$4.45

JULY 2009

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION

INSIDE
Interview with Bishop
Alfonso De Galarreta

ORIGIN & CAUSES OF
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

Dr. White on Solzhenitsyn: PART 2

FACEBOOK, MYSPACE,
AND TWITTER, OH MY!

Pope Pius XII and the Catholic
Church During World War II: PART 3

of

HOLY HOUR
R EPA R ATION
First published in 1945, now completely re-typeset and
printed in full color. This collection of prayers may be used
for public or private devotion. Excellent for church Holy
Hours. Contents of this booklet include litanies, acts of
consecration, and many prayers.
In the Garden of Gethsemani on Mt. Olivet, Our Lord said
to His Apostles: “My soul is sorrowful even unto death.
Stay you here and watch with Me.” Later He said to them:
“Could you not watch one hour with Me?” The Sacred Heart
of Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary: “Make reparation for
the ingratitude of men. Spend an hour in prayer to appease
divine justice, to implore mercy for sinners, to honor Me,
to console Me for My bitter suffering when abandoned
by My apostles, when they did not WATCH ONE HOUR
WITH ME.”

64pp. Softcover. Full color throughout.
STK# 8388✱ $8.95

The Promises of the Heart of Christ
to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
I
II
III
IV
V

I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.
I will establish peace in their homes.
I will comfort them in their afflictions.
I will be their secure refuge during life, and above all in death.

I will bestow a large blessing upon all their undertakings.
E AUR
K
shall find in My Heart the source and the infinite ocean
MAY HOATION VI Sinners
of mercy.
L
VII Tepid souls shall grow fervent.
HO EPARME !
O
R
VIII Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection.
OF AT H
I will bless every place where a picture of My Heart shall be set up
IX
and honored.

X

I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.

XI

Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names
written in My Heart, never to be blotted out.

XII

I promise thee in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My
all-powerful love will grant to all those who communicate on the
First Friday in nine consecutive months, the grace of final
penitence; they shall not die in My disgrace nor without receiving
the Sacraments; My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this
last moment.

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ST

“Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.”
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

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ngelus
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July 2009
Volume XXXII, Number 7

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Letter from the editor. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 2

PublisheR

Interview with bishop de galarreta . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 3

Fr. Arnaud Rostand
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Iesus Christus magazine

An introduction to solzhenitsyn . .  .Part
 .  .  .  .  . 2 .  .  .  .  .  . 7
Dr. David Allen White

Church and world . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 13
pius XII AND THE ATTITUDE OF THE cATHOLIC
cHURCH DURING WORLD WAR ii . .  .Part
 .  .  .  .  .  .  .3 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 15
Fr. Peter Gumpel, S.J.

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THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT

The Blindness of Catholics: PART 2 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 19
Political Modernism: The Negation of Christ the King . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 22

facebook, myspace, and twitter, oh my! . .  .  .  .  .  . 28
Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

the origin and causes of
the spanish civil war . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 33
Scott Quinn and William F. Quinn

catechism of the crisis in the church . .Part
 .  .  .  .  .  .  .25
 .  .  . 41
Fr. Matthias Gaudron

Questions and answers. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 43
Fr. Peter Scott
ON OUR COVER: Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais blesses the crowd after performing
the ordination ceremony at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, Winona, MN, on June 19, 2009.
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2

Letter
from
the
Editor

In this issue of The Angelus you will find the third
part of the interview with Fr. Gumpel about Pope Pius
XII. Although this pope died half a century ago, the
topic is of a special interest today.
First of all, and most importantly, Pope Pius
XII represents “the old Church,”which means the
Church before Vatican II. Therefore the question of
his successes and failures often becomes implicitly a
question about the successes and failures of the “preconciliar Church” as opposed to the “post-conciliar
Church” (to use an expression of Cardinal Benelli). The
interview tries to show that the violators of historical
truth are the “post-conciliar ideologues,” not those who
defend the pope against unjust accusations. We are
proud to have in Pope Pius XII an “angelic pastor,”
someone who was not only learned and full of wisdom,
but also full of charity and commiseration with human
suffering, especially during World War II.
A true Catholic attitude is always an attitude
capable of abstracting from circumstances, like, for
instance, nationality. We find in Pius XII the attitude
of being independent from national adherence. He
was a friend of the Jews, but also a friend of the
Germans (having been for many years a papal nuncio
in Germany, he had many connections to Germany).
He was therefore predestined like nobody else to be
the highest representative of the Church of Christ,
cosmopolitan by its very definition, during the terrible
struggle of the world in a destructive war which
involved powerful ideologies and demanded from the
pope an unprecedented discernment of the spirits.
Many accusations are forwarded against Pope Pius
XII. While during and after World War II, prominent
Jews were speaking up and giving testimony in favor
of the “Angelic Pastor,” we are living today with a
generation that has less and less memory. Gratitude
towards a great pope therefore is replaced more
and more by the biased position of “historians”
who are under a certain ideological strain. Jewish
pressure groups are even trying to stop the process of
beatification of Pius XII–not so much because they
have an accurate idea of sanctity, but more because
they use the process of beatification as a political means
against historical evidence.
Having said all that, there is an important objection.
Some people say: Pope Pius XII was a liberal in
disguise. Some people bring forward this argument,
giving as examples essentially liturgical questions:
the revised Holy Week liturgy, a reduced fast before
THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

Mass, evening Masses, and similar reforms which were
introduced under and through Pope Pius XII.
In order to understand those liturgical reforms, it is
important to know that there was a so-called Liturgical
Movement in Europe. It had a Janus-face; it was
ambiguous. On the one hand there was a true zeal for
a participation of the faithful in the liturgy. The handmissal in two languages for the faithful can be seen as
a fruit of this aspect of the Liturgical Movement, and
it became very popular in the Liturgical Movement
down to today. On the other hand there was a tendency
to modernize the liturgy, which finally paved the way
for the New Mass of Vatican II. Liturgical experiments
started as early as the 1930s. The Benedictine monastery
Maria Laach near Cologne used an altar versus populum,
and Frs. Odo Casel and Romano Guardini said Masses
in the vernacular as early as then.
Pius XII fought against those experiments. His
encyclical Mediator Dei (1947) is proof that he was well
aware of abuses and exaggerations. He tried to address
and stop them, often not sufficiently supported by the
hierarchy (the Liturgical Movement had powerful
supporters among the bishops).
Pope Pius XII sitting at his typewriter and typing
his sermons by himself became a symbol for the pope
during his last years. He did not have the support
he deserved from inside the Church. The Church at
this time was heading towards a modernization that
brought her close to destruction (if it were possible), a
modernization that was brought about by the Second
Vatican Council. For a man like Konrad Adenauer, the
German chancellor of the post-war era (1949-63) and
a Catholic, Pius XII was the last great pope before a
“new generation” of popes; Adenauer did not like Pope
John XXIII, not for any liturgical reasons, but in virtue
of the chancellor’s anti-communism, which he did not
see confirmed by Pope John XXIII.
Be that as it may, Pope Pius XII deserves the
support of every Catholic (and honest man) in virtue of
historical truth. At least in this respect he should not be
abandoned, especially not by the nation that profited
from his Christian charity.

Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Markus Heggenberger

3

An interview with

Bishop De
Galarreta
May 2, 2009
Your Excellency, you are one of the four bishops
consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on June
30, 1988. You have recently been appointed Visitor of
the Seminary of La Reja to replace Bishop Williamson.
Before we talk about your current assignment, we
would like to ask you some questions regarding
the events of recent weeks. On January 21, 2009,
the Vatican sanctioned the lifting of the decree
of excommunication from July 1, 1988, after the
consecrations of bishops by Archbishop Lefebvre. In
an interview with Nouvelles de Chrétienté (No. 115,
Jan.-Feb. 2009), Bishop Fellay said, referring to the
excommunication of 1988: “This decree was void
because there was no excommunication.” In your
sermon of March 15, 2009, you also stated: “We have
always said and have always maintained that these
censures were absolutely void in law and fact.” Why
argue the invalidity of the excommunication declared
by John Paul II in 1988?

In our written contacts with Rome, we always
took great care to make clear that what we
asked for was a declaration of the nullity of the
excommunications, or–in a slightly more acceptable
form for them–the withdrawal of the decree of
excommunication, precisely because these (the
excommunications) do not exist. Archbishop
Lefebvre’s consecrations in 1988 constituted an
act absolutely necessary for the continuity of the

Catholic priesthood, of Tradition, of the Catholic
Faith, and of the Church itself. It was an act of
survival to safeguard the Catholic Faith, and
therefore it is not a sin that should require any
condemnation or censure. It was a virtuous act and,
in my opinion, a supremely virtuous act for the sake
of souls and the good of the Holy Church.

Don’t you think it is contradictory to maintain on one
hand that there is no excommunication, and on the
other hand to have petitioned Rome to do something
about the decree?
The contradiction is only apparent because
whether or not the excommunications are valid
is one thing, and the impression of the rest of the
Church and public opinion is something different.
It is clear that we bore a stigma in the eyes of the
whole Church, which was like a condemnation
of what we represent: Catholic Tradition. These
are two different aspects. Objectively speaking,
there was no excommunication. Now, subjectively
speaking, in the minds of the people, that is what
impelled us to ask to have the decree withdrawn.

In response, Rome issued the decree of January
21, 2009, not recognizing the invalidity of the
excommunication, but erasing the penalty. This is not
what the SSPX had requested. And yet Bishop Fellay
asked to have a Magnificat sung to celebrate the fact.
You yourself said in your March 15 sermon that “we
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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

4

are delighted and grateful for this decree.” Why are
you happy if the decree is not what you asked for?

Without a doubt, the way this decree was
worded does not correspond either to truth or to
justice; therefore the question of the rehabilitation
of the bishops, including Archbishop Lefebvre
and Bishop de Castro Mayer, remains unresolved,
as ultimately a rehabilitation of all the faithful of
Tradition. We had asked for the withdrawal of the
decree as an effective sign of good will and of a
change of attitude in Rome in regards to us and
Tradition. That is why we are glad. While the decree
is not what it should be, nevertheless, we no longer
have a case of persecution and for persecution and
breakup. It also removes a major obstacle for souls
to be able to draw near the riches of Tradition and
the true Faith.

Your Excellency, you said in your sermon that the
number of the faithful had increased after the decree
of January 21.

Yes, indeed, after the Motu Proprio several
thousands of priests asked for the DVD that teaches
how to offer the traditional Mass. Also, after this
decree there has been a lot of new people contacting
us through our priories and seminaries.

Many wonder why the Pope issued the decree of
January 21. Some speak of an intention to first absorb
and then silence the SSPX. Others speak of a simple
act of benevolence of the Pope. What is your opinion?

It is difficult to know the intentions, but by what
one can infer from the facts, there are probably
several different reasons. It seems indisputable to me
that we can find on the Pope’s part some good will
to restore justice and benevolence. But at the same
time it is also clear that what they expect in Rome
is that these actions and contacts will allow them
to place us inside the “ecclesiastical dynamics” that
would smooth the rough edges we’re supposed to
have; for example, what Rome calls our rigidity and
our uncompromising stand in respect to dogma. So
they expect to “moderate” us a bit, incorporating
also some positive things from us.
Another important aspect is Benedict XVI’s
desire to demonstrate the continuity of Vatican
II with Tradition: If you want to prove that there
is continuity, we must be allowed to exist and
live within the confines of the conciliar Church.
Certainly Rome’s view of things and of us is the
greatest danger of the future contacts.

Can we speak of a traditionalist pope?

No, unfortunately not. Benedict XVI has taken
care to deny this explicitly. He feels fully and
theologically identified with the Second Vatican

THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

Council. His teaching and his governing of the
Church fall squarely within the spirit of the Council.
The proof is that he wants to incorporate us into
the official Church, but within an ecumenical
conception. He is practicing ecumenism towards us.
However, there is at the same time a change of
attitude regarding tradition: the attitude towards
us is no longer one of persecution, but, to some
extent, of acceptance. This change in attitude, more
candid now, more open to tradition, serves us as a
foundation to tackle the talks with Rome. What’s
good, what’s new with this Pope, is this change in
attitude and the acceptance that the Council and
the postconciliar teaching must be in continuity
with Tradition. This is one point of agreement and a
starting point for the discussions.

In his letter to the bishops of the world of March 12,
the Pope said that “the problems to be addressed now
are essentially doctrinal in nature, and relate primarily
to the acceptance of Vatican II and the postconciliar
teaching of the Popes.” What are the doctrinal
problems Benedict XVI mentions here?
They are precisely the novelties inspired by
the liberal, neomodernist principles such as, for
example, religious freedom, freedom of conscience,
ecumenism, democracy that entered the Church
with the vision of the “Church as communion,”
“Church as people of God” and through
collegiality, which limits the authority of the Pope
and the bishops. In short, we’re talking about the
anthropocentric, humanist and personalistic turn
that has penetrated the Church and performed a
Copernican revolution. We have moved from a
Christocentric, God-centered conception of the
Church to a sort of worship of man, as claimed by
Pope Paul VI.

According to the decree of January 21, the doctrinal
talks between the Society of Saint Pius X and the
Vatican would have to begin. It’s been said several
times by the SSPX that we must “study Vatican II
in light of Tradition.” How is this expression to be
understood?

This expression requires some clarification. We
clearly understand by this that the guideline for an
explanation of any Church doctrine is its conformity
to Tradition. Therefore to study the Council in the
light of Tradition means rejecting everything that
is in contradiction to the traditional teaching and
Magisterium, and accepting that which is consistent
and harmonious with what was believed always,
everywhere and by all, which is the definition of
tradition.

5

So we can say that the goal of these talks is “to
convert Rome”? Doesn’t that sound arrogant? Wishful
thinking?

The term “to convert Rome” is not accurate. It
is rather a return, a re-conversion. Moreover, it is
God who can enlighten the minds and move hearts
to be able to return to the tradition of the Church.
We would be arrogant if we were to wrap ourselves
in our own new ideas and set ourselves up as judges
of the doctrines of the Church. But it is rather the
opposite: we intend to judge a series of novelties in
the light of what was always believed and lived in
the Church. Therefore it’s a question of fidelity, not
of pride. Arrogance is precisely the attitude of those
who, based entirely on their own personal opinions
contrary to the Faith, reject 2,000 years of Church
teaching. Wishful thinking? No, we’re not engaging
in wishful thinking, because we are not going into
this with false expectations, that is, we do not have
fixed expectations. We believe it is our duty to
bear witness to the Catholic Faith, to defend it and
condemn the contrary errors, but we don’t know
what will be the result of these discussions.
We do not know if the discussions will yield little
or some fruit or nothing at all. We do not know if
at the onset of the talks Rome will regret them or if
we’re going to be able to continue them. We have
an obligation to do so, it is our duty, but it is God
who gives the fruit...nothing at all, 30 percent, 60
percent, 100 percent? God only knows, and He
will provide; but remember, for God nothing is
impossible.

Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops invoking
a state of necessity. He spoke in his sermon of
an “operation survival” of the Church. Is there still
such a state of necessity after the Motu Proprio of
July 7, 2007, authorizing the Tridentine Mass and
the decree of January 21, 2009, concerning the
excommunications?
Yes, the state of necessity was not brought
about by some wrongful convictions or even just
by the disappearance of the traditional liturgy. Our
combat has not ended with the Motu Proprio. The
state of necessity originated with the change in
the Faith, the introduction of doctrines radically
opposed to tradition and the Catholic Faith. In this
sense, the problem remains exactly the same and
has not changed. Although there has been some
improvement in the attitude of the official Church
regarding the traditional liturgy, there was no
resolution of the doctrinal problem of the Mass. The
state of necessity remains exactly the same because
the question of Faith continues to exist.

What prospects do you see for the Society of St. Pius
X in the future? An agreement with Rome? A canonical
recognition?
Not at all, either in the immediate future or for
a while. We actually reject this possibility. We know
that until Rome returns to tradition, any practical
or canonical agreement is incompatible with the
confession and public defense of the Faith, and
would mean our death. In the best case, humanly
speaking, we have several years of discussions ahead
of us.

Your Excellency, you have just been appointed Visitor
of a seminary that has 42 seminarians and 6 teachers.
What is the difference between the role of Visitor and
that of Director? What will be your concern, your goal
as a visitor of the seminary?

My specific role is actually to ensure a quiet and
peaceful transition. I am serving as interim director,
while still fulfilling my other duties; I will alternate
some periods of time at the seminary with my
travels to administer the sacraments of ordination
and confirmation. This transition period can last
six or nine months, though you never know....I
have been in Spain for 15 years in what had started
as a temporary appointment for a year....Thank
God this seminary is very well established, with an
experienced, excellent teaching staff. So my task is
to continue the excellent work that my predecessor
did at the seminary, and simply solve whatever
needs may occur in these months, contributing a few
things of my own.

What does the training of a seminarian involve?

There are three main pillars: first, formation in
the Faith–the doctrinal, theological formation that
is accomplished through the studies of philosophy,
theology, and Scripture; essentially, the study of St.
Thomas Aquinas, the great light of Catholic studies.
The second part is the training in what we could call
piety, especially through the traditional liturgy and
participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It
also includes the formation of a deep, true personal
prayer life. Thirdly, the seminary is a school of
perfection, of holiness. This is essential. We aim at
a spiritual growth with the practice of virtue and
fighting against our own faults. This doctrine, piety
and virtues lead us to holiness and union with God.
“Without a doubt, to consecrate one’s life to God
and to souls through all the riches of the traditional
Catholic priesthood, is an appealing ideal.”

Your Excellency, there is a crisis of vocations. The
conciliar seminaries have few seminarians, but not

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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

6

so this seminary. How do you explain the number of
vocations we see here?

I think these men are attracted to the traditional
concept of the Catholic priesthood: the priest is
to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, to preach the
Truth, to sanctify souls; a priest is dedicated to the
establishing of the primacy and royalty of Our Lord
Jesus Christ while building the Church. Without a
doubt, to consecrate one’s life to God and to souls
through all the riches of the traditional Catholic
priesthood is an appealing ideal.

Do you mean that nowadays God calls men to His
service as much as in days gone by?

That’s a difficult question to answer! I do not
know. Perhaps there are fewer men called as a
punishment for the abandonment of God’s way, as
a punishment for apostasy. That being said, I also
think that there are still many young people who
have a vocation, but because of the lack of a true
ideal, and especially because of the cares of this
world, these desires are drowned. Sometimes life
has led [these young men] to certain experiences
that block or impede a vocation. I believe that part
of the problem is that sometimes the parents do not
take good enough care of the souls of their children,
especially the adolescents. Some are not providing
the necessary care to support in their children the
desire and the disposition for the priesthood, and to
have them develop the virtues necessary to pursue
a vocation: generosity, spirit of sacrifice, fortitude,
strength of character.

In addition to the six years of Seminary studies there
is the “Year of Humanities.” What is this year? A preseminary, a year of discernment?

Actually it’s a bit both at once. It is a year
given to those who do not enter the seminary after
a solid base of humanistic studies, to alleviate the
tremendous gaps in education today. On the other
hand, for many of these young men this is a year
during which, in a better environment, they can
discern their vocation and find which path to follow
in life. It was an excellent idea of Bishop Williamson
to have set up this year of studies, because that
difficulty of which I spoke, of discovering and
pursuing a vocation, and even perseverance in life
as a layman, is to a large extent mitigated by this
year of humanities. For him who will continue in
the seminary, it is an excellent foundation. And for
him that decides to continue his life in the world,
this year gives him a strength that will ensure his
perseverance for life.

During the July holidays there have been for several
years now the so-called “Days of Humanities.” What is
THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

the purpose of these workshops? Will they take place
this year? On what topic?

The purpose of this workshop is to study, in
a short period of time, some key subjects of the
modern world which confront Catholics nowadays,
to give training and encouragement to persevere
in this battle. This year it will take place in July
on the subject of evolutionism. We will study the
scientific aspect of the subject, but also the impact
of evolutionism on other fields: philosophy,
theology, the current situation of the Church. This
will be supplemented with other topics: music, art,
literature...all of course adapted to the level of young
people.

One last question: In this terrible crisis that shakes
the Church, what advice would you give to our faithful?

The advice that I would most strongly offer to all
is to bear in mind that faithfulness and perseverance
in this tremendous crisis do not happen only by
keeping the faith, but also from maintaining hope
and charity. Surely our fundamental duty is fidelity
to the truth, to the Faith. But just as important as
believing, professing, and defending truth is, so it is
to have trust, hope, in Our Lord, who is God, and
to believe in the omnipotence of Our Lord, who
said to us: “Do not be afraid, I have overcome the
world”; and also “There is nothing impossible for
God.”
Our Lord is Truth, and He is also Charity.
The great Christian revelation is about the love
that God has for men. The motto of our founder
was Credidimus Caritati, “We have believed in God’s
love for us,” and that means we should remain in the
love of God and also maintain the love between us.
The commandment par excellence of Our Lord is
charity. The new commandment is that we love one
another as He loved us.
I always remember with pleasure the words of
St. Augustine, who asked God to soften his heart
so that the love of truth would not make him lose
sight of the truth of love. I think that is the great
temptation for those of us who remain faithful
in the midst of the aggression from the world
and sometimes from the members of the Church
themselves: to fall into despair and bitterness.
To remain faithful, we must keep the truth in
its entirety, but making sure that this love of truth
will not take away from us the truth of hope–God
will triumph–or the truth of love: that we love one
another to strengthen one another.

Translated for Angelus Press. Originally published in Iesus Christus, No.121,
January-February.

D r .

D a v i d

A l l e n

7

W h i t e

An introduction to

ALEXANDER
SOLZHENITSYN
PART 2: The Gulag

Solzhenitsyn reports
that in some camps the
men and women were
isolated—the Soviets at
least had the sense to keep
them apart, realizing what
would happen if they were
together—more sense than
our own military has these
days. The camp was called
Kengir:
Later in Kengir they
increased the height of the
dividing wall to fifteen feet
[between the men’s camp
and the women’s camp], and
stretched barbed wire, too, along the top. [Obviously the
men and women were anxious to get at each other—they
kept building the wall higher, finally adding barbed wire!]
And then they added a high-voltage wire as well. (How
strong that cursed Cupid is!) And in addition to everything
else they put watchtowers at both ends as well. This Kengir
wall had its own special destiny in the history of the
Archipelago (see Part V, Chap.12).

