Social Doctrine Restoring the Broken Ladder of High Designs Law and Order Understanding America’s New Religion May - June 2021 May the glory of the Lord endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. He looketh upon the earth, and maketh it tremble: he toucheth the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Let my speech be acceptable to him: but I will take delight in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and the unjust, so that they be no more: O my soul, bless thou the Lord.—Ps. 103:31-35 Finding the Christ Child in the Temple. St. Mary Church, Edgerton, Ohio. Letter from the Publisher Dear Reader, If the previous issue of The Angelus gave us an exotic tour of the antipodes, Australia and New Zealand, this time, we are back home again, in the thick of real American life all around us. We wanted to bring under the spotlight the oft-quoted topic of social doctrine. For the average person, the expression is vague enough to include disciplines like economics and politics, problems touching on religion and race, so-called opposition between law and liberty, let alone the validity of democracy and socialism. These are indeed some of the issues well worth the attention of our readers. And why should these issues about the conditions of society be such a concern to us? Because, in the words of Pius XII, “Of the form given to society, in harmony or not with the divine laws, there depends and filters the good and evil of souls, that is to say, the fact that men, all called to be vivified by the grace of Christ, breathe, in the contingencies of the earthly course of life, the sane and life-giving air of the truth and the moral virtues or, on the contrary, the morbid and often mortal virus of error and depravity.” It is a mystery to no one that our Western culture is fast depleting its rich patrimony, so slowly and wisely acquired through ages of faith and courage. Today, the most natural human rights are denied us. Laws protects the rascals and perverse while putting behind bars the honest and godly. We seem to be living “1984” or a preview of the “Lord of the World,” with the addition of a religion gone mad. Put bluntly in the happy wording of Dr. Rao’s hard-hitting article—harder than usual—“Gangster Society, Gangster State, Gangster Church!” By way of relief in the seemingly dark background of present-day vision of society, we offer you a biography of Louis Veuillot, the 19th-century journalist who was the Nemesis of the Liberals. May Veuillot’s clear vision and love for the Papacy inspire us to preserve the perennial principles of the Church’s social doctrine. Fr. John Fullerton Publisher May - June 2021 Volume XLIV, Number 3 Publisher Fr. John Fullerton Editor-in-Chief Mr. James Vogel Managing Editor Fr. Dominique Bourmaud Assistant Editor Mr. Gabriel Sanchez Associate Editor Miss Esther Jermann Marketing Director Mr. Ben Bielinski Design and Layout credo.creatie (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) Mr. Simon Townshend Director of Operations Mr. Brent Klaske U.S. Foreign Countries Subscription Rates 1 year 2 years 3 years $45.00 $85.00 $120.00 $65.00 $125.00 $180.00 (inc. Canada and Mexico) All payments must be in U.S. funds only. Online subscriptions: $20.00/year. To subscribe visit: www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access back issues 14 months and older. All subscribers to the print version of the magazine have full access to the online version. Contents Letter from the Publisher 4 Theme: Social Doctrine – Restoring the Broken Ladder of High Designs – Law and Order – Understanding the Social Doctrine of America’s New Religion – Culture Shock: An Interview with Fr. Thomas Marie Onoda, SSPX – Our Apostolic Mandate 6 11 14 18 23 Spirituality – The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: The Canon—Part Four – Meditations on St. John’s Gospel: Chapter Six – Saint Thomas More – Law and Order in the Rule of St. Benedict 30 34 38 42 Christian Culture – De Valera and Catholic Ireland – Gangster Society, Gangster State, Gangster Church – Who Is My Child? – Around the Boree Log – Questions and Answers 46 56 61 64 68 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published bi-monthly under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels. Publication office is located at PO Box 217, St. Marys, KS 66536. PH (816) 753-3150; FAX (816) 753-3557. Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, MO. Manuscripts and letters to the editor are welcome and will be used at the discretion of the editors. The authors of the articles presented here are solely responsible for their judgments and opinions. Postmaster sends address changes to the address above. ©2021 BY ANGELUS PRESS. OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE PRIESTLY SOCIETY OF SAINT PIUS X FOR THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA Catechism – Complex Questions & Simple Answers – Louis Veuillot: Journalist, Polemicist, Letter Writer, Author, and First and Foremost, a Catholic – The Last Word 73 78 87 Theme Social Doctrine Restoring the Broken Ladder of High Designs By Robert Morrison In his Life Everlasting, Fr. Reginald GarrigouLagrange recalls the words of two saints to illustrate a point about the virtue of humility. From St. Augustine we have: “There is no fault committed by another man of which we ourselves are not capable if we were placed in the same circumstances and surrounded by the same evil examples from the time of our youth.” And St. Francis expressed a similar idea about a criminal who was being led to execution: “If this man had received the same grace as I have received, he would have been less faithless than I. If the Lord had permitted in my life the faults which He permitted in this man’s life, I would be in his place today.” These reflections naturally inspire humility and gratitude to God for all that He has given 6 The Angelus May - June 2021 us. They should also remind us that “unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required” (Luke 12:48). The two saints considered both the graces they have received and the extent to which they accepted those graces to pursue virtue and avoid sin. In their humility, they realized they are nothing of themselves, relying upon God’s grace for everything. These thoughts of St. Augustine and St. Francis are thus important for us to consider in our own pursuit of virtue, but they also have bearing on how we view and treat those who have found themselves in less favorable circumstances. When this inspires us to perform spiritual and corporal works of mercy, we improve the circumstances of those in need and grow in grace and virtue. Conversely, we can easily fall into the sin of the Pharisee judging the Publican when we forget that we will not know what graces others have received until the General Judgment—perhaps there are people we perceive as great sinners who make better use of grace than we do. The Church itself has always had a role in fostering the conditions in society that promote virtue. Just as a doctor who treats diseases but also helps his patients avoid them, the Catholic Church welcomes sinners but also attempts to improve their circumstances before they become a breeding ground for vice. The Church teaches that the ultimate end of man is to glorify God and attain salvation, but it does not neglect the material aspects of our lives. Through missionary work, schools, churches, and hospitals, the Church establishes the spiritual and material means by which grace can flow most effectively to souls. As important as the Church is in developing and sustaining the conditions for virtuous life, secular government establishes the legal frameworks that, in various ways, incentivize or discourage virtue and vice. Even when there is separation of Church and state, society can promote virtue and curb vice (which often becomes crime) by ensuring its laws are consistent with natural law and respecting traditional family life. However, in varying degrees, today’s “enlightened” societies reject natural law and the Catholic beliefs about the purpose of our lives on earth as well as what constitutes virtue and vice. So the Catholic Church (as distinct from its false shepherds) and modern societies are in opposition over the most fundamental beliefs about human nature. In many purely secular matters, people and organizations may arrive at satisfactory outcomes despite fundamentally different viewpoints. This is generally not the case, though, when dealing with matters of morality, for God has set the laws of human nature and we cannot change them. As society drifts away from God, its laws and customs deviate more and more from natural law. Man, instead of God, effectively becomes the 7 Theme Social Doctrine but exacerbate the circumstances that lead to crime, a godless society must excuse the crime or blame someone else for it. Not surprisingly, misidentifying the crime and the culprit creates circumstances that lead to more crime. Pope Leo XIII described our current situation in Libertas Praestantissimum: “For, once ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, and the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is naturally opened to universal corruption. With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny.” Esteban Murillo. Jacob’s Dream. supreme legislator. The rejection of God sets in motion a tragic cycle as society still must address the circumstances that lead to crime even though it cannot make a proper diagnosis. So, for instance, society has long created conditions, such as the ease of obtaining a divorce, that attack families. With broken families comes an increase in crime. Incarceration of parents further disrupts families, worsening the circumstances that give rise to crime. Unwilling to do anything 8 The Angelus May - June 2021 Yes, the universal corruption and road to tyranny we see now has its roots in the liberal principles that Pope Leo XIII saw so well in 1888. But Pope Leo XIII traced the deepest roots to man’s fallen nature: “Man, indeed, is free to obey his reason, to seek moral good, and to strive unswervingly after his last end. Yet he is free also to turn aside to all other things; and, in pursuing the empty semblance of good, to disturb rightful order and to fall headlong into the destruction which he has voluntarily chosen.” Society rarely chooses this destruction all at once, rather falling by degrees through the progressive rejection of God’s grace. Each step of the way leads to a further disruption of proper order, which brings odious fruits that should alert society to the fact that it has chosen the wrong path. One of the great dramatic representations of the inversion of order in its various forms comes from Ulysses in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: “Oh, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder of all high designs, Then enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogeneity, and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels, But by degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores And make a sop of all this solid globe; Strength should be the lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead; Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey And last eat up himself.” (Act 1, Scene 3, lines 101-124) virtue, at least on a small scale. Many people who have not previously embraced the truth now sense that they must repent and turn to God. Moreover, the wisdom and merit of true Catholic teaching shines forth more brightly at precisely the time that all that once drew souls away from the Church is revealed as empty. By remaining faithful to what the Church has always taught and professing it unflinchingly, we can show those who still have eyes to see that our Faith is the ultimate ladder of all high designs. What we have failed to learn through the wisdom of the Church, or even Shakespeare, we now must learn through painful experience. The process of completely overturning order in society has been slow, but it is nearly complete. Strength is now the lord of imbecility, and it seems that society no longer understands the concepts of right, wrong, and justice. By rejecting the ultimate ladder of high designs—advancing in Christian virtue to the Beatific Vision— modern man has now lost the ladder of even the most mundane designs. And yet, all is not lost. There is the grace of which St. Francis spoke, which God still provides in abundance to those who seek Him. If our circumstances are now dire, or will become so, we can honor God so much the more if we strive to avoid sin and cultivate virtue. In a certain sense, we may even be blessed to find that the current deterioration of society affords propitious circumstances for restoring 9 80 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8754 – $12.95. An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine By Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX Why is Social Doctrine Necessary? “Because Holy Mother Church knows that it is much more difficult to work out one’s salvation in a godless materialistic world like Communist China and North Korea…or in any liberal Western country where divine and natural law are no longer respected.” Learn to defend the Catholic principles behind: – Politics, religion, and the relationship between Church and State – The nature of man as an intelligent, free, spiritual, and moral being – The structure of society and its duties toward God – The dangers religious liberty poses to society – Political economy and false notions surrounding it – The nature of authority and its function – The family as an authentic domestic society – The role of Church and State in education and schooling This easy-to-read book is essential to maintaining a true Catholic understanding of man and society. Sadly, Catholic social principles have been ostracized from contemporary life for more than a century. This excellent tool combats the modern world and helps restore those lost principles, first in the home and then in the wider society in which we live. Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. Law and Order By FSSPX News In the adolescents under our care, the formation of conscience throughout the time of their development is vital. Why is it that we adults find the child’s pioneering spirit charming but the same in the teenager alarming? We think our shift justified, even if we cannot explain exactly why. Perhaps we see in youthful inquisitiveness two distinct phases: whereas the child explores the world, the teenager explores how he relates to the world. Without proper constraints, the second phase is often disastrous to say the least. The teenager needs rules lest he navigate the world on a whim. Yet from time immemorial the teenager disdains rules. Seduced by unexplored urges, he construes rules as fetters, obstacles to his authentic desires. He supposes rules to be at odds with freedom. In response, the adult dismisses such juvenile indignation on pragmatic grounds. But does the youth have a point, conceptually speaking? Does law curtail liberty? The Relationship Between Law and Liberty In a word, no. To answer in the affirmative is to put the cart before the horse. Our liberty does not preexist law; it results from law. St. Thomas Aquinas asserts the priority of law, which he calls “eternal law.” God the Creator, by His eternal law, moves all things—plants, animals, men, etc.—to their due end. In fact, the eternal law “is nothing other than” Divine Wisdom directing all actions and movements (I-II, q. 93, a. 1). 11 Theme Social Doctrine All things thereby “partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends” (I-II, q. 91, a. 2). A creature’s freedom, then, is its power to move according to its nature, or its “respective inclinations.” We men are no exception. Our freedom functions within our constitutional confines, within the laws of our nature. For example: “[A] man who jumps from a ten-story building to break the law of gravity does not break the law, but himself gets broken. The man’s fall simply demonstrates the law of gravity. A man who breaks God’s law does not break God, but himself gets broken” (Dauphinais & Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ). Attentive though we are to our physical limitations, we fallen creatures do our utmost to contradict—or at least ignore—the moral legislation of our nature. Except to behave immorally is to waive our very freedom! We are rational animals. Rationality is the defining element of our nature. By the honest exercise of reason, we attain a certain moral awareness and its attendant obligations. 12 The Angelus May - June 2021 Furthermore, by the honest exercise of reason enlightened by faith, we attain morality’s full explication in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. The degree to which we refuse these obligations, to that degree do we brutalize ourselves, enslave ourselves to our purely animal drives; the degree to which we embrace these obligations, to that degree do we ennoble ourselves, liberate ourselves to pursue the good. Law Does Not Curtail Liberty The moral law undoubtedly lessens what we may physically do: it prohibits, for instance, our robbing, molesting, or stabbing another. Yet only in this contrived sense does law curtail liberty. In reality, our physical freedom is but a mere abstraction. It does not exist in itself but is rather subsumed into our rational existence; our physical abilities function within the moral dimension, always. So, if we be morally prohibited a certain action, we do not retain—in any meaningful way—the physical freedom to carry out the same. Both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment contributed their fair share to the above error. The former, to facilitate its investigation into matter, de-emphasized formal and final causation, i.e., it abstracted from the natures of the objects under investigation. The latter then interpreted such methodology as absolute, which paved the way for the outright denial of natures. In today’s philosophical wasteland, many a man accepts this extreme. With nature out of focus, the human implementation of law gets messy. A given superior can easily disregard the true inclinations of his subjects by permitting or prescribing the irrational and proscribing the rational. At present, for example, we citizens impotently watch our nations legalizing sexual deviancy, forcibly indoctrinating youth as to its legitimacy, and forbidding sound criticism of said legislation. These falsely so-called “laws” are immoral and, as such, must not be obeyed. Discerning true from false law can be a subtle business—something typically beyond the competence of the teenager. If we fail to immediately grasp the rationale behind particular natural or supernatural laws, this does not invalidate them ipso facto. Stubbornly breaking them will surely harm us. Discerning the eternal law in its many gradations requires discipline, a willingness to submit to a legislator wiser than ourselves. Appreciation comes with maturity. “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free,” writes Goethe. The rebellious teenager is the enduring victim of this delusion. By enforcing the law, however, we may still recall him to his senses. “[T]hrough fear of some unwanted suffering,” writes Augustine, the deluded “may either lose his spirit of prejudice, or be compelled to acquaint himself with previously unknown truth . . . and now hold willingly what once he did not wish to hold. . . .” (Epistola 93.16). God’s law serves an educational purpose: by submitting to it, we learn virtue. And, as it turns out, virtue and freedom are coextensive realities. Learning lessons in virtue imparts to us a matching freedom. Without the skill of virtue, we lack the freedom to choose the good, just as without “the skill of playing the piano, a person lacks the freedom to play” (Dauphinais & Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ). Ultimately, virtue and freedom are one and the same: a skill for greatness. To youthful incredulity, we now confidently retort: freedom is the skill to fulfill God’s law! It is a natural skill acquired by a life of discipline, but even more so a supernatural skill gifted from above. Freedom is reserved for excellence, and there exists within us no higher and more excellent calling than to love God and do all for love of Him. “Love therefore is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10). 