january 2005 $4.45 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition Does Economics exclude Catholic morality? man, state, economics  Methodological and linguistic definitions  Denial of the crisis  The error of secondary Christianity  The crisis as failure to adapt  Adapting the Church’s contradiction of the world  Further denial of the crisis  The Pope recognizes the loss of direction  Pseudo-positivity of the crisis  False philosophy of religion  Further admissions of a crisis  Positive interpretation of the crisis  False philosophy of religion  Further false philosophy of religion.  The crises of the Church: Jerusalem (50 A.D.)  The Nicene crisis (325 A.D.)  The deviations of the Middle Ages  The crisis of the Lutheran secession. The breadth of the Christian ideal  Further breadth of the Christian ideal. Its limits  The denial of the Catholic principle in Lutheran doctrine  Luther’s heresy, continued. The bull Exsurge Domine  The principle of independence and abuses in the Church  Why casuistry did not create a crisis in the Church  The revolution in France.  The principle of independence  The Auctorem Fidei  The crisis of the Church during the French Revolution  The Syllabus of Pius IX.  The spirit of the age  Alexander Manzoni  The modernist crisis. The second Syllabus  The preconciliar crisis and the third Syllabus  Humani Generis (1950)  The Second Vatican Council. Its preparation  Paradoxical outcome of the Council  Paradoxical outcome of the Council, continued  The Roman Synod  Paradoxical outcome of the Council, continued  Veterum Sapientia  The aims of the First Vatican Council  The aims of Vatican II  Pastorality  Expectations concerning the Council  Cardinal Montini’s forecasts. His minimalism  Catastrophal predictions  The opening address  Antagonism with the world  Freedom of the Church  The opening speech. Ambiguities of text and meaning  The opening speech. A new attitude towards error  Rejection of the council preparations  The breaking of the council rules  The breaking of the Council’s legal framework, continued  Consequences of breaking the legal framework  Whether there was a conspiracy  Papal action at Vatican II  The Nota praevia  Further papal action at Vatican II. Interventions on Mariological doctrine  On missions  On the moral law of marriage  Synthesis of the council in the closing speech of the fourth session  Comparison with St. Pius X  Church and world  Leaving the Council behind  The spirit of the Council  Leaving the Council behind. Ambiguous character of the Conciliar texts  Novel hermeneutic of the Council  Semantic change  The word “dialogue.”  Novel hermeneutic of the Council, continued  “Circiterisms.”vUse of the conjunction “but.”  Deepening understanding  Features of the post-Conciliar period. The universality of the change  The post-Conciliar period, continued  The New Man  Gaudium et Spes  Depth of the change  Impossibility of radical change in the Church  The impossibility of radical newness, continued  The denigration of the historical Church  Critique of the denigration of the Church  False view of the early Church  Sanctity of the Church. An apologetical principle  The catholicity of the Church  Objection  The Church as a principle of division  Paul VI  The unity of the post-Conciliar Church  The Church disunited in the hierarchy  The Church disunited over Humanae Vitae  The Church disunited concerning the encyclical, continued  The Dutch schism  The renunciation of authority. A confidence of Paul VI  An historic parallel. Paul VI and Pius IX  Government and authority  The renunciation of authority, continued  The affair of the French catechism  Character of Paul VI. Self-portrait  Cardinal Gut  Yes and no in the post-Conciliar Church  The renunciation of authority, continued  The reform of the Holy Office  Critique of the reform of the Holy Office  Change in the Roman Curia. Lack of precision  Change in the Roman Curia, continued  Cultural inadequacies  The Church’s renunciation in its relations with states  The revision of the concordat, continued  The Church of Paul VI. His speeches of September 1974  Paul VI’s unrealistic moments  The defection of priests  The canonical legitimation of priestly defections  Attempts to reform the Catholic priesthood  Critique of the critique of the Catholic priesthood  Don Mazzolari  Universal priesthood and ordained priesthood  Critique of the saying “a priest is a man like other men.”  Change in the post-Conciliar Church regarding youth  The delicate task of education  Character of youth. Critique of life as joy  Paul VI’s speeches to youth  Juvenilism in the Church, continued  The Swiss bishops  The Church and Feminism  Critique of Feminism  Feminism as masculinism  Feminist theology  The Church’s egalitarian tradition  Subordination and superordination of women  The subordination of women in Catholic tradition  Defense of the Church’s doctrine and practice concerning women  Catholicism’s elevation of women  Decline in morals  Philosophy of modesty  Natural shame  Personal shame  Reich  Episcopal documents on sexuality  Cardinal Colombo  The German bishops  Modern Somatolatry and the Church  Sport as the perfecting of the human person  Sport as an incentive to brotherhood  Somatolatry in practice  The penitential spirit and the modern world  Reduction of abstinence and fasts  The new penitential discipline  Origins of the reform of penance  Penitence and obedience  Renunciation of political and social action  Disappearance or transformation of Catholic parties  The Church’s surrender in the Italian campaigns for divorce and abortion  The Church and communism in Italy  The condemnations of 1949 and 1959  The Church and communism in France  Committed Christians  Weakening of antitheses  Principles and movements in Pacem in Terris  On Christian socialism  Toniolo  Curci  Fr. Montuclard’s doctrine and the emptying of the Church  Transition from the Marxist option to liberation theology  The nuncio Zacchi  The document of the 17 bishops  Judgment on the document of the Seventeen  Options of certain Christians, continued  Bishop Fragoso  Examination of Bishop Fragoso’s doctrine  Support for the teaching of the Seventeen  Schools in the post-Conciliar Church  Relative necessity of Catholic schools  The Congregation for Catholic Education’s document of 16 October 1982  Catholic rejection of Catholic schools  Bishop Leclercq  Modern pedagogy  Catechetics  Novel pedagogy  The knowledge of evil in Catholic teaching  Teaching and authority. Catechetics  The dissolution of catechetics  The 1977 synod of bishops  The dissolution of catechetics  Fr. Arrupe  Card. Benelli  The dissolution of catechesis  Le Du  Charlot  Bishop Orchampt  Renewal and vacuity of catechetics in Italy  The Roman catechists’ meeting with the Pope  Contradiction between the new catechetics and the directives of John Paul II  Cardinal Journet  Catechesis without catechesis  Restoration of Catholic catechetics  The religious orders in the post-Conciliar Church  Change in principles  The fundamental change  The religious virtues in the post-Conciliar reform  Chastity  Temperance  Poverty and obedience  New concept of religious obedience  Rosmini’s teaching on religious obedience  Obedience and community life  Theological setting of the argument  Pyrrhonism in the Church  Cardinals Leger, Heenan, Alfrink and Suenens  The discounting of reason  Sullivan  Innovators’ rejection of certainty  The discounting of reason, continued  The Padua theologians  The Ariccia theologians  Manchesson  Dialogue and discussionism in the post-Conciliar Church  Dialogue in Ecclesiam Suam  Philosophy of dialogue  Appropriateness of dialogue  The end of dialogue  Paul VI  The Secretariat for Non-Believers  Whether dialogue is always an enrichment  Catholic dialogue  Mobilism in modern philosophy  Critique of mobilism  Ugo Foscolo  Kolbenheyer  Mobilism in the Church  Mobilism and the fleeting world  St. Augustine  Mobilism in the new theology  Mobilism in eschatology  Rejection of natural theology  Cardinal Garrone  Bishop Pisoni  The theological virtue of faith  Critique of faith as a search  Lessing  Critique of faith as tension  The French bishops  Reasons for the certainty of faith  Alexander Manzoni  Hybridization of faith and hope  Hebrews 11  Reasonableness of the supernatural virtues  The Virtue of Charity  The Catholic idea of charity  Life as love  Ugo Spirito  Love and law  The denial of the natural law. Sartre  Catholic doctrine recalled  Grandeur of the natural law  The despising of it  The natural law as taboo  Cardinal Suenens  Hume  Critique  The law as a human creation  Dumry  Rejection of the natural law by civil society  Divorce  Bishop Zoghby  Patriarch Maximos IV at the council  Maximos IV, continued  The formula “humanly speaking.”  The value of indissolubility  Abortion  Historical development of doctrine  The formation of the foetus  The new theology of abortion  French Jesuits  The new theology of abortion, continued  The Beethoven argument  The Italian Constitutional Court  Fundamental root of doctrine concerning abortion  Theory of potency and act  The death penalty  Opposition to the death penalty  Doctrinal change in the Church  Inviolability of life  Essence of human dignity  Pius XII  Christianity and war  Pacifism and peace  Cardinal Poma  Paul VI  John Paul II  The teaching of Vatican II  War’s unanswered questions  The question of moderation in war  Voltaire  Pius XII  Ultimate impossibility of modern war  Removal of the problem of war by an international confederation  Situation ethics  The practical and the praxiological  The law as a forecast  Critique of creativity of the conscience  Passivity of man’s moral life  Rosmini  Situation ethics as an ethics of intention  Abelard  Whether Catholic morality removes the dynamic power of conscience  Global morality  Moral life as a point in time  Critique of globality  The gradualist morality  The anthropocentric teleology of Gaudium et Spes  Critique of anthropocentric teleology  Proverbs 16:4  The autonomy of worldly values  The true meaning of the autonomy of nature  Whether man should be loved or not  An objection solved  Anthropocentrism and technology  Work as dominion over the earth and as punishment  Modern technology  Genetic engineering  The Moon landing  False religious interpretation  New concept of work  The encyclical Laborem Exercens  Christ as a working man  Critique  Work as man’s self-realization  Critique  The distinction between the speculative and the practical  Superiority of contemplation to work  The perfecting of nature and of persons  The City of the Devil, the City of Man, the City of God  Secondary Christianity. Confusion between religion and civilization  Critique of Secondary Christianity  Theological error  Eudaemonological error  Church and society in the post-Conciliar period  Catholicism and Jesuitism  The myth of the Grand Inquisitor  The principles of 1789 and the Church  Change in doctrine concerning democracy  Passage from a species to a genus  Examination of the democratic system  Popular sovereignty  Competence  Examination of democracy  The sophistry of taking a part for the whole  Examination of democracy  “Dynamic majorities.”  Parties  The Church and democracy  Influence of public opinion on the life of the Church  The new role of public opinion in the Church  Episcopal conferences  Synods  Synods and the Holy See  Spirit and style of synods  The Swiss Forum of 1981.  Philosophy and theology in Catholicism  Misrepresentation of Thomism  Schillebeeckx  Present and abiding importance of Thomism  Paul VI  Post-Conciliar rejection of Thomism  Thomist theology in the post-Conciliar Church  The setting aside of Aeterni Patris  Theological pluralism in Catholic tradition  The innovators’ view of theological pluralism  Dogma and its formulation  Theology and Magisterium  Hans Kung  Change in the notion of Christian unity  The instruction of 1949  The Conciliar change  Villain  Cardinal Bea  Post-Conciliar ecumenism  Paul VI  The Secretariat for Christian Unity  Consequences of post-Conciliar ecumenism  Drop in conversions  Political character of ecumenism  Unsuitability of current ecumenical methods  Movement towards nonChristian ecumenism  Naturalist character of non-Christian ecumenism  Teaching of the Secretariat for Non-Christians  Theory of anonymous Christians in the new ecumenism  Critique of the new ecumenism  Pelagian coloring  Unimportance of missions  Changing religion into culture  Campanella’s ecumenism  Influence of modern psychology on the new ecumenism  A “Summa” of the new ecumenism in two articles in the Osservatore Romano  Critique of the new ecumenism  The unimportance of missions, continued  Theological weakness of the new ecumenism  Real state of ecumenism  The movement from a religious to a humanitarian ecumenism  Change in the theology of the sacraments  The practice of baptism down the centuries  New tendency to subjectivize baptism  Baptism on the strength of the parents’ faith  The Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist  Theology of the Eucharist  The new theology of the Eucharist  Decline in adoration  Worship of the Eucharist outside Mass  The degradation of the sacred  The Eucharist as venerandum and tremendum  Priesthood and eucharistic synaxis  Analysis of Article 7  The degrading of the priesthood in the Eucharist. Cardinal Poletti  Dominance of synaxis over sacrament  Liturgical Reform  Popular involvement in the Latin liturgy  The value of Latin in the Church  Universality  Relative changelessness  Distinguished character of the Latin language  The new version of the liturgy. Change in vocabulary  Pelagian tendencies  The new version of the liturgy. Dogmatic ambiguities  General collapse of Latin  Critique of the principles of the liturgical reform  Human expressiveness  The principle of creativity  Movement from the sacred to the theatrical  Transition from public to private  Bible and liturgy  Variety and imprecision of the new version  Altar and table in the liturgical reform  The altar facing the people  The new church architecture  Summary of the liturgical reform  New concept of conjugal love and marriage  The primary and secondary goods of marriage  Predominance of the procreative end of marriage in traditional teaching  Luke, 20:35-36  Marriage and contraception  Critique of the theory of contraception  The new theodicy  New conception of divine causality  The French bishops  Change in the doctrine of prayer  Providence and misfortune  Moral origin of human suffering  Death as an evil  Preparation for death and forgetfulness of death  An unprepared death  Pius XI  Death and judgment  Justice and mercy in Christian death  Marginalization of the fear of judgment  Dignity of burial in Catholic ritual  Indignity of burial today  Cremation  The triumph of justice  Hell  Defense of Hell  The eternity of punishment  Hell as pure justice  The change in the Church as Hairesis  Notional and real assent  The unchanging character of Catholic doctrine  St. Vincent of Lerins and Cardinal Newman  Substance interpreted as mode by the  indifferentism  Etudes  Bishop Le Bourgeois  Loss of unity of worship  Loss of unity of government  Deromanization of the Sacred College  Condition of the Church today  Cardinal Siri  Cardinal Wyszynski  The French bishops  Crises in the Church and the modern world  Parallel between the decline of paganism and the present decline of the Church  Decline of the Church’s social influence in the world  Decline of the Church’s vital influence in international affairs  The Church thrown off course by secondary Christianity  The encyclical Populorum Progressio  Obscuring of Catholic doctrine regarding the last things  Humanistic ecumenism  Laws of the Spirit of the Age  Pleasure  Forgetfulness  Instances of forgetfulness in the modern Church  Metaphysical analysis of the crisis  Diagnosis and prognosis  Two final conjectures  The burden against Duma. Hardcover Edition now Available “You must read. You must nourish your souls. You must enlighten your spirit. You must enkindle your hearts, your charity. You must inform yourselves! There is a...book, a very thick book, which was published relatively recently [in English]. It would not be for everybody—Iota Unum. It is not an easy book, but it is a very informative book. Excellent! Archbishop Lefebvre wished... that it would be the book every seminarian had in his hands” —Fr. Franz Schmidberger (February, 22, 2001) Archbishop Lefebvre comments: “A book has just appeared, Iota Unum, written by Professor Romano Amerio [†1997, professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, a peritus at the Council—a scholar and an insider!], who lives in the north of Italy. In my opinion, it is the most perfect book that has been written since the Council on the Council, its consequences, and everything that has been happening in the Church since. He examines every subject with a truly remarkable perfection. I was stupefied to see with what serenity he discusses everything, without the passion of polemics, but with untouchable arguments. I do not see how the current attitudes of Rome can still persist after the appearance of such a book. They are radically, definitively condemned, and with such precision, for he only uses their own texts, citations from Osservatore Romano. The whole is absolutely magnificent. “One could base an entire course on this book, on the pre-Council, the Council, and post-Council. I assure you that not much is left standing. The Popes take a licking; he is not at all soft on the Popes, but he recounts their deeds, their words, everything. They stand condemned. In his epilogue he shows how the consequence is the dissolution of the Catholic religion. Nothing is left. But he says that since the Church is not going to perish...there must be a remnant; after all, the good God said that the Church will not perish, therefore there must be a witness or the witness of a remnant that will keep the faith and tradition.” 816pp, color softcover, STK# 6700. $24.95. 816pp, color hardcover, STK# 6700H $44.95 “Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.” Motto of Pope St. Pius X The ngelus A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION 2915 Forest Avenue “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 January 2005 Volume XXVIII, Number 1 • Kansas City, Missouri 64109 English-language Editor and Publisher for the International Society of Saint Pius X PUBLISHER Fr. John Fullerton EDITOR Fr. Kenneth Novak OPERATIONS AND MARKETING Mr. Christopher McCann MAN, STATE, ECONOMICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Letter from the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Opposing the Austrian Heresy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Christopher A. Ferrara “Corporation Christendom”: The True School of Salamanca . . . . . . . . 8 Dr. Peter Chojnowski SECRETARIES Miss Anne Stinnett Miss Lindsey Carroll CIRCULATION MANAGER Mr. Victor Tan DESIGN AND LAYOUT Mr. Simon Townshend SHIPPING AND HANDLING Mr. Nick Landholt PROOFREADING Miss Anne Stinnett Miss Lindsey Carroll The Climb .................................................................................................... 19 Battle Plan ................................................................................................... 24 L. Hein The Immaculate Conception ..................................................................... 24 Fr. Michel Simoulin QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Fr. Peter Scott A LIFE–A CHALICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré LETTER TO FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS #67 . . . . . . . 33 Bishop Bernard Fellay THE TSUNAMI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published monthly under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels. Publication offices are located at 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, 64109, (816) 753-3150, FAX (816) 753-3557. Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2005 by Angelus Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Manuscripts are welcome. They must be double-spaced and deal with the Roman Catholic Church, its history, doctrine, or present crisis. Unsolicited manuscripts will be used at the discretion of the Editorial Staff. Unused manuscripts cannot be returned unless sent with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Angelus, Angelus Press, 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109-1529. Theological Considerations and Practical Aid Fr. Daniel Couture ON OUR COVER: Illustration by David Ho. Used with permission. THE ANGELUS SUBSCRIPTION RATES US, Canada, & Mexico Other Foreign Countries All payments must be in US funds only. 1 YEAR 2 YEARS $34.95 $52.45 $62.90 $94.50 2 Man, State, E Letter from the Editor The buck stops here. “Philosophizing without exact philosophical ideas is a very common defect among Economists” (Fr. Matteo Liberatore, Political Economy [1891]). Leave it to a Catholic priest who knew his philosophy to say the lords of the Almighty Dollar don’t wear any clothes. Believe this: a priest must talk about hotdogs, baseball, apple pie, Chevrolet, and Economics. If he doesn’t, the people will be as sure to insist that George Washington was Catholic as Wal-Mart is Catholic (because it has a cross at the end of its title). That few Catholics understand in a truly Catholic way the complex mix of philosophy, social science, financial technique, and wealth production, distribution, and consumption is a product of their ignorance–largely invincible–of Catholic social thought and the basic principles of “Political Economy.” We want this Angelus to help you where the Wall Street Journal or Moneyline won’t. Here’s my two cents worth.... Economics begins with the “management of the household” and deals primarily with the family. Only secondarily is it concerned with “Political Economy,” that is, the relation of the family to external goods, with the wealth of the nation and how that wealth is produced, distributed, exchanged, and consumed. The modern economist holds Political Economy to be a physical or natural science with rigid laws, comparable to physics or geometry, which can be methodically studied and empirically tested. The point for these moderns is that the “natural” law which governs economic science is not normative (i.e., consisting of moral laws that govern what man ought to do in this or that situation) but it is rather analytic (i.e., based simply upon conclusions drawn from observation and analysis). But, believing that Economics works the same as gravity works is nuts. The law of gravity is a property of physical nature that cannot be denied without serious consequences. “Laws” of economics which demonstrate that the big firm “must” always swallow the small firm may seem irrefutably true in a society in which laissez faire (literally, “let people do [as they please]”) is the law of the land, but the idea that I must conform to a “law” of this kind simply because this observed “swallowing phenomena” is likely to repeat itself–barring any moral, customary, or legal restraint–is nuts, too. The “scientific” approach to Economics is based upon basic truths and observed behavior. Well and good, so far. For instance, it is not “economical” to undertake a productive activity if it consumes more wealth than it produces, or, men stranded on an island will immediately look to build shelter. Catholics often conclude, however, from considering this “scientific” aspect of Political Economy, that Economics is a science like math and chemistry are. But thinking of Economics only in this way leads Catholics to forget that Economics is governed by laws of justice and morality. No Catholic