“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Religious Liberty
Toleration or Religious Liberty
A.D. 313 - The End of the
Beginning
The Two Swords

January - February 2013

Religious
Liberty
“Elias the prophet stood up as a fire,
and his word burnt like a torch.”
(Ecclus. 48:1)
In the middle of the ninth century
before Christ, the worship of one
God had weakened considerably
among the tribes of Israel and was
further debilitated when the worship
of the god Baal was introduced by
Jezabel, the wife of King Achab.
Jezabel brought forth a procession of
idolatrous priests and erected temples
to Baal. The prophet Elias stormed
against the evils of the priests of Baal,
who were contaminating the pure
worship of God.
After different clashes with Queen
Jezabel, the final test to decide which
god was the greater comprised a
placing of sacrifices at two altars, one
to Baal and the other to God. When
all was in readiness each side would
call for fire to be ignited, the winner
being the one whose fire lit first.
The outcome, but especially the
fiery and merciless procedure of
the prophet, shocks our modern
spirits. In religious matters we
are so used to indifferentism and
to the juxtaposition of different
denominations and religions that
we cannot understand the prophet’s
claim to sole rights for the one God.
In this issue of The Angelus we strive
to give clear answers on the question
of religious liberty and the concept of
tolerance.
Statue of the prophet and two plaques at the memorial on
Mount Carmel

Letter
from the
Publisher

Following its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Society of St. Pius X is
known for its objections to religious liberty, especially as formulated by Dignitatis
Humanae and post-conciliar documents. It is, in some ways, the most significant
doctrinal problem we face today as traditional magisterial teaching is clear about the
duty of the State to profess and protect the Catholic religion and the impossibility of
the State to be agnostic. The whole question of the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ
and of ecumenism depends on this first point: what is religious liberty? This question, however, presupposes a proper understanding of the relationship between
Church and State.
In light of this, we provide here some considerations on Church and State. Of
particular interest to Americans is the distinction between religious liberty and religious toleration. This is not an easy distinction to make in 2013, but it is essential to a
proper understanding. Remember the fight between Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal
Bea at the Second Vatican Council on this very question! They understood what was
at stake, what the consequences would be of modifying the teaching of the Church
on this point, which had been so clear in the past.
We also provide some historical studies to place religious liberty in a broader
context. It is not possible to provide a thorough analysis of this question in one issue of the magazine. For those who wish to spend more time studying this, I would
recommend Archbishop Lefebvre’s study which he sent to the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith in 1985. Angelus Press publishes it under the title Religious
Liberty Questioned. It is not an easy read, but neither is the topic simple!

In Christ the King,
Fr. Arnaud Rostand, Publisher

January-February 2013
Volume XXXVI, Number 1
Publisher
Fr. Arnaud Rostand
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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: Religious Liberty
– Toleration or Religious Liberty?
– A.D. 313–The End of the Beginning
– John Locke on Religious Liberty
– The Two Swords

6
12
18
24

Faith and Morals
– Liturgy: The Liturgy
29
– Social Doctrine: The Contraceptive Mandate
36
and “Religious Liberty”
– Acts of the Magisterium: On the Christian Constitution of States 41

Spirituality
– Spirituality: The Venerable Francis Libermann

46

Christian Culture
– History: Church and State in the Spanish Empire
– Education: History and the School
– Lives of the Saints: The Thomas More of America
– Family Life: Tridentine Duties of the Husband

50
54
58
61

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

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Priestly Society of Saint Pius X for the United States and Canada

– Questions and Answers
– Church and World
– Theological Studies: Cardinal Koch and the SSPX
– Letters to the Editor
– The Last Word

64
66
74
83
87

Theme Religious Liberty

Toleration
or Religious
Liberty?
by Fr. François Laisney

Among the points of doctrine taught by Vatican
II that depart from Catholic Tradition, perhaps
the one the most clearly in opposition with the
antique Catholic Doctrine is the doctrine on
religious liberty.

The Duty to Be a Good Catholic
The Catholic Faith is simple: Our Lord Jesus
Christ is the one Mediator, “the Way, the Truth
and the Life,” and “no one goes to the Father
except by Him” (Jn. 14:6), for “there was not given
under heaven another name by which we must
be saved but the name of Jesus. Neither is there
salvation in any other” (Acts 4:12). Our Lord is the
Saviour; He is powerful enough to save all men;
He came for that purpose (I Tim. 2:4); hence all
6

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January - February 2013

men have the duty to receive Him, and “to them
that received Him, He gave power to become sons
of God” (Jn. 1:12).
To receive Our Lord implies embracing the
truths He has taught and has entrusted to His
Church, to whom He said: “Go, teach all nations”
(Mt. 28:19). To become adoptive sons of God by
grace can only be in the Son, as members of the
Mystical Body of the Son of God, which mystical
body is the Church, the Catholic Church, the one
Church He has founded and is recognizable by
its four notes of unity, holiness, catholicity and
apostolicity.
Thus the Catholic Church is very intimately
linked with the very purpose of life: the salvation
of our souls. “For what doth it profit a man, if
he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of
his own soul?” (Mt. 16:26). To save men from

the greatest danger, everlasting punishment
in hell; to deliver them from the greatest evil
(sin), source of all human ills; to give to men the
greatest of all goods, union with God Himself
in eternal life and a beginning of it here below
through “the bond of perfection, charity” (Col.
3:14)—this is the inestimable benefit which Our
Lord Jesus Christ offers to men in His Church,
the Catholic Church!
Yet, this goal of life is not optional: it is the
duty of everyone to “work out [one’s] salvation
with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). And that
is done within the Catholic Church, and cannot
be achieved outside of her: we can live of the
life of Christ (Phil. 1:21) only in “the Body of
Christ, which is the Church” (Col. 1:24). “Outside
the Church there is no salvation” (St. Cyprian,
Ep. 73, 21). Hence the Church is not optional, as
salvation is not optional.
That this was the teaching of the Church from
the beginning (St. Cyprian is of the third century,
witness of the Faith of the early Church) all the
way to 1962 is manifest by the fact that the very
schema on the Church prepared under Pope John
XXIII for the second Vatican Council says: “It is
a dogma of the faith that no man can be saved
outside the Church” (Section vii, in The Church,
documents on the Church published by Solesmes,
appendix, p. 814).

True and False Freedom
Against this dogma, modern man rebels in the
name of freedom.
God has created man free, but many people
misunderstand this freedom. They want to be
“free from God”; they repeat the cry of rebellion
of Satan: “I shall not serve!” (Jer. 2:20). To this
rebellion is opposed the Fiat of the Blessed
Virgin, the obedience of Mary: “Be it done to
me according to Thy Word” (Lk. 1:38). Hence
mankind is divided in two camps, the “seed of
the Woman” and the “seed of the Serpent” (Gen.
3:15).
To understand that true freedom is on the side
of the Blessed Virgin Mary and false freedom
on the side of Satan, it is useful to consider the

following. God created all things, visible and
invisible; now all the material universe perfectly
follows the laws that God has set to it, laws of
gravitation, of electromagnetism, of chemistry,
of life, etc.; from the smallest particles to the
greatest galaxies everything obeys God perfectly.
You might say, they have no merit, they obey
out of necessity. True, and this is the reason
why God created spiritual beings, angels and
men, and endowed them with freedom: so that
they may obey His Laws out of love and not out
of necessity. Understand well, dear reader, the
purpose of freedom is to obey God’s laws out
of love, not to disobey His laws! And don’t fool
yourself: you cannot escape God’s laws. Either
you do what God commands, and you will be
rewarded according to God’s laws; or you do not
what God commands, and you will be punished,
still according to God’s laws. What do you prefer?
The choice is indeed yours. The ability to choose
is not an ability to escape the Creator.
Thus it is clear that true freedom is the ability
to choose that which is good, not a right to
choose that which is evil. Hence the Church
always taught, with Pope Pius XII: “That which
does not conform to truth and moral law has
objectively no right to being, to propagation, nor
to action” (Discourse to the Italian jurists Ci
riese on the Dec. 6, 1953). In one word, freedom
is for good, not for evil. That principle has no
restriction.
Note also this other principle: truth is the good
of the intelligence; error and falsehood, the evil
of the intelligence. Error is not always a sin, but
it is always evil, and very damaging for souls.
Hence it ought to be corrected, and has no right
to be “immune” from correction.

Patience and Tolerance
When some hear that there is no right for
evil, they immediately fear persecutions and
violence. Yet there is nothing more remote from
the teaching, practice and spirit of the Church,
founded by “the Son of man [who] came not to
destroy souls, but to save” (Lk. 9:56). He taught:
“Love your enemies, do good to them that hate >
7

Theme Religious Liberty
you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them
that calumniate you” (Lk. 6:27-28). And He gave
the supreme example of this when He prayed for
His enemies on the Cross, thereby teaching us
“not to render evil for evil…but to overcome evil
by good” (Rom. 12:17, 21).
But to love those who hate us does not
give them a right to hate us, not even a right
to immunity for hating us; to bless those who
curse us does not give them a right to curse us,
not even a right to immunity for cursing us; to
pray for those who calumniate us does not give
them a right to calumniate us, not even a right
to immunity for calumniating us. Because hate,
cursing, calumnies are evil, and evil has no right,
not even a right to immunity.
St. Augustine not only teaches such patience
and tolerance, but he even pleads for clemency
in favour…of heretics in his Letter 153 to
Macedonius, the imperial vicar for Africa, who
was applying the imperial laws against heresy.
This Macedonius, the most powerful man in
Africa, standing in the very place of the emperor,
was a very good Catholic with a great esteem
for St. Augustine. This one asked that penalty of
death be not applied to the heretics, in the hope
that this clemency would help them to convert,
for this is the main desire of the Church. Here
are some of his beautiful words: “Malis parce,
vir bone; quanto melior, tanto esto mitior;
quanto fis celsior potestate, tanto humilior fiere
pietate!—Spare the wicked, thou good man; the
better you are, the meeker you ought to be; the
higher you are by your power, the more humble
you ought to be by piety!” (Ep. 153, 4,11 – PL 33,
408 – BAC XIa Cartas, p. 414). And Macedonius
granted the clemency asked by St. Augustine.
Thus far from persecuting the wicked, the Church
intercedes for them!
Yet St. Augustine does not acknowledge a right
to immunity for them. Indeed, he writes a little
further: “Now it is true, as morals go in our days,
that men want both to be exempt from penalty
for their crimes, and yet to possess that for which
they admitted the crime [i.e. to continue in their
sins]. This is the worst kind of men…” (Ep. 153,
6, 20 – PL 33, 419 – BAC, ibid. p. 423). In other
words, those who want to continue in their sins
8

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January - February 2013

with impunity, those who want “immunity from
coercion” in their sins, are the worst kind of men.
Thus St. Augustine is far from acknowledging
such a “right for immunity from coercion.”

The Christian Service
Proper to Kings
“And now, O ye kings, understand: receive
instruction, you that judge the earth. Serve ye
the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with
trembling” (Ps. 2:10-11). And St. Augustine
comments: “How shall the kings serve the
Lord with fear except by forbidding with a
religious severity that which is done against the
commands of the Lord? Other is the manner of
service as a man, other as a king: as a man, he
serves [God] by living faithfully; yet because he
is also a king, he serves by commanding that
which is just and forbidding the opposite.…In this
therefore the kings serve the Lord, in as much as
they are kings, by doing in the service of the Lord
that which kings alone can do [i.e. just laws]”
(Letter 185, V, 19, to Boniface, Count of Africa, in
charge of implementing the imperial laws against
the Donatists).

Pius IX and the Syllabus
After such clear teaching, put in practice (more
or less well) in the centuries of Christendom, it is
no surprise that Pope Pius IX solemnly condemns
those who say: “The best condition of society
is that where one does not recognise to civil
authority the duty to repress by legal penalties
the violators of the Catholic religion, except
where public peace requires it” (Quanta Cura,
Denzinger, 1689).
Now, since every false religion by its refusal
to honour Our Lord Jesus Christ and to enter
the Church He has founded “violates” the
commandments of God (at least the first, and
often also the others, such as by their permission
of divorce and remarriage) and therefore violates
the Catholic Religion, if everyone would have “a
right to immunity from coercion” (Dignitatis

Humanae, 2) in religious matters, then clearly
to repress such “right” could not be the best
condition of society. Therefore one cannot hold
such “right to immunity” without falling under
the condemnation of Pope Pius IX.

A New Foundation
In an effort to get this novel right accepted,
Vatican II changes the approach from an
objective approach (i.e. looking at the object of
the right: a right to something) to a subjective
approach (i.e. looking at the subject of the right,
the human person).
Now in good logic, one can prove the same
proposition with different approaches (thus Our
Lord could learn through His human intelligence
by what He suffered what obedience is,1 though
He already knew it by His Divine Intelligence),
yet one can never rightly prove two contrary
propositions: since they cannot be true together,
they cannot be both proved rightly. Two different
paths can reach the same conclusion; they can
never reach contrary conclusions: in such case,
one of the reasoning is flawed. Since the age-old
teaching of the Church is certain—“what the
Catholic Church has always held”2 is guaranteed
by Christ—then we know that the novelty is
flawed.
The idea behind Dignitatis Humanae is
that the dignity of man—of which the Church
would have taken a greater awareness recently!
—requires that no coercion be exercised at all
in religious matters by any authority on earth:
that man, being free, may be able to exercise
freely whatever his religious convictions are.
The underlying error here is that any coercion is
always against the dignity of man. If man were
supreme, thus his own rule, then any coercion
would indeed be opposed to his dignity. God is
supreme: He is Goodness itself, thus God is His
own rule, and any coercion on Him is simply
impossible. But because man received his being
from God, he also receives his goodness from
God, and therefore the rule of his action is also
from God. God gives this rule in two ways:
exteriorly by His law and interiorly by His grace;

His law tells us what we ought to do to be good,
and His grace moves us to do it. We need both!
Far from rejecting the law of God, the grace of
God moves us to do what the law commands, and
thus to rejoice in His law: “Therefore have I loved
thy commandments above gold and the topaz”
(Ps. 118:166).
God did not create man as a loner, but as a
social being that needs the help of his neighbor.
One help, instituted by God in human society, is
authority: “Let every soul be subject to higher
powers: for there is no power but from God: and
those that are, are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1).
As intended by God, authority is a help to do
good. The authority of parents over children is
a good example: though parents do not always
do that which is right, yet they rarely command
their children to do wrong. And their authority is
a great help for the children to learn right from
wrong—and today’s lack of proper exercise of
parental authority leads many children to ignore
right from wrong. St. Paul says: “For he is God’s
minister to thee, for good.” Now that ministry not
only rewards that which is good, but also protects
from evil by exercising a certain coercion: “But
if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth
not the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister:
an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth
evil” (Rom. 13:4). This protection and help is so
much the more necessary after the fall of Adam,
since our wounded nature is inclined to evil: it
needs that support. Where the authority is good,
it helps many to be good; where the authority
is evil, many fall into evil ways. Thus there can
be a good coercion (reasonable and moderate),
far from opposed to human dignity, it protects
it from falling into error and sin. Indeed as the
possibility of having an accident is not part of the
value of a car, neither is the possibility of falling
part of the dignity of human freedom, neither is
the ability of erring part of the dignity of human
intelligence!
Thus the refusal of coercion under the guise
of human dignity is in fact a refusal of divinely
instituted authority, at least in religious matters.
Contrary to Holy Scripture and the whole
Tradition of the Church, it pretends that kings
and heads of state have no duty as such, i.e., as >
9

Theme Religious Liberty
heads of state, to support the practice of the law
of God, including the first commandment.
They pretend it is beyond their competence.
It is beyond their competence to be judges in
religious matters (such competence belongs
to the Church’s authority), but it is not beyond
their competence to receive the judgments of
the Church and support them. This is what
the imperials laws were doing at the time of
St. Augustine, and he gives testimony to the
benefits for the people who, thanks to these
laws, were able to get out of the social pressures
exercised by the violence of the circumcellions
(Donatist gangsters), and were very grateful once
converted to have discovered the true Church.
This is what all the holy kings have done in the
Middle Ages: think of St. Stephen of Hungary who
converted his country. This is what good Catholic
governments were doing even in the twentieth
century, such as in Spain and Portugal.
And at a lower level, the exercise of parental
authority to guide the children in the way of God
is good, necessary and blessed by God.

Conclusion
Let us keep the unchangeable Catholic Faith
in the one true religion founded by the Son of
God, which every man has a duty to embrace
and practice. Let us be patient and tolerant with
those who are still outside of it, praying that by
the grace of God they may be converted. And let
everyone endowed with authority use it the best
way possible to help others fulfill their duties
towards God and neighbor. May Our Lady, Mother
of the Church, help the Church’s authority to
return to this Catholic teaching of all times!

10

1

Heb. 5:8.

2

St. Augustine, Ep. 186, ix, 33. There would be very many other
quotes possible, especially in Magisterial documents. This is just
the last one I encountered in my readings.

The Angelus

January - February 2013

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“Renew in all our people a profound respect for religious liberty, the first, most cherished
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Is religious liberty, so loved by modern man, something that Catholics can support?
In this insightful work, Archbishop Lefebvre presents the traditional teaching of the Church on
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Theme Religious Liberty

A.D. 313

The End
of the
Beginning
by John Rao, Ph.D.

Calling attention to specific dates, such as 1789
and 1914, is a necessary means of underlining
major developments in the history of the world.
Nevertheless, further study regularly indicates
that men require much more time before they can
properly digest the changes that such dates do
indeed foretell. Rather than summing up the full
import of the intellectual, spiritual, political, and
social revolutions to follow, what they really point
to is the end of the beginning of a new era long in
preparation and still pregnant with many more
questions for the future.
Such is the case with the so-called “Edict
of Milan” of the Christian Constantine and the
pagan Licinius in 313, issued hot on the heels of
their joint victory over their rival, the persecutor
Maxentius. The exact form this measure took
is presented to us in somewhat different ways
12

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January - February 2013

by the early Christian historians Lactantius (c.
240-c. 320) and Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263-339).
Whatever its shape actually was, it confirmed
that liberation for Christians that had begun two
years earlier with Galerius’ resigned admission
of the failure of the policy of harassment in the
eastern part of the Empire. Freedom to worship
and to possess property for Christian purposes
was awarded the faithful, while goods that had
been confiscated were ordered returned. But
what this all really meant was going to take a
long time to grasp. In fact, if the truth be told, it
still is not fully appreciated in the Year of Grace
2013, and by believers and non-believers alike.
Still, as indicated above, the Edict of Milan
did clearly mark the end of the beginning—the
beginning of that radically new phenomenon
called a “relationship” between Church and State.

This was so startling an innovation—and how
could it not have been so, brought about as it was
by the Incarnation of the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity as Jesus Christ, the God-Man—
that the Roman State had fumbled for almost
three hundred years trying to figure out some
coherent way to respond to it.
In many respects, the Empire did not tackle
its task that badly. The imperial authorities
recognized the dependency of the commonwealth
upon the good will of religious-minded men and
women, and wanted no troubles with the gods as
such. Once they understood that Christians were
distinct from Jewish zealots in full revolt against
Roman rule, they recognized that believers were
actually law-abiding individuals upon whom no
ordinary criminal accusations could be pinned.
Many of the state authorities’ best instincts
told them to leave these wretches to their
“superstition” without interference.
But the new reality the Christians represented
was just too much for the pagan community as
a whole peacefully to bear. How could pagan
magistrates easily comprehend the idea of a
religious force organized in a supranational body
of an army-like quality truly separate from the
State and eager to evangelize not just a single
city or ethnic group but the whole of the imperial
population? How could they grasp the mentality
of a Faith that would not accept and enjoy
nature “as it really was ,” but wished to judge
its “flaws” and supposedly correct them? And
how could they consistently resist the pressure
to crush these “haters of mankind” that came
from defenders of “the ways of the ancestors,”
Roman and non-Roman, high born and low, the
Empire over? Hence, the periodic outbursts
of persecution that struck at believers whom
magistrates knew to be the easiest of men to rule
in every normal respect.
With the Edict of Milan all this centuries
long fumbling came to an end. That end was a
dramatic one not because it called a halt to the
persecution of Christians, welcome though this
cessation of hostilities obviously was to those
who had suffered from its ravages. It was really
dramatic because it gave official state recognition
to the existence of the Church, the Mystical Body

The Room of Constantine (1517-1529)
The room, which was designed to be used for receptions and official ceremonies,
was decorated by the school of Raphael on the basis of drawings by the artist,
who died prematurely before completion of the work (1520). It takes its name
from Constantine (306-337), the first Christian emperor to officially recognize
the Christian faith, granting freedom of worship. On the walls are painted four
episodes of his life which testify to the defeat of paganism and the triumph
of the Christian religion: the Vision of the Cross, the Battle of Constantine
against Maxentius, the Baptism of Constantine, and the Donation of Rome.
The decoration of the room is completed by figures of great Popes flanked by
allegorical figures of Virtue.

