In the above 10 minute Fox News segment from this week (April 2020) Tucker Carlson says: “People in power abuse their power. That may be the lesson here. The arrival of a terrifying new virus from China gave our leaders more power than anyone has had in the history of this country. Six weeks ago, America was something resembling an imperfect democracy…But suddenly everything has changed. Now, this is an oligarchy managed by bureaucrats and tech-moguls, none of whom are accountable to voters. Our leaders are making decisions that will affect your family forever with no oversight or accountability. And of course they love it. We shouldn’t be surprised they don’t want it to end.”

The brilliant Jewish writer, Mr. Dennis Prager, recently wrote: “All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right (‘America is headed to communism’) and the left (‘It can happen here’ — referring to fascism). It’s not that I’ve ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that. But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking. ‘Police state’ does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms…But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.
No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.
No. 3: Use of police.
No. 4: Snitches

So why should a Catholic hermit-priest care about matters of the state?  First, because traditional Catholicism is against the separation of Church and State.  I have the support of every Pope from at least 500 AD to 1950 AD in this assertion.  It is my right and my duty (vis a vis better contemplatives than me—like St. Bernard—who changed not only the ecclesiastical face but also the secular face of 12th century European politics) to defend the rights of the Church above and beyond the State.  In fact, a civil attorney and I recently tackled this topic with Church history and constitutional law in a podcast titled When Does the Church Have to Obey the State?

Secondly, I have been thinking a lot recently about the Russian Orthodox Church of 100 years ago during the Bolshevik Revolution.   Did the communists start peacefully in closing down the Churches of Moscow?  How many priests and bishops thought they were meeting “halfway” in letting the government close down their cathedrals for “just a little time”?  Were the clergy and laity pandered with promises of “just a little longer”?  Did violations of state orders upon the Church include Prager’s deprivations of rights (listed in bold above)?  Did bishops want to “win the communists with pastoral charity” by not resisting their orders?  How many priests and bishops sold out to simply become communists?

I don’t have the answer to all those questions, but perhaps a more important question for a Catholic at this juncture of American history in 2020 is this:  Is ecclesiastical resistance to a police-state tantamount to a rejection of Divine Providence?  Indeed, before answering that question, we must remember that Our Lord rebuked St. Peter for pulling out his sword to stop His Passion (cf. Mt 26:52.)   If the bride (the Church) must follow the bridegroom (Christ) then we must take our medicine, which is the cross.  Perhaps a Church of the catacombs is best for us.

Also in support of maintaining ecclesiastical compliance with our current totalitarian globalists (however nefarious they be as they consider abortion centers to be essential and Catholic Churches to be non-essential) we must remember that the Catholic Church holds that five criteria must be met for armed resistance to oppressive governments.  I proved on this recent podcast titled A Catholic’s Rights Before a Totalitarian State done with a retired Los Angeles sheriff that we have currently met zero of these five requirements in the first fifty days of national lockdown here in 2020. (Again, let me re-iterate on this blog what I said on that podcast: I am not calling for armed resistance to American police from US Catholics.)

But, I can’t help but think of the Russian people: If the Russian faithful had resisted the shutting of their Churches in the first half of the 20th century (by people who sounded a lot like the democrats in the Tucker segment) then Orthodoxy would have triumphed over Communism much earlier and the Churches would have stayed open through the 1950s or later.

Predictable objection:  But Fr. Nix, don’t you know that more Asian Christians were martyred by Communists than even the Romans in the ancient Empire?

Yes, that is exactly my point! If the Russian Bolsheviks were going to permanently close all Russian Orthodox Churches anyway, then Christians attempting peace with communists would have never promoted the rights of the Church or of man, anyway.  And this is exactly my message to American Catholics in lockdown: If the globalists are going permanently close all Catholic Churches anyway, then Catholics attempting peace with globalists will never promote the rights of the Church or the rights of individuals, anyway.

Of course, the one word I have not yet proved in the premise of the previous paragraph is:  permanent.  That is what you have to keep your eye on.  Will excuses of a “second wave of COVID-19” or a new “surge” be the excuse to put hypothetical models of fake projections above solid biostatistical evidence of a virus being nothing but a designer-flu with a mortality rate of 0.3%?  Or will science even matter at all?  Germany suspiciously announced that schools will open in May, but not Churches.  How random!  How arbitrary!  Will democrat governors try the same thing on American Churches?  Will our clergy resist by peaceful sit-ins or stand-ins?  Which Americans will be muzzled by a mask (literally) and give up all of their human rights before we even get to talk of the sacraments?

Notice that my evidence for alarm comes from Fox News and Dennis Prager, not InfoWars.  Yes, please watch the Tucker Carlson video above again if you want to know how the democrats want normal citizens of this country to behave and subsequently falter into non-existence—most especially Christians—for something no more serious than the flu (except in NYC.)  And if you think the democrat-governors of this country will never succeed at Fr. Nix’s “conspiracy theories,” then please re-read Dennis Prager’s four marks of a police state that have rapidly been met in America 2020:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.
No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.
No. 3: Use of police.
No. 4: Snitches

Are you honest enough (as is Prager) to admit that in 2019 you would have never imagined those four police-state hallmarks to rapidly move into our country in the first half of 2020 for a simple flu?  Are novelties like masked-priests in the confessional (mindlessly complying with the dystopian hype in the mask for a photo op) or “drive-in Masses” (as lockdowns apparently get dialed-down by governors) anything more than last-ditch whimpers of the final rights of the visible Catholic Church?  Are you sure that relinquishing the last tiny vestige of the social rights of Christ the King is abandonment to Divine Providence?  Is it really Christian meekness to do what liberal totalitarians tell us with our bodies (read: vaccines) and our worship (read: Churches being non-essential while abortion centers are essential)?

If you are not convinced that shaky peace with globalist governors (in bed with big-Pharma, by the way) will lead to a liberty and exaltation of the Holy Catholic Church, then know:  We apostolic Catholics are now called to resist these four marks of globalist oppression.  Not with violence, but with our hearts, our voices, our bodies, our prayers, our online posts, our letters to our superiors and our undying courage as Americans and as Catholics.

Post Production Edit:  In some cases, we are our own worst enemies in the Catholic Church, even more than any globalist overlords: