Liberalism: Sin, Iniquity, Abomination

By Rev. Fr. Horacio Bojorge, S. J.

This essay by Rev. Fr. Horacio Bojorge has been published in Spanish by Ediciones del Alcázar, Buenos Aires, under the title El Liberalismo es la Iniquidad—La Rebelión Contra el Padre (Liberalism is 'the' Iniquity-The Rebellion Against the Father.)

Many authors have exposed the failures and flaws of Liberalism, its historical and philosophical precedents, and consequences. In this exposition we shall analyze the concept of liberalism as sin. This is what liberalism really represents: a systematic rebellion against Divine Paternity. In the classic sense of the word, Liberalism is an abomination.

Liberalism is not simply a sin but 'the' sin. Therefore, when we call it "a sin", we could misunderstand it as just another sin among many. In reality, liberalism is the sin par excellence, root, base and pinnacle of all sin. By introducing this brief precision I believe I have interpreted correctly the ultimate intention of Fr. Felix Sardá i Salvany, who titled his work Liberalism is Sin [1]

The thesis

When I say that Liberalism is 'the' sin, the quintessential sin; I intent to advance one step closer to the comprehension of the type of sin we are dealing with, and the reason why Liberalism must be defined in that unique way.

My thesis could be summarized as follows: Liberalism is 'the' sin, because Liberalism is intrinsically evil. It is the sin against the Holy Spirit, the rejection of the Son, and the rebellion against the Father.

We need to understand the importance and depth of this affirmation. Liberalism is the direct sin against Christ and the Father. Consequently, it is a sin against the Holy Spirit. We shall see later that this is the sin that is called "the iniquity" in the New Testament, the sin of the Devil. The book of wisdom says that by envy—by ακηδία [1] of the Devil—death entered the world and those who belong to them, experience that death when they rebel against God, [2] and just like the Devil they aspire to place themselves in the place of God. They are also in accordance with the Devil in his negative to serve God. This is the sum of all evil, the supreme iniquity. Its complete manifestation is reserved for the Time of the End. This is what Saint Paul calls "The Mystery of Iniquity" (Mysterium Iniquitatis.) [3]

Liberalism is exposed as a manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, denounced by Saint Paul as a force acting incipiently in a covert manner already in apostolic times.

We will return to this topic and examine it in more detail. However, it is convenient to define in advance the concept of iniquity. According to the New Testament, iniquity consists in rejecting Jesus Christ and the revelation of God the Father, as agents of man's life and salvation. Iniquity is the opposition to the Holy Spirit by an impure spirit. It is therefore a direct sin against the Holy Spirit.

This rejection can be explicit or implicit. Explicit like that of Judaism and others who deny the validity of the Christian revelation in history. Implicit, like that of the practical atheists, or those who are indifferent, or those who do not oppose the truth but simply consider truth implicit, and relegate it to the bin of unnecessary, or inconvenient things that are hard to explain.

A recent example

Let me propose an example to show which types of silence, omission, or forgetfulness I am referring to.

His Holiness Benedict XVI introduced a small modification in the text of the Theme of the Fifth Conference of the Episcopate in Latin America and the Caribbean. The title of the theme that was presented to him was: "Disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ, so that our peoples may have life".

The Pope added two words: 'in Him', changing it to "Disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ, so that our peoples may have life 'in Him'".

With this smallest addition of two words ('in Him') the Pope called our attention to something fundamentally essential. If that something would have remained implicit, it could have covered a dire ambiguity in the comprehension of the expression "may have life".

To have life 'in Him' means to have the fullness of life as sons. The life announced by Jesus Christ. The goal of the disciple's mission remains defined explicitly by its objective: "so that they may have life 'in Him'".

This inspired addition, introduced by the Vicar of Christ, prevented the whole theme of the Conference, (and even the Conference itself) from being infected by that kind of Gramscian reductionism, that limits the life of man to a purely material existence. That immanentist reduction that has its roots in Rationalism, Naturalism, and Liberalism, finding its final form in Marxist Materialism.

I would be satisfied if, at the end of my exposition, I had been able to explain the nature of the sin of Liberalism, helping to comprehend better the nature of the danger avoided by the Pope, when he reminded us that the goal of our missionary work is to aid the peoples to have life in Christ through the message of God the Father. That life is the fullness of life that we can only have 'in Him'. Such life consists of entering in communion with the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit.

Notice how, at the bottom of that vague imprecision in the original phrase—at the root of that casual omission—lay something that could have been wrongly construed as an essential part of the Gospel. That ambiguity left just enough room for a surreptitious infection of the message with the Liberal concept that separates human life from its life in God. In that Naturalist vision, the ultimate horizon in the life of man is merely the quality of life.

That silence could have been particularly damaging if its origin would have been a forgetting of the essential. It would have been demonic if its origin would have been a conscious aversion towards the essential.

Félix Sardá i Salvany: Liberalism is sin

Before going any further it is necessary to define, as a fundamental point of reference, the diagnostic given to us by Fr. Félix Sardá i Salvany in his work "Liberalism is Sin". There Fr. Sardá writes:

Liberalism, whether in the doctrinal or practical order, is a sin. In the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against faith. In the practical order, it is a sin against the commandments of God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments. To be more precise: in the doctrinal order, Liberalism strikes at the very foundations of faith; it is heresy radical and universal, because within it all heresies are comprehended. In the practical order it is a radical and universal infraction of the divine law, since it sanctions and authorizes all infractions of that law.

Liberalism is a heresy in the doctrinal order because heresy is the formal and obstinate denial of all Christian dogmas in general. It repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently, it denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Liberalism, have been denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or another rejected—from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility.

Nonetheless Liberalism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth—or a truth consequent upon Revelation—by its infallibly constituted exponent [the Pope]. This logically implies the obedient acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society. Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and social reason and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of authority. It knows no dogma except the dogma of self-assertion. Hence it is heresy, fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against God.

It follows, therefore, that Liberalism denies the absolute jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society, and by consequence, repudiates the jurisdiction which God has delegated to the visible head of the Church over each and all of the faithful, whatever their condition or rank in life. Moreover, it denies the necessity of divine Revelation and the obligation of everyone to accept that Revelation under pain of eternal perdition. It denies the formal motive of faith, viz., the authority of God revealing, and admits only as much of revealed doctrine as it chooses or comprehends within its own narrow capacity. It denies the infallible magistracy of the Church and of the Pope, and consequently all the doctrines defined and taught by this divine authority. In short, it sets itself up as the measure and rule of faith and thus really shuts out Revelation altogether. It denies everything which it itself does not proclaim. It negates everything which it itself does not affirm. But not being able to affirm any truth beyond its own reach, it denies the possibility of any truth which it does not comprehend. The revelation of truth above human reason it therefore debars at the outset. The divinity of Jesus Christ is beyond its horoscope. The Church is outside its comprehension. The submission of human reason to the Word of Christ or its divinely constituted exponent [the Catholic Church, especially the Pope] is to it intolerable. It is, therefore, the radical and universal denial of all divine truth and Christian dogma, the primal type of all heresy, and the supreme rebellion against the authority of God and His Church. As with Lucifer, its maxim is, "I will not serve." Such is the general negation uttered by Liberalism. From this radical denial of revealed truth in general naturally follows the denial of particular dogmas, in whole or in part (as circumstances present them in opposition to its rationalistic judgment). Thus, for instance, it denies the validity of faith by Baptism, when it admits or supposes the equality of any or all religious cults; it denies the sanctity of marriage when it sanctions so-called civil marriages; it denies the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, when it refuses to accept as laws his official commands and teachings and subjects them to the scrutiny of its own intellect—not to assure itself of their authenticity, as is legitimate, but to sit in defiant judgment upon their contents.

When we come to the practical order, Liberalism is radical immorality. Morality requires a standard and a guide for rational action; it postulates a hierarchy of ends, and therefore of order, within whose series there is a subordination of means to the attainment of an ultimate purpose. It therefore requires a principle or fundamental rule of all action, by which the subject of moral acts, the rational creature, determines his course and guides himself to the attainment of his end. In the moral order, the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order, the created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by the light of the Uncreated Reason, Who is the beginning and end of all things. The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the creature must be the principle or rule of morality. Hence, obedience and submission in the moral order is an absolute requisite of morality. But Liberalism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and asserts its independence in the order of knowledge, and hence in the order of action or morality. Here we have morality without law, without order, freedom to do what one pleases, or what comes to the same thing, morality which is not morality, for morality implies the idea not only of direction, but also essentially demands that of restraint and limitation under the control of law. Liberalism in the order of action is license, recognizing no principle or rule beyond itself.

We may then say of Liberalism: in the order of ideas it is absolute error; in the order of facts it is absolute disorder. It is, therefore, in both cases a very grievous and deadly sin, for sin is rebellion against God in thought or in deed, the enthronement of the creature in the place of the Creator. [4]

The road to follow

Fr. Sardá i Salvany tells the truth. There is more, though a lot is implicit in the precise diagnostic of the Spanish apologist. The first consequence we that Liberalism is 'the sin' in a specific sense: it is 'the iniquity' identified in the New Testament as the setting in place of the supreme anti-Christian, anti-God evil. The seed of that iniquity lies hidden in history waiting to sprout a virulent manifestation. This is also an eschatological sign, because it is the cause of the final dissolution of mankind an the preamble to the reign of the Antichrist.

As we shall see, Saint John defines 'that sin' as η ανομία (ē anomía 'the iniquity'). This sin is particular and unique, this η ανομία (indifferent negligence that makes no difference between good and evil) always appears in the New Testament as a characteristic of the Antichrist and the End of Times, the Final Judgment, or the παρουσία (parousia) of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From the beginning of the Church it is applied to the rejection of Jesus Christ and God the Father, whom the Son comes to reveal. Saint John affirms that in his First Letter:

"... many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour [...] This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also." [5]

That denial or rejection was experienced by Jesus Christ Himself during his life. He defined it as a "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit". [6] The same rejection was experienced by all the apostolic ecclesial communities, because it is present and operates within them. Saint John and also Saint Paul interpreted its nature in the light of the words of Jesus. They announced its recrudescence in the End of Times.

One example of evil language

As a sample of the language of the modern iniquity, please read what was said by David Friedrich Strauss, Pastor and Theologian, self-appointed arbiter of what we should consider an acceptable Christ:

As long as Christianity is considered like something given to Mankind from outside itself; Christ as something who came from Heaven; His Church like an institution for the forgiveness of sins by means of His blood; Christianity will be understood in a Jewish way and the Religion of the Spirit will continue to be fleshly. Christianity will only be understood when we recognize in it a Mankind made more aware of itself than it has ever been aware so far: that Jesus is only that Man in Whom that profound conscience was manifested for the first time like a force determinant of His whole life and His whole being; and that sin can be erased only by access to this new conscience. [7]

The rebellion against the Father

The aforementioned words of Saint John, teach us that lastly, 'the sin', the worse evil, is the rejection of God the Father, the rebellion against a God-Father. That rejection and rebellion are manifested in the rejection of the Son (sent by the Father,) and of those disciples sent by the Son. The Son is rejected because the Father is also rejected. The Father is rejected by those seeking to avoid being subject to Him by filial obedience.

We must remember that the rejection of both obedience and subjection to God's government of human affairs has long established biblical roots. Remember the people of Israel who wanted to be freed from the lead of Moses [8]. Later, the Israelites asked Samuel to give them a King, like the kings of the neighboring nations.
God interpreted that request as an intent of secularization of political life, a form of early liberalism: "They have not rejected you, they have rejected Me, so that I don't rule over them." [9] Certainly, the Israelite monarchy would come to be the history of the infidelities of the chosen people to their Covenant with God, with the kings they have asked for, acting as leaders of the apostasy.
In the New Testament we find the Parable of the Murderous Vineyard Workers. They kill the son to take possession of their master's vineyard for themselves.
Let us recall the words of Jesus: "He who receives you, receives me, and he who receives me, receives the One who sent me." [10] Also, inversely: "He who rejects you, rejects me; and he who rejects me, rejects the Father who sent me." [11]
The rejection of God found in the Old Testament continues manifesting itself, as reported in the New Testament, in the form of a rejection of God the Father.

Heresies of Liberal origin

Within the Christian world—including the Catholic world—there were produced certain forms of religious liberalism. This religious Liberalism, criticized by John Henry Cardinal Newman, produced deviations and heretic theologies containing the rejection of God the Father that we observe and suffer even today.

One of them was the so-called Deism. Deism accepts God as a Creator, a Supreme Architect. But, once the house has been constructed, God leaves it in the hands of its inhabitants. He does not keep any relation with them, leaving them without the possibility of communion or closeness. Deism was a Naturalist, Rationalist rejection of the Christian revelation. It believed in a Creator God with whom there is no possible communion or communication.

Cardinal Pie cleverly diagnosed that, rejecting the communion with a God that invites us to commune, "it is nothing but the fear of vertigo produced by the wondrous heights that God calls us to climb." [12] That fear to the sublime union, will later invade all dimensions of human life, giving origin to Liberal individualism, the master-slave dialectic substituting Christian brotherhood, class warfare, and finally, the dictatorship of the envious that will impose the hatred of the best [13] and the tyranny of Equalitarianism in the name of Democracy.

