october 2006 $4.45 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition The book causes the reader to reflect and it makes him meditate on the providential work of Ecône.... We can perceive the author’s admiration for Archbishop Lefebvre, and his admiration is contagious. He is able to relate his vast knowledge of western literature, philosophy, culture and history to the story of the Archbishop’s life, making it a richer experience than it would otherwise be. An amazingly easy book to read. I had a hard time with the big bio; this is my kind of book. Historical soundbites. Contemporary mindbites. Baptism Compiled by Angelus Press There are three types of Baptism. No, I am not talking about water, blood and desire. Nor am I speaking of immersion, infusion and aspersion. For a normal infant baptism (infusion with water, technically speaking), I have witnessed “chaotic baptism,” “clueless baptism” and “orderly and intelligent baptism.” What, you may ask, am I talking about? In “chaotic baptism,” there are generally a bunch of people and the priest shows up with two or three rituals–all of which are shared, tugged at or fought over by the attendees. At a “clueless baptism,” there may be a few rituals present, perhaps some St. Andrew Daily Missals (with its incomplete Rite of Baptism) and those who are not fortunate enough to have one of the above stand silently and make as much sense of things as possible. Lastly, “orderly and intelligent baptism.” There is one essential ingredient, and that is that everyone in attendance have a copy of the Rite of Baptism in English and Latin. There are two sources for this. Ideally, one would flip to the Rite of Baptism in Angelus Press’s 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal. Ahh–perfect. The whole rite to follow. You can even share with a neighbor...but hopefully not three or four! Not everyone has the Roman Catholic Daily Missal and so we have produced Baptism, which contains the entire Rite of Baptism. Ideally, the church should make them available for use at baptisms, but otherwise, bring your own. Everything you need (and not just for observers, but also parents and godparents) is there. They are inexpensive enough that everyone can have one and fully concentrate on the rich ceremonial the Church provides for creating new members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Simply, I don’t think I have ever been to a baptism where I would not have bought one of these books for everyone present, just so people could pray along with the Church in these beautiful prayers. EVERY CHURCH AND CHAPEL SHOULD HAVE THESE AVAILABLE TO THE FAITHFUL. Chapters include: On Holy Baptism by Fr. Franz Schmidberger Church Teaching About Baptism The Ceremonies of Baptism The Serious Obligations of Godparents The Churching of Women Blessing of a Woman after Childbirth and of Her Child Consecration of a Child to the Immaculate Heart of Mary The Rite for the Baptism of Adults The Reception of Converts. • • • 78pp, softover, STK# 8209 $4.95 • • • • • • 25 pack, STK# 8210 $64.95 The Divine Office “What does it gain a man to have his whole life perfectly organized but to lose his soul?” It’s so easy to lose sight of God in our busy world. But the Church gave us the answer from the very beginning when she structured her official prayer around a framework of the psalms prayed eight times a day so that within one week, all 150 psalms are said. Here you have the most critical hours of the Divine Office for the layman in the world. Prime is the perfect Morning Prayer, Compline the perfect night prayer, and Sext is for the middle of the day. This is better than private prayer; it’s the prayer of the entire Mystical Body because you pray with one heart with the millions of other clerics, religious and laymen around the world who have prayed and are praying these exact same prayers, AND because you adopt the ion t i d E intentions of the psalmist as you pray. When understood correctly (this edition has a short explanation 4th preceding each psalm), these are the intentions for which Holy Mother Church wants us to pray…for ourselves, for the Church and for all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Our Lord, our Lady, and the Saints prayed these psalms. Includes: An 11-page Introduction explaining the Divine Office and how to pray it, including guidelines on how to interpret the psalms in a Catholic manner, Table of Contents, the prayers to be said before and after reciting the Divine Office, melodies in Gregorian notation for those who chant the office in common, in timeless Latin with parallel English translations. Beautiful edition with sewn leatherette cover, rounded edges, black text with rubrics in red, two ribbons. Includes everything for the Hours of Sunday Lauds, Prime, Sext, Vespers, and Compline; Prime, Sext, and Compline for each other day of the week. Individually shrink-wrapped. Latin pronunciation guide bookmarker included. CKN! A B AI AG 221pp, leatherette sewn hardcover, 2 ribbons. STK# 6597 $34.95 Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day of the Liturgical Year Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. Divine Intimacy is THE classic meditation book that shows how to join prayer and action and put Catholic doctrine on the spiritual life into daily practice. For each day of the year, Fr. Gabriel (1893­-1953) gives 1) a brief intro­duction, 2) a two-part meditation, followed by 3) a “colloquy”–holy acts of love, thanksgiving, petition, resolution, etc., addressed to Our Lord and based on the truths just meditated upon. About three pages are devoted to each day, so it reads quickly, and even the busiest person can use it regularly. The meditations for Sundays are based on the Sunday Gospel readings of the traditional liturgical calendar. Grounding his work on a firm Thomistic basis, Fr. Gabriel draws from Sacred Scripture and the writings of the great saints. His goal–marvelously achieved–is to cover the whole doctrine of the spiritual life in the course of the liturgical year. Divine Intimacy imparts an absolutely Catholic view of life and prepares the reader for the greatest possible union with God this side of Heaven. N EWI NG ER O FF 1,227pp, leather hardcover, ribbon, STK# 8215, $48.00 Spiritual Conferences Fr. Frederick Faber, D.D. Fr. Faber was one of the giants of 19th-century English Catholicism. A convert from Anglicanism, he was best ­known for his powerful sermons. During Advents, Lents, and Months of Mary, Fr. Faber would preach on matters of the spiritual life. These “spiritual conferences,” as he called them, were honed to perfection for this collection, which became one of his most popular books. Among the many topics and insights: Common ways people are dishonest with themselves–and how to overcome them Two mistakes we are likely to make when we study the lives of the saints How the practice of kindness bears its greatest fruit in our spiritual lives “Plain rules” for doing kind actions Why, contrary to common opinion, our thoughts are a more true measure of ourselves than our actions are Varieties of death: What kind should we pray for? Why only the irreligious can ever desire a sudden death The spiritual dangers of lingering deaths The quiet, easy death: why it is less desirable than it appears The chief temptations of death The final assaults of evil angels Three kinds of preparation for death­: lifelong, general, and special The fear of death: one that is good and several that are bad What is death like? What do we experiences­on our deathbed? Answers from a priest who has been present at countless deaths Five kinds of deaths that are the most precious in the sight of God Christian simplicity: three things in which it consists The seven varieties of self-deceit and its five sources Why self-deceit tends to increase with age Wrong intentions for going to Confession Why does piety seem so monotonous? And what can we do about it? Heaven and Hell: what will they be like? N EWI NG ER O FF • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 345pp, hardcover, STK# 8216 $29.95 • • • • “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 October 2006 Volume XXIX, Number 10 • Kansas City, Missouri 64109 English-language Editor and Publisher for the International Society of Saint Pius X PublisheR the maronite church and the future of catholic lebanon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fr. Damian-Marie Fr. John Fullerton Editor Fr. Kenneth Novak Assistant Editor Mr. James Vogel business Manager Mr. Jason Greene Editorial assistant Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend operations and MARKETING Mr. Christopher McCann comptroller Miss Lisa Powell customer service Mrs. Mary Anne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Shipping and Handling Mr. Jon Rydholm 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. Archbishop lefebvre, the priesthood, and the Social Reign of our lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais after the general chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Interviews with Bishop Bernard Fellay conducted by Fr. Alain Lorans benedictine nuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Notre Dame de Toute Confiance Monastery, Lamairé, France book review: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Horn of the Unicorn by Dr. David Allen White Dr. Peter Chojnowski interview with bishop williamson . . . . . . . . . . 32 Stephen Heiner from luther to st. ignatius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 • Sermon of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais • Fr. Lorans’s Meeting with Sten Sandmark • The Pastor’s Last Parish Sermon ON OUR COVER: Quotes about The Horn of the Unicorn by Dr. David Allen White. The quotes are successively from Fr. Alain Lorans, Amazon.com, a housewife, a seminarian, and a priest. See the “Book Review” on pp.27-31 of this issue. The Angelus Subscription Rates US, Canada, & Mexico Other Foreign Countries All payments must be in US funds only. 1 year 2 years $29.95 $52.45 $57.95 $94.50  F r . D a m i a n - M a r i e Society of the T r a n s f ig u r at io n The Maroni & the Future leban THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org  nite Church re of Catholic anon The Maronite Church, essentially located in Lebanon, warrants a detailed study of its lively history, for it is the only one of the Eastern Rite Churches that has only Catholics. Perfectly in communion with Rome and unashamed to proclaim it, the Maronite Church is, in a Near East where religious variants are numerous, the very model of the unity that should prevail among all those who claim membership in the Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. The tragedy that Lebanon has been enduring for the last 30 years might embitter us, but it does not alter the fact that the Maronite model of a Christianity both Eastern and Roman is not a utopia or an accident of history. The undeniable fruits of this dynamism, this culture, and the holiness it has produced are the proof. Origins The early history of the Maronite Church is somewhat obscure. In the beginning was a Syrian hermit named Maro (d. circa 410) around whom a flourishing monastery developed–Beit Marun, in the north of Syria, in the vicinity of a place called Apamea, on the banks of the Orontes river. During the 5th and 6th centuries, the monks of Beit Marun were, in the Antiochian Syrian Church, what later came to be called Melchites. The monastery was one of the main centers of defense of orthodoxy against the great heresy of the time, Monophysitism (which teaches that there is only one nature in Christ, namely, the divine, and thus that He was not fully man): it was thus that 350 monks of Beit Marun were massacred in 517 by the Monophysites. Things became more complicated during the next century when the country was overwhelmed by the Arab Moslem conquest. The patriarchal see of Antioch remained vacant for many years; moreover, new theological disputes developed. And when the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610-41), threatened simultaneously by the Persians and the Arabs, tried to establish peace by imposing a doctrinal compromise–a measure which strikes us as exorbitant, but the likes of which occurred throughout Byzantine history–the monks of Beit Marun followed him, as did most of his subjects, into the Monothelite heresy (which teaches that there is but one will in Christ). After many vicissitudes, in 680 the Third Ecumenical Council of Constantinople rejected this compromise as heretical, but some, undoubtedly of good faith because of their isolation (they probably did not learn of the council until many years or even centuries later), kept the doctrine of Heraclius: these were the monks of Beit Marun and the Christian populations in their vicinity-in other words, the Maronites, as they were to be called afterwards. At the beginning of the 8th century, the monks had the monastery’s superior, already a bishop, proclaimed patriarch of Antioch during a vacancy of the patriarchal see, and from then on the Maronites constituted a separate ecclesiastic community completely distinct and isolated for four centuries; heretical in the eyes of other Syrian Christians but conserving the ancient Antiochian liturgy which the Melchites were to abandon subsequently. Because of the scarcity of perfectly incontestable primary sources, the question of whether the Maronites were formally heretical is still debated; www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006  most of their own historians affirm on the contrary the “uninterrupted orthodoxy” of the Maronites, emphasizing–which is entirely just–that they always had the sentiment of belonging to the universal Church and of upholding doctrinal orthodoxy. In any case, they never desired to be separated from the Roman Church, and they proved it at the beginning of the 11th century. Before, necessarily isolated, the Maronites forged their identity (and that of Lebanon) and survived in spite of the Moslem occupation by taking refuge in impregnable mountain strongholds or by emigration (principally to Cyprus, where they constituted an important community until the Turkish invasion of the 16th century). The Crusades and the End of Isolation At the time of the Crusades, as soon as the “Franks” arrived in the Near East to deliver the Holy Land, the Maronites cooperated fully with the newcomers, in whom they saw not intruders but allies and co-religionist, an attitude they were never to abandon. The Crusades marked the end of the Maronites’ isolation, and they became and have remained the juncture of Romanitas and openness to the Western world. Not that they suffered no mishaps: at the beginning they were considered heretics (for the reasons developed earlier) and under Frankish tutelage they experienced some reticence, and even dissidence, which sporadically recurred until the 14th century, but the will to unite the Christian forces and to be in communion with the Roman pontiff was stronger: once the Latins arrived, the Maronite patriarch acknowledged the authority of the pope, a gesture that his successor renewed a century later by participating in person in the Lateran Council of 1215. But already by this time the situation of the Latin kingdoms in Palestine had become precarious. And when these were finally expelled in 1291 (the date marking the fall of St. John Acre), Moslem repression unfurled upon all the native Christians. The Maronites took refuge once again in the mountains, but did not question their union with Rome. At the Council of Florence (1439) the links with Rome were even tightened: the pope sent the pallium to the Maronite patriarch, and he installed an Apostolic commissioner in Lebanon. Moreover, Maronite students began taking the road to Italy, the fruition of the developments of previous centuries. The end of the Middle Ages was the period in which the persecution conducted by the Mamelukes especially affected the Maronites, who pertinaciously adhered to Rome; a Maronite patriarch was massacred in 1367 together with his monks. It was from this period that, for centuries, the patriarch found himself forced to retire with his followers and some of his bishops to the famous deep valley of the Qadisha, where they took shelter in monastic THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org dwellings carved out of the rock and lived humbly by cultivating the earth. The Modern Epoch: A Golden Age for the Maronite Church In the 16th century, the Latins regained a toe hold in the Near East, where Lebanon was to be one of their principal bases. The political situation became less grim, for, until the 1830’s, the power of the Ottomans was remote and the Lebanese emirs (the Ma’anide and Chihabide dynasties) accommodated the Maronites, who were united and enjoyed the prestige of their patriarch, the uncontested leader, both civil and religious, of their nation. On the whole, the emirs were benevolent towards the Christians, whom they willingly chose as advisers; and even more: towards the end of this period, at least one or two of the Chihabide emirs embraced the Catholic Faith: incidental conversions, perhaps, but which shed light on the privileged position of Lebanon. The Maronites were able to leave the mountains and to spread towards the south, and their progress in every respect (demographic, economic, educational, etc.) is incontestable. The entente that developed between the Maronite Church and the Holy See was a decisive factor in the cultural flourishing that characterized this period of Lebanese history. In 1854, the Maronite College had been founded at Rome, which henceforth trained the elites of the Lebanese Church, and in Lebanon schools developed during the next century. Add to this the economic and cultural ties to France, and it is no longer astonishing to find the Lebanese at the origin of the Arabic cultural renaissance (for while conserving the Catholic Faith, the Lebanese had become Arabic speakers). A Christian elite came to the fore. Indeed, the same phenomenon is a constant in countries subject to Islam: the Christians are the principal engines for the conservation and advancement of culture; this was true at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when literate Christians of the Near East preserved the intellectual heritage of Greek antiquity; it was also true for Lebanon during the modern era. The “Catholic” vocation of the Maronite Church was so solid that it was never again doubted–which notably distinguishes it from most of the other Oriental Catholic Churches, which only developed after the 18th century. A few controversies were able to stir up the Maronite community, for instance, pontifical interventions in canonical matters, or the fake mystic Hindiyya of Aleppo affair which engrossed the chroniclers for some time; though without there being the least hint of rupture with the Holy See. This unfailing adherence to the Roman Church was reinforced by studies at Rome for most of the Maronite Church clergy. In fact, the Maronite prelates were the first to approve a certain  standardization in the liturgical domain progressively obtained by Rome. The Maronite Rite, while remaining quite eastern, imitated Roman