$4.45 $4.45 july 2007 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition ue w co ri t n s of ee t in th p. es g is 44 t iss forty years of ecumenism with the orthodox ssed o b m E Gold ardcover H The Haydock Bible A larger-print (12 point) Douay-Rheims Bible from the 1859 edition of Fr. Haydock, whose superb explanations and commentary take up about one-half to two-thirds of each page. The commentary is drawn largely from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church–ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE. The commentary (which is NOT large print) makes it the best Bible available if you want to understand Scripture. If you want a Bible that is not just the Word of God but will help you to understand the Word of God, then look no further! Old Testament with engravings and illustrations, record births, marriages, and deaths, Tables (Biblical weights & measures, etc.), Historical and Chronological Index, New Testament with illustrated Bible Dictionary, Historical and Chronological Index and History of the Books of the Catholic Bible. PERFECT FOR CONFIRMATION, WEDDING, CONVERT GIFTS, etc. One burgundy leather hardcover volume on fine Bible paper with satin ribbon marker. A UA T C L T E XT S I ZE 1,968pp, 8½" x 11", Gold-embossed Hardcover, STK# 5456✱ $125.00 SINS OF PARENTS Fr. Charles Hugo Doyle In two parts: “Sins of Commission” (e.g., broken homes, alcoholism, contraception) and “Sins of Omission” (e.g., failure to teach virtue, etc.). It is obvious that most serious Catholics will have overcome or avoided the major sins of commission, but even the best Catholic parents regularly commit the sins of omission, oftentimes without even knowing it. Discover... 31 “don’ts” of child-rearing 21 character traits of good parents One rule you must never break in disciplining your child Harmful notions about marriage that even faithful Catholic couples unwittingly derive from society and the media The three parental attitudes that are most damaging to children Adverse effects of mothers working How parental quarreling hurts kids Find yourself shouting at your children more and more?...here’s what you’re almost certainly doing wrong Homosexuality: why bad parenting is often the cause The best way to train your child in the virtues What to do if you catch a child lying or stealing Devastating effects of an absent father or mother Why wives should never undermine their husbands’ standing in the eyes of the children. Full of witticisms–not only informative but very entertaining also. An excellent book that we highly recommend to all parents! • • • Mothers of Priests Fr. Robert Quardt, S.C.J. This book praises mothers responsible for their sons’ priestly vocation: the mothers of St. Bernard and St. John Bosco; Alice Rolls, mother of ten religious; the mother of Pope St. Pius X; the mothers of Lu, that town of 4,000, who gave 500 sons to the priesthood in 50 years. What are the dispositions which characterize mothers of priests? Includes indulgenced prayers for vocations. • • • • • • • • • • 206pp, hardcover, gold-foil stamped, STK# 6762✱ $19.95 ANGELUS PRESS 2915 Forest Ave., Kansas City, MO 64109 LOCAL CALL (816) 753-3150 FAX (816) 753-3557 www.angeluspress.org 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 (Office hours: Mon-Fri, 8:00am-12:30pm & 1:00-4:30pm CST) 57pp, softcover, STK# 6595✱ $6.00 Letters to a Mother on Faith Fr. Emmanuel Marie André A pastor of 53 years tells mothers how to get their children to heaven. His letters are short, but not sweet. Straight talk on the nature of faith, how it comes, its increase and loss, its distinction from “religious feeling,” how it increases reason. Explains faith without works. Instructive and edifying. Besides the help they give, they’re also food for a mother’s meditations. 48pp, softcover, STK# 6594✱ $5.00 “Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.” Motto of Pope St. Pius X The ngelus A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition 2915 Forest Avenue “To publish Catholic journals and place them in the hands of honest men is not enough. It is necessary to spread them as far as possible that they may be read by all, and especially by those whom Christian charity demands we should tear away from the poisonous sources of evil literature.” —Pope St. Pius X July 2007 Volume XXX, Number 7 • Kansas City, Missouri 64109 English-language Editor and Publisher for the International Society of Saint Pius X diagram from the editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fr. Kenneth Novak PublisheR Fr. John Fullerton Editor Fr. Kenneth Novak Assistant Editor Mr. James Vogel Editorial assistant and proofreading Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend MARKETING asia: land of explorers, missionaries, and martyrs Christendom . . . . . .NEWS .................3 Angelus Press Edition Interview with Fr. Daniel Couture, SSPX Eyes of the soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Abigael Quain catechism of the crisis in the church . . . . . . . . . 12 Fr. Matthias Gaudron absolute truth belongs to you alone . . . . . . . . . . 15 Ivar Bernhard Döcker-Faaborg Mr. Christopher McCann comptroller Miss Lisa Cavossa customer service Mrs. Mary Anne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Shipping and Handling Mr. Jon Rydholm THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Was St. Francis Xavier a Forerunner of Vatican II? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Neo-Modernists Defend Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 forty years of ecumenism with the orthodox Christendom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 NEWS Angelus Press Edition Christendom love’s progress in marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. Questions and answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Fr. Peter Scott The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published monthly under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels. Publication offices are located at 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, 64109, (816) 753-3150, FAX (816) 753-3557. Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2007 by Angelus Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Manuscripts are welcome. They must be double-spaced and deal with the Roman Catholic Church, its history, doctrine, or present crisis. Unsolicited manuscripts will be used at the discretion of the Editorial Staff. Unused manuscripts cannot be returned unless sent with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Angelus, Angelus Press, 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109-1529. April 2007 writing contest winning essay . . . . . . . 43 The Angelus Monthly photo writing contest . . . 44 ON OUR COVER: St. Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral, Kiev, Ukraine. The Angelus Subscription Rates 1 year 2 years 3 years US $34.95 Foreign Countries (inc. Canada & Mexico) $54.95 $64.95 $104.95 $99.95 $159.95 All payments must be in US funds only. Online subscriptions: $14.95/year (the online edition is available around the 10th of the preceding month). To subscribe visit: www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access back issues 14 months and older plus many other site features.  Diagram from the Editor MONGOLIA Harbin Changchun Vladivostok Ürümqi Baotou Beijing Sea of Japan NORTH KOREA P'yongyang ) Kashi Tianjin Taiyuan TAJIKISTAN Jinan Lanzhou Indian claim CHINA Chinese line of control Islamabad ¯ ¯ ¯ Sapporo Shenyang KYRGYZSTAN  JAPAN Seoul SOUTH KOREA Yellow Sea Qingdao Zhengzhou Tokyo Pusan - Xi'an Nanjing Lahore Shanghai Quetta India: Some of the orphans Swarna found on the streets. Hangzhou New Delhi PAKISTAN Jaipur BHUTAN NEPAL Lucknow Kathmandu East China Sea Nanchang NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN Thimphu Kanpur Taipei BANGLADESH ¯ Karachi - Ahmadabad Guangzhou Kolkata (Calcutta) Nagpur INDIA Mumbai (Bombay) Rangoon Chiang Mai Gulf of Tonkin Vientiane Philippine Sea Hainan Dao Hue THAILAND Bay of Bengal Luzon Strait S.A.R. LAOS - - Bangalore Taiwan Nanning Hanoi BURMA Manila VIETNAM Bangkok South China PHILIPPINES CAMBODIA Chennai (Madras) Christendom NEWS Phnom Penh Gulf of Thailand Angelus Press Edition Colombo Ho Chi Minh City Cebu Davao SRI LANKA Bandar Seri Begawan BRUNEI Kuala Lumpur Asia: Land Of Explorers, Missionaries And Martyrs Medan M A L A Y SINGAPORE S I Celebes Sea A Pontianak Palembang I INDIAN OCEAN N Jakarta D O Makassar Java Sea N E S I A Banda Sea Arafura Sea East Timor Timor Sea PAPUA NEW GUINEA Honiara Port Moresby ROTUMA t Grea Darwin Coral Sea Barrier Cairns SOLOMON ISLANDS VANUATU Port-Vila Re ef New Caledonia Adelaide Canberra SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN Brisbane Sydney Melbourne Tasman Sea Tasmania Hobart Suva TONGA Perth Great Australian Bight FIJI Nuku'alofa Noumea Alice Springs A U S T R A L I A SAMOA Ap Mata-Utu Pago Pago Auckland NEW ZEALAND Wellington Christchurch The SSPX has been in Asia since 1986 when the first priory was opened in India. Then came Manila in the Philippines in 1992, Sri Lanka in 1995, a second priory in the Philippines in Iloilo, in 1998, and lastly Singapore (which eventually replaced Sri Lanka), in 1999. In 2005, Bishop Fellay attached New Zealand to the District of Asia. Christendom recently had an oppurtunity to interview Fr. Daniel Couture, the SSPX District Superior of Asia since 1996.  Father, you have been in Asia for more than ten years, and you will soon be reaching the end of a second term of office in this continent where over half of the world’s population is living. You seem to like the missionary life. Fr. Daniel Couture: Missionary is the right word. In the SSPX, we, the spiritual sons of Archbishop Lefebvre, are all, in fact, missionaries: no matter where we are sent, we always find ourselves in a mission country. However, some of our Districts are such in the more classical meaning of the word, if I may say so. Africa and Asia have always more specifically called to mind the missionary adventure. India:Young orphan baptized by Fr. Couture. To how many countries in Asia does the SSPX minister? Presently, the countries we visit on a regular basis–let’s say at least every other month–are the following, going from west to east: India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, China (which we reach by going to Hong Kong), the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and New Caledonia. Those we visit occasionally are Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan. So, our 17 priests from their four priories manage to keep up the good fight for the Faith on this immense territory. They continue to water with divine grace these few thousands of souls upon whom God is watching and whom He has entrusted to our care. What strikes you most when you travel through countries so different in their histories, languages, cultures, and religions? I believe it is the mystery of divine grace which reaches souls in so many different environments. To see everywhere the same fruits of the Holy Ghost, the same thirst for God and the sacraments, and especially for the traditional Mass, and the same love for the Blessed Virgin, fills us with admiration. It is truly a perfect application of the divine word: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” God tells us (Rom. 9:15). I also saw this paradox: In these countries of the East, on the one hand, we come into contact with paganism, let us say, in its purest state, just as we can find it when we read the lives of the missionaries of the past centuries. We see people who adore stones, devils, and idols of all kinds. And on the other hand, we still find those natural virtues that we have lost in our own Catholic countries. For instance, family virtues, respect for the elders (in many Asian languages, there are different names for your relatives—brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts— depending if they are older or younger). In India and in Sri Lanka, which are Hindu and Buddhist countries, a young lady can hardly get married THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org Fr w A Pf A few Oblate Sisters from Asia and an aspirant to the Dominican life. if she has lost her virginity. There is not as much promiscuity as in our Western countries. How is Catholic Tradition received in Conciliar circles in the East? It is received with difficulty, for obedience to authority is also a very natural virtue. However, grace is at work here as elsewhere. Well-disposed souls, troubled by what they see in their parishes in the field of inculturation or modernism, understand that obedience is at the service of faith and not the other way around. In Asia, apart from the SSPX, are there other traditional Masses offered? Very, very few. As far as I know, in all of Asia, there are Indult Masses only in Bombay (India), in Hong Kong, and one or two in the Philippines, and that is all. Recently, I came across an article favorable to Tradition written by a Vicar General in Vietnam. It would be interesting to follow this up. If the Motu Proprio on the Mass were published, several bishops would certainly encourage the traditional Mass in some of our Asian countries. They are not all as  (Above) The Primary School in Wanganui, New Zealand. (Left) Statue of Christ doing yoga.This is actually a monstrance.The sacred Host is on the chest of Christ. Fr. Daniel Couture (front center) with some of the priests of the Asian District. Americans Frs. Purdy, Pfeiffer, and Kimball are circled. It is true that we meet more and more Asian faces in several communities of Tradition. Deo gratias! As a matter of fact, we have some in France, in Morgon (Capuchins), in Bellaigue (Benedictine monks); in Italy in Velletri and Vigne (two communities of Sisters); and in the SSPX among our Sisters, Oblates, Brothers and priests. The harvest will always be plentiful and the harvesters will always be too few. Oremus!–Let us pray! Manilla:The Bethanians, young ladies being trained prior to entering religious communities in Europe or America for their postulancy. fiercely opposed to Tradition as the bishops in Europe or in the Americas. What are the most promising places in the District? The priory with the most complete apostolate is unquestionably in Wanganui, New Zealand. It has a school with 130 students, 6 teaching Dominican Sisters (a local foundation), 3 priests and some 400-500 faithful. And people keep moving from various parts of the country to come closer to this center of intense spiritual life. Next, I would say, are the Philippines, which are a breeding ground for vocations. In the other missions, we are really using the “fishing rod technique”; we gain souls one by one. According to you, what is the precise role of the Society in the East? First of all, it is to safeguard Catholic Tradition by safeguarding the Mass. But we must not forget that the first purpose of the SSPX is “the priesthood and all that pertains to it; all that complements it” (SSPX Statutes). Consequently, we are particularly interested in priestly formation, as everybody knows. By safeguarding priestly formation, we help the universal Church. For, as the Council of Trent teaches in its Catechism, the priesthood is the sacrament most necessary for the whole Church. Hence, as soon as an opportunity arises, we like to get information on the state of the diocesan seminaries in our mission countries–which we have been able to do a few times–to see what we can do. What did we find out? A real tragedy, like in the West, but at another level. For instance, some time ago, I met the Rector of the only seminary in Thailand. There is only one seminary in this country, which numbers ten dioceses. They have over 100 seminarians. I went to see him, among other reasons, to try to find some classic books in Thai, like the Summa of St. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007  Thomas, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the encyclicals of the popes prior to Vatican II, to begin only with these basic texts. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in Thai. “These books have never been translated,” the Rector told me. The reason is that before the Council, the seminarians would learn Latin, and thanks to Latin they had access to all the books of formation. But with the loss of Latin, it was not only the liturgy that suffered: they have thrown out the window the key to all (or almost all) of the Catholic library! Besides, these young seminarians know no other modern language. In this way, they are truly cut off from the whole of Tradition. I said as much to the Rector: “Don’t you think that your seminarians, after seven years of formation will have a, let’s say, schismatic mentality, because they will be cut off from all of the past of the Church?” He did not answer. Schism does exist in the Church, and it is certainly there. I found out the same thing in Vietnam when talking to a professor of moral theology. They no longer have any handbooks, they must rewrite all their courses with modern authors. And this is precisely what Pope Pius XI feared. He could see very clearly the consequences of the loss of Latin for the clergy. On August 1, 1922, he wrote a very strong letter on this subject in which he warned that when the young clergy does not have a sufficient knowledge of Latin, they neglect the rich volumes of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in which the dogmas of the Faith are taught with precision and irrefutably defended, and they rather seek among modern authors a source of doctrine all of their own. These authors not only lack precision in their language and argumentation (note: this recalls an important intervention of Archbishop Lefebvre at the Council!) but they also fail to expose the doctrine faithfully. Personally, I think that the SSPX in Asia as well as in the rest of the world is only in its first stage with the safeguarding of the Mass and of doctrine. A second stage will be assistance to priests in great numbers; and then, with God’s grace, the founding of numerous seminaries in the whole world, as, for instance, the Sulpicians (whom we find in Vietnam) did. Or at least the SSPX would collaborate with the bishops to open seminaries. Archbishop Lefebvre, during the Easter retreat in Ecône in 1984, even considered a model seminary in Rome one day! We will see, if we live long enough! How is Thomism received in Asia? This is a good question. At the Asian Synod in 1998, several interventions were made against Western, namely Scholastic of course, philosophy and theology. The most rabid in this sense were the Japanese bishops. (I learned afterwards that the texts of those interventions had been prepared by Italian Jesuits!) So, as a rule, we rather often meet with an attitude hostile to St. Thomas, under the pretext that he comes from the West. However, I met an old THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org bishop who was very well versed in Latin and Greek culture, and who would have liked to marry Eastern and Western philosophies. But God, who counts the drops of water and the grains of sand, and who has ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight, is certainly not born by chance in Palestine. Neither is it by chance that he willed his Church to use the Greek philosophy, purified and then baptized by St. Thomas. And it is not by chance that he established the see of Peter in the very heart of the Roman Empire. These are data provided by history and to which we must submit. We always come back to St. Pius X, who saw in the loss of Thomism the first step towards modernism, and in Thomism the first remedy against modernism. What about inculturation? Is it a superficial problem or a root problem? Inculturation is the scourge of Asia, and it can be summed up quite simply as a deep de-Romanization. The liturgy is its vehicle, but it touches everything. The Federation of the Asian Bishops Conferences, in a 2005 document on the reception of Vatican II forty years later, said it quite clearly: Applying the teachings of Vatican II, the Churches of Asia resolutely moved away from the predominant model of the mission considered as the pre-Conciliar plantatio ecclesiæ. (FABC, Document 117) In plain English, it means that they no longer go and seek the sheep outside to bring them back to the fold, the Roman Church, as Our Lord requested, but they build the fold where the sheep are! They have lost the love for Rome. This is the whole irony of this inculturation: we, SSPX, are accused of being schismatic, we who teach the Roman faith, who pray with the Roman liturgy and language, who always have a reference to a Roman encyclical ready, whereas the conciliar clergy destroy little by little, or even at times very quickly, all that has come from the West, in short, all that smacks of Romanitas. We cannot help thinking of Archbishop Lefebvre who wrote in the last pages of his spiritual testament, his Spiritual Journey: Schisms and heresies often began by a rupture with Romanity, a rupture with Roman liturgy, with Latin, with the theology of the Latin and Roman Fathers and theologians. I could give you a litany of the most incredible examples of inculturation, such as Masses for which the celebrant is clothed in leopard skin, children dressed as Hindu gods dancing liturgical dances around the altar, representations (even a monstrance) of our Lord doing yoga, ancestor worship officially approved by bishops… The whole missionary work of so many centuries is being spoiled, the blood of millions of martyrs is trampled upon.  