Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves

Why Catholics Cannot Defend Themselves— Revisited:

v Only neo-Catholic legalists would have felt called upon to praise as geniuses bad reigning popes whose deaths, resignations, or depositions were greeted by saintly men and women of the day with holy whoops of Catholic joy. They alone seek to block knowledge of the essential truth that the Church has never equated the legitimacy of a pontiff with his impeccability in mind and behavior as Duce .

Allroads lead Catholics to Rome, even if across the ancient Silk Road westwards from far away Cathay.

And my thoughts this week did turn to Rome-the Rome that was raised to a new level of supernatural significance due to the importance of the Catholic Church-precisely while preparing a lecture for a class in Chinese History at my university.

The lecture in question dealt with Shi Huangdi (221-210 B.C.), the first emperor, whose Qin Dynasty proved to be the shortest in Chinese History (221-207 B.C.), surviving its founder by a mere three years. This Dynasty was guided by the political philosophy known as legalism. Insisting upon the principle that material issues are the only things that really count in life, legalism basically taught that material might determines legal right. Therefore, whatever the physically powerful emperor "willed" was the law.

Qin legalists like Li Si (280-208 B.C.) and Han Fei Tzu (280-233 B.C.) were so committed to keeping men's minds focused perpetually upon what "the law" identified as being "practical" and preventing them from discussing the True, the Good, and the Beautiful that they worked successfully to ban the consultation of all non-utilitarian books and to punish severely those who wrote and read them. Some philosophers were even buried alive for the unpardonable crime of wasting time in rational thought and praising those who bravely put its conclusions into practice in the past.

The all-encompassing character of the pragmatic, materialist, a-moral Qin legalist vision was "holistically" represented by Shi Huangdi's tomb: a massive city recreating the entire cosmos as a parallel universe allowing the emperor to orient himself properly at his entry into the next life. Its macabre interior was populated by everything from the bodies of slaughtered concubines to the famous army of 10,000 terracotta military figures to painted depictions of the very geography of the cosmos as a whole.

Sima Qian (c. 145-c. 86 B.C.), whose massive Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian , written down in all their "impractical" glory on slips of bamboo, cover the entirety of Chinese History from its beginnings to his own day. We interpret the Qin through him.

Ravage the present and the past as much as the first Chinese dynasty did, it was 1)

We possess our own vast Records of the Grand Historian in the documentation provided by the fullness of the Catholic Tradition. These Records come down to us in a myriad of forms: Sacred Scripture; the decrees of all the Councils and the whole teaching of the Papacy, with due distinction made between their unchanging doctrinal claims and their passing and potentially erroneous comments on contemporary matters, ecclesiastical and secular; the writings of the Church Fathers and Doctors that aid us mightily in making such a distinction properly; and, finally, the conglomerate of lessons offered by the successes and failures of men and women throughout the entirety of Church History. We have no right willfully to abbreviate or to shred this record entirely to fit our own pet passions-which are themselves generally pathetic reflections of the dominant, passing fashions of our own time and place. Truncating the past is an insult to Christ in His Mystical Body, as well as to the intrinsic value of each and every human person with a distinct role of eternal significance to play in the service of God.

Let us begin by noting that the terrible counterpoint to the splendor of the one truly different, corrective, transforming event of history—the Incarnation—is the drab, reductionist, but strangely effective character of the opposition to the full flowering of the Christian life. The contrast of the frustrating defeats regularly experienced by those promoting the brilliance of Christian civilization with the exasperating successes of the standard bearers of its drab cultural opposition, is the main theme of my recent book, Black Legends and the Light of the World .

Black Legends recounts the tale of the absolutely furious rejection of any and all attempts, rational as well as supernatural, to step back from and judge the "business as usual" approach to the life of "nature as is" that characterizes history from classical Greek times to our own day. It shows that powerful men and women who rage at any rational or faith-based criticism of immediate surface material perceptions of what is "practical" have repeatedly worked against Christians committed to deeper thought and judgment of the world around them.

