The dogma of
the modern world in light of Catholic teaching.
Liberty
is a dogma of the modern world.
Liberty is enthroned as one of the great goods to be cherished in life,
something worth dying for. The American War of Independence was fought for
liberty’s sake. World War II was fought for liberty, and was financed in part
by “Liberty Bonds.” For a long time our money had an image of a woman who
personified liberty, and even wore a crown with the word liberty inscribed on
it. This “Miss Liberty” as well wore a “Liberty Bonnet,” which can also be
found on the insignia of many states, including those of New York and New
Jersey. In New York’s harbor stands the colossal Statue of Liberty, holding a
torch. The original name of this statue is “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
The red and white stripes of the American flag are derived from the flag of the
“Sons of Liberty.” Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Thomas Jefferson
enthroned liberty in the Declaration of Independence by numbering it among the inalienable rights: life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. The Bill of Rights touts freedom of religion, freedom
of speech, and freedom of the press as great goods to be guaranteed. Norman
Rockwell, after the suggestion of Franklin D. Roosevelt, portrayed in art the
four great freedoms: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of worship,
freedom of speech. The Declaration of Independence was heralded by the ringing
of the “Liberty Bell,” now a national relic and shrine.
The cherishing of
freedom is very much a part of, if not the essence of, American culture. Nor is
it confined to America. French money always has the word liberté engraved upon it, together with égalité (equality) and fraternité
(fraternity). Nearly every European democracy enthrones the concept of
liberty in one form or other.
Since all culture
must come under the scrutiny of the Catholic Faith, it is necessary to take a
look at this cult of liberty which is so much a part of the American culture,
and of all Western culture since the eighteenth century.
The Catholic
Notion of Liberty.
What is a little
odd at first view in the cult of liberty is that it was non-existent before the
eighteenth century. Nowhere in the great Catholic culture of medieval Europe do
we find a cult of liberty. Why, all
of a sudden in eighteenth-century Europe, do we find a cult of liberty to the
point of “deifying” the concept by means of an image of a glorified woman?
A red flag should
go up to any Catholic well-versed in history. The eighteenth century is the
century of revolution, of freemasonry, of naturalism and rationalism. It is the
century of the guillotine. It is the century of Jansenism, which besides being
a form of Protestantism in the religious sphere, was a powerful political
influence on the side of liberalism. In short, the eighteenth century is the
century of intellectual ferment against the legitimate authority of the Church
and of civil government.
The new-fangled
cult of liberty implied that the Catholic Church or Catholic culture up to the
eighteenth century had somehow missed the boat on liberty. It is as if
something was missing from life, as if there were constraints in the Catholic
culture which needed to be done away with. In other words, what did the
liberty-cultists in the eighteenth century seek to be free from?
The Catholic
Church, however, missed nothing about liberty. Always a defender of free will,
particularly against Protestants, the Catholic Church in no way failed to
address the liberty of the human will in the writings of her great minds. It
has always taught that man is endowed with free will, and is thereby
accountable for his actions. Because of his free will, he is capable of merit,
and therefore capable, with the help of divine grace, of achieving eternal
salvation. He is therefore also capable of demerit, and of causing himself to
be damned for all eternity.
Catholic
philosophy teaches that the human will is a blind faculty which must be
informed by the intellect as to what is good and what is bad. The intellect is
that faculty of the soul by which it takes in reality. The intellect informs
and commands the will with regard to the objects it should pursue.
Catholic
philosophy further teaches that the foundation of the freedom of the will is
the indifference of the object. This
simply means that created goods, unlike God, do not have a necessary attractive
power on the soul, like a magnet does to iron, but merely a limited attractive
power, one that can be refused by the intellect, and therefore by the will.
Let an example
illustrate. When you set down food in front of a hungry cat, the cat moves necessarily toward the food, without any
freedom or deliberation, since it perceives only the sensual good of the food.
The cat goes to the food like iron would go to a magnet. It is not a free act
for the cat. On the other hand, if you set down a plate of food in front of a
hungry man, although he would be strongly attracted toward it by his sensual
nature, he would still be able to perceive with his intellect the fact that the
food is merely a limited good. He could perceive something good about the food,
and something bad about it. For example, while he might perceive that it is
nourishing, he also might perceive that it tastes bad. He must then make a
deliberate decision, a free decision, either to bear the evil of the bad taste
and eat the food for its nourishment, or to reject the good of nourishment for
the fact that the evil of the bad taste outweighs it. Thus, even though he be
very hungry, he could freely refuse to eat.
The reason why
man is free in front of limited created goods is that his intellect is made to
know universal being, and his will is made to love universal good. When
something fails to be universal good, but only a limited good, the will remains
free, that is, unconstrained, in front of such an object. The will may freely
draw back from a good that is attractive to it in a limited manner. Martyrs,
for example, have even freely drawn back from the good of preserving their
natural lives in order to possess a greater good, namely God. No animal could
do such a thing, for no animal could perceive the great good of possessing God.
In fact, only the vision of God, who is Subsistent Being and Subsistent Good,
is able to necessarily attract the attention of the human intellect and the
adherence of the human will.
