In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Well, there is a lot of talk and everybody has a lot of opinions depending on who you ask about what is the greatest evil in the world, what is the most evil thing there could possibly be. It depends on who you talk to. You talk to some, it’s global warming or others it’s this, that and the other thing, pollution or abortion, and that’s probably getting closer to it though. But, in general, the most evil thing that can possibly exist in the universe is sin. It is human beings setting their will in contradiction to the will of God in their disobedience. That is the greatest evil there is. Why? Because, with the exception of man, every other creature of God, everything created by God, and whether it be animal, vegetable or mineral, is obedient, absolutely and totally obedient to its creator. You don’t think of rocks as obedient, but in their own way, they are. If you drop a rock, it has no choice but to go down. It obeys at least the law of gravity and other laws. It decomposes in the elements and whatnot. We think that when a rattlesnake bites a person that the rattlesnake is so horrible. Well, funny enough, that rattlesnake is being perfectly obedient to the will of God in biting whoever or whatever it was that it bit. Only man, who has free will, can choose to sin, that is, to disobey the will of God.
So, you wonder why, then, did God give him free will. Look at the horrible results of our free will. First of all, starting with Adam and Eve, it got us into this horrible mess with the use of their free will to disobey God and eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And we’ve been getting into messes ever since. I mean, look, there’s no need to tell you, just look around you, not in church but outside in society, and you’ll see that everything has literally gone to hell, and that is because of man’s abuse of his own free will. God gave him this free will for one particular purpose. He created man with free will out of some mystery of His love that He would be able to share eternity with creatures who had earned their place to be there with Him. The Kingdom of Heaven is a reward that is earned, and we must never forget that. It isn’t something that everybody is just given for nothing because God is so nice.
There are people with the Protestant mentality that think, Oh, they were such nice people, nice to be with, such a nice person, he always said, Have a nice day, and, so, I think he’s in a better place now. Yeah, he didn’t go to church and you know there was that married three times thing or four times, lost track, but he was so nice. Well, look at Our Lord. Quite often Our Lord sends us a little reminder. He said, “And his Lord being angry, delivered Him to the torturers until he paid all the debt. So also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you do not every one forgive his brother from your hearts”. And Our Lord is constantly reminding us that He is not a cosmic muffin, that He is, in fact, Our Lord and Judge, and that we have to earn heaven by being obedient.
But, anyway, to answer the question to the reason why He gave us free will, it is so we could earn heaven, and by freely choosing to do His will, we could spend eternity with Him. Now, we have the ability to sin and many people choose that way of going. But I want to remind you that it does not give us the right to sin. An ability to do something and a right to do something are two different things. We have the ability to drive 150 mph down Bixby. We certainly shouldn’t be doing that, and we absolutely don’t have the right to do that. You can’t go into traffic court and say, Well, I have the right to do that. No, we don’t even have the legal right to do that. But that man believes that it is his right to do as he pleases is at the root of all our problems and, in fact, the deplorable state of our world. People stand up to God as if they are something. We are nothing. We are nothing. We were created out of nothing, out of dust, then. The dust was created out of nothing and we were created out of dust by God. We can’t stand up to Him. In fact, we don’t even have the right to stand up to Him.
Another example is having a real right and a false right. There is a legal right, for example, to abortion, amongst other things. It does not give you the actual right. No one has the right before God to an abortion or other immoral things that may be covered by the law of a particular country. People have the legal right in some states to get so-called married to people that are the same gender as themselves, as stupid as that sounds. But it’s not a real right, because you can’t have a right to do something which is against the law of God and His Will.
So, we never have that real right. This being so, we have to remember that we only have the right to do what God wants us to do. Think about it. Why must we obey God? How come? And there’s a couple of reasons I’ll give you.
The first reason that we only have the right to obey God and never have the right to do the contrary, though we may have the ability, is that He created us, He made us out of nothing, He made dust out of nothing and then made us out of the dust, right? just to prove a point. And being our Creator, we can’t say, Yeah, You created us but we owe You nothing. You created us and we can do what we want. Now, it even sounds absurd to you. You certainly wouldn’t stand for that from your children, and you didn’t even create your children. You only helped, you only participated, you only obeyed the Will of God in creating them, you didn’t even create your children. But, let’s say you could make a little Play-Doh thing, you know, a little Play-Doh person type thing, and then you could make it come alive. If that little Play-Doh deal said, Well, the heck with you, I’m going to do what I want to, and stick to things that you don’t want me to stick to, and get in laundry, you would simply say, Okay, (Msgr. slamming his hand down on the pretend Play-Doh) squash! Right? It wouldn’t take as long to lose patience with our little Play-Doh creations. Well, think of what we do in the face of God, and think how patient and merciful He is in not splatting us at many points during our life. He has other ways of splatting us, but it’s usually more like a spanking than a splatting to get us to come around to doing His Will.
