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“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

HELL:
rATHER THAN HELL:

REINCARNATION

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“Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.”
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The

ngelus
A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION

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July 2005
Volume XXVIII, Number 7

• 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
ASSISTANT EDITOR

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Fr. Kenneth Novak

PART 1

RATHER THAN HELL: REINCARNATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Dr. Gyula A. Mago

Mr. James Vogel
OPERATIONS AND MARKETING

Mr. Christopher McCann

THE ANGEL OF THE STORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Dr. John Senior

SECRETARIES

Miss Anne Stinnett
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CIRCULATION MANAGER

THE FRANCISCAN MINIMS OF
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DESIGN AND LAYOUT

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TRANSCRIPTIONS

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Fr. Peter Scott

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE
MORAL THEOLOGY OF PRIVATE PROPERTY . . . . . . . . . 32
Fr. Kenneth Novak

Miss Miriam Werick

TIME ACCORDING TO GOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré

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ON OUR COVER: Onlookers choke on the smoldering remains of their burning
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pp.10-11). For one to be cremated here guarantees release from the cycle of birth and
death. An article which will appear in three parts, “Rather than Hell: Reincarnation”
begins in this issue starting on p.4. Cover photograph by Steve McCurry/Magnum
Photos used with permission.

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2

from
Letter
the

Editor

In its March 2005 issue, The Angelus republished
with permission an essay by Mr. Eric Gill (1882-1940)
titled “Education for What?” which he wrote in 1940.
For all the good which is in his writings, Mr. Gill had
some grave moral problems due to his erroneous ideas
about original sin. The full extent of Eric Gill’s moral
problems was first revealed in 1989 when a biography
titled Eric Gill: A Lover’s Quest for Art and God was
published by Fiona MacCarthy, an apostate Catholic.
These problems have been recently brought to light in
Catholic circles close to us, some of which have gone
so far as to connect Mr. Gill’s sins with this magazine’s
discussion of Catholic alternative economics, namely
that of the system called “Distributism,” an economic
system whose principles Eric Gill respected.
Despite the moral problems of Eric Gill–for
which we can do penance–“Education for What?”
itself is true, is Catholic, and is extremely sound.
In his counsels to a student (c.1270), St. Thomas
Aquinas advised: “Don’t concentrate on the person
of the speaker, but treasure up in your mind anything
profitable he may happen to say.” It’s a counsel H.E.
Bishop Fellay quoted to the student body of St. Mary’s
Academy and College (see The Angelus, May 2005). Just
as evil is evil no matter who commits it, so the truth is
true no matter who says it. Aristotle is quotable; he was
a pagan. President George W. Bush is quotable; he is
a heretic. Even an ass can get it right sometimes; read
about Balaam’s in Numbers 22-24.
By publishing the Gill article (or by using his Gill
Sans typeface in our magazine) Angelus Press in no
way condones Mr. Gill’s immorality; it condemns the
sin and commends the sinner to the mercy of God.
But, a consequence of having done so necessitates
the address of two specific issues more basic than Gill’s
moral life or the validity of Distributism: pleasing God
in our polemics and accepting the indirect authority of
the Catholic Church in political matters.
Firstly, on polemics:
Strictly speaking, “polemics” simply refers to
arguments among Catholics who seek to determine the
nature of true Catholic faith and practice on a given
point. Practically, in our day it has come to mean
any controversial argument, especially one attacking
a specific opinion. The word comes from the Greek
word polemos which means “war.”
Since Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and his
infamous March to the Sea (The Angelus, July 1995)
our notion of warfare in the US has been tainted.

Polemics is often colored by Sherman’s no-holds-barred
example of “total war.” The standards of debate–even
of civil discourse–have long been abandoned by the
world at large, and it is disheartening to see them too
often practically abandoned among Catholics as well.
(In large part this is to be blamed on the death of the
classical system of education, an education which
included rhetoric–the art of genuinely persuasive speech
and writing–as one of its linchpins.)
If we were blessed in our growing up with being
taught something of classical rhetoric by our teachers,
or basic civility from our parents, we would avoid
combating ideas with personal slurs. From our priests
we should have learned our obligations under the
fifth and eighth commandments regarding justice to
neighbor, not to mention our over-riding obligation
to practice charity. The Catholic manner of discourse
is at the level of principles and counter-reasoning, not
persons. The famous “argumentum ad hominem–argument
against the man” has always been and always will be a
logical fallacy, the tool of the self-seeking sophist rather
than the truth-seeking philosopher. The false argument
runs like this:
Benjamin Franklin says that lightning is static electricity,
but he was an unjust young man for having run away from his
apprenticeship. Therefore, lightning is not static electricity.

For a much stronger example of this tactic, take a
look at St. John’s Gospel (9:31-34). A man born blind
has been healed by Our Lord and is trying to convince
the authorities that Our Lord indeed had healed him
miraculously:
31. Now we know that God doth not hear sinners: but if a
man be a server of God, and doth his will, him he heareth.
32. From the beginning of the world it hath not been heard,
that any man hath opened the eyes of one born blind.
33. Unless this man were of God, he could not do any thing.
34. They answered, and said to him: Thou wast wholly born
in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.

Now, there circulates a refined and dangerous
version of the false argument ad hominem, which is the
ultimate smear tactic: guilt by association, especially
association of ideas. It goes something like this:
Here is a book which says Benjamin Franklin discovered
that lightning is static electricity which, of course, is untrue
(see above). On top of that, Benjamin Franklin was a
Freemason. Therefore, the author of this book must be a
Freemason, too.

It’s ridiculous, but only if one remembers that
the argument is to be kept at the level of principles,
not people. Otherwise, in an unsuspecting or overemotional moment, it is captivating.
All errors contain at least a grain of truth, just as a
rotten apple is an apple, and bad men can sometimes
say true things. Even a stopped clock is right twice a
day!
Catholics must sift truth from falsehood at the
level of principles, responding to rational argument
with rational argument. To the extent that we get
stuck on people, we hinder the advance of truth and

3
risk displeasing God by our own unreasonableness,
injustice, and lack of charity.
Secondly, on the indirect authority of the Catholic
Church in Politics:
We know ourselves. The American psyche is
uncomfortable with any violation of the “wall of
separation between Church and State” to the extent that
for some people, any intervention of the Catholic clergy
into political matters–even at the level of principles–is
opposed as inappropriate. The best popes have said that
this is a liberal notion. It is vain to speak of the Social
Kingship of Christ if the Catholic clergy is denied any
voice in pursuing the concrete realization of that goal.
It cannot be denied that the Church’s direct authority
lies in the spiritual realm, but the doctrine of the “Two
Swords” means that we must accept the Church’s
indirect authority in the temporal realm, too.
The Catholic Church is concerned with one thing:
to bring as many people as possible to their supernatural
final end, the Beatific Vision. The State is concerned
with one thing: to bring as many people as possible
to their natural final end, the fulfillment of a virtuous
life. The wrinkle comes when the Church’s mission is
stymied because the State doesn’t fulfill its mission. Yet,
the State is incapable of fulfilling its mission without
help from the Church. We must accept that the two
entities are meant by God to work together. Both are
“perfect societies,” meaning that each has its own
means to pursue its end. However, when two “supreme”
authorities are meant to work together, there must be
some coordination between them, and one must be
somewhat subjected to the other. This is where the
indirect authority of the Catholic Church over the State
comes in.
Of course, the Church has direct authority over
the State in religious matters as such. There is only
one God and only one True Church which He has
founded. There is only one way to heaven, and the
State, itself a creature of God, must submit or suffer the
consequences which we see all around us. The State is
directly responsible for the natural common good, but
this natural common good is linked necessarily to the
supernatural common good–salvation–which is in the
care of the Church. Therefore, in order to carry out
her proper natural mission, the State must necessarily
pursue the natural common good within the limits set
by God’s laws given it by the Church. These limits
include assessments of concrete political and economic
programs in the light of moral principles. (For an
example of such principles, read in this issue “A Boring
But Necessary Investigation of the Moral Theology of
Private Property,” pp.32-37.)
You and I are children wounded by original sin.
Like our First Parents, we chafe under limits, even
when they are set by the Church. The easiest way
to reject them is to use dirty tactics to discredit the
Church and her clergy, and thus undermine the whole
idea of her authority in temporal matters. This is truly
Revolutionary. As Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara said in his
excellent article “Christendom and Revolution” (The

Angelus, Sept. 2003), “We must tear the Revolution out
of our hearts...and minds.”
The Angelus is a Catholic journal published by a
priestly society for the English-speaking world. The
majority of its authors are lay people, and many of their
writings are efforts towards Catholic Action. Catholic
Action is the work of Catholics for the reign of Christ in
the temporal sphere (see Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’s
“Catholic Action” in The Angelus, Aug. 2003). The
Angelus chooses its authors and articles, and it makes
its decisions in concert with its superiors based, among
other considerations, on the principle of the indirect
authority of the Catholic Church in temporal affairs.
Under its current editorship, The Angelus has never
knowingly published any political or economic work
exceeding the limits set by the Church in doctrine or
morals.
There is only one reason why The Angelus has
chosen since 1998 to publish 12 articles referring
to Distributism, four of them book reviews: It is an
economic system conforming to the social teaching
of the Catholic Church, explained especially well by
Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI in
Quadragesimo Anno. Since popularized by the Catholic
Hilaire Belloc in The Servile State (1913), Distributism
has been attacked as “socialist” by the proponents
of Capitalism. While Distributism has never been
condemned by the Church, “individualist” economics
(rapacious Capitalism) has. Msgr. Luigi Civardi reminds
us of this in his book How Christ Changed the World:
The Social Principles of the Catholic Church where he says
about Pope Leo XIII’s “most solemn act,” his encyclical
Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891):
This document condemns the capitalistic system introduced
by liberalism, because it overestimates the rights of capital
and does not give just consideration to the rights of labor.
[Emphasis in original, p.53]

The Angelus has never claimed that Distributism is
the only possible economic system conforming to the
social teaching of the Church. Alongside the Church,
it has called Communism and Socialism intrinsically
evil, but has never said so about Capitalism as such. If
The Angelus is attacked for allowing its writers to decry
the excesses to which Capitalism is so prone–and which
reign triumphantly around us today to the detriment
of souls–and if The Angelus causes outcry by allowing
its writers to suggest means of promoting wider private
ownership as recommended by Pope Leo XIII and
Pope Pius XI, then it will rest serenely in the company
of these two Holy Fathers who were attacked and
caricatured for the same reasons.
We beg that civil debate on the principles replace
the current e-universe of sordid polemics, which are far
more pleasing to the common enemy of mankind than
to Our Lord Jesus Christ. May those with eyes, see;
those with ears, hear; those with hearts, understand (Mt.
13).
Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
FR. KENNETH NOVAK

rATHER THAN HELL

REINCARNA
REINCARNA

LL:

d r .

G y u l a

A .

M a g ó

The first effect of
not believing in God
is to believe
in anything.
–G.K. Chesterton
There was a saying in the Middle Ages: “Truth
is one, falsity is manifold.” Modern man might
prefer saying: “Truth is clear, falsity is fuzzy.”
This paper discusses a very fuzzy notion which
has come increasingly into vogue in the West: the
doctrine variously called “transmigration of souls,”
“metempsychosis,” “palingenesis,” “rebirth,” and
“reincarnation.” These various terms correspond
to the manifold ideas about reincarnation, which
constitute a very vague idea.
Although most of these terms imply belief in
an immortal soul that transmigrates or reincarnates,
Buddhism, while teaching rebirth, denies the
immortality of the soul, so it is not clear at all what
it is that reincarnates according to that religion
(we shall only discuss versions that assume an
immortal soul). A brief summary of the belief in
reincarnation is as follows: when a human being is
born, it is assumed that the soul has already lived
previous lives in other bodies, not necessarily in
human bodies, but also possibly in those of animals
or plants. Modern spiritists, theosophists and New

NATION
ON
NATION
TION
TI
ON

PART 1 OF 3 PARTS

“BACKGROUND TO REINCARNATION”

6
Agers prefer the term “reincarnation” restricted to
human bodies only. In this paper, for the sake of
simplicity, we shall also assume only human bodies.
And when a human being dies, it is usually assumed
that it has to look forward to another life in another
body. The time interval between reincarnations may
be seconds, days, or thousands of years.
There is no single set of explanations of how
all this might take place. For example, matching up
bodies with souls appears as a giant “traffic jam.”
What if several souls want the same body? What
if no soul wants the body committed to come into
existence? What if there is no soul available for the
body committed to come into existence? And while
the soul is discarnate, does it act autonomously (find
an available body, etc.) or are things done for it, and if
so, by whom?
One of the most awkward problems for
reincarnation is the so-called population problem.1 In
the imaginary world of reincarnationists, all human
souls are eternal, they always existed, so there is
a fixed number of them. By contrast, the number
of human beings (the number of bodies that need
animation by souls) has been greatly increasing. It
is estimated that 2000 years ago there were about
200 million human beings, whereas today there are
more than six billion of them. If there are 200 million
souls, just right for the time of Our Lord, how can
they animate six billion bodies today? (No matter
what this fixed number is, the problem has to be
faced somewhere.) Reincarnationists glibly offer some
incredible “solutions”: a) one soul animates many
bodies; b) souls are “split up” into several copies;
c) new souls are brought in from “other world
systems” that surely must exist “somewhere out
there.”
It is clear that this doctrine raises a lot more
questions than it answers. Since the interest of human
beings is usually focused on the (immediately)
previous incarnations, and on the (immediately)
subsequent incarnations, the ultimate questions
1) where does the soul ultimately come from, and
2) where does the soul ultimately go–recede
from the focus of attention, and no answer is sought
or offered to them. In other words, all interest in
eschatology vanishes. G.K. Chesterton observed that
Reincarnation is not really a mystical idea. It is not really
a transcendental idea, or in that sense a religious idea.
Mysticism conceives something transcending experience;
religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil
than experience can give. Reincarnation need only extend
experiences in the sense of repeating them. It is no more
transcendental for a man to remember what he did in
Babylon before he was born than to remember what
he did in Brixton before he had a knock on the head.
His successive lives need not be any more than human
lives, under whatever limitations burden human life. It
has nothing to do with seeing God or even conjuring up
the devil. In other words, reincarnation as such does not
necessarily escape from the wheel of destiny; in some sense
it is the wheel of destiny.2
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

Recent developments are proving Chesterton
correct. Indeed, reincarnation today is treated
primarily as a therapeutic idea, its main (pretended)
use being what is called a “past-life therapy.” It is
also used for explaining such non-issues as déjà-vu
experiences, child prodigies, and phobias. None of
them have anything to do with the great issues of
religion such as afterlife or the meaning of life.
There are many hideous consequences of the
doctrine of reincarnation, one pointed out by Fr.
Arendzen :
Nature seems to lead men spontaneously to regard childhood
as the embodiment of innocence, and infants as those who
as yet know not sin. Nature, on the theory of rebirth, is the
great deceiver, for a number of infants are supposed to be
really deep-dyed criminals and monsters of wickedness
awaiting terrible retribution, and all have some sins to
expiate, otherwise they would not have been born at all.3

And you should not swat mosquitoes or tread on
ants because any of them might be your grandmother,
etc., etc.

HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE
OF REINCARNATION
As our title suggests, reincarnation in the modern
West is first and foremost wishful thinking. But its
beginnings were expressions of ignorance, as Paul
Siwek, S.J., explains:
But how are we to conceive of human life devoid of
any bodily substratum, the life of the soul alone? This is
the problem which could not fail to confront the primitive
mind. And we must admit that this problem was of a
puzzling nature. Truly, life as experience manifests it to
be, is based on matter; it depends on the body; is it not
by means of the body connected with the soul that we get
into contact with the world? Our first acquaintance with
the world is due to our senses, our first reactions to the
outside world are in the form of affections, emotions and
other tendencies. Now, can the sensations and affections
be conceived of as being independent of matter? How
are we to imagine the life of the soul alone, a life devoid
of any material support? That is the first difficulty which
confronted primitive man.
But there is another difficulty. It is after death that the
righteous expect to receive their full reward; and it is
likewise after death that punishment will be meted out
to the wicked. Now, how is it conceivable that man will
enjoy real happiness if he is deprived of one of his essential
parts, namely his body? On the other hand, how are we to
interpret the meaning of punishment for a man who, having
no body, cannot be affected by fire or frost, nor be subject
to hunger or thirst?
These difficulties must have assumed a particular
importance in the eyes of primitive man whose mentality
was very much akin to that of a child. Like a child,
primitive man does not easily grasp the intensity of mental
life, its innermost joys, its silent sufferings; in his case
joys and pains manifest themselves spontaneously in the
noisy forms of cries, tears, and spasms. The disciple of
the Avesta dreams of his paradise in radiant light and the
brightest colors, with the choicest tapestries woven of the

7
most precious material. For Homer, happiness in the next
world consists of the sojourn “in the Elysian Fields situated
at the earth’s limits where the sweetest life is enjoyed by
human beings, where there is no snow, no severe winters,
no rain, only gentle breezes rising from the Ocean to cool
and refresh men.” The religious ideas of other nations and
their conceptions of happiness and punishment in the next
world were not much loftier.
One understands the strong fascination that must
have been exerted on so rude a mentality by the idea of
reincarnation, which did away in such a naive manner
with the difficulties we have mentioned. In the place of the
body buried in the ground, or reduced to ashes, the soul
would be given a new body–human, animal or vegetable,
no matter which; the essential being that the existence of
man in another life might be conceivable, his happiness or
punishment possible.
Those are the reasons–at least the principal ones–which
must have influenced primitive thought in favor of the ideas
of reincarnation. They are the real origin of the success of
this theory which Plotinus does not hesitate to call “a Faith
universally professed.”4

Continuing the history of reincarnation:
Herodotus tells us in a well-known passage that “the
Egyptians were the first to assert the immortality of the
soul, and that it passes on the death of the body into
another animal; and that when it has gone the round of
all forms of life on land, in water, and in air, then it once
more enters a human body born for it; and this cycle of
the soul takes place in three thousand years.” That the
doctrine first originated with the Egyptians is unlikely. It
almost certainly passed from Egypt into Greece, but the
same belief had sprung up independently in many nations
from a very early date.5

In Greece, Pythagoras (c.582-c.507 B.C.)
borrowed the idea of transmigration of souls from
Orphism, the secret mystery rites in worship of
Dionysus.6 Another important representative of
the doctrine was Empedocles (c.495-c.435 B.C.), a
follower of Pythagoras. Plato (427-347 B.C.) learned
the idea from the Pythagoreans, and the NeoPlatonists also taught it.
The two great religions of India, Hinduism
and Buddhism, both contain reincarnation as an
important dogma. Since the Cabala and the Talmud
are deviations from Old Testament Judaism, it
is not surprising to find reincarnation appear
in some versions of the Cabala7 and also in the
Talmud: “Some of the Talmudists invoke endless
transmigration as a penalty for crime.”8 “When in
the 16th century Platonism became again, so to
speak, the pole of philosophical thought, the idea of
reincarnation reappeared. Giordano Bruno (15481600) and Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) defend
it eagerly.”9 Goethe (1749-1832) also toyed with the
idea: “Surely, I must have lived already before the
Emperor Hadrian, for everything Roman attracts
me with irresistible force.”10 Skeptical philosopher
David Hume (1711-76 ) was also in favor of it. German
philosopher Schopenhauer (1788-1860 )
had some acquaintance with the thought of India, and
a good deal of sympathy with certain of its features–in

particular with its doctrine of repeated births. In the third
volume of his great work, The World as Will and Idea, he has
a chapter on “Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility
of Our True Nature.” This true nature he conceives to be
not the intellect, which is mortal, but “the character, i.e. the
will” which is “the eternal part” of us and comes again and
again to new births.11

Primitive religions of Africa, North and South
America, Australia and New Zealand contain belief in
reincarnation.
Reincarnation being a rival of the Catholic
doctrine of Resurrection, it played a prominent part
in many heresies. It was held by some Gnostics.
The Manichaeans combine metempsychosis with
belief in eternal punishment. In the Middle Ages
the Albigensians and the Cathari inherited many
of the cardinal doctrines of Manichaeanism, and
may be considered as Neo-Manichaeans and thus
reincarnationists.

THE MODERN OFFENSIVE
AGAINST CHRISTIANITY:
EASTERN RELIGIONS AND
OCCULTISM
As Christianity, and especially the Catholic
Church, had been gradually weakened during the
20th century and the flow of Christian missionaries
was drying up, a missionary movement of Hinduism
and Buddhism was beginning to take shape in
the reverse direction. The appearance of Swami
Vivekananda at the First World Parliament of
Religions held at Chicago in 1893 may have been the
beginning of the evangelizing of the West by Vedantic
(or monistic) Hinduism. It had an important effect on
intellectuals.
As far as efforts to reach the masses, we mention
four: the Hare Krishna movement, Transcendental
Meditation (TM), Zen, and Yoga. Of the four, Hare
Krishna or the “Krishna Consciousness” movement
is the most specific in its pagan religious content,
emphasizing non-rational means of worship (chanting,
music and dancing) in 300 temples in 71 different
countries. Zen was popularized in the West by D.T.
Suzuki (1870-1966). Yoga and TM (a derivative of
siddha-yoga) are especially dangerous because they
pretend to have nothing to do with religion. Yoga is
thought to be a form of gymnastics and relaxation,
and TM is also presented as a means of relaxation,
both thought to be merely techniques. In fact, yoga is
a spiritual discipline aimed to get man out of the cycle
of reincarnations.12
This campaign was so effective that in half a
century even the spiritual core of the Roman Catholic
Church, monasticism, began showing signs of rapid
disintegration. Cistercian monk Thomas Merton
(1915-1968), Catholic priest and prolific Catholic
writer (the story of his conversion entitled the Seven
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

8

BLAVATSKY

BESANT

Storey Mountain was immensely popular), at the end of his life, while continuing
to present himself as a Catholic contemplative, embraced and strongly supported
Hinduism and Zen. Among others, he wrote a strongly sympathetic introduction to a
new translation of the Bhagavad-Gita under the title The Significance of the BhagavadGita.13 While this “Bible” of the Hindus contradicts every important teaching of
Christianity, Merton’s only complaint against it was that it “appears to accept and
justify war.” Merton also published enthusiastically on Zen,14 accepting the false
assumption that all the “mystical experiences” in every religion are true. Thomas
Merton should have known better, he knew the warnings against this error in Holy
Scripture and in the Catholic spiritual classics.
As a significant part of the offensive, in the late 19th century strong and persistent
efforts were beginning, initiated in the West by Westerners, to introduce into the
West the doctrine of the reincarnation of souls through occultism. Movements like
Theosophy and Anthroposophy, both eventually merging into and culminating in the
New Age movement, promoted with extraordinary vigor everything anti-Christian,
and consequently embraced the doctrine of reincarnation. Occultism often involves
an anomaly, trying to graft reincarnation onto Christianity thereby hoping to ease
and speed its acceptance. But occultism and Christianity remain contradictories, and
consequently descriptions like “Christian occultist” or “Christian theosophist” are
meaningless.
The intention was not so much to introduce into the West existing Eastern
religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism but rather to undermine Christianity in
the most effective way. Those false Eastern religions are incapable of leading man
to God, but they have enough respect for the natural law so that, for example both
Hinduism and Buddhism strongly condemn abortion. As a result, they are acceptable
in the West only with modifications, and the modifications are provided by popular
versions of occultism, such as Theosophy and New Age.
In our days, Western man, and especially woman, wants nothing to do with
either Christianity or any other religion that takes the natural law seriously. Religions
(“organized religions”) are denounced as being too rigid: instead “belief-systems” and
“spiritualities” are being advocated. People use these as merely sly code words for
free-wheeling, do-it-yourself, private religions, failing to comprehend that “a man can
no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.”15
Such private religions are usually nothing more than fantasy, fiction, wishful
thinking, and often rank nonsense. That they involve the imagination only, and do
not involve reason at all just proves that they are paganism pure and simple. Again,
G.K. Chesterton explains it best:
The substance of all paganism may be summarized thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine
reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all....In
reality the rivers of mythology and philosophy run parallel and do not mingle till they meet in
the sea of Christendom.16

BAILEY

Modern Theosophy, popularized since 1875 by Russian Helena Blavatsky
(1831-91) and Englishwoman Annie Besant (1847-1933), as a Western adaptation of
Hinduism and Buddhism, strays far from its ancestors. Blavatsky preferred Buddhism,
whereas Besant preferred Hinduism, but both were strongly influenced by Western
Occultism. E. Cahill, S.J., describes the Theosophical Society as “an Occultist sect
whose doctrines are a blend of Materialism, Pantheism, Gnosticism and Cabalistic
Judaism.”17 And Jung’s summary is: “Theosophy...is pure Gnosticism in a Hindu
dress.”18
Fr. Martindale quotes P. Oltramare, a scholar of ancient Indian thought:
[T]he name Theosophy is affixed to the strangest wares: an amalgam of mysticism, charlatanism
and thaumaturgic pretensions which have been combined, in the most unlikely fashion, with an
almost childish anxiety to apply the method and terminology of science to transcendent matters.
India itself could not but be besmirched by the ridicule and disfavour so justly incurred by the
curious doctrines of Mme. Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant.19

The first sentence is an excellent summary of New Age as well. Martindale also
cites Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion, a book by French esotericist René Guénon
(1886-1951), according to which Theosophic books distort oriental religions.20
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

9
Helena Blavatsky comments on occultism and
Theosophy in particular: Theosophy is not a religion
but “Divine Science,” and “Wisdom religion was
ever one, and being the last word of possible human
knowledge, was therefore carefully preserved.”21
Here she emphasizes that all the occult, esoteric lore
had a continuous existence over thousands of years.
She made clear the same by stating that her greatest
work, entitled The Secret Doctrine, was not written as
a revelation but rather as a compilation of fragments
scattered throughout thousands of volumes describing
various Asian and pre-Christian European religions
and philosophies.
Theosophy was consistently anti-Christian from
the beginning, although it used Protestant ideas
and metaphors against Christianity such as inner
individual spirituality, and denounced ritualized and
clergy-mediated religious practices.
When Theosophists speak well of Christianity, it must be
firmly remembered that they do so at the cost of denying
its absolute, final, and unique validity, and of detecting in
it an esoteric doctrine which Christians are ignorant of or
deny.22

“Esoteric Christianity” is a malicious distortion of
true Christianity. For example, it
really considers Christ as the Gnostics did, i.e., as chief of
the Aeons....A. Besant considers that the historical Jesus was
born 105 B.C., became an Essene monk, studied Indian
occultist books, traveled into Egypt and at 29, surrendered
his body to a Buddha of Compassion, who entered it at the
Baptism. The man Jesus in his human body suffered for the
services rendered to its superhuman occupant.23

Such fables are subversive of Christianity, and
thus we are justified in considering Theosophy antiChristian.
Alice Bailey (1880-1949) was born in Manchester,
England. She was raised in an orthodox Anglican
family which, she would say later, made her very
unhappy and a bad-tempered little girl. “Life was not
worth living,” she said, and she attempted suicide
three times before she was even 15. In 1917, after
the breakup of her first marriage, she moved to
the United States, where she was introduced to the
teachings of Theosophy. By 1920, she became the
editor of the American Theosophists’ newspaper, The
Messenger. In this same year she launched a fight with
Annie Besant for control of Theosophy, which Alice
Bailey lost, when Besant’s man, Louis Roger, was
elected president. Immediately after the dust settled,
Alice and her husband Foster Bailey founded their
own Tibetan Lodge, then the Lucifer Trust, whose
name was changed in 1922 to its present Lucis Trust.
By the 1930’s, Bailey claimed 200,000 members, and
her faction of Theosophy grew even more rapidly
after Krishnamurti denounced Besant’s scheme to
promote him as the Messiah (the World-Teacher or the
Lord Matreya) in 1939.
During the early 1930’s, Bailey spent her
summers in Ascona, Switzerland, giving lectures

at the Eranos Conferences, which later came to be
dominated by Carl Jung. The Eranos Conferences
were an important center of the Occult Revival,
influential in shaping the forthcoming leadership of
the New Age movement. The Lucis Trust promulgates
the work of an “Ascended Master” who was working
through Alice Bailey for some 30 years. This “Tibetan
master, Djwhal Khul” (undoubtedly an infernal spirit)
wrote 19 books between 1919 and 1949 through Alice
Bailey.
Alice Bailey is sometimes called “the mother of
New Age,” and Helena Blavatsky “the grandmother
of New Age,” which explains the role they played.
There is no better justification of the saying that
“the New Age is the Kingdom of Satan on Earth”
than the legend of the mythical continent Atlantis
cherished by both Theosophy and New Age. At the
time of the cataclysmic destruction of Atlantis, the
legend says, the “White Lodge of Ascended Masters”
(infernal spirits that are the sources of the occult
doctrines) withdrew from the earth and left the planet
temporarily in control of the “Black Lodge” which
stands for their enemy, Christianity. The “White
Lodge,” also called “Great White Brotherhood,” is
now expected to return to Earth, and the New Age
they are to usher in will have no room whatsoever for
Christianity.

PROPAGANDA IN FAVOR
OF REINCARNATION
As an example, we discuss Reincarnation:
An East-West Anthology by Joseph Head and S. L.
Cranston, a haphazard compilation published by
the Theosophical Society of America.24 The book is
described on the first page as follows:
Reincarnation is frequently regarded as an Oriental concept
incompatible with Western thinking and traditional belief.
This encyclopedic compilation of quotations from eminent
philosophers, theologians, poets, scientists, and other
thinkers of every period of Western culture, and the
thoroughly documented survey of reincarnation in the
world religions, will serve to dispel this idea.

This argument is misleading: Western occultism
has always advocated reincarnation, and it has always
had a small following. But the book fails to show
that reincarnation has real supporters beyond the
followers of the occult. Beyond quotes from Helena
Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Karl Jung and other
occultists, the rest of the compilation gives dubious
support to the doctrine of reincarnation.
Many of the quotes in this book merely support
the existence of the human soul, or the immortality
thereof, which of course is fine, but they give no
support for reincarnation. Many quotes are not quotes
at all (this being a typical propaganda trick): some
famous name is listed, and the reader jumps to the
conclusion that he also supported reincarnation, but
there is no quote at all to show such support. For
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

10

Hindu Ritual

Cremation
Long stretches of the Ganges River
and its tributaries are cremation sites
like this one in Kathmandu, Nepal. The
Ganges spills out into the Indian Ocean,
the ultimate point of dissolution and
regeneration for all.

The corpse is wrapped in a white cotton cloth overlaid in an ochre one.
A garland of small orange flowers stretches along the length of the body.

The body is sloshed with river water.

The shroud is opened to
expose the face of the
victim to the god of the sun.

However, there are special cremation
sites. “Once in every lifetime an
observant Hindu hopes to make a
pilgrimage to the holy city of Varanasi.
Some come to wash away sickness and
sin in the Ganges River. Others bring
their dead to be burned. Still others
come to live their last days here, for
to die and be cremated in Varanasi
guarantees eternal release from the
cycle of birth and death.”––From “India:
Fifty Years of Independence,” May 1997,
National Geographic

The son walks around the body, smearing butter on the body
and dousing water on the face of his rotting father.

Th
co

11
example, Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist is listed
because he wrote a play about Julian the Apostate,
and Julian believed in reincarnation (discussed
later in this paper). A quote from the play is used,
presumably to insinuate that maybe Ibsen believed in
reincarnation too. Well, no, he did not. If he did, they
could have quoted him saying so.
And the book plays fast and loose with Catholic
authors. For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa is quoted:
“It is absolutely necessary that the soul should be
healed and purified and if this does not take place
during its life on earth it must be accomplished in
future lives.”25 St. Gregory is obviously talking about
purgatory; the quote is clear that there is only one life
on earth. The only source of confusion is the plural
of the last word, but it cannot be checked because no
citation is given.
Dante is deliberately misquoted: the quote
from Canto XX of “Paradiso” of the Divine Comedy
has absolutely nothing to do with reincarnation. A
miracle showing the mercy of God, the resurrection
and conversion of Roman Emperor Trajan (emperor
between 98-117), is described. John Ciardi, author of
one of the better translations of the Divine Comedy into
English, explains:
Dante follows a legend that Gregory I (Pope from 590-604,
later St. Gregory) prayed so ardently for the salvation of
Trajan that God’s voice replied: “I grant pardon to Trajan.”
Since God so granted, it was, of course, predestined that he
should so grant. Trajan, therefore, could never have been
truly damned, for no prayer can help the damned. But
since none may go from hell to heaven, it was necessary
to restore Trajan to the flesh long enough to permit his
conversion to Christ.26

Most quotes can possibly be checked in principle,
but not in practice: the quote is said to come from a
book, and only the title of the book is given. Who is
willing to read through a whole book to locate a short

The son has touched the torch to the
corpse and set his father in flames.

quote? This entirely inadequate way of supplying
references was done to prevent checking, which
makes one suspect all the quotes that cannot be
checked.
And finally, some quotes are absolutely pointless,
like this from Bertrand Russell:
I find my boy still hardly able to grasp that there was a time
when he did not exist; if I talk to him about the building of
the Pyramids or some such topic, he always wants to know
what he was doing then, and is merely puzzled when he
is told that he did not exist. Sooner or later he will want
to know what “being born” means, and then we shall tell
him.