who understands Economics in a Catholic way would say selling pornography is an “economically valuable” activity any more than it was a moral one, or that just because America can be efficiently stocked with slave-produced Chinese junk (49 hours a week at 30-40 cents an hour), it is therefore “economical” that Wal-Mart be allowed to run every family retail and craft shop out of business. Modern economists come to their “economic” conclusions by saying that they are “compelled” by “economic law” to argue for this and that proposition. Hilaire Belloc says that if Economics as a science is truly independent of morality, it cannot propose certain courses of action but only explain how the economic process works. The Science of Economics does not deal with true happiness nor even with well-being in material things. It 3 , Economics deals with a strictly limited field of what is called “Economic Wealth,” and if it goes outside its own boundaries it goes wrong. Making people as happy as possible is much more than Economics can pretend to. Economics cannot even tell you how to make people well-to-do in material things. (Economics for Helen) Belloc writes that “economic law” provides no excuse for violation of the moral law, because though the two are independent one is subordinate to the other. Economics must be kept in its place in order to prevent its trumping the moral law: The only difficulty is to keep in our minds a clear distinction between what is called economic law, that is, the necessary results of producing wealth, and the moral law, that is the matter of right and wrong in the distribution and use of wealth. Some people are so shocked by the fact that economic law is different from moral law that they try to deny economic law. Others are so annoyed by this lack of logic that they fall into the other error of thinking that economic law can override moral law. (Ibid.) Laissez faire Economics is practically laissez faire morality. Moral philosophy is a “science” no less scientific than the next. Modern Catholics tend to think, however, of “science” as based upon natural observation and physical fact, and some other discipline as telling us how to behave. On the contrary it is very “scientific” to understand, based on first principles, how normative laws governing human action regulate not only private activity but also the public pursuit of wealth. Knowing to what degree the science of wealth creation is ultimately subordinate to moral science would help clear up the confusion perpetuated by writers—among them even traditional Catholics—who refer to Economics as an exclusively “positive science” which is a “value-neutral, scientific discipline” and not the normative one of Political Economy which regulates human conduct. Once we skate on Economics as “value-neutral,” we are on thin ice. Whereas Fr. Denis Fahey explains, “As the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind...economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church” (The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, 5), we hear a woodpile of Catholic thinkers today deliberating that Church teaching of cardinal points of doctrine on man, society, and economic life are “an indefensible extension of the prerogatives of the Church’s legitimate teaching office.” On the contrary, it is from moral and social philosophy itself that economics as a social science must derive its essential concepts (Fr. Heinrich Pesch, Ethics and the National Economy)! From this foundation certain principles of moral rectitude in economic practice (beyond just theft and dishonesty) can be derived that are not the less true because the Magisterium has sought to authoritatively teach them for the common good. On “Economics,” the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) says: The best usage of the present time is to make political economy an ethical science, that is, to make it include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well as what is. This has all along been the practice of Catholic writers. Happily it also remains the practice of writers Christopher Ferrara and Dr. Peter Chojnowski. In this issue of The Angelus, they explain why we should reject modern schools of economics which fail to take root in a truly Catholic understanding of what justly guides and limits economic thought, namely, the moral and social philosophy that is the patrimony of the Church and her scholars. Actually, let me now pass the buck to them.–Fr. Kenneth Novak 4 Ludwig von Mises Murray Rothbard Opposing the Austrian Heresy c h r i s t o p h e r I am privileged to introduce Dr. Peter Chojnowski’s article “Corporation Christendom: The True School of Salamanca,” which deftly exposes how the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, Sts. Bernadine of Siena and Antonino of Florence, and the late Spanish Scholastics on just prices and wages has been misrepresented by proponents of the so-called Austrian School of economics. Dr. Chojnowski’s article is an important first step in mounting a traditional Catholic response to the swelling ambitions of the Austrian school, whose two major divines, the deceased liberal Jewish thinkers Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, wrote the foundational works of the Austrian movement: the massive tome Human Action (1949) by Mises, and the equally massive Man, Economy and State (1962) by Rothbard. These two books comprise the Old and New “Testament” of what amounts today to a cult of radical social and economic laissez faire, which, sad to say, claims a growing number of Catholic adherents. 1 “Mises Institute Supporters Summit: Radical Scholarship,” http:// www.mises.org /upcomingstory. asp?control=68. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 a . f e r r a r a A Cult of Laissez Faire I do not use the phrase “swelling ambitions” or the word “cult” lightly. The Mises Institute, founded to preach a gospel of social and economic “liberty” to the world, boasts of the movement’s success in near-messianic terms. As the Institute–headed by a Catholic, Lew Rockwell–recently declared: We have been remarkably effective in building a global movement for liberty and its intellectual foundation. Today Austrians and libertarians form a cohesive movement the world over, united on principles, publishing as never before, and teaching the multitudes through every means available. For this reason, the Austrian School has been called the most coherent and active international intellectual movement since Marxism.1 The Mises Institute’s tribute to Rothbard on the tenth anniversary of his death savors of a cultic dulia: And so, to dear Murray, our friend and mentor, the vice president of the Mises Institute, the scholar who gave us guidance and the gentleman who showed us how to find Rockwell y Lew joy in confronting the enemy and advancing truth, the staff and scholars of the Institute offer this tribute, alongside the millions who have been drawn to his ideas. May his works always be available to all who care to learn about liberty and do their part to fight for the cornerstone of civilization itself. May his legacy endure forever [!] and may we all become happy warriors for the cause of liberty.2 Heaven and earth may pass away, but Rothbard’s words will not pass away. What Kind of Thomist Is This? Rothbard befriended a number of prominent Catholics during his life, but evidently was converted by none of them. He professed to be a “neo-Thomist” because of his peculiar secularized notion of “natural rights” detached from any divine endowment. Rothbard (and other Austrians) attempted to pass off his version of natural rights as likewise sanctioned by the Spanish Scholastics, but of course no Scholastic philosopher ever held that there could be natural rights without a divine Obligor to give them the force of natural law, which is man’s innate participation in the eternal law. There can be no rights without an obligor, nor law without a lawgiver. And if there is no divine Creator who endowed man with a fixed nature, what sense does it make to speak of human “nature” and “natural” rights in the first place? Rothbard’s “scholarship” attributing to St. Thomas and Suarez the “absolute independence of natural law from the question of the existence of God…”3 was not only shoddy; it was nonsensical on its face.4 Rothbard’s natural-right theory was limited to the (non-existent) “ownership” of one’s own body “The Unstoppable Rothbard,” Jan. 7, 2005. Rothbard, Murray, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p.4. 4 As Fr. Copleston observed, Suarez certainly taught that “God is, indeed, the author of the natural law; for he is Creator and He wills to bind men to observe the dictates of right reason.” History of Political Philosophy, Vol. III, p.385. Without the divine will, natural law and natural rights as such cannot exist, for what obliges man to observe the “natural rights” of others if there is no God to impose the obligation? The later Scholastics merely emphasized the intrinsic goodness of the natural law against the nominalism of William of Occam, who held that the validity of the natural law depended solely on the arbitrary will of God, Who could, if He so willed, make murder a natural right. 5 and the ownership of private property attaching on first appropriation of unused resources.5 Since these were the only two natural rights Rothbard recognized as universally binding, he (like the strict utilitarian Mises) would limit the power of government to the protection of those rights only. Thus, he defined “freedom” as “the absence of invasion [his emphasis] by another man of any man’s person or property.”6 Based on his concepts of natural rights and freedom, whose deviance from Catholic teaching needs no demonstration, “dear Murray” advocated not only the legal right to abortion but also the right to sell one’s children (i.e., to sell the ownership of parental rights), or, if one prefers, to let one’s children starve to death. The latter “right,” wrote Rothbard, “allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is, of course, yes….”7 Rothbard was certain, however, that “in a libertarian society, the existence of a free baby market will bring such ‘neglect’ down to a minimum.”8 These views of “dear Murray” are enunciated in his Ethics of Liberty, which Mr. Rockwell promotes as part of “the core” and one of the ten “must haves” of Austrian literature.9 Freeing Prices and Wages from Morality In demonstrating that the Austrians have not accurately presented the Scholastic teaching on the just wage and the just price, Dr. Chojnowski has done much more than to make an academic point. As he points out, Mises (and, even more so, Rothbard) advocated a social order that negate[s] Christendom and every social, economic, and moral teaching of the Catholic Church [and] also renders “inoperative” the entire Classical moral and philosophical tradition. Dr. Chojnowski is here referring to a fundamental truth of human existence affirmed by Western man from the time of the pagan philosophers to the great anti-liberal popes of the 19th and early 20th centuries: i.e., that man is ordered by his very nature to life in society under a common ruler and set of laws, and that this arrangement, called the State, is necessary not only for the maintenance of peace but also for the achievement of virtue, which means “becoming as like to God as it is possible for man to become.”10 As Ethics of Liberty, p.43. Ibid., p.42. 7 Ibid., p.101. 8 Ibid. 9 See (“Ten Must Haves”) http:// www.mises.org/store/category.asp?Customer ID= 848567 &ACBSessionID= euoZXmrhabgTmkMTw5DX&SID=2&Category_ID=10; (“The Core”) http://www.mises.org/ Study Guide Display.asp?SubjID=116. Like all doctrinaire liberals, Rothbard allowed that abortion and the willful starvation of children could be seen as morally wrong according to “personal ethics,” but he insisted that the State has no right to prohibit such conduct. 10 Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol.I, p.218 (concerning Plato’s definition of the pursuit of virtue). 2 5 3 6 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 6 Pope Leo XIII declared in Libertas, his monumental encyclical on the nature of human liberty: Even the heathen philosophers clearly recognized this truth, especially they who held that the wise man alone is free; and by the term ‘wise man’ was meant, as is well known, the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in justice and virtue.11 The Misesian-Rothbardian system, going even beyond the French Revolutionaries and The Declaration of the Rights of Man, utterly rejects this concept of the State. As Rothbard wrote in Ethics of Liberty: [T]he great failing of natural-law theory–from Plato and Aristotle to the Thomists and down to Leo Strauss and his followers in the present day–is to have been profoundly statist rather than individualist.12 That is, the entire Western tradition is wrong and “dear Murray” is right. Following Rothbard, many (if not most) contemporary Austrians would not only limit the power of the State to the mere prevention of violence and theft (à la Mises), but would abolish the State altogether in favor of a utopian “anarchocapitalist” polity in which social order is maintained entirely by insurance companies13 and other private contractual agencies. As the libertarian scholar Ralph Raico explains: Contemporary Austrian economists, following in Mises’s footsteps, have by and large adopted a more radical form of liberalism. At least one of them, Murray N. Rothbard…has gone even further in his anti-statism. It is to a large degree due to Rothbard’s “libertarian scholarship and advocacy”… that Austrianism is associated in the minds of many with a defense of the free market and private property to the point of the very abolition of the state, and thus of the total triumph of civil society.…14 Thus, Marxist and Austrian alike envision a withering away of the State, although they arrive at their dreamland from opposite sides: the one by way of abolishing private property, the other by exalting it to the summum bonum of politics (even if, as Rothbard allowed, “personal ethics” might have a higher aim in view). Seen against this background, the Austrians’ attempt to cast the Spanish Scholastics as protoAustrians, an undertaking begun by Rothbard, is highly significant. The aim here is to persuade us that it is perfectly Catholic to believe that “the market price is the just price” without further moral inquiry, and that this is true always and everywhere, both as to wages and commodities. Of course, to accept this dictum is to reject the teaching of seven consecutive popes, both pre- and post-conciliar, who hold quite to the contrary on the question of just wages: Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II have all insisted on precisely the 11 12 13 Libertas Praestantissimum, §6. Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty, p.21. See, e.g. Hans Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God that Failed (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004), p.247: “Widespread agreement exists among liberallibertarians such as Molinari, Rothbard…as well as most other commentators on the matter that defense is a form of insurance and that defense expenditures represent a sort of insurance premium…the most likely candidates to offer protection and defense point that the “market wage” and the just wage are not morally equivalent, as an employer is bound in justice to pay, whenever conditions allow, a living wage sufficient for the ordinary support of a dependent worker and his family, no matter what “the market” supposedly dictates. As Pope Leo declared in Rerum Novarum (§63): [T]here underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice…. As the Austrians would have it, the Spanish Scholastics shared their theory that prices and wages arise from the sum total of subjective utility assessments by parties to exchanges (i.e., what each party thinks the good or service to be acquired or given up is worth in terms of serving needs or wants on his personal scale of values), rather than by such objective factors as cost plus reasonable profit, what is needed to maintain one’s station in life, or the commonly estimated intrinsic value of a good. As Dr. Chojnowski shows, however, the Austrians’ own writings admit (or at least inadvertently reveal) that the Scholastics did not teach this absolutist view. Rather, as the renowned traditional Catholic economist Heinrich Pesch, S.J., pointed out in Volume V of his encyclopedic treatise on economics, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, the Scholastic teaching on the just price involved “a combination of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ factors, as these exert decisive influence on the price formation.” These factors included not just subjective utility but also “the qualitative capacity of the goods for satisfying human wants,” the “work and costs involved in producing and making the goods available,” and, most damaging to the Austrian claim, “the general [objective] value estimation and the officially set price” in keeping with the common legal practice in medieval times of ceiling prices fixed by the prince, especially as to the necessities of life.15 Indeed, even on the question of wages the Spanish Scholastics were in general agreement with the later papal view that in the labor market “compulsion was possible due to disadvantage in bargaining power held by either employee or employer” and that “[c]ollusion associated with labor market combinations might require an impartial observer to establish the just wage, properly reinforced by legal rule”16–not exactly music to Austrian ears. Why the Austrian insistence on an exclusive subjective utility theory and the resulting “free agreement” as the only criterion of justice in prices and wages? Why do the Austrians seriously defend services [in place of government] are insurance agencies.” Ralph Raico, “The Austrian School and Classical Liberalism,” at: mises.org/etexts/austrian liberalism.asp. 15 Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics, Excerpts from the Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie (Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), p.218. 16 Ibid., p.475. 14 7 17 Scrooge and the practice of price-gouging desperate consumers during emergencies,18 when the voice of conscience in every reasonable man cries “outrageous” and “unfair”? The answer is that if there is no objective standard of a just price or wage, and if the just price or wage is–in every case, always and everywhere–simply the market price, then the market becomes totally “self-regulating” and thus immune from moral correction of its abuses by either the Church or public authority. If the just price is nothing more than the market price, then, conveniently enough, the market never fails to achieve justice so defined. This means that the market’s marvelous “self-regulating” capacity can then be cited in favor of an entire “free market society” based on “the market principle,” wherein human action in general is free from any “external” norm of justice imposed by law, save that which governs economic exchange: i.e., the absence of violence or theft. As Rothbard argued in a passage full of loaded terminology: Every time a free, peaceful unit-act of exchange occurs, the market principle has been put into operation; every time a man coerces an exchange by the threat of violence [i.e., the force of law enforced by public authority], the hegemonic principle has been put to work. All the shadings of society are mixtures of these two primary elements. The more the market principle prevails in a society, therefore, the greater will be that society’s freedom and its prosperity. The more the hegemonic principle abounds, the greater will be the extent of slavery and poverty….19 do for individuals, human law, promulgated for their good, does for the citizens of States.20 Pope Leo here describes with marvelous concision the only concept of social liberty to which Catholics can adhere. Nor should we entertain the argument by certain Catholic Austrians that the Church’s concept of social liberty is out of the question today, and that we must settle for an expedient compromise with “the facts.” Speaking of precisely this sort of liberal Catholic, Pius XI declared: Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country…on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV. There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.21 Finally, we can reply to these social modernists, who call for a compromise of the Catholic ideal, by citing against them Rothbard’s own exhortation never to forsake a “radical idealism”: The free-market economist F. A. Hayek, himself in no sense an extremist, has written eloquently of the vital importance for the success of liberty of holding the pure and “extreme” ideology aloft as a never-to-be-forgotten creed. Hayek has written that one of the great attractions of socialism has always been the continuing stress on its “ideal” goal, an ideal that permeates, informs, and guides the actions of all those striving to attain it….Hayek is here highlighting an important truth, and an important reason for stressing the ultimate goal: the excitement and enthusiasm that a logically consistent system can inspire.22 The Austrian Heresy The effort to “baptize” what has rightly been called (in a broad, non-canonical sense) “the Austrian heresy” would lead us only to a “purified” form of the same social order condemned by every pope from Pius VI through Pius XII. As faithful Catholics understand, however, Murray Rothbard had no idea what “freedom” means, nor any authority to teach the world about the nature of social liberty. The whole truth about social liberty is to be found only in the teaching of the Magisterium, a single paragraph of which contains more wisdom than the entire bloated corpus of Austrian political philosophy. As Pope Leo taught in Libertas Praestantisimum: [T]he eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law.…What has been said of the liberty of individuals is no less applicable to them when considered as bound together in civil society. For, what reason and the natural law Michael Levin, “In Defense of Scrooge,” Dec. 18, 2000, at http://www.mises.org/ fullstory.aspx?control=573. 18 John R. Lott, Jr., “Especially During Disasters,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/lott /lott29.html. Lott, apparently, is not a formal Austrian, but his arguments, published on this major Austro-Libertarian website, are typical of this school. 17 Catholics can certainly subscribe to Rothbard’s sentiment in “holding aloft” their own “never-tobe-forgotten creed” concerning true liberty. The Catholic creed of liberty is to be found in the doctrine handed down to them, not by liberal Jewish thinkers, but by the Church that God Incarnate founded to make disciples of all nations. We can only thank Dr. Chojnowski for standing in opposition to those, including misguided Catholics, who would advance another ideal of human society. Mr. Ferrara is President and Chief Counsel of the American Catholic Lawyers Association, Inc., a religious organization dedicated to defending the civil rights of Catholics in litigation and public discourse. Mr. Ferrara’s next book, Liberty, the God That Failed: The Church’s Answer to Social and Economic Liberalism, will be published in June. Murray Rothbard, Power and Market, Online Edition, p.1363. Libertas Praestantissimum, §10. Ubi Arcano Dei, §§60-61. 22 “The Case for Radical Idealism,” lewrockwell.com, Jan. 3, 2005. 