JANUARY 2011

$4.45

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION

INSIDE

40 YEARS OF
THE SSPX: Interviews
with Fr. Schmidberger
and Fr. du Chalard
Archbishop Lefebvre
and the Popes,
by Fr. Iscara

(2010 SSPX Conference)

Dr. White on
Dante’s Paradiso
The Authority
of Vatican II
The Lord’s Prayer

The Gift of the Magi

The Defense of Tradition
as transmitted by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

2010 A NGELUS PRESS CONFERENCE
Over the weekend of October 15-17, 2010, Angelus Press hosted its first annual
conference in Kansas City, Missouri. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the
founding of the Society of St. Pius X, nearly 700 people convened at the Hilton Hotel
near the Kansas City airport for three days of talks, socializing, and mutual support.
Bishop Bernard Fellay, the Superior General of the Society, was the keynote speaker and
offered a pontifical High Mass Sunday morning at the historic St. Vincent de Paul Church.
The conferences are available on CD as a set.
Please visit www.angeluspress.org for more information.

Forty Years of Fidelity

Bishop Bernard Fellay

The Popes in the Life of Archbishop Lefebvre

Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara

A Bishop Speaks at the Council

Mr. John Vennari

The Holy Mass, Heart of the Church

Fr. Kenneth Novak

I Accuse the Council

Fr. Scott Gardner

Archbishop Lefebvre and the Salvation of Religious Life Fr. Cyprian, OSB
Education of the Youth: The Future of the Church

Fr. Michael McMahon

The 40th Anniversary of the Society of St. Pius X

Fr. Arnaud Rostand

2010 Conference Audio set:
The Defense of Tradition.
STK# 8492. $49.95

Spiritual Journey Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Archbishop Lefebvre’s last book. Describes a sanctity, simple yet profound, based on the writings of St. Thomas
Aquinas. “Souls find in the Summa not only the light of the faith, but also the source of sanctity.” Originally for
priests and seminarians, it is now a popular favorite. In satisfying the intellect rather than the emotions, we’re
encouraged to make “a total and unreserved offering of ourselves to God by our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified.”
73 pp. Softcover. STK# 4079✱ $8.00

The Little Story of My Long Life Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
In January 1990, Archbishop Lefebvre came to the motherhouse of the SSPX Sisters in France. A few days
later, serious heart trouble once again put the prospect of death before his eyes. All the Sisters of the community thus came to be around their founder as he recounted with joyful and moving simplicity the amazing
story of his life. 119 pp. Softcover. 39 photographs. STK# 7061✱ $9.95

Marcel Lefebvre Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais
This is the definitive biography of the Archbishop, written by one of his closest friends. Influential French
Catholic publisher Jean Madiran said, “...the fruit of several years of labor. The book is rich in documentation,
often unpublished, and in many theological observations.” All Catholics, particularly those attached to the
Tridentine Mass, owe a huge debt of gratitude to this man. We ought to know him better.
718 pp. Sewn softcover. 54 photographs, 16 Maps and Charts. STK# 8035✱ $22.95

The

“Instaurare omnia in Christo — To restore all things in Christ.”

ngelus
Volume XXXIV, Number 1

JANUARY 2011
English-language Editor and Publisher
for the International Society of Saint Pius X
PUBLISHER

Fr. Arnaud Rostand
EDITOR

Fr. Markus Heggenberger
ASSISTANT EDITOR

Mr. James Vogel

Contents
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

2 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Fr. Markus Heggenberger, FSSPX

3 ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE AND THE POPES
Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara, FSSPX

OPERATIONS MANAGER

Mr. Michael Sestak

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

12 INTERVIEW WITH FR. FRANZ SCHMIDBERGER, FSSPX

Miss Anne Stinnett

DICI

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Mr. Simon Townshend

COMPTROLLER

Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA

Fr. Franz Schmidberger, FSSPX (left),
Fr. Emmanuel du Chalard, FSSPX (right)

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Mr. John Rydholm
Miss Rebecca Heatwole

14 INTERVIEW WITH FR. EMMANUEL DU CHALARD, FSSPX

SHIPPING AND HANDLING

Mr. Jon Rydholm

“To publish Catholic journals and place
them in the hands of honest men is
not enough. It is necessary to spread
them as far as possible that they may
be read by all, and especially by
those whom Christian charity demands we should tear away from the
poisonous sources of evil literature.”
–Pope St. Pius X

DICI

17 DANTE’S PARADISO: READING AND COMMENTARY CONCLUSION
Dr. David Allen White

19

THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT

A HERMENEUTIC OF THE HERMENEUTIC:
Reflections on the Implications and Ultimate
Consequences of the Hermeneutic of Continuity

33 THE LORD’S PRAYER CONCLUSION
36 THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

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O. Henry

39 CHURCH AND WORLD
41 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
DICI

43 THE LAST WORD
Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, FSSPX

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ON OUR COVER: Fra Angelico. Adoration of the Magi.

St. Camilla Battista
da Varano. See
“Church and Wolrd.”

2

Letter
from
the
Editor

Christmas brings to our attention the one and
only way that God chose human happiness to be
realized: through His Incarnation, through a life of
imitating His virtues. Soon after His coming into
the world it became clear that the world would not
accept Him. This is expressed in the Gospel of St.
John: “He was in the world, and the world was made
by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto
his own, and his own received him not” ( Jn. 1:1011).
Consequently we find many ways in which the
world seeks happiness without God or in a different
way than the example of Jesus Christ would suggest.
While open atheism might be less common in the
West, we often find a new way of seeking happiness
which is, in terms of the tradition of the Church,
modernist. Modernism is a sign, not only and
perhaps not even so much of a wrong theology,
but of a new approach to the Christian life. The
old Christian truth that the servant is not greater
than his master (see Jn. 15:20) has been changed
into a theory of human progress that supposedly
allows us to combine the world and the “kingdom of
Christ” in a new way. In other words, you can live
a Christian life without caring too much about the
commandments of God, because He is, as they say,
a “merciful God who forgives our weakness instead
of punishing it.”
This is, broadly speaking, not wrong, but the
logical connection is insufficient. God is merciful
and He forgives sin on condition that there is
an honest intention of repentance and doing
amendment. God does not sell out His creation nor
does He adapt to human standards. If we are talking
about a “church of saints,” we are well aware that
the human person is the only being in this world
who has to realize “what he is.” We would not tell
an animal that it should behave like a monkey or a
lion or whatever, because we know that it is doing
exactly that by its own nature. There is no threat
to the behavior of an animal and, consequently,
no moral question involved. This is very different
for the human person, who has “to become what
he is meant to be.” In other words: for a human
being there is a continual danger of missing his
true mission, of doing things he should not do–
of sinning. Sin is nothing else than missing the
fundamental orientation given to human beings by
the laws of nature or the laws of God.
THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

Christ came into this world in order to remind
us of the orientation of the human being, of the
threat for the soul in this world and even, in certain
ways, of the anti-Christian character of this world.
Any attempt to create a “paradise on earth” is
fundamentally compromised by the persecution of
the Son of God after His incarnation. There is only
one way to happiness, the way which was found and
formulated by one of the most famous seekers of
God of all times: “...for Thou madest us for Thyself,
and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee” (St.
Augustine, Confessions).
We know examples of His persecution: Herod
killed the innocent children (since then so often
repeated: the innocent have to suffer for the whims
of the rulers), the flight into Egypt, the conflict with
the religious rulers of the time, and finally the “death
of God,” a crime which has haunted, in some mystic
way, those who were involved in it ever since.
Does this mean that misery is part of the human
condition? Not really, but it means that riches are
often dangerous (“It is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to
enter into the kingdom of heaven”–Mt. 19:24) and
might easily divert our direction of life from true
goods. “Paradise on earth” is the idea of Lenin, not
Jesus Christ. By the way: the communist paradise
was the poorest and most brutal of all time.
But communism might only be the most evident
example of the failure of a world without God. Our
materialistic society is another and probably more
important for us. Did Christ not come into this
world in order to teach us to be independent from
material goods? Yes, he did. And Christmas is the
herald of this attitude.

Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Markus Heggenberger

F r .

J u a n - C a r l o s

I s c a r a ,

F S S P X

3

The Defense of Tr adition
A rchbishop Lefebvre
and the Popes

At the first Angelus
Press conference
in October 2010,
Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara gave
the opening talk. As the
theme of the conference
was the 40th anniversary
of the founding of the
SSPX, Fr. Iscara gave
the background of
Archbishop Lefebvre's
life. Special emphasis is
given to the popes who
led the Catholic Church
in this period.

Many years ago, visiting Italy with a
group of seminarians, we happened to be in
the ruins of Pompeii in our black cassocks
under a scorching midday sun. A group
of cheerful Italian nuns, well provided for
the occasion with umbrellas and widebrimmed hats, approached us. Although
commiseration and concern for our melting
selves were written over their faces, they
were thrilled and happy at seeing so many
young men readying themselves for the
priesthood of Our Lord. We chatted, in broken English and
more broken Italian, and soon one of them asked, “What is your
congregation?” We proudly answered that it was the Society of
St. Pius X. They didn’t know it, but realized that it had to be a
relatively new foundation. So they asked the next, fateful question,
“Who is the founder?” We hadn’t finished saying “Archbishop
Lefebvre” when the smiles disappeared; they made their hasty,
near impolite farewells and left us there alone, baking under an
equally unforgiving sun.
As we were already seasoned travellers in modern-day, notso-Catholic Italy, such a reaction was not unexpected, so when it
came, although still hurtful, it did not surprise us much. We well
know that, in ecclesiastical circles, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
is widely known as the “rebel, disobedient bishop,” branded a

4

The Defense of Tr aDiTion

“schismatic” and even a “heretic.” But why are
such judgments passed upon him? Certainly not
on account of his behavior throughout a life that
was apostolic, highly virtuous, edifying–as even his
adversaries acknowledge–but only on account of
and as a consequence of the positions he assumed
during Vatican II, when he denounced the conciliar
deviations and foresaw their dechristianizing
consequences, and later, in the ensuing conflicts
with the promoters and defenders of the Council,
the Popes included.
In doing so, Archbishop Lefebvre became truly
a “sign of contradiction.” As a recent academic
puts it, “the word ‘Lefebvre’ has suffered a transsignification; it has lost its simple function of
surname, to become the definition of a distinctive
manner of understanding the Faith, the Church,
Catholicism itself.”1
Today, almost 20 years after his death, 45 after
the end of the Council, 40 after the foundation
of the SSPX, when the clerical generation of the
Council is passing away and a new generation
is coming of age–a generation that has received
only a distorted view of Archbishop Lefebvre–it
is necessary for us, his children and disciples, to
present him anew, reminding the Church and the
world who he was and somehow still is, in spite
of all distortions–a priest, a soldier of Christ, a
defender of the Faith and of the Church, and also,
appearances notwithstanding, a staunch defender of
the pre-eminent role of the Successor of Peter.
Now, even a summary presentation of
Archbishop Lefebvre’s event-filled life would be a
massive undertaking. Thus, time limitations have
obliged us to choose some vantage points from
which to contemplate and present anew his life and
work. The thread that we will follow throughout this
first conference will be the unbroken continuity of a
vital bond of fidelity that united him to the papacy
and its perennial Magisterium.
To avoid both repetitions in our exposition
and losing sight of this line we are trying to follow,
let us present in advance what we consider to be
some of the salient characteristics of Archbishop
Lefebvre’s priestly and episcopal actions, which
stand as witness and proof of this unfailing fidelity.
Firstly, in marked contrast to the popular perception
of his person and work, he was not overwhelmingly
attached to his own ideas. He most certainly had
his own opinions, judgments, inclinations, but,
in fact, he acted many times against them, in
obedience to his superiors and to the Pope. As long
as only contingent matters–whether administrative,
political, or temporal–were at stake, he yielded
and submitted, even if he disagreed. But when the
Faith and, thus, souls, were endangered, he reacted
1

L. M. I. Gardaleta, quoted in Siccardi, 9.

THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

vigorously, ever mindful of his episcopal mission,
as a successor of the Apostles, a member of the
Ecclesia docens–“the teaching Church,” entrusted by
God with the transmission of the Faith. Secondly,
he knew well that the defense of the Faith cannot be
merely passive, but requires a corresponding attack
against the contrary errors. Thus, keeping in mind
the dictum of Card. Pie, “Destruenda sunt aliena ut
nostra credatur”–“The [contrary doctrines] of others
must be destroyed so that ours may be believed”–
his reaction was habitually two-pronged, consisting
in the exposition of the Faith and the refutation of
errors. Thirdly, in all his battles he observed what
we may call the “law of proportionality,” that is, he
had recourse to the means that were most adequate
and proportionate to solve the problem at hand–
without going to extremes–doing no more, but no
less, than what the problem required.
For facility and clarity of exposition, we
have partitioned his life in four great, distinctive
chronological periods: first, his years of formation,
particularly at the seminary; then, his life as a priest
and missionary bishop, and later, as a Conciliar
Father; and, finally, what we may call “the SSPX
years.” We will take perhaps a little more time in
the period before his increased notoriety in the
world at large, a period less well known even by
traditionalists, but in which the seeds of the future
were planted, the directions of a life were traced.

The Years of Formation
His early life was already marked by a strong
devotion to the Pope. His own family was intensely
ultramontane, that is, devotedly loyal to the
Papacy and opposed to the tendencies of episcopal
independence from the Holy See, commonly
known as Gallicanism, which had so much harmed
the Church of France in the past. His father, René
Lefebvre, had a well-founded distrust of liberal ideas
and institutions, finding in his Catholic faith the
certainty that a just society must respect God and
the hierarchies instituted by Him. Strongly guided
by this spirit that pervaded their family, the two
eldest sons considered very early on a vocation to
the priesthood. When the time came to follow this
vocation, René Lefebvre, aware of the mounting
crisis in the diocese of Lille–the renewed penetration
of liberalism and modernism under the lenient
rule of Benedict XV–insisted upon sending young
Marcel to Rome, to be safely formed there for the
priesthood.
But, long before that, the first recorded episode
in the life-long relationship of Archbishop Lefebvre
with the papacy is worthy of the fioretti of some
saint. After making his First Communion, the little
Marcel wrote, without knowledge of his parents, a
letter of gratitude to St. Pius X for having allowed

5

In these formative years we see, firmly established and virtuously
practiced, the essential attitude of Archbishop Lefebvre towards the
popes–an attitude of reverence, submission and gratitude, and an overwhelming desire to collaborate with them.
him to receive Our Blessed Lord at such a young
age. If we may be permitted to express a pious
wish, we would like to see in this episode the first
providential link with St. Pius X, already hinting at
what was to come.
From the custody of a father of strong faith,
with clear ideas on matters of religion and a
very Catholic understanding of politics, a man
who discerned in modernistic progressivism and
liberalism the root causes of the prevailing temporal
and spiritual evils of the times, the young Marcel
Lefebvre passed to the custody of a spiritual
father, Fr. Henri le Floch, a man equally decided
in the combat against liberalism and modernism,
who exercised his paternal role by transmitting a
doctrinal and spiritual patrimony, the complete
wisdom of the Church.
The French Seminary in Rome, in via Santa
Chiara, entrusted to the Congregation of the Holy
Ghost, had been founded in answer to the will of
the Pope, to fight against Gallicanism and to form
the future bishops of France in complete fidelity and
submission to the Holy See.
For the young Marcel Lefebvre “Santa Chiara”
was a “revelation” and, later, “a guiding light for his
whole priestly and episcopal life.”2 The Rector, Fr. le
Floch–a friend of the popes, consultor of the Holy
Office, defender of the purity of the Faith–taught
him who the popes were, what they taught and
their absolute continuity in the fight against errors,
trying to preserve both the world and the Church
from the evils that affect them today. There Marcel
Lefebvre learned the “sentire cum Ecclesia,”–“to feel,
to think with the Church”–to leave aside all personal
ideas in order to embrace the mind of the Church,
to judge of all things as the Church does, to see all
events in the light of the spirit and the unerring
papal teachings.3 As the popes had condemned
the modern errors contrary to Catholic doctrine,
so he learned to condemn them.4 There, at the
French Seminary, he was taught the cult of truth,
and the horror for half-truths, or for diminished or
dissembled truths.

Many years later, Archbishop Lefebvre
acknowledged, to the astonishment and mild
amusement of his seminarians, that when he arrived
at “Santa Chiara” he had many false ideas, but, he
said: “I was happy to learn the truth, happy to know
that I was wrong, that I needed to change some of
my notions, and I did this above all by the study
of encyclicals of Popes who condemned modern
errors.”5
He studied a “formally Roman theology,”6
that is, a theology insistent on the existence of
a visible and living papal Magisterium, on the
infallibility of the popes and of the ecumenical
councils participating in their ordinary infallibility.
He absorbed this Roman creed, making it his
own, to the point where, in any discussion or in
cases of doubt, it was enough for him to refer to
the Magisterium to dissipate any of his hesitations
or contrary opinions. This is the “Romanitas,” the
abiding love for Rome and the submission to its
Magisterium, that he has transmitted to his priests
and seminarians.
Marcel Lefebvre was shaken and upset by the
condemnation of the Action Française–a strongly
anti-liberal French movement, based upon sound
principles of natural law–but he submitted to the
papal decisions: “Roma locuta est, causa finita est,”–
“Rome has spoken, the matter is closed,” although
he could foresee the consequences for French
politics. And his submission to Pius XI remained
unchanged even when informed about the “absolutely
scandalous manner”7 in which the Roman authorities,
yielding to political pressures, had dismissed Fr. le
Floch from the French Seminary. Many years later,
speaking to his seminarians, he would have only
words of praise for the doctrine of Pius XI, while
limiting his criticism of this pope to a regretful
acknowledgement of his entanglements with worldly
politics. But still, painful as it was, in this episode
there was a providential lesson to be learned,
“because it showed the malice and wickedness of the
enemies of truth.”8

CONSPEC 36 A, November 30, 1976.
Abbé Berto.
7
Lefebvre, Little Story, 29.
8
Lefebvre, Little Story, 34.
5

Lefebvre, Little Story, 26.
3
Tissier, 35.
4
Lefebvre, Little Story, 28.
2

6

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2011

6

The Defense of Tr aDiTion

At “Santa Chiara,” Marcel Lefebvre pronounced
for the first time the anti-modernist oath, which he
would later repeat on other occasions, when taking
office and in his episcopal consecration, and to
this most solemn promise before God he remained
faithful his whole life: “I firmly accept and embrace
each and every doctrine defined by the Church’s
unerring teaching authority and all that she has
maintained and declared, especially those points
of doctrine which directly oppose the errors of our
time.”
It was not in his character to take such a promise
lightly or to perjure himself.
In these formative years we see, firmly
established and virtuously practiced, the essential
attitude of Archbishop Lefebvre towards the popes–
an attitude of reverence, submission and gratitude,
and an overwhelming desire to collaborate with
them. Here is the root of his often-repeated “Tradidi
quod et accepi,”–“I have transmitted what I have
received”–seeing himself as a successor of the
Apostles, acting in close union with the Successor of
Peter, serving thus as a link in the unbreakable chain
of the transmission of doctrine until the end of times.
Here is the root of Archbishop Lefebvre’s combat,
and the source of his distress and subsequent actions
in post-Vatican II times, when he witnessed the
seismic shift in the understanding of the papacy
brought about by the Council and its aftermath, and
the consequent dangers for the Faith and for souls.

