“WHEN a country’s Christianity is reduced to the proportion of domestic life, when Christianity is no longer the soul of public life, of the power of the state and of public institutions, then Jesus Christ will treat such a country as He himself is treated. He will continue to bestow His Grace and His blessings on those who serve Him, but He will abandon the institutions and authorities that do not serve Him. And such institutions, authorities, kings and races become like sands in the desert or like the dead leaves of autumn which can be blown away by a gust of wind.”

— Cardinal Pie, Bishop of Poitiers (1815-1880)

(more…)

A Leaf-Treader

I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn-tired.
God knows all the color and form of leaves I have trodden on and mired.
Perhaps I have put forth too much strength and been too fierce from fear.
I have safely trodden underfoot the dead leaves of another year.

All summer long they were overhead, more lifted up than I.
To come to their final place in earth they had to pass me by.
All summer long I thought I heard them threatening under their breath.
And when they came it seemed with a will to carry me with them to death.

They spoke to the fugitive in my heart as if it were leaf to leaf.
They tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief.
But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go.
Now up, my knee, to keep on top of another year of snow.

— Robert Frost

(more…)

FROM “A Survival Manual During the Great Tribulation and the Operation of Error (XLVI)“:

[W]e are indeed fully immersed in the Great Tribulation, which we were told would take place in the last days preceding the Parousia of Our Lord Jesus Christ in glory and majesty. This great tribulation, we insist, must be understood in a spiritual and bloodless way, rather than physically and bloodily, as many unfortunately interpret it. Time has shown that this interpretation was erroneous, since all the persecutions suffered by the Holy Church throughout its history until the second half of the 20th century with atheistic communism never managed to defeat it, for the blood of the martyrs was always the seed of new Christians. (more…)

FROM 2 Mac 6:18-28:

18 Eleazar one of the chief of the scribes, a man advanced in years, and of a comely countenance, was pressed to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh.

19 But he, choosing rather a most glorious death than a hateful life, went forward voluntarily to the torment.

20 And considering in what manner he was come to it, patiently bearing, he determined not to do any unlawful things for the love of life.

21 But they that stood by, being moved with wicked pity, for the old friendship they had with the man, taking him aside, desired that flesh might be brought, which it was lawful for him to eat, that he might make as if he had eaten, as the king had commanded of the flesh of the sacrifice:

22 That by so doing he might be delivered from death: and for the sake of their old friendship with the man they did him this courtesy.

(more…)

“WE say, we, and the Catholic Church teaches, that God, by a free act of His love, has established a superior and transcendent bond between our nature and His; we say that a similar bond had not been necessary in itself, that it had not been commanded nor even formally demanded by any requirement of our being; it is due solely to the immense charity, to the gratuitous and excessive liberality of God towards His creature; we proclaim that the bond as a result of the divine will has become obligatory, irrefutably necessary; that it eminently subsists and that it will eternally subsist in Jesus Christ, God and Man altogether, divine and human nature always distinct, but irreversibly united by the Hypostatic Union; we add that the bond must be extended, according to divinely instituted proportions and means, to the whole race of which the Incarnate Word is the Head and that any moral being, be it individual and particular, or be it public and social, could not reject it or break it up, in all or in part, without falling short of its end, and consequently without mortally injuring itself and without incurring the wrath of the sovereign master of our destinies. Such is not only the doctrine, but the very substance of Christianity.[emphasis added]

….”We do not omit nor allow to be omitted, that which the great Apostle teaches, that Jesus Christ, after having descended from heaven, determined to fill up all things: ut impleret omnia. He did not act in His capacity as God, since this presence had always been there, but in His capacity as God and Man altogether. — In fact, Jesus Christ is thence present to all, upon earth, as well as in heaven; He filled up the world with His name, His law, His light and with His grace. Nothing is placed outside of His sphere of attraction or repulsion; no thing nor any person could remain totally foreign and indifferent to Him; He has been set as the corner-stone: building-block for some, stumbling-block and scandal for others, a stone that touches all. The history of humanity, the history of nations, the history of peace and of war, the history of the Church, above all, is not other than the life of Jesus filling up all things: ut impleret omnia.”

        — Cardinal Pie (1815-1880), Bishop of Poitiers

Source

(more…)

“PHILOSOPHERS who proclaim the decline of Jesus Christ, you cannot take His place, and if it were true that Christian society no longer exists upon earth, you will no longer be able to rebuild, even, a society of honest pagans.”