The original wooden roof which Leo X (pontiff from 1513 to 1521) had built was
replaced under Gregory XIII (pontiff from 1572 to 1585) by the modern ceiling,
the decoration of which was entrusted by order of the Pope to Tommaso Laureti,
who portrayed the Triumph of the Christian religion in the central panel. The
work was completed at the end of 1585 under Pope Sixtus V (pontiff from 1585
to 1590).

of Christ, as a legitimate and different kind of
social entity. Something “other,” claiming to have
its roots in a world beyond and above nature, was
given droit de cité. A greater theoretical blow to
the entire earth-bound pagan mentality cannot be
imagined.
Very swiftly, many of the longer-term
consequences of this death knell began to be felt,
apparently demonstrating the growing influence
of the Christian “body” and mentality upon the
State. Not only was the Church allowed to
13

Theme Religious Liberty
own property; the Emperor Constantine himself
began to augment her holdings considerably, as,
for example, through the grant of the properties
around the Lateran. Not only did bishops now
become respected imperial personages, with
highborn men from the senatorial aristocracy
gradually aspiring to enter the ranks of the
episcopacy; diocesan courts and the validity
of their judgments were soon given imperial
approval as well. Even ordinary priests were
awarded the privileges of local notables. Not only
was the weekly Christian holy day made into an
Empire-wide festival, but, belying the Edict of
Milan’s claim to offer a general “religious liberty,”
pagan religious practices began, bit by bit, to be
circumscribed as “superstitions,” and all this in
Constantine’s own lifetime.
Unfortunately, other things were happening
during the reign of that same Emperor indicating
that the full significance of the existence of
a truly “separate,” supernaturally grounded
Christian body and mentality had by no means
yet been digested by the State. Constantine’s
support for a revision of the Council of Nicaea’s
anti-Arian definition of the Son as being of the
same substance as the Father is, of course, the
chief case in point. It was one thing granting
the clergy special benefits when they could be
handed secular administrative responsibilities
that laymen in the late Empire were fleeing as
intolerable burdens along with them. It was quite
another treating prelates with respect when
they might use their supposedly favored and
independent positions to oppose the imperial
will. For as real as the recognition of the separate
role of the Mystical Body of Christ in the Edict
of Milan may have been on the theoretical level,
that separate function was still looked upon as
one that must be guided by the State and for the
narrowly perceived political well-being of the
State.
To give to Constantine and his successors
down to 2013 their proper due, this attitude is
understandable and, in effect, “comes along with
the job.” Weighing, measuring, and submitting to
supernatural guidance always requires serious
effort for all of us in each and every one of our
natural daily activities. This can be especially
14

The Angelus

January - February 2013

problematic when we realize that that guidance
that we as believers must acknowledge comes
at the hands of men who themselves have their
own temptations to misuse their vocations
and can therefore badly muddle their work as
transmitters of Christ’s message.
Quite frankly, as far as I am concerned, the
biggest obstacle to digestion of the full meaning
of the Edict of Milan and the consequences this
should have for the transformation of all things
in Christ—right down to the present—has always
been the failure of the episcopacy to do its job
properly. From the very outset, all too many
prelates whose chief “job hazard” and flaw ought
to have been that of exaggerating the power
of the Church have dedicated themselves to
weakening ecclesiastical authority.
Some of these “court bishops,” such as that
Eusebius of Nicomedia (d. 341) who stirred up
the Arian revision movement in the first place,
may have been fundamentally concerned with
heretical principles. Nevertheless, they clearly
understood how the State machinery could be
mobilized against the free action of the Church
as a whole. They provided a model for that horde
of prelates who joined in the ecclesiastical
destruction game for the sake of personal riches
and glory and made the whole of the fourth
century one long and unnecessary battle to
return (admittedly in enriched form) to the
original Nicaean formula.
Particularly disturbing is the damage done
by more well-meaning court bishops. Eusebius,
the Bishop of Caesarea (c. 263-339) and the first
great Church historian, stands at the head of the
list of offenders in this regard. He, whatever his
personal Arian convictions, seems to have been
motivated much more by awe before the fact
that a Roman Emperor with the age-old majesty
of the Imperial State behind him, now called
himself a Christian. This awe led him to create
an aura surrounding the “Christian Emperor”
that was crucial to the transformation of his
responsibility from one of simple protection of
the Pax Christi—a difficult enough task—to
that of playing an unacceptable “apostolic”
role in shaping it. Eusebius expressly rejected
discussing anything in his Vita of Constantine

that could be unedifying from a Christian
standpoint, even though the full story might have
sent the orthodox believer hunting for a much
more certain shield and buckler. Having assured
us of Constantine’s beneficence by suppressing
any evidence that might contradict its validity,
he then moved on, in the Laudes, delivered
on the thirtieth anniversary of the Emperor’s
reign in 335, to set a tone in praise of the faithfriendly ruler destined for a long history of
imitation down to the present day. One passage
from Johannes Quasten’s Patrology reveals the
attendant problems neatly:
“Eusebius begins with the assurance that
he intends to avoid any display of rhetoric. He
believes that the Emperor is a human being
set apart from other human beings in that he
is ‘perfect in wisdom, in goodness, in justice,
in courage, in piety, in devotion to God: the
Emperor truly and he alone is a philosopher, for
he knows himself, and he is fully aware that an
abundance of every blessing is showered on him
from a source quite external to himself, even
from heaven itself.’ Eusebius compares him to
the sun: ‘Thus our Emperor, like the radiant
sun, illuminates the most distant subjects of his
empire through the presence of his Caesars, as
with the far piercing rays of his own brightness.’
His Empire is ‘the imitation of the monarchical
power in heaven,’ because he has consciously
modeled his government after that in heaven”
(Johannes Quasten, Patrology, III, 326-327).
To paraphrase a line from the old film Cool
Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure
to communicate”—in this case, a failure to
communicate the true path to that corrective
and transformative impact of the Church on
the State that the Edict of Milan ought to have
made possible in practice as well as in theory.
Eusebius of Caesarea was a “court bishop”
of the most dangerous sort—most dangerous
because he actually believed in the error that he
was communicating. He told the imperial State
that called itself Christian that its mere “words”
ensured the victory of the Word Incarnate.
Unfortunately, he was but the first of many such
prelates. Future court bishops would serve the
interests of national monarchies on the one hand

and democratic “Catholic” political parties on
the other, granting the same twisted “apostolic
powers” to their “Most Christian Systems” that
Eusebius awarded to his. In our own time and
place similar prelates promote the cause of
supposedly God-fearing Founding Fathers who
were really servants of the anti-Catholic Whig
Enlightenment.
The Edict of Milan was indeed only “the end
of the beginning” in terms of the history of the
complex relationship of Church and State. Still,
let us not allow a recognition of the problems
that continued to trouble the interaction of these
two institutions after A.D. 313 to tempt us to the
conclusion that the collaboration of the earthly
political authority with that of the Mystical Body
of Christ necessarily weakened and corrupted
the Church’s liberating spiritual mission.
One might just as well use recognition of the
inevitable difficulties of harmonizing the exercise
of parental and ecclesiastical authority as an
excuse for calling for the separation of Church
and Family.
No, the Edict of Milan was “the end of the
beginning” of something more than a simple
revelation of the pains involved with struggling
towards eternal life in a sin-stained valley of
tears. It was also “the end of the beginning” of
the construction of that magnificent society
that we call Christendom. Construction of that
new social order had begun the moment that the
Apostles, Apostolic Fathers, and their successors
understood that our earthly environment was
meant to be corrected and transformed through
the message and grace of the Incarnation, thereby
providing us a training ground for Heaven as
opposed to Hell. Plans were laid intellectually
and even carried through practically, to a certain
narrow degree, within the precarious Catholic
enclaves of the pre-Constantinian world. But the
Edict proved to be the crucial step by means of
which “Christendom” left its parochial clubhouse
to conquer the public spaces of the world at large.
And the rest is history.

15

“Who do men say that I,
the Son of Man, am?”

(Matt. 16:13)

The Lord asked His disciples who men said that He was, and their answers were human
as long as they were the answers of human reason, unilluminated by Divine light. At last,
when the glimmerings of earthly conjecture were spoken, he whose apostleship is the first
in dignity, was the first to confess his Lord. And Simon Peter answered and said: “Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered and said unto him, “Blessed
art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
which is in heaven.” That is to say, for this cause art thou blessed, because My Father
Himself hath taught thee; the opinions of men have not beguiled thee, the voices of angels
have not taught thee, not flesh and blood, but He, whose only begotten Son I am, hath
revealed Me unto thee.
Thus says the Lord unto Simon Peter: “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter.”
That is to say, even as My Father has revealed unto thee concerning Me that I am God,
even so now will I also reveal unto thee that thou art Peter; I am the sure Rock of defence,
the Corner Stone, who make both one (Eph. 2:20); I am the foundation, beside which other
can no man lay (I Cor. 3:11), and thou also art a rock, in My strength made hard, and those
things whereof I by right am Lord, into thy hand do I give them, that thou mayst bear rule
over them, for Me and with Me. And upon this rock I will build My Church.
(Pope Leo the Great, Homily on the Third Anniversary of His Own Election)

Theme Religious Liberty

John Locke
on Religious
Liberty
by Fr. Jonathan Loop, SSPX

1

18

By referring to religious
liberty as the “cornerstone”
of American government,
Cardinal Dolan is arguing
that it is as important to
the political system of the
United States as is Our Lord
Jesus Christ in the economy
of salvation. If he is correct,
this would necessarily mean
that if one rejects religious
liberty, one rejects the
entire American project. It
may be further observed
that the full quote is: “the
stone which the builders
have rejected has become
the cornerstone.” In this
light, Cardinal Dolan is
saying that religious liberty
was something previously
rejected by the “builders”;
amongst whom are all preVatican II popes.

The Angelus

January - February 2013

In an editorial for the Wall Street Journal written on January 25, 2012,
then Archbishop Timothy Dolan stated, “When the Founding Fathers
determined that the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in
our Constitution, they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the first
freedom in the Bill of Rights.” He goes so far as to identify religious freedom
as the “cornerstone”1 of American government. Although the archbishop’s
immediate purpose in writing this article was to oppose the presidential
administration’s contraceptive mandate, his underlying goal is to outline
the proper relations between church and state, especially in America. He
considers ideal the situation wherein the government permits members of
different religions both to worship publicly and to live in accord with their
consciences. Inasmuch as the eminent Cardinal is expressing the accepted
opinion of the majority of the Catholic hierarchy in our day, it is necessary
for us to examine briefly its origins and character.
These ideas in great measure may be traced to the writings of John
Locke, a philosopher who exerted much influence on the men of America’s
founding generation. He articulates most clearly his understanding of

2

Here it may be of note
to observe the criticism
directed by President
George Washington to the
Quakers of his day, who
refused to fight in defense
of the country: “Your
principles and conduct are
well known to me; and it
is doing the people called
Quakers no more than
justice to say, that (except
their declining to share
with others the burden of
the common defense) there
is no denomination among
us, who are more exemplary
and useful citizens.”

3

In this light, it is interesting
to note that the feast of
Christ the King in the Novus
Ordo has been moved to the
end of the liturgical year.

4

In his First Treatise,
Locke says: “reason is our
only star and compass”
[emphasis added].

the proper relations between church and state in a small work titled A
Letter Concerning Toleration, written in 1689. In order to grasp better
the understanding of religious liberty which dominated American political
culture until at least the 1960s and which still has some influence in our
nation, it is necessary to examine this short essay. What follows is not an
attempt to justify or to attack, but merely to describe.
To begin, Locke’s argument may be simplified as follows: religious
societies or churches have different ends than political societies. Therefore,
they have no business interfering in one another’s internal affairs. Indeed,
he begins his essay with the claim that the motives which lead people to mix
the two are rather based on a desire for power than a zeal for souls. At best,
he claims that there is confusion as to the extent and nature of the power of
civil magistrates to promote this or that creed.
Therefore, Locke endeavors to distinguish the nature, goal, and proper
means of the two powers. To begin, he claims that a commonwealth is
“a society of human beings constituted solely for the preservation and
advancing of civil goods, [amongst which are] life, liberty, bodily health
and freedom from pain, and possessions of external things, such as landed
estates, money, furniture, etc.” In other words, the jurisdiction of politics
is essentially limited to the goods of this world. We must understand that
Locke did not wish to exclude from these goods proper moral habits. Later
on in the essay he will specifically say that the government cannot tolerate
religious opinions which undermine the moral qualities—e.g., justice,
courage,2 fidelity, etc.—necessary to preserve civil society. As a necessary
consequence of the this-worldly goal of civil society, Locke maintains that
the authority of a government is limited to providing for these goods: “It is
the duty of the civil magistrate, through laws established impartially for
all, to secure to all the people in general, and to the individual subjects
in particular, the just possession of the things pertaining to this life.” To
legislate on questions of theology with no bearing on morals would be to
arrogate to itself an authority which it cannot possess.
What is the foundation of such a claim? It is clear that Locke wishes to
highlight the role of human choice in the establishment of political societies
while downplaying the intervention of God. He explicitly argues that God has
in no way imparted to any civil ruler the right to force men to embrace the
true religion or, by extension, to prohibit the peaceful practice of religions
other than his own. While not denying that God is the author of man’s nature
—indeed, in other works he specifically argues that man is a creature of God
—and therefore is the author of political society, he circumscribes the role
of the positive will of God in politics to a very narrow sphere. Later on in the
work, Locke will argue that should there be a dispute between the supreme
human legislator in a society and his subjects about some point of religion,
there is no one but God who can decide the dispute and that God will do
this at the end of time.3 In the meantime, it is impossible to know who truly
speaks for God. In short, Locke is asserting that there is no way to know
how God wishes political society to be organized other than by consulting
reason,4 which can ascertain the rules of civil society rendered necessary in
light of the nature of man.
19

Theme Religious Liberty

20

5

Thus, Locke would not
simply agree with what was
said by John F. Kennedy in
his famous speech to the
Greater Houston Ministerial
Association in 1960: “I
believe in a president whose
religious views are his
own private affair, neither
imposed by him upon the
nation, or imposed by
the nation upon him as a
condition to holding that
office.” Locke would agree
that the president should
not impose his views on his
people, but would not be of
the mind that the president’s
views need only be his
“private affair.”

6

“As the happiness of a
people, and the good order
and preservation of civil
government, essentially
depend upon piety, religion
and morality; and as these
cannot be generally diffused
through a community, but
by the institution of the
public worship of GOD, and
of public instructions in
piety, religion, and morality:
Therefore, ...the several
towns...[shall] make suitable
provision, at their own
expense, for the institution
of the public worship of
GOD, and for the support
and maintenance of public
protestant teachers of piety,
religion and morality.”
Taken from: http://
press-pubs.uchicago.edu/
founders.

The Angelus

January - February 2013

We may further note that Locke is silent in his letter on the duties which
any civil society as such owes to God. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical
Immortale Dei, teaches that the “State, constituted as it is [by nature], is
clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God,
by the public profession of religion.” There is nothing equivalent in Locke’s
treatment of the subject. Nevertheless, he does grant that the government is
free to promote its own understanding of religion:
“But you will say, the magistrate is able to use arguments, and thereby
draw the heterodox into truth and effect their salvation. So be it; but this is
common to him with other human beings: if he teaches, if he instructs, if he
corrects the erroneous by arguments, he certainly does what is becoming
for a good man. It is not necessary for the magistrate to lay aside either the
human being or the Christian.”
What he says of the “magistrate” may be said to be true of government in
general. Thus, it may promote a certain religious view if it should so please.5
However, Locke does not here speak of any duty to do so, nor any positive
obligation to seek out the one true religion and to promote it at the expense
of others, as Leo XIII expressly states. The American founders, for their part,
agreed that government was free to support and promote certain religious
views. For example, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 expressly
commanded towns to set aside public funds to pay for Protestants preachers
who were to direct the public worship of God.6
George Washington went further and declared in his Thanksgiving
Proclamation: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of
Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to
implore his protection and favor.” In other words, our first president believed
the government should teach that God provides laws for men and exercises
providence in their regard. Washington nevertheless wholeheartedly
agreed with Locke that while the government was free to encourage
certain religious beliefs, it had no right to compel members of the political
community to join this or that religious denomination. In other words, those
Americans who refused to take part in Thanksgiving—or who did so in
manners opposed to the sensibilities of the members of government—were
not to be punished by the civil magistrate.
This brings us to another aspect of Locke’s teaching; namely, that no one
ought to be deprived of their legitimate rights on account of their religious
beliefs. Again, Locke’s presupposition is that the laws of society are derived
from man’s natural needs, which are not connected to any religious opinions.
He says explicitly: “If a Papist believes that to be truly the body of Christ
which someone else calls bread, he does no injury to his neighbor. If a Jew
does not believe the New Testament to be the word of God, he alters no
civil rights. If a heathen doubts of both Testaments, he is not therefore to be
punished as if a wicked citizen.” This attitude evidently lies at the foundation
of the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, passed in 1785, wherein one
reads: “that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions,
any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” Locke and Thomas
Jefferson, the author of the Virginia statute, are claiming that such doctrines
about God’s nature affect men’s moral conduct to the same extent as do

7

Here, it is important to note
that “civil rights” are not
identical to “natural rights.”
The latter are derived
immediately from man’s
nature while the former are
rights discovered by reason
to be necessary for good life
in civil society. An example
of civil rights would be
voting or holding elective
office. The distinction
is analogous to what St.
Thomas Aquinas refers
to as the “primary” and
“secondary” precepts of
the natural law. The former
are principles of conduct
derived immediately from
man’s natural desires while
the latter are practical
conclusions arising from
them.

8

Thus, the English crown
would have been justified
to persecute Catholics
in the wake of St. Pius
V’s excommunication of
Queen Elizabeth I and his
subsequent claim that she
was deprived of any rightful
claim to rule.

9

Perhaps ironically, Locke’s
statement here more
directly affects Anglicans,
who have as the head of
their church the reigning
monarch of Great Britain.
Given this principle, all
countries not subject to
England should rightfully
forbid any Anglican
churches within their
territories.

10

Locke does not admit what
is taught by Leo XIII and
other popes; namely, that
the “teaching Church” (i.e.,
the Pope and the bishops)
have been given a special
grace of state by God to
judge accurately what is
and is not commanded or
prohibited by the natural
law.

questions of mathematics and are thus irrelevant to political life, with this
added caveat: such religious opinions are not as open to demonstration
as are the laws of the physical sciences. Therefore, they are not fit subject
matter for the laws of the realm and it is unjust to punish people—whether
by depriving them of life or property or by withholding from them the equal
advantages of civil society—for holding them.
However, Locke is not of the mind that any and all opinions about God
ought to be countenanced by government. Indeed, he lists four beliefs—
partly theoretical, partly practical7—which must be suppressed. Why?
Locke, not being a fool, would admit that not all opinions about God have
the same relation to moral behavior as do geometric theorems. In the
first place, a religion which teaches corrupt moral doctrines ought not
to be tolerated. Thus, Locke would have approved of the actions of the
United States Congress when in the 1890s it threatened to dis-incorporate
(i.e., seize) all property held by the Church of Latter-Day Saints should it
insist on its practice of polygamy. Secondly, Locke claims that a religion
which claims for its members prerogatives contrary to the civil rights of
non-members should not be tolerated. In this class, Locke includes the
ability to depose kings for heresy.8 In effect, he is claiming that this is an
unjustifiable attempt by some to rule other people without their consent.
Thirdly, he states that government cannot permit anyone to adopt a creed
which puts them under the jurisdiction of a foreign prince, for it undermines
their loyalty to their own sovereign. This argument was long used against
Catholics in the United States.9 Finally, he teaches that no atheists can
be countenanced, for such deny the foundation of all morals. Thus, Locke
would approve of the censorship of movements such as American Atheists,
who this past Christmas posted billboards in Times Square of New York
City with pictures of Santa Claus and Our Lord with the phrase: “Keep the
Merry, dump the Myth.”10 He would neither praise the ambivalence of state
and local governments in the face of such campaigns nor of the teaching of
radical secularism in public schools and universities. Indeed, he might well
have viewed a government which allowed such doctrines to be taught in
its institutions of higher learning as suicidal. Locke thus did judge that the
government ought to limit and determine to an extent the parameters of right
belief for its subjects, but he believed the criteria for such interference to
be the effects—reason and not revelation—of religious teachings on moral
behavior.
Now, a notable effect of Locke’s position is to deprive those who claim—
whether rightly or wrongly—to be God’s representatives of any special
right to direct political matters either directly or indirectly. For the correct
method of organizing society to obtain and preserve temporal goods does
not depend on any special supernatural revelation. As a result, leaders
of different churches are no better situated to determine what is most
conducive to the common good of civil society than the other members of
their religious communities or even non-members thereof. In light of this, he
would almost certainly have approved in part of John Kennedy’s statement:
“I believe in an America where...no Catholic prelate would tell the president
(should he be Catholic) how to act.” The fact that he denies ecclesiastics
21

Theme Religious Liberty

11

I say “in part” because
Locke would probably
note that these students
do not have a civil right to
go to the university at all.
Students choose freely to
come to the university and
therefore they implicitly
promise to abide by the
standards of the university.
Thus, the university has
a right—in principle—to
establish conditions
whereby students may
associate on campus.
Of course, Locke would
view the decision of the
university as bad inasmuch
as it tends to exclude men of
decent moral character.

such prerogatives is implicit in his definition of a church. He defines it as “a
free society of human beings, joining themselves together spontaneously, to
worship God publicly in such mode as they believe will be acceptable to the
deity for the salvation of souls.” Locke admits that such voluntary societies
must have some form of hierarchy, but implicitly insists that the members
of this hierarchy have jurisdiction only over those who have voluntarily
submitted to them in those spiritual matters pertaining to the salvation
of their souls (as a result, he denies that they have any power to compel
their subjects with temporal punishments aside from excommunication).
This does not, he suggests, give these leaders any greater insight into the
natural law than other men and therefore does not confer on them a special
prerogative to judge the actions of political superiors.11
Nevertheless, Locke argues that this hierarchy is supreme in its internal
affairs. He observes that “the right of establishing laws can belong to none
but the society itself; or at least (which comes down to the same thing) to
those whom the society itself has approved by its own consent.” Therefore,
he argues that it is not the place of the civil government to dictate to these
communities how they are to conduct themselves. The first consequence
of this is that such societies are wholly free to admit or to exclude those
whom they will. Thus, Locke would agree with Cardinal Dolan’s delight at
the decision of the Supreme Court in the recent Tabor case, where all nine
members of the court agreed that a Lutheran school could most certainly
terminate the contract of a teacher who did not subscribe to Lutheran views.
After having given this sketch of Locke’s view in his Letter Concerning
Toleration, we are in a position to observe that his teaching regarding
the proper relations between church and state is relatively simple in itself,
though its practical application can be somewhat complex. In short, men
voluntarily join two kinds of societies—one political, the other religious—for
essentially different purposes. In the first case, they seek to provide for the
good things of this life by submitting to a ruler with the power to use force to
protect them. In the latter, they attempt to worship God in the manner which
they believe pleasing to Him by observing certain rules and rituals. Those
who refuse are kicked out. While the government may promote this or that
church, it may neither compel men to join it nor prevent them from joining
private associations to worship as they see fit. It may only prohibit those
religious opinions which reason perceives to be harmful to good morals
and the common temporal good of society. It is this vision of the relations
between church and state which Cardinal Dolan calls the “cornerstone” of
the American system. The good Cardinal and much of the Catholic hierarchy
thus embrace a vision of politics which is certainly faithful to much of
the American tradition. However, we must confess that it is foreign to the
tradition of the Church—as expressed in Quas Primas by Pope Pius XI—for
it renders impossible the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
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.

22

The Angelus

January - February 2013

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

Mother Love
A mother’s life 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
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-- Prayers to Some of the Special Patrons of Christian Mothers
-- Indulgenced Prayers
-- A short book of instructions for Christian Mothers on the
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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.

Theme Religious Liberty

The Two
Swords
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

“We are informed by the texts of the gospels
that in this Church and in its power are two
swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal…
Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church,
that is to say, the spiritual and the material
sword, but the latter is to be administered for
the Church but the former by the Church; the
former in the hands of the priest; the latter
by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the
will and sufferance of the priest. However, one
sword ought to be subordinated to the other and
temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power.”
This text of the bull Unam Sanctam (A.D.
1302) gives the classic thesis on Church and
State. Boniface VIII wrote it in a dramatic
moment of Church history which saw the
beginning of the end of the Christian era, which
signed the end of the Middle Ages. A pawn of
24

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King Philip the Fair of France, Nogaret gave a
slap to the Pope which marked indeed the breach
of the Church’s supremacy over the temporal
powers.
To better assess this matter, a briefing
into some of the historical, philosophical
and theological documents will elucidate the
fundamental ecclesiastic tenets of the political
question.

Three Options Historically
We are looking at the connection between
two powers ruling the same subjects both
as Christians and as citizens. And since this
connection is not unlike the relation between
husband and wife, historically, its options were
necessarily one of three: either proper marital
union, or de facto separation, or again total
divorce.
The Catholic option is that which exists in
wedlock between husband and wife, each holding
a specific jurisdiction and yet properly ordered. It
consists in the harmony between the two Powers,
the Temporal and the Spiritual—the State
working under the ‘vigilance’ of the Church—and
this is called the doctrine of the Two Swords,
“The State not above but in the Church,” to quote
St. Ambrose, echoed by St. Pius in Notre Charge
Apostolique: “Society cannot be set up unless the
Church lays the foundations and supervises the
work.” Hence, there is neither unity in confusion
nor separation, but union in the distinction. For
about a millennium, from the baptism of Clovis
till the Protestant uprising, under leaders like
Charlemagne and St. Louis, the statesmen knew
their faith and applied, with more or less fervor,
the testament of St. Remigius: “For the honor of
Holy Mother the Church of God and the defense
of the poor.”
Historically, religious liberalism was the first
erroneous version of the relation of Church
and State. The State must ignore the Church,
although this admits of a couple of variations.
“The Church free in a free State” was the credo
of the Italian revolutionary Cavour aiming at
destroying the Pontifical Estates, separating

what had always existed together. This credo
was promoted later by the conservative liberal
Montalembert in France during the Second
Empire: “We’ll leave the Church free to transact
its spiritual things with souls and schools, as long
as we take full control of civil affairs, free from
religious arbitration.” What is proposed in the
first case is total separation, as when the spouses
part company altogether. The second case offers
a separation under the same roof, so that the
State—the wife—would obey only when it suits
it. In any case, the liberal system—for, so it is
named—promotes liberty of conscience, which
implies the liberty of thinking, of the press and of
cult.
The utter disconnection or divorce between
Church and State has been advocated lately
by many revolutionary States. As an undiluted
product of naturalism, State atheism denies
Revelation and Religion altogether. Likewise,
an indifferentist State worships a self-centered
humanism and promotes human instincts.
Therefore, religion or Church must receive its
rights exclusively from the State according to
the axiom: “The Church by the State and in the
State.” This is the way communism and tyrannies
have wiped out any parallel spiritual force so as
to reign supreme, above and beyond any divine
law.

The Recipe for Good
Government
It was in the Age of Faith that St. Thomas
Aquinas gave a reply to Hugh, newly appointed
king of Cyprus, on how to govern. The De Regno
encapsulates the best of Christian philosophy
regarding the confessional State. Here are the
logical steps of the argument.
The term governor etymologically designates
the pilot who is said to govern a ship when he
brings it unharmed and by a direct route to
harbor. Likewise, the governor’s endeavors will
merely tend to preserve the State undamaged
in its proper perfection. Yet man’s perfection
consists not only in the pursuit of earthly things,
but really in final beatitude in the enjoyment
25

Theme Religious Liberty
of God. So, the Christian man, for whom that
beatitude has been purchased by the blood of
Christ, needs also spiritual care to direct him to
the harbor of eternal salvation, and this care is
provided by the ministers of the church of Christ.
This may be fine and good for the individual,
but what about the community? It also must
have a purpose, which cannot be a common type
of living, as that of animals or slaves. Indeed
only such men form a multitude who submit to
the same laws and the same government for the
purpose of living well, i.e. virtuously. And since
society must have the same end as the individual
man, its ultimate goal cannot be only to live
virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain
to the possession of God, according to the words
of Our Lord: “What does it profit a man to gain
the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
Now the possession of God is a lofty goal
obtained not by human, but by divine power.
Consequently, government of this kind pertains
to that king who is not only a man, but also God,
namely, our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, in order
that spiritual things might be distinguished from
earthly things, the ministry of this kingdom
has been entrusted not to earthly kings, but to
priests, and most of all to the chief priest, the
Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff.
On the other hand, those who have the care
of intermediate ends should be directed by the
rule of him who has care of the ultimate end. And
in practice, the king’s office should promote the
good life of the multitude for reaching heaven,
that is, he should command those things which
lead to the happiness of heaven and, as far as
possible, forbid the contrary. St. Augustine,
writing to the African governor Boniface,
explains this: “One thing is for the prince to serve
God as an individual, it is quite another thing
to do so as a prince. As a man, he serves it by
living faithfully; as a king, by producing religious
laws and sanctioning them with the fitting vigor.
The kings serve the Lord as kings when they
do for His cause that which only kings can do.”
But if the king were only worried to provide for
these material goods without caring whether
his subjects used them to go to hell, he would be
acting like the captain of the Titanic, worried
26

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only about giving fun to his passengers but
careless as to whether the boat would reach port
or nail an iceberg.
Thus, in the mind of St. Thomas, both Powers
are autonomous in their respective domain. The
State deals with the temporal and the Church
with the spiritual, with their proper immediate
ends, living well or eternal beatitude. But as the
ends are ordered and subordinate, so must the
respective societies. This is called the indirect
power, usually spoken of negatively although it
has also a more positive side to it.
Negatively, the Church has power of veto over
the State ratione peccati—whenever it is at fault.
Its duty is to correct the natural leaders who
stray because of sin and to condemn them if need
be, as was the case of St. Ambrose with Emperor
Theodosius, or St. Gregory VII with Emperor
Henry IV at Canossa. This is because the
temporal power suffers from a double weakness.
As such it not only ignores the flaw of original sin,
but it has no way to remedy it. Thus, the temporal
society needs to be infused with the Church
teaching of the natural law, which is like the
State catechism for living well. The Church will
also impart the healing grace without which man
will all too soon return to his beastly cave or, as
Chesterton puts it: “Take away the supernatural,
and what remains is the unnatural.”
Positively, the Church has received from
Christ the mission to “teach all nations.” She
alone has the supreme wisdom of the ultimate
purpose of man and knows the how and why of
all authority on earth. Hence, she is the mistress
of life and of statesmen. Her function is to
provide the overseeing governor with the good
eye. For governing must conjugate two things,
the authority which is the eye apt to see the end
and its proper means, and the power which is
the arm to put in motion all means necessary to
reach the end. In this sense, the Church’s wisdom
and knowledge influence directly the statesman
pretty much as the shipman tells the shipbuilder
what kind of ship he must construct to be
suitable for navigation.
It would be false to consider the Church locked
in an ivory tower, imperturbable to the evolutions
and revolutions in the city laid out at her feet.

The City needs the Church as well as the Church
needs the City. The Church needs to permeate
and fashion the City in the same way that the
City is to find its place in the Church. This
complementarity is what Leo XIII refers to when
he compares the two Powers to the union of body
and soul. Continuing in this analogy, Cardinal
Pie says: “But, however happily it be endowed
with articulations, springs and muscles, a body
without a soul is a cadaver, and the proper of the
cadaver is to fall soon into dissolution. The soul
of any human society is the faith, it is doctrine, it
is religion, it is God.”
If the City is vitalized through the Church, the
other side of the coin is no less true: the Church
badly needs a confessional State. Although she
will survive because she is divine, the Church
will be impaired from reaching her spiritual
ends without the help of civil powers. We need
only open our eyes to see that the vast majority
of people are sheep: they follow the behavior of
society and custom. If it is fashionable to go to
church, the people will go to church in droves;
but if the law allows divorce, many will divorce.
Hence, when the Church is in the City like its
soul, the majority of people are saved; but in time
of separation, eternal salvation is the privilege of
heroes.

The Theological Documents
In 1950, Cardinal Ottaviani wrote an
interesting piece of political jurisprudence,
occasioned by a controversy in the United States
opposing Monsignor Joseph C. Fenton (American
Ecclesiastical Review, May 1954) and John C.
Murray, the father of Dignitatis Humanae.
The latter’s view was that the Church can live
peacefully and in the full possession of all the
rights to which she is entitled in a lay-state, even
when the State is composed of Catholics. Murray
defended virtually the American dream as the
messianic Promised Land. For him, the State
as such cannot accomplish an act of religion;
moreover no obligation to worship God can ever
enter the constitutional sphere; finally, even
for a State composed of Catholics, there is no

obligation to profess the Catholic religion.
Ottaviani, grounding his theses on the
perennial Church magisterium, affirms as an
indisputable truth that in a predominantly
Catholic State, it is incumbent on the rulers to
mold the legislation of the State in a Catholic
sense. From this duty, three consequences follow
immediately:
First, the State has the duty of professing its
religion, even socially. “States cannot without
serious moral offense conduct themselves as if
God were non-existent or cast off the care of
religion as something foreign to themselves or of
little moment” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei).
Secondly, legislation must be inspired by the
full concept of membership of Christ. “Reflecting
seriously on the deleterious consequences
which a Constitution, that abandons the
‘corner stone’ of the Christian concept of life
and attempts to base social life on moral and
religious agnosticism, would introduce into the
bosom of society and into its ephemeral history,
every Catholic will readily understand that the
question which, before every other, ought at
present to attract his attention and to spur him
to action, is that of securing for this and future
generations the benefit of a fundamental law of
the State, which is not opposed to sound religious
and moral principles, but which rather draws
vigorous inspiration from them and proclaims
and pursues their lofty aims” (Pius XII, October
19, 1945). Thus, when Cardinal Pie was told that
certain countries (like Belgium and the United
States of America) had proclaimed the separation
of Church and State and allegedly enjoyed more
complete liberty, he answered boldly: “The
American and Belgian system, this system of
philosophico-political indifference, is eternally a
defective system.…The perfect agreement of the
priesthood and of the empire is the common law
and the normal state of Christian societies.”
Thirdly, the State must ward off everything
that would tend to divide or weaken the religious
unity of a people that has the unanimous
conviction of being in the secure possession of
religious truth.
Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei, makes it manifest
that rulers cannot “out of the many forms of
>
27

Theme Religious Liberty
religion adopt that one which pleases them,”
because, as he explains, in the worship of God
they are obliged to observe the laws and the
forms of worship in accordance with which
God Himself has commanded that He should be
honored, “for we are bound absolutely to worship
God in that way which He has shown to be His
will.” And in Libertas, he insists strongly on the
same point: “Justice forbids, and reason itself
forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line
of action which would end in godlessness, namely
to treat the various religions (as they call them)
alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously
equal rights and privileges.”
The Church magisterium on the confessional
State was given liturgical expression with the
feast of Christ the King which Pius XI instituted
in 1925: “To the States, the yearly celebration
of the feast (of Christ the King) will recall that
magistrates and governors are held, as much as
the citizens, to render Christ a public worship and
to obey Him…because His royalty demands that
the entire State be ruled by the commandments
of God and the Christian principles.”
Such is the ideal State for the Catholic Church,
which occurs in a largely Catholic country.
Ottaviani explained the need for toleration in
other cases. Time magazine, in the thick of
the Murray-Fenton controversy, argued that
Catholicism supported the first amendment only
in practice, but denied it in principle. Fenton
answered the attack by quoting Immortale Dei
of Leo XIII which gives room for toleration of
the freedom of worship “for the sake of securing
some great good or of hindering some great evil.”
Hence, no American needs to enter the anarchist
club in order to remain a Roman Catholic.

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Faith and Morals

The Liturgy
by Fr. Adam Purdy, SSPX

1

St. Augustine’s definition of
sin: aversio a Deo (turning
away from God), conversio
ad creaturam (turning
toward the creature).

In our spiritual lives we are often urged to assess the esteem we give to
creatures. Men become inordinate in their pursuit of wealth, reputation, and
various creature comforts. In all cases, it is not a question of what the thing
is in itself, but rather what it means to us. Herein lies the true depth to the
expression conversio ad creaturam1 involved with every sin. We are therefore
moved to check these attachments in order to obtain spiritual progress.
On the other hand, the role of creatures in our sanctification is a most
important one. Psychologically speaking, there is nothing in the soul that
does not first come through the senses, that is, from the material world. As
this is true intellectually, so it is true spiritually. Let us make note of the
humanity of Jesus Christ as well as the sacraments, both material creatures
instrumental in our sanctification.
Men are body and soul; as such, all of our actions engage our bodies and
souls in some way. While grace resides in the higher faculties, we are not to
think of the body as simply excess baggage. A well-disciplined body is a most
effective tool for the sanctification of the soul.
Looking at the grand scheme of things, the Word goes forth in the
Incarnation to bring sinful men back to God who is Spirit. “I came from
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Faith and Morals

30

2

John 16:28.

3

Hebrews 10:5.

4

I Cor. 4:1.

5

Marmion, Christ the Life of
the Soul.

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the Father and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and I go to
the Father.”2 In taking flesh, He commits to use the material world in order to
restore the spiritual to men. This use of the material order on the part of the
Word is the liturgy of the Church.
The liturgy is the public prayer of the Church—the Mass, the sacraments,
the prayers of the missal, the blessings of the ritual, the breviary, etc. All
these are material, sensible expressions organized in times and seasons,
feasts and ceremonies. While the established signs instruct us in our duties
to God, our interior dispositions also find expression in these signs. Ritual is
the exterior expression of the interior dispositions of worship.
This description of the liturgy is the one closest to our senses; the one that
appears immediately. It is, however, incomplete without further development.
The deeper the development goes, the more we understand that the liturgy
and all prayer life are summed up in one word—Christ.
To come to a higher understanding of the liturgy, we must focus on the
work of Christ and the work of His institutions. For easiness in meditation
these are listed as follows:
-	The ‘work’ of the Son of God in His Divinity; the ‘prayer’ of Christ within
the bosom of the Trinity; the end to which we are called, namely, future
glory.
- The work of Christ in His humanity: “but a body thou hast fitted to me.” 3
- Christ is the ‘Conjoined Instrument.’
-	The work of Christ in instituting His instruments, the ministers and the
sacraments, to carry His Passion to souls.
-	The work of the ministers in dispensing the sacraments (instruments):
“dispensers of the mysteries of God.” 4
-	The organization of the ritual, the public prayers and actions of the
Mystical Body of Christ.
Let us begin with the end and purpose of the liturgy—the ‘work’ of the Son
of God, in His Divinity, the ‘prayer’ of Christ within the Bosom of the Trinity.
God is Father. Eternally long before the created light rose upon the world,
God begets a Son to whom He communicated His Nature, His perfections,
His beatitude, His life, for to beget is to communicate being and life. “Thou
art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee.” Both, although distinct from
one another, are united in a powerful, substantial embrace of love, whence
proceeds that Third Person, whom Revelation calls by the mysterious name:
the Holy Ghost.
But the Son, who by nature is the only Son of the Eternal Father, appears
here below only to become the First-born of all who shall receive Him, after
having been redeemed by Him: “The first-born among many brethren.” Alone
born of the Father in eternal splendor, alone Son by right, He is constituted
the head of a multitude of brethren, on whom, by His redeeming work, He
will bestow the grace of Divine life.
That same Divine life which proceeds from the Father into the Son and
from the Son into the humanity of Jesus, will circulate through Christ in
all who will accept it: it will draw them even into the Bosom of the Father,
where Christ has gone before us, after having paid, with His Blood, the price
of this divine gift.5

6

John 12:21.

7

Ibid., 17:21.

8

I Cor. 15:28.

9

Ant. O Sacrum Convivium,
Feast of Corpus Christi.

10

John 10:10.

To be drawn even into the Bosom of the Father! Jesus says the same at
his discourse at the Last Supper: “As Thou Father, in Me, and I in Thee: that
they also may be one in us”6; and “I in them, and I in Thee; that they may be
made perfect in one.”7 This refers to that repose, where union with God will
be eternally consummated: “And when all things shall be subdued unto him,
then the Son also himself shall be subject unto him that put all things under
him, that God will be all in all.”8 The purpose of our life is union with Christ
in His ‘work’ within the Bosom of the Trinity; to do what Christ does within
the Trinity; to participate in the eternal knowing and loving of God in His
intimate life.
Our usual understanding of the liturgy never goes this far; properly
speaking, this is not called liturgy. For our purpose we do not disconnect
the idea, for St. Thomas joins these ideas in one: “O sacred banquet at which
Christ is consumed, the memory of His Passion is recalled, our souls are
filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us.”9 The end,
future glory, is contained and signified in the sacraments, and therefore the
‘prayer’ of Christ remains united to the liturgy.
Life in Christ, within the Trinity, is the very end of the liturgy, the end of
our spiritual life. Exterior expressions made in the liturgy are to draw us
to this end; these expressions point to the inward meaning and purpose, to
the very life of the liturgy itself—“that you may have life and have it more
abundantly.”10

31

Faith and Morals

32

11

Summa Theologica, III, Q.
64, Art. 4.

12

“And He was made flesh,”
Nicene Creed.

13

Isaias 53:5.

14

I Peter 2:24.

15

Col. 1:12-14.

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In explaining the other points, let us turn to St. Thomas Aquinas. In his
treatise on the Sacraments, he explains the instrumental causality of the
humanity of Christ in the sacraments. To say this in lay terms: what role does
the humanity of Jesus play in distributing divine life? What is the value of His
body and soul? What does He accomplish as man in the sacraments?
Christ produces the inward sacramental effect, both as God and as
man, but not in the same way. For, as God, He works in the sacraments by
authority, but as man, His operation conduces the inward sacramental effect
meritoriously and efficiently, but instrumentally. For it has been stated
above (48, 1, 6; 49, 1) that Christ’s passion, which belongs to Him in respect
of His human nature, is the cause and justification, both meritoriously and
efficiently, not as the principal cause thereof, or by His own authority, but as
an instrument in so far as His humanity is the instrument of His Godhead, as
stated above (13:2, 3; 19:1).11
Christ as God has power of authority over the sacraments. This means
that God alone is the author of grace; He is the principal agent of grace
as He alone creates grace, and He alone touches the soul. However, God
chose an instrument, a tool, in order to carry this grace to souls. This tool
is the humanity of Jesus Christ. The Eternal Word of God takes flesh: Et
incarnatus est.12 In this work of the Holy Trinity, the Divine Nature and the
human nature are united in the one person of the Word. Human nature is
assumed to act as an instrument to reconcile men to God.
Reconciliation is accomplished through the redemptive work of Christ,
namely His Passion. “He hath borne our infirmities…and by his bruises we
are healed.”13 “Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree; that
we, being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were
healed.”14 “Giving thanks to God the Father, who has made us worthy to be
partakers of the lot of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the
power of darkness, and hath translated us in to the kingdom of the Son of his
love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins.”15
What then is the need of further instruments? What would bring His work
to men centuries after He lived? What would preserve in souls the graces
merited by the Passion? How would souls be nourished in the physical
absence of Jesus?
Jesus Christ instituted the sacraments as signs and causes of grace. These
are the material/sensible means to dispense the spiritual graces of His
Passion to souls. The material element is important; it is the execution of the
material element that gives the confidence and assurance that the spiritual
effect is delivered to the soul.
St. Thomas continues: “Consequently, just as Christ as God has power of
authority over the Sacraments, so, as man, He has power of ministry in chief,
or power of excellence. And this consists in four things. First in this; that the
merit and power of His Passion operates in the sacraments as stated in Q.
62, Art. 5. And because the power of the Passion is communicated to us by
faith, according to Rom. 3:25, ‘Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation
through faith in His blood,’ which we proclaim by calling on the name of
Christ: therefore, secondly, Christ’s power over the sacraments consists in
this, that they are sanctified by the invocation of His name. And because

16

Summa Theologica, III, Q.
64, Art. 4.

17

The law of praying is the law
of believing.

18

Rom. 5:9-10.

