“I am the king’s faithful servant, but God’s first” (St. Thomas More).[1]
The Decriminalization of Sin
Until the mid-20th Century, most U.S. states (especially southern and northeastern states) had laws against fornication, adultery, cohabitation, and other grievous sins. These laws have gradually been abolished or struck down by courts as unconstitutional. As of 2023, adultery is a criminal offense in 15 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In the past decade, states like Minnesota, Idaho, Utah, Massachusetts, Colorado, and West Virginia decriminalized adultery. Yet even in states where it is still a felony or a misdemeanor, convictions are extremely rare. (Can any of our readers provide a date for the last time a U.S. Court convicted someone of adultery? If so, please make note in the comment section below.)
The legality and availability of contraception changed after the often-undiscussed Supreme Court decision of Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965. This infamous case led to the legalization of contraception in all 50 states by asserting an alleged “right to privacy” in the U.S. Constitution. This same mindset would lead to the disastrous moral legitimization – and popularization – of abortion by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The same can be seen with divorce as well, an attack to the bedrock of society and a direct attack to Our Lord’s own teaching that the Sacrament of Matrimony is indissoluble. While laws varied widely from state to state, the end result concerning divorce is the same. For instance:
New York: Until 1967, New York had particularly strict divorce laws compared to other states. Divorce was only granted on fault-based grounds, such as adultery or cruelty, and required a lengthy separation period. New York was the last state to adopt no-fault divorce laws, allowing couples to divorce without proving fault.
South Carolina: Prior to 1949, South Carolina did not allow divorce under any circumstances, making it one of the last states to legalize divorce.
Massachusetts: Divorce was illegal in Massachusetts until 1887 when the state passed a law allowing for divorce on limited grounds, such as adultery or desertion.
Why This Matters
“The stench of impurity before God and the angels is so great, that no stench in the world can equal it” – St. Philip Neri.
For someone who truly understands the gravity of sin and its eternal consequence, there can be no disagreement that civil society has a responsibility to outlaw sins – especially those that cry to Heaven for vengeance.
A government’s primary duty is to promote the common good. This term is grossly misunderstood. It does not refer to that which materially benefits the greatest number of people. Rather, first and foremost, the ‘common good’ is the good which benefits all citizens. These are spiritual goods – such as truth, right order, unity, and the worship of God – which are not decreased as more people participate in them, but rather increase in goodness for all as more and more people have access to them. Only secondarily is the common good concerned with material benefits, which by their very nature can only be used by some and not others (e.g., food, money, and land). Therefore, a government has the right and responsibility to all which impairs or destroys the common good of its people.
Moreover, a government has the responsibility to protect their citizens from harm from external nations and from threats within. And there is no greater threat than sin – it can destroy sanctifying grace in the soul and damn a soul for all eternity. The collective weight of all of a society’s sins undoubtedly further builds up to incur the wrath of God, which has been seen many times even since the infamous days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
As such, adultery, extramarital sex, abortion, contraception, and pornography need to be illegal. While it is unlikely that our world – without the direct intervention of Our Lord and Our Lady in a truly miraculous manner – would ever outlaw these sins totally, we can and should work to do what we can to make these sins harder and harder to perform. As a result, attempts to regulate pornography by requiring age verification, and heartbeat laws – which outlaw the murder of unborn children only after the detection of a heartbeat – are steps in the right direction. They are not the end goal but should nevertheless be supported as improvements to make sin harder and harder to perform.[2]
Sins Seriously Attack Society in Addition to Offending God
Let’s take cohabitation as an example. It is not just against divine law – cohabitation has statistically been shown to harm relationships in the long term. This should not surprise us, since we know God’s law provides for a good and joyful life here on earth – despite the sufferings we are called to endure – and for all of eternity.
According to a study by the Institute for Family Studies, 65% of Americans believe that living together before marriage will improve their odds of relationship success. But actual statistics show this is not the case. On the contrary, those who started cohabiting before being engaged were more likely to experience marital dissolution than those who only did so after being engaged or already being married. Specifically, 34% of marriages ended among those who cohabited before being engaged, compared to 23% of marriages for those who lived together only after being either married or engaged to be married. In relative terms, the marriages of those who moved in together before being engaged were 48% more likely to end than the marriages of those who only cohabited after being engaged or already married (source: Institute for Family Studies, “What’s the Plan?”, 2023).
The percentage of first births to cohabiting women tripled from 9% in 1985 to 27% for births from 2003 to 2010. This rise in first births to cohabiting women parallels increases in first births to unmarried women overall. Of first births from 2006-2010, 46% were to unmarried mothers, compared with 38% in 2002 (source: National Center for Health Statistics, National Survey of Family Growth 2006-2010).
The Family as the Bedrock of Society
“The final confrontation between the Lord and satan will be over family and marriage” (Sister Lucia of Fatima).
