Is the upcoming presidential election our Lepanto moment? Is it a watershed event as consequential to civilization as the Battle of Lepanto?

It certainly looks that way. Unhappily, Christian civilization is less capable today of defeating the enemy than it was on October 7, 1571. Collective discernment dissolves in a daily acid bath of media exertions to synthesize a viable candidate from a calculating, Marxoid cipher who parlayed sexual favor to the 41st mayor of San Francisco into a lucrative public service job.

Half of today’s voters cannot even name the enemy. That is the message of a more or less evenly divided electorate. Poll numbers publicize the pathos of a culture cheapened by spectacle, enchanted with celebrity, and ignorant of the facts on which truth about the past is built. We are a people susceptible to the contrived content of media propagandists who live in the devices we hold in our hands every waking day.

A recent survey by EWTN News/Real Clean Opinion Research finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump among self-identified Catholics. This is especially true among women: Female voters support Harris over Trump 56% to 37%, with abortion far lower on the scale of concerns than the economy and border security. In sum, regular Mass attendance and respect for Church teaching are insufficient to prompt women to step back from the Sovietized abyss and abortion free-for-all that Harris represents. Highly significant is the appalling reality that women perceive Harris as their security against economic chaos and the menace of open borders.

If Catholic women have lost the plot, Pope Francis is disinclined to help them find it. He imposes his allegiance to a globalist agenda—the utopian delusion of one world, one government—on Western societies staggering under lawless invasion by aliens from failed states. This election is a choice between two evils, he groans. In his mind, rejecting illegal “migrants” is on the same moral plane as executing the unborn. Pilate-like, Francis washes his hands and leaves it us to choose the lesser evil.

[Francis ranked things differently in 2016. He established priority early on when he hailed the notorious abortionist Emma Bonino as one of Italy’s “forgotten greats” for her efforts on behalf of African migrants.]

 

Our shepherds share blame for this electoral cliffhanger. Reluctant to cross Francis, and fearful of jeopardizing their tax exempt status, they will not risk taking sides. In itself, that is a topic for another day. What matters here is the pious-sounding hedge that fills the void in place of a considered, if anxious, stand.

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Enter LifeSiteNews with a breathless headline: “URGENT: Say this powerful prayer NOW for a successful 2024 election.” The news flash begins: “Father Chad Ripperger just released a powerful new prayer consecrating the upcoming election in the United States to the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

But the power of prayer does not lie in the words. Prayer relies on the power of God Who acts as He wills. Any formula that presumes its own power to impel the Lord is not prayer. It is an incantation. As any sophomore at Hogwarts knows, only spells and charms claim potency. Sorcery compels. Prayer does not.

But leave that for another day.

Ripperger’s Consecration of the Election to the Blessed Virgin Mary opens with an ornate flourish that builds on and elaborates the venerable Memorare.

Mary Immaculate, living tabernacle of the Divinity, where the eternal Wisdom lies hidden to be adored and served by angels and men, Queen of heaven and of earth, beneath whose sway are subject all things that are lower than God, Patroness of the United States of America, sorrowful and mindful of our own sinfulness and the sins of our nation, we come to Thee, our refuge and hope. Knowing that our country cannot be saved by our own works and mindful of how much our nation has departed from the ways of Thy Son, we humbly ask that Thou wouldst turn Thine eyes upon our country to bring about its conversion. We consecrate to Thee the integrity of the upcoming election and its outcome [emphasis mine], so that what is spiritually and morally best for the citizens of our country may be accomplished, and that all of those who are elected would govern according to the spiritual and moral principles which will bring our nation into conformity with the teachings of Thy Son. Give grace to the citizens of this land so that they will choose leaders according to the Sacred Heart of Thy Son, that His glory may be made manifest, lest we be given the leaders we deserve. Trusting in the providential care of God the Father and Thy maternal care, we have perfect confidence that Thou wilst take care of us and will not leave us forsaken. O Mary Immaculate, pray for us. Amen.

There is no arguing with a need for prayer. That is the abiding ground of Christian hope in the face of history’s strife and catastrophes. But a presumption to sanctify—make hallow—the electoral process is not meaningful as prayer. Fr. Ripperger’s words of consecration come under the heading of what Thomas Merton termed “the idolatry of devout ideas and imaginings.”

It is implausible to expect—and impudent to ask—the Patroness of the United States to cut the Gordian Knot of electoral procedures. These accompany a documented tradition of voter fraud, practices that have dogged elections throughout our national history. Will Mary put her foot on ballot boxes or whisper to the operatives who collect and count the ballots? Will duplicate registration and double voting magically disappear? Can we hope that, after thirty years, the insidious Motor Voter Act will be mothballed?

Passing the buck to the Virgin Mary short circuits the questions that keep coming.

It discomforts me to admit that Ripperger’s consecration strikes me as grandstanding—more a self-admiring display of piety than true prayer. It indulges in magical thinking prettified as a faithful petition. It addresses the Mother of God not as an advocate, but as a fixer. Mary is enjoined to rig the election (“the outcome”)—but for whom?

Politics is a life problem from which there is no respite. We have not removed ourselves from the state. As citizens, we suffer state demands and accept its benefits. Until the state jails or elseways penalizes us for not voting, abstention remains a empty posture more than a moral stance.

Leave it to Mary. Whatever the outcome, the abstainer’s hands are clean. Pilate-like. We spare ourselves the dread of a decision.

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Here you object: “Did not the Rosary win the Battle of Lepanto?” In full truth, that is not likely. Doubtless, faith fortified the resolve of Christian men sent to engage the feared Ottoman archers. And that is no small thing. But it is not the decisive one.

During the battle, Christendom kept churches open and prayed the rosary. Pope Pius V enjoined all Christians to pray. But not for peace. He called them to pray that the Holy League would sink the Ottoman fleet in the Ionian Sea. However many rosaries were recited during the largest naval battle in Western history, Christians were not appealing for an indeterminate peace. They were pleading, heart and soul, for a concrete victory over the Ottoman Empire and a decisive halt to Muslim incursions into Europe.

The Holy League and Pope Pius V attributed victory to the intercession of the Virgin Mary. That chivalrous credit is a mainstay of Catholic sensibility. We forget that Mary had strategic help from Western advances in arms manufacture. It is unlikely that the Christian forces could have won the Battle of Lepanto had it not been ahead of the Ottomans in the arms race of its day.

Lepanto marked that moment in naval history when the traditional hand-to-hand combat of boarding operations was being succeeded by heavy artillery. In 1571 cannons were the decisive weapons of war. And the Holy League had the numbers.

Last October I wrote that our shepherds should read more military history to gain appreciation of the necessity of armaments. This year, the need for arms remains the same. But in this instance—our presidential election—the nature of the weaponry has changed. It means putting aside, for now, disappointment in a flawed Donald Trump in order to repudiate full square the hellscape the Harris/Walz duo lusts to usher in.

NOTE: Just after finishing this last night, I caught the news of a second attempt at murdering Donald Trump. The left wants him dead. It would exult to see most of us on the killing field as well. Bear that in mind if your conscience is too exquisite to be bruised by voting for the man in the crosshairs of your enemies.