If we now pass to
liberty in the social and political sphere, it is obvious that human beings
should be free in those areas which are truly indifferent, but constrained with
regard to those things which are necessary. Thus the observance of the law of
God and of the natural law pertain necessarily
to the common good, and consequently civil governments are duty bound to outlaw
the transgressions of these laws. Men should not be “free” to disobey the law
of God and the natural law. Hence murder, which is against both laws, is
outlawed by the civil law. On the other hand, civil governments would exceed
their authority, were they to attempt to dictate to citizens practices which
are not necessarily linked to the common good, e.g., whether people should
drink alcoholic beverages or not, or whether they should wear seat belts or not.
Is this the
liberty that the cult of liberty strives for? Is the cult of liberty the desire
to free man from the excesses of government in regulating the lives of the
citizens?
No, because the
facts of history tell us otherwise. The world has never known more oppressive
governments or bigger governments than those which profess the cult of liberty.
No governments have meddled more in the lives of their citizens. Since the
abolition of the monarchies and the rise of democracies, the common man, the family
and business have been subject to tyrannical oppression, emaciating taxation,
as well as economic and social “engineering” which affects every aspect of
life. The democracies of the past two hundred years make the most dictatorial
monarchical regimes look like liberty fests. With democracy have come both
liberalism and socialism, two sources of oppression for hundreds of millions of
people, if not billions, over the past two hundred years.
This fact tells
us that the liberty which the cult of liberty seeks is not the freedom of the
common man from big, oppressive, and tyrannical governments. It is a freedom
from something else which the cult of liberty seeks.
The cult of
liberty in the eighteenth century is intimately associated with Freemasonry.
The political and social goal of Freemasonry was and still is to “free” man
from the “tyranny” of the Catholic Church and from any civil authority which
does not claim to be democratic. By definition, a Church or a regime is
tyrannical for the Freemason if it seeks to make dogmas or to rule without the
consent of the governed. For this reason Freemasons have always detested the
Roman Catholic Church, since she claims power from heaven to teach supernatural
doctrines and make binding laws, all of which must be adhered to by the whole
of humanity. Freemasons have similarly opposed any monarchy which did not
divest itself of power (like the present British monarchy, absurd in its
powerlessness). Therefore any monarch who would not cave in to their demands
for socialistic democracies, where power was considered to come from the people
and not from God, met with the solemn disapproval of Freemasonry. Starting with
the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, they have not ceased to labor against the monarchies
of Europe and elsewhere which did not conform themselves to their principles.
One by one did these monarchies come down during the nineteenth century, until
finally, by the end of World War I, the Austrian Emperor, the Russian Czar, and
the German Kaiser collapsed as heads of state, yielding to, as always, liberal,
socialistic democracies, with a curious preponderance of Jews in the
government.
The motive for
fighting World War I, at least according to the Allied propaganda of the time,
was to “free” the world from “Czardom” and “Kaiserdom.” Wilson said that the
reason why we had to enter the war against Germany was in order to “make the
world safe for democracy.”
One should not
infer, however, from these comments that the regimes of the monarchies of
nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe were by any means perfect. The
Austrian Emperor, the Czar, and the Kaiser had all given the Church
considerable difficulty, but certainly no more difficulty than the liberal,
socialistic democracies of France and England. Italy too had persecuted the
Church, and although then a monarchy like England, was nevertheless virtually
democratic, its monarch very much in the hands of the Freemasons and other
similar anti-catholic secret societies. It is merely to point out that
Freemasonry has a hatred for any power, ecclesiastical or civil, which claims
its authority from God, and which is not somehow dependent upon the people for
its power, if any. Freemasonry seeks to “free” people politically and socially
from such “bonds,” so that they might enjoy the “liberty” of a democratic
regime.
This hatred of
Freemasonry for the papacy and for monarchy can be seen in the initiation rites
of the Knight Kadosh (30°), in which the Knight is called upon to run the sword
through two skulls, one bearing the papal tiara and the other the crown. The
symbolism of such an act needs no comment whatsoever.
The cult of
liberty has always been a favorite theme of the Freemasons. The liberty they
seek is not the legitimate and due liberty from the burdensome constraints of
socialistic governments, which a citizen may rightfully desire, but rather
freedom from the authority of God, the “freedom” of the devil, the liberty of perdition, as Saint Augustine
called it. They desire not the liberty of the sons of God, but the “liberty”
which makes us slaves to sin.
The Statue of Liberty: Masonic Goddess from Top to
Bottom
The maker of the
statue was Freemason Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. He had already made a statue
of the Freemason Marquis de Lafayette for the city of New York, for the
occasion of the centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Bartholdi sailed
to America, at the suggestion of other Freemasons and kindred spirits in
France, for the purpose of proposing the project. Although he had no drawings
as he set sail, his masonic biographer says that, as he entered New York
harbor, “he caught a vision of a magnificent goddess holding aloft a torch in
one hand and welcoming all visitors to the land of freedom and opportunity.”
Returning to
France, he managed to raise, through the help of a great deal of masonic
propaganda, the sum of 3,500,000 French francs, a very large sum for the period
of the 1870’s. For the face of his “Goddess of Liberty” he chose his own
mother. The structural framework was provided by Freemason Gustave Eiffel,
later to be famous for the 984-foot Eiffel Tower.
Although
financial support for the statue was forthcoming in France, America was not
willing to put up the money for the pedestal. It was Joseph Pulitzer, the owner
and editor of the New York World, who
managed to raise over $100,000 for the project.
On Washington’s
Birthday in 1877, Congress accepted the statue as a gift from the French
people. Bedloe’s Island, now Liberty Island, was chosen by General Sherman, the
well-known Atlanta-burner. Meanwhile in Paris the work gradually progressed.