Fideliter (the magazine of the French SSPX district) recently published an article about an orphanage in India that came over to Tradition. Can you tell us more about it? It is one of the most beautiful stories of confidence in Divine Providence I have witnessed in all my years as a priest. We saw this young lady, Swarna, discover Tradition and leave everything, like Abraham; however, not with 75 persons like the Patriarch, but with half of that, namely 37: 20 orphans, 10 elderly persons, and 6 other persons. She left the property she had just bought to build her orphanage (the contract for the construction was to be signed two days later). She traveled 22 hours by train to go to another Indian state, where a different language is spoken. And all that in order to be closer to the traditional Holy Mass and the sacraments, and to have a spiritual life strengthened by the catechism classes and conferences given by the SSPX priests. Thanks to this move, she is now making ready to leave all her work in the hands of her helpers in order to consecrate herself to God in the religious life. The Consolers of the Sacred Heart in Vigne, north of Rome, will adopt this beautiful work. These Sisters joined Tradition a few years back, thanks to the good work of Fr. du Chalard. I had the happiness of baptizing most of these 20 orphans and some of the elderly people, among them a Brahmin. They are very beautiful souls quite capable of attracting missionary vocations! Swarna has just bought another property of about five acres on which (after her novitiate in Italy) she will build the orphanage, the convent for the Sisters, and, with God’s help, the house of the novitiate, for we expect that this work will attract vocations. As a matter of fact, three young ladies already live at the orphanage, and another impatiently waits for the end of her studies to go and join them. They all aspire to the same religious life. St. Ignatius rightly said: “Few souls know what God could do with them if they did not raise obstacles.” The story of Swarna looks like it is going to be the story of one of those beautiful but rare choice souls. Do you have schools in your big District? In this respect we are certainly lagging behind in Asia, though with New Zealand (and its elementary and secondary schools) we are making progress. Last year we opened a small primary school in India for our orphans. But one day we must have a secondary school, at least in the Philippines and in India. However, to open a school, we first need parents who are convinced of its necessity. Now, too many, alas, still trust the Novus Ordo schools. And we need money. In some of our poorest chapels, a Sunday collection for 100 people can reach the amount of 13 or 26 US dollars. We cannot rely on them to get a school working, pay salaries, and so on. I once counted the Sunday collection in one of our villages in India. For 70-80 people there were 17 rupees ($0.30US) and one egg in the little wicker basket! Apart from schools, what are the projects already underway or planned for the future? We are now at the building stage for chapels. Presently we build chapels at the pace of one or two each year. The Filipinos are completing their fourth chapel; in India they are about to begin their third. In Singapore, a little city-republic of four million inhabitants, a super-rich city, after beginning the Mass center in a private home in the ’90’s, we opened the priory, seat of the District, in a small, rented apartment of 5,000 square feet in 1999. We are looking for a bigger place, and even for an abandoned church, but such are not to be found around here! Besides, prices are sky-high: in 1996, a one-acre plot of land destined for a church, in which we were interested, sold for over five million US dollars–and that was only for the land. The cost of a chapel would be about as much. But we must not lose hope: Quite recently, a benefactor offered us a rather unique proposal: he will meet the amount given by the faithful, dollar for dollar up to $100,000US until July 1, 2007, for our Asian missions in general and for this project especially. This would already be a good start, either to find a better place to rent (and hence for the remodeling to be done), or for a down-payment in case we find something to buy. May St. Joseph and St. Rita help us! Is there one last thing you would like to tell our readers? You really have to live in these countries, which are sometimes up to 99% pagan, to realize the special value of three of God’s gifts: First, the gift of the Catholic Faith! We too often take it for granted, but it really is a gift from Heaven that we can lose if we are unfaithful. Second, the gift of the traditional Mass, which is really Catholic and universal, which reaches the souls of all walks of life, languages, and cultures. And lastly, the gift of the Catholic priesthood, and hence of Archbishop Lefebvre’s work to safeguard this priesthood. You must see the love that souls have for the priest, especially when he comes only every three or four months. So, let us not be ungrateful but, on the contrary, let us appreciate as much as possible these treasures of our holy Roman Catholic Faith. From Christendom, No.10. Christendom is a publication of DICI, the press bureau of the Society of Saint Pius X (www.dici.org). Fr. Couture, a Canadian, was ordained at Ecône by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1984. Having served at Post Falls, Idaho, and then in Ireland, he was named Superior of the District of Asia in 1996 when it was formed from the Autonomous Houses of India and the Philippines, at which post he is still serving, headquartered in Singapore. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 8 If the object of art is no longer spiritual upliftment through the presentation of the beautiful, what purpose can it serve? m i s s A b i g a e l Q u a i n EYES OF THE SOUL Today, art seems to have been degraded by men to be only used as a means of individualistic self-expression or for propaganda. And when we view a work of this “art,” we usually find ourselves contemplating the mundane, the mediocre, the sentimental, the perverted, or something so personal to the artist that it becomes unintelligible and completely lacking in any interest to us that we sit and think, and after minutes of brain-wracking, can still only ask ourselves the question, Why? So Why Do Men Make Art? And Why Should They? At college, I discovered that most art students have been brainwashed into truly believing that art is all about themselves– all about the individual. Expressing themselves is the only rule when it comes to making modern art, and the more technical rules are only supposedly learned for the purpose of breaking them. In truth, art is meant to be a means of expression for the artist, in that, as we are God’s own creatures, suggesting creation, art is the artist’s privileged way of imitating the ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org Our Lady of the Beautiful Window, Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France. 9 Divine Creator: 1) in the very act of creating, and 2) by the very fact that “art imitates nature.” Nature, being created by God, is set up as an ideal for man’s imitation because it fulfills in itself all the requirements which art, to be beautiful, must possess: integrity, or the right ordering of all its components to itself as a whole (unity); right proportion, or the fitting proportion of each part as it corresponds to another; and, finally, the radiance and splendor of form which it must possess. Art is meant to express; it should be able to tell you something about the artists themselves, what they hold as true, how they perceive beauty and how well they can show that truth and beauty. For the manner of action follows the disposition of the agent, and, as a man is, so are his works. Through the virtue of Art present in them, they in some way are their work before making it; they are coi formed to it, so as to be able to form it. ( Jacques Maritain) But that is not the “why” of art–or, at least, it should not be. The banal, the mediocre, the downright hideous is often presented to us for our veneration now, and any criticism or resistance makes one liable to the charge of chauvinism, [modernism, liberalism, irreligion] or some other socially lethal label. (Ed Faust) What Is the Ultimate Purpose of Art? “Ad Maioram Dei Gloriam”: we are to do all “for the greater glory of God.” After that most obvious reason, art is supposed to, like everything, draw us closer to God through our contemplation of the beautiful. We must first think about the beauty we desire to make, and then use every effort to form that beauty. But how can we form anything beautiful that is not a reflection and derivation of the Divine Beauty? The great Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo said, Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all come. So, we cannot help but to be led to the contemplation of Him-Who-Is-Beauty-Itself when we make a beautiful work of art. Art is in order that it may be beautiful. It is beautiful so that it may facilitate man’s comprehension of the beauties of God and teach us Truth. “The world’s visible beauty is a refection of its invisible beauty” (Hugh de St. Victor). The purpose of art then is: 1) to glorify God; 2) to draw us to Him through the contemplation of the beautiful; 3) to show Him to us and teach us in a more human manner. The object of Art is the spiritual upliftment through the presentation of the beautiful. So the real question is, what is beauty? St. Thomas Aquinas defines beauty as “id quod visum placet –that which, when seen, pleases.” This answer seems to give us a rather subjective prospect, relative so far as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” goes. And yes, beauty is relative; relative to what you believe as true, relative to what you look with, and what you, by your education, spiritual state, and similar influences, are predisposed to see. What do we look with? Beauty is a quality of things which can only be perceived by a mind. It is, therefore, a reality of the intellectual and spiritual order. (Dr. Peter Chojnowski) So, to find real beauty—which, if it is true beauty, will ultimately refer us back to God–we must think. Man’s “chief power of knowing is his reason or his intellect” (Fr. Pègues, O.P.), and this makes sense to us rational creatures. Art is in order to be beautiful, and it is that we may better know God as He is. In order to know, we have no choice but to use our intellects. Ergo, it follows that to perceive beauty, we must see with our minds, and not necessarily with our emotions or feelings, as many well-intentioned but misunderstanding Catholics of today seem to. This use of our minds to contemplate beauty in art and to know seems to point to a definite relation between Beauty and Truth. “But, of course!” we exclaim, “God is both!” And in fact, the triad www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 10 Banal: Modern Catholic church sanctuary. At left, abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are so related as to cause them to be called the “Transcendental Trinity,” and by Hilaire Belloc as “inseparable.” Then art is meant to convey Truth? The Catholic artist endeavors to catch a glimpse of the world as it is known by the Eternal Word in all of its potentiality, both in the natural and supernatural orders. (Ed Faust) “To know truth is to know things as they are” (Fr. Pègues, O.P.). What is more “as things are” than the way God sees them? But how can we, of imperfect and finite understanding, portray the thought of the Infinite? Since the beginning, we have used symbols to help the human mind fathom “the unsearchable riches of God.” Dr. David Fontana, in his work The Secret Language of Symbols, describes a symbol as representing “some deep and intuitive wisdom that eludes direct expression,” and later as an “expression of some deep, inner power of which we are aware, but cannot fully encapsulate in words.” Early Christian art uses the simple triangle to better explain the unity and equality of the Three Persons in One; a mystery, yes, but with the help of such symbolic imagery, we have much more we can think about. Gold is a symbolic color universally representing the Divine Life of God. Why? It is the most precious ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org Side altar at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, richmond, Michigan. of metals, the most luminous, untarnishable, and durable. That’s a lot to meditate on right there. Simple colors, line schemes, and actual realistic representations like these, known as symbols, direct the mind towards the contemplation of higher and deeper things, hidden truths, which mere realisms can fail to do. However, images utilizing these symbols are to be understood with the mind, as we reasoned above. And these, icons being the best and most obvious examples of good, true, and therefore beautiful symbolic art, can be rather distasteful to certain people’s sensibilities. But when they are, we have to ask if we are really seeing with the right instrument. Is it your mind or your senses that dislikes these hard truths? Something must be realized. The truth is beautiful, but not necessarily “pretty.” When you see an icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, she may not be your idea of 11 (Left) Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir. (Below) Tympanum, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, richmond, Michigan, painted by parishioners. pretty or comely. But nevertheless, she is beautiful, because she is true, and this truth is represented in her icon. If you saw a picture of the martyrdom of Edmund Campion and others who died in brave defense of the truth during the Protestant Reformation, I assure you, if the image were true, it would not be “pretty”; it would be grotesque. Their racked, broken bodies being disemboweled and cut in pieces would be a long shot away from making you feel good. But that would be a gloriously beautiful scene precisely because of the truth it would depict. The truth isn’t always pretty, and pretty isn’t always true! Disney teaches us to “look with our hearts” and let them decide. But please, look with your soul! Miss Quain graduated from St. Joseph’s Academy in 2006. She enjoys reading and has garnered experience in art through the Academy’s art program and conversations around the family’s dining room table. The recent pastors of St. Joseph’s in Richmond, Michigan, have all been interested in the arts. This article was originally titled “Oculis Animae” and is used with permission from the girls’ school newsletter Os Aquilae. It is available for a donation by contacting St. Joseph’s Academy, 28049 School Section Road, Richmond, MI 48062. Sources Dr. Peter Chojnowski. “The Splendor of Form: Catholic Aesthetics,” The Angelus, July 1996. Edwin Faust. “Losing Our Marbles.” David Fontana, Ph.D. The Secret Language of Symbols: A Visual Key to Symbols and Their Meaning. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994. Jacques Maritain. Art and Scholasticism, 3rd edition. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935. Fr. John Oesterle, T.O.P. “Art and the Moral Order.” Fr. Thomas Pègues, O.P. Catechism of the “Summa Theologica” of Thomas Aquinas. Burns, Oats, & Washbourne, 1931. iN TiERs OF GLORY Michael Rose Aside from music, probably no form of art has a more profound effect on the human soul than architecture. Rose provides a clear, comprehensive summary of the development of Catholic church architecture from the Church’s earliest days to modern times. He identifies the canons that have been common to Catholic churches throughout history–from Roman basilicas to Byzantine and Carolingian churches, from pilgrimage shrines to Gothic churches, from Renaissance classicism to Baroque opulence–that is, elements that have been common to churches in every age–except our own. Rose details how this organic development has been broken by the banal and uninspiring church buildings of today. But he insists that Catholics need not endure these monstrosities. With a series of enlightening prescriptions for the future of Catholic church architecture, Rose explains how the Church can restore continuity with the great churches of the past–and why it is crucial to do so. Gloriously illustrated with 200 fullcolor photos and renderings, In Tiers of Glory is a much needed and welcome addition to the literature on church architecture. 136pp. 11 x 8.5 inch large format. STK# 8136, WAS $29.95 NOW $12.98 www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 pArt 3 1 F r . M a t t h i a s G a u d r o n The Angelus continues the installments of Fr. Gaudron’s Catechism of the Crisis in the Church with Part 3 on the Magisterium of the Church. What is the Magisterium? When is it infallible? How important is this understanding to the crisis in the Church? Catechism of the Crisis in the Church 16) in the Church, who holds the power to teach with authority (the magisterial authority, or magisterium)? The holders of the ecclesiastical magisterium are, by divine right, the pope for the universal Church, and the bishops for their dioceses. l How do the pope and the bishops receive this authority? The pope is the successor of St. Peter, and the bishops are the successors of the Apostles, whom our Lord Jesus Christ Himself instituted as ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org supreme doctors of the faith. They received from God the mandate to preach Christian doctrine to their subjects and to safeguard its purity. In this way they continue the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, since His Ascension, no longer remains visibly among us. l Did our Lord clearly mention the teaching authority transmitted to the bishops? Jesus said to His Apostles: “He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me” (Lk. 10:16). The same pertains for the bishops, who are the successors of the Apostles. 1 17) is the ecclesiastical magisterium infallible? Yes, the ecclesiastical magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church, is infallible. But for this to be true, precise conditions must be met. If they are not fulfilled, the bishops and the pope can err. A declaration or a homily and even a papal encyclical or a conciliar document are not necessarily infallible. They are only infallible when infallibility is claimed. 18) When is the pope infallible? The pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when as supreme teacher of the nations, he elevates a truth to the rank of dogma, which must be believed by the faithful. In this case, the assistance of the Holy Ghost is promised to the pope so that he cannot err. Theologians generally attribute the privilege of infallibility to the pope in a few other cases, for example, canonizations,1 the general laws of the Church, and when he echoes the teaching of his predecessors. l Where are the conditions in which the pope is infallible clearly set forth? The conditions in which the pope speaks infallibly are very clearly set out by the First Vatican Council, which precisely defined papal infallibility. The Council teaches: When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.2 l What can we learn from this text of Vatican Council I? By attentively reading this text of Vatican I, we learn that there are four conditions for papal infallibility: 1) the pope must speak “in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians,” that is, not as a private theologian but as head of the Church explicitly engaging “his supreme apostolic authority” received directly from Christ; 2) the subject on which he pronounces must be “a doctrine concerning faith or morals”; 3) the doctrine must not only be taught, but the pope must declare it obligatory by an authoritative act (“a doctrine... to be held”); 4) this will to oblige the faithful to assent must be addressed to “the universal Church.” l Is the manifestation of the pope’s will to oblige the universal Church essential for a papal act to be infallible? Yes, the pope’s manifestation of his will to oblige the universal Church to hold a point of doctrine or morals is necessary for infallibility to be engaged: this act of authority is even the essential element of the ex cathedra definition. l How does the pope manifest this will to oblige? The pope manifests his will to make a doctrine obligatory in the Church by clearly declaring that those who refuse it no longer have the Catholic faith and are henceforth outside the Church. l Can the pope use his infallibility to impose novelties? Papal infallibility is entirely at the service of the conservation of the faith, which, as we have seen, is immutable and necessary for salvation.3 Vatican I teaches: For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the Apostles.4 l Does the solemn (infallible) definition of a truth of faith occur frequently? The solemn definition of a truth of faith does not occur often; numerous popes have never used this power. There was only one instance of this in the 20th century: the definition of the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950. l How did Pope Pius XII manifest his will to oblige the Church during the definition of the dogma of the Assumption? Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of our Lady by declaring, in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus: ...by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our own authority We pronounce, declare, and define that the dogma was revealed by God, that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, after completing her course of life upon earth, was assumed to the glory of heaven both in body and soul. Therefore, if anyone, which may God forbid, should dare either to deny this, or voluntarily call into doubt what has been defined by Us, he should realize that he has cut himself off entirely from the divine and Catholic faith.5 19) When are the bishops infallible? The bishops are infallible in two cases: 1) When they solemnly proclaim a truth of faith in an ecumenical council in union with the pope, their supreme head. All the ancient ecumenical councils proclaimed the truths of faith in this manner. It www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 Pope or Church? 1 Dom Paul Nau, O.S.B., & Canon René Berthold For further reading on Questions 19 and 20 of the “Catechism of the Crisis in the Church” (presented above), there is no better resource available than Pope or Church? Question 19 briefly explains the role of the Ordinary Magisterium in the Teaching Church. Question 20 discusses the abuse of the Ordinary Magisterium by modern bishops. These two questions are perfectly complemented by the two essays that comprise Pope or Church? The first essay, written by Dom Paul Nau, O.S.B. (Solesmes), in 1956 lays down the groundwork for a theological understanding of the Church’s Ordinary and Universal Magisterium, based especially upon the teaching of the First Vatican Council, thus expanding on Question 19. The issue covered in Question 20 is expanded on in the second essay written in 1980 by Canon Réné Berthod. He clearly outlines the universality required for the infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium and applies it to the present crisis in the Church, and in particular to the teachings of Vatican II, answering the question, To what extent and in what way they can be considered infallible...or not. 77pp, softcover, STK# 6715✱ $9.00 If you are tempted to think that this is a bit too theological or technical for you, or that it has no practical application to your life, consider Archbishop Lefebvre’s observation that the master stroke of Satan was to foment Revolution in the Church in the name of obedience. Consequently, to avoid this snare of the devil and its accompanying errors (obedience to modernist directives and, the other extreme, rejection of the Magisterium via sedevacantism), it is essential to thoroughly understand the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium and the role it plays in the Church, the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ. is important, then, that the pope approve these decisions, even if it is not necessary that he be present at the council himself. A council the decrees of which were not ratified by the pope could not be considered infallible. 2) The bishops are equally infallible when, dispersed throughout the world, they unanimously teach a truth as belonging to the deposit of faith. This is the case for the articles of faith in general which have for a long time been taught everywhere in the Church without having been subject to doubt. l How are these two modes of episcopal infallibility designated? 