From Jesus 'without Father' to Jesus 'against the Father'

A further consequence of religious Liberalism has been the Reductionist vision of Christ, in the style of the one proposed by David Friedrich Strauss we read earlier. This Jesuanism presents a historical Jesus separated from the Christ of the faith, with no reference ever being made to the Father as the final goal of the Gospel's message.

In the theological-pastoral discourse emerging from that proposition, the Father is relegated to a silent, implicit role. The Father is only explained when someone demands an explanation.

The Dominican Father Le Guillou has said about that contemporary Jesuanism:

"This places [...] Christ, not with the Father, but in lieu of the Father. In that way we see the vague design of a kind of Christicism, or Jesuanism (generally leaving the name of the Father silent) that tries to pass for real Christianity." [14]

Saint Paul teaches us: "But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?" [15] That which is not preached is not believed. That is the horrific consequence of leaving the Father in an implicit role, falling outside the conscience of both preacher and faithful.
This fact has been pointed out by Monsignor Josef Cordes in his work: The Eclipse of the Father, in these words:

"When one asks the great contemporary theologians of both confessions (Protestant and Catholic) about the Father of Jesus Christ, one acquires a surprising perspective: the researchers think more frequently and more markedly about 'God' that in the "Eternal Father'. If one calculates the statistical average of how many times the word 'Father' is used in the Father-Son relationship, the word is sadly relegated." [16]

This is the result of the liberal contagion that has affected the common sense of culture and overflows to the faithful, affecting them and the preachers as well. Once could say, extending the words of Saint Paul: How will they preach if they don't believe?

The Jesuanism, or pastoral criticism, is frequently proposed by the Protestant sects and ecclesial communities. Protestants preachers heard in tents and radio programs come to mind. Their message is the announcement of Christ as the personal savior, without a reference to the Father, nor the entering in communion with Him as the point of completion of the salvation they announce.

That same illness has been extended among, and penetrates into the common sense of Catholics, priests and theologians included. I refer you to your own experience in hearing the preachers in our own temples.

Something caught my attention in the final message of the Conference of Aparecida—please note that I am not referring to the magnificent Final Document of the Conference, but to the Final Message, a sort of draft of the Final Document written by the Ad Hoc Commission—In this Final Message, different from the later, final document, the Father ends up relegated to an implicit role in the whole opening part, the doctrinal-kerygmatic speaking of Jesus (10 times,) or Lord Jesus (1 time,) or Jesus Christ (4 times.) In the message the Father is mentioned three times. He is never mentioned in the first part, where Jesus Christ is presented, but later after passing over the doctrinal-kerygmatic moment, in the parenthetical context of the fourth and fifth sections. In this manner Jesus Christ is presented predominantly as Jesus, without an explicit reference to His Father.

The contrast with the original discourse of Benedict XVI is remarkable. There, Benedict XVI reiterates explicitly, that the Father is the goal of the evangelizing process to which the Conference of Aparecida is calling. [17] That is reflected in the Final Document.

This phenomenon I have been describing so far—the growing detachment of Jesus from the Father in pastoral preaching—is emphasized until it reaches a form of paroxysm in the diffusion of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Father Ignatius Anderggen has written:

Freudian psychoanalysis, as a method and technique, is intrinsically in solidarity with its fundamental intent of reaching a full awareness of the rebellion of man against God the Father, the rebellion rooted in the unconscious structure of those vices and passions of man that have not been restored by grace. This intention of Freud, and also of Nietzsche, consists in their conscious opposition against God and their pretension of taking God's place." [18]

From the rebellion against God the Father to a society without fathers

Monsignor Paul Josef Cordes comments:

"Freud—who knew that the father in the flesh is the analogy of the Celestial Father—had to get rid of the former first, to eliminate the later ". [19]

That is why, by means of the psychoanalysis, he attacks the Father in the soul of the patient being analyzed.

Fr. Le Guillou, in the same work quoted before, points to the fact that the abolition of God the Father, is a basic element in what Monsignor Paul Josef Cordes has called the Eclipse of the Father in our culture; a progressive disappearance of the paternal figure and of the culture of paternity; the effective destruction of the paternal male.

The religious rebellion against God the Father in liberal civilization brought about sociological and cultural consequences. There has been a continual extermination of the paternal man, an also of the filial man, the spousal man and the fraternal man. The abandoning of the fathers to the geriatric nursing home by the present generation, is the consequence of the previous abandonment of God the Father, relegated to Heaven, just as if Heaven was a geriatric home. That generation did not lived with God anymore. They only visited Him from time to time or during visit hours... or never.

The Italian psychotherapist and sociologist Claudio Risè, in his book Il Padre l'Assente Inaccettabile (The Father, Unacceptable Absent), dedicates an entire chapter to describe how Western Civilization is "distancing itself from the Father". Claudio Risè establishes a parallel between the secularization process, initiated during the French Revolution (the fruit of seeds planted by the German Reformation) and the decadence and disappearance of the paternal figure and of the right of the family man in the West. [20]

On Earth as it is in Heaven

The disappearance of the paternal figure in our society is nothing strange. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated in his studies in History of Religion, that man builds his civilization and culture imitating his gods:

"In reenacting Sacred History, imitating the behavior of the divine, man takes his place and continues united to the gods in what is real and significant." [21]

"The modern-irreligious man assumes a new existential situation. He sees himself as the only subject and agent of history, rejecting all calls to transcendence [...] he does not accept any model of mankind outside of the human condition as it is found in the diverse historical situations. That man is self-built but he does not reach the completion of the task beyond the point of de-sacralizing himself and the world. He sees the sacred as an obstacle for his freedom. He will not be truly free until he has killed the last god." [22]

The religious rebelliousness of Liberalism against God the Father ends therefore, with the dissolution, not only of the paternal culture, but of all culture. That is the result of the untying of forces of destruction in the human heart, forces that accelerate and precipitate the apocalyptic threats upon that part of mankind living apart from God.

Mircea Eliade affirms:

"In the Judeo-Christian perspective one could say that the no-religion is equal to a new fall of man [...] After the first fall, religiousness fell to the level of the torn conscience. After the second fall, it has fallen even further down, to the underworld of the unconscious: it has been forgotten."

The non-religious man is a disconnected man

Now we can understand better the relationship between the sin that is 'the iniquity' and all the other sins that emanate from it. When men revolt against Heaven, they revolt against each other on earth.

God came seeking to rescue man, fallen by original sin. When fallen man refuses to take the hand that God extends to lift him up, he falls to even more unforgivable depths.

In the light of the prophecy of Malachi—the last words of the Old Testament—our theme acquires apocalyptic tones. This prophecy closes the Old Testament announcing the coming of Elijah. The New Testament connects that return of Elijah with the advent of John the Baptist, precursor of Christ:

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse." [23]

In our world, the irreligious and the anti-religious men, all have religious ancestors. Along with their rebellion against God the Father, there is a rebellion against their own fathers. The heart of the sons has turned against the fathers and the heart of the fathers has turned against the sons.

Christ has reconciled all things with His blood on the Cross—including fathers and sons, sons and fathers—that is what happened in the Catholic culture. After the arrival of Christ, if men insist again in rejecting Christ and the Father, just as Liberalism does, the result is that men are planted against God the Father, and also against each other.

If there is no possibility of a new reconciliation, then, the only expectation left, is that of a land smitten by the curse. A curse that men could have avoided but they consciously refused to avoid. This curse, they chose freely, misusing their freedom to reject goodness and accept evil.

Kant's liberation from religious moral—An example of rebelliousness

I have quoted so far, a number of contemporary authors who have studied the illnesses of our culture. All of them coincide in affirming that the origin of those ailments can be traced back to the German Reformation, the French Revolution, the ideology of Illuminism and the Soviet Revolution.

That path shown, shows clearly that the irreligious emancipation of morals leads inevitably to the dissolution of the social bonds among men. Plain history debunks the myth of the secularization of morals and the emancipation of all divine and religious moorings, proposed by the Kantian utopia.

Let us see if the Liberal manifest of Kant was on target:

"So far as morality is based upon the conception of man as a free agent who, just because he is free, binds himself through his reason to unconditioned laws, it stands in need neither of the idea of another Being over him, for him to apprehend his duty, nor of an incentive other than the law itself, for him to do his duty. At least it is man's own fault if he is subject to such a need; and if he is, this need can be relieved through nothing outside himself: for whatever does not originate in himself and his own freedom in no way compensates for the deficiency of his morality. Hence for its own sake morality does not need religion at all (whether objectively, as regards willing, or subjectively, as regards ability [to act]); by virtue of pure practical reason it is self-sufficient." [25]

You have just read the manifest of iniquity. The voice of that sin from which all other sin derives; the religious impiety that is the origin of all impiety perpetrated among men: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." [26]

The central proposition of Liberalism is: "Do free men need the Christian revelation to live morally? Does he need to be subject to a God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? No, thanks. Does he need to be saved from something by God? Not at all! Man can fend for himself!"

The many-horned beast that said grandiose things

Kant's manifesto has been proved fallacious by history, however it continues to be taken seriously even more now than ever before. The image of the Beast, described by the prophet Daniel, comes to my imagination. This is the last Beast that emerges from the depths of the sea.

We know that the bottom of the sea, in the biblical imagery, is the place of residence of all the evil forces, the enemies of God. The last Beast emerges from the sea. Unlike the previous ones, this is a talking Beast. It says grandiose things. Horns multiply protruding from its head. [27] The bombastic things it proclaims are the lies of Satan, the original liar and the father of lies. The horns are the multiple political powers born of Satan's lies.

The Christian interpreters of the Apocalypse have seen in this Beast and its horns, the figures of the political powers and the ideologies that support them: Naturalism, Rationalism, Free-thinking, Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Progressivism, Modernism, Post-Modernism, etc.

The Beast represents the sum of all iniquity, the rejection of Christ and the rebellion against God the Father. That Beast speaks saying grandiose things. It opposes the Word of God, the Word made Man with its eloquence, its propaganda, the erroneous discourse of its ideology, and the manifestos of its lawlessness (Greek ανομíα, anomía).

As the previous beasts are fearsome due to their menacing maws and terrible paws, this Beast impresses with its misguiding eloquence. It displays a convincing sophistry, opposed to the Word of God. When we arrive to the Apocalypse of John this will become a deafening croaking of frogs.

We are reminded of this beast, representing Satan himself, by the words of Our Lord:

"Do not fear those who kill the body [the lion, the bear and the leopard seen by Daniel] but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body [the fourth beast that says grandiose things, the father of lies and all his servants, the prince of this world and all the kingdoms belonging to him] in hell." [28]

Sin is 'the' iniquity

Liberalism is the historic manifestation of the spirit of the Antichrist. From the beginning of history, he hides the seed of his final reign. The "Mystery of Iniquity" [29] prophesized by Saint Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, 7 that breaks into the world at the end of times. But, before going into the Pauline mystery of iniquity, let us deal with the ανομíα, the lawlessness. Let us analyze its essence as it is expounded in the Holy Scriptures. We begin with the First Letter of John. In this case the Revised Standard Version Catholic, renders ανομíα as lawlessness.

Saint John affirms in his First Letter: "Sin is lawlessness." [ανομíαanomía, iniquity]. [30] We can take profit from listening and keeping in mind the context of this apostolic affirmation:

See what love the Father has given us, [31] that we should be called children of God; and so we are. [32] The reason why the world does not know us [33] is that it did not know Him. [34] Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And every one who thus hopes in Him [Jesus] purifies [35] himself as He is pure. [36] Every one who commits sin [ten hamartían] is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness [ten anomían, iniquity]. [37] You know that He appeared to take away sins, [38] and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; [39] no one who sins [40] has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive [41] you [planáto]. He who does right is righteous, as he is righteous. He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God commits sin; for God's nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother. (1 John 3, 1-10 RSV Catholic)

This passage is full of meaning. In it, John opposes to the sons of God to the sons of the Devil. Two generations, meaning two progenies or human races. His letter teaches us how to discern one from the other.

This discernment is necessary and difficult for two reasons. Firstly because the manifestation of the sons of God has not yet occurred. Secondly, because the generation of the original serpent is a race of snakes. They are the sons of the Devil, the descendants of he who was a liar from the beginning. They lie with their thought, word and deed! They are consummated hypocrites, able to pass for sons of God. Even more, they take upon themselves to declare that they are the real sons of God and accuse and condemn the true sons. Their lies are like the deafening croak of the swamp frogs. They are the clamor of the swamp.

The lawlessness or iniquity

At this point we need to go in further in the interpretation and specific sense of the 'ανομία' (pr. AH-NOH-MEE-AH, iniquity, lawlessness) in the text of Holy Scripture. Comprehending the nature of 'ανομία' as it is revealed in Scripture, will allow us to understand what is the 'sin of the world' that Jesus came to take away. That will allow us to understand also why Liberalism is 'the iniquity' (ανομία,) whether in its more radical, rabidly open anticlericalism, or in those other secondary forms, where the radical edge has been mitigated. These are basically hypocritical forms, moderated only in appearance.
The etymology of the Greek word ανομία (from ánomos, no-law) means literally lack of law, negation of the law, without law. What the Vulgate translated as 'iniquity' (iniquitatis,) is basically lack of law, negation of the law. In the case of Liberalism, ανομία is, in all truth, an adequate adjective because Liberalism seeks to free itself of all laws exterior to the individual, making the will of the individual its own law. That is what we have heard from Kant in his manifesto for the liberation of all morals.

