SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022

The

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

ngelus
T he V oice of T raditional C atholicism

Back to L and and Hearth
Returning to Your Own Backyard by Robert Wyer
Fr. Jonah Garno, How the Modern Lifestyle Destroys Our Link to God
Jonathan Wanner on Wendell Berry: Farming as “Practicing Resurrection”
Pauper Peregrinus: Culture and Christianity
Jackie and Clay Smith—Farming It Ourselves

L etter from
the District Superior
Dear Reader,

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

In the early years of the 20th century and the decades that followed, a so-called “back-to-the-land” movement emerged on both
sides of the Atlantic. Spurred in part as a reaction to mass industrialization and urbanization, the movement had a practical component as well when food shortages beset Europe during the First
World War. Proponents of the movement, which came to include
Catholic intellectuals such as Fr. Vincent McNabb, argued that the
mechanization of life had eroded traditional communities and families while contributing to poverty, misery, and vice.
Although this movement began to fade by the middle of the
last century, it never disappeared entirely. Traditional Catholics
have maintained a steady interest in the land movement, relying in
large part on the works of Fr. McNabb and authors such as Hilaire
Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. In more recent times, the writings of
John Senior have inspired not just a desire for agrarian living, but
the formation of intentional communities built around traditional
Catholicism. St. Marys, KS, which has become the heart and soul
of the Society of Saint Pius X in the United States, is an example
of such a community.
The Angelus this month features a series of articles on returning
to the land as a means of maintaining and growing an authentic
Catholic society. More than a romantic longing for “simpler times,”
these pieces present a vision of living that is both deeply spiritual
and eminently practical. Examples of localized living are on offer,
as are some needful reflections on its cultural components.
While not everyone can uproot their lives and start fresh on the
open plains, every Catholic can and should be on guard against
the temptations of contemporary living, particularly consumerism,
individualism, and social atomism. The lessons contained in this
issue, and the further reading they inspire, can assist everyone in
living engaged and godly lives.
Fr. John Fullerton

ON OUR COVER: Breakfast Under the Big Birch, Carl Larsson 1896.
 Most images in this issue are taken from commons.wikimedia.org.

CONTENTS
Volume LXVI, Number 5

SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2022
District Superior
Fr. John Fullerton
Publisher
Fr. Paul Robinson
Editor-in-Chief
Mr. James Vogel
Assistant Editor
Mr. Gabriel Sanchez
Associate Editor
Esther Jermann

FEATURED:
2 FEATURED Caged and Comfortable
Fr. Jonah Stephen Garno, SSPX

9

Returning to Your Own Backyard

F EATURED

Robert Wyer

13

Farming It Ourselves

INTERVIEW

Jackie and Clay Smith

CULTURE:
16 COMMENTARY Will Rascals Defend Our Civilization… ?
William Edmund Fahey

Marketing Director
Mr. Ben Bielinski

23

Executive Assistant
Annie Riccomini

26

Design and Layout
Mr. Simon Townshend
Mr. Victor Tan

30

Director of Operations
Mr. Brent Klaske

39

CONTEXT

Get Out: An Anti-Urban Manifesto

Michael Warren Davis

Wendell Berry: Farming as “Practicing Resurrection”

LITERATURE

Jonathan Wanner

Contemplative Realism:

LITERATURE

Catholic Literature for the Twenty-First Century
Katy Carl
POETRY

The King’s Fool to His Lady

Patrick Murtha

41

R EVIEW

Strangeness of the Good: A Review of the Book by J. M. Wilson

Reviewed by William Gonch, Ph.D.

“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

FAITH:
44 FROM THE ARCHBISHOP The Three Ways of Praying
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

48

EDUCATION

We’ve Got Each Other’s Backs

Bridget Bryan

53

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

Desiderio Desideravi

Fr. Peter Scott, SSPX

59

APOLOGETICS

Culture and Christianity

Pauper Peregrinus

62

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, SSPX

65

THE LAST WORD

Fr. David Sherry, SSPX

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.
©2022 by Angelus Press. Official Publication of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X for the United States and Canada

1

FEATURED

Caged and
Comfortable
How the Modern Lifestyle
Destroys Our Link to God
Fr. Jonah Stephen Garno, SSPX

T

he modern age is one of unprecedented
technological achievement. The number of revolutionary inventions in the
past few decades boggles the mind.
Gadgets and gizmos abound to solve every
problem, to eliminate every inconvenience,
and to put the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. Scarcely a day goes by without some new
upgrade or improvement to our already very
advanced machines, making them still better,
more efficient, more powerful, and more able
to make our lives comfortable and convenient.
This proliferation of technology sets the current time apart from all other ages of human
history. The lifestyle of the modern world is
drastically different from that of our forefathers
back to Adam. Never before in human history has man been so comfortable. Never before
have we had to work so little. Never before have
we had such easy access to the necessities and
even the luxuries of life. With our technology,
we have surpassed the eagle in flight, we have
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The Angelus u September - October 2022

beaten the horse at speed. The sun can no longer oppress us with her heat. The wind and the
storm are powerless to hurt us. We have overcome the forces of nature, and now life is easy
and pleasant, and there is little to suffer.
How different was the life of our forefathers!
For them, life was hard. In a world lacking the
technology we now enjoy, they had to grapple with the environment around them. Winter
came with its frosty air that pierced them to
the bone and drew them to the family hearth.
The scarcity of light made evenings short and
nights long. Food was seasonal, and their diet
was drastically altered during the cold months.
They had to adapt to the conditions. Survival
depended on it.
Even the summertime, with its fair weather,
brought its own unique set of challenges. The
sun beat down upon them and the shadow of
a roof or a tree shielded them from its rays if
not from its heat! It was the time of growth, of
light, and of life, when fruits and vegetables

FEATURED

were abundant, and when they enjoyed the
fresh produce that winter denied them. It was
a time when the weather was warm, and evenings long, when provisions were produced and
then laid aside for the cold months to come.
In sum, the men of the past were keenly
aware of themselves and their environment.
They could not escape it, and survival depended upon it. They were attuned to the weather,
the seasons, the vegetation, the heavenly bodies, the properties of the earth. Just as we cannot
ignore the clothes that we wear since they touch
us always, they could not ignore their natural
environment. It was always there, something to
be dealt with and treated with respect. Their life
was shaped by their connection with the earth.
Modern technology has changed all of this.
The earth no longer shapes the way we live.
We have inventions to overcome nearly all the
challenges our forefathers faced. Darkness no
longer limits us. We have electricity to give us
equal light at all times of the day or night. Heat
or cold no longer oppresses us. We have systems of heating and cooling that allow us to
live in a stable temperature at nearly all times
of the year. With our modern construction, we
no longer fear the might of a storm. Any damage that is sustained is quickly repaired by our
insurance. Food, grown in some other part of
the world, is acquired with ease and without toil
neatly packed in plastic. It is even sometimes
delivered to our door! Even the most arduous
of natural pursuits, the pursuit of knowledge,
is now rendered easy through the ubiquitous
access to internet.
We live in a bubble of comfort. Modern technology surrounds man with an artificial environment suited to his tastes and preferences.
This environment distances us from the earth,
and in this way, distances us from the hardships of life close to the land. For our forefathers, to walk outdoors, to ride a horse, to eat
a supper by candlelight, or to gather around a
fire was something routine and commonplace.
For us, it is something extraordinary and exotic, something to be done on vacation or on a
special occasion. Our reality has become the
office cubicle, the interior of our car, our sterile
and climate-controlled home, and our computer
screens, things which make up in comfort what
they lack in character.
At first, we might be inclined to celebrate the
status quo. We have overcome so many chal-

lenges. Life is better than ever before! It seems
like we have progressed farther than any other
human generation. Is not this cause for celebration? However, a drive through a modern city
or a glance at the news headlines is enough to
destroy this naive enthusiasm. The world has
never fallen to such depths of depravity as we
see today. Crime is rampant, and we celebrate
and promote practices that would make the men
of other generations blush with shame. We have
technology, but are we better for it?
If we intend to live for this life, then things
have never been better, and we have every reason to rejoice and to fill our lives with the good
things of this world. If, however, we are not
content to live for this life, if we are hungry for
virtue and holiness, if we are dissatisfied with
the things of this earth and long for the things
of heaven, then perhaps it is time to reconsider
the modern way of life. Perhaps this comfort
has a downside. We have better machines than
our forefathers, but are we better men? We live
longer lives than ages past, but are we living
fuller and more meaningful ones? Is it good to
live in this artificial environment or is it time
for a return to the land?
To answer these questions, let us examine
the plan of God. Why did he create the world?
Why did he create us? What order did God
establish among creatures to achieve the end
of creation? How did he intend us to live in this
world? If we examine these questions, then it
will soon become clear how we should evaluate
the current age and how we might change our
lives if we want to live the good life that leads
to life eternal.

Creation and the Plan of God
Creation was a free choice of God. God did
not need to create. God is perfection itself, and
he does not need anything or anyone else to
perfect or complete Him.1 With that in mind,
we might wonder why He went to the trouble
of creating such a vast universe. What end did
He have in mind? What does He get out of it?
The catechism tells us that God created, “to
show forth His goodness…” 2 This line, which
has almost become a platitude, is difficult to
understand. Why does God need anyone to see
His goodness? St. Thomas explains that this
desire to share with others is in the very nature
of goodness. 3 Goodness is meant to be shared.
When someone is good, or has good things,
3

FEATURED

they are inclined by the very nature of goodness itself to share it with others. It is a sort of
impulse that is present wherever “goodness” is
found. It is natural to goodness.
This rather abstruse principle is something
that we witness every day in human interaction.
It is not something that we question. It is just
the way it is. When someone has something that
is good, perhaps a thought, a photo, or a material object, they burn with a desire to share it
with their family and friends. Once upon a time,
these things would be shared in a letter, in conversation around the dinner table, or through
some personal encounter. Now the common
thing to do is to text it to them, or to put it on
social media. Either way, the principle is the
same. Good things are meant to be shared.
God, who is goodness itself, also burns to
share Himself with others, with us. He communicates His goodness to us. But since man
is both spirit and matter, this communication
takes place on two levels: the natural and the
supernatural. The most perfect sharing of the
Divine Goodness happens through grace.
Grace is real participation in the Divine Nature
which makes the Trinity dwell in the soul. Man
becomes an adopted child of God, and he bears
His likeness.
However, there is also a natural communication which happens through the universe created by God. Through His creation, God reveals
Himself to us through His effects. While creation is not so perfect an image of God as grace
makes the soul to be, it is nevertheless a reflection of God. It shows forth His infinite goodness and perfections. This is because He made
it from nothing; it is entirely His work. Things
that are made will resemble the one who made
them.4 Any work will leave behind a trace of
the one who accomplished it. The painting will
tell us about the painter. The house will have
something to say of the carpenter. God made
the world, and the world bears His trace.
The reason for this is found in the creative
process itself. When a craftsman or an artist
creates, it is not merely his hands that do the
work. He also uses his mind and his heart. The
most intimate parts of the soul are bound up in
the creative act. Certainly he uses his hands to
fashion the material, but his hands work according to an ideal that he has in his mind. If it were
not for this idea, his hands would not know what
to do. Yet even if he has an idea, and he has
4

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the ability to make it, that is not enough for the
work to be done. Many of us know how something is done, have the power to do it, yet do
not. We need something else to make us act and
that thing is love. The craftsman loves the thing
he is making, or he loves the one for whom it
is made, and it is this love which pushes him to
execute the project.
In a similar way, Creation is the product
of Divine Power, Divine Wisdom, and Divine
Love. Creation is the work of the whole Trinity, a product of the Divine Essence and, while
it is a work common to the whole Trinity, we
can attribute a part of it to each Divine Person. 5
God the Father has the power to create anything
He wills. However, even God Himself needs
a pattern or idea to follow in the creative act.
This pattern or idea is the Son who is the Word,
the idea that God has of Himself. This is what
St. John tells us: “through Him all things were
made.”6 This is what St. Paul means when he
tells the Hebrews, “…the world was framed by
the word of God: that from invisible things visible things might be made.”7 It is God the Father
who creates after the image of His Son, and by
the love between them which is the Holy Ghost.
Therefore, we can truly say that the processions
of the divine persons are the cause of creation!
The Trinity leaves its trace upon its work.
Just like the perfection of the painting
depends on the ordering of each part within
the whole, each part of the created order has
its place in the universe. In this way, there is
a hierarchy of perfections which contribute to
the perfection of the whole. Just like the proper
placement of shadow and the light in a painting
add to the richness of the image, the submission
of the less perfect to the more perfect adds to
the beauty and perfection of creation.
There are many degrees of excellence among
material creatures, but at their head is man, who
has both an intellect and a will. God placed man
at the head of creation to rule over it, to tend
it, to keep it,8 and to contemplate the Divine
perfections. When God created Adam, He put
him in a garden. He is told to tend it and keep
it and to eat of the fruits thereof. We see him
begin this work with the naming of the animals.
He enjoys the garden, eating of its fruits and
walking with God in its midst. 9 If he had not
sinned, he would have continued in that state
of earthly bliss till he would have been taken
up to heaven.

FEATURED

Even after the first sin, God intended man
to continue in this place in creation. The only
modification that God makes to man’s original place in creation is that from then on, he
would work the land by the sweat of his brow.
He would still have to tend to the created order,
but this would now be hard work as a punishment of sin. The land would not cooperate, and
it would be difficult to cultivate. After Adam’s
banishment from Paradise, we see the two sons
of Adam both undertake work on the land. Cain
tends to the fields whereas Abel feeds the flocks.
Man’s place in creation is important for creation itself. God endowed man with an intellect and a will. With these two faculties, he is
enabled to participate in God’s providence.
Through exercising his foresight, his prudence,
and by intervening in the course of nature, man
assists God in the governance of creation. By
caring for creation, man gives a visible image of
the providence of God. This cooperation places
before the eyes of men a very visible representation of God’s care for His creatures. When men
witness someone wisely caring for the things of
the earth, they have a better idea of the infinite
wisdom and providence of God. Man’s place at
the head of creation is important for creation
to glorify God.
However, it would be a mistake to think that
Man’s place in creation was only for the good of
the created order alone. It is also important for
man himself.10 God put him in the garden not
only to care for it but so that he could be cared
for by it. Creation is to benefit by the work of
man. Man is meant to benefit by his place in
creation. This makes sense when we consider

that the good of the whole is shared by every
part. The place assigned to man in the created
order is meant to help him arrive to the perfection of his whole being. Accordingly, man’s
place in creation affords him benefits that are
natural, spiritual, and supernatural.
By taking his place at the head of creation,
man receives many natural benefits. By tending to the garden, the natural organism of the
human body was to be maintained and perfected. The earth was to give food for the nourishment of man.11 The sun would warm him with
its rays. The work that he would do would have
exercised and strengthened the body keeping
it healthy and fit.
We see these benefits in those who live in
touch with the land. The work that it demands,
while inconvenient and difficult, promotes the
health of the body. This is not by accident. It
is because man in such a state is closer to that
intended for him by God. Those who work
the land, those who engage in agriculture or
gardening, those who use tools to master and
change their environment are often strong and
healthy.
Modern medicine is keenly aware of this.
In an age when the majority of work has been
taken from us and given to machines, engineers
invent countless machines designed to exercise
and strengthen the muscles. These machines
simply try to do artificially what was once done
by the swinging of a hoe, the lifting of a stone
or a hay bale, or the pulling of weeds. Furthermore, so many of the medicines and remedies
suggested by doctors are merely artificial substitutes for what comes naturally from the land.

Jose Moya del Pino, Flower and Vegetable Farming, study for mural, bet. 1941-1962.
5

FEATURED

Man’s place in creation is not only intended for his physical benefit. It was also meant
to help him grow in knowledge. A study of
psychology as well as any brief reflection on
our own thought process will tell us that man’s
knowledge comes from his senses. God alone
can infuse knowledge without using the senses. The way that we learn virtually all that we
know is through the five senses and through
their contact with the world around us.
As a child we touched many things. We felt
the smooth texture of the wood floor and rough
feel of the carpet. We felt the warmth of our
mother’s arms and the cool breeze blowing in
through the open window. As our eyes adjusted
we learned the faces of our parents and siblings.
We became familiar with their voices and the
sounds of home. We learned to recognize our
favorite foods by smell and taste. As we grew
older this process of learning did not stop, but
there was added to it learning from the written and spoken word. Knowledge was poured
into our minds through the sound of the voice
or through the sight of written characters on a
page.
The five senses are our link to reality. They
are the means by which we contemplate the
works of God around us. The created order
bears a trace of the Trinity. It was created by
the power of God through the Word and by the
Holy Spirit. Without the light of Revelation, it is
through contemplating this creation alone that
we come to know about the deeper order behind
things and the Creator that made it all. Even
with Divine Revelation, the contemplation of
the created order gives us a deeper insight into
all natural truths. It helps us to know the principles governing all things. It helps us to now the
deeper reasons for why things are what they are.
It was through observing and contemplating
creation that the ancient philosophers arrived
at their theories of everything.
Therefore, by living his role as the keeper
and head of creation, man is in a perfect position to contemplate the natural truths of the
universe. He can grow in science and wisdom
and his knowledge of all things. In other words,
through his place in God’s order, he gains
immense intellectual benefits since through his
proximity to creation, his intellect is brought
closer to reality and, through this contact, closer
to the creator Himself. Through His effects, he
approaches closer to the cause.
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His place in the created order also helps his
soul rise to God. Creation is meant to show
forth the goodness and perfections of God.
These perfections are meant to be seen, to be
contemplated by rational creatures, and they
are, in turn, meant to praise Him for them. In
other words, creation is meant to move man to
the praise and worship of God. Faced with the
might of the ocean, the vastness of the night sky,
the beauty of a flower, or any other perfection of
nature, man is meant to see a little reflection of
the one who created it. This reflection is to fill
him with wonder at the perfections of God, and
then he is meant to render to God the homage of
his whole being through the practice of religion.
This is a natural reflex which we see in the
pagans who worship the sun, the earth, and various elements of nature. They fail to understand
that these are not gods, but reflections of God
Himself. Faced with the beauty of creation, they
are moved to worship creation itself. This error
of the pagans nevertheless proves the principle
that the perfection of creation is meant to move
man to worship, to adore. This is a sort of natural instinct. This is the way that God made us.
Through his contact with the natural order
man was to reap even supernatural benefits.
By tending to creation and participating in the
providence of God, man is meant be filled with
a sense of his own littleness and the greatness of
God. This is something that each one of us can
verify through experience. When we are faced
with the beauty of nature, we are instinctively
drawn to think of the one who made it, and we
feel very small.

A Departure from Order
Unfortunately, the modern lifestyle has
pulled the majority of men away from their
natural place in creation. Very few now live in
contact with the earth, and many live in a sort
of bubble of comfort. Their connection with the
land has been severed. They live in an artificial
paradise that substitutes plastic for the reality. If
what has been said above is true, then this lifestyle is dangerous. If God put man in the garden
for his natural, spiritual, and supernatural benefit, then modern man should show symptoms of
sickness and malnutrition all these areas. That
is, in fact, exactly what we find.
On the level of physical wellbeing, it is not
an exaggeration to say that we are not well. Certainly, modern medicine helps us to live much

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longer than in the past, but in general, we are
not healthier. Especially in the United States,
obesity is almost the norm and not the exception.12 Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other
illnesses plague us, and it is almost seems rare
for one to die of “natural” causes. Healthy and
balanced living is uncommon, and we could
almost say it is the luxury of the rich who have
the time and money to exercise and eat well.
Far more alarming is the psychological sickness that we see everywhere around us.
Anxiety and depression are rampant. Disorders
of every kind are everywhere, and so many poor
people resort to drugs or even suicide for escape
and relief. We are not well, and the shootings
and acts of senseless violence that now happen
more and more often are a testimony to the
psychological imbalance that plagues so many
these days.
Almost worse is the sickness in modern thought and philosophy. We have become
detached from all reality, and we now celebrate practices that shocked and horrified
men of other times. Artificial birth control is
ubiquitous, and it is considered a part of being
“responsible.” We consider it normal to kill
unborn children in the womb. We think that a
man is a woman simply because he “identifies”
as such, and we let him compete in women’s
sports and use women’s facilities. We consider
it good and normal for people of the same sex
to marry and raise children, and we force these
sick and twisted ideas upon the minds of the
young and innocent.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the
mind of modern man is deeply sick. We can say
that he is deranged. It has become so far separated from the reality around it that it denies
objective truth. It considers as true whatever
is identified as such. Reality is a question of
choice. It is what we think it is, almost like a
video game in which we can choose the sex of
our character, the place in which we play, and in
which our actions have no consequences since
we can just “respawn” if we make a mistake.13
This disconnection from reality damages even the soul of man. Detached from the
earth, which is meant to lift him up to God,
his soul is pinned to the purely material. Never
has the world been so godless. Atheism, at least
practical, is everywhere. We believe that we
are the long-term result of random material
processes. Isolated and cut off from the natu-

ral world around us, we are surrounded by the
works and creations of man. It is not surprise
then, when men consider themselves omnipotent and deny, at least practically, the existence
of a God.
Creation is meant to speak to us of God.
Separated from the works of God, we forget
about God Himself. The world speaks to us of
Him, but we are not present to listen. This disconnect effects even those who believe in God
and who profess His one true religion. Surrounded by modern technology and comforts,
we no longer understand the language of symbolism. In the Sacred Liturgy we see the light
of a candle. We smell the sweet smell of incense,
we see the bright gold of the vestments. However, these symbols are lost on us who have never
learned to appreciate a candle in the darkness,
who daily use strong perfumes and colognes,
who live in a world that is full of cheap and
gaudy cloth and jewelry that glitters but is not
gold.

