JULY-AUGUST 2021

The

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

ngelus
T he V oice of T raditional C atholicism

THE HOLY LAND
A Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 4th-Century
My All-Night Vigil in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Historic Sermon of 1982 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
A Substantial Change in the Liturgy: Fr. Marcello
Meditation on St. John’s Gospel
Priestly Life, an Inside Look: Fr. Paul Robinson

L etter from
the P ublisher
Dear Reader,

Fr. John Fullerton
District Superior of the
United States of America

It is my privilege to present to you the new format of The
Angelus magazine.
For those of you who have been subscribed since the first
years of the 80’s, you will have witnessed the variations from
the simple offset in-house printing by the late Fr. Pulvermacher to the professional printing with stylish shades of black and
grey. Later in the 90’s, it displayed colors on the front cover,
and only in the 2010’s did we work at having the entire colored
magazine. It also had a facelift in line with the branding which
the SSPX extended to the whole world, with the view to unify
and recognize genuine publications from adulterated texts.
I am confident that the new look will meet with the approval
of our readers, as it offers easily readable wonderful material,
along with the high-resolution photos you have enjoyed in the
past decade.
The current issue deals with the birthplace of Our Lord. The
Holy Land was the object of constant strife from Abraham until
Christ’s time, ever sought after by pilgrims and knights, and
still today the prime area of conflict in the world.
Through the magazine, we hope to provide you with the flavor of the Middle East, with the sense of adventure and piety
of the continuous flow of pilgrims, monks and soldiers coming
from all regions to venerate the holy places where heaven and
earth met two thousand years ago.
We are pleased also to introduce the first of a series of interviews with some of our District priests who have been involved
in a specific apostolate. I am sure that it will draw much attention and show better the multifaceted aspect of our extensive
apostolate “to restore of all things in Christ.”
Fr. John Fullerton
Publisher

ON OUR COVER: The Altar of the Crucifixion in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

CONTENTS
Volume LXIV, Number 4

JULY - AUGUST 2021

Publisher
Fr. John Fullerton

2

Editor-in-Chief
Mr. James Vogel

8

Romanus

Managing Editor
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud
Assistant Editor
Mr. Gabriel Sanchez

20

Marketing Director
Mr. Ben Bielinski

30

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

My All-Night Vigil in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Fr. Hugh Barbour

25

Director of Operations
Mr. Brent Klaske

Egypt and Jordan: Thoughts and Insights from a Traditional
Catholic Pilgrim
Bridget Bryan

Associate Editor
Miss Esther Jermann

Design and Layout
Mr. Simon Townshend
Mr. Victor Tan

Egeria’s Journey: A 4th-Century Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

The Tragedy of the Fourth Crusade
Gabriel S. Sanchez, J.D.

Gerusalemme Liberata? The Holy Land after World War I
John Rao, D.Phil. Oxon.

38

Meditations on St. John’s Gospel: Chapter Seven
Pater Inutilis

42		
An Interview with Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
46

A Pilgrimage to the Heavenly Jerusalem
By a Benedictine Monk

48

The Passion of the Church: The 1982 Ordination Sermon
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

53

Questions and Answers
Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, SSPX

56

Complex Questions & Simple Answers

58

Substantial Change in the Liturgy
Fr. Albert P. Marcello

65

The Last Word

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

HOLY LAND

Egeria’s Journey
A 4th-Century Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Romanus

C

onstantine’s conversion ushered in
an era of peace for the Church and
planted the first seeds of Christendom. The imperial treasury was
opened for the building of churches—large
ones—testimony of the gratitude of the emperor to the God of the Christians. In Rome itself
he ordered the construction of imposing basilicas over the tombs of the martyrs, and later,
having moved his capital to the East, in the
Holy Land he restored the places most sacred
to Christians, places that pagan emperors
had tried to obliterate—the grotto of Bethlehem, Golgotha, the Sepulcher, the Mount
of Olives. . . Successive Christian emperors
2

The Angelus u July - August 2021

and bishops and monks continued this work,
erecting basilicas, shrines and memorials on
almost every place mentioned in the gospels.
With this era of peace upon them, with
a restored confidence, Christians renewed
their purpose of following in the footsteps of
Our Lord by reproducing His dispositions in
their souls. But human nature being what it is,
they were also eager to follow Him in a more
material way, up and down the roads He trod
during His earthly life and thus increase, in
a sensible way, their intimacy with Christ:
to be a bit closer to Him by sitting at Jacob’s
well under the midday sun, by perhaps sipping wine at Cana of Galilee, or walking

HOLY LAND

along the shores of the lake
of Genesareth, or kneeling
on the rock of Golgotha, or
bathing with their tears the
slab of the Tomb, or joyously climbing the mount of the
Ascension. . .
Most certainly, during the
previous centuries, pilgrims
had made their way to the
Holy Land, but they left barely a testimony of their passage. Now, the
Constantinian era opened the floodgates of
pilgrimages and written memoirs. . .
One of the earliest surviving testimonies
of such pilgrimages is an itinerarium ad loca
sancta, “a journey to the holy places,” a manuscript fortuitously found in 1884 in a dusty
Italian archive. It is composed of the letters sent back home to her dominae et sorores,
“ladies and sisters,” by an anonymous woman
who made a three-year pilgrimage from 381
to 384 through modern-day Egypt, Israel,
Palestine, and Syria. A letter from Valerius, a
7th-century Spanish monk, praising the spirituality of a nun who had many years earlier
written about her extensive pilgrimage to the
eastern part of the Roman Empire, gave her
name: Egeria.

“The Lady Egeria”
From the 3rd and 4th centuries, there
were women who consecrated their lives to
God, dedicated to prayer and good works
and living in community, while in some cases
still retaining their patrimony and a certain
degree of freedom.
From her narrative, we discern that Egeria was most probably such a consecrated
woman. Her long explanations on liturgical
and catechetical matters and frequent conversations with clerics point more to the interests
of a religious than of a laywoman. But she still
retained considerable freedom of movement
and abundance of resources at her disposal.
Egeria was certainly a courageous, devout
and enterprising woman, not deterred by distance, deserts or robbers, seeking to pray at
the holy places—all the while writing about

her experiences to her “sisters,” “my ladies and light of
my heart,” back home. Scholars deduce that she came
from Hispania, Spain (Galicia, most precisely), not only
because of her references to
the ocean “at the ends of the
earth,” but also because her
Latin already shows a shift
towards what will become the
Spanish language.
She must have been of a noble family, having the means to embark on such an expensive trip and being constantly accompanied
by a retinue of personal attendants, clerics
and monks. Bishops received her with signal honors and offered themselves as guides
during her pious visits. In dangerous places
along her route, the commanders of Roman
forts put military escorts at her disposal. All
this suggests that she may have had connections in the imperial court and was even possibly the leader of what St. Jerome, in one of
his bad moods, bitterly described as a wealthy
and ostentatious travel party heading to the
East at about that time.
She was a Latin speaker, but with knowledge of Greek. She had a degree of culture
and was comfortably familiar with the sacred
Scriptures, which she often mentioned and
related to the places she visited.
She was certainly observant, noting every
detail, and even acknowledged herself to
be satis curiosa, “very curious,” eager to see
everything, even at the cost of added efforts.
So that her “sisters” could understand her
descriptions, she made comparisons with
places in Western Europe they would have
seen or heard about—at the Red Sea, she
pointed out that its waters were as clear and
cold as the ocean; later, she mentioned that
the Euphrates river ran as strong and fast as
the Rhone in France. . .

The Journey
As the manuscript we possess is incomplete, the first part of her narrative is missing—
her journey from Spain to Jerusalem and her
3

HOLY LAND

she returned to Constantinople and considered whether to push back into Asia Minor
or to return home. . .

Carpentum replica

first visits to the Palestinian sites mentioned in
the gospels. But from what we know of travel
in those times, the usual route from Spain to
the East was to connect with the Via Domitia through southern France and northern
Italy; then to embark at an Adriatic port to
Constantinople, and continue again by land
through Asia Minor (modern Turkey) until
reaching Jerusalem.
In our days it is difficult to imagine the
harshness and difficulty of the pilgrimage
that Egeria made in Roman times—long,
in exhausting stages covered on wagons or
horseback, and often on foot. The Roman
road network was extensive and reliable, but
travel by road was slow and exhausting—the
carpentum, a wagon pulled by many horses,
could travel only about 10-15 miles per day,
and on horseback a richly appointed tour
could make 30-40 miles a day. . .
Egeria made four great excursions in the
Holy Land, each ending with a return to
Jerusalem. The manuscript we have begins
half-way through the second trip: after having
visited monastic Egypt, she returned from the
Red Sea and climbed Mt. Sinai. The third trip
took her to Mt. Nebo, from where she contemplated the Promised Land, as Moses did. The
fourth was to Israel, visiting the places blessed by the presence of Elias, Job and the Baptist. The manuscript ends when, after having
arrived at the eastern edge of the empire and
unable to go beyond, into Persian territory,
4

The Angelus u July - August 2021

Holy Week in Jerusalem
A traditional Catholic’s attention will be
attracted by Egeria’s description of the ceremonies of Holy Week as celebrated in Jerusalem, taking comfort in knowing that we substantially celebrate them as they were in the
earliest times, while humbly acknowledging
that we fall short of the devotion, commitment and sheer stamina of our ancestors in
the faith. . .
On Palm Sunday, everybody went up to
the Eleona, the church built by Constantine
on the Mount of Olives, where hymns were
sung and there were readings from Scripture.
As the eleventh hour draws near, that particular passage from Scripture is read in which the
children bearing palms and branches came forth
to meet the Lord, saying: “Blessed is He who
comes in the name of the Lord.” The bishop
and all the people rise immediately, and then
everyone walks down from the top of the Mount
of Olives, with the people preceding the bishop
and responding continually with “Blessed is
He who comes in the name of the Lord” to the
hymns and antiphons. All the children who
are present here bear branches, some carrying
palms, others, olive branches.

On Wednesday, after the night vigil at the
Martyrium, the great basilica built by Constantine, the bishop went to the Sepulcher. There:
A priest takes up the Gospel and reads that
passage where Judas Iscariot went to the Jews to
set the price they would pay him to betray the
Lord. While this passage is being read, there is
such moaning and groaning from among the
people that no one can help being moved to
tears in that moment.

On Thursday, after the Mass, everybody
hurried home to eat, and immediately after
went back to the Mount of Olives, where they
continued praying until daybreak. Later:
Singing hymns, they come to Gethsemani
very slowly on account of the great multitude of
people, who are fatigued by vigils and exhausted

HOLY LAND

A reconstruction of the Constantinian basilica.

by the daily fasts, and because of the rather high
mountain they have to descend.

haps without the devotional excess that Egeria mentions):

At Gethsemani, the passage of the Gospel
narrating the arrest of Our Lord was read.

The bishop holds the sacred wood of the cross
with his hands, while the deacons keep watch
over it. There is a reason why it is guarded in this
manner. It is the practice here for all the people
to come forth one by one, the faithful as well as
the catechumens, to bow down before the table,
kiss the holy wood, and then move on. It is said
that someone (I do not know when) took a bite
and stole a piece of the holy cross. Therefore, it
is now guarded by the deacons standing around,
lest there be anyone who would dare come and
do that again. . .

During the reading of this passage there is
such moaning and groaning with weeping from
all the people that their moaning can be heard
practically as far as the city. And from that hour
everyone goes back on foot to the city singing
hymns. . .

Having returned to the church of the Holy
Sepulcher, the bishop addressed the people,
comforting them, admonishing them not to
grow weary, but to have hope in God who will
bestow great graces on them for their efforts.
On Friday, all proceeded to the adoration
of the Cross, much as we do today (but per-

It was followed by a 3-hour-long office of
readings.
First, whichever Psalms speak of the Passion
are read. Next, there are readings from the

A mosaic map of 6th century Jerusalem found under the floor of St. George’s Church in Madaba, Jordan.
5

Frederic Edwin Church, Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

apostles, wherever they speak of the Passion
of the Lord. Next, the texts of the Passion from
the Gospels are read. Then there are readings
from the prophets, where they said that the
Lord would suffer; and then they read from the
gospels, where He foretells the Passion. And so,
passages from Scripture are continuously read,
to show the people that whatever the prophets
had said would come to pass concerning the Passion of the Lord can be shown, both through the
gospels and the writings of the apostles, to have
taken place. And so, during those three hours,
all the people are taught that nothing happened
which was not first prophesied, and that nothing was prophesied which was not completely
fulfilled. At each reading and at every prayer, it
is astonishing how much emotion and groaning
there is from all the people. There is no one,
young or old, who on this day does not sob more
than can be imagined for the whole three hours,
because the Lord suffered all this for us.

On Saturday, there were no services during
the day, for preparation was made for the Easter Vigil in the great basilica.
The Easter vigil is observed here exactly as
we observe it at home. Only one thing is done
more elaborately here. After the neophytes have
been baptized and dressed as soon as they came
forth from the baptismal font, they are led first
of all to the Anastasis with the bishop; a hymn
is sung, and he prays for them. Then he returns
with them to the major church. After the vigil
service has been celebrated in the major church,
everyone comes to the Anastasis singing hymns.
There, once again, the text of the Gospel of the
6

The Angelus u July - August 2021

Resurrection is read and the bishop offers the
sacrifice. However, for the sake of the people,
everything is done rapidly, lest they be delayed
too long. And so the people are dismissed.

Farewell. . .
Finally tired and perhaps ill, Egeria ended
her letters in Constantinople.
So, beloved ladies, light of my heart, my present plan is, in the name of Christ our God, to
travel to Asia, since I want to make a pilgrimage
to Ephesus and the martyrium of the holy and
blessed Apostle John. If after that I am still alive,
I will either tell you about them face to face, if
God so wills, or at any rate write to you about
them if my plans change. In any case, ladies,
light of my heart, whether I am “in the body”
or “out of the body,” please do not forget me.

We may embark on similar journeys to
holy places, but perhaps a bit closer to home.
Still, let us remember the admonition of St.
Gregory of Nyssa, putting visits to such places
in their proper perspective:
A change of place does not bring one closer
to God, but there where you are, God will
come toward you, if the condition of your soul
is such that the Lord can there reside and move
around. But if you have the interior man full of
evil thoughts, even if you are on Golgotha, even
if you are on the Mount of Olives, even if you
are in the tomb of the Anastasis, you are as far
from receiving Christ in you as those who have
not even begun to confess Him. . .

Pocket
Apologetic
The Truth of the Catholic Religion
Attested by Holy Scripture and Reason

“Everyone that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in
heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father” (Mt. 10:​
32-33).​
In this era of disbelief any Catholic not taught how to defend the faith will surely lose it. This
book provides a brief, easily-absorbed guide to the absolute bare necessities of apologetics. It
gives a breakdown of Holy Scripture, the History of the Early Church, Testimonies of the Early
Church Fathers, and the Rise of Protestantism.
Learn to defend these commonly attacked Catholic doctrines, sacraments and truths:
• Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance
• Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, Matrimony
• Indulgences, Celibacy, Sacramentals
• The Four Last Things: Death Judgment, Heaven, and Hell
• The Truth of the Catholic Religion Attested by the Writings of the Early Fathers
• A Short Accurate Account of the History of the True Religion
• The Rise of Protestantism and Historical Evidence of the Truth of Our Divine Religion

A Few Thoughts for the Reader’s Consideration:
“What is Truth?” Millions of men and women have asked this question since Pilate first asked it
of Christ. We as Catholics must understand what we believe, why we believe it, and how to defend it. Whether you are a cradle Catholic, a convert, a parent or a young adult—it has fallen to
us to not only grow our own faith but also plant the seeds of faith in the next generation. Defend
your soul and the souls of your children by giving them the knowledge to first understand and
then defend our glorious Catholic Faith.
164 pp. – Softcover – 4.25” X 6.5” – STK# 8778 – $9.95

www.angeluspress.org | 1-800-966-7337

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

Egypt and
Jordan:
Not quite the Holy Land, but close.
Thoughts and insights from a Traditional Catholic pilgrim.
Bridget Bryan

8

The Angelus u July - August 2021

HOLY LAND

Why Egypt and Jordan?
Egypt and Jordan, while not part of the
Promised Land, can be considered part of
the “holy land” in a way. What is a holy land?
What makes a place holy? It is the presence of
God that makes a thing holy. An object also
becomes holy when it is touched by God or set
aside for his use. Egypt and Jordan were each
set aside for God’s use. I’d like to share with
you some highlights of that pagan soil and
how it bore the fruit of God. In viewing how
God used the “soil of the past,” we’ll come
to more deeply appreciate the providence of
God in our own lives.
My decision to travel to this “holy land”
came from wanting to give more to my students, a thirst for adventure, and a love of
travel and history. After teaching ancient history for eight years, I began to love Moses,
and also how God worked with Egypt and
other pagan empires through the translatio
imperii (the transfer of power from one civilization or empire to another to prepare for
the salvation of mankind). Because of those
things, I yearned to go explore among those
old stone buildings of Moses’ past, ride camels, and sail down the Nile. In 2019, my brother and I did just that, as well as explored a
bit of Jordan.
Egypt
On our way over to the “Dark Continent,”
my brother and I took advantage of a layover
in Paris, France to go gallivanting, and by late
afternoon, we left the land of the first daughter of the Church and her great Gothic cathedrals. By nightfall, we could see the lights of
Cairo and the great darkness of the Sahara
surrounding it.
The next morning, the first on the African
continent, I did my usual morning ritual of
reading and prayer, and read the mass of the
day. It was the feast of St. Anne. Uncanny:
that’s what it felt like, looking out over the
same Nile river that St. Anne’s daughter and
grandson had seen when they fled with Joseph
to Egypt. From then on, my physical vision of
the place took on a vision of historical layers.
Far out, the pyramids were obscured by the

city haze. Here I was, spiritually in the presence of God, in the very land that he had been
physically in over 2,000 years ago as a little
toddler, having narrowly escaped the clutches
of King Herod’s henchmen!