If this is the best propaganda the advocates
of reincarnation can come up with, they do not
convince.

THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND
OF THE DOCTRINE OF
REINCARNATION
In this brief survey we shall discuss truth in
various religions, in sharp contrast with the customary
discussions called comparative religion, which tend
to present a lot of details about similarities and
dissimilarities in the religions of the world, usually
emphasizing religious practices but always steering
clear of religious truth.
The two most important beliefs that shape man
and societies are what is believed about God, and
what is believed about the nature and destiny of man.
Mortimer Adler in his Truth in Religion: The
Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth27 stated
clearly (based on philosophical arguments only) that
if one is looking for truth in religion, the only place
where there is any hope of finding any truth is the
monotheistic religions.
Women do not go to the cremation ground. Across the river,
women rinse their hair and wash pots in the same river,
indifferent to the cremation across the way.

THE ANGELUS • July 2005
Photographs by Vincenzo Medici used with permission.

12

FRANCE

KARDEC

Of course, the Catholic knows that the Catholic religion is the only religion that
contains the complete truth: Old Testament Judaism and Islam fall short by knowing
nothing about essentials like the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Redemption. But all
three are correct in saying: there is only one God, God is an infinite spiritual being, God
is a person who rewards and punishes, and God is the Creator of the universe.
From monotheism the nature and destiny of man can be deduced more or less
correctly. The Catholic religion states the full truth: Man is a composite of body and soul;
the soul is created by God at conception; the soul is judged by God immediately after
death and eventually the body will be resurrected and miraculously rejoined with the
soul for an everlasting existence either in heaven or in hell.
The most important rival of the Catholic truth in modern times is what can be
called secularism, theoretical atheism or materialism: God does not exist, and man has
no spiritual soul, i.e., man is really an irrational animal. Marxism, Communism and
Secular Humanism advocate this position. Although this position is probably dominant
in Western society, paganism, the most important rival of the truth in ancient times, is
gradually increasing in importance in recent times. Fr. Martindale defines the term in The
Catholic Encyclopedia: “Paganism, in the broadest sense, includes all religions other than
the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism,
and Mohammedanism.” In this article, we shall use the term in the narrower sense.
Paganism has a succinct characterization in the Bible: “... all the gods of the Gentiles
are devils” (Ps. 95:5), a statement echoed by St. Francis Xavier, the great Catholic
missionary to India, Ceylon, Malaya and Japan, who, in a letter to St. Ignatius wrote: “All
the invocations of the pagans are hateful to God because all their gods are devils.”28 And
if a more vivid eyewitness account is needed that the gods of the heathen are not merely
stone and brass but devils, a reading of The Mark of the Beast, a short story by Rudyard
Kipling, is recommended.
Paganism is hard to describe in a coherent manner, because it is full of contradictions
and inconsistencies. It involves distorted notions of God such as polytheism and
pantheism. Usually, on the surface, to satisfy the needs of popular piety, these religions
are polytheistic. They have large numbers of “deities,” “gods” and “goddesses,” and
lots of made up stories (mythology) about them. But they are inspired by a pantheistic
metaphysics. Pantheism essentially involves two assertions: that everything that exists
constitutes a unity, and that this all-inclusive unity is divine. Put even more simply, it
identifies God and the world. It may also be said that according to this view either God
is everywhere or God is nowhere, expressing that pantheism and atheism are very close.
The consequences of pantheism are: denial of a personal God, denial of divine revelation
(i.e., all religious truths are derived from nature, not from revelation), denial of the
miraculous, and denial of the supernatural in religion. Therefore, pantheism can also be
called naturalism.
Christopher Dawson in his article The Nature and Destiny of Man discusses Eastern
religions:
The Indian picture of the whole life process as an endless wheel of lives and deaths gripped in
the claws of the monster Kama or desire; to be freed from that wheel is the end of all their efforts....
But how can man escape from the domination of this power which seems to be the very power
of life itself? Only, it was said, by turning his back on life, by seeing in the whole sensible world
nothing but illusion, and by leaving the finite and the known for the unknown infinite....Life is evil,
the body is evil, sense is evil, consciousness is evil. Only in the destruction and cessation of all these
can true good be found. This is no less the message of the other great spiritualist religions of the
East. Whether they teach spiritual monism, like the Vedanta; spiritual nihilism, like Buddhism; or a
spiritualist dualism, like Manichaeanism–they agree in this, that what is wrong with man is not the
disorder or disease of his actual existence, but his very life itself.29
This denial of the reality of the world of phenomena and even of the principle of causality is
characteristic of Indian thought....The material universe is, in fact, a kind of cosmic nightmare....30

Against this background, the fate of man is reincarnation, governed by the law of
Karma:
As is a man’s desire, so is his will, and as is his will so is his deed, and whatever deed (Karma) he
does, that will he reap....The one end of life, the one task for the wise man is Deliverance; to cross
the bridge, to pass the ford from death to Life, from appearance to Reality, from time to Eternity–all
the goods of human life in the family or the state are vanity in comparison with this.31
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

13
According to the popular imagination, Karma
means you will get what you deserve. This gloomy
world view is the origin and background of the
doctrine of reincarnation, and the only proper
setting for it. Reincarnation goes hand in glove with
paganism, pantheism and polytheism. By contrast,
present-day Western efforts to combine reincarnation
with monotheism are baseless and fraudulent.
Mortimer Adler examines whether any truth
can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism and similar
religions, and arrives at the following conclusions by
an elaborate philosophical reasoning:
In the light of these principles and considerations, I
would be compelled to say that there cannot be logical
and factual truth in any of the Far Eastern religions
that are cosmological rather than theological in their
orthodoxies [Buddhism, Jainism, and Taoism], nor in any
of the theological religions that are polytheistic rather than
monotheistic [Confucianism, Hinduism, and Shinto].32

Adler bases his conclusion on two important
observations: 1) the Far Eastern religions (Hinduism,
Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism)
embrace contradictions, and 2) in these Far Eastern
cultures there is a latent or explicit Averroism.33
Averroism involves a doctrine called that of double
truth, according to which statements could be true
in reason and false in faith and vice versa. St. Thomas
Aquinas in his dispute with the Latin Averroists of
his day refuted this doctrine: the truths of faith and
truth of reason are truths of the same kind and no
incompatibility can exist between them. A good
history of this great medieval debate can be found
in Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages by Etienne
Gilson.34
We conclude that the religions that provide the
background for reincarnation contain no factual truth
whatsoever, or, at least truths that are so enveloped by
vagaries and falsehoods that they become obscured.

OCCULTISM
Another source for belief in reincarnation is
occultism, which refers to supposed knowledge,
“Divine Wisdom” so-called, the principles and
practice of which is held to involve the use of hidden
and mysterious powers, and manifested in magic,
divination, and astrology. It goes back to ancient
times, both in the East and the West. Occultism
involves, most of the time, diabolical intrusions into
the affairs of men, which cannot be delicately sidestepped any more, but has to be discussed openly, for
we see an ever increasing militancy of Satan in this
world.
The following item from BBC News on the
internet is typical of the many other examples that
could be given to justify, or even compel, our open
discussion of Satanic activity throughout this paper.
The British Navy has officially recognized its first
registered Satanist. Naval technician Chris Cranmer,

24, has been allowed to register by the captain of HMS
Cumberland. The move will mean that he will now be
allowed to perform Satanic rituals on board the vessel.
A spokesman for the Royal Navy said: “We are an equal
opportunities employer and we don’t stop anybody from
having their own religious values.” (Published: 2004/10/23
23:52:51 GMT at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/
uk_news/3948329.stm)

The Church of Satan was established in San
Francisco in 1966. Anton Szandor LaVey was its
high priest until his death in 1997. Followers live by
the Nine Satanic Statements, which include “Satan
represents indulgence instead of abstinence,” “Satan
represents vengeance instead of turning the other
cheek,” and “Satan represents all of the so-called
sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional
gratification.”
The diabolical is not only being flaunted, it is
insolently forced on society through the printed
and electronic media. Probably most widely known
is “channeling,” referring to communications of
diabolical origin, which have become so popular that
entire magazines are trying to satisfy the demand for
them. (We always have to allow that human fraud
takes the place of truly diabolical communication,
since humans are usually able to imitate the style of
previous diabolical communications, and this is often
the case with the popular “channeling” magazines.)
Other examples of the diabolical are UFOs,
“speaking in tongues” and other manifestations of the
“charismatic revival,” the mass suicide at Jonestown in
1978, the demonic healers in Brazil, etc., etc.
Examples of occultism that go back to ancient
times are Cabalistic Judaism, the “real” secret
interpretation of the Bible (Old Testament) for Jews,
and Gnostic Christianity, which is the “real” secret
interpretation of the Bible (Old and New Testaments)
for Christians. They both survive even today, for
example the Cabala in Hassidic Judaism, and
Gnosticism in the so-called Gnostic Catholic Church.
Gnosticism also survives in literature hostile to the
Catholic Church. For example, Anatole France (18441924) French Nobel-prize winner in literature, was a
complete pagan, and in 1920 all his books were put
on the Index of Forbidden Books. The last novel he
wrote, The Revolt of the Angels (1914), is usually labeled
a political satire, but it is in reality a Gnostic attack on
God and the Catholic religion.
Better known manifestations of occult in modern
times are Theosophy and New Age. We shall only
discuss Theosophy as being an important source and
also the backbone of New Age.
Modern Theosophy developed under strong
demonic influences, which is clearly visible in
the lives of three of its leaders, Helena Blavatsky,
Annie Besant and Alice Bailey. While “Buddhism
discourages superstitious credulity; Gautama Buddha
taught that no one should believe what is spoken
by any sage, written in any book, or affirmed
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

14
by tradition, unless it accords with reason,”35 by
contrast, Theosophy rests completely on unsupported
assertions provided by “Masters,” or Mahatmas
(Great Spirits). But who are these Masters?
[T]hese Guardians of the Immemorial Doctrine...are
“Beings more completely developed than antecedent or
existing humanity. These more advanced Beings have
traversed the entire human course, and help their less
advanced brethren. All humanity shall one day reach this
degree of development, like that which Westerns assign to
their anthropomorphic God,” and then it will be their turn
to help others. They may be called Initiates, Adepts, Magi,
Hierophants, Mahatmas, Elder Brothers, Great Souls, or
Masters. We are told to number among them Pythagoras,
Orpheus, Moses, Christ, St. Paul, St. John, Clement and
Origen, Krishna and Buddha, high-priests of various cults
(including that of the Temple at Jerusalem), Alexander the
Great, and many others.36

For example, the Master of Helena Blavatsky was
a certain Master Morya (the name of an infernal spirit)
“who lived in Tibet” and who was the acknowledged
author of The Secret Doctrine (the main work under
the name of Helena Blavatsky). Blavatsky claimed
that she regularly received channeled messages from
Morya, including written messages that dropped from
the ceiling during her channeling sessions. It should
not be surprising that this sounds like Spiritism or
Spiritualism, since we know that Helena Blavatsky,
before founding the Theosophical Society, practiced
Spiritism under Allen Kardec.37
The infant Society...made use of not a few of the methods
of spiritualism, and Mme. Blavatsky was constantly
accompanied by a perfect fusillade of rappings, and by
other phenomena. She insisted, however, that she was no
“medium,” but a “mediator” (i.e., between the sages and
ordinary men). She (Helena Blavatsky) wrote from
Switzerland, approving of the assertion that “the
Theosophical Society, minus Masters, is an absurdity,” and
that “I am the only means of communication with the
Masters, and for giving out their philosophy–the Society,
unless I continue to work for it as in the past, is a dead
thing.”38

Alice Bailey was a channel for Master KH (Koot
Hoomi) and Tibetan Master DK (Djwhal Khul), both
again infernal spirits. The latter of the two wrote 19 of
the 24 books produced by Alice Bailey between the
years 1919 and 1949.
So these Mahatmas are, to a large extent, the
source of modern Theosophy. “Mahatmas, their
existence, position, and teaching, become entirely
an affair of faith.”39 Although Theosophy rebels
against all the traditional religious authorities and
against every faith as being exoteric, it itself asserts a
principle of authority and demands from its followers
a blind faith. The authority of teachers and faith in
teachers–this indeed is the basis of the theosophic
path. But the ultimate teachers are demons, so the
faith the follower of Theosophy has is faith in a
manifestly demonic revelation. And this is what one
of the demons, Koot Hoomi Lal Singh, writes about
the “occult mysteries”: “The mysteries never were,
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

never can be, put within the reach of the general
public, not, at least, until that longed for day when
our religious philosophy becomes universal.”40
Unfortunately, this demonic revelation is wrong
about everything: about God, about man, and about
the universe. Theosophy is monism, and in its
pantheistic worldview there is no personal God and
Creator. “To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and
accept at the same time his absolute immateriality
is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void.”41 Koot
Hoomi also wrote that the “very ABC of what I know,
the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe
are encrusted”42 is the certainty of there being “no
such thing as God, either personal, or impersonal.”43
The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary
power. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare
[i.e., the God of Christianity], to teach man virtue for its own
sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of leaning
on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct
cause of nearly all human misery.44
The best Adepts have searched the Universe during
millenniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such
a Machiavellian schemer [i.e., the Christian God], but
throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law.45

In addition, Theosophy suffers from a fatal
confusion between matter and spirit. We give several
quotes to show that this error is absolutely central
and essential to their thinking (all of them are on the
Internet).
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are...to be regarded,
not as independent realities, but as two facets or aspects of
the Absolute.46
Matter is Eternal. There can be no manifestation of
Consciousness...except through the vehicle of matter.47
Spirit is matter on the seventh plane; matter is Spirit on
the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both are MAYA.48
The Monism of Theosophy is truly philosophical. We
conceive of the universe as one in essence and origin. And
though we speak of Spirit and Matter as its two poles, yet
we state emphatically that they can only be considered
as distinct from the standpoint of human, mayavic (i.e.,
illusionary) consciousness. We therefore conceive of spirit
and matter as one in essence.49
The Occultists recognize but One Element which they
divide into seven parts, which include the five exoteric
elements and the two esoteric ones of the ancients. As to
that Element, they call it, indifferently, matter or spirit,
claiming that as matter is infinite and indestructible and
Spirit likewise, and as there cannot exist in the infinite
Universe two omnipresent Eternal elements, any more than
two Indestructibles or Infinites can exist–hence Matter and
Spirit must be one. “All is Spirit and all is Matter,” they say:
Matter, then, is but a state of Spirit, and vice-versa.50
The Eastern Occultists hold that there is but one element
in the universe: infinite, uncreated and indestructible–
MATTER; which element manifests itself in seven states,
four of which are known to modern science….Spirit is the
highest state of that matter, they say, since that which is
neither matter nor any of its attributes is–NOTHING.51

15
In one sense every Buddhist as well as every Occultist
and even most of the educated Spiritualists, are, strictly
speaking, Materialists….If [Spirit] is something–it must be
material, otherwise it is but a pure abstraction, a no-thing.
Nothing which is capable of producing an effect on any
portion of the physical–objective or subjective–Kosmos can
be otherwise than material. Mind…could produce no effect
were it not material; and believers in a personal God, have
themselves either to admit that the deity in doing its work
has to use material force to produce a physical effect, or–to
advocate miracles, which is an absurdity.’52
Matter is the opposite pole of spirit and yet the two are
one.53
It is one of the elementary and fundamental doctrines of
Occultism that the two [spirit and matter] are one, and are
distinct but in their respective manifestations, and only in
the limited perceptions of the world of senses.54
In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate
sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of
spirit.55
The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of
motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or
indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as
a Being or an Existence–give it whatever name you will–is
a chimera, a gigantic absurdity.56