Due to this moral relativism, Liberalism has allowed certain errors to reemerge in our time. For example, the "situation moral," known in moral theology. This is effectively, moral pragmatism.

John Paul II had to fight against the modern moral relativism engendered by Liberalism. In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, he defended the objectivity of Natural Law against moral relativism and subjectivism. We have read before how Kant affirms that man does not need God telling him what is good and what is bad, because man has the science of good and evil. What else can we add to that?
Benedict XVI continues to combat the wave of moral relativism invading classrooms and parliaments. Relativism is one of the bêtes noires of the contemporary world.

The moral academicians within the Catholic realm are not completely free from its influence.

It is precisely because of that ανομία, that iniquity, that we can say that Liberalism is 'the sin'. That lawlessness is an effort to adroitly shake off the subjection to all laws, especially God's law. Lawlessness negates all limits to the self determination of the individual and society. [41b]

If we see it from the perspective of the thought of Mircea Eliade, we could say that ανομία is the voiding of the divine example in the configuration of human life.
When Saint John makes the affirmation: "Sin is lawlessness [iniquity]", his affirmation has a specific meaning. Without denying the usual meaning of the Greek word ανομία—opposition to the law—he presents it predicating specifically in the sense of denying Jesus, He who has "not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it." (Matthew 5:13-20). Considering the Christian perspective, it is obvious that he who rejects the one who is Himself the fulfilling of the law, wholly rejects the law. He who ignores, does not acknowledge, or takes no heed of Him who perfectly fulfills the law, commits the ultimate act of lawlessness, the most extreme of iniquities. He perpetrates the deepest of iniquities, the most radical and perverse sin, carrying the most baneful and deadly consequences for himself, and mankind.

The ανομία according to John is the rejection of Jesus Christ, the Revealer, the obedient Son—who lives by and fulfills—the will of the Father. Jesus Christ the Son, the fullness of the law fully revealed by his behavior as a perfect Son doing the Father's will: "For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life [...]" (John 6, 40). Those who do not recognize the will of the Father and commit the ανομία, rebel against the will of the Father, thus excluding themselves from eternal life by refusing to live as sons in filial justice.

Finally, for Saint John, the sin is: the ανομία, the iniquity or lawlessness. It is to willfully refuse to believe in Christ. It is the negation of the Son and the Father, the rejection of the only way to enter into a communion of life with them.

To refuse to believe is to deny to enter and participate in the family covenant offered to humans by the Divine. This is apostasy (αποστασία), the abandonment of the ancestral communion. The iniquity is fundamentally, apostasy. This apostasy is often made visible when the rejection of the ecclesial communion is made manifest in public by those who depart from their brothers, after having judged, accused and condemned them. This rejection of the ecclesial brotherhood shows clearly that the apostate loves the world more than the Father. He loves his own passions and the world much more than having God as Father.

Eschatology and ανομία

The word ανομία is used in the New Testament in a context predominantly eschatological, relative to the Final Judgment, the parousía (παρουσια), and the future of the Church at the End of Times. It does not have a predominant moral sense, but rather religious, relative to the salvation of condemnation of men.
In the Sermon of the Mountain, we hear Jesus say that He will be the judge of that future judgment:

"On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, [42] you evildoers.' [η ανομία]." [43]

The iniquity condemned by Jesus, has been perpetrated in history by means of invoking His name to produce—by means of that invocation—prodigious signs, prophecies and expulsion of demons, thus appearing to give credit to those who are only Christian in appearance. What does this mean?

Jesus warns us in His instructions about the future:

For many will come in my name, saying, `I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray [...] For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Lo, I have told you beforehand. [44]

These are the impostors that will appear before the Judge saying, "Lord, Lord, we have performed many miracles in your name". Jesus will reject them on the grounds of them having been evildoers, workers of lawlessness.

They appear in history invoking the name of Jesus, but hypocritically doing their own will and not the will of the Father. They announce the messianic salvation and try to put it to work. Let us reflect for a moment in the so called "theologies of liberation" that were introduced in the name of a "liberator Christ" while proposing class warfare. They did not promote the freedom of the sons of God announced by Jesus Christ, the need to become sons of God and the loving subjection of ones own life to the will of the Father. Those and other pseudo-Messiahs, make human will the norm of interpretation of the words of Jesus Christ, while adroitly manipulating the Christ's image.

Iniquity and Scandal

Going further in our reading of these passages of Sacred Scripture we can learn more about what is the ανομία. Pointing to the End of Times, in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jesus says:

So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those [evildoers] who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [45]

We can make a few useful observations here:

1. Here 'the evildoers' are presented—let us emphasize this—as being internal to the Kingdom: '[the angels] will gather out of His kingdom...'. This is something that happens inside the kingdom, it also happens in the name of Jesus, with knowledge of His teaching, invoking His teaching, twisting the meaning of His teaching as they find it convenient—but—not doing what Jesus teaches. They listen to His words—and perhaps they may teach His words in His name—but they don't practice them.

2. Those 'workers of lawlessness', those evildoers operate in a scandalous manner, being like stumbling blocks causing the fall of those who have faith. We have to notice here the technical application and the salvific sense of the word scandal, which we use more frequently in a moral sense (as in "scandalous sins.") Jesus uses this word in the sense of making the disciples stumble in their following of Jesus, who is the road to the Father. What is the relationship between iniquity and scandal? Scandal, used here in parallel with iniquity, supposes in this context, that the evildoers— by the mere device of being evil—induce many believers into iniquity.

Iniquity is contagious and damaging to the believers' faith. Even more when it is more than an isolated practice, when it has been turned into an environment, a civilization, a culture, a contagion penetrating in the hearts of the believers as an invisible cultural colonization, altering their common sense, their outlook on life and the world. Thus they also become hypocritical Christians, underground evildoers who have heard the words of Christ in the beginning and they ended up not practicing them, or perhaps practicing a modified version of Christ's teaching, which is equally bad. They are victims, more or less guilty of the evildoers' reinterpreting of the doctrine of Jesus to undermine it.

Is it not true that we can apply in full, this definition of iniquity to a pretended Christian teaching that would limit itself to teach values, while avoiding to look at the practical exercise of theological and cardinal virtues? Today we see how easily Jesus Christ is substituted by values, and not even virtues at that! The substitution of the faithful and explicit Gospel for a sort of 'Gospel light and stretch'. This is a chilling procedure, bringing to mind the exchange of Christ for thirty silver coins—a monetary value. The substitution of the Gospel message for the mere proclamation of values, even if those values are the values of the Gospel: is it not a form of treason? Certainly this definition can be applied to the program of hetero-interpretation of the believer's language proposed by Antonio Gramsci, a program that has been a stumbling block for so many believers.

Liberal Catholics

The parable of the weeds can help us to focus on the phenomenon of religious Liberalism.

It is quite obvious that Liberalism has been a stumbling block for many—even more so its religious version—It has been an obstacle and a scandal for many Christians. It has lead many to confusion. It has been the cause why many Catholics have gone astray, including clergy and bishops who have wandered into the ways of liberal Catholicism. This has happened mainly to those Christians more inclined to listen to the flattery of the world and more fearful of its condemnations and persecutions.

Fr. Félix Sardá i Salvany observes how the liberal iniquity becomes a cause for scandal, once installed in the minds of priests or bishops. That is a stumbling block causing the believers to accept the Liberal opinions. To those faithful who are taken aback by the fact that something like that may even happen, Fr. Salvany says:

"Yes, friendly reader, yes. There can be, unfortunately, ministers of the Church who are Liberal, some of those in that sect are fierce, and others gentle, and there are some that are just resented. This happens just in the same way among the laymen. The ministers of God are not exempt from paying tribute to human frailties [...] This should not come as a shock to no one, considering that there has been hardly any heresy in the Church of God that has not been propagated or exalted by some cleric."[46]

These words of Jesus apply very well to those men of the Church who have fallen prey to the Liberal contagion:

" So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity (ανομία)." [47]

What turns the ανομία into grave iniquity is precisely the act of becoming an obstacle for men who are in their filial way to reach the Father:

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in." (Matthew 23, 13).

The Kingdom of the Heavens is nothing more than the way to attain communion, as sons, with the Father. Therefore, hypocrisy is ανομία, the iniquity that causes one to separate from the faith in Christ, loosing the opportunity to reach the communion of the human and the Divine. Thus iniquity (ανομία) is scandal because it makes us stumble and fall while we are following Christ in our way to the Father.
Jesus calls those who are championing the opposition to Him in every time, the sons of Satan, a brood of vipers, a perverse generation:

" You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" [48]

Here we find again, the same opposition that we saw earlier in the text of the First Letter of John. The sons of God, who are pure as the Lamb, counter to the sons of Satan who oppose the Son, the workers of lawlessness, the evildoers who practice the iniquity (ανομία) which is 'the' sin.

The Iniquity According to Saint Paul

The teaching of Saint Paul about the iniquity extends the doctrine emanating from the texts of Saint Matthew and Saint John. The most significant passage containing this teaching is this:

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming. The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. [49]

The Mystery of Iniquity

We enter now fully into eschatological predictions, into the fullness of apocalyptic doctrine. That is why we are going to link Liberalism with that eschatological lawlessness which—invoking the Christian mysteries—it is against them and yet able to parasitize them, working prodigies in Christ's name. These are marvels of efficacy that the wicked use to propel themselves, augment their prestige, and hypocritically mislead the elect.

The Fraud and Falsehood of Modernity

Romano Guardini has described well the Christian perplexity standing before the Modern Age, showing features common to both the age and the mystery of iniquity in this manner:

"The [Christian] memories of the Modern Age rebellion against God were too deeply impressed, leading to an excessive suspicion of modernity and its way of placing all spheres of cultural activity in contradiction with the faith. We must add to that, the occurrence of what we have called the fraud [the hypocrisy] of the Modern Age, that falsehood consisting in the denial of one part of the Christian doctrine and order of life, while at the same time reclaiming for modernity the fatherhood of the cultural results of Christian doctrine and order. This caused the Christian feeling of insecurity relation to the Modern Age: everywhere one could find ideas and values of obvious Christian heritage, being presented falsely as belonging to the common patrimony. Elements of the Christian heritage everywhere were being turned against their own originator. [50]

This is a fact that deserves further reflection. I prefer to ruminate on it in the light of the observations of Mircea Eliade. Let us reflect on the situation of the Christian man in a Liberal medium, where there is also religious Liberalism. What is going to happen to that Christian when he is forced to live in a world that he cannot configure according to his divine archetypes, nay, this world is imposed to him, constructed by others according to the disordered configurations of the irreligious man?

Would this Christian be tempted to reconcile the irreconcilable, the configuration of the irreligious world with the religious archetypes of his faith? Wouldn't that put him in a state of confusion? Would he end up splitting in two, with his religious faith on one side, and the Liberal secular sense on the other? This is something to think about. At this stage we finally arrive to the thought of Father Leonardo Castellani.

The teachings of Fr. Leonardo Castellani

Fr. Leonardo Castellani has disserted deeply and abundantly about the mystery of iniquity in the eschatological context of the Antichrist, and about Liberalism as an apocalyptic phenomenon related to the mystery of iniquity.

I bring up here some passages of Fr. Castellani that are useful to revise and confirm what we have been analyzing.

"The Mystery of Iniquity is the hating of God and the idolizing adoration of Man." [51]

There is evidently an implicit mention of Liberalism in this quote. Liberalism can be also defined properly as "a negation of God and divinization of Man." Now Fr. Castellani comments on other apocalyptic characters connected with this mystery:

"The two beasts are [the first:] the political powers and [the second] man's religious instinct turned against God and controlled by the Pseudo-Christ and the Pseudo-Prophet. [...]

"The Great Harlot is religion, de-constructed and placed in the hands of the temporal powers."

"The adoration of man and the hating of God have always existed [...] that [phenomenon] has a tendency to coalesce in the body politic and crush the saints. That was the power that condemned Socrates, persecuted the prophets, crucified Jesus, and later multiplied the martyrs. That power, incarnated in a man of satanic greatness, a plebeian and perverse genius, perhaps [not unlike Our Lord] of the Jewish race, superhuman intellect, absolutely evil, will destroy the Church when the obstacles impeding him are removed, Satan will lend him his power and accumulated fury." [52]

Fr. Castellani foresees that this tide of iniquity will mortally affect Catholicism:

"The temporal structure of the Church—at least a sizeable part of it—will be captured by the Antichrist, fornicating with the kings of the earth, as it has already happened in history. At that point the abomination causing desolation will enter the Holy Place." [53]

In other passages of his commentaries on the Apocalypse, Fr. Castellani links Liberalism with one of the three frogs of Saint John's Revelation. Those three frogs appear in the scene after the pouring of the sixth "cup of the ire of God" that the seven angels pour over the earth. [54]

Let us keep in mind that the frogs (Hebrew, tsefardim) are God's second plague sent to punish Pharaoh [55] Even when here they appear to be only three frogs, one could think that they gather the kings of the earth, to lead an invasion of frogs. In the story of Exodus, the frogs fill the whole country getting into homes, furnaces and everywhere.