19 20 21 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 8 St. Bernadine of Siena St. Antoninus “Corporation Christendom”: The True School of Salamanca D r . P e t e r In the market economy the individual is free to act within the orbit of private property and the market. His choices are final (Ludwig von Mises, Human Action). When we read this text from the founder of the Austrian school of economics and the grandfather of modern Neo-Liberalism1 (which manifests itself, in the United States, in the movements called Libertarianism and Neo-Conservatism), we are not surprised. Von Mises, a Jewish intellectual, but a practical atheist in his political philosophy, is concerned to render absolute, the only absolute (other than “market forces”) he seems to acknowledge as having any relevance for the 1 For Neo-Liberalism’s understood indebtedness to Ludwig von Mises during the post-World War II period, see Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisited: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot in the chapter entitled “Real Liberalism” (Washington, D. C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990), p.180. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 C h o j n o w s k i affairs of mankind, the volitional determination of individuals. Nor are we surprised when he unfolds his basic conception of reality and applies it to the public actions of individuals. Referring to the entire doctrinal and moral activity of Christian Civilization and comparing it to his idea of the autonomous, selfinterested, and willful individual, Mises states, In urging people to listen to the voice of their conscience and to substitute considerations of public welfare for those of private profit, one does not create a working and satisfactory social order [emphasis mine].2 In one sweeping statement, Mises has negated Christendom and every social, economic, and moral 2 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949), p.726. 9 teaching of the Catholic Church; this statement also renders “inoperative” the entire Classical moral and philosophical tradition. Such statements by the hero of contemporary Libertarianism and Neo-Conservatism (read, Neo-Jacobinism) need not disquiet us at all if we understand it exactly as he meant it to be, a statement by one who upheld the modern Liberal, anti-Christendom world-view and denigrated the civilization, overall and in its detail, built by the Catholic Church; this civilization, of course, was constructed in a certain way, on account of the Church’s attempt to conform the circumstances and the means of man’s life to the Eternal Law, which includes within itself the Providential Plan by which each created being is brought to a state of perfect fulfillment and satisfaction. Christendom, unlike the “market forces,” presupposes real freedom; if man was not free and meant to be fulfilled in his freedom, Christendom would not be needed. “Freedom,” of course, is meaningless, and soon becomes bizarre (as in our own commercialist culture) if it is not directed towards the true “good” that fulfills human nature. If freedom does not achieve a true satisfaction of human nature, why is freedom “good”? If, however, freedom is “good” because it genuinely fulfills human nature, economic “freedom” or the ability to sell goods made and to purchase goods made by others, must be subordinated to overarching considerations of the “good.” Since we are speaking about a public “good,” we must speak about the “common good,” in which every private good is included. The common good entails the fulfillment of human nature at large. If all of the above reasoning is valid, economic freedom to buy and sell must be ordered to the achievement of a truly fulfilled human nature, both individually and commonly. Only those with the most animalistic conception of man would think that the ability to buy and sell things is the pivot around which should turn an individual life, a political ideology, or the efforts of the State. That “man does not live by bread alone” is not only a religious truth, but is also a bit of wisdom testified to by universal human experience. It is the religious devotion of man, his virtuous moral actions, and his aesthetic and emotional appreciation and expression, which are the higher aspects of man’s being that mercantile trade is meant to facilitate and sustain. In light of this, it is perfectly rational that the normal and traditional (i.e., nonLiberal) societies and governments of the past have tried to ensure that the buying and selling that went on amongst men truly facilitated the genuine end of all economic relationships, the full and complete good of men, both individually and as, necessarily, living within a civic body. It was for this reason that such notions as “the just price” and the “the just wage” were normative, and limitations on the use and procurement of private property were instituted. One point in favor of Ludwig von Mises, however, one not shared in by a number his disciples, is that he recognized that the whole bulk, theoretical and practical, of historical Christendom was against his understanding of the proper order of things. He, at least, recognizes that there was a very definite concept of “justice” in “medieval” Christendom. He simply relativizes it. In pure Nietzschean fashion, he insists that claims about the “justice” of this or that social arrangement or economic condition are merely an attempt by some to preserve an arbitrarily adopted “utopia.” 3 5 4 Ibid., p.728. Ibid. They call “just” that mode of conduct that is compatible with the undisturbed preservation of their utopia, and everything else unjust.3 Von Mises, also, does not claim St. Thomas Aquinas as an early advocate of Liberal Capitalism and the “free-market economy.” He understands that St. Thomas, as a Catholic philosopher and theologian, held views profoundly at variance with his own, including in matters of economics. With regard to the question of the “just price,” Mises writes: If Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the just price had been put into practice, the 13th century’s economic conditions would still prevail. Population figures would be much smaller than they are today and the standard of living much lower.” The sentence following should, also, be of interest to those who would like to see the sharp distinction between Mises’s Liberalism and the great tradition of the Christian World: Both varieties of the just-price doctrine, the philosophical and the popular, agree in their condemnation of the prices and wage rates as determined on the unhampered market.5 If Aquinas was a capitalistic pre-Liberal, Mises certainly did not see it; in fact, he uses St. Thomas’s teachings as the embodiment of the very mentality and outlook which he is rejecting. De Roover’s Libertarian Dreaming To base one’s ideas solely on conceptions prevailing in relatively current times has never been a very attractive option. The American Whigs of 1787 looked to Republican Rome and the French Democrats of 1789 could look to Democratic Athens. Looking back 2,000 years for a political Ibid., pp.728-729. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 10 model is a genuine example of antiquarianism. At least Napoleon, with his later emulation of Charlemagne, only had to look back 1,000 years to find an example of a situation in which his newly chosen form of government “worked” (We must keep in mind here that the reason people had not, for so long, adopted these first two old systems of government was because they were historically conscious enough to realize that they had not “worked.”) A number of Libertarians have felt the need to trace their ideas back to the established thought of Catholic Christendom. We can only speculate as to their motives. However, what is clear is this, within the second half of the 20th century and even into our own, there have been some Libertarians who identify nascent capitalistic ideas (I simply identify Capitalism here as the economic form of Liberalism–not to be confused with American Leftism) as existing within the corporate organism that was Christendom, prior to the “dawning” of the Enlightenment. There are some more reckless Libertarian thinkers who would even state that, not only are there Liberal anomalies within the paradigm of historical Christendom, but rather, that Liberalism is the Christian civilizational paradigm itself. The recurrent focus of such Libertarian “dreaming” is the late Renaissance Spanish School of Salamanca and Sts. Bernadine of Siena and Antonino of Florence. The main issue, although not the only one, is the one of the “just price.” Can it be that the later Scholastics, as represented by the School of Salamanca, along with the two Renaissance saints known for their sermons on economic concerns, should be identified as early advocates of Liberal Capitalism due to their supposed insistence that the “just price” which must be upheld by Church, State, and Society at large, is simply the one which is assigned to a product due to the interplay of producer supply and consumer demand? If economic “justice,” at this most basic and essential level, is simply a matter of adhering faithfully to the “laws of supply and demand,” we can say that the view of these Catholic thinkers could, indeed, be characterized as an example of Early Economic Liberalism. If there were something more to “justice” than the simple end result of the interplay of the free will of producer and the free choice of the consumer, then their thought could not be denominated as an early form of Misesian NeoLiberal/Libertarian conceptions. BOOK REVIEW TITLE: Flee to the Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement (Available from Angelus Press. Price: $14.95) PUBLISHER: IHS Press REVIEWER: Dr. Peter Chojnowski Parliament today means Plutocracy….The beastly condition of Parliament is a byword. The atmosphere of bribery and blackmail–it is rather a stench than an atmosphere–is the very air of what is called “Politics.” Until you have got rid of that you can do nothing….So long as the legislative machine is controlled by and composed of the monopolists, all effort at restoring healthy economic life will fail. These sobering and frank words of Hilaire Belloc, found in his original preface to Flee to Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement first published THE ANGELUS • January 2005 in the Depression year of 1934, are both a realistic assessment of the entire “Back to the Land” movement, both then and now, and an indication of the paradoxes and unresolved tensions that pervade every article in this text. Belloc, in his preface, points out that a healthy reinvigoration of society, the logical fruit of any return to the normal and most common form of human life and occupation, can only be realized if the governing power of the State rededicates itself to the maintenance of the Common Good, rather than the private good (here read “bottom line”) of those who “sponsor” and “finance” 11 When looking for an example of a Neo-Liberal who represents this attempt to find roots in the distant past for Liberal doctrines that seem quite modern, we can turn to Raymond de Roover, who published an article entitled, “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy” in Journal of Economic History (Dec. 1958). Here it is interesting to read De Roover’s portrayal of the “typical” view of medieval thought as it relates to the topic of the “just price.” In this article, we read, According to a widespread belief–found in nearly all books dealing with the subject–the just price was linked to the medieval conception of a social hierarchy and corresponded to a reasonable charge which would enable the producer to live and to support his family on a scale suitable to his station in life [emphasis mine]. This doctrine is generally thought to have found its practical application in the guild 6 system. For this purpose the guilds are presented as welfare agencies which prevented unfair competition, protected consumers against deceit and exploitation, created equal opportunities for their members, and secured for them a modest but decent living in keeping with traditional standards.6 I will place in the footnote all the authors who held these universally acknowledged “misconceptions.”7 Such was the “idyllic” view of the Middle Ages upheld by the great German economist Max Weber and by the British author, controversialist, and historian Arthur Penty. According to De Roover, another famous German economist, Werner Sombart (1863-1941), went even further: according to him, not only the medieval craftsmen but even the merchants strove only to gain a livelihood befitting their rank in society and did not seek to accumulate wealth or Raymond de Roover, “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy” in Journal of Economic History 18 (Dec. 1958), p.418. For a traditional view of Medieval history and economics, rejected as a “fairy tale” by Raymond de Roover, cf. William Ashley, An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1920), I, Part II, 391; John M. Clark, The Social Control of Business, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1939), pp.23-24; Shepard B. Clough and Charles W. Cole, Economic History of Europe, rev. ed. (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1946), pp.31, 68; George Clune, The Medieval Guild System (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1943), p.55; Alfred de Tarde, L’idée du juste prix (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1907), pp.42-43; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 3 vols. (New York: Viking Press, 1946-1949), I, 5; N. S. B. Gras, Business and Capitalism (New York: Crofts, 1939), pp.122-123; Herbert Heaton, Economic History of Europe, 1st ed. (New York: Harper, 1936), p.204; George O’Brien, An Essay on Medieval Economic Teaching (London: Longmans, Green, 1920), pp.111112; Leo S. Schumacher, The Philosophy of the Equitable Distribution of Wealth (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1949), p.47; James Westfall Thompson, An Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 300-1300 (New York: Century Co., 1928), p.697. Also, included as a representative of this “erroneous” view of the Middle Ages, Arthur J. Penty, A Guildman’s Interpretation of History (New York: Sunrise Turn, n.d.), pp.38-46. De Roover concludes these footnotes by saying, “This list is by no means exhaustive” [emphasis mine]. the rulers of the State. Here, Belloc draws attention to a point which appears to evade most contemporary political thinkers, even those who are “conservative.” The problem with our own times and the problem with the countries that most of us live in, is that the State has been handed over to private interests; private interests that “cash out” in the augmentation of privately held bank accounts. It is counter-intuitive to believe that those who possess access to the halls of political power will ever countenance a situation in which their monopoly on the resources of the nation is thrown into doubt. So it is with these practical words of warning that Belloc prefaces the enthusiastic and unequivocal articles in this Agrarian manifesto. His words very much echo those of Arthur Penty, who stated that for a family to embrace farm life without price regulation and control, on the part of the government, would be tantamount to economic suicide. With all this said, Flee to the Fields is an unapologetic Agrarian manifesto. Dr. Tobias Lanz makes this clear in his new introduction to this work by comparing the Catholic Land Movement, and the British Distributists who were behind it, to the American Southern Agrarian writers in the first half of the 20th century. What is important for us “practical” Americans to be aware of, is that the Catholic Land Movement was not just a bunch of “egg head” intellectuals “sitting around” and talking about “getting their hands dirty.” As Fr. John McQuillan, in his article on the origins of the movement, points out, the movement began with the full support (moral, if not financial) of the British Catholic hierarchy, in Glasgow, Scotland, on April 26, 1929 (N.B.: prior to the Wall Street Stock Market Crash). The Scottish Catholic Land Association was quickly complimented by similar associations in the Midlands and the North and South of England. The “sitting around” (also known as coherent prudential planning, propagandizing, and conceptual clarification of ends and means) only lasted until May 27, 1931, when the Scottish Catholic Land Association leased Broadfield Farm, Symington, Lanarkshire. It was opened as a training center for young men who wished to learn farming and to settle later on the land. They were accompanied by Fr. John McQuillan, who became the parish priest of the surrounding district. By 1934, the year of first publication for Flee to the Fields, significant numbers of young men, adopted by the respective Catholic Land Associations, were fully trained in every branch of farming. Some obtained their own family farms, while some became managers of farms. We find in this text, along with plenty of detailed descriptions of the work of the British Catholic Land Movement and the support that it received from popes, cardinals, and intellectuals, a theoretical defense of the Agrarian position, specifically the “Back to the Land” movement, which had such prestigious backers as Hilaire THEMcNabb. ANGELUS • January Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, and Fr.Vincent In 2005 7 12 to climb the social ladder. This attitude, Sombart claimed, was rooted in the concept of the just price “which dominated the entire period of the Middle Ages.”8 De Roover, however, has a different understanding of the common mind of the Christian Era as regards prices and economic activity in general. Amidst the presence of many non sequiturs, confused and, even, contradictory historical claims, we find De Roover throwing out various red herrings such as, “Thomas Aquinas himself recognizes that the just price cannot be determined with precision, but can vary within a certain range, so that minor deviations do not involve any injustice. This…is not in accord with Marxian dialectics; but it agrees with classical and neoclassical economic analysis” [emphasis mine].9 So an obvious and balanced moral statement about a minor aspect of the just price issue, because it does not agree with the Marxist theory, makes St. Thomas’s economic position into one that “agrees with classical and neoclassical analysis.” The bizarre and forced logic present in De Roover’s analysis can only be touched upon here. For example, one of the “naïve” economists, Werner Sombart cites Heinrich von Langenstein (1325-97) to the effect that “if the public authorities fail to fix a price, the producer may set it himself, but he should not charge more for his labor and expenses than would enable him to maintain his status (per quanto res suas vendendo statum suum continuare posit).” This is fully in accord with the “traditional” understanding of social and economic thinking in the Catholic Middle Ages. Langenstein continues in the same vein, “And if he does charge more in order to enrich himself or to improve his station, he commits the sin of avarice.”10 This position of Langenstein was “regarded as a characteristic formulation of the scholastic doctrine of the just price,” according to De Roover. Having been cited by Sombart, De Roover insists that it was “copied by one author after another.”11 De Roover tries to throw cold water on the enthusiasm of economic historians for the writings of Langenstein, by stating that, “Langenstein was not one of the giants in 8 Ibid., p.419. Cf. Werner Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1916), I, 292-293. 9 De Roover, Just Price, p.420. 10 As the source of this quotation, de Roover cites Heinrich von Langenstein, Tractatus bipartitus de contractibus emptionis et venditionis, Part I, cap.12, published in Johannes Gerson, Opera omina, IV (Cologne, 1484), fol. 191. According to de Roover, “No more recent edition is available.” 11 De Roover, Just Price, p.419. an article entitled, “The Rise and Fall of Industrialism,” Commander Herbert Shove grounds the ideology of British Agrarianism in a systematic analysis of British history, beginning with the Medieval feudal system and ending with the emergence of a fully industrial and monopolistic system in the 19th century. Echoing much of what Belloc says in the introduction, Shrove states that, those whose livelihood depended on attending the machines they drove were forced to crowd.”3 Those who “crowded” around the steam engines of industry were disproportionately adherents of the Catholic Faith. This was true in both Britain and the United States. At the time of the publication of Flee to the Fields, some 80% of the population of Great Britain was crowded into town and city, while some 95% of the Catholic population was so situated. Just as many American churchman in the 19th century feared the assimilation of the Catholic population into Protestant groups on account of overwhelming social and economic pressure, so too did the British Catholic elite fear that the conditions of urban life would act to further the “contraceptive mentality” amongst the Catholic peoples. Here we find one of the main motivations behind the “Back to the Land” movement of the pre-World War II years. On this note, it is informative to quote Dr. Tobias Lanz, who states that, English medieval history is largely a record of more or less successful attempts by Kings to curb the power of overweening nobles. After the rise of the squirearchy, to whom the balance of power passed through the overthrow of the Church, the struggle became one between this class and the Crown. In this, the squires were entirely successful.1 Feudalism was “of a graduated personal responsibility of administration culminating in the King, who as ‘Lord Paramount’ was the trustee–under God–of the National Heritage.”2 With the breaking of the power of the kings and the infiltration of Calvinistic theology from Scotland and Holland, the stage was set for the emergence of monopolistic industrial Capitalism. By the 19th century, the proletarianization of the English masses began. Rather than the immemorial village, always resonant with the felt sense of community and ancestral ties and obligations, “the developed city was essentially nothing more than a small group of steam engines round which THE ANGELUS • January 2005 Despite a well-conceived economic program, the moral backing of Catholic hierarchies in England, Wales, and Scotland, and the intellectual support of a host of writers and activists, the Catholic Land Movement–and the entire Distributist project–failed, with the coming of World War Two. It was a real desire to see the beginnings of a reorientation of the Catholic soul toward life on the land which produced both the land movement in Britain 13 medieval philosophy but a relatively minor figure.”12 This statement is, of course, totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. The question was not whether or not Langenstein was one of the “giants” of medieval philosophy, but whether his statement of economic theory and practice can be seen as “characteristic.” Someone need not be a giant in order to be characteristic. “Giants,” of course, are not characteristic at all, but that is another point entirely. When De Roover does treat a giant, St. Thomas Aquinas, we find contradictory statements interwoven with more than questionable deductions. With regard to St. Thomas, he focuses on the topic that he–De Roover–believes will confirm that the “majority of the [Scholastic] doctors” held that the “just price” did not correspond to cost of production as determined by the producer’s social status, but was “simply the current market price.” Clearly, De Roover understood that if the just price meant something other than the capitalistic “just the price,” his attempt to root Neo-Liberal Capitalism in Catholic social tradition and thought would fail. He had to prove that the “justice” of the price charged in the times of Christendom was nothing other than the price that the item could fetch on the open marketplace. The plan was to portray St. Thomas and this manifesto of its intent. Minds such as that of Fr. Vincent McNabb were convinced that, without that movement, Catholic family life would be eroded and, finally, completely dislodged, due to the unnatural environment of the cities and the fact that, in city life, a man’s place of work is in one place and his home and family in another. The primary goal of the Catholic Land Movement was to provide skills, education, and, in the best conditions, financial aid to those families who were committed to an integrally Catholic life and who would produce food and primary goods, within a community grounded in faith, for their own sustenance. It was to the not impossible dream of a free man on his own land with family at hand that Flee to the Fields was dedicated. 