19

Hebrews 2:14-15.

the Sacraments derive their power from their institution, hence, thirdly, the
excellence of Christ’s power consists in this, that He, who gave them their
power, could institute the sacraments. And since cause does not depend on
effect but rather conversely, it belongs to the excellence of Christ’s power
that He could bestow the sacramental effect without conferring the exterior
sacrament.”16
Thus is clear the role and power of the humanity of Christ in the
sacraments:
- the merits and power of Christ’s Passion work in the sacraments;
-	the sacrament itself is an established instrument by which Christ applies
those merits;
-	these merits are able to touch our soul through the necessary disposition
of faith.
In His choice of instruments, Christ does not settle for inanimate elements
only, but He institutes the priesthood, incorporating men, not as inanimate,
but knowing and willing instruments. These instruments are given the power
to wield the sacraments, in effect, to wield the Passion of Christ.
All of this seems quite logical when we consider the state of man—the
sacraments are on account of man. The sacraments are not some mystical
creations that hover above us, dropping graces like rain; they are an exact fit,
molding around us, adapted to our very nature. It is not need that warrants
existence, but rather Christ’s perception of our needs who supplies in every
part and measure of our nature.
The Church, also perceptive of the nature of man, fashioned the ritual
of the Church. For the first centuries this development was restricted for
reasons of persecution. With the peace of Constantine, the liturgical rites
developed.
This ritual, externally a series of material elements—words, gestures,
actions—serves to accomplish many ends. As the external is a sign of the
internal, these material elements demonstrate the Faith. Lex orandi, lex
credendi.17 The authors of these signs designed them to indicate certain
things to the mind. The words used are a catechism of Catholic teaching,
exposing the mysteries of our Faith; the gestures, with their sense of the
sacred and the spirit of adoration, indicate what hides within the signs; the
entire structure and ambiance strengthen our dispositions of faith, hope and
charity, inspiring true worship of God.
Let us conclude with a passage from St. Paul, which shows that for the
sake of mankind, even God would bind Himself to a material element (flesh
and blood) to bring about the redemption of mankind. “Christ died for us;
much more therefore, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved
from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled
to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, shall we
be saved by his life.”18 And again St. Paul writes: “Therefore because the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner hath
been partaker of the same: that, through death, he might destroy him who
had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil: and might deliver them, who
through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude.”19
33

When Jesus was crucified the trumped-up
charge was first of blasphemy because, as
the Pharisees and priests said, “He claimed
to be God.” However, this would not be a
capital punishment issue according to the
Romans because blasphemy, in their eyes,
did not deserve capital punishment. To
cope with this the priests and Pharisees
then used the tack that Jesus claimed to
have authority in the “Kingdom of God”—in
other words, he declared himself a king. To
declare oneself a king was an issue with the
Romans as this was seen as treason against
the Roman emperor. “If you free this man,”
said the Pharisees, “you are no friend of
Caesar.” Therefore the weak Pilate had no
option but to authorize his execution.
The guards wove a ‘crown’ for the new
‘king’—out of thorns which dug into his
scalp. This crown was simply a device for
mocking Jesus, and for inflicting even more
pain on him.
“The Crowning with Thorns” from Santa Prassede’s Church, Rome

Faith and Morals

The Contraceptive Mandate and

“Religious
Liberty”
by Christopher Ferrara

1

36

See http://www.hrsa.gov/
womensguidelines/

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January - February 2013

Now that the United States Supreme Court has upheld the Obama
administration’s “Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act” by
the bare majority of 5-to-4, what is popularly known as its “contraceptive
mandate” has gone into effect. The mandate requires that employers provide
“health” insurance coverage for “all Food and Drug Administration approved
contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and
counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”1
To their credit, the American bishops affirm in the USCCB’s statement
“Our Most Cherished Liberty” (OMCL) that “an unjust law cannot be obeyed”
and that “Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must
have the courage not to obey them.” This episcopal call to civil disobedience
in our “culture of death” has been a long time coming and is most welcome.
The organized civil disobedience of the Church has nothing less than the
potential to renew the face of this nation, and for that reason the powers that
be of political modernity have always had an abiding fear of the Church thus
aroused. It is a fear as old as Locke’s Essay and Letter concerning toleration,
which counsel eternal vigilance in the task of keeping the Catholics down.
But the very need for civil disobedience reveals a far deeper problem

2

All emphasis mine unless
otherwise indicated.

than resistance to this or that unjust and immoral law. The problem is
systemic: “structures of sin” made possible by the political incapacitation
of the Church under America’s regime of “religious liberty.” It is here that
the bishops’ opposition to the mandate comes up short. This is not to
detract from the good faith effort by certain of the bishops to speak out
courageously in defense of the Church in this affair. It is, rather, to observe
the quid that must be accepted in return for the quo of “religious liberty”
in the modern sense: the Church is granted a certain exempt “space” for her
activity, but must accept that the realm of politics is to be governed solely by
civil authority and the will of relevant electoral majorities, without restraint
by the dictates of revealed truth and the natural law as expounded and
defended by the infallible Magisterium.
Consider another statement of protest issued by the USCCB via its
Administrative Committee, led by New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan,
whose chummy relations with Mr. Obama have scandalized traditional
Catholics around the world (as the Cardinal himself admits). The statement
is tellingly entitled “United for Religious Freedom” (UFRF)—not united for
the defense of the divine and natural law against violation by civil authority.
UFRF contains an implicit capitulation to the unchallengeable power of
the secular state: “[W]e wish to clarify what this debate is—and is not—
about. This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and
inexpensive, even when it is not provided by the Church’s hand and with the
Church’s funds….”2
Notice, first of all, the reference to a “debate.” In America, as in all Western
democratic republics, all questions are debatable, including questions of
fundamental morality, such as contraception or whether human life in the
womb shall be taken or spared. The “debate” over the mandate, says UFRF,
has nothing to do with transgressions of the objective moral order, but only
with how “the mandate includes an extremely narrow definition of what HHS
deems a ‘religious employer’ deserving exemption—employers who, among
other things, must hire and serve primarily those of their own faith.”
In other words, the statement concedes the power of the federal
government to mandate payment for abortion and sterilization generally.
It objects only that “religious liberty” requires a broader definition of the
exempt space to which those who might decline to pay for the mandate on
grounds of conscience may retreat. The morality of what is mandated is not
challenged in itself. Indeed, the statement hastens to add that the “debate”
is “not about the Bishops’ somehow ‘banning contraception,’ when the U.S.
Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago.” In other
words, supremum iudicatorium locutus est, causa finita est. What the
Magisterium teaches regarding the objective moral order, binding on all
nations, is implicitly assumed to be inoperative on American soil, once the
High Court or John Locke’s “supreme legislature” has spoken to the contrary.
As if to confirm this abdication of moral authority in the face of what John
Courtney Murray called the modern state’s “monism of power,” in OMCL we
read: “This is not a matter of whether contraception may be prohibited by
the government. This is not even a matter of whether contraception may be
supported by the government. Instead, it is a matter of whether religious
37

Faith and Morals

38

3

Louis Veuillot, L’Illusion
Libérale (Palmé, 1866), 96
(English edition).

4

Proceedings (1872), vii.

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January - February 2013

people and institutions may be forced by the government to provide coverage
for contraception or sterilization, even if that violates their religious beliefs.”
In other words, the government and “the people” may do whatever they
please respecting contraception without opposition from the Church, so long
as Catholics and others of similar “beliefs” are not forced to participate. This
“most cherished liberty” is not the freedom of the Church to constitute social
order by informing and directing the body politic in matters that touch on
morality and the welfare of souls so as to lead men, in partnership with the
State, toward their final end in eternal beatitude—i.e., the Social Kingship
of Christ. Rather, what is most cherished is “the gift of liberty which is ours
as American citizens.” And what is this “gift”? It is the “gift” bequeathed to
us by the sainted Founders and Framers, who generously provided that the
citizens of the Republic may profess any creed they please, so long as they
understand that their creed is of no public import whatsoever to a politics
now definitively separated from religion. For Catholics, this “gift” means an
agreement (as Louis Veuillot put it) to be, in public life, “sufficiently nothing
to live in peace with the rest of the world.”3
Catholic hierarchs are expected to be assiduous about keeping their end
of the bargain. The modern nation-state views as heresy the teaching of Pope
Leo XIII in Libertas, wherein the Roman Pontiff reprobated the thinking
of those “who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the
divine law, but not the morality of the State, [and] that in public affairs the
commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded
in the framing of laws.” From this way of thinking, Leo warned, “follows
the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State.” But,
he continued, “the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself
proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities
whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say,
according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness
and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention
to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enactment.”
But the very regime of “religious liberty” depends precisely on this
absolutely ridiculous proposition, according to which the laws of God do
not bind the federal government of the United States, but rather constitute
only private opinion within the exempt space of conscience; the divine and
natural laws are not permitted to be publicly true. Thus the Catholic Church
in America is left only with an appeal to the “gift of liberty which is ours as
American citizens.”
As I show in my book Liberty, the God that Failed, even a group of
conservative evangelical Protestants known as the National Reform
Association (NRA) petitioned the federal government in the mid-19th century
for the following amendment to the Preamble of the Constitution:
“We the People of the United States, [humbly acknowledging Almighty God
as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus
Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law
of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government,] and in order to
form a more perfect union…”4
The NRA’s extraordinary proceedings, which I explore in the book,

defended the Social Kingship in a manner consistent with the same theme
in papal encyclicals, warning that America faced certain moral and spiritual
collapse unless it acknowledged and submitted to the reign of Christ in
its organic law. (The fatal flaw in the NRA’s approach was its Protestant
rejection of an authoritative teaching Church allied to the State.)
Today, the vast majority of Catholics, now helpless captives of the
Zeitgeist, would consider that proposal madness—a stunning indication of
how quickly our once-Christian civilization has degraded into the “silent
apostasy” John Paul II lamented, but without identifying the root cause
of it all in Western man’s rebellion against the specific influence of the
Catholic Church over the res publica. Hence, instead of invoking the Law
of the Gospel as the supreme law of the land, as even these conservative
Protestants did in the 1800s, OMCL hews to the programmatic abandonment
of the Social Kingship since Vatican II: “The Christian church does not ask
for special treatment, simply the rights of religious freedom for all citizens.”
In other words, leave us alone and we will rest content with the “gift of
liberty.”
And then the groveling apology that has become de rigueur for the selfneutered Church Militant of the post-conciliar era: “As Catholics, we
John Locke (1632-1704), widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician
regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and
liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.

39

Faith and Morals

40

5

From the historic
declaration of Pope
Gelasius I in his letter to the
Emperor Anastasius (494)
on the supremacy of the
spiritual over the temporal
power in cases of conflict:
“There are two powers,
august Emperor, by which
this world is chiefly ruled,
namely, the sacred authority
of the priests and the royal
power. Of these that of
the priests is the more
weighty.”

6

Murray, We Hold These
Truths (1960), 206.

7

Ibid., 210.

8

Ibid., 213, 214, 215.

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January - February 2013

know that our history has shadows too in terms of religious liberty, when
we did not extend to others the proper respect for this first freedom.” But,
says OMCL, the Church has overcome her shameful past—when the State
was Catholic and State-subsidized abortion, contraception and sterilization
were inconceivable even in nightmares. This happy development is thanks
to Vatican II and Dignitatis Humanae: “the teaching of the Church is
absolutely clear about religious liberty: ‘The human person has a right
to religious freedom.’” In the words of Archbishop Lefebvre: they have
uncrowned Him. And they are happy to do so, because “religious liberty”
itself requires that very uncrowning.
Murray, whose work supposedly inspired the Council’s embrace of
the “American model” in Dignitatis Humanae, lived long enough to be
chastened by the outcome of “religious liberty” in practice. He saw that the
modern nation-state had destroyed the “Gelasian dyarchy” of two powers,
religious and civil, the latter subject to the former where the concerns of the
two overlap.5 Political modernity, rather, is founded on “a rejection of the
Gelasian thesis…which had been the dynamic of the Christian revolution.”6
The result is that “‘One there is whereby the world is ruled’—the power of the
people, expressing itself in the preference of a majority; and beyond or beside
or above this power there is no other.” The secular state, with its regime of
“religious liberty,” has “declared the Gelasian doctrine to be heretical and
has outlawed it in the name of modern orthodoxy, which is a naturalist
rationalism.”7
Undermining his own attempt at a Catholic defense of American-style
“religious freedom” in the same book, Murray concluded rather bitterly that,
despite its boast of religious freedom for all, the modern nation-state has
“rejected the freedom of the Church…as the armature of man’s spiritual
freedom and as a structural principle of a free society.” The secular State
has “denied…the Christian revelation that man is sacredness, and that his
primatial res sacra, his freedom, is sought and found ultimately within the
Church.”8 Today Murray, the author of immense mischief for the Church and
the world, sounds like Archbishop Lefebvre in comparison to the generality
of Catholic hierarchs—noble exceptions aside.
It is precisely the freedom of the Church we are expected to surrender in
return for “our most cherished liberty,” by which is meant nothing more than
immunity from overt legal punishment by a State that has constituted itself
an enemy of Christ and the Church He established. The vaunted “opening
to the world” at Vatican II has become, with supreme irony, a retreat into a
virtual ghetto while society at large descends into an abyss of depravity, with
no Church to guide it aright. The post-conciliar Church no longer officially
recognizes what Pope Leo remarked in Libertas: “that it is absurd the citizen
should respect the Church, while the State may hold her in contempt.” By
accepting this absurdity, Catholic hierarchs unwittingly confirm their own
prison as they rattle the bars of a gilded cage that is closing ever more tightly
around them, and us.

On the
Christian
Constitution
of States
Selections from Immortale Dei, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Christian Constitution of States

1. The Catholic Church, that imperishable
handiwork of our all-merciful God, has for her
immediate and natural purpose the saving of
souls and securing our happiness in heaven. Yet,
in regard to things temporal, she is the source of
benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end
of her existence were to ensure the prospering
of our earthly life. And, indeed, wherever the
Church has set her foot she has straightway
changed the face of things, and has attempered
the moral tone of the people with a new
civilization and with virtues before unknown.
All nations which have yielded to her sway have
become eminent by their gentleness, their sense
of justice, and the glory of their high deeds.
2. And yet a hackneyed reproach of old date is
levelled against her, that the Church is opposed
to the rightful aims of the civil government, and

is wholly unable to afford help in spreading that
welfare and progress which justly and naturally
are sought after by every well-regulated State.
From the very beginning Christians were
harassed by slanderous accusations of this
nature, and on that account were held up to
hatred and execration, for being (so they were
called) enemies of the Empire. The Christian
religion was moreover commonly charged
with being the cause of the calamities that so
frequently befell the State, whereas, in very
truth, just punishment was being awarded to
guilty nations by an avenging God. This odious
calumny, with most valid reason, nerved the
genius and sharpened the pen of St. Augustine,
who, notably in his treatise, The City of God, set
forth in so bright a light the worth of Christian
wisdom in its relation to the public wealth
41

Faith and Morals
that he seems not merely to have pleaded the
cause of the Christians of his day, but to have
refuted for all future times impeachments so
grossly contrary to truth. The wicked proneness,
however, to levy like charges and accusations
has not been lulled to rest. Many, indeed, are they
who have tried to work out a plan of civil society
based on doctrines other than those approved by

42

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January - February 2013

the Catholic Church. Nay, in these latter days a
novel conception of law has begun here and there
to gain increase and influence, the outcome, as
it is maintained, of an age arrived at full stature,
and the result of progressive liberty. But, though
endeavours of various kinds have been ventured
on, it is clear that no better mode has been
devised for the building up and ruling the State

than that which is the necessary growth of the
teachings of the Gospel. We deem it, therefore,
of the highest moment, and a strict duty of Our
apostolic office, to contrast with the lessons
taught by Christ the novel theories now advanced
touching the State. By this means We cherish
hope that the bright shining of the truth may
scatter the mists of error and doubt, so that one

During the twenty-five years
of his pontificate (1878-1903)
Pope Leo XIII exercised his
teaching authority in a series
of encyclicals which offer the
definitive Catholic answer to the
errors of modernity.

and all may see clearly the imperious law of life
which they are bound to follow and obey.
3. It is not difficult to determine what would
be the form and character of the State were it
governed according to the principles of Christian
philosophy. Man’s natural instinct moves him
to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling
apart, provide himself with the necessary
requirements of life, nor procure the means
of developing his mental and moral faculties.
Hence, it is divinely ordained that he should lead
his life—be it family, social, or civil—with his
fellow men, amongst whom alone his several
wants can be adequately supplied. But, as no
society can hold together unless someone be
over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the
common good, every body politic must have a
ruling authority, and this authority, no less than
society itself, has its source in nature, and has,
consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows
that all public power must proceed from God.
For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of
the world. Everything, without exception, must
be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that
whosoever holds the right to govern holds it
from one sole and single source, namely, God,
the sovereign Ruler of all. “There is no power but
from God” (Rom. 13:1).
4. The right to rule is not necessarily, however,
bound up with any special mode of government.
It may take this or that form, provided only that it
be of a nature to insure the general welfare. But
whatever be the nature of the government, rulers
must ever bear in mind that God is the paramount
ruler of the world, and must set Him before
themselves as their exemplar and law in the
administration of the State. For, in things visible,
God has fashioned secondary causes, in which
His divine action can in some wise be discerned,
leading up to the end to which the course of the
world is ever tending. In like manner in civil
society, God has always willed that there should
be a ruling authority, and that they who are
invested with it should reflect the divine power
and providence in some measure over the human
race.
5. They, therefore, who rule should rule with
even-handed justice, not as masters, but rather as
43

Faith and Morals
fathers, for the rule of God over man is most just,
and is tempered always with a father’s kindness.
Government should, moreover, be administered
for the well-being of the citizens because they
who govern others possess authority solely for
the welfare of the State. Furthermore, the civil
power must not be subservient to the advantage
of any one individual or of some few persons,
inasmuch as it was established for the common
good of all. But if those who are in authority
rule unjustly, if they govern overbearingly or
arrogantly, and if their measures prove hurtful
to the people, they must remember that the
Almighty will one day bring them to account,
the more strictly in proportion to the sacredness
of their office and pre-eminence of their dignity.
“The mighty shall be mightily tormented” (Wisd.
6:7). Then truly will the majesty of the law meet
with the dutiful and willing homage of the people,
when they are convinced that their rulers hold
authority from God, and feel that it is a matter
of justice and duty to obey them, and to show
them reverence and fealty, united to a love not
unlike that which children show their parents.
“Let every soul be subject to higher powers”
(Rom. 13:1). To despise legitimate authority, in
whomsoever vested, is unlawful, as a rebellion
against the divine will, and whoever resists
that, rushes willfully to destruction. “He that
resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of
God, and they that resist, purchase to themselves
damnation” (Rom. 13:2). To cast aside obedience,
and by popular violence to incite to revolt, is
therefore treason, not against man only, but
against God.
6. As a consequence, the State, constituted as
it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold
and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public
profession of religion. Nature and reason, which
command every individual devoutly to worship
God in holiness, because we belong to Him and
must return to Him, since from Him we came,
bind also the civil community by a like law. For
men living together in society are under the
power of God no less than individuals are, and
society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude
to God who gave it being and maintains it and
whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with
44

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January - February 2013

countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed
to be remiss in the service due to God, and since
the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in
both its teaching and practice—not such religion
as they may have a preference for, but the religion
which God enjoins, and which certain and most
clear marks show to be the only one true religion
—it is a public crime to act as though there were
no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have
care for religion, as a something beyond its scope,
or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms
of religion to adopt that one which chimes in
with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to
worship God in that way which He has shown to
be His will. All who rule, therefore, should hold
in honour the holy name of God, and one of their
chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect
it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of
the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any
measure that may compromise its safety. This
is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over
whom they rule. For one and all are we destined
by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail
and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final
good in heaven, and to the attainment of this
every endeavor should be directed. Since, then,
upon this depends the full and perfect happiness
of mankind, the securing of this end should be of
all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence
civil society, established for the common welfare,
should not only safeguard the well-being of the
community, but have also at heart the interests
of its individual members, in such mode as not in
any way to hinder, but in every manner to render
as easy as may be, the possession of that highest
and unchangeable good for which all should seek.
Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially
be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded
the religion whereof the practice is the link
connecting man with God.

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Spirituality

The Venerable

Francis
Libermann
by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

It is the delight of God’s sovereign Providence
to use the weak ones of this world to confound
the strong (I Cor. 1:27). When He comes upon
a servant who is at once feeble and completely
docile to His will, then He picks up the
instrument in His own hands and wields it to
work wonders for souls. Such was His work in
using His Mother to destroy the empire of Satan.
Such is His work to a lesser degree in the lives
of His saints, of whom one was a diminutive,
penniless, epileptic son of a rabbi, Francis
Libermann.

His Cherished Malady
One day in the first half of 1830, Francis
46

The Angelus

January - February 2013

Libermann was in his spiritual director’s office,
conversing on spiritual matters. He had received
Baptism two and a half years previously, had
entered the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, received
Tonsure and the four Minor Orders, and now was
on the eve of his ordination to the subdiaconate.
But, suddenly, “as he stood before the fireplace,
an instantaneous convulsion shook him from
head to foot; his face was contorted, his eyes
distended and lusterless, his pale lips frothed,
and he fell gasping and breathless at the feet of
his director, who bravely seized him in his arms
and carried him to his bed.”1
It was his first major epileptic seizure, after a
few years of minor crises of nerves. And it does
not seem that it could have come at a worse time.
What greater disappointment can be conceived

for a convert aspiring to the Catholic priesthood?
To stretch out one’s foot to cross over the line of
eternal consecration to God’s service, and then
to be struck down, indeed by God Himself. “What
an affliction, what a misery, what an unbearable
misfortune!” he writes in a letter to his brother’s
family (also convert Catholics) …in order to
portray the wrong attitude:
“Such, surely, would be the language of a child
of the world, of one who seeks happiness only
in earthly goods, and who acts as if there were
no God for him. But quite other is the way of the
children of God, of true Christians. They are
pleased with all that their Heavenly Father sends,
because they know that whatever He sends them
is good and advantageous, and that if things
could turn otherwise it would be to their very
real hurt.
“The ills with which God seems to afflict us are
really benefits, and woe to the Christian who has
all according to his own desire: he is not filled
with the blessings of his God. So, my friends, I
can assure you that my dear malady is for me
a great treasure, a treasure preferable to all the
advantages which the world offers its friends”
(pp. 57-58).
This cherished sickness both made and
proved Francis apt for the great designs of God,
as nothing else could. For God had not made a
mistake; He never makes mistakes.
It was not long before Francis’s superiors
had to draw their canonical principles to a
conclusion and lead the seminarian to the door
with his epileptic impediment. The messenger,
Father Carbon, tried to soften the blow: they
would help him find a position in the world, so
as to support himself. Libermann merely asked
the date of his departure and said, “As to the
world, I cannot return to it: God, I trust, will
provide for me” (p. 61). St. Sulpice’s rector, Father
Garnier, was extremely restless that night and,
on the following day, the directors judged fit to
rescind their decision. The young convert had
already shown signs of sanctity and supernatural
favors; his acceptance of God’s will was certainly
heroic. He would stay, more as a worker than
a seminarian, and be provided for out of the
seminary’s pocket.