Levi P. Morton, the then Ambassador to France, drove the first rivet. The
statue was finished on May 21, 1884, and presented to Ambassador Levi Morton on
July 4th of the same year by Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez canal.
On the American
side, the chairman of the American committee to receive the statue contacted
the Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York. It
had been a tradition in America to have the cornerstone of major public and
private buildings and monuments “consecrated” with full Masonic rites, ever
since Freemason George Washington, in 1793, had personally laid the cornerstone
of the Capitol, with the assistance of the Grand Lodge of Maryland. The
cornerstone of the Washington Monument was also laid in a Masonic ceremony.
The ceremony for
the laying of the cornerstone was set for August 5, 1884. It poured rain. The
decorated vessel Bay Ridge carried
about a hundred Freemasons, along with some civil officials to Bedloe’s Island.
Freemason Richard M. Hunt, the principal architect of the pedestal, handed the
working tools to the Masonic officers.
Then Freemason
Edward M. L.. Ehlers, Grand Secretary and a member of the Continental Lodge
287, read the list of items to be included in the copper box within the
cornerstone: A copy of the United States Constitution; George Washington’s
Farewell Address; twenty bronze medals of Presidents up through Chester A.
Arthur (including Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson and
Garfield, who were all Freemasons); copies of New York City newspapers; a
portrait of Bartholdi; a copy of Poem on
Liberty by E. R. Johnes; and a list on parchment of the Grand Lodge
officers.
The traditional
Masonic ceremony was observed. The cornerstone being found square, level and
plumb, the Grand Master applied the mortar and had the stone lowered into
place. He then struck the stone three times, and declared it duly laid. Then
the elements of “consecration” were presented, corn, wine, and oil.
The “Most
Worshipful” Grand Master then spoke a few words. He posed the question: “Why
call upon the Masonic Fraternity to lay the cornerstone of such a structure as
is here to be erected?” His answer was: “No institution has done more to
promote liberty and to free men from the trammels and chains of ignorance and
tyranny than has Freemasonry.”
The principal
address was given by the Deputy Grand Master: “Massive as this statue is, its
physical proportions sink into comparative obscurity when contrasted with the
nobility of its concept. Liberty Enlightening the World! How lofty the thought!
To be free, is the first, the noblest aspiration of the human breast. And it is
now a universally admitted truth that only in proportion as men become
possessed of liberty, do they become civilized, enlightened and useful.”
The statue
arrived in dismantled pieces in June of 1885. The statue was dedicated on
October 28, 1886. President Grover Cleveland (Freemason) presided over the
ceremony and Freemason Henry Potter, Episcopal Bishop of New York gave the
invocation. Freemason Bartholdi pulled the tricolor French flag off the
statue’s face. The main address was given by Freemason Chauncey M. Depew, a
United States Senator.
There is another
indication that the masonic notion of liberty — freedom from the laws of God,
the Church, and of legitimate civil government — has deeply influenced our
culture. It is the appearance of the “Liberty Cap” on many official seals in
America, as well as in the engravings of scenes of the American Revolution,
dating from the eighteenth century.
The Liberty Cap
is a shallow, limp cap, somewhat resembling a woolen ski cap. Its origin is in
ancient times, when freed slaves would be given this sort of cap to wear as a
sign of their freedom. Hence the symbolism is that the wearer is freed from
some sort of slavery. Slavery to what?
In the eighteenth
century, the cap was worn by radicals who were bent upon the destruction of the
monarchies in favor of republican or democratic regimes, in accordance with the
dictates of free-thinking and atheistic “philosophers” of the same century. It
was a symbol of revolt against the existing order, and a call for a new,
radical order in which power was perceived to come from the people, and not
from God. A modern equivalent would be the hammer and sickle or the peace
symbol of the 1960’s.
It is seen either
worn on the head, usually by the Liberty Goddess (although absent from the head
of the one standing in New York), or more often, it is seen sitting on the top
of a pole. In its second appearance, this symbol of eighteenth century radicalism
forms part of a number of seals of the United States: the seal of the States of
New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, as well as that of the United States
Army. It is also found on the Liberty Goddess on the Morgan Dollar (the silver
dollar in circulation in the latter part of the nineteenth century) as well as
on the “walking” Liberty Goddess of the mid-twentieth century half-dollar, and
on the Mercury dime of the same period. (Mercury, by the way, is a favorite god
in the masonic menagery of deities).
The Liberty Cap
was confirmed as the symbol of radicalism in the French Revolution, when it
became the fashionable attire of anyone who was in favor of the Revolution, and
finally of the bloodthirsty and cruel Jacobins, the leaders of the Reign of
Terror.
Needless to say,
the Liberty Cap figures in a great deal of masonic symbolism. The famous
“Marianne,” female symbol of the revolutionary French Republic, is of course
wearing the cap. In 1884, the government in France, loaded with Freemasons, had busts made of the devilish female
unabashedly wearing a masonic sash over her shoulders, bearing the three dates
of glory for the wicked brotherhood: 1789, being the date of the French
Revolution, 1848, and 1870, being dates of subsequent revolutions in which Freemasons
and their luciferian principles came to power in what was once Catholic France.
As always, Marianne had her head covered.
