SOURCE:
http://www.christorchaos.com/PureUnadulateratedAmericanism.html
 
   
 
December 8, 2007
Pure, Unadulterated Americanism
by Thomas A. Droleskey

The diabolical heresy of Americanism exercises its considerable quasi-religious influence across not only the ecclesiastical divides of Catholicism. Oh, no. Americanism exercises its sway throughout the popular culture of the United States of America. Many abject secularists and out-and-out atheists join with adherents of тαℓмυdic Judaism in their embrace of the Americanist errors of religious liberty, separation of Church and State and freedom of speech and freedom of press, which permits them the opportunity to give full-throat under the cover of law to their errors that originate from the devil and are designed to lead souls into Hell for all eternity and as social order is rent asunder as a result. Protestants, especially those of the Calvinist bent, make Americanism a religious cause celebre, celebrating the founders of the United States of America as plaster saints and their "doctrines" as beyond question, received from the very hand of God Himself. And the Mormons? Well, Mormonism is a quintessential homegrown Americanist religion, founded by a confidence man, the Freemason Joseph Smith, who believed that the United States of America was to be the New Jerusalem and that he was the "prophet" of the "latter-day saints.

Mormonism is an American ethnocentric sect. Joseph Smith, a native of Palmyra, New York, contended that the fictitious "Book of Mormon," delivered to him by the "angel Moroni," "revealed" that the Garden of Eden was located near Jackson, Missouri, but that the great Flood washed Noah over to the Middle East. Mormonism means to "restore" the purity of Christian doctrine was "corrupted" following the death of Saint Peter and the other Apostles, using the United States of America, the "New Jerusalem," as the instrumentality to effect this end. Mormonism embraces what is called "American exceptionalism," teaching that the "American creed" is the foundation of all social order, especially as it relates to the fundamental heresy of "religious liberty" (or "religious freedom"). Adherents are taught that they will be given their own planets, prompting one comedian back in the 1960s, just before "political correctness" arose to censor such quips, to use the following line in a act on some long forgotten variety show on television:

A Jehovah's Witness came to my door today to ask me to join their cult. I said, "You say only 144,000 people are getting into Heaven. The Mormons say I get my own planet. Why should I join you?"

 

As we know, of course, Mormonism is a false religion, raised up by the devil to enshrine Americanism and the "American way" of thinking and acting as a "civil creed" that must form the patterns of daily living. Like Mohammedanism, Mormonism is a false religion that believes itself to have "revealed truth," that they have a mission to convert everyone on the face of the earth to their false, diabolical beliefs. Mormonism is particularly devoted to proselytizing itself in Latin America, where many Catholics, upset with the apostasies of conciliarism, have been convinced by the self-assured preaching of Mormon "missionaries" to leave the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the past three decades to join up with a cult that has been counterfeit from the very beginning. The fact that Mormonism opposes some abortions (permitting the ubiquitous "exceptions in the "hard" cases) and opposes conjugal immorality (apart from its initial embrace of polygamy, that is!) appeals to many poorly-catechized Catholics in Latin America, many of whom are sick and tired of screeds about "liberation theology," representing, once again, another example of how conciliarism has failed the cause of the salvation of souls so miserably.

Although Mormonism has very few adherents, relatively speaking, thirteen million worldwide (half of those in the United States of America), it represents an amazing confluence of the errors of Modernity (leaving aside their numerous dogmatic heresies concerning the nature of the Blessed Trinity and of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross) that unite it with conciliarism in many respects, especially regarding the nature of Church-State relations. This is why former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's address, given at the George Herbert Walker Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A and M University (which was called the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas when my late father and his very alive brother studied veterinary medicine there in the late-1930s) in College Station, Texas, is so very significant and is deserving of a protracted commentary: significant parts of Romney's address could have been given by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who rejects the Catholic teaching on the necessity of the confessionally Catholic civil state, himself.

Mitt Romney is the son of late Governor of the State of Michigan and the former Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development during the administration of the late President Richard Milhous Nixon, George Romney, who was seen by almost every political analyst as the proverbial "front-runner" for the 1968 Republican Party presidential nomination until he said told interviewer Lou Gordon on WKBD-TV in Detroit, Michigan, on August 31, 1967, that he had been "brainwashed" by generals during a tour of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). As it turns out, George Romney was, in all likelihood, quite correct, although he was mocked pretty roundly at the time for what he said. The once shining "front-runner" had to drop out of the race on February 28, 1968, after fellow liberal Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, then the Governor of the State of New York, told reporters that he would "open" to a draft at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, in August of that year. That dried up George Romney's funding and ended his campaign, which was characterized on occasion by commentaries about his Mormonism (George Romney's parents had been Mormon "missionaries" in Our Lady's country, Mexico, which is where he was born). George Romney never addressed that issue as his eldest son, Mitt, did yesterday at the George Herbert Walker Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

The title of Mitt Romney's speech yesterday, "Faith in America," says it all. It dovetails very nicely with the commentary I posted two days ago, Fascists for Freedom, displaying every Americanist myth imaginable. Here are some key excerpts, following by commentary and juxtaposing Romney's Americanism with the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, which binds every human being on the face of this earth, Catholic and non-Catholic alike (if something is true, you see, it binds all people at all times in all circuмstances in all places):

There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'

 

The nation's founders "discovered" the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom? Well, the Protestant and Masonic and Deist founders of the United States of America, aided and abetted by some prominent Catholics who presaged conciliarism by about 186 years, did indeed "protect" the heresy of "religious freedom," enshrining this slap in the face to the Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Church in an Article VI of the Constitution of the United States of America, which forbids any religious test for one to hold office in the Federal government, and in the Constitution's First Amendment. This has made it possible for adherents of false religions and false philosophies and even atheism itself to publicly propagate their errors, which blaspheme God by daring to assert that He has not revealed His truths definitively and exclusively to the Catholic Church and which thus deceives the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. God does not want human beings steeped in an abyss of confusion as to what He has revealed. He wants all men in all places at all times and in all circuмstances to submit themselves unhesitatingly to the Deposit of Faith that He has entrusted to the Church that He Himself founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Pope Pius VII, writing in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, condemned religious liberty, as a heresy.

For We had hoped, affairs having so happily changed, not only that all impediments organized against the Catholic religion in France would be removed with the utmost speed (as We have unceasingly demanded), but also that, as the opportunity presented itself, provision would also be made for her splendour and ornament. We saw at once that a deep silence was preserved in the constitution concerning this, and that there was not even any mention made of Almighty God, by whom kings reign and princes command. You will find it easy, Venerable Brother, to convince yourself of how grave, how bitter and how painful this matter was to Us, to whom has been committed by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Our Lord, the whole of Christendom. For how can We tolerate with equanimity that the Catholic religion, which France received in the first ages of the Church, which was confirmed in that very kingdom by the blood of so many most valiant martyrs, which by far the greatest part of the French race professes, and indeed bravely and constantly defended even among the most grave adversities and persecutions and dangers of recent years, and which, finally, that very dynasty to which the designated king belongs both professes and has defended with much zeal - that this Catholic, this most holy religion, We say, should not only not be declared to be the only one in the whole of France supported by the bulwark of the laws and by the authority of the Government, but should even, in the very restoration of the monarchy, be entirely passed over? But a much more grave, and indeed very bitter, sorrow increased in Our heart - a sorrow by which We confess that We were crushed, overwhelmed and torn in two - from the twenty-second article of the constitution in which We saw, not only that "liberty of religion and of conscience" (to use the same words found in the article) were permitted by the force of the constitution, but also that assistance and patronage were promised both to this liberty and also to the ministers of these different forms of "religion". There is certainly no need of many words, in addressing you, to make you fully recognize by how lethal a wound the Catholic religion in France is struck by this article. For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me."

But We ought no less to wonder at and grieve over the freedom of printing guaranteed and permitted by Article 23 of the constitution; by which indeed the experience of past times itself teaches, if anyone could doubt it, what great perils and what certain poisoning of faith and morals are encouraged. For it is quite clear that it is principally by this means that, first, the morals of people were depraved, then their faith corrupted and overthrown, and finally ѕєdιтισns, riots and rebellions stirred up among them. Given the present state of great corruption of mankind, these most grave evils would still be an object of fear if - which may God prevent - the free power were permitted to anyone of publishing whatever he pleased. Nor indeed are We without other causes of grief in this new constitution of the kingdom, especially in articles 6, 24 and 25. We shall forbear to expound these to you individually since We do not doubt that your Fraternity will easily perceive in what direction these articles tend. Indeed in such great and so just perturbation of Our soul We are comforted by the hope that the king-designate does not subscribe to the articles of the proposed constitution which We have mentioned; indeed We promise ourselves this most certainly, on account of the ancestral piety and zeal for religion with which We have no doubt that he is enkindled. But since, if We were silent during the peril of faith and of souls, We should most certainly betray Our ministry, We have decided meanwhile to send this letter to you, Venerable Brother, whose faith and priestly strength have been so persuasively demonstrated to Us, not only so that it may be thoroughly known that We most vehemently reject those things which We have hitherto expounded to you, and whatever may perchance be proposed contrary to the Catholic religion, but also so that, having conferred also with the other bishops of the French churches, you would apply yourself to the counsels and studies which We have enjoined upon you in order that the grave evils which, unless they be most swiftly driven away, threaten the Church in France, should be averted, and that those laws and decrees and other sanctions of government concerning which, as you well know, We have never ceased to lament in recent years, and which are still flourishing, should be removed

 

Pope Gregory XVI reiterated this condemnation in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.


Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?

 

Pope Pius IX cited Pope Gregory XI's own condemnation of religious liberty as "insanity" in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864:

Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that "there is one God, one faith, one baptism" may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that "those who are not with Christ are against Him," and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore "without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate." Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: "He who is for the See of Peter is for me." A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: "The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?"

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."


Pope Leo XIII put the matter this way in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:


So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.

 

No one is morally free to propagate error under cover of law. While Holy Mother Church does recognize, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Libertas, June 20, 1888, that the civil state might have to tolerate the private holding of erroneous beliefs and the private practice of the rites of false religious sects, it is a grave and fundamental error to hold that those who adhere to false beliefs, whether religious or philosophically, have a "right" from God to propagate them openly in civil society. They do not. Such, however, is of the essence of the American founding that has been praised so lavishly by Joseph Ratzinger in his days before becoming "Benedict XVI," a praise he lavished in his December 22, 2005, curial address as follows:

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.

 

Alas, the American Revolution and the French Revolution are but two aspects of the same anti-Incarnational coin, manifesting its beliefs in the supremacy of the "rights of man" in different ways. The American Revolution paid obeisance to a generic concept of God and to man's fallen nature, relying upon the Roman concept of "civic virtue" to build the pluralist state of which the conciliarists, including Joseph Ratzinger, are so enamored. The French Revolution posited the pantheistic deification of man. They differ only in details and in methodology. Both are united at the hip concerning the rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King. It is not for nothing that Joseph Ratzinger wrote in Principles of Catholic Theology in 1982 that the "Second" Vatican Council represented the "Church's official reconciliation with the principles of the new era inaugurated in 1789."

John Adams, cited by Mitt Romney in his "Faith in America" address yesterday, was a virulent anti-Catholic, a naturalist who exalted the state constitutions of the original thirteen states for the fact that they had not been written under "consultation with the gods" or that they had anything to do with the "mystery" of holy oil and holy water. He considered the Catholic Faith to be but a superstition that had enslaved man during the Middle Ages.

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.


Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. ( President John Adams: "A Defense of the [State] Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," 1787-1788)

Furthermore, John Adams engaged in an active correspondence with his one-time collaborator and then his adversary, Thomas Jefferson, after they had been reconciled in the years following the end of the latter's term as President of the United States on March 4, 1809. Adams wrote the following to his friend Adams to indicate the contempt that both of them shared for the Catholic Faith:

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)

 

Oh, yes, that John Adams, the "defender" of religion. I forgot. No one who writes such things is a friend of God or of the good of his nation, which is premised upon the obedience of its citizens to the binding precepts He has entrusted to the Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. To quote John Adams on the "importance" of "religion" is beneath contempt. Does Mitt Romney endorse the anti-Catholicism of the founders of this nation, including John Adams, whom he quoted so favorably?

Here are a few more reminders of the anti-Catholicism of the "founders" for those who want to subordinate their Catholic Faith to the anti-Incarnational views of men who hated the Faith and believed in the lie that personal and social order could be obtained without It.

To James Madison, the "father" of the Constitution and the fourth President of the United States of America:

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."—letter to William Bradford, Jr„ April I, 1774

". . . Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest."—spoken at the Virginia convention on ratification of the Constitution, June 1778.

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."—-A Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785

 

To the Deist Thomas Jefferson:

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death.)

 

Ladies and gentlemen, when are we going to learn that the one and only standard of genuine human liberty is the Cross of the Divine Redeemer and that no man and no nation is truly free unless each chooses to submit to the sweet yoke of that Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, recognizing His right to reign as the King over men and as King over nations as that Social Kingship must be exercised by the Catholic Church? The idolatry of the "founders" by Catholics must cease. These were men who had a fundamental hostility to the Catholic Faith. Hostility to the Catholic Faith is hostility to God Himself. Don't you understand this, folks? One cannot say He loves God and be hostile to His true religion? It is that simple. Why do Catholics continued to exalt men who had ideas that came from Hell and have opened the path wide to the abyss of social disorder in which we find ourselves at present. No matter how sincerely the founders may have held their false beliefs, it is a truth that false beliefs lead to bad consequences. It is false to believe that men do not need to submit themselves, either individually or collectively, to the magisterial (teaching) authority of the Catholic Church and that men do not need to belief in, have access to or cooperate with Sanctifying Grace to be virtuous. Men who believe these falsehoods bring ruin upon themselves and their descendants no matter how deeply they believe in these falsehoods.

John Adams's appeal, therefore, for a "moral" and "religious" people is an exercise in the heresy of semi-Pelagianism, the belief in human self-redemption, based upon the acceptance of religious indifferentism, one of the hallmarks of ʝʊdɛօ-Masonry that served as the "guiding darkness" that has clouded the minds so men from the time of the Seventeenth Century to the present day. Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, explained the logical consequences of religious indifferentism:

To hold therefore that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points, cannot all be equally probably, equally good, equally acceptable to God.

Mitt Romney went on to dig a deeper Americanist hole for himself, one into which the counterfeit church of conciliarism has resided over forty years now:

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

"Given our grand tradition of religious tolerance and liberty, some wonder whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate's religion that are appropriate. I believe there are. And I will answer them today.

"Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for President, not a Catholic running for President. Like him, I am an American running for President. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

"Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.

"As Governor, I tried to do the right as best I knew it, serving the law and answering to the Constitution. I did not confuse the particular teachings of my church with the obligations of the office and of the Constitution – and of course, I would not do so as President. I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law.