Of Alexandria and Dirt
The first day was a long trip into Alexandria, founded in 331 BC by Alexander the
Great.
A word must be said about the dirt. The
first thing we noticed getting off the plane up
to now, and until our last hours in Egypt, was
how dirty it is. A particularly poor neighborhood of Alexandria which surrounded some
ruins was crowded, busy, dusty and so dirty
that there was trash everywhere. Everyone
was in their long Arabic robes, the women
were almost always cloaked in niqabs (full
hijab). The intense heat enhanced the effect of
stifling closeness and dirtiness. It was exciting
to see, but such a contrast to sterile American
cities. I expressed my initial disgust of the
filthy crowded conditions to my brother. He
acknowledged it, but then said “Every country has its filth. Our country’s is more hidden.
Which sort of filth would you prefer?” I grunted, impressed by his wisdom, and relaxed
a little more as we wound our way through
teeny tiny streets crowded with honking tuktuks, donkey carts, flee-bitten camels, cars,
old trucks, shop wares, and hookah bars filled
with old, robed men of leathery skin and missing teeth, playing chess between puffs. Tall,
dilapidated apartment buildings rose up on
every side. In spite of the dry heat, with my
attitude somewhat adjusted, and in spite of
all that initial grime, you could see that the
community and the families were strong.
Passers-by took the time to visit with and poke
fun at their neighbors, smiles and laughs were
more frequently seen than grim, busy faces,
and all through this bustling chaos, children
played.
We explored a great deal, and finally
ended the day in front of the Great Library,
originally founded by Alexander. Here he had
Jewish scholars come and translate the Septuagint into Greek, thus enabling the word
9

HOLY LAND

of the Lord to be revealed more easily to the
Gentiles of the ancient world. Somewhere,
underneath the city, in a yet-to-be-excavatedplace, Alexander’s body lies. Up to now, its
location is a mystery.
All that day was spent with our Arab guide,
Hisham. Through him we were exposed to the
hearts of the Arabs: they are upfront and talk
about what is most dear to a person: religion,
family, and politics. This was to be affirmed
with every Arab I talked to. Our stimulating
conversations made time travel quickly as we
drove through crowded city streets and miles
and miles of desert and occasional irrigated
farms.

Pyramids
Back in Cairo, now cooler in the evening,
we saw a peaceful sunset with the Pyramids
at Giza and the Sphinx. It was very overwhelming in a quiet, deep way. The energy
and awe is similar to what one experiences
when one stands near a great Gothic cathedral. These great massive monuments, though
nearly 6,000 years old, still stand with great
silent majesty.
The next day was a hands-on visit to the
pyramids in the sweltering mid-morning heat.
I climbed as high as I could on Khufu’s pyramid before being yelled at by the police to
come down lower. A trifle embarrassed and
yet somewhat triumphant to have achieved
such a chiding, I sat down on one of the giant
limestone blocks and soaked up the reality
of sitting on one of the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World. The great pharaohs had been
here, Alexander the Great, Herodotus, Marc
Antony, Napoleon Bonaparte. . .and then the
people of Christ. I thought of Joseph, son of
Jacob—what did the pyramids look like when
he came to Egypt? What about his brothers
and his father when they came to beg for food
during the famine? And Moses, did he whisk
his chariot round the dunes at the edges of this
sacred burial place? Joseph and Mary, and
their baby, the King of Kings—did they see
these great buildings of men? If so, the infant
God saw them and now I was seeing what was
seen by him in his exile. This moment was a
portal into a vivid contemplation of the Holy
Family in Egypt.
10

The Angelus u July - August 2021

Musing on the pyramid, (and yes, posing for photos galore), led to camel rides.
We rode our dromedaries, all decked out in
Arab tassels, out to a lovely view of the nine
pyramids, right on the fringe of the Sahara.
Again, images of all those people in the Bible,
and of all those famous people of history too,
appeared in my mind as I rocked to and fro
on the back of the gangly but oddly attractive
animal. Need vivid sound for your contemplation? Camels gargle and groan like Chewbacca from Star Wars, and sometimes, they spit.
Apparently the females find that attractive.
We left our camels, and the flies attracted
to them, to visit the great Sphinx who guards
the three main pyramids at Giza. The Sphinx
was almost as arresting as the pyramids.
Huge, and silent, his posture and resting gaze
has a commanding presence. The longer I sat
and sketched him (I sketched and painted in
a travel journal every step of the way), the
more he seemed to come alive and “be” there,
watching. Between his massive paws you can
see the Thutmose III’s tablet Roger Lancelyn
Green tells of in his Tales of Ancient Egypt. Seeing such a thing would be akin to discovering
that Red Riding Hood’s cape was real.
Then came lunch, which that day was
down the road in a Bedouin tent supported by
palm trees (date trees are the main palm tree
in Egypt) and pillars made of reeds.

Reeds and Patriarchs
When I saw those reed pillars, Noe, Abraham, and the marshland of Mesopotamia
all flashed through my head in an instant. It
was like an information overload. Why the
association? The Bedouins have always been
nomadic tent-dwellers, and have traveled
across the Middle East. Any habit of theirs
have been long in their traditions—thousands
of years. The reed supports were built in a
way that closely resembled the mudhifs—reed
houses. These mudhifs rose out of the marshlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates River
(my next dream destination), possibly the geographical setting for the garden of Eden, our
ancient family hearth or living room.
These structures, an odd cross between
a Gothic chapel and an Indian longhouse,
have been around as far back 3000 BC, pos-

A glimpse from my travel journal shows us
at the Giza Pyramid complex.

sibly longer. You can find engravings of them
carved on knife handles from that era, near
Uruk, the kingdom of Gilgamesh the King.
That’s near Ur, where Abraham was from.
Thus, Abraham would have been familiar
with this type of housing. Some experts have
wondered if Noe’s family, after the flood, had
a similar style of housing. Seeing the reed pillars was like seeing a relic of the old patriarchs
who were types of the Savior.
All these connections, from the reed pillars
to Abraham and Noe flashed into my head as
I passed into the Bedouin tent. Nerding out
on the topic was saved for the travel journal,
and total attention was given to a good cold
beer and lunch with my fellow travelers.
The rest of that day was spent viewing temples and pyramids, inside and out: the Red,
Bent, and Djoser’s Step Pyramid (the very
first successful Egyptian pyramid), and an old
crumbled pyramid. The only thing that would
have made all that even better would have
been to be able to bring my students there too.
What does the inside of a pyramid look
like? Well, the really old ones are ornate,

while the “newer” ones at Giza are plain
inside. We descended into a pyramid older
than Moses. Inside it, carved on the ceiling
were stars—they looked like starfish—but this
expression is so similar to the stars the French
use in ecclesiastical decorations. Also carved
into the vertical walls, with the precision of
a laser cutter, were litanies in hieroglyphs,
praying for the soul of the deceased pharaoh
and his people. “Litany” took on a whole new
meaning for me after seeing that—the form
had been around for nearly 4000 years, and
carved so precisely in such an ancient age!
At one moment, while exploring Djoser’s
complex, I stood alone in a deserted stone
funeral hallway, its limestone ceiling, walls,
and floor polished and glossed by the Sahara wind. The view looked out at golden sand
and blue sky. It dawned on me that all these
buildings were prepared not for men to live in
and enjoy, but for their preparation for death.
The wonder began to form: is most of what
the Egyptians have given us the fruit of their
preparation for death?

11

HOLY LAND

[Left] One of my favorite pages, this captures typical life on the streets of Egypt, whether village or crazy Cairo.
[Top right] Here’s the ancient Mesopotamian reed technique I saw in the Bedouin tent restaurant.
[Bottom right] “All are welcome to worship here” is one of the hieroglyphs found carved on each of the pillars of Philae.

Signs of Eternal Life
From the Pyramids at Giza, we traveled
overnight by train down to Aswan, near the
Egyptian border along Ethiopia—Nubia, to
those acquainted with antiquity. Here, the
Nubians, gentler and more dark than the
Egyptians, usually dress in white robes which
they keep immaculate in spite of all their
activity.
In Philae, a curious hieroglyph is carved
onto all the massive stone pillars. It means
“All are welcome to worship here.”
Nestled amongst the pillars is an early
Coptic Christian altar, with a tabernacle of
sorts carved into the stone wall behind it.
That stone altar was taken from the dark12

The Angelus u July - August 2021

ness of the pagan sanctuary to the god Isis,
and placed in the light, to be used for the
unbloody sacrifice of God for man. That
altar, a relief to see in the Muslim land, once
used for pagan worship, seemed fulfilled, a
mini-Calvary, and the hieroglyph echoed on
all the surrounding massive pillars seemed to
call all the souls of the land: “All are welcome
here for ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’”
The wee hours of the next morning saw
us driving through the Sahara, watching the
sunrise over the rosy endless dunes and the
dark tarmac road disappear where sand met
sky. The mind’s images from Anton St. Exupery’s flight stories over the desert in The
Little Prince and Wind, Sand and Stars enliv-

HOLY LAND

en the scene. Little teeny flies appear out of
nowhere and afflicted each person. Plagues
of Egypt anyone?
We arrived and hiked to the massive work
of Abu Simbel. It’s the gigantic double temple
of Ramses II and his favorite wife, Nefertari,
carved into the cliffs. The mammoth-sized
statues that guard the front of the temples
were meant to send a strong message to anyone coming into Egypt from the south. Ramses II may have been the adopted brother
of Moses. It was interesting to view all the
works from this point of view. It dawned on
me here that Ramses II built much and built
big. Did he have a Napoleon complex? Was
he short and that’s why he had to go big? Or
did he feel really inadequate with a someone
like Moses alongside him? Were these massive statues more of a show of power rather
than actual power? Ramses II’s actual military accomplishments certainly do support
the last question.
Inside the temple, imagine a church, nearly
30 feet high, complete with pillars and ceremonial rooms, and large halls, all leading
back to a more private sanctuary, and that
all hollowed out of rock. That’s Abu Simbel.
Within Abu Simbel are carved scenes of Ramses’ reign.
The most violent scenes, scenes of war,
are on the outer perimeter of the temple, and
as you get closer to the sanctuary, the scenes
become more peaceful.
The golden moment here was seeing a temple guardian with a giant gold ankh. An ankh
looks like a key with a cross at the end, and
you find the pharaohs holding it, and some of
the gods in pictures and carvings. It’s everywhere in ancient Egyptian culture. The symbol of the ankh is eternal life. When a robed
Arab guard put the ankh into the temple door
[and tried unabashedly to get people to pose
with him and then haggle a tip from them] the
lines “the keys of the kingdom” (Matthew 16:19),
and “I am the way the truth and the life” ( John
14:6), came into mind simultaneously with
the thought that the God-Man Christ brought us
eternal life through the cross. It was like watching an Arab unknowingly act out an Egyptian version of St. Peter at the pearly gates,
using ancient symbolism. Here was another of

God’s scavenger hunt clues to Eternal Happiness as He weaved them throughout history.

Faith and Feluccas
The most awaited moment of the trip was
sailing down the Nile on a felucca, an Egyptian sailboat. We drifted luxuriously for two
days on the quiet Nile, living as carefree boatmen taking advantage of a river to swim in, a
deck to dose on, and appreciating the famous
hospitality of our Nubian crew. Unanticipated, in contrast to the idyllic daze, were hours
of discussing the Catholic Faith.
The first night began with questions asked
by our guide, Ramadan. Under the intense
starry sky, drinking tea, the guide and I began
the first of several intense discussions of his
Islamic beliefs versus the Catholic Faith. I’ll
never forget his look of surprise when, after
sharing what he was taught about our priests
and how mercenary they were, I assured him
with utter conviction that each of the priests
I knew would willingly die for us if it meant
getting us to heaven. Integrity means a lot to
them, and this assertion seemed to leave a
great impression upon him. I thanked God
for the formation of St. Mary’s College, especially in philosophy and theology, as well as
the Holy Spirit for giving me the confidence
to bear witness to my faith.
Regarding the Nile: it is pretty clear water,
and has a good current. The cool water felt so
good in the high heat of the Egyptian August.
Again, layers of history processed through
my mind of who had been in the Nile in their
royal ships—Tuthmosis III, Hatshepsut, Joseph
of Israel, Ramses II, Moses taken from the
reeds in his pitch-tarred basket, and possibly
Joseph and Mary using it as a water source.
We had no problems with Nile crocodiles—
apparently they’re all north of Cairo.
After our sailing adventure, we embarked
to the site of Thebes, modern day Luxor,
known as the city of gold. So many temples
lay near there, including Karnak—the largest
temple by far—nearly as large as St. Mary’s,
Kansas. We visited the valley of the kings
and Hatshepsut’s temple. All these temples
and ruins, thousands and thousands of years
old, bore witness to men’s ego and power,

13

HOLY LAND

but also bore witness to a world beyond this
earthly life.

Moses’ Step-Brother?
Once back in Cairo, we saw the Cairo
museum briefly. For the record, Egypt is best
viewed in context of the land rather than in
a museum, but boy, there are some treasures
there. All of Egypt’s ancient history is captured within this huge building. Some things
that really stood out are mummified pets, the
contents of King Tut’s tomb, solid statues several stories tall, a Moses-like reed basket covered in resin from ancient days, remnants of
Akhenaton’s attempt at monotheism, as well
as one of the best-looking pharaohs available.
The body of Ramses II, once wrapped
in layers of linen and amulets, is partially
exposed in a climate-controlled room, with
an entourage of other stiff celebrities. His
features command even in death. His eagle
nose stands out of a chiseled face, revealing
a hint of a strong personality. His hair, still
visible, has a bleached, yellowish complexion. The preserved corpse, now shriveled,
still exuded a sense of gravity and comportment. This silent corpse, whose life I was so
well acquainted with, whose colossal temples
and building projects I had just explored from
southern Egypt, all the way north to the Mediterranean. Now I was looking down at him,
in the flesh (though somewhat shriveled). It
was possibly this man with whom Moses grew
up as his half-brother, ran through the great
palace halls, raced Moses in chariots, exiled
him, then invited the nine plagues of Egypt,
and finally had his men pursue the Israelites
to the edge of the sea. And here he was for all
of us ordinary people to see.
A Coptic Church, Synagogue,
and an Ancient Mass
Later that day we planned to make a final
pilgrimage in Egypt before we flew to Jordan. Nestled in old Coptic Cairo, near a
famous mosque, is a Catholic Church and a
synagogue. The synagogue was built on the
site where, according to tradition, Moses was
taken from the reeds (there’s that ancient basket made from reeds in the Cairo Museum—it
makes one wonder, “Moses, is this what your
14

The Angelus u July - August 2021

basket looked like?”). The Church close-by is
built over a cave where Joseph and Mary are
said to have rested. (There are many caves
with the same claim along the way down to
middle Egypt where legend says they settled for some time. But it’s not highly visited
because this part of Egypt is often the scene
of conflicts between Muslims and Christians.)
Alas, the hopes for these two great destinations were dashed for some unfortunate reasons, and as I nursed my disappointments
through the streets of Cairo, and haggled at
the Souq for papyrus souvenirs for my students, I prayed that I’d be able to come back
to these holy spots of antiquity.

The Exodus in Three Hours
The next day, what took the Chosen People forty years to do, we did in three hours.
We crossed the Red Sea, went straight over
Sinai, up past the Dead Sea, along the River
Jordan, and landed in Amman, where at night
we could see the lights of Jerusalem.
Though this Exodus only lasted three
hours, a bit squished into a plane of mostly
Arabs, I sponged up every moment I could
from my window seat. I looked over bright
blue Red Sea, as lego-sized cargo ships floated
into it through the Suez Canal. In my mind’s
eye, I saw the parting of it at the hands of
Moses, “Horse and rider thrown into the sea,”
(Exodus 15:21).
The rigorous terrain of the Sinai Mountains came into view and my heart yearned to
go there, to hike up through those mountains.
(That was one of my original destination
dreams, but most tour groups weren’t offering
any trips due to some security concerns.) I put
it on my consolation “Come Back and Visit”
list. Still, I tried to look out for what might be
Mount Sinai, where the finger of God wrote
out the 10 Commandments, also where the
burning bush was, and now has the Church
of the Annunciation built over it. Even today,
you can hike to and visit the Monastery of
St. Catherine which surrounds the area and
visit the ancient Church built over the gnarled
roots of the still-alive burning bush.
Red jagged stone against blue sea and blue
sky is what rolled out underneath us, and it
was not difficult to contemplate the Hebrews,

HOLY LAND

Walking out of the Siq into candlelight took our breath away as
the famous Treasury (a tomb) stood silent under the stars.

with all of the their belongings and children,
for years, making their way through that
rocky area.