A Novitiate in Limbo
Francis spent the next ten years in clerical
limbo. He never retracted his unalloyed
commitment to God’s service, yet his future
always remained uncertain…in a sense. For
God knew what He wanted and how He was to
accomplish it. In this feeble epileptic He had a
rare docile instrument in whom Providence could
fully demonstrate Its sway.
The Sulpician superiors sent Francis to reside
at Issy, the country house of the Paris seminary,
where philosophy was taught. He would remain
there from 1832-37, doing many practical services
for all and sundry, but also exercising a spiritual
apostolate. It would not be exaggeration to say
that he rejuvenated the piety of a seminary life
that had become too occupied with natural
sciences and too imbued with a worldly spirit.
At the same time, Libermann maintained an
extensive correspondence with people of all
walks of life. His letters were spiritual gold.
In short, the spiritual crucible that Francis
was passing through gave him an immense
47

Spirituality
supernatural influence. As a hot iron heats all
that it touches, so too Libermann, on fire with
God, enkindled that fire in all he encountered.
Seminarians flocked around him at recreation
to hear him speak of things divine. He organized
pious groups that would go on walks to
discuss pre-arranged spiritual topics. Such
was the esteem in which he was held that both
seminarians and superiors addressed the mere
acolyte as “Father” Libermann.
Thus, it is not surprising that when the
superior of the Eudist novitiate in Rennes wrote
the rector of the Issy seminary in 1837, asking for
a director of novices, he received the reply, “Take
Father Libermann. He is only in Minor Orders, it
is true, but he’s as good as a priest” (p. 103). As a
result, Francis found himself leaving Issy to take
up a most uncomfortable role, that of an epileptic,
acolyte, convert Jew directing a crowd of clerics
in major orders. This humiliating experience
coupled with an extreme desolation of soul
seemed to complete his spiritual preparation for
his great work. At the same time, it gave him an
intimate familiarity with the Eudist spirituality
that would later be such a useful reference point
for him.
During his three years at Rennes, several
Sulpician seminarians attached to “Father”
Libermann became increasingly insistent that he
lead them in a grandiose project: the founding
of a missionary order for the conversion of the
black races. At first, Francis encouraged their
zeal without considering himself as being called
to that apostolate. Over time, however, he felt
obliged to consult those whom he called God’s
“most wisest servants, those most zealous for His
glory” (p. 145), and all unanimously declared that
God wanted him to devote himself to the black
mission.

Priest, Founder, and
Re-Founder
As 1840 dawned on the world, the road to
Rome witnessed this preposterous sight: an
epileptic acolyte and a young French priest
headed to the Holy See to propose the beginning
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of a mission society to evangelize the black races.
They obtained an audience with Pope Gregory
XVI on February 17, and submitted a memoir
to the Propaganda on March 11 stating their
purpose.
However, things quickly took their necessary
Providential downturn: Libermann’s companion
abandoned him, several priests that he consulted
ridiculed him, and an Archbishop of the
Propaganda told him that he needed to be a priest
before thinking about starting a mission society.
“As if to make the work very evidently of Heaven,
human aid was almost entirely withdrawn” (p.
165).
What was acolyte Libermann’s response to this
situation of human hopelessness? It was for him
to take up residence in a miserable Roman garret
costing one dollar a month, where he “drew up
the Rule, formed members, counseled aspirants,
and made provision for the Institute’s life and
work far into the future” (p. 173). These were
not the actions of an insane man, but rather one
whose calculations are wholly supernatural—he
was convinced that the work was the will of God.
His confidence was rewarded when, after a
three months’ wait, he received a letter from
the prefect of the Propaganda encouraging his
project and also expressing the wish that he be
provided sufficient health to receive Holy Orders.
In fact, his epilepsy had been consistently waning
and over two years had passed without a seizure.
Francis would now enter a period of reaping rich
fruits from his long patience with God’s hand, as
he went from success to success in the decade
remaining of his short life.
Father Libermann without quotation marks
emerged from a chapel in Amiens on September
18, 1841, and that same month he established the
novitiate of the Congregation of the Holy Heart of
Mary in a suburb of the same city. Newly-formed
priests of the newly-formed Congregation soon
were pouring out into Haiti, Mauritius, Bourbon,
Australia, Guinea, Gabon, and Senegambia.
As the new order grew and a wave of
missionary fever spread through France, Rome
turned to Father Libermann to solve a difficult
problem. The Holy Ghost Fathers, founded in
1703 for the same sort of missionary work, had

suffered terribly from the French Revolution,
and were now fading out of existence. Would it
be possible for the new order to save the old by
becoming one with it? The practical difficulties
were great, but in the end Father Libermann
accomplished the merger while holding on to two
indispensable conditions: regular community
life for his missionaries and their exclusion from
diocesan parish work.
Three years after this triumph of Providence,
on February 2, 1852, Father Libermann, Superior
General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, made the final
submission of his will to God by breathing forth
his soul. He was almost 50 years old.

Conclusion
Clearly, the defining aspect of the Venerable
Libermann’s life was his habitual deference to the
will of God. It was by following but not preceding
that Will that he was able to accomplish sanctity
and the great fruits that flowed from it. May we
not see in his founding of a priestly missionary
society at the insistence of seminarians a great
work of faith, and also a great testimony for his
sons? Should we be surprised that his seventh
successor as Superior General, 120 years later,
should himself found a priestly missionary order,
in very unlikely circumstances, by faithfully
following Providence? No, in retrospect, we
simply see the consistency of God’s ways. He
alone Who pleases to confound the strong by the
weak could have been directing these two great
men of faith, Francis Libermann and Marcel
Lefebvre.
1

Cited in G. Lee, The Life of the Venerable Francis Libermann
(Fort Collins, Colorado: Roger McCaffrey Publishing, 1911 edition),
p. 53. All page numbers are taken from this book.

Fr. Robinson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and entered
the Seminary in Winona in 2000, two years after completing a
Master’s in Computer Science Engineering. He was ordained in
2006 by Bishop Bernard Fellay and is currently a professor at
Holy Cross Seminary in Goulburn, Australia.

Father Libermann on
Practical Union with God
If the Spirit of God fills the soul in every instant of life, every
phase of our conduct is marked by the supernatural. In
conforming to the will of God the smallest detail is carried
out with the same perfection as are important things—
the most insignificant and indifferent acts are sanctified
without any special reflection or preoccupation, by the holy
dispositions which rule all our conduct.
A soul united to God in this way abandons little by little the
errors that spring from an obstinate attachment to one's
own views. Its judgments are freed from the control of
purely natural influences, and therefore from prejudice and
impulsiveness. The soul acquires lights that are strong and
practical, that is, a certain discernment in the things of God
both for its own guidance for the direction of souls and also
for the works of God which it will have to perform.
Such a soul forms correct judgments of persons, things and
circumstances in accordance with the mind of God: "The
spiritual man judges all things." It is not a light as clear
as that found in fervent meditation but rather a practical sense of things divine. It discerns their value and their
diverse nuances by a kind of instinct, a calm insight which
proceeds from divine grace.
Entire abandonment to the action of grace renders the soul
docile and flexible before the holy will of God, which the
soul's faith and love discern in all that happens. The soul,
filled with strength, is discouraged or disheartened by
nothing. Nothing can agitate it to excess since it is indifferent to the things of this world. Misfortunes, contradictions,
suffer-ings and humiliations, even death itself, cannot
disquiet it.
What is most remarkable is that in the midst of sufferings
and afflictions the soul so disposed experiences in its
contact with creatures a greater serenity and cheerfulness
of heart. It is a quiet and restrained gladness and still, one
that is very real and sweeter than that which springs from
the gratification of nature. The soul may indeed be afflicted
in its natural sensibilities, but at the same time it is humbly
and lovingly submissive and fully abandoned to the holy will
of God. Its gladness resides in the profoundest depths of
the soul, at the very source and root of its life.

Christian Culture

Church
and State
in the Spanish Empire

by Michael Jones

These events in the fourth century were only
the beginnings of a long history of Church-State
relations. They have also received very bad press
in post-Enlightenment times, the new orthodoxy
being that the state should be indifferent in
matters concerning religion and that anything
else is a theocratic Dark Age worthy of the
Ayatollahs.
It is quite a distortion of the truth. The
Christian state from Theodosius onwards was
one that believed in the Christian religion, not
just in terms of the individuals that made up
the state, but corporately; it was a confessional
state that declared itself to be Catholic even
though half the population may well have
been pagan or members of sects. It was not a
theocracy because the Church and State were
distinct entities with different immediate ends
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(unlike the Islamic Caliphate). It was a case of
unity not identity. Because the Catholic state
was a believing state, it undertook to assist
the Church. As there was an overlapping of the
subjects of these two institutions which also
agreed on the ultimate questions of life, working
together seemed natural. Just as the head of a
non-ecclesiatical society like the family was held
to have obligations concerning its religious wellbeing, the state felt the same responsibility for its
subjects.
Emperors like Constantine and Theodosius
were strongly encouraged by leaders of the
Church to intervene heavily and forcefully also in
support of doctrinal orthodoxy.
For the early Church, the Sermon on the Mount
and every aspect of dogma were one and the
same thing.

It has occurred to people in more recent times
(but not to fourth-century Catholics) that the
actions of Constantine and Theodosius were
those of pagan-minded, worldly men of power,
and forced real Catholicism away from its pure
beginnings. Speaking of the early Church under
persecution, G. K. Chesterton, in his work The
Everlasting Man, was nearer to the truth:
“It was important solely because it was
intolerable; and in that sense it is true to say that
it was intolerable because it was intolerant. It
was resented, because, in its own still and almost
secret way, it had declared war. It had risen out
of the ground to wreck the heaven and earth
of heathenism. It did not try to destroy all that
creation of gold and marble; but it contemplated a
world without it....
Those who charged the Christians with
burning down Rome with firebrands were
slanderers; but they were at least far nearer to
the nature of Christianity than those among the
moderns who tell us that the Christians were a
sort of ethical society, being martyred in languid
fashion for telling men they had a duty to their
neighbours, and only mildly disliked because
they were meek and mild.”
The early Church was militant and dogmatic,
and Theodosius in the uncomplicated fashion
typical of Spain, of which he was a native, saw no
reason not to unite the whole empire in this new
enlarged family. It is a mentality which can be
seen in the empire which grew out of the Spanish
kingdom of Castile from the late fifteenth cen­
tury onwards. In fact, the universal monarchy
of Castile, which was global in its reality and
aspirations, never employed the title empire, or
used imperial eagles as emblems, or claimed to
be the successor to ancient Rome. Nevertheless
it was the first time a civilization could claim
to be global, or that the Catholic Church could
actually fulfil its aspiration to universality in the
geographic sense.
When the Columbus expedition sent by
Isabel of Castile discovered the Americas, it
immediately raised questions about how to deal
with the new reality. Pope Alexander VI in his
1493 Bull Inter Caetera granted to the monarchs
of Castile all new lands lying west of a pole to

pole line established west of the Azores. But he
also charged these monarchs: “...that in our times
especially the Catholic faith and the Christian
religion be exalted and be everywhere increased
and spread, that the health of souls be cared
for and that barbarous nations be overthrown
and brought to the faith itself....We [the Papacy]
command you [the Catholic Monarchs and their
heirs of the Crown of Castile]...to instruct the
aforesaid inhabitants and residents and dwellers
therein in the Catholic faith, and train them in
good morals.”
This Bull, including the responsibility for
the religious well-being of their new subjects
demanded by the Pope, was interpreted in the
widest and most literal sense by the Spanish,
who were nothing if not consistent. The reform
of the Church conducted during the Counter
Reformation after the Council of Trent was
already in full swing in Castile well before
Protestantism. Under the inspiration of the
Bishop of Toledo, Franciso Ximenes, and
Queen Isabel, monasteries were encouraged to
observe their rule and the moral and intellectual
standards of the Spanish clergy improved. The
result in the early sixteenth century would be
that while northern-European Christianity was
tearing itself apart in degeneracy and civil war,
a new kind of clergy with a zeal not seen since
the crusades would enthusiastically set about
reordering the life of entire nations across four
continents.
The Iberian conquests established the first
global civilization, which was the beginning
of our modern age. It is usually asserted that
modernity means secularism and liberalism,
but for more than a century, globalism and
modernity were par excellence Catholic, Baroque
and Hispanic. The division of the world’s newly
discovered regions in 1494 between Castile and
Portugal (both culturally Hispanic, and between
1580 and 1640 politically united by personal
dynastic union) under papal arbitration may
have been detested by some European states,
but these simply weren’t in the running. The first
surviving non-Hispanic settlement or colony
outside Europe had to wait until the seventeenth
century.
51

Christian Culture

Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. (1484 – July 18, 1566)
was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He
became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed
“Protector of the Indians.”
Arriving as one of the first settlers in the New World he participated in,
and was eventually compelled to oppose the atrocities committed against the
Native Americans by the Spanish colonists. In 1515, he reformed his views, gave
up his Indian slaves and encomienda, and advocated, before King Charles V,
on behalf of rights for the natives. In his early writings, he advocated the use
of African slaves instead of Natives in the West-Indian colonies; consequently,
criticisms have been leveled at him as being partly responsible for the beginning
of the Transatlantic slave trade. Later in life, he retracted those early views as
he came to see all forms of slavery as equally wrong. In 1522, he attempted to
launch a new kind of peaceful colonialism on the coast of Venezuela, but this
venture failed causing Las Casas to enter the Dominican Order and become a
friar, leaving the public scene for a decade. He then traveled to Central America,
undertaking peaceful evangelization among the Maya of Guatemala and
participated in debates among the Mexican churchmen about how best to bring
the natives to the Christian faith.

The conquest of America by the
conquistadores was an epic and sometimes ugly
business. These were private expeditions given
approval by the monarch, in particular Charles
I, who needed the money for his European
ventures. The forays then diminished and in
1573 the Ordinances Concerning Discoveries
forbade any further unapproved expeditions of
conquistadores, Spanish rule then continuing
on the American continent until 1830. However,
politically correct history has represented the
Baroque civilization of the Americas as a 300year massacre.
This fairy tale ignores what has been termed
“the second conquest of America” by friars and
bureaucrats. Arriving with the conquistadores,
they immediately set about putting into practice
the aims of Church and State and were united
in what would become a 300-year social
experiment, a giant mission which they were able
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comparatively undisturbed to develop. This real
conquest created the Baroque civilization that
is the cultural base for all the peoples of Iberian
America today, a vast space comprising over 650
million people (and another 100 million in the
Philippines).
What kind of society did the priests and
administrators of the Crown create? The Laws
of Burgos in 1512 show the Crown already
determined to prevent abuses in dealings with
Amerindians. There were several versions of the
Laws of the Indies, the most famous of which
was that of the 1680 Laws of the Kingdoms of
the Indies (from the Crown’s point of view the
Americas were not colonies, but Christianized
versions of preceding states and peoples).
The Amerindians, who until the end of Spanish
rule in the Americas constituted more than 50
percent of the population (today less than ten
percent), lived in towns that were self-governing

and economically corporate entities on lands
that were inalienably theirs. Amerindians and
Castilian settlers were geographically divided by
the Crown into two sets of areas called “The Two
Republics,” a division insisted upon by the clergy
to protect the Indian populations. Amerindians
could reside in the towns set aside for Europeans
(resulting in a numerous mestizo population),
but Europeans, apart from the clergy, could not
move to Indian areas. It was thought that if these
peoples were insulated from the influences that
colonists might bring from an already decadent
Europe, the Church might be able to radically
transform them. The same policy existed in
the Philippines, where Spanish settlement was
discouraged. The Castilian Crown supported and
applied these demands of the Church.
The result was an overwhelming success
that has not been repeated since. The great
missionary work of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, for example, did not result in the
establishment of a single Catholic country
because the colonial empires where this work
was done simply no longer had the confessional
attitude of Castile, and such activity was directed
towards individuals, not societies as a whole.
Gabon today, for example, may have a statistical
majority of baptized Catholics, but it is not
culturally a Catholic country.
The Church also insisted on educating
Amerindians in their own languages, leading to
their standardization and preservation. Quechua,
for example, is more widespread today than it
was under the Incas because it was promoted by
the Church as means of communication. In the
sixteenth century almost the entire Amerindian
population under Castilian rule was transferred
to reducciones, or model towns, designed to
create a new sacred urban geography, a new
human landscape that would unashamedly and
successfully integrate a whole continent into the
Christian civilization in its globalized, Baroque
and Hispanic form. This new living cultural
reality is still with us today.
If the Castilian world was a mission, it was
also a crusade and it would be hard to find a
more successful and modern example of Catholic
geopolitics. The Columbus expedition sent off by

Queen Isabel in 1492 “accidently” found America,
but why did Castile send it in the first place?
Europe had been contained by the Islamic world
for almost a thousand years and the Iberian
kingdoms had been fighting to free themselves
from it for almost 800 years. The Castilian
expeditions to the west and the simultaneous
Portuguese expansion east were deliberately
designed to surround and contain Islam on a
global basis. They succeeded in spectacular
fashion. From around the year 1500, Islam, which
had been expanding continuously, was checked
globally at every possible point of expansion.
After expelling Islam from Granada, opposing
it in West Africa, in Ethiopia, the Indian Ocean
and South East Asia and sensationally in the
Philippines which were already ruled by Muslims,
the Castilians and the Portuguese put a stop to
Islamic encroachment for 300 years.
The modern world was born in the struggle
between a Catholic, Baroque and Hispanic
civilization on one hand, and Islam and the
emerging bourgeois powers of northern
Europe on the other. An important subject for
consideration is the Thirty Years War and the
kind of society that began to triumph after 1648.
Still with us today, it is a world dominated by the
self-interest of states which are the expression
of what historian Christopher Dawson has called
a bourgeois type concerned with material wellbeing and determined to relativize everything
else. Nobody really doubts that the days of its
dominance are now numbered. More to the
point: what does the current rapid return of
contemporary society and politics worldwide to
the situation preceding 1648 mean for us?

53

Christian Culture

History and
the School
by Dr. John Senior

Political liberals who dominate the media
(including universities) today, denounce the
other modes as enemies of democratic dogma.
Among the fantasies such reduction spawns is
“one worldism” of the Wilsonian sort—fantasy
because the U.S. Constitution is not a blueprint
for the world or even for America: Men are
not created equal. Humans, like most animal
species, are divided by gender; and America,
like most societies, was (and despite the utopian
emancipations still is) divided into rich, middle
and working classes with a slave or quasi-slave
body of captives and recent immigrants (black,
white, yellow, mestizo—whatever) who do the
menial work. Since the civil rights rebellion, the
servile class has suffered left wing delusions of
upward social mobility and their masters suicidal
guilt.
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Because we have descended to the non-rule of
unruly “democratic” man, the art of government,
divorced from its end (the common good), is a
headless means, a multi-media machine whose
message is programmed by unaccountable,
irresponsible agents.
Since the state, as Plato says, is the soul writ
large, the “democratic” state, led by the mob, is
like a man ungoverned by his lusts. Since no one
follows, leaders run to stay ahead of whatever the
mob demands, but since mobs are mindless, and
cannot even know their wants, some other “mind”
(the tyrant’s or the demon’s) invents and whets
their appetites.
Politics falls from persuasion, determined
by the give and take of rational rhetoric, to the
psychological order, where irrational appetites
are manipulated.