Conclusion
Modern man is like a lion at the zoo. For
him, life is easy. He no longer has to hunt, to
fight for his food and his territory. Everything
is given to him with little or no effort. He can
lie about all day basking in the sun while the
cage in which he lives shields him from the
harsh realities of the jungle from which he was
taken. He no longer has to fight. Life is good,
and this, at first, may seem like a good thing.
After all, a domesticated animal is so nice, and
it doesn’t bite!
The consequences of this comfortable confinement are soon felt by the lion who gradually
finds himself less than he once was. He no longer needs to fight or hunt; his teeth and claws
grow dull with disuse. His strength diminishes,
and his senses become more and more dull. He
retains the nature of “lion,” but little more. The
“King of the Jungle” becomes a shell of what
he once was, a specimen for the amusement of
passers-by.
Modern technology has placed us in a cage.
We are sheltered from the harsh realities that
our fathers had to confront. We are comfortable. We have a thousand gadgets to handle
every inconvenience. We can answer each question through a search on Google. We hardly
have to work anymore. There are machines and
computers to do it all for us. The food is grown
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by complex automated machinery, and it comes
to us packaged in plastic. Our wars are fought
by drones and other killing machines. Snow is
removed by trucks and snow blowers. Trenches
are dug by back-hoes. Wood is cut with electric
or gas-powered saws. Life is very good.
However, just like the lion, perhaps this comfort has a downside. We have better machines
than our forefathers, but are we better men?
We live longer lives than ages past, but are we
living fuller and more meaningful ones? We
accomplish more than they used to, but are
these achievements going to resonate throughout time and space like the works of men in a
simpler, slower age? Is this comfortable cage
that we have created for ourselves good for us,
or are we becoming weaker in body, mind, and
soul? Is it good to live in this artificial environment or is it time for a return to the land?
It would be an oversimplification to blame
all modern ills on technology. It would be
almost as false to say that these things do not
have their uses. It would be incorrect to say that
all must become farmers to save their souls. Yet
it would be safe to say that the artificial lifestyle
is contributing to the separation of man from
God. As with everything, “virtue stands in the
middle.” Are we seeking the balance, or have
we become comfortable in our cage?14

Endnotes
1

Ps. 15:2 “I have said to the Lord, thou art my God, for thou
hast no need of my goods.”

2

Morrow, Bishop Louis, My Catholic Faith, ch. 1, no. 1

3

Summa Theologica, Ia, Q. 5, art. 4 “Bonum est diffusivum
sui…”

4

Ibid. Ia, Q. 19. Art. 2 “Omnis agens facit sibi simile.”

5

Ibid. Ia, Q. 45, art. 6

6

Jn. 1:3 “Omnia per ipsum facta sunt.”

7

Heb. 11:3

8

Gen. 1:26 “Let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea,
and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the earth.”

9

Gen. 2:8-9;15-16 “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man
whom he had formed. And the Lord God brought forth of the
ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat
of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of
knowledge of good and evil…And the Lord God took man,
and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to
keep it. And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of
paradise thou shalt eat…”

10

Summa Theologica, Ia, Q. 102, a. 3

11

Gen. 2:16 “Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat…”

12

The CDC website states that in 2020, 41.9% of American
were obese.

13

In more primitive third-world countries, these things are not
so much of an issue. People in this condition are pagan, but
their paganism is often more in keeping with the natural law.
This cannot be said of the decadent, first-world countries of
the West.

14

For more advice on how optimize technology while avoiding
its harmful effects, see, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work
both written by Cal Newport.

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to the importance of cultivating the presence of God. Over the course of
these Sundays, the liturgy directs us to foster certain qualities of soul, gradually correcting our faults and increasing our virtues. Since summer is often a
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FEATURED

Returning to
Your Own
Backyard
Robert Wyer

This is the Key of the Kingdom
In that Kingdom is a city;
In that city is a town;
In that town there is a street;
In that street there winds a lane;
In that lane there is a house;
In that house there waits a room;
In that room an empty bed;
And on that bed a basket –
A Basket of Sweet Flowers:
Of Flowers, of Flowers:
A Basket of Sweet Flowers.
Flowers in a Basket;
Basket on the bed;
Bed in the chamber;
Chamber in the house;
House in the weedy yard;
Yard in the winding lane;
Lane in the broad street;
Street in the high town;
Town in the city;
City in the Kingdom –
This is the Key of the Kingdom.
Of the Kingdom this is the Key.

T

his poem, the first and last in Walter
de la Mare’s Come Hither—a remarkable
anthology containing an abundance of
fine English verse, surprises us. (Some
might even find the contents of the basket a bit
disappointing: “All that for flowers?”) The poem
telescopes in and out, but the focus remains the
simple basket of flowers—“sweet flowers,” to be
exact. The particularity of an object resting in
a basket on a bed in a room in a house in a yard
in a street in a town in a city in the kingdom
demands our attention; the poem calls it “the
key of the kingdom.” Within the broad scope
of the entire realm, the item that unlocks the
kingdom is, by comparison, rather small, one
might almost say intimate but also insignificant.
Likewise, one element of “returning to the land”
(a movement that could be overwhelming to
consider as a practical program) might perhaps
begin with something on a more manageable
scale: a return to one’s own backyard and even
the flowers there.
All too often, we tend to neglect what is right
in front of us, imagining that the real object of
9

FEATURED

greatness lies elsewhere. In fact, it may exist
right beyond our door, and if so, might that
not offer a beginning that suits us? If we leap in
the car or board a plane to visit some spectacular sight (something one might do from time
to time) but remain ignorant strangers in the
place we live, doesn’t that seem a bit backward?
Becoming familiar with “this litel spot of erthe”
where we actually “live and move and have our
being” most of the time seems like a first step
in recovering a proper connection to the land.
I live in a small town, and my yard is not
too big. And yet it abounds with marvels. I am
not certain it could ever be exhausted. Cardinals and robins (and many others) come to the
feeders, and they usher in the dawn with their
chorus that begins before light appears in the
east. Trees punctuate the space—two kinds of
oak, three species of maple, mulberry, locust
and catalpa—along with a handful of fruit trees
(apple, pear, and cherry). Opossum, bats, raccoons, cottontails, red fox, and even deer are
close at hand.
It’s not enough to know the names of these
creatures or even to see and hear them. The
greater thing, after becoming aware of their
presence, is to understand something of how
they make the place their home alongside us
and how these things interact with each other,
forming an interdependent web of life—the totality that surrounds our houses and our daily lives,
of which we are a part. Despite the walls that
shelter us, with their furnaces, air conditioners,
electric lights, and indoor plumbing, we do not
function independently of that world just over
the threshold. It does not require much to see
how much of our man-made world is directed
toward the realities of heat and cold, sunshine
and rain, light and darkness. One huge step
in living out the realities of human life begins
with a simple recognition of the truths that Aldo
Leopold captured: “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of
supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the
furnace.” Somewhere, at the end of the thread
that is forced air and meat on a styrofoam tray
are soil, sun, rain, plants, and animals. It is inescapable.
Here are some practical suggestions to help
us along the way to seeing and living things as
they are:

10

The Angelus u September - October 2022

Carl Larsson, In the Rose Hip Hedge, 1897.

1. Choose a spot where you can go and sit,
watch, listen, smell, touch and maybe even
taste. Go there at different times of the day and
night, in all weathers. Learn at a visceral level
the world God made, in the rhythm of sun and
moon, stars and seasons, flowering and falling.
Life is there; you only need show up and be still,
be receptive. Everything that is IS because it
participates in God’s own being, and He preserves it in existence. If you do not have much of
a yard, that is no impediment. You simply need
to be outside. In a pinch, a window or plants in
a pot can offer a start.
2. Put up some bird feeders and get acquainted with the birds. Some of them might be passing through or nesting there for only a part of
the year; some species—some individual birds—
may be more or less permanent residents. Pay
attention to their size and shape, their colors
and markings. Try and recognize their songs
and calls—at first, by simply spending time
watching them and listening. Look for patterns.
If they suddenly become silent or fly for cover,

FEATURED

look to see if you can discover why. (One of the
best books here is Jon Young’s What the Robin
Knows.) Some will typically be on the ground,
others higher in the trees. Notice the way they
fly. Different species behave differently. While
on the ground, some walk; others hop. Birds
have always been mysterious creatures. They
inhabit the air a good part of the time, free of
the earth. Their sounds add a great deal of beauty to the world. Do not be content lumping them
all together as mere “birds.”
3. Plant some f lowers. Make a garden in
spring and see it through to harvest. Cultivate
a tiny orchard. Grow some berries. Even on this
scale, a person can experience the pleasure in
the economy of picking things you have assisted
nature in growing and then enjoying them as
additions to your table. Before a child broaches
the complexities of something like photosynthesis, he ought to have a long, protracted experience of leaves and flowers, colors and smells.
Taking time to sit by a plant and draw it forces
one to notice the details of what is there. When
we plant something, tend it, and watch it grow,
we may actually be rooting ourselves.
4. Let the kids loose in the yard and immediate neighborhood, or better yet, go with them.
Make a game of seeing what signs of life can
be found. There are trails and tracks and scat
and evidence of feeding in ditches and alleys
and little clumps of brush. Explore vacant lots
and stands of trees at the end of the road. Do
not make this too structured or didactic. Play
and exploration are essential. Feathers can
be taken home; a little collection of treasures
begun. Maybe give them a little notebook and
a pencil to sketch and record observations. I
assure you that you will be surprised to discover what is going on close by. One day, in
winter, I was amazed in parting a little stand
of tall grass in a ditch at the edge of the yard
to find tunnels and chambers, little seeds and
other evidence of abundant life. One naturalist
has called suburban and even urban landscapes
“the forgotten wilderness.” Honing this awareness at home will later enrich occasional treks
to parks and forests.
5. Clear a bit of dirt or build a small sandbox.
Bait it in the evenings (peanut butter on a stick in
the ground works well) and then check it again
the next morning and throughout the day. If you

are blessed with tracks, sketch them or make
plaster casts of them. Bare spots in roads, after
a rain, or edges near water may offer the thrill
of tracks. Learn the ways animals move and
imitate them. See if you can relate these movements to patterns on the ground in the tracks.
Notice your own tracks. Drink in the mysteries. (Recently a friend found a skull and some
other bones and hair in a ditch while mowing.
What followed was a great deal of close observation, questioning, and even comparing the skull
and its teeth to the family cat. Like Sherlock
Holmes, she eventually determined that she had
the remnants of a raccoon, probably hit by a car
and then subject to decomposition. It was like
playing detective.) Snow will help tremendously
in tracking when it falls. Follow trails and you
may discover where animals come and go. On
one occasion, the pristine tracks of a red fox in
my neighbor’s snow-covered yard led to a culvert, from which weeks later emerged young
who crossed the road to scamper in our front
yard.
6. Pets and other small animals can teach
much, while adding to family life. An examination of your cat’s paws will show why the
overall shape of feline tracks is circular (about
even in length and width), while Lassie’s feet
will teach that the greater length than width
of canines leaves an oval-shaped track. Watching the habits of even domestic animals is rich
in instruction and wonder. Cats stalk, and one
can see stealth in action by watching. The anatomy of dogs and cats teaches much about the
lives of those animals. Size and prominence of
noses, ears, and eyes on particular mammals
reflect how they survive. Animal husbandry
on a small scale is yet another area to explore.
Depending on your situation, there might even
be room for a few chickens or rabbits in your
backyard—more opportunities for learning and
wholesome food for your table.
7. If you are fortunate enough not to have
many streetlights where you live, begin with the
stars and constellations you can view overhead
at night. H.A. Rey has some very helpful books
to help you find your way. Pay more attention to
the weather, even sitting on your porch. Notice
the clouds and changing weather. Orient yourself in relation to landmarks at hand by practicing a birds-eye view of your neighborhood.
It can be fun to ask people which way is north
11

FEATURED

and about prevailing weather patterns. Tristan
Gooley has written several books on “natural
navigation” that offer tremendous insights.
8. Insects can be found everywhere. Read
the writings of one of the greatest scientists, J.
Henri Fabre, the “Homer of the Insect World.”
Fabre practiced his observation skills in what
he called “the laboratory of the open field,”
and his insights from a couple of acres in rocky
Provence filled the world.
9. As time goes on, you might begin a small
collection of books and field guides to assist—
but never replace—your time outdoors. Some
authors, like Ernest Thompson Seton and Jean
Craighead George wrote some marvelous books
that help foster understanding of the natural
world.
Much more could be suggested, but this short
list will keep you occupied for years and guide
you on the journey to becoming more aware and
knowledgeable. Awareness is key throughout.

Asking questions helps kindle desire to know.
We can never know what we do not notice. All
you need to do is go outside. Simplicity truly
is best. Do not worry that you have to know
the names of everything and have an encyclopedic knowledge at instant recall. Knowledge
will come, but exposure comes first. Knowers
first observe; they have to know what is there,
recognize patterns and differences. Genus and
species follow suit in time.
Decades ago, in a botany class taught by Professor P. V. Wells at the University of Kansas, we
spent every class outside, learning the scientific and common names for the trees and shrubs
on campus. We traipsed around with our field
guides, and Professor Wells took us from plant
to plant. As we noted leaves and bark and bud
scars and other things, he told us interesting
facts and stories about each plant in front of us.
What a shame it would have been to spend four
years walking past “green stuff” without being
properly introduced.
Sacred Scripture is filled with wise things to
say on even this subject. “Consider the lilies of
the field.” “I know all the birds of the air.” “He
has numbered all the stars and called them by
name.” “My father is a farmer.” “My beloved is
an enclosed garden.” “Speak to the earth and
it will answer you.” Somewhere (I believe it is
one of Willa Cather’s novels), Pascal is quoted:
“Man was both lost and found in a garden”—
Eden and Gethsemane. And de la Mare’s “Key
of the Kingdom” ought to remind us of Our
Savior’s admonition that “unless you become as
little children, you will not enter the Kingdom
of Heaven.” Fitting perhaps that the Doctor of
the Little Way of Spiritual Childhood is also
called The Little Flower. Surely one aspect of
this childhood is an unceasing wonder in the
face of God’s creation. “This is the Key of the
Kingdom / Of the Kingdom this is the Key.”
Like God Himself, it is right where we are.
TITLE IMAGE: Carl Larsson, The Apple Harvest, 1904.

Carl Larsson, Hide and Seek, 1898.
12

The Angelus u September - October 2022

INTERVIEW

Farming It
Ourselves
Jackie and Clay Smith

1. Tell us a little bit about Smith
and Smith Farms. Where are you
currently located, and what kind of
goods and services do you offer?

W

e are currently located by Meriden, Kansas, which is about 10
minutes north of Topeka on 10
acres. We offer eggs primarily, but
also chicken, rabbit and soon-to-be turkey meat
by special order. Additionally, we are hoping to
expand with a dairy cow—first for ourselves and
then added to our delivery/sales repertoire. We
currently stock both Sugar Creek Country Store
and Growers & Graziers in St. Mary’s proper,
and we offer delivery to families in the surrounding area. We settled here in August 2020 as our
wedding approached since we both had wanted
to start a homestead, and everything fell into
place with our upcoming marriage at Assumption Chapel in September of that year. Both of
us are passionate about nutrition and personal
health, and taking care of our own food supply

is one of our continual goals that we are still
working towards—and we try to supply any of
the bonus outputs to those nearby.

2. How long have you been in
operation, and what are some of
the struggles and victories that
you’ve experienced since then?
What has been your proudest
moment or fondest memory so far?
We started selling our eggs in Spring 2021—
when they got to be too many for us to eat, we
started a small sales operation. Since our community is built around St. Mary’s and the church,
we ended up there multiple times a week, and it
only seemed natural to start selling to families
in town. From there we became known as the
egg people—more particularly Jackie as the “egg
lady”—and we started expanding our operation.
Most of our struggles come from growing
and expansion, along with maintaining supply
for the future. Most animals produce goods on
a yearly cycle, particularly chickens, but every13

INTERVIEW

Our turkeys enjoying the field.

This is one of our Barred Rocks laying on her new, “hidden”
nest.

one (including us) wants a steady weekly supply.
Clay handles raising chickens and scheduling
lays, which involves thinking six months in the
future at all times due to the grow-up time from
chick to layer. In particular, the expansion this
spring and summer of 2022 was exceptionally troublesome due to the housing and input
requirements of 120-170 new baby chicks in
addition to 200 adult hens which were “rescued”
from a commercial farm and turned into free
pasture chickens. The influx of birds required
Clay to set an entirely new routine for feeding,
watering, and even the purchase and training
of our livestock guardian pup, Marcy, to protect
the investment. These associated growing pains
made us consider downsizing to once again only
suit personal consumption, sell chickens, and
refocus our entire homesteading venture over a
particularly troublesome week and a half.
However, this struggle led to, in all likelihood,
our biggest accomplishment with homesteading
to date, as we nailed down an entirely new feeding, raising, and pasture schedule with our new
birds and have returned to being able to take
care of them an hour each day, which is typically our baseline. Clay was even able to leave
town for a business trip—which was unheard of
as recently as earlier this summer. Not only that,
our supply has begun increasing once more as
the new hens pick up laying and we are able to
take on clients rather than turning people down
on a large scale, which is as rewarding as it gets.

3. What advice would you give to
other small families looking to get
more involved in their own land, or
in farming in general? Where did
you start, and where should they?
A baby bunny last February.

We had four guineafowls just show up on our farm one day,
and they started a family here shortly after that.

14

The Angelus u September - October 2022

Start with chickens! They are great for learning what it takes to keep animals. Chickens
are hardy, small, and easy to handle while still
requiring the daily feed-and-care schedule that
most livestock will need. You will gain valuable
experience over six months raising them from
chick to hen, and the first egg will be one of the
most personally gratifying things you’ve ever
seen. We also offer farm tours and information
about basic chicken keeping and raising for anyone from the small family to the budding pasture farmer. We started with just 20 chickens,
some layers and some fancy breeds, and have
a number of them around the farm that we still
point out and have names for.

INTERVIEW

With any stock that you keep, you will be
inundated with info about it (many times contradictory or unhelpful). We have found that the
Storey’s series of livestock-keeping books offer
a great resource of basic information without
overloading you or leaving no room for you to
figure out a good system for your personal setup.
For chickens specifically, the website Backyard
Chickens offers basic breed info and troubleshooting with a handy forum and search bar.
It is a good idea to start with what your family needs, and expand from there or sell/give
any excess on a person-to-person level. Since
a lot of Catholics have large families, make a
careful list of weekly egg (for starters) and eventually dairy or meat intake depending on what
you want to raise next. From that, you can look
at the time it takes to raise a hen to laying age,
expected dairy cow output weekly, or the time
it takes various meat stock to slaughter age. It is
a lot easier to have a specific number that you
aim for, so that you know when to add, remove,
or expand (if you want to get into providing
for other families around). Once you want to
expand your sales, make a small income goal
and then see what it takes to expand to there
and beyond based on your previous experience
with providing for personal consumption. One
of the first things that Clay did when we wanted
to start scaling up our egg chickens was to make
a spreadsheet with expected inputs and outputs of various laying breeds so that we could
calculate the expected number of chickens we
need to cover our homestead expenses and
then mortgage. Setting attainable but impactful goals is the most important part of scaling
up any business, and since your farm income is
so closely tied to your home, it only made sense
for us to set these personal goals.

4. Prior to starting your own
farm, what experiences were
formative in your lives that led
you toward this business?
In short, basically none. Clay and Jackie grew
up in suburbs, with Clay even going to college
for electrical engineering in New York City for a
number of years. Clay has always had an affinity
for animals of all shapes and sizes, and wanted to
work with them on a closer level while not sacrificing his entire career. Jackie has crop farmers
in her family, but not too much animal farming
except large scale beef. We both bought into this

This is George, a
very special naked
neck rooster. He
loves to be held, to
perch on your arm,
and he comes to his
name. He was one of
the first chickens we
ever had on the farm,
and the chicken that
made me fall in love
with chickens as
much as my husband
loves them.

lifestyle after seeing the supply chain breakdown
during the 2020 pandemic and beyond, and we
knew that we both wanted more agency in what
we ate and consumed. Since both of us were/are
relatively young, we were able to uproot what we
were doing. We knew that homesteading would
be a totally new experience for us both so we
just plunged right in and did the best that we
could—which is really all that you can do when
God leads you somewhere and to do something.

5. In five years’ time, where
do you hope to see Smith
and Smith Farms?
Within the next year we hope to expand to
personal dairy and honey production. From
there, we will figure out how to add both of
those to our sales repertoire and scale those
operations. Additionally, we would like to scale
up our rabbit production for more personal sales
and keep our chicken flock growth constant
so that we can keep taking on customers. Our
goal in the long term is to get as many families
as possible less dependent on food that they
don’t know the source of and is just one truck
breakdown away from not being stocked on the
shelves. We are working with a couple of other
farmers who run Growers & Graziers in St.
Mary’s to stock complementary items to what
we each produce, and we hope to expand with
them to make this a reality for the entire area.
TITLE IMAGE: Kansas Farming at U.S. Courthouse, Wichita,
Kansas. Richard Haines, ca. 1936.

15

COMMENTARY

Will Rascals
Defend Our
Civilization…
And What Books Will They Read?
William Edmund Fahey

H

Originally published February 24, 2012 in Crisis magazine.

e faces execution each day. Seven
days a week, his jury of peers votes
unanimously for capital punishment. The judge’s hand is typically
stayed. Mercy reigns because the accused shows
signs of improvement. Perhaps, this little boy
will one day also become fully human. With
him and his kind rests the fate of Western Civilization.
My son Willie’s peers are, as you may guess,
his sisters (his younger brother bides his time
and keeps a low profile). Willie’s offenses are
many, but on one particular morning as the
jury howled for blood, the naughty five-year
old could be heard dressing himself and singing this little tune:
Old Mr. B! Old Mr. B!
Hickamore, Hackamore, on the King’s
Kitchen door;
All the King’s horses, and all the
King’s men,
Couldn’t drive Hickamore, Hackamore,
Off the King’s kitchen door.
16

The Angelus u September - October 2022

Now some of you will recognize this as a
riddling tune by Squirrel Nutkin. My son has
not been made to memorize it. He has heard
the Tale of Squirrel Nutkin a number of times,
but it does not have the near liturgical status of
a rather simple version of Chicken Little, whose
current reading is now Vespers-like in its regularity. Somehow the songs of Squirrel Nutkin
are in him now, perhaps because Nutkin’s are
songs in which he can participate and understand his own nature.
Willie’s singing of “Old Mr. B!” was accompanied by a sort of twisting dance and chuckling laugher that suggested he saw something of
himself in that furry agent provocateur, Squirrel
Nutkin. If you do not have your own five-year
old, let me assure you that you simply cannot
mete out justice against a little fellow who knows
such tunes and takes them so very seriously.

COMMENTARY

Civilization Starts in
Wonder and Play
My son’s song reminded me of a letter that
my wife read to me once. It was written by John
Keats in 1818 to his little sister Fanny. Keats
had been back-packing in northern England
and Scotland. At the end of a long day hiking
in Dumfries, during which Keats occasionally
“scribbled” poems and thought for his sister, he
trotted out the following lines—“a song about
myself,” as he put it:
There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet beHe took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels—
A slight cap
For night cap—
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at’s back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow’d his nose
To the north.

