A POLICEMAN'S LOT MAY NOT BE A HAPPY ONE --
BUT IS SO VERY NECESSARY
by Thomas A. Droleskey

April 16, 2002

     "A policeman's lot is not a happy one," goes one 
ditty from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. However 
unhappy that lot may be, though, a policeman who 
discharges his duty to keep the public safety according 
to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and 
natural law is doing very necessary work to help maintain 
the common good of a society. So sad is the spectacle, 
therefore, of police officers being used in this country 
to protect evil-doers, such as baby-killers, rather than 
throwing them into jail for the offenses against both God 
and man. Nevertheless, a well-ordered and rightly 
disposed police force is a necessity for the maintenance 
of public safety as our first defense against those who 
use their free wills irresponsibly in defiance of the 
objective standards of justice founded in Truth Incarnate 
as He has revealed Himself through Holy Mother Church.

     The Most Reverend Thomas Daily, now the Bishop of 
Brooklyn, has exculpated himself for his role in 
protecting a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston who was 
convicted recently of child molestation by claiming quite 
defensively, "I am not a policeman; I am a shepherd." 
Bishop Daily thus betrays a woeful misunderstanding of 
the simple fact that one of the jobs of a shepherd in 
herding his sheep is indeed to police his flock. A 
shepherd has the responsibility to prevent chaos among 
his flock, using his staff to discipline unruly sheep. 
Discipline is one of the chief roles of a shepherd, 
something that most American bishops simply fail to 
understand.

     Bishop Daily was the Chancellor of the Archdiocese 
of Boston when accusations of pederasty were first made 
against Father John Geoghan in 1980. One printed report 
noted that Daily "believed at the time, incorrectly, that 
priests had immunity from civil and criminal prosecution 
abuse." How a chancellor of a major metropolitan 
archdiocese could believe in such folly strains 
credulity. However, the predilection of American prelates 
to engage in wishful, positivistic thinking is all too 
well documented. Time and time again, for example, the 
legitimate concerns expressed by the lay faithful about 
the horrors of sex instruction programs and liturgical 
abuses and heretical statements made from the pulpit or 
contained in catechetical texts (or taught in Catholic 
educational institutions) are dismissed by bishops and 
their apparatchiks in chancery offices as so much 
nonsense. If such problems exist, these officials try to 
convince themselves, then they are minor and do not need 
to be addressed because these situations will correct 
themselves over the course of time. Or, in many 
instances, bishops and chancery officials adamantly 
defend deviancy, liturgical abuses and "diversity" in 
theological opinion as objectively good things that help 
people to grow in the "journey of their faith 
experiences."

     The fact that Bishop Daily and Bernard Cardinal Law, 
who has been Archbishop of Boston since March 25, 1984, 
have failed to police clergy accused of perverted 
behavior should come as no surprise. Neither use their 
episcopal authority to discipline heretics within the 
flock, including pro-abortion politicians. Cardinal Law, 
for example, has bent over backward to please the 
Kennedys over the years despite the fact that every 
single Kennedy in public life supports the mystical 
dismemberment of our Lord in the person of unborn 
children in their mothers' wombs. He heaped lavish praise 
upon the late Thomas P. O'Neil, Speaker of the United 
States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1987, at the 
latter's Mass of Christian Burial in January 1994, even 
though O'Neil was a staunch supporter of "abortion 
rights." (This is something that would have made the man 
whom O'Neil replaced in his Congressional district in 
Massachusetts, the late Speaker John McCormack, roll over 
in his grave; McCormack had vowed that there would never 
be any bill proposing to "legalize" abortion in the 
United States as long as he was Speaker of the House. 
McCormack was Speaker from the time of the death of 
Representative Sam Rayburn in 1962 until January 1971.) 
Cardinal Law has even gone so far as to say that he will 
not demand that teachers of theology at Catholic colleges 
and universities in his archdiocese, such as Boston 
College, receive a mandatum from him in order to teach as 
is required in EX CORDE ECCLESIAE, which was issued by 
Pope John Paul II in 1990 precisely to ensure the 
integrity of doctrine taught by theology professors at 
colleges and universities. No, Cardinal Law, who fashions 
himself a man of nuanced judgments, does not want to be a 
"policeman," something that he now admits was an error of 
judgment in the case of Father Geoghan.