Jordan
Then we got to Jordan. It was like going
from Italy to Portugal: Cairo is not a clean
city, and Jordan felt immaculate, and more
safe. While Cairo was old, Jordan has roots
that historians trace as far back as 10,0006,000 B.C. So ancient! If you are familiar with
scripture, you may have read of Rabboth-Ammon, or Philadelphia—those are names for
what is now simply Amman, Jordan.
This is one of the oldest cities in the world,
descended from Lot and his daughter, and is
first mentioned in Holy Scripture in Genesis
19:37-38: “The younger also bore a son, and she
called his name Ammon, that is, the son of my
people: he is the father of the Ammonites unto this
day.” If you’d like to see how civilizations built
upon each other, this city is very ideal. It was
built along the King’s Highway, an ancient
trade road that connected Africa with Mesopotamia. Moses took the chosen people along
part of the road when coming into the Prom-

ised Land, and it is frequently mentioned in
holy scripture. It’s a great place to walk in the
footsteps of the chosen people and Moses, as
well as the early Church.

Moses’ Water Stop, and
The King’s Highway
The other holy spot of this land is Wadi
Musa. Wadi means valley, Musa, Moses. The
town Wadi Musa is named for the spring that
comes from under a rock, believed to be that
from the story of Moses striking the rock to
give drink to his people, “And when Moses had
lifted up his hand, and struck the rock twice with
the rod, there came forth water in great abundance,
so that the people and their cattle drank,” (Numbers 20:11). The spring was the original water
source for Petra.
To access this incredible city carved out of
rock, you have to go through a winding canyon of red sandstone. We initially did this in
the dark, with the stars shining overheard, our
path lit only by starlight and candlelight. The
next day we rode Arabian horses, the Bedouin’s most loyal friend, down to the entrance,
and hiked all over the red dusty ruins.
15

HOLY LAND

Petra goes all the way back before Moses;
it’s a city carved out of rock, begun by the
ancient Nabataeans of Arabia, taken over
by the spread of Hellenization, then by the
Romans, which became Christian. The
Mohammedans then drove them out, then
the Crusaders tried to take it back, and finally, with the failure of the Crusades it stayed
in the hands of the Muslims. The city, famous
for its tomb reliefs, was a central point on the
King’s Highway, and would have seen many
people of antiquity passing through.

Minarets and Mozarabic Chants
When you come to an Islamic country,
minarets are as common as churches in
Rome. Minarets are towers which rise above
the domed mosques so that imams (spiritual
leaders of the Muslims) can call the people
to prayer five times a day. Back in America,
while planning the trip, I cringed to think of
this reality. In Egypt and Jordan I didn’t as
much. In seeing all those minarets, I thought
of two things:
In seeing the skylines dotted with minarets, I was first reminded of Chesterton’s
quote: “The only way to love anything is to
realize it may be lost.” In vain did I search
for a crucifix atop a dome. When I did, in the
bigger cities, it was like seeing a homeland.
The minarets marked mosques nearly on
every corner: this was a reminder how earthly
Christendom may have looked at its height,
and what it may still become.
The second thing I thought of was the
chant that came from those minarets. The
chant conjured up both ordinary Gregorian
chant in its pure melody, and the audio of
priests singing Jeremiah’s Lamentations at
Tenebrae in the majestic Mozarabic Chant.
Both our chant and those of the Arabs have
similar ancient strains. Just like wine and
scotch have layers of taste from their sources,
so do our own chants sung everyday at the
Office and High Mass.
Moses’ Last Stop
South of Amman, away from the hustling
and bustling stands Mount Nebo. This is the
resting place of Moses, where he watched as
his people, whom he had led with difficulty
16

The Angelus u July - August 2021

for forty years, passed into their new land.
“Go up into this mountain . . . unto mount Nebo,
which is in the land of Moab over against Jericho:
and see the land of Chanaan, which I will deliver
to the children of Israel to possess, and die thou in
the mountain” (Deuteronomy 32:49).
Upon this limestone mount, to the left you
can see the northern edges of the Dead Sea,
and the lush beginning of Israel, the Promised Land. To the right is the dry land of
Moab. Upon this mountain a monastery was
built. It was destroyed, but a church, sadly
cold and sterile, stands in its stead. You can
kneel in prayer as Moses must have before
he was taken to the Lord, his body hidden
from view by St. Michael, “When Michael the
archangel, disputing with the devil, contended
about the body of Moses” ( Jude 1:9). The best
moment was to stand in the silence, looking
across the same view he must have looked at
and pondered and contemplated the remainder of his life. After a lifetime theme of being
set apart from his people: sent adrift upon
the Nile to be raised in a foreign household,
fleeing into exile, then leading his own people
in the Exodus (for leadership can be lonely),
he was again separated from his people as
they entered the Promised Land. From there,
he was finally able to enter into Abraham’s
bosom. Moses is known as the holiest person
of the Old Testament, so much so that the
Jews compared Christ to him. Having reached
the top of Mt. Nebo, it seemed that the trip to
Egypt and Jordan had all been worthwhile.

Reoriented
By the end of this journey I had realized
that our Faith and our Culture of Western
Civilization had more roots than I could possibly fathom. It was as if each of us humans
were a speck in the universe of time, like earth
is a speck in the universe of stars and galaxies. And yet in that smallness was felt God’s
greatness and His love for one small person in
2019 A.D. I was able to glimpse many of these
historical layers laid thousands and thousands
of years ago. It was truly a humbling realization, as well as a tantalizing carrot calling for
further exploration of the land of Pharaohs
and Bedouins.

The 15 Decades of the Holy Rosary

A Book to Assist in Your Meditation of the Mysteries
accompanied by the masters of fine art - one great work for each mystery

Enjoy this large 15-decade Rosary devotional. As Catholics, we know that the Rosary is
more vital than ever, even while our schedules become more hectic—especially for those
with large families. This simple book is meant
to be used while praying the Rosary, providing a way to keep one’s thoughts on the devotion for each decade. Each work of art was
selected for its impact and, when possible, a
work was chosen that has many details. Our
hope is that even after many uses, you will
be able to find something new to turn your
attention to, providing added richness to your
meditations. A tool to aid you and your family
in saying our most important prayer!

32 pp. 8.5" x 11". Softcover. STK# 8783. $14.95

Keep Learning 		 Keep Growing

Keep the Faith

The Church of the Transfiguration [Mount Tabor]
Built on the peak of Mt. Tabor, the current church is part of a Franciscan
monastery complex, and was completed in 1924. It was built on the ruins of an
ancient (4th-6th-century) Byzantine church and a 12th-century church of the
Crusader Kingdom period.
The church contains three grottoes representing the three huts which Peter
desired to build—for Jesus, Moses and Elias—Elijah.
The Grotto of Christ is in the eastern part of the church. Steps lead down to a
lower level containing a sanctuary roofed with a modern vault.
There is a chapel in each of the two towers at the western end of the church. The
Chapel of Elijah is located in the south tower; the north tower holds the Chapel of
Moses.
In the upper part of the church there is a mosaic on a gold ground representing
the Transfiguration. On August 6 the sun strikes a glass plate set into the floor so
that the golden mosaic is briefly illuminated.

My All-Night Vigil
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Fr. Hugh Barbour

I

t can happen in the life of a Christian,
and especially in the life of a priest,
that he receives favors from the loving
Providence of God which exceed all his
expectations and which he never sought or
even imagined. I do not mean the supernatural graces to be expected through that progress in the life of prayer, penance, and works
of mercy which is the common and blessed
lot of all who take the practice of the faith
to heart. I mean rather unexpected consolations, discoveries, I might even say “perks,”
along our way here below. In this narration,
I will share with you just such a kind bonus I
received from the “Giver of every good gift.”
In Lent of the year 2011 I led a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of some faithful who
20

The Angelus u July - August 2021

were knights and dames of the Equestrian
Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
I am a Knight Commander of this order,
which, since I am a priest, means that I am
also a titular canon of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre. St. Pius X, by the way was a
member of this order as a bishop and patriarch, and then was the Grand Master of the
order as pope. There have been a number of
sainted knights and dames. The order began
in the 12th century at the time of the first
crusade and the recovery of Jerusalem, and
still thrives, despite the twists and turns of
history, to the present day. Blessed Pius IX
reorganized the statutes of the order, bringing it directly under the Holy See. This was
in part to provide the popes with a means of

HOLY LAND

honoring nobles, gentlefolk, and professionals, since after the French Revolution and its
Napoleonic aftermath these means were much
restricted throughout Europe. This engaged
the honored knights and dames and canons in
the work of helping the Church in Palestine,
then still under the Ottoman Turks. The order
was no longer to fight crusades, but to provide
material support for the Latin Patriarchate of
Jerusalem. In our time this is a very important
and urgent work indeed, given the desperate
situation of Christians in the Middle East. If
I may be so bold, in the last and present century, secular states supported a kind of crusade, but without the cross, establishing the
State of Israel there, which is still the focus of
violent struggle in the region. Everyone on all

sides recognizes this. The effects of this state
of affairs on Christians and Christian works
and enterprises there is thus the occasion of
much effort in the crusade of charity of the
contemporary Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which
contains both Calvary and the Tomb of the
Savior, is the chief object of a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. With what excitement did I greet
the day we arrived there from Galilee!
On the way up to Jerusalem, we all prayed
together the Gradual psalms, which the Jews
of old recited when going on pilgrimage there
at Passover or on the feast of Tabernacles. The
holy family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph recited these psalms, an office for the pilgrimage,
many times. And now, finally, as one of these
psalms exclaims, “Our feet were standing in
thy courts, O Jerusalem!”
Our pilgrimage hostel was not far from
the Holy Sepulchre, and so not being able to
wait until our official entry in the morning, I
slipped out before supper with a confrere of
my abbey who was with me on the pilgrimage
to find the church. Now what happened next
requires a little back-story.
In the hostel where we were staying, there
had been a change of ownership; one of the
terms of the change was that some residents
there would be grandfathered in, and not
be moved out. One of these folks was a man
whom we found in the lobby as we came in.
He was exceedingly friendly, even expansive,
chatting up each new group of pilgrims. This
bigger-than-life character seemed to make
the present administration of the hostel a bit
nervous. He hastened to make my acquaintance and was very interested in the white
habit of my religious order, and my Roman
hat, I recall. We went upstairs, and put our
things away, and then came down to seek out
the church.
As we were walking along looking for indications of the narrow roads to take, suddenly
the friendly resident I had met swung out of
the door of a little bar, and apparently “feeling
no pain” as we say, he called out “If you are
going to the Holy Sepulchre, you should know
21

HOLY LAND

that you can make an all-night vigil there.” I
asked “How?” He shouted as he swung back
inside “Ask the friars in the Catholic sacristy!”
Socrates tells us that children and the
inebriated speak the truth. Now granted,
he was not St. Alphonsus Ligouri, but there
is something to this. Angels, I am sure, can
help with moving a weak or distracted mind
such as children and drinkers have, since
they do not put up much resistance to their
present impulses, sometimes even good ones.
Of course, this is risky business, since the
demons can do the same for evil tendencies.
Angels, however are channels of grace. In
this case the gushing hospitality and good
cheer of this man occasioned a great grace
for me, infallibly foreseen by Providence.
If he hadn’t swung out of the door, I would
never have known of this utterly unadvertised
vigil. After all, at Cana the apostles drank
their fill with everyone else, and gladly recognized the revelation of the glory of Christ
and first believed in him. The Savior is able
to bring good effects out of a party, without
anyone sinning. We may not be so fortunate,
and should not fool ourselves about excess,
but in this case what I am saying is true, so
there you are.
In the Latin, or Catholic sacristy of the
church, I found the Franciscan sacristan. He
was the one who vetted those who would
make the vigil. There is a limit of twelve per
night. He gladly put me on the list and told
me when I could come. The brown Franciscans have the care of the shrines and holy
places of the Holy Land. This is an arrangement which the Turkish sultan made with the
popes throughout their domains. The Turks
did not want a regular Catholic hierarchy, but
only the Franciscans, to care for the Catholics
under their rule. This “custody” of the Holy
Land has continued even after the Turkish
empire fell apart after World War I, and is
still very much a reality.
In the mid-nineteenth century the Ottoman Sultan established a protocol for dealing
with the various Christian groups in the Holy
Land; this is commonly called the Status quo.
As the name implies, this keeps in place the
customary rights of each of the confessions
who have historically had claims on the holy
22

The Angelus u July - August 2021

places. Modern regimes, including the State
of Israel, have maintained this. In the church
of the Holy Sepulchre there is a fixed routine
that governs each and every day of the year
and each and every hour of every day in the
church. The Greek Orthodox, the Armenian
Orthodox, and the Roman Catholics are the
most privileged groups at the Holy Sepulchre. Each has the right to a sung Mass in
the Lord’s tomb every day, the Greeks first,
at midnight, the Armenians later around
three in the morning, and the Catholics at
around five in the morning, starting with private Masses and with the sung Mass at about
six-thirty. At Calvary the Greeks have the
actual altar over the rock of Calvary, but the
Latin Catholic altar of the Deposition is right
by it for private Masses mostly. The Catholic
Masses must be in Latin and on the original
altars since the Orthodox do not countenance
dramatic changes in anyone’s practices; this is
how the Status quo protects the Catholics from
themselves. So accidentally, but efficaciously,
Providence used the Muslims and the Orthodox to keep us in line! So the sung Mass is in
Gregorian Chant, in Latin, a votive Mass of
the Resurrection, Re­surrexi, every day. (Even
the ceremonies of the Triduum have to be in
the morning, as in the Holy Week rites before
the Venerable Pius XII. So the Muslims and
the Greeks support ultra-traditional arrangements.)
I arrived the evening of my vigil as directed, after three stiff little cups of Turkish coffee. The first thing I witnessed inside was the
locking of the principal door at sundown.
Representatives of the Greeks, Latins, and
Armenians watch as a man from a Muslim
family which has held the keys since the eighteenth century locks everyone in. He will
unlock the doors early the next morning.
The Franciscan friar addressed the Catholic vigil makers (by the way, it seems that
only the Catholics have this privilege). He
warned us that we were not to sing out loud,
or to fall asleep (“The Greeks will come and
shout at you if you do!” he said.) Otherwise
we were free to pray and to move about as we
pleased all night. Amazing, I thought, free to
wander about in the labyrinth of side altars
and shrines, in addition to Calvary and the

The Tomb of Jesus

Altar of the Crucifixion, where the rock of Calvary is
encased in protective glass

Tomb. And there were only two other vigil
makers on that night. Two Italian ladies, who
unaccountably stayed completely out of sight
in the chapel of Adam beneath Calvary, so I
really was alone.
Calvary was, of course the first place to
go. I was there from seven to ten. Alone! I
mean all alone, with no one around at all.
The church is unbelievably crowded during
the day. I was able to kneel right over the rock
of Calvary before the Greek altar, and reach
down to touch it through the shrine opening
under the altar. All alone. . .and Our Lord
knew when he thought of my many sins and
faults in Gethsemane and on the Cross that
he was preparing for me that I would be there
two millennia later. He had been waiting for
me to come there all those years, and I had
no idea. Truly, as St. Paul says “He loved me
and gave Himself for me.”
On Calvary I recited the whole breviary
office of Good Friday from beginning to end.
I decided I would pray the Triduum offices in
the different places. Place trumps time, and it
is always in place, in any season, to pray the
offices of the mysteries of Redemption in the
places where they were accomplished.