The Great Seal of the United
States
The Great Seal of
the United States is dripping with
masonic symbolism. It can be seen on the reverse side of the dollar bill. The
men who were commissioned by the Continental Congress to come up with the seal
of the United States were all Freemasons: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and
Benjamin Franklin (who had the further distinction of being shamelessly
debauched and boorishly crude). Benjamin Franklin was the chairman. After a
number of models, the seal which we have today was adopted in 1782. It was
Jefferson himself who placed the triangle around the all-seeing eye, added the
year 1776, and E Pluribus Unum.
To accurately
describe all of the masonic and occult symbolism contained in the Great Seal
would require a separate article. My point here in citing the fact that there
are masonic symbols on the Great Seal, is that these are a further indication
of the deep influence which Masonry has had on the American culture.
Should anyone
doubt that these are masonic symbols, suffice it to quote the April 1960 issue
of the official masonic magazine, curiously entitled New Age:
13 leaves in the
olive branches
13 bars and
stripes in the shield
13 feathers in
the tail
13 arrows
13 letters in the
“E Pluribus Unum” on the ribbon
13 stars in the
green crest above
32 long feathers
representing 32° in Masonry
13 granite stones in the Pyramid with the Masonic “All-seeing Eye” completing it.
13 letters in
Annuit Cœptis, “God has prospered.”
On the front of
the dollar bill is the seal of the United States made up of a key, square, and
the Scales of Justice, as well as a compass which, of course, is an important
symbol of Masonry.
—
James B. Walker 32°
I am afraid that
not even Old Glory managed to escape the influence of the freedom-from-God
principles of Freemasonry. Although the origins of the Stars and Stripes are
obscure, we do know that the original use of horizontal red and white stripes
was by the Protestant Dutch in their rebellion against Catholic Spain. It
surfaces again on British ships, seen flying it as they were helping the French
Huguenots (Protestants) against their fellow Catholic countrymen. It next
surfaced as the flag of the Sons of Liberty, a radical, masonic group which put
on the Boston Tea Party.
So even the flag
participates historically in this culture of freeing oneself from the “slavery”
of Roman Catholicism, and ultimately from any civil government which is not
democratic, that is, which is not merely a functionary of the people’s will.
The American Catholic’s Problem: Cherishing
Condemned Ideals
I cite these examples
of the influx of masonry into our institutions to point out to the American
Catholic that principles which are alien to the Catholic Faith have deeply
influenced the culture in which we live. The Catholic Church in the United
States had difficulty in grappling with this problem. In the nineteenth century
there were two camps of clergy, the liberals and the anti-liberals, for lack of
a better term. The liberals saw no problem in incorporating into Catholicism
the principles of the American cult of liberty; the anti-liberals recognized
the problem, and denounced them for watering down the Catholic Faith. In the
end the liberals won out, particularly with the emergence of a personality like
Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. Cardinal Farley of New York and Archbishop
Ireland of Saint Paul also figure prominently in the liberal camp.
By “liberal” is
not meant here same thing that it means today. It meant at the turn of the
century, when these men lived, a belief that the principles that animated
American politics and the American mentality in general, were compatible with
Catholicism. These liberals actually held up the American system of the
government’s indifference to all religion as an ideal for all nations to
follow. In such a system, they argued, the Church can and does flourish, for it
meets with no resistance from a hostile civil government. This sounded good to
many ears on this side of the Atlantic. For a century they had been hearing the
horror stories from Europe of civil governments persecuting the Catholic
Church. The American system of “hands off religion” just seemed better.
While it is true
that the Catholic Church did flourish in this country whose government was
professedly indifferent to religion, it must be said that the Church received
this “freedom to flourish” at a high price. That price was the nearly complete
negligence of the Church’s doctrine of union of Church and State, of the duty
of governments to profess the one true faith, and to repress non-catholic
religions. Catholics were told that the American system of freedom of all
religions was the ideal system, and Catholics had deeply fixed in their heads
the notion that you have a civil right to be a Protestant, a Jew, a Moslem or
even a Satanist, since religion should have nothing to do with the state, and
the state nothing to do with religion.
But this idea was
condemned by Pope Gregory XVI and Pope Pius IX:
And so from this rotten source of
indifferentism flows that absurd an erroneous opinion, or rather insanity, that
liberty of conscience must be claimed and defended for anyone. — Pope Gregory XVI
For surely you know, Venerable
Brothers, not a few are found who, applying the impious and absurd principles
of naturalism, as they call it, to
civil society, dare to teach that the “best plan for public society and civil
progress absolutely requires that human society be established and governed
with no regard to religion, as if it did not exist, or at least, without making
distinction between the true and the false religions.” — Pope Pius IX
And also, contrary to the teaching of
Sacred Scripture, of the Church, and of the most holy Fathers, they do not
hesitate to assert that the “best condition of society is the one in which
there is no acknowledgment by the government of the duty of restraining, by
established penalties, offenders of the Catholic religion, except insofar as
the public peace demands.”— Pope Pius IX
And, from this wholly false idea of
social organization they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion,
especially fatal to the Catholic Church and to the salvation of souls, called
by Our predecessor of recent memory, Gregory XVI, insanity; namely that “liberty of conscience and of worship is the
proper right of every man, and should be proclaimed and asserted by law in every
correctly established society; that the right of all manner of liberty rests in
the citizens, not to be restrained either by ecclesiastical or civil authority;
and that by this right they can manifest openly and publicly and declare their
own concepts, whatever they may be, by voice, by print, or in any other way.”— Pope Pius IX
From these texts it is clear that the Catholic
Church condemns freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech,
and freedom of the press. Yet these “freedoms” are held as sacrosanct in the
American culture. In an effort not to appear un-american, the Catholic clergy
in the United States for the most part neglected these condemnations, as well
as the teaching of Sacred Scripture, of the Church, and of the holy Fathers
which supports them.