Our Lady of Good Success was the title the Blessed Virgin Mary identified Herself as to Mother Mariana when She appeared to her beginning in 1594. Over the course of several decades, Our Lady revealed visions of the coming immorality of the 20th Century – that faith and morals would be totally corrupted; that secular education would lead to a shortage of priests and religious; that sacraments would be ridiculed and the Sacrament of Extreme Unction would be little used; that women would dress without modesty and children would lose their innocence; and that many priests would fail to uphold the sacredness of their office.
Our Lady of Good Success said:
“As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolizes the union of Christ with His Church, it will be attacked and profaned in the fullest sense of the word. Masonry, which will then be in power, will enact iniquitous laws with the objective of doing away with this Sacrament, making it easy for everyone to live in sin, encouraging the procreation of illegitimate children born without the blessing of the Church. The Christian spirit will rapidly decay, extinguishing the precious light of Faith until it reaches the point that there will be an almost total and general corruption of customs.”
Marriage is rapidly becoming temporary. The divorce rate among couples married in the United States is approaching fifty percent. And divorce is not limited to couples of non-Catholic belief. Although surveys encouragingly have shown that the divorce rate among Catholic couples is lower than average, that rate, too, is increasing. More couples today are living in non-traditional “marriages” – man and woman cohabiting, same-sex partners cohabiting. Indeed, the very concept of what it means to be married is being challenged at the highest federal levels in the United States and in other countries.
We are living in these times as seen by the rise of immodest dress, the rise of freemasonry, the onslaught of modernism on the Faith since Vatican II, and in the collapse of truly Catholic nations like Mexico, Spain, and Italy.
Civil Society Must Subject Itself to God’s Reign
The United States was founded on the notion that the government derives its ability to govern from the consent of the people – directly contrary to the Lord and His Church, which affirms that all authority comes from God (cf. Romans 13:1) and governments traditionally obtained the ability to govern by divine right, leading to the consecration and coronation of the monarch.
The failures of America and the world as a whole – including formerly Catholic nations like Ireland, Spain, and Italy – to prevent divorce, artificial contraception, and abortion all stem from the rapid onset of Modernism, which continues to obscure the truths of life, government, and God. The errors of the French Revolution and the so-called “Enlightenment” continue to pollute our minds, our schools, our institutions, and even our seminaries and priests.
There is only one supreme law and that is not the United States Constitution. It is not a document of the United States, the United Nations, or the EU. It is also not the Code of Canon Law. It is not a document published by the Vatican. The Supreme Law of the Church is the Salvation of Souls. All of divine law and natural law, which no man can change or has the moral authority to disobey, serve that ultimate law. And that supreme law is what must be the cornerstone of all our efforts or else they will fail. As King David reminds us, all our efforts if not based on the Lord’s true law and true Church will fail: “Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Psalms 126:1).
All Catholics must work for the salvation of souls with an ardent and generous spirit. This is not optional. This commitment must underscore our day-to-day lives. We must be missionaries to our families, our friends, and everyone we meet. Everyone must know that we are Catholics. And our efforts at converting others by our example, our charity, and our unwavering commitment to the Faith will be our tools to make abortion, contraception, homosexual marriage, euthanasia, adultery, and divorce unthinkable.
Prayer to St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher to remain steadfast in the Faith against civil pressure.
O God, Who didst raise up from among the English people, Thy blessed Martyrs, John and Thomas, to be the zealous defenders of the true Faith and of the primacy of the Roman Church, grant through their merits and prayers that, by the practice of the same Faith, we may all become and remain united in Christ. Through our Lord …
ENDNOTES:
[1] Pope Leo XIII beatified St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, and 52 other English Martyrs on December 29, 1886. Pope Pius XI canonized Ss. Thomas More and John Fisher on May 19, 1935, and St. Thomas More’s feast day was established as July 9th. It was kept only in England and Wales as a regional feast day through the 1960 Roman Catholic Calendar. Since the Novus Ordo and calendar change in 1970, the General Roman Calendar has celebrated St. Thomas More with St. John Fisher on the 22nd of June (the date of Fisher’s execution).
[2] By helping form another generation of true Traditional Catholics we can make abortion unthinkable. Abortion is a two-fold murder. First, it destroys sanctifying grace in the soul of the mother who murders the child. It also destroys any grace in those who perform or help foster, encourage, fund, or support the murder of human life in any way. But it even more tragically sentences the child (a truly human life with an immortal soul) to an eternity away from God. Baptism is necessary for salvation. These aborted babies are not baptized. We are not aware of any way how aborted children can go to Heaven. While we trust in God’s mercy that they will spend an eternity in Limbo away from the fires of hell, they will ultimately never see the face of God in Heaven since they were deprived of Baptism. Aborted babies do not go to Heaven.
This reality, which is hardly taught anymore even by Catholic priests who fear offending people, must be proclaimed even more loudly. How many souls have been deprived of Heaven because of secular governments divorced from God’s laws and founded on the false principle of man’s rights?