Of the thousands of camps, it was the one
camp where there was a rebellion. The prisoners
overthrew the guards and camp leaders and took
control. For forty days they lived as free human

beings. The stories that
came out of there were of
forty days of graciousness,
civility, joy and love. They
had their own space and
lived freely in it. But it
ended when the Soviets
heard; they sent in armed
forces and killed every
last one of them. We can
not begin to grasp what it
means to have a measure of
freedom until we have lived
Alexander Solzhenitsyn being
in such circumstances; or,
searched at a checkpoint.
how such freedom can be
hated by those totalitarian
forces that wish to keep control over everything.
Notes were thrown over the fence, or else left at the
factory in prearranged hiding places. The addresses on the
notes were coded, so the jailer, if he found them, couldn’t
work out who was writing whom.
Galya Venediktova recalls that sometimes people even
made one another’s acquaintance blindly, corresponded
without seeing each other, and said farewell to one another
blindly too, without seeing each other. (Anyone who has
ever conducted such a correspondence knows both its
desperate sweetness and its hopelessness and blindness.)
In that very same Kengir, Lithuanian women were married
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to Lithuanian men whom they had never seen or met; and
the Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest (also, of course, a
prisoner in the standard pea jacket) would provide written
documentation that so-and-so and so-and-so had been
joined for eternity in holy matrimony in the eyes of God. In
this marriage with an unknown prisoner on the other side
of a wall—and for Roman Catholic women such a marriage
was irreversible and sacred—I hear a choir of angels. It is like
the unselfish, pure contemplation of the heavenly bodies.
It is too lofty for this age of self-interested calculation and
hopping-up-and-down jazz.

Magnificent. What he saw in the camps, what he
learned through his suffering, made a believer out of
him. Let me pause here to make an obvious point:
If 20th century literary fashion taught us anything,
it was simply that you go along with whatever
winds happen to be blowing in your time. Simply
be blown by the literary winds and take whatever
ideas are out there. Because of this, almost all of
the so-called major writers were atheists. What they
discuss in their lives is atheism, the meaninglessness
of life, how horrible life is, how awful life is, how
stupid it is to be alive, how boring the whole process
is, how we have no purpose but to endure here and
shuffle along, waiting for death to release us into
absolute meaninglessness where at least we won’t
know it’s meaninglessness anymore since we’ll all
just flop into the grave and be blessed with darkness,
obscurity, and emptiness for ever and ever.
And these people are honored. They win prizes.
Their books win awards. It’s very, very fashionable.
Some of them became literary superstars to the
point that you could, at the same time Solzhenitsyn
was serving his time in the Gulag, have gone to
Paris, walked along the St. Germain du Pres, gone
to one of the bistros and found, for example, Jean
Paul Sartre, the famous existentialist, sitting outside
sipping yet another coffee, with his little beret on,
spending a pleasant day in the Parisian sunset.
Perhaps he was ordering another baguette and
putting rich butter on it. Maybe he had a nice glass
of Beaujolet. Perhaps a little brie for his bread. And
then another glass of Beaujolet. And then a cognac.
The whole time, young university women from
America flocked to him, threw themselves at his feet
and said, “Speak, O wise one!” And he would say
“Ah, life is meaningless, it is nothing...It is empty, it
is boring...there is no life, there is only death! Thus,
in this life, Communism is the ideal.” And this man
was considered a serious intellectual, one of the
great philosophical thinkers of our age, as he rolled
in money, comfort, and acclaim. He became stuffed
with pride. I quote Solzhenitsyn from The Gulag:
“Pride grows on the human heart like lard on a pig.”
All these fine literary men became full of
themselves. Their message? Life is meaningless.
Meanwhile, in the Gulag, crawling around in
conditions that are unimaginable, suffering things
that few human beings have ever had to go through,
facing endless visions of torment, suffering, and
death, a great writer discovered the truth of God’s
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Word. Nor should we be surprised that he came to
the point where he could understand the importance
of suffering and the vision of the crucifix. It made
clear that the worst punishment of our age is
comfort.
Those literary figures, sitting in bars in New
York City, or fancy restaurants in Paris, or shuffling
about the hills of San Francisco writing their beat
poetry, were being punished immeasurably. Every
award they won, every time they were acclaimed
as one of the great thinkers of the time, or started
a revolution in poetic verse—they were being
punished. The great gift that God gave to literature
and to a literary man was to have him arrested,
sentenced and shoved off to the Gulag for nearly a
decade. God’s gifts are not the gifts the world seeks.
But God, in His infinite wisdom, knows better than
we do. He even knows better than those who give
out literary awards.
Solzhenitsyn was in the camps from 1945 to
1953 and determined that someone had to tell
the truth about what was happening in Russia. He
decided that it was his mission, as a writer, for the
rest of his days, simply to write the truth: what had
happened, what he had seen, what he knew. And
that’s what he did.
He was sent into exile as soon as he was released
from the camps. They wouldn’t release them right
back into society. He was lucky enough simply to
get out—millions and millions did not. Solzhenitsyn
concurs with the estimates of emigre Professor of
Statistics Kurganov that between 1917 and 1959,
the iron fist repression within the Soviet Union cost
66,000,000 lives. The exact number, of course, can
never be known.
Those who punished them are still spreading
their errors throughout the world. Those errors
are still being spread. And these 100 to 110 million
dead in Russia may just be an example for us—or a
warning that the rest of the world, in the billions,
has not looked at or understood yet.
In any case, Solzhenitsyn was sent into exile
since he could not be trusted. He went to teach
mathematics in the middle of nowhere USSR
in a tiny village. He again recalled this event as
Providential because it meant no one was paying
attention to him. And as he lived there, he began
writing. He began putting it down. They claim—and
I’ve seen it—that his handwriting is microscopic. It is
perhaps the smallest handwriting ever on earth. He
couldn’t afford paper and he wanted to keep it so
small that people couldn’t read it—in case they came
across it, they wouldn’t know what it was. He could
not keep the manuscripts together; he would write a
little bit and then hide it, or bury it in the back yard,
or give some to friends. He began writing fiction,
novels about the camps and what he had seen there.
But then he was struck with stomach cancer. He
went to a cancer institute where he was told there
was not much that could be done. They gave him

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what little treatment they could. He had a tumor
in his stomach the size of a baby’s head. It was
assumed he was a dead man. He describes returning
to his village, sinking to his knees and saying to
God, “If you allow me to live, I will write a long
nonfiction work that tells all the truth about those
camps and Mother Russia.” This was how The Gulag
was conceived. The tumor shrank, went away, and
never came back.
He began to work on his massive book, The
Gulag Archipelago. It is made of seven volumes in
three huge books. He began digging through all his
memories, what he had seen, whom he had spoken
to, etc.
He finished his years in exile and was allowed
to return to Moscow. He was still working as a
mathematician. He made friends—again, trusting
a few people, but not, sadly, his own wife, who
one day, at a critical moment, betrayed him to the
KGB. It shattered the marriage; the marriage never
recovered.
Some of his manuscripts began circulating
underground. These were handwritten copies. It’s
very interesting because it’s one of the first times I
can think of since Scripture itself was passed along
in a similar fashion. People could not believe that
he was actually telling the story. They knew if those
in power got wind of it, he was a dead man. But he
didn’t care.
Then, in the 1960’s, came the “Khrushchev
Thaw.” After Khrushchev took over, he decided
that some little tiny squeak of truth had to come
out. He began admitting, in small ways, that maybe
Stalin over-reacted. At that moment, he sent the
manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
to the most popular literary magazine in the Soviet
Union. What happened, as a result, was that he
wound up being published. One edition of the
magazine was dedicated to this book. It sold out
instantly. It hit the Soviet Union like a bombshell.
Everyone was talking about it. No one could believe
it had been published.
And, at that moment, he began pulling out
other work. Next came a novel called The First Circle
about the time he spent in the special camp for
mathematicians, physicists, chemists and others the
Party needed for their brains. They were thus given
a little special treatment so that they could live in a
little more comfort so their brains wouldn’t die and
be useless. The title, of course, comes from Dante.
When Dante began to descend into the Inferno, the
first circle was where he put all the great classical
writers and figures. He couldn’t bear to put them in
hell although he knew they had to be in hell; thus,
the first circle is essentially the Elysian Fields where
they all dwell together in a rather nice castle, having
a perpetual picnic in Hell. Solzhenitsyn took the
phrase “The First Circle” because those who were
lucky enough to be scientists or mathematicians

lived as if they were picnicking in Hell. It’s a very
great novel and I recommend it to you.
He also wrote a novel called Cancer Ward. This
is obviously about his time dealing with cancer.
It’s in fiction form, about people he met while he
was being treated for cancer, and what went on in
those hospitals, trying to treat cancer while living
in a totalitarian state—not an easy thing to do. But,
of course, the cancer itself becomes a metaphor
for Communism: It is deadly, growing, and cannot
be stopped. It is spreading everywhere, and just
as cancer kills the body, Communism was killing
Russia. It’s a powerful novel and a great book.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the only
one of his works to be published in Russia during
those years, went out to the West. It was published
and acclaimed instantly as one of the greatest works
of all time, one of the masterpieces of Russian
literature. He was proclaimed an heir to Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky and the other great Russian writers. He
had the other works smuggled out as well since he
couldn’t simply box and ship them.
There are two magnificent autobiographical
books by Solzhenitsyn, but not autobiographies as
most writers write them. They are about what it took
to get his books published, and the impossibility of
writing in that State. The first volume is called The
Oak and the Calf, named after an old Russian proverb
where the calf keeps butting the oak, but the oak
never moves. The allegory is obviously Solzhenitsyn
butting the Russian State. Then, at a later date,
came Invisible Allies, about those who helped him
with the typing, who protected and smuggled the
manuscripts out to the West, etc.
It became clear in the West, after they were
published, that this man was a literary genius. He
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. Of
course, at that point, the Communist authorities
allowed him to go to Sweden for the prize. In fact,
they encouraged him. And he knew that as soon as
he set foot outside his country, he would never be
allowed back in. They wanted to be done with him.
He refused to go and accept the prize. In an open
letter to the Nobel Committee, he said: “Thank you
for the honor, but if I come to collect it, I will be in
exile the rest of my days. My own country would
not allow me to return.” It wasn’t until many years
later that he actually collected the prize he won in
1970.
The big work, The Gulag Archipelago, was
completed although, as he said, at no time was the
entire manuscript on his desk as a unified whole.
He’d write a bit of it, give it to a friend, hide some,
etc. It is a massive, long, overpowering work.
I seriously call it, “The Great Work of the 20th
Century.” If the Greeks had Homer, the Romans
had Vergil, the Middle Ages had Dante, and the
Renaissance had Shakespeare, we had Solzhenitsyn
and his great work, The Gulag Archipelago.
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It is a work about everything which defined
the 20th century: totalitarianism, brutality, murder,
horror, the triumph of the human spirit, and the fact
that God watches over all of it. It is an extraordinary
piece of work. It is a history, an autobiography,
a collection of true short stories, a work of
philosophy, and more. I will later quote some of his
philosophical thinking, which, unlike Sartre, isn’t
simply nonsense. It is grounded in something real.
There had been rumors all over that this book
existed. The KGB wanted to find it. But how do you
locate a book that you can’t prove even exists? A
book that, when you say to the author, “We know
you’ve writing a book; give us a copy,” you receive
the reply, “What book?” He infuriated them. They
tried to track it down. They made his life impossible.
At this point, he married a woman who helped
him through all of this after his first wife turned him
over to the KGB. I won’t comment on this for I
don’t know enough. It’s in God’s hands.
They began to make his life so impossible that
he had nowhere to live. No one would give him a
place to live. Eventually, Mstislav Rostropovich,
the great Russian cellist, and his wife, Galina
Vishnevskaya, the leading soprano in the
Bolshoi Opera, invited him to live with them in
a small house they had on their property. It was
an incredible act of courage. The day after, all
over Rostropovich’s tours were cancelled. (I was
supposed to hear him at Indiana University that
year, but did not as his tour was canceled as a result
of his sheltering Solzhenitsyn.) They would only
allow him to occasionally play in the provinces of
Russia. He was the greatest cellist in the world.
His wife went the night after to the Bolshoi
Opera to sing Madama Butterfly. She learned that
she would be singing Suzuki, the maid, instead. She
turned around, walked out, and never set foot in the
Bolshoi Opera again. The next day, in the record
stores, on every recording she had ever made in her
career her name had been blacked out. She became
a non-person, a non-singer. But it didn’t stop them;
they kept Solzhenitsyn with them. Finally, he felt so
guilty for what he had done to their careers that he
left of his own accord. They were still not allowed to
perform afterward.
There may not be much good to say about the
Kennedys, but here’s a good Kennedy story: Teddy
Kennedy and his (then) wife Joan–whom I believe
was dumped and has since died, God rest her soul—
went to Moscow and were guests of Brezhnev. There
was a big State dinner, and Brezhnev was hitting
the vodka heavily. He just so happened to be seated
next to the lovely Mrs. Kennedy and said: “Lovely
lady, you have charmed me so. This last night in
my country, if there is anything you want, ask it
and it is yours.” Probably expecting that she would
ask for a car or a mink coat or two pounds of caviar
to take home, she turned to him and said, “Let
Rostropovich go.” The next day he signed the order
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and Rostropovich was free to tour again. Shortly
thereafter he and Vishnevskaya left the country.
There are amazing stories from these years.
In any case, the KGB kept pursuing this book
that may or may not exist according to them.
Finally they brought in an elderly woman, a friend
of Solzhenitsyn’s who had a fragment of the book
buried in her backyard. They did not allow her to
sleep for three nights. They tortured her. At the end
of these three days of sleeplessness and torture, she
said: “Yes, the book exists. Yes, I can prove it. Some
of the manuscript is buried in my own yard.” The
KGB went, dug it up, took it to the authorities, who
read it and said it was worse than expected. The
woman went home and hanged herself, believing
she had betrayed not merely a friend but all the
souls who had died in the Gulag. Again, God will
judge.
Word came to Solzhenitsyn that the KGB had
the manuscript. He packed a little bag, said goodbye
to his wife and family, and prepared to be sent to
prison where he would be killed. But before he
went, he made a phone call to Paris and said, “Let
the presses roll.” The whole manuscript was in
the West; he had not allowed it to be printed until
then out of fear for repercussions for other people
mentioned in the book.
I remember the day. It was on the front page
of every newspaper in the world. Nobody knew
this book existed. He had already won the Nobel
Prize. This is 1974. Suddenly it was revealed that
Solzhenitsyn had written a massive exposé of the
Soviet slave labor camps. It was incredible. Excerpts
appeared on the front page of every newspaper.
Then, indeed, he instantaneously disappeared.
The authorities got him but did the smartest thing
they could have done: they put him on a plane and
sent him to the West. He landed first in Germany,
went to Switzerland, traveled around a bit, and
finally came to rest in Vermont, where he would live
for 20 years.
When he arrived in Vermont, he went to the
first town meeting that took place once he bought
his estate—which he surrounded with brick and
barbed wire. At the town meeting he said, “I wish I
could be a good neighbor; unfortunately, that is not
possible. I have come to your community and I am
glad to be among you, but I am still not free. The
KGB is threatening me, my wife, and my children.
I have to live behind brick and barbed wire for
their safety and for my own. I hope to finish all my
writing while I’m here and therefore I cannot walk
among you. Please know, however, that I think of
you and am very happy to be here with you.” They
applauded him, cheered him, and for the next 20
years, covered his tracks. If you went up there and
tried to find where he was, they would send you
on a wild goose chase. This was important because
there were, in essence, literary pilgrimages being

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made. Every one wanted to see him, meet him, talk
with him, etc.
He worked. From sun-up to sun-down. He had
a small chapel built-in at his home. An Orthodox
priest regularly came to the house to offer the
Liturgy. He listened to a little music. And he
worked. That was his life. Period.
He wrote a massive four-novel sequence about
the Russian Revolution called The Red Wheel.
Only the first two parts have been translated into
English; the rest is available in Russian. The literary
establishment dumped on it although it is a great
book. Why was it so roundly critiqued by the
establishment?
Solzhenitsyn became as big a burr under
the saddle of the West as he had been to the
Communists. In 1978 he was invited by Harvard
to give the Commencement Address. He began by
saying, “Harvard’s motto is Veritas, truth. Were I in
my own country there are many hard truths I would
have to utter to them, but since I am here and have
been living among you for four years now, I have a
few truths to tell you about the West.”
He proceeded to savage liberal democracy,
materialism, and, most particularly, the media. The
next morning he became a non-person in the West.
Every editorial page in the country dumped all over
him, attacked him, and, from that point on, stopped
covering him. He was never invited to the White
House by any American president during his 20
years here. It would have “looked bad,” after all.
As he said, he finished his major life’s work,
Communism supposedly “fell,” they began
publishing more of his works in Russia, and in 1994
he returned there. He made a very famous whistlestop tour. He came in from the West and took a
train the whole way across, stopping at all the little
villages.
But what happened, of course, was that the
ideas, the errors, of Communism did not fall.
They were not stopped. It was simply that those
materialists who simply had no material finally
opened up to the materialists who had lots of
material. What came pouring in, in the words
of Solzhenitsyn himself, was “the raw sewage of
Western culture.” In came McDonalds, Coca-Cola,
modern music, Hollywood movies, and, perhaps
most interestingly, Stephen King novels. At the time
when the Russian people could have freely read
their greatest writer, they started reading Stephen
King. The bookstores themselves started to be
closed down and replaced by supermarkets that
traded only in cash. Don’t ever be fooled: Russia has
not been converted.
Solzhenitsyn didn’t say much after he returned
to Russia. He did have a television show briefly,
but nobody watched it; they preferred American
sitcoms. In an interview in 2000, much of what he
said was very frightening. At the time, he claimed

Russia was worse off then it was ten years earlier
and that lies dominated the country:
Our decline has lasted through 70 years under the
Communists and 10 years after that. We must not permit
the death of Russia as a nation. A rebirth is always far more
difficult; it will take at least 100 years. The demographic
trends in our country are frightening. The nation loses
nearly a million people a year, so greatly does the death
rate exceed the birth rate. A nation experiences losses like
that only in wartime.

Well, there is a war going on: between God and
the Devil. The focus, as those of us who are Catholic
know, somehow has much to do with Russia. Death,
for now, is winning there. But we know that death
will not triumph. Russia will be converted.
He remained as feisty as ever towards the end of
his life. Read the clarity of his words inn April 1999,
while the United States was busy bombing Eastern
Europe. This is the man at his best. It’s a voice
speaking with a kind of authority that we just hear
too rarely today:
Hurling aside the United Nations and trampling its
Charter, NATO proclaimed to the whole world and to the
next century an ancient law–the law of the jungle: He who
is mighty is completely right. If you are technically superior,
excel your condemned opponent in violence a hundredfold.
And they want us to live in a world like this from now on.
In the sight of humanity, a beautiful country is
being destroyed while civilized governments applaud.
And desperate people leave bomb shelters and come out
as living targets to die for the salvation of Danube bridges.
Is this not antiquity? I do not see why Clinton, Blair, and
Solana would not tomorrow burn and drown them.