Life as Priest and
Missionary Bishop
His life as a priest and even as a missionary
bishop was lived in a spirit of prompt and effective
obedience to his superiors. After his first year in
a French parish, close to home, he entered the
novitiate of the Holy Ghost Fathers, at that time
still fueled by the spirit impressed upon it by its
founder, the Ven. Francis Libermann, and thus, still
characterized by a strong attachment to the Holy
See.
Then followed the assignments in Africa,
many in few years. He always went where he
was sent, whatever his personal inclinations may
have been–and in some cases, clearly against his
inclinations–but always devoted to the service of
the Church, following with docility the directives of
his superiors and of the Popes. “As a missionary, he
rose steadily through the clerical ranks, but it is clear
that he was almost entirely without ambition in this
regard, except in so far as he wanted to exercise his
missionary zeal.”9
In 1944, while still in Africa, he received the
news of the death of his father, René Lefebvre, in
9

Stephen McInerney, in http://www.oriensjournal.com/17ghost.htm.

THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

the Nazi concentration camp of Sonnenburg. We
have never heard Archbishop Lefebvre boast of this
veritable martyrdom of his father, because for him
remembrance and gratitude were expressed better
by an ever closer fidelity to this example of devotion
given by a man who spent himself in the service of
his faith, of his family, and of his country.
In 1945, he was sent back to France, appointed
as rector of the seminary of his congregation in
Mortain, an appointment that caused him another
“heavy trial,”10 now that of being torn away from
what had become his beloved Africa–but back to
France he went.
In Mortain he found the students affected and
disoriented by the new, revolutionary ideas that
had sprung up during the war years, and tempted
by the new experiments being made elsewhere
in the world and in the Church. Acknowledging
the difficulty to counteract these new tendencies,
Archbishop Lefebvre strove to give to his
seminarians a solid foundation on the unchangeable,
continual exposition of the doctrinal truths by the
Magisterium, encouraging them to “sentire cum
Ecclesia”–“Never to have a thought that is not in
conformity with the truth of the Church.”11
In June 1947, Archbishop Lefebvre was
nominated as Vicar-Apostolic of Dakar, and a few
months later he received the episcopal consecration
from Cardinal Liénart in his native parish in
Tourcoing. In the reception following the ceremony,
Archbishop Lefebvre expressed again his gratitude
to Fr. le Floch, “for having given [him] sound
principles of the Faith, for having attached [him]
to Our Lord in life and in death, and for having
helped [him] to understand the drama which the
Church was going through, the errors contrary to
truth and against Our Lord”12 and he reaffirmed his
own loyalty to the principles learned at the French
Seminary. The very liberal Cardinal Liénart rushed
to tell everything to the nuncio in Paris, Msgr.
Giuseppe Roncalli, the future John XXIII, thus
helping to prepare the stage for the drama to come.13
Having proven his worth after a year of service
in Africa, Pius XII appointed him Apostolic
Delegate for French-speaking Africa, with residence
at Dakar. In the brief of appointment, signed by
Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini on behalf of the
Pope, Pius XII acknowledged and praised the
prudence, wisdom, and activity of Msgr. Lefebvre,
and his zeal for the reign of Christ.14 He became
thus the representative of the Pope, responsible for
44 ecclesiastical territories in continental and insular
Lefebvre, Little Story, 55.
Quoted in Siccardi, 110.
Lefebvre, Little Story, 61.
13
Tissier, 155.
14
Tissier, 205.
10
11
12

7

Pius XII greatly appreciated his Apostolic Delegate, and the sentiment
was reciprocated. The Pope is reported to have said to Msgr. Veuillot: “Archbishop Lefebvre is certainly the most efficient and the most
qualified of the Apostolic Delegates.”
Africa and for the diplomatic relations with the
French government in all matters having to do with
these territories. In this position, “he was one of the
most important figures in the Church” in his time.15
The instructions given by Pius XII were clear:
to increase the native clergy and to create a native
hierarchy; to establish a hierarchy of ordinary
bishops and episcopal assemblies; to develop
Catholic works, and to incorporate, insofar as
it was possible, compatible African customs.16
Archbishop Lefebvre applied himself to this task
with his habitual zeal and thoroughness, tempered
with a healthy measure of patience and good humor.
He did not hide his own opinions, particularly
his misgivings about the assemblies of bishops he
was establishing and in which he already foresaw
the dangers of collegiality, but nonetheless, he
“dutifully carried out his responsibilities by
obedience, keeping his own thoughts to himself and
representing publicly only the thinking of the Holy
See,”17 thus upholding the authority of the Pope
wherever it was contested.
Pius XII greatly appreciated his Apostolic
Delegate, and the sentiment was reciprocated. The
Pope is reported to have said to Msgr. Veuillot:
“Archbishop Lefebvre is certainly the most efficient
and the most qualified of the Apostolic Delegates.”18
Thus trusted, and with his wide experience in the
mission field, Archbishop Lefebvre was the foremost
advisor of Pius XII for writing the encyclical “Fidei
donum,” which reinvigorated missionary work
worldwide. On his part, Archbishop Lefebvre
immediately realized that there was between the
Pope and himself “a great union of thought, that
[they] were well united in the desire to extend Our
Lord’s kingdom and to live truly the Christian
and priestly life.”19 He added: “The Pope was
always very friendly with me and provided a lot of
support and encouragement. He was a true father,
very good, very simple, and at the same time
very dignified and very noble. He was a man that

Fr. Vincent Cosmao, O.P., quoted in Tissier, 232.
Tissier, 210-217.
Fr. Jean Watine, S.J., quoted in Tissier, 232.
18
Tissier, 231.
19
Lefebvre, Little Story, 65.

commanded respect in those who had dealings with
him.”20
In the years after the war, and more clearly
with the beginning of John XXIII’s pontificate,
it was clear that European bishops in Africa
were becoming “undesirable, a burden.”21 First,
Archbishop Lefebvre ceased to be the Apostolic
Delegate, remaining only as archbishop of Dakar.
Later, seeing the drift of events and ideas, he
offered his resignation from Dakar, which was
eagerly accepted. The Pope transferred him to
Tulle, in France, a very small and poor diocese.
This could be construed as a “demotion,” and it was
most probably due to pressures from the French
bishops, who certainly disliked him and were, at
that moment, particularly upset over his support of
Jean Ousset and the anti-liberal movement of the
Cité Catholique.22 Archbishop Lefebvre was keenly
aware of these undercurrents of hostility towards
his person and ideas, and of the dissolving forces
already at work–in Africa, in his congregation, in
France, and even in the Roman Curia. Nonetheless,
he never reacted against the decisions of the Pope,
obeying and, as always, encouraging others to a
similar obedience.
With his habitual zeal, always docile to the
promptings of Providence, he applied himself
to strengthen and restore his new diocese, both
materially and spiritually.
Practical and objective as usual, when other prelates were
having presumptuous dreams about the priests of the 21st
century, he took special care of his own clergy, suggesting
to his priests to live together in small rural communities to
foster their spiritual life.23

Nonetheless, he had to leave this task unfinished,
due to his election as Superior General of his
congregation and, at about the same time, his
appointment as member of the Central Preparatory
Commission for the Council.

15

Quoted in Tissier, 229.
Lefebvre, Little Story, 77.
22
Lefebvre, Little Story, 78.
23
Cf. Angles, Biography.

16

20

17

21

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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

8

The Defense of Tr aDiTion

The Council and After
During the Council, his predominant concern
was “to put forward the Faith in all its purity and
integrity.”24 But, from the beginning, the violent
attacks against the Magisterium and its essential
organs made clear that one of the progressives’
goals was to modify profoundly the traditional
understanding of the teaching authority in the
Church. As the Council progressed, the chipping
away at the magisterial authority increased. Thus,
the infallibility of the Pope was presented in the
context of the infallibility of the Church, and in
this way somehow diminished the import of the
Pope’s personal infallibility. But the deadliest blow
was delivered by the approval of the decree on
religious liberty, a concept that is, by definition, the
direct opposition to a Magisterium that imposes the
Catholic truth, morally obliging the subject to accept
it.
To deal with the problems arising in the
Council, Archbishop Lefebvre followed the “law
of proportionality” of which we have spoken,
that is, he had recourse to means that were not
extreme, but proportional and sufficient to tackle
the problem that confronted him. Thus, to the
influential, unofficial groups of the progressives, he
helped to oppose another group, by coordinating
in the Coetus Internationalis Patrum the efforts of
traditionally-minded Conciliar Fathers. This group,
although representative of a minority, was well
organized and vocal, and, as such, highly resented
by the reformers. And when “Paul VI blessed the
adulterous union between the liberal conception
of man and society with the Catholic doctrine,
[by] reducing systematically the influence of the
traditionalists and opposing any declaration which
could “hurt” non-Catholics,”25 an implacable
persecution started against the members of the
traditional Coetus. One of the Archbishop’s cousins,
on the other side of the doctrinal fence, Cardinal
Lefebvre, declared that he could never forgive
what the Archbishop did in the Council–that is
(we translate), his active and vocal opposition to
the winds of change, based upon his fidelity to the
perennial teachings of the Popes.
During the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre did
what he could to uphold the cause, the authority
of the Pope, putting his trust in him to set matters
right–and, in the end, being sorely distressed with
the realization that Paul VI himself was aiding and
abetting, at least by his inaction, the prevailing
errors. Romano Amerio has pointed out how the
pontificate of Paul VI marked a turning point in
Letter to the Members of the Holy Ghost Fathers, during the First Session
of the Council, quoted in Muzzio, 38.
25
Cf. Angles, Biography.
24

THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

the process of post-conciliar errors. With Paul
VI’s understanding of his role as Pope, to which
he was conditioned by his personal character, and
in the context of the conciliar reforms, came into
being a new perception of the Petrine ministry, a
shift from governing to admonishing, which was
in fact, a renunciation, a non-functioning of the
papal authority.26 And this crisis of authority at
the top filtered down in the Church, affecting and
undermining all other authorities.
The Second Vatican Council became, as
Cardinal Suenens put it, “1789 in the Church.” As
happened with the events of the French Revolution
in 1789, the Council became, indeed, a revolution,
a reversal of the existing order–a disorder that
constituted a new reality: “the Conciliar Church,”
in the expression of Msgr. Benelli, Secretary of State
for Paul VI.
In the ensuing doctrinal and disciplinary
whirlwind, Archbishop Lefebvre remained steadfast,
as he was before–he did not change, although from
the outside it may have looked as if he was forcing
his way in a contrary direction. For this we have the
testimony of Fr. Vincent Cosmao, OP, once prior of
the Dominicans in Dakar: “It is the Church which
has changed, not Archbishop Lefebvre. He really
is the witness of that Church which was certain of
her truth, rights and power, and which considered
herself alone capable of saying how best to organize
society.”27
His work as Superior General of the
Congregation of the Holy Ghost, between 1962 and
1968, was the culmination of his missionary life.
Throughout his life, he had directed his students,
priests, and missionaries according to the principles
of obedience and fidelity that he had applied to his
own life.28 In the aftermath of the Council, when
those principles were rejected and finding himself
unwilling to collaborate in the dismantling of his
own congregation, there was no other path open to
him than to resign from his post and retire. Of his
own accord, he accepted to pass the remainder of
his life in obscurity, not demanding or expecting
anything for himself–but he retired to Rome, to
be as physically close to the See of Peter as he had
spiritually been throughout his life.
But with the end of the Council, Divine
Providence opened for him a new field of mission,
this time within the Church…

Amerio, 143-150.
Tissier, 195.
28
Cf. Muzzio, 34.
26
27

9

During the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre did what he could to uphold
the cause, the authority of the Pope, putting his trust in him to set matters right–and, in the end, being sorely distressed with the realization
that Paul VI himself was aiding and abetting, at least by his inaction,
the prevailing errors.
The SSPX
In the preface of his Spiritual Journey,
Archbishop Lefebvre wrote a mysterious and
beautiful paragraph:
Before entering–if it pleases God–into the bosom of
the Holy Trinity, I will be allowed to realize the dream of
which God gave me a glimpse one day in the cathedral of
Dakar. The dream was to transmit, before the progressive
degradation of the priestly ideal, in all of its doctrinal purity
and in all of its missionary charity, the Catholic priesthood
of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as He conferred it on His
Apostles, just as the Roman Church always transmitted it
until the middle of the twentieth century.29

This dream became true in 1970.
Archbishop Lefebvre was always aware that, as
bishop, he had been given a mission, he had been
charged with a special concern for the common
good of the universal Church. In the circumstances
in which he found himself then, it was for Divine
Providence to show the way, to provide the means
for securing this common good. In due time, a
way was shown. Again using proportionate means,
avoiding extremes, he fulfilled his providential duty
by founding, not a “Vatican in exile,” but a religious
society, our SSPX, to preserve the “Faith of always,”
against all the attenuations and reinterpretations,
reductions and negations of Conciliar and postConciliar times30–and to form priests at the
service of the Church and of the Pope, “priests for
tomorrow.”
It would be impossible, in such a short space,
to give even a more or less summary exposition of
the relations with Rome during the years between
the foundation of the SSPX and the Archbishop’s
death–years filled with events, ups and downs, hopes
and disappointments. As those details are easily
available in a number of different publications,
we have chosen, as an alternative, to refer to
Archbishop Lefebvre’s statements of principle,
which were the guidelines for his concrete actions
during those years. He always made clear his own
fidelity to traditional Rome, to the traditional

Magisterium of the Church, and wherever he went–
in lectures, spiritual conferences, sermons, books–he
encouraged others to keep the same fidelity.
In his luminous declaration of November 1974
he stated the fundamental distinction that guided his
work and still guides us:
We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul,
to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic faith and of
the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal
Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth. We refuse, on the
other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of
neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were
clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the
Council, in all the reforms which issued from it.31

The sermon of the 30th anniversary of his
episcopal consecration, in 1977, summarizes his love
and understanding of the Papacy:
It is an extraordinary gift that God has made us in
giving us the Popes, giving us precisely this perpetuity in
truth, communicated to us through the Successors of Peter.
The Deposit of Faith does not belong to the Pope. It is
the treasure of truth which has been taught during twenty
centuries. He must transmit it faithfully and exactly to all
those under him who are charged in turn to communicate
the truth of the Gospel.32

But–he asks–what should we do when, for
whatever reason, the Pope fails to fulfill this mission?
We cannot follow error, change truth, just because the
one who is charged with transmitting it is weak and allows
error to spread around him. We don’t want the darkness
to encroach on us. We want to live in the light of truth.
We remain faithful to that which has been taught for two
thousand years. Never can the Trinity be changed. Never
can the redemptive work of Christ through the Cross
and the Sacrifice of the Mass be changed. These things
are eternal; they belong to God. How can someone here
below change those things? Impossible! This is why,
without worrying about all that is happening around us
in these times, we ought to affi rm our Creed, our Ten
Commandments, meditate on the Sermon on the Mount,
which is also our law. We must attach ourselves to the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass, to the Sacraments, awaiting the light
that will shine around us again. That is all. We must do

31

Lefebvre, Spiritual Journey, iii, quoted in Angles, Short History.
30
Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, quoted in Le jugement de Mgr Brunero Gherardini sur le débat théologique entre la Tradition et le Concile Vatican II.
29

32

Complete text in Tissier, 620-621.
In all the quotes taken from this long sermon, we have suppressed the repetitions proper to the spoken style, and slightly abridged the expressions,
without altering anything of its substance.
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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

10

The Defense of Tr aDiTion

this without becoming bitter or violent in a spirit that is
unfaithful to Our Lord.
And so, my dear friends, be faithful–faithful to the Pope,
successor of Peter, when he shows himself to be truly the
successor of Peter. Because that is what a Pope is and it is
in this sense that we have need of him. We are not of those
who want to break with the authority of the Church, with
the successor of Peter. But neither are we of those who want
to break with twenty centuries of tradition in the Church,
with twenty centuries of successors of Peter! We have
made our choice. We have chosen to be obedient in the
real sense. We want to remain faithful to the successors of
Peter who transmitted to us the Deposit of the Faith. It is in
this sense that we are faithful to the Catholic Church, that
we remain within it and can never go into schism. That is
what guarantees for us the past, the present and the future.
Sustaining ourselves with the past, we are sure of the present
and the future.

As the time passed, it is undeniable that there
was a perceptible hardening of his expressions,
which ran parallel to Rome’s hardening in its
continued refusal to even consider making what he
had called “the experiment of Tradition,” and which
also corresponded to his distress and indignation
at John Paul II’s ecumenical meeting of religions
at Assisi in 1986. But, contrary to what some
expected or hoped for, he did not succumb to the
sedevacantist temptation.
On the contrary, even when Archbishop
Lefebvre proceeded to what is seen as the ultimate
act of his so-called “disobedience,” the episcopal
consecrations of 1988, he reaffirmed the principle
that had constantly guided his actions:
There is no question of separating ourselves from Rome,
or of putting ourselves under a foreign government, or of
establishing a sort of parallel church. It is out of the question
for us to do such things. Far from us the miserable thought
of separating ourselves from Rome! On the contrary, it is
in order to manifest our attachment to Rome that we are
performing this ceremony. It is in order to manifest our
attachment to Eternal Rome, to the Pope, and to all those
who have preceded these last Popes who, unfortunately
since the Second Vatican Council, have thought it their
duty to adhere to grievous errors which are demolishing
the Church and the Catholic Priesthood.

