By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
American Catholics operate within the context of a rapidly withering, if not fully dismantled, Democracy. The virtual barricades of a subversive revolution to transform our polity into a Communist or Marxist tyranny are the transformed instruments of government. The deep state FBI, CIA, Congress and government bureaucracies which have grown too big and unmanageable are all part of the problem. All this while the frustration of the working middle-class patriotic Americans grows, threatening to again boil over.
David French sums up well the crisis in which we marinate in his book Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.
“It’s time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed…. There is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart.”
Traditional Catholics, reasonably, propose integralism as an alternative. Fr. Thomas Crean, OP, in his eponymously named book, explores the various benefits of integralism.
“Integralism is the application to the temporal, political order of the full implications of the revelation of man’s supernatural end in Christ and of the divinely established means by which it is to be attained. These implications are identified by means of the philosophia perennis exemplified in the fundamental principles of St. Thomas Aquinas” (Google Books).
If Christ is King of the universe, and of the human persons who fill it, what is His role in the polity that mediates between the two realities? It should not be notable for His complete absence. Which is where our representative democracy is racing at supersonic speed.
“Since the first principle in moral philosophy is the last end, and man’s last end cannot be known except by revelation, it is only by accepting the role of handmaid of theology that political philosophy can be adequately constituted. Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy is a handbook for those who seek to understand the consequences of this integration of faith and reason for political, economic, and individual civic life. It will also serve as a scholastic introduction to political philosophy for those new to the subject. Each chapter finishes with a list of the principal theses proposed” (Ibid.).
While many Americans and faithful Catholics together seek to repair and restore unity and operate with sanity in the polis, politics unfortunately roils the Church as well. But this often begins in Rome.
American Catholics rightly seek the reign of Christ the King by fighting legal child murder (abortion) and for the rights of parents to expect the support of schools in their role as first teachers, and in other areas where the left repurposes benign institutions for indoctrinating new young disciples in evil.
We are definitely in uncharted territory when the Pope mocks traditional families by ridiculing the gift of spiritual bouquets, physically forces apart the folded hands of a reverent altar boy, and refers to large families as “reproducing like rabbits.” Consider this together with reprimanding a woman who presents him with two young Catholic converts, traveling together to Rome on pilgrimage. And there are many more examples, most significantly errors perpetrated in Amoris Laetitia and Traditionis Custodes. We must face the fact that it isn’t only the U.S. experiment in ordered liberty that is being actively dismantled.
No, the Church too has been overwhelmed by the tsunami of leftist, globalist money and agents. Perhaps we will have to wait for many years to find out how they got to the Vatican and the Sankt Gallen mafia.
As I write it is already in August that this article will be published. The summer is flying by and time with it. For us and for the Pope. He is in a hurry to make sure his “changes” stick. Thus, he looks to the College of Cardinals as does the world. He has done his best to pack the house with those who will support his agenda. What is his agenda? Thomas Reese, SJ, would like to tell us, also in terms of appointing cardinals, the electors of papal successors. In the pages of the National Catholic Reporter we read:
“For John Paul II, this meant prelates who were loyal to the Vatican and opposed changing the Church’s teaching on birth control, sexual ethics, married priests, and women priests. John Paul also liked strong personalities who were willing to take on political and cultural elites on abortion, gay marriage and other issues.
“Benedict also appointed cardinals who were loyal and defenders of traditional Church teaching, but he preferred his cardinals to be more academic than culture warrior.
“Francis, on the other hand, has looked for bishops who are pastors to their people and prioritize the poor and marginalized.
“During his 10-year reign, Pope Francis has had a significant impact on the College of Cardinals, and that continues with the 18 newly appointed cardinal electors (those under 80 years of age who can vote for a Pope in a conclave).”
This would all be fine if you believe that the prelates appointed by JPII and BXVI were not also “pastors to their people” who “prioritize the poor and marginalized.” Where is the evidence they were not good shepherds? There is none. You see here again how we are subjected to a continual stream of straw men, slander and ridicule, all to promote an open agenda of destroying the Catholic faith.
No, the evidence is before us. A decided pattern among the men appointed by Pope Francis emerges of those who cover up clerical sexual abuse, openly promote and defend heresy by means of the “Trojan Horse” Synods, and otherwise serve as scandals to the faithful and the world.
We can be honest. And should. Cardinals are, as are priests and all human beings, sinners. The apostolic college suffered betrayal of Christ and dissension from the beginning. Both involving Peter, the first Pope. Men of the Church are sinners as are we all. This is not the problem. Of course, if the sin is also a crime, and a crime against the vulnerable and weak, then removal and punishment are necessary. But otherwise, these men are expected to repent and amend their lives, as in Christ are we all.
It is when a pattern emerges of a life of rejection of the abundant opportunities to repent that we see prelates unfit to lead. When they persist in a pattern of heresy or immorality they must be called to account. Pope Francis has been aggressive in seeking resignations of bishops all over the world. The pattern there has been one of punishing orthodoxy more than anything else.
We know what he and his henchmen are up to. We must always hope and pray that the Lord will right the course of the Barque of Peter through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, remembering the divine guarantee that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail.” But we must also do what is necessary to die holy deaths as good Catholics and we must hand on the true faith to our children
We look to the holy and courageous example of the English recusant Catholics. They too lived under a rogue hierarchy that perpetrated immorality thinly disguised as political loyalty. Like them, we must never become so wedded to this worldly comfort so as to forget it is all simply a foretaste and promise of the only blessedness that will last, that of the Kingdom.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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