“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Confession: God’s Gift to the Soul
The Mercy of God
The Balm of Penance
Examination of Conscience

November - December 2012

Confession
“Priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels. It was
said to them: ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever
you shall loose, shall be loosed.’ Temporal rulers have indeed the power of binding, but they
can only bind the body. Priests, in contrast, can bind with a bond which pertains to the soul
itself and transcends the very heavens. Did God not give them all the powers of heaven?
‘Whose sins you shall forgive,’ he says, ‘they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain,
they are retained.’”
“What greater power is there than this? The Father has given all judgment to the Son. And now
I see the Son placing all this power in the hands of men (Mt. 10:40; Jn. 20:21-3.) They are raised
to this dignity as if they were already gathered up to heaven.”—Most Rev. Wilhelm Stockums,
The Priesthood

Letter
from the
Publisher

Confession may seem like an unusual theme for an issue of The Angelus. Most
readers surely frequent the sacrament regularly and there is no lack of material available on examining one’s conscience or the doctrine and history of penance. But if
frequency can breed lukewarmness, we want here to provide some material for
reflection.
Do we truly appreciate and fathom the mercy of God, who has given us this means
of forgiving sin? Do we show proper gratitude for this great gift? How can we prepare
ourselves better to ensure the best dispositions for receiving grace?
St. Jerome says that “penance is a second plank after shipwreck.” It is our hope
that you take some concrete resolution after reading this issue: perhaps making confession regular, if it isn’t already, or making the effort to examine your conscience
more thoroughly. Perhaps you might even consider an Ignatian Retreat, with the opportunity to make a general confession!
Let us not take this sacrament lightly. Let us thank God for this means of salvation
and use it to our advantage, that we may enjoy eternity with Him.

In Christ the King,
Fr. Arnaud Rostand, Publisher

November-December 2012
Volume XXXV, Number 6
Publisher
Fr. Arnaud Rostand
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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: Confession, God’s Gift to the Soul
– The Mercy of God
– The Balm of Penance
– Examination of Conscience
– A Psychologist Looks at Confession
– Sins at the Bottom of the Sea: The Boon of Confession

6
10
14
18
22

Faith and Morals
– Liturgy: A Mysterious Action of Christ
– Social Doctrine: When Private Penance Is Not Enough
– Acts of the Magisterium: Tridentine Teaching on Confession

26
32
36

Spirituality
– Spirituality: An Apologetical Look at Confession

42

Christian Culture
– History: At the Feet of the Virgin
– Education: Perspective on Stained Glass

46
50

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

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©2012 by Angelus Press. Official Publication of the
Priestly Society of Saint Pius X for the United States and Canada

– Lives of the Saints: St. John the Baptist
– Family Life: The Catholicity of Your Marriage

56
59

– Questions and Answers
– Church and World
– Courrier de Rome
– Letters to the Editor
– The Last Word

64
67
73
83
87

Theme Confession

The Mercy
of God
by Fr. Pierre Duverger, SSPX

1

Origen thought that God,
because of His goodness,
would save sinners from
hell at the end of the world.

2

God, for His own part,
has mercy on all. Since,
however, His mercy is ruled
by the order of His wisdom,
the result is that it does
not reach certain people
who render themselves
unworthy of that mercy,
as do the demons and the
damned who are obstinate
in wickedness. And yet we
may say that even in them
His mercy finds a place, in
so far as they are punished
less than they deserve
condignly, but not that they
are entirely delivered from
punishment. Suppl., Q. 99,
Art. 2, ad 1.

3

6

Eph. 2:4.

The Angelus

“If God is infinitely merciful how can He condemn souls to hell?”
This common objection from our contemporaries is in fact an old one.1
St. Thomas already answered this very question2 by defining exactly what
constitutes the mercy of God. We can also find a reflection of the divine
mercy in the human soul, just as an artist’s perfection comes out in his
artwork. But by the Incarnation God revealed Himself by Jesus Christ who
expresses for us in a human way the love of God, who is rich in mercy.3
These are the good tidings preached to us for our salvation.

The Angelic Doctor’s Teaching
In the beginning of the Summa,4 when St. Thomas lays out for his students
the answer to his life-long question, Who is God? we discover some welldefined qualities of God’s mercy.
Mercy5 supposes a certain misery or deficiency in someone. A person
is said to have a merciful heart when he supplies what is lacking to his
neighbor in such a way that he relieves the misery. This is a special way to

November - December 2012

4

St. Thomas, Summa, I, Q.
21.

5

In Latin, mercy is
misericordia, literally: a
heart opened to neighbor’s
misery.

6

One could write a whole
article on this use of “quasi”
by St. Thomas.

7

Preface of the Saints.

8

Is it not common to see the
mother having a special love
for the weakest or the most
rebellious of her children?

exercise kindness towards our neighbor: by giving him what he is thirsting
for. After covering the idea of love in God (Q. 20), St. Thomas speaks about
justice and mercy in God, then about their consequences, providence (Q. 22),
then predestination (Q. 23).
To be merciful is to have a heart saddened by another’s misery and to
stop at nothing for its removal. Thus, God is supremely merciful since He
heals the deficiency by bestowing the appropriate perfection. Searching for
a clearer definition of mercy, St. Thomas sets it apart from other virtues.
Mercy differs from justice, by which one imparts a perfection according
to merit; it differs from liberality, by which one bestows a gift out of the
goodness of one’s heart; whereas mercy consists precisely in communicating
a perfection so as to remedy the entire deficiency.
Thus mercy does not work against justice, but on the contrary surpasses
it. St. Thomas illustrates this in the case of a man who gives his neighbor not
only the one thousand which is strictly owed, but two thousand in order to
provide more securely for his neighbor’s needs. Mercy goes beyond justice
especially when one forgives an injury. To forgive is to donate a gift which
relieves the misery. Mercy is in a certain way6 the fullness of justice.
Mercy is found in all the works of God (Art. 4) although, strictly speaking,
mercy is found only in the human heart inasmuch as it seeks to relieve the
neighbor’s sadness felt as its own. Everything God does is just, since He
does everything with due order. This divine justice towards creatures, says
St. Thomas, supposes and is always primarily a consequence of His mercy.
Creation itself is an effect of God’s mercy, since He has called us into being
from nothingness, thereby filling the most radical deficiency, namely nonexistence. Thus we acquire the status which makes any relation of justice
possible.
This is a true pearl of wisdom in St. Thomas! The very benefit of creation
makes us beneficiaries of God’s mercy. God mercifully introduced us in an
order of justice. In her Liturgy the Church says: “In Thy Saints, Thou dost
crown Thy own gifts!”7

God’s Image and Likeness
We admire the mercy of a mother or of a nurse who spends day and night
tending the sick. Sickness and suffering provide us greater opportunities for
kindness and compassion. Who does not think highly of the patience and
zeal shown consistently by a good teacher to his students, multiplying the
examples and the different approaches, in order to enlighten the ignorance
and the closed minds of his students? Who put into their hearts this
special love that leads them to take care of the least amiable to the point of
preferring them to all the others?8

The Sacred Heart of Jesus
These shining examples pale in comparison with the reality of the

>
7

Theme Confession
9

Prov. 8:31.

10

“Having loved His own who
were in the world, He loved
them unto the end” (Jn.
13:1).

11

Lk. 19:10.

12

Lk. 9:56.

13

Mt. 9:13.

14

Jn. 10:16.

15

As related by the Gospel,
the first Apostle to see Jesus
after the resurrection is St.
Peter.

16

Lk. 15:8-10.

17

Lk. 15:11-32.

18

Lk. 15:4-7.

19

God loves certain people
more than others (I, Q. 20,
Art. 4). God is said to rejoice
more over the penitent
than over the innocent, (1)
because often penitents
rise from sin more cautious,
humble, and fervent; (2)
because gifts of grace, equal
in themselves, are more as
conferred on the penitent,
who deserved punishment,
than as conferred on the
innocent, to whom no
punishment was due (Ibid.,
ad 4).

20

“Cor mundum crea in me,
Deus,” Psalm 50.

21

As referred to by Pope St.
Pius X, 1907.

22

On the Feast of the Holy
Trinity, June 9, 1895.

Fr. Pierre
Duverger was
ordained in 1995
by Bishop de
Galarreta after
teaching in St.
Marys, Kansas,
and military
service as an officer for mountain
troops. After assignments in France,
Chile, and the Argentine, he has
been at the U.S. District since 2010
as secretary to the District Superior.
He is from a family of 11 which
had the honor of being a friend of
Archbishop Lefebvre’s since the
1950’s in Africa. Two of his brothers,
as well as two nephews, are also
priests of the SSPX.

8

The Angelus

merciful love of God for His creatures. When the Wisdom whose “delight
is to be with the children of men”9 became Emmanuel, God revealed to us
the extent of His mercy. Not only does Jesus manifest a particular love for
children, for the youth, for the sick, but His compassion for sinners knows no
bounds.10 He is the one who came to seek and save the Lost,11 “not to destroy,
but to save.”12 He shows sympathy for the Samaritan woman, goodness to
the adulterous woman, even becoming her advocate. He chooses St. Peter
to be a fisher of men, of sinful men. Jesus rebukes the severity of Pharisees
who are scandalized by seeing Him eat with the sinners: “I desire mercy and
not sacrifice, for I have come to call not the just, but sinners!”13 He suffers
from seeing the lost sheep outside the sheepfold;14 He cries when he sees
Magdalene in tears. His last address to Judas will be “friend”; He converts
the heart of Peter by looking at him, reserving for him one of His first
apparitions15 and the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. On the cross, His first
prayer is for His executioners and the promise of paradise for the good thief.
His parables manifest the same merciful preoccupation: the lost coin,16 the
prodigal son,17 the lost sheep,18 even seeming to forget the angels and saints!19
And is not God’s mercy abundantly shown in the sacraments? We exper­
ience it primarily in the holy tribunal where the culprit is always acquitted,
where God creates a new heart,20 which is a greater work than the creation of
the entire universe.

Victim to Merciful Love
In conclusion let us consider and hopefully imitate the special way in
which the greatest saint of modern times,21 St. Therese of the Child Jesus,
had recourse to this merciful love of God.
She offered herself as a victim,22 not to God’s Justice, but to the merciful
Love of God: “It seems to me that if You found souls offering themselves as
sacrificial victims of Your love, You would consume them speedily and would
rejoice to unloose those torrents of infinite tenderness You hold within
Yourself.”
To offer oneself to the Merciful Love is therefore to open God’s own heart
in order to receive no mere gift of material wealth, but nothing less than the
often unrequited love that God is only too eager to provide.
Is this a privilege reserved for souls already advanced in perfection? Quite
the contrary, as St. Therese explains: “What pleases Him is that He sees me
loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His Mercy.
This is my only treasure. In order to love Jesus, to be His victim of love,
the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more one is docile to the
operations of this consuming and transforming Love.”
Herein lies the secret of her holiness, offered to all of us for our imitation:
taking advantage of our miseries by appealing to the mercy of God.

November - December 2012

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Confession

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These short words from Bishop Toth sum up the aim of this book: to create real, manly character
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Theme Confession

Balm
of Penance
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

“I would rather feel compunction than know
its definition.” These words of the Imitation
of Christ express the purpose of the penitent
approaching the confessional. Of the three
acts which he poses, contrition, confession
and satisfaction, the first is the one condiment
essential for salvation. It echoes St. Augustine’s
statement about baptism of water (De bapt.
c. Donat., IV, 22): “[It] can be supplied by faith
and the conversion of the heart if, in case of
emergency, one cannot attend the baptismal
celebration.”

The Meaning of Penance
Contrition and compunction are synonymous
with penance seen as virtue, used no less
10

The Angelus

November - December 2012

than 56 times in the New Testament, e.g., “Do
penance, for the kindom of God is at hand” (Mt.
3:2). It translates the Greek term metanoia,
which literally means to know after, to reflect
and revise. It acquired in Scripture the sense of
regret and change of attitude, referred exclusively
to the unbelievers and sinners returning to
God. It shapes into a new theological concept
of “conversion” to Christianity. No need to
distinguish a change of thoughts, of heart or of
action. The change is integral, of the whole soul,
producing a new creature purified from its faults.
John the Baptist exhorts his penitents to enter
God’s kingdom by the purification of their sins.
This purification is an affliction and remorse,
accompanied with the will to repair and expiate.
In this sense, Christ said: “I did not come to call
the just, but sinners to penance” (Lk. 5:32); He

sends His Apostles “to teach to do penance” (Mk.
6:12). The first teaching for baptism demands the
“repentance from dead works and faith in God”
(Heb. 6:6). It is the opposite of “the impenitent
and hardened heart” (Rom. 2:5), which is the
lot of the apostates and of a long list of sinners
(Apoc. 2:3).
Penance or repentance is an interior movement
of the soul away from sin and creatures and
back to God who must be adored “in spirit and
truth.” All knowledge carries with it a special
responsibility. The knowledge of God, if received
in a proud man, drags him down to vanity,
whereas in a soul inflamed with charity, it will
unfold into adoration and praise. Likewise, the
knowledge of our sins begets thorns and thistles
in a soil unprepared by humility, but in souls
imbued with humble love of God, it begets a

genuine compunction of heart.
What purpose fulfils this pricking within our
soul? Why is it that the limb which has been
pierced with a thorn swells and hurts so much?
Because it thus prompts us to action and to
extract the dangerous body from rotting within.
The hurt felt is a merciful warning of nature.
Likewise, the divine Physician has set the sting
of remorse to urge us to apply the scalpel to our
sore soul: remove the alien body; take away this
occasion of sin; reject these foolish thoughts of
hatred and passion which blindfold your heart,
and you will again recover mastery over your
soul.
The Apostle tells us there are two kinds of
sorrow: one is sorrow unto death, the other
sorrow unto life. The former is a sorrow for sin
which causes fresh sins, by filling us full of
11

Theme Confession
irritability both towards others and ourselves.
The sorrow which is unto life is of two kinds.
The first is that which works conversion. It is
impetuous, outwardly demonstrative, full of selfrevenge. This sorrow is naturally transient; for it
has an end to accomplish and then it goes.
The other is the sorrow which we should wish
to retain with us always. It is affectionate and
not reproachful. It knows how to deal gently with
self, without dealing indulgently. It is humble,
and never downcast at falls. It inclines to prayer,
brings pleasure in prayer, and though a sorrow,
is itself a sweetness. It is very confident, and its
confidence rests solely upon God.

Abiding Sorrow for Sin
Few pages have been written by spiritual
authors which rise very close to divine
inspiration as Father Faber’s “Abiding Sorrow for
Sin” taken from his book, Growth in Holiness.
Extracts will not do justice to it but might give
us a taste for this Must Read. The author is
enquiring about the one thing missing in most
souls who never reach the spiritual growth God
expected of them. After bringing to the bar of
judgment such culprits as the lack of persevering
prayer, the want of bodily mortification and
the feverish ways of acting, he finally points to
another one.
“Just as all worship breaks down if it is not
based on the feelings due from a creature to his
Creator, just as all conversions come to nothing
which are not conversions from sin, just as all
penances come to nought which do not rest on
Christ, just as all good works crumble away
which do not rest upon Our Saviour,—so in
like manner all holiness has lost its principle of
growth if it is separated from abiding sorrow for
sin. For the principle of growth is not love only,
but forgiven love.”
Father Faber then goes to extremes to define
its nature. This sorrow consists of a constant
sense that we are sinners, yet is less occupied
at recalling precise past offenses than at sitting
at God’s feet. It consists in an unceasing prayer
of pardon, echoing the penitent king: “Wash me
12

The Angelus

November - December 2012

more and more, O Lord” (Psalm 50). Our sins
are past. They have left only scars. And yet, they
leave within the soul the sorrowful and healing
fire of gentle love, not unlike that of souls in
Purgatory. It consists in a growing hatred of sin,
in an increase of the spirit of Gethsemane within
us. It is the Sacred Heart touching our hearts, and
leaving faint stigmata of His own life-long sorrow
upon them.
Given such peaceable reproach, it is little
wonder that this sorrow shows the paradoxical
characteristics of sadness and joy. It is the divine
sadness watching our past entangled deeds in
a confusion of infirmities, which humility and
faith will not allow to be disquietude. Yet, it is
our joy to “call His Name Jesus, because He
saveth His people from their sins.” It is impossible
to resist quoting Father Faber developing the
characteristics of this forgiven love: life-long,
quiet, supernatural, and a fountain of love.
“It is as much life-long with us as anything can
be. It is a prominent part of our first turning to
God, and there is no height of holiness in which
it will leave us. It is the interior representation
of our Guardian Angel in our souls, and the
disposition and demeanour he would fain should
be constant and persevering in us.
“It is quiet. Indeed, it rather tranquillizes a
troubled soul than perturbs a contented one.
It hushes the noises of the world, and rebukes
the loquacity of the human spirit. It softens
asperities, subdues exaggerations, and constrains
everything with a sweet and gracious spell which
nothing else can equal.
“It is supernatural. It is all from God, and all
for God. It is forgiven sin for which we mourn,
and not sin which perils self. And this very
fact makes it also a fountain of love. We love
because much has been forgiven, and we always
remember how much it was. We love because the
forgiveness has abated fear. We love because we
wonder at the compassion that could so visit such
unworthiness. We love because the softness of
sorrow is akin to the filial confidence of love.”

The Confessions of
Saint Augustine
Many of the psalms of David remind us of
God’s goodness towards the timorous soul, prey
to trials from without and to temptations from
within. In more ways than one, the Confessions
of St. Augustine remind us also of the attitude
of the sinner and his misdeeds, in prostration
before the God of mercies, who has absolved him
from his past foibles. It has been called the Psalm
of the New Testament. It is not only a classic of
literature for its sublime Latin style, it has been
an immortal monument of piety and a spiritual
guide to souls. Even the great St. Teresa said of it:
“I saw myself there described.” The author gives
us a sense of the folly of sin, as in Book II, ch. 4:
“Theft is punished by Thy law, O Lord, and
the law written in the hearts of men, which
iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief will
abide a thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing
through want. Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it,
compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through
a cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness
of iniquity. For I stole that, of which I had enough,
and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I
stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself. A pear
tree there was near our vineyard, laden with
fruit, tempting neither for colour nor taste.…And
this, but to do what we liked only, because it was
misliked. Behold my heart, O God, behold my
heart, which Thou hadst pity upon in the bottom
of the bottomless pit. Now, behold, let my heart
tell Thee what it sought there, that I should be
gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill, but
the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to
perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which
I was faulty, but my fault itself. Foul soul, falling
from Thy firmament to utter destruction; not
seeking aught through the shame, but the shame
itself!”
The miracle of the Confessions is that St.
Augustine not only unearths intimate traits
to draw universal considerations and noble
principles, but he turns everything into a prayer
of praise and thanksgiving. Here is one example
among a thousand (Book X, ch. 43):
“How hast Thou loved us, good Father, who

sparedst not Thine only Son, but deliveredst Him
up for us ungodly!...Well then is my hope strong
in Him, that Thou wilt heal all my infirmities, by
Him Who sitteth at Thy right hand and maketh
intercession for us; else should I despair. For
many and great are my infirmities, many they are,
and great; but Thy medicine is mightier. We might
imagine that Thy Word was far from any union
with man, and despair of ourselves, unless He
had been made flesh and dwelt among us.”
What we see in St. Augustine’s Confessions
is the effusion of compunction from start to
finish. All the charm of the work consists in his
elevation of mind and eye fixed on God’s merciful
love to him. There is nothing of the psychotic
or the scrupulous soul in Augustine the bishop.
The past life is absolved and only an occasion to
confess God’s love for us sinners. Or in the words
of Bishop Sheen:
“There are two kinds of personal confessions:
The purpose of one is to extrovert vice and
experiences of love life, that the reader may
live the experiences vicariously; the purpose of
the other is to arouse the reader to the purging
of those passions for the sake of regeneration.
The first gives a thrill to the jaded and makes
the reader envy the author’s transgression; the
second gives praise to God’s Mercy and makes
the reader envy the author’s repentance. When
one finishes the first type of confession, the
reader remembers the experience; when one
finishes the second type, the reader remembers
the Goodness of God.”
The Confessions of St. Augustine seem to be
the living commentary of the gospel account of
the public sinner who sat at the feet of Christ,
begging for pardon. Our Lord’s parable to His
host Simon led us to understand that one loves
more the one who pardoned us more. Yet, at
the end Christ said to the penitent woman: “He
who loves more is pardoned more.” This can be
rendered thus: The more we love, the more we
are pardoned, and the more we are pardoned, the
more we love. O happy circle and cycle of mercy
and benignity on the part of the God who knows
our weakness and how much we are in need of
His loving forgiveness and forgiving love.
13

Theme Confession

Examination
of Conscience
What is it? How do we make it?

by Fr. Daniel Chavarria, SSPX

14

1

Denzinger, The Sources of
Catholic Dogma, 899.

2

Merklebach, Summa
Theologiae Moralis
(Bruges: Desclee, 1949), III,
521.

The Angelus

What it is: an act of the Presence of God. It is part of our Faith and a
truth well known by anyone who is well instructed in the catechism that
every penitent has to confess his sins before confession.1 In that respect an
examination of conscience falls under the aspect of formal integrity in which
the penitent presents all of the mortal sins not previously confessed.2 This
disposition is necessary simply for the validity of the sacrament. It would,
however, be a grave injustice to reduce examination of conscience to just the
bare necessity for validity of a sacrament. More than an obligation of law,
examination of conscience is a necessity of nature.
Catholic moral teaching leaves a certain freedom in the method of
examination of conscience, but mere general directives to ensure fruitful
practice.
1. First, it must be done every day: “Optima est consuetudo faciendi examen
conscientiae quolibet die.”
2. Second, it must consist in a quiet meditation under the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost: “Instante tempore confessionis poenitens invocet Spiritum
Sanctum illuminantem corda humana. Deinde in loco quieto recogitet
vitam suam a ultima confessione, servans clarum ordinem.”

November - December 2012

3

Prummer, Manuale
Theologiae Moralis
(Barcelona: Herder, 1961),
III, 385.

4

Hardon, Modern Catholic
Dictionary (New York:
Doubleday, 1980).

5

Garrigou-Lagrange, The
Three Ages of the Interior
Life (St. Louis: B. Herder
Book Co., 1947), I, 304.

