august 2006

$4.45

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

franciscan sisters

rebuilding from ground zero

The Roman Martyrology

W
E
N English
in

Sometimes called the Acts of the Martyrs,
The Roman Martyrology is an essential part of
the Roman Liturgy, specifically during the Office
of Prime, when its daily readings are chanted.
So important did Archbishop Lefebvre consider
the Martyrology that he selected the office of
Prime over Lauds to be the usual morning office
that the members of the Society of St. Pius X
recite in common.
Once extremely difficult to obtain
secondhand, this Newman Press classic is
available again new for the first time since its
original printing in 1961. Translated from the
official Latin texts and adhering to the 1962
liturgical calendar, with The Roman Martyrology
you can follow the annual liturgical life of the
Church as she splendidly recounts the feasts
of Our Lord and Lady, the martyrs and other
members of the Church Triumphant. Beneficial
for all Catholics, especially Third Order
members who recite the Divine Office daily.

412pp, 6¼" x 9¼", cloth hardcover,
sewn binding, STK# 8158 $34.95

Michael Davies’s monumental Apologia series

Ecumenism

from
to Silent Apostasy
An Analysis Compiled by the
Society of Saint Pius X

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol.I

This book is certainly one of great historical value. Portrays the dramatic
conflict (1968-76) relating to the grievances between Archbishop Lefebvre and
the Vatican under Pope Paul VI. Depicts the role of one who had the foresight
to recognize that he could not defend orthodoxy and at the same time accept
reforms “themselves oriented towards the cult of man.” Completely documented.
461pp, softcover, STK# 3051 $16.95

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol.II

This volume covers the story of Archbishop Lefebvre’s relations with the Vatican
from 1977-79. The negotiations between the Archbishop and the Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith form the principal feature of the book.
393pp, softcover, STK# 3053 $16.95

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol.III

Covers 1979-82, the beginning of the pontificate of John Paul II. Davies records
many of the Holy Father’s directives, how they were opposed by the Bishops,
and why it was necessary for Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX to avoid all
compromise in preserving Catholic Truth. Completes the series by considering
Abp. Lefebvre within the broader perspective of the crisis in the Church.
461pp, softcover, STK# 3040 $16.95

3-volume Apologia set, STK# 3050. $44.95

In 2004, The SSPX sent a letter
to all the Cardinals of the Church.
This letter was accompanied by a
hard hitting, but short and concise,
analysis of Ecumenism. Recently,
the SSPX has sent this same study
to EVERY Catholic bishop in the
world. We have put the letter and
study together for our customers in
this booklet and included a short
interview with Bishop Fellay and two
appendices: one, a not-so-Catholic (to say the least!) speech by
Cardinal Kasper on Ecumenism and, two, a pertinent excerpt from
the writings of the great Cardainl Pie (1815-80), “On the Duties of
Priests,” which stands in stark contrast to the ecumenical-babble
of Cardinal Kasper!
The Study itself, entitled “From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy”
is masterful and is divided into three main parts with the following
subdivisions:
Analysis of Ecumenical Thought: The Unity of the
Human Race and Interreligious Dialogue The Church of Christ
and Ecumenism The Recomposition of the Visible Unity The
Doctrinal Problems Posed by Ecumenism: The Church of
Christ is the Catholic Church Belonging to the Church by a
Triple Unity Outside of the Church There is No Salvation The
Pastoral Problems Posed by Ecumenism: Ecumenism
Begets Doctrinal Relativism Ecumenism Turns Souls Away
from the Church

•

•

•

•

•

63pp, softcover, STK# 8171Q $4.95

•

•

•

“Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.”
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

The

ngelus
A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

2915 Forest Avenue

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

August 2006
Volume XXIX, Number 8

• 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

Mr. James Vogel
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Editorial assistant

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operations and MARKETING

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Shipping and Handling

Mr. Jon Rydholm

A tribute to fr. carl pulvermacher  . . . . . . . . . . 2
Stephen L.M. Heiner

reverence and irreverence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
Fr. Franz Schmidberger

Oliveira salazar of portugal
and Catholic Regeneration in the 20th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
Dr. Tiago Jones

franciscan sisters of christ the king  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 17
Christ the King Convent, Kansas City, Missouri

letter #69 to friends and benefactors . .  .  .  .  .  . 30
Bishop Bernard Fellay

non-directive education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P.

It’s Not About
;
. It’
. .s. About
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . part
. . . . . . VIII
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Persons
Principles

The State and the Citizen
Amintore Fanfani

Questions and answers  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 40
Fr. Peter Scott

The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published
monthly under the patronage of
St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels.
Publication offices are located at
2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri,
64109, (816) 753-3150, FAX (816) 753-3557.
Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas
City, Missouri. Copyright © 2006 by Angelus
Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Manuscripts
are welcome. They must be double-spaced
and deal with the Roman Catholic Church, its
history, doctrine, or present crisis. Unsolicited
manuscripts will be used at the discretion of
the Editorial Staff.
Unused manuscripts
cannot be returned unless sent
with a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
The Angelus, Angelus Press,
2915 Forest Avenue,
Kansas City, MO 64109-1529.

ON OUR COVER: On a recent field trip with girls from Our Lady of Sorrows
Catholic Church and Retreat House (Phoenix, Arizona), a lone Franciscan Sister
of the Convent of Christ the King (see pp.17-24) walks towards the ruins of a
southwestern adobe mission church.

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Now Thou dost dismiss

A Tribute to Fr. Ca



iss Thy servant...
I never had the honor of
meeting Fr. Carl. But, as I
did the interviews necessary
to compile a proper tribute
to him, a pattern began
to emerge. Everyone kept
saying the same thing–that
he was a truly happy and
holy priest who worked
tirelessly for the Faith.
And it is eminently
appropriate for this
magazine which he helped
found to pay tribute to him.

Carl Pulvermacher

By

S t e p h e n

L . M .

H e i n e r

Fr. Carl Pulvermacher came from a family of nine children. He would, like three of his
brothers, enter the Capuchin Order, where he would remain as a priest for 56 years, the last 26 of
them spent working with the Society of Saint Pius X.
In the 1960’s, Father worked in Montana as a pastor to six different Indian reservations. He had
a pilot’s license and often told many stories about traveling from one reservation to another. These
were but his early years.
In the early 1970’s, Father was forced to choose between the Mass of All Time and the Novus
Ordo that was being foisted on Catholics worldwide. Like many of his contemporaries, it is said that
he said the Tridentine Mass privately while saying the New Mass publicly. In an attempt to bring
him up to speed with the “new springtime” of the Church, Father was providentially transferred to



t
m
l
m
a
t

b
2
h

Australia, where he met Archbishop
Lefebvre.
It was probably in his time spent
with the Archbishop that Fr. Carl
gained the steel necessary to resist his
superiors, for when they confronted
him (at the end of 1975) with the
choice of saying the New Mass or
leaving, he chose the better part, and
left.
This is the time when Father’s
history with the Society began, and
why this magazine even exists today.
The story started in Dickinson,
Texas, where, with Fr. Hector Bolduc,
Fr. Carl served as one of a handful
priests for the entire United States.
Surely his days of making mission
runs to his Indian parishes had
prepared him for the travel, but
he was probably not prepared for
the thirst of souls for the vivifying
immemorial Mass.
At this time (1976) Father would
trade off with Fr. Bolduc for seven- to
ten-day Mass circuits: Dickinson on
Sunday, San Antonio on Monday,
Dallas on Tuesday, New Orleans
on Wednesday, Kansas City on
Thursday, and so on. It was in a
moment of rest from one of these
mission runs that Carlita Brown, who
saw Father seven days a week for 15
years, recalls a moment sitting around
the table where the “What’s next?”
question among the Fathers led to
the answer, “Let’s start a magazine!”
Mind you, they had just finished
painting the rectory of Queen of
Angels in Dickinson, where they had
spent many months of hard work.

Al Matties, an early parishioner and Angelus Press assistant, recounts
that the property in Dickinson had come into the hands of the Society
through quite a bit of work. The property had to be bought by a third party
so the Diocese would not be aware of the planned “crime” of celebrating
the true Mass. When the Society did obtain the property they found it
in need of much rebuilding. Indeed, the church in question, which was
called “True Cross” and had an accompanying large crucifix as part of the
building, was judged to be “too Catholic” looking, and such anomalies were
to be discarded in the “new opening” of the Church to the world in the
1970’s.
The church stood on the spot where the original church structure
(named St. Joseph’s) was built. It had no pews, chipped floor tiles, no altar
railing, and no altar. In fact, they found an altarstone in the garage buried
under some other so-considered “junk.” Many faithful came to work at the
church at all hours of the day during the week in order to get the parish
into serviceable condition. In the meantime confessions were heard in the
pantry.


It was in the midst of this tireless effort of the faithful
that Fr. Carl’s indefatigable spirit turned to The Angelus
magazine. If you were to visit Angelus Press’s current
location on Forest Avenue in Kansas City, you would find a
modern structure with offices, computers, a warehouse, and
air conditioning, all a far cry from the office environment of
the early Angelus Press volunteers.
But in these heady early days, The Angelus was serviced
by a printing press that Fr. Carl kicked or fiddled with every
20 minutes to keep it running. Thankfully, Fr. Carl was
handy. In fact, handy is really an understatement. Father

was a genius for mechanical things. He could take
apart a wristwatch and put it back together. Ever a
priest, he didn’t only have trust and confidence in
his own mechanical abilities….
The printing press back then had a camera that
was used in order to prepare works for typesetting.
One day, the camera just would not work. Fr. Carl
worked and worked, trying to get it to function,
but to no avail. Remembering that God picks up
where we leave off, Father went into the rectory,
took some holy water, sprinkled it on the camera,
said some prayers, and lo and behold, the camera
worked.
As I said, the modern Angelus Press building
bears no resemblance to what the early Angelus
employees worked in. Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume I, Michael Davies’s seminal work defending
the Archbishop from the libelous insults he received
from the Conciliar Church authorities, was 256
stacks of paper almost six feet high. There were no
funds for a collator (a device that assembles pages
together in order in preparation for binding into a
book), so parishioners would literally pick up sheets
in order, and when they got to around page 30, they



p

would make a stack for another parishioner
who would collate those 30 pages. That’s
how the first 5,000 copies of the Apologia
got printed. Fr. Carl ran the press almost
continually, and parishioners contributed
what little free time they had to manually
collate and bind this book.
When he wasn’t cranking out pages
of books for literally hours on end, Father
was helping to typeset the articles and add
his own column, “Ask Me,” which was
the forerunner of today’s “Questions and
Answers” section with Fr. Peter Scott. Father
was known for short and simple answers,
though he was almost always late getting his
column in. One time the entire magazine
was printed save his column, and when one
of the workers went in to press him to finish
it, he replied cheerfully: “These questions
are all too hard, ask me something else next
month!”
Fr. Carl loved working in the print shop.
Often the little children would come in to try
and help out. Father suffered these little ones
to come unto him, and often gave them little
tasks to do like stacking paper or sweeping
up–just enough to keep them occupied and
around.
Father was known for being tireless,
and even better, to never complain. One
of the times he was seen with an enormous
grin on his face was upon the relating of a
story from Fr. Bolduc. Father had just come
back from Ecône, where he had met with
the Archbishop on some important business
regarding the work in the United States. In

Queen of Angels, Tex



This part of the complex is still the
parish bookstore. It was once called
“The Angelus Shop.” As seen here in a
photograph from the late 1970’s, there
was a sign on the face of the building.

Texas (c. late-70’s)

The corner of this L-shaped building, now the Queen
of Angels School, was the main building for Angelus
Press, where the warehouse and printing shop were.

Al Matties, an early volunteer for Angelus Press
along with his wife, Margaret, and both still
parishioners at Queen of Angels, points to the
corner of the former printing room where the
printing press ran (now a classroom). Here, Fr.
Pulvermacher would stay up all night reading his
Breviary, tending the paper hopper and ink wells,
and taking catnaps. Always, he was at the altar
to start Mass on time the next morning.

A mobile home with three offices for the
Angelus Press staff used to be on this swath of
land. Previous to this, the Angelus Press office
was in the rectory (circled) for a short time.

Early signing party
the middle of the meeting the mail was delivered by
the secretary, and enclosed was the newest copy of The
Angelus. The Archbishop stopped the meeting, flipped
to Fr. Carl’s “Ask Me,” and read it all the way through.
When he was finished, he resumed the meeting. When
Fr. Carl heard this he was very happy, and it was often
noticed that he and the Archbishop shared a very close
kinship.
Indeed, there is a handwritten letter from the
Archbishop to Fr. Carl which was written about eight
months before His Grace passed away. The English
translation reads:
The years go by and the end draws near. How I long to quit
this world where only disorder reigns. How we long to see each
other at last, face to face. How I long to be ubi justitia habitat.

These words would so well also sum up Fr. Carl’s
sentiments at the end of his life.
Father served as “Managing Editor” (meaning, he
did a little and a lot of everything) of The Angelus until
it moved to Kansas City in 1990. There it came under
the management of Fr. Daniel Cooper, Fr. James Doran,
and in 1992, the current editor. In the early days in
Dickinson the crew would always sit down for a moment
and say, “I can’t believe we did another one.”
Speaking of Kansas City, the faithful there were very
anxious for the sacraments, having been deprived of true
priests and the true Mass for so long. Soon Mass alone
became Mass and Benediction. Then Mass, Benediction,
and Rosary. Then those things in addition to visiting the
sick in the homes and in the hospitals.
One day after going with some of the faithful to
plant St. Benedict medals around Kansas City to protect
it from natural disasters, Fr. Carl said to Fr. Bolduc:
“You’ve got Kansas City next week. Watch out for the
‘spiritual bandits.’” Here again we see Father’s sense of
humor–never complaining about the work the faithful
asked him to do, but making light of it–no doubt to
lighten the mood between those many hundreds of
thousands of miles of travel.
In the midst of all this parish work and dedication to
the work of propagating the magazine and good books,
sometimes it can be forgotten that he was a religious
who had taken a vow of poverty. But he never forgot
that. Many people throughout the years had sent him
THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

checks for thousands of dollars. Fr. Daniel Cooper
found them in Father’s room in Dickinson years later,
and when he called Father in Florida to ask what to do
with them, he said: “Throw them away.”
On one occasion, parishioners mistook the Fathers’
practicality as austerity. On the mission runs it was
important to never have checked luggage because if
the luggage didn’t arrive, Mass couldn’t be offered.
Furthermore, it was a blessing when carry-ons fit well
into the overhead compartments. Thus these bags
became very worn, but the Fathers didn’t want new
ones because those bags were the perfect shape and size
for their needs. The good-hearted parishioners, thinking
the Fathers very in love with holy poverty, proceeded
to give both Fr. Bolduc and Fr. Carl literally 15 pieces
of luggage each. Surprised, both of them didn’t know
what to do with them and gave quite a few away. They
ended up keeping the old ones because they were the
perfect shape and served their purpose.
But while he did not accept money (but accepted
luggage), he often did accept the offers of dinner from



Praying for a victorious comrade

Our Lady of the Clergy
his parishioners. Father noticed his growing belly, and one day
he showed up with a flashing light on his habit under which
read, “Please don’t feed the Father.”
When asked what to do in the present crisis, Father once
responded: “Learn your faith and hold on to it. For priests and
brothers: be faithful to your recitation of the Divine Office;
…where Mass is not available, keep Sunday holy as best as you
can…hold on to your Rosary and be faithful to your devotion to
Mary.”
That isn’t the only quote that parishioners remember.
Irene Slovak told me of a “spirit of Martha” moment where
she was bustling about here and there and still felt something
lacking; she told Father that she still needed something
“more” spiritually. He replied to her: “It is enough to live as
a Catholic.” And indeed, in these troubled times it is enough
of a call to sanctity to simply live those words. The Church of
the 1970’s and 1980’s was not any easier to live in than today’s
Church, and his words resonate more than ever.
Father counseled many parishioners, and often was heard
to remark (with a twinkle in his eye): “Oh, thank God I never
got married–you women are so difficult!” But he also said in

response to the difficulties that mothers often face
(with the same twinkle), “All mothers will go to
heaven.”
A parishioner recounted that once she had
gone to the second Mass of a Sunday just to
hear a particular sermon of Father’s again, in
which he had essentially stated that when Our
Lord was crucified, He could look out at all of
us throughout time and know whether we would
have been at the foot of the Cross. She said that
that simple meditation has always stayed with her
(and well might it stay with us).
Another parishioner once asked Father how it
was possible that the Church was doing what she
was doing. He replied that, “When the bishops
as a whole exonerated the Jews for the death of
Christ, they themselves took on the blindness of
the Jews.”
And nowhere was the death and suffering of
Our Lord more deeply commemorated than a
Good Friday Stations of the Cross at Dickinson
in the late 1970’s. Fr. Carl had been suffering
from kidney stones, yet he still did every station,
each genuflection causing tears to come to his
eyes. By the late stations, they were rolling down
his cheeks. As he finished the stations he went
out the back door into an ambulance and went
directly to the hospital. None of the parishioners
present that day ever forgot that.
Yet the scene was to be repeated later in his
life. In his final sickness he returned to Dickinson
from Florida. He was unable to say Mass due to
a broken shoulder, though he wanted to be well
enough to say a private Mass on Easter Sunday,
which he did. However, his last public act in
Dickinson was to lead the faithful in the Stations
of the Cross on Good Friday. In Irene Slovak’s
words:
How very special it was to see Fr. Carl come to the
altar in his habit to lead us in the Way of the Cross.
His voice was weak and slow, but it brought back the
memory of another Good Friday when he valiantly
led the prayers that walked us through Our Lord’s last
public act of His life. Somehow it seemed fitting that
Fr. Carl should approach his own end in this way. For
some of us, Good Friday and the Way of the Cross will
always be connected to special memories of Fr. Carl.

Sue Broussard shared with me that “his
vocation was his whole life, never more,
never less–he genuinely lived his vocation.” It
reminded me of a sermon Bishop Williamson
once gave on the occasion of the profession of
vows for a new brother of the SSPX in which he
used nearly those exact words–that God simply
asks us to live our vocation, nothing more,
nothing less.
Father went to Florida in February of this
year, knowing that he was in his final months.
His love of poverty and total detachment from
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • August 2006

10

Psalm 83
2 How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of
hosts!
3 My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts
of the Lord. My heart and my flesh have
rejoiced in the living God.
4 For the sparrow hath found herself a house,
and the turtle a nest for herself where she
may lay her young ones: Thy altars, O
Lord of hosts, my king and my God.
5 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O
Lord: they shall praise thee for ever and
ever.
6 Blessed is the man whose help is from
thee: in his heart he hath disposed to
ascend by steps,
7 In the vale of tears, in the place which he
hath set.
8 For the lawgiver shall give a blessing, they
shall go from virtue to virtue: the God of
gods shall be seen in Sion.
9 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer: give
ear, O God of Jacob.
10 Behold, O God our protector: and look on
the face of thy Christ.
11 For better is one day in thy courts above
thousands. I have chosen to be an abject
in the house of my God, rather than to
dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.
12 For God loveth mercy and truth: the Lord
will give grace and glory.
13 He will not deprive of good things them
that walk in innocence: O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.

THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

the world at this point manifested itself in the fact that he had
only brought himself, a rosary, and a briefcase.
Father had four home nurses and related that, as he was
shuttled around for tests and chemotherapy and more test and
injections, he felt a lot like Our Lord going from Annas and
Caiaphas to Pilate to Herod. He was pleased to make up in his
members the sufferings that were lacking to the Body of Christ.
Many would ask Father to pray for them, but he could only
respond that he could not pray (indeed, he was unable to say his
Mass or Breviary since the time he had broken his collerbone
and become increasingly sick in February) but would offer his
sufferings for them.
On April 24, the Feast of St. Mark, he went into cardiac
arrest. He was revived on route to the emergency room. Fr.
Gregory Post gave him Extreme Unction, and Father spent his
last five weeks in the intensive care unit.
Those last five weeks were the fitting end for this missionary
servant of God. He lay on his bed, virtually crucified. He had a
respirator that fed into his lungs, assisting his breathing, a tube
that went up his nostril down to his duodenum to assist with
fluids and nutrition, and no less than five different tubes feeding
into his chest for different medical reasons.
One of his caregivers, about a week before he died, said:
“Father, this year you may get to celebrate Ascension Thursday
with Our Lord Himself.” Father blinked his eyes together hard
and shed a few tears. He fervently desired such a thing.
And it was granted to him. He died holding a rosary in his
right hand, a cross with a relic of the True Cross in his left, a
brown scapular around his neck, and his gaze resting upon a
stand-up crucifix. The “Quam dilecta” [Ps. 83: “How lovely are
thy tabernacles, O Lord....” See sidebar.–Ed.] was being read
to him. Surely we wish for such a death, and it was the only
appropriate way for such a servant to depart this existence. In
hearing this we recall the Archbishop’s words in the letter to Fr.
Carl: “How I long to be ubi justitia habitat (where the just ones
dwell).” The name of the hospital where Fr. Carl died is called
“Triumph.” And well it was–a holy triumph.
I had started the interviews for this article before I went
to cover Ordinations in Winona, and though I never had the
pleasure of meeting Father, my impression from those who knew
him resonated with some words from the Rite of Ordination of
Priests:
May they, by gravity of demeanor and strictness of life, prove
themselves to be elders, trained according to the principles which Paul
set down for Titus and Timothy. May they keep Thy law before their
minds day and night, believe what they read, teach what they believe,
and practice what they teach. May they show forth in their person
justice, constancy, mercy, fortitude, and all other virtues, be leaders
by their example, inspire strength by exhortation, and preserve the
gift of their ministry pure and undefiled; may they change by a holy
benediction bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Thy Son for
the worship of Thy people. And having kept their conscience pure and
true their faith in never failing charity, may they rise on the day of God’s
just and final judgment, full of the Holy Ghost, as perfect men, in the
full measure of the age of Christ. Amen.
Mr. Stephen L.M. Heiner runs a tutoring and test preparation company in Kansas City, Missouri, where he attends the Latin Mass at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. The author
wishes to thank Irene Slovak, Carlita Brown, Al Matties, and Sue Broussard, early Queen
of Angels parishioners and volunteers for The Angelus, who (along with some other sources
who wish to remain anonymous) shared their reminiscences, and all those who helped Father
throughout the years. He also thanks Mr. Kenneth Fisher for his SperoNews article which was
the source for some information about Fr. Carl Pulvermacher. Photographs of the Requiem
Mass and burial ©Katie O’Neill Photography.

11
F r .
F r a n z
S c h m i d b e r g e r

Reverence
and Irreverence

One of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost is fear,
that is to say reverence for God and the divine. The
Spirit of Christ is startlingly apparent from the lack of
reverence of our times.
Modern man knows nothing of the exaltation,
majesty, and holiness of God, nor of the absoluteness
of Truth. For him, God is at most a partner, or rather
an instrument of his own desire for well-being. He
understands God as pure Love, to the exclusion of
His justice. Adoration of God and humble submission
to the designs of His Providence are foreign to him.
Human rights, freedom of conscience, and boundless
egotism take the place of the rights of God. St. Paul
writes in II Thessalonians (2:10), in connection
with the appearance of the Antichrist, that men will
not receive the saving charity of truth. Relativism
and religious indifference are characteristic of the
irreverence of our times. Come, Holy Ghost, and fill
us with the Spirit of Reverence for Him, whose majesty
the angels praise, the principalities adore, and the
trembling hosts venerate!
Anyone who fails in showing due reverence to
God will also fail to show respect for the Lord in
the Eucharist. What offense is given by carnivalstyle Masses! Added to this is the banishment of the
tabernacle from the center of the altar to a corner of
the church because the mysteriously present God-man
disturbs the “adult Christian.” When God is distanced
from the center of our sanctuaries, then also will
His central place be evacuated from Christian life.
Irreverence is the poisoned spring of Communion in
the hand. What happens to all the pieces of the Host,
and sometimes even entire Hosts, that fall unnoticed
to the ground? Come, Holy Ghost, and fill us with
profound reverence for the Eucharist as a sacrifice, as
abiding presence, and as the sacrament of Communion!
Irreverence has taken hold of the spirit of
theologians in their dealings with Sacred Scripture.
They strike out or falsify passages that displease
them. They understand the miracle stories in the
New Testament to be fantastic embellishments. A
shocking example is the denial of many such miracles
by Cardinal Kasper in his book Jesus the Christ. They
outright censor the Holy Ghost. Nor is it difficult

for them to lay hands on the words of consecration.
They place false statements in the mouth of our
Lord. For them Holy Scripture is but the word of
man, and the Holy Ghost is in no way its principal
inspiration. Come, Holy Ghost, and fill our theologians
and ourselves with the sense of reverence towards Thy
immutable and imperishable word!
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose
its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good
for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be
trodden on by men” (Mt. 5:13). Are today’s priests
and religious filled with reverence for their own
vocation? Do they dress in the manner of witnesses
to Jesus Christ; do they conduct themselves in accord
with their consecration to God; are they truly the
light of the world–or do they rather court the favor
of the world and popularity from the young? Where
self-respect is lacking, soon the respect of one’s
subordinates and colleagues also disappears. Come,
Holy Ghost, and fill those consecrated to God with
reverence for their calling and mission!
Our churches and sanctuaries are no longer places
for adoration, recollection, and prayer. At best they
are attractions for immodestly attired tourists, who do
not so much as genuflect before God, truly and bodily
present in the Eucharist. Added to this are “youth
Masses” with discotheque atmosphere, Coca-Cola
and chips. Come, Holy Ghost, and make our churches
and sanctuaries, transformed into dens of thieves, once
again houses of prayer!
Our ancestors knew well how to distinguish
between Sundays and workdays. They rested on the
day of the Lord from their workweek, took part in
the public worship of the Church, prayed and sought
instruction in the Faith, and passed this special day
in the bosom of the family and works of fraternal
charity. This distinction has been completely lost by
our secularized society. This is evident first of all in
clothing: the Sunday suit and other Sunday attire
has been replaced in the best case by leisure wear;
normally, however, by T-shirts, blue jeans, and tennis
shoes. Farmers cultivate their fields and harvest on
Sundays the same as weekdays. Trucks roll on the
highways seven days a week. Do today’s Catholics
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The ANgelus • August 2006

