them just bought a cigar. You can do that here. Beamish.
Cigars. Pipes. Life ain’t all bad, I guess.
Aside from our ad nauseam and ad infinitum discussion about the immi-
nent dissolution of the inviolable, indefectible, immemorial Church, my angst
includes the fact that the world and I don’t get along. NewChurch is no Church,
but outside of a Church there is only the salvation of a pipe and a pint, inane
conversation, and traveling from one mass-produced culture to its twin two or
more time zones distant. You can form a rock band. I can only crawl under a rock.
And I bruise so easily.
Chesterton had God, the Mass, and the last hurrah of Empire. We have hu-
manism, fellowship meals, and the internet. This is so not fair. What’s worse is
that I know that where we are isn’t the best place we’ve been. In this ignorance
would have been bliss: unknowing of transubstantiation, one could be impressed
by digital communications; but once one has been given God, what else could
possibly satisfy?
When I get back to the States I have to start making decisions. I can’t keep
on as I have been. (By the way, Iota Unum is not conducive to calm.) Soon, quite
soon, I must decide which of the forks I will take: Novus Ordo and modernity,
with attendant “respectability”; or Tradition and calumny, ignominy, and, quite
probably, infamy.
Cheery thoughts, no?
I can’t be sure, but I bet that the neo-Catholics are ecstatic about the No-
vember election results. I don’t blame them—the alternative would be worse.
Their fault lies in not realizing that the Republican victory is still a victory for the
Revolution. Not not realizing, but not admitting. You heard it here first! Abor-
tion will remain legal, income taxes and property taxes will not be repealed, and
consumerism will be no less in evidence. Were I wrong about this, I would be
convinced that a change had occurred and a celebration would be in order. As it
is, I am in mourning.
You won’t get this letter until I return, so I need not worry that I brought you
down tonight. Anyway, you might have plenty of reason to be down without my
help. At any rate, I am praying, for you, our families and friends, the Church. I
am confident that you’re doing the same. Thanks.
In Christ and Mary, (signed) LCS.
10 November 2002: St. Andrew Avellino

Dear F –,
From amidst the native scents of Amsterdam—monosodium glutamate,
gorgonzola, jalapeno, and the Colonel’s original recipe—I send you greetings!
Few times in your life will you receive letters penned by a Roman Catholic
priest in a protestant country, buffeted by North-Sea rains, dining on northern
Mediterranean cuisine, wielding an authentic ink-well filled fountain pen. I am
nothing if not odd. Nay, a walking, writing contradiction.
No pride do I take in this. The Tin Man wanted a heart, the Scarecrow brains,
the Cowardly Lion—you guessed it!—courage, and Dorothy her home. Father
Smith begs belonging, a communion of faith, yes, a Church. It is my growing
conviction that what Vatican II gave us was not a renewed Church, but a denuded
church. Much of my time in this Godless, or should I say gods-filled, land has
been spent ruminating on this reality.
Sometimes I wish that I were a drunkard. Inebriated oblivion would solve
nothing, but neither would it feel anything. Twenty-four-seven sobriety can be
painful. Even on holiday I am haunted by the ghost of ecclesiologies past.
Four days ago I stumbled into a 19th-century neo-gothic church run by the
Jesuits. It was striking in its ornamentation and untouched by the liturgical revo-
lution—except for the obligatory Cranmer table blighting the sanctuary. But, the
literature in the narthex promised not one, but two Latin Masses each Sunday.
Today is Sunday. I came to Mass.
After a passable schola chanted a prelude, what did I hear? The prayers at the
foot of the altar? No. The asperges beginning an unannounced High Mass? No.
Directions for all to kneel as we prayed the Holy Rosary in preparation for the
Sacrifice? No. Our presider proclaimed welcome to visitors. We were instructed
that Mass would be conducted in Latin…According to the prescriptions of the
Second Vatican Council.
Now, for Jesuits this is pretty impressive. For Dutch Jesuits this is astounding.
So if one must endure the Novus Ordo Missae yet again, this was a less-than-abom-
inable instance. Still, Novus Ordo is protestant, Latin notwithstanding.
These last five days I have written seventy manuscript pages explaining why
protestantism is concomitant with damnation. Catholic Apologetics Internation-
al, the apostolate of Robert Sungenis, has tentatively agreed to run it on their web
page. They might change their minds after they read it. I’m pretty direct. You’ll
see the e-mail version of it before you get this letter, so you can judge for yourself.
But, anyway, I am not particularly pleased with protestantism in any form
at present. It is safe to say that protestantism in any form, most particularly the
Novus Ordo variety, will be the recipient of increasing vitriol from my pen. Protes-
tantism has no redeeming value to it, but much that invites perdition.
This position is not held by my family. The trip to Amsterdam of which I am
now victim is the brain-child (a bastard, really) of my sister, a resident and a citi-
zen of this benighted sovereign state. Big Sis wanted us to get together, reconnect,
and strengthen family bonds.
Mind you, my parents divorced nineteen years ago. My Dad and stepmoth-
er will have been married eighteen years at Thanksgiving. My older brother (my
only sibling not making this trip) speaks to us on average twice a year from his
home in Kansas City. My younger brother, his wife, and their child (but not his
illegitimate son by another woman in Illinois) live in Georgia. And, as I said,
my big sister is now a Dutch citizen (this does, by the way, entail renouncing
American citizenship).
I, on the other hand, live within fifty miles of our home town, my address
is published in an international directory, I am in frequent contact with friends
from my siblings’ childhood, and I practice the Faith given each of us at birth.
Guess who is considered the outsider in our family dynamic?
Early this afternoon I had a tete-a-tete, (that’s Dutch for “come to Jesus”
talk) with my sister. Gently I expressed my sense that our family does not
share a common set of values. I intimated that this state of affairs causes me
discomfort and concern.
My sister, the modernist, explained that my ego is the problem, that the Ro-
man Catholic Church is not intended by God, that we all worship the same God
and should accept one another unreservedly, and that if I love my family I will
embrace them and their beliefs uncritically. I have lived to experience a live ad-
vertisement for apostasy and syncretism! The World Council of Churches has an
unpaid spokesperson on staff in my family.
As happens with my neo-Catholic friends in the clergy, my modernist
family tells me that I am the source of division, that I lack charity (my sister
uses the English “love”—I doubt she knows the Dutch for caritas), and that I
am abandoning them. By wanting to be what we all claim we are, I am on the
infamous trajectory of schism.
Several times my sister insisted that reason and faith are incompatible. She
understands faith as a feeling, and feeling as superior to words. Dogmas and defi-
nitions are mere words, unrelated to the deeper reality of Christ. Jesus did not
come to correct, teach, and to redeem, but to share compassion indiscriminately.
This compassion evidently extends to everyone and everything except the Church
that claims Him as her Founder!
When I pointed out to my sister that her broad-minded, all-inclusive princi-
ple of Christianity required me to reject my own “feelings” on the subject, she de-
clared that our conversation was useless because I was not “open” and had already
made up my mind. Telling her that she and the whole family had already made up
their minds and rejected traditional Roman Catholicism brought the accusation
that I was judgemental and believed Mohammedans and Hindus were all going
to hell. I expressed my fear that I have no idea what will keep my family from hell.
The long and the short of it is that I am pilloried for not changing to please
my family, but they have no qualms or desires referent to changing to please God.
It’s supposed to make me feel better to make them feel better for a few years on
earth, even though I have reasonable fears that their temporarily feeling better
will result in eternal misery. You might also note that no concern is given by my
sensitive, compassionate family to how their son and brother the Roman Catholic
priest feels about all of this.
***MELODRAMA ALERT***
F—, the devil in the form of my sister begged me to forsake the immemorial
Faith. I was pleaded to embrace what they embrace: indifferentism, syncretism,
and apostasy. Satan at least offered Jesus worldly power. My family offered me
nothing except that they would feel better. In the spirit of the age, I ask, “What’s
in it for me?!”
Modernism can not appeal to reason. It destroys faith. And it negates natural
relationships such as filial devotion, patriotism, and the honor of keeping an oath.
Given that NewChurch would have me become a modernist, what in the name
of all that is good and true do I gain from abandoning the Faith of my Fathers?
What makes my sister think that by embracing a self-centered philosophy, I
will pay more attention to her immortal soul than I do now?
Yours in Christ’s peace, (signed) LCS.
Sweeter than Revenge — A Rationale for this Writing
Revenge is mine, and I will repay them, saith the Lord! (Deuteronomy 32:35).
Only fools presume to take to themselves divine prerogatives. Well, so does satan.
Oh, yes, and also sinners. Okay, it happens all the time. But neither the preceding
title nor the succeeding paragraphs should be construed to convict yours truly
of falling into presumption on this particular occasion. Although a catalogue of
grievances will be described herein and a day of satisfaction thereof predicted,
vengeance is far from the meaning or desire informing this effort. Mercy given is
mercy received; may all mine enemies receive through me a superabundance of
what God has granted me so copiously. Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos
dimittimus debitoribus nostris! A fine prayer when prayed in the spirit in which
it was taught; a horrible self-cursing when it is offered but lip service, while like
service to neighbor is denied.
For nearly a half-decade as of this writing, the question has nagged and
gnawed this writer of just why so many, nigh on all, of the adults of the genera-
tions immediately before and immediately after Vatican II succumbed so readily
to the ethos of the modern age and the modernists’ errors. Instantaneous is not
too strong an adjective to describe the reception offered by the clergy and lay
faithful to the concoction brewed by the hierarchy in Rome from 1962-1965,
bringing to fruition within the Church the attempts to subvert the Body of Christ
dating from at least the fourteenth century, through the protestant rebellion, fes-
tering in the erudite ignorance spawned by the age of “enlightenment”, rabidly
descending into the violence of the revolutions yet blighting the modern world,
and exploding in a mass apostasy with the dawn of the twenty-first century. An
historical analysis is sufficient to explain the heavy forces at work for more than
a half-millennium eroding the sensus fidei within the Church, resulting in a daily
onslaught on average Catholics against orthodox doctrine, pious practice, ritual
integrity, economic justice, and political order. That there was scattered resistance
beginning even before the end of the Second Council of the Vatican is the excep-
tion which proves the rule that virtually every Catholic on earth embraced the
departures to the Faith embodied by the “spirit” of Vatican ii. It is not surprising
that some of the faithful and clergy recoiled at the admonitions to walk away from
the Faith of the Fathers of the Church. What still boggles this mind is that there
was not a wholesale series of personal refusals to acknowledge the legitimacy of
such a project; indeed, there was, rather, a general capitulation to that which had
been formally condemned by the Church up to and including the very year in
which the Council began. In other words, we know why so many were weakened
by modernism, but how does any given individual account for his own participa-
tion in the debacle?
Turnabout is fair play, they say. In the interests of equal time, time has been
spent by this writer prior to penning these thoughts thinking about the questions
addressed to those of us born since the Council as to why some of us evince a
“nostalgia” for the bad old days rampant before the Council. None has explained
to my satisfaction the why of my elders’ behavior giving succor to the enemies of
the Church. It would be refreshing and informative if what follows were to result
in a reflection on the part of the generation now becoming septuagenarians of the
part they played in bringing to pass what Pope Paul vi termed an “autodemoli-
tion of the Church”, what Pope John Paul ii described as a “silent apostasy”, and
what Pope Benedict xvi (when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) has lamented as
“the dictatorship of relativism”. Perhaps if the generation of adults now entering
middle age are able to articulate how they have come to insist on the entirety of
the traditions of the Faith, their elders might find the words necessary to make a
rational explanation for how they came to believe that those traditions are entirely
expendable. Besides, it is easier for me to say what is on my mind than for me to
be able to oblige another to make what is on his mind make sense to me.
The Way We Were When We Were In, Not Of, the World
Women used to be able to walk down the streets of New York City. Alone. At
night. Safely. Within living memory! Lest this strike some as a bit farfetched, let
us not forget that there are yet cities on the earth where this is still the case. Cities
are not inherently dangerous. It is a peculiarly modern scourge that “city” is now
synonymous with “savagery”. Not only is this a modern peculiarity, it is a modern
oxymoron, for “city” and “civilization”—that is, “civilized”—are of a piece. It
takes man to order, build, and govern a city. It is beastly to live in environs where
one might be killed, dispossessed of home, and/or starved by one’s own kind. The
city is meant to be a place where man is safe to live, to raise a family, and to pass
on that safety, posterity, and sense of home. And, as well, a city should be a place
with streets on which it is safe to walk.
Men used to be able to provide for their families. At home. Without a job.
Alongside their wives and children. Within living memory! The context for what
is now an otherworldly notion used to be called the family farm. On the farm,
food was grown. A house was built. Clothes were sewn. By the people who ate
them, lived in them, and wore them. Taxes, multinational corporations, and en-
nui did not conspire to destroy this bucolic lifestyle. It is a testimony to the de-
pravity of modernity that the family farm has been abandoned by family farmers
en masse in favor of cities where women can not walk the streets safely. Imagine
how awful modernity must have made the farm in order for the modern city to be
preferable to it. Imagine what modernity must have made of the modern farmer’s
mind for the modern city to be preferable to the family farm. Shudder for a few
moments while contemplating the fact that quite a few of the men who yet labor
on the farm commute to their jobs from cities!
Children used to be able to grow up knowing that Mom was in the kitchen
and Dad was in the fields. And the girls did not mind learning housekeeping
from Mom. And the boys did not mind learning Dad’s trade. And Mom and Dad
expected that their flesh and blood would find nothing extraordinary in such les-
sons. Within living memory! Homeschooling did not always mean that a curric-
ulum concocted by “experts” who never met their victims, I mean, students, was
inflicted on youngsters within their residences instead of behind barred windows
in an institutional setting easily mistaken for a penitentiary. Homeschooling used
to mean that the home was where the best and most important life lessons were
learned: the Faith, how to grow up to be honorable like Mom and Dad, the skills
of socializing with older and younger children, showing respect to elders, and, yes,
abcs. And in those instances where a good case could be made that such lessons
were better assimilated away from home, the locales where it occurred were not
dens of iniquity devoted to undermining the home and the authority of the par-
ents, but to complementing the wisdom already begun to be imparted by the first
and best teachers of children, their Moms and Dads.
Not everyone needs to live in cities. Not everyone needs to live on farms. Not
everyone is able to be homeschooled. Once upon a time, however, a man and his
family were not destroyed, were in fact nurtured, by the circumstances involved
in realizing the combination of God’s will, personal choice, and social norm by
which a man’s life was ordered. Part of the dismay of the people born since the
mid-60s is that life now resembles more a life sentence than the first gift given by
God. Home is a place to escape to be out with friends, out in the world, never
to return when one has grown up. School is literally an armed encampment,
complete with guards, firearms, surveillance cameras, body searches, and doors
and windows secured from the outside! The farm is a wilderness never visited by
tourists who instead frequent zoos for trees, also known as city and national parks.
The city is a jungle about which movies are made with titles such as Escape from
New York. No one should be surprised that two, almost three, generations raised
under these conditions will not desire to stay at home, in school, or near the other
people subjected to such oppression. People given the grace of the Faith might
well demand other, better alternatives.
How has the Church responded to these challenges inflicted by the world? By
closing schools. By closing parishes in rural communities. By opening its colleges
to teachers who instill in their guinea pigs, I mean, students, the mores of a world
that is emphatically urban, decidedly materialistic, and wholly un-Catholic. Prel-
ates of the Church are on record endorsing candidates for public office who are
hostile to support for Catholic education, the definition of the natural family, and
the maintenance of morality in keeping with the Ten Commandments, the Com-
mandments of the Church, and the Two Great Commandments. When children
of the Church ask her for guidance, they are told to find the answers in “dia-
logue” with false religions, in organizations devoted to erecting a society divorced
from reference to the true God and His true Church, and in looking within their
own hearts, which are self-admittedly confused and frightened. Sanctifying grace
seems to be the one remedy unpalatable to the snake oil salesmen prescribing ec-
umenism, academic freedom, and secularism as the cures for what ails the world.
And people wonder why some of us beg to differ?!?
The Family that Stays Together…Does not Exist
Human history has yet to witness the spectacle of the formation of the
b.a.b.i.e.s. Union—Babies Amalgamated to Banish Infant Exploitation Soon.
(Please chortle at that—it took me five minutes to come up with it.) Children are
not banding together demanding that mothers and fathers present countenances
above the cradle every bit as adorable as those within the crib. There are no court
cases, yet, where plaintiffs well under the age of reason are suing their guardians
for alienation of affection committed after being tucked in for the night. Toddlers
are not seeking personal injury lawyers to pursue damages for pain and emotional
suffering due to being laughed at when falling after the first step, being slobbered
over by the puppies who thought they were from the same litter, and being dressed
in Grandma’s idea of cool or hip or cuter than Mildred’s grandkids up the street.
At the same time, thus far mankind has been spared the indignity of moth-
ers and/or fathers placing liens against newborns’ future earnings to compensate
for duress endured for the nine months prior to delivery. There is still no legal
precedent set for empty-nesters to recover expenses, good names, or non-grey
hairs lost during their offspring’s teen years. Grandparents are afforded a certain
satisfaction at what affects their spoiling of their grandchildren will produce on
their children, but something is lacking in the fact that so much time elapses
between youthful infractions and the poetic justice effected when the chicks’
chicks come home to roost. At most, and worst, parents of grown children are
able to sport bumper stickers on their Airstreams declaring, “We’re spending
our children’s inheritance!” To which said children are reduced to two words
in reply: Nursing Home.
There is a modicum of the natural law yet in force, a modicum of natural
affection still present in homes. Children can still be prevailed upon to sign Moth-
ers’ Day cards and ask Dad for an advance on the allowance. Mothers still write
and sign Fathers’ Day cards for their children and offer the only hugs worth hav-
ing this side of Heaven. Even the media pay tribute to these almost indestructible
truths of human nature with tv specials, movies, and sales at the malls occurring
like clockwork. Ma Bell is never so happy as when Ma is made so happy with all
the telephone calls—long distance—she receives on Mothers’ Day.
Don’t get too teary-eyed just yet.
Modern jurisprudence has given credence to creatures known as “wrongful

life” suits. Persons not murdered by their parents litigate against their parents
and/or doctors for not being butchered in utero, during delivery, or after birth.
Somehow courts have discovered that justice does not deny fault being attached
to those who would spare a fellow human being the fate of death. Life is now
defined as the fate worse than death. I hesitate to ask the following question
for fear that some fiend will seek to answer it with action: What would be
proper compensation for an aggrieved party when the end sought but denied
was death, and how can money be considered a fair compensation under such
circumstances?
Parents are not suing ungrateful children for misspent lives. Instead, parents
are suing to have children murdered before they leave the womb so as to afford
the parents the opportunity to further misspend their lives. It may be the case that
the only defense against a wrongful life suit is to ensure that the chip-off-the-old-
block goes to the incinerator before he whines in court for having been taken to
the woodshed once too often. This dynamic begs the question, of course, of how a
child can sue after birth to punish his parents for not killing him, but no recourse
is required to be offered the child murdered before birth who might plead to be
allowed to continue living. Children are granted a right to demand to have been
murdered by their parents, and parents are granted a right to murder their chil-
dren. Just in case any are wondering, such “rights” are never granted, absolutely
denied, and forever called abominations by God.
Should unhappy children come to term, they then must come to terms with
their parents unhappy with being each other’s spouses. Not only must the chil-
dren cope with their parents’ constant bickering. Not only must the children cope
with their parents’ divvying up who gets whom for which holidays. Not only
must the children cope with determining which of their parents is more to blame
for the disaster which has become all of their lives. But the children must also
come to cope with what it means when the Church declares that after twenty-one
years, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were never married, although there were no diriment
impediments, they were married in the church, and had received instruction from
a priest. The Church has done little to come to terms with the dissonance pre-
sented between its former absolute prohibition against divorce, and its current
requirement that civil divorce be procured before an annulment may be pursued.
As well, the Church has not come to terms with the ubiquitous assumption that
annulment is just a fancy Catholic word for divorce.
And do not even get me started about the fact that bishops in this country
stated publicly during the last election cycle that pro-murder presidential candi-
dates may be supported if they also wanted to balance the budget and grant tax
relief, conclude the war in Iraq, and respect the “rights” of sodomites—stances
taken by each of the major political parties’ candidates. When he was Joseph Car-
dinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI opined that such candidates could be licitly
offered Catholic support so long as they were advanced for their opinions not in
opposition to the Faith, rather than for their convictions which held the Faith in
contempt. As if Hitler could be supported for his policy of getting the currency
stabilized as long as he was not endorsed for his desire to find a “final solution”!
Some young adults of the Vietnam era burned buildings, shot people, and
blew up cars in opposition to Nixon’s continuation of Johnson’s prolongation of
the French’s interference in Indochina. Today we are told by no less a personage
than the President of the United States, echoed by his Attorney General, and
parroted by his appointee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court—both (suppos-
edly) Catholics, no less—that child murder is the law of the land, that they will
do nothing to repeal that law, that they will enforce that law. Our bishops utter a
not a peep to decry such a foul policy. The Pope blathers on about “healthy sec-
ularity”. Laws are passed to make peaceful abortion-protesting a federal crime on
par with mob activity, and the college students of the eighties were vilified by their
aging hippy parents for their apathy exhibited during their years in college. Those
same parents, now grandparents, reap huge investment dividends from the stock
market fantasy world created in the nineties, by the people who derided the evil
of the espousal of Gordon Gecko’s creed from the eighties, “Greed is good!” Now
all of these people are profiting from the smoke and mirrors of the “expanding”
economy based on home equity. Morality, politics, and finance are now run by
the minds that brought us this morass.
Happy people do not express their happiness in ways that result in the death
of others. Healthy people do not define happiness as whatever one’s passions dic-
tate. Holy people do not get addicted to drugs, rid themselves of their families,
and elect known fiends to high public office. It is now the case that a man who
staunchly defended sanctity, declared his desire to cooperate fully with the teach-
ings of the Church in ordering society, and recognized Christ as Sovereign King
of the universe and the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven and earth
would stand absolutely no chance of being elected to any statewide or national
office. On the other hand, child murderers, advocates of sodomy, divorced peo-
ple, the greedy, and false religionists may broadcast their errors and win decisive
election victories, not in spite of, but because of their hellish philosophies, habits,
and gods. Are we to believe that no one is to take exception to this wretched, obscene,
unspeakably offensive status quo?!?
Partial, Passive, and Stupefied Apathy
Mass attendance is at an all-time low, hovering in the single-digit percentages

among Catholics in various large cities around the world. Catholics are not going
to confession in droves. Outright denial of the sanctity of the marriage bond and
its primary purpose of raising up children for the glory of God—taking the forms
of fornication, cohabitation, contraception, adultery, and divorce—among Cath-
olics, mirrors that of pagans, Jews, and protestants, with some protestants and
Jews showing more respect for the institution than some Catholics. Convents,
monasteries, novitiates, seminaries, and rectories were emptied in the 1970s and
1980s almost as quickly as divorce courts wrecked families. Many of the few per-
sons who present themselves for preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Matrimo-
ny have not been Confirmed. Perhaps millions of souls avail themselves of regular
“healing” and “anointing” Masses, but precious few priests make themselves avail-
able to attend the dying with the Last Sacraments of Confession and Viaticum
immediately prior to the death of a Catholic. Baptisms, however, continue at a
brisk pace, albeit without the full exorcisms and ceremonies of the ancient rite.
Did everyone who went to Mass in the old days hate it? Was Jansenism the
only motivation that Catholics found for seeking God’s mercy? Is “serial monog-
amy” really preferable to “till death do we part”? Perhaps it was the case that such
singularly unhappy professed men and women Religious and secular priests were
responsible for the hundreds of millions of lay faithful growing up to despise the
entirety of the patrimony taught them by such malcontents? Is Confirmation a
hard concept or merely a concept not adequately considered, engaged, and uti-
lized by the bishops bestowing the Sacrament? What is so odious about the idea of
being prayed for, prayed over, before death, and thereby being prayed into Heaven
by the power of a Sacrament? Is it superstitious, outdated, or triumphalistic to
perform “an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to impart grace”?
If we are to assume as correct the estimation of the adults of the gener-
ations immediately before and after Vatican ii that the ways of the Church
needed wholesale jettisoning, it does not follow that they are the best judges
of what should replace what was jettisoned. They were by their own reckoning
the victims of a systemic malady imposing guilt, unjustly deriding their fellows,
and warping the Word of God. Acknowledging that the perpetrators of such
a heinous set of offenses stand in profound need of correction, does it not
also follow that their followers may well know what is wrong, but be utterly
unequipped to define what is right?
Of course, such a supposition accounts for the penchant of those folks look-
ing to protestants, secularists, and even atheists for a cure. But what are protes-
tants if not disaffected Catholics from an earlier era, secularists but timid men
unwilling to make statements of faith in aught but material gain, and atheists but
the antithesis of Catholics, making absolute claims no more provable nor certain
of assuring happiness than anything proclaimed by any Saint or Pope or Council?
If the one Church is not right, why is belief in the one God right? If many churches
can be right, why can not the many gods of the pagans be right? If the many gods
of the pagans are right, why may I not worship a god whom none but I recognize
and call good that which all but I recognize as bad?
There are explicit statements from various quarters of the magisterium, up
to and including Popes John Paul ii and Benedict xvi, asserting the rights of
the secular to remain secular, of the Jews to remain Jews, of the protestants to
remain protestant, and the schismatic eastern churches to remain in schism.
How is it, then, that a Catholic faithful to immemorial Catholic tradition is
to be taken to task for remaining Catholic? Talmudic Judaism, masonic secu-
larism, and heterodox Christianity need not change at all, but Catholics must
change all?!? This is not merely unfair, this is absurd! Beyond its absurdity lies
an utter unnecessity: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,
and so is His Body, the Catholic Church! None who clings to Christ needs
to repent his beliefs, to apologize for his beliefs, or to change his beliefs. The
obedience demanded of the Catholic is permanent, therefore, the Church to
which he offers his obedience must be permanent in her teaching, in her prac-
tices, and in her rituals!
The Lion Lies Down with the Lamb
There will be no protests, no sit-ins, no catchy sophomoric slogans. The rul-

ing elite need fear no purges, no pogroms, no re-education centers after they are
deposed, for none among their loyal sons will depose them. It might prove nec-
essary to declare a few anathemas, define some as excommunicant, and condemn

certain heresies and heterodoxies, but before any of that occurs, in keeping with
genuine Catholic tradition there will be opportunity for explanation, retraction,
and repentance. In all likelihood, before anything of the sort is to happen, not
a few will find themselves posing silent opposition to wayward hierarchs while
destitute on the street, behind bars, or even on death row. Perish the thought, but
it is not unthinkable, that some faithful children of Holy Mother Church might
find themselves in such straits on the word of the very shepherds given them by
Christ to guard them from the wolves.
It is true that the period from two centuries or so before the Council
until now has been one of unparalleled material increase around the world.
Also true is the fact that in countries once considered thoroughly protes-
tant, Catholics now can confidently aspire to lead in finance, politics, and
entertainment. This rush by Catholics to seek acceptance by the prevailing
non-Catholic powers in the world ignores the words of Jesus, “What doth
it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his very soul?” A desire
to bring a Catholic influence into the workings of the world is self-defeat-
ing if success is bought at the price of Catholics being admitted to the
halls of power only on the condition that they never mention the Faith,
the immutable laws of God, and the necessity of all men to be Catholic
if they are to be saved. Catholics attempting to influence the world while
downplaying Catholicism are so many noisy gongs, fruitless trees, and lights
under bushel baskets.
The era of Christendom was a period in which the Church offered the
world a coherent order that protected the family, nurtured the Faith, and
glorified God. Since the protestant revolt, the world has inflicted on the
Church, with the appalling cooperation of some members of the Body of
Christ, an environment where murder is encouraged, abominations are de-
fended in law, the family is ridiculed, the Faith is attacked, and God Himself
is denied. Any imperfections present during Christendom, and heaven knows
there were many, could be identified, critiqued, and corrected by an objective
measure in keeping with an existent ideal. Modernity champions the rule of
personal whim and preference, claiming that no absolute measure of right
and wrong exists, and then proceeds to assail the faithful for committing the
unforgivable sin of pursuing perfection. Christendom can be taken to task
for frequently failing its ideal, although innumerable saints stand as witness
to the fact that perfection is attainable. It is not possible for modernity to

point to the perfect modern, for there is no ideal for which to strive, no
measure by which the masses can imitate the successful few, no highest good
that stands in judgement of evil or as the goal of lesser goods.
At some point it will become clear that some Catholics will not partici-
pate in denuded worship, false ecumenism, Americanism, masonry, immorality,
usury, or the “spirit” of Vatican ii—not refraining from some of those things
or many of those things or most of those things, but refusing every single one
of them without exception and in their entirety. Modernism would suggest that
some kind of generation gap is operative, but years have nothing to do with
this. Some folks old, some folks young, some folks in between, and all of them
children of the Kingdom of Heaven, will adhere to that which Catholics every-
where at all times and in toto have believed since Jesus breathed the Holy Ghost
upon the Apostles and the Blessed Mother in the Upper Room. Look not for
revolution, but for return, a return to what the Church has always been, has
always believed, has always taught. Fear not that the return will be a return to
the violence and fears of the revolution, but instead look for a renewal of the
ancient messages, “Noli timere!” and “Laudate Dominum!” and “Jubilate Deo,
omnis terra!” and “Pax vobiscum!” and “Gloria in excelsis Deo!” proclaimed by
Prophets, sung by Angels, and assured by God Himself.
If indeed the Vatican ii generation had reason to be displeased with their
forebears, then far more have the succeeding generations since the Council
cause to express dissatisfaction with the ruined patrimony offered them as
an excuse for the one, true Faith of Jesus Christ in His Church. Rather than
following the lead of the post-Vatican ii generation and running the risk of
furthering their faults, the Church at large must put in practice once again
the tools guaranteed by God to foster the faith: prayer, mortification, and the
Sacraments. To very loosely paraphrase G.K. Chesterton—Catholics before the
Council had not tried prayer, mortification, and the Sacraments in keeping
with immemorial tradition and found them wanting, but Catholics before and
since the Council have abandoned tradition and left themselves in want of the
sanctifying grace available only in prayer, mortification, and the Sacraments.
The Church does not need a new generation of young turks to come along
and disrupt the status quo. What the Church needs is the constancy of every
generation to desire, defend, and disseminate the Truth to all nations, Baptizing
them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. What
worked on a Sunday almost two-thousand years ago and every day since then
will continue to work until the end of time when dawns the endless Day of
the Kingdom of Heaven.
Father Smith.
29 September 2005
St. Michael the Archangel
Conjugal Fidelity
Against ecumenism
Thy twin I heard give voice to pretty things

much as art thou so often wont to do,
but more akin they were to cobra stings
than sweetness sipped by none ‘til thee I knew.
There is a double of the wonder shown
upon thy face within the gilded morn,
yet like the weeds where roses once were grown
is dawn beside the beauty thou hast borne.
Should any fiend or ever cad presume
to lay a hand on thee and thus decide
himself to be a not unworthy groom,
I soon will prove his fault a suicide.
In love the fool can not be fooled, nor I
mistake eternal Truth for satan’s lie.
Father Smith
28 September 2005
St. Wenceslaus
A Matter of Dialogue
Those who are led by the Holy Ghost have true ideas; that is why so many ignorant
people are wiser than the learned. The Holy Ghost is light and strength. When we are
led by a God of strength and light, we cannot go astray.
To the man who gives himself up to the Holy Ghost, there seems to be no world; to
the world there is no God.
O Jesus! To know Thee is to love Thee! Did we but know how our Lord loves us,
we should die of joy!—St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
DePaul University used to employ an Australian soccer coach. In addition

to his duties on the field, this Aussie also taught a course titled, “Theories and
Techniques of Coaching”. I took that course during my junior year to satisfy the
physical education requirement of my degree.
Many priests from Ireland have provided sacramental ministry in the United
States. More than a decade ago a diocese in one of the southern states sponsored a
seminarian from Ireland to study for the priesthood in order to serve in America
after ordination. That man attended seminary with me, being ordained a year or
two before me.
For several years my home diocese employed a religious sister in the religious
education office, charging her with the task of overseeing parish efforts in adult
education. This sister grew up in England. She and I met while I worked in the
same office cataloging the electronic media owned by the continuing education
department of the diocese.
The untutored ear hearing the speech of an Australian, an Irishman, and an
Englishwoman frequently falls into the error of labeling all of the sounds as “Brit-
ish accents”. I have heard the same mistake in reference to persons from South
Africa as well. In fact, I must confess that at times all of those accents sound alike
to me, too. Given that each of the locales producing those accents was once part
of the British Empire, it is not odd that there are similarities in the way they speak
English. However, to say that Australians, Irish, and English share a common
British imperial heritage is far, far different from saying that they are the same
thing. Only someone utterly unfamiliar with their distinct qualities could pos-
sibly mistake any one of those accents for any other of them. No real Brit could
ever commit such a heinous error as thinking the mother tongue is the same on
the Emerald Isle as it is Down Under or in Merrie Olde England.
Long before familiarity breeds contempt it brings recognition. To recognize

something is to know it. When something is intimately known, it can be loved.
Contempt comes not from close proximity, but from taking for granted a knowl-
edge which is neither thorough nor fully possessed. To truly know something, to
really grasp it, to be perfectly familiar with it is to participate in the divine act of
loving one’s own, what belongs to one by right of ownership, through a mutual
sharing, or from the grace of receiving a gift.
Love of what is owned, shared, or given and received leads to a greater knowl-
edge of the beloved. That increase of knowledge will result in a concomitant mag-
nification of love, flowering in further knowledge, gaining yet more knowledge
of love in the beloved ad infinitum. Familiarity is the basis of boundless love and
knowledge of the beloved. And when something is loved it is loved for what it is,
not for what it is not. Thus, true love depends upon being familiar with what the
beloved is, and on knowing well what it is not.
So, when one is familiar with English, when one knows the varieties of ac-
cents with which it is spoken, one comes to a deeper love of the language expressed
in countless inflections, innumerable variations, a myriad of dialects. The more
there is to know the more there is to love. Professor Higgins from G.B. Shaw’s
Pygmalion, made yet more famous by the musical My Fair Lady, forgot knowledge
and love and fell into contempt by taking for granted that he had heard all that
English accents had to say to him. His life completely changed—for the better—
when he discovered how contemptible was his prideful erudition and how attrac-
tive the fiery humility of Eliza Doolittle. In short order, their unfamiliar linguistic
worlds collided, but contempt gave way to a common language based on a mutual
understanding of the intimacy that grows when the unknown at last is known.
That intimate knowledge allows its possessors to live together happily ever after.
Faith is a language. Faith is a gift. Faith is an action. It is a common tongue
which can bear a plethora of accents. It requires a sensitive ear to detect the subtle
distinctions between various voices. It demands an innate capacity wed to diligent
study. Faith only makes sense when it is understood as a communication, not
of knowledge, but of love, yet a love that rejoices in knowing ever more how to
communicate love to the beloved. The fundamental communication of love is the
mutual desire to live happily ever after together—forever.
But one Word is adequate to convey this loving communication. Only one
Mouth has ever uttered that Word. There is only one Voice with the power to
sound that Word spoken by that Mouth. Jesus Christ is the Logos, the Word. His
Father for all eternity has savored the meaning of the Word. In the Holy Ghost
the Truth of the Word is articulated by His Father perfectly, fully, ceaselessly. Love
is the Word spoken. Love is why the Word is spoken. Love is the Motivation of
the speech, the Content of the utterance, and the Sound of the voice.
Faith is the conviction given by God, the grace given by God, the commu-
nication given by God that the love of the Most Blessed Trinity is meant to be
shared by the creatures made in the divine image and likeness. That love is intend-
ed to be returned to God in kind and to be shared among His creatures. Faith is
the evidence of the truth of the extraordinary hope given to man that he may live
with God in beatitude forever. Faith is the substance within the human heart by
which the invisible God is perceived, in which the divine Mystery is made known,
for which God became man for the salvation of sinners. It is the gift of faith with
which God declares to man, “I love you!”
Through the gift of faith, man is able to respond to God’s sublime ques-
tion, “Do you believe me?” God does not so much ask if man believes in Him,
although that sentiment is indeed implied by the question. Still less is God inter-
ested in how much man knows about God, for although greater knowledge can
lead to a closer relationship with God, human knowledge is ever inadequate to
the comprehension of the divine totality, and man’s mind is not sufficient either
to express human being or to encompass the fullness of the divine. God’s gift of
faith to man is the divine declaration of God to man, “I love you!” That same gift
results in man’s ability to respond to God’s question, “Do you believe me?” with a
resounding “Yes! I love you, too!”
Without the grace of faith, man is incapable of making a response of “Yes!”
to God. Instead, man will direct his love away from the Creator toward creatures,
seeking not the one true God, but pursuing countless false gods. The false god
allah does not love man enough to be a man. The false gods of nature do not love
man enough to preserve man from eternal death. The false god almighty dollar
does not love man enough to bring order, direction, and reason to bear on the
conduct of life on earth. The false gods of science do not love man enough to
teach certain knowledge of human being or comprehension of divine being to the
soul engaged in the act of learning. The false gods that deny Jesus Christ, the one
true God, do not love man enough to tell him the full truth about the Creator’s
love for His creation and His incredible love for man himself, a love willing to
die for the beloved. Lacking faith in the loving God, man is reduced to a hopeless
state surrounded by uncreated creatures, insatiable appetites, irrational philoso-
phy, ultimate purposelessness, and unredeemed oblivion. Faithless man is alone

in cold space, alone in his interactions with his fellow man, and alone in absolute
separation from God now and forever.
With the grace of faith, man is given someone to talk to, something to say,
and the power of speech. Faith brings about the communion of the divine with
the human. Through that communion, each man is given the means to union
with all men. Another way of saying this is that faith is the condition by which
love of God is known by man, the love of God dwells within the hearts of men,
and the love of God is shared by each man with all men. Set above the mute
beasts, the man of faith can say who he is, how he is to live, and the purpose for
which he exists. Faith teaches each man and all men what it means to be created in
the image and likeness of God, how that creation is to be repaired, then preserved,
and the eternal love sustaining that effort in time unto a perfection known only
outside of time. Faith is the revelation, experience, and expression of love: God
tells man He loves him, man thus knows God’s love, and God receives back from
man the love He gave man in the beginning.
As with every language, faith is learned best by immersion and in childhood.
Accent, colloquialisms, and humor can be neither taught nor learned. They are
received in and make sense only in context. Nuance and subtlety can not be re-
duced to ink on paper, inflection and drawl do not translate into theories, facial
expression and hand gestures find no substitutes or explanations in a thesaurus or
dictionary. It is true that describing just what all of this is is impossible. The native
speaker of a language nonetheless immediately knows an imposter, a technician,
a foreigner when he hears one.
Catholics embracing the traditions of the Faith must not make the horridly
protestant mistake of thinking that fidelity finds its ultimate authority in a doc-
ument, that orthodoxy can be divorced from ancient and constant usage, and/or
that understanding sanctity depends more on expert testimony than on the actual
experience of saints living in a state of grace. Catholic Faith is not just who speaks.
Catholic Faith is not just what is said. Catholic Faith is not the babble common
to pagans as well as to atheists. Catholic Faith is the Living God, living in the
Mystical Body, alive with members living true to the example of Christ crucified.
Catholic Faith is the Word of God given to the Church of God, teaching Him to
the creatures of God with authority and power stemming from the perfect and
unchanging truth of the Word. Catholic Faith is the immutable Truth of God alive
in time. Catholic Faith is the discourse between Heaven and earth, the exchange
shared by eternity with time, the common life in the Holy Spirit uniting the sons
of God through the Son of God with God the Father.
Deprogramming from the Cult of Man