     What neither Cardinal Law nor Bishop Daily (nor most 
of their brethren in the American hierarchy) understand 
is that there is a direct connection between failing to 
police the hiring and retention of those who teach the 
Holy Faith and the increase in public scandals which 
arise as a result of the denial of our Lord's received 
teaching by priests. If priests are permitted to preach 
and to teach heresy with abandon, either from the pulpit 
or in the classroom, then this is a pretty fair 
indication that they themselves are exculpated from 
having to live according to that which they deny so 
gratuitously in the official fora provided them by the 
Church. Thus, one of the most important things any bishop 
is obliged to do to protect the integrity of the Faith 
and thus the eternal welfare of the souls of the lay 
faithful entrusted to their pastoral care is to police 
priests and nuns and teachers who prove themselves to be 
disloyal to the received teaching of our Lord. Naturally, 
though, if a man is committed to viewing the Faith in a 
nuanced way, such as Cardinal Law, then much latitude is 
given to outright heretics within the Church to poison 
the souls of the faithful and then to engage in predatory 
physical assaults upon those they have poisoned with the 
rot of theological relativism. A failure to police those 
who undermine the Holy Faith leads to the abortion of 
souls. And it is the abortion of souls in Catholic 
parishes and Catholic educational institutions and 
Catholic hospitals which is what helps to lead our own 
Catholic women to seek out the abortionist to kill the 
fruit of their own wombs. After all, if pro-abort 
Catholics in public life can remain Catholics in good 
standing -- and if Catholic priests and nuns and teachers 
can continue teaching heresy with complete and total 
impunity -- then members of the lay faithful are thus 
encouraged to succumb to the pressures of the prevailing 
cultural and legal orthodoxy. If you want to keep 
Catholic women out of the abortuary, then it is incumbent 
for shepherds to indeed police those who are responsible 
for preaching and teaching.

     This lesson is utterly lost on Bishop Daily. 
Utterly. Oh, he goes faithfully every month to some 
abortuary in the Diocese of Brooklyn to pray Our Lady's 
Most Holy Rosary. All well and good. However, his 
Excellency does not realize that one of the reasons, as 
noted above, that our own women are going to abortuaries 
is that they have been the victims of Catholic 
educational fraud. Thus, Bishop Daily did nothing in 1995 
when then Dean Rudolph Hasl of St. John's Law School 
hired a woman named Tanya Hernandez at a time when she 
was working for the Center for Reproductive Law and 
Public Policy in Puerto Rico. Bishop Daily did nothing. 
He said nothing. Indeed, early in his reign as bishop of 
Brooklyn Daily used the "I'm not a policeman" line to say 
that it was not his job to supervise the hiring of 
teachers in the Catholic schools operated in his diocese. 
Bishop Daily thus excuses himself so very easily and so 
very lightly from the responsibility to make sure that 
everyone who teaches and preaches is of one mind and 
heart with the Mind of the Divine Redeemer as He has 
discharged It in Holy Mother Church and protects Its 
contents by the infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost 
over the centuries until the end of time. No one who 
dissents one iota from the received teaching our Lord has 
entrusted to His Mystical Bride, the Church, must ever be 
hired in any position of teaching or preaching authority.