Well, God is so patient and so merciful to us, but still we continue down this path. Now, that is on the individual level. It’s easy to see, maybe, that as individuals being created by God, we have to be obedient to Him. There is a second claim He has on the world, as well, though. Because Jesus Christ, God the Son and the Son of God not only created us, but He died to redeem us. He bought us with His blood, and so he has two claims on us. Not only did He create us, but we are bought and paid for by His Precious Blood. And, so, we never have the right to choose against Him. And His right is the right of Christ the King, the absolute King with absolute dominion over all of creation, especially humanity. I say especially because we’re the ones who can choose against Him.
Imagine that there was a king of a country. Now the Church is not for any particular government as long as it is exercised correctly. There are many things about our form of government that the Church is against, because it is wrong. It’s not so much democracy in itself that is wrong, but it is our form of it. You have to realize that if democracy means nothing more than the people vote to elect a person who will enforce the will of Christ the King in that society, then, that’s fine. You can have your democracy. But if democracy means what it means here that we have the mistaken notion that power and authority come from the people, that is a heresy. Omnes potestas a Deo , All power comes from God. And if your government and your system of government is not realizing that, then they are in error. In fact, they are sinning. And that’s only one of the millions of ways that our government is sinning.
But, imagine we have a king, and kings are fine, too, as long as they enforce the Will of God in their kingdom, or else they are not doing their job. They are bad kings. But let’s say there’s a king and he goes around and there’s a group of people who say, We’re not acknowledging you as king, we’re not giving you your dues, we’re not going to pay your taxes, we’re not even going to look at you. We’re going to pretend you don’t exist. What would the king do to them? We don’t know, but use your imaginations, pretend you’re the king. You probably have a lot worse things in mind than I do. (Msgr. laughing) But, you know, it would be the equivalent to the Play-Doh smash until they gave him his due. And we could see that in a human setting. We go, Of course, that’s what a king would do. Well, Christ the King is owed even more than that by every single human being on earth. But look what his creatures are doing. They are ignoring Him, disobeying Him, doing whatever it is they want to do, their own will without recognizing that He is King over all humanity. And when I say all humanity, Christ is King not only of Roman Catholics, Christ is King of Muslims, Christ is King of Buddhists, of tree worshipers, worshipers of the great thumb, of anything you can think of, but He is their King. And their failure to recognize Him as their King is not helping the human condition one little bit.
So, what do we do? Instead of the real solution in society, the real solution in society is only found in the peace of Christ. The peace of Christ is the only peace that will last on earth. But what do we do? We invade here, we invade there, we go and invade Afghanistan, we invade Iraq, we probably will invade Iran, invade the Sudetenland, whatever place we continually as a world go invading back and forth, Al Sas Lorraine and the Hinterland or whatever the era or place may be. These will not bring peace. I think most of us, except the politicians, realize that invading places does not bring peace. Only what they will not acknowledge will bring peace, and that is true lasting peace will be in the kingdom of Christ in His earthly kingdom as well as His heavenly kingdom.
Now, I said you can see that in the picture of a human king saying I’m not putting up with you people. I am the king here, by the way, and I’m going to show you I’m king, and, so, you’re not going to get away with ignoring me or my commandments. Well, Christ is not only my King and your King and your King and your King and your King. Christ is the King of states, of governments, of whole countries, of continents, of the entire world, as a matter of fact. And look who is not giving Him His due. If the public schools were following the will of God in this country, theology would be mandatory, the catechism would be taught, there would be crucifixes in every public school class. This is if they were giving Christ His due. But as it stands, we have to pretend there is no God, sorry, there is no God. You can’t mention God in a classroom because we have separation of church and state, right? That isn’t even what church and state is about, and church and state is wrong in the second place.