 

Excuse me, the "sovereign authority of the law." Civil law must be conformed to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in all that pertains to the good of souls. No positive law enacted by the institutions of civil government that is contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law has any binding force whatsoever. Pope Leo XIII pointed this out in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

Hallowed therefore in the minds of Christians is the very idea of public authority, in which they recognize some likeness and symbol as it were of the divine Majesty, even when it is exercised by one unworthy. A just and due reverence to the law abides in them, not from force and threats, but from a consciousness of duty; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear.


But if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense levelled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of ѕєdιтισn: for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused; but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor of God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, Venerable Brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word, at once adds, And to be ready to every good work. Thereby he openly declares that if the laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner the prince of the apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak of the things which we have seen and heard.


Wherefore, to love both countries, that of earth below and that of heaven above, yet in such mode that the love of our heavenly surpass the love of our earthly home, and that human laws be never set above the divine law, is the essential duty of Christians, and the fountain-head, so to say, from which all duties spring. The Redeemer of mankind of Himself has said: For this was I born, and for this I came into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth. In like manner, I am come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled? In the knowledge of this truth, which constitutes the highest perfection of the mind; in divine charity which, in like manner, completes the will, all Christian life and liberty abide. This noble patrimony of truth and charity entrusted by Jesus Christ to the Church, she defends and maintains ever with untiring endeavor and watchfulness.

Although it is true that there is a distinction between ecclesiastical power and that of the civil state, each with its own competency and autonomy in their own respective spheres, those who hold office, whether elected or appointed, in the civil state, must be be consistent within themselves and to make every decision in their lives on the basis of the pursuit of their own Last End and that of others. The common temporal good is premised upon the pursuit of man's Last End. There can never be any dichotomy between the two. Never. Not under any circuмstance, as Pope Saint Pius X explained in Singulari Quadam, September 24, 1912:

All actions of a Christian man so far as they are morally either good or bad -- that is, so far as they agree with or are contrary to the natural and divine law -- fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church.

 

Mitt Romney's citation of then Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy's address to Baptist ministers and broadcasters in Houston, Texas, in 1960 is quite telling. Kennedy, a pure, unadulterated product of Americanism, sought to continue the legacy of the Alfred Emmanuel Smith to make a distinction between his "private" Faith and his public duties as an office-holder, thus giving rise to the "I'm personally opposed but can never impose" line that has been used by one pro-abortion Catholic in public after after another for the past thirty-five years (Richard Cardinal Cushing, Kennedy's Americanist cardinal-enabler, actually said in 1965 that he could not "impose" Catholic morality upon the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts concerning a then-pending piece of legislation, introduced by State Senator Michael S. Dukakis, to permit the sale of contraceptives to married couples) and making it more possible for the "privatization" of religion in public life. Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, put the lie to any such distinction:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue.


Mitt Romney went to explain how he believed in the sort of "political religion" as supported the nation's only un-baptized president, the atheist Abraham Lincoln, a man who cynically referred to God when he was a naturalist who had no belief in anything other than government of, by and for "the people:"

As a young man, Lincoln described what he called America's 'political religion' – the commitment to defend the rule of law and the Constitution. When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I am fortunate to become your President, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.

 

This is quite a statement. The American "political religion" and the oath taken to uphold it as it is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States of America becomes one's "highest promise to God"? In other words, the Constitution of the United States is above all else. The Deposit of Faith that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb entrusted entirely to the Catholic Church is irrelevant in the conduct of public life. Many, many Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide believe this. Non-Catholics embrace it with enthusiasm, especially Mormons, which is why it is specious for Romney to declare that he not let his Mormon beliefs override "the rule of law" as those beliefs are inextricably intertwined with the American ʝʊdɛօ-Masonic "political religion." They are one and the same.

Romney's statement does raise an interesting issue for Catholics: can one swear on a Bible to uphold a Constitution that is founded upon false premises and that enshrines the heresies of religious liberty and freedom of speech and freedom of press and makes no mention of Christ the King? Even fully orthodox Catholic theologians would give a variety of answers to this question, some relying upon the Suarezian mental reservation to justify taking such an oath. My own judgment, which is simply that in this instance, a judgment that is not received from the hand of God, is that one could not do so, again recognizing the debatable nature of the conclusion.

Indeed, I was asked by a brilliant young Catholic gentleman, who was only fifteen years of age at the time, if I could take the oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America if I had won my then ongoing primary campaign against Senator Alfonse D'Amato in 1998 and then defeated D'Amato and Schumer in the general election. The young man, whom I will not name, knew that I had no chance of winning.

As a thoughtful student of Catholic Social Teaching and one who knew each of the fallacies of Americanism fully, this young man was simply raising a question about the logical consequences of swearing to uphold the terms of docuмent that permits as a "civil right" the public propagation and defense of heresies while not mentioning the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I told him, after thinking about the question for a moment after an "indult" Mass in the City of New York that Sunday, "Probably not." It's a question that will be explored at some point in the future, one, I should qualify once again, that is purely speculative in nature and upon which Holy Mother Church has not pronounced, leaving its consideration open to discussion among Catholics of good will.

Mitt Romney's referring to the oath as his "highest promise to God," however, is not an uncommon view, making a discussion of this matter at some point to be quite pertinent as we see the continuing idolatry of the Constitution and of the "founding principles" that is exhibited by so many Americans, including so many Catholics.

Mitt Romney also touched in his "Faith in America" address upon Mormonism's rejection of the nature of the Blessed Trinity and the relationship of the Three Divine Persons when he admitted that his "church" may not share the same beliefs as to others about our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

"There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.

"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.

Heresy must never be tolerated. While we tolerate persons and their private holding of false beliefs, exhibiting kindness and forbearance with them as we attempt to exhort them to convert to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, we do not tolerate their false ideas and beliefs. We are not silent in the face of these false ideas and beliefs. Those who hold these false ideas and beliefs can never make good, just stewards of the public weal. Mitt Romney believes in multiple heresies about Our Lord, including that He is not Consubstantial with the Father, Who is alleged by Mormons to have a corporeal nature (that is, with bones and flesh), and that He will come to reign physically on earth for a thousand years before the end of time (in addition to the belief of some Mormons that Our Lord actually "married" Saint Mary Magdalene, an unspeakable blasphemy against the Divine Redeemer). An individual who believes such diabolical lies is not fit to hold any office of public trust in any country, including the United States of America, as he shows himself to be in the deep pit of a diabolical delusion, reserving judgment, as we do in all such instances, on such a person's subjective culpability to God alone.

The last paragraph cited in the passages immediately above illustrate that Mitt Romney is indeed a "good" and "tolerant" American ecuмenist, giving a little something to each of the major religious denominations in the United States of America. There's only one little problem with this: there is one and only one true religion, and it is only the Catholic Church, not any of the others, each of which is from Hell and has nothing to offer individuals or nations than confusion and disarray wrapped up in a myriad of falsehoods and sophisms.

True to his Americanist form, Mitt Romney genuflected at the altar of separation of Church and State in a series of paragraphs in his "Faith in America" speech that should warm the cockles of every good conciliarist's heart:

 
It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

 

This is pure ʝʊdɛօ-Masonry. A common creed of moral convictions? Once again, truth has been revealed definitively by Truth Himself, Truth Incarnate, Truth Crucified and Resurrected. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted the totality of truth, both supernatural and natural, to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Although it is possible for men to apprehend moral truths with certainty by the use of natural reason alone, fallen human nature is such that not all men everywhere will accept these moral truths no matter the fact that they have been inscribed on the very flesh of their hearts by God Himself. To appeal to "common moral convictions" while at the same time minimizing "differences in theology" is of the essence of ʝʊdɛօ-Masonry, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

Now, the fundamental doctrine of the naturalists, which they sufficiently make known by their very name, is that human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide. Laying this down, they care little for duties to God, or pervert them by erroneous and vague opinions. For they deny that anything has been taught by God; they allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence, nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority. And since it is the special and exclusive duty of the Catholic Church fully to set forth in words truths divinely received, to teach, besides other divine helps to salvation, the authority of its office, and to defend the same with perfect purity, it is against the Church that the rage and attack of the enemies are principally directed.


In those matters which regard religion let it be seen how the sect of the Freemasons acts, especially where it is more free to act without restraint, and then let any one judge whether in fact it does not wish to carry out the policy of the naturalists. By a long and persevering labor, they endeavor to bring about this result -- namely, that the teaching office and authority of the Church may become of no account in the civil State; and for this same reason they declare to the people and contend that Church and State ought to be altogether disunited. By this means they reject from the laws and from the commonwealth the wholesome influence of the Catholic religion; and they consequently imagine that States ought to be constituted without any regard for the laws and precepts of the Church.

 

Men need to submit themselves to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church to know what has been revealed and then to cooperate with the graces won for them by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, in order to live in accord with what He has revealed. Our Lord is eminently merciful. He does not want us dumb sheep arguing constantly about what is true. He wants to accept what He has revealed and then to make the effort, despite our sins and failings, to cooperate with His graces to do what is true and good, that which redounds to our own salvation and to those of others whom His loving Providence places in our paths on a daily basis.

Not much time needs to be spent on Mitt Romney's embrace of the pernicious error of the separation of Church and State and his belief that it is "good enough" for a generic sense of "religion" to be able to make its influence felt in the course of the "public market place of ideas."

Certainly the latter concept, of the "public market place of ideas, is a plausible understanding of how the American founders viewed the separation of Church and State, although as demonstrated before, some of the founders had a profound hostility to religion in general and to the true religion in particular. Be that as it may, the market place of ideas approach to "religion in society" is of the devil, who wants to convince people that everything is "up for grabs." Pope Leo XIII noted this in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.

Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.

 

Pope Leo XIII used Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, to reiterate the insufficiency of the Natural Law by itself to order the lives of men and their nations:

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.

 

An important distinction needs to be made at this juncture. Holy Mother Church will avail herself of a

SOURCE: http://catholicism.org/americanism-heresy.html

Americanism — A Phantom Heresy?
        by William Jay  May 16th, 2005
[Note: While some of the commentary is dated, the article provides a good historical foundation for what is going on today in the Church.]

It began for me when I was about twenty years of age. The Church was being “updated.” She was being modernized , brought more in line with the times, more acceptable to the modern way of thinking. This was what the people wanted. It was a new beginning. The light was finally being let in, and the fresh air was filling the stagnant corners of Catholic traditionalism.

To some, however, it all seemed strange. I would venture to say that most Catholics were taken by surprise, just as much as I, when the changes began to take place. The truth of the matter is that most of us never considered changing anything until we heard about it from the pulpit. Why change something that needed no change? But the changes came, and they occurred so gradually that we paid them little, if any, attention.

First came the vernacular Mass with its new ceremonial, turned around altars, lay ministers, Communion in the hand, and even guitar “Masses,” more suitable for a campfire than a Catholic Church. All this on-going upheaval has left everyone, young and old, spiritually confused and cheated. Consequently, many have literally been driven away from Mass. (Were we not informed that these changes were supposed to bring the wayward back to Church!)

The children who attend the “parochial” schools are subjected to religious classes more like social studies than catechism, and the subject matter includes sex education, once taught only in the home, now taught in class, and hidden beneath the high-sounding title of family life .

The confessionals, now called reconciliation rooms, remain empty, while almost everyone receives Communion. It’s almost as though nobody sins any more; and, if they do, it makes no difference. After all, they are now taught that God is a loving God, and love cannot afford to punish; love only rewards.

Birth control, even recently condemned by Pope John Paul, is discreetly permitted by many parish priests.

Those who remain loyal to traditional Catholic principles are ignored or ridiculed, while non-Catholic ministers are welcomed to our churches, and Martin Luther is touted as a man of “great religiosity.”

The American bishops condemn national defense as a “danger to world peace,” while Communism gobbles up one country after another. Even more perplexing is their comparatively weak defense of the unborn, in light of the fact that millions of innocents die each year without the saving waters of Baptism.

Realizing that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church and seeing that open physical persecution was useless, he [Satan] resorted to different tactics shifting the emphasis from bƖσσdshɛd to heresy and schism. To divide and conquer was the answer for which he had searched.

And his success has been astounding. Through the centuries since the Church was founded, countless millions of souls have been lost because they have been deprived of union with the one true Church. Hundreds of new religions have drawn millions from the bark of Peter since the first heresies occurred in Apostolic times. Yet his final objective, the total destruction of the Church, has eluded him. Try as he will, in his uncontrollable pride, the promise of Christ has held true: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” But his pride will give him no rest, and his genius for destruction seems boundless. It is this genius for deception which gave birth to his most recent and vicious attack, an attack which seems to have brought the Church to her knees.

It began in the eighteenth century, when in 1789, the first of the monarchs of Europe was conscripted for destruction. The French Revolution had begun and the Age of Enlightenment was at hand. Before it was over the king of France was dead, the first to go in a long line of European monarchs who had been long-time allies of the Vatican. This was a necessary step in setting the stage for the events which followed.

The Catholic monarchs of Europe, on many occasions, had been invaluable assets in quenching outbursts of heresy, and even in protecting Rome itself from invading armies. If the final phase of this battle was to succeed, they must be eliminated or neutralized. Through the poisonous process known as enlightenment , the people would be convinced that the kings had no right to rule them. They must rule themselves. By this Masonically directed propaganda, and the careful application of force, one by one the friends of the Vatican fell, and Rome was soon in a state of virtual isolation. With the loss of her temporal power, the Church stood vulnerable to the final thrust, so carefully and cleverly calculated.

The liberal brainwash: If the kings had no right to rule in the temporal sphere, the Church had no right to rule in the moral. If mankind was free to rule himself in matters of politics, he was also free to rule in matters of religion. If one form of government was just as good as another, providing it had no king, then one religion was just as good as another, providing it had no Pope. And so, from the Age of Enlightenment was conceived religious indifferentism. An evil child! Fathered by Satan, and mothered by the Enlightenment. A child whose eventual birth would be attended by a midwife known as liberalism.

The only remaining detail was to choose a place suitable for training such a midwife, and, as history proves, he chose it well: a young nation, predominantly Protestant, and recently divorced from the British king who once ruled her. She was a multi-denominational society already accustomed to tolerating differences in religion, and her Catholic minority was eager to prove that they too could be good citizens.