I mentioned Solzhenitsyn’s philosophical side
earlier. Let me share one last story which illustrates
this, from The Gulag:
Following an operation, I am lying in the surgical ward
of a camp hospital. I cannot move. I am hot and feverish,
but nonetheless my thoughts do not dissolve into delirium–
and I am grateful to Dr. Boris Nikolayevich Kornfeld, who
is sitting beside my cot and talking to me all evening. The
light has been turned out–so it will not hurt my eyes. He
and I–there is no one else in the ward.
Fervently he tells me the long story of his conversion from
Judaism to Christianity. This conversion was accomplished
by an educated, cultivated person, one of his cell mates,
some good-natured old fellow like Platon Karataev [from
War and Peace ]. I am astonished at the conviction of the new
convert, at the ardor of his words.
We know each other very slightly, and he was not the
one responsible for my treatment, but there was simply no
one here with whom he could share his feelings. He was a
gentle and well-mannered person. I could see nothing bad
in him, nor did I know anything bad about him. However,
I was on guard because Kornfeld had now been living for
two months in the hospital barracks, without going outside.
He had shut himself up in here, at his place of work, and
avoided moving around camp at all.
This meant that he was afraid of having his throat cut.
In our camp it had recently become fashionable to cut the
throats of stool pigeons. This has an effect. But who could
guarantee that only stoolies were getting their throats cut?
One prisoner had had his throat cut in a clear case of
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settling a sordid grudge. Therefore the self-imprisonment
of Kornfeld in the hospital did not yet prove at all that he
was a stool pigeon.
It is already late. All the hospital is asleep. Kornfeld is
ending up his story thus:
“And on the whole, do you know, I have become
convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in
this life on earth which is undeserved. Superficially it can
have nothing to do with what we are guilty of in actual
fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and
ponder it deeply, you will always be able to hunt down that
transgression of yours for which you have now received
this blow.”
I cannot see his face. Through the window come only the
scattered reflections of the lights of the perimeter outside.
The door from the corridor gleams in a yellow electrical
glow. But there is such mystical knowledge in his voice that
I shudder.
These were the last words of Boris Kornfeld. Noiselessly
he went out into the nigh-time corridor and into one of the
nearby wards and there lay down to sleep. Everyone slept.
There was no one with whom he could speak even one word.
I went off to sleep myself.
I was wakened in the morning by running about and
tramping in the corridor; the orderlies were carrying
Kornfeld’s body to the operating room. He had been dealt
eight blows on the skull with a plasterer’s mallet while he
still slept. He died on the operating table, without regaining
consciousness.
And so it happened that Kornfeld’s prophetic words
were his last words on earth, and, directed to me, they lay
upon me as an inheritance. You cannot brush off that kind
of inheritance by shrugging your shoulders.
But by that time I myself had matured to similar thoughts.
I would have been inclined to endow his words with the
significance of a universal law of life. However, one can get
all tangled up that way. One would have to admit that, on
that basis, those who had been punished even more cruelly
than with prison, those shot or burned at the stake, were
some sort of super-evildoers. And yet the innocent are those
who get punished most zealously of all. And what would one
then have to say about our so-evident torturers? Why does
not fate punish them? Why do they prosper?
The only solution to this would be that the meaning
of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to
thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.
From that point of view our torturers have been punished
most horribly of all: they are turning into swine; they are
departing downward from humanity. From that point of
view punishment is inflicted on those whose development
holds out hope.1

The section in which this appears, the core of the
book, is called “The Soul and Barbed Wire.” He ends
it by saying: “Bless you, prison, for having been in
my life.” It is a recognition that, without suffering, he
never would have understood the truth.
What do we have here? And why do I call
him one of the few great men of the century? His
messages are very simple, very clear, and he not only
put them on paper—he lived them.
Number one: There is truth. We can know it.
When we know it, we must put it forward, whatever
the cost. As he himself wrote, “One word of truth
outweighs the whole world. The world is falsehood;
truth is eternal.”
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Number two: We must be courageous in standing
up and fighting for the truth. The world will try to
shout us down. The world will try to destroy us all
the more as we put the truth forward. To put the
truth forward in the world at any time demands
courage; but to put it forward in the modern world,
in the world we find ourselves in today, demands
superhuman courage. It demands the grace of God.
This brings us to the third great message:
suffering. We will not be worthy of God’s grace
unless we suffer. Through this suffering comes health
of soul, a better understanding of the truth, and the
courage to stand up for it in the world, no matter
what the barbarians try to do to us. They can only
kill our bodies; they can’t get our souls.
That this man should appear in Russia and send
the word out because of what he learned there, in
my mind, connects completely with the messages of
Fatima. It’s because of that message, and the fact that
some will hear it and adhere to it, and that God calls
us all to suffer for the truth with real courage, that
suggests why one day it will be possible for Russia
to be converted, through the grace of God and the
action of the Pope, listening finally to the message
given to the world through the Blessed Mother.
Russia will be converted through devotion to Her
Immaculate Heart.
A period of peace will be granted to the world.
Can we deserve it? Do we deserve it? God, in His
goodness, has promised it to us. But, before we get
there, we may all have to spend our time in a place
quite distant from the comfortable, modern, material,
atheistic world, sipping fine wine in nice restaurants,
being adored by the world around us.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89 on
August 3, 2008. In his last major interview with Der
Spiegel a year before his death he stated, “I am not
afraid of death anymore....I feel it is a natural, but
by no means the final, milestone of one’s existence.”
He was buried in the Cathedral of the Donskoi
Monastery in Moscow. Afterwards, large numbers of
Russian people mobbed the site, leaving flowers and
kissing the temporary wooden cross erected over the
grave. Two weeks after his death, Moscow authorities
amended an existing rule that only people who had
been dead for at least 10 years could be honored
with a street name. They announced that a street
in the city center would be renamed “Alexander
Solzhenitsyn Street” in his honor. The street was
formerly known as “Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya”
or “Great Communist Street.”
Talk originally given at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary. Audio tapes are available at www.stasaudio.org. To be continued in a future issue of The Angelus.

1

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment
in Literary Investigation, (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), vol. II, part 4.

Church and World
Press Release by
Fr. Frey, Rector of
the Seminary of
Zaitzkofen
Regarding the
Priestly Ordinations
of June 27, 2009
The Seminary of the Sacred Heart
of Jesus of the Priestly Fraternity of St.
Pius X, regarding the Ordinations to
the priesthood planned for 27 June,
2009, declares the following:
1. T h e s e o r d i n a t i o n s a r e
bestowed with the intention of serving the Catholic Church. We bestow
these priestly ordinations because
we wish to express our unity with
the Church of Rome. This unity
consists of the same doctrine, the
same sacraments, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass of all times. The
newly ordained priests, as well as
all of the members of the Priestly
Society of St. Pius X, recognize the
office of the Pope and the authority of the Church. Just as all other
clergy of the Society, the candidates
for ordination will pray by name for
the reigning Pope as well as the local
Ordinary–an expression of solidarity
the Society has practiced since its
founding more than 30 years ago.
We do not want a parallel Church,
but instead wish to preserve the
incalculable treasure of Catholic Tradition within the one true Catholic
Church.
2. When Rome, on January
21, 2009, repealed the decree of
excommunication that had been
declared against the four bishops of
the fraternity, the Holy Father surely
intended it as a provision of life,
and not of death. The generous gesture was primarily intended to be a
confidence-building measure for the
coming theological discussions with
representatives of the Holy See, in
which, through difficult negotiations,

the difficulties which still remain will
presumably be eliminated.
3. An emergency requires and
justifi es corresponding emergency
measures. Is there an emergency
in the Church today? We refer to
an appendix attached to this declaration, in which representative
statements from popes, cardinals,
bishops, and theologians are documented. Pope Paul VI, for example,
speaks of the “self-destruction of the
Church,” Pope John Paul II speaks
of “silent apostasy.” Additionally
we give two numerical examples:
In 1950 in Germany, 13 million
Catholics regularly attended Sunday
Mass. Today it is less than 2 million,
a reduction of more than 85 percent. The number of priestly ordinations in German dioceses in 2008
reached a record low of less than 100.
It is a question of the existence or the
dissolution of Christianity in Europe.
Should the ordination of these new
priests, who have been formed on
the solid foundations of Catholic tradition and who are so necessary for
the survival of the Church, be postponed? Instead, as true vocations
become more and more uncommon,
should we not with great devotion
thank God for the grace of such
vocations? There can be no talk of
an insult to the unity of the Church
and most certainly not of a rebuff of
the outstretched hand of the Holy
Father, for whom we pray daily.
4. The bishops, in their fury,
continuously invoke canon law. But
consider an analogy: a valuable
building is burning down, a group
of courageous young men rush to the
blaze to extinguish the fire, or at least
to contain it, and then afterwards
to begin with the rebuilding. But
they are detained by law enforcement for having exceeded the speed
limit. Isn’t the last canon of the 1983
Code of Canon Law still valid today,
according to which the highest law of
the Church is the salvation of souls?

13

5. Since the current problems
are not of a disciplinary nature, the
discussion has to be conducted at an
entirely different level; in particular,
at the level of faith. When Pope
Benedict XVI, in his letter to the
bishops of March 10, 2009, made the
dramatic declaration that the faith
is in danger of being extinguished
in many parts of the world, is it not
urgent that we together make every
effort to ascertain the causes of this
crisis of faith and to utilize the means
at our disposal to remedy this crisis?
In this spirit we renew our readiness to engage in dialogue with the
German bishops in an atmosphere
of peace and intellectual honesty,
far removed from all polemics and
unhelpful accusations.
Zaitzkofen, June 13, 2009
Fr. Stefan Frey,
Rector of the Seminary
(DICI, 24/06/2009)

Secret Vatican II –
Soviet Agreement
Confirmed
Giacomo Galeazzi reviewed for
La Stampa the new biography of
Paul VI written by Andrea Tornielli, and mentioned that what many
considered a conspiracy theory was
true: there was indeed a secret agreement, led by Cardinal Tisserant,
between the Soviet Union and the
Holy See (under John XXIII) in
1962–an agreement which Paul VI
also respected. As Galeazzi says: “In
a note of November 15, 1965, in fact,
Montini explicitly mentions among
‘the commitments of the Council’
also that of ‘not mentioning Communism (1962).’”
The indication of the date at the
end of the sentence written by Paul
VI refers to the secret agreement,
related by Tisserant, between Rome
and Moscow.
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgelus • July 2009

14

And this would explain why
the Second Vatican Council, which
dealt with all sorts of issues, relevant
and irrelevant alike, ignored the
most challenging menace of its time:
Communism.
(rorate-caeli.blogspot.com)

Pope Benedict XVI
Proclaims
a Special
Year of the Priest
On March 16th last, the day
before leaving for Africa, Benedict
XVI gave an audience to the members of the plenary assembly for the
Congregation for the Clergy, and
declared: “As Church and as priests,
we proclaim Jesus of Nazareth Lord
and Christ, Crucified and Risen,
Sovereign of time and of history, in
the glad certainty that this truth coincides with the deepest expectations
of the human heart.…Precisely to
encourage priests in this striving for
spiritual perfection on which, above
all, the effectiveness of their ministry
depends, I have decided to establish a special ‘Year for Priests’ that
will begin on June 19 and last until
June 19, 2010. In fact, it is the 150th
anniversary of the death of the Holy
Curé of Ars, John Mary Vianney
(1786-1859), a true example of a
pastor at the service of Christ’s flock.
It will be the task of your Congregation, in agreement with the diocesan
Ordinaries and with the superiors of
religious institutes to promote and
to coordinate the various spiritual
and pastoral initiatives that seem
useful for making the importance of
the priest’s role and mission in the
Church and in contemporary society
ever more clearly perceived.”
Benedict XVI will grant the plenary indulgences to priests and faithful alike on the occasion of this Year
for Priests, according to the decree
published on May 12, 2009, and
signed on April 25th by Cardinal
The ANgelus • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

James Francis Stafford and Bishop
Gianfranco Girotti, respectively
Major Penitentiary and Regent of the
Apostolic Penitentiary.
“Truly repentant priests who,
on any day, devoutly recite at least
morning Lauds or Vespers before
the Blessed Sacrament, exposed
for public adoration or replaced in
the tabernacle, and who, after the
example of St. John Mary Vianney,
offer themselves with a ready and
generous heart for the celebration
of the sacraments, especially Confession, are mercifully granted in God
the Plenary Indulgence which they
may also apply to their deceased
brethren in suffrage, if, in conformity with the current norms, they
receive sacramental confession and
the Eucharistic banquet and pray
for the Supreme Pontiff’s intentions.
Furthermore the Partial Indulgence
is granted to priests who may apply
it to their deceased confreres every
time that they devoutly recite the
prayers duly approved to lead a holy
life and to carry out in a holy manner
the offices entrusted to them.
“The Plenary Indulgence is
granted to all the faithful who are
truly repentant who, in church or
chapel, devoutly attend the divine
Sacrifice of Mass and offer prayers
to Jesus Christ the Eternal High
Priest, for the priests of the Church,
and any other good work which they
have done on that day, so that He
may sanctify them and form them in
accordance with His Heart, as long
as they have made expiation for their
sins through sacramental confession
and prayed in accordance with the
Supreme Pontiff’s intentions: on the
days in which the Year for Priests
begins and ends, on the day of the
150th anniversary of the pious passing of St. John Mary Vianney, on
the first Thursday of the month or
on any other day established by the
local Ordinaries for the benefit of the
faithful. It will be most appropriate,
in cathedral and parish churches, for
the same priests who are in charge of

pastoral care to publicly direct these
exercises of devotion, to celebrate
Holy Mass and to hear the confession of the faithful.
“The Plenary Indulgence will
likewise be granted to the elderly,
the sick, and all those who for any
legitimate reason are confined
to their homes who, with a mind
detached from any sin and with
the intention of fulfilling as soon as
possible the three usual conditions,
at home or wherever their impediment detains them, provided that
on the above-mentioned days they
recite prayers for the sanctification
of priests and confidently offer the
illnesses and hardships of their lives
to God through Mary Queen of
Apostles.
“Lastly, the Partial Indulgence
is granted to all the faithful every
time they devoutly recite five Our
Fathers, Hail Marys and Glorias, or
another expressly approved prayer,
in honour of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, to obtain that priests be preserved in purity and holiness of life.”
On June 19, 2009, on the Feast of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Benedict
XVI will solemnly declare open the
Year for Priests–fi delity to Christ,
fidelity of the priest–at Vespers in St.
Peter’s where the relics of St. Curé of
Ars will be exposed. The Pope will
close this special year on June 19,
2010, by taking part in a World Meeting of Priests, on St. Peter’s Square.
During this Jubilee Year, Benedict
XVI will proclaim St. John Mary
Vianney “Patron of all the priests in
the world,” and the Congregation for
the Clergy will publish a Directory
for Confessors and Spiritual Directors, as well as a compilation of the
Pope’s texts on the mission of priests.
(apic/imedia/VIS. 6/6/2009)

15

pope piUs Xii
and the Attitude of PART 3
the Catholic Church
During World War II
This is the continuation of the interview with Fr. Peter Gumpel, S.J.,
the relator of the cause of Pope Pius XII. This part of the interview focuses
on more of the little-known history of World War II. It will be concluded
in the next issue of The Angelus.
We’ve learned through a Jewish journalist, Mr.
Dan Kurzman, a very competent journalist who had
interviewed General Karl Wolf, the Commandant to
Italy and assistant and deputy to Heinrich Himmler,
about the plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII. The plan–this
was an actual plan that Hitler had put into place—was
to arrest him and bring him to Liechtenstein or some
place for his “safety,” then kill him and seize the
Vatican and the assets of the Vatican. I’d like you to
comment on this and give your knowledge.

Yes, these facts are, to my knowledge, absolutely
true. I’ve been in touch with Mr. Kurzman; he
very graciously sent me his book. I’ve read it. I
agree with his conclusions—maybe not every single

expression–but with his general tendency, definitely
yes. The highest commander of the SS police forces
in Italy, General Karl Wolf, indeed was heard when
we made a canonical inquiry. The secretary of state
knew he had once been received by the Pope, in all
secrecy, and wanted to know more about that and
his further activities. He was approached through
an intermediary and agreed to make a statement
under oath, which is in the acts of the cause of Pius
XII’s beatification. I have known these acts. He later
even published certain parts of it, and I believe him.
The personality of Wolf is not entirely unknown to
me, because I already mentioned at the beginning
that my mother was arrested and in serious danger
of death and that somebody was sent to me when
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgelus • July 2009

16
I thought at first I was going to be arrested myself.
This was Karl Wolf.

Was he a general?

No, he was not yet a general, but he was the
personal aide-de-camp of Heinrich Himmler
himself. Therefore, at that moment, and ever since
that happened to me, I felt that this man was not
totally evil to say the least, that he was still human,
that he was not bound to come to see me and to tell
me, “I understand what a boy of your age has gone
through, that’s why I’m telling you this. But don’t
mention it to anybody.” It’s the same Karl Wolf. I
had never met him in Italy because I came here in
1947, two years after the end of World War II.

He was in prison, wasn’t he?

He was not condemned by the Americans or
by the English. He had gone to see Allen Dulles,
the brother of Foster Dulles, the former secretary
of state, who was heading the counter-espionage in
Geneva, Switzerland. He communicated that he was
planning to surrender the German army in Italy and
Yugoslavia, which he did. As a quid pro quo, Dulles
promised him that he would not be persecuted by
tribunals in England, and, in fact, he was never
taken to court by the Americans or the English.
He was later condemned—it is true—by a German
tribunal for certain papers he had signed with regard
to the transport of Jews from Germany and France
to Auschwitz. And for this he was condemned–and
to a rather long period of imprisonment. But it was
shortened on account of his health.
We contacted him after he had already been
released from prison. So substantially I think the
facts can be confirmed, which we also know from
German sources. We are not only relying on Karl
Wolf. But certainly when Mussolini fell on July 25,
1943, Hitler immediately gave orders to dislocate
eight motorized divisions to all the aggressors
between the German-occupied countries and Italy:
France, Austria, etc. And then he said, “I’m going
to arrest the King of Italy, Badoglio, who was the
successor to Mussolini, and the Pope.” And on
that occasion he said in the presence of witnesses,
“I’m going to invade the Vatican and arrest all the
foreign diplomats who are sitting in there,” which
was true, “and I’m going to take care of the Pope.”
He was dissuaded at the moment by Göbbels and
Bormann–Nazi leaders–not to do that because of
the international reaction to a step like this. But he
never gave up.

By “take care of the Pope” you mean arrest the Pope?
Arrest him, yes. Meaning at least to deport
him, to arrest him, yes. On the other hand, in the
Vatican–I know this for certain by oral testimony–
people believed that the Pope would be abducted.

The ANgelus • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

The Pope himself was convinced of it. He got the
advice from the Spanish government and from the
Portuguese government to leave the Vatican and
take refuge in their countries. And this was planned
rather in detail about how it should be done. The
Pope said, “No, I’m not going to leave my diocese.
If they want to arrest me, they will have to carry me
out by force.” And then he added, and he told this
to Cardinal Canali, Sister Pasqualina, Fr. Leiber and
other people, “Whomever would leave the Vatican
at that moment would no longer be Pope Pius XII,
but Cardinal Pacelli.” In other words, provisions had
been taken that somebody else, another cardinal,
would temporarily govern the Church because
Pius XII would be impeded from doing so. These
testimonies are clear. We also know that a number of
high-ranking people were ordered to prepare their
suitcases to follow the Pope. We also know that a
number of foreign ambassadors had declared, “We
are going to accompany him,” out of loyalty to the
Pope: the Finnish ambassador and others. So this
story is not just an invention; it is true. And I think
Mr. Kurzman has pointed out that this thing cannot
just be simply dismissed as a fable as if some people
had invented it.

I would like you to just make a comment on what it
was like within the Vatican during the war as far as
leaks were concerned–spies and Nazi sympathizers,
etc. All communications had to be done by either
word of mouth or by code because, as I mentioned,
we interviewed Msgr. Ferrofino, who said that the
telegrams would come from the apostolic palace
doubly encrypted, and he would have to do this all
for secrecy. But comment possibly on the leaks that
existed within the walls of the Vatican.

Certainly, I think in all governments, and in
all major political bodies, there is the danger of
leaks. Think, for example, in America, about the
Rosenberg couple who leaked top secret elements
with regard to nuclear armaments. In England,
Dr. Fuchs did the same thing with regard to the
Russians, and other people like that. Therefore
things like this happen all the time. They should not
happen in an ecclesiastical institution, in religion,
but they definitely do happen. They happened
during the war, and they happen to this very day.
Let me give you a very concrete example. (You
see I am very outspoken and honest with you.)
When the Communists still occupied Romania,
one of our own Jesuit superiors of that region
succeeded–I don’t know how he got leave, he didn’t
tell me–in going to Rome. He came to see me and
said, “I need to see the Pope.” And I said no. He
said, “Why are you so determined?” I said, “For the
very simple reason that I happen to know that if

17

you go there within an hour, the Romanian embassy
for the Italian government will be informed about
it. I will not expose you to that kind of danger. So
what you’re going to do, my dear Father, is sit down
and write a report. I will see to it that the Pope gets
it by hand. Without your signature or anything,
typed over.” He grumbled a little bit; he didn’t
understand. I said, “I won’t expose your life to that.
I know what’s going to happen. If word comes to
the Romanian embassy here, the next thing is you’ll
go back to Romania and, at the border, you’ll be
arrested. So don’t push me, I’m not going to do it.
That’s it.”
So, to your question, during the war, there were
certainly spies, yes, but spies also in the English
embassy to the Holy See. The butler there took
advantage of the fact that his boss, the minister,
every day took a walk in the Vatican garden to move
a little; because the area was restricted, after all. And
then he photographed all kinds of documents and
passed them right on to the Italians and through the
Italians, to the Germans.
And in the Vatican there have been people
partly–there are many Italians in the Vatican, and
certain Germans–for nationalistic reasons. Some
people felt it would be their duty to do this. In other
cases, some dark spot has been discovered in the
life of somebody. And they put him under pressure.
They say, “If you don’t do what we want, we are
going to reveal what we know.” The third reason:
material advantages, promotion, money–these are

all dishonest motives. But these things do happen.
You must remember that in the Vatican there are not
only priests, there are a number of lay people. They
may have their own interests, they may have their
own agenda, and there are also some priests who
did things in the past at least–I hope they don’t do it
today–who in fact give out information which they
should never give out.
A typical example is two people who spoke to
Hochhuth and provided him with information that is
first of all not correct; both of them were very much
opposed to Pius XII: one, a bishop who had been
deposed and exiled from Rome, living outside Rome
now; and the other one, a junior member of the
secretariat of state who was so convinced of his own
capacity, he thought he was due to be promoted.
The Pope knew his people and never promoted him
to anything. And the man never forgave him.
And these are the two ecclesiastics to whom
Hochhuth spoke. Now this is not exactly “spying”
as you are referring to, but you see, the motives that
some people can have in giving out information
can be various and at times very dishonest.
Unfortunately, I cannot deny that these things
happened. I know for certain that they happened.
There is even a book written on this, Nothing Secret,
by Dr. Kaltefleiter, one of my collaborators, and the
other co-author, Oschwald, with whom I am also
in contact, in addition to other spy books. Not spy
stories, but ascertained facts…
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgelus • July 2009

18

At the point when the archives are opened, what do
you think will actually be found? I mean, based on the
fact that all of this is living potential…

Well, to return to your first question, if there
would have been anything really damaging, you can
well imagine that these spies would have found it
and would have already sold it a long time ago. That
is point number one: connecting the two questions
together. The second point is: I think I know what
is in these archives. I’ve never seen anything in
there. I’ve been in frequent contact with the head
of the secret archives, now Bishop Pagano, and with
the head of the archives of the secretariat of state, a
dear friend and fellow Jesuit. I didn’t go there all the
time, but I said, “Look, I want to see this, that, and
the other thing, and, as investigating judge I have
a right to do this.” They both recognized this, and
they sent me the documentation. And so that’s how
I found out. Now, I’m not a betting man. What I’m
going to say may sound a little bit cynical, but it’s
my sincere conviction. I’m sure once the Vatican
archives are entirely open, everybody can go there
provided he has a doctorate or something like a
journalist’s credentials.

They don’t have to have a “library card” to go in?

You need permission. It’s a serious, important
archive. I needed one when I was a student and,
later, as a professor going into the archives. You
need to have documentation that you are capable
of doing research. Now, we hope that many of these
people who are now claiming that there are secret
documents hidden in the archives will go there.
They are not going to find what they are looking for.
But I’ll bet you anything they will say, “Oh well, of
course it was there, but it has been destroyed.” This
is cynical, but I think it’s realistic.