This playful tune rolls on through four parts
and ends as follows:
There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see—
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore

Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England—
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder’d,
He wonder’d,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder’d.

I find this poetic scribbling simple, beautiful,
and wise. I also find it as wonderful as the “Ode
on a Grecian Urn,” which Keats wrote the following year. Perhaps my judgment is shocking,
but it is true. Would a complicated argument
or ornate poem burst the conceit of vagabond
cosmopolitanism as effectively as this naughty
ditty?
The romantic notion of genius beguiles
us. Too many of us think that something like
the Odes of Keats (which are sublime in their
perfection) are Divinity’s random appearance
amongst men and have nothing to do with the
specifics of culture or of an individual’s own
mind, soul, upbringing, and conscious working
out of talent.
The “cold pastoral” of the “Ode on a Grecian
Urn” came from a naughty boy. I would argue
that it came out of the naughty boy precisely
because he was a boy, a boy who liked to trick
and amuse his sister, like many a boy. His head
was filled with potent sounds and images. These
delighted him constantly and made the fertile
stuff from which his better-known poetry was
born. Let us not forget that Keats came from a
particular kind of family and particular kind of
education and particular culture. Let us tremble at every loss or diminishment of that world
which assumed such families, education, and
culture would be wide-spread.

Culture Wars without Culture?
Our own disorders spring from so much
neglect of the real soil of culture: the widely
shared canon of good literature and the widely affirmed understanding that there must be
goodness in literature, and that such literature
should be read aloud within families and by
each and every person who dares call himself
civilized—before, during, and after their formal
education. Goodness is the soil of greatness.
I do not mean by goodness in literature
and good literature that all characters should
be plaster statues without depth or real com17

COMMENTARY

plexity. No, I mean literature which elicits a
clear understanding of what is true, good, and
beautiful, because what is light is seen nearby
to what is dark. Enchantment will not work in
an imbalanced world of goody-goody mannequins. The enchantment offered by good literature works because those reading or listening to a tale already know first-hand that life is
complex. We need go no further than Squirrel
Nutkin to understand how this very real balance
is achieved even in a children’s literature. Nutkin is, at once, morally flawed and attractive.
No one who encounters Squirrel Nutkin—even
one of five years—can fail to miss his conceit,
fail to anticipate his demise, or fail to recognize
his own fallenness in the impertinent will-topower of Nutkin.
I will go so far as to say that a reader who
has not had his experience nurtured and refined
by the likes of Squirrel Nutkin is unlikely to
comprehend Thucydides, St. Augustine, or
Nietzsche.

the witches of Macbeth, never wept at the death
of a bull dog named Jack or sorrowed over the
sins of Kristen Lavransdatter? The one thing
a liberal arts or great books education will not
do is create a moral imagination where there
is none. Yet somehow many educators believe
that reading advanced works and chatting about
them will lead to a good society. It may lead to
a well-read society, but that need not be a good
one or a happy one.
For this reason, I wonder how we can go
about encouraging those “naughty” boys who
at least learn their poetry and know in their
bones what friendship, mirth, betrayal, danger,
and courage are.
In short, should we not defend those naughty boys and girls, who are not really naughty,
but still visibly filled with the eternally youthful wonder that sustains us through life? Such
naughtiness may be our best hope for finding
the future custodians of the great books and the
whole of our civilization.

Do the Great Books Sustain
Wonder and Lead to Morality?

A Good Culture Will
Need Civilized Readers…
Like John Senior

Over the last century, “great books” programs and colleges have fought a valiant battle
to keep up the high standard of what it means
to be human and civilized. Sadly, most of the
progenitors of these programs neglected or gave
little time to thinking about the supporting culture—especially as it touched upon family life
and social customs. Worse still, some of the
“great books” proponents thought that by rubbing up against Milton’s Areopagita, or joining
in a seminar discussion of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, leaders would be
born who would create, leaven, and sustain a
good society. Somehow the idea has held steady
for decades that an almost sacred encounter
with great literature between the ages of 17 and
22 could transcend a hollow and malnourished
family life, where little song was heard and none
sung.
Yet the great books demand a supporting
culture—both before and after and throughout.
Would we place our trust in a man who was
well-versed in Nichomachus’s Introduction to
Arithmetic or Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past,
but who could not complete a line of nursery
rhyme, who had never slept under the stars with
Jim Hawkins, never wanted to rescue the likes
of Princess Flavia, never shrunk in horror at
18

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The following short essay and booklist was
authored by Dr. John Senior. It was originally
a talk given at one The Remnant Forums in the
1980s, and it was also published in The Remnant.
It was first added as an appendix to his book,
The Death of Christian Culture, in the 1994 reprint
edition. He also added some very brief comments about spiritual reading, art and music.
I would like to thank David Whalen, Kirk
Kramer, and Fred Fraser for their help in producing this version of the essay.
Senior’s list was the inspiration behind starting the Civilized Reader, which reviews the good
and the great books.

“The Thousand Good
Books” by John Senior
The “Great Books” movement of the last generation has not failed so much as fizzled, not
because of any defect in the books—“the best
that has been thought and said,” in Matthew
Arnold’s phrase—but like good champagne in
plastic bottles they went flat. To change the figure, the seeds are good but the cultural soil has
been depleted; the seminal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, only properly
grow in an imaginative ground saturated with

COMMENTARY

fables, fairy tales, stories, rhymes, adventures,
which have developed into the thousand books
of Grimm, Andersen, Stevenson, Dickens, Scott,
Dumas and the rest. Western tradition, taking
all that was best of the Greco-Roman world into
herself has given us the thousand good books as
a preparation for the great ones and for all the
studies in the arts and sciences, without which
such studies are inhumane. The brutal athlete
and the foppish aesthete suffer vices opposed
to the virtue of what Newman called “the gentleman.” Anyone working in any art or science
at college, whether in the so-called “pure” or
the practical arts and sciences will discover he
has a made a quantum leap when he gets even
a small amount of cultural ground under him—
he will grow up like an undernourished plant
suddenly fertilized and watered.
Of course the distinction between “great”
and “good” is not absolute. “Great” implies
a certain magnitude; one might say War and
Peace or Les Miserables are great because of their
length, or The Critique of Pure Reason its difficulty. Great books call for philosophical reflection; whereas good books are popular, appealing especially to the imagination. But obviously
some writers are both and their works may be
read more than once from the different points
of view – this is true of Shakespeare and Cervantes, for example.
It is commonly agreed also that both “great”
and “good” can only be judged from a certain
distance. Contemporary works can be appreciated and enjoyed but not very properly judged,
and just as a principle must stand outside what
follows from it (as a point to a line), so a cultural
standard must be established from some time
at least as distant as our grandparents’. For us
today the cut-off point is World War I before
which cars and the electric light had not yet
come to dominate our lives and the experience
of nature had not been distorted by speed and
the destruction of shadows. There is a serious
question—with arguments on both sides surely—as to whether there can be any culture at all
in a mechanized society. Whichever side one
takes in that dispute, it is certainly true that we
cannot understand the point at issue without
an imaginative grasp of the world we have lost.
What follows is not a complete list: almost all
the authors have written many books, some as
good as the ones given; and there are undoubtedly authors of some importance inadvertent-

ly left out—but this is a sufficient work-sheet.
Everyone will find more than enough that he
hasn’t read; and everything on this list is by
common consent part of the ordinary cultural
matter essential for an English-speaking person
to grow in.
Remember that the point of view throughout a course of studies such as this is that of the
amateur—the ordinary person who loves and
enjoys what he loves—not of the expert in critical, historical or textual technology.
The books have been divided (sometimes
dubiously because some stand midway between
the categories) into the stages of life corresponding to the classical “ages” of man and in general agreement with the divisions of modern
child psychology as explained by Freud or Piaget. And because sight is the first of the senses and especially powerful in early years, it is
very important to secure books illustrated by
artists working in the cultural tradition we are
studying both as an introduction to art and as
part of the imaginative experience of the book.
This is not to disparage contemporary artists
any more than the tradition itself disparages
contemporary experiment—quite the contrary,
one of the fruits of such a course should be the
encouragement of good writing and drawing.
A standard must never be taken as a restrictive
straitjacket but rather as a teacher and model
for achievement. Book illustration reached its
perfection in the nineteenth century in the work
of Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane, Gustave Dore, George Cruikshank,
“Phiz,” Gordon Browne, Beatrix Potter, Sir John
Tenniel, Arthur Rackham, Howard Pyle, N.C.
Wyeth, and many others.
The rule of thumb is to find a nineteenth-century edition or one of the facsimiles which
(though not as sharp in the printing) are currently available at moderate prices. What follows is an incomplete work-sheet of unedited
notes which may serve as a rough guide.

19

COMMENTARY

Carl Larsson: Anna-Johanna, 1913.

SENIOR’S INCOMPLETE LIFELONG READING LIST
THE NURSERY (Ages 2 – 7)
Literary experience begins for very young
children with someone reading aloud while they
look at the pictures. But they can begin to read
the simplest stories which they already love at
an early age.
Aesop. Aesop’s Fables (The translation by Robert L’Estrange is the classic).
Andersen, Hans Christian. Fairy Tales.
Arabian Nights. There are two classic translations, one expurgated for children by
Andrew Lang, the other complete by Richard Burton.
Belloc, Hilaire. The Bad Child’s Book of
Beasts; Cautionary Tales.
Caldecott, Randolph. Picture Books, 16 little
volumes (published by Frederick Warne).
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland; Through
the Looking Glass. Illustrated by Tenniel.
Collodi, Carlo. Pinocchio.
de la Mare, Walter. Come Hither; Songs of
Childhood.
20

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Edgeworth, Maria. The Parent’s Assistant; Moral Tales.
Ewing, Juliana. Jackanapes.
Gesta Romanorum. Translated by Swann
(scholarly facsimiles).
Grahame, Kenneth. Wind in the Willows (illustrated by Ernest Shepherd).
Greenaway, Kate. Apple Pie; Birthday
Book; Marigold Garden; Mother Goose; Under
the Window; The Language of Flowers (Frederick Warne).
Grimm. Household Stories. Illustrated by Walter Crane (Dover facsimiles).
Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus.
Kingsley, Charles. Water Babies.
Kipling, Rudyard. Just So Stories; Jungle Book.
Lamb, Charles. Beauty and the Beast; Tales from
Shakespeare.
Lang, Andrew. Blue Book of Fairies and other
colors; five volumes; best illustrated by
H.J. Ford (Dover facsimile).
Lear, Edward. Nonsense Omnibus; The Owl and
the Pussycat. Illustrated by Lear (Warne).
Lofting, Hugh. Dr Doolittle’s Circus and others
in the series.
Milne, A.A.. Winnie the Pooh and others in the
series.
Mother Goose (Dover facsimiles – illustrated by
Rackham; Viking Press).
Perrault, Charles. Fairy Tales. Illustrated by
Dore (Dover).
Potter, Beatrix: Peter Rabbit and 23 little volumes; some available in French, Spanish
and Latin. All illustrated by Potter (an
important feature of these books is their
small size, designed for a young child. Buy
the individual books, not all of them collected in one big volume).
Stevenson, Robert Louis. A Child’s Garden of
Verses (Scribners).

SCHOOL DAYS (Ages 7 – 12)
Adams, Andy. Log of a Cowboy. Illustrated by
N.C. Wyeth.
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women; Little Men;
others.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey. Story of a Bad Boy.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Tarzan series.
Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Illustrated by Kate Greenaway (Warne).
Burnett, Francis Hodgson. The Secret Garden; Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Collins, William. John Gilpin’s Ride. Illustrated
by Caldecott (Warne).

COMMENTARY

Cooper, James Fenimore. Deerslayer and many
others.
Dana, Richard Henry. Two Years Before the
Mast.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Carol; Cricket on the Hearth; David Copperfield; Oliver
Twist (These last may be reserved for adolescents or re-read.)
Dodge, Mary Mapes. Hans Brinker.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Garland, Hamlin. Son of the Middle Border and
others.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Tanglewood Tales.
Henty, George William. A hundred “Boys
Books.”
Irving, Washington. Sketch Book.
James, Will. Smoky; Lone Cowboy; Book of Cowboys Illustrated by James.
Kingsley, Charles. Westward Ho, others
Kipling, Rudyard. Captains Courageous; Stalky
and Co. Illustrated by Millar.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.
Hiawatha; Evangeline.
Marryat, Frederick, Midshipman Easy; Masterman Ready, and others.
Masefield, John. Jim Davis.
Porter, Gene Stratton. Freckles and others.
Pyle, Howard. Robin Hood and others. Illustrated by Pyle.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty.
Shakespeare. Comedy of Errors.
Spyri, Johanna. Heidi.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island; Kidnapped, and others. Illustrated by N.C.
Wyeth
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Tarkington, Booth. Penrod and others in the
series
Til Eulenspiegel translated by Mackenzie.
Twain, Mark. Tom Sawyer; Huckleberry Finn; The Prince and the Pauper – but
not Connecticut Yankee and later novels.
Verne, Jules. Around the World in Eighty Days;
and many others.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie; and others.
Wyss, Johann. Swiss Family Robinson.

ADOLESCENCE (Ages 12 – 16)
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Collins, Wilkie. Moonstone and others.
Dampier, William. A Voyage Round the World.
Daudet, Alphonse. Tartarin, Fromont Jeune.

Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge; Nicholas
Nickleby; Old Curiosity Shop.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Sherlock Holmes
series; White Company.
Du Maurier, George. Trilby.
Dumas, Alexander. Three Musketeers; others.
Eggleston, Edward. The Hoosier Schoolmaster.
Eliot, George. Romola; Adam Bede; Mill on the
Floss.
Fabre, Henri. Selections from Souvenirs entymologique.
Hughes, Thomas. Tom Brown’s School
Days; Tom Brown at Oxford.
Hugo, Victor. Quatre-vingt-treize; Les Miserables; Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Ibanez, Blasco. Blood and Sand; Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse.
Le Sage, Alain. Gil Blas.
Park, Mungo. Travels in Africa.
Parkman, Francis. Oregon Trail.
Poe, Edgar Allen. Tales; and poems.
Polo, Marco. Travels.
Reade, Charles. The Cloister and the Hearth.
Rhodes, Eugene. Best Novels and Stories (edited
by Dobie).
Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe; Rob Roy; many others.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
Shakespeare. Midsummer Night’s Dream; Romeo
and Juliet; Merchant of Venice.
Sienkiewicz, Henryk. Quo Vadis; With Fire and
Sword.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Wallace, Edgar. Four Just Men; Sanders of the
River; others.
Wells, H.G.. The Time Machine; The Invisible
Man; others.
Wister, Owen. The Virginian.

YOUTH (Ages 16 – 20)
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice; and others.
Balzac, Honoré. Pere Goriot; and many others.
Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward.
Bernanos, Georges. Diary of a Country Priest.
Blackmore, Richard. Lorna Doone; and others.
Borrow, George. Romany Rye; and others.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
Buchanan, John. The Thirty Nine Steps; and
many others.
Butler, Samuel. The Way of all Flesh; Erewhon.
Cabell, James Branch. Jurgen; and others.
Cable, George Washington. Old Creole Days;
and others.
Cather, Willa. My Antonia; Death Comes for the
Archbishop; and others.
21

COMMENTARY

Chekhov, Anton. Stories; and plays.
Chesterton, G.K.. Father Brown series; Everlasting Man; A Man Called Thursday
Columbus, Christopher. Four Voyages to the
New World.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim; and many others
Cook, James. Captain Cook’s Explorations.
De Maupassant, Guy. Stories.
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House; Our Mutual
Friend; Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dostoyevsky, Feodor. Crime and Punishment; Brothers Karamazov.
Doughty, Charles. Travels in Arabia Desert.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones; Jonathan Wilde
Hakluyt, Richard. Voyages to the New World.
Hawkins, Anthony Hope. The Prisoner of
Zenda.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Scarlet Letter; and others.
Irving, Washington. Life of Columbus; Conquest
of Granada; Life of George Washington
Jackson, Helen Hunt. Ramona.
Lagerof, Selma. Jerusalem; Gosta Berling; and
others.
Loti, Pierre. Iceland Fisherman; and others.
Manzoni., Alessandro. The Betrothed.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick; Billy Budd; and
others.
Moore, Tom. Lalla Rookh.
Morris, William. News from Nowhere.
Scott, Robert. Scott’s Last Expedition
Shakespeare. Macbeth; Hamlet; Taming of the
Shrew; As You Like It.
Stendahl. The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma.
Stanley, Henry Morton. How I Found Livingstone.
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity
Fair; Henry Esmond; and others.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace; and others.
Trollope, Anthony. Barchester series
Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons; A Nest of
Gentlefolk; and others.
Undset, Sigrid. Kristin Lavransdatter; and others.
Verga, Giovanni. The House by the Medlar Tree;
and others (translated by D.H. Lawrence)
Washington, Booker T.. Up from Slavery.

SPIRITUAL READING (All ages)
The Bible. For cultural purposes, there are
only two English Bibles: for the Protestants
the King James Version and for Catholics the
22

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Douay-Rheims. Both are literary masterpieces
as none other even remotely is. Since spiritual
mysteries can only be communicated through
poetry, whatever more modern versions may
gain in accuracy is nothing compared to what
is lost.
Bunyan, John. Pilgrim’s Progress—the Great
Protestant Masterpiece.
de Sales, St Francis. Introduction to the Devout
Life—the best there is.

MUSIC
Avoiding extremes of difficult and light—neither Bach nor Debussy—the distinction between
“great” and good is blurred. The student should
listen to one work only for at least a week, going
over and over the separate movements or acts
until the repeated themes are recognized as
they recur. It is better to know a very few works
very well than to run over vast amounts. The
following is a good order for neophytes:
Beethoven. Violin Concerto.
Beethoven. Pastoral Symphony.
Verdi. Rigoletto.
With an opera, read the entire libretto in
English, then take only a single scene and play
it through several times trying to follow the
words in Italian (or French or German) with an
understanding of their meaning. Having gone
through the whole opera scene by scene, pick
out great moments – arias, duets, etc. It is good
to have two recordings, one of the complete
work, another of the highlights.
Puccini. La Boheme
Mozart. Clarinet Concerto or Oboe Concerto; Jupiter Symphony; Piano music (especially as played by Gieserking)
Beethoven. Seventh Symphony.
Brahms. Fourth Symphony.
Chopin:. Selections.
(Most important: Students should attend live
concerts).

ART
The Kenneth Clark series Civilisation. Clark
published a book with illustrations and the
text of the series. And most important, visits to
museums and galleries.
TITLE IMAGE: Carl Larsson, Esbjörn at the Study Corner, 1912.

COMMENTARY
CONTEXT

Get Out:

An Anti-Urban Manifesto
Michael Warren Davis

The rural family needs to regain its rightful place at
the heart of the social order.
— Pope Benedict XVI

C

ities are a near occasion of sin.
Maybe that wasn’t always the case.
It’s possible that a man could become
a saint in twelfth-century Salisbury. I
don’t know; I’ve never been. But I’ve spent time
(too much time) in New York and Los Angeles
and Washington, D.C. That’s where souls go
to die. Nobody who has done the same could
possibly disagree. Those skyscrapers loom like
headstones over mass graves—blank monuments
to a billion victims of spiritual genocide, all
nameless and unmourned.
We could go into the statistics about the
higher rates of irreligion, depression, crime,
drug use, and sexual deviancy found in cities.
But that would be superf luous. You already
know all that. You take it for granted—as well
you should. It can’t tell us why, though. Here
are what I believe to be the four main reasons.

1. We cannot love. Our Lord commands
us to love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s difficult, even in the best of times.
In the best of times, cities were made up of
large families who ran small family businesses. The husbands and fathers were independent craftsmen. Most of them lived above their
shops. Everyone on the block patronized the
same businesses. They attended the same parish. Their children played together. They were
friends—even relatives—as well as neighbors.
Today, the opposite is true. Most city-dwellers now live miles away from their place of
work. Many of them aren’t even from the same
state. Their neighbors, coworkers, family, and
friends are four totally distinct groups of people. In fact, few of them even meet the folks
who live in the next apartment, let alone the
next building. Cities are like little kingdoms in
which everyone is a resident alien.
There’s a fifth group of people with whom
city-dwellers interact. It’s a group I call the
23

CONTEXT

Crush. This is the mass of nameless, faceless
individuals through which we wade on the sidewalk, in traffic, and on the subway. Many of us
spend more time with the Crush than any of
the others. To us, it isn’t a group of people. It’s
a seething mass of flesh and plastic—an obstacle
to be pushed through, the way a farmer pushes
through his pigs. They do nothing for us except
rob us of our time, our air, our peace of mind.
And everywhere we go in the city, we know
that we are the Crush to everyone else. We, too,
are merely an irritant to everyone around us.
That’s why, when you catch their eye, they look
away or, more likely, scowl.
How can we love them? They wouldn’t
accept our love, even if we offered it to them.
2. We cannot work. Those independent
craftsmen—blacksmiths, tailors, and the like—
gave way to factories. Those factories, in turn,
were shipped overseas. Now, what do most
city-dwellers do for work? Those who are considered well-off spend their days sending emails
to each other. The rest clean hotel rooms, wait
tables, make coffee, etc.
Today, for every single “goods-producing”
job in New York City, there are over 2,000 “service-providing” jobs.
Here we have the slow degradation from
work to labor to service. In the city, no man is
his own master. He isn’t skilled; he isn’t even
needed. His only “talent” is to take abuse (both
from his employer and his customers) as cheerfully as possible, and then get on with his work.
The whole system is designed to crush his spirit,
to rob him of his dignity.
No wonder our cities have become spiritual
wastelands. No wonder homicide and abortion
and human trafficking are rampant. How can
we value the lives of our fellow human beings
when our economy teaches us not to value our
own?
3. We cannot be creatures. Man was made
for the Garden. We belong to the land, just as
surely as fish belong to the sea. We are God’s
creatures, no less than the beasts and the birds.
He created our habitat for us, and He didn’t see
fit to include concrete or asphalt.
Our wellness—physical, mental, and spiritual—depends on our taking our proper place
in the order of Creation. And yet we’ve built a
new environment for ourselves: a jungle of steel
and glass. Rivers of tar run all through this jun24

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gle, with mountains of filth washing up on their
banks. By day, these vast groves of headstones
block out the sun. By night, the stars are blotted
out by a hundred million LED lights.
This isn’t good for us. It’s not how we’re
supposed to live. And there’s only one way to
regain our creatureliness—to locate ourselves in
Creation once again: head for the hills.
4. We cannot hear God. The prophet Isaiah said, “in quietness and in confidence shall
be your strength.” That’s why Cardinal Robert
Sarah wrote his landmark book The Power of
Silence. “The modern world has multiplied the
most toxic noises,” he observes, “and yet God
hides Himself in silence.”
Silence is not a way to God. It’s the only
way. In the first lines of the book, His Eminence declares, “There is one great question:
how can man really be in the image of God?
He must enter silence. When he drapes himself in silence, as God Himself dwells in a great
silence, man is close to heaven, or rather, he
allows God to manifest Himself in him.”
Cities are antithetical to silence. It isn’t only
the car horns, the screeching trains, the banging
of hammers, the roar of jackhammers, the ringing of cell phones, or the endless, pointless chatter of the Crush. As His Eminence points out,
the “noise” attacks our eyes as well as our ears.
Studies have found that, on average, Americans view 10,000 advertisements every day.
Most of them, of course, are on our smartphones. But in cities, they’re everywhere.
They’re on billboards and taxi signs. They’re
plastered on the sides of buses, and over the
seats on the train. They’re on huge television
screens planted around the city. They’re handed out by hawkers on every street corner. This
“visual noise” is literally inescapable.
In his essay The Call of Nazareth, Fr. Vincent McNabb urged us to “shake the towndust of neopaganism from our feet.” He knew
even then that cities were a near occasion of
sin. He knew that life in the city made it virtually impossible for one to have a rich interior
life. His writings seemed prescient at the time;
today, they’re downright prophetic.
Once, a young disciple asked Fr. McNabb,
“How can I get out of London?” The old Dominican’s reply was quite simple: “Walk.” There’s
no other way left to us now. Get out of the city.
Whatever the price is, pay it. To stay might cost
your soul.