By the late 1800’s, the American Church had already been exposed to nearly one hundred years of ” the attractive theory of democracy,” which the Protestant majority had long since extended to religious government as well. Many American Catholics hoped that this new-found democratic principle might be employed to “modify traditional Catholic authoritarianism. ” 1

In 1878, James Gibbons was appointed Archbishop of Baltimore by the Apostolic Delegate to Canada, Archbishop George Conroy. At Rome’s request, Conroy also made a tour of the United States in the same year, and he sent a report which was critical of what he had seen to the Vatican. Pope Leo XIII became concerned and asked for more information on what he called the “young enthusiastic country across the sea.” 2

It seems as though the American Church had developed an attitude more inclined to befriend their non-Catholic countrymen, than to be concerned for the salvation of their souls. Matters of religion were taking a back seat to matters of civil harmony; and, as time progressed, it would become evident that Archbishop Gibbons was one of the most effective propagators of this attitude. In fact, this tendency became so pronounced that it created a considerable controversy. So unique was this self-defeating attitude that it was named for the country in which it was spawned. It was called Americanism , and the trend it started has grown like a parasite, eating away at the very substance of the Church until only the shell we see today remains.

All of this prompted requests for a third Plenary Council, and once the Pope gave his approval, the American bishops succeeded in having Archbishop Gibbons appointed as the Apostolic Delegate to preside at the Council. The new Bishops were against having an Italian serve in that capacity for fear that he would not be in sympathy with the American spirit . Upon completion of the preparations, the Council convened in November of 1884, with Archbishop Gibbons presiding. 3

Pope Leo had left, naively, the council agenda and direction mainly to the cardinals, and many American clerics, especially the younger members of the hierarchy, interpreted his solicitude toward the council as sympathy for the new Nation. They believed that Leo had a desire to see “Roman Catholicism reconciled with the American spirit. This reconciliation led to a liberal-conservative conflict among the clergy.” 4

The situation reached the boiling point when, as a result of the council, “In 1889 a group of progressive bishops, headed by [the new] Cardinal Gibbons, succeeded in founding the Catholic University of America at Washington, D.C. Gibbons, the second U.S. Cardinal (1886), perhaps best represented the Catholic mind to most Americans during the nearly half century (1877-1921) that he occupied the See of Baltimore. He was forward-looking and desirous of accommodating Catholicism to the national spirit. Gibbons stoutly defended the orthodoxy of the U.S. Church when conservatives in Paris and Rome accused it, in 1897-1899, of promoting a liberalized Christianity, styled, Americanism.” 5

The establishment of the University caused such a stir among the hierarchy that progressives like Gibbons and Bishop Ireland were openly at odds with conservatives, including Bishops Corrigan, McQuaid, and Katzer. The first Rector was Bishop Keane, a progressive , and his administration (1889-96) was marked by ideological controversy between the factions in his faculty. The situation was so bad that Abbe Peries wrote articles claiming Keane had been removed in 1896 because Catholic University had become the “fortress of American liberalism.” Gibbons was accused of showing “a singular contrast to the orthodoxy of the Vatican” in the Edinburgh Review of April, 1890. 6

Undaunted by the criticisms leveled against him, Gibbons, along with other prelates, took part in the Parliament of Religion (an interfaith gathering) at the Chicago Exposition in 1893. While speaking to his multi-denominational audience he remarked that “though we differ in faith…we stand united on the platform of charity and benevolence.” Now this remark seems harmless at first glance, but it also seems to place the importance of one’s faith in a secondary position to the more active virtues of charity and benevolence. The Review of Reviews was quick to accuse Gibbons of doing exactly that. 7 Although this remark was considered as mild by some (in view of the Cardinal’s liberal tendencies), it is not difficult to understand why the Review reached the conclusion it did.

In all fairness to the Cardinal, Pope Leo had given him permission to address the Parliament, and, to many, it was considered a “high watermark in co-operation between Catholics and non-Catholics. Europeans, however, criticized it because they thought the American bishops were willing to play down some articles of faith not to the liking of Protestants.” 8

At any rate, the uproar became so intense that Leo reconsidered his decision. “In 1895, he sent a letter to Archbishop Satolli forbidding future participation in inter-denominational congresses.” 9

It seems that no matter what Gibbons said or did, his inclination to bend Catholic teaching to the liking of his non-Catholic neighbors almost always manifested itself.

Isaac Hecker was a convert to Catholicism whose liberal methods made him the target of conservative criticism, and before it was over, he would also become a part of the Gibbons story. This controversial man eventually became a Redemptorist priest, and, in March of 1858, he was released from his Redemptorist obligations by Pope Pius IX. He founded the Society of Paulist Missionaries, in the same year, for the espoused purpose of converting America to Catholicism. 10

In his early 20s, before his conversion, Hecker became a member of Brook Farm, an experiment in socialism which eventually earned a reputation as “the most celebrated American utopian community.” His friends included such transcendentalist notables as George Ripley, the founder of Brook Farm, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Orestes Brownson. It was through the influence of Brownson, himself a dynamic convert, and noted Catholic writer, that Hecker decided to join the Catholic Church. (Not to his credit, and previous to his conversion, it was Brownson who introduced the contemporary French philosophers into New England.)

“Hecker’s impact on the American scene was twofold: he directed the attention of Americans to the Roman Catholic Church, and stimulated Catholic interest in non-Catholic America.” 11 But his entire background seemed filled with the transcendentalist philosophy, a philosophy so Liberal in nature that James Freeman Clark could say of these people collectively, “We are called like-minded because no two of us think alike.” 12 He was well conditioned to accept a liberal attitude with regard to religion, and, no doubt, there were others who recognized his tendency to do so.

In 1890, Father Walter Elliott, editor of the Paulist Catholic World , which was accused of “liberalizing tendencies” by Archbishop Corrigan, published a Life of Father Hecker. This work overly stressed an activist thesis in opposition to the more passive virtues, much as we see in the Church today, and it bore the introduction of none other than Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland, both of whom were considered progressives. 13

By 1897, the theories of Father Hecker had caught on so well that they backlashed to Europe via a French translation of his life by Louise, Comptesse de Ravilliax. The introduction for this work was supplied by Abbe Felix Klein, who emphasized Father Hecker’s innovations even more than the English version. French Catholics were encouraged to hold Father Hecker as an example for forward looking Catholics. But European conservatives were on the alert, and, by March of 1898, articles began to appear denouncing this new Americanism , which had found its way into Europe. These articles were written by Abbe Charles Magnien, of the Brothers of Saint Vincent, and he accused American Catholics of “advocating a false liberalism: absolute separation of Church and state, limitation of submission to lawful authority, criticism of older religious orders, and just as Gibbons and Hecker both emphasized, exaltation of active and natural virtues over passive and supernatural ones.” 14

Gibbons, possibly realizing things were getting out of hand protested that there was no such thing as Americanism . But by then it was too late, and it condemnation was recommended by a commission of cardinals.

On January 22, 1899, Pope Leo sent an Apostolic letter to Cardinal Gibbons known as Testem Benevolentiae . Although the letter was not primarily concerned with Americanism, and was quite cordial in nature, the Pope did bring out the main error embodied in it:

1) The contention that there is a need of adapting the Church to the demands of modern civilization and slanting it toward a more democratic method, 2) that there should be more scope for individual freedom of thought and action, since the Holy Spirit operates on the conscience of the individual more directly than on the hierarchy. The errors of Americanism take away from the importance of the passive virtues-such as mortification, obedience, contemplation and concentrate on the active virtues, such as the active apostolate and organization. After a thorough examination, the Pope concluded with these words: ‘We cannot approve the opinions which constitute the so-called Americanism.’ Though acting with the highest motives, the ‘Americanists’ find themselves eventually, as regards doctrine, in a position which is difficult to reconcile with the doctrine and traditional spirit of the Church. 15

According to Brother William Keifer, S.M., in his book Leo XIII , the above reference to Testem Benevolentiae referred to “the thoughts that he [Leo] had on the preface of the French version of the Life of Father Hecker . But he goes on to say, “Archbishop Ireland, who was in Rome at the time, wrote to the Holy Father, repudiating and condemning all the opinions which the apostolic letter repudiated and condemned. Later Gibbons also wrote to Leo on this matter. The letter stated that no educated American Catholic sided with Americanism . Corrigan and the German bishops still insisted Americanism did exist in the United States. Some have stated that the Pope was ill-advised, but if so, it was not for long.” In a footnote he says, “Cardinal Gibbons wrote Leo XIII, March 17, 1899, in part: ‘This doctrine, which I deliberately call extravagant and absurd, this Americanism , as it is called, has nothing in common with the views, aspirations, doctrines and conduct of Americans.’ Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons , Vol. II, p. 71.”

Brother Kiefer then continues: “An interesting letter of Archbishop Ireland has proved that point (that the Pope was ‘ill-advised’).” The Archbishop, writing to a certain Mrs. Bellamy Storer in 1900 stated: ‘The Pope told me to forget the letter on Americanism , which has no application except in a few dioceses in France.’ Shortly afterward, Abbe Klein repudiated Americanism and indicated that he did not realize what he had started.”

And so, the liberalism of that “young enthusiastic country across the sea” escaped the condemnation it deserved. Either Pope Leo was extremely naive, or he was the victim of a conspiracy to isolate him from the truth. The latter of the two possibilities seems the more likely.

Six years after ascending the Chair of Peter, on April 20, 1884, Pope Leo issued his Encyclical, Humanum Genus . In it he gave a stinging condemnation of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ. In addition to the in-depth study of Masonry it contained, he listed his predecessors who also condemned it. They include Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, and Pius IX.

Leo said that Masons

“teach the great error of this age—that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions…

“It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion and morality, but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men in any way or to help them cannot be lawful.”

Pope Leo knew full well the danger posed to the Church by the Masons. He knew what they had already started in Europe, and he knew of their ultimate goal, expressed by Adam Weishaupt, who became the father of Illuminated Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ in 1782. “We will infiltrate that place [the Vatican] and once inside we will never come out. We will bore from within until nothing remains but an empty shell.”

At the very moment when the Illuminism of Europe and the Liberalism of America were scheduled to be joined for the purpose of poisoning the Church itself, Leo XIII occupied the chair of Peter. He was a force to be reckoned with, and, as he closed in on the Americanists, Satan saw the opportunity he needed to divert Leo’s efforts at stopping this evil union. He would pull Leo’s attention from the real threat, and draw his fire instead to “a few dioceses in France.”

To accomplish this seemingly impossible task, he would enlist the services of Leo’s most trusted Lieutenant. This was Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro. Upon the death of Cardinal Jacobini in 1887, this sinister character became Pope Leo’s fourth Secretary of State. For the remainder of Leo’s Pontificate, Rampolla served in that capacity. So close was the relationship between these two men that some referred to Rampolla as Leo’s “alter ego.” 16 There can be no doubt that Rampolla’s advice and influence had a profound effect on Leo’s policy-making decisions regarding Americanism . As we will now see, Rampolla turned out to be the Alger Hiss in the Vatican Department of State.

After Leo’s death, the cardinals entered the conclave, on July 31, 1903, to elect a new Pope. Cardinal Rampolla seemed to have enough influence and popularity to become the next Pontiff. After all, he had served as Secretary of State for sixteen years, and no one seemed more qualified than he.

However, Monsignor Jouin, a learned scholar, was aware of the evil plot of the Masons, and he was convinced that Rampolla belonged to a Masonic lodge. He asked Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria to use his power of veto to block the election of Rampolla.

The voting was heavily in favor of Rampolla at first, and his lead increased with successive ballots. It was then that Cardinal Puzyna conveyed the Austrian Emperor’s intention to use his veto. Rampolla strongly protested, but the tide turned, and the conclave elected, not Rampolla, but Cardinal Sarto the new Pope, and future Saint Pius X.

From that moment, all through the Pontificate of Saint Pius, Rampolla’s influence was cut off. But, as Adam Weishaupt had declared, “…we will never come out,” history seems to have proven him right. Let the reader be the judge.

The September, 1976, issue of Lectures Francaises [French Readings] published a list of names, along with the corresponding offices held by certain high Church officials, and the dates they were accepted into the Masonic order. This list was published “in the Italian press and by some traditionalist French publications.” Among other high ranking Church officials, the names of the private secretary of Paul VI and his chaplain were included. His Secretary of State, the Secretary for the Congregation of the Eastern Churches, and even the prefect of the Congregation for the Bishops were also included. In all, there were eighteen names listed, many of which were almost household words at the time because of their activities during and after Vatican II.

On February 18, 1984, the Vatican Secretary of State and Italian Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, signed a treaty which took sixteen years to negotiate. “Under the treaty, known as the Concordat, Catholicism would no longer be the state religion in Italy . The treaty acknowledges the rights of members of other religions to practice on an equal footing with Catholics.” 17

“Another tragic provision of the new concordat is the removal of Rome from its official status of ‘Sacred City.’ Among the privileges that designation afforded was the banning of offensive and pornographic books and shows inside the city limits. The floodgates of filth are now open.” 18 The power of the Church has been greatly diminished, and the concordat even “makes Church marriage annulments subject to state confirmations.” 19

Following the signing of the concordat, the Cardinal Secretary of State “declared that the pact was consistent with the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council, particularly those involving religious liberty.” 20

It is interesting to note that Craxi is the Prime Minister of the first socialist government of Italy. Vatican spokesman Rev. Romeo Panciroli said that the negotiations took so long because of frequent changes in Italian government. But an advisor to Craxi, Gennavo Aquaviva, said the socialist government “gave the matter a higher priority than previous Christian governments which had traditional ties to the Church.” 21

Mr. Aquaviva seems to make sense, considering the fact that he represents a system formerly condemned by the Church. What doesn’t seem to make sense is that the Church waited for a socialist government with which to reach such an accord! An accord in which the Church comes out the obvious loser. An accord which permits pornographic materials within the city limits and puts all religions on an “equal footing”!

But when we examine the list published by Lectures Francaises , in 1976, the clouds begin to clear. The Vatican Secretary of State who signed the new concordat is Agostino Cardinal Casaroli. According to the list, he was serving as Secretary for the Public Affairs of the Church in 1976, and he entered Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ on September 28, 1957. Is it any wonder that the new Code of Canon Law at first gave the impression that a Catholic could join a Masonic Society that was not “against” the Church? (As if the naturalistic religion of Masonry in itself is not “against” the Church of Jesus Christ!) All the double talk and deliberate ambiguity forced Pope John Paul to make a clearer statement, namely that no Catholic can join any Masonic sect without committing a mortal sin. Undoubtedly, things are not all harmony and peace behind Vatican walls.

And so, the child is born — religious indifference — Satan’s child — conceived in the womb of the Masonic Enlightenment — delivered by the liberal philosophy of Americanism, in a maternity ward known as Vatican Council II. This is an evil offspring who has brought about a modernized and updated Church with a new liturgy, tailored to avoid ruffling the sensitivities of non-Catholics—a Church with a clergy more interested in being popular than preaching the truth. Mortification, obedience, and contemplation have been replaced by social justice, a utopian search for world peace , and false ecuмenism .

