To My Readers: This week, yours truly has much to do at work, and I'm glad I have a guest post by Lee! I honestly don't know how this blog could continue publishing one post each week without him to take some pressure off me! His topic is on the much neglected and pernicious evil of what Pope Leo XIII called "Americanism." I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. Please feel free to comment as usual. If anyone has a particular comment or question addressed for me to answer, I will do so as always, but it may take longer than usual.
Please say a prayer for Lee that God may reward him for all his good work here, and God Bless you all, my dear readers---Introibo
Catholicism vs. Americanism
By Lee
Over the last few years, the MAGA movement has become such a popular spectacle that as the forty-fifth president, Donald Trump, would say, "it's like nothing the world has ever seen." When there is a rally, more people attend these venues than sporting events. Live online viewership is just as massive despite the limited access due to censorship. Everybody gets energized and wait long hours just to hear #45 speak while listening to other speeches throughout the day. It fills people with hope with the goal of combating "woke culture" in exchange for a prosperous nation, along with the continuation of following the U.S. Constitution. The America First agenda also stresses respect for the individual rights of its citizens.
While the MAGA movement is for good policies such as strong border control, small businesses succeeding, anti-abortion laws, lower taxes, preserving resources of oil and gas, being anti-Communist, pro-second Amendment, and staying out of unnecessary foreign wars etc., there are some flaws within the movement. It's due to Americanism. Pope Leo XIII coined this term in his encyclical Testem Benevolentiae on January 22, 1889. The letter condemns the general complacence with Protestantism and the adoption of pluralism. It also condemns the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and stressed that a Catholic had a duty towards the Church's teaching office (more on that below).
First Some History
The land of the free and home of the brave is what America is known as, but was it really as free as we are told? Before the founding of America, the Catholic Church was already in the Americas during the 16th to early 18th centuries, spreading missionaries around to convert the Indian natives, while settling in different areas. As we see in the first general report on the state of Catholicism by Bp. John Carroll in 1785, Catholics were a mere handful. He conservatively estimated the Catholic population in those colonies to be 25,000. Of this figure, 15,800 resided in Maryland, about 7,000 in Pennsylvania, and another 1,500 in New York. Considering that the population in the first federal census of 1790 totaled 3,939,000, the Catholic presence was less than one percent, certainly not a significant force in the original 13 British colonies.
In his book Faith of Our Fathers Cardinal James Gibbons records the following account of how Catholics were treated in the colonies of America before and up to its birth in 1776:
"Maryland was the abode of happiness and liberty. Conscience was without restraint. A mild and liberal proprietary conceded every measure which the welfare of the colony required; domestic union, a happy concert between all the branches of government, an increasing emigration, a productive commerce, a fertile soil, which heaven had richly favored with rivers and deep bays, united to perfect the scene of colonial felicity. Ever intent on advancing the interests of his colony, Lord Baltimore invited the Puritans of Massachusetts to emigrate to Maryland, offering them lands and privileges and free liberty of religion; but Gibbons, to whom he had forwarded the commission, was so wholly tutored in the New England discipline, that he would not advance the wishes of the Irish Peer, and so the invitation was declined.
On the 2d of April, 1649, the General Assembly of Maryland passed the following Act, which will reflect unfading glory on that State as long as liberty is cherished in the hearts of men.
Whereas, the enforcing of conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it has been practiced, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and unity amongst the inhabitants, no person whatsoever within this province professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be anyways troubled or molested for his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof, nor anyway compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against his or her consent.”
Upon this noble statute Bancroft makes the following candid and judicious comment: “The design of the law of Maryland was to protect freedom of conscience; and some years after it had been confirmed the apologist of Lord Baltimore could assert that his government had never given disturbance to any person in Maryland for matter of religion; that the colonists enjoyed freedom of conscience, not less than freedom of person and estate, as amply as ever any people in any place of the world. The disfranchised friends of Prelacy from Massachusetts and the Puritans from Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political rights in the Roman Catholic province of Maryland.”