Revealing to thee the pre-eternal Counsel
Gabriel came and stood before thee, O Virgin,
And in greeting thee, he said:
Rejoice, earth that hath not been sown!
Rejoice, burning bush that remains unconsumed!
Rejoice, unsearchable depth!
Rejoice, O bridge that leads to Heaven!
Rejoice, ladder raised on high that Jacob saw!
Rejoice, divine jar of manna!
Rejoice, deliverance from the curse!
Rejoice, restoration of Adam:
The Lord is with thee!
—The Pre-Eternal Counsel

Composer: Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944)
(https://youtu.be/XzK5YEVMHn4)

Titian, “Annunciation” from The Resurrection of Jesus Christ polyptych, 1520-22.
25

LITERATURE

Wendell
Berry:

Farming as “Practicing Resurrection”
Jonathan Wanner

What I stand for is what I stand on.
~Wendell Berry

T

o most folks at most times, dirt is a
dirty word. Pigsties and sinners find
in it a common stain; housewives lose
by it their peace of mind; and it is the
very emblem of evil’s corruption (Gen 3:19).
When it is not a playpit for boys, it is a harbor
of the dead. For poet Wendell Berry, however,
our livelier way forward is downward. To him,
this grime is opposed to the grim. Dirt is anything but “cheap as dirt” since by it the farmer
“practices resurrection”:1
The grower of trees, the gardener, the
man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and
sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He
enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He
has seen the light lie down
26

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in the dung heap, and rise again in the
corn. 2
As the medium through which life and death
endlessly cycle, soil is resurrective: the sunfed corn dies to feed the livestock; the animals
translate the plant decay into a “dung heap”; and
by the farmer’s calloused hands, the manure
fertilizes the newborn crop. Miraculously, the
same solar energy that first warmed the corn
from above feeds its progeny from below. Sunbeams, in this sense, figuratively “lie down in
the dung heap” because life remnants remain
in the decay so that plants have a light-lineage
just as humans have bloodlines. Profoundly, the
soil is, at once, both tomb and womb.
Yet, there is a secret buried beneath Berry’s paradox: sacrifice alone sets this death-life
cycle in motion. Even before a crop dies, its life
is full of many little deaths, or as Berry calls
them, “breakings.” Seeds break into shoots;
shoots break into flowers; flowers break into

LITERATURE

fruit; fruits break into seeds… and so the spokes
turn. Yet the breaking begins even before the
seed, with the farmer who plows the ground:
The opening out and out,
body yielding body:
the breaking
through which the new
comes, perching
above its shadow
on the piling up
darkened broken old
husks of itself:
bud opening to flower
opening to fruit opening
to the sweet marrow
of the seed— 3
Animals too “open out and out” as they mature.
Breaking through egg, through womb, newborns pile up their “broken old husks” as their
bodies continually regenerate, shedding fur
and feather, budding forth talon, tusk, and
tooth. Humans follow in like pattern: at birth,
the mother “opens” to the infant, from whose
body teeth—and eventually puberty—erupt. This
cycle of sacrifice and renewal happens even on
a microscopic level: to strengthen our muscles,
we must first rupture their fibers; we shed our
outer skin every 2-4 weeks;4 and we are, in a
small way, remade when, every day, our body
regenerates roughly 330 billion cells. 5 Repeatedly, the lesser and former must die to give way
to a greater prime. Nor does the pattern stop
after death since decay is the umbilical cord for
new life. A rotting corpse, in fact, cannot escape
the agrarian cycle of rebirth:

of ourselves and mature into our eternal prime.
As time-bound as the agrarian cycle is, then, its
endless repetition tends toward timelessness:
All times are one
if hearts delight
in work, if hands
join the world right.7
Here in time
we are added to one another forever.8
The beauty of Berry’s analogy is its universality. Even if most Americans don’t practice
husbandry, everyone can “practice resurrection” because everyone eats. Eating, after all,
“is an agricultural act” since it “ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with
planting and birth.”9 The kitchen table, in these
terms, is a crossroad where life and death intersect. Our lives, after all, only go on when other
living bodies are sacrificed for us. You can’t
keep breathing unless plants and animals die for
you. At the very least we ought to revere crops
and livestock as our daily bread. As low as they
are on the “chain of being,” they sustain our
bodies so the Eucharist can sustain our souls,
and their sacrifice prefigures our more rational self-gifts. We might take an extra minute to
set the table rightfully, to consider our humble
place on time’s cosmic wheel, and to praise God
before and after our meal:

After death, willing or not, the body
serves,
entering the earth. And so what was
heaviest
And most mute is at last raised up into
song.6
The involuntary “deaths” and “rebirths” of
tooth and tissue, of course, are hardly freewilled martyrdoms, but they are nonetheless a
natural analogue of the supernatural renewal
for which we are bound. In this poetic sense,
the sacraments are crop-like: Christ’s wounded side, as much as it appears a loss, is the
harvest-place of souls. Through His “broken
ground” we “break away” from the lesser parts

Wendell Berry in Henry County, KY, 2011 (Wikimedia). Photo
by Guy Mendes.
27

LITERATURE

Prayer after Eating
I have taken in the light
that quickened eye and leaf.
May my brain be bright with praise
of what I eat, in the brief blaze
of motion and of thought.
May I be worthy of my meat.10
To the farmer, eating is an awe-worthy grace.
Certainly we don’t deserve to live, even “in the
brief blaze” of a mortal span, yet God endows
us with continuous warmth through the creative refreshments of art, earth, and sky. We
need only look with plain eyes to find gratitude, since effects eventually lead to causes: as
vessels of solar radiance, plants enrich our bodies with clear minds so we can properly thank
God for the sun’s clarity. We may be “bright
with praise” as well for the farmer and the cook
who transpose the sunlight into solid edibles.
Thankfulness, after all, is chain-like, and food
finds its origins in the dependency we might
call “community”:
We must thank God to thank the cook.
To thank the cook we must thank the
farmer.
To thank the farmer, we must thank the
plants.
To thank the plants, we must thank the
sun.
To thank the sun, we must thank God.
Even when we are alone, eating is a communal
act since God passes every plate through the
many “hands” of man and nature.
Of course, Berry has an upper edge: as a
farmer, he has seen grace, time, and his hands
work a seed into a candlelit dinner. When the
food comes from you, you know it comes from
beyond you. Thankfulness is written in a farmer’s bones. We need not wonder, then, how
Americans became so ungrateful and unwise
with food. There are fewer farmers now than
ever, and the food industry does its utmost to
convince us that our meals were never alive. In
the words of Berry,
“The passive American consumer, sitting
down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food,
confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed,
dyed, breaded, sauced, g ravied, g round,
pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and san28

The Angelus u September - October 2022

itized beyond resemblance to any part of any
creature that ever lived.”11
For most consumers, food is an “abstract
idea” until it “appears on the grocery shelf or
on the table.”12 I must own that I have fallen into
this thicket many times, despite the fact that my
parents grew up on farms (and my father, as
Berry would say, is a man “born to farming”).
My mother always tended a vegetable garden,
but it wasn’t until I groomed a plot of my own
that I “practiced resurrection” in the dirt. It is
one thing to know that eggs come from chickens
or that tomatoes come from seeds; it is another thing to grow a specific variety, to experience a specific breed, to see a life cycle in all
its roundness, to consider what calcium-rich
foods produce thick-shelled eggs, to mind the
elemental conditions in which tomatoes germinate best. I remember when I first sowed lettuce indoors. My vaulting ambition told me to
get an early start before spring poked its head
out of the horizon. Surely the task would be as
easy as blowing my nose. The problem was that
I never took the middle ground: the window
light was not enough, and my watering schedule was excessive. The seeds grew “leggy,” or
“dampened off,” or scorched unacclimated to
the sun. Once, after sowing another batch of
mixed vegetables, I set the trays outside only
to find a passing storm had tossed them about.
From the chaos of dirt, I forked out what seedlings I could and for the next few weeks played
plant roulette. The “seed leaves” eventually
gave way to “true leaves,” so that by the time I
transplanted them into the garden, I had successfully paired like with like—that is, except
for the lone zucchini I had clownishly put in
the cucumber row. What a resurrection I had
on my plate when, with tossed salad, I finally
forked that storm-tossed zucchini. As much as
harvest time, the misfortunes make us squint
more than we ever would: the sunflower leaning
in the sandy loam; the knob-warped potato, the
aphid-ridden melon, the mildewed squash, the
striations of peppers “corking”…
Gardening is never quite as simple as sticking a seed in the mud. It forces you to know a
place and to have a place in it. The difficulty is
that you can never really see how a place is in
one day. You could observe a plot for an entire
year and only acquire a starting knowledge of
how its soil behaves, how its creatures live and

LITERATURE

kind of knowledge that stains the fingertips and
sweetens the mouth-buds, the kind that trains
you to live more alive.
As slow as farming is, it is the quickest way
to see what a place is about. A place, after all,
is made meaningful not just by what creatures
live and die in it, but how they do so. How, then,
does a farmer live? Always sacrificially, with a
stability of place, and with the kind of self-sufficiency that teaches him how to depend upon
beings both greater and lesser than himself. Paradoxically, the “Man Born to Farming” cultivates to be cultivated:
Winslow Homer, Farmer with a Pitchfork, c. 1874.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love
flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and
like water
descending in the dark?14

die. As Berry puts, a wise farmer needs a slowpaced mind:
Speed is everything now; just jump on the tractor and way across the field as if it’s a dirt-track.
You see it when a farmer takes over a new
farm: he goes in and plants straight-way, right
out of the book. But if one of the old farmers
took a new farm, and you walked round the
land with him and asked him: “What are you
going to plant here and here?” he’d look at you
some queer; because he wouldn’t plant nothing
much at first. He’d wait a bit and see what the
land was like: he’d prove the land first… He’d
walk on it and feel it through his boots and
see if it was in good heart, before he planted
anything: he’d sow only when he knew what
the land was fit for.13

Slow, however, does not mean simple. There
are many circles the farmer must consider
across the seasons: the revolutions of light and
shade, the weather’s rhythms, the life span of
local insects, the eating habits of wild animals,
and the back and forth of minerals and organic matter passing through the soil. You need to
know where and when to plant, when and how
to harvest, how far apart to space the seeds, how
often to fertilize, how often to water, and how
to build support structures when necessary. You
must know what health looks like in each growing stage, and all the while the environment
and the crop are in a constant flux. Under one
hat, a farmer is a plant’s parent, doctor, butler,
and grim reaper. Monk-like, he must play these
parts slowly, and never with immediate gratification. Yet, when the reaping comes, it is always
in abundance: the pot-bellied gourd, the beet
in full blood, beans in swell, and carrots like a
college of elders, their chin-hairs wise. It is the

Let our hands be trowels. Let our souls be
dirt-clean.

Endnotes
1

Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation
Front,” The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Berkley: Counterpoint, 1998), 88.

2

Ibid., “The Man Born to Farming,” 67.

3

Ibid., “The Broken Ground,” 8.

4

Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, “How
Does Skin Work?,” National Library of Medicine, September
28, 2009 [Updated Apr 11, 2019], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/books/NBK279255/.

5

See “Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body” by Ron Sender, Shai Fuchs and Ron
Milo in PLOS Biology, Vol. 14; August 2016 (total cell data),
and “The Distribution of Cellular Turnover in the Human
Body” by Ron Sender and Ron Milo in Nature Medicine, Vol.
27; January 2021 (cell turnover data).

6

Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems, “Enriching the Earth,” 83.

7

Ibid., “From the Distance,” 138.

8

Ibid., “Epitaph,” 149.

9

Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating,” Wendell Berry:
Essays 1969-1990 (New York: The Library of America, 2019),
739.

10

Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems, “Prayer After Eating,” 83.

11

Wendell Berry, Wendell Berry: Essays 1969-1990, “The Pleasures of Eating,” 705.

12

Ibid., 703.

13

Ibid., “Horse-Drawn Tools,” 475.

14

Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems, “The Man Born to Farming,” 67.

TITLE IMAGE: Joseph Vorst, Rural Arkansas (mural study,
Paris, Arkansas Post Office), ca. 1939-1940, colors modified.

29

LITERATURE

Contemplative
Realism:
Catholic Literature
for the Twenty-First Century
Katy Carl

30

The Angelus u September - October 2022

LITERATURE

It seems to me that Catholics ought to possess
a genuinely informed doctrine concerning
everything which is human, a doctrine which
conforms with truth, taste, and intelligence.
No timidity. No pharisaism. No ignorance. No
prudishness. No Manicheism. But the full and
luminous Catholic doctrine.—Raïssa Maritain,
1919, from the Four Notebooks 1906–1926, in
The Journal of Raissa Maritain (Providence, RI:
Cluny Media, p. 70)

Introduction: Some
Catholic Writers Today

I

f nearly two decades of studying the question of the Catholic writer (with hopes of
becoming one myself) have conduced to
one conclusion more than another, it is that
no easy formula exists to define “the Catholic
writer.” Dana Gioia’s seminal essay The Catholic Writer Today comes closest in recent years,
and his categorization or taxonomy of various
kinds of Catholic writing still remains valid
and clarifying. Yet when it comes to the literary landscape, significant changes have taken
place even within the ten years since that essay
was in production. So instead I speak of “some
Catholic writers” in the clear recognition that
any complete picture will have to be much bigger than that sketched here.
This essay will deal more with fiction than
with poetry, both because fiction is my own specialty and because it is the focus of the nascent
contemplative realist movement in literature.
Yet anyone familiar with Catholic literary traditions, fictional or otherwise, will instantly think
of Flannery O’Connor’s maxim that “the Catholic novelist does not have to be a Catholic; he
does not even have to be a Christian; he does,
unfortunately, have to be a novelist.” By “novelist” O’Connor here means, broadly, a craftsperson trained in some manner in the art of making fiction (or, by extension, one’s own chosen
genre). Strength of belief alone will not make
for worthwhile reading. And the history of the
Catholic influence in literature includes many
writers whose backgrounds include significant
Catholic influences but whose adulthood relationships with the Church and devotion have
ranged from the oppositional or tendentious to
the obscurely defined, on-again/off-again, or
merely deeply private. We could list litanies:
James Joyce and Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison, among many others.
Such writers remain worth studying for their

extraordinary contributions to literary craft
and human wisdom. Any reader serious about
engaging literary tradition in the present day
must take writers in these contemporary categories, as well as writers of the more distant
past, into account.
That said, belles-lettres do not seem to rise
to the top of every mind, even of many minds,
when we discuss what is popularly thought of
as “Catholic literature” over coffee after Mass.
Perhaps this tendency follows the example of
St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers, who says
of his own Introduction to the Devout Life that
he had “no time” to give it a “polished style”
(ironically making for better, clearer, and more
elegant reading than was at all popular among
the ornate, baroque constructed decorations
of his day). Or perhaps when we turn toward
the leisure and recreation that literature often
represents, then, worn out from dealing with
a thousand other matters, we simply tend to
ignore whatever might pose a greater intellectual or emotional challenge than we are willing at that moment to face. Either way, blurred
distinctions muddy the waters of many conversations. When I talk of “Catholic literature,” I
am imagining neither primarily scholarly nor
primarily devotional work (though the Catholic
writer may also, and often does, possess such
qualifications in addition to literary bona fides).
Instead I am exploring work where the fine art
of writing meets the deep human concerns, both
material and spiritual, that inform and motivate
the Catholic worldview. That many in both literary and Catholic circles feel some tension at
this locus seems to be enough justification to
ground an inquiry. Whether this tension has a
source in underlying reality, or only in the distortions of vision that beset our human vulnerabilities, may be a question on which we can
begin to throw light.

The Catholic Literary Revival:
“Here Comes Everybody”
Today readers interested in fiction and poetry by Catholic authors are witnessing a tremendously exciting resurgence of contemporary
voices, frequently but not always influenced by
the earlier “Catholic revival” of the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century as well as
by the finest novelistic tradition of the past. The
year 2014 marked an annus mirabilis for a twenty-first-century flowering of fiction shaped by
31

LITERATURE

Catholic experience and worldview: Phil Klay’s
National Book Award–winning Redeployment,
a rawly forthright examination of moral injury
done in the course of duty to those most directly
responsible for protecting American interests;
the initial publication of many of the stories
collected in Kirstin Valdez Quade’s Night at the
Fiestas, whose treatment of conflicts with and
within Catholic-influenced cultures garnered
2015’s National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize; and Christopher Beha’s Arts & Entertainments, a trenchant satire of contemporary
celebrity culture that nevertheless posed the
same deep questions about human attention,
devotion, and the nature of genuine freedom, on
which Beha meditated more seriously through
his debut What Happened to Sophie Wilder.
To explore this newer generation of writers,
we also should seek to comprehend the achievements of what I have come to think of as the
“quiet generation” of Catholic fictionists, who
according to editor and critic Gregory Wolfe
largely worked in “whispers” and not “shouts”
throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. At that time,
prominently featuring questions of faith in fiction could easily lead to a writer’s being seen
as out of step with trends in mainstream publication, sales, and readership. Yet in this period
Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy (1994), Alice
McDermott’s Charming Billy (1996), and Tobias
Wolff’s In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
(1981) all succeeded in using fiction to explore
the nature of Catholic belief and to present
unironically viewed Catholic characters in serious situations that test their faith. Other exemplars of the “quiet generation” might include
Fanny Howe, Paul Horgan, Don DeLillo, Richard Bausch, and Edward P. Jones, among a multitude of interesting corner cases too complex
to explore here. (For example, Alice Thomas
Ellis, working in this generation and bridging
the divide between fictional “whisperers” and
fictional “shouters” of faith, deserves her own
in-depth study well beyond the scope of this
essay.) That such writers’ work is now meeting with a broader reception and appreciation
among Catholic readers is cause for celebration,
not only as it may lead to a deeper understanding of the cultural and historical moment, but as
each writer’s work represents its own valuable
benchmark of artistic achievement.
Perhaps farther out of the mainstream, yet
traveling very much in the theological and aes32

The Angelus u September - October 2022

St. John the Evangelist, Miniature from the Grandes Heures of
Anne of Brittany, 1503-1508.

thetic paths of Catholic writers of the initial
Revival, there has been a recent blossoming of
outlets and markets either founded specifically for, or widely open to, Catholic-influenced
fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. These include
Angelico Press, Chrism Press, Cluny Media,
Colosseum Books, Dappled Things magazine,
Ignatius Press, Loyola Books (an imprint of
Ignatius), Paraclete Press, Slant Books, Windhover magazine, and (my own publisher) Wiseblood Books. I can only speak to this trend as
a participant in it: I have worked on the editorial board of Dappled Things magazine since
2007, the same year I began in earnest to draft
my own “contemplative realist” debut novel, As
Earth Without Water.
Over many years of working directly with
writers and editors who share similar interests,
I have become deeply committed to establishing locales within the literary ecosystem where
Catholic writers can more fully explore our
identity, tradition, and relation to other literary
forms and expressions. These locales are what
artist and critic Makoto Fujimura in his book
Culture Care calls “estuaries”: protected, but
not completely secluded, environments where
writers and artists of faith can grow, gain experience, and test their powers and limitations
before seeking to engage in forums where their
core concerns and aspirations are less likely
to be supported, valued, or even understood.
In these environments, whole new approaches
to a creative field can be born—as we see happening with contemplative realism, the emerging movement described by Joshua Hren in his

LITERATURE

Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical
Manifesto. Texts like Culture Care and Contemplative Realism can themselves become places of
encounter in which writers and readers see and
recognize themselves and each other.
Another way estuary-like environments can
support emerging creatives of faith is by a deepening engagement with artists who have sought
to address similar themes or achieve similar
goals. This helps to explain the move in recent
years toward expansion of the Catholic canon
to include global voices whose literary work,
though deeply consonant with a Catholic worldview, has not been previously accessible to
English-speaking readerships—often because
translations have not been widely available or
because those translations that do exist are not
widely enough discussed. A sampling of international voices would include Norwegian writer
Sigrid Undset, whose epic achievement Kristin Lavransdatter was done a terrible disservice
by its initial rendering into English but is now
available in a beautifully accessible translation
by Tiina Nunnally, and whose less-known yet
deeply deserving novels are also now appearing in English in editions from University of
Minnesota Press, Ignatius Press, and Cluny
Media; Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō, whose
work is available in wonderful translations from
Picador and New Directions among others, yet
who has been done a different kind of disservice by contemporary interpretations that read
more ambiguity and doubt than actually subsist there into Endō’s sensitive explorations of
the tensions between his native Japanese culture and his adopted Catholic faith; and Martin Mosebach, living and working now, whose
novel What Was Before has been well-received
in English translation and whose contributions
to fiction were honored with Germany’s prestigious Georg Buchner prize in 2007, but who
most American readers will likely only know
for his essay collection The Heresy of Formlessness
and related writings on Church and culture.
An accomplished literary writer with a publicly
prominent attachment to the traditional Latin
Mass is truly a rara avis, and one whose example merits closer attention.
T h e n , fo r b o t h i n t e r n a t i o n a l a n d
English-speaking writers, we often lose access
when worthwhile works fall out of print. If not
renewed, these works are lost to memory. Cluny
and Wiseblood are among the presses currently

striving to prevent these losses, as well as CUA
Press, which recently initiated a series of new
editions of nearly-lost work by Catholic women
writers spanning the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.