The sun never hides his light for fear of inconveniencing the owls.
My child, we must not be afraid of doing good, even if it costs us something.
If you are afraid of other people’s opinion, you should not have become a Chris-
tian.—St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Anyone seeking a Catholic “re-education camp” need not look very far. It
can be found in Nazareth. It is frequented by the likes of Saints Basil, Macri-
na, and Peter of Sebaste; Saints Benedict and Scholastica; St. Bernard and his
beloved Blessed Humbeline; St. Thérèse and the other Martins of Lisieux; and
Saints Peter and Andrew, Sts, James and John, and Saints Simon, Thaddeus,
and James. It is nestled on Elm Street, on Main Street, on the street where
you live. In a word, Catholic reeducation—deprogramming from the cult of
man—occurs in the family.
Much like, in fact, exactly as we learn language from our parents and older
siblings, we learn the grammar and syntax of the Faith in the home. Our first
home is, of course, the house of God of prayer, the Church, reflecting the
many mansions of our Father’s House in Heaven. This primary Home of the
faithful gives form to the houses in which the faithful make their homes on
earth. At our mothers’ knees on Main Streets we learn to speak lovingly with
the voice of angels as heard from Our Mother living at the end of the Via
Della Conciliazione in Rome. Our mothers speak our Mother’s tongue, and we
learn in the homes of our fathers the Faith of the Fathers. Mother Church is
at home in the domestic church; our fathers’ homes on earth are the thresholds
of our Father’s house in Heaven.
Go home!
Orphans of Adam and Eve, in but not of the world, are adrift and hopeless
when charity grows cold in their hearts and the light of faith is dimmed by sin
gnawing their souls. It is only when the entirety of the ways of the world, the
flesh, and the devil are abandoned utterly that those orphans find true sonship
in Christ within the bosom of Holy Mother Church in service to God the
Father. Faith is a family affair. Families belong in the home. The home is where
the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts dwell, where God’s will is perfectly obeyed,
where charity is above all, hope encourages all, and faith in Christ is all in all
hearts, souls, minds, and bodies.
The Catholic family must engage the larger society around them as a
context, not as a goal. Society exists for and from families, not families for
and from societies. The first society, in time and in primacy, is the family. The
family is the society par excellence, chosen by God to be the context for His
Incarnation, the image expressed by His Church, and the revelation of His
glory in Heaven. The perfect society is that where a father reigns, a mother’s
heart loves, and children obey. The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
embodies this perfection. Christendom of Holy Mother Church beneath the
Holy Father the Pope with faithful sons obediently ruling the state presents
this ideal to the world. God the Father, the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother
of God the Son, and the saints of God live as a family society in the unsullied
peace in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Within the family, then, is learned the speech of the Faith known as the sensus
Catholicus. The sense of the Catholic—that which faithful subjects perceive and
the power of the faithful to perceive what is authentically of God—is not first a
matter of study, but observation. The Bride of Christ contemplates her Groom.
The children of the Church imitate their Mother Mary in imitating Christ. Fam-
ilies look to the saints beneath their Queen to see how the will of God is to be
expressed. Mothers and fathers express God’s will to their children by example in
action so that the Word of God is lived not only as a vague desire or empty speech,
but as acts bearing eternal significance. Baby’s first catechism is not a published
text, but a living witness.
This experience of the family in small is identical to the experience of the
Body of Christ the Church at large. Before the words of the Gospel were written
down, the Word who is the Gospel came down from Heaven and became flesh.
Ere Apostle or martyr gave testimony to the Cross of Calvary, Calvary was given
in spirit and truth on Maundy Thursday at the First Mass, the Last Supper. The
Empty Tomb was seen first, then recorded; the Lord ascended as a model to be
repeated, not as a story to be deconstructed; and the Holy Ghost descended in
tongues of fire; enflaming tongues to exhort men to live the Gospel, not to pay
lip service to the Gospel or to render it a dead letter in ink on paper couched in
legalese. The Word became flesh, not print, and those who believe the Word dis-
dain the deadly letter of the law in favor of the living Spirit who writes on hearts,
enkindles love, and dwells in earthly temples destined for Heaven.
Advent and Lent are central to doing justice to the ways of God, the Way of
Christ. They are those times of penance when the faithful shed yet more of the
world—permanently—in order to more purely put on the new man, Jesus Christ.
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Faithfulness begins by shunning
the world, the flesh, and the devil for fear of losing the Lord. Advent and Lent
provide regular, extended, and focused opportunities to examine one’s life, to
discard what offends God, and to seek greater fidelity by atoning one’s sins, aiding
one’s neighbors, and serving God above all in charity.
Perfect charity casts out all fear. Hence, as the world, the flesh, and the devil
are increasingly rejected, there is an increase in confidence that God loves us more
than satan can hate us. Love is sufficient not only to overcome the world with
and in Christ, but to please God by cooperation with His grace. What is more,
through that cooperation with grace which separates man from slavery to sin and
satan, there is made a real union between God and man in divine charity.
In that divine charity, each man loving God above all things recognizes the
joy and beauty of obeying the law of love for his fellow man. The first locus of
obedience to the divine commandment of charity for neighbor is for the neigh-
bors in the family: husband, wife, and children. Wisdom begins with fear of the
Lord. Fear finds its end in charity. Charity begins in the home. If men are to fear
the Lord, love the Lord, and have charity for their neighbors, then their efforts
must begin in their homes on earth, with the hope of Heaven as their motivation,
sustenance, and end for every thought, word, and deed.
Before the Hebrews came to the Promised Land, they wandered forty years
in the desert. Jesus spent forty days in the desert in anticipation of His public
ministry, consummated on the Cross. Catholics spend four weeks in darkness
deepening before the dawn of Christ at Christmas, and forty days of fasting be-
fore the Lamb who was slain brings the eternal Feast of Himself to man through
Calvary at Easter. Noah’s forty-day ordeal, Moses’ twice-forty-day vigil, and the
forty hours of Christ in the tomb are all types of the Church, the Body of Christ,
fulfilling that wanted in Christ’s Cross on Good Friday: the full participation of
heart, soul, mind, and strength of each man in the obedience to God the Father
wrought by God the Son on Golgotha, and rendered in spirit and truth through
the worship offered by the sons of God in Holy Mother Church.
Two-year-olds do not improve their vocabulary by conversations with other
toddlers. Babbling infant gibberish can neither be the goal of the baby nor a
source of permanent satisfaction for his parents. Proper to the state of childhood
and to the task of childrearing by adults is the effort of guiding the child in put-
ting aside the things of childhood in order to embrace the fullness of manhood.
Children must have exposure to and interaction with their elders in order to reach
a healthy maturity. Grownups must strive to draw the child out of immaturity to-
ward full stature, lest the charm of childhood degrade into an endless adolescence.
Analogous to the forty days riding out the flood by Noah, the forty years the
Israelites spent in the desert, and the forty days of temptation endured by Our
Lord, is the period of maturation experienced by the growing child. That which is
inadequate or in error is rejected. The insufficiencies of peers are recognized and
a better way is embraced. Preparation is made for a task of profoundly different
kind and extraordinarily greater degree. All men, the chosen people, and the Son
of Man serve in due measure to demonstrate to each person the will of God apart
from self-will; the election which constitutes God’s vocation offered to the faith-
ful; and the concord of heart, soul, mind, and strength between the Father and
His obedient Only-Begotten Son and the sons obedient in the Father’s adoption.
Furthermore, the Church offers twice each year an opportunity for her faith-
ful sons to go out from the world like Noah, to heed the call of God like Moses,
and to offer an acceptable holocaust to the Lord as Jesus. Advent and Lent rep-
resent times of growth for the children of God in imitation of their elders who
have gone before them. The penitential seasons are a casting aside of the filth of
the world as Noah faithfully accomplished, like the infant must come to discard
his diapers. They are an acknowledgment that God desires more and other from
man than man can hope to attain on his own, as Moses convinced the reluctant
Hebrews to believe, like the boy who realizes that his father offers more by way of
life’s lessons than his playmates can conceive. Violet is the color donned by both
kings and penitents: Christ the King performing perfect penance for His subjects;
growing children enduring discipline as they set about acquiring skills and knowl-
edge that will serve them in the day of their coming of age and inheritance; and
the mourning mortification of the flock of Christ as they are prepared to receive
their Shepherd and to reign with their King.
All of this growth takes place in the context of the family. This peculiar family
is in but not of the world, called to go forth from it and to bear glad tidings to it.
Within this family the junior members contemplate and imitate the example of
their elders in obedience to the image they receive from their Father taught them
by their Mother. These children of this family seek to jettison the deadly habits of
their fellows outside of the family, while begging further communion for them-
selves and their fellows with the family members who have reached the fullness of
maturity. Each member of this family heeds the head of the family, hearkens to
His Word, and faithfully repeats Him in perfect harmony with the Spirit in which
the Word is communicated by the Head. Nothing is desired or grasped which is
not in consonance with the family’s way of life, mode of speech, and understand-
ing of itself. Everyone in the family believes that everyone of the family must look,
sound, and act according to the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness whose very being is
at home in the Head of the family whence all else proceeds.
In Plain Language, Please

Jesus Christ was not afraid of being laughed at.
Whenever God has revealed His will for man it has been in the context of a
society. Eden provides the first example of this, where God’s first commandment
to His creatures made in His image and likeness, “Be fruitful and multiply!” is giv-
en after He has declared that, “It is not good for man to be alone.” After the Fall,
Noah is saved with his family, Abraham is offered a great people as the fruit of his
fidelity, Moses leads that people in receiving God’s Covenant, David is the king
of that people wherein the Covenant will reach perfection, and that perfection
is the Incarnation of God, Christ the King, within the Holy Family with Mary
and Joseph at Bethlehem, the King’s city, and Nazareth, the prophesied home of
the Messiah of God. It is not good for man to be alone, and the men faithful to
God discover that they are never abandoned in doing God’s will. God wills that
ultimate fidelity depends on him dwelling with His people, taking on flesh to
share all with them, and exchanging life for life—giving immortality to mortality.
Perfect fidelity to the will of God is best expressed in the communion given the
name Emmanuel, God-with-Us. It is not good for man to be alone without his
family or without his fellow man or without his God. Jesus Christ comes into the
world truly God and truly man among men, within a family, to form a family, a
holy people, a peculiar nation, a people set apart as inheritors of the Kingdom of
Heaven and the house of God.
“My Father’s house,” as Jesus puts it, “is a house of prayer”. It can be under-
stood also in reference to the eternal dwelling place of God in Heaven. And, too,
it can be interpreted by extension to mean the royal family of God, more ancient
than the pharaohs, infinitely more powerful than the Carolingians, of unutterably
greater nobility than Plantagenet, Romanov, or Hapsburg. God has formed a

family for Himself not of foundlings, nor of bastards, nor of stepchildren. The
children of God beneath the Son of God are heirs in Christ and heirs with Christ,
younger brothers and sisters of the King, princes and princesses of the Kingdom
of Heaven. God’s children are full members of His family, full relations through
His Spirit and water, sharing with Jesus Christ God as Father and Mary as Mother.
Royal families are sacred, the king receiving crown and anointing from the
Church. To be sacred is to be lifted above and away from the mundane. Rule is
weightier than service, for the ruler below God must not only govern his subjects,
but is himself subject to God’s rule. Nobles in God’s royal family must learn not
only the rule of inferiors and dependents, but also self-rule. Indeed, ungovernable
is the people ruled by the man who can not govern himself. The first task of the
faithful in attaining reign in the Kingdom of Heaven is to do what neither satan
nor faithless sinners do, namely, serve.
Jesus shows this by his example in his divine infancy, his obedience through
his minority, and his self-abnegation on the cross. The deeds of Christ are echoed
in the words of Christ: If you would be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven you must
deny yourself and serve the least; he who humbles himself will be exalted; the Son of
Man came not to be served but to serve. This theme of service informs the prayers
addressed by the Son to the Father: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done; Not my
will, Father, but Thy will be done; Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!
The Catholic echoes this service through his willingness to submit to the di-
vinely ordained rule of the parents in the home. He manifests obedient humility
by voluntary acts of mortification encouraged by the Church originating in the
penitential seasons of Advent and Lent and renewed on a daily basis throughout
the year. Each Catholic learns the life common to all Catholics through denying
self, dying to self, and dedicating self to the Cross as the Tree of Life whose fruit
is the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.
This means, then, that the Catholic on his way to sanctity disavows the God-
less ways of the world. The Cross renders one dead to self, dead to the world, and
alive in Christ Jesus. He who has tasted the Bread of Life finds no savor in the
banquets of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Fasting from the false feasts of
mammon leaves one hungry for the real Food and real Drink of Christ’s Body and
Blood. The poverty of the Kingdom of Heaven reduces the riches of the nations to
rags. There is no room in the human mouth for gluttony where the human heart
has an insatiable desire for grace. No satisfaction is had in pursuing appetites,
fashion, and passions; but overabundance of wealth is possessed by those whose

desire for glory is fulfilled in Christ’s Passion. As the saying goes, no less true for
being old: to have everything in the world without Christ is to have nothing; to
have nothing in the world but Christ is to have everything.
The progression of acquiring an authentic sensus Catholicus begins with
the renunciation in toto of the world, the flesh, the devil, and one’s very
self. It continues with the cultivation within the family at home of those
habits conducive to a life of sacrifice, service, and sanctity. At its height the
sensus Catholicus leads the faithful soul in a fervent zeal to avoid evil, to do
good, and to lay down one’s life for love of enemy, for love of friend, and
for love of God. Anything not in keeping with this ultimate goal of self-im-
molation for, with, and in Christ is utterly rejected. All of life is directed by
the Catholic sense of what is holy, simple, and charitable. Sensus Catholicus
will be uninterested in the curiosities presented by fashion, it will be repulsed
by the suggestion that anything is preferable to the will of God, and blank
mystification is the response sensus Catholicus offers when worldly wisdom
is proffered as sufficient for understanding the world. Where the true sensus
Catholicus is cultivated the human person increasingly seeks mortification, re-
joices in the opportunity to aid a fellow in need, and is indifferent to either
material dearth or wealth so long as spiritual good is received through prayer,
the Sacraments, and charity above all.
St. Paul admonishes, “‘Go out from among them and be ye separate,’ saith
the Lord, ‘and touch not the unclean thing. And I will receive you. And I will be
a Father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord almighty’”
(2 Corinthians 6:17-18 referencing Isaias 52:11 and Jeremias 31:9). The sensus
Catholicus motivates the faithful to go out, to be set apart, to be a holy nation
separate from the people insistent on walking in the darkness of the ways of the
world. This going out can be understood on several levels. It is the physical going
out necessitated by the avoidance of occasions of sin. There is the social going out
wherein families seek others who are seeking sanctity as their basis and forum for
recreation, culture, and trade. Most profoundly is the spiritual going out whereby
the children of the Church hunger for the Sacraments rather than for the allure
of the world, nourish sanctifying grace within their souls instead of feeding the
appetites of the flesh, and obey the commandments of Christ leading to the hu-
mility of the Cross rather than succumbing to the tyranny of satan which brings
nothing but shame disguised as glory.
Sensus Catholicus is the living expression of the will intent upon the beatitude,
“Beati mundo corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt!” Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God! It is the faculty by which the profane is recognized and
rejected, the sacred is acknowledged and accepted, and the desire for God and
His will manifested in the Cross becomes the single measure by which thoughts,
words, and deeds are deemed of worth by the faithful soul. The communion of
saints shares the sensus Catholicus as the common sense of Catholics, judging right
from wrong, willing always the good, and doing all for charity toward neighbor
solely for the sake of God. Such common sense for the Catholic flows from the
grace of faith received in Baptism by which the faithful participate in the Cross
of Christ consummated in the Mass in Holy Communion. Faith enlightens the
mind, then, so that learning reinforces the supernatural powers inherent in the
soul within the state of grace. This is the language of the Kingdom of Heaven,
communicating charity through the Cross of Calvary between the Persons of the
Blessed Trinity and the persons redeemed by the will of the Father through the
Passion of the Son in the power of the Holy Ghost. The sensus Catholicus knows
that the will of the Father is the absolute law of the universe, that only the Son
has perfectly obeyed that will, and that the Holy Ghost brings adopted sons to the
Father through the Son so that they can obey, be redeemed, and share in the reign
of Christ Jesus to the glory of God the Father.
The Syntax of Sanctity

The saints never complained.
The saints were so completely dead to themselves that they cared very little whether
others agreed with them or not.
Our Lord is never found in pomp, pleasure, or luxury, but in lowliness and hu-
miliation. —St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney
Exclusive conformity to God’s plan of salvation is the work of the sensus

Catholicus in the life of the faithful. Through the sensus Catholicus the faith-
ful know what is sinful, denounce it, and avoid it. What is more, the sensus
Catholicus spurs the faithful to seek the holy, to ask the grace to embrace it,
and to strive ever more to conform to the example of Christ and Him cruci-
fied. Persons growing in the sensus Catholicus resonate with the truths taught
by the Church, distinguish licit activities from the traps of the world, and
increasingly act on the conviction that Heaven, not earth, is their true home.
As such, Heaven’s citizens, not hell’s denizens nor the world’s inmates, form the
society sought through the sensus Catholicus. The child baptized into the true
Faith is received into a communion of persons who know their true identity,
who know how to act from the truth of their being, and who know that such
fidelity results in final and perfect union with the Author of their being and of
each of their faithful acts. It is by the sensus Catholicus that such knowledge is
communicated, understood, and put into action.
Humility is the means by which the saint is able to say his first words, ad-
dressing God as Father and the Virgin Mary as Mother, much like the baby learns
to say “Daddy” and “Mommy”. It is the saint’s priest within the Church where
he first understands spiritual paternity in persona Christi and spiritual maternity
from Mater Ecclesia. His family at home gives flesh to the spiritual reality present
in Heaven. At each stage of growth the saint comes to a deeper realization of the
infinitude of God and the peace that grows from serving God in obedience to the
superiors God has placed over him. Each saint knows that every saint not only
starts at the bottom, but profoundly wishes to remain last and least, in favor of
giving God all glory and esteeming His glory in all things and all persons above
and before the self.
St. Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Curé of Ars, repeating Saint Augustine,
teaches us that humility is the first virtue, humility is the second virtue, and hu-
mility is the third virtue. He also likens humility in relation to all the virtues as
the chain is to the Rosary beads: remove the chain and all the beads scatter; re-
move humility and all the virtues fall away. Humility is the foundation on which
base the edifice of sanctity is built. Without humility nothing can rise from the
ground, all crashes to the ground, for humility is the ground, the humus, which
gives firmness and support and stability to all above it—one gets nowhere until
beginning in humility. The human, made from humus, must remain grounded in
humility if he is to rise above his earthly state and aspire to the heights of Heaven.
The vaults of Heaven are exceedingly exalted, and the tower that reaches them
must be tremendously tall, but the tower is only as secure as its foundations are
deep. Humility is the deepest foundation possible, capable of scaling the highest
of pinnacles, Heaven itself.
This truth flows from the fact that its fullness is revealed by the will of God.
The Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Son, dwells on high
with the Father in the Holy Ghost within eternal glory. Taking on flesh from the
Blessed Virgin Mary in the power of the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, the Word of
God the Father, descended to earth. In the world, but not of the world, He came
unto his own but His own owned Him not, crucifying Him on the Tree of the
Cross. Dying indeed, Jesus descended into hell, vanquishing satan and freeing the
captive souls. He rose again from the dead on the third day, returning to the earth
in body and soul perfectly united to His divinity. Forty days later, Jesus ascended
to the Right Hand of his Father in Heaven, whence He shall come to judge all,
casting the damned into hell, and bringing the saved with Him to dwell in Heav-
en forever. Thus, Jesus knows the way from Heaven, has trod the Way of Sorrows
to hell, and gives Himself to be the Way to conquer hell, transcend the world, and
gain the reign of Heaven.
Saints humbly acknowledge the sinfulness which merits hell. Humility
prompts them to serve God’s Kingdom faithfully on earth. Heaven is the reward
won by God’s grace for the humble. Humility can be heard from the lives of
saints saying things like “Christ must increase and I must decrease” (St. John the
Baptist); “Silver and gold I have none, but what I have I give thee: in the name of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk!” (St. Peter); “To me, the least of all the
saints, is given this grace, to preach among the gentiles the unsearchable riches of
Christ” (St. Paul); “Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same
condemnation? And we indeed justly: for we receive the due reward for our deeds,
but this man hath done no evil” (St. Dismas); “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord:
be it done in me according to thy word” (the Mother of God).
Humility focuses the eyes of the faithful so that they pierce the dross of this
world now ending, so as to perceive the splendor of the world that will never end.
Lives lived according to an authentic sensus Catholicus not only look different
to those observing them from the outside, but they see differently from within
this worldview. To be made in the image and likeness of God means more than
appearing to be like God, but really knowing as God knows, understanding as
God understands, and judging as God judges. This is to esteem the world not by
worldly reckonings, but according to the measure of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus, the faithless enter each day as a burden of further toil in the employ of
oppressors for the acquisition of wealth of the meanest and most fleeting kind.
Each day is one day fewer before the end of days in death. Any day is doomed
to repeat the vanity of every newless day under the age-old sun. Faithless life is a
horror of dread for the hateful sameness (with which he has grown all too famil-
iar) inflicted on man by himself, and a terror of the hopeless unknown awaiting
him (which newness he finds anything but lovable) after the horrible dread passes
into oblivion. At best man is left to divert himself with unsatisfying pleasures of
painful brevity; at worst he is left to imagine what pleasure is from the depths of
either rank deprivation or disgusted satiety.
Faith built on humility, on the other hand, brings the lens of the sensus
Catholicus to bear on man’s daily life. He labors faithfully alongside a Master
who imposes a sweet yoke and an easy burden, bearing the bulk of the bitter
and the harshness Himself. The fruits of his labor withstand moth, rust, and
thief, perduring forever. The dawning day is a summons for which he keeps
faithful vigil, leaping into each day with the vigor and zeal with which he
hopes to answer the Trumpet call on the Last Day bidding him to rise to final
Judgement. On the dawn of the Last Day, the saints will not beg another hour
of the sleep of death before arising to endless life in Christ. Each day, then, the
faithful soul on earth keeping company with the saints in Heaven goes forth to
answer his Lord’s call, whatever it might be, whenever it might come, however
it must be accomplished, whoever gives voice to it, because the humble are
eager to obey the Lord who loves them. Days of grace pass swiftly bringing ever
greater and more wondrous experiences of the breadth and depths and heights
of the love of God in Christ Jesus.
From this humble will to serve the Lord with fervent zeal results the supreme
sign of sanctity recognized by and expressed through the sensus Catholicus: taking
up the cross each day and following Jesus. To proud sophisticates this is the height
of absurdity. To men ignorant of God through and in Jesus Christ, this is an un-
speakable scandal. But to those who believe, faithful children of God, souls given
by grace the sensus Catholicus, this is the very stuff of beatitude. It is the poor, the
meek, the sorrowful, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful, the pure, the peaceful,
and the persecuted who know beatitude; and they come to poverty, humility,
sorrow, want, mercy, purity, peace, and persecution through the cross with Jesus.
Learned through the sensus Catholicus is the inadequacy of bodily health, ma-
terial wealth, or social standing to provide the heart’s truest desires. The faithful do
not deprive their loved ones of food, shelter, and clothing; but they refuse food,
shelter, and clothing divorced from the charity perfected on the Cross. The poor,
the pure, and the persecuted have nothing from the world and can offer the world
nothing of its own. The poor, the pure, and the persecuted pray for an increase of
unworldly blessings, and this they share with the world, with the prayer that the
world will not remain self-satisfied, satisfied with selfishness, nor satisfied until
Christ Jesus is all in all.
Humility, zeal, and the cross are commanded by the Lord: “Go, sell all, give
to the poor, store thus treasure in Heaven, and follow me!” “He who hates his life
will save it.” “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just
a grain of wheat.” “He who humbles himself will be exalted.” “Love the Lord your
God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with your whole mind, and
with your whole strength! . . . Love your neighbor as yourself!” The foolishness
of God is greater than the wisdom of men, righteousness must surpass religious
legalism, and God’s measure exceeds the comprehension of men. Absurdity and
scandal are accusations from fools and egoists. Charity expressed with humble zeal
in self-sacrifice is the means accepted by the wise who would learn the sublime
truths from the mouth of God, taught by his Word, understood only in the Spirit
with whom He deigns to grace man with a share in divine and eternal life.
What is the Matter of the Kingdom not of this World?

Nothing is so contrary to charity as pride.
When two things are to be done, we may choose the one which is least pleasant.
Pure souls shall form a circle around the Lord. The purer we have been on earth,
the nearer we shall be to him in heaven.
Prepositions are vital parts of speech. The question is not, “What is the
matter with the Kingdom not of this world?” Asked that way, it is of a piece
with the addled mentality of those who find things like “faith”, “large families”,
and “God” to be problems. One gets the answers to questions in the mode in
which the questions are asked. If you define “faith”, “large families”, and “God”
as problems, you will get problematic solutions galore, but precious little un-
derstanding of the objects of your inquiries. There is nothing the matter with
the Kingdom of Heaven—unless one desires perdition—but there is matter of
which the Kingdom of Heaven is possessed on earth, territory claimed by its
rightful King. It is most legitimate to ask what that matter is, akin to taking a
survey of land so that its rightful owner may lay claim and build the home in
which he will house his family.
Bread and wine are essential elements of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Bread strengthens the body and wine gladdens the heart. Bread and wine also
are the apt matter for confecting the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our
Lord Jesus Christ, from which gushes forth the infinite mercy of His Most Sacred
Heart. God has willed that nature and supernature depend on the humble grain
and fruit of the vine for the sustenance of man on earth unto eternal life. The
nexus of mortal and divine life is found by the grace of God in the humble ele-
ments by which is offered the Sacrifice of the Mass. Life depends on proximity to
sustenance. The sensus Catholicus seeks places where food for the body grows from
the earth and food for the soul comes down from Heaven.
Eating and drinking are unique among human activities. They are reflec-
tions of the divine will for man’s ultimate beatitude. On the Altar of the Cross,
Christ spread out the Food and Drink of His Body and Blood in order to nourish
His Flock that they might avoid a death wherein no hunger is sated, no thirst is
quenched, and no suffering ceases. The life given and gained on the Cross bestows
on the faithful a sustenance wherein hunger, not satisfaction, ends. God’s life
grants a fulfillment where thirst, not quenching, is exhausted.
Eating and drinking are a cooperative venture between God, His creation,
each man, and all men. Unlike angels, who need no material sustenance, and
unlike animals and plants, that have no will to exert in seeking sustenance,
man is called to cooperate with God in the care of the bounty of the earth, to
cooperate with the natural order God has willed for creation, and to cooperate
with his fellows in cultivating and distributing the fruits of God’s grace, nature’s
largesse, and man’s toil. In this activity, man’s natural and supernatural essence
is brought into play. He must receive the grace of humility to acknowledge his
absolute dependence on God. He must use his innate reason to bring forth
from the soil, the sea, and the countryside the material necessities for human
existence. And he must act on the virtue of charity by which the overwhelming
excess of nature is to be shared with all mankind, none burdened with too
much, none plagued by too little.
Sowing and harvesting are apt metaphors for God’s work among men. He
offers man the privilege of accomplishing the divine will. He includes man in the
fruits of a labor which man does not merit nor can he effect on his own. He ex-
presses a wondrous mystery wherein the supernatural and the natural are brought
together within the heart of man by way of the hands of man submitting to God
and ruling over nature. God gives man satisfaction both in the hopes running
high when the seed is sown and in the pleasant toil that comes with those hopes
brought to fruition. When the harvest is complete, it becomes the basis for further
hope and greater joy in the plantings and yields yet to be. Rest is possible, labor is
rewarded, and peace reigns within and without man’s soul.
The wedding feast is a fitting description of Christ’s Kingdom. Union

occurs between bodies and souls. Bounty is shared joyfully and fearlessly.
Fruitfulness is celebrated for the blessings of the past and the promise of the
future. Humility is received by the groom and authority is acknowledged by
the bride. The wedding feast flows from all that has gone before and is meant
to be a harbinger of what is to come. It provides a symbol of the life that is to
be shared henceforth permanently.
Christ’s Cross, the labor of the vineyard, the joy of the harvest, and the bliss
of the wedding feast are intimately united in the Mass. The seeds of Faith are sown
in the lessons and the Gospel, and brought to fruit in the Credo. Thanksgiving for
the harvest is rendered in the Offertory. Angelic ecstasies are heard in the Sanctus.
And the consummation of all of it occurs in the immolation of the Lamb who,
under the forms of bread and wine, makes Himself the Food and Drink by which
His Bride is made a Mother, her many children become the sons of His Father,
and His Spirit is poured forth so that death is thrown down and the Kingdom of
Life begins His reign on earth as it is in Heaven.
Faith is best served by seeking living arrangements conducive to participating
in this reality. People should live where food grows. The growing of food is meant
to nourish the body in its task of providing a venue where the soul may be con-
formed to God in Christ. Perfect conformity to Christ is had only in communion
with Him in the Mass. Thus, the ideal to which the sensus Catholicus is drawn
is a rural setting in imitation of Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus on the Mount of
Quarantine, eremitic solitaries, monastic foundations, and mystics bent on con-
templating the divine, where livelihood is not divorced from the land and the
Mass is available daily and the other Sacraments on a regular basis. This should
be a Catholic community in which the constant rites, teachings, and habits of the
Church are the exclusive offering presented to the faithful by the priest.
A brief digression on the subject of Latin: Latin does not demand or guar-
antee a true sensus Catholicus. A language in itself is a natural phenomenon,
not expressive as such of the divine will. The sensus Catholicus, however, has its
genesis in the Latin-speaking ancient world, where Latin was the lingua franca
and then became the tongue of erudition and worship. The sensus Catholicus is
not native to Latin, but Latin is native to the sensus Catholicus. Speaking Latin
does not lead to the sensus Catholicus, but the sensus Catholicus insists on Latin
as the language first spoken by our Mother the Church to the world, the lan-
guage in which she has served the nations as teacher beneath Christ the divine
teacher, and the precious speech spoken to God in the exquisite prayer of the
immemorial Mass. The Church, absent hearers with an authentic sensus Catholi-
cus, is perceived as speaking vernacular tongues with an accent, lacking idiom-
atic ease, and in poor translations. It is the sound of Shakespeare rendered in
Mandarin Chinese. Grace from God, however, brings those vernacular speakers
to the bosom of their Mother where they can learn her language and speak
as native sons without need of dictionary, interpreter, or repeatedly redacted
documents. Worldly error can be embraced and expressed by Latin, powerless
in itself to correct heresy and immorality. The sensus Catholicus, however, trains
the heart to love God, trains the tongue to speak God’s truth, and trains the
will to obey God’s commands in all things at all times for all men. Latin is the
language by which Holy Mother Church teaches the nations; the Holy Ghost
teaches the children of the Church by the sensus Catholicus to distinguish truth
from error in any language.
Catholics gathered around the Mass, in a rural setting dedicated wholeheart-
edly to sanctity and truth, will understand their responsibility to do their utmost
to live saintly lives for the sake of the salvation of their neighbors. Peter Maurin once
said that a good society is a society where it is easy to be good. Catholics in fami-
lies and parishes must make it their constant care to be good so that their beloved
neighbors have a good society to which to conform, rather than a hellish chaos
from which to escape. Peer pressure among the saints is a matter of competing to
raise one’s fellows to higher levels of sanctity than oneself. This can not be done
by depraved souls, who can only drag others down to their debased level, but is
accomplished by saints in service to sanctity, or rather, reformed sinners aiding
their brothers to avoid their former sins.
Left behind by reformed sinners in the extended Advent and Lent of the
life of faith on earth are all the old ways of the world: media filth disguised
as entertainment, avarice in the name of making a living, envy for the sake
of social status, machines substituting for human relations, and pride trum-
peted at the expense of humble faith, hope, and charity. In other words, the
sensus Catholicus revolts against modern pipelines from hell such as television,
radio, movies, the internet, and video games. The faithful will have nothing to
do with lies in the newspapers, pornography from periodicals, or blasphemy
pretending to be literature. Convenience does not rule the daily life of the
would-be saint, nor will he succumb to the seduction of social acceptance—
human respect—at the cost of pleasing God. One of the primary signs of a
healthy sensus Catholicus in operation is the ability to define, demonstrate, and

denounce the usury rampant in modern economic life since the destruction of
Christendom in the protestant revolt.
Rather than internet insipidity, printed insanity, or recorded confusion, mod-
ern Catholics should have access to what Catholics have had since Our Lord
walked the earth: instruction from the priest, converse with other faithful Cath-
olics, and study commensurate with one’s state in life. No Catholic home should
lack the daily habit of the Rosary. If daily Mass is unavailable, then following the
prayers and lessons in a hand missal such as The St. Andrew Daily Missal is invalu-
able. Alongside that should be daily readings from Dom Prosper Guéranger’s The
Liturgical Year. Great edification and indulgences come from pious reading of the
Holy Bible—if a family reads one chapter of the Gospels each day, they will read
the inspired life of Christ four times every year. Guiding their understanding of
the Sacred Scriptures must include the Church Fathers, such as St. Thomas Aqui-
nas’ stupendous Catena Aurea, and a solid catechism such as The Catechism of the
Council of Trent. Also of assistance in comprehending the Word of God is contem-
plating them who know him best, His saints. References such as Butler’s Lives of
the Saints, The Roman Martyrology, and Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend
are indispensable. Great saints who describe the effort necessary for beatitude
include St. Francis de Sales in his Introduction to the Devout Life, and St. Thérèse
the Little Flower in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul. Magisterial declara-
tions of dogmatic weight particularly applicable to this period of history are Leo
xiii’s Rerum Novarum, St. Pius x’s Pascendi Domenici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane,
and Pius xi’s Quas Primas. Recreational reading with Catholic novelists provides
both rest and instruction. Three of the many available are Louis de Wohl’s Lay
Siege to heaven, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson’s Come Rack, Come Rope, and
G.K. Chesterton’s Manalive. Enormously more exists, but need not be mentioned
unless one has mastered already all of which he is now aware. Part of the sensus
Catholicus is knowing when to stop, and realizing that gluttony can be spiritual
and intellectual, as well as physical. The Kingdom of Heaven contains the best
cooperators with God, not necessarily the best and the brightest, the bestsellers,
or the best read of the world’s luminaries.
Immersion is key to learning, understanding, and expressing both faith and
language. The child must set aside baby talk, the student must put down his
dictionary, and the immigrant must forget his mother tongue if fluency is ever to
come in language. Likewise, the Catholic must reject the world’s views, the ways
of worldly life, and the world’s tyranny over man’s understanding of spiritual mat-
ters if the sinner is ever to become a saint. Naturalized citizens are always living
in two countries; if their children are ever to be true citizens of the new country,
the parents must release all family ties to the old country, including language.
No one insistent on remaining a citizen of the world will ever be a citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven. There is no dual citizenship. The former worldling who
loves poverty, who craves the cross, who forgets himself in his constant thoughts
of God and neighbor has received the sensus Catholicus and is on his way to living
now in the world in consonance with the world without end. God loves him, he
knows this, and he knows how to answer God’s question, “Do you believe me?”
in thought, word, and deed with all of his heart, all of his soul, all of his mind, all
of his strength, and with all of his family within God’s family in the Church, until
he dwells forever with God and his family in Heaven.
Current Events: The White Man’s Burden

Christian Europe: Anno Domini 313-1517, R.I.P. Christendom was brought
to the brink of extinction by the introduction of an alien competitor, for reasons
of greed, by unscrupulous men. It succumbed to its fitter rival, which has no nat-
ural enemies (only supernatural enemies), and was driven from its habitat by the
encroachments of aggressive, urban, and industrial human society; the victim of
evolution, natural selection, and its own excessive success.
Encroached upon by foreign powers

bent on conquest of a weaker foe,
a fading native people cowers,
adding shame to fill their cup of woe.
Through feast and famine long enduring

kings this way of life had freely trod,
their wives’ and children’s rights ensuring
for the honor of their home and God.
But now the end is surely nearing

of their liberty and right to rule
themselves without the pain of fearing
unjust death or bondage yet more cruel.
In lust for land and love of money

hordes are on the march and bound the main,
‘tho’ bitter proves the milk and honey
flowing in the wake of lucre’s gain.
This tortured realm is seized by violence

wrought by both the victor and the lost;
unrighteous anger yields to silence
as defeat in winning’s deadly cost.
The progress of the modern onslaught

whelms indigenous societies,
and leaves their ancient cultures untaught
in their homes or universities.
United Nations high commissions

take a pause in mercy’s just pursuit,
while Brussels fails to see conditions
that the Hague demands for filing suit.
From neither Hollywood nor Greenpeace
issue any statements to decry
the base refusal to bring surcease
to these victims of the System’s lie.
An army daily growing greater

sweeps across this land where few are born;
destruction coming soon or later
matters not when none are left to mourn
the final hour, ‘tho’ far from finest,

when the whimper, not the bang, is heard
that sets the sun which once shone brightest
on the realms where Europe spread the Word.
Father Smith
12 November 2005: Pope St. Martin I
393
Re-establishing Christendom III:

