Just Proclaim the Truth Always
by Thomas A. Droleskey

     A consistory of the Church's cardinals called 
by Pope John Paul II will have met by the time the 
next issue of CHRIST OR CHAOS is published. The 
Holy Father posed seven questions to the cardinals 
in preparation for the consistory, which met 
between May 20 and 24, 2001: (1) what the best way 
is for the Church the convey her message in a 
world of religious pluralism? (2) whether the 
Church is doing enough to promote holiness in all 
its evangelical radicality? (3) how the Church and 
the "originality of its sacraments" should be 
defended in the face of New Age sects offering an 
alternative spirituality; (4) how world poverty 
and globalization are to be tackled; (5) whether 
there is a discrepancy between the views of 
ordinary Catholics on sexual and family matters 
and Catholic doctrine; (6) how the world's mass 
media can be better used to convey Christian 
values; and (7) how church bodies such as the 
Curia and the Synod of Bishops could be "made to 
function better." I am not a member of the College 
of Cardinals. The Holy Father has not addressed 
his questions to me, therefore. However, as a lay 
Catholic concerned about our mater and our 
magister, I do have a few humble suggestions which 
touch on these questions.

     (1) The best way for the Church to convey the 
unchanging teachings of her Divine Bridegroom, our 
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is to do what the 
Apostles did in the midst of cultural 
circumstances almost identical to our own: 
proclaim the Holy Name whether in season or out of 
season, whether welcome or unwelcome, whether 
convenient or inconvenient. The Apostles rejoiced, 
as Saint Luke records in the Acts of the Apostles, 
because they were deemed worthy of ill treatment 
for the sake of the Name. The Apostles were not 
afraid of losing any of the benefits afforded by 
this passing world, including that of their very 
physical lives. They took seriously the Great 
Commissioning they had received from the Master to 
go into the whole world and to preach everything 
He had revealed to them, baptizing all people in 
the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Spirit. The Apostles and those who followed 
them planted the seeds which resulted in the glory 
of the Middle Ages, a glory which arose because 
missionaries preached the Gospel pure and 
unadulterated to barbaric peoples, inviting them 
into the true Faith without compromise or apology. 
Thus, there must be an end to the sort of 
ecumenism that has been practiced for more than 
forty years now, which give impetus the very 
religious indifferentism which the Holy Father has 
criticized at various points in the past 23 years. 
As Pope Pius XI noted in 1928 in MORTALIUM ANIMOS, 
authentic religious unity is fostered only by 
proclaiming the truth in love and by inviting 
everyone into the true Church founded by our Lord 
upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. There is nothing 
to be "discovered" by "dialoging" with Protestants 
and non-Christians. We need to exhort them to 
convert. Such exhortations worked for the Apostles 
and those who followed them by the grace of God. 
Why do we believe that the same grace is less 
efficacious now in the Third Millennium than it 
was in the First?

     (2) The Church by her very nature is holy. 
There are many holy people who make up the Church 
Militant on the face of the earth, men and women 
who spend much time in prayer on their knees 
before the Blessed Sacrament and who are tenderly 
devoted to the Mother of God. Indeed, the practice 
of instituting chapels of Perpetual Eucharistic 
Adoration, which is relatively recent in the life 
of the Church, has resulted in an outpouring of 
love and sacrifice on the part of believing 
Catholics as they place themselves before our 
Eucharistic King, Who permits Himself to be the 
Prisoner of Love for us sacramentally in the 
tabernacles and in monstrances. The growing 
movement of total consecration to Mary Immaculate, 
which was the subject of an extensive commentary 
in the May issue of CHRIST OR CHAOS, is a sign of 
great hope for the Church and for the world, which 
is why the Devil has sought to eradicate devotion 
to our Lady from within the very quarters of the 
Church.

     That having been noted, however, the very 
nature of the  Novus Ordo has undermined the 
holiness of the faithful and their belief in the 
Real Presence in many instances, led to an 
unprecedented corruption of doctrine, and 
therefore served as one of the major impediments 
to the spread of holiness in the Church (and thus 
order in the world). As I have been noting in my 
continuing series analyzing the GENERAL 
INSTRUCTION OF THE ROMAN MISSAL, instability of 
worship leads to a decline of the life of the 
faith in the souls of believers. The best way for 
the Church to recapture the full spirit of her 
holiness is to promote more generously the 
Traditional Latin Mass, especially by effecting a 
reconciliation with the Priestly Fraternity of the 
Society of Pope Saint Pius X.