12
have any understanding of closing times? Advent and
Lent are to be observed, the first as preparation for
the birth, the second as preparation for the Passion
and Resurrection of the Lord, in silence, prayer, and
penance; festive marriage ceremonies and every
worldly entertainment used to be forbidden at these
times. Those days are gone. Come, Holy Ghost, and
renew in us the spirit of the holy times of God, especially
for Sundays, that we might again live these days as
feasts of commemoration of the Resurrection of our
Lord in calm, prayer, and works of fraternal charity,
that we might understand the aspersions of water at the
beginning of high Mass as tokens of our baptism!
Reverence for parents and elders (who have a part
in the authority of God) has sunk to an unimaginably
low level. These days children not only address their
parents by their first names, but may even pursue
litigation for receiving a box on the ears from those
who have given them life and thus after God are their
greatest benefactors on earth. Likewise reverence for
advanced age, gray hair, and Christian wisdom has
evaporated. Come, Holy Ghost, and infuse our hearts
with respect for our parents, superiors, and elders!
Things are not much better with respect for
Church and secular authorities. We all know that
both are not always the most worthy people; many of
them are decidedly unsuited for their responsibilities.
Nevertheless we must respect them, not on account
of their own worthiness, but because they have a part
in the authority of God: “There is no power but from
God” (Rom. 13:1). The Apostle continues: “Therefore
he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance
of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves
damnation” (v.2). Two examples from Holy Writ help
us understand this respect for unworthy bearers of
authority, one from the secular, the other form the
spiritual realm:
1) God rejected Saul, the first king in Israel, on
account of his unauthorized assumption of authority
and his disobedience. When God, unbeknownst to men,
chose David in his place, Saul undertook the shameful
persecution of David and set out to kill him. During
this manhunt Saul twice fell into the hands of David,
who each time made up to him saying, “I will not put
out my hand against my lord, because he is the Lord’s
anointed” (I Kings 24:11).
2) With the death of Jesus, the Old Testament was
transcended, the new and eternal covenant was founded
on His blood–the tearing of the veil of the Temple is
the obvious sign of this event. Thus, too, was the high
priesthood overcome; it continued only as an empty
form. St. Paul was called before the high council one
day, and told to give an account of his actions. When
he began to defend himself, the high priest Ananias had
him struck on the mouth. Paul was indignant at this and
called him a whitewashed wall; those standing around
rebuked him: “Dost thou revile the high priest of God?”
At this point Paul demanded pardon with the following
words: “I knew not, brethren, that he is the high priest.
For it is written: thou shalt not speak evil of the prince
THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

of thy people” (Act. 22:3-5). Come, Holy Ghost, fill those
in authority and those subject to them with Thy grace,
that the former might truly, wisely, and worthily exercise
their authority, and the latter might follow with love
and devotion!
Whoever treads underfoot reverence to God cannot
be expected to put much stock in his fellow men. Who
fails to adore the Creator cannot show much reverence
towards His creation; who disrespects God will soon
despise also mankind. Who exposes consecrated
Hosts to be trodden underfoot will also treat human
beings and human life as disposable. There is a
close relationship between Communion in the hand,
abortion, and euthanasia. Come, Holy Ghost, and teach
us respect for men, created in the image of God and
restored to His likeness through baptism!
Finally, respect for creation as the work of God
has virtually disappeared through materialism and
utilitarianism. The earth is no longer cared for and
cultivated, but rather exploited. Artificial insemination,
embryonic stem cell research, and cloning are sinful
and criminal actions, opposed to the order of God. All
the more so the current efforts of “scientists” to cross
human beings with different kinds of animals.
The human body demands reverence, especially
when it is or has been inhabited by a baptized soul.
Even a corpse lying in the coffin is brought into church,
sprinkled with holy water and incensed, to finally
be buried. Cremation is a brutal work of destruction
that cannot be reconciled with the Christian vision
of man; it is associated with the denial of the bodily
resurrection.
Reverence is also expressed by clothing, which
should cover the body. Shameless dress leveling the
difference between the sexes, undermines the dignity
and modesty of man and woman. It does not accord
with the mind of our Lord in His Passion and His most
chaste Mother, but with the spirit of women’s liberation
and feminism. Come, Holy Ghost, and teach us reverence
for the work of God, but which is now disordered
through human irreverence!
Christian culture is essentially reverence for human
and divine orders, commands given for the good of
those subject to them, and obedience for the sake of
God. Only the living Spirit of God can lead us back
to this culture, which radiates nobility, dignity, and
beauty. To know God and serve Him with reverence is
the fulfillment of the Catholic life. Thus she who is the
Seat of Wisdom is described as the Mother of beautiful
love and of fear, knowledge, and holy hope (Eccles.
24:24). Come, Holy Ghost, Thou Spirit of truth, love,
and reverence, renew the hearts of men, renew the face
of the earth!
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...”
(Ps. 110).
Fr. Franz Schmidberger is a former Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X
(1982-1994) and at the time of this publication, is First Assistant to the Superior
General.

Salazar

13

and
Catholic
Regeneration
in the 20th
Century
D r .

T i a g o

J o n e s

Lisbon, Black Horse Square, February
1, 1908, the royal family of Portugal, while
crossing the square in an open landau, is
fired upon by Republicans. The king, Charles
I (1889-1908), and his youngest son die.
Emmanuel II (1908-10), heir to the throne
survives, but he is king for little more than
a year before the October 4th Revolution
of 1910 ushers in 16 years of Republican
anarchy.
From 1910 to 1926 there were nine
presidents, 25 uprisings, three dictatorships,
and 325 bomb incidents,1 not to mention the
assassination of the dictator Sidônio Pais in
1918, amongst other political assassinations.
As far as the Catholic Faith is concerned,
divorce was legalized, monastic orders were
outlawed, many priests were exiled, the State
took over education, land was seized from
the Church, and the State abrogated the
role of Catholicism as the official religion of
Portugal.
From 1974 to 1985 there were three
coups, close to 20 heads of state, one
assassination,2 and several bomb incidents;
drugs proliferated, and all forms of
censorship were lifted, such that pornography
became a major form of entertainment
both on the big screen and the little, as well
as in publications. As far as Catholicism
is concerned, the inroads of Vatican II,
temporarily held at bay, ostensibly saw to
the needs of those Portuguese who had not
already succumbed to communism and
modernism.
Could there ever be any greater proof of
the graces of the Holy Spirit showered upon
a country than the leadership of Antonio
Oliveira Salazar from 1928-68? Sandwiched
between the excesses of the first two decades
and the last three decades of the 20th century
there was a government of Catholic truth,
order, and common sense in Portugal which
lasted for nearly 50 years.3 These were the
years which saw the world torn apart by
the Spanish Civil War, the Stock Market
Crash, the Second World War, the Cold
War, the 1960’s and Vatican II, yet Portugal
remained a sea of tranquility predicated upon
the subsidiarity espoused by Pius XI in his
Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno and the social
justice outlined by Leo XIII in his Encyclical
Rerum Novarum.
There is no way to explain why one of
the smaller Catholic countries should receive
the apparitions of the Virgin of Fatima in
1917, at the height of the Republican scourge,
only to be blessed soon after by 50 years of
Catholic inspired leadership, other than to
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THE ANGELUS • August 2006

14
say, “Surely this is the work of God.” The Virgin Mary
always appears to the humble, humble shepherds,
children no less, and in a distant but ancient corner
of the Catholic world, Portugal. The common people,
so courted by the Republicans, had spoken, and they
wanted the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was as a direct
result of their persistent pilgrimages that the Church
hierarchy and ultimately the political elites had to
accept the veracity, or at least the strength of belief,
which emanated from the apparitions.
God chose Portugal as an exemplification of
His divine intervention. On the one hand this was a
small, forgotten country in the western most corner of
Europe, desecrated by over a century of Republican
and Monarchist conflict, but on the other hand it was
the first Christian nation to spread the Faith to Asia,
Africa, and the New World. It would serve as a model
for the so-called advanced countries of Europe, which
had become racked by the fevers of modernism.
Blessed are the meek for they shall possess the land.4
Through the apparitions at Fatima the Portuguese
people would regain the strength needed to reassert
their desire for a Catholic-oriented country. The fight
would be a long one. It was ten years before Salazar
came to save Portugal, and, by his example and
support, Spain. Apart from Spain, there were other
leaders such as Dolfuss in Austria5 and Petain in Vichy
France6 who actually looked to Portugal as a model.
The circumstances leading up to Salazar’s
becoming the leader of Portugal are in themselves
remarkable, and the specific details at the time are
worthy of note. However, in order to get a better sense
of the forces of good and evil, of the battle between
God and the Antichrist that is at stake, let us retrace
a little the history that would bring Portugal to this
epochal government.

Portugal’s Proud History
Between 1127 and 1580 Portugal enjoyed especial
prestige insofar as its national and Catholic identity
is concerned. With the first king, Alfonso I (1139-85),
Portugal defined itself as a separate kingdom in Iberia
with the determination to reconquer the western
seaboard of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors. The
following four centuries saw the emergence of great
saints such as St. Anthony of Padua and St. Elizabeth
of Portugal, as well as the election of a Portuguese
pope, John XXI (1276-77). With the age of Discoveries
initiated by Portugal, Christianity was taken to the four
corners of the world. Compared to the Spanish, whose
activities were mostly restricted to the New World,
Portugal sent missioners to Africa and Asia, too.

Eclipse
The invasion of Portugal by Spain at the end of
the 14th century lead to an alliance with England such
that the new dynasty of Avis under John I (1385-1433)

would result in the marriage of said king with Phillipa
of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, who was the
third son of King Edward III of England. The third son
of John I was Prince Henry the Navigator, who made
possible the Christianization of much of the world as
a result of his having initiated the Age of Discovery.
By 1580 Portugal had been surpassed by Spain as the
major European and Catholic force in Europe. Young
King Sebastian (1577-78) died in North Africa in a
campaign against the Moors. Young as Sebastian was,
he left no direct descendant so Philip II (1581-98) of
Spain took over the throne of Portugal.

French and English Ascendancy
Although Portugal regained its independence from
Spain less than 100 years later, it remained a country
plagued by the same ills as its larger neighbor, that is
to say, the after-effects of the Counter Reformation.
Above all, following the Spanish occupation, Portugal
was all the more inclined to look beyond Iberia for
direction.
By the beginning of the 18th century France is
in the ascendant and Portuguese intellectuals are
enamored of Rousseau and Voltaire. In fact, the latter
spent time in Lisbon and wrote about the earthquake
of 1755. Apart from the radical ideas of the philosophes
and Jansenists, there was also the liberal economic
model of England to be admired. In later centuries the
Anglo-Portuguese alliance became the Trojan Horse of
the Catholic peninsula. The English, sensing Portugal’s
fears of Spain, were able to use their influence to
weaken Spain while simultaneously keeping Portugal
sufficiently disengaged from France.
Enter the Marquis of Pombal, Prime Minister
during the reign of Joseph I (1750-77). He is famous
for having rebuilt Lisbon after the aforementioned
earthquake. Interestingly, after building himself a huge
column in the main rotunda of Lisbon he had a lesser
statue built for his king, the infamous Black Horse
Square, scene of the assassination of Charles I. Pombal
was a staunch supporter of the Masons and expelled
the Jesuits. They would not kow-tow to his absolutist
whims, and, above all, their huge successes in the
missions of southern Brazil were an embarrassment
to his secular pretensions. Under the guidance of the
Jesuits the Guarani were building lucrative cottage
industries, which the secularist Spanish and Portuguese
governments wanted to control. Needless to say, no
sooner were the Jesuits destituted of their control than
the Guarani fell back into their pre-Christian ways.

Descent into Anarchy
At the time of the French Revolution and the
subsequent Napoleonic invasion, Portugal, along with
Spain, was in the throes of total anarchy. France and
England were haggling over Iberia like two dogs with
a bone. Given the famous alliance, England convinced

15
calling. As discussed earlier it
was a time of extreme religious
persecution, therefore to really
make a difference Salazar knew
the government itself would
have to change. To this end he
believed that a strong background
in economics, and by extension
politics, would better put him in a
position to do God’s work.

The Catholic
Activist

With Cerejeira

Carmona

John VI of Portugal to escape to Brazil, thereby preventing the Portuguese
monarchy from coming under French control. On his return in 1822 he
found a country even more corrupted by revolutionary ideals.
On top of all this, there were two claimants to the throne following
John’s death, Michael on the side of the traditionalists and Peter IV,
supported by the English, who would win out, on the side of the liberals.
With his accession to the throne he would expropriate Church property and
abolish religious orders. The tenor of events throughout the century was one
of excessive anticlericalism.7
Although the liberals and the traditionalists would continue to fight
throughout the century, it was the English Ultimatum of 1890 that brought
about another major political crisis. The British wanted Portuguese Africa
and threatened to take it by force. So much for the alliance. Because the
king backed down, Republicans took this as an excuse to further undermine
his power. Ultimately this lead to the sequence of events mentioned at the
beginning of this article. In response to Republican threats the king gave the
Prime Minister, João Franco, carte blanche to suppress Republican activity;
the response: assassination of the king.

Vocation of a Statesman
António de Oliveira Salazar born, April 28, 1889, in Santa Comba was
the fifth child of the overseer to landed gentry. As the only son he was to
embody all the family aspirations. Although not of the poorest background,
the family could expect little more than that he might himself become an
overseer.
Given his strong academic aptitude coupled with the deep faith imbued
in him by his parents, they sought a place for him in a school that would
prepare him for the seminary. The family for whom Salazar’s family
worked sponsored him. During his time in the seminary he became friends
with another seminarian, the future Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, Manuel
Cerejeira.
Due to the assassination of the king in 1908 and the subsequent
revolution two years later, Salazar felt that the priesthood was not his

Salazar completed his
doctorate in economics and
gained a position at the foremost
university in Portugal at
Coimbra. In the meantime he
was a founding member of the
Democratic Christian Academic
Center (CADC) in 1912, and later
he was elected to the Portuguese
Catholic Center (CCP). His
participation in these groups and
the articles he wrote brought him
to the attention of government
spies, who had him destituted
of his teaching duties for several
months. Nevertheless, he was
later reinstated, and his name
was not forgotten by those who
would eventually overthrow the
Republican regime on May 28,
1926.
Above all, he was known
to be a very astute economist
whose ideas appealed to the
head of the existing government,
Mendes Cabeçadas, and who thus
invited him to be the minister
of finance. Salazar renounced
his post after just 13 days once
he realized that he would have
no real power to affect actual
financial policy. In the meantime
Cabeçadas too resigned, and
it was the eventual president
of the new government, Oscar
Carmona, who, on March 25,
1928, appealed again to Salazar to
take on the responsibilities for the
budgetary demands of Portugal.
The country was in a shambles
on every level and there was no
money to undertake any kind of
serious reforms. Carmona knew
that unless he could somehow

Salazar (center) with friends.
Note the hole in his boot. “When
I die, on turning out my pockets,
only dust will be found.”