1 2 3 Herbert Shove, “The Rise and Fall of Industrialism” in Flee to the Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2003), p.26. Ibid. Ibid., p.32. as an early economic liberal, and then indicate how later Scholastic thought followed him, and, thereby, set the stage for Adam Smith and capitalistic Manchester Liberalism. De Roover starts his analysis of the position of St. Thomas on the question of the “just price” by stating that in the works of Aquinas, “the passages relating to price are so scattered and seemingly so conflicting that they have given rise to varying interpretations.”13 He then goes on to state, unambiguously, what St. Thomas definitely meant by the term “the just price.” As he goes on “definitively” articulating St. Thomas’s position, he proceeds to contradict his own interpretation of and statements about this position. For example, De Roover states, “By selecting only those passages favorable to their thesis, certain writers even reached the conclusion that Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas had a labor theory of value.” In a footnote, on the same page, he states, “As a matter of fact, Aquinas comes close to saying that any exchange of two commodities should be based on the ratio between the amounts of labor expended on each.” Isn’t he affirming here that Aquinas had a “labor theory of value,” when he was just one paragraph above, chiding “certain writers” for reaching the conclusion that St. Thomas “had a labor theory of value”? The Liberal scholar’s reasoning becomes somewhat more convoluted when we find him, at the beginning of a paragraph, stating that St. Thomas “nowhere puts the matter [of the just price] so clearly,” and by the end of the paragraph states that this [single] passage [which is only a story addressing a very limited moral question] destroys with a single blow the thesis of those who try to make Aquinas into a Marxist, and proves beyond doubt that he considered the market price to be just. So, within a single paragraph, made up primarily of an illustrative story about a merchant selling wheat in a town when he knows that more wheat is on the way, we go from Aquinas the Ambiguous to Aquinas the Absolute. When we look for the passage cited by De Roover, in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologica, we find that the article cited has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the just price. It is from the question dealing with “Cheating” and the specific article is entitled, “Whether the Seller Is Bound to State the Defects of the Thing Sold?” St. Thomas states here that a seller is acting rightly, from the view point of strict justice, if he merely accepts the amount offered for his wheat by the buyer, without informing the buyer of the greater amount of wheat to come. In other words, it is not unjust to fail to provide information that one could 12 13 Ibid., p.420. Ibid., p.421. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 14 provide about the relative short-term worth of one’s products. St. Thomas ends by saying, “If however he were to do so, or if he lowered his price, it would be exceedingly virtuous on his part: although he does not seem to be bound to do this as a debt of justice.”14 From this short story concerning a very specific moral question having nothing in itself to do with economic systems or the general topic of the just price, De Roover takes it as proven that “Aquinas upheld market valuation instead of cost,”15 thus beginning a pre-Capitalist tradition in moral theology, which bore fruit in the late Renaissance Salamanca School and in the economic-related sermons preached by St. Bernadine of Siena and St. Antoninus of Florence in the 15th century. Before treating the real attitude of the late Scholastics in Salamanca and the sermons of St. Bernadine of Siena and St. Antoninus of Florence, it is worthwhile to look at a simple reply to an objection, present in Question 77, “On Cheating, Which is Committed in Buying and Selling.” In Article 1, the same article from which De Roover draws his conclusions about the “free market” inclinations of St. Thomas, we read, in Reply to Objection 2, a line of reasoning that would certainly put St. Thomas outside the boundaries of any form of Liberal capitalistic sympathies. Here he cites St. Augustine who says, th[e] jester, either by looking into himself or by his experience of others, thought that all men are inclined to wish to buy for a song and sell at a premium. But since in reality this is wicked, it is in every man’s power to acquire that justice whereby he may resist and overcome this inclination. The example, cited by St. Thomas, which St. Augustine uses to illustrate this idea, is one of a man who gave the just price for a book to a man who through ignorance asked a low price for it. Here we see the virtuous buyer, who knows the real value of the book, ignoring the market value of the book (the one which was being asked by the seller of those wishing freely to buy), and, instead, justly compensating the seller for his loss. St. Thomas concludes from this example that the “capitalistic” drive to buy as cheaply as possible and sell as dearly as possible–expressive, as it is, of an unlimited drive for acquisition and an overriding self-interestedness– can be overcome just like any vice is overcome. He acknowledges, however, that this self-interested attitude–which is, precisely, the attitude assumed by Liberal Capitalism–is “common to many who walk along the broad road of sin.”16 Here we see clearly that economic attitude of Christendom contrasted 14 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 77, Art. 3, ad 4. De Roover, Just Price, p.423. 16 ST, II-II, Q. 77, Art. 1, ad 2. 17 De Roover, Just Price, p.421. 18 Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, The School of Salamanca: Readings in Spanish 15 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 with the economic attitude of Neo-Liberalism. Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas is anything like Neo-Liberals. Clearly, the “market price” is not necessarily the “just price.” To quote a phrase commonly used by Raymond de Roover, “This text…does not lend itself to a different interpretation.”17 The Spanish Fairs and Renaissance Banking To offer proof that the Scholastics, early or late, did not adhere to Libertarian principles of economic life, it is best to cite the historical works of the Neo-Liberals themselves. The two which draw our attention are The School of Salamanca: Readings in Spanish Monetary Theory 1544-1605 by Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson18 and Raymond de Roover’s San Bernadino of Siena and Saint Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages.19 Our task can also be simplified if we can demonstrate, using the research of the Neo-Liberal scholars themselves, that the later Spanish Scholastics of Salamanca, along with the two above-mentioned saints, were fully within the great intellectual, social, and economic tradition of Catholic Christendom most particularly concerning the question of the “just price.” If the “just price” is formulated in a way which allows for many factors other than the exigencies of “supply and demand” (i.e., whether there is a social and moral aspect of the determination of price), and, especially, if there is a role for the “prince” in the determination of “market prices,” then we can safely reject the notion that these Catholic scholars of the past accepted a paleocapitalistic conception of the determination of price and, hence, of the entire economic life of society. Even though Salamanca University was the most prominent place of higher learning in the European world at the time, it was Spain’s position as master of the New World that set the stage for a concentration on the problems of economics by the Scholastics of Salamanca. The gold and silver coming from the mines of the Americas made Seville, the homeport of the treasure fleet, the economic center of and primary money market in Continental Europe during the middle of the 16th century.20 Here we have a place where there was a large circulation of money and a high price level. Tomás de Mercado (d. 1585), a Dominican from Mexico who was present in Seville and preached on Monetary Theory 1544-1605 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). Raymond de Roover, San Bernadino of Siena and Sant’ Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages (Boston: Harvard University Printing Office, 1967). 20 Hutchinson, School of Salamanca, pp.1-6. 19 15 commercial morality, portrays the mercantile and financial situation that grew up in these conditions to us. According to Mercado, when the fleet comes in, every merchant puts into the bank all the treasure that is brought to him from the Indies, the bankers having first given a pledge to the city authorities that they will render good account to the owners.21 The bankers served their depositors free of charge and used the money deposited with them to finance their own operations. Most of the gold and silver brought in by the fleet passed in this way through the hands of the bankers and served as a basis for credit. The opening for usury was occasioned, however, by these transactions. As Mercado complained at the time, “money-changers sweep all the money into their own houses, and when a month later the merchants are short of cash they give them back their own money at an exorbitant rate.” In Spain, concludes Mercado, “a banker bestrides a whole world and embraces more than the Ocean, though sometimes he does not hold tight enough and all comes crashing to the ground.”22 The above stricture, on the part of Mercado (who died on a ship in 1585 on his way back to Mexico), against the financial transactions of bankers and merchants, was an articulation of an idea that was of ancient origin. Interest paid simply for the use of money during a certain period of time was considered usurious and universally condemned. Much of the moral thought about economics coming out of Spain during this period was, specifically, an attempt to grapple with the moral considerations occasioned by certain attempts to avoid the Church and State’s condemnation of usury. The attempted circumventing of the usury laws occurred in a very subtle way. It originated in a seemingly legitimate attempt to deal with two practical difficulties encountered by merchants at the time. First, there was, generally, a lack of cash available at the time, requiring merchants to set debts against one another at the merchant “fairs” held at various times and in various places throughout the year. Second, the merchants of the period, at the various fairs, had to act as money changers since, often, a debt was incurred in one place, say Seville, and paid in another, say Flanders. In this regard, it was generally agreed that the merchant who paid out money in one place and recouped himself in another was entitled to make a reasonable charge for his services. Even with regard to this type of “financial service,” to charge a similar fee for bills transferring money from one Spanish fair to another was forbidden by a royal decree in 1551.23 21 Ibid., p.8. From Tomás de Mercado’s Tratos y contratos de mecaderes published in Salamanca in 1569 cited in Hutchinson, pp.4-8. 23 Ibid., pp.9-14. 24 Ibid., p.18. 25 The Politics of Aristotle, edited and translated by Ernest Barker (New York: 22 Clearly the Spanish Catholic Crown was even willing to “dislocate the whole business of the fairs” rather than allow merchants to become involved in unnecessary “financial servicing.” There also developed situations in which borrowed money was not to be paid back at the next fair but at one year later. Due to the “fees” attached to such “financial services,” these became loans camouflaged as fees and involving a high payment of interest. According to Grice-Hutchinson, these met with “fulminations from both Church and State.”24 It is when dealing with this question of the transference of funds from one fair to another, that Grice-Hutchinson, as representative of the NeoLiberal Economic School, focuses on the question of “price” and the factors determining the “prices” of both money and goods. The Function of Money and the Question of Foreign Exchange Medieval ideas about the origin and functions of money are largely based on a few short passages in Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics. Here, Aristotle insists that the function of money was its use as a medium for the exchange of goods. Money was first invented to overcome the difficulties of transport and need that are bound to arise in a barter economy.25 Money, therefore, is meant to serve as a common denominator that brings into line with each other things diverse in nature: “Making all things commensurable, equalizes them.”26 Along with rendering commensurable for the seller and buyer what is, by nature, qualitatively different, money can serve as “capital,” or as a store of value to be used at a future time. Aristotle emphasizes the function of money as a man-made instrument by indicating that its value rests on custom and that it, “rests on us to change its value or make it wholly useless.”27 Averroes (1126-98), whose commentary on the Ethics was translated into Latin early in the 13th century, follows Aristotle closely on the origin and functions of money.28 Since St. Thomas Aquinas upheld this traditional view that money was invented for purposes of exchange, he held that it was unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as usury. Here we have a reassertion of Aristotle’s own condemnation of usury. St. Thomas himself applies this to our issue under discussion, Oxford University Press, 1945), I, 1257a and 1133b. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1985), V, 1133a. 27 Ibid. Cf. Hutchinson, School of Salamanca, pp.20-21. 28 Hutchinson, School of Salamanca, p.22. 26 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 16 gain on account of the foreign exchange of money, by condemning this practice outright. Merchants who attempt to make money by lending money where money is plentiful and collecting it where money is scarce for a real financial gain, meet the following statement by St. Thomas, from his Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, I, lvii: Likewise the art of money or acquisition is natural to all men for the purpose of procuring food, or money with which to buy food, out of natural things such as fruit or animals. But when money is acquired not by means of natural things but out of money itself, this is against nature. be determined according to the judgment of the merchants themselves?”: Firstly...excluding fraud and malice, we should leave merchants to fix the price of their wares. Secondly…every man is the best judge of his own business. Now, the business of merchants is to understand merchandise. Therefore, we must defer to their opinion in settling prices. Thirdly, that a man may do as he likes with his own property. Consequently, he may ask and receive whatever price he can extort for his wares. When considering what the purportedly innovative School of Salamanca said about this important question of the “just price,” the economic issue extraordinaire in the Middle Ages, I came across a text, included in The School of Salamanca by Grice-Hutchinson, which led me to hesitate for a moment. Here, in a citation from Domingo de Soto’s book De Justitia et Jure published in 1553, we find the following in answer to the question, “Should prices “Now,” I said to myself, “we have a big problem. Domingo de Soto is an important figure in the history of the School of Salamanca. He was a Dominican, a contemporary of the School’s founder Vitoria, and considered to be one of its best writers on economic subjects. In 1532 De Soto was appointed to a chair of theology at Salamanca. His fame was such that, in 1545, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V appointed De Soto, now regarded as the most eminent of the Spanish theologians after Vitoria, as his own representative at the Council of Trent. He became Charles’s own confessor two years later. Surely if this man held for the ‘free market’ approach to commodity pricing, such must be a genuine teaching emanating out of Salamanca.” After some uncomfortable consternation, it dawned on me what I was reading. Rather than being De Soto’s own position and teaching on the matter, these were the Objections to De Soto’s own position, which always, of course, appear first in any properly organized Scholastic article. De Soto’s own teaching on the matter of the just and proper price is perfectly in line with what you would expect a Catholic theologian of a still flourishing and faithful civilization to say. De Soto’s first “conclusion” with regards to this issue is to make a distinction that is the commonsense ground work for any discussion of prices: the price of a “good” (or commodity) is not determined by its essence (how the thing fits into the whole hierarchy of creation), but rather, “by the measure in which [it] serve[s] the needs of mankind.”31 Here he affirms what was taught during this same period (1554) by another Salamancan scholar, Diego de Covarrubias: “The value of an article does not depend on its essential nature but on the estimation of men, even if that estimation be foolish.”32 The “goods” we are citing here are “goods” which are good insofar as they service human needs. These things, therefore, have a price insofar as they are valuable in the eyes of the citizens; these goods or commodities would allow the citizens to satisfy their human needs. De Soto concludes this foundational claim about prices by saying, “We have to admit, 29 32 This teaching concerning making money on the basis of the relative “price” of money in one place or another, appears again in 1532 when the Spanish merchants of Antwerp sent their confessor to Paris to get a ruling on the legitimacy of exchange transactions from the learned doctors of the University. They condemned forthright all exchange business.29 The point that the Neo-Liberals, represented by Marjorie GriceHutchinson, would like to draw out of this incident is that, in this reply, the rate of exchange fluctuates according to the state of supply and demand and is not derived from the labor and costs incurred by the person in whose favor the bill is drawn. The assumption here being that that which all think should determine the “price” of money, is the same as what all think should determine the price of commodities. This is an arbitrary assumption. Moreover, the doctors of the University of Paris are, apparently, merely speaking of a matter of fact. In itself, it by no means determines what the Scholastic doctors will say about the “just price” of things that ought to be sold, namely commodities. What we are truly left with from this reply is a further verification of a perennial teaching of the Christian Era; money should not be made off money. As St. Thomas states, such activity is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, “it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity.”30 The School of Salamanca and the Just Price Ibid., p.38. Ibid., p.35. Cf. ST, II-II, Q. 77, Art. 4. 31 Domingo de Soto, De Justitia et Jure, Book VI, Q. 2, Art. 3, pp.546-549 (Salamanca, 1553). This text is cited in Hutchinson, pp.83-88. 30 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 Diego de Covarrubias, Variarum ex pontificio, regio et caesareo jure resolutionum, Book 4, 1554, vol. Ii, lib.2, chap.3 as found in Hutchinson, p.48. 17 then, that want is the basis of price.” Things are, therefore, more desirable, and therefore will go for a higher price, insofar as they more perfectly satisfy man’s desire for fulfillment and sustenance, irrespective of the place which the thing holds in the hierarchy of Creation. As St. Augustine states (City of God, Bk.II, chap.16), “a man would rather have corn than mice in his house”; this, even though mice are ontologically more perfect than grains of wheat. When speaking of the “want” which is at the basis of all economic life and pricing, De Soto recognizes, in a very balanced way, that when we speak of “want” we must not exclude a recognition of the fact that the city needs “adornment”; even though such things are not necessary for human life, it is something which renders life “pleasurable and splendid.” In De Soto’s second “conclusion,” we find a statement which directly contradicts the Libertarian claims that the later Scholastics of Salamanca thought that nothing should be considered when calculating price, other than “supply and demand.” De Soto lists supply and demand as one of the elements that go into determining the just price for an item. Next, we must bear in mind the labor, trouble, and risk which the transaction involves. Finally, we must consider whether the exchange is, for better or worse, to the advantage or disadvantage of the vendor, whether buyers are scarce or numerous, and all other things which a prudent man may properly take into account. In other words, much to the consternation of those who would insist that the Salamanca School recognized nothing but the needs of “supply and demand,” we find one of its most prominent scholars asserting that the entire process and situation of production and sale must be considered when the just price is calculated. Social and economic prudence is truly queen here. We find out in the next paragraph who it is, exactly, who is entitled to make a binding judgment, while employing this social and economic prudence. The answer to this question depends upon another Scholastic distinction. This distinction is between the “legal” price and the “natural” price. These are, as De Soto states, the “two-fold” aspect of the “just price.” Here we find that “the just legal price” is that which is fixed by the prince. The “discretionary” or “natural price” is that which is current when certain prices are not legally controlled. De Soto states that this distinction is one drawn by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (V, chap.7). Notice, in this regard, De Soto is not making a “value judgment,” saying that the “legal price” is bad and the “natural price” is good. As we will find, the application of these two different types of prices depends upon what type of good or commodity we are speaking of. 33 The next few paragraphs of the passage we have been citing are very significant and are echoed by other scholars of the Salamanca School. De Soto states: To understand the [above] Conclusion and to judge its validity, and to see why it is necessary for prices to be controlled, we must realize that the matter is a primary concern of the republic [in the sense of res publica or the commonweal] and its governors, who, in spite of the arguments repeated above [i.e., those “free market” arguments in the Objections], ought really to fix the price of every article. But since they cannot possibly do so in all cases, the task [of “fixing” the price of those commodities which the prince has not fixed] is left to the discretion of buyers and sellers. The price that results is called the natural price because it reflects the nature of the goods, and the utility and convenience which they bring [emphasis mine].33 In proof that the term “legal price,” entails no negative judgment on this form of pricing, we can cite De Soto as stating, “When a price is fixed by law (for instance, when a measure of wheat or wine, or a length of cloth, is sold for a certain sum) it is not lawful to increase this price by even a farthing. If the excess be great, then it is mortal sin and a matter for restitution.” Those prices which are not regulated, especially the prices of commodities extraneous to the basic needs of the citizenry, can “enjoy a certain latitude within the bounds of justice.” Here we find that even the prices allowed to fluctuate must be kept within the bounds of justice; “justice,” in this case, meaning the requirements of the common good. The Complexity of the Just Price Reaffirmed De Soto was, as was every Scholastic, an inheritor of a centuries-old tradition of scholarship and learning. His statements concerning the advisability of “fixing” prices had antecedents deep in the heart of the Middle Ages. That characteristic “non-giant,” the Viennese scholar Heinrich von Langenstein, was an advocate of a strict system of price controls. He advises the prince, however, to fix prices in accordance with the customary price, which is determined by “the degree of human want.” Moreover, Langenstein shows a completely balanced approach to the question of the just price. He acknowledges that there is an objective factor, in the sense that it should be fixed by some authority standing outside the market, and yet subjective as being the product of subjective factors. Some of those subjective factors that Langenstein mentions are: supply and demand, utility, cost of production, remuneration of labor, cost of transport, and risk. All of these are to be taken into account when See Hutchinson, School of Salamanca, pp.84-85. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 18 determining value.34 Just like St. Thomas Aquinas, Langenstein understood “supply and demand” to play a part in determining price. Grice-Hutchinson herself recognizes this to be the generally held position of the Scholastic tradition when she writes, “we have seen that the concepts of utility and rarity were placed high in the traditional list of factors determining value which accompanied scholastic discussions of the ‘just price.’” She also admits, “We have seen that our Scholastic writers regarded utility and rarity as the primary, though not the sole, determinants of value [emphasis mine].”35 If we should look specifically for another member of the School of Salamanca who affirms De Soto’s teaching on the desirability of fixing prices, especially those of “staple” commodities, we come upon one Pedro de Valencia. In his Discurso sobre el precio del trigo, he states: [T]hose who allege that a thing is worth the price it will fetch must be understood as referring only to things that are not essential to life, such as diamonds, falcons, horses, swords, and also to other commoner things when there is no fraud, compulsion or monopoly, and when vender and purchaser enjoy equal liberty or suffer equal need [emphasis mine]. Recognizing, however, that in matters of real need the citizenry is at a distinct disadvantage in any exchange, he states, “in the case of bread, in years when it is dear–the vendor always enjoys liberty and plenty, and the purchaser always suffers urgent need and want.” Now we come to the question of the just price: The just price is not whatever a thing will fetch on account of the purchaser’s need, nor can such a price in conscience be demanded. No price is just or should be regarded as current if it is against the public interest, which is the first and principal consideration in justifying the price of things.36 Bernadine of Siena and Antonino of Florence: Saints Misconstrued We ought be very much surprised when we find a Neo-Liberal scholar like Raymond de Roover focusing our attention on two great saints, St. Bernadine of Siena and St. Antonino of Florence.37 It is, first of all, surprising to see that they are termed, “The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages,” when they lived their lives square in the heart of the blossoming Italian Renaissance. That these thinkers are acclaimed as far-sighted prophets of the goodness of Liberal Capitalism is also surprising, since their attitude towards 34 Ibid., p.28. Ibid., p.64. 36 Pedro de Valencia, Discurso sobre el precio del trigo (reprinted in Pedro de Valencia, Escritos sociales, in Biblioteca de clasicos sociales españoles [Madrid, 1945]); the text is cited in Hutchinson, pp.118-119. 35 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 economics itself could not be farther away from the mentality of a Ludwig Mises, who would hold the laws of private property and the “free-market” to be adverse to the “heterogeneous” moral claims made by the divine and natural law. Here it would be useful to recall Mises’ statement: In urging people to listen to the voice of their conscience and to substitute considerations of public welfare for those of private profit, one does not create a working and satisfactory social order [emphasis mine]. The only thing which the two great saints under consideration intended by their preaching and writing on economic issues was to “urg[e] people to listen to the voice of their conscience and to substitute considerations of public welfare for those of private profit.” They also held that only if such things were done, would a just and satisfying civil order be attained. When we consider the moral teachings of St. Bernadine (1380-1444) as these relate to economic issues, what we are analyzing are 14 sermons which are part of a larger collection of sermons entitled De Evangelio aeterno (Concerning the Eternal Gospel). These Latin sermons, as opposed to his Italian ones, were meant to be read rather than preached. Here we can see the continuation of a long tradition, echoed in our own age by men like Heinrich Pesch, S.J., of including economic questions within the larger framework of ethics. In these sermons of St. Bernadine (a Franciscan and the great apostle of devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus), we find the general teachings of the Church as regards economic life repeated anew. As De Roover himself admits, the condemnation of usury was a prominent theme in St. Bernadine’s writings.38 Just as was the case with the other Scholastics, St. Bernadine was “preoccupied with another set of problems [as opposed to questions of “how the market operates”]: what is just or unjust, licit or illicit? In other words, the stress was on ethics: everything was subordinated to the main theme.”39 Both St. Bernadine and St. Antonino (Archbishop of Florence from 144559), both frown upon acquisitiveness as leading to sin and eternal perdition. St. Antonino deals with the whole topic of market transactions in the section of his Summa Moralis that deals with the sin of avarice.40 Moreover, economics was discussed within the framework of contracts, as Roman law understood these. The virtues that regulated the individual and collective economic actions of men were the virtues of distributive and commutative justice (i.e., the State giving to its citizens “their due” and citizens “giving to each other their due”). Let us 37 Raymond de Roover, San Bernadino of Siena and Sant’Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages. 38 Ibid., p.1. 39 Ibid., pp.7-8. 40 Ibid., p.1. 19 face it, the only “due” that the Libertarians allow is the absolute claim that each man has to have the government and his fellow citizens respect his already demarcated private property right. They forget what the Distributists remembered quite well, all men have a certain right to private property. Those who uphold the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church, better than their Libertarian antagonists, understand the role of private property in personal and familial fulfillment. When we study De Roover’s book on these two putatively innovative saints, we find ourselves at a loss to find a significant teaching that is not firmly rooted in the wisdom of the Catholic past or one which is not clarified, in a purely traditional way, by the later Scholastics of the School of Salamanca. As De Roover himself recognizes, St. Bernadine, like the Medieval Scholastics before him, understood price determination to be a social process. Price is not set by the arbitrary decision of individuals but collectively by the community as a whole.41 St. Bernadine makes this explicit when he states, “the price of goods and services is set for the common good with due consideration to the common valuation or estimation made collectively by the community of citizens [emphasis mine].”42 According to De Roover, in the writings of St. Bernadine, there was “only minimal analysis of changes in demand or supply as this affects prices.”43 With regard to the above question of price, as we found earlier with his analysis of the economic thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, De Roover’s portrayal of the intellectual “innovations” of St. Bernadine is very forced and often involves the use of statements that do not at all prove his point, in fact, they often contradict it. One example is his citation of a single sentence from the “sermons” of St. Bernadine which seems to indicate that the saint held to an idea of the “just price” which was convertible with the idea of “market valuation.” In support of this view, he cites St. Bernadino as defining the “just price” as, “the one which happens to prevail at a given time according to the estimation of the market, that is, what the commodities for sale are then commonly worth in a certain place.”44 As we have seen, however, with regard to this determination of price based upon “supply and demand” and “market conditions,” there was a solid moral tradition, passing into late Scholastic times, in which it was considered perfectly reasonable that prices of certain inessential items were allowed to “float” freely, their value being determined by how much someone who did not absolutely need the item was willing to pay. De Roover himself seems to recognize that the language of “just price” as “prevailing market price” refers to just this situation and to these kinds of goods. And yet, that De Roover wants to insinuate that St. Bernadine equated the “just price” with the “one that happens to prevail at a given time according to the estimation of the market” in all cases, is clear. With his usual hesitant definitiveness he says, “This statement [about just price and prevailing market price], it seems to me, is so clear that it does not admit any other construction.” If, as he seems to say, St. Bernadine equated just price with market price, all prices should, for justice’s sake, be subject to the free flow of market forces–any interference would be, according to this view, an interference in the market’s setting of the “just price.” That this is not St. Bernadine’s view is made clear, again by De Roover himself, when he admits that the Franciscan taught “prices may be fixed for the common good.” Society, then, is in charge of setting prices. Who does not hear the echo of the entire economic ethos of Christendom in St. Bernadine statement that, prices may be fixed for the common good, “because nothing is more iniquitous than to promote private45 interests at the expense of general welfare.” 41 43 42 Ibid., p.20. St. Bernadine of Siena, De Evangelio aeterno, sermon 35, art. 2, cap.2 and 3 in Opera omnia, IV, 197-198. This text is cited in de Roover, San Bernadino, p.20. St. Antonino, the Just Price, and the Just Wage St. Antonino of Florence was explicitly committed to the position that civil authority had the right and, often, the obligation to fix prices for the sake of the common good. Clearly the “common estimation” by which prices ought to be determined, included the possibility of the State explicitly setting the price of items. According to De Roover: Sant’ Antonino…states that it might be desirable under certain circumstances to have prices of victuals [i.e., food stuffs] and other necessities fixed by the bishop, or even better, by the civil authorities. If there is such regulation, it is binding and victuallers and other tradesmen may not, without sinning, raise the price above the legal minimum.46 Rather than being anything like a “free market” advocate, the Archbishop of Florence reaffirms the traditional condemnation of usury and monopoly. He also insisted upon there being a “just wage.” The calculation of what would constitute a “just wage” was a social and a complex process that would involve the consideration of many different elements. To quote De Roover’s citation of St. De Roover, San Bernadino, p.21. Ibid., p.20. 45 Ibid., pp.20-21. 46 Ibid., pp.22-23. 44 THE ANGELUS • January 2005 20 Antonino, “Sant’ Antonino states that the purpose of wages was not only to compensate the worker for his labor but also to enable him to provide for himself and his family according to his social situation.”47 Moreover, “it was as unfair and sinful to pay less than the just wage because a worker had mouths to feed as it was unfair to pay less than the just price because of the seller’s urgent need for cash.”48 St. Antonino clearly saw man as a whole, not just as a private property owning (or not owning) unit. The whole talk about a “just wage” (not to mention a “just price”) means nothing unless we understand man to be a social creature and all of man’s activities and social interactions, including his economic ones, as having an orientation to the higher and more perfect good, at least the true and fulfilling good of human existence. We see this over-arching teleological (from the Greek word telos or goal) understanding of the human good present in the following statement that De Roover makes concerning the teaching of St. Antonino: The purpose of a fair wage was to enable the worker to earn a decent living, the purpose of a decent living was to enable him to lead a virtuous life, and the purpose of a virtuous life was to enable him to achieve salvation and eternal glory.49 As we might expect, from what we have seen from the various Libertarian writers cited in this article, De Roover “summarizes” St. Antonino’s position by overturning everything he had previously stated concerning the saint’s teaching: “St. Antonino’s own wage theory according to which the just wage was set by common estimation, that is, by market forces without any reference to individual needs.”50 Here he is asserting A and not A simultaneously. Here we have the manipulation of a classical Christian moral text by a Libertarian whose views on economics, logic, politics, society, and, even simple human psychology would be completely inexplicable to our saintly Renaissance bishop. Restoration Economics Why does all of this matter? Much of “conservative” and “libertarian” thought, in the United States, in the British Commonwealth, and on the Continent of Europe has attempted to find a way to, as Arthur Penty put it, “stabilize the abnormal.” What is truly needed is a return to the normal. What we have seen when analyzing the actual statements made by the Medieval and Renaissance moral theologians on economic issues is a balanced portrayal of what the “normal” is. What has been 47 48 Ibid., p.25. St. Antonino of Florence, Summa Theologica, Part II, tit. I, cap.17, n.8. This text is cited in de Roover, San Bernadino, p.25. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 amazing to see is not how innovative they were, in a Liberal direction, but rather, how traditional and deeply Christian they were. That there was room for discussion on such questions as the worth of money as a result of foreign exchange is a perfectly normal manifestation of the Catholic desire for justice and a deep prudence that understands the multiplicity of situations in which human beings act. Such prudence cannot be taken as a revolutionary innovation or for an opening to modern economic liberalism. The basis of our current “abnormal” is an inflated and unnatural understanding of man as an individual, free to “create” his own “value system,” which, to a certain extent, means to “create his own world.” Liberalism, in its economic and political manifestations, has created a situation in which the ancient psychological, social, economic, and political tapestry of human societies has been unraveled. By upholding an ethereal concept of “choice,” it has robbed us of our honor, our personal security, and our heritage. This entire conception of man and human existence is embedded in the Neo-Liberal equation of the “just price” with the “market price.” That Arthur Penty and many others would present the “just price” and its attainment as the primary purpose of the Medieval Guild System is testimony to the fact that the very social life of Christendom, in a very real way, pivoted upon this reality. That “justice” should involve more than mere “freedom of choice,” rather including within the very term an idea and concrete historical reality expressive of a higher order and more fundamental and essential obligations, is testimony to the fact that the spiritual psychology of Christendom was profoundly different from the one we find possessed by all those who reject the ancient way, whether they be Socialists, Globalists, or Libertarians. For those who would correctly seek for a life outside of the spiritually suffocating totalitarian Liberalism that we find ourselves immersed in, Penty warns them that any attempt to realize the dream of an independent rural existence without price controls put into place, would result, for most, in economic suicide for families and for individuals. These are sobering words. Our struggle must then take on a more encompassing religious, moral, and even political dimension if our children and our children’s children are to live a life richer and, hence, more traditional than our own. Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and another in Philosophy from Christendom College. He also received his master’s degree and doctorate in Philosophy from Fordham University. He and his wife Kathleen are the parents of six children. He teaches at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, and for the Society of Saint Pius X at Immaculate Conception Academy, Post Falls, ID. 49 De Roover, San Bernadino, p.27. The citation is a paraphrasing of St. Antonino’s Summa Theologica, Part III, tit. 8, cap.1, n.1. 50 Ibid., p.25. Catholic y l i Fam Angelus Press T H E C LI M B On one sunny, but very cold afternoon, I was watching my three-year-old climb a snowy hill with his sled. He was close to the top, the sled got away from him and went down the hill without him. I felt like crying for him, which shows how quickly discouraged I can get. He just turned around to get his sled, however, and started back up the hill. His goal was to sled; anything else was a waste of time, and he knew all too well that when the sun went down his sledding would be over. 22 Isn’t this life? We are climbing up “the hill” in order to sled down its other side. We have never seen the other side, but by our Faith we know our climbing will end at the top. We occasionally read of people who have reached the top and have exclaimed, “Ah!” They have told us how worthwhile the climb was. Sometimes they have left behind an explanation of how they got up the hill and we are invited to emulate it. It may sound exhausting to us, but we are made to climb. We are given the equipment: boots, gloves, snow pants, a sled. Some have flashier equipment than others, but, as every child that has spent the day sledding knows, how a sled performs is more important than what it looks like. We are not alone on “the hill.” The whole world is climbing. Sometimes the person next to us makes us so happy we forget we are climbing. A fellow climber may take our sled and throw it down the hill. Why could this be so?–We may learn that had we kept going in the same path, we might have hit a snow-covered ditch and fallen farther than we could have recovered. Maybe we are meant to arrive at the top at a different point. Perhaps on the return climb we may run into someone that needs our help whom we didn’t see the first time or wasn’t there on the first trip up. In any case, we must finish our assent before the sun sets on our lives. If a person falls–especially a big one–on a hill this crowded, he will take a number of people with him. Some will stand still because they think it is the nice way to be in such a situation. They wave to passersby and smile. They do no want to offend anyone, even people going the wrong way. For this, these bystanders may even get patted on the back. And yet, they themselves are slowly sinking into the snow. We may try to tell them, but they don’t want the discomfort of having to move. They like where they are. What about the huge number of people going the wrong way (let’s call them Modernists)? They refuse to listen. They say, “We decided to go up the mountain, down. We find it far too hard to go up the mountain, up.” They refuse to believe they will not reach the top of the mountain. Parents have been known to toss onto the mountain a child without a jacket whom they never taught to walk. Surely these children will freeze unless we who are more fortunate clothe them with our prayers and carry them to salvation with our sacrifices. The climbers who are Catholics have an advantage. The members of their Mystical Body are interconnected to push and pull each other upwards. We are tied to the person next to us and that person has a rope connecting him to the man in front and behind him. This is that organ of the Mystical Body called the Church Militant. At times, we pull our own weight. At other times we have to help pull someone who is weary. We ourselves may be the ones being pulled. But by what sandbags do we burden ourselves?