In the Church
Where Christ is King
A Prelude
Laws must transcend the man if they are to be just; law must transcend men
if there is to be justice. It serves no one well to be ruled by a bully. Equally inad-
equate is the anarchy of despotism wherein all must obey, but none need admit
responsibility. Man wants neither the tyrant nor the bureaucrat for his liege and
lord. But democracy ill-used is no improvement. My daily life is a gauntlet in
which I am pummeled in the one moment by the sinner who tells me that my
“paternalistic” Catholic morality impinges on his personal sovereignty; and in the
neighboring moment by the “paternalistic” hierarchy of said Church waxing si-
lently eloquent on matters such as the obligation of Sunday Mass attendance, the
prohibition against contraception, or the advisability of sending one’s children to
Catholic schools. My superiors have charged me with leading a flock in such wise
that the flock goes nowhere it would rather not.
In this ethos of absurdity there is no separation of Church and state. Our
government insists that children are powerless to resist tobacco corporations’
manipulative marketing of their legal products, and then proceeds to tax those
companies to the point of socialist takeover in order to fund, among other things,
education programs for children. Kids, if you want textbooks and lab supplies, get
some adult to smoke another pack today!
These same children are deemed impotent before their baser urges and are giv-
en, free of charge, medications and devices that encourage them, through a false
sense of security, to engage in behaviors perilous to their bodies, minds, and souls,
as well as to our society. Our children are admonished, at taxpayer expense, to just
say “No!” to drugs, to eat healthy snacks, and to get regular exercise; but their gov-
ernment-sponsored cheerleaders surrender before the “insurmountable” obstacle of
pubescent hormones. There are no programs for clean needle exchanges in schools
for adolescent heroin addicts, no playground giveaways of Twinkies for toddlers
with too much of a sweet tooth, no subsidized purchases of remote controls for teen-
aged couch potatoes, even though there is an epidemic of drug abuse, obesity, and
illiteracy among America’s youth. But “safe sex” courses, condom distribution, and
abortion counseling are available in schools from Watts, l.a., to Washington, d.c.,
to address the problems associated with “underage” fornication.
Behind the curtain of license, disguised as liberty, where our inconsistent
minders keep their dirty secrets, is an unwillingness to submit the individual
to a higher law. Not the law of other individuals or groups of individuals, but
a law untouched by fickle appetites, the fads of the day, or the fancies of phi-
losophers. Our wayward world lacks leaders who would offer men the blessing
of the natural law.
It is telling that modernity claims that man is opposed to nature in his tech-
nology and economy of life. Simultaneously it is the modern vogue to insist that
man is incapable of contact with any objective supernatural reality. Man is a fiend
at enmity with mother nature, and a fool for believing that he might somehow
transcend this world. Such is the Gospel according to evolutionary biology and
the “new” “theology”.
G.K. Chesterton famously warned that to deny the supernatural is not to
assert the natural, but to descend into the unnatural. Hence the importance of the
natural law. It is the bridge between the ultimate law of God and the laws of men
meant to reflect it. The natural law prevents the despair that would come from the
conviction that man is utterly divorced from the divine, and the tyranny of man
asserting himself as God.
St. Paul makes use of the natural law when he tells the pagan Romans that
none can plead ignorance when it comes to righteous living. Jeremias prophesies
that the Lord will write His law on every heart, so that God Himself will see to
it that all men can know Him. In the Apocalypse, St. John sees the revelation of
God’s will that all nations enter into the New Jerusalem.
Defining Our Terms 395
Ancient Rome, modern America, and every creature made in the image
and likeness of God have the benefit of God’s truth available to them. We are
no more ignorant than the pagans of antiquity, no more willful than exiled
Israel, no more persecuted than the saints have ever been. The rule of law is
the birthright of all men.
What is curious about man, rather than animals, vegetables, and minerals, is
that he can choose which law will rule him. Man either will be a law unto him-
self, in which case he will be a subject in the kingdom of chaos; or he will subject
himself to God’s law, manifested in the natural law and expressed in the justice of
human laws, in which case he will reign in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It would be most odd if man elected to live in chaos, but odder still if he re-
jects the current chaos and follows the narrow way. Chesterton also said, “What-
ever occurs to me as ridiculous has always occurred to somebody else as wise.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderfully ridiculous if everybody decided to let God rule not
only the universe, but everyone in it?
The Only Ruler by Which Rulers are Measured

My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this
world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be de-
livered to the Jews: but now my Kingdom is not from hence…Thou
sayest I am a king. For this was I born, and for this I came into the
world: that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is
of the truth heareth my voice…Thou shouldst not have any power
against me, unless it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that
hath delivered me to thee hath the greater sin.—St. John 18:36, 37;
19:11
Sin is a grammatical error on the metaphysical plane where “can” is mis-de-

fined as “may”. Modernity is a morass in which willful misrepresentation of the
nature of things is made public policy, the basis of personal morals, and the ethos
of the men responsible for the governance of the Church. It is essentially a rever-
sion to the barbarism of “might makes right”, the “law of the jungle”, and the
“survival of the fittest”. Good manners, common sense, and any appreciation for
the dignity of the imago Dei in man recoil at pursuing life predicated on such an
understanding. As well, the solemn magisterium condemns it in the Syllabus of
Modern Errors of Pope Blessed Pius ix, a.d. 1864: Proposition declared in error
—“Right consists in physical fact; all the duties of men are an empty name, and
all human deeds have the force of right.”
All authority is from God. The exercise of that authority may not transgress
the bounds observed by God Himself. In the flesh He came into the world to
give testimony to the truth. The Son deferred to the Father. The Holy Ghost gives
nothing but that given by the Son in obedience to the Father. The law as given
by the Father, to its smallest letter, is fulfilled by the Son, not destroyed by Him,
not changed by Him, not improved by Him, not evolved by Him, not superseded
by Him, not ignored by Him, not contradicted by Him, not denied by Him, not
updated by Him, not modernized by Him. The Son is the supreme lawgiver, and
the law He gives and upholds is the immutable law of God the Father. The Father
and the Son are one; the law they love is one. Those who claim to love the Father
and the Son love that law.
Under the Son, obedient to the Father, men entrusted with rule on earth,
either temporal or spiritual, exercise authority with the same freedom enjoyed
by the Son. They are free to teach the law to the nations as witnessed by the
Son. They are free to enforce the law as judged by the Son. They are free to
forgive infractions against the law in keeping with the mercy of the Son. In
short, they may know and proclaim the truth, and in that knowledge and
proclamation, they are free.
A “right” to false worship is as nonsensical as asserting a “right” to theft.
In the moral law, freedom and license are distinct. In the usage of English,
“may” and “can” are distinct. In conscience, grace received and grace refused
are distinct. No one is “free” to reject God anymore than one is “free” to
commit grand theft auto—ask souls in hell or prisoners in the penitentiary
if their acts manifest freedom. The power to do is not the same as permis-
sion to do— satan rebelled in fact and, by definition, in disobedience; he
did not assert his freedom, but reduced his freedom to nothing. The citizen
committing a crime, the soul committing a sin, the angel committing rebel-
lion, forfeit their freedom.
At the same time, the police officer abetting a crime, the parent leaving
a child unbaptized and in ignorance of the Faith, and the bishop placing the
ways of the world over the rights of the Kingdom of Heaven are guilty of dis-
obedience to the divine law. Remaining silent in the face of crime, refusing to
adhere to the practice of the Faith in the home, or permitting the freedom and
exaltation of Holy Mother Church to go undefended are to submit oneself and
one’s charges to the tyranny of mob rule, enslavement to sin, and imprison-
ment in the clutches of the devil. Government, families, and prelates are insti-
tuted by God to do battle against the world, the flesh, and satan. Infidelity to
the mission of truth, sanctity, and humble assent to the will of God by nations,
individuals, or hierarchs of the Church is damnable disobedience. To stand by
while the Divine Majesty is offended is to be condemned to the same punish-
ment meted out to those who actively revolt against the Lord of all creation.
No authority is given anyone on any level to impose personal whim on his
subjects. Since it is from God that all authority derives, the Pope, the bishops,
and the pastors of the Church, parents, and government officials, exercise their
authority, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of giving God all glory. In this
they imitate Christ, who Himself gave nothing of His own, but only that willed
by His Father. The Father has all authority, bequeaths it to His Son, who, through
the Holy Ghost, bestows it on those who believe in Him. Faith in Christ is shown
in being obedient to the word of Christ as given by those who have themselves
obediently received His word.
“Divine right” of kings separated from Christ the King is no more valid in a
sovereign nation than in the Catholic Church. Secular rulers, be they legislators,
executives, or courts may not create laws that break God’s law. St. Peter teaches
us that we must obey God above men. What the first Pope infallibly observed
binds all of his successors. Neither may the prince of this world, nor princes in the
world, nor the princes of the Church disregard the precepts binding on all men
given by God in nature, revealed by God through the Prophets and Scriptures,
and willed by God by the Church.
Thus the protestations of those who would embrace every single teaching
of every single bishop because the bishop or the council or the pope propagated
the teaching are not necessarily championing true justice. Nor is justice ad-
vanced by observing the travesties enacted by parliaments or enforced by heads
of states or expanded by judicial fiat. One is bound in obedience, but that obe-
dience belongs finally to God and must be in service to His truth. Obedience
that does not serve truth is not of God and is therefore unjust. Bishops who de-
mand obedience to themselves when they are disobedient to the truth, and thus
to God, are doing injustice to their subjects. Secular authorities who mandate
the protection of persons committing sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance
call down the wrath of God on themselves and on their depraved subjects. The
faithful who offer obedience without discerning it as being tributary to the
truth suffer injustice for themselves, deprive their leaders of proper respect, and
deny God His due. Obedience without truth is ultimately oppression.
Truth itself comes from God and is unchanging. Innovation can not be
equated with ultimate truth. Truth is preserved and nurtured through tradition,
that which is handed down to posterity having been firmly rooted in eternal
truth. Without roots in eternal truth, tradition withers and becomes no more
than personal whim. No one can be obliged to obedience based on whim, for
arbitrary will is bound to the subjective nature of man without reference to
God. Obedience is owed to God alone, and personal whim denies Him His due.
Whim can not be a vehicle by which the faithful are confirmed in sanctity; no
one is made holy by obeying caprice.
The faithful are called to make a permanent commitment of obedience to the
truth; the truth to which they commit their obedience must be permanent.
Any demand of obedience based on whim, arbitrary will, caprice, innovation,
or novelty is itself disobedience. Such things can not give God his own because
they are not of God. They assert human will over divine will. Subjects of those
in authority who seek novelty and newness for their own sakes participate not in
the sanctifying of their lives, but in the injustice of rebellion against God. Proper
authority seeks only to honor God, doing so by handing down only that which
God has deigned to reveal as His will.
There is no obligation for the faithful of the Church or citizens of a state to
obey anything that is not consonant with the tradition handed down by the will
of God. Subjects need not justify disobeying novelties, rather, it is the innovators
who must demonstrate that they are not introducing contradictions to tradition,
either secular or ecclesial. It is not necessary for something to be bad for the
faithful to balk at receiving it; all that is needed is for the innovation to be foreign
to tradition and alien to the revealed Word and will of God. One would have an
extraordinarily difficult time explaining how anything describable as an “innova-
tion”, “novelty”, or “change” can be construed as consonant with immemorial,
unchanging, divine Truth.
Obedience binds only to tradition in scripture, doctrine, and practice. If the
faithful are presented with teachings, examples, or documents that do not reflect
fidelity to God through the unchanging patrimony of the Church, then they are
free to ignore the innovations. This holds whether the context of the innovation is
in man’s secular relations or within the workings of Holy Mother Church. Those
who are so gifted may be obliged to present questions for clarification to those in
authority. Any who are confused should not suffer any qualms about doing what
the Church has always done, in all places, by all the faithful, of all times. What
has always saved, will always save. Doubts arise only when deviations are offered
in the place of definitions. When the shifting sands of time encroach, the faithful
are always safe in planting their feet firmly on the solid rock of the timeless Faith.
For more than a half of a millennium, man has suffered from the ill effects
of ignoring this truth. Where authority is abused, tyranny reigns. As men in au-
thority wander further afield from seeking the Kingdom of God and His justice,
the affects of their meanderings become ever more apparent in lawlessness. This
is not a matter of law being renounced in principle. Rare are the times more
subservient to the law than those in which respect for law wanes, as is the case
today. The problem is not a lack of law, nor of laws being broken, nor of legal
authority being rejected. Modernity, in both secular and ecclesial realms, suffers
from too many laws, from conflicting laws, and from a bewildering array of ju-
risdictions interpreting laws. Hyper-legislation, regulation, and litigation are the
marks of tyranny, not of a free society. The opposite of the rule of law is not only
the lawlessness of anarchy, but also the lawlessness of the over rule of law. Sanctity
produces fewer laws. Sinfulness produces the police state. Suburban charity would
be more at home in a prison cell than in a monk’s cell.
The project of re-establishing Christendom is an effort that requires a sober
appraisal of the mess that confronts us. Beyond that and more important is the
obligation to be mindful of the theological virtues. The Faith that gives us con-
fidence in the power of Christ and Him crucified, able to overcome the world
and to set us free from the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The Hope
that sustains the faithful in all times and places is that he who trusts in the Lord
will never be confounded. This Hope produces a willingness to lose all—wealth,
family, life itself—so long as a place in Heaven is obtained thereby. The Charity
that comes from God, is manifested on the Cross, and compels the labors of the
Church to bring all men through the power of the Holy Ghost into the sheepfold
of Christ to the glory of God the Father. Amen!
What Was, Is, and Never Should Have Been

The idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have a
mouth, but they speak not. They have eyes, but they see not. They have ears, but they
hear not. Neither is there any breath in their mouths. Let them that make them be like
to them, and every one that trusteth in them.—Psalm 134:15-18
Our antecedents in the economy of salvation do not comprise a golden age of

fidelity, courage, and nobility. Contemplating this is a sobering thought when one
realizes as well that we have in many ways declined from the days of old. Still more
disturbing is the consideration of what such a state of affairs bodes for the future.
The example of Our Lord, Our Lady, and the saints of the Church offer hope to
the fallen, but honesty demands as well the admission that the majority of men
given those wonderful models availed themselves not of the good that was avail-
able. Examining our own consciences, individually and collectively, will result in
the confession that we most often resemble not the extraordinary few who sought
and attained perfection, but the ordinary many who denied perfection’s existence
or ignored its summons to sanctity.
Adam and Eve made a god of their desire to eat that which was pleasing to
see, to know that which was forbidden, and to obtain divinity for themselves at
the behest of a liar accusing the true God, the God who is Truth, of lying. The
ancient pagans, before and after Abraham, made gods of their bellies and what-
ever other parts of their bodies voiced loud demands. Abraham’s descendants, the
Jews, made gods of golden calves, of demons that ate babies, and of the law that
was intended to bring them closer to the Lawgiver Himself, God. Men of every
age have woven from whole cloth notions of the divine based on rejecting the
truth of Christ, reflecting the politics of a particular epoch in history, or attached
to the persona of a single man whose teachings and worship died with him. The
love of money, St. Paul tells us, is the root of all evil, and the love of money has
moved the hearts of sons to patricide, prompted nations to commit genocide, and
resulted, on one notable occasion, in deicide. On American money is the famous
quote, ironically rooted in Holy Scripture, “In God We Trust”; begging the ques-
tion of whether the statement is referent to the divine or is a proclamation of faith
writ upon the very object of faith. Passing rare are the men and nations willing
to spend all—time, money, life—in the effort to render God his due and thereby
receive a due reward from God.
Men must have worship or go mad. There is a peril in this part of our
nature in that false worship leads to madness as well. Man without the divine
falls lower than the beasts. his heart will be of stone. His mind will become a
desert. His world will increasingly be a place filled with despair at the prospect
that there is nothing but the world, nothing beyond the world, nothing better
than the world, nothing for which the world was made, nothing but nothing.
Men who believe in nothing, that is, men who place their trust in anything
other than the true God, will countenance consuming other men (for instance,
in the medicines derived from fetal tissue), killing their own children (in the
name of mercy, convenience, or scientific “progress”), or enslaving men in the
industry of manufacturing death (birth control pills, nuclear weapons, and
hospitals with euthanasia policies come to mind). Civilization depends on the
true Faith in the true God. Absent that truth, barbarism will rain terror on the
weak, the enemy, the friend, the family, the self.
True worship of God allows man from his knees in awe, humility, and love,
to aspire beyond himself, raised by the divine mercy to legitimately lay claim to
a share in the divine stature. Proud man, ignorant man, deceived man reduced
to the worship of creatures is stunted, diminished by the effort to stoop below
himself to be united to that which is beneath him. Worshipping man does men
no good, for it is beneath human dignity to mistake the image of God for God
Himself. But the man of God knows that he bears the image of God, that he has
heard the Word of God, that he can see God in authentic worship, that he can
taste God therein, and that God wills him to be His son and to imitate Him in
charity, sanctity, and perfection. God became man that man might become God;
and men who do not make their own gods will be made divine by God.
Knowing who God is guarantees a rule of law founded on justice and capable
of mercy; the laws by which men are governed reveal the divine source, or lack
thereof, of the laws. When law derives from individual men, the point of a gun, or
the balance in a checking account, be sure that injustice reigns over all. Likewise,
do not seek justice in a land where the lawgiver is worshipped in wood, stone, or
gold—be they wampum, statues, or traded in a commodity exchange. Gods made
from men, from force, from building materials, or from money can not produce
or preserve a healthy, happy, holy society. Paper gods are no improvement.
The paper to which reference is here made is not the brightly colored
swaths on which a large variety of masonic, read demonic, symbols are depict-
ed with which worship is conducted at various cathedrals of mammon present
in every city from coast to coast. Paper in this context is another display of
masonic, read demonic, influence on the world bereft of Jesus Christ and His
Body, the Catholic Church. At Philadelphia in 1789, at San Francisco in 1945,
and at Brussels in 2004, documents on paper were fashioned to serve as the
gods ruling the lives of billions of men. These pieces of paper were invested
with authority, power, and absolute sovereignty over individuals, families, and
even nations. Principles present in the universe, found solely in ink on paper,
lacking any reference to absolute truth, objective reality, or the true God, gov-
ern the daily affairs of the world’s teeming masses without any higher authority
to which to appeal against the injustices thus wrought, absent any immutable
means to interpret the meanings of the words expressed by the dead or dying
men who crafted the new gods, and in denial—often violently—of any right,
rule, or reign other than that effected by the unthought rendered in blue-black
dye across a surface of decaying tree pulp.
False gods wrought in the image and likeness of their worshippers are no
better than their makers. The makers of false gods can not be made better by
worshipping their falsity. Gods so created are neither divine nor human, but
misshapen, misbegotten, misnamed fonts of lies. The ultimate source of false
gods is satan in hell. The ultimate destination of the men foolish enough to
place their trust in false gods is to place themselves under the rule of satan in
hell. Before this life ends and perdition begins, the worshippers of false gods
bring a little bit of hell to the experience of all on earth. Lies, injustice, and
oppression—the eternal state of hell—become under the regime paying hom-
age to false gods the policy of nations and the state of human being within
them. Man making gods descends into inhumanity, failing both at making
real gods and at making a world fit for man. If one makes a false god, one
will become what one has made: absolutely untrue, wholly wrong, forever
impotent. Or in the words of King David, deaf, dumb, blind, unfeeling, and
dead, fit for nothing but burning, like so much paper. The fires of hell blaze
amazingly hot from all of the wooden idols cast into the flames; imagine how
much hotter will be the conflagration when the billions of reams of modern
gods are added to the furnace!
Among the first of the pantheon of perdition to be immolated should
be the one ratified by the United States of America in 1789. The anthem to
anarchy which is the American Constitution is a false god that obediently de-
crees the nothing desired by its makers: nothing of obedience to the true God,
nothing other than the whims of the men who wield actual power, nothing
capable of effecting true happiness for the unhappy men doomed to live under
its thralldom. Certainly one of the great tragedies resulting from that travesty
against justice which is the governing document of this nation, is the fact that
so many of our benighted citizens are convinced that the injustices caused
by the use of this Constitution can be remedied by the Constitution. This is
simply impossible, given the fact that the men who interpret the Constitution
are insistent on creating positive law out of whole cloth, applying the law in
self-contradictory ways, and interpreting the Constitution in light of elements
completely absent from the Constitution.
For instance, one may read the Constitution paragraph by paragraph, from
Preamble to the 27th Amendment, translated into any of seventy-two languag-
es, backwards and upside-down and standing on one’s head, and one will find
absolutely nothing instructing the government to be hostile to the Church.
Words to that effect simply do not appear in the document. However, begin-
ning with Thomas Jefferson, hallucinators have perceived in the Constitution a
high wall between the Church and the state, they have discerned a prohibition
from uttering the very word God in public schools, they have beheld a national
interest in questioning whether or not a man of the Faith is fit to serve as a
Supreme Court Justice, a Cabinet Secretary, or President of the United States.
A cleric uttering opinions on electoral matters from his pulpit will call down
the wrath of the government, which will promptly destroy that cleric’s legal
status within a recognized church, subjecting him to ruinous taxation and the
probable dissolution of his apostolate (that is, if said cleric is pusillanimous
enough to believe his ministry is dependent on the provision of the almighty
dollar rather than on the providence of almighty God).
While one is vainly searching the Constitution for the words “separation of
church and state”, one will not be distracted by allusions to or definitions of
powers possessed by the federal government to coerce the various states to re-
main within the Union. The Constitution is not cluttered with references to a
taxing authority that results in financial penalties levied against states seeking
independence from Washington, d.c. None of the austere majesty of the framers’
original language is obscured by untidy details of how one or more of the three
branches of the federal government is empowered to imprison state legislators
or executives should any of them be so bold as to declare a sovereign state free
of the tyranny wielded by the denizens infesting the masonic metropolis on the
Potomac between Maryland and Virginia. Even though Abraham Lincoln man-
aged to do so, ordinary citizens endowed with normal powers of perception are
entirely incapable of locating within the text of the Constitution any delineation
of powers proper to the federal government as a whole, or the executive in partic-
ular, permitting the use of live ammunition against citizens guilty of the imagined
felony of wishing to imitate the founders’ love of freedom by divesting themselves
of an odious overlord. One is able, however, to read in the Constitution a clear
description of how human chattel are to be treated under the laws of the nation;
the definitive statement that powers not explicitly given to the federal government
are reserved to the states and/or individuals; and that the Establishment Clause
specifically limits federal actions, not states’ or individuals’.
This proclivity to see that which is invisible and to overlook that which is ob-
vious extends to a Constitutional issue of more modern import. Insane would be
among the adjectives (along with dishonest, demonic, and disgusting) appropriate
to attach to the attempt to suggest that the framers of the Constitution envi-
sioned infanticide as one of the rights threatened by George iii for which the new
document was the proper guarantor. Murdering babies, either in utero or during
or shortly after birth, was decidedly not a desire expressed by any of the persons
responsible for establishing the governing structures of this nation. To the extent
that property rights are recognized by the Constitution—and the 2005 Supreme
Court decision in the case of Kelo et al v. City of New London calls into question
whether or not the government does recognize the existence of private property—
it is surely not the case that the framers thought that the exercise of property rights
included the right to commit murder, nor that the rights could be construed as to
mean that unborn human beings could be defined as property, nor that the right
to own human beings could be denied without recourse to Civil War—oops!
Here is seen how the hallucinations involved in constitutional law lead to
the depravity and insanity of the modern world. A nation without a professed
belief in God need not believe in His prohibition of murder. A nation without a
professed belief in God need not believe that it is bound by the same rules which
it asserts must be obeyed by other sovereign nations. A nation without a professed
belief in God can term one set of human beings property, another set free, and
use force to prevent the protection of human beings who are in peril of being de-
stroyed as property, and use force also to confiscate the property of subjects acting
within the law to protect their property rights from usurpation by the federal
government acting outside of the bounds of constitutional law. One need not
make sense when one denies the very Author of reason, but neither should anyone
who agrees to place power in the hands of such men expect justice, security, or
reasonability in government or public life.
A nation without a professed belief in God will say that human beings
may be owned, then that human beings may not be owned, then that human
beings may be owned again. Owned human beings may be killed without due
process of law, owned human beings may be freed from their servitude by the
denial of laws which made their servitude legal, owned human beings may be
killed while others, seeking to save them, may be prosecuted under law for
their efforts. The President may cite partisans of an unapologetically religious
bent advocating force against other citizens in his effort to enforce the freeing
of legally held human property, descending to butchering citizens by the tens
of thousands in order to effect his will; but citizens who peaceably invoke the
protection of the Mother of God for the children of God in peril of being
murdered in their mothers’ wombs are descended upon by the subordinates of
the Chief Executive in the name of protecting other citizens’ “right” to dispose
of human property under cover of a phantom principle pretended to be in the
Constitution. This nation was established with the explicit right of citizens to
hold other human beings as property. This nation was almost obliterated by the
struggle to deny that right, and this nation now demands the right of citizens
to murder human beings declared property under law. The Constitution has
been invoked—by Congress, by the Supreme Court, and by the President—to
assert, enforce, and impose each of those positions.
All of those positions can not be right. The Constitution which is used to
support each of these positions can not be entirely right. However one determines
the rightness or wrongness of those positions and the Constitution, the measure
must be something other than, higher than, better than the Constitution. Among
the citizens subject to the Constitution is not the best place to seek a judge of the
Constitution, seeing that they are the ones who made the Constitution, with all
of its flaws and self-contradictions in the first place. Beyond that fact is the fact
that the citizens are the subjects, not the judges of the Constitution. Adding to
the difficulty is the fact that the judges of the Constitution in the courts are them-
selves taken from the citizenry, appointed by executives taken from the citizenry,
and confirmed by legislators taken from—and all answerable to—the citizenry.
The citizens made the Constitution, the citizens must obey the Constitution, the
Constitution is authoritatively interpreted by persons put in place by the citizens,
those interpreters may be removed by the citizens at will, making the citizens the
judges of the judges of the Constitution which is meant to stand as judge over the
operations of the nation. Who is in charge when everyone is in charge? No one!
Hence, the statement earlier that the Constitution is an anthem to anarchy.
It is profoundly to be hoped that a Catholic reading this would, out of an
authentic sensus Catholicus, protest, “Well, of course, the Church is the corrective
to this abysmal state of affairs.” Profoundly to be hoped as well is that no Catholic
with an authentic sensus Catholicus is unaware that obedience to the separation

of Church and state is not very much in evidence in the modern structures and
statements of the visible Church. Within the Church, the state’s desire for a di-
vorce is granted by way of members of the Church behaving, not as men of the
Faith, but as men of the world. Paradoxically, the closer churchmen come to the
world, the greater is the divide between the state and the Church, precisely the
evil intended by the masons. Where men of the Church parrot the truisms of false
worship, demanding religious liberty, separation of the state from the Church,
and the brotherhood of man devoid of a relationship to the Son of God, there is
less and less influence of grace on the workings of the world, and more and more
insistence on moral license, moral depravity, and moral destruction. Satan and his
masonic minions have discovered that the best way to separate the state from the
Church is to co-opt the men of the Church into the ways of the world, familiarity
of the members of the Church with the world thus breeding contempt within
those members of the Church for the Church, esteeming the world all along.
So, the men of the Church allying themselves with the men of the world, the
flesh, and satan, succumb in like manner to the affliction of seeing things that are
not there and being blind to reality and to truth. Such churchmen see resemblanc-
es between Catholicism and the enemies of the Faith, which prompted our Savior
to warn them, “I never knew you! Depart from me, you that work iniquity!”
These blind guides somehow can see truth in denials of the Truth by them who
adhere to the errors of Mahomet, the Talmud, or the Declaration of the Rights of
Man. But they are powerless to see the sense of the Word of God proclaiming, “I
am the Truth!” or his Apostle declaring, “What concourse hath Christ with Beli-
al?” or His Vicar commanding “That in all things God may be honored through
Jesus Christ, to whom is glory and empire forever and ever, amen!”
In the spirit of the age, the defenders of Vatican ii advance its spirit. They
enjoin the members of the Church to join the world in joy and hope. Dignity in
worship is tenuous, but the dignity of humanity is sacrosanct, regardless of the in-
dignities perpetrated against men of the Faith, the laws of the Faith, or the object
of the Faith, Jesus Christ. Our age is one in which the light of men is diminished
in its power to be certain of the truth of the Word of God. The Pastoral Council
claims as its Flock all of mankind in the spirit of brotherhood without reference
to God the Son, and obliges none of mankind to be made part of the Flock in
the power of the Holy Spirit and water making men sons of God in the Body of
Christ, the Church. There exists a right to disbelieve in the Church, even though
its unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity are articles of the only faith that
saves. The members of the Church who hold this mindset would have the whole
Church refuse to assert her right to teach all nations and Baptize them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Because of this spirit omnipresent in the texts of the documents of Vatican ii,
in the minds of the prelates authoritatively interpreting Vatican ii, and the loyal
adherents to Vatican ii among the laity, immemorial rites, doctrines, and practices
of the Church are called into question. There is felt a need to apologize for actions
by faithful sons of the Church from the past. At present there is but an apologetic
admission of the legitimacy of the claims of the Church to be the repository of au-
thority to teach the Gospel to all the world. Appeals are made at the very highest
levels of the Church to the work and policies of masonic institutions as the sole
and best means to peace in the world. Princes of the Church publicly pray with
heretics, make concessions to the unreasonable and unjust demands of schismat-
ics, and invoke the false gods of false religions. And all the while, many otherwise
well-meaning Catholics refuse to see the extent of the damage caused by this sorry
state of affairs, or to admit their own complicity in it by making excuses for the
inexcusable, or to realize that where they attack the loyal sons of the Church who
rise to her defense against lies and calumny, they are making themselves enemies
of the Church, of truth, of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
No one is a friend of the Church, of the truth, or of Our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ who is able to construe the meaning of Sacrosanctum concilium to
require the composition of a new Mass. That document did in no way mandate a
vernacular Mass. There is no obligation by the Church or her faithful contained in
the first of the texts from Vatican ii to believe that Quo primum is abrogated, that
the immemorial Mass is no longer the Roman rite, or that any rite other than the
Latin rite codified at Trent, ratified by Pope St. Gregory the Great, and descend-
ed from Apostolic usage binds the faithful or must be celebrated by the clergy.
Sacrosanctum concilium does not say these things, nor do any of the succeeding
fifteen documents from the 2nd Vatican Council. Anyone who says otherwise is
either illiterate, mentally deficient, or a liar. The possibility also exists that such an
assertion stems from the ignorance rooted in the failure to actually read the doc-
uments of the 2nd Vatican Council which supposedly give rise to the spirit of that
Council. However one comes to such erroneous conclusions, one can blame one’s
own inadequacy, the brazen disobedience so in evidence after the Council, or the
woeful combination of human sin in tandem with satanic rebellion; but one can
not blame the Council itself—except insofar as the Council fathers irresponsibly
failed to anathematize any who would so rashly undermine the sensus fidei and
endeavor to redirect the sensus fidelium into paths of the world demonstrably in
error and at odds with the truth of Christ in the Church of Christ.
Outside of the Church of Christ there is no salvation. Vatican ii, for all its
legion flaws, did not deny this. Nothing in the 1962-1965 Council condemns
the Catholic who adheres to the teaching of Pope Leo iii and the 1215 state-
ment of the Fourth Lateran Council, “There is but one universal Church of the
faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved.” At the end of the twentieth
century, the Church did not forbid belief in what she believed at the beginning
of the fourteenth century, when she infallibly taught through Pope Boniface viii’s
Bull, Unam Sanctam, “We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely
necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman
Pontiff.” The Roman Pontiff on the papal throne in 1441, Eugene iv, echoed this
truth in his Bull, Cantate Domino, saying, “The most Holy Roman Church firmly
believes, professes, and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic
Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a
share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared
for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with her; and that
so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining
within this unity can profit by the Sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and
they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings,
their other works of Christian piety, and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one,
let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for
the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the uni-
ty of the Catholic Church.” No more did Vatican ii warn the faithful against those
earlier Vicars of Christ in this dogmatic teaching than they themselves departed
from the very first Vicar of Christ, Pope St. Peter, who insisted that Jesus Christ
is “the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head
of the corner; neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other Name
under Heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.”
This divine Savior is the Head of which the Catholic Church is His One,
Holy, and Apostolic Body. Any separated from the Body are separated from the
Head. No one loves the Head who does not love the Body. Vatican ii said nothing
to render this truth false. Still operative at the time of the Council was the Oath
Against Modernism, taken by every successor of the Apostles present at Vatican
ii. Also still in force was the Creed of the Council of Trent, to which all repenting
schismatics and heretics had to agree before being readmitted to the life of grace
they forfeited after Baptism. The Oath Against Modernism says in part,
“…Thirdly, I believe with equally firm faith that the

Church, the guardian and teacher of the revealed word, was
personally instituted by the real and historical Christ, when
He lived among us, and that the Church was built upon Pe-
ter, the prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors
for the duration of time. Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the
doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the Apostles
through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning
and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject
the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change
from one meaning to another different from the one which the
Church held previously. I also condemn every error according
to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given
the Spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is
put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience
that has gradually been developed by human effort and will
continue to develop indefinitely… I also condemn and reject
the opinion of those who say that a well-educated Christian
assumes a dual personality—that of a believer and at the same
time of a historian; as if it were permissible for a historian
to hold things that contradict the faith of the believer, or to
establish premises which, provided there be no direct denial of
dogmas, would lead to the conclusion that dogmas are either
false or doubtful…I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my
dying breath, the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth,
which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession
of the episcopacy from the Apostles. The purpose of that is,
then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems
better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that
the absolute and immutable truth preached by the Apostles
from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may
never be understood in any other way.
I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entire-

ly, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating
from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus
I promise, thus I swear, so help me God.
This vow is very much in keeping with the Creed assigned by Trent to those
professing faith in Christ and His Church, saying in part,
I resolutely accept and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiasti-

cal traditions and the other practices and regulations of the same
Church. In like manner I accept Sacred Scripture according to
the meaning which has been held by Holy Mother Church and
to which she now holds. It is her prerogative to pass judgement
on the true meaning and interpretation of Sacred Scripture. And
I will never accept or interpret it in a manner different from the
unanimous agreement of the Fathers.
I also acknowledge that there are truly and properly seven
Sacraments of the New Law, instituted by Jesus Christ Our
Lord, and that they are necessary for the salvation of the hu-
man race, although it is not necessary for each individual to
receive them all. I acknowledge that the seven Sacraments are:
Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction,
Holy Orders, and Matrimony; and that they confer grace; and
that of the seven, Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders
can not be repeated without committing a sacrilege. I also
accept and acknowledge the customary and approved rites of
the Catholic Church in the solemn administration of these
Sacraments. I embrace and accept each and every article on
original sin and justification declared and defined in the most
holy Council of Trent…
I acknowledge the holy, Catholic, and apostolic Roman
Church as the Mother and Teacher of all churches; and I promise
and swear true obedience to the Roman Pontiff, Vicar of Christ
and successor of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles.
I unhesitatingly accept and profess all the doctrines, es-
pecially those concerning the primacy of the Roman Pontiff
and his infallible teaching authority, handed down, defined,

and explained by the sacred canons and ecumenical councils
and especially those of the most holy Council of Trent and
of the ecumenical Vatican Council. And at the same time I
condemn, reject, and anathematize everything that is contrary
to those propositions that have been condemned, rejected and
anathematized by the Church. I, N., promise, vow, and swear
that, with God’s help, I shall most constantly hold and profess
this true Catholic Faith, outside which no one can be saved
and which I now freely profess and truly hold. With the help
of God, I shall profess it whole and unblemished to my dying
breath; and to the best of my ability, I shall see to it that my
subjects or those entrusted to me by virtue of my state in life
shall hold it, teach it, and preach it. So help me God and His
holy Gospel.
Oaths worded in this spirit do not admit of easy denial. It is the sense of
the Church that a vow thus made is binding unto death. The letter and the
spirit of these oaths were still in force throughout the entirety of the Second
Vatican Council. When one endeavors to make sense of the conciliar docu-
ments on religious liberty, the Constitution of the Church and the World, and
the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church regarding the identity, mission, and
nature of the Body of Christ, it is imperative, obligatory, of the Faith that one
does so reaching no conclusion other than that the Mystical Body of Christ is
the Catholic Church, beneath the successor to Peter, the Pope, and membership
in which is absolutely necessary for salvation. Variant interpretations, ambig-
uous verbs, and philosophical obfuscations must give pride of place to clarity.
The Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church beneath the Pope are
identical, to say one is to say the other, to say anything other is to deny this
truth. Unless one is in communion with the Body of Christ under the Pope at
the moment of one’s death, one is damned forever. Good manners, prudence,
and charity demand that one assumes that the fathers at Vatican ii understood
this, believed this, and meant to teach this. Those who teach otherwise in the
name of the Council fathers, if incorrect in their estimation of the Council
fathers’ fidelity, are guilty of a serious sin of slanderous dishonesty. Those who
teach otherwise in the name of the Council fathers, if correct in their estima-
tion of the Council fathers’ infidelity, must admit that the fathers violated their
solemn oath, that they taught error, and that they are not to be followed or
obeyed in their error.
When Cowardice is king