ceremonies: Communion under one species for the faithful; use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, liturgical ornaments, and the Latin corporal, etc. The Ritual of the Sacraments was revised in order to bring it into greater conformity with Roman doctrine, and, lastly, in 1606 the Maronites adopted the Gregorian calendar. All these reforms seemed at the time to be indispensable for the Maronites’ attachment to the Holy See to be absolutely unquestionable. Also, in the domain of discipline, the Maronite Church had solid structures, but it accepted a less distant Roman tutelage; moreover, the monasteries–very numerous but for a long time with somewhat anarchic constitutions–were structured in a manner certainly not very oriental but definitely beneficent, which grounded them in their role as spiritual guides. Also, one cannot fail to mention the special personages who were the flower of Lebanese culture, all of whom but the last did their studies at the Maronite College at Rome, of whom we list only some. Among them were two patriarchs: George Amira (author, among other things, of a Syriac grammar printed at Rome in 1596), and especially Stephen Douwaïhi (a scholar of the first rank, the foremost and irreplaceable historian of the Maronite Church, a great liturgist, and a very zealous priest before becoming patriarch from 16701704). Let us also mention Abraham Al-Hakeli, called Ecchellensis (d. 1664), professor of Arabic and Syriac at Pisa, Rome, and Paris (at the College of France). We must also list the most famous Lebanese scholars: the Assemanis, a dynasty of learned men who left a monumental work on Syriac Christianity: Joseph Simon (1687-1768), who divided his time between Rome, where he put to good use his knowledge of some 20 languages, and the East, whence he brought forth a harvest of manuscripts and where he exercised the functions of legate (with which title in 1736 he presided over the Synod of Mount Lebanon, a decisive step, though very laboriously applied, of the reorganization of the Maronite Church). His Bibliotheca Orientalis is a mine of information about the Syriac Churches; he was prefect of the Vatican Library, where he was succeeded by his nephew Stephen Evodius (1711-82), who, after a fine career as missionary and pontifical legate, pursued the scientific work of his uncle. Another nephew, Joseph Louis (1710-82) limited himself to teaching Syriac and liturgy at Rome, and publishing several works on liturgy and history. A last name deserves to be pulled from oblivion to demonstrate the richness of the Lebanese intellectual revival in the modern period: the Archbishop of Aleppo, Germano Farhat (1670-1732), whose career is remarkable in more than one aspect. Remarkably gifted, he benefited from a very complete formation at Aleppo, his native town. Aspiring to the religious life, he went to Mount Lebanon with a few companions to found, with the blessing of the Patriarch Stephen Douwaïhi mentioned above, not only a monastery but a religious order (which was something new for the Eastern Church): the Lebanese Antonines. He was Superior General for several terms, all the while devoting himself to literary and scientific study. Moreover, being renowned for his exceptional talents as an administrator, in 1725 he was named (Maronite) archbishop of Aleppo, where his zeal did wonders. After seven years of fruitful pastoral endeavors and literary works (it was due to him that the library at Aleppo acquired its international reputation), Germanos Farhat died, unanimously praised. But if his name is singled out in our article and in the history of the East, it is especially because he is inseparable from the renaissance of Arabic literature, of which he was the incontestable instigator. The Arabic language was then despised and abandoned by the Moslems themselves, to the benefit of Turkish. Germanos, a distinguished Arabizer from his youth, made its study more accessible by composing the first modern Arabic grammar, which is still in use today; he gave it letters of nobility by the elegance of his style, in particular in his poetic works; finally, while Arabic seemed irremediably linked to Islam and to the Koran, he Christianized it, so to speak, by using it in his writings, from which the entire Eastern Christendom benefited, especially Egypt, where Christian writers who brought about the literary revival of the 19th century acknowledge their debt towards the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo. The 19th Century: The Difficult Emergence of an Autonomous Lebanon We have spoken about the 18th century as a “golden age” for the Maronites, and the trials endured by the Catholics of Lebanon during the two following centuries allow it to be considered as such in retrospect. Nevertheless, one must not exaggerate the categorization: even in the time of the benevolent Lebanese emirs (18th and beginning of the 19th centuries), dhimmitude (the status of Christians in the Holy Land) remained a heavy yoke, and latent persecution was easily revived. One could easily recite atrocities perpetrated during the 17th and 18th centuries. There were, certainly, some mitigations obtained by the officious but accepted interventions of the representatives of the French king, but in the 19th century the situation became worse, and violent persecutions began again as before: armed intervention by Western forces was required for the Catholics of Lebanon to obtain their freedom, an intervention that was beneficial at the outset but which was fraught with consequences for the future. The fragile equilibrium between the diverse communities was reversed: the more and more www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006  flagrant superiority of the Catholics (by their numbers as well as by their economic and social success) inspired rancor in their Moslem neighbors. Moreover, in 1831, the emir of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, had conquered Syria and the Lebanon, imposing Westernizing reforms which, among other things, completely emancipated the Catholics. The new status was shortlived, for British diplomacy forced the withdrawal of Egypt in 1840. The immediate and extremely grave consequence of these events was the shattering of the old tactical alliance between the Maronites and the Druses (a local dissident Islamic group). The two indigenous Lebanese communities had long made a common front against the distant Turkish power, but everything changed when the Druses began to fear the Maronite supremacy and diplomatic maneuvers pitted the two groups against each other (France, faithful to her tradition, protected the Maronites, but England, in order to counter her action, supported the Druses, which were a useful pawn on the diplomatic chessboard of the Near East). Thus it was that in 1841, and then on a grand scale in 1860, the Druse aristocracy unleashed horrible massacres of Catholics with the active support of the Turkish authorities (360 villages, 560 churches, and 50 convents were destroyed, with 20,000 victims in just a few weeks). Among the victims of the massacres in 1860, a group of martyrs from Damascus were beatified in 1926: eight Frenchmen and three Maronites, the Massabki brothers, notable and fervent Catholics and their friends, who had taken refuge in the convent at the time of the massacre. They are the first Maronites to have been elevated to the honors of the altar by Rome. The carnage came to an end thanks to the military intervention of France under Napoleon III. The Maronites, justifiably traumatized by the 1860 massacres, emigrated; as for those who remained, they placed their hope more than ever in the protection of Europe and in the exclusion of Moslems from holding positions of authority in the government; in fact, this was undoubtedly the only way to prevent, in the near and middle term, a renewal of the atrocities. The Maronite Church with the patriarch at its head was more than ever one of the major entities of Lebanese society. Let us go back a little: in 1842, the Turkish power, in order to better control the region, had suppressed the Lebanese emirate; the patriarch became de facto the only representative of the Maronite community and the whole of the Lebanese population to the Sultan. After 1860, he retained this role, with the quasi official backing of France. For all Lebanese, the patriarch was the effective defender, guaranteeing the security of the Catholics and the autonomy of the country; an effective defender, because relying unabashedly upon France, which remained concerned (even under the anticlerical Third Republic) to maintain its positions in the Near East. THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org For a century, the Maronite patriarch enjoyed an almost uncontested prestige which enabled him to speak loud and clear to Rome on behalf of maintaining the distinctive attributes of his community (vis-à-vis a policy of the apostolic delegates or the Holy See in favor of uniformity), and also and especially to make known the political and religious interests of the Lebanese. This privileged role reached its apogee in the circumstances that ushered in the Lebanese nation after the trial of World War I. Let us note once again, in our panorama of Lebanon in the 19th century, that its cultural progress in the context of the Middle East remained incontestable: schools and colleges, often in the orbit of monasteries, were founded in number; and the city of Beirut had the look of an intellectual capital, with the Jesuits’ College of St. Joseph (a future francophone university) and its rival, the Protestant American university. But before beginning the recent history of Lebanon (from 1914 to the present, even though politics was going to interfere in the religious domain), we cannot leave the 19th century without evoking the memory of those who were the soul and flower of Maronite Christianity: the monks, and among them the surprising figure of St. Charbel. Monastic communities of men of the ancient type, organized in two and then three congregations after the 18th century, flourished at every epoch in Lebanon; they were never purely contemplative (although they had hermitages to allow advanced souls to practise a stricter asceticism). Throughout Lebanese history, the monks have been close to the population by exercising apostolic activities and also by contributing to the defense of the Catholic identity in the country in spite of persecutions. By some of his canonizations, Pope John Paul II drew attention to several beautiful figures of the Lebanese Church: Sr. Rafqa (Rebecca) Rayès (18321914), a Maronite nun, canonized in June 2001; Fr. Nihmatullah al Hardini (1818-85), canonized in May 2004, monk and ascetic, artisan of the spiritual renewal of the Lebanese Maronite Order, master of St. Charbel; and lastly, St. Charbel, who merits a longer presentation [see book advertised on adjacent page–Ed.]. Charbel Makhlouf (1828-98), monk of the Lebanese Maronite Order, a model of obedience and humility, a hermit during the last 23 years of his life, was struck by apoplexy while celebrating the Mass and died in agony eight days later. Renowned during his lifetime for his powers as a miracle worker, he became famous especially after his death by the prodigy of the perfect preservation of his body, which moreover, for a hundred years, inexplicably exuded a bloody sweat. His convent of St. Maro of Annaya (on Mount Lebanon) is the object of a heavily attended pilgrimage and is the theater of numerous miracles. St. Charbel, besides being venerated by the A 7 population as a whole, is the first saint of the Near East to have been canonized by the Sovereign Pontiff of Rome (Pope Paul VI, in 1977). The Maronites rightly consider him to be one of the greatest of their great men, on a par with their founder, St. Maro. From World War I to the War of Lebanon: A Fragile but Prosperous Catholic Ship of State At the beginning of the 20th century, the privileged situation of the Lebanese Catholics was a fragile exception in the Near East. Following the military intervention of the French in 1860, the peace and prosperity of the Catholic communities and of the entire country was without obstacle, whether in the domain of agriculture (development of orchards and silkworms in particular) or culture. The reduced size of autonomous Lebanon was not sufficient to support all of its inhabitants. During this epoch of accelerated demographic growth, the second wave of massive Maronite emigration took place, with most of them headed to new lands, the Americas and Australia in particular. The Catholics who stayed were resolved to obtain greater autonomy; in Lebanon as throughout the Near East, nationalist sentiment was developing: did they not need to be completely emancipated from the remote, archaic Turkish power, and even, as far as Lebanon was concerned, from stifling Western protection? All this explains why the events of the First World War had very serious repercussions in the Levant. Lebanon, for the time being deprived of its protectors and agitated by separatist ideas, endured an extremely severe occupation at the hands of the Turks, who were in the war alongside the Germans. The country emerged badly scathed (at least 150,000 victims, about a third of the population), but with its moral prestige intact. The Maronite Church had been the soul of the Lebanese people’s resistance: one counts many martyrs (at least in the broad sense) in her ranks during this epoch. After the global conflict, how would the region be organized? There was a period of incertitude, over which we shall not stop: local rivalries, a plan supported by Britain and the Arab nationalists for a greater Syria comprising Syria and Lebanon, and so on. Finally, the demands of the majority of Lebanese Catholics were satisfied, thanks to the blunders of the Iraqi Prince Faisal, who had proclaimed himself king of the entire country and was defeated by the troops of General Gouraud; and, we might add, by the personal intervention of the Maronite patriarch Elius Hoyek at the Paris Peace Conference, which contributed much to a decision favorable to the Catholics. An independent Lebanese State with an enlarged territory and with a strong Catholic character saw the light of day. It presented a very comfortable position in the short term for the Catholic population, but many uncertainties remained: the support of France had proven to be indispensable to obtain this result, and then regions of Moslem majority had been integrated into the young State without consulting the inhabitants; finally, Lebanon under French mandate was supposed to be a modern State (with equality A new book available from Angelus Press ST. CHARBEL MAKHLOUF OF LEBANON: ONE OF THE GREATEST SAINTS OF OUR TIME St. Charbel (1828-98), a Maronite Rite Roman Catholic religious, priest and hermit of Bekaa-Kafra, Lebanon, is considered by many to be the masculine counterpart of the Little Flower of Lisieux. He led a hidden life of profound virtue, humble labor and ardent fervor for the Holy Eucharist. He left home at the age of 23 to follow the examples of two uncles by entering the monastic life of the Lebanese Maronite Order (a religious order WITHIN the Catholic Maronite Rite that includes most Catholics in Lebanon). He was devoted to the Holy Rosary and to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which he said daily at 11:00AM. Why so late? Because he knelt before the Blessed Sacrament from midnight the night before! His obedience went so far as to obey the lay laborers at the monastery. His fasting and penances were severe. His only contact with the outside world was at the request of his superiors. The stories of his heroic virtues are fascinating especially since they take place in a land that Catholics are not much accustomed to thinking of as Catholic–Lebanon. It is even more interesting as he was a miracle worker in life and in death–the miracles were practically non-stop. Fr. Charbel suffered a stroke on December 16, 1898, during the Offertory of the Liturgy, the high point of his day. He was reciting the prayer of the Holy Liturgy of the Maronite Rite: “Father of Truth, behold Your Son, a sacrifice pleasing to You. Accept this offering of Him who died for me...” As he fell to the floor, he kept his hands safely clasped around the Holy Eucharist. His companion, Fr. Makarios Al-Mishmeshani the Hermit, and some other monks helped him to his cell, where he continued to repeat that prayer until his death on Christmas Eve, 1898. From April 22-August 14, 1950, exactly 350 miracles were recorded at his tomb...20 of the cured were Moslems. Many more were recorded as his body remained intact for over 75 years. After his death and exuded a liquid that healed a great number of sick people and converted many others, including Moslems. His casket rotted; he did not. Sanctity is the ultimate solution to war. While the Middle East and specifically St. Charbel’s Lebanon is being blown up, let us all invoke him as we earnestly pray for peace and the conversion of nonThe ANgelus October 2006 believers...intentions dear to the heart of St. Charbel. 