–Television? Possessions? Human respect? Undue pleasure? We can barely lift our legs because our boots are filled with the lead of our own THE ANGELUS • January 2005 will, weighing us down to earth. Spiritual lethargy and indifference make us deadweights needing the assistance of those willing to carry the burdens of others. Some people seem to ascend rapidly up the hill. We do well to attach ourselves to them. Often, however, we behave as though the climbing of others is a spectator sport. Dismayed, we curse our own lack of progress while determining that those making the great strides will surely tire. We are terribly mistaken; they will never tire. It is desire for Jesus Christ and their trust in Him that pulls them upward. Our action and inaction on the mountain affect everyone else on it. The climbers of the Church Militant are nourished by the same food–the Body of Christ. We are stronger to remember so, and by so doing, perhaps the climbers of the Church Militant may stop merely putting up with each other. We follow Christ Who not only put up with us; He became one of us. With His blood, He marked a path in the snow up the mountain. Our truest Friend sees our flaws and loves us more because we are His Body. The strength of One makes up for all the weaknesses of the other. He has put out His arms (on a Cross) to break our fall. A soldier’s strength and determination are needed to make this climb. Trial and suffering will be expected from him. But these are hardships which bind the climbers more closely. When joints ache and muscles become sore, every movement is a reminder of Christ’s Passion. We no longer just sympathize with Christ; His Passion becomes real to us. Because we are climbers in the Mystical Body, we must feel It in our own flesh. Moving en masse in one upward direction, the Church Militant, to the relief of the Church Suffering and the joy of the Church Triumphant, should capture the hill and bring everyone with it. And, as the sun sets on the mountain, the Mystical Body would show its Creator that not a drop of the Son’s blood was wasted. The author is a mother of six children whose family attends St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Kansas City, Missouri. The artwork is drawn by students of Miss Miriam Werick’s second grade class at St. Vincent’s Academy, Michael Townshend, Jerome Nienaber, and Thomas Crouse. Catholic Family battle plan 23 My assignment is a scouting mission into enemy territory–to remain undetected and gather intelligence as to the enemy’s situation, capabilities, intentions, and likely courses of action. I managed to get inside the main headquarters and into the operations center. They seem to feel that their victory is so very nearly certain, they haven’t much need for security. I stood in the back of the operations center as the daily situation briefing began. The operations officer led off, using the situation map as a reference. He briefed the commander, who was sitting front row center, on how the major power centers of the world had all been subdued. Financial power, political power, communications, entertainment, all those were firmly under control. The commander was pleased. The operations officer relaxed a little. He then gave an update on current operations, and paid special attention to the continued inroads in the areas of science, education, health, and religion. Of particular note were the brilliantly executed propaganda campaigns on the “new morality.” “We’ve had our greatest success in the popular culture campaign. This continues to be one of the weakest points in the enemy perimeter. It was a brilliant decision on your part to place more of our resources there.” At this the commander eased back into his chair and lit a cigar, immensely pleased. The other staff officers were livid–to the point of glowing like embers, lighting up the room. I was beginning to worry that I might be discovered. “Filthy sycophant,” someone muttered. The staff officers were restless, looking for an opportunity to unseat the operations officer. The commander motioned for the operations officer to continue. “Over the past few years we have restricted the enemy to defensive operations. Much of their force is in retreat, and a good many of their troops have actually been turned to work as our agents. And the beauty of it is that they don’t even know they’ve been turned. They’re fighting our battle, and they think they’re defending virtue.” Catholic Family THE ANGELUS • January 2005 24 “Virtue!” The commander roared with laughter. “Best idea I ever had, sending in saboteurs against language, and sleeper agents to continue the operation. And it all started with one little word–tolerance.” The commander, very pleased with himself, accepted the congratulations of the staff officers, who, although visibly cooled off, still cast burning glances at the operations officer. The operations officer, basking in the glow of the commander’s approval, but keenly aware of the glares of the other staff officers, finished his briefing with a very short overview of New Age support operations. He focused primarily on the success of the efforts to infiltrate and weaken our defenses from the inside. “It’s all in the details,” the operations officer said. “People find details so tiresome. This is how we’ve been able to erode the defenses. The enemy’s symbols and practices are blending nicely into the New Age rituals. We found it much easier when we stopped trying to eliminate them, and just gradually changed their meanings. Everybody’s lighting candles these days, but they’re ‘serenity’ candles. And you’d be amazed at who wears crosses!” The commander’s smile dimmed just a bit at that, but the operations officer quickly added, “It’s all according to plan.” The commander didn’t look convinced. The operations officer opened a new display on the board and hastened to explain. “It’s all right here, in a typical mail order catalogue. Yes, you’ll find crosses in here, simple crosses, decorative crosses, beautiful crosses.” The commander scowled. The other staff officers brightened a little. “But,” continued the operations officer, “look what surrounds–and visually overwhelms–the crosses. Here we have a book of wiccan wisdom, here a book explaining all the ceremonies of the feminine life cycle, over here pentagrams, crystals, tarot cards–all together, all quite lovely, all quite equal.” His tone leaving no doubt that victory was certain, the operations officer made his final point. “I invite your attention to this votive light holder. You see a ring of angels encircling the candle. But look what we’ve done with the angels. They’re all girls!” he chortled, “soft, nurturing, defenseless girls.” “That,” he sneered, “is the extent of the enemy’s power in the world.” The commander laughed out loud again. He was beaming. (Well, glowing, actually.) The operations officer, secure in his position, gathered his slides and sat down. The intelligence officer took the podium. He was sweating profusely. The commander scowled. He never reacted well to the intelligence briefing. He had relieved the last three intelligence officers and reassigned them to the lower reaches of Hell. Somewhere in Texas, I think. The intelligence officer presented his report by region, beginning with the United States. “The opposition, it seems, has not entirely disappeared.” THE ANGELUS • January 2005 The commander’s face darkened. The intelligence officer looked very nervous. “There were several new priests ordained in Winona, with over 1500 of the faithful in attendance.” The commander growled, “The faithful!” He sort of spat the words out, somewhere between a threatening tone and a sneer of disdain. The intelligence officer, looking somewhat ashen, cleared his throat and continued. “We don’t have an accurate count of the number of confessions and communions, but based on the standard indicators, we predict an increase in vocations.” He barely whispered that last part, but it was enough. Steam came out from the commander’s ears. (Really. I always thought that was a metaphor, but I saw it.) At this point I was actually beginning to feel sorry for the intelligence officer. I could see that he was picturing a white-hot future deep in the heart of Hades. The commander’s eyes had narrowed to where they looked a lot like lasers, piercing the enveloping darkness. In a very low voice he said, “Continue.” The late intelligence officer related that young men had come to the seminary in such numbers that it appeared an expansion might be necessary; four new churches had either recently opened, or were scheduled for imminent opening, despite the best efforts of agents in the field. He was sweating so much, he seemed to be evaporating right before my eyes. The commander hadn’t stopped him yet, and, although he was visibly hesitant to go on, the intelligence officer was compelled to finish his report. “Convents have opened and religious vocations are responding. Retreats are filled, and scores of new recruits are added to the opposition forces regularly. And they’re using all those symbols and practices just mentioned, but with the original meanings. Priests who were thought to have been under the control of their superiors are turning to,” he trembled visibly, “Tradition.” With that word the intelligence officer shriveled like a worm on hot asphalt. The commander said nothing, but the room started to rumble and quake. The staff officers and their minions began tearing about, screaming obscenities, thrashing subordinates (and other staff officers who were in weaker positions), looking for someone to blame. The operations officer left in a flash. I thought it best not to stay for the rest of the briefing. I continued my mission in other parts of the camp and managed to return to friendly territory just before all Hell broke loose. After completing the scouting mission I returned to camp to make my report. I was still shaken from the experience and the atmosphere. There was a Catholic Family 25 strange sort of order in the chaos of the enemy’s camp; a plan hidden behind the random and seemingly mindless activity. And in that atmosphere of chaos, anger, and constant discontent, I had recognized so much that I see to a lesser degree every day in the world around me. They had, indeed, invaded our very camp. The body armor I had worn concealed could not protect me completely, and the cacophony had been almost unbearable. I returned wounded and frightened. I made my report to the watch officer. “They’ve mapped out our strong points and located our weaker defenses,” I said. “They boasted of agents inside our perimeter who will go active on their signal. They’re heavily armed, and they’re coming.” The watch officer took my information and compared it to what was already on our own situation map. As he examined the map he calmly said, “Go get some food now, and have your wounds treated.” “But there’s no time,” I said, almost despondent. “The attack will begin in force soon. And we have enemies in our own camp. We don’t know whom to trust.” “Wrong!” he said forcefully. “This will be a long campaign. You’ll need nourishment, rest, and often enough, medical attention. Take advantage of the opportunities for these whenever you can. You keep your head clear, and you’ll know well enough who your friends are and who your enemies are. Now move out.” I left the headquarters a little confused. What I had seen was horrible, and it was coming, but there were no hasty preparations being made. There was activity in the camp, to be sure, but it seemed almost too calm. And then I saw Him. The King Himself was moving among us. Even at a distance I could see the quiet strength about Him. He spoke to the men as He passed by, but there was really no need for Him to speak. His very presence inspired confidence. I was in no condition to be in the presence of the King, so I kept my distance, but watched and listened. He looked at me, though, with a look I can’t describe. And then He came to me. I fell to my knees, suddenly shamed by my appearance and my fear. He put His hand on my shoulder. “Courage,” He said, “Take heart.” And then He walked on. All my wounds were healed. I now felt in the calm of the camp a quiet determination for battle. In that quiet also moved the Queen among her troops. She, too, was arrayed for battle. “They’re coming, my Lady,” I said to her. She smiled at me and then turned her gaze toward the enemy camp. Her face was at once unutterably beautiful and terrible to behold. She smiled at me again and then walked on, to stand beside the King. They were silent invincibility. The battle captains were moving toward the front now, giving final instructions. “Are we to dig in, then,” I said, “and wait for the assault?” “No,” he said. “We spread out and take the battle to them. We are few in number, but we are sufficient. If you feel your strength failing, look to the standard.” We formed ranks and marched off, the battle hymn ringing in the morning air. “We stand for God, and for His glory....” The author, L. Hein, M.R.S., knows something about military operations and attends St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Roswell, Georgia. Artwork by Miss Lindsey Carroll. Catholic Family THE ANGELUS • January 2005 26 The Immaculate Conception Fr. Michel Simoulin It is wonderful to be able to sing the praises of the Immaculate in the jubilee year of the solemn proclamation of her privilege, in the very village of Lourdes and even in the very chapel which the Immaculate asked men to build above the grotto of Bernadette’s apparitions. Before so beautiful a grace, we can only bow our heads and our hearts in an immense gratitude, in silence and prayer heart-toheart with Mary, as she taught the blessed child of the apparitions. Yet, we need to take a moment to ponder a little bit on the meaning of Lourdes: Why did the Blessed Virgin come here? And why have we come here? The second question has an easy answer: we have come to Lourdes because the Immaculate asked us to: “Go tell the priests to have people come here in procession and to have them build a chapel.” That is what we have done. But what characterizes the apparitions of our Lady at Lourdes, among all the manifestations of the Blessed Virgin? Why did the Blessed Virgin come here, after the Rue du Bac (1830), after Rome (the THE ANGELUS • January 2005 Revisited conversion of Ratisbonne in 1842), after La Salette (1846), after the definition of the dogma in 1854…? The Rue du Bac is already the Virgin conceived without sin, the Immaculate Mother and Mediatrix of all graces. At Rome, the Virgin who commands Ratisbonne the Jew to fall on his knees–she is the Immaculate Queen who ordains. At La Salette, she is the desolate Mother who pleads. At Lourdes, she is not Queen; she is not Mother; she is not Mediatrix. The Immaculate does not speak of her Son; she does not evoke her maternity nor her mediating power…she does not speak of herself at all and only says her name at the very end, when Bernadette nearly forces her to; and even then she only says it with a discretion to echo her Magnificat, by pointing to the wonder accomplished in her by God in the act of her Immaculate Conception. For a conception is Catholic Family 27 not a being but an act, and that act is a divine act of which Mary is but the fruit. So who is the Immaculate of Lourdes, if she is neither Queen, nor Mother, nor Mediatrix? The Immaculate of Lourdes is a sister–a big sister, scarcely older than Bernadette (16 or 17 years old, the seer tells us), an elder sister who speaks very little but who gives the example and teaches us to imitate her: she prays; she helps and teaches to pray; she points to heaven, where we have been promised true happiness; ● she teaches humility, and even humiliations; prayer and penance for sinners; ● she teaches how to look for the source of grace; how to wash and drink there where man only seeks profit and pleasure. ● ● In a very simple way, she gives us the answer to the detractors of God and of the Church: silence, prayer, penance, and the life of grace. At Lourdes, everything is simple…nothing is complicated. Everything is too simple and disconcerts a mind that is too rational. Everything is simple because everything comes from the heart of our big sister the Immaculate. However, if we go no farther, it might seem that there is nothing really new about Lourdes. We already more or less knew all that. What was the new message brought to us by the Immaculate of Lourdes? A message that is not really new, and that she had already allowed us to hear in the chapel of the Rue du Bac: “Come here to the foot of this altar. There you will receive many graces.…Go tell the priests to have people come here in procession and to have them build a chapel.” It is the same request, repeated here more strongly because it is no longer a question of coming to a chapel, but of building one. Why a chapel? Why processions? Because a chapel is an altar. Because a procession is a public prayer of the faithful united to their priests. So what the Immaculate wants is an altar. Our elder sister wants to lead us to the altar of the redemptive Sacrifice and to the Host; the Immaculate wants the site of her manifestations to be consecrated to the liturgical worship of the Eucharist–to the Holy Mass. The Immaculate of Lourdes is truly “soror populi christiani–sister of the Christian people” (St. Albert the Great)! She draws us toward the Sacrifice to which she owes her own privilege of being Immaculate, in turn the source of all her other privileges. She owes everything to the Sacrifice of the Cross present on our altars; she desires to lead us to the altar that we might receive from it all the graces of our own sanctity. Truly, the Immaculate of Lourdes draws us to the Church, to her priests, to the Mass, to adoration. Catholic Family And to give force and authority to her words so simple–and so disconcerting by their very simplicity– she finally consents to tell who she is. It has been said that, in telling her name, the Blessed Virgin wished to confirm the words of the pope defining four years earlier her stainless Conception. That is surely true, but it seems we can also see another reason for the Blessed Virgin’s speaking in this way. She does not precede the voice of the Church but teaches us to follow the voice of Rome. In saying, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” she is saying: I am she whose stainless Conception the Church has just defined by the voice of the pope. The Immaculate founds the authority of her own words on the authority of the Church. No, the Virgin of Lourdes does not appear as a queen, nor even as a mother, but as our elder sister, “the first of the redeemed–primogenita in multis fratribus.” She is the young Virgin, the Virgin of Nazareth, the Virgin who is not yet a Mother and who is adorned only with the gracious and simple and delicate beauty of her Immaculate Conception. She is our elder sister, so close to us despite her unparalleled sanctity. She is a sister who comes to walk at our side, to draw us after her. She is the Immaculate Virgin who makes herself very small indeed so that she might slip in among us and even pray with us and like us…and even seem nearly to forget that she it is whom we are praying to as we say the Rosary. She leaves us the Rosary to remain with us after having shown us how we ought to pray it. This, then, is indeed the grace of Lourdes: the Immaculate become young again, just as she was before the Angel came to ask her consent. She is silent; she prays; humble, discreet and penitent, she reveals to us the place of true happiness, and disregard for the world and for what the world thinks, admires, loves, or rejects. She carries us to the altar, and therefore to the source of grace: to her Son the Redeemer whose blood shed in sacrifice made her Immaculate in order to make her His Mother and our co-redemptive Mother. Now it is our turn to make ourselves very small indeed to be able to follow her, simple and confident as she was, and walk in safety among the perils of a world in revolt–a world enamored of all that is base; to follow her Son with her and join them at last in that heaven where she has promised to make us happy. A sermon given by Fr. Michel Simoulin on December 8, 2004, at the Basilica of Lourdes. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press. Fr. Michael Simoulin was ordained in 1980 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. He is currently serving in Romagne, France, as chaplain to St. Thomas Aquinas School. Painting by Francisco de Zurbarán, detail from Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 28 How does one determine what buying and selling is permitted on Sundays? F R . The traditional Code of Canon Law (1917) is very explicit on this question, stating that, “On feast days of obligation [including every Sunday] …one must abstain from public commerce, public gatherings of buyers and sellers (e.g., auctions) and all other public buying and selling, unless legitimate custom or special indults permit them” (Canon 1248). The 1983 Code of Canon Law does not give this precision, but simply states that those things are to be abstained from that impede worship to God, joy proper to Sunday and due relaxation (Canon 1247). Everything is left to the interpretation of the private individual. The traditional law is very explicit, and excludes all public buying and selling, such as auctions or major legal contracts. However, it allows for the details to be determined somewhat by local custom. This is not to be understood as what everybody does, but the custom amongst fervent, practicing Catholics. It is certain that private contracts can be entered into, namely those that do not have any public legal form. It is equally certain that the purchasing and selling of small items is licit, such as milk, fruit, bread, flowers, holy pictures, books, clothing and other such items that might be available at road side stalls or at a church bookstall. All agree that those items that are necessary for daily use, such as common food items, can be sold and purchased on Sundays. The authors also agree that if there is a grave reason to purchase larger items on a Sunday, that this is permissible, for example when a person lives a long distance from town, and is only able to come in to town on a Sunday. These exceptions, due to necessity, show the Church’s attachment to the spirit of the law, rather than simply the letter. There are things that are manifestly forbidden in the traditional law of the Church, such as buying and selling real estate, bidding on important items at auctions (e.g., furniture). Then there are areas that are not so clear cut, such as doing one’s grocery shopping on a Sunday. Any one or other of the items could certainly be purchased on a Sunday without any scruple of conscience, and likewise a person who had no other opportunity to do his grocery shopping could do so. However, a person who did a whole week’s grocery shopping on a Sunday without necessity would be considered as involved in public purchasing and selling of items of large value, and could not be excused from at least venial sin. Here, as always, the value of the Church’s law lies in the fact that it determines the right means to our end. Our end is to sanctify the Holy Days and Sundays, for the greater honor and glory of God and the salvation of our souls, which is only possible if we remove the preoccupation with the mundane, temporal things that occupy the rest of our time. We must consequently consider it a grave spiritual obligation to take these means that the Church so wisely imposes upon us. Let us then be determined to abstain from all unnecessary shopping for items of considerable value on Sundays and Holy Days. In particular let us protest the opening of grocery outlets on Sundays by refusing to patronize them on Sundays. Q What benefits can flow from a visit to a Catholic cemetery? It must first be recalled that a Catholic cemetery is a holy place, being consecrated ground, especially blessed by the Church to receive the bodies, temples of the Holy Ghost, that will rise up to meet Our Lord, the Supreme Judge, on the last day. It is for this reason that it was always considered obligatory for the bodies of faithful Catholics to be buried in Catholic cemeteries (Canon 1205,§1 of the 1917 Code). A visit to a cemetery is consequently an act of religion, as is the special care of the cemetery and of the tombs of those who are buried there. It inspires a Catholic with reverence, awe for God’s judgments, respect for the souls of those whose bodies are buried there, with an awareness of the brevity of this earthly life, and of the union of the Church militant with the Church suffering in the mystical body of Christ. Special graces are consequently attached to silent and prayerful visits to cemeteries. It can easily be understood why Church law prescribes that each parish have its own cemetery (Canon 1208), and why it is the traditional custom