One searches in
vain to find in Catholic catechisms before Vatican II, even on the High School
level, the Church’s teaching on the duty of states to the Catholic religion.
Rather most pre-Vatican II Catholic catechisms and history books are either
totally silent on the subject, or actually extol the American system of
indifference to all religions, and extol freedom of conscience, freedom of
religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.
Why was this so?
Why were these teachings and condemnations purposely ignored by the Catholic
clergy of this country, to the extent that students who came through twelve or
sixteen years of Catholic schools knew nothing of them? The answer is that the
Catholics of the nineteenth and early twentieth century felt an urgent need to
convince the Protestant establishment of this country that Catholics were good
Americans, and had no problem in accepting American mentality and culture.
Irish, German and Italian immigrants, most of them Catholics, were eager to
secure for the Church peace and prosperity in a land peopled by those who, in
large degree, had fled Europe in order to get away from Catholic influence. And
since the cult of freedom, the cherishing of freedom of religion, freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of conscience was paramount in the
existing protestant-masonic culture of America, Catholics perceived it
necessary to somehow marry their Catholicism to the cult of liberty. The result
was the neglect, through nearly total silence, of very important moral
teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. It furthermore required a whitewashing,
a pulling, and a stretching of historical facts and events of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries in order to make them appear compatible with Catholic
principles.
Archbishop
Ireland, prominent at the turn of the century was the embodiment of this whole
mentality. He was so imbued with these ideas that he was capable of making
these statements in a speech entitled “Catholicism and Americanism,” given in
Milwaukee in 1913:
Necessarily religious freedom is the
basic life of America, the cement running through all its walls and
battlements, the safeguard of its peace and prosperity. Violate religious
freedom against Catholics: Our swords are at once unsheathed. Violate it in
favor of Catholics, against non-Catholics: No less readily do they leap from
the scabbard.
Had I been in his
audience, I would have asked, “Your Excellency, when in sixty or seventy years,
in the name of religious liberty, the enemies of the Church shall make films
portraying Our Lady as a harlot and Our Lord as a fornicator, shall Catholics
unsheathe their swords to protect the rights of these blasphemers to make such
films?” What would this Archbishop have answered to such a question? One
shudders to think. Further on he states:
Personal conscience is the ultimate
asylum of the soul, in presence of civil or ecclesiastical authority. Both
Americanism and Catholicism bow to the sway of personal conscience.
Bow to the sway of personal conscience? “Your Excellency, when in sixty or seventy years,
in the name of freedom of conscience, women shall kill their babies in their
wombs, should the civil or ecclesiastical authority bow to the sway of personal
conscience?” It is unbelievable that a Catholic bishop, living in 1913, could
utter such words. What is the purpose of the authority of the Church, if it
must bow to the sway of personal
conscience? Such an idea is thoroughly protestant and masonic in origin. It
is to this very principle, that the personal conscience is higher than the
authority of the Church, that Luther made appeal in his heresy and revolt
against the Catholic Church.
In another place
the same Archbishop says:
Would we alter, if we could, the
Constitution in regard to its treatment of religion, the principles of
Americanism in regard to religious freedom? I answer with an emphatic No.
No? “Your
Excellency, would we not be obliged, as Catholics, to desire the public and
legal recognition of the Roman Catholic Church as the one true Church of
Christ?” This question he answers:
Do we, however, demand special
privileges not accorded to other citizens of America? No — never — no more than
we would allow others special privileges not accorded to ourselves — less even
than we would allow such privileges to others. If the members of a Church, or a
religious or semi-religious organization of any kind, arises in America calling
for special privileges, be the shame of un-Americanism their portion. Such a
contention will never be the disgrace of Catholicism.
Disgrace of Catholicism? To ask that Our Lord Jesus Christ the King and His
Church be given the public and legal recognition that is due to them is the disgrace of Catholicism? Rather
Archbishop Ireland is the disgrace of Catholicism.
It is impossible
to reconcile these statements with the condemnations of Pope Pius IX, which I
cited above. He condemned, with his apostolic authority, the proposition that the best plan for public society and civil
progress absolutely requires that human society be established and governed
with no regard to religion, as if it did not exist, or at least, without making
distinction between the true and the false religions. Archbishop Ireland
would completely agree with this condemned statement.
The awful problem
is that Archbishop Ireland was not just a “kook,” but represented a whole
system of thought very popular among much of the Catholic clergy in America.
This marriage of Catholicism and the cult of liberty would win out, until
finally it was sanctioned as “Catholic doctrine” at Vatican II in the document Dignitatis Humanć. It is not surprising
that the document was prepared by American priests, and won the support of the
American bishops as a whole, Cardinal Spellman in the lead. Archbishop Ireland’s
disgraceful compromise of Catholic doctrine had won the day in the Vatican
basilica.