13 Theme Social Doctrine Understanding the Social Doctrine of America’s New Religion By Robert Morrison The First Amendment of the Constitution begins with the statement that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” While legislators and courts have long debated the application of this idea, we know that “separation of church and state” is now a well-established principle that has been used in various ways to exclude Christianity from public places. Although we might expect that this process of de-Christianizing America would result in a society in which religion was found only in homes, churches and religious schools, an objective observer could be forgiven for believing that religion has never been more dominant in America than it is today. Everywhere we turn in America, and throughout most of the world, 14 The Angelus May - June 2021 we find the quasi-dogmas, moral judgments, censures, symbols, and worship services of a new and powerful religion that is completely transforming law and order. To understand this new religion in its proper context, we ought to consider why America’s most prominent old religion—Christianity—was forced from the public square. Quite simply, the vocal minority has worked to exclude Christianity because it imposes moral judgments on nonbelievers. Without question, any society with laws must have implicit moral judgments about prohibited behavior. But opponents of religion will argue that such moralistic laws are derived from the need to maintain public order rather than from religious instinct. In isolation, and without considering the purpose of our lives or our duties to God, there is a certain logic to the idea that one could limit laws to those necessary to maintain public order. With this in mind, we see one of the first paradoxes of the new religion when we examine whether it applies the same types of moral judgments that it rejects in Christianity. So what are the precepts of the new religion? Is this religion judgmental or instead permissive and accommodating? How extensive is the evangelization and catechesis? We can answer these questions by reflecting on a few common epithets used to describe the new religion’s heretics and disbelievers: racist, (fill-inthe-blank)-phobic, misogynist, Nazi, conspiracy theorist, and domestic terrorist, among others. When politicians, educators and celebrities can freely apply these labels to skeptics of the new religion without fear of recourse, one can reasonably conclude that the new religion is highly judgmental and widely catechized. Increasingly, the priests of the new religion go well beyond name-calling in their reshaping of society. African-Americans are exploited by politicians to foment perpetual division in society. “Climate change” is hysterically cited to dictate how we move from place to place, where we work, and what we can eat. Matters of gender and sexual morality are wedges to separate “fundamentalists” from mainstream society. COVID-19 has been increasingly used to lambast and isolate those who maintain a questioning attitude about what the government can do to its citizenry. More recently, the threat of domestic terrorism is being used to threaten various actions against those who will not accept the new religion. Indeed, non-believers face an ever15 Theme Social Doctrine increasing burden in workplaces, schools, and other social contexts. We all know what we can and cannot say in the new religion. One may wonder how we, as a society, have accepted such an all-encompassing and overbearing religion while simultaneously allowing Christianity to be practically forbidden outside of homes and churches. In the case of all quasi-dogmas of the new religion, even those involving science, the new religionists have started with an appeal to something resembling Christian charity and ended with ad hominem attacks on disbelievers. At a high level, the process resembles one that St. Ignatius described in his Spiritual Exercises, as a rule for discerning spirits: “The bad spirit knows well how to transform himself into an angel of light. Aware of the pious desires of the soul, he will begin by seconding them, but soon he will begin to lead it to his own ends. Thus, at first he will feign to consent to your good and holy thoughts and even applaud them, but by degrees he will draw you into his hidden snares and entangle you in his dark meshes.” Thus we all know that it is sinful to hate another person, and even worse to act on that hatred. The new religion seconds this pious attitude and then insists on classifying new ways in which people commit hateful acts: not abasing oneself for the real or imagined sins of our ancestors, believing in traditional family morality, killing future generations by doubting climate change, and killing elderly people by doubting the necessity of closing churches in response to COVID-19. It might be easy enough to ignore all of this sophistry but there is tremendous social pressure to accept the new religion, and the new priests have even been increasingly successful in enacting laws to enforce such acceptance. Given that this new religion is much more coercive than Christianity ever was in America, we understandably wonder how it became so dominant. After all, would that not violate the principle of separation of church and state they hold dear? One might be tempted to answer that the new religion does not contain a comprehensive body of beliefs like Christianity. This would be persuasive were it not for the fact that the new religionists 16 The Angelus May - June 2021 do not simply ban Catholicism, or the various Protestant religions, from the public square but rather everything that can be tied to Christian beliefs. Hence, the real target is anything that points to Christ. In this light, we can see that the new religion is actually more “dogmatic” and comprehensive than the fragments of Christianity that it bans from the public square. The only plausible answer is that new religion is acceptable because it does not yet openly profess a god. Instead, the priests of the new religion allow its adherents to maintain any god they prefer, so long as it is not the actual Jesus Christ. Here we confront the great secret of the new religion, one that St. Pius X saw over one hundred years ago in his letter to the French Bishops on the Sillon—the new religion harnesses, for its own purposes, the counterfeit Catholicism that has misguided so many souls since Vatican II: “And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable effluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a OneWorld Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.” All of this fits what we see today, tragically. St. Pius X writes that the tyrannical new religion is “more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men to become brothers and comrades at last in the ‘Kingdom of God.’” The counterfeit version of Catholicism is truly essential to the success of the new religion—such a “church” attracts souls that would otherwise fight for the Mystical Body of Christ and it also lends its supposed authority to various antiCatholic measures. One could fill volumes with descriptions of the various ways in which this false authority has attacked the Church since Vatican II, but one may see the picture in its essential details by considering the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Al-Azhar al-Sharif, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, in 2019 and recently commemorated. As the document states: “It is a document that invites all persons who have faith in God and faith in human fraternity to unite and work together so that it may serve as a guide for future generations to advance a culture of mutual respect in the awareness of the great divine grace that makes all human beings brothers and sisters.” This is the new religion, which for Catholics is the Faith without Jesus Crucified. Remove Jesus Crucified and the priests of the new religion have no objection to Catholicism. This distorted view of Jesus is one that lacks the lessons of the Cross that stand in the way of the new world order: God’s great love for us, the horror of sin, and the need to faithfully carry our own crosses during the trials of life. For so long as the new religion exists, it will do all it can to shape social doctrine to make it more difficult for souls to find and accept Jesus Crucified. In his Cross and Crown, Fr. Robert Mäder emphasizes our great need for the Crucified Christ, as Christians forget their Lord and Redeemer: “The Crucified Christ is the sum and substance of Christianity, so that St. Paul can say, ‘I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ (I Cor. 2:2). The crucifixion is therefore also the main thing we should preach in our time. The most important, the most necessary and the most urgent for people today.” In the end, the new religionists will discover that in rejecting the Crucified Christ, they are rejecting a God Who will not be mocked. Until that happens, we will likely have the distinct honor of carrying our blessed cross by upholding the only religion pleasing to God, Deo Gratias! 17 Theme Social Doctrine Culture Shock An Interview with Fr. Thomas Marie Onoda, SSPX Could you say a few words about your vocation and “falling into the SSPX net”? Yes. As the Catechism of Saint Pius X says at the very beginning: I am a Christian, a true Christian and even a Catholic priest in the SSPX, by the grace of God. Through perfectly gratuitous gift of God, I was born near a most conservative Catholic parish and was placed in its Catholic kindergarten where I learned the Hail Mary when little. I was very much interested to know, as a junior high school student, about existence of God. I became aware of the crisis in the Church as a high school student, noticing the differences between priests. I was led to attend the Traditional Mass as a university student and had occasion to meet SSPX priests in Japan. My former parish priest, Fr. Joseph Marie Jacq, M.E.P. encouraged me 18 The Angelus May - June 2021 to go to Archbishop Lefebvre when I revealed to him my desire to serve God. And Fr. Franz Schmidberger was kind enough to allow me to enter the SSPX Seminary in France. Would you tell us about your meetings with Western culture? The actual Japanese Society likes to receive the Western culture. This movement started in 1880s as catchphrase of “Wakon Yōsai” (Japanese spirit and Western technique/culture), through learning modern Science, literatures, arts, music, ideologies, even military systems. This movement is still going on through internet, movies, and international politics in general. With regards to my personal encounter with the Western culture, however, I think, it started seriously when I attended Mass, as a young lad, to become catechumen on Christmas of 1979. This meeting was accomplished when I was forgiven by God, through the sacrament of Baptism on Christmas in 1980—because the true Western culture worthy of its name is rooted in the Catholic faith. The European nations, together with their customs and culture, laws and entire literatures, arts and music, were the creation or products of the Catholic faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. The more the nations depart from “the true Vine” (Jesus Christ) whose Father is the husbandman, the less they can bear fruit. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me,” says Our Lord. Saint Pius X declares in his Notre Charge Apostolique in 1910 that “the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be set up unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to Vol.#56-Winter 2021 be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. Omnia instaurare in Christo.” I come back to my story: when I entered the seminary in France in 1987, I did not have cultural shock. No. I felt rather at home because I could attend the Traditional Latin Mass daily. I keep only good memories, joy, and happiness from my seminary life in Europe. I was a part of 1 big family. I felt loved and respected. All the true “Western” culture is in truth Catholic culture, and, therefore, it is our common culture which transcends time and place. It was a French missionary priest who baptized me. He worked so hard for the salvation of souls in Japan. When he was replaced by a Japanese parish priest, our parishioners suffered greatly because he wanted to impose us, in the name of inculturation, what was not incultured by Faith S S P X District of As 19 Theme Social Doctrine Frs. Onoda and Demornex in front of the new priory in Tokyo. in our parish: communion standing by hand. In the name of tolerance and pluralism, I was alienated. This was about 40 years ago. Now in our SSPX Mass center in Tokyo, we have so many kinds of nationalities and people living Japan. They attend Latin Traditional Mass happily and feel at home. In Novus Ordo institutions, they were divided by their languages, and their priests, because each priest is different from one another in terms of how they celebrate the Mass. Few years ago, I met a Chinese Catholic from Nanjin. He attended the Latin Mass for the first time but he knew how to serve Mass perfectly well. He was waiting for it so ardently. When we had to say goodbye, he embraced me in tears with gratitude. Wheresoever I go, I celebrate the Mass of all times and that’s enough. That’s what the people want and they feel at home in our common Catholic worship and culture. 20 The Angelus May - June 2021 Finally, could you explain to us the history of the Japanese/Korean mission— and your expectations for it? The SSPX missions to Japan and Korea have different histories, in time, persons and circumstances. However, both are the same in the sincere request of Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from the faithful. In Japan, Fr. Nanasaki, the parish priest in Nagoya, who was always offering the Traditional Mass, asked his faithful to contact Archbishop Lefebvre and request him to send his priests to Japan. Thus, then Fr. Williamson came to Japan in 1978 for the first time. We then started to go to Korea upon request from a group of faithful. As a seminarian, I was fortunate to have a privilege to accompany Fr. Laroche for one of his first missions in 1988. On the feast of Saint Joseph, this year, we want to consecrate to Saint Joseph our priory with its priests and missions to Japan and to Korea. Especially we want to ask special help from the glorious Patron of the Holy Family and of the Universal Church, because we are not able to do missions to Korea for a year because of COVID travel restrictions. We are praying also for priestly vocations from these countries. 352 pp – Color Softcover – STK# 6710 – $17.95 Against the Heresies Papal Encyclicals Condemning Modern Errors Infecting the Church and Society Here’s the book for a world pretending everything is gray - even truth. Saint Irenaeus gave us the first Against the Heresies (Adversus Haereses) in the second century. In the 20th, it is as of a second Irenaeus that we present these conferences by Archbishop Lefebvre under the same title. They both address the same problem: Man playing God. Archbishop Lefebvre analyzes the various aspects of Liberalism in the same way Irenaeus did of Gnosticism. As Saint Irenaeus addressed the philosophical errors and presented the Catholic response, which is the rule of the Catholic Faith in the Creed, so Archbishop Lefebvre, too, shows how the modern errors in the Church and Society are so opposed to our unchanging Catholic Faith. The solution is the same. Catholic Tradition. The Deposit of Faith. The authority of the Holy See. Both appeal to the one test of Truth, that is, “the teaching of the Church of Rome.” In fact, Archbishop Lefebvre’s defense is but a commentary on the encyclicals of the popes. They’re dead, but their teaching shouldn’t be. Learn why these encyclicals were buried with them. Six popes resurrected from the last 150 years. Eleven mind-blowing encyclicals. Against the heresies and the heretics, especially the Freemasons and the Liberals. All taught by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in the style of his other most popular work, Open Letter to Confused Catholics. Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. 22 The Angelus May - June 2021 Our Apostolic Mandate By Pope St. Pius X The Sillon—the Furrow—was founded by Marc Sangnier as a forerunner of Catholic Action. Yet, he entertained certain notions which more and more identified themselves with Liberal and Masonic ideas. Here are some extracts touching on the main social issues found wanting. The Sillon Utopia The truth is that the Sillonist leaders are self-confessed and irrepressible idealists; they claim to regenerate the working class by first elevating the conscience of Man; they have a social doctrine, and they have religious and philosophical principles for the reconstruction of society upon new foundations; they have a particular conception of human dignity, freedom, justice and brotherhood; and, in an attempt to justify their social dreams, they put forward the Gospel, but interpreted in their own way; and what is even more serious, they call to witness Christ, but a diminished and distorted Christ. Further, they teach these ideas in their study groups, and inculcate them upon their friends, and they also introduce them into their working procedures. Therefore they are really professors of social, civic, and religious morals; and whatever modifications they may introduce in the organization of the Sillonist movement, we have the right to say that the aims of the Sillon, its character and its action belong to the field of morals which is the proper domain of the 23 Theme Social Doctrine Church. In view of all this, the Sillonist are deceiving themselves when they believe that they are working in a field that lies outside the limits of Church authority and of its doctrinal and directive power. We know well that they flatter themselves with the idea of raising human dignity and the discredited condition of the working class. We know that they wish to render just and perfect the labor laws and the relations between employers and employees, thus causing a more complete justice and a greater measure of charity to prevail upon earth, and causing also a profound and fruitful transformation in society by which mankind would make an undreamedof progress. Certainly, We do not blame these efforts; they would be excellent in every respect if the Sillonist did not forget that a person’s progress consists in developing his natural abilities by fresh motivations; that it consists also in permitting these motivations to operate within the frame of, and in conformity with, the laws of human nature. But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is led, not toward progress, but towards death. This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests. No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker— the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO. 24 The Angelus May - June 2021 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity For the rest, if the people remain the holders of power, what becomes of authority? A shadow, a myth; there is no more law properly so-called, no more obedience. The Sillon acknowledges this: indeed, since it demands that threefold political, economic, and intellectual emancipation in the name of human dignity, the Future City in the formation of which it is engaged will have no masters and no servants. All citizens will be free; all comrades, all kings. A command, a precept would be viewed as an attack upon their freedom; subordination to any form of superiority would be a diminishment of the human person, and obedience a disgrace. Is it in this manner, Venerable Brethren, that the traditional doctrine of the Church represents social relations, even in the most perfect society? Has not every community of people, dependent and unequal by nature, need of an authority to direct their activity towards the common good and to enforce its laws? And if perverse individuals are to be found in a community (and there always are), should not authority be all the stronger as the selfishness of the wicked is more threatening? Further,—unless one greatly deceives oneself in the conception of liberty—can it be said with an atom of reason that authority and liberty are incompatible? Can one teach that obedience is contrary to human dignity and that the ideal would be to replace it by “accepted authority”? Did not St. Paul the Apostle foresee human society in all its possible stages of development when he bade the faithful to be subject to every authority? Does obedience to men as the legitimate representatives of God, that is to say in the final analysis, obedience to God, degrade Man and reduce him to a level unworthy of himself? Is the religious life which is based on obedience, contrary to the ideal of human nature? Were the Saints—the most obedient men, just slaves and degenerates? Finally, can you imagine social conditions in which Jesus Christ, if He returned to earth, would not give an example of obedience and, further, would no longer say: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” ? Teaching such doctrines, and applying them to its internal organization, the Sillon, therefore, sows erroneous and fatal notions on authority, liberty and obedience, among your Catholic youth. The same is true of justice and equality; the Sillon says that it is striving to establish an era of equality which, by that very fact, would be also an era of greater justice. Thus, to the Sillon, every inequality of condition is an injustice, or at least, a diminution of justice? Here we have a principle that conflicts sharply with the nature of things, a principle conducive to jealously, injustice, and subversive to any social order. Thus, Democracy alone will bring about the reign of perfect justice! Is this not an insult to other forms of government which are thereby debased to the level of sterile makeshifts? Besides, the Sillonists once again clash on this point with the teaching of Leo XIII. In the Encyclical on political government which We have already quoted, they could have read this: “Justice being preserved, it is not forbidden to the people to choose for themselves the form of government which best corresponds with their character or with the institutions and customs handed down by their forefathers.” The same applies to the notion of Fraternity which they found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting. Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart. No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness. Finally, at the root of all their fallacies on social questions, lie the false hopes of Sillonists on human dignity. According to them, Man will be a man truly worthy of the name only when he has acquired a strong, enlightened, and independent consciousness, able to do without a master, obeying only himself, and able to assume the most demanding responsibilities without faltering. Such are the big words by which human pride is exalted, like a dream carrying Man away without light, without guidance, and without help into the realm of illusion in which he will be destroyed by his errors and passions whilst awaiting the glorious day of his full consciousness. And that great day, when will it come? Unless human nature can be changed, which is not within the power of the Sillonists, will that day ever come? Did the Saints who brought human dignity to its highest point, possess that kind of dignity? Blame the Church, Praise Ecumenism You are the past; they are the pioneers of the civilization of the future. You represent the hierarchy, social inequalities, authority, and obedience—worn out institutions to which their hearts, captured by another ideal, can no longer submit to. Occurrences so sad as to bring tears to Our eyes bear witness to this frame of mind. And we cannot, with all Our patience, overcome a just feeling of indignation. Now then! Distrust of the Church, their Mother, is being instilled into the minds of Catholic youth; they are being taught that after nineteen centuries She has not yet been able to build up in this world a society on true foundations; She has not understood the social notions of authority, liberty, equality, fraternity and human dignity; they are told that the great Bishops and Kings, who have made France what it is and governed it so gloriously, have not 25 Theme Social Doctrine been able to give their people true justice and true happiness because they did not possess the Sillonist Ideal! The breath of the Revolution has passed this way, and We can conclude that, whilst the social doctrines of the Sillon are erroneous, its spirit is dangerous and its education disastrous. Here we have, founded by Catholics, an interdenominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the “Kingdom of God”—“We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind.” And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a OneWorld Church which shall have neither dogmas, 26 The Angelus May - June 2021 nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clearthinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that—their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution—they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition. As for you, Venerable Brethren, carry on diligently with the work of the Saviour of men by emulating His gentleness and His strength. Minister to every misery; let no sorrow escape your pastoral solicitude; let no lament find you indifferent. But, on the other hand, preach fearlessly their duties to the powerful and to the lowly; it is your function to form the conscience of the people and of the public authorities. The social question will be much nearer a solution when all those concerned, less demanding as regards their respective rights, shall fulfill their duties more exactingly. 264 pp. – Softcover – STK# 5240 – $15.95 They Have Uncrowned Him The Summa of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Covers the origins of liberalism, the subversion of orthodoxy by Vatican II, the decline of the missionary spirit by dialogue, the bad fruits of post-Conciliar reforms, and his vision of restoration. Most importantly, the Archbishop explains how the revolutionaries in the Church managed to dethrone Christ the King, both ecclesiastically and temporally. Call 1-800-966-7337 and get yours today! Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. The Cathedral of St. Nikolaus in Überlingen, Germany, is the largest late Gothic building in the region, and contains a magnificent wooden altar carved by Jörg Zürn. The altar was built on behalf of the City Council of Überlingen: it is a fourtiered Marian altar (Annunciation, Birth of Christ, Coronation of Mary, Crucifixion) made of fir and lime wood without painting, and follows the tradition of the Gothic carved altars. It is 32 feet high and 16 feet wide at its widest point. Spirituality The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass The Canon Part Four By Fr. Christopher Danel In this article we continue an examination of the Canon of the Mass, presenting the work of Msgr. Nicholas Gihr in his fundamental liturgical commentary The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically, and Ascetically Explained. Msgr. Gihr was a priest of Freiburg im Breisgau whose work of liturgical research took place during the time frame spanning the pontificates of Popes Pius IX to Pius XI, including that of Pope Saint Pius X. The early years of his work were contemporaneous with the last years in the work of Dom Prosper Guéranger. (The English translation of his study appeared in 1902; the original is: Gihr, Nikolaus. Messopfer dogmatisch, liturgisch und aszetisch erklärt. Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau, 1877.) 30 The Angelus May - June 2021 Hanc Igitur Hanc igitur oblationem servitutis nostrae, sed et cunctae familiae tuae, quaesumus Domine, ut placatus accipias: diesque nostros in tua pace disponas, atque ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi, et in electorum tuorum jubeas grege numerari. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. This oblation, therefore, of our service, and that of Thy whole family, we beseech Thee, O Lord, graciously to accept; and to dispose our days in Thy peace, and to command us to be delivered from eternal damnation, and to be numbered in the flock of Thine elect. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen. The Text In the Canon up to now the oblation indicated is that of the bread and wine, in so far as they are destined to be changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The petition for the acceptance of the sacrificial elements, therefore, includes in itself the petition for their transubstantiation: the purpose for which they are to be accepted is the Consecration. However, the Eucharistic Oblation is here more minutely described as “the offering of our servitude” and as “the oblation of the whole family of God.” Unquestionably these words express in general the truth that the Eucharist is the homage-offering of the whole Church. In a stricter sense, we may consider “our servitude” as designating the consecrated ministers of the altar, that is, the priests and clerics who by actual participation unite in the celebration of the Mass. However, this does not exhaust the full sense: it says “the oblation of our servitude,” that is, the offering that we and all the members of the Church make, in order to acknowledge the absolute dominion of God over all that is created, and to express our profound submission to it. As creatures we stand in a special relation of dependence toward God our Creator; the Mass now has principally for its object the giving to God of that veneration, homage and acknowledgement, in brief, that religious worship which is due to Him alone. We expect and implore by virtue of the Eucharistic Sacrifice mercies and blessings for time and for eternity. Earthly, temporal welfare consists in this, that God orders and directs our days in peace; heavenly, eternal well-being includes preservation from endless reprobation and the being inscribed among the host of the elect. “Diesque nostros in tua pace disponas,” we pray, for we desire good and peaceful days that are not clouded by sufferings, combats, assaults and persecutions, but always cheered and blessed with the peace of God, “that, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve Him without fear in justice and holiness” (St. Luke 1:74). We pray for temporal prosperity, inasmuch as it may be serviceable to the attainment of the “one thing necessary,” and for possession of that “best part” which shall not be taken away from us. But in what do this “one thing necessary” and this “best part” consist? In this, that we escape the evil of all evils, eternal death (ab aeterna damnations nos eripi), and that we attain to the best of goods, the supreme good of eternal life (in electorum tuorum grege numerari). As fruit to be derived from the Sacrifice, therefore, we implore in the above prayer the peace of God for the days of our earthly life, and we pray especially for the consummation of our redemption and eternal salvation. The Accompanying Action During this prayer, the priest extends his two hands horizontally over the chalice and Host, 31 Spirituality and in such a manner, that the right thumb is placed over the left one in the form of a cross. This imposing, or extending of hands occurs first toward the close of the fifteenth century in some Missals, and it was afterwards universally prescribed by St. Pius V. This ceremony not only harmonizes with the tenor of the text, “this oblation” (hanc oblationem), indicating the sacrificial elements in a just and reverential manner, but also contains in addition a mystical meaning. The ritual laying on of hands frequently occurs in both Testaments, as well as in the liturgy: according to its fundamental signification, it is always a symbol, or a means of transferring something to others, for example, the guilt of sin, a blessing and protection. In the Mosaic worship the laying on of hands was a symbolical representation of the transferring of sin and guilt to the animal that was to be sacrificed, which vicariously had to suffer death instead of man. Here in the Holy Mass, the laying on of hands has a similar object; and therefore in a visible way it deeply fixes the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, for it shows that Christ on the altar, in our place, for our sake, and on account of our sins offers Himself; moreover, it indicates that we should unite ourselves with His Sacrifice, offering ourselves in it and along with it. Quam oblationem Quam oblationem tu Deus in omnibus, quaesumus, benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptabilemque facere digneris: ut nobis Corpus et Sanguis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Which oblation do Thou, O God, we beseech Thee, vouchsafe to make in all things blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable, and acceptable: that it may become for us the Body and Blood of Thy most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Text This prayer is closely connected with the preceding one and forms the immediate 32 The Angelus May - June 2021 transition and introduction to the act of Consecration. In general its meaning is clear, but the several designations therein given to the offering appear obscure and difficult to the understanding. Since the foregoing preparation for the act of Consecration ends with this prayer, it expresses for the last time in a simple, grand way the already oft-repeated petition to God for the changing of the bread and wine into the Body and the Blood of Christ. Therefore, we implore of God that the elements lying on the altar and dedicated to Him be raised to the highest degree of consummation. The Eucharistic Savior is “the perfectly blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable and acceptable oblation” which, by the power of God, is to replace the substance of bread and wine. Oblatio benedicta. The blessing here meant and to be imparted to the material elements, is the very highest and the most sublime conceivable, namely, the Consecration, that is, the changing of the elements into the glorious Body and the Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We, therefore, beg God to bless the oblation of bread and wine, that is, to consecrate it and thereby make it for us an inexhaustible source of grace and blessing. Oblatio adscripta. This extremely obscure word can only with difficulty or perhaps not at all be explained in a perfectly satisfactory manner, as is evident from the different attempts at interpretation. We translate adscripta by the word approved and thereby give our preference for an explanation according to which this word seems to coincide better with the whole context. Accordingly, the oblation becomes adscripta when it responds and answers to the prescription, to the ordinance and institution of Christ, as it took place at the Last Supper. In this manner, therefore, the same petition would be presented that frequently occurs elsewhere in liturgies: that the elements of bread and wine may become eucharistia legitima, that is, legitimate Eucharist. Oblatio rata. If the oblation is so constituted as to be conformable to Holy Scripture, to the will and command of Christ (Hoc facite), then necessarily it is also an oblatio rata, that is, a true or valid sacrifice; for with this presupposition all the features and elements are at hand requisite for the existence and essence of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The contents of the above three words (benedicta, adscripta, rata) are now stated more correctly and emphatically, in this that the Sacrifice is called a “spiritual,” or “reasonable oblation” (oblatio rationabilis). In the liturgies the Eucharist is often designated as “a spiritual sacrifice” (hostia spiritualis) or as “a reasonable and unbloody worship of God.” This expression is borrowed from Holy Scripture; in its liturgical use it refers as well to the way and manner of offering, as to the sacrificial gift, and characterizes it as endowed with life, spirit and reason, in contrast with the Old Testament offerings of irrational animals and inanimate things. The Eucharist is, therefore, a “reasonable oblation,” because on the altar the living Lamb of God, the God-Man Jesus Christ, is sacrificed, He who is, indeed, the eternal reason, the uncreated and personal wisdom of God. If the Eucharistic Sacrifice has these four qualities, it is then infallibly and in the highest degree also “pleasing to God,” dear, precious and acceptable to the Heart of God (oblatio acceptabilis). The little word nobis (“for us”), moreover, adds a new idea; for it petitions that the Body and Blood of Christ take the place of the bread and wine, that is, become present under their appearances for us, for our sake, for our salvation and blessing and advantage. For us the Savior offers Himself on the altar, to us He gives Himself in Holy Communion. The Accompanying Action The aforesaid prayer is accompanied with five signs of the Cross, three of which are first made over both sacrificial elements at one and the same time (at the words benedictam, adscriptam, ratam); then there is one besides made separately over the Host and over the chalice (at the words Corpus et Sanguis). These holy signs strengthen and visibly elucidate the text of the prayer spoken vocally; they symbolically express what the accompanying and corresponding words signify. The signs of the Cross are here symbols and means of blessing; they call down the divine blessing upon the bread and wine, that they may be changed, and that which is likewise made apparent by the sign of the Cross is that the bread may be changed into the same sacrificial Body that hung on the Cross, and the wine into the same sacrificial Blood which was shed on the Cross. If we consider the first three signs of the Cross in themselves, then we must at the same time evidently see in them an indication and symbol of the Adorable Trinity, from whom proceeds the blessing of Consecration prayed for, to sanctify the material elements and change them into the Eucharistic Sacrifice. But not only in a general way should the identity that exists between the bloody and unbloody Sacrifice of Christ be made clear to us by the sign of the Cross; we can piously and edifyingly consider the five repetitions of the sign of the Cross occurring in this prayer immediately before the Consecration, and in another prayer directly afterward, as indicating the five sacred wounds, which were particularly prominent on the Body of Christ, and which, consequently, are also in the most intimate relation with the redeeming passion and death of the Lord. Precisely at the moment in which the altar becomes a mystical Mount Calvary, the sublime and sacred scene of the Passion of the Savior should present itself before the eyes and mind of priest and people in the most striking manner. The hands and feet of the Lord have men bored through, and His Heart they have pierced. Those hands that were overflowing with benedictions and mercies; those feet that had become weary walking in search of the lost sheep on the thorny field of the earth; that Heart which glowed with love for God and men, behold, how they are lacerated and wounded! Those bloody signs of martyrdom, those deep, gaping wounds on the sacrificed Body of Jesus are an inexhaustible fountain of propitiation and mercy and grace for regenerated man. Christ, pierced on the Cross, wounded in five different places, come, let us adore! 33 Spirituality Meditations on St. John’s Gospel Chapter Six By Pater Inutilis St. John’s gospel is the one which shows us that Our Lord’s Public Life was not limited to one year, an idea one could get from reading the synoptic gospels which mention only one visit of Our Lord to Jerusalem and one Passover; that when He was crucified. But St. John recalls several explicitly: already in 2:13, and now again here in 6:4, before that Pasch, which was a great sabbath day, of which on the day of preparation, the parasceve, Jesus Christ was crucified. True to his intention, our evangelist will continue giving us long and deep discourses of our Savior omitted by the others. But he begins by relating a miracle of our Lord’s already presented by the three other evangelists: the multiplication of the loaves for the five thousand. Apart from Our Lord’s own resurrection, this will be the only miracle found in all four gospels. If 34 The Angelus May - June 2021 St. John gives us it as well, it is because it was the occasion for Jesus to speak of the “bread of life” that is Himself. From the narrative of this multiplication, let us note just that St. John’s account is more vivid than the others. We read of different individual Apostles (St. Philip versus St. Andrew) and the crowd’s reaction—their concluding that He was the prophet to come and their wanting to make Him king. That is when Jesus left the crowd, and also His disciples. These were to board ship while He went up the mountain to pray alone. Later, He joined them, walking to them upon the waters. As by multiplying bread, so by walking on the water, Jesus is showing that He is Master over all physical nature. He is preparing them to accept His teaching He is about to give on the Holy Eucharist. With daytime coming, Jesus will be teaching in the synagogue in Capharnaum, which was His “home base” throughout His public ministry, called by St. Matthew “His own city,” the scene of a good number of His miracles, but in the end unresponsive and bitterly condemned. This chapter six of St. John’s gospel will show us the people of Capharnaum turning away from Christ. By all His signs in their presence, and principally the multiplication of loaves, He has shown to them, and even more so to His disciples, quite enough now to demand faith in Him; and He will now put them to the test by speaking very realistically of the Eucharist without further explanation. Jesus’ interlocutors are now mainly the Jews of Capharnaum. Noticing Him gone, they seek Him eagerly, very pleased with a ready supply of bread and wanting more of the same. Our Lord will use this miracle, and under the metaphor of bread, invite them to desire things spiritual and eternal. It is His to give, He being “sealed by the Father”: not only through the hypostatic union, but also coming with the Father’s “seal of approval.” They are to believe in Him. More than in Moses? But he fed daily for forty years the people with manna, the bread from heaven. And you? True bread gives true life (and not just sustaining this present life): this is from My Father in heaven. They can understand this only carnally. And so on, throughout the rest of this discussion. “I am the bread of life.” Unless one be a Protestant, there is no question but that Our Lord is teaching us about the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. He will repeat the very concrete “eating His flesh” and “drinking His blood.” His hearers understand it literally and Christ will not disabuse them. He will not explain further (that it will be under the appearances of bread and wine); now He demands faith; He will let go those who cannot believe. It is moreover something that He “will give” and not just the present gift that is Himself. No wonder, therefore, that the Council of Trent uses different verses of our chapter 6 in treating of the Eucharist. While this whole discourse on the bread of life is centered around this sacrament, Catholic authors do not all agree with which verses the Eucharist and Communion are explicitly and literally meant— for “bread” and “wine” can be taken scripturally for wisdom and spiritual nourishment, as they 35 Spirituality are several times in the Sapiential books. Some say that Our Lord intends to teach us about the Eucharist, but first generally as “heavenly food,” then more explicitly as Himself being that food before clearly speaking of the eucharistic manner of His being food from heaven. Let us pass briefly over different objections taken from this chapter, remembering that every verse should be taken in the context of the whole gospel. Our Lord does speak of eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, as already noted. This does not mean that all are bound to communicate under both species. What He says of this eating and drinking—that it will give life, and life everlasting—He also says just of eating bread. More importantly, He is “the living bread”—He is alive under either species, wherever it be; and so, with His Body and Blood, with His Body and Soul. He is whole and entire under each species. To receive Him, not all must receive Him under both species by any means. Then again, what He asserts of the necessity of communicating, he has already asserted of being baptized. This does not mean that they are each equally necessary. Baptism is a new birth, one now lives according to a “spiritual life.” Holy Communion nourishes that life and prevents one from dying (spiritually). If it raises again to life, then it is a question of the resurrection of the body. We may note that “never thirsting” and “life everlasting” are fruits promised also to faith, belief in Him; which does not preclude the necessity of living a sacramental life, now also inculcated by our Lord. Nor does any of this preclude having to live according to that life, to do well and bear fruit. A similar idea: God’s acting, grace, is all necessary—not accepting the Son, coming to God, without it. True—“No man can come to me, unless it is given him by my father. Even more absolutely: “Without Me you can do nothing.” But we can put obstacles to grace, and so we are to prepare His way, “to make straight the way of the Lord”; and we must labor for the meat “which endureth unto life everlasting.” When dealing with such exalted mysteries, we are to accept simply all that God tells us without trying to fathom things humanly: “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing.” More 36 The Angelus May - June 2021 fruitful is loving contemplation of the divine gift. “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me.” When there is question of being “sent,” then we are talking about God incarnate. Jesus Christ, in His human nature, lives a divine life, thanks to the hypostatic union. We, by communicating, live a divine life, each according to his capacity to receive and the giving of God thanks to this Real Presence. We become more “Him” who abides in us. At this, we are not to take scandal for He has the words of eternal life; He is “the Christ, the Son of God.” 325 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8249 – $26.95 The Mass of All Time The prayers, actions, and history of the Mass Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre A collection of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s sermons, classes, and notes on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—its rites, spirit, prayers, theology, spirituality, and grace. Part One is a running commentary on the prayers, parts, and actions of the entire liturgy. Part Two covers the New Order of Mass and includes commentary on liturgical history, the liturgical revolution and the history of the SSPX’s defense of the old Mass. Here we see the love and depth of understanding that Marcel Lefebvre had for the Mass of All Time. With the release of the motu proprio, it seems there has never been a more ideal time for traditional Catholics AND those who are being introduced to the “Old” Mass to reflect on this side of Archbishop Lefebvre. This book proves his love of truth and the Mass that fueled his battle to defend them. Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. Saint Thomas More By Malcom Brennan 38 The Angelus May - June 2021 While St. Thomas More was a man of great subtlety and complexity, his story in broad outline may be recalled simply. Son of a prosperous London lawyer, he followed his father’s profession with notable success even from the beginning. By the age of thirty-two he had long ago completed his education at Oxford and in London, he had lived the spiritual life of the Carthusian monks for four yeras (though not himself professed), he had married and begot his four children, he had filled several civic posts with the approval of his fellow Londoners, and he had grown in the friendship and respect of the greatest scholars of the age. In the years to come his fame and fortune would increase, his enterprises would diversify, his accomplishments would multiply, and all the while his reputation would grow as a man who was amiable, wise, “the best friend a poor man ever had,” and when the Lutheran heresies began to spread, as a stinging controversialist. He progressed through a succession of positions in the government of King Henry VIII. Behind his various official positions— administrator, ambassador, counsellor, judge, executive—his basic position seems to have been that of intimate advisor and personal agent of the King, who was anxious to surround himself with the best minds and the best men of the age. (More’s head was never turned by the friendship which the King conferred on him: he explained to his son-in-law once that the King would gladly forfeit More’s life for the gain of a castle in France.) When the great Cardinal Wolsey’s grand policies began to collapse, Henry chose More to replace him as Lord High Chancellor, the highest position in the government. At this time, 1529, Henry VIII was pressing for his divorce from Catherine, and he knew that Thomas More would not lend his support to the scheme. Yet Henry seemed to think that he could manage without More, as More seemed to think that he could serve as Chancellor and remain independent of “the king’s great matter.” This indicates how fluid and tentative the situation must have seemed to the principals, while to us who look back the events seem to march ineluctably toward catastrophe. Subject more and more to his passion for Anne Boleyn (her sister had been a much easier conquest), Henry sensed that he would never have his divorce from Rome, and so he simply declared that Rome did not have authority in this matter anyway. And it did not take him long to declare that the Pope had no more authority in England than any other foreign bishop, and in fact less authority than the King. Thomas More’s refusal to endorse this heretical challenge to the authority of the universal Church is what cost him his head. The pathetic and inspiring tale of St. Thomas More’s last months in the Tower of London has moved the hearts of millions—the tale of his growing sanctity as death approached, of the misunderstanding of his friends and family, of his scruple to utter no word of treason or sedition, of his kindliness toward his jailers; and when finally condemned to die, the brilliance of his expose of the fraudulent trial, the serene dignity of his self-defense (in the cause of truth and justice, for his own cause was lost), and the elegance of his statements of traditional Catholic Faith. Here was all that was finest in the English character, here was the flower of manhood, here was Christendom’s champion. But somehow Saint Thomas More continues to be misunderstood. For example: “Like Socrates, he dies for freedom of conscience.” And: “Thomas More in his Utopia attempts to oppose to the system of dogmatic theology an entirely new form of religion. He outlines here the ideal of religion without dogma.” And again: “Only in modern times, with the rise of scientific Socialism, has it become possible to do full justice to More the Socialist,” that is, Marxist. Without undertaking to refute these points severally, it is nevertheless profitable to reflect on several aspects of the life and meaning of Thomas More. When St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and St. John Houghton, Abbot of the London Charterhouse, were asked to take the oath which declared Henry VIII to be the supreme head of the Church in England, they promptly, stoutly, and unequivocally denounced it for the heresy it was. When the same oath was offered to 39 Spirituality William Frederick Yeames, The meeting of Sir Thomas More with his daughter after his sentence of death, 1872. Thomas More, he simply declined to make it, without explaining why. A principal reason for this silence was that he dared not tempt God by throwing himself into the face of danger. He had earlier explained to his family: God made the angels to show Him splendor— as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind! If He suffers us to fall to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and yes, then we may clamor like champions. It is clear that More did not suddenly ‘get religion’ when he discovered the jig was up, and then luck into a martyrdom to make it to sainthood by the short route. As a young man he had hesitated long between the law and the Church as his profession, longer than his father liked. And while his principal spiritual formation occurred no doubt while he was living “religiously” but “without vows” among the Carthusian monks, his spirituality was not primarily monastic but rather Franciscan; that is, 40 The Angelus May - June 2021 instead of trying to imitate the life of a monk he tried to imitate the life of Christ, who went about preaching, doing good works and anticipating the Passion. Though not an infallible sign, another indication of More’s active devotion was his interest in theology. He wrote a number of polemical works in refutation of Luther—that “pinhead,” that “raving baboon,” as he called him. Early in these controversies More defended the Mass as the central and crucial issue in the contests, but before long he re-evaluated the central issue as the Papacy. The popes of his day were some of the least attractive men who had ever occupied the See of Peter, and their bureaucracies were arrogant and venal, but More had no trouble distinguishing between a pope and the Papacy. Luther spoke of a church of all those in charity and in which all were equal, except that some administrative duties were distributed here and there. More argued that the Church was unified by faith, not by charity, because 1) the Church had to be visible like its incarnate founder, and charity was impossible to see whereas a man’s faith could be seen as orthodox or heretical, and 2) because the Church contained sinners (lacking charity) as well as saints. More also attacked the idea of the equality of believers, who deferred to one another more or less for the sake of efficiency and tranquility. No, he said, the Church has been given real authority because it is the body of Christ, to whom has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and this authority is conferred differently to different members of the Church. Thus authority in the Church is a very immediate result of its divine foundation. And if authority is real, so is obedience. Obedience is not a tactic for muddling through various obstacles, but is a positive, central, sometimes heroic virtue for those who would imitate Him who was obedient unto death. (We speak here, of course, not of dogmas which are more or less important in the hierarchy of revealed truths, but of dogmas as more or less central to the controversies of the age. In this sense it may be true that in the 16th century the Papacy was a more important issue than the Mass, while in the 20th century the Mass is the crucial issue. The reformers in More’s day were trying to replace one religion with another, while it is not too far fetched to say that today they are trying to replace religion itself with sociology, and politics, and economics, and public relations.) A related issue is Thomas More as a kind of conscientious objector to the policies of Henry VIII. To an age like ours, which is treated to the spectacle of high government officials who promise not to let their consciences interfere with their official duties, the word conscience becomes obscure. The government is apparently full of people who are personally opposed to abortion, but whose consciences will not permit them to follow their consciences. (For these people the Biblical injunction about charity has been modernized and applied to conscience: Let not thy left lobe know what they right lobe dost.) We may be sure that St. Thomas More shows no such signs of a disintegrating personality. When he speaks of conscience he is not speaking of a private law that he has made up for himself nor does he use such a law of the self to justify disobedience. He is not a refuser, a dissident, a protestant, one who arbitrates truth and right. Rather he is at great pains to discover “wittily, in the tangle of his mind” what the universal (i.e., catholic) teaching was and to conform himself to it. It was his tragedy (and glory) that Henry forced him to refuse an order of his king—not his authority, just an order. And More chose not to follow Henry into dissent, into novelty, into disobedience, but rather to remain obedient to the faith which had been handed down. The anomolous and unnatural state of a Catholic who is forced to defy authority unjustly exercised became such a commonplace later in the century that men invented a new word for it: recusant, a splendid word which came to mean a Catholic who refused to obey an order that violated the faith. Saint Thomas More did not earn the martyr’s glory for saying, “I will not serve,” or “Ich kann nicht anders,” but for being what no protester or dissident could ever be, “The King’s good servant, but God’s first.” Sancte Thomas, ora pro nobis. Reprinted from The Angelus, April 1978. 41 Spirituality Law and Order in the Rule of St. Benedict By a Benedictine Monk On three different occasions in his Rule, St. Benedict, quoting Scripture, encourages his monks to a high-level of justice in their monastic life. He commands the monk: “Not to do to another what one would not have done to oneself.” Many of his commentators have called this little phrase “The Golden Rule” within the Rule. This “golden rule” is like a summary of the doctrine of charity taught by our Lord Jesus Christ: “All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this is the law and the prophets.” Our Lord, calling this little phrase: “the law and the prophets” shows us the importance that He places upon this very simple thought. To treat others in the way that one would like to be treated by them is itself a beautiful code of life. In modern society there are many 42 The Angelus May - June 2021 thousands of laws trying to regulate the moral behavior of the citizens of the country. So many laws are needed because of the great depravity of modern man who refuses to treat his neighbor in a way that he himself would like to be treated by his neighbor. The more man disobeys the laws that God has written in nature, the more laws man has to write to try to regulate his behavior. The greatest tragedy imaginable for a nation is to officially impose laws which are contrary to the nature that God has created. Unfortunately, this is exactly what many modern nations are imposing upon their citizens. Let us consider a few examples of iniquitous laws imposed upon the nation’s citizens that do not follow the “golden rule” quoted in the Rule of St. Benedict. If you were growing in your mother’s womb, would you like to be ripped apart, limb by limb, by your own mother and some murderous doctor? If you were a young girl, would you like to share a public restroom with a known male sex offender who identifies himself as a female? If you were a growing child, still in the state of immaturity, would you like to have the legal right to decide to change your gender without fully understanding the definitive consequences of this operation? If you owned a small business, would you like to see so-called peaceful protesters protected by the laws of the nation steal your hard-earned goods and burn your building to the ground in the name of social injustice? If we accept these unjust laws and actually put them into practice, we are disobeying the law of God which says that we should not do to another what we would not like to have done to ourselves. If on the contrary, man carried this very simple law within his heart, he would reduce the many laws of modern society to one simple code of life. This law can be carried with man at all times and wherever he goes. If he truly treated his neighbor with the respect and charity with which he would like to be treated, human society would be a very beautiful expression of fraternal charity, based on the love of God. Imagine the man that truly believed this law, he would be able to live a life without hatred, anger and bitterness towards his neighbor. Love calls upon love. If we treat our neighbor with great charity, he will be encouraged to treat us in the same way. The Desert Fathers left us many examples of this law of compassion and love for one’s neighbor. A monk from one of the desert communities had fallen into a grave fault and his fellow monks expelled him from the monastery. He sought refuge with St. Anthony of the Desert. After a few days, St. Anthony sent him back to his monastery and the other monks once again expelled him. St. Anthony went to the monastery to teach them compassion through a parable. “There was a ship that had to abandon all of its cargo because of a terrible storm. It was so damaged that it was sinking very quickly, but with great effort it made it to the shore. And you seeing this man in such a state throw him back to the sea so that he would perish.” St. Anthony taught those monks to treat others with the same compassion with which they would like to be treated. Our Lord taught His disciples to pray with this same thought: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. . .” thus reminding us to treat our neighbor in the same way that we would like to be treated by him. How would we like to be treated by our neighbor? All men would like to be thought well of instead of criticized and misjudged, to be forgiven of all shortcomings, to be encouraged in the midst of tribulation, to be visited when sick or imprisoned, in short to be sincerely loved by our neighbor. With Our Lord, St. Benedict teaches us true law and order: “Not to do to another what one would not have done to oneself.” 43 Sing joyfully to God, all the earth: serve ye the Lord with gladness. Come in before his presence with exceeding great joy. Know ye that the Lord he is God: he made us, and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Go ye into his gates with praise, into his courts with hymns: and give glory to him. Praise ye his name: For the Lord is sweet, his mercy endureth for ever, and his truth to generation and generation.—Ps. 99 Christian Culture De Valera and Catholic Ireland By Fr. Francis Gallagher My only sighting ever of President Eamon De Valera’s distinctive profile was in 1961. He was returning by car from a ceremony to commemorate the fifteen hundredth anniversary of St. Patrick’s death. His Career De Valera (1882-1975) was probably modern Ireland’s dominant political figure. His over fiftyyear-long career included terms as Taoiseach1 and President. He was a leader of the 1916-1921 struggle for independence from Britain. He opposed the subsequent peace treaty which tacitly accepted Protestant “Northern Ireland” remaining part of the United Kingdom. This assured British masonry 46 The Angelus May - June 2021 a strategic foothold in Ireland. The British “Government of Ireland Act” states that neither the northern nor southern parliament “… shall have power to abrogate … any privilege … of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Ireland.”2 The treaty also stated that: “Neither the Free State nor Northern Ireland will pass laws that favor any religion or restrict the free practice of religion,” (Article 16). In fact “Northern Ireland” was soon declared to be: “… a Protestant state for a Protestant people.” Yet neither the “pro-treaty” nor “anti-treaty” factions in the Free State objected to not being allowed to favor Catholicism over the minority sects. De Valera led the anti-treatyites. His Conservatism De Valera was a conservative. He claimed that he was meant to be a Tory “or even a bishop,” rather than a revolutionary leader.3 In a 1943 speech he said: “That Ireland which we dreamed of would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people … satisfied with frugal comfort (who) devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit.”4 That speech still arouses the ire and mockery of leftists like the Republican News writer who once claimed that links between Catholicism and nationalism were now irrelevant.5 Church authority was “shattered.” Catholicism was no longer linked with national identity. Ireland, no longer poor, was attracting immigrants instead of exporting emigrants. Seated, left: Éamon de Valera, President of Ireland, meets President Lyndon B. Johnson after the funeral of John F. Kennedy. Now, some eighteen years later, with mushrooming economic, political, emigration, immigration, rant may be. Recalling the State’s upholding and crime problems, it is secularist triumphalism of morality when the bishops were Catholic, like this, not Dev’s dream, that sounds archaic. the journalist Kevin Myers noted that today’s The British MEP6 Nigel Farage noted how bishops “… have about as much political power Ireland having fought for centuries to achieve as Australian Aborigines in North Korea…”9 De independence had now given it away allowing Valera’s reputation has also suffered from today’s Brussels and the IMF7 to take control.8 De Valera changed perspectives. would have agreed! In a speech to the Dail in However the Polish MEP Maciej Marian 1955 concerning proposals for European “unity” Giertych declared: “The presence of such he stated: “In a Council of Europe it would have personalities as Franco, Salazar or De Valera … been most unwise for our people to enter into guaranteed Europe’s preserving of traditional a political federation which would mean that values. We lack such men of action these days,”10 We do indeed! you had a European parliament deciding the economic circumstances, for example, of our life here.” “Europe” seeks also to control Irish morality as the European Court of Human Rights order to Nobody questions De Valera’s Catholicism. update her abortion laws indicates. This followed He once considered becoming a priest. He liked an IMF “bailout” of Irish banks. Indeed, increased discussing religion with priests. He participated outside economic “aid” has accompanied the actively in the religious life of his school.11 liberalization of laws on religious and moral matters. During a visit there in 1928 of the renowned Certainly much has changed since De Valera’s spiritual writer Fr. Edward Leen, C.S.Sp.,12 day, simplistic though the Republican News whom he esteemed greatly, he claimed that His Catholicism 47 Christian Culture he saw, superimposed on Leen, the figure of Our Lord. This made an abiding impression. In 1934, rejecting suggestions that he might be Jewish, he stated: “… I come from Catholic stock … I was baptized in a Catholic church. I was brought up in a Catholic home.”13 In 1935 he said: “Since the coming of St. Patrick fifteen hundred years ago, Ireland has been a Christian and a Catholic nation … ruthless attempts made through the centuries … have not shaken her faith. She remains a Catholic nation.”14 He carried a first De Valera, photographed c. 1922–1930. De Valera (right) with Mayor of Boston John F. Collins and his wife Mary. class relic of St. Therese of Lisieux. He was a daily communicant. As President, he visited the Blessed Sacrament five times daily. Of his failing eyesight he said “It is a small cross to have to carry for Christ.”15 Towards the end of his life he became a Third Order Carmelite. To what extent then did Catholicism influence his politics? His Morality Certainly morality did. In his reply to a postWorld War II attack on Irish neutrality he accused Winston Churchill of making Britain’s necessity into a moral code. He defended the 1916 rising 48 The Angelus May - June 2021 as moral against episcopal criticism. Yet he had some moral reservations about certain aspects of the 1919-1921 guerrilla war. As Premier and President he insisted that his salary should be a modest one. De Valera refused however to support the 1936 Spanish Catholic uprising, partly because it was against a “democratic government” although he had himself rebelled against democratic governments. He favored the Spanish rebels but did not recognize Franco until his rule was clearly