What “Catholic Literature”
(Probably) Isn’t
To draw even the broadest boundaries into
which we may assort “the Catholic writer,” we
cannot engage, as other contexts might allow, in
gatekeeping based on a scrupulous examination
of writers’ own religious views—which cannot
anyway be assumed, presumed, or surmised
even from the well-formed reading of a fictional text. And it is worth noticing that writers’
religious views can shift not only farther away
from, but closer to, recognizable faith within
the process of the work itself, as a forthcoming memoir by novelist Christopher Beha narrates as having happened during the writing of
What Happened to Sophie Wilder. After all, the art
of fiction routinely explores profound realities
that objectively exist outside of both writers’
and characters’ relationships to them. If fiction
directly reflects any religious views at all, it is
first responsible for accurately reflecting the
views of its characters or those common in the
milieux it describes. Higher effects are achieved
only indirectly, through the “controlling intelligence” or implicit perspective of the narrator.
The best of the emergent Catholic literary tradition will resist merely relativized conceptions
of religious belief, instead reading the truths
of observation and those of Revelation as ultimately consonant and not in tension with one
another—though apparent tensions may make
themselves felt, with significant consequences.
The Catholic creative writer must trust that
the truths of Revelation are strong enough, in
themselves, not to require defense by means
of our anxious efforts to adduce experience as
evidence. As St. Augustine has it, “God does
not need my lie.” Yet the truth of experience,
or what Henry James called “felt life,” contains
for many powerful reasons to believe—reasons
that fiction can, at times, reflect with honesty
and accuracy.
Fiction is a form of truth-telling that, to ring
true, must take adequate account of the characters’ own limitations, perspectives, and capacities. We come to a piece of fiction not in direct
search of reasons for believing, but primarily
33

LITERATURE

in search of the texture of experience itself. We
look for authentic expressions of “truth, taste,
and intelligence,” which literature both forms
and appeals to. We desire sometimes to ratify, sometimes to test our previous perceptions,
always to relate them to those of the writer and
character.
Readers ask themselves, consciously or not:
Are things in life really like this (or can I be
successfully convinced, for the moment, that
they are?). Does this story reflect or challenge
my innate feeling of what it is to live in the created world? Does it express or reveal something
about the self, humanity, nature, or the life of
the spirit, which I have never heard articulated
in this precise way before? Does it make me,
somehow, less alone in the best aspects of my
being?
The best narrative art seeks this connection
and, to that end, refuses polemicism or didacticism. Provided it succeeds at this, it can then,
after the words of Catholic poet Raïssa Maritain
(1883–1960), “contribute to spiritualizing man,
to making him more ready to receive the natural and supernatural contemplative life, and
to bear, through grace, savory fruits for eternal
life” (Four Notebooks, 69) simply by being technically excellent art that offers implicit bases
for the acceptance of Truth that transcends and
encompasses any individual human experience.
This contribution does not preclude the literary
artist’s engagement in other contexts where a
more abstract language is both necessary and
desirable, but it preserves a distinction between
spheres of discourse: The more fully a fictionist of faith embraces that faith, the more likely
that fictionist grows to let the art retain its own
distinct identity, rather than to distort art by
forcing it to do the work of theory, theology, or
apologetics.
François Mauriac, a Catholic writer of the
twentieth century whose work remains underread and underappreciated in the United States,
arrived at this conclusion experimentally. A talented fictional artist with a deep love for the
Catholic traditions of his youth in pre–Vatican II France, Mauriac exercised a significant
influence on Flannery O’Connor and Graham
Greene as he worked alongside French existentialist writers like Sartre, Gide, and Camus.
Mauriac rose to prominence in the French literary mainstream between the two World Wars,
and in 1952 he received the Nobel Prize for
34

The Angelus u September - October 2022

Watercolor c. 1938, After Dictating a Letter by Harry Herman
Roseland.

literature, joining Sigrid Undset on the (admittedly short) list of publicly Catholic laureates.
Throughout much of his career, Mauriac felt
deeply the potential for division between his
spiritual training and his artistic discipline.
Caught between Catholic critics of his subject
matter and literary critics of his style and commitments, he worried that his detailed and sensitive explorations into his characters’ “abnormal” psychological states could lead him—or,
still worse to his mind, his reader—into a connivance with sin on the one hand or an acceptance of substandard art on the other.
Mauriac’s long essay God and Mammon, really a short book, wrestles in depth with this fear
until it arrives at the conclusions also reached
by Thomist luminary Jacques Maritain: that the
surest solution for a fictionist seeking to avoid
damage to his own and his readers’ souls is to
“purify the source” of the story—that is, to pursue holiness. For Mauriac, ultimately depiction
of sin does not equal excuse-making for sin
but, instead, works in fiction to the degree that
the artist achieves “altitude” (Maritain’s term)
between the controlling intelligence and the
erring character’s action. The demand for this
altitude, which Mauriac first feels as an intolerable restraint on his artistic freedom, later turns
out always to have been the precondition of a
higher liberty, the ability to create precisely as
he does: “to show the element which holds out
against God in the highest and noblest characters . . . and also to light up the secret source
of sanctity in creatures who seem to us to have
failed” (God and Mammon, 79). Through the process of literary invention Mauriac discovers
that, without the convincing depiction of evil,

LITERATURE

neither there can be any convincing depiction
of redemption. Or, as St. John Henry Newman—
our only known novelist-saint, to date—would
have it, “you cannot have a sinless literature of
sinful man.” This does not by any means denote
that literature leads us into sin—a thought that
would horrify Newman, whose deepest-held
desire was desire for holiness. On the contrary,
Newman believed a canny engagement with
quality literature was much likelier to have the
protective effect of putting the student on guard
against harm, making sheltered minds aware of
the world’s harsher realities in a safe, controlled
mode before asking them to sail in shark-infested waters.
What then can we say of the temptation
that spoils so much religious fiction, namely
the desire to bend or force narrative arcs toward
sanitized conclusions that feel unnatural to previous developments of theme and character?
Maritain, following St. Thomas Aquinas, says
that the virtue of art is “the appetite straightly tending toward the perfection of the thing
made.” The thing made—even if well made—
may, or may not, tend toward the perfection of
the artist or of the reader. Whether it does so
depends much more on the prior dispositions of
both maker and receiver than on the inherent
qualities of the fabulated article. Yet the virtue of art provides this safeguard: Any wellmade thing is less likely to cause harm than is its
counterfeit or slipshod imitation. While a writer whose convictions are firmer than her grasp
on the virtue of art might well attempt to force
the reader’s response, this forcing—essentially
a falsehood—may do more harm to the minds
involved than would a premature encounter
with “too much reality.”
Catholic literature is not and cannot be
coterminous with the kind of sanitized, bowdlerized, overly tidied depictions that would falsify observed reality—as though falsification
were not a radical disservice to the complexity
of our life among the layered orders of created goodness, fallen evil, and redeemed glory.
That said, we can recognize more than one way
of falsifying reality, and contemporary secular
fiction can at times also be complicit in characteristic distortions and omissions. Contemporary novelist Jonathan Franzen calls out these
complicities when he resists a “depressive realism”—the reductive, brutalist view that “You are,
after all, just protoplasm, and someday you’ll

be dead”—in favor of a “tragic realism” that
recognizes a deep brokenness in human frailty but refuses to despair over that vision. This
“tragic realism,” in some expressions compatible with Christian modes of tragedy identified
by Fr. William Lynch in his magisterial study
of faith and the literary arts Christ and Apollo,
stands closer to a position that John Gardner in
his classic On Moral Fiction might have called
“life-affirming”—even if for some such writers,
the life they affirm is not a life of the soul but is
limited to strictly sensory and biological human
survival and thriving. Catholics can still likewise affirm the goodness of this natural life,
even as we resist the reductionism of affirming
only the natural at the expense of the human
experience of God, even as we hold out hope
for something higher. As Joshua Hren writes in
Contemplative Realism, to write as though “the
unseen is taken to be unreal” is a “needlessly
restrictive,” even a misleading, position.
Still, Catholic writers of the future will attentively study non-Catholic mainstream writers
wherever the latter display mastery of technique. Anyone interested in fiction can learn
much from Willa Cather’s framing of a scene,
Honore de Balzac’s presentation of a conflict,
Virginia Woolf’s use of atmospheric detail, or
Emile Zola’s inclusion of a thread of argument
between characters. This continual learning is
important for contemplative realists who seek
to embody (or experience) in prose the characteristically Catholic insight that the highest
does not stand without the lowest. If you are
looking for Truth everywhere you cannot afford
to neglect truth anywhere, be it found where it
may. This leads not to a dichotomy but, rather,
to a multiplicity of realisms, all casting what
light they can on a reality that contemplative
realists see as stably present and meaningfully
existent regardless of how much or little light
a particular writer may have to see it by. But
because of the variation of angle, a writer coming from one perspective may see important
facts that another, differently positioned writer
would miss—which makes it worth the time to
keep one’s ears and eyes open, to listen, and to
study the technique of writers with whom we
may not, on many matters, fully agree.

35

LITERATURE

What Catholic Literature
Might Become
At the same time, we must not be deceived
into thinking that, given a clean slate and an
ideal state, the bedrock human brokenness that
ruins art and love and all that makes life worth
living would magically, automatically vanish
from our midst. It may be entertaining, but I
submit it is not ultimately constructive, to dream
of what a Catholic literary tradition might have
looked like without the fragmentation incurred
first by Protestant and then by Enlightenment
intellectual traditions—the separation first of
church and then of community from individual conscience, leading to the romanticization of
Faustian antiheroes and a tendency to elevate
the lyric mode to an authority beyond its stature
in literature. We have the literary tradition we
have—and the wounds of human nature, too—
and yet Catholics have always found ways to
produce quality literary work within, or despite,
those constraints. For evidence, look no further
than to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387), whose
rich, rollicking, overwhelmingly secular—and
yet also overwhelmingly Catholic—rhythm is
the beating heart of the literary tradition from
which the modern English prose narrative has
taken its shape. Every one of the individual tales
told by Chaucer’s rowdy crew is framed inalienably within both the identity of the teller and the
broader context of pilgrimage to a holy place.
The stories may be concerned with mundane
and even vulgar matters, but they are told precisely by pilgrims, in via, along a path toward
an otherworldly destination. This framing cannot help but color the way the stories are told,
as well as how we think and feel about the telling. It also does not prevent the pilgrims from
encompassing in their narrations a cacophony
of lust, greed, violence, prejudice, falsity, and
other all too human failings. Through the lens
of the Canterbury Tales we can begin to see what
Cardinal Newman meant by calling literature
“a record of man in rebellion” against the grace
and the glory of God. Often, literature makes
clear how this rebellion is always and simultaneously an outrage against the rebel’s own
inherent dignity and goodness as well as those
of others. Such was humanity even while the
great prophetic voices of the medieval Church
were actively calling out to it; such humanity
remains today, despite our wildly divergent historical and socioeconomic contexts, leaving us
36

The Angelus u September - October 2022

Ivan Kulikov, Painting of Russian writer Evgeny Chirikov, 1904.

room to hope that a worthwhile literature and a
doubtless very different constellation of prophets may rise up at the same time—perhaps even
in some of the same places.

What Is Contemplative Realism?
This literary movement, first consciously
articulated by Joshua Hren and arising from
a cultural estuary where the intersection of
Catholicism and literature is explored, aims
to restore a vision of what is truly real to our
efforts to depict a contemporary life blurred and
blinded by various forms of distortion. The contemplative realist agrees with Josef Pieper that
“man’s ability to see is in decline” and proposes
an integration of spiritual and artistic vision
as a remedy. Contemplative realism, at once a
literary style and an artist’s spirituality, aligns
authentic insights of Catholic tradition on the
interior life with great aesthetic gains made in
the art of realist fiction in modern and contemporary times.
The contemplative realist seeks to dramatize the intersection between the vertical axis
of human experience, most fully realized in
the aspiration toward God, and the horizontal
axis, represented by our common and embodied life in the world. A contemplative realist
work pursues a sensorially vivid, painterly rendering of the sensory world and strives to situate the human condition in relation to those
natural and supernatural realities that exist
both below and above the human. Such work
tends toward a deepening of moral and spiritual vision, avoiding all easy tropes, false pieties,
Gnostic or Manichean tendencies, and anything

LITERATURE

else that smacks of what might be called, after
O’Connor, “Instant Uplift” or, after Bonhoeffer, “cheap grace.” Contemplative realism holds
out hope for redemption while never forgetting
that the true cost of grace is Christ’s Passion,
Death, and Resurrection and our own carrying
of our crosses after Him. These transcendent
centralities may not be directly “presenced” or
“rendered” in a contemplative realist text, but
as they are the recognized source and summit
of existence, these realities will remain none
the less positioned at the center of the contemplative realist’s attention—even as, in acknowledgement of the demands of art, the text continues to honor the limitation of an audience
that, like each of the characters (and like the
artist), is human and “cannot bear very much
reality” (T.S. Eliot).
A word on this human limitation is warranted here. Too often in common life, abundant
exterior evidences of devotion appear to be
linked to less, not more, ability to bear reality.
Appears is the right word: A devotion that cannot
countenance reality as we find it is too likely to
be an apparent devotion only. One thinks of St.
Louis de Montfort’s careful distinctions between
true devotion and several different facsimilies of
devotion that manage to create some of the right
appearances, yet miss the mark in the depths of
the heart. As fiction’s proper realms of exploration are the worlds around us and the worlds
within us, fiction can help us to see the depths
of the heart and their reflections in our environment more clearly—doing us the great service of pointing the way to greater self-knowledge, both of our tremendous imperfections
and of our deep inherent goodness rooted in
the goodness of the One who made us as we
are. Well-crafted, truly humane fiction tends to
increase our capacity to see truly, and to accept
prudently, both our actual faults as individuals
and the inherent goodness of our lives as creatures in a created order. Like any other pursuit
engaged in the right spirit, the writing and reading of fiction can be offered to God. To borrow
the words of Dostoyevsky, chosen by Hren as
an epigraph for the Contemplative Realist manifesto, “Realists do not fear the results of their
study.” A central tenet of contemplative realism
is the thought that many people (whether believers or the reverse) frequently see not what is real
but what we think to be real—and the literary art
of fictional narrative offers one way of provid-

ing much-needed correctives to vision. Contemplative realism, seeing to “dramatize mystery’s
hiddenness,” takes as truth the equal reality of
the unseen with the seen and proceeds from that
reality as from a first premise. At the same time,
contemplative realism aims for a range of aesthetic goals: a multisensory approach to what
is seen, an emphasis on the interior life and the
movements of the human heart, a willingness
to countenance things as they are, a preference
for mystery over ambiguity.
Contemplative realism challenges readers
to remain open to ways of seeing that have the
potential to refine, refresh, and clarify their
own; contemplative realism challenges writers
to continually serve the ends of art, the better to arrive at truth. The creative writer who
wants to make a worthwhile contribution to literature must begin simply by seeing and rendering clearly—yes, without the blinders of ideology, but often even without the more correct
yet still complicated and abstract languages and
vocabularies with which in other contexts we
label and denominate our adult worlds. The
contemplative realist seeks to see and render
reality with at once childlike freshness and consecrated clarity. The ideal is a vision characteristic of saints’ ways of seeing, a recognition that
not only are holiness and creativity not necessarily incompatible, but that the two qualities,
situated within the same character, could rise
hand in hand to heights commonly found difficult and left unimagined.
That said, contemplative realism does not
present itself as the sole or even as the best way
to be a “Catholic writer.” That category admits
of as many solutions as there are writers of good
will who seek to engage the depths of Catholic
thought and practice. Contemplative realism
represents one aesthetic solution among many,
but one that is deeply consonant, as others may
also be, with the best of the Catholic intellectual
and spiritual traditions. It can be fruitfully situated among a multiplicity of “Christian realisms” that nevertheless differ from contemplative realism, a multiplicity which would include
O’Connor’s grotesque “prophecy of distances.” It can be fruitfully distinguished from, for
example, the stylized and often satirized worlds
of Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, and Randy
Boyagoda, or the fantastic realms of J.R.R.
Tolkien, Gene Wolfe, and Walter Miller, all
of which are no less identifiably Catholic, but
37

LITERATURE

which noticeably differ from realist and naturalist models inspired by European and American
literary fiction of the past 150 years.
Within that strain, however, contemplative
realism remains distinct from what Hren calls
“materialist-realist” traditions that limit the
knowable to the visible and sensorially tangible, as well as from a different type of “supernatural realism” that still tends to ratify materialism’s sense of the “gritty underbelly” as the
hallmark or signature of what is most real—as
though spiritual truth were only to be found at
the abject depths of human extremity. Rather,
contemplative realism seeks to find and to presence the spiritual dimension of the full range of
human realities, from the depths to the heights
and everywhere in between.
As we saw above with Mauriac, many literary Catholics may tend to suffer, in their work
or reading or both, from the scrupulous fear
that such a wide-ranging journey as literature
demands will somehow lead us farther away
from, rather than toward, God. Those with delicate consciences may want to avoid encountering even a whisper of sin’s depiction, but in the
long run this very avoidance restricts our ability to perceive truth and speak it into the lives
of those more deeply wounded by the effects of
Original Sin and personal sin:
While all human life will ultimately be judged
according to Christ, in fiction it would be
dishonest to force eucatastrophe out of every
complication: some genuine goods can sear
through our encounter with decent but flawed
people… Artists who render this trajectory for
us do a great service—often purging us, through
catharsis, of temptations which we share with
their protagonists. Sins can lose their lure when
we see characters act out immoralities we only
imagined. (Contemplative Realism, 19)

That is, what once seemed sweet to a weak
imagination may, under the stronger light of a
literary writer’s ability to unfold all sin’s uglinesses and ramifications, turn sour when we see
it in its totality. A frequent trick of temptation
is to make us forget precisely the context of our
actions, isolating the brief relief afforded by a
pleasure or an escape while concealing its full
human cost. By holding space for the entirety
of context, and enabling us to see that entirety
with characteristic completeness, a literary artist may spread a stronger light of vision among
a greater number of minds. Mauriac himself,
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Norman Rockwell, Boy Writing a Letter, 1920.

as a recovered sufferer of scruples, frequently achieves exactly this clarifying effect in his
own fiction.
The contemplative realist’s firm conviction
remains that our subjective experience of reality neither changes reality’s nature nor makes
reality unknowable. Rather through the mystery of perception, multiple subjectivities provide unique and ever-widening windows on the
human and divine scope of what can be seen
and known by the soul, even through Henry
James’ fabled “million windows” of the “house
of fiction.” Truly, we have good reason to trust
that the God of truth will lead us into all truth.
We have good reason not to fear the results of
our study.
TITLE IMAGE: Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691–1765), Modern
Rome, 1757.

POETRY

The King’s
Fool to His
Lady
Patrick Murtha

lady of my laughter, the feast is killed with frost.
My king grows prim and scowls, his lords grow cold and cross.
The mirth of ancient ages is choked up in the child
Who chortled at the Mermaid when all the world was wild.
I heard primeval laughter, before both day or night,
Darting o’er the waters, echoing God’s delight;
I heard a maiden’s rapture, her merriment in May—
They’ve dwindled in the darkness, they’ve faded far away.
For Mayhem’s fools have mellowed. Comedian and the clown
Have set aside their laughter and laid their wisdom down.
Their rapier tongues are blunted; their riddles only cloak
A hollow hint of humor—their jests are just a joke.
The humor’s hushed with honors, with trophies, and with rings;
The playwright, like a puppet, is parroting the kings.
Poor Blondel longs for Richard, and Patch’s wit is dull;
And Touchstone’s just a statue, and Yorick’s but a skull.
But though my brother-jesters lie wit-dead like a tomb,
I daily tease my monarch to teach him of his doom;
With barbs of truths in riddles and stabbing words that sting,
I dare, my dear, to be a conscience to the king.
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POETRY

I leaned my motley crest upon my monarch’s chair:
“What ass,” our ruler roared, “profanes my lion’s lair?”
“In sooth, my portly sire,” brayed I with glummish glee,
“This ass has berthed his bells where a noble brute should be.”
“And, fool,” my king retorted, “where strays this regal beast?”
“Too long,” I larked, “in chambers shadowed from the east,
“And there a falcon’s aerie is twined with toxic thorns;
“Her plumage shrouds her talons, so Satan masks his horns.”
And lest his mulish mind couldn’t chew this cryptic word,
I rounded out my riddle, and said squarely to my lord:
“A low-down lust lampoons what a lofty love had been;
“You’ve legalized your lover, you court her as your queen.”
My love, my Liege grew graver and overcast his sky.
He thundered with a mad-mouth and lightninged from his eye.
But when his tantrum tempered, he warned me, staring stern:
“Beware, my foolish jester, what king and bridge you burn.”
“My Lord, your gentle caution, I’ll muse within my mind.
When London’s bridge is blazing, I’ll leave my king behind.
I bellow ‘bout the fire; you fire for the belle.
I’ll rest my heels in heaven; you’ll roast a heel in hell.”
And on and on I jested, and every jest a truth;
And on and on he rumbled, and every crack uncouth.
His humor’s growing graceless; he banters like a bawd.
For like the mutinous monk, he’s lost the wit of God.
And like the mutinous monk, he waters down his wine,
Grows gloomy with the sermons of a sober-lipped divine.
And like the duke in Deutschland, he set himself as king,
Not only of his kingdom but God and everything.
You see, my Love of Laughter, so muddled is the earth.
The realm is fat with mayhem but barren in its mirth.
And vice is for a giggle, and virtue’s but a gag;
And piety is parodied, debauchery’s a brag.
The light has gone from London, for Camelot is cold:
Our globe has lost her gaiety. The lion’s growing old.
But ‘til our Merry England is filled with glad-full things,
I’ll arm myself with humor, and hurl my jests at kings.

The King’s Fool to His Lady is a shadow of William Sommers, the famous jester to Henry VIII. But it
hints at the lack of honest laughter in the world and the rise of bawdy rants with the loss of morals.
TITLE IMAGE: Page from Codex Manesse, c. 1305-1340 (public domain).

40

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REVIEW

Strangeness of
the Good
A Review of the Book by J. M. Wilson
Reviewed by William Gonch, Ph.D.