1) An infallible affirmation made by the pope or a council is called a solemn judgment; it is an act of the Church’s extraordinary magisterium; 2) the infallible transmission of the faith by the bishops dispersed throughout the world is called, on the contrary, the ordinary and universal magisterium (sometimes abbreviated OUM.). l Is not one mode of infallibility sufficient? Why are there two? Normally, the common teaching of the bishops (the OUM) is sufficient for knowing with certitude the truths of faith. But in times of crisis, when the bishops disagree among themselves or simply fail to use their authority to reiterate revealed truth, then it is no longer possible to have recourse to this criterion. To resolve the crisis, an extraordinary act of the magisterium is required, that is, a solemn judgment pronounced by a council or by the pope. l Can you give us an example? All Christians firmly believed in the real presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord in the sacrament of the ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org Eucharist long before it was solemnly defined. It was taught throughout the whole Church as a truth of faith. Nevertheless, the denial of this truth by the Protestants made its solemn definition by the Council of Trent necessary. In fact, the attacks of heretics are often the occasion for the Church to solemnly define a truth. l What is the advantage of having a solemn judgment over and above the teaching of the ordinary and universal magisterium? A solemn judgment delivered by the pope or a council has the advantage of resolving a doctrinal difficulty with a single judgment of incontestable authority, whereas the ordinary and universal magisterium refers to a multitude of acts posed in divers terms and contexts by different bishops; thus it is more difficult to discern. l What precisely is the ordinary and universal magisterium? Pius IX gave the following definition: [It is] those matters which are handed down as divinely revealed by the ordinary teaching power of the whole Church spread throughout the world, and therefore, by universal and common consent are held by Catholic theologians to belong to the faith.6 l What does this definition show? This definition shows that, like the pope’s teaching, the universal teaching of the bishops (the ordinary and universal magisterium) is only infallible under certain conditions. l For a doctrine to be infallibly certain by virtue of the ordinary and universal magisterium of 15 the Church, isn’t it enough for all the bishops of the world to be unanimously in agreement at a given moment? No, it is not enough for all the bishops to adopt simultaneously some new theory for it to become infallible. The infallibility of the ordinary and universal magisterium can only apply to: 1) a truth touching faith or morals that 2) the bishops teach with authority 3) in a universally unanimous way 4) as divinely revealed to the Apostles or necessary to safeguard the deposit of faith, and thus as immutable and obligatory. If these four conditions are not met, there is no infallibility. l Are these theses directly contrary to the Church’s teaching? The teaching of the Apostles is quite clear. St. Paul speaks explicitly of the incredulity of the Jews (Rm. 11:20) and of their blindness (Rm. 11:25; II Cor. 3:15; etc.). He affirms that in this state they “please not God,” but rather are the object of “the wrath of God” (I Thess. 2:14-16). The mild-mannered St. John speaks of “them that say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Apoc. 2:9). On the day of Pentecost, St. Peter tells them to their face: Let all the house of Israel know most certainly, that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus, whom you have crucified....Do penance, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins.9 l Then only a doctrine the bishops teach as having been revealed to the Apostles and transmitted to us by Tradition can enjoy the infallibility of the ordinary and universal magisterium? Yes, only a truth the bishops are unanimous in teaching with authority as belonging to the deposit of faith (or necessarily linked to it) can be guaranteed by the infallibility of the ordinary and universal magisterium. l Can you give other examples of bishops betraying the Catholic faith? They are unfortunately superabundant. In 2001, the doctrinal commission of the French episcopate publicly encouraged the reading of the Bayard edition of the Bible, underscoring its “profound fidelity to divine revelation.” Yet this version of the Bible denies the historicity of the facts reported in the Gospels.10 In 2003, Bishop Dufour of Limoges declared from the pulpit: “We do not know whether God exists. We do not know it with scientific certitude, but we know it by faith.”11 But St. Paul and the Church teach that the existence of God can be known with certitude by reason, even without faith.12 l What is the reason for this condition? The magisterium was not instituted to reveal new doctrines, but only to transmit the truths already revealed to the Apostles. It is this transmission, and not subsequent extraneous accretions, that infallibility protects. 20) What responsibility do the bishops have for the current crisis in the Church? “The crisis in the Church is a crisis of bishops,” Cardinal Seper said.7 Among the 4,000 bishops of the Catholic Church, there are certainly some who want to be Catholic and to serve the faith, but by most of them, the faith is maltreated. Instead of defending it, they allow free rein to the priests and professors who openly deny truths of faith; moreover, they encourage them. Many bishops even personally support positions incompatible with faith and morals. l Can you give some examples? In France, Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, publicly teaches that the Jews need not convert to Christianity. Proselytism aimed at them would make no sense. Similarly, Archbishop Doré of Strasbourg (and former dean of the theology faculty of the Catholic Institute of Paris) denies that the Jews, having rejected Jesus Christ, can be considered as “perfidious” and “blind”: it is not they who would be in need of conversion, but rather the Catholics, who usurped their place by claiming to be the “new Israel.”8 On November 6, 1997, during a conference at Berlin, the president of the German Episcopal Conference, Bishop Karl Lehmann, called Luther “the common Doctor,” a title habitually given by the Church to St. Thomas Aquinas! The list of abuses could easily be extended. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Katholischer Katechismus zur kirchlichen Kriese by Fr. Matthias Gaudron, professor at the Herz Jesu Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The original was published in 1997 by Rex Regum Press, with a preface by the District Superior of Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger. This translation is based on the second edition published in 1999 by Rex Regum Verlag, Schloß Jaidhof, Austria. Subdivisions and slight revisions made by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé have been incorporated into the translation. 1 At least the canonizations prior to 1983. The simplification of the procedures implemented at that date as well as the veritable explosion in the number of canonizations allow the existence of a serious doubt as to whether the current pope [John Paul II] has the same intention as his predecessors when he carries out canonizations. (If he does not firmly intend to bind definitively the universal Church, then there is no infallibility.) 2 Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, Dz. 1839. 3 Catechism on the Crisis in the Church, Chapter II, QQ. 12, 15 [The Angelus, June 2007]. 4 Pastor Aeternus, Dz. 1836. 5 Dz. 2333. 6 Letter of Pius IX to the Archbishop of Munich dated December 21, 1863 (Dz. 1683). www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 16 W Another Story of Conversion To the Catholic Faith Absolute Truth Belongs to You Alone I v a r B e r n h a r d D ö c k e r - F a a b o r g Quoting St. Augustine: “You have created us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” This sums up what has been a long quest for the Truth, at last finding peace in the holy Mass of St. Pius V and its associated eternal Catholic Truth. Born in Denmark in the 1950’s, I headed straight for the typical 1960’s society with its contradictory clichés of liberal ethos. My parents’ marriage being a shambles from the outset, my father being deprived of any moral standards, I was raised predominantly by my Prussian great-uncle and my grandparents in their cultivated aristocratic world, which by the 1960’s was not only devoid of any spiritual depth, but also totally at odds with modern society. The schools I attended were a mirror of the new movements in which tolerance had become a shield for indifference to the Christian Truth. The result of this upbringing was that I had no idea of who Christ was, and I sensed in my teens a deep spiritual void. My parents divorced after we had moved to England, and my mother remarried an extraordinary English banker of Jewish origin, whose subsequent death two years later sincerely shocked me in the sense that 17 Westminster Cathedral, London, England. I felt a total confusion as to what was the essence life. Once I had finished my studies, I left Oxford for London. Mother invited a very formal English aristocratic couple for a very ceremonial British cup of afternoon tea, and they in turn found me a job and accommodation in central London. My office being at Grosvenor Square, I had literally to walk around the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral every day. Being attracted by the unusual semi-Byzantine architecture, I ventured inside one morning only to see what I later was to understand was the Mass. God, having lured me into His church by playing on my artistic sensibilities, now presented Himself in the form of the Holy Spirit in front of the ongoing Mass. I was as if nailed to the floor–it was an actual bodily sensation. It can at best be characterized by an apparent instantaneous flash of insight, shaped into a rational whole. I sensed a glow of assurance, a consciousness of integration, a sense of well-being, and an inner peace beyond words. For me, and no doubt for many others, it was an occurrence that was to thrust my life in an entirely different direction. It was totally unexpected, and for me the experience was like an earthquake, shattering and transforming my experience and making me into a new person. I was above all conscious of a deep sense of joy in this happening. I left the cathedral not understanding a word, but feeling as if I was walking on clouds! In the evening, I returned to the cathedral to request the name of the priest I had seen the same morning. I was told he was called Msgr. John Crowley and was the secretary to Cardinal Hume, and that if I wanted to see him, I would have to make an appointment. The devil then set in unconsciously suggesting to me that it was really not worth the bother–what was all this about anyway? Christ, seeing that I had not rejected the earlier experience as something negative, did not give up and played His next triumph card only a week later! Opposite my office at Grosvenor Square was the Jesuit church at Farm Street. As usual I was attracted by the beauty of the architecture and went inside to have a look. The aesthetic played a role in my conversion; I doubt it would all have happened with the same intensity in a secular building or a modern, concrete, cube-style Church. Straight in front of me, upon entering into the church, was a bookstall with pamphlets including one entitled: Prayer in a Busy Life, by Msgr. John Crowley. Once again God allowed the Holy Spirit to descend on me, depriving me of the power to move and giving me this inner sense of peace. I then and there perceived that I was being led, but why and where I had no idea. I bought the booklet, read it, and did not understand one word. Sensing though, unconsciously, that I was heading towards finding an answer to my outcry for discovering the meaning of life, I telephoned Msgr. Crowley. Not being able to explain why I was phoning, he asked me kindly if I was in financial need, to which I answered that I had read his pamphlet, but did not understand it. He generously invited me, and on hearing that I did not even know who Christ was, started a series of mini lectures. I subsequently analyzed the various religions and indeed Protestantism, but I quickly came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is Christ and Truth. The taste was not altogether delightful. My mother felt very strongly that my conversion was an implied judgment on her. Other relations and friends found my act truly eccentric, if not a bit barmy! I realized that once I had accepted Jesus in my heart, there could be no lukewarm middleground; it meant following Christ totally–even if it led all the way to the Cross. Today one has to have courage to be anti-conformist. It is all fashionable currently to discover a religious dimension, be it New Age, Buddhism, Islam, or whatever is politically and media correct, but it is certainly not acceptable to become a Roman Catholic! One has to have guts to stand up today for the Truth, specially if one wants to follow an undiluted version with the Tridentine Mass and associated Truth free of modernism and relativism, which have unfortunately invaded a large part of the Catholic Church. However, I have no regrets; Christ is life, and one’s heart can have no peace before it rests fully in the Catholic Faith. My conversion 20 years previously gave me a strong faith, but it remained somewhat distant, a kind of awe in front of Christ and not a real personal contact. Last year I became confronted with the actual living Christ, being a bystander in His quest in making a seminarian, here called Hovsep, understand and accept His holy and divine Will. A second conversion took place. In preparing a book on the Catholic priest in painting, I had met Hovsep, the most brilliant seminarian intellectually for several decades in Rome. He visited us later at our home in Normandy, and seeing he doubted whether he could stay celibate I took him to Lisieux. Coming back in the evening he was deeply moved. A friend of his from New York telephoned him the same evening to inform him that to the day he had made a special prayer during an entire year to St. Theresa that Hovsep would stay celibate! Signs like this continued, ending up with a private audience with the Holy Father, who indirectly informed him of the same thing. Alas, the girl friend imposed herself in Rome shortly afterwards with the consequences that Hovsep proposed to her! www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 18 Jesus could have left Hovsep at this point, as he had exercised his free will. However Christ is pure love and quietly tries different routes to make His divine Will not only understood, but accepted. I did not hear from Hovsep after the arrival of the girl friend, and, being busy with a large opening of an Impressionist exhibition in Bergen, I had no time to contact him. During my stay in Bergen, the director showed me his museum. As the two-hour visit progressed there was a voice in me that kept on stating, “It was MY letter,” making reference to a letter I had sent Hovsep just previously on the issue of his situation. I had written to Hovsep–in truth, in spiritual terms a truly brilliant letter at a speed that I myself was surprised at! The voice became more and more forceful, in the end irritating me as I was busy putting up a good appearance! In the end I made a comment that I just wanted to see a painting again in another room and dropped the party. I left and prayed in a corner asking Jesus to leave me alone. “Come back another day, I am tired and busy, please go away!” Obviously, Christ does not work like that! At five o’clock after the visit, it was like a thunder in my ear. I used the excuse that I was tired and wanted to go back to the hotel to rest before the opening. On the way to the hotel the voice changed to “Go and see me at My Church.” Again, Ivar: “Dearest Jesus, not today please, I am tired.” Getting into the hotel room it was no longer a voice but like a volcano in front of me. I obeyed and went to His (Catholic) Church. On the way I strongly sensed that I was in for something unusual. It was drizzling and cold, but I noticed nothing, I had not even brought the umbrella! Opening the door to the church, which had been closed several times in the past when I wanted to go in, I realized immediately that it was like my conversion some 20 years previously. I was literally sucked in by the Holy Spirit. I knelt in front of the Tabernacle, and it was as if I no longer sensed time, where I was, anything, my entire body and soul being burned up in love–almost unbearable and yet still so beautiful. A few seconds later, or minutes I do not know, I still felt this intense sensation of love, but at the same time that I was like a fly in front of an elephant, the latter obviously being God. In an instant flash I knew in a very forceful but calm way that God was angry with Hovsep, that he had done something wrong, and again reference was made to “My letter,” evidently meaning the message in it. I really cannot say how long this lasted; trying later to calculate, I guess 15-20 minutes. Suddenly like a spell, it stopped, and two ladies entered into what was previously an empty church. There was no sight of God, no anger, no vision of heaven, purgatory, or hell, just this almighty THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org presence of God. I have hesitated to convey this, as most people would deem in polite terms that I was ready to be locked up, but reading–by coincidence(?)–a few months later the revelations of St. Catherine of Sienna, I perceived that my experience was not all that uncommon. The Council of Florence, as well as that of Trent, declares that every person receives in his immortal soul at the point of death, his specific judgment. St. Catherine goes on to say that the soul does not see God, but is blinded by His holiness. At the same time, she continues, in the presence of God the soul is drowned in His love and subjected to Him, leading to an attraction in a form that the soul burningly and unconditionally desires to be united with Him. The love is like a divine light of Truth in which the soul immediately sees clearly his path on earth, his sins and good deeds, and will know his destination. The soul is confronted with God Himself face to face, but does not yet see Him. Though the message was as such not directed at me personally this time, but at Hovsep, it obviously made me realize a great deal of issues, and that the next time I would likely undergo this experience would be after my death. I cannot term this a “conversion,” but my spiritual life since has not been the same as before. Coming back to the story, I somehow managed to walk back to the hotel. I threw myself on the bed totally choked and overwhelmed. I thought I could sleep for an hour, but no. A voice firmly started: Telephone him! I answered, No way I can do this; Hovsep will laugh at me. One does not argue with God; I was almost pushed out of bed! With my legs shaking I pulled together everything I had and telephoned. No answer. Phew, there You see, Jesus, he is not there; we can forget about it. Again: “I demand that you telephone him!” Fifteen minutes or so later I again managed to pull myself together and I tried again, and this time was successful. When Hovsep had confirmed what Christ had expressed just shortly beforehand, I felt at that moment my entire body was shaking in shock, realizing that God was right. I landed on the floor feeling like throwing up and I was lost for words, totally amazed. As with St. Thomas, Ivar had been doubting! Unfortunately, in spite of yet more signs from Christ, Hovsep married five month later. Christ’s call made no difference to him, but it did indeed change my life for a second time! The author was born in Copenhagen of a Danish German protestant/atheist background and educated in England, earning degrees in Architecture, Urban Design and Management. He worked ten years in London as a property consultant for the Anglican Church and the Crown Estate (Royal Family) and was received into the Church at Westminster Cathedral in 1986. Four years later, he married a French woman and now lives in France with a family of four children and works as an exhibition organizer of Old Master paintings. THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Let your speech be, “yes, yes,” “no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37) l July 2007 Reprint #76 The modern-day Jesuits are arguing that St. Francis Xavier anticipated the teaching of Vatican II on the salvation of unbelievers. That teaching, according to Jesuit Superior General, Fr. Kolvenbach, is “that God will offer salvation to those who did not come to know Christ.” St. Francis believed no such thing. Here’s why. The April 2006 issue of 30 Days published an interview with the Provost General of the Society of Jesus, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, on the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier. He was asked by 30 Days: Cardinal Tucci has written that it would be easy to see in Xavier the mentality of the conquistador of those times. Whereas, the cardinal continues, what motivated Xavier was the conviction that nobody can be saved without having received baptism. What example and teaching can one draw from that? WAs sT. FRANCis XAViER A FORERUNNER OF VATiCAN ii? Superior general of the Jesuits, rev. Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Fr. Kolvenbach replied: In many aspects Xavier was a child of his times. The theology he learned in Paris and the religious milieu in which he had lived, considered baptism an absolute necessity for salvation. Xavier suffered greatly when he saw the Japanese weeping after having told them that their ancestors were damned to hell because of not being baptized. As a result Xavier set more emphasis on the mercy of God who would accept the righteous lives of those who were blamelessly ignorant of the necessity of baptism. Guided by the Church and by the Second Vatican Council, we know today that the seed of truth is to be found in all mankind, and that God will offer salvation to those who did not come to know Christ. But that was not the doctrine at the time of Xavier. The Apostolic Tradition We do not know exactly what theology St. Francis Xavier learned in Paris (in any case, not the “New Theology” of Vatican II) nor in what religious milieu he lived, but it seems to us impossible that either he or his Parisian professors would not have known (and would not have cared) that since antiquity, the Church has considered that baptism of water (baptismus fluminis) can be supplied by martyrdom suffered for Christ (baptism of blood–baptismus sanguinis), as well as by the desire for baptism accompanied by perfect contrition (baptismus flaminis).1 The Fathers of the Church, witnesses of the Apostolic Tradition, combatted the abuse of those who postponed baptism until the end of their lives, counting on baptism of desire. St. Gregory Nazianzen, for example, said that whoever in this life has been content with baptism of desire, in the next life will have to be content with the desire of beatitude (Orat. 40, 23); and St. Augustine, citing the Centurion Cornelius (Acts 10) as an example of baptism of desire, remarks that he promptly received baptism of water (De Bapt. 4, 22). The abuse, combatted by the Fathers, bears witness to the antiquity of the doctrine of baptism of desire, and the Fathers’ combat bears witness to the doctrine according to which whoever can receive water baptism must receive it: the desire of baptism cannot supply the sacrament when, being able to receive it, one neglects to do so. If, however, there is neither refusal nor negligence, but a real impossibility (physical or moral) of receiving water baptism, the Fathers unanimously ascribe to baptism of desire the virtue of making up for water baptism. Thus St. Ambrose in his funeral oration for the Emperor Valentinian II, slain by Arbogast when he was still a catechumen, said: 20 But I hear that you grieve because he did not receive the sacrament of baptism. Tell me: What else is in your power other than the desire, the request? But he even had this desire for a long time, that, when he should come into Italy, he would be initiated, and recently he signified a desire to be baptized by me....Has he not, then, the grace which he desired; has he not the grace which he requested? And because he asked, he received.2 Elsewhere he says: “I have lost someone I was going to regenerate, but he has not lost the grace he requested.”3 We might add that the doctrine on the limbo of children, which some today would like to cast into oblivion, is connected to the doctrine of baptism of desire: baptism of water is of an absolute necessity for children precisely because, being still without the use of reason, they are incapable of baptism of desire, as Pius XII reaffirmed in his famous allocution to midwives. The Traditional Doctrine Defended and Expounded by the Scholastics The doctrine of the Fathers was defended, at Paris in fact, against Abelard by the first Schoolmen, in particular by Hugh of St. Victor and by St. Bernard, who wrote: “By simple faith and by desire of baptism, a man can be justified” (Ep. 77, 8). The major Scholastics (especially St. Thomas) deepened the Patristic doctrine on baptism of desire: The sacrament of Baptism is said to be necessary for salvation in so far as man cannot be saved without, at least, Baptism of desire; “which, with God, counts for the deed” (Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 57).4 that Baptism of desire essentially consists in the fact a man receives the effect of Baptism by the power of the Holy Ghost, not only without Baptism of Water, but also without Baptism of Blood: forasmuch as his heart is moved by the Holy Ghost to believe in and love God and to repent of his sins.5 Here St. Thomas appeals to the authority of St. Augustine and St. Cyprian: Thus, therefore, each of these other Baptisms is called Baptism, forasmuch as it takes the place of Baptism. Wherefore Augustine says (De Unico Baptismo Parvulorum iv): “The Blessed Cyprian argues with considerable reason from the thief to whom, though not baptized, it was said: ‘Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise’ that suffering can take the place of Baptism. Having weighed this in my mind again and again, I perceive that not only can suffering for the name of Christ supply for what was lacking in Baptism, but even faith and conversion of heart, if perchance on account of the stress of the times the celebration of the mystery of Baptism is not practicable” (De Baptismo contra Donatist., c. 22).6 THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org From the same passage of St. Augustine, Peter Lombard concluded: “It is evident that some can be justified and saved without baptism [of water]” (Sent. d.4, c.4). The Church has thus always taught the necessity of baptism, but she has never taught (except for children without the use of reason) the absolute necessity of water baptism for salvation in the case of a genuine impossibility, physical or moral, of receiving it. The Magisterium Innocent II, called upon to resolve the case of an unbaptized dead person, refers to St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, and recommends preserving the doctrine handed down by the Fathers on baptism of desire (Dz. 388). Innocent III, in his turn, declared that no one can baptize himself, even in a case of necessity, but in a case of necessity a man can be saved by faith in the sacrament even without the sacrament of faith: “Propter sacramenti fidem, etsi non propter fidei sacramentum” (Dz. 413). This doctrine was defined by the Council of Trent, which taught that one cannot be justified “except through the laver of regeneration, or a desire for it–sine lavacro regenerationis eius voto fieri non potest” (Dz. 796. If there were a novelty at the time of St. Francis Xavier, it was this: until the great geographical discoveries, it was believed that the gospel had been preached to the entire world; then many peoples were discovered to whom the gospel had not been preached. Even so, all their ancestors should not have been consigned to hell; rather, the missionaries should have applied the ancient teaching on baptism of desire, a doctrine the Fathers of the Church had already applied to the pagans who had not been able to hear of Christ. In this case, one cannot speak of negligence or contempt of the sacrament, but invincible ignorance, and hence a real moral impossibility of receiving water baptism, which is why it is necessary to attribute to baptism of desire (if this desire is present by an action of grace) the virtue of making up for water baptism. The desire for baptism can be explicit, as for catechumens who die before being baptized, but it can also be implicit in the general desire to accomplish in all things the will of God.7 What remains a secret of God is the number of those who are saved by this extraordinary means (the ordinary way is that of faith received through hearing: fides ex auditu, whence the need of missionaries), and it is certain that in this extraordinary way, they are deprived of the assurance of salvation and the ordinary means of attaining it dispensed by the Church.8 Thus those who would exclude from salvation men united to the Church by baptism of desire (explicit or implicit) are condemned, as well as those who affirm that all men can be saved by their natural rectitude in all religions (indifferentism). Considering what Fr. Kolvenbach asserts, at the sight of the tears shed by the Japanese, St. Francis would have gone from the first error to the second error, and this second error...would be the “fruit” ripened by Vatican II, the ecumenism which in practice unconditionally and without distinction extends baptism of desire to all the infidels, rendering water baptism and the missions unnecessary. Naturalism Fr. Kolvenbach attributes to St. Francis Xavier the error of holding that “God would accept the righteous lives of those who were blamelessly ignorant of the necessity of baptism.”9 On this point, too, there is a constant teaching of the Church: since man’s final end is supernatural, it is impossible for him to be saved by natural rectitude alone (which undoubtedly disposes man to receive grace, but which cannot replace it); to be saved, supernatural faith is necessary. That is why, while water baptism in given circumstances can be supplied by baptism of blood and of desire (even implicit), for adults supernatural faith cannot in any instance be supplied (it is only for little baptized children that it is supplied by the faith of the Church). Holy Scripture and the magisterium are categoric: “But without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6); St. Clement of Rome declared that no one has ever been justified without supernatural faith (Epist., I ad Cor. XXIII). The doctrine of St. Cyprian, of St. Ambrose, of St. John Chrysostom, of St. Cyril of Alexandria, of St. Gregory the Great, etc. is the same. The Council of Orange (529) requires a supernatural faith for our regeneration that, from the outset, is the work of grace (Dz. 178), and the Council of Trent affirms that “without this [supernatural] faith, no one was ever justified” (Session 6, Chapter 7), and anathematizes anyone who would dare maintain that justification is the fruit of human efforts and does not proceed first from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (Canon 8). In this regard, one finds in the decrees of the Council of Orange a definition which is an anticipated condemnation of today’s ecumenism: Canon 5. If anyone says, that just as the increase [of faith] so also the beginning of faith and the very desire of credulity...is not through the gift of grace, that is, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit reforming our will from infidelity to faith, from impiety to piety, but is naturally in us, he is proved to be antagonistic to the doctrine of THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 21 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT the Apostles, since blessed Paul says: ...“By grace you are made safe through faith, and this not of yourselves; for it is the gift of God” [Eph. 2:8]. For those who say that faith, by which we believe in God, is natural, declare that all those who are alien to the Church of Christ are in a measure faithful.10 And is not this the abnormal conclusion the ecumenists draw today from their fundamental naturalism? The absolute necessity of supernatural faith was reiterated by the dogmatic Vatican Council I: But, since “without faith it is impossible to please God” [Heb. 11:6] and to attain to the fellowship of His sons, hence, no one is justified without it; nor will anyone attain eternal life except “he shall persevere unto the end in it” [Mt. 10:22; 24:13].11 It should be noted that the Council continues by affirming that it was for this purpose that the Church was founded, “that we may satisfactorily perform the duty of embracing the true faith and of continuously persevering in it.”12 Moreover, it is certain that God gives all infidels without personal guilt (infideles negativi) grace sufficient for their salvation. The universality of the divine salvific will and the [objective] universality of redemption render inadmissible the fact that a very large part of the human race would be refused the necessary and sufficient grace for salvation. That is why Alexander VIII, in 1690, condemned the propositions of the Jansenists according to which the pagans, Jews, and heretics receive no influx of grace from Christ.13 The Holy Spirit thus acts outside the visible boundaries of the Church in order to push souls towards the Church, if they do not resist, at least by desire. This Catholic doctrine on the necessity of supernatural faith for the salvation of adults was reaffirmed and defended by the Roman Pontiffs until Vatican II. Thus Pius IX (Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, August 10, 1863), speaking of infidels who by misfortune, without personal fault, find themselves in a state of invincible ignorance with regard to our holy religion, but diligently observe the natural law, clarifies that they can attain eternal life, not in virtue of their natural righteousness, but “by the operating power of divine light and grace,”14 (to which their natural righteousness disposes them). Later, Pope Pius XII in the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston (August 8, 1949), speaking of baptism of desire, clarified: implicit desire produce its effect, unless a person has supernatural faith.15 Now, according to Fr. Kolvenbach, what is the novelty which, “guided by the Church and by the Vatican II Ecumenical Council,” we would have discovered? It is this: “The seed of truth is to be found in all mankind, and that God will offer salvation to those who did not come to know Christ.” Now, if that means that the infidel possesses in himself a natural light (moral and religious) which, if he does not extinguish it by his personal sins but, on the contrary, regulates his life according to it, it already leads him toward salvation because God, who desires that all of us be saved, does not refuse His grace to one who does what he can to be saved, then we are in the line of Tradition, and Vatican II teaches us nothing new. But if that means that the infidel in good faith is saved in virtue of his own natural righteousness (without grace, without supernatural faith, and without the Holy Spirit), then Vatican II would be teaching us something new, but not something good; rather, it is something the Church has already condemned several times, and which we cannot accept; something that St. Francis Xavier could not have taught (and certainly did not teach) without betraying his mission. Hirpinus Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, February 2007, pp.6-8. 1 This is the way B. Bartmann expresses it in his excellent Manual of Theology (Ed. Paoline), III, 89. The adjective “excellent” does not apply, however, to the additions to the Italian version made by Natale Bussi. 2 De Obitu Valent., 51. 3 Ibid. 4 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, Q.68, Art.1, ad 3. 5 Ibid., Q.66, Art.11. 6 Ibid. 7 Pius XII, Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, August 8, 1949. [This letter has been reprinted in both Latin and English as an appendix in Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1999), pp.65-73.–Ed.] 8 Pius XI, Singulari Quadam; Pius XII, Mystici Corporis 9 “It’s the Lord who makes the difference,” 30 Days, April 2006, p.14. 10 Dz. 178. 11 Dz. 1793. 12 Ibid. 13 Dz. 1294-95. 14 Dz. 1677. 15 Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary, p.72. But it must not be thought that any kind of desire of entering the Church suffices that one may be saved. It is necessary that the desire by which one is related to the Church be animated by perfect charity. Nor can an 22 ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org Msgr. gianfranco Basti Paul Cardinal Poupard Dear Editor, Once again I am sending you a few newspaper clippings. In one of them (Il Giornale of November 4, 2005), Cardinal Poupard and Msgr. Gianfranco Basti accept evolution–quite wrongly, in my opinion–by citing, among other things, the words of Pope John Paul II: “Evolution is more than a hypothesis.” I seem to recall that in that speech, the late Pope referred to a declaration by Pope Pius XII while turning his thinking upside down. As you can read for yourself, the article concludes with these words of Msgr. Basti: “For decades science has gotten beyond the scholastic-type [?] thesis of pure chance, abandoned because it does not hold up scientifically.” Dear Editor, things are going from bad to worse: the silent apostasy is invading the whole world despite the vast crowds that applaud Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. What an illusion! A Priest NEOMODERNisTs DEFEND EVOLUTiON Pope Pius XII and Evolution The statement of Pope John Paul II to which Msgr. Basti refers is taken from his Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996.1 We shall see if it was used judiciously. We looked at this message in a previous number of Courrier de Rome.2 At that time we remarked that this text simplified Pope Pius XII’s teaching, and made him say something which in reality he never said on the subject of evolution. He simplified it, because in the Encyclical Humani Generis Pope Pius XII 1) unconditionally condemned atheistic, materialistic evolution; and 2) denied the conclusiveness of the scientific THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • July 2007 23 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT proofs of theistic evolution, which, by admitting the direct creation of the soul by God and His direct or indirect intervention in evolution, laid claim to, and still claims, a “Christian baptism” of the theory.3 That is why Pope Pius XII postponed the Church’s judgment on theistic evolution until the time when science would be able to provide “clearly proved facts.” Here is the passage of Humani Generis that is concerned with theistic evolution: It remains for Us now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith. In fact, not a few insistently demand that the Catholic religion take these sciences into account as much as possible. This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter, for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.4 At this point in the letter, Pius XII parenthetically references his Allocution to the members of the Academy of Sciences of November 30, 1941, in which he had said: The many investigations in the domains of paleontology, biology, and morphology into other problems concerning the origins of man have not yet returned anything positively clear and certain. There remains nothing else to do than leave to the future the answer to the problem, should science, enlightened and guided by Revelation, one day be able to give certain and definitive results on a subject of such importance. Continuing (in Humani Generis), Pius XII then deplores that “some rashly transgress this liberty of discussion” [this is all that the Encyclical conceded], when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely 24 certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question. (§36) This last phrase clearly shows that Pius XII’s reserved judgment on “theistic” evolution was more negative (non licet) than positive. The Reversal In Pope John Paul II’s Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, one reads: In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points....Taking into account the state of scientific research at the time as well as of the requirements of theology, the encyclical Humani Generis considered the doctrine of “evolutionism” a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis.5 That is how Pius XII is made to say what he did not say. Everyone can see for himself that, contrary to what the Message says, in Humani Generis Pius XII absolutely did not say that the doctrine of evolution is a “serious hypothesis”; rather, he said that it is a hypothesis that must be “weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure” (which is obviously not the same thing); he does not say that it is a hypothesis “worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis,” but on the contrary he finds fault with the theistic evolutionists who consider “the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” as something clearly demonstrated, “as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question” (§36). This is tantamount to saying that the “opposing hypothesis” is more in conformity with the sources of divine Revelation than theistic evolution, hence the injunction to ponder the evolutionist hypothesis “with the necessary seriousness,” since the evolutionist hypothesis, even when it is theistic, requires that “the former convictions, based upon the Bible, the doctrine of the Fathers, and the usual teaching of the Church”6 be set aside. A First Step in Favor of Evolution Having understood Pius XII’s Encyclical Humani Generis in this way, Pope John Paul II’s Message THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org takes a step forward in favor of evolution: “Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.” And after gratuitously asserting that this “theory” has been accepted because of “the convergence, neither sought nor fabricated [really? but isn’t it within the habits of evolutionists to bend the facts to fit their theory, even resorting to fakery–a temptation from which even the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin was not exempt], of the results of work that was conducted independently,” the Pope then wonders: What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology. A theory is a metascientific elaboration, distinct from the results of observation but consistent with them. By means of and eventually “rethought,” it does not seem to us that evolution has gained much by this promotion from hypothesis to theory. The only result is to encourage the press to publish headlines like “Faith and Science/ Appreciation of the Pope’s Words Rehabilitating Darwin’s Theory/ Soul or Not, Thanks to the Monkey!”7 Another Step Forward and Another Reversal Based on this fragile premise, Msgr. Basti felt authorized to take another step. John Paul II, he says, defined the principle of evolution as “more than a hypothesis”; now, “a hypothesis,” Basti explains, can be true or false, and to say that it is more than Paul Cardinal Poupard (b. 1930) was named cardinal by Pope John Paul II in May 1985. He served as President of the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers until April 4, 1993, when this Council was incorporated in the Pontifical Council for Culture, whose mission is “to foster relations between the Holy See and the realm of human culture, especially by promoting communication with various contemporary institutions of learning and teaching, so that secular culture may be more and more open to the Gospel, and specialists in the sciences, literature, and the arts may feel themselves called by the Church to truth, goodness, and beauty” (Pastor Bonus, 166), of which he became President in 1988. In 2006 he was also appointed President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Cardinal Poupard is a prolific writer and the recipient of a knighthood from the Legion of Honor. Msgr. Gianfranco Basti is Professor of the philsophy of nature and science at the Pontifical Lateran University and Director of the Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest Project (STOQ, also SROQ), which was created by the Pontifical Council for Culture, the Lateran University, and the John Templeton Foundation “to illustrate the deep harmony between science and religon based on principles outlined by Pope John Paul II in such documents as Fides et Ratio and Veritatis Splendor” (National Catholic Reporter, November 18, 2005). The STOQ can be found online at stoqnet.org. it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory’s validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought. The speech is not the clearest, but we believe we have correctly understood it to say that “the theory of evolution” must no longer be considered as a hypothesis, but as a “theory.” But since the theory, as the Message acknowledges, must also, like a hypothesis, be verified “against the facts” www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 a hypothesis means that proofs [sic] exist in favor of evolution which “tend towards the consolidation of a scientific theory.” That is how John Paul II’s Message, which reversed Humani Generis, is itself reversed by the interpretation given it by Msgr. Basti. Evolution becomes a solid “scientific theory” based on who knows what “proofs.” THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 25 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Desperate Recuperation of a “Shattered Myth” But even a Pope’s word cannot create ex nihilo scientific proofs in favor of a hypothesis which foundered long ago on the barrier of the fixity of the species: The absence of links from species to species is not an exception: it is the universal rule. The more researchers have looked for transitional forms between species, the greater has been their disappointment. This was the admission of the 160 evolutionists from all over the world who met at Chicago for a congress in 1980.8 And more recently, on August 25, 1992, the Corriere della Sera published a report from London entitled “Scientists at Congress: We Do Not Descend from Monkeys/Darwin Challenged on Evolution.” It involved the yearly meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, an association at which the theory of evolution was first presented. The challenge was thrown down by the English scientist Richard Milton, author of The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. The Corriere della Serra added: “Milton is not alone in his challenge. Many other scientists have put in doubt Darwin’s thesis.” It is in this “post Darwinian” atmosphere that churchmen, afflicted with “teilhardosis” (Teilhard de Chardin, recall, was one of evolution’s mythmakers), believe they are opening the Church to the world by gathering the shards of a “shattered myth.” Geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti rightly wrote: Modernism’s temptations are dangerous. One risks surrendering to modernity just when it has seen its day, of becoming a Darwinian for love of the world just when Society of Saint Pius X District of the United States of America Regina Coeli House 11485 N. Farley Road Platte City, Missouri 64079 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED Darwin is on his way out, and of basing ethics on the descent of man from the monkey just when this theory has been definitively rejected.9 Hirpinus Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from the French edition of SiSiNoNo, Courrier de Rome, November 2006, pp.4-6. 