They have done so in two related ways. One is by concocting "black legends" that spread lies regarding the nature and impact of the "offensive" Christian critique of the status quo.

The other, rising to the fore when it is clear that Christianity cannot be completely silenced, is to invent "nice stories" to co-opt and emasculate the corrective, transforming influence of the Incarnation. These "nice stories" are ultimately designed to ensure the victory of whatever the will of the strongest, reigning, materialist-minded power might be-and to equate that victory with the triumph of the Christian message and its "law" themselves.

Modern neo-Catholics accomplish this emasculation of the message of the Incarnation on behalf of the "business as usual" forces of sin-bound "nature as is" through their own particular "nice story". Everything begins with the "nice story" of the omnipotent lawgiving pope whose every waking thought and action is declared consubstantial with the Faith and the good of the faithful. Such a transfiguration of the sublime role of the successor of Peter into that of Il Supremo no more enhances the truth about the Papacy than making an act of faith in a divine Tetrarchy would somehow more firmly enhance the truth that God can be one and many at the same time than belief in a mere Trinity. The vision of pope as Il Supremo is false—pure and simple. And being false, it is an offense to Christ that cannot help but injure real papal authority in the process.

Yes, it is unfortunately true that a number of nineteenth century Catholics who probably would be in the Traditionalist camp today did aid in the formulation of this erroneous vision. But let us note, in their defense, that such men and women went down their false pathway precisely because they knew that they had the unqualified support of the contemporary Papacy in freeing the Church from an already dominant naturalist and secularist environment preventing transformation in Christ in its own right.

Cooler heads at the time—those of people who had read those Records of the Grand Historian that we call the full Catholic Tradition-warned strongly against the Il Supremo temptation. One of these calming spirits, Victor Auguste Cardinal Deschamps (1810-1883), Archbishop of Mâlines, a man who figured among the most important proponents of the definition of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility at First Vatican Council, provided an explanation of its import afterwards that contemporary supporters of the Il Supremo concept would have to command all Catholics to consign to the book burning flames. He was not alone.

Vatican One as a whole knew that it had to deal with the problems of a number of popes like Honorius (625-638), who frivolously dismissed orthodox warnings of the dangers of the Monothelite Heresy as "the croaking of frogs"—a "croaking" his more theologically alert successors thankfully soon enthusiastically imitated. Every historian familiar with the committee of cardinals called upon by Pope Paul III (1534-1549) to explain just how the Reformation happened knows that it blamed the entire outburst first and foremost on generations of late medieval acts of papal madness—backed by canonists who exalted Il Supremo’s will to the point that they claimed that he could abolish Sacred Scripture itself with the flick of a wrist.

The same historians are aware that Julius II (1503-1513) was so contemptuous of a predecessor, Alexander VI (1492-1503)-whom he, while Cardinal, regularly and happily disobeyed—that he could not even bring himself to sleep in the same room as the dead, simoniac pontiff. And, once again, every student of the ecclesiastical past can attest that there have been all too many popes like Benedict IX—pontiff on three separate criminal occasions in the 1000’s, and characterized by the Catholic Encyclopedia as "a disgrace to the Chair of Peter". They can confirm the fact that saints ranging from Peter Damian to Bridget of Sweden openly chastised such pontiffs while they reigned , and without feeling the slightest fear of being drummed out of the Body of Christ for daring to speak the truth.

Only neo-Catholic legalists, transported back in time, would have felt called upon to praise as geniuses bad reigning popes whose deaths, resignations, or depositions were greeted by saintly men and women of the day with holy whoops of Catholic joy. They alone, in our own era, are determined to place a gauleiter with a fiery sword before the doors of the libraries and inside the browsers of the computers of faithful eager to consult our Catholic Records of the Grand Historian to know what might be good or bad in a current papal Führer’s thought and action. They alone seek to block knowledge of the essential truth that the Church has never equated the legitimacy of a pontiff with his impeccability in mind and behavior as Duce .

