Man’s triumphs are being placed more and more at the service of demoniacal hate

For St. Thomas, as we have seen in a previous chapter, contemplation is the end of civil government, not that civil government is meant to aim at it as its proportionate end, but because it can prepare for it as for a higher end, superior to political ends and preferable to them. Thus, when a tiller of the soil makes ready the ground for planting, he is preparing for the flowers and fruits that will spring from the cultivated soil. Civilization, as we have already said, has directly in view the development of human nature here below, but mediately it is ordained to the Kingdom of God, that is, to the order of eternal and supernatural life begun here below, and it is from the Kingdom of God that it must receive the supreme rule and measure. Civilization is the development of the truly human life of the State. It belongs of itself to the natural order: metaphysics, art, science, politics, civic virtues. But it cannot attain its full development except under the supernatural sky of the Church. Christian civilization is the overflow of the Kingdom of heaven. It is the impress of the Mystical Body of Christ on man's natural social organization.

Accordingly, as man's contemplation of God in the actual world is meant to be not merely natural but supernatural, that civilization is simply and absolutely (simpliciter) the most perfect in which the well-being and moral rectitude of society is sought in a manner calculated to pave the way for supernatural contemplation. Such a civilization may be surpassed by others in a certain department or departments (secundum quid), but these latter will lack the harmony and power of recuperation of the former. For the true progress of a people, the rulers must ever keep these principles in view. True progress will always respect the line of formal development of man. It will give rise to qualitative civilizations such as was the civilization of Greece in the fourth century before the birth of our Lord and, in a higher degree, the civilization of Western Europe in the thirteenth century. If a people's attention is diverted from things spiritual and turned to material conquests, to the cultivation of the useful, that is of whatever serves as a means of furthering human intercourse and ministers to man's bodily needs and comforts, the whole direction of life gradually changes. The means become the end. The civilization is quantitative instead of qualitative. As mind tends invincibly to universality, it will then seek it in the realms of matter. The reign of quantity, of mass production and of standardized parts will be inaugurated. In such a civilization, metaphysicians will be of little social account compared with financiers. Arts in which matter is excessively prominent, such as the noble art of self defence and certain games, will occupy a place altogether out of proportion to their importance. The winning of material comfort which appeals to the animality in man (animality is so universal that it belongs also to beings other than man) will become all-absorbing. By all this we do not mean to convey that those technical triumphs are devoid of intelligence and idealism. Far from it. We simply want to emphasize the fact that, in our quantitative civilization, intelligence and idealism are placed at the service of the animality in us and turned downwards to the manipulation of matter rather than upwards to contemplation and suprasensible reality. With the rejection of the great truth of our membership of the Mystical Body of Christ Crucified, these very material conquests are leading to a state of awful disorder. Man can now overcome the obstacles of time and space with what may be termed, of course with exaggeration, angelic swiftness, but his triumphs are being placed more and more at the service of demoniacal hate. Matter is the principle of division.

Rev. Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World (pp. 145-7)

On media provoking panic way out of proportion to the risks

Of course government officials can’t grab the media megaphone if the media themselves don’t make it available. The mass media tend to magnify the latest health concern and broadcast it to millions of people at once. This has the effect of elevating an issue to a grand scale and provoking panic way out of proportion to the risks. I call this phenomenon the “bug du jour”. . . Many of the bugs du jour are cause for concern only among narrow segment of the population. Only a small portion of those who believe they are at risk really are, and few who become infected actually die. But a strange disease that kills only a few people still makes for good headlines if the story is strategically hyped.

Marc Siegel, False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear (pp. 17, 19)   

"The content of this book has to be read quickly and worldwide..."

If everything that politicians, researchers, and journalists sell us as truth is actually false, how could all the mistakes go undiscovered for so long? Shouldn’t the conclusions outlined in this book have gone off like a bomb a long time ago?

The primary reason this has not happened is that it’s too simple for many people to imagine. Intelligent researchers have chosen to overlook it for decades. It is too shocking for us to believe we’re been lied to by the very people charged with safeguarding our health. Above all, none of them are interested in these simple pursuits [e.g., proper nutrition and exercise, avoiding toxins and pharmaceuticals]. Doctors would have to go on a totally different path in order to achieve fame and honor (or abandon such a goal altogether and change the definition of success). Medical statisticians would be sawing off the very branch on which they perch. Pharmaceutical companies would have to completely overhaul their bottom line-obsessed industry and actually invest resources in developing effective medications instead of ones that do nothing, harm, or even kill.