3. Third: It is a review of our lives. “Fideles autem saepe confitentes melius
conscientiae statum agnoscent, si recogitaverint, quomodo obligationes
status sui, obligationes erga proximum, obligationes religiosas etc.
impleverint.”3
It would seem strange for a Catholic moral theologian like Prummer
to place the aspect of meditation in an examination of conscience. Is it
not rather a factual practical summation of problems to be taken care of,
a checklist that we must complete to then enter into prayer? Meditation
would fall outside that scope as it is: Reflective prayer. It is that form of
mental prayer in which the mind, in God’s presence, thinks about God and
divine things.4 How can this be an examination? Is not the examination of
conscience a prelude to a cleansing of soul to achieve a union with God or a
prayer?
The answer? Both! Precisely because it is difficult to know the true
nature of our interior feelings, we must examine them closely. And this
examination, far from turning us away from the thought of God, should
keep bringing us back to it.5 The statement is as startling in its depth as
its profundity. A true examination includes both aspects. What Prummer
expresses as the recogitatio is broad enough to reflect man’s whole soul. Recogitare is to think again, to think again of what we are, have been, and hope
to be. The scope of human destiny cannot be shackled by the mere practical
directives of obligation but guided by them to the deepest true end of its life,
the thought of God Himself.

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Theme Confession
6

Ibid.

7

Ibid., p. 41.

8

Tanquerey, The Spiritual
Life (Rockford Ill.: TAN
Books and Publishers,
2000), p. 225.

In fact what we ask for is above and beyond any purely human vision. Not
only in a proper examination of conscience do we direct the soul’s sight to
the end, but we ask for the Source’s light to lead us there. Moreover, we must
ask for divine light to see our soul a little as God Himself sees it, to see our
day or the week that has just ended somewhat as it is written in the Book of
Life, somewhat as we shall see it at the Last Judgment.6 We seek therefore to
put our life in the direction to eternity and under the light of eternity.
Seen in this way, the only true perspective, our examination is placed
under a completely different light and the link between it and meditation
becomes obvious. Light comes from our perspective and gives true
understanding of what this examination consists in, an elevation and not a
morbid self-deprecation. Left to our­selves, without this divine orientation it
could indeed become so, but we are saved from this as from all else by the
merciful charity of God Himself. His (man’s) thought almost always falls
back on what is inferior in him, and though he often shows intelligence and
cleverness which may even become craftiness and cunning, his intellect,
instead of rising, always inclines toward what is inferior to it. It is made to
contemplate God, the supreme truth, and it often dallies in error, sometimes
obstinately defending the error by every means. It has been said that if life
is not on a level with thought, thought ends by descending to the level of life.
All declines, and one’s highest convictions gradually grow weaker.7
The same exercise yet with such a different outlook! The light is God’s,
the viewpoint is God’s, and the end is God. We will present to the eye of our
conscience under the guidance of the Holy Ghost our day to see if God is
our end. Sins become obstacles to His grace to be subjected to the gentle
remedies of the Divine Physician. Gone from the picture are the pedantic
nitpicking of the scrupulous or the uninspired rote recitation of the tepid.
We are sons of a Father, and we place ourselves in the honesty of good sons
under His gaze so that we can go to Him.

How We Make It: With the Holy Ghost in
Gratitude, Sorrow, and Determination
Having seen that our examination is merely a return to the governing
presence of God in our lives, we should make sure to understand the method
of the exercise. Not being content with identifying a brief five minutes before
bed with a remembrance of the presence of God, we should also have in mind
some concrete means to ensure that our examination reaches its proper end,
a union with God.
If our goal is God and the light is God’s, then we must seek it from the
true source, the Holy Ghost. Every good examination of conscience must
begin with an invocation to the Holy Ghost, who “searches the reins and the
hearts” of men, and beg Him to show us the inmost recesses of our soul by
bestowing upon us the gift of knowledge, one of whose functions is to help
us know ourselves and thus to lead us to God.8 The gift of knowledge, and
most importantly that of self-knowledge, already spoken of, is the way to
begin our examination.
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9

Ibid., p. 226.

10

Ibid., p. 230.

Remembering always that the examination is a means of union with God,
we next must turn to the way by which all men return to Him, Our Lord Jesus
Christ. We look at ourselves in relation to the God-Man and by the light that
His Truth casts upon our faults. Nor shall we be disheartened at the sight,
for Jesus is also the Healer of souls whose anxiety is to dress our wounds
and heal them.9 We have to make our examination to Our Lord and seek our
reconciliation with Him. This is but an extension of sacramental confession
when we speak to Christ Himself in the person of the priest.
Our purpose clear and direction established, we must align as much as
possible our disposi­tion to that of one desiring to make a good examination of
conscience. Though a view of the actions of each day has to be detailed enough
to be encompassing and brief enough to avoid scrupulosity, an honest glance
at them within the balance of good common sense should be enough to give
enough matter to the examination. The dispositions, however, in which the
examination is done are everything as they make it an act of union with God.
The primary disposition in this examination should be gratitude. In this
context it is helpful to start by remembering not just the faults we have
committed that day, but more importantly the graces God has given us.
Remembering that the protection of Providence in general has been a refuge
and incentive to us in any daily success and recalling individual instances of
gifts for which we are grateful is a good start to any examination of conscience.
Arising from that gratitude can only be sorrow, sorrow arising from true
knowledge of the depth of the goodness of our Father and our separation
from Him. It does not preclude joy, but rather encourages it since knowledge
of not just sin but also forgiveness gives us the happiness of souls who know
they are loved and want to return that love. Remembrance of sin should lead
to an act of contrition that expresses that sorrow.
Lastly and most importantly, we have to approach our examination with
a true determination to sin no more, atoning for past sins by acts of penance
and taking the means necessary to fight against our faults in the future.
This determination must resolve a delicate balance between the extremes
of presumption and confidence by faith, and this resolution can only come
by the light of faith. We both have a complete confidence and a healthy selffear because our determination rests upon the power of God and not the
weakness of our own will.10
God’s presence is in our whole life, a presence which the saint
acknowledges and the sinner tries desperately and pointlessly to hide from.
By an examination of conscience we return to that presence. We return
as prodigal sons in gratitude, sorrow, and determination. Confident of our
forgiven past and present state of being loved, our sins become a way to be
loved more, not less. Even by sin we can be brought back to the purpose of
life, the honor and glory of God.
Fr. Daniel Chavarria is an alumnus of St. Mary’s College in St. Marys, Kansas. He was ordained in
2012 and teaches at the SSPX school in Phoenix, Arizona.

17

Theme Confession

A Psychologist Looks at

The Practice
of Confession
by Randall C. Flanery, Ph.D. 1

18

1

I wish to make it clear
that I am speaking of the
sacrament of confession
from the perspective of a
psychologist practicing in
the natural sciences; I am
not speaking as a moral
theologian.

For there is no other religious system that does really profess to get
rid of people’s sins. It is confirmed by the logic, which to many seems
startling, by which the Church deduces that sin confessed and adequately
repented is actually abolished; and the sinner does really begin again as
if he had never sinned.—G. K. Chesteron, Autobiography

2

Center for Applied
Research on the Apostolate,
Sacraments Today: Belief
and Practice Among US
Catholics (Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown
University, 2008).

Confession is a most humbling sacrament, which might explain why so
few Catholics avail themselves of it. Currently in the United States, only
a quarter of self-described Catholics receive the sacrament of penance
annually.2 Those who attend Mass weekly believe you can be a good Catholic
receiving the sacrament less than once a year. The less frequently you attend
Mass the more likely you are to believe that good Catholics need not confess
even annually. The same survey indicates that the pre-Vatican II generation
is more likely to go to confession (42%) than the Millennial (young people)
generation (27%), hardly an impressive availing of a grace-filled sacrament.
Regrettably many avowed Catholics, even traditional ones, do not confess
with anything like the frequency that the status of their souls would suggest
is necessary. Since Vatican II the sacrament of penance, or reconciliation,

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if you prefer the post-conciliar terminology, has been greatly underutilized.
As an adult convert, married to a definitely traditional cradle Catholic, both
the sacrament itself and the decided changes in its significance have been a
puzzle to me. Raised as Southern Baptist, I was acquainted with the notion
that I am a sinner and that it needs to be acknowledged, but the ritualized,
frequent, almost bureaucratic practice was a bit difficult to grasp. It seemed
somehow lacking in sincerity as well as being deliberately demeaning. The
Protestant notion of personal conscience in religious matters can hardly
allow for the sacrament. I would hazard that similar difficulties exist for
contemporary Novus Ordo Catholics for whom numerous modifications have
been made to make the sacrament more palatable. For many, the barriers
to the sacrament have more to do with confronting one’s nature, or more
accurately, one’s behavior, than with any doctrinal issues.
Psychologically, going to confession is an act of courage. If I confess
properly, I confront my true nature by reviewing my life since my last
confession, identify my sins, distill them to their concrete essence: “In the
last month, I used profanity 13 times, gossiped 25 times, got falling-downdrunk twice, missed Mass once because I got tickets to the football game.”
I voice it to the priest, as quietly as possible and yet still be heard, vowing
that I fully regret my sinful actions including those I don’t remember. Saying
it in your heart of hearts, sincerely, is not sufficient, nor is meditating on it
privately. It must be said and to a priest. If you are a traditional Catholic, you
confess your sins on your knees. Is that not humbling to a modern man? You
then allow someone else to judge your actions and assign penance, some
sacrificial act; no negotiating, no face-saving, no excuses. Having vowed to
mend your ways and agreeing to do penance, you also have to acknowledge
that you are so flawed that you couldn’t have done any of it without the grace
of Our Lord. Amazingly you are now sinless. You leave the confessional,
suspecting that you will need to return before too long. Or, you just might not
think about it at all.

Negative Emotions
Acknowledging one’s sinfulness will invoke some guilt and shame,
negative emotions familiar to all humans. Psychologists distinguish between
primary emotions, such as disgust and pleasure, which are present from
birth and appear to be hard-wired into our nervous systems, and secondary
emotions which develop out of the primary emotions, and require intellectual
development and human experience to become manifest. Part of becoming
a fully mature human is realizing that others exist separate from yourself,
that they have the capability of affecting you, making you happy or sad, and
helping you understand your own qualities better. The process of intellectual
development and the experience of other humans makes it possible for us to
have satisfying relationships. It also makes us susceptible to emotions such
as guilt and shame. Secondary emotions, despite their later development, can
be every bit as potent as the primary emotions.
The stench of garbage, an external physical reality, will invoke
19

Theme Confession
3

Miriam Webster
Dictionary online.

disgust in everyone. You do not need the experience of others to feel disgust
at a foul smell. In contrast, secondary emotions such as guilt or shame are
meaningful only in the context of personal relationships. You do not typically
experience shame smelling rotten fruit, unless you have been powerless
to keep another person from thrusting your face into it. All human beings
desire to be valued and accepted by other important people, not demeaned.
When the communication that I am not good enough is persistent and severe,
the dislike of oneself or the other person can be very much like a primary
emotion such as disgust, although contempt is the more accurate word. Guilt
cannot be experienced until the intel­lect has developed enough to recognize
that I have harmed someone else, “I did something wrong.” To experience guilt
requires empathy, the capacity to see yourself in someone else’s position, to
take responsibility for the harm you have done to another person.
Shame, another secondary emotion, is akin to guilt but with some crucial
distinctions. Shame is “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt,
shortcoming or impropriety.”3 In other words, “I have failed to live up to some
standard” or “I am not good enough.” While guilt occurs in recognition of
specific acts that have harmed, shame entails a global, negative judgment of
one’s essential character. With shame, we know our flaws and inadequacies,
but would be mortified if others knew. The assumption is that I would be
rejected if the other person really knew me. To simplify, guilt means “I did
something wrong, and I know it.” Shame means “I am bad, because I did
wrong things, and others might find out.”
Shame and guilt are experienced by all humans and are not intrinsically
harmful. At times we appropriately feel shame or guilt; each of us does
shameful things, morally transgresses. Emotions, positive and negative, are
essential to being human; that is how God made us. The problem is what
we do with them. While negative emotions are necessary and useful, their
immediate experience is aversive. As with any noxious event, we seek to
escape the emotion, or better avoid the negative feeling altogether, which
causes us humans even more trouble.

Avoiding Unpleasant Experience
Humans, by virtue of their intellect, have an impressive array of methods
for avoiding unpleasant experience. Some highly effective methods entail
not knowing, by avoiding exposure to information that would indicate you
did wrong, or simply by not thinking about things that make you feel bad.
Alternatively you can justify the actions, reducing culpability. Failing that,
you can “correct” the information that wrong has been done, i.e. the person
wasn’t really harmed or if harm was done it is not really my fault. The human
intellect that makes us very skilled at fooling ourselves and others is also the
foundation for guilt and shame, which makes us want to correct our behavior.
The most effective method of avoiding shame is follow Christ’s example,
thus never have wrongdoing to acknowledge. Sadly, we are flawed and can’t
keep from sinning; we can deny that wrong was done, or make sure no one
knows. But unlike escaping a foul smell, we cannot simply remove ourselves
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from negative emotions or from the knowledge that is connected to the
negative feelings we experience.
Attempting to avoid guilt and shame is what is ultimately damaging to
the person and to personal relationships. For the shameful truth to not
be known, the person must withdraw physically, by avoiding others, or
psychologically, by concealing the flaws, actively preventing the failings
from being known. The recognition that I sometimes come up short in doing
the good, that is, I sin, leads erroneously to believing I am in my very nature
horribly bad and thus unacceptable to God and man. Since I have done
sinful things, I am totally sinful. Furthermore, no one can know. This is a
prescription for isolation and despair.

“We are witnessing in practice a diminution of fervor and of regularity
in receiving the sacraments, above all the Sacrament of Penance.”
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in his letter of response to Cardinal Ottaviani after the Council on the Sacrament of Penance.Note the date: Dec. 20, 1966.

Randall C. Flanery, Ph.D.
obtained his doctorate in Clinical
Psychology from the University of
Wisconsin in 1983. He is an adjunct
associate professor in Family
Medicine at St. Louis University
School of Medicine and is Director of
Webster Wellness Professionals, St.
Louis, MO. Despite being an adult
convert and a child psychologist,
three of his 10 children are currently
pursuing religious vocations.

Ironically, the harmful power of shame dissipates once the person tells
others of the shameful acts. It reveals not only am I still acceptable, but
others struggle with the same flaws. We may even learn our judgments are
much harsher than those others would make. Sadly, the fear of disclosure
and lack of trust prevent us from learning these merciful truths.
Confessing one’s transgressions in the confes­sional can evoke guilt and
shame. Recognizing that we have harmed another human is unpalat­able,
hence the guilt and shame. On the supernatural level, personal failings
are infinitely more noxious to Catholics because not only have we harmed
another human being, we have offended God. While we might be able to hide
our transgressions from others, we can’t very well conceal the truth from
God who is omniscient.
The Church requires the sacrament of penance and accommodates
the operational details to our human nature that we might more readily
accomplish it. By mandating confession, Catholics will do it, at least once
in awhile. In confession the immediate recipient of the awful truth does not
know you; you are anonymous. Personal details are disclosed only to clarify
what the sins are. The enumeration of sins is reduced to the bare essentials.
What is disclosed is obliterated when the priest leaves the confessional box.
Limiting confession to matter-of-fact statements of sins, a ritual of prayers
and declarations, and acceptance of minor sacrifices, my weaknesses are
overcome, and my relationship with God and Church is repaired. However
difficult it is to grasp, the supernatural reality is that I am forgiven.
I am always surprised how much better I feel after confession. I know it
will happen, yet I actively avoid it until finally with God’s grace, I invoke all
my will and intellect. And what do I get in my relationship with God when
I do expend a few minutes of human effort, a little well-earned humbling,
a few acts of reparation? An undeserved gift that cannot be measured or
earned—the peace of forgiveness, once and for all. Well, at least until I sin
again. In justice, I should not be given it, and yet mercifully I am.
21

Theme Confession

Sins at the Bottom of the Sea:

The Boon of
Confession
by Fr. Christopher Brandler, SSPX

How many times will the regular churchgoer,
when he falls into sin, take the sacrament of
confession for granted? Unfortunately, even
something as sacred as this divinely instituted
means of sanctification, of transformation in
Christ, can sink gradually into a pious routine of
rattling off a few failings mechanically because
it has been a while, and one feels that it’s time
again for this tedious exercise, which one would
rather omit. We all sin. This is a fact, of which
we are more or less aware. But how thankful
and appreciative we should be for this gift to our
souls, this healing remedy, which the Catholic
Church has received from Our Lord, known to us
as the sacrament of penance, by which we receive
with certitude the forgiveness of our sins, no
matter how great or how many, as long as we are
truly sorry for them and seek to fight against our
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bad habits in order to come closer to God every
day of our lives.

Confession in the
Old Testament
Though confession was instituted by Our Lord
as a sacrament of the New Testament, let it never
be said that confession was unknown or foreign
to the Old Testament. God doesn’t change; human
nature doesn’t change. And more specifically,
man’s sinfulness and need of God’s forgiveness
is a common thread throughout the entire Bible,
and so is God’s everlasting, persevering, longsuffering, all-loving mercy for us poor sinners.
From the fall of our first parents and God’s
promise of a Redeemer in the Book of Genesis

onwards, we are reminded of God’s power to
forgive our sins, to blot them out. The voice of
the prophets rings out: “He will turn again, and
have mercy on us: he will put away our iniquities:
and he will cast all our sins into the bottom of
the sea” (Mich. 7:19)—Biblical imagery declaring
that the sins are obliterated, and will never
appear against us in God’s mind! God insists on
His power of forgiveness in another key passage:
“…for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). God,
who knows all things, promises to forget our
sins. “Forgiven and forgotten”—in reality—what
an unspeakable gift! And in the time of Advent,
as we read from the prophet Isaias, who had the
deepest visions of Our Lord’s Coming: “If your
sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as
snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall
be white as wool” (Is. 1:18). Isaias begins with
God scolding His beloved people for their sins.
God takes sin seriously. Sin is the greatest evil,
as disobedience to God’s authority, as ingratitude
to His repeated benefits. And yet God is ready
to forgive sin, to wash the soul clean, if only the
sinner will repent, turn back to Him, and seek
His mercy. The Curé of Ars often reminded his
parishioners that our sins are like a grain of
sand against the mountain of God’s Mercy. We
may even say that God’s mercy towards sinners
is a greater miracle and manifestation of His
almighty power than the creation of the entire
universe from nothing. (See St. Thomas, I-II, Q.
113, A. 9, and the Collect for the tenth Sunday
after Pentecost: “O God Who dost manifest Thine
almighty power most chiefly in sparing and
showing mercy.…”) The sacrament of confession
affords us ample opportunities to score yet
another victory for the merciful love of God. St.
Paul expressed it so well: “But where sin hath
abounded, grace did abound yet more” (Rom.
5:20).

Tools Christ Passed Down to us
We memorized catechism definitions for our
First Communion: A sacrament is an outward
sign instituted by Christ to give grace. Penance

is a sacrament instituted by Christ, by which
sins committed after Baptism are forgiven.
These definitions are priceless, though at first
glance they seem rigid and uninspiring. But in
order to have a conversation, we fall back on the
definitions which we learned by rote, otherwise
we won’t know what we’re talking about.
“Sacrament” shouldn’t be that hard to
understand. Let’s compare it with two objects
from everyday life: tools and signs. We all have
tools around the house or at the workplace. We
need tools to do a job. We could try pushing a nail
into the wall with our fingers, but it doesn’t work.
We need a hammer to drive the nail into the wall,
and we have to do it right (i.e. hitting the nail
on the head, not our thumb). Sacraments are so
many tools or instruments which Christ passed
down to us to get a job done—much more than
a job: the greatest work possible, uniting a soul
with God, giving His own life! As for signs, we
see them everywhere: road signs, building signs.
These signs convey a message intended by the
lawgiver or the builder. The road signs “Stop” or
“Do not enter” mean exactly what they say, the
signs “Exit” or “Caution: Wet floor” in a building
likewise. These signs are intended to accomplish
something: to prevent injury, or to give
directions. Sacraments are outward (external or
visible) signs which not only mean something, but
which bring about the effects which they signify,
the giving of grace, which once again is the life
of God in our souls: We are given the power to
think His own thoughts (Faith), to love Him as He
deserves to be loved, to love our neighbor as God
loves him (Charity).

Supernatural Signs
The sacraments did not come about by human
law or contrivance. They are supernatural signs
(i.e. sacred, sanctifying) which Christ entrusted
to the Church to continue His work on earth until
the end of time. We can prove this especially for
the sacrament of Confession.
When Our Lord told a man afflicted with
palsy, “Thy sins are forgiven,” the Pharisees
were scandalized, hearing blasphemy in these
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Theme Confession
words. Our Lord answered their thoughts: “Which
is easier to say to the sick of the palsy: Thy sins
are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, take up thy bed
and walk? But that you may know that the Son
of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (He
saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say to thee: Arise,
take up thy bed, and go into thy house” (Mt. 9:27).
This miracle of healing was meant to show that
Our Lord had power to forgive sins and that this
power could be exercised on earth, not only in
heaven.
Later on, Our Lord commissioned this power
solemnly to St. Peter and the other Apostles:
“Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be
bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall
loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven”
(Mt. 16:19, 18:18). Clearly the power is judicial, i.e.
the Apostles are authorized to bind and to loose;
whether they bind or loose, their action is ratified
in heaven. In healing the palsied man Christ
declared that “the Son of man has power on earth

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to forgive sins”; here He promises that what these
men, the Apostles, bind or loose on earth, God in
heaven will likewise bind or loose.

