Catholicity’s Perceived Threat to Worldly Authority

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has honored God’s command from Genesis to “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.”  Both ordained and lay Catholics have gone forth to build communities, schools, hospitals, orphanages, and goodwill wherever they have gone.

Catholics traditionally have built and raised both the culture and quality of life for societies.  Unfortunately, their works are often looked upon with distain.

Officials often become angry and greedily covet the results of the Church with envy.  Catholic charities often outperform State institutions with far less resources injuring the pride for those in power.

Others who lust for a gluttony of their sins, resent the culture of the Church.  Those clinging to their sins, do not want anyone to remind them of their wrong doings.

Throughout history, governments have engaged in a cycle of persecution and suppression when threatened by the positive work of the Church.  This cycle is not limited to any single country or culture.

Blessed Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel

The problems faced by the foundress of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, Blessed Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel, is an excellent example of this persecution and suppression.

Regina Christine Wilhelmine was born during the year 1830 in Opal, Germany.  At the age of 20, she became a member of the Third Order Secular of St. Francis, taking the name Maria Theresia.  Soon after she entered a convent beginning her path to found a new order dedicated to the service of other.

After founding her new community, as the community grew she saw that the sisters in her congregation obtained professional education so they could better work in hospitals and schools.  More candidates joined her order, and the house expanded several times.

By 1868, her community had several houses including one ministering to orphans.  Times were not peaceful in Germany in the early 1870’s.  During the war years, Theresia’s sisters from Opal nursed over 800 soldiers.

After the war, the Sisters were rewarded for their service with suppression.  The “Kulturkampf” was an anticlerical reaction by the State against the perceived strength of the Catholic Church.  Mother Maria Theresia was forbidden to receive new candidates.  The state confiscated her convents placing them under police control.  In 1876, the state forced the Sisters to close the orphanage they were running.

During this “Kulturkampf,” the state jailed bishops and priests.  Church property was confiscated and sometimes destroyed.

Not a Victim

Not to be a victim, Mother Maria Theresia moved many of her sisters from Opal with no funding to Indiana.  With the assistance of a pastor from a German parish in Lafayette, the Sisters found housing and began building.  Starting with a few poorly furnished rooms in an old house, the sisters opened a clinic.  During the years that followed, the Sisters were able to open several new hospitals and schools.

Conditions softened over time in Germany.  In 1882, after multiple petitions to the government, the state finally allowed Mother Maria Theresia to admit new Sisters in Germany.  With time, she was able to rebuild opening new schools and ministering to orphans.  Mother Maria Theresia continued her work until her death in 1905.

Several hospitals in Indiana are run by the current generation of her order.  Just as Mother Maria Theresia was suppressed in Opal, the Sisters in the United States still running hospitals in Indiana are under similar threats due to their unwillingness to execute children in the womb through abortion and bear false witness to a person’s gender.

Blessed Mother Maria Theresia stood fast and endured the challenges pushed on her by the state.  However, suppression by Governments can be much more violent.

Mexico’s Cristero War

In the 1920’s, the Cristero War raged when thousands of Catholics fought for religious freedom at the cost of their lives.

The newly elected secularist President Plutarco Calles implemented laws directly attacking the free exercise of the Catholic Faith using articles from Mexico’s 1917 Constitution as an excuse.  The constitution at the time required churches and religious groups to register with the state.  Moreover, priests or ministers were restricted from taking office or appealing for a political candidates.

Calles went further enacting what became known as Calles Laws which defined specific penalties for priests. For example, wearing clerical attire in public was punishable by a fine of 500 pesos, equivalent to about $5,000 U.S. dollars today.  But priests did not have to talk about a candidate or party to get into trouble.  Rather, just criticizing the government was enough to warrant imprisonment.

Just the Beginning

Some of the Mexican states went further.  Chihuahua enacted a law permitting only a single priest to serve the entire Catholic congregation of the state.  Tabasco became very creative with its suppressive laws.  Tabasco introduced a law requiring all priests to be married in order to perform their duties in effect banning all Roman Catholic priests.

Calles seized Church properties, expelled foreign priests, and closed monasteries, convents, and religious schools.  Initially, resistance was passive and non-violent.  As most records from the time were destroyed, today’s historians do not agree on the trigger that initiated armed hostilities.

Be that as it may, the murder of 4 members of the Asociacion Catolica de la Juventud Mexicana (Catholic Association of Mexican Youth) caused locals to band together.  Guerrilla warfare escalated throughout Mexico primarily in the State of Jalisco.

As Calles’s presidency came to end, Alvaro Obregon, a former president, was re-elected.  Obregon had been more lenient to Catholics than Calles, but was perceived to be Calles’s marionette. Just weeks after the election, a Catholic rebel assassinated Obregon. Mexico’s congress then named Emilio Portes Gil interim president with a special election to follow.

A Truce

Portes Gil brokered an agreement through United States Ambassador Morrow and Father John Burke, also from the Unites States.

The pact allowed worship to resume in Mexico under registered priests.  Religious instruction could also resume in churches but not in schools, and the Church would recover the right to use its properties.  Mexico still legally owned the land, but the Church effectively took back control.