It is precisely
this doctrine of religious liberty which throws the wrench into Vatican II. To
be sure this wicked assembly had produced other heretical doctrines, even more
profound and far-reaching than this one. Religious Liberty has the distinction,
however, of being specifically condemned
by Pope Pius IX. As a result the Catholic conscience is perplexed: do I listen
to the apostolic authority of Pope Pius IX, who tells me that religious liberty
is an insanity, a monstrous error, an error most fatal to the Catholic Church
and the salvation of souls? Or do I listen to the “apostolic authority” of
Vatican II, which tells me that religious liberty is a right which every human
person possesses in virtue of his human dignity, a right “which is based on the
very dignity of the human person as known through the revealed word of God and
by reason itself?” (Dignitatis Humanć, no.
2. It says further on, “This doctrine of freedom is rooted in divine
revelation, and for this reason Christians are bound to respect it all the more
conscientiously.”) Upon this dilemma, this contradiction, is based the whole
problem of Vatican II.
It is here
necessary to distinguish between religious liberty and religious toleration.
Religious liberty is that doctrine which asserts that each man has the right to profess and practice that
religion which to him seems fit, according to the dictates of his conscience.
Religious toleration is that doctrine which asserts that a civil society may
morally tolerate within its walls, when a sufficient reason warrants it, the evil that some of its citizens profess
and practice false (i.e., non-catholic) religions. A sufficient reason for the
toleration of so great an evil would be the avoidance of a greater evil, of
which an example would be civil war. The very term toleration implies evil,
and we are therefore not speaking about a right to profess the false religion,
since all right is founded in God. It is inconceivable that God would grant
someone the right to be wrong: the right, for example, to say that His
Immaculate Mother is a harlot, or that Christ is an adulterer.
The Church has
always recognized the prudence of toleration in certain circumstances, and the
situation of the United States is certainly one of those circumstances. Pope
Leo XIII teaches:
Although the Church pronounces the
judgment that different worships cannot stand on the same footing of equality
with the true religion, yet she does not therefore condemn those rulers who,
inview of procuring a great good or of avoiding evil, tolerate in practce the
coexistence of different worships.
Spread out over a
vast territory and encompassing myriad religions, the government of the United
States may prudently tolerate many religions.
But religious
toleration does not dispense a government from the obligation to profess the
one true Faith, and to recognize Christ as the one true God and the Roman
Catholic Church as His one true Church.
In this lies the
key error of the liberty-cultists: they extol not the prudence of religious
toleration in order to avoid a civil war, but rather they extol the very
indifference of the government to religion altogether, as if this indifference
were one of the great virtues of the Constitution. They extol the right of each man to open his mouth and
say whatever he pleases, to write (or
make a film about) whatever he pleases, to believe and practice whatever
religion he pleases. This, according to the liberty-cultist, is the right
ordering of society. Under the monarchies, when the Catholic Church was
recognized as the one true religion, human beings were “oppressed.”
Liberty as an End in Itself
As I said
earlier, the Catholic Church was never a foe of liberty, but to the contrary,
was a staunch defender of the doctrine of free will against many nay-sayers.
Nor did it ever favor tyrants or oppressive regimes. A pope even admonished St.
Louis, King of France, in the height of the “oppressive” Middle Ages, against
being too severe in the punishment of blasphemers.
Where the Church
and the liberty-cultists disagree is in this: the Church teaches that human
liberty is a means to an end, whereas
the liberty-cultists see human liberty as an end in itself.
The Church
teaches that liberty or human free will is a faculty of which the purpose is to
choose the good means to a pre-determined end. The end is already set for us:
the universal good, which is none other than God. The means to that end is the
observance of the law of God: the eternal law, the natural law, the Ten
Commandments, the laws of Christ, the moral law, the laws of the Church. It is
the function of our free wills, as intended by God, to freely elect to obey
these laws so that we attain the end that is set for us. When I say “freely
elect,” I do not mean that it is optional for us to choose to obey them or not.
I mean that we are meant to follow them by free election of them, and not by
mere mechanics or instinct, as other creatures follow the laws set down by God.
God has so ordained it, since He is more glorified by a creature’s love of Him
rather than by a mere mechanical or instinctive obedience to his law, as in the
case of rocks and animals.
It is therefore a
defect of liberty that we are capable
of failing to choose the correct means to our end. Liberty cannot be defined,
then, as the ability to choose between good and evil, for if that were its
definition, we would have to say that God is not free, since He cannot choose
evil.
The
liberty-cultists have an altogether different view of liberty. They have
substituted human liberty for God. The end of man, for them, is to be free. It
does not matter what he is doing, as long as he is doing it freely, and without
constraint. “Freedom of choice” is the greatest quality of human beings,
springing from his very dignity as a human person, and must be safeguarded at
all costs. Freedom therefore becomes no longer a faculty of choosing a means to
an end, but becomes the end itself.
If we substitute
the word “eating” for “freedom,” we will see how absurd this notion is. The
ability to eat and digest is a faculty of nourishment for human beings. Our
eating is morally good if it is ordered to a good end; morally bad if ordered to
a bad end. If we eat good food in moderation, then the exercise of our faculty
of eating participates in the goodness of the end, which is the health of the
body. If, on the other hand, we are eating something bad for us, or something
good in excess, then our eating becomes morally evil, since it participates in
that evil end. But imagine if someone said, “It doesn’t matter what you’re
eating or how much you’re eating, what is good is that you are eating.”
In the absurdity
of this example can be seen the absurdity of liberalism: man’s free choice is
the highest good; what he chooses to do is secondary. What is paramount is that
he is freely choosing to do what he is doing.