16

Here was born on 28-4-1889
Dr. Oliveira Salazar
A gentleman who while governing
was known for not robbing.

A Salazar property. “I want the
country poor but independent, not
colonized by American capital.”

Salazar’s adopted daughters (left)
Maria Antonia and Micas Tambem.

balance the budget he would be going the way of his
predecessor all too soon.
Salazar’s relationship with his mother was
extremely close, and he felt that unless she were to
be well cared for he could not take on such a burden
as that of Finance Minister. However, she was to die
soon after, allowing him to further reconsider the
offer. Also, he was happy with his job at the university.
Nevertheless, he felt a call to do his duty to his country.
The only way he could make such a decision was
through prayer, as Hugh Kay explains:
Salazar asked for a night to think it over, spent part of it
on his knees like a squire on the vigil of knighthood, talked
at length to Cerejeira, and served Mass in the morning for
his confessor, Fr. Matteo Crawley Boevy.8 [At the insistence
of Pope Pius XII, Fr. Matteo is famous for originating and
promulgating the devotion to the Sacred Heart by way of the
family enthronement.–Ed.]

Before finally accepting to become finance
minister, Salazar stipulated several conditions: he must
be entirely responsible for budgetary discretion, and
all ministers, including the President, would have to
assent to his projections and restrictions. Given the
gravity of the economic crisis in Portugal, Carmona
THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

had no choice but to agree to Salazar’s demands. In
the next budgetary session Salazar had miraculously
balanced the budget. Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit was
working His will in this ancient Catholic country all
but destroyed by modernist Republicanism.

Portrait of the Man
What manner of a man was this Salazar? We have
seen that he was educated for the priesthood, but
even if he did not follow that path, God had endowed
him with the will and discipline of an ascetic. For 40
years he charted a Catholic course for his people in a
time of increasing and aggressive de-Christianization
throughout the world, and he himself remained a
fervent Catholic both in his faith and in his way of life.
If rampant materialism and absolute dissipation
were the bywords of all modern societies be they
Communist, Capitalist, or Fascist, here was a leader
who lived the life of a monk, insofar as a head of state
can. He, though a proponent of private property as
this is understood in the traditional Catholic Church,
rented rooms paid from his own pocket in the small
government fortress just outside Lisbon, St. Julian da
(continued on p.25)

25

(continued from p.16)

Barra. At his death the property inherited from his
family constituted two broken-down cottages in Santa
Comba. His net worth at his death was approximately
$3,000US. There is a famous picture of him with a
couple of friends during his time in office in which he
has holes in the soles of his boots [see p.16–Ed.].
Two hundred years earlier, the irreligious Pombal
was the first Portuguese statesmen to fully espouse
the modernist cause, and he became enormously rich
during his time in office, ultimately overshadowing the
king. Salazar sought to rectify the errors initiated by
the former politician, and his Catholicism was reflected
in his Spartan ways. As we saw, Pombal had erected a
massive column to his own glorification, while Salazar
enjoys a simple headstone surrounded by the opulent
mausoleums of other Portuguese families. On this
headstone can be read the inscription:
Most powerful Portuguese leader of the 20th century
Unequaled was he in modesty
Humbly was he born, humbly was he raised
Humbly lived he and humbly he died
Mediocre are the people who from him
nothing learned.9

During his time in government he limited his
travels to one state visit to Spain.
He was rarely seen either in public or in the
media. His activities were unknown to the people. His
private life was his own. All that we know is that he
had proposed to the daughter of his father’s boss but,
although already a successful professor at Coimbra, he
was considered below their social status. He wept at
the rejection of the only woman he would ever love.
He never married, dedicating his life instead to God
and to his country. His one concession to domesticity
was becoming godfather to two orphan girls who were
raised under his roof, the domestic staff taking care of
them.

A Catholic State
As a result of the huge success Salazar had had
in balancing the budget, he was able to gradually
insinuate himself into further positions of power in
the government such that he soon became the de facto
leader of the country, and Carmona accepted that he
would do better to play second fiddle. From the outset,
while not wishing to confuse the powers of the Church
with those of the government, he set about making of
Portugal a Catholic State in status if not in name.
Salazar believed, in accordance with Catholic
doctrine, that the family and God are at the center
of every society, as he stated at the tenth anniversary
government commemoration in 1936:
To the souls torn apart by the malaise of the century we
seek to give back the great certainties. We do not discuss
God and virtue. We do not discuss our homeland and its
history. We do not discuss authority and its prestige. We do

not discuss the family and morality. We do not discuss the
glory of work and duty.10

To this end he sought to institute in his policies
the subsidiarity of the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno,
whereby those in power were obliged to look to the
needs of those who were beholden to them, and these
in turn were to respect and obey the dictates of their
patrons. In other words, with Catholic truth as a
guiding light, the excesses of market-driven forces were
curtailed and the errors of atheistic Republicanism
were proscribed.
Through the corporatist State–not to be confused
with the word corporation in the capitalist sense–which
was the embodiment of the New State founded by
Salazar, legislative power was given to civic assemblies.
Unlike in pluralism, where different groups compete
for power, unelected leaders take critical roles in
decisions. In the following excerpt from the 1933
Constitution this can be seen:
…a unitary and corporative republic founded upon the
equality of all its citizens in the eyes of the of the law, upon
the free access for all classes to the benefits of civilization,
and upon the participation of all the constituent forces in its
administration and in the making of laws.11

The top-down model closely mirrors the
hierarchical schema we see in the Church–God, Rome,
Bishops. In this system, the dignity of fatherhood
must be upheld, as each family is a microcosm of
the above governance. Men should not be simply
cogs in a mechanistic, capitalistic wheel. Nor should
families simply be a part of a cooperative that works
toward production goals regardless of their familial
duties, as in Communist societies. In these cases, the
State intrudes on the family’s structure, breaking it up
whenever it is expedient, such as the one child law in
China and abortion as contraception in Russia.
In the New Sate, the individual is valued but only
insofar as he is part of a family, a member of a village
council, all within God’s plan for universal redemption,
not in the modernist sense where he becomes his own
God. As a seminarian for 11 years, Salazar was acutely
aware of this need, and he was aware, too, of the forces
of evil arrayed against him both in Portugal and in the
world outside. His old friend the Cardinal Patriarch of
Lisbon Manuel Cerejeira told him:
God is with you, and for that very reason all those who
belong to the spirit of darkness will be against you. You do
not know how much you are loved in Portugal.…But there
are also those who hate you. It is the hatred of those who
know they have been repulsed. It is the hatred of those who
hate you because they hate God. Courage! Your work has
only just begun.12

The Economics of
Quadragesimo Anno
Salazar was able to build a consensus behind
his project because he had had so much success in
dragging Portugal out of the economic chaos it had
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THE ANGELUS • August 2006

26

Happy supporters of Salazar in Portuguese Timor
of Southeast Asia thank their Prime Minister
by spelling out his name with their own bodies.

A Portuguese poster from Salazar’s terms in office.
“Only a good understanding between worker and employer
can lead to social equilibrium.” Note in the pans of the
balance (left) a laborer and (right) the employer at his desk.

fallen into. Subsequently, he predicated the continued
stability of the country on a pragmatic relationship with
the production centers of the country, relying primarily
on the agricultural sector. Just as the father of a
household is expected to lead morally, so must he lead
financially, and this would mean essentially melding
Catholic morality and economics. In other words,
Salazar was strongly against the excessive credit-based
modernist societies of the North. For this reason he was
averse to excessive international ties.
Portugal would pay its way. In the 1960’s when
Portugal was suffering a financial crisis, Salazar refused
loans from the World Bank, as this would have implied
external pressures on the formation of the national
budget. Salazar kept the country solvent and essentially
poor but self-contained. In Hugh Kay’s summary of
the Quadragesimo Anno encyclical we can see how close
Salazar had followed the principals therein:
The ultimate foundation of public order and the origin of
all legitimate power is not the will of the people, but God.
This is true even where democratic elections are held….
The Church can accept historical variations in the form of
government, their relative good being conditioned by the
circumstances.13

Only by holding the financial reigns could he
insure that the moral reigns would be maintained.
His one concession to this plan was when he opened
the country up to tourism. He remained ever vigilant,
however, of the corrupting influences of this industry
both insofar as economic dependence on external
markets was concerned, and because of the moral
laxness introduced by foreigners raised in modern
societies.

True Liberty
Salazar’s national policy reflected his staunch
Catholicism and his own lifestyle, as we have seen.
Once he had established the credibility of his
government, Salazar had to set about guaranteeing its
THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

A chair (in one of the run-down Salazar
properties) similar to the one from
which Salazar fell when it collapsed,
causing him to hit his head and bringing
about his death two years later.

continued success; therefore, censorship and security
became a part of his modus operandi. Salazar saw as
his blueprint the Catholic anti-modernist battle that
had been waged throughout the 19th century, wherein
the false notions of liberty introduced during the
Enlightenment had been responsible for the collapse
of the West. As Sevilla Andrés highlights, it was a time
when the powers that be “…wanted to deny God,
certitude, truth, justice and morality, forgetting that
denial, indifference, and war cannot be fountainheads
of action.”14 Basically, his goal was to re-Christianize
Portugal. With the help of the apparitions at Fatima, the
country was ready, and although assorted anarchists
and Communists claimed otherwise, the Portuguese
people responded well to the censorship and security
which kept Portugal stable, organized, and morally
consistent with the dictates of the Church, as Fr. Luis
Mafra, a priest under Cerejeira, states: “I believe the
primary base of support for the New State was not the
nationalists but the Catholics.”15
Although Salazar did not make many public
appearances he was known to go to Holy Mass daily,
and it was on one of these days in July, 1937, that a

27

mor
ter
ies.

ar
m
d,
ng
er.

Salazar’s morning read of the
paper. Note the image of St.
Anthony of Padua above the
door behind his head.

Salazar with workers in a vineyard.

group of anarchists decided they would attempt to assassinate him.
Fortunately, he escaped unscathed and continued on to Mass. The
people wanted to acknowledge him for his bravery but he played
it down. During his rare appearances in public men were observed
running to try to touch the sleeve of his coat as if he might have
been a saint.
Salazar was convinced that amongst the gravest threats to a
healthy, moral society was that of feminism, as Sevilla Andrés
shows in this paraphrase of Salazar: “Women do not understand
that happiness does not come through possession but through
renunciation.”16 With a society imbalanced toward the satisfaction
of a woman’s self-determination, the breakdown of the family and
thus society would be inevitable. In order to prevent this from
happening contraception and abortion were outlawed, and divorce
was uncommon because it was illegal in the Church and most
marriages took place within the Catholic Church. If a society kept
its moral compass as prescribed by Catholic doctrine then stability
would be maintained.

Steering the Nation
One of the high notes of Salazar’s first decade of leadership
was his role in bringing about the success of Franco’s own battles
against modernism in Spain. In fact, Portugal sent thousands of
troops to aid Franco as France, the US, and England stood by
while Russia intervened on the side of the Republicans. It was
Salazar’s astute statesmanship that helped strengthen Franco’s
hand against the Germans when, during the Second World War at
the meeting in Hendaye between Hitler and Franco in 1940,17 the
former statesman demanded the alliance of the latter in return for
the support given during the Spanish Civil War. Under the aegis
of an Iberian pact Salazar told Franco that their two countries
could play off the interests of England and Germany against each
other and remain neutral. Salazar actually sold wolfram, a major
mineral in the production of arms, to both countries throughout
the war. It must be remembered that at the time, while Salazar
did not sympathize with Hitler’s quasi paganism, it was not
readily apparent that Germany was any more opportunistic and
materialistic than England. The important thing was to remain a
self-sustaining economy unfettered by international obligations.
Eventually he ceased any dealings with Germany.

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Salazar leaving a church after attending Mass.

THE ANGELUS • August 2006

28
Salazar knew that there were Falangists who
sought a unified Iberia, but at the same time he preempted Spanish annexation by reminding Franco that
Portugal and Spain already had chosen the same path
of Catholic morality and independence as standards,
thus there was no need for the two to be at odds over
their mutually independent national status.
In his only journey outside Spain Salazar met with
Franco to discuss the pact, and the Spanish caudillo
stated that he had never met a more accomplished
national leader.18 As we have seen, Vichy France under
Petain, which also adhered to a traditionalist Catholic
line, actually looked to Portugal as a model for their
government, and there are definite parallels with
Austria under Dolfuss [see book advertised on inside
back cover of this issue–Ed.] prior to the Anschluss.
Pope Pius XII himself had stressed: “The Lord has
provided the Portuguese nation with an exemplary
head of government.”19 Even modernist countries saw
Portugal as a bastion of morality and stability at a time
of growing European secularization. In the French
newspaper L’Ordre Français we read in 1970:
…while subversive forces of every kind, Liberal, Masonic,
Marxist…backed by the great powers continued their attacks
on Portugal in the hopes of dragging it into the storm, Salazar
fought against the tide in the firmness of his principles.20

Salazar did not see the need to have Portugal
consecrated to the Church as was the case of Spain,
because he knew his people and he knew his Faith,
having been a seminarian. Therefore he believed he
could take care of the politics and keep Portugal on
the correct path, and the Church could take care of its
business, which he surely gave it license to do through
education at all levels and through correct catechism,
as well as the sacraments. He was very close to the
Cardinal Patriarch, and they saw eye to eye on most
matters.