Five years later, when the Puritans gained the ascendency in Maryland, they were guilty of the infamous ingratitude of disfranchising the very Catholic settlers by whom they had been so hospitably entertained. They “had neither the gratitude to respect the rights of the government by which they had been received and fostered, nor magnanimity to continue the toleration to which alone they were indebted for their residence in the colony. An act concerning religion forbade liberty of conscience to be extended to ‘Popery,’ ‘Prelacy,’ or ‘licentiousness of opinion...’ ”
When the rule of the Catholic Proprietary was overthrown and the Puritans had gained the ascendency in the Province, the new Commissioners issued writs of election to a general assembly—writs of a tenor hitherto unknown in Maryland. No man of the Roman Catholic faith could be elected as a burgess, or even cast a vote. The Assembly obtained by this process of selection, justified its choice. It at once repealed the Toleration Act of 1649 and created a new one, more to its mind, which also bore the title: “An Act concerning Religion,” but it was toleration with a difference. It provided that none who professed the Popish religion should be protected in the Province, but were to be restrained from the exercise thereof.
For Protestants it provided that no one professing faith in Christ was to be restrained from the exercise of his religion, “provided that this liberty be not extended to Popery, or Prelacy, nor to such as under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness. That is, with the exception of the Roman Catholics and churchmen, together with the Brownists, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other miscellaneous Protestant sects, all others might profess their faith without molestation.”
After the overthrow of the Puritan authority, and the advent to power of the members of the Church of England, the second act of the Assembly was to make the Protestant Episcopal Church the established church of the Province.
The Act imposed an annual tax of forty pounds of tobacco per poll on all taxables for the purpose of building churches, and maintaining the clergy. In 1702 it was re-enacted with a toleration clause: “Protestant Dissenters and Quakers were exempted from the penalties and disabilities, and might have separate meeting-houses, provided that they paid their forty pounds per poll to support the Established Church. As for the ‘Papists,’ it is needless to say that there was no exemption nor license for them.”
Other examples outside of Gibbons description of Maryland include the thirteenth colony of Georgia which in 1732 brought into being a charter granted by King George II. Its guarantee of religious freedom followed the fixed pattern: full religious freedom was promised to all future settlers of the colony "except papists," that is, Catholics. Rhode Island, famous for its supposed policy of religious toleration, inserted an anti-Catholic statute imposing civil restrictions on Catholics in the colony's first published code of laws in 1719. Not until 1783 was the act revoked.
The Problem with Religious Liberty
When the U.S. Constitution was put into force by 1789, the Bill of Rights were created that same year and ratified on December 15th 1791.
The famous 1st Amendment reads as follows: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The good that comes out of this is the Catholic Church gets to exercise its religion freely without prohibition from an established government. However, the problem is the idea that all religions are granted a God-given right to exercise it thereof. This was condemned by popes as well as the idea of freedom of conscience and that of publishing any writings regardless of its content.
The same year the Bill of Rights was ratified (1791) Pope Pius VI was quite explicit in his condemnation of religious liberty as a so-called right. He called it a “monstrous right,” and an “imaginary dream.”
He states, "The necessary effect of the constitution decreed by the Assembly is to annihilate the Catholic Religion and, with her, the obedience owed to Kings. With this purpose it establishes as a right of man in society this absolute liberty that not only insures the right to be indifferent to religious opinions, but also grants full license to freely think, speak, write and even print whatever one wishes on religious matters – even the most disordered imaginings. It is a monstrous right, which the Assembly claims, however, results from equality and the natural liberties of all men. But what could be more unwise than to establish among men this equality and this uncontrolled liberty, which stifles all reason, the most precious gift nature gave to man, the one that distinguishes him from animals? ( See Brief Quod aliquantum, of March 10, 1791, in Recueil des Allocutions, Paris: Adrien Leclere, 1865, pp. 53)
Some years later, Pope Gregory XVI wasn't any less forceful when he said:
"Now we consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism”[16] may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him,”[17] and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate...
This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say...
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth...
Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?
The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books. This was true even in apostolic times for we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books." Mirari Vos, 1832, para. #13,14,15
Contrast this with Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae and you'll see the opposite. It states:
"This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom...
The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right...
On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience, especially in matters religious. The reason is that the exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before all else in those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the course of his life directly toward God. No merely human power can either command or prohibit acts of this kind. The social nature of man, however, itself requires that he should give external expression to his internal acts of religion: that he should share with others in matters religious; that he should profess his religion in community."
