FROM The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism by Solange Hertz:

True devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has rarely, if ever, been preached in the United States. It is too embarrassingly political.

For two hundred years the false principles that Church and state must be separate, that all men are created equal, and that authority comes from below have been imposed as a matter of public policy. It is therefore understandable that Catholics not prepared to “suffer under Pontius Pilate” have kept this flammable devotion to the Heart of God within the jug of personal piety, with little social extension beyond the family. Lest our Lord be deported as a subversive, He has been portrayed only as a yearning, all-forgiving – if not simpering – Savior desiring to clasp indiscriminately to His blazing breast any and every individual without the slightest concern for his politics.

The Lord who appeared to St. Margaret Mary and declared that He wished to be honored in the house of the King of France is dwelt upon mostly by specialists in mysticism. Few Americans have even heard of the vision subsequently accorded to St. Catherine Labouré, of Christ the King in anguish, despoiled of His royal insignia; nor do they know that she was told concerning the destruction of the French monarchy, “Little do you know what you have lost!” Yet the consequences of the French Revolution are clear in the world today. The divine predilection for kings and hierarchical government remains a forbidden subject in a country where monarchy is denied not merely in practice, as for instance in England, but in principle, where every schoolchild must absorb the idea that kings are per se the villains of history and the insurgent mob its heroes.

Our Lord did not stand before Pilate and declare “I am a President.” Nor your Big Brother. He said simply, “I am a King.” During His public ministry He had furthermore specifically characterized his enemies as men who “will not have this man to rule over us” (Luke 19:14). Countless times in the Gospels He spoke of a Kingdom which is to come, one He taught us to ask for daily in the Lord’s Prayer. Is it possible He was ignorant of the progressio populorum bound to take place?

His apparently archaic politics have, alas, been treated as just that. We are led to believe that He really doesn’t care about politics, yet the implication is that if He were on earth today He would favor democracy or communism as more highly evolved forms of Christianity. As those bent on His destruction ever maintain, “Whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh history and the insurgent mob its heroes. This explains why even the Infant of Prague, clad in royal robes and diadem, with the world in His hand, has been largely reserved to the piety of little old ladies with financial problems. It would hardly do to publicize the fact that this miraculous image was originally granted as a focus for the prayer of royalists pitted against ravaging democracy, and known as “le petit Roi de Gloire.”

To keep our Lord out of trouble with secular authority it is essential to relegate His kingship to the purely spiritual – whatever that is. But then, why did God become man? Wouldn’t His divinity have sufficed for purely spiritual ends? If the Gospels are to be believed, our Lord had something more in mind. Faith without works denies the Incarnation. As Pius XI laid down in Quas Primas, “the title and power of King belongs to Christ as man in the strict and proper sense,” not just “figuratively and spiritually.”

He told Pilate His Kingdom is “not from hence” (John 18:36) This formally excludes modern democracy, whose sole raison d’être is derivation of authority “from hence,” that is, from here below; but this doesn’t mean that Christ’s kingdom isn’t here, in the world, embedded in time and space, producing visible effects in society. He assured the venal bureaucrat Pilate that even he would have no power over Him if it hadn’t been conferred from above. Our Lord reigns as absolute monarch in this world: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18) Evil exists here only by His express permission, for our perfection or chastisement. If His Kingdom appears to be waning, it does so only in men ’s wills, for His rule continues intact.

In the very heart of the Passion He was pleased to show us “democracy” in action, manipulated by the instruments of Satan. Pilate, turning to the people in hopes of saving the Prisoner he knew to be innocent, asks, “What, then, am I to do with Jesus who is called Christ?” And they answered, prompted by their leaders, “Let him be crucified!” (Matt. 27:22-23) and elected Barabbas.

Thus was our Lord’s death demanded and ratified by Jews who had espoused the democratic process, preferring human rule to God’s. Let there be no mistake. The real objective of the liberty, equality and fraternity touted by the forces of humanism is always the death of God.

Our Lord nevertheless directed each instant of His Passion, then as now in His Mystical Body, using the forces of evil to accomplish the decrees of His Father. He tells Pilate that if His Kingdom were of this world, that is, “from hence,” His servants would have fought to deliver Him; but they did not, explains St. John Chrysostom, because He didn’t want them to. It was as simple as that. His enemies, on the other hand, had not only been powerless to apprehend Him until the moment He willed, but even to change the inscription on the Cross which proclaimed Him “King of the Jews.” He is so because He is accepted by all the children of the promise of Abraham, all true Jews being Christians. Others, He told St. John on Patmos “say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” (Apo. 2:9)

The battle joined in Pilate’s hall has continued through the centuries and is now rising to fever pitch. No one saw the opponents more clearly than St. Ignatius Loyola, when in the mortal throes of the Reformation he laid out the points for his famous meditation on the two standards: one army fighting under the flag of Satan, and the other under Christ’s. Unfortunately this is not just a battle to the death, for it extends beyond. We tend to forget that Satan’s kingdom, which he seeks to establish over the whole world, is just as eternal as Christ’s.

The damned will be resurrected with the elect. Although Satan allows us to think his rule is merely “from hence” and limited to the joys of this life, those who cleave to him will be his subjects not only now, but forever. Far from believing in democracy, equality or any separation of church and state, what Satan has in mind is actually an anti-theocracy of worshiping slaves, beginning like Christ’s on earth, but continuing in hell. That’s politics.

(From The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism, Solange Hertz, pp. 189-196, Kindle Edition; Tumblar House, 2012)

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