Because of this materialism, it is not surprising
that Theosophy is primarily interested in the cosmos
and in a science-like description of the cosmic
structure and cosmic evolution. This goes hand
in hand with Theosophy being very deferential to
science, but completely ignoring (or being ignorant
of) philosophy. So all the time theosophists talk
about spirit they are in reality talking about matter.
Paul Edwards, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (Prometheus Books, 1996),
p.226.
2
Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), pp.14849.
3
J.P. Arendzen, What Becomes of the Dead? (Sheed & Ward, 1951), p.236.
4
Paul Siwek, S.J., The Enigma of the Hereafter: The Reincarnation of Souls (Philosophical Library, 1952), pp.viii-ix.
5
Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), s.v. “Metempsychosis.”
6
Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic,
Hermetic, Quabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (Jeremy Tarcher-Penguin, 2003), pp.74-76.
7
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1967), s.v. “Cabala.”
8
Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Metempsychosis.”
9
Siwek, The Enigma of the Hereafter, pp.xii-xiii.
10
Ibid., p.52.
11
Curt Ducasse, A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death (Charles C.
Thomas, 1961), Chapter 20.
12
Jean-Pierre Marie, “Yoga and Zen: Philosophies of Despair,” Apropos, No. 15, Advent
1993.
13
Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Direction, 1975), pp.34853.
14
Mystics and Zen Masters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967), and Zen and the Birds of
Appetite (New Direction, 1968).
15
G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to The Book of Job (1907).
16
Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p.123.
17
Rev. E. Cahill, Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement (M. H. Gill and Son,
1929), p.240.
18
Karl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, (Harvest Books, 1933), p.215.
19
C.C. Martindale, Theosophy (London: Catholic Truth Society). [Available on the
Internet.]
20
Ibid., p.9.
21
H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy. (The Theosophical Publishing House, n.d.),
p.8.
22
Martindale, Theosophy.
23
Ibid.
24
A Quest Book, 1968.
25
Ibid., p.36.
1

Words like “vibrations,” “rays,” “planes,” “spheres,”
“ranges” and “dimensions” apply to matter and space;
they have nothing to do with spirit. Therefore, what
theosophists call spirituality has nothing in common
with true spirituality. The latter consists in an intrinsic
independence with regard to matter as to being and as
to operation.
Being in violent contradiction not only with
Christianity but with most of philosophy completely
invalidates all their reasonings about man and about
the universe. A single contradiction like the one we
demonstrated in detail above, asserting that matter
and spirit are one, has devastating consequences for
the whole system of thought. From it, one can easily
derive false assertions such as that the chair you are
sitting on is invisible. But of course, the demons
know what they are doing. Their “spiritual” universe
is really an all-material universe, exactly because
humans can easily imagine material things, and can
then generate endless fantasies about it.
Beyond Theosophy, we shall discuss as examples
of the occult Allan Kardec, a representative of Latin
Spiritism (especially influential in South America),
and Edgar Cayce, very influential in the United
States.
(to be continued)
Dr. Gyula Mago was born in 1938 in Hungary and raised a Catholic. He
lived under Communist rule for 20 years. Dr. Mago obtained his Ph.D. from
Cambridge University, England, in 1970, and was a professor of Computer
Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1970-99). He presently lives in retirement in Durham, North Carolina, and assists at the Latin
Mass at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Park 2,
appearing in the August 2005 issue will examine the apparent “justifications”
and “evidence” for reincarnation.
Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso, trans. by John Ciardi (Mentor Book, 1979), p.233.
Macmillan, 1990.
James Brodrick, S.J., Saint Francis Xavier (Image Book, 1957), p.85.
29
Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into Religion and Culture (Sheed & Ward, 1933),
pp.324-25.
30
Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion (Sheed & Ward), p.143.
31
Ibid., pp.135-36.
32
Truth in Religion, p.107.
33
Ibid., p.73.
34
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950.
35
Christmas Humphreys, Buddhism (Penguin Books, 1951), p.73.
36
Martindale, Theosophy.
37
Siwek, The Enigma of the Hereafter, p.130.
38
Martindale, Theosophy.
39
Ibid.
40
A. Trevor Barker, transcriber and compiler, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from
the Mahatmas M. and K. H. Arranged and edited in chronological sequence by Vicente
Hao Chin, Jr. (Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1998), p.6, Letter 2.
41
Ibid., p.280, Letter 90.
42
Ibid., p.284.
43
Ibid., p.270, Letter 88.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., p.283, Letter 90.
46
H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (The Theosophical Publishing House, n.d.),
1:15.
47
Ibid., 1:328.
48
Ibid., 1:633.
49
H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings (The Theosophical Publishing House, 1950-91),
11:336.
50
Ibid., 5:52.
51
Ibid., 4:602.
52
Ibid., 4:307fn.
53
H. P. Blavatsky, Studies in Occultism (Theosophical University Press, n.d.), p.210.
54
Barker, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p.282, Letter 90.
55
Ibid., p.283, Letter 90.
56
Ibid., p.273, Letter 88.
26
27
28

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

16

Angel
the

torm
S
of the

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

l
m

17

D r .

J o h n

s e n i o r

As you go by a field of buckwheat after a
thunderstorm, you will often notice that the
buckwheat has been scorched quite black. It’s just
as though a flame had passed over it, and then
the farmer says “It’s got that from the lightning.”
But how has it happened? I will tell you what the
sparrow told me, and the sparrow heard it from an
old willow tree that stood–and is still standing– by
the side of a field of buckwheat. It’s quite a
venerable great willow, but wrinkled and aged, with
a crack down the middle–and grass and brambles
growing out of the crack! The tree leans forward,
and the branches hang right down to the ground like
long green hair.
In all the fields round about, there was corn
growing, rye and barley and oats–yes, the lovely
oats that has the appearance, when it’s ripe, of a
whole string of little yellow canaries on a bough.
The corn was a wonderful sight; and the heavier the
crop, the deeper it stooped in meek humility.
But there was also a field of buckwheat; it was
just in front of the old willow. The buckwheat didn’t
stoop like the other corn; it held itself up proudly
and stiffly.
“I must be just as rich as the grain,” it said, “and I’m
much better-looking. My blossoms are beautiful, like
apple-blossoms; it’s quite a pleasure to look upon me and
mine. Do you know anyone finer, my dear willow?”
The willow tree nodded his head as if to say, “You may
be sure I do!” But the buckwheat was simply bursting
with pride and said, “The stupid tree! He’s so old that
his stomach has grass growing on it.”
And now a terrible storm blew up. All the flowers in
the field folded their leaves or bent their delicate heads
while the storm passed over them. But the buckwheat
stood up straight in its pride.
“Stoop down like us!” cried the flowers.
“No need whatever for me to!” answered the
buckwheat.
“Stoop down like us!” cried the corn. “Here comes the
angel of the storm in full flight. He has wings that reach
from the clouds right down to the earth; he will strike
straight over you, before you can cry for mercy!”

“Very well, but I refuse to stoop,” said the
buckwheat.
“Shut up your blossoms and bend down your leaves!”
said the old willow. “Don’t look up at the lightning when
the cloud bursts; even mankind daren’t do that, for in
the lightning one may see into God’s heaven. But even
man can be blinded by the sight of that; what ever would
happen to us plants, if we dared so much–we who are
far inferior?”
“Far inferior?” said the buckwheat. “Well, now I’m
going to look into God’s heaven”; and in arrogance and
pride it did so. The lightning was so fierce that the whole
earth seemed to be wrapped in flame.
When the storm passed away, there in the pure still
air stood flowers and corn, all refreshed by the rain;
but the buckwheat had been scorched coal-black by the
lightning. It was now a dead useless weed on the field.
And the old willow stirred his branches in the wind,
and big drops of water fell from his green leaves, just
as though the tree was crying. And the sparrows asked,
“What are you crying for? It’s so lovely here. Look how
the sun is shining, how the clouds are sailing by. Can’t
you smell the perfume of the flowers and bushes? Why
should you cry, dear willow?”
Then the willow tree told them about the buckwheat’s
pride and arrogance–and punishment, for that always
follows. I, who tell the tale, I heard it from the sparrows.
It was they who told it to me, one evening when I begged
them for a story.

Cardinal John
Newman’s Warning
At the end of this tale as it is finely printed on
thick rag paper in the little edition published at
Odense, Denmark, in its rich, red leather cover
embossed with a golden flower, is an illustration
taken from the original drawings by Wilhelm
Pederson of the great Angel of the Storm, grasping
bolts of lightning in his hands, his long hair flying in
the wind, his huge wings spread behind him in his
flight.
“Stoop down like us,” cried the corn. “Here comes
the Angel of the Storm in full flight. He has wings that
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

18
reach from the clouds right down to the earth; he will strike straight over you, before you
can cry for mercy.”

Do you think there really are angels of the storms?
Before you start to answer that, take note of two severe warnings Cardinal
Newman gives to anyone who writes or speaks on angels: In a sermon he preached
on the Feast of St. Michael, he says
Many a man can write and talk beautifully about [the angels] who is not at all better or
nearer heaven for all his excellent words.

He means that in meditating on the joys of heaven and in particular the choirs
of angels, we run the risk that these anticipations will satisfy us prematurely as
a sentiment; as if we could enjoy the end without placing the necessary means
whereas these things have been revealed to us for a definite, practical purpose.
Cardinal Newman says:
Let us beware lest we make the contemplation of them a mere feeling, and a sort of luxury
of the imagination. This World is to be a world of practice and labour; God reveals to us
glimpses of the Third Heaven for our comfort; but if we indulge in these as the end of our
present being, not trying day by day to purify ourselves for the future enjoyment of the
fullness of them, they become but a snare of our enemy. The services of religion, day by
day, obedience to God in our calling and in ordinary matters, endeavours to imitate our
Saviour Christ in word and deed, constant prayer to Him, and dependence on Him, these
are the due preparation for receiving and profiting by His revelations; whereas many a
man can write and talk beautifully about them, who is not at all better or nearer heaven
for all his excellent words.

MARITAIN

Newman’s second warning is even more severe than the first, because the
consequence of failing to heed it is worse even than a snare of the enemy–it is a
vice, the more dangerous for its attractive, highly-polished, spiritual appearance.
Newman calls it the vice of a dark age. He scarcely thought of it as a present
danger in his own; but in ours–well, anyone with an eye can see that this dark age
is in fact returning now.

The New Gnosticism

MASSIGNON

Gnosticism, which infected the Church of the first centuries, reappearing
under different names and guises several times since, is born again today in the
super-spiritualism associated with the new theology and in extravagant forms
of charismatic prayer. In the ancient days it festered first in the synagogues of
Alexandria and from them the infection spread to the Christian churches as well.
St. Paul himself condemns the idolatry of angels practiced among the Colossians
who had fostered a false ecumenism between the Church and pagan cults of
Aeons, or Intermediaries, so-called emanations of God, just as Thomas Merton,
Teilhard de Chardin and even Jacques Maritain in our time tried to bridge the
abyss between the Catholic mystics like St. John of the Cross and the Oriental
swamis. One thinks of Merton or Teilhard more in pity than in anger because they
were neither learned nor smart, but what are we to think of Maritain who was
certainly both?

Jacques Maritain
This sensitive, gifted intelligence, distinguishing with exquisite subtlety
precisely the teaching of St. Thomas on the mysteries of grace, proceeds to isolate
the truth that Christ died for all from the other truths which limit and define it. He
cites a contemporary Carmelite theologian in support of his view, who writes,

MR. R.
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

St. Thomas, speaking of those who lived before the coming of Christ and who were saved
by following the voice of conscience, says: “Even though they did not have explicit faith
(in a Mediator), they did nevertheless have implicit faith in Him through their faith in
Divine Providence, believing that God would save men by such means as pleased Him.”
(continued on p.24)

Traditional
Religious
Orders
19

THE FRANCISCAN MINIMS
OF THE PERPETUAL
HELP OF MARY

T

he Order of the Franciscan Minims of the Perpetual Help of Mary, otherwise known as the Work of
Atonement, was founded in Zamora, Michoacan, Mexico by Rev. Mother María Concepción Zúñiga
Lopez. The divine mission of Rev. Mother Maria began on October 3, 1926, when she was 12 years old.
At that time, public worship was suspended in Mexico due to the religious persecution [of the
Cristeros–Ed.] by President Calles. On that day, in the parish church of her hometown of Ocotlan,
Jalisco, the crucifix came to life, and Christ spoke to the future foundress of the Minims from His cross,
inviting her to share the sorrow of being hidden, abandoned, forgotten, despised, persecuted, and hated
without cause. This was Our Lord’s first invitation to unite her soul to His cross of suffering. She replied:
Yes, I want to carry the weight of Thy cross and the sorrow of Thy Heart, divine Jesus. I want to follow Thee down
the path to Calvary. Nail me to Thy cross with Thee. In exchange I only ask for one thing: give me souls–souls for Thy
Church, for Heaven. May all souls love Thee.

The young woman suffered greatly on considering the number of souls that were lost eternally and
she longed to embrace them all in the Heart of Jesus. From that day on she understood God’s divine plan.
Our Lord wanted her to offer herself in union with Divine Justice to save souls and to teach others this
way by founding a religious Order that would have as its goal the formation of victim souls who offered
themselves in atonement for the world.

20

Good Friday Way of the Cross

Peace and goodwill
The realization of the foundation of
the Order of victims became a reality
and was born to the Church ( June
24, 1942) with the approval of H.E.
Bishop Manuel Fulcheri y Pietrasanta
of holy memory. The work that Mother
Conchita initiated within the Franciscan
family–living in poverty, obedience, and
chastity–is a work at the service of the
Church to gather souls. Its apostolates
consist in giving religious conferences
to women with the purpose of fostering
the practice of virtue, of enlightening
souls which are confused or in error, of
arousing piety and religious fervor in
women and teaching them their duties
before God and society. In this way, the
Order cooperates with Holy Mother
Church, striving to remedy the problems
of women, one of society’s greatest
present-day problems. It organizes
groups for catechism and feminine
Catholic activities. Besides publishing
a magazine titled Estrella, it also prints
various bulletins to send rays of light
into homes and families.
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

Refectory

21

“Quintet of love”

However, the most intense and beneficial of their
apostolates is prayer and perpetual adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament. During hours of intimacy with Jesus in the
Sacred Host, they inflame themselves with great zeal for the
salvation of souls.
At present there are 33 Sisters in the single Community
which makes up the Order of which two of its members
are from the US. Sr. Mary of Lourdes is from Lawrence,
Massachusetts, and Sr. Mary of the Holy Spirit is from
Kirkwood, Missouri. One other Sister is from Buenos
Aires, Argentina, and the rest are from different provinces
throughout Mexico. Mother foundress Maria died in 1979.
H.E. Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta of the Society of Saint Pius
X is the Minims’ clerical superior.
The Franciscan Minims of the Perpetual Help of Mary
have a second name: the Work of Atonement. The Order is
of the great Franciscan tree whose seed is that of St. Francis
of Assisi. They observe the spirit of littleness, humility, and
poverty so as to imitate their holy Father (who called himself
the “Poverello”) and give the same good example he did to
souls and combat error, falsehood, pride, egoism, and the
world’s sensuality. In order to strengthen the life of prayer in
the Community and compensate for the forgetfulness of the
Divine Guest on our Catholic altars, the Order is dedicated
to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
The Sisters worship Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament
by perpetual and uninterrupted adoration. They unite
themselves to Him as eternal Mediator between heaven and
earth, between Divine Justice and the guilty world. They
offer themselves in atonement with Him, like Him, and for
Him.
The Minims take the same three vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience that bind all religious at the time
of temporary profession. But at the time of their perpetual
profession, they rebind themselves to their special charism by
pronouncing a fourth vow of “victim” which characterizes the
Order. This vow of victimhood is threefold. Firstly, that the
Minim be a victim in union with the Divine Word Incarnate,
zealous for the glory of God and salvation of souls, repairing
for the harm sin brings upon the world and satisfying the
Divine Justice to transform It into blessing and mercy.
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

22

Secondly, that she adore Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament,
compensating for the failure of dissipated souls to love and
console the Sacred Heart. Lastly, that she offer herself in childlike
abandonment to Our Lady and propagate devotion to her to others.
The qualifications for entry are that aspirants must be at least
18 years of age, in good mental and physical health, and a daughter
of a legitimate marriage. She must have a general knowledge of
Spanish, that is, to be able to converse simply in the language and
to understand it when spoken to her. Aspirants must have a strong
desire to love God and save souls and be capable of suffering gladly
the trials of holy poverty. She is not obliged to pay a dowry or to
have finished her formal schooling.
The postulancy for the Minim is nine months, the first three
months of which she wears a gray habit followed in the last six
months with the wearing of a brown habit symbolizing poverty.
On the day of her clothing as a novice, the aspirant wears a white
wedding habit. For the two years of her novitiate, she wears the
dark, deep-red habit of the Work of Atonement signifying that she
is inflamed by ardent charity (as that of the inflamed and reddened
Sacred Heart). The short turquoise head-veil she dons at this time
symbolizes the theological virtue of hope that enlivens her soul.
Once the two-year novitiate has ended, the novice makes temporary
vows, renewing them annually for five years, during which time she
wears a blue veil reaching to the middle of her back. This new veil
represents the veil of Mary, symbolizing that the religious should be
clothed with aspirations for Heaven. After renewing her temporary
vows for five consecutive years, she is eligible to make her perpetual
vows and becomes a professed Minim clothed with the blue veil
reaching to her feet. The Minim habit is a symbol of the Minim’s life
as a religious.
The Minims consider themselves mothers of suffering humanity
united to Jesus, the Divine Mediator. They mourn the wounds of
the world, bearing in mind the spiritual and temporal needs of all.
They pray especially for those who have any relationship with the
spiritual welfare of souls and God’s interests, according to the words
of Our Lord: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice,
and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. 6:33). They
seek never to avoid any sacrifice since it is the duty of the Minim
to practice immolation in a total self-surrender to Divine Justice,
an attribute they especially honor. In this they imitate Christ Who
came to earth precisely to offer Himself up to this Divine Justice as
Victim for the redemption of the world.