At ten I went into the Holy Sepulchre and
prayed the office of Holy Saturday in the antechamber, the “chapel of the angel.” Then I
went in to the tomb itself, and kneeling there
before the slab covering the limestone where
Our Lord’s body was laid and on which Mass
is celebrated, I prayed a bit, until a Greek
monk came in and politely asked me to leave
since they were setting up their Liturgy for
midnight.
I went over to the choir chapel of the Franciscans, who invited me to enter the choir to
pray Matins with them, in Latin of course.
Before this the Greeks were censing all the
altars in all the chapels of the church, both
Catholic and Orthodox, in preparation for
their Liturgy. As the hieromonk with the censer passed by me, he stopped and censed me
as well, a fine liturgical courtesy. One of the
Franciscan friars offered me a cup of coffee
to help in my vigil, which I gladly accepted,
and he showed me where the lavatories were,
wryly pointing out, that after all, men are not
angels.
Then I went out to the open space before
the tomb, and assisted at the Greek Liturgy,
taking the time to pray rosaries. It was Lent,
so they had the Liturgy of St. Gregory the
23

HOLY LAND

Great, better known as the Liturgy of the
Pre-Sanctified. I watched the procession with
the Blessed Sacrament coming from the high
altar of the church into the Holy Sepulchre,
the monks prostrating themselves to the floor.
Jesus slain for us went into the tomb, and
came out again as in a liturgical resurrection
to offer himself in Holy Communion.
I was consoled by the thought that all the
Masses in this church were ancient, Catholic
liturgies, in spite of the schisms of the East.
There was nothing in them of which a Catholic would not approve. The Savior’s true body
and blood were there. How faithful He is to
His word, even if men are not!
After the Greek liturgy was over, I went
into the tomb, and alone, as always, prayed
the office of Easter. Even though it was Lent,
I said all the alleluias, figuring that I should,
given where I was. As I said, place is before
time! St. Thomas would agree. This was the
place where the Redeemer rose alive, glorious, and impassible on Easter morning! And I
was there kneeling up against it. And he knew
I would come. I thought, “Why did he think
I needed this singular grace?” The answer
came, “Others are stronger than you, but you
I have to spoil to get you to behave.”
I prayed a bit more, and soon enough an
Armenian monk came in and politely asked
me to leave now, since they would be setting
up their Mass, shortly to begin. I went outside
and began to pray rosaries. They had a full
Mass, not the liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified.
And other than the monks I was the only
one attending, just as at the Greek Liturgy.
The Armenians were rather friendly, they
came up to me and made small talk about
where they and their families had lived in the
States. They were very kind, very charming.
No wonder the Armenians do so well wherever they go, as long as they can escape their
Muslim persecutors. Little changes in history
for Christians of the Orient.
Then I went back into the tomb, and
prayed the whole office of Our Lady, and
then to the stone of the anointing where I
prayed the office of the Dead. You see, I had
learned from one other vigil I had made, that
for this work one cannot engage in prolonged
mental prayer (unless there were some special
24

The Angelus u July - August 2021

grace) all night; one has to pray vocal prayers
to keep awake and remain attentive. So five
whole offices, Matins in choir, and I don’t
know how many rosaries were my effective
way of staying up and making the vigil worthwhile. Vocal prayer, is prayer! It is not Catholic to despise or minimize its importance
when we start learning about meditation and
contemplation. We need all forms of prayer.
Our Lord said many, many vocal prayers a
day, and He taught us vocal prayer, and He is
the model of prayer. He prayed vocally from
the cross; psalm 21 was on His lips. Read the
whole psalm yourself, and you will see Him
on the cross and in his glory in its very words.
Finally, I went to the sacristy after the
doors of the church had been opened again,
and carried chalice and paten to Calvary to
celebrate Holy Mass in the ancient rite there.
I chose the votive Mass of the Passion. Here
neither time nor place were the point. The
Lord’s body and blood that day of March,
2011 were present as in a place in heaven, and
under the sacramental signs substantially, in
an unbloody manner in the same very sacrifice which He had offered in a bloody manner
in the same very place so long ago. Time had
stood still and our place was in the heavens.
And this sacramental sacrifice conveyed His
immolation and His risen and glorious body
and blood no less truly, no less really, than
had I been there in A.D. 33.
You see, I did not need to come to the
church of the Holy Sepulchre at all to be on
Calvary and in the tomb and even in the glory
of heaven. All I needed was an altar of Catholic sacrifice anywhere. Indeed, this altar of
sacrifice is not just a monument of the past, it
is a living exposition of the mysteries “at all
times and in all places.”
Love for the Holy Mass was the grace I
received there, and the awareness that Jesus
is still thinking of us in His Sacred Heart now
with the same changeless charity he had then
and there, on every altar and in every tabernacle where we find him in the Sacrament of
His Love.
And this is no “perk,” it is a saving grace.

HOLY LAND

The Tragedy
of the Fourth
Crusade
Gabriel S. Sanchez, J.D.

T

he ill-fated Fourth Crusade to win
back Jerusalem for Christendom
resulted in a series of errors, misdeeds, and outright horrors that
drove a rift between East and West that continues to this day. Although it is commonplace
for contemporary Catholics to romanticize
aspects of every crusade undertaken, not
all were carried out with the same righteous
intentions as others. From nearly its inception,
the Fourth Crusade was destined for failure
and, despite the protestations of Pope Inno-

cent III, the endeavor quickly took a sinister
turn as both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox
Christians were victimized.
As there exists a vast array of literature on
the Fourth Crusade, this article will limit its
contents to a “bird’s eye view” with commentary on what the Crusade still means today
for the remnants of Christendom and the
possibility of reconciling the Great Schism
between Catholics and Orthodox that took
place in 1054 and continues to the present
day.
25

HOLY LAND

The Fraying of East/
West Relations
Tensions between Western and Eastern Christendom, on both an ecclesiastical and political level,
emerged in the final centuries of the first millennium.
Within the Church, which
had not yet fractured, differing theological, liturgical, and spiritual practices
planted the seeds for more
serious doctrinal disagreements, particularly as it concerned the papacy’s jurisdiction over the East. By 1054,
relations between Rome and
Constantinople, the capital
of the Byzantine Empire and
the spiritual center of Eastern Christianity, had deteriorated to the point where
mutual excommunications
of questionable authority
were issued. Despite sporadic attempts to heal the
rift and Rome maintaining
Gustave Dore. Dandolo Preaching the Crusade
better relations with nonGreek Eastern Christians,
the Great Schism splitting the Church into
where 60,000 Latin Catholics living in ConCatholics and Orthodox had begun.
stantinople were killed, sold into slavery to
On the political level, while the Byzantine
the Muslims, or forced to flee the city.
Empire (and its capital) remained the crown
The Building of a Crusade
jewel of Christendom going into the second
Upon ascending the papal throne in 1198,
millennium, its power had declined substanPope Innocent III issued the bull Post Mise­
tially after five centuries of war with the Musrabile (“Sadly After”). In it, he lamented the
lims. At the same time, the West had come
military setbacks suffered by Crusader states
into its own politically, socially, and economin and around the Holy Land and called for
ically. Although still considered “backwards”
a new crusade to take back Jerusalem. At the
by the Byzantines who saw themselves as
time, many Western states were preoccupied
the continuous heirs of the classical Roman
with their own problems, including an ongoEmpire, by the close of the 12th century,
ing
war between France and England. The
the Republic of Venice had become a major
Pope hoped to rouse the Western Europerival to Constantinople. Moreover, tensions
an powers to once again take up the sword
between Latins and Greeks living in the East
and head East. Although the call was largely
had given rise to violent outbreaks, including
the so-called “Massacre of the Latins” in 1182
26

The Angelus u July - August 2021

HOLY LAND

ignored at first, preparations for the Fourth
Crusade began between 1199-1201.
Under the eventual leadership of the Italian
Count Boniface of Montferrat, negotiations
began primarily with Venice to transport the
Crusader army. Prior military setbacks had
left commanders wary of making a land crossing to the Holy Land via Asia Minor, where
the Crusaders were likely to meet strong
resistance. Instead, work began to create a
large Venetian fleet to transport an estimated
33,500 troops to Egypt, conquering the Ayyubid Sultanate, and finally taking Jerusalem.
In order to complete this mammoth task, the
Venetians were forced to severely curtail their
other commercial dealings while diverting
considerable resources to manning and training the sailors who would transport the army.
Crusaders from all over Europe, including
many areas in France, arrived in Venice by
May 1202, albeit in much smaller numbers
than expected. With some choosing not to go
entirely and other Crusaders opting to find
transit from other ports, infighting broke out
between the Crusader Army and the Venetians, who were promised substantial payment
for supplying ships, sailors, and soldiers for
the expedition. Placed under the leadership of
Doge Enrico Dandolo, the Venetians demanded full compensation for their commitment to
the cause, something which proved impossible for the shorthanded Crusader Army.
Despite attempts to reach a solution,
including the Crusader Army practically
bankrupting itself trying to appease Venetian
demands, the nascent Crusade looked to be
on the brink of collapse. It was at this point
that Dandolo proposed an alternative solution
that would lead to eventual disaster.

The Crusade Loses Its Way
In addition to the Republic of Venice’s
growing rivalry with Constantinople, it had
also entered into hostilities with the port
of Zara in Dalmatia, which had repulsed
Venetian dominance by aligning with the
King of Hungary and Croatia. At the outset of the Crusade, Pope Innocent III had
warned, on pain of excommunication, that no

harm should befall the Christian populations
the Crusaders acquired, whether they were
Orthodox or Catholic. Zara, for its part, was
primarily Catholic. Even so, Dandolo proposed that the Crusaders divert their efforts
to Zara and use the spoils gained to pay off
its debt. And so, in November 1202, the Crusader Army arrived at Zara, laid siege to the
city, and engaged in rampant looting.
When the Pope learned of this atrocity,
he dispatched a letter excommunicating the
leadership and imploring the army to return
to its primary task. While these excommunications were eventually rescinded for the
non-Venetians who participated in the attack,
it is unclear how widely the leadership knew
of Pope Innocent III’s threat. Unsure what its
next move should be, the Crusaders remained
at Zara for the winter.
Meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire was facing its own turmoil. In 1195, Emperor Isaac
II Angelos was deposed and blinded by his
brother Alexios III Angelos. Rampant corruption in the Empire had led to political and
military leaders pilfering the treasury and
selling off Constantinople’s resources, including its armaments. Alexios IV Angelos, the
son of Isaac, sought protection of his brotherin-law, Philip of Swabia, who also happened
to be the cousin of Boniface of Montferrat.
Boniface, perhaps unwilling to participate in
the siege of Zara, had departed the Crusaders
to visit Philip. It was at this time that Alexios
IV had a proposition for Boniface.

Tragedy Unfolds
Desirous to avenge his father and take
Constantinople’s throne for himself, Alexios
IV promised to supply funds to the Crusaders; pay off the Venetians; commit 10,000
Byzantine troops to aid the Crusade; provide
naval transport to the army; and, astonishingly enough, place Constantinople under
the jurisdiction of the papacy. While some
historians remain skeptical that the Crusaders took Alexios IV’s promises seriously, the
army arrived in Constantinople in June 1203
and began to lay siege to the city the following month. Lacking military resolve despite
27

HOLY LAND

Tomb of Pope Innocent III in St. John Lateran, Rome.

his army outnumbering the Crusaders, the
Byzantine Emperor Alexios III retreated,
fled the city, and was quickly deposed. While
Isaac II returned to the throne, the Crusaders demanded that Alexios IV be named
co-emperor in order to ensure his extravagant promises were kept. Unsurprisingly, they
were not.
Due to the Empire’s financial difficulties,
Alexios IV ordered that religious objects,
including icons, be melted down so the silver, gold, and jewels that adorned them could
be used to pay the Crusaders. This shocking
display of iconoclasm caused massive unrest
in Constantinople, leaving Alexios IV unsure
if he could maintain his grip on power without the Crusaders. He also had need of the
army to help him ward off an assault from
the deposed emperor Alexios III, who had
amassed his own army in Adrianople. While
Alexios IV and the Crusaders were away
from the city, the citizenry rose up against
Constantinople’s remaining Latin residents,
an act which brought down the wrath of the
Venetians. In August 1203, they set fire to the
28

The Angelus u July - August 2021

city, leaving an estimated 100,000 Greek and
Muslim inhabitants homeless.
By January 1204, Isaac II had died, and
Alexios IV’s reign was under constant attack.
Alexios Doukas, a nobleman who was head
of the imperial finances, spearheaded further
Byzantine animus against the Latin occupiers. He used his influence to overthrow and
execute Alexios IV before taking the throne
as Alexios V. On April 8, 2014, Alexios V
and his army had repulsed the Crusaders.
Hindered by bad weather, the Venetians
were unable to use their ships to come to the
Crusaders’ aid. This military blow severely demoralized the Crusader Army. Again,
Innocent III sent word prohibiting further
military action against the Greek Orthodox in
Constantinople, but his letter was suppressed
by members of the clergy who had accompanied the Crusaders.
A few days later, weather conditions
improved, allowing a combined Crusader
and Venetian force to undertake a three-day
sack of Constantinople with murder, rape,
and pillaging becoming the order of the day.

HOLY LAND

While precise estimates are unknown, historians believe that many ancient and medieval
works of art and literature were destroyed.
Irreplaceable bronze works, including a statue
of Hercules, sculpted by Lysippos of the Court
of Alexander the Great, were melted down.
And again, despite Innocent III’s protestations, Constantinople’s holy sites, including
churches and monasteries, were vandalized,
with nuns sexually assaulted and clerics put
to the sword. The Venetians did, however,
manage to preserve some religious works,
sending them back West where they remain
to this day.

A Sorrowful Aftermath
In the months following the destruction of
Constantinople, many Crusader and Venetian
factions broke off for different destinations
with only a partial remnant reaching the Holy
Land. Innocent III, for his part, was filled
with shame over what had transpired during
the Crusade he had called six years prior.
Here are some of his words of lamentation:
How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no
matter how severely she is beset with afflictions
and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union
and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when
she has seen in the Latins only an example of
perdition and the works of darkness, so that she
now, and with reason, detests the Latins more
than dogs? As for those who were supposed to
be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their
own ends, who made their swords, which they
were supposed to use against the pagans, drip
with Christian blood, they have spared neither
religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed
incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes
of men. They have exposed both matrons and
virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the
sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking
open the imperial treasury and plundering the
goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid
their hands on the treasures of the churches and,
what is more serious, on their very possessions.
They have even ripped silver plates from the
altars and have hacked them to pieces among
themselves. They violated the holy places and
have carried off crosses and relics.

Empire of Constantinople established. Continuing hostilities with Muslim armies and
Byzantine states that avoided Latin rule weakened the Empire further. Nicean Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos took back the
city in 1261 and once again a Greek emperor reigned. But by this point it was too late.
Never again would Constantinople shine, and
on May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell to the
Turks. The Byzantine Empire, which had lasted for more than 1,000 years, was no more.

A Tragedy That Continues to This Day
While the Great Schism began in 1054,
it was surely cemented in April 1204 with
the sack of Constantinople. Efforts would
be made to heal this wound, including the
Council of Florence, but Greek antipathy
toward the Latins remained strong. With the
eventual loss of their empire and subjugation to Muslim rule, no substantial progress
toward reunion was possible. To this day,
Greek Orthodox Christians still speak of the
Fourth Crusade with opprobrium. Not only
did the Crusaders fail to take back Jerusalem,
but it also effectively destroyed a civilization
that had remained a bulwark against Islamic
incursions into Europe for centuries. Unsurprisingly, Muslim armies continued to press
their advantage westward before being dealt
substantial blows at the battles of Lepanto
and Austria.
To end on a dimly positive note, Pope
John Paul II, in solidarity with his predecessor Innocent III, offered two apologies to
the Greeks for what transpired in 1204. In
April 2004, Greek-Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew formally accepted the Pope’s apology. Even so, the tragedy of 800 years ago
reverberates to the present day.

In the aftermath of the Crusade, the Byzantine Empire was partitioned and the Latin
29

Gerusalemme
Liberata?
The Holy Land after World War I
John Rao, D.Phil. Oxon.

30

The Angelus u July - August 2021

HOLY LAND

I

t was with the above words, the title of
Torquato Tasso’s epic poem of 1581 on
the liberation of Jerusalem in the First
Crusade, that the Kingdom of Italy illuminated state buildings in Rome to celebrate
its British ally’s capture of the Holy City from
the Ottoman Empire during World War One.
And indeed there were many Catholics that
December of 1917 who were also ready to see
the hand of God in this particular victory of
the Entente over the Central Powers. To them,
such a triumph meant that with Palestine in

Capture and occupation of Palestine by
the British.

the Ottoman Empire, but how many Catholics
there are in the entire world. (Cited by Silvio
Ferrari, “Pio XI, la Palestina, e I Luoghi Santi,”
pp. 909-924, in Achille Ratti, Pape Pie XI, Ecole
Francaise de Rome, 1996, p. 909.)

Unfortunately, the Great War was actually
to prove to be the catalyst of a twentieth century Jerusalem and Palestinian nightmare that
still frightfully shakes the peace of the globe
in 2021. This is due to the fact that Britain
made not one but three plans for the postwar
future of the Arab region of the enemy Otto-

4th Sussex Regiment marching through Bethlehem, December 9, 1917.