1 English version: English Edition of the Osservatore Romano, October 30, 1996, available on line at www.newadvent.org /library/docs_jp02tc.htm. Published in the English edition of SiSiNoNo, No. 25, March 1998.–Ed. 3 Dictionnaire de théologie dogmatique, ed. Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo, s.v. “Évolutionisme.” 4 §§35-36. 5 §§3-4. 6 E. Ruffini, “The Responsibility of Catholic Paleoanthropologists,” Osservatore Romano [It. ed.], June 3, 1950. 7 La Nazione, October 25, 1996. 8 Newsweek, November 3, 1980. 9 Il Tempo, July 10, 1987. 2 $1.95 per SiSiNoNo reprint. Please specify. Shipping & Handling US Foreign $.01 to $10.00 $6.95 $10.01 to $25.00 $8.95 $25.01 to $50.00 $10.95 $50.01 to $100.00 $12.95 Over $100.00 13% of order $11.95 $13.95 $15.95 $17.95 18% of order Airmail surcharge (in addition to above) Foreign 21% of subtotal. Available from: ANGELUS PRESS 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, MO 64109 USA Phone: 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID KANSAS CITY, MO PERMIT NO. 6706 Christendom NEWS Angelus Press Edition 27 Forty Years of Ecumenism with the Orthodox F r . H e r v é G r e s l a n d Eastern Orthodoxy is a vast and complex world. It is complex in its history and theology, but even more so for us Westerners because of the Eastern mindset. In order not to drown our readers under the subtleties of the mysterious Orthodox world, we will try to remain simple without being simplistic. We will first follow the fascinating chronology of the Eastern Orthodox churches. White Sea Mostly Orthodox SWEDEN FINLAND Gulf Mostly Catholic of Bothnia Mostly Muslim ESTONIA Baltic Sea RUSSIA LATVIA BELARUS POLAND GERMANY RUSSIA LITHUANIA UKRAINE CZECH REP. SLOVAKIA AUSTRIA SWITZ. SLOVENIA ROMANIA CROATIA BOSNIA ITALY MOLDOVA HUNGARY SERBIA MONTENEGRO KOSOVO BULGARIA Black Sea GEORGIA MACEDONIA ALBANIA GREECE Sicily The historical embrace between the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, and Paul VI in Jerusalem, January 5, 1964. TURKEY 28 The Preparation of the Council The announcement by Pope John XXIII that a Council would be called was a major event for the ecumenical movement. This announcement was the cause of significant ecumenical maneuvers at the highest levels of the Church, since one of the Council’s objectives was the “union of the Churches.” For the innovators, the pope who opened the council was the privileged instrument which enabled false ecumenism to make its official entry into the Church. Indeed, Msgr. Roncalli, the future John XXIII, had, as early as 1924, became a faithful friend of Dom Lambert Beauduin, a Belgian Benedictine monk who had founded at Amay (Belgium) a Benedictine monastery devoted to the union of the Churches. Later on, the monastery was moved to Chevetogne, and it was the best known and most active center of Catholic ecumenism. It was responsible for the publication of the review Irenicon. Dom Beauduin was far from being the only one to work for the ecumenical cause. For instance, Fr. Dumont, O.P., was responsible for the reviews Russia and Christianity, Istina, and Towards Unity. In spite of reproaches and exiles, Dom Beauduin kept working behind the scene. The ideas of the reformer had won the heart of the future pope. John XXIII would once say: “Dom Lambert Beauduin’s method is the right one.”1 As early as June 5, 1960, John XXIII created a Secretariat for Christian Unity. His objective was to establish contacts with the Orthodox and the Protestants and to invite them to send official representatives to the future council, to take part in it as observers. The door was beginning to open; the theories of false ecumenism, which had been prepared for decades, were going to enter the hall of the Council. The Secretariat for Christian Unity immediately displayed intense activity. Cardinal Bea, its president, was giving conferences everywhere. The Secretariat invited the various Churches2 to send observers to the Council. Already at that time, optimism was prevalent. Everything began under the brightest star with the relationship with the Patriarch of Constantinople. However, the Patriarch of Moscow made an exception. Msgr. Nicodemus, speaking on behalf of Patriarch Alexis on December 27, 1960, denied the Patriarchate of Constantinople the right of taking initiative in the name of the Orthodox religion in matters of union, and added: “If there is a question of dialogue with the pope, the Russian Church will discuss the matter alone, and on her own account.”3 To explain the situation of the Russian Orthodox Church, we must add that this Church was giving token to the Communist government, which THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org tolerated her only inasmuch as it could make use of her. On every occasion, she would support the politics of the Soviet Union, and was certainly acting in close collaboration with the Kremlin. At first, the Patriarchate of Moscow refused Rome’s invitation to the Council, especially because in it, it is fitting to see nothing but an effort to extend Rome’s power over the Orthodox Church.…We cannot agree upon the Roman conditions for this unity understood as the Christian World Union under the pope’s authority.4 Nevertheless, long negotiations began and a secret meeting was arranged in Metz between Cardinal Tisserant and Metropolitan Nicodemus, president for the department of foreign affairs for the Patriarchate of Moscow. This latter communicated the conditions set by the Patriarchate (or by the Kremlin, for it was the same thing in Pope John Paul II meets with Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church. this case) for the presence of Russian delegates to the Council: there will be no declaration hostile to the USSR. Msgr. Nicodemus was the man who, in November 1961, declared: “We can affirm that in our country the Church is totally independent from the State.”5 Msgr. Nicodemus publicly outlined the conditions to be fulfilled in order for the Patriarchate to send representatives to the Council: If the schedule of the activities of the Roman Council did not contain doctrinal issues with which the Orthodox Church cannot agree (for instance, the dogma of the supremacy of Peter), and if there was no declaration hostile to the country which we love, I believe that, on our part, there will be no difficulty of principle to the sending of observers from the Russian Church to Rome.6 29 Msgr. Willebrands, secretary of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, went to Moscow from September 27 to October 2, 1962, in order to meet again with Msgr. Nicodemus and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. He assured the Orthodox that the Council would not condemn Communism. Upon this, the Russian Orthodox Church sent two representatives to the Council.7 The Second Vatican Council During the first session, in 1962, the other Orthodox Churches refrained from sending delegates. The Patriarchate of Constantinople sent observers to the Council only from the third session onwards. Thus the non-Catholic observers could attend the work of all the Council meetings as first-class witnesses, and it was most easy for them to talk with the Council Fathers, to tell them Dom Lambert Beauduin Augstin Cardinal Bea their reactions and their wishes. The Secretariat for Christian Unity organized various meetings for them with the outstanding personalities of the Council. Cardinal Bea assured them that the greatest importance would be granted to their suggestions and desiderata.8 Their influence on the Council was real. They gave it an ecumenical twist: it is obvious that when you entertain guests you try not to offend them, but to satisfy them. On the day after the vote for the schema on ecumenism, Cardinal Bea would state: “The non-Catholic observers played a decisive part in the drawing up of the text of the decree on ecumenism.”9 As for the members of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, they occupied a very important place in the Council. Cardinal Bea wrote the drafts of the schemas, among others, including those on religious liberty and ecumenism, in collaboration with Msgr. De Smedt, vice-president of the Secretariat and with Msgr. Willebrands, the secretary, who was more specifically responsible for the relations with the World Council of Churches and with Moscow through the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow. In the relationships with the non-Catholic world, the conciliar Church adopted the principle of dialogue to which Pope Paul VI devoted his entire Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam (August 6, 1964). The Church must enter into a dialogue with the world in which she lives. The Church becomes word; the Church becomes message; the Church becomes conversation. This dialogue is in itself identified with evangelization. Consequently, this evangelization would not show itself armed with the weapons of The President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, Cardinal Kasper, embraces Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexis II during his visit to Moscow in June, 2005. exterior coercion, but through the only legitimate means of human education, interior persuasion and ordinary conversation she would offer her gift of salvation always in respect of the personal liberty of civilized men. Thus, missionaries would start a “fraternal” and sincere dialogue with all men, the former expounding to the latter the truth they have found or think they have found so as to help one another in the quest for truth. The means to attain false unity is “dialogue.” This ever-present word shows a change of spirit: it is no longer a question of converting and bringing back people to the truth that the Church alone possesses, but of dialoguing in order to exchange the riches and values which each one allegedly possesses. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 30 The Application to Ecumenical Dialogue with the Orthodox Pope Paul VI strongly encouraged this ecumenical dialogue through his example as well as through his teaching. He went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, January 5-6, 1964, to meet the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras. It was the first time a pope had met with a Patriarch of Constantinople since the Council of Florence (1439) over five centuries ago! They prayed together and exchanged a long kiss of peace. Paul VI offered to the Patriarch a gold chalice, source and symbol of the brotherhood between the two “Churches,” “as a token of their conviction that one day our two Churches would together partake again of the Holy Eucharist.”10 At the end, they blessed the faithful together. Those present spoke of an historical moment and thought that unity was already achieved. Athenagoras would say: “It was the most beautiful day of my life.”11 That same year, on September 26, Paul VI caused the head of the apostle St. Andrew, which was kept in the Basilica of St Peter’s in Rome, to be “restituted” to the Orthodox. Several relics of the saints were transferred to the East in the following years. The decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, was adopted by the Council Fathers on November 21, 1964. It puts forth the principles of the Catholic Church on ecumenism. In the section concerning the Eastern Churches, we find this sentence, which has become a basic principle for the relations between Catholics and Orthodox: This is why among the Easterners prevailed and still prevails a particular care to keep in a communion of faith and charity the fraternal relations which must exist between the local Churches, as between sisters.12 In this decree, not a single allusion is to be found to the Encyclical Mortalium Animos by Pope Pius XI [available from Angelus Press. Price: $2.00.– Ed.], and even the Instruction of the Sacred Office of 1949 about the ecumenical movement is never quoted; and yet there are only 15 years between the two texts. This conciliar schema says that the other Christian religions are “not at all devoid of significance and value in the mystery of salvation” (§4) while the one means of salvation is the one Church founded by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church “outside of which absolutely no one can be saved.”13 Archbishop Lefebvre did not hesitate to call this teaching a heresy.14 This text also says: “In some circumstances, for instance on the occasion of prayer meetings for unity or during ecumenical meetings it is allowed and still more it is desirable that Catholics join their separated brethren to pray” (§8). It also advises “meetings between both parties THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org to deal with issues particularly of a theological nature, during which all intervene on an equal footing” (§9). The day after this text was voted on, Cardinal Bea said: During these past years, deep evolutions have taken place in the Church, and we only gradually see the whole scope of these evolutions. In this sense, the conciliar experience of all the Christians together can be compared to the mustard seed of the Gospel which grows slowly before reaching its full development.15 Doubtless our Lord Jesus Christ did not foresee the same application when He spoke of the mustard seed! With the meeting in Jerusalem between Paul VI and Athenagoras, the relations between the Catholic and the Orthodox Church began to increase in depth. On the last day of the Council, December 7, 1965, the mutual lifting of the excommunications between Rome and Constantinople took place. The pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, represented by a delegation, made a joint declaration by which they meant to regret the offending words, the reproaches without foundation, and the blameworthy gestures which, on both sides, stamped or accompanied the sad events of that time (the rupture); to regret also and to wipe from the memory of the Church the sentences of excommunication which followed; and lastly to deplore the events which, under the influence of various factors, among which misunderstanding and mutual distrust, finally led to the actual breaking of the ecclesiastical communion.16 This declaration supposes that both parties are equally wrong and treats them on a par, whereas the rupture of the unity was mainly caused by the Orthodox schism. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of this act, Paul VI would declare, on September 7, 1965, We have made the solemn and sacred ecclesial act of lifting the old anathemas; by this act We meant to remove for ever from the memory and the heart of the Church the souvenir of these events.17 In its decree on ecumenism, the Second Vatican Council taught: Since these Churches, though separated, have true sacraments–mainly by virtue of the apostolic succession: the priesthood and the Eucharist–which unite them intimately to us, a certain communicatio in sacris is not only possible but even advisable in favorable circumstances and with the approval of the Church authority.18 Two years later, the Secretariat for Christian Unity, published a guidebook19 which put these principles into practice. Among others, it established the following points: 44. Outside of the cases of necessity, we may consider as a just reason to advise “communication in the 31 sacraments,” the material or moral impossibility of receiving the sacraments in one’s own Church for a notable period of time, because of the circumstances and to prevent that the faithful be deprived of the spiritual fruit of the sacraments without legitimate reason. 46. The Easterners, who desire to do so spontaneously, may go to confession to a Catholic priest when they do not have the possibility to confess easily to a priest of their own Church. In similar circumstances it is allowed for Catholics to go to confessors from an Eastern Church separated from the Roman Apostolic See. In this domain also, let a legitimate reciprocity be observed. However, on both parts let them be watchful not to give rise to suspicions of proselytism. 47. A Catholic who occasionally attends the divine liturgy (the Mass) in a church of separated Eastern brethren, on a Sunday or a Holy Day of obligation, is no longer bound to the precept of attending Mass in a Catholic Church. Likewise, it is fitting that on these same days Catholics attend the sacred liturgy in the church of their separated Eastern brethren if possible, when, for a just reason, they are prevented from taking part in the sacred liturgy in a Catholic Church. 52. Because “the participation in the ceremonies, or sacred things, the use of sacred places are allowed between Eastern Catholics and separated brethren, for a just reason” (decree on the Eastern Churches, n° 28), it is recommended that the use of Catholic buildings together with the other things necessary be granted to separated Eastern priests or communities for their religious rites, if they ask for them and with the permission of the local bishop, when they lack places in which they may fittingly and worthily accomplish their holy celebrations. We can easily see how all this is far from the constant practice of the Church. Until then, a Catholic could not participate actively in nonCatholic worship; such participation was forbidden by the law of the Church.20 The Patriarchate of Constantinople Up to now we have studied the relationship with the Orthodox religion as a whole. It is henceforth necessary to deal separately with the different elements composing it. As a matter of fact, there is not really one Orthodox Church. We use the term to simplify matters, but in fact, the Orthodox are divided into 16 autocephalous Churches, that is to say, independent from one another, and generally divided according to various nations. They are frequently at strife with one another. The Patriarch of Constantinople enjoys a certain pre-eminence in the Orthodox world, but the autocephalous Churches do not recognize in him the right to speak in their names. This division is an added difficulty for ecumenism with the Orthodox. To limit ourselves to the essentials, we will only speak of the relations with Constantinople and Moscow (with a passing mention of the Greek Church). The Patriarch of Constantinople is first among his peers in the Orthodox hierarchy; the Patriarch of Moscow is the Primate of the largest Orthodox Church in the world, as far as the number of faithful is concerned. Let us consider first the relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1967, Paul VI went for the first time to the Phanar, the seat of the Patriarchate in Istanbul, in order to meet with Patriarch Athenagoras. He gave him in person an important message in which he told him: Through baptism, “we are one in Christ Jesus.”21 By virtue of the apostolic succession, the priesthood and the Eucharist unite us even more intimately. Such is the deep and mysterious communion which exists between us. We are really and mysteriously each other brothers. In each local Church takes place this mystery of divine love, and is this not the reason for the traditional and so beautiful expression by which the local Churches loved to called themselves Sister Churches? After a long period of division and reciprocal misunderstanding, the Lord grants us to rediscover each other as Sister Churches, in spite of the obstacles that were then raised between us. In the light of Christ, we see how pressing is the necessity for us to overcome the obstacle to manage to bring to its plenitude and perfection the already so rich communion which exists between us. First of all, we must work fraternally in the service of our holy Faith to find together the adapted and progressive forms in order to develop and bring up to date the life of our Churches, and the communion which, although imperfect, is already there. Then, on both parts through mutual contacts we must promote, deepen, and adapt the formation of the clergy, the instruction and the life of the Christian people.22 This text is rich and calls for many comments, which we will provide later. Patriarch Athenagoras returned the Pope’s visit and went to Rome in October 1967. Cardinal Bea commented: Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Phanar, like that of the ecumenical patriarch Athenagoras I to Rome are historical events, unique in their kind. Since the time of Pope Constantine (708-15) never had a Roman Pontiff visited the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Likewise, no Patriarch of Constantinople in office had ever gone officially and solemnly to visit the Bishop of Rome.23 And Cardinal Lubachivsky would later explain: When the ecumenical Patriarch went to Rome, on this occasion, and later again, he was received with all the honors due to a pope. The Patriarch of Constantinople is the only person ever who was invited to make use of the papal throne to greet his hosts.24 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 32 In his address during the ecumenical celebration in St. Peter’s, on October 26, 1967, Athenagoras said: The whole Catholic Church and the whole Orthodox Church in a common agreement and with the sense of their responsibility will move on towards their union. Msgr. Chrysostomos, an Orthodox metropolitan, explained the meaning of this meeting between Patriarch Athenagoras and Paul VI as a matter of a new ecclesiology: Until now, the ecumenical movement was in the hands of theologians; it was entrusted to their labs. Today, this ecumenical movement, these ecumenical efforts are officially the work of the Churches. Ecumenism is no longer a theory or discussion between theologians. It is a life lived by the Churches themselves....The Churches are aware of the issues which are still the objects of theological difference, but they have declared that these issues cannot prevent the Churches from seeking and rediscovering full communion in the Faith and in charity....Consequently, it is a new theology that has just been developed, the theology of communion between the Churches, which must tend towards its fullness in the Faith and in charity.25 When Metropolitan Meliton, representative of the Patriarch, came to Rome in 1972, Paul VI said in his address at St. John in Lateran: “Both (the Church of Rome and the Patriarchate of Constantinople) rediscover with joy that they are branches from the same tree born of the same root.”26 And again: “There are beginnings which are like the forerunning signs of great ecumenical events towards which we turn our gaze with impatient joy while we work actively at bringing them about.”27 On December 14, 1975, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the lifting of the anathemas, a solemn Mass was offered in Rome at the Sistine Chapel. After his address, Paul VI went up to the envoy of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Metropolitan Meliton, knelt down before him and kissed his feet. Dumbfounded by this unheard of act of humility of the pope towards the Eastern Church, Meliton cried out: “Only a saint can act thus.”28 Fr. Congar said he was struck and seduced by such a gesture: Paul VI said many words of ecumenical scope; his texts speaking of “Sister Churches” are of great import. But his gestures are stronger still than his words. What he did on December 14, 1975, opened the theological dialogue more creatively still than his speeches. He went beyond the historical papacy and right back to the purer and more evangelical “Petrine ministry.”29 Since 1977, the pope sends a delegation every year to represent him in Istanbul for the feast of St. Andrew, the patron saint of the patriarchate, and the patriarchate of Constantinople sends a delegation to Rome for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. These are the occasions to exchange messages. THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org On November 30, 1979, on