But, may I remind you, you can use this when you are talking with the less pleasant people you must talk with in the course of a week sometimes. Belief in God is not a religion. Well, what religion are you? Well, I’m the kind that sort of, I believe in God. Oh, you’re that religion, are you? No. Belief in God is an element of sanity. Atheism is a form of insanity. These people should be medicated. The ACLU should be on whatever good pill they give people these days. I don’t know. But something to get them out of their hallucinogenic state of denying the existence of God. How do you know? Look anywhere. Look at each other. Look at plants. Anything. Nature. I had this conversation last week with somebody who is, well, insane, too, trying to tell me there is no God. So, I said to them, Okay, look at the law and order of the universe. Look at life, look at nature, look at other people, look at the forms of creation. Now, he was believing in evolution. So, I said, Now let me understand. There are only two choices here, okay? Either somebody created all of this or they didn’t. Right. And you are saying the more sane choice is to say it all happened by itself. Yeah. That’s not saying, show me something that made itself, show me anything that has ever made itself. All you wonderful ladies out there, put all the ingredients on the kitchen near the stove and go out for the day. Okay? And when you come home you will be cured of evolution if you ever had a problem there, because, guess what? All the nice little things will be sitting in the packages when you come home, the containers right where you put them. They will not have opened their lids spontaneously and swirled around and made your casserole by itself, or whatever it is you are making that day. So, these people, then, they are trying to tell us that the belief that this all made itself is more sane and scientific and rational. No, they just want God out of it. Because if you acknowledge the obvious, yeah, I gotta admit that nothing really makes itself so somebody made this. And then I go, Okay, that somebody we call God. Okay? You don’t have to know a lot about it right now, but if you will say somebody made this, that somebody’s God, and since He made it, you have to be obedient, not only individuals, but states, governments, the world and it has no right to do otherwise. A Muslim has no right before God to practice their ridiculous made up form of Satan worship, which is what Islam is. They are not worshiping the true God, and if you are not worshiping the true God, you are worshiping Satan. We can go into more of that later. They have no right to do that. In fact, Protestants don’t have the right to do what they do. Why? Because you can’t get an end run around the Church by divine right.
The God who created us and who died to redeem us with blood, died to found the Roman Catholic Church, and that is what we profess and what we believe. He didn’t die so that everybody can get together at Assisi from time to time and pretend we have no differences and this kind of thing, and get along as one big happy family, each doing our own different thing. Christ died to found the Roman Catholic Church for the salvation of men. This is what is wrong with Protestantism. They think that by dying Christ saved everyone individually directly. This is not the Christian way of thinking. They call themselves Christians and they are not. Christ died to found the Roman Catholic Church to dispense the graces of salvation that He got by our redemption on the cross. You see, Christ died, Christ is there, He founded the Church and through the Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and only through the Roman Catholic Church, and to mankind comes the graces of salvation. You can’t do an end run around that.
So, what are the implications there? Since Christ died to found the Church and gave us Its’ sacraments, He also then knows He was dying in obedience to His Father, to give Him, His Father, the only sacrifice that would be acceptable to pay for the sins of humanity, the only acceptable sacrifice, translating into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the only acceptable form of worship in the eyes of God, the only thing He will take as worship since Its’ institution. Therefore, all people should be attending the Holy Sacrifice and worshiping in this way, all nations, the governments of nations should be opening sessions of Congress with the Holy Mass, and the Church should be invited to send moral theologians to the lawmakers and they would have to listen to the morality of the laws they were considering of enacting. It’s God’s right, it’s His demand. And what we are doing is in opposition to that.
Let me just say that the Popes have always taught this until Vatican II. This is the constant teaching of the Church. Read the encyclicals, for example, of Leo XIII. He was one of the ones who wrote the most on this. All of the Popes believed it, but Leo XIII was particularly adamant and knew the world needed to hear this at that time that he was alive and after that. So he put that clearly into his encyclicals. He also wrote more encyclicals on the rosary than any Pope has ever written. And those are really good to read, too.
But let me just give you an example out of one of one of his, Immortale Dei.
“Every civilized community must have a ruling authority. And this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve Him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, mainly God, the sovereign Ruler of all.”
“The right to rule is not necessarily, however, bound up with any special mode of government” as I was talking about. “It may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature to ensure the general welfare. But whatever be the nature of the government, rulers must ever bear in mind that God is the paramount Ruler of the world and must set Him before themselves as their exemplar and law in the administration of the state.”
So we can only say how far are we from that. I was talking about separation of church and state. One of our you can call him more recent Popes, but Pope St. Pius X, let’s see what he had to say about separation of church and state. “That the State should be separated from the Church is an absolutely false and most pernicious thesis, pernicious, deadly thesis kind of idea or proposition.” So that we should have separation of church and state is a deadly proposition according to our Pope and Saint Pius X. And that is Church teaching. Why? Because the Roman Catholic Church, by divine right, has the right to be the Church of State in every nation on earth. If they were following God’s will, it would be, but there aren’t many that are following it. Of course, all of this was overturned, not overturned, but contradicted by Vatican II, which is the source of many of our recent problems.