Bullies on playgrounds and overindulgent grandmothers share a common
trait: they make it difficult for the boy to grow up. The bully does not want the
boy to grow up, because the grown man beats up bullies. Overindulgent grand-
mothers do not want the boy to grow up, because property-owning husbands and
fathers will look elsewhere than cookies, hugs, and pinched cheeks to satisfy their
needs. Some boys do not wish to grow up because they are afraid of bloody noses
or frightened by the prospect of long nights of worry about providing for the fam-
ily. Good boys look forward to overcoming the bully and outgrowing the desire to
be spoiled, because it offers the opportunity to put might in the service of right,
and to make a return to the past for the future good being made in the present.
Bad boys never get over their fears of bullies or their attachment to grandmothers’
apron strings. A real man thanks the bully for being part of what made him stron-
ger, and thanks the grandmother for providing the good times that must, and
have, come to an end to make way for yet better times.
Cowardly men afraid of bullies recoil at the prospect of imitating the manly
resistance mounted by the early settlers of the frontier at the western reaches of
the newly founded United States. Men such as Shay and Bradford took up arms
against overweening governments, both state and national. Unequal taxation,
prosecution for crimes at far removes from the residences of the accused, and lack
of representation of taxpayers in the electoral process were hallmarks of the gov-
ernments administered by the two men named George on either side of the Atlan-
tic Ocean at the end of the eighteenth century, George of the house of Hanover in
London and George Washington in New York. Where George iii of Great Britain
was branded a tyrant for such policies, George Washington is venerated as the
Father of the United States. Revolution against the sovereign Crown of Britain
is a badge of honor borne by the men led by Washington the revolutionary from
1776 until 1781. George Washington the President pursued as treasonous felons
the men who resisted him in arms from the mid 1780s until the early 1790s.The
first and last sitting President of the United States to lead men in battle wielded
force against his fellow citizens asserting the same rights that Washington himself
championed in his cause against his rightful king. Washington not only set the
precedent by which later presidents limited themselves to two terms in office,

but also established the principle of using the armed force of the federal govern-
ment against American citizens repeated by Lincoln in the nineteenth century, by
Roosevelt in the middle of the twentieth century against the citizens of Japanese
descent, and by Clinton at the end of the twentieth century at Ruby Ridge, Idaho,
and at Waco, Texas.
It is the shame of cowards to yield to the claims of might as right. Apologists
for America, right or wrong, cowardly assert that abuses of governmental power,
by officials of the United States, are always expressions of liberty and justice. They
would have all citizens forget the example offered by innumerable heroes through-
out American history who resisted the injustices cloaked by assertions of legal au-
thority, constitutional allowance, or political expediency. A government founded
in the wake of armed rebellion should not be surprised that the citizens who own
such as a birthright might find cause to take up arms against the descendants of
the rebellion. Cowardice rather than inherent error forbids the examination of the
possibility that armed resistance might be appropriate in some cases, even used
against the instruments and officials of a sovereign government. Even when that
government is defined as being “we the people”.
Oftimes it is the case that mere bullets and explosives provide insufficient fire-
power. When that is the reality confronting the man of honor, he must bring out
the big guns. This usually means fighting courageously by doing nothing. Not the
nothing in evidence when cowards lament wrongs in which they are participating
because they are told the law requires them to do so. Not the nothing of making
excuses for the abuses of power by the men in charge based on the fact that they
are the men in charge and they have power, so they are excused by their craven
subjects begging pardon for not being properly subservient. Not the nothing of
attacking other victims of the bully state who have decided to stand up to the bul-
ly—and to the allies of the bully evolving from victims into bullies in their own
right. No, there are far better ways for doing nothing than these.
For instance, there is the story of the nothing done by Saint Maurice and his
companions. “[He] was the commander of a legion in the Roman Army called
the Theban Legion, because it had been recruited in the Thebaid in upper Egypt.
This legion was composed of 6,666 men, every one of whom was a Catholic. They
were noble, holy and devout soldiers. They were ordered by the Roman Emperor
Maximian to sacrifice to pagan gods. They all refused. The Emperor first killed
every tenth man. But still the legion would not give in. Again, he killed every
tenth man. But the valiant regiment held out. Finally, when asked once more to
sacrifice to the gods, Maurice in the name of his soldiers, replied, ‘O Caesar, we
are your soldiers. But we are also the soldiers of Jesus Christ. From you, we receive
our pay. But from Him, we receive eternal life. To you, we owe service. But to
Him, we owe obedience. We are ready to follow you against the barbarians, but
we are also ready to suffer death rather than renounce our faith.’ They were then
all slaughtered. Saint Maurice knelt down and was beheaded” (from the website
of Saint Benedict Center, Richmond, New Hampshire, www.catholicism.org).
Nothing also was done by Saint Thomas More when confronted with the
ill will of his benefactor, King Henry viii of England. Commanded by the king
to urge his suit to divorce Queen Catherine, the Chancellor of the Realm, Lord
Thomas, did nothing. Ordered to take the loyalty oath imposed on the Catholic
citizens of the nation in which the primacy of the papacy was denied, Sir Thomas
the nobleman did nothing. Beseeched by wife, family, and friends to refrain from
resisting the royal schism, the man of integrity, Thomas More, did nothing. Led
to the gibbet by force of an unjust decree of death, Saint Thomas did nothing,
except stretch his neck, forgive his tormentors, and obey almighty God.
Of course, history has never seen such a spectacle of heroically doing nothing
as was displayed in the Praetorium, along the Via Dolorosa, and on Calvary. Cae-
sar sentenced God to death, and Jesus said nothing in His defense. The chosen
people of God spat on the face of God, and Jesus offered nothing of resistance
to their hatred. The King and Queen of Heaven and earth suffered excruciating
punishment for their blaspheming subjects, and they held nothing back of mercy,
forbearance, and love. Theirs is the model for all true subjects of earthly kings and
faithful children of Holy Mother Church.
Compare the nothing employed by the Theban Legion, St. Thomas More,
and the Son of God and His Mother, with the nothing done to end abortion by
supposedly pro-life politicians in legislative and executive branches at both the
state and federal levels. Not all nothings are created equal. When a saint utilizes
the weakness of God and seemingly does nothing in the face of his persecutors,
Heaven is moved to move men of the earth to the Faith. Whole families, cities,
and nations have thus been won for the true Church by the blood of the martyrs.
When men of the world plead worldly prudence, or faith in a paper god, or hope
that the ways of tyrants will change given enough time and patience, in the name
of love of country, death comes to bodies and souls and their efforts to accomplish
justice without condemning the perpetrators of injustice come to nothing. The
power of God creates all from nothing, but the powers of the world bring them-
selves, their slaves, and their works to nothing. Cooperating with evil is no way
to end evil, doing less evil than one’s neighbor will not end evil, being afraid to
be good abets evil. The only means to destroy evil is to have nothing to do with it
and to do nothing but good.
In the context of modern America, this means denouncing all political parties
and candidates that in any way whatsoever allow for the commission of murder
under cover of constitutional law. Good people will not permit bad people to
sully their homes with the sound of foul opinions advocating the “rights” of baby
killers, abominators, and home wreckers. None but a fool would offer money to
one’s oppressors for the sake of financing further oppression, thus decent folk will
not fund indecent fiends marketing immodesty, inculcating indifference to God,
and calumniating Catholicism. Standing up to the bully that is the modern world
means being unafraid of being unpopular, risking material dearth, enduring po-
litical marginalization, physical attack, and even being called names.
New heroes of the Faith will need to take stock of the fact that absolutely all
of the world’s governments since the revolting protestants, opportunistic politicians,
and faithless Catholics destroyed Christendom have predicated their laws on a denial
of God and His Church. When coming to grips with what is left for a man of the
Faith to embrace in modern society, the inescapable conclusion he must reach is
nothing. Salvation is not to be had from the mores of the world, nor from the
size of one’s stock portfolio, nor from the most recent version of tyranny posing
as democracy, nor from religions confessing belief that God does not know what
truth is, nor from going along to get along. Salvation comes from adhering to
nothing but the Catholic Faith, from doing nothing but imitating the example of
Our Lord and Our Lady, and desiring nothing but to love God the Father with
one’s whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, whole strength, and one’s neighbor as
one’s self for the sake of divine charity. Nothing else is enough. We must give to
the world nothing but the conviction that we owe God our all.
All that we have to give God that He finds acceptable is what He has given
us in the first place. It is not that we have loved God, but that He has first loved
us. We did not choose Christ, but He has chosen us. The love and election of the
Lord is manifested in the deposit of the faith taught by Jesus, guaranteed by the
Holy Ghost, recorded in Sacred Scriptures, transmitted through the Apostles,
preserved in Church tradition, authoritatively interpreted by the magisterium,
and given flesh in the lives of the faithful. This deposit is not some of these things,
nor most of these things, nor any of these things that suits an individual’s fancy.
To love the Lord our God with our whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and
whole strength means to love the whole of the body of truth He has given us in
each and every way He has revealed His will throughout history. Love of God
with the whole of one’s being will be expressed in freely assenting to the truth as
authentically taught by the Church and in bringing that truth to bear in one’s
activities in the world.
Surely the first to believe and accept this approach to our faith must be the
shepherds of Our Lord’s flock, the Pope and the bishops in union with him.
Alas! such is not always the case. All too often the Church has seen the spec-
tacle of wayward shepherds joining their wayward flocks in waywardness. This
is a matter of the blind leading the blind. More absurd, and yet more tragic,
is the phenomenon of injustice wherein the sighted allow themselves to be led
by the blind. It is the singular shame of the Church during the era since the
protestant revolt, slowly at first but now with alarming abandon, to have her
sons within the hierarchy acquiescing to the world in matters of finance, mim-
icking the laity in matters of morality, imitating despotic kings in their notions
of rule, accepting the doubts of science applied to the Faith, and forgetting
that attaining the Kingdom of Heaven is the one task of the Church, prelates,
priests, and people alike. This writer once wrote:
Bishops are taken to task on a regular basis for their various

shortcomings, imagined or real. This has been true in the Church
since St. Paul had to remind St. Peter of orthodox teaching con-
cerning dietary practices. Good bishops respond to corrections,
either from their brothers in the episcopate or from members of
the flock, with humility and, when warranted, with contrition.
Bad bishops respond with rationalizations, obfuscation, and le-
galese. St. Peter modeled the proper contrition of a good bishop.
The English hierarchy at the time of Henry viii, excepting St.
John Fisher, saved their miters, if not their souls. That is not the
goal of a good bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, but, in
their cases, being Roman Catholic was a temporary condition.
It is a common fallacy to attribute the infallibility and in-
defectibility of the Church (and the offices by which dogma is
guarded and propagated) to the persons of the men who hold
magisterial positions. The fractured logic runs something to the

effect that if the Church is perfect and indefectible in all her
teaching, then the men who lead her must as well be without
flaw in their intent and impeccable in the execution of their du-
ties. Such a mistaken understanding stands the colloquial gigo
principle (Garbage In, Garbage Out) on its head, producing the
popes principle: “Peter’s Office Produces Errorless Shepherds”,
as if merely donning the papal tiara affects the man who is Pope
in such wise that nothing he says or does is capable of denying
the font of authority symbolized by the crown (a crown now
lamentably on display in a museum, rather than gracing the
pontifical pate).
It must be mentioned, as well, that the converse of this
flawed mindset is equally false. Petrine authority does not effect
impeccability in the person of the Pope, nor do the Pope’s hu-
man frailties translate into a diminishment of the papacy. The
majesty of the Vicar of Christ is not dependent on the occupant
of the throne; occupying the throne does not confer upon its
holder personal sanctity or inability to sin. The man who is Pope
sacrifices much, but not his free will.
Properly understood, the relationship of office to man is one
in which the man must conform to his office, which is itself a
gift in conformity with divine providence. The papacy does not
bend to the Pope, but the Pope must bow to the immemorial
deposit of truth endowed and entrusted to the papacy. Insofar
as he does this, the Pope exercises infallibility. Where he fails
at this, the Pope is reduced to being a noisy gong, a clanging
cymbal, profiting nothing and being nothing, profiting no one
and harming each one. Truth and the papacy remain, a Pope’s
waywardness, willfulness, or even wantonness notwithstanding.
Infallibility attaches not to papal teaching but to papal
teachings. It is not the action of the Pope speaking which is infal-
lible, but the content of the truth propounded which is without
possibility of error. Only the Pope may so propound an infallible
truth, but a Pope’s propounding can not make an error true.
Infallibility rests less in the sounds that come from the mouth
than in the reflected sheen from the eternal Word living in the
heart of the papacy at the heart of the Church. It is profoundly
to be hoped that the heart of the Pope welcomes the divine light
to make His home in him.
This writer was asked to rethink something preached in a
recent homily. At that time he referred to the current crisis in
the Church as, “a crisis not of leadership, but of ‘followship’.”
Others suggested that such is not the case. It is, these gentle
critics insisted, bishops and the Pope refusing to lead or leading
ineluctably astray that has resulted in the shipwreck experienced
since Vatican ii. Our hierarchy can not be excused for following
the flock, for in so doing they lead the flock to disaster. Their
fault is not in being over-willing to cultivate public opinion, but
in being too willing to eschew, silence, and resist their role as
shepherds, teachers, and fathers.
None of this runs counter to the statement from the ser-
mon in question. Indeed, seeking to follow the flock is to lead
them astray. One more step, however, completes the explana-
tion for how the Church has come to this pass: The magiste-
rium has been unwilling to lead the faithful AND unwilling to
follow Tradition.
It is this unwillingness to defer to Tradition that has brought
about the woeful circumstance of shepherds who will not guide,
guard, or govern. Failure to “bow to the immemorial deposit of
Truth endowed and entrusted to the papacy,” at the head of the
magisterium, is a matter of the shepherds giving poor example
to the flock. The flock does not follow the shepherds for two rea-
sons: the shepherds do not lead—the flock—and the shepherds
do not follow—Christ. These hirelings drink the milk and wear
the wool, but do not walk the walk. They insist on obedience
from their inferiors, but give but token obedience to Christ the
Good Shepherd. Choosing not to follow His lead, the shepherds
have led all the sheep astray. They manifest a dereliction of duty
and gross pride.
Obedience in proper proportion is lacking. The episcopal
office is due the obedience of its holders, receiving from them
their willingness to conform to divine truth. Bishops in turn

can expect to receive the grace of office, the power to preach the
truth, and the obedience of their flock due to those whose charge
is not to feed on but to feed the sheep. When the bishops submit
in unwavering obedience to God’s truth as mediated through the
episcopal office, then the laity are safe in obeying the bishops.
Disobedient bishops are a danger to themselves and to the souls
in their care.
If bishops deny obedience to the truth, their flock is obliged
to avoid the direction of their wayward shepherds. If truth is the
common object of episcopal and lay obedience, then obedience
will neither be overstated by bishops leading in error, nor under-
stated by laity demanding error. Truth as the common object of
obedience allows the laity to follow the magisterium with con-
fidence, and the magisterium to exercise the virtue of humility,
the authority of office, and service to God alone.
Pope Leo xiii expressed a similar sentiment in paragraph 15 of his 1881 en-
cyclical letter, Diuturnum illud, thus:
“The one only reason which men have for not obeying is
when anything is demanded of them which is openly repugnant
to the natural or divine law, for it is equally unlawful to com-
mand and to do anything in which the law of nature or the will
of God is violated. If, therefore, it should happen to any one to
be compelled to prefer one or the other, viz., to disregard either
the commands of God or those of rulers, he must obey Jesus
Christ …And yet there is no reason why those who so behave
themselves should be accused of refusing obedience; for if the
will of rulers is opposed to the will and the laws of God, they
themselves exceed the bounds of their own power and pervert
justice; nor can their authority then be valid, which, when there
is no justice, is null.”
Not exhausting the subject, Pope Leo also said in Libertas praestantissimum
of 1888:
From Paragraph 6: “This subject is often discussed by the

Angelic Doctor in his demonstration that the possibility of sin-
ning is not freedom, but slavery. It will suffice to quote his sub-
tle commentary on the words of Our Lord: ‘Whosoever com-
mitteth sin is the servant of sin’ (John 8:34). ‘Everything,’ he
says, ‘is that which belongs to it naturally. When, therefore, it
acts through a power outside itself, it does not act of itself, but
through another, that is, as a slave. But man is by nature rational.
When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself
and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when
he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and
is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, “Whoso-
ever committeth sin is the servant of sin”.’…the wise man alone
is free; and by the term ‘wise man’ was meant, as is well known,
the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in
justice and virtue.”
From Paragraph 13: “…obedience is greatly ennobled when
subjected to an authority which is the most just and supreme of
all. But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law
is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some or-
dinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man,
we become disobedient to God …all being free to live according
to law and right reason; and in this, as We have shown, true
liberty really consists.”
From Paragraph 24: “There can be no doubt that truth
alone should imbue the minds of men, for in it are found the
well-being, the end and perfection of every intelligent nature;
and therefore nothing but truth should be taught both to the
ignorant and to the educated, so as to bring knowledge to those
who have it not, and to preserve it in those who possess it. For
this reason it is plainly the duty of all who teach to banish error
from the mind, and by sure safeguards to close the entry to all
false convictions. From this it follows, as is evident, that the lib-
erty of which We have been speaking [liberty of teaching, a.k.a.
academic freedom] is greatly opposed to reason, and tends to
pervert men’s minds as it claims for itself the right of teaching
whatever it pleases—a liberty which the state cannot grant with-

out failing in its duty.”
From Paragraph 30: “But when anything is commanded
which is plainly at variance with the will of God, there is a wide
departure from this divinely constituted order, and at the same
time a direct conflict with divine authority; therefore, it is right
not to obey.”
Or, as this writer has repeated innumerable times, disobedience to the disobe-
dient is obedience.
The penchant shown by Popes and prelates since the Second Vatican Council
to display affection for modern errors is lamentable, to be sure. No less disturbing
is the willingness of so many lesser clerics and lay faithful to accept this misplaced
devotion to contemporary unthought. Religious liberty, academic freedom, uni-
versal salvation, wholly secular states, and adulterated worship are just a few of
the legion un-Catholic positions taken by the Catholic hierarchy for more than a
half-century now. But regardless of the frequency with which such positions are
maintained, or the exalted state of the men maintaining them, no one is bound
to assent to them, for they are against the letter of the Faith and against the spirit
of the Faith. In most instances they do not even follow the letter of Vatican ii, but
indeed represent the infamous “spirit” of the Council which seemingly is com-
prised of nothing other than denials of the philosophy, theology, and practice of
the Church from earlier eras.
Do not lay hands on the Lord’s anointed! Although a strong argument can be
made that secular matters at times require the use of force to bring justice to the
oppressed, such can not be the case where the justice of God in the Church is in
question. Never, never, never may the primacy of Peter, the apostolic succession of
the episcopate, or the sovereignty of Holy Mother Church be challenged. Never.
Where error, abuse of power, or capitulation to the world is in evidence among
the hierarchy, even the Pope himself, the proper response of the faithful Catholic
is the aforementioned nothing. Nothing may be said or done to call into doubt
the legitimacy of the Petrine office. Nothing may be said or done which gives
encouragement to the enemies of the Church, those within or those without the
sheepfold. Nothing may be said or done expressive of despair that anyone but
God the Holy Ghost guides the Mystical Body of Christ always in keeping with
the providence of God the Father.
As well, then, nothing may be said or done supportive of what hierarchs say
and do in opposition to immemorial truths and traditions given them for the
teaching of the nations. Nothing may be said or done acquiescing to the ethos of
the world infecting men of the Church. Nothing may be said or done confirming
children in the sense that the Church herself is as fungible, as evolving, as unsta-
ble as the media circuses, the bread and circuses, the madhouse which modern
science, politics, and pseudo-philosophy declare is the state of reality. Nothing
may be said or done in denial of that which Catholics have believed unanimous-
ly, ubiquitously, and unchangingly. Nothing may be left unsaid or undone to
demonstrate absolute fidelity to the entirety of the Deposit of faith, regardless of
who might be in disagreement, no matter the sanctions threatened for such fidel-
ity, in spite of any hardships incurred as part of taking up the cross of Christ each
day and following Him to Calvary and thence to the bliss and joy promised His
faithful on the Last and Endless Day.
Kings of realms may not oppress their subjects. Presidents of nations may not
give license to their subjects to commit immorality. Popes may not impose error
on their subjects. The fact that most people will accept oppression, throw them-
selves into sin, and embrace error does not change reality. There is no authority,
secular or spiritual, to legitimate wrong as right. None has the right to be wrong.
Or, in the words of the already quoted Pope Leo xiii, error has no rights. Justice
means rendering each his due. Obedience is an act of justice. Disobeying God is
the supreme act of injustice. To obey any man of any state of whatever power in
rebellion against the will of God is unjust, unloving, and damnable. Not only the
tyrants who dictate such repugnant actions will be punished by the supreme Judge
on Judgement Day, but their subjects who willingly—willfully—submitted them-
selves to that injustice will be subject to that punishment. He who aids a prophet
because he is a prophet receives a prophet’s reward; he who cowardly aids the faith-
less by being faithless will receive the punishment reserved for the faithless coward.
In other words, follow Peter, not Judas.
Where’s a mythic hero when you need one?

Posterity is grateful that history has not universally practiced the politics of
expedience. Though our common human heritage is filled with its share of Iscar-
iots, Benedict Arnolds, and Vichy governments, our patrimony has seen better.
We are the beneficiaries of innumerable profiles in courage from antiquity to the
very present.
Were it not for the boldness of the likes of Constantine, the pre-Revolution-
ary French, and the Americans during Britain’s finest hour, the world might well
be run by pagan monarchic nazis. Of course, no serious historian would suggest
that Constantine’s embrace of Christianity, French affection for Benjamin Frank-
lin, or the lend-lease policy of Depression-plagued America were purely altruistic
actions. They were, however, unorthodox and risky commitments to causes that
were anything but ventures assured of success.
Constantine sought not salvation, but allies in his struggles to advance im-
perial interests. In fact, his first act in favor of the Church was not official sanc-
tioning, but mere decriminalization. The aristocratic French sought less to aid
democracy than to harm their neighbors across the Channel. They would have
been horrified to realize—as they did too late—the ramifications of anti-monar-
chical sentiment in their own kingdom. Most Americans sought little more than
jobs from the New Deal Administration. Many Congressmen and Senators used
anti-war sentiment quite effectively to thwart Roosevelt’s attempts to expand as-
sistance to America’s European friends.
Giving realism its due, however, does not diminish the significance of these
(and other) historic advocacies of the underdog. Prudence dictated that Christi-
anity should be shunned as a disruptive element in the Roman Empire. The Brit-
ish could not be allowed to lose their New World colonies because of the risk to
the territories claimed by every European power. Conventional wisdom was that
the United States preferred dealing with its own economic disaster rather than
with the military catastrophe brewing far away. None of these assessments was
false, but all proved wanting when placed in the scale of political, philosophical,
and strategic genius.
Iscariot, Arnold, and the Vichy were shrewd. In the short term they might
have seemed vindicated. Christ died. The British remained a threat to America
for more than a third of a century after the Declaration of Independence. Hitler
conquered more of Europe than any Caesar, Charlemagne, or Napoleon.
Those whose measure is shrewdness might well have predicted the Goths, the
Reign of Terror, and the Cold War. It is not likely, though, that minds perceptive
enough to understand the reality of absolute personal deity, of the ascendance
of personal freedom, of the right to political self-determination were themselves
blind to the eventuality of being transcended by the ideals they championed.
All that is left of Rome’s empire is her Church. France saw her own revolution
descend to anarchy and then into the eventual dictatorship of Napoleon, estab-
lishing a stable republican government only in the twentieth century. The tangible
loss of national innocence in the United States during the Cold War period has
yet to reveal a concomitant gain.
We are the inheritors of these treasures amassed through history. All too
often, unfortunately, we behave, not like our pioneering forebears, but like the
spoiled scions of Old Money. We make our fortunes, not the old-fashioned way
of earning, but by the newfangled obsession with the lottery.
There is a monumental difference between the perils braved by our adventur-
ous ancestors and the wagers made by our greedy selves. Risk in the past involved
hands-on interaction with the land, with ideals, with human beings. Today’s cor-
porate warrior speculates in other peoples’ money, in the stock market, in copy-
right law, and in virtual realty.
The stuff of which greatness is made requires an ability to identify the good
desired, the fortitude to confront risk, and the willingness to bear the cost en-
tailed. Far from being alien to human nature, this dynamic is constitutive of hu-
man history. What we ignore to our mortal peril is that the other half of this
equation is quiescence in the face of necessity, complacency with the status quo,
and cowardice before unknown hardship. One would look long, perhaps in vain,
to find leaders in our country whose standard is that of greatness rather than
sameness. It seems the fatal flaw of democracy is that the leaders are drawn from
the led.
November’s first Tuesday is little more than two months distant. Instead of
voting for candidates who pledge more of the same or a return to a golden age that
never was, it is time for American citizens to take on the mantle placed on them
by representative democracy.
It is not enough to vote—campaigns need workers. It is not enough to cam-
paign—ballots need candidates. It is not enough to run—citizens need leaders.
Leading means to do what others will not. To get out in front. To take chanc-
es. To be ready to vindicate truth and righteousness, though all the world be
arrayed against you.
Our votes are not meant for the winners, but for the best. Our ideals our not
meant to be palatable, but to be true. Our goal is not meant to keep us where we
are, but to lead us on to where only the bold, the great, and the selfless can find
the way.
History, my friends, is a harsh judge, but not the harshest.
The preceding paragraphs might have been written in 2004. They were not. It
was the presidential election of 2000 that prompted those thoughts. Their author,
yours truly, is not at all satisfied with them. He yet labored under the delusion
that the system in place provided a remedy for the system in place. He was wrong.
When the 2004 presidential elections came along, he understood things better.
Here is a sample of what he said:
America’s Politics of Perdition
Your Eminence,
It is difficult to fully express my gratitude to you for your
recent clarification of the principles involved for men of good
will seeking to cast votes in popular elections according to the
moral guidance offered by the Church. As you are well aware,
the situation in the United States is quite volatile. Your explana-
tion provided the Episcopal Conference an excellent means to
navigate these perilous waters. I convey here my personal thanks
for the invaluable assistance your wise words represent. Solo-
mon himself would have been hard pressed to state so clearly the
absolute prohibition of supporting candidates known to hold
problematic positions viz. the moral law; while making the fine
distinction that a voter may in conscience decry said candidate’s
shortcomings, yet support him all the same in favor of other
meritorious ideas, policies, and accomplishments. Brilliant, Your
Eminence, exquisitely brilliant!
Your Grace will be pleased to know that I have employed
what I wish to flatter you by calling “Ratzinger’s Rationale” to
another matter of governance vital to the Church in the United
States. On the principle, almost along the lines of that called
“double effect” most often invoked in medical ethics, that good
may be pursued separate from the evil known to be attached to
it, so acutely articulated by Your Eminence, I have sent a set of
recommendations to the Congregation for Bishops in the Holy
See regarding vacant sees in the United States facing pressing
pastoral needs. Your splendid proposition has given exactly the

foundation needed to calm those who might find my sugges-
tions challenging.
His Eminence Bernard Cardinal Law and their Excellencies
Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Bishop Anthony O’Connell
head the list of names which this Nunciature urges the Holy
See to consider as appointments for ordinaries in a number of
dioceses in the United States. Given their proven track record
as shepherds with profound pastoral sensitivity, administrative
competence, and total dedication to the vision of His Holiness
Pope John Paul ii and Vatican ii, issues of age, past legal incon-
veniences, and any misgivings within popular opinion can eas-
ily be resolved with an appeal to “Ratzinger’s Rationale”. These
worthy prelates are not being put forward in order to endorse
any views they might have on seminary formation, celibate chas-
tity, or personnel policies not quite in line with accepted practice
in the rest of the Church; but because they have tremendous
skills, talents, and experience sorely required in shepherdless
local churches who would welcome pastors of souls with their
histories of affection for the People of God, dedication to the
service of humanity, and commitment to preserving and extend-
ing the new Springtime of faith of which they have been such
prominent promoters.
Again, Your Eminence, thank you for the wisdom that you
shared which resulted in this felicitous resolution to certain pas-
toral difficulties begging my attention. You are an inspiration
to us lesser sons of the Church. With gratitude and fraternal
warmth, I remain
Yours in Christ,
Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, JCD
Papal Nuncio to the United States of America
Ahem.
None would seek justification in any way to defend a decision so obtuse,
mindless, and insulting as appointing as bishops, known perpetrators of im-
moral acts or those who tolerated such while in former positions of authority.
There is no fear that Cardinal Law, Archbishop Weakland, or Bishop O’Con-
nell will ever head dioceses again. Of course, in the case of Cardinal Law, his
“demotion” involves the burden of administering one of the four major basilicas
of the city of Rome.
This willingness to brave a storm of criticism in such public and visible mat-
ters of scandal and outrage is not possessed only by the apparatus ruling the Holy
See. Citizens of the United States are more than willing to turn their self-blinded
eyes to the morally reprehensible records of the two men currently vying for the
presidency. Sad to say, Catholics are among those who see less evil, hear less evil,
speak less evil, and call it good.
It is never ever permissible to do evil. Good may not under any circumstances be
the excuse for committing an evil act. Bad means can not lead to good ends.
During the present electoral contest, however, a refrain is recurring ad nause-
am encouraging Catholics to vote on the basis of choosing “the lesser evil”. Others
have pointed out long before this writer was ever born that the lesser of two evils
is still evil. Wishful thinking, good intentions, and “nice” people can not change
reality or alter the path that leads to hell. Good is that which is all good; evil is so
because of whatever defect it possesses, however small.
President Bush allows babies to be murdered for stem-cell research, after
rapes, as a response to incest, and if a mother’s life purportedly is at risk.
Senator Kerry accepts all of that, adding to the President’s list child murder at
the discretion of a woman’s choice for whatever reason or none. Senator Kerry
wants states to regulate sodomite unions. So does President Bush. The current
Chief Executive is of the opinion that the Constitution is properly interpreted
to mean that laws offensive to the will of God may be passed according to the
will of the people. Senator Kerry concurs. Senator Kerry is also a self-admitted
participant in committing atrocities during time of war. President Bush has
made public confession to alcohol abuse, immaturity, and irresponsibility lead-
ing to brushes with the law.
Baby killing, sodomy, and faithlessness are evil. Murder and unnatural acts
cry to Heaven for vengeance. To have no God violates the true God’s First
Commandment to His chosen people, and denies the greatest Commandment
articulated by His Son, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ: Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with they whole mind,
and with thy whole strength!
Practically everyone retches at the idea of placing perverts in the role of shep-
herd and guardian over children’s bodies and souls. The same people, absurdly,
can stomach as rulers men who countenance children being scalded, vacuumed,
and rent limb from limb—by their mothers! Catholics who would not have sod-
omites as bishops would elect as president men who defend the “rights” of sod-
omites to “marry”, to commit their abominations, to broadcast their foul propa-
ganda in public, to insinuate depravity in school curricula, and to adopt helpless
children to be subjected to degenerate environments as their only homes. Bishops
are vilified for “hiding” behind laws and lawyers to escape criminal and/or finan-
cial liability for their dioceses’ (mis)management of abuse cases; but the populace
continues to reelect to office the very lawyers who concoct laws so offensive to the
sense of justice of all parties involved; the abused, the accused, and the confused
prelates in the middle of it all.
Hackles rise among apologists for this sick state of affairs as they protest by
way of demanding, “What are we supposed to do—waste our votes on third-party
candidates?” To this a reasonable response would be, “Do whatever you want. It’s
a free country, isn’t it? Vote third party, write in a name, don’t vote at all. Vote for
whomever you think best. Isn’t that what it means to have free elections?”
Freedom does not, however, inhere in knowingly establishing in power men
who will use that power to encourage the slaughter of infants, the abandonment
of the conjugal bond, and the deposing of Christ as Sovereign King. To patiently
endure such a regime imposed by force of arms could lead to heroic sanctity. To
lend one’s agreement, financial support, and labor to efforts informed by such
abominations is disgraceful. It is hard to decide which is most despicable: philos-
ophies and policies founded in base iniquity, the men who promulgate them, or
the people who accede to them.
No compliment to a political system is offered when to vote for a competent,
qualified, and moral candidate is described as a “waste”. Not much freedom re-
mains to those who accept the dictates of a two-headed cabal, the Replutocrats
and the Demoblicans, in the name of liberty. It is a waste, as the expression of
representative government, to offer political franchise and universal suffrage to a
“citizenry” blindly willing to receive what most of them consider to be options
between one evil and a lesser evil. Bring back the days of smoke-filled rooms, ma-
chine politics, and “bought” elections—they were more honest, less hypocritical
manifestations of the truth tacitly admitted by those adhering to the lesser-evil
doctrine for choosing leaders of the “free” world. It has not been explained how
this dearth of choices is materially or substantially different from Soviet Politburo

operations rubber-stamped in popular elections.
Modern man bemoans the “restrictions” on his free will that require deference
to the will of God. Our Lord offers perfect freedom in choosing His will, but most
men reject that in order to effect their own wills. Democratic politics force men to
choose between two equally foul options, and mindless voters agree to impose on
themselves what they know to be unjust. God offers eternal life where democracy
offers tyranny—and God’s people choose… tyranny! This is what modern man
calls freedom?!?
Judgement Day will bring the revelation of each heart’s content based
not on whether his candidates won elections, but on whether the candidates
for whom he voted should have won elections in order to bring obedience to
God’s will to bear on the governance of peoples. Worthy is the soul whose ev-
ery righteous candidate lost every election; woe to the soul whose compromise
candidates won every election by being willing to offend God by gross injustice
inflicted in the name of law. A nation with almost 300 million inhabitants
incapable of finding for a leader even one man true to Christ, His Kingdom,
and His Church has little hope of preserving itself against the inevitable assaults
that will beset it from within. If the lesser of two evils is the best that can be
offered by a nation’s citizens, then much, much worse than the present evil will
be their collective future.
The mindset of choosing, as opposed to enduring evil, led to the election of
Hitler and the Nazis on their promises of economic stability, restored national
prestige, and military security. A world war was necessary to replace that vision of
world order with the New World Order being brought into existence in the 21st
century. Some improvement. The politics of compromise, willing to endorse the
lesser of two evils, resulted in the enshrinement in the United States Constitution
of the legal fact that dark-skinned persons were to be counted as three-fifths of a
person rather than being ignored as non-persons. The War Between the States was
fought, civil unrest in the mid-twentieth century was inflicted, and continuing
disparity in economics and political power is tolerated as the consequences of the
Constitution’s other fatal flaw (the truly fatal flaw was excising Christ as King
from the national identity). The cynical political reasoning that it is expedient that
one man die for the sake of the people bore ill fruit in deicide. That decision drew
the battle lines between Heaven and hell that ushered in the war being fought
even now and unto the end of time.
Jesus Christ is the victor in that war. All that remains for man is for each man
to choose the side on which he will battle. Every thought, word, and deed—and
vote—in this earthly life is a declaration for or against Jesus Christ and eternal
life. In this battle with powers and principalities, not flesh and blood, flesh and
blood lends aid either to satan or to Saint Michael. It beggars belief to imagine
that evil—rationalized, chosen, and willed—to any degree will be welcomed by
Saint Michael in his efforts in obedience to God almighty.
Be ye holy as I the Lord your God am holy! (Leviticus 19:2). Be ye therefore per-
fect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect! (St. Matthew 5:48). Love the Lord thy God
with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with thy whole mind, and with thy whole
strength! (St. Mark 13:30).
These commands from God leave no room for philosophies in denial of Him,
provide no wiggle room for politicians who would rather avoid Him, and offer no
room for compromise to the people of a nation who prefer to accept a lesser evil
instead of Him and only Him. Decision 2004 is before us. Choose a side.
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
6 September 2004: St. Zachary the Prophet
Contrary to false political ideologies protesting otherwise, the modern men

of the Church have bound themselves intimately to the men of the world in the
state. Separation of Church and state is observed in its constant breaching inso-
far as the men willing to be false to the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother
Church pursue liberty in keeping with the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the
same year, six months earlier, as the above was written, the Holy See issued a
statement from Pope John Paul ii that resulted in this writer feeling compelled to
object by saying the following:
The Exaltation of the Absurd