Traditional schools are not immune
because, on the highest intellectual level,
many “Thomists” (not St. Thomas) turn out to
be fideists. To protect the Church against the
dialectic criticisms coinciding with the oligarchic
ascendancy in the nineteenth century, the
Hierarchy imposed a know-nothing childishness
on Catholics. The doctrine of infallibility was
raised to a papalotry by which whatever the
magisterium said—not just infallible decrees—
was taken as the word of God. When St. Thomas
was declared the Common Doctor of the Church,
professors in seminaries and universities took
the Summa as a “Book of Knowledge” where
all answers can be found, if not directly, then
inferred, by ingenious accommodation. The
extreme reaction of democratic revolt against
the authority of the magisterium (since Vatican
II by the magisterium itself) blew in a house
of straw. Bad to worse to be sure: Before there
was false order, but order nonetheless. Blind
obedience to true propositions kept a hundred
years of Catholics from modernist error and sin:
They did not read Marx and Nietzsche; couples
married, stayed married and had many children;
priests were trained in disputation and knew the
arguments—like high school children learning
Euclid, they memorized axioms and worked
proofs never having seen their truth but got
the answers right! Alas, when the “democratic”
revolution came, not just the ignorant, but priests
and nuns with doctorates were easily switched
from axioms to false assumptions on the
authority of new theologians (and many broke
vows they had taken in what had really been
playing a memorized part).
The Summa Theologica is exactly what it says
it is, a book for beginners in the graduate school
of theology, not a blueprint for kindergarten
through college. First of all, it presupposes
something requisite to education itself, and
lacking in industrial society, a normal human life
nurtured by the direct experience of what poets
(not philosophers) call “nature”—earth, sea, sky,
forests, fields, wild and domestic animals, stars.
The capital joke of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is
a rooster who struts about declaiming Thomist
philosophy. I found out teaching Chaucer years

ago that the difficulty was not with philosophy
but that, even in a class of small town and rural
students, none had ever raised chickens! And
this is the crux of the crisis in the political order:
Poetry not grounded in reality is fantasy, and
image illusion; a people with the habit of such
pseudo-poetry can be easily led, through the
manipulation of empty images, to illusory ideas.
In reforming education, before “back to basics,”
“back to nature”!
In the second place, the Summa presupposes
twenty-five years of propaedeutic, that is, the
whole classical curriculum from elementary
and high school through college. The order of
learning follows the order of human growth.
Now St. Thomas and the Fathers agree that
theological knowledge is (in St. Anselm’s famous
phrase) “Fides quaerens intellectum”—Faith
seeking understanding. In the theological order,
you begin with Faith and using reason try to
understand it. But, for example, teaching third
grade arithmetic you cannot invoke such logic
because Faith presupposes nature. Let children
know what chickens are by seeing, hearing,
chasing, being chased and pecked before they
count their eggs! The education expert says, “It
makes no difference if it’s eggs, peanuts or stars!
Two and two of anything is four”—a mode of
discourse college youth can handle, but abuse to
six- to twelve-year-olds who think by sight, sound,
touch, smell and taste, in a word in things. You
can pry them loose by teaching methods but in
doing so deprive them of the natural strength in
childhood learning. Tom Sawyer on his island
spending hours watching insects or alert for
shooting stars at night is far from wasting time. It
is the work of schools to discipline such learning,
not subvert it. Confusing theology with politics
reduces teaching to propaganda where truth is
whatever message authority wants. The docile
child, in filial fear, starting with faith in what
he is told, will say that two and two is four and
worse believe it, never having seen the fact—an
ungrounded act of faith that will shift with shifts
in power. Take the children out to see insects and
stars and let them wonder for themselves. Insects
and stars are really wonderful and wonder is the
way Christ teaches at the center of the soul.
55

Christian Culture

56

Schools reflect (and further shape) their
ages. For aristocrats the school is the frontier.
Timocrats establish private academies for the
children of the privileged classes. Oligarchs train
little money-makers for success in business.
“Democratic” schools are street gangs.
“But not our school!” you say. Well, I have
seen computers on the sixth-grade desks and
your children at Right to Life demonstrations
organized precisely on the rules of New Left
manuals—the placards, chants, jeers, locking
arms, the fanatic women making speeches about
“family values” while pathetic fathers nurse
babies in the crying room! When St. Paul says
women should be silent in the Church, he means
in the whole mystical body, not just the chapel.
Let Rachel weep for her children and Jacob fight
and teach. Lady, go home. Your house is on fire
and your children will burn! Get out of public
life back to the bedroom, kitchen, nursery and
salon—oh, do the talking there! Restore the
truth and beauty of your sex in house and garden
where they fructify and flower. But how, when we
have grown so poor our women have to work?
Fathers, make your living at some manful thing—
oh, how? How can we teach what we have failed
to do? Except for heroes and some lucky few, I
see no way.
Every age has its heroes. The natural
aristocrat, as Jefferson called him, the genteel
timocrat like Lee imitating Washington, the
oligarchic millionaire, the democratic savage.
In schools the hero is the teacher. Frontier
aristocrats like Natty Bumpo learn from nature.
Timocrats have legendary masters—Chamberlain
at Bowdoin, Lee at the college that now bears
his name along with Washington’s; Tom Brown’s
School Days, celebrating Arnold at Rugby, was
an American bestseller. Oligarchs adore the
Scientist. “Democratic” teachers are “Rap” stars,
rapists of the heart and mind if not the body—
though it sometimes come to that.

teaching by the love of Christ, of his students and
subject for whom wisdom is fear of the Lord and
understanding keeping His commandments.
Traditionalists, God knows, have heroically
kept the Faith, but from economic pressure and
a well-earned distrust of experts, have often
ignored the heroic mode: Unqualified, talentless,
unloving teachers have been employed as if
teachers were employees! A school is first and
principally a faculty, a college of “colleagues”
themselves perennially learning together what
they teach. Good schools need tenured masters.
Home schooling or schools without gifted,
educated, independent (that is, “heroic”) faculties
are not schools at all.
In a society that pays teachers less than truck
drivers, prudence counsels family men to seek
safe slavery in other jobs until by luck or grace
they find refuge.

Which is why traditional schools have run
in terror to the opposite extreme. Child abuse
is a common mark of “democratic” practice—
and so is its reverse, the freezing up of love.
We need good, normal Catholic men, called to

John Senior was the founder of the famous Integrated Humanities Program
at the University of Kansas, through which hundreds of his students entered
the Catholic Church. He is the author of several books including The Death of
Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture. He is buried in St.
Marys, Kansas.

The Angelus

January - February 2013

Things appear to be so bad, some think it is
the End. However, it is a habit of history, as of
the spiritual life which history reflects, that when
things get worse, the worst winds up the spring
of a return to give us one more chance—if not a
second Spring, perhaps an Indian Summer. As
emulsified mobs in universities and schools churn
into mostly slavish clabber, a few golden kernels
precipitate out into free, intellectual butter.
The class nature of society is a fact but in
the vicissitudes of history, long-lasting, stable
orders shift, elites collapse, déracinés from
everywhere loot and squat in culture’s mansions.
Yet unbelief and classlessness are vacuums
intellectual and social nature abhor. Willy-nilly
truth and class recur. It is a curious fact that the
worst “democracy” in smashing all distinctions,
opens up the world to that benign and only true
democracy where there is neither Gentile nor
Jew, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision,
Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free...neither
male nor female.

Memorare to
St. Joseph
Remember, O most chaste spouse of the
Virgin Mary, that never was it known that
anyone who implored your help and sought
your intercession was left unassisted. Full
of confidence in your power, I fly unto you
and beg your protection. Despise not, O
Guardian of the Redeemer, my humble
supplication, but in your bounty, hear and
answer me. Amen.

Spirituality

Gabriel García Moreno

The Thomas
More of
America
by J. Orella, translated by Fr. Paul Kimball, SSPX

Martyr of Liberalism in the
Defense of His Country and
Christendom
Gabriel García Moreno was born on December
21, 1821, in the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador,
in the midst of a comfortable family, Creole on
his mother’s side and Spanish from Leon on
his father’s side. In the process of American
independence, the Garcías always maintained a
position of faithfulness to Spain and of love for
their Mother Country, which little Gabriel, the
youngest of eight children, inherited.
Unlike his brothers, Gabriel’s poor health
obliged him to receive his schooling at home.
At the time of Gabriel’s youth, his country was
still in line with his upbringing. He was born a
Spaniard, spent his childhood as a citizen of the
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Greater Bolivian Columbia, in the little republic
of Guayaquil, which afterwards belonged to Peru
and finally to Ecuador. Gabriel would become the
father of this small Spanish-American nation.
In September of 1836, Gabriel had to leave
for Quito to pursue his university studies at the
University of San Fulgencio. There this young
man from Guayaquil soon stood out for his ability
in studying philosophy and law. At first he was
inclined to become a priest, but the difficulties
in his country made him decide to take the road
of politics in order to defend the Church from
liberal, anticlerical legislation. In 1845 he took
part in an armed revolt against the liberal Flores,
thus beginning his public life centered on the
battle against Ecuadorian liberalism.
The following year he married Rosa Ascásubi,
of a venerable family, whose two brothers were

Gabriel’s most constant collaborators. The
marriage would be blessed with three daughters,
but they died soon after birth. Meanwhile, Gabriel
gained fame from the pages of his periodical,
The Avenger, since it denounced the intentions
of Flores’ liberals to regain power. Nevertheless,
the political problems of his country obliged him
to make a trip to Europe for two years, where he
remained dedicated to the Catholic intellectual
reaction against the radical liberalism of 1848.
On his return to Ecuador, Gabriel put himself
in danger by defending the Jesuits, recently
expelled from Columbia. In 1850 he wrote
his small work, The Defense of the Jesuits.
Consequently, the Ecuadorian government
withdrew its plan to expel the sons of St.
Ignatius. The following year he returned to public
activity through the pages of the periodical, The
Nation, by his attack on General José María
Urbina, the epitome of Ecuadorian anticlerical
liberalism and president of the Republic. His
attacks earned his arrest and he was handed over
to the Columbian authorities, but he escaped
into exile. He remained so for two years in Peru
and France. In the Gallican country, Gabriel
studied Geology, Botany, Vulcanology and
Church History; frequented the sacraments;
and from that time his life as a defender of the
Church guarded coherence with his spiritual life.
Under the reign of Napoleon III, Gabriel noticed
the developments attained by the initiative
of an executive force dedicated to favorably
transforming society.
In 1856 the new president Robles decreed an
amnesty and Gabriel was able to return to his
country. The popularity attained by Gabriel as
leader of the opposition made him mayor of Quito
and rector of the dilapidated University. From his
sojourn in France, Gabriel understood and tried
to improve the physiognomy of the Ecuadorian
capital and bolstered scientific research; he
himself taught the chemistry classes. His work
was increased by The National Union, a new
periodical which served as a vehicle against
radical liberalism. The following year, despite
the established tyranny, Garcia Moreno was
elected senator. Nevertheless, the excuse of a
war against Peru permitted President Robles to

establish a dictatorship and to exile Gabriel to
the Andean country to the South.
It was the worst moment for Ecuador. Civil
war broke out and four governments tried to
obtain power, while Columbia and Peru began
negotiations for dividing the country. President
Robles was overthrown when, in hope of
remaining in power, he offered the Galapagos to
the United States. Garcia Moreno formed part of
a provisional government, was defeated by the
Columbians and sought the military support of
Flores, who was exiled. Together they defeated
the liberals of Ecuador and of the neighboring
countries. In 1860, Gabriel obtained the highest
office in the country. To give a good example,
he gave half of his salary to the public treasury
and the rest to works of charity. As president, he
had the duty of making civil power prevail over
military power, even by commanding a general
to be flogged. In 1862 he established a concordat
with the Holy See and summoned different
religious orders to begin educating the whole
population. During this period, he faced various
conspiracies by the liberals who had taken refuge
in Columbia and Peru, and part of an armed
confrontation with the Columbian Republic
which resulted in disaster for the Ecuadorians.
In 1865 he left the presidency and was named
ambassador to Chile. Being recently widowed,
he married his niece, Mariana Alcázar. On a
journey to Santiago, while delayed in Lima, he
was victim of an attack. He was not harmed, but
the Peruvian authorities accused him of intent to
murder for having tried to defend himself with
a weapon that could have killed the terrorist
who had assaulted him. Two years later he was
named governor of Imbabura, a region which
had suffered a terrible earthquake with fifteen
thousand dead. The ability of this ex-president
was clearly shown in securing public order and
reconstruction of the region. In 1869, to ward
off the blow of a liberal state, Gabriel García
Moreno acted swiftly and took the presidency
of the Republic upon himself by means of a
coup de force. As president he had to face
liberal military uprisings which were forcefully
repressed. Nevertheless, under his government,
Ecuador experienced great economic progress,
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Spirituality

doubling financial earnings and tripling funding
for education. It was the first time that children
and native Indians had the obligation to learn
and to read. Partly, the introduction of religious
orders, such as the Jesuits from Germany, put
the country in contact with the most modern
methods of research.
In 1873, his unblemished religiosity led Gabriel
to consecrate the country to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus. Ecuador was the first county to do this.
His devotion brought him to join the Marian
congregation of men established for laborers,
so that those of his social standing, though his
political rivals, were not troubled about praying
with the president. Nevertheless, his candidacy
for a third term brought the liberals into complete
opposition to his government. From Masonic
circles, ideological principles inspired by radical
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liberalism were defended through the pen of
Juan Montalvo, calling for “tyrannicide” of the
Catholic president. In this way, by means of a
Columbian mercenary, Gabriel García Moreno
was assassinated on August 6, 1875, receiving
fourteen blows of a machete and six bullet
wounds. Dying in the Cathedral, he became a
martyr par excellence for Catholic politicians and
a St. Thomas More brought back to life in modern
times.
J. Orella, “Gabriel García Moreno, el Tomás Moro de América,” Arbil, No. 38
(online at www.arbil.org), trans. by Fr. Paul Kimball.

Tridentine
Duties of the
Husband
by Michael J. Rayes

What does it mean to be a man today? What
did it mean to be a man in 1566? If you have
a sensus Catholicus, your answer would be
practically the same.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent offers a
thorough treatment of Catholic doctrine. It was
ordered by the council Fathers, edited under St.
Charles Borromeo, and finally published by St.
Pius V in 1566. The Catechism has a chapter on
marriage and includes a section on the duties of a
husband.
The man should be “constantly occupied in
some honest pursuit” both to provide for the
family and to avoid idleness. This means that
even if you do not work because you are retired,
unemployed, or perhaps working part-time, there
should be some hobby or leisure activity which
you pursue to occupy your time. The Catechism

calls idleness “the root of almost every vice.” Do
something! Your kids will notice your busy hobby
and they will want to take part. This is exactly
what you want. Your wife will certainly notice
your work with the kids in your wood shop, your
garage, or when playing sports with them.
Men are to cherish their wives. This is the full
meaning of St. Paul’s exhortation on marriage
(Eph. 5:22-33). Following up on the wisdom of
St. Paul, the Catechism exhorts men to treat
their wives “generously and honorably.” Men
are then reminded that woman was taken from
man’s side so as to be his companion. Not from
his feet, so he could trample her, but not from
his head either, because she is not to command
her husband, but obey him. The man, in turn, has
certain duties to his family. The Catechism lists
three: Keep his family in order, correct their
61

Christian Culture
morals, and see that they faithfully discharge
their duties.

Keep the Family in Order
It falls upon you, the husband, to ensure that
your house is in good order. This means fixing
the doorknob, but also means not leaving when
things get too dramatic. The family must stay
together.
One way to help keep your family life
organized is with a family schedule. You might
be the one who either writes the family schedule
or adjusts it as needs dictate. If you don’t have
a family schedule, you and your wife might
consider creating one. It would most likely be
flexible to accommodate reality. If you write “4:35
– clean family room and set table for supper” you
will be disappointed. Instead, it may need to look
like, “after school – clean family room and set
table.”
You will usually be the one to call everyone
together for the Rosary and other prayers. You
ought to be the one who ensures that the children
are well-shod, clothed, and have appropriate
hygiene. Your wife may perform the actual
tasks, but you are the one who makes sure it can
happen. Your wife also should not have to call
and call and call the kids to the dinner table or
any other time they are needed. You may have to
administer consequences for failing to assemble
when called, or your family will be in chaos and
your wife will be exhausted.
The family schedule will need a great amount
of input and advice from your wife because it will
be her schedule too. You may even want to have
her write it. The husband, however, is responsible
for ensuring that the family has some orderly way
of functioning, whether that entails following a
written schedule or some other method.

Correct Their Morals
It is your job as the father to discipline the
children when they stray. Sometimes you may
need to tell them it’s a good thing they were
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caught and now punished by you, because
purgatory is a lot worse. Remind them that the
effects of their sins can be expiated now, on
earth.
It’s a lot easier to correct a son’s morals when
you are the same guy who just spent an hour
throwing a Frisbee with him. It’s also a lot easier
when the child just spent half an hour telling you
all about his little problems and yearnings, while
you simply listened. If instead, all you ever did
was show up and punish, your authority would
soon enough be practically non-existent.
Remember Don Bosco’s preventative method.
Your goal is to get your children to want to be
good, not simply to behave because their parents
want it. Sometimes I’ll just ask my miscreant
eight-year-old daughter, “Don’t you want to
be good?” She just looks at me without saying
anything. I know she’s thinking about it.
You may wish to tell your children that your
job is to correct them and get them to heaven.
You can also differentiate things for them. (“This
is how little kids act when they’re naughty, but
here is how older people behave.”) The point is to
tie selfish, immature behavior with childishness;
but mature, loving, morally correct behavior with
being grown up. This makes a strong impact on
kids.
This is a sensitive topic, but men are also
responsible for correcting the errors of their
wives. One example is when the woman is out by
herself or with kids, a Mary-like standard should
rule her attire. This and other concerns are best
discussed privately and when both spouses are in
an agreeable mood. Timing is everything.
The virtue of prudence is necessary as well.
Husbands and wives should not complain about
each other to other adults. You correct your
family’s morals but if others don’t need to know
about it, do not reveal it to them. Your job is to
protect your family.

Faithfully Discharge
Their Duties
The obvious comes to mind when discharging
duties: The father makes sure that his children

do their daily duties, such as homework. But
there is more to it than that. If your wife takes
the initiative every Sunday morning to get the
kids ready for Mass, while you rely heavily on her
to wake you and then barely lift a finger to help
with the kids, you may want to reassess your own
adherence to your duties.
How are your kids doing in school? If you don’t
know, find out. What are your wife’s needs so she
can perform her domestic duties? You may need
to buy a new kitchen appliance instead of a new
cordless drill. Without paying attention to her
needs, you may never notice them, especially if a
docile wife doesn’t mention it.
On the other hand, some wives are the exact
opposite of the docile type. You’ll want to help
her sort out and prioritize what she really needs,
since everything for which she asks may have the
same tone of urgency.
Sometimes we fathers can get uptight about
money. I resisted buying a replacement math
book for one of my sons, who lost his. It was
an expensive hardback. I eventually bought a
duplicate book anyway, even though I’m still
convinced the original book is around here
somewhere! But I had to make sure my son could
faithfully discharge his own duties.

loving feelings toward you.
Your family needs you right here, right now.
They need your predictability. Your evenhandedness. Even when you feel discouraged or
frustrated, they still need your fun spirit, your
decisive action, and your leadership.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent presents
a nice mixture of doctrine, spirituality, and
practical living for men of any generation. It is
mostly a presentation of doctrine, but its clarity
gives parents clear direction today on living a
virtuous Catholic life.
Living the Catholic Faith, after all, entails
applying the doctrines of the Church to our
daily lives. This is as true today as it was 500 or
even 2,000 years ago. Today, the torch of faith
is passed to you. It is now our turn to be strong
Catholic husbands and fathers and to raise
our children in the loving arms of Holy Mother
Church.

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.

Grace and Feelings
The important thing is that when men
faithfully discharge their duties of state, however
mundane they may feel, God notices. You may
or may not “feel” close to God every day or feel
that you’re even receiving actual graces. Does
this matter? Sometimes, yes. We men need those
feelings to help us persevere. But we probably
won’t be experiencing consolation every day.
Regardless of your peaceful state, your male
mind may spin with a lot of distractions and
logical reasons to do something else. Your wife
needs you to work with the kids, to direct them,
to break up fights before they start, to discipline
them, to be there so the kids can come to you
with questions or to sort out conflicts. When you
thus help with child-raising, it lifts a tremendous
burden from your wife and she will have plenty of
63

Questions and Answers

by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

Is it safe to say that I get
some graces from listening
to or watching Mass on TV?
“Because of where I live, I am unable to get
to Mass on Sundays, but I always listen to a live
airing of the Mass from Our Lady of Fatima in
Pittsburgh, and had a few questions: Is it safe to
say that I get some graces from listening to or
watching Mass on TV?
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“If I am unable to get to Mass otherwise, does
this fulfill my Sunday obligation?”
By itself, watching and piously associating
with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, even
when done only through television or radio,
can be meritorious, but not in the same way
that attending Mass is. Christ instituted the
sacraments as outward signs to give grace,
which effect what they signify. Because of
this necessarily external component of the
sacraments, the Church has always insisted
that to directly participate in them, we must be

physically and morally present. Thus, though we
may receive graces because of our pious acts,
we are not directly receiving graces as if we
were attending a Mass. Put another way, when
we watch or listen to Mass on TV or radio, we
are not actually attending that Mass or directly
participating in its merits. Any grace we receive
in this way would amount to the devotional
prayer of someone reciting his missal at home.
For the question of obligation, it is very simple.
If you are able to attend Mass, and the distance
is not seriously inconvenient, then you must
attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on every
Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. If, however,
you are unable to do so, listening to Mass on
the radio doesn’t fulfill your obligation, for the
simple reason that the Church does not oblige
you in these cases. The obligations imposed by
the Church exist for the sake of our salvation,
and the Church does not seek to oblige in cases
that are impossible or gravely inconvenient (such
as extended travel required to attend, or family
illness).

them for the simple reason that he does not
believe in unchanging truth (vs. antimodernist
oath which he himself swore several times for
sure!). It is difficult to believe in the infallibility
of Church canonizations in the postconciliar
era, which has sabotaged the canonization
process. In the course of the 25 years of John
Paul II’s pontificate alone, there have been more
saints canonized than in 2,000 years. In fact,
often today, the canonizations are conveniently
organized according to the trips of the Pope:
does that sound like Catholic practice? So,
the real sanctity of Padre Pio is not increased
by the official canonization, no more than the
non-sanctity of Escriba is magically turned
into sanctity by an all too hurried process of
canonization. With more reason can we affirm
the same about forcing the beatification of John
Paul II, which seemed to have been a media coup.