96pp, softover, STK# 8198 $4.95 www.angeluspress.org •  of all before the law), but in practice, account was taken of the religious affiliation of the inhabitants–an indispensable measure to ensure that the country, in conformity with the desires of its founders, remain a haven of peace for the Catholics of the country. All of this was going to create rancors, which did not fail to become manifest once the French mandate expired. The situation was indeed aggravated by the continuous growth of fervent Arab nationalism throughout the 20th century. The War of Lebanon and Its Consequences Behind a brilliant facade, significant political and social tensions were in play in Lebanon. Events were precipitated by the massive installation of Palestinian refugees (already numerous after 1948 at the time of the creation of the State of Israel, but especially after the expulsion of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Jordan in 1970). The clashes degenerated into civil war, and the country became a battlefield for its neighbors: Israel for one, and the Arab countries supporting the Palestinians on the other. In the first rank on the Arab side was Syria, whose expansionist intentions vis-à-vis Lebanon were not a secret to anyone. We will not analyze the war years (1975-90), years of civil war and war between foreign armies (Israeli, Syrian, and Palestinian) which clashed on Lebanese soil. These 15 years ruined the country in every respect, and practically put an end to the independence of the one State of the Near East where Catholics enjoyed civil liberties. Beyond military and political events of a disconcerting complexity and confusion, it is certain that the great losers in the war were the Lebanese Catholics (two thirds of whom are Maronites): hundreds of thousands of them were driven from their homes and congregated in the Catholic zone on the coast or else chose exile; hundreds of villages and places of Catholic worship were destroyed; by the thousands, Catholics were victims of massacres the atrocity of which did not fail to match those of 1860. More serious, perhaps, at the end of the war the Catholics of Lebanon were profoundly demoralized, not only by these trials, but by the internal divisions which finally wracked the Catholic military forces. To shorten the account, it will suffice to say that during the war, the Christians changed their alliances, but their hopes were always disappointed. The Europeans never wanted to intervene on the ground in their behalf. Why this failure? Among other reasons, because neither the secularized States nor modernizing churchmen wanted to intervene on behalf of a community judged oldfashioned and denigrated by the leftist intelligentsia. The Israelis sometimes pretended to support the Lebanese Catholics against the Moslem masses of THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org the country, but with many hidden motives, gaining a foothold in the country in 1982 and installing themselves permanently in southern Lebanon, supported moreover by local Christian militias, who undoubtedly did not have much choice. But it was the Syrians who profited most from the situation: Beirut called for their help in 1976 against the encumbering presence of the PLO, and thereafter the Syrian forces threw their weight around, militarily occupying part of the country and adding fuel to the fire. When the country was drained of blood, Syria arrived at its ends with the 1989 Taef Accord. Lebanon was essentially vassalized by Syria, despite the repugnance of the majority of the Lebanese (not only the Catholics). The inter-Christian war of 198990 allowed the Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to pose as an arbiter; since then, the Lebanese leaders have been pro-Syrian, the Syrian army occupied the country until April 2005, and the danger of a Moslemstyle society being imposed remains constant. Outlook for Lebanon and the Catholic Maronites In such a deplorable situation–the nation subjugated and the Faith threatened–what can be the situation of the Maronite Church? Let us try to see things clearly by presenting the present head of the principal Lebanese confession. The elected patriarch of the Maronites in 1986, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, like his predecessor, has no popular appeal. He seems like a man of compromise (and he owes his election to this). In fact, he has always preached conciliation and reconciliation (for, let us not deceive ourselves, in a civil war, no party is completely innocent: the Lebanese civil war is no exception). A moderate man by temperament, Patriarch Sfeir has pursued the politics of his predecessors, claiming to be a partisan of a multiconfessional Lebanon and not of a Catholic stronghold. He has never ceased to maintain contact with the different Moslem factions, which bear him some respect; and he has always defended the Palestinian cause, in spite of the difficulties for Lebanon which have resulted because of it. In 1989, General Aoun launched a campaign of Catholic reconquest; Patriarch Sfeir’s reserve with regard to this courageous but ill-fated policy (for lack of Western backing) earned him a marked but short-lived disaffection. For the divisions and the rapid collapse of hopes of military victory left on the Catholic side only one credible figure: Patriarch Sfeir, for he is the only one not discredited by party quarrels or humbled by defeat. Has he renounced the defense of Catholic Lebanon? It would be unjust to assert this: firstly, Patriarch Sfeir is well aware that his taking too combative a stance would risk bringing dire consequences for all the Catholics of the Near East. And then, his courageous resistance to the exactions  and threats of the Syrians and his denunciation of the unjust occupation of the country prove that he has not betrayed the cause nor renounced a political role. This political engagement, in the noble sense of the term, was formerly the rule for the prelates of the Levant. Western analysts contest this practice as outmoded and even harmful ever since Vatican II. All things considered, it seems that in Lebanon the traditional conception remains very prudent: for all the Lebanese and for all the Catholics of the Orient, Patriarch Sfeir has an uncontested authority and influence; should he not, therefore, exercise his providential role as spokesman of his country and defender of Catholics in the Near East as on the international scene? This role is indeed difficult to exercise, for the Roman authorities themselves do not incline in this direction because of their desire to foster IslamoChristian dialogue. But Patriarch Sfeir knows how to resist when the interest and the honor of his country are at stake; thus he categorically refused to accompany John Paul II to Israel in May 2000 and to Syria in January 2001: “I will not betray my flock! This visit would be considered as a disavowal,” he stated on the latter occasion. A few signs of hope have appeared nonetheless, at least on the political level: in January 2001, the Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon, and in April 2005, under international pressure, the Syrians also rather unexpectedly withdrew from the country. Better still, the reconciliation talks led by Patriarch Sfeir, let us emphasize, were concluded in July 2001 between the Druses and the Maronites: the latter agreed to forget the still recent massacres (1983) which weighed heavily on the two communities, which suggests that the Lebanese as a whole reject Syrian domination and that they are capable of living in peace without being under foreign oversight. The foreign occupation that was the principal cause of Lebanon’s decline seems to have ended. Might not the return from exile of General Aoun foretell the renaissance of an independent Catholic Lebanon? On the geopolitical scene, it seems that the supranational powers are careful to favor the Israeli State and thus to weaken its Arab neighbors. Syria is the first to be targeted, which accidentally lends some hope to the partisans of an independent Lebanon. Following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, which seems to have been a monumental blunder perpetrated by Syria, all the Lebanese momentarily united against Syria (with the notable exception of the Shiites), and the two Christian leaders who were rivals at the end of the civil war, Michael Aoun and Samir Geagea, agreed to be reconciled. Will this be enough for Lebanon to retain its character, unique in the Near East, of a country where Catholics are numerous and are fully citizens? In fact, it has been at least ten years since Christians have become a minority (about 40%, with 45-50% Moslems). To reverse the demographic process, it would be necessary for Lebanese Catholics of the diaspora to have the courage to return in great numbers to the country; such a return is not inconceivable given the visceral attachment the Maronite people has for the land which has forged its identity over the course of centuries. It would also be necessary, at the very least, that the political and religious authorities not equivocate about the Christian identity of the country, something which seems unlikely in the postconciliar era in which we live. The advance of the Islamic peril could open the eyes of most of the Christian leadership, including Aoun (who has gone astray on this subject for a long time), to the danger and to the impasse constituted by taking the France of 1789 and the very secular Rights of Man as reference points. The weight of the Moslem population and the rise of Islamism forbid an optimistic outlook. Conclusion At the end of our study, how does the Maronite Church appear today? Beyond the political difficulties of the country, the Maronites continue to constitute the soul of the Lebanese nation, at once fully Oriental and turned towards the West, rooted in a land where Catholics, who are so maltreated in neighboring countries, can flourish. The hierarchy of the Maronite Church are on the whole uncontested; most of the bishops have compelled the admiration of all by their courage during the civil war. Another plus is that the formation of the Maronite clergy remains of a high quality, especially that given at the University of the Holy Ghost at Kaslik run by the Lebanese Maronite Order. Vocations are very numerous; the monks in particular are especially zealous in their ministry and in their defense of their Catholic and Lebanese identity. The secular clergy are very dignified in our Latin eyes (the celibate secular priests are in the majority; that is the choice that was made by the most famous of them in France, Fr. Mansour Labaki). It is appropriate to give some information on the liturgy and the “ecclesial mentality” of the Maronites. In liturgical matters, we note that from 1946, a credible process of restoration of the Maronite Rite (in the sense of fidelity to the Antiochian tradition) began. The Maronite liturgy underwent a reform at the beginning of the 1990’s, a relatively light reform: they contented themselves with composing new anaphores (Eucharistic Canons) and translating the liturgy into the vernacular, that is to say into Arabic (or into the language of the country of the diaspora), while conserving passages–the Canon in particular–in the traditional liturgical language: Syriac. Another point to mention, and this one is indeed disquieting, is that for the last 20 years, the Maronites have been more and more open to new religious ideas: www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 10 ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and Charismaticstyle piety. Moreover, the tendency to adopt the lifestyles of the West is manifest in the Lebanese Catholics as a whole, who thus distinguish themselves from their Moslem fellow citizens, who are tempted by fundamentalism. It is an unfortunate evolution that risks annihilating the strong Catholic identity that the Maronites had been able to preserve through the 1970’s and beyond. Nevertheless, the Maronite Church still possesses an undeniable vitality and remains the mainstay of the nation with its patriarch, who prevails over all, even if the divisions between Christian factions are to be found in the ranks of the clergy. Can a Lebanon in which Catholics enjoy freedom of faith and action continue to exist in the 21st century, while the support of the Western Christians continues to be lacking? One may well doubt it: the temptation remains very strong for the elites to emigrate. For a long time now the majority of Maronite Catholics have been living in the diaspora (in France, the Americas, Africa, Australia, etc.); it is true, though, that the majority retain a very strong consciousness of their identity. In the homeland, the Lebanese Catholics are divided into two groups. First, there are those who want to guarantee their freedom by partitioning the Letter from Fr. Laroche, SSPX On July 12 while I was at Ecône, I received a letter from one of our Lebanese friends asking me to let him know the results of the election. The same day another message arrived in response to mine informing him of the results: “I am happy for the Society. We are going to write a letter of congratulations.” Alas, the next day, messages reached me from three different people: “The situation is serious. Watch the news.” “The airport has been bombed. Israel is organizing a blockade of Lebanon.” “I don’t know how you are going to manage to come. It is impossible to reach Lebanon, even by boat.” And the news, worse and worse, kept coming: “Almost impossible to meet. It is necessary to postpone the summer apostolate. Too bad, we had organized everything for the first Mass and the retreat.” On July 19 a young teacher sent a message, too: “Good day, Father. We are still alive, but we seldom go out of the house. The others are doing well, too, I think, at least for the moment. My sister and I are helping the families that have left their houses and have lost their kin. There are very many dead and wounded. There are no more bridges or ports. The Lebanon you love is suffering and dying. Pray for us.” Later another message came: “Dear Father, where are you? at home or in Germany? We never appreciate enough the daily bread of our Father. We miss you!” At the beginning of August, by the intermediary of one of our faithful a new message reached me from a priest whom we were supposed to visit as we do each year. This year, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais also would have been his guest. He had wanted to get to know Lebanon and would have given the sermon at the first Mass of Fr. Benedict-Joseph de Villemagne planned for Sunday, July 23 in the region of Biblos. “Fr. X requests aid for 320 Christian families of the Bekaa Valley. He needs 900,000 Lebanese pounds every day to help these poor people, farmers, who have nothing left for the present. Can you help us?” No more water for their fields or their beasts, no gasoline, and no way to sell their produce has made life extremely hard for these families during the last weeks. Others have had to flee because of bombardments or the destruction of their homes. The sum of 900,000 Lebanese pounds equals 500 euros, just enough to cover the most elementary necessities of these families. Lebanon suffering paralysis, it is from nearby Syria that the priest was hoping to find the necessary food. Thanks to the cease-fire, the situation is beginning to improve. But the destruction inflicted by the war is far from being repaired for the families of the Bekaa Valley or southern Lebanon where, even if the population is majority Shiite, there are many Christian villages like Marjeyoun and Beit Jbeil, or Christian quarters at Tyre and Qana. The village of Deir Mimas, half Christian, half Moslem, was destroyed. Through the intermediary of trustworthy friends and priests whom we know, we are trying to respond to this appeal. Through the bank, money is being received, and I expect to be able to get there around Christmas if the situation permits, as we all hope. Fr. Patrick Laroche THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org t t F a a T r k T fo p A U c p m S 2 K A T t A c 6 7 F 11 country (which is already very small); this is the goal of the “militant” Maronites. But could a miniature Lebanon, even supported from afar by the diaspora, be viable? The other group wants to preserve a united but multiconfessional Lebanon that could assure its role as “a witness of Christ in a Middle East dominated by Islam,” in the words of Patriarch Sfeir; such is the hope entertained by the bishops, a hope that may seem illusory and that postconciliar ecumenical deviations can only further skew. The goal of our study has been mainly to provide an historical sketch; as it reaches the most recent events, it leaves us unable to reach any sure conclusions. We wish, certainly, that God, the only true master of the events, will allow the Lebanese nation to subsist on its historical territory. But for this wish to come to pass, it will undoubtedly be necessary that in the West both civilian and religious leaders mobilize to guarantee the continued existence of the advanced bastion of civilization that a Catholic Lebanon represents. Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Sel de la Terre, No.57, Summer 2006, pp.146-61. Fr. Damian-Marie is a member of a French community of priests founded in 1970 to continue the work begun by the Orthodox convert Archbishop Vladimir Ghika for the return of the separated Churches to true unity with the Roman Catholic Church. to the Catholic Faithful to come to the Aid of Catholics in South Lebanon Fr. Patrick Laroche, the priest in charge of the SSPX’s apostolate in Lebanon, is making an urgent appeal to the generosity of the faithful to come to the aid of the Catholics of southern Lebanon, who after a month of war have lost everything. These families were obliged to leave everything and flee in order to escape the bombing. On their return they discovered their fields in ruin, their homes and businesses destroyed, family members killed, and the survivors without even the most basic necessities like food and water. The Association of St. Cyril of Alexandria (ASCA) proposes to collect your donations (a receipt for tax purposes will be provided) and to transfer them through Fr. Laroche to these sorely-tried populations. Thank you for your generosity. Americans may send donations for the Lebanese to the U.S. District office, which will forward all donations collected to the Lebanese mission. Make your check payable to The Society of Saint Pius X, and note in the memorandum line “for Lebanese relief.” Society of Saint Pius X 2918 Tracy Avenue Kansas City, MO 64109 Attention: Mr. Tim Eaton For those wishing to make a wire transfer to the account of the Association St. Cyril of Alexandria: Bank Account Association St. Cyril of Alexandria: C.I.C. IBAN: FR 76 3006 6109 0800 0101 4520 174 Bank code: 30066 Agency code: 10908 Account number: 00010145201 74 For more information, please contact: The ASCA: michel.blanchet8@wanadoo.fr SSPX France-Lebanon: france-liban@laportelatine.org To send a donation directly, enclose a note specifying that it is for “Action Lebanon 2006,” and mail it to: To write to Fr. Patrick Laroche: Association St. Cyril of Alexandria (ASCA) c/o Mr. Michel Strainer 6, rue Valentine Hauy 75015 Paris FRANCE Rev. Fr. Patrick Laroche Aid to Lebanon Priesterminar Herz Jesu D–84069 Zaitzkofen www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 Germany 12 Mass celebrating the 100th anniversary of the French Seminary. Archbishop Lefebvre, the Priesthood, and the Social Reign of Our Lord B i s h o p B e r n a r d T i s s i e r Archbishop Lefebvre always linked the priesthood to the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ: the one is the source of the other, the latter flows spontaneously from the former. At the French Seminary in Rome At the seminary on the Via Santa Chiara, where he was trained as a priest from 1923–29, Fr. Lefebvre learned from Fr. Henri Le Floch, the rector of the house, not to separate what must be united: the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and His kingship, THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org d e M a l l e r a i s the doctrine of the priest and his piety, and also the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. This teaching is that of the Popes in their encyclicals: Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII are the masters, together with Cardinal Pie, the journalist Louis Veuillot, etc. “Fr. Le Floch,” Archbishop Lefebvre would tell us, “made us enter and live the history of the Church and the fight against the perverse forces arrayed against our Lord. That mobilized us against this fatal liberalism, against the Revolution and the powers of evil at work to overthrow the Church, the reign of our Lord, the Catholic States, and the whole edifice of Christendom.” This combat confronted 13 each seminarian with a personal choice: “We had to choose: either leave the seminary if we did not agree, and some did leave, or else engage in the fight and march.” But to enter into the fray means to bind oneself for life: “I think that our entire sacerdotal and episcopal life has been oriented by the fight against liberalism.” But where does the priesthood fit in this essentially