It is because of the Order’s detachment
from earthly goods that it bears the last
name of “Perpetual Help.” The Order is
entrusted to the patronage of the Blessed
Virgin, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Since
she is considered their “Superior General,”
they beg for her counsel on every occasion.
The members of the Order strive to make
this Marian devotion stand out as a tribute
to the Blessed Mother. They take refuge
in her motherly embrace to obtain perfect
union with Jesus, whom she carries in her
arms.
The devotion to the Sacred Heart
of Jesus consists in the veneration of the
physical heart of Jesus. Since the goal of
the Work of Atonement is to console this
Divine Heart, the members participate in
His internal Passion by means of the Holy
Eucharist where He mystically perpetuates
His victimhood.

Plenty o

.

23

New convent construction

The Minim Sisters’ devotion to St. Joseph, the
spouse of Mary and head of the Holy Family, is
childlike, with a spirit of total confidence in his
patronage. They commend to him in particular the
cultivation of the interior life in their souls.
The two words which make up the motto of the
Franciscan Minims of the Perpetual Help of Mary are
“Charity” and “Immolation.” They are reminders of the
two duties of this Order: to love souls and be victims for
God. Its work is to unify all things in the spirit of the
Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
The principal goal of the Order is the sanctification
of its members. Each member considers what it means
to be a true victim soul, that is, a faithful imitator
of the virtues Jesus taught us by His charity and the
immolation of His Heart hidden in the Holy Eucharist.
The logical result of this is a victim soul who wants
to immolate herself for the glory of God, the triumph
of the Church of Christ on earth, and the fulfillment
of Our Lord’s desire that there be one flock and one

nty of healthy work...

Shepherd. They try to compensate for the sensuality
and impenitence of those who need atonement, baptized
or not. Penance is the only means to cleanse the soul
and, since this Order is of atonement, it loves penance
and practices it with a joyful spirit.
The Franciscan Minims of the Perpetual Help of
Mary commend themselves to your prayers so that they
might fulfill the mission Our Lord has given them, and
that there be awakened in souls a love for the Divine
Justice. Our Lord wants to be loved in His justice and
asks for souls to offer themselves as victims who render
their love, confidence, and self-abandonment to Him so
He will shower mercy upon the world for the salvation
of souls.
The Work of Atonement follows in the footsteps of
Jesus Victim, and Divine Providence continues to keep
watch over His Minims. These words of Rev. Mother
Foundress best identify the spirit of the members of the
Order:
I have never esteemed the goods of the earth as valuable.
Heaven has been my only desire since my childhood; Heaven
for my soul and for the souls of those I love. And the souls
I love are so numerous that my spiritual thirst cannot be
quenched. No price is too high in order to rescue souls for
Heaven who one day will surround God’s throne for all
eternity.
For information [You may write in English]:
Franciscan Minims
Avenida Xochiquetzal #249
Colonia Santa Isabel Tola
Delegación Gustavo A. Madero
07010 Mexico D.F.
Phone number: 011 [52] (55) 77-2901
Members of this community will be visiting chapels of the Society of Saint
Pius X throughout the US this September and early October: El Paso, Texas
(Sept. 11), Arcadia, California (Sept. 14), Portland, Oregon (Sept. 16), Post
Falls, Idaho (Sept. 18), St. Paul, Minnesota (Sept. 21), Syracuse, New York
(Sept. 23), Farmingville, New York (Sept. 24), Ridgefield and Hartford,
Connecticut (Sept. 25), St. Louis, Missouri (Sept. 29), Kansas City, Missouri
(Sept. 30), St. Mary’s, Kansas (Oct. 2).

...and recreation

24
(continued from p.18)

Thus, believing God saves men by means pleasing to
Him is having an implicit faith in Christ, the Redeemer.
It is difficult to contend that conditions have changed for
those who, because they lived after Christ, have never
heard mention of him.

Well, yes, provided that we add the note of
invincibility to their never having heard and
provided that we have clear knowledge of their
definitions of God, Providence, Mediator and
Salvation. For example, if there were evidence
(which there is not) that Plato or Aristotle believed
God “saved,” one could, I think, at least morally
conclude from what St. Thomas says and the
study of their work to their implicit faith in Christ.
But Maritain applies this carefully discriminated
argument indiscriminately to an appalling
assortment of cases in which there is certain
evidence to the contrary.
We know [Maritain writes] that unbaptized persons,
even though they are not stamped with the seal of faith,
so as to participate through the virtue of the Church in
the proper work of the Church (which is the redemption
continued), can nevertheless (inasmuch as they receive
without knowing it the supernatural life of the selfsame blood which circulates within the Church and of
the same spirit which rests upon it) belong invisibly to
Christ’s Church. Thus they can have sanctifying grace,
and, as a result, theological faith and the infused gifts.

So far so good, but look at the utterly imprudent
judgment which follows:
Works like those of Louis Massignon and Asin Palacios
on Islam, present-day studies devoted to Hassidism, the
personal testimonies to a Mukerji or a Father Wallace to
Hindu spirituality, or even the works of contemporary
ethnologists on the prayer of primitive peoples–all
these being precious factual confirmation to this view
of the spirit. And those are but the first explorations in
a complicated and difficult terrain.

From St. John of the
Cross to Ramakrishna
He even goes so far as to include some whom
anyone of common sense would either pity as
lunatics or flee from as demonic. For example, he
writes,
The saints who visibly belong to the Church enable us
to recognize their far-off brethren who do not know Her
and yet belong to Her invisibly–St. John of the Cross
enables us to do justice to Ramakrishna.

Ramakrishna was an atheist, a pervert, and, worse,
a sentimentalist. One of his American imports,
Swami Nihilananda, in the introduction to a widely
circulated book blasphemously entitled The Gospel of
Sri Ramakrishna, gives the biographical details:
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

Some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was
seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of
the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings
from the Bible...[and] became fascinated by the life and
teachings of Jesus.

Comment: What has become of invincible
ignorance? St. Thomas has been cited speaking
about those who, living before the coming of
Christ could not have known him, a contemporary
Carmelite theologian extends this saving ignorance
to those living after Christ but who “have never
heard mention of him,” and Maritain now saves Sri
Ramakrishna who explicitly studied and “became
fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus.”
But it is worse than that:
One day [Nihilananda reports] he was seated in
parlour of Jadu Mallick’s garden house...when his eyes
became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child.
Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed
with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on
life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered
his soul.... And breaking through the barriers of creed
and religion...[Note that phrase: when a Catholic does
that he fulfills the formal definition of apostasy]...
breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he
entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul.
On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking
in the [garden], he saw coming toward him a person
with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance and fair
skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in
the depths of Sri Ramakrishna’s soul: “Behold the Christ,
who shed His heart’s blood for the redemption of the
world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It
is He, the Master Yogi, Love Incarnate.” The Son of Man
embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in
him. Sri Ramakrishna realized his identity with Christ,
as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama,
Hanuma, Radha, Krishna, Brahman and Mohammed.
[Mohammed would have slit his throat.]
Thus [Sri Ramakrishna] experienced the truth that
Christianity too was a path leading to God-Consciousness.
Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ
was an Incarnation of God. But Christ for him was not
the only Incarnation; there were others–Buddha, for
instance, and Krishna.

St. Thomas teaches that if in invincible
ignorance one believed in Jesus’ Name which
means “God saves,” even though he didn’t know
the Jesus born in Bethlehem who died on Calvary,
that such belief would constitute an implicit and
sufficient faith. But Ramakrishna thinks that all
gods save, that salvation is something called “GodConsciousness” and that God is a symbol of one’s
self. Ramakrishna also practiced forms of sexual
yoga achieving states of consciousness psychiatrists
identify as pathologically regressive and clinically
insane. I could quote some passages to shock and
disgust; more shocking is that Maritain, Nobel Prize
winner, by everyone’s account a brilliant Catholic
philosopher, and a strong influence on Pope Paul VI

25
and many bishops and periti at the Council, should
have confused such stuff with sanctity. Such stuff
has no more to do with St. John of the Cross than
theology with insanity.

Extraordinary in the
Service of the Ordinary
True doctrine is always sound doctrine, by
which I mean healthy doctrine; and the practices
deriving from it have always had the ring of
common sense. Fanaticism, excess, especially
spiritual excess, enthusiasm, the exotic, the Oriental,
primitive, depraved, and, worst of all, the simpering
sentimentality of “Ah, we all love God, you in your
way, I in mine”–these are symptoms of an avarice of
spirit, a gluttony, and, finally, a lust.
There are extraordinary and sometimes
shocking cases of authentic Catholic charismatic
grace, but nonetheless in the ordinary way of
salvation, grace inheres in sound minds and bodies
in a healthy Christian culture which might be best
summed up as a good sense of humour and humility.
God for His reasons has enriched the Church
with prophecies and other extraordinary graces–but
always for the purpose of leading souls to heaven by
converting them back to the ordinary things. The
extraordinary is for the sake of the ordinary–not
the other way around. Our Lady at Fatima did not
tell us to have visions–even of her loveliest self; but
to pray the Rosary, wear the scapular, do penance,
make reparation and exercise the natural and
spiritual virtues according to our station in life.

St. Louis
Once a priest who doubted the Real Presence
was given the miraculous grace of conversion when
at his Mass the Sacred Host bled on the corporal
right in front of him, repeating the famous miracle
at Bolsena in Italy which began the worldwide
celebration of Corpus Christi. The congregation was
amazed. One of them immediately ran across the
city and found the King, where he often was, sitting
alone before the Tabernacle in his private chapel.
When the messenger blurted out the news, the King
sat still. “Sire,” the man said, “Will you not come
at once to see this great vision?” St. Louis replied,
“I am grateful for this grace; it is a blessing to the
priest, the congregation and our city. But as for
myself, I must confess–Deo gratias–I have so far had
the greater grace to have no need of such events to
believe Our Blessed Lord dwells behind that little
golden door there on the altar. Blessed are they who
see and believe, but more blessed are those who
believe not having seen.”

St. John of the Cross
St. John of the Cross explicitly says that if you
do receive extraordinary graces, you must earnestly
pray for them to be taken away–even if they are
real. If God wants you as His instrument, the graces
will be given to you willy-nilly; but to desire them is
a sin of spiritual avarice.

The Noonday Devil

Twenty years ago I was struck by the title of a
book, the contents of which I have since forgotten; it
was called The Noonday Devil, taken from one of the
great prayers for Compline, Psalm 90:
...Non timebis a timore nocturno, a sagitta volante in die,
a negotio perambulante in tenebris; ab incursu, et daemonio
meridiano.–Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the
night, of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the business
that walketh about in the dark, of invasion, or of the
noonday devil.

Who is this noonday devil? The book, as
I remember, suggested that he represents the
temptations that come to us in middle age–at the
mid-life crisis as they call it; which is sensible
enough. But reading the psalm week after week at
Compline, especially late at night, I had often felt
that this daemonium meridianum in the brightness of
high noon must be something worse. And he is.
The Church, of course, has never left us alone,
like the Protestants, with private interpretation of
Scripture. We have the whole Catholic Tradition;
and St. Bernard has devoted no less than 18 sermons
to this one psalm alone. When I came upon them
in the course of tracking down something else not
long ago, I immediately stopped what I was doing,
eagerly searching out his explication of this phrase
that had haunted me for 20 years.

The Four Principles
of Temptation
St. Bernard says that the four things listed in
the verse–the nightly fear, the arrow, the business,
and the noonday devil–are the four principles of all
temptation. By a principle he means the beginning
which virtually contains its possible developments,
as an acorn virtually contains the oak or at the
moment of conception the fertilized ovum virtually
contains the man. St. Bernard says that all the
thousands of varieties of temptation can be reduced
to these four principal kinds:

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

26

1) Night:
Night, in Scripture, usually means adversity;
and the first adversity for souls who turn to
God is the rebellion of the flesh, which fights
the stronger as it is suppressed. No wonder
it produces a fear that we shall lose the fight!
And fear itself becomes a worse temptation
than desire if it stifles recourse to the one sure
remedy–prayer and meditation on these sins
in the light of truth. Concupiscence is like a
furnace, St. Bernard says; but if truth is the fire,
it teaches so as not to burn us up, but purify–the
word “pure” derives from pyr, the Greek for
“fire.”

2) The Deadly Arrow of Vainglory:
But, then, if truth succeeds and conquers fear
and the night of sin dissolves as it will, beware
the delicate but deadly arrow of vainglory. This
is the second temptation that never attacks the
fearful soul still struggling with his ups and
downs; this one attacks the fervent who succeed
and become susceptible to praise and self-esteem.
This is the devil of the devout Catholic who goes
to daily Mass, confession every month, says his
Rosary and thinks that’s all there is–when there
is so much more!–failing to remember in the
light of truth that goodness is not an achievement
but a gift: What have you that you have not
received?

3) The Business:
All right, suppose you have survived these
first two temptations. Suppose the devil finds
he can’t assail you with your fears of failure
or your vain illusions of success? Then he will
try you with some real success. When vain
failure and vainglory fail, he will offer you
real glory. This is the business walking in the
darkness, the third temptation to use your gifts
for real accomplishment in business, teaching,
preaching, writing, professional practice, politics,
ecclesiastic office, even to the mitre and the hat.
Whereas, whatever your ambition is, the truth
is, it is nothing, because the world is nothing
and nothing profits if you lose your soul. Even
spiritual success is nothing if it is measured by
the world, and they say: “How good he is; he is
a saint.” This is the temptation facing Catholics
who at last break from the ghetto to become
senator or member of the board. It is then that
the devil suggests that he can win an even greater
good–for God and for the Church, of course–if
he reneges on only this or this; for example, that
he can win against abortion if his party overlooks
contraception, failing to see that though abortion
is the worse evil in its immediate consequences,
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

contraception is worse in its malice because it is
more spiritual deliberately to use a faculty against
itself, contra naturam, even than, praeter naturam,
to commit murder, as lying, for example, is more
spiritual than theft.