These three frogs come out of:
1. the mouth of the Serpent
2. the mouth of the first Beast
3. the mouth of the False Prophet (identified by some with the second Beast)

These three frogs "are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty." [56]

Fr. Castellani observes:

"[the frogs] have challenged the interpreters; the Fathers of the Church, and almost all have seen in them heresies the latest and newest of them. These are Liberalism, Communism and [...] Modernism". [57]

The same interpretation is put by Fr. Castellani in the mouth of his literary character, Don Benjamin Benavides:

"The three frogs are Liberalism, Communism and Modernism, three noisy, jumpy, swampy, stuttering heresies [...] they come out of the sixth plague [...] they are three unclean spirits [opposed to the Holy Ghost] capable to execute prodigies to congregate the kings of the earth to the last battle against God." [58]

"The text does not say 'three demons', neither is in agreement with the fact that two of the spirits come out of the mouths of men. The text says 'unclean spirits'. Those words, in any language, designate a movement, an ideology, a theology [...] they resemble frogs; slimy, lascivious, occult, swampy, noisy and boring animals, incessantly repeating their monotonous croak:

"Croak, croak, croak, the frogs sing
From the bottom of the river,
Democracy, croak, croak, croak,
Social Justice, croak, croak, croak
Humanity, croak, croak, croak,
The diabolic trio sings unceasingly."

"This political heresy, now diffused throughout the world, does not yet have a name. When it gets a name, it will not be his own, that is what Newman called "Religious Liberalism." He saw in it—just like I do—an omen of the Antichrist." That is what Pius X called 'modernism' and Hillaire Belloc called 'aloguism' [and 'anthropolatry']. That is the old religious Naturalism that goes back to Rousseau and the Encyclopedists and, if you will, has his roots in Baius (Michel Bay) [...] that is, deep inside, the idolatry of Man and Mankind, the worse possible error, attributed by Saint Paul to the [lawlessness, the iniquity, the chaos] the ánomos (ανομoσ)."

"I have written much about it, I will condense my thought here. This is a subtle falsification of Christianity, intent on emptying Christianity of its supernatural meaning, leaving the empty hull, which is filled again promptly by 'the spirit that loves the unclean wasted spaces' with he ancient call 'you shall be like Gods.'"

"Josef Pieper justly observed that the slogan of Liberalism, the dictum: 'Religion is a private thing and is not a concern of the State' implies make a God out of the State, putting it above a private God. This is the idolatry of the State, as old as the world itself, or at least, as old as the Roman Caesars, now proclaimed openly by Hegel: the worshiping of the Nation, man's creation, 'higher that practical intellect,' in the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas; who also adds, referring to the ancient cult of the Caesars: if man ceases to worship God he falls into the worshiping of the State—his nation, his race, his Science, his aesthetics, his power to wage war, his Freedom, his Constitution, and also Goddess Reason. Those last three deities were adored by the French Revolution; although the incense ascended towards Robespierre, who stood in the background, behind the prostitutes adorned with priestly silk and gold. [59]

Don Benjamin Benavides offers more information about the three frogs:

"Liberalism, struggling with his son Communism, is the frog-like spirit that came out of the mouth of the Beast, the other came out of the Dragon's mouth [...] Modernism will ally itself to both [...] Modernism is the common ground of these two opposing heresies. One day—we can see it coming—the Pseudo-prophet will fuse them together." [60]

"Modernism cannot be defined briefly, [...] That heresy is nothing more than the explicit, pedantic center of an omnipresent spirit permeating today's world. His origin in history was the 'Philosophism' of the 18th century. Fr. Manuel Lacunza [60b] with a very keen eye, saw the heresy of the Antichrist, the last heresy, the more radical and perfect of them all. Ever since those days, it has taken diverse appearances, but deep inside it has been always the same. It keeps repeating the same old song " Croak, croak, croak, the frogs sing, from the bottom of the river" [...] Anyone can figure out what a frog is saying because it's more noise than word. It is a magical noise, it is hypnotic, demonic, full of signs and prodigies... It attracts, subdues, hypnotizes, enhebriates, exhilarates [...] in its own way, in a wholesale manner.

"The 'croak-croak' of Liberalism is 'freedom, freedom, freedom;' the croak-croak of Communism is 'social justice.' The croak-croak of Modernism and the mother of them all is "Paradise on Earth", "Man is God" [...] and Democracy is the chorus of the three frogs singing together: political democracy, social democracy, and religious democracy.

[...] These are the last three heresies because one cannot go any further in the falsification of Christianity. These are the false messiahs predicted by Our Savior. Inside them beats the heart of "the Abomination causing Desolation" consisting in the worshipping of man instead of God, under the pretension of holding to the Christian ways, while keeping the exterior structure of the Church." [61]

After this consideration of the writings of Fr. Castellani, we can conclude that Liberalism is not only 'the' sin, it is also the 'unclean, impure spirit' that opposes the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son.
Fr. Castellani ended his conference about the "Essence of Liberalism" taking a phrase from a letter by Juan Manuel de Rosas [62] a quote presented as his "Argentine definition of a free man."

"A truly free man is he, who exempt from unfounded fears and unnecessary desires, in any country, finding himself in any given condition, is still subject to the mandates of God, the dictates of his conscience and of sane reason..."

In the same conference, Castellani encourages his young audience telling them:

"Neither you, nor I can defeat the Liberals with one hit. There is though, a way to defeat them in the end: "Giving witness" in the manner of the great Catholics that have confronted it intellectually. [63]

Conclusion

I have strived to show how Liberalism is 'the' sin, the supreme iniquity, the sin against the Holy Spirit. This is essentially the rebellion against the Father, the shout of "I shall not serve". Consistant with not obeying, not wanting to be His sons, not wanting to recognize God as Father, not wanting to recognize any right over one's life, not wanting to receive one's being from the Father. That is wanting to be one's own beginning and end, to be one's own god.

Confronted with this terrible blasphemy of our times, in the words of Fr. Castellani, we have nothing to oppose but our own witness of wanting to be sons of the Father, striving to live like sons and to know God as Our Father. That is why I invite you to pray this Prayer to the Father, saying with me:

Father, beget us in this hour and in every hour, in this day and every day. We want to receive our being from You always and in every instant here on earth, and in heaven, eternally so that we can glorify You like You deserve. Give us our being, our sight, our thinking, our understanding, our wanting to do Your will, our remembering your charity from where we come and to where we go. Our joy and peace, our happiness: we worship You, we praise You, we bless You. We have no happiness outside of You. To give You glory is the blessing of Your sons. Do not let us fall into the temptation of this generation of indifference where You have placed us. They are saddened by our joy. Deliver us from the evil one. Do not let his sadness prevail over the joy of Your sons, so that nothing will obscure Your glory and the glory You gave to your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

References

[1] ακηδία, pron. ah-ceh-dee-ah; meaning negligence, indifference, for the wicked are indifferent, make no distinction between good and evil. Latin acidĭa, derived from the same Greek word.

[2] Wisdom 2, 24.

[3] 2 Thessalonians 2,7.

[4] Félix Sardá i Salvany, El liberalismo es pecado, (Liberalism is Sin), Ediciones Cruz y Fierro, Buenos Aires, 1977. Colección Clásicos Contrarrevolucionarios 2. Cited from the Spanish edition in c. 3, pp. 32-34.

[5] 1 John 2, 18-23.

[6] Mark 3, 29.

[7] David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus for German Working People), Leipzig 1864, p. 18.

[8] Exodus 32, 1: When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him, "Up, make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."

[9] 1 Samuel 8, 7; Cfr. Luke 19, 14 `We do not want this man to reign over us.'

[10] Matthew 10, 40.

[11] Luke 10, 16.

[12] Alfredo Sáenz, El Cardenal Pie. Lucidez y Coraje al Servicio de la Verdad. (Cardenal Pie. Lucidity and Courage in the Service of Truth). Editorial Gladius, Buenos Aires. 2nd. Ed. 2007, p. 276.

[13] See the study by Helmut Schoeck, La Envidia. Una Teoría de la Sociedad (Envy. A Theory of Society). Ed. Club de Lectores, Buenos Aires 1969.

[14] M. J. Le Guillou, O.P. El Misterio del Padre. Fe de los Apóstoles (The Mystery of the Father. Faith of the Apostles). Gnosis Actuales. Editorial Encuentro, Madrid 1998, p. 196.

[15] Romans 10, 14.

[16] Mons. Paul Josef Cordes, El Eclipse del Padre (The Eclipse of the Father), Editorial Palabra, Madrid 2003, 1967, cited in p. 167.

[17] In the discourse of Benedict XVI the reference of Jesus Christ to the Father is very clear. Jesus has come to reveal the Father. The discourse expresses clearly this relation of Jesus to the Father in three main passages.

1-By pointing at what must be done by the Conference of Aparecida with the situation faced by the Latin American Continent at this point. "A new situation is being analyzed here in Aparecida. Facing these crossroads, the, the faithful expect of this new Conference, a renewal and revitalization of their faith in Christ, our only Teacher and Savior, who has revealed to us the unique experience of the Father's infinite love for mankind."

2-By pointing at Jesus as the one who reveals God: "For the Christian the nucleus of the response is simple" Only God knows God, only His Son, Who is God, is from God, true God can know Him. "He who is 'in the bossom of the Father', has revealed Him."

3-By pointing at the charism and the mission of those religious and consecrated people: "remind your brothers and sisters that the Kingdom of God has arrived already; that justice and truth are possible if we are open to the loving presence of God our Father, of Christ our Brother and Lord, and the Holy Spirit our Consoler."

[18] Fr. Ignatius Andereggen: Santo Tomás de Aquino- Psicólogo (St. Thomas Aquinas-Psychologist). Sapientia, 205 (1999) 59-68. R. Fr. Andereggen refers these affirmations by Sigmund Freud to: Totem y Tabú (Totem and Taboo), Buenos Aires 1993, 155-156.

[19] Mons. Paul Josef Cordes, El Eclipse del Padre (The Eclipse of the Father), Editorial Palabra, Madrid 2003, 1967, p. 179.

[20] Claudio Risè, Il Padre, l'Assente Inaccettabile, (The Father, the Unacceptable Absent) San Paolo, 2003, 7th Ed. pp. 49-70.

[21] Mircea Eliade, Lo Sagrado y lo profano, (The Sacred and the Profane) Ed. Guadarrama, Madrid 1967, p. 196.

[22] Mircea Eliade, op.cit. p. 197.

[23] Mircea Eliade, op.cit. p. 207.

[24] Malachi 4, 5-6; Matthew 17, 10-13; Luke 1, 17.

[25] Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Beginning of the Prologue to the 1st Edition, 1793.

"Die Moral, so fern sie auf dem Begriffe des Menschen als eines freien, eben darum aber auch sich selbst durch seine Vernunft an unbedingte Gesetze bindenden Wesens gegründet ist, bedarf weder der Idee eines andern Wesens über ihm, um seine Pflicht zu erkennen, noch einer andern Triebfeder als des Gesetzes selbst, um sie zu beobachten. [...] Sie bedarf also zum Behuf ihrer selbst (sowohl objectiv, was das Wollen, als subjectiv, was das Können betrifft) keinesweges der Religion, sondern Vermöge der reinen praktischen Vernunft ist sie sich selbst genug." En: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Vorrede zur ersten Auflage.; Kant's gesammelte Schriften, Hsgben. von der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Band VI, Seite 1.

[26] Genesis 3, 5.

[27] Daniel 7, 7-8.

[28] Matthew 10, 28.

[29] In this section I make use of the study by Fr. Ignace de la Potterie S.J. El Pecado es la Iniquidad (Sin is the Iniquity), from the volume containing several of his works: La Vida según el Espíritu, (Life According to the Spirit,) Ed. Sígueme, Salamanca 1967, pp. 69-86), from the French original: La Vie selon l'Esprit, Ed. Du Cerf, Paris 1965.

[30] 1 Juan 3, 4.

[31] Dédoken, given, delivered.

[32] Esmén, we are. The continuous present in Greek means literally: "we are being'.

[33] Ginôskei hemás, "That is why the world did not know Him [ignored Him]".

[34] Egnô autón, Egnô is at the root origin of the English word for "ignorance" which implies "not to know" both in the intransitive and the transitive.

[35] Agnízei, purify.

[36] Agnós, pure; from where the Latin word agnus (lamb) derives.

[37] Pás ho poiôn tên hamartían kai tén anomían poiéi, kai hê amartía estin he anomía.

[38] Tas hamartías.

[39] Hamartánei, a present word, here given a continuing sense.

[40] Pas ho amartanôn, "all sinners," participle.