As we see the error of religious liberty taught by the Vatican II sect "Church," we also see how it mimics the Bill of Rights. This only leads to more erosion in society. Religious liberty focuses on man being the center of attention and not the rights of God.
1776 Project
Shortly after the Resident-in-Chief (Biden) was sworn into office, one of the first things he did was stop Trump's 1776 project from going through. This project was an attempt to have public schools teach the history of United States in the most respectable patriotic way as a deflection to the "woke" 1619 project.
In America, we are all taught how great the founders of this country were. They are treated as invincible and to be admired. While much of their lives were trail-blazing, and developed our nation into a much more free society, it is good to note that most of them were Freemasons and Deists.
In her book, Star Spangled Heresy, Solange Hertz gives us an example of who Benjamin Franklin was:
"There has hardly been a more devoted student of Alchemy than Franklin, who was well aware that the real aim of the Great Work was also social and political. A leaflet distributed by the Christophers in March, 1975 featured the following Prayer composed by him:
God grant, that not only the love of liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man, may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say, ‘This is my country.'
And this is followed by a truly singular rendition of the first verse of Psalm 126: “If the Lord does not build the house, in vain the masons (!) toil.” Let him who reads understand where and by whom the dream of a man-made world government is nourished.
Franklin’s religion does not have to be conjectured. Not only do we know he assisted David Williams in his Apology for Professing the Religion of Nature (complete with liturgy!), but he also left in writing his own “Articles of Belief,” a document conveniently overlooked by those who would like to regard him as a Christian.
Stirred by Newton’s novel theories of the universe, he espoused the cosmic spiritualism of Alchemy based on hierarchies, much as described by Dr. Taylor. He says furthermore:
I cannot conceive otherwise than that the Infinite Father expects or requires no Worship or Praise from us, but that he is even infinitely above it. But, since there is in Men something like a natural principle, which inclines them to DEVOTION, or to worship of some unseen Power; and since Men are endued with Reason superior to all other Animals, that we are in our World acquainted with: Therefore I think it seems required of me, and my Duty as a Man, to pay Regards to SOMETHING. I conceive then, that the INFINITE has created many beings of Gods, vastly superior to Man, who can better conceive his Perfections than we, and return him a more rational and glorious Praise ... It may be that these created Gods are immortal; or it may be that after many Ages, they are changed, and others supply their Places ... It is that particular Wise and good God who is the author and owner of our system, that I propose for the object of my praise and adoration. For I conceive that he has in himself some of those Passions he has planted in us.
Franklin concludes from this that his God might like some praise after all. “Let me then not fail to praise my God continually, for it is his Due, and it is all I can return for his many Favours and great Goodness to me.”
Clearly this created God with human passions, one among many, who made man merely one of the animals, is not the God of the Christians, but only Franklin’s. Bernard Fay notes,
“It is difficult to affirm that Franklin’s credo was the Freemason’s credo; but it is clear that it was a Masonic creed,” corresponding “more exactly than any other to the tendencies of Freemasonry and to the phraseology which Desaguliers and Anderson utilized in their ‘Constitutions of the Freemasons.’” And we might add, corresponding to the tendencies of the dawning space-age: “This Masonic religiosity, as found in Desaguliers and Franklin, did not intervene as a conservative element in society, but as a ferment of transformation,” precisely the stuff of the Great Work, now carried on in the New World as in the old.
Like all sophisticated Gnostics of any age, Franklin publicly supported the prevalent religion. Using the handy, ambiguous language of Masonry, his utterances are often accepted as orthodox Christianity by believers or half-believers, but interpreted correctly enough by the initiated. Franklin was a member in good standing of the Presbyterian Church and never missed a sermon of the young liberal Rev. Hemphill, who seldom mentioned God. When despite Franklin’s defense Hemphill was evicted by his frustrated congregation, Franklin joined the Anglican Church.
