The Corruption of the Best is the Worst

Dear Friend, 

The title of this email is a direct translation of a Latin phrase that has been passed down through the annals of Church history as a warning for all societies: Corruptio optimi pessima.

One does not even need to know Latin to understand this ominous phrase: namely, that when a society’s best and brightest members go bad, they do more damage and commit exponentially worse crimes than a common man who goes bad. 

The commoner doesn’t usually have a great capacity to cause such harm. The intelligent and influential do. 

The same can be said for whole nations. When the best nations go bad, it spells utter destruction for that nation and the world around it, and I’m sad to say that the best of all Catholic nations—France—has just gone very, very bad.

If you weren’t aware, Catholic France just became the first country in the world to enshrine abortion in their national constitution. 

The Eldest Daughter 

France has traditionally been called the “Eldest Daughter of the Church” because she was one of the first nations in Europe to fully embrace the Catholic Faith when Clovis, King of the Franks, was baptized in 496 AD. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the other nations of Europe were still mixtures of pagan tribes that were only gradually becoming Catholic through the missionary efforts of heroic saints like St. Benedict and his order, St. Columban, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Boniface, and others, but the French became Catholic in one fell swoop. 

Since the coronation of Charlemagne by the pope in the year 800, all the kings of France took an oath to be the primary defenders of the ancient Faith throughout the realm. Even the Protestant rebellion in the 16th and 17th centuries didn’t change that. 

France built the majestic Gothic cathedrals. France created many dozens of domestic and missionary religious orders. France gave us hundreds of saints whose names spill off our tongue as everyday companions in our journey of faith: Joan of Arc, Therese of Lisieux, John Vianney, Martin of Tours, Francis de Sales, Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Bernadette Soubirous just to name a few.

France has been the privileged venue of Our Lady’s and Our Lord’s apparitions: the Sacred Heart, Lourdes, La Salette, and the Miraculous Medal, among others. 

Abortion Has Infested the Realm

But abortion has tainted the Eldest daughter of the Church with the blood of innocents. Abortion brings a blood curse upon every land that accepts the evil institution and now France is so cursed.

And remember, The French Assembly’s recent overwhelming majority vote of 780 out of 925 votes in favor of abortion was not just a legalization of abortion, which would be bad enough. It was an act of enshrining abortion in the very constitution of the Catholic nation. 

When the vote was publicly announced, a cabal of hideous feminist radicals gathered under the Eiffel Tower and cackled, as one writer put it, “with a glee that can only be called demonic.” 

They lit up the famous Tower like New York lit up the Empire State Building on the day of their extreme abortion vote and emblazoned it with a lighted sign that said, “My body, my choice,” which can be nothing short of the devil’s slogan.  

This atrocity will destroy what is left of the Catholic faith in the most ancient of Catholic cultures unless it is reversed. 

And there is the battle. It is the same battle we ourselves face in every state in the union after the overturning of Roe v Wade. 

Truly, the devil never sleeps, and neither should we. 

Our Evangelization Challenge

It is my belief that the weakness of Church leadership has allowed evils like this to enter our world, even into Catholic cultures, like France, that at one time were totally penetrated by the Faith. We live in a dire time for Church and country. 

Yet, spiritual leadership is not only on the shoulders of the clergy. It is our responsibility too, so we must do everything possible to strengthen our faith in desperate times like these and band together with those leaders and groups that are fighting the good fight of faith. 

We also take events like the abortion corruption of France as a great challenge to our evangelization efforts. 

What happened in France last week is just one more affirmation of the evils that Our Lady warned about at Fatima over one hundred years ago. If you recall, the Blessed Mother said the world was sinning greatly and one of the few things she asked for was reparation. 

So I ask you to join me in making acts of reparation to God for these sins. I ask you to pray that an advance of evil like this will not discourage us but ignite the flame of faith within us and spur us on to greater efforts to bring all souls to Christ. Let this be a part of our Lenten prayers and sacrifices.

May we assure in our own lives, our own families, and our own society that the best among us will never be corrupted by evil but rather, that the faith will burn radiantly in the darkness of the world and give our world the hope of Christ once again!

May the Lord bring France to conversion! More importantly, may the Lord bring our own nation to conversion! 

Sincerely yours in the Sacred Heart of Jesus,

Thomas J. McKenna  
Founder and President
Catholic Action for Faith and Family

https://www.catholicaction.org/