[41] Planato, to deceive, to misguide, to deviate. "The misguiding, planê is one of the characteristics of the forces of darkness in the eschatological dualism light-darkness. In the darkness we stray off the road, with light we can see it. Remember that even in Matthew the notions of iniquity and perdition (straying off the road of salvation) are shown together in the warnings about the false prophets." Fr. Ignace de la Potterie S.J. La Vida según el Espíritu, (Life According to the Spirit,) Ed. Sígueme, Salamanca 1967 p. 81.

[41b] This part of Fr. Bojorge's work brings to mind the rebellion of the nations against the Father and His Messiah, prophesized in Psalm 2. That rebellion precedes the triumph of the Kingdom of God on earth. [Editor's note.]

[42] Psalm 6,8-9: "Depart from me, all you workers of evil; for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping. The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD accepts my prayer." This eschatological interpretation is shown in reference to the lawlessness made manifest in the Passion of Our Lord. The same will be manifested the time the Antichrist is revealed.

[43] Ergazoménoi ten anomían; Matthew 7, 22-23.

[44] Matthew 24, 5, 23-25.

[45] Tous poiountas tēn anomian; Matthew 13, 40-42:
ωσπερ ουν συλλεγεται τα ζιζανια και πυρι κατακαιεται ουτως εσται εν τη συντελεια του αιωνος τουτου. αποστελει ο υιος του ανθρωπου τους αγγελους αυτου και συλλεξουσιν εκ της βασιλειας αυτου παντα τα σκανδαλα και τους ποιουντας την ανομιαν. και βαλουσιν αυτους εις την καμινον του πυρος εκει εσται ο κλαυθμος και ο βρυγμος των οδοντων.
Transliterated: ōsper oun sullegetai ta zizania kai puri katakaietai outōs estai en tē sunteleia tou aiōnos toutou. apostelei o uios tou anthrōpou tous angelous autou kai sullexousin ek tēs basileias autou panta ta skandala kai tous poiountas tēn anomian. kai balousin autous eis tēn kaminon tou puros ekei estai o klauthmos kai o brugmos tōn odontōn.

[46] Félix Sardá i Salvany, El Liberalismo es Pecado (Liberalism is Sin) p. 129.

[47] Matthew 23, 28.

[48] Matthew 23, 33.

[49] 2 Thessalonians, 2, 1-13.

[50] Romano Guardini, El Ocaso de la Edad Moderna, (The End of the Modern Age) Ed. Guadarrama Madrid, 1958, p. 143.

[51] "El Misterio de la iniquidad es el odio a Dios y la adoración idolátrica del Hombre." Quoted from Cristo: ¿Vuelve o no vuelve? (Chist: Will He Return or Not?) Fr. Leonardo Castellani. Ed. Vórtice, Bs. As. 2004; pp. 26.

[52] "Las dos Bestias son [la primera:] el poder político y [la segunda] el instinto religioso del hombre vueltos contra Dios y dominados por el Pseudo-Cristo y el Pseudo-profeta. [...]

"La Gran Ramera es la religión descompuesta y entregada a los poderes temporales".

"La adoración del hombre con el odio a Dios ha existido siempre [...] él tiende a corporizarse en cuerpo político y aplastar a los santos. él fue quien condenó a Sócrates, persiguió a los profetas, crucificó a Jesús, y después multiplicó los mártires; y él será quien destruya la Iglesia, cuando, retirado el Obstáculo que lo retiene se encarne en un hombre de satánica grandeza, plebeyo genial y perverso, quizás de raza judía, de intelecto sobrehumano, de maldad absoluta, a quien Satán prestará su poder y su acumulada furia". Fr. Leonardo Castellani, Cristo: ¿Vuelve o no vuelve? (Chist: Will He Return or Not?) pp. 26-27.

[53] "la estructura temporal de la Iglesia existente será presa del Anticristo, fornicará con los reyes de la tierra—al menos una parte ostensible de ella, como pasó ya en la historia—y la abominación de la desolación entrará en el lugar santo." Fr. Leonardo Castellani, Cristo: ¿Vuelve o no vuelve? (Chist: Will He Return or Not?) p. 27.

[54] Revelation 16, 12 ss.

[55] Exodus 8, 1-4: Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, `Thus says the LORD, "Let my people go, that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs; the Nile shall swarm with frogs which shall come up into your house, and into your bedchamber and on your bed, and into the houses of your servants and of your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls; the frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants." And the LORD said to Moses, "Say to Aaron, `Stretch out your hand with your rod over the rivers, over the canals, and over the pools, and cause frogs to come upon the land of Egypt!'" So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.

ובכה ובעמך ובכל עבדיך יעלו הצפרדעים׃ (Exodus 8, 4. Hebrew Bible)

και επι σε και επι τους θεραποντας σου και επι τον λαον σου αναβησονται οι βατραχοι (Exodus 8, 4. Septuagint)

[56] Revelation 16, 14.

[57] "han hecho sudar el quilo y romperse el mate (la cabeza) a los intérpretes; los santos Padres, casi todos, han visto en ellas 'herejías', las últimas y 'novísimas'. Son el liberalismo, el comunismo y el [...] modernismo". Fr. Leonardo Castellani, El Apokalypsis, (The Apocalipse) Ediciones Jus, Buenos Aires 1963, p. 228

[58] "Las tres ranas son el liberalismo, el comunismo y el modernismo, tres herejías vocingleras, saltarinas, pantanosas y tartamudas [...] surgen de la plaga sexta y según dice el profeta son tres espíritus impuros [opuestos al Espíritu Santo] y capaces de hacer prodigios para congregar a los [ocho] reyes de toda la tierra a la última batalla contra Dios."

"El texto no dice 'tres demonios' ni tampoco es congruente con el salir dos de ellos de boca de dos hombres: el texto dice 'espíritus' [impuros] palabra que, en todas las lenguas designa también un movimiento, una ideología, una teología. [...] se parecen a ranas, animal viscoso y lascivo, oculto y fangoso, vocinglero y aburridor, que repite sin cesar su croar monótono:

"Cuá, cuá, cuá, cantaba la rana
Cuá, cuá, cuá, debajo del río
La democracia, cuá, cuá,
Justicia social, cuá, cuá,
Y la Humanidad, cuá, cuá,
Canta el diabólico trío".

"Esta herejía política difusa hoy en todo el mundo, que aún no tiene nombre y cuando lo tenga no será el propio suyo, que Newman en el siglo pasado llamó 'liberalismo religioso' (y por cierto vio en ella, como yo ahora, presagios del Anticristo); que San Pío X llamó 'modernismo' y Belloc 'aloguismo', es el viejo naturalismo religioso que remonta a Rousseau y los Enciclopedistas; y en su raíz, si se quiere, al presbítero belga Baius (Michel Bay) ...; la cual es, en su fondo, la idolatría del Hombre y de la Humanidad, el peor error posible, atribuido por San Pablo al ánomos.
Fr. Leonardo Castellani, Los Papeles de Benjamín Benavides, (The Papers of Benjamin Benavides.) Ediciones Dictio, Buenos Aires 3rd Edition, 1978, p. 43.

[59] "Mucho he escrito sobre ella, me resumiré aquí. Consiste en una adulteración sutil del cristianismo, al cual vacía de su contenido sobrenatural dejando la huera corteza, la cual rellena de inmediato 'el espíritu que ama los sitios sucios y los lugares vacantes' con el antiguo 'Seréis como dioses'.

"Josef Pieper observó con justeza que el dicho 'la Religión es cosa privada y al Estado no le interesa', lema del liberalismo, comporta nombrar Dios al Estado, poniéndolo por encima del Dios...; privado. Es la estatolatría, tan vieja como el mundo, o por lo menos, como los Césares romanos, proclamada ahora abiertamente por Hegel: la adoración de la 'Nación', creación del hombre, 'la más alta obra del intelecto práctico' dice Santo Tomás; el cual añade, refiriéndose al antiguo culto de los Césares, que si el hombre deja de adorar a Dios, cae a adorar al Estado—a su nación, a su raza, a su Ciencia, a su Estética, a su poder bélico, a la Libertad, a la Constitución—y a la Diosa Razón; a cuyas tres últimas deidades tributó culto la Revolución Francesa; aunque era Robespierre, en el fondo, que estaba allí detrás de las prostitutas enjaezadas de seda y oro sacerdotales, a quien subía el humo del incienso". Fr. Leonardo Castellani, El Apokalypsis, (The Apocalipse) Ediciones Jus, Buenos Aires 1963, pp. 228-230

[60] "El liberalismo, en pugna con su hijo el comunismo, son el espíritu batracio que salió de la boca de la Bestia, y el otro que salió de la boca del Dragón [...] El modernismo coaligará a los dos [...] el modernismo es el fondo común de las dos herejías contrarias, que algún día—que ya vemos venir—las englobará por obra del Pseudoprofeta". Fr. Leonardo Castellani, Los Papeles de Benjamín Benavides, (The Papers of Benjamin Benavides.) Ediciones Dictio, Buenos Aires 3rd Edition, 1978, p. 45.

[61] "[El modernismo] no se puede definir brevemente. [...] Esa herejía no es más que el núcleo explícito y pedantesco de un impalpable y omnipresente espíritu que permea el mundo de hoy. Su origen histórico fue el filosofismo del siglo XVIII, en el cual, con certero ojo, el Padre Lacunza vio la herejía del Anticristo, la última herejía, la más radical y perfecta de todas. Desde entonces acá ha revestido diversas formas, pero el fondo es el mismo, dice siempre lo mismo: 'Cuá, cuá, cantaba la rana, cuá, cuá, debajo del río" [...] ¡Cualquiera interpreta lo que dice una rana!—rió Don Benya—es más un ruido que una palabra. Pero es un ruido mágico, arrebatador, demoníaco, lleno de signos y prodigios...; Atrae, aduerme, entontece, emborracha, exalta [...] pero así, aproximadamente y a bulto.

"El cuá, cuá, del liberalismo es 'libertad, libertad, libertad'; el cuá, cuá, del comunismo es: 'justicia social', el cuá, cuá, del modernismo, de donde nacieron los otros y los reunirá un día, podríamos asignarle éste: 'Paraíso en la tierra'; 'Dios es el Hombre'; 'el hombre es Dios'" [...] "y la Democracia es el coro de las tres ranas juntas: democracia política, democracia social, y democracia religiosa".

[...] "Estas son las tres últimas herejías, porque no se puede ir más allá en materia de falsificación del cristianismo. Son literalmente los pseudo-cristos que predijo el Salvador. En el fondo de ellos late la 'abominación de la desolación'; [que consiste] en la adoración del hombre en lugar de Dios, y eso bajo formas cristianas y aún manteniendo tal vez el armazón exterior de la Iglesia".

Fr. Leonardo Castellani, Los Papeles de Benjamín Benavides, (The Papers of Benjamin Benavides.) Ediciones Dictio, Buenos Aires 3rd Edition, 1978, p. 46-47.

[62] "El hombre verdaderamente 'libre' es aquél que, exento de temores infundados y deseos innecesarios, en cualquier país y cualquier condición en que se halle, está 'sujeto' a los mandatos de Dios, al dictado de su conciencia y a los dictámenes de la sana razón...". Leonardo Castellani, La Esencia del Liberalismo, (The Essence of Liberalism) Ediciones Nuevo Orden, Buenos Aires 1964, 2nd edition, c. Carta a Josefina Gómez.

[63] "Neither you or I can defeat Echeverría, Ingenieros or Repetto (*) in one fell swoop (I cannot even read them myself) but we can serve Truth, and furthermore if God choses us we can give witness to the Truth; that is the great battle cry of Christianity that made fall the walls of pagan Jericho. All the religion of Christ is contained in these two words presented by Christ to the Apostles: give witness. [...] In Spain, during the century dominated by Liberalism, there were always men, from Donoso Cortés to Ramiro de Maetzu, that made Truth, that is, gave witness; and Spain [in time] triumphed over Liberalism. That is the true Great Mission of Buenos Aires: not precisely to exteriorize religiosity, nor to make religious propaganda, or [rather] religious boredom, repeating the same commonplace religious platitudes that have bored people to death; but to make Truth. How do you make Truth? By making Life, that is the rough material [of Truth]. How do you make Life? God has given us a little bit, we cannot increase it or diminish it, but we can spend it well.
(*) Argentine Liberal writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries: Esteban Echeverría, José Ingenieros and Nicolás Repetto.

Ni yo ni ustedes podemos vencer de golpe a Echeverría, a Ingenieros y a Repetto (yo ni siquiera puedo leerlos) pero podemos servir a la verdad, e incluso si Dios nos elige podemos dar testimonio a la Verdad; lo cual es el gran grito del Cristianismo, el que hizo caer las murallas de la pagana Jericó. Toda la religión de Cristo se encierra en estas dos palabras que Cristo impuso a sus Apóstoles : dar testimonio. [...] En España durante un siglo que duró el dominio del liberalismo nunca faltaron hombres, desde Donoso Cortés hasta Ramiro de Maeztu, que hicieron Verdad, o sea, dieron testimonio; y España venció al liberalismo. Esta es la verdadera Gran Misión de Buenos Aires: no precisamente hacer exterioridad religiosa, ni propaganda religiosa, ni aburrimiento religioso, repitiendo lugares comunes religiosos de los cuales la gente está aburrida; sino hacer Verdad. ¿Cómo se hace Verdad? Solamente con Vida, esa es la materia prima. ¿Cómo se hace Vida? Dios nos ha dado un cachito, no podemos aumentarlo ni disminuirlo, podemos biengastarlo.

