There was a reference above to "anti-Catholic confessional states fixated on developing better war machines and horrifically efficient techniques for exterminating millions with the push of a button." What exactly are we talking about here?
American and Russian nuclear arsenals today are much smaller than they were at the end of the Cold War. In fact, American strategic forces were at their height of raw destructive power back in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Explosive yields went down as accuracy and reliability improved and enabled a shift from "city busting" to counterforce and counter-military targeting. Today, although American strategic forces are adequate in number and size, there are major problems with the overall "nuclear enterprise" that do need fixing and have nothing to do with "exterminating millions with the push of a button."
It is odd that, while we seem to pride ourselves on swimming against the Americanist tide when it comes to the "Founding Fathers" and against the neo-Catholic tide when it comes to just about anything, we do not hesitate to gulp down misinformation and disinformation about nuclear deterrence. In fact, many of us seem to have remembered everything--and learned nothing--from the days when the KGB's useful idiots were propagating the gospel of "Better Red Than Dead."
In a world where some nasty actors either have or are acquiring nuclear weapons, and where no one is to be trusted with the power that would come from exclusive possession of such weapons, deterrence remains a political and even a moral necessity. If it comes to it, there may, under certain conditions, be no moral objections to the use of nuclear weapons against military targets. Even if our own society is attacked, however, I must insist that a response against other than the attacker's military targets is neither morally licit nor of any utility in terms of the political ends which need to guide a recourse to war and the conduct of military operations.
While we are on a roll here, let us rethink our romanticism about the "kings and queens of Christendom" who would, allegedly, never have countenanced any of our modern barbarisms. In reality, "total war" became possible and "thinkable" not so much because of the collapse of moral restraints since the Middle Ages as because of the advance of technology and science. Human beings weakened by original sin and by their own sins accepted the bombing of cities and nuclear weapons for the same reason that they had accepted crossbows and gunpowder. They waged "total war" for the same reason that they conducted "chevauchees" in the Middle Ages.
No, I do not suggest that all the Catholic (or even Protestant) monarchs of old would have been quite as self-satisfiedly brutal as many of our modern "statesmen." On the other hand, I cannot imagine that Charles Martel, St. Louis IX, the Crusaders, Don Juan of Austria and his men at Lepanto, or Jan Sobieski and his men at Vienna would have recommended unilateral disarmament and surrender to the barbarians among us. If you want to advocate "nuclear pacifism" as the only moral course, please have the intellectual honesty to say that you are willing to make martyrs not only of yourselves, but also of your countrymen and your fellow Catholics, because you are just too good and holy--in your own minds, at least--to do what is reasonably necessary for us to survive.
As Hilaire Belloc wrote, "Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right." On my part, I am glad that we still have the men and the means to deter and, if necessary, to defeat the Roaring Bills of the world. At least in charity, I suppose that we owe it to the Pale Ebenezers to save them from the natural consequences of their prissy and ineffectual moralism so that they can continue to live and think themselves superior to those who defend them.
This is not an endorsement of any particular aspect of U.S. foreign or defense policy or of any specific military actions or adventures, nor an attribution to you of any position that you have not explicitly adopted, merely a general (albeit exasperated) plea for realism. Inasmuch as prudence is a virtue, willful ignorance and deliberate unrealism are vices.

Wow. Is this the rough draft for your new e-book or something? That's a lot of words. Listen, you missed the point completely. We're merely making passing reference to man's "progress" from Enlightenment to the present, and in terms of wiping out human beings we've gone to a place "evil" Christendom never could have imagined. As for war, man has "progressed" from a few hundred men meeting honorably on a battlefield swinging broadswords to the development of every manner of barbaric weapon of mass destruction---including firebombing cities (women and children included--pioneered by Churchill, by the way), nuclear warheads, atom bombs, chemical weapons, gas chambers, drone war, total war, EMPs and the rest. I don't expect you to accept this explanation as you seem pretty fired up, but that's what this brief comment was getting at, and how you went from that to Belloc and Vienna and the Roaring Bills and the Pale Ebenezers is completely beyond me. I enjoyed the rant, though. Thanks for sharing.

I'm an Anglican who knows that the secularist caricature of the history of the Catholic Church is bunk. (It's the modern version of Catholicism I reject.) I commend this bishop for his condemnation of the evil French Revolution. I pray for the restoration of Catholic Monarchy in France, no matter how "unrealistic" the modern world tells me that is. Vive le Roi!

Why doesn’t anyone ever consider the ill effects of The American Revolution? The truth is that without the American Revolution which helped to bankrupt France, the French Revolution may never have happened. Most of our Founding Fathers here in America were Freemasons and devotees of The Enlightenment. The American War for “liberty” set the stage for the advent of democracies and the dismantling of The Crown. The three pillars of Christendom were often known as the Altar, Crown, and Hearth. Luther revolted against the pillar of The Altar. America revolted against The Crown. Now in this final stage of the revolution, the revolt against The Hearth is almost complete. The creed of each stage of the revolt is Non Serviam.