M

any poets think of the 20th century as the era of “free verse,” which
eschews traditional rhyme, meter,
and verse form. Undoubtedly,
great poets such as T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams wrote free verse; by mid-century
it was the dominant style in American poetry. Polemicists in the 1960s accused traditional
verse forms of being elitist, reactionary, and out
of date. But formal verse never disappeared.
Major modernists used it; poets such as Richard
Wilbur and W.H. Auden kept it alive when it
was unpopular; and in the late 20th century, a
group of poets began to revive traditional forms
under the title of the “New Formalism.”
New formalists wrote in old forms such as
sonnets, ballads, rhyming couplets, and blank
verse, a style of poetry that uses iambic pentameter without rhyme (this is the verse form of Paradise Lost and much of Shakespeare’s dialogue).
They argued that old forms were not exhausted—in fact, the long neglect of traditional forms

meant that a poet could achieve striking effects
by combining old forms with contemporary language. The new formalists are still a minority,
but they made their mark: today, traditional
verse forms have a rich community of practitioners.
James Matthew Wilson is a contemporary
poet in mid-career and a member of the second generation of new formalists. His work
makes a strong case that traditional verse forms
can still be used to write thoughtful, moving
poetry. His most recent collection of poetry,
The Strangeness of the Good, assembles several
dozen lyric poems from the 2010s and early
2020; the second half of the book, his “Quarantine Notebook,” is a series of blank verse poems
about the first two months of the coronavirus
pandemic. These poems show that traditional
forms endure because each one enables a poet
to observe and create in irreplaceable ways.
One of my favorite poems in the collection, a
sonnet entitled “The Teachers,” could only have
41

REVIEW

been written as a sonnet. The poem is about the
first years of childhood, during which a child
learns elemental realities that anticipate what
he will feel and do as he grows. His “father’s
rough hands, hung with fingers laced,” teach
him “all the eye may ever learn of prayer.” He
learns to feel comfort in the dark by listening to
his mother sing. But then he goes to sleep, and
“every wildness of our fallen state / Come crying” in nightmares that are as raw as anything
he will suffer as an adult. At the turn from the
first eight lines—a unit known as the Octave in a
sonnet—to the second part, or “sestet,” the attention shifts to nature as the child’s teacher. The
“flit of time instructs the mind,” and his observation of things growing, maturing, and dying,
instructs him about the fate of all living things.
In a Shakespearean sonnet like this one,
the final two lines form a rhyming couplet that
condenses the entire poem, expresses its argument in a tight form, and twists it to provide a
new insight. Wilson is a master of resonant final
lines like these: “These figures can so make the
conscience ring / That speech, which follows,
seems a poor, dumb thing.” The raw images
of the child, afraid of nightmares and learning
about death, “so make the conscience ring” that
neither the child nor the poet will ever muster words equal to the experience. But it is no
tragedy that language is insufficient to experience, because experience is common to us all.
The shortcomings of language send us back to
the opening lines to receive an eloquence that
anyone can practice. The father’s hands are a
more eloquent prayer than any words; the mother sings, but the “figure” of a mother singing
reaches an elemental experience of comfort
beyond words.
When the child matures, his actions and
worries are more sophisticated versions of
his childhood wants and comforts. His fear of
losing love or a job is already anticipated by
his childhood fear of the dark. Sophisticated
adult language might be valuable, but it cannot
say everything that is said by his silent father,
folding his rough hands in prayer. In another
poem, Wilson’s speaker thinks of Polish immigrant girls in the Midwest, his mother among
them, who turned to manners and needlework
in order to work through their emotions: their
“want, pain, fear, deep longing / Worked themselves out in thread.” The speaker, a poet, sees
his poetry as an extension of his mother’s work
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darning socks and teaching manners: “such
silent passions…can—if just—be wrought,” in
language as much as in housework.
By embracing the continuity between poetry
and ordinary life, Wilson sets himself against
a powerful strain in 20th century poetry. The
dominant 20th century aesthetic was oppositional. Tradition and repetition were seen as
worn out, oppressive, and probably a cover for
capitalist exploitation. Poetry could overturn
traditions and overturn the world by looking
carefully and freshly at things long since overlooked—the everyday speech of ordinary people; habits of life like Ezra Pound’s passengers
on the metro; manufactured objects like William Carlos Williams’s red wheelbarrow; and
even poetry itself, the ways in which our language makes meaning. When it is written well,
modernist poetry shows us how much there is
to notice all around us and lets us see the world
freshly. But revolutionary modernism was also
dogmatic and small-minded. It assumed that, if
we renewed our vision, we would always reveal
the emptiness of ordinary work and family life.
Poetry like Wilson’s agrees with the modernists

REVIEW

in aiming to refresh our vision of the world. But
it rejects the assumption that if we see the world
new, we will reject the old order. Against the
modernist idea of the poet as a lonely visionary,
Wilson sees poetry as a continuation of his family’s ordinary work, love, suffering, and prayer.
Wilson’s poetry, like a lot of New Formalism,
argues with its cultural moment and its freeverse precursors. The New Formalists began
as a young movement who opposed poetic
hegemony, and even today they are an insurgent minority within the poetry establishment.
Often, they are cheeky. Like the many college
students who begin attending the Latin Mass,
they get to embrace tradition but still have the
fun of defying the establishment. Dana Gioia,
one of the most accomplished New Formalists, put it this way: “The new formalists put
free verse poets in the ironic and unprepared
position of being the status quo. Free verse, the
creation of an older literary rebellion, is now
the long-established, ruling orthodoxy; formal
poetry the unexpected challenge.”
Wilson draws on poetic forms themselves to
argue against self-expression and on behalf of
shared experience. “Imitation,” from this collection, is written in four-line ballad stanzas.
It is the same stanzaic structure as the greatest
of all Victorian poems, Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Like Tennyson’s poem, too, the poem is
about the meaning of death. But Wilson’s poem
is an argument against a modernist account of
human experience. “Not long ago,” the poem
starts, “it seemed the fashion / to preach that
man was born alone / And died that way, in
somber tone, / As if no one could know one’s
passion.” These lines evoke an existentialist
account of human dignity. Each human being,
so the thinking went, is fundamentally alone.
Our lives are incommunicable and meaningless, but we acquire a certain dignity by accepting our freedom to determine our own values.
Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this mentality well
when he wrote, “Man is condemned to be free.”
But Wilson ironizes nihilism by placing it
in the past: the meaninglessness of human life
was a “fashion,” not the self-evident truth that it
seemed in the Paris of Sartre and Albert Camus.
Certainly, our “thought” can be “Trapped at an
airless altitude” by our loneliness… but are our
lives really as incommunicable as the existentialists made out? “The infant in his mother’s
lap,” he points out, “Already imitates her tap /

Of heart, her self himself composing.” The child
imitates the mother before he has words for self
or mother. The line break between “her tap /
Of heart” gives these lines two meanings. The
infant intuitively takes on his mother’s habits,
like the way she taps on the arm of a chair. He
also takes on “her tap of heart”—the rhythm
of her heartbeat and the pattern of her inmost
thoughts and feelings. Our deepest selves, where
Sartre found our purest freedom, are learned—
and, therefore, can be told and understood.
Wilson is a devout Catholic, and it is in this
sense of the continuity of human experience that
the poems are at their most Catholic, because
a distinctive mark of the Catholic Church is
its insistence on the continuity of the faithful.
Ancient paganism tended to divide into the
religion of the masses, who burned incense to
their household gods, and the beliefs of the philosophers, who pursued an intellectual apprehension of the One. By contrast, the Catholic
Church insists that the doctrines of the faith are
shared by all. Thomas Aquinas understood the
work of the Redemption with greater sophistication than a peasant in 13th-century France,
but they believe the same faith and the same
Lord saves them. Wilson’s poetry extends this
principle: poetry is a particular human practice
that taps into a wisdom accessible to anyone
who lives, observes, and prays. And the best
case for a poetic form is that it makes that wisdom present.
TITLE IMAGE: Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Lord Thy Will
Be Done, 1855.

43

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

The Three

February 17, 1991 —

It was at the Chapel of the Visitation in Nice
that Monsignor Lefebvre celebrated on February
17, the first Sunday of Lent, his last Solemn
Mass and delivered his last homily.
My dear brothers,
It is with great joy, great satisfaction that
I find myself today in the midst of you in
this admirable church of St. Claire, filled
with so many memories. It so happens that
Providence has chosen the first Sunday of
Lent for me to be among you. So you will
allow me to give you some advice to practice this Lent well, which is none other than
the preparation for the beautiful feast of
Easter. Make us participate in the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but first
we must also participate in His Passion, His
Redemption, His Sacrifice.
It is true that Lent is a time of penance
and therefore we must make some effort to
deprive ourselves of the usual pleasures, of
eating, drinking and others, which it is good
to deprive ourselves of from time to time
to attach ourselves more to spiritual goods,
forgetting a little the temporal goods to raise
us towards the eternal goods. But even more
than these penances, it pleases God that
we practice his commandments. God created us to join Him one day. This path that
leads us to Him through the few years that
we spend here below is directed towards
Him by His Law. His law is ultimately none
other than the milestones that Our Lord laid
down along our earthly path to reach Heaven, to arrive at heavenly happiness.
W hat are these commandments of
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ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

Ways of Praying

Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
God? Our Lord Himself took care to remind
us of them and Saint Paul also repeats it to
us. They consist simply of loving God and loving one’s neighbor. All of God’s commandments
boil down to this. And insofar as we love God
and our neighbor and we manifest it in our daily
life, in our daily actions, we are moving peacefully towards the happiness of Heaven.
How can we show our love for the Good
Lord in a particular way? I think the deepest,
most essential way to show our love to God is
to pray. We have all learned how to pray in our
catechism, the small catechism of yesteryear,
because unfortunately today’s catechisms have
distorted everything and no longer define anything. But we, we keep the good definition of
the time of yesteryear: “Prayer is an elevation
of the soul towards God.”
It’s simple, it’s a small thing, but it’s a
lot. Raising our souls to God. I think that if we
practiced this definition of prayer more, “raising our souls to the Good God,” we would be
less attached precisely to the goods of this earth
and we would be more attached to God Himself
and to heavenly goods.
Therefore, let us make an effort during this
Lent, to pray better and to pray more.
And what are the ways of praying? What are
the different kinds of prayers?
Well, there is vocal prayer: the one that you
do here, during this Holy Mass, during the
exercises that you do in common: the rosary
that you were reciting just now. These are the
vocal prayers by which you express your love
to the Good God and by which you raise your
soul to the Good God. It is therefore a prayer
that we must greatly esteem and practice: par-

ticularly assistance at Mass and also when we
can, recite our Rosary, pray to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, unite ourselves to Her, and all
the practices of vocal prayer, all the devotions
approved by the Church and which are those
that all devout souls have done during their life,
those souls who, having preceded us to Heaven, now sing the praises of the Good God in
Heaven, particularly the Saints and the Saints.
T he ot her way of pray ing is ment a l
prayer. Mental prayer consists in raising one’s
spirit towards the Good Lord by reflecting on
the greatness of God, on his perfections, but
without pronouncing external words. It is another form of prayer. And he who comes during the
day to recollect himself near the Blessed Sacrament, near Our Lord, and who, without needing
to utter a word, raises his soul to the Good God,
submits to Him, thinks of Him, spends some
time with Him, thus separating oneself from the
cares of this world, from daily worries, to elevate one’s soul to the Good God, performs mental prayer. It is of course advised by the spiritual
directors, by all the saints, by all those who have
founded Orders. You know well that the good
Poor Clares who were here before, behind these
railings practice mental prayer for long periods
of time. This is the case in all the Carmels, in
all the religious congregations; and even the
regulations of the clergy ask priests, men and
women religious, to practice mental prayer. So it
is good for the faithful also to imitate those who
are particularly consecrated to the Good God
and to practice this mental prayer. You can do
it not only in a church, in a chapel, you can do
it at home, in front of a statue of the Virgin, in
front of a Crucifix, a small chapel that you set
45

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

What is the prayer of the heart?
It is the one that interiorly
expresses the love we have for
the Good God. … It looks a
bit like a child in his mother’s
arms, to what he can have in
his heart for his mother and
for his father. He is happy. He
is in the arms of his father, of
his mother. He doesn’t think of
anything else. He thinks only of
loving his parents. Well, we too
should have this natural, deep,
constant love for the Good Lord.

46

The Angelus u September - October 2022

up in your house. We can very well pray to
Our Lord and unite ourselves with the Most
Blessed Virgin Mary, in His spirit.
There is a third kind of prayer, which is the
essential, which is the most important: vocal
prayer, mental prayer—the prayer of the heart.
What is the prayer of the heart? It is the
one that interiorly expresses the love we have
for the Good God, without even having any
particular thoughts on such a subject, such a
perfection of the Good God, such a manifestation of God’s charity towards us. But quite
simply to love God, to express our love to
the Good Lord. It looks a bit like a child in
his mother’s arms, to what he can have in his
heart for his mother and for his father. He is
happy. He is in the arms of his father, of his
mother. He doesn’t think of anything else. He
thinks only of loving his parents. Well, we
too should have this natural, deep, constant
love for the Good Lord. And this prayer is
most pleasing to the Good Lord, because it
places us at his disposal. We offer ourselves
by the same token, entirely to God. We offer
our body, we offer our will, we offer our time
and all that we are, to Him who created us, to
Him who awaits us, to give us this heavenly
happiness that He has prepared for us. And
this is the best way not to sin anymore, at
least not to sin anymore seriously. The one
who really loves the Good God, somehow
gives his being and all that he is during the
day and all the time. This prayer of the heart
can exist always, without stopping. Just as a
child who loves his parents always loves them,
with perfect continuity, we too should love
the Good Lord in this way. And loving Him
in this way, sin will no longer frighten us,
because we will feel that disobedience to the
Good Lord distances us from Him. So, if we
really love Him, how can we want to both love
Him with all our heart and at the same time
displease Him and disobey Him? There is a
case of contradiction. This is why the prayer
of the heart is so important.
I ask you a lot during this Lent to put yourselves in the hands of God, to forget the things
of this world a little, to attach yourselves to
God. This is the first piece of advice I will give
you about this realization of the Law of the
Good God who asks us to love Him. The first
table of the Law of Moses bore these three
commandments for the Good Lord. The second table was the one that indicated the law

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE

of love of neighbor. How could we show our
love for our neighbor? Certainly through the
services we render to our neighbor in our families, in our profession, in our daily life, but we
could also ask ourselves how we most frequently
fail to love our neighbor.
For this, we must consult Saint James who,
in the letter he wrote and which is recorded
in Sacred Scripture, speaks to us of this little
member that the Good Lord has given us and
which is called the tongue. And he tells us: “It
is with the tongue that we sing the praises of
the Good God, but it is also with the tongue
that we light the fire of iniquity and the fire of
division.” And that is true.
So let us make a small effort to practice charity of speech and, by the same token, charity
of thought. Thus, let us avoid rash judgments,
slander, calumnies which are so easy and so
tempting sometimes in conversations. Unfortunately, we like to criticize this, that; divide
instead of unite, instead of practicing charity. Let us make an effort to manifest the love
of our neighbor during this Lent by trying to
avoid backbiting and slander, all these sins of
the tongue. Here, my very dear brothers, is the
advice that it seems good to me to give at the
beginning of this Lent.
Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary,

Saint Joseph, the Child Jesus, that we may live
as they lived in Nazareth. You have to think
that the example that Our Lord has given us
is absolutely remarkable. God Himself (for it is
God who came down among us), what did he
do during the thirty-three years of His life? Of
these thirty-three years that He spent here below
before ascending to Heaven, He remained thirty years in family life, except when, leaving his
parents, He stayed behind in Jerusalem to teach
the doctors of the Law. This is the only event
that we know of during his childhood, of his
adolescence. Until the age of thirty He practiced charity in the family. It is an admirable
example that Our Lord has given us.
He therefore does not ask absolutely impossible things of us, only the practice of charity,
the practice of charity towards God, towards
our neighbor, as He Himself did in the family
of Nazareth.
Let us ask the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph
to help us practice this charity so that, with the
grace of God, with the grace of the sacraments
that we receive, we may move slowly towards
the goal for which we are here below: one day
share the happiness of Heaven with all those we
love and who have left us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost. Amen.

T he H oly Face M anua l by Rev. Abbé Janvier
The Manual of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face is a collection of traditional devotions to the Holy Face of Our Lord in His Passion. It was approved by
Pope Leo XIII in 1895 and promoted by Pope Pius XII in 1958 and practiced
by St. Therese of Lisieux. This devotion exists as a specific form of reparation
for the blasphemies committed against Jesus Christ.

St. Therese of Lisieux’s
Favorite Devotion!

Inside you will find treasures such as:
• Official letters and documents written to and from the Holy Father
• Statutes and Rules of the Archconfraternity
• Indulgences granted by Leo XIII
• Promises of Our Lord to those who honor His Holy Face
• Engraving of the Holy Face
• Novena to the Holy Face
• Litanies, Prayers, Aspirations including: the golden Arrow, various crowns
and chaplets, the Mass in honor of the Holy Face
• Little Office of the Holy Name of God
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346 pp. 4” X 6”. STK# 8806 $14.95

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

47

EDUCATION

We’ve Got Each
Other’s Backs:
How Parents Can Assist Teachers
(and Thus Their Own Children) at Home
Bridget Bryan

T

he growth of a well-formed child is like
a tree, strengthened by three kinds of
support: home, Church, and society
(school is the preparation for society).
In an ideal world, the support from each area
would be equal and each would be in harmony with the other. But we live in an imperfect
world stained by original sin, so sometimes the
support lacks on one side. The grace of God and
determined human will can remedy the slack.
Whether we are parents, teachers, or both,
we have the same end goal: to know God, to
love him, serve him, and be happy with him
forever in heaven. Parents of a Catholic marriage come together to make souls for God, and
to love each other enough to bring each spouse
and the children to heaven. This is an incredible mission. As Catholic teachers, we ultimately
want the same thing for our students.
To go about raising a “tree” for this noble
goal, it helps have all three realms give their
best. Let us consider the following tidbits and
48

The Angelus u September - October 2022

principles that help parents and teachers work
together toward the education and ultimate
sanctification of our students.

Where Knowledge Begins and the
Good, the True, the Beautiful
God is the good, the true the beautiful.1
Children (and you and I) first come to know
everything through our senses, and we can only
desire what we know. (Imagine someone being
expected to love chocolate chip cookie dough
ice cream, but they had never tasted or seen
it!) So, if we want our children to desire and
seek after the good, the true, and beautiful, we
need them to know goodness, beauty, and truth
through their senses. Below is an example of
how each of the senses can inform the mind:
• Eyes: Surrounding a child with beauty helps
form his taste. What he sees around him in
his house, where he spends recreational
time, what he wears, the body language he

EDUCATION

observes (which is 70% of communication),
are ways by which a child can be uplifted
and given pieces of God. What a child sees
is stored up as images in his memory and
forms his imagination.
• Mouth: Taste of the tongue is a type of discernment. To know the good insofar as food
and drink are concerned has always been a
mark of a well-rounded child. What passes
out of one’s mouth is also worth considering: tone and quality of speech—these can
lift people’s hearts or inflict stings of pain.
• Ears: what passes from sound into a man’s
head helps form his thoughts and soul. Music
is often defined as the language of the soul,
and it is something that is both heard and felt
but not seen. A healthy diet of music nourishes a child’s soul. What a child hears in
conversation also forms him: What sort of
conversation do you want him to partake in
and be in a habit of? We must foster that conversation around him and within our own
heads.
• Nose: Being aware of smells and how they
relate to the rest of creation is something
we’re not always aware of. But a smell of a
specific spice can transport us in a second
back to a favorite adventure abroad, or can
indicate the need to slow down and bathe,
or just to stop and smell the flowers.
• Touch: To touch and feel (not emotionally, but using the nerves under our skin) is
a delicate sense. Studies show that children
are more healthy and smarter when they
receive physical affection in their years of
growth. 2 People who are hugged daily are
less depressed.3 Textures, the way things feel,
inform the mind: the feel of cool linen on the
palm, the soothing rush of cold river water
against the hand, or the caress of wind on
the cheek.

How do you regard God and sin?
Do you act as though you hope in the love of
God or the fear of sin? Mother Janet Stuart,4 an
incredible educator from the same order as St.
Philippine Duchesne, the Society of the Sacred
Heart, counsels that good and not evil should be
made a prominent feature of religious teaching.
She bemoans that often our first impressions of

God “are gloomy and terrible,” and then we are
consequently always worried what the “sleepless
Eye” is watching. This leads to a life of “if we
may not escape, let us try to forget.” Would we
as parents like ourselves to be so misrepresented? This she says, is what we do to God.
Instead, if we can see that all that is lovable,
beautiful, enjoyable, gracious, strong, and add
to that and then “multiply it a million times, tire
out our imagination beyond it… we shall give a
poor idea of God indeed, but at least, as far as it
goes, it will be true, and it will lead to trustfulness and friendship, to a right attitude of mind,
as child to father, and creature to Creator.”

PERSONAL INTERVIEWS
The following points capture information
shared in personal interviews with many teachers, some of whom are priests or parents:
• Authority that supports other authority
makes for not only a peaceful household but
also a peaceful community. One teacher-parent commented: “One can differ in views,
but it is not the child’s place to ever tell the
teacher this. This is between the two authorities.” Another shared: “As long as nothing
they do undermines the authority of the
teacher,” and vice versa. A house divided
shall not stand. 5 If authorities can be mutually supportive, then their combination will
make an even stronger child.
• Keep in mind the fallen nature of our dear
children. Like you and I, they are not perfect. Sometimes we will feel betrayed by our
children, let down by them, and disappointed by them. But remember “to err is human,
to forgive is divine.” As parents and teachers, we get to be the images of God, showing consistent follow-through coupled with
mercy and understanding.
• Open communication is essential, an educator from both SSPX and public schools
shared. It’s the bridge of understanding
between two entities. No one, as much as we
like to think it, has the gift of mind-reading.
Always give the other party the benefit of
the doubt. Too often parents are worried that
they might be over-communicating, teachers
just run out of time to write those emails, or
both parties shy away from the effort it takes
to reach out to one another. Don’t ever skip
49

EDUCATION

the teacher when it comes to communicating, but don’t be afraid to go up the chain
of command if your teacher isn’t communicating with you. It’s important to nourish all
relationships, and the only way one can do
that is through communication. Communication between the parent and the child also
fosters a strong sense of trust and openness.
• Encourage gratitude. Several teachers who
were formed in public schools and who now
teach in our SSPX schools are filled with so
much gratitude for what our schools can give
the students that they seem on fire with love
for the students. A teacher who is also a convert and mother repeatedly urged the practice of gratitude in the home, “Cultivate wonder and gratitude for what the children are
learning at school. Encourage your children
to have great respect and gratitude towards
teachers and administrators, especially the
religious.”
• Honesty and Personal Responsibility
were musts, said several veteran teachers.