Power to Forgive or Retain
What does Our Lord mean by “binding” and
“loosing”? Surely a spiritual or moral power,
especially since the power granted here is
unlimited—“whatsoever you shall bind…
whatsoever you shall loose.” The same idea
recurs after the Resurrection: “Whose sins you
shall forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose
sins you shall retain, they are retained” (Jn.
20:23). The exercise of this power in either
form (forgiving or retaining) is not restricted:
Christ merely says “whose sins.” The sentence
pronounced by the Apostles (remission or
retention) is done by the power of God Himself—
“they are forgiven...they are retained.” The power

is twofold—to forgive or to retain, i.e. they
must act judicially, as in a tribunal, forgiving or
retaining according as the sinner deserves (i.e.
if he shows true contrition and a firm purpose
of amendment). For how is the priest to know
whether to absolve or to withhold absolution,
unless the penitent declares his sins, whereby the
priest may judge the sinner’s dispositions?
Thus Christ gave the Apostles the power to
forgive sins, but this was not a privilege which
they alone held, and which was to vanish after
they died. It was granted to them in their official
capacity and hence as a permanent institution
in the Church—no less permanent than the
mission to teach and baptize all nations. We may
call Confession a very “realistic” sacrament.
Christ foresaw that those who received faith and
baptism after the time of the Apostles would fall
into sin and therefore would need forgiveness
in order to be saved. Our Lord must, then, have
intended that the power to forgive should be
transmitted from the Apostles to their successors
and be used as long as there would be sinners in
the Church, and that means to the end of time.
Such is the teaching of the Church from the time
of the Apostles.
Of course God is sovereign, and can confer
grace outside of the channels which He has made,
but the point here is that the sacraments are the
sacred tools and signs which Christ intended us
to use as the ordinary means of transmitting His
divine Sonship, by which we become no less than
“partakers of the divine nature” to use the words
of St. Peter (II Pet. 1:4).

A priest does not hold the power to forgive sins
simply as an individual man, however pious or
learned he is. Only God has this power; but He
can and does exercise it through the ministration
of men. We sometimes hear that the confession of
sin is “cruel and unusual punishment,” therefore
not in keeping with the spirit of Christianity.
How misguided is this view! First of all, it ignores
the fact that Christ, though merciful, is also just
and exacting. Secondly, however humiliating it
may be to kneel down and confess our sins to a
mere human like ourselves, it is a minor penalty
when compared to what we deserve for pride and
disobedience. Finally, for anyone who is serious
about his salvation, no price is too high, no
hardship too great in order to regain God’s favor.
Since God has seen fit to forgive sins by means of
this sacrament, let no one say that the Church or
the priest bars the way between the soul and God;
on the contrary, Penance is the removal of the
one obstacle that keeps the soul away from God.
When the priest speaks the words “I absolve thee
of thy sins…,” he speaks in the name of Christ, by
Whose expiatory death on the Cross our sins are
truly cast “into the bottom of the sea.”
Fr. Christopher Brandler was ordained at Ridgefield, Connecticut (which was
then St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary) by Archbishop Lefebvre on May 19, 1985.
He taught at the seminaries at Ecône and Zaitzkofen and later served in Canada
(Calgary, then Quebec), then on the west coast of America (Post Falls, Los Gatos,
and Veneta). He has been stationed at the District House in Platte City, Missouri,
since September 2012.

Not an Option
The sacrament of penance or confession is not
an option for anyone who calls himself Christian.
This teaching is an integral part of Apostolic
Tradition and Church practice, and is on the
same level as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity,
the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the bodily
Resurrection of Christ, original sin, hell, the
existence of the devil, miracles, etc. Take away
Confession, and the entire message of Christ is
made void.
25

Faith and Morals

A Mysterious
Action of
Christ
by Fr. Hugues Bergez, SSPX

26

1

Col. 1:12-22.

2

Cf. Heb. 9: 11-15.

The Angelus

Two thousand years ago, St. Paul made his delight of the Mystery of
Christ, and ever since souls desirous of substantial spiritual nourishment
have meditated on the Apostle’s wonderful exhortation, “giving thanks to
God the Father...: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and
hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have
redemption through his blood, the remission of sins: Who is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For...all things were created
by him and in him. And he is before all: and by him all things consist. And
he is the head of the body, the church: ...Because in him, it hath well pleased
the Father that all fullness should dwell: And through him to reconcile all
things unto himself, making peace through the blood of his cross....And you,
whereas you were some time alienated and enemies in mind in evil works:
Yet now he hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present
you holy and unspotted and blameless before him.”1 “Christ, being come an
high priest of the good things to come...by his own blood entered once into
the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption....And therefore he is the
mediator of the new testament.”2
In this and the next couple of articles we intend to study to some extent

November - December 2012

3

In the time of the
Patriarchs, priests were
the very heads of families
and they did not need a
special consecration; in the
old Testament of Moses,
priests were chosen by birth
within the Tribe of Levi
and the family of Aaron,
and became priests by a
ritual ceremony. In the New
Testament we shall see
further down.

4

Summa Theologica, III, Q.
22, Art. 1, Corpus.

this priesthood of Christ, which is at the very root of the Liturgy of the
Church. In this short treatise we shall follow him that was declared the
Common Doctor of the Church, and who by reason of the depth and beauty of
his teaching is usually called the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. Under
such a master, we shall be able to admire the beauty of the Divine Groom
and of His Bride the Church, and of their union, which is most beautifully
realised in the Liturgy. And we shall be able to see the very wickedness of the
modernist corruption of this our beautiful Religion.
Christ is The Priest, that is The Mediator between men and God, and He
shares this His priesthood with His bride the Church, making her partaker of
His great liturgical prayer.

The Notion of Priesthood in General
Man being social by nature, it follows that it is not enough for him to pray
God in the secret of his soul, nor even to join an outward reverent attitude
to this his private prayer. For whether just inward or also outward, his
personal prayer remains purely private, and so something is missing to his
social nature: man must pray to God not only privately but also socially, as a
community, and this is the broad meaning of the word Liturgy.
Now, since in any well-organized community every field of community
life is led by some particular individual endowed with authority in that
particular field, so also community prayer should rightly be led by some
particular individual especially designated for that function and endowed
with authority in the domain of public worship. This man is called Priest,
Sacerdos in Latin, from “Sacra dans,” he who gives the things sacred.
The way such a man is chosen can change according to circumstances
and times,3 but the nature of this man’s vocation remains the same, and all
well-established religions, whether true or false, bear testimony to this very
point: the priest is the man of prayer, consecrated to perform the liturgy
of the community to God; in other words he is a mediator between God
and men. This is what St. Thomas explains in some depth in his Summa
Theologica: “The proper office of the priest is to be a mediator between God
and the community: in so far as he gives to the community the things of God
[divina, in Latin], and for that reason he is called Priest [Sacerdos, in Latin],
that is, He who gives sacred things, according to Malachi 2:7: ‘They shall seek
the law at his mouth’ (that is, of the priest), and in so far also as he offers the
prayers of the community to God, and makes satisfaction to God for their
sins in some way; therefore the Apostle says, ‘Every high priest taken from
among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he
may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins.’”4

The Priesthood of Christ
Christ, as man and God, is thus the very link of union between man and
God; in other words He is The Mediator, The Priest, He cannot be but
27

Faith and Morals
5

Summa Theologica, III, Q.
22, Art. 1, Corpus.

6

John 14:6.

7

Cf. Rom. 8:34.

8

Of course a sacramental
and a sacrament are not the
same thing and a sacrament
has more efficacy than a
simple sacramental, but all
in all both sacraments and
sacramentals produce their
proper effects precisely
because they are performed
by Christ through His
Church!

The Priest: St. Thomas, in the same article cited above adds, “This office
(of mediator) does most perfectly apply to Christ: For by Him the things of
God have been granted to men, according to these words of II Peter, 1:4, ‘By
Whom (that is Christ) He hath given us most great and precious promises:
that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature.’ And He it is
Who did reconcile humankind to God, according to these words of Coloss.
1:19: ‘In Him, it hath well pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell,
and through Him to reconcile all things.’”5
Christ did actually perform His Liturgy throughout all His life: In the
Sacred Gospels we learn of His many prayers, of His miracles by which He
did not only heal bodies but also souls, and most of all, of His Sacrifice on
the Cross and of the institution of the Holy Mass. In all these actions, Christ
was acting as The Great Priest of God, leading men to God and obtaining and
giving God’s graces to men. He Himself said to St. Thomas the Apostle, “I am
the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me.”6

The Priesthood in the Church in General
The very reason why Christ created His Church is precisely to spread the
action of His Priesthood everywhere and at all times in a visible way adapted
to our human nature: for although He has left this world, Christ continues the
office of His priesthood not only from Heaven (where, as St. Paul says, “at the
right hand of God [...he...] also maketh intercession for us”7), but also here on
earth, in a very hidden but real way through the Church: He does not merit
any more, but He still adores His Father, He still offers reparation to Him, He
still asks for the graces we need, which He still distributes from God to men,
here and there, through the Mass, the sacraments, the sacramentals...
As a consequence of this very presence of Christ acting mysteriously
but really within the Church, we can truly say that from the time He left
us by His Ascension and gave us the fullness of His Spirit at Pentecost, the
Liturgy is the action not only of Christ the Priest, but of the Church also, or
better, of Christ the Sovereign Priest by His Church which He has endowed
with His own priesthood: every liturgical action performed in the Church is
not done principally by the individual who actually performs it, but by the
Church herself through whatever particular priest, and ultimately Christ
in her! For example, when a bishop ordains a candidate to the priesthood,
a priest absolves a sinner, a deacon sings the Gospel, a subdeacon sings an
Epistle, a lector blesses a meal—all these actions are to be considered as
performed not just by this or that minister but more deeply by the Church,
and ultimately by Christ within her, who actually ordains, absolves, blesses,
teaches, sings...8
There are a couple of very important practical consequences to this
presence and action of Christ the Priest in His Church:
If the main “actor” in any liturgical action is not merely the individual who
performs it but Christ in His Church, then liturgical actions have by their
own nature a social character: they are performed within the Church and by
the Church, and are BY NATURE public. In theology we say that the Liturgy
28

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November - December 2012

9

Cf. Summa Theologica, III,
Q. 83, Art. 6, ad 12.

10

The Litany of the Saints
is still prescribed by the
Roman Ritual, but most
of the time it is replaced
by other private prayers,
which is understandable
since it actually is not that
frequent to find a group of
persons able to recite the
Litany of the Saints on their
own without the help of
the priest; moreover, most
devotional booklets that
lay down the ceremony
of Extreme Unction in
vernacular for the faithful
do not mention nor give the
Litany of the Saints in Latin
(as should be since their
recitation at that time is
not a private but a liturgical
action).

11

There is a sermon of St.
Hilary of Poitiers for the
beginning of Lent, who
asked the faithful to attend
not only daily Mass but also
all the canonical hours of
the Office at Church with
the clerics every single day
of Lent.

is per se (in itself) a public action, even if per accidens (in a particular
instance) it is performed in a private manner.
Let us draw some practical lesson from this truth so often forgotten: The
celebration of the Liturgy should be performed publically. It really does not
matter what liturgical action one has in mind, for the very nature of its being
a liturgical action means that it is an action of the Church performed by her
publically! And so in ages long gone, the Liturgy was celebrated publically
whenever possible. Let’s be concrete and give some examples:
A priest cannot find a server and celebrates holy Mass alone; this de facto
private celebration does not take away the very social nature of the Mass:
this very Mass is offered by Christ in His Church, in the presence that is of
His Church. This is why the holy canons have decreed that, without a special
dispensation a priest is not allowed to celebrate without at least one server
(or at least one person to answer) who, as St. Thomas explains, acts as a
representative of the whole Church united to Christ offering Himself through
the priest.9
For centuries, even Extreme Unction was very solemnly given, with a
procession following a cross-bearer, and several priests alternating the
anointments as the people present were reciting or singing the Litany of the
Saints.10
Until the Renaissance, and especially the French Revolution, the recitation
of the Breviary was not a private but a public affair: according to the
canons, even in the most modest parishes, the Divine Office was supposed
to be celebrated in the sanctuary and in the presence of all clerics, and the
faithful were encouraged to attend. And this they were accustomed to do!11
St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem in the fifth century, testifies that in his own
time the peasants of Bethlehem were so much accustomed to the Liturgy that
one could hear them singing the psalms by heart in the fields as they were
going about their daily business! Another story: as the emperor had sent his
police to arrest St. Ambrose, the latter took refuge in his cathedral in Milan
together with his people, and they spent the three days of siege singing the
psalms! This would have never happened in recent centuries, for most of our
good Catholics would have been altogether incapable of singing much more
than our famous 15th- or 16th-century Kyriale 8 de Angelis and a couple of
renaissance or sentimental 19th-century Tantum Ergos! All true reforms in
the Church always strove to encourage souls to nourish their souls with the
Liturgy in general and the Divine Office in particular: St. Pius X, for example,
reformed the Breviary and Gregorian chant to help his people to join more
fruitfully in the Prayer of the Church, and Archbishop Lefebvre made it a rule
in our dear Society of Saint Pius X for his priests to celebrate every single
day at least part of the Office together.
The actions performed by the minister of the Liturgy are not his own but
those of the Church, and so this is why the Church insists on the faithful
performance of the ceremonies, without personal style or sentimental
addition or subtraction—and this regards either the priest, the ministers,
or the faithful. And to be practical and concrete, let us take some examples
gleaned here or there in our daily experience. Each of these examples is
not necessarily very important, but as a whole they reveal the way most
29

Faith and Morals

30

12

The number for a sung Mass
is 2, 4 or 6 according to the
class and the custom, and 7
for the diocesan bishop. For
a Low Mass only 2 candles
are lit. The main parish
Mass may have 6, even if
it is a Low Mass, if there
is no High Mass on a feast
day. There are a couple of
other exceptions, but as we
see there are precise rules
established by the Church.

13

The place of the wedding
couple is OUTSIDE the
sanctuary at all times,
whether during the actual
ceremony of marriage or
during the nuptial Mass; all
other customs have been
expressly condemned by
Rome without exception:
even in the case of a
wedding by a Bishop,
although the wedding
couple is allowed to kneel
at the very altar for the
exchange of vows, their
place remains outside the
sanctuary at all other times.

14

As an example, a Low Mass
does not allow more than
one or two servers, with
the exception of a bishop,
who may have two Acolytes,
two Chaplains (acting a
little bit like two deacons),
and eventually several
torch-bearers). A solemn
ceremony requires more
servers, but the Roman
tradition always limits the
number of servers to what
is necessary for the correct
celebration of the rite. In
other words, to add a server,
like an Acolyte or a Crossbearer, because one more
server is actually needed
is totally conformed to
Roman tradition, but to add
a server for symmetrical
look, to please a parent,
to give the impression of a
Choir, to make the boys see
better..., is not according to
Roman tradition, even if the
boy is given the cute name
of Little Angel...: it may be
decided by the priest out
of prudential reason, and
he alone is judge of such a
reason.

15

The Deacon is actually
endowed with the faculty to
lead some Liturgical actions
like the Divine Office.

16

I Peter 2:5.

The Angelus

of us know so little about the Liturgy and its rules, and tend to do our own
personal way: The number of candles to put on the altar does not depend
on the devotion of the priest, the sacristan or anyone else but on the actual
type of ceremony.12 The place of the wedding couple during the celebration of
their marriage is strictly established by the Church, which does not allow any
change.13 The number of servers at a given ceremony does not depend on the
desire of the priest or the faithful but on the type of ceremony.14
The Church was founded by Christ for the spreading of His priesthood
throughout space and time. Thus it follows that the main activity of the
Church, which concerns all Catholics at any time and place, is the fulfilment
of this priesthood of Christ: to adore God through Christ and receive from
Him God’s graces. In other words, the first and foremost activity of the
Church, that is, of all Catholics in general and in particular, is the celebration
of the Liturgy of Christ! Of course, as we know, this liturgical dedication of
all Catholics will be performed differently according as to whether one is a
priest or not! The priest, and he only, will LEAD the Liturgy,15 but all baptized
Catholics must join in this celebration by the priest. This is why, to mention
just one canon of the Church, every Catholic is obliged to attend Mass,
the very heart of the Liturgy, very regularly, that is at least once a week on
Sunday. This total dedication of every Catholic to the Liturgy follows from
the very nature of the sacramental character received in the sacraments
of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders. Not all Catholics receive the
sacrament of Holy Orders, but all receive that of Baptism and all should
receive also that of Confirmation. By these three sacraments the faithful,
in a manner appropriate to each of these sacraments, is dedicated to the
celebration of the Divine Liturgy of our Blessed Lord: Christ the Sovereign
Priest celebrates His Liturgy through His earthly priest and incorporates
the baptized as well as the confirmed faithful to this His Liturgy. This is why
St. Peter, writing to his flock says, “Be you also as living stones built up, a
spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable
to God by Jesus Christ.”16
This is the true source of man’s dignity. As members of the Church we
all share in Christ’s priesthood, each one of us according to the character
we have received. The modernists, who have had such influence in recent
years, have missed the occasion to cry out this beautiful truth. Instead they
have replaced it by a false dignity which harms the Church’s teaching and
confuses the faithful. In our next article we shall precisely delve into this
doctrine of the priesthood of Christ as it is shared by the members of the
Church in a different way. We shall read the wonderful articles written by our
Angelic Doctor about this, and insist on a very important distinction which
makes the whole difference between the true Catholic doctrine and the
corruption of neo-Protestantism.

November - December 2012

Light
In Him was life: and
the life was the light
of men: and the light
shineth in darkness:
and the darkness did
not comprehend it.
(John 1:2)

Faith and Morals

When Private
Penance Is
Not Enough
by Dr. John Rao

Public confession and penance is not a
topic that traditionalist Catholics much like to
mention. In our minds it generally involves bad
experiences with post-conciliar practices calling
yet another sacramental doctrine of the Church
into question. Nevertheless, all of the traditional
Catholic reference books give ample space to
a discussion of its importance in the early life
of the Church. That discussion leads us to the
commentaries on this subject of some of the
greatest theologians of the first five centuries.
The points that these thinkers make illustrate
both the undeniable value that public as opposed
to private confession and penance may have as
well as the reasons why its practice had to be
severely limited.
Let us briefly summarize their arguments by
first noting Origen’s argument that the penitent
32

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November - December 2012

will mercilessly torture himself if he does not
reveal his sin to someone. Both Origen and
St. Augustine then go on to indicate that this
personal drive to personal admission of the
performance of an evil action may sometimes
well require public confession and penance.

Public Scandal Given
Such would be the case, first and foremost,
if public scandal had been given. This would
create in the sanior pars (the healthier part) of
the community the same psychological demand
for revelation of the sin and the sinner Origen
believed to be felt by the individual in question
himself. Its public identification would thus be
needed to restore the spiritual health of society at

large in addition to that of the criminal himself.
Due to the troubled state of the sinner, as
well as his lack of experience as a soul doctor,
both Origen and St. Augustine insist that the
decision for a public as opposed to a private cure
must be left to experts in such matters: namely,
trained priestly confessors and the legitimate
Church authorities. Most traditionalists know
that the public penances prescribed by such
men were not of the sort that would please the
contemporary local modernist. Tertullian tells
us of prostrations, sackcloth, ashes, prayer, and
fasting day and night, often for years on end.
He organizes these in four lengthy stages of
reconciliation—and all before absolution was
even administered. The penitent remained cut off
from the grace of the Church in the interim.
By the fifth century at the very latest, however,
a reaction to the harshness of such procedures
had definitively set in. Not only did they seem
unnecessarily to risk the salvation of the sinner
waiting to be restored to grace. They also appear
to have become the cause of scandal themselves.
One can well imagine why. On the one hand,
they could entail public discussion of matters
that St. Paul says should not even be spoken of
among us, thereby arousing the prurient interest
in a passerby happy to indulge in what might be
construed as legitimate titillation. On the other
hand, they may well have encouraged gossip and
hypocrisy on the part of spectators who joined in
the public outrage over wicked crimes that they
would claim an inability to conceive of, much less
commit. Given such circumstances, neither the
spiritual edification of the community nor that of
the sinner subject to public humiliation would in
any way be ensured.
In one sense, sins that affect the public psyche
in a truly serious way cannot help but be openly
admitted. Such sins would, ipso facto, be the
work of men and women publicly well known
to the community. Insofar as Origen might be
mistaken, however, and the sinner in question
proved to be unmoved by his flaw, the burden
of avoiding scandal and re-establishing public
spiritual health would lie with the authorities
of the Church. It would be their duty firmly
to identify the evil that had been done and,

hopefully, arouse personal contrition along
with social outrage. If they did not fulfill their
responsibilities in such a matter then they, too,
would become public sinners whose confession
and penance ought to be open in character.