the the feast of St. Andrew, Pope John Paul II went to Istanbul to visit Patriarch Dimitrios I who had succeeded the deceased Patriarch Athenagoras. The Holy Father attended the Orthodox Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom celebrated by the ecumenical patriarch in the patriarchal cathedral of St. George. The two bishops exchanged the kiss of peace before the Creed. This was an extraordinary gesture on the part of the Pope. It was absolutely unheard of that the pope of Rome would attend an ecumenical celebration with someone who is not in full communion with the Catholic Church.30 The period which had elapsed since the Council had been baptized as a “dialogue of charity.” It had for its objective to create links between Catholics and Orthodox as well as a favorable atmosphere in order to prepare for the quest of doctrinal unity. Rome had been waiting for a long time already for the moment when it could go forward and begin doctrinal discussions. But the Orthodox were in no hurry. They also had to settle this question between themselves at the “Pan-orthodox” level. After this period began the official theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church “in view of a full sacramental communion”31 between the two Churches. John Paul II and Dimitrios I announced this together on the occasion of the meeting in Istanbul. A few months later, in June 1980, the first meeting of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue in Rhodes took place. As usual, the Orthodox clearly put forth their positions. From the very start, the president of the Commission on the Orthodox side, Msgr. Stylianos, read a declaration: “By reason of the presence of Roman Catholics of Eastern rite, we recall that the Orthodox Church, for reason of principles, does not admit the Uniates.”32 We will come back at length on the question of the Uniates further on. In 1981, on the occasion of the 16th centennial of the Second Council of Constantinople, the pope, who was prevented from preaching himself (because of the attempt on his life on the preceding May 13), invited Metropolitan Damaskinos to preach in his stead in St. Peter’s Basilica. For the first time since the schism, an Orthodox prelate was going up to the pulpit in the basilica. In 1985, John Paul II wrote an encyclical devoted to the apostles of the Slavs, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, in which he said: Cyril and Methodius are like links of unity or a spiritual bridge between the Eastern and the Western tradition. They are for us the champions and at the same time the patrons of the ecumenical efforts of the Sister Churches of the East and the West to find again visible unity and full and perfect communion through dialogue and prayer. “A unity which,” as I said on the 33 occasion of my visit to Bari, “is neither absorption nor even fusion.”33 In December 1987, Patriarch Dimitrios went to Rome. During the ceremony of December 5, in St. Mary Major, John Paul II answered the Patriarch: If, in the course of the centuries, divergences, and often serious ones, between Western and Eastern Christian have weakened the testimony to the one Church of Christ, today repentance and the desire for union dwell in our hearts. Today we have a new proof that God has mercy on us and hears the prayers of those who ceaselessly intercede for the unity of all the Christians of His Church. To the Catholic Church and to the Orthodox Church was granted the grace to recognize themselves again as Sister Churches and to walk together towards full communion. The next day, December 6, Dimitrios was received by the Pope in St. Peter’s Basilica. After putting on the liturgical vestments, they presided together over the liturgy of the word. The patriarch gave the homily first, after John Paul II had presented him to the people in the following terms: “With a deep joy, I now exhort you to listen to the word of the ecumenical patriarch, His Holiness Dimitrios I, our beloved brother in Christ.” The pope in turn pronounced the homily, followed by the chant of the Creed of Nicea-Constantinople in Greek, the prayer of intercession and the kiss of peace....The patriarch went back up to the altar of the confession at the end of the Mass to bless the faithful.34 In his homily, the Pope said: I pray to the Holy Ghost to give us His light and to enlighten all the pastors and theologians of our Churches, so that we, obviously together, may seek the forms in which this ministry [the pope’s] can accomplish a service of love recognized by all. That day, the Pope and the Patriarch proclaimed the Creed together in Greek, without the word Filioque (which means that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son), which the Orthodox reject. The next day, the Pope and the Patriarch signed a joint declaration in which they said: This fraternity does not stop increasing and bringing forth fruits for the glory of God. We experience once more the happiness of being together like brothers. The documents accepted by the Joint Commission seek to express what the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church can already profess as their common faith about the mystery of the Church.35 The declaration here alludes to the “International Joint Commission for Ecumenical Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.” This commission was set up in 1980 for theological dialogue. It held eight plenary sessions from 1982 to 2000, which resulted in the publications of joint documents. “Though the reactions were as a rule positive, these documents gave rise to certain reservations, and even to open opposition on both sides,” acknowledged the Commission.36 During the plenary session which took place in Freising, Germany, in June 1990, the Orthodox delegates insisted on suspending the theological discussion and on discussing as a priority the question of the Uniates, meaning by this the existence and function of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The seventh session, which took place at the Institute of Orthodox Theology in Balamand, Lebanon, in 1993, consequently tackled this issue, which the Orthodox consider crucial. It was a most important meeting. But to understand the problem of the Uniates, it is necessary to know the situation in Russia, which we shall now consider. The Russian Church In the empire of the Czars, the Orthodox faith was the state religion. Catholics, however, were quite present, and the government would regularly attempt to make them enter the Orthodox Church. The practice of Catholic worship was subject to harassment. Catholic priests could not preach in Russian to their parishioners, and thus no apostolate was possible. This persecution explains the relief of the Catholics when the Russian revolution broke out: “At the Vatican, the fall of the Czars was hailed as a liberating event,” wrote the representative of France near the Holy See.37 Obviously, they had to give up their illusions. In 1927, through the signature of Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church pledged allegiance to the established power. The “Sergianists” caused the Church to collaborate with the Communist regime. Men docile to the government infiltrated the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church (with the exception of the Russian Church in exile “outside the country,” which rightly refused this allegiance to the government). Almost all the members of the episcopate of the patriarchate of Moscow were compromised with the Communist power. The declaration of Metropolitan Sergius in 1927 has never been annulled, nor regretted, nor even admitted as a weakness of the time, justified by the pressure exercised by the regime. On the contrary, they try to make people believe that it was legitimate, because all power exists only by the will of God. Today the civil power declares that it does not want to meddle with the internal business of the Church. But is the patriarchate truly free? In 1948, the Patriarchate of Moscow had absolutely refused to adhere to the World Council of Churches. Some years later, in 1961, the Russian Orthodox Church entered the WCC with full membership at the New Delhi assembly. The www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 34 Patriarch of Moscow, Alexis I, declared at that time: “Our mission in the present situation is to show forth to the Christians of the West the light of Orthodoxy.” But it seems much more likely that this entry was done upon order from the Russian government, who thus had one foot in the door. Metropolitan Cyril of Smolensk (in charge of the Department of Foreign Relations for the Patriarchate of Moscow) acknowledged that any official intervention of the Patriarchate of Moscow at the international level had always been agreed upon before together with the Soviet and then the Russian authorities. He also acknowledged that the entry of the Patriarchate of Moscow into the World Council of Churches in 1961 enabled it “to have access to an invaluable source of information coming from all of the Christian world.” This information was destined to Soviet diplomats among others. In plain language, it means that the Department for Foreign Relations was nothing but an antenna of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and hence of the KGB, to which it passed on all the information to which it had access.38 This confirms the very close links which existed between the KGB and the Patriarchate of Moscow, in which high dignitaries were KGB members, according to the Communist praxis of the ruling nucleus. Each of the Communist states had its autocephalous Orthodox Church with its independent patriarch. Where this title did not exist, the Communists created it (in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia). Thus the political power had the upper hand in this Church, which it used as an assistant for the destruction of the Churches united to Rome. Let us now come to the Uniates. This word designates several Eastern Churches which were separated in the past but happily returned to the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church. First the Ruthenians, a people living on the border of Poland and Belarus, became Catholics in 1596 by the Pact of Union of Brest-Litovsk, which united them to the Roman Church. Then in the following decades other peoples in Romania, the Ukraine, and so on, who, acknowledged their errors and thanks to the constant efforts of Rome to re-establish union in charity but also in truth, left their schism and came back to the One Church, while keeping their own rites and venerable traditions for which the Latin Church has a great respect. They are the symbol of true ecumenism, namely of the deep charity which urges us to convert our brethren. After the Second World War, the Communist government with one stroke of the pen suppressed the Catholic Churches of the Byzantine Rite (also known as Greek Catholic) in the Soviet Union, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. As for the Western Ukraine, when Stalin’s regime suppressed THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org the Greek Catholic Church in 1946 and sent all the bishops to prison and later on to the Gulag, there was but a very scanty Orthodox presence. The places of worship were confiscated and handed over to the Orthodox Church or affected to other uses. The Greek Catholic Church was incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church under duress. Cardinal Lubachivsky, Archbishop of the Ukrainians in Lviv, passed the following judgment on the attitude of the Orthodox Church at that time: More disturbing is the obvious refusal or the incapacity of the Orthodox Church to acknowledge that it had even a partial role in the historical cases of suppression of the Eastern Catholic Church. They very conveniently reject the full responsibility for the use of “unacceptable methods” upon “some civil authorities.” Documentary evidence about the suppression of the Greek Catholic Church in the Ukraine in 1945-46 suggests much more than a passive acceptance of what was happening on the part of the Orthodox. The Orthodox Church seems to be incapable of even dealing honestly with its own history.39 After the Second Vatican Council, the Russian Orthodox hierarchy continued its persecuting alliance with the Communists against the Catholics. At the very time when John XXIII was receiving with great honors Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Alexis Adjoubeï (March 7, 1963), the closing of churches, the sending of bishops into exile, and deportations to Siberia began to soar again. The “Ostpolitik,” namely the politics of rapprochement of the Holy See with the Communist governments, whose main agent was Cardinal Casaroli, will remain an everlasting shame upon its author. During the Council of Zagorsk (USSR) in 1989, the Russian Orthodox hierarchy received many civil awards from the Soviet government and was congratulated in a decree for its fight for peace and its support to the Soviet State. This Council, at which Cardinal Willebrands was present, sent a very warm message to Mr. Gorbachev.40 Likewise the Russian hierarchy had made an alliance with the Kremlin to delay a possible visit of the Pope to the Ukraine, which would reveal how numerous the local Catholics were. Presently two extremely thorny questions are poisoning the relations between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox. The two causes of disagreement on the part of the Patriarchate of Moscow are the Uniates (the issue of the Churches of the Eastern Rites united to Rome), and the “proselytism” of the Catholic Church. The Russian Orthodox Church had been forever asking for “the establishment of truly ecumenical relations between the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church, excluding the manifestation of anything that could harm Orthodoxy (Uniatism, proselytism, and so on).”41 And it happened precisely that the “dialogue” with 35 the Orthodox in Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular with the Russian Orthodox Church, suffered from tensions due to two circumstances which were cause of great resentment for Russian Orthodox. 1) Public acknowledgment of the Greek Catholic Church The Communist governments and the Orthodox thought they had managed to eradicate the Uniate Churches and that they now belonged to the past. After the return of religious liberty in 1989, after the long winter of persecution, the Byzantine Rite of the Catholic Church suddenly reappeared; it was able to rise again and become reorganized. The Orthodox, especially in the Ukraine and in Romania, found it very hard to accept the reality of a Church which they thought was dead and which had no right to exist according to them. So they made vigorous protests. These Churches thus became a serious and unforeseen stumbling block. In 1979, Metropolitan Juvenaly of Moscow requested of the Holy See an explanation which was rather harshly phrased, denying the existence of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. On January 10, 1982, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church reacted firmly to the words of Pope John Paul II who, a few days earlier, had defended the Romanian Catholic Church (the Uniates), which had not legally existed in Romania since 1948. This defense was considered by the Orthodox as an attempt to divide “the faithful of the Romanian Orthodox Church.” As it often happens, the most serious difficulty is of the material order: it has to do with the right of ownership and the use of the places of worship which in the past belonged to the Byzantine Catholic Churches, and which were confiscated by the governments and in part granted to the Orthodox Churches. Through its suppression, the Byzantine Catholic Church had suffered a great injustice, but today the Orthodox Church is quite unwilling to remedy this injustice. It is especially the case in Western Ukraine where the contested Church properties all belonged to the Catholic Church up to 1946. Obviously, the Catholic faithful want to recuperate them, and hence a series of clashes over the ownership of these places of worship arose, along with the problem of their distribution. The Patriarch of Moscow, Alexis II, accused the Catholics of inflicting sufferings and even persecutions upon the Orthodox in Western Ukraine. In order to overcome and resolve the difficulties which arose in this country, a meeting took place in Moscow in January 1990 between the Holy See and the Patriarchate of Moscow. During the meeting, the two delegations drew up “Recommendations” in view of the normalization of the relations between Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics in Western Ukraine. In this context, on May 31, 1991, John Paul II sent a letter to the bishops of the European continent about the relations between Catholics and Orthodox in the new situation of Central and Eastern Europe. In this letter, he emphasized that the religious liberty recovered by many peoples of Eastern Europe “made possible the re-organization of the Catholic Church’s Latin Rite in various nations and the normalization of the life of the Catholic Church’s Byzantine Rite,” but that this was accompanied by tensions and problems coming also from “the wounds caused by the sad experiences of the past.” “In Western Ukraine, today the Orthodox Church is actually destroyed,”42 complained an Orthodox official. The Catholics, whom the Communists had tried to force to become Orthodox and who had suffered for the Faith, obviously were most anxious to again become openly Catholic as soon as they were free to do so. Their “antiecumenical” attitude, which is a sorrow to the Roman authorities, is explained by this avowal which we can call a gem of Msgr. Duprey, one of the officials of the Secretariat for Christian Unity: This agreement [decided by the Roman authorities without asking their opinions] could not be fully applied because of an explosion of the passions back there, which neither the Catholic authorities nor the Orthodox authorities could control. We must bear in mind that these Catholic faithful were unable to have contacts with the Holy See at the time when the Catholic Church was making what I would dare to call a 180° turnabout in her attitude towards the Orthodox Church in her ecumenical commitment during the Second Vatican Council and later in its application. Let us not forget either that, for 50 years at least, neither the Catholic Church nor the Orthodox Church had the possibility of giving a catechetical formation enabling them to orientate their faithful in this new direction.43 2) The appointment of three apostolic administrators for the European part of Russia, for Siberia, and Kazakhstan by the Holy See in 1991. In Russia, until 1917, there was an ecclesial structure that encompassed the entire territory: it was the Archdiocese of Mohilev (in Belarus), created in 1783. The increase in the number of Catholics in the Russian empire was due to various factors, among which were the arrival of German settlers, massive deportation of Catholics from the kingdom of Poland and from Lithuania to the territories of the Russian empire; emigration of Poles and Lithuanians to Russia because of unemployment. These various www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 36 causes brought about the arrival of Catholics in the territories of the Czarist empire, even in Siberia. All in all, we can say that at the beginning of the 1920’s there were approximately 1,650,000 Catholics in Russia, with 580 parishes or churches and 397 priests to minister to them. In 1923, there still existed in the territory of the present Russian Republic six Catholic “deaneries” for the Latin Rite and the “apostolic Vicariate of Siberia,” erected into a diocese (Vladivostok) the same year. In 1926, in the midst of the raging persecution, Pope Pius XI divided the territory of the Archdiocese of Mohilev into five apostolic administrations, among which were those of Moscow and Leningrad, to ensure a better spiritual assistance to Latin-Rite Catholics. But among other devastating effects, the 70 years of Communism changed the “Latin” religious topography of the Soviet Union. The map of the religious denominations changed much during those years due to the successive deportations of populations (caused by the Second World War, or arbitrarily decided by Stalin). Millions of people were obliged through violence and terror to move from one area to another across this immense territory. Consequent to these deportations, Catholics were to be found in great number all the way to Siberia and Kazakhstan. These Catholic have been practically deprived of pastors for decades. As far as possible, the Holy See tried to get in touch with these Catholic communities. The popes, as much as they could do so at the time, tried to go towards these Catholic communities who were turning to the See of Peter to implore help. In 1989, in the Soviet Union, the “law on liberty of conscience and religious organizations” was promulgated; it was also the beginning of official relationships between the Holy See and the USSR. The Pope’s representative, Msgr. Colasuonno (now a cardinal) tried to establish an inventory of the Catholic communities which were at last able to manifest themselves. In Moscow, the Catholics of Polish origin alone might be 40,000, not including the Catholics from other origins and the members of the numerous embassies. In St. Petersburg, there are some 12,000 Catholics of Polish origin and many Lithuanians. In the area of the Volga, there are over 40,000 faithful of Polish, German, and Lithuanian origin who were deported there by Stalin. In Siberia, in the area of Novosibirsk, it seems that there are about 40,000 Catholics of German origin and just as many of Polish origin, and in Omsk, about 50,000 of German origin. In Kazakhstan, most of the Latin rite Catholics are Germans (about 500,000 Catholics) who were deported to the diocese of Tiraspol (already erected in 1848) where there also some 100, 000 Poles. THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org In the present state of things, it is still difficult to know the exact number of Catholics present in the territory of the Russian Federation. We can affirm, while being close to the truth, that presently the number of Catholics in the whole Russian Federation is somewhere around 1,300,000.44 Consequently, on April 13, 1991, the Holy See appointed three apostolic administrators in the territory of the former USSR. This appointment was interpreted by the Patriarchate of Moscow as an attempt at missionary action in territories in which the Orthodox Church traditionally has the majority. It accused the Holy See of establishing “ecclesiastic structures parallel” to the Orthodox structures in territories where they did not exist previously. This creation may have no other purpose than to set up the conditions for future proselytism. The Holy See tried to explain to the Russian Orthodox Church that the purpose of these appointments was merely to answer the needs of the Catholic communities in the places where they find themselves nowadays, thanks to the religious freedom at last recognized in the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, as soon as it was possible, the Holy See accomplished its duty of providing pastors for Catholics who, for more than 70 years, had been living in a situation of great spiritual distress. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State, intervened on this subject: I would not like a gesture of great pastoral solicitude from the Pope in favor of the Catholics in these areas to continue to be misinterpreted by anyone, and inaccurate or truly unjust affirmations to continue to be repeated. The Holy Father has the duty to provide spiritual assistance for the Latin-Rite Catholic communities. Consequently, the Holy Father has established three apostolic administrations for European Russia, Siberia and Kazakhstan, appointing as many apostolic administrators, who will reside in the centers having the greatest number of Catholics: Moscow, Novosibirsk, and Karaganda. The re-organization of the Catholic Church in the countries of Eastern Europe is not done at all with the intention of making converts. The unique reason was pastoral. Personally, I would have expected a better understanding of the Pope’s pastoral attitude.45 These measures “were in no wise motivated by proselytism. The Holy See feels a great respect and a great esteem for the Russian Orthodox Church. And it showed this on various occasions and in different manners.”46 Since the reorganization of the Latin-Rite Church in 1991, the number of parishes in the Russian Federation increased from 10 to 220. The major seminary of St. Petersburg was reopened in 1993, and Catholic priests were ordained, something that had not happened for 80 years. But 40% of the parishes still do not have a location to celebrate Mass, because many of the churches which belonged 37 to the Catholic Church have not been given back, especially in the areas where Catholics are a minority, hence the impossibility of practising their religion in all freedom. On February 11, 2002, the Holy See made public the new organization of the Catholic Church in the territory of the Russian Federation. The four “apostolic administrations” (created in 1991 and 1999), structures which are temporary by definition, became full Catholic dioceses, and the former apostolic administration of Northern European Russia was even made into a metropolitan archdiocese with its see in Moscow. That same day, L’Osservatore Romano published the following explanatory notice: With the elevation of the four present administrations to the rank of dioceses and the creation of a metropolitan see in the Russian Federation, His Holiness John Paul II wants to answer concretely to the pastoral solicitude due to those who have freely chosen and acknowledged the Catholic Church as their “home” or “family.” It is not, strictly speaking, a question of introducing new ecclesiastic structures in these territories, but rather of re-establishing those which already existed previously, while adjusting them to the present situation. The present increase in the number of Catholics in the Russian Federation certainly does not come from the passage of Orthodox faithful to the Catholic Church. The new Catholics rather come from walks of life usually removed from any religion. They came in contact with the Catholic Church, and asked to be baptized and become part of this Church. This is sufficient to wave aside any hypothesis or accusation of proselytism which are often leveled at us with assured approximation, obviously based on a partial or inaccurate reading of the facts.47 To this the Orthodox oppose various arguments. For the Orthodox Church and the Russian government, which agree on this point, the Russians were always the flock of the Orthodox Church, and even if many were torn away from their religion by 70 years of the Communist regime, they must now return to Orthodoxy. The new converts coming to the Catholic Church are not pagans to be converted, but descendants of the Orthodox whose religion was violently torn away from them. They must be given time to evangelize them again. The 70 years of oppression and sometimes of very severe open persecutions have weakened our Church and deprived her of her missionary and catechetic knowhow. Without having the time to catch our breath and restore forgotten traditions, we are today confronted with a serious competition in the domain of missionary action by all those who are here, from the Moonists and the new Charismatic movements to our Catholic brethren.48 According to the Orthodox, the Christians who are Russian citizens and who only speak Russian must be Orthodox, since Russia is a traditional territory of the Orthodox Church. The Catholic Church must cease her proselytism “on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church,” and should not open parishes in these “traditionally” Orthodox territories. These two issues of the Uniates and of the proselytism of the Catholic Church in Russia cause great tensions in the relations between the Vatican and the Patriarchate of Moscow. In order to give a more precise idea of the difficulties of ecumenism with the Orthodox, here are two examples of internal divisions in Orthodoxy. In the Ukraine, Orthodoxy is divided into three parallel hierarchies, which makes matters singularly difficult. For the Patriarchate of Moscow, the only canonical representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox is Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev, primate of the autonomous Orthodox Church of Kiev (with approximately 5,500 parishes). But there also exists an “autocephalous Church of the Ukraine” (not recognized by the other Orthodox Churches), re-constituted in 1989 (with 800 parishes), and a “Ukrainian Church–Patriarchate of Kiev,” created in 1992 (with 1,500 parishes). This latter is supported by the Ukrainian civil authorities favorable to a rupture with Moscow politically as well as religiously. With which one of these “Churches,” which cordially hate each other, should we practise ecumenism? Here is a question of the daily La Croix to the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexis II: On the occasion of his visit to the Ukraine (in 2001), John Paul II greeted the representatives of other Orthodox Churches established in the Ukraine but which do not depend upon the Patriarchate of Moscow. How do you react to this gesture? This question gives rise to concern in the Russian Orthodox Church. It has to do with the ambiguous position of the Roman Catholic Church towards several schismatic “Orthodox” groups [schismatics also have their own schismatics!] present in the Ukraine. The Patriarchate of Moscow insists with the Vatican upon a mandatory and official acknowledgment by the Vatican of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the only canonical Orthodox Church in the country, and of his head as the only Orthodox primate for the all of the Ukraine. Such a measure would make it possible to avoid a further degradation of the relations between our Churches in the future.49 A second example: Moscow and Constantinople are in conflict concerning jurisdiction over the Orthodox of Estonia. In summary, those of Russian origin want to maintain links with the Patriarchate of Moscow, while those of Estonian origin want to be autonomous under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The visit to Estonia of Bartholomew, the present Patriarch of Constantinople, in October 2001 was considered by Moscow as an intrusion and a provocation. On www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 38 November 6, the Russian Orthodox Church broke all relations with Constantinople. There are similar problems in the Ukraine. As a rule, the Patriarchate of Moscow is so touchy that we can feel ill will and blackmail in its reaction. Russian nationalism may be partly responsible, but we are forced to observe that it uses methods similar to those of the Communists. This is probably not a coincidence; its apparatchiks remain impregnated by 70 years of close contact with Communism. How difficult would be any attempt of union with the See of Peter, even if it were done in a Catholic spirit, by reason of this complex situation! The Greek Church The Greek Orthodox Church deserves a special mention. It never hid its mistrust and apprehension of ecumenism, and it proclaimed it loud and clear. For instance, on the occasion of the first official visit of Cardinal Willebrands in Greece, on May 18, 1971, the Orthodox archbishop of Athens in his address expressed his mistrust of the Roman Church, which has been forever under suspicion of entertaining questionable intentions with regards to the Orthodox Church.50 The Orthodox Church in Greece is particularly attached to the immutable and intangible character of its doctrine. The Metropolitan of Patras declared as spokesman of this Church: Not a single iota of the dogmas of Orthodoxy shall be removed....We must not allow that Orthodoxy be modified in anything whatsoever....Not one jot or tittle shall be taken away from the whole of the Orthodox faith.51 On December 16, 1969, the Russian Orthodox Church, in order to make reciprocal the Catholic decision made two years earlier, decided to allow Catholics to its sacraments. This caused an uproar in the rest of the Orthodox world, especially in Greece. The monks on Mount Athos said they were “dumbfounded” by this “incredible” decision.52 As a matter of fact, the Russian Orthodox Church would suspend its decision in 1986.53 In 1972, eight out of the twenty monasteries on Mount Athos rebelled against the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and ceased to make a commemoration of him (Athenagoras, and then Dimitrios) in the liturgy, in order to manifest their opposition to the ecumenical overtures of the Patriarchate towards Rome.54 The Patriarchate had a hard time pacifying them, and was slowed down in its ecumenical wishes by this internal opposition. The position of the Church in Greece is probably even more radical than that of Constantinople, but it shows us well what is at the basis of Orthodoxy. Today’s Orthodox want to remain themselves, namely, Orthodox. They mean THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org to be faithful to the “undivided Church” of the first millennium, i.e., before the separation of the Latin Church. They accept only the first seven Councils. The Councils celebrated after the schism are not ecumenical and the truths defined since that date are theological opinions of the Church of Rome. For them, the Roman Church made secession and has fallen away from unity with Orthodoxy. They do not share, and rightly so, the enthusiasm of the conciliar Catholics for all the novelties, and they are much more attached to their doctrinal and liturgical tradition. But, in fact, the Orthodox bishops are mere “Museum custodians.” Many Orthodox do not agree with ecumenical organizations such as the WCC. They reject ecumenism for deep doctrinal reasons. It would seem that the Patriarchate of Moscow slows it down rather for opportunist and political reasons (it threatens to weaken its own power), but it can put forth purely doctrinal considerations. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church held an extraordinary assembly during which she published a document on the basic principles ruling the relations of the Russian Orthodox Church with heterodoxy (namely the non-Orthodox Christians).55 We quote here somewhat extensive passages from this important document, because it explains the present position of a good portion of the Orthodox: The Orthodox Church is the true Church of Christ, founded by Our Lord and Savior Himself, the Church that the Holy Ghost has established and which He fills, the Church of which the Savior Himself said: “I shall build my Church56 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her” (Mt. 16:18). She is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church57, the custodian and dispenser of the sacred sacraments in the whole world, ‘column and foundation of the truth’ (I Tim. 3:15). Hers is the full responsibility of diffusing the truth of the Gospel of Christ. The Orthodox Church is the true Church, in which are kept unaltered the holy Tradition and the fullness of the saving grace of God. Those who have fallen away from the Church cannot be united to her again in the state in which they now are: we must overcome the existing dogmatic divergences and not merely go around them. Unacceptable is the idea that all the divisions are tragic misunderstandings, that the disagreements only seem irreconcilable because of a lack of mutual love, because of a refusal to understand, and that in spite of all the difference and all the dissimilarity, there is a sufficient unity and agreement “on the essentials”.... Equally unacceptable is the affirmation that what distinguishes the Orthodox Church from the Christian communities with which it is not in communion are questions of secondary importance. We do not have the right to reduce all the divisions and disagreements to various non-theological factors. 39 The Orthodox Church rejects a unity more apparent than real, “thanks to which the Christian will appear united on what is secondary and will continue as in the past to diverge on the essentials.” In the relationships with the heterodox, there must be a firm confession of the truth of our Ecumenical Church as the only custodian of the heritage of Christ and the unique ark of salvation and divine grace…we must reveal to them our faith and our immutable conviction that our Orthodox Church alone has kept unaltered the totality of the Christian deposit. (Quotation from a letter of the Holy Synod of 1903.) The Orthodox Church considers as her main task to “bear a permanent and insistent testimony” to the tradition of the Church. It is “the main objective of the Orthodox participation to the ecumenical movement.” If the necessity for the Orthodox Church to bear testimony before the heterodox world does not raise any doubt, on the other hand the question of the concrete forms of this testimony, and especially the legitimacy of a participation of the Orthodox Church to the ecumenical movement and to the International Christian organizations, were the objects of careful and constant consideration and continue to be so.... We cannot say that this point goes without saying for the Orthodox conscience....While participating in the ecumenical movement, the Orthodox however proclaim clearly and without ambiguity that they do not share the heterodox conception of ecumenism. They exclude all dogmatic concessions and any compromise in the domain of the faith. We would like to find the same firmness in the Catholic pastors! We must also mention that the Russian Church “outside the country” (the Church constituted during the 1922 emigration, which is not in canonical communion with all of the Orthodoxy) “anathematized ecumenism” in 1983. So this is what the Orthodox think of the ecumenical dialogue. For them, there is no question of conversion or of a return to the Catholic Church. This article was originally published in Nouvelles de Chrétienté in January 2003. However, since Benedict XVI considers ecumenism with the Orthodox as one of the priorities of his pontificate, this study by Fr. Gresland has lost none of its interest. Fr. Hervé Gresland, a Frenchman, was ordained in 1983. After several assignments at priories in France, he is now at the Sierre Priory in Switzerland. 1 L. Bouyer in Dom L. Beauduin, un homme d’Eglise (Casterman, 1964), p.135. 2 Let it be understood from the start that we call the different Christian communities “Churches” only for the sake of convenience. 3 La Croix, January 3, 1961. 4 La Documentation Catholique (D.C.), November 5, 1961. 5 D.C., January 21, 1962. 6 Interview with La Stampa, February 20, 1962. D.C., July 1, 1962. 7 D.C., November 4, 1962. 8 R. M. Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, p. 124 (French edition). 9 Declaration of November 22, 1964, D.C., February 21, 1965. 10 Pastoral Letter of Cardinal Lubachivsky, major archbishop of Lviv of the Ukrainians, D.C., September 1994. 11 D.C., February 2, 1964. 12 Unitatis Redintegration, §14. 13 IVth Lateran Council, Dz. 802. 14 They Have Uncrowned Him, p. 176 (French edition). 15 November 22, 1964. D.C., February 21, 1965. 16 D.C. 1966, No.1462. 17 On December 14, 1975; D.C., January 1976. 18 Unitatis Redintegration, §15. 19 Guidebook of May 14, 1967; D.C., June 18, 1967. 20 Canon 1258. 21 Gal. 3:28. 22 Letter Anno Ineunte, handed by Paul VI to Athenagoras on July 25, 1967. D.C., August 7, 1967. 23 Article by Cardinal Bea. D.C., December 17,1967. 24 Cf. Footnote 10. 25 D.C., October 15, 1967. 26 On January 24, 1972. D.C., February 20, 1972. 27 On the occasion of the Angelus of January 23, 1972. D.C., February 20, 1972. 28 L’Osservatore Romano, December 16, 1975 (French edition), article by Fr. Pierre Duprey. D.C., January 4 1976. 29 Article by Fr. Congar in L’Osservatore Romano, September 25, 1977. D.C., January 15, 1978. 30 Cf. footnote 10. 31 Idem. 32 D.C., July 20, 1980. 33 Encyclical Slavorum Apostoli of June 2, 1985. The passage quoted by the Pope is taken from his address at Bari in St. Nicolas’ Basilica, on February 26, 1984. 34 Report in the D.C. of January 17, 1988. 35 D.C., January 17, 1988. 36 D.C., September 17, 2000. 37 Quoted by Philippe Prévost in L’Eglise et le Ralliement (C.E.C., 2001), p.242. 38 Nouvelles du Monde Orthodoxe, November 2002. 39 Letter of Cardinal Lubachivsky to Cardinal Cassidy, Rome, August 2, 1993. D.C., January 16, 1994. 40 La Croix, June 8 and 11, 1989. 41 Interview of Patriarch Alexis I on March 1966. D.C. July 17, 1966. 42 Address of Fr. Yosif Poustooutov at the Fifth European Ecumenical Meeting in Santiago, November 12-8, 1991. D.C., January 5, 1992. 43 Address of Msgr. Pierre Duprey at the Fifth European Ecumenical Meeting in Santiago, D.C., January 5, 1992. 44 Article in L’Osservatore Romano, French edition, February 10-11, 2002. D.C., April 7, 2002. 45 The historical and pastoral reasons for the recent bishops’ appointments in the USSR, the Ukraine and Rumania. Speech of Cardinal Sodano, Secretary of State on December 6, 1991. D.C., January 19, 1992. 46 Communiqué from the Press Room of the Holy See. L’Osservatore Romano of October 14, 1991. D.C., November 17, 1991. 47 D.C., April 7, 2002. 48 See footnote 42. 49 Interview of Alexis II with La Croix, published in the September 12, 2001 edition. D.C. November 18, 2001. 50 D.C., August 1, 1971. 51 Conference given on November 1980. D.C., November 1, 1981. 52 D.C., March 15 and April 19, 1970. 53 D.C., December 7, 1986. 54 D.C., January 7, 1973. 55 Assembly of Moscow from August 13-16. Text in the D.C. of April 15, 2001. 56 This sentence falsifies the text since the “on this rock” is eliminated. 57 Nevertheless the Orthodox recognize that “to confess that our holy Eastern Orthodox Church is the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church does not means that the notes of the Church are not found and are not respected in other particular Churches separated from us.” (Discourse of Msgr. Meliton, President of the Conference, at the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Rhodes on November 1, 1964. D.C., May 2, 1965.) www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 40 Ten Minutes with Fr. de Chivré: Love’s Progress in Marriage St. Thomas Aquinas’s definition of marriage is “conjunctio et vinculum animarum et relatio conjungum–the indissoluble union of souls and relation of spouses.” There is a joy of permanence when he is speaking of the soul of the spouses: vinculum—bond. St. Thomas saves the notion of love: a mutual and definitive engagement between two souls, bringing about a permanent and practically accidental right of the two sensibilities over each other. Since perfection implies a state—therefore a duration, a permanence, we have to seek the principle of the perfection of love in the spiritual life of the two spouses. The reason? Perfect love consists in a certain forgetfulness in the gift of self. Now, sensibility does not know such gratuity; it represents the interested form of love, that which demands its salary, its emotion, its impressions; it is the love of concupiscence, the love whose act reveals that one is concerned more with oneself than with one’s partner, who is limited to being the means producing one’s personal joy—which one is seeking legitimately, moreover. In a love inspired primarily by the sensibility of each, there is first a personal self-seeking by way of another. The initiative goes from oneself to the spouse, and comes back to oneself (the bee gathering nectar from a flower). This form of love fosters fidelity by the physical and psychological awareness which one takes from the agreeable reciprocity of sensible exchanges existing between two spouses, but it does not involve the depth THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org of their souls; it is a relation not a bond; it leaves their judgment free regarding each other; it does not engage them on the deepest level. Now, the only sure love is the love that exhausts the reasons to give oneself, the substantial reasons that engage the soul to give itself and call upon the love of benevolence, that perfected form of love. Contrary to the love of concupiscence, the love of benevolence goes out from the heart of the spouse as a proof of attachment so spontaneous and so gratuitous that it demands no salary, no obligatory response, no sensible gain. It regards solely that which involves benevolence toward the other: the good which it will bring to the other, the virtue which it will foster in the other, the joy which it will cause the other, the help which it will procure for the other, the lightening of a burden which it will produce for the other. It is a supremely disinterested attitude, fruit of an intensity of affection having reached the point where one sees only the beloved without any concern for oneself. This gratuity, this attention to gratuity in a love, is the signature of its moral superiority and its authenticity. What is the origin of this gratuity? The flesh, because it is material, therefore because it is perishable, has no notion of gratuity. Even in its generosities it seeks a pledge of duration, an opportunity to verify that it still exists and that we are not forgetting about it, in the form of a sensible benefit, a pleasant emotion, or an interesting gift. It has no notion of 41 gratuity. With the flesh, everything has a price. Gratuity has its origin and flows spontaneously from the value of a being: the diamond gratuitously shines its fires, the sun gratuitously shines its light, God gratuitously shines His goodness, because, in varying degrees, they are beings of value, finite or infinite. Now, nothing binds, nothing confirms a relation like gratuity; why? Because it is the expression of beauty, and beauty binds us to it. Two spouses whose supernatural value is true will experience, spontaneously and reciprocally, the need to prove their love gratuitously, and so they will give one another proofs of the moral beauty of their soul, which will bind them more and more to one another with a freshness, an enthusiasm, and a youth that are forever increasing. The love of concupiscence—legitimate for all that, but not immune to selfishness and the callousness of selfishness that separates more or less according as it inspires more or less these proofs of interested love—will have ceded to an undercurrent, composed of so great a reciprocal benevolence that the two spouses will come to a greater and greater appreciation of each other in a joy without parallel. Even in the love of benevolence we have to make distinctions. It, too, has its duties: the marriage debt, mutual support, obligatory help to one another. These duties are at one and the same time the conjunction of the two aforementioned forms of love: concupiscence and benevolence are both involved. The duties of love are freely chosen engagements, without a doubt, therefore retaining an echo of gratuity, but rendered obligatory by the sacrament of which they are not yet the full blossoming. However, to the extent that each of the spouses is intent on accomplishing his duty with virtue, to that