CONSPIRATIO
Est. 2002
... a loosely-knit group of traditional Catholic lay apologists from across the
nation who defend the faith, inform consciences, inspire Catholic Action and
encourage Catholic activism using political forums and other internet venues.
OUR PREMIERE GATHERING
A day of prayer,
discussion and planning for
continued Catholic action,
evangelization and solidarity.
St. Patrick's Church
March 16, 2002
Presentation topics included:
- The False Dichotomy Between Faith and Religion
- An informal discussion of the philosophy of science and its place in the hierarchy of human knowledge with a view toward encouraging dialogue between religious and scientific thinkers. Particular emphasis is place on the apparent support to be found for certain distinctive ideas of Catholic theology in the cosmology of modern physics.
- The Use of Technology for Good and Evil
- With a special emphasis on "The Lord of the Rings" and the use of imagination.
- Monarchy
- A discussion of the relationship of responsibility and authority and post-Reformation abuses of the institution of monarchy.
- The Co-Opting of Faith for Political Purpose ... The Church as Pitted against "The Peoples' Will"
- A discussion of the "Narodnaya Volya" and other indications that the militant atheism as espoused by the Leninists was -- and is -- the driving force behind the gramscian-marxist deconstruction of the West, the triangulation of the People of the Book and the revolution from within the Church.
- A Defense of Pope Paul XII
- An investigation of the allegations against Pope Pius XII who has been widely disparaged for his failure to overcome Hitler and other totalitarian evils by the exact sorts who insist on the "separation of Church and State" not at all envisioned by the Founding Fathers' "Establishment" clause.
- Sexual Scandal in the Church and Its Bearing on the Argument for Celibacy
- An overview of the political and religious ramifications of AmChurch's current sexual scandals with particular emphasis on the reasons for the crisis of homosexuality in the American Church including the rejection of qualified candidates for the priesthood who do not fit the liberal view of the AmChurch clergy whose political "partnerships" with the State are evidenced only too well by their continued fleecing of faithful Catholics by the Campaign for Human Development.
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Epistol ad Diognetum
The Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, by language, nor by civil institutions. For they neither dwell in cities by themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular mode of life.
They dwell in the Grecian or barbarian cities, as the case may be; they follow the usages of the country in dress, food, and the other affairs of life. Yet they present a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical conduct They dwell in their own native lands, but as strangers. They take part in all things, as citizens; and they suffer all things, as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every native land is a foreign.
They marry, like all others; they have children; but they do not cast away their offsprings. They have the table in common, but not wives. They are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh. They live upon the earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the existing laws, and excel the laws by their lives.
They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and yet they are condemned. They are killed and made alive. They are poor and make many rich. They lack all things, and in all things abound.
They are reproached, and glory in their reproaches. They are calumniated, and are justified. They are cursed, and they bless. They receive scorn, and they give honor. They do good, and are punished as evil-doers.
When punished, they rejoice, as being made alive. By the Jews they are attacked as aliens, and by the Greeks persecuted; and the cause of the enmity their enemies cannot tell.
In short, what the soul is to the body, the Christians are in the world. The soul is diffused through all the members of the body, and the Christians are spread through the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but it is not of the body; so the Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world.
The soul, invisible, keeps watch in the visible body; so also the Christians are seen to live in the world, for their piety is invisible.
The flesh hates and wars against the soul; suffering no wrong from it, but because it resists fleshly pleasures; and the world hates the Christians with no reason, but they resist its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and members, by which it is hated; so the Christians love their haters. The soul is enclosed in the body but holds the body together; so the Christians are detained in the world as in a prison; but they contain the world.
Immortal, the soul dwells in the mortal body; so the Christians dwell in the corruptible, but look for incorruption in heaven. The soul is the better for restriction in food and drink; and the Christians increase, though daily punished.
This lot God has assigned to the Christians in the world; and it cannot be taken from them.
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FRANK MORISS
Deconstructing the Western Mind
The Gramscian-Marxist Subversion of Faith and Education
PETER KREEFT
What Are We ... Spouse, Child, Citizen ... To Make of Christ?
"How to Save Western Civilization"
A Philosophy of History
Four Stages in History
Three Psychological Principles
... and Possible Solutions
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Catholic Action
Catholic Action is an apostolate.
Its end is to win men to Christ as men were
won to Christ by Peter and Paul.
It is a social apostolate. It seeks to restore right order in society, to
re-create society. But its action is not political. The breaking societies of
the West cannot be renewed by economic or political panaceas.
It is a moral sickness from which the body of society suffers, and it will not
be cured by local plasters upon local symptoms. Politics, economics are phases
of human behavior, but human behavior is inevitably determined by the right
values which men hold, by their sense of right and wrong ...
Catholic Action restores society by converting it to Christ.
Restoring All Things: A Guide to Catholic Action,
John Fitzsimons and Paul McGuire (Sheed & Ward, 1938)
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Click the image for an excerpt from
Michael O'Brien's Father Elijah.
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Dr. Alan Keyes
The American Heart ... The American Faith
... very often today we seem to turn our back on [the right to life and the defense of our true liberties] because, I guess, for a great many people it's more convenient to try to forget who we are than to remember who we are at a time that we would do so to our shame.
The facts are clear. We are a nation founded on a clear and simple premise. The fact that it is clear and simple, however, doesn't mean that it was easy to arrive at
easy to perceive
easy to apply to human circumstances and affairs. It was not.
And, in fact, in all the thousands of years of human history before this nation was founded, this particular insight had certainly been around but it had never been expressed in a form that actually led to and transformed political institutions and society.