Public Penance for
Public Sinners
Conscientious ecclesiastical authorities
have to demand public penance of public
sinners whether they feel contrition or not and
whether the attempt to exact that penance is
successful or not. We have many examples of
such conscientious behavior all through Church
History. St. Ambrose was able to exact contrition
and penance from the Emperor Theodosius in
390 for his indiscriminate massacre of both
the innocent and the guilty after a revolt in
Thessalonica. St. John Chrysostom was not able
to do so after his denunciation of the Empress
Eudoxia for extravagant waste of money in 404.
The pope and the English episcopacy forced
Henry II to do public penance in 1174 for his
semi-involvement in the murder of St. Thomas
à Becket; those very few courageous prelates
who demanded the same from Philip the Fair of
France for his assaults on the Church in his own
country and his intimidation of Pope Boniface
VIII outside of it achieved nothing.
One particular long-term conscientious effort
to curb public sin that also simultaneously
avoided indulging spectators’ temptations
hypocritically to overvalue their own sanctity
was that which began in the “age of iron” of the
900’s and 1000’s and continued throughout the
whole of the High Middle Ages. I describe this in
detail in my recent book, Black Legends and the
Light of the World, in the chapter entitled “The
New Ascent of Mount Tabor.”
It was at this time that “robber barons” and
their minions, soldiers whom the population no
longer referred to with the proper Latin term as
militia but as malizia—that is to say a gang of
evildoers—dominated much of Western Europe.
Once again, courageous clerics, in this case often
bishops and abbots of monasteries, publically
33

Faith and Morals
attacked the sinners in the most vigorous of
terms and before large masses of the population
(Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of
Western Culture, p. 123).
“How then are these robbers Christians, or
what do they deserve who slay their brothers for
whom they are commanded to lay down their
lives?
“You have only to study the books of antiquity
to see that the most powerful are always the
worst. Worldly nobility is due not to nature but
to pride and ambition. If we judged by realities
we should give honour not to the rich for the
fine clothes they wear but to the poor who are
the makers of such things—nam sudoribus
pauperum praeparatur unde potentiores
saginantur (for the banquets of the powerful are
cooked in the sweat of the poor).”
Contrite or not, these robber barons were
forced by their clerical prosecutors to admit
their crimes and swear to correct their immoral
behavior: by subscribing to those rules for
more just warfare that were referred
to as the Peace and the Truce of
God. The thirst for justice in the
social realm was thereby sated
and spiritual health restored.
But this was accomplished
without canonizing the
victimized—but always potentially
also titillated and hypocritical—population
at large. In fact, this mass of men, now and in
the centuries to come, living out its life in a
variety of different vocations and corporate
institutions, was told that it, too, had to
demonstrate its commitment to the Way,
the Truth, and the Life through working
towards transformation in Christ. And
when the men and women of this variegated
Christian corporate order did not fulfill
their responsibilities in ways that impinged
upon the community as a whole, they, too,
were publically called to task as bourgeois
or peasant “robber barons” in their own
right. All men and groups were, at times,
capable of public chastisement; all were
equally capable of being publically forgiven
and improved.
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November - December 2012

Laxity an Encouragement
of Spiritual Disease
Allow me now to bring this all down to our
own time and place. Private confession and
penance are ignored like never before in most of
the Catholic world, Catholic America included.
It is no wonder therefore that prelates are so
lax in stimulating men and women to what is
in effect a more severe open confession and
penance by refusing access to the Eucharist to
public sinners. This laxity is an encouragement
of spiritual disease—not only that of the persons
directly involved, but that of the entire body
politic, which does not see public wickedness
chastised and becomes either cynical or
demoralized in consequence.
Yes, we have been blessed with a few
courageous prelates in the United States who
have made moves to deal with public sinfulness
by singling out liberal supporters of the
monstrous crime of abortion, particularly from
the Democratic Party. Origen and St. Augustine
would have blessed their labors. Nevertheless,
they are only the start of the massive call to
order that the contemporary world requires.
For many of those who cheer this praiseworthy
assault on a libertinism striking at the right
to life itself are perfectly happy to encourage
an individual economic libertinism and a
national patriotic libertinism with horrendous
public consequences of a horrible anti-Catholic
character. And here the problem comes
from conservative supporters of anti-social
Enlightenment ideas with tremendous influence
over the Republican Party. The call for public
confession of the sin of unrestrained individual
libertinism has to be a complete one. If not, the
“robber barons” stealing our chance to make
Christ the King of the social order will gain on
one attack front what they may seem to have lost
on another.
All of England begged for pardon for the
crimes of Henry VIII and Edward VII under
Queen Mary and Cardinal Reginald Pole
in the 1550’s. England slipped back into an
unacceptable relationship with the Church of
Rome and then, ultimately, with Christianity in

general, falling prey to the charms of that Whig
Alliance that won the Glorious Revolution of
1688. It was this Whig England with its political
philosophical guru in the person of John Locke,
that created the American system of a religious
toleration that reduces religious groups to clubs
having no right to an impact on the public sphere
and a politics of checks and balances that seeks
to guarantee that government exists purely for
the sake of protecting individual private property.
Would that a new Mary and a new Pole would
emerge in both countries! They could then do
what no alternation in power between impossibly
individualist liberal Democrats and impossibly
individualist conservative Republicans would
ever be able to do: confess both England and
America’s social sins and do penance for them.
That would be a real inaugural ceremony worth
attending; one ushering in a new era where the
“truth that sets men free” and “the peace that
passeth all understanding” might finally get a
chance to work their transforming abilities again.

John Rao, Ph.D., is a professor of history at St. John’s University in New York,
New York. He is the author of Removing the Blindfold, in addition to articles
written for The Angelus, The Remnant, and other periodicals.

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Faith and Morals

Tridentine
Teaching on
Confession
Selections from the Catechism of the Council of Trent

Importance of Instruction
As the frailty and weakness of human nature
are universally known and felt by each one in
himself, no one can be ignorant of the great
necessity of the Sacrament of Penance. If,
therefore, the diligence of pastors should be
proportioned to the weight and importance of
the subject, we must admit that in expounding
this Sacrament they can never be sufficiently
diligent. Nay, it should be explained with more
care than Baptism. Baptism is administered but
once, and cannot be repeated; Penance may be
administered and becomes necessary, as often
as we may have sinned after Baptism. Hence the
Council of Trent declares: “For those who fall into
sin after Baptism the Sacrament of Penance is
as necessary to salvation as is Baptism for those
who have not been already baptized.” The saying
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of St. Jerome that Penance is “a second plank,”
is universally known and highly commended by
all subsequent writers on sacred things. As he
who suffers shipwreck has no hope of safety,
unless, perchance, he seize on some plank from
the wreck, so he that suffers the shipwreck of
baptismal innocence, unless he cling to the
saving plank of Penance, has doubtless lost all
hope of salvation.
These instructions are intended not only for
the benefit of pastors, but also for that of the
faithful at large, to awaken attention, lest they
be found culpably negligent in a matter so very
important. Impressed with a just sense of the
frailty of human nature, their first and most
earnest desire should be to advance with the
divine assistance in the ways of God, without
sin or failing. But should they at any time prove
so unfortunate as to fall, then, looking at the

infinite goodness of God, who like the good
shepherd binds up and heals the wounds of His
sheep, they should not postpone recourse to the
most saving remedy of Penance.

Why Christ Instituted
This Sacrament
In the first place, however, it will be well to
explain why it is that Christ our Lord was pleased
to number Penance among the Sacraments.
One of His reasons certainly was to leave us no
room for doubt regarding the remission of sin
which was promised by God when He said: “If
the wicked do penance,” etc. For each one has
good reason to distrust the accuracy of his own
judgment on his own actions, and hence we could
not but be very much in doubt regarding the
truth of our internal penance. It was to destroy
this, our uneasiness, that our Lord instituted the
Sacrament of Penance, by means of which we
are assured that our sins are pardoned by the
absolution of the priest; and also to tranquilize
our conscience by means of the trust we rightly
repose in the virtue of the Sacraments. The
words of the priest sacramentally and lawfully
absolving us from our sins are to be accepted in
the same sense as the words of Christ our Lord
when He said to the paralytic: “Son, be of good
heart: thy sins are forgiven thee.”
In the second place, no one can obtain
salvation unless through Christ and the merits
of His Passion. Hence it was becoming in itself,
and highly advantageous to us, that a Sacrament
should be instituted through the force and
efficacy of which the blood of Christ flows into
our souls, washes away all the sins committed
after Baptism, and thus leads us to recognise that
it is to our Saviour alone we owe the blessing of
reconciliation.

Effects of the Sacrament
of Penance
Nothing will prove of greater advantage to the
faithful, nothing will be found to conduce more to

a willing reception of the Sacrament of Penance,
than for pastors to explain frequently the great
advantage to be derived therefrom. They will
then see that of Penance it is truly said that its
roots are bitter, but its fruit sweet indeed.
First of all, then, the great efficacy of Penance
consists in this, that it restores us to the grace
of God, and unites us to Him in the closest
friendship.
In pious souls who approach this Sacrament
with devotion, profound peace and tranquillity
of conscience, together with ineffable joy of soul,
accompany this reconciliation. For there is no
sin, however great or horrible, which cannot be
effaced by the Sacrament of Penance, and that
not merely once, but over and over again. On
this point God Himself thus speaks through the
Prophet: “If the wicked do penance for all his
sins which he hath committed, and keep all my
commandments, and do judgment, and justice,
living he shall live, and shall not die, and I will
not remember all his iniquities that he hath done.”
And St. John says: “If we confess our sins; he is
faithful and just, to forgive us our sins”; and a
little later, he adds: “If any man sin,”—he excepts
no sin whatever,—“we have an advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ, the just; for he is the
propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only,
but for the sins of the whole world.”
When we read in Scripture that certain
persons did not obtain pardon from God, even
though they earnestly implored it, we know that
this was due to the fact that they had not a true
and heartfelt sorrow for their sins. Thus when
we find in Sacred Scripture and in the writings of
the Fathers passages which seem to assert that
certain sins are irremissible, we must understand
the meaning to be that it is very difficult to obtain
pardon for them. A disease is sometimes called
incurable, because the patient is so disposed
as to loathe the medicines that could afford
him relief. In the same way certain sins are not
remitted or pardoned because the sinner rejects
the grace of God, the only medicine for salvation.
It is in this sense that St. Augustine wrote: “When
a man who, through the grace of Jesus Christ,
has once arrived at a knowledge of God, wounds
fraternal charity, and, driven by the fury of
37

Faith and Morals
envy, lifts up his head against grace, the enormity
of his sin is so great that, though compelled by
a guilty conscience to acknowledge and confess
his fault, he finds himself unable to submit to the
humiliation of imploring pardon.”

Confession Should Be
Plain, Simple, Sincere
In the second place our confession should be
plain, simple and undisguised; not artfully made,
as is the case with some who seem more intent
on defending themselves than on confessing
their sins. Our confession should be such as to
disclose to the priest a true image of our lives,
such as we ourselves know them to be, exhibiting
as doubtful that which is doubtful, and as certain
that which is certain. If, then, we neglect to
enumerate our sins, or introduce extraneous
matter, our confession, it is clear, lacks this
quality.

Confession Should Be
Prudent, Modest, Brief
Prudence and modesty in explaining
matters of confession are also much to be
commended, and a superfluity of words is to
be carefully avoided. Whatever is necessary
to make known the nature of every sin is
to be explained briefly and modestly.

Confession Should Be Made
Privately and Often
Secrecy as regards confession should be
strictly observed, as well by the penitent as by
the priest. Hence, no one can, on any account,
confess by messenger or letter, because in those
cases secrecy would not be possible.
The faithful should be careful above all to
cleanse their consciences from sin by frequent
confession. When a person is in mortal sin
nothing can be more salutary, so precarious is
human life, than to have immediate recourse
38

The Angelus

November - December 2012

to confession. But even if we could promise
ourselves a long life, yet it would be truly
disgraceful that we who are so particular in
whatever relates to cleanliness of dress or
person, were not at least equally careful in
preserving the lustre of the soul unsullied from
the foul stains of sin.

362pp – Gold-embossed leatherette cover – Sewn binding – Rounded corners – Gilt edges – Ribbon– STK# 8555 – $24.95

Mother Love
The life of the mother is not an easy one. Between her duties
as a wife and mother, and all the details that arise from managing
a home, the life of a mother can lose its proper focus: the glory of
God. To help Catholic mothers sanctify themselves in their state in
life, we have printed the original, unadulterated version of Mother
Love, a complete prayer and devotional book, just for moms! Originally written in the late 1800s by a priest of the Capuchin order, this
“manual for Christian mothers” contains:
-- Morning and Evening Prayers for Mothers
-- Devotions for the Holy Rosary
-- Points of Doctrine a Christian Mother Should Teach to Her
Children
-- Prayers at Mass
-- The “Ten Commandments” of Christian Education
-- Devotions for Confession and Communion
-- Devotions for the Poor Souls, and for the Way of the Cross
-- Prayers for the Various Special Necessities of a Christian
Mother
-- Prayers to Some of the Special Patrons of Christian Mothers
-- Indulgenced Prayers
-- A short book of instructions for Christian Mothers on the
Christian Training of Children
Purchase this book for yourself, or for the Catholic mothers you
know. It contains almost everything a mother needs to nurture and
grow her spiritual life, so that through their sanctification they may
sanctify their husbands and children, and truly become the heart
of the Catholic home.

Part I
Morning Prayers
On awaking, raise your first thoughts to God, and making the sign of the
holy cross, say:

In the name X of the Father who has created me, X
of the Son who has redeemed me, X of the Holy Ghost
who has sanctified me, do I begin this day.
May the Most Holy Trinity bless, govern, and protect
me and mine, and lead us on to eternal life. Amen.
On arising and dressing, say the following prayer, either mentally or orally:

Glory be to the Father! Glory be to the Son! Glory be
to the Holy Ghost! Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ in expiation of my own sins
and for the wants of all my family!
Divine Savior, clothe us with Thy virtues, with humility, meekness, patience, charity, and purity. Make our
hearts like unto Thine!
O God, the Holy Ghost, adorn us with Thy seven
gifts! Preserve us from vanity, pride, and worldliness!

Prayers at Mass
Preparatory Prayers
Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, a
poor sinner, come before Thee, to assist at the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the only one worthy of Thy Divine
Majesty, the only one that can render Thee the honor
Thou deservest. I make the intention, therefore, by it to
adore and thank Thee, not only for myself and those
dear to me, but for the whole world. I desire to satisfy
for all our sins and negligences, and to beg of Thee all
that will be beneficial to us for soul and body. I pray especially in this holy Sacrifice for my children, beseeching
Thee to grant me the grace of training them in a Christian manner, and to cast around them the shield of Thy
paternal care through life, and especially at the hour of
their death.
Saints of God, help me by your merits and intercession that I assist at this holy Sacrifice with true devotion,
being lovingly and gratefully mindful of my Redeemer,
who instituted it in memory of His bitter Passion and
painful death on the cross. Amen.

Sprinkling yourself and your children with holy water, say:

May the peace and blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the power of His bitter Passion, the sign X of the holy
Cross, the assistance of Mary, the Immaculate Virgin
and Mother of God, the protec tion of the holy angels,
the merits and prayers of all the saints shield us from
all dangers of soul and body, guard us from all enemies,

Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

The Priest goes up to the Altar.
Jesus ascends the Mount of Olives with His disciples.
O my Jesus, Thou dost ascend the Mount of Olives,
to begin Thy sufferings for us! Ah, cleanse my heart
and sanctify my will, that I may have no other desire
than that God’s will may in all things be accomplished!
Amen.

Incarnation
Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who in the
beginning was with God, through whom all things were made and
without whom was nothing made (John 1:1-3), with the purpose of
delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself
to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty,
that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might
unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God
the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that
the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher
impaired by its new associate. Without detriment therefore to the
properties of either substance which then came together in one person,
majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and
for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable
nature was united with possible nature, and true God and true man
were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our
case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man
Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other.
Pope Leo the Great
Fresco “Mother of God”, Palace of the Popes, Avignon

Spirituality

An
Apologetical
Look at
Confession
by Fr. Jonathan Loop, SSPX

Of all Catholic doctrines, few are more viscerally rejected by Protestants
than that dealing with the sacrament of penance. Whether we are dealing
with Fundamentalists or mainline denominations such as Lutherans or
Methodists, the argument is effectively the same: Jesus Christ alone can
forgive sins, and so it is blasphemous to assert that a mere man can somehow
remit the offenses which we have committed against God. Furthermore,
since Jesus Christ alone is the mediator between His Father and a fallen
human race, it is superfluous to make known our sins to a priest. Rather,
men are asked merely to avow their sins to Our Lord in a more or less purely
interior and private fashion and to receive His forgiveness in like manner.
Without delving into the scriptural and theological proofs that the
Protestant reaction to the Catholic doctrine of confession is unfounded and
unreasonable, we shall simply observe that in this way men who profess to
be Christians cut themselves off from one of the most profound and beautiful
spiritual treasures which the King of heaven and earth has bequeathed to us.
They fail to understand that the sacrament of penance manifests to us the
goodness of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ or that to use it well
42

The Angelus

November - December 2012

1

I-II, Q. 84, Art. 2.

2

Dom Marmion, Christ,
Ideal of the Priest.

confers on the faithful soul immense spiritual advantages. To better grasp
the nature of the spiritual benefits which the good God reserves for those
who approach this sacrament worthily, it is helpful to remember that its
minister is said to be at one and the same time a judge, a doctor, and a father.
If we examine the flip side of the coin, we find that this sacrament causes in
the penitent the dispositions proper to a defendant, son, and patient.

Why This Particular Method?
At first glance, there seems to be no special spiritual benefit in appearing
as a defendant before the sacramental tribunal of Jesus Christ. What possible
good can come from the very fact of accusing ourselves of iniquitous
behavior before a representative of Our Lord? It appears to be nothing more
than a necessary and painful means of obtaining forgiveness for our sins.
Nevertheless, Our Lord chose this method precisely because it is especially
well-suited to help us progress in the spiritual life. How? By directly
addressing man’s pride, which is, according to the Holy Ghost, the “beginning
of every sin” (Ecclus. 10:15).
On the one hand, this saying of the wise man means—according to St.
Thomas Aquinas—that the goal of all sinful behavior is to attain a certain
pre-eminence or excellence out of proportion to one’s station in life.1 That
is to say, we seek an undue measure of good—whether honor, wealth,
pleasure—for ourselves in order to set ourselves above others. On the other
hand, it can also be understood to mean that human pride causes men to be
blind to the real state of their soul. Since we love to think well of ourselves,
we find it extremely painful to acknowledge our shortcomings. As a result,
we are prone to avert—even unconsciously—our gaze from our faults so
as to maintain the illusion of our greatness. The more we think well of
ourselves, the more likely it is that we are oblivious indeed to very great evils
within our soul.
The method of sacramental confession which Our Lord prescribed for
us addresses both these aspects of pride. In the first place, it compels us to
blame ourselves of gross faults to another man. We are forced to admit to
another that we are ungrateful criminals who have abused the friendship
of Almighty God. If we thus accuse ourselves with sufficient generosity
and constancy, the good God will impart to us the precious virtue of
compunction. Dom Marmion, the great spiritual author of the early 1900s,
defined this virtue as the habitual sentiment of regret at having offended the
divine majesty.2 In other words, we are constantly aware of our pettiness
and meanness before both God and men, thus removing at a deep level our
proclivity to seek our self-aggrandizement.
He further remarks that the absence of this disposition of soul causes
many souls to struggle to make any true progress in the spiritual life. If a
man does not have any real sense of the fact that he has offended Almighty
God, that he has unjustly crucified his Lord and Master, he is not likely to
experience the urgent necessity of conversion, of identifying and eradicating
everything in his soul which is displeasing to God. Again, this sacrament
43

Spirituality

44

3

Jn. 17:21.

4

Gal. 4:19.

5

Mt. 5:48.

6

Heb. 11:16.

The Angelus

of penance—well-used—obliges us to lay at the feet of a fellow man our sins
(somehow, this makes it easier to see them as “real”) and so to acknowledge
the unpleasant truths about our soul. Only by undoing this profound pride
can we hope to begin to progress towards union with God.
This union with God and subsequent intimacy with the Holy Trinity is the
goal of the spiritual life. In the beautiful prayer which He offers to His Father
on the eve of His Passion, Our Lord asks that “they may all be one as you,
Father, are in me and I in you; so may they be one in Us.”3 Our Lord wills that
we partake of the unity which He shares with His Father. In other words,
He desires that we become sons of His Father and brethren one of another.
These realities admirably expressed are rooted in our soul as a result of the
sacrament of penance.
In the first place, in the priest we find a reflection of our Father in heaven,
as is manifested by the very title “Father” which we so lovingly bestow upon
him. To the priest is given by God participation of the solicitous providence
by which He governs His adopted sons. All worthy priests may make their
own the ardent words of St. Paul, “My little children, over whom I labor until
Christ be formed in you.”4 In fact, when we approach the confessional, we
ought to be inspired by a supernatural confidence that we are treating in a
certain manner with the very Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We must look
beyond all merely human qualities of the man before us and see our Father in
heaven acting through him.
The more we are penetrated with a belief in this reality, the more God will
teach us through this sacrament our duties towards Him precisely as Father.
This will entail principally a firm conviction of our obligation to follow in
His footsteps, so to speak. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that “we must be
perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”5 Like any child, we should long
to make Him proud of us. We read in St. Paul that God was not ashamed to
be called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.6 However, each mortal sin
which we commit grieves God and causes Him—speaking humanly—to wish
to avoid even being associated with us. By speaking to His representative
on earth, we are moved to be ashamed for having let Him down through
our own most grievous fault. In the confessional, we kneel before the one
who holds the place of our Father, and we cannot hide from the fact that we
have given Him cause to be ashamed of us, His children. At the same time,
our knowledge of the parable of the prodigal son reminds us that this same
Father is eager to forgive us our shortcomings and give us a new opportunity
to please Him.
In the second place, speaking to our Father in the confessional is meant
to remind us that we are brethren one of another. The priest who hears
our confessions must also hear those of the whole parish. The difficulty
and embarrassment which we inevitably experience in revealing our most
shameful exploits serve to remind us not only of our own weakness but
also that of our neighbors. Thus, the sacrament of penance helps cultivate
in us a spirit of magnanimity and generosity when confronted with the
offenses committed against us by our neighbor. At the least, we are led
to recall our Lord’s admonition to St. Peter that we must be ever ready to
forgive our neighbor, even seventy times seven times if necessary. As we say
November - December 2012

7

Mt. 18:21-25.

8

Jn. 3:16-17

9

Think of the parables of the
lost sheep, the woman and
the drachma, as well as of
the prodigal son. (Lk. 15)

Fr. Jonathan Loop was born and
raised an Episcopalian. He attended
college at the University of Dallas,
where he received the grace to
convert through the intermediary of
several of his fellow students, some
of whom later went on to become
religious with the Dominicans of
Fanjeaux. After graduating with
a bachelor’s degree in political
philosophy, he enrolled in St.
Thomas Aquinas Seminary, where
he was ordained in June 2011.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” we ought to consider the parable of
the Unmerciful Servant7 (who owed ten thousand talents) and resolve to be
more prompt to forgive the weaknesses of our neighbors—our brothers and
sisters.
There is yet another disposition which is proper to penitents: that of a
patient. While it is true that we are certainly guilty of the offenses which
we have committed against God, it is important to recall that we have been
deeply wounded by original sin. Thus, it is not infrequently the case that we
violate the law of God not so much through malice as through weakness.
Indeed, it is not uncommon that after a hard and bitter conflict we fall into
sins which displease us immensely. These lapses are discouraging and if
they occur frequently, they tend to provoke us to despair of any victory in
our spiritual combat. St. Paul captures this feeling of impotence perfectly in
the seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Romans: “For the good which I will,
I do not: but the evil which I will not, that I do. But I see another law in my
members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law
of sin that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?” Nevertheless, he by no means admits defeat;
rather he turns to Our Lord Jesus Christ and His grace.
Indeed, Our Lord came into this world to save sinners, as the Apostle of
the Gentiles assures us. St. John reveals to us that “God so loved the world as
to send His only-begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should
not perish, but have eternal life.”8 Jesus Christ delights in healing us from our
infirmities, as He makes abundantly clear in so many of His parables.9 In the
Introit of the Mass of the Sacred Heart, we hear the Psalmist’s words: “The
thoughts of his heart are from generation to generation to free their souls
from death and to feed them in peace.” In effect, it is in thus drawing us forth
from the misery of our sins that He manifests most clearly the goodness of
His Sacred Heart. Therefore, when we approach the confessional, where Our
Lord exercises His prerogative to forgive us and to heal us, we come into
intimate contact with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The more we believe this
ineffable reality and prepare our confessions accordingly, He shall slowly but
surely remove from us all trace of sin and make our hearts like unto His.
As is all too clear, those Protestants who shun confession turn their backs
on the principal method of coming into contact with the goodness of Our
Lord. They may speak of a personal relationship with their Savior, but they
refuse the eminently sensible means by which He has chosen to forgive us
our sins. Furthermore, it is not blasphemous to go to a man entrusted by God
with the power to remit sin. Blasphemy implies an immense pride inasmuch
as a man puts himself on an equality—to say the least—with the God he
mocks. However, we have seen that by orchestrating the forgiveness of our
sins in this manner, God in fact produces in us a deep and abiding humility
for the very reason that our sins are no longer hidden in our bosom from
the sight of men. We ought to thank the good God for granting to us this
powerful and holy sacrament which is—even if painful—the source of such
manifold spiritual riches.