     As men who have shirked their episcopal 
responsibility, however, most American bishops delegate 
their authority to others. And then they engage in 
gratuitous denials of reality when problems are brought 
to their attention -- or angrily defend outrages which 
are brought to their attention. It is almost as though 
they want to live in a fantasy world and that anyone who 
dares to burst the bubble of their fantasy world has to 
be attacked with anger and savage fury. It cannot 
possibly be that they or any of their hand-picked 
officials are guilty of malfeasance, sloth, arrogance, 
and contempt for the legitimate right of the faithful to 
integrity of doctrine and reverence of worship 
(especially as it relates to the Traditional Latin Mass). 
Much like elected politicians, most bishops and their 
chancery officials attempt to engage in "spin doctoring" 
in order to justify themselves.

     In essence, you see, many of our bishops and their 
chancery toadies believe they are above public 
questioning for their refusal to see our ecclesiastical 
situation clearly for what it truly is. If everyone in a 
chancery office keeps congratulating them on what a great 
job they are doing (which is one of the central themes of 
the new Mass: everybody is holy, everybody is doing a 
great job of pleasing God), they are going to resent 
anyone who attempts to tell them that they are not 
wearing any clothing. Furthermore, many of our bishops 
and their chancery factotums either have a soft spot for 
those inclined to active homosexual behavior or are 
subject to blackmail themselves in this regard. No one is 
alleging this to be the case with Bishop Daily or 
Cardinal Law. However, Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., has 
published damning material about a network of homosexuals 
in the hierarchy of this country, going so far as to name 
names. No one has sued them over that report. No one has 
even threatened to sue them over that report. At the very 
least, however, it is the case that most of our bishops 
and their functionaries do not understand or want to 
believe that homosexuality in se is a psychiatric disease 
and that those who demonstrate this disease must never be 
ordained to the priesthood and must be removed from all 
pastoral assignments forever once they demonstrate such 
behavior. Better that they spend their lives celebrating 
Mass alone in a monastery than that they be placed in a 
situation destructive of their own souls and of the souls 
of the boys they victimize and the families who suffer 
with these boys. Once again, though, anyone who attempts 
to explain this ugly reality to bishops is met with 
contempt.

     As if the avoidable scandals which have broken in 
recent decades are not enough, at least two Catholic 
colleges, Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the 
University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, are 
permitting an unspeakably obscene play, "------ 
Monologues," to be performed on their campuses. This 
outrage, which is taking place during the season of Lent, 
has been met with indifference by the two bishops 
involved. Indeed, Bishop Daniel Reilly of the Diocese of 
Worcester has said publicly that it is none of his 
business and that he intends to do nothing about it. So 
much for preventing souls dear to our Lord from being 
polluted and corrupted at allegedly Catholic institutions 
of higher learning. Then, again, if bishops don't take 
serious the minimal requirements found in EX CORDE 
ECCLESIAE to ensure the doctrinal integrity of those who 
teach theology at Catholic universities and colleges, why 
should they care one whit about that which promotes sin, 
the very thing we are supposed to be repenting of during 
the season of Lent?

     A shepherd is called to be a policeman. Policing is 
an indispensable function of a pastor. We need to pray to 
our Lady, Mother of the Church, that bishops will police 
those in need of policing for the good of the salvation 
of souls and the greater honor and glory of the Blessed 
Trinity. "Ad majorem Dei gloriam" demands nothing less 
than firmness in protecting the flock entrusted to a 
shepherd's care.

     As is well known to readers of my writing, I am a 
critic of the modern state, including the precepts 
responsible for the Declaration of Independence and the 
Constitution of the United States of America. The modern 
state is modern in the specific rejection of the 
authority of Christ the King as exercised by His true 
Church in the person of the Sovereign Pontiff and those 
bishops in full, juridical communion with him.