It was contradicted in Vatican II in the infamous document, Dignitatis Humanae. Now, once again, as traditional Catholics we have the sense to say, Well, let’s see. All these Popes say this is true, and the next one says Yes, that’s true, I’ll tell you again, that’s true, that’s true, that’s true. And, all of a sudden, the 1960s hit and we have, Oh, the opposite is now true. Well, who are you going to believe? So, let me tell you about Dignitatis Humanae. It was the document on religious freedom, so called. The actual author was John Courtney Murray, an American Jesuit, who 10 years before was condemned by the Jesuits at the request of Rome for teaching what he later wrote in Dignitatis Humanae which was codified by Vatican II and is the Vatican II documents. It contains heresy. How could they condemn it 10 years before and then 10 years later say, Oh, this is great. Now this is our new approach. Everybody is saved no matter what, is basically what it says. It says Protestants can be saved by Protestantism, which is a clear heresy. We never said that maybe somebody who thinks they are Protestant isn’t going to heaven. But we said somebody who thinks they are Protestant ends up in heaven it’s because actually they were saved through the Catholic Church in some way. But that doesn’t happen very much I have to say, but it is a possibility. But they are saying clearly that Protestantism can be a religion of salvation, the Protestants can be saved through Protestantism. Of course, that is an impossibility. You are trying to enter the sheepfold through another gate? Seems to me somebody named Jesus said something about that at one point. You cannot. There is one sheep, there is one gate for people to come into the fold.
Everybody here are soldiers of Christ, especially the ones who are confirmed most especially, we are soldiers of Christ. We are not wimps for Christ. We were slapped on the face by the bishop to wake us to the challenge of fighting for the Lord and His blessings in our world, not only in our personal lives, but out there. And everybody here has some spirit influence, your families, maybe some little way at work with other people, and we need to know what Christ demands of us as our king. That’s what we need to do. And wherever we can implement that, we have to. We might not make any big dent in anything And, in fact, it is my belief that the big dent is going to come when Russia is consecrated and we have the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. Then, briefly on earth we will see the reign of Christ the King. Maybe not until then. But it doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility of living Christ the King in our spheres of influence.
So that’s why particularly I am telling you, not just — I don’t expect you to do something violent, but you can do something. We are one week away — last week was the Feast of Christ the King and the reason the Church had put it there, the Pope who implemented it, but the Popes before and after him, wanted it in that particular place was for a reason. Why? You see, it was specified that the feast of Christ the King be celebrated on the last Sunday of October. So we did have it and now look, we are in green again. Interesting. And there are still a couple of Sundays in green. Why are we jumping to white for Christ the King, and then out of white and back into green? Because it was meant to show — you see, after the last Sunday in October, there are always a few Sundays in green after that. And this signifies that Christ rules over time and over the earth. Because, you see, the beginning of the Church New Year is the First Sunday of Advent. So to show that He rules over time and the earth, they had the Feast of Christ the King to symbolize His ruling over time until the New Year starts again, until His second coming, even on earth, not just in heaven.
So Vatican II, besides messing up everything, included in its’ messing up of things, the location of the feast and not accidentally. They moved it to the last Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent, where there is no intervening Sundays to symbolize Christ’s ruling until the end of time and His second coming. What they are showing by their symbol is that Christ no longer has a right to rule on earth. Annibale Bugnini — I’m sorry to say that name out loud and his name is not mentioned in polite circles, but the one responsible for many of these things, with John Courtney Murray and others responsible for changes, he said in his autobiography and in interviews, he said, Well, you know, there was a time when the Church could talk about Christ the King, but you can’t do that these days, that’s no more good in the modern world. So we’re not going to talk about that any more. And, of course, we have to talk about that. If we are not fighting for our King, then what good are we as soldiers of Christ. Not only did they change the feast, they gutted it. Christ the King, you’d think was the feast of Christ the wallflower. There is nothing of His kingship really left in it. And I want to show you a hymn they took out which was the hymn from the office of that day, this is from first vespers of Christ the King, the traditional one, they took it out in the Novus Ordo one because it talks about Christ the King, and it’s much to, you know, not separating church and state kind of thing. I want to finish with this. It said,
“The wicked mob screams out. “We don’t want Christ as king,” While we, with shouts of joy, hail Thee as the world’s supreme King.
May the rulers of the world publicly honour and extol Thee;”
You know, there was a time when they did and Paul VI whose name is also not mentioned in polite circles, made them change. For example, before Vatican II, in Central and South American countries, Spain and other Catholic countries, you could elect a president. All right, let’s take like El Salvador or Columbia, Ecuador, these countries, you could elect a president but he couldn’t take office until he stood on the steps of the Cathedral in front of the Archbishop of the Cathedral there and consecrated publicly his country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Only at that moment by the constitutions of the countries could he become president. And Paul VI made them change that. He made them write out the Catholic Church from all public documents. So, you don’t want to be him right now.
“May the rulers of the world publicly honour and extol Thee; May teachers and judges reverence Thee; May the laws express Thine order and the arts reflect Thy beauty.”
No need to say what they are doing with “art” these days, and calling it art. Does that reflect the beauty of God and his Kingship?
“May kings find renown in their submission and dedication to Thee. Bring under Thy gentle rule our country and our homes.
Glory be to Thee, O Jesus, supreme over all secular authorities; And glory be to the Father and the loving Spirit through endless ages. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.