The possible permutations on doctrine and practice permitted by an unquestionable, unalterable "papal will"-capable of shooting off in as many directions as a fireworks display- combined together with interpretations of what the will of such a Leader "really meant"-offered by conflicting "experts" possessing their own arbitrary but Zeitgeist- backed pipelines to the Holy Spirit—are theoretically endless.

In practice, however, all of the many permutations of "nice expert stories" regarding the Faith possess a basic unity.

They gain this basic unity by means of the general agreement reached by the main strains of modernist thinking in the Church by the time of Vatican Council that the voice of the Holy Spirit in our

a "powerless" man with the vision of a broad moral order that judged its momentarily invincible, but ultimately meaningless and brutally inhuman message for posterity.

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day undoubtedly passed through those forces that possessed an overwhelming "vital energy". Such forces displayed their power through success in winning converts, imposing their

, and silencing their opposition. This included the opposition coming from popes who could really only be considered omnipotent when they behaved themselves and submitted to the will of the strongest "energy".

greatest

vital energy yielding the

clearest

deepest

papal desires

defining

unquestionable

most perfectly

The neo-Catholics who became the standard bearers of the victor "inside" the Church were obliged to teach the faithful that responding to American Pluralism's "will" mandated obedience to yet another arbitrary but infallible guide to understanding the final meaning of the Christian message: the "will" of those Founding Fathers responsible for the creation of the system in the first place. The neo-Catholic Defenders of the victorious Pluralist Faith were thereby called open to reinterpret, rewrite, or toss into the doctrine-and-practiceshredder every Christian document, every conciliar and papal statement, and every contribution of every Christian saint and civilization builder that might be questioned by the slightest whisper of a Founder Objection.

One last step and we will have reached the end of the "Follow the Will" game. The will of the Founders clearly requires obedience to that principle of religious liberty that their master, John Locke, defines as the central truth of the Christian Faith. Founders will also obviously demands a general respect for "freedom" for the expression of all "vital energies", whatever the Christian past might have said about them. But conservative neo-Catholics make reference to the right lobe of Founder Wisdom to press for slavish acceptance of "freedom" for one type of vital energy that translates into support for individual economic oppression and the need to use American military might to make the world safe for chain stores and the State of Israel.

Remember that both right wing and left wing neo-Catholic American Pluralism make reference to exactly the same commitment to religious impotence and the Founder "freedom loving" spirit. It is only willful commitment to one expression of freedom as opposed to another that prevents the lot of them from seeing that they are all in the same camp and ultimately agree. For how can the rightist oppose perversion if it is individually profitable? And how can the leftist oppose individual profit hunting, no matter how many age old cultures are destroyed in the process, when the task of freeing personal passion requires the authority-and-tradition shattering labors of the powerful individual capitalist as well?

Together, their two front war against the perennial Christian Tradition and all of its real authorities effectively corrects and transforms the teaching of the Incarnation out of existence no matter which materialist freedom is said to be backed by the unalterable Dictatus Papae .

O Christ, where is thy sting? O Catholicism, where is thy victory? Li Si's and Hang Fei Tzu's eyes would have bugged out in admiration at the achievement. And Leni Riefenstahl would have had to confess that she missed her mark with her Triumph of the Will . The "nice story" of Founders who so adore religions and freedom that they just cannot get enough of them to tolerate and to exercise, has allowed the will of neo-Catholic American Pluralists-presented as the will of the Church-to triumph in a way that makes the reach of the will of a Hitler look pathetically amateurish in contrast.