The Vatican II Effect
Where a rift did seem to grow between Salazar
and the Church was when the effects of Vatican II
started to filter into the country. His security and
censorship policies began to be questioned by clergy
who had clearly been influenced by the liberalism
and ecumenism that underscored the Council. The
bishop of Porto issued a statement criticizing his
government, and he was reprimanded. One priest,
José Alves Felicidade, who had studied in Paris, was
even advised that he had become persona non grata in
Portugal.21 For all intents and purposes Salazar had no
time for innovations when it came to Church doctrine:
“Portugal is a country of Catholic foundation…as
long as the Church does not change its dogma and
morals it evolves slowly in its cult, discipline, and
internal organization.”22 When Pope Paul VI visited
Fatima on May 13, 1967, Salazar was not available
to welcome him. In part this might have been due to
his aversion to the Council. Objectively it is mostly
THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

explained by Salazar’s anger at the Pope’s apparent
support of India’s annexation of Goa. Soon after
the 1961 invasion, in which Portuguese strongholds
were bombed by Indian government forces, the Pope
conducted an ecumenical conference in India. It
would have seemed to Salazar that both the interests
of Portugal and the Church were at odds when a nonChristian country seized a bastion of Catholicism in
the East. Therefore, it was all the more intolerable that
Rome should treat the event with such nonchalance.
Hundreds of thousands of Goans fled to Portuguese
Africa and Portugal as India began at once to purge
Goa of its nearly 500 years of Catholicism.
Many priests who had eagerly awaited the return
of the Cardinal Patriarch following the Council in the
hopes that he would institute the same kinds of reforms
which had ravaged the rest of the Catholic world,
were disappointed when he did nothing.23 The same
priests who then decided on their own recognizance
to push for changes were critical of the Cardinal
Patriarch when he supported the fact that Salazar
had rebuked the Conciliar Pope. In fact, shortly after
Salazar’s accident the Cardinal himself stepped down,
such that it was not until after the revolution that the
Council began to make serious headway in Portugal.
There is a clear and obvious irony that the devil had
to bring about the full and total collapse of this bastion
of Catholicity before modernist liturgical and other
changes could take hold. In order to fully grasp the
extent to which this was the case we need only remind
ourselves of the secular threats immediately before
and after Salazar. In the first case we have the example
cited by William Walsh in his book on Fatima. The
apparitions have occurred and the little shepherds
have been abducted and thrown into jail by the town
mayor, who threatened to boil them alive if they did
not recant. Here is Walsh in his own words:
The administrator of Ourem was Aturo de Oliviera
Santos–Mason of the Grand Orient Lodge of Leiria…he
became a devout and tireless member of what might be
called the Mystical Body of this World. “Mystical?” Yes. For
the invisible head of a kingdom devoted to uprooting the
work of Christ must obviously be the disfranchised spirit of
revolt of whom he said, “The prince of this world cometh,
and in me he hath not anything.”24

In the second case we have quotes from two
of the Communist leaders who sought to take over
the government of Portugal after Salazar, Alvaro
Cunhal and Vasco Gonçalves respectively: “In order
to insure the democratization of national life…the
Portuguese Communist Party is ready to assume
its responsibilities”25 and “The central question of
Socialism is the question of power. In order to establish
Socialism the workers must take power.”26
As with the case the of Goa, the secular modernist
countries did succeed in undermining Portugal–
eventually bringing about the desired adherence to
their own dissolute ways–by way of Portugal’s other
overseas regions. England, which had so ruthlessly
claimed much of Portuguese Africa in 1890, now felt

29
qualified to remind Portugal that they should leave
Africa altogether. Since the early days of Bartolomeu
Dias, who first charted the Cape of Good Hope in
1488, and Vasco da Gama, who reached India in
1498, Portugal had established itself in Africa and
Asia. Subsequently, within less than one generation
missioners had succeeded in preparing locals as
priests and even bishops. Unlike the English, the
Portuguese were truly concerned with spreading the
gospel in these continents. To this day Goa, former
Portuguese India, is 30-40% Catholic. Nevertheless,
international capitalist and Communist interests
wanted Portugal out, and it was ultimately the
pressures brought to bear on the overseas territories
that lead to the April 25, 1974 revolution and the
transition from a government founded upon Catholic
values to one mired in moral relativism.

End of an Era
In 1968 the chair in which he was sitting
collapsed, and Salazar fell and sustained serious
trauma to his head. As a result, the like-minded but
less qualified leader Marcelo Caetano took his place
as head of the government. Due to the great military
presence in Africa where it was felt Portugal was
losing its hold, there was an uprising at the military
headquarters in Lisbon, and this brought about
the fall of the government. Consequently Portugal
became, albeit unbeknownst to much of the world’s
media, the last great stage of the Cold War before
the Polish Solidarity movement, Perestroika, and
the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. After 50 years
of government steeped in the same values prevalent
throughout Christendom from the time of Christ
up until the first inroads of humanism in the 13th
century, and temporarily reinstituted in Iberia and
Ibero-America during the Counter Reformation
(approximately 1520-1720), the modernists had finally
battered down the last point of resistance. Spain too
was to collapse less than a year later with the death of
Franco.
Communists and capitalists fought over little
Portugal as if their lives depended on the outcome.
And it did, because with Communism strong in
Portugal, Spain would have been next. Instead,
secular modernist capitalism won out definitively 11
years later in 1985 with the election of Cavaco Silva
as Prime Minister.
We live in unsettled times, and the knowledge
that Catholic countries like Portugal are now only
nominally so is distressing. From standard-bearer of
Catholic values to just one more modernist country
racked by materialism and the inevitable demise of
the family–Portugal now has one of the lowest birth
rates in the world–the encroachment of socialism, and
the complete subjugation to international interests,
this country would seem to be a long way from the
simple morality imposed by Salazar. However, as the

Lord has said: I will build my Church and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it.27 There may be some
remnant of morality left, because as often as Portugal
passes a referendum on abortion it is voted down.
Maybe it will take even further demise of the familyoriented society that Salazar championed before
the people, inspired by further graces from heaven
(let us not forget Fatima), will again say, “Enough!”
However, it would surely take another figure with the
strength of purpose and depth of vision of a Salazar
to effect such an awakening.
Dr. Haydn Tiago de Azevedo Mafra Jones, with a Ph.D. in Romance Languages
from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, teaches at Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southern Atlantic
Modern Language Association. Professor Jones has published articles and
translations on various topics pertaining to the Iberian world. He has lived
in Portugal, and he taught at the University of Puerto Rico for four years.
He attends the Latin Mass with his wife Karen and five children at the SSPX
chapels in Raleigh and Goldsboro, North Carolina.

1

Hugh Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal (NY: Hawthorn Books, 1970),
26.
2
On December 4, 1980, Francisco de Sá Carneiro, leader of the Democratic
Alliance Party, died in a plane crash under suspicious circumstances.
3
Prior to Salazar’s coming to power definitively in 1928, the Carmona
regime which selected him had already been in power for over two years.
Following an accident in 1968 when he suffered some trauma to his head,
Salazar had to delegate his power to Marcelo Caetano, who remained in
office until 1974. Therefore we can speak of 48 years in which a Catholicoriented government prevailed.
4
Mt. 5:4.
5
Antonio Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Dictatorship:
Problems of Interpretation (NY: Columbia U. Press, 1995), 30.
6
Manuel Loff, Salazarismo e Franquismo na Época de Hitler (Porto: Campo
das Letras, 1996), 255.
7
Diamantino Machado, The Structure of Portuguese Society (NY: Praeger
Pub., 1991), 72.
8
Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal, 41.
9
http://www.joatilly.weblog.com.pt/ 4.
10
http://www.vidaslusofonas.pt/salazar.htm 10.
11
Political Constitution of the Republic, Art. 5 (SNI, Lisbon).
12
José Rebelo, Formas de Legitimação do Poder (Lisbon: Livros e Leitura,
1998), 67. Author’s translation.
13
Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal, 32
14
Diego Sevilla Andrés, El Portugal de Oliveira Salazar (Madrid: Ed. Del
Movimiento, 1957), 105. Author’s translation.
15
Padre Luis Azevedo Mafra, Lisboa no Tempo do Cardeal Cerejeira (Lisbon:
Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 1997), 32. Author’s translation.
16
Sevilla Andrés, El Portugal de Oliveira Salazar, 105. Author’s translation.
17
http://www.ctv.es/USERS/fnff/hendaya.htm.
18
Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal, 159.
19
Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Dictatorship, 203.
20
Rebelo, Formas de Legitimação do Poder, 198. Author’s translation.
21
Azevedo Mafra, Lisboa no Tempo do Cardeal Cerejeira, 101. Author’s
translation.
22
Sevilla Andrés, El Portugal de Oliveira Salazar, 137. Author’s translation.
23
Azevedo Mafra, Lisboa no Tempo do Cardeal Cerejeira, 77.
24
William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima (NY: Image Books, 1954),
95.
25
Hipolito de la Torre Gómez and Josep Sánchez Cervello, Portugal en la edad
contemporánea (1807-2000): Historia y documentos (Madrid: Universidad
nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2000), 507. Author’s translation.
26
Ibid., 512. Author’s translation.
27
Mt. 16:18.

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THE ANGELUS • August 2006

0

Letter #69
h . e .

B i s h o p

B e r n a r d

f e l l a y

Letter #69 to Friends and Benefactors from Bishop Bernard Fellay,
Superior General of the Society of Saint pius X

Dear Faithful and Benefactors,
“By celebrating the old Mass, I discovered what
the priest is.”
Several times lately we have received this moving
testimony from priests who are getting to know
us. This short sentence sums up the essence of the
profound mystery that has struck the Church:
1) The Church has been in a crisis since Vatican II
because the priesthood has been slighted. This is
one of the fundamental elements of this crisis.
2) One of the most decisive points for the Church’s
restoration is and will be the priesthood. Of all
the churchmen of the 20th century, Archbishop
Lefebvre was probably the one who understood
this most clearly.
3) In founding the Priestly Society of Saint Pius
X, he sought nothing but the restoration of the
priesthood for the sake of restoring the entire
Church, and
4) to do this by re-establishing the intimate,
unimaginably profound link that exists between
the priest and the Mass.
The priest was the forgotten man of Vatican II, as
Fathers of the Council have frankly admitted. In the
Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, while
entire chapters were dedicated to the bishops and
especially to the laity, one of the great “discoveries”
The ANgelus • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

of Vatican II, only a few paragraphs refer to the
priest, and when they do it is to subordinate him
to the bishops or to the universal priesthood of the
baptized.
As early as 1971, the International Theological
Commission would say:
Vatican II modified the image of the priest in two
regards. The Council treated of the common priesthood
of all the faithful before treating of the ministerial
priesthood....Moreover, it highlighted the place of the
bishop, the center of each particular Church and member
of the universal college of bishops. The place of the priest
in the Church became blurred.1

Loss of identity, an uncertain place in the
Church...and yet the decree Presbyterorum Ordinis
gives the same definition of the priesthood as the
Council of Trent! But the context is such that another
idea is put forward, that of the priest as preacher, as
Martin Luther would have it, and not the priest as
the one who offers the Sacrifice. This would lead Fr.
Olivier, a recognized expert on the subject, to say
about the crisis that befell the priesthood after the
Council:
The real problem is so unusual in Catholicism
that one can easily understand the instinctive
blindness that has allowed a perception of the cause
to be avoided: the will to be faithful to two Councils
that completely diverge from each other is simply
impossible.2
To this new presentation of the priesthood, a
new Mass with an intentionally Protestant savor

31

corresponds perfectly....The conjunction of these
two elements, the definition of the priesthood and
the new Mass, has sufficed to provoke the most
severe crisis touching the priesthood in the Church’s
entire history.
Let us say it quite simply: the priesthood has
been cleverly denatured. The “president” (præesse),
the “preacher” (prædicare) are indeed sacerdotal
roles, but they are not the essential: this belongs to
the “sacrificare” (the “sacrificer”).
Insofar as the priest has not understood that
his reason for being is sacrifice, that his ordination
ordains him for the offering of sacrifice, the sacrifice
of Our Lord on the cross, the priest will not truly
know what he is or who he is. The priest without the
Mass, without sacrifice, is an eye that sees not, an
ear that hears not, feet that do not walk.
The Church’s enemy will never better succeed
in striking her heart; for the heart of the Church,
that which communicates supernatural life to
the entire Mystical Body, that which diffuses life
throughout the whole organism, is the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass. For a Mass protestantized in the name
of ecumenism, according to Bugnini’s very words, a
corresponding priesthood was required...
The priests we quoted at the beginning of this
letter have understood this in a lightening flash
when they came in contact with the traditional Mass.
And then, they tell me, they are both frustrated and
happy. Frustrated, because “they” hid from them this
treasure, they deprived them of it. Happy, inundated
with happiness, at understanding the extraordinary
grandeur of their vocation, the thrilling reality
of their participation in the priesthood of Our
Lord Jesus Christ “in persona Christi.” The priest is
associated, immersed even, in the sacrificial act of
Our Lord, Sovereign Priest, and he thus participates
with his whole being, which he surrenders to Jesus,
priest and victim, for the salvation of souls, for the
redemptive act. All of this was made away with in
the New Mass.
Poor priests who know not what they are!
Very dear faithful, we do not doubt that you
rejoice with us when priests discover what they are.
These are beautiful victories over the crisis in the
Church, strongholds and citadels reconquered for
the Church Militant, joining ranks with the new
priests Divine Providence gives us every year. This
year there will be seventeen, ten in this month of
June, and seven in December. In such occurrences,

we see accomplished in a tangible way one of the
goals of our Society, whose end is the priesthood
and everything related to it.
It should be the constant concern of the
superiors to maintain among the members a lively
will to accomplish and to reach this end. As in
every society, from time to time it is necessary to
stop and examine the road traveled, to verify if and
how the end of the society is being pursued, and to
consider the state of its members. This work is done
particularly during the course of the “Chapter,”
an assembly which for us, the SSPX, meets every
twelve years. It is also on this occasion that the
capitulants, numbering forty, elect the Superior
General, who will lead the Society, assisted by his
council, for the next twelve years.
We have no need to insist upon the importance
of such an event for our Society. During the
six months preceding the Chapter, our Statutes
command us to offer prayers to obtain from Divine
Mercy His grace, His light, and the help of the Holy
Ghost.
We invite you to join our prayers and sacrifices
by a novena, and if you can, by a day of fasting. The
novena will commence on July 2. It consists of the
prayer of the Veni Creator, three invocations to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary, and one to St. Pius X.
The day of fasting has been set for Friday, July 7.
Please receive our warmest thanks for your most
touching and faithful generosity, without which the
Society would not have the means to develop and
to grow, a growth that is somewhat miraculous...
We count on your prayers, and ask Our Lady to
obtain for you by her intercession all the graces and
spiritual support you need.
May God bless you abundantly.