45

Spirituality

The Life and Martyrdom
of Father Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M.

At the Feet
of the Virgin
by Brendan King

46

1

“Father Leo’s Murderer
Goes Cursing to Death,”
Paterson Evening News,
July 16, 1908, p. 1.

2

Fr. Antonius M. Santarelli,
The Life of the Servant
of God Rev. Fr. Leo
Heinrichs, O.F.M. (New
York: Franciscan Press,
1926), p. 25.

The Angelus

On the evening of July 15, 1908, Sicilian immigrant and convicted
murderer Giuseppe Alia was summoned from his cell at the Colorado State
Penitentiary at Canyon City. As the warden read him the death warrant, Alia
responded with the self-pity typical of psychopaths, “All right. I am ready to
die now… I do not blame the law, but there is no God, or I would not be here
now.”1
Alia remained quiet and calm until he was led into the execution chamber
at 8:30 p.m. As the black cap was being adjusted, however, Alia let out a
barrage of Sicilian profanity, saving his foulest statements for the Roman
Catholic Church. Offering his best physical resistance, Alia had to be
physically carried by corrections officers. Moments before the gallows trap
launched him into eternity, Alia was heard to scream, “Death to the priests!”2
Nearly two decades after Alia’s execution, an investigation was opened by
the Franciscan Order into the heroic virtues of his victim, Fr. Leo Heinrichs.
A Postulator was assigned to look into the circumstances of Father Leo’s
life and death. After a painstaking investigation, a petition was submitted
to the Congregation for Saints’ Causes in Rome. Although this writer is
unaware of any progress being made since, devotion to Father Leo continues

November - December 2012

3

Ibid., p. 5.

4

Santarelli, Life of the
Servant of God, p.
6.

to be spread by members of the Franciscan Third Order. Furthermore, his
grave at Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey, continues to be a
destination for pilgrims.
As recent events have shown, it is by no means unlikely that the Catholic
Church will again be subjected to violent persecution in the United States.
For this reason alone, it would be a major mistake for traditional Catholics to
neglect devotion to Fr. Leo Heinrichs. May his prayers and intercession guide
us as we face whatever the future may hold.

Life
Joseph Heinrichs was born in the town of Oestrich, in the Archdiocese of
Cologne, on August 15, 1867. His parents were Joseph Heinrichs and Agnes
Foeres.
According to Fr. Antonius Santarelli, “He spent his childhood in innocence
and in due time took up the study of the classics, and was so well trained
in the fear of God by his Christian parents that he was to others a continual
example of piety and of the practice of religion.
“As he grew in years, he felt in his innermost heart the voice of the Divine
call inviting him to the Order of Friars Minor, and he gladly gave heed to the
call. Wherefore, in his nineteenth year of age he generously bade farewell to
his parents and his native country, and because at that time the Franciscans
were exiled from Germany for the reason of the laws of the Kulturkampf, he
was forced to seek distant shores; he came to America under difficulties but
with great enthusiasm.”3
On December 4, 1886, Joseph Heinrichs received the Franciscan habit
and the name of Brother Leo , which he had so desperately longed for, at
St. Bonaventure’s Friary at Paterson, New Jersey. At the time, the Friary’s
Master of Novices was Fr. Denis Schuler, who would one day reach a senior
position within the Order of Friars Minor.
According to Father Santarelli, “Under the direction of so great a master,
our Servant of God gave himself up entirely to the cultivation of his vocation,
and being intent upon the religious exercises he entered upon the way of
perfection and walked in it as faithfully as possible. He excelled his fellow
novices in devotion, zeal, and ardor, for the glory of God. Having caught
the spirit of a true Friar Minor, so that by the favorable vote of all, he at the
completion of the year of novitiate, pronounced the simple vows in the year
1887,—and after the lapse of three years from the taking of the simple vows,
having always faithfully walked in the ways of the commandments of God,
he made the solemn vows to the great happiness of his soul.
“Having finished his studies and being found worthy on account of the
religious manner of his life, he was raised to the sacerdotal dignity, which he
received with genuine piety and devotion, July 29, 1891.”4
According to Deacon William Joyce, “Between 1891 and 1897, Father
Leo served as assistant Master of Novices and as an assistant at St.
Bonaventure’s. Father Leo also ministered as Spiritual Assistant to the Third
Order Franciscans.…In 1897, he was named Pastor at Holy Angels Parish
47

Spirituality

5

http://www.franciscansfo.org/fe/heinrichs.
html.

6

Ibid.

in Singac, New Jersey. He was later Pastor at St. Stephen’s in Croghan, New
York, and St. Bonaventure’s, Paterson, New Jersey. Father Leo’s parishioners
knew him as a compassionate, cheerful priest. During a smallpox epidemic
while he was Pastor at Paterson, Father Leo selflessly spent many hours at a
nearby ‘pest house’ ministering to the sick and the dying.”5
On September 23, 1907, Father Leo arrived at the St. Elizabeth of Hungary
Roman Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado. According to Deacon William
Joyce, “Soon the poor of Denver learned that they had a friend in the Pastor
of St. Elizabeth’s, and every morning a line formed at the Friary gate. No one
went away without food and a kind word. Father Leo received permission
to return to Germany to visit his family after an absence of over twenty-one
years; but he decided to postpone his journey until after June 7, 1908, when
he planned to give First Communion to a class of seventy children. Death
interrupted Father Leo’s plans.”6

Martyr
Giuseppe Alia would later recall that his hatred for the Catholic Church
dated from Easter Sunday, 1895. After hearing the parish priest in his native
village of Avola denouncing Anarchism from the pulpit, Alia had ceased
practicing his religion. When he began preaching militant Atheism, Alia’s
wife and three children had separated from him. In subsequent statements
to the Denver police, Alia repeatedly expressed a belief that the Catholic
priesthood was responsible for the breakup of his family.
In 1906, Alia had emigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he
purchased an American-made Bulldog revolver. After a series of quarrels
with Argentine Catholics, Alia boarded a ship bound for New York, arriving
at Ellis Island on May 22, 1907. Over the months that followed, Alia had
drifted from city to city and job to job. At long last, he arrived in Denver,
Colorado.
On the morning of Sunday, February 23, 1908, Fr. Leo Heinrichs arranged
to offer the 6:00 a.m. Workmen’s Mass so that he could attend a meeting later
that morning.
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7

“Priest’s Slayer Has
Confessed,” Paterson
Morning Call, February 25,
1908, p. 1.

8

Santarelli, Life of the
Servant of God, p.
23.

9

Santarelli, Life of the
Servant of God, p.
25.

Giuseppe Alia later recalled, “On Saturday night I went early to bed, but
I got no rest because I thought always of this religious question, and the
priests—always the priests, who take money from the poor. Toward morning
I dozed a little and then the church bells woke me.
“I got up; dressed myself and put the revolver inside the band of my
trousers. The bell was still ringing and I followed the sound. I did not know
where the church was only for the bell. I went inside with the rest and I did
as they did.
“I opened my mouth as the others did and the priest placed something on
my tongue. It burned me and I jumped up, spat it out, and with my left hand
drew the revolver so, and when the priest turned toward me I fired and he
fell.”7
As Father Leo fell, Alia let out “a devilish howl,”8 and attempted to flee
the church. After a struggle over his revolver, Alia was overpowered on the
church steps by Daniel D. Cronin, an off-duty Denver police officer, and taken
to the city jail.
Meanwhile, the bullet fired by Alia’s revolver had entered the left ventricle
of Father Leo’s heart. As his life drained away, Father Leo was seen to pick
up two of the Eucharistic Hosts which had fallen from the ciborium. When
two fellow Franciscans arrived at the scene, Father Leo pointed to the fallen
Hosts which he was no longer able to pick up.
Moments later, Fr. Leo Heinrichs died, smiling, at the foot of the Blessed
Virgin’s altar. It was a firm belief among all those present that he had forgiven
his murderer.

Epilogue
The murder of Fr. Leo Heinrichs made headlines throughout the United
States. After St. Elizabeth’s Church was re-consecrated, thousands of people
attended his funeral, including the Governor of Colorado.
The last word is best left to Father Leo himself. Just a few days prior to
his murder, Father Leo had said the following words to his parish’s Marian
Sodality, “Oh, how sweet it is to die at the feet of the Virgin!”9
49

Christian Culture

Perspective
on Stained
Glass
by Zuzana Killam

On the first day of creation light came into
existence. “And God said, Let there be light: and
there was light. And God saw the light, that it
was good: and God divided the light from the
darkness.” Stained-glass art translates the beauty
of light for us, and through this very Christian art
form, we glorify God.

History of Stained-Glass Art
The Abbot Suger, the father of Gothic
architecture, filled his abbey church of St. Denis,
near Paris, with “the most radiant windows” to
“illumine men’s minds so that they may travel
through it (light) to an apprehension of God’s
light.”
The history of stained-glass art begins with
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the history of glass with the Egyptians and
Mesopotamians, the oldest known molded glass
ever found. Next the blowing iron was invented
in Babylon, but it was the Romans who adopted
it and mastered the skill of working with glass.
They learned that glass to which certain metallic
oxides have been added will absorb wavelengths
of certain colors and appear tinted. Both the
Romans and the Egyptians showed great skill in
the way they used metallic oxides as colorizers.
Very small differences in oxide content can
drastically affect the final color of the glass.
Copper was used to make green and ruby-red
glass; iron produced black, brown, and green;
antimony, yellow; manganese was employed
to make purple and amethyst glass. An opaque
white glass was made by using tin.
Romans attempted to make flat glass by

pouring slabs about one-half inch thick, but these
attempts failed. The glass lacked transparency
and only small panes of glass could be made
using this method. The Romans did not overcome
this limitation.
In fact glassmaking skills in Europe declined
after A.D. 200. For about a thousand years,
standards remained far below those of the
Romans. The range of articles, as well as the
quality of the material, was poor. The glass was of
inferior color and marred by streaks and bubbles.
The revival of glass making skills in Europe
emerged in Venice through trade contact with
the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). The
Venetians imported these skills from the east
and eventually redeveloped all the expertise of
the Romans. Venetian glass products and their
glass-making secrets were so much sought after
that regulations were passed forbidding the
emigration of workers. It wasn’t until the 16th
century that most of the secrets and all of the
manual skills of Venetian glass artisans had
leaked out. Glass of improving quality was being
produced all over Europe.
The art of cloisonné enamel, in which colors
were separated by thin metal strips, is believed
to have inspired stained glass in Byzantium. The
oldest complete stained glass windows in the
world, however, are in the Augsburg Cathedral
in Germany and were glazed in the 11th century.
Using smaller pieces of glass connected to one
another by strips of lead, these large windows
depicting the prophets were made. It was in the
12th century that large stained-glass windows
began to appear in the new Gothic churches all
over Europe.

Technique
The technique of making stained-glass
windows was first described between 1110 and
1140 by the monk Theophilus. He categorized the
process starting with the first step in which a
full-size line drawing of the window was painted
directly onto the top of a whitewashed table,
showing the division of the various color areas
into individual pieces of glass. Next, sheets of

glass of the selected colors were chosen, and
pieces were cracked away with a red hot iron
which was applied to an edge of the sheet of
glass, and a crack in the glass was started. This
crack could then be guided more or less in the
direction in which the iron was moved, resulting
in a piece of glass of the right shape. The glass
pieces were measured, allowing for a strip of lead
between the pieces to hold them together. The
details of the design were then painted onto the
glass wherever necessary with vitreous enamel,
and these pieces were fired in a kiln so that the
enamel was fused to the glass. Now the windows
were ready to be assembled.

In cross section, the grooved lead strips
looked like the letter H. A piece of glass could be
inserted in the grooves on either side of the lead
strip. The first piece of glass was set in a corner
between two corner leads. The next piece of glass
was then placed next to this and a lead cut that
went between them. This process was repeated
until the entire window was assembled. All the
leads were then soldered. The panel was then
waterproofed by rubbing a putty compound that
bound the glass in the groove in the lead. Now the
panel was ready for installation.
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Christian Culture
Cathedral Age
The Cathedral Age sprang from new affluence
where money showered the Church from kings
and nobility as well as merchants. The cathedral
became the symbol of wealthy, thriving towns.
They became the centers for religious and artistic
activity. They were centers of learning with
schools attached to them, and from these the first
universities evolved in the 12th century.
The Cathedral Age was the inaugural age for
stained glass. Soaring vertical planes were made
possible by the invention of the pointed Gothic
arch. With the engineering innovation of flying
buttresses which supported the vaulted height,
thinner walls and larger window were possible.
More light could enter the cathedral interior.

way images and designs were painted using glass
as a canvas, vitreous enamel as their paint, but
light as their real medium. No other art form uses
light so directly. The viewer has an unearthly
experience, a sense of seeing living forms. This
experience was magnified by the great contrast
of the dark interior of the 12th- and 13th-century
churches with the deep dark colors of the stained
glass. During the 14th and 15th centuries when
architectural innovations allowed churches to
open up to more light, brighter stained-glass
colors were used. The dark rubies and blues of
the earlier time could not be perceived in the
lighter interiors.

This is a practice piece for St. Francis Xavier, Jerseyville, Illinois.

Glass artist Sean Merchant works on drawings, i.e. cartoons, for a window to be
installed at St. Francis Xavier, Jerseyville, Illinois.

The art of stained glass reached its full
splendor in the 13th and 14th centuries. Many
of the colors were produced by the method of
fusing stains to the surface of the glass. In this
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In the Middle Ages the subject matter of
stained-glass art was taken from the Scriptures,
and the images not only told stories, but glorified
God, the saints, and the Church. The cruciform
formation of churches also resulted in four focal
points in four different directions with exposure
to sunlight in different ways depending on the

time of day. The eastern exposure was often
devoted to the resurrection. In Chartres, the west
was devoted to the Last Judgment. The subject
was not only determined by the clerics who
supplied the master glazier with a program, but
also by the donors who financed the project.

twig, tapping the underside of the score line, or
“nibbling” out small pieces in more difficult cuts.
Five hundred years ago studios were selfcontained entities. “Studios used to make their
own lead channels by melting the lead and
pouring this molten material into forms—but this
caused variations. Now variations are minimized
and consistency is maximized,” Krol says. Glass
also used to be made in the studios with each
sheet having a unique variation in colors. Today
stained glass is made in about seven companies
in the U.S. and about four companies in Europe,
mostly by machine, but some using the original
mouth-blown techniques.

Oculus from Central Christian dome in Jacksonville, Illinois, being restored at the
JAG studio in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Today
The process of making stained glass remains
remarkably the same today as it was when
first described by Abbot Suger 900 years ago.
The main difference, says stained-glass expert
John Krol, owner and founder of Jacksonville
Art Glass, is that there is greater accuracy and
uniformity in process with new technologies such
as the electric kiln and chemical analysis using
spectrophotometers. Today, a carbide wheel
cutter is used to produce a fracture in a sheet
of glass along a pre-determined line. Once the
sheet has been lightly scored, a controlled break
is achieved by “snapping” the glass, much like a

A window from White Hall United Methodist Church in White Hall, Illinois, being
reassembled at the JAG studio.

Advances in colors and enamel painting on
the glass took place over the centuries, but the
basic formula for painting stained-glass images
and designs remained the same to this day.
“The chemical composition of colors is more
53

Christian Culture
accurate,” says Sean Merchant, stained-glass
painter at Jacksonville Art Glass. “Vitreous
paints are composed of chemical substances
that actually have glass in them. When this is
painted on glass and fired, it fuses to the glass in
a permanent bond,” Merchant says.
Merchant studied under the acknowledged
master craftsman and glass artist David Millard
of New Hampshire, who only recently died, but
not before teaching his craft to young artists.
Merchant uses only ox and boar hair brushes
when painting because, he says, the quality of the
filament is unmatched by synthetic materials.
In modern times artists have continued to
explore the unique qualities of stained glass—
the special refractory properties of opal-flashed
antique glass, the graphic potentialities of the
lead line, the bold effects of texture and relief
that had become possible with slab glass and
concrete—and to create a whole gamut of
strange, brooding color harmonies the like of
which had not been seen in stained glass since
the 12th century.
Louis Comfort Tiffany of the early 20th
century used stained glass in both religious and
secular ways, depicting bunches of wisteria or
vines laden with fruit as in the Heckscher House
window. Actual folded glass adds to the illusion
of robes in Tiffany’s depictions of the angels
and saints at the First Presbyterian Church in
Springfield, Illinois. Instead of painting robes
and wings, Tiffany used the hand-formed glass
that cooled in folds and then softened the look by
layering the glass several pieces thick. The glass
was made in his studio.
Glass art has also been revolutionized with
digital imagery. At the Jerseyville United
Methodist Church, in Jerseyville, Illinois,
parishioners are welcomed into the interior
by a luminescent image of a dove with wings
outstretched against a background of the sunrise
that spans the width of the sanctuary. “This is a
completely new process that is remarkable in the
amount of detail and brilliant color seen in these
digital images,” says John Krol, whose studio,
Jacksonville Art Glass, designed and created the
piece.

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No Longer Didactic
Although the difference in the technologies
of traditional stained-glass imagery and digital
imagery is clear, the greatest change may be
in the subject matter of modern stained glass.
In the 20th century, the stained glass used in
churches is no longer didactic, i.e. teaching about
Scripture and Christianity, but is used as a means
to create an atmosphere. The depiction of the
white dove to create an emotional response is a
perfect example.
As society changes with the changing attitudes
of the world, art changes, says Krol. “The chang­
ing of tradition allows a freedom of art; less
confined and more open to human experience.
It’s why the more modern windows reflect less of
historic value as far as figures and symbols, and
more of an expression of an idea,” Krol says.
“The traditional Catholic Church is set by
parameters set by the divine creator,” says Krol.
“Art therefore becomes less human expression
as it is a search for divine expression. This keeps
it tightly bound by the traditions of the Church,
which itself is disciplined by its founder and its
apostolic succession.”
For this reason Krol values restoring the
older, historical windows. “In restoring an old
window it’s within an older structure and older
congregation and deeper history. Most churches
choose to preserve their history,” Krol says. “A
new window affects a new architecture which
defines a new attitude in the congregation. This
new attitude is more influenced by the changing
world,” Krol states.
And the world is changing. Stained glass
is an art form that, because of its radiance,
will continue to uplift our spirits whether the
subject matter is traditional or modern. This
art is a legacy that we have inherited from the
Catholic Church. So many of our traditions have
been undervalued and neglected. Studios like
Jacksonville Art Glass have a vital function
in restoring the old for future generations to
understand the importance of our history. Those
who work at restoring our Church and valuing
our legacy are truly doing God’s work.

14 CDs – STK# 8558 – $59.95

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these 14 talks examine the foundations and history of the papacy, considering it also from its doctrinal and cultural perspectives.
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For the low price of only $59.95 you will receive all of the following talks:

– The Church: Heir of the Roman Empire (Dr. John Rao)
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(Bp. Fellay)

– St. Catherine of Siena (Mr. Christopher Check)

– The Pontificate of Pope Pius XII (Mr. Andrew Clarendon)

– The Great Western Schism & the Lesson for Today (Fr.

– The Question of Collegiality (Fr. Albert, O.P.)