for it to be physically adjoining the parish. However, if Catholics love to visit cemeteries, it is especially out of a motive of charity. We long to assist the suffering souls in purgatory by our prayers, sacrifices, and Masses, given that we are united as members of the same mystical body. A physical visit to a cemetery is a great help in inciting us to this duty of charity. It is for this reason that the Church has generously enriched with her indulgences visits to cemeteries. During the eight days from November 1-8, any of the faithful can, simply by visiting a cemetery and praying for the poor souls, obtain a plenary indulgence, applicable to the poor souls in purgatory, under the usual conditions. At other times of the year this is a partial indulgence. The gaining of a plenary indulgence does not mean that A THE ANGELUS • January 2005 p e t e r R Q A r R . s c o t t one soul is freed from Purgatory, but that the power of the Church’s suffrages is added to the personal prayers and applied to the poor souls, by manner of intercession. How could we refuse to take advantage of the unlocking of the Church’s treasury, which simply depends on our visits and prayers. Let us consequently be generous and regular with our visits to Catholic cemeteries, and let us never pass one by without stopping to recite a short prayer for the poor souls there, or at least reciting such a prayer as we go by. Q Is one permitted to maintain social contact with apostate family members? The question here concerns what is called by the theologians communication with heretics. Here it concerns profane or civil communication, namely that concerning commerce, business and friendly conversation, as distinct from communication in sacred things pertaining to the worship of God, and prayer. Active participation of this latter kind is forbidden by the traditional law and practice of the Church (Canon 1258, §1 of the 1917 Code), but encouraged by the post-conciliar Church in the name of ecumenism (Canon 844 of the 1983 Code). There was a time in the history of the Church when the Church’s law forbade communication in civil or friendly matters with those who were or who had become notorious heretics, and who apostatized. However, the sad conditions of modern society, in which we must constantly live alongside heretics and apostates, forced the Church to mitigate this law. Consequently the injunction to avoid civil communication with heretics and apostates only applied to the special class of excommunicated persons classified as having to be avoided in the 1917 Code. Furthermore, even then such civil communication was permissible for any reasonable cause, such as necessary commerce (Canon 2267). In addition, the same Canon explains that the forbidding of civil communication does not apply to a person’s spouse, parents, children, servants, or subjects, since manifestly such communication cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, although the Church’s law does not bind us to avoid all personal and friendly contact with apostates, and especially not with relatives, such contact is frequently highly dangerous to the faith of Catholics, bringing with it the possibility of indifferentism. For, in practice, such contact presumes that the Faith is not discussed, and the beliefs or not of the apostate person are accepted as such. For this acceptation is the basis of ordinary friendly, social contact. In such instances A 29 contact even with relatives would be opposed to the natural law, and even to the divine law. St. Paul is, indeed, very explicit: “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid” (Tit. 3:10). Likewise St. John, the apostle of charity: “If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you. For he that saith unto him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works” (II Jn. 10, 11). However, this being said, it cannot be denied that there is no true Catholic who is not zealous for the conversion of heretical or apostate relatives to the true Faith, and that if there were no friendly contact or conversation, there would be no human possibility of initiating that conversion. It will consequently depend upon the virtue of prudence to balance the possible advantage of maintaining some contact with the grave danger of indifferentism of keeping up that contact, either affecting one’s own soul, or giving one’s relatives the impression that religion does not matter, or finally inducing other persons or relatives into indifferentism by the example of such contact. The prudent man will generally resolve this question by using the opportunity of a social contact to speak openly and frankly about the true religion and Faith, in an attempt to encourage the apostate or heretical relative to show interest in it. In so doing, he will faithfully fulfill Our Lord’s command: “Everyone therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 10:32). If this effort brings a positive response, then he will maintain the contact, speaking regularly about the Faith. If it does not, but rather seems futile, then he will avoid all friendship, but simply limit his contact to social necessities, thus fulfilling the recommendation of St. Paul: “Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. For what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever?…Wherefore, go out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (II Cor. 6:14-17). Indeed, for what do we have in common with those who refuse to believe in supernatural realities, in God, His grace, the teachings of the Church, and the Cross, our only hope. This being said, the prudent man will always be ready to practice charity towards his relatives, even apostate, and in case of need he will always be available to provide physical help or emotional support, even when the spiritual is rejected, as St. Paul teaches: “Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good” (Rom. 12:21). THE ANGELUS • January 2005 30 Five Minutes about Fr. de Chivré: A Life– A Chalice The difficulty today, as we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Fr. de Chivré and would evoke his memory, is that we find ourselves before a life so rich, a life lived to the full, that there are no words able to express it all. We remember a life so entirely devoted to all the battles worthy of being waged—patriotic battles, religious battles, ecclesiastical battles—all these battles which Father waged even as a very young man for the Dominican Order, for the Church, for the Mass, for his homeland as well. We will perhaps have the occasion to speak of all these things during the conferences planned for this afternoon, but if we want to summarize or try to offer a synthesis or a symbol of the life of Fr. de Chivré, I believe we should simply remember—as has already been said and written—remember quite simply that he was essentially a priest, a priest before all else. And where do we find the priest? What is, so to speak, THE ANGELUS • January 2005 the heart of a priest’s life, the source of unity in a priest’s life? His chalice. The Chalice: The priest is made for the altar; and the priest is made for the chalice. It is this chalice which he is made to touch the day of his ordination, the chalice and the paten which he has to touch in the very ceremony of his ordination. And then, it is over this chalice, hunc calicem, that, day after day, with never an interruption, the priest leans to pronounce those holy words, those terrible words that do not come from him, that could not come from him; those words that have the extraordinary power—of which he is the instrument— the power to transform this bit of bread and wine into the divinity of the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this chalice which follows the priest all through his life, always the same, hunc calicem, that : 31 of our Lord; materially different and yet identical, for the sacrifice and the priest are identical. It is his chalice that ties together all of the Masses which the priest has the privilege to offer day after day: it is there before Mass; the Sacrifice itself takes place within it; and it remains after the Mass…still all steeped in the presence of the divine Word. And it is this very chalice which makes the priest; it is this chalice of his daily Mass in which is realized the continuity of the divine presence; the continuity of the fullness of love of our Lord Jesus Christ; the continuity of the work of Redemption. It is this chalice which models the priest after the image of the Sovereign Priest. It is by his daily contact with his chalice that the priest becomes every day a little more what he should be: in adoration and consumed with zeal for the glory of God. Yes, of course, he is a priest by the sacred character with which he is marked, but the chalice is what educates the soul and the heart of the priest, and establishes him in a living and unceasing contact with the heart and the soul of our Lord, to become truly a priest according to the order of Melchisedech; to love as our Lord loved; to give his life as our Lord gave His life. It is the chalice—if the priest truly gives himself to what he is doing on the altar—it is the chalice which educates the heart and the soul of the priest. And it is also the chalice which educates the word of the priest. These words so simple, so sober, and yet charged with the fullness of an infinite power; these words which the priest pronounces every day educate his own speech, taking away its inclination to squandering itself in vain conversations, in worldly conversations, in useless, wasteful speech, to the benefit of the fullness of life of the divine Word, that his words might spread only what is sacred wherever they are heard, purified of all that has nothing to do with the sacred, of what can have no value for eternity before God or for the good of souls. I believe that Father’s chalice is what can help us understand who Fr. de Chivré was; to bring back to us something of this priest we have so loved. This chalice was offered to him by his mother for his ordination, and God knows it was his pride and joy–he loved his mother so much! This chalice is a real treasure, very simple and very rich, and was consecrated the very day of Father’s ordination by Archbishop Le Roy, a Holy Ghost Father—perhaps a sign of Providence. So it was a Holy Ghost Father archbishop who consecrated Father’s chalice as he himself was receiving the priestly consecration and, near the end of his life, we find Fr. de Chivré by the side of another Holy Ghost Father archbishop, Archbishop Lefebvre. A beautiful touch, isn’t it? This chalice, which is in fact identical to the chalice of Archbishop Lefebvre’s ordination, was consecrated by one of the predecessors of Archbishop Lefebvre at the head, as Superior General, of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost. I think we would be allowed to see there a sign of Providence. So now if we look at Father’s chalice (we will all see it soon), this same chalice which Father used for his first Mass, on the feast of St. Anne in 1930, even to his last Mass, his very last Mass, celebrated in his oratory of Our Lady of the Granite, Tuesday of Holy Week in 1984, that is April 17, 1984 (he had to travel very early Wednesday morning and was not able to celebrate Mass, since he was already too exhausted, and it was here on Holy Thursday that Father was struck down without having had a chance to say Mass), that is, between July 26th of the year 1930 until April 17, 1984, this chalice was the life of Fr. de Chivré and Father de Chivré was the life of this chalice–he who brought down into it the life of God…for us. Mysterium fidei! So now if we look at this chalice, what do we see? First, we see a very noble material, the union of the most noble materials found on this earth: gold and silver. Silver, for this chalice is solid silver; and then gold on the inside of the cup. The most noble material, then, and the purest. An elegantly simple chalice, without flowery designs. Here already we have Father, in his human nature: an extremely noble nature inherited from his mother, inherited from his father, inherited from his ancestors. The Chivrés were a proud and noble race. And this nobility which would be humanly so natural to him he put in the service of God’s nobility, for the most noble of works: the divine glory and the work of Redemption; for God and for souls. We have then first of all the most noble of materials, and equally the most durable: a material made for the duration, made for a sacred eternity. When I had the joy of receiving this chalice, Father’s words came back to me, namely that this chalice never needed to be refinished in gold, and therefore never had to be reconsecrated. It is always intact, such as it was on the first day, such as Father received it from the hands of his dear mother and such as he possessed it from his very first Mass. And there, too, we find Father: embattled, exhausted, even shattered by illness or by the petty malice of his fellow men, Father remained intact, indestructible, always the same. It really took death itself to reduce him to silence. But up until then, nothing could stop him, nothing could stop the vigor of his heart, the vigor of his soul, nor even the vigor of his word, even if it had a harder time expressing his thought. There we already have the essence of Father, on the natural level. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 32 But if we look more closely at this chalice, what do we see? Only one “decoration,” only one symbol, but a symbol which is not soldered on; a symbol which is not added onto the metal of the chalice; a symbol which is engraved in the base of the chalice: and that is the cross, engraved in the very metal of the chalice. This cross is inseparable from the chalice: it forms an integral part of the chalice and no one will ever be able to detach this cross from the chalice; this cross is engraved in the base of Father’s chalice. This cross, too, is engraved in Father’s life from his earliest childhood, from the age of nine, when he had the great sorrow of losing his father while still a child. And for as long as he lived, this cross remained engraved in Father’s life. The life of a priest is necessarily a crucifixion, and I think that Father’s life was perhaps more of a crucifixion than the lives of many other priests who, perhaps for that very reason, do not have Father’s spiritual vigor; because the cross is not an integral constant, engraved in their life, but maybe only juxtaposed, superposed on their life. The cross ought to be engraved, impressed in a permanent and inseparable way in the soul and the heart of the priest, in his very life; and that was the case with our beloved Fr. de Chivré. Finally, the third thing we can see in this chalice, after its noble and pure material, after this cross engraved in the base, at the node of the chalice we find a vine: a cluster of grapes and the leaves of the vine: it is the superabundance of life, the fullness of life which overflows from this chalice, marked with the seal of the Cross; a fullness of life sufficient to re-consecrate the world, to re-sacralize a desecrated earth. And when just a moment ago we read the passage from the book of Wisdom, how can we not think precisely of Father’s chalice, of all these fruits of sanctity attributed to the Wisdom of God and, rightly, to our Lady; but also the fruits which ripened in the heart of Father’s chalice, those fruits of sanctity spread by his daily Mass, by his holy, pious and sometimes painful celebration…? God only knows the multitude of those fruits! But those who had the grace to be able to assist at Father’s Mass in the last years of his life know to what point he truly lived his Mass; to what point it was adoration and suffering. We felt his soul draw itself toward the Heart of our Lord, and we understood that his soul suffered, even physically, in unison with the soul of our Lord. All that suffering he lived through every day, there, at the heart of this chalice—all that suffering was a source of life. Who can say the number of souls who found life again at Father’s feet; who perhaps even found the faith again; who found again the courage to live, the courage to go forward simply because Father had found in his chalice the strength to smile? What power there was in Father’s smile, in just a THE ANGELUS • January 2005 word, when Father would say, almost offhandedly, “Come, child…” And suddenly everything was simple: Father had understood you, Father had guessed, because Father had already understood these sufferings, our own sufferings, in the chalice of his Mass, because in his daily Mass, he lived the suffering of our Lord. That is surely where lies the secret of Father’s penetration of hearts, his penetration of souls. He had an extraordinary grace: the penetration of our most intimate sufferings. And what was his secret? Well, it was precisely that suffering shared with our Lord Jesus Christ at the heart of the chalice, deep within the chalice of his Mass. Here, then, are a few very imperfect words to help us perhaps summarize the life of Fr. de Chivré: nobility, the cross, and then the abundance of life. I am convinced that it is within this chalice that Father found the answers to our questions and to his own questions; the answers to what we came to confide to him to help us resolve our difficulties. There, in the chalice, he found THE answer, that is, our Lord, and our Lord Jesus Christ crucified. The answer is there, and even if Father isn’t there any more, we, too, can go and seek the answer every day in the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is the answer, the only answer: Jesus Christ. Father also found that answer at the feet of our Lady. Father had named that statue in front of which he used to kneel, before the altar in his oratory, “Our Lady of the Answer.” There is the answer. It is the answer our Lady used to give him in silence; she would give it to him simply by showing him the tabernacle, the altar: there is the answer. On this First Saturday of the month, as we celebrate the Immaculate Heart of Mary, let us pray to our Lady to make us always be the echo of that answer, and to draw us to do what Father used to do: to go before our Lord Jesus Christ to find the answer to all the difficulties we may have. May she teach us to follow her divine Son on the road to Paradise, with a soul full of hope, full of dignity; with a soul full of confidence. As long as the Chalice of the Real Presence of His Son will be raised up to God, there will be for souls, even the most deprived or the most rebellious, a source of life and salvation; a place to go and re-sacralize all the beatings of their heart; a holy refuge to consecrate every instant of their life here below. Translated from a sermon preached by Fr. Michel Simoulin (Aug. 7, 2004) at Fanjeaux, France, exclusively for Angelus Press. Fr. Michel Simoulin was ordained in 1980 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. He is currently serving in Romagne, France, as chaplain to St. Thomas Aquinas School. Fr. BernardMarie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop 33 h . e . B i s h o p B e r n a r d f e l l a y Letter #67 Letter #67 to Friends and Benefactors from Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X In these days when we celebrate the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, may the newborn Child cover you with His blessings. We ask Him that He might render you a hundredfold your generosities and devotion! The Nativity is full of lessons for our times. God among us, the True God, Eternal and All-powerful, Creator of all things and the absolute Sovereign comes in our midst to save us. While being diligent and making the best use of the means He gives us, we must expect EVERYTHING of Him. “Without Me you can do nothing.” “It is the Father’s will that you bear many fruits.” These two phrases are not at all contradictory, but complementary —they indicate the personal effort and cooperation that should accompany the grace of God. They tell us that with Our Lord we can do everything, in whatever situation we find ourselves, and especially in this 21st century of unbelievable decadence. The times in which we live discourage many people. Rebellion against God becomes more and more open, manifest, blasphemous, through the whole world. The Church seems inert, numb and without force before this new deluge. More than ever, we must all see with the eyes of faith, this faith which conquers the world, which gives the courage to fight, this faith by which we resist even the devil. Cui resistite fortes in fide. It is this faith which makes us recognize in the Newborn in the crèche our God, the Word made flesh, the Savior of the world, Who asks us to stake everything on Him. Venite adoremus! We would like to take this opportunity to communicate to you the letter we sent to Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos in June. It expresses our unchanged position towards Rome. May Our Lady protect you in this new year and obtain for us all this faithfulness to the end which will save us; may she bless you with the Child Jesus, as the Liturgy so well puts it: Nos cum prole pia, benedicat Virgo Maria. With all our gratitude, on the feast of Christmas 2004, + Bernard Fellay THE ANGELUS • January 2005 34 Letter to Cardinal Hoyos FRATERNITÉ SACERDOTALE SAINT PIE X Schwandegg CH 6313 MENZINGEN Tel. [41] 41 755 36 36 FAX [41] 41 755 14 44 His Excellency Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos Menzingen, 6 June 2004 Most Reverend Eminence, Your letter of December 30, a letter of greetings with the new proposal of an accord did indeed reach us. We have taken some time to answer because it leaves us perplexed. Allow me to respond with the greatest frankness, the only way of making progress. We are sensitive to your efforts and those of the Holy Father to come to our aid, and we see that this overture on your part is certainly very generous. Accordingly, we are much afraid lest our attitude and our response not be understood. When we made our request that two conditions be met at the beginning of our discussions, and when we repeated that request several times, we were simply indicating a natural and necessary order to follow: before constructing a roadway on a bridge, one must lay its foundations. Otherwise the enterprise is doomed to failure. We do not see how we could arrive at a recognition without passing through a number of steps. Among these steps, the first seems to us to be the lifting of the decree of excommunication. The excommunication applying to the Orthodox was lifted without their in any way changing their attitude towards the Holy See; would it not be possible to do something similar in our regard, for us who have never separated ourselves from the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, which we have always recognized as defined by Vatican Council I. At the time of our consecration in 1988 we took an oath of fidelity to the Holy See; we have always professed our attachment to the Holy See and the Sovereign Pontiff, we have taken all kinds of measures to show that we have no intention of erecting a parallel hierarchy: it should not be so difficult to cleanse us from the accusation of schism... As regards the penalty for the reception of the episcopate, the Code of Canon Law of 1983 foresees that the maximum penalty should not be applied in the case where a subject has acted on the basis of a subjective necessity. If the Holy See does not want to admit that there was a state of objective necessity, it should at least admit that we perceive things in this way. Such a measure would be recognized as a real overture on the part of Rome and would create