4) The Noonday Devil:
These first three cardinal temptations
constitute exactly those the devil tried against
Our Lord. Not even Lucifer, St. Bernard says,
dared tempt him with the fourth: This is the devil
at noon who brings us visions, spiritual locutions,
mystical feelings, words and touches, the devil
of the “neo” in Neo-Thomists who, like Maritain,
adapt St. Thomas to the genius of themselves; the
devil of false ecumenism, experimental liturgies,
the pseudo-spirit of Vatican II. This is the devil
who appears when we think our prayers at last
are answered and we have begun ourselves to
become theologians, mystics and saints.
St. Bernard writes:
What does [the devil] do against those he sees really
love justice and hate iniquity? What else but clothe
iniquity in the image of virtue. The ones he knows
are perfect lovers of the good, he tries to persuade to
evil under the appearance not just of ordinary but of
perfect good; so that the person who most loves good
will consent the quickest and easily run and fall. This is,
therefore, the devil not just of the daytime but of noon.
Is this not what Mary feared at the novel salutation of
the angel?

Materialists have always sought to justify sin as
natural good–birds do it, bees do it; it is a universal
urge and I can’t help it. This is a low-grade devil
not even of the terror of the night, but of the night
before. You find him hanging out in low places like
the writings of Sigmund Freud and Margaret Meade,
and he has wormed his way from them through the
sinks and drains of post-Conciliar reform into neoCatholic catechisms and marriage manuals. But the
noonday devil proposes something far less gross,
more subtle and especially attractive to sensitive
souls, to those advanced in spiritual life, especially
to contemplatives. This is the devil who says that
there is a “spirituality of the body.” It is not as Freud
and the others taught, that religion symbolizes sex;
sex, to them, symbolizes religion. “Concupiscence is
caritas. Copulation is a form of prayer.” As a father
and grandfather I want to make clear I have nothing
against copulation, but from considerable personal
experience I can assure all these contemplatives
that it isn’t prayer. These oh so sensitive theologians
begin by stating what the Church has always taught,
that there are two ends of marriage; children, yes,
but also mutual love–lets call it “unitive-experience”
which is a mystical term. “So sex, you see, is a sign
of the mystical marriage St. Bernard and St. John
of the Cross describe, which is, you see, a kind of

27
tantric or sexual yoga!” Suffice it to say that some
of this has actually infected Catholic monasteries,
convents and seminaries where the sin of singular
friendship has sunk to actual vice. In the face of
which our best and instant recourse is a special
prayer to St. Michael authorized by a prophetic
pope as early as Newman’s day when these devils
still seemed fast asleep. They are wide awake and
prowling now at noon, seeking the ruin of the
tenderest, most generous and vulnerable souls:
O glorious Prince of the heavenly host, St. Michael
the Archangel, defend us in the battle and in the fearful
warfare that we are waging against the rulers of this
world of darkness, against the evil spirits....That first
enemy of mankind and a murderer from the beginning
has regained his confidence. Changing himself into an
angel of light, he goes about with the whole multitude
of the wicked spirits to invade the earth and blot out the
Name of God and of His Christ....This wicked serpent
like an unclean torrent, pours into men of depraved
minds and corrupt hearts the poison of his malice,
the spirit of lying, impiety and blasphemy, and the
deadly breath of impurity and every form of vice and
iniquity. These crafty enemies of mankind have filled to
overflowing with gall and wormwood the Church, which
is the Bride of the Lamb without spot: they have laid
profane hands upon her most sacred treasures. Make
haste, therefore, O invincible Prince, to help the people
of God against the inroads of the lost spirits and grant
us the victory. Amen.

Darkness at Noon
These are the sins of an age of darkness–at
noon. But, of course, this darkness would never
have occurred if the grosser and simpler sins of the
age of light had not occurred first–I mean the false
light of rationalism; the light of a materialist and
sceptical age which denied the presence and even
the existence of angels.
Many a parent, horrified at a son or daughter
trafficking with the noonday devils of the Oriental
cults, has failed to see that his own addiction to the
business walking in the darkness–that is, to his own
ambitious drive for money, power and success–had
cut that son or daughter off from the holy Angels
of the true, Catholic and once perfectly ordinary
spiritual life. If Hindus and their Catholic converts
practice a false angelism, the great mass of Western
men, including Catholics, exclude the holy Angels
from their daily lives. Conservative and traditionalist
Catholics, of course, hold the existence of angels as
a dogma of the Faith and most of us recite a prayer
to our Guardian Angel every night and morning.
But we do not integrate this dogma of the Faith into
our daily lives, our businesses, schools, political and
social institutions, and especially fail to recognize
their presence in the science of physical nature

which dominates the age. As Newman stressed,
the commonest and most pernicious form of
infidelity is not conscious heresy in which doctrine
is denied, but the failure to take doctrine seriously.
Materialism had been the ordinary unacknowledged
philosophy of the vast majority of Catholics long
before the great disaster of the Vatican Council.
Generations who accepted the Creed in the abstract,
had nonetheless practiced an idolatrous science
as pragmatically true. Many a Catholic, fervently
praying to his Guardian Angel in the morning, has
gone to the office, school or shop utterly failing to
acknowledge the existence much less the presence
of angels in the chemical, biological and social
processes of the actual work he does.

The Reality of the Angels
Is there an Angel of the Storm? Carissimi, as
the old writers would say at this point–Beloved in
Christ; I am embarrassed to use such language,
unused to it as I am, but the subject calls for it; we
are on holy ground. I wonder if you thought Hans
Christian Andersen’s fairy tale was just fiction?
That angels of the storms, like talking sparrows and
weeping willows are just pretty metaphors, just ways
of talking, in a word, just fantasy?
St. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor–angelic both in
his chastity and in his doctrine on the angels–says
that there really are spirits presiding over all the
species and motions of the universe, moving,
governing, regulating the stars and the motions of
the elements such as winds and tides.
It is generally found both in human affairs and in
natural things [St. Thomas says] that every particular
power is governed and ruled by the universal power
of the king. Among the angels also, the superior angels
who preside over the inferior, possess a more universal
knowledge. Now it is manifest that the power of any
individual body is more particular than the power of
any spiritual substance; for every corporeal form is a
form individualized by matter, and determined to the
here and now; whereas immaterial forms are absolute
and intelligible. Therefore, as the inferior angels, who
have the less universal forms, are ruled by the superior,
so are all corporeal things ruled by the angels.

The Four Roles
of the Angels
Angels work at four assignments in the physical
universe exactly as they are enumerated in the wellknown prayer to our Guardian Angel: “Ever this
day (or night) be at my side, to light and guard, to
rule and guide.” Illumina, custodi, rege et guberna. The
act of illumination proper to angels is the light of
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

28

understanding, not of the sun, moon, stars or any physical or chemical variety of
light. St. Augustine says that on the first day of creation when God said “Fiat Lux–
Let there be light,” He created the angels. The sun and other stars of course were
not created until the third day. When angels perform their office of illumination,
it is an act of understanding the principles and reasons of things, perfectly and
instantly without any need of science, experiment and reason. When angels guard,
they perform their military service against the inroads of the fallen angels–they
keep watch and keep off. When angels rule, they discern by prudence how the
natural law applies to particular cases; when they guide, they actually apply force
and direction in the execution of those laws.

Newman’s Sermon on the Angels
There have been ages of the world as Newman said, in which men have
thought too much of angels, attributing to them divine prerogatives; and many
highly gifted souls are trafficking with devils at noon today; but for the great, slow
majority of Catholics, the body of Newman’s “Sermon on the Angels” still holds
true. He directs it to the scientific and technological spirit of the age:

NEWMAN

ANDERSEN
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

There have been ages of the world [he says] in which men have thought too much
of angels, and paid them excessive honor; honored them so perversely as to forget the
supreme worship due to Almighty Good. This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what
is called an educated age, such as our own, is just the reverse: to account slightly of them or
not at all; to ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency, but to certain assumed laws of
nature. This, I say, is likely to be our sin, in proportion as we are initiated into the learning
of this world; this is the danger of many [scientific] pursuits, now in fashion–chemistry,
geology, and the like; the danger that is, of resting in things seen, and forgetting unseen
things...
Why do rivers flow? Why does rain fall? Why does the sun warm us? And the wind,
why does it blow?...These events which we ascribe to chance as the weather, or to nature
as the seasons are duties done to that God who maketh His Angels to be winds, and His
Ministers a flame of fire.
For example, it was an Angel which gave to the pool at Bethesda its medicinal quality;
and there is no reason why we should doubt that other health-springs in this and other
countries are made such, by a like unseen ministry. The fires on Mount Sinai, the thunders
and lightnings, were the work of Angels; and in the Apocalypse we read of the Angels
restraining the four winds. The earthquake at the resurrection was the work of an Angel.
And in the Apocalypse the earth is smitten in various ways by Angels of vengeance.
Thus wherever we look abroad, we are minded of those most gracious and holy beings,
the servants of the Holiest, who deign to minister to the heirs of salvation. Every breath
of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect is, as it were, the skirts of their
garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God in heaven....Vain man
would be wise, and he curiously examines the works of nature, as if they were lifeless and
senseless; as if he alone had intelligence, and they were base inert matter....So he goes on,
tracing the order of things, seeking for causes in that order, giving names to the wonders
he meets with and thinking he understands what he has given a name to. At length he
forms a theory, and recommends it in writing, and calls himself a [scientist].
Now let us consider what the real state of the case is. Supposing the inquirer I have been
describing, when examining a flower, or an herb, or a pebble, or a ray of light, which he
treats as something so beneath him in, the scale of existence suddenly discovered that he
was in the presence of some powerful being who was hidden behind the visible things he
was inspecting, who, though concealing his wise hand, was giving them their beauty, grace,
and perfection, as God’s instruments for the purpose, nay whose robe and ornaments those
wondrous objects were, which he was so eager to analyze–what would be his thoughts?...

29

The very lowest of His Angels is indefinitely above us in
this our present state; how high then must be the Lord
of Angels! The very Seraphim hide their faces before
His Glory, while they praise Him; how shamefaced then
should sinners be, when they come into His presence!

Five Practical Proposals
Well, every lecture must conclude upon some
practical advice: Surely Newman is right and surely
we have failed to integrate our faith in general, and
the doctrine of angels in particular into the business
of everyday life, particularly in Science. It is also
true in politics. Just as there are angels of the storms,
so there are angels of institutions: angels of the
United States, of the several states, angels of cities.
His biographer says St. Francis de Sales on entering
Chablais, saluted the angel of the province. Because
they enjoy the Beatific Vision, in the strict sense,
angels can’t be sad, but metaphorically it can’t be
false to say the angels of our cities weep at our sins
and infidelities and I suggest nothing less than the
restoration of our gratitude and the recognition of
our dependence on these great insulted beings as
they preside over nature, nations, cities, institutions
and persons. So I propose five practical actions:
First, that you restore the nightly reading in your
homes of tales and stories like Andersen’s, derived
from the great Catholic culture of the Middle Ages,
so that the memories and imaginations of children
are nurtured on these holy presences, so that your
sons and daughters will grow like the corn and oats
and not the arrogant buckwheat of a scientific age.
Of course I read that tale of Andersen’s not only
in illustration of how good literature contains in a
poetic mode true doctrine; but also because I think
it is itself a prophecy: If Fatima is true, and the
world grows worse; if no sufficient number is found
to carry out Our Lady’s strict commands, the Angel
of the Storm will come with bolts of lightning in his
hands; but if we fold our leaves and bend our heads,
when the storm has passed away–if not in this world,
hopefully the next–in the pure still air we shall stand
with the flowers and the corn, all refreshed by the
rain.
Second, if you get up in the morning, as most of
us must, sit before a window facing east, where St.
Thomas says the angels stay, and watch the work of
this great spirit of the earth, singing the glory of God

with his brother of the air and clouds and sun and
light; so that you don’t just pray to them as blank
abstractions, but love them in their beauty and truth.
Third, whenever you approach a city or a town
by car or air, or foot, salute its angel; after all, you
stop for the traffic signs; recognize his governance as
well.
Fourth, remember every time you say the
perfect prayer to your Guardian Angel, that his
little offices are precisely the same four the greater
spirits–the Virtues–work for every species and every
force throughout the universe: to light and guard,
to rule and guide. This is true of sun, moon, wind,
tides, the tides of history and the Church.
Fifth, there are also angels of the Church: of
these St. Michael has been named. In honor of the
Queen of Angels, to whom our lives and hopes
must be consecrated, as the angels are, to whom
the whole creation is a gift of her Son–a marvellous
play full of music, color and light, which the angels
perform just to please the Queen of Heaven every
day, and so to honour her and save the world from
the evil angels and ourselves–we might recite the
other famous prayer to her great servant which must
be restored to the altars of Christendom, as the
altars themselves must be restored:
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of
battle, be our protection against the wickedness and
snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly
pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by
the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and the other
evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin
of souls. Amen.

Queen of Angels, pray for us.
This article comes from a talk delivered by Dr. John Senior (R.I.P. 1999),
on March 20, 1983 at the 15th Remnant Anniversary Conference, St. Paul,
Minnesota.
Dr. Senior taught literature and classics at the University of Kanssas in the
1970’s and 80’s. He was a professor in the famous Integrated Humanities
Program there, during which many of his students converted to the Faith. He
is the authored several works, including The Death of Christian Culture and
The Restoration of Christian Culture.
He is buried, along with his wife, at the cemetery attached to Assumption
Chapel in St. Mary’s, KS.

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

30

When can the Prayer to St. Michael against the devil and the bad angels be recited?

This powerful prayer (see below in its original entirety), written by Pope Leo XIII
in 1888, was incorporated into the Roman Ritual in 1925 (Tit. XI, Cap. 3) with the
rubric that it can be recited by bishops or by priests who have received the authority
to do so from their Ordinaries. However, this rubric concerns the public prayers of the
Church that are contained in the Roman Ritual. The same restriction does not apply to
the private recitation of this prayer by any individual priest, or any of the faithful for
that matter, as many bishops permitted and encouraged before Vatican II.
The Church’s traditional teaching concerning the recitation of private exorcism
prayers is contained in the Moral Theology manual of Dominicus Prümmer (Vol. II,
§463):
It is not only clerics who can pronounce an exorcism in a private and secret manner, enjoying a
special power over the devils in virtue of the order of the exorcistate, but also the laity themselves.
It is in no way forbidden to the laity nor does any inconvenient arise from it. Thus we read in
history how several lay persons, such as St. Catherine of Siena and St. Anthony of the Desert,
cast out devils.

Consequently, it is in no way inappropriate for the laity to recite the exorcism
prayer of Pope Leo XIII, provided that they do so privately. It will certainly be very
powerful in overcoming the temptations and evil snares of the devil.

Prayer Against Satan and
The Rebellious Angels
Published by Order of Pope Leo XIII

The Holy Father exhorts priests to say this prayer as often as
possible, as a simple exorcism to curb the power of the devil
and prevent him from doing harm. The faithful also may say
it in their own name, for the same purpose, as any approved
prayer. Its use is recommended whenever action of the devil
is suspected, causing malice in men, violent temptations and
even storms and various calamities. It could be used as a
solemn exorcism (an official and public ceremony, in Latin), to
expel the devil. It would then be said by a priest, in the name of
the Church and only with the Bishop’s permission.

Prayer to St. Michael
the Archangel
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost. Amen. Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly
Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our
battle against “principalities and powers, against the
rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of
wickedness in the high places” (Eph. 6:12). Come to the
assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness
and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the
tyranny of the devil. Holy Church venerates thee as her
guardian and protector; to thee the Lord has entrusted
the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray,
therefore, the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our
feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do
injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the Most High,
that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon
us: take hold of “the dragon, the old serpent, which is
the devil and Satan,” bind him and cast him into the
bottomless pit “so that he may no longer seduce the
nations” (Apoc. 20:2).

Exorcism
In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord,
strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the
Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and
all the Saints (and powerful in the holy authority of our
ministry), we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks
and deceits of the devil.
Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let
them that hate him flee from before his face. (Ps. 67).
V. Behold the Cross of the Lord; flee, bands of enemies.
R. He has conquered, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the
offspring of David.
V. May thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us.
R. For great is our hope in Thee.

✠

The crosses ( ) indicate a blessing to be given if a priest
recites the Exorcism; if a lay person recites it, they indicate the
Sign of the Cross to be made silently by that person.