political combat? At the French Seminary, readings to the seminarians made them contemplate with Belgian historian Godefroid Kurth [author of The Origins of Modern Civilization] “the Mystical Body of Christ transforming the pagan society of the Roman Empire and preparing the upward movement of recognition for the program of our Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and King.” They helped them understand, with Fr. Deschamps, S.J., in his Secret Societies and Society, that “the revolutions were bringing about the elimination of the rule of Christ the King in view of ultimately eliminating the Mass and the supernatural life of Christ, the Supreme High Priest.”1 The De Ecclesia of Fr. (later Cardinal) Billot, S.J., made them “grasp the meaning of the Kingship of Christ and see the horror of liberalism.” At the school of Cardinal Pie, they learned the understanding of the full meaning of “Thy Kingdom come” in the Our Father. Our Lord’s Kingdom is meant to come, not only in individual souls and in heaven, but on earth through the submission of states and nations to His rule....The dethronement of God on earth is a crime, to which we must never become resigned. Let us never cease to protest against it.2 What’s more (according to Fr. Fahey, who was a seminarian in Rome at the same seminary 12 years before Marcel Lefebvre, under the direction of the same Fr. Le Floch), “The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX and the encyclicals of the last four popes [Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X] have been main subjects of my meditations on the Kingship of Christ and its relation to His priesthood.”3 What a surprising subject of meditation for a young seminarian: allying the most elevated piety with the submission of the temporal city to Christ. For Marcel Lefebvre’s masters, there was no break between individual life and political action taken in its largest sense. So-called Catholic liberalism effects the separation of what must remain united. It was also at the French Seminary at Rome that Fr. Marc Voegtli, C.S.Sp., a professor at Santa Chiara, commented on Pope Pius XI’s 1925 encyclical Quas Primas on the social kingship of Christ. For his young, enthusiastic audience, he set out the political program of the Catholic Church, which is the inverse of the liberal plan: 1) the Mass; 2) then life in the state of grace; 3) finally, the recrowning of our Lord Jesus Christ. The testimonials of Fr. Voegtli’s students, like Fr. Roger Johan (a future bishop) and Fr. Victor Alain Berto, were unanimous: His teaching was simple, he spoke only of our Lord Jesus Christ the King....He taught the integrity of the priesthood, the priesthood taken to its logical conclusion: the sacrifice of the priest [note the idea] for the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything was judged in that light. “My dear friends,” the Father would say, “I beg you to love our Lord Jesus Christ,” or “My dear friends, you must preach our Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart!” A collective testimony signed by twelve seminarians...declares: “Through him we learned to see our Lord Jesus Christ, the King, as the center of everything, the answer to all questions, our food, our thought, our life, everything....That is what he wanted to impress upon us: that will remain!”4 That remained! especially the indelible memory Marcel Lefebvre kept of Fr. Voegtli’s conferences. By now you might be inclined to tell me: “Get on with his action at the Council and afterwards!” Yes, but it is necessary to understand the motive of his action. The Motive of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Combat for Christ the King: An Oath Fifty years later, one of his rare faithful disciples, Marcel Lefebvre, also bore witness to the indelible impression produced by [Fr. Voegtli]’s “talks, which were very simple, taking the words of Scripture, showing who our Lord Jesus Christ was....That remained with us for life!” It even became the subject of the seminarian’s meditation: “We shall never have sufficiently meditated on, or sought or understood, what Our Lord Jesus Christ is...He should rule our thinking. He makes us holy. He is also our Creator since nothing whatsoever was made without the Word, and therefore without Our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Word. So we must only think about and contemplate Our Lord Jesus Christ. And that transforms one’s life!”5 What a remarkable statement! For Marcel Lefebvre, believing in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently in his right to rule alone meant involving himself personally in the fight. And that is what he did, as did many of his colleagues from the seminary at Rome, at the confession of St. Peter, interiorly making an “oath of Romanitas” both doctrinal and militant. Fr. Berto’s statement6 allows the inference that such an oath was the normal thing to do and went without saying. The young clerics bound themselves to “always be on crusade.”7 He did not know when or where, or in what troubled or tragic circumstances in the Church he might have to enter the fray and himself write a page of this Church history that had been taught to him from the angle of Christ’s right to reign, but he knew that sooner or later he would have to leap into the fight. The Second Vatican Council proved to be the providential moment for Archbishop Lefebvre, the moment at which he felt impelled to intervene, remaining faithful to the Roman seminarian’s oath of long ago. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 14 Herald of Christ the King Let us read from another page of Dom Marmion: Faith is the primary disposition of one who would follow Christ; it must be the first attitude of the soul in presence of the Incarnate Word. Christianity is nought else than the acceptation, by faith–a practical faith–of the Incarnation with all its consequences; the Christian life is but the constant putting into practice of this act of faith made to Jesus....If you accept the Divinity of Jesus Christ, you must, in consequence, accept His will, His words, His institutions, the Church, the Sacraments, the reality of His Mystical Body.11 At the Council, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was to become, in the name of Christ the King, the head of the resistance against the false notion of religious liberty. After the presentation of the two rival schemata of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bea during the last meeting of the Central Preparatory Commission in June 1962, he said, referring to Cardinal Bea’s schema: On Religious Liberty: non placet [I vote no]...since it is based on false principles solemnly condemned by the sovereign pontiffs, for example Pius IX, who calls this error “delirium” (Denzinger 1690)....The schema on religious liberty does not preach Christ and therefore seems false. Referring to Cardinal Ottaviani’s Catholic schema, he said: On the Church: placet. However, the exposition of the fundamental principles could be done with more reference to Christ the King as in the encyclical Quas Primas....Our Council could have as its aim to preach Christ to all men, and to state that it belongs to the Catholic Church alone to be the true preacher of Christ, who is the salvation and life of individuals, families, professional associations, and of other civil bodies. ...The Theological Commission’s schema expounds the authentic doctrine but does so like a thesis; it does not sufficiently show the aim of this doctrine which is nothing other than the reign of Christ....From the point of view of Christ as source of salvation and life, all the fundamental truths could be expounded as they say “pastorally,” and in this way the errors of secularism, naturalism, and materialism, etc., would be excluded.8 He continued to affirm the same thing after the Council, and would tell Cardinal Ratzinger on July 14, 1987: You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them. For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything, He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.9 Conclusion For Archbishop Lefebvre, the social reign of Christ the King is the consequence of Christ’s divinity. That is what Dom Columba Marmion, a spiritual author particularly appreciated by the Archbishop, wrote: Christianity is nothing else than the acceptation in all its far-reaching, doctrinal and practical consequences of the Divinity of Christ in the Incarnation. The reign of Christ–holiness, through Him–is established in us in the measure of the purity, intensity and fulness of our faith in Jesus Christ.10 It is indeed the purity, the intensity, and the fullness of the Christian faith that was lacking at Rome in 1987, as it still is in 2005! THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org And we would add: You must also accept His priesthood, His kingship, His reign over all things, even temporal, over civil societies, their institutions and States. That is what it means to have a practical faith. It is this practical faith that is lacking in Rome. Moreover, the Catholic faith, the practical faith, necessarily leads to the fight for the social reign of Christ: not merely a battle of ideas, a Platonic fight, but a fight that requires the participants to engage themselves in order to obtain practical results: If someone has the faith, faith in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, then he wants Him to reign, to repel error. He cannot accept that the same rights should be accorded to Luther, Buddha, or Mohammed as to our Lord Jesus Christ.12 At Rome, they have kept a purely theoretical faith in the divinity of our Lord, but in fact, they no longer have the faith. They have lost the faith, because their faith finds no application in their politics. In place of Jesus Christ’s right to reign, the right of His Divine Person in which His Sacred Humanity subsists and which thus has a right to absolute and universal dominion, they have substituted the rights of the human person, the rights of an abstract and unreal person jealous of his liberty, his independence, and his conscience, whatever his mode of life might be. As for us, we keep the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ! And we shall work for His kingship on earth. This talk was given at a conference on “Christ the King versus the Secular Apostasy,” held on December 10, 2005, in Paris. It was organized by the SSPX’s St. Pius X Institute in honor of Archbishop Lefebvre’s centenary. The transcript was reviewed and approved by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais. 1 Fr. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., Apologia pro Vita Sua, reprinted in The Angelus, January 2001, p.5. 2 Ibid., p.6. 3 Ibid. 4 Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2002), p.44. 5 Ibid. 6 Abbé Berto, Notre-Dame de joie (NEL, 1974), p.300. 7 Archbishop Lefebvre, La Petite histoire de ma longue histoire (1999), p.28. 8 Marcel Lefebvre (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2004), p.285. 9 Ibid., p.549. 10 Dom Marmion, Christ, the Life of the Soul (St. Louis: R. Herder Book Co., 1925), p.141. 11 Dom Marmion, Christ, the Ideal of the Monk (1926; reprint: Roger A. McCaffrey Publishing, n.d.), p.88. 12 Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual conference at Ecône, c. 1973. 15 F r . A l a i n L o r a n s Interviews with Bishop Fellay After the General Chapter Your Excellency, the General Chapter of the SSPX has just come to an end. Without betraying the secret of the debates which took place behind closed doors, could you tell us your impression after these two weeks at Ecône? It was a very good Chapter. Of course, given the number of subjects to be treated, it was an intensive work meeting. But everything was done very serenely. We could easily see that for all the major issues–the root questions–there was a profound unity in the Society, whether it be about Rome, the care for our priests, the concern for their sanctification, or for the apostolate in general. The faithful prayed much and we could feel it. Will your two new assistants keep their positions in Germany and Italy, or will they reside in Menzingen? Will they have particular missions entrusted to them? Are visits to foreign countries already planned? The two new assistants will reside at Menzingen and will be freed from all other responsibilities. Given the expansion of the Society, it is absolutely normal that the number of people at headquarters increase, and there is enough work to give the two assistants a full-time job. They will have to grow www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 1 accustomed to the administration of the Society, and this will obviously imply a certain number of journeys to foreign countries. The multiplicity of apostolates and countries in which the Society operates means, of course, that this will take some time. Although the Chapter was composed of priests, were any decisions made regarding the faithful? As you say, the Chapter is a meeting of priests, but even more it is the main decision-making body of our Society, which is a clerical congregation. Thus the Chapter considers primarily questions concerning the Society and the lives of its priests. Since a large portion of the life of a priest is consecrated to working with the faithful, there is a sense in which a certain number of decisions made regarding priestly work will also concern indirectly the faithful. Did the chapter members decide anything regarding the Society’s relations with Rome? The Chapter drew up a declaration stressing the most important aspects of our relations with Rome. This declaration was published and sent to our faithful. [See the September 2006 issue of The Angelus –Ed.] The July 13th edition of the Italian daily Il Giornale mentioned that an agreement between Rome and Ecône is imminent. Is such a statement to be believed? I can only wonder where they get such stories! They have a decidedly fruitful imagination, for no agreement has been proposed to the Society in recent days. I think the Chapter’s declaration is sufficiently explicit on that point. And what will be your top priorities, Your Excellency? Where will your first trips take you? At the beginning of a new term in office we must apply the priorities as they were defined at the Chapter and consider long-term plans. Since that will require a certain amount of thought, the next two months should be rather calm. I have no long trips planned before the end of autumn. The General Chapter: The Outside View (Right to left) Fr. Franz Schmidberger, Fr. Niklaus Pfluger, Bishop Bernard Fellay, Fr. Alain-Marc Nély, and Bishop de Galarreta On Monday, July 10, 2006, the seminary of Ecône was empty. Where were the chapter members? They were on a pilgrimage near Fribourg, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Bourguillon, Guardian of the Faith. After a five-day retreat preached by Rev. Fr. Antoine-Marie, superior of the Capuchins of Morgon [see the September 2005 Angelus—Ed.], they had gone to the Blessed Virgin to ask for the graces necessary for the success of this third General Chapter of the SSPX. They returned around 7:00 in the evening and followed the seminary’s schedule: dinner at 7:30, The ANgelus • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org recreation at 8:00, and Compline chanted at 8:45. They were using the small cells of the seminarians that had gone on vacation after the ordinations of June 29. The furnishings were austere: a desk, a bed, a closet, and a sink. There are common bathrooms on each floor. The meals were taken in the refectory where a long table had been set to enable all the chapter members to sit side by side, as in a family. The few priests and seminarians that attended to the practical organization of the chapter had their own refectory in a room behind the kitchen. On the next day, Tuesday, the chapter members rose at 6:00am and said the office of Prime at 6:30 in the main chapel. Then the priests celebrated their Masses in turn on all the altars available in the seminary. The first group said their Masses at 6:45, the others at 7:30. Breakfast followed at 8:15. At 9:00 in the morning, the chapter members went to the St. Theodule room, which had been T The General Chapter: The Inside View 17 Your Excellency, we are now in the midst of a General Chapter. Can you enlighten us with regard to it? It’s a little mysterious–one wonders how it works. Is it a conclave? It’s not just a question of electing a Superior General; there are certainly other functions. First of all, tell us about the members of this Chapter. Do you know them? Do they know you? How do they get to know each other? How do they go about electing and carrying out other functions in this Chapter? up with an idea which I like a lot–it didn’t originate with me–which was to make a pilgrimage together, to place all our concerns and our Society in the hands of the Holy Virgin. It was also a chance to get to know each other a little better from a practical point of view, not too theoretical. And so the forty members know each other a bit better now. I think that in the days to come, they’ll know each other better still. A Chapter is also–you’re right to say so– something a little hidden, because there is a veil of secrecy. That’s normal, entirely normal. We’re going to discuss a lot of things and, in reality, what will not be secret will be the final decisions. That’s not new; it’s entirely in keeping with the Church. It’s a bit like parliamentary discussions behind closed doors. That’s the image that comes to my mind, even if the Chapter is only a small parliament. Still, it has about the same characteristics: it’s a body that is going to legislate, that’s going to produce directives and laws concerning what must be done in the Society in order to be yet more faithful to the Statutes, to the achievement, to the seeking out of the purpose of the Society, which is the priesthood....And then, of course, there is also Rome today, the situation of the Church...and how to develop further, to protect the priesthood in the historical circumstances in which we live. turned into the chapter-room. (St. Theodule is the patron saint of Wallis). Tables had been set up in a U-shape opposite a desk where the outgoing General Council would sit: Bishop Fellay, the Superior General; Fr. Schmidberger, the First Assistant; and Bishop de Galarreta, the Second Assistant [see cover of The Angelus, Sept. 2006–Ed.]