Iscara)
– The History of Papal Infallibility (Mr. Joshua Hayes)
– St. Pius X: History and Biography (Dr. John Rao)

– Is Sedevacantism an Option? A Debate (Frs. Themann and
Rutledge)
– Conclusion (Fr. Arnaud Rostand)

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Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

Christian Culture

St. John the Baptist

Innocence
and
Penitence
by Fr. Emanuel Herkel, SSPX

“Among those born of women there has not
risen a greater than John the Baptist.”
—Matt. 11:11
“The time is near! Are you ready to welcome
the Saviour?” The voice was loud and clear,
carrying over the water to the crowd along the
shore. “How can you serve both God and the
devil? Repent! Come out into the river and be
washed clean of your sins.”
Many men and women had been standing on
the bank of the Jordan River all day. They had
never heard a man speak like this. Surely this
man, John, son of Zachary, was a prophet. He was
like the ancient prophet Elias who called the Jews
to return to the worship of the true God. Now his
call to them was personal. The more devout rose
up and waded into the water; the less devout,
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inspired by this good example, followed after.
With tears and cries they made public confession
of their sins. John walked among them, washing
them with the river water.
At sunset the crowds went home. Some of them
had to walk for hours, but they did so with joy in
their hearts. They told their friends about their
experience, and new crowds gathered on the next
morning. A small group of young men stayed with
John. They were so enthusiastic that they wanted
to share the preacher’s life. It was a rough life,
with little food or shelter. John lived in a cave
or slept under the stars. He ate what he found in
the wilderness, even insects (with a bit of honey
they were palatable). Two of the most faithful
disciples were Andrew and his cousin John. As
a distinction, the master was called John the
Baptist, even though the disciples began to help

him baptize (i.e. wash the crowds).
Not everyone was inspired by the Baptist. The
priests and Pharisees from Jerusalem whispered
that he was a fraud. The public confessions were
a scandal. Sins should be told in private to the
priests, and then a sacrifice should be offered
in the Temple. That was the Law of Moses.
Baptism had no legal value. These criticisms were
whispered, but when the boldest Pharisees went
out to confront John, they found no strength to
speak. Instead, they were publicly insulted: John
called them vipers and rotten trees that would be
cut down and thrown into the fire!

going before the Lord….You will make known to
His people the salvation that is to release them
from their sins.” The elderly parents had lived
long enough to teach their son about his mission.
When they died, John had gone off into the
desert, to pray and do penance for the sins of his
people.
John the Baptist probably did not explain
the whole story. He had met the Messias, once,
before he was born. The pregnant Mother of God
had come to visit his pregnant mother, and John
had leaped for joy in his mother’s womb. At that
moment he had been purified from Original Sin and

A Voice Crying in
the Wilderness
The crowds cheered! It was well known that
the priests were not pious, and the Pharisees
were an arrogant bunch. The rumor started that
John the Baptist was himself the Saviour. As John
and his disciples baptized, they were forming
an army of zealots. Soon he would have enough
followers to start a rebellion. God would bless
the upright Jews with victory and the Scriptures
would be fulfilled with the Messias reigning from
sea to sea.
John did his best to put a stop to such ideas.
He told the crowds that he was not the Messias.
He was only a voice, crying in the wilderness,
preparing a way for the great man who would
soon come. In private, he told his close disciples
the story of his life. His parents, Zachary and
Elizabeth, had long prayed for a child. At last,
in their old age, the angel Gabriel appeared to
Zachary in the Temple and foretold the birth of
a son, whom he would name John. The miracles
associated with John’s birth were known to the
old farmers of the hill country of Judea. Zachary
had doubted the angel, and so he had been struck
dumb. He could not speak until the eighth day
after his son’s birth, when he wrote on a tablet
that the child would be named John. The first
words out of Zachary’s mouth were the praises of
God and a prophecy about the child: “Blessed be
the Lord, the God of Israel….And you, my child
will be known for a prophet of the most High,

received the special grace to avoid sin all his life.
Now John lived in hope. The Saviour was
alive, somewhere among these crowds that did
not know Him. The mission of the Baptist was
clear. He was preparing a way for grace to enter
the souls of men, so that they would welcome
the Messias when He appeared. Every day John’s
eyes searched the crowds, seeking for the
57

Christian Culture
promised One.
When Jesus approached, He was not
immediately recognized. He stood among the
crowds and waited until the end of the day. At
last, when John was alone, Jesus went up to him
and asked for Baptism. Somehow John knew
this was the One. He knelt in the river in front of
Jesus and said: “No, Lord, I ought to be baptized
by Thee.” Jesus answered him: “Those who are
clean do not need to wash. We have no sins to
confess, but let us do this My way.” So John
poured the water on the head of Jesus, and Jesus
sanctified the water for use in a more perfect
kind of Baptism.
As Jesus stood up, the heavens opened, and
John saw a dove coming down from the sky.
Above his head a great voice spoke: “This is
My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
John bowed low before this manifestation of
the Trinity. When he arose, Jesus was far away,
walking not towards the city, but out into the
desert.
It was forty days later when Jesus returned.
John had waited near the same bend in the river
all this time. He had no reason to visit other
regions. He knew that his most important work
was to send the people to Christ. Jesus did not
speak to the Baptist again, but as Jesus crossed
the river, John shouted out to the crowds:
“Behold the Lamb of God!” Most people did not
recognize Jesus, but when Andrew and his cousin
John asked the Baptist, they were told: “Follow
Him. He must increase and I must decrease.”
Soon after this Jesus also began to preach and
to baptize. John tried to send his followers to our
Lord.
In those early days, when Jesus was mostly
unknown, King Herod came himself to see the
wild preacher by the river. Herod thought it might
be good fun to listen to the public confessions of
his subjects. He brought his courtiers along to
laugh with him. But the words of the Baptist did
not cause any laughter. John was deadly serious
as he climbed up the river bank and accused
the King of adultery. The charge was true and
everyone knew it, but no one else would say it.
John, the last prophet, spoke the words of truth.
For that he was arrested and thrown into a
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November - December 2012

dungeon. His death as a martyr soon followed.

Why We Praise the Baptist
Our Lord now became popular. Most of John’s
converts accepted Jesus as John’s successor.
It was the hard work of our Lord to convince
them to accept Him as someone greater. When
the disciples of John came to Jesus, He taught
them about sanctity in general and the sanctity
of John in particular. Sanctity is not only a work
of God giving graces, it is also a human work of
individual men and women living lives pleasing to
God. There are two sorts of holy lives: some are
the saints who lived in innocence, hardly, if ever,
committing a sin; others, the great majority, I am
afraid, have sinned often and grievously. God,
in His mercy, has pardoned them and allowed
them to return to the state of grace. Thus it is
necessary for the great majority to make amends
by penance.
John the Baptist possessed both of these
qualities. “What went you out into the desert to
see? Was it a reed shaken with the wind? Was it
a man who sways at the blast of every passion?”
No! John was firm against temptations. “What
went you out to see? Was it a man clothed in soft
garments, such as are found in the houses of
kings?” No! John was not wearing fancy clothes.
He wore rough camel’s hair, as a penance. “So,
was he a prophet?” Yes! More than a prophet!
For the other prophets had wives, children, and
homes; but here was one whose life was totally
given to God. He was more than a prophet, for a
prophet’s function was to announce the coming
of the Messias from afar; John’s duty was to point
a finger at Jesus and say: “There He is! He will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Fr. Herkel was born in British Columbia, Canada, and
graduated from boarding high school at St. Mary’s, Kansas,
in 1992. He studied for the priesthood at St. Thomas Aquinas
Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, and was ordained in 2001.
Since then he has been stationed in Canada. He is currently
stationed at Immaculate Heart of Mary Priory in Calgary,
Alberta.

Ten ways to improve

The
Catholicity
of Your
Marriage
by Michael J. Rayes

Bishop Fulton Sheen once wrote that marriage
is a combination of physical, emotional, and
spiritual love. He developed these ideas from
classical Greek thought, which taught four ways
to love: familial, physical, affectionate, and
spiritual. Three of the ways are natural. Indeed,
there are already plenty of articles on physical
love and improving affection and communication
in marriage.
That leaves spiritual love. How do you improve
spiritual love in your own marriage? Spirituality,
after all, can be hard to measure. You can’t touch
it. Over time, you can look back and realize that
you and your spouse may have greater spiritual
maturity than before, but how did you get there?
Here are ten specific ways to improve the
Catholicity, and thus spiritual love, in your own
marriage. Some of these ideas cost money;

others are free, but they all involve an investment
of time with huge spiritual returns. The ten
ideas are generally listed from lesser to greater
spiritual intensity.

10. Read the same
Catholic book.
You can either get two copies, or just take
turns reading it. Then, schedule time to get
together and discuss the book. This will involve
listening to each other without interrupting. Your
discussion should also allow your spouse to state
what he or she thinks of the author’s ideas and
to ask questions. This does two things: increases
your Catholic knowledge and improves your
marital communication skills.
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Christian Culture
9. Visit a mission or some other
Catholic landmark as a family.

6. Choose a “virtue of the
month” for your family.

This requires some planning. Is there an old
mission church or some other Catholic landmark
within a day’s turnaround trip? Or do you want
to make it part of a family vacation? Perhaps
it could be as simple as visiting an old church
building downtown and viewing the original
architecture and statuary. The point is to go
somewhere as a couple, and hopefully with the
kids, to expand your Catholic way of life and have
a renewed appreciation for your holy Faith.

Every month, choose a virtue for your family
to practice. These do not have to be the most
important ones all the time. Otherwise, you’ll
always do patience, patience, patience, month
after month. Our family is practicing docility
for the month of December. You might choose
magnanimity or courage. The important thing is
that the father chooses the virtue and the whole
family practices it for a month. This focus on one
virtue will increase all the virtues in your soul.
Spirituality does not neatly compartmentalize
itself: When anything is practiced out of love for
God and neighbor, the soul is thereby refined and
grows in love, grace, and virtues. God is never
outdone in generosity.

8. Share something inherited.
This can be an old family Bible, an old
Missal, heirloom statuary or even fine china, or
anything that reminds you of the continuity of
family life. If you didn’t inherit anything, buy
something valuable and timeless to hand on to
future generations. This earthly inheritance can
help strengthen the roots of your marriage by
reminding you that your own family now holds
the family heirloom. Marital strife is temporal,
but your family life goes from generation to
generation, just the way God intended it.

7. Get a first-class relic.
This can be from the saint whose feast day
is your wedding anniversary date. You might
consider getting a namesake relic for everyone
in your family, holding the children’s relics until
they reach adulthood, of course. You might also
consider reading about the saint of your wedding
anniversary and invoking him or her every week
together with your spouse.
Catholicism involves both the “visible” and
“invisible,” as the Nicene Creed states. Relics and
other sacramentals in your house pull together
the material and spiritual to help you obtain
graces from Heaven.

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5. Lead nighttime
prayers as a family.
Gather the family together for a few prayers.
You might always include a short examination of
conscience as part of your night prayers. These
prayers do not take a lot of time; probably no
more than five or ten minutes at the most. It’s the
last thing before the kids go to bed. When your
spouse sees the consistency of your devotion to
God, it instills trust and confidence. When your
children grow up with this consistent devotion,
they learn that they always have to answer to
God, every night.

4. Do the Sacred Heart
enthronement.
This is a formal enthronement ceremony
conducted by a priest inside your home. The
priest will read prayers of enthronement before
an image of our Lord’s Sacred Heart displayed
prominently in your house. You’ll want to
schedule this enthronement with your pastor. You
may also want to invite family and friends and
then have a celebratory evening together after the
enthronement. Some families combine the event

with a house blessing. It is usually advised to do
a new enthronement and house blessing every
time you move. There is also the annual Epiphany
blessing of a home. This is another opportunity
for your pastor or another good, traditionalist
priest to make a pastoral visit and strengthen the
spiritual bonds of your marriage and family life.

3. Spend more time together
in prayer as a couple.
Prayer is supposed to be the foundation of
marriage. The angel Raphael stated this forcefully
and clearly in Tobias 6:18. Prayers as a family
are essential, but prayer together as a couple is
critical. It’s hard to remain angry with a person
who is praying a string of Hail Marys right next
to you. Remember the priorities of life: Marital
strife is always temporal, the marriage itself is
permanent until death, but the sacramental grace
gained from it is eternal. Today, a lifetime, and
forever: Couple prayer gets you through.
The important thing is that the couple spend
some time in prayer every day, or at least several
times a week. These can be spontaneous, formal,
planned, informal, or a combination. If you are
not accustomed to praying with only your spouse,
it will seem awkward at first. But the discomfort
will pass, and trust will take its place. Another
thing to remember is to pray WITH your spouse,
not against him or her. Ask that God’s will be
done, and do not use prayer time as a weapon
(“…and please help her get the dishes done
on time. Amen”). Prayer is a letting go and
surrendering your relationship to God the Holy
Ghost, who is the bond of your relationship, as
Bishop Sheen put it so well in his book, Three to
Get Married.

2. Make a visit to the
tabernacle as a couple.
You may already have a weekly date planned.
Even if it is running errands together with
your spouse, take a few minutes to stop and
pay a visit to our Eucharistic Lord. This can be

spontaneous, informal, and without coinciding
with a scheduled adoration. Visit our Lord in the
tabernacle, kneeling in the quiet of the church
next to your spouse, and ask God to bless your
relationship.
What you ask for doesn’t matter as much
as simply kneeling next to each other in the
presence of God. That is the point. This is
probably the most direct way to re-orient your
relationship exactly where it belongs: In front of
God Himself.

1. Offer Mass for each other.
When you attend the same Mass with
your spouse, or even separate Masses due to
circumstances, you can receive particular graces
for your marriage because of the spiritual unity
with your spouse. The important point is to
offer Mass for your spouse. One of the primary
purposes of marriage is to get each other to
Heaven. By offering your Mass intention for your
spouse, you orient the sacrament of Matrimony
back to God, the source of your sacramental
grace.
Remember to make your Mass offering for your
spouse as a person, and not only as a petition
to solve particular temporal problems in your
marriage. You’ll offer plenty of Masses for those
intentions as well, but the point is to make a Mass
intention specifically for your spouse. An entire
Mass offered just for that person: This is true
charity practiced in holy Matrimony. Remember
your spouse when you receive our Lord in Holy
Communion as well.
Readers will no doubt think of other ways to
improve the Catholicity of their marriages, as
the scope of this article allowed for only so much
discussion. Take what you learned, as well as
other ways that may come to mind, and you can
help your relationship grow into the abundant,
loving bond that God intended it to be.
Michael J. Rayes is a lifelong Catholic, a husband,
and father of seven. He has been published by
Rafka Press, Latin Mass Magazine, and others.

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Confirmation
The olive oil indicates the Holy Ghost. Why so?
Because there is something amazing. A similarity
between the way the Holy Ghost is acting with us
and the oil. If you put some oil on your skin, the
oil will very, very smoothly penetrate your skin.
And so does the Holy Ghost penetrate, enter in our
soul very smoothly. We don’t notice it. He is there!
This oil is ready to regenerate our souls, is ready
to strengthen them. The Holy Ghost gives us the
strength to be faithful, to keep the faith and to live
according to it.
The oil gives light and warmth. So, when the Holy
Ghost comes in us, He gives us the light of truth
and the warmth of charity.
That’s the exterior, the sign!
Bishop Fellay, sermon on the occasion of Confirmations, Calgary, December 27, 2012

Questions and Answers

by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

Can God lead us into
temptation?
This question derives from the translation of
the prayer of the Our Father in English, namely
“Lead us not into temptation.” How could we say
that God leads us into temptation?
This expression in the Our Father in English
is a literal translation of the Latin of the Vulgate,
“Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.” In his
commentary on the Pater, St. Thomas Aquinas
has this to say about it: “In the preceding petition
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Christ taught us to pray for the forgiveness of
sins, but in this one he teaches us to beseech that
we might be able to avoid sins, that is to say that
we might not be drawn into temptation, through
which we fall into sins” (§76).
However, this does not resolve the problem as
to why the text is in the second person singular,
which leads one to suppose that it is God who is
doing the tempting.
There are in fact two kinds of temptation to
which man is subject. The first kind exists when
a man’s virtue is tried or proven to see if he will

do good. In this way, we try our fellow man if we
make him pass a test, or if a superior or novice
master wants to test the spirit of mortification
of his novices, or if a future spouse wants to see
how his future spouse practices self-sacrifice. In
this way, God likewise can test or try a person,
just as He tested Abraham, asking him to
sacrifice Isaac, and just as He tested the patience
of Job and of Tobias. In this way God tests us not
infrequently, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out:
“And so God often sends tribulations on the just,
that when they bear them patiently, their virtue
may appear and they might progress in that
virtue, as is mentioned in Dt. 13:3: ‘The Lord your
God trieth you, that it may appear whether you
love Him with all your heart, and with all your
soul, or not’ ” (Commentary on the Pater, §79).
However, this is not the usual sense of our
prayer that God not allow us to be drawn into
temptation. The other meaning of temptation
is called the temptation of seduction, in which
man is incited to evil, to commit sin. This is
temptation as is generally understood, and we
are subject to such temptations from the world,
the flesh (our fallen human nature), and the devil.
In this way, no man is tempted by God, for He
cannot in any way will or draw man to evil. This
is clearly stated by St. James: “Let no man, when
he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For
God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no
man” (1:13).
However, although God cannot directly
induce a man into evil, He can, in his all-wise
Providence, permit such temptations to come
upon us, while at the same time giving us the
strength to overcome. Hence the importance of
our prayer that God will give us the supernatural
help to guarantee our victory over the world, the
flesh, and the devil. It is in this sense that we pray
that God not allow us to be led into temptation,
or as it is translated in French, “ne nous laissez
pas succomber à la tentation,” that is “do not
allow us to give way to temptation.” Our faith
in God’s Providence in giving us all the help we
need, so that it is never His fault, and always our
own, when we fall into temptation, is contained
in this text of St. Paul: “God is faithful, who will
not suffer you to be tempted above that which

you are able: but will make also with temptation
issue, that you may be able to bear it” (I Cor.
10:13).

How did the Holy
Innocents go to heaven?
The Holy Innocents, being honored by the
Church as saints, must be in heaven. But how
could they get there, given that they neither
received the sacrament of baptism nor were
capable of baptism of desire?
Two responses are given to this question
by Catholic Tradition. The first concerns
the sacraments of the Old Law, of which
Circumcision was the most important. There is
a clear difference between the sacraments of
the Old Law and those of the New Law, as the
first could not give grace by their own power,
but simply as a protestation of faith in Christ’s
passion, which justified them. All the Catholic
authors accept that as such it bestowed grace
upon infants who were circumcised in the Jewish
rite before Christ’s Passion, of which it was a
symbol. Consequently, there can be no doubt that
the Holy Innocents were purified from original
sin and in the state of sanctifying grace at the
time of their murder by Herod, since all were
circumcised and under the age of two years, and
hence under the age of reason.
However, if the Catholic Church has honored
these Holy Innocents in all the rites during
the Octave of Christmas since at least the
fifth century, it is not just because they were
circumcised. It is because it considers them
as martyrs, having died not by will, but by
blood, and having died not only for Christ, but
actually in His place. It is inconceivable that
Almighty God would not have given them an
extraordinary grace at that very moment of their
martyrdom, which is why we celebrate their feast
as saints. Allow me to quote from the Catholic
Encyclopedia, under “Holy Innocents,”
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Questions and Answers
which in turn quotes St. Augustine: “The Church
venerates these children as martyrs ( flores
martyrum—the flowers of the martyrs); they are
the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of
persecution; they died not only for Christ, but in
his stead.”
The prayers of the traditional Roman Breviary
express this faith in the martyrdom of the Holy
Innocents. Take, for example, this verse from the
hymn at Lauds:
All hail! Ye infant martyr flowers
Cut off in life’s first dawning hours,
As rosebuds snapt in tempest strife
When Herod sought your Savior’s life.
Nevertheless, it is certainly true that the Holy
Innocents could not immediately enter heaven
when they were slaughtered. The gates of heaven
were to remain closed for another thirty-three
years until the Passion, and so they were to wait
in Abraham’s bosom, in the limbo of the Fathers,
before being delivered therefrom by Christ’s
death on the Cross. In this they differ from the
martyrs that followed Christ, and this used to
be expressed in the liturgy by the use of violet
vestments for their feast. But this takes nothing
away from the special grace they received, nor
their special sanctity by identification with
Christ.
Let us conclude with this text from St.
Augustine, incorporated into the Second
Nocturn of Matins: “In full right do we celebrate
the heavenly birthday of these children whom
the world caused to be born unto an eternally
blessed life rather than that from their mother’s
womb, for they attained the grace of everlasting
life before the enjoyment of the present.”

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Would it be sinful to omit the
meal prayers in public and at
work among non-Catholics?
Those who raise such questions may recall the
reaction of little John Vianney, the future Curé of
Ars, who, when at table with a beggar who omitted
his grace, left the table and spent the night fasting.
When asked about his behavior by his parents, he
simply said that he could not get himself to eat
when someone who was behaving like beast of
burden! This story reminds us that saying meal
prayers is a holy custom among Catholics. Our
Lord often blessed the bread and broke it in such
a singular and religious fashion that it gave his
identity away to the disciples of Emmaus.
However, what is to be thought of those
who leave prayers off in public and among non
Catholics? By way of principle we may advance
that there is no formal precept about meal
prayers anywhere in the teaching of Christ or of
the Church. And if there is not commandment
to say them, there is no sin in omitting them.
Such omission does not always mean that one’s
faith is growing cold either and that one is being
negligent in saying his prayers.
Are we dealing here with a case of
dissimulation of the faith? There could be times
indeed where the very fact of openly making the
sign of the cross would start a fight among the
workers and begin the litanies of ‘holy-rollies’,
slightly mocking our religion. This alone would
be a sufficient reason to omit saying grace openly,
and one might be content with saying it mentally.
But by and large, the question of saying or
omitting meal prayers at a gathering with non
Catholics is more a matter of noble courage vs.
human respect. Oftener than not, especially at
the restaurant where people are busy enough
to not worry about downgrading the religion of
other customers, the fact of saying meal prayers
as a family will easily inspire respect from the
witnesses and the waiters. And this can easily
start an interesting conversation on the faith.

Church and World
An Interview with Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: “We’re back to square one”
An interview with Fr. Niklaus Pfluger, First
Assistant General of the Society of St. Pius X, on
the present situation of the Society.
Kirchliche Umschau: Just a few months
ago, the Vatican seemed to be on the verge of
granting canonical recognition to the Society. It
seems now that all efforts were in vain. Bishop
Müller, the new Prefect of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith,
suggested as much in
several recent interviews.
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger:
All efforts were not in
vain, but an agreement
in the near future is
improbable. In both
our estimation and
that of the Curia, any
agreement would be
pointless unless we are
on the same page about
what the Faith really
means. This common
understanding was to be
expressed in a “doctrinal
declaration,” which we
took ample time in drawing up, and in April
2012, Bishop Fellay, our Superior General,
presented a preliminary, informal draft. But, to
our great surprise, this text was rejected by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. So we
are back to square one.
Kirchliche Umschau: How do you account for
Rome’s change of direction?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: In Rome there is a group
strongly opposed to a canonical regularization
for the Society. Such an official recognition
would in effect be a sign that the post-Vatican
II era is outdated and that a new chapter has
begun. Of course, this would not suit the agenda
of the Council’s supporters. For them, official
recognition of the Society of St. Pius X would be
not merely an insult, but also a questioning of the
Council’s status, therefore a collapse. It appears
that the Council’s adherents prevailed.