the new climate necessary for any progress. At the same time, the SSPX would submit itself to what we could by analogy call an ad limina visit. The Holy See could observe us and examine our development without there being any engagement of the two sides for the time being. With respect to the formulas that you ask us to sign, they suppose a certain number of conditions that we cannot accept and that leave us very ill at ease. Continued on next page. THE ANGELUS • January 2005 35 Continued from previous page. The propositions suppose that we are guilty and that this guilt has separated us from the Church. In reparation, and to certify our orthodoxy, they ask us for a sort of limited profession of faith (Vatican Council II and the Novus Ordo). Most of our priests and faithful have been directly confronted with heresy, and often faced with grave liturgical scandal coming from their own pastors, from bishops as well as priests. The whole history of our movement is marked by a tragic succession of events of this kind up to today, as we are joined by religious, seminarians, and priests who have had the same experience. You cannot exact a justified penalty or contrition because alone, abandoned by the pastors and betrayed by them, we have reacted to conserve the faith of our baptism or in order not to dishonor the divine Majesty. It is impossible to analyze the 1988 Consecrations without considering the tragic context in which they took place. Otherwise, things become incomprehensible and justice no longer has its due. Furthermore, it is often said that our status would be a concession, and that we would be accorded a situation suitable to our “special charism.” Must one recall that what we are attached to is the common patrimony of the Roman Catholic Church? We do not ask nor do we seek a special status as a mark of singularity, but we want a “normal” place in the Church. So long as the Tridentine Mass is considered a particular concession, we remain marginalized, in a precarious and suspect position. It is in this perspective that we claim a right that has never been lost: that of the Mass for everyone. To reduce this right to an indult (which certain Roman voices hold to be provisory) is already to diminish it. In the current situation, where everything of a traditional savor immediately becomes suspect, we have need of a protector and defender of our interests in the Curia. It is more a question of representing Tradition at Rome than of establishing a delegate of the Holy See for traditional matters, as in the case of Ecclesia Dei today. In order for this organization to have some credibility and to correspond to its purpose, it is important that it be composed of members who belong to Catholic Tradition. To achieve a “recognition” without having first resolved these questions in principle would be to doom the proposed “practical accord” to failure, for we hope to act tomorrow with the same fidelity to Catholic Tradition as we do today. Wanting to maintain the frankness with which we address these questions (which is not a matter of arrogance or of lack of charity), we would be condemned tomorrow as we were yesterday. At baptism a contract is established between the Christian soul and the Church: “What do you ask of the Church?” “The faith.” This is what we ask of Rome: that Rome confirm us in the Faith, the faith of all times, the immutable faith. We have the strict right to demand this of the Roman authorities. We do not believe that we can truly progress towards a “recognition” so long as Rome will not have shown its concrete intention to dissipate the cloud which has invaded the temple of God, obscured the faith and paralyzed the supernatural life of the Church under the cover of a Council and subsequent reforms. In the hope that this letter may make its contribution to overcoming the current inertia we assure you, Eminence, of our daily prayers for the fulfillment of your heavy duty in this grave hour of Holy Mother Church. +Bernard Fellay THE ANGELUS • January 2005 36 F r . D a n i e l C o u t u r e Dear Friends of the Society of Saint Pius X in Asia, It has been a month now since the tsunami disaster, and I promised to give you some considerations on it from a priest’s point of view. I was prompted to put my thoughts on paper while in Sri Lanka recently, having to reply to one specific insulting and blasphemous article. Here is my reply to this article with only very minor additions (mostly quotes), since this time my readers are mostly Catholics (not so in Sri Lanka, with a Buddhist majority). This comes at the right moment for another reason. The Civiltà Cattolicà, the famous Jesuit Italian magazine, has just written an article in which the editor begins by discarding absolutely the element of Divine Justice one may see in this natural disaster. The editorial states: First of all, it must be said that to see divine punishment in natural disasters, because of men’s sins, is an error, which puts God, as revealed by Jesus in the Gospel, into question. Moreover, the article not only eliminates the Divine Justice but boldly presumes that God has saved all the victims! The way in which this [i.e., how good can come out of evil] takes place is a great mystery for us, but precisely because God is good we must think that he would not permit these painful and tragic events if he was not able and did not have the intention to bring good out of evil for men....In his paternal tenderness, God was close to each one of those children and saved them in his Kingdom [emphasis mine]. (www.zenit.org, Jan. 20, 2005) Such Jesuits ought to redo the first week of their own Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Some people (The Island, Sri Lanka, Jan. 15, p.7) are wondering where was God on that morning of December 26, and how could a loving God allow such a tragedy, the worst in recent memory? THE ANGELUS • January 2005 TSU THEOLOGICAL CO 37 Sixty-three deaths were recorded from this village alone. In the background is the unharmed house of a traditional Catholic family. These men lost their fishing boat, their only means of providing for themselves. UNAMI CONSIDERATIONS AND PRACTICAL AID THE ANGELUS • January 2005 38 This is but a normal reaction of one whose idea of God is very incomplete, erroneous, and, indeed, blasphemous. Back in the 12th century, St. Thomas Aquinas was already answering, in his Summa Theologica, those who object, at the sight of so many evils in the world, that there cannot be a God ruling the universe, that such a God, if He exists, could not, should not tolerate all the evils we see. St. Thomas replied that God is so powerful as to draw good out of evil. The God of the Christians, the one and only true God, is all-perfect. That means not only all loving, all good, omnipotent, all wise, but also all just. We think, in our self-centeredness, that God owes us everything here below, that whenever something bad happens, it is the fault of God: “Why did God do that?” In such case we show our shortsightedness, we miss the big picture. Where was God on December 26? “When the waves struck, God was where He always is–on His throne, working out His will, perfectly” (Straits Times, Singapore, Jan. 22, 2005, p.S13). And what was He doing? He was–as He had been doing for centuries, for millennia–ruling every single wave of the ocean: The waves smashed this boat under a bridge. Who stilleth the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves (Ps. 64:7), Thou rulest the pride of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them (Ps. 88:10). The fact that we are used to the normal cycle of nature manifests that we accept, at least unconsciously, a law for the universe, therefore its Lawgiver. Then, to blame the Legislator for suspending for a few moments the normal rhythm of nature for reasons of His own is sheer blasphemy. Who are we, who have enough difficulties in ruling our own little lives, to judge the Ruler of the Universe? Listen to Him answering Job–and through Job anyone who asks God the same question: Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it? Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Who laid the corner-stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or [who] shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, [as if] it had issued out of the womb; When I made clouds the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling-band for it, and marked out for it my bound, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; And here shall thy proud waves be stayed? ( Job 38:3-11) Even pagan Greek philosophers, using common-sense principles–such as there is no effect without a cause, no order without a mind ordering things for a purpose–had no problem accepting that there is a Maker of the universe, ruling it, using it for His glory and our own good. St. Thomas Aquinas taught in one of his sermons (Serm. Dom. 5), that although on one side, “creatures teach us to praise God because all of them do praise Him and invite us to praise Him (‘It is surprising,’ said St. Augustine, ‘that man doesn’t praise God unceasingly when all creatures invite THE ANGELUS • January 2005 In the priory, 90 bags of food are ready to be loaded into the van and distributed. him to do so’).” On the other side, continues the Angelic Doctor, “we see all the creatures ready to punish those who revolt against God, according to Wisdom (16:24): ‘The creature serving Thee, the Creator, is made fierce against the unjust for their punishment.’” We can add here a passage of St. Ignatius of Loyola, completing what St. Thomas Aquinas said about the creatures at the service of the Creator. In trying to make us understand the gravity of sin and our ingratitude when committing sin, St. Ignatius asks each one of us, in the Second Exercise of the First Week, to consider what God is, against Whom I have sinned, according to His attributes; comparing them with their contraries in me–His Wisdom with my ignorance; His Omnipotence with my weakness; His Justice with my iniquity; His Goodness with my malice. Then, this consideration should be followed by an exclamation of wonder with deep feeling, going through all creatures, how they have left me in life and preserved me in it; the Angels, how, though they are the sword of the Divine Justice, they have endured me, and guarded me, and prayed for me; the Saints, how they have been engaged in interceding and praying for me; and the heavens, sun, moon, stars, and elements, I c t 39 This boat was recovered from an inland road, but was no longer seaworthy. In order to get a bag of food villagers had to show a coupon given them beforehand by the head fisherman testifying which ones were really victims of the tsunami. fruits, birds, fishes and animals–and the earth, how it has not opened to swallow me up, creating new hells for me to suffer in them forever! Need I add that the book of St. Ignatius was approved by more than 40 popes? The bottom line in all this is the mystery of sin, which most of us and most of our contemporaries ignore or have forgotten. Now, let us apply all this to the tsunami. Why did God allow it? What good can come out of it? Firstly, on the occasion of this disaster, there have been great acts of charity and of generosity, and these are still being seen from everywhere at the sight of so much suffering. The tsunami is, moreover, a terrible lesson for the creature who ignores its Creator and His Law, it is clearly an act of the Divine Justice against sins which are a plague to the whole modern world. This ought to be a warning for all. To prove this, let us glance for a moment at three of the areas most hit by the waves: Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Aceh, Indonesia. There are no doubt good people everywhere, even in Aceh, but Aceh has been well known, for many centuries, for its pirates. Back in the 16th century, St. Francis Xavier had to deplore it. One of his most famous and historically documented prophecies concerns a victory over these pirates (cf. Villagers display their coupons. G. Schurhammer S.J., Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. III, Indonesia [1980], pp.225-241). Nowadays, this part of the Indian Ocean, the Malacca Strait, is still a very dangerous one for ships. One has simply to search the Internet to find recent documents proving this, such as those published by the International Maritime Bureau describing pirates’ various recent attacks. It is vital that action be taken by Indonesian authorities to ensure that vessels off the northern coast of Sumatra can navigate in safety. (IMB Director, Captain Pottengal Mukundan [Feb. 13, 2004]) Phuket and the Thai coast have beautiful beaches indeed, may be called “Paradise” for their natural beauties, but they are also a hot-bed of prostitution of every kind–a very well known fact. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka, too, is on the list of the countries where the prostitution of children, especially along the coast, with its “sex tourism,” is a real national plague. Where in the world would you find (as one could see in Colombo until recently), as you arrive in a capital’s international airport, a huge billboard warning tourists not to touch the children? Now, it is worth recalling a terrible warning of the Divine Master for such sins: THE ANGELUS • January 2005 40 A woman stands where there used to be a house. TV sets destroyed by the waves. Nothing remains of this house but the cement slab. But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Mt. 18:6) Such sins cry to heaven for vengeance. God is the defender of the innocent, yes, and He surely has the right to punish nations (and unfortunately that will include innocents as well)–in whatever way He decides—who let their children be thus abused. In Sri Lanka, we can add another reason for the fury of the sea. The December 26th issue–note the date–of the Sunday Leader (p.13), in an article entitled “Christians spend Christmas in fear,” described the violence against Christians nationwide. It specified that in 2003, 39 churches were attacked in and around the city, with 91 other recorded incidents of arson, desecration of churches, etc., and in 2004, 78 similar incidents were recorded. In the same vein, just before Christmas this year, Buddhists plastered posters on walls, buses, train wagons, etc., insulting Our Lord Jesus Christ with the following: “Jesu baba thoth-tha babek the?–Isn’t baby Jesus a helpless, silly baby?” (cf. Catholic Messenger, Jan. 16, 2005, p.2). Well, we now have the terrible answer to this blasphemous question, from the One Whom “even the wind and the sea obey” (Mk. 4:41). Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. (Gal. 6:7-8) Will man learn from this sad chapter of history? Will man repent from his sins? I doubt it. “With THE ANGELUS • January 2005 desolation is all the land made desolate, because there is none that considereth in the heart” ( Jer. 12:11). Life will go on, sinful habits will continue as if Paradise were to be found on earth. It is not. We were told, by Swiss scientists in 2000, that a megatsunami is very likely to happen soon by the rupture of the Cumbre Vieja, a live volcano in the Canary Islands. Will this imminent danger urge people to make their peace with God? Unlikely. Have mercy on us, O Lord! Modern madness and foolishness is no different now than it was 2000 years ago. It is part of fallen human nature to refuse to submit to reality and to the Almighty. It makes man inexcusable, because he refuses to be reasonable, logical. Thus wrote St. Paul facing the same problems 2000 years ago: For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified Him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. (Rom. 1:20-27) The final lesson we can draw from all this is what Our Blessed Lord said when news came of the slaughter of some Galileans by Pontius Pilate: Think you that these Galileans were sinners above all the men of Galilee, because they suffered such things? No, I say to you: but unless you repent, you shall all in like manner perish. (Lk. 13:2-3) “He that is able to understand it, let him understand” (Mt. 19:12). Fr. Daniel Couture was ordained for the Society of Saint Pius X at Ecône in 1984. He has been variously assigned as assistant, then prior of Post Falls, Idaho (1984-87); district superior of Ireland (1987-96); and currently superior of the District of Asia (1996-). Let Us Go To Jesus The Raccolta Revised under Pope Pius XII, this official collection (raccolta) of the Church’s prayers and devotions was published in English in 1957. It includes a timely supplement of additional prayers for many urgent needs all of which were composed under the same pontiff. Many of the more commonly used prayers and devotions are followed by the Latin text, thus providing the perfect aid for teachers and parents anxious to keep the Church’s language both alive and spiritually efficacious. These eight hundred prayers touch practically every spiritual and physical need, and every personal and societal hope. They are the confidently suppliant voice of the Catholic Church in her maternal zeal, joy and agony, nobility and militancy. 752pp, bonded leather softcover, STK# 6765. $39.95 Fr. F.X. Lasance Devotions in honor of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. Liturgical texts, brief visits to the Blessed Sacrament, together with prayers for Mass and Holy Communion, Litanies and Devotions for various occasions. Loaded! All that and: Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus  Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus  Litany of the Holy Name  Litany of the Sacred Heart  Reflections on the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Kingdom Come,” other prayers  Prayer to the Holy Ghost  Prayer of St. Alphonsus Ligouri  Prayers and Acts before the Blessed Sacrament  The Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady Queen of the Holy Rosary  Mysteries of the Rosary with suggested meditation themes  An Act of Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary  The Memorare  Litany of the Blessed Virgin  Prayers to St. Joseph  Prayers for the Dying and the Holy Souls in Purgatory  Prayers for use during Mass  Thanksgiving after Holy Communion  Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. With illustrations. Easily fits into a pocket. W NE 122pp, pocket-sized softcover, STK# 8062Q $4.95 Liturgical Calendar 2005 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Never before published photos show Fr. Lefebvre with his flock in the African bush in the early 1940’s, his installation as Bishop of Dakar, his apostolic labors through the 1950’s for which he was praised so highly by Pope Pius XII, who called him “the best of my apostolic delegates.” Two photos depict him as the Superior General of the 7,000 member missionary congregation: one at the Council and another in 1965 (shortly before his “retirement”) accepting an honorary degree from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Each image is described by a caption taken from the text of Bishop Tissier’s biography. Plenty of room for your notes and appointment reminders. Large-holed for easy hanging! All the feast days of the year according to the 1962 Roman Missal are listed with class and liturgical color marked. Reminders of days of fast and abstinence. Includes a list of patron saints and their feast days, and the latest directory of Latin Mass locations and traditional Catholic schools in the US and Canada. 10¾" x 10¾" Full color throughout, STK# CAL2005Q $9.95 20 pages What Catholics NEED to Know the conference Bishop Bernard Fellay Given November, 2004 by the Superior General of the SSPX about:  How the wall against Catholic Tradition is crumbling  The “Triple Bankruptcy” of the Novus Ordo  Clerics favoring the SSPX  New confusions  The lessons of fallen Campos  Zoo-cage Catholicism  Applications of authentic obedience  Status of SSPX in Rome  Letters to Cardinal Hoyos  Other Latin Mass groups seek to excommunicate faithful at SSPX Masses  No bridge to Rome without pillars. Why No Agreement  The blessing of the “excommunications”  Imposters pretending to defend the Faith  Rome, seat of the New Ecumenism of Cardinal Kasper  The destructive consequences of a new definition of “person”  How Christ and the Church are “dialogue”  Hope in Mary 20pp, 8" x 10¾", STK# 8073Q $2.95 W NE 1980pp, sewn binding, gold-embossed skivertex cover, STK# 8043 $59.95 Angelus Press is proud to announce the publication of the first totally re-typeset, Latin-English daily missal for the laity since Vatican II. This is the most complete missal ever produced in the English language. We have included everything and have produced a missal that is affordable while being of the highest durability. The Roman Catholic Daily Missal will become your life-long liturgical companion—at Church, at home, and on the road. We are now accepting orders, but the missals will not be shipped until January 15, 2005.  All new typesetting—not a photographic reproduction. Clear and crisp type.  According to the 1962 juxta typica (typical edition) of the Missale Romanum  1,980 pages  All liturgical texts in Latin and English (both Propers and Ordinary)  All readings in English (Douay-Rheims) and Latin  All music in Gregorian notation  Ordinary with rubrics in red  Gilt edges—it won’t come off if it gets wet like some missals!  5 liturgically-colored non-fraying ribbons  Smythe Sewn, rounded back binding with durable, leather-like Skivertex polymer gold-embossed flexible cover  Rounded corners on pages and cover  Reinforced 80 lb. resin-impregnated endsheets for extreme durability  Fully and thoroughly Indexed Why is this the best missal ever?  All the Masses of the Liturgical Year according to the Roman Calendar of 1962—Temporal and Sanctoral Cycles and accompanying rites (Blessing of Ashes, Blessing of Palms, Chrism Mass, and the Blessing of Holy Oils, etc.)  Complete Holy Week Liturgy of 1962  Supplements containing the additional Masses for the United States and Canada  Feasts of particular Religious Congregations  Liturgical Calendar  Table of Moveable Feasts updated to 2050 AD  Masses for the Dead (including infants), Complete Burial Service, Prayers for the Dead  Marriage Service  Special Commemorations  39 Votive Collects  17 Votive Masses  Common Masses of the Saints and the Blessed Virgin  Conclusions of Collects  Rite of Baptism  The Churching of Women  Rite of Confirmation  Rite of Extreme Unction  Various Blessings  Vespers for Sundays and Feasts  Compline for Sundays  Office of Tenebrae  The Itinerary or Office before a Journey  Various Devotions and Prayers including favorite Litanies, the Way of the Cross, prayers of the Rosary and others.  Morning and Evening Prayers  Devotions for Confession  Litany of the Saints  Devotions for Communion  Anthems to the Blessed Virgin  Hymns in honor of Our Lord and Our Lady  An explanation of “The Liturgy or Public Worship of the Catholic and Roman Church”  A Summary of Christian Doctrine  Kyriale with Tones for the most common sets of Masses (I Lux et Origo, II Kyrie Fons Bonitatis, IV Cunctipotens Genitor Deus, VIII De Angelis, IX Cum Jubilo, XI Orbis Factor, XXVII Sundays of Advent & Lent, XVIII Deus Genitor Alme)  Tones for Asperges and Vidi Aquam  Tones for three of the most common Credos—I, III, IV  Te Deum Shipping & Handling US/Canada Foreign $.01 to $10.00 $3.95 $7.95 $10.01 to $25.00 $5.95 $9.95 $25.01 to $50.00 $6.95 $12.95 $50.01 to $100.00 $8.95 $14.95 Over $100.00 9% of order 12% of order Airmail surcharge (in addition to above) Canada 8% of subtotal; Foreign 21% of subtotal. angelus Press 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri 64109 1-800-96ORDER 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.