The Cult of Liberty: Recipe for
Moral Breakdown
The only
constraints which liberty-cultists will place upon their freedom-goddess, is
that of preventing people from murdering or stealing from other people, at
least for now. I say “at least for now,” since we already have legalized murder
in the form of abortion.
For we have seen,
one by one, the constraints of law that were in place in the United States or
in other countries even fifty years ago, be dissolved in the name of liberty of
choice. In the 1920’s for example, a druggist could be arrested if he sold
birth-control devices or chemicals. Now he might be arrested if he does not,
and these wicked instruments of the devil are advertised on television
alongside corn flakes and dish detergent, and are found prominently displayed
in drugstores right next to the aspirin and shampoo, so that lusty teenagers
can come in and grab them up without delay or inhibition.
In the name of
liberty, mothers can walk into an abortion clinic more easily than they can go
to their hairdressers, and kill their babies. I think that twenty-five million
or so is the last count. Again, fifty years ago they would have been arrested
and prosecuted, and the abortionists with them.
Even in cases of
divorce in this Protestant country, it had to be proven that there was a
“sufficient cause.” Divorce, although legal, was considered fifty years ago to
be scandalous, even among Protestants. For Catholics it was non-existent. Today
there is no-fault.
Fifty years ago,
you could be arrested for homosexual behavior or for wearing the clothing of
the opposite sex. Just recently San Francisco passed an ordinance forbidding
discrimination against transvestites. That means that if the vice-president of
your company decides he wants to wear a dress, lipstick, perfume, and
high-heels, there is nothing you can do about it. I wonder if Freemason Patrick
Henry had that in mind when he said “Give me liberty or give me death!”
The reason why
these constraints were in place fifty or so years ago is that the population
was naturally conservative, and illogically insisted on these constraints. I
say “illogically,” since, once you posit the principles of the cult of liberty,
there is nothing to stop the freedom
of choice of anything. If one were to
cite the natural law against the abortionists, the homosexuals, the divorced,
or the birth-control users, they would simply respond, “We don’t believe in the
natural law.”
The
liberty-cultist can make no answer to this, for, according to the principles of
freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, people have a civil right to
reject the natural law. They have a civil right to profess atheism, to say that
Our Lady was a harlot, and our Lord a fornicator, that children may be killed
in their mothers’ wombs, that homosexuality is just as good as heterosexuality,
that it does not matter how you dress, whether like a man or like a woman —
whatever you feel like putting on that day. What law can the liberty-cultist
cite against them, if, for two hundred years the gospel of liberty of
conscience, of religion, of speech and of the press has been preached
everywhere as the highest and most ennobling qualities of human life?
One could perhaps
object here that neither American culture nor the American Constitution intends
such an abuse of human liberty, but strives to uphold only those liberties
which are true and good. This argument is what the conservative objects to the
liberal who throws the cult of liberty into the conservative’s face.
But where is the
foundation of such an objection? Where is it stated in the Constitution or in
any monumental document of the United States of America that the freedoms
guaranteed to its citizens must be limited by the eternal law of God, or the
natural law? Where is there a single mention of Our Lord Jesus Christ in any of
these documents?
Where does it say
in the American Constitution that the natural law exists, and that Congress,
the President and the Supreme Court are bound to observe the natural law in
their acts of lawmaking, law enforcement, and interpretation of law,
respectively? Nowhere. These three entities are three free agents, bound by no
law, but are laws unto themselves.
No, the
conservative’s attempt to limit the freedom so cherished by American culture is
spurious. Freedom of religion means that you have the right to worship whatever
god you want, even Satan. Freedom of speech means that you have the right to
say whatever you want, even blasphemy. Freedom of the press means that you have
the right to print whatever you want, even pornography, blasphemy, and heresy.
Neither Congress nor any state legislature can put a clamp on these things
logically, since such a restraint would be an arbitrary denial of someone’s
right to a freedom.
The effects of
this cult of liberty are disastrous. For as long as the American people were
naturally conservative, moral, and religious, they agreed enough about moral
and religious issues at least to hold back the tide of most serious evils. It
is these days, the days before the 1960’s, or even better before Roosevelt,
that most American conservatives dream about when they form their political
views. But those days are over. We now live in the reign of Satan, in which
people have handed themselves over to indescribable debauchery, wanton
disregard for the laws of God and even of the natural law, and to a selfishness
and cold-heartedness that justifies the killing of unwanted babies. There is no
possible way in which this godless population is going to put back in place the
restrictions which were in place fifty years ago. The only thing that the
conservative can hope for is a moral reawakening of the United States.
What supports
this fact is the so-called “conservative” upsurge recently in this country has
focused nearly entirely on economic issues. They are going to “dismantle the
welfare state.” Bravo, but what about dismantling abortion? Gay rights? Birth
control pills and devices? Sex education? Dirty movies and TV? Women’s
liberation? Secular humanism in the schools? These are the true plagues of
American society, not high taxes or welfare, and these diseases are the effect
of the general breakdown of the morals of the people. And the problem is that
these infections cannot be eradicated legally and logically except by some principle, a principle which restricts human
freedom only to those objects which are good. For as long as the cult of
liberty is in place, these and the many other noxious influences in our daily
lives must continue under the banner of protecting human liberty.