— Cardinal Pie (1815-1880), Bishop of Poitiers

Source

(more…)

“AS to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that Belief has the good Consequence, as probably it has, of making his Doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Unbelievers in his Government of the World with any peculiar Marks of his Displeasure.

“I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the Goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously thro’ a long life, I have no doubt of its Continuance in the next, though without the smallest Conceit of meriting such Goodness.

— B. Franklin

“P.S. I confide, that you will not expose me to Criticism and censure by publishing any part of this Communication to you. I have ever let others enjoy their religious Sentiments, without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me unsupportable and even absurd. All Sects here, and we have a great Variety, have experienced my good will in assisting them with Subscriptions for building their new Places of Worship; and, as I have never opposed any of their Doctrines, I hope to go out of the World in Peace with them all.”

— Benjamin Franklin, A letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College

(more…)

“BECAUSE the legislation has made a profession of neutrality and of abstention concerning the existence of God, upon what foundation will its proper authority be established? In permitting me to not acknowledge God, am I not authorized to belittle God Himself? We have not elected to place dogma in the law, you tell me. And I respond to you: If the dogma of the existence of God is no longer in the law, the reason for the law is no longer in the law, then the law is no longer so in the true sense of the word, it is nothing but a pipedream.”

 — Cardinal Pie (1815-1880), Bishop of Poitiers

Source

(more…)

“AT the present hour [October 31, 1870], among those of our fellow citizens who do not close their eyes to the light of the terrible lessons afflicting our nation, who hears us and who understands us? To be sure, it is not unusual to encounter men who confess, who deplore, who condemn and, finally, who wish to repair the faults and personal omissions of their lives, in keeping with the fulfillment of their religious duty. There is a sufficiently large enough number who even visualize in these harsh truths a chastisement and a remedy to the notions of pride, in the habits of greed, of luxury, of excessive sensualism and of naturalism which would invade nearly all social circumstances. But who is there that proceeds to think of and ask if this complete collapse of a great nation, would not have its cause in a great national sin; that is, if [sic] the temporary abandon where God permits us to not respond to the political systems of which He has given leave?

….

“O France, more than fifty years have passed since the name of God, for the first time, has been taken out of thy constitution. Now, I implore thee today to show the fruits of this half-century experience. I lend an ear and I hear a confused murmur which bursts out in all places. O my country, I do not judge thee rashly, for I judge thee according to thy own words: Ex ore tuo te judico.[From your mouth you will be judged.] There is no more morality, no more justice; all is going, all is wasted away, all is admittedly gone from every corner of the country. There is the result, see there the progress obtained since we have been given over to excluding God.

“There is no more public morality, no more justice, you will say. These results astonish you; it should have been easy to predict. Isn’t this as a pagan saying has it, that it would be easier to build a city in the air than to have a society without God? Isn’t this what the Roman orator had said, that the stability of commerce and the greatest of virtues, which is justice, would be undermined along with loss of respect for a strong faith in the divinity? Hasn’t the Holy Ghost declared in most energetic language that wherever the impious rule, men can expect nothing other than their ruin: Regnantibus impiis, ruinae hominum!’ [When the wicked shall bear rule, the people shall mourn. (Prov. 29:2).]”

— Cardinal Pie (1815-1880), Bishop of Poitiers

Source

(more…)

“IT is there and nowhere else that one must go to seek the cause of all our evil. There is the sad beginning of our faults and consequently the point of departure of all our misfortunes. We have for a long time now overthrown a premier throne, that of God, denied a premier sovereignty: the divine sovereignty…. All our mistakes pale alongside this premier assault. It is against God alone that we have sinned.”

— Cardinal Pie (1815-1880), Bishop of Poitiers

Source

(more…)

“TO say Jesus Christ is the God of individuals and of families, but not the God of peoples and of societies, is to say that He is not God. To say that Christianity is the law of individual man and is not the law of collective man, is to say that Christianity is not divine. To say the Church is the judge of private morality, but has nothing to do with public and political morality, is to say that the Church is not divine.”