Does the Pope have the power
to bind error in Heaven?
“For example, the Pope has canonized a couple
of questionable souls, such as the founder of
Opus Dei and beatified many more such a John
XXIII and John Paul II. I am heavily criticized
for not addressing them with their given title of
Blessed or Saint or as ‘Great’ because I do not
believe they really are any of those things. So
how can I simultaneously accept the canonization
of Padre Pio and that of Escriva de Balaguer
without seeming inconsistent when they were
elevated by the same, Modernist, authority?”
You are getting at the core of the mysterium
iniquitatis in the Church, with a Pope who hardly
believes in his Papal powers and refuses to use
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Church and World

French Catholics Protest in Favor of the Family
In Paris, on January 13, 2013, the evening of the
day of protests against proposed legislation to redefine marriage, Alain Escada, president of the Civitas
Institute, published a news release with an account
of the event. “Never has Civitas gathered such a
multitude. Nearly 50,000 people joined us on Place
Pinel to pray for France and to denounce the appalling
legislation concocted by a government of sorcerer’s
apprentices. We thank the many friendly associations
that came to support us. Nearly a million protestors were here in the capital this Sunday, from every
region and every walk of life.” Mr. Escada encouraged
his readers to continue the struggle. “The conclusion
is self-evident. If the President of the Republic hopes
to avoid a disastrous end to his term of presidency,
he must start listening to the people of France, who
clearly did not elect him for Bill 31.”
The protest organized by the Civitas Institute was
supported by several other movements, including but
not limited to such groups as the local family councillors’ group, the Catholic doctors and nurses’ association, the Tourtereaux, the association of Catholics of
Val d’Oise, the Marnaise association for Christianity
and society, the ‘Laissez-les-Vivre’ group, the
Movement of Catholic Families, Catholic Renaissance,
SOS Tout Petits, the association of Our Lady of Light,
SOS Mamans, the Anjou students’ group against
same-sex marriage, the Catholic students’ group of

Toulouse, Vendée’s Clean Earth group, the Catholic
Honour group, Riaumont, Scouts of Doran, Scouts of
Godfrey de Bouillon, Perigord Friendships for France,
the association for descendants of the papal Swiss
Guard, the national veterans’ group, the React group,
the Versailles Family Solidarity group, the Center for
studies on the recognition of the human person, the
‘Oui à la Famille, non à l’homofolie’ group, and the association Papa, Maman et Nous. Among the protes-

tors were Fr. Régis de Cacqueray and many other
priests of the SSPX, as well as Fr. Jean-Nöel, superior
of the Society of the Transfiguration, and priests
from the Institute of the Holy Cross at Riaumont, the
Institute of Christ the King, and the Good Shepherd
Institute.
(Source: DICI)

Anti-Clericals Seek to Remove Crucifix from Polish Parliament
On January 14, 2013, the District Court of Warsaw rejected the renewed
request, led by the anticlerical movement Palikot, to remove the crucifix present
in the hall of the National Parliament. According to the Polish Catholic news
agency KAI, the “anti-crucifix” deputies argued that “crosses placed in public
places violate the Constitution and the freedom of conscience and of religion.”
According to them, the cross influences the decisions made in Parliament.
The court esteemed that the religious symbol was “not an attack on private
property” and could not be a “source of prejudice.” The anticlerical members of
Parliament are able to appeal this decision at a higher juridical level. The Palikot
movement is the third faction in the lower house of the Polish Parliament; it
received ten percent of the votes in 2011. (DICI.org)
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U.S. Bishops Stand Against
Anti-Catholic Legislation
While certainly not a unanimous front, it is
important to note that many of the United States’
bishops have publicly taken a stand against the
anti-Catholic legislation proposed by the Obama
administration’s HHS Mandate.
LifeSite News spoke with some of the bishops
at this year’s March for Life, and some of the
more hopeful responses to questions about the
bishops’ reactions are as follows:
Bishop Alexander Sample, Marquette: “We will
not simply roll over and accept the mandate.”
Bishop David Zubik, Pittsburgh: “We can’t
compromise on the principles; all we have to do is
look at our history. Take a look at the saints who
defended our faith and that’s what it’s about.”
Bishop Samuel Aquila, Denver: “Many of us

have already stated that we will not and cannot
cooperate with the mandate. There will be
implications on it, whether it means narrowing
some of what we do, or continue what we do and
not cooperate with the mandate.”
In the end, every prelate who spoke with
LifeSite News admitted that he would be willing
to go to jail rather than comply with the antiCatholic HHS Mandate. But perhaps the most
encouraging and direct statement comes from
the newly appointed bishop to Lincoln, Nebraska,
Bishop James Conley. In a recent statement on
the Mandate, he stated, “The Catholic Church is
not going to back down. We are never going to
compromise our principles. We will defy it and
face the consequences.” Let us hope and pray
that these statements represent a strengthening
of the entire U.S. Episcopacy in the face of an
increasingly anti-Catholic government.
(Source: LifeSiteNews, LifeNews)

The Black Madonna of Czestochowa Vandalized
On December 9, 2012, a 58-year-old man threw
light bulbs filled with black paint at the icon of the

Black Madonna in Czestochowa, in southern Poland.
A police spokeswoman, Joanna Lazar, told the Polish

news website Wirtualna Polska that security at the
monastery had restrained the man and handed him
over to police.
The vandal was a resident of Swidnica in Lower
Silesia (south-west Poland), and he is expected to
undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Tradition says the icon of the Black Madonna,
enshrined in the monastery of Jasna Gora, was
painted by St. Luke on wood from a table belonging to
the Holy Family. It is the best-known symbol of Polish
Catholicism. Every year the shrine draws millions of
pilgrims. St. Ladislaus of Opala left the painting at
Jasna Gora in 1382; the image is easily recognized by
its distinctive slashes, left on the Madonna’s cheek by
Tartar looters on April 14, 1430, Easter Sunday.
After World War II, Jasna Gora became the spiritual
capital of Poland. In September 1948, the primate of
Poland, Cardinal August Hlond, consecrated Poland to
the Immaculate Heart at the shrine.
(Sources: kipa/apic–DICI No. 267)

67

Church and World

Press Release of the General House of the Society of Saint Pius X
The Society of Saint Pius X has learned of the
sudden announcement about the resignation of Pope
Benedict XVI, which will be effective on the evening of
February 28, 2013. Despite the doctrinal differences

that were still evident on the occasion of the theological talks held between 2009 and 2011, the Society
of Saint Pius X does not forget that the Holy Father
had the courage to recall the fact that the Traditional

Mass had never been abrogated, and to do away with
the canonical sanctions that had been imposed on its
bishops following their consecration in 1988. It is not
unaware of the opposition that these decisions have
stirred up, obliging the pope to justify himself to the
bishops of the whole world. The Society expresses its
gratitude to him for the strength and the constancy
that he has shown toward it in such difficult circumstances, and assures him of its prayers for the time
that he wishes to devote from now on to recollection.
Following its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre,
the Society of Saint Pius X reaffirms its attachment
to eternal Rome, Mother and Instructress [Mater et
Magistra] of Truth, and to the See of Peter. It reiterates its desire to make its contribution, according to
its abilities, to resolving the grave crisis that is shaking
the Church. It prays that, under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, the cardinals of the next conclave may
elect the pope who, according to the will of God, will
work for the restoration of all things in Christ (Eph.
1:10).
Menzingen, February 11, 2013,
on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

The Society of St. Pius X to Be Consecrated to St. Joseph
The theme of this year’s Pentecost pilgrimage
from Chartres to Paris will be: “Go to Joseph.”
In Paris on January 6, during the conference he
gave for Courrier de Rome’s eleventh congress,
Bishop Bernard Fellay officially announced that
he would consecrate the Society of St. Pius X to
St. Joseph, protector of the Church, on March
19,2013, in Ecône.
In the Pentecost pilgrimage’s preparatory
doctrinal and spiritual booklet, this quote taken
from The Mystery of St. Joseph’s Paternity
by Canon Daniel-Joseph Lallement shows how
appropriate this consecration is: “We are living
in a time when man wishes to seek satisfaction
by feverishly filling himself with earthly things.
St. Joseph, a man of God, the man of the Virgin
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Mary, is the antithesis of materialism. He will
be given as a sure remedy for humanism and
materialism. But let us understand things from
yet another point of view: in the secret designs
of Providence, humanism and materialism will
be an opportunity to manifest the glory of St.
Joseph.…Dare I add that among the forgotten
goods that God prepares beyond the disasters of
humanism and materialism, is the glorification of
St. Joseph: disgusted with themselves and tired
of earthly food, men will turn to the poor man of
God.”
As the prayer of the Litany of St. Joseph says:
“May we deserve to have as our intercessor in
heaven him whom we venerate as our protector
on earth!”

French Senate Authorizes
Human Embryo Research
In the night of December 4-5, 2012, senators
passed an amendment to the law of July 7, 2011,
on bioethics. Under certain conditions, embryo
and embryonic stem cell research is now legal.
The Senate’s website quotes the amendment:
“Embryonic stem cell research gives hope;
researchers have long been interested in stem
cells because of their considerable therapeutic
potential.” The amendment calls for the current
legal ban on embryonic stem cell research to be
lifted; it even allowed for multiple exemptions,
and for permission for “supervised” research.
On behalf of the French bishops’ conference,
Archbishop Pierre d’Ornellas of Rennes strongly
criticized the amendment. In a press release
dated December 5, the Archbishop asked, “Does
the life of the human embryo deserve protection?
Yes or no? The Senate has answered in the
negative. The Senate is aware that such research

constitutes an ‘anthropological transgression,’
but it has nonetheless voted to authorize human
embryo research, in principle and no longer only
in exceptional cases.” The Archbishop states that
“the motive cited, that France might lag behind
other nations in scientific research, is dubious.
Does the progress of French research really
depend on this authorization? The human embryo
has a right to protection.”
The bishops of France consider the Senate’s
decision “shocking”—all the more so since the
amendment was proposed and voted on without
any real debate, while Article 46 of the 2011 law on
bioethics stated that “any proposed reform related
to ethical problems and social issues raised by
the progress of knowledge in the fields of biology,
medicine and health must be preceded by a public
debate involving people from every stratum.”
The amendment, which has not yet been
submitted to the National Assembly, was passed
thanks in part to votes from right-wing senators.
(Sources: kipa/apic.ch/senat.fr–DICI, No. 267)

Irish Church Opposes Pro-Abortion Legislation
On December 18, 2012, the Irish government
proposed a bill authorizing abortion in cases where
the mother’s life is endangered. The Irish Catholic
Church immediately expressed its opposition, claiming that this would go against the “pro-life” intention
clearly expressed by the Irish people and inscribed
in Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution. According
to Cardinal Sean Brady, archbishop of Armagh,
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, archbishop of Dublin,
Archbishop Dermot Clifford, archbishop of Cahel
and Emly, and Archbishop Michael Neary,
archbishop of Tuam, lifting the penalties for
abortion “would open the path to direct and
intentional murders of unborn children.
That can never be justified morally, no matter what the circumstances may be.”
On December 18, in a public
declaration, the prelates called all

to pray that the bill proposed by the Irish government
may not be adopted by Parliament, who should vote
on it before this summer. The next day, during a press
conference, Bishop John Buckley (on the picture),
bishop of Cork and Ross, in southern Ireland, added
that according to studies, the practice of abortion
because of a risk of suicide by the mother opens the
door to abortion for all who ask. He quoted England,
where one in four pregnancies ends in abortion. And
he thus concluded that “abortion is the most serious threat to human rights.” The prelate also
pointed out that it is “ironic” to observe that
while the latest referendum in Ireland, approved
by all parties, referred to children’s rights, “it
now seems that the unborn child can be deprived of the most fundamental right
of all, the right to life.”
(Sources: apic–DICI, No. 268)

69

Church and World

Catholic Church in Dakar Profaned
The Church of Mary Immaculate of ParcellesAssainies in Dakar was profaned during the night of
December 2-3, 2012. A statue of the Virgin Mary as
well as the arms of the Infant Jesus were struck with
rocks and broken. The two statues were set up at the
entrance to the church beneath a hut with a triangular roof that served as a place of prayer and recollection for the faithful of the parish.
According to the Senegalese Press Agency (APS),
the Senegalese President Macky Sall said that he
was “upset” and urged the public security forces
to deal severely with the perpetrators. “Concerned
about safeguarding the balance [équilibres] and
the peaceful coexistence of the various beliefs in a
secular Republic, the Head of State, Mr. Macky Sall,
expressed his emotions to all persons of faith who
were affected by these acts,” his spokesman Abou

Abel Thiam declared the day after the incident.
For his part, the Archbishop of Dakar, Car­di­
nal Théodore Adrien Sarr, called on the Catholic
faithful to exercise restraint. He asked that there
be no response to the provocations, which he
described as Satanic acts. Quoted by the Internet
news website senenews.com on December 4, he
urged the Christian community not to give in to
“panic” and “anger,” but to wait for “the results of the
investigations.”
These misdeeds in the church in ParcellesAssainies occurred after a series of 160 desecrations
of graves in two cemeteries in Dakar last October.
Senegal is a secular country with 13 million inhabitants, the majority of them Muslim (around 95%).
(Sources: apic/aps/senenews.com—DICI,
No. 267)

France: Facing the Crisis of Vocations
Aging priests and increasingly fewer young
Catholics ready to take the path of the religious
life, such was the report given February 1, 2013,
to the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF). France
faces a serious crisis of vocations. Between 2000
and 2012, the number of candidates for the priesthood has fallen by a third, from 976 candidates
in 2000 to 691 in 2012. In light of this fact, French
bishops have begun a campaign to promote vocations among youth aged 15 to 20, called “Jeunes
cathos 2.0” [Young Catholics 2.0].
Moreover, the Conference of French Religious
(Corref) has published the results of a survey
taken in 2009 that studied all types of community life in France—retirement homes, university
campuses, boarding facilities, workers’ homes,
prisons, religious communities. “Religious communities, convents and other monasteries (most
ancient form of community life along with barracks) include 37,000 people. The population is
elderly with an average of 66 years. Women are in
the majority (74%). A high proportion of religious
70

The Angelus

January - February 2013

hold diplomas (61% hold a degree equivalent or
superior to the French baccalaureate, and 42%
hold an undergraduate or postgraduate degree).”
To be exact, in 2000 48,412 apostolic religious
were counted and 28,678 in 2010, while the
number of cloistered religious went from 5,237 to
3,864 in 2010.
Two years ago, in an interview with the
Vatican Radio on February 16, 2011, Cardinal
Franc Rodé, former prefect of the Congregation
for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies
of Apostolic Life, stated, “It must be recognized
that religious life is in crisis today,” adding,
“Secularization has taken over many communities and consciences”; this “secularization is
expressed by prayer that is not recollected, often
formal; secularization attacks the concept of
obedience by introducing a ‘democratic’ mentality
that excludes the role of the legitimate authority.”
See DICI, No. 231, March 5, 2011.
(Sources: Vatican Radio–DICI, 270)

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Saint Bartholomew’s
A first chapel dedicated to St. Bartholomew at the Königssee (Bavaria,
Germany) was built in 1134 by the Provosts of Berchtesgaden. From
1697 onwards it has been rebuilt in a Baroque style with a floor plan
modeled on Salzburg Cathedral, two onion domes, and a red-domed roof.
The church features stucco work by the Salzburg artist Joseph Schmidt
and a three-apse choir. The altars in the apses are consecrated to St.
Bartholomew, St. Catherine, and St. James respectively.
An annual pilgrimage to St. Bartholomew’s is held on the Saturday after
August 24, starting from the Austrian municipality of Maria Alm and
crossing the Berchtesgaden Alps.

Theological Studies

Cardinal Koch
and the SSPX
By Dr. John Lamont

Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity, recently made
the following statements about the theological positions of the SSPX:
“It is only the group of Lefebvrists that doesn’t accept…ecumenical dialogue, relations with the Jews and
religious liberty.…One must ask how it can present itself
as Catholic…”
“These are central points of the teaching of the Holy
Father, and if [there is] a group that does not accept
a council and does not accept a teaching, one must
ask how they see each other as Catholic.…This is the
fundamental problem.” (The Tablet and the Jewish Daily
Forward).
Cardinal Koch has also made a broader criticism of
traditionalists as a whole: “The progressives profess a
hermeneutics of discontinuity and break. The traditionalists profess a hermeneutics of pure continuity: only
that which is already noticeable in the Tradition can be
Catholic doctrine, therefore, practically, there cannot
be a renewal.”
74

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January - February 2013

These criticisms of traditionalists are often made.
Cardinal Koch’s high curial post, and the fact that he
was one of the members of the Vatican committee that
ruled that the Society’s proposed doctrinal preamble
was unacceptable, makes it desirable to offer a response to them. As a traditionalist and a theologian
myself, although not one affiliated with the SSPX, I will
attempt to do so.
We can distinguish three main criticisms in his
remarks:
a. the criticism that the SSPX is not Catholic because it
does not accept the Second Vatican Council and the
teachings of the current pope,
b. the criticism that traditionalists accept a false
‘hermeneutics of pure continuity’, and
c. the criticism that it is only the SSPX that does not
accept ecumenical dialogue, relations with the Jews,
and religious liberty.
The expressions ‘ecumenical dialogue’, ‘relations
with the Jews’, and ‘religious liberty’ are rather vague in
themselves, but in the context it is clear that Cardinal

Koch is using these expressions in the sense in which
the SSPX denies that they are true.
Cardinal Koch’s first criticism sounds plausible only
because of its unclarity. Some allowance should be
made for the fact that he was giving an interview to
the media in which a precise definition of terms would
have been out of place, but even when all possible
allowances have been made, his assertion cannot be
understood in a theologically defensible way. What is
necessary to be Catholic is to believe and confess all
the teachings of the Catholic faith. The SSPX does this,
and therefore can rightly call itself Catholic. Cardinal
Koch raises questions about the Catholicity of the
SSPX on the basis of the claims that the Society rejects
‘central points of the teaching of the Holy Father’, “does
not accept a council and does not accept a teaching”.
The expression “central points of the teaching of the
Holy Father” is too vague. A teaching’s being ‘central’
does not suffice to make it an infallible definition or a
repetition of previous infallible teachings. The ‘central
points’ that the SSPX does not accept have never been
claimed or established to be doctrines of the faith, and
their rejection of them thus does not mean that they are
not Catholics.
The assertion that the SSPX “does not accept a
council and does not accept a teaching” suffers from
a similar vagueness. It is not a doctrine of the faith
that the Second Vatican Council was a genuine ecumenical council, but it is a dogmatic fact. Rejection of
the validity of the Council thus might be argued to be
incompatible with being a Catholic. However, the SSPX
acknowledges that the Second Vatican Council was a
genuine ecumenical council. As for the teaching of the
council, the SSPX accepts all the teachings of the council that prior to the council were taught as doctrines of
the faith. No new doctrines were defined by the council,
as is evident both from the content of the conciliar
documents themselves – which do not contain anything in the form of a solemn definition – and from Paul
VI’s assertion in his discourse closing the council on
December 7, 1965. In rejecting certain teachings of the
Council, the SSPX thus does not reject any teachings
of the faith. Its rejection of these teachings therefore
cannot be said to be grounds for doubting that it is
Catholic.
It is worth reviewing theological debates on the level
of authority of the teachings of the council. Fr. Umberto
Betti claimed that the teachings of the dogmatic
constitution Lumen Gentium virtually reached the level

of infallible teaching.1 This claim was contested by the
then Fr. Joseph Ratzinger,2 who argued against Betti’s
maximising interpretation. Even if Betti is correct,
however, and we ignore the difficulties in the notion of a
teaching being ‘virtually infallible’, his claim applies only
to those conciliar teachings contained in dogmatic constitutions; he bases his argument above all on the application of the prefix ‘dogmatic’ to those constitutions.3
The teachings that Koch mentions as being rejected by
the SSPX are not found in the dogmatic constitutions of
Vatican II, but in decrees or declarations of the council.
We may invert Fr. Betti’s argument and infer that since
these teachings were not included in the dogmatic
constitutions of the council, they cannot be considered
to be pronouncements on the dogma of the Church.
In view of Cardinal Koch’s involvement in the decision on whether or not to grant a canonically regular
status to the SSPX, we should consider not only the
question of whether or not the SSPX is Catholic, but
also the question of whether the SSPX, while Catholic,
nonetheless should be denied a canonical status within
the Church on the grounds that it rejects teachings
that are not dogmas of the faith, but are authoritative
magisterial teachings to which religious submission of
mind and will is due. This is the real issue that arises
with respect to the status of the SSPX; questions about
the Society’s being Catholic are not serious ones.
A first question that arises is how a denial of canonical status to the SSPX on these grounds can fit into the
current disciplinary practice of the Church. For example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
has judged that Sister Elizabeth Johnson upheld errors
in her book Quest for the Living God. This judgement
clearly states that these errors are denials of fundamental dogmas of the Catholic faith. Such denials,
which Sr. Johnson refused to retract, are punishable by
automatic excommunication in canon law (Canon 1364
§1). But Sr. Johnson in fact remains un-excommunicated, and is still a member in good standing of the Sisters
of St. Joseph of Brentwood. Cases like hers are not
uncommon; Fr. Hans Kung remains a Catholic priest in
good standing in the eyes of ecclesiastical authority,
despite having rejected the defined dogma of papal infallibility as long ago as 1970. It is not defensible to treat
denials of the faith as undeserving of punishment, while
refusing canonical regularisation to the SSPX on the
grounds of its allegedly rejecting magisterial teachings
that are not dogmas of the faith and are not infallibly
taught.