His Holiness, Pope John Paul ii, is reported by the Zenit News Service (23
February 2004) as advocating, “an adequate separation of church and state so that
citizens, regardless of their religion, can make their contribution to society.” He is
quoted as saying, “In fulfilling this task, the clear distinction between the civil and
religious spheres allows each of these sectors to exercise its proper responsibilities
effectively, with mutual respect and in complete freedom of conscience… In a
pluralistic society the secularity of the state allows for communication between
the different spiritual dimensions and the nation… The church and the state,
therefore, are not rivals but partners: In healthy dialogue with each other they can
encourage integral human development and social harmony.”
The story goes on to relate that the Pope perceives a positive sign in the Turk-
ish Constitution that recognizes “freedom of conscience, as well as freedom of re-
ligion, worship and instruction…These constitutional guarantees, once they have
become part of ordinary legislation and therefore of the living fabric of society,
permit all citizens regardless of religious belief or affiliation to make their contri-
bution to the building up of Turkish society… The nation is thus able to benefit
from the hope and the moral qualities that draw their strength from the deeply
held religious convictions of the people.” It is the desire of the Pope that such a
progressive stance will bring the juridical recognition of the Church, presumably
not only in Turkey, but in all nations.
Setting aside the critical problem of the fact that “distinction” and “sepa-
ration” are entirely different—separate—words with very different—distinct—
meanings, rendering it impossible to make use of them interchangeably as His
Holiness endeavored to do in the statement quoted by Zenit, it must be pointed
out that the Pope’s own argument eliminates his desired goal, namely, of estab-
lishing religious pluralism as normative to society and guaranteed by secularism.
Religious freedom is not a goal of secularism. Increasingly secular states invariably
experience a lessening of religious tolerance, a diminishment of the influence of
authentic morality on the public mores, and the removal of a place for God and
His Church from official policy, national objectives, and cultural identity.
As a case in point, one needs look no further than the poster child of na-
tional secularism enshrining the chimera of religious freedom, the United States
of America. The Constitution of this country explicitly denies pride of place to
the Body of Christ, the Catholic Church, and any other religious organization,
within the philosophy, structures, or mechanisms of the government. The Church
is forbidden to comment from the pulpit on political issues on pain of losing
the all-important tax-free status afforded the pusillanimous who prefer legitimacy
in the city of man rather than citizenship in the city of God. Sodomy has been
endorsed as a protected “right” by the Supreme Court of the United States, the
Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts, and the mayors of San Francisco
and Chicago, as well as the two most prominent candidates for the nomination of
the Democrat party for President. The current Republican President thinks sod-
omite marriage unacceptable, but is on record as wishing to codify laws in favor

of sodomite “civil unions”. Contraception, divorce, abortion, and usury are com-
monplace to the point of being unremarkable in the minds of most Americans.
Looking further afield one sees that France has passed a law criminalizing the
wearing of religious symbols and apparel in public places, such as Mohammedan
women wearing veils, Jews wearing yarmulkes, and Christians wearing large cru-
cifixes. The French have the cheeky temerity to suggest that this law is a protection
of the rights of Mohammedan women against the tyranny and injustice of Mo-
hammedan religious practice. Soviet Russia was as secular a country as could have
been conceived, and its secularism perdures in the post-Soviet era. The result of
this ongoing secularist bent is that the Russian government outlawed almost every
religious group in the world from seeking members within its borders, excepting
only the Russian Orthodox Church and a few small religious entities that pose
little threat to the monolithic status quo.
Closer to hand, our neighbors to the north in Canada are in the process of
making a “hate crime” out of public opposition to “gay rights”, and leaders in
that nation are so bold as to aver that abortion and homosexuality are Canadian
values that must be given every legal support imaginable. Secularist, Marxist, and
masonic regimes in Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua have a disturbing habit of seiz-
ing Church property, imprisoning clergy, and executing bishops. Secularism and
pluralism in Haiti have resulted in the spectacle of a country that holds voodoo
as its national religion being presided over by a former Catholic priest who just
happens to be in sympathy with communism.
Secularism has not made the Mohammedan minority in India or the hindu
minority in Pakistan any safer. Catholics in Northern Ireland do not benefit, reli-
giously or economically, from the enlightened secularist policies of England. The
Dalai Lama is in exile precisely because the Red Chinese are quite indiscriminate
in their application of nonsectarian values toward Buddhists, Catholics, or their
fellow atheists who dare seek for man the rights already denied to God.
“Religious freedom” can not stand up even in the abstract because of that
pesky law of non-contradiction forbidding a statement and its opposite to be
simultaneously true. A nation committed to offering human sacrifices for the ap-
peasement of the gods can hardly be expected to be tolerant of a group of people
in its midst who insist on the absolute sanctity of human life. One can not say as
statements of absolute truth both that men must always be killed and that men
must never be killed.
Lest any demur that human sacrifice is an extreme example unbefitting a

sober argument, please remember that the slaughter of innocents is very much
a concrete issue regarding religious beliefs as they touch on the subject of abor-
tion. How, pray tell, can one nation respect the religious beliefs of two sets of
people, one of which literally celebrates the scalding, evisceration, and impaling
of infants, and the other of which is convinced that such barbarity cries to
Heaven for vengeance?
But even if the theoretical notion of religious liberty could be sensibly and
sanely maintained, which it can not be, actual human experience across several
centuries, around the world, and among billions of people demonstrates that it
simply does not work. The practical result of religious liberty is the freedom to not
practice religion becoming the prohibition of religious practice ultimately leading
to the persecution of religious practitioners. Religious persecution by the religious
is at least logically consistent: error has no rights. Religious persecution by those
claiming to champion religious freedom adds to the injury of injustice the insult
of illogic, hypocrisy, and rank dishonesty.
Perhaps the most absurd aspect of the Pope’s statement, however, is that there
simply is no reason within the concept of religious liberty binding on all of its
advocates to explain why religious liberty should be offered to anyone at all. Some
secularists are atheists. Most would probably describe themselves as agnostics. A
secularist calling himself a religionist is a walking, talking oxymoron. A religionist
calling himself a secularist is an apostate.
It would seem that the desire of a secularist approach to the problem of sec-
tarian discord is predicated on the fact that religious strife stems from religious
disagreement. What happens, then, when the secularists disagree? An answer to
that question can be found in the history books on the subject of World Wars i
and ii; in the contemporary media describing the conflicts in Iraq, the Korean
peninsula, and the Ivory Coast; and in the revealed word of God almighty in the
Book of the Apocalypse, chapter eighteen.
The Pope making his appeal to the government in Turkey begs the question
of why a diplomat from a Mohammedan country, about to join the economic
organization of Europe with stated policies offensive to Christian morality, should
listen at all to the head of the Catholic Church. Secularist man is satisfied that
he can solve all of mankind’s problems without recourse to the divine, faith, or
the Church. That is the definition of secularism; it is thoroughly opposed to the
truths, morality, and worship native to religion.
What ails man is not that there are too many religions fighting over what is
good, in need of a secularist referee to bring deluded simpletons to their senses.
What ails man is the unwillingness of the hierarchy and members of the Cath-
olic Church to fight for the one Faith, one Baptism, and one Lord as revealed to
and taught by His one Church, wherein true peace can be shared, real hope is
offered for the relief of mortal woes, and the love of God is experienced with the
confidence that He will judge, not referee, with justice and mercy on the Last
Day. How his Holiness expects a conglomeration of unbelieving, immoral, and
money-grubbing bureaucrats to do what the Church seems unwilling at present
to attempt admits of no rational explanation.
Father Smith,
Sacerdos vagus
25 February 2004: Ash Wednesday
The Bottom Line

Rarely if ever is it pointed out that Caesar must join his subjects in rendering
unto God that which is God’s. God does not receive His due from those who are
ignorant of His identity, His will for the moral life, or the necessity of worship-
ping Him in His Spirit and in His Truth. Obscuring the law of God, silencing the
mention of the Name of Jesus, and confusing the sheep of His Flock are acts of
disobedience and injustice. Men who deny the existence of God, who deny the
divinity of Jesus and/or the divine Maternity of His Mother, Mary, or who deny
the primacy of His Vicar on earth commit blasphemy against the Divine Majesty.
First among men in offering God all glory, honor, and kingship are the members
of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church beneath the successor of St. Peter, the
Pope in Rome. It is for them to ensure that Caesar is not remiss in his duty to
render God’s to God, including the children He claims through His merciful
love. Rendering unto Caesar ultimately is rendering unto God, for Caesar owes
God what everyone owes God—everything. Caesar, too, is commanded to love the
Lord God with his whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength, and
lead his whole nation—the neighbors he is commanded to love as himself—in
doing the same. As Saint Ambrose so wisely put it, “The grandest title of an em-
peror is to be a son of the Church; the emperor is in the Church, not over her.”
This sentiment applies to presidents, prime ministers, and potentates of every
stripe with equal force.
A story is told of John Cardinal Newman after his conversion to the one, true
Faith. Conversing with one of his former fellows in the heresy of Anglicanism,
the Cardinal failed to convince his companion of the necessity of belonging to
the Catholic Church for salvation. That man responded instead by saying, “With
all due respect, Your Eminence, you worship God your way, and I will worship
God my way.” To which the prince of the Church replied, “No, sir. You worship
God your way and I will worship God His way.” This is in the category of stories
that if it did not happen, it should have. Regardless of whether or not the incident
happened in fact, it is in fact the truth.
Much space has been taken up in these pages with quotes. There seems yet
room for at least one more:
From the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: “Religious

Indifferentism”
(which includes the public praise of false religions)
II. Restricted Indifferentism

In distinction from this absolute Indifferentism, a restricted
form of the error admits the necessity of religion on account,
chiefly, of its salutary influence on human life. But it holds
that all religions are equally worthy and profitable to man, and
equally pleasing to God. The classic advocate of this theory is
Rousseau, who maintains, in his Emile, that God looks only to
the sincerity of intention, and that everybody can serve Him by
remaining in the religion in which he has been brought up, or
by changing it at will for any other that pleases him more (Emile,
iii). This doctrine is widely advocated today on the grounds that,
beyond the truth of God’s existence, we can attain to no certain
religious knowledge; and that, since God has left us thus in un-
certainty, He will be pleased with whatever form of worship we
sincerely offer Him. The full reply to this error consists in the
proof that God has vouchsafed to man a supernatural revelation,
embodying a definite religion, which He desires that all should
embrace and practice. Without appealing to this fact, however, a
little consideration suffices to lay bare the inherent absurdity of
this doctrine. All religions, indeed, may be said to contain some
measure of truth; and God may accept the imperfect worship

of ignorant sincerity. But it is injurious to God, who is truth
itself, to assert that truth and falsehood are indifferent in His
sight. Since various religions are in disagreement, it follows that,
wherever they conflict, if one possesses the truth the others are in
error. The constituent elements of a religion are beliefs to be held
by the intellect, precepts to be observed, and a form of worship
to be practiced. Now—to confine ourselves to the great religions
of the world—Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, and the
religions of India and the Orient, are in direct antagonism by
their respective creeds, moral codes, and cults. To say that all
these irreconcilable beliefs and cults are equally pleasing to God
is to say that the divine being has no predilection for truth over
error; that the true and the false are alike congenial to His na-
ture. Again, to hold that truth and falsehood equally satisfy and
perfect the human intellect is to deny that reason has a native
bent towards, and affinity for, truth. If we deny this we deny
that any trust is to be placed in our reason. Turn to the ethical
side of the question. Here again there is conflict over almost all
the great moral issues. Let an illustration or two suffice. Moham-
medanism approves polygamy; Christianity uncompromisingly
condemns it as immoral. If these two teachers are equally trust-
worthy guides of life, then there is no such thing as fixed moral
values at all. If the [unmentionable acts of obscene worship] are
as pure in the sight of God as the austere worship that was con-
ducted in the temple of Jerusalem, then we must hold the deity
to be destitute of all moral attributes, in which case there would
be no grounds for religion at all. The fact is that this type of In-
differentism, though verbally acknowledging the excellence and
utility of religion, nevertheless, when pressed by logic, recoils
into absolute Indifferentism. “All religions are equally good”
comes to mean, at bottom, that religion is good for nothing.
We might all be wrong, but, my modern(ist) friends, we are not all right.
But what are we to do when the Vicar of Christ and the successors to the
Apostles under him refuse, or are reluctant to acknowledge, this simple truth.
Nothing. If you are not a bishop or the Pope, do not pass judgement on those
who attempt to be Catholic in ways different from yours. Pray for them. Explain
to them if they ask. Do not join them in their errors. You need not declare them
in error to refuse to accept their errors. Preach and live the Truth. Correct your
brother’s errors and leave the judgement of his soul to God.
There is but one magisterium in the Catholic Church. It is comprised of the
Pope and the bishops in communion with him. The rest of us need to be very
cautious about demanding of others a justification for how they are attempting to
be faithful. Certainly we might ask our fellows to explain their choices to us with
an eye toward greater fidelity in our own hearts. We must, however, steadfastly
resist the temptation to insist that others make themselves make sense to us and
satisfy our demands for orthodoxy.
Should one find himself in the position of being questioned by a member
of the hierarchy, it is incumbent upon him to offer the clearest, truest, and
most Catholic explanation within one’s means to provide. In these trying times
one may discover that the layman or simple cleric has a better grasp of Catholic
orthodoxy than a prelate. If that is indeed the case, all that can be done is to
respectfully disagree with him, pray for him, and offer no disrespect of him in
public or in private.
Catholicism is an offering of the grace of God to sinful men. That is all that a
faithful Catholic is able to embrace and to transmit. Catholicism is fundamentally
for things: for Christ, his Church, her Sacraments, their grace, and the salvation
it affords. Protestantism is an erroneous fundamentalism that is against things:
Christ’s One Church, His Vicar of that Church on earth, her seven Sacraments,
the actions that flow from the grace of faith, and a definitive body of Truth pro-
claimed authoritatively by the Vicar of Christ, through the Church, in perfect
imitation of her Lord. The Catholic faithful to tradition will spurn anything that
smacks of protestantism and will cleave humbly to the life of sanctity in keeping
with the Cross, the Sacraments, and the Truth.
Be Catholic. Pray. Do penance. Mortify the flesh. Reject all of the ways of the
world. Go to Confession. Assist at Mass.
Catholics are not protestants. They are not protestants in some blanket de-
nial of the authority and existence of the papacy. They are not protestants in an
inconsistent acknowledgement of the papal office and some jurisdiction without
any reference to a universal ministry. They are not protestants in pursuing an al-
legiance with the world divorced from continuity with the Church’s own history.
They are not protestants in the finding by individuals of an ability on their own
authority to declare other authorities null.
Church laws are given by God, through the magisterium, with the intent of
offering souls the means to their salvation. They are the vehicles of attaining the
freedom of the sons of God. Children of the Church who obey what they should,
as they should are not in fetters, but are at liberty to realize the life of sanctity.
Although they will proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven to all in earshot, they will at
root be asserting only their own witness to the grace of God at work in them. This
is legitimately understood as implying their conviction that all might licitly follow
their example, but it can not be construed to mean that any others are required
to imitate that example.
For those who desire a more forceful warning leveled at the hierarchy, take
comfort in these words of St. Augustine of Hippo:
Excerpted from Treatise 45 on the Gospel of St. John
“…[T]he Lord has spoken to us in similitudes of His

flock, and of the door, by which the sheepfold is to be entered.
Let the pagans therefore say, “We lead good lives!” If they
do not enter by the door, what does it profit them in which
they glory? A good life is profitable to man if it leads to life
everlasting, but if he is not to have life everlasting, what shall
his good life profit him? Because they can not be said to live
well, who either through blindness are ignorant of the very
end of all good living, or through pride despise the same. But
no man has a true and certain hope of living forever, unless
he acknowledge the life which is Christ, and enter by the door
into the sheepfold.
Such men as these, therefore, for the most part, try to per-
suade men to live well, and yet not to be Christians. They wish
to climb up another way, to steal and to kill; not, like the Good
Shepherd, to keep and to save. And so there have been certain
philosophers, holding many subtle discussions upon the virtues
and the vices; dividing, defining, reasoning out very clever argu-
ments, filling volumes, airing their own wisdom with loud trum-
pets; who would even dare to say to others: “Follow us; keep to
our sect, if you would live happily.” But they did not enter by the
door; they wished to destroy, to slay, and to kill.
What shall I say of these men? Behold, the Pharisees them-
selves were wont to read of Christ, and, in that very reading,
their voices re-echoed Christ, they hoped for His coming, and
yet did not recognize Him while He was with them. They boast-
ed that they themselves were among the seers, that is, among the
wise, but they denied Christ, and entered not in by the door.
Therefore, also would they, if they chanced to lead them away to
slay and to kill them, not to deliver them. So much for them. Let
us look to those who glory in the Name of Christ himself, and
see whether they by chance are entering in by the door. For there
are countless numbers who not only boast that they are seers,
but would have it appear that they are enlightened by Christ; yet
they are heretics.”
For those who desire words of comfort for our beloved shepherds, the Pope
and all the bishops in union with him, offer these words of St. Augustine of Hippo:
“Pray for us who live in so precarious a state, as it were be-

tween the teeth of furious wolves. These wandering sheep, ob-
stinate sheep, are offended because we run after them, as if their
wandering made them cease to be ours. ‘Why dost thou call us?’
they say; ‘why dost thou pursue us?’ But the very reason of our
cries and our anguish is that they are running to their ruin. ‘If
I am lost, if I die, what is it to thee? What dost thou want with
me?’ What I want is to call thee back from thy wandering; what I
desire is to snatch thee from death. ‘But what if I will to wander?
What if I will to be lost?’ Thou willest to wander? Thou willest to
be lost? How much more earnestly do I wish it not! Yea, I dare say
it, I am importunate; for I hear the Apostle saying: “Preach the
word: be instant in season and out of season.” In season, when
they are willing; out of season when they are unwilling. Yes then,
I am importunate: thou willest to perish, I will it not. And He
wills it not, who threatened the shepherds saying: “That which
was driven away you have not brought again, neither have you
sought that which was lost.” Am I to fear thee more than Him?
I fear thee not; the tribunal of Donatus cannot take the place of
Christ’s judgement seat, before which all appear. Whether thou
will it or not, I shall call back the wandering sheep, I shall seek
the lost sheep. The thorns may tear me; but however narrow the
opening may be, it shall not check my pursuit. I will beat every
bush, as long as the Lord gives me strength; so only I can get to
thee wherever thou strivest to perish.”
For those who might be asked advice from hierarchs on how they should
proceed, suggest these words of St. Augustine of Hippo:
“Who could love us more than God does? Nevertheless God

makes use of fear in order to save us, although He teaches us
with sweetness. When the Father of the family wanted guests for
his banquet, did he not send his servants to the highways and
hedges, to compel all they met to come in? This banquet is the
unity of Christ’s Body. If, then, the divine goodness has willed
that, at the fitting time, the faith of Christian kings should rec-
ognize this power of the Church, let the heretics brought back
from the by-ways, and schismatics forced into their enclosures,
consider not the constraint they suffer, but the banquet of the
Lord to which they would not otherwise have attained. Does
not the shepherd sometimes use threats and sometimes blows,
to win back to the master’s fold the sheep that have been enticed
out of it? Severity that springs from love is preferable to deceitful
gentleness. He who binds the delirious man, and wakes up the
sleeper from his lethargy, molests them both, but for their good.
If a house were on the point of falling, and our cries could not
induce those within it to come out, would it not be cruelty not
to save them by force in spite of themselves? And that, even if
we could snatch only one from death, because the rest, seeing
it, obstinately hastened their own destruction, as the Donatists
do, who in their madness commit suicide to obtain the crown
of martyrdom. No one can become good in spite of himself;
nevertheless, the rigorous laws of which they complain, bring
deliverance not only to individuals, but to whole cities, by free-

ing them from the bonds of untruth and causing them to see the
truth, which the violence of the deceits of the schismatics had
hidden from their eyes. Far from complaining, their gratitude
is now boundless and their joy complete; their feasts and their
chants are unceasing.”
Catholic Citizens of heaven and Earth

Give your secular rulers the gift of loyal subjects whose first loyalty is the
Kingdom of God. Give the Pope the spiritual gift of being a member of his flock
who loves his predecessors, their teachings, and the Truth no less than the filial
affection offered the current Holy Father. Give God the gift of loving Him more
than father and mother, wife and child, one’s very life and self. Love Him with
whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength. Offer whatever is left
over to your secular rulers.
Make it clear to the government that you understand that citizens do not
exist for the sake of the state, but that the state exists for the sake of the salva-
tion of citizens according to the will of God. Obeying that will results in living
the Faith in such a way that approval by one’s bishop or the Pope does not
become the ultimate goal, but supporting the hierarchy in the goal of winning
approval in individuals, the society, and the Church at large of only those things
which preserve the Faith in its entirety. Obedience does not necessarily lead to
sanctity, as is seen all too painfully in the experience of the Germans obeying
the Nazis, the United States Supreme Court obeying the political pressures that
brought Roe vs. Wade to the docket, and the average penitent having obeyed his
passions between visits to the confessional. Bellies make lousy gods, but so does
force, and so does the faceless mob. Obedience does not lead to sanctity, but
sanctity demands obedience to the font of holiness, God Himself. He has com-
manded; “Be ye holy as I the Lord thy God am holy!...Love the Lord thy God
with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with thy whole mind, and with thy
whole strength…If you love me, you will keep my commands…My command
to you is this: love one another as I have loved you…There is no greater love
than that a man lay down his life for his friends…”
If your parents tell you to play in traffic, disobey them. If your president tells
you to kill your children with surgery, devices, or chemicals, disobey him. If your
priests or Pope tell you that what the Church used to say is wrong and that you
must now follow them in following the ways of the world, disobey them. God did
not say, “Be ye obedient because I the Lord thy God am obedient.” God said, “Be
ye holy as I the Lord thy God am holy.” His Son followed that teaching faithfully
when He declared, “If you love me, keep my commands.” And the Father and the
Son both teach and command, as we are able to understand through the power
of the Holy Ghost, that we are to love the Lord Our God with our whole hearts,
whole souls, whole minds, and whole strength. Sanctity does not come from obe-
dience—just ask the Watergate burglars, the Nazis at Nuremberg, or Adam and
Eve after Eden if you don’t understand that. Obedience comes from sanctity— as
is proved by the words, Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, and Fiat voluntas tua
sicut in caelo et in terra, and non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu.
If you don’t understand Latin, just realize that sanctity is what Our Lady
obediently gave the Father, sanctity is what the Son taught us to give the Father in
obedience, and sanctity is the obedient gift of the Son to the Father. Our Lady and
Our Lord did not obediently become holy. Their holiness demanded obedience.
Those who are holy obey proper authority. One can be obedient without being
holy. The holy can not remain holy without obedience, but obedience without
sanctity leaves one in servile obedience to the unholy. Our Lady and Our Lord
are holy, and thus they obeyed. Our task is to seek their sanctity, and thus obey as
they obeyed. If we begin with obedience without acknowledging the sovereignty
of sanctity, we will be enslaved. Obedience without sanctity is servitude. Sanctity
with obedience is freedom.
We can not obey if we are not holy. We must not obey anything that does not
lead to our holiness. Nothing is holy that rejects the perfect, eternal, unchanging
will of God as it is expressed through the perfect, everlasting, unchanging teach-
ings of the Church. This is true regardless of who you are to obey, be it your par-
ents, your president, your priests, or your Pope. Your parents, your president, your
priests, and your Pope must also obey God. If your parents, your president, your
priests, or your Pope disobey God, then you disobey your parents, your president,
your priests, or your Pope. Disobeying the disobedient is a true manifestation of
obedience to God.
Humility is sane, it is in touch with reality, it is honest. To be humble is to
know that God is above all, not only above you, but above your parents, your
president, your priests, and your Pope. If you are humble you will not insanely
obey the insanity of parents who tell you that making money is the most import-
ant part of life, or the insanity of your president who says that we must be friends
with the enemies of God, or the insanity of your priests who say that you must
obey your bishops who agree with your parents and your president, or the insan-
ity of your Pope who says that the only insane thing would be to call all of this
insane. The humble person is like the boy who told the emperor he had no new
clothes, indeed, no clothes at all. The humble person is the honest person. He will
say, “The world, the flesh, and the devil are wrong, liars, and evil. The Church is
not now, never was, and never will be in error. What she has taught from the time
of Jesus is what I will believe until the day I die. No matter who disagrees with
this, be he my father, father of the country, father pastor, or the Holy Father, I
will shun his lies and embrace Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.” Or
as a humble woman in my acquaintance once told me, “I will leave the Catholic
Church when Jesus Christ leaves the Catholic Church.”
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Obedience was
made for sanctity, not sanctity for obedience. The Catholic papacy is to lead all
men of the world to the Catholic Church, not to lead the Catholic papacy and the
Catholic Church into the ways of the world. It is that simple. That is the simple
truth. Follow no one who is going anywhere other than to the Cross of Christ, the
Gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Tree of life, the Sign borne by the Groom
and the Bride sealing their hearts in perfect love on earth, unto perfect and eternal
life in Heaven.
Christendom is not of this world, but dwells within: in the human heart, in
the family, and in the nation. It is in the world, but not of the world. Christen-
dom is the Kingdom by which Heaven reveals its reign at hand. Christendom is
the Catholic Church within every nation where souls acknowledge the absolute
sovereignty of Christ the King. There is no divine right of kings except they exer-
cise their rule as regents of the only rightful King, who is Himself divine.
Re-establishing Christendom requires humility. The lay faithful must humbly
attend to their responsibilities in the world, seeking to bring sanctity to the world
through their fidelity to the Church, fretting and obsessing less on the human
weakness manifested by the shepherds of the Flock of Christ, and insisting more
on the sanctity by which God’s power will operate throughout the Body of Christ
to preserve the Church against her enemies from within and without. Those shep-
herds must humbly bring sanctity to bear on their reception of divine Truth and
their assent to the Deposit of Faith as they teach the nations, administer the
Sacraments to the faithful, and rule and judge souls in keeping with the justice
which finds its perfection in mercy. It is for the men of the world to set aside their
demonic pride and respond to the graces present in their midst through their
neighbors already of Christ’s Flock, offered through the instruction of Christ’s
chosen shepherds, and rejected at peril of eternal perdition subject to the prince of
the world, satan, who desires to wield his infernal rule in despite of God on earth
and absolutely separated from God in hell. Humility is manifested in the poor
in spirit. Christendom is the Kingdom of Heaven present on earth. It is through
the humility of the poor in spirit that Christendom will reign supreme on earth
in consonance with God’s promise that the humble will reign in His Kingdom.
Fear not the world, for Jesus has overcome the world! Powers and Principali-
ties are arrayed against us, but God is for us, and none can overcome Him. Even
now the head of the serpent is beneath the foot of Our Lady; we who dwell be-
neath the protection of her mantle will share in her victory, in which she has full
share in the victory of Christ, victor mundi.
Father Smith
25 September 2005
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
445
Defining our Terms

Ground Rules for Useful Dialogue
1. Introduction
Heaven is a Kingdom. The King of Heaven is Jesus Christ, the Second Person
of the Most Holy Trinity, the Son of God. The Queen of Heaven is the Blessed
Virgin Mary, immaculately conceived, absolutely free from sin, so that she would
be worthy to obey the will of God the Father to bear the Son of God as His Moth-
er, conceiving Him in her pure womb by the power of the Holy Ghost. Heaven is
the house of God whose many mansions are the home of His children conceived
not by blood or by flesh or the will of man, but according to the will of God by
water and the Holy Ghost. Heaven’s Kingdom is not of this world. Heaven’s King
reigns not over realms and lands, but in the hearts of the blessed who believe in
Him and obey His commands. Sovereignty from Heaven is the eternal rule begun
for us in time. Heaven’s reign is at hand.
Where Heaven’s rule holds sway on earth, men come to know that earth
offers them no abiding place. Nations are loved insofar as they provide a context
for heeding the sovereignty of the eternal King, Jesus Christ. Countrymen are
acknowledged as brothers regardless of their ethnic roots so long as they recog-
nize a common sonship in Jesus Christ as children of God the Father. The peace
wrought by this unity is the work of the Holy Ghost within the Body of Christ,
His Bride the Catholic Church, Mother of the faithful sons of God. This peaceful
unity is in this world, not of this world, and lasts beyond the end of this world.
That which is done by men in this world, by which they obey, cooperate
with, and wield divine authority, must ever reflect the law God has established
in creation, written on human hearts, and taught his Church. Man’s free will is
effective only when he chooses life, rejects the unnatural, and dedicates himself
wholeheartedly to the charity by which he was created, in which he is nurtured,
and for which he is willed by God. Fidelity to this humble obedience is man-
ifested in worship of God in spirit and truth; filial piety to family, neighbor,
and country; and willingness to sacrifice everything in favor of the good as
given by God alone.
Each man begins his mortal life of service to the goal of God’s gift of eternal
life within a family. Within the family lives the charity ordained by God to be
the work of life on earth and the condition for endless life in Heaven. As God
gives love excepting none of His being in commitment to the unbreakable bond
He wills for His children, husbands and wives, in union with their children must
offer themselves to, and for, one another with the intention of never abandoning
them whom God has willed to be the recipients of His abundant love. Man and
woman are given to one another for the purpose of raising up children for the
glory of God. Husbands and wives give themselves unto death for the sake of the
love of God expressed in the family He has made for Himself to share His death-
less joy in Heaven.
Societies depend upon the sanctity of the family for their stability, prosperity,
and continuation. Societies depend upon the sanctity of the family for their raison
d’etre, guiding principle, and ultimate purpose. As the family is in small, so will
the society be at large. Every element of family life is ordered toward the end of
aiding its members attain eternal life. Every aspect of society is ordered toward the
end of aiding families in their work of rendering God His due, and thus attaining
eternal life. The just society is that society which offers the family an environment con-
ducive to giving God all to which He justly lays a claim: the hearts, souls, minds, and
strength of the creatures made in His image and likeness.
Jesus Christ is the only Name given to men by which divine justice is ac-
complished. He fulfills all justice by His perfect act of mercy on the Cross of
Calvary. God can not deny Himself; Jesus Christ is the truth of God incarnate
who offers His Father all glory, denying Him nothing of His Body, Blood, Soul,
and Divinity in thought, word, or deed. Each faithful soul who acknowledges
the Word made flesh on earth will be acknowledged by the Word before the
Throne of His Father in Heaven. That grace-filled heart will find himself made
the dwelling place of the Father and the Son in the Holy Ghost, and will dis-
cover a place for himself in the many mansions of his Father’s house in Heaven.
The first abode of the Father and the Son in the Holy Ghost on earth was
the inviolate womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Full of grace from the instant
she was made the Immaculate Conception, the Mother of God is the proof par
excellence of the divine will to live forever with His creatures. Mary demonstrat-
ed her perfect discipleship to her divine Son by her humble acquiescence to the
Father’s will that she be His Son’s Mother, by her confident intercession result-
ing in His first public miracle, and by her steadfast witness to His immolation
on the Altar of the Cross. God the Father rewarded her extraordinary fidelity
by willing her presence among the college of the Apostles when they received
the gifts of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, by her following His Son to glory
enthroned in Heaven, and by the fulfillment of her prophetic word received
in Holy Scripture, All generations shall call me blessed! Lesser sons of God need
not despair of salvation for the Queen of Saints goes before them treading the
Way of Christ wherever He is found: at Bethlehem, in Nazareth, on the streets
of Galilee, atop Calvary, upon Heaven’s highest throne.
God’s adopted sons are not left orphaned. Standing in place of Mary,
the Mother of God and Mother of the faithful sons of God, is Holy Mother
Church. Standing in place of Heaven’s King is His Vicar the Pope. On earth
the children of God are given a womb as Jesus received His from the Blessed
Virgin Mary; the waters of Baptism and the power of the Holy Ghost con-
ceiving divine life united to human flesh in imitation of the Word being made
man when Christ was conceived at the sound of His Mother’s Fiat! On earth
the children of God are given a shepherd to guard and guide them on the way
of the Cross to the Pastures of Heaven as St. Peter and his successors faithfully
obey the command of the Good Shepherd, “Feed my lambs!” The sheep are fed
in obedience to His word that, “My Flesh is real Food and my Blood is real
Drink!” The faithful sheep thus fed at the hands of their obedient shepherds
are promised life abundant, eternal, and divine.
What follows in the next several pages is a brief elaboration on this outline of
truths firmly embraced by the Catholic Church. Dialogue depends on mutual in-
telligibility. Two parties incapable of understanding both stances are not engaged
in dialogue, but in babbling gibberish. Dialogue’s goal is not further dialogue;
dialogue’s goal is Truth. Conflicting accounts of the truth can not result in reso-
lution through compromise—a little error shared by both sides does not generate
a little truth, but a whole lot more error. Not until error is identified, admitted,
and corrected can resolution be reached. Not until there is a clear exposition of
principles can the truth or falsity of those principles be established. Where firmly
embraced principles contradict one another, the parties can never be reconciled—
it is the condition of war between truth and lies, Heaven and hell, Christ and
Belial. Those in error should not seek resolution or reconciliation, but repentance.
At the risk of committing a foolish and egregious sin of presumption, this writer
offers here a sketch of the contribution of the Catholic Church to the dialogue
by which is further articulated that revealed by God to be His unchanging truth.
2. Peace among nations depends on unity within the true Faith

Truth does not change. Jesus Christ is the Truth. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
today, and forever.
Forms of government may change. Whether monarchical, republican, aristo-
cratic, tribal, or directly democratic, all can prove effective in the task of exercising
authority for the common good of society and the good of individuals within
families. Principles of justice can not change, for all authority is from God and its
legitimacy depends on obedience to His immutable law founded in charity. A na-
tion increases its domestic tranquility and peace beyond its borders as it increases
its fidelity to the divine law expressed in the natural law, taught in ecclesial law,
and ensconced in civil law. Hostile nations might deem a righteous nation fair
game for attack, but a righteous nation poses no threat to its neighbors. Nations
at peace are nations of justice. More important than defining the parameters of a
just war is establishing the conditions of a just peace. War is invariably an assault
on justice destroying peace, but peace must be understood as more than merely
the absence of war. True peace is restored when war ends and justice reigns. Cessa-
tion of hostility and resumption of social order must involve an element of mercy.
Justice between nations resulting in peace among nations must obey the dic-
tum, “One can not give what one does not have.” A just peace can not be offered
by unjust nations. A just peace offered by a just nation will not be accepted by an
unjust nation. A just nation will, however, seek peace in the name of justice by
offering mercy to its unjust opponent. As war so often leads to acts of injustice on
both sides, mercy extended by one side might well accomplish justice for all sides.
It is rare in this world for nations to conceive of security in terms of mercy.
Many would aver that the harsh reality of the world is that neighbors are not to
be trusted. True peace transcending the mere absence of war is barely believed in
as a theory and considered unrealistic, unlikely, and unfeasible in practice. Justice

established by force of arms is man’s typical problem-solving technique; mercy as
the best realization of justice is thought impossible for man. Nonetheless, what
man finds impossible is found by men of the Faith to be possible with, indeed
commanded by, God.
Jesus Christ in saving individual men from the ravages of sin and death makes
it possible for groups of men to do as He has done, namely, to effect justice by
rendering mercy. The Cross of Christ is both the realization of perfect justice and
the means of perfecting justice. On Calvary Jesus satisfies the requirements of
man’s debt of sin, making atonement to God. By that same Cross, each man and
thereby every nation is offered the power to give God His due, to honor the rights
of other men, and to safeguard the peace craved by the nations.
Bereft of faith in Jesus Christ, unjust nations and individuals will scoff at the
notion of mercy as being an expression of weakness. The power of God given in
Christ crucified exposes the weakness of the ways of the world for what they are:
illusions of strength masking an absolute impotence. The just man and the just
nation imitating Christ can make an offer of justice to an unjust foe by way of
mercy. The foe has the power to reject that mercy, thus refusing justice and pro-
longing war; but justice for the merciful is not at the mercy of the unjust. Justice
received depends on the measure by which justice is offered; the mercy given as
the justice desired to be received; and the final appeal to the Judge who does not
measure with the weights of the unjust world, but with the Justice whose perfec-
tion is Mercy from beyond the world. That otherworldly justice bestows a peace
which the world does not know, will not have, and can not give.
3. The Natural Law must inform moral acts

today, and forever.
Justice as the condition of peace is a matter of submission to the law. There
is but one law operative in the universe, the will of God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost. Divine law has as its highest expression the will to char-
ity. God has willed that His law of charity be manifested in three ways: through-
out creation by the natural law, among His children of His adoption under eccle-
sial law, and within the society governed by civil law. Based as they are in divine
truth, which can not be self-contradictory, the natural law, ecclesial law, and civil
law must never deny divine law, and, by extension, may not reject one another.
Peace as the fruit of justice properly rendered in mercy will flourish in

societies where the single divine law and its three manifestations in creation are
observed by all subjects. Divine law and the natural law are wholly indepen-
dent of human will and are absolutely incapable of change. Ecclesial law and
civil law embody many aspects of the immutable divine law and the natural
law, but also include elements indicative of man’s changing conditions in time.
These changing manifestations of man’s relationship to the divine law and the
natural law within ecclesial law and civil law may never contradict, deny, or
reject that which is immutably decreed by God. Breaking God’s immutable law
is an injustice against His Divine Majesty, an assault on the rights of fellow
men, disruptive of the peace of society, contributory to the conditions of war,
and an obstacle to human freedom.
Mankind beset by the ravages of war, the peril of crime, the dishonor of
enemies, the betrayal of loved ones, and the constant threat of death is not free.
Freedom in truth must be in consonance with the Truth given by God. Ecclesial
law and civil law in harmony with divine law and the natural law are meant to
be guarantors of human freedom and means to perfect human freedom. God’s
ultimate law of charity is not about what may not be done, but is a command of
what must be done. The perfection of laws on earth in the Church and in the state
is the establishment of a context in which mortal life is released from the bonds of
mortality and given the freedom of immortal life.
Thus, the laws of the Church and of the state will protect the sanctity of
life. They will safeguard the conduct of that life in matters of economics. Weak
persons will themselves be protected by the law from the loss of property and
other rights. Interactions between persons physically, emotionally, spiritually, and
politically will have definitions in Church and state laws by which the natural law
is acknowledged and divine law is obeyed. In short, the goal of ecclesial law and
of civil law is to effect, to the greatest extent possible, a state of justice on earth in
keeping with the perfection of that justice reflecting the will of God in Heaven.
Citizens of earthly kingdoms, then, will seek to live in time as nearly as
possible to life as experienced in eternity. Law-abiding subjects of the Kingdom
of Heaven in the world endeavor to ensure that the will of man embraces his
natural state as the creature made in the image and likeness of God willed by
God for the purpose of receiving supernatural life. G.K. Chesterton once said that
the rejection of the supernatural yields not the natural, but the unnatural. Also
true is that the rejection of the natural gains not the infinitude of the supernatu-
ral, but the utter and unending naught of the unnatural. The most natural thing
for man is to live a life in time predicated on, sustained by, and destined for an
eternal supernatural life.
Ecclesial law is the nexus where the will of man expressed in civil law and the
will of God inherent in creation as the natural law are given direction toward the
fulfillment of divine law. As Jesus Christ unites in Himself His human will to His
divine will in obedience to the supreme law of charity, willing even death on the
Cross for the sake of friends thus set free from slavery to sin and death, so also
His Body the Church unites the desires and needs of man within the confines of
creation to the intent of God for man’s salvation. It is through the Church that
the state is able to find purpose for its just governance of the natural life of men.
It is in the Church that the natural state of men offered in the context of secular
society is transformed to be apt matter for inclusion in the supernatural Kingdom
of Heaven. Christ the Head and His Body the Church reveal the sacrifice of love
which God wills for the world in order to forgive the condemnation justice de-
mands in favor of the salvation mercy merits.
Civil law, then, is at its best when men recognize the divine prerogatives writ
large across creation and taught to the last iota by the Church. The nation that is
just understands that it is not over the Church, but within the Church. It brings
to bear on matters of governance, a fidelity to the highest law of God by way of
establishing order in society based on the natural law and submissive to ecclesial
law. The just nation seeking peace recognizes the source of all justice and peace
within the Cross of Jesus Christ, who offers His mercy to the nations through the
mediation of His Body the Church. There is no peace without justice, no justice
without mercy, no mercy without the Church, no Church without the Cross, and
no Cross without Jesus Christ, in whom Heaven and earth, the supernatural and
the natural, and God and man are made one.
4. Society depends on holy families