The major error of Masonry, “that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter,” now seems to have been almost totally accepted, and our Popes seem powerless to reverse the trend. Pope Paul VI said as much when he declared: “The smoke of Satan has entered the Church.”

But his victory is a hollow one. He may cripple the Church for a time, but her most effective weapon, one which she has for a time ceased to use, will bring about his ultimate downfall. It is a weapon so powerful that if it were in use, he could never have achieved his present level of success. It is the dogma of the Faith contained in the teaching of the Church from the very beginning; “Outside the Church there is no Salvation.”

When this dogma is once again upheld by Rome, preached from our pulpits, and taught in our schools, Satan will be defeated. The Church will return to the business of salvation; her liturgy and doctrine will again be sound, and Christ will rule where Satan has failed.

Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 A Survey of American Church History , Newman C. Eberhardt, C.M.

2 Leo XIII , Brother William Kiefer, S.M.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Encyclopedia Americana , 1979.

6 A Survey of American Church History , Newman C. Eberhardt, C.M.

7 Ibid.

8 Leo XIII , Brother William Kiefer, S.M.

9 Ibid.

10 Encyclopedia Americana , 1979.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 A Survey of American Church History , Newman C. Eberhardt, C.M.

14 Ibid.

15 The Bible: Catholic Action Edition , 1953.

16 Leo XIII , Brother William Kiefer, S.M.

17 The Way , March 4, 1984

18 TFP News Letter , Vol. IV – No. 3 – 1984.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 The Way , March 4, 1984

SOURCE:

http://catholicism.org/america-catholic.html

When America Was Catholic

by Gary Potter  June 13th, 2005

from After the Boston Heresy Case

There was a time when America was Catholic. That is to say, there was no Christian presence in the vast territory of North America which is now the United States except the Catholic one. Even as late as the beginning of the 19th century three-quarters of the territory — all the land west of the Mississippi — remained Catholic. Before we consider developments which led eventually to the conditions prevailing at the time of Fr. Feeney’s controversey — conditions which virtually dictated that action would be taken against him and which still prevail today — let us recall the Catholic America which earlier was.

The event which today marks in the minds of most Americans the beginning of their history was the landing in 1620 of the so-called Pilgrim Fathers at a place they named Plymouth on the coast of what is now Massachusetts. However, nearly a century before that, in 1528, a Spanish Franciscan priest, Fr. Juan Juarez, was designated Bishop of Florida.

That was but 15 years after Florida was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon on Easter Sunday, 1513, and no more than 36 after Christopher Columbus, sailing under the flag of Catholic Spain, made his first voyage to the New World and planted the cross on its shores. (In Spanish, Easter Sunday was known as Pascua Florida, Flowery Easter, which is how the land discovered and named by Ponce de Leon is still called Florida.)

Bishop Juarez died in his diocese the year of his appointment. If he was killed by Indians, as were many in his party (we do not know how, or exactly when, he died), he would be the first American martyr. However, of the 116 American martyrs whose names over the years have been submitted to Rome for canonization, the title of American protomartyr is bestowed on Fr. Juan de Padilla, another Franciscan. A chaplain attached to the 1541-42 expedition of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado deep into the American heartland, Fr. de Padilla was slain by Indians at a spot in today’s Kansas which is practically the geographical center of the continental U.S.

Three more martyrs: Fr. Luis Cancer, Fr. Diego Tolosa and Hermano Fuentes, all Dominicans. They were murdered by Indians soon after going ashore on the Feast of the Ascension, 1549, near Tampa Bay. The bay had been discovered 10 years before, in 1539, by Hernando de Soto, and was named by him Espiritu Santo, Holy Spirit, because the discovery took place on Pentecost. (From Florida, de Soto would go on to explore lands we now know as Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. At one point his path nearly crossed that of Coronado.)

The Spanish explorations of Florida would lead to the founding, on September 8, 1565, of the first city in what is now the U.S. This was St. Augustine, named that by its founder, Admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles, because he sighted the peninsula on which it stands of the feast day of the great saint.

Accompanying the admiral were 12 Franciscan priests and four Jesuits. They would be followed by an army of missionaries who set out to evangelize Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and later the Carolinas and Virginia, as well as Florida, from their base in St. Augustine.

To speak of an army of missionaries is not to exaggerate. In all, from the end of the 15th century until 1822 Spain sent to America 16,000 missionaries who were members of religious orders. Also active as missionaries were countless diocesan priests and religious who were born in Spanish territories in the Western Hemisphere.

If their work of evangelization was initially blessed, it soon enough suffered because of the incursion of Protestants. The first on the scene were Huguenots to whom it was seldom sufficient to destroy the Catholic settlements they attacked and overran. It was common for them to put to the sword the Catholic missionaries and native converts who fell into their hands.

It was the same story with the English after they began settling coastal areas north of Florida. For instance, in 1704 the English governor of South Carolina, Moore, led a military expedition against Apalachee Mission in Florida. Capturing three Franciscan priests, he executed them along with 800 Catholic Indians. He also forced into slavery another 1,400 Indians who were living at Apalachee.

Nearly a century before then and far to the northwest, in today’s New Mexico, Pedro de Peralta in 1609 founded a city which he named Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis, and which soon became known simply as Holy Faith, Santa Fe. Peralta built on one side of the town’s central plaza, in the manner typical of Spanish capitals, a Governor’s Palace, a long one-story edifice of adobe and log beams. Serving well into this century as the residence of New Mexico’s governors, it still stands.

More important to the work of planting the Faith within our shores and once again typical of Spanish settlements, 11 churches or missions had been built in and around Santa Fe by 1617, and in 1625 there were 43 Churches serving 34,000 Catholic Indians.

The existence in the early 17th century of a thriving center like Santa Fe wants to be known not simply because it predates the arrival at Plymouth in 1620 of the Pilgrims and their first encounter with some Indians. There is also a widespread notion today that America west of the Mississippi, the whole territory that was Spanish and French and therefore Catholic as late as 1800, was a wilderness untouched by civilization until English-speaking Protestants settled in it during the 19th century. The existence of a center like Santa Fe shows the notion to be false.

If the Huguenots and English Protestants impeded the Spanish missionaries’ work of evangelization, it also has to be admitted that these heroes of the Faith were not always as successful in bringing it and its civilizing influence to the native population as they were at Santa Fe.

There was much about Christianity and Christian living that many Indians at first found unacceptable. Thus, five Franciscans were martyred in Georgia in 1597 for trying to introduce monogamy among local Indians.

At Mission Santa Elena in South Carolina, the Jesuit Fr. Juan Rogel found that eight months of religious instruction led to nothing when a council of Indian chiefs objected to renouncing the devil before Baptism. (Many Indians worshipped the spirit of evil. It was to him they offered human sacrifice.)

In all, from Juan de Padilla in Kansas in 1542 to Antonio Diaz de Leon in 1834 in Texas, 80 Spanish missionary priests and brothers were martyred in America. Most of them were Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans. Twenty-one Franciscans died at one time in New Mexico in 1680 . Eight Jesuits were killed at one time in Virginia in 1570 at a site near the Rappahannock River which would be within commuting distance of today’s Washington, D.C.

The French arrived in what is now the United States later than the Spanish, but they, too, helped make most of the country what it first was: Catholic. Numberless existing place names testify to it, and none more gloriously than the “Gateway to the West,” St. Louis, named for France’s great King Louis IX, crusader, friend and patron of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a saint canonized in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII after the Church examined 65 miracles attesting to his sanctity. “A Christian should argue with a blasphemer only by running his sword through his bowels as far as it will go,” King St. Louis once declared. As for Boniface VIII, the pontiff who canonized him, he declared in his Bull Unam Sanctam in 1302: “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 ” Feeneyites” have compiled more than 3,100 quotations from Scripture, the decrees of popes and councils, and the writings of Fathers and Doctors of the Church and hundreds of saints, blesseds and venerabili in support of their position on Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. [see The' Apostolic Digest; ed. Michael Malone.] However, the quote from Unam Sanctam is one of the three they cite most often on account of their solemnity. The other two:

“There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all can be saved.” [Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215]

“The most Holy Roman Catholic 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 unity of the Catholic Church.” [Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441].)

The city named for St. Louis was founded fairly late, but before there was a United States. It was in 1764. By then, French explorers and missionaries had been active in and around today’s U.S. for more than two centuries, the first being the Italian-born mariner Giovanni Verrazano. In the service of France’s King Francois I, he became in 1524 the first European to enter New York Harbor. During that voyage he explored most of the East Coast from the Carolinas to Newfoundland.

The list of French who brought the Faith and European Catholic civilization to these shores is long. It includes Marquette, Cartier, Champlain, LaSalle (who opened Illinois to French settlement), the brothers Lemoyne (one of whom founded New Orleans in 1718), and others. None matter more than the eight canonized by the church in 1930 as the Martyrs of North America. They are Sts. Rene’ Goupil, Jean Lalande, Isaac Jogues, Antony Daniel, Jean de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Cornier and Noel Chabanel, listed here according to the chronology of their martyrdom from 1642 to 1649.

We need to understand what it was that motivated these men and their Spanish brothers in the Faith. Why were these men willing to die as they did? ( In all cases it was horribly.) The answer is very relevant to our inquiry into the Boston Heresy case. That is, if Fr. Feeney was never called upon to give his life (thanks, perhaps, to the mounted police who surrounded him on Boston Commons), why was he ready to sacrifice his brilliant career and reputation as “an American Chesterton”?

In reference to the canonized North American Martyrs, Coulson’s biographical dictionary, The Saints, tells us that Fr. Charles Garnier, born to considerable wealth in Paris, “would walk thirty or forty miles in the Summer heat over enemy country just to baptize a dying Indian.” “Just” to baptize him?

Did Fr. Garnier not believe that “baptism of desire” would be sufficient for the Indian? Sufficient to what?

The answer is suggested by Fr. Garnier’s Jesuit superior, Fr. Paul LeJeune (all of the canonized Martyrs of North America are Jesuits). Coulson tells us that in his missionary travels, Fr. LeJeune “tasted the four worst aspects of Indian life: cold, heat, smoke and dogs. Of these he found smoke by far the worst. It filled the hut in which men, women and dogs slept together around the fire, and prolonged exposure to it usually brought blindness in the end, a fact which caused LeJeune to remark: ‘Unhappy infidels who spend their lives in smoke, and their eternity in flames.’”

Taking Fr. LeJeune’s words on their face, the canonized North American Martyrs (like their uncanonized but heroic Spanish brethren) were ready to undergo all they did in order to save as many Indians as they could from eternal fire. They paid dearly for their charity. How dearly? Here is some of the account we have of the martyrdom of Fr. Jean de Brebeuf. (It is provided by another Jesuit missionary, Fr. Christophe Regnant. We shall begin by summarizing him, and then go to direct quotation.)

Taken captive by Iroquois, Fr. de Brebeuf was stripped naked and tied to a post. He was beaten with clubs. His fingernails were then torn out. In a mockery of Baptism, a cauldron of boiling water was poured over him, There followed a string of hatchets heated by fire to red-hot and which was strung around his neck. Next, a belt of pitch was tied around his waist and set afire. The Indians then cut out his tongue. After that they began to flay him, which is to say cut and strip the skin off his body.

They still were not done. Says Fr. Regnant: “Those butchers, seeing that the good father began to grow weak, made him sit down on the ground, and one of them, taking a knife, cut off the skin covering his skull. Another one, seeing that the good father would soon die, made an opening in the upper part of his chest, and tore out his heart, which he roasted and ate. Others came to drink his blood, still warm, which they drank with both hands.”

Centuries later, in 1991, a feature film entitled Blackrobe would be made about the early encounters of French missionaries with American Indians. Not nearly as politically correct as another film of the day, Dances With Wolves — besides the savagery shown the missionaries, it realistically depicted Indian cruelty to other Indians — the movie did poorly at the box office. Besides its political incorrectness, the chief reason for the picture’s poor acceptance was doubtless accurately fingered by the New York Times’ senior religion writer, Peter Steinfels, in a review of the film. A contemporary audience, Steinfels said, simply could not understand the missionaries’ willingness to sacrifice themselves. The missionaries looked misguided or positively idiotic to such an audience. It was not necessary for Steinfels to say this was because the audience would consist mainly of unbelievers, or at least of persons who do not believe as did the North American Martyrs — and all other Catholics once upon a time, it should be added.

Here is a piece of writing from the pen of another Jesuit missionary and canonized saint, Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit Apostle to the Indies who lived (1506- 1552) a century before the North American Martyrs: “Before their Baptism, certain Japanese were greatly troubled by a hateful and annoying scruple: that God did not appear merciful and good because He had never made Himself known to the Japanese people before, especially if it was true that those who had not worshipped God were doomed to everlasting punishment in Hell. One of the things which torments them most is that we teach that the prison of Hell is irrevocably shut, so that there is no escape from it. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, their parents, and relatives, and they often show their grief by tears. So they ask us if there is any way to free them by prayer from the eternal misery. And I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none.”

So wrote St. Francis Xavier in the 16th century. But in the 20th, another Jesuit, James Brodrick, author of a biography of the saint published in 1952, could say of the Apostle to the Indies that “it is impossible not to feel a little sorry for the Brahmans whom Francis trounced so mercilessly [in a letter to Rome]. For one thing, it was their country, not his, and the religion which they professed and served had a title to some respect from a foreigner, if only by reason of its venerable antiquity, so much more impressive even than that of the Holy Catholic Church. Besides, it has a metaphysic, a philosophy of being, as profound in its own way as any of which the Western world can boast, but of that St. Francis was completely ignorant. He does not seem even to have heard of such deep-rooted and cherished doctrines as those of karma, maya, bhakti and yoga….Of course, St. Francis was not alone or singular in the hastiness and superficiality of his views. They were shared by all Western men of his time, and we too would have shared them had we been alive then, so there is no particular reason why we should imagine ourselves to be superior.”

No, there certainly is not, one is inclined to respond. In fact, how many “Western men” today can be regarded as even equal to Francis Xavier and the countless other missionaries who took seriously Christ’s last commandment to His followers, to make disciples of all the nations? The missionaries would include, first of all, the very Apostles who heard the commandment directly and set out to convert the lands of the Roman Empire, but also those who sought to make America Catholic beginning virtually as soon as Catholics discovered her. If these missionaries are today incomprehensible to “Western men,” as Blackrobe was to its audience, the incomprehension is rooted in unbelief. “Western men,” which is to speak of men who used to be Christian, do not believe in the same things as did Francis Xavier and the North American Martyrs, or they do not believe in anything at all. Remaining Catholics among the “Western men” are apt to be of the “cafeteria”-type. They pick and choose which of the Church’s teachings they will believe, including extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, and then feel “free” to decide whether or not they will live according to them. They may do so, they contend, because every man enjoys “freedom of conscience.” Every American knows that.