After nearly 3 years, the Cristos War ended in a truce through this agreement.  But the Mexican government did not abide by the terms of the pact executing over 5,000 Cristeros after the truce.

The end of the Cristero War also affected emigration, with estimates as high as 5% of Mexico’s population fleeing to the United States.

During the war, an estimated 250,000 Mexican’s lost their lives.  However, the Federalist Government atrocities show that the secular atheist Federal Soldiers were not looking for their enemy to surrender, but to capitulate their Faith.

Government forces publicly hanged Cristeros on main thoroughfares throughout Mexico leaving their bodies on display for extended lengths of time. Torture of captives was common.

Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio was a 14-year-old captured flag bearer for the Cristeros.  As he marched to his death, his captors tortured him.  Soldiers cut the bottom of his feet and forced him to walk to a cemetery for his execution.  He was told that if he said, ‘Death to Christ the King’ he would be spared.  When reaching the cemetery, the soldiers impaled him on their bayonets.  Jose replied with, “Viva Cristo Rey!” The commander of the soldiers was so frustrated he shot Blessed José Sanchez del Rio in the head at point blank range.

To the secular soldiers, surrender and execution was not enough.  They demanded complete submission.

Reaching for Total Control

Regardless of the government structure, whether it be a democracy, a republic, a socialist government, a monarchy, or a democratic republic like the United States, history shows that totalitarians will always try and take control.  But those pushing for complete authority never say that.

Totalitarians claim to work for the greater good by asserting their expertise.  They coerce the populace to surrender their rights and freedoms to benevolent experts who know better.

When totalitarianism takes control, governments always view Christians as a threat. Christians place God’s authority above the authority of the state, and totalitarians cannot have that.  The state must be above God.

Governments that used to be tolerant of Christians are becoming more and more authoritarian.  That drive to total control inevitably results in the suppression of Christianity.

In the U.S.

Even the United States is succumbing to this.  It’s not hard to do.  A political party only  has to collude with the unelected bureaucracy, large businesses and the media to use the government to suppress competition.

This year, one party even appointed their candidate, superseding the party’s own primary election.  This is one way to avoid meddling by the ignorant proletariat. And just to be clear, they view all of us as the ignorant proletariat.

Moreover, the presence of a 2-tiered justice system is obvious.  No matter how many buildings are burned down, those ideologically aligned with the current party of power will be reported as having a mostly peaceful protest by the state colluding media.

Those not in lock step with the narrative are cancelled in numerous ways.  One opposing political candidate is endlessly accused of criminal conduct and taken to court.  And actual peaceful protestors are put in prison for the crime of praying at abortion mills.

To offer just one specific example, the group Gays Against Groomers (hardly a conservative Christian organization) is labeled a far-right anti-LGBT organization.  The group’s ‘crime’ is opposing the sexualization, indoctrination, and mutilation of children.

Prayer for the Future

On September third, Father Chad Ripperger announced the consecration prayer on his podcast, urging that the prayer be recited daily until the U.S. elections on November 5.  The prayer reads:

Mary Immaculate, living tabernacle of the Divinity, where the eternal Wisdom lies hidden to be adored and served by angels and men, Queen of Heaven and Earth beneath whose sway are subject all things that are lower than God, Patroness of the United States of America, sorrowful and mindful of our own sinfulness and sins of our nation, we come to thee our refuge and hope.

Knowing that our country cannot be saved by our own works, and mindful of how much our nation has departed from the ways of thy Son, we humbly ask that thou wouldst turn thine eyes upon our country to bring about its conversion. We consecrate to thee the integrity of the upcoming election and its outcome so that what is spiritually and morally best for the citizens of our country may be accomplished and that all of those who are elected would govern according to the spiritual and moral principles which will bring our nation into conformity with the teachings of thy Son.

Give grace to the citizens of this land, so that they will choose leaders according to the Sacred Heart of thy Son, that His glory may be made manifest, lest we be given the leaders we deserve, trusting in the providential care of God the Father and thy maternal care, we have perfect confidence that thou wilt take care of us and will not leave us forsaken. O Mary Immaculate, pray for us. Amen.

This prayer acknowledges that the United States needs the divine help of God and calls upon Mary’s special relationship to Christ as Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Honest Discernment

If you are an American Catholic, you should set aside the noise of the world and 30 second negative commercials to discern which candidates are most aligned with Christ’s teachings.  Which candidates avoided war, and which continue to stoke the fire of conflict?  Which candidates appointed people based on Christian principles?  And which candidates suppress the opposition while projecting that claim on the opposition?

After honest discernment, one might not like (and maybe even hate) the conclusion.  If that is the case, what should one do?

Pope Francis recently stated the U.S. election this year is a choice between the lesser of two evils – “one who throws out migrants and the one who kills babies.”  So ask yourself, what is more evil: condoning and even championing the murder of innocent babies, or not allowing people to enter your country illegally and deporting those who do so?  It’s really not a difficult choice.

Keep in mind, Mother Maria Theresia’s Sisters and Catholic Mexicans were able to escape to the United States when their countries became totalitarian.  If the United States becomes totalitarian, where can one run?