extent he prepares himself, by the virtuous aspect of that duty, to awaken in himself more than the notion of affection owed: the notion of affection offered by pure gratuity. This affection spontaneously offered over and above duty, outside of duty, proves itself by attitudes from which is excluded all idea of interested seeking on the part of our sensibility—and this is precisely what will render affection more and more interesting: disinterestedness in service, sacrifices, kind and thoughtful initiatives, affectionate and unexpected decision. And this at the expense, perhaps, of a personal pleasure, of time “for self,” of work “for self.” The art of self-forgetting engenders the art of loving, and the art of loving engenders the art of making oneself loved without running after it. The hallmark of pure love turns out to be, then, the need to do more than one’s duty—for value is a thing of life, and life has no reason not to prove itself. The duration and the development of love therefore demand the moral and supernatural perfection of our faculties, to maintain them in a state of gratuity. The role of prayer and the sacraments is intimately tied to the life of love in marriage and source of its density—its weight. Marriage begins with the love of concupiscence, progresses into the love of concupiscence qualified by a beginning of benevolence, and comes at last into its own with a very sweet and very strong friendship, recompense of a love of benevolence in full activity taking more and more the place of the love of concupiscence. Two people physically young felt themselves attracted toward one another to the benefit of their reciprocal sensibility; it was the time of passionate proofs of affection in which, without suspecting it, their heart, too, began to engage values of its own, though still entangled in the necessary sensations and emotions. Little by little these values became aware of their relative independence from the flesh, as the scent is relatively independent from the flower; then, the years going by and sensibilities calming, these values came loose of themselves from any carnal demands, as the fruit comes loose from the tree. Sufficiently noble and sufficiently supernatural, they proved to be living of a life all their own, a pure life, a life of the heart and the soul, an intense life emerged from the sensible cocoon and become independent and free to give itself entirely. These values blossomed in the sunshine of God, of His adoration, of His imitation; then, as God entered into the love of these young people, and as the divine reasons to love each other settled into their understanding, they passed beyond the phase of culpable hesitations and enervating lassitudes; they eternalized their affection by nourishing it with the immortality of their personal value. This value, composed of the state of grace, the state of gift, the state of offertory, pervaded their intentions and their actions. They begin to know each other more and more deeply by a more and more absolute appreciation silently brought to bear on the delightfully Christian attitudes of each one. They begin no longer to desire each other for being continually together whether separated or apart. They begin to read each other even before they speak, so much do both know the other ready to be of service. The shameful dreams of guilty distractions no longer even darken the horizon of their heart, for their heart is content, and a contented heart no longer dreams of being guilty. Is not this the sweetest and most real emotion of Christian love, to have so entirely interwoven two lives in the energy of a love more and more gratuitous, that there is no longer any other reason for living than steadily to strengthen that love? When you look closely, very closely, we are always the architects of our unhappiness and of our happiness by the inferior or superior manner with which we envision the usage of the means destined for its construction. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Carnets Spirituels, No.8, pp.3-7. Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 42 F R . p e t e r R . s c o t t Q Is the Church telling the truth when it says of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Thou alone hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world”? It would by idyllic to imagine a time in which there would be no heresies, no individual persons who place their personal opinions over the Church’s authority and Magisterium. However, the fact that heresies exist, and that this time has manifestly not come, does not at all mean that this antiphon with which the Church honors the Blessed Virgin Mary is not perfectly and literally true. For there cannot be a time, this side of the General Judgment, in which heresies will not exist. St. Paul stated this very explicitly in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For there must be also heresies: that they also, who are approved, may be made manifest among you” (11:19). The meaning of this antiphon is consequently not that there was or will be a time at which all heresies in the whole world are destroyed, but that at all times the Blessed Virgin Mary destroys all heresies in the whole world in those who are truly and profoundly devoted to her. The meaning of this expression is very well explained by St. Pius X in his encyclical of 1904 for the 50th anniversary of the definition of the Immaculate Conception. He there explains that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception contains in germ all Catholic doctrine and in particular the supernatural order of grace, which man in his proud rebellion refuses to accept. Devotion to the Immaculate Mother of God is consequently the only means to preserve the submission to God and to the Church’s authority that are the protection against all heresy and every error in the Faith. is neither liberal, nor modernist, nor ecumenical. She is impervious to all errors and with even greater reason to heresies and apostasy. (Spiritual Journey, p. 57) Is it permissible to induce early delivery in cases of fetal anencephaly? Anencephaly [an´en-sef ´e-lee] is a congenital deformity of an unborn fetus in which large parts of the brain and skull are missing. It is always fatal for obvious reasons. The birth can be emotionally upsetting, since the birth defect is quite ugly and obvious. The baby may be stillborn, or may survive for a very short period of time before dying. The condition is usually now diagnosed during the second trimester by means of ultrasound. The most frequently advised medical treatment is abortion, the justification being that the baby will not survive, and this will diminish the emotional suffering of the wait and the trauma of seeing a deformed baby. However, the fact that the child will die is irrelevant. It is clearly evident that such direct killing of the unborn is not only a mortal sin, but also merits for every Catholic the canonical censure of excommunication. As a consequence, some Catholics devised the plan of early delivery, stating that the principle of double effect applied, and that it was not an abortion, for the death of the baby is not directly willed, but rather the relief of the mother’s anguish. This is not true, for the early delivery before viability is a direct killing of the infant. Then others came up with the opinion that premature induction could be done for as long as the fetus was viable, namely at 33 weeks. The problem with such a position is that the fetus is likely to die not just of anencephaly, but also of the consequences of prematurity, unless extraordinary means are used, which would not normally be the case when there is such a severe defect. Clearly, then, this is not permissible. At any rate, it is of no advantage to the baby, and there is no real evidence to suggest that there is any relief of parents’ emotional distress due to such early induction. Consequently, even in such cases in which the infant is viable, there is no proportionate cause, and the principle of double effect cannot be applied to place the baby at such great risk. Consequently, in 1996 the US Bishops issued a statement that treats of this question quite well, entitled, “Moral Principles Concerning Infants with Anencephaly.” It declared: A If people believe and profess that in the first moment of her conception the Virgin Mary was free from all stain, they must also admit the existence of original sin, the redemption of mankind by Christ, the Gospel, the Church, and even the law of suffering. These truths will root up and destroy any kind of rationalism and materialism that exists.…This doctrine compels us to recognize that power of the Church which demands intellectual as well as voluntary submission. Because of this intellectual submission the Christian people sing to the Mother of God: “Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is no original stain in thee.” For this reason the Church rightly attributes the destruction of all heresies in the whole world to the venerable Virgin alone. (Ad Diem Illum, §14) Archbishop Lefebvre was himself very much aware of the wisdom of this teaching concerning devotion to the Blessed Mother as the great protection for the integrity of our Faith, especially for apostles of these last times: May devotion to Mary be honored in every house and chapel of the Society, and in all the hearts of all its members! Mary will keep us in the Catholic Faith. She THE ANGELUS • July 2007 www.angeluspress.org It is clear that before “viability” it is never permitted to terminate the gestation of an anencephalic child as the means of avoiding psychological or physical risks to the mother. Nor is such termination permitted after “viability” if early delivery endangers the child’s life due to complications of prematurity.…Only if the complications of the pregnancy result in a life-threatening pathology of the mother may the treatment of this pathology be 43 permitted even at a risk to the child, and then only if the child’s death is not a means to treating the mother.1 The emotional distress referred to in this whole discussion is none other than the refusal of the mystery of the Cross. It is a consequence of original sin that sickness entered into the world, and the particularly distressing sickness of congenital deformities. If the innocence of the baby, who has not personally merited such afflictions, distresses us, yet the existence of such deformities is a necessary reminder of the universality of our inheritance of original sin and of how much we are all in need of the Redemption, and of the mystery of the Cross. The thought of trying to escape this distress by any other way is nothing less than the running away from the Cross that is inseparable from human life in this vale of tears. Others, however, have proposed early induction not for the comfort of the mother, but to assure the birth of a live infant, and hence a certain valid baptism. This is a grave reason, but still could not justify doing anything morally wrong, such as delivering a baby before viability, or delivering a baby after viability but not supplying the means necessary to survive. It would seem, at any rate, a false presupposition to think that the baby would be more likely to be born alive with premature induction than with normal birth or Cesarean section at term, and so the Catholic attitude in such a case would be to pray, place all things in Divine Providence, and be ready for an emergency baptism as soon as the child is born. Fr. Peter Scott was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. After assignments as seminary professor and the US District Superior, he is currently the rector of Holy Cross Seminary in Goulburn, Australia. 1 Origins, 26, 17 (October 10, 1996), quoted in “The Case Against Premature Induction” by Nancy Valko, the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Vol. 29, May 2004, §5. This article treats admirably of this subject in detail. writing Contest winner The members of the judging panal (none of whom are on the Angelus Press staff) made this selection based on the strict definition of the “essay” format which is what the March 2007 contest required. Note that since then The Angelus has broadened the contest to include any poem, dialogue, short story, song lyrics, script, explanation, etc. Miss Marybeth Themann St. Pius X Catholic Church, Cincinnati, Ohio Cold—the air is cold. The ground is cold. The stone is cold. All appears black and desolate. To one without faith this place is one of despair and sorrow. This is the end of all things. There is nothing more. However, the Catholic eye sees beyond the mere surface. It discovers much to lift the heart in such a place. The Catholic eye sees the statue of Our Lady who patiently watches over the mortal remains of her child till Judgment Day. It notices the fresh flowers which symbolize fresh prayers being sent to heaven on this soul’s behalf. The eye of faith beholds the April 2007 evergreen tree which lives on even in the dead of the year; to the Catholic mind this is akin to the human soul which lives on in eternity even while its body decays here on earth. The Catholic heart realizes that this is not a place of despair but a place of hope, not a place of fear but one of comfort, not the end of the journey but simply another part of the road. The cemetery is merely a resting place, a kind of waiting area where mortal bodies sleep away the days until they will again be united to their immortal souls, nevermore to be www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • July 2007 separated. The Angelus monthly photo writing contest Any member of a household aged 10-18 whose family address has a current subscription to The Angelus (either in print or online) is eligible. There may be more than one entry per address if more than one child is eligible. (Please include your family’s address and phone number, especially if you are a contestant writing from a boarding school.) Pricing for The Angelus is found at the bottom of the “Table of Contents” page. The Angelus is offering $150 for a 250-word creative writing composition on the above picture. (This may include, but is not limited to, any poem, dialogue, short story, song lyrics, script, explanation, etc.) If none is deserving of the prize, none will be awarded. The winning essay may be published if there is a winner. An extra $50 is available if one is a member of the SSPX Eucharistic Crusade (verified by your chaplain with your entry). Entrants must submit a creative-writing composition in their own words about the featured monthly picture. Submissions must be handwritten and will be judged on content, legibility, and creativity. The essays will be judged by parties outside of Angelus Press. Essays must be postmarked or faxed by july 31 and be addressed to: Attention: The Angelus Monthly Photo Writing Contest 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109 FAX: 816-753-3557 (24-hour dedicated line) archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Writings and Addresses 1963•1976  Out of print Out of print for 13 years, A Bishop Speaks is back! Posthumous thanks are due to Mr. Michael Davies, RIP, who continually encouraged us to reprint this book while revising Pope John’s Council and Pope Paul’s New Mass. He said, “You must reprint A Bishop Speaks. It’s a very important work.” He referred to and quoted from his old copy constantly. This book is a chronological collection of key letters, sermons, conferences, and interviews (1963-1976) that are critical to understanding his founding of the SSPX, his defense of Catholic Tradition, and his opposition to Vatican II and the New Mass. “We hope that this English edition will be widely read. May it also help many Catholics–bishops, priests, and laity–to understand the tragedy that is ruining the Church, and the new betrayal of which Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Victim,” said Archbishop Lefebvre in the first English edition. for 13 years!  New, expanded edition!  Includes those parts unpublished in the original English edition Includes: 1963: Letter to Members of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost on Wearing the Cassock  Letter on the First Session of Vatican II. 1964: After the Second Session of the Vatican II. 1965: Between the Third and Fourth Sessions of Vatican II. 1968: Light on the Present Crisis in the Church  For a True Renovation of the Church  Authority in the Family and in Society as an Aid to Our Salvation. 1969: After the Council: The Church and the Moral Crisis of Today. 1970: To Remain a Good Catholic Must One Become a Protestant? 1971: The Priest and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass  The Fruits of the New Mass. 1972: The Priest and the Present Crisis in the Church. 1973: Priests for Tomorrow. 1974: Crisis of the Church or Crisis of the Priesthood? 1975: Declaration  Account of the “Three Cardinals’ Commission” in Suppressing the SSPX  Letter to Pope Paul VI (both) 1976: Letter to Pope Paul VI (three)  Ordination Sermon  The Sermon at Lille 312pp, softcover, STK# 5067Q $19.95 You and Thousands Like You “You must repr A Bishop S int pe It’s a veryaks. important work.” –Micha el Davies Fr. Owen Francis Dudley Originally printed in 1949, this book is perhaps even more relevant today than when it was first written. Written in the form of “An Open Letter to the Men and Women of Today,” this dynamic book constitutes an excellent apologia for the Catholic Faith. It shows what Christianity means and involves, and demonstrates how its practice could stave off the impending disaster which looms over our world. Fr. Dudley’s presentation is logical, forceful, and thought-provoking. He writes in a vivid and dynamic style familiar to his readers. “If certain things I shall say are resented, please believe me that it is not my intention to hurt, but only to draw attention to the truth. A quality of truth is that it hurts when refused; when accepted it no longer hurts.” 157pp, sewn hardcover, STK# 3082✱ $15.50 Highly recommended by SSPX US District Superior, Fr. John Fullerton The Rev. Owen Francis Dudley has won recognition on both sides of the Atlantic as a penetrating thinker and a novelist of distinction. Born in 1882, he studied for the Anglican ministry and was ordained in 1911. In 1915, he converted to the Catholic Faith and after study­ing for the Catholic priesthood at the Beda College in Rome, he was ordained in September of 1917. Fr. Dudley served as Chaplain to the British Gunners on the French and Italian fronts in World War I. After recovering from war wounds, Fr. Dudley be­came very active in the work of the Catholic Missionary Society, of which he was superior from 1933-1946, lecturing in town halls, theaters, Hyde Park and mining club rooms; he even visited the United States while on a lecture tour. As part of his missionary apostolate, he wrote a series of novels on the abiding Problems of Human Happiness–the desire of every heart. www.angeluspress.org l 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. Iota unum Romano Amerio (see revelation below) La Civiltà Cattolica breaks the silence on Romano Amerio! Just ed Reveal “He was the most authoritative and erudite representative of criticism of the Church in the name of Tradition, but for decades the discussion of his thought was barred. The magazine of the Rome Jesuits has broken the taboo. Authorized from on high.” These are the words of Italian journalist Sandro Magister (see www.angelusonline.org for the full article.) What follows are excerpts from his article, which is an analysis of the importance of the Civiltà Cattolica article, which itself was a positive book review of Enrico Maria Radaelli’s biography of Amerio, Romano Amerio: On Truth and Love. l ROME, April 23, 2007–In La Civiltà Cattolica, the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed with the prior scrutiny and authorization of the Vatican Secretaiat of State, a review has been published that signals the end of a taboo...one that has obliterated from public discussion, for decades, the thought of the most authoritative and erudite representative of criticism of the 20th century Church in the name of Tradition: the Swiss philologist and philosopher Romano Amerio.... l Amerio, although he was always extremely faithful to the Church, condensed his criticisms of it in two volumes: Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, begun in 1935 and finalized and published in 1985, and Stat Veritas, sequel to Iota Unum.... l Iota Unum, 658 pages, was reprinted three times in Italy, for a total of 7,000 copies, and was then translated into French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. It thus reached many tens of thousands of readers all over the world. But in spite of this, an almost complete blacklisting fell upon Amerio in the Church, both during and after his life. The review in La Civiltà Cattolica thus signals a turning point. Both because of where and how it was published–with the authorization of the Holy See–and because of what it says. l And the judgments are largely positive, both on “Amerio’s intellectual and moral stature,” and on “the importance of his philosophical-theological vision for the contemporary Church.” The reviewer, Giuseppe Esposito,...does not agree with Amerio in everything, but he maintains that his thought “deserves more extensive discussion,” and “without prejudice.” l In particular, he writes, “It seems simplistic to relegate his reflection–and that of Radaelli–to the sphere of nostalgic traditionalism, as a position now irrelevant, incapable of comprehending the new movements of the Spirit.” On the contrary, the reviewer maintains, Amerio’s thought “confers a form and a philosophical framework upon that ecclesial component which, following in the path of Tradition, reaches out to safeguard Christian specificity and identity.” #1007 816pp, softcover, STK# 6700✱ $30.00 Color hardcover, STK# 6700H✱ $40.00 Archbishop Lefebvre on Iota Unum: “In my opinion, it is the most perfect book that has been written since the Council on the Council, its consequences, and everything that has been happening in the Church since. He examines every subject with a truly remarkable perfection. I was stupefied to see with what serenity he discusses everything, without the passion of polemics, but with untouchable arguments.... I do not see how the current attitudes of Rome can still persist after the appearance of such a book. They are radically, definitively condemned, and with such precision, for he only uses their own texts....The whole is absolutely magnificent. “One could base an entire course on this book, on the pre-Council, the Council, and post-Council....The Popes take a licking...but he recounts their deeds, their words, everything. They stand condemned. In his epilogue he shows how the consequence is the dissolution of the Catholic religion....there must be a remnant; after all, the good God said that the Church will not perish, therefore there must be a...remnant that will keep the faith and tradition.” E-mail Updates from Angelus Press! If you would like to receive our bi-weekly e-mail, ­updating you on new titles, sales and special offers (most available only on-line), simply send your e-mail address to: listmaster@angeluspress.org. You can change your e-mail reception preferences or un-subscribe at any time. Shipping & Handling USA $.01 to $25.00 $7.50 $25.01 to $50.00 $10.00 $50.01 to $100.00 $15.00 Over $100.00 15% of order Foreign 50% of order subtotal angelus Press 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, Missouri 64109 1-800-96ORDER 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org l 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.