I want to get back to the Pope’s apprehension of
speaking out because there is a specific point. There
were many, many thousands of Jews that were being
protected under Vatican state territories, whether
ecclesiastical facilities or otherwise. What is your
impression of what the Pope was probably thinking in
terms of the safety of these people? Had he spoken
out or had he forced the hand to be actually arrested?
Had he been arrested by Hitler?

Some people have said–and I think, first of all, it
is not demonstrated, and is even, in a certain sense,
objectively malicious: “Oh, he didn’t speak out
because he was afraid for his personal safety!”Other
people go beyond this a little bit and say that he
was afraid the Vatican would suffer. That is not the
decisive reason. The Pope personally was a very
brave man. When he was Apostolic Nuncio in
Bavaria, after the end of the First World War, the

THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

Communists broke into the Nunciature, even though
it was a diplomatic building. They broke in there
and threatened him with a pistol pointed at him. He
didn’t back up one single step. He said, “Out with
you! Out!” Therefore, he was not afraid, and he said
so later.
He referred to this incident and other incidents
when he was on the point of being attacked by the
Communists in Munich during the Communist
party’s uprising in Munich during the uprising in
1919. Therefore, it’s not that. The reason is simply
and purely that if he had spoken out, the reaction of
Hitler was foreseeable. And it would have seriously
aggravated the situation. For example, during the
occupation of Rome, imagine he would have come
out with a public statement: “This is outrageous, this
must stop.” Hitler’s reaction would have been to
order the SS to invade all the convents, maybe even
the Vatican, and to look for the Jews in there and kill
them. And he was aware of that, and he didn’t want
to take that risk.
People say, “Why didn’t he speak out?” What
they forget is that he was advised by the Polish
bishops–not by some Polish bishop who had taken
refuge and left Poland at the moment of the danger,
but by the Polish bishops who stayed in Poland—who
said, “For heaven’s sake, don’t speak out, you are
only causing damage.” He once sent over a military
man–a chaplain, the military chaplain for the
Maltese Order, which was neutral–and sent hospital
trains to take back people who were severely
wounded to be taken to a hospital here in Italy, etc.
He sent over things, pamphlets, to be distributed
to the Polish clergy because in Poland there was
very bad propaganda from the Nazis saying, “The
Pope is with us; the Pope is against you,” which
was, of course, a lie. But people, if you continue to
repeat something, become very dubious. He sent
huge cases labeled “macaroni pasta,” “bottles,” etc.,
but they were all filled with these writings. And
they were taken there by this military chaplain and
accompanied by a German officer so as to make it
safer.
They went to the Archbishop of Cracow, one
of the predecessors of the future John Paul II. He
opened them and said, “For heaven’s sake, what are
you doing? If I distribute these things, even if they
are not tied to me, there are not enough heads in
Poland to be chopped off!” And in the presence of
these two people who were flabbergasted, he threw
everything into the fire. Therefore the Polish warned
the Pope: don’t say anything.
In the German concentration camps, where
there were many priests and also many Protestant
clergymen, if the SS treated them particularly badly,
the Protestants would say to their Catholic confrères:
“Did your big Pope perhaps open his mouth or
your bishops say something to annoy Hitler?” and
Continued on p.27.

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 2009

Reprint #87

“I SHALL HARDEN PHARAO’S HEART” (EX. 7:3)

THE BLINDNESS
OF CATHOLICS

PART 2

AND THE SOCIAL KINGSHIP OF CHRIST
“Russia Will Spread Her Errors
in the World”: The Ostpolitik of
John XXIII and the Principle of
the New Concordats
The ground covered in the two preceding articles
[see the May 2009 issue of The Angelus] enabled us
to appreciate the growing rift separating the way of
Divine mercy and the way taken by Vatican diplomacy.
Not that the two ways are irreconcilable in theory, but
when man thinks his prudence superior to the proven
prudence of her who is called Virgo prudentissima, then
the two ways have parted. And they clearly lead to
different outcomes. Heaven’s way would have led to
a stable (though not definitive, as that will come only
in Paradise) peace founded on the rights of God and
His holy Mother; men’s way has, on the contrary, led
to the construction of an unstable peace threatening
to collapse at any moment, a peace like the menacing
atmosphere that precedes a violent storm.
With the pontificate of John XXIII, the utopia of a
peace outside the order established by God became a
reality.

The New Tack of the Vatican’s
Ostpolitik: John XXIII
With the accession of John XXIII there appeared a
tendency to a different understanding of the Communist
phenomenon even in those places where it had become the
regime; and at the same time there was a growing awareness of the depth of the developing changes which were
subsequently to affect the politics of the Holy See. But we
think that one development of utmost importance was Pope
Roncalli’s idea that international peace should be a priority
for the Church.1

In our opinion, the capital error of John XXIII’s
Ostpolitik is contained in this new priority. International
peace is surely a value in behalf of which the Church
has always deployed her diplomatic arms; however,
it is a value subordinate to the rights of God and
the Church. This hierarchy of values was literally
subverted by John XXIII, as we shall see in our threepoint analysis of the three key points of his politics in
dealing with the Eastern European countries: 1) The
Metz Accord, 2) Vatican II, and 3) the encyclical Pacem
in Terris.

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The Metz Accord
In 1959 John XXIII announced to the world
his intention to convoke an ecumenical council. He
made known his desire that representatives of other
Christian confessions also participate in this council.
The extension of this “invitation” to the Orthodox
Church certainly could not exclude the Patriarchate
of Moscow, which constitutes the largest part of the
Orthodox world. It immediately became evident that
this involved the problem of relations with the Soviet
State. The ambassador of the Russian Orthodox
Church—and thus of the Communist party, since
according to Article 126 of the USSR Constitution
promulgated by Stalin in 1936, all professional and
social organizations, including those of a religious
character, were directed and controlled by the party2—
was Msgr. Nikodim. In 1962 he obtained a meeting
at Metz with Cardinal Tisserant. News of the meeting
was only made known the following year thanks to a
conference Msgr. Schmitt, the bishop of Metz, granted
to journalists:
It was at Metz that Cardinal Tisserant met with Msgr.
Nikodim, the archbishop charged with the Russian Church’s
exterior relations, and it was there that the message taken by
Msgr. Willebrands to Moscow was prepared. Msgr. Nikodim,
who had come to Paris in the first fortnight of the month of
August [1962] had made known his desire to meet with the
Cardinal….Msgr. Nikodim agreed to someone’s going to
Moscow to bring an invitation [to participate in the Council]
on condition that guarantees be given concerning the Council’s apolitical attitude.3

The significance of these guarantees as to
the apolitical attitude of the Council is obvious:
Communism must not be mentioned, as indeed
happened; the arrangement was confirmed for us by Fr.
Wenger:
During the French bishops’ meeting at St-Louis, Cardinal
Feltin made a confidential intervention. The Pope asked him
to tell the bishops that he did not want any political allusions
in their interventions.…They should not talk about Communism either.4

Vatican Council II
During the Council, the order not to talk about
Communism was followed to the letter. John XXIII
prepared the ground with his famous opening
discourse, in which he announced that the Church
would no longer use the arm of severity, and that she
preferred the remedy of mercy: “We are to understand
that, emerging from the mist of a nebulous strategy,
the point was to initiate the particular policy of a
sudden ban on open anti-Communism.”5 And indeed,
from that moment on, every attempt to obtain the
Council’s condemnation of Communism was thwarted
by recourse to the orientation the Pope desired to
impart to the ecumenical assembly, an orientation the

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following pope, Paul VI, was to approve fully. During
the Council several petitions were rejected, or rather—
what is worse—allowed to sink into oblivion: Bishop
Sigaud’s petition, signed by 213 Fathers, for a schema
on Catholic social doctrine and the condemnation
of Marxism, socialism, and Communism; a second
petition by the same bishop signed by 510 prelates to
obtain the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, as the Virgin had requested at Fatima;
and a letter drafted by Msgr. Carli with 332 signatures
(ultimately 454) demanding the condemnation of
Communism.
The last initiative met with unbelievable obstruc­
tion.
Archbishop Lefebvre submitted the petition and the
332 original signatures in person at the Council Secretariat
on November 9 when there was sufficient time for it to be
considered. He was given a receipt acknowledging that the
document had been received.
The result? On November 13 the new version of the
schema made no reference to the wishes of the petition.
Communism was still not named. Thus, Bishop Carli made a
protest on the same day to the Council Presidency and lodged
a complaint with the administrative tribunal. Moreover, he
decided to make the request once more in the form of an
amendment, and at the same time proposed a debate specifically on the topic….on November 15, the vigorous protest of
Archbishop Sigaud shook the Council. But it was all in vain.
Nevertheless, Cardinal Tisserant ordered an inquiry that
revealed…that the petition had unfortunately been “lost” in
a drawer. In fact Msgr. Achille Glorieux, secretary for the relevant commission, received the petition but had not passed
it on to the commission. Archbishop Garrone apologized
publicly for Msgr. Glorieux’s “forgetfulness,” but there was
nothing that could be done. Time had been made for a paragraph on Communism to be added, but it had now passed.6

And so the Council, which ought to have been
pastoral, attentive to mankind and contemporary
society, scandalously did not mention Communism:
Communism was undoubtedly the most imposing, longlasting, overwhelming historical phenomenon of the 20th
century; and yet the Council, which had proposed a Constitution on the Church and the Modern World, does not speak
of it. By midcentury, Communism…had caused the deaths
of tens of millions, the victims of mass terror and the most
inhuman repression; and the Council does not speak of it.
Communism…had in practice imposed atheism on its subject
populations…; and the Council, which expatiated on the case
of atheists, does not speak of it. During the years the ecumenical assembly was sitting, the Communist prisons were still
places of unspeakable sufferings and humiliations inflicted
on numerous “witnesses of the Faith” (bishops, priests, convinced laymen believing in Christ); and the Council does
not speak of it.7

The Encyclical Pacem in Terris
On April 11, 1963, while the Council was in
session, John XXIII published the encyclical Pacem
in Terris, which “will prove to be a precious source
for the elaboration of the document Gaudium et Spes”;
and indeed this encyclical determined the Council’s

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line of conduct in regard to Communism, which line
of conduct was, as we have seen, one of scandalous
silence.
Pacem in Terris literally overturned Divini
Redemptoris of Pius XI, especially by the principles
posited in paragraphs 158-160:
§158: It is always perfectly justifiable to distinguish
between error as such and the person who falls into error—
even in the case of men who err regarding the truth or are led
astray as a result of their inadequate knowledge, in matters
either of religion or of the highest ethical standards.

The principle is correct, but dangerously incomplete.
Cardinal Biffi writes:
While reflecting upon this statement, I was unable to
forget that the historical wisdom of the Church has never
reduced the condemnation of error to a pure and ineffectual abstraction. The Christian people must be warned and
defended against someone sowing error without our ceasing
to seek that person’s true good….In this regard, Jesus gave
the heads of the Church a precise directive: someone who
gives scandal by his conduct and teaching and does not allow
himself to be persuaded either by personal admonitions nor
by the more solemn reprobation of the ecclesia, ‘let him be to
thee as the heathen and the publican’ (Mt. 18:17); thus foreseeing and prescribing the institution of excommunication.8
§159: Again it is perfectly legitimate to make a clear distinction between a false philosophy of the nature, origin and
purpose of men and the world, and economic, social, cultural,
and political undertakings, even when such undertakings
draw their origin and inspiration from that philosophy. True,
the philosophic formula does not change once it has been set
down in precise terms, but the undertakings clearly cannot
avoid being influenced to a certain extent by the changing
conditions in which they have to operate. Besides, who
can deny the possible existence of good and commendable
elements in these undertakings, elements which do indeed
conform to the dictates of right reason, and are an expression
of man’s lawful aspirations?

With this we have the contrary of common sense and
the statements of Pius XI: given the intrinsic wrongness
of Communism, no one may collaborate with it in
anything whatsoever.
§160: It may sometimes happen, therefore, that meetings
arranged for some practical end—though hitherto they were
thought to be altogether useless—may in fact be fruitful at the
present time, or at least offer prospects of success.

Behold the Church caught in the Bolshevik snare:
Lenin and Company expected no more. John XXIII
misunderstood the true nature of Communism,
which—as we have seen—completely resides, not in its
theory, but in its praxis; the first is at the service of the
second, and not the reverse. Reality is but matter and
dialectical movement. Madiran profoundly perceived
the problem:
The Church is not expected to align her doctrine with
Marxism-Leninism, but only to stop keeping the faithful from
joint action with the Communist party: thus she needs must
refrain from opposing Communism; and since she cannot
avoid criticizing it when she speaks of it, she need only and
she needs must stop speaking of it.9

The Communist objective is to push the Church to
silence and Catholics to collaboration, even partial.
The Church thereby finds herself co-opted in the
Communist cause.

Open Doors to
International Communism
The Catholic hierarchy opted for the noncondemnation of Communism by its refusal to
consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart as by
its rejection during the Council of the proposal to
condemn Communism. Presented with these more than
conciliatory choices, the Communists agreed to change
their tone, but certainly not to change their objectives.
To the contrary, the groundwork for implementing
Marxist dialectic at the beginning of the 1980s was
readier than ever. The Italian deputy Longo, Togliatti’s
successor, clearly depicted the Italian Communist
party’s strategy:
We affirm that we are not in favor of an effectively and
absolutely secular State: that, as we are against the confessional State, we are also against atheism of the State; that we
are for the absolute respect of religious freedom, of freedom
of conscience, for believers and non-believers, Christians and
non-Christians. We are thus against the State’s attributing
any kind of privilege to an ideology, a religious belief, or a
cultural and artistic current to the detriment of the others.10

The State atheism practised in the Soviet Union
was nothing else than the momentary antithesis to
oppose the confessional Catholic State (the thesis); just
as the persecution that flowed from it served as the
“bait” to draw the Holy See into dealings and induce
it to accept a solution that would ultimately be the
abandonment of the Catholic social order, because this
order, and only it, was radically opposed to the integral
Communist revolution. The Concordat from the
Catholic perspective constituted an impassable barrier
to the achievement of the real revolution. Gramsci
clearly understood this when he wrote:
The concordats essentially attack the autonomous and
sovereign nature of the modern State. Does the State gain
in return? Yes, but it gains it on its own territory in matters
concerning its own subjects….the capitulation of the State
consists in its accepting in fact the tutelage of an external
sovereignty whose superiority it recognizes in practice.11

In the “classic” concordat, the State recognizes the
Catholic Church in itself, with its superior mission, and
it recognizes its indirect authority over the civil power.
The Catholic Church thus has a juridical importance,
and in virtue of this importance coherent laws are
promulgated. It was thus necessary to eliminate this
“juridical obstruction” but without falling into the error
of declaring an open war on the Church. The solution
takes shape in the principle of the secular State; in it,
the Church is taken into account as a phenomenon in

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that it exists de facto, as other ideologies, confessions,
etc., also exist. It may enjoy a greater respect inasmuch
as Catholicism is a religion belonging to the historical
roots of a nation, or because it is still (somewhat…)
professed by the majority of the citizens of the State. It
matters little. The point is that the Church is no longer
considered for what it is in truth. Senator Mancion,
who in 1984 was the head of the Christian Democrats
in the Italian Senate, explicitly stated about the new
concordat signed by Cardinal Casaroli and Craxi: “as
several acknowledged legal experts, we understand
the Catholic religion as the religion of the majority of
the Italian people, and not as the religion of State”12–a
statement of phenomenological importance. Such
is the fundamental principle the men of the Church
will adopt henceforth; it is not only a question of a
pragmatic agreement seeking to obtain as much as
possible in a particularly unfavorable situation. No;
it is a question of revolution in principle, as the vicepresident of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Msgr.
Fagiolo, admitted at the time:
We are obliged to recognize that it was no longer possible to maintain or to make others maintain the principle
according to which the Catholic religion is the sole religion
of the Italian State. Honestly, this principle could no longer
be defended.13

The foundations upon which Christian society
was built up for centuries and the rampart that had
defended it from arrogant political power were
definitively suppressed. The way was clear for
International Communism, which could more freely
“spread its errors in the world.”

“They Shut Their Eyes”
Blindness: such is the terrible consequence for
those who refuse the grace of God. There is not much
more to add: the Church’s doctrine on the social
kingship of Jesus Christ, the only true solution to the
manifold evils that afflict our society, is before the eyes
of any who have eyes to see. The “first” Maritain wrote
in 1927:

This doctrine is unchangeable. It may have been presented under different aspects: it has not altered in essentials
throughout the centuries....Anyone paying sufficient attention
to the substance of things underlying the various incidents of
history, will perceive that one same teaching is imparted by
Boniface VIII in the Bull Unam Sanctam and by Leo XIII in
the Encyclical Immortale Dei.14

The idea of the secular State, however it may be
declined, has never been accepted by the Church;
it has been, however, the instrument willed by
Communism for the annihilation of the Catholic State
and Christian society. And the events prove it day after
day.
Though they have eyes, they cannot see, and though they
have ears, they cannot hear or understand….You will listen
and listen, but for you there is no understanding; you will
watch and watch, but for you there is no perceiving. The
heart of this people has become dull, their ears are slow to
listen, and they keep their eyes shut, so that they may never
see with those eyes, or hear with those ears, or understand
with that heart, and turn back to me, and win healing from
me. (Mt. 13:14 [Knox version])

But that is not the Lord’s only saying, for He told
Sister Lucy: “It will never be too late to have recourse
to Jesus and Mary.” The faults committed can still
be repaired; the Holy Father, in union with all the
bishops, can still publicly and explicitly consecrate
Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Translated from Courrier de Rome, December 2008, pp.5-7.
G. Barberini, The Holy See’s Ostpolitik: A Long and Wearying Dialogue [Italian]
(Bologna, 2007), p.56.
2
Cf. Jean Madiran, La vieillesse du monde: Essai sur le communisme (Jarzé, 1975), p.
5ff.
3
Jean Madiran, L’accord de Metz ou pourquoi notre Mère fut muette (Versailles, 2006),
pp.28-29.
4
Ibid., p.31.
5
Ibid., p.34.
6
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre, tr. Brian Sudlow (2002; Kansas City:
Angelus Press, 2004), p.301.
7
Giacomo Biffi, Memories and Digressions of an Italian Cardinal [Italian] (Sienna,
2007), pp.184-185.
8
Ibid., p.179.
9
Madiran, L’accord de Metz, p.26.
10
L. Longo, “Summary of the Introduction to the XIth National Congress of the PCI” in
R. De Mattei, Catholic Italy and the New Concordat [Italian] (Rome, 1985), p.131.
11
A. Gramsci, Notebooks from Prison, 1929-1935 [Italian], C. 16, §11.
12
Quoted in De Mattei, Catholic Italy, p.105.
13
Ibid., p.96
14
Jacques Maritain, Primauté du spirituel (Paris, 1927), pp.28-29. [English version: The
Things That Are Not Caesar’s, tr. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1930), p.13.]
1

Political Modernism: The Negation
of the Kingship of Jesus Christ
Political modernism seeks the separation of
Church and State in opposition to the teaching of the
Church on the social kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Political modernism would limit God’s relationship

22

with men to individual members of humanity. The
Church, to the contrary, teaches that man, by nature a
social animal, must, among other duties, offer public
worship to God, and that society (a union of many

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families), a “moral creature” of God, owes Him public
worship and adoration. Unfortunately, Vatican II (in
Dignitatis Humanae) denied the social dimension of
the confessional Catholic State. The last trip of Pope
Benedict XVI to the United States (April 2008) was
the epitome of this error, for he presented as the ideal
and model separation between the State and the true
religion.

The Cause of the Evil Enveloping
the Modern World: Laicism
On December 11, 1925, Pius XI promulgated the
Encyclical Quas Primas on the social reign of our Lord
Jesus Christ; this document brought the social kingship
of Christ into the universal liturgy (Feast of Christ the
King) and into the category of truths declared by the
ecclesiastical Magisterium.
I. On March 24, 1960, the Italian episcopate,
under the presidency of Cardinal Siri, wrote an
interesting Pastoral Letter on “Laicism” which well
explained its nature and malice. Etymologically, the
Greek word laòs, whence comes the word laicism,
designates the faithful and, in the language of the New
Testament, the Christian and the saint; but the term
laicism in the 19th century, as the suffix “ism” denotes,
took on a purely negative anticlerical and antireligious
connotation. Laicism, in effect, is “a complex state of
mind…however it is possible to discern a constant
line…a mentality of systematic and alarmist opposition
to any influence that might be exercised over men and
institutions by the Catholic religion and hierarchy”
(Pastoral Letter on Laicism).
Laicism can be either radical or moderate: it is
radical when it completely abstracts from Revelation
and grace; it is moderate when it considers the Faith as
something private and individual in such wise that the
Church ought not to intervene in public life. Moderate
laicism is also anti-Catholic: it is Liberal Catholicism,
which Pius IX judged more dangerous than the “Paris
Commune.”
One of the causes of laicism may be “the
shortcomings of some members of the clergy, whose
attitude of excessive authoritarianism and distrust
of the laity…can lead to reciprocal defiance and
opposition” (ibid.). Priests, to the contrary, should
instruct the laity, give them spiritual direction, and
provide them with the means of grace, and the laity
should then bring Jesus and the spirit of the Church
into their social circles and workplaces.
St. Pius X reiterated that in order to restore all
things in Christ–“instaurare omnia in Christo” [Eph.
1:10]–it was necessary to have good laymen who, in a
collaboration subordinate to the clergy, would carry
the Gospel into secularized society and rechristianize
the world. L’Ami du Clergé of January 20, 1921,
reported a dialogue between St. Pius X and a group
of cardinals:

“What is most needed today,” asked the Pope, “for the
salvation of society?”
“Founding Catholic schools?” answered one.
“No.”
“Building churches,” replied another.
“Not that either.”
“Promoting vocations,” said a third.
“No,” replied St. Pius X. “What is most needed today is
that every parish should have a group of laymen who are
very virtuous, well-informed, resolute, and real apostles.”