     As Pope Leo XIII noted in IMMORTALE DEI in 1885 (and 
throughout his 25-year pontificate) and as Pope Pius XI 
noted in QUAS PRIMAS in 1925), the reign of Christ the 
King extends to nations as well as individuals. The 
binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the 
natural law govern the actions of men both individually 
and collectively in society. No one has the right to 
transgress God's law. No one is morally free to do evil. 
There is a difference between having the physical freedom 
to choose to do evil and having the moral authority to do 
so. Thus, it was the case in the Middle Ages, that period 
of time which ran approximately from the fall of the 
Roman Empire in the West to the period of the so-called 
Renaissance, that leaders of Christian kingdoms 
understood that they were as bound to the observance of 
the binding precepts of God's law as set down in writing 
and contained in Sacred Tradition and the natural law in 
their civil rule over their subjects as they were in 
their individual lives. And they recognized that just as 
the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man 
subjected Himself to the authority of His own creatures 
in Nazareth, including that of His foster father, Saint 
Joseph (who, though a just man, was a sinner), so too 
must they, civil rulers, submit themselves to the 
authority of the Vicar of Christ or a national primate on 
matters pertaining to faith and morals and on matters 
pertaining to objective justice founded in the splendor 
of Truth Incarnate.

     Although never realized perfectly (Saint Louis IX of 
France perhaps best exemplified an understanding of the 
Social Kingship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ), the 
exercise of the Social Kingship of Christ by the Church 
was the brake that checked and curbed the tendencies of 
some rulers in the Middle Ages toward absolutism, and it 
was the overthrow of that divinely instituted brake 
during the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Freemasonry 
which resulted in the triumph of monarchical absolutism 
as well as the triumph of majoritarian despotism in our 
own day. As the late Father Denis Fahey noted in his 
great work, THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST IN THE MODERN 
WORLD, the rise of the modern state is founded in the 
deification of man, principally by its deemphasis or 
denial of the social dimensions of the Incarnation and 
Redemption and by its assertion that political 
sovereignty resides in the people.

     As I have noted on so many occasions in the past six 
years, the founding of this nation was a complex event 
which was influenced by a number of philosophical forces. 
Its principal defect, however, rests in its rejection of 
the Social Kingship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 
as exercised by Holy Mother Church, thereby leaving the 
Constitution, which does indeed have parts which are 
consonant with at least an attenuated understanding of 
the natural-law principle of subsidiarity, open to the 
same sort of radical deconstructionism that the Bible 
itself underwent at the hands of Protestant (and, later, 
Catholic) Scriptural exegetes enamored of the so-called 
historical-critical method. That is, once man divorces 
himself from the authority instituted by God Himself to 
direct man in both his personal and social lives, then he 
is subject to the whims of whoever happens to hold power 
at any given moment or whatever happens to be 
majoritarian sentiment at any point in time. If there is 
no authority on earth to which men must submit 
themselves, then a nation degenerates only too naturally 
to the point where people say, "Who are you to tell me 
the Second Amendment means what you say it means? Who are 
you to tell me that abortion is wrong? I have my own 
truth. I don't read things the same way you do." Absent a 
belief in the Deposit of Faith our Lord entrusted to His 
true Church, which is our mother and our teacher, men of 
their fallen nature come to think of themselves as gods, 
and come to believe that they can act in any 
Machiavellian manner they choose to advance their goals, 
noble or ignoble, in the temporal realm.

     James Madison expressed his belief in THE FEDERALIST 
PAPERS that there was no one "opinion" that could unite 
men, who he claimed to be fractionated by a variety of 
"opinions." Men thus prone to be fractionated would form 
into factions to promote their own interests in society, 
using violence and fraud to do so. This tendency of man 
to form factions to promote his own interests and 
"opinions" is what led to him to devise a structural 
framework he claimed would make it difficult, not 
impossible, for there to be the triumph of any one 
faction or one opinion in society that does not at least 
consider the rights of those who dissent from it to make 
its collective voice heard in civil debate. Thus, the 
whole framework of a bicameral Congress and separation of 
powers and of the division of power between a national 
government (alleged to be created by the agents of the 
people) and the state governments was meant to multiply 
factions in order to force them to clash with one another 
in the schemata presented by a republican (or 
representative) form of government. The tendency of 
factions toward mobocracy could be curbed by forcing them 
to confront each other in legislative debate, and by 
making sure that no one region or one group or one 
"opinion" could control the entirety of the policymaking 
process. This can be called the Madisonian dialectic: 
Madison's belief that men were destined to clash because 
there is nothing of substance, apart from patriotism, 
which could unite them.