Ultimately, the only individuals who would profit from this would be patients. But first, they have to educate themselves and take back control of their own bodies. And with this book, we hope we can make a contribution to this pursuit—for a better, more peaceful, and healthier future for our beloved planet and all its inhabitants.

Torsten Engelbrect & Claus Köhnlein, Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits at Our Expense (p. 266)

Foreword to Virus Mania by Etienne de Harven...

The Content of this Book Has to be Read, Quickly and Worldwide

The book Virus Mania by Torsten Engelbrecht and Claus Köhnlein presents a tragic message that will, hopefully, contribute to the re-insertion of ethical values in the conduct of virus research, public health policies, media communications, and activities of the pharmaceutical companies. Obviously, elementary ethical rules have been, to a very dangerous extent, neglected in many of these fields for an alarming number of years.

When American journalist Celia Farber courageously published, in Harper’s Magazine (March 2006) the article “Out of control—AIDS and the corruption of medical science,” some readers probably attempted to reassure themselves that this “corruption” was an isolated case. This is very far from the truth as documented so well in this book by Engelbrecht and Köhnlein. It is only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption of research is a widespread phenomenon currently found in many major, supposedly contagious health problems, ranging from AIDS to Hepatitis C, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or “mad cow disease”), SARS, Avian flu and current vaccination practices (human papillomavirus or HPV vaccination).

In research on all of these six distinct public health concerns scientific research on viruses (or prions in the case of BSE) slipped onto the wrong track following basically the same systematic pathway. This pathway always includes several key steps: inventing the risk of a disastrous epidemic, incriminating an elusive pathogen, ignoring alternative toxic causes, manipulating epidemiology with non-verifiable numbers to maximize the false perception of an imminent catastrophe, and promising salvation with vaccines. This guarantees large financial returns. But how is it possible to achieve all of this? Simply by relying on the most powerful activator of the human decision making process, i.e. FEAR!

We are not witnessing viral epidemics; we are witnessing epidemics of fear. And both the media and the pharmaceutical industry carry most of the responsibility for amplifying fears, fears that happen, incidentally, to always ignite fantastically profitable business. Research hypotheses covering these areas of virus research are practically never scientifically verified with appropriate controls. Instead, they are established by “consensus.” This is then rapidly reshaped into a dogma, efficiently perpetuated in a quasi-religious manner by the media, including ensuring that research funding is restricted to projects supporting the dogma, excluding research into alternative hypotheses. An important tool to keep dissenting voices out of the debate is censorship at various levels ranging from the popular media to scientific publications.

We haven’t learnt well from past experiences. There are still many unanswered questions on the causes of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, and on the role of viruses in post-WWII polio (DDT neurotoxicity?). These modern epidemics should have opened our minds to more critical analyses. Pasteur and Koch had solidly constructed an understanding of infection applicable to many bacterial, contagious diseases. But this was before the first viruses were actually discovered. Transposing the principles of bacterial infections to viruses was, of course, very tempting but should not have been done without giving parallel attention to the innumerable risk factors in our toxic environment; to the toxicity of many drugs, and to some nutritional deficiencies.

Cancer research had similar problems. The hypothesis that cancer might be caused by viruses was formulated in 1903, more than one century ago. Even today it has never been convincingly demonstrated. Most of the experimental laboratory studies by virus-hunters have been based on the use of inbred mice, inbred implying a totally unnatural genetic background. Were these mice appropriate models for the study of human cancer? (we are far from being inbred!) True, these mice made possible the isolation and purification of “RNA tumor viruses,” later renamed “retroviruses” and well characterized by electron microscopy. But are these viral particles simply associated with the murine tumors, or are they truly the culprit of malignant transformation? Are these particles real exogenous ineffective particles, or endogenous defective viruses hidden in our chromosomes? The question is still debatable.What is certain is that viral particles similar to those readily recognized in cancerous and leukemic mice have never been seen nor isolated in human cancers. Of mice and men…