Christ Is King
Christ is king, Pope Pius XI states, and then asks
what the nature of His kingship is. As God, the Son
is consubstantial with the Father; He is king of the
universe like the Father and the Holy Ghost. As man,
He is king by birthright, His humanity belonging to
the person of the divine Word (the hypostatic union);
He is king by acquired right, having redeemed the
human race from sin with His blood. Consequently,
Christ as man also has power over all creatures, which
must adore and obey Him. This royalty residing
in Christ’s human nature is the subject of Pius XI’s
encyclical.
As king, Christ has a primacy of honor, or
excellence, and of domination. He thus possesses
the triple power legislative (He promulgates the Ten
Commandments), judicial (particular and universal
judgment), and executive (He rewards and punishes in
this life and in the next).
In Holy Scripture, the kingship of Christ is
announced several times in both the Old and the New
Testament. In the New Testament, the Angel of the
Annunciation tells Mary: “And his reign will have no
end”; and on Good Friday Jesus tells Pilate, who asked
“Are you then a king?” “I am.”
Christ’s reign is by nature essentially and
principally spiritual, but without excluding its
extension to temporal things; it is also social and not
only individual. The kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ
is principally spiritual: He governs souls and leads
them towards Paradise. Yet “whoever would take from
Christ, God and man, power over all things temporal
would be sorely mistaken,” wrote St. Pius X.
As God, He has an absolute right over all created
things. But Christ did not and does not desire to
exercise His kingship over things temporal; He leaves
it to human authority. He communicates this power
in the same terms to the Church in the person of the
Pope: direct and exercised power in matters spiritual;
direct but unexercised power in things temporal,
which the Pope, like Christ, leaves to princes, only
exercising his power insofar as temporal things hamper
or hinder man in the pursuit of his final spiritual end
(ratione peccati).1

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The reign of our Lord Jesus Christ is not only a
reign over individuals but also over society. Society is
a grouping of families and individuals by natural right,
and as Christ is the king of individuals, He is also the
king of nations, which owe Him their adoration and
submission. The State, moreover, must co-operate
with the Church by means of good laws so that its
citizens may attain eternal happiness, in keeping with
the proper subordination of ends: the temporal good is
inferior to the spiritual good, thus it is subordinate to
it.
The negation of the social kingship of Christ has
catastrophic consequences because it leads to anarchy
and totalitarianism. If authority does not come from
God but man, the question arises: why should some
men obey and others command? This is the principle
of revolution and anarchy. In another connection, if
the citizens refuse to obey an authority which they
perceive as purely human, the State has no other
means than force to compel obedience—and that is
totalitarianism. But if the principle that authority
comes from God is widely accepted, the citizens will
be more obedient because they realize that by obeying
human authorities, they obey God; and the leaders, in
turn, will be more just, seeing in the kingship of Christ
the model they must strive to imitate.
The failure to take into account Christ’s kingship
results in the destruction of civil society by making it
alternate between anarchy and the police state, which,
in order to make its authority respected, must inspire
terror and crush all opposition.

Humanity Needs Christ the King
The world, in disarray after World War I, was
looking for a king of peace. In 1925, the Pope pointed
him out to everyone, saying: Jesus Christ is the Princeps
pacifer.
All men need someone to govern or guide them
(a rector or rex, from regere, that is, to direct someone
towards a goal) just as a ship needs someone to steer
it (helm = gubernaculum; helmsman = gubernator). This
king is Christ, and men must be disposed to observe
His laws and commands in order to make their way
to port, that is, the Law that, if observed with the help
of grace, will lead them to heaven. If men, being free,
refuse, they will be bereft of their final end, which is
eternal life.
Moreover, man is a social animal, and every
society needs an authority to maintain its unity and
to govern it towards its end: ubi non est gubernator,
populus corruet. The world that issued from the First
World War felt the need of a guide to shelter it from
the consequences of that massacre and looked for a
king; the Pope showed Him to it, but the world did not
want Christ to reign over it, and so there was a second
world war even more terrible, at the end of which the

24

last “empire” still standing in Europe, encircled on the
east and the west, was the Roman Church with Pope
Pius XII for pastor, who once more pointed out the
only remedy to so many evils: a return to Christ the
King. The world again did not want to obey, and so we
find ourselves on the brink of a terrifying era of chaos,
disorder, and anarchy.

Christ the King
of Minds and Hearts
The king of minds is Christ, who alone reveals
the fulness of truth. He is also the king of hearts
because He is the infinite Sovereign Good, the only
one capable of satisfying the infinite aspirations of the
human soul. Man has need of a king of his intellect to
enlighten him and lead him to the gate of truth and to
keep him from erring. That king is Christ, who said: “I
am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”; and who warned
us: “Neither be ye called masters, for one is your
master, Christ” (Mt. 23:10).
Man is also made to love, but he can find
no creature able to satisfy his heart’s desires. St.
Augustine said: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O
God, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”
This is something we experience daily. But our heart
is also “pravum et inscrutabile,” as Jeremias teaches
(17:9), and it can turn its back on God and prefer to
Him creatures whom he shall have to leave one day
whether he wishes or not.
That is why the human heart (nutantia corda, the
liturgy says) needs a remedy from a doctor; a sure
guide, to be preserved from procrastination. Only
Jesus, true God and true Man, has the power to heal
our reluctant hearts, and He tells us: “Come to me,
all you that labour and are burdened; I will give you
rest….learn from me; I am gentle and humble of heart;
and you shall find rest for your souls” (Mt. 11:28-29).
Such is the only true remedy for the evils afflicting
man and threatening to make him lose his way.

How to Restore the
Social Reign of Christ
Cardinal Pie wrote a great deal on the social
kingship of Christ, and gave wise advice for restoring
it. Let us listen to his counsel.
The faithful must make Christ reign in their minds
and then in their hearts (nihil volitum nisi praecognitum)
by religious instruction: “The only hope of social
regeneration depends on the study of our religion….
The first step towards a return to peace and happiness
will be the return to the knowledge of Christianity.”3
Letting one’s mind drift away from truth and
becoming indifferent to it is, according to Cardinal
Pie, the crime God will punish the most severely and
the most justly. The religious instruction of the faithful
must be solid and nourish in them an integral faith
which confesses not only the divinity and the humanity

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of Jesus Christ, but also His social kingship. The
Catholic, if he wishes to be such fully, must believe
that Jesus has the right to reign over social institutions.
The faithful will manifest their integral faith especially
by practising the Catholic Faith without human
respect: “The Christian religion is a public religion,
and the faithful have a duty to practise it publicly,
whence the duty to offer to Christ the pubic worship of
the Church.”4
We must not be ashamed of Christ in front of
men, and we must not give in if the culture in which
we live and work is anti-Christian; this would be an
aggravating, not mitigating, circumstance, for in the
general apostasy in which we live, we must declare
our faith out loud and be an example. If anyone
is ashamed of Jesus before men, then Jesus will be
ashamed of him when He comes to judge the living
and the dead: “Since today the God of heaven and
earth has become unpopular and you stand a fair
chance of being despised like Him by a corrupt
generation, you consider yourselves free from any
public duty towards Him….On the contrary! If we are
faithful to Him, we shall reign with Him; if we disown
Him, He will disown us.”5
Priests must devote their lives to the cause of
the social reign of Christ. Since the first obstacle to
its restoration is religious ignorance, “the priest’s
principal duty is to instruct….it is his mission….If the
priest is a man of doctrine, this program will be carried
out; he must know how to give to the faithful and to
magistrates the Church’s complete teaching on the
social kingship of Christ.”6
But who will realize and put into practice the
doctrinal teaching given by priests, the Cardinal
wonders; and he answers: the intellectual class and the
ruling class.

The Common Duties of
Intellectuals and Rulers
The laity, who are neither “laicists” nor
anticlericalists since the word “lay” designates the
faithful who do not belong to the clergy, must have a
solid, complete, and superior instruction: “They should
follow a course of Thomist philosophy, natural ethics,
Catholic social doctrine, and ecclesiastical public law;
so doing, the nation will be transformed.”7
Teachers, who have the delicate mission of forming
the intellects and moral conscience of youth, have
the particular duty of teaching them the principles of
Christianity and the necessity of the social kingship of
Jesus Christ, in opposition to the intellectuals of the
Enlightenment, who took advantage of their role to
create a vacuum round Christ, to discredit the Church
and the clergy, thus estranging the masses from Jesus.
It is also necessary that public officials take
part officially and sincerely in the Church’s public
worship. The return en masse of the people to the
liturgy and the Christian life will never be able to

happen if the intellectual and political leadership does
not give the example: the intellectual elite [le savoir]
must give a completely Catholic teaching, and the
political elite [le pouvoir] must strive to realize in the
political domain an integrally Christian platform.
We must not forget what St. Pius X said:
Civiliza­tion is not something yet to be found, nor is the New
City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and
still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has
only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.8

Leo XIII described Christian society, or medieval
Christendom, in these terms:
There was once a time when States were governed by the
philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and
divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people….Then,
too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ…flourished everywhere, by the favour of princes and the legitimate protection
of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united
in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The
State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond
all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will
be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs
which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any
craft of any enemies.9

St. Pius X averred:
“To restore all things in Christ” has always been the
Church’s motto….“To restore all things”–not in any haphazard fashion, but “in Christ”….“To restore all things in Christ”
includes not only what properly pertains to the divine mission of the Church, namely, leading souls to God, but also
what We have already explained as flowing from that divine
mission, namely, Christian civilization in each and every one
of the elements composing it.10
To restore all things in Christ, above all it is necessary to
know the doctrine of Jesus Christ, not by reading the great
books destined for intellectuals, but by reading a little book
that, beneath a humble aspect, contains all the wisdom dispersed in the great books: the Catechism.11

Finally, Pope Pius XII observed:
There is a whole world to be rebuilt from its very foundations, the universal order to be re-established. The material
order, the intellectual order, the moral order, the social
order, and the international order: everything has to be
remade and restored in a constant, regular movement. The
rebirth and continuation of the tranquility of order, which
is peace, the only true peace, can only happen on condition
that human society be made to rest upon Christ, and so
regather, recapitulate, and reconjugate everything in Him:
instaurare omnia in Christo.12

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The Peril Hanging
over Humanity

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USA

The world is becoming more and more
dechristianized. Today there no longer exists a single
nation in which Christ reigns publicly; indeed,
everything is being done to efface every trace of His
reign. Humanly speaking, the contest is unequal. If
anyone should entertain the thought of winning by
purely human means, let him heed what St. Pius X
teaches:

5-10 days

2-4 days

He is everywhere and amongst all; he knows how to be violent or sly. Throughout the course of recent centuries, he has
attempted to achieve the intellectual, moral, and social disaggregation of the unity in the mysterious organism of Christ.
He desiderated nature without grace; reason without faith;
freedom without authority, and sometimes authority without
freedom. This enemy takes a more and more concrete form,
and his lack of basic principles leaves one flabbergasted:
Christ, yes; the Church, no. Then: God, yes; Christ, no. Finally
the impious cry: God is dead; and even, God never existed.
And now comes the attempt to construct a global framework
on foundations...which are the very ones chiefly responsible

26

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There are many, We are well aware, who, in their yearning
for peace, that is for the tranquility of order, band themselves
into societies and parties, which they style parties of order.
Hope and labor lost. For there is but one party of order capable
of restoring peace in the midst of all this turmoil, and that is
the party of God.13

But the arm of God has not lost its strength, and
“omnia quaecumque voluit, fecit,” even though the enemy
of the Christian social order has been advancing in
giant steps from Renaissance humanism to the present
day, reaching its apex in Italy with the Risorgimento
and becoming a mass phenomenon with Christian
Democracy. This enemy is admirably described by St.
Pius X:

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for the menace imperilling humanity: an economy without
God, law without God, politics without God.14
Translated from Courrier de Rome, January 2009, pp.1-4.
P. Parente, A. Piolanti, S. Garofalo, Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, 4th ed. (Rome:
Studium, 1957).
2
Cf. T. de Saint-Just, La royauté sociale de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Chiré-enMontreuil: Ed. de Chiré, 1988), pp.23-42; J. de Monléon, O.S.B., Le Christ Roi (Paris:
Téqui, 1933); F. Sarda y Salvany, Le libéralisme est un péché (Paris: Nouvelle Aurore,
1975), pp. 239-245; J. Ousset, Pour qu’Il Règne (Paris: Office, 1970), pp.11-30.
3
H. Oudin and J. Leday, Oeuvres sacerdotales (Paris, 1891), I, 137.
4
Saint-Just, p. 87.
5
L. Pie, Instruction pastorale sur l’obligation de confesser publiquement la foi chrétienne (Lent 1874) (Paris: H. Oudin-J. Ledday, 1891).
6
Saint-Just, p. 94.
7
Ibid., p.103
8
Letter on the Sillon “Our Apostolic Mandate,” August 25, 1910.
9
Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.
10
Encyclical Il Fermo Proposito, June 11, 1905.
11
Allocution to Tuscan Pilgrims, October 12, 1908.
12
Exhortation to the Faithful of Rome, February 10, 1952.
13
E Supremi Apostolatus, October 4, 1903, §7.
14
Nel contemplare.
1

The ANgelus • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

27

Continued from p.18.

so on. The German Resistance asked him not to do
anything because it would hinder the Resistance
since they continued underground to act against
Hitler, finally bringing about this attempt on his
life on July 20, 1944. But there were about twenty
total attempts on the life of Hitler, and, nearly
miraculously, he escaped. He had a sixth sense.
So, there were many people who said, “Speaking
out doesn’t help anything, so don’t.” And he was
right in making this decision because it was a
question of saving Jewish lives. Speaking out would
not have saved a single life. It was demonstrated
in Holland and on other occasions. Helping them
in secrecy and not exposing the institutions of the
Vatican to invasion saved thousands of lives.
In other countries like Hungary, where there
was still an Apostolic Nuncio, Rotta, together with
Wallenberg, saved, under formal order of Pope
Pius XII, 20,000 Jewish lives by handing out fake
certificates of baptism, by handing out letters of
protection, etc. And here, it may be useful to say
something, because sometimes people quote John
XXIII against Pius XII, which is total nonsense.
Pope John XXIII had the greatest admiration for
Pius XII; I met him several times. But some people
do not know; they try to establish an opposition
between Pius XII and his immediate successor, John
XXIII, who, during the lifetime of Pope Pius XII
during the Second World War, was acting as a papal
representative, first in Romania and Greece, later in
Turkey. He did a lot to save Jewish lives, and he was
praised for that by the Jews, thanked understandably
and honestly.
But he always said, “Look, I acted only and
exclusively under direct order of Pope Pius XII.”
When they tried to give the decoration of “Just
among the Gentiles” to Msgr. Montini, who was one
of the chief helpers of Pope Pius XII, he said, “No,
I won’t accept that. I did only what I was ordered
to do, and you don’t accept a medal for doing your
duty.” When the Bishop of Assisi, Nicolini, got the
same decoration with his aide, Fr. Brunazzi, they
always claimed, “Well, we did it because Pius XII
sent a message.”
You see, Dr. Susan Zuccotti, whom I’ve already
mentioned, said, “Well, I know that Msgr. Brunazzi
said that Bishop Nicolini of Assisi (where many Jews
had taken refuge) had at a certain moment a letter
in his hand, a written statement, and he said, ‘This
is what I received from the Vatican: help the Jews to
the best of your capacity.’” And then they got going
and saved several hundred Jewish lives. Not only
in Assisi, but they were sending out messages to the
people in the surrounding areas, etc.
Now Susan Zuccotti said that Bishop Brunazzi
did not see the letter, practically saying that the
bishop was lying. But why should a man who got the
highest distinction of Israel tell a lie to these people?

Isn’t it outrageous that a Jewish personality of today
accuses a man of such high merits for the Jewish
people of a lie or fraud? This is, to my mind, from a
scientific point of view but also from a human point
of view, difficult to understand.

I’d like to touch on a very prominent example of
something that went on from 1939-45. Every six
months the Pope would issue a telegram so that they
could use an old ship to transport 800 Jews from
Portugal to the Dominican Republic, and on to the US,
Mexico, and Cuba. Msgr. Ferrofino said they would
have to hand-deliver this telegram to General Trujillo,
driving a day and a half from Port-au-Prince to the
island. Then the General would say, “In the name
of the Pope, we are going to allow this to happen.”
And this went on for many years and saved many
thousands of lives. This is, as I see it, a very good
example of direct intervention on the side of the Pope.
Would you comment on any information you have
which may be similar to this? In other words, were you
aware of this particular situation?
Yes, I was aware of it, and I even wrote to the
state archives and ecclesiastical archives, both in
Haiti and in Santo Domingo. But it appears that
these archives are in a terrible state of disorder–
which, given the smallness of the country and the
general setup there, doesn’t surprise me. You can’t
compare archives in Haiti and Santo Domingo with
the huge archives in Paris, London, etc. Therefore,
the case mentioned by Ferrofino was not entirely
unknown to me, but he gave me a number of details
that I did not know. The essential facts that he
passed along the orders of Pius XII, that he got in
touch with Trujillo, etc., these things are published
in a series of documents which so far I haven’t
mentioned. I refer to a 12-volume set published in
French and Italian: Actes et documents du Saint Siège
relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. In English, that
would be, “Acts and Documents of the Holy See
Relating to the Second World War.” There are about
5,000 documents that were published between
1965 and 1982. And in these volumes, you will
find several documents dedicated to the helping of
persecuted people. And in one of these volumes
this incident of Ferrofino and Trujillo is mentioned.
Therefore the substance is there, but not all the
details that I saw yesterday when you showed me
what had been gathered in this very interesting
interview with His Excellency, Msgr. Ferrofino.

(To be continued.)
This is an edited transcript of a video interview of Fr. Gumpel with Pave the
Way Foundation, which owns the copyright to this material.
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • July 2009

28

F r .

p a u l

r o b i n s o n

Facebook, MySpace,
anD tWitter, oh My!
Social networking has become a nearly universal phenomenon. From children to business
professionals, these networks have come to dominate the internet to the point that almost
everyone has a variety of "profiles" which show a fragment of a person's life.
But primarily for parents: do you really understand the dangers?
Finite man is made for the infinite God. And he
cannot escape this purpose; he can only frustrate its
attainment. I say “cannot escape” not because he
should want to–what is more flattering than being
made for the infinite?–but because he is so often trying
to. For some, there is an outright and desperate effort
to find ultimate satisfaction in something less than God;
for others, a constant stopping short of God to lollygag
around with creatures.
If anything has been reinforced in my years as
a priest, it is this: the empty and superficial are a
massive roadblock in a man’s journey towards God. To
draw closer to God, to unite with God, to be one with
God–this is the purpose of man’s existence. But God is
measureless, all-encompassing, all-satisfying, infinite.
Unlike our relation to finite creatures, at no point can
we say to God, “I have come thus far and can go no
further.” To attain God requires time, depth, effort,
and consuming desire. He cannot be exchanged for
anything less than Himself–stopping at the finite will
always make for loss of the infinite, and man has no
meaning without union with the infinite.
The challenge posed by man’s God-given purpose
has never been so difficult as today because the
superficial has never been so attractive, accessible, and
imposing. At every level of man’s existence–natural,
intellectual, social, supernatural–what is higher is
more nourishing and valuable than what is lower:
principles over practice, thinking over acting, lasting
over passing, effort over ease, contemplation over
meditation, philosophy over science, spiritual over
material, God over man. Our technology-charged
The ANgelus • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

world, however, manifestly inverts the equation,
streamlining the path to what is transitory and shallow,
making the living of meaningful human existence
a societal aberration. The nightly news, sitcoms,
billboards, cell phones, iPods, video games, rock ‘n’
roll, text messages, fax messages, e-mail messages,
instantaneous stock quotes, weather reports, news
feeds, traffic updates–how can any swimmer drowning
in this information tidbit tidal wave manage to breathe
deeply the spiritual realities made for his fulfillment?
At this moment, I am typing on a laptop, gift
from my St. Joseph’s Businessmen. To the right of
the 17-inch flat screen is my Google toolbar, inviting
me to indulge any curiosity at the speed of thought
by sending off a search engine or Wikipedia query. A
visual analog clock ticks away the seconds and minutes
while just above it hovers a bright sun with the current
temperature in St. Marys and the high and low for the
day. Soliciting me with tantalizing attractiveness are
1,532 other “Google gadgets.” For the moment, I have
chosen to forgo a display of the position of the planets,
a game of Tetris, road maps, a virtual flower pot, an
Answer ball, a sidebar TV set, Einstein quotes of the
day, and countless other “life enriching” possibilities.
All the while, I realize that I am only scraping the
surface of the technological monolith.