We drive you from us, whoever you may be,
unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders,
all wicked legions, assemblies and sects; in the Name
and by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ ✠ may you
be snatched away and driven from the Church of God
and from the souls made to the image and likeness of
God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine
Lamb. ✠ Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to
deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment
God’s elect and sift them as wheat. ✠ The Most High

31
One wonders why it is that post-Vatican II authors
have scruples concerning the recitation of this magnificent
prayer, stating that since the 1983 Code of Canon Law
it is no longer permitted. In fact, the same rule of the
necessity of permission for public exorcisms is retained
(Canon 1172). There is, however, no determination
concerning the private recitation of an exorcism prayer,
which is consequently perfectly permissible. Of course,
we all know why it is that the modern church has changed
the rites of exorcism, done away with the traditional
powerful prayers, and discouraged all such commands in
the name of Christ against the power of evil: it is that the
devil is henceforth treated more as a mythical figure than
as a reality that we must deal with every day, as St. Peter
teaches: “Be sober and watch: because your adversary the
devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may
devour” (I Pet. 5:8).
The gravity of sin, the danger of eternal damnation
and the personal power of evil that the devil is able
to exercise in this corrupt world, the corruption of

God commands you. ✠ He with whom, in your great
insolence, you still claim to be equal; “He who wants
all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of
the truth” (I Tim. 11:4). God the Father commands
you. ✠ God the Son commands you. ✠ God the Holy
Ghost commands you. ✠ Christ, God’s Word made flesh
commands you; ✠ He who to save our race outdone
through your envy, “humbled Himself, becoming
obedient even unto death” (Phil. 11:8); He who has built
His Church on the firm rock and declared that the gates
of hell shall not prevail against her, because He will
dwell with her “all days even to the end of the world” (St.
Mt. 28:20). The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you,
✠ as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian
Faith. ✠ The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary,
commands you, ✠ she who by her humility and from
the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed
your proud head. The faith of the Holy Apostles Peter
and Paul and of the other Apostles commands you. ✠
The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of
all the Saints command you. ✠
Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we
adjure you by the living God, ✠ by the true God, ✠ by the
holy God, ✠ by the God “who so loved the world that He
gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him
might not perish but have life everlasting” ( Jn. 3:16); stop
deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the
poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church
and hindering her liberty. Begone, Satan, inventor
and master of all deceit, enemy of man’s salvation.
Give place to Christ in whom you have found none of
your works; give place to the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church acquired by Christ at the price of His
Blood. Stoop beneath the all-powerful Hand of God;
tremble and flee when we invoke the holy and terrible

the Church, and its infiltration by its enemies, even to
the Papacy, are so many realities pushed aside by the
modernists, but of which we are reminded in this prayer:
On men depraved in mind and corrupt in heart the wicked
dragon pours out like a most foul river the poison of his villainy,
a spirit of lying, impiety and blasphemy; and the deadly breath
of lust and of all iniquities and vices. Her most crafty enemies
have engulfed the Church, the Spouse of the Immaculate Lamb,
with sorrows, they have drenched her with wormwood; on all
Her desirable things they have laid their wicked hands. Where
the See of Blessed Peter and the Chair of Truth have been set up
for the light of the Gentiles, there they have placed the throne
of the abomination of their wickedness, so that, the Pastor
having been struck, they may also be able to scatter the flock.
Therefore, O thou unconquerable Leader, be present with the
people of God against the spiritiual wickednesses which are
bursting in upon them: and bring them the victory.

Is it any wonder that the modernists consider this
prayer “dangerous” for the soul? In fact, to the contrary, it
is the refusal to pray in this way that is dangerous for the
soul.–Fr. Peter Scott

Name of Jesus, this Name which causes hell to tremble;
this Name to which the Virtues, Powers and Dominations
of heaven are humbly submissive; this Name which the
Cherubim and Seraphim praise unceasingly repeating:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, the God of Armies.
V. O Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto Thee.
V. May the Lord be with thee.
R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray. God of heaven, God of earth, God of
Angels, God of Archangels, God of Patriarchs, God
of Prophets, God of Apostles, God of Martyrs, God of
Confessors, God of Virgins, God who has power to give
life after death and rest after work, because there is no
other God than Thee and there can be no other, for
Thou art the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, of
whose reign there shall be no end, we humbly prostrate
ourselves before Thy glorious Majesty, and we beseech
Thee to deliver us by Thy power from all the tyranny
of the infernal spirits, from their snares, their lies and
their furious wickedness; deign O Lord, to grant us Thy
powerful protection and to keep us safe and sound. We
beseech Thee through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
From the snares of the devil, deliver us, O Lord.
That thy Church may serve Thee in peace and liberty,
we beseech Thee to hear us.
That Thou may crush down all enemies of Thy Church,
we beseech Thee to hear us.
Holy water is sprinkled in the place where we are.

✠ Henri, O.M.I.
Vicar Apostolic of James Bay
August 15, 1967

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

32

Persons;
Principle
b y

It’s Not About
It’s About

t h e

e d i t o r

A BORING BUT
NECESSARY
INVESTIGATION
OF THE
MORAL
THEOLOGY
OF PRIVATE
PROPERTY

I have thought it would be helpful to bring to light the writings of
authoritative moral theologians on the subject of “private property.” This will
be of great usefulness to any coherent discussion of the Church’s teaching
on Economics. The actual magisterial teaching on this point is well-known,
and readers are encouraged to peruse for themselves the two great social
encyclicals, Rerum Novarum [available from Angelus Press. Price: $3.50]
and Quadragesimo Anno. What follow are English translations, with some
commentary, of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and the great 20th-century
moral theologian, Fr. Dominic Prümmer, O.P.,1 both of whom were taught to
me at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, Winona, Minnesota.
Those who are unfamiliar with the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas should
understand that he uses imaginary or real objections to clarify the state of the
question which he then answers from a recognized authority and explains
according to reason.–The Editor
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

33

s;
les
The Angelic Doctor treats of private property
almost as an afterthought, addressing it in light of
the malice of theft and robbery. Everyone knows
that theft and robbery are wrong, but why are they
wrong? St. Thomas answers in terms of the very
nature of ownership in the Summa Theologica
(II-IIae, Question 66, Articles 1 and 2).

ARTICLE 1:

Whether it is natural for man
to possess external things?

In this article, St. Thomas does not distinguish
between common and private ownership but begins at
the beginning: Can man rightfully possess external
things at all, given God’s superior rights?

Objection 1.

[Remember, the
“Objections” are imaginary arguments that St.
Thomas surmised were circulating in the minds
of his readers. By using this device, St. Thomas
forced himself to answer directly, objectively, and
on principles alone–Ed.] It would seem that it is not
natural for man to possess external things. For no
man should ascribe to himself that which is God’s.
Now the dominion over all creatures is proper to
God, according to Ps. 23:1, “The earth is the Lord’s
and the fullness thereof: the world, and all they that
dwell therein.” Therefore it is not natural for man to

possess external things. [In other words, only God
really owns anything.–Ed.]

Objection 2.

Further, Basil in
expounding the words of the rich man (Lk. 12:18), “I
will gather all things that are grown to me, and my
goods,” says [Hom. in Luc. xii, 18]: “Tell me: which
are thine? Where did you take them from and bring
them into being?” Now whatever man possesses
naturally, he can fittingly call his own. Therefore
man does not naturally possess external things. [This
is to object that a man, not being the Creator, cannot
properly call anything his own.–Ed.]

Objection 3.

Further, according to
Ambrose (De Trin. i) [De Fide, ad Gratianum, i. 1]
“dominion denotes power.” But man has no power
over external things, since he can work no change
in their nature. Therefore, the possession of external
things is not natural to man. [That is to say, since
man is not powerful enough to change nature from
the inside, he cannot naturally possess things.–Ed.]

On the contrary,

it
is written (Ps. 8:8): “Thou hast subjected all things
under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the
beasts also of the fields.” [This Scripture refers to the
subjection of all things under the feet of man, whom
God has set over all the works of “His hands” (Ps.
8:7).–Ed.]

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

34

I answer that,

external things can be considered in two ways.
Firstly, as regards their nature, and this is not
subject to the power of man, but only to the power
of God Whose mere will all things obey. Secondly,
as regards their use, and in this way, man has a
natural dominion over external things, because, by
his reason and will, he is able to use them for his
own profit, as they were made on his account: for
the imperfect is always for the sake of the perfect,
as stated above (64, 1). It is by this argument that
the Philosopher [Aristotle] proves (Polit. i, 3) that
the possession of external things is natural to man.
Moreover, this natural dominion of man over other
creatures, which is competent to man in respect of
his reason wherein God’s image resides, is shown
forth in man’s creation (Gen. 1:26) by the words:
“Let us make man to our image and likeness: and
let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea,”
etc. [In other words, we must make a distinction
between the things themselves, whose dominion
belongs entirely to God their Creator, and their
use, which belongs to man by the will of God
Who created him to share His dominion....Having
made the necessary distinction and stated his case
in answer to the question, “Whether it is natural
for man to possess external things,” St. Thomas
now moves on to answer the specific imaginary
objections he posed earlier in the article.–Ed.]

Reply to Objection 1.

God has sovereign dominion over all things: and He,
according to His providence, directed certain things
to the sustenance of man’s body. For this reason
man has a natural dominion over things, as regards
the power to make use of them. [God created things
for man, and so man has the right to make use of
them.–Ed.]

Reply to Objection 2.

The rich man is reproved for deeming external
things to belong to him principally, as though
he had not received them from another, namely
from God. [Man has a lower degree of ownership
of things, held in trust as it were from God. The
problem came from–as is usual since the Fall in
Eden–the rich man’s desire to put himself in the
place of God.–Ed.]

Reply to Objection 3.

This argument considers the dominion over external
things as regards their nature. Such a dominion
belongs to God alone, as stated above. [In light of
the ownership of things in themselves, the objection
is correct, but it ignores the rightful use of things by
man as willed by God.–Ed.]
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

ARTICLE 2:

Whether it is lawful for a man
to possess a thing as his own?

[Here, St. Thomas brings greater precision
to the previous argument: Given that man can
possess things in general (as regards their use), can
individual men possess and retain individual things
as their own?–Ed.]

Objection 1. It would seem unlawful for

a man to possess a thing as his own. For whatever
is contrary to the natural law is unlawful. Now
according to the natural law all things are common
property: and the possession of property is contrary
to this community of goods. Therefore it is unlawful
for any man to appropriate any external thing to
himself. [In other words, God created things for
the use of the human race in common, and what
we mean by “private property” contradicts this
common use, so what is called “private property”
seems to go against God’s design.–Ed.]

Objection 2.

Further, Basil in
expounding the words of the rich man quoted above
(Article 1, Objection 2), says: “The rich who deem
as their own property the common goods they
have seized upon, are like to those who by going
beforehand to the play prevent others from coming,
and appropriate to themselves what is intended for
common use.” Now it would be unlawful to prevent
others from obtaining possession of common
goods. Therefore it is unlawful to appropriate to
oneself what belongs to the community. [That is to
say, given that all things were created by God for
humanity in general, to claim any particular things
as private property is to rob the rest of mankind of
its common stake in those things. This is the very
argument of Karl Marx.–Ed.]

Objection 3.

Further, Ambrose says
[Serm. lxiv, de temp.], and his words are quoted in
the Decretals (Dist. xlvii., Can. Sicut hi.): “Let no man
call his own that which is common property:” and
by “common” he means external things, as is clear
from the context. Therefore it seems unlawful for
a man to appropriate an external thing to himself.
[The objector invokes the authority of St. Ambrose
to claim that all external things must be common
property as opposed to individual property.–Ed.]

On the contrary,

Augustine says (De Haeres., haer. 40):

The “Apostolici” are those who with extreme arrogance
have given themselves that name, because they do not
admit into their communion persons who are married or
possess anything of their own, such as both monks and
clerics who in considerable number are to be found in
the Catholic Church.

Now the reason why these people are heretics
was because severing themselves from the Church,
they think that those who enjoy the use of the above
things, which they themselves lack, have no hope of
salvation. Therefore it is erroneous to maintain that
it is unlawful for a man to possess property. [The
authority of the Church, in her condemnation of
some early “Christian Communists,” is invoked to
show that the obligatory common ownership of all
goods is against the Catholic Faith.–Ed.]

I answer that,

two things are competent to man in respect of
exterior things. One is the power to procure and
dispense them, and in this regard it is lawful for man
to possess property. Moreover this is necessary to
human life for three reasons. Firstly, because every
man is more careful to procure what is for himself
alone than that which is common to many or to
all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave
to another that which concerns the community, as
happens where there is a great number of servants.
Secondly, because human affairs are conducted
in more orderly fashion if each man is charged
with taking care of some particular thing himself,
whereas there would be confusion if everyone had
to look after any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly,
because a more peaceful state is ensured to man if
each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be
observed that quarrels arise more frequently where
there is no division of the things possessed. [In
other words, man is better able to take care of the
things God created for the end He intended if each
man has private property. This is often called the
“individual character” of private property.–Ed.]
The second thing that is competent to man with
regard to external things is their use. In this respect
man ought to possess external things, not as his
own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to
communicate them to others in their need. Hence
the Apostle says (I Tim. 6:17,18): “Charge the rich
of this world not to be highminded, nor to trust
in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God
(who giveth us abundantly all things to enjoy), to
do good, to be rich in good works, to give easily,
to communicate to others.” [This is often called
the “social character” of private property, and

35
please note that it is treated in the Tract on Justice,
not in the Tract on Charity. Keeping in mind the
practical individual and social advantages of private
possession noted above, man is also bound–in
justice–to respect God’s creation of all things for the
human race in general. In other words, there are
natural and Divinely-willed guidelines for the just
use of private property.–Ed.]

Reply to Objection 1.

Community of goods is ascribed to the natural
law, not that the natural law dictates that all things
should be possessed in common and that nothing
should be possessed as one’s own: but because
the division of possessions is not according to
the natural law, but rather arose from human
agreement2 which belongs to positive law, as
stated above (Question 57, Articles 2,3). Hence
the ownership of possessions is not contrary to
the natural law, but an addition thereto devised
by human reason. [St. Thomas contends that the
natural law does not positively require private
ownership but permits it as advantageous in
seeking the end for which things were created in
the first place. The method of that seeking–and
the particular guidelines for just use of private
property in that seeking–are regulated by positive
law (human or Divine). Private property need not go
against the design of God but can complement this
design when justly controlled.–Ed.]

Reply to Objection 2.

A man would not act unlawfully if by going
beforehand to the play he prepared the way for
others: but he acts unlawfully if by so doing he
hinders others from going. In like manner a rich
man does not act unlawfully if he anticipates
someone in taking possession of something which at
first was common property, and gives others a share:
but he sins if he excludes others indiscriminately
from using it. Hence Basil says (Hom. in Luc. xii, 18):
“Why are you rich while another is poor, unless it be
that you may have the merit of a good stewardship,
and he the reward of patience?” [In other words,
private property harms the end for which all things
were created when it is used selfishly, failing to take
into account its “social character” described above.
On the other hand, if private property is used justly,
it is apt to help the plight of those who do not yet
own.–Ed.]

Reply to Objection 3.

When
Ambrose says: “Let no man call his own that which
is common,” he is speaking of ownership as regards
use, wherefore he adds: “He who spends too much
is a robber.” [St. Thomas asserts that those who fail
to regard the “social character” of private property
use it unjustly.–Ed.]
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

FR.PRÜMMER
ON OWNERSHIP

36

“Dominion is the legitimate ability of disposing
of a thing as one’s own.” “Legitimate” means that
the ability is granted by natural or positive [Divine
or human–Ed.] law. Therefore, a man who has
dominion over a thing can only dispose of it within
the limits of [natural or positive–Ed.] law. Thus, a
rich man who wastes his goods does not sin against
commutative justice [the justice which regulates
exchanges between and among individuals–Ed.],
nor against any positive law, but he sins against the
natural law. The sin is prodigality [as in the parable
of the Prodigal Son–Ed.]. Prodigality violates
liberality, which is a potential part of the virtue of
justice.

Types of Dominion

[Keep going through all of this. It’s dry, but
important!–Ed.]