It was precisely such incomprehension and unbelief which Fr. Feeney foresaw if the leaders of the Church in the U.S. continued on the course they were following a half-century ago. He also understood it was a course to which the U.S. hierarchy had bound itself earlier. Did he additionally see that the heresy of Americanism with its view of liberal democracy as a model for the Church would spread far beyond the frontiers of the country to influence the life of the Church Universal? He was in decline during most of the years following Vatican II and until his death in 1978, and his sense of Americanism’s triumph therefore may not have been very sharp. Besides, he might not have wanted to believe in the development, even if he foresaw it. After all, like Fr. de Brebeuf he had sacrificed himself in the conviction that the Church is the Church and outside her there is no salvation. To give them their due, most of the original Americanists probably shared his conviction. They simply held that in a Protestant nation the teaching extra Ecclesiam nulla salus was not to be taught. Somehow they failed to understand that if it were not taught, one day it would not be believed.

*****

Who were the Americanists? What were they about? To answer these questions now is to fast-forward our account of the devolution of Catholic America into the officially pluralistic and secular United States of the late 20th century, but without doing it at this juncture it will be impossible to understand how there arose the circuмstances which eventually prevailed, were prevailing when the controversy surrounding Fr. Feeney was at its height, and which prevail today.

Americanism was condemned as a heresy by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 in an Apostolic Letter, Testem Benevolentiae. The docuмent was addressed to Baltimore Archbishop James Cardinal Gibbons, Primate of the United States. Himself an Americanist, Gibbons tried to block the letter. At the last minute he even sent a cable to Rome, beseeching Pope Leo not to dispatch it. However, the cardinal’s cable was received at the Apostolic Palace after Testem Benevolentiae was shipbound for transport to the U.S.

(Interestingly enough, no Archbishop of Baltimore has been canonically invested with the title of primate since Gibbons. The most recent one before today’s incuмbent was installed, William Borders, was not even made a Cardinal.)

In his letter, Pope Leo says that Americanism can be identified by certain “doctrines” (his word) which it promotes. They may be summarized: Christian perfection can be attained without external spiritual guidance; natural virtues are superior to supernatural ones and should be extolled over them: even among natural virtues, the cultivation of “active” ones (doing good works), as compared to “passive” ones (praying or contemplating, for instance), is more suitable to modern times; religious vows are out of joint with these times because they limit human liberty; traditional methods of winning non-Catholics to the Church should be abandoned for new ones.

Of these “doctrines,” the first and last interest us the most for purposes of tracing the historical background against which the drama of the so-called Boston Heresy Case would eventually play out. The first, that Christian perfection can be attained without external spiritual guidance, can lead to the view when developed far enough that the Church herself is not necessary for salvation. As for the last “doctrine,” it had always been the way of the Church to proclaim her truths “from the housetops” (Matthew, 10:27). That was so from the days when St. Paul preached in the Athenian agora. It was still so with the North American Martyrs and St. Francis Xavier in India and Japan. The Americanists-Bishops John J. Keene and Denis J. O’Connell, Archbishop John Ireland and Cardinal Gibbons were among the leading ones-believed it should be otherwise.

They saw that the evangelization of a Protestant nation suspicious of “undemocratic” Catholicism and “Popish plots” against separation of Church and state was a difficult problem. They proposed the “Americanization” of the Church as the solution. That would entail leaving untaught teachings which truly were undemocratic. Among them would be the teaching that membership in a particular religious body, theirs, was necessary for salvation. No democrat believing in the principle of equality — equality of beliefs as well as of men — would want to hear that.

Leo knew exactly what Americanism entailed. It is why he wrote that all of the “doctrines” summarized above were based on a single “First Principle”: “That in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to [the Pope is being ironic] our advanced civilization, and, relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern popular theories and methods.” The Pope then allowed himself to express the confidence that “the Bishops of America would be the first to repudiate and condemn” the First Principle. Otherwise, there would be raised “the suspicion that there are some among you who conceive and desire a Church in America different from that which is in the rest of the world.”

Now, it needs to be known that the formal heresy of Americanism did not first arise in America. Its true home was France. However, it could not take root in that country in the late 19th century. It was only in America that it could possibly find the right soil for taking root at that time, and Leo knew very well what it could one day mean for the Church Universal if it did anywhere. Equally well, he understood that among the U.S. bishops were men who did desire “a Church in America different from that which is in the rest of the world” and who believed the one in the rest of the world should be as theirs.

One such has already been identified — Denis J. O’Connell. In 1898, the year the U.S. went to war against Spain ostensibly over Cuba, he was rector of the North American College in Rome. As such he was the man in charge of the formation of young clerics selected for training in the Eternal City in order for them to play leading future roles in the U.S. Church. Here he is writing from Rome to his good friend and fellow-Americanist, Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul, in May of that year:

“For me this [the Spanish-American War] is not simply a question of Cuba. If it were, it were no question or a poor question. Then let the ‘greasers’ eat one another up and save the lives of our dear boys. But for me it is a question of much more moment:-it is the question of two civilizations. It is the question of all that is old & vile & mean & rotten & cruel & false in Europe against all this [sic] is free & noble & open & true & humane in America. When Spain is swept of [sic] the seas much of the meanness & narrowness of old Europe goes with it to be replaced by the freedom and openness of America. This is God’s way of developing the world. And all continental Europe feels the war is against itself, and that is why they are all against us, and Rome more than all because when the prestige of Spain & Italy will have passed away and when the pivot of the world’s political action will no longer be confined within the limits oft the continent; then the nonsense of trying to govern the universal church from a purely European standpoint — and according to exclusively Spanish and Italian methods, will be glaringly evident even to a child. ‘Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree.”‘

O’Connell continued: “Let the wealth of Convents & Communities in Cuba & the Philippines go; it did nothing for the advancement of religion.”

There is still another, quite amazing passage of this letter which asks for citation: “Again it seems to me that above all nations, moving them on along the path of civilization to better, higher, happier modes of existence is the constant action of a tender divine Providence, and that the convergent action of all great powers is towards that common & destined end: to more brotherhood, to more kindness, to more mutual respect for every man, to more practical and living recognition of the rule of God. At one time one nation in the world now another, took the lead, but now it seems to me that the old governments of Europe will lead no more and that neither Italy, nor Spain will ever furnish the principles of the civilization of the future. Now God passes the banner to the hands of America, to bear it:-in the cause of humanity and it is your office to make its destiny known to America and become its grand chaplain. Over all America there is certainly a duty higher than the interest of the individual states — even of the national government. The duty to humanity is certainly a real duty, and America cannot certainly with honor, or fortune, evade its great share in it. Go to America and say, thus saith the Lord! Then you will live in history as God’s Apostle in modern times to Church & to Society. Hence I am a partisan of the Anglo-American alliance, together they are invincible and they will impose a new civilization [emphasis added].”

Let us for a moment (but only a moment) abstract from the letter’s obvious racism and voiced contempt for religious in convents and monasteries (they would be guilty of practicing “passive” virtues). O’Connell’s letter is docuмentary proof that leading Americanists really did want “a Church in America different from that which is”-or then was-”in the rest of the world.” Indeed, it shows they wanted a different Church Universal, one annealed to “the cause of humanity,” not the cause of Jesus Christ (who is never mentioned).

It was said a few lines ago that we would soon return to the racism of Bishop O’Connell’s letter, the note of Anglo-American superiority he struck, and we shall. Right now, there asks to be answered the question, why might the heresy of Americanism take root in America but not in France where it arose-and take root so deeply it would become known as Americanism? The answer is simple.

The heresy essentially represented an effort to accommodate the Revolution, the one that began with the Protestant Revolt commonly called the Reformation, which erupted politically in France in 1789, subverted most of Spain’s empire in the Americas at the beginning of the 19th century, erupted again in 1848 in France and elsewhere in Europe, then in 1917 in Russia, and the spirit of which has held sway almost everywhere in ex-Christendom since 1945. This Revolution amounts to a revolt of man against God and it shows itself politically in the notion that society should be governed according to “the will of the people” instead of God’s. But in France in the late 19th century there was an intense Catholic feeling, one so intense that monarchists for a time were the majority in the French parliament. It was this feeling that led to the construction on Montmartre, approved by the parliament as a public utility, of the spectacular Basilica of the Sacred Heart (the Sacre Coeur) in expiation for France’s revolutionary sins.

In contrast to France, the U.S. was the nation where “the will of the people” governed as nowhere else in the world at that time, and given fallen human nature,”the people,” if left uninstructed (and to speak in terms of the “doctrines” condemned by Pope Leo), will never readily concede the need for authoritative external direction for anything; will not even acknowledge supernatural virtues; will not imagine, if only due to sentimentalism, that anything could be more important than doing good; and will (at best) turn a deaf ear to truth. (At worst-we have already seen it – the bearer of truth may have to suffer martyrdom, if only a “dry” one.) As for the racism of Bishop O’Connell’s letter, it was doubtless more rooted in a cultural attitude than in actual belief in the superiority of one set of genes over another. (”Greasers” were seen as wont to “waste” time sitting in cafes — or praying in monasteries; things were run more “efficiently” in North America than in Latin Amcrica; Latins were not as democratic in their institutions; and so on.) Margaret Sanger worshipped Anglo genes, but the Church has never proposed the worship of anything or anyone except God, at least not until quite recent times when the spirit of the Revolution finally so infected her that most clerics began openly to suggest that serving creatures (like the “poor and oppressed”) is more important than serving the Creator (exactly as if the Church really were dedicated to “the cause of humanity” instead of the cause of Jesus Christ).

In any event, it was the arrival on these shores of English-speakers, especially including Catholics among them, which began to undo the Catholic America founded by the Spanish and French. It was natural for Protestant Anglos to want to undo it, but more important to what transpired was the attitude of the Catholics among the new arrivals. They did not resist the Protestant enterprise. Search the history books as you will, you can find no instance of an early-arriving English-speaking Catholic ever saying more than that Catholics simply wanted their Church in this country to be equal to other religious bodies.

The Carroll family, the first Catholic family to enjoy real prominence in the United States, are emblematic of all the Catholics in their day and ever since who were and have been American before anything else, and to such a degree that no one has ever spoken of Catholic Americans, but always of American Catholics.

Charles Carroll (of Carrollton), schooled by Jesuits in Maryland and Flanders, would be the wealthiest man in the colonies when he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. We are told by the old Catholic Encyclopedia (the edition of 1909): “As a democrat he opposed all distinctions and titles.” He was also a champion of centralized government, that deadliest of enemies to true political freedom. On the personal level, he had seven children, four of whom died in their youth. Those who lived and married did so outside the Church.

John Carroll was the cousin of Charles and, like him, was Jesuit-trained. But John became a Jesuit, being ordained at Liege at the age of 34. That was in 1769, by which time the Society was no longer what it had been when it produced the North American Martyrs. Indeed, four years later Pope Clement XIV published his Bull dissolving the order. History best knows John Carroll, of course, as the first bishop named in the U.S., his see being that of Baltimore (which is what makes it the primatial one in the U.S.).

The old Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that although he accepted his office from Rome, he “hoped that some method of appointing Church authorities be adopted by Rome that would not make it appear as if they were receiving their appointment from a foreign power.” That is a delicate way of saying John Carroll advocated the popular election of bishops.

It was not all he advocated. Again we turn to the old Catholic Encyclopedia. “Doubtless to him, in part,” it says, “is due the provision in Article Sixth, Section 3, of the Constitution, which declares that ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,’ and also the first amendment that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”‘

Helpful also in erecting the famous wall of separation between Church and state in the U.S, would have been John Carroll’s brother Daniel, one of the two Catholics present in Philadelphia in 1789 as framers of the Constitution. Daniel also owned the land, which he gifted to the United States, on which the U.S. Capitol was erected. (The ceremonies for the laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone, presided over by George Washington in the apron he wore as Grand Master of a lodge in Alexandria, Virginia, were Masonic.)

Such was America’s first eminent Catholic family. In light of the lead they gave, there should be no surprise that when in a few decades the United States engaged in its first foreign war, the one it waged against Mexico in 1846, no important Catholic voice was raised against the aggression. That was even though the proximate cause of the U.S. invasion of Mexico was a law enacted by the Mexicans which required that U.S. citizens settling in Texas (then a state of Mexico) should be Catholic or convert to the Faith.

( If no important Catholic voice was raised against the war, simple Irish immigrants sent to Mexico in the U.S. Army quickly perceived the anti-Catholic nature of “the Crusade,” as it was called in the U.S. They defected to Mexico and formed the Brigada de San Patricio, St. Patrick’s Brigade. Also, Abraham Lincoln, a man who is not known to have joined any church and who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846, was the only member of that body to speak out against the war. There is a statue of him in Mexico City on account of it.)

It is an aside but illustrative of how far America got away from her Catholic origins that from the seizure of half of Mexico’s territory (Texas, California, Colorado, all of today’s Southwest) in the war of 1846, to the “liberation” of Spain’s last important colonies in 1898, to the dissolution of the Catholic Habsburg Empire demanded by Woodrow Wilson as a condition for peace in World War I, to the U.S.-approved overthrow and murder of President Diem in Vietnam, the Catholic interest has suffered in every foreign war fought by the U.S. That is with the arguable exception of the “police action” in Korea, but conducted as it was under the auspices of the United Nations, that fighting can be seen as a precursor to more recent undertakings in the Persian Gulf, Somalia and elsewhere in defense of the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr-which order is certainly inimical to the Christian one.

As for World War II, the atom-bombing of the principal center of Catholicism in Japan, Nagasaki, was celebrated by most Americans, but at St. Benedict Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the effect was traumatic, as we shall see. However, to speak already of the years of World War II really is to get us far ahead of ourselves.

*****

The point has here been made that as late as 1800 all of today’s U.S.which lay west of the Mississippi was still Catholic. That is because it was all Spanish. It should be added that east of the river, all of today’s Florida and the coasts of today’s states of Alabama and Mississippi also belonged to Spain. To give some sense of what Spain was doing to evangelize her lands, it is sufficient to know that in Florida alone there had been established 87 Spanish missions, with 17 Spanish forts to defend them.

A large section of Spain’s North American lands, known as the Louisiana Territory and extending from the Mississippi River on the east to the Sabine River in the west and to the Missouri in the north, had been ceded to Spain by France in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. (The entire Mississippi Valley-most of today’s Midwest-was claimed by France after La Salle explored the length of the “Father of Waters” in 1682.) The Louisiana Territory reverted to France after Napoleon’s conquest of Spain soon after the turn of the 19th century. Subsequently, Napoleon literally sold everything claimed by France, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border, to the U.S. The latter still consisted of nothing but the former British colonies hugging the eastern seaboard, but already, merely 25 years after George Washington’s installation as the first president,those states felt the westwards expansionist urge whose eventual fulfillment, our textbooks tell us, was the realization of “Manifest Destiny.” Napoleon’s sale of the territory is what we know as the Louisiana Purchase.