today, and forever.
Society at one with the Church at one with her Lord, in whom the supernat-
ural and the natural are mutually given in mercy perfecting justice bringing peace,
is built on and exists for the human family. Husband and wife given to one anoth-
er for the sake of raising up children for the glory of God form the family, which
constitutes the fundamental unit of society. The first society is the family, and the
family does not exist unless and until a union occurs in which natural life can be
generated, increased, and offered for supernatural life. No more than the family
can society be described in terms of atomism and individualism. By definition,
all human society begins with a union of bodies, souls, and God’s will for their
beatitude. Removing any of these three elements—the natural, the supernatural,
or divine providence—results in the complete destruction of the society, whether
the society of the family or the society of the nation. Holy families ensure the
health of society; the healthy society establishes the conditions by which families
are most able to attain sanctity.
Jesus Christ gives Himself in an unbreakable bond to His Bride the Church.
No more than life can continue with the head separated from the body can the
will of Christ be gainsaid that life in Him is dependent upon union with him
through His Bride the Church. There is no life apart from Christ, and there is no
union with Christ apart from His Bride the Church, bone of His bone, flesh of
His flesh, enlivened by the Spirit He shares in perfect charity with His Father. As
the Blessed Virgin Mary, although a mere creature, brings forth the only-begotten
Son of God in the order of the flesh she shares with Him, so also the Church im-
itates Our Lady in Maternity bearing countless sons of God’s adoption through
the power of water and the Holy Ghost. The union of Christ and His Bride is for
the purpose of raising up children of the Father in the love of the Holy Ghost.
Jesus bears his Cross as the Sign of the reality of this union, as the means by which
this union is consummated, and as the ultimate expression of the identity of the
offspring born from and belonging to this union. The union of Christ the Groom
and His Bride the Church, entered by Baptism in water and the Holy Ghost, is
absolutely experienced in the offering of Christ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divini-
ty immolated on the Altar and received by God the Father and all the faithful
through the hands of the priest consecrated in persona Christi in Holy Commu-
nion with the Blessed Sacrament.
Man and woman reflect in Holy Matrimony the union whose perfection is
Christ the Groom with His Bride the Church. The Cross of Christ informs the
whole of the life of husband and wife. At Baptism, each suffers death with Christ,
where sin is rejected and destroyed, rising to a new life of grace. The Cross is fully
received at the Sacrifice of the Mass where an acceptable holocaust is received by
the Father from the Son and offered by Him through His priest for and to those
baptized in His Cross. Again, in the vows of Holy Matrimony, the Cross is taken
up by man and woman, who lay down lives of separation and take up a life of
union devoted to the communion shared within the family, the Communion of
Saints worshipping God alone, and the Holy Communion of the Mass wherein
the orphans of Adam and Eve call on God as Father in Spirit and in Truth within
the bosom of their Mother the Church by whom the Father receives perfect Sac-
rifice and praise and in whom the Father is pleased to call sons those whom His
Son is pleased to call brothers.
God and man in Christ, Christ and His Church, and husband and wife are
absolutely unbreakable bonds established for the freedom of the sons of God in
keeping with the will of God. Human happiness on earth and man’s salvation in
Heaven depend upon the integrity of these bonds. If these bonds are deemed irrel-
evant, unbinding, or nonexistent, then there can be said to be nothing of perma-
nence given to man. There can be no justice in a society where the unity of God
and man, Christ and His Church, or man and wife can be called into question;
for if faith in God given by Christ and hope in God shared by the faithful, who
believe in His Resurrection from the dead, and charity of and from God experi-
enced by man and woman imitating Christ and the Church, do not last forever,
then nothing had by man for a time in the world is of any value whatsoever. A
heart convinced of this utter futility of worldly things bereft of faith, hope, and
charity for the things of Heaven can never know peace, will never have peace, and
is powerless to share peace. The society rejecting God and man in Christ, Christ
and His Church, or husband and wife, will be divided against itself, against its
neighbors, and against God. It will have no hope for the peace of the Kingdom
of Heaven, but will find itself in the grip of the hell that is war in this life and
damnation in the afterlife.
5. Poverty of spirit brings prosperity transcending material goods

today, and forever.
Faith in God given by Christ and Hope in God shared by the faithful who
believe in His Resurrection from the dead and Charity of and for God experienced
by man and woman imitating Christ and the Church are the bulwark against the
despair that destroys peace, foments war, and dissolves societies. Faith, Hope, and
Charity flow from, are united on, and bear fruit by the power of the Cross. Faith
is belief in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary by the power of the Holy
Ghost, risen from the dead. Hope is the confidence that Christ’s victory over the
world by His Cross will be fully shared by the faithful on the last and endless
Day. Charity is the gift of God’s life given on Calvary’s Altar and returned to Him
in humility, contrition, and obedience on the Altar at Mass. These three, Faith,
Hope, and Charity, endure inseparable from one another, perfected on the Cross.
Only that which is united in Faith, Hope, and Charity can be transformed from
ephemera doomed for destruction with the end of time into heirs of the Kingdom
of Heaven given glory forever. Even now men can read the signs of the times,
judge the tree by its fruit, and discern the spirits to determine whether they are
directing their use of things in this world toward the wilderness where sin-laden
goats shall perish, or in the footsteps of the Good Shepherd toward the pastures
where His sheep will find their mansions in their Father’s house in Heaven.
It is the Cross by which Sign Christ knows His sheep and His sheep know
their Shepherd. His sheep judge the things of this world to be rubbish, of no
worth in comparison to the human soul, an unnecessary encumbrance for those
who prefer to sell all, give to the poor, store treasure thus in Heaven, and follow
the Good Shepherd even unto death, death on the Cross. To be too busy about
many things is to neglect the one needful thing and risk rejecting and losing
the better part. When seeking the presence of Christ’s Church bringing the
Cross lifted high into the world to transform the world, one finds his object
in seeing unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. The signs of the Cross at
work bearing fruit in the Church confronting the world are the faithful being
poor, persecuted, pure, and prayerful.
The Kingdom of Heaven is at war with the world. But just as Jesus Christ
came to bring a peace unlike that given by the world, so, too, the sword He
wields refusing the peace of the world has a potency unlike and far greater than
the weapons wielded by the world. Jesus Christ reigns upon the highest Throne,
crowned in glory, bearing the scepter of royalty whose lineage brooks no rival. In
Christ Jesus sword, throne, crown, scepter, and victory are one. The reign of Christ
is established on His Cross.
His loyal subjects, then, obey His commands by dwelling within the bounds
of His realm. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the Seat of Mercy, and the Lord of Love.
By the Cross the Prince of Peace casts down and thrusts out the prince of the
world, satan. By the Cross the just Judge forgives the debt of the slaves in bond-
age to the world, the flesh, and the devil. By the Cross charity reigns over all, is
in all, and conquers all. The Cross is the chasm dividing hell from Heaven, it is
the winnowing fan that distinguishes the tares from the wheat, and it is the gate
barring wolves from the fold and the mark separating the goats from the sheep.
The condemnation consumed by those guilty of the Blood of the Lord is heard in
the cries of, Crucify him! Crucify him! The salvation won for those washed in the
merciful Blood of the Lamb is declared in the witness of the Centurion, Surely,
this man was the Son of God! The Kingdom of Heaven is beset by violence, and
the tide of blood shed in the violence of the Cross bears away to the Kingdom of
Heaven the faithful subjects who bear the cross with their triumphant King.
Persecution is the cross embraced in the face of oppressors. Purity is the beat-
itude of the heart made wholly open to the will of God. Prayer is the labor of the
Holy Ghost on behalf of the inarticulate children of God ignorant of what to say
to their heavenly Father. The signs of the Cross at work as the Church confronts
the world in being persecuted, pure, and prayerful are a matter of a faithful accep-
tance of what others have to offer. Humility is the condition for all virtues—as St.
Jean-Marie Vianney says, “The first virtue is humility. The second virtue is humil-
ity. And the third virtue is humility.” He also says that humility “is like the chain
of the Rosary: remove it and all the beads, all the virtues fall away.” It is through
humility that the faithful are able to endure persecution, to practice purity, and
to pray ceaselessly. Persecution, purity, and prayer are gifts from outside oneself;
humility is the gift of oneself, insignificant as it is, little as it might be, worthless
as it seems, but given wholly and selflessly.
Poverty—of spirit and of material goods—is a means of receiving and in-
creasing the virtue of humility. The materially poor can always give more of them-
selves. The materially wealthy but poor in spirit can always give more things in
order to give more fully of themselves. Humility is always in the company of
poverty. This is most perfectly seen in the humility of Jesus in the poverty of the
manger, the humility of Jesus in the poverty of the wine-less wedding feast, the
humility of Jesus amongst the poverty of the 5,000 in the desert, the humility of
Jesus accepting the poverty of Golgotha, and the humility of Jesus in the poverty
of a borrowed tomb.
Jesus teaches that the humble will be exalted. Thus, His humility exalts man
in a union with his Creator. The humility of Jesus responds to the intercession
of His Mother with an overabundance of wine. The Son of God humbly feeds a
multitude a miraculous feast, knowing that most of them will shortly walk away
in angry disbelief. No greater degradation and humiliation has ever been or ever
shall be than Christ dying, and no greater glory ever revealed than in His empty
tomb. That glory will be seen forever by the humble who become like children,
the humbly pure of heart, and the humble who confess their guilt in hope of
hearing the wondrous judgement, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise! The
seed that humbly falls to the ground losing life shall gain a life bearing fruit thirty,
sixty, and a hundredfold.
That is true wealth. The truly wealthy on earth labor for the treasure of Heav-
en, selling all, giving it away, and gaining Heaven thereby. Neither rust nor moth
nor mortality can touch the jewels possessed by the meanest pauper of Heaven.
Nothing the world holds can compare with the least object of Heaven. The glory
of the world wrought in gold is the stuff which the blessed tread underfoot in the
New Jerusalem.
Poverty for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, like Faith, Hope, and Char-
ity, is an act of the will. It is an offer of the bounty received from God rendered
back to God out of obedience, trust, and love. The more that one receives in gifts
from God, the more one is required to offer in gift to God. From those who are
given much, much is expected. This holds in the natural world no less than in the
supernatural.
Cleverness of serpents (worldly wisdom) yields in a union with the inno-
cence of doves (God’s wisdom) within holy poverty. Holy poverty does not seek
the increase of the wealth available to be secured by rich people, but establishes
a society wherein the wealth of all, rich and poor, is made secure. Therein the
widow fears no foreclosure. No orphan is condemned to the streets. Laborers
receive a wage sufficient to allow them to purchase real property through thrift
and industry. Not only is usury forbidden, but the usurer is punished. Humil-
ity expressed in poverty is the desire for more wealth created for sharing with
people in love of God and one another, rather than for more wealthy people
in love with money.
A useful lesson to be learned in youth and taken to heart into old age is the
principle that one gets the answers to the questions one asks. Answers are only
as good as the questions to which they respond. Hence, if one asks the question,
“How rich can I be and still get to Heaven?” one will learn much about now hard
it is to acquire wealth, retain wealth, and let go of wealth on the way to the grave,
but precious little about attaining the kingdom of Heaven.
If, on the other hand, one asks Our Lord Jesus what must be done to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven, he will hear the very useful, practical, and attainable an-
swer given the rich young man: Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, thus store up
treasure in Heaven, and come, follow me! That rich young man, Lazarus’ oppressor
Dives, and the doomed silo builder failed to learn the lesson which Christ would
teach His own: narrow is the way of salvation, needles’ eyes do not admit camels,
and the whole of the world is insufficient compensation for one soul.
True peace is not found in hoarding riches or in lacking riches. True peace
comes either from giving riches from the motivation of heartfelt charity, or from
the richness borne by the soul who leaves all behind—wife, husband, mother,
father, sister, brother, children, property—in order to seek and find Jesus. When
the Good Shepherd claims His sheep looking to be found by Him, they share a
peace which this world can not give, alien to the wealthy, and undesired by the
avaricious whether wealthy or poor.
The blessed poor who inherit the Kingdom of Heaven know like St. Paul how
to cope with either a sufficiency or with want. The poor in spirit who are materi-
ally wealthy do not measure their worth in property, and neither do the materially
poor count their blessings by way of what they lack. Holy poverty understands
that lacking the grace of humility either riches can be a curse, as with King Midas;
or poverty can be a curse, as John Steinbeck put it, “You who handled poverty
badly will handle wealth equally badly.” It is in neither the possession nor in the
lack that blessing lies, but in the heart filled with a desire which only the love of
Christ can satisfy.
Curiously, both holy poverty and material greed manifest insatiable appetites.
The billionaire is ever after more money, and the pauper saint is in constant want
of grace. If he is true to his craving, the billionaire will come to his deathbed still
desiring money, but arriving at a place where money is not to be had and buys
less happiness than it could on earth. The saint faithful to his vocation anticipates
the Day of Judgement knowing that the grandest expectations of the blessed will
be infinitely surpassed in the reward announced with the glorious words of the
just Judge: Come, you blessed of my Father, into the Kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world! The saint in Christ is where infinite need is met by
inexhaustible largesse.
6. Jesus Christ is King of All

Jesus Christ is the single possession of the sheep of His Flock. He is their
true wealth, their only desire. As the saying goes, to have everything but God is
to have nothing, but to have nothing but God is to have everything. To see Jesus
Christ is to see the Father. To believe in Jesus Christ without yet seeing Him is to
receive a greater blessing. To see Jesus Christ for all eternity is the very definition of
Heaven. In that Vision is all the glory of the universe, and it belongs to ev-
eryone whom the Father claims as His own, and to anyone who claims Jesus
Christ as his all.
Eternal life in Heaven begins with mortal life on earth. Human life is meant
to be nurtured in the family. Jesus Christ is the bond by which husbands and
wives tenaciously cling to one another in their mutual attachment to the love of
Christ. For the sake of the love from and of God, mothers and fathers offer them-
selves wholeheartedly to their children that they might grow up to know, love,
and serve God now and be happy with Him forever. Jesus Christ is the love shared
in Holy Matrimony, Jesus Christ is the love given by parents to children, Jesus
Christ is the love from God the Father returned to Him by the children adopted
by Him in Jesus Christ through water and the Holy Ghost.
Written on the very heart of every creature made in the image and likeness
of God is His eternal law. God’s will for perfect charity is manifest in the natural
law, taught by ecclesial law, and meant to be realized in civil law. Jesus Christ is
the Word through whom creation is made. Jesus Christ is the Truth taught by His
Church for the salvation of souls. Jesus Christ is the Sovereign before whom every
knee must bend in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth. The only justice, order,
and rule possible comes from, is guided by, and submits to Jesus Christ.
In Him is found the only source of peace. Nations separated from Christ
through sin, heresy, schism, apostasy, or ignorance can not share Christ with one
another. Incapable of sharing Christ, they are incapable of conceiving true peace,
desiring to share true peace, or experiencing true peace within their borders or
with foreigners. Such nations are doomed to war. The world not only wars against
Christ and His Kingdom, but is ever beset by strife in homes, on the streets, and
across battlefields.
But the nation who accepts Jesus Christ as Sovereign King will seek peace and
find it. His peace will be offered by His subjects to other nations. His peace will
inform the righteous laws enacted by His subjects who rule in His Name. Families
will share His peace within homes shielded from injustice by the nation founded
on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ will be the one treasure pursued by those families,
defended by their nation, and prodigally spread by them throughout the world.
Any attempt to pursue peace, rule, or prosperity without being submissive
to Jesus Christ in keeping with divine law, the natural law, and ecclesial law will
end in a denial of Jesus Christ. Witting or no, men who do not submit to the rule
of Christ will find themselves ruled by the antichrist. Antichrists will rise up to
pervert human strivings so that war will be desired more than peace, depravity
will gain legal standing, the family will be attacked in law, and prosperity will be
defined in terms of material objects whose worth, pleasure, and possession can not
last. These men can provide no mercy, only tyranny; no justice, only brute force;
no charity, only worse than bestial passions; and no true joy in this life, only de-
spair at the end of life. Life without Christ is faithless, hopeless, loveless, and brief.
Jesus Christ is life. He promises abundant life. He has pledged us complete
joy. He has vowed never to abandon us, in life, at death, forever. Jesus Christ can
be trusted to fulfill His word, for it is true. Truth does not change. Jesus Christ is the
Truth. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
7. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the perfect model of humanity restored to the image and
likeness of God
From the instant of her Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary
was destined by God for perfect discipleship in His Son. Our Lady is the perfect
vessel chosen by God to bear Him whom the heavens can not contain. Jesus
Christ willed that the perfect tabernacle to be filled with Him in grace would be
His mother Mary. Scripture proclaims that all generations will call her blessed for
the singular call given her by God. She never once failed to heed the Father’s call,
to obey her Son’s commands, to offer the love of the Holy Ghost.
No treasure compares with the bounty of receiving Christ in one’s heart. No
Christian ever received the fullness of Christ Jesus—Body, Blood, Soul, and Di-
vinity—as completely as the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Lady was created for Our
Lord in a unique way far above the purpose for which any of His other creatures
were brought into being. Her humble acknowledgement of this wondrous truth
left no room in her heart for anything other than fulfilling His will to be perfect
as God is perfect, to go to the Cross with the Son, and to receive the very life and
love of God within her from the Holy Ghost. The Blessed Mother desired nothing
of worldly wealth, accepting instead only the riches brought by Heaven.
Receiving that treasure, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Lady proceeded to nur-
ture and guard that infinite wealth through her chaste marriage with St. Joseph.
Each marriage is made for the purpose of raising up children to the glory of God.
The marriage of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph accomplished the sublime task of
raising up the only-begotten Son of God for His glory.
Within the Holy Family at Nazareth, the will of God informed every thought,
word, and deed. Jesus Christ stood at the center of the Holy Family, the position
He should have in every family. Our Lady was the dutiful mother, laboring to
keep a house where Jesus Christ could feel at home; every wife and mother’s re-
sponsibility. St. Joseph toiled by hand to provide materially for his family, aware
of the awesome burden of fostering God’s child and being accountable to Him for
the quality of his performance; thoughts which should be at the forefront of the
minds of every husband and father under God. Mary and Joseph looked to the
just laws given by God, revealed by His holy people, and administered by the state
not as onerous obstacles, but as helps to obeying God and thus pleasing Him. Our
Lady and her most chaste spouse were not lawyers seeking loopholes to avoid the
law. They were children who loved everything given them by their Father: life,
each other, the law, their Son, and His love.
The love of Jesus Christ was what prompted His Mother to share her flesh
with the Word of God. In the flesh given Him by His mother, our Lord Jesus bore
the Cross by which He consummated the saving act wherein the mercy of God
is given to men. When men receive mercy from God, they can share it with one
another. On that mercy ultimate justice depends. Where justice is served through
mercy, peace can reign, God is obeyed, families are safe, Christ is received, and He
receives all glory, honor, and kingship as is His due.
Jesus Christ never abandons His own. His Mother Mary never abandoned
her Son. She heard the angel’s word and conceived her Lord by the power of the
Holy Ghost. Angels watched over the birth of Jesus as Mary nursed Him at her
breast in the stable. It was at Mary’s word that Jesus deigned to work His first
public miracle. She followed Him at each step along the way of the Cross. Her
mother’s Heart shared His torment unto death on Calvary. Mary’s faith received
the reward of seeing her Son raised from the dead. And at Pentecost she was on
hand as once again the power of the Holy Ghost descended upon the earth.
For just as Our Lady never abandoned her firstborn son, she ever stands
by those adopted by the Father through water and the Holy Ghost. So, as she
was on hand when Jesus was born, she stood at the foot of the Cross when His
pierced side gushed forth the life-giving fount of Blood and Water giving birth
to the infant Church. Our Lady was there when her Son miraculously appeared
in the Upper Room and breathed on the newborn Church, commissioning
them to know peace, to love, and to show mercy through the forgiveness of
sins. And on the great Day of Pentecost, the Mother of God saw the Church
burst out into the world to proclaim the Good News of salvation in the power
of the Holy Ghost, just as she had seen her Son go into the towns of Galilee
teaching, healing, and forgiving.
Where Jesus is, there also is Our Lady, our Queen, our Mother. Christ’s faith-
ful may never deny Him, His Father, or His Mother. The children of God claimed
by the Father are not half-brothers in Christ. No, His Father is our Father; His
Mother is our mother. We share the same humanity He received from His moth-
er. We are privileged to participate in the divinity He shares with His Father in
the Holy Ghost.
Blest is she who believed the promises of the Lord! Mary believed because she
recognized the truth when it was presented to her. She understood that the truth
proclaimed in the law and the prophets was to be fulfilled in her! The truth pro-
claimed through the ages does not change. Mary gave the Truth the name foretold
for Him by the angel: Jesus, the Lord saves. Jesus is the truth. Jesus does not change.
The salvation of Our Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
8. The Pope is God’s guarantee of success

Jesus did not establish one means of salvation on Pentecost, a different one
a millennium-and-a-half later, another one a half-century ago, and yet a further
one to be announced by a sect waiting to be incorporated in Geneva or New
York. Salvation comes from the Cross. The Cross is received through water Bap-
tism. Baptism is ordered toward the participation in Calvary which is the Mass.
The Mass is offered only by Christ’s Church, and His Church is governed, at His
command, by the Pope. Salvation does not come to those who deny God. Sal-
vation does not come to those who deny the Son of God, Jesus Christ crucified.
Salvation does not come to those who deny the Mother of God. Salvation does
not come to those who deny the son of the Father appointed to be the Vicar of
the Son and His Mother’s defender.
Salvation is had by those who receive what St. Peter and his successors offer
as their only wealth, neither silver nor gold, but the Name of Jesus Christ. In His
Name they feed His Flock His Body and Blood immolated on the Cross in the
Mass. In His Name they teach the nations and Baptize in the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In His Name they cast out demons, heal
the sick, and raise the dead. In His Name they are willing to lay down their lives
for their friends, to love their enemies, and to rejoice when they are tortured for
the sake of the Name of Jesus Christ.
The flock entrusted to St. Peter and his successors benefits from this unwav-
ering embrace of the Cross by the example it offers for the sanctity in and of the
family. Christ lays down His life for His sheep, St. Peter lays down his life for
Christ’s Flock. Husbands lay down their lives for their wives and children. The
Bride of Christ the Church obeys her Lord in all things for the sake of the Flock.
The faithful of the Church obey the Vicar of Christ for the sake of their salvation.
Wives obey their husbands in the task of bringing sanctity to the whole family.
The love of husbands must stop at nothing, even death, to provide for their fam-
ilies. The obedience of wives must express the humility of Mary, not the pride
of Eve, so that their husbands will receive due support in obeying God for the
salvation of the whole family.
The Pope has nothing to teach except the sacrificial love and the humble obe-
dience of the Cross that lead to salvation. Every dogma, all the history, and each
ritual of the Church is for the salvation of souls, the highest law of the Church.
Salvation can not be offered by the Church in any way that makes salvation im-
possible. This means that the Church may never violate the divine law or the
natural law, and she must resist civil laws where human will is given precedence
over divine will. The laws of the Church support the freedom of the sons of God,
not the lawless license of the orphans of Eden.
With that in mind, God has given the Church under the Pope to the world
to be the supranational institution bringing the peace of Christ to the world.
The keys to the Kingdom of Heaven by which the Pope binds and looses,
unlock the treasure of God’s mercy in the Sacraments, particularly in the Sac-
rament of Penance. Individuals receiving the mercy of God are made able to
move nations to share that mercy with one another. The mercy which bridges
the gap between God and man and between individuals also has the power
to bring nations together. The bond of peace wrought by justice perfected in
mercy unites God and His children and brothers in Christ, and can establish
harmony between nations. And just as no confusion of persons occurs where
the peace of Christ reigns between God and the human soul and between in-
dividuals thus reconciled, national identity is preserved where Christ is given
kingship. Sovereign nations are preserved from war, defended from injustice,
and freed from fear when Jesus Christ is their King. The strife between nations
passes, but the nations themselves are free and can flourish.
They will flourish by enacting laws which respect divine law and the natu-
ral law, and which reinforce ecclesial law. Justice in law, within these states, will
provide a safe context in which families can nurture the graces given by God
and increase the material well-being of society in keeping with the supreme law
of charity. Through this charity individuals, families, and all of society will be
bound more closely together in the Faith which Jesus Christ has commanded His
Body the Church to teach the nations. Those who believe and are Baptized will
be among the multitudes processing into New Jerusalem on the Last Day. They
will discover that their endless life in the Kingdom of Heaven began when they
determined to live in the Kingdom at hand among the nations of the world.
Christ’s Gospel of salvation is all that the Church under the Pope has to
offer the world. To avoid sin and to do good, to be Baptized and consume the
Body and Blood of the Lord, to confess our sins, to venerate Our Lady and the
saints, and to worship God through the immolation of Christ in the Mass are
the lessons taught by Jesus, passed down in the tradition of his Church, and
mandated by Christ through his Vicars’ binding and loosing. The Pope can not
change this. St. Paul could not change it. An angel of light has no power to
change it. To attempt to alter the immutable is to be subject to anathema. The
teachings of the Church authoritatively declared by the Pope can not change
because they are true. Truth does not change. The teachings of the Church are the
teachings of Christ, the unchanging Truth. Christ and His teachings through His
Church are the same yesterday, today, and forever.
9. Conclusion
It is, of course, the case that many beg to differ with the Church’s steadfast
teachings. Not only is the content of her truth challenged, but the very constancy
of her faith in Jesus Christ and His truth is attacked. The only thing that comes
close to equaling the unchangeable nature of truth is the willful rejection of that
Truth from antiquity through modernity. From satan before Eden to secularists
seeking utopia, some things never change. What does change constantly, however,
are the grounds cited for refusing submission to Christ and His Church.
Some hackles rise at the suggestion that the Church is the proper agent for
protecting national sovereignty, improving international relations, and securing
world peace; but many of those same people demand such a role for the Godless
United Nations. Holy Mother Church’s age-old insistence on the inviolability of
the matrimonial bond is met with ridicule among the sophisticates who in the
same breath lambaste marriage as an outdated institution while bellowing that
its privileged position in society should be extended to fornicators and deviants.
The Church would have her members have large families with many children who
learn respect for and life lessons from their parents. Worldly people are shocked
by couples with more than two children and subject parents to hostile inquiries
from agents of the state who wish to teach perversion to children, Worldly people
depict parents as bumbling idiots in the media, exalt youth as the sine qua non of
popular culture, and foam at the mouth when efforts are made to protect children
from parents and strangers who would boil, dismember, or impale them during
the first nine months of their lives. Love of neighbor and the proper use of ma-
terial things guides the Catholic, providing a foundation for understanding the
meaning and purpose of life; angst-ridden worldlings declare life meaningless and
purposeless, despair of man’s perfection, and love money with all their heartless,
soulless, mindless impotence in the face of unavoidable death.
Dialogue demands truth as the object of discussion. The world lukewarm to,
in denial of, or ignorant about Jesus Christ and His Church guided by His Vicar,
is in error. Catholics have nothing to gain from lending credence to error. The
Church can forgive error, she can correct error, and often she must denounce the
purveyors of error, but listening to error in dialogue is a matter of enduring so
much gibberish. Before dialogue can begin, both parties must agree on the exis-
tence, the nature, and the accessibility of truth. Those who deny the truths of the
Catholic Church have nothing to say to her. The Catholic Church will continue
proclaiming the Truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified without compromise un-
til He returns to claim for Himself the people who have kept His faith unalloyed,
unapologetically, and unashamed.
Little difference in practice is found in the various sources of error and the
futility of engaging them in dialogue. If a man is certain that niggers, kikes, and
spics are subhuman, rational conversation with him is impossible. If a woman is
convinced that two mothers are better for her children, after she divorces their
father for refusing to let her kill their unborn brother, reasoned discourse can not
occur with her. If a group of people decide that they are infallible in declaring that
Jesus turned water into grape juice but that the Pope is mistaken when he thinks
he devours real Flesh and real Blood every day, it is madness to engage them in
theological debate. If a Catholic believes that getting to Heaven does not depend
upon being in communion with the Pope, only a fool would try to persuade
him through speech that it makes sense for him to remain Catholic or for him
to attempt to convince others to convert to Catholicism. As the world brazenly
preaches the gospel that Mohammed, the Buddha, Caiaphas, Madeleine Mur-
ray-O’Hare, and Pope St. Pius x all believed in the same deity, the argumentative
powers of Socrates are inadequate to communicate truth to the souls steeped in
self-delusion. It is passing strange that irreconcilable differences between a hus-
band and wife are readily construed to be absolutely insurmountable obstacles to

successful resolution of marital conflict, but few to none balk at the notion that
thousands, millions, and billions have hope of finding common ground by spew-
ing mutually contradictory, dishonest, twisted, hostile, and morally reprehensible
ravings at one another.
Teaching, correcting, and reprimanding—not dialogue—is what God ex-
pects of his Church. The world has a right to clear enunciations of the truth,
regardless of how often or how much the world rebels against such. The salvation
of countless souls depends on the Church wasting no more time in fruitless bab-
ble, and wasting no time in coming to rededicate herself to preaching the truth
to every nation, in season and out, when convenient and inconvenient, even at
the risk of losing her tax-free status, the modern form of martyrdom. Indeed, very
harsh will be the judgement on Catholics who did not feed those hungry for the
Truth, quench those thirsty for the waters of life, clothe with sanctity those living
in naked sin, heal those members of the Body of Christ crippled by heresy, and
visit with the true Presence of Christ the lonely dying facing imminent judge-
ment. Dialogue must end, and the ensuing silence must be filled with one voice,
once and for all declaring one truth: the same yesterday, today, and forever, Jesus
Christ is Lord!
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
17 July 2005
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (St. Alexis)
Travelers Inn, Missoula, Montana
467
Regnum Christi
A Handbook for Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven in Exile
Welcome, child of God!

You have just been baptized, washed clean of the stain of Original Sin,
snatched from the clutches of the enemy satan, and are now a member of the
Body of Christ, the Catholic Church, thereby becoming an adopted Son of God
the Father through water and the Holy Spirit. During the days and years ahead
as you mature into the full stature of the New Man, Jesus Christ, whom you have
put on through this marvelous Sacrament, you will be assisted by extraordinary
graces from your Father in Heaven. Our Queen and Blessed Mother Mary will be
at your side at all times to intercede with her divine Son on your behalf.
Already you have been assigned a Guardian Angel to accompany you all the
days of your life, watching out for your stumbling feet, protecting your toes from
stubbing, and steering you clear of questionable persons and places. A large num-
ber, too great to be counted in fact, of witnesses go before you in a cloud of glory
and surrounding you with the love of God. Many of them, you will discover, are
special friends chosen for you by God to offer you particular example, encour-
agement, and, as needed, correction and chastening. Remember, if you ever have
any questions or difficulties, God the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Most
Blessed Trinity and your divine Advocate, is available at all times, day and night,
with a bounty of Fear of the Lord, Piety, Fortitude, Knowledge, Understanding,
Counsel, and Wisdom to aid you in absolutely every task before you as you faith-
fully work out your salvation with fear and trembling in the firm hope of attaining
the perfection of the charity that casts out all fear.
Jesus Christ, our Sovereign King, has waged war on your behalf, destroying
sin, conquering death, and casting out the prince of the world, satan. Our Holy
Mother Church, for whose freedom and exaltation your daily prayers will be of-
fered, has mediated to you the graces of the triumph of the Cross of Christ. These
graces fortify the Church Militant as its members continue the battle bringing to
consummation at the end of time the victorious strife engaged by Heaven over
hell. You are the beneficiary, along with the many other members of the Body of
Christ, of these graces. Use them well and go forward to your share in the struggle
by which you will gain a portion of the eternal reign of Christ the King!
This manual is offered to you as a general guide for how life is conducted in
the Kingdom of Heaven as it pertains to its loyal subjects in exile in but never of
the world. It is strongly recommended that you make frequent use of the infor-
mation contained herein until you are thoroughly familiar with the traditions,
teachings, and practices common to the worshippers of God in spirit and truth.
Most of our newest citizens discover that the new life in Christ they have em-
braced is so different from their old ways of sin and death that they simply must
forget all that they once knew about conducting life in the world, and essentially
begin from scratch. As well, it is regrettable that not a few fall victim to pride,
believing that somehow their old ways were sufficient or, God forbid—and He
does forbid—even better than the habits of sanctity instilled in the hearts, souls,
minds, and bodies of the true children of God. What is described below is not
just better than your old life in bondage to sin, in peril of death, and oppressed
by satan, but it is wholly different. And, remember, when God says be holy as He
is holy, He means to be wholly holy as He is holy, with your whole heart, whole
soul, whole mind, and whole strength. Keep in mind that God is the Author of all,
including language, so when He says something, He means it— as He said it, He
means it, and because He meant it, He says it.
The world, of which you now have repented, is not your friend. It is not
slightly damaged and in need of just a few repairs. There is nothing of the world
that is desirable for possession within the Kingdom of Heaven. This world is pass-
ing, destined for judgement in fire, and slated for utter replacement. Anything
and anyone attached to the world will suffer the same fate. As a new child of God,
you have begun the tremendous work of ensuring that you, your loved ones, and
Regnum Christi 469
all of your endowments are preserved from destruction so that God the Father
has the joy at the end of time of looking on you and calling you a beloved son in
whom He is well pleased. You will discover that such an experience will bring you
joy as well, and, indeed, immense pleasure.
Specific instructions on dogmas, doctrines, and the devotional life of the
Church are contained in the catechism issued through the authority of Mother
Church (that from Trent is especially informative), and, thus, none of that will be
treated herein. Instead, this brief survey is intended to provide general principles
necessary to navigate the treacherous waters besetting the Barque of St. Peter. The
manual is divided into three categories subdivided into three sections each with
each of the sections offering three points to remember—the Kingdom of Heaven
really likes trinities. The schema for the manual is as follows:
Part I: The Body

A. Section 1: Food
1. Why to eat
2. How to find food to eat
3. With whom to eat
B. Section 2: Shelter
1. Where to live
2. How to provide a house
3. What goes inside a house
C. Section 3: Clothing
1. Modesty
2. Simplicity
3. Utility
Part II: The Mind

A. Section 1: Science
1. The nature of knowledge
2. The knowledge of nature
3. The limits of empiricism
B. Section 2: Philosophy
1. The law of non-contradiction
2. Defining terms of debates
3. Where philosophy ends
C. Section 3: Theology
1. Revelation
2. The magisterium
3. The queen of the sciences
Part III: The Soul

A. Section 1: Free Will
1. Imago Dei
2. Obedience
3. Sin as slavery
B. Section 2: Body and Soul
1. The body aiding the soul
2. The soul aiding the body
3. Body and soul in enmity
C. Section 3: Life and Death
1. Life is an absolute, but life on earth is not
2. Avoid evil! is absolute—Do the good! is relative.
3. Reward and punishment
Little time or study will be necessary to realize that this is far from an ex-
haustive treatment of the subjects in question. Primary to the effort at hand is to
demonstrate the clear separation between those who are of the world and those
who are of the Kingdom of Heaven. Ruled by the King who declares, “Let your
yes mean yes and your no mean no,” the Kingdom of Heaven should not be
expected to admit of any ambiguity about what properly belongs to it and that
which is foreign to it. The world is a wasteland of black, white, and grey, admixed,
confused, and dreary. The Kingdom of Heaven is the domain of Light Himself,
brilliant, filled with the vision of glory and the glory of the vision, and pleasing
to Him in Whom there is no darkness, Who paves in gold, and Who created the
rainbow as the first sign of His mercy.
Part I: The Body