Western Christian hands, control of the Holy
Places, which had been given by the Turkish
authorities to the Orthodox in 1757, could
now be returned to representatives of the
Roman Church. As Pasquale Baldi wrote in
La Questione dei Luoghi Santi of 1919:
Today, the improbable has become a fact;
today, due to a prodigious combination of events
that we regard as providential, Italy, France, and
England, three nations that took part in the Holy
Wars, hold Jerusalem under their dominion.
Today, then, the Catholics of the whole world
can expect that the hour of justice may finally
sound. Today, they can finally hope that for the
Sanctuaries of Palestine the splendors of the era
of Constantine may be renewed. . .Today it no
longer matters how many Greeks there are in

man Empire. Worse still, all of these plans
rudely conflicted with one another and could
not therefore bode anything but long-term
trouble for Palestine and the Middle East as
a whole; trouble that almost immediately saw
understandable Catholic hope for control of
the Holy Places take second place to fear of a
much more worrisome threat.
Pasquale Baldi built his hopes upon the
Sykes-Picot Agreement of May of 1916, as
modified by the events of 1917-1918. That
agreement had envisaged a joint Anglo-Franco-Russian responsibility over the Arab
regions of the Ottoman Empire. The Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917, and then
the Soviet signing of the Treaty of Brest-Li31

HOLY LAND

The original letter from Balfour to Rothschild.

tovsk with the Germans the following year,
removed the chief defender of Orthodoxy
from the consortium of future guardians of
the Middle East, leaving Britain and France
as sole custodians of the region. It was from
their cooperative Western hands that justice
for the Roman Church’s rights was expected.
The Balfour Declaration, outlining a second British plan for a major part of the Middle
East, posed the new danger. This was contained in a letter of November 2nd, 1917 from
the British Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour
(1848-1930), to Lord Walter Rothschild (18681937), meant for transmission to the Zionist
Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, led
by Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952). It committed the United Kingdom to working with the
Zionist Movement to create a “national Jewish
homeland in Palestine.”
Before that Declaration, Pope Benedict XV
(1914-1922), looking forward to Western control of the Middle East, discounted any danger to Christian interests from the existence
of small Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine. Unlike Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the
founder of the Zionist Movement, who did not
find St. Pius X (1903-1914) in any way recep32

The Angelus u July - August 2021

tive to his plans, Benedict, in May of 1917,
gave a friendly welcome to Nahem Sokolow
(1859-1936), another major Zionist leader. He
told him he thought that Jews and Catholics
would be “good friends” in the Holy Land.
But after Balfour’s letter, as Cardinal Pietro
Gasparri (1852-1934), Benedict’s Secretary
of State, explained to the Belgian Ambassador to the Holy See, the danger that Turkish
rule would be replaced by “the constitution
of a Jewish State in Palestine,” was perceived
as being a deadly blow to Christian rights in
the region.
Both the Sykes-Picot Agreement as well as
a Jewish “homeland” or “State” were distressing to the overwhelmingly Arab population
of Palestine, whose postwar future had been
envisaged very differently by the Hashemite
Family, the third “partner” of the British in
their varied plans for the post-Ottoman Middle East. That third plan was actually the
earliest in time chronologically, sealed as it
was by an agreement concluded in 1915 with
Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi (1854-1931), the
Hashemite leader and Sheriff of Mecca, and
his two sons, Abdullah (1882-1951) and Faisal (1885-1933). It was this pact that unleashed

HOLY LAND

the revolt that was supposed to ensure the creation of an Arab Kingdom in the region under
Hashemite rule. But how could Palestine figure into that Kingdom if it were simultaneously going to be under joint Franco-British
guidance and also provide a national home
for Jews as well?
Rome’s fears for the Holy Land, awakened
through the Balfour Declaration, were further intensified due to the accord sealed by
British Prime Minister Lloyd George (18631945) with French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) of 1918 and validated by
the Supreme Allied Council in San Remo
in April, 1920, awarding sole control of Palestine to Great Britain. This decision would
inevitably strengthen the supporters of the
Anglo-Zionist agreement. And given that
Greece at that time looked as though it could
gain possession of Constantinople, and that
one major segment of the Anglican Church
was becoming more and more friendly theologically with the Orthodox theologically,
the Vatican worried that an Anglo-Orthodox
union might use British power in Palestine to
crush Roman claims to guidance of the Holy
Places. Catholics would lose footing in the
region in two distinct ways.
Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938), the “Father” of
the Republic of Turkey, soon dashed Greek
designs on Constantinople, eliminating one
of Rome’s fears. Nevertheless, the Vatican
intervened as strongly as possible to try to
block the League of Nations’ confirmation of
Britain’s so-called “Mandate” to sole rule in
Palestine in 1922. The Mandate articles under
consideration gave to Britain the task of creating political, economic, and administrative
conditions for the constitution of a national
Jewish home in Palestine (Article 2), establishing a Jewish entity to collaborate with the
Mandate authority in all questions relevant to
the development of Jewish interests and the
execution of works of public utility (Articles
4, 11), and favoring Jewish immigration, settlement, and acquisition of Palestinian citizenship (Articles 6, 7).
Cardinal Gasparri, in his observations
to the Council of the League of Nations of

May 15th, 1922, explained that the Holy See
had no objection to equal rights for Jews, but
the articles in question went beyond equality, giving the migrants a special position to
the detriment of what were referred to as the
“non-Jewish communities existing in Palestine”—namely, 83% of the current population.
The Secretary of State noted that Article 22
of the Treaty of Versailles spoke of Mandates
as having a “sacred, civilizing mission.” And
yet such a goal would seem to be trampled if
the present, indigenous, and overwhelmingly
majority population were subordinated to a
new, minority national group. “Civilization”
would be equated with exploitation.
Vatican objections were powerful enough
to cause the League to delay approval of
the Mandate. Chaim Weizmann, by then
the head of the World Zionist Organization,
found that he could now not even arrange a
meeting with Pope Benedict—who apparently was upset by the way in which his earlier
encounter with Sokolow had been used to
exaggerate his approval of Jewish migration
to the Holy Land—to negotiate a change of
policy. Yet, despite this setback, Sir Herbert
Samuel (1870-1963), the British High Commissioner for Palestine, did meet with Benedict’s successor, Pius XI (1922-1939), on July
6th, 1922, and somehow succeeded in calming Rome’s fears sufficiently to allow for the
League’s final approval of the Mandate without further Vatican intervention.
There were two schools of thought in Rome
regarding the situation in interwar Palestine,
whose basic premises can be followed in the
pages of the two most authoritative Roman
“mouthpieces”: the Osservatore Romano and La
Civiltà Cattolica, A minority judged Zionism
positively, considering the return of the Jews
to the Holy Land to be providential; a passage towards their general conversion, and a
sign of the imminence of the Second Coming.
Supporters of this view called the conversion
of Theodore Herzl’s son a “logical” consequence of the return to Zion. Opponents contested just how logical this conversion actually was, given the vehemence with which it
33

HOLY LAND

was denounced within the Yishuv, the Zionist
Community in Palestine.
The majority view, favored by La Civiltà
Cattolica, was extremely hostile to the entire
Zionist Movement. It continued to see the Jewish Diaspora as a punishment of the People of
Israel for Christ’s Crucifixion. Moreover, the
Jewish migration into Palestine was attacked
for its blatant secularism, and its consequent
promotion of a modernization of the region
destructive of the sacred and moral character
of the Holy Land. In an article of 1937 enti-

Jews at the Western Wall

Immigration to Israel

tled “The Jewish Question and Zionism,” La
Civiltà Cattolica condemned the Movement
as nothing other than a third example of secularist Jewish effort to dominate the world,
the occupation of the globe’s most sacred
space accompanying its monopolization of
the capitalist financial world and its role in
promoting revolutionary Bolshevism. “There
is no disguising the fact—the British representative to the Vatican admitted in 1923—
that the jubilations which greeted the British
occupation of Palestine has given place to a
noticeable uncertainty and suspicion; a feeling, too, that there was greater liberty for the
Church and religion under the regime of the
Turks.” British Mandate rule in Palestine in
the interwar period was plagued by an inde34

The Angelus u July - August 2021

cision leading to drastic changes of policy that
ended by alienating every party concerned.
Pro-Zionism characterized its approach in the
1920s, so much so that in 1924 the Jerusalem
correspondent of the Osservatore Romano complained that Europeans were underestimating the seriousness of the efforts of the Jews
to gain full control of Palestine. The public
authorities of the Yishuv, aided as they were by
the World Zionist Organization, were said to
be so sophisticated that the Arab opposition
“would not be able to arrest their advance by

one step.” This warning was confirmed by the
Italian Consul General in 1927, who advised
his government to work together openly with
the Jews, since they would, without a doubt,
be the future leaders of the Holy Land.
Riots in 1929 brought about a British
reconsideration of its policy in Palestine in a
way that first looked to limiting Jewish immigration and settlement. Pressure from the
World Zionist Organization caused the United Kingdom to abandon this change of policy,
sparking the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939.
Suppression of that rebellion caused the Mandate authorities to cultivate the services of the
officially illegal Yishuv military defense organization, the Haganah. But with the revolt subdued, and the chief Moslem Arab leader, the

HOLY LAND

Grand Mufti ( Judge) of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseni (1897-1974), in exile in
Berlin, British plans then changed drastically
anew. They now envisaged an immediate end
to Jewish immigration, and the creation within ten years of an independent democratic
Palestine that the Arab population, still 70%
strong, would unavoidably control.
Hence, just at the beginning of the Second
World War, the Jewish settlers, friendly to the
British in their conflict with Germany, were
to turn against them inside Palestine. This
meant not only potential trouble from the
Haganah, under the control of the Old Zionists, but also from the Irgun, the paramilitary
force of the much more militant Revisionist
Zionists, founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky (18801940). Both these Zionist forces were to cause
problems for the Mandate authorities, the
Arab population, and one another, beyond
the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and
right up until the present day.
In 1943, in the midst of the war, Monsignor
Domenico Tardini (1888-1961), the assistant
for external affairs under Pope Pius XII’s
Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione (1877-1944), reaffirmed Rome’s position
unambiguously: “The Holy See,” he said, “has
never approved of the project of making Palestine a Jewish home.” He also made it clear that
the Vatican disapproved of suggestions for
partitioning the region, given that there would
be Christian minorities in both a Jewish and a
Moslem Palestine. Rather than either of these
options, the Holy See preferred that the British remain in control as the Mandate authority. That still seemed to be the best guarantee
of a “free Jerusalem” where Christians could
worship God with some semblance of security. But what if a continued British presence
in the area were to prove to be a pipe dream?
That was a distinct possibility. World War
One had already convinced the Papacy that
Europe was dedicated to its self-destruction
and that the future of the Roman Catholic
Church had to be secured through its worldwide development. It was this sober assessment that lay behind Rome’s more conscious
commitment to ensuring an indigenous epis-

copacy and clergy throughout the globe, Palestine included. It was this judgment that also
caused the Holy See to befriend the national
movements that it deemed more and more
inevitable, and to find ways to steer them
from potential union with purely secularist
forces, especially Marxist parties. Rome’s
anti-Mandate intervention in the early 1920s
had stressed concern for the exploitation of
the majority Arab population in Palestine—the
exact same complaint that this community’s
own representatives in London had simultaneously expressed. In the interwar period,
both the Latin Patriarch, Msgr. Luigi Barlassina (1872-1947), and Eastern Catholic prelates like Bishop Gregorios Hajjar (d. 1940),
favored an alliance with the Arab Moslems
in a joint, religious-focused, anti-Zionist and
anti-Marxist union.
As the war came to an end, the thought that
support for a religion-friendly, Arab-dominated Palestine might be a suitable guarantee of
a Gerusalemme Liberata after all was beginning
to take root. Little could anyone in the still
Catholic pontificate of Pius XII imagine that
in the not-too-distant future, the dominant
opinion within the Roman Church would
view secularist Pluralism as the best support
for the freedom of the Christian world, and
the Old Covenant as an equal with the New—
and this, just as Jewish and Arab Moslem
religious revival were reaching their peak.
Little could anyone then have foreseen that
the Vatican would consider prayer at the Holy
Places as “as non-essential” as prayer anywhere else under the tyrannical reign of the
COVID God—regardless of who might be in
control of them.

35

Jerusalem, around 1890 - 1900

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Meditations on
St. John’s Gospel
Chapter Seven
Pater Inutilis

S

t. John henceforth will present us Our
Lord during the last year of His life,
beginning with His third journey to
Jerusalem, according to our evangelist. Our Lord’s altercations with the Jews
during this sojourn are related in chapters 7
to 10, where we hear Him stating the divine
origin of His teaching and therefore the obligation to accept it.
Gone are the days when in Jerusalem
“many believed in his name, seeing his signs
which he did.” We have just seen that of His
very disciples many found His sayings hard
to accept and walked no more with Him,
and even an apostle is now a devil. Now Calvary is in the picture: the world hates Jesus;
the Jews want to kill Him and send ministers
to apprehend Him; His own brothers do not
believe in Him.
Parenthetically, it may be the moment
to talk more about Our Lord’s “brothers,”
already mentioned when, after the wedding
at Cana, He went down to Capharnaum with
“his mother and his brethren and his disciples.” Given that “a prophet hath no honor
in his own country,” “his own” knowing him
too well just as one of them and not acting as
38

The Angelus u July - August 2021

a prophet, Jesus’ brothers do not believe in
Him. This, of course, will not be true of all
of them. Who are these brothers? For a start,
they are not children of Mary and Joseph.
God had wanted that “a virgin. . . bring forth
a son” and had blessed her vow of virginity,
“‘How shall this be done, because I know not
man?’ And the angel answering said to her:
‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee. . .’”
St. Jerome had no difficulties in showing that
the Bible readily uses “brethren” for relatives
and kinsfolk other than siblings of the same
parents, e.g., Abraham and Lot, uncle and
nephew, are called “brothers” and the Church
has gladly defined the perpetual virginity of
Mary.
Jesus’ ‘‘brethren” are His cousins. We do
not know how many siblings St. Joseph may
have had (but one brother was called Cleophas) nor therefore how many cousins Jesus
had. Mary of Cleophas was the mother, notably, of St. James the less, called elsewhere
“James of Alpheus.” Most likely, Cleophas
married Alpheus’ widow. The Blessed Virgin
Mary then could easily have a sister-in-law
named Mary. James, therefore “the brother of
the Lord,” is one of the Apostles; so too Jude

SACRED SCRIPTURE

the “brother of James.” “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James
and Joseph and Jude and Simon?” These are
not amongst those who believed not in Him,
or even thought He had become mad.
His brothers, not believing in Him, want
Him to present Himself in Jerusalem grandly.
They probably expect Him not to be received,
to fail and be disillusioned. Jesus will not do
their bidding—“I go not up to this festival day,”
as you would have Me: manifestly. But go He
would, “not openly, but, as it were, in secret.”
There He is very much on the minds and in
the mouths of the Jews, with opinion upon
Him being divided, but nobody could openly support Him “for fear of the Jews,” fearing
reprisals unto “excommunication.” Yet He
was born to “give testimony to the truth,” and
so “about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up
into the temple, and taught.”
What He teaches is grand: He has been
sent by God, His words are the words of
God. He did not study in any rabbinical
school, but received directly from God: “My
doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me.”
Those of “good will,” who want to do God’s

will, will see that His teaching is of God; but
of these Jews who seek to kill Him “none of
you keepeth the law.” They cannot even claim
to “know God”: “He that sent me is true,
whom you know not.” But Jesus has come
from Him, has been sent by Him, and brings
His words. “I know Him, because I am from
Him, and He hath sent Me.” This they should
know because Jesus seeks only “the glory of
him that sent him” and works miracles showing that He is sealed of God. This should be
ample evidence for those of good will: “But
of the people many believed in him and said:
When the Christ cometh, shall he do more
miracles than these which this man doth?”
His teaching is divine. “Of that multitude
therefore, when they had heard these words
of his, some said: This is the prophet indeed.
Others said: This is the Christ.” The ministers
sent to arrest Him would not do so: “Never
did man speak like this man,” they explain.
But those intent upon His destruction feed
their antagonism even upon His miracles.
“One work I have done, and you all wonder.”
Our Lord deigns again to explain that miracles are not breaking the Sabbath rest, but
39

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Jesus Raises the Widow’s Son at Naim

these Jews are not of good will. They gainsay when He accuses them of wanting to kill
Him though this is of general knowledge. To
refuse Him, they quibble: the Christ is the
son of David and to be born in Bethlehem.
Further inquiry would have shown this to be
Jesus’ case. He comes from Galilee, whence
no prophet comes.
Nowhere is it written that a prophet cannot come from Galilee, and indeed Jonas did.
Those who do believe in Him are despicable: “Hath any of the rulers believed in him,
or of the Pharisees? But this multitude, that
knoweth not the law, are accursed.” Anyone
who would defend him must himself be a Galilean—only a Galilean would. They are hardening their hearts, their blindness is becoming
complete. This will be more and more obvious
throughout the remaining disputations of this
“third visit” to Jerusalem.
With Calvary looming larger, Christ invites
to Himself with greater insistence: He “cries
out.” “And on the last and great day of the
40

The Angelus u July - August 2021

festivity, Jesus stood and cried saying: If any
man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” A
thirst, of course, for spiritual drink: wisdom,
grace, life. These are Our Lord’s to give. “He
that believeth in me, as the scripture saith: Out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
Believing in Him, one imbibes His Spirit,
now in him a fountain of life—the Spirit which
God does not give by measure, but abundantly—“rivers,” overflowing and enriching many.
“The knowledge of a wise man shall abound
like a flood, and his counsel continueth like
a fountain of life.” “Now this he said of the
Spirit which they should receive who believed
in him,” explains our inspired writer. “For as
yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus
was not yet glorified.” That is, the Holy Ghost
could not be given so abundantly, manifestly and universally until Christ’s resurrection
and ascension, making it “expedient for us
that He go.” Like Nicodemus, let us first want
to hear Him.