     Madison was wrong. There is something which of its 
nature is meant to unite all men: the Holy Faith. Men can 
live together in peace for the honor and glory of God if 
they recognize in each other the Divine impress and 
understand how each of us is called to keep company with 
our Lady at the foot of the Holy Cross in the Mass, 
cooperating fervently with the graces won for us on the 
wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of our Lord's Most 
Precious Blood to grow in sanctity, not merely natural 
civic virtue for the sake of being "good" citizens. 
Catholics understand that it is necessary for men to have 
access to, belief in, and cooperation with sanctifying 
grace in order to be the best husbands and the best 
fathers and the best artisans and the best citizens for 
love of the Blessed Trinity. It is not possible in the 
normal course of events for men to persevere in virtue 
without sanctifying grace; it is absolutely impossible 
for nations to pursue justice over the course of the long 
run without subordinating themselves to that which the 
God-Man Himself ordained for the proper ordering of 
individual souls for the pursuit of their Last End as 
they go about the business of daily life in this vale of 
tears.

     That is, the Founders missed entirely the purpose of 
government. The purpose of government is not the creation 
of the "extended commercial republic" to advance the 
economic and other property interests of men otherwise 
fractioned by a diversity of "opinions" about their 
origins and destiny. No, as Saint Louis IX understood -- 
and as Pope Leo XIII taught so very clearly -- Catholics 
understand that one of the principal purposes of 
government, apart from defending the integrity of a 
nation and administering justice in the pursuit of the 
common good, was to help to defeat those conditions in 
society which breed sin and thus lead to the degeneration 
of men over the course of time (and which leads 
ultimately to the destruction of nations and empires). 
Each of us is a sinner. However, it is one thing to sin 
and to be sorry, to seek out the mercy of the Divine 
Redeemer in the Sacrament of Penance. It is quite another 
to persist in sin unrepentantly, worse yet to promote it 
in every aspect of a nation's social life. Men and 
nations need the Church to guide them.

     This is a nutshell summary of the social teaching of 
the Church concerning the State, something I have 
explicated on a number of occasions in recent years. I 
have included it here by way of prelude to a denunciation 
of treason. For while I recognize the defective nature of 
the founding, I am nevertheless a native-born citizen of 
the United States who loves his country in that I want to 
will the good of my country, the ultimate expression of 
which is her Catholicization and her subordination to the 
Social Kingship of our Lord through His true Church 
(which was the goal of the North American Martyrs and of 
Blessed Junipero Serra as they sought to evangelize the 
native peoples on different coasts of what became the 
United States of America). A person can be a critic of a 
country's founding and love country. However, we love our 
country after we love our Lord through His true Church, 
as I explained in detail in my reflections following the 
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon this nation.

     That having been noted, therefore, it is important 
to note that the betrayal of one's nation is a serious 
crime against the natural law, which enjoins us to love 
the country in which we were born or in which we have 
found refuge. A Catholic works to plant seeds by means of 
prayer and sacrifice and fasting and efforts of 
evangelization for the conversions of souls in a nation 
that might, please God and by His ineffable grace, result 
in the conversion of his nation over the course of time 
(just as the Apostles and those who followed them in the 
first few centuries of the Church planted the seeds that 
resulted in the rise of the first Christendom). He does 
not fight with the enemies of his nation in instances 
where her legitimate right of national survival is 
threatened. (There could be instances in which, for 
example, a person would believe it to be just to resist 
unjust state power if all conditions justifying an 
internal revolt were met, even going so far as to accept 
foreign assistance to assist that effort; that would not 
be treason but an effort to restore order by means of 
armed resistance, something that is never undertaken 
lightly.) He does not give aid and comfort to those 
seeking to kill innocent civilians. He does not work with 
those seeking to kill our military personnel as they 
attempt to secure his nation's security when attacked by 
those intent on his destruction. A patriot is not a 
nationalist. However, no patriot can be a traitor.