The Feast of Pentecost
4 June 2006
+ Bernard Fellay
1
2

The Priestly Ministry [French] (Paris: Cerf, 1971).
Daniel Olivier, The Two Faces of the Priest [French] (Paris: Fayard, 1971),
p.106.

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THE ANGELUS • August 2006

32

Fifteen Minutes

with Fr. de Chivré:

Non-

Directive

Education

It is commonplace to speak of the “weight of
the past” for each one of us: the sum of felicitous
or infelicitous responsibilities, consequence of our
voluntary initiatives and determined by our freedom.
That freedom alone explains the number at which stops
the needle of the gauge indicating that our present
is beneath its destiny, or just barely within the safety
level, or that it has gone beyond the essential, climbing
toward a brilliant maximum.
But the worrisome needle, day after day, will
oscillate over that dashboard of existence, seeking
its mysterious measurement, up until the day when
death will freeze it definitively on the good or the bad
number.
For if there exists a “weight of the past” between
our cradle and this evening, we also have to speak
of a “weight of the future” between this evening
and our death; a weight of anxieties and a weight of
hopes, conditioned by the fortune of the present—with
the understanding of what that fortune represents,
accompanied by the will to make it produce. One
cannot be too well informed about what one has, about
what one lacks, about what one can do, about what we
THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

must decide and will, when our temporal or eternal
definitive is at stake. Everything is definitive, in the final
analysis; each one of our consents immobilizes us in an
orientation, either beatifying or dangerous. We have to
dare to gaze ahead to the prospect of our tomorrows
and look beyond the material chances or mischances
that solely occupy our mind—they hold the promise of
so much more.
There is a sacred aspect to the future, in view of
whose definitive and formidable consummation the
present can never be too demanding.
All professional activity includes a period of
training, a realization of all that has to be learned: an
apprenticeship dictated by the masters of the trade,
assimilated by our mastering faculties and daily lived
out by the exercise of our efforts and our application.
The salesman or the parachutist, the violin player
or the professor of theology, know they need to learn
so they can know how to do, in order that they might
know enough to produce their optimum “yield” by
means of that acquired understanding.
The weight of the future is conditioned by
docility to the present. No one more strongly than the

33
adolescent feels the mysterious weight of it upon his
daily present. He knows he is destined, but to what?
He knows he is gifted, but for what activity? He knows
his tastes, but he knows his aversions; he is aware
of his capacities–he is also aware of his pretensions.
Every day, he adds to the fortune of the day before a
supplement of knowledge, awareness, and weakness
acquired during the course of the day. How is it all
going to end for his future? With a decision or with a
sudden impulse? With reflection or with a run of luck?
With a healthy approach or with a runaway passion?
Leave them alone, people tell us today; you are
not supposed to decide for your children—they are
born to choose, so leave them the right to choose, and
most of all forget about imperative-driven education:
an education is not a direction. Léon Bloy would
answer you in a voice of thunder: “Clearly, rivers are
not the only things that overflow; we are watching an
extraordinary flood of stupidity.”
Parents are responsible for the good and the true
which they have to draw their child to live and to
love. This good and this true arise from a rational
understanding of life, which the child is on the road
to acquiring, but which he is unable to embrace
spontaneously. By its nature, understanding is what
comes when our reason has worked at comparing,
discerning, in order to fix upon a decision.
Yet the child’s reason is not fully formed or
he would no longer be a child—he would have his
majority, disposing of a freedom capable of willing
in spite of the instincts, the caprice, the passions, the
inclinations of his nature in turmoil and of his age in all
its growing pains.
The defining characteristics of childhood are
precisely a lack of sufficient reason combined with
the anarchic excess of unreasonable impulses. The
choices of a child do not descend from the heights of
his intellectual faculties, which are still shrouded in
the fog of ignorance or sensation. We therefore cannot
abandon to him the responsibility of choosing in the
absolute sense of the word, in the full and true sense, if
that responsibility is not perfected by the parents, as a
guide in the mountains perfects the choice made by the
tourists, by directing their hike.
In certain families, the expression “just let them
choose” is equivalent to exploring the mountains
without a guide: “Just let them go off the path, lose
their way, and tumble into a chasm.” You will answer:
“But I bought him hiking boots, a rope, an ice-axe,
even a whistle to call for help.” For pity’s sake,
understand that no climbing gear of counsels, warnings,
lovely speeches are enough to prevent his getting lost,
which is only avoided with an understanding of life
which the child does not have and cannot have in one
fell swoop. He needs the imperative of red lights and
green lights managed by the wisdom of his parents.
He needs the intelligent imperative of the guide—an
imperative arising from a knowledge of the terrain
which tourists by definition do not have and which, by

way of an attentive authority, will determine the use of
the means which each one is impatient to try out for
himself.
The child, too, is impatient to try out all of his
being; a knowledge of the terrain does not interest
him for its own sake, but for the opportunity of selfaffirmation it offers to him. For the child, everything
is an opportunity. He trusts his psychological and
moral agility, afraid of nothing: he does not know
what constitutes a chasm; he does not know that he is
confusing reasonable with curiosity; he does not know
that for him decision is synonymous with passion; that
courage is a mask for violence; that independence
signifies intemperance; that liberty flatters laziness. He
throws himself headlong wherever he is attracted; he
is impatient to play at being a man, to affirm himself
a man, to realize himself as a man. Like the tourist
impatient to take the place of the guide, the child is
impatient to take the place of his parents. His true
capacity for choosing is much more a disordered
need for personal affirmation than a concern with
knowing where he is heading, with learning its difficult
terrain, with accepting the conditions of access and the
conditions of enterprise. Tourists only set out on a trip
for sense impressions, with an understanding that leads
their senses toward a result superior to the satisfactions
of the hike: its goal. The child has a passion for setting
out on trips; the parents need to have a passion for
teaching him the goal toward which he is setting out
without knowing it.
By definition, the child does not judge based on
a knowledge that he does not yet have, but based on
whims, tendencies, and attractions that need exterior
imperatives to guard the child from contradiction with
what he should little by little know and understand
in order to be a person. Intelligent refusal on the part
of the parents is a way of giving the child knowledge
that he did not yet possess: knowledge of a danger,
of an unsuitability, of an opposition to the value he
should acquire. Likewise, intelligent permission is a
way of approving the child’s beginnings of a rational
understanding of life.
The firmness of authority is an imperative
responsible for teaching the child the importance of
what is asked of him in view of his personality and
his future. For personality only exists through an
understanding of the spiritual and moral value which
we are called to become and to remain. Education is
not a hazing, by a succession of imperatives, any more
than it is a psychological criminality by a succession
of abdications: “No, dear; you know what you have to
do—you’re a big boy.” No, he is not; that is precisely
the point.
In both cases, we have an absurdity: that of the
educator who in all things takes the place of the
educated; that of the educated who in all things takes
the place of the educator. To educate is to dare: to
choose for the child, in order to deliver him from his
ignorance, his helplessness, his personal impulses;
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34
to choose in place of the child for the benefit of the
child, even if it means effectively upsetting the child
momentarily; to choose in function of what one
knows as a Christian and as a man of honor to the
benefit of the child, all unproven in the faith and in
his honor.
To educate is to will at all costs the essential good
of the child in view of his essential future: eternity.
We have reduced the future to a secularized
problem of a purely temporal life centered around
success, money, and well-being, instead of seeing that
temporal future as supposed to allow the child to use
things temporal to affirm himself a moral Christian, a
personality, and a value: to draw things eternal out of
it.
The discredit brought to bear upon the value
of imperatives in education holds a particularly
shameful place among educators. This proves that
their authority does not even have the merit of
understanding that to command is to love—and
to make oneself fiercely loved—with precision,
moderation, and gentle firmness; that they
misunderstand the psychological frailty of the
adolescent by treating him as a fully responsible
person, for very quickly his intuition will seize upon
the incapacity of the educators, with even a secret
disdain for their liberalism; that their educational
methods are marked from the outset by the
fundamental flaw of that powerlessness inherent in
contradictory terms: non-directive education! One might
as well speak of the recitation of a non-learned lesson.
Léon Bloy was not wrong: there is an
extraordinary flood of stupidity which can only finish
by drowning the educators and the educated.
So where does this hatred of command come
from? From human pride, abandoning man to his
irrational mechanism of wants satisfied at the expense
of the knowledge of the good to be preferred to
the wants, and to be willed in spite of the wants.
Liberated from the imperatives that preserve in
order to develop, man is left to the development of
his whims, imprisoning him in the tyranny of his
passions.
There exist only three categories of men: men of
duty, men without duty, and men against duty.
I can already hear the piously demagogic
protestation of supernaturalized sentimentality
presenting, with appropriate unction, Jesus’ famous
expression: “I give to you a new commandment, that
you love one another.” Love each other, and that’s
enough. And yet Jesus’ words are a commandment:
a formal imperative leaving no room for any
concession, any interpretation, any abdication,
an imperative legitimizing every effort, every
sacrifice—giving your life included. Never has there
been a leader so strong as the Lord in the matter of
imperatives. No one has ever dared to demand such
renouncement or confident, liberating obedience.
Not one educator has ever dared to impose in such
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detail the rigors of an eternal formation and, after
having constructed for us the program of love with
the consented demolitions of Calvary, He declares that
it will all end on the clouds of heaven, with a great
power and a great majesty, doubly acclaimed by
the Hosannah of the well-bred and by the cry of the
ill-bred, “Erravimus”: “we were mistaken.” In which
camp will our pious educators be found? Here, truly,
the future will tell, but a future where no one will be
doing any more choosing...it will be too late, and the
surprises are likely to be devastating.
We have lost too profoundly the understanding of
our finality to be able to soundly judge the education
meant to prepare it. I take this reasoning very far:
What is heaven?–It is the country of the well-bred
by the imperatives of love. What is grace?–It is the
return to the good eternal education of oneself by the
imperatives of consent to that grace. What is natural
education?–It is an interior preparation to lure grace
into taking its initiatives in us, for education draws out
the natural virtues.
By an intelligently directed education, parents
dispose the child to harmony with supernatural
imperatives, so much will he have benefited from
the natural imperatives of the education received.
There is surely a high percentage of education in
a person’s appreciation of grace and of sanctity.
Certainly, we cannot turn it into a formal condition
for salvation—the Good Thief was probably not very
well-bred—but be careful: God alone is judge of the
causes which dispense from being well-bred for
meriting His mercy. These causes are numerous: they
go from irresponsibility due to heredity all the way
to irresponsibility due to the fact of being an orphan,
one more reason to measure your own responsibility
to be well-bred when the opportunity is offered to
you, by a directive education anxious to keep you
from missteps and make you pick up the pace, in
order to foster your encounter with grace.
Education does not mean bowing and scraping
and flattering words—no imperatives are needed
for those products of mere instinctive vanity.
Education means spiritual and moral value acquired
by affectionate imperatives and developed by the
personal free will of each. We must not forget that the
Living God has a very directive pedagogy from the
first day of Genesis up to the Ascension, and from
Pentecost up to our day. The prophets only spoke in
imperatives.
Now, the duty of parents is to be but the echo
of God to enlighten, support, warn, and achieve or
obtain. Their children have received physical life:
they direct them toward health by imperatives of
prudence and care which they would be judged
criminal not to express, which helps you appreciate
the imprudent deeds and words chosen by the
inexperience of children in the vital domain of the
conscience and the understanding, because of parents
who either do not dare or do not will.