Luther’s
True Face
by Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, SSPX
October 31, 2017 marked the 500th year anniversary of the famous episode (and birth
of Protestant revolution), when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Church of
Wittenberg. Naturally, the revolutionaries have every reason to celebrate. But what is utterly
shocking is that Catholics have joined their celebration. Pope Francis participated in the 500th
anniversary of this revolution. This “is quite simply a scandal” (p.12). And why so? Why is this
man’s action simply unacceptable?
“The much dwelt on cliché of Luther as ‘an obscure monk who rose from his cell,’ one day
in 1517 to overturn Christianity is the creation of superficial (19th century) and self-serving
(Protestant revolution) literature, and couldn’t be farther from the truth” (p.37). If so, what is the
truth?
Written by French scholar and clergyman, Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, of the Society of Saint Pius
X, Luther’s True Face provides an in-depth look at the “Father of Protestantism.” More than just
a theological analysis, Fr. Gleize’s study offers crucial historical details about Luther’s life, the
times in which he lived, and the state of the Catholic Church in the early 16th century.
Also included in this first English edition of Luther’s True Face is an introduction by Bishop
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, as well as several appendices, and a copy of Pope Pius XI’s
landmark encyclical Mortalium Animos (on religious unity).
While Fr. Gleize approaches his subject matter through a Thomistic lens and delves deeply into
Luther’s doctrine, this volume is accessible to all Catholics who wish to learn about the origins
of Protestantism and come away with a deeper understanding of what continues to divide
Catholics and Protestants to this very day.
STK# 8698. $16.95

www.angeluspress.org | 1-800-966-7337

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

INTERVIEW

An Interview

With Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

What is your
background?
I grew up in Louisville,
Kentucky, where I attended
an independent traditional
Catholic school for grades
1-12. Then, I spent five years
at the University of Louisville
to get a Masters in Engineering in 1998. After two years
working in the field, I started
my seminary formation and
was ordained in 2006.
When did you join
the seminary? Which
seminary? Were
you surprised of
the appointment?
I was assigned to Holy
Cross Seminary in Australia three years after I was
ordained. Both Fr. MacPherson, the current rector of Holy
42

The Angelus u July - August 2021

Cross, and I were stationed
in Saint Mary’s. It was the
summer of 2009 and we had
both traveled up to Winona
for the ordinations, but from
different directions. Shortly
after I arrived, he pulled me
aside and told me I was being
transferred to the seminary
in Australia! It was definitely
not something I had anticipated but the practical circumstances were unambiguous:
Fr. Griego had been my superior in Saint Mary’s for two
years before being appointed rector at Holy Cross, he
requested my transfer the following year, and the request
was granted.

Could you tell us
an anecdote you
wish to share?
After I learned that I was
being transferred to the seminary in Australia, I called the
seminary to ask for details
about the assignment. No
one answered the phone, so
I left a message, something
like, “Hello, this is Fr. Paul
Robinson calling from the
USA. I wanted to speak to Fr.
Griego about my transfer to
Holy Cross, so if he could give
me a call back, that would
be great.” Well, Fr. Griego
was away and none of the
community knew that I was
coming! You can imagine the
questions and head-scratching that this message caused,
especially among the priests,

PRIESTLY LIFE

who were wondering if one
of them was getting replaced.
Here is another anecdote
I learned from Fr. Iscara,
who had been also assigned
to the Holy Cross Seminary
years earlier. He had asked
Fr. Schmidberger, the current Superior General, how
long he should expect to teach
there, and his answer was at
least 10 years, mentioning
time required to develop, stability, and all that. Well! 10
years was the time I myself
would spend in Australia, but
dear Fr. Iscara spent more
time chasing after an Australian visa than teaching there.
Before the year was over, he
was transferred to Mexico,
although his next move to the
U.S. Seminary proved more
lasting. . . he is still there after
28 glorious years. That’s how
it works with SSPX assignments!
Was this move to the
antipodes a promotion
or did you feel you had
your wings clipped?
To be honest, it felt like a
wing clipping on both sides
of the ocean. Before I went,
I discovered that I was to
be the sixth priest at a seminary that only had about ten
major seminarians and twenty minor seminarians! Once I
arrived in Australia, the reality completely lived up to the
expectations. We were out in
the bush with little apostolate, the duties were light, and
the seminary seemed to be
holding onto its existence by
a thread. What a contrast to
my three years immersed in

the work at that thriving traditional Catholic metropolis
that we call Saint Mary’s!
The greatest challenge, at
the beginning, was supernaturalizing my perspective of
an assignment that, on the
natural level, did not seem to
make sense. I had just spent
three years in the SSPX’s busiest district, I had tasted the
frenetic pace of the apostolate, and I knew that so many
of my confreres were there
laboring away in the trenches. Meanwhile, here I was in
a remote, quiet, bucolic setting in Australia, sometimes
not leaving the building for
an entire month, teaching
classes of three seminarians
or two or even one, admiring
exotic birds and the stunning
Southern Hemisphere night
sky, and certainly wondering
if I might not be put to better
use elsewhere.

I knew that the spiritual
view was an entirely different one. It does not quantify
man hours and seek for a most
efficient and equal distribution of resources. It rather
sees the formation of priests
as the most important work,
one that ultimately results in
the salvation of more souls
than the labors of the active
apostolate, precisely because
priests are necessary for those
labors. I could almost say that
my new assignment was forcing me to make my priorities
more like those of St. Pius
X and Archbishop Lefebvre!
Both of them made the formation of priests their highest
priority.
In the end, all priests
understand that they are giving their lives when they are
ordained. They are not giving
their lives to do this or that;
they are giving their lives
43

INTERVIEW

to do whatever Providence
ordains for them. From this
perspective, any merely natural assessment of the value
of one’s work or one’s assignment is meaningless. The
fact that a thing is assigned
is what makes it valuable, not
the fact that it is “important”
or “unimportant” work.
What I cherish most when
I look back on my ten years
in that monastic setting is the
fact that I was able to provide
weekly spiritual direction for
eight seminarians who went
on to become priests.
What’s the most
advantageous thing
you gained from being
a seminary teacher?
Teaching; passing the heritage of doctrine and life; contemplation; seclusion. . .
You ask for one advantage,
but there were many. The

first and most important was
a deeper prayer life. I have
that strong American tendency towards activism, which
results in a priesthood where
prayer is often not sought for
its own sake, but is performed
as a perfunctory duty. Life at
a quiet seminary forced me
to pray at a slower pace, to
choose prayer and, yes, to relish it.
The seminary also deepened my ability to study. I
had always loved reading, but
I had never had the occasion
to become immersed in a subject, where you assemble all
of the writings you can on a
given topic, read them and
take notes on them until you
reach the point that you are
an expert on the subject. Preparing for seminary classes,
especially ones that are taught
for multiple years, provides
an opportunity to do all of

the work necessary to master
a topic. The fruit of this work
is clarity, a better ability to
communicate, as well as more
material for contemplation.
Besides this, I ended up
using a fair bit of my free time
to write. It is a very different skill from researching,
but it is related, because it
involves translating a mental word into a spoken word.
What I learned, through writing a book at the seminary,
is that writing is one of those
skills where “practice makes
perfect.” You attain a greater facility for collecting your
thoughts and composing them
in a text simply by doing it
over and over. This facility,
in turn, reaps dividends in the
constant communication that
a priest must undertake, from
his sermons, to his emails, to
his Angelus interviews.

Holy Cross Seminary, Goulburn, Australia
44

The Angelus u July - August 2021

PRIESTLY LIFE

Was your transfer to
an active apostolate
traumatic?
It was pretty brutal. I
taught my final class at the
seminary on a Monday (they
were still in the midst of their
Southern Hemisphere school
year), arrived in Denver on
Tuesday, visited the Archbishop of Denver with our District Superior on Wednesday,
and then began my new triple
charge of prior, principal, and
parish priest on Thursday.
There was no real transition
of power process and I had to
learn all of the ways of the priory and parish through experience rather than instruction.
How did your long
years of teaching
prepare you for the
present apostolate?
Well, a priest needs to
know how to pray and communicate, the main benefits I
mentioned above. I failed to
mention the many missionary
travels that I was able to make
in Oceania and Asia, which
provided a broader experience.
What my seminary professorship did not and could not
prepare me for was the duties
of an intensive leadership
role, administrating a parish
and school. There could have
been a more graduated stepping into my current duties.
I also have to mention how
different my own country and
the world at large look after
ten years being away from
them. It was during that time
that the smartphone took
over everyone’s lives (I did

Father with Dominican Sisters in Samoa.

not even have a cell phone
for most of my time in Australia!). There seems to be
more restlessness, insecurity
and meaninglessness today
than in the world I left. As
life becomes increasingly artificial and less human, we do
not have the same strength as
before to undertake normal
human goals such as pursuing
a career and starting a family. Our technology makes
us psychologically weak and
society is waging open war
against the family. This poses
a problem for our youth and
also for the priests who are
meant to encourage them to
embrace the state in life that
God desires for them.
Do you have any
final last words?
At some point dur ing
my ten years at Holy Cross
when, to be honest, I was
chafing under the monotony

of a humdrum assignment, I
decided that I needed to act as
if I would be stationed there
for the rest of my life. This
helped me to make the best
of the seminary environment
and invest my time in deeper
studies and projects. Now that
I am back in the apostolate, I
am able to see how important
that decision was for my current pastoral work.
In the end, the priest of
the Society of the St. Pius X
has to be extremely flexible,
because he could be asked to
go or do just about anything.
The important thing is that he
grow in whatever assignment
he is placed. There is an edifice of holiness to be built and
it must be constructed using
the materials at hand. The
materials are always there,
but they must be put to use.

45

SPIRITUALITY

A Pilgrimage
to the
Heavenly
Jerusalem
By a Benedictine Monk

F

rom Christian antiquity until the present the land graced by the human
presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ has
witnessed many pilgrims. All seek to
receive a grace or some divine assistance in
life. Although they all arrive at the very place
where Our Lord was born, crucified and rose
from the dead, they only see a material place
occupied by real human beings, both good
and bad. They must make an act of faith in
this Holy Land, sanctified by the blood of
Christ, to receive the graces that God wants
to grant them.
Both in the Old and the New Testament
the Holy Land was a figure of the Heavenly
Kingdom. This pilgrimage may be seen as a
symbol of our earthly existence seeking the
way to the Kingdom of Heaven. St. Gregory of
Nyssa, in his commentary of the life of Moses,
compares the pilgrimage of our life with the
ascent of Moses to the top of Mount Sinai and
46

The Angelus u July - August 2021

the forty years journey in the desert seeking
the Promised Land.
In the book of Exodus, God invited Moses
to the top of Mt. Sinai. This was a frightful
place with terrible lightning, thunder, and
the thick darkness of a cloud. St. Gregory
explains that when the soul first seeks God,
he escapes the darkness of sin by embracing
the light of faith which leads to a virtuous life
that St. John calls “. . .the light shining in the
darkness.”
As the soul advances towards God through
contemplation, he realizes that in spite of the
light of faith, there remains the very thick
darkness of mystery. He must go beyond what
the five senses offer to his intelligence and
even what the intelligence itself thinks it sees.
It is precisely in the presence of this reality
of the Invisible and the Unknowable that the
soul will “see” God, albeit a hidden and invisible God. The light of faith and the darkness

SPIRITUALITY

of unknowing moves Moses
to seek God even more and he
asks to see His Majesty. God
Himself responds that no man
can see Him here below and
live, but that He would permit
Moses to glimpse His Majesty
from behind. He tells Moses
to go to a “place” and in that
place he would find “the rock”
and in the rock he would find
a “hollow spot.” In this cavelike space in the rock, God
would cover the opening with
His hand while He passed
by and after taking away His
hand, Moses could glimpse at
the “back of God.” Moses was
transformed by this vision
of God that he found in the
darkness of faith. When he
returned to the camp of the
chosen people, rays of light
were shining from his face
to the point of frightening all
that saw him. What his soul
contemplated was reflected
materially on his face, the reflection of the
Majesty of God.
To summarize the explanation given by
St. Gregory, the “place” that Moses is to enter
is compared to the baptized soul leaving the
slavery of sin, like the chosen people left the
land of Egypt. The “Rock ” upon which he
walks is Christ Who is the Way that offers
solid footing, and the “hollow space” in the
Rock is where we dwell in Christ. It is our
habitual union with God by the practice of
virtue, the habit of receiving the sacraments
and continual prayer. God is pure spirit and
He has no front or back, neither does He have
a hand with which He covers things. These
material elements symbolize the humanity
of Christ by which we are able to see God
through the veil of faith.
Moses received the commandments and
saw the “back of God.” Had he seen the face
of God, he would have already reached his
destination. Seeing God only from behind,

he was obliged to follow the
path of God. He was to follow
God by practicing the commandments and running in
the way of perfection of God’s
law. His life was transformed
into a ray of light in order to
help others follow the way of
perfection. He then began his
long pilgrimage of forty years
through the desert in order to
reach the Promised Land.
In the desert, his battle
intensified. The pilgrims that
he was leading began to bitterly complain of nothing to
drink or eat. God provided for
them with a stream of water
from the rock and bread from
heaven called Manna. These
pilgrims continued to complain. God permitted poisonous serpents to bite them and
they finally asked for God’s
mercy. He told Moses to make
a brazen snake and nail it to
a tall post. If they would look
upon this serpent they would be healed from
the poison. The water from the rock, the
bread from heaven and the brazen serpent
that looks poisonous, but instead of inflicting
death restores life to those about to die; all of
these events represent Our Lord Jesus Christ.
All of the battles fought by the chosen people
in the desert represent the spiritual battles
that every soul must undergo in order to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven.
We are all wayfarers in the dark battleground of this life and we must make the pilgrimage to our heavenly fatherland. Although
we flee from the darkness of sin and vice, we
are not afraid of the darkness of faith where
we can contemplate the beauty of God in the
surrounding cloud of darkness and mystery.

47

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

The Pass

The 1
Briefly, I would like to try to
explain what it seems to me our
course of action should be in the
face of these sad developments
taking place in the Church. It
seems to me that we can compare
this agony the Church is suffering
today to the Passion of Our Lord
Jesus Christ. You see how astonished the Apostles themselves were
when Our Lord was taken and
bound after the kiss of Judas. He is
taken away. He is clothed in a scarlet robe, mocked, beaten, weighed
down with the Cross. And the
Apostles run away; they are scandalized. It is not possible that He
Whom Peter proclaimed: “Thou
art the Christ, the Son of God”—
can be reduced to this plight,
this humiliation, this destruction.
It cannot be. They run away.
Only the Virgin Mary, with St. John
and some women remain with Our Lord
and keep the faith. They will not abandon
Him. They know that Our Lord is truly
God, but they also know that He is man.
It is precisely this union of the divinity
with the humanity of Our Lord that poses
extraordinary difficulties. Our Lord in fact
did not want to be merely man; He wanted
48

The Angelus u July - August 2021

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

ion of the Church

1982 Ordination Sermon
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

to be a man like us, with all the results of sin
yet without sin, apart from sin; but He wanted to accept all the consequences: sadness,
fatigue, suffering, thirst, hunger, death. Yes,
right up to His death, Our Lord embodied
this extraordinary thing that so scandalized
the Apostles, as it indeed scandalized many
others who turned their backs on Our Lord
and did not believe in the divinity of Our
Lord.
Throughout the history of the Church,
one comes across these people who are so
surprised at the weakness of Our Lord that
they cannot believe He is God. This was the
case with Arius. Arius said no, it won’t do,
that man cannot be God, because He said He
was less than His Father, that His Father was
greater than He. He is therefore less than His
Father. He is therefore not God. And then Our
Lord said that astonishing thing, “My soul is
sorrowful, even unto death.” How could He,
with the Beatific Vision, seeing God in His
human soul, and thus far more glorious than
weak, far more eternal than temporal, His
soul already in eternity and blessed, yet here
He is, saying, “My soul is sorrowful, even unto
death,” and goes on to utter those astonishing words we could never imagine on the lips
of Our Lord, “My God, my God, why hast
Thou abandoned Me?” Hence the scandal,
alas, which spreads among weak souls. Arius
takes practically the entire Church with him
in saying this Man is not God.
Others, on the other hand, go the other
way and say that perhaps everything Our

Lord endured, spilling blood, the wounds,
the Cross, all that was imaginary. They were
external phenomena but not real. Rather
like the archangel Raphael, when he went
with Tobias and later revealed to him, “‘You
thought I was eating when I had dinner with
you, but I am nourished with a spiritual nourishment.” The archangel Raphael did not have
a body like that of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He
was not born of an earthly mother, as our
Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. Was Our
Lord an illusion like that and only appeared
to eat, but did not really eat, or appear to suffer but did not really suffer? There were those
who denied the human nature of Our Lord
Jesus Christ: the Monophysites, the Monothelites, who denied the human nature and the
human will of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything about Him was God (they claimed), and
everything that seemed to happen was only
an illusion.
So you see what happens to those who are
scandalized by reality and truth. Let me make
a comparison with the Church of today. We
thought the Church was truly divine, that she
could never deceive herself or deceive us.
Well, it is true, the Church is divine;
she cannot lose the truth. The Church will
always be the guardian of truth. But she is also
human. The Church is human and indeed
more human than Our Lord Jesus Christ was.
Our Lord could not sin. He is the Holy One,
the Just One par excellence.
The Church, if she is divine and truly
divine, transmits to us all the things of God
49

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

“Are we then required to follow
error because it comes from
someone in authority? No more
than we should obey parents
who are unworthy and ask us
to do unworthy things, no more
should we obey those who ask
us to abandon our Faith and to
abandon all Tradition. This is out
of the question. Oh, of course, all
this is a mystery, a great mystery,
this union of the divine with the
human.”