3) Our Neo-Catholic Shi Huangdi Tomb Oh there is no denying that what one sees in looking at pluralist America and its worldwide Empire is "impressive". But it is impressive in exactly the same way that Shi Huangdi's tomb is impressive: as an arrogant, "holistic" parallel universe, awesome in the unrepentant brazenness of its materialism. Despite certain centers of resistance to the worship of this parallel pluralist universe, there is no doubt that the world as a whole is and continues to be overwhelmingly impressed by its display of raw material power and the rewards and punishments coming along with it. This is true of the Papacy as well, which has shown a remarkable willingness to "behave itself" and speak in a way that certainly gives the impression that its will and the will of American Pluralism

are

indeed in union with one another. Once Pope Francis decided that "drastic" reform of the Curia mandated hiring big time American publicity firms that could themselves never be expected to conceive a thought that was not rooted in Founder principles of religious liberty, religion as Clubhouse Phenomenon, and materialist pluralist freedoms both economic and sexual, continued papal worship at the shrine of this parallel universe was confirmed anew.

More than this, however, it has become painfully clear to me over the past year that the priesthood focusing the eyes of the men and women conscripted to ensure the global worship of the cult of the parallel pluralist universe has been renewed. To paraphrase John F.

Kennedy, the "torch has been handed on to a new generation". Vocations to the consortium of neo-Catholic Defenders of the Pluralist Faith are booming. The George Weigels, Michael Novaks, Fr.

Siricos, and their compatriots further leftwards can now all go to Boca Raton, play golf, shop at the mall, hedge the Market, and leave the high minded defense of the "nice story" linking Christ, pope, the Founders and their conservative and liberal ayatollahs to a fresh wave of enthusiastic storm troopers. Happily for the Old Guard, the new generation has also well digested its guidelines for keeping the eyes of Catholics turned away from examination of the historical Catholic Records .

These new assassins of the past know the formula by heart: ignore entirely the critics of American pluralism; rehash the same arguments over and over again as though they had not been heard ad infinitum beforehand; always and everywhere associate obedience to "worldwide materialism with a religious cherry on the top" as loyalty to the will of Catholic leaders who cannot even recognize that they themselves do not know how to describe the nature of a Christian civilization; if push comes to shove, condemn anyone eager to open the entire book of the past as hopelessly "impractical" or as a "divisive" (and potentially terrorist) enemy of order and freedom. And horror of horrors, this new generation of assassins is winning further recruits among Catholic apologists in circles that I never would have imagined would fall prey to the charms of mindlessness.

Just when I had become weary of offering yet another defense of the Catholic past against its modern gravediggers in the usual manner, Sima Qian and the Qin Dynasty came along to provide an exotic means of giving flesh to the perennial argument.

And the analogies of his task and ours ultimately do seem so apt! Moreover, the poignancy of his fate and his reasons for accepting it also seemed valuable in giving Traditionalist Catholics courage to continue our fight against the modern willful assassins of the past, whatever the cost. Sima Qian ran afoul of the "law" in his own day in a particular fight for justice for a man requesting his help in a case before the emperor. The authorities

He refused to do so, and received the alternative punishment: castration. He took the path that he did, as he himself tells us, because his life's work was not yet done. The Records of the Grand Historian had to be completed. The proponents of "law" as "imposition of will power" wanted "'to make the common people ignorant and to see to it that no one in the empire used the past to criticize the present'" (Keay, p. 97).

Our neo-Catholic American pluralist legalists would love for us to commit religious and cultural suicide in obedience to a "papal will" which is not always in accord with the perennial will of the Church; a "papal will" which, willy-nilly, seems to work today more in line with the ideas of John Locke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Ludwig von Mises, George F. Babbitt, and Pussy Riot. We cannot do so. Even if it means our being reduced to momentary public impotence, ecclesiastical and secular, we must struggle on for the revival of knowledge of the whole Catholic past and the defeat of the willful. And just as the first emperor's tomb failed to bedazzle posterity due its ultimate judgment at the hands of a higher order whose memory was preserved by the "impractical" work of that pagan servant of truth, Sima Qian, our dazzling parallel pluralist universe will one day be shown for what it really is---the Twilight Zone--due to our own contemporary labors in the wilderness. The Catholic Records will one day be reopened in all their fullness and the assassins of the past will be driven from the temple. v

For an expanded version of this article, as well as many other important works by Dr. Rao, please visit his website at: jcrao.freeshell.org/