Taken from La Esencia del Liberalismo, (The Essence of Liberalism) by Fr. Leonardo Castellani, Ediciones Nuevo Orden, Buenos Aires 1964, 2nd edition.

We Have No King But Caesar

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer

The following is the first of a three-part series on the 2008 Elections. In the next two weeks we will deal with issues of Culture and Conscience

Now that the election is over, we can separate the real Catholics from those who just act the part. Those still reeling from the results of the election can rest assured that they are in good company with the saints. Those who have drawn a line in blood and made a decision to stand with the culture of death need a serious examination of conscience. Now look at what we’ve done to ourselves. America has made her “choice” for maximum leader and it is not pretty. In fact, it is one of the most devastating blows to American civilization that we have ever undergone, and I do not speak in hyperbole. Even such a saintly figure as Mother Theresa said that “a nation that kills its children has no future;” likewise, an authority like Fr. Benedict Groeschel recently commented that we have entered into “the beginning of the twilight” of our country—dire words that touch on the reality of electing the most extreme, pro-abortion candidate America has ever had the misfortune of occupying the highest office of our land.

This has happened before though. When the prophet Samuel complained to God that the people of Israel were asking for a king, the Lord God replied that they were not rejecting Samuel but were in actual fact rejecting God Himself, His sovereignty and His authority over them (cf. 1 Sam, ch. 8). He also told Samuel that the people would have to accept the consequences of their wicked desire, and as we know, the craven need to be like the surrounding pagan nations was a bitter pill for them to swallow. The people of Israel echoed that rejection of their God more than a thousand years later when the King of Kings and Lord of Lords stood before them in Herod’s derisive purple robe and the people shouted, this time with vehemence: “We have no king but Caesar!” In essence, we have chosen a Barabbas over Christ—again.

And choices have consequences they say. The consequences of this election will be imprinted upon our national conscience for years to come, one of which is that, by electing abortion extremists to rule over us, both in the Presidency and in the Congress, we have now lost the blessing promised in Psalm 41:1-4

“Happy those concerned for the lowly and the poor; when misfortune strikes, the Lord delivers them. The Lord keeps and preserves them, makes them happy in the land, and does not betray them to their enemies. The Lord sustains them on their sickbed.”

It is hard for Americans to imagine that a land so consecrated could be shriven of that blessing. Yet, we have made our sickbed and we must lie in it.

This did not happen, though, without dire and prolonged warnings about the institutionalization of evil. We can’t say we were not warned. When moral persuasion about the killing of innocents did not work, rational science was our witness. When science was ignored and then co-opted for the works of death, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases came to awaken people’s consciences, but these did little better. God then had to allow such an onslaught of terrorism, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes and tsunamis in the past decade that He surely thought we would wake up to the deadly reality of the culture of death and repent. When that didn’t happen, He hit us in the most sensitive spot on the human body: our wallets. The gas price hikes and the recent financial meltdown surely would do the trick, He thought, but apparently that did not work either because our people adamantly refused to be deterred at any price from our lust for abortion and put into office all those who would serve the interests of this unholy agenda for decades to come. Alas, we all need to get on our knees and repent from the very depths of our hearts for the plague that we have just invited onto our beloved nation.

At the same time, my friends, despite the dismal picture, this is a time to thank Almighty God for the gifts of life, love and family that we have been given. It is also the time to seriously engage in efforts to take the culture back so that eventually our politics will follow the growth of a new pro-life culture from the seeds we are planting today.

Stay tuned for next week’s segment on winning the culture wars. Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer is the President of Human Life International

Report from Hell

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

I, captain Hirozaku Matsuda, Commander of Task Force 10 in charge of the clean-up and demolition works in sector 123-NIP of the Asteroid Belt, declare:

On the second day of our mission, first officer Yuri Kitajima found the wreck of a space probe, possibly from the 20th Century. This is not the first time that we find space junk and we knew very well what to do. The probe had impacted a rather large asteroid. The vessel is of Russian origin. Comparing it with the profiles in our database we learned the vessel is a Venera class probe, possibly destined to Venus in 1968 or 1969. It crashed against a category 6 asteroid, composed mainly of iron and a smaller portion of other metals.

We preserved its magnetic tape memory capsule supposed to contain the self-maintenance instructions. Officer Kitajima kept it as a memento of his first mission. The following month, when we returned to base in Baikonur, the tape was analyzed by the technicians in the local archaeology lab.

What follows is the transcription of a recording found in that tape, where one can clearly hear a high-pitched human voice. The voice talks, being interrupted from time to time by a cough or a gurgling noise, such as the noise made by someone having difficulty breathing. We have filtered off the extraneous noises and other strange dissonances to complete the transcription. The voice speaks in English. The linguists in our intelligence office have identified a New York accent, circa 1980-1990. The message is not very long.

(noise) This is Jeff Murray, I was born in Queens. This words are for Muriel Murray, of 722 Folsom Boulevard, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Muriel, I am your brother Jeff. I died in prison. I don't have a lot of time, I must explain... The blood of those children... you must stop that thing... the blood of children. When I passed through the corridor before entering eternal death I was allowed to see all of history in one minute. Two men dressed in white showed it to me in a small blob of ink. In the center of the blob I could see the Great Lady, she is a young mother of great beauty--it is hard for me to talk about beauty now... beauty hurts so much in this place... aack... (noise) yes... she was giving her son in the hands of God, for a brief moment. God allowed men to kill him. He was losing a lot of blood... his mother soaked a big cloth with his blood, she wanted to keep it... to give it to God as He was waiting... then God lifted the bleeding man. I am sure he was Jee-suss... oh... it hurts so much dear sister... and with the blood of Jesus, with every drop he rescued souls that went flying to him... Oh... but there was also an enemy. He was tied and then they let him loose. The enemy knows that he can convince a mother to give him the blood of her baby... he can use it to rescue his minions... he went out to convince the whole world that killing the babies is what they ought to do. He will use the blood of those babies to free the demons in the deep dark pits. Muriel dear, I am so sorry I lied to you... I was not working as a gynecologist... I made more money performing abortions... ah... money hurts and burns my hands and eyes now... save yourself, my sister. I have found this. It's like a tape recorder and I can speak through it... they let me do it but it hurts... a horrible pain to speak... this... aghh... I hope it reaches you. If it's found, take it to 722 Folsom Boulevard, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I hope it's not too late... (cries?) late... (noise)

We have been able to establish that there was a Muriel Murray Sullivan living in that address. She died in March 2007 of the rupture of an aneurism. She was involved as an activist in the Pro-life Movement that resulted in the Universal Right to Life Act passed by the UN after World War III. Her older brother, a physician with an alcohol addiction, lost his license to practice medicine and ended up working for an abortion clinic in Yonkers, New York. He was sent to prison after killing two children with his car while driving drunk. He killed himself in prison in 1998.

The reference dossier is attached.

Hirozaku Matsuda
Captain W.E.F.S.
Commander of Task Force 10

Rebuilding

David Warren

One of the grand mysteries of faith -- of human life -- is the irrevocable act. We do things that can never be undone. We make decisions that, in the clearer light of retrospect, should never have been made. But they were made, and acted upon, and the consequences are now out of our hands. How do we salvage the mess we have created? How could anyone salvage the mess, without the ability to go back in time? Great destruction can be wreaked in a moment; the salvage must proceed incrementally.

The western, "Judeo-Christian" tradition is unique among those that have governed the minds of civilized men and women, for its realism -- for its direct confrontation with the irrevocable act. From its announcement in Genesis, the tradition has presupposed a radical view of human freedom. Humans are moral actors who, in effect, lack only the freedom to deny their freedom -- who must therefore take full responsibility for their acts, and for any foreseeable consequences of their acts, to themselves and others. This began with Adam and Eve.

I beg my agnostic reader not to distract himself from this point with vain speculation about whether Adam and Eve were historical people. Let us agree, for sake of argument, that the Genesis story is pure myth. Ask instead: What is this myth expounding?

That we, the descendants of Adam and Eve, are likewise mortally flawed, and yet, unlike mere animals, we carry the burden of responsibility for our acts.

We have powers finally of life and death, not only over ourselves, but over our neighbours.

The consequences of our mistakes are written not only into our own lives, but into the lives of others, down to the lives of children yet unborn. Forgetting, for the moment, even heaven and hell, the business of our lives is deadly serious, and every human act has meaning.

The "game" was not reset after what we refer to as the Fall of Man. It cannot be played again to a different result. God Himself could not "reset the game" if He wanted: for in the Judeo-Christian view, even what God does is done irrevocably.

This is an extraordinary theological position, and it is easy to understand why "post-modern" or "post-Christian" man, along with followers of every other known religious tradition, should feel quite uncomfortable with such a restriction on God's power. For with such radical freedom comes the pain of radical accountability: to God, and also to each other.

But perhaps we don't care what happens to others.

As I have quoted in the past, let me quote again, the profound words of the late Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, replying to the central lie in Marxism, which remains the central post-modern or post-Christian lie: "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death -- the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged."

A great danger in democratic politics comes with just this denial. We are tempted to think that just by voting for a demagogue, a charlatan -- for any politician who tells us cynically only what we want to hear -- we can change the facts of nature.

We think that we can "make the rich pay," or otherwise transfer our personal responsibilities to the Nanny State. By some mysterious "social contract," we transfer to politicians the responsibility for what we have ourselves decided. And in due course, we may punish them, for what we got wrong.

I invite any reader with the stomach for it to consider the incredible demonization of the outgoing U.S. president, which was used in turn to secure the election of the incoming one. George W. Bush, from the balance of evidence a decent man with an honest view of his own limitations, served his country as well as he knew how. He has been made a scapegoat as if he were personally liable for everything that went wrong on his watch. A true scapegoat: for in the end he is blamed even for what was done to him.

John McCain is perhaps lucky to escape that fate. For the same forces in contemporary North American society would turn against him as turned against Mr. Bush -- the vicious machinery of recrimination by which "progressive forces" make their advance.

The president-elect may seem luckier, still, for he has an articulate gift for deflecting his own failures of judgment, and for finding plausible scapegoats external to himself.

Watch for this in the trials that will soon beset him.

Yet also, he professes to be Christian. So pray for him, that he will find the courage, perspicacity and prudence that come with the remembrance of our Lord.

The rebuilding effort by the Republican opposition will also need prayers.

Every attempt to disown "conservative principles" -- the principles not only of the free marketplace, but of moral absolutes and human responsibility -- will be a further setback. The abandonment of the specifically Christian heritage on which America was built can only contribute to her further destruction.

George Washington's Vision

Wesley Bradshaw

For many years copies of Washington's vision at Valley Forge as related by Wesley Bradshaw, told to him by Anthony Sherman, have been in existence. The earliest publication was in 1859, then republished in 1880, and 1931. It was printed once more by The Stars and Stripes in December 21, 1950. The following was published by Wesley Bradshaw in the National Review, Vol. 4, No. 12, December 1880.

The last time I ever saw Anthony Sherman was on July 4, 1859, in Independence Square. He was then 99 years old, and becoming very feeble. But though so old, his dimming eyes rekindled as he gazed upon Independence Hall, which he came to visit once more.

“Let us go into the hall,” he said. “I want to tell you an incident of Washington’s life - one which no one alive knows of except myself; and, if you live, you will before long, see it verified.

“From the opening of the Revolution we experienced all phases of fortune, now good and now ill; one time victorious and another conquered. The darkest period we had, I think, was when Washington, after several reverses, retreated to Valley Forge, where he resolved to spend the winter of 1777. Ah! I have often seen our dear commander’s care-worn cheeks, as he would be conversing with a confidential officer about the condition of his poor soldiers. You have doubtless heard the story of Washington’s going to the thicket to pray. Well, it was not only true, but he used often to pray in secret for aid and comfort from God, the interposition of whose Divine Providence brought us safely through the darkest days of tribulation.

“One day, I remember well, the chilly winds whistled through the leafless trees, though the sky was cloudless and the sun shone brightly, he remained in his quarters nearly all the afternoon alone. When he came out, I noticed that his face was a shade paler than usual, and there seemed to be something on his mind of more than ordinary importance. Returning just after dusk, he dispatched an orderly to the quarters of the officer I mention who was presently in attendance. After a preliminary conversation of about half an hour, Washington, gazing upon his companion with that strange look of dignity which he alone could command said to the latter:

“I do not know whether it is owing to anxiety of my mind, or what, but this afternoon, as I was sitting at this table engaged in preparing a dispatch, something seemed to disturb me. Looking up, I beheld standing opposite me a singularly beautiful female. So astonished was I, for I had given strict orders not to be disturbed, that it was some moments before I found language to inquire the cause of her presence. A second, a third, and even a fourth time did I repeat my question, but received no answer from my mysterious visitor except a slight raising of her eyes.