He seldom attended its services, but when the famous preacher George Whitefield brought the “Great Awakening” to America, Franklin became one of his most ardent supporters. This led many to believe he had suffered a conversion, but Fay remarks wryly, “The support given by Franklin was only a Masonic support conforming with Masonic doctrines and the spirit of Desaguliers,”- indeed an early form of Marxist dialectics in action, for, “It is true Whitefield ... converted the crowds, but wherever he preached the parishes became detached from their pastors; wherever he passed, the life of the Church was disorganized” and the work of revolution furthered. As for Franklin, he said he saw “a positive advantage in the existence of many different churches, for that created competition, and after all, competition was good for every kind of trade.”
He seems to have believed in some sort of immortality, if we are to credit the famous Epitaph he wrote for his tombstone:
The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stript of its lettering and gilding, lies here food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author.
This is no Christian Resurrection of the body, glorified through the Son of God. The immortality he expects would be only natural, a re-incarnation into another body of some kind. The “work itself,” as Franklin calls himself, is subject only to alchemical transmutation according to the alchemical maxim known to every neophyte: “No generation without corruption.”
That Franklin recognized no extra-natural forces is easily proved by a celebrated anecdote. At a party at Lord Shelburne’s in England, Fay relates:
There were a number of scholars from both the continent and England, some able ministers who succeeded in purifying God, such as Priestley and Price; other churchmen who were expert in avoiding God, like the Abbé Morellet of France who ministered to courtesans and atheists.
Franklin and the Abbé were conversing:
...about the Bible and Christ, and Franklin, half-smiling, said that the Biblical miracles no longer seemed like miracles to him, that he could calm the waters quite as easily as Jesus Christ. The Abbé was too polite to contradict him but too educated to believe the statement... Franklin sensed what was going on in his mind, and calling the company together, they went to the pond. A slight breeze was ruffling its surface with a thousand tiny ripples, and Franklin slowly encircled it while the party waited in a curious silence. Then, raising his staff abruptly, Franklin whirled it three times above the water and inscribed some magic hieroglyph in the air. With a wave of his hand, Franklin then turned to the company and showed that the water was calming down. In a few moments the pond was as glassy as a mirror and a vague light glimmered over the immobile watery surface. The spectators stared at each other without knowing what to think. Then they surrounded the doctor, overwhelming him with compliments and adulation, but he escaped from them and disappeared down a shady walk, still conversing with Morellet. He leaned on his cane heavily and laughed softly. The Abbé was frankly mystified, so Franklin then showed him that his staff was hollow and that he had filled it with oil. It was this oil, spread over the water, which had stilled it. A hedge fortunately hid them from the others, for the Abbé burst into a clear peal of laughter which was joined by Franklin’s. They laughed all the more when they saw through the twigs that the party was still standing by the pond, fearfully exclaiming over the event. Franklin’s miracles were the delight of the crowd, and deeply appreciateby the philosophers and Masons, for they enlightened humanity and made for progress. All the lodges of France and England sang the praises of their illustrious brother."
Hertz continues to explain the spirit of belief in the founders of America in the late 1700's:
"Like Franklin, most of its Founding Fathers were not Christians. Although they often made references to the Deity, the God they invoked was their God, . . . the God of nature in Christian dress. In fact the most influential among the were not so much deists as thoroughgoing pantheists, for, being avowed rationalists, they looked for divinity only in nature. . . .
In Alchemy, a Green Dragon signifies the Great Work in its beginnings, and it cannot have been coincidence that the Revolution was planned and carried out by men who met regularly in a Boston tavern of the same name. So diligently did they promote the serpent's cause that America today finds herself immersed in a sea of neo-Gnosticism so pervading and controlling her moral, intellectual political life that, by comparison, the Albigensian heresy which once ravaged the whole of Christendom now looks like a harmless childhood disease. . . .
Any citizen doubting that the Old Religion of the alchemists is the state religion of the U.S. need only make a pilgrimage to the nation' s capital, beginning with the Prayer Room established . . . by joint resolution of Congress in 1954. He will find there for his devotion a small central altar flanked by two seven-branch candelabra, above which rises a stained glass window showing George Washington kneeling. Below the Father of his country is the Great Seal of the United States. Above him is the truncated pyramid surmounted by the eyes of Horus, which constitutes the seal of Masonry and the Illuminati."