— Cardinal Pie(1815-1880), Bishop of Poitiers,

(more…)

“TODAY we sadly behold ‘a world undone,’ largely paganized in principles and outlook and, in recent years, in one country even glorying in the name ‘pagan.’ At the best, governments mostly ignore God; and at the worst, openly fight against him, as we of today are witnessing in the Old World and in the New. Even the statesmen’s well-meant efforts to find a remedy for present ills and, above all, to secure world peace, prove futile because whereas peace is from Christ, and possible only in the Kingdom of Christ, his name is never mentioned throughout their deliberations or their documents. Christ is kept out of the State schools and seats of higher education; and the rising generations seem to be taught anything and everything save to know, love, and serve him. Art and literature all too frequently reflect the same tendencies.

“And since the spirit of evil reigns inevitably wherever the spirit of Christ has ceased to reign, in public and in private men are flouting the moral laws of God, and some of the worst abominations of ancient paganism are becoming matters of every-day life. Moreover, be it remembered, modern paganism is worse than that of the ancient world, in that the former knows what it does as the latter did not. There is now an intense, positive hatred of Jesus Christ in the militant atheist, which differs in kind from the attitude of the fiercest Roman or Eastern persecutor: ‘If I had not come and spoken to them … if I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father.’”

Dom Prosper Guéranger, Feast of Christ the King Sunday

(more…)

ALL glory, praise, and honor
to Thee, Redeemer, King,
to whom the lips of children
made sweet Hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s Name comest.
the King and blessed One.

The company of Angels
are praislng Thee on high,
and mortal men and all things
created make reply.

(more…)

“AND Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.“

— St. Matthew: 28:18

Feast of Christ the King, 2026

(more…)

“CHRIST as our Redeemer purchased the Church at the price of his own blood; as priest he offered himself, and continues to offer himself as a victim for our sins. Is it not evident, then, that his kingly dignity partakes in a manner of both these offices?

“It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia.[27]

“Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: ‘His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.’[28] Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. ‘Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.’29] He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. ‘For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?'[30] If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. ‘With God and Jesus Christ,’ we said, ‘excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.'” [emphasis added]

— Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1925

(more…)

[Reposted from Feast of Christ the King, 2022]

CHRIST’S kingship over society is the antithesis of the New World Order.

You’ll never hear that from Alex Jones or David Icke. Christ and the Divine Society He created are the only alternative to the worldwide “deep state.”

He is not just king over hearts and minds, but rightful king over each and every human nation.

Religious neutrality is an impossibility.  No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be subject to the one and despise the other. That is God’s word and therefore an article of faith… There are no neutral governments, no neutral schools, no neutral press, no neutral clubs, no neutral families … This applies to the life of nations. Periods of neutrality are periods of transition, of groping indecision. They are times of twilight between day and night. After the time of neutrality comes the time of service of one master, in which either Christ or Satan will be king. After the liberal twilight comes either the Russian night of persecution or the new Sun-Day of the Kingdom of Christ.

— Fr. Robert Mader, Cross and Crown

See further reflections on today’s feast, Christ the King Sunday posted here. (more…)

“LIBERALISM in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another; and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with the recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, as all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact — not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.”

— Cardinal John Henry Newman, (1801-1890)

(more…)

“HAVING thus spoken, the holy Archangel was silent, but Tobias and his son were seized with fear, and fell trembling, with their faces to the ground. The Angel cheered them, with the words: ‘Peace be to you; fear not. For when I was with you, it was by the will of God: bless ye Him, and sing praises unto Him. It is time now that I return to him that sent me: but bless ye God, and publish all his wonderful works.’ Having said these words, he vanished from their sight. They, however, lay prostrate on the ground for three hours, partly from fear, partly in wonder at the great goodness of God who had sent so high a prince of heaven to protect, comfort and help them. At length, having overcome their fear, they repeated their thanks to God, and announced everywhere, the benefits He had bestowed on them. The beautiful hymn of praise which Tobias composed on that occasion is to be found in Holy Writ. From this event, as true as it is wonderful, several historians, not without reason, conclude that the intercession of St. Raphael ought to be invoked by those who are either troubled or tempted by the Evil One, who are blind, or otherwise infirm, or who go on a journey. The name, Raphael, means ‘the remedy, or the physician of God,’ and shows that this holy Angel assists particularly those who are sick, either in soul or body. The true Church teaches those who intend to undertake a journey to pray: ‘May the Angel Raphael be with us on our way!’ from which we infer, that he is the especial patron of all travellers.”

—- St. Raphael, Archangel, Father Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876

(more…)