However, by the time this became clear, in the late 1960s, viral oncology had achieved a dogmatic, quasi-religious status. If viral particles cannot be seen by electron microscopy in human cancers, the problem was with electron microscopy, not with the dogma of viral oncology! This was the time molecular biology was taking a totally dominant posture in viral research. “Molecular markers” for retroviruses were therefore invented (reverse transcriptase for example) and substituted most conveniently for the absent viral particles, hopefully salvaging the central dogma of viral oncology. This permitted the viral hypothesis to survive for another ten years, until the late 1970s, with the help of increasingly generous support from funding agencies and from pharmaceutical companies. However by 1980 the failure of this line of research was becoming embarrassingly evident, and the closing of some viral oncology laboratories would have been inevitable, except that…

Except what? Virus cancer research would have crashed to a halt except that, in 1981, five cases of severe immune deficiencies were described by a Los Angeles physician, all among homosexual men who were also all sniffing amyl nitrite, were all abusing other drugs, abusing antibiotics, and probably suffering from malnutrition and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). It would have been logical to hypothesize that these severe cases of immune deficiency had multiple toxic origins. This would have amounted to incrimination of these patients’ lifestyle…

Unfortunately, such discrimination was, politically, totally unacceptable. Therefore, another hypothesis had to be found—these patients were suffering from a contagious disease caused by a new...retrovirus! Scientific data in support of this hypothesis was and, amazingly enough, still is totally missing. That did not matter, and instantaneous and passionate interest of cancer virus researchers and institutions erupted immediately. This was salvation for the viral laboratories where AIDS now became, almost overnight, the main focus of research. It generated huge financial support from Big Pharma, more budget for the CDC and NIH, and nobody had to worry about the lifestyle of the patients who became at once the innocent victims of this horrible virus, soon labeled as HIV.

Twenty-five years later, the HIV/AIDS hypothesis has totally failed to achieve three major goals in spite of the huge research funding exclusively directed to projects based on it. No AIDS cure has ever been found; no verifiable epidemiological predictions have ever been made; and no HIV vaccine has ever been successfully prepared. Instead, highly toxic (but not curative) drugs have been most irresponsibly used, with frequent, lethal side effects. Yet not a single HIV particle has ever been observed by electron microscopy in the blood of patients supposedly having a high viral load! So what? All the most important newspapers and magazine have displayed attractive computerized, colorful images of HIV that all originate from laboratory cell cultures, but never from even a single AIDS patient. Despite this stunning omission the HIV/AIDS dogma is still solidly entrenched. Tens of thousands of researchers, and hundreds of major pharmaceutical companies continue to make huge profits based on the HIV hypothesis. And not one single AIDS patient has ever been cured…

Yes, HIV/AIDS is emblematic of the corruption of virus research that is remarkably and tragically documented in this book.

Research programs on Hepatitis C, BSE, SARS, Avian flu and current vaccination policies all developed along the same logic, that of maximizing financial profits. Whenever we try to understand how some highly questionable therapeutic policies have been recommended at the highest levels of public health authorities (WHO, CDC, RKI etc.), we frequently discover either embarrassing conflicts of interests, or the lack of essential control experiments, and always the strict rejection of any open debate with authoritative scientists presenting dissident views of the pathological processes. Manipulations of statistics, falsifications of clinical trials, dodging of drug toxicity tests have all been repeatedly documented. All have been swiftly covered up, and none have been able to, so far, disturb the cynical logic of today’s virus research business. The cover-up of the neurotoxicity of the mercury containing preservative thimerosal as a highly probable cause of autism among vaccinated children apparently reached the highest levels of the US government... (see article “Deadly Immunity” from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in chapter 8)

Virus Mania is a social disease of our highly developed society. To cure it will require conquering fear; fear being the most deadly contagious virus, most efficiently transmitted by the media.

Etienne de Harven, MD
Professor Emeritus of Pathology at the University of Toronto and Member of the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, New York (1956 - 1981)
Member of Thabo Mbeki’s IDS Advisory Panel of South Africa
President of Rethinking AIDS

Link to .pdf of this Forward here
Link to purchase Virus Mania here
Link to .pdf of this article here

Subjection to princes and obedience to magistrates

Image: John Calvin (1509-1564)

“Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work” (Titus 3:1). 