     John Walker Lindh is a traitor to the core. It is 
shameful that the Bush administration is not trying him 
for treason, just as it was shameful for the 
administration of the late President Richard Milhous 
Nixon not to prosecute Jane Fonda for treason during the 
Vietnam War. One legal scholar noted that Fonda had 
committed treason but that the Nixon administration did 
not believe it was politically expedient to prosecute 
her, especially given the fact that convictions for 
treason are very rare. Right is right, however. John 
Walker Lindh was fighting side by side with the Taliban. 
He is a traitor, not a "confused" young man.

     John Walker Lindh was aided and abetted in his slide 
down the path to treason by his mother, a fallen-away 
Catholic who now practices Buddhism, which, of course, 
preaches tolerance and "understanding" of diversity of 
beliefs. If little Johnnie wanted to become a Mohammedan, 
there was no harm in that, right? It was simply his way 
of expressing his individuality, his way of getting "in 
touch" with his true "inner self." No Catholic would 
encourage his son to fight with the enemies of his 
nation. While a Catholic might find it necessary to 
refrain from a participation in some military activity 
(the Spanish-American War was a masonically inspired 
effort to destroy the last influences of Catholic Spain 
in the world and to bring the United States into the 
imperial era), he does not seek to associate with those 
intent on killing his fellow citizens engaged in military 
action consonant with the common good

     What can be said about John Walker Lindh can be said 
to a certain extent about Ted Turner, who praised the 
"courage" of the terrorists who attacked this country on 
September 11, 2001, in an address to students at Brown 
University in Providence, Rhode Island, recently. Turner 
blamed the attacks on the "poverty" in the Third World, a 
preposterous proposition in light of the fact that Osama 
bin Laden is a multi-billionaire who gave his 
confederates fistfuls of dollars to spend in flight 
academies and for first-class airline tickets. Ever 
politically correct, Turner could never admit that it is 
Mohammedism of its nature which bred the violence 
proximately responsible for the actions of the men who 
participated in the September 11, 2001, attack. No, he 
who attacks Christianity on a regular basis, could never 
criticize a religion which of its nature is a Christian 
heresy and foments violence against Christians as doing 
the will of Allah. Turner is a man who certainly hates 
this country; alas, his hatred of this country is rooted 
in his hatred of our Lord. If one can hate our Lord, then 
one can quite easily seek to replace the true God with 
the false god of internationalism and globalism, thereby 
obliterating the natural law rights of his nation.

     John Walker Lindh is a traitor. Ted Turner is a 
hater. However, if you think about it, both men are 
simply manifestations of the anthropocentricity that is 
at the root of the modern state. As true lovers of our 
nation, therefore, we must work with particular urgency 
for the triumph of our Lady's Immaculate Heart as the 
necessary precondition for the Social Kingship of her 
Divine Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The more 
that people love our Lord through His true Church and 
seek to subordinate every aspect of their own lives and 
the life of their nation to Him, the more that people 
will be true patriots willing to defend the honor of 
their King in the land which gives them both birth and 
refuge.

     O Immaculate Conception, Patroness of the United 
States of America, pray for us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Thomas Droleskey, speaker and lecturer, is a 
professor of political science, the author of CHRIST IN 
THE VOTING BOOTH and THERE IS NO CURE FOR THIS 
CONDITION (www.hopeofstmonica.com), and editor of 
the CHRIST OR CHAOS newsletter.

This column is distributed and archived by Griffin 
Internet Syndicate, http://www.griffnews.com. All rights 
reserved.

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