Social Networking
Among all of the newfangled life-emptying media
available today for public consumption, the one most

29
popular among teens is social networking. It seems
innocuous enough in principle: just some young
people getting together to chat, post some pictures,
make friends. In a non-toxic culture, such networking
could possibly have positive effects. Today, it is the
vehicle to construct a second life,1 a life with virtual
friendships unrestricted by any social barriers,
parental rules, or human decency. Too often, the
difference between a teenager’s in-life persona and
online profile is as extreme as the difference between
Shirley Temple and Britney Spears. The line between
virtual life and real life is marked by the computer
keyboard, and the contrast between the two is often
shocking.
The exponential success of Twitter2, MySpace
and Facebook among tweens and teens should not
be a surprise. They give an unheard of and flattering
power: a potentially unlimited audience paying
attention to you. To take Facebook for example:
Every single quiz taken, photo posted, preference
stated, comment made, mood changed, and profile
perturbation of yours is dutifully and immediately
passed on to every single “friend” of which the
average user has 120. The famed Facebook “Wall”
keeps an instantaneous running tab of the mouse clicks
of you and your virtual friends.
Teenagers engaging themselves in the social
networking world enter a narcissist incubator that is
as addictive as its astounding ability to make me feel
good. Many decide not to emerge, leaving family,
friends, and the real world out of their timetable in
exchange for a second and virtual life that is all the
more satisfying as it feeds the craving for attention and
validation, without making any demands, moral or
social. Out of many studies done, the best estimate is
that the average media use for children and teenagers
is 6 hours and 21 minutes a day.3
The aim to draw attention can only be reached by
going down, not up. The scandalous and sensational
outsell the pious and profound. A Teen Trends Study
done between 2004 and 2006 concluded with “This
generation is unique. Teen life has become a theatrical,
self-directed media production.”4
Exhibitionism is rampant in the online matrix. By
the design of human nature, girls are to attract and
boys are to be attracted. Boys flaunt their drinking,
smoking, rocking to death metal, and, yes, their
girlfriends. Meanwhile, the girls undress. Few of
them hesitate showing themselves in various stages of
dishabille to whoever’s interested. And enough are.
Me, MySpace, and I quotes a 14-year-old:
I have some very sexy poses as my MySpace pics. I know
that they are flashy and pretty because I get requests from
older men to be their friends all the time. I like it when
people think I am a model. It makes me feel important.5

The official terminology for preparing your
MySpace page is “pimping it out.”
The new term “sexting” has even been coined for
the fast-growing trend among teens for sending nude

or semi-nude pictures.6 Last year, a girl in Cincinnati
even went so far as to hang herself after her nude
photo meant for her boyfriend was sent to teenagers
at several high schools and she became the object of
ridicule.
Many of generations past would consider
themselves dangerously self-absorbed if they found
themselves snapping self-photos and mailing them
on a regular basis to all their friends. Today’s teens
tote their digital camera with them wherever they go
in order to perform for their audience. Knowing that
everyone will be seeing their pictures and videos, they
behave accordingly. Last year, some girls in Florida
decided to video themselves beating up a schoolmate
so that they could upload the video to YouTube and
get high ratings. The virtual now determines the real;
teens are living for the screen, not for the reality of
which it is but an image.

The average child today has over
six hours of screen time every
day. Much of it involves some
form of social networking.
But there is a much more troubling side-effect
to “growing up online.” The very life views of the
teenager are now being taught by the Facebook
world. What does it mean to be someone’s friend?
How ought one to speak, to undertake and carry on a
relationship, or to interact with others? What is most
important in life? What does it mean to be fulfilled
and successful? Where do one’s best interests lie?
Answers to all of these questions are persistently
inculcated through the social networking sub-culture,
in the advertisements, the underlying architecture,
and the expressions of the teens themselves. Perhaps
we have here a picture of what society would be if
it were run by pre-adults unformed by the norms of
civilized culture. Teen Society = millions of teenagers
+ social networking 44 hours a week – adult or family
interaction – constraints of civilization – impositions of
reality.
The book Generation MySpace accurately distills
into four sentences the message that is being sold
to children by the mass media and which social
networking caters to:7
l “I must be entertained all of the time.” The first
message teens have heard loud and all too clear is that
entertainment comes above all else....Now we are more
alienated and disconnected from them than ever before.
l If you’ve got it, flaunt it. The second message teens
are embracing is that modesty is uncool–a thing of
the past, stifling, disempowering–and that privacy is
lame....Because screen culture is one that is rooted
in a peekaboo mentality anchored in images, today’s
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgelus • July 2009

Facebook

30
teens are expert exhibitionists, vigilant voyeurs, and novice
narcissists.
l Happiness is a glamorous adult. The pursuit is for excitement,
not substance.
l Success means being a consumer.

I have to buy in order to be validated.
The end product of this media parenting is today’s
“screenager”: multi-tasking, self-consumed, allergic to
responsibility. And people are noticing. Lady Susan
Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and
director of the Royal Institution, recently stated:
My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain
into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing
noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who
live for the moment....I often wonder whether real conversation
in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier
screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and
butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience
of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf.8

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, states:
We are seeing children’s brain development damaged because
they don’t engage in the activity they have engaged in for
millennia. I’m not against technology and computers. But before
they start social networking, they need to learn to make real
relationships with people.9

The Pope himself is a bit worried about the
phenomenon. When the Vatican announced its YouTube
channel, Benedict XVI had this to say:
It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online
friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage
with our families, our neighbors and those we meet in the daily
reality of our places of work, education and recreation.10

Cutting through all of the media glamour, the simple
fact is that the worth of each individual is determined by
the strength of his relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ.
But if relationship extends no further than the clicking
of a button, then it will be surprising indeed if someone
is able to put forth the serious, sacrificial effort required
to maintain fidelity to Our Lord and remain in the state
of grace. “Being friends” in the online world is no more
profound than eating jello. Meanwhile, Our Lord asks for
and deserves nothing less than a lifelong commitment.
But how could a MySpace screenager have any notion of
such a commitment? Take up your camera and promote
yourself is a far cry from take up your cross and follow Me.
The traditional preludes to intimacy between couples,
the life-long vow of fidelity we call marriage being the
most important among them, are long gone. Now the
coupling starts with puberty. Catholic morality demands
psychological maturity and financial stability before
approaching courtship; in the online world, once you are
physically ready, you need only a partner to exercise the
rights of the married. That person is your friend, until they
get removed from your Top 8.11
With the amazing perspicacity often shown forth in
encyclicals, Pope Pius XI had this to say 80 years ago:
The ANgelus • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

1,000,001 ways to stroke the ego
Facebook has a multiplicity of ways
to feed your self-love. As an example:

You can take thousands of quizzes!

What musical interval are YOU?
What Jersey town best suits YOU?
Which Twilight character are YOU?
How Wyoming are YOU?
Inner Nationality Quiz: What are YOU really?
Which Muppet are YOU?
What are YOU meant to do in life?
What should YOUR parents have named YOU?
What’s the first letter of the person YOU will fall in love with?
What kind of kisser are YOU?
What alcoholic drink are YOU?
What Greek goddess are YOU?
Which Saint are YOU?
What do YOUR eyes say?
Which High Fashion Brand are YOU?

You can “interact” virtually
with your friends!
Throw a sheep at
Adopt a pet with
Trout slap
Chest bump
Build a playground with
Blow a kiss at
Breath fire on
Bubblewrap
Name a sewage plant after
Give a box of chocolates to
Make out with

. . . your friends!

You can let everyone know
what YOU are doing!

Jill posted their name in pictures!
100 things about me
Joe picked the five cars he wants in his garage.
Jane found the egg hidden by Bob
Bill picked the five greatest cereals of all time.

You can tell the world what YOU like!

John became a fan of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, Olive
Garden Bread Sticks, Sleeping, Hot Showers

The most grave disease by which our age is oppressed,
and at the same time the fruitful source of all the evils
deplored by every man of good heart, is that levity
and thoughtlessness which carry men hither and thither
through devious ways. Hence comes the constant and
passionate absorption in external things; hence, the
insatiable thirst for riches and pleasures that gradually
weakens and extinguishes in the minds of men the
desire for more excellent goods, and so entangles them
in outward and fleeting things that it forbids them to
think of eternal truths, and of the Divine laws, and of
God Himself, the one beginning and end of all created
things.12

k

31
Living an empty life online, there is no room for
the fullness of the Faith.

Modern Medicine
& PBS Frontline
I cannot help but breathe a sigh of weariness in
sorting through the mountain of statistics and case
studies that modern authors amass in their analysis of
our cultural destruction. There are always two implicit
premises: a) arguments from common sense or first
principles, i.e., “non-scientific” or “non-experimental”
arguments, are completely out of the question–no
deduction, only induction; b) the ultimate good that
we must all strive for is making things “safe” for our
children.
It is as if there were a clinic of patients, all afflicted
with various forms of cancer, and the doctor refuses
to treat them for anything but skin disease. For the
modern world, the problem is always material, and so
is the solution. We are to talk to kids and their parents,
hear their concerns and interests, and respond with
behavioral counseling, pharmaceuticals, and awareness
training. But today’s youth are well enmeshed in
materiality; what they need is to be freed from it. They
need spirituality, not safety; morality, not practicality.
They do not need a balm that cleanses their skin, but
medicine that penetrates to their very soul.
That being said, all of the practical examples and
data do have their use. In early 2008, PBS Frontline
aired a documentary called Growing up Online.13 It
does a good job of choosing several real teenagers in
a sleepy New Jersey town to showcase typical paths
which teens follow online. It begins with the words,
“In Morris, NJ, as in the rest of the U.S., 90% of teens
are online, immersed in a world largely hidden from
their parents,” and presents the following real life
examples:
The Deadbeat. Greg, the first teenager presented,
demonstrates at a general level what underlies all
the teens that follow him: complete consumption in
an unreal, online world, cut off even from the actual
house in which he lives. His father comments that
sending him an e-mail is a more effective way of
communicating with him than going up to his room,
while his mother states, “He relies on us so heavily;
I don’t know if he realizes it. It’s just part of his
persona.” Greg himself explains how he has no time
to read Hamlet; he just looks up the Spark Notes, an
online shortcut to writing papers.14
The Anorexic. Sara was a quiet, introverted girl, but
now is different. Soon after going online, she received
a message from a boy asking her to take a picture of
herself naked, and he would do the same. Sara says,
I didn’t feel comfortable, so he said, ok, just send one
with minimal clothing, so I went to the bathroom and did
it. It was just like a picture; it didn’t really mean anything...

and continues,

...I have this one life that’s like fake: happy go-lucky.
And then there’s the real me. When I’m online, I’m the real
person. I’m completely 100% me. I’ll talk about anything to
these people because I know they won’t judge me.

Sara has a problem with anorexia that her parents
do not know about. She goes online to such forums
as “thin is beautiful” where anorexics who want to
be anorexic meet one another. They deify anorexia,
calling her the goddess “Ana” and compose psalms
to her. Sara gets tips and tricks for binging, purging,
starving, that makes living with an eating disorder
easier. “Part of me is completely Ana and part of me is
anti-Ana.” Sometimes she finds it disgusting; at other
times she is all for it. She mentions at the end of her
interview with Frontline,
I hope this is not the rest of my life, because I know that
I should not be living like this.

The Porn Star. Jessica was living just a plain,
ordinary life, but was unhappy. So she went online to
recreate herself.
I didn’t want to be known as Jess. I wanted to be the
total opposite. That just reminded me of the girl who had
no friends. I just never fit the mold. I would try and try and
try; it just wasn’t me. I felt so insecure. I felt like an alien, in
this all white bread town.

She created a MySpace account and became the
Goth porn star Autumn Edows. Her parents knew she
was constantly in her room, but did not know what
she was doing in there; she did not eat with them, did
not spend time with them. She became hugely popular
online.
I didn’t feel like myself, but I liked the fact that I didn’t
feel like myself. I felt like I was famous.

Jessica’s school principal was alerted to her online
activity and called her parents. At first, the parents
were shocked and made her delete everything.
Jessica comments,
I was completely erased from that whole world. To have
something that is that meaningful for you...to have it taken
away is like your worst nightmare.

Her modern dad says,
This was an important lesson for her. You need to know
who to trust. You have to be careful about where this
information goes and how people perceive this information
and how they can change the context of it.

Later, Jessica’s parents let her put everything back
online.
The Suicide. Ryan Halligan was a victim of
cyberbullying. His father John states:
I clearly made a mistake putting that computer in his
room. I allowed the computer to become too much of his life.

At the age of 13, Ryan was ridiculed online and it
carried over to his school. He was called a fag, then
flirted with by the most popular girl only to be made
fun of when he returned the attention. Ryan started
to look up sites on death and suicide, including how
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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

Litany for the
Technology Dependent

32

From an empty life, deliver me, O Lord.
From a superficial life, deliver...
From a self-absorbed life, deliver...
From a double life, deliver...
From a virtual life, deliver...
From a life addicted to technology, deliver...
That I may choose the arduous good, Lord hear my prayer.
That I may be detached from all technology, Lord...
That I may ever choose entertainment that elevates
over that which empties, Lord...
That I may be everywhere conscious of my dignity as
a Catholic and child of God, Lord...
That I may choose Catholic culture
over pop culture, Lord...
That I may foster friendships based on self-sacrifice
rather than those based on self-love, Lord...
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.
(Without ecclesiastical approval)

to commit suicide and the best means of suicide for
one’s personality. He was encouraged in this pursuit
by online “friends.” He ended up taking his life at the
age of 13 by hanging himself. His father knew nothing
about his life online.

No Naiveté
If I were asked to distill the message of this article
into a few words, it would be this: parents, wake up.
Survival on the natural and supernatural levels in
the Internet world requires both maturity and a wellestablished faith. Your teenagers have neither. My
motivation to write this article did not come from
reading St. Thomas’s Summa, but from going online
and seeing our traditional Catholic youth swimming
with the current of the world on Facebook. It is tragic
to see traditional Catholic parents putting forth so
much effort to lead Catholic lives, and then handing
themselves and their children over to the enemy. In
many cases, the compromise prevents for their children
any hope of a vocation and makes for terrible mistakes
before and after marriage, including the choice of one’s
partner; in some cases, this naiveté is fatal.
Some see our cultural wasteland as a Garden
of Paradise or at least as a safe playground for their
children. Children’s unattended access to technology–
Internet, iPod, CD player, PSP, cell phone, TV, DVD
player, email account, MySpace, Facebook–amounts
to parental delinquency. In a matter of seconds online,
an eager teenager can access pornography, obscenity,
and satanic music, among other things. Just as trust
can be destroyed in a moment, so can innocence.
A transfusion of the spirit of the world through
technology leads to destruction of faith, lack of interest
in things spiritual, alienation from parents, and overall
THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

emptying of meaning from life, paradoxically hidden
under the appearance of finding meaning.
It is not that technology is wrong in itself. It is just
that it has the potential for working powerful and quick
destruction. Handing such means over to teenagers,
immature, unstable, curious, and rebellious as they are,
is like giving a gas can and matches to a child with a
corresponding request to be careful, a request which
may pacify the guilty conscience of remiss parents, but
in no way helps the child. Many parents themselves
have problems being responsible with technology; the
danger is multiplied for children.
To close with some suggestions:
The Internet: If it’s a necessity in the home, then
make it public, limited, and filtered.15 There should
be no unattended access to technology before proven
maturity.
Life: Have a real one! Build true relationships with
your spouse, your friends, and with Our Lord Himself.
They are real to the degree that we give our time and
ourselves for our friends.
Culture: Read a book. Play or sing music. Mix
entertainment with education; the former should
elevate and enrich, not empty.
Fr. Paul Robinson received a Masters in Computer Engineering before becoming a priest. He was ordained in 2006 by Bishop Fellay and is stationed at St.
Mary’s Academy and College in St. Mary’s, Kansas.
There is actually an online game called “Second Life” of less popularity
than social networking wherein one creates an avatar of oneself that lives a
virtual life in a virtual world.
2
Twitter is a means of sending a quick 140-character or less message to friends
at every instant to let them know what you are doing.
3
Larry D. Rosen, Me, MySpace, and I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007),
p.6.
4
Ibid., p.9.
5
Ibid., p.16.
6
Cf. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/07/sexting.busts/index.
html?iref=mpstoryview.
7
Candice Kelsey, Generation MySpace (New York: Marlowe & Co., 2007),
pp. xxiii-xxv.
8
See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1153583/ Social-websites-harmchildrens-brains- Chilling-warning-parents-neuroscientist.html.
9
Cited in Ibid.
10
See http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0124/ 1232474679217.
html. The Vatican has recently banned any access of MySpace and
Facebook by its employees. See http://www.catholiccourier.com/tmp1.
cfm?nid=76&articleid=107627
11
To quote from Me, MySpace, and I, p. 41: “MySpace’s Top 8 feature encourages adolescents to identify their best friends–at least their best friends at
the moment–by prominently displaying the pictures of these eight friends on
the main MySpace page....Fourteen-year-old high school freshman Sandie
told me that she changes her Top 8 daily, ‘depending on who I talked to that
day and who I am trying to get to know.’ ...Sixteen-year-old Danae told me,
‘I hate Top 8. I feel so obligated sometimes. If a friend puts me on their Top
8 and I don’t do the same, I feel kinda bad....So instead, I put my favorite
bands on my Top 8.’”
12
Mens Nostra, December 20,1929, §4.
13
The show may be viewed in its entirety at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/
frontline/kidsonline.
14
When I visited sparknotes.com, two articles of interest were “Waste Your
Time: We’ll Show You How” and “Adults Are Boring: Don’t Become One.”
Three out of 16 suggestions for the former article were “Take a Facebook
quiz.”
15
Free Internet web filtering software may even be obtained at http://www.
k9webprotection.com.
1

33

S c o t t
W i l l i a m
f.

Q u i n n
Q u i n n

The
Origins
and PART 1
Causes
of the
Spanish
Civil War,
(1936-39)

The murderers rang the doorbell
and waited. It was nearly three
o’clock in the morning on the 13th
of July, 1936, but their victim most
likely was not asleep. Few residents
of Madrid slept much during the
heat of the summer of 1936. Political
and social tensions had reached a
breaking point and rumors of an
armed revolt from the Right or the
Left had all of Spain on edge.
To state that Spain was in the throes of anarchy is not
an exaggeration. The Leftist Popular Front government,
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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

34
which ruled Spain after February 1936, looked the
other way as priests were murdered and Catholic
churches and schools were ransacked and set afire.
Government inspectors closed schools run by
religious congregations. Conservative judges were
accused of dereliction of duty and dismissed from
the bench. Strike after strike paralyzed Spain’s
economy. Meanwhile, the government began its
campaign to eliminate the leaders of the rightist
parties.1
The murderers—Leftist members of police and
military who were loyal to the anti-Catholic Popular
Front government—waited for their victim, Jose
Maria Calvo y Sotelo, to answer the door of his
apartment.2 Calvo was no ordinary victim: He was
a prominent member of parliament and a leader
of the main Catholic party (CEDA).3 Erudite and
articulate, Calvo earned the ire of the Popular Front
government for insisting that an authoritarian,
Catholic state was the answer to Spain’s problems.
Calvo presented a difficulty for the government
since he spoke for millions of Spaniards who
counted on him to fight for the rights of Catholics
in Madrid. Something needed to be done, and
there were plenty of volunteers. Captain Fernando
Condes, the leader of the squad sent to murder
Calvo, presented his papers and persuaded Calvo
to come to police headquarters for an emergency
meeting. Although suspicious (the phone line to
Calvo’s flat had been cut, restricting his access to
outside counsel), he trusted that his status as the
leader of the opposition would protect him from any
harm. After kissing his wife and sleeping children,
Calvo followed his kidnappers and walked silently
to the waiting truck. A few minutes later the back of
his head was blown away by one of the gunmen and
his body dumped, like a piece of trash, at Madrid’s
main cemetery.4
The discovery of Calvo’s body the next morning
confirmed the fears of many on the Right that
the Socialist government was unable or unwilling
to maintain order, let alone obey the law. As
the noted historian Stanley Payne has observed,
“never before had a government’s own security
forces, in collaboration with revolutionary gunmen,
sequestered and murdered in cold blood the leader
of the opposition.”5 Amidst the social and political
chaos of the months following the disputed and
Joaquin Arraras, Francisco Franco: The Times and the Man (The Bruce
Publishing Company, 1938), describes the terror in Spain in the spring of
1936, pp.140-153.
2
Spanish surnames use the father’s surname first, then the mother’s. It is
typical, however, to refer to an individual by his father’s surname only.
3
CEDA is an acronym for Confederacion Espanola de Derechas Autonomas
which translates as Confederation of Autonomous Rightist Parties. CEDA
comprised several Catholic parties with clerical affiliation.
4
Stanley G. Payne, Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933-1936: Origins
of the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2006), pp.319-330.
5
Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime: 1936-1975 (Phoenix Press, 1987),
p.97. See also pp.46-50.
1

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close elections in February, concerned generals had
begun to make plans to restore order if the situation
deteriorated further. Calvo’s murder was the event
which prompted the defenders of the Faith to issue
a call to arms and put their plan into action. The
Spanish Civil War had begun.