50

The Angelus u July - August 2021

especially the Holy Eucharist—eternal
things which can never change and
which will be the glory of our souls in
heaven. Yes, the Church is divine, but
she is human too. She is made up of
men who may be sinners, indeed, who
are sinners, and yet who share somehow in the divinity of the Church, to a
certain extent like the pope, for example, by his infallibility; by the charism
of infallibility he shares in the divinity
of the Church and yet remains human.
They all remain sinners. Except in
those instances where the pope makes
use of his charism of infallibility, he
can err, he can sin.
Why be scandalized and say, like
some people following the example
of Arius, that he is not pope? He is
not pope, as Arius said Christ was not
God, it cannot be, Our Lord cannot be
God. We ourselves may be tempted
to say that it cannot be, he cannot be
pope and do what he is doing.
On the other hand, others would
divinize the Church to the point that
everything in it becomes perfect. So
everything in the Church being perfect, we could say there is no question
of our doing anything whatever to
oppose anything coming out of Rome;
we must accept everything coming out
of Rome. Those who talk this way are
like those who say that Our Lord was
God to such an extent that He could
not suffer, that He gave only the illusion of suffering, but in reality did not
suffer; in reality it was not His blood
that flowed. Those around Him had
only illusions in their eyes not reality. There are some of these today
who go on saying there can be nothing human, nothing imperfect in the
Church. They too are mistaken. They
do not see the reality of things. How
far can imperfection in the Church go,
how high can sin go, if I may say it,
in the Church, sin in the intellect, sin
in the soul, sin in the heart and in the
will? The facts tell us.

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

As I said a moment ago, we would never
have dared to put on the lips of Our Lord the
words, “My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me?” So too, we would never have
thought that evil and error could penetrate so
deeply into the Church. But we are living in
this age; we cannot shut our eyes. The facts
are there; it is not merely a subjective impression. We are witnesses of what is happening
in the Church, of the terrible things that have
happened since the Council, the ruins piling up day after day, year after year, in Holy
Church. The more we go on, the more the
errors spread and the more the faithful lose
the Catholic Faith. A recent study in France
shows that hardly more than two million
French Catholics are still really Catholic.
We are nearing the end. Everyone will
fall into heresy. Everyone will fall into error
because wicked clergy, as St. Pius X predicted, have found their way into the Church and
occupied it. They have spread errors from
the positions of authority they occupy in the
Church.
Are we then required to follow error
because it comes from someone in authority? No more than we should obey parents
who are unworthy and ask us to do unworthy
things, no more should we obey those who ask
us to abandon our Faith and to abandon all
Tradition. This is out of the question. Oh, of
course, all this is a mystery, a great mystery,
this union of the divine with the human.
The Church is divine, and the Church is
human. How far can human weakness, how
shall I say, overshadow the divinity of the
Church? Only God knows. It is a great mystery. We see the facts; we must put ourselves
in full view of the facts and never abandon the
Church, the Roman Catholic Church, never
abandon her, never abandon the successor of
Peter, because through him we are united to
Our Lord Jesus Christ, through the Bishop of
Rome, the successor of Peter. But if, by some
misfortune, under the influence of some spirit or other, or some weakness or pressure, or
through neglect, he abandons his duty and
leads us along roads which make us lose our
faith, well, we must not follow, although at the
same time we recognize that he is Peter and if
he speaks with the charism of infallibility, we

must accept his teaching, but when he does
not speak with the charism of infallibility, he
may very well be mistaken. Alas! It is not the
first time that something like this has happened in history.
We are deeply troubled, deeply anguished,
we who love the Church so much and venerate her and have always venerated her. This
is why this seminary exists, for love of the
Church Catholic and Roman. This is why all
seminaries exist. Our love of the Church has
been badly bruised to think that her servants,
alas, are not her servants any longer and render her no service at all. We must pray, we
must sacrifice and, we must, like Mary, stay
at the foot of the Cross and not abandon Our
Lord Jesus Christ, even if He seems, as the
Scriptures, say, “as it were accursed” on the
Cross. Well, the Virgin Mary had the faith
and she saw beyond the wounds, beyond the
pierced Heart. She saw God in her Son, her
Divine Son.
We too, in spite of the wounds in the
Church, in spite of the difficulties, the persecution which we are enduring, even from
those in authority in the Church, let us not
abandon the Church, let us love the Holy
Church our mother, let us serve her always in
spite of the authorities, if necessary. In spite
of these authorities who wrongly persecute
us, let us stay on the same road, let us keep to
the same path: we want to support the Holy
Roman Catholic Church, we want to keep it
going and we will keep it going by means of
the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by
the true sacraments of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
by the true catechism.

51

Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, SSPX

When discussing questions
of morality, reference is
often made to the “natural
law.” What is that “law”?
The natural law is, according to Saint
Thomas, nothing other than the participation of the rational creature in the eternal law.
Therefore, we must begin with the notion of
eternal law. St. Thomas explains that it is the
plan of divine wisdom by which God directs
all the actions and movements of creatures
in order to the common good of the entire
universe.
The natural law is the same eternal law
made known to man through natural reason.

52

The Angelus u July - August 2021

God, in fact, knows and orders from all
eternity what is convenient and proportionate to rational nature; and that ordination
existing in the divine mind is called or constitutes the eternal law. In creating man, God
intimated this eternally conceived ordination
into him in his own nature; therefore, by the
mere fact of being born, every man is subject
to this law. This participation in the eternal
law, or the moral order constituted by God, is
the natural law objectively considered.
When man reaches the use of reason, he
knows, at least, the first principles of natural
law (e.g., “one must do good and avoid evil”) as
something that he has an obligation to fulfill,
and this participation of the eternal law is the
natural law subjectively considered.
Natural law is so named for two reasons.
First, because it encompasses only the pre-

Q&A

cepts that are deduced from the very nature
of man. That is why it obliges all men without
exception, and it would oblige in the same
way if man had not been elevated by God to
the supernatural order and end. Secondly,
because it can be known with only the lights
of natural reason, without the need for divine
faith or human teaching.
Denied by atheists, materialists, pantheists, etc., the existence of natural law is, however, an incontrovertible truth that can be
proved even by the evidence.
It is clearly stated in Sacred Scripture:
For when the Gentiles, who have not the law,
do by nature those things that are of the law;
these having not the law are a law to themselves:
who shew the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them,
and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another, in the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus
Christ, according to my gospel (Rom. 2:14-16).

Moreover, the testimony of their own conscience dictates to all men, in a very clear and
irresistible way, that it is necessary to do good
and avoid evil; that there are actions that are
bad in themselves (e.g., killing the innocent)
and others that are good even if they are not
ordered by any human law (e.g., honoring
one’s parents). For this reason, when those
very clear precepts of natural law are broken, man feels remorse and shame; and, on
the contrary, the faithful fulfillment of it fills
him with joy and peace.

We expect much from our
spiritual director, but what
do we have to do in order to
draw spiritual benefit from
his direction?
The first and foremost of all a dirige’s duties
is full sincerity and openness of heart, because

without this it is completely impossible for the
direction to produce fruit. The director must
know everything: temptations, weaknesses,
purposes, good and bad inclinations, difficulties and stimuli, triumphs and defeats, hopes
and illusions—everything must be manifested
with humility and simplicity. Some spiritual
authors even demand the manifestation of the
lack of confidence that one may begin to feel
in relation to the director.
It is wrong—and useless for spiritual profit—to manifest only good or less bad things,
leaving our true miseries and sins to be confessed to some other priest. Without sincerity
and openness it would be better to renounce
a spiritual direction that is pure and simple
hypocrisy, deception and waste of time.
However, it is necessary not to exaggerate.
Everything that is important for the spiritual
life must be manifested with absolute sincerity to the director; but it would be a manifest
abuse to give him a detailed account of the
smallest incidents and details of the intimate
life of the person being directed. Many minor
things can and should be solved by the dirige
himself.
It also requires full docility and obedience to
the director. Without this meekness and obedience, the direction would be totally ineffective and a waste of time. Although it is true
that the director does not have jurisdiction
over his dirige (as does the religious superior
in relation to his subjects), he must demand an
all-embracing obedience in matters pertaining to the direction, under pain of refusing
at all to continue it. As diriges, we must simply obey, without distinctions, restrictions or
interposing our own interpretations.
Much worse than disobedience would be
to manipulate the direction, so that the director does not ask more than what we ourselves
want. St. John of the Cross severely condemns
this abuse. However, it would not be contrary
to obedience to take the initiative in pointing
out attractiveness and disgust, and even to
respectfully raise objections, yet still humbly
obey if the director insists despite them.

53

We must also be perseverant. The direction
is completely sterilized, rendering it practically null, by frequent changes of director
for futile or inconsistent reasons; by spending
long periods without direction; by continually
changing exercises, methods and procedures
of sanctification; by letting oneself be carried
away without resistance to the whim of the
moment or of a capricious and fickle will in
the practice of the norms received from the
director; etc., etc.
Finally, the dirige must not forget that if his
director is obliged to keep the sacramental
seal or natural secret, the dirige himself is also
bound to keep a special discretion in regard to
his director. Most specifically, the dirige must
never entrust to others the advice, norms or
particular advice received from his director,

not even by way of edification of others. The
particular advice given in order to a certain
soul and with a view to its special psychology and temperament may not suit other souls
placed in different circumstances or endowed
with a different temperament. Unfortunately,
many disgusts, quarrels, jealousy on the part
of other souls and a thousand other inconveniences sometimes follow from the indiscretion of penitents!

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.

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
344 pp.–Hardcover–STK# 8343✱–$25.55

54

The Angelus u July - August 2021

Marriage, Parenting, Family Life and Child Rearing
Science and Medical Matters
Life After Death
Church Practices and Customs
The Papacy and the Church Teachings
The Bible and Biblical Matters
The Trinity, Jesus Christ, The Virgin Mary, Angels, and Saints
The Mass and the Liturgy
The SSPX and the Crisis

Protestantism As Seen
by G.K. Chesterton
A profound work that defends the Faith
while it informs and entertains.

An easy-to-read book that effortlessly pierces through the objections of the failed Protestant reform while simultaneously introducing the reader to Chesterton’s irresistible charm
and ruthless wit, which has become so beloved the world over.
If you want to better understand why the Catholic Church stands impervious to the attacks leveled against it by Protestants of all sects, this book is sure to delight, inform, and
elevate the mind to God.
146 pp. Softcover. STK# 8769. $13.95

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

CATECHISM

Part Seven
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 say that marriage is indissoluble. But how can they reconcile
that teaching with the words of Christ:
“Whoever divorces his wife, except in
the case of adultery, and marries anoC ther commitsa adultery?” (Mt.
t 19:9). For h
those words clearly indicate that a man
may remarry after his wife’s adultery.
These words are often played out as a
difficulty against the indissolubility of marriage; and they are then reinforced by another
text, viz.: “Whoever divorces his wife, except
in the case of adultery, causes her to commit
adultery” (Mt. 5:32).
Now, however, one must be careful in
explaining scriptures and not always looking
at them in isolation; one has to compare them

56

The Angelus u July - August 2021

with other texts, and this often clarifies a lot
of obscure things.
Now there are plenty of passages in Holy
Scripture that clearly say that marriage is
indissoluble, and that he or she who remarries during the life of the other party commits adultery. For example, we can compare Mk. 10:11-12: “Whoever divorces his
wife and marries another commits adultery
against her. And if a woman divorces her
husband and marries another, she commits
adultery.” Christ speaks there without exception: both the sender and the sent-away always
commit adultery when entering into a new
marriage.
The teaching of the Apostle Paul is also
clear. He writes: “It is not I, but the Lord
who commands the married that the woman
should not separate from the man; and if she
is divorced, she must remain unmarried or

CATECHISM

be reconciled with the man” and: “A woman
is bound as long as her husband lives” (I Cor.
7:10-11 & 39). The texts may raise a difficulty for some and must therefore be read in the
light of the other quoted texts. And what is
their meaning then?
Christ means this: Whoever casts off his
wife unjustly commits the sin of adultery,
because he puts her in danger of sin without lawful cause: as a divorced wife she is
in danger of committing adultery. If, on the
other hand, he sends her away because she
herself has broken the marriage fidelity, he is
not responsible for the following sins of the
woman, because he exercises his right to send
her away. Christ teaches, therefore, that the
breaking off of marital society in the event of
adultery is permissible, but always while preserving the unbreakable marriage bond. And
thus, the texts found in Matthew prove nothing against the indissolubility of marriage.

Catholics say that marriage is indissoluble. In practice, however, some
marriages can be dissolved by the
pope. How can that be reconciled?
A validly concluded marriage and consummated by the conjugal act cannot be dissolved. That is not an ecclesiastical but divine
right, and the pope cannot change that. But
the pope can do other things that may be
regarded as a dissolution of marriage by inexperienced or superficial people.
In the first place, he can declare that a marriage is invalid. This is not an annulment of
an existing marriage, but a decision that there
has never actually been a marriage, even
though a marriage of convenience had been
consecrated in church. For example, if there
was an invalidating marriage impediment,
which was not dispensed with for whatever
reason, or if one of the parties was unable to
enter into a valid marriage, because that party
was not mentally competent, or if one of the
parties refused to give the consent, then there

has never been a valid marriage. That can
now be examined in Rome by trial, and then
the pope can officially declare the invalidity.
That is not the dissolution of a marriage.
In some cases, the pope can also dissolve a
marriage that has been validly concluded but
not consummated by the conjugal act. Such a
papal dispensation is a favor sometimes granted for very serious reasons. Then it could be
said that something is dissolved, but then it
only concerns a marriage that was not yet
completed.
And then, finally, there is the mysterious
privilege of which the Apostle Paul speaks:
“If a brother has an unbelieving wife, and
she consents to dwell with him, let him not
cast her off; also, if a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to dwell with
her, she may not cast off the husband… But
if the unbeliever desires to divorce, let him
divorce; in such cases the brother and sister
are not bound” (I Cor. 7: 12-15).
Only in this case is there a dissolution of
a validly concluded and consummated marriage, which was not a sacramental or Christian marriage. But that exception is made on
the express teaching of the Apostle Paul for
a very special case, and surely no one can
blame the pope for that.
We can therefore safely say that the pope
adheres completely to the indissolubility of
marriage. Either he only pronounces the
invalidity; or he annuls an unconsummated
marriage; or he applies the privilege of Paul.

57

Substantial
Change in
the Liturgy
Fr. Albert P. Marcello

I

n his magisterial work
Enchiridion Liturgicum,
Polycarp Radó, O.S.B.
proves the thesis: “The
sa c red l it u rg y does not
beget, but follows upon faith,
expresses it, and for this reason is an excellent theological
locus.”1 Such a statement is
proven clearly by Pius XII in
Mediator Dei and Munificentissimus Deus, and Radó assigns
the first two parts of this thesis the theological note of fidei
58

The Angelus u July - August 2021

proxima.2 In the latter Apostolic Constitution, Pius XII
states that “the liturgy of the
Church does not engender
the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it, in such a
way that the practices of the
sacred worship proceed from
the faith as the fruit comes
from the tree.” Such an argument goes back at least as far
as St. Augustine of Hippo in
his De dono perseverantiae. 3

While this author certainly
commends Dom Alcuin Reid,
O.S.B. for his emphasis on the
objectivity of the liturgical
tradition and otherwise providing a beautiful and otherwise theologically accurate
reflection on these matters in
his recent article on “liturgical integrity,” one must part
company with his criticism of
Pius XII’s teaching in Mediator Dei on the primacy of faith
before the liturgy as being a

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

“deeply troubling exegesis.”4
One can sympathize with
Reid’s intent to safeguard
the authentic liturgical tradition, but it would seem that
such a critique of the liturgical understanding of Pius XII
would not be the appropriate
way to do so.
Radó very succinctly and
rationally argues for the aforementioned understanding
provided by the magisterium
of Pius XII on the basis of

agere sequitur esse. 5 Reid contends that Pius XII, in elucidating this principle, somehow provided an opening to
refashioning the liturgy after
the Council on the basis of
the “new theology” introduced by the Council. It is
hard to see how this reading
of Pius XII is in agreement
with Mediator Dei’s principle
that “the integrity of faith and
morals ought to be the special
criterion of this sacred science [i.e., liturgy].” It seems
self-evident that the two principles must go hand-in-hand,
as orthodox theology and an
orthodox approach to the
liturgical texts must inextricably be bound together on
the part of those responsible
in the Church hierarchy for
the care of divine worship.
In this sense, then, the goal of
restoring all things in Christ
(the liturgy inclusive) must
always start from the basis of
the solid foundations of the
Catholic Faith in sound theol-

ogy and authentic philosophy.
Herman A. P. Schmidt, S.J., in
his monumental Introductio in
Liturgiam Occidentalem, likewise gives important criteria
for the use of the liturgy as a
theological font.6 He also goes
on to anticipate the criticism
posed by Reid, and argues
that the adage “lex orandi, lex
credendi” had been abused by
modernists such as Tyrrell to
argue that changes in prayer
and worship would somehow
produce an evolution in theological mindset in such a way
that the law of prayer would
determine the law of belief.
In recent years, much has
been written about the return
of the pre-1955 Holy Week
rites in certain circles in the
Church. Indults have indeed
been issued for communities
such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to utilize these
rites on a temporary basis.
Some authors have even gone
so far as to criticize traditional priests for using the Pius
59