35
No longer daring to ask, no longer willing to
inform, no longer deciding to permit or to forbid, is,
on the part of parents, attributing to their children the
non-existent honor of a judgment they do not possess,
and burdening their conscience as parents with a
dishonor they ought not to know: that of abdicating
their function as educators.
The joy of witnessing the emergence of selfcontrol in an adolescent, the joy of observing in a
young person a dawning independence from the
tyranny of the senses, the joy of hearing appreciations
wax more beautiful and more noble in a child gripped
by an ideal and by beauty, the joy of seeing young
people striving like saplings in a forest toward the
highest altitude and the most beautiful light because
they have been trimmed, helped, supported, pruned
by the imperatives of the heart and the thought of
the parents vigilantly watching over their chances
for the future with the present of their wise and firm
assiduity, which, for parents and children, all comes
back to the new commandment: “love one another,”
even when it hurts.
All of those joys are music to the ears of parents,
in recompense for having dared to love to the point of
a command animated by an understanding put at the
service of the little one.
For parents, to choose is to know; for the child,
to choose is often to yield to his wants or to decide
without knowing the significance of his choice,
uneducated thanks to the abdication of the parents.
Perhaps you will conclude that, at this price, never
will the child dispose of his personal liberty, with the
imperatives of his parents acting as permanent crutch.
You fail to appreciate the efficacy of the educative
command when you consider it thus. Maybe you will
understand if I put it this way: when you use your
authority to put an airplane on its runway, you deliver
it from authority by communicating to it the freedom
to fly away. The runway-imperative, accepted and
loved, gives it the independence of flight through the
freedom of takeoff.
Every order holds out to the subordinate the
opportunity to develop his own intelligence. To
obey is to draw out of an order the means to be
freely capable of commanding later in your turn, by
developing the thoughtful functioning of your will.
There is no blind commanding, or it is tyranny.
There is no blind obedience, or it is slavery. There is
the imperative of love: the order translating affection.
There is execution by love: obedience reinforcing
freedom.
To command well, you have to begin by obeying
well; and to obey well, you have to appreciate the
independence of spirit and the development of the
personality which obedience proposes.
What we need is a people nourished once again
on the great and liberating intellectual principles that
go beyond the pedestrian, vulgar vision of imperative

considered as abuse and of obedience considered
as debasement. It has become nearly impossible
to create any appreciation for these intellectual
principles in a people whose education is limited to
fostering well-being and material security alone.
For parents to be able to fulfill their role, they
have to recognize that this role is inseparable from
the risk of the imperative-out-of-love. For children to
become men, they have to recognize that this destiny
is inseparable from the risk of obedience. Whoever is
unwilling to risk (“Gave his life,” said Jesus) will never
give more than lip service.
The unending declarations glorifying submission
of the mind are often a mask for psychological
passivities terrified of having to commit to the risk of
courageous affirmations, or that of daring to discern
error to the point of refusing to follow.
And yet, for Jesus, love is a commandment which
is not interpreted according to persons but according
to His Truth.
Moreover, life tends to exact a kind of revenge
whose victims do not even appreciate its terrible
irony; for there has indeed arisen a terrible irony of
imperatives. By nature, their function was to watch
out for the good of the human person in preserving
it and in developing it. Today, authority despises
and distrusts persons. It uses its power to issue
orders from behind an anonymous collectivism of
administrative councils and commissions. From the
outset, the trembling personality of the leader takes
shelter behind the non-responsible number, and the
precaution of that non-responsibility is reinforced
by a cascade of committees—local, regional, state,
national, international—hence the catastrophic
disaffection of the elite in regard to their leaders,
who have vanished from their role even though they
fill the space. Impossible to know them in order to
make an assessment or speak to them: “Awfully sorry,
but the commission decided, it wasn’t me.” The best
part of all is that, issuing as it does from collectivism,
modern authority naturally flows, anonymous and
implacable, into that other collectivism of groups, of
associations, from which their elite no longer dare
dissociate themselves for fear of being singled out.
And here is the revenge: the appearance of
the tyranny of regulations, hoops to jump through,
anonymous obligations of which you would have to
be clever indeed to name the author. It is what we
call Big Government: up above, the anonymity of the
few; down below, the anonymity of the masses; above
and below, the passion for power wedded to the
passion for non-responsibility, the whole animated by
a slave-army of speakers, psychologists, pedagogues,
specialists, delegates, representatives, who put the
final touches on the construction of an absolutely
depersonalized humanity, that is to say, the contrary
of God, the contrary of Jesus, the contrary of the
saints, the contrary of the Church: “Thou, you there—
nobody else—Thou art Peter.” Marxism has triumphed
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36
over the faith of many people by replacing the cult
of personified and sanctified value with the cult of
numbers and with many-headed Anonymity, to use
the language of the Apocalypse.
Happily, we still have the Maternity of the Virgin,
declared high and loud by the sole Pontiff responsible
for the Church, and beautifully concretized by the
official designation of Mary whose heroic obedience
to the imperatives of grace earned us the recompense
of her ineffable personality. With her, we know to
whom we need to speak, and how to speak.
Happily, she dared to accept the risks contained
in the free imperatives of the Annunciation. Happily,
His Holiness Paul VI dared to run the risk of
confiding the Church to her Maternity, recompense
of the redemptive imperatives freely and intelligently
consented by her strength of soul, fruit of her purity
of heart. Happily, she remained a person without
belonging to any group, that she might listen to the
poor sinners animating every group, thirsty for her
gentle and firm authority, which she uses directly—she,
Suppliant Omnipotence.
Fortunately, with her, we know whom we are
addressing: most humble dignity, most efficacious
authority, most certain power—in a word, the One and
Only who dares to risk everything without cowering
behind brilliant anonymities.
What an admirable educator she was for the
young humanity of Jesus, and what admirable
obedience she received from the Child thanks to the
divinity of Jesus.
To risk, you have to renounce the habits of
pen-pushers and bureaucrats; you have to possess
a capacity to know man beyond the airs he gives
himself and beyond his vulgar spinelessness; you
have to look at yourself with enough courage to refuse
to see yourself in your original baseness by a will to
start afresh, which is neither a caricature of authority
nor a caricature of obedience. You have to be proud
with the pride of Mary; proud enough to serve the
authority of God in order never to be enslaved by the
authoritarianism of men.
With God, there is no risk of being a victim of
His imperatives. Absolute Intelligence, He knows
His children to the last detail, and He measures out
His invitations in proportion to their ignorance and
their frailty. He asks progressively, but He asks; He
proposes the risk affectionately, but He proposes.
Never will He regret a single one of His appeals—He
knew its precise quality; never will He regret having
proposed a risk—He knew its marvelous suitability. On
His side, nothing to fear, nothing to regret—He is the
perfect educator: Pater noster, the Father of each one
of us, and of all of us, conscious of the help which His
Love brings with it and conscious of the implications
of our refusal to run the redemptive risks solicited by
His grace.
How can we yield to Him? Have the coolheadedness to understand that what He knows cannot
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be replaced by anything better; that the instant in
which He asks for it “matches” exactly the validity
of what He knows about us; that our only way of
responding is by a consent filled full of understanding
and overflowing with love; and that nothing is then
more free than our spontaneous obedience. Let Him
ask because He knows, let Him insist because He
loves, and let us say yes because He does not deceive.
Among the artists of the 19th century was a Swiss
composer, Niedermayer, who wrote a charming
prayer. I am going to give in to the temptation of
quoting it to you as an illustration of a mother’s
understanding of her child—even if my memory
stumbles over a word or two:
Over a cradle, the dream of a mother
Should always be but a prayer.
Deign, my God, to choose for my child.
You know better and You love him as much.

You know better (understanding), so choose
Yourself, You who cannot be deceived, and choose for
this baby who knows nothing, and whom You do not
wish to deceive. As for me, his mother, it is a little bit
my admirable function to dream for my child, whom
I picture as one day being the most handsome or the
most successful:
Angel from heaven, what will you be on earth?
A man of peace or else a man of war?
Priest at the altar, handsome officer at the ball?
Brilliant poet, orator, general?
As I wait to see...on my knees,
Angel from heaven, fall fast asleep.

As I wait to see the future with all its mysteries.
The weight of the future: it so truly is the agonizing
mission of a mother to wait, a heart full of dreams,
a soul full of faith, and a life full of what we never
expect.
God knows everything–what a comfort, and
how the imperatives of Christian authority echo
the knowledge of God to help little children and
adolescents match up to the dreams of Mama
kneeling at their cradle.
When you see your children pulling away in
the name of freedom and a brave new world, ask
yourselves what are the imperatives of love of which
God asked you to be the echo for their heart hungry
to trust someone, and to which you did not dare to
give—I do not say the risk of an evasive or dilatory
response, but the handsome risk of an authority
indisputable by the truth communicated in nomine
Domini, in the name of the Lord.
Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Carnets Spirituels: L’Éducation,
No. 7, January 2006, pp.34-46. Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheaveray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture,
retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984.

Persons;
Principles
37

It’s Not About
It’s About

(1908-99) Former Prime Minister of Italy
and a professor of Economic History at the
Catholic University of Milan, Italy.

A Catechism
Of Catholic
Social
Teaching

A m i n t o r e

F a n f a n i

Part VIII
With another
installment, The
Angelus continues the
serialization of the
book Catechism of
Catholic Social Teaching
by Amintore Fanfani
(translated by Fr.
Henry J. Yannone,
The Newman Press,
1960), which will
run monthly until its
conclusion. He was the
author of articles and
books on economics,
including Catholicism,
Protestantism, and
Capitalism, available
from Angelus Press
for $14.95.

Heading three:
the state and
the citizen

CHAPTER 5. Nature, Ends, and Powers of the State

59)

Does the State have
an educational mission?

The State must favor and integrate the educa­tional mission of family
and Church and fulfill its own mission promoting the civic, cultural,
physical, administrative, and military education necessary to all or to
certain categories of citizens so that the common good may be attained.
Pope Pius XI: The true and just rights of the State in regard to the education
of its citizens...have been conferred upon civil society by the Author of nature
Himself, not by the title of fatherhood, as in the case of the Church and of the
family, but in virtue of the authority which it possesses to promote the common
temporal welfare, which is precisely the purpose of its existence. Conse­quently
education cannot pertain to civil society in the same way in which it pertains to
the Church and to the family, but in a different way corresponding to its own
particular end....The function therefore of the civil authority residing in the
State is twofold, to protect and to foster, but by no means to absorb, the family
and the individual, or to substitute itself for them. Accord­ingly in the matter of
education, it is the right, or, to speak more correctly, it is the duty of the State to

38
pro­tect in its legislation, the prior rights of the family...and
consequently also to respect the supernatural rights of the
Church....It also belongs to the State to protect the rights of
the child itself....In general, then, it is the right and duty of
the State to protect, according to the rules of right reason
and faith, the moral and religious education of youth, by
removing public impedi­ments that stand in the way. In the
first place it pertains to the State, in view of the common
good, to promote in various ways the education and
instruction of youth. It should begin by encouraging and
assisting, of its own accord, the initiative and activity of the
Church and the family....It should, moreover, supplement
their work whenever this falls short of what is necessary,
even by means of its own schools and institutions....Over
and above this, the State can exact and take measures to
secure that all its citizens have the necessary knowledge
of their civic and political duties, and a certain degree
of physical, intellectual, and moral culture, which, con­
sidering the conditions of our times, is really necessary
for the common good. However, it is clear that in all these
ways of promoting education and instruction, both public
and private, the State should respect the inherent rights
of the Church and of the family....This does not prevent
the State from reserving to itself the estab­lishment and
direction of schools intended to prepare for certain civic
duties and especially for military serv­ice....In general also it
belongs to civil society and the State to provide what may
be called civic education, not only for its youth, but for all
ages and classes. This consists in the practice of presenting
publicly to groups of individuals information having an
intellectual, imagi­native, and emotional appeal calculated
to draw their wills to what is upright and honest, and to urge
its prac­tice by a sort of moral compulsion, positively by
disseminating such knowledge, and negatively by suppress­
ing what is opposed to it. This civic education, so wide and
varied in itself as to include almost every activity of the
State intended for the public good, ought also to be
regulated by the norms of rectitude, and therefore cannot
conflict with the doctrines of the Church, which is the
divinely appointed teacher of these norms. (Divini Illius

Magistri)

60)

Does the State have
religious duties of its own?

The State, with its own means, has the obligation
to honor God in the manner which He Himself has
requested through Revelation, to respect the laws and
to see that they be respected, to favor the Church in
the fulfillment of its mis­sion, and to help the citizens in
the pursuit of their ultimate end.
Pope Leo XIII: Nature and reason, commanding every
indi­vidual devoutly to worship God in holiness...bind
also the civil community by a like law. For men living
to­gether in society, no less than individuals, are under the
power of God; and society, no less than individuals, owes
gratitude to God....No one, then, is allowed to be remiss
in the service due to God, while the chief duty of all men
is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice–not
such religion as each may prefer, but the religion which
God enjoins and which certain and most clear marks show
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to be the one and only true religion....So, too, is it a sin in
the State not to have any care for religion, as if this were
something beyond its scope, or of no practical benefit; or
else out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which
chimes in with its fancy. For we are bound absolutely to
worship God in that way which He has shown to be His
will. All who rule, there­fore, should hold in honour the
holy Name of God. One of their chief duties must be to
favour religion, to pro­tect it, to shield it under the credit
and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact
any measures that may compromise its safety. This is the
bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule:
for one and all we are destined, by our birth and adoption,
to enjoy after this frail and fleeting life the supreme and
final good in heaven....In as far, then, as on this depends
the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing
of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most
urgent. Hence civil society, established for the common
welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the
community, but should have at heart also the interests of
its individual members, and that in such a manner as not to
hinder, but in every way to render as easy as possible the
possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which
all should strive. For this purpose, care must especially be
taken to preserve unharmed and un­impeded the practice
of religion which is the bond connecting man with God.
(Immortale Dei, §3)
Pope Pius XI: The believer has an inalienable right
to pro­fess his faith and put it into practice in the manner
suited to him. Laws that suppress or make this profes­
sion and practice difficult contradict the natural law. (Mit
Brennender Sorge)
Pope Pius XI: All diligence should be exercised by States
to prevent within their territories the ravages of an anti­God campaign which shakes society to its very founda­tions.
For there can be no authority on earth unless the authority
of the Divine Majesty be recognized; no oath will bind
which is not sworn in the name of the Living God. (Divini
Redemptoris, §80)
Pope Leo XIII: To hold, therefore, that there is no
difference in matters of religion between forms that are
unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most
clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion
in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing
as athe­ism, however it may differ from it in name. Men
who really believe in the existence of God must, in order
to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd
con­clusions, understand that differing modes of divine
wor­ship, involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most
important points, cannot all be equally probable, equally
good, and equally acceptable to God. (Immortale Dei, §14)
Pope Leo XIII: It is not lawful for the State, any more
than for the individual, either to disregard all religious
duties, or to hold in equal favour different kinds of religion.
(Immortale Dei, §17)
Pope Leo XIII: The Church, indeed, deems it unlawful
to place various forms of divine worship on the same
foot­ing as the true religion, but does not, on that account,
condemn those rulers who for the sake of securing some
great good, or of hindering some great evil, tolerate in

39
practice that these various forms of religion have a place
in the State. (Ibid.)

61)

Is the State
the protector of liberty?