“Presently I heard a voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn,” while at the same time my visitor extended her arm eastwardly. I now beheld a heavy white vapor at some distance rising fold upon fold. This gradually dissipated, and I looked upon a strange scene. Before me lay spread out in one vast plain all the countries of the world---Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. I saw rolling and tossing, between Europe and America, the billows of the Atlantic, and between Asia and America lay the Pacific.

“Son of the Republic,” said the same mysterious voice as before, “look and learn.” At that moment I beheld a dark, shadowy being, like an angel, standing, or rather floating, in the hollow air, between Europe and America. Dipping water out of the ocean in the hollow of each hand, he sprinkled some upon America with his right hand while with his left hand he cast some on Europe. Immediately a cloud raised from these countries and joined in mid-ocean. For a while it remained stationary, and then moved slowly westward, until it enveloped America in its murky folds. Sharp flashes of lightning gleamed through it at intervals, and I heard the smothered groans and cries of the American people.

“A second time the angel dipped water from the ocean, and sprinkled it out as before. The dark cloud was then drawn back to the ocean, in whose heaving billows it sank from view. A third time I heard the mysterious voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn.” I cast my eyes upon America and beheld villages and towns and cities springing up one after another until the whole land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was dotted with them. Again I head the mysterious voice say, “Son of the Republic, the end of the century cometh, look and learn.”

“At this the dark shadowy angel turned his face southward, and from Africa I saw an ill-omened spectre approach our land. It flitted slowly over every town and city of the latter. The inhabitants presently set themselves in battle array against each other. As I continued looking, I saw a bright angel, on whose brow rested a crown of light, on which was traced the word “Union,” bearing the American flag which he placed between the divided nation, and said, “Remember ye are brethren.” Instantly, the inhabitants casting from them their weapons became friends once more, and united around the National Standard.

“And again I heard the mysterious voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn.” At this, the dark, shadowy angel placed a trumpet to his mouth and blew three distinct blasts; and taking water from the ocean, he sprinkled it upon Europe, Asia, and Africa. Then my eyes beheld a fearful scene. From each of these countries arose thick, black clouds that were soon joined into one. And throughout this mass, there gleamed a dark red light by which I saw hordes of armed men, who, moving with the cloud, marched by land and sailed by sea to America, which country was enveloped in the volume of cloud. And I dimly saw these vast armies devastate the whole country, and burn the villages, towns and cities that I beheld springing up.

“As my ears listened to the thundering of the cannon, clashing of swords, and the shouts and cries of millions in mortal combat. I again heard the mysterious voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn.” When the voice had ceased, the dark shadowy angel placed his trumpet once more to his mouth, and blew a long and fearful blast.

“Instantly a light as of a thousand suns shone down from above me, and pierced and broke into fragments the dark cloud which enveloped America. At the same moment the angel upon whose head still shone the word “Union,” and who bore our national flag in one hand and a sword in the other, descended from the heavens attended by legions of white spirits. These immediately joined the inhabitants of America, who I perceived were well-nigh overcome, but who immediately taking courage again closed up their broken ranks and renewed the battle. Again, amid the fearful noise of the conflict, I heard the mysterious voice saying, “Son of the Republic, look and learn.”

“As the voice ceased, the shadowy angel for the last time dipped water from the ocean and sprinkled it upon America. Instantly the dark cloud rolled back, together with the armies it had brought, leaving the inhabitants of the land victorious.

“Then once more I beheld the villages, towns and cities, springing up where I had seen them before, while the bright angel, plating the azure standard he had brought in the midst of them, cried with a loud voice: “While the stars remain, and the heavens send down dew upon the earth, so long shall the Union last.” And taking from his brow the crown on which was blazoned the word “Union,” he placed it upon the Standard, while the people, kneeling down, said “Amen.”

“The scene instantly began to fade and dissolve, and I at last saw nothing but the rising, curling vapor I at first beheld. This also disappearing, I found myself once more gazing upon the mysterious visitor, who in the same voice I had heard before, said, “Son of the Republic, what you have seen is thus interpreted. Three great perils will come upon the Republic. The most fearful is the third.”

“(The comment on his word ‘third’ is: The help against the THIRD peril comes in the shape of Divine assistance; passing which, the whole world united shall not prevail against her. Let every child of the Republic learn to live for his God, his land and Union.)”

“With these words the vision vanished, and I started from my seat and felt that I had seen a vision wherein had been shown me the birth, progress, and destiny of the United States.”

“Such, my friends,” concluded the venerable narrator, “were the words I heard from Washington’s own lips, and America will do well to profit by them.”

A Covert War?

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

America has learned nothing from the resounding defeats on the "War on Poverty" during the 1960's. Cities like Detroit--at one time among the most affluent cities in the world--have gradually collapsed under the weight of social programs. Entire neighborhoods are turned into eyesores where no one would choose to live.

Now the target of this covert war is the whole country. After allowing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to partner with Wall Street in the selling of dubious financial instruments, now the U.S. Government is embarked in a humongous "rescue of everybody." While the intentions are good, the results are almost guaranteed to be a disaster. The new massive programs will not fare better than the welfare programs of yesteryear.

We must all wake up from this dangerous dream and realize that the only way to create capital is hard work. Ever since mankind was kicked out of Eden, we must earn our daily bread working. Work involves risk. There is no way to weed out the thorns and thistles. History demonstrates that every time we device a defense seeking to achieve total security, we end up inviting a disaster much bigger than the one we were trying to avoid.

Since the times of the Great Depression, we have created a complex web of regulations and programs to avoid financial instability, to prevent war, to end poverty, etc. etc. All of these things have proven to be as effective as the Maginot Line that the German paratroopers neutralized in a matter of hours. Yes, the greatest achievement of Maginot was to inspire the Blitzkrieg.

When are we going to learn?

Brace for harsh times. The more government gets involved, the bigger the problem will become. May be this time we will learn the lesson once and for all. We have replaced an incompetent with a sweet-talking dreamer. We will have no one to blame but ourselves in the end.

These are the times when we should be repenting in sackcloth and ashes for the barbarity of abortion, for the perversity that we have instilled in our youth, for the darkness we have allowed to grow in the minds of our intellectuals.

Instead we have voted to perpetuate the society of recreational abortion, drugs, debauchery and violence. The price for those items is much bigger than the doozy that Wall Street and Congress have dumped on us. Do not even dream on skipping payment on that. No society that practiced children sacrifice ever survived.

Excessive government growth and intervention got us into this mess. Only a fool can believe that the ones who created the problem can now solve it.

Good policies must come back or we are toast. Reduce the capital gains tax or make it disappear altogether. Allow for lower payroll taxes. Let people work in peace and be productive no matter what their age. Good policies can still turn this around. The elimination of abortion and the return to a society based on sound Christian values is paramount if we are to survive. We are teetering at the edge of chaos: one epidemic, one natural disaster, one well-planned attack by a vicious enemy is all that separates us from dissolving our Union or--God forbid--be conquered.

Think, America. Think!

Echoes of a Distant Thunder

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison—Revelation 20, 7

It was 312 a.D. and Constantine the Great had defeated Magentius in battle, securing the control of the Western Roman Empire. The night before he had been advised by a strange vision to use the Cross as a sign that would surely bring him to victory. He did and he won. In time, he moved the Roman capital to the East, to Constantinople (now called Istanbul.) The move caused some of the bishops of Constantinople to think that perhaps the Chair of the Roman Pontiff should be moved to the new capital. The Romans (and the rest of the West) wanted nothing to do with that. The dispute continued until 1054 a.D. when the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople exchanged excommunications. Thus began the Eastern Schism that produced what we know now as the Orthodox Churches of Asia. The first thousand years of the Reign of Christ were coming to an end and Satan was out of his prison.

In time, the Churches of the East would know much more exacting taskmasters than the far removed Roman Pontiff. Invading hordes assailed the Western Empire for centuries, Constantinople fell to Islamic forces in 1492, then came the Sultans, the Ottomans and finally Communism. The tyranny of evil always befalls the disobedient.

Before and after the fall of the Eastern Empire, the top of their society started moving west, escaping the consequences of their own ideas and behavior. They brought with them the same kind of intellectual attitude and spirit that had caused the split in 1054. Not long after the fall of Constantinople, the German Reformation, a new and more pervasive form of schism, appeared in the West.

That was going to be just one of many assaults on the old order of the ages. The German Reformation opened the door to the French Revolution, the precursor of Communism. Bonaparte, Weimar, Lenin, Hitler followed in quick succession: all of them agree in one thing and only one thing: they hated the Christian ideals.

The Second World War ended the aspirations of fascism, the Cold War ended the expansion of Soviet Communism, but not before they had infected our youth and intellectuals. The year of 1968 saw the beginning of many decades of turmoil. The transgressors had reached our shores. That was the year that the Democratic Party jettisoned the Jacksonian ideals, ceasing to represent the workers of America in the perpetual dialogue between Labor and Capital. The successes of the Civil Rights Movement inspired the Democrats to seek new causes in a perpetual and nonsensical push for "absolute equality in everything." The dogmas emerging from that deviation ended up infecting even those to the right in the political spectrum. Our body politic ails of a strange fever, the result of an epidemic that started moving east more than a thousand years ago.

As it often happens with common infirmities, the fever is only a symptom, a sign that the body is burning energy and generating antibodies to fight the invaders. When the sickness wins the fight, the result is the death of the body. When the body wins, it becomes stronger, and the antibodies prevent that sickness from ever occurring again.

All analogies are imperfect and mine sure follows the rule. This sickness has not the slightest chance of killing the body. We know that God created mankind to give Him glory, and praise Him forever for His love. But now the fever rages on and it will get worse before it gets better. The sure sign of victory is still the same it was in times of Constantine: the Cross.

In Hoc Signo Vinces, a motto having the same initials as Iesu Homini Salvatoris Vincit.

Jesus, Savior of Mankind Prevail! Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Crowds and power

David Warren

If my reader celebrated All Hallows' Eve last night, will he also celebrate All Hallows today, or "All Saints" as we say in current English? And will he continue through this late autumn weekend, observing "All Souls" tomorrow? It would, after all, be perverse only to celebrate witches and ghosts and goblins, and not the morning light of Christendom that chased them all away. Who could be so perverse?

Sanctity is sanity. A saint is that rare person who is completely sane, who can look broadly on things as they are, without flinching. Saintly behaviour consists in not flinching -- not out of some private stoicism, for no man can stand unaided against the hurricane when it comes -- but in the clear light of Grace. That, at least, has been the Christian teaching over 20 centuries, and will be for 20 more, and 20 times 20, if the years remain.

My column today is about politics, but I have gratuitously mixed in religion from the start. I do not think we can have a clear sight of politics, if we do not begin with a fairly clear sight of reality, which means eyes open, so wide as they will go, to everything before us. "Everything" does not include only our present station in life, and our present imagined or unimagined problems, or even the Earth considered as an ecological whole. Everything we see, with our own living animal eyes, will soon pass away. A clear sight looks beyond the visible, towards a reality beyond chance and change. A clear sight requires a destiny and purpose that is not confined to any worldly ambition.

A Christian view of politics, or the religious view more generally, is therefore different in kind from the "agnostic" or "atheist" or "secular liberal" view. To this day the great majority of people living on this continent take a religious view, at least in the moments when they are fully honest and candid with themselves. These moments may only occur as a by-product of stress or grief: when our illusions are stripped away by events, and we are left facing the emptiness out of which all illusions are summoned. It is not true that "there are no atheists in the trenches"; only true that the trenches are where the atheists despair.

In the religious view, which is sometimes indistinguishable from what we now call the "conservative" view (though with a very small "c") politics are merely of this world. We must live in this world, and make the best of it, and we may take considerable latitude in arguing about the best that is achievable.

But for the irreligious -- the people for whom this world is all there is -- politics can easily become everything. The very human instincts that turn towards prayer, towards heaven, towards God, turn easily instead towards human idols, towards the contemplation of a heaven on earth, towards utopian hopes and aspirations -- and finally, towards demonizing all those who appear to be getting in the way of "progress." As they inevitably must: for the definition of the "good" which progress seeks comes into dispute, between those whose futurity is here, or elsewhere.

In civic life, persons of all persuasions must accommodate each other, live and let live. This at least has been, in the best, old-fashioned sense of the word, the "liberal" notion guiding public policy. Or, it was the liberal notion in a time when North American society was still, in the mass, unambiguously Christian. Let those within the Church get on with their lives; let those outside the Church get on with theirs; and let the State not intrude in the lives of either. Buttressing this view was the Protestant, later secular, idea of "conscience." Let no reasonable man or woman be forced to do what he does not think right.

We have a crisis in our political life, which seems nowhere as apparent as in the U.S. election, to be decided this coming Tuesday. As ever, the crisis is heralded by public confusion, and the emergence of a demagogue.

My sense is that the old liberal notion of "live and let live" is breaking down, is proving unworkable (for reasons that would take far more than a newspaper column to explicate). My fear is that we are crossing a threshold, in which "crowds and power" (compulsion, tyranny) are in the ascendant; that we are on a path where the saints become martyrs. I pray that I am wrong.