Remind them to be subject to principalities and powers - From many passages it is evident that the Apostles had great difficulty in keeping the common people subject to the authority of magistrates and princes. We are all by nature desirous of power; and the consequence is, that no one willingly is subject to another. Besides, perceiving that nearly all the principalities and powers of the world were at that time opposed to Christ they thought them unworthy of receiving any honor. The Jews especially, being an untamable race, did not cease to mutiny and rage. Thus, after having spoken of particular duties, Paul now wishes to give a general admonition to all, to observe peaceably the order of civil government, to submit to the laws, to obey magistrates. That subjection to princes, and that obedience to magistrates, which he demands, is extended to edicts, and laws, and other parts of civil government.

What he immediately adds, To be ready for every good work, may be applied to the same subject, as if he had said, “All who do not refuse to lead a good and virtuous life, will cheerfully yield obedience to magistrates.”  For, since they have been appointed for the preservation of mankind, he who desires to have them removed, or shakes off their yoke, is an enemy of equity and justice, and is therefore devoid of all humanity. Yet if any prefer to interpret it without any immediate relation to the context, I have no objection; and indeed there can be no doubt that, in this sentence, he recommends to them kind offices towards their neighbors throughout their whole life.

John Calvin, Commentary on Titus 3:1

The right ordering of rulers in a state or nation

Two points are to be observed concerning the right ordering of rulers in a state or nation. One is that all should take some share in the government: for this form of constitution ensures peace among the people, commends itself to all, and is most enduring, as stated in Polit. ii, 6. The other point is to be observed in respect of the kinds of government, or the different ways in which the constitutions are established. For whereas these differ in kind, as the Philosopher states (Polit. iii, 5), nevertheless the first place is held by the “kingdom,” where the power of government is vested in one; and “aristocracy,” which signifies government by the best, where the power of government is vested in a few. Accordingly, the best form of government is in a state or kingdom, where one is given the power to preside over all; while under him are others having governing powers: and yet a government of this kind is shared by all, both because all are eligible to govern, and because the rules are chosen by all. For this is the best form of polity, being partly kingdom, since there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set in authority; partly democracy, i.e. government by the people, in so far as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the people have the right to choose their rulers.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Question 105, Article 1)

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father..."

Image: Sunshine and rain on flowers

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:43-48).

Followers of Jesus cannot be cheerleaders for executions, wars, or any other actions that destroy human life. We're called to love people. To love all people. Good people and evil people. Friends and enemies. And by loving those whom the world deems unlovable we become very different from the world. We become followers of Jesus.

The beast from the earth

Image: The Apotheosis of Washington (by Constantino Brumidi, 1865)

The beast from the earth is the sea beast’s religiously oriented accomplice. This false prophet’s lying wonders support the sea beast’s arrogant boasts and slanders against God, luring those who dwell on the earth into worshipping the beast. What does this earth beast/false prophet symbolize? Just as the beast from the sea is Rome and yet is much bigger than Rome, so the beast from the earth is the imperial cult indigenous to Asia Minor but also a larger phenomenon that continues in our day. As we saw in the background of the letters to the seven churches, several of those ancient Christian congregations found themselves in cities that competed vigorously for the honor of building a temple or shrine to the ruling Roman emperor and/or to the empire’s patron goddess, Roma. A city that bore the honored designation “temple warden” (neocoros) had enhanced its social prestige and its political and economic status. In the decades following John’s reception of the Apocalypse, religious devotion in the form of burning incense to the emperor would be made the test of political loyalty to Rome and its ruler. The worship of rulers as gods, descendants of the gods, or gods in the making (after death—apotheosis) is less overt in Western culture today than it was in the ancient world. Even in so-called secular states, however, governments can arrogate to themselves quasi-divine powers and issue quasi-divine promises of salvation to their loyal and believing subjects. Such states have no qualms about exploiting religious establishments in the interests of civic loyalty and cultural conformity. But people who, in allegiance to “another king, Jesus,” resist the state’s claim to ownership over forehead and hand, mind and deed, are seen as threats to good order and the common weal—and must be eliminated.

Dennis E. Johnson, Triumph of the Lamb: A Commentary on Revelation (pp. 196-197)