     (3) Defending the Church's doctrine on the 
"originality of the Sacraments" against the 
onslaughts made by the New Age movement involves 
having a body of bishops and priests who adhere 
without one jot of dissent from the received 
teaching of our Lord and who are unafraid to 
proclaim that truth in love, as noted in my 
commentary on the first question the Pope has 
posed to the cardinals. Sadly, the received 
teaching of our Lord -- the deposit of faith -- is 
not a matter of personal opinion or speculation. 
Our Lord deposited His teaching in Holy Mother 
Church through the Apostles. His teaching has been 
safeguarded in its transmission by the magisterium 
under the infallible guidance and protection of 
the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy 
Spirit. Thus, the next Holy Father is simply going 
to have to do a better job than Pope John Paul II 
has done with respect to closely supervising the 
appointment of men as diocesan ordinaries and 
auxiliary bishops. The next Pope is going to have 
to realize that there *is* a real crisis of faith 
within the hierarchy and that it is absolutely 
necessary to break with the standard operating 
procedures by which men are recommended for the 
episcopacy or transfers to particular sees. My 
simple suggestion, which I have made at other 
points in the past decade, is for the members of 
the Congregation for Bishops and the Holy Father 
to take seriously recommendations of orthodox and 
courageous priests by lay Catholics for 
consideration as bishops. Aggregately, each of us 
knows enough priests to staff every single diocese 
in the world with a true believer who would take 
seriously his obligation to pasture the flocks 
entrusted to his pastoral care with zeal, men who 
would be unafraid of media criticism and the loss 
of contributions from the faithful as the price 
they must pay for the promotion of liturgical 
reverence and doctrinal orthodox. *That* is the 
principal way to fight the insidious spread of the 
New Age movement within the Church. Secondarily, 
though, it may very well be necessary to suppress 
religious communities that have been infested with 
New Agers. 

     (4) World poverty is a vexing problem. It has 
many causes. In many instances, though, the 
problem of poverty in the world is the result of 
the leaders of corrupt socialist, collectivist 
governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, who 
loot all international assistance sent to them and 
who exploit the natural resources of their own 
countries in order to enrich themselves at the 
expense of their own people. Too, it is true, as 
Pope John Paul II has noted, that the corporate 
world and developed nations have played a role in 
the exploitation of the labor and the resources of 
those trapped in poverty in underdeveloped 
nations. However, it is also true that one of the 
significant sources of world poverty is the 
planned and relentless assault upon the integrity 
of the family by the United Nations, the 
International Planned Parenthood Federation, the 
European Union, and other supranational and 
international bodies and organizations, whether 
governmental or nongovernmental. Contraception, 
sex instruction, feminism, and sodomy have all 
played a significant role in the undermining of 
the integrity of the family. 

     The Christendom of the Middle Ages was made 
possible by the stability of families. The lack of 
the sort of poverty known in the world today was 
the result of economic cooperation engendered by 
the guild systems, in stark contrast to the dogged 
competition produced by all aspects of 
contemporary capitalism, both individualistic 
capitalism associated with Calvinism and the 
corporate brand of capitalism spawned thereby. 
Thus, it was necessary for Freemasons to attack 
the integrity of the family in the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries as a means of augmenting the 
power of the state to the point whereby the state 
would be seen as the natural substitute for the 
family, thus turning the principle of subsidiarity 
on its head. The Church must confront this quite 
directly, stating in no uncertain terms that it is 
the reconstitution of the Catholic family and the 
promotion of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ 
which are the only antidotes to the poisons which 
have spread in the world as a result of both 
capitalism and all forms of socialist 
collectivism. Home-schooling must be fostered and 
promoted, not hindered, by the Church, and 
Catholic schools and universities must be 
authentically Catholic. No one who dissents from 
one whit of received teaching should be permitted 
to teach any subject in any Catholic educational 
institution. Catholics need to learn that every 
aspect of our lives is to be lived in the shadow 
of the Holy Cross.