established. His hesitancy, though, was possibly due to the slowness of Pius XI to do likewise. The 1937 Constitution When devising a new constitution, he consulted militantly orthodox priests like Fr. John Charles Mac Quaid, C.S.Sp., Fr. Dennis Fahey, C.S.Sp., and Fr. Edward Cahill, S.J., who was for many years his confessor. The 1937 Constitution begins indeed by stating: “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, we, the people of Éire … do hereby … give to ourselves this Constitution.” This preamble, largely Cahill’s work, was modified somewhat by De Valera. Mac Quaid supplied various manuals, advice and suggestions which were also influential. The family is recognized as the basic unit of society and first educator of children. The State pledges to uphold marriage. Divorce is forbidden.16 The State recognizes that women in the home provide a necessary support for denominations existing in Ireland…” This provision pleased De Valera, who wished to placate northern Protestants. Compare the above with Article 6 of the former Spanish constitution which clearly states: “The profession and practice of the Catholic religion, which is the religion of the Spanish State, shall enjoy official protection.”17 Private practice only of other faiths would be allowed. Pope Leo XIII reminds us: “Justice forbids … the State to be godless … to treat the various Photo of the First Dáil Éireann taken at the Mansion House on 21 January 21, 1919. Pictured are: First row, left to right: Laurence Ginnell, Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera, Count Plunkett, Eoin MacNeill, W.T. Cosgrave, Kevin O’Higgins. achieving the common good. The State therefore tries to avoid having mothers work outside the home. All this displeases the liberals and feminists, strengthens the position of the family and hinders efforts to introduce anti-family legislation. However, certain provisions concerning relations between Church and State provided problems. Article 44, Section 2 said: “The State recognizes the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.” Section 3 said that the State also recognizes the Anglicans, the Presbyterians, the Quakers, “… as well as the Jewish Congregations and the other religious religions … alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges.”18 St. Pius X describes Church and State separation as “… a most pernicious error.”19 Fr. Cahill, recalling constant papal teaching, says that the State while tolerating non-Catholic religions “ … itself publicly professes the Catholic faith.”20 This the Irish State manifestly failed to do in 1937. Cahill, Fahey, Mac Quaid and Cardinal MacRory all criticized the new Constitution. Mac Rory was the Archbishop of Armagh and therefore “the Primate of All Ireland” at this time. Surprisingly, Archbishop Byrne of Dublin regarded the preamble as sufficient to ensure the Constitution’s acceptability. De Valera did include a reference to the Church’s “special position as 49 Christian Culture the religion of the majority,” an “anodyne phrase” nonetheless.21 Any “special position” comes from the Church’s having been founded by Christ, not from mere majority approval! Cardinal Mac Rory, the Primate of All Ireland, was initially unhappy with Article 44. De Valera, not wanting any unnecessary public conflict, sought Rome’s approval. However Cardinal Pacelli, the Secretary of State and future Pope, insisted that the “special position” reference had no value if there was no recognition of the Catholic Church as the one founded by Christ. He criticized the recognition given to other religions which should merely be tolerated. Eventually Pope Pius XI succinctly declared: “Ni approvo ni non disapprovo; taceremo” (“I do not approve, neither do I not disapprove; we shall maintain silence.”22 This was not quite what De Valera wanted. But did either De Valera or Rome go far enough? How far did they want to go? Did Rome hope eventually to see better things? The Liberal Influence Hamish Fraser complains of “ … the wellintentioned liberalism of Mr. De Valera who … with an eye to eventual Irish unity, wished the Constitution to be ‘Christian’ rather than ‘Catholic.’”23 It was, says Fraser, apparently the reason for rejecting the counsel of Catholic advisers who wanted Article 44 to explicitly recognize the Church as the One, True Church, and not merely that of the majority. There is evidence that international finance may also have exerted pressure on Dev.24 Even the “special position” reference eventually had to go, hence the 1973 campaign for the amendment of Article 44 supposedly so offensive to non-Catholics. Cardinal Conway, the then Primate, promised that he would not shed a single tear if Article 44 was amended. A popular referendum amending it had near overwhelming episcopal support. Episcopal non-resistance to secularist politicians would soon facilitate the legalization of contraceptives and divorce. It will likely ensure a more complete legalization of abortion. 50 The Angelus May - June 2021 It has certainly contributed to the popular vote in favor of “gay marriages” in May 2015, and to the end of what is left of Catholic education now that anti-family socialists have so much influence in the government and elsewhere, including the Church itself and of course also in the media. We now have the most anti-Catholic and antifamily government in the history of the state. The response from the hierarchy is a deafening silence! Some attempts were made to have Catholic social and political teachings implemented in Ireland. De Valera “too trained in English democracy,”25 was unsympathetic to decentralization and diffusion of powers as urged by Catholic activists. So why have an Irish government if England’s partisan liberal democracy is so wonderful? Apart from organizing the Senate on vocational rather than party political lines, very little was done by the government to implement Catholic teaching. Ironically Irish secular leaders showed interest in decentralization and vocationalism as churchmen abandoned Catholic social teachings following Vatican II. In the early fifties, the bishops were concerned that proposed legislation for free health care for mothers and babies (“The Mother and Child Scheme”), might mean undue state interference in family life with possible state “education” in matters like contraception. When De Valera returned to power in 1951, Dr. Mac Quaid, now the Archbishop of Dublin, was unhappy with the new government’s approach. He complained of “a policy of distance” concerning the Church. He noted that there was undue concern with pleasing northern Protestants. Of De Valera’s Fianna Fail party he claimed: “…a definite liberalism is always present.”26 The obsession with appeasing northern Protestants (thus hopefully ending partition) partly explains De Valera’s practical liberalism in devising the Constitution. It was a reason given for amending Article 44 and for introducing liberal legislation. Ironically, Catholics, whose families remain somewhat larger, will soon be a majority in the “province” whose raison d’être was the preservation of Protestantism and masonry in Ireland. But it is also ironic that the morality of Ulster Protestants is often more Catholic than that of modernized Catholics. An Historical Perspective It is forgotten, by the Irish as well as the English, that a major reason for the long standing “Irish problem,” for the fact that Ireland could not fit into the United Kingdom in the same way as did Scotland and Wales, is that Ireland was Catholic while England, Scotland and Wales were Protestant. It is not the only reason. Otherwise the curious 12th-century English invasion to “re-Christianize” Ireland might have been less catastrophic. The invasion was fiercely resisted with invaders settling in Ireland and becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves.” The 16th-century Protestant revolt sharpened the conflict between Catholic Ireland and Protestantized England. For the Irish, it now became a war for defending the Faith rather than for re-establishing national independence.27 However, from the 18th century onwards, liberal and revolutionary ideas began to influence many Irish Catholics and nationalists, some of whom found common cause with Ulster Presbyterians, like the masonic United Irishmen and the violently anti-Catholic Wolfe Tone, who wanted to overthrow the Anglican establishment as their co-religionists and kinsmen had done in the United States. The liberal element in Irish nationalism would become increasingly influential affecting men like Eamon De Valera. Ironically much of this came from England. Of course, events in the Church influenced developments in Ireland. Many Irish priests and laity were martyred. Others fled to European Catholic countries to receive a priestly or religious formation. Some unfortunately developed revolutionary ideas. The English government, fearing this influence, decided to have established in 1795 a Catholic seminary in Ireland which they could closely monitor. Priests formed in this “Royal” seminary in Maynooth were sometimes obsequiously proBritish. Others, influenced by revolutionary ideas, associated themselves with the more radical and masonic influenced nationalists in the Fenian/ Irish Republican Brotherhood. Cardinal Paul Cullen, the Primate for much of the nineteenth century, dealt rigorously with revolutionary nationalists but also kept aloof from the British administration. Ireland had not experienced an integrally Catholic society in culture, politics, and economics for many centuries. This disadvantage remained manifest after independence. Irishborn bishops in the USA, lacking this integrally Catholic background, easily identified with the American system and encouraged Americanism. Americanist influence during Vatican II contributed much to a new and false teaching on religious liberty. Notably a leading figure in all this had an Irish name: Fr. John Courtney Murray. Archbishop Lefebvre on De Valera Archbishop Lefebvre was as prominent in fighting false religious liberty as he was in fighting liturgical errors. During his last visit to Ireland in 1989 he remarked: “I remember when I visited Ireland many years ago, I met your great President, Eamon De Valera. He was a great Catholic.28 He certainly would have refused to say that Jesus Christ is not King of Ireland. But after the Council, the Vatican authorities requested from the President of Ireland to abandon the principle of the Kingship of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is no more publicly acclaimed King of Ireland; it is the same in many Catholic countries.29 What Was Achieved In 1937, some in the Vatican regarded the Irish Constitution as a positive step despite its deficiencies and Mr. De Valera’s failure, pious though he was, to introduce a fully Catholic Constitution. Certainly, many worked diligently to make Ireland a fully Catholic country. In 1925, Fr. Cahill founded An Rioghacht (the Kingdom) which promoted Christ’s social kingship and influenced some government legislation.30 Similar work was done by Fr. Fahey’s Maria 51 Christian Culture Duce. The Irish Christian Front, led by Patrick Belton, organized material support for Catholic Spain’s war effort. Muintir na Tire, founded by Canon John Hayes in 1937, implemented Catholic social teaching among farming people thereby improving the quality of rural life. Dr. Mac Quaid did much to alleviate poverty in Dublin. There was a growing interest among young people in Catholic social and political teaching. The works of writers like Fathers Fahey, Cahill and Alfred O’Rahilly became influential worldwide. De Valera showed interest in some of this, notably in the works of his friend Fr. Edward Cahill. However the publication of Dignitatis Humanae during Vatican II destroyed any immediate prospect of Ireland’s becoming again an integrally Catholic nation. Nations and individuals were now supposedly free to choose any religion or none. 12 Leen, Edward. In the Likeness of Christ, available from: Angelus Press, PO Box 217, Saint Marys, KS 66536, USA. 13 Jordan, Anthony J. Eamon De Valera 1882—1975: Irish Catholic Visionary. October 2010, p. 11. 14 Ibid., p. 13 15 Ibid., p. 15. 16 This section was unfortunately removed after a 1995 referendum favoring divorce. The majority in favor was narrow and, as with the recent pro-Lisbon Treaty vote, there was some evidence suggesting electoral fraud. 17 Ottaviani, Cardinal Alfredo. Duties of a Catholic State with Regard to Religion (trans. Fr. Fahey). 18 Pope Leo XIII. Immortale Dei. 19 St. Pius X. Vehementer Nos. 20 Cahill, Rev Edward. Framework of a Christian State. Roman Catholic Books. p. 610. 21 Jordan, p. 207. 22 Irish Times, 25 Nov. 2006 by Stephen Collins, based on Republic of Ireland state papers. 23 “Can Ireland Survive”—Approaches No 40-41, November 1974. 24 Payne, M. “The Truth About Ireland,” Christian Order, December 2004. This article, citing Fr. Fahey, reveals a masonic plan to destroy the old Catholic countries beginning with Belgium and Ireland. Thus the 1916 Rising was apparently financed by international bankers (who would later finance the 1917 Russian Revolution) in the hope of influencing future developments like the 1937 constitution. Elsewhere the writer claimed to have spotted an international finance “watchdog,” described by De Valera as an “observer,” at a meeting discussing the future constitution. What Must Be Done Ireland must begin again to make herself truly Catholic. But this she, like other countries, can achieve only whenever Rome finally abandons her current false teaching on religious liberty which has so undermined formerly Catholic countries. To restore all things in Christ throughout Ireland we need leaders, lay and clerical, who have De Valera’s patriotism, piety, courage and determination, but who are better informed in Catholic social and political teaching than were he and most of his generation. May Our Lady Queen of the Gael, St. Patrick, and St. Bridget obtain for us such leaders. 52 1 Prime Minister. 2 Government of Ireland Act: Section 65. 3 De Valera in a letter to Mary MacSwiney, 11 September 1922. 4 http://www.rte.ie/laweb/ll/ll_t09b.html. 5 Republican News/An Phoblacht, 22 May, 2003. 6 Member of the European Parliament. 7 International Monetary Fund. 8 Athlone Topic, 9 December 2010. 9 The Irish Independent, 25 January, 2011. 10 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1660229/posts 11 Blackrock College. It is a prestigious school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers. Archbishop John Charles Mac Quaid was among its Presidents. The Angelus May - June 2021 25 Ferriter, Diarmaid, Judging Dev. Royal Irish Academy (RIA), 2007, p. 212 (The remark was made during a conversation with the British ambassador in 1967.) 26 Ibid., p. 219. Dr. Mac Quaid also expressed his worries concerning: “…the presence of a Protestant minority … powerful in finance and in the professions & very firmly organized on a Masonic basis.” He called for: “… an unrelaxed vigilance on the part of the Church, particularly in education.” 27 O’Donnell Timothy, Swords Around the Cross: The Nine Years War: Ireland’s Defense of Faith and Fatherland, 1594-1603. Christendom Press, 2001. The 17th Century leaders Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell wanted to establish Ireland as a Spanish protectorate, a realistic policy perhaps for a country with a powerful Protestant neighbor. Their military campaign, by keeping the English army occupied in Ireland, did much to stem the spread of Protestantism in Europe as well as in Ireland. In his book A Priest in Changing Times (The Columba Press, 1998, p. 111), Fr. Michael O’Carroll states: “Interestingly, Mr. De Valera was one of Mgr. Lefebvre’s heroes, and he liked to recall that ‘Dev’ once served his Mass. What impressed him was the uncompromising public profession of the faith by our president. I do not think that Mgr. Lefebvre had read the reference to the Catholic Church in Dev’s Constitution. The wording, it has been noted, strongly resembles the formula finally reached in the Napoleonic Concordat. Dev denied any borrowing. Mgr. Lefebvre, if he had time to study Constitutional texts would have preferred Franco’s declaration in the Concordat of 1953.” He probably would have. Yet, I think we can say that De Valera would be most unhappy with many aspects of today’s increasingly secularist Ireland. 29 Sermon of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre for the Feast of Christ the King, October 29, 1989. http://sspxasia.com/Documents/ Archbishop-Lefebvre/Feast_of_Christ_the_King.htm. 30 It has been re-established by the SSPX in the US & Britain where it is doing much good work under the title: “League of the Kingship of Christ.” 89pp – Softcover – STK# 3072 – $10.95 I Accuse the Council “In the discussions which appear in these pages, nothing less than the Catholic Faith and the future of so-called Christian nations is at stake.” — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Now back in print with a beautiful new collectible cover, this excellent work is a compilation of twelve interventions made by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre during the Second Vatican Council. With prophetic foresight, these twelve official statements warn against the modern errors, which have sadly, like the smoke of Satan, entered the Church, plus additional statements on the Council itself. Interventions on: - The Orientation of the Council - The Purpose of the Council - Collegiality - The Role of Bishops - Ecumenism - Religious Liberty - The Danger of Ambiguous Expressions - Missionary Activity - The Church in the Modern World - Much More! Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. Fra Angelico, Death of the Virgin, 1433-34. Christian Culture Gangster Society, Gangster State, Gangster Church By John Rao, D.Phil. Oxon. “Good sense was still there. But it remained hidden out of the fear of common sense.” (Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed) If human happiness were dependent purely upon accuracy in predicting the future I ought to feel truly dizzy with success. Looking back at what I have said and written over the fifty two years of my college and academic career, it seems to me that literally everything that I thought would logically happen as a result of the embrace of the so-called “modern” world view—the one espoused by the anti-Christian, naturalist, Enlightenment—has indeed proven to have been totally validated. But happiness is not so narrowly ensured, and rather than exulting in my intellectual victory, I 56 The Angelus May - June 2021 am utterly miserable dealing with a reality that I foolishly dreamed would not fully emerge until after my death. Still, at least I can console myself with the knowledge that feeling wretched proves my continued possession of some “good sense.” For who in his right mind would want to live in a lawless Gangster Society, tyrannized over by a lawless Gangster State? And yet it is precisely that which is the all too logical conclusion of a brain-dead “modernity” that brutally cows into silence those who suggest that its supposedly obvious, unquestionable “common sense” appreciation of nature be subject to the slightest critique. Anyone familiar with my book, Removing the Blindfold (Angelus Press, 2013) will recall that I learned of the logic of modernity while at university from my reading of nineteenth century Catholic counter-revolutionary thinkers, especially two of the Jesuit founders of the then orthodox Roman journal, La Civiltà Cattolica: Frs. Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio (1793-1862) and Matteo Liberatore (1810-1892). I would feel obliged to ask your forgiveness for once again bringing up the arguments of these two men if I were not struck, now more than ever before, by their unsurpassable clarity in identifying the nature of the “common sense” sickness that has terrorized into the underground the good sense of critical minds, as well as their profound prescience regarding the criminal character of this inevitably suicidal poison. Their clarity and prescience were founded upon an understanding of the meaning of history as a basic two-sided conflict, the battle lines formed by a Catholic-Socratic army on the one side, at war with the naturalist Enlightenment and their anti-philosophical Sophist predecessors on the other. The religious and philosophical “good sense” army was shown by these Civiltà thinkers to perceive grave problems and insufficiencies in individuals and the societies that shape them, the cure for which required humble acceptance of a corrective knowledge and “medicine.” This correction culminated in the supernatural Revelation and Grace of the Christians, which in turn provided the strength seriously to believe in and act on the value of the natural Reason taught by the Socratics as well. Naturalist Enlightenment and Sophist enemies of the Catholic-Socratic Army were identified by their rejection of any need for such corrective knowledge and medicine as a totally artificial and offensive interference with the obvious “common sense” data offered by our natural senses and feelings. Such an outlook was elaborated through an “independence principle” commanding individuals and societies to forge their own “free” pathway through life, liberated from the obstructive rational and religious wrenches thrown into the otherwise supposedly smoothly functioning machine of nature. From the standpoint of Christian and Socratic “good sense,” the “free men” operating by means of the “common sense independence principle,” along with the “free societies” created by them which confirm them in their “liberty,” do nothing more than make a conscious commitment to blind ignorance and sinful insufficiencies as though they were unquestionable blessings. They therefore leave themselves no tools other than their passion-shaped wills to judge what they should and should not bother to learn and then do with both the natural world around them as well as with one another. Hence, rather than just failing to see their mistakes, they actually revel in and intensify them, sinking lower and lower as they try to deal “naturally” with the challenges 57 Christian Culture of an earthly life that the humble man grasps as being badly scarred by sin. Turning their hearts and minds away from the civilization built under Christian and Socratic auspices, they step by step “unlearn all being, deny all the laws of logic, and bury themselves in the night of complete ignorance in order to reach the height of perfect liberty.”1 “Starting with the words ‘I am free’ and their newly found spirit of independence, men began to believe in the infallibility of whatever seemed natural to them, and then to call ‘nature’ everything that is sickness and weakness; to want sickness and weakness to be encouraged instead of healed; to suppose that encouraging weakness makes men healthier and happy; to conclude, finally, that human nature {conceived of as sickness and weakness} possesses the means to render man and society blissful on earth, and this without faith, grace, authority, or supernatural community. . . since ‘nature’ gives us the feeling that it must be so.”2 “The ‘free’ man looks into a perversion of his true character—passionate, willful, and undisciplined. He looks into a mirror that reflects a lower animal without wisdom; and from the distorted image he sees, he extrapolates a theory of nature and strikes out on the road of ‘progress.’ In doing so, he must call evil good, encourage more evil when he does not achieve the particular wicked goal that he has attempted to reach, and constantly reject all medicines that might cure his sickness. He must relentlessly move from blindness to blindness, ‘curing’ his lack of sight by tightening the bonds that hold the blindfold on him and prevent him from seeing his true state.”3 Hence, incapable of even providing a definition of the word “liberty” itself—lest that explanatory effort bind some overwhelmingly passionate future whim that “nature” imposes upon him— the “free man” has no standard by which to justify his actions others than his pure will to power. In short, he becomes a gangster who must oppress the people and the world around him to give practical meaning to his freedom. A society filled with such “free men” must become a Gangster Society, with the people ruling over this sewer destined necessarily to create a Gangster State to ensure the triumph of their will. 58 The Angelus May - June 2021 Will those rulers be a democratic majority of any given population? No. The vast majority of men have always been held back from imposing their own potentially passionate gangster will because of an inertia that chiefly comes from their preoccupation with the daily struggle for survival. What really has counted historically since the Enlightenment is the work of a strongwilled criminal elite, which, in its stubborn commitment to the “business as usual,” “natural” ignorance of the modern vision has battered the average man into a lethal obedience to its arbitrary and ultimately suicidal passions. This stronger-willed criminal elite is twopronged in character. The first prong is composed of the true believers in the positive value of the “independence principle” and the natural wonders to be achieved by complete submission to its call for freedom from knowledge and correction of sinful human failings. Since that vision is based on “an inevitable struggle against the nature of man and of things”; “a lie denied solemnly by nature in all the pages of creation”; “a war of Titans against the Creator”; “an insane war against God, wherein the mortal cannot hope to triumph, but, rather, is certain to be defeated,”4 it cannot help but make its proponents criminally insane. And it has done so in a myriad of forms over the past few centuries, as ideological madmen, their psyches focused upon whatever pet intellectual passion they have freely embraced, have sought to transform men and societies according to their either totally perverse or all too narrow tunnel-vision whims. The second prong is that of the criminal pure and simple, composed as it is of self-interested, cynical materialists able to capitalize on modern “freedom” to get whatever it is they want— destroying their own lives as well as those of the people they oppress in ways too numerous to mention since the time of the Garden of Eden. There is no love lost between the criminally insane and just plain criminal gangster elements. Still, they need one another to survive and come to reflect each other’s sins as they fall to their inevitable doom. Criminally insane ideologues require the brutal help of the ordinary criminal to take over the state and society and force the generally inert mass of men to accept their recipes for doom, themselves becoming even more unscrupulous than the “professional” brigands they cultivate in the process. Meanwhile, self-interested, cynical villains, who pride themselves on being hardheaded and practical, are totally dependent on the Enlightenment theorists of the “independence principle” and modern “freedom” for their chance to pillage respectably without anybody questioning their “common sense” natural actions. As much as they might not have wanted to do so, they therefore end up forced to live in the ideological nuthouse their mad allies drag them into constructing, where even their rather basic human vices become more and more impossible to enjoy. Given what is ultimately a universal battle between the forces that want man and society ruled by either knowledge or passionate will, the Civiltà editors believed that the final product of the work of this two pronged elite, if victorious, would be a worldwide, self-destructive mishmash. On the one hand, there would be a global society guided by totalitarian, state-sponsored projects deemed to be the obvious dictates of nature as freely expounded by criminally insane minds. On the other, this society and state would simultaneously be the toy of gangster moneygrubbers and pleasure seekers who both drag the madmen’s dreams into the gutter in which they generally operate, while also themselves becoming dehumanized due to the influence of their allies’ brutal, ideological inanities. Both visions and vices would grow ever more stupid and ever more boring, in exactly the same way everywhere, with all good sense ground into the dirt, and no one imagining that things could possibly be different. The Civiltà editors’ contemporary and friend, the French journalist Louis Veuillot (1813-1883), called this global, vulgar, gangster-run, vicious nuthouse and true-liberty destroying entity the “Empire of the World”: “But why would he change places and climates? There will no longer be different places or climates, or any curiosity anywhere. Man will everywhere find the same moderate temperature, the same customs, the same administrative rules, and infallibly the same police taking the same care of him. Everywhere the same language will be spoken, the same bayadères will everywhere dance the same ballet. The old diversity will be a memory of the old liberty, an outrage to the new equality, a greater outrage to the bureaucracy, which would be suspected of not being able to establish uniformity everywhere. Their pride will not suffer that. Everything will be done in the image of the main city of the Empire and of the World.”5 Aristotle noted that those possessing the good sense that comes from humility and an openness to correction do not have to be medical men to know a quack from a real physician. You, dear readers of The Angelus, as the men and women of good Catholic sense that you are, do not have to be experts in socio-political studies to distinguish a Gangster Society and a Gangster State from legitimate ones. You do not have to be experts in the physical sciences to know that the supposedly obvious “common sense” of the Enlightenment regarding what is natural actually encourages the “perfection” of the flaws of nature, and that going down the pathway that their “independence principle” requires the “free man” to take puts us all precisely in the lawless gangsters’ socio-political hands. Most importantly, you do not have to study in depth all the “expert” judgments shoved down your throats by the mainstream media concerning current events today to know that the Empire of the World is indeed upon us, with criminally insane quackery, cooperating together with criminally self-interested cynicism silencing even the slightest expression of good sense. Quacks like Dr. Fauci-Faustus and the transhumanist-posthumanist-eugenistcollectivist globalists of the World Economic Forum at their Davos Country Club rule the roost with the aid of a battery of more common criminals ranging from the movers and shakers of Big International Finance, Big Tech, and Big Pharma to petty hoodlums like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Andrew Cuomo, along with some half-breed ideological money-grubbers such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and the Corporate Communist Party of China. They are all working to make us ever more free, through a rejection of the laws of God and 59 Christian Culture God’s natural Creation, reducing even the illicit pleasures that can be gained from their horrible worldwide dreams and materialist monopolies to men who think they are women and women who think they are men shooting up in lonely corners, social-distanced from one another while choking to death due to mouths muzzled by diapers and duck beaks. And, once again, you do not have to be legal experts to know that a new Nuremberg Tribunal needs to be constituted to bring these gangsters to trial for Crimes Against God’s Creation and all God’s children. Not so fast, our criminal dictators and their Ministry of Propaganda will jump in to tell us! For who are we to judge the Desperado Society and State when the supreme earthly judge—in her all too human, but all too public media friendly manner—proclaims herself over and over again to be a Gangster Church, whose chief mission seems to be to bless the closing of the individual and social mind and soul to true knowledge and correction, divinizing personal passionate willfulness in their place. When Francis was elected pope, an Argentinian priest assured me that “if I tried to understand him I would lose my Reason.” He went on to complain that people would falsely identify him as a Marxist. “If they do,” he advised me, tell them: “yes, he is a Marxist—a Groucho Marxist.” He then went on to recite one of Groucho’s best film lines: “These are my principles. And if you don’t like them . . . I have others.” My friend’s lecture then ended with the warning that the newly elected pope’s foundation for his ever changing principles was the need to ensure by whatever means possible the triumph of his personal will. In other words, he was the model modern gangster of the criminally insane 60 The Angelus May - June 2021 variety. Still, he was doing nothing more than perfecting that “liberation” of the Church from the corrective wisdom and medicine of her Magisterium and Sacraments as part of a “naturefriendly” union with ignorance, passion, and arbitrary willfulness that began in earnest in the 1960s. Job well done. With every organ for the dissemination of obvious, “common sense,” natural wisdom in control of this alliance of Gangster Society, Gangster State, and Gangster Church, it is no wonder that those who still possess some good sense live in terror of saying and doing the wrong thing lest they be totally vaccinated out of existence. Amidst the rubble of the Empire of the World, it seems to me that we have two grounds for hope alone: divine intervention on the one hand, and the mutual assured destruction of the criminally insane and the just plain criminal on the natural level. Reading the signs of the times makes the first option seem more likely. Come Lord Jesus, come! 1 Taparelli, “Libertà ed ordine,” La Civiltà Cattolica, i, 2 (1850), 632; Liberatore, “Concetto storico del secolo ultimo,” i, 6 (1851), 521. 2 Taparelli, “Ordini rappresentativi,” La Civiltà Cattolica, i, 6 (1851), 497-498. 3 Removing the Blindfold, p. 82. 4 Taparelli, “Preliminari all’esame critico,” i, 4, 1851, 29; “Miss Cunningham in Toscana,” ii, 4, 1853, 258; “La mosca cieca,” iii, 5, 1857, 17. 5 L. Veuillot, Mélanges, VIII, 369. Who Is My Child? By the Sisters of the Society St. Pius X. Translated by Maria Trummer. As a mother leans over the baby cradle, she may think to herself: “Here is this tiny human that I am going to love, care for, and educate for the next twenty years. Who are you, my little Peter whom God has entrusted to my care?” Certainly, this is a fundamental question. Who is this tiny human? The answer depends on the choice of education that will be given to him. If we say, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that a child is a naturally good being, then we will undoubtedly educate him just as our current society encourages. However, the results will not be convincing. . . From Meaning to Intelligence Saint Thomas Aquinas, reiterating the Greek philosophy of Aristotle, states that man is a “rational animal.” Rising up, the mother will say, “my little Peter is not an animal!” No, of course not! There is a profound difference between a kitten and a tiny human; the profound difference of the intellect. But little Peter, nevertheless, has a body and senses. Rightly so, these two elements call upon the parents’ attention first. The necessity to care for the physical needs of the child goes without saying. However, from the beginning, good habits must be transmitted; they are the foundation of the child’s education. There needs to be a set time for meals and sleep. The baby has to learn how to soothe itself rather than crying to be held, to not touch the electrical sockets otherwise it will receive a slap on the hand, to sit upright in the chair without fidgeting, etc. Naturally, we will not remain at this level, 61 Christian Culture for it is the intellect and the will of the child that we must train. However, it is only little by little that the intellect will be properly molded. It is only little by little that Peter will acquire language skills which will serve as a tool of thought; a tool that will improve from infancy all the way to writing philosophy compositions in 12th grade. It is only little by little that he will acquire the habit of judgment, of reflection. It is only by trial and error that he will succeed in thinking independently. This is why it is necessary to adapt the child’s education to his level of understanding. At the beginning, the parents think for the child because he is not yet capable. There is no point in telling little Peter, at 3 years old, that he must eat his green beans because they contain essential vitamins for growing big and strong. More simply put, “Peter, eat your green beans, otherwise, you will not have dessert.” Any other talk on the matter is superfluous. What Peter is capable of understanding at this age, and what he needs to learn, is not nutrition, but rather that his parents give the commands and that the child must obey. Later on, he will understand that it is good for him and his health. Undoubtedly, the older that Peter is, the more necessary it is for him to be provided the proper explanations. A teenager no longer solely obeys his father. The teenager should receive explanations and not justifications. Parental authority does not have to “justify” in detail the legitimacy of their orders. The mother and father give orders because they are the parents, they are responsible before God for the children He has confided to them. However, for children to obey their parents, it is necessary that the reasons and circumstances around the situation are explained. In doing this, children will learn how to reason for themselves by the time they become adults. “No, Peter, you cannot go to Kevin’s house this weekend. He has a collection of video games and you will take advantage of it. Now, you know the worth of these games. You can invite him to our house. He will benefit, at least a little bit, from a real family atmosphere. Friendships are worth the value of the goods we exchange.” Like that, the opportunity arrives for the father to have a serious discussion with his son about what 62 The Angelus May - June 2021 true friendship is. Be careful! Even though the child does not yet know how to express himself well, his intellect is present, and sometimes, the young child understands more than we imagine he does. Also, make sure not to have conversations between friends in front of the children because at times, they are all ears without giving the impression. ”Oh, my dear friend, your Agatha is so cute with her curly hair and blue eyes and you even sewed her that beautiful dress! She is such a sweetheart!” There you have it, such exclamations have not fallen on deaf ears. . . unfortunately. From Sin to Grace Now, we have not completely exhausted our description of the little boy, Peter, in saying that he is a rational animal. Peter is a child of Adam, bearing the marks of original sin. However, since his baptism, he became a son of God, raised to the supernatural state through sanctifying grace, and destined to eternal life. The fact that Peter bears the mark of original sin and a tendency toward evil stemming from it, is, unfortunately, observed quickly. This is the truth of experience. The first tantrums happen quickly. As early as six months old, a child is perfectly capable of expressing her demands that are anything but reasonable: Emily cries as soon as her mom puts her in the cradle. She has to be held in mom’s arms and she never sleeps unless overcome by fatigue. Joan is very hungry for dessert and not at all for spinach. She is extremely tired when she has to clean her room, study her lessons or help her mom, but she gets back all her energy to play or annoy her sister. She has the unbelievable ability to invent lies to cast a favorable light on herself, etc. No, despite whatever Rousseau says, man is not naturally good. It would be an absolute crime to allow a child to do what he feels like. Look at all the poor children in modern society that were never refused anything, and who are nothing but regrettable playthings submissive to their impulses, their untamed passions! As adults, they see how their passions are destroying them (the passion of laziness, impurity, ambition, substance abuse, pleasure . . .). After having 20 years of continual bad habits, they do not have the strength to fend off or resist such passions. Thankfully, the grace of God is present in the soul of the newly baptized, to heal, little by little, these bad tendencies and to raise him to be a future member of the celestial paradise. A baptized child opens up quickly and seemingly spontaneously to the supernatural realm. Very soon, he will give Jesus a kiss before going to bed, a presage of his future night prayers. He walks straight into the spiritual world and makes himself right at home. Stories of Jesus and Mary captivate this soul which is opened by grace to the divine mysteries. How much more will such an arduous habit, done for a completely different reason, be filled with even more enthusiasm: “What are you going to do this year for Lent to console Jesus who is saddened by our sins? How about you make the effort to tidy up your room every night without me having to repeat myself? That will make Jesus happy.” To help the missionaries, the children are going to do without candy. Rather than spending their pocket money on such treats, they are going to send the money, with the help of their parents, to a particular mission in a poor country. Children are even capable and immensely generous when it comes to converting sinners or helping the poor souls in purgatory. It is up to the adults to arouse, encourage and direct them. This seed of faith that was infused into the soul of the child at baptism needs a thorough education in order to develop; this means good examples, family prayer time, a religious education, the habit of receiving the sacraments . . . How can we be surprised that a child’s soul sometimes resembles that of a battlefield, where so many opposing tendencies clash? They are torn between two contrary tendencies (animal . . .yet intellectual; sinner. . . yet supported by grace). This is what is at stake. This is the serious challenge of education. It is necessary, once an adult, that this little man has understood that he is the general in charge of combat. He is to take accountability for himself in this struggle to triumph with the grace which will make him a saint. 63 Christian Culture Around the Boree Log By Msgr. Patrick Joseph Hartigan Monsignor Patrick Joseph Hartigan wrote poetry under the pseudonym of John O’Brien and became one of the legendary icons of Australian Pioneering literature. Oh, stick me in the old caboose this night of wind and rain, And let the doves of fancy loose to bill and coo again. I want to feel the pulse of love that warmed the blood like wine; I want to see the smile above this kind old land of mine. So come you by your parted ways that wind the wide world through, And make a ring around the blaze the way we used to do; The “fountain” on the sooted crane will sing the old, old song Of common joys in homely vein forgotten, ah, too long. 64 The Angelus May - June 2021 Portrait of Msgr. Hartigan The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog, Yet spend another night with me around the boree log. Now someone driving through the rain will happen in, I bet; So fill the fountain up again, and leave the table set. For this was ours with pride to say—and all the world defy— No stranger ever turned away, no neighbour passed us by. Bedad, he’ll have to stay the night; the rain is going to pour— So make the rattling windows tight, and close the kitchen door, And bring the old lopsided chair, the tattered cushion, too— We’ll make the stranger happy there, the way we used to do. The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog, Yet spend another night with me around the boree log. He’ll fill his pipe, and good and well, and all aglow within We’ll hear the news he has to tell, the yarns he has to spin; Yarns—yes, and super-yarns, forsooth, to set the eyes agog, And freeze the blood of trusting youth around the boree log. Then stir it up and make it burn; the poker’s next to you; Come, let us poke it all in turn, the way we used to do. There’s many a memory bright and fair will tingle at a name— But leave unstirred the embers there we cannot fan to flame. The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog; Still, spend this fleeting night with me around the boree log. * Boree (sometimes accented on the last syllable) is the aboriginal name for the Weeping Myall—the best firewood in Australia except Gidgee. 