Section 1: Food
We eat because we are hungry, not because we are bored. We eat to live, not
live to eat. We eat to celebrate a worthy event, refraining from making eating the
event which is celebrated. We eat enough to keep the body strong, and a strong
Regnum Christi 471
body is capable of abstaining from kinds of food and certain times of eating in
order to contribute to the strengthening of one’s character. We eat what is put be-
fore us, grateful for plenty and uncomplaining in dearth; we do not cause dearth
by refusing to eat what is put before us, and we shun plenty when it becomes a
temptation to gluttony.
Food grows on trees, from the ground, beneath the sea, in the woods, and
within mothers’ breasts. Common sense dictates that as one proceeds through life
one arranges things in such a way that trees, the earth, water, countryside, and
loving companions are ever nearby. It also makes sense that each man would have
at least a modicum of knowledge of how to extract sustenance from the land and
sea. There is nothing inherently evil or erroneous about supermarkets—except for
the unfortunate misconception that such is the locale wherein milk, bread, and
eggs are produced. Restaurants can be delightful venues for the abovementioned
celebration of worthy events, but they are woefully inadequate as replacements
for the kitchen hearth and the taste and feel of meals made from scratch by the
hands of wives and mothers. In the same way that food should be moderated in
the amounts in which it is consumed, moderation should also mark the frequency
with which meals are pursued in restaurants and foraged in their entirety from
supermarket chains. Kitchen gardens should be employed, at least to some extent,
in stocking kitchen cupboards, and kitchen stoves should be employed daily to
lade kitchen tables.
The only thing worse than preparing food that one does not like is to eat food
with persons one does not like. Avoiding either of these ills is a matter of charity.
One learns to like whatever food is available by remembering that unavailable
food is the worst kind of food. Likewise, one must learn to like one’s family re-
membering that eternity is a long time to be apart from them—if you wish to not
spend time with them on earth, you will spend eternity being separated from them
in hell. Such is not the worst incentive for finding it within one’s heart to enjoy
simple food and the simple company of one’s flesh and blood. There is certainly a
problem when eating many meals with persons unrelated is preferable to dining
with one’s own family. If this problem should arise, the solution is not a matter of
getting more new friends, but of developing a new attitude about the old family.
Love of neighbor is the second Great Commandment, after love of God, which is
accomplished in large part through the love of neighbor. The first neighbors one
ever meets are in one’s family. Charity begins in the home, and charity is fed, in
large measure, through the happy meals spent in the company of neighbors.
Fast food, junk food, and comfort food should strike healthy ears as being
unpalatable. Among oxymorons, fast food is one of the most nonsensical—fast
food is no food at all. Edibles should not include anything with the modifier junk
attached to them—we are what we eat, so imagine what comes from eating junk
food. Sympathetic ears, warm hugs, reassuring smiles, the sight of home, and
true words bring emotional comfort. The only food that brings comfort is that
which relieves one after having had a diet of fast food, and the comfort is merely
physical, not emotional. Inanimate objects can not bring emotional or intellectual
satisfaction to the mind or soul.
There is a penchant in modernity for labeling things: certain speech as polit-
ically incorrect, certain people as belonging to various nonexistent ethnic groups,
and certain foods as natural, artificial, organic, and/or all of the above, which last
designation might stem from belonging to ethnic groups whom political cor-
rectness forbids naming by name. For anyone concerned about whence his food
comes, there is a simple remedy—simple, mind you, not necessarily easy—a sim-
ple remedy available in the act of growing one’s food oneself. Then pesticides,
insecticides, and herbicides can be applied to the point of suicide at one’s own
discretion—or not! Barring residency in nations other than this one, one need
never worry about Made in China appearing on the produce produced in one’s
own backyard. And, thus far at least, the government is not interested in regulat-
ing, restricting, or registering the fruit of private labor accomplished on private
property for use in the private sector.
In each and all of these considerations, the citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven
is liberated by a sense of freedom, a sense of the possible, and good old-fashioned
common sense. There is no room in the Kingdom of Heaven for those who fall
into the ways of the world simply because that’s what everyone is doing. Most of
the world is either dying of starvation or from the effects of overeating. Unnatural
death is decidedly not one of the results of living obedient to the mores and cus-
toms of the saints.
Central to this truth is the fact that the saints realize, and actually believe,
that the body is subject death. Worldlings have a bad habit of doing deadly things
in denial of the fact that death will take them all. Citizens of the Kingdom of
Heaven understand that death of the body is not the worst thing that can happen
to a person. Death of the soul in hell is the worst thing that can happen to a per-
son. Thus, saints-in-the-making are insistent on living responsibly in this world
acknowledging that this world is ending—without them. The soul destined for
Regnum Christi 473
Heaven lives apart from this passing world, leaves behind the trammels of this
world in death, and is no more of the world in eternity than it was in time. Fear
of death motivates worshippers of the body; fear of displeasing the Lord motivates
the worshippers of Christ in spirit and truth. Fearing death, death becomes the
final judgement; fearing God, God rewards the faithful with eternal life.
Section 2: Shelter
Houses generally are built of wood, stone, brick, or in combinations thereof.
Houses generally are built on lots slightly bigger than the houses themselves, al-
lowing in most instances space for but a modest yard. Houses generally are built
to ward the ill-effects of the elements, to provide security for the dwellers therein,
and to promote a sense of happiness and wellbeing.
As well, houses generally are built for the occupants to use for, on average
these days, five years. Houses generally are built for the profit of developers, con-
struction companies, and banks. Houses generally are built at a cost that results in
the buyer spending thirty years paying off the principal (two or three times over
at least) and the interest. Houses generally are built with the idea in mind that
the debtor will leverage his debt into a larger house one day and/or borrowing
power for greater indebtedness as the years go by. Houses generally are built as
part of the engine driving a boom economy; houses generally are not built when
the economy goes bust.
Another way in which houses generally are not built is by their occupants.
Most home “owners” do not know the first thing about drywall and laying founda-
tions. Houses generally are not built for the use of people who will do much more
with them than sleep in them and argue over them in divorce proceedings. Houses
generally are built for use by people who spend a third of the day at work or school,
an eighth of their waking hours in various modes of transportation, a quarter of
the day in some kind of “recreational” activity more often than not involving in-
ordinate attention being given to lights dancing across a screen of some sort, and
the bulk of any remaining time complaining about all of the things that need to
be done around the house that never seem to get done. Additionally, these people
who have mortgaged themselves to an enormous debt for the house, who work
ridiculously long hours to service the debt for the house and to meet life’s other
pressing needs, and who point to their “dream home” with great pride and a sense
of accomplishment long before the bank surrenders title to them—these people go
to malls, amusement parks, and wilderness areas because home is so boring.
Some people in human history have had the novel idea of building houses in
the country. There they build their dream homes themselves, according to their
specific needs and abilities, not according to a developer’s set of variations on a
theme. These houses are situated on land that is ample enough to offer an acreage
for growing food, space for children to run about, and for untamed environs
where animals, creeks, and curious humans can roam about unfettered.
Houses built under these conditions are not subject to a tyranny known in
the United States of America as the property tax. Productive land might well have
a levy placed on the produce, but none of the inhabitants of places where such
houses are welcome would dare think that land can be taxed just for being landed
on by a house and family. A house constructed in these circumstances is consid-
ered the property of its builder, who is not to be reduced to being the renting
tenant of a government entity in perpetuity.
And as the property of their builders, these houses are at the disposal of said
builders. If one of them would like to add a room, he may do so without con-
sulting the local owners’ association. If one of them would like to drain a marsh
so as to plant corn, he may do so without asking the permission of a government
bureaucrat in charge of wetlands, deserts, and the oppression of citizens. If one
of them would like to stay in the house his whole life and hand it down to his
eldest son to hand to his eldest son, then he may do so without worrying that the
exercise of the absurdity of eminent domain will result in his back forty becom-
ing the fast lane on the new highway to MegaMallUSA. If one of them would
like to build his house in such a way that it would require his three older boys to
take turns carrying Grandma up and down three flights of stairs to and from her
bedroom each day, he may do so and his sons should thank him in his dotage for
teaching them to honor their elders and to be conscientious in performing the
corporal works of mercy.
Boredom is not allowed in houses built to these specifications. The land
needs care. The buildings need maintenance. The people need not look far to
see the next thing that needs doing. One of the delightful things that will need
doing on a regular basis will be the spontaneous decision, over which no one
has veto authority except one’s own common sense, to do absolutely nothing
right now.
What is allowed in these houses and their environs is their full use. Hunting
and fishing require no permits. Campfires can not be forbidden. Cottage industry
is entirely unregulated. The castle’s king, the husband/father, has no royal over-
Regnum Christi 475
sight commission empowered by his fellow kings from their neighboring castles,
nor does he exercise such interference in their domains.
There are historians who can tell tales of a time when the peasantry abode
in such circumstances. It will be pointed out that vermin frequently shared
space with families, much like the lice that run through third grade classrooms
in our day or the legendary sewer rats of New York City terrorizing the inatten-
tive, or the gads of termites fumigated every five years in posh suburban homes
near Los Angeles. It is a fact that the average medieval peasant lived in what
would now be called a hovel, resembling in most respects the public housing
available in big cities throughout the United States—with the major difference
being that the medieval peasant owned his hovel and could not be put out of
it. Marauding hordes might beset a medieval village from time to time, true,
but there was never a knight on every street corner inspecting each passing
donkey cart for hemlock or eye-of-newt—gang graffiti, the highway patrol, and
home (in)security systems attest to a different reality in the twenty-first century.
Peasants were indeed bound to the land, but they also knew nothing of rifs,
outsourcing, or Chapter 11 reorganization.
Modernity is rather unimaginative. Suggestions that our society might return
to the medieval understanding of property rights are met with an instantaneous
dismissal as if such would mean a return to medieval understanding of indoor
plumbing. The medieval man would not have balked at all of the modern notions
of “home improvement”, indoor plumbing being a prime example thereof. It is
very sad that modern man thinks that not owning, not using, and not building
his own home is an improvement. Such modern ideas of “progress” are, to any but
the modern mind, unimaginable.
Exile was among the worst of nightmares for the medieval man. To lose one’s
home, family, and friends was to lose one’s identity, one’s very self. The little boy,
growing up in the modern suburban dream home, dreams of the day when he can
finally escape and be on his own in an apartment in the big city. The little girl,
growing up in the modern dream home in the big city, dreams of the day when
she can finally have a family in the suburbs. The woman, commuting from the
suburban dream home to her office tower downtown, dreams of the promotion,
coupled with alimony, that will allow her to move her two children and herself to
a condo uptown. The man out of work and living in an apartment complex has
dreams of selling his suburban dream home so as to move the ex and the two kids
to a cheaper place and ease his support payments. When one has no home, one
likely will have no family, no friends, and no sense of self to lose.

This world is a dream world inhabited by impotent dreamers plagued with
nightmares. The Kingdom of Heaven deals with reality. Citizens of the King-
dom of Heaven do not look forward to the day when their address will change,
but to the endless day where nothing changes. They do not live in fear fanned
by mortgages, real estate values, and interest-rate fluctuations. Confidence is
the hallmark of these citizens, but not confidence in the phantom market and
its invisible hand guided by its nameless manipulators; rather, they are con-
fident in the God who saves. Worldlings are taught that salvation inheres in
saving the almighty dollar, a god who must be saved but who saves no one.
The Kingdom of Heaven is ruled by the King who spends Himself endlessly,
without diminishment, enriching His subjects, making them wealthy enough
to live in mansions on streets paved in gold, within walls of pearl, whose very
being is light and life! Now that’s something to look forward to, to prepare for,
to promise one’s children!
Section 3: Clothing
Several subversive septuagenarians sat in the office of a young priest one
morning. These were pillars of their community, rocks upon which their families
were built, grandmas to a woman. And they were talking revolution!
Some of the ladies had granddaughters who were causing them distress. Each
had experienced the same offense in the midst of Sunday Mass. All wanted some-
thing done about it.
The beauty of their ire was that they had no desire for government interven-
tion. They did not expect the priests to address the situation from the sanctuary.
There was no outcry for a petition drive or legislation.
These grannies wanted action. They were going to do it themselves. They were
going to sew some dresses!
What had happened was the ever-growing phenomenon of immodesty. These
parishioners were weary of the weekly invitation to impurity being witnessed at
Mass. But the women were astute enough about the local economy to know that
few if any opportunities exist to buy actual dresses for girls. The gods of fash-
ion don’t allow that. The septuagenarian radicals also understood enough about
young people and the feminine psyche to realize that a problem with vanity had
a better chance at a solution through an appeal to beauty than through lecturing
or criticizing.
Regnum Christi 477
Thus, the women thought of making some dresses for their granddaughters.
Then they would market them as one-of-a-kind Grandma Originals for birthday
and Christmas gifts. The piece de resistance was the decision to try to persuade the
girls to learn to sew!
Walmart sells clothes for a profit. Americans buy clothes because they can
and to make various meaningless statements about themselves. Third-world slaves
make clothing to postpone death by starvation (after all, they are sewing, not sow-
ing). This dynamic, operative almost universally in the world, results in clothes
that leave their wearers little better than nude, and worse, without shame for their
nakedness. Rather than adorning the body in accord with a clean mind, a pure
heart, and a spotless soul, clothing, according to the world’s standards, is a matter
of exciting the passions, enflaming the baser instincts, and is pleasing only to the
denizens of hell with naught but ill regard for the citizens of Heaven.
Said citizens of that Kingdom don apparel conforming to principles markedly
other than those observed by the worldly. Here are three principles that encom-
pass much of what is to be expressed in the clothes worn by the man who wears,
but is not made by, the clothes:
1. It is impossible to overdress
2. Ditch-digging clothes may not be worn to a formal dinner, but formal-
wear can be used in digging ditches.
3. Women are not men, men are not women, and people are not animals.
When in doubt, don’t—don’t dress down, that is. Dressing up is nothing
ever to be ashamed of. Jesus tells a parable of a wedding guest who gets thrown
out of the celebratory feast. His fashion faux pas was not a matter of sartorial per-
fection carried to excess. Also keep in mind that a lack of clothing was part of the
degradation to which Our Lord was subjected on Calvary—only the shameless
ignore their own nakedness or would inflict it on others. Saints in the Kingdom
of Heaven do not worry that the sanctity with which they clothe their souls is “too
much” for the occasion of coming into the presence of the Lord of the universe.
Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven in exile upon the earth should dress physically
in keeping with the inner spiritual reality given them in being clothed with Christ
in Baptism. Their Baptismal garment of purest white is the primary garb for daily
wear and tear throughout earthly life unto eternal life.
“Isn’t this impractical?” some might ask. No. The lower is always inadequate
to accomplish the higher, but the higher transcends and encompasses the low-
er. Thus, God can take on humanity, the Church can dwell in the world, and
modest clothing can be used in the midst of strenuous work, mundane activities,
and worldly venues. Immodest clothing, however, becomes an occasion of sin for
others on the street, distracts from important efforts attempted in daily life, and
often threatens physical health in the accomplishment of manual labor—skin
cancer, fallen arches, and amputated limbs being among the hazards of dressing
inadequately for the harsh conditions of some physical exertions.
Dressing up and dressing well do not mean dressing like a fool. Dangling
baubles, gaudy makeup, and bizarre hairstyles are unbecoming to feminine beau-
ty. Foppish accoutrement, feminine adornment, and bizarre hairstyles are un-
manly. Clothes should hide nakedness, protect from the elements, and adorn the
physical image of God; they are not for strange ornamentation, drawing attention
to themselves, or impeding locomotion. Clothing should be worn in sufficient
quantity to prevent wandering eyes from leading wandering minds into impure
thoughts. In fact, the best clothes are those clothes which permit the beholder
to see them without imagining the wearer without them, while at the same time
allowing both the beholder and the wearer to forget that they are worn at all.
Part II: The Mind

Section 1: Science
The air we breathe by which moral, political, and social convictions are voiced
is a scientific methodology guided by a materialist philosophy. Empiricism gov-
erns how modern man sets about knowing. A relativistic subjectivism rules mod-
ern man’s understanding of what is true and why he should act on truth in any
given way. The here and now, the tangible, the measurable is the lowest common
denominator on which the majority of men will agree as a shared context of life.
Anything beyond the material world capable of empirical analysis is a matter of
faith, and modern men have agreed that as a group we can believe nothing to-
gether. Faith is out of bounds; only what is knowable is admissible in the court of
modern thought. Epistemology far more than theology is the metaphysical arena
of exploration for modernity. For a scientific age that is etymologically appropri-
ate. Science is the search for knowledge. Epistemology is the study of knowing
and what is knowable. What does science know, and how does the epistemologist
know that it knows it?
Each scientific discovery is a veritable proclamation that what is known is that
we were wrong about what we knew. Newton yielded to Einstein. The horse gave
way before the horseless carriage, which in its turn is brought to bay by gridlock,
Regnum Christi 479
a victim of its own success. The campfire was dimmed by radio, itself outshone by
television, eclipsed now by the variety of entertainments available via computer.
Medical science vacillates constantly about whether or not and how much wine,
butter, and coffee are good for you.
Progress as measured by science is an evolution from the unknown into the
less-known. Scientific knowledge is an absurdly boastful assertion that nothing
can be known fully, nothing can be known finally, and nothing can be known
fundamentally. All of this would be woefully depressing were it not for the phil-
osophic fact that proof of a universal negative is impossible. Thus, science can
not know for certain that its claimed impossibilities are indeed impossible. Sci-
ence declaring that faith in nothing is reasonable in deference to the effort to
know something, is brought up short by the scientific and rational inability to
demonstrate that God is part of the nothing that can be believed or is a kind of
something that can not be known. Perhaps the man of faith is to be doubted for
his lack of physical proof of the existence of the object of his faith, but the man of
science is not to be believed when he insists that one take him on faith when he
denies the capacity of the subject of faith to know something simply because sci-
ence is self-admittedly agnostic on the matter. What is not known by science far
exceeds what science knows for sure; what is not known by science is a matter of
the inadequacy of scientific means to certain knowledge, not of the impossibility
of certitude in knowledge.
Any decent, honest scientist admits this. As a thermometer has nothing to say
about the height of the man whose temperature it is taking, science has nothing to
say about the soul of the man that divines knowledge of the divine Person who is
the sole measure of man. It is not an insult to say of science that it is ignorant of
the realm of spirit. It is the highest compliment to science to employ its tools in
allowing the spirit of man to strive for true freedom. Man bound only to matter
and only for death is in the bonds of slavery. Man striving to ken the fullness of
truth is set free by the knowledge that a life in the spirit can be at least rationally
posited. Science in denial of that possibility is in self-denial: science of itself can
neither affirm nor reject faith, and in attempting to do either makes not only faith
impossible, but science dies as well.
If man depends only on science for his knowledge of the world and of him-
self, then he will find himself trapped by science’s inherent inability to know any-
thing definitively. The paradox of science is that the first thing known must be the
fact of ignorance. Unless an ultimate source and object of knowledge (God) exists,
then science is reduced to being an ever-expanding arena of subjects for a nev-

er-ending increase of ignorance thereof. The key that unlocks this prison of pure
reason is the Faith. Man electing to disregard faith is choosing to remain impris-
oned in his senses, utterly unable to make ultimate sense out of what he perceives.
Science might answer what, how, where, and when, but science knows nothing of
who and why. In an exclusively material universe, there is no such thing as an I to
be the subject of knowledge, there is no Thou to be the object of knowledge, there
is no We to share knowledge (or faith, or hope, or love), and there is no purpose
for the existence of knowledge nor for the seeking of knowledge.
Children of God look around them and are awestruck at how wonderful
creation is. They delight in its beauty. For them, the whole world points to a God
who loves, who brings joy, who makes Himself known through everything there
is. Such childlike people are certain that God is to be experienced through the
things that God has made. They eagerly seek out more of His creatures, not to
glory in the art, but to catch a glimpse of the exquisite vision of the Artist.
The Book of Wisdom tells us that it is through His Wisdom that God has
endowed his creation with knowledge of His love. Wisdom pervades all that God
has made. Those who seek to perceive this gift become wise themselves, reflecting
the glory of God in their own lives. Many saints understood this. They sought
deeper and deeper into the natural sciences, not to make a god out of nature, but
to see more clearly how nature reveals the maker who is God. Saints are convinced
that the more one knows of the natural order, the more one’s faith is confirmed
that it is God who has ordered all things.
All good scientists realize that God has made Himself known in all creation.
Rather than deny that science has an authentic relationship to faith, the good sci-
entist allows science to confirm his faith in a God who loves His creation so much
that He is present everywhere in it. The wisdom that pervades all things is a sign
of God who has made all things. The goal of science is to gather knowledge that
leads to wisdom that believes in God and returns His love.
We live in an age of science. Often science sounds like a god. Things are
condemned if they do not “obey the laws of science.” Appeals are made to believe
something because “that’s what science tells us.” Scientists begin to sound like
pagan priests as they arbitrate for the uninitiated what it means to be a human
being, what the purpose of life is, where life comes from, how it is to be lived.
Because of this fawning on science, we would do well to follow the lead of
saints like St. Albert the Great. He understood that science is for something. It
Regnum Christi 481
is meant to guide us better to God. It does not end in a dispassionate objectivity,

but results in a passionate love for creation, a joyous experience of God’s highest
creation, man, and an intimate unity with God the Creator.
Too often we let our science get ahead of us and control us. Our wealth,
technology, and medicine frequently surpass our ability to understand them. We
lose sight of what they are for and the fact that we actually create and control
them, not they us. In our rush to make things that more and more imitate human
beings, we have made human beings to imitate things. Voice synthesizers replace
talking on the front porch, eating in the car replaces dining with the family in the
dining room, internet sites replace sharing a hug after a long absence.
What’s worse, however, is reducing human beings to numbers in measure-
ments of productivity based on units manufactured. Names are lost amid the
cacophony of pins and Social Security numbers and passwords for the pcs so
common in homes and offices. We are on the threshold of using technology to
manufacture human bodies for the express purpose of using them as replacement
parts for other human beings.
Before us are three options. One is that which we seem to be choosing right
now, to hurtle down the road of gadgetry, technology, and false convenience. Our
machines will become more and more human and our people will be more and
more dehumanized. Science as it is mainly practiced today offers no reason why
this should not be. This is because such is a moral issue and moral issues can only
be resolved by an appeal to absolute truth and absolute truth relies on the exis-
tence of an absolute God and this bad science denies the existence of God.
Another option is to flee the monster of science which we have created. We
can, as the Amish do, throw out novelties because we do not understand them
and it is hard to control them. This risks the error of condemning certain crea-
tures as inherently evil. Such would be a denial of our longstanding Catholic
perception of the divine acclamation concerning creation: “And God looked on
all that He created and called it very good!” The Manichees, the Zoastrians, and
the Puritans had an unhealthy disdain for the material world. King David in the
Psalms, St. Francis in the Canticle of the Sun, and St. Albert in championing the
study of the natural sciences would strenuously beg to differ with that kind of
attitude. The God who has revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, His Incarnate
Son, seems to like the idea of being united with the material world.
The third option, the correct option, is to embrace the intellect which
is truly a gift from God. We are to use this intellect in such a way that the
objects of its study help us better to appreciate the God who made all things.
We are to enjoy these creations and rejoice in the love of their Creator. Using
them to excess, as modernity would have us do, ends in the destruction of
the relationship between men and the world, between humans and each other,
between man and God revealed in Jesus Christ. To reject their use entirely, as
overly spiritual philosophies would suggest, results in the diminishment of the
human, contempt for the nature of which man is a part, and a denial of God’s
own word calling all creation good.
It is for us to use restraint. To reject utterly those things of science which are
bent on destruction. To take our time in understanding the complicated things
which science discovers, eschewing their use until we are morally fit to control
them instead of being overwhelmed by them. To support one another in times of
sacrifice and self-denial—such as Advent, Lent, and all Fridays—when we volun-
tarily set aside our material wealth in order to appreciate better the tremendous
spiritual blessings to which the earth and all it contains is pointing us. To celebrate
with one another, in our parish community, in the secular society, and within the
eternal Church that Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us.
He has chosen to be with us as the transcendent Creator of all, as imma-
nent in all creation, united with us in the Blessed Sacrament wherein the
Body-Blood-Soul-Divinity of Jesus Christ makes the new creation a marriage be-
tween earth and Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is not to be seen with the eyes
of a telescope or microscope, to be declared present there in the stars or there in
the test tube. The Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst, surrounding us, within our
hearts, uniting us with God who loves us, now and forever.
Section 2: Philosophy
A thing can not be and not be at the same time. The same statement can not
be true and untrue at the same time. God, Truth Himself, can not contradict
Himself, being the same yesterday, today, and forever. These statements are the
abcs of philosophy. Until they are learned, understood, and acknowledged, no
further love of wisdom can be sought, for no wisdom can exist where there is no
truth, and the denial of these principles results in the annihilation of the ability
of the human mind to embrace truth. Of course, the inability of so many in the
world to pursue wisdom with any hope of success is a direct product of their
refusal to cultivate a deep and abiding Fear of the Lord—the beginning of Wis-
dom—within their hearts.
Regnum Christi 483
Among men purporting to possess the powers of the modern intellect, some-
thing of a contradiction in terms itself, there is a penchant for denying absolute
truth altogether. Grey is the color of their true love’s truth. Rather than being a
perspective on reality and a view of the world, this is tantamount to a self-indict-
ment of blindness, at least of being blind to color, and, thus, blind to much if not
all of reality, truth, and wisdom.
“You must learn to love the grey!” is something of a national anthem for this
ilk. However, contrary to these connoisseurs of contradiction, black and white,
right and wrong, good and evil do exist. The confusion rampant in the world is
due in part because black and white have been confused one for the other, result-
ing in this grey that so many would have us “love”. God’s very first act of creation
is to separate: light from dark, earth from sky, sea from earth. In other words,
creation is the divine declaration, “This is not that!”
Such is the fundament of being. Remember the theological construction: the
Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father; each
is wholly God. They are one, distinct, and whole, while not being separate, con-
fused, or identical. Categories and the power to discern them constitute the first
activity of the intellect. If indeed there are difficult decisions to be made in the
moral life, they lie in the realm of what to do about nuclear weapons, how to feed
so many hungry people, and what one is to do when approached by a beggar who
smells of alcohol. Citizens of the Kingdom, on the other hand, have no trouble
discerning the wisdom in admitting the truth that Sunday Mass is always to be
attended, cohabitation is never appropriate, abortion is an abomination, sodomy
is unnatural and forbidden, self-abuse is never licit, materialism is a sin, divorce is
a failure, and charity must be above all.
If one would use colors as a metaphor for reality, black and white as well
as grey are insufficient. God paints across the spectrum. A grey world leaves all
indistinct and unrecognizable. A world of nothing but black and white would be
two-dimensional and no more real than a photographic negative. Reality corre-
sponds to the rainbow: there are distinctions between the colors, they are united
in white light, they can be distinguished by the prism, they are visible to the eye,
they can combine to create new and marvelous hues, and they have gradations be-
yond the power of human retinas or tongues to discern and describe. All the colors
mixed indiscriminately is grey (which is not good); all the colors extinguished is
black (which is nothingness); all the colors have their origin in light himself (who
is the only Good, from whom all good things come). Such light was seen at the
Transfiguration of Our Lord, where he appeared in dazzling white; such light is

the reward of those who walk in the light of faith on earth and attain the glory of
God’s Kingdom in Heaven. On the other hand, the Left hand, is grey, the color of
the goats, the tares, and the sound of weeping, wailing and the gnashing of teeth.
Good philosophers recognize the fact that the three paragraphs immediate-
ly above are chock full of the sort of statements that of necessity spill over into
theology. Wisdom is the object of truth, truth the object of knowledge, and the
senses the initial means to knowledge in time. However, such knowledge is itself
provisional and incomplete, and the truth built on it can not lead to ultimate per-
ception of reality, nor can the wisdom flowering from it in itself teach more than
one creature can teach another.
Absolute and ultimate knowledge can come to creatures only from their
Creator, who reveals greater truths beyond His creation within His creation,
and in so doing displays the indescribable Wisdom guiding it all. Those who
would deny this must also deny their ability to know anything more than this
world, and must admit that their knowledge, truth, and wisdom shall end in
the death of this world. Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven delight in the
Wisdom of God who delights in the sons of men in this passing world and in
the world that will never end.
But back to things more philosophical. The nation of the United States of
America prides itself on being God-free. Normally this is expressed as having
religious liberty as one of the rights guaranteed by its government to its citizens—
begging the question of who is doing the guaranteeing if the government is made
by the citizens—and is meant to protect the citizens, but the Constitution is
designed to defend the liberties of the citizens from an overweening government
by government mechanisms. If the citizens are powerful enough to enforce laws
against the encroachments of an unjust government, then why is it necessary to
have the government issue guarantees against itself? If the government comprised
of the citizens is powerful enough to oppress the citizens, then who are the citizens
powerful enough to overcome the government when it runs amok against the
citizens, against itself? What is the use of a God who requires Godless men to de-
fend Him on behalf of “believers” who trust that justice can be had from princes
dedicated to excluding trust in God in governance?
That is a sample of the “order” typical in the world. There are many unpleas-
ant implications to philosophy in rank rejection of its ultimate end in theology.
For instance, freedom of the press is ensconced in the Bill of Rights amended to
Regnum Christi 485
the Constitution of the United States of America, guaranteeing citizens’ activity

in the marketplace of ideas without undue government interference. Notwith-
standing the license some have taken to indulge in obscenity, incendiary polem-
ics, and demagoguery, Americans hold sacred the right to print, broadcast, or
transmit whatever is of moment, of interest, or of profit to society. The power of
the word both to reflect and to shape reality is acknowledged as a fundamental
principle of this and most democracies.
Children frequently are introduced to the concept of press freedom by way
of examining the elements of journalistic reporting and storytelling. The “who-
what-where-when” complex of questions is presented to students to help them
learn the skills of observation and the rules of rhetoric and articulation. So deeply
ingrained in our social psyche is this approach to understanding our world that
the products of such analysis are assumed to be accurate, self-evident, and incon-
trovertible. If it appears in print, on the air, or referenced at an official website,
then it must be true. Violations of this trust can result in public shaming, lawsuits,
and even incarceration.
Untrammeled freedom to express in public whatever is on one’s mind is
predicated on the notion that either truth is the subject being propagated or the
object being sought. It is no accident that such is the national attitude in the
United States, given that this is a decidedly materialist culture, devoted to the
advancement of science as final arbiter of reality, and dedicated to empiricism
and technology as the means to explore, comprehend, and subdue the natural
world. Truth as concrete reality is a primary good, hence, the expression of ideas
consonant with or desirous of truth serve the good. A free press can not (and may
not) hurt anyone, because truth is its matter and the truth ultimately is good to
know and to share. Thus, lies and liars receive no protection under the principle
of a free press.
But is a half-truth true?
America is rife with sources of information concerning “who-what-where-
when” things happen in society. Raw data inundate our every day. How, however,
is one to sort through and organize all of the facts, distinguish the falsehoods
therefrom, and then determine the nature of the truth being espoused and one’s
response thereto?
Or more simply put, why do things happen?
It is the policy of reputable disseminators of information to restrict them-
selves to reporting verifiable, objective matters in the body of their stories. In oth-
er words, “who-what-where-when” is all that is considered—just the facts, ma’am.

Speculation is not deemed appropriate in a reportorial venue.
Why is considered under the heading of editorials and opinions. Theoretically,
everyone can agree on the facts, or at least on establishing a means to determine
their veracity. What requires further thrashing out is explaining their origins, their
ramifications, and their relative importance.
As an aside, it is curious how much of newspapers, the broadcast media, and
the internet is given over to advertisements. If truth is the ultimate goal of the
press, one wonders what truth is held dearest by commercial interests. Those eager
to point out that making money in homage to the almighty dollar is the major
motivator of business would do well to ask whence comes the profit made by
capitalists, and what motivates the customers of said capitalists to agree to supply
them with so much capital. Who can be most trusted with discerning truth: ma-
nipulators of the market, or those in the market so manipulated? How can one be
sure that a free press is free from manipulation?
But that aside aside, the content of the media—whether print, broadcast, or
electronic—conveys a certain image of the world. There is crime in the streets,
corruption in government, and concupiscence in the population. What sells
newspapers, boosts ratings, and generates website hits is the sensational, the in-
tense, and the violent. What drives disagreements in specific controversies far
exceeds the attention given whatever general principles on which parties agree
that could provide a context for conflict resolution. Pornography is peddled, high
culture is applauded, and Americana is celebrated—indiscriminately and in fairly
equal amounts.
Why does all of this get ink, air time, and downloaded?
Because businesses make money that way. Or because that’s what the public
wants. Or because the government is oppressive. Or because our schools are inad-
equate. Or because that’s the way of the world.
But why?
What no one seems willing to admit is that the press is free to report any fact
and to editorialize any explanation—except that mankind is wallowing in sin.
Imagine this as the beginning of a newspaper article: “Two men were convict-
ed today of committing the sin of theft by robbing a bank...” Or this for the lead
story on the evening news: “A new poll released today indicates that Americans
consider the sin of adultery to be much more harmful to society than the sin of
fornication...” Or a website with this on its home page: “Earn the highest possible
Regnum Christi 487
returns on usurious investments in the Third World by taking advantage of loop-

holes in the tax code explained by our trained professionals...”
It will be pointed out that bank robbery is defined as a felony, not as a sin.
That not everyone agrees that fornication is immoral. That one man’s sin of usury
is another man’s just return on a capital investment.
But why?
Are there no media executives who understand and accept the moral law? Is
there no audience among the God-fearing who desire a no-holds-barred approach
to describing the state of the world? Would the government persecute this kind
of press freedom?
An odd self-censorship is operative in America. No laws forbid describing
illegal or immoral behavior as sins. The Establishment Clause applies to govern-
ment (and schools and public squares and the politically correct), but not to me-
dia outlets. Yet the public forum is utterly devoid of a daily accounting of world
events from the perspective of the Faith. The descriptions of reality ignore God,
thus explanations, blame, and solutions for the ills of the world ignore God.
But why?
The aforementioned Establishment Clause is interpreted in such wise that the
muzzle intended for government is self-imposed on the citizenry. Obeying the law
of unintended consequences, our sinful elimination of God from the workings of
government has resulted in the elimination of God in the workings of American
life, including the expression of truth through the press. Fittingly, we neither ad-
mit the sin that removed Our Lord from our Constitution, nor the sins riddling
our hearts. The Constitution is silent on the subject of God, the government is
silent on the subject of God. We the people are the government, silent on the sub-
ject of God in their laws, in their press, and in their understanding of the truth.
So long as God’s sovereignty is denied by a nation, its facts will be half-truths
at best, and wholly useless toward attaining the goals of life, liberty, and happi-
ness. Life is denied to the unborn, the ill, and the old. Enslavement is the norm,
in bondage to bodily appetites, oppressed by greed, and impotent to understand
why. America has more money, more gadgets, and more health than any other
civilization in history, and its whole economy is predicated on the idea that it is
not enough, that better things will replace these things, that satisfaction and con-
tentment with a sufficiency is impossible.
Without God, neither the individual man nor the world of men make sense.
If there is no God defining sin as an offense against His Majesty, then there is no
sin, all are good, and the world is filled with the fruits of man’s goodness...?!?! Or
if it is true, as the newspapers sometimes imply, that bad things happen now and
then, then the denial of God and His absolute goodness operative in the world
leaves one wondering about the wisdom of giving selfish, shortsighted, and some-
times silly people like Americans the right to say, print, or believe whatever they
want. How can one account for evil in the world without a God forbidding it,
or for good in the world without a God mandating it, or for truth in the world
without a God revealing it?
There are those who would say that all that is necessary is the “who-what-
where-when” approach to reality. Therein, in the material, tangible, objective
world, lies truth and the ability to recognize it and to agree on it. No more can be
reasonably expected in a pluralistic and free society.
So much, then, for a free press. The only purpose for having a free press is to
allow the free exchange of ideas. These ideas can be tolerated so long as they pur-
sue truth. Ideas can not be measured by, contained in, or subjected to instruments
designed for empirical evaluation. If the only truth acknowledged is material,
there is no need for free speech, free press, or free religion. All that is necessary
then would be scientists, recording devices, and no-nonsense news readers to give
us just the facts—a town crier would do the trick.
But if ideas are good and what makes them good is their truth, then God must
be acknowledged. This acknowledgement must be in the citizenry, in the press,
and, yes, in the Constitution. Or put another way, God must be loved with one’s
whole heart, whole mind, whole soul, and whole strength. Denial of the obligation
to obey this greatest Commandment accounts for the denial of the second greatest
Commandment, to love the neighbor as the self. Evidence of this two-fold denial
is in each day’s news.
Denying God and neighbor, why should anyone believe in democracy and
democratic rights? Why should citizens obey the laws of the land? Why should the
government allow the press, the citizenry, or the faithful any freedom at all?
Sin confessed explains who is wrong: the sinner. Sin confessed explains what
is wrong: offending God. Sin confessed explains where it leads: hell. Sin confessed
explains when the remedy will come: with repentance. And the final mystery is
revealed in why repentance is possible: because Christ Jesus loves man unto death,
even death on the Cross.
Perhaps this makes no sense to empiricists and leaves them unsatisfied. To the
world immersed in the senses and the nonsense of sin, grace is unfathomable. This
Regnum Christi 489
world, its culture, is self-admittedly attached to satisfying perpetually insatiable

appetites. Those who insist on nothing but physical existence as the meaning of
life have the whole of their physical lives to pursue such happiness. At the end
of this life, they will come to an end of happiness, and they will discover to their
eternal horror that they forfeited their liberty when they exercised their “right” to
be “free” from God. In the parlance of Madison Avenue, you can have it all—but
you can’t take it with you. C.S. Lewis put it very aptly when he wrote, “In the end
there are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’, and those
to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’”
While someone endeavors—in vain—to explain how the First Amendment
obeys the First Commandment, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven who hold
temporary citizenship in modern nation states, such as the United States of Amer-
ica, will continue to seek the ways of wisdom founded on truth borne on rational
knowledge of the created world revealing the existence of its Creator. Skeptics will
abound, to be sure, within this world, but, embracing the spirit of the age just this
once, the faithful are permitted a skepticism of skepticism. If men can doubt God,
then men of God can doubt men. Time will tell whose faith proves to be most
trustworthy, and which philosophy is revealed to have been most wise.
Section Three: Theology

Were a three-year-old child to engage a game of hide-and-seek with a sadis-
tic thirty-year-old, electing to be it while his older companion sought a hiding
place, the toddler would be utterly incapable of winning should the other hide
by hopping in his car and driving a thousand miles away. In a like manner, Deus
Absconditus does not exist. God is not hiding. God is not hidden away in the
human subconscious. God is not a Gnostic secret waiting for the eager adept to
be initiated into the sublimities of hidden knowledge. If God were truly hiding,
then there is no way at all for man to so much as to conceive of His existence—it
would be a poor God who could not hide Himself sufficiently to prevent human
speculation from proposing Him as at least in consonance with human reason. If
God were merely the hidden mysteries of the universe, the natural phenomena,
laws, and principles governing the uncreated cosmos, then He would not be God
the Creator, but the god creation. If God were but the prize won by human effort
at grasping the unknown in tandem with other men already successful in such en-
deavors, then the being subject to such seizure would hardly be the divine omnip-
otence, but would more aptly be describable as a singularly impotent commodity.
The only way that man can conceive of the existence of God is for God to will
such a conception in the mind of man. Our very desire to know of God is of God.
The practically universal craving of man to know the divine is itself obedience to
the divine will. Man’s search for purpose, order, and comprehension is a product
of the plan, consummation, and truth by which divine Wisdom designed the
universe and all its contents including man. A God hiding Himself unsuccessful-
ly, a God whose hiding is describable in terms of human discovery, a God whose
hiddeness is a matter of being ubiquitous in His supposed creation would be as
irrational, impossible, and discernible as the circle with five corners the reader is
now asked to imagine as he finishes reading this paragraph.
None of this is sufficient to prove that God does exist. It all merely means
that if God does exist and he preferred us not to know it, we not only would not,
but could not know it. There are only two explanations for man’s ability to con-
ceive of the existence of God: A) God does exist and He wills human knowledge
of that fact; or B) God does not exist and human speculation about that idea is
either a delusion, or an insanity, or an error, or a deception. Again, it can not be
maintained that God exists desiring that man have no inkling of that truth, while
asserting that somehow man on his own, unaided by and against the will of God,
has stumbled onto the secret. Theology is not so much seeking to answer wheth-
er or not God exists, as addressing the issue of whether or not man is mad for
positing a being possessing the attributes of “God”. Philosophically it is not un-
reasonable to assume that God does not exist, but one is left then with no means
of explaining matters of ultimate purpose, the final cause of all things, and why
any given man should bother getting up in the morning. Once one allows for the
existence of God, the only question is, What does He want?
This question can be answered only when one first believes that God Himself
has revealed that He is, who He is, and why He has allowed man access to this
singular piece of knowledge otherwise utterly hidden from all creatures in the
material world. Painful is the obviousness that multitudes of men down the mis-
erable millennia have assumed and asserted various affirmations that they indeed
know that, who, and why God is and wants. The quandary before men and each
man, then, is determining which one is right or is the insanity defense the only
other option—for although it is tenable that all ideas of God might be mistaken,
if any is right, it can be only one of them. Remember: A thing can not be and not
be at the same time. The same statement can not be true and untrue at the same time.
God, Truth Himself, can not contradict Himself, being the same yesterday, today and
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forever. If God exists, He does not change, He does not change His mind, and He
does not change His will for men varying from time to time, place to place, and
culture to culture. Of course, if you persist in the insistence that God does not
exist and man is master of all, consider these lines:
If man unbound
you would pursue
regardless of
the good and true
then you may not

deny my will
is free to break
Thou shalt not kill!…you.
Adhering to such sentiments is a diriment impediment to citizenship in the