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

XII Holy Week for the mere
fact that these rites bear the
stamp of Annibale Bugnini,
who was principally responsible for concocting the Novus
Ordo Missae. Some—mirabile
dictu!—have even begun to
question the missal and breviary reforms of St. Pius X,
who himself described the
liturgical rites at that time as
being in a state of “squalor.”7
It is not this author’s intention
to painstakingly catalogue
and describe the variations
in the 1955 Holy Week liturgy from those which preceded it, since others have very
capably documented these
changes.
It is, though, at this point
that the classic distinction
between substance and accident must come into play.
What must be said is that
these changes are accidental
to the celebration of the liturgy during these days—not
much different from the variations found in the Dominican Missal or the Ambrosian
Missal from the traditional
Roman Rite. (By way of illustration, the Dominican Rite,
as was the case in many other
northern European usages,
always had four lections in the
fore-Mass of the Easter Vigil.)
Furthermore, such changes
are fully within the competency of the Supreme Legislator
to impose, and no less of a
Pontiff than Pius XII certainly agreed as much in Mediator Dei 49, that “from time
immemorial the ecclesiastical
hierarchy has exercised this
right in matters liturgical.” To
Reid’s argument, it could be
60

The Angelus u July - August 2021

added: up until the “Copernican revolution” of changes introduced by the Second
Vatican Council starting in
late 1964, the liturgy has been
altered accidentally, yes; substantially, no.
It should be said that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, along
with other courageous priests
subsequent to the Council like
Gommar DePauw and Yves
Normandin, had no qualms
about the doctrinal and liturgical exactitude of the 1962
Missal—revised Holy Week
liturgies inclusive. While liturgists are free to research,
discuss, and debate the historical growth and evolution
of the liturgical texts as they
have been handed down to us,
for certain Catholics to continually wish to “wind back
the clock” on the Roman Rite
to a certain date (be it 1954,
1911, or even before!) is a
slippery-slope phenomenon
which is questionable at best.
It betrays an understanding of
the liturgy as being “en chantier perpétuel”—subject to the
whim of liturgists, instead
of being established by the
ecclesiastical hierarchy. It
smacks of the questionable
quest for novelty unleashed
by the Council itself. There is
no perfect liturgy this side of
eternity—indeed, Radó documents that the liturgical texts
themselves have contained
historical and factual errors,
and even, in the case of the
pre-1955 Good Friday liturgy,
have given rise to theological
errors, in this case regarding the unconsecrated chalice being consecrated by the

commingling with the Sacred
Host.8
At worst, such a hyper-liturgicism can potentially lead
to rebellion against the principle that those in hierarchical authority in the Church,
i nclud i ng sa i nt ed popes
such as St. Pius X, have the
right and duty to regulate
the Church’s divine worship
in consonance and harmony with the deposit of faith.
It would seem to this author
that to question the reforms
of Pius XII would be tantamount to questioning the doctrinal integrity of this holy
Pontiff who provided such a
clear and orthodox magisterium to the Church Universal
and who himself expressed
sincere concern and care for
the Church’s liturgical life.
These accidental revisions
are in no way comparable
to the substantial alterations
made to the Church’s liturgy
as demonstrated in practice
from March 1965 onwards
and evidenced by the removal
of Quo Primum from all missals issued subsequent to the
Second Vatican Council.
As the current editor and
principal developer of the
Divinum Officium Project,
this author has constantly
borne in mind that the 1962
books are normative and
should thus be given priority in editing this resource.
While the Project does provide the former liturgical
texts as a research aid and
didactic tool, the aim of this
project, according to its original developer, the late Laszlo
Kiss, was to demonstrate that

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

“. . . such changes are fully within the
competency of the Supreme Legislator
to impose, and no less of a Pontiff than
Pius XII certainly agreed as much
in Mediator Dei 49, that ‘from time
immemorial the ecclesiastical hierarchy
has exercised this right in matters
liturgical.’ . . . up until the Copernican
revolution of changes introduced by
the Second Vatican Council starting in
late 1964, the liturgy has been altered
accidentally, yes; substantially, no.”
the reforms of St. Pius X and
John XXIII were not in any
way radical.
The bishop of the author’s
diocese of Providence, Russell J. McVinney, who himself
was quite critical and only
begrudgingly accepting of the
liturgical changes subsequent
to the Council, expressed only
positive praise for the 1955
Holy Week changes, even to
the point of requesting that his
diocesan priests write a 500word essay for a clerical study
day on the import and intent
of this reform. McVinney stated that “it goes without saying
that each of us wishes to conform strictly to the directives
of the Holy Father and to give
the people the inspirational
leadership which will bring
them to a more fruitful observance of the impressive liturgy.” Several years later, an
article by Fr. Henry J. Dziadosz, J.C.D. ably demonstrates

that the 1960 rubrical code
made “no radical changes in
the structure or texts of the
Mass.” 9 As Michael Davies
argued as well, “this rubrical reform had been ordered
by Pope Pius XII, and few of
the changes would have been
noticed by the layman using a
pre-1962 Missal.”10 The same
cannot, however, be said
for the Novus Ordo Missae or
even the changes implemented by Inter Oecumenici as the
first fruits of the Consilium.
In researching how liturgical
directives were implemented
in this diocese, the author has
discovered that prior to the
conciliar changes imposed by
Inter Oecume­nici, the normal
way in which the accidental
changes were made to the
liturgical books was by decree
sent out through the chancellor’s office. It was only after
the implementation of “liturgical committees” to imple-

ment the Conciliar changes
did the substantial destruction of the traditional Roman
Rite begin in haste—this being
a far cry from the diachronic
identity of the Roman Rite
which existed in reality until
March 7, 1965, and which
was already being previously
undermined in places infected quickly with modernism,
such as the Pontifical North
American College.11
With these points in mind,
a caveat must be made that
the 1960 codex rubricarum does
leave room for genuine development and/or legitimate
wide interpretation, particularly since it is a legal axiom
that favorable laws conceding rights merit broad interpretation. The Vatican Ordo
Recitandi and the former Pontifical Commission Ecclesia
Dei have given broad scope
to permitting certain practices which, while not strictly in
61

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

conformity with the rubrics
of the 1962 books, are also
not repugnant thereunto. For
instance, the practice of the
Confiteor before administration of Holy Communion has
been justified, as well as the
use of Benedicamus Domino in
lieu of Ite, Missa Est in Masses where there is no Gloria.12
One can also point to the
recent decrees of Cum Sanctissima and Quo Magis in reference to recent additions of
saints’ feast days and prefaces.

Mediator Dei intended to correct. Some have even taken to
critiquing the new Mass and
Office issued by Pope Pius
XII for the Assumption and
his widely-accepted translation of the psalter, with the
arguments for both being
mainly aesthetic grounds,
since these texts are theologically unimpeachable. In the
case of the Pius XII psalter,
this translation was accepted almost universally by the
secular clergy for usage in the

After all, if one can question the decrees
of a genuinely orthodox Pope such
as Pius XII on the basis of liturgical
aesthetics, why not also question the
reforms of St. Pius X, or even the
Council of Trent for that matter? As Pius
XII stated himself, “it is neither wise
nor laudable to reduce everything to
antiquity by every possible device.”
In this author’s opinion,
focusing upon the restoration
of pre-1960 rubrical forms
and structures is, at best, a
distraction from the necessity
of a clear focus on the general restoration of the integrity
of Catholic Tradition (specifically, theology, which must
precede praxis) before the cataclysmic changes of the Second Vatican Council, and at
worst, an expression of the
hyper-liturgicism and search
for antique novelty which
62

The Angelus u July - August 2021

Breviarium Romanum in the
decades preceding the Council.
On a spiritual and ascetical level, it can, in the minds
of some Catholics attached to
Tradition, potentially inculcate an elitist mindset, dividing those who attend the pre1955 rites from those who are
content with the normative
1962 liturgical books as they
are. The same could be said
for the usage of the Pius XII
psalter. It is regrettable that

some of these Catholics have
forgotten the wise words of
Davies that the 1962 Missal
is a “rock of stability.”13 Ultimately, this desire to “restore
the ‘54” should be perceived
more along the lines of the
“over-eager search for novelty” spoken about by Pius XII,
but in the reverse direction
from the aims of the 1960’s
Consilium. One might even
term it a sort of “reverse antiquarianism.” After all, if one
can question the decrees of a
genuinely orthodox pope such
as Pius XII on the basis of
liturgical aesthetics, why not
also question the reforms of
St. Pius X, or even the Council of Trent for that matter? As
Pius XII stated himself, “it is
neither wise nor laudable to
reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device.”14
Perhaps this discussion
points to a larger issue in theology taken as a whole—namely, the exaggerated role that
the liturgy has taken as a consequence of the Council and
against which Pius XII sounded the warning in Mediator
Dei. In the traditional ratio
stu­diorum, while not neglecting the import of the liturgy as a locus theologicus, the
courses on liturgy and exercitatio rubricarum were considered only minor courses
as part of the normal cursus
theologicus or cursus seminaristicus. This changed as a result
of Sacrosanctum Concilium 16,
which elevated these courses
to principal or major courses.15 While a deeper study of
the liturgy should not be discounted as negative in se, it

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

nevertheless needs to be seen
in relationship to the larger
study of theology, in proper
proportion, as a part to the
whole.
The liturg ical texts as
issued in 1962 remain normative and never abrogated,
evidenced in a particular way
by their praenotanda witnessing to a continuity with St.
Pius V’s Quo Primum (in the
Missale) and Quod a Nobis (in
the Breviarium). Furthermore,
the sound doctrine of Pius XII
in Mediator Dei remains as
valid now as ever, specifical-

ly that there remains a need
to restrain the over-bold and
give due moderation to the
liturgical movement, be it
new or old. The substantial
changes in the Roman Rite
came as a result of the Consilium’s changes between 1964
and 1969. Those which came
before it, specifically those
issued at the behest of Pope
Pius XII, can best be classified as accidental. It is only in
this sense that a harmony can
be sought between liturgical
and doctrinal integrity, and
the balance of authority in the

Church (in this case, liturgical
authority) being used at the
service of Tradition.

Father Albert P. Marcello, III, J.C.D.
(Cand.) is a priest of the diocese
of Providence, holding an S.T.B.
and M.A. in Thomistic theology
from the Pontifical University of
St. Thomas Aquinas, and a J.C.L.
from the Catholic University of
Louvain, where he is a doctoral
candidate in canon law. He serves
as a hospital chaplain as well
as a tribunal official for several
dioceses. He is also the manager of
The Divinum Officium Project.

1

“Thesis: S. liturgia (1) non gignit, sed sequitur fidem, (2) eamque
exprimit, (3) ideoque est locus theologicus excellens.” Radó, P.
Enchiridion Liturgicum. Vol. 1 of 2. Herder: Rome, Freiburg,
Barcelona: 1961, p. 14

10

Davies, M., “The Missal of 1962: A Rock of Stability” in Latin
Mass Magazine, Spring 2001. Available online at: http://www.
latinmassmagazine.com/articles/articles_2001_sp_davies.
html (accessed April 8, 2021).

2

Ibid.

11

3

Augustine of Hippo, De dono perseverantiae, c. 23, PL 45, 1031 s.

4

Reid, A., “Reflections on authority in liturgy today” in Catholic World Report, July 14, 2019. Available online at: https://
www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/07/14/reflections-on-authority-in-liturgy-today (accessed April 8, 2021).

Clore, V., “Re-Echoes 1965” in Roman Echoes 1965. Rome:
Apud Aedes Pontificii Collegii Americae Septentrionalis,
1965, p. 62. The author notes that concelebration began taking place ad experimentum before the end of its vacatio legis, and
even such novelties as a sung Canon were being introduced
before the changes of Inter Oecumenici came into force.

12

5

Radó, op. cit., p. 15.

6

Schmidt, H. A. P., Introductio in Liturgiam Occidentalem. Herder: Rome-Freiburg-im-Breisgau-Barcelona, 1960, pp. 132-133.

Ordo Divini Officii Recitandi Sacrique Peragendi Secundum Antiquam vel Extraordinariam Ritus Romani Formam. Romae: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, MMXX, p. 8.

13

Davies, ibid.

14

Mediator Dei 62.

15

Sacrosanctum Concilium 16: “The study of sacred liturgy is to
be ranked among the compulsory and major courses in seminaries and religious houses of studies; in theological faculties
it is to rank among the principal courses.”

7

McManus, F., “Introduction,” in Reinhold, H.A., Bringing the
Mass to the People. Baltimore: Helicon, 1960, p. 3.

8

Radó, op. cit., p. 19.

9

Dziadosz, H., “New Rubrics Code” in Catholic Transcript,
December 15, 1960. Available online at: https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CTR19601215-01.2.86 (accessed
April 8, 2021).

63

The

ngelus

Support the Cause of Uncompromised Traditional Catholic Media!
JULY-AUGUST 2021

The

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

ngelus
The Voice of TradiTional caTholicism

For over three decades, The Angelus has stood
for Catholic truth, goodness, and beauty
against a world gone mad. Our goal has
always been the same: to show the glories
of the Catholic Faith and to bear witness to
the constant teaching of the Church in the
midst of the modern crisis in which we find
ourselves. Each issue contains:
• A unique theme focusing on doctrinal and
practical issues that matter to you, the
reader
• Regular columns, from History to Family
Life, Spirituality and more
• Some of the best and brightest Catholic
thinkers and writers in the Englishspeaking world
• An intellectual formation to strengthen
your Faith in an increasingly hostile world

THE HOLY LAND
An Interview with Fr. Paul Robinson
Egypt and Jordan
Historic Sermon of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Questions & Answers
Substantial Change in the Liturgy

Simply the Best Journal of Catholic Tradition Available!
PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS
Name_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Address______________________________________________________________________________________________
City______________________________ State_______________ ZIP______________ Country_______________________
 CHECK  VISA  MASTERCARD  AMEX  DISCOVER  MONEY ORDER
Card #________________________________________________________ Exp. Date______________________________
Phone # _______________________________________E-mail_________________________________________________
Mail to: Angelus Press, PO Box 217, St. Marys, KS 66536, USA

PLEASE CHECK ONE
United States
$45.00
 1 year
$85.00
 2 years
$120.00
 3 years
Foreign Countries (inc. Canada & Mexico)
$65.00
 1 year
$125.00
 2 years
$180.00
 3 years
All payments must be in US funds only.

ONLINE ONLY SUBSCRIPTIONS
To subscribe visit: www.angelusonline.org.

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)!

T he
L ast
Word

Fr. David Sherry
District Superior of Canada

Dear Reader,
The year: 1095. The place: Clermont.
The speaker: Eudes de Châtillon, otherwise
known as Urban II. The topic: Crusade.
Christian warriors, who continually and
vainly seek pretexts for war, rejoice, for you
have today found a true pretext! Men of God,
men chosen and blessed among all, combine
your forces! Take the road to the Holy Sepulchre
assured of the imperishable glory that awaits you
in God’s kingdom. To the Christian, every place
is exile because in every place, he is far from
heaven, and every place is home because in
every place he finds God. If you are conquered,
you will have the glory of dying in the very same
place as Jesus Christ, and God will never forget
that he found you in the holy battalions. Let each
one deny himself and take the Cross!

Then, in the great crowd, was heard like
the sound of a river growing in volume and
strength the cry “Dieu li volt! Dieu le veut!”—
“God wills it!”
And so started the great enterprise of…
“the pursuit of mines of treasures, of gold
and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper” according to Edward Gibbon. Or to
quote Voltaire, “an epidemic of fury which
was always marked by every cruelty, every
perfidy, every debauchery and every folly of
which human nature is capable.” We could go
on. Everyone knows how the crusades were

simply a colonial takeover, the imposition of
a “colonial religion,” the source of the Muslim
world’s suspicion of the west. Or were they?1
After Mohammed’s raiding of Christian
territory, Jerusalem was taken by Muslim
forces in 638 AD. From then on, the Muslims more or less treated the Christians with
tolerance and the holy places with relative
respect. But in the new millennium, everything changed. The Seljuk Turks, recent converts to Islam, took over. No more tolerance.
There is no God but Allah! Death to the infidel! And thus, they began to persecute the
Christians, to maltreat and kill them, and
to desecrate the holy places. In other words,
when the Christians in the East were attacked,
they called on their brethren in the West to
defend them: their lives, their rights and the
holy places. No war of conquest then, “epidemic of fury” indeed; the Crusades fulfill the
classic definition of a just war: the vindication
of trampled-upon rights.
Fr. David Sherry
1

In “Bearing False Witness,” (2016) professor of history—and
agnostic—Rodney Stark debunks this and many another chestnut of anti-Catholic anti-history.

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 Mission of Angelus Press
Angelus Press, 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.

PROUDLY FLY THIS FLAG

Sacred Heart Flag of Reparation
Among the promises of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord are the following:
• “I will bless every place in which an image of my Heart is exposed and honored.”
• “Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names written in my Heart.”
Here is a practical way to propagate the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, continually enkindle the love for
the Sacred Heart of Our Lord in our own hearts and in those around us, and easily avail of the deluge of graces
awaiting those with a true devotion to His Sacred Heart.
The Sacred Heart’s promises include full graces, peace, comfort, mercy, fervor, conversion and final perseverance.
Thus, there is one color to fly going forward and one alone: SACRED BLOOD RED!
Custom 3 x 5 ft. flag - Durable polyester construction with rivets.
Suitable for indoor or outdoor usage. STK# 8800 $90.00 $72.00

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. Includes Cardinal Ottaviani’s On the Relations
Between Church and State and On Religious Tolerance, replaced at Vatican II
by Dignitatis Humanae.
264 pp. Softcover. STK# 5240. $15.95

www.angeluspress.org | 1-800-966-7337

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