1) Our last legitimate king was James II. By 1776, "The Crown" was part of the spoils of a largely corrupt and rather unpleasant Protestant oligarchy. The American Revolution represented a falling-out between the Mother Country branch and the North American Colonial branch of the legatees of the Inglorious Revolution of 1688. Thus, there is no more reason to demonize the Founders than there is to idolize them.
2) What can and should be said for the Founders is that they built with moderation, prudence, and a certain conservatism after they broke away from England. It seems almost unarguable that, two centuries and change after the American Revolution, the United States is better off--morally, socially, and politically--than those countries or colonies which remained under the Crown. The American form of government has changed and degenerated less since 1789 than the British form. (Consider Britain's castrated monarchy, its gelded House of Lords, and its altogether post-Christian Established Church.)
3) It is true that French involvement in the American Revolution bankrupted France and set the stage for the French Revolution. On the other hand, more far-sighted statesmen in France and elsewhere knew, as soon as France lost its Canadian colonies, that there was going to be a falling-out between the English colonists and their Mother Country. They welcomed that eventuality and did not need to be manipulated by any cunning Yankee Masons into supporting it when the opportunity came. Also, France's profitless and largely unsuccessful wars and its inability to get its house in order internally had been pushing it toward bankruptcy since the time of Louis XIV. In short, the French did it to themselves.
4) Inasmuch as God the formal source of all authority, every government that is established and that rules justly and well can claim to rule by divine right. Not-withstanding the nostalgic monarchism that seems to prevail here, that goes for our own government today.
5) Let us not turn a particular and somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of the American Revolution into a criterion of Catholic orthodoxy.

You must also remember that The Founders took an oath of loyalty to The King, and they broke that solemn oath. Catholics aren’t revolutionaries, so even though The British Monarchs were no longer Catholic, they were valid kings. The British weren’t oppressive to the colonists and I don’t see any way that one could consider the American War for Independence a Just War.

My main point is that the actions that the founding fathers of America took, resulted in the spread of democracies which made it easy for individualism and legalized sin to spread. The modern Secular, Apostate World may have been born from that war.

Agreed!

Of course. The experiment of liberty and the heresy of self rule were tested here first. Had there been no 1776 there would’ve certainly been no 1789, with Lafayette, Franklin and Jefferson working both sides of the Atlantic. The reason it’s overlooked i believe is because, once the Catholic French and Portuguese had been pushed aside, 1776 was all about Protestant Freemasons vs Protestant Freemasons, whereas in France it was bloody sacrilege against Catholic altar and throne.

I agree with you. It’s good to see that I’m not alone in observing the negative consequences of The American War for “Independence.” It seems like most American Catholics like to single out The French Revolution. I’m sure it’s because of the cultural indoctrination where The Constitution is portrayed as the neo 10 Commandments and the Founding Fathers as the prophets of The American Covenant. My prayer is that Americans will see themselves as Catholics first and Americans second instead of as Americans first and Catholics second.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it’s good to not feel isolated.

After failing in Freemasonry's initial 18th century attempt to destroy the French Bourbon monarchy, the Marquis de Lafayette shifted the European Masonic revolutionary apparatus to the North American war for independence---also using it as a model for the gathering French Revolution. Of course, Lafayette's main object was to absorb the American Revolution, and thus enjoy a new field for conquest. For this he is a supposed official "hero", of doctored history, complete with solemn stony statuary. Meanwhile, back in Paris a financial crisis was a pretext for revolt.
So this is why we now have Lafayette's statue and Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. (next to the White H0use). And also don't forget the gift of the French Masons to "grateful America" of the "Statue of Liberty" in New York Harbor---an intendedl Masonic match for the Mason's Eiffel Tower in Paris (1889) in commemoration of the French Revolution of 1789. And the purpose of all of these granite-and-steel memorials is to remind the citizenry of who is really in charge of the political and economic arena.
So yes, dear Alice, there really is a "Deep-State"---and it's way past time for all to awaken to what's going on behind the heavy curtains of "Fake State"---and time to realize that "Lady Liberty" is really a stony Lady-in-Chains. Do have a nice day, but lock your doors tonight.
And by the way, defend your Constitutional Right to own a gun, in "homeland" defense. And thank you, Editor Michael Matt for The Remnant Newspaper's fearless defense of the Faith. Time to call a spade---a spade.

This is a great read....from one who’s countrymen no longer have the freedom to own a gun....& yes we do have to lock every door & window.....since true freedom has now disappeared in Protestant Australia....thanks to our Godless bureaucrats...

People do think the Inquisition killed millions of people. They also think contemporaries of Columbus thought the world was flat.