Kingdom of Heaven.
If indeed God exists, and that means that only one God exists, and the hu-
man project depends on finding the one avenue to such knowledge, then that
one avenue would be the one teaching that God exists, only one God exists, and
human salvation is impossible without entering upon the Way teaching this truth.
For if God exists, He must be true, and the path to God must be a path of truth.
That true path must teach as true the truths that God exists, only one God exists,
and but one way to the one God exists. Any suggestion otherwise would be un-
true, ungodly, and unuseful for human salvation.
There is no lack of false religions purporting to satisfy the demands of reason
in their application of the tenets of their ersatz faiths. When it comes down to
it, all of the false faiths in all of the false gods fail due to a lack of interest—false
gods just are not that interested in the real needs of mankind. The false god allah
does not love man enough to be a man. The false gods of nature do not love man
enough to preserve man from eternal death. The false god almighty dollar does
not love man enough to bring order, direction, and reason to bear on the conduct
of life on earth. The false gods of science do not love man enough to teach certain
knowledge of human being or comprehension of divine being to the soul engaged
in the act of learning. The false gods that deny Jesus Christ, the one true God, do
not love man enough to tell him the full truth about the Creator’s love for His cre-
ation and His incredible love for man himself, a love willing to die for the beloved.
Lacking faith in the loving God, man is reduced to a hopeless state surrounded by
uncreated creatures, insatiable appetites, irrational philosophy, ultimate purpose-
lessness, and unredeemed oblivion. Faithless man is alone in cold space, alone in
his interactions with his fellow man, and alone in absolute separation from God
now and forever.
Jews no longer have priest, prophet, or king to guide them—truth can not
be had in an ununified conglomeration of folks whose number simultaneously
includes Judas Iscariot, Simon Wiesenthal, Karl Marx, Groucho Marx, Sammy
Davis, Jr., the Rothschild family, and many of the original funders and founders
of the communist revolution in Russia, all without a means of determining a con-
sistent measure of what constitutes membership in the group or a mechanism for
expelling those who fall short of that measure. Protestantism is more a matter of
posturing than of positing truth, the defining element of those sects being an atti-
tude of denying anything proclaimed by the Catholic Church, including in some
instances the divinity of Christ, the existence of God, and the historicity of Jesus.
Mohammed had to reject Christ’s claims about Himself and Judaism’s prophecies
about the Messiah in order to make Islam make sense; he wanted it both ways: to
claim continuity with the truth and to introduce novelties that contradict ancient
wisdom. That is the time-honored practice of all heretics. Schismatics follow suit
by denying the claims of authority of the one true Church, only to set up author-
ity in opposition to the Bride of Christ, although utterly incapable of establishing
bona fides better than “Thou art Peter and on this rock I shall build my Church!”
Within the true Church Jesus has been betrayed by individuals time and
again, just as He was after the Last Supper. This fact no more disqualifies the
truths of her claims than the foul treachery of Judas disqualifies Jesus as Savior of
mankind. The one Head shares with His one Body the privilege of suffering every
indignity for the sake of obedience to God the Father, up to and including the in-
constancy of brothers and hatred from those given the most love. Mother Church
says with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the words of Psalm 54:
Cast down, O Lord, and divide their tongues; for I have

seen iniquity and contradiction in the city. Day and night shall
iniquity surround it upon its walls: and in the midst thereof are
labour and injustice. And usury and deceit have not departed
from its streets. For if my enemy had reviled me, I would verily
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have borne with it. And if he that hated me had spoken great
things against me, I would perhaps have hidden myself from
him. But thou a man of one mind, my guide, and my famil-
iar, who didst take sweetmeats together with me: in the house
of God we walked with consent. Let death come upon them,
and let them go down alive into hell. For there is wickedness in
their dwellings: in the midst of them. But I have cried to God:
and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning, and at noon
I will speak and declare: and He shall hear my voice. He shall
redeem my soul in peace from them that draw near to me: for
among many they were with me. God shall hear, and the eternal
shall humble them. For there is no change with them, and they
have not feared God: He hath stretched forth His hand to repay.
They have defiled His covenant, they are divided by the wrath of
His countenance, and His heart hath drawn near. His words are
smoother than oil, and the same are darts. Cast thy care upon
the Lord, and He shall sustain thee: He shall not suffer the just
to waver forever. But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into
the pit of destruction. bloody and deceitful men shall not live
out half their days; but I will trust in thee, O Lord.
Because she is so intimately united to her Lord, Holy Mother Church clings
to all that He has given for all time. She reflects the immutability of her divine
Master in her faithful adherence to the Deposit of Faith entrusted to her and
guaranteed by the power of the Holy Ghost. An illustration of this conviction can
be seen in this excerpt from the papal oath of office:
I vow to change nothing of the received Tradition, and noth-

ing thereof I have found before me guarded by my God-pleasing
predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or to permit any inno-
vation therein;
To the contrary, with glowing affection as her truly faithful
student and successor, I vow to safeguard reverently the passed-
on good, with my whole strength and utmost effort;
To cleanse all that is in contradiction to the canonical order,
should such appear;
To guard the Holy Canons and Decrees of our Popes as if

they were the divine ordinances of Heaven, because I am con-
scious of Thee, whose place I take through the Grace of God,
whose vicarship I possess with Thy support, being subject to the
severest accounting before Thy divine Tribunal over all that I
shall confess;
I swear to God almighty and Our Savior Jesus Christ that
I will keep whatever has been revealed through Christ and His
successors and whatever the first councils and my predecessors
have defined and declared.
I will keep without sacrifice to itself the discipline and the
rite of the Church. I will put outside the Church whoever dares
to go against this oath, may it be somebody else or I.
If I should undertake to act in anything of contrary sense, or
should permit that it will be executed, Thou willst not be merci-
ful to me on the dreadful Day of divine Justice.
Accordingly, without exclusion, We subject to severest ex-
communication anyone—be it ourselves or be it another—who
would dare to undertake anything new in contradiction to this
constituted evangelic Tradition and the purity of the Orthodox
faith and the Christian religion, or would seek to change any-
thing by his opposing efforts, or would agree with those who
undertake such a blasphemous venture.
The progression of authority bestowing knowledge of the will of God and

handing down the tenets of the Faith in obedience predates the Church, being the
image of the relationship of the Father and the Son. The Father has all authority,
bequeaths it to His Son, who, through the Holy Ghost, bestows it on those who
believe in Him. Faith in Christ is shown in being obedient to the word of Christ
as given by those who have themselves obediently received His word.
Misunderstanding this progression and the obedience that proceeds there-
from is a typical attribute of modern men in the Church. There is a fallacious
assumption that infallibility in the papacy is a function of the person of the pope,
attaching to his every utterance, action, and written sentiment. By extension this
presumption is given to individual bishops, congregations of the Holy See, and
conferences of bishops, so that each organ of the institutional Church is invested
Regnum Christi 495
with an authority that Christ Himself never exercised.

For remember the words of Jesus: “You did not choose me, but I chose
you…” (John 15:16). Authority is given to no one to create from whole cloth
statements in the Name of God. The faithful can not and should not understand
the offices held by those in authority to grant their holders the exercise of that
authority in their own right. It is only in obedience to God and in harmony with
His truth that ecclesial authority may be wielded. This authority is vested in the
persons who hold office, but it is not personal authority—it is official authority. It
is unjust, disobedient, and sinful to attempt to usurp that authority to accomplish
personal gain, be it monetary, political, or philosophical.
The question for the faithful is, “Do you accept the gift the Father reveals
through his Son’s Church?” The infallibility of the Holy Ghost-guaranteed
Church is not in question; the disciple of Christ is being tested in faith. It is not a
matter of the worthiness of the Pope, but the proper obedience of the Christian.
Such obedience is not blind. The teaching from the Father through the Son is
the gift of knowledge given in the Holy Ghost. The teacher, the Vicar of Christ,
in obedience to the Father, is guaranteed infallibility by the Holy Ghost, who im-
parts prudence, wisdom, and counsel as well. The faithful of the flock of Christ,
seeking the Father’s will, are given the gift of understanding by the Holy Ghost.
The theological virtue of Faith confirms the disciple in his certitude, the virtue of
Hope spurs him on to further sanctity, and the virtue of Charity unites the soul
to the Source of all knowledge, truth, and love, the Most Holy Trinity. Thus the
faithful recognize the divine origin of the Church’s infallible teaching.
Receiving the teaching of the Church is not a matter of mindlessness on the
part of the faithful. They are recipients, but not absolutely passive ones. By their
own personal attempts at sanctity they increase their openness to the teachings
of the Church. At the same time they become better able to discern that which
contradicts her truths.
This serves them both in terms of avoiding sin and error in the world, and in
recognizing falsehood when it is presented as truth from God. St. John (1 John
4:1-6) admonishes the faithful to test all the spirits, reject the spirit of error, and to
listen only to God. St. Peter (2 Peter 2:1-3) warns that false prophets and teachers
will rise to lead astray the unwary, enticing them to sin, heresy, and unbelief. Our
Lord Himself (St. Luke 12:49-59) proclaims that the truth will divide the good
from the evil, and that men have the capacity for discerning that which is good,
and of ordering their lives in accordance with the good, so as to achieve salvation.
Power to know right from wrong, good from evil, truth from falsehood is
both a natural and a supernatural endowment. Man can know from his senses,
from experience, and from reason truth as it pertains to the material world,
and those aspects of the spiritual world proper to man. Sin, however, darkens
the intellect, dimming human understanding not only of things from beyond
this world, but even of objects perceptible to the senses and engaged by reason.
Supernatural faith restores and improves man’s ability to know the natural, to
perceive the supernatural, and ultimately to find union with the divine. The
discipline of theology engages man’s reason as the vehicle for created beings
in time coming to know their Creator dwelling in eternity, by virtue of that
Creator having dwelt in time, perduring in time through His grace-mediating
Body the Church, and bringing that Body through the travails of time into the
rest and peace of eternity.
A hierarchy of being exists in the universe, with God at its summit and in-
animate nature at the bottom. In the same vein, the relative position of man’s
activities can be placed in a hierarchy, those having as object mere matter being
the lowest, those having the divine as their supreme object being the highest. Thus
the sciences can be ranked in a like manner: organic chemistry ranks higher than
inorganic, chemistry has precedence over physics, and physics is above geology.
Theology as the science, the ascertainment of knowledge, of God is supreme over
all sciences, the ultimate knowledge available to man, indeed, the pinnacle of all
knowledge. All other sciences find a proper place within theology.
Lesser sciences exclude and/or are ignorant of that which is above them. By
the same token, lesser sciences benefit from greater clarity beneath the light shed
on them from above by the greater sciences. Geology can teach much, but teaches
much better when the truths of physics are applied to it. All of the natural and
human sciences have much to offer man, but they are perfected only when illu-
mined with the light available solely through true theology. In the end, without
theology the lesser sciences are left in the dark regarding ultimate things, the ques-
tion of purpose for being, and explanations for how man is to engage the universe
if nothing distinguishes him within the universe from those elements of it which
do not reason. Theology is the only science able to offer a reason to reason for
asking questions, seeking their answers, and judging truth from error. In a word,
theology is the only science that has any faith that there is hope that charity exists
to provide man with a response to his desperate Why?
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Part III: The Soul

Section 1: Free Will
Man is made in the image and likeness of God. This means not only that one
looks like God in the spirit, but that one looks like God in how he perceives the
world. It is not merely a matter of how one is seen, but of how one sees; not just
of how one looks, but of that for which one seeks. It is the nature of the search,
the means by which one searches, and the goal for which one searches. Imago Dei
is man’s being and action—just like God!!!
Man must see with the eyes of the Lord. The son resembles the father not
only in how he looks to the world, but in his worldview. To have our Father’s eyes
is not just to look like Him, but to see like Him, to learn to recognize what the
Father reveals as good and true. That is the gift of the sons of God in the Faith: to
see even as they are seen.
At the center of this vision is the Cross of Christ. Faithful citizens of Heaven
do not look at the Cross as do the faithless, with despair. They look on the cross
and see man’s greatest and only Hope. This is the Love that all saints experience
in bearing all for Christ.
Confusing “freedom” with “license” is a common mistake. People take license
to do things they are not free to do. Free will in angels and man is the power to
choose to obey God, something denied all other beings. Animals, vegetables, and
minerals must obey God by virtue of their very being. They have no choice in the
matter. They obey perforce. Angelic and human freedom inheres in the freedom
to choose to obey God. The license taken to reject obedience results in the utter
loss of freedom.
God built man with free will in order for him to make use of it in obedience
to Him. Man is “hard-wired” to freely obey God. That is the way free will is
meant to be used. Abuse of the power man has as a rational creature results in the
freedom being destroyed, the being had from God being destroyed, for God has
created man to be free only by obeying Him. When men disobey God, they de-
stroy their freedom and, if unrepentant, destroy the creation God has made them
to be as free children of His love.
Willing evil is absolutely forbidden. A little evil chanced for the good al-
ways diminishes the moral agent. As St. Thomas says, Bonum est ex integra causa,
malum ex quocumque defectu. A little evil does no good.
Some fools think that evil is allowed to exist in order to create free will. Ouch!
no! no! no!
Free will is not a choice between good and evil. Free will is the choice between
God and nothing—and God, not the devil, temptation, or human pride, creates.
Eek! To suggest that the defining attribute of man as a material/spiritual being is
the work of evil is, is—is evil!
Indeed, God creates ex nihilo, but though He creates from nothing, He most
certainly does not create for nothing. To be or not to be is not the question; to
be good or to not-be good—that is the question! The damned deny God’s will
toward being good, but their being evil does not undo His original act of creation.
To be evil is to not-be good, but it is not to be nothing. The damned may want
to be nothing in opposition to God’s will that they be good, but in attempting
to deny God’s will that they be good, they still do not get the nothing that they
want, they only get to not-be good. Neither God’s will nor their will is done! That
is the essence, the being of evil. It is a slavery, an impotence, in which both divine
omnipotence and creaturely free will are rejected.
Neither God nor man can create nothing. Man can choose nothing, but
this perversion of his free will in opposition to God’s will does not gain noth-
ing, it becomes evil. What damned men are left with, then, is not the nothing
of denying God, but the condemnation to being evil. God does not ratify the
rebellious soul’s disobedience with oblivion, for God can not deny Himself, or
His act of creation. God forever upholds His original creation, but the denial of
the good of that creation becomes the eternal experience of evil for the damned
soul. Demons and damned souls can choose to not-be good, but they can not
choose to not be.
Destruction of a creature is not an expression of freedom, but of slavery. To
use a creature for something other than its created end is to bring ultimate de-
struction to that creature. The misused, the abused, the destroyed are not free, but
are damned. Here is how Pope Leo xiii put it (Libertas praestantissimum of 1888),
explaining how St. Thomas Aquinas put it:
From Paragraph 6: “This subject is often discussed by the

Angelic Doctor in his demonstration that the possibility of sin-
ning is not freedom, but slavery. It will suffice to quote his sub-
tle commentary on the words of Our Lord: ‘Whosoever com-
mitteth sin is the servant of sin’ (John 8:34). ‘Everything,’ he
says, ‘is that which belongs to it naturally. When, therefore, it
acts through a power outside itself, it does not act of itself, but
Regnum Christi 499
through another, that is, as a slave. But man is by nature rational.

When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself
and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when
he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and
is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, “Whoso-
ever committeth sin is the servant of sin”.’…the wise man alone
is free; and by the term ‘wise man’ was meant, as is well known,
the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in
justice and virtue.
From Paragraph 13: “…obedience is greatly ennobled when
subjected to an authority which is the most just and supreme of
all. But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law
is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some or-
dinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man,
we become disobedient to God…all being free to live according
to law and right reason; and in this, as We have shown, true
liberty really consists.”
In short, freedom comes from God. To be free means to incline one’s be-
ing toward God. The only expression of freedom is choosing to be as God has
created man to be, namely, to be good. To choose to be other than good is not
freedom, but is the slavery of being evil. The evil are not free. Only the holy
are truly free as God, sanctity itself, is free. Freedom in angels and humans is
part of their reflection of the being of God. Being holy, being good, as God is
good and holy is the only means to preserve and exercise freedom. To be holy
as God is holy is to be free; to be free requires being holy as God is holy.
Section 2: Body and Soul

Life comes in many different forms. Some life is bodily without a rational
soul. Some life is bodily with a rational soul. Some life is spiritual without a body.
Here is a brief schema of what life exists in the universe:
Life: The Owner’s Manual
Standard Equipment
Carbon, protein, and water
in every son and daughter,
‘tho’ some, to be fair,
don’t need much air.
Most make use of light

but not always for sight
‘cause it’s also good,
say the plants, for food.
And whether one is fruit or meat

you’ll want a modicum of heat,
for if you get too hot or cold
you’ll not get very old.
Available Options
A most marvelous thing
is a flock taking wing,
but more miraculous still
is the thrush’s trill.
How to make their own glow

some worms and flies know;
another secret delight
is the bumblebee’s flight.
Spiders and beavers build

but none of them gild;
the ants do lots of work,
but sloths have none to shirk.
Wise seem the eyes of owls

and sad the coyote’s howls,
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but neither can tell

the ill from the well.
Deluxe Models (Limited Editions)

Angels we have heard on high
but they lack tongues to speak and wings to fly;
the Cherubim and Seraphim
only want to be with Him.
Demons are what angels won’t

by being what the angels don’t:
on primrose paths they chose to trod
the way to death—away from God.
Neither spirit nor flesh is man

‘tho’ in Eden from both (and God) he ran;
unique his terrible call:
to be a soul-in-body all.
Human beings are persons of both flesh and spirit. Men do not possess bodies
and souls, men are bodies and souls, embodied spirits. A body without a soul is a
corpse. A soul without a body is a ghost. Corpses and ghosts are what come of an
erroneous understanding of human being—and acting on it.
Action flows from being. The works of the flesh are material; those of the
human soul are spiritual. Whether good or not, in either the material or spiritual
realm, depends on the will responding to reason based on knowledge of reality.
Body and soul are meant to work together to effect the overall good of the whole
person. Sometimes it is necessary for the body to sacrifice a measure of well-being
for the higher good as directed by spiritual considerations. It is never acceptable to
sacrifice a spiritual good in favor of a merely physical advantage. Since the works
of the flesh are material, they pass away; spiritual actions, on the other hand, have
eternal ramifications. Thus, temporary material deprivation is desirable when per-
manent spiritual improvement is thereby possible.
Fasting from food, sleep, and speech stretch the endurance of the body. They
also increase the power of the will to endure the struggle to avoid all evil and to do
only good. Giving into the body’s weakness destroys both body and soul. Over-
coming that weakness is a path to preserving body and soul unto eternal glory.
Brother Ass, as St. Francis referred to his body of flesh, is to the soul what
Cain was to Abel. The body is of the species of blessings generally labeled as
“mixed”. It is in essence good, being made by God and worthy to house the
souls of the Blessed Mother and the Son of God. However, the body is also
the locus of the fiercest of the battles in the world since the Fall of Adam and
Eve, the war each man must wage against himself. The body is to be nourished
and nurtured, not coddled; it is to be treasured as a gift from God, not prized
in itself; and it is to be discarded in death in favor of the glorification that will
belong to the saints on the Last Day.
Catholic citizens in heaven and on earth are not Manicheans, Puritans, or
Zoroastrians. The material world is not coeval with the spiritual world. The
material world is not evil as such. The material world is not an end in itself,
itself doomed in its present state to come to an end. Matter need not be feared,
may not be worshipped, and should not be ignored as a legitimate means of
engaging the larger reality in consonance with the will of its Creator. Creation
is not the revelation of a glorious god, but is the revelation in small pointing
to the infinite glory of God.
Physical eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and fingers are utterly incapable of grasp-
ing that truth without the guidance of reason directed toward spiritual truth.
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness die without a rational soul to perceive them. There
are no connoisseurs of music among the hawks eating sparrows in mid-warble.
No judgement is forthcoming from a celestial tribunal, to weigh the arguments of
the sun, that its rights are infringed upon by the nightly encroachments mounted
by the moon. There is no reason for nature to be found within nature; any mind
desiring such must look outside of nature, beyond the natural mind, and beg
admittance to knowledge of the supernatural.
In time, this journey is impossible for the body to take. It is endeav-
ored only in the spirit, and only insofar as spiritual truth is sought and
grasped. That search and that embrace can succeed only when the human
soul is infused with divine grace. Grace from God sufficient for salvation
may be obtained nowhere except in the Sacraments of the Catholic Church,
predicated on the Cross of Christ engaged in Baptism and consummated
in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Walking the path of grace on the way to the
Kingdom of Heaven, the citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven in exile in the
Regnum Christi 503
world is given the light of the Faith by which to see with a sight capable
of piercing the veil that covers the peoples. He is given understanding upon
hearing the truth of the Word of God with a charity that prevents him from
becoming a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Sweetness beyond all telling is
tasted when God Himself is made Food for the journey, as the Lord Jesus
in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar descends onto tongues hungry for the
Bread of Life.
All is seen clearer when the eyes of the soul illumine the eyes of the body. Ev-
ery truth is perceptible to the ear trained to detect divine Wisdom through the ca-
cophony of worldly imbecility. Satisfaction is unending for the appetite desirous
of consuming Panis Angelicus. And the beauty present in the world, the delight in
human creativity, and the savor of simple natural blessings is immensely increased
for the man who, by grace, is able to properly value them. Those who treasure the
gifts of God in the world are not those who amass worldly treasures. No, the real
lovers of creation’s blessings are those who see them for what they are, know their
true worth, and enjoy them as means, not ends, to good from God which is invis-
ible to the world, beyond the comprehension of the worldly, and finally perfected
in the world that will never end.
Adam’s Fall resulted in a divorce occurring within man of the body and soul.
They are rendered enemies of one another by Original Sin. And the war between
Heaven and hell has as its most vital battleground the human person, where body
and soul are enlisted either as agents of satan or members of the Church Militant
destined for victory in Christ Jesus. Sharing in His victory, the human person
must die to himself, taking on the cross with Christ, and willing the defeat of the
world, the flesh, and the devil in his own soul through the thoughts, words, and
deeds of time being given in their entirety to God. The whole heart, whole soul,
whole mind, and whole strength of man lives or dies dependent on the choice
for or against God. Either the soul comes to grief by obeying the passions of the
body, or the body comes to glory by obeying the deep desire of the soul to share
in the Passion of Christ with and in the Body of Christ. If body and soul do not
win this battle together under the direction of spiritual truth and goodness, then
both body and soul will be lost. It is not either-or, but all-or-nothing. Body and
soul are designed to be one—warring for all eternity with the damned if obedient
to the father of lies; in perfect peace forever if obedient with Jesus to the holy will
of God the Father.
Section 3: Life and Death

Life comes from God, who is truth. Death is the domain of the devil, the
father of lies. The Spirit of God informs the law of God, and leads to life. Satan
twists the letter of the law in such a way as to make it deadly to its adherents.
Without charity, the greatest divine attribute, the law is a dead letter. Hatred
is the heartless desire of satan and his minions, bringing a message of death to
those who hearken to him. To cling to life is to embrace all truth in Jesus Christ.
Death comes to those who receive the dead letter of the lies told by the world, the
flesh, and the devil. Alas! even some who purport to be members of the body of
Christ have accepted lies over the truth, to wit:We, the People who are Church
in Corinth, Galatia, and Ephesus, in solidarity with one another and with all
oppressed by poverty, injustice, and the sins of society, who are seeking peace and
harmony with every sister and brother in whom God’s salvation is being worked
out by the creator’s very act of creation, and his coming among humankind as a
sharer in the grace belonging to all the world, send greetings to our fellow-worker
Paul who once was Saul.
We are pained, dear Paul, by the tone of the two or three let-
ters (we lost track of the exact number) that you sent to Corinth
and each of those received by Church in Galatia and Church in
Ephesus. We are grieved at the name-calling, referring to Church
in Galatia as stupid and yourself as a fool, expressing a horrible
lack of self-esteem and a patriarchal condescension to the People
of God who share with you a common baptismal priesthood.
We are especially saddened at your rigid and culture-bound in-
sensitivity to the gifts that women can bring to the ministry of
teaching, Proclaiming at the Table of the Word, and bringing
God’s maternal qualities to the Table of Fellowship we all share
with our brother Jesus.
And beloved Paul! think of the hurt felt by our Jewish and
Greek friends when they heard of your reactionary remarks con-
cerning them. Peter showed so much more understanding and
progressive thinking in his efforts to reconcile our current prac-
tice with the venerable and ancient customs of the Temple and
Table of the Chosen People. We must show restraint in remark-
ing on your old-fashioned ideas about those who worship God
Regnum Christi 505
in the divine multiplicity or graven in the materials of creation.

To be frank, yet always gentle, friend Paul, you are guilty of the
sin of inhospitality—and would have us bring that sin to the
Table of God!
Our disappointment is all the more heartfelt because of the
openness you seemed to show on your visits. You never raised
your voice. You reprimanded no one. You appeared willing to
accept Church in all its diverse and rich expression of love for
humankind and the cosmic creator. We are confused, wondering
which is the real Paul, the warm companion who walked with
us, or the harsh and aloof man of his letters. We wonder if even
Paul knows his real self. Is there still some of the old Saul in him,
unable to fully embrace the becoming and evolutionary newness
to which God calls us all?
But we know there is hope, Paul! As you so beautifully said
yourself, there are only three things, faith, hope, and love, and
the greatest of these is love! We know the person capable of such
tremendous empathy will ultimately see that love reveals that
all are one. We who are Church will love like Jesus and embrace
everyone in love: slave or free, Jew or Greek, woman and her
co-worker man! No human experience or expression of love can
ever be excluded from our worship of God, who is love manifest-
ed by humankind. Please, Paul, pray on this and accept our gift
of love. We look forward to receiving the gift of love becoming
Paul!
Before we close we ask you to reflect as well on the difficult,
and dare we say, obscure things you wrote concerning the place
of Jesus in the universe, marriage relationships, and the afterlife.
Very few of us have any appreciation of your ideas and how the
God of our various understandings would permit them to be
true. Even fewer of us agree with you. It seems to us that Jesus
places much more importance on the here and now and making
this life peaceful and agreeable to all. Jesus was a uniter, not a di-
vider! Let us dialogue on these issues and reach consensus. But if
we do not come to share a consensus, may our ongoing dialogue
become a mutual offer of non-judgemental acceptance.
Send our greetings with a big hug to Sosthenes, Timothy,

and all the women and men empowered to be Church for you.
May God who maternally gives life to creation, who shares in
the pain of humankind, and who is the blesser of all with the
spark of divinity grant you grace and love. Peace, Paul. : )
The foulest lies, and the most woefully effective, are those that tell most of
the truth, mostly truth, admixed with error. Man is inherently drawn to the truth.
Where the truth is used as a disguise for a lie, there is a deadly peril for those men
incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, all too often succumbing to the
fatal mistake of accepting the lie as truth, accepting truth as compatible with lies.
There is no life to be had for them so cursed with credulity lacking the assent of
the will to the grace of the true Faith.
Among the most pernicious of lies clinging to truth is the twisted logic result-
ing in the exaltation of earthly life as an end in itself. Creation is good, as declared
by the mouth of God in His very act of creating it. However, it is most evil to
believe that creatures are good in themselves without reference to their Creator
and refusing use of them according to the will of Him who made all things. Life
is good, but life on earth is meant for more than just the earth. All creatures are
given to men for the purpose of man’s use of them in working out his salvation
with fear and trembling, not with arrogance and presumption. A life lived on
earth for nothing beyond the earth will come to a disastrous end with the end of
the world. Only the lives willing to release their hold on the earth will discover a
far better life beyond the beauty of this world, beyond the comprehension of man
to imagine, beyond simply food, shelter, and clothing, instead being nourished on
the very life of God, housed in divine mansions, and clothed in glory.
Do the good! and Avoid evil! are the two moral imperatives given to the faithful
through the natural law, the magisterium, and the divine law meant for the sal-
vation of man. Through obedience to this dual admonition to seek sanctity and
reject sin, the faithful cooperate with God’s plan of salvation. In His plan God’s
activity is creation and redemption. Man’s activity results in God’s creation either
being damned or glorified. What a man does is his contribution to the project of
establishing what he is for all eternity. Each of the two moral imperatives must
be engaged in man’s life in the world. “Do the good,” is a relative command.
“Avoid evil,” is an absolute command. Between birth and death man is given am-
ple opportunity to obey these commands and thus be saved. Free will gives him
Regnum Christi 507
the power to choose, but the power is dependent on the choice. Man’s free will
is increased in choosing righteousness; it is diminished when he chooses sin. The
saint is truly, fully, and eternally free as a son and heir of God. The sinner dies in
perpetual slavery, bound forever to his sin, entirely incapable of asserting his will
to happiness, which he falsely sought by disobedience to God on earth. A man
is able to do only so much good. His responsibility is limited by his very being.
God alone can do all good. Man participates in the infinite goodness of God. It
is divine grace and mercy which deigns to extend the infinite good of God to the
finite man. Doing but a little good is rewarded with endless beatitude. In giving
God His due, man receives infinitely more than is his due from God. There is
never an instance in which evil may be done. No sin is ever permissible, and none
can be attributed to the divine will or imputed to the person of God. Sin belongs
utterly to the world. Each man’s sins are uniquely his own. Although God gives
the saved full portion of His life beyond their just desserts, the perdition of the
damned is solely his own work and the fruit of his own demerits. Grace in its very
being is a sharing in love; sin and its wages, death, are confined to the guilty soul
and makes impossible any communion on earth or in Heaven. Being, in keep-
ing, with the divine will, is inherently good. God’s original creation received His
benediction six times before he declared His work Very good! (cf. Genesis 1:1-31).
This truth has been confused by many to mean that good attaches to the human
person regardless of how he exercises his free will. It is a commonplace to hear a
man’s sins related with the summary judgement, “But he’s a good person.” Man
may have begun good, but original sin, concupiscence, and sinful actions disfig-
ure that goodness in time and, potentially, destroy it for all eternity. Allied to the
separation between life and death pertinent to the final disposition of the human
person are the signs manifesting whether or not the soul is choosing life. Death
is evinced by an existential despair enveloping a person. Life is manifested in a
confident hope in the face of all that occurs until eternal life is received. A simple
way of describing this dynamic would be:
1) The secularist laments a man’s “early” death as “dying before his time”; the
Catholic acknowledging John 12:24, understands that a man must die before his
eternity.
2) The worldly die as if no life awaits: in despair. The Catholic lives as if no
death awaits: in hope.
3) It is the will of God that man redeemed dies just in time.
Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor human mind conceived of the delights
of Heaven. God’s mercy in the world also extends to sparing men a full appre-
ciation of the horrors of hell. It should be evident, however, to men of reason
that delight is to be preferred to horror, in whatever degree, of whatever kind,
for whatever duration. Faithless souls see pain, hardship, and deprivation in
the world only as horrors to be avoided. Faithful souls see pain, hardship, and
deprivation as the delights of those privileged to share in God’s mercy through
the Cross of Jesus Christ. Only the true Faith is efficacious in bestowing the
power to see beyond appearances into the deeper truths veiled to physical sight
by concupiscence. Too late will faithless souls discover their error when finding
not only were they utterly incapable of avoiding all pain, hardship, and depri-
vation on earth, but that such faithless cravenness results in pain, hardship, and
deprivation as their lot for all of eternity. Great is the joy of the faithful soul
who discovers that the little consolations, the little consolation, he received in
his pain, hardship, and deprivation on earth bear fruit in an eternity of bliss,
complete joy, and abundant life.
All the books of all the world throughout all of time are inadequate to
the task of describing the fullness of the life of Christ. All the books of all the
world throughout all of time are inadequate to the task of describing the life
in Christ meant to be lived by the members of the Body of Christ. This brief
excursus humbly acknowledges its laughable lack. As well, however, it is to be
profoundly desired in prayer that it might serve as some small aid to souls
eager to embark on the wonderful labor of bearing the Lord’s sweet yoke and
light burden. May He who began the good work of salvation in you bring it
to perfection, and with mutual sentiments of charity solicitous for the salvation
of all of our fellows, Oremus pro invicem!
Father Smith
19 November 2005
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
Regnum Christi 509
A Sure Thing
What madman, fiend, or fool would dare believe

that e’er the strife between the sun and clouds
besetting earth with frequent cause to grieve,
where life itself seems draped in deadly shrouds,
will come to resolution in a night
of tempest winter-wrought beneath the noon,
and quelling hope as if a summer blight
assailed the stars and made the moon to swoon?
But lunatics, the damned, and addled brains
would think it sense such nonsense fit to tell,
as if the fire of dawn is quenched by rains
or birth is daunted by the tolling bell.
No more than counting after one begins
can satan aught but lose what Jesus wins.
Father Smith.
21 November 2005: The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
My sheep hear my voice. And I know them: and they follow me. And I give them
life everlasting: and they shall not perish forever. And no man shall pluck them out of
my hand. That which my Father hath given me is greater than all: and no one can
snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.—St. John 10: 27-29
These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world
you shall have distress. But have confidence. I have overcome the world.—St. John
16:33
If This, Then That…

Dignitatis Humanae says, “The Vatican Council declares that the human per-
son has a right to religious freedom. Freedom of this kind means that all men
should be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups, and
every human power, so that, within due limits, nobody is forced to act against his
convictions nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his con-
victions in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in associations with

others. The Council further declares that the right to religious freedom is based on
the very dignity of the human person as known through the revealed word of God
and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom must be
given such recognition in the constitutional order of society as will make it a civil
right.” (see Paragraphs 2-5, 6-7; this principle is reiterated in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, Paragraph 2106)
Canon 1311 of the 1983 Code says, “The Church has an innate and proper
right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful by means of penal
sanctions.”
As regards Catholics who would practice the immemorial Tradition, dis-
cipline, and Sacraments as they stood prior to 1962, it would seem, then,
that either the canon does not apply to them, given the force of the state-
ment from the Council, and all sanctions they have suffered these past thirty
or more years are unjust; or coercion to bring into line other members of
the Body of Christ wherein the Church of Christ subsists (see Lumen Gentium
8) would be in order.
If it be argued that Photians and protestants are not subject to papal authori-
ty, then one of two conclusions is necessary: either they are not, in fact, members
of the Body of Christ, and therefore are denied access to salvation; or communion
with the Holy See is not necessary for salvation.
If it be argued that membership in the Body of Christ is not necessary for
salvation, then sanctions such as suspensions and excommunications applied to
Catholics adhering to immemorial tradition are meaningless and null.
If it be argued that Photians and protestants are somehow in communion
with the Holy See but need not obey its mandates, then it must be explained
how traditionalists who acknowledge the authority and validity of the Holy See
are excluded from communion therewith; as well is necessary an explanation
of how disobedience to due authority by Photians and protestants does not
impede salvation.
If it be argued that subjects of the Holy See are bound to obedience to the
Holy See for the sake of salvation, but those who are not subject to its authority
are not so bound, then what is being said is that the means to salvation are not
absolute but relative, changing for each man according to circumstance. If one
law does not bind all for the sake of salvation, then none can say what is necessary
for any individual’s salvation.
Regnum Christi 511
If it be argued that the Holy See is competent to teach the necessary means to
salvation, then said teachings must be made clear to all and observed by all.
Canon 1313 states, “If a law is changed after an offense has been committed,
the law which is more favorable to the accused is to be applied.” If the ceaseless
teaching of the Church, Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, has been changed such that
Photians and protestants can gain access to salvation outside of the Roman Cath-
olic Church, then this changed law, according to the principle expressed in the
new canon, must apply, as well, to subjects of the Holy See, particularly those who
incurred sanctions before 1983.
If the laws pertaining to salvation can change from time to time, then they
can be construed to apply in different ways from man to man; likewise, if the laws
of salvation given by God, taught by Christ, and endowed by the Holy Ghost
upon the Church are eternal, immutable, and irrevocable, then they apply to all
men at all times.
Either Dignitatis Humanae allows for all men to seek God in whatever way
conscience dictates, which includes the immemorial doctrines, practices, and Sac-
raments of the Roman Catholic Church; or all are bound to obedience to the
Holy See, whose authority is given by God solely for the purpose of handing
down the Deposit of Faith without novelty, innovation, or deviation.
Father Smith
7 December 2002
Feast of St. Ambrose
Prince of Peace Parish, Clinton, Iowa
“For us as Catholics, the Distributive State (i.e., the State in which there are as
many owners as possible) is not something which we discuss, but something we have
to propagate and institute. No advance in social thought or social action is possible if
we are seeking to prove to ourselves as a theory what we should be trying to realize as a
fact.” —Father Vincent McNabb, OP, The Church and the Land
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Distributism for Dorothy

by Father Lawrence C. Smith

O Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Mother of Christ, thou hadst influ-

Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Part Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

Preface: “Distributism for Dorothy”

That said, let us into the breach…

proved, and executive-enforced endorsement of divorce, sodomy, abortion, usury,

This wondrous scene once more will come to pass

few questions: Could you elucidate a little on modern employ-

Modernity: A Diagnosis of What Ails Us

A thesis never intended for publication or completion, by Father Scott Phillips

Inside their walls both great and lowly

What present threatens is not warfare

A love for strangers is the dearer

At last the wall will more a window

cultural colony or suburb or wholly-owned subsidiary of America. China and Tai-

constitutes worth in a man. These pan-national entities hold billions—of people

The fool hath said in his heart:

All modernity has conspired in apostasy by the wretched principle of de-

home in God’s many mansions, we have devolved to seeking one world-encom-

II. When Saints and Sages Rule

depravity is under consideration veritably wilt at the prospect of impeding prog-

Father Phillips’ great-nephew and namesake, Father Phillips, took about as

A few simple principles for the spiritual life:

1) Where has God offered His grace to me today?

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Credo in Deum, Patrem Omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et

Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adve-

Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mu-

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto! Sicut erat in princip-

O, mi Jesu, indulge peccata nostra. Conserva nos ad igne in-

Salve Regina! Mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nos-

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen

Bad News for Modern Man

While mulling in my mind whether or not I wanted to mount the effort

to get done. Additionally, these people who have mortgaged themselves to an

are a tweedledee/tweedledum affair. Do you want abortion on demand or just

Other examples of liberated, freethinking modernism include the

Father Smith, Sacerdos vagus

15 July 2004: St. Henry of Bavaria

Sensus Catholicus with Father Smith

Dear PQ and all Readers,

God bless you,

26 August 2004: Pope St. Zephyrinus

Reflections on Belloc’s On Usury

5 February 2002, St. Agatha

Father Smith Presents a Layman’s

not backed by gold, and it is not generated by production. It is almost entirely

Money Does Grow on Trees

In the aftermath of Christmas, the biggest binge of buying of the consumerist

Leaping into the Handbasket Bound

wrong, no God, no meaning, and no purpose, just an is happily being whatever

It is readily evident that the so-called “reform” of the revolutionaries produced

Father Lawrence C. Smith