The Background
What could cause a country like Spain, whose
cultural and historical identity was so intertwined
with the Church, to reach the point where priests
and religious were murdered simply for being
Catholic? Though there were several causes of the
Spanish Civil War that stretched back decades prior
to the conflict, readers of Archbishop Lefebvre’s
writings will not be surprised to learn that the
genesis of the political, cultural and religious conflict
was none other than the French Revolution, which
began in 1789. The French Revolution, the world’s
first international political revolution, affected the
Church and Crown in Spain. The insidious ideas of
the Enlightenment had already taken root in Spain
during the last half of the 18th century.6 Spanish
reformers and “enlightened” clergy mimicked the
ideas of an influential group of philosophers and
intellectuals known as the Philosophes, who called
for a diminished role for—and even destruction of—
the Church and the elimination of the monarchy.
Religious skepticism and revolutionary political
ideas that preached the denial of authority were
spread principally through a network of Masonic
lodges across Europe.
Liberty, equality, and fraternity were the
terrible words that inspired the French Revolution.
The king and queen were executed and the new
government confiscated all Church property. The
revolutionary elements in France wanted nothing
less than to create a new society free from religion
and aristocracy, and were generous in imposing
the death penalty on anyone who opposed their
scheme. Man’s reason, not God’s wisdom, was the
guiding principle for the creators of the new order.
France remained in a state of murderous anarchy
until 1795, when Napoleon Bonaparte ended the
worst phase of the Revolution, becoming in the
process one of the most powerful men in France.
Napoleon then embarked on a series of successful
military campaigns across Europe. In the process,
he converted much of Europe into what was,
essentially, an organized crime syndicate, installing
family members as kings throughout the continent.
The disaster that befell France caused many of the
6

For a detailed examination of the first principles of Liberalism, see Fr.
Felix Sarda Y Salvany, What Is Liberalism? (Tan Books, 1979), pp.9-15.
See also Stanley G. Payne, Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), chapters 2-3, for an overview of
the Church in Spain during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Guernica
One of the most famous paintings of the
20th Century is Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a
grotesque, fragmented work that Picasso
painted to commemorate the bombing by
the Nationalists of a Basque town in Spain by
the same name. Picasso intended the viewer
of the painting to sympathize with the victims
of supposed Nationalist terror bombings of
innocent civilians. Guernica is certainly the most
easily recognizable piece of pacifist propaganda
in the world, and is singularly responsible for
creating and sustaining the myth Guernica.
The myth posits that Guernica was an “open
town” with no military purpose whatsoever.
According to pro-Communist propaganda, Guernica was
bombed in broad daylight on market day, the busiest day of
the week, in order to inflict the most casualties and terrorize
the most people. Leftist historians like Paul Preston make this
claim in spite of evidence to the contrary.1 One key motive
for the Left to fabricate evidence goes to the heart of why
the civil war was being fought: Religion. As Douglas Jerrold
points out in Arnold Lunn’s Spanish Rehearsal, governments
like Great Britain and the United States of America wanted to
support the Republican government, but Catholic attitudes in
those countries in support of Franco kept them from making a
move that would have been damaging politically.2 Guernica is in
the Basque region, home of fervent Catholics who supported
the Republic. Having “proof ” that Franco’s forces deliberately
targeted Catholics for murder would have destroyed Franco’s
reputation in the eyes of Catholics, thus giving Great Britain
and the USA the excuse they needed to become involved in
the war on the side of the Republic.3
So what really happened? Was Guernica a legitimate
military target? Guernica was indeed bombed, and Guernica
was indeed a legitimate military target: It was home to an
arms production facility, a district military command center,
a communications hub, and occupied by Republican troops.
Moreover, the bombing was not a strategic “rain of bombs.”4
Jerrold observed a lack of pockmarked streets and other telltale signs that are visible in the aftermath of a town that has

same Spaniards who dabbled in liberalism to return
to traditional beliefs and practices.7 For the time
being, Spain was safe.
A clash of fundamental principles—between
those who believed in the divine right of the
monarchy, whose legitimacy and authority come
from God, and those who were seduced by
7

Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp.69-70. Indeed, by the close of the 18th
century, much of Europe was alarmed by the Revolution and France’s
transformation–perfected under Napoleon–to a revolutionary empire. See
W. Gene Shiels, S.J., History of Europe (Roman Catholic Books, originally
published in 1941), pp.288-292, and Carlton J.H. Hayes and Parker Thomas
Moon, Modern History (The Macmillan Company, 1928), pp.295-368,
for excellent summaries of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s regime.
Michael Oakeshott’s classic essay, “Rationalism in Politics” in Rationalism
in Politics and Other Essays (Liberty Press, 1991), pp.5-42, dissects the
self-indulgent rationalist perspective that has dominated Western political
philosophy since the “Enlightenment.”

35

been heavily bombed. In fact, the likeliest explanation for the
vast destruction of Guernica was that the Republican troops
set fire to the town as they were retreating, a tactic they
committed in other cities during the war, no doubt inspired
by their Soviet (Russian) advisors.5 Bolin also notes that
neither Nationalists nor the “Reds” bombed towns “wantonly,”
a comment which makes sense when looked at from the
perspective of a senior military combatant-leader. The victor
in a civil war obviously remains in his country. It makes no
sense to destroy infrastructure and alienate his fellow citizens
by indiscriminately bombing them. What should have been
mourned as another tragic episode in a tragic war proved to
be invaluable PR for the Republic, and it is this myth, rather
than the truth, which most people believe.6
See Paul Preston, Franco (Basic Books, 1994), pp.244-247 for his thundering
denunciation of the bombing.
2
Lunn, Spanish Rehearsal, pp.204-206, and Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War,
p. 70.
3
Bolin, Spain:The VitalYears, pp.274-282 and pp.355-360. Stanley Payne, in his Basque
Nationalism (University of Nevada Press, 1975), p.194 also points out that Franco
“normally tried to avoid the destruction of civilians and of economic resources.”
See n.58 in Payne’s Basque Nationalism for his critique of both sides’ arguments.
4
Stanley Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II (Yale University
Press, 2008), pp.36-37.
5
The Russians are famous for their scorched-earth tactic to defeat an invading
army.
6
Bolin laments the lack of PR sophistication on the part of the Nationalists, Spain:
The Vital Years, p.282.
1

revolutionary republicanism, a political theory that
claims that authority comes from men, and which
the French revolutionaries had let loose throughout
Europe—took center stage in Spain during the 19th
century. Napoleon led the way. Although Spain
had been somewhat isolated from the effects of
the French Revolution, the situation changed in
1808 when Napoleon crossed the Pyrenees and
deposed the Spanish Bourbon king Ferdinand VII
and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as
king. The Spanish people rose up against Joseph
and fought the French for the next six years until,
in 1814, Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne.
While he was in exile, a small group of middleclass liberals proclaimed a new constitution known

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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

36
as the Constitution of Cadiz.8 This anticlerical
liberal constitution, which traced its origins to
Enlightenment theories of government, represented
an unprecedented assault on the Spanish Church:
The Inquisition9 was abolished, popular sovereignty
proclaimed, and a form of universal suffrage
introduced. When Ferdinand VII returned to
Spain, he abrogated some of the liberal provisions
of the Constitution and returned the Church to her
rightful status: The Inquisition was restored and
Masonry condemned.10 Still, Spain and the Church
would not recover from the damage inflicted by
the introduction of these liberal political and social
ideas.11

The Carlists Revolt
With the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833,
a political situation occurred that would have
repercussions over 100 years later. By law and
custom, his brother, Don Carlos, was the rightful
heir to the throne, as Ferdinand VII had no son.
However, Charles IV, the father of Ferdinand
VII, secretly changed the law of succession shortly
before his death, making it possible for Ferdinand’s
daughter, Isabella II (with her mother Maria
Cristina acting as regent), to become Queen. Maria
Cristina added insult to injury and appointed a
liberal government, which led to the supporters of
Don Carlos—known as Carlists—to take up arms in
the countryside and wage a long guerilla war. The
Carlists were fervent Catholics from northern Spain
who defended fiercely their ancient local rights and
religion against the centralizing and anticlerical
force of the modern state.12 The anticlerical riots
that occurred in other parts of Spain in the 1830s,
along with the attacks on the Church by a series of
liberal governments, including the mass confiscation
and sale of Church property, reinforced the Carlists’
opposition to modern political and social ideas.
A poster that appeared in the Basque region of
Guipuzcoa in the early 1830s warned that a group of
French-inspired usurpers threatened to “submerge
us in an abyss of atheism and heresy.”13 The Carlists
revolted three times between 1833 and 1876 in
defense of the Church, and though they suffered
military defeat, their attachment to the legitimate
According to Payne, Spanish Catholicism, p.73, the new constitution was
drawn up and approved by the “self-selected elite of middle- and upperclass liberals.”
9
The Inquisition was responsible for handling offenses against the Church.
10
Payne, Spanish Catholicism, p.75, and Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil
War (Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2001), p.41. Thomas links the
Masonic lodges from Napoleonic France to the infusion of liberal ideas in
Spain in the 19th century, aptly characterizing the lodges as “anti-religious.”
11
William T. Walsh covers this episode in Spain’s history in his Characters
of the Inquisition (P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1940), pp.263-277.
12
Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp.81-82.
13
Jon Cowans, ed., Modern Spain: A Documentary History (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2003), pp.39-40.
8

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branch of the Bourbon monarchy and the Church
never waned. Their participation in the Spanish
Civil War would prove crucial to the success of the
Nationalists.14

Political Turmoil,
Unrest and Disaster
For Spain, much of the rest of the 19th century
can be characterized as a constant struggle between
the Church against the Crown and the Army over
the scope and nature of liberal constitutions. The
Army used its influence to intervene in Spanish
politics, generally in support of liberalism, in order
to increase its prestige at the expense of the Church.
The great statesman and Catholic visionary, Juan
Donoso Cortes, in a famous speech on dictatorship
delivered to the Spanish Parliament in 1849, warned
of the coming tyranny of Socialism, which falsely
promised that men will be like the rich, nobles,
kings and—ultimately—gods.15 Donoso prophesied
the destruction of civil society as religious control
waned. His prophecies were accurate indeed.16
Spain even experimented with a republic in 187374, known as the First Republic. As a result, a more
direct denunciation of political liberalism was made
by Fr. Jaime Balmes, who declared: “Catholics know
only one thing on this subject [forms of government]
and that is that good social conditions cannot be
formed out of bad men. They know that immoral
men are bad, and that where there is no religion,
morality cannot take root.”17 Later, toward the
end of the 19th Century, Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany
published his enormously popular Liberalism Is a Sin
Stanley G. Payne, Falange (Stanford University Press, 1961), p.115. The
Carlists were instrumental in the success of the early stage of the revolt
against the criminals of the Second Republic. See also Gabriel Jackson,
The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1936-1939 (Princeton University
Press, 1965), pp.225-226. In fact, General Emilio Mola, one of the chief
conspirators of the rebellion, was forced to delay the uprising because the
Carlists would not participate in the revolt unless they received assurances
“that the new State would be anti-democratic,” in Brian Crozier, Franco
(Little, Brown & Company, 1967), p.180.
15
Juan Donoso Cortes, “The Church, the State, and Revolution” in Bela
Menczer, ed., Catholic Political Thought: 1789-1848 (University of Notre
Dame Press, 1962), pp.160-176.
16
Ibid. Donoso also traces the roots of the problem not only to the French
Revolution but to the Protestant Revolution. His argument is a compelling
one which posits that political control (tyranny) ascends whenever religious
control disappears and, of course, vice versa. The cases of the Soviet Union,
Communist China, North Korea, and even contemporary politics in the
USA confirm Donoso’s observation.
17
Fr. Jaime Balmes, “Faith and Liberty” in Menczer, ed., Catholic Political
Thought, p.190. In other words, a morally healthy society has the necessary
conditions to enable a free society. Fr. Balmes contrasts the American and
French revolutions, and points out that in the American Revolution, multiple
public invocations to ask God’s help were a key component of revolutionary meetings and proclamations, and that the American Revolution was
“essentially democratic and the French was essentially impious,” p.187.
The savagery that accompanied the French Revolution was meted out by
men who blasphemed God. While we may smile at Fr. Balmes’s quaint
description of the American Revolution, there is no denying the accuracy
of his description of the French Revolution.
14

37
in response to the liberal attitudes in Spain. Clearly,
Catholics in Spain were fighting back.
A truce of sorts took hold as the 19th century
came to a close. A Catholic revival in literature, the
arts and religious fervor flowered and lasted until
the second decade of the 20th century.18 Turn-of-thecentury Spain had some reason for optimism. She
survived more or less intact after nearly a century
of civil war, and the political situation at home had
stabilized. But an explosion in Havana Harbor in
1898 led to a humiliating defeat by the United States
of America, which threw Spain into a military and
political crisis that would not be resolved for more
than three decades.

Rising Tensions
Like many countries at the beginning of the
20th century, Spain struggled with the social effects
of industrialization. Sadly, workers were treated
poorly, and their resentment led many otherwise
faithful Catholics to embrace a Socialist agenda.
The long rule of King Alfonso XIII (1902-31)
appeared to give the Church a key ally in her
attempts to combat the effects of Socialism in Spain.
The Catholic King’s close association with the
Church gave the impression that Spain remained
fundamentally committed to her Catholic identity.
In reality, the social teachings of the Church, so
eloquently made by Pope Leo XIII, did not find
fertile ground in Spain, making it easy for Marxist
and union agitators to create an atmosphere of
intense and violent anticlericalism as they linked
the Church with the economic problems in Spain.
Anticlerical riots, inspired by union strikes, broke
out in all parts of Spain in the first three decades
of the 20th century, with the region of Catalonia
(Barcelona) suffering the most by far at the hands
of the radicals. For example, during the “Tragic
Week” in July 1909, one-third of religious buildings
in Barcelona were damaged or destroyed. Churches
and convents remained frequent targets of Leftist
arsonists, even escalating to the point where the
Cardinal of Tarragona was assassinated by anarchists
in 1922.19 Moreover, Spain was in a protracted war
in Morocco, often with disastrous results, which
further soured the mood of the country. Politically,
the country was racked by instability: From 1902

See Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp.97-121. For an in-depth discussion of
19th century Spain, see Stanley G. Payne, A History of Spain and Portugal
(The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), chapters 19-21. Geoffrey Jensen,
in his Irrational Triumph: Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and the
Ideological Origins of Franco’s Spain (University of Nevada Press, 2002),
has an excellent study on the revival of Catholic traditionalism within the
military in chapter 5.
19
See Payne, Spanish Catholicism, Ch. 5. Payne provides several examples
of the vicious and obscene anti-Catholic propaganda introduced in Spain
by socialists and other anti-Catholic groups.
18

to 1923 there were 33 governments. Alfonso XIII,
though a good Catholic, was a terrible politician.20
Alfonso’s missteps eventually led to the
emergence of a dictatorship under General Primo
de Rivera. With the King’s backing, the regime,
which lasted from 1923 to 1930, was in large part
good to the Church, but as Primo’s popularity
waned, so did the Church’s standing in the eyes
of the working classes, who identified the Church
with authoritarianism and repression. Alfonso
dismissed an ailing Primo in 1930, and in 1931 the
government, under immense pressure, held regional
and local elections. The result was a crushing defeat
for the King and the parties that supported the
monarchy: The pro-republican parties won huge
majorities in the cities, which effectively ended the
monarchy in Spain. Alfonso left Spain for France on
April 14, 1931, choosing exile rather than risking a
civil war.

The Left Takes Charge
The men who made up the Second Republic
(the First Republic lasted from 1873-1874) were
not of such high character as Alfonso. From the
beginning, the Second Republic “decided to launch
a frontal assault on the Church” that “often seems
difficult to comprehend.”21 It is important to note
that the Church reached a diplomatic understanding
with the Second Republic and issued no formal
denunciation of the new regime.22 Sadly, there
was no such graciousness from the leaders of the
Republic towards the Church: Separation of Church
and State was declared, public religious processions
were prohibited, and Catholic teaching orders were
forbidden, with the obvious goal of destroying
Catholic education. Catholic churches and convents
were burned as the police, acting on orders from the
government, looked the other way.23 Bishops critical
of the new regime were exiled.24

Crozier, Franco, pp.69-74.
Payne, Spanish Catholicism, p.149. See also Payne, A History of Spain and
Portugal, pp.630-632.
22
Ibid., pp.152-153. Ronald Fraser, in his outstanding oral history, Blood of
Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War (Random House, 1986),
p.526, quotes Fr. Alejandro Martinez, a priest in Madrid, regarding the
early days of the Second Republic: “Here was a regime which, unbelievable as it may sound, had come in with clerical support, and in less than a
month was condoning the burning of convents and churches. It was from
that day–11 May, 1931–that I realized nothing would be achieved by legal
means; sooner or later, to save ourselves, we should have to rise.…” G. K.
Chesterton notes in an essay titled “The Return of Caesar” in The Well and
the Shallows (Ignatius Press, 2006), pp.180-183, “that the Church generally
had a Concordat with her enemies rather than her friends.”
23
Crozier, Franco, p.115. Hugh Thomas writes that the government went so
far as to ban the displaying of religious articles in classrooms on the absurd
grounds that they posed a risk to good hygiene. See Thomas, The Spanish
Civil War, p.71. See also Jensen, Franco, pp.57-60.
24
E. Allison Peers, The Spanish Tragedy, 1930-1936: Dictatorship, Republic,
Chaos (Oxford University Press, 1936), p.59.
20

21

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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

38

The siege Of
The alCaZar
The siege of the Alcazar occurred in the first days of the
war and played out in an almost isolated manner vis-à-vis the
war in general. Due to the relative positions of the Nationalist
and Republican armies at the beginning of hostilities, the Alcazar,
located in Toledo, was not considered vital to either army’s
immediate success. Indeed, Toledo was ringed for 50 miles by
provinces and towns under Republican control and, except for
the potential of tying up Republican war assets, could not have
offered any value to Franco at the beginning of the war.
What it could—and did—offer was an opportunity of a
most extraordinary morale boost to the Nationalists as they
scrambled to consolidate positions and defend vulnerable
areas they had won early in the fighting in other parts of Spain.
The defense of the Alcazar was also being watched by the
foreign governments Franco was trying to woo in hopes of the
Nationalists receiving men and materiel from them. A successful
defense of the Alcazar, given its historical significance, would
send a strong signal of a winning horse in the race.
The Alcazar had been diminishing as a vital cog in the
Spanish military. Though it contained two academies, the
Academies of Infantry and Cavalry, the Republican government
had been lowering the number of cadets that both academies
trained. Communists and Socialists within the government
demanded that army officers be promoted from within the
ranks and thus saw no need to train an “elite” officers corps at
the Alcazar. As a result the enrollment of cadets had dropped
to a historical low of 130 or so as opposed to over a thousand
cadets in years past. Even many of the cadets who were actually
enrolled at the academies were away on vacation in July of
1936 and so were not available for its defense.1 It is no wonder,
then, that the Republicans thought they would only have to
make a perfunctory demand for surrender of the fortress from
the Nationalist commanding officer, Colonel Moscardo, and
have the small detachment of Nationalist officers and cadets as
their prisoners.
What they got was a quite different response. Almost
immediately Colonel Moscardo rallied the few cadets available
to him along with the Guardia Civil, some retired military
officers, citizens of Toledo who were properly disposed to
Nationalist Spain, as many military members who were in the
area and could reach the Alcazar as he could find, and some
of the town’s civilian population, including Sisters from a local
convent, who wished to come into the Alcazar for security
purposes. All told though, Colonel Moscardo still had fewer
than 800 capable military defenders inside the Alcazar and at
the Arms factory, some two or three miles away. In addition, he
had almost 700 noncombatant civilians, including women and
children, to care for inside the walls.
Moscardo brought all the weapons and ammunition he
could retrieve from the Arms Factory into the fortress. The
morning of July 21 brought the first sightings of government
The ANgelus
• July 2009 www.angeluspress.org
troops
making
their way towards the Alcazar and moving on

the Arms Factory. One last contingent of trucks was sent to
the Arms Factory and, while the commanding officer of the
Republican troops was trying to negotiate the surrender of the
Arms Factory, these trucks made a hurried trip to the Alcazar
with their ammunition and weapons. This trip turned out to
be fortuitous because when the siege was finally relieved
on September 27, 1936, ammunition was the only thing not
in short supply or exhausted. Geoffrey McNeill-Moss, in his
wonderfully detailed book, The Epic of the Alcazar, estimates
that the defenders of the Alcazar had more than 1.5 million
rounds at their disposal thanks to Colonel Moscardo’s quick
action.
The siege was one of the most horrendous and brutal
episodes in modern warfare. The Alcazar was completely
isolated from the rest of Franco’s army and had absolutely
no hope of a quick relief operation. The defenders were
outgunned, facing aerial bombardments and heavy artillery
shelling, and had no way of replenishing any supplies including
medical supplies and food. Throughout the 70 days, they
continued to resist and inflicted enough damage on the
attacking Republican forces to keep them at bay. By the end
of the siege the defenders were starved, exhausted and
barely mobile but they had held. They had been reduced to
drinking stagnant water and had eaten all the meat available
to them including horse meat. They had started eating mule
meat and barley paste substituted for bread. The grand walls
of the Alcazar were reduced to rubble which the defenders
continued to use as protection for their snipers. McNeill-Moss
reports that during the siege the defenders endured 30 aerial
bombardments, 35 flame-thrower attacks, and three powerful
mines exploded in tunnels dug under the Alcazar’s walls by
Republican miners. For 70 long days the Alcazar had held,
inspiring the Nationalist army and showing the world that, in
defense of freedom and the Catholic Church, they would face
all odds and offer their all for Spain.
For the extraordinary gains in morale on the Nationalist
side, the Republicans suffered severe losses of morale as well
as materiel and men. For 70 days they had been unable to
take a completely isolated, under-manned fortress. They had
employed 15,000 men in the attempt–men who were sorely
needed by the Republicans on other fronts. In attacking, they
had lost some 3,000 men and upwards of a million dollars’
worth of ammunition, and had resorted to executing their own
commanders for failure to take the Alcazar.2
After the Alcazar was relieved Colonel Moscardo, the “hero
of the Alcazar,” asked for no special ceremony or honors for
himself. He only requested that he be given command of a
combat unit and continue to fight the war, a request that was
honored.
1
2

G. McNeill-Moss, The Epic of the Alcazar, 1937, p38
H. Edward Knoblaugh, Correspondent in Spain, 1937, pp.50-52.

39
All of this was too much for Spaniards to accept,
and in 1933 the Rightist,Catholic party CEDA swept
the national elections. Yet because of an unusual
electoral technicality, aided by an anti-Catholic
President who single-handedly blocked the political
will of the Spanish people, CEDA was not allowed
to form a government for more than a year. The
government that did form managed to roll back
some of the Left’s more hostile legislation regarding
the Church, but the campaign promises of CEDA
were by no means fully implemented. When three
CEDA deputies merely entered the government in
1934 (as was their right), the reaction of the Left
was swift and violent: Revolution.25 The revolt was
successful at first and lasted for several weeks in
some areas of Spain, and a young general named
Francisco Franco was instrumental in quashing the
uprising. Franco’s actions were never forgotten or
forgiven by the Left. By now it was clear that Spain’s
attempts at democracy had failed and that the Left
was unwilling to engage in sensible, moderate
legislation with respect to the Church. Indeed, the
Left’s hatred of the Church was matched only by its
disdain for working within the democratic process.
As G. K. Chesterton so aptly put it, “Having lost the
game by the rules of democracy, they [the Left] tried
to win it after all entirely by the rules of war; in this
case of Civil War.”26