65 Christian Culture By Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, SSPX Is there a precise definition of the Liturgy? The term “liturgy” comes from the Greek leitourgia (leitoV, pertaining to the people, and eργον, work), indicating a service done for the common welfare. In ancient Greece, it designated any service rendered to the community at personal expense, or at least without remuneration. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient times, the term was used to designate also the worship of God 68 The Angelus May - June 2021 (cf. Ex. 29:30, II Chronicles 13:10), and with that meaning it has passed into Christian usage. In his encyclical, Mediator Dei, Pius XII has given us the real definition: “The Sacred Liturgy is the public worship which Our Redeemer as Head of the Church renders to the Father, as well as the worship which the community of the faithful renders to its Founder, and through Him to the Heavenly Father.” As a definition, it is precise and exhaustive. Worship is the acknowledgment of God’s supreme excellence and the expression of man’s submission to His absolute dominion. As such, it is an act of the virtue of religion, which inclines man to give to God the honor and adoration due to Him as the Creator and supreme Ruler, as well as the last End of all things. Public does not refer to the number of faithful who attend divine services, or to the external quality of those acts, but to the fact that what is done or said represents and affects the whole body of the faithful, even when none of them are physically present. Not all acts of worship are liturgical in the strict sense, but only those performed in the name of Christ and the Church. These constitute the piety of the Church, comprehended in the ecclesiastical liturgical books. Liturgical actions are distinct from the nonliturgical devotions, developed because of the spiritual needs of the faithful, and with the permission of the Church. The Church has never opposed these devotions, has even made them hers by her approval (e.g., Rosary, Way of the Cross, etc.), but they cannot prevail against the Liturgy or take its place. Nevertheless, there is no opposition between liturgical and personal piety: devotional practices, not strictly connected with the Liturgy, are highly praiseworthy and absolutely indispensable. Christ is the principal minister of the worship of the New Testament, the Eternal High Priest of the new Covenant. Through the Liturgy and as principal minister, Christ not only renders the honor due to God, but at the same time, and precisely because He is the Head of the Church, He gives and sustains supernatural life in the members of this Mystical Body. Thus, Christ is present in all the liturgical actions, and the work of redemption is always continued in the Liturgy. The sacred rites have a double, simultaneous end: to render the honor due to God, and the sanctification of men. The ultimate reason why the Liturgy sanctifies men is that through it the faithful enter into contact with the mystery of salvation, which is the mystery of Christ. The act by which He redeemed the world—His passion, death, resurrection and ascension—is made present and operative in the sacred rites of the Liturgy, which is nothing else than the priesthood of Christ in action. The community of the faithful renders public worship to God. The theological foundation for this assertion is the dogma of the Mystical Body of Christ. The Head of this Body is the High Priest and Victim, Who renders to the Eternal Father adoration, thanksgiving, expiation and impetration, and, at the same time, sanctifies and consecrates the members of the Body and the whole universe. The glory of Christ, now consummated at the right hand of the Father, is reflected in the individual members. All the members being ruled under the same Head, the faithful are not alone in their pilgrimage towards heavenly kingdom, but they are part of the Body, associated in that supernatural society that includes the living and the dead, and whose Head is Christ. Only the Catholic Church can render legitimate worship to the Eternal Father. To be able to do so, she has received from the Incarnate Son of God the Mass, the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, and the Sacraments, the seven sources of salvation, which the Church, with maternal care, has surrounded with the Divine Office and other devotions. We know that we have to love our neighbor as ourselves, but, how should we love ourselves? It is necessary to have clear ideas about the true love of charity for oneself, because there are many ways of loving oneself that have nothing to do with the supernatural charity that must rule the relations with our neighbors. First, there is sensual love, disordered and immoral, that the sinner professes to his body, granting it all kinds of illicit pleasures. There is also the purely natural love of keeping oneself in existence and seeking one’s own good. It is not 69 Christian Culture a supernatural virtue, since it is something purely instinctive and natural, but it is not a disorder in itself. Such self-love is common to all men, good and evil alike. There is a better kind of love, the supernatural love of desire, by which the eternal happiness of the glory of heaven is desired. It is good and honest, but imperfect, and, in fact, it belongs to the virtue of hope, not to charity. Finally, there is the supernatural love of charity, by which we love one another in God, through God and for God. This is a most perfect love and of the highest dignity, since, having God as its formal motive—although it falls materially upon other men—it belongs properly to the theological virtue of charity and receives from it its sovereign excellence. According to these distinctions, then, supernatural charity for oneself is the supernatural act by which we love ourselves in God, through God, and for God. The love of charity for oneself extends to our own person and to everything that belongs to us, both in the natural and in the supernatural order, since everything must be related to God. Thus, in relation to natural life, man has an obligation to love his own body and preserve his own life. The body should not be loved for itself, but for God, as an instrument of the soul to render honor to God and practice virtue (Rom. 6:13-19), and as a living temple of the Holy Ghost (I Cor. 6:19-20), sanctified by grace (I Cor. 3:16-17) and capable of eternal glory by redundancy of the glory of the soul (I Cor. 15:42-44) . The duty to preserve natural life prohibits doing anything against the health of the body and demands the use of ordinary means to recover that health when it has been lost. But we are not obliged to use extraordinary means, unless our own life is necessary for the family or the common good and has founded hope of success in the use of the extraordinary means at our disposal. However, it is permissible to practice voluntary mortification, even very severe, to atone for one’s own sins or those of others or to conform ourselves to Jesus Christ, even if this entails the unintended reduction of our life on earth. However, for this perfect mortification and selfimmolation to be lawful and meritorious, it must 70 The Angelus May - June 2021 be regulated by Christian prudence. Nothing can be done against obedience or directly seeking to shorten one’s life. One can also—and sometimes must—sacrifice one’s life for the sake of charity towards one’s neighbor or the temporal common good. And so, for example, it is lawful and highly meritorious to dedicate oneself out of charity to the care of people with contagious diseases, even with the near danger of contracting the same disease and causing death. The parish priest is obliged to administer the last sacraments to the sick, even if it is with immediate danger to his own life. As a corollary of the obligation to preserve his own life and to seek the maximum human perfection, man must procure, out of charity for himself, a dignified human future, in proportion to his personal abilities and the social environment in which he lives. Honestly striving to improve one’s status and social condition is not only licit, but it is even obligatory, under the control and regime of charity for oneself. But we must not forget that supernatural life is incomparably more important than natural life. Regarding this, charity towards ourselves prescribes two fundamental things: one negative, avoiding sin at all costs; the other positive, practicing virtue with the maximum possible intensity, striving to reach the heights of Christian perfection. If charity is love, and love consists in wishing well to the person we love, it follows that the more we love ourselves with true love of charity, the more we will endeavor to procure the greatest among all possible goods, the increase and development of the supernatural life in our souls. A greater degree of grace in this life corresponds to a greater degree of eternal glory in heaven. There cannot be a greater act of charity for oneself than to work with all our might in the great undertaking of our own sanctification, and this even at the cost of the loss of all earthly goods, bodily health and life itself. 344 pp.–Hardcover–STK# 8343✱–$25.55 The Best of Questions and Answers The best questions and the best answers of 40 years of The Angelus. This will be a family’s heirloom reference book for everyday Catholic living to match the Catholic Faith we believe and the Latin Mass we attend. Over 300 answers classified under 30 subtitles. – Marriage, Parenting, Family Life – The Bible and Biblical Matters – The Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Virgin and Child Rearing Mary, Angels, and Saints – Science and Medical Matters – Life After Death – The Mass and the Liturgy – Church Practices and Customs – The SSPX and the Crisis – The Papacy and Church Teachings Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. 73 pp. – Softcover – STK# 4079 – $11.95 Spiritual Journey Describes a sanctity simple yet profound Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre This is the great Archbishop Lefebvre’s last book. In it, he describes a sanctity based on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Originally written for priests and seminarians, it is now a popular favorite. In this simple, yet profound book he encourages us to make “a total and unreserved offering of ourselves to God by our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified.” Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. Catechism C Part Six: Prof. Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F. Pauwels, O.P. Editor’s Note: This article continues the series of straightforward responses to frequently-encountered questions and objections concerning the Catholic Faith. The questions and answers are adapted from Professor Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F. Pauwels, O.P.’s The Most Frequently Encountered Difficulties, published originally in Dutch in 1939. Catholics apply the Fifth Commandment’s prohibition, “Thou shalt not kill,” very consistently with respect to abortion, but not to war. Why is there such an inconsistency in Catholic teaching? And why are there blessings for instruments of war? Did Christ not admonish St. Peter to put away his sword? According to Catholic teaching, war, however terrible it may be, cannot be called simply good or bad; there can be just and unjust wars. A war can be justified and just, especially a defensive war. War may, however, be used only as a last resort and only to save the vital interests of the State, and all other means must first be exhausted. When Catholic doctrine says this, it cannot be answered that it is inconsistent and interprets the Fifth Commandment in a very different way. Because the prohibition to kill does not mean just war. This is evident from this alone, that the same God who gave this commandment on Sinai several times commanded the Jews to make war against the Canaanites. Every person is therefore obliged to help 73 Catechism prevent a war if possible. But if the lawful government of his country decides that now all other means have failed and must be taken to the last resort, then he must take up arms to fight for his country. For an individual will seldom be able to judge whether the government is right or not, if only because he does not know enough about the facts. Then the question of blessing weapons comes up. And in doing so, we must pay attention to two things: first, the weapons are not only used to kill and bring misery, but also to defend a good cause with legitimate means. Secondly, it is not only about the weapons themselves, but also and much more about the men who have to handle and operate them. They are actually blessed and not so much the weapons. And those men will be blessed when they come to fulfill an extremely difficult and dangerous duty and make great sacrifices. If we look at the blessing of the weapons this way, it looks a bit different! And as for the quoted word of Christ to Peter, this, as with all biblical texts, must be read in context to understand it properly. And then we see this: Christ willingly wants to go to His death in order to redeem the human race. He would have been defended by legions of angels if He had willed. And yet Peter drew his sword and went against Christ’s will. So as you can see this incident has nothing to do with warfare per se. Catholics, like the Protestants, believe that Sunday is the Lord’s day. How is it, then, that they sanctify so little on that day? Catholics hold meetings, festivals, and even go to work on Sundays. The accusation of Sunday desecration is mainly made against Catholics. That in itself is quite unfair. Taking together the Protestants of all shades, it is difficult to maintain that on average they sanctify Sunday better than Catholics. It is especially the Dutch Reformed who have a strict conception of Sunday sanctification and Sunday rest. However, these are often exaggerated. They pretend that the Jewish laws on the observance 74 The Angelus May - June 2021 of the Sabbath still applied to the observance of Christians on Sunday. The Jews were not allowed to travel and hardly even engage in household activities. The Reformed have an almost equally strict view. And we must admit that, like the Orthodox Jews, they do try and live out their beliefs. For instance, they will strictly close their businesses, even if they would still have to suffer economic losses as a result. But although we may admire this in a sense, we still maintain that those Jewish laws are no longer in force under the New Covenant, just as, for example, the dietary laws of the Jews are no longer in force. For example, we see no objection to traveling on Sunday. And if one objects to this, because the railway staff then have to work on Sundays, one should also object to the use of the water mains, the burning of electric light, and using the telephone. After all, that also entails work for others! Sunday is two things at the same time for us Catholics: first, the day of God, on which we are to especially worship and adore God; second, the day of rest that God gave to the people to recover from hard labor. The Church has prescribed how we should keep Sunday holy as the Lord’s day. We must attend Mass on that day. Further, we are urged to attend other services such as Vespers as well. That’s the Catholic idea of ​​Sunday sanctification. Furthermore, according to God’s will, Sunday must be a day of rest, which is why the Church has forbidden Christians to perform so-called slavish work on that day outside of necessity (nursing the sick, bringing in hay in case of a thunderstorm, etc.). When it comes to rest, we cannot apply that concept too narrowly. Relaxation, sports, hiking, etc. are also rest, and a form of rest that helps modern people better than sitting still and doing nothing. And as long as those things do not hinder going to church, we do not believe that they are contrary to the observance of Sunday. And because we feel that way, Catholic Sunday is undoubtedly a bit more exuberant than Protestant Sunday. As far as Catholic conventions and meetings on Sunday are concerned, there would be much more to say against it if they could be held on a weekday. But that is simply not possible for many people and Saturday afternoon is also insufficient for national gatherings, which can also be of great use. So, if it is ensured that all participants can attend Mass (and that happens!), and if a religious ceremony is also involved in the afternoon (and that happens very often!), we think a demonstration or celebration for a truly Catholic affair is not so bad. And then there are those shops that remain open. Here we have to take into account that our Sunday law is outdated. We would like to cooperate in making all trading that is not strictly necessary on Sunday impossible, but we are not there yet. And if the Catholic shopkeeper did not make use of what the law allows (and even the law of a country that Protestants like to call a Protestant country!), he would fall so far behind the others that he could no longer compete. That is why the ecclesiastical authorities have not strictly imposed a prohibition on work on Sundays but allowed Catholics to adhere to existing customs and conditions. With this defense we do not, of course, claim that Catholics never do wrong against Sunday observance, or that everything that happens in Catholic communities is equally commendable. But we do not admit that Catholics celebrate Sunday worse than the others, nor that the strictest views are always the best! However, Protestants will always accuse Catholics of not properly observing Sundays and we must live with it as best we can. forbid it as a bad thing. But if we also take into account that Holy Scripture itself shows us how the Apostle Paul repeatedly calls on God as a witness, for example: “God is my witness, how I long for you all with the warm love of Christ” (Ph. 1:8), then it becomes clear that Christ at least could not have had that intention. What then is the meaning of Christ’s admonition in the Gospel of Matthew? Christ here indicates first of all that it would be better if one never had to make God a witness to the truth of his words and that swearing is “evil” because it comes from the weakness of men, who therefore cannot simply be believed by their own statements. If only people were better, oaths wouldn’t be necessary. So, Christ indicates what should really be regarded as the ideal for us. Consequently, there is also an admonition in these words not to take an oath frivolously and to limit swearing to those cases where it is necessary. And finally these words contain a reproach against the Pharisees, who had devised all kinds of subtleties in order not to have to use God’s name and still be able to swear, such as when they swore by Heaven or by sacrifice. Christ expressly forbade the taking of the oath (cf. Mt. 5:34-37). How, then, is it possible for Catholics and even clergy to take oaths on different occasions? It is not only Catholics who consider oaths to be lawful. The great majority of Protestants do not object to this either, and it is only small groups among them, such as the Mennonites, who, on the basis of Scripture, have conscientious objections to swearing oaths. If we found nothing in the Holy Scriptures on the oath other than the quoted words of Christ, we might think that He really intended to 75 The church of Saint-Antoine de Fixey, built between the 12th and 15th centuries is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture with its lava roof and a bell tower in glazed Burgundy tile. It is located in Fixey, near the town of Fixin, in the Côte-d’Or. In 902, a Romanesque oratory dedicated to St. Anthony (Anthony the Great, 251-356) was erected on this site, which over time grew into a church. It is the oldest Romanesque building in the Dijon region. Theological Studies Louis Veuillot Journalist, Polemicist, Letter Writer, Author, and First and Foremost, a Catholic By G. T. [Toulouse] One of the many very strong personalities that marked the 19th century, Louis Veuillot made a name for himself with more than just an exceptional intelligence. He was a journalist, a polemicist, a letter writer, an author and first and foremost, a Catholic; the writings he left behind are a record of everything this man of uncompromising conviction did and represented for France, for the Church, and for his century. In every sense of the word and in every situation, he was a man of honor and despised material gain, preferring to defend higher causes. He never sought to hide his modest origins. Nobody before him in his paternal or maternal ancestry knew how to read or write, but even in their modest conditions, there were some strong characters; in 1793, his maternal ancestor Marianne Adam threatened loudly, with her husband’s heavi- 78 The Angelus May - June 2021 est axe in hand, to strike down the first person who dared touch the great village crucifix; she would have done it, and no one dared to try. On his father’s side, the Revolutionaries confiscated the mill in which Monsieur Veuillot had been living comfortably. Death and misery followed, and Louis’ father, François, one of the many orphans left behind, succeeded with prodigious efforts of intelligence and courage in becoming a cooper. He did not know how to read and had to earn his living every day from his earliest childhood. He would die in Bercy at the age of 50, exhausted by his hard daily labor that never earned him more than the strict minimum. His son arrived just in time to find him in his last agony, and he would later write of him, “He was a simple worker, with no pride and no learning. A thousand obscure and cruel misfortunes had filled his years of hard labor.” His wife, another Marianne Adam, had inherited her family’s pride and zeal for work, and it served her well in the midst of the needy of the time. Their married life began