Conclusion
As we said at the beginning, Archbishop
Lefebvre’s life can be summarized in one word,
fidelity. Fidelity to the principles he received at
the French Seminary in Rome, fidelity to the spirit
of “Romanitas,” to the spirit of submission to the
constant and consistent Magisterium of the Roman
See.
Malicious foes and uncomprehending bystanders
have considered him a fossil, a relic, stubbornly
attached to a past that is now irrelevant, a past that
has nothing to say to the world and to the Church
of today. To this accusation, Archbishop Lefebvre
himself repeatedly answered by paraphrasing St.
THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

John Chrysostom’s expression, “I prepare the
future by being faithful to the past.” He was not
simply attached to the Church of the past. He
understood that, by preserving Tradition faithfully,
he defended not only the Church of yesterday, but
also that of today and of tomorrow. The Church
cannot break with or deny her past–because for the
Church, Mystical Body of Christ, past and future are
identified in an atemporal Present.
As Cardinal Pie, who, on the day of his
enthronement as Bishop of Poitiers, exclaimed, “I
am a bishop, I will speak up!” Archbishop Lefebvre
rendered to the papacy his most signal service by
refusing to be a “mute dog,” by elevating his voice
as an echo of the perennial papal teachings, by
appealing to Rome, with Rome, against Rome.
Where is the proof of this, our assertion of his
unfailing fidelity? We may answer that it is to be
found in the present attitude of the SSPX, that is,
in our certainty that the solution to the present
crisis can come only from Rome, that our Society
is only an instrument to be used by the Vicar of
Christ for that restoration. If we have and still
hold this position, it is because we have received it
from Archbishop Lefebvre, from his example and
teaching, to which we remain, by the grace of God,
still faithful.
Archbishop Lefebvre’s so-called “rebellion”
was nothing else than the external manifestation
and the fulfillment of his episcopal mission of
transmitting, as he had received, the doctrinal and
spiritual patrimony built up by the Church in almost
2,000 years of a history guided by the Holy Ghost.
And in doing so, he has shown himself to be a man
of obedience, a faithful son of the Church. His
“disobedience” was in fact an act of fidelity, fidelity
to the Church and to the Pope. It is ironic that many
of Archbishop Lefebvre’s most vocal accusers are
precisely those who at every step have attempted
to thwart, disobey or simply disregard the most
Catholic decisions and teachings of the recent Popes.
Archbishop Lefebvre, living his whole life in this
unwavering fidelity, has become thus a witness–a
martyr, we may say–to the Papacy. His life may
thus appear to us as an illustration of the liturgical
acclamation, “Tu es Petrus !”–an affirmation of
Catholic doctrine, maintained against adversaries
and reformers, and even against Peter himself, when
Peter seemed to forget who he is…
Let us quote the moving, final paragraph of
Bishop Tissier’s biography of Archbishop Lefebvre:
When God asked, on March 25, 199133 what he had
done with the grace of his priesthood and episcopacy, what
indeed may he have replied, this old soldier for the faith
…? Lord, look, I have handed on everything that I could
hand on; the Catholic faith, the Catholic priesthood, and
33

The date of Msgr. Lefebvre’s death.

11
also the Catholic episcopacy; You gave me all of that, and
all of that I handed on so that the Church might continue.
Your great Apostle said, Tradidi quod et accepi and like him I
wanted to say, Tradidi quod et accepi. I have handed on what
I received. Everything that I received I have handed on.

Thus, without advancing a future judgment
of the Church, we conclude this conference by
expressing our pious wish–no, our pious certainty
that he has already heard the answer of Our Lord:
“Euge, serve bone et fidelis… Good and faithful servant
of the Church and of the Papacy, enter into the joy
of your Master.”
Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara, a native of Argentina, was ordained in 1986 by Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre. For the last nine years he has been teaching Moral Theology
and Church History at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, Winona, Minnesota.

Archbishop Lefebvre’s so-called “rebellion” was nothing
else than the external manifestation and the fulfillment of
his episcopal mission of transmitting, as he had received, the
doctrinal and spiritual patrimony built up by the Church in
almost 2,000 years of a history guided by the Holy Ghost.
Bibliography Consulted
A MERIO, Romano. Iota Unum: A study of the changes in the Catholic Church
in the 20th century. Kansas City: Sarto House, 1997.
A NGLES DOMINGUEZ, Ramon, sspx. A biography of Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre. http://www.fsspx.org/en/presentation/our-founder/ archbishop-marcel-lefebvre/
A NGLES DOMINGUEZ, Ramon, sspx. A Short History of the Society of St. Pius
X. http://www.holycrossseminary.com/Most_ Asked_ Questions_ Appendix_III_page9.htm
DAVIES, Michael. Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre. Part II: 1977-1979. Dickinson, Texas: Angelus Press, 1983.
GAMBRA, Rafael. Mons. Lefebvre. Vida y pensamiento de un Obispo católico.
Madrid: Vasallo de Mumbert, 1980.
H ÉRY, Christophe. Mgr. Lefebvre, maître spirituel et homme d’Église. Certitudes, n. 23, July 1996.
Le jugement de Mgr Brunero Gherardini sur le débat théologique entre la
Tradition et le Concile Vatican II. http://www.dici. org/ documents/
le-jugement-de-mgr-brunero-gherardini-sur-le-debat-theologique-entrela-tradition-et-le-concile-vatican-ii/
LEFEBVRE, Marcel. Spiritual Journey. Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1991.
LEFEBVRE, Marcel. The Little Story of My Long Life. Browerville: Sisters
of the SSPX, 2002.
LEFEBVRE, Marcel. Un évêque parle. Écrits et allocutions. Tome I: 19631974. Paris: Dominique Martin Morin, 1979.
LEFEBVRE, Marcel. Un évêque parle. Écrits et allocutions. Tome II: 19751976. Paris: Dominique Martin Morin, 1977.
MARZIAC, J. J. Des évêques français contre Mgr. Lefebvre. II: Mystères
douloureux. Escurolles: Fideliter, 1989.
MUZZIO, Nelly C. Por razón de fe. Vida de Monseñor Lefebvre. Buenos
Aires: 2000.
SICCARDI, Cristina. Mons. Marcel Lefebvre. Nel nome della verità. Milan:
Sugarco, 2010.
T ISSIER DE MALLERAIS, Bernard, sspx. Marcel Lefebvre. Kansas City:
Angelus Press, 2004.
Un combat pour l’Église. La Fraternité St. Pie X, 1970-1995. Menzingen:
Fraternité St. Pie X, 1997.
WHITE, David Allen. The Horn of the Unicorn. Kansas City: Angelus Press,
2006.
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2011

12

40 Years of the SSPX

“Today, We are
Being Taken
SeriouSly”
Fr. Franz Schmidberger is District Superior of Germany. After his
entry into the seminary in Ecône in 1972, he was Superior General
of the Society of Saint Pius X from 1982 to 1994. On the 40th
anniversary of the Society, Father recalled the religious context of
the 1970s and the development of the relations with Rome.
When and how did you enter
the Society of Saint Pius X?

I was living in Munich and studying natural
sciences at university. I met a small group of young
Catholics under a philosophy professor who had
been fighting since the Second Vatican Council
to save Latin, stop the spreading betrayal of the
Faith, and maintain Tradition. So when I decided to
become a priest, I had no doubt as to where I ought
to go. I would even go so far as to say I knew where
to go even before I knew whether I would go to the
seminary! Ecône was the only possibility, since I did
not want to be ordained by a bishop who celebrated
the New Mass. That was in 1972.

So Ecône and the Society of Saint Pius X were
already known in Munich, in Germany, in 1972?

Oh yes! We knew an archbishop had just opened
a seminary in Switzerland with the old liturgy. You
know, in a group such as ours, after the Council, we
were looking for other groups of a similar nature.
So then, we were in contact with Catholics in the
United States, in France, in Vienna, and thus we
knew of each other’s existence. We fought for the
same ideas, we were engaged in the same fight, even
though it was not always as precise, as explicit as it is
today. But even so, the general orientation was clear:
we wanted at all costs the Mass and the catechism of
all time.

THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

What drew you so strongly then
to the Tradition of the Church?

In the beginning I did not really understand the
whole movement which began at the Council. In
my family, which was deeply Catholic, we followed
along at the start. But already in 1967, we grasped
the importance of the Council’s reforms. From that
time on, we became part of a fight and, with this
group of students, we attacked the modernists head
on. I remember having advertisements printed,
including some against the Archbishop of Munich
[Cardinal Döpfner], who was very progressive and
who played a detrimental role at the Council.

But how did you become aware
of this war within the Church?

It was really due to our formation in philosophy
in Munich. We had a firm foundation in the subject.
We knew that truth is unchangeable. We could also
see clearly that the development of civil society was
going in the wrong direction. And so we were well
prepared and when we entered Ecône, with Father
Klaus Wodsack, we had clear ideas.

When did you meet Archbishop Lefebvre?

It was on March 12, 1972, on the fourth Sunday
of Lent, Laetare Sunday. With Father Wodsack,
we served the Archbishop’s Mass in his house in
Fribourg on Route de La Vignettaz. Then we had
our meal together, and Archbishop Lefebvre then

13
told us we were accepted into the seminary. We had
already sent our enrollments; he simply wished to
get a personal impression. Two weeks later, we spent
a few days in Ecône. The following October, we
entered the seminary.

What were your first impressions
of Archbishop Lefebvre?

Very good, very noble, an extraordinarily
balanced character! A truly Catholic man. A man of
the Church! Those were only the first impressions.
We discovered his entire personality in the following
months.

So then, you entered Ecône in 1972. Your first
commitment to the Society of Saint Pius X goes
back to 1973. What state was it in at that time?

It was small! There were perhaps six priestmembers. It was in statu nascendi, just in the process
of being born! But there was no question about
numbers. We had very strong convictions: the New
Mass was not good, we did not want it, and on the
contrary, we wanted the old Mass at all costs. And
that was the core of our conviction. It did not matter
how many people adhered to it; it did not matter!
We had to work to propagate this Mass again. God
had called us by His grace to the priesthood and
so we told ourselves we had to work to diffuse the
true Catholic Mass again in Germany. It was an
apostolic, missionary desire.

So you thought then that the Society
would enjoy such a wide development?

To be frank, I did not think we would spread
over the whole world, to Asia, to Africa, etc. What
was really an unheard-of and completely unmerited
grace was that we were able to collaborate in its
spread across the world.
Archbishop Lefebvre told me one day, “If
the Society remains limited to Europe, that will
be a sign that it is not the work of God. For if it
is truly the work of God, it must have a Catholic,
a universal dimension. It must draw to itself all
cultures, all languages, all social classes…” And
that is what happened! The Society is truly a work
of the Catholic Church. It is universal. It has been
established on every continent, in every class,
among intellectuals, simple folk, the rich, the poor.
That is what we find in the primitive Church, in
the Church of all ages. The Church is universal! It
speaks to every man, to bring all souls to the Good
God.

What does this 40th anniversary inspire in you?

It gives me above all a feeling of deep gratitude
towards God. It is a great joy, a profound joy, to be
able to collaborate in this work.

The fight continues in the same way?

We can see that our arguments prove ever
stronger and more irrefutable. That, even the
progressives notice. That is why I would say we
even enjoy a certain esteem among our enemies.
For it is very difficult to make objections to our
arguments.
I remember, when I was Superior General,
I went to Rome quite often, and I must say that
we were then almost despised: “You are little
rascals. What has gotten into your head? How can
you imagine that the Pope is not in the right line
regarding religious liberty and ecumenism? What
is wrong with you that you should turn against the
Pope?” We were treated a little like that. Today, we
are taken very seriously. And we bear witness to the
Catholic Faith in its entirety in Rome.
Our role is firstly to fight against errors, secondly
to point out the way to the true solution, and thirdly
to put this solution into practice a little. With the
seminaries, the schools, the families gathered
around our altars, retreat houses, the convents of
the different religious groups who are united to us…
in this way, we are rebuilding a little Christendom.
That is our role. We show the way and we say
clearly: the solution is priestly sanctity, it is the Mass
of all time, it is the catechism of all time, it is to
work for the reign of Our Lord in society. And so,
we are bringing that into being. Of course, it is being
done in a very limited way, but all the same we are a
little army fighting for Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Taken from DICI. DICI is the official news bureau of the Society of
Saint Pius X.

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2011

14

40 Years of the SSPX

“For THe
loVe oF
eTernal
roMe”
Fr. Emmanuel du Chalard (on the extreme right of the photo),
arrived at Ecône 40 years ago, almost to the day. Now stationed
in Italy, where he has spent the entirety of his priestly ministry,
this priest, who was master of ceremonies during his time at the
seminary, goes back over the early days of the Society of St. Pius
X, the teaching of Archbishop Lefebvre, and the reception his
work has received in Rome.
What year did you enter Ecône? How had you heard of
the Society of St. Pius X? How did it happen that this
choice seemed necessary to you?

In the beginning of September 1970, I arrived
at Ecône as a seminarian. There were eleven of us
candidates, including Fr. Patrick Groche, for the
opening of this first year of spirituality. At the time,
one did not yet speak of the Society of St. Pius X, but
for those who were thinking about a vocation, the
problem was how to find a serious seminary in which
they could be formed. My bishop, Bishop Michon,
advised against the seminary of Orleans, which was
responsible for his diocese of Chartres, for they were
losing the Faith there. Coming from a profoundly
Christian family, there were connections between
my parents and the Cité Catholique, the Congress
of Lausanne, and also the spiritual exercises of St.
Ignatius. At home, we had subscriptions to Itinéraires,
L’Homme Nouveau…

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It was in these circles that I first heard of
Archbishop Lefebvre’s plan to open a seminary.
I must admit that when I entered at Ecône, I was
completely ignorant of what the future held, be it
the very existence of the Society, its development in
the world, or the difficulties that would arise with the
Holy See.

During these founding years, what were the relations
between Archbishop Lefebvre and the seminarians?

If it is true that Archbishop Lefebvre was a
bishop, for us in the beginning he was above all a
true father, always taking care to ensure for us a good
priestly formation, but also attentive to all the little
material details, in order that the seminary might be a
setting that would allow a life of recollection, prayer,
and study. He was a born organizer, and nothing
in our daily life escaped him. Above all, he was an
example for us; when he was at the seminary, he
followed the rule, the schedule, and the offices, and

15
he took his meals and recreations with us. And of
course we looked forward to his spiritual conferences
with great interest. That was when he would give us
updates on his interviews with the bishops or Roman
prelates. Always at our disposition, to receive us and
listen to us, we could thus speak freely with him in
his office. Throughout all these years spent at Ecône,
where difficulties from both within and without were
not wanting, what was the most striking was the calm
and serenity that His Excellency always preserved.

In 1976 there came what they called “the hot summer”:
Archbishop Lefebvre was declared suspended a divinis
by Rome. Were you not tempted to leave the Society of
St. Pius X? What reasons brought you to continue your
studies in spite of so many troubles?

“The hot summer” did not arrive unexpectedly.
Since 1974 we had already experienced important
events that had prepared us not only for these
sad and painful condemnations, but especially
to understand better the gravity of the Church’s
situation and the incompatibility between the reforms
coming from Vatican II and fidelity to Tradition.
In November 1974, there was the canonical visit of
Bishop Descamps and Bishop Onclin, sent by Rome,
who scandalized us with their modernist comments.
Then, in Rome, there was the meeting between
Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinals Garonne,
Wright, and Tabera in February 1975. And the
conclusion of this meeting was, according to them,
that the famous declaration of November 21, 1974
“seemed unacceptable on all points.”
The years ’74 through ’76 were of a capital
importance for an understanding of the position of
Archbishop Lefebvre and of the Society of St. Pius
X. At the time, Jean Madiran rendered us a priceless
service with the publication of La condamnation
sauvage de Mgr. Lefebvre (“The Illegal Condemnation
of Ab. Lefebvre”) in the magazine Itinéraires.
Archbishop Lefebvre had always taught us and
transmitted to us a great love for the Roman Church.
It is this love for Rome that made us prefer to remain
faithful to Tradition and undergo with sorrow and
pain the condemnations of the men of the Church

imbued with modernism. Archbishop Lefebvre
told us: “We are condemned by those who ought to
encourage the work of the Society.” He also added:
“The day will come when Rome will thank us for our
resistance.”

You were master of ceremonies at Ecône. As such you
were by Archbishop Lefebvre’s side when he celebrated
the Mass. What was the importance of the traditional
Mass and liturgy in his combat for the Church?

I must admit that it was with Archbishop
Lefebvre that I discovered all the meaning of the
Mass and its importance, even though I had been
going to daily Mass for years. His Excellency
celebrated the Holy Mass perfectly, that is to say,
he conformed himself perfectly to the liturgy of the
Roman Church: nothing singular, nothing that was
particularly his. The ceremonies were for us the most
beautiful and most intense moments of seminary life.
He knew how to give us a taste for the holy liturgy.
And then, through his sermons and conferences
on the Mass, he was able to show us how the Holy
Sacrifice is the heart of the Church and how all our
apostolate must be built around the altar. One of
the great services he has rendered to the Church
is certainly that of having transmitted to future
generations this love for the Holy Mass.

Since your ordination, you have been stationed in
Italy, and very often in Rome. How is the work of
Archbishop Lefebvre seen, 40 years after its foundation,
by the priests and faithful that you have been able to
encounter? Have you seen an evolution?
Before answering this question, allow me to
express my personal thoughts on Archbishop
Lefebvre. The more time passes, the more we
must recognize that this prelate was an absolutely
exceptional man of the Church and is among the
greatest reformers that the Church has had in the
course of her history. A bishop of boundless faith,
which brought him to a veritable martyrdom for the
love of Eternal Rome. Who can doubt his Romanitas?
Certain decisions that he had to make were for him

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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

16
an immolation of his person for the good of the
Church. For those who knew him, it is out of the
question for him to have had at heart any other
interest but the good of the Church and the salvation
of souls. And the collapse of the Church today and
the vitality of Tradition certainly show that he was
right a hundred times over.
How was His Excellency seen at Rome? He
always aroused in many a certain admiration
because of his prodigious ecclesiastical career
and for his absolute selflessness. Today, although
many know him only through the written press
and television, I must admit that there is an evergrowing interest in his person and his work. This
comes from the ever more obvious and catastrophic
collapse of the structures of the Church: the
closing of seminaries and convents, the decrease
in vocations, the weaker and weaker practice of
religion…and also from the fact that, in Tradition,
there is a growing vitality (vocations, full parishes,
large families, a firm faith, etc.). This contrast cannot
but make those who want truly to serve the Church
think. Another fact to be taken into account in the
tableau of today’s Church is that many ecclesiastics
lack formation, not because they have not studied

much, but because many fundamental elements of
the traditional doctrine have not been transmitted to
them.
Two important acts of the present pontificate
have aroused a lively interest in Tradition: the Motu
Proprio in favor of the traditional Mass and the
lifting of the “excommunications.” Since then, there
has certainly been a desire to discover Archbishop
Lefebvre and his work. For proof, take the two
publishers that recently published and continue
to publish the works of Archbishop Lefebvre:
the famous Marietti of Turin that published in
Italian Priestly Sanctity, which can be found in
French from Clovis, and should publish The Mass
of All Time shortly. Likewise, Sugarco Editions
published another life of Archbishop Lefebvre,
written by Cristina Siccardi, which has interested
a vast public. And within the next few weeks a
volume containing a selection of the Archbishop’s
texts will be available. To find today in so-called
Catholic bookstore windows Priestly Sanctity or the
life of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is certainly an
important sign.
Taken from DICI. DICI is the official news bureau of the Society of
Saint Pius X.