The Elections of 1936
The dysfunctional and acrimonious nature of
government under the Second Republic could not
continue, and elections were called for February
1936, in the hope that more moderate parties would
prevail and calm the nerves of Spaniards who were
drawn increasingly towards extremist parties on
the Right and the Left. Unfortunately, the Left’s
alliance with Communist parties precluded any
sort of compromise, and when Spaniards went to
the polls in February, the choices were between an
intolerant Left and the Rightist parties who, more
than ever, and with good reason, feared a victory
of the Left. The general elections of 1936 were
contested under a cloud of turmoil. The principal
group on the right was an alliance of parties under
the umbrella of CEDA. The Catholic Church, land
owners and large companies gave both financial
and political support to CEDA, which had won
the election of 1933. Contesting from the left was
the Popular Front, which was made up of various
left-wing parties. The manifesto drafted by this
coalition called for agrarian reform, which turned
out to be nationalization of the land, and the
`25
26

Payne, The Franco Regime: 1936-1975, p.79.
Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows, “My Six Conversions,” Part VI,
“The Case of Spain,” p.55.

dissolution of the army, civil guard, and religious
orders in the Church. In addition, the Popular
Front had previously called for the confiscation
and nationalization of all the major industries in
Spain. Class division and class warfare were the
major themes of their campaign, and, inspired by
the Soviets, they put the Catholic Church squarely
in the midst of the “elite” classes and so demanded
that the Church be destroyed and its property
redistributed throughout Spain.
The campaign was a dangerous affair,
particularly for the candidates and supporters of the
Right. Political rallies were attacked repeatedly by
government forces and, as the opening paragraph
of this article demonstrates, even murder—both
state-sanctioned and politics-driven—became all
too familiar to the Spanish voter. It was dangerous
even for an unlucky Spaniard to be caught hanging
posters for the Right or attending Mass or other
religious services, and political rallies were a
continuous flash point for left-wing thugs. A typical
example is given by Luis Bolin, former DirectorGeneral of the Spanish National Tourist Department
after the Civil War, in his insightful and riveting
book, Spain: The Vital Years. Bolin describes a
political meeting in Antequera:
When the right-wing speakers began to denounce
communist or “Red” violence, a police official put an
end to the proceedings and a band of hooligans forced an
entry into the hall and smashed all the furniture. Only the
speakers were arrested.27

With voter intimidation so rampant throughout
the country and with much of the Right’s voice
silenced or, at the very least, heavily censored, the
Left claimed victory in the 1936 election. Even that
victory was clouded by doubts as reports circulated
about the honesty of the vote counting, intimidation
at the polls, and the reckless recording of votes.28
The election had been held on February 16, but the
final results were not announced until March 1. The
Popular Front demonstrated that they would tear
apart Spain by violence if that were what it took to
move into power immediately. Their campaign of
violence and destruction had not been enough to
secure unchallenged power in Spain, and they were
anxious to assume a majority in parliament. People
like CEDA leader Calvo represented an ongoing
threat to that majority and so had to be dealt with
27
28

Luis Bolin, Spain: The Vital Years (J. B. Lippincott Company, 1967), p.146.
Ibid., p.146. Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse (Henry Regnery Company, 1952), p.300, recounts how he was marched at gunpoint to “vote Red.”
Campbell was not a citizen of Spain and had no privileges to vote. Arthur
F. Loveday, Spain, 1923-1948: Civil War and World War (The Boswell
Publishing Co. Ltd.), pp.44-45. Arraras, Francisco Franco, pp.140-141.
Arraras translates a statement published in Journal de Geneve by Niceto
Alcala Zamora, former President of the Spanish Republic, in which he
alleges illegalities and deception on the part of the Popular Front. This is
verified by the government’s handling of the candidacy of Jose Antonio
Primo de Rivera, the late dictator’s son. See Payne, Falange, pp.105-107.
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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

40
in Soviet fashion. Murder at the highest levels in
politics was still not a reach too far.
The Left had reason to be nervous. When the
official results were announced, even with their
massaging of the votes in the two weeks since the
polls closed, the results were not a mandate for
either side. The Right garnered 4,570,000 votes
while the Left tallied 4,356,000. 340,000 voted for
the Center, but the Left was able to form a Popular
Front Government to initiate its own program.29

State of Affairs in Spain on the
Eve of the Spanish Civil War
The Popular Front realized that their majority
was in danger of evaporating under the light of
electoral scrutiny. Their response—again, predictable
due to the influence of their Soviet advisers—was
to create more chaos. The Church was even more
targeted as a scapegoat for all things deemed
inequitable and elitist in Spanish society.30 Despite
this stepped-up campaign, it was becoming clear
that centuries of faithfulness to the Catholic Church
throughout Spain was minimizing the effect of
the lies lodged against the hierarchy, the ordinary
clergy, and the worshippers, who only wished to
continue to exercise their religion in all its truth and
inspiration.31 To the Popular Front, inspiration from
anywhere but the Spanish Communist principles
was both dangerous (to the Left) and empowering
(to the individual). Neither one was a desirable
outcome.
The class struggle initiated by the Left and its
Soviet advisers continued unabated at every level of
Spanish society. Private cars were frequently stoned
or even shot at, and in a move that backfired on the
international stage, tourists were harassed to donate
to something called the Red Relief Fund—oftentimes
more than once. Since there were also frequent
hotel and railroad strikes, these tourists had trouble
leaving the country and did not feel welcome in
it. When they returned home they told quite a
different story from the government’s version of the
Spanish state of affairs.32 Right under the noses of
the Popular Front and its advisers from Moscow, the
first stirrings of truth began to emerge from Spain as
it hurtled towards civil war.
Payne, The Franco Regime, p.44.
Alfred Mendizabal, in The Martyrdom of Spain: Origins of a Civil War
(Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press, 1938), isolates the main problem:
“And, alas, it was the innocent who paid–by churches in ashes, by poor nuns
sacrificed to violent or veiled sectarianism, by children without a Christian
school, by invalids and orphans with no aid from charity,” p.266.
31
The Left’s fanatical obsession with attacking the Church left the Right with
a significant base of supporters. See Fraser, Blood of Spain: An Oral History
of the Spanish Civil War, p.84. His interviews with ordinary Spaniards of
all political stripes provide a unique perspective for the modern reader.
32
Not surprisingly, Bolin especially took note of this. See Bolin, Spain: The
Vital Years, p.149 and pp.302-306.

As the country continued its spiral toward
anarchy, provocations from the Popular Front
government intensified and became more overt.
As a result, the government lost confidence in its
ability to cling to power democratically. Of course,
their whipping-boy of choice would be the Catholic
Church. The old vices reappeared: From February
to June, 1936, 170 churches were burned.33 Mob
rule replaced the rule of law. Catholic politicians
were rounded up and imprisoned. Factory and
land owners were murdered, and those who
Red militia and mob armed by the
Popular Front traversing the streets.

weren’t were forced to accede to the preposterous
demands of strikers. The Catholic convert and
poet Roy Campbell recounted his experiences in
Toledo in the months before the Civil War. His
eerie account confirms the worst about the motives
and practices of the enemies of the Church.34
People who were formerly his friends now openly
taunted and threatened him and his family because
of their allegiance to the Church. Catholics were
effectively branded as criminals: Assisting at Mass
was evidence that one was an enemy of the new
State that the Left promised to create. Street battles
between supporters of the Right and Left were
common in cities and towns all across Spain. The
Left’s murderous campaign provoked the Right
to fight back, and the Left responded by targeting
higher-profile victims, including politicians and
businessmen. The breaking point had been reached.
On edge, Spaniards braced for all-out civil war.

29
30

THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

Scott Quinn assists at St. Vincent de Paul in Kansas City with his wife Jane and
daughter Elizabeth. He holds an M.A. in History from Creighton University,
where he studied modern European and U.S. colonial history. William Quinn
is a long-time friend of the Society of St. Pius X. Both men have a love for
Spain: Her people, her culture and her history. The authors wish to thank David
Nuffer, Stephen E. Page, and Pat Quinn for their comments and suggestions.

Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
(Penguin Books, 2006), p.48.
34
Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse, pp.291-312.
33

PART 25

41
F r .

M a t t h i a s

G a u d r o n

This part of the Catechism deals with the charismatic
movement, its origins, historical development, and
infiltration into the Catholic Church.

Catechism
Of the Crisis
In the Church
l Are there precedents for the Pentecostal
phenomenon?
The rite properly called “baptism in the
Spirit” is new, but heretical sects have regularly
experienced analogous phenomena throughout
history. At the end of the 17th century, a wave of
illuminism shook the Protestant Camisards of the
South of France: people claimed they felt the Holy
Spirit, they spoke in tongues and wept copiously.
The same eccentricities occurred in 1731, at Paris,
in the St-Médard Cemetery on the tomb of a
Jansenist deacon: frenetic convulsions gripped entire
crowds, ecstasies, speaking in unknown languages,
“prophecies,” etc.
l How can this type of phenomena be explained?
These strange phenomena can partly be
explained by natural causes (uncontrolled
nervousness, morbid psychic exaltation,
hallucinations), but it is likely that the devil often
intervenes. The first sign of diabolical possession
indicated by the traditional Ritual for exorcisms
is the person’s speaking in languages never before
studied.1

l Can people who call on the name of Christ with
such fervor really be manipulated by the devil?
Our Lord Himself said:
Beware of false prophets….Not every one that saith to
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven:
but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven,
he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say
to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied
in thy name and cast out devils in thy name and done
many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto
them: I never knew you. Depart from me, you that work
iniquity. (Mt. 7: 15, 21-23)

l How did the Pentecostal rite penetrate into the
Catholic Church?
The Pentecostal rite of baptism in the Spirit was
spread in the Catholic Church by so-called Catholic
“charismatics.” The “Charismatic Renewal” can be
defined as “the Catholic branch of the Pentecostal
current.”2
l What is the origin of “Catholic” charismatism?
“Catholic” charismatism was born in the United
States, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February
20, 1967, the day on which two Catholic students
at Duquesne University received the laying on
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THE ANGELUS • July 2009

42
of hands in a prayer group led by a Protestant
minister and began to speak in tongues. They then
used the same rite to transmit to other Catholics
the powers thus received. On February 18, 1972,
an engineer returning to France from the United
States transmitted the baptism in the Spirit to Pierre
Goursat, who founded the Emmanuel Community
(the main French charismatic community) in 1973.
l What was the effect of the Pentecostal rite on the
first Catholics who received it?
The laying on of hands produced the same
effects in the Catholic students of Duquesne
University as it did in Protestants.
One of them recounted: “I was so joyful that all
I could do was laugh as I lay on the floor.”
Another testified: “The sense of the presence
and love of God was so strong that I can remember
staying sitting in the chapel for a half hour just
laughing out of joy over the love of God.”
And a third: “When hands were laid upon me,
immediately it felt as if my whole chest were trying
to rise into my head. My lips started trembling,
and my brain started turning flips. Then I started
grinning; I couldn’t help it.”3
l What do these reactions show?
These unseemly reactions reveal diabolical
intervention. Whereas the Holy Ghost makes order
and discretion reign, the evil spirit, even when
disguised as an angel of light, generally betrays
himself by some grotesquery.4
l Can the devil then inflame souls with the love of
God?
The devil cannot inflame souls with the love
of God, but he can give this impression to those who
desire too strongly to feel the action of grace:
[T]he devil hath power to feign some false light or
sounds, sweet smells in their noses, wonderful tastes in
their mouths, and many quaint heats and burnings in
their bodily breasts or in their bowels, in their backs and
in their reins and in their members.
And yet in this fantasy they think that they have a
restful contemplation of their God without any hindrance
of vain thoughts; and surely so have they in a manner,
for they be so filled with falsehood that vanity cannot
disturb them. And why? Because he, that same fiend
that would minister vain thoughts to them if they were
in a good way–he, that same, is the chief worker in this
work. And know thou right well that he would not hinder
himself. The thought of God will he not put from them,
for fear that he should be held suspect.5

l Are similar warnings to be found in the writings of
the saints?
St. Vincent Ferrer, in his Treatise on the Spiritual
Life, teaches:
The first remedy against the spiritual temptations
which the devil plants in the hearts of many persons in
these unhappy times, is to have no desire to procure by
THE ANGELUS • July 2009 www.angeluspress.org

prayer, meditation, or any other good work, what are
called revelations, or spiritual experiences, beyond what
happens in the ordinary course of things; such a desire
of things which surpass the common order can have
no other root or foundation but pride, presumption, a
vain curiosity in what regards the things of God, and,
in short, an exceedingly weak faith. It is to punish this
evil desire that God abandons the soul, and permits it
to fall into the illusions and temptations of the devil,
who seduces it, and represents to it false visions and
delusive revelations. Here we have the source of most of
the spiritual temptations that prevail at the present time;
temptations which the spirit of evil roots in the souls of
those who may be called the precursors of Antichrist….6

l Does this passage of St. Vincent apply to
Pentecostalism and Charismatism?
It was precisely so that she could “speak in
tongues” that Agnes Ozman asked Pastor Parham
to lay hands on her. It was also to benefit from
these extraordinary “charisms” manifested by the
Pentecostals that the Catholics at Duquesne asked
for the same laying on of hands.
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 from the second edition
(Schloß Jaidhof, Austria: Rex Regum Verlag, 1999) as translated, revised, and
edited by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé in collaboration with the author,
with their added subdivisions.
Rituale Romanum, tit. XI, c.1, §3: “Signa autem obsidentis dæmonis sunt :
ignota lingua loqui pluribus verbis….”
2
This is the definition given by the journal Tychcique (review of the
Charismatic community “Chemin neuf” [New Pathway] in its No.50
( July 1984).
3
Testimonies quoted in the work by Kevin and Dorothy Ranaghan,
Catholic Pentecostals (Paramus, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1969), pp.28, 64, 67.
4
The 14th-century English mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing
(one of the basic texts of Carthusian novices) wrote:
1

Many wonderful gestures follow them that be deceived in this false
work. Some be evermore smiling and laughing at every other word that they
speak, as they were giddy girls or silly jesting jugglers lacking behaviour.
Better far were a modest countenance, with sober and demure bearing of
body and honest mirth in manner.
I say not that all these unseemly gestures be great sins in themselves,
nor yet that all those that do them be great sinners themselves. But I say
that if these unseemly and disordered gestures be governors of that man
that doth them, insomuch that he cannot leave them when he will: I say
then that they be tokens.…And this is the only reason why I set so many of
these deceits here in this writing: for why, that a ghostly worker shall prove
his work by them. [English version: tr. Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B.
(London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1924), Ch.53.]

5

The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 52. The same author explains:

They conceive a false heat wrought by the fiend, their ghostly enemy,
caused by their pride and their fleshliness and curiosity of wit. And yet,
peradventure, they ween that it is the fire of love gotten and kindled by
the grace and the goodness of the Holy Ghost….This deceit of false feeling, and of false knowing following thereon, hath diverse and wonderful
variations, according to the diversity of states and the subtle conditions of
them that be deceived. (Ch.45)

6

St. Vincent Ferrer, “Treatise on the Spiritual Life,” in Rev. Fr. Andrew
Pradel, O.P., Saint Vincent Ferrer of the Order of Preachers: His Life, Spiritual
Teaching, and Practical Devotion, tr. from the French by the Rev. Fr. T. A.
Dixon, O.P. (London: R. Washbourne, 1875), p.181 [available online
through Google/books].

43
F R .

p e t e r

Is it a sin to attend the Novus Ordo Mass?

Our immediate reaction to such a question is an
emotional one: either one of anger and frustration,
according to which the assistance at the New
Mass is incomprehensible and sinful, or one of
compassion,according to which it seems impossible for
those millions and millions of Catholics who assist at
the New Mass every Sunday to be all committing sins
each time that they do so. In both cases one considers
primarily the subjective morality, the intention of the
person, before considering the objective morality of the
deed, which is determined by the purpose of the act
itself.
If you open a traditional catechism, you will find
a definition of the Mass, such as this one found in Fr.
Connell’s Baltimore Catechism #3: “The Mass is the
sacrifice of the New Law in which Christ, through
the ministry of the priest, offers Himself to God in an
unbloody manner under the appearances of bread and
wine.” It is not just the highest possible act of worship,
being the act of Christ Himself, but a sacrifice in the
true and full sense of the term, and consequently
has in itself four purposes: adoration, thanksgiving,
propitiation, and impetration. Note that of these four
ends, propitiation is the one that is proper to the
Mass as a sacrifice, not being able to be effectively
accomplished in any other way.
Now the question is quite simply this. Does the
New Mass attain the end for which it exists? If it does,
it is good, and one ought to assist at it; if it does not,
then it is evil, and it is objectively, materially, a sin to
offer it or to assist at it, even when this is done to satisfy
one’s Sunday obligation.
You will object by saying that the term “evil”
cannot be applied to an act of worship, for every act
of worship has at least some truth and some good
things about it. It cannot possibly be all bad, as the
word evil seems to indicate. Here lies a very common
misunderstanding. The concept of evil is an analogical
notion. This means that there is something common
to all things that are evil, but that there is a world of
difference between different kinds of evils, such as
between physical or moral evil. There is something
in common, but the dissimilitude is greater than the
likeness. Sickness is an evil, but not in the same way as
telling lies; pollution is an evil, but not in the same way
as murder or abortion.
What is common to all evil? The definition of evil
given by the moral theologians is very simple: evil is
the privation of the good that is due. It is not just an
absence, but the absence of a good that ought to be
there. Sickness is a physical evil, since the body ought
to be healthy. Sin is a moral evil, since the soul ought to
be pure and pleasing to God.
When the term “evil” is applied to the New Mass,
it refers to the Mass as a liturgical act, namely as an
assemblage of ceremonies and prayers molded into

R .

s c o t t

one whole. As such, it has as its goal to express in its
liturgical prayers and ceremonies the reality of the
Mass as defined by Catholic doctrine, namely the
unbloody reactualization of Christ’s sacrifice on the
Cross for the four purposes of adoration, thanksgiving,
expiation, and petition, for the greater glory of the
Most Holy Trinity. For the ceremonies of the Mass are
of their very nature symbolic. They are symbols of the
underlying reality they represent and are a solemn,
public, complete profession of our Catholic Faith.
A Mass that fails to express fully Catholic teaching
concerning the sacrifice, as it ought, is lacking an
essential element. It manifestly suffers from a privation
of the good that is due to it. It is not what the Mass
ought to be and cannot attain the purpose of the Mass.
It is quite simply evil, and that privation of the due
good is to be found in the assembly of ceremonies and
prayers of the Mass itself. This does not mean that all
is bad about it, neither does it mean that it is invalid.
Neither is it a judgment on the intention of the priest or
of the assistants, nor does it mean that graces cannot be
received by both. The affirmation that the New Mass is
evil is an objective statement that this liturgical act as
such does not adequately profess the Faith, nor does it
attain its end, or as Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci put
it:
The Novus Ordo Missae…represents, both as a whole
and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic
theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session 22 of
the Council of Trent. The “canons” of the rite definitely
fixed at that time erected an insurmountable barrier
against any heresy which might attack the integrity of the
Mystery. (Ottaviani Intervention, September 25, 1969)

The fact that the New Mass was framed in such a
way as to be acceptable to the Protestant theologians
who participated in it does not mean that it is
necessarily heretical. It is simply ambiguous. However,
the absence of a clear profession of the Catholic
Faith, which is due, makes it evil. Likewise for the
validity. The fact that it is evil does not mean that it is
necessarily invalid. A priest can have the intention of
doing what the Church does and still celebrate validly,
even if the prayers of the New Mass do not adequately
express that intention, as the prayers of the New Mass
certainly do not.
Having established that the New Mass is objectively
evil, it necessarily follows that the celebration of or
assistance at it is a disorder, opposed to God’s will,
and a sin. It is, moreover, a sin against the virtue of
religion, namely the sin of sacrilege, to attempt to
give glory to God by a ceremony that is not truly,
in itself, to His glory. This sounds shocking because
we associate sacrilege with the deliberate, voluntary,
mortal sin of a bad communion, for example. However,
the mistreating of sacred things has degrees to it,
and there can be venial sins of sacrilege in which the
disorder is not so great as in a sacrilegious communion.
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • July 2009

44
A New Mass that is invalid, due to defect of form or
intention or matter, is certainly objectively a grave
sacrilege and a mortal sin. However, a New Mass
that is celebrated with some reverence, and with
certain validity, is not such a grave sacrilege as to be a
mortal sin. There is still disorder and contempt of the
Almighty in the very ceremonies themselves, but not
in such a grave way. Such is the case of the relatively
reverent and conservative New Masses in which such
abuses as “for all men” and Communion in the hand
are excluded. To assist at such Masses is a venial sin
of sacrilege. We have no right to do so, just as we
have no right to commit any venial sin, not even to
satisfy a precept of the Church.
Now we can resolve the question of the subjective
morality in a less emotional way. It is not just because
the New Masses are irritating and annoying that we
refuse to attend them, but because we know that they
are wrong because they destroy the Faith; and having
that understanding of the objective morality, we are
bound in conscience to follow it. Yet at the same
time, we will make no judgment as to the subjective
or personal culpability of priests or faithful who still
celebrate or assist at the New Mass. They may not
be aware of the disorder and of the evil, or at least
not sufficiently. Their conscience is not well enough
formed. This may not be their own fault, and it is for
this reason that we cannot even affirm that all those
who celebrate or assist at the New Mass commit
venial sins in so doing.

Can grace be received by those
who attend the New Mass?

This follows directly from the above. Those who
attend the New Mass are not all in mortal sin, and
many do not even commit any subjective sin at all
in attending the New Mass, given that they do not
understand the disorder or that they have a choice.
Consequently, they place no obstacle to grace in
attending the New Mass.
Furthermore, the Mass is efficacious ex opere
operato, which means in and of itself. As long as it is
validly offered up, it produces grace for the assistants.
The objective defect in the ceremonies and their
meaning, as grave as it might be for the profession
of the Faith, cannot in itself prevent the Mass from
giving grace. It is only the subjective sins of the
persons who attend that can be such an obstacle.
Hence we can both say that the New Mass is evil,
and also that there are good people who attend it in
good faith and who still receive grace from it all the
same.
Fr. Peter Scott was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. After assignments as seminary professor, US District Superior, and Rector of Holy Cross
Seminary in Goulburn, Australia, he is presently Headmaster of Our Lady of
Mount Carmel Academy in Wilmot, Ontario, Canada. Those wishing answers
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