Kirchliche Umschau: Do you think that there
could be a new development?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Not just think—I
know! The facts are what they are. The Church
everywhere in the world, with some rare
exceptions, is undergoing a process of selfdestruction, and not just in Europe. In Latin
America, for example, things don’t seem to be any
better. Where the economy is relatively strong, as

in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States,
the external structures remain. But the loss of
the Faith can be seen everywhere. Now, without
the Faith, there is no Church. In Germany, the
bishops recently sent a clear message: the right
to collect taxes from Church members is more
important than 120,000 Catholics leaving the
Church every year. We are witnessing a march
to destruction unseen in history, a rising tide
which not even the bishops can stem, using,
as they do, tactics devoid of the spirit of faith.
Joseph Ratzinger, as a Council Father 50 years
ago, spoke of a Church “imbued with the spirit of
paganism,” which the Council did its part to usher
in. I am convinced that this turn of events, on the
one hand, will bring the bishops to a more sober
frame of mind, and, on the other hand, will leave
only the conservatives holding fast, meaning
those who quite simply wish to believe as the
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Church and World
Church has always believed, and to persevere in
their Catholic Faith. With those holding fast, we
will no longer need to argue. Agreement in the
Faith will soon follow.
Kirchliche Umschau: You are insinuating
that the tide of self-destruction will engulf liberal
Catholics. But the liberals see things differently.
They want even more reforms to assure the
survival of the living Church.
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: I am inventing nothing.
I see events and where they lead. Which religious
orders or dioceses have younger members to
ensure their future growth, and which ones
are dying out? We can observe that decline and
dissolution are most apparent in those places
where the so-called conciliar reforms are most
eagerly followed. I don’t deny that, in the arena
of public opinion—and on the parish level—the
liberal approach is more acceptable. But the
Church does not live by social acceptance or by
human applause. She derives her energy from
men and women who believe and practice their
Faith, who are prepared to renounce worldly
pleasures to become priests, monks, or nuns.
These latter are conspicuously absent among
the liberals, and that is why they now want to
receive priestly ordination, but of course without
celibacy, with­out any self-denial. And they
naively expect to increase their vocations by
lowering the standards!
Kirchliche Umschau: Do you foresee a new
excommunication of the Society’s bishops, or
even of the whole Society?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: There are many who
might welcome a new excommunication,
but during this pope’s reign, it seems highly
improbable. How would they justify it? There
is no “traditional heresy.” We do not belong
to the sedevacantists. We fully accept that
the assistance of the Holy Ghost is granted
to the pope and the bishops. But from Rome’s
standpoint, the Society was pronounced guilty of
“disobedience” even when the excommunications
from 1988 were later withdrawn. How would
they justify new ecclesiastical penalties? For
refusing the Council? In the Credo none of the
articles state: “I believe in the Second Vatican
Council”! The imposing reality of the facts just
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mentioned should be more important than the
discussions. We find today a new generation of
young priests who slowly but surely discover the
old Mass, and through it, the Catholic Faith in
its entirety, and the authentic priesthood. But in
many cases we find young Catholics interested in
the Faith who nearly always discover it outside
of their parishes. These honest souls are very
impressed by traditional doctrine and worship,
even if they still attend the New Mass. They
observe the Society, follow it with interest, seek
to contact us, ask for our publications, and stay
in communication with us. The same holds for
the “Ecclesia Dei” communities, and for diocesan
priests, who, thanks to the Motu Proprio of 2007,
have begun to celebrate the Tridentine Mass.
We are more than just a Society with almost 600
priests; our influence is deeply felt in the Church,
and particularly in those circles which have a
future. If the Romans want to save face, they will
wisely avoid an excommunication which they will
soon have to revoke.
Kirchliche Umschau: So there is still a
chance to regularize the Society, but it seems that
the bottom line is to “recognize the Council.”
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Of course we recognize
that there was a Second Vatican Council.
Archbishop Lefebvre himself was a Council
Father. Nonetheless, we must admit that not
only the post-conciliar reforms, but also certain
texts of the Council itself are in contradiction
with important doctrines already defined by the
Church. Certain ambiguities and novelties are at
the heart of the present dissolution taking place
within the Church. For Rome, it is unacceptable
that we speak of “the errors of the Council.”
You see, we criticized the Council while it was
everywhere being celebrated and when the
Church enjoyed a deeper faith and vitality than
it does today. Why would we suddenly make an
about-face, when our warnings and criticisms
have been vindicated over time? The sad reality
is that, 50 years after the Council, Archbishop
Lefebvre’s predictions were far from exaggerated.
In the 1970s, due to the enthusiasm and naive
optimism of the moment, nobody could have
imagined that the Catholic bishops would rally
in favor of homosexuality, the propagation of

Islam, and the dissolution of marriage, which
unfortunately is now the order of the day! The
Vatican is faced with the ruins of the Church,
which was at one time so beautiful and strong.
But now there is no true renewal, no relief in
sight. A realistic evaluation of new charismatic
communities, which were extolled in the last
decades as signs of vitality, should serve instead
as warning signs. I don’t understand why there
hasn’t been an honest and thorough investigation
of the causes of the present situation in the
Church. The Church is destroying herself, and
silencing all discussion of the problem will not
make the problem go away. Pretending that the
Council is not to blame for the post-conciliar
crisis is burying one’s head in the sand.
Kirchliche Umschau: Since you seem so
little disposed to compromise, why do you still
hold discussions with the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Because the pope
and Rome are realities inseparable from the
Faith. The loss of faith in
the Church’s structures—a
loss of faith from which we
have been spared, thanks be
to God—is only one aspect
of the crisis in the Church.
For our part, we suffer also
from a defect: the fact of our
canonical irregularity. The
status of the post-conciliar
Church is imperfect, nor is
our status the ideal.
Kirchliche Umschau: Are
you referring to members of
your community who refuse
the discussions with Rome?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Yes,
but they are few, very few.
The prolonged period of
separation has led certain
members to confusion
in theology. Deep down,
these persons set faith in
opposition to law, as if union
with the pope, the primacy of
the pope, were just a minor

question of law.
Separating the legitimacy of the pope from the
Faith, and reducing his legitimacy to a merely
juridical question, is a sign of great danger.
Finally, it comes from a Protestant view of the
Church. But the Church is visible. The papacy
belongs to the domain of Faith.
We ourselves, Catholics faithful to Tradition,
suffer from the crisis in two ways. We participate
in this crisis, albeit on a different and higher
level, as I see it. There is no denying the
obligation to take an active part in overcoming
the crisis. And this combat begins with us, by
desiring to overcome our abnormal canonical
status.
Kirchliche Umschau: So we are back to
square one. Why not just go along with Rome?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Because we cannot
exchange an imperfect status for one that is even
less perfect. Union with Rome is supposed to
be an improvement, not a mutilation. Having to
omit certain truths of the Faith, as well as being

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Church and World
forbidden to criticize various doubtful and liberal
positions: all this would be tantamount to a
mutilation. We will not go along with that.
Kirchliche Umschau: The General Chapter
was held in July. What position was taken by
members of the Chapter?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: We laid down six
guidelines to be met before any reunion with
Rome. These were so many touchstones which
restated the points to which we have always held
fast. Our position was reinforced once more.
Kirchliche Umschau: On the Internet,
there is a debate over this issue. Thundering
condemnations are hurled at the Society’s
leaders, who are accused of treason.
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: You are quoting Bishop
Williamson, who was excluded from the General
Chapter by the great majority of superiors. That
shows how strongly united we are.
Kirchliche Umschau: But you have a problem
of communication. Judging by certain forums
over the Internet, the situation couldn’t be worse.
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: It is true that the
Internet calls for, even requires, a new form of
communication. We are obliged—just as the
Vatican is—to go beyond the printed publications
in use until now. But surely there are simple souls
who are easily misled by sowers of discord, who
themselves are widely misinformed by what
they read on the Internet. Our priests appealed
to the faithful not to go on these discussion
sites, which are often very rude, and not to let
themselves be troubled and upset by the rumors
and maneuverings found on the Internet. We will
use the available means of communication from
now on, including the Internet.
Kirchliche Umschau: Certain groups have
targeted Bishop Fellay himself.
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Bishop Fellay has
certainly done more for the cause of Catholics
faithful to Tradition than all those who doubt
him, criticize him, and even accuse him of
treason. For several years, he has conducted
relations with Rome prudently and skillfully;
never did he act impulsively, nor did he let himself
be provoked or lose patience. Today we have
the Tridentine Mass available to any priest; we
have seen the lifting of the “excommunications”
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which were inveighed against us in 1988; we
have had the discussions on the problems of the
Council. And, as an Austrian bishop admits, we
have brought the Council back on the table for
debate. Thus, as a result, the Council is no longer
sacrosanct and its glory turns to dust. And all
this remains true notwithstanding the litany of
praises heaped on the Second Vatican Council by
the 50 year jubilee.
Our Superior General has accomplished a great
deal, because he persevered in the negotiations
and faithfully presented our theological positions.
On that score, I observe that he has only one aim
in view in this crisis of the Church, namely to
preserve the Faith and to serve the Church with
our whole heart.
Kirchliche Umschau: One question remains.
Why is it that Bishop Fellay seems to have done
nothing against the smear campaign mounted
against him these last few months over the
Internet?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Patience, kindness, and
generosity appear to many as weaknesses, but
this is not so. Faced with repeated attacks and
harassment over the Internet, we do not abandon
our values and our principles. We deal with
plotting and intrigues according to the laws of
the Church. This may seem like procrastination,
which can be annoying to some, but it can’t be
done any other way if we don’t want to betray our
own ideals. I would like to make this clear: let no
one imagine that he can criticize authority with
impunity.
Kirchliche Umschau: What does this mean
specifically?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: Bishop Williamson has
been given fair warning. This is a sad moment
in the history of our Society. If he continues his
Internet campaign against the Society and its
Superior General, then his expulsion from the
Society cannot be avoided. Besides his false
ideas, he has plotted under cover. The veritable
tragedy is the fact that for years he has not
accepted the authority of the Superior General,
but has assigned to himself a God-given mission.
Before the General Chapter, he rallied priests and
faithful to rebellion. For a Catholic bishop, this is
very serious.

Communiqué of the General
House of the Society of Saint
Pius X (October 24, 2012)
Bishop Richard Williamson, having distanced
himself from the management* and the
government of the SSPX for several years, and
refusing to show due respect and obedience to his
lawful superiors, was declared excluded from the
SSPX by decision of the Superior General and its
Council, on October 4, 2012. A final deadline had
been granted to him to declare his submission,
after which he announced the publication of an
“open letter” asking the Superior General to resign.
This painful decision has become necessary by
concern for the common good of the Society of
Saint Pius X and its good government, according
to what Archbishop Lefebvre denounced: “This is
the destruction of authority. How can authority
be exercised if it needs to ask all members to
participate in the exercise of authority?“ (Ecône,
October 3, 1987).
(Source: Menzingen, October 24, 2012)
*

The original text being in French, it must be noted that the
word “authority” translates better the French word “direction.”

Kirchliche Umschau: The Society’s purpose
is not limited to negotiations with Rome. What
other fields of apostolate do you envision?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: The West has lost the
Faith. One reason for this loss is the fact that
the Church is no longer presenting the Faith, no
longer brings it to the world. Modern churchmen
almost seem to be ashamed of their faith, which
is why they campaign for the defense of the
environment, the redistribution of wealth, and
aid to development. We cannot just wait for them
to come to their senses. We must be more active
in society, have a greater influence in public, and
rebuild Christendom with prudence, humility,
and charity. As Our Lord appealed to those of His
time: do not fear!

Kirchliche Umschau: Where do you see the
important challenges to face?
Fr. Niklaus Pfluger: We witness presently
a world-wide persecution of Christians in the
East. Our task is to draw our attention to our
persecuted brethren and to come to their aid.
The General Chapter’s Declaration made this
clear. In the Western countries, parents are
having fewer and fewer children because family
values are declining. The laws of the State pose
greater threats to the family, the building block
of society. One major task is aid to families.
We must give our support to large families, lest
they be marginalized by society at large. But
our primary duty remains—as re-emphasized
by the General Chapter’s Declaration in July—
the defense and preservation of the Faith, and
specifically the formation of truly Catholic
priests. That is the best way we can be of service
to the Church.
On the personal level, sanctification is
called for. Prayer, religious instruction, and the
distribution of the sacraments are one aspect; an
exemplary life and fraternal charity are the other
aspect. They go together. By accomplishing this
task, we help to save our own souls and those of
our neighbor. Yes, indeed, we have known such
moments where we have a real foretaste of the
harmony and happiness of heaven. Materialism,
atheism, coupled with false religions: all these are
standing more and more in the way of a healthy
Catholic life. We are speaking here of a decisive
mission for the Society: to help believers of good
will to keep the Faith in times of difficulty, and to
live that faith. This is our task at the present time,
and a magnificent and sublime one at that, if we
use our God-given talents to spread the fire of
divine love to the ends of the earth. This is only
possible through a deep and vibrant faith.
Kirchliche Umschau: Thank you for the
interview, Father.

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Church and World
Kenya: A Missionary Sister of Jesus and Mary Takes the Habit
On October 3, 2012, feast of St. Therese of the
Child Jesus, patroness of the missions, one of our
postulants received the religious habit and took
the name Sister Nicolas of Jesus. To her joy, many
of the young Swiss woman’s family members
were able to be present.
The ceremony was celebrated by Fr. Henry
Wuilloud, superior of the district of Switzerland
and the novice’s uncle. Fr. Philippe Pazat, the
Missionary Sisters’ chaplain, preached the
sermon, and sent us this report from Nairobi in
Kenya:
“The Good God blessed us with a splendid
day. After the ceremony and an excellent buffet,
we got to hear some beautiful Swiss melodies:
yodels to the accompaniment of an accordion. It
was rather surprising in the middle of Africa! But
to bring us back to Africa, some of our African
faithful displayed their talents with some songs
in Swahili. And to complete the show, the whole
community presented a song…in Italian!
“We also have the joy of announcing to you
the entry of two new postulants. One of them is
French, Hélène Pieronne; some of you may know

Ordinations at the
Benedictine Monastery
at Bellaigue, France
Ordinations of the Dominicans from
Avrillé and the Capuchins from Morgon
took place on October 11, 2012, at the
traditional Benedictine monastery at
Bellaigue, France, conferred by Bishop
Alfonso de Galarreta, SSPX.
For the Capuchin friars of Morgon,
France, were ordained to the priesthood:
Br. Diego de Burgos Joseph, Br. FideleMarie d’Aubonne, and Br. Pio de Bordeaux.
Br. Paul-Marie was ordained deacon.
For the Dominican friars of Avrillé,
France, two friars were ordained to the
diaconate: Br. Hyacinthe-Marie and Br.
Reginald.

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her because of her help with the sacristy for the
Chartres pilgrimages; the other one comes from
Gabon, after receiving a good preparation from
our dear Sisters of the Society of St. Pius X in
Ruffec. Nigeria has sent two new pre-postulants.
This little community of missionary sisters is
growing and becoming even more polyglot, a sign
of the universality of the faith in the Catholic
Church. This makes it a little more difficult for us
to give classes and instructions, but fortunately
Sister Maria Concepcíon is multilingual, as she
comes from the Philippines, an archipelago with
many dialects.
“After all these festivities, it is time to get
serious again with the classes in religious
formation. Three years of formation (not counting
the pre-postulancy) go very quickly. Will these
sisters be ready to be sent everywhere in the
world, to help our missionary priests? God alone
knows! But one thing is for sure: your prayers can
help us greatly, and we thank you for them ahead
of time.”
—Fr. Philippe Pazat

From Hermeneutics to History

The Key to
Understanding
Vatican II
By Professor Roberto De Mattei

We bring to your attention the publication of a new
book on the Second Vatican Council, a work of historical
character by Prof. Roberto De Mattei, renowned for his
studies on the history of the Church and for defending
Christianity especially in our time, which in many ways
operates for the destruction of the true Religion and of
the Catholic Church.
The book has raised a certain interest among
Catholics, interest that has been enhanced by some
criticism of the book by some represen­tatives of the socalled conservative Catholic world. Some were astonished that, this time, to the criticism of the modernists
were added those of the conservatives, but this is quite
normal since both these objections, although different
in their content, stem from the assumption that the
Council must not be criticized. The Author, instead, on
the basis of the examination of the historical facts leading to the Council, occurring during its course, and in the
course of its application, reaches the unavoidable conclusion that there is ground for criticism.
The same thing happened to other studies that have

come to light in the past three years: think for instance of
the works of Monsignor Brunero Gherardini (in particular, The Ecumenical Council Vatican II: A Much Needed
Discussion, and Quod et Tradidi Vobis: The Tradition, Life
and Youth of the Church), where the theological aspect
of the Council and the true meaning of Tradition are examined in depth. So it is not by chance that, like Msgr.
Gherardini, De Mattei also concludes with a request to
the Holy Father to finally enlighten us about the misunderstandings and the deviations that the Council and
the post-conciliar period have produced.
What should make us ponder is the fact that neither
of these authors belongs to the Catholic sector conveniently labeled “traditionalist,” but rather to the conservative one. From this latter group we have often heard
voices stigmatizing the excesses and the abuses characterizing the post-conciliar era, though avoiding any
correlation to the responsibility of the same Council, because of an erroneous defense of elements that a priori
had been accepted as positive: the documents of the
Council. Here is why today’s critical reactions seem so
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strange. Since the Council’s documents and the ones
that have ratified their application have proven to be in
open contrast with what the Church has always taught
and has always practiced, the voices in defense of the
“conservation” of the patrimony of the Church so much
endangered have been very few and in general very
weak, exception made for those who, from the beginning, have denounced the conciliar drift: the Catholics
faithful to Tradition, who for this very reason have been
labeled with the title of “fundamentalists” and have had
to endure ostracism and exclusion de facto from the normal life of the Church, to the point of excommunication:
it is the case of Msgr. Lefebvre and of the four newly ordained bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X. Nowadays,
the conservatives strive to defend the status quo, even
though faced with innumerable perplexities and the not
few problems that from it still derive regarding Tradition,
while at the same time they violently stigmatize even
those among them who dare to criticize the problematic
works, to say the least, of the Council. A strange sense
of “conservation,” put into effect in a discriminatory and
biased way: only what is useful must be preserved, independently from its real Catholic value.
To get an idea of what the book we are referring to
covers and how it does it, we reproduce here the following excerpts.
1. Vatican II: A Council Different from All Others
The history of the Catholic Church is at the center of
universal history because of the primary role that the
Church plays in the guidance of souls and in the building
of civilization. In this perspective, the importance of the
ecumenical Councils in universal history is not surprising, since they constitute one of the highest expressions
of the social life of the Church. If the Church has a relationship with human history, an ecumenical Council will
have with the same history a relationship equal to the
one it has with the Church.
Councils are said to be ecumenical, or general, when,
under the direction of the Pope or of his representatives,
they gather bishops coming from the entire ecumene,
that is from the whole inhabited world.…In the Councils
the voice of the Pope and of the bishops of the whole
world with him united rises over historical vicissitudes:
this solemn voice makes the history of the Church and,
with it, the history of the world.
In the history of the Church there have taken place
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menical, or general. The last one was the Second Vatican
Council, opened in Rome in St. Peter’s Basilica by John
XXIII on October 11, 1962, and closed in the same place,
after four sessions, by Paul VI on December 8, 1965.
Since the Council of Nicaea, which, after the Council of
Jerusalem, was the first one to be treated by historians,
up to Vatican II, every Council has been the subject of
historical debate. Each one of such assemblies not only
made history, but eventually had its own historians, and
each one of these injected in his work his own viewpoint
and interpretation. Quite differently than the previous
Councils, however, Vatican II poses to historians a new
problem. Councils do exert, under the Pope and with
the Pope, a solemn Magisterium in matters of faith and
morals and hold themselves out to be supreme judges
and legislators concerning the laws of the Church. The
Second Vatican Council has not promulgated laws,
nor deliberated authoritatively in matters of faith and
morals. The lack of dogmatic definitions has inevitably
opened the discussion on the nature of the documents
and on the method of their application during the time
so-called “post-Council.” The problem of the correlation
between the Council and the “post-Council” is therefore
the core of the ongoing hermeneutical debate.
2. The Two Hermeneutics of the Council
The discussion on the Second Vatican Council, even
in its complexity and in the development of the diverse
opinions, substantially can be summarized in two main
lines of interpretation: the one of “continuity” of the
Council with the preceding tradition, and the one of its
“discontinuity” with the past of the Church. The first line
has been adopted by the ecclesial hierarchy since the
pontificate of John Paul II and has been formulated with
clarity and conviction by Benedict XVI especially in his
speech to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005. This
is a theological approach to the Second Vatican Council,
judged by the 16 texts, of unequal doctrinal value, produced by it. The collective body of these texts, according to the supreme authority of the Church, expresses
a Magisterium not infallible but authentic, that must be
read in continuity with the documents preceding it and
following it, that is to say “in the light of Tradition.”
Benedict XVI several times went back on this issue; in
his talk to the participants of the Plenary Congregation
for the Clergy on March 16, 2009, he reasserted, for
example, the necessity to relate “to the uninterrupted
ecclesial tradition” and to “promote among the priests,

especially those of the new generations, a correct reception of the texts of the Ecumenical Council Vatican II, interpreted in the light of the whole doctrinal heritage of
the Church.” The only way to make Vatican II credible—
has always maintained Card. Ratzinger and so does now
Benedict XVI—is to present it as part of the whole and
unique tradition of the Church and its faith.
The second line of interpretation fosters not a theological, but a historical hermeneutical approach. Its
most significant expression comes from the so-called
“school of Bologna” which, under the direction of Prof.
Giuseppe Alberigo, has produced an impressive History
of Vatican II, widespread in various languages, which
constitutes a reference work, even if questioned and
questionable, that cannot be ignored. According to this
school, Vatican II, beyond the documents that it produced, has been first of all an historical “event” that, as
such, has meant an undeniable discontinuity with the
past: it has aroused hopes, triggered polemics and discussions, and opened, after all, a new epoch.
An event is a situation that represents a radical break
with the past, “a fact that, once happened, changes
something in the present and in the future.” The Second
Vatican Council presents, according to Alberigo, its own
very distinctive characteristics: the way it was convoked,
the absence in the program of an established historical
goal, the nearly total rejection of the preliminary documents and formulations prearranged by the preparatory
committees, the elaboration by the assembly of the general orientations and of the same texts of the decisions
taken, the perception of the Council by public opinion
as a crucial event, followed and lived with extraordinary
intensity. “For all these reasons,” writes the historian
from Bologna, “the hermeneutics of Vatican II depends,
principally and most of all, on the element ‘event’ of the
Council.” The identity of the Council is determined, in
this perspective, not only by the institutional doctrinal
documents and by the canonical norms following the
Council, but mainly by the actual working of the assembly and by the reception of this event by the community
of the faithful.
The thesis of “discontinuity” is supported also by
the so-called “traditionalist” community that harbors a
large but heterogeneous range of opinions. The most important work we have so far is the one of Prof. Romano
Amerio, Iota Unum, which does not develop the subject
on the historical basis, but on the theological and mainly
philosophical one. Though ignored by the “progressive”