Marcel Lefebvre

Definitive biography of Archbishop Lefebvre
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais
This is the definitive biography of the Archbishop, written by one of his closest friends. Influential French Catholic
publisher Jean Madiran said, “...the fruit of several years of labor. The book is rich in documentation, often unpublished, and in many theological observations.”
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s (1905-91) life is fascinating. After attending the French Seminary in Rome he joined
his brother in the African missions. Consecrated bishop at age 42, one year later he was named the Holy See’s
Apostolic Delegate for French-speaking Africa. In 1962, he was elected Superior General of the 5,000-member Holy
Ghost Fathers. John XXIII made him an Assistant to the Papal Throne and a member of the Preparatory Commission
for Vatican II. At the Council, he was a leader of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum–those bishops who vigorously
fought the modernists. In 1968, he resigned his post as Superior General rather than preside over the destruction
of his beloved order. He went into retirement in Rome, only to be called on again and again by seminarians seeking
his advice on where to get a solid formation. This led to the founding of the SSPX in 1970. All Catholics, particularly
those attached to the Tridentine Mass, owe a huge debt of gratitude to this man. We ought to know him better.
718 pp. Sewn softcover with French flaps. 54 photographs, 16 Maps and Charts. STK# 8035✱ $22.95

The Mass of All Time

The prayers, actions, and history of the Mass
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
A collection of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s sermons, classes, and notes on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass–its
rites, spirit, prayers, theology, spirituality, and grace. Part One is a running commentary on the prayers, parts,
and actions of the entire liturgy. Part Two covers the New Order of Mass and includes commentary on liturgical
history, the liturgical revolution and the history of the SSPX’s defense of the old Mass. Here we see the love and
depth of understanding that Marcel Lefebvre had for the Mass of All Time. With the release of the motu proprio,
it seems there has never been a more ideal time for traditional Catholics AND those who are being introduced
to the “Old” Mass to reflect on this side of Archbishop Lefebvre. This book proves his love of truth and the Mass
that fueled his battle to defend them.
325 pp. Softcover. Indexed. 795 footnotes. STK# 8249✱ $16.95

17

“Dante and Shakespeare
divide the world between
them; there is no third.”
–T.S. Eliot

DANTE

Dante’s Paradiso : Reading and Commentary

CONCLUSION

D r .

D a v i d

Let us begin the last installment by taking a
brief look at Canto 8. One of the main themes of the
Paradiso is the movement from failure to inadequacy
and frustration. One experiences the same sentiment
in trying to teach the poem; it is partially the poet’s
intent but it is also an unpleasant feeling. I will thus
allow the poem to speak for itself.
In Canto 8, the Pilgrim has been talking to
Charles Martel, from the Anjou family. He is
hearing about the doctrine of heredity and how it
works. At the end of the Canto, he is talking about
the difference between two orders: the cosmic order
where God dwells, which we are visiting in the
Paradiso, which is perfection, and the earthly order,
reflected in history and our personal lives, which
tends toward disorder. The work contains much
political talk as well as criticism of religious disputes
of the time; throughout the poem these discussions
draw this distinction between the earthly order and
the heavenly order, a gulf that remains always with
us.
If you are going to study cosmology, not modern
astronomy but the medieval idea of order of the
spheres, this study of cosmic order will move you to
God, Who is perfection. The vision will be complete
and perfect if you can grasp it. But if you are going
to look at earth, where we live, you are going to see
inadequacy, the failures of fallen man, and hence,
earthly disorder. The poet expresses this through his

A l l e n

W h i t e

sense of the defeat of language itself to express what
he wants to express. In a sense, we cannot reach the
ultimate and Dante expresses his own inability to
lead us there.
Remember: Dante lived in an age of faith. He
still felt he had trouble expressing it. The best the
modern Catholic artist can do is give a little hint of
the Purgatorio vision; that is how far gone we are.
For most of us to even attempt to grasp the notion of
Paradise seems impossible; it lies so outside our age
that we are forced to feel frustration.
In Canto 8, Martel tells the Pilgrim that he is
giving him a gift:
Should natural disposition find itself
not in accord with Fortune, then it must
fail as a seed in alien soil must die.

Of course, he here means “Fortune” not in the
modern sense, but as Providence.
If men on earth were to pay greater heed
to the foundation Nature has laid down,
and build on that, they would build better men.
But those men bent to wear the sword you twist
into the priesthood, and you make a king
out of a man whose calling was to preach:

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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

18
you find yourselves on roads not meant for you.

This is a fascinating vision. The point is that
gifts can be given, although we are still left with the
burden of discerning what those gifts are and using
them for their intended purpose.
When we left the Pilgrim, he was moving
upwards. We had moved into the sphere of the
theologians. Let us go to the opening of Canto 14,
immediately after he has spoken to St. Thomas and
St. Bonaventure. What happens is very interesting:
we are entering the Canto that will give us the
martyrs and crusaders, who are in the sphere of
Mars, appropriately enough. (In classical terms, Mars
was the god of war.) But we are seeing movement of
whirling lights, figures, and souls into patterns. And
these patterns change as we move from sphere to
sphere.
One reason the Pilgrim and Beatrice leave the
sphere of the theologians is because it gets to be too
much for Dante. He is overwhelmed, so she lifts him
upward. Remember, there was one circle of lights out
of which St. Thomas spoke, another circle of lights
out of which St. Bonaventure spoke, and then a third
circle. (Again, note the presence of three.) All these
lights and circles are rotating at the same time. Before
anyone can speak from the third circle, Dante has to
be taken out. It is fascinating to note that, at the end
of the poem, when the Pilgrim is granted his vision of
God, God will be three inter-linking circles of lights.
Of course, the theologians, who taught us about God,
reflect God in being circles of lights as well—although
the theologians are not whole or complete; each soul
makes up a circle. So we have the divine creative
light coming down and illuminating the theologians,
who point us back toward the Creator.
At this point, though, Dante is lifted up into the
sphere of the martyrs and crusaders. You will note
he is still obsessed with the image of the circles. The
beginning of Canto 14 is illustrative of the way the
poetry works throughout the Paradiso. The Canto
opens with an image of concentric rings:
The water in a round container moves
center to rim rippling or rim to center,
when struck first from within, then from without:
this image suddenly occurred to me
the moment that the glorious, living light
of Thomas had concluded its remarks
because of the resemblance that was born
between his flow of words and Beatrice’s,
she being moved to speak once he had spoken...

The imagery here is fantastic: light and water,
motion outward and motion inward, Thomas and
Beatrice. It is a beautiful vision of unity in particulars.
THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

“This man, though he cannot express his need,
and has not even thought the thought as yet,
must dig the roots of yet another truth.
Explain to him about the radiance
with which your substance blooms. Will it remain
eternally, just as it shines forth now?
And if it does remain, explain to him
how, once your sight has been restored, you can
endure the brilliance of each other’s form.”

In other words: the light is so great, one wonders
how any of the souls in Paradise can bear to look at
one another.
As partners in a dance whirl in their reel,
caught in a sudden surge of joy, will often
quicken their steps and raise their voices high,
so at her eager and devout request
the holy circles showed new happiness
through their miraculous music and their dance.

Joy, music, dance, light, whirling motion:
Beatrice’s question is so excellent that the souls
become excited and can hardly wait to answer it.
Those who regret that we die here on earth
to live above, have never known the freshening
downpour of God’s eternal grace up here.

Dante uses the image of rain to represent God’s
grace. It is wonderful imagery. But we have to pause
and raise our intellects to the point of understanding
the poetic image. It is not the kind of passionate
imagery from the Inferno. The imagery there works
on the lower passions: rivers of blood and men
holding their own heads. The images themselves are
the stuff of the passions. In the Purgatorio, we feel and
suffer in human sympathy with those souls. We feel
the weight of the stones on the backs of the proud.
Those images work on us in an emotional way. The
images of the Paradiso work on the mind. They are
intellectual and demand that we raise our minds.
That One and Two and Three which never ends
and ever reigns in Three and Two and One,
uncircumscribed and circumscribing all,
three separate times was sung by all those spirits,
and unbelievably melodious
it sounded—Heaven’s consummate reward.

But the poet does not give it to us. He will not
tell us what was sung. There are other moments like
this. Her question is answered, they explain it, we
are told it is glorious, but there is neither attempt to
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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)

●

January 2011

Reprint #95

A HERMENEUTIC OF
THE HERMENEUTIC:

Reflections on the Implications and Ultimate
Consequences of the Hermeneutic of Continuity
Benedict XVI’s pontificate has been marked by
a few defining moments that have provoked some
neither entirely foreseeable nor easily controlled
reactions: one need only think of the polemics
that ensued after the release of the motu proprio
Summorum Pontificum. This act, which occasioned
an openly hostile, widespread reaction, was also
an opportunity for some to discover the Church’s
genuine liturgical patrimony and, through it, they
were spurred on to discover an ecclesiology and
theological system not only different from, but also
incompatible with, that forged over the last 50 years
and peremptorily imposed on “the People of God.”
Among the choices characterizing Benedict
XVI’s pontificate it seems to me that we can include
the principle of the “hermeneutic of continuity,”1
which was articulated in his famous speech to the
Roman Curia of December 22, 2005. The speech
was not followed by the explosive reactions that have
occurred in other instances, but it did give rise to a
current of thought, and to its opposition, that is still
with us and merits our attention.
In the following reflections we intend to scrutinize
what the principle of the hermeneutic of continuity
asserts, and we shall try to situate it in the historical

context of the Church today so as to deduce all of its
implications.

A True Principle and an
Unproven Presupposition
Forty years after the close of the Second Vatican
Council, Benedict XVI recognizes the fact that
situations creating a deep malaise arose after this
historic event. He immediately frames the difficulty
as a problem in the acceptance of the Council linked
to a problem of the interpretation (hermeneutic) of
the texts of the Council itself: too often, the Council
was interpreted and thus applied in discontinuity
with the perennial teaching of the Church, contrary
to the objective meaning of its texts and contrary
to the intentions of the Council Fathers themselves.
The hermeneutic of continuity thus is presented as
the proper approach to interpreting the Council
authentically, according to its true intention and
especially in perfect harmony with Tradition.
Benedict XVI’s intervention has the merit of
highlighting a basic principle, namely, that in the
Church’s magisterial teaching, there cannot be a break
with previous teaching, but only continuity: what the
19

THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT

Church has always taught can neither be surpassed
nor set aside; rather, it constitutes the Church’s
patrimony, which can neither be repudiated nor
substantially altered.
We should remark that this truth recalled by
Benedict XVI is in one sense quite simple; it pertains
to the rudiments of the Faith and to the foundational
principles that define the very nature of the Church.
Consequently, the fact that he deemed it necessary
to outline his papal program in light of this truth
constitutes a first significant acknowledgement of the
doctrinal crisis in which the Church finds itself. By
solemnly reiterating such a simple, elementary truth,
which had been set aside in practice and in common
teaching, the Pope inevitably provided an objective
indicator of the gravity of the current situation.
The usual commemorative orations about
the Council were replaced in this speech by a
reminder of elementary principles: it constituted
an initial acknowledgment that something has not
worked. Moreover, it should be recognized that the
fact of recalling that there can be no break in the
Church’s teaching prompted in some individuals,
especially priests, a desire to valorize things past
and the Tradition of the Church. In many cases this
re-evaluation led to the progressive discovery of an
absolutely new patrimony, which these priests felt had
been denied them. This is certainly the most positive
effect of the hermeneutic of continuity.
However, the hermeneutic of continuity stands
out, not so much for its intrinsic, abstract value as
in the concrete application made of it, as a twoedged sword: it affirms, in effect, that the documents
of the Council are in perfect continuity with the
Church’s perennial Tradition, and when it brings
to light an objectively serious problem of a break,
it systematically reduces it to a question of the
interpretation of the Council itself, to a deviation that
occurred in the post-conciliar period. The absolute
fidelity of the Council to the previous authoritative
teaching of the Church seems to remain as an
indisputable postulate. In this way, the “blame” falls
upon a heterodox current of thought incompatible
with Catholic doctrine and foreign to the Council, but
which paradoxically succeeded in steering in large
part the application and the concrete results.2
As we now get to the crux of our considerations,
we plan to situate the hermeneutic of continuity
historically by seeking to grasp every aspect: without
entering in detail into specific conciliar teachings,
which have been discussed over and over, we realize
that it postulates a series of elements which, instead of
saving the Council, indirectly demonstrate its failure.

20

I. The Eclipse of
the Magisterium
The Finality of the Magisterium
It is helpful first of all to focus our attention on
the specific finality of the Church’s magisterium, and
more particularly, that of a self-described “pastoral”
Council. The question is capital insofar as finality
represents the purpose of any reality and of all its
specific, characteristic elements.
It should be remembered that the magisterium is
by definition the proximate rule of faith, that is, the
source that must say and explain to me what I must
believe and do to be a good Christian and save my
soul. In this sense, the magisterium is distinguished
from Sacred Scripture and Tradition, which, while
being the sources of Revelation, are remote rules
of faith, that is, they necessitate intermediary
explications by the magisterium for a proper
understanding of their content. But if the solemn
magisterium of a Council does not succeed in making
itself understood such that after forty years–the
duration of a Biblical generation–a Pope must call for
the correct interpretation by seeking to indicate the
basic interpretative criteria, that can mean only one
thing: this Council failed in its specific finality.
If we then add to this general consideration the
fact that the Second Vatican Council was presented
from the outset as “pastoral,” that the intention was
to emphasize its ultimate purpose of making itself
understandable by all through the use of language
in conformity with the sensibility of modern man; it
means that the Council was explicitly and eminently
intended to be “hermeneutical” in relation to the
points it meant to treat, that is to say, capable of
furnishing clear, certain, and accessible answers. But
if after forty years a Pope must call for the correct
interpretation, it means that the Council also failed in
the “pastorality” that should have characterized it.
The Magisterium Is the Sole
Interpreter of the Magisterium
Supposing that the problem of the Council can
be reduced to a matter of its correct interpretation,
a question immediately arises: from whom does the
Pope ask for help to guarantee the hermeneutic of
continuity? But especially: why does he ask for help?
From the tenor of the speech, the Pope seems to
denounce certain schools of theology as well as some
widespread behavior in the Church. But at the same
time, he seems to be asking for the help of theologians
rather than the episcopate or other organizations
directly subordinate to himself. But if the magisterium
must be interpreted, the only competent organ is
the Magisterium itself. No one can explain what
the teaching authority means more clearly than the

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authority itself, and certainly, none has the authority
to do so apart from it.
Why, we wonder, in the period after the Council,
did not the Magisterium intervene in the manner
indicated by the Pope?3 If he did so, why did he not
succeed in his intention to make what the Council
meant to say correctly understood? Prescinding
from all other considerations, can a Council whose
interpretation is not clear and a Magisterium that did
not succeed in providing the desired clarity during
the era inaugurated by this Council be considered
trustworthy? The dilemma seems rather simple: if the
Council did not fail, then it was the only body truly
competent to explicate it that seems to have failed:
the Magisterium of the post-conciliar era.
Or else, more simply, they both failed.
The hermeneutic of continuity, by intending
to save a priori the Magisterium of the Council,
indirectly condemns with an intensity in proportion
to this intention, the Magisterium that ought to
have guaranteed its correct interpretation, and
in a certain sense, it declares its incapacity to
intervene effectively. Here appears a rather obvious
contradiction, result of the “inviolability” of the
Council. Consequently, a satisfactory response
cannot be furnished until people have the courage
to serenely take the Council itself into consideration,
by evaluating its finality, its unusual nature, its
anomalies, and by redefining its dogmatic scope and
the tenor of its contents: an authentic interpretation
should first of all begin with the consideration of what
it must interpret. This day does not seem close, and
the present impasse is probably destined to go on
somewhat longer.
Until the present, the Council has been
systematically explained by the unique, self-sufficient,
self-referential and indisputable authority of the
Council itself. It is inevitable that with such premises,
the problem of continuity with unchanging Tradition
cannot be seriously broached and, in the final
analysis, it cannot really interest us.
In this regard, the reaction of the bishops to the
“wishes” of Benedict XVI should be mentioned as
emblematic and extremely suggestive. The generally
wary reaction against the prudent invitation to
recuperate something from Tradition–naturally
without raising the subject of the Council–joined with
the indifference of many bishops, shows, alas, that
it is the episcopal college itself that has assimilated
an aversion to the Church’s past that is humanly
speaking incurable, and which embodies in itself and
its own conduct this “rupture” of which Benedict XVI
would like to limit the damage. Unfortunately, such
is the most representative fruit of the Council and the
post-Council, slowly ripened over the last 50 years.
As for the theologians, another ripe fruit,
it seems that we can state that the fundamental
ambiguity of the Council, combined with the
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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

complementary absence of precise dogmatic
definitions, produced and continues to produce
a considerable number of theological schools,
each characterized by its own specific originality.
Consequently, the best known theologians after
the Council seem to be a diverse group of “gurus,”
each in pursuit of his own originality rather than
representatives of a systematic theology, coherent and
unified. This fact is important: since the Council does
not have an official theology, but is upheld by nonhomogeneous schools, any theological hermeneutic
that would link it to Tradition or anything else
would first of all have to justify its “school” before
addressing a jungle of diverse and varied theses
which would condemn from the outset such an effort
to futility.
In this situation, it seems unlikely that the
hermeneutic of continuity can rely upon the help of
bishops or theologians.
Fundamentally, the Pope seems to be asking
others, especially theologians, for a response and a
clarity that only he can provide.
Two Significant Icons of the Post-Council
Let us illustrate what we’ve expounded about
the relationship between the Council and the postCouncil with an example: the liturgical reform. It
involves a domain in which debate has taken place
recently and, on the occasion of the promulgation of
Summorum Pontificum, has inaugurated some critique,
though very moderate, of the 1969 reform.