That principle
which is so badly needed is the law of
God. But since Congress is obliged never to establish a religion, it cannot
even apply the Ten Commandments to our lives, it cannot even mention Our Lord
Jesus Christ the King, and least of all the Roman Catholic Church. No, our
country is condemned to worshipping the masonic Liberty Goddess, and thereby to
fall headlong into moral corruption and finally destruction.
A Truly Catholic Politic
I do not mean to
deter people from actively pursuing the suppression of abortion and the removal
of other liberal influences in their lives. Nevertheless, I think that the
Catholic should understand the political and moral principles which are at play
in the American culture. There is not a permanent peace of law and order to be
hoped for, for as long as the cult of liberty dominates the mentality of the
American people, or the people of any other nation, for that matter. I do not
think that American Catholic conservatives should hold up, as an ideal, the
very system of the cult of liberty which gave us this dreadful problem, which
gave us abortion, gay rights, sex education, pornography and the rest of it.
The only truly
Catholic stance in politics is to desire a Constitution for one’s country which
recognizes Our Lord Jesus Christ as King and the Roman Catholic Church as the
one, true Church of Christ, and which submits the nation to the laws of Christ
as promulgated by His Church. As distant and impossible as this state of
affairs may seem, it must nevertheless, by definition, be the Catholic’s ideal
— by definition, since a Catholic
would not be a Catholic unless he desired such a state of affairs for his
country.
Anything less
than such a state of affairs is not an ideal, but a mere half a loaf, which,
although better than none, still does not measure up. Most of all, Catholic
politics should bitterly oppose any system of government which makes a cult of
human liberty and places on a pedestal the indifference of the state toward
religion. For such a system leads logically to exactly what we have today:
moral anarchy. And if you read what communists in the 1920’s and 1930’s
intended, it was just that, a system of anarchy, and we are there or almost
there.
Far from losing
hope and energy, however, Catholics should strive as much as they can to hold
the line of moral rectitude in local and national laws. Although logically the
cult of liberty leads to moral anarchy, it is nevertheless true that people are
not always consistent and logical. Strong pressure from Catholics and from
others, who at least believe in the natural law, could effectively bring about
significant changes in favor of good. My only concern is that the Catholic mind
be not poisoned by protestant and masonic ideals concerning human liberty and
the secularistic, non-religious state.
And while we are
on the subject, I would like to take the opportunity to say a word of caution
about a well-known national “conservative” radio talk-show host. While his
comments about liberals are definitely amusing, what bothers me about him is
that he has a dirty mind, and jokes about filthy matters in a most disgusting
manner. He is divorced twice, and married three times, which is not my idea of
a “conservative.” What I also notice is that most of the moral issues for him
are on the back burner, while the economic issues are for the really hot
topics. He represents, unfortunately, the state of many conservatives: people
who are as morally bankrupt as liberals, but who simply want to keep the
government out of their pursuit of money and success. He is also alarmingly
“one-worldy” on many issues. My fear is that he is going to educate the
conservative into being someone like himself: a liberty-cultist to the
fingertips, morally trashed, and an egotist trying to keep government out of
his way in this pursuit of happiness, consisting of money, prestige, and success.
An Objection: America-Bashing?
I must now deal
with the objection that I have been engaging in America-bashing. The very term
implies that there is nothing seriously wrong in the American system. It
implies that, in itself, America is great and fine, and that its problems stem
only from the fact the American people, politicians in particular, have strayed
from the original American ideal.
But I do say that
there is something seriously flawed in the American system, because it is a
country which is professedly religion-less. It prides itself on being
religion-less. It prides itself on the fact that its laws are regulated by no
superior principle. It prides itself on the fact that it will not recognize Our
Lord Jesus Christ as King. This, to me, is an abomination, and is a quality
which it shares with the howling mob of faithless Jews in Pilate’s courtyard.
Even pagan and
cowardly Pilate had the guts, however, to place the inscription upon the Cross,
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
And when chief priests objected, claiming that it should say instead, “He said,
I am King of the Jews,” obviously to protect the religious liberty of Judaism,
Pilate had the guts to say to them, “What I have written, I have written.” It
was an eloquent and very Roman way of telling them to shut up.
So also I think
that Americans should write the inscription above America, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the United States of America. And when
accused of America-bashing (for it is a slap in the face to the Liberty
Goddess), I think that they should have the guts to respond, “What we have
written, we have written.” For it is in no way contrary to the justice owed to
one’s country to point out its faults, particularly those systemic faults which
would bring about its destruction. On the other hand, it would be a sin to
love, either in an individual or a country, that which is sinful in it, that
which is not of God in it. No one will ever convince me that the indifference
of American government and American culture to God is something pleasing to
Him.
Leo XIII said
it:: “A society well regulated without religion is impossible.”
Everyone should
be devoted to his homeland as the source of many good things in his life. A
country is an extension of one’s family, and should therefore always be treated
with respect, love, loyalty, and admiration. But just as it is a duty of
charity to point out to members of one’s family their serious faults, so is it
a duty of charity to point out the serious faults of one’s country. One such
fault of America — and of every other Western nation — is that it glories in
its indifference to Christ the King. Catholics cannot relegate this glaring
defect to being a mere misdemeanor of politics, but must desire for their
countries what their Catholic Faith desires: the repudiation of the masonic
cult of liberty, and the public recognition of Christ the King and of His Holy
Catholic Church.
(Sacerdotium 14, Spring 1995).