. At 9:15, they all gathered in the main chapel to invoke the Holy Ghost and take the oath: the chapter members are bound to secrecy. Back in the chapter room, after the verification of the members’ titles and the designation of notaries, they listened to the report made by the outgoing General Superior. The election of the Superior General and of his assistants took place behind closed doors. However, towards the end of the morning, in the inner courtyard we could hear the Te Deum being chanted. Coming out of the St. Theodule room, the members congratulated Bishop Fellay for his re-election; and when this latter resumed the place of honor in the refectory, we could hear loud applause. After lunch and a period of relaxation, the chapter began again at 3:00pm. Towards 6:00, Fr. Arnaud Sélégny, the Secretary General, addressed a communiqué to all the districts of the SSPX announcing the re-election of Bishop Fellay and the election of Fr. Niklaus Pfluger as First Assistant, and of Fr. Alain-Marc Nély as Second Assistant. In the seminary courtyard, before the statue of St. Pius X, photos of the elected General Council and of all the chapter members were taken. With the setting sun in their faces, some priests found it hard to smile! Bishop de Galarreta suggested that a photo be taken of the outgoing assistants with their replacements and, with an improvised gesture, he confidently passed on the baton to his successor. At 7:00, Fr. Alain Lorans, director of the Press Office, addressed an official communiqué to the press agencies. The first photo of the members of the new general council was released on the DICI website. After dinner and Compline, Bishop Fellay and his assistants kindly granted a first interview to DICI. The audio file was sent to the director of DICI around 10:30pm, and was available online the next day at 9:00am. On Wednesday July 12, work was resumed. Several commissions sat in the seminary classrooms specially furnished for the occasion. We were told that the atmosphere was quite fraternal during the plenary assemblies. But we cannot say more, because the chapter–like the good–makes no www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 noise! Our Chapter is composed of 40 members, in keeping with our statutes. If we look at the preceding Chapters, the members were all more or less of the same age. Almost all of them had been at Ecône for their training. Thus, given the more limited number of members of the Society, they had known each other since the seminary, or since their apostolate. But as we move forward and the Society grows, the origins of the members and their ages will be more and more diverse. And so we will encounter the problem–it has already appeared this year–of those, especially the young, who say, “But I don’t know the older ones,” and of the elders who say, “Who are these youths?” We therefore instigated meetings preliminary to the Chapter itself, which made it possible for the members to get to know one another. And we came 18 I won’t, of course, ask you to lift that veil, since you say that this must remain essentially “in the family,” in the spirit of the Society of Saint Pius X. But I will ask whether all 40 members work together on all the different subjects to be treated, or work in a more specialized way. We work (it’s nothing original) in commissions– which is to say that, in order to progress a little more rapidly, we broke down all the questions into commissions that deal with the topics and then, during the general meetings, present their conclusions to the whole Chapter for discussion and agreement. And–if the question isn’t indiscreet–what types of subjects can be dealt with by these commissions? Every type, in principle; everything can be dealt with. And every question, every motion proposed by the members of the Society must be dealt with. All the members of the Society participate in the lead-up to the Chapter. Until six months before the beginning of the Chapter, they were free to put their suggestions and their proposals to the Chapter. And the Chapter deals with all these questions–there are a lot–which fuse like fireworks on really every aspect you can imagine concerning the life of the Society. I can’t say that the subjects range from the buckles on our shoes right up to the modification of our Statutes...but that’s about what it is. So it’s the big questions–needless to say, the Chapter doesn’t deal with details!–it’s the big questions of the Society which are its goal, the means of reaching this goal–how to do better. We also look for cracks in the armor and how to repair them–it’s truly vast. But you yourself, Your Excellency, you’ve been reelected for twelve years as Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X. When you arrived at the end of your term yesterday evening maybe you said to yourself, “I didn’t succeed in such and such an area, and I would have liked...” What are you going to do now that you dispose of twelve years? Are there issues you would like to take up again and try to carry? I think one often hears a famous expression in sports: “I’ll do better next time.” For me, such a sentence scares me; it seems presumptuous to me. So I wouldn’t dare say “I’ll do better.” I prefer to say, “I’ll try to do my best.” We are, of course, men, with all kinds of weaknesses, omissions, and failures–there are those things as well. That’s why I will try to profit from previous experience in order to do my best. THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org You are the father of a large family. How many priests and how many nuns are under your orders now? How many countries are being served by the Society? We have 472 priests today who are members of the Society, with whom 26 priests are associated– that makes just under 500: 498 priests. Working with us, helping us in our ministry, we have 86 Brothers, 74 Oblates and the Sisters–for the Sisters we only count the communities–around 30 communities of Sisters. The Sisters of the Society are about 120 or a few more. That’s a lot of people... The Society, like its founder Archbishop Lefebvre, is missionary. Are there countries where you see possible development? Are you thinking of making any foundation? We currently have priests living in 33 countries. We assure regular ministries in more than 60 countries. The projects for the opening of new priories are immense, but I think it wise to proceed with a great deal of prudence, in keeping with our strength and capacities. Of course, we would like to open priories everywhere, but we must be reasonable and plan to support what already exists before undertaking new foundations. That will be a priority. A last question, Your Excellency, the one that everyone asks. You were received by the Holy Father in late August, 2005. What’s going to happen now? Are you going to follow up on this audience? Do you wish to meet the Pope again? It is the Chapter that will decide, because the Chapter is the true supreme authority. It’s true that the Chapter meets only once every 12 years, but it is the Chapter–that is to say, the whole of the Society–which fixes the line of conduct for the entire Society and for the Superior General. The Superior General is not above it. A Superior General must obey, must know how to obey directives and rules... to obey what the Chapter maps out or decides. I don’t think there will be any spectacular changes in our relationship with Rome. I expect us to continue along prudent lines, but I will submit with all my heart to the decisions and the reflections of the Chapter concerning the questions which so profoundly touch upon the existence and the future of our beloved Society. Thank you very much indeed, Your Excellency. Our prayers–the prayers of all the faithful–are with you. And long live the Society of Saint Pius X! Indeed–and God bless you. Pictures and text taken from Christendom, No.6, with permission. Fr. Alain Lorans was ordained for the Society of Saint Pius X. He served as Rector of the Society’s Institut St. Pie X located in Paris from 1980-83, as Rector of the seminary at Ecône from 1983-88, then again Rector of the Institut St. Pie X from1988-2002. Since then, he has been the editor of the Society’s news bureau, DICI. of the Monastery Notre Dame de Toute Confiance Lamairé, France Traditional Religious Orders Benedictine Nuns 19 Monastery of Our Lady of Total Confidence F or 2,000 years, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ has been making its way at the price of ceaseless trials and tribulations. The Apostles, privileged witnesses of the death and resurrection of our Lord, were its foundation stones. The martyrs sprinkled it with their blood. Then the Fathers of the desert defended its purity by separating themselves from the world to pray. Soon they recognized the need to come together in monasteries. In our time, it is in monasteries still that are to be found “seekers of God,” who have but one love in their hearts, that of our Lord, whose call they have heard: “Come, follow me. Learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart.” 20 The Benedictine Ideal Inspired by the monks of the Orient, St. Benedict founded the monastic life in Italy in the sixth century. The monastic life soon crossed Italy’s border, and spread throughout the world. Christendom grew up in the shadow of the cross and beside monastic walls. The grain of mustard indeed became a towering tree. During the Middle Ages, other orders providentially came into being in response to the needs of the times, each exemplifying a particular virtue of Christ: the Franciscans, poverty; the Dominicans, the defense of the truth; the Carthusians, solitude; and the Carmelites and other strictly contemplative orders, prayer. In modern times, a multitude of congregations devoted to corporal and spiritual works of mercy have exemplified the charity of Christ. As for the Benedictines, throughout the centuries, by their fidelity to the “Opus Dei ”–the choral recitation of the Divine Office–they have been “maintaining and renewing continuously in the Church the spirit of religion.”1 The Monastery’s History It is in this spirit that a small group of traditional Benedictine nuns have assembled, desiring to lead a life of prayer and contemplation following the rule of St. Benedict. Their monastery, the Monastery of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance (toute confiance [pronounced: toot kohnfjahns]: the complete confidence or total trust that our Lady inspires in her children), is situated in a peaceful little valley in western France not far from the Vendée region of the Loire valley renowned for its heroic Catholic resistance during the French Revolution. Indeed, the same heroic Catholic resistance, this time in response to the revolution within the Church after Vatican II, lies at the foundation of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance. Heroic Beginnings The founding of the monastery is owed to the fidelity and perseverance of a single nun, Mother Gertrude de Maissin (1914-2005). Born in 1914, Mother Gertrude entered the monastery of Faremoutiers, near Paris, in 1937, where she made her solemn profession on July 15, 1942. After 18 years of contemplative monastic life, Mother Gertrude de Maissin was elected Prioress in 1956 and maintained this position until 1969. The currents of the Council crept into the religious communities, and this devastating tempest did not spare Mother Prioress. Rome sent an Apostolic Delegate to ask her to resign and to absent THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org 21 herself from the monastery for some time. For this reason, Mother Gertrude went and stayed a year with the Benedictines of Lisieux and two years at St. Anne of Kergonan Abbey in Brittany before being authorized to return to her community as a simple nun, keeping only the rank of her profession. It was the beginning of a long combat to impede the Council’s reforms, to preserve the Tridentine Mass, the integrity of the Divine Office, Latin, Gregorian chant, the grills of the chapel and the parlor, etc. However, the situation became worse and left her with no choice but to leave her monastery. But where could she go? A few monasteries that preserved the integrity of tradition welcomed Mother Gertrude. Unfortunately, one by one they accepted the reforms of the Council, and each time Mother Gertrude had to leave. After having passed nearly a year at an abbey near Orleans, she finally ended up temporarily in Paris, where she became a “parishioner” at St. Nicholas du Chardonnet and met Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget, to whom she explained her situation and confided to him the unanswered question: must she found a monastery in order to keep Benedictine tradition? Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget gave his lively encouragements and counseled her to ask the advice of Archbishop Lefebvre. In 1978, Mother Gertrude went to Ecône to consult Archbishop Lefebvre, and met with him several times in France as well. He encouraged her to found a monastery and showed much good will. But now a place had to be found, and this was not an easy task. All the propositions were examined, many properties were visited, and she finally settled down in Lamairé, a little village in the Deux-Sèvres region of central-western France. It had been an old school house occupied by some Sisters, with one wing of the building already made into a chapel, some linden trees shading the front yard, a vegetable garden, a meadow www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 22 descending to the bottom of the valley, and a beautiful view of the neighboring hillsides. The beauty and silence of nature made it favorable for the contemplative life. In the end, Lamairé seemed a suitable enough place to start a foundation. Thanks to a few friends, the property was bought and on May 10, 1980, the Monastery of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance was officially founded. The first taking of the habit (1981) and the first triennial profession (1983) were both presided by Archbishop Lefebvre, who until his death never ceased to encourage Mother Gertrude. During her 25 years at Lamairé, Mother Gertrude was assisted in her many difficulties by the spiritual aid of the priests of the Society of the Transfiguration, the Dominican Friars of Avrillé, and other traditional priests of the region. Her constant care was to transmit to the young nuns the treasures of the monastic tradition she had received. The present Mother Prioress, Mother Claire, entered the monastery in 1989, and other vocations followed. Plans for the Future Mother Gertrude had always recognized that the property at Lamairé was not entirely suitable for a Benedictine monastery because it did not allow for a real cloister, and that a move would eventually become necessary. When the traditional Benedictine monks of Brazil started a monastery at Bellaigue, France, in 2000, a hope glimmered that someday the Benedictine nuns would be able to find a property nearby, so that the Sisters could be close to a monastery of Benedictine monks, a practice that has been customary since St. Scholastica followed her brother Benedict by entering a convent nearby. Indeed, their experience of monastic life and their roots in the same ideal of holiness make Benedictine priests good spiritual directors and confessors of Benedictine nuns, and more apt to understand their aspirations and needs. They belong to the same spiritual family and strive to realize the same ideal of St. Benedict, oriented towards purity of heart and continual prayer. The dream began to be a reality just a year after the Benedictine monks moved to the Monastery of Notre Dame de Bellaigue in the Puy de Dôme region of central France in 2000. The Sisters first visited a property nearby in 2001. After long negotiations, the sale was agreed upon on November 20, 2004, just a year before Mother Gertrude’s death THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org Profession (November 20, 2005), and the property of Perdechat at Virlet, about a mile from the Bellaigue monastery, was purchased. Renovations and construction have been ongoing ever since under the direction of Fr. Matthew Haynos, a monk of Bellaigue, and Bro. Bernard, a monk of the Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Silver City, New Mexico, and an architect. The plans call for the construction of a monastic cloister able to accommodate 30 vocations. The Benedictine nuns of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance expect to move in the summer of 2007. The community now numbers seven Sisters, of whom two are French, one German, one Canadian, and three Americans. More American girls are expected to enter, one in October and the others, American and French, in 2007. Ultimately, when enough American Benedictines have been fully formed in the Benedictine life, it is hoped that a contingent will return to America to found a convent near Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery at Silver City, New Mexico. Benedictine Life The Benedictine order is one of the oldest orders in the West, and its Rule constitutes one of the foundational n Ceremony 23 documents of Western Civilization. The very first lines of St. Benedict’s famous Rule are an invitation to the soul to renounce the world for the sake of everlasting goods. Listen, my son, to your master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you, therefore, my words are now addressed, whoever you may be, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King, and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience. The rule of St. Benedict is organized for “seeking firstly the kingdom of God.” A great Irish monk, Dom Marmion, who governed the Abbey of Maredsous in Belgium at the beginning of the century, explained it thus: When one submits oneself entirely to Christ Jesus, when one abandons oneself to Him, when our soul does but answer, as His did, a perpetual “Amen” to all that He asks of us in His Father’s name, when we remain in this attitude of adoration, then our Lord Jesus establishes His peace in us. This “peace” sought and pursued unstintingly has become the motto of the Benedictines. The Benedictine life has been summed up in two words: “Ora et labora–Pray and work.” But it can also be characterized by “listen”: this is the life of prayer of the contemplative. In the silence of the cloister, the religious hears God, but it is not enough to simply “hear” God; she must prove that she is listening by putting her hand to the “labor www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 24 Cooking and cleaning Laundry day From the chicken coop of obedience.” This is the union of prayer and work whereby the Benedictine treads her path to God. The nun lives for Christ alone. Her only desire is that our Lord Jesus Christ live in her, sing in her, pray, suffer, and come to life again in her. Thus the Benedictine fills her days with blessing the Beloved in chanting the Holy Mass and the Divine Office, and in imitation of His life and virtues. She begins to “run in the way of the commandments with an ineffable sweetness of love,” but only after having accorded her life, by an oft exercised patience, to the passion and death of her dear Lord. Living by the Rule The monastic day begins and ends with the liturgical prayer known as the Divine Office, or as THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org Feeding the livestock St. Benedict calls it, the “Opus Dei–God’s work.” “Seven times a day,” and once while it is still night, they assemble in the chapel to praise God. The Divine Office, the prayer of the Church since the first centuries, is chanted in Latin, which requires care and study, so that “the heart be in accord with the voice,” as St. Benedict says. Seven times a day and once while it is still night the bell rings and the Sisters are called to the choir to offer to God the “sacrifice of praise.” About four hours a day are devoted to the recitation of the Divine Office. St. Augustine’s dictum that “to sing is to pray twice” is incarnated daily in the life of the Benedictines. These canonical hours, moreover, are but the repercussion or echo of the “sacrifice of praise” of our Lord Jesus Christ: the holy Mass. The Mass is at the center of the monastic life. Each day, Christ 25 daily Schedule 5:10 AM Rise 5:30 AM Matins; Breakfast 7:00 AM Lauds 8:00 AM Prime; Mental prayer (half an hour) 9:15 AM Terce 9:30 AM Sung Mass 10:30 AM Class; “Lectio Divina” (Spiritual Reading); The woodlot 12:00 PM 12:30 PM 2:00 PM 2:30 PM 5:30 PM 7:00 PM 8:15 PM 9:15 PM Jesus offers anew the sacrifice of Calvary, and renews His call to a greater love: to give one’s life, to give oneself, to let oneself be seized by Christ. The monastic day also allows considerable time for study and spiritual reading, called “lectio divina.” The Rule, which some have called a summary of the Gospel, must be studied not only in the novitiate, but throughout a Benedictine’s life, for it contains the rule of life and a wealth of counsel for advancing in the way of virtue and perfection. The psalms are studied in detail so that the mind and heart can be united to the voice during the recitation of the Opus Dei. Spiritual reading, too, is a daily necessity, for it instructs the mind, elevates the soul, and inflames the heart, thus providing sustenance for mental prayer. Religion class Sext Lunch Recreation None; Class or Study hour (Latin, Gregorian chant, Church History, etc.); Manual labor Vespers; Mental prayer (half an hour) Dinner Compline Lights out “To combat under the true King, Jesus Christ, with the strong, bright weapons of obedience” also means undertaking everything that is commanded. A vegetable garden and a poultry yard are quite useful in the countryside. Household chores also fill up the hours, but all that is accomplished out of a love that dispossesses us of our self-will. The virtue of obedience is the daughter of humility, and is it not this virtue that pleased the Most High in our Lady? It is comforting to pray to her under this name of “Complete Confidence,” sure that it is she who governs the community and gives it its unity. The nuns pray the rosary daily in private. Apostolate of Prayer If the monastic life is a life of prayer and work, it is also an apostolic life. Indeed, how can one keep from making one’s own the intention that our Lord be formed more and more in souls. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 26 Archbishop Lefebvre thought– because he had experienced it– that the “treasures of graces for missionaries are found in the convents of contemplatives.” “It is by prayer, sacrifice, and penance that God gives His grace to the world,” he would say. And this is the desire of the young women who come to Lamairé to become Benedictine nuns, following in a long line of greats saints starting with St. Benedict’s own sister, Scholastica. To belong to the Church, to keep the Mass of all time, to maintain the monastic tradition: such is the desire of the nuns of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance. They do not seek to innovate, but rather “attach their barque to the ship of the ancients.” Becoming a Benedictine Nun The Benedictines welcome candidates between the ages of 18 and 30, in good health of body and mind, to come and try their vocation. After six months of postulancy, during which the candidate lives the monastic life in common with the Sisters, she receives the traditional black habit and white veil of the novice, which marks her entrance into the novitiate. During the two years of the novitiate, the novice especially studies the Rule of St. Benedict, the Constitutions of the monastery, and the obligations of the religious life, as well as Latin and Gregorian chant. The novice then makes temporary vows for two periods of three years. She is free to leave at the end of each three-year period. If she desires to persevere in religion, then she pronounces her perpetual vows. The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience are the matter of the three vows in religion, and while these counsels are practised in the Benedictine life, the vows are expressed differently. The Benedictine nun makes three vows: 1) obedience, which she embraces in order to follow Christ, who became obedient unto death; 2) conversion of life, by which she promises to tend towards perfection in the practice of the Christian virtues, including poverty and chastity, so as to live ever more and more for God alone; and 3) stability, by which the nun promises to persevere in the monastery of her profession until death. At the time of perpetual vows, the nun also makes an oblation of herself in the rite of the Consecration of a Virgin. While not a part of the Benedictine Rule, this ceremony is of ancient usage in monasteries of consecrated women. During this ceremony, which takes place during the Mass, the nun receives the cowl, the black veil, the ring, the crown, and the breviary. It is similar to the ordination of a deacon, with recitation of the Litany of the Saints, consecration preface and the receiving of the breviary. Interested persons are welcome to come for a visit or to make a private retreat. While postulants should learn French before entering, this is not necessary for an initial visit. While no dowry is required, postulants and novices are asked to contribute something for their room and board, the amount of which can be accommodated to family means. As yet, the monastery lives thanks to the generosity of benefactors. A newsletter is available in French, English, and German, and may be requested by writing to the monastery. “Whoever you may be, who hurry to attain everlasting life, with our Lord’s help, accomplish this little rule for beginners,” says St. Benedict modestly, “and you will attain to the loftier heights of doctrine and virtue.” Story compiled by Angelus Press from several sources and combined with text from the Monastery. Pictures submitted by the Benedictines. For information: Reverend Mother Prioress Notre Dame de Toute Confiance Monastery Lamairé F-79600 Airvault France Telephone/Fax: [33] (5) 49.64.61.58 [Six hours ahead of US Central Standard Time–Ed.] 1 Remark of Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-57), a French priest who founded the seminary and Society of St. Sulpice; quoted by Dom Bruno Destrée, The Benedictines, tr. by Dom Bede Camm (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1923). 7 BooK ReVieW TITLE: The Horn of the Unicorn AUTHOR: Dr. David Allen White PUBLISHER: Angelus Press DISTRIBUTOR: Angelus Press. Price: $19.95 REVIEWER: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski SUMMARY: The life of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre told in Dr. White’s inimitable style. Although not as comprehensive as Bishop Tissier’s biography, Dr. White provides the popular and poetic story of one of the 20th century’s greatest men. “One word of Truth shall outweigh the whole world.”–Alexander Solzhenitsyn This statement by Solzhenitsyn cannot but be considered sublime. Its profundity, however, must not distract us from asking the ultimate philosophical question, “Why?” Why is it the case that the “whole world” is normally being weighed in the balance against Truth? Why are truth and the world opposed? Why do we now expect that a man required by his circumstances and conscience to speak the truth will have the whole of the world against him? It must be that truth is the affirmation and direct identification of an aspect of the created and divinely ordained order. The fallen “world,” however, operates according to a system, which may be more or less in accordance with the divinely ordained order or it may be opposed to that order. The more that truth is incomprehensible within the context of that system, the greater is the distance between the divine order and the human “order.” In such a situation, the truth, spoken clearly and without consideration of its ramifications for the system, points out the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be. Truth can make it clear to those who have assimilated the false ideas of a system that not only have they been lied to, but that they are living a lie. The only way of understanding Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the man whose life is portrayed so effectively in Dr. David Allen White’s biography of him, The Horn of the Unicorn, is to see him as a man who understood the full ramifications of the moral claim that truth makes upon us. In fact, Dr. White’s biography of the Archbishop can easily be divided in half, in the first half the Archbishop is working within the truth, with papal sanction, to communicate Catholic truth and its fruits to souls in the timehonored manner of the Apostles and their successors. In the second half of the text, presenting an account of the year 1962 to the Archbishop’s death in 1991, we find Marcel Lefebvre having to defend the truth against those whose predecessors had sanctioned his own efforts for some three decades. Lefebvre’s Milieu (1905-29) Whereas in the second half of the text, the sections dealing with Vatican II and, especially, the events leading up to the 1988 episcopal consecrations, it is clear that righteous indignation is the psychological and moral spirit pervading the account, in the early sections of this text we find manifested a very delicate spirit of admiration. Whether it is in his rendition of the accomplishments of the Lefebvre and Watine (the Archbishop’s mother’s maiden name) families in the sometimes French cities of Lille and Tourcoing, or his riveting accounts of the virtues, struggles, and deaths of the Archbishop’s mother and father, Gabrielle and René Lefebvre, we find Dr. White admiring, with a certain awe, the possibilities that develop within a family, society, and educational system completely www.angeluspress.org The ANgelus • October 2006 28 imbued with the teachings of the Catholic Church. In this regard, Dr. White writes: Everything in the young boy’s life was Catholic and church-oriented: his family, the daily Mass, his school.... young Marcel Lefebvre grew up enveloped in a Catholic world and had his life organized in a loving and wellordered Catholic “factory” designed to turn out seamless and beautiful Catholic souls. Here the literary scholar quotes Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, as explaining that one good memory from childhood can help a man endure the trials and sorrows of a lifetime. Surely Marcel Lefebvre had an abundance of these. Dr. White is a layman. Most of those reading his biography of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre will be laymen and women. Therefore, it is admirable that he should dedicate good sections of his book to an account of the life of the layman and laywoman who made the Archbishop the great churchman that he was. René Lefebvre and Gabrielle Watine were both from very devout Catholic families who, each in their turn, considered a religious vocation prior to their marriage. The marriage, happily arranged by a parish priest, was to endure through years of great joy and heroic suffering. No one can be unmoved by Dr. White’s account of the imprisonment and familial separation endured by Gabrielle Lefebvre, a stigmatist, during the German occupation of Lille through the years of World War I, nor will anyone forget the account of her death, a death so moving and inspiring that her youngest son Michel said: If I ever doubt, I only have to think of the radiant face of my mother on her deathbed, listening to the Magnificat being sung, I knew by her eyes she was gazing in rapture on our Blessed Mother. Nor can we, without emotion, read the last written testament of René Lefebvre, imprisoned for his clandestine activities during World War II that were motivated by his Catholic and Monarchist convictions, The Holy Virgin has been so kind to me....She will lovingly bless my family, who must remain consecrated to her, totally devoted to her, and seek through her the extension of the reign of her Divine Son. Surely those who identify themselves with the Archbishop’s cause can understand their own struggles and achievements to be fruit of the hope and confidence of this great Catholic father. Catholic Priest and Missionary Bishop (1932-59) “You will be a priest...you must be a priest.” These were the words that the young Marcel Lefebvre heard when he went to the Trappist Abbey of Poperinge in order to speak to a holy Trappist Father, Fr. Alphonsus. The immediacy of this exclamation made it clear to the young man where his destiny lay. The THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org only question that remained was in which manner was he to serve the Church as a priest. The traits of Marcel Lefebvre which come through clearly in Dr. White’s account of this period in the Archbishop’s life are his genuine commitment to the Church and its mission, his sense of his own unworthiness for the priestly vocation, and also his reliance on the voice of authority. This reliance on authority can be seen in his decision to heed the voice of his parents and his bishop, Achille Liénart (a man who would play a very significant role in Archbishop Lefebvre’s life, moving from apparently sympathetic benefactor to an outright opponent), that he should not join the missionary Holy Ghost Fathers, as did his older brother René, but rather become a diocesan priest for his home diocese at Lille. It was this choice of the life of a parish priest and the political and economic situation created in the aftermath of World War I that put Marcel Lefebvre in the path of the great Fr. Henri Le Floch, the priest whose teachings would prove to be determinative in the life of the Archbishop. To understand what Archbishop Lefebvre received from Fr. Le Floch, one only has to read the published statements of the Archbishop as recounted by Dr. White. According to the Archbishop, Fr. Le Floch and the professors [at the French Seminary in Rome] taught us how we should view current events, exposed errors to us–liberalism, modernism, and so many others of which we were not aware–and taught us how we must search for the truth in the papal encyclicals particularly those of St. Pius X, Leo XIII, and all the popes that had preceded them. This desire to “view events in the spirit of the sovereign pontiffs,” never left Archbishop Lefebvre– especially when it came to confronting and analyzing the Modernist and Liberal notions that rose to the surface of the Catholic Church in the 1960’s. In this regard, when speaking about the dismissal of Fr. Le Floch from his professorship at the French Seminary, ultimately with the approval of Pope Pius XI, Dr. White makes a very telling statement when writing about the positive reports produced concerning the work of Fr. Le Floch and yet recounting the fact of his dismissal; he writes that, “higher forces were in play.” Here Dr. White broaches a topic that needs to be seriously considered, namely, how much of this infiltration of the higher reaches of the ecclesiastical organization of the Catholic Church by Modernism and Liberal/Leftism was Archbishop Lefebvre aware of during his long years as a missionary priest and bishop in French West Africa? What we do know, as Dr. White mentions, is that, during his time as bishop for Dakar, Senegal, and his years as Apostolic Delegate for French West Africa under Pope Pius XII, the Archbishop spoke of the great support he received from the Roman Curia, and especially from the Pope himself, in the course of all of his many building and evangelization projects. Speaking about his annual 29 trips back to Rome to report on the progress of his missionary work, the Archbishop writes: So I left and went to see the Holy Father [Pope Pius XII]. He received me like a true father and I immediately felt that there was great union of thought, that we were well united in the desire to extend Our Lord’s kingdom and to live truly the Christian and priestly life....I was really touched by this visit with Pope Pius XII. We spoke together and he said that he was relying on me to develop the evangelization of the whole African territory. As far as can be discerned, this complete papal and ecclesial support continued until the election in 1958 of Angelo Roncalli as Pope John XXIII. This election would be the turning point in the life of Archbishop Lefebvre. From that point on, The Horn of the Unicorn portrays a man who suddenly finds himself under attack for propagating doctrine, which had suddenly become unacceptable and, most importantly, “inopportune.” The false Liberal System was attempting to fully swallow the Catholic Church. It would take Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre many years to realize that it was his destiny to be the bone in the gullet of the all-consuming Liberal Beast. The Archbishop and the Pastoral Takeover of the Catholic Church (1958-68) Many who knew the man throughout his life speak of his great charity and kindness, his natural politeness, his radiant serenity. Calm of soul and grace of heart radiated from him and touched all who came to know him. Those who came up against him saw another distinguishing characteristic–his backbone of steel and will of iron. When questions of faith or the good of his flock were at stake, he could prove firm, intractable, and unyielding. These sympathetic and penetrating words of Dr. White express the spirit of the man who, in the revolutionary 1960’s, would confront a situation which he could not have expected: To be fighting for Catholic truth, alone. It was in these circumstances that we see some of the “intractableness” spoken of by Dr. White. In one of his most moving paragraphs in The Horn of the Unicorn, Dr. White speaks of the anomaly which was Marcel Lefebvre in this flattened, consumerist, egalitarian age of ours. When writing about the man who threatened to shatter the Liberal/Modernist paradigm, Dr. White states: We do not live in an age of great men. The democratic principle is a leveling principle. As mankind flocks together, the “sheeple” collectively become fearful and mindful of comfort, no one head lifting above the white wooly plateau, no one voice bleating too loudly. Life becomes the greatest good and suffering must be avoided at all costs. These are not attitudes that give rise to greatness. With this said, Dr. White makes a comparison between the Archbishop and another great prophet of the age, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Here he says, And yet this era of passive and pusillanimous creatures has produced two very great men, two heroic visionaries who have stood high above the flock, raising themselves from obscurity to world-wide recognition by virtue of their courage and their truth-telling: Marcel Lefebvre and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. We find the usual good-natured humor and humane gentleness of David Allen White being momentarily suspended when he expresses something ultimate about our own day and tells us, finally, why he chose to write a book about the great churchman. When speaking about what made the Archbishop and the anti-Communist dissident both antidotes and exemplars, he says: True manhood