The Liturgical Reform

It is a fact universally admitted that Paul VI’s
Missal is the first fruit of the Council and the most
obvious. This “gift” was imposed on “the People of
God” by the application of the Council’s principles
to the liturgy, and it was achieved scarcely four years
after the Council’s close.
It is undoubtedly legitimate to wonder if the
liturgical reform did not go beyond the principles of
the Council, as an attentive hermeneutic of continuity
might suggest; but in case of an affirmative, it would
be necessary to have the courage to ask also who
bears the responsibility, be it the heterodox and
turbulent theological schools, or those who had the
authority to supervise the application of the Council?
We shall only remark that the promulgation of
the conciliar documents and the new missal bear,
unfortunately, the signature of the authority in
charge during the Council and after. Consequently,
to limit systematically the problems in question to
the interpretations of the Council that were given
subsequently by creating a discontinuity between the

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Council and the post-Council, does not seem to be a
schema that perfectly matches the reality.4

The Interreligious Meeting at Assisi

An analogous observation could be made
concerning the full significance of the interreligious
prayer meeting at Assisi of 1986. It represents the
apogee of a long ecumenical and interreligious
development and the historical model of every
initiative of this kind.
It also represents the blackest day in the Church’s
history.
It can be said that the meeting at Assisi
exaggerated or exceeded the conciliar principles; that
may certainly be discussed, but the fact remains that
this initiative also bears, alas, like the promulgation
of the Council, the signature of a Pope.
In brief, the hermeneutic of continuity leads
necessarily to the admission that something did not
function properly in the exercise of authority.
A Recent Observation
by Msgr. Guido Pozzo
As regards the observations under consideration,
we think it is interesting to take a look at the recent
lecture of Msgr. Guido Pozzo, already mentioned.
The prelate considers the chief cause of the
hermeneutic of rupture to be a renunciation of the
use of anathemas:
The first factor is the renunciation of the anathema, that
is to say, clearly distinguishing between orthodoxy and
heresy. In the name of what is called the “pastorality” of the
Council, the idea was spread that the Church has renounced
the condemnation of error and the definition of orthodoxy
in opposition to heresy. The condemnation of errors and the
anathemas previously pronounced by the Church on all that
is incompatible with Christian truth is set over against the
pastoral character of the teaching of the Council, which no
longer wished to condemn or censure, but only to exhort,
illustrate, or bear witness.
In reality, there is no contradiction between the firm
condemnation and refutation of errors in doctrinal and
moral matters and the love of those who have fallen into
error and respect for their human dignity. On the contrary,
it is because the Christian has a great respect for the human
person that he expends himself boundlessly to liberate his
fellow men from error and false interpretations of religious
and moral reality.
Adherence to the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God,
to His word and to the mystery of salvation, demands a
clear and simple response of faith, such as it is found in the
symbols of faith and the regula fidei. The proclamation of
the truths of faith also implies the refutation of error and the
censure of ambiguous and dangerous positions that spread
uncertainty and confusion among the faithful.
It would thus be false and unfounded to consider that after
the Second Vatican Council, the dogmatic affirmation of the
Church’s Magisterium should be abandoned or excluded,
just as it would be equally erroneous to consider that the

22

explanatory and pastoral nature of the documents of the
Second Vatican Council does not also imply a doctrine that
requires from the faithful the level of assent according to
the different degrees of authority of the proposed doctrines.

Msgr. Pozzo adopts an observation that has
always been expressed by the “traditionalists”
about the Council,5 but, as a good interpreter of the
hermeneutic of continuity, he rigorously restricts it
to the post-conciliar period or, to use the same term
as he, the “para-conciliar ideology.” Naturally, we do
not question his good intentions, but this manner of
proceeding highlights the fundamental contradiction:
in all honesty, to accuse the “postcouncil” of having
renounced the use of anathemas seems a rather
strained interpretation when the documents of the
Council contain not a single one.
On this point, it is obvious that the attitude of
the post-conciliar period is in perfect continuity
with what the Council expresses (or rather does
not express): but both, the Council and the postCouncil, represent an entirely new way of acting in
comparison with the past; in short, it does not strike
us as fair to continue to hunt for scapegoats only
among those born after 1965.
Especially, we cannot fail to underline that an
anathema can only be formulated by the one who
has the authority to do it: in practice, by the one who
is also responsible for the magisterium. If then the
use of anathemas has been abandoned, it means that
the authority mandated to formulate them has been
in some way remiss.
Taking into account all these aspects, the
hermeneutic of continuity, in the specific usage
which has been made of it, appears dangerous to the
Magisterium itself: the harder they try to save the
Council, the more they risk definitively destroying
the authority that should have guaranteed its correct
interpretation, and especially the one authority that is
currently called upon to bring a remedy to the evils
afflicting the Church.
A principle that is good in itself, precisely
because of its intrinsic goodness, risks becoming
pernicious if it is applied without the requisite
discernment; the a priori by which the Council is
held to be necessarily in continuity with Tradition is
a preconception that skews the entire status quæstionis
and makes clear (with due respect to Msgr. Pozzo)
the ideological nature of the approach. The fear of
peacefully discussing the Council, with the necessary
serenity and intellectual honesty, is nothing else than
the umpteenth indicator of its intrinsic weakness.6

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II. Ultimate Consequences of
the Hermeneutic of Continuity
The Hermeneutic of Continuity Proves
the Non-Infallibility of the Council
An infallible text by definition cannot be
interpreted. If indeed an infallible text requires an
interpretation, it is automatically the content of the
interpretation that becomes infallible and no longer
the original text, insofar as it is the interpretation that
expresses the categorical and definitive formulation
which is therefore capable of compelling assent. A
definition necessarily concerns something definitive:
to define what is not definitive would mean defining
the indefinable, attempting to render static the flow
of becoming.
Consequently, no authority can oblige someone
to believe something before one knows what it is or
what it expresses (whence the absolute precision of
classical dogmatic formulas): it would be tantamount
to asking someone to swim without letting him jump
into the pool.
The application of this principle becomes even
stricter if the responsible authority itself recognizes
that an interpretation is seriously needed. Now, if
after 40 years, the conciliar documents require a
correct interpretation, it is proof that the Council
cannot be binding on the Catholic conscience.
Contrariwise, on a purely theoretical level, its
correct interpretation could be binding, but we know
that for a correct interpretation to be authentic (in
the modern sense of the term), it must be continually
reformulated so that it can express something still
living and therefore still true. In this hermeneutical
mechanism, nothing can exist that is dogmatically
constraining, for there can no longer be semantically
stable dogmatic formulations. This aspect of the
problem merits some supplementary reflection.

1965–2005–2010

We have already alluded to some implications
of the “pastorality” of the Council, highlighting
how the intention was to employ expressions and
language adapted to the sensibility of contemporary
man. Consequently, the language of the conciliar
documents is nuanced to express the cultural
climate, the typical apprehensions and enthusiasms
of the sixties. Now, the social, cultural and religious
context of the third millennium has undergone a
transformation such that, from an honest and really
hermeneutical perspective, the pastoral texts of the
Council, rather than being reinterpreted, should
be replaced by other texts in conformity with and
adapted to the man of today. If they really
wanted to continue to use them as the basis of
an authentic interpretation, they should have the
courage to recognize that every interpretation

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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

would have a contingent value, in conformity
with the historical moment during which it was
formulated, and that it should at the same time
continue to face the reality, and so continue to
provide adequate and therefore true responses.
The authentic hermeneutic, in the modern sense
of the term, presupposes a sustained effort capable
of producing new questions, new answers and
new expressions, parallel and proportionate with
humanity’s evolution, its problems, its expectations,
and its life.
In wedding man in his concrete existence, in his
being-in-the-world, which the Council intended to do,
it is necessary to also wed perpetual becoming.7
The 2005 speech to the Curia, to take a recent
example, is the expression of a precise intention
of the Pope formulated and expressed at a precise
moment of his pontificate. He would probably
reformulate differently today what he expressed five
years ago, taking into account what has happened
in the Church during the last five years, how his
sensibility has evolved and that of his flock…and
how his “signals” were received by the bishops.
Getting back to the documents of the Council,
if we push to the limit the hermeneutical dynamic
described, they end up signifying something
indefinable, or else equivocal and even, at the
limit, contradictory. In this sense the documents,
taken literally, prove to be incapable of signifying a
univocal and definitive meaning.
The conclusion may seem exaggerated, but
the moral, doctrinal and theological Babel that has
invaded the Church today is really comparable to a
mingling of true and false, good and evil, beautiful
and ugly, absolute and relative, being and nonbeing…, the result of a basic attitude comprehensible
only when it is understood that, by refusing to define
anything, the authorities have given up teaching. If
things have really reached this point, the Church
can no longer–humanly speaking–either receive
instruction or be governed. Nothing more can be
taught because nothing can be defined in the classical
sense of the word. No text or dogmatic formula
can pretend any longer to have a meaning that is
definitive, intrinsic, universal and eternal.
In the last analysis, this is the snare into which
the Church fell with the Council. It is the snare
in which the Magisterium itself is caught when
it persists in trying to save the documents of the
Council. In this scenario, the hermeneutic of
continuity supplies a channel of communication with
Tradition without, however, being allowed to escape

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the cage into which the Council has pushed the
minds of the pupil and the professor.
An Inapplicable Analogy: The Historical
Problem of the Acceptance of Councils
Probably for the sake of attenuating the current
drama, the difficulties the Church has had in the past
when applying the decisions of earlier councils are
often mentioned; for instance, the Council of Nicaea
or the Council of Trent. In short, when we look at
history, we see that we must be patient and continue
to hope.
While fully sharing this confidence in
Providence, we seem to discern in this reasoning a
certain misconception worthy of our attention. It
is true that the Council of Trent, for example, met
with numerous pockets of resistance, and it certainly
wasn’t applied in a day; however, the fundamental
cause of these difficulties seems to be far removed
from the problems of the hermeneutic of Vatican II.
The Council of Trent, in effect, met with obstacles
precisely because of its doctrinal and disciplinary
clarity: its texts were, then as now, self-explanatory,
with such a clarity that they certainly frightened the
parts of the Church and clergy reluctant to undertake
the very necessary Catholic reform and the sacrifices
it implied. Vatican II, on the contrary, was received
and applied in a climate of general enthusiasm,
especially by the most modernist wing of the clergy,
now accused of not having understood what the
Council meant.
Paradoxically, the comparison with previous
Councils shows once more the fact that the problems
that followed upon Vatican II must be related first
and foremost to its intrinsic deficiency, totally absent
from any other council in history.
The Hermeneutic of Continuity
and the Council as “Superdogma”
At this point in our reflection, it seems to us
particularly enlightening to recall an expression
coined by then Cardinal Ratzinger. This expression,
“superdogma,” has been used regularly by
proponents of the hermeneutic of continuity to
identify the failure that occurred in the interpretation
of the Council.8 The Council would have been
transformed into a “superdogma,” as if everything
began with it and every reference to the Church’s
perennial Tradition had been abandoned. The term
is clear and incisive, and it has the merit of attaching
a name to the complex problem of the absolutization
of the Council. But this expression, like the
hermeneutic of continuity it complements, risks
eclipsing the root of the problem. In effect, it would
once again recast the Council, too “superdogmatized”

24

in its application and interpretation, yet save all its
content. In short, everything would come down to a
question of degree but not of substance.
This interpretation seems to leave the question
not fully explored, especially if we apply, for
argument’s sake, a similar treatment to other
ecumenical councils. If, for example, the dogmatic
decisions of the Council of Trent were absolutized,
the Church would not become “tridentine” to the
detriment of other truths not treated of directly
by the Council of Trent; it would remain perfectly
Catholic. If one were to “superdogmatize” the
decisions of Nicaea, the Church would remain what
it is, even extremely fortified and confirmed in the
Faith of all time. This would be so because faith is a
theological virtue which, having God for its object,
is never too dogmatic in the sense that an “excess of
dogma” or “excess of a dogma” error does not exist.
If, for example, the dogmas of the Incarnation were
“superdogmatized,” that is to say, if this dogma were
hugely emphasized, this “superdogmatization” would
never lead to an error. It would simply augment the
explicit knowledge of this dogma and through it the
whole dogmatic complex would emerge reinforced.
In effect, the Faith is a simple, integral unicum, and
not the result of the equilibrium of interdependent
elements or heterogeneous components.
Consequently, the fact that the “superdogmatiza­
tion” of the Second Vatican Council has led to
the very grave situation we are familiar with and
which a Pope recognizes, is a sign that the Council
itself intrinsically contains elements that are not in
accord with Tradition: its absolutization appears as
an inevitable consequence of its lack of a link with
the past. This absolutization has but amplified the
innovations already present in the Council without
creating them ex novo and independently of it.
This can be illustrated by the lack of anathemas
(mentioned above), which characterizes, in perfect
continuity, both the Council and the postconciliar
era.

Conclusion
It seems to us that the entire affair that has arisen
over the hermeneutic of continuity has the merit
of bringing out the fundamental problem of the
Council: it is about a structural problem before its
being a textual problem:
●● The Council does not teach in the classic
sense, but juxtaposes ancient and new
expressions and contents, things of a
dogmatic nature and considerations of a
contingent and pastoral nature.
●● The result does not have a definitive value,
but rather constitutes a platform from
which to undertake continually recurring

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reinterpretations, ever living and up-to-date,
which cannot be anchored in a particular
historical moment nor be expressed in
irreformable statements.
It is about an irrepressible hermeneutical
movement that cannot be stopped until the Council
is stopped, that is, when the movement it began is
finally ended.
Probably, to arrive at this result, our minds
would have to be reconverted to the fact that an
absolute truth exists that can be expressed and
described by definitive dogmatic affirmations
that neither postulate nor necessitate any further
hermeneutic.
It is about the classical dogmatic formulations
of the unchanging and eternal Tradition of the
Church: these, far from constituting an “incomplete
and contradictory” notion of Tradition, far from
constituting a “petrified” Tradition, are the only
vehicle possible for handing on the apostolic Faith
till the end of time.
Don David Pagliarani
From the Tradizione Cattolica, No. 3, 2010; translated from Courrier de
Rome, October 2010, pp. 1-6.
The expression “hermeneutic of continuity” is being employed for
convenience’ sake, in that it is certainly the most widely used in popular
writing to designate the kind of hermeneutic indicated by the Pope
in opposition to a hermeneutic of “discontinuity and rupture.” More
exactly, the Pope spoke of the “hermeneutic of reform.”
2
Msgr. Guido Pozzo, the current secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, in a recent lecture last July 2 at Wigratzbad, Germany, spoke
of a “para-conciliar” ideology which “took hold of the Council from
the beginning and superimposed itself on the proceedings. By this
expression we do not mean something concerning the documents of
the Council, nor the intention of the participants, but rather the general
framework of interpretation in which the Council was placed and which
acts as a sort of internal treatment [conditionnement intérieur] affecting
our subsequent reading of the facts and the texts. The Council is not
the same thing as the para-conciliar ideology, but the story about that
ecclesial event and about the mass media has served in large part to
mystify the Council, and that is precisely the para-conciliar ideology.…”
The admission is serious, while obviously accompanied by an implicit
absolution of the Council.
3
Unfortunately, John Paul II’s only important intervention as regards
Tradition does not seem to be favorable to Tradition. It was the condemnation of the Society of St. Pius X in 1988, which was accused of
having an “incomplete and contradictory” notion of Tradition. This
condemnation, even before being aimed at particular individuals, was
directed to a particular type of traditional behavior. It is interesting to
note that Benedict XVI relates all the problems of the post-Council
to an “interpretation of rupture” with Tradition, while his predecessor
systematically ascribed these problems to an inadequate and incomplete
application of the Council. On the one side we find error by excess;
on the other, by defect.
4
The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, which was intended to be
a concrete, exemplary application of the hermeneutic of continuity
in matters liturgical, limited itself to bringing together the former rite
and the new rite in order to valorize the presumed continuity and to
favor their mutual enrichment, excluding any kind of definitive judgment about the quality of the liturgical reform. In this sense, it does
not directly bring up for discussion the application of the Council
achieved by Paul VI’s reform. But if the new liturgy were already
in perfect continuity with the former, their rapprochement would not
1

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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

really make sense and would be merely superfluous, the new rite
itself being an expression of continuity. And especially, were it so, it is
hard to understand why the former rite was not naturally and simply
welcomed back by the universal Church. Once again, they wish to
valorize a continuity the loss of which they do not wish to admit.
5
The anathemas, namely, the condemnations of the errors opposed
to the truths being defined, have always characterized the traditional
Magisterium both in the Councils and in other forums. They express
the will of the Teaching Church to “define” and consequently to
“compel.” Their absence from the documents of Vatican II has
always been offered in evidence as a sign of the absence of this will
to “impose,” and thus as a proof of the non-infallibility of these texts.
The argument rests on the fact that the Church cannot define a truth
of faith without at the same time imposing it upon minds as a truth
that must be believed.
6
Because of the institutional position of the author, Msgr. Pozzo’s
lecture merits a few supplementary reflections. He identifies three
general factors as causes of the hermeneutic of rupture. The first is
the renunciation of the anathema, which has been mentioned. The
second is the translation of Catholic thought into the categories of
modernity:
The opening of the Church to the concerns and needs begotten by
modernity (see Gaudium et Spes) is interpreted by the para-Conciliar
ideology as a necessary reconciliation between Christianity and modern
philosophical thought and ideological culture. This involves a theological
and intellectual work that substantially proposes once more the idea of
Modernism, condemned at the beginning of the 20th century by St. Pius X.