publishers, it is also a reference work that cannot be
disregarded.
3. Reception and Application of the Council
The hermeneutical contrast about Vatican II is linked
to two different views about the context in which the
Council took place and its historical consequences.
Cardinal Ratzinger recalls that, on the eve of the opening of the works, on October 12, 1962, Cardinal Frings,
president of the Episcopal Conference of Germany, invited him to relate to the German-speaking bishops the
theological problems that the conciliar Fathers were
about to face in the following months. Looking for an
introduction which could emphasize some connections
to the very nature of the Councils, the then Prof. Joseph
Ratzinger found a work by Eusebius of Caesarea, who
was a member of the Council of Nicaea in 325 and who
summarized his impression about the gathering of his
time with these words:
“From all the churches of Europe, Africa and all
Asia the greatest servants of God had convened. And
one and only one Church, as if expanded by the grace
of God to the dimension of the world, included people
from Syria, Cilicia, Phoenicia, Arabia and Palestine as
well as from Egypt, Thebes, Africa and Mesopotamia.
There was also a Bishop from Persia. This choir was not
lacking a Scythian. Pontus and Galicia, Cappadocia and
Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia had invited chosen men.
But also some Thracians, Macedonians, Achaeans,
and some from Epirus and other people from places
even farther than that: also a famous Spanish man was
among the participants of this assembly.”
Behind these enthusiastic words, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger
commented to the German Bishops, you can see the description of Pentecost given by St. Luke in the Acts of the
Apostles. Eusebius’ thought was that Nicaea had been
a true Pentecost. This was likewise the thought of Pope
John XXIII and of the conciliar Fathers about Vatican
II: it would be a new Pentecost. The school of Bologna
remained faithful to the model Council-Pentecost and
sees in Pope John XXIII the unheeded prophet of a new
era in the history of the Church. Today Benedict XVI is
instead the most distinguished representative of those
who, facing the self-destruc­tive post-conciliar reality,
have revised, over the years, their opinion regarding
the Council, proposing to read it in light of Tradition.
Having been through the affairs of the Council and the
long years of the post-Council as a protagonist, Joseph
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Courrier de Rome
Ratzinger, now on the Papal See under the name of
Benedict XVI, again applied to Vatican II, but in a quite
different way, the image of the Council of Nicaea. In his
previously mentioned speech of December 22, 2005,
the newly-elected Pope, after stating that undeniably
the reception of the Council had been a difficult one,
evoked the very image of the Church given by St. Basil
after the Council of 325: he compares the Church to a
naval battle taking place in the middle of the night under
a heavy storm, describing “the hoarse cry of those who
in discord fight with each other, the incomprehensible
chatting, the confusing noise of continuous uproars.”
The metaphor that Benedict XVI applies to the postconciliar Church, forty years after the end of the Council,
is then the one of a naval battle, through the darkness,
in a stormy sea. But already twenty years after the closing of the Council, in his The Ratzinger Report the then
Cardinal Ratzinger thought “unquestionable” that “the
last twenty years” had been definitely unfavorable to the
Catholic Church.
“The results that came after the Council seem to
be cruelly opposed to everyone’s expectations, starting from those of John XXIII and Paul VI. Christians are
again a minority, more than ever since the end of antiquity. The Pope and the Fathers of the Council expected
a new catholic unity, yet we advanced instead toward a
dissent that—using the words of Paul VI—seemed to go
from self-criticism to self-destruction. We were expecting a new enthusiasm; instead we ended up too often
in boredom and discouragement. We were expecting a
leap forward, instead we found ourselves facing a progressive process of decadence that has been developing mainly under the sign of a recall to an alleged ‘spirit
of the Council’ thus discrediting it.…The Church since
the Council is a large construction site; but it is a building
site where the design has been lost and each keeps on
building according to his own taste.”
The causes of this deep crisis, according to Cardinal
Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, are to be found in a bad application of the Council due to an erroneous interpretation
of its documents. It is therefore a hermeneutical conflict.
“The problems of the reception originated from the
fact that two opposite hermeneutics came to oppose
each other and got into a confrontation. The one caused
confusion, the other, silently but always more visibly,
bore fruits. On one side there is an interpretation which I
would call ‘hermeneutics of discontinuity and of rupture’;
it could often take advantage of the support of the mass
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media, and also of part of modern theology. On the other
side, there is the ‘hermeneutics of reformation,’ of the
renewal within the continuity of the one body-Church
that God gave us; it is an organism growing in time and
developing, even though it remains always the same, the
only body of the People of God on the way.”
We need to point out that there is a fundamental difference between the situations of crisis subsequent the
Council of Nicaea and the one after the Second Vatican
Council. The crisis after Nicaea did not erupt as a consequence of a hermeneutical conflict over the canons of
the Council of 325, but as an open reaction to such decrees. Facing this reactionary movement, the Emperor
Constantine modified his policy toward Arianism, favoring this way the expansion of the crisis. The conflict involved those who supported the Council of Nicaea and
its adversaries, both radical and moderate, without ever
bringing into question the meaning of the Nicene Creed.
4. “Pastoral” or “Doctrinal” Council?
The formula of the Council by the light of Tradition, or,
if so preferred, of the “hermeneutic of continuity,” doubtlessly offers an authoritative indication to the faithful for
clarifying the problem of the right understanding of the
texts of the Council, but it leaves open a basic problem:
given that the correct interpretation is the one of continuity, it remains to be understood why after the Second
Vatican Council happened what had never happened after any other of the Councils in history, namely that two
(or more) divergent hermeneutics stood opposite each
other and, using the same words as the Pope, “fought”
against each other. Furthermore, if the post-conciliar
time must be interpreted in terms of “crisis,” we must
ask ourselves whether an erroneous reception of the
texts can influence so heavily the historic development
and become a reason sufficient and proportionate to explain the extent and the depth of the crisis itself.
The existence of a plurality of hermeneutics, moreover, confirms a certain ambiguity or ambivalence of the
documents. When a hermeneutical criterion external to
a document must be invoked to interpret the very same
document, it is obvious, indeed, that the document is
not sufficiently clear per se: it needs to be interpreted
and, being susceptible to interpretation, can become
the object of historical and theological criticism.
The most logical development of this hermeneutical
principle is the one proposed by an eminent expert of
ecclesiology, Monsignor Brunero Gherardini. According

to the Roman theologian, Vatican II, being a Council that
defined itself as “pastoral,” lacked a “defining” doctrinal
character. The fact that Vatican II cannot claim the qualification of being dogmatic, but is identified by its “pastorality,” does not mean of course that it lacks a doctrine
of its own. The Second Vatican Council certainly has
its own specific teaching, not lacking authority, but, as
Gherardini writes, “its doctrines, irreducible to previous definitions, are neither infallible nor unchangeable,
therefore neither are they binding; if anyone should deny
them he would not be for this reason formally a heretic. If
anyone should impose them as infallible and unchangeable, he would go against the Council itself.” If Vatican
II is eminently pastoral in nature, it is licit to recognize
its dogmatic quality only where it restates as truths of
faith dogmas already defined in previous Councils; “instead, the doctrines proper to it can in no way be considered dogmatic because they lack the inescapable
defining formality and consequently the related voluntas definiendi (will to define).” To those objecting that, in
principle, there is no impediment for a pastoral Council
to define dogmas, one can answer that, besides the
self-proclaimed pastoral quality of the Second Vatican
Council, its own acts and the standard of its documents
are in any case proof that it did not want to define any
dogma, since in none of them can be found unequivocally the manifestation of the will to define. Paul VI himself, at the closing of the Council, declared that, in it,
“The Magisterium of the Church…did not want to make
extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements,” and, in less
formal occasions, he restated that the Council had as
one of its goals “the one of not giving new solemn dogmatic definitions.” If a Council is to have only the authority given to it by the Pope, the pontifical statements of
John XXIII and Paul VI, precedent and subsequent to the
promulgation of the acts of the Council, erase any possible doubt in this regard. The “pastoral” character of the
Second Vatican Council is also underlined by the school
of Bologna, even if interpreted from a different viewpoint.
The “pastoral” qualification of the Council lessens indeed the importance of its own acts and documents and
contributes to make out of the “event” a hermeneutical
canon. If we admit the “novelty” of a pastoral Council, we
must recognize, with Alberigo, that “the most significant
novelty of Vatican II does not reside in its formulations,
but rather in the fact itself of having been convoked and
celebrated.” Historian Joseph Komonchak points out
that the convocation of the Council “was a surprise, a

break with the normality of the Church, in a way even
independent from what Pope John had in mind for the
Council.” The texts promulgated of course are part of
the event, but the “event” consists of a set of elements
including, next to the letter of the documents, also the
portrayals of it transmitted and enhanced by the media
that covered the affair. Some sociologists, like Melissa
Wilde and Massimo Introvigne, accept the category of
“event” exactly because of the depiction given to it by
the media and of the “self-description” of it that the
Council Fathers already had during its progress. Also
Gilles Routhier underlined how the hermeneutics of
the Council cannot ignore its representation by the
media and how the Council was perceived by the faithful. Catholics, who for the most part have not read the
conciliar texts, have come to know the Council via the
representation of it given to them by the media. Fr. John
W. O’Malley goes deeper into this analysis by stating
that the problem does not pertain only to the way the
documents were presented, even before the end of the
Council, but it touches the proper nature of the documents in regard, not to the contents, but to their form.
The American Jesuit proposed the figure of Erasmus of
Rotterdam as “key” to interpret Vatican II, which he defined an “Erasmian” Council. The major concordances
between Erasmus and Vatican II, in terms of contents,
regard the root theme of “reconciliation,” but the “most
significant similarity between Erasmus and Vatican II is
their language, their vocabulary, and the style of their
speech.”
The “novelty” of the Council, much more than in
the contents of its documents, is to be found therefore
in their form, according to the indications of Gaudium
et Spes and of the same John XXIII in his opening discourse: “One thing is the deposit or the truths of the faith,
another is the way in which they are expressed, keeping
always the same meaning and their deep sense.” The
professions of Faith and Canons are replaced by a “literary genre” called by Father O’Malley “epideictic.” It was
that way of writing that,” according to the Jesuit historian, “marked a definitive break with previous Councils.”
Expressing oneself in different terms than in the past
means accepting a cultural transformation deeper than
what it may seem. The style of speech reveals in fact,
even before the ideas, the deep tendencies of the soul of
the writer. “Style is the ultimate expression of the meaning, it is meaning not ornament, it is also the hermeneutical means par excellence.”
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The pastoral aspect is, normally, accidental and secondary with respect to the doctrinal one, but at the moment it becomes a substantial and primary dimension,
the way in which the doctrine is formulated becomes
itself doctrine, more important than the one that, objectively, it expresses.
The leaders of the Council, continues O’Malley, “were
well aware that Vatican II, by proclaiming itself a pastoral Council, for this very reason was also a teaching
Council….The conversational style of the Council was
the means, but the means forwarded the message....
This means that Vatican II, the ‘pastoral Council,’ has a
teaching, a ‘doctrine,’ that has been for us for the most
part difficult to formulate, as in this case doctrine and
spirit are the two faces of the same coin.” The choice
of a language “style” for speaking to one’s contemporaries reveals a certain way of being and thinking; in this
sense we have to admit that the literary genre and the
pastoral style of Vatican II not only express the organic
unity of the event, but implicitly carry forward a coherent doctrine.
Under this aspect the Council undoubtedly marked
a deep change in the life of the Church. The contemporaries sensed its epoch-making character. “They
were talking,” Komomchak recalls, “of a historical turning point; the end of the counter reformation or of the
Tridentine era, the end of the Middle Ages, the end of the
Constantinian era.” “Simply,” points out Melissa Wilde,
“Vatican II represents the most significant example of institutionalized religious change since the Reformation.”
5. Primacy of the Praxis and Reform of the Church
Like every “event,” Vatican II must be considered within the historical setting in which it took place: the Sixties,
which were the years when the so-called “real socialism”—that is communism in power—reached the vertex
of its historical parabola. The intellectual influence of
Marxism, as it was presented in those years, was strong in
all circles, including the Catholic ones. It is not difficult to
catch in the “supremacy of the pastoral view” that came
through during the years of the Council, the theological
transposition of the “supremacy of the praxis” stated by
Marx in his Thesis on Feuerbach, with these words: “It is in
the praxis that man must show the truth, that is to say the
reality and the power, the practical nature of his thought,”
and “philosophers only interpreted the world in different
ways; but now is the time to change it.” The praxis, that is
the historical result of political action, according to Marx,
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is the supreme criterion of the truth of ideas, because action implicitly includes a doctrine, even without stating it.
The gloss of Marx on Feuerbach, according to which
philosophers do not need to know the world but need to
transform it, could be paraphrased by a conciliar gloss
according to which the duty of pastors and theologians
is not to understand and pass on the doctrine of the
Church, but to transform history through it. “Since the
end of the first session,” writes Cardinal Agostino Bea, “I
have repeatedly affirmed that the fruits of the Council are
to be found principally, rather than in the texts on paper,
within the experiences made by the participants and, by
consequence, also by the Christian people who followed
the Council. This is especially true in the ecumenical
field.” Liberation theology carried out this principle to its
extreme consequences.
During the post-Council, the historical praxis became
a “locus theologicus,” according to which, “theology is not
to be qualified as a pure science, but always as a moment
of a historical process.” The connection truth-history was
reformulated by underlining the historical dimension of
theology, which took into itself the historical praxis under
the form of “critical theory of the Christian and ecclesiastical praxis.” The theology of praxis was postulated as
“the coherent application of the theology of the signs of
the times (ST) as outlined by the Council above all in the
pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (GS).” The “Orthopraxis” became the criterion of verification of theology,
judged according to its capability to change historically
the world. “The theology that came to be developed in
the reception of Vatican II is therefore characterized by
its peculiar historicism,” writes Msgr. Bruno Forte, echoing the Manifesto of Le Saulchoir according to which “the
theologian does not have and cannot have any hope of
meeting his datum outside of history….” It is in this perspective that we must read key words of the times of the
Council such as “pastoral,” “aggiornamento (updating),”
“signs of the times.”
The formula of the “aggiornamento,” according to
which men do not have to conform to the sacred teachings, but the latter must conform to men, according to
O’Malley, inverts the axiom of Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo
in his opening talk of the Lateran Council V (1512):
“Homines per sacra immutari fas est, non sacra per homine [The law is that men should change according to the
sacred things, not the sacred things to men—Note the
misprint in the original].” “No previous council has ever
used the equivalent of aggiornamento as a leitmotiv, as

Si Si No No

a general principle rather than a rare exception, with the
consequence that from certain standpoints the Church
should be the one to change to meet the times, not the
times to meet the Church.”
The pastoral dimension thus becomes a hermeneutical key to recognize the “historicity of the Church” and to
interpret Christian truth historically. Coherent with this
perspective, Giuseppe Alberigo, who wanted to make
the school of Bologna the continuation of the one of Le
Saulchoir, in his History of Vatican II does not limit himself to writing a historical work: he entrusts to history
the task of the “ecclesiological reform” hoped for by the
“nouvelle théologie” [the new theology] and, before then,
by modernism.
6. “Rewriting” the History of the Council
From our standpoint, our purpose is to distinguish
accurately between the theological dimension of the
documents and the one more strictly “factual,” related
to historical occurrences. Distinction does not mean, of
course, “separation.” Every historian of the Church carries in his work the background of a theological and ecclesiological point of view and, even before this, of his own
“theology of history.” Rather, I would say that the historical reconstruction of the conciliar “iter [course]” of the
Council is indispensable to understanding the sense and
the meaning of those documents of the Church that theologians help us to read in their theological dimension. The
theologian reads the documents in their doctrinal significance and discusses them. The historian pieces together
the events, even without limiting himself to the mere factual dimension, but catches the events at their roots and
their cultural and ideal consequences. The task of the historian is not to unscramble the past, nor to re-compose
it as a chronological sequence, but to catch the orientation of the process and its binding connections in order to
achieve an “integral” comprehension of the events.
The hermeneutics of continuity rightly reaffirms the
primacy of the Magisterium but runs the risk of eliminating, not only a wrong theological point of view, but also
the event itself under discussion. The consequence of
this work of removal of the event is that today no serious
alternative exists to the school of Bologna, to which we
must recognize the merit of offering a first reconstruction, even though biased, of the facts of the event.
According to many supporters of the hermeneutics
of continuity, the historical elimination of the conciliar
“event” is necessary in order to separate the Council

from the post-Council and to isolate the latter as a pathology developed on a healthy body.
We must ask nonetheless if by erasing the Councilevent we will be able eventually to comprehend in depth
what happened in the post-Council. The Second Vatican
Council was, indeed, an event that did not end with its
solemn final session, but solidified with its application
and historical reception. Something happened after the
Council as a coherent consequence of it. In this sense
we cannot confute Alberigo when he affirms that the reconstruction of what happened between January 25th,
1959, and December 8th, 1965, constitutes a necessary
premise for a serious reflection on Vatican II. The history
of the Council, therefore, must be rewritten, or at least
completed. It is in this spirit that I propose a history of the
Council “never written,” not so much for the novelty of the
accounts and episodes emerging from it, but more for the
new reconstruction and interpretation of the facts that is
thereby offered. The true historian is not the researcher
who “digs up” new documents, nor the “reporter” who
bundles up the ones already known, but the one who, on
the base of the published or unpublished documentation
available to him, is able to put it in order, to understand it,
to narrate it, by framing the facts in a philosophy of history which is, for the Catholic historian, first of all a theology of history.
The following pages are dedicated to the reconstruction of the “fact” without aspiring to create an artificial
dichotomy between the documents and the event, but
rather trying to show the impossibility of separating the
doctrine from the facts that generate it. This is not therefore a work of theological reflection, but of historical narration, written in the spirit with which Cardinal Sforza
Pallavicino faced the Council of Trent: “The most sublime
among human things is Religion,” he wrote, “through
which we deal with Heaven, we gain Heaven. Therefore
those stories that have Religion as subject are as much
above the others in the matter as the sky is above the
earth.”

Translation of a book review posted on the website Intra multiplices
Una Vox (http://www.unavox.it/Segnalazioni_Rete/De_Mattei_Storia_
Concilio.html#su).

79

Cathedral
Age
The Cathedral Age was the
inaugural age for stained glass.
Soaring vertical planes were made
possible by the invention of the
pointed Gothic arch. With the
engineering innovation of flying
buttresses which supported the
vaulted height, thinner walls and
larger windows were possible.
More light could enter the
cathedral interior.

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Letters to the Editor

Dear Angelus Press,
I am a faithful reader of your magazine, I enjoy The Angelus, and I think
you all do a great service by providing traditional Catholic materials and
information to the faithful struggling to live a truly Catholic life. That being
said, I’m a bit annoyed (angry may be a better word) that during what was
perhaps the defining election of our age, your magazine was silent. We have
the most radically pro-abortion president in history, who has gone after the
Catholic Church in unprecedented ways, and you had no directives for us on
voting, or even a commentary on the problems that exist. What gives?
Christina, New Mexico

Dear Christina,
Thank you for your letter, and for being a faithful reader. We truly
appreciate it. As far as the specific objections in your letter, that we said or
did nothing regarding this election, I’d like to explain in a bit more detail.
First, I would like to point your attention to Christopher Ferrara’s article
in the last issue, titled “Re-dimensioning the Catholic Simpleton.” Mr. Ferrara
examines the problem we find ourselves in, living in the modern world,
where neither political party reflects the principles of the Catholic Church.
For more on this, please see our article on Catholic Principles for Voting.1 It
lays out the duties of Catholics in the modern age with regard to voting.
Regarding this election in particular and the lack of commentary by The
Angelus, I can tell you it was a conscious decision. It’s not that we aren’t
aware of the problems that exist in modern American political life (and that
of most of the world, for that matter), but because in our age what is needed
above all is a restoration of Catholic principles, which must first come from
education. Our Lord tells us through the Psalms, “Put not your trust in
princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.” This doesn’t
mean we ignore action, but it does mean that our salvation will not come
through political rulers, even our political “salvation.”
Because of this, we decided, and we maintain this decision, that focusing
exclusively on the theme of the Importance of the Faith, and all that flows
from there, will do more to restore sanity to the American state than any
contribution we could have made by commenting on the election itself.
Angelus Press
1

http://www.sspx.org/miscellaneous/catholic_principles_for_voting.htm

83

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The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,

Both communion and confession were instituted as sacraments by Our Lord Jesus Christ
specifically to help us overcome sin and practice virtue. We should receive them both on a
regular basis, and for this reason they hold a special place among the seven sacraments.
These truths may seem obvious to us, but they are certainly not obvious to most Catholics
today.
Some time ago, I spoke with a priest who was being transferred to a new parish. He had,
for more than five years in his old parish, preached regularly on the importance and necessity of sacramental confession. This priest explained exactly how one should confess, and
he repeatedly enumerated the many fruits of regular confession. What were the results of all
this effort? Out of a parish of six thousand souls, only twenty or twenty-five began confessing
at least once a year.
In the eyes of this parish priest, this new development was a big improvement. His parish now stood out as a shining example among the other 200 parishes of the diocese.
Nevertheless, in the above-mentioned “exemplary” parish, 99.6% of the parishioners completely abandoned sacramental confession and practically none confessed their sins regularly! Such numbers are shocking.
What could have caused such a crisis? Does the adoption of modernist principles account
for the disappearance of confession? Was there a planned removal of this sacrament?
Certainly the relations between God and man have been practically redefined by the modernists. Man is now presented as the crown of creation, the friend of God, possessing in himself everything he needs to reach perfection. Man is promoted to the level of a god, on a par
with God Himself. Why, then, should mighty man be obliged to kneel down degradingly and
confess his sins?
Certainly the reality and gravity of sin have also been practically redefined. Respect for
God’s majesty, eternity, sanctity, and omnipotence is today disregarded and even ignored.
Thus any offense committed against God seems trivial. Why should he tremble when facing
his equal?
Let us leave behind such impious attitudes. Let us strive to show more honor and respect
for such a great and necessary sacrament.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Father Jürgen Wegner

The Society of St. Pius X is an international priestly society of common life
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