in Gâtinais, in Boynes. A son, Louis, was born to them in 1813. After five years of working and saving, the little money they had saved was taken from them by a dishonest dealer. To hide their newfound poverty, the family left for Paris, settling in Bercy, where a second son, Eugène, was born. Louis Veuillot would later write, “The first joy I can remember was seeing that beautiful little brother asleep in his crib. As soon as he was able to walk, I became his protector…” And the two brothers grew up, often separated, always inseparable. Later on, two sisters were born; they were Louis’ little girls. The first money he earned was for them; he did not want their childhood to be like his. Annette and Elise Veuillot were given an excellent and beautiful education at the Couvent des Oiseaux. Louis started attending school in Boynes at the age of 4, and he was given an alphabet book. After the first lesson, he ripped out the page he knew, as he had no desire to learn the same thing twice. He was punished. He did it again. To put an end to his compulsive destructions, he was given a primer carved in wood, which he used to learn his lessons but also to hit his classmates on the back. It had to be taken away. After spending a few months in Bercy at the age of five, Louis was sent back to Boynes to live with his grandparents. There, he was put to work extracting saffron like the rest of the village, and he picked it up quickly, but soon tired of it and declared he had better things to do. Nothing was able to overcome his resistance. The child was untamable. In school, he was first in his class. The teacher predicted that he would go far. A witch in the area announced he would become an emperor! In the meantime, he broke his arm and caught smallpox, which left deep scars on his face. Thanks to his rustic youth, he would never lose his love of the fields and his hatred for the Parisian boulevards. He did not see his parents again until he was ten, and his mother scarcely recognized him. In Bercy, with a teacher who was drunk from morning to evening, he learned nothing, except a few lessons in syntax and history and some rudiments of Latin thanks to a teacher’s assistant who had taken a liking to him. He made his First Communion with no preparation or encouragement to persevere, and due to their poverty, he had to start earning a living. Thanks to some friends, he was offered 20 francs a month to work for Master Delavigne, a lawyer in Paris. Here is what he later wrote about 79 Theological Studies this time: “I was going to live outside of my father’s home. I was 13 years old, all alone in the world, with no guide, no advice, no friends, and so to speak, no master, 13 years old and no God! Oh, what a bitter destiny…” Without even enough to get by, he found himself in a circle of cultivated, wealthy, carefree clerks whom he amused, interested and surprised by his intelligence. They lent him books and he devoured them; they gave him tickets to shows and he never missed a single one. He was given lessons; Master Delavigne’s firm was a university for him. He met Gustave Olivier there, the friend who would guide him and above all show him that he could be loved. What a discovery for a child who was so sensitive under the shell he used to protect himself! At the age of 15, he was third clerk with 30 francs a month and board. His education and instruction continued according to the circumstances. A short article he wrote was published in Le Figaro, and in 1830, he observed and described the fall of Charles X: “I was 17 years old when I saw the mediocre children of the middle class around me congratulate themselves on demolishing the altar and the throne; I was 18 when I saw the ferocious beast fell the cross; already my former companions were beginning to congratulate themselves a little less. Overwhelmed almost as soon as they had conquered, the alarmed middle class looked to everyone else for help. As they doubtless had neither enough intelligence nor enough heart, they had to accept children as defenders of the strange social order they had just established.” Thanks to Gustave Olivier, he thus began his career as a journalist for L’Echo de la Seine Inférieure. In Paris, Bugeaud, who noticed him, sent him to Périgueux as editor-in-chief of the government paper. He was 19 years old and within two or three years he had taken the wind out of all his detractors’ sails. He was a biting polemicist and the society of Périgueux, captivated, welcomed him in its salons and adored him. He was received everywhere; he enjoyed himself, contracted debts but worked and kept a keen eye on everything around him. He flirted around and left a piece of his heart in Périgueux. In 1834-1835, Gustave Olivier revealed to him that he was Catholic. Louis Veuillot found this troubling. 80 The Angelus May - June 2021 In Paris, Guizot, who had returned to the government was looking for journalists. At Gustave Olivier’s advice, Veuillot left Périgueux to join the newspaper La Charte de 1830. In 1837, he left it for La Paix. He led a disordered life, spent more than he earned and was not happy. Once again, Gustave Olivier crossed his path, convincing Louis to accompany him to Rome and Constantinople. “It was high time,” he would later say. “I was 24, I was growing philosophical; fortune was smiling on me. I had seen a great deal of men; I was beginning to despise a great many things. At a turn in the road, I met God. He reached out to me; I hesitated to follow Him. He took me by the hand, and I was saved.” These few lines sum up the intense battle that took place in his soul in Rome, immediately changing the course and meaning of his life. Around the same time, Alphonse de Ratisbonne, also passing through Rome on a visit, received a sudden grace of conversion. The Jesuits presented the new convert to Pope Gregory XVI, then advised him to pass through Loreto on his way home, hence the title of the book “Rome and Loreto” in which he relates the stages of his conversion. From then on, by reason of the fight for Catholicism that he would never again abandon, he would be in frequent contact with the successive popes, Pius IX and Leo XIII. Continuing on to Constantinople was obviously out of the question and upon his return to Paris where the political situation was not very clear, he reunited with his friends from before, from his Bohemian lifestyle, from the Ministry and from the press, but all in a very different perspective. He wrote his first article in L’Univers Religieux, founded by Fr. Migne. In 1841 came the Algerian episode, when he accompanied Bugeaud, who had been nominated governor general of the country, to Algiers, while remaining in close contact with Guizot. While there, observant as he was, he made the same remarks as General Lyautey and Charles de Foucauld several years later: “So long as the Arabs are not Christian, they will not be French, and so long as they are not French, no governor, no army will be able to guarantee lasting peace. And they will not be Christian so long as Wife and daughters of Louis Veuillot. Louis Veuillot’s birthplace, in Boynes, Loiret. we do not know how to be Christian ourselves.” This vision was prophetic and would soon come true. He added, “France is devoting prodigy after prodigy of her ancient courage to conquer an infidel kingdom, but she only thinks of winning it over to her trading counters and does not wish to win it over to her God.” He quickly grew tired of the fights in which he participated, and having little interest for material or honorary profit, he asked to return to France, where he showed up “black as a cauldron” and “looking ten years older.” He remained on perfectly friendly terms with Guizot, who offered to send him back to Algiers so he could have him by his side when he visited there, as a sort of ambassador. But it took time and Veuillot was far more interested in the development of the Catholic press, even though it paid very little, and he had taken his two young sisters under his care and had been progressively paying off his debts ever since his conversion. Louis Veuillot refused any government aid for the Catholic press in order to be sure it would remain entirely independent; he also refused any political ties, which immediately made him the target of the enemies of God and of a certain middle class, the liberals, and the fearful; but he did not care. In the midst of the most venomous and pain- ful attacks from his colleagues and many of the people indebted to him, he always remained on the same path that he had chosen once and for all. And regardless of the attacks, with Veuillot’s pen and signature, L’Univers went from 1,600 to 6,000 subscriptions. Louis and Eugène Veuillot worked together at L’Univers from 1842 on. They completed each other marvelously. Said Louis Veuillot: “We are still the two brothers who went to school together, carrying their things in the same basket, with the same adversaries, the same problems, the same worries, the same fortune and the same pleasures.” His newspaper was forbidden by Napoleon III in 1860 for having published Pius IX’s encyclical against his political actions in Italy. It resurfaced in 1867. In 1871, the Commune suppressed it again. The newspaper was thus eclipsed for political and religious reasons, because of its disagreements with the government of the time. In 1841, in the midst of all this political disturbance, Veuillot was thinking of getting married, but he was in no hurry, for, as he said, “When I am bothered, I pray, I work, and everything goes away. Once I am married, if my wife bothers me, she will not go away. The poor woman will certainly need a great deal of patience.” 81 Theological Studies Veuillot’s tombstone, Montparnasse Cemetery. The following year, he wrote to Fr. Morisseau de Tours, “If you know of a good girl who is very pious, very gentle, simple, healthy, who can play me a little music and has enough to feed us, that is all I need.” For with his sisters in boarding school, Eugène in Angiers and their mother remarried to the coalman Antoine, he was lonely. In 1845, “I got married at the age of 32, a bit by coincidence, like everybody. Two priests had arranged it all with the parents of Mathilde Murcier, of the lower middle class of Versailles, very simple Christians. They told me this marriage would suit me. I did as they said…” He would relate some of the comical and tender episodes that accompanied this very fast and very happy marriage. The first great battle in which Veuillot found himself involved as editor-in-chief of L’Univers was that of freedom in education. It was a fight that the liberal and anticlerical middle class was waging against the Church in order to conquer minds. The ideas of 1789 had left heavy constraints on the education of children and on universities in this regard. Like all those who participated in the opposition, Louis Veuillot was punished and by reason of his position as editor he was fined 3,000 francs and condemned to a month in prison which earned him 82 The Angelus May - June 2021 Caricature of Louis Veuillot, by André Gil, from La Lune, 21 April 1867. immense popularity. Even today, 150 years later, the wicked law of 1844 that we owe to Monsieur de Falloux, still causes untold harm in education. It took thirty-seven years to overturn it at the time. After 1830 when Charles X was dethroned, 1848 saw the overthrow of the “usurper” Louis Philippe, whose blood had many flaws. “The machine is cracking everywhere and truly rotting,” wrote Veuillot in 1847. Once again, there was the same disorder in the streets, once again the Republic resurfaced; the legitimists called for the Count of Chambord, but it was Napoleon III who arrived in 1851. One year later, God sent His faithful servant a crushing blow; in 1852, after the birth of his sixth daughter, his wife died of peritonitis. A few months earlier, Thérèse, his fifth daughter had died; then in 1855, diphtheria took 9-year-old Marie, the eldest, in June, Gertrude, the second, in July, and Madeleine, the youngest, in August, the only one her father saw before she died. In this devastated home, there remained only two frail little girls, Agnès and Luce. His despair was terrible; Elise Veuillot, Louis’ youngest sister, came to replace the deceased mother and never left again. Centennial Celebration for the birth of Veuillot, October 5, 1913. For Louis Veuillot, his home was the haven of peace and joy where he came to be reinvigorated. His Faith helped him greatly, but he had bouts of despair that his work was not always able to dispel. At the least illness of his two surviving daughters, he was anguished at the thought of the early death that was the fate of so many of his contemporaries (predicted by Our Lady of La Salette in 1846). Friendship played an important role for Louis Veuillot, who was received amicably in every rank of society. He knew and spent time with all the important men of his time. He loved to stay at Solesmes where he was welcomed with joy. His departure was always regretted, and his next visit eagerly awaited. He also liked to visit the country priests who were in contact with the milieu in which he had grown up. Very sensitive to feminine charm, which corresponded better than men to his need for effusion and affection, Veuillot nonetheless remained prudent and even in his youth he kept his distance from relations that were too sentimental. But to Charlotte de Grammont, he wrote, “I love to tell you that I love you.” To Olga de Pitray, the youngest daughter of the Countess of Ségur, “Last friend of my youth and first friend of my old age,” and “How beautiful your eyes are! I adore you and cannot define you.” He liked to speak of the past with the pious Madame Volnys, whom he had admired as a young man. Around the age of fifty, in Rome, Louis Veuillot suddenly fell in love with a 36-year-old Belgian countess, Juliette de Robertsart, but nothing came of it. The marvelous and inexhaustible letter writer reserved the best of his heart for those closest to him, but he knew how to speak to each person as if he were his only friend in the world. He traveled much and made several pilgrimages to Rome where he was affectionately received by the pope as a defender of the Church. Nadar photographed all the important men of his time, and thanks to him we have a portrait of Veuillot around the age of fifty. Albert de Mun who saw him around this time said that even more than his extraordinary intelligence, what emanated the most from him was his goodness. And indeed, his generosity was as vast as everything he possessed; he helped and gave without counting, never holding a grudge for a bad turn. In 1874, his two daughters left him: Agnès married the Commandant Pierron and Luce, the youngest, entered the Visitation. Here is what he wrote to her: “Nothing has given me greater sorrow or greater joy than your resolution. The joy is in my soul and cannot enter into my heart; the sorrow is in my heart and cannot trouble my soul. In truth, my child, I did not realize how dear you were to me. When you were little and you gave me a pin or a straw, you used to say, ‘I give it to you, but not for good.’ I would like to say to God, ‘Not for good!’ But God knows that it is for good.” And he signed, “Your former father.” In the fall of that same year, 1874, Louis Veuillot had a stroke that was worse than the previous ones. He wrote less, and his speech became a little confused. In 1875, he had the joy of seeing Catholic education finally obtain freedom. In 1878, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre was erected, and his effigy and name can be seen in a side chapel. He had reached the age when his friends and enemies were beginning to die. He wrote eulogies that sometimes raised outcries when the right words were dealt out a little too clearly. In 1879, he dictated or wrote, but very little, and he was no longer able to write any letters. On May 20, 1880, forty lines in honor of the memory of 83 Theological Studies Cardinal Pie would be his last. Louis Veuillot accepted the slow disintegration of his last five years. He started complaining about his legs and his eyes in 1872. “There is no sea or forest that can fix old tools. But we can see Heaven with no eyes and climb to it with no legs, and that is my consolation,” he wrote. “Eternity is an excellent invention, for in spite of so many good reasons, we are not made to die.” At the end, he had a rosary in hand and no longer a sword. Louis Veuillot died on April 7, 1883. He is the one and only example of a son of an illiterate family who became a very great journalist. With his exceptional ability to assimilate and work, in spite of his eyes that tired easily and were often ill, he was able to touch on everything without getting lost in details or book learning, always going straight to the essential. How did he learn Latin? A little at school, a little at Master Delavigne’s firm, a little in Périgueux, a little in Rome, eight days in Freiburg, a little with Henri Hignard (a Normalian), all widely spaced episodes that were enough for him to perfectly master this language, quote the Fathers of the Church and Cicero, and give a proper critique of a speech in Latin by Auguste Nisard. It was the same with theology for his religious works. His general culture was prodigious. He lucidly analyzed the harmful effects of Modernism and of progress in its various forms. He recognized and helped promote people who would later become famous, as in the case of the Countess de Ségur and Léon Bloy, and he was able to appreciate authors whose ideas he did not share, such as George Sand. He was an excellent critic, objective and incisive, without any of the malice that was often used against him. And above all, he had an astonishing faith that was more than just fine words, that he truly lived and put into practice in every situation. The papacy of the time saw this; Pius IX received him often and his name was enough to open the doors of the Vatican, and Leo XIII said that he spoke like a Father of the Church. Silence has now fallen upon Louis Veuillot who so disturbed those against whom he spent his entire life fighting, faithful to the course laid out for him by his Roman Catholic baptism. 84 The Angelus May - June 2021 500 Cards – STK# 8627 – $24.95 Catholic Trivia Game Trivia For Traditional Catholics Educational and entertaining for the whole family. Contains two decks, each containing 250 cards; 1,500 questions in total. Test your knowledge of the Faith, with six categories: the Baltimore Catechism, the Latin Mass; History and the Liturgical Calendar; Popes, Patron Saints, and Other Pious People; Ritual, Symbol, and Doctrine; and everything else. 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Everyone has FREE access to every article from issues of The Angelus over two years old, and selected articles from recent issues. All magazine subscribers have full access to the online version of the magazine (a $20 Value)! The Last Word Dear Reader, Utopia is a byword for the ideal state. It is the country in which the ideal laws find the ideal citizens: perfect socialism and democracy, where virtuous citizens with a disdain for gold live in peace and prosperity. And yet, some have secretly scratched their heads. Surely this was not written by Saint Thomas More! In Utopia, there is marriage for priests, divorce, euthanasia, gross immodesty and incitement to assassination—and all perfectly legal. Yes, say the Catholic liberals, it was certainly written by Thomas More, precursor of Vatican II. He died for freedom of conscience and he left as his testament that the best state of affairs is not one where the entire world is Catholic, but one where religious freedom reigns. Yes again, says the true Catholic, it was indeed written by Saint Thomas More, most lovable of Saints, the paradigm of husbands and the one glory of professional politicians. The whole point of his satire is this: given a country where human reason alone, unaided by revelation, ordered affairs, what would be the result? Socialism, permissive euthanasia, easier and easier divorce, assassination and totalitarianism.1 Sound familiar? If kings and presidents want their kingdoms to last, then Christ must be King!2 King of minds with His Truth, King of hearts with His charity. Human reason, unaided by revelation, will find convincing and reasonable arguments for what is in fact evil. And, just as man without grace can do some good, but will get worse; so the nation without God, as the habits of Christendom and of charity grow cold and are forgotten, will be one where at length in place of charity, injustice will thrive “and in the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organised brigandage?”3 The cause of the corruption of the State is the throwing off of the yoke of the Church. 4 The remedy: bring “back human society to the discipline of the Church, the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God.”5 When that happens, we will see evil giving place to good, and hear, for our gladness, “a loud voice from heaven saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ.”6 Fr. David Sherry 1 cf. E.E. Reynolds, St. Thomas More, London, 1953, p. 124. 2 Cardinal Pie. 3 St. Augustine, City of God, 4, 4. 4 Leo XIII, Inscrutabili. 5 St. Pius X, E Supremi Apostolatus. 6 Apoc. 12:10. T The Society of Saint Pius X is an international priestly society of almost 700 priests. Its main purpose is the formation and support of priests. The goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its fullness and purity, not changing, adding to or subtracting from the truth that the Church has always taught, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through the Roman Catholic priesthood. Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its primary means to foster virtue and sanctity and to bring the divine life of grace to souls. The Angelus, in helping the whole man, tries to be an outlet for the work of the Society, helping them reach souls. We aspire to help deepen your spiritual life, nourish your studies, understand the history of Christendom, and restore the reign of Christ the King in Christian culture in every aspect. $ 9.00 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: THE ANGELUS, 480 MCKENZIE STREET, WINNIPEG, MB, R2W 5B9