After it, much of the territory west of the Mississippi still belonged to Spain, and then to Mexico after that nation declared independence from Spain in 1821 . We have already seen how this remaining Catholic territory came to be governed by the U.S. as a consequence of the war against Mexico begun in 1846. (Florida was ceded by Spain to the U.S. in 1819, by which time there had grown up in addition to St. Augustine cities which are now known as Jacksonville, Miami, Gainesville, Tampa, Tallahassee and Pensacola.)

From a Catholic point of view, the importance of the takeover by the predominately Anglo, English-speaking Protestant U.S. of the lands west of the Mississippi cannot be exaggerated. As Bishop David Arias, Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar for Hispanic Concerns of the Archdiocese of Newark, explains in his 1992 book, Spanish Roots of America (he writes in the present tense): “The taking of this vast region by the United States is not like coming into an uncivilized land, but into a territory that is explored and unified. It is a territory with a culture deeply rooted in its people and cities. Also, this is a territory with mining, agriculture, cattle raising, and economy in progress. It is a territory with its Indian population, to a large extent, settled, civilized, and Christianized from a slow but steady labor of Spain for over three hundred years.” In a word, it was not wilderness. It was Catholic.

Bishop Arias, still writing in the present tense, also notes the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo by which Mexico lost all her territories north of the Rio Grande. “The Treaty includes three conditions for its validity: respect for the property of its present owners; keeping of the Spanish language, culture and customs of its people; and freedom to practice their Catholic faith. None of these conditions will be respected in the years to follow.”

By way of illustrating the difficulties faced by Catholics in the former Spanish and Mexican lands after their takeover by the U.S., Bishop Arias points out that within a year of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, there were but 12 priests in the entire State of Texas to serve 20,000 Catholics.

The Indians of whom he speaks-”settled, civilized, and Christianized to a large extent”-especially suffered as a consequence of the takeover. Great historians have acknowledged this, historians whose works, alas, were not the ones read at Harvard or the other exclusive eastern seaboard universities which for too long served as models for all so-called higher education in the U.S. In those schools, books like The California and the Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman, were the preferred texts. What they provided-to generations of the sons of the nation’s governing elite-was the notion of an unexplored Western wilderness finally being civilized thanks to its settlement by English-speaking Protestants.

One of the neglected historians was Herbert Eugene Bolton, author of numerous scholarly volumes on Spain’s civilizing mission in the Western Hempsphere in general and North America in particular (History of the Americas; Coronado, Knight of Pueblos and Plains, etc.). It looked for a time during the 1960s that Bolton would finally enjoy the recognition he deserved, but the interest in him faded. It is even less likely that his work will be revived in these days of political correctness. “The conquistadores who threaded their way through the American wilderness,” he wrote of the original explorers of the continent, “were armored knights upon armored horses; proud, stern, hardy, and courageous; men of punctilious honor, loyal to the king and to Mother Church, humble only before the symbols of their Faith.” Of another time, the years after the U.S. began to expand into the formerly Catholic West, Bolton said: “We must admit that the accomplishments of Spain remained a force which made for the preservation of the Indians as opposed to their destruction so characteristic of the Anglo-American frontier.”

Of course that was not about to be admitted, no more by Americanist bishops like Denis O’Connell than by Harvard professors.

Even before the Anglo-American frontier was pushed westward, the ideology driving the push found expression in the Monroe Doctrine, avowedly designed to exclude European influence from the Americas — and by European was meant Catholic. Theodore Roosevelt was explicit about that at the turn of this century after a visit to Argentina. “While these countries remain Catholic,” he said, “we will not be able to dominate them.” That European meant Catholic was again evident in 1982 when the U.S., in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, actually assisted England in its war against Argentina in the Malvinas Islands (called the Falklands by England).

At no time did the Catholic bishops in the U.S. or any Catholic laymen of note raise their voice in protest against the clear anti-Catholic policy of the U.S., much less try to stand athwart developments stemming from the policy. Either to protest or act, at least in a Catholic way, would necessarily have entailed the championship of undiluted Catholic truths. Of course a defense of the Church and her material interests within the settled U.S. was made, but it was made in an American way, on the basis of religious freedom, equality of beliefs, and so on. John Carroll, as we have seen, led in this way.

By mid-19th-century, so anxious were Catholics in the U.S. to show themselves as Americans before they were Catholic that even the greatest apologist the Faith has ever produced in this country, Orestes Brownson, felt obliged three years before his death to write: “I willingly admit that I made many mistakes, but I regard as the greatest of all the mistakes into which I fell…that of holding back the stronger points of the Catholic faith…of laboring to present Catholicity in a form as little repulsive to my non-Catholic countrymen as possible; and of insisting on only the minimum of Catholicity.”

Having admitted his mistake to himself, Brownson ended his life (he died in 1876) as a vocal defender of the teaching Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Doubtless it helps explain why his name and work were let fall into obscurity after his death. (It took the archliberal Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., of all men, to revive the memory of Brownson. It was with his first book, published in 1939, Orestes Brownson; A Pilgrim’s Progress.) There can certainly be no doubt as regards the reason for the silencing of the Redemptorist priest Michael Mueller, another 19th-century figure. He was the Bishop Sheen of his day, but without television. His medium was books, and his principal theme was extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. The books were always best sellers for that era. Fr. Mueller’s publishers could not print them fast enough. Yet, he was silenced. Today his name is hardly known. The present writer did not know it until I started the research for this book.

*****

If there could ever have been a time when U.S. Catholicism might develop in other than an Americanist direction, it was probably precluded from doing so by a single factor: From the days of the signing of the Declaration of Independence until very recently, the majority of the Republic’s Catholics have been Irish or of Irish extraction. Well before the end of the 19th century it was the same with the bishops. Even today, with the majority of the Church in the U.S. likely to become Hispanic in the near future, the Irish influence remains predominant. More bishops are still of Irish extraction than any other, for instance.

For a time in the 19th century and early in this one, German-speaking Catholics centered in the northern Midwest offered some challenge to the Irish influence, but the Germans generally fell into silence in the face of the widespread anti-German feeling that seized the U.S. during World War I.

Also in the 19th century there were numerous Spanish and French bishops in the U.S., but their mere arrival within these shores seemed to change them. An example would be the famous Archbishop Lamy of Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Frenchman and the model for Willa Cather’s justly celebrated novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Archbishop Lamy, like the majority of the bishops from the U.S., was an inopportunist at Vatican I.

(The record of Vatican Council I shows that Ven. Pope Pius IX and the majority of the bishops at the council-they were continental Europeans-intended the dogmatic definition of papal infallibility precisely in order to strengthen the papacy’s ability to defend Catholic truths against the spread of the democratic conception of liberty of ideas and freedom of conscience. Besides the Americans opposed to the definition, another inopportunist was the Englishman, Henry Cardinal Newman.)

In terms of the U.S. Church developing in an Americanist direction and thus becoming one virtually certain to condemn Fr. Michael Mueller in the 19th century and Fr. Leonard Feeney in the 20th, what is the significance of the Irish influence? To answer in as few words as possible, Irish Catholicism by the time it reached America was deeply imbued by the spirit of Jansenism. No one will dispute this. It is too widely recognized. Had a Catholic gone to confession as recently as 30 years ago in Dublin or Boston or New York, and then confessed the same sins in Naples or Marseilles or Buenos Aires, he would have had sharply different reactions from the priests. Your Irish-American priest in Boston would have been outraged, and rightly so, at the confession of a sɛҳuąƖ transgression. The priest in Naples would also be disturbed by that, but it would probably draw his first attention if you additionally confessed, say, purposely harming another man’s reputation.

There would have been no question of the priests practicing different religions. Had you asked the one in Boston and then the one in Naples to draw up a list of ten grave sins, they could well end by listing the same ones, but it would have been in a different order. Generally speaking, the Irishman would put sins of the flesh at the top.

That there was a Jansenist spirit in the Irish Church has significance in the story of the so-called Boston Heresy Case because most of the great Irish immigration into the U.S. that followed the Potato Famine and during subsequent years was via the Northeast, and for a long time stopped there. It made Boston, as it did New York City, a great Catholic center. Unfortunately, New England after Plymouth Rock had become the heartland in America of Protestant Puritanism. This native Puritanism simply reinforced the Jansenist tendencies of the Irish immigrants and their clergy The tendencies reinforced, they made the Irish-American Church — that is essentially what the Church in the U.S. became — a very peculiar institution. No doubt the Church everywhere and in every age should be anxious for the sɛҳuąƖ morals of her sons and daughters, but the concern of the Irish-American Church could be excessive. There are women living today who can remember being instructed by parochial-school sisters not to look at the toes of their patent leather shoes. At home they were made to wear a slip when they bathed.

Though it certainly did not shape his outlook as it would that of countless others, even Leonard Feeney was not untouched by the Jansenism of the Irish-American Church. Some of his poetry could be quite sensual. (One thinks, for example, of a poem he wrote about the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria.) On the other hand, during the years he spent in New York City as a critic for America magazine, he never went to the theater, not even to the most serious of plays, for fear of exposing himself to impurity.

But the effect of the Irish-American Church on her individual members is not our real concern here. Rather, the larger point that wants to be made is that a predominantly French or German or Italian immigrant Church would have been immunized against the native Puritanism of New England. The predominantly Irish one was not. However, the native Puritanism did not simply make her even more Jansenist than she was at home. It made her, from the beginning, American — i.e., different from what then was the Church in the rest of the world and especially in her heartland, continental Europe. The real question is, how could a Church which was American from the beginning ever have been disposed to convert America? The answer is that she never was.

The tragedy is that non-Catholics did not believe the Church in the U.S. was not disposed to convert the nation. They looked at the Church in Europe and Latin America and supposed the one at home was the same. Seeing that this is what they believed, Catholics in America, and especially the Catholic clergy, became all the more determined to prove they were as American as everybody else. They proved it by becoming exactly that, even though it meant ignoring our Lord’s last Commandment to his followers, the one we have already recalled: to make disciples of all the nations. In time, they would feel driven to go beyond ignoring Christ’s injunction. They would positively deny that the Church had a mission to convert the nation, and to deny also the reason for converting anyone: that outside the Church there is no salvation. In other words, they began by asserting that the Church sought no special position for herself in the U.S., she simply wished to be equal with other “denominations,” and hence Bishop Carroll’s instigation of the First Amendment. They ended by teaching that there is nothing special about the Church, period. You could get to Heaven without her. If pressed, some might allow that it was “better” to be Catholic, as it is “better” to ride first-class on an airplane. But you’ll still arrive at the destination if you’re seated in coach.

With that teaching is how they ended, it was said a moment ago. However, it was not quite the end. In fact, the U.S. bishops took the teaching with them to Rome in 1962, and the result was Vatican II’s promulgation of the Declaration on Religious Liberty. That particular Americanist triumph is another story, however, one already told by Michael Davies as here earlier noted.

*****

We have said that the Church in the U.S. went from ignoring Christ’s commandment to make all nations Catholic to denying positively that the Church had such a mission, and that she was driven to do so in order to prove the sincerity of her Americanism. It remained that many persisted in not believing in her sincerity.

One such was writer Paul Blanshard. Wrong as he proved to be, this name is not much remembered today, but in 1949 it was a household one. Blanshard was a lawyer by training who became a very successful professional anti-Catholic. In 1949, Beacon Press, a Boston publishing firm run by Unitarians and with national reach and respectability, brought out one of his books, American Freedom and Catholic Power. To describe the book as merely a best-seller would be seriously to misrepresent it. The thing in fact went through no fewer than 26 printings in its first edition. In a word, its sales were phenomenal.

We want briefly to look at Blanshard’s book, bearing in mind that the year it came out, 1949, was also when the controversy surrounding Fr. Feeney and St. Benedict Center was at its height.

Blanshard posited a “struggle between American democracy and the Catholic hierarchy.” That there was no such struggle is right now beyond the point. Catholics, Blanshard said, were “outbreeding non-Catholic elements in our population,” and once they became the majority in threefourths of the states, there would be “Catholic control of the United States.” Once this “control” existed, went the line, there would be passed “three comprehensive amendments to the United States Constitution.” The first Blanshard styled as the “Christian Commonwealth Amendment.” Its first provision, as imagined by the best-selling writer: “The United States is a Catholic Republic, and the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion is the sole religion of the nation.” Another provision: “The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.” That, of course, was the amendment in part contrived by Bishop Carroll in the first place.

Blanshard’s second imagined amendment was the “Christian education Amendment.” Two of its projected provisions, which the writer said “could be expected with confidence” ; ” 1 . American religious education belongs pre-eminently to the Roman Catholic Church, by reason of a double title in the supernatural order, conferred exclusively upon her, by God Himself. 2. The governments of the United States and the states shall encourage and assist the Roman Catholic Church by appropriate measures in the exercise of the Church’s supreme mission as educator.” Finally, Blanshard said there would be a “Christian Family Amendment”. Some of its provisions, as envisioned by the writer:

1. All marriages are indissoluble, and the divorce of all persons is prohibited throughout the territory of the United States, providing that nothing herein shall effect the right of annulment and remarriage in accordance with the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.

2. Direct abortion is murder of the innocent even when performed through motives of misguided pity when the life of a mother is gravely imperiled.

3. Birth control, or any act that deliberately frustrates the natural power to generate life, is a crime.”

Now, cradle Catholics who grew up in the U.S. during the forties and fifties know that Blanshard’s notion of a Catholic threat to American democracy was preposterous. They know that the Catholic hierarchy did not seek a “Catholic Republic”. However, the present writer can testify that non-Catholic Americans often did believe the kind of things Blanshard claimed. It is exactly the kind of stuff I used to hear around the house, growing up in the forties as a Protestant.

To the non-Catholics, Blanshard’s predictions seemed plausible for two reasons. First, Catholics at that time were “outbreeding” the rest of the population. Indeed, had the practice of contraception and then abortion not become as widespread among them as the rest of the population, they would be the majority today. However, more important to Blanshard’s credibility was the fact that he could point to the predominantly Catholic nations of Western Europe and Latin America where at that time divorce, abortion and the sale of birth-control devices were all still illegal. (Of course in 1949 abortion was still illegal in all the states of the [non-Catholic] United States except in cases where the mother’s life was supposedly gravely endangered.) As far as that goes, in two heavily Catholic states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the sale of contraceptive devices over the counter was illegal. What Blanshard chose to ignore was that by 1949, Catholic politicians in the U.S., with no censure from their bishop, were already ignoring Rome’s teachings. for instance, the young John F. Kennedy, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was telling his constituents that he was opposed to the continued prohibition against the over-the-counter sale of contraceptive devices in Massachusetts. Kennedy always enjoyed the support of his family’s close friend, Richard Cardinal Cushing.