Clara Peeters, Table, @1611.
50

The Angelus u September - October 2022

This is a foundational habit: if a child can
own up to his mistakes and take ownership
of them, he’s going to understand the consequences that must come from his actions.
• Parents who have self-respect and emotional awareness will teach children how
to have similar self-respect, manage their
own emotions, and be self-confident overall.
• “Surround them with beauty,” several
priests and teachers echoed. When I asked
my own mother why she did some the things
she did, like sewing us beautiful dresses at
Easter and Christmas, her reply was “I wanted to surround you all with beauty.” Beauty
is that which uplifts and is good in and of
itself: this includes music, decor, clothing,
bearing, language, tone of voice, and surroundings.
• Reading aloud for entertainment was one
of the most popular suggestions. It’s an
informal way of nourishing the mind in a
social context. While audiobooks are good,

EDUCATION

there’s nothing like a respected member
of the household sitting down in a comfy
chair and reading aloud while all around
curl up on the sofa or stretch themselves on
the floor to draw, color, or simply lay next
to the dog. One mother-teacher shared, “By
reading to your children you teach them language (vocabulary, comprehension); this is
important at a young age to make learning
to read easier. Classic children’s literature
helps teach and internalize the moral order,
emphasizing the good and evil, while giving
the children [and their adult reader] hope.”
• The dinner table is a place where children
should be heard and seen, according to one
vibrant mother. One priest observed that in
France, the dinner table is where the children learn how to think. Where else will
they learn to engage in lively, inquisitive conversation and to talk about and make connections with things that matter in a courteous way? This is also an opportunity to
sit together, to inquire into their day, and to
share something of each other around the
breaking of bread. The dinner table can be
the foundation of many social graces.
• Are we making time to contemplate? To
look at God’s creation? To look inward? This
is “any quiet time they can make at home,
which is not filled with ‘thrill’ and ‘screen’”
said an educator. “Our kids out here are
so thrill-soaked that it is hard for them to
appreciate the contemplative side of life.”
Are our adult lives fostering a life in which
one can sit and rest and see, beyond the digital screen? Simply going outside and taking
a walk around the neighborhood can spark
an interest in creation, or simply help readjust one’s mental perspective. “Miss Bryan,”
one 8th grade boy asked me as we came back
from a stroll I had promised them, “Have
you noticed that everyone seems just happier
and ‘reset’ when we come back from walks?”

who study doctrine … who have books on
the shelves! It’s unbelievable what a difference it makes.”
• Don’t be a perfectionist with yourself or
those around you. “Emphasize and encourage your children’s strengths. Whatever your
children excel in, encourage them, give them
opportunities to learn and do more. Gently
guide your children in areas they struggle in.
Work with them one on one.” “Find different ways to teach the subject using wonder
and gratitude,” shares a teacher and mother
of many.
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. If we
can help bend the twig or trunk of the young
sampling towards the good, the true, the beautiful, while supporting each other through mutual respect, communication, contemplation, and
integrity, all on the foundation of charity, then
we can trust in the projection of that growth.
Then you and I, with the young souls, by the
grace of God, our good will, and our collaboration will “be as stars for all eternity.”6

Endnotes
1

Dr. Dan Guernsey, “Educating to Truth, Beauty and Goodness,” Last modified October 17, 2016, <https://newmansociety.org/educating-to-truth-beauty-and-goodness-2/>.

2

Pamela Li, “Importance Of Hugging Your Child – 7 Amazing Benefits,” Parenting for Brain, May 8, 2022, https://www.
parentingforbrain.com/children-hugging/.

3

Melissa Locker, “Why Some People Hate Being Hugged,
According to Science,” Time, September 4, 2018, https://time.
com/5379586/people-hate-hugged-science/.

4

Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ, The Education of Catholic Girls.
(Charlotte, NC: Tan Books, 1911), pp. 13-21.

5

Mt. 12:22-28.

6

Dan. 12:3.

• Foster the intellectual life. The highest
function of our being is our intellect; therefore, we do have a responsibility to nourish it and
develop it. One wise teacher recommended
the following “Parents can talk to the principal and to their children’s teachers to find
out what they are reading in school, and read
it also! … Parents who read about history,
51

The

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THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

Desiderio
Desideravi
Fr. Peter Scott, SSPX

Pope Francis’ Desire
On June 29, 2022, Pope Francis issued an
Apostolic Letter on liturgical formation, entitled from the Latin Vulgate text of the Last Supper Desiderio desideravi—“With desire have I desired
to eat this pasch with you before I suffer” (Lk. 22:15).
It is in fact a series of reflections justifying to
the laity the decision to revoke the permission
for the traditional Latin Mass, given on July 16,
2021, and maintaining that the liturgical books
of the liturgical reform of 1969 “are the unique
expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite” and
that “those who are rooted in the previous form of
celebration…need to return to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II.” In
Traditionis custodes he had declared that his reasons were based on the unity of the Church,
affirming that traditional Catholics were causing a division, and in particular because he considered that the motive for the attachment to
the traditional Mass “is a rejection not only of the
liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself.”
The recent Apostolic Letter pretends to justify

his assertion that the traditional Mass is divisive
and that it is a refusal of Vatican II.

Absence of Doctrine
In order to capture our good will, this document appeals repeatedly to the experience of
the Eucharist, being an encounter with Christ
alive, inseparable from the Incarnation, Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of
Christ, reminding us that every reception of
communion is “that surrender to this love, that
letting ourselves be drawn by him” (§8). However,
the first observation that imposes itself is the
total absence of Catholic doctrine concerning
the Mass. Not only is the term Mass deliberately
avoided, and replaced by the repeated “celebration of the Eucharist,” but there is no reference
at all to the Church’s teaching in 65 long paragraphs that are supposed to explain the “beauty
and truth of Christian celebration” (§1).
It is very revealing to compare this with the
magisterial encyclical Mediator Dei of Pope Pius
XII in 1947, condemning the excesses of the
53

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

liturgical movement. Clarity comes with teaching Catholic truth, and this is what Pope Pius
XII taught: “The august sacrifice of the altar, then,
is no mere empty commemoration of the passion and
death of Jesus Christ, but a true and proper act of
sacrifice, whereby the High Priest by an unbloody
immolation offers Himself a most acceptable Victim
to the Eternal Father, as He did upon the Cross. It is
one and the same Victim, the same Person now offers
it by the ministry of His Passion, who then offered
Himself on the Cross, the manner of offering alone
being different” (§68). Pius XII goes on to point
out that the Mass has the same four ends as
the sacrifice of the Cross, namely giving praise
and glory to His heavenly Father, duly giving
thanks to God, expiation and propitiation for
sins and impetration of blessings and graces
(§71-74). These are the truths of our Faith, upon
which all considerations concerning Mass must
be based, and upon which our unity at the Holy
Sacrifice is founded. But there is no mention
of any of them in Francis’ Apostolic Letter of
desire. Instead there is constant reference to the
vague, nebulous, experiential, “existential” (§41)
encounter with Christ. Clearly this is not based
upon the objective truths of Faith contained in
the Mass and so it is nothing but an immanent
experience, which St. Pius X called modernism.

Accusations Against
Traditional Catholics
Instead, Pope Francis makes two gratuitous
accusations against those attached to the traditional rite of Mass. To do so he quotes from his
own encyclical on the New Evangelization of
November 24, 2013. It is consequently important to understand what he means by the New
Evangelization. It can be summarized in simple terms. The New Evangelization is a natural sharing process that builds up a certain
human sense of oneness and community on a
purely natural level. It stands in opposition to
the direct teaching of supernaturally revealed
truth. It is a human phenomenon of dialogue,
corresponding to a man’s desire to have others
share his ideas. It is consequently not specifically Catholic, but something that any other
religious or non-religious person can practice.
Used as a means of spreading the Faith, it is consequently and necessarily a form of naturalism.

Gnosticism
Pope Francis’s first accusation against those
opposed to the New Evangelization is that they
54

The Angelus u September - October 2022

fall into Gnosticism. Gnosticism is an ancient
heresy from the early centuries of the Church,
which pretends to a hidden, esoteric knowledge,
only accessible to a few chosen souls, which
knowledge itself is what constitutes sanctification. It is directly opposed to Catholic doctrine
on many points, not the least of which is its
denial of divine revelation and grace. This accusation is directed against traditional Catholics
because they supposedly consider themselves
to have some special knowledge and to have
fallen into “the prison of self-referencing, nourished
by one’s own reasoning and one’s own feeling” (§19).
He further accuses us of “subjectivism” “imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings” (§17),
because we will not accept the official line of the
revolution in the Church. Elsewhere he calls it
“individualism” (§28). However, the falsehood of
this accusation escapes no-one who has studied
the positions of those attached to the true Mass.
They are not motivated by personal hidden
knowledge, or by personal reasoning or feelings, or the possession of some higher knowledge. Traditional Catholics are quite simply
faithful to the catechism, to what the Church
has always taught and done. They refuse the liberalism and naturalism repeatedly condemned
by the Church’s Magisterium. This is entirely as
a result of fidelity to the Church, that we adhere
to that which is truly Catholic. It has nothing to
do with the heresies of Gnosticism.

Neo-Pelagianism
The second accusation is that of neo-Pelagianism. Pelagianism was a heresy of the fifth
century which denied the necessity of grace and
maintained that man could be pleasing to God
by his own efforts. This accusation is directed
against traditional Catholics, because we are
supposedly intoxicated “with the presumption of
a salvation earned through our own efforts” (§20).
Participation in the true liturgy is considered to
be “our own achievement” (Ib.), that is “by a scrupulous observance of the rubrics” and the search
for “a ritual aesthetic” (§22), which allegedly
makes one incapable of symbolic action and
understanding (§28). However, it is exactly the
contrary. It is precisely because we understand
what the Mass is, and what its prayers and its
actions symbolize, that we pay so much attention to them. Indeed, obedience to the rubrics
and the desire to make the Holy Sacrifice as
beautiful as possible, by the ceremonies, chants,
vestments, etc. is not naturalism at all, but the

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

expression of our love for the supernatural. It is
not a depending upon our own efforts, for there
is no pretence to be justified by a scrupulous
observance of the rubrics. It is only the grace
of God which can sanctify, but it is given principally by the Mass and the sacraments, which
is why we surround them with so much honor.
Our fidelity to the rules of the Church and to
all her teachings is ultimately because of our
understanding of our littleness, sinfulness, and
our need for grace and for the supernatural. The
accusation of Neo-Pelagianism is preposterous.

Sense of Mystery Evacuated
Pope Francis’ response to one of the “chief
accusations against the liturgical reform” is the consequence. The accusation, he says, is this, and
we all agree: “It is said that the sense of mystery
has been removed from the celebration” (§25). Here
is his response: “If the reform has eliminated that
vague sense of mystery, then more than a cause for
accusations it is to its credit” (Ib.). He is, therefore,
proud of the fact that there is no longer a sense
of mystery in the Novus Ordo.
But, if we remember our catechism we will
know that “a supernatural mystery is a truth which we
cannot fully understand, but which we firmly believe
because we have God’s word for it.” The Mass contains many such mysteries, not just transubstantiation, but that Christ can continue to offer up the
same sacrifice on our altars as on the cross, making it present for us as if we were at the foot of the
Cross, and that His Precious Blood is vicariously
offered on our behalf, and is thus efficacious in
expiating our sins and obtaining the many graces that we need but do not deserve. It is for this
reason that we proclaim in the words of consecration of the Precious Blood in the traditional
Mass that this sacrifice is “the mystery of Faith.” By
mystery we mean precisely the revealed truths
that are expressed in the prayers, gestures and
ceremonies of the traditional Mass. And this is
precisely what is missing in the new Mass. It is
replaced, Pope Francis himself claims, by “astonishment or wonder” (Ib.) at God’s plan, “not some
sort of being overcome in the face of an obscure reality
or a mysterious rite.” The mystery of our supernatural Faith is thus evacuated from the prosaic New
Mass, and it is no wonder that Mysterium fidei
was eliminated from the words of consecration
of the Precious Blood in the New Mass to adapt
to its naturalism.

Vatican II and the
Liturgical Reform
Pope Francis’ most profound, and at the
same time most contentious, observations are
found in §31, in which he speaks of the relationship between the Second Vatican Council and
the New Mass. There he explains the reason
for his affirmation that the liturgical books of
the new rites “are the unique expression of the lex
orandi of the Roman rite.” These are his words:
“It would be trivial to read the tension, unfortunately
present around the celebration, as a simple divergence
between different tastes concerning a particular ritual
form. The problematic is primarily ecclesiological. I
do not see how it is possible to say that one recognizes
the validity of the Council—though it amazes me that
a Catholic might presume to do so—and at the same
time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document that expresses the
reality of the Liturgy intimately joined to the vision of
Church so admirably described in Lumen Gentium.”
This observation, which identifies the real
cause of the rupture in the Church, has been
contested by some conservatives, who love the
traditional Mass but affirm that they have no
difficulties with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. They observe that the Fathers who
voted the Vatican II decree on the Liturgy (SC)
had no idea to what degree Archbishop Bugnini
would years later destroy the traditional rite of
Mass, and they consequently conclude that the
liturgical reform was not the consequence of Vatican II at all. For this they quote, amongst others,
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal
Ratzinger in 1976 affirmed: “The problem of the
new Missal lies in the fact that it breaks away from this
continuous history, which has always gone on before
and after Pius V, and creates a thoroughly new book
(albeit from old material), the appearance of which is
accompanied by a type of prohibition of what has gone
before, which is quite unheard of in the history of ecclesiastical law and liturgy. I can say with certainty from
my knowledge of the Council debate and from rereading the speeches of the Council Fathers delivered at
that time that this was not intended” (Letter to Prof.
Waldstein); and again in 1986 “In part it is simply
a fact that the Council was pushed aside.” Cardinal
Stickler is also quoted as affirming in 1997: “I
found that the final edition of the new Roman Missal
(1969) in many ways did not correspond to the conciliar texts that I knew so well, and that it contained
much that broadened, changed or even was directly
contrary to the Council’s provisions.” However, if it
is certainly true that SC does not contain all the
55

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

Jan van Eyck, Adoration of the Lamb from the Ghent Altarpiece, before 1426.

errors and abuses of the New Mass as it is now
celebrated, it does not follow that the principles
upon which it is based are not clearly found in
Vatican II, and also in SC.

The New Mass, Issue of Vatican II
Such authors propose to deny that the New
Mass is the unique expression of the lex orandi
of the Roman rite, by contradicting the Pope’s
affirmation that it is the fruit of Vatican II. To
the contrary, they should be affirming that it
is precisely because it is the fruit of Vatican II
that it cannot possibly be the expression of the
Church’s Catholic prayer. They have missed
the entire point of the Pope’s affirmation. He
does not say that the liturgical reform is entirely in the document on the liturgy (SC), but that
the new vision of the Church described by the
Vatican II document on the Church (LG) is the
essential determining factor, along with SC, for
a liturgical reform being in conformity with the
decrees of Vatican II, taken as a whole. In this
he is absolutely correct, affirming as he does
“the intimate bond between this first of the Council’s
constitutions (SC) and all the others” (§61).

The New Ecclesiology
For the redefinition of the Church is the essential novelty of Vatican II, as John Paul II admitted in the promulgation of the 1983 Code of
Canon Law. The notion of the Church has been
56

The Angelus u September - October 2022

enlarged and expanded to include all of humanity, which is why the Church of Christ is no longer said to be identical to the Catholic Church,
but to subsist in it (LG §8), and why there is no
longer such a thing as a false religion, since all
benefit from religious liberty, even when they
do not search for the truth (DH §2), and all have
“many elements of sanctification and truth” (LG §8).
The obligation of ecumenism is the consequence
(UR). The reason is given by the document on
the Church and the modern world, Gaudium et
spes, which clearly defines the new Humanism,
root of the new Ecclesiology, in §22: “It is only in
the mystery of the Word made flesh, that the mystery
of man truly becomes clear” for Christ “fully reveals
man to himself… for, by his Incarnation, he the son
of God has in a certain way united himself with each
man.” Christ’s mission, therefore, and that of the
Church, are on a purely natural level. Their mission is to give that vague spiritual life to all men
that makes them truly men, a mission that has
nothing of the supernatural. Hence the definition of the Church given in LG §2: “The Church,
in Christ, is in the nature of sacrament—a sign and
instrument, that is, of communion with God and of
unity among all men.” The Catholic Church is but
a symbol and a sign of what unites all men, and
brings all men by themselves into some vague
communion with God—that is she promotes the
dignity of human nature, their common brotherhood—nothing more or less.

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

This humanism becomes a personalism when
it places all of the focus on the individual person
and his relationships, while making abstraction
from God, His grace, the common good, and
the necessity of the Catholic Faith. Thus Pope
Francis affirms in this very apostolic letter that
the encounter of the liturgy makes “a human being
become fully human,” that is “open to a full relationship with God, with creation, and with one’s brothers
and sisters” (§33). The New Mass operates, therefore, on a simply human level, and is not specifically supernatural. It was Pope Paul VI himself
who admitted that this new humanism was the
driving force behind Vatican II, when he concluded the Council by a discourse on Dec 7, 1965
stating: “Secular humanism, revealing itself in its
horrible anti-clerical reality has, in a certain sense,
defied the Council. The religion of the God who became
man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who
makes himself God. And what happened? Was there
a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have
been but there was none… You, modern humanists,
who renounce the transcendence of the highest realities,
recognized for it (the Council) this merit and accept
to acknowledge our new humanism, for we also, more
than anybody else, have the worship of man.”

profoundly. To change everything that is not
divine, in the light of the new notion of the
Church, is to remove that which is specifically
Catholic, and makes it acceptable to humanity
as a whole, and to non-Catholics in particular,
as was done with the New Mass when six protestant observers were asked to help frame it. It is
this denial of that which is specifically Catholic,
of the Church’s bimillenial Tradition, perfectly
expressing the Faith, which shows how the New
Mass comes from SC, in the light of the other
teachings of Vatican II.
SC likewise orders that “the liturgical books are
to be revised as soon as possible” (§25), that there
be a wider use of the vernacular (§36,2 & 54),
that “the rite of the Mass is to be revised”(§50), that
“communion under both kinds be granted” (§55), that
it no longer be the Mass of the catechumens and
the Mass of the faithful but “the liturgy of the word
and the eucharistic liturgy” (§56), that concelebration be allowed with a new rite (§57, 58). These
novelties are all to be interpreted according to
the new ecclesiology, regardless of what precautions may have been inserted into the document
to obtain the votes of the conservative bishops.

Humanism Applied to the Liturgy

This is, indeed, the New Mass in its making. That
which is specifically Catholic and supernatural is
systematically either obscured or gently evacuated.
It is no longer the true propitiatory sacrifice for the
sins of the world, but the “repeated experience of the
Paschal Mystery,” as Pope Francis repeats ad nauseam
(§36). The term Paschal Mystery has a precise theological signification. By it is meant the manifestation
of God’s love for us in the person and resurrection
of Christ. It is not the Redemption properly speaking, for it does not include any sacrifice for the sins
of the world. This is considered to be an outdated
medieval concept affirming that God’s justice must
be propitiated, thus denying, they say, the love of
God. The Paschal Mystery is simply a reminder of
God’s goodness which Christ gave to us when He
rose from the dead. This is easily understood from
a purely natural perspective, for Christ by rising
from the dead and showing his power has opened
the path to man truly knowing himself, and accessing his high dignity. It is no longer a question of the
supernatural dignity acquired by the Redemption,
by which we participate in the life of God Himself. It
is man’s natural dignity, his human freedom, which
is emphasized. This is the whole focus of the New
Mass and why it is that it destroys the Catholic Faith,

There can consequently be no doubt about it
that Vatican II called for a transformation of the
Church according to this new humanism, which
is essentially naturalistic, making abstraction
from the supernatural order of grace. Yet, it is
the special function of the Catholic Church to
provide grace through the Mass and the sacraments. It is in this light that Sacrosanctum concilium must be interpreted when it requests that
full and active participation by all the people
must “be considered before all else,” that is before
the doctrine of the Mass (SC §15). It is likewise
with this understanding that the elements of the
Liturgy which are not of divine institution “not
only may be changed, but ought to be changed with
the passage of time” (§21). Now the only divine elements of the Mass are contained in the words of
institution, which are little more than the matter and form of the sacrament. Everything else
comes from the Apostles and from the Church
over the centuries. This necessity of innovation
demanded by SC denies ecclesiastical tradition,
which hands down to us the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass, the sacraments, and our
devotions, which express our Catholic Faith so

New Mass = Paschal Mystery

57

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

which is a supernatural infused gift from God by
which we believe all that God has revealed, and in
particular our need for Redemption, not what man
thinks, believes or likes about himself. This is confirmed by this very Apostolic Letter, which speaks
repeatedly of the ¨importance of presiding¨ (§55), which
presiding by the priest has taken the place of offering
the sacrifice, never mentioned. Here again is what
Pope Francis has to say on this: ¨It is the celebration
itself that educates the priest to this level and quality of presiding. It is not, I repeat, a mental adhesion¨ (§60). What
he means is that it is not a profession of Faith with
the mind, but a shared experience. This is a purely
natural understanding of the Liturgy. It is the New
Mass, a celebration presided over by a priest, and
not a sacrifice.
If Pope Francis believes that the New Mass
is born of Vatican II, because it follows the new
ecclesiology introduced by Vatican II, then he
is indeed correct. The New Mass was created
for the specific purpose of expressing the new
notion of the Church, humanist and naturalist
as it is. And it is precisely for this reason that
it cannot possibly be any expression at all of
the prayer of the Catholic Church and must be
entirely rejected. The lex orandi of the Roman
rite is the traditional Mass, just as in the Eastern rites it is their own traditional liturgy. This
is how the Church has always prayed, and anybody who denies it falls under the condemnation
of the seventh ecumenical Council, the Second
Council of Nicea, which in 787 declared against
the heresy of iconoclasm: “Those, therefore, who
dare… to spurn according to wretched heretics the
ecclesiastical traditions and to invent anything novel,
or to reject anything from these things which have
been consecrated by the Church… or to invent perversely and cunningly for the overthrow of anyone of
the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church…
we order… to be excommunicated” (DB 304).