Warning from the Past

Mark Mallet

What is this strange spell which seems to have bewitched America? What is this enchantment which has befallen the mainstream media? What is this strong infatuation which has inebriated a large portion of the electorate? Yet, for many others, there are enormous and very loud alarm bells ringing this eve over the next likely President of the United States: Barack Obama. I am a Canadian, and so I am usually reluctant to express my thoughts on another country’s politics. However, I feel more and more that what is happening is setting the stage, in part, for many things I have written about of the trials which are coming upon the Church and the world.

A Strange Spell

As always with the internet, there are the wild and extreme opinions, the conspiracy theorists, the bizarre extrapolators. I have personally received emails from readers wondering if Obama is actually the antichrist. Perhaps Canadian author Michael D. O’Brien sums up my feelings best on this matter in his recent and powerful newsletter:

Obama is a crowd-pleaser with just the right ethos of idealistic crusader. That the crusade and the banners under which it marches are evil does not automatically prove that he is the Antichrist. But now that I have seen the video of the Berlin speech I think there is more here than meets the eye. He is indeed a powerful manipulator of crowds, even as he appears ever so humble and wholesomely charming. I doubt that he is the long-prophesied ruler of the world, but I also believe that he is a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well. In this sense he is of the spirit of Antichrist (perhaps without knowing it), and probably is one of several key figures in the world who (knowingly or unknowingly) will be instrumental in ushering in the time of great trial for the Church under its last and worst persecution, amidst the numerous other tribulations prophesied in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and letters of St Paul, St. John, and St. Peter. —November 1st, Studiobrien.com

Yes, I agree with this entirely; it is precisely the flag of warning which has been steadily ascending the flag pole between my heart and mind. (But let me add that I do not mean to negate the feelings of many Americans that the current government has made a moral mess of their country’s economy and foreign relations.) The warning is a result of the strange, pretentious, if not alarming actions and statements Obama has made, such as his bold proclamation at Henderson, Nevada this week when he stated ‘I will change the world.’ The fact that he campaigned in Europe with elaborate pagan props also seemed odd. His speech there, where he proclaimed to 200, 000 gathered to hear him: "This is the moment to stand as one…" led to a German television commentator to state, "We have just heard the next President of the United States… and the future President of the World." A Nigerian news outlet recently said that an Obama victory "…will enthrone the US as the global headquarters of democracy. It will usher in a New World Order…"

Then there is his speech at the Democratic Convention. One CNN anchor said, "All Americans will remember where they were at, obama_halo.jpgthe moment he gave his speech." This was said before the speech was made. Oprah Winfrey said she cried her "eyelashes off" just watching Obama walk on stage. In an interview afterward, Oprah and rapper Kanye West said the speech "changed my life" and that she had "never experienced anything like this." And yet, there were others who watched the speech and found it nominally interesting. How is that? On a sidenote, Oprah has become a leading false prophet in the world, drawing many astray into new age philosophies. At the same time, she has thrown her absolute support behind Obama promising she will do "whatever it takes" to get him elected. A powerful combination, indeed.

Early in the campaigning, many were startled to see media representatives lose objectivity entirely. MSNBC News anchor, Chris Matthews, described "a thrill going up my leg" as Obama spoke. And then on another show said, "[Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament." Others have made comparisons of Obama to Jesus and described the senator in terms of being a "messiah" who will capture the youth.

When taken altogether, an uneasy scene begins to unfold of a young politician who has risen from virtual obscurity into more than a celebrity: a savior who is going to bring ‘hope’ and ‘change’ to America. However, there is a deadly irony in this: Barack Obama will make America one of the leading countries in the world of infanticide and genocide in the womb (see The Hour of Decision ).

From an American reader in Colorado:

I sense in this night’s wind that my country is at the tipping point, that we are about to experience ‘Change’ but it is not what many are expecting, it is not the social transformation that has been slickly advertised and promised this campaign season. ‘Hope’ cannot be given to a people by sowing death, by encouraging and enabling the destruction of the most innocent and helpless. Abortion, the greatest challenge ever to human rights, is about to become an ‘entitlement’ in my country by way of the Freedom of Choice Act, if Senator Obama is elected Tuesday and his open declaration to sign this act into law should come to pass.

Warning Signs

When one adds to his ability to mesmerize the masses also his far left political ideas, a picture begins to emerge which is troubling to many who feel this will turn America into a socialist country, if not facist. (While this sounds rather extreme, it’s already apparent that religious freedoms are rapidly vanishing and "state morality" is being forced on the public through the judicial system.)

Aside from the senator’s past relationships with questionable figures, there is his comment on "redistributing the wealth" which some have deemed Marxist. And then there was that interview on Iowa Public Television in which Obama suggested using "price signals to change behavior" —jacking up the cost of electricity or adding a federal tax on fuel to force Americans to start conserving energy. It leaves open the question as to what other "price signals" could be incorporated to "change the behavior" of families who, according to the new regime, or to manipulated public opinion, have "too many children" or refuse to allow their kids to participate in gay sex education… Add to that, he said his policies to fight greenhouse gases will actually bankrupt coal companies because "they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted."

Then there is that astonishing comment he made that he would not want his daughters "punished with a baby" if they "made a mistake." Or his criticism of those in small towns who "cling to their… religion."

Perhaps most ominous is Obama’s speech calling for a "civilian national security force" within America’s borders which is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military. For some, this evoked the word "Gestapo" or "KGB."

But perhaps what some have found most disturbing are the following two videos. They prompted a Nazi era survivor to pen the words which follow below these two short videos.





Warning from the Past

The following excerpt is from a recent letter by Lori Kalner who lived during Hitler’s regime. When she heard the above children’s song, it evoked powerful memories which moved her to write this powerful warning…

In Germany, when Hitler came to power, it was a time of terrible financial depression. Money was worth nothing. In Germany people lost homes and jobs, just like in the American Depression in the 1930s…

In those days, in my homeland, Adolph Hitler was elected to power by promising "Change." …So Hitler was elected to power by only 1/3 the popular vote. A coalition of other political parties in parliament made him supreme leader. Then, when he was leader, he disgraced and expelled everyone in parliament who did not go along with him.

Yes. Change came to my homeland as the new leader promised it would.

The teachers in German schools began to teach the children to sing songs in praise of Hitler. This was the beginning of the Hitler Youth movement. It began with praise of the Fuhrer’s programs on the lips of innocent children. Hymns in praise of Hitler and his programs were being sung in the schoolrooms and in the play yard. Little girls and boys joined hands and sang these songs as they walked home from school.

My brother came home and told Papa what was happening at school. The political hymns of children proclaimed Change was coming to our homeland and the Fuhrer was a leader we could trust. I will never forget my father’s face. Grief and fear. He knew that the best propaganda of the Nazis was song on the lips of little children. Soon the children’s songs praising the Fuhrer were heard everywhere on the streets and over the radio. "With our Fuhrer to lead us, we can do it! We can change the world!"

Soon after that Papa, a pastor, was turned away from visiting elderly parishioners in hospitals. The people he had come to bring comfort of God’s Word, were "no longer there." Where had they vanished to while under nationalized health care? It became an open secret. The elderly and sick began to disappear from hospitals feet first as "mercy killing" became the policy. Children with disabilities and those who had Down syndrome were euthanized. People whispered, "Maybe it is better for them now. Put them out of misery. They are no longer suffering… And, of course, their death is better for the treasury of our nation. Our taxes no longer must be spent to care for such a burden."

And so murder was called mercy.

The government took over private business. Industry and health care were "nationalized." (NA-ZI means National Socialist Party) The businesses of all Jews were seized…. The world and God’s word were turned upside down. Hitler promised the people economic Change? Not change. It was, rather, Lucifer’s very ancient Delusion leading to Destruction.

What began with the propaganda of children singing a catchy tune ended in the deaths of millions of children. The reality of what came upon us is so horrible that you in this present generation cannot imagine it …Unless your course of the church in America is spiritually changed now, returning to the Lord, there are new horrors yet to come. I trembled last night when I heard the voices of American children raised in song, praising the name of Obama, the charismatic fellow who claims he is the American Messiah. Yet I have heard what this man Obama says about abortion and the "mercy killing" of tiny babies who are not wanted.

There are so few of us left to warn you. I have heard that there are 69 million Catholics in America and 70 million Evangelical Christians. Where are your voices? Where is your outrage? Where is passion and your vote? Do you vote based on an abortionist’s empty promises and economics? Or do you vote according to the Bible?

Thus says the Lord about every living child still in the womb… "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…"

…I have experienced the signs of the politics of Death in my youth. I see them again now…wicatholicmusings.blogspot.com

Exaggerated fear? Or are we indeed on the threshold of "Change"? When one considers that economic experts are saying that America’s currency is headed for a complete collapse under unsustainable debt, the man in charge in the ensuing chaos becomes rather important at this time.

How will he handle martial law? How will he use his power to bring peace and security, tolerance and unity? We should perhaps heed present and past warnings, as we pray for our leaders…

…in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3, 1-7)

When people are saying, "Peace and security," then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5, 30)

Further Reference

[1] How the current moral vacuum is creating the right environment for a charismatic leader to come on the global scene as a savior to mankind: The Great Vacuum

[2] To My American Friends: an article on the war in Iraq and what the Church says about it.

Save Us

David Warren

Snow fell on London this last week, a beautiful blanket of snow -- the first to fall in the month of October since the year of grace 1922 -- while the Mother of Parliaments gave third reading to an extraordinary piece of legislation, which will put a huge new bureaucracy in place to monitor and fight global warming, sucking taxes from a shrinking British economy.

This is an example of what is now called, in urban parlance, the "Gore effect," after the Nobel-prize-winner and former U.S. vice-president. It is defined as, "The phenomenon that leads to record cold temperatures wherever Al Gore goes to deliver an important statement on global warming, or by extension, to sharp temperature drops wherever a major discussion of global warming takes place."



The phenomenon was first noticed on Jan. 15, 2004, when Mr. Gore railed in New York against the Bush administration's indifference to his railing. The city that day experienced one of its coldest days on record. It was noted in Australia, in November 2006, when Mr. Gore arrived in the late antipodean spring, together with a remarkable cold front and a late-season boon for the ski resorts. It was noticed again last May, during an international conference on global warming in Lima. For the duration of the conference, Peru experienced a cold spell.

Pure coincidence, I'm sure, although the general worldwide trend to cooler temperatures, and accompanying cold weather patterns, has a perfectly obvious explanation: "It's the sunspot cycle, stupid." The earth's climate has, for some time, been observed to track only a little behind solar magnetic field trends. We did indeed have global warming for the duration of the last solar "max," peaking in 1998. We have now plunged into the succeeding "min," in which sunspots haven't been showing at all (for the first time in almost a century).

For all the souls who live down here below, on the same earth that has survived so many election cycles, this is rather bad news. It should be obvious, to the sane, that increasing temperatures are a net blessing, up to some reasonable point, for life requires heat, just as plant life requires carbon dioxide. (A quick comparison of tropical rainforest with arctic tundra will help to confirm that generalization, though perhaps water supply should be mentioned in passing.)

Decreasing temperatures mean decreasing crop yields, and the sudden need for thicker clothing and heating fuels. In the main, global warmings are a boon, global coolings are a bust. Humans with the means generally vote with their feet: travelling towards warm, and away from cold, as Canadians perhaps understand better than most.

Even the Greenland Eskimo would have migrated south, according to the first modern European explorers who made contact with them. They didn't, however, because apparently some Inuit-speaking Al Gore had arisen among them. This hypothetical soi-disant genius had convinced them that in summer it must get colder the farther you go south. It was "settled science." The proof? As everyone could see, all the ice flows south in the summer. Imagine how cold it must be down there!

Life is hard enough -- and will become hard enough through the coming cold if the sun does not renew its spots -- without all the soi-disant geniuses of our political order, building their bureaucratic castles in the sand, their castellated igloos in the snow, with our tax money. They offer "change," "hope," and any number of plausible-sounding arguments for the continued expansion of the vast machinery to equip us against the various threats that afflicted us yesterday -- each of which leaves us less well equipped to confront the challenges of tomorrow.

It is our own fault when they succeed. For we are stupid, and we fall for mere words, and arguments that are pure rhetorical blather.

The British Parliament is on the verge of an act of ruinous stupidity with its global warming legislation.

The United States is on the verge of electing a man whose sweet promises include an end to rising sea levels, and the change you can believe in. Should he win, and should his party form the supermajority in the U.S. Congress that is currently predicted in the polls, we can be assured of at least four years of American self-destruction -- probably on a scale beyond that of the Carter presidency -- with consequences to the entire free world.

Look at all the souls who gather in the mass rallies for this eloquent demagogue! We have seen this kind of thing so many times before in history. People believe because they want to believe. But when their faith is transferred from God, to politicians; and when their rational judgment is suspended, from the illusion of hope -- well. My own earthly prayer is a simple one, that Truman will somehow defeat Dewey, in this instance, letting us return to our real problems, with whatever our wallets still contain.

Hear us, O Lord, in heaven thy dwelling place.