But we are different. And in our case--I believe very much by the providence of God Almighty--we live in a country where this special insight was, in fact, applied in a way that has born great and so far lasting Truth. And the insight is quite simple. We start with the recognition that there is, in fact a Creator God. [We then] understand that that Creator takes an interest in human affairs, in human justice and is, in fact, the foundation by His Will of the right understanding of human justice and social affairs.
And that understanding is such that each and every human being stands in the sight of that Creator God almighty equal to every other human being in their moral worth and dignity. An equality that is not based upon human power or human assertion, upon human constitutions or human attitudes and judgment but instead rest upon the will of our Almighty God. Determined by His hand, His rules, by His Choice and not our own.
Of course there will be those particularly those folks in the media (and anybody who knows me even a little bit knows that I have a kind of running battle with the American media. I actually think that, by and large, anyone of conscience would have a running battle with the media.)
But in this context
whenever I say this, somebody out there [
] asks some question which implies that what I have just said to you, that simple logic I've just outlined, that premise that rights come from God "this is Alan Keyes standing there articulating his particular sectarian religious belief."
Now it is very true that every word I just spoke to you is real consistent with my Roman Catholic heart and my Roman Catholic faith. But it's also very true that every word I just spoke to you is not just a reflection of my heart and my faith, it is the American heart and the American faith.
This is articulated very clinically when this Nation began. In the great documents that our Founders used to justify their willingness even to go to war in order to assert their independence. I think we ought to take that very seriously because at least in those days, I don't know about now, I think we're kind of
we've gotten really careless about wars these days, as some events, I think, even in recent times have proven.
And we go to war maybe without understanding what we ought to understand. Every time you go to war, you know -- a people like ourselves -- even if that war is conducted by others, even when it's conducted by a means where you're flying high up in the air and dropping bombs on people you don't even see and folks die as a result
I hope we still understand that each and every one of us who has an opportunity to participate as part of the sovereign body of the people in this country: we are responsible for every life that is taken by America in war.
And we had better be awfully sure that what we're doing has a solid moral ground or we will stand before God bearing the stain and weight of every life taken in injustice that we did not oppose.
And I think that it's why our founders, being that they were many of them, most of them, almost all of them, in fact people of conscience and faith, felt that before you risked war, you better justify what you're doing in moral terms. You've got to state the moral premises and the moral principles that inform your heart.
And that's what they did in our Declaration of Independence. It's a statement of the moral justification of that assertion of independence at the risk of war. And, in doing what they did, they set forth the basic moral principles that then informed the later deliberations that led to our Constitution and are the practical foundation of our liberty.
And so those words in the Declaration of Independence "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" -- are the basic premise of everything that, as a people, we claim to hold dear. Self-government and rights and due process and liberty and all these other unique hallmarks of the American way of life, they rest on that premise and that premise alone.
That Pro-Life Schtick
(Part II of Keyes' address at the New Orleans "Proudly Pro-Life" supper in January, 1999.)
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Pantheism and Perfectability in Democratic Nations
Alexis de Toqueville
A Call to Vigilance: Pastoral Instruction on New Age
Cardinal Norberto Rivera (Mexico City)
The State and the Soul
Dom Hubert Van Zeller, O.S.B.
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Dr. Alan Keyes
Why Aren't We Winning?
The liberal Socialist arguments with which all too often they are able to keep this people from reclaiming its rights
to keep this people from demanding the truth about its safety and the surrender of its sovereignty
those liberal arguments rest, in the end, on exploiting the lack of moral confidence in the American people.
My friends, we don't believe in ourselves anymore. We don't believe in our own goodness anymore. And I don't know why.
I remember I was at the UN years ago, representing the United States for Ronald Reagan. And one day, one weekend, I was out with my son. And, as usual, it was in the midst of one of those times we were always at war in the United Nations with some element or other of the Soviet blocthis one or that oneat the time. And we were out and we walking along that plaza where they have all those different flags of the different countries and I was explaining to him what this one and that one was and we finally got to what was, at that point, the flag of the old Soviet Union. And he points up to it he's very youngand he says, "Well whose flag is that?" And I said, "Well, that represents the bad guys," I said. And, obviously, I still believe that I was quite right about that.
And then, we got to the American flag, which was quite close [and he asked] "if that's the bad guys, what does that one represent?" I said, "Well, that one represents the good guys that's us." But, you know something my friends, if we keep going the way we're going, persisting in the path that we have persisted in
then we, the very country that more than once in this century has saved the world from the shadow of the worst evils will no longer be there in the 21st Century to save the world from the shadow of evil.
And worse than that
we won't save the world from that shadow because we will be casting it.
We don't get it, do we? We are either going to continue to be the country that holds before the world those ideas and standards of godly justice and liberty and decency for which so many of our patriots died or we are going to turn into that power which plunges the world into a maelstrom of evil like nothing we have ever seen.
I frankly don't think that for American there will be a middle way. And that's the truth of it. And we are already at it. For we've had an administration that has aided and abetted and promoted and coerced the culture of death in every continent and toward every nation on the fact of the Earth already.
Using our capital and our money and our clout they have forced other nations to take the same ungodly stance toward innocent life in the womb that they take now.
So my friends, don't think that this is just some future that we are talking about. We are already far down the road toward the destruction of our republic, our conscience, our decency. The question isn't whether we will choose that road but whether we will turn back now before we pass the point of no return.
Why Aren't We Winning?
(Part II of Keyes' address at the FreeRepublic.com Treason Rally)
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