consists precisely in advancing the truth and protecting and preserving the moral order–the words “virile” and “virtue” grow out of the same root. Here were real men. When a great teacher speaks with such clarity, ultimacy, and precision, we would be well-advised to listen because something important is being said. As cited by Dr. White in his account of the activity of the Archbishop prior to the Council, Michael Davies, in his work Pope John’s Council, describes the early days of Vatican II: Many of the Council Fathers, perhaps most, arrived in Rome for the First Session of Vatican II without any clear idea as to why they were there and without any definite plan as to what they attended to achieve. Since the Council had not been called to counter a dominant heresy (e.g., the Council of Trent) or to deal with a great social and political crisis relating to the papacy and the Catholic Church (e.g., the First Vatican Council), this lack of orientation was perhaps inevitable. Archbishop Lefebvre thought the two years spent formulating the schemata that were to be presented for the consideration of the Council would ensure that there would be a Catholic statement of doctrine and principle made to the increasingly anti-Christian contemporary world system. When speaking about the work of the Preparatory Commission, all of whose sessions he attended, the Archbishop stated: This work was done most conscientiously for presentation to the Council; these schemas conform to the doctrine of the Church, though adapted to the mentality of our generation, adapted after careful thought and with much prudence [emphasis mine]. Rather than the caricatured portrayal of the traditionalist and orthodox position, we find here a serious attempt to present Catholic truth in its fullness, in language understandable to modern man and yet fully in accord with Thomistic philosophy and perennial Magisterial Teaching. I might also add that this was precisely the attempt of most of the neoThomistic school of philosophy since the 1930’s. Here the actions and intentions of Pope John XXIII become problematic. Did the Pope simply find himself being manipulated in 1962 as the www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 30 Council entered its initial stages or was the Liberal predominance planned since the initiation of the Council? Two interesting events from the life of the Archbishop in 1962 are mentioned in The Horn of the Unicorn. First, of course, was the discarding of all the schematic texts drawn up before the Council; this was facilitated by Pope John when he, contrary to the established rules of the Council, allowed the schemas to be rejected even though two thirds of the Council Fathers had not voted against them. As the Archbishop states: A fortnight after the opening of the Council, not a single one of these carefully prepared schemas remained; not one. All of them had been discarded, thrown into the wastepaper basket; there remained nothing, not a single sentence. All had been discarded. Second, there was the presence at the Council of theologians who had been under censure for their neo-Modernist orientation under Pope Pius XII. When he questioned Cardinal Ottaviani, then head of the Holy Office, about the presence of these leftleaning theologians at the early planning sessions of the Council–men like Karl Rahner, E. Schillebeeckx, Hans Kung, Yves Congar, and Joseph Ratzinger, he was told that the presence of these men had been required by Pope John XXIII himself. In later years, he identified the philosophical roots of the problem with the bishops and theologians of Vatican II. The THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org crisis in the Church would be the consequence of a rejection or a “bracketing” of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. When speaking about the reasons for the crisis in the Church, the Archbishop related: I sincerely believe that it is the Council which is at the back of all this since many of the bishops...were people who had studied an existentialist philosophy but had never studied Thomistic philosophy and so do not know what a definition is. For them, there is no such thing as essence; nothing is defined any longer; one expresses or describes something, but never defines it. Moreover, this lack of philosophy was patent throughout the whole Council. This policy of ensuring the leadership positions of the neo-Modernist theologians and Rhine region bishops and marginalizing the voices of orthodox bishops like Lefebvre, Castro Mayer, Ottaviani, and Sigaud, was to continue throughout the Council under both Pope John XXIII and his successor, Pope Paul VI. The perfect expression of the new orientation given to the Catholic Church by the popes and the official “pastoral” documents approved by the Vatican Council happened in October, 1965, when Pope Paul VI traveled to New York to address the United Nations. Here we find a pope who sought to present to the world a New Catholic Church, one fully acceptable to Modern Men and the Liberal Age. In line with his intellectual mentor, Jacques Maritain, he seems to have forgotten or put safely aside the Social Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. From now on, 31 Catholics would be acceptable and non-threatening. To the global organization, set up to consolidate the post-World War II geo-political system, Paul VI said: You organize the brotherly collaboration of peoples. In this way a system of solidarity is set up, and its lofty civilized aims win the orderly and unanimous support of all the family of peoples....This aspect of the organization of the United Nations is the most beautiful; it is its most truly human aspect; it is the ideal of which mankind dreams on its pilgrimage through time; it is the world’s greatest hope [emphasis mine]. Finally, making a statement that seems to be an implicit rejection of the indirect jurisdiction of the Sovereign Pontiff over the political order of men, Pope Paul VI stated that he had “nothing to ask for, no question to raise,” but only “a desire to express and a permission to request: namely, that of serving you insofar as we can, with disinterest, with humility and love.” Disinterest? Permission? A Bishop’s Duty (1968-91) Having been elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1962, then the most numerous missionary order in the Catholic Church including some 5,600 priests, it is truly shocking to read of the 180-degree turn which this order made from 1962 to 1968. This was mirrored by the institutional Catholic Church as a whole. Having been hailed as Superior General in 1962, he found himself, in 1968, told by Msgr. Antonio Mauro, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, to “leave them alone and make a short trip to America.” This, in response to the complaint of the Archbishop that his beloved religious order had “departed from a faithful observance of the spirit of the order.” Indeed, during the years 1968-69 Archbishop Lefebvre found that things had changed and that he was less than politely being “shown the door.” Having been replaced as Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, Archbishop Lefebvre planned for retirement since he was approaching the age of 65. Such was not to be, however. In response to the appeal of a number of seminarians that they could no longer find a seminary that they could consider truly Catholic, the Archbishop, with the full support of Swiss episcopal authority, established, in 1969, the “Saint Pius X Association for Priestly Training” and was to send seminarians to Fribourg University. The Archbishop, however, was forced to seek another solution when the seminarians encountered the same Modernism that they had experienced elsewhere. With the approval of Bishop Charrière and Cardinals Wright, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, and Antoniutti, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious, the Archbishop established the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X with its own seminary at Ecône, Switzerland. One must have a strong stomach and relatively calm nerves to read the account which Dr. White gives of the retraction of Rome’s approval of the Society and the seminary at Ecône. It is difficult to read about the double-dealing, the illegal and peremptory procedures, and the ecclesiastical indifference to the fate of Catholic Tradition. We must endure reading it; the Archbishop had to live it. For anyone with a sense of the true mission and sanctity of the Church, along with a knowledge of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s life-long dedication to the Church, it is difficult to read the statement of Msgr. Benelli, who said in 1976, four days before the Archbishop was to ordain men for the Priesthood in the ancient manner and for the ancient reasons, that by ordaining, the Archbishop was going to be acting “contrary to ecclesial communion, and damaging... the unity and peace of the Church.” Communion and unity in what? Peace for what? If this is bad, what is good? What did he mean when Msgr. Benelli told the Archbishop, “In the name of the Catholic Church, Catholics are required to subject themselves to the Conciliar Church”? How are we to understand the statement made by Pope John Paul II in Mexico in 1979, also cited in The Horn of the Unicorn, that those who “remain attached to the incidental aspects of the Church, aspects which were valid in the past, but which have been superseded, cannot be considered the faithful” [emphasis mine]. That something had gone wrong in the Catholic Church, seriously wrong, was made clear to Archbishop Lefebvre in 1986 with the Prayer Meeting at Assisi. Here, without question, the Vicar of Christ had called together all the leaders of world religions to pray to their own gods. Marcel Lefebvre, the pious youth, the energetic priest, the missionary father of the African people, the fearless defender of doctrine at the Vatican Council, understood this to be a watershed in the history of the Catholic Church. It was his sign that he must consecrate traditional Catholic bishops in order to preserve the Catholic priesthood in its pristine integrity and orthodoxy. Such was his “bishop’s duty.” Our literary Virgil, Dr. David Allen White, leads us to the end of this great realm, which is the life of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Like him we do not weep over the death of the great Unicorn, the one whose single horn purifies the waters so that all may drink, for we too wonder, “What now would be the state of us, But for this unicorn?” Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and another in Philosophy from Christendom College. He also received his master’s degree and doctorate in Philosophy from Fordham University. He and his wife Kathleen are the parents of six children. He teaches at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, and for the Society of Saint Pius X at Immaculate Conception Academy, Post Falls, Idaho. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 Interview w Bishop William 32 This year is the 30th anniversary of Bishop Williamson’s ordination to the priesthood by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Bishop Richard Nelson Williamson is the Rector of Our Lady Coredemptrix Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in La Reja, Argentina. Before that time he was Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in both Winona, Minnesota, and Ridgefield, Connecticut. Prior to that he was asked by Archbishop Lefebvre to be a seminary professor at Ecône. From nearly the beginning of his priesthood His Excellency has been entrusted with the care and formation of future priests. Throughout the years Bishop Williamson has explored many issues relating to the encroaching anti-Catholic culture that surrounds us. Many have read those letters, but few know much about him. We sent Stephen Heiner to visit His Excellency in Argentina to talk about his 30 years of priesthood. with mson 33 Your Excellency, let’s start at the beginning. What was family life like in the Williamson household? I had parents that were not Catholic but most certainly looked after their three children as best they knew. They made sure I had a very good education up to the age of 18, even 21. Who were the other two children? I have an older and a younger brother–neither of them Catholic, but both still living. My younger brother lives in New Zealand so I see him rarely, and my older brother lives in England so I see him occasionally. What do they think of having a bishop for a brother? They are not unsympathetic. They are happy that I am “doing my thing.” I have heard that you met Dr. Albert Schweitzer in your younger days. Is that true? Yes, between 1963 and 1965 I was a schoolmaster in Ghana, West Africa, formerly the Gold Coast until it became independent in 1958. For my summer vacation in 1964, I took a French steamboat down the West African Coast to Libreville, the capital of French Gabon, in order to visit Dr. Schweitzer, not far away. At that time he had long been famous as a missionary hero in Africa–something like the Mother Teresa of his day. I spent four weeks in his famous jungle hospital because guest-workers were always welcome. I was able to speak to him personally twice. He was an interesting figure. While he certainly didn’t have the Catholic Faith, he was very realistic about Africa and its politics. He was quite old when I met him. He came from Alsace, and he knew music very well, especially Bach. And I can remember talking to him about Beethoven, whom he admired for “his modulations, and the freedom of his orchestra.” Why was his hospital famous? It was very crude by modern standards, but it did a great deal of good, medically speaking, because it was very realistically adapted to African conditions. I had a most interesting holiday! Dr. Schweitzer had been thoroughly hospitable. Some people say that Beethoven played a great part in your conversion. Is that true? Certainly. Without Beethoven during my adolescent years, I’m not sure I would be a Catholic today. Mozart also greatly helped, and Wagner provided an extra religious dimension. Wasn’t Wagner a favorite of the Nazis and Hitler? Wagner appealed to Hitler precisely because his operas offer a religious dimension without the Faith, in other words, a substitute redemption. Who is the redeemer in Wagner’s operas? Basically, woman. Especially in the Flying Dutchman and The Ring. Why was that? Because, as St. Paul says (I Cor. 11), as Christ is head of the man, so man is head of the woman. Now, broadly speaking, around the time of the French Revolution, modern man refused to be under Christ, but, to hold things together, women stayed under man for a while. So she “saved” the situation for about a hundred years, which is when Wagner was writing his operas. But by the 20th century she had had enough, and that is when the “emancipation” of women began. The foundations have shaken ever since! www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 34 To get back to opera, would you say it helps our Catholic lives? Opera is obviously not necessary for a Catholic life. However, like all great art, it contains a great deal of truth about human life. And as St. Augustine said, all truth belongs to Catholics, meaning that Catholics can profit by truth wherever they find it. Opera is very much human nature, and so especially in today’s more and more anti-human world, opera can provide a good “sentimental education,” or education in the human heart, a far better education of the heart than either Hollywood or television provide. Apart from music, what else contributed to your conversion? Especially reading the beginning of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. A Jesuit friend of the family recommended I read Teilhard de Chardin, but he added that “if I liked the older stuff,” I might try St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas. So I tried the Summa and I loved it. It was so utterly unsentimental. I had been used to religion in gooey washes of mush and slush. And here were great truths as hard as nails. I loved it. So you converted–to the Novus Ordo Church? Yes, initially. I was received into the Church in early 1971 by a “conservative” priest. He did not agree with Archbishop Lefebvre, but he believed I had a vocation, so he sent me firstly to a diocese and secondly to a religious congregation in London. After I got kicked out for the second time, he said, in his heavy Irish accent, “If you can’t keep your big mouth shut, there’s only one place for you, and that’s Ecône.” So that’s where I went. What were your initial impressions of Ecône and the Archbishop? Ecône–peace and order. The Archbishop–radiant with peace and order. And what about your fellow seminarians, whom Bishop Tissier called in his book a “fragile and disparate” bunch? The seminarians were good men, like fragments after the explosion of the 1960’s, magnetized by the Archbishop picking up pieces in the 1970’s. The magnetism was very strong, without being a cult of personality. There was a quiet joy and a real sense of purpose. Do you see any difference in the character of those who sought Tradition in the 1970’s and those who are seeking it today? In the 1970’s one was only 20 years away from pre-conciliar times, so the Archbishop was able to profit at that time from remains of the relative order and sanity of the pre-conciliar world. Also, in the ’70’s the fight for Tradition was fresh, everything was new, the Society was a novelty, and was just getting its “act” on the road. Today the novelty is gone, the “act” has been on the road for 35 years, and the Society is a full-scale THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org operation (for instance, just in France we have six boys’ schools), and tiredness threatens a number of our priests and faithful. As for order and sanity in the world around us, between the 1970’s and today there has been an enormous deterioration. The world of today exerts a relentless, soft pressure on Catholics, 24/7. But isn’t the Society solidly on its feet? Time must tell. In Communist Russia the Church had to go underground as deeply as possible. Classic Catholic congregations and seminaries were out of the question. Do you expect us to have to operate underground in the near future? It seems to me to be a distinct possibility. What might precipitate that? A Russian and/or Chinese attack and victory over the West is one possible speculation. Some might balk at likening Russia and China simply because they both had their roots in atheistic communism. They have definitely taken different paths to the current political situations in their respective countries. I do not pretend to be an expert, but the Old Testament perspective will be the truest. According to that perspective, the apostate West is running up a tidal wave of sins, for which the Lord God “needs,” i.e. will often use, a human scourge, like the Assyrians for the Israelites of old. Now who would or might that scourge be today? Surely China has never ceased to be Communist, i.e. intent upon establishing the Communist “paradise” throughout the world. China has long despised the domineering materialistic West. Many reports