It must be recognized that Msgr. Pozzo says something quite correct
when he sees the current crisis as a reproposal of the modernist project
condemned by St. Pius X. But the problem lies elsewhere, and it is
much more radical: [the para-Conciliar ideology] could freely say
the opposite and it would equally find a place in the hemicycle of the
most disparate positions that are justified by appeal to the Council.
How is this possible? It is also impossible for this point to be reduced
to the problem of a malfunctioning hermeneutic. The Council was
intended to face up to the modern world, to modern anthropology,
to modern thought, as Benedict XVI explained abundantly in his
speech of 22 December 2005: “the Council had to determine in a
new way the relationship between the Church and the modern era.”
But the Council chose to do it without denouncing or condemning
the apostate and immanentist spirit of modern thought by trying a
novel approach: what was lacking in the Council was precisely these
anathemas… It seems rather natural to us that, without using classical
definitions and anathemas, the Council opened the way to different
and divergent interpretations. To desire to impose one interpretation
rather than another 45 years later while maintaining the fundamental
ambiguity of the conciliar texts is quite simply impossible. Msgr. Pozzo
is free to express himself as above, but other institutional figures can
also freely express themselves, like bishops…, who may have decidedly different nuances. The only freedom not granted to anyone is
that of suppressing the first cause of the ambiguity, the amphibology,
the circiterism (to use a term dear to Romano Amerio), which allows
the coexistence of the most disparate positions.
The third factor Msgr. Pozzo identifies is the bad interpretation of the
idea of “aggiornamento” [updating]. This theme appears to be linked
to the preceding one, even though it has a specific character which
we shall show later: “By the term aggiornamento, Pope John XXIII
wanted to indicate the primary task of Vatican Council II. This term
in the thought of the Pope and the Council did not, however, express
what has occurred in its name in the ideological implementation of
the post-Conciliar period….”
Msgr. Pozzo’s speech is extremely significant, and he quotes the
famous description of Paul VI [“Through some crack, the smoke of
Satan has entered the temple of God….]. Paul VI spoke of a “crack”
which, however, still seems not to have been identified in the analysis
presented by the prelate. We shall not repeat what we have already
noted; as for the origin of this “crack,” it seems obvious.
We simply note that aggiornamento signifies a relationship with the

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contingent present which tomorrow will have already have passed: it
thus implies a complex relationship between transcendent things and
changing things. On this point, too, the Council declined to establish
fixed and definitive points (and in a certain sense it could not furnish
them because of the contingency of the “present” to which it wished to
be linked), but it involved itself in a movement of adaptation that has
not yet finished and which, because of the flow of History, will never be
finished. It involves an essential aspect of the hermeneutical problem,
which we shall analyze during the course of our reflections and to which
we refer the reader.
For the moment it will suffice to underline that all that is contingent
cannot, by nature, be definitive nor the object of irreformable definitions,
but strictly concerns the sphere of historical becoming. Now, the Church
has always been occupied with adapting itself to new situations, and this
is not something exceptional to Vatican II; but the Council seems to
juxtapose, without making the necessary distinctions, what belongs to
the doctrinal sphere and what concerns historical contingency. This lack
of clarity and of necessary distinctions represents a permanent source
of confusion and of the dogmatization of what cannot be dogmatized.
In general, appeals to the authority of the Council do not address this
manifest problem.
7
In sum, the hermeneutic of continuity must obligatorily harmonize elements that appear resolutely irreconcilable: Tradition, the documents
of the Council, and the present evolution of mankind.
8
The expression was used for the first time by Cardinal Ratzinger on July
13, 1988, during a speech to the Chilean bishops, in which the Cardinal,
commenting on the “Lefebvre Case,” expounded certain analyses and
thoughts in which we find the germ of the fundamental principles of the
hermeneutic of continuity. We cite here a short passage:
It is a necessary task to defend the Second Vatican Council against Msgr.
Lefebvre, as valid, and as binding upon the Church. Certainly there is a
mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II and which has provoked
this opposition. There are many accounts of it which give the impression
that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what
preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.
The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire
living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from
zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and
deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council;
and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma
which takes away the importance of all the rest.
This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which
previously was considered most holy – the form in which the liturgy was
handed down – suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one
thing that can safely be prohibited. It is intolerable to criticize decisions which
have been taken since the council; on the other hand, if men make question
of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the faith–for instance, the cor-

26

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poral virginity of Mary, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of
the soul, etc.–nobody complains or only does so with the greatest moderation.
I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who,
before the council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a
certain crudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the council, to dismiss a
professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the faith.
All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church
of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for
something else without telling people. The one way in which Vatican II can
be made plausible is to present it as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique
Tradition of the Church and of her faith.
In the spiritual movements of the postconciliar era, there is not the slightest
doubt that frequently there has been an obliviousness, or even a suppression, of
the issue of truth: Here perhaps we confront the crucial problem for theology
and for pastoral work today.

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27

(Continued from p. 18)

explain nor apology for not doing so. Let me quote
the original Italian, so you can simply hear the music
of the language:
Quell’uno e due e tre che sempre vive
e regna sempre in tre e ‘n due e ‘n uno,
non circunscritto, e tutto circunscrive,
tre volte era cantato da ciascuno.

The Italian has a wonderful beauty to it that no
English translation of any degree can quite catch.
If you want Dante in the original language—and I
recommend you do this at some time—some versions
have the Italian and English side-by-side. I do
not know of any side by side with a great English
translation, but the original Italian is not hard to
find. You do not need to know much Italian to catch
the beauty of the poem’s sound, of the music of the
language.
As we move upward, these circling lights assume
different forms. The theologians formed concentric
circles. The martyrs and crusaders form a cross.
Suddenly the Pilgrim sees a gigantic lighted cross
before him. This is appropriate because these souls
put forward the cross of Christ on earth. Thus, either
having fought for the Faith, or having died for the
Faith, they become part of the vision of the Cross in
Heaven. Of course, they were the men of action on
earth. But when we see them on the Cross, they are
singing a hymn (which appears at the end of Canto
14). They are singing “Arise and Conquer,” calling
for, in some sense, the Pilgrim to keep moving
forward, seeking the final conquering of himself, so
that he can see the ultimate vision.
Suddenly, a star falls down from the right arm of
the Cross; a shooting star. This star begins glowing
like fire. Then it speaks to Dante. It turns out to be
Dante’s great-great-grandfather. After all of these
famous figures, he now encounters a member of his
own family. Needless to say, he is pleased to meet
this former relative of his, Cacciguida. This relative
will dominate Cantos 15 and 16.
So we are at the center of Paradise, the central
cantos, and the poem gets very personal. Dante is
first told by his great-great-grandfather that his greatgrandfather is on the first terrace of Mt. Purgatory.
This, of course, puts a burden on Dante since he
is more aware of his family tradition. Dante is told
he must pray for his relative when he gets back to
earth. Then we get another lengthy description of
Florence and its political problems. Recall that Dante
is writing this poem in exile, having been shut out
of Florence for almost twenty years. The Paradiso
is being written at the end of his life; apparently he
lived not long after writing its final verses. (In fact,
the final cantos were lost for a while. Legend says
that his son found them after being shown them in a
dream. Great legends are always true.)

The great painting of Dante in the Duomo of
Florence shows Dante pointing to the Divine Comedy
with one hand and pointing upward with the other.
The sense is: “Look at my poem, but see where it
should lead you.” In the background of this painting
is the city of Florence with the doors being closed to
him. It is, in some sense, an admission from Florence
that they exiled their greatest citizen. Dante was a
pilgrim in the poem, but a pilgrim in his life as well.
So Cacciaguida, his great-great-grandfather, tells
Dante about the mess in Florence and then tells him
what is going to happen to him. Remember that
the poem takes place in 1300, from Good Friday to
Easter Sunday. When the great-great-grandfather is
telling Dante Florence’s future, in the poem’s time
frame this future has not yet arrived. His ancestor
tells Dante of the forthcoming exile and says that he
should prepare for suffering. The sense of corruption
has gone from the religious orders, criticized by
the saints, to political corruption, criticized by
Cacciaguida. But it is made clear that Dante will be
touched personally.
The Pilgrim then moves upward to Jupiter, the
next and sixth sphere, where we meet the righteous
rulers. We have just heard about lousy rulers in
Florence; now we will encounter some good ones.
Specifically, we are going to hear about the glory
of what it means to be a good ruler. The form that
they take is the form of an eagle, but they do not
first appear as such. Dante first sees these lights form
a Latin phrase: Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram.
This is from the Book of Wisdom: “Love justice, you
who judge on earth.” So, one by one, the letters are
formed until the last “m” becomes an eagle. We then
learn about righteous rule. Mark Musa in the notes
to his translation provides actual diagrams of the
stages of this formation. The eagle, of course, was the
symbol on the standard of the Roman Empire.
As Dante stares at the eagle and speaks with it,
the eagle introduces itself. Many of the just rulers
speak out of it as well. The eye of the eagle is King
David. The image is wonderful. Then there are
five lights that form the eyebrow above David:
Trajan, Hezekiah, William II of Naples and Sicily,
Constantine, and Ripheus: “As the brow guards
the eye.” All of these figures, including two pagans,
speak to Dante. His puzzlement over the appearance
of the two pagans in Paradise leads to a fascinating
discussion This ends the visit to the middle heavens
and the Pilgrim is taken upward.
Now we come to the upper heavens. The
first sphere of the upper heavens is Saturn. This
is where we meet the contemplatives. We get
something fascinating formed here: a ladder. The
contemplatives form a lighted latter. This is because
the contemplative life, placed in the upper heavens
where the angels who rule are praising God the
Father, is meant to be a ladder for climbing up to
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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

28
God. The ladder leads them first toward the triumph
of Christ, then to the angels praising God, and finally
to the vision of the Trinity itself.
It is at this point that we meet St. Benedict. He
also complains about his order and gives a brief
account of his own life. He hopes that his own order
would climb this ladder, but says that men no longer
climb. Written in the age of faith, the poem presents
a sense that things are already breaking down. But,
again, we must recall that the problems come from
earthly failures. St. Benedict says all the monastic
orders are not what they should be, that they are
relaxing their disciplines.
The Pilgrim looks back down through the
seven celestial spheres he has already traveled and
suddenly sees the earth as puny and insignificant.
Then he turns and looks at Beatrice. Now we recall
that the first time Dante the Pilgrim looked at
Beatrice, in the Purgatorio, he passed out. All the
way through this heavenly journey, he has been too
blinded by light to look upon her fully. Now, having
come to the sphere of the contemplatives, after being
instructed by St. Benedict, Canto 22 ends thus:
I, turning with the timeless Twins,
saw all of it, from hilltops to its shores.
Then, to the eyes of beauty my eyes turned.

The timeless Twins is a reference to Gemini,
whose sphere they are in, the sign under which
Dante was born. Dante is looking at Beatrice’s eyes
after turning away from the visible, physical universe.
The eyes of Beatrice represent spiritual beauty. We
are about to move upward once again, toward the
fixed stars which represent the triumph of Christ.
The beauty is now purely spiritual beauty.
Beatrice announces the arrival of the Church
triumphant. Dante is actually to see the triumph of
Christ. At this moment we have a glorious passage
where Dante is granted the first glimpse of the
Blessed Virgin herself. This is in Canto 23:
I saw her face aflame with so much light,
her eyes so bright with holy happiness,
that I shall have to leave it undescribed.

Here Dante does it again: the vision is so
magnificent that he cannot describe it. He then,
however, goes on to give whatever description he
can:
As in the clearness of a fullmooned sky
Trivia smiles among eternal nymphs
who paint the depths of Heaven everywhere...

This is a classical vision which Dante knows is
totally inadequate. He is toying around, mimicking
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classical poetry. The Poem is trying to climb the
contemplative ladder to give us an adequate poetic
description of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I saw, above a myriad of lights,
one Sun that lit them all, even as our sun
illuminates the stars of his domain;
and through its living light there poured the glow
of its translucent substance, bright, so bright
that my poor eyes could not endure the sight.
O Beatrice, loving guide, sweet one!
She answered: “That which overcomes you now
is strength against which nothing has defense.
Within it dwell the wisdom and the power
that opened between Heaven and earth the road
mankind for ages longed for ardently.”
As fire when it expands within a cloud
must soon explode because it has no space,
and, though against its nature, crash to earth,
so my mind there amid so rich a feast
began to swell until it broke its bounds,
and what became of it, it does not know.
“Open your eyes, look straight into my face!
Such things have you been witness to that now
you have the power to endure my smile.”

He has been looking into Beatrice’s eyes, and
now he can take her smile. He is now strong enough.
As one just shaken from a dreamy sleep
who having dreamed has now forgotten all
and strives in vain to bring it back to mind,
so I was hearing her self-offering,
an invitation that can never be
erased within the book of my past life.
If at this moment all the tongues of verse,
which Polyhymnia and her sisters nourished
with their sweet milk, sang to assist my art,
their singing would not come to one one-thousandth
part of the truth about her sacred smile
nor how it set her holy face aglow...

All this focus and contemplation of Beatrice is
necessary to get us toward that which is about to
occur.
So I find that my consecrated poem
describing Paradise will have to make
a leap, like one who finds his road is blocked.
Now bear in mind the weight of my poem’s theme,

29
think of the mortal shoulders it rests on,
and do not blame me if I stagger here:

whose grace ensapphires the heaven’s brightest
sphere:

this stretch of sea my vessel’s prow now dares
to cut is no place for a little boat
nor for a captain who would spare himself.

“I am angelic love encompassing
the joy supreme who breathed from out the womb
which was the place where our Desire dwelt,

Again, we see the sense of inadequacy.

and I shall circle you, Heavenly Lady
while you follow your Son, to highest heaven
and with your presence make it more divine.”

“Why are you so enamored of my face
that you do not turn to the lovely garden
flowering in the radiance of Christ?
There is the Rose in which the Word of God
took on the flesh, and there the lilies are
whose fragrance led mankind down the good path.”

Beatrice tells Dante not to look at her, but rather
at the Rose.
Thus Beatrice. And I, eager to serve
her every wish, surrendered once again
my frail eyes to the battle of the light.

Here we have another poetic image. He’s
trying to give us images so that we have some
understanding of what he saw.

Now, understand: the angel has fallen down and
is circling and singing. Now he says he will follow
upward. He descended in order to lead Dante back
up. The pattern continues: the light comes down,
re-glows, goes back up. It continues throughout the
poem.
With this the circling melody was sealed,
and all the other lights within that sphere
sang out the Blessed Virgin Mary’s name.

Suddenly, the multitude of lights we saw are
singing. Our senses should be confused. That which
we are seeing we now hear. This is not confusion but
unity and wholeness. Things are not separated any
longer.

Sometimes on cloudy days my eyes have seen
a ray of pure sunlight come streaming through
the broken clouds and light a field of flowers,

The regal mantle folding itself round
the turning spheres, and nearest to the breath
and ways of God it burns and quickens most,

just so I saw there hosts of countless splendors
struck from above by ardent rays of love,
but could not see the source of such a blaze.

was curving round us with its inner shore
at such a distance that from where I stood
as yet there was no sign that it was there;

O Mighty Force that seals them with such light,
You raised yourself on high so that my eyes,
powerless in your presence, might perceive.
The sound of that sweet flower’s name, the one
I pray to night and day, drew all my soul
into the vision of that flame of flames;
and when both of my eyes revealed to me
how rich and glorious was that living star
that reigns in Heaven, as it had reigned on Earth,
down from Heaven’s height there came a flaming
torch
shaped in a ring, as if it were a crown,
that spun around the glory of her light.

He is being encompassed by the mantle. The
mantle is going around him.
And so my mortal eyes did not have strength
enough to see the crowned flame as it rose,
higher and higher, following her son.
And as an infant after it has suckled
will raise its arms up searching for its mother,
expressing all the love with which it glows...

The image is fascinating: he is as a baby in the
presence of the Divine Mother.

An angel is coming to him to help him.

So I saw all those radiances stretch,
their flame on high, thus making clear to me
how deep their love, how much they cherished Mary.

The sweetest sounding notes enrapturing
a man’s soul here below would sound just like
a clap of thunder crashing from a cloud

There they remained suspended in my sight
singing “Regina coeli” in tones so sweet,
the joy of it will never leave my mind.

compared to the melodious tones that poured
from the sweet lyre crowning the lovely sapphire

O what abundant grace is stored up here
inside those richest coffers who below
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30
in our world sowed the land with their good seed!
Herein they truly live and they enjoy
the wealth their tears had won for them while they
in Babylonian exile scorned all gold.
And here, victorious, beneath the Son
of God and Mary and amid the good
souls of the Old and the New Covenant
triumphs the one who holds the keys to glory.

The images are piled so thickly atop one another
that we are not entirely sure what we are seeing or
where we are. We are just moving upward. It is not
confusion; it is glory. The mind can barely describe
because the eye can barely see. The sense is that we
are just flying upward.
A brief schema of cantos 24-26: I encourage you
to read these closely because they are particularly
magnificent. We are about to approach the Godhead
Itself here. We are going up to the Primum Mobile.
While we are there, before we can finally enter
the Empyrean and see the vision of God, there is
a quiz. It’s essentially a pop quiz. Please note: the
Pilgrim has been in ecstasy, being overwhelmed by
love. But once again we are told the intellect must
precede love. Wisdom has to come first. We have to
first know what we want before we can desire it. It
demands that there is a balance between mind and
heart.
So immediately following this glorious rapture,
this hint of the vision of the Blessed Mother herself,
the Poet, soaring upward, suddenly has a test to take
before going further. He has to prove that he knows
where he is and understands enough to be allowed
to glimpse the vision that is coming. The test is in
three parts. In Canto 24, he is given a test on faith.
St. Peter himself gives the Pilgrim the test on faith. It
is rather intimidating. You need to read it, but let us
say the Pilgrim passes the test.
Having made it through that, Canto 25 brings
us a test on hope, given by St. James. Of course, the
pattern completes itself: in Canto 26, he is given a
test on the nature of charity by St. John. They are
wonderful Cantos; they are the stuff of the intellect.
Let us look at Canto 27. At this point, he has
passed the tests. All the souls of the blessed are
singing the Gloria. The Pilgrim has made it this far.
Suddenly, the brilliant light of St. Peter turns red.
The souls stop singing. St. Peter begins a discussion
about the corruption of the Church. He begins
railing against his successors. It is important to
realize that there are certain perpetual problems;
the history of the Church is not a bed of roses. It
is rather daring of Dante to put these words in the
mouth of St. Peter, this invective against the state of
the Church. Part of this is criticism of a particular
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moment in history. On another level, it is part of the
design of the poem: the falling of from perfection in
the beginning, the need for perfection as one draws
near the end, and the disorder of history as opposed
to the perfection of the cosmos:
and I heard: “Do not marvel at my change
of color, for you are about to see
all of these souls change color as I speak.

Here we have St. Peter speaking, and all the
souls turn red.
“He who on earth usurps that place of mine,
that place of mine, that place of mine which now
stands vacant in the eyes of Christ, God’s Son,

St. Peter looks down and says the seat is vacant!
“Has turned my sepulchre into a sewer
of blood and filth, at which the Evil One
who fell from here takes great delight down there.”
The color which paints clouds at break of day,
or in the evening when they face the sun–
that same tint I saw spread throughout that Heaven.

