under the patronage of St Joseph and St Dominic

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Zion;
on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. . . Ps 136

AMERICANISM, THE US SUPREME COURT & THE CATHOLIC EPISCOPACY

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The problem with American Catholics is Americanism, their acceptance of the Masonic doctrines of separation of Church and state and religious freedom. The heresy derives from the errors of the French Revolution. It manifests itself among the American Catholic faithful in conscious, or unconscious, subjection of the Church's teachings to the demands of the world's greatest nation state. It afflicts bishops, clergy, religious and laity alike.

On 16th June, American layman Hadley Arkes penned a piece for The Catholic Thing website which reflected, quite unconsciously, his infection with the virus. The piece, anticipating a decision of the United States Supreme Court, was entitled 'Waiting for the Decision on Marriage'. The issue before the Court involved, as a peripheral matter, whether homosexuals in one of the American States, had 'married' in accordance with a 'law' of that State. Contrary to the implication in the title and in its text, the status of marriage does not depend on the fiat of any judge, or on the legislation of any state. The essence, or quiddity, of marriage (what it is) is not something within the power of man. True, whether one marries or not is a matter of will, but the institution itself is of nature. It was established by nature's Author.

Men and women marry pursuant to a law implanted in their being for the good of mankind. Long before governments or 'marriage laws' existed men and women married : they will do so long after government has fallen into disarray, a reality which may be with us shortly. Nor does a 'marriage celebrant' marry a man and a woman, no matter what any law may say to the contrary. They marry each other. Not even a priest in a Catholic wedding marries the couple : they confer the sacrament on each other. The state's authority is limited to ensuring marriage is conducted in an orderly fashion, that its demands as regards consent, competence and lack of impediment are met, and its celebration is recorded. This, which accords with right reason, has ever been the Catholic Church's teaching.

The business was, all of it, quite clear until 500 years ago when the English king, Henry VIII, decided to arrogate to himself authority over marriage by forcing parliament to declare he had never been married to his lawful wife, Queen Catherine, so he could 'marry' his mistress. The virus of thinking that men can subvert, or control, the natural order by human legislation has been with us ever since the Protestant disruption.

Americanism manifests itself in systematic silence on moral and social questions by the Church's bishops. For the best part of 100 years they have assisted the subjugation of natural (and Catholic) principle to secular demands and aided the flourishing of these errors in the secular world. They have conceded the Protestant, and secular, view that marriage is of human will, and so tacitly endorsed the falsity imposed by the English tyrant. Had they insisted—and persisted in insisting— that marriage is of nature and not of human will, the folly of 'homosexual marriage' might never have arisen.

Conjugal union is of the essence of marriage : there can be no conjugal union between homosexuals. Any 'marriage' between them, then, is a paper marriage only, no matter what any 'law' or a judge may say to the contrary.

The evil is not confined to America. Most Catholic bishops throughout the world are infected, for it was transmitted to them via the Second Vatican Council's embrace of the Masonic doctrines and the Vatican's enthusiastic enforcement of their poison. The effects, the permission of secular access to the Church's sacred precincts, reduction of the sacred liturgy to a species of entertainment, denial of proper philosophical formation to seminarians and the removal of the raison d'être for personal religious dedication, are manifest in the harm wrought among two generations of the Catholic faithful. Not the least of the harm worked is the brainwashing that followed, the categorical denial by a majority of bishops and clergy that the Council was responsible for these evils.

One of them deserves special mention, the compromise over the involvement of Catholic lawyers in the evil of divorce. On 28th January 2002, Pope John Paul II addressed the Roman Rota on the question of marriage and its indissolubility.[1] He laid down the conditions subject to which a lawyer might involve himself in divorce without incurring the sin of proximate material cooperation, namely, when in the intention of the client, it is not directed to the break-up of the marriage, but to the securing of other legitimate effects that can only be obtained through such a judicial process in the established order. He was repeating here, as was his duty as Sovereign Pontiff, the Church's perennial teaching.

Bishops around the world went out of their way to 'white-ant' the Pope's condemnation to justify continued cooperation of Catholic lawyers in divorce. In Australia, the conspiracy to diminish the force of the Pope's words was particularly offensive.[2] Some time after the coup that resulted this commentator suggested to one of Australia's regional bishops that he had full power in his own diocese and was free to eschew this rejection of the Pope's teaching. He promised to consider the proposal. His response, two days later, was a vehement refusal. Reading between the lines, he had been given his 'riding instructions' by the other bishops of the Australian Episcopal Conference.

The scandal of the involvement of Catholic lawyers in divorce continues unabated around the world. If the bishops of the Catholic Church find their arguments against 'gay marriage' falling on deaf ears, they have no one to blame but themselves. Having contributed to the denigration of marriage by tacitly conceding it may be modified by human will, they have aided that deafness.

Michael Baker

3rd July 2015—St Thomas, Apostle