75

Theological Studies
There is a basis in Canon 1371 §1 for punishing those
who deny authentic magisterial teachings that are not
infallibly defined. The crucial question, therefore, is
whether or not the positions of the SSPX can be judged
to be punishable according to that canon. A clear and
accurate evaluation of the Society’s positions shows
that this is not the case. To see why, we need to distinguish between (1) the position of the SSPX on religious
truth, specifically on the truth about religious liberty,
ecumenism, and the other matters concerning which it
is at odds with some current office-holders in the Holy
See, and (2) the SSPX’s claim that the Second Vatican
Council taught errors on these matters.
With respect to (1), the SSPX rightly understands
that fidelity to the papal magisterium does not consist
only in fidelity to the teachings of the current pope. This
fidelity is due to the office of the papacy itself, not to
the individual that holds it, and the basis of this fidelity is the authority of the apostle Peter, which exists in
all holders of the papal office. In the same way, fidelity
to the entire college of bishops united under the Pope
is based on fidelity to the authority of all the apostles,
which is perpetuated in all the bishops throughout the
history of the Church acting in unison under the Pope.
This authority of Peter and the other apostles is thus
present in all the magisterial teachings of the Church,
not just in those of the current pope and bishops.
Fidelity to the magisterium of the Pope and the bishops
thus requires acceptance of all the teachings of all the
popes and bishops since the death of the last apostle.
On the issues under (1), the SSPX bases its positions
on the authoritative and sometimes infallible teachings of papal and conciliar documents such as Quanta
Cura, Dei Filius, Mortalium Animos and others. Its
positions are not peculiar and dubious interpretations
of these documents, but the standard interpretations
of these teachings, interpretations that were universally
accepted at the time that the teachings were promulgated, and that can be seen to be correct from an
examination of the discussions and preparations that
led to the production of these documents.4
The Society can thus assert that it is following the
magisterium of the Church in upholding these positions, and hence that its positions under (1) are not
open to any theological objection. If they are not
open to theological objection, far less can they form
the grounds for any canonical sanction. In order for
a theological position to be made the grounds for
canonical punishment, it is not enough for it to simply

76

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be false. Holding a false theological view is not as such
an offence of any kind, as is evident from the disagreements between schools of Catholic theology; at least
one side in these disagreements must be in the wrong
and hence hold a false view, but such disagreements
are a legitimate part of the life of the Church. Even being
hard to reconcile with magisterial teaching does not
suffice to make a theological position a basis for canonical sanctions. A theological view can only be grounds
for canonical punishment if it is a clear and manifest
rejection of a magisterial teaching. It is absurd to say
that upholding a plausible understanding of magisterial
teaching can be such a rejection.
It is thus not possible for Cardinal Koch or other
Roman authorities to reject this defense on the basis
that these positions have been denied by the Second
Vatican Council, and hence that it is no longer permissible to hold them. Such a rejection is incompatible with
Benedict XVI’s rejection of a ‘hermeneutic of rupture’
for that council, which the Roman authorities are committed to upholding. It does not matter here that the
SSPX agrees that the Second Vatican Council denies
these earlier teachings; we are not considering the position that the SSPX holds, but the position that Cardinal
Koch and other Roman authorities would have to
advance in order to make a canonical case against the
SSPX. If contradicting earlier magisterial teachings is
not a rupture, then nothing is. So if the Second Vatican
Council is not to be understood as a rupture with previous teachings, it cannot be said to have contradicted
any such teachings, and it is permissible and even
obligatory to accept all previous magisterial teachings.
Cardinal Koch could abandon Benedict XVI’s rejection of a hermeneutic of rupture, and claim that the
Second Vatican Council did indeed deny these previous
teachings and hence that it is not permitted to uphold
them. But this position is untenable for two reasons.
One reason is that the magisterial documents upon
which the SSPX bases its positions are both clearer and
more authoritative than the conciliar texts that might
be held to contradict them. Another reason is that it has
never, in the more than 50 years since the council was
opened, been officially stated that its teachings contradict earlier teachings and replace them; and there
are many official denials that this is the case, beginning
with the conciliar documents themselves. To state in
so many words that the council abolished previous
magisterial teachings is a radical rejection of the past
50 years of magisterial teaching, and as such cannot be

advanced by the Roman authorities.
Some theologians have claimed that the magisterial
documents upon which the SSPX base their positions
are really practical directives rather than statements of
fact, or are statements about the particular historical
circumstances that obtained at the time of the promulgation of the documents rather than statements of
universal truths. On the basis of this claim, they argue
that the SSPX actually falsifies the meaning of these
documents, by wrongly holding them to teach universal
truths rather than truths that apply only to a specific
set of historical circumstances. Although the doctrinal
conversations between the SSPX and the Holy See

have rather unfortunately been kept secret, one has the
impression that this claim is the basis of the case made
against the SSPX by the theologians of the Holy See.
There are two points to be made in reply to this
claim. The first point is that it cannot serve as an objection to the positions of the SSPX, because the circumstances in which these documents were promulgated
are substantially the same as those of today; attacks
on the Church and the faith by an aggressive secular
liberalism that arises from Enlightenment thought.
It has been asserted that these documents did not
condemn a more benign form of liberalism that was not
at odds with the Church, but only a more hostile form

His Eminence Kurt Koch (born March 15, 1950) is a Swiss Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church currently serving as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity since his appointment was announced on July 1, 2010. He is also the bishop emeritus of Basel, having served from 1995 until he resigned the see in 2010.

77

Theological Studies
of liberalism. This assertion is not in fact true. This idea
of a more benign form of Enlightenment liberalism that
could be reconciled with the Church, as opposed to a
radical secularism that could not, was the position of
the Liberal Catholics of the 19th century. This position
was rejected by the 19th-century popes, who explicitly
targeted it in their encyclicals. But even if it was true, it
is hard to see how it is relevant to the positions of the
SSPX. The allegedly benign form of liberalism has no
representatives in society or governments today, which
are dominated by a hostile secularism. It thus follows
from the very position of the critics of the SSPX that the
doctrines which the Society upholds, at least on religion
and society, are the ones that are suited to current circumstances. The Society’s only error would be in holding that these doctrines, since they are universal truths,
also apply to other possible circumstances, which do
not in fact obtain and have little or no resemblance to
the real circumstances. This is not a serious criticism,
and is not a reasonable basis for denying canonical
status to the Society.
The second point is that the claim is obviously false.
The magisterial documents upon which the SSPX base
their position proceed by first laying down and teaching
fundamental principles that apply universally, and then
applying these principles to the concrete situations
which the documents address. They clearly enunciate
an intention to teach truths that apply everywhere and
always, and that are based on the essential attributes
of God, man, and the Christian economy of salvation. This is seen, for example, in Leo XIII’s teaching
on the religion and the state, which teaches about the
essential nature of the state in itself, and in Pius XI’s
teaching on ecumenism, which appeals in Mortalium
Animos (§6) to these essential attributes of God, man,
and the Christian economy. It cannot be claimed that
the Second Vatican Council altered these teachings
from universal truths into facts that applied only to a
particular set of circumstances. That council did not
claim and did not possess the power claimed by Big
Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, the power to change
the past. The earlier magisterial documents say what
they say, and that cannot be changed.
The actual positions of the SSPX on the content of
Catholic teaching, referred to by (1), are thus beyond
criticism, and do not violate any canon. As for (2), the
SSPX’s claim that the Second Vatican Council taught
error on some matters; this claim is not an assertion
about faith and morals at all, and does not in itself
78

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January - February 2013

contradict any magisterial teaching whether infallible or
non-infallible. It is simply an assertion that a small proportion of the Church’s fallible teachings did, in fact, fail
to be true. This assertion violates no canon or religious
obligation at all, and variants of it are commonly held by
theologians. Since neither the SSPX’s religious positions nor its claims about the Second Vatican Council
are objectionable or subject to canonical penalty, it is
unjust to deny canonical regularisation to the Society
on the basis of them.
Although the SSPX’s claims about the Second
Vatican Council do not justify any penal measures, I
believe that there are some criticisms to be made of
the Society’s position towards the Council. The Society
tends to focus as much on the claim that the council
contains errors as on denouncing the errors that it believes the council to contain. This gets priorities wrong.
After all, there is no profit in a Catholic’s accepting that
the council contains errors without learning what these
errors were; whereas a Catholic who learns that the
errors taught by the council are to be avoided, but who
remains ignorant of the council’s having taught them,
greatly benefits thereby – and is not really any the
worse for his ignorance of the council’s assertions. The
basis for objecting to the council’s having taught errors,
after all, is that such teaching leads Catholics to accept
these errors. If the Society were to focus on upholding
its positive positions on doctrine, it would be in a much
stronger position with respect to the Holy See and the
Church generally. Rather than being in the position of
defending the claim that some conciliar and post-conciliar teachings are false, it would put its opponents on
the defensive, by saying “here are these authoritative
teachings; all Catholics must accept them”. If its opponents are not to reject the authority of Church teaching
altogether, they must either accept these teachings, or
else claim that the Second Vatican Council had abolished them and hence accept that the council actually
did reject previous teaching. Now that Benedict XVI has
officially rejected the latter position, this approach by
the Society would eventually force Catholics who intend
to be loyal to the magisterium to accept the former.
In addition, the claim that the Second Vatican
Council taught error is actually quite hard to maintain
if we look closely at the words of these documents.
These are often framed in such a vague way that if their
meaning is examined strictly, they say very little. The
claim that some passages of the conciliar documents
logically contradict previous teachings misses the

Si Si No No
subtlety of the problem they pose. It is almost never
totally impossible to give the conciliar documents an
orthodox meaning, which makes it possible to dismiss
traditionalist criticisms of them as unfounded; but the
fact that they naturally suggest heterodox interpretations makes it easy to use them to attack the faith when
addressing audiences other than traditionalists. This
makes them much more effective tools for subverting
Catholic doctrine than would be the case if they plainly
contradicted earlier teachings, and thus provoked
suspicion and debate. Showing beyond a doubt that the
council taught falsehood is thus very hard to do, and attempting to do it falls into the trap that the documents
set. Attacking the falsehoods that the council seems
to teach, on the other hand, enables the documents to
be used in the way suggested above, by forcing one’s
opponents to either accept the orthodox doctrine or
acknowledge that the conciliar documents reject previous teaching.
The subtlety of the problem is compounded by the
fact that the vagueness and ambiguity of the documents are not simply the result of a deliberate strategy
of deception on the part of their drafters. Certainly,
some of the objectionable passages in the conciliar
documents are due to the influence of modernists, who
consciously held the heterodox views that the passages
suggest and wished to produce an innocuous-sounding
text that could later be used to undermine the faith. But
sometimes the vagueness and ambiguity existed in the
minds of the drafters themselves, and continue to exist
in the minds of those who uphold the documents as
beyond criticism. This lack of clarity is often due to an
aversion to Catholic doctrines or a desire to avoid unpleasant choices between Catholic teaching and worldly beliefs, but it is also influenced by bad educational
formation, lack of a natural capacity to think clearly, a
love of cloudy high-sounding rhetoric, the wish to be
positive and amiable, and other factors that are not in
themselves sinful. The problem of getting over this lack
of clarity is thus complex and difficult. Approaching it
by insisting on the clear earlier teachings is better than
trying to seize the jelly of the conciliar texts.
This answers Cardinal Koch’s criticism of the SSPX
for rejecting papal and conciliar teachings. His attack
on the traditionalist ‘hermeneutic of pure continuity’
can be dealt with more briefly. This attack again trades
on vagueness – in this case, the vagueness of the word
‘noticeable’ in the cardinal’s rejection of the alleged
traditionalist claim that “only that which is already

noticeable in the Tradition can be Catholic doctrine”.
Traditionalists take the Catholic position that Catholic
doctrine must be present either implicitly or explicitly
in Tradition. ‘Noticeable’ does not distinguish between
what is implicit and explicit, since it is possible to notice
what is implicit. If ‘noticeable’ were to be understood as
meaning ‘explicitly present’, it would be false to claim
that Catholic doctrine must be noticeable in tradition; but traditionalists do not hold that doctrine must
be noticeable in tradition in that sense. If ‘noticeable’
includes ‘implicit’ as well as ‘explicit’, then traditionalists do hold that doctrine must be implicit in tradition;
but in so doing, they simply hold the Catholic position.
This alleged ‘hermeneutic of pure continuity’ is in any
case irrelevant to the traditionalist position on tradition. This position argues that what is already explicit in
tradition must continue to be upheld, and that nothing
that contradicts what has been explicitly taught can be
accepted. It is not concerned with claims that are not
explicit in tradition but that do not openly contradict it.
Finally, there is Cardinal Koch’s criticism that it
is only the SSPX that does not accept ecumenical
dialogue, relations with the Jews and religious liberty.
Whether or not others accept the SSPX’s views on
these subjects is totally irrelevant to the strength of
their arguments, so this criticism does not have much
weight. It is somewhat disingenuous of Cardinal Koch
to make it, since he knows well why people outside the
SSPX are reluctant to publicly endorse the positions
of the Society; they fear consequences of the sort that
he himself was involved in imposing on the Society,
when he recommended that they be denied canonical
regularisation for holding them. These sorts of consequences, or worse ones, are the universal result of
speaking in favor of the Society’s positions. No seminarian will be ordained, no priest will be made bishop,
and no academic will be appointed to a post teaching
theology if they are known to agree with the Society on
these issues. This policy goes back at least to Paul VI’s
removal of Fr. Antonio Piolante as rector of the Lateran
University for holding traditionalist views, and has
been applied with great thoroughness ever since. So it
is natural enough that few Catholics are seen to agree
with the Society on these questions.
Despite this policy, however, it is not the case that
the SSPX is the only body to reject the positions that
Cardinal Koch refers to, and the existence of agreement
with their views is worth noting. Here we must distinguish between the SSPX’s position on the content of
79

Theological Studies
religious truth, and the SSPX’s claim that the Second
Vatican Council contradicted earlier magisterial teachings. There are an enormous number of Catholics,
probably a majority of Catholics who consider the
question, who think that the council rejected earlier
teachings. For example, Fr. John O’Malley, S.J., university professor of theology at Georgetown University,
recently claimed that it is absurd to hold that the
documents of the council are entirely in continuity with
Catholic tradition. Fr. O’Malley of course thinks that this
is a good thing and the SSPX thinks that this is a bad
thing, but they are in entire agreement on the existence
of some rejection of previous tradition by the council.
When it comes to the positions on religious truth
held by the SSPX, we must also distinguish between
the Society’s objections to doctrinal statements and
its objections to practical policies. It is very hard to
describe, for example, exactly what the position of the
Second Vatican Council on ecumenism is. The practical
policy that has been implemented since the council is
however clear; it is no longer insisted that non-Catholic
Christians must submit to the teaching and government of the Roman Catholic Church in order to do
God’s will.
On the questions of doctrine, we must distinguish
between general statements about doctrinal problems
with the Second Vatican Council and agreement with
the SSPX’s particular doctrinal positions. The claim
that heretics played an important role at the council is
not confined to traditionalists. It is made by Fr. Ralph
Wiltgen in his The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, the then
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his memoirs, and Fr. Henri
de Lubac in his journals of the council; it is also admitted with commendable frankness by Fr. Hans Kung in
his memoirs. The crucial – and sensitive – question
concerns the nature of this role; did it lead to the council
teaching the views condemned by the SSPX, and are
these views in fact contrary to Catholic tradition?
There are voices outside the SSPX that answer yes
to both these questions. The issue of the teachings of
the council has been addressed above, and I will simply
note that the SSPX is not alone in making this criticism
of the council. Agreement with the positions of the
SSPX on religious truth demands more consideration.
The negative consequences of agreeing with the SSPX
have gravely limited public expressions of agreement
with their doctrinal positions; private agreement is hard
to measure, but seems to be not uncommon. These
consequences have meant that the case for the SSPX’s

80

The Angelus

January - February 2013

positions has been made to a great extent by laymen
who worked outside of universities. The important
figures here are well known to traditionalists: Jean
Madiran in France, and Michael Davies in England. Their
non-academic status is not a problem for the quality of
their work – something that has been recognised in the
case of Michael Davies by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
who described Davies as a man of deep faith who
has left important publications. (One should however
mention Fr. Paul Crane, S.J., founder and editor of
the English traditionalist journal Christian Order, as an
exception to this generalisation about lay intellectual
leadership in non-SSPX traditionalist circles.)
Despite all the obstacles, however, there are nonetheless significant academic contributions that agree
in substance with some or all of the positions of the
SSPX on religious truth. The most significant figure
here is Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, former professor
at the Lateran and editor of the theological journal Divinitas. Msgr. Gherardini has raised serious
questions about the continuity of the teachings of
the Second Vatican Council in a number of important
works, including The Ecumenical Council Vatican II: A
Debate to Be Opened. He has expressed his sympathy
with the SSPX on a number of issues. Prof. Roberto de
Mattei has done the same in his prize-winning book on
the Second Vatican Council. The Swiss philosopher
Romano Amerio produced a magisterial condemnation of conciliar and post-conciliar deviations in his Iota
Unum and Stat Veritas, which largely agreed with the
SSPX. The author of this article has argued for the traditional position on religion and the state in his Catholic
Teaching on Religion and the State (and in ‘Pour une
interprétation pieuse de Vatican II au sujet de la liberté
religieuse’, which appeared in Divinitas). The English
Dominican Fr. Thomas Crean has attacked the common practice of praying with non-Catholic Christians,
recommended in the post-conciliar document Ad
Totam Ecclesiam, as contrary to divine law, and has attacked the understanding of religious freedom rejected
by the SSPX (see his articles ‘Religious Liberty?’ and
‘Praying with Non-Christians: Is It Possible?’ at
http://www.christendom-awake.org). Dr. Christopher
J. Malloy of the University of Dallas has criticised the
Joint Declaration on Justification signed by Lutherans
and Catholics in 1999, in his Engrafted into Christ: A
Critique of the Joint Declaration (Peter Lang, 2005). Fr.
Claude Barthe and the writers involved in the French
review Catholica have also made very important con-

tributions along the lines of the SSPX positions, which
attain a scholarly level in the depth of their research and
analysis. To sum up, there are no significant positions
on religious truth that are held by the SSPX but not held
by other scholars of substance – who, one should note,
have not suffered canonical penalties for holding them.
When it comes to the practical policies that the
SSPX criticises, no specialist theological expertise is
required, and the people who agree with some or all
of the Society’s criticisms are too numerous to even
attempt to list them. Some of these critics are not even
Catholics. To give some examples, the sociologists
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have offered devastating
criticisms of the policies of the Church after the council
in The Churching of America 1776-2005. Christopher
Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods have attacked these
policies in The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime
of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church, and Kenneth
C. Jones has given extensive statistical backing to criticisms of conciliar and post-conciliar policies in his Index
of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican
II.
Criticisms of the policy on ecumenism are of particular relevance to Cardinal Koch in view of his post
as President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity. Since the Second Vatican Council
embraced a policy of ‘ecumenism’, there has been
a greater departure of Catholics for other Christian
groups than at any other time in history. In Brazil, for
example, a country where 95 percent of the population
was Catholic until the 1960s, Protestantism has grown
to 22 percent of the population, and is projected to
reach a majority by 2020. These losses, which run into
the scores of millions, dwarf the losses to the Catholic
Church in the original Reformation. No greater failure
for the promotion of Christian unity can be imagined.
These figures evidently do not lead Cardinal Koch to
agree with the SSPX in its criticisms of ecumenism, but
they should.
Since Cardinal Koch has a responsibility for promoting Christian unity, it is especially disappointing that
he should have opposed the canonical regularisation
of the SSPX on plainly inadequate grounds. It is to be
hoped that he will withdraw this opposition and take
positive steps to support this regularisation, which
would heal a serious wound to the unity of the Church.

1

Umberto Betti, “Qualification théologique de la
Constitution,” L’Église de Vatican II, Vol. 2, Commentaires, ed. Y.
Congar (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967).

2

J. Ratzinger, “Announcements and Prefatory Notes of Explanation,”
in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 1, ed. H.
Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967).

3

“Avant tout, il s’agit d’une Constitution dogmatique. Ce qui
importe, ce n’est pas la denomination de Constitution – qui
aurait pu aussi bien être remplacée par d’autres, comme Décret,
Bulle, etc., mais la qualification de ‘dogmatique’. Celle-ci
indique que le magistère universel a pour tâche comme tel
de proposer la doctrine contenue dans la Constitution,” Betti,
“Qualification théologique,” in Congar (1967), pp. 214-15.

4

For the discussion and preparation of the teachings of Gregory
XVI and Pius IX on religious freedom, for example, see M. J. Le
Guillou and Louis Le Guillou, La condamnation de Lamennais:
dossier (Paris: Beauchesne, 1982); G. Martina, ‘Nuovi Documenti
sulla genesi del Sillabo’, in Archivum Historiae Pontificae, 6,
1968; Roger Aubert, ‘L’intervention de Montalembert au congres
de Malines en 1863’, Collectanea Mechliniensia 35 (1950); and E.
Lecanuet, Montalembert, Vol. III: L’Église et le Second Empire, 3rd
ed. (Paris: Vve. Ch. Poussielgue, 1905), pp. 374-374.

Dr. John Lamont holds a degree in philosophy from Oxford University and in
theology from Ottawa University, Canada. He is an honorary fellow in the Faculty
of Philosophy and Theology at the Australian Catholic University. Dr. Lamont has
taught at the University of Notre Dame Australia and the Catholic Institute of
Sydney, where he had the canonical mandate to teach theology from the Sydney
Archdiocese.

81

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The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,
I hope you agree with the scholastic principle: veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei, “truth
is the joining of the mind with reality.” The affirmation 3 + 5 = 8 is true. Tchaikovsky composed the Nutcracker—this statement corresponds with historical reality, it is true. It is also
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insist that 3 + 5 = 7. Error, then, is simply a deviation from reality, and those who are in error
should correct their mistake, their misperception. If someone promotes and teaches error,
we should encourage him to correct it!
In religious matters we uphold the same principles. We know that God exists! We also
know his divine attributes: he is eternal, almighty, good and holy. Moreover, there is no room
for error on these matters, and Saint Paul exclaims: “The wrath of God is revealed from
heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice of those men who detain the truth of God in
injustice, because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested
it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity, so that
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There is, then, only one God. He is Real. He is the only Unchanging Truth. Two contradictory statements cannot simultaneously apply to God! If one is true, then the other must
be false; it must be an error, a misperception, and those who have been deceived by error
should be charitably corrected.
Needless to say, the Truth Incarnate, Jesus Christ, does not tolerate our modern notions
of religious liberty. Rather he proclaims: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Father Jürgen Wegner

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