So it is a tint, not a dark red.
And as a modest lady, self-secure
in her own virtue, will at the mere mention
of someone else’s failings blush with shame,
so did the face of Beatrice change–
the heavens saw the same eclipse, I think,
when the Almighty suffered for our sins.

Beatrice is embarrassed for what she hears
happening on earth.
Then he continued speaking, but the tone
his voice now had was no more different
than was the difference in the way he looked:
“The bride of Christ was not nourished on blood
that came from me, from Linus and from Cletus,
only that she be wooed for love of gold;
it was for love of this delightful life
that Sixtus, Pius, Calixtus, and Urban,
after the tears of torment, spilled their blood.
Never did we intend for Christendom
to be divided, some to take their stand
on this side or on that of our successors,
not that the keys which were consigned to me
become the emblem for a battleflag
warring against the baptized of the land,

31
nor that my head become the seal to stamp
those lying privileges bought and sold.
I burn with rage and shame to think of it!

This corruption will keep bubbling up and will
be used to create a greater crisis some centuries on.
“From here we see down there in all your fields
rapacious wolves who dress in shepherd’s clothes.
O power of God, why do You still hold back?”

It is a common cry of those faced with
corruption. The point is made. We are seeing again
what Charles Martel spoke of earlier: the misuse of
proper nature. Things are set up in a certain way,
but we misuse them. Man does not understand.
Let us look at two moments at the end of the
poem. The first is a particularly moving moment
that very few are aware of; I think it is because
so few readers continue to the poem’s end. Most
people think Dante’s guides are only Virgil and
Beatrice. But, in fact, he has three guides. The third
one doesn’t come until the last few cantos of the
Paradiso. Beatrice steps aside in Canto 31 after we
have entered the Empyrean. We have transcended
the nine spheres. He’s getting very close to the final
vision of the Godhead:
By now, my eyes had quickly taken in
a general plan of all of Paradise
but had not fixed themselves on any part...

So he has a general sense of what he is seeing
but cannot have knowledge of the full impact of the
particulars until he returns to write the poem. The
desire for wisdom increases as he goes higher.
And with new-kindled eagerness to know,
I turned around to ask my lady things
that to my mind were still not clear enough.
What I expected was not what I saw!
I thought to see Beatrice there but saw
an elder in the robes of Heaven’s saints.

He is expecting the beautiful Beatrice but sees
instead an old man. It turns out to be St. Bernard
of Clairvaux. He is Dante’s third guide; he takes
Dante the rest of the way. Why this change? If Virgil
represented reason, and reason can tell you about
sin and punishment, reason can teach us about
Hell and take us to the Purgatorio. But we need
Beatrice, divine wisdom that comes from grace, to
enter Paradise. Please notice: we need the beauty of
Beatrice, but this beauty is not earthly beauty; it is
divine wisdom. It is the beauty of God’s grace that
comes to the Pilgrim.
But divine wisdom will not get us all the all the
way because we are about to come to the ultimate

mystery. In front of the ultimate mystery, even the
intellect fails. Even wisdom fails. Beatrice steps
aside; what we need is a guide to the mystical vision.
We’re about to penetrate the heart of the mystery.
Therefore we get a new guide, St. Bernard the
mystic.
But before we go to that final vision, we have to
say goodbye to Beatrice. Dante leaves her and says
goodbye:
I thought to see Beatrice there but saw
an elder in the robes of Heaven’s saints.
His eyes, his cheeks, were filled with the divine
joy of the blest, his attitude with love
that every tender-hearted father knows.

Notice: we go from the guide as mother, which
is what Beatrice was, to a father who must take us
into the mystery.
And “She, where is she?” instantly I asked.
He answered: “I was urged by Beatrice
to leave my place and end all your desire;
you will behold her, if you raise your eyes,
to the third circle from the highest tier,
enthroned where her own merit destined her.”

This is the Rose. There are seats all around the
petals of the Rose. She is in the third circle from the
highest tier. It was destined that she be there.
I did not say a word but raised my eyes
to the third circle from the highest tier,
enthroned where her own merit destined her.
Not from that place where highest thunder roars
down to the very bottom of the sea,
is any mortal’s sight so far away
as my eyes were from Beatrice there;
but distance made no difference, for her image
came down to me unblurred by anything.

Dante feels as if she is beyond him once again.
But here is his farewell, his last words to her:
“O lady in whom all my hope takes strength,
and who for my salvation did endure
to leave her footprints on the floor of Hell,

Remember she went down and got Virgil. She
deigned to go down there to Hell itself to help this
lost soul.
Through your own power, through your own
excellence
I recognize the grace and the effect
of all those things I have seen with my eyes.
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32
From bondage into freedom you led me
by all those paths, by using all those means
which were within the limits of your power.
Preserve in me your great munificence
so that my soul which you have healed may be
pleasing to you when it slips from the flesh.”
Such was my prayer. And she, so far away,
or so it seemed, looked down at me and smiled;
then to Eternal Light she turned once more.

In the last, Beatrice becomes a woman again.
If she has been a symbol for much of the poem, in
the end she is the woman whom Dante glimpsed on
earth some years before. Now it is just the individual
soul seated there, connecting with him; she smiles
at him, then looks toward the eternal light. It is a
vision of the communion of saints. She is the one
who gave him that first glimpse, who set him on the
journey. In the same way, God, in His mystery, has
people who will touch us and give us a push down
that road. There is a place for us reserved there if we
get there, if we cooperate with God’s grace. Thus we
leave Beatrice, the woman, the soul filled with grace,
in the presence of God, staring at that eternal light.
Then, St. Bernard speaks:
“That you may reach
your journey’s perfect consummation now
I have been sent by sacred love and prayer...

St. Bernard will lead him to the end. Let us go
to the very end where the Pilgrim is granted that
glimpse. He looks and sees the three interconnected
circles of light at the end. He is absolutely and
totally stunned by it. In the final Canto, let us give
Dante the last word:
Within Its depthless clarity of substance
I saw the Great Light shine into three circles
in three clear colors bound in one same space;
the first seemed to reflect the next like rainbow
on rainbow, and the third was like a flame
equally breathed forth by the other two.
How my weak words fall short of my conception,
which is itself so far from what I saw
that “weak” is much too weak a word to use!
So human language is here clearly insufficient.
O Light Eternal fixed in Self alone,
known only to Yourself, and knowing Self,
You love and glow, knowing and being known!
That circling which, as I conceived it, shone
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in You and Your own first reflected light
when I had looked deep into It a while,
seemed in Itself and in Its own Self-color
to be depicted with man’s very image.
My eyes were totally absorbed in It.

He looks at the central section. And, suddenly,
in the center circle, he sees an image of man: God
the Son, God Incarnate. He is overwhelmed by it,
trying to figure out what it is he has seen.
As the geometer who tries so hard
to square the circle, but cannot discover,
think as he may, the principle involved,
so did I strive with this new mystery:
I yearned to know how could our image fit
into that circle, how could it conform;

How could God become man? How could there
be an image of man in the Godhead itself? How is it
possible that God could become incarnate?
But my own wings could not take me so high–
then a great flash of understanding struck
my mind, and suddenly its wish was granted.

Dante is trying to figure it all out, but he cannot.
But suddenly he understands and knows all.
At this point power failed high fantasy
but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning,
I felt my will and my desire impelled
by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

He has a glimpse of it. He understands it all—and
then his power of imagination to tell us what it was
fails him. He wants to tell us because he is filled with
the love that moves the universe. What is unspoken
in the end is what he cannot tell us.
We end The Divine Comedy with the Poet telling
us to make our own journey. Through God’s grace,
and by taking the right path, with good guides,
prayer, and love, we can get there. But the poem is
at an end.
Dr. David Allen White taught World Literature at the Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Maryland, for the better part of three decades. He gave many
seminars at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, including
one on which this article is based. He is the author of The Mouth of the Lion
and The Horn of the Unicorn. All quotes from The Divine Comedy are taken
from Mark Musa’s translation, published by Penguin Books. Illustrations by
Gustave Doré.

33
F r .

T h o m a s

J a t z k o w s k i

“THe lord’S
Prayer”
Part 9 of 9
1) Introduction
2) Our Father
who art in heaven,
3) hallowed be
Thy name;
4) Thy kingdom come;
5) Thy will be done,
on earth as it is
in heaven!
6) Give us this day
our daily bread
7) and forgive us our
trespasses, as we
forgive those who
trespass against us,
8) and lead us not
into temptation,
9) but deliver us
from evil. Amen.

The seventh petition, strictly speaking, is a corollary to the
sixth petition. Because the early Christian exegetes were fond of the
number seven, it was declared to be a separate petition, although
the version of the Our Father in Luke ends with the petition: “Lead
us not into temptation.” In Matthew this petition continues with the
elaboration, “but deliver us from evil.”
1. Deliverance from what? From evil
or from the personified adversary?
On the basis of the original Greek text it cannot be determined
whether “evil” is meant in this petition, i.e. the sum total of all
powers and events that are opposed to God, or “the evil one”,
the person of Satan himself. Either one could be meant, both are
possible. The great commentators, from the Church Fathers to the
present day, either decide on one of the two variant readings or else
advocate openness in principle to both interpretations. However
the reader or the Christian at prayer may decide, in any case the
reality referred to here is a threat to mankind which the weak sinner
can hardly overcome alone without God’s help.
2. Augustine: Deliverance from all evils
One plausible reading goes back to St. Augustine, who argues
on the basis of the preceding petitions of the Our Father. Against
the background of the continuing theme of temptations, the
concluding petition formulates the request that God might assist us
in all attacks of the evil one (of whatever sort), so that we are not
overpowered by the evil one. It is obvious that we are supposed to
pray here to be preserved from all evils. By “evil” St. Augustine
understands sins as well as sicknesses, sufferings and afflictions.
3. Thomas Aquinas: Four ways
and means of “deliverance from evil”
St. Thomas Aquinas argues more strictly than Augustine in a
process of elimination, in which he, unlike Augustine, deliberately
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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

34

“I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world,
but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil” ( Jn. 17:15).
excludes sin and temptation. Thomas understands
“evil” to mean simply all the sufferings and
adversities of this world, which God can alleviate for
the suffering person in four ways:
l by sparing the person suffering;
l through a sympathetic person or some other
consolation in suffering;
l through the gift of blessings which cause the
suffering to be forgotten;
l through a miraculous transformation of
sufferings into joy.
4. The concluding petition as the seal
and summary of all the petitions
The conclusion of the Our Father represents
the crowning, indeed the quintessence of all the
petitions, if we read this final petition in light of
the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in the Gospel of
John, where our Lord Jesus Christ, about to depart
from this world, implores God the Father for the
well-being and salvation of mankind: “I pray not
that Thou shouldst take them out of the world,
but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil” ( Jn.
17:15). Therefore it is no exaggeration to say
that the importance, character and substance of
the other petitions is once again summarized and
intensified here in the last petition. Likewise it is not
presumptuous, with St. Jerome (in his Homily on
Matthew) to describe this petition as the seal of the
Lord’s Prayer.
5. A Christian
sense of reality!
The last petition once again shows so
marvelously and impressively the fundamental
weakness of man who is faced with overwhelming
evil. The realistic person who prays does not
presumptuously rely on his own might and strength,
but instead humbly places his trust in God’s power
and faith in God’s Providence. The weakness of the
person who prays, if it is humbly admitted, ceases to
be an oppressive burden, inasmuch as he knows that
he is continually being held in God’s hand.
6. Deliverance from the ultimate evil:
the loss of salvation
If we disregard for the moment all temporary,
earthly evils, then ultimately only one decisive evil
remains for every human being, namely the loss of
eternal salvation, the loss of eternal happiness with
God—the total absence of hope of ever being able to
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see and possess God. That is the only really major
evil that can befall a human being. The Second
Epistle to Timothy, for example, points in this
direction, in one passage where it borrows language
from the concluding petition: “The Lord hath
delivered me from every evil work and will preserve
me unto His heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:18).
Thus evil is understood as “sin.” The great evil
of sin breaks the bond between the soul and God;
only God is capable of overcoming the chasm
brought about by sin. Do not fool yourselves: the
concluding petition is not simply about having a
little less sin, but rather about the total defeat of all
sin and disorder. This demands therefore from the
person who prays an unsparingly objective view
of the reality of the sin in his life, free from any
illusions. The person who prays the Our Father
honestly has to take up the fight against sin as the
all-important task of his life.
Whereas the human being in the midst of
suffering understandably is fixated on the oppressive
sensation of his suffering, God cares about the
only thing that contributes to man’s salvation. The
decisive thing is reaching the goal, and there is no
second chance. The believing Christian, despite the
adversities and afflictions in his life, should never
lose hope in a good outcome, if he believes that the
concluding petition will be granted and fulfilled.
God is always more powerful than all evil and any
misfortune! Satan seeks our life (the salvation of our
souls), but God is always stronger!
7. Evil and “consequent evil”
Only in the rarest cases does sin remain
inconsequential; often it causes repercussions
in one’s immediate circle, in society and in the
Mystical Body of Christ. We can assume, therefore,
that the concluding petition of the Our Father
prays also inclusively for deliverance from all the
(secondary) consequences and complications of sin.
8. “Sed libera nos a malo”
(from Holy Mass in the Traditional Rite)
In the Missal according to the Traditional Rite
there is a continuation of the Pater Noster in the
words, “libera nos Domine ab omnibus malis, praeteritis,
praesentibus et futuris–deliver us, O Lord, from all
evils: past, present and future.” A request merely
for deliverance from past sufferings, pains, etc.,
makes little sense here. The Missal understands
“malum” here as “sin,” which results in separation
from God. Along the same lines, one of the three
Communion prayers of the priest after the Agnus

35

Over the grotto on the Mount of Olives in which, according to tradition,
the Lord taught His disciples the Our Father, a large basilica was built
by St. Helena. It was destroyed after the Persian invasion of Jerusalem
and could not be replaced until the time of the Crusades. In the 19th
century a Carmel was founded here by French nuns. The walls of the
cloister and of the church are decorated with ceramic plaques on which
the Lord’s Prayer is translated into the major languages of the world.

Dei says: “et ne umquam a te separari permittas–never
permit me to be separated from Thee.”
Conclusion: The Our Father as light
and illumination from Tradition
May the preceding reflections on the individual
petitions of the Our Father help us learn to pray the
Our Father with a fresh attentiveness. Let us allow
ourselves to be instructed and formed by the words
of the Lord’s Prayer, so that we can become more
and more like God. May we pray the Our Father
daily and increasingly profit from it.
At first the Lord’s Prayer can be for us an
important aid as we learn the right attitude
toward God. The words of the Our Father taken all
together describe the essence of a right relationship
to God. On the basis of the Our Father we can
determine very easily whether we have already
acquired this right attitude toward God or how far
removed we still are from it.
The Our Father is a true school of genuine
Christian spiritual formation. Let us allow our
hearts to be conformed to the Heart of Jesus. The
Our Father is a real spiritual treasure that orients and
directs the heart to God.
One method of delving more deeply into
the spirit of the Our Father would be to repeat
each individual meaning unit and to explore
it meditatively until one has made progress in
understanding it more profoundly.

True conversion to God always means a
progressive adaptation of purely secular (that is,
worldly) ways of thinking and acting to those of a
genuine Christian. The Our Father, if taken seriously,
will train and increase our alertness and power of
resistance.
Those so-called Christians who neglect the
prayers of Tradition and instead prefer newly
fabricated, supposedly creative texts, have no idea
what profound and wonderful treasures of Tradition
remain closed to them. The use of traditional
prayers is an offer and a gift from heaven to us,
to smooth the way to heaven for us with powerful
signposts and bridges. It is sheer incomprehensible
presumption to despise traditional ways of prayer,
especially since our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught
us to pray this way. Let us be humble, open to God’s
promptings, and may we persevere in prayer!

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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

36

O .

H E N R Y

The Gift
of the Magi
O. Henry was the pseudonym for William Sydney Porter,
an American author of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Most of his works were short stories like this. Of his
hundreds of stories, this is one of the most famous.

O

ne dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was
all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.
Pennies saved one and two at a time by
bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable
man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with
the silent imputation of parsimony that such close
dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One
dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day
would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down
on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did
it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is
made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually
subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a
look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It
did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly
had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy
squad.

THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into
which no letter would go, and an electric button
from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also
appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name
“Mr. James Dillingham Young.”
The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze
during a former period of prosperity when its
possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when
the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were
thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and
unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham
Young came home and reached his flat above he
was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James
Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as
Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks
with the powder rag. She stood by the window and
looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence
in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas
Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim
a present. She had been saving every penny she

37
could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a
week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than
she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to
buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour
she had spent planning for something nice for him.
Something fine and rare and sterling—something just
a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being
owned by Jim.
There was a pier glass between the windows
of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier glass in
an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may,
by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence
of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate
conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had
mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and
stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining
brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair
and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James
Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty
pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his
father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s
hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across
the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out
the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her
Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been
the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the
basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every
time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard
from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her
rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.
It reached below her knee and made itself almost
a garment for her. And then she did it up again
nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a
minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on
the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her
old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the
brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the
door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mme.
Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up
Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame,
large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and
let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass
with a practised hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on
rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was
ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for
Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any
of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside
out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance
alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all
good things should do. It was even worthy of The
Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must
be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the
description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they
took from her for it, and she hurried home with the
87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be
properly anxious about the time in any company.
Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it
on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he
used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave
way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her
curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work
repairing the ravages made by generosity added
to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear
friends—a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with
tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully
like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection
in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself,
“before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look
like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—
oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven
cents?”
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the fryingpan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to
cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain
in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near
the door that he always entered. Then she heard his
step on the stair away down on the first flight, and
she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit
of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest
everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please
God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed
it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow,
he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with
a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was
without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a
setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon
Della, and there was an expression in them that she
could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any
of the sentiments that she had been prepared for.
He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar
expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me
that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I
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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

38
couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving
you a present. It’ll grow out again—you won’t mind,
will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully
fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy.
You don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice
gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously,
as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even
after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like
me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair,
ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your hair is gone?” he
said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,”
said Della. “It’s sold, I tell
you—sold and gone, too.
It’s Christmas Eve, boy.
Be good to me, for it
went for you. Maybe the hairs of my
head were numbered,” she went on
with sudden serious
sweetness, “but nobody could ever
count my love for
you. Shall I put the
chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance
Jim seemed quickly
to wake. He enfolded
his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with
discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the
other direction. Eight dollars a
week or a million a year—what is
the difference? A mathematician or a
wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi
brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.
This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and
threw it upon the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about
me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a
haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make
me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that
package you may see why you had me going a while
at first.”
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and
paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then,
alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and
wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all
the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs—the set of combs,
side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a
THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise
shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in
the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive
combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved
and yearned over them without the least hope of
possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses
that should have adorned the coveted adornments
were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length
she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile
and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat
and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful
present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm.
The dull precious metal
seemed to flash with a
reflection of her bright
and ardent spirit.
“Isn’t it a dandy,
Jim? I hunted all
over town to find
it. You’ll have to
look at the time a
hundred times a
day now. Give me
your watch. I want
to see how it looks
on it.”
Instead of
obeying, Jim
tumbled down on
the couch and put his
hands under the back of
his head and smiled.
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put
our Christmas presents away
and keep ’em a while. They’re too
nice to use just at present. I sold the
watch to get the money to buy your combs.
And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were wise men—
wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the
Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no
doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of
exchange in case of duplication. And here I have
lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of
two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely
sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their
house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let
it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the
wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they
are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the
magi.