     Indeed, it is the recapture of the wisdom of 
Popes Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, and Pius XI which 
will steer Holy Mother Church in the right 
direction as regards the growth of world 
governance. As I have indicated in many other 
commentaries in the last few years, the abrogation 
of the post-Protestant Revolt reality known as the 
modern nation-state is an attempt on the part of 
globalists to replace the Church, which is meant 
by our Lord to be the true means of global 
governance on matters of faith and morals and on 
matters of fundamental justice founded in the 
splendor of Truth Incarnate, with interlocking 
political, social and economic structures designed 
to control the lives of the world's population 
(especially as its relates to matters of so-called 
"reproductive freedom"). The Church must assert 
*her* rights to be recognized as the world's 
leader, something she has not done since the death 
of Pope Pius XI in 1939. While she does not have 
(nor has ever proposed) any concrete models for 
the governance of peoples, she does have the 
eternal principles which are meant to guide those 
who exercise civil authority: the Social Kingship 
of Jesus Christ and the authority of His true 
Church to interpose herself directly when civil 
law contravenes the binding precepts of the Divine 
positive law and the natural law.

     The rise of monarchical despotism and statist 
totalitarianism was made possible by the 
Protestant Revolt, which "liberated" rulers from 
the authority of the Vicar of Christ on temporal 
matters, and by the rise of the so-called Age of 
the Enlightenment and its monster-child, 
Freemasonry. There is no other way to combat all 
of the secular "isms" spawned by these 
developments, as I noted in my "From Luther to 
Clinton to Gore" seven months ago, than by 
defending the Catholic Faith, as Pope Leo XIII 
noted in IMMORTALE DEI, to the utmost of our 
ability. And St. Maximilian Kolbe, who knew full 
well the dangers posed by Freemasonry and global 
governance, began the Militia of the Immaculata as 
the means by which Catholics would build up the 
City of Mary Immaculate as the means to do battle 
with the forces of the world, the flesh, and the 
Devil.

     (5) It does not take the proverbial rocket 
scientist (I'd like to meet at least one of those 
scientists before I die) to figure out that most 
baptized Catholics have not got one blessed clue 
about the meaning of the Ten Commandments. For it 
is the very simple case that the acceptance of 
what the Church teaches in the Name of her 
Invisible Head, Jesus Christ, on matters of the 
family and conjugal morality is directly related 
to loving God completely and putting total faith 
in all that He has revealed to us through Holy 
Mother Church, keeping His Name holy, maintaining 
Sunday, the Lord's Day, as a day devoted specially 
to a consideration of First and Last Things; 
honoring our fathers and our mothers, whether 
living or deceased, by living as befits redeemed 
creatures destined to share in an unending Easter 
Sunday of glory in Paradise; safeguarding the 
absolute inviolability of all innocent human life 
from the first moment of fertilization to the time 
of natural death without any exception whatsoever; 
understanding the necessity of the virtue of 
purity as a the precondition to holy, happy 
marriages wherein the gift of marital intimacy is 
based on a mutual surrender of one spouse to the 
other in Christ through His true Church; being 
people of honesty and integrity and moderation in 
the acquisition and retention of the goods of this 
world; having an abiding love for the truth and 
for the good name of others; and never seeking to 
covet the goods or the lives of others, being 
content with what God has given us. All that is 
needed to live a life in accord with the binding 
precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments is to 
first of all love God authentically through His 
true Church, to receive the Sacraments of Penance 
and the Eucharist regularly and worthily, and to 
be steadfast in prayer before the Blessed 
Sacrament and to the Mother of God. There is no 
need for any program (such as the insidious lie of 
sex instruction) or "manual" to convince Catholics 
of truths they have rejected because the ambiance 
of worship and catechesis within the Church has 
been shaped by the prevailing spirits of 
relativism and positivism within the world.

     (6) There are many ways to use the media to 
promote the received teaching of our Lord. 
Although there are elements and personalities on 
the Eternal Word Television Network I can do 
without, there is much programming on EWTN which 
does clearly state the truths of the Faith in no 
uncertain terms. There are a lot of good websites 
on the Internet which do so. There are vistas of 
opportunity in this regard. However, it is also 
true that the Church needs to do more than simply 
to expand her use of the media. She must teach the 
faithful not to partake of entertainment fare 
which promotes the very thing which caused our 
Lord to suffer once on the wood of the Cross in 
His Sacred Humanity and which wounds His Mystical 
Body continuously today: sin. While it is one 
thing to be sorry and to seek out the mercy of our 
Lord in the Sacrament of Penance, it is quite 
another to promote and to glorify sin, worse yet 
for those of us who say we love our Lord through 
His true Church to make a mockery of our faith by 
paying money to participate in the glorification 
of sin. The Church must pray to the Holy Ghost so 
that she will discover once more the virtue of 
fortitude in order to form the sheep of Christ's 
true sheepfold on matters of culture.