Validity of Vatican II
In his Apostolic Letter, Pope Francis accuses
traditional Catholics of refusing to accept “the
validity of the Council.” This confusing accusation
calls for clarification. No traditional Catholic
denies that Vatican II was convoked by Pope
John XXIII and that the texts were approved by
Pope Paul VI. If this is what is meant by validity, then the accusation is false. However, the
question as to the value of the texts is altogether
different. Vatican II did not use the charisma
of infallibility of the extraordinary Magisteri58

The Angelus u September - October 2022

um, for it wanted to be pastoral and refused to
make definitions and utter condemnations of the
opposed errors, which are the necessary conditions for the Extraordinary Magisterium. Pope
Paul VI himself clearly declared this just after the
Council, on January 12, 1966, namely that the
Council “had avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary manner dogmas having the mark of infallibility.”
When it teaches what has always and everywhere
been taught in the Church, then it teaches the
truth by the Ordinary Magisterium, and every
Catholic is bound to accept it. This is the meaning of the explanatory note attached to the Vatican II document on the Church by Archbishop
Felici, Secretary General of the Council: “Taking
into account conciliar practice and the pastoral purpose of the present council, the sacred synod defined as
binding on the Church only those matters of faith and
morals which is has expressly put forward as such.”
That is the whole point. Nothing is put forth as
binding in matters of faith and morals. Vatican II
contains no definition of dogma, with the opposing anathema. Therefore, when it teaches novelties, philosophical ideas, humanism and ecumenism, there is no obligation whatsoever to
believe, since these “teachings” are not teachings
of the Catholic Church, but have been infiltrated into it. Consequently to accept the validity of
the Council does not mean to accept all that it
contains in its documents. Far from it.
In conclusion, our refusal of the New Mass,
and our maintaining that the traditional Latin
Mass as the unique expression of the lex orandi
in the Roman rite are not questions of polemics,
but of Faith. It is not a question of individualism, rejecting authority, causing divisions, but
maintaining the Catholic unity that the modernists have blown apart by their humanism
and their relativism, in the name of Vatican II.
The more dictatorial and insistent Pope Francis becomes in his losing battle to have the true
Mass destroyed, in the name of a fake humanist
unity, the more determined we must be to maintain it in its integrity and to defend it, as the true
Mass, the Mass of all time, the Catholic Mass,
the expression of the supernatural inheritance
that Christ left to the Church, in continuity with
twenty centuries of Catholic doctrine and life.
TITLE IMAGE: Long Thiên, Pope Francis with the papal ferula
used by John Paul II, March 28, 2016 (Wikimedia).

APOLOGETICS

Culture and
Christianity
Pauper Peregrinus

W

hat should Christians study? The
question has exercised many
great minds down the years. No
one doubts, of course, that it is
good to study sacred scripture, and what is
called “divine science.” But how much time or
energy should we give to human culture: for
example, to philosophy, history, mathematics,
and the various sciences of nature, to literature
and the other fine arts? Can we justify giving
them any of our precious time on earth?
The problem is a real one. St. Augustine
expressed it with his usual acuity in his work
On Christian Doctrine. “Suppose,” he wrote, “that
we were wanderers in a strange country, and
could not live happily away from our homeland,
and so, wishing to put an end to our misery, we
decided to return home. We find, though, that
we must make use of some mode of conveyance,
either by land or water, to reach that homeland
where our happiness is to begin. But the beauty
of the country through which we pass, and the

very pleasure of the motion, delight our minds,
and so, turning these things that we ought to use
into objects of enjoyment, we grow unwilling to
hasten onward to our journey’s end.” Such, he
adds, is in fact the state of man on earth.
In other words, by studying earthly things,
and discovering their beauties, we may find
our desire for heavenly ones beginning to cool.
“A man is never so well,” noted the bishop of
Hippo, “as when his whole life is a journey
toward the unchangeable life, and his affections
are entirely fixed upon that.” His older contemporary St. Jerome experienced this problem as
a young man, when he felt torn between his
love for Cicero and Virgil, and his love for the
psalms.
Accordingly, St. Augustine is cautious about
studying created things, beyond the little science and history that will help us understand
the bible, and enough logic so that we may think
straight. True, he does not forbid us to go further: but he is afraid that even “studious and
59

APOLOGETICS

able young men, who fear God and are seeking
for the blessed life” tend to throw themselves
into their secular studies unduly. Some of the
better pagan philosophers, he allows, said some
noble things, which Christian converts have
done well to bring into the Church, rather as
the Israelites brought the gold and silver out of
Egypt. Yet he adds that these same truths are
found in a simpler and sublimer form in the
Scriptures, and without admixture of error. We
may wonder, then, why anyone should bother
reading Plato and Aristotle, who already has
the gospels and St. Paul.
Another 4th-century saint, Basil the Great,
may be able to help us. This Cappadocian bishop once gave a talk to schoolboys on how and
why to read books by pagans, and happily, his
words have been preserved. The very fact that
the Church’s scriptures are divine, he told them,
means that we need to be in good spiritual
shape to read them well. Just as gymnastics and
even dancing forms the muscles that a soldier
will later use in battle, and just as dyers must
prepare the cloth before they add the dye, so
boys should train their minds by reading poets,
historians and orators. Of course, the Christian
lad must steer clear of anything obscene, and
“close his ears to songs that corrupt the mind.”
But if they begin by studying whatever is best in
human wisdom, “in which we perceive the truth
as it were in shadows and in mirrors,” they will
be more ready in due time to understand the
word of God (Address to Young Men on the Right
Use of Greek Literature).
St. Basil is generous in speaking about the
authors of the past who lacked the light of revelation. He knows people who hold that all the
poetry of Homer tends to the praise of virtue,
and he feels no need to contradict them: though
he would add that it is natural and not Christian virtue that is in question. All the same, we
should remember that it was youths and not
grown men to whom the saint was speaking. We
can hardly say that he was encouraging them
to pursue what would today be called a literary
or academic career.
A far more recent writer who grappled with
similar questions was Clive Staples Lewis. In
1940, as the bombs were falling on England,
he wrote a little-known but fascinating essay
called “Christianity and Culture” (it can be
found in a modern anthology of his writings
entitled Faith, Christianity and the Church). His
60

The Angelus u September - October 2022

problem, he says, is this: to be cultured does
not make us more pleasing to God. So how can
he, Lewis, justify spending as much time and
effort as he does on studying poetry, plays and
novels? More generally, how can there be such
a thing as a “liberal education”: how can any
knowledge be worth pursuing for its own sake,
if it is not such knowledge as we have been put
on earth to acquire?
Lewis knows of no one who has faced the
problem as squarely as John Henry Newman—
now canonized—in his 19th-century lectures on
The Idea of a University. “No one ever insisted
so eloquently as Newman on the beauty of culture for its own sake, and no one ever so sternly
resisted the temptation to confuse it with things
spiritual.” Newman’s solution was to point out
that every kind of thing has its proper perfection. The perfection of the intellect is not that
of the will. The will is perfected by charity,
the intellect by knowledge. While only the former kind of perfection prepares us for a happy
eternity, the latter is a perfection nonetheless,
and therefore worth pursuing. For “we attain
to heaven by using this world well, though it
is to pass away” (Discourse 5, “Knowledge its
Own End”).
Lewis, however, professes himself dissatisfied with Newman’s answer. Granted, a liberal
education may perfect my mind, as a course of
weight-lifting may perfect my body, but does
either of them perfect me? Having a well-stocked
mind and a discriminating taste, and having
a perfectly-honed physique, are both of them
quite compatible with going to hell. So, can
Lewis be serving God by dedicating himself to
something, culture, that has no eternal value?
He considers the suggestion that there may
be a moral duty to perfect even the non-moral parts of ourselves, such as the intellect and
the body. He finds this implausible, given that
Scripture and tradition do not seem to speak of
one (those of us who are not given to frequenting gyms may find this reassuring.) He therefore
suggests a humbler answer, in two parts. First of
all, there is an existing demand for culture, and
culture is not intrinsically bad, and it can afford
innocent pleasures that divert men from sinful
ones. Hence it seems that one may legitimately
become a “culture-seller”—under which slightly ironical designation he includes teachers of
English literature such as himself.
Secondly, while literature as a whole tends

APOLOGETICS

to promote not Christian but sub-Christian values, these values sometimes occupy the highest rank among merely natural ones: he mentions honor, romantic love, the contemplation
of something divine in creation, and Sehnsucht,
or the longing for some indefinable happiness.
While it would be a mistake for the Christian
to immerse himself in such sentiments, since he
has got beyond them, they may aid the conversion of someone coming from a merely brutal
or self-satisfied kind of life. It would make the
“perfected Christian” worse, Lewis holds, to
take any merely natural ideal as his inspiration,
yet “to the man coming up from below, the ideal
of knighthood may prove a schoolmaster to the
ideal of martyrdom.” He sums up his thought
in a fine aphorism: “Any road out of Jerusalem
must also be a road into Jerusalem.”
Where does all this leave us? Lewis’s justification of his trade is convincing enough.
Even were the arts no more than a form of play,
human beings need some “deeds or words in
which nothing is sought save mental delight,”
says St. Thomas Aquinas, as providing a kind
of rest for their mind. But in fact, as both Lewis
and St. Basil suggest, culture is also a kind of

milk, preparing weak souls for some more substantial food.
For Newman, too, there is much to be said.
The intellect is man’s highest power, and it is
perfected, says the angelic doctor, by every necessary truth. Therefore, provided we are always
aiming above all at eternal life, we are pleasing
God by cultivating it. Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever modest, says St. Paul, whatsoever lovely,
if there be any virtue, think on these things (Phil. 4:8).
Yet the doubts of St. Augustine abide. Fallen
man will always be trying to turn the hierarchy
of values upside-down. Studiousness is a virtue,
but what the medievals called curiositas is a vice,
and we had better learn to mortify our passion
for learning as we do our other passions. And
the closer we come to that eternal country of
which the bishop of Hippo spoke, the less, I
think, we shall want to spend our time on any
human culture, however noble: for now we know
in part … but when that which is perfect is come,
that which is in part shall be done away.
TITLE IMAGE: St. Jerome in His Study, by a follower of Joos van
Cleve, 16th or 17th century.

THE STORY OF FR. GEORGE KATHREIN, C.SS.R.
By Fr. Alphonsus Maria Krutsinger, C.Ss.R.
Foreword by Bishop Bernard Fellay

The life of Fr. Kathrein is a reminder to all readers, especially newer
generations who are too young to have experienced the spiritual
abandonment that traditionalist Catholics went through during the years after
Vatican II. It also serves as a reminder that the fight itself has not changed,
even if the tactics have mutated with time and circumstances: our goal is to
eradicate the neo-Modernist errors from the Catholic Church, and to restore
the Church’s own unchanging and infallible Tradition to the hierarchy and
to the faithful, who have been left spiritually poor and abandoned due to the
erroneous teachings, poor catechesis, and liturgical anarchy of the past 60
years. Only Catholic Tradition can efficaciously give the life of God to souls
for His glory and for their salvation and sanctification.
Fr. Alphonsus Maria
Krutsinger, C.Ss.R., made
his religious profession in
1994 and was ordained by
Bishop Fellay in 2000. Since
2005, he has been preaching
parish missions and retreats
throughout the Englishspeaking world.

“You will find here an uncommon life of a Redemptorist in the
middle of the torment of Vatican II, the catastrophe of the 20th
century. The damage it caused worldwide to souls, first the Catholic
souls, then any soul … is beyond any imagination .… Suddenly, the
normal actions, the normal life turns into heroism. This example
should give us joy and courage for our times.”—Bishop Bernard Fellay
283 pages. Color softcover. STK# 8823 $16.95

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

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

61

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, SSPX

s
s
62

What is a “rash judgment”?
Is it always sinful?
Every man has the right to a good reputation, to the good opinion that is commonly held
of him, for no one is to be regarded as evil until
it is proved that he actually is evil. Hence, the
unjust defamation of the neighbor constitutes a
sin against strict justice.
Judgment is the affirmation or negation of a
thing (e.g., that something is good or it is not).
A judgment may be true or false, depending
on whether or not it is in agreement with the
objective truth; true or probable, as stated or
denied with certainty or only with probability;
prudent or reckless, as issued with sufficient or
insufficient foundation.
Taking into account these notions, we will
draw the following conclusions regarding
unfounded suspicions and reckless judgments.

The Angelus u September - October 2022

A reckless suspicion exists when without
sufficient foundation we begin to doubt our
neighbor’s conduct or intentions, although without definitely affirming it.
It is evidently a sin against justice, by the
strict right of the neighbor to his own reputation
until proven otherwise. But because not having
firm assent, the simple suspicion does not seriously injure the neighbor, and may be somehow
excused either by some of the neighbor’s actions
or by our own human weakness that makes us
so prone to these suspicions.
But it could be serious in certain circumstances, for example, if the reckless suspicion
(and a fortiori the opinion) regards a very serious and unaccustomed sin or a person of recognized virtue. In these cases there is mortal sin in
the simple suspicion deliberately admitted and
maintained, by the serious injury that is done
to the neighbor.
St. Thomas explains the causes of these reckless suspicions: “As Cicero says, suspicion denotes evil

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

thinking based on slight indications, and this is due to three
causes. First, from a man being evil in himself, and from
this very fact, as though conscious of his own wickedness,
he is prone to think evil of others, according to Ecclesiastes
10:3, ‘The fool when he walketh in the way, whereas he
himself is a fool, esteemeth all men fools.’ Secondly, this
is due to a man being ill-disposed towards another: for
when a man hates or despises another, or is angry with or
envious of him, he is led by slight indications to think evil
of him, because everyone easily believes what he desires.
Thirdly, this is due to long experience: wherefore the Philosopher says that ‘old people are very suspicious, for they
have often experienced the faults of others.’ The first two
causes of suspicion evidently connote perversity of the affections, while the third diminishes the nature of suspicion, in
as much as experience leads to certainty which is contrary
to the nature of suspicion. Consequently suspicion denotes
a certain amount of vice, and the further it goes, the more
vicious it is” (II-II, q.60, a.3).

A rash judgment is the firm assent of the
mind (not a simple doubt, suspicion or opinion),
without sufficient foundation, about our neighbor’s sin or evil intentions.
It is a grave sin against justice, on account of
the grave injury that it inflicts upon our neighbor, who has a strict right to preserve his reputation, even in our internal thoughts, until
proof exists to the contrary. But it admits parvity of matter, and so, for example, it would be a
venial sin to judge recklessly that the neighbor
is lying so as to appear better than he is. The
greater or lesser seriousness of a reckless judgment depends not only on the quality of the
sin or crime that is recklessly judged, but also
on the greater or lesser disproportion between
the judgment and the reasons or grounds for
its issuance.
Holy Scripture severely forbids such reckless judgments, and Christ himself warns us
that we will be measured to the same extent as
we measure others: “Judge not, that you may not
be judged, for with what judgment you judge, you
shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it
shall be measured to you again, and why seest thou
the mote that is in thy brother’s eye; and seest not the
beam that is in thy own eye?” (Mt. 7:1-3).
“Judgment without mercy to him that hath not
done mercy. And mercy exalteth itself above judgment” ( Jas. 2:13). These words of the Apostle
St. James resolve by themselves the objection
that is often opposed to the sound Christian
advice to always interpret in a good sense the
intentions of the neighbor until the contrary is
certain. It is true that, in doing so always, we
risk being wrong many times. But this mistake

will be to our greatest benefit, because, at the
time of our own final judgment, God will use
with us the same merciful procedure that we
have used with our neighbor.
There is, moreover, another reason, which
St. Thomas explains admirably: “He who interprets doubtful matters for the best, may happen to be
deceived more often than not; yet it is better to err
frequently through thinking well of a wicked man,
than to err less frequently through having an evil
opinion of a good man, because in the latter case
an injury is inflicted, but not in the former” (II-II,
q.60, a.4, ad 1).

Is boxing morally
permissible?
As there is no official teaching of the Church
on this matter, we must rely on the application of general moral principles to the concrete
action of boxing.
A dictionary defines boxing as “a combat
sport in which two people, usually wearing some
kind of protective equipment, throw punches at
each other for a predetermined amount of time
in a boxing ring.” Another dictionary defines
it as “a giving and parrying of blows with no
intention of striking the opponent severely,” but
it must be agreed that that is not a realistic definition of the boxing matches we may usually
see on TV.
Both definitions agree that it is a combat
sport, in which blows are exchanged, but distinctions must be made taking into account the
intention of the fighters, their goal, and the concrete circumstances surrounding the exchange
of blows. In other words, a distinction must be
made between what we may call amateur and
professional boxing.
In principle, among theologians there seems
to be no major moral objection to amateur
boxing. Its defenders argue that it is a sport
that offers good opportunity for physical development and strength, for growth in confidence
and discipline, for character-building and good
sportsmanship. They even point out that these
advantages of the sport are such that St. Paul
himself, talking about the self-discipline to be
exercised in our Christian life (I Cor. 9:25-27),
makes the analogy with boxing.
As the match takes place in supervised conditions and usually protective gear is used, the
63

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

possibility of physical damage is limited. Moreover, the skills learned can be also used outside the ring in cases of genuine self-defense or
defending an innocent party.
Nonetheless, there are also theologians who
point out that, fallen human nature being what
it is, even in the most benign of the various
forms of amateur pugilism may become morally reprehensible because the fighters, although
not delivering the blows with the same intent
nor the same power as in professional boxing,
may be still carried away by the desire to win
and thus inflict immoderate physical damage
to the adversary.
The major moral problems arise in the case
of professional boxing.
There are sports where there is often the possibility of physical injury. However, such damage is incidental to the game, accidental, not
intended. If it is seen to be inflicted on purpose,
it is penalized.
Professional boxing is a sport whose primary objective is to deprive the rival of the ability
to fight, not symbolically (as in wrestling, for
example, by immobilizing him on the ground),
but by battering and damaging the opponent
into helplessness, rendering him physically
incapable of continuing the fight.
The danger of such injuries is such that the
Vatican journal La Civiltà Cattolica called professional boxing a “legalized form of attempted
murder,” noting that fighters often suffer longterm physical and psychological injuries.
Now, the Fifth Commandment prohibits the
intentional infliction of direct physical damage
on oneself or on another. As creatures, we do
not have absolute dominion over our own bodies, and much less over the bodies of others.
We are only stewards charged with the duty
and privilege of reasonable administration over
them. Absolute dominion belongs only to God.
A deliberate, intended injury to the human
body is morally permissible only with a reasonable cause or a compensating good – for
example, knocking out a drowning man to be
able to save him, or cutting off a limb to save a
life. But in professional boxing, there is no such
reasonable cause or compensating good, as the
physical damage suffered by both fighters is
not proportionate to the good to be attained by
one of them—fame, wealth, pride in his physical
superiority.

64

A recent scholar has also stressed the societal effects of professional boxing—it glamorizes
violence, encourages the concept of becoming
rich and famous through physical aggression,
and is accompanied by a growing commercialization that favors the brutalization of all combat sports.
It also can have deleterious effects on us, the
spectators. It is spiritually dangerous to drink
such spectacles in. An ancient pagan philosopher, Seneca, had already warned that when
we make sport of maiming and killing human
beings, we render ourselves less humane. St.
Thomas knew nothing of professional boxing, but with an unerring knowledge of human
nature, he pointed out that taking pleasure in
the unnecessary sufferings of another man is
barbaric.
In his Confessions, St. Augustine speaks of a
beloved friend, Alypius, who had developed an
incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows,
pointing out both the strong appeal of viewing
violence and our often ineffectual struggle to
resist it. St. Augustine describes the gladiatorial games as “a frenzy of extravagant excess,” with
crowds cheering as humans are hurt. “As he saw
that blood, he drank in savageness at the same time.”
And far from a momentary or fleeting delight,
when Alypius emerged from the amphitheater
he was “no longer the man who entered there… He
took away with him the madness he had found there.”
Certainly, modern professional boxing does not
go to those extremes of bloodshed. However,
it still taps into some primeval passion deeply
buried in our fallen nature, a passion that can
be nonetheless overcome with God’s grace, as
Alypius did, thus later becoming the saint bishop of Thagaste.

The
L ast Word
Fr. David Sherry
District Superior of Canada

Dear Reader,
“That’s it! I’m finished! I’m never going there
again. That priest! He started Mass twenty-five
minutes late—again—and then, he preached for
forty-five minutes! And those children—the
noise! I’m back to the Indult/Sedevacantists/
Novus Ordo—anything but that!”
Whoa! Hold your horses, friend! Don’t rush
off so quickly. Think first. What are the reasons that you’re going to Mass here in the first
place? Is it for the bells and smells? Is it the
short sermons or delightful singing? No. I agree
that the priest shouldn’t start Mass late when
he can avoid it—it does give a haphazard feel
to the Sacred Mysteries and it tests people’s
patience unnecessarily. As for the sermon, I
once heard a man say that his parish priest’s
sermons were like a Rolls Royce. “Lucky man,”
I said. “When I say that they were like a Rolls
Royce,” he replied, “I meant that you couldn’t
hear a thing and they went on forever!”
The thing is, the reason that you’re coming
to Mass here is for the true Faith and the Mass
of all time, not because the priest is a nice guy.
If you go to the Indult Masses, certainly, you
might have beautiful singing but the priest very
likely won’t say a word about any problem in
the Church—if he does, he’ll be out on his ear,
they’ll say he’s got a schismatic attitude. Chances are he thinks that everything’s fundamentally
all right anyway. He certainly won’t be able to

tell you to avoid the New Mass. And anyway,
your indult Mass will be sandwiched between
two New Masses, and they’ll wheel in the drumkit as he’s saying the Last Gospel…
As for going to the sedevacantists, well, some
things just aren’t black and white, but don’t tell
them that. They judge that the pope isn’t pope
but St. Paul says: “Judge not before the time.”
Archbishop Lefebvre said that we’re not qualified to judge that the pope is not pope. We need
to possess our souls in patience, the Church will
make sense of the crisis when the calm returns.
All we have to do for the moment is to use our
Catholic antennae—hold fast to the Faith that
was passed down from Christ.
As for going to the Novus Ordo, don’t get
me started! While you’re waiting twenty-five
minutes for the priest to start next Sunday,
think about all the things you’re missing—guitars, altar girls, lay-ministers, sickly sermons…
you’ll feel much better.
Fr. David Sherry

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.

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Misalito Latín-Español

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Thinking about attending a Latin Mass
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