For the triumph of truth and the respect of the
human person, the State must protect full liberty in
all opinionable matters; but it cannot permit without
neglecting its own duties abuses contrary to truth,
justice, and the com­mon good, unless such toleration
is productive of greater good.
Pope Leo XIII: It is hardly necessary to say that there
can be no such right as this [liberty of speech and liberty
of the press] if it be not used in moderation, and if it pass
beyond the bounds and ends of all liberty....In regard,
however, to any matters of opinion which God leaves
to man’s free discussion, full liberty of thought and of
speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such
liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often
to discover it and make it known. (Libertas, §18)
Pope Leo XIII: Liberty is a power perfecting man, and
hence should have truth and goodness for its object....
Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth, may
not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man,
much less sanctioned by the favour and protection of
the law...and on this account the State is acting against
the laws and dictates of nature whenever it per­mits the
licence of opinion and of action to lead minds astray
from truth, and souls away from the practice of virtue.
(Libertas, §15)
Pope Leo XIII: Therefore, the true liberty of human
society does not consist in every man doing what
he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and
confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but
rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law
all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the
eternal law. (Libertas, §7)
Pope Leo XIII: The Church...while not conceding
any right to anything save what is true and honest, does
not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance
with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some
greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater
good....But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the
common good (and this is the only legitimate rea­son),
human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not
and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake.
(Libertas, §23)

the State take care
of the citizens’ economic welfare?
62) Must

The State must participate in the creation of those
conditions without which it is not pos­sible for the
members of the community to attain their own
welfare. This it must do respecting and exacting
respect for the natural rights of the person, and
integrating the in­sufficiencies of the individuals and
of minor societies.

Pope Pius XI: It must likewise be the special care
of the State to create those material conditions of life
without which an orderly society cannot exist. (Divini
Redemp­toris, §81)
Pope Leo XIII: The first duty, therefore, of the rulers of
the State should be to make sure that the laws and institu­
tions, the general character and administration of the
commonwealth, shall be such as to produce of them­selves
public well-being and private prosperity....Whenever
the general interest of any particular class suffers, or is
threatened with evils which can in no other way be met,
the public authority must step in to meet them. (Rerum
Novarum, §§26, 28)
Pope Pius XI: If, however, for this purpose, private
resources do not suffice, it is the duty of the public
authority to supply for the insufficient forces of individual
effort. (Casti Connubii, §126)
Pope Pius XI: Just as it is wrong to take away from
indi­viduals what by their own ability and effort they
can accomplish and commit it to the community, so
it is an injury and at the same time both a serious evil
and a perturbation of right order to assign to a larger
and higher society what can be performed successfully
by smaller and lower communities....The State, then,
should leave to these smaller groups the settlement of
business and problems of minor importance, which
should otherwise greatly distract it. Thus it will carry
out with greater freedom, power, and success the tasks
belonging to it alone, because it alone is qualified
to perform them: directing, watching, stimulating,
and re­straining, as circumstances suggest or necessity
de­mands. (Quadragesimo Anno, §§79, 80)

means can the
public prosperity?
63) ByStatewhatprocure

By promoting good morals and order, the family,
religion and justice, and a moderate and just
distribution of obligations, and by favoring the
development of economic activities, the State can
foster public prosperity.
Pope Leo XIII: Now, a State chiefly prospers and
flourishes by morality, by well-regulated family life, by
respect for religion and justice, by the moderation and
equal distri­bution of public burdens, by the progress of
the arts and of trade, by the abundant yield of the land–by
every­ thing, in brief, whose cultivation makes the citizens
better and happier. Here, then, it is in the power of a
ruler to benefit every order of the State, and amongst the
rest to promote in the highest degree the interests of the
poor. This he will do by virtue of his office, and without
being exposed to any suspicion of undue inter­ference;
for it is the province of the commonwealth to consult the
common good. And the more that is done for the working
population by the general laws of the country, the less
need will there be to seek for particular means to relieve
them. (Rerum Novarum, §26)

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • August 2006

40

F R .

p e t e r

Is hypnosis permissible as a medical therapy?

Hypnosis is a deliberately induced state of
reduced consciousness. It is widely recognized as
a means of therapy for a variety of conditions of a
psychological nature, including drug and alcohol
addiction, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and
obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, its most
frequent and most successful use is to enable persons
to give up smoking who are otherwise unable to do
so. The effectiveness of the treatment depends upon
the responsiveness of the subject to the therapist’s
power of suggestion, which is highly variable,
depending upon the depth of the hypnosis, the
individual character of the subject, and the authority
of the therapist. Suggestions not opposed to the will
of the individual subject are imprinted deeply into
his subconsciousness, thus strengthening his weak
affectivity, so that he can think, act, and feel as he
desires.
The morality of this method of treatment is
dependent upon the modification of the voluntariness
of the subject. The loss of voluntariness depicted in
the Hollywood representations of hypnosis rarely
if ever happens. Experienced hypnotists know full
well that nobody can be hypnotized if he does not
want to be, and that if the hypnotherapist makes a
suggestion opposed to the will of the subject, then
the person immediately leaves the state of hypnosis.
However, if it were possible through hypnosis, it
clearly would be immoral for a person to deliberately
allow the voluntariness of his acts to be destroyed, so
that he would then act in a programmed way, without
responsibility or morality in his acts. This is not the
case.
In fact, the modification of voluntariness that
hypnosis gives is an increase of voluntariness. It is
the willing choice of a method that will increase the
effectiveness of the will over the emotional faculties,
and the feelings in particular. The therapist repeatedly
inculcates the desired feelings, such as the hatred of
drugs or alcohol, detestation of smoking, the feeling of
happiness, and the like. He is thus an extension of the
person’s will, indirectly enabling him to have a greater
power over the lower faculties that he cannot directly
control. Thus a person’s feelings come more in line
with what he wills, and his actions that follow as a
consequence are more deliberate, more willful, and
more positively moral than they would have otherwise
been.
It is certainly true that like any other therapy,
there can be a danger with hypnotherapy. However,
this will only take place in the case of particularly
immature individuals who do not know what they
want, have very little direction, and who are highly
suggestible. Consequently, young persons who could

R .

s c o t t

fall into this category ought to be accompanied by
a parent for hypnotherapy sessions. It is certainly
also possible that a therapist could follow a New Age
philosophy, but it is neither necessary nor common.
The ideal, of course, would be to find a
hypnotherapist who shares the Catholic Faith, for the
effectiveness of this treatment is based largely upon
trust and confidence, and it is difficult to show such
trust and confidence towards those who do not share
our religious convictions. This being said, there is
no reason why a mature person ought to be afraid
of going to a non-Catholic hypnotherapist for the
treatment of a particular psychological condition, such
as drug addiction, since he knows ahead of time that
the suggestions will be limited to that domain, and he
will exit the hypnosis if the therapist goes beyond his
limits.

Q

Ought we to pray that God
lead us not into temptation?

The correct understanding of the sixth demand
taught by our Divine Savior in the Our Father, when
he taught us to pray, is this: “Allow us not to fall into
temptation.”
If we translate it as, “Lead us not into temptation,”
it is because this is a direct translation from the
Vulgate Latin text: “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.”
The verb “inducas” or “lead us” is a translation of the
Greek “eisphero,” which means literally “to bring into.”
However, it has a secondary or causative meaning,
namely “to make or command one to enter into,”
and from that also is derived a permissive meaning,
namely “to allow one to enter into,” for by allowing
one to enter in (e.g., a building), one becomes a cause
of his entering into it. This is the meaning here,
namely: “Do not allow us to enter into” or “Allow us
not to succumb to” (cf. Zorell, Lexicon Graecum, p.384).
This interpretation is confirmed by multiple texts
in Sacred Scripture that indicate that God, who is all
Good, cannot tempt man in the sense of inducing
him to fall into evil. St. James states this explicitly:
“Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is
tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils,
and he tempteth no man” ( Jas. 1:13). This is likewise
confirmed by St. Paul: “Let no temptation take hold
on you, but such is human. And God is faithful, who
will not suffer you to be tempted above that which
you are able: but will make also with temptation issue,
that you may be able to bear it” (I Cor. 10:13).
The three sources of temptation are the world,
the flesh, and the devil, but not God. Hence, when
we pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” we should
understand thereby, “Allow us not to succumb to
temptation.”

A

THE ANGELUS • August 2006 www.angeluspress.org

The Crusades

Dollfuss: An Austrian Patriot

Belloc shows that the Crusades were
a titanic struggle between Christian
civilization and “the Turk,” savage Mongols
who had embraced Islam. He explains
the practical reasons why the Crusaders
initially succeeded and why they ultimately
failed; then he predicts the re-emergence of
Islam, since Christendom failed to destroy
it in the 12th century. Makes history come
alive and gives a rare, true appreciation of
Christendom and of our Catholic forefathers!

Excellent biography of one of the great
political leaders of the 20th century and one
of the most remarkable opponents of the
Nazis. Dollfuss was not only an Austrian
patriot, but also a hero of Catholic Action.
As Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss
(1892-1934) tried to fashion public life
around the social doctrine of the Church as
expressed in Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno.

Hilaire Belloc

Fr. Johannes Messner

160pp, softcover, photographs,
STK# 8044 $12.95

250pp, softcover, STK# 8096. $16.50

Raising Your Children

St. Augustine as Educator:
The Confessions (Vol.1)

Vol.2, The Integrity Series

Confusion prevails about the job of
bringing up children. Integrity Magazine,
a post-WWII journal by lay Catholics for
living an integral Catholic life, has been
sifted for insightful articles on every
aspect of raising children.
 Teaching Children to Pray  Purity
and the Young Child  Creative Activity
 The Dating System  Crisis of Faith
in Youth  The Vocation of Parents 
Marriage for Keeps and MUCH more all
in short easy to read article-chapters.

Dr. Peter Chojnowski

Dr. John Senior wrote that a true teacher “teaches
himself,” which is to say that the most significant
thing a teacher can communicate to his students
is his own personal and intellectual encounter
with the Created and the Uncreated Order. By
instructing the youth in a specific discipline, the
teacher is opening up his own mind and soul. If
the teacher is a true seeker of the truth, his own
soul will be a medium between the student and the
rational order.
39pp, softcover, STK# 8166. $8.00

256pp, softcover, STK# 6598 $14.95

R.I.P.

R.I.P.

PRIEST, where is thy mass?–
Mass, Where is thy priest?

Seventeen Roman Catholic priests (none of whom are members of the Society of Saint Pius X)
explain why they celebrate the old rite of the Latin Mass instead of the New Mass. In question and
answer format, these priests tell their trials and triumphs over the Novus Ordo establishment.
Inspiring and often heroic examples of fidelity to their priestly vocation.

232pp, color softcover,
15 photographs,
STK# 8024 $12.95

Fr. Carl Pulvermacher, R.I.P. (Florida)  Fr. Paul Wickens, R.I.P. (New Jersey)
 Fr. Ronald Conrad (Arizona)  Fr. Christopher Danel (Georgia)  Fr. Vincent Michael  Fr. Francis
Le Blanc (Arizona)  Fr. Paul Greuter (Canada)  Fr. Brian Hawker (Florida)  Fr. Eugene Heidt
(Oregon)  Fr. Harry Marchosky (Oregon)  Fr. Vidko Podržaj (Slovenia)  Fr. Clement Procopio
(Arizona)  Fr. Ronald Ringrose (Virgina)  Rev. Raymond Ruscitto (California)  Fr. Graham
Walters (Oklahoma)  Fr. William Young (California)  Fr. Stephen Zigrang (Texas)

The book that’s been sent to every Catholic priest in the U.S.

W
E
N

by Dr. David Allen White

Dr. White has done it again! From the author of our tremendously popular The Mouth of
the Lion (the life of heroic Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer) comes this new–and different–
biography of Archbishop Lefebvre. Make no mistake, this biography is unlike ANY you have read
before. It is a mosaic, if you will, providing parenthetical glimpses and historical soundbites of
the life of Marcel Lefebvre. Each tid-bit (sometimes one to a page, sometimes five to a page)
offers a new and fascinating insight. A truly unique style of writing. It is perfectly suited to those
who want the convenience of picking up the book and reading for one minute OR one hour. Pick
it up. Put it down. On your time.
Although not a definitive and exhaustive biography like Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’s Marcel
Lefebvre, The Horn of the Unicorn deftly weaves poetry, Scripture, anecdotes, news and history
into the story of the life of Archbishop Lefebvre. The result is an inspiring and thought-provoking
appreciation of his life from one of America’s most distinguished Catholic writers.
But, you’re asking, “I read Bishop Tissier’s bio. Why should I read this one?” Because it
invites the reader to reflect on the life of Archbishop Lefebvre in a new and different way. Like a
motion picture on paper, Dr. White associates thoughts, images, notions, quotations in such a
way that an understanding of the Archbishop and his times emerges.
The Crisis in the Church is not fun. None of us wants the current situation we are in, but
God has His reasons... “to them that love God, all things work together unto good” (Rom. 8:28).
One of these reasons is summed up in the Latin phrase “Crescit sub pondere Virtus” (virtue
grows out of adversity). We have the opportunity to “step up to the plate” ourselves AND the
privilege of living among saints. How many of us met this great man? Were confirmed by him?
Received the Body of Christ from his hands? Received his blessing? How fortunate we are! Dr.
White says, “But allow me to share a comment made to me once by the late Fr. Malachi Martin,
‘Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer are the two great saints of
the modern Church. Once this catastrophe ends they will be instantly canonized.’”
What now would be the state of us,
But for this unicorn?
And what would be the fate of us,
Poor sinners, lost, forlorn?
Oh, may he lead us on and up,
Unworthy though we be,
Into the Father’s kingdom,
To dwell eternally!

352pp, softcover, 77 photographs,
STK# 8159 $19.95

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