Church and World
Latin Mass Gets
Press in Italy
There are things that
preoccupy you for a good quarter
of an hour. One of them is finding
an article dedicated to the Mass
in Latin (the real one!) on the
first page of L’Avvenire, the daily
newspaper of the Italian Bishops’
Conference. And reading in it
nothing but words of praise in
lyrically suggestive prose, which
is only what one would expect
from the author of the piece: the
author Antonia Arslan, one of
the finest minds in contemporary
literature and, like any Catholic
who loves Beauty, a devotee of
the immemorial rite.
Unlikely, yet it is in fact
L’Avvenire, as the logo on the
left testifies, not to mention an
advertisement on the right for
an essay by Cardinal Martini
(written, as the blurb says, “in
order to find the path and to look
with confidence to the future”–
thanks, very kind of you, but we
prefer Arslan’s recipe).
But here is the text of the
article:

Masses in Latin

I happen to go to Mass in
Latin often, the extremely wellattended 11:00 Mass at St. Agnes
Church in New York.
It is best to arrive early.
There is a crowd of people
of all nationalities in festive garb:
the white women often in suit and
hat, the black ladies in sumptuous
draped tunics, the Puerto Rican
usher with his broad smile, the
Mexican woman dressed in violet,
with a large satin scarf over her
shoulders, kneeling in front of the
image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The ceremony is lively and
festive, with music by great
composers and a polished choir.

Here in Italy, in Venice, at
the Chiesa di San Simon Picolo, I
found instead an austere, simple
rite, less striking but maybe, just
maybe more authentic.
It did not seem to be an
exception that Sunday but rather
the perpetuation of ancient words
and gestures fraught with centuries
of significance, which the
celebrant ran through again with
us, although he was turned around
facing the altar and pronouncing
the words in a lost language.
Those in attendance were
recollected, reading the booklets
with the prayers in Latin and
Italian.
The music and the chant
were stimulating without being
imposing, and the presence of the
sacred seemed to me more and
more intense, as though other
very ancient voices joined in
with ours, voices of the dead and
of the living, together until the
Resurrection.
(Source: “Messa in Latino,”
L’Avvenire)

Christians Mourn
the Attacks
against Them
The situation for Christians
in Iraq is becoming bleaker. The
violence directed against them is
no longer limited to the capital
city Baghdad, but has been
spreading throughout the country.
Two Christian men were killed
Nov. 15 in the northern city of
Mosul, about 250 miles northwest
of Baghdad. The men were shot as
they sat in the living room of their
home.
The latest wave of violence
began October 31 when Muslim
extremists massacred more than
50 worshipers in Baghdad’s Syriac
Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of
Salvation. Bombings of Christian

39

homes around the city quickly
followed as part of what some
Church officials and other analysts
describe as a concerted effort
to erase the ancient Christian
footprint from the nation.
Fr. Firas Benoka, a Syrian
priest in Mosul, said November 16
that at least five Christians have
been killed in Mosul and Baghdad
in recent days. Some were
murdered in their homes while
others were victims of car bombs.
A report from Italy’s Catholic
Avvenire newspaper placed the
death toll of Iraqi Christians in
recent days at seven.
“There is a climate of terror
that fills the Christian homes
not only in Mosul and Baghdad,
but also those on the plain of
Nineveh,” Fr. Benoka told CNA of
the mood in the country.
The plain of Nineveh, where
Mosul is located, is one of the
ancient cradles of Catholicism.
The towns and villages that dot
the plain are home to some of
the world’s original Christian
communities, dating back nearly
2,000 years to the dawn of
Christianity.
These communities have been
the target of numerous attacks
in recent years. In February,
five family members of a priest
were killed in their Mosul home.
Separate bombings of buses
carrying Christian students to the
University of Mosul took place in
both May and August, with many
casualties.
Kidnappings and killings of
Christians have become almost
routine in the city.
Experience has proven that
all Christians are vulnerable. In
February 2008, Archbishop Paulos
Faraj Rahho of Mosul’s Chaldean
Catholic rite was kidnapped
and killed. In 2005, the current
Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile
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THE ANGELUS • January 2011

Church and World

40

Georges Casmoussa of Mosul was
kidnapped, but released after one
day in captivity.
Archbishop Casmoussa told
CNA in an e-mail interview that
the situation on the ground in Iraq
today is “tense.”
Christians, he said, feel like
“hostages of fear,” he said.
But there are glimmers of hope
and reconciliation.
Muslim and Christian leaders
in the city of Irbil issued a
joined statement November 12
condemning the anti-Christian
violence. Mullahs, or spiritual
leaders, representing both main
Muslim factions, the Sunni and
the Shiite, have promised to use
their pulpits to invite people “to be

instruments of peace and fraternity
rather than violence.”
Islamic extremists such as
al-Qaida and the Islamic State of
Iraq, which claimed responsibility
for the attacks on the Our Lady of
Salvation, are directly responsible
for attacks. But Archbishop
Casmoussa said these groups are
able to operate with impunity
because Iraq’s government has
been in discord.
Archbishop Casmoussa
asked for assistance from the
international community to ensure
the safety of Iraqis and stop the
mass emigration. He specifically
urged international companies
doing business in Iraq to push for
greater human rights protections

and to use their economic clout to
put pressure on the Iraqi and U.S.
governments.
He is also calling on the Iraqi
government to investigate and
bring the terrorists to justice.
If they do not, he said, the
United Nations must step in.
Until the perpetrators of this
religious violence are brought to
justice, Archbishop Casmoussa
said, “Christians will not feel safe.
The hemorrhage of emigration
and violence will continue to
undermine the Christian presence
in Iraq and it will be disaster for
Christians.”
(Source: Catholic News Agency)

The Story of St. Camilla Battista da Varano

O

n Sunday, October 17,
2010, Pope Benedict
XVI canonized several
new saints. One of
these newly canonized saints put
forward for our imitation was St.
Camilla Battista da Varano, an Italian
princess who left her life of luxury to
become a Poor Clare. Although only
canonized recently, she lived in the
late 15th and early 16th century.
Born to a wealthy family, her
father was the Prince of Camerino
in central Italy. Her father initially
resisted her attraction to the
religious life, going so far as to
imprison her for two and a half years
until relenting to her vocation. He
would later do penance by building a
new monastery for the Poor Clares.
Strangely, we know almost
nothing about the beginning or end
of her life. What we do know about
her we know primarily from her own
writings, which she began at the age

THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

of 10 and continued
until she was 33
years old. She wrote
at the request of her
confessor, Blessed
Peter of Mogliano, a
Franciscan.
Among her
books are numbered
Remembrances of
Jesus (1483), Praise
of the Vision of Christ
(1479–1481), Treatise
on the Mental Sufferings
of Jesus Christ our Lord
(1488), and The Spiritual Life (1491),
an autobiography that took 25 years
to write.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says:
“As a whole the writings of
Baptista are remarkable for originality
of thought, striking spirituality, and
vividly pictorial language. Both St.
Philip Neri and St. Alphonsus have
recorded their admiration for this

gifted woman who
wrote with equal
facility in Latin and
Italian, and who was
accounted one of
the most brilliant
and accomplished
scholars of her day.
Baptista died on the
Feast of Corpus
Christi, and was
buried in the choir
of her monastery.
Thirty years later
her body was exhumed and
was found in a state of perfect
preservation. It was reburied to be
again exhumed in 1593. The flesh
was then reduced to dust but the
tongue still remained quite fresh
and red. The immemorial cultus of
Baptista was approved by Gregory
XVI in 1843, and her feast is kept in
the Franciscan Order on June 2.”
(Source: Angelus Press)

QUesTions anD ansWers
Is the Catholic Church opposed
to the use of condoms?

In a book-length interview entitled Light of the
World, which was released in German, Italian and
English on November 23, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI
admits, for the first time, the use of condoms “in
certain cases” “to reduce the risks of infection” by
the AIDS virus. These erroneous remarks require
clarification and correction, for their disastrous
effects—which a media campaign has not failed
to exploit—cause scandal and disarray among the
faithful.

1. What Pope Benedict XVI said
To the question, “Are you saying, then, that the
Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle
to the use of condoms?” the pope answered,
according to the authorized English translation of the
original German version:
She of course does not regard it as a real or moral
solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless,
in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first
step in a movement toward a different way, a more
human way, of living sexuality.

To illustrate his statement, the pope gives
only one example, that of a “male prostitute.” He
considers that, in this particular case, it
can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a
first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward
recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed
and that one cannot do whatever one wants.

The case in question, therefore, concerns
someone who, while already committing an act
contrary to nature, for mercenary reasons, would
take care not to infect his client fatally in addition.

41

step on the road toward a more human sexuality,” rather
than not using it and exposing the other to risking his life.

It is appropriate to note here, to be exact,
that the pope speaks not only about “a first act of
responsibility” but also about “a first step in the
direction of a moralization.” Along these same lines,
Cardinal Georges Cottier, who was the theologian
of the papal residence under John Paul II and at the
beginning of the pontificate of Benedict XVI, had
declared during an interview with the news agency
Apcom on January 31, 2005:
In some particular situations—and I am thinking about
environments where drugs are circulated or where great
human promiscuity and great poverty prevail, as in
certain regions of Africa and Asia—in those cases, the use
of condoms can be considered legitimate.

Legitimacy of condom use, regarded as a step
toward moralization, in certain cases: that is the
problem posed by the pope’s remarks in Light of the
World.

3. What Benedict XVI did not say
and what his predecessors
have always said
“No ‘indication’ or necessity can turn an
intrinsically immoral action into a moral and licit
act” (Pius XII, Address to the Italian Catholic
Union of Midwives, October 29, 1951).
“No reason, however grave, may be put forward
by which anything intrinsically against nature may
become conformable to nature and morally good”
(Pius XI, Encyclical Casti Connubii, 54).

2. What Benedict XVI intended to say,
according to his spokesman
These remarks by the pope have been perceived
by the media and by militant movements in favor of
contraception, as a “revolution,” a “turning point,”
or at the very least a “break” in the constant moral
teaching of the Church on the use of contraceptives.
That is why the spokesman for the Vatican, Fr.
Federico Lombardi, issued an explanatory note on
November 21 in which we read:
The Pope considers an exceptional circumstance in
which the exercise of sexuality represents a real threat
for the life of another. In that case, the Pope does not
morally justify the disordered exercise of sexuality but
maintains that the use of a condom to reduce the danger
of infection may be “a first act of responsibility,” “a first
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2011

42

Now the use of condoms is contrary to nature
inasmuch as it deflects a human act from its natural
end. Their use therefore remains immoral always.
To the journalist’s clear question, “Are you
saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually
not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?”
the pope answers by citing an exceptional situation,
and he does not recall that the Church is always
fundamentally opposed to condom use.
Now the fact that condom use is an intrinsically
immoral action, and matter for mortal sin, is a
constant point in the traditional teaching of the
Church, for example in the writings of Pius XI and
Pius XII, and even in the thought of Benedict XVI
when he says to the journalist who is questioning
him, “[The Church] of course does not regard
[the condom] as a real or moral solution,” but
nevertheless the pope allows it “in certain cases.”
But that is inadmissible from the perspective of the
faith. “No reason,” Pius XI teaches in Casti Connubii,
§54, “however grave, may be put forward by which
anything intrinsically against nature may become
conformable to nature and morally good.” Pius XII
recalls this in his Address to Midwives (October
29, 1951): “No ‘indication’ or necessity can turn an
intrinsically immoral action into a moral and licit
act.” Saint Paul condemned the opinion that evil
may be done so that good may come of it (see Rom.
3:8).
Benedict XVI seems to consider the case of
the male prostitute according to the principles of
“gradual morality” which claims to allow certain
less serious crimes so as to lead delinquents
progressively from extremely serious crimes to
harmless behavior. These lesser crimes would not be
moral, no doubt, but the fact that they are part of a
path toward virtue would render them licit. Now this
idea is a serious error because a lesser evil remains
an evil, whatever improvement it may indicate. As
Paul VI teaches in Humanae Vitae (§14):
Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate
a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in
order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even
for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come
of it (cf. Romans 3:8)—in other words, to intend directly
something which of its very nature contradicts the moral
order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of
man, even though the intention is to protect or promote
the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in
general.

Tolerating a lesser evil is not the same as making
that evil “legitimate,” nor including it in a process
of “moralization.” Humanae Vitae (§14) recalls that
THE ANGELUS • January 2011 www.angeluspress.org

“it is a serious error to think that a whole married
life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual
intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and
so intrinsically wrong,” just as one must say that it is
an error to propose the idea that a condom, which in
itself is wrong, could be made right by the hoped-for
path toward virtue of a male prostitute who uses it.
As opposed to a weaning process that would
lead from a sin that is “more mortal” to one that is
“less mortal,” evangelical teaching clearly affirms:
“Go and now sin no more” ( Jn. 8:11) and not “go
and sin less.”

4. What Catholics need to
hear from the pope’s lips
Certainly, a book-length interview cannot be
considered an act of the Magisterium [i.e., of the
Church’s official teaching authority], a fortiori when
it departs from what has been taught in a definitive,
unchangeable way. Nonetheless the fact remains
that the doctors and pharmacists who courageously
refuse to prescribe and deliver condoms and
contraceptives out of fidelity to their Catholic faith
and morality, and in general all the many families
devoted to Tradition, have an urgent and overriding
need to hear that the perennial teaching of the
Church could not change over time. They all await
the firm reminder that the natural law, like human
nature upon which it is engraved, is universal.
Now in Light of the World we find a statement
that relativizes the teaching of Humanae Vitae by
describing those who follow it faithfully as “deeply
convinced minorities” who offer the others “a
fascinating model to follow.” As if the encyclical
by Paul VI set an ideal almost out of reach, which
is what the great majority of bishops had already
persuaded themselves of, so as to slip that teaching
more readily under the bushel basket—precisely
where Christ forbids us to place “the light of the
world” (Mt. 5:14).
Should the demands of the Gospel become,
unfortunately, the exception destined to confirm
the general rule of the hedonistic world in which we
live? The Christian must not be conformed to this
world (see Rom. 12:2), but rather must transform
it as “the leaven in the dough” (see Mt. 13:33) and
give it the taste of Divine Wisdom as “the salt of the
earth” (Mt. 5:13).
From the General House of the Society of St. Pius X. Menzingen. Published
on November 26, 2010.

THELASTWORD

43
Fr. Régis de Cacqueray, FSSPX

The Death of Catholic Nations Leads to
the Disappearance of Christian Minorities
On Sunday, October 31, 2010,
while we were celebrating the
Feast of Christ the King, our brothers in the Middle East were suffering bloody persecution. While the
Syrian Catholic Cathedral of Baghdad was packed for Sunday Mass,
soldiers burst into the sanctuary and
in the name of Allah cut down two
priests, Fathers Athir and Wassim,
and some fifty of the faithful who
had been taken hostage. Profaned
altars, exploding grenades, gun-fire
bursts, blood shed, bodies mangled,
families scattered, should not strike
us as the commonplaces of distant
news.
Historians relate that the disciples of St. Thomas had evangelized
Mesopotamia in the first centuries of
our era. The bell towers of Christian
churches in the Orient were lifted
up to heaven long before the advent
of minarets, and these communities which are today condemned
by the silence of our contemporaries to suffer exile or abject submission in face of the advance of
Islam, were implanted in these
lands long before the birth of
Mohammed. Today, they are
destined to imminent disappearance in a great number
of countries while people
explain that this deplorable
development is only the
work of a fanatic minority, when it is first and
foremost that of a cowardly desistance.
If, despite the spread
of Islam, Christian communities were able to
survive in these countries and preserve the
first hearths of Christianity for centuries, it
was essentially due to
the protection afforded

them by the Catholic States of the
West, which never ceased to support
them. Their programmed disappearance, in favor of the theme of religious liberty which surfaced in the
20th century, has left these Christendoms in prey to persecution, while
the new practice of dialogue proves
to constitute scant protection for this
Christian presence, daily shrinking
away to nothing in the Middle East.
In parallel, it is the same equalization of religions that makes it that,
far from being contained, the spread
of Islamic thought is making enormous inroads in once Catholic, now
apostate countries, rendering the
Muslim communities less and less
of a minority.
Eighty-five years ago, Pius XI, in
the encyclical Quas Primas, recalled
the Catholic doctrine on the subject
that he had received from his predecessors and which has strangely
disappeared in the last 40 years. The
pope prophesied about the disastrous consequences of the disappearance of Catholic nations in social,
cultural, or geopolitical matters
on a planetary scale. On the contrary, he explained, “When
once men recognize,
both in private and
in public life, that
Christ is King, society
will at last receive
the great bless-

ings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony” (§19).
Thus, it is indeed on the profession of faith by heads of State
that depends the fate of Catholics
throughout the world. No international authority secular or interreligious, no universalist diplomatic
conferences can establish a peace
that does not rest upon Jesus Christ.
Let us pray and let us not
neglect any sacrifice for these Christian brethren suffering martyrdom,
whose blood, by the grace
of God, will make the
Church bound back in
these Eastern lands.

Fr. Régis de Cacqueray, FSSPX,
is the district superior of France.

www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • January 2011

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