Yet, in 1949 there was still one nationally-known cleric, a priest standing in the same line as his heroic Spanish and French predecessors to these shores, who publicly preached that there was no salvation outside the Church and that accordingly for the sake of her citizens’ souls, America should be Catholic. She would become that by converting non-Catholic Americans as well as by “outbreeding” them. Preaching this is exactly what now made the cleric nationally known since he was no longer writing much poetry, but he did not merely preach it. Working out of a storefront operation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was successfully converting hundreds of young men and women, students of Harvard and Radcliffe, including members of some of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful Protestant families.

The assimilation of Catholics in the U.S. as complete social equals is what was wanted by the leaders of the Church in the U.S. Assimilation would not be as easy, it could be made impossible, if families belonging to the nation’s governing elite were antagonized.

The cleric in Cambridge was Rev. Leonard Feeney, S.J. Unless he and his associates were silenced now, in 1949, and a cloak of obscurity cast over the teachings they upheld, it would be impossible to prove once and for all that Blanshard and his ilk were wrong, that the Catholic hierarchy was not at odds with American democracy. Of course, too, if the teachings continued to be proclaimed in America and accepted by very many on account of their proclamation, it would be impossible (at least it would be much more difficult) for the Church elsewhere in the world to be persuaded and to accept that it really was desirable for her to “adapt herself” — we are quoting Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae — to liberal, democratic, pluralistic “advanced civilization.”


Potter audio talks:
http://store.catholicism.org/browse-by-speaker/potter-mr-gary-.html

tapped a strain in Catholicism

Tapped a strain in modernism, he means.  I couldn't read all this bushwa---too sickening.  Neo cons are israelites.

Didn't even know such an ism existed until you brought it up.

QUOD APOSTOLICI MUNERIS (On Socialism)
Pope Leo XIII
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII promulgated on 28 December 1878.
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See.

At the very beginning of Our pontificate, as the nature of Our apostolic office demanded, we hastened to point out in an encyclical letter addressed to you, venerable brethren, the deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibers of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction; at the same time We pointed out also the most effectual remedies by which society might be restored and might escape from the very serious dangers which threaten it. But the evils which We then deplored have so rapidly increased that We are again compelled to address you, as though we heard the voice of the prophet ringing in Our ears: "Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet."1 You understand, venerable brethren, that We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning—the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever.

Surely these are they who, as the sacred Scriptures testify, "Defile the flesh, despise dominion and blaspheme majesty."2 They leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws has been wisely decreed for the health and beauty of life. They refuse obedience to the higher powers, to whom, according to the admonition of the Apostle, every soul ought to be subject, and who derive the right of governing from God; and they proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties. They debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is "the root of all evils which some coveting have erred from the faith,"3 they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one's mode of life. These are the startling theories they utter in their meetings, set forth in their pamphlets, and scatter abroad in a cloud of journals and tracts. Wherefore, the revered majesty and power of kings has won such fierce hatred from their seditious people that disloyal traitors, impatient of all restraint, have more than once within a short period raised their arms in impious attempt against the lives of their own sovereigns.

2. But the boldness of these bad men, which day by day more and more threatens civil society with destruction, and strikes the souls of all with anxiety and fear, finds its cause and origin in those poisonous doctrines which, spread abroad in former times among the people, like evil seed bore in due time such fatal fruit. For you know, venerable brethren, that that most deadly war which from the sixteenth century down has been waged by innovators against the Catholic faith, and which has grown in intensity up to today, had for its object to subvert all revelation, and overthrow the supernatural order, that thus the way might be opened for the discoveries, or rather the hallucinations, of reason alone. This kind of error, which falsely usurps to itself the name of reason, as it lures and whets the natural appetite that is in man of excelling, and gives loose rein to unlawful desires of every kind, has easily penetrated not only the minds of a great multitude of men but to a wide extent civil society, also. Hence, by a new species of impiety, unheard of even among the heathen nations, states have been constituted without any count at all of God or of the order established by him; it has been given out that public authority neither derives its principles, nor its majesty, nor its power of governing from God, but rather from the multitude, which, thinking itself absolved from all divine sanction, bows only to such laws as it shall have made at its own will. The supernatural truths of faith having been assailed and cast out as though hostile to reason, the very Author and Redeemer of the human race has been slowly and little by little banished from the universities, the Lyceums and gymnasia—in a word, from every public institution. In fine, the rewards and punishments of a future and eternal life having been handed over to oblivion, the ardent desire of happiness has been limited to the bounds of the present. Such doctrines as these having been scattered far and wide, so great a license of thought and action having sprung up on all sides, it is no matter for surprise that men of the lowest class, weary of their wretched home or workshop, are eager to attack the homes and fortunes of the rich; it is no matter for surprise that already there exists no sense of security either in public or private life, and that the human race should have advanced to the very verge of final dissolution.

3. But the supreme pastors of the Church, on whom the duty falls of guarding the Lord's flock from the snares of the enemy, have striven in time to ward off the danger and provide for the safety of the faithful. For, as soon as the secret societies began to be formed, in whose bosom the seeds of the errors which we have already mentioned were even then being nourished, the Roman Pontiffs Clement XII and Benedict XIV did not fail to unmask the evil counsels of the sects, and to warn the faithful of the whole globe against the ruin which would be wrought. Later on again, when a licentious sort of liberty was attributed to man by a set of men who gloried in the name of philosophers,4 and a new right, as they call it, against the natural and divine law began to be framed and sanctioned, Pope Pius VI, of happy memory, at once exposed in public docuмents the guile and falsehood of their doctrines, and at the same time foretold with apostolic foresight the ruin into which the people so miserably deceived would be dragged. But, as no adequate precaution was taken to prevent their evil teachings from leading the people more and more astray, and lest they should be allowed to escape in the public statutes of States, Popes Pius VII and Leo XII condemned by anathema the secret sects,5 and again warned society of the danger which threatened them. Finally, all have witnessed with what solemn words and great firmness and constancy of soul our glorious predecessor, Pius IX, of happy memory, both in his allocutions and in his encyclical letters addressed to the bishops of all the world, fought now against the wicked attempts of the sects, now openly by name against the pest of socialism, which was already making headway.

4. But it is to be lamented that those to whom has been committed the guardianship of the public weal, deceived by the wiles of wicked men and terrified by their threats, have looked upon the Church with a suspicious and even hostile eye, not perceiving that the attempts of the sects would be vain if the doctrine of the Catholic Church and the authority of the Roman Pontiffs had always survived, with the honor that belongs to them, among princes and peoples. For, "the church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of truth,"6 hands down those doctrines and precepts whose special object is the safety and peace of society and the uprooting of the evil growth of socialism.

5. For, indeed, although the socialists, stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary, have been accustomed to distort it so as to suit their own purposes, nevertheless so great is the difference between their depraved teachings and the most pure doctrine of Christ that none greater could exist: "for what participation hath justice with injustice or what fellowship hath light with darkness?"7 Their habit, as we have intimated, is always to maintain that nature has made all men equal, and that, therefore, neither honor nor respect is due to majesty, nor obedience to laws, unless, perhaps, to those sanctioned by their own good pleasure. But, on the contrary, in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel, the equality of men consists in this: that all, having inherited the same nature, are called to the same most high dignity of the sons of God, and that, as one and the same end is set before all, each one is to be judged by the same law and will receive punishment or reward according to his deserts. The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature, "from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named."8 But the minds of princes and their subjects are, according to Catholic doctrine and precepts, bound up one with the other in such a manner, by mutual duties and rights, that the thirst for power is restrained and the rational ground of obedience made easy, firm, and noble.

6. Assuredly, the Church wisely inculcates the apostolic precept on the mass of men: "There is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist purchase to themselves damnation." And again she admonishes those "subject by necessity" to be so "not only for wrath but also for conscience' sake," and to render "to all men their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor."9 For, He who created and governs all things has, in His wise providence, appointed that the things which are lowest should attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these again by the highest. Thus, as even in the kingdom of heaven He hath willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some subject to others, and also in the Church has instituted various orders and a diversity of offices, so that all are not apostles or doctors or pastors,10 so also has He appointed that there should be various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights, and power, whereby the State, like the Church, should be one body, consisting of many members, some nobler than others, but all necessary to each other and solicitous for the common good.

7. But that rulers may use the power conceded to them to save and not to destroy, the Church of Christ seasonably warns even princes that the sentence of the Supreme Judge overhangs them, and, adopting the words of divine wisdom, calls upon all in the name of God: "Give ear, you that rule the people, and that please yourselves in multitudes of nations; for power is given you by the Lord, and strength by the Most High, who will examine your works, and search out your thoughts.... For a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule.... For God will not except any man's person, neither will he stand in awe of any man's greatness, for he hath made the little and the great; and he hath equally care of all. But a greater punishment is ready for the more mighty."11 And if at any time it happen that the power of the State is rashly and tyrannically wielded by princes, the teaching of the Catholic church does not allow an ιnѕυrrєcтισn on private authority against them, lest public order be only the more disturbed, and lest society take greater hurt therefrom. And when affairs come to such a pass that there is no other hope of safety, she teaches that relief may be hastened by the merits of Christian patience and by earnest prayers to God. But, if the will of legislators and princes shall have sanctioned or commanded anything repugnant to the divine or natural law, the dignity and duty of the Christian name, as well as the judgment of the Apostle, urge that "God is to be obeyed rather than man."12

8. Even family life itself, which is the cornerstone of all society and government, necessarily feels and experiences the salutary power of the Church, which redounds to the right ordering and preservation of every State and kingdom. For you know, venerable brethren, that the foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law, and is completed in the mutual rights and duties of parents and children, masters and servants. You know also that the doctrines of socialism strive almost completely to dissolve this union; since, that stability which is imparted to it by religious wedlock being lost, it follows that the power of the father over his own children, and the duties of the children toward their parents, must be greatly weakened. But the Church, on the contrary, teaches that "marriage, honorable in all,"13 which God himself instituted in the very beginning of the world, and made indissoluble for the propagation and preservation of the human species, has become still more binding and more holy through Christ, who raised it to the dignity of a sacrament, and chose to use it as the figure of His own union with the Church.

Wherefore, as the Apostle has it,14 as Christ is the head of the Church, so is the man the head of the woman; and as the Church is subject to Christ, who embraces her with a most chaste and undying love, so also should wives be subject to their husbands, and be loved by them in turn with a faithful and constant affection. In like manner does the Church temper the use of parental and domestic authority, that it may tend to hold children and servants to their duty, without going beyond bounds. For, according to Catholic teaching, the authority of our heavenly Father and Lord is imparted to parents and masters, whose authority, therefore, not only takes its origin and force from Him, but also borrows its nature and character. Hence, the Apostle exhorts children to "obey their parents in the Lord, and honor their father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise";15 and he admonishes parents: "And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord."16 Again, the apostle enjoins the divine precept on servants and masters, exhorting the former to be "obedient to their lords according to the flesh of Christ . . . with a good will serving, as to the Lord"; and the latter, to "forbear threatenings, knowing that the Lord of all is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with God."17 If only all these matters were faithfully observed according to the divine will by all on whom they are enjoined, most assuredly every family would be a figure of the heavenly home, and the wonderful blessings there begotten would not confine themselves to the households alone, but would scatter their riches abroad through the nations.

9. But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with especial care for public and private tranquillity in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods which are necessary for life and use. For, while the socialists would destroy the "right" of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven. But not the less on this account does our holy Mother not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother's embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments. In fine, she does all she can to relieve and comfort the poor, either by holding up to them the example of Christ, "who being rich became poor for our sake,18 or by reminding them of his own words, wherein he pronounced the poor blessed and bade them hope for the reward of eternal bliss. But who does not see that this is the best method of arranging the old struggle between the rich and poor? For, as the very evidence of facts and events shows, if this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.

10. These things being so, then, venerable brethren, as at the beginning of Our pontificate We, on whom the guidance of the whole Church now lies, pointed out a place of refuge to the peoples and the princes tossed about by the fury of the tempest, so now, moved by the extreme peril that is on them, We again lift up Our voice, and beseech them again and again for their own safety's sake as well as that of their people to welcome and give ear to the Church which has had such wonderful influence on the public prosperity of kingdoms, and to recognize that political and religious affairs are so closely united that what is taken from the spiritual weakens the loyalty of subjects and the majesty of the government. And since they know that the Church of Christ has such power to ward off the plague of socialism as cannot be found in human laws, in the mandates of magistrates, or in the force of armies, let them restore that Church to the condition and liberty in which she may exert her healing force for the benefit of all society.

11. But you, venerable brethren, who know the origin and the drift of these gathering evils, strive with all your force of soul to implant the Catholic teaching deep in the minds of all. Strive that all may have the habit of clinging to God with filial love and revering His divinity from their tenderest years; that they may respect the majesty of princes and of laws; that they may restrain their passions and stand fast by the order which God has established in civil and domestic society. Moreover, labor hard that the children of the Catholic Church neither join nor favor in any way whatsoever this abominable sect; let them show, on the contrary, by noble deeds and right dealing in all things, how well and happily human society would hold together were each member to shine as an example of right doing and of virtue. In fine, as the recruits of socialism are especially sought among artisans and workmen, who, tired, perhaps, of labor, are more easily allured by the hope of riches and the promise of wealth, it is well to encourage societies of artisans and workmen which, constituted under the guardianship of religion, may tend to make all associates contented with their lot and move them to a quiet and peaceful life.

12. Venerable brethren, may He who is the beginning and end of every good work inspire your and Our endeavors. And, indeed, the very thought of these days, in which the anniversary of our Lord's birth is solemnly observed, moves us to hope for speedy help. For the new life which Christ at His birth brought to a world already aging and steeped in the very depths of wickedness He bids us also to hope for, and the peace which He then announced by the angels to men He has promised to us also. For the Lord's "hand is not shortened that he cannot save, neither is his ear heavy that he cannot hear."19 In these most auspicious days, then, faithful of your churches, We earnestly pray the Giver of all good that again "there may appear unto men the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour,"20 who brought us out of the power of our most deadly enemy into the most noble dignity of the sons of God. And that We may the sooner and more fully gain our wish, do you, venerable brethren, join with Us in lifting up your fervent prayers to God and beg the intercession of the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary, and of Joseph her spouse, and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, in whose prayers We have the greatest confidence. And in the meanwhile We impart to you, with the inmost affection of the heart, and to your clergy and faithful people, the apostolic benediction as an augury of the divine gifts.