“Dominion” is divided into “Divine”
dominion and “Human” dominion.
● In Divine dominion, only God has perfect
dominion, as Creator and Preserver of all
creatures.
● Human dominion is only by delegation from
God. The terms of this delegation are such
that man is not able to dispose of things at his
own will, but by the Will of God only. Man is
the steward of God. [Conclusion?–The rights
of a man (even over his own property) are
necessarily subject to limits, either from nature,
from Divine law, from human law, or from the
“private law” of contracts and wills.–Ed.]

Human dominion is divided into
“full” dominion and “partial” dominion.
● Full dominion is perfect ownership, extending
both to the thing owned and to its fruits. [The
man who owns a chicken owns its eggs as
well.–Ed.]
● Partial dominion is less perfect ownership,
extending either to the thing itself or to its fruits,
but not to both. [The man who owns only the
oil rights to a piece of property owns the oil but
not the land.–Ed.]

THE ANGELUS • July 2005

Human partial dominion is divided into
“direct” dominion and “indirect” dominion.

● Direct dominion is the restricted ownership
of one who owns a thing but cannot dispose
either of it or its fruits. [The simply-professed
Religious who still rightfully owns a savings
account cannot use, spend, or give away the
principal or the interest.–Ed.]
● Indirect dominion is the restricted ownership
of one who can use a thing (preserving it intact)
and its fruits but cannot sell the thing itself or
give it away.

Human partial indirect dominion
is divided into “usus” dominion
and “usufructus” dominion.
● “Usus” dominion is the restricted ownership of
one who, preserving a thing intact and neither
selling it nor giving it away, can use its fruits but
cannot sell them or give them away. [The underaged heir to an estate truly owns the estate and
can enjoy its profits, but he cannot sell it or
spend them beyond his appropriate upkeep, as
decided by his guardian.–Ed.]
● “Usufructus” dominion is the restricted
ownership of one who, preserving a thing intact
and neither selling it nor giving it away, can
both use its fruits and dispose of them in any
way. [The one who inherits an “entailed” estate
cannot get rid of the estate itself or allow it to
suffer loss, but he may live on its profits as he
sees fit and sell, invest, or donate them without
restriction.–Ed.]
Dominion itself can be divided in a second
way: “Dominium altum” and “Dominium humilem.”
[“Dominium altum” is what we would call “eminent
domain.” “Dominium humilem” is what we would
call “private property,” as opposed to public
property.–Ed.] By means of “dominium altum,” the
supreme legitimate authority (i.e., the State) has the
power, sometimes and for a grave cause, to dispose
of private property for the common good. It is not
dominion strictly speaking, since the legitimate
authority (i.e., the State) is not the master of all the
goods of its subjects, nor can it convert [private
property] to its own advantage. Eminent domain can
only be exercised if two conditions are met:
1) It is invoked in the face of a true necessity of
the community.
2) The legitimate authority (e.g., the State) must
give just compensation which does not burden
one subject more than another. [Example: The
State undertakes the annexation of land to build a
necessary road or airport–Ed.]

37

The Origins of
Private Property

There you have it. Please let me make a few
wrap-up comments.
Why all this talk about such things as “usus”
and “usufructus”? We must understand that
private property is compatible with the natural
law, but it is subject to reasonable restrictions
since it itself arises from right reason. Reality is
extremely complex, and one must learn to make
distinctions. It is far too easy to adopt simple
slogans (especially when bombarded constantly
with sloganeering by media interests of all kinds)
rather than to look at complex realities with
a view to penetrating their complexities. The
aim of this article has been to expose readers
to a few of the complexities of a very small
chunk of moral theology and to enable them
to rise above–even for a moment–the clamor
of interested parties of the so-called “left” and
“right.” Very obviously, the Catholic Faith and
all its repercussions including, and especially,
in the sphere of Economics, transcends what is
popularly labeled “left” and “right” because it
pre-dates them.

● In fact (de facto), the notion of “private property”
arises from three sources:

A Catholic economic order which strove to
apply the principles explained above pre-existed
both Capitalism and Marxism. This is why Pope
St. Pius X said in Our Apostolic Mandate [available
from Angelus Press. Price: $4.45],

.

The origin of “private property”
is to be considered under two angles:
in fact and by right.

Civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is
the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been
in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization,
it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and
restored continually against the unremitting attacks
of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.

1) “Occupation” or the first entry into uninhabited

property [This is how Cain became the owner of his
own city after his flight from Adam and Eve.–Ed.]

2)

Civil law. [This is illustrated by the US
Homestead Act (1862) which allowed ownership of
160 acres of unoccupied public land after five years of
residence and payment of a nominal fee; or after six
months of residence and a $1.25/acre fee.–Ed.]

3)

Social pacts, such as that between Abram and
Lot [On account of the growth of their livestock herds,
a quarrel arose between the two brother herdsmen
over which lots of their common land was to be
pastured by whom. To settle the friction, Abram and
Lot made a deal between each other (Gen. 13:1-18).]
● By right (de jure), private ownership is without
doubt a conclusion from the principles of the
natural law, and it falls under just limits. Common
ownership is not directly against the natural
law, but in view of all the circumstances, it is
not as conformable to the natural law as private
ownership. [See St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, IIIIae, Q.66, Art.2 as quoted above on p.33–Ed.]

Catholicism and its economic principles are
not in any sense a reconciliation of rapacious
Capitalism and atheistic Communism–called
by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno the “twin
pillars of shipwreck”–which represent departures
in different (though not ultimately exclusive)
directions from Catholic morality which is
central because it is immovable. Private property
itself is central to the Catholic view of Economics
and it behooves us all to look to the principles
before jumping on bandwagons.

1

All passages from Prummer taken from Prummer, Dominicus M., O.P.
Manuale Theologiae Moralis Secundum Principia Sancti Thomae
Aquinatis, 3 vols. (Fribourg, Switzerland: Herder, 1935), vol. 2, 5f.

2

“Human agreement” is a poor translation of a concept St. Thomas
Aquinas refers to earlier, that is, “jus gentium” [the law of nations–Ed.].
The notion comes from Roman law and it means universally-accepted
rules of behavior, for example, that every human society has forbidden counterfeiting money. St. Thomas says in the article referred to,
“Whatever natural reason decrees among all men, is observed by all
equally, and is called the law of nations.”
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

38

Ten Minutes

with Fr. de Chivré:

Time
According
to God
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

“Every creature, even the tiniest, is in the
hand of God as though it were His sole concern.”
So reads the caption beneath a charming
photograph showing a man’s hand, fingers
unfolded, holding in his palm an adorable little
downy chick.
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum
meum.”–Into Thy hands, Lord, I commend my
pour soul, anxious for security, for the day begins
with a need for security.
The need for security! Men throw all of their
energy into the task of ensuring their security–
personal safety, financial security, health security,
work-union security, political security, etc. For
all this, time still slips through their fingers like
the pages of a book avidly devoured in hope of
finding the security of an answer. Suddenly, one
day, the page when they die is already between
their fingers.
We secure our houses and our salaries but no
one can ever secure the essentials: time escapes
us, health escapes us, tomorrow escapes us. This
accumulation of precautions does not take away
man’s feeling of insecurity because security is not
in a particular organization of events but in our
understanding of the meaning of events which,
outside of God, no one can possess. We only
ensure our security according to the degree of
knowledge and love we share with Him who lives
in the total security of His omnipotence–God.

39
Absolute security depends on the quality with
which we live our time. Now, quality depends on the
soul, and time depends on God. Security is hidden
within the permission we grant to God to qualify
the time of every one of our days, by our letting
His grace take possession of all of the moments,
one after the other, giving us the security of a soul
established in the continuity of love.
Outside of this unshakable security, all of the
other securities sought by men are the efforts of
those who struggle to claim for themselves a sector
of human life which remains at the mercy of the
unforeseen, besieging them inside and out.
Time does not belong to us. We know very
well that even the most human changes in our
lives come from unforeseeable events, small or
great, which settle into the day like the teacher who
settles into his desk to draw the children’s attention
away from the pleasures of recess. He tells them,
“The time for necessary learning has now come.
Independently of your desire for recess, I give
you my time and I use yours in order to save your
future.” Time is an educator that uses the present
moment to explain to us how we should meet the
future. It is a commentary on tomorrow in order
that we might rectify, envision, and renew. It is the
gaze of God keeping watch over our movements,
sometimes impeding them to keep our pride from
the pitfalls that it cannot see, sometimes pushing
them along to take us even deeper than we realize
toward our ultimate destiny. God never agrees with
us: He knows too much, we know too little. God’s
good time is the eternal postman who is never on
strike, who delivers to us the mail from on high
with news about our absolute security, oftentimes
at the expense of our homemade security. It carries
with it a living, precise, and urgent understanding,
challenging us to be good students and take in the
teaching of the Master in order to be on the honor
roll for existence-management. Nothing ever comes
about the way we wanted, but everything comes
about perfectly for the coming of His Kingdom in
us.
If anyone is willing to look a little farther than
appearances, we are enveloped in time like a little
bird enveloped by the fingers of a hand. Like the
bird, we are quivering with impatience to stretch
our wings and fly away free in the fresh air, yet the
fingers restrain us because they are of the hand of
God who knows the storm is coming. Our wings
would break in the tempest, so He squeezes His
fingers around us a little tighter and we cry out,
groan, protest, and disagree….“You will not lose a
hair from your head without my permission. By My
use of time, I think only of what goes beyond it and
prepares it, that is, your existence with Me, Love
Itself.”

Security consists in learning the supernatural
meaning of time.
Let us take an example: It’s June. Since February
I have been organizing my vacation plans so as best
to please my family and myself. I have a good job,
enough money, perfect health, relatives to visit, a
pleasant beach, etc. I am master of my vacation, the
reward of my honest toil and virtuously executed
labors. I possess financial, physical, and family
security. Suddenly the phone rings and I am told
that the New York Stock Exchange has crashed and
my livelihood is in danger. It becomes impossible
to take a vacation. The first impulse is to say, “What
did I do to God to deserve this?”
I heard that same objection from a member
of my family at the funeral of his wife whom he
had loved ardently. The priest replied gently and
admirably, “You did what was needed to go farther
and higher.”
Every day is watched over by Love to push us
outside of time by means of time, farther and higher.
The gift of Understanding dwells in an appeal
to knowledge held by Faith, tearing through the
fog and provoking a ray of light to help us reason
farther and higher and use our disappointments to
know ourselves better, which would otherwise be
too preoccupied with recess. For God, the time has
come to teach us something new, something more
necessary, something indispensable.
Our disagreements with Him are due to our
differences of appreciation. He knows everything;
we only know what is in front of us, and even this
knowledge is superficial and insufficient. God knows
that time is the currency of exchange between Him
and us. He carefully prevents our wasting it on the
world, on evil, on sin, and on the excesses hidden
under the appearances of a good.
Our goal must be to acquire the security of
having an understanding of time in harmony with
the understanding God always has of it, that is,
to introduce into our “fiat” a peaceful and strong
agreement with the divine understanding as we let
our selfish sense of tragedy melt away under the
intelligent light of love and faith.
The first noble attitude we need to recover is
to associate our day to the mystery of time which
will unroll our day the way we might unroll a brand
new tablecloth, revealing unknown and unexpected
designs as it is slowly opened. Approving or
disapproving these designs will not change the
tablecloth: the only understanding we need of the
tablecloth is where it should go in function of its
designs–for the living room, the dining room, or
maybe the kitchen. The design commands where
the tablecloth should be put and the activity to
exercise around it. Each of our days is a tablecloth
embroidered with unforeseen designs of events–
interior or exterior, social or intimate. Having a
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

40
divine understanding of the designs means letting
them decide the kind of use to which we put them as
the events command. This is an illustration of how
we use time, how we use the tablecloth woven by
God, designed by God, who leaves to us freedom
to understand it, love it, and live it, and preserve
the intention of the Weaver who created it. We
cannot do violence to time because it is made of
a cloth which none can tear. But we can oblige it
to produce that for which God offered it to us. At
every instant, God calls upon our understanding to
act. He waits for us to understand the details in the
design and then, by reading there the meaning of
events as written out by His Wisdom, to live them
out–perhaps constructing, for instance, a stretch
of wall in our interior city or cementing a fissure
which threatened the strength of our fidelity. In
bringing to time an understanding that the absolute
Wisdom of God is its origin and cause, we eliminate
the sourness of our anger and refusals which do
not accept being deprived of control over the
unforeseeable accents of time’s eternal language.
In the name of a temporal security, we
compromise our absolute security when we deny to
time the right to tell us something essential about the
limits of our social securities.
You might object, “But isn’t this a mind-set
reserved for hermits and Carthusians?!” Since when
should we refuse to participate in the unshakable
security of those whose schedule is constantly
determined by the Master of time? Why should
we deny ourselves that security full of a freedom
which reads in detail the positive meaning of life’s
difficulties and raises up, with energy and patience,
the weight and the burden of a schedule constantly
animated, refreshed, and renewed by the Wisdom
of Love traveling through the time of our day? The
cool-headedness of the Faith is for all the baptized.
The serenity of a schedule remains the peaceful
privilege of all the sanctified. Loyalty of conscience,
clinging to the unexpected events of time like the
conscience of Jesus adhering to the wood of the
Cross, is the victory of believers over the blackest
hours and ensures the security of daily resurrections.
After events have toppled everything for him, the
baptized sees rising from the ruins outlines of a new
map–that of the heavenly Jerusalem emerging from
the secrets of His heart.
The charming legend of a little town covered
over by the ocean echoes a troubling reality. To
this day, its bells can be heard to ring loudly when
storms move the surface of the waves. There are
storms of unforeseen events, permitted by God in
the time of our existence, whose violence penetrates
to the very depths of our spiritual life to ring out
the bells of long-forgotten fervors. Without the hour
of God marked on the face of time to awaken our
secrets, we would remain forever bogged down in
THE ANGELUS • July 2005

the fastidious day-to-day of temporal materialism
and never come to know the honor of the
contradictions which accompany happiness.
“My God, I commend my day into Thy
hands. Make this portion of time unfold with the
application of heart that spells out each detail to
tell Thee ‘Thank You’ if it is something pleasant,
preserving it from ingratitude; to tell Thee
‘Gladly!’ if I must travel a short distance in the
opposite direction from the plan set out yesterday;
to tell Thee ‘Why not?’ if it means facing multiple
temptations; to tell Thee, ‘Please, take it,’ if Thou
wishest to strip something away; to tell Thee:
‘Together,’ if the cross is too heavy or there are too
many tears. Establish my thoughts in a conscious
faith, in a logical hope, in a love which does not
choose but only offers—which is the only kind that
truly chooses to conquer its time.”
Let’s get ourselves out of the habit of only
temporal security, of only human foresight. This
does not mean totally disdaining these securities, but
I mean that we ought not forget that the mysteries
of time reveal their ultimate fragility through
helplessness, unforeseen events, accidents, and
reversals of fortune which speak with authority the
language of Someone who knows everything to
the point of upsetting our time in order to call us
affectionately back to Him (in spite of ourselves).
Our society of insatiable demands, of
malcontents chained to their duty, of broken
families, and of political violence, is a society at
odds with the human nature which was created to
be tied to the Master of time by, as all the saints
could do, its reading what is worthy of adoration
in time. The saints were so docile that they
conquered the time of their earthly existence by
establishing themselves until the end of the world
in the admiration of men incapable of doing better
than they. The days of our existences are a series of
stair-steps rising up from the ground of time, each
drawing us closer to Him who is outside of time.
We are all living the dream of Jacob. With our head
resting on the rock of time, our understanding sleeps
as long as the mysterious ladder of our days does
not appear to us glowing with the traces of those
guardian angels concretized in earthly events. They
descend the ladder of our days bearing messages
from God, inviting us to meet Him by climbing
up the ladder enveloped in the security of these
messengers whom we fear so much and whose
embrace always bestows the tranquility of God when
we dare draw near them by our consent.
Translated exclusively into English for Angelus Press and published in this
language for the first time. Fr. Bernard-Marie 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 Lefebvre. He died in 1984.

Breaking with the Past:
Catholic Principles
Abandoned at the
Reformation
Abbot Francis Gasquet

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Mrs. Colleen Hammond

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Pope Pius XII

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Rev. Fr. Raoul Plus, SJ

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The un-Ordinary Magisterium:
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On St.
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Pope Pius
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On St.
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On the
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Pope Pius
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Pope Pius
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of Rome. A martyr, he is buried
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The Holy Bible (Douay-Rheims Version)

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