Any citizen doubting that the Old Religion of the alchemists is the state religion of the U.S. need only make a pilgrimage to the nation' s capital, beginning with the Prayer Room established . . . by joint resolution of Congress in 1954. He will find there for his devotion a small central altar flanked by two seven-branch candelabra, above which rises a stained glass window showing George Washington kneeling. Below the Father of his country is the Great Seal of the United States. Above him is the truncated pyramid surmounted by the eyes of Horus, which constitutes the seal of Masonry and the Illuminati."
Freemasons: The Greatest Enemy to Both Church and State
The very principles of the Founding Fathers (Masonic principles) were condemned by numerous popes.
Here is a great description from Pope Leo XIII Humanum Genus:
"With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavors to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
Then come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves. According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people; power is held by the command or permission of the people, so that, when the popular will changes, rulers may lawfully be deposed and the source of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude or in the governing authority when this is constituted according to the latest doctrines. It is held also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.
That these doctrines are equally acceptable to the Freemasons, and that they would wish to constitute States according to this example and model, is too well known to require proof. For some time past they have openly endeavored to bring this about with all their strength and resources; and in this they prepare the way for not a few bolder men who are hurrying on even to worse things, in their endeavor to obtain equality and community of all goods by the destruction of every distinction of rank and property.
What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ. - So also the studious endeavor of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race." April 20 1884 #21-24
Jerusalem
From the Catholic perspective on the matter, we need to revisit Pope St. Pius X perspective. On a Jewish website https://www.jpost.com/Christian-News/Today-in-History-Pope-Pius-refused-to-support-a-Jewish-Jerusalem-442696 he is remembered in infamy for his following statements: “We cannot give approval to this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem – but we could never sanction it. The soil of Jerusalem, if it was not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church I cannot tell you anything different. The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.” All that the Pope could promise the Jews coming to Israel would be that he would do his best to turn them into Catholics. “And so, if you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we shall have churches and priests ready to baptize all of you.” The Pope then stuck the nail in the coffin: “Gerusalemme, he said, must not get into the hands of the Jews.” On December 6th 2017, President Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was primarily intended to bring peace, although the move itself was not without its detractors. President Netanyahu of Israel, for his part, thought it heroic and historic.
Sodomy Accepted
Sixty years ago sodomy was shameful and not talked about. Twenty to the thirty years ago, it was laughed at and made fun of but people didn't really care whether somebody was a homosexual or not. Within the last ten years, a new acceptance of sodomy is more rampant than twenty years ago. One of Trump's worst problems is his acceptance of "gay marriage" and "LGBTIA+" in general. I would say most don't agree with him who are part of the movement, but for the sake of "free opinion" many tolerate it and move on.
Yet, while in office, he was strongly against transgenders fighting in the military. Nevertheless, when Dave Rubin and his partner announced that they were having a baby through a surrogate, Prager U, The Blaze, and many other so called "conservatives" congratulated him.
When Christ isn't acknowledged as King, the Church and State are separated, and thereby Protestantism dominates the public. This results in nothing but problems continuing to grow as a result. The toleration of sodomy and the legalization of that type of "marriage" is by far one of the worst abominations; but hey it's America, "do what thou wilt," right?
Conclusion
Much more could be said about vaccinations/masks mandates, and feminism, all of which have created a decay in society. However, the bottom line is that we can either pledge our allegiance to Christ and His One True Church or to the liberal Masonic teachings of Americanism. This isn't to say that we should despise America (if one lives here) for its past, nor not to have anything to do with politics or society in general, but to keep a real perspective for the benefit of a Catholic's duty in America.
Let's not forget the words of Pope Pius XII on voting:
"It is a strict duty for all who have the right, men or women, to take part in the elections. Whoever abstains, especially out of cowardice, commits a grave sin, a mortal fault.
Everyone has to vote according to the dictates of his own conscience. Now, it is evident that the voice of this conscience imposes upon every sincere Catholic the duty of giving his or her vote to those candidates, or those lists of candidates, who really offer sufficient assurances for safeguarding the rights of God and the souls of men, for the real good of individuals, families, and society, according to the law of God and moral Christian doctrine." (Pope Pius XII, Address to the Delegates of the International Conference on Emigration, Oct. 17, 1951)
With that in mind, I say what the Mexicans once said in their country "Long live Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Patroness of the Americas)."