Given at St. Peter's, in Rome, on the twenty-eighth day of December, 1878, in the first year of Our pontificate.

have not read most of this yet, but:
The Phantom Heresy?

by Aaron J. Massey




          For most people, the word "Americanism" may conjure up both positive and negative images, from economic strength to Vietnam, democracy to crass materialism. At the turn of the century however, many Americans viewed the United States as the shining city on the hill, a blessed nation full of optimism and teeming with opportunity. This is why the idea of an "Americanist" heresy seemed offensive to most Americans and, for that matter, the entire world. All large movements have large prehistories and many seemingly unrelated factors that converge to create the historical zenith and conclusion of the movement. Americanism is no different. The causes of Americanism are rooted in an amalgam of factors including race, nationality, language, ideology, church politics, civil politics, theology, ecclesiology, and simple personality conflicts. A movement with such broad foundations would be impossible to cover within a small research paper. Whole books have been written on the subject. In this paper, the author will attempt to examine the major causes, players, development, condemnation and future ramifications of the Americanist heresy.

          The single largest contributing factor to the development of the Americanist controversy was the mass exodus of European Catholics to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. The original Catholic settlers in America made up only a small percentage of the population. Even in Lord Baltimore's Maryland, they were quickly overshadowed by Protestants looking for religious freedom. However, the potato famines in Ireland and economic and social upheaval in the rest of Europe led to a massive Catholic immigration, taking Catholicism from a small sect in 1830 to the largest denomination in America by 1870.1 These immigrants were almost all in terrible poverty. There first priority was survival in their new home. Before they could be accepted by society, they had to first be to some extent Americanized. Catholics were spread throughout the country with large concentrations in the urban centers of the East, and small, sparse populations in the Middle West and West. The large compact communities of the East were more insulated from the current social forces, including most of the clergy. The Middle West, however, by necessity had to be more open to the social impact of the America around them. These geographic differences would later play a great role in the Bishops they produce: conservatives from the East v. progressives from the Middle West.

          The first problem facing the fledgling Church in America was one of simple economics. The economic panics and depressions of the 1870s and 80s gave rise to the need for labor and trade organizations that the average Catholic laborer needed desperately. The Catholic laborer of the nineteenth century was usually the ditch digger or factory worker who often worked these difficult jobs for much less than their Protestant counterparts. To improve his economic standing and defend his rights as a laborer, the Catholic labor wanted to enjoy the membership privileges that the Protestant he worked along side also enjoyed. At this time, there were practically no Catholic workers associations; as a result, Catholics tended to join organizations with Protestant or no religious affiliation.2 The Catholic leadership saw several dangers in this trend including the weaning of the Catholic away from the faith, the socialistic politics of some of the organizations and the secret oaths and societies which some of the organizations adopted in imitation of the Masonic rites.3 The hierarchy was also divided on the issue of membership in social and civic organization such as temperance unions. The Church had banned membership in such societies in Europe where they were indeed much more of a danger to the Church.4 However, the progressive bishops viewed the societies as social service or insurance organizations which were of little harm in the United States, and thus did not directly discourage membership because of the potential charge of hedonistic drunkenness by Protestants.5 The Germans and conservatives saw the temperance unions as unnecessary because their flocks were not in need of reform.6

          Another major problem was the issue of nationality. Although many different Catholic groups had immigrated to the United States during the past century, by far the largest were the Irish and German Catholics. Germans were more resistant to Americanization than the Irish for several reasons. Obviously, the German language barrier was much higher than that of the Irish. Also, the Germans were not as economically desperate as the Irish, and, therefore, didn't need Americanized as urgently as did the Irish.7 This was the basic economic difference between the masses. However, the battle over Americanism was going to be fought by the bishops, and three major events forced the basic choosing of sides by the Germans. First, the German clergy had complained to Rome about the inferior status afforded to German parishes in large cities where there would be German-language sermons preached. The Germans also wanted parishioners assigned to the church of their nationality and German-language parochial schools. All of these propositions were argued against by the Irish bishops and were rejected by Rome.8 Second, the Bennett Law of 1889 in Wisconsin required all children between nine and fourteen to attend schools in their district and be taught in English.9 Wisconsin was the seat of German Catholicism in America and the protest mounted by the German episcopate eventually led to the law's repeal.10 The resentment of the Germans towards the leading progressive in the coming battle, Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul, would not be forgotten. Third, a German business man named Peter Paul Cahensly, seeking to help German emigres to the New World, presented a series of Memorials to Pope Leo XIII detailing the great losses to the Faith due to the poor condition of the German churches.11 To remedy the problem, Cahensly and others requested greater recognition be given to the foreign groups in the Church in the United States to the point of possible foreign representation in the hierarchy of the Church.12 Prompt action by Archbishop Ireland and Cardinal Gibbons averted a potential division of the hierarchy by nationalistic lines, but this further widened the rift between the German and Irish bishops.

          Another battle ground was the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. at where the faculty had begun to take sides. The Rector, Bishop John Keane, formerly of Richmond, and Father Thomas Bouquillon were on the side of Ireland and the progressives, while Father Joseph Schroeder of the Theology school and Father George Peries of canon law supported the conservatives.13 The Catholic University had always been a project of the more progressive groups of the hierarchy and had been the special project of Ireland and Keane. The Jesuits did not support the school because it rivaled Georgetown only two miles away. The conservatives also did not fully support the University because of its liberal foundations, especially Archbishop Corrigan of New York because there had been the proposal of a Catholic University in New York also under the direction of the Jesuits.14 As long as Bishop Keane was rector, the University would officially remain on the side of the progressives with much opposition from conservatives within and without. Thus, by the beginning of the 1890s the American hierarchy was divided into two distinct camps. The conservatives were comprised basically of the conservative bishops of the East, led principally by Archbishop Corrigan of NewYork, Bishop McQuaid of Rochester, and Bishop Ignatius Horstmann of Cleveland, along with the German bishops of Wisconsin.15 Their allies in Rome included Father Salvatore Brandi, S. J., editor of the Civilta Cattolica, and Cardinal Camillo Mazzella, S.J., both of them ex-Americans.16 The progressives were led by the triumvirate of Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Bishop John Keane of Richmond, and Monsignor Dennis O'Connell, Rector of the North American College in Rome, who also had the friendship of the two Cardinal Vannutelli.17 Cardinal Gibbons, the only Cardinal in America, was very diplomatic, usually siding with the progressives. The majority of the bishops remained inactive in the controversy offering opinions for either side only when necessary. Another factor which cannot be underestimated is the fact that Archbishops Ireland and Corrigan were both considered front-runners to be the next American Cardinal.

          Americanism remained basically a national issue until 1892. In that year, while on a papal visit in Rome, Ireland was asked by Leo XIII to tour France to drum up support for the Third Republic, called the ralliement.18 Liberal French prelates had long been fascinated with the developments in America while conservative Frenchmen viewed them with horror. Ireland was not openly welcomed by the French clergy and was usually the guest of liberal French laymen. On his tour, Ireland made statements such as, "The Church in Europe is asleep," and "The people is king now," to the joy of supporters of the ralliement and anger of conservative clergy.19 Ireland's speeches sparked a debate that would ironically make France the final battleground for Americanism. Another important event in 1892 was the arrival of Archbishop Francesco Satolli whose stated mission was to escort a set of the Vatican's ancient maps to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.20 It would later be announced that he was to be the permanent Apostolic Delegate from the Vatican. From the beginning it seemed as if Satolli would be influenced by the progressive camp. Satolli's arrival in New York was arranged in such a way that it appeared that he had snubbed Archbishop Corrigan.20 He took up residence at the Catholic University. He also made some propositions on education that mirrored Ireland's plans in Minnesota.21 When he finally announced that his mission was permanent, all but Ireland dissented. Another hopeful event was Satolli's speech in Chicago at the Catholic congress in September 1893 when he urged his audience to go forth "in one hand carrying the book of Christian truth and in the other the Constitution of the United States."22 The Church goes where Rome leads it, and Rome seemed to be leaning towards the progressives. The tide, however, was turning against the Americanists.

          Some progressive bishops attended the World's Parliament of Religions which brought mass criticism from Corrigan and the conservatives who charged Ireland and others with "liberalism" and "minimalism." Satolli agreed and was not pleased with the bishop's decision not to consult him. The battled shifted into civil politics when in 1894 Archbishop Ireland campaigned in a New York State Election to help defeat Bishop McQuaid in his bid for a seat on the board of regents of New York University.23 McQuaid blasted Ireland from the pulpit and was reprimanded by Satolli. McQuaid sent Rome a full report in his defense, calling Ireland a political meddler, dangerous liberal, and a persecutor of Archbishop Corrigan.24 The conservative accusations of McQuaid and others were beginning to take hold in Rome. On January 6, 1895 the encyclical letter, Longinqua Oceani, expressed Leo XIII's praise for the astronomical growth of the Church in America and the equity and customs of the American people.25 However, Leo XIII warned that the separation of church and state was not the ideal and the United States was not the model for all societies.26 He said that the American situation, although good, would be made better if the Church were to receive the favor of the laws and the patronage of the government.27 This encyclical was followed in September by a papal letter condemning interdenominational congresses like the one in Chicago in 1893.28 Meanwhile, in Rome, officials of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith had demanded Dennis O'Connell's resignation as rector of the American College.

          Archbishop Ireland would not be daunted by the mounting opposition. At an episcopal ordination in April 1896, he praised the papally-questioned separation of church and state and began a new phase in his attack.29 He heaped praise on the diocesan priesthood while criticizing religious orders, especially the Jesuits whom he blamed for the losses Reformation England and Japan.30 Meanwhile, Satolli had been made Cardinal in November 1895, and called back to Rome. Cardinal Satolli, along with Cardinal Mazzella, S.J., who had been angered by Ireland's statements against the Jesuits, began to combat "Americanism." Their efforts resulted in the ouster of Bishop Keane as Rector of the Catholic University in September 1896. With the American progressives in disarray the battle turned once again to France and Catholic Europe.

           The French liberals who were in favor of the ralliement in France began to look to the American Catholic Church as an archetype for a benevolent relationship between the Church and a democratic government. The liberals found their icon in a translation of a biography of Father Isaac Hecker, founder of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle, or Paulists, in the United States. Father Hecker was a convert who called upon the Church to adapt itself to the needs of the modern world. Hecker became the embodiment of a new kind of religious pioneer and the subject of much admiration among the liberal French clergy. In the biography, Life of Father Hecker, by Walter Elliot, Hacker came across as a man of action, the ideal modern priest, blessed with intellect, independence, rugged individualism, and mystical insight.31 The book, coupled with an introduction by Archbishop Ireland was an instant lightening rod for conservative criticism, the most notorious of which came from a series of articles by Abbe Charles Maignen writing under the pseudonym of "Martel" in the French La Verite beginning on March 3, 1898.32 Maignen asked whether Father Hecker was a saint, and countered that he was in fact a radical protestant. Using Elliott's book, Maignen fashioned a theology that closely mirrored that of the Quakers in its emphasis on the internal guidance of the Holy Spirit. He accused Hecker of denying the objective certainty of Catholic truth.33 He also interpreted Hecker's stressing of activism as having a corresponding disdain for the so-called "passive" virtues of humility and obedience, which Hecker said were necessary in the Counter-Reformation, but now the "active" virtues of love, tolerance and compassion were to dominate.34 The violent attack of Maignen and others, including the Jesuits of the Civilta Cattolica, had taken there toll and the majority of the French clergy dismissed American Catholicism as neo-Pelagian. They viewed Hecker's confidence in a new age of the Spirit as the condemned illuminism of Madame Guyon and Molinos. Maignen put his series of articles in book form, but was denied the imprimatur by Cardinal Richard of Paris. However, Alberto Lepidi, the Master of the Sacred Palace in Rome gave the imprimatur, seemingly putting the seal of approval of the Holy See on Maignen's book.35 With Leo XIII's indirect endorsement of the book, rumors of an imminent papal condemnation were being circulated. The rumors became reality on January 22, 1899.

          The papal encyclical, Testem Benevolentiae, Leo XIII stated that he wished "to point out certain things which are to be avoided and corrected."36 The Pope stated that efforts to adapt the church's teaching to the modern world are folly because, as the Vatican Council had made clear, the Catholic faith is not a philosophical theory that is elaborated when humans see fit, but a divine revelation that is to be guarded and infallibly exclaimed.37 Second, there is a great difference between church authority and government authority.38 The state exists by the free will of those associated with it, whereas the church is based upon its own infallible teaching.39 Members of the church must submit to the church's infallible authority to be preserved from private error.

          The encyclical met with a predictably ambivalent reaction. No American bishops contested it. The Americanists at whom the letter was aimed stated that the condemned doctrines were "phantoms" created by their enemies and had no basis in fact.40 Archbishop Corrigan and the conservatives were thankful that heresy had been exposed.41 Most of the bishops said nothing. If one was keeping score, the conservatives had won a major victory with the removal of Keane and O'Connell and, finally, the condemnation.

          The Americanist controversy quickly died, although it served as a precursor for the Modernism battles in the next decade. The actual laity and priests in the trenches were essentially insulated from the high level wrangling. The "Americanism" already instinctual to the American catholic remained unscathed, but the hierarchy and intellectual did remain cautious. American Catholics had experienced their first incipient heresy and would remain theologically dormant for the next half-century. Pragmatic Americanism continued however, culminating in the election of the first Roman Catholic president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in 1960.






Notes

1. Briane K. Turley, lecture on Catholic Immigration After 1820, February 26, 1998.

2. Robert D. Cross, The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 117.

3. James H. Moynihan, The Life of Archbishop John Ireland (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 215.

4. Ibid., 216.

5. Thomas T. McAvoy, The Americanist Heresy in Roman Catholicism (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1963), 30.

6. Ibid., 30.

7. Ibid., 20.

8. Ibid., 21.

9. Ibid., 21.

10. Ibid., 22.

11. Ibid., 23.

12. Ibid., 23.

13. James Hennesey, S.J., American Catholics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 198.

14. McAvoy, 29.

15. Hennesy, 198.

16. Ibid., 198.

17. Ibid., 198.

18. Moynihan, 136.

19. Hennesey, 199.

20. Ibid., 199.

21. Ibid., 199.

22. Lester R. Kurtz, The Politics of Heresy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 46.

23. John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1952), 25.

24. Ibid.

25. Cross, 195-196.

26. Ibid., 196.

27. Ibid.

28. Hennesey, 201.

29. Ellis, 113.

30. Ibid.

31. Hennesey, 202.

32. McAvoy, 145.

33. Hennesey, 202.

34. Ibid.

35. Cross, 199.

36. Kurtz, 47.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. McAvoy, 237.

41. Cross, 201.