     (7) The structure of the Vatican Curia is 
certainly something that is open to debate. Said 
structure is merely a form of church governance 
determined as a result of long-standing traditions 
and prudential decisions reflected in the CODE OF 
CANON LAW. It is not received directly from the 
hand of God. As is the case with any other 
bureaucracy, the Curia has a tendency to take on a 
life of its own, seeking to insulate itself from 
controversies and difficulties. Bureaucrats tend 
to become careerists interested in protecting the 
sinecures they hold and in being promoted to 
another sinecure in which they could exercise more 
power and possess more prestige in the circles 
they travel in. This is not good for the integrity 
of the Faith, especially when good souls present 
real, documented problems concerning the promotion 
of liturgical irreverence and doctrinal impurity 
by bishops and priests. As I noted a few months 
ago in my commentary on the scandalous behavior of 
priests in Africa, the Curia has not acquitted 
itself well in dealing with the reality of the 
situation we face within the Church.

     To be sure, there are many dedicated people 
who work hard for the honor and glory of God and 
for the salvation of souls within the Curia. There 
are just not enough of them. And it may take until 
all of the principals involved in the promotion of 
the mythologies of the last 40 years are dead and 
buried for there to be a frank assessment as to 
how the Curia has become in large measure a spin-
doctoring factory for the state of the liturgy and 
the state of doctrine within the Church. Men need 
to be appointed to curial posts who will actually 
listen to the pleas of the faithful concerning the 
state of the Church. The Curia becomes little more 
than a structure existing merely to exist if those 
who serve within it turn a deaf ear and a blind 
eye to the suffering of the lay faithful at the 
hands of bishops and priests, to say nothing of 
the suffering of faithful priests at the hands of 
their bishops and other priests. 

     Although I touched on the subject of bishops 
at the beginning of this discourse, it is also 
necessary to do so at this point. According to 
experts in canon law, there is no provision in 
existing canon law whereby the Holy Father may 
demand the resignation of a diocesan ordinary. I 
don't really understand why the Holy Father, who 
is the supreme legislator of the Church, simply 
can't amend canon law to specify his inherent 
power to remove the men he appoints as ordinaries. 
However, there does need to be some canonical 
procedure to protect the faithful from the likes 
of Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, New York, 
Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, et 
al. There must be some procedure to remove the 
Daniel Ryans and J. Keith Symons from their sees 
without maintaining various fictions invented to 
protect them from their perversity. The Church is 
not a democracy. However, the faithful do have the 
right to the fullness of the Faith in all of its 
holy purity. An ordinary who positively undermines 
the Faith -- or who tolerates its undermining -- 
must be removed quickly for the good of the 
salvation of souls.

     Mind you, each of us is a weak vessel of 
clay. Each one of our sins has weakened the 
Mystical Body of Christ. As I note so frequently, 
though, it is one thing to sin and to be sorry. It 
is quite another for those in episcopal authority 
to be indifferent to sin, if not openly 
contemptuous of the concept that order in the 
world depends upon the order produced in souls as 
a result of those soulsą being in states of 
habitual or sanctifying grace. 

     The Traditional Latin Mass is not the 
guarantor of personal sanctity, ecclesiastical 
harmony, or the successful pursuit and maintenance 
of justice in society founded in the standard of 
the splendor of Truth Incarnate, our Blessed Lord 
and Savior. One does have to be a little thick-
headed, though, not to realize it is the necessary 
precondition for such a state of affairs. 

     Thus, we must pray to the Mother of God, who 
is the Mother of the Church and the Mother of us 
all, that the Church will ultimately recapture her 
living liturgical tradition in the West, which is 
the only effective antidote to the poisons which 
have been spreading in the world for so long. 
While we pray every day for the Holy Father and 
the bishops in communion with him, we pray also 
that the future will bring us popes and bishops 
unafraid to examine the events of the last forty 
years with honesty and dispassion. For it will 
only be when the tragedy of the last 40 years is 
admitted frankly that the glory which was once the 
Church's and the world's can, please God and by 
His grace, be restored and extended once more.

     Viva Cristo Rey!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Thomas Droleskey, speaker and lecturer, is a 
professor of political science, the author of CHRIST IN 
THE VOTING BOOTH and THERE IS NO CURE FOR THIS 
CONDITION (www.hopeofstmonica.com), and editor of the 
CHRIST OR CHAOS newsletter.

This column is distributed and archived by Griffin 
Internet Syndicate, http://griffnews.com. All rights 
reserved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You may forward this column if you use this disclaimer:

Subscribe to Dr. Droleskey's column. 
See "Subscribe" at www.griffnews.com 
or call 800-513-5053.