speak of China’s preparation for war upon the USA in the Pacific theater, and of Chinese infiltration within the USA. As for Russia, Putin does indeed seem to be a Russian nationalist. As such he resents and fears Russia being encircled by American military bases, whatever be or be not his residuary Communism. In other words, he too has more than sufficient human reason to serve as a scourge for the Lord God of Hosts. Certainly our media cannot be relied upon to tell us the truth about either Russia or China. Back to the Old Testament! Apart from this distinction between Russia and China, people believe that the West is invincible. Is it not? You have to believe the media to believe that. Well, getting back to the 1970’s for a moment, tell us about the “Hot Summer” of 1976. The summer of 1976 was when the first big class of new priests was ordained at Ecône. In 1974 there had been one or two, in 1975 there were three, in 1976 we were 14 altogether. Nuestra Señora Corredentora [Our Lady Coredemptrix] Seminary of the Society of Saint Pius X, La Reja, Argentina 35 In 1983 you had to deal in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with the split from the Society of nine American priests in the Northeast. It’s been over 20 years. How do you look back on that now? It was a bit spectacular at the time. Things had to be kept going. And what of the sedevacantist positions which those priests took? I am rather less anti-sedevacantist than a number of my colleagues. I don’t happen to believe sedevacantism is the biggest sin in the book. It has been demonized. At worst, sedevacantists are proud and sterile, but there are also some very honest and intelligent Catholics who simply cannot believe that recent Popes are true Vicars of Christ. Do you agree with their consecrating their own bishops? I can’t say it was a wise idea for most of them. Yet we are living through an unparalleled crisis. And I think the magnitude of the crisis calls for a great deal of charity and compassion, 355 degrees, almost all around the compass, and more charity and compassion with each day that passes. The Archbishop was a man of deep charity and trust. Some people say he trusted too much, as when in 1975 he walked into the kangaroo trial with the three cardinals in Rome. Well, his trust and charity were also matched with excellent judgment. For example, in the 1970’s a number of candidates for the priesthood were ordained that might have been a disappointment, and would have never made it through our seminaries today. But I don’t think that he was wrong for ordaining them. There was a desperate need and he wanted to keep the Mass and the Sacraments going....In the 1970’s it looked as though the whole Church was in the hands of the Enemy. It was an unbelievable situation. What was the atmosphere like? Strangely enough I have no special memories, perhaps because we ordinands were in the calm in the eye of the storm. The Archbishop, on the other hand, was taking a lot of heat. Yet he remained firm, very firm. He knew what was at stake and he protected us. Essentially, he told us, “You’re not going to do all of your seminary training only to have me abandon you. I will not abandon you.” I clearly remember him saying it, perhaps because it was so typically him, without fanfare or rhetoric. He said it very quietly. And he was as good as his word. Rome might menace and scream and threaten and thunder, and the media might stir up a global storm, as they did in 1988, but the Archbishop just went about his Heavenly Father’s business. Dr. White’s biography of the Archbishop [see “Book Review” on p.27–Ed.] says that the future Bishop Lefebvre felt fearful to be called a bishop. Did you feel a fear when you were first told you would be elevated? I trusted the Archbishop completely. If he had come up to me on the evening before the Consecrations and said, “You’re not being consecrated tomorrow,” that too would have been fine by me. There’s the famous picture of all four of you enthroned with mitre and crozier, seated, with Fr. Laisney unmistakably smiling. What were you thinking at that moment? I was probably thinking, what do I do next? I’m not very good at ceremonies, so I was probably trying to remember the next step in the ceremony. What about the next morning, when you woke up a bishop? To be honest, becoming a priest from being a deacon seemed a bigger step in my mind than going from priest www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 36 to bishop. To go from not being able to say Mass to being able to do so is a tremendous leap, as opposed to “merely” adding the powers of Confirmation and Ordination. The priest interceding at the altar is the very heart of our religion. Speaking of the priesthood, Fr. Peter Scott some months ago deplored the small number of vocations to the first and second year at the Seminary in Goulburn. He stated that this was a hindrance to presenting Benedict with the “fruits of Tradition.” What can we, as laymen, do to encourage vocations? Apparently there are now a number of priestly vocations in France and the United States. Perhaps we in the Southern Hemisphere only need to wait. You said once in a sermon that the reason vocations to the brotherhood are so few may be because the world is stamping out humility. What is the world doing to make priestly vocations difficult? It is destroying innocence. Also, God has become so pushed to one side that it is today difficult for a young man to conceive of giving up his whole life, and marriage, to serve such a marginalized God. A young man can easily see what he sacrifices–family life, children, a sweet wife (or so he thinks!), etc. What he cannot see is how souls need to be saved, because in today’s world God has been made into such a nice guy that no one goes to hell. At Fr. Stafki’s first Mass, Fr. Doran said we will not get priests by Mom introducing her son to the pastor as “little Johnny that will be a priest.” How can we encourage vocations? Number one: get Dad to take his religion seriously. By this I mean the example of Dad, and not just his words. Number two is very close. Let Mom create a home in which the Catholic religion is as natural as it is supernatural, a home in which religion is not a running away from the modern world because then it is artificial, and children don’t want artificiality. Nor do we want artificial priests. Why do people always say there will be a “Williamson schism” in the case of a deal with Rome? Maybe a number of people sense that I would have great difficulty in going along with neo-modernists because I didn’t struggle out of liberalism only to go back into it a few years later in a cassock with red piping. It is said that because 1) you are a former Anglican, a sect which is “episcopally centered,” and because 2) you converted at an unfortunate time, during a period in which we have been deprived of a Catholic pope, THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org you therefore suffer from a lack of Romanitas and are overly hostile to Curial authorities. It is certain that I have less “piety” towards Rome than many Catholics. However, the upside of that is that, for me, maybe piety doesn’t get too much in the way of truth. For sure and certain, the bottom line in the Church is always a question of truth. Converts may have their upside as well as their downside! Let’s begin talking about the “new stage” in relations between the SSPX and the Roman Curia, dating from the Jubilee Pilgrimage of 2000. What was your impression, then and now, of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos? The heart of the matter is something I said to him at his lunch party of August 11, 2000: “Eminence, we have two different religions!” “Oh no,” he replied. And later in the conversation he came back to the topic saying, “We have the same God, Jesus Christ, and the same Church, and the same Eucharist.” By this I believe he was attempting to answer my previous objection. Were you respectful to the Cardinal during the meeting? Yes, I believe so. I don’t believe in being disrespectful to high-ranking Curial prelates. As Our Lord says, they occupy the chair of Moses. Let’s go back to 2000-02 and Fr. Aulagnier. After reading about him and his closeness to the Archbishop, may I ask what happened? Is it true he is no longer allowed to say Mass publicly on any SSPX altar? Yes, I believe so. He separated himself from the Society because he firmly believed in some kind of Campos-style agreement between the SSPX and Rome. That sounds like Fr. Bisig, the former SSPX Assistant who helped form the FSSP. Indeed. An insufficient grasp of the importance of doctrine as against “piety” towards Rome. Now let’s speak of 2003 and Campos. I read Mouth of the Lion not too long ago and read about a fiery young priest named Padre Rifan. Earlier this year the website AngelQueen hosted an interview with a conciliar bishop named Dom Fernando. Would somebody tell me what Dom Fernando did to Padre Rifan? There is a Winona letter entitled Campos Has Fallen [available on SSPX.org] in which I wrote on this subject. Essentially, since 1991, they had been deprived of their rock, Bishop de Castro Mayer. Also, I am told, Brazilian priests in general are accustomed to following, so they followed where they were misled. So much for the previous Declaration of the Campos priests Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman [available from Angelus Press; price: $5.95–Ed.]. 7 Their “reconciliation” is a de facto admission that they were wrong all along, and it’s a disgrace to Bishop de Castro Mayer’s legacy. Fiftiesism came back with a vengeance. But do not despair of all the Campos priests. As Dr. White says, they did too much good for it all to be lost. Also, let’s consider 2004-05 and the long illness of Pope John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI. Unlike Bishop Tissier, you have never met Joseph Ratzinger, as bishop, cardinal, or after his election as Pope? That’s correct. You have another Winona letter from 1999 which talks about Milestones, his autobiography. yes. I said there that his life-story “is of interest to all Catholics, because it shows how crippled is even the seeming best of today’s Romans when it comes to defending the Faith. Despite their apparent benevolence they cannot defend what they no longer understand.” This reminds me of a quote from the Archbishop in Bishop Tissier’s book on the Archbishop, concerning a confrontation with Cardinal Ratzinger regarding religious liberty: For us, Our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is Our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! you are doing the opposite; you have just wanted to prove to me that Our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society. The downside is, of course, that a number of lines will be blurred which are presently clear, separating true Tradition from any kind of compromise. Also, the very idea of the intrinsically legitimate Tridentine Mass needing an “indult” is false. But I think, over all, much more good than harm would come from the true Mass being “liberated.” What about the General Chapter of the FSSP this year? I considered this to be a non-event, though more moderate colleagues of mine who are personally acquainted with Fr. Berg, the new Superior General, tell me he is a “hard-liner.” I don’t know how “hard line” one can be in a congregation that accepts the legitimacy of the illegitimate New Mass as part of their raison d’être, but perhaps I am being too hard? Perhaps Rome didn’t interfere this time because they feel that they have the FSSP sufficiently under control. As for the FSSP, perhaps they are firming up. Most of their priests may have a genuine repugnance for the teachings and orientation of the Newchurch. What about the SSPX General Chapter? What does the re-election of Bishop Fellay signify? Negatively, the at least seeming lack of a viable alternative. Positively, the desire on the part of many SSPX Superiors for the Society to continue going the way it has been going over the last several years. Alright, Your Excellency, let’s shift gears a bit. Sts. Athanasius and Eusebius consecrated bishops Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal’s attitude: “Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of” (p.548). “Woman’s family-wisdom is priceless; It comes straight from God.” Bishop Richard Williamson Truly, they cannot defend what they no longer understand. Quite a few colleagues of mine on the Internet have ridden the wave of the “Universal Indult” as it has teased its way throughout the year. During Holy Week, for example, people were checking certain websites two or three times a day based on news from Italian newspapers. I’ve remained (and remain) skeptical throughout. That being said, it is quite a road to go from “wildcat seminary” to the fairly universal assumption that it is only a matter of time before the true Mass will be “authorized.” What say you, Your Excellency? I may be wrong, but I’m in favor of the “Universal Indult.” The Tridentine Mass has a power and grace all its own. If unshackled, it will make its own way. Much more grace will flow. GREAT WIVES AND MOTHERS Rev. Fr. Hugh Francis Blunt One of the greatest glories of the Church is her noble womanhood. And today especially, when the world is in many different ways seeking to turn our women from the pursuit of the Christian ideal in wifehood and motherhood, there is need surely of recalling the inspiriting stories of the women who sought first of all for the kingdom of God.–From the Preface Inspiring biographies of Catholic wives and mothers from throughout history. Queens, writers, teachers, poets, founders of religious houses, hospitals and orphanages and those who followed all manner of vocations from the earliest times of the Church. In every department the wife and mother has been chosen by God to help in His work, and here their inspiring stories, both famous and obscure, are collected. Sample chapters and biographies include: Mothers and Martyrs Matrons of the Early Church St. Monica The Queen Saints St. Elizabeth of Hungary St. Rita Royal Ladies Isabella the Catholic Margaret Roper Anna Maria Taigi St. Elizabeth Seton Jerusha Barber Mary O’Connell Lady Georgiana Fullerton Margaret Haughery Pauline Craven A Catholic mother of five said, “It has something for everyone: the wife with no children, the wife with many children, the widow with a family, the childless www.angeluspress.org The ANgelus • October 2006can widow, the rich and the poor, talented and simple folks alike. Every woman find here a model for what a Catholic wife and mother must do to gain eternity.” • • • • • • • • 424pp, softcover, STK# 8219 $24.95 • • • • • • • • 38 and gave them jurisdiction in a time of crisis. The Church responded to these actions with canonization. Some say that the Society should be setting up jurisdictional bishops of its own. Is this fair? Firstly, the Society cannot give an ordinary jurisdiction which it does not itself have. And secondly, in modern circumstances rather different from the 4th century, the Archbishop refused to set up any such bishops because he wanted to avoid for the Society even the appearance of schism. At the end of his book The Great Façade, Chris Ferrara postulates that along the lines of Cluny the SSPX might be used to reform the Church. Can we hope the Society will work a Cluny-style reform of the Church? There are interesting points of comparison. Certainly the Church needs a revival. Certainly the Society is preserving what the rest of the Church must eventually come back to. However, Cluny was a long-term operation, wrought over two centuries by thousands of holy monks under a handful of saintly abbots. On the contrary, the Society has presently not many vocations and may not have much time ahead of it to exert any influence comparable to that of Cluny. Some people say you’re a myopic Fatimist–that you see everything through the lens of Fatima, to your detriment. Goodness gracious! Isn’t Fatima one of the two special lights God gave us to illuminate the darkened 20th and 21st centuries? In 1907, God gave us, through St. Pius X, the Encyclical Pascendi. Ten years later, He sent His Blessed Mother to Fatima, Portugal. If you want to call me a Fatimist, please also call me a Pascendist. In 2005, Bishop Alfonse de Galarreta gave a sermon in Winona in which he said that we are in the Napoleonic stage of the Revolution in the Church, meaning, the Revolution has become institutionalized. Do you agree? It’s an interesting analogy. Napoleon was a dynamo. He spread the Revolution everywhere, though it was cloaked in his imperialism. Similarly John Paul II and now Benedict XVI have consolidated the Revolution of Vatican II. Your Excellency, going back to the interview I did with Bishop Tissier for The Remnant in April, Fr. Anthony Cekada wrote an article in response that said that for Bishop Tissier, there are no consequences for professing heresy. Is that a fair assessment? Bishop Tissier would certainly say that what he calls the heresy of Benedict XVI has the very gravest consequences, namely the destruction of the Catholic Church! THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org Then what do you think Fr. Cekada had in mind? From today’s destruction of the Church, Fr. Cekada concludes that Benedict XVI cannot possibly be a true Pope. Fr. Cekada surely wishes that Bishop Tissier would draw the same conclusion. Is Fr. Cekada right or is Bishop Tissier right? Myself, I believe that Benedict XVI is the true Pope, so I think Bishop Tissier is right. But what about Benedict XVI’s heresy? To be such a heretic as to so put oneself out of the Catholic Church that one cannot possibly any longer be its head, i.e., Pope, one must know that one is denying what one knows to be a defined dogma of the Catholic Faith, because such a denial amounts to deliberate apostasy. To become, or to continue being, a Catholic, is a choice. If I know what a Catholic must believe in order to be Catholic, and if I refuse to believe it, then I am choosing to be a heretic instead of a Catholic, and I put myself outside the Church. So Fr. Cekada would believe that this is the case of Benedict XVI, and you believe it is not? Correct. Why? Because modern minds are very sick, as minds, and Benedict XVI has a modern mind, like millions and millions of modern people, including churchmen, around him. Firstly, in what does the sickness consist, and secondly, how can Benedict XVI not be aware of it? The sickness consists in believing that there is no fixed, objective truth which absolutely excludes error. For example, I may believe that two and two are four, but I will believe that they can also be five or six or 600,000 or whatever. The “truth” is what my mind makes it. But the mind is made for objective truth like lungs are made for oxygen, so just as lungs without external oxygen are sick to death, so a mind with no external truth is sick to death. And how do we see this in someone like Benedict XVI? Benedict XVI believes that Catholic “truth” can evolve. For instance, very serious statements of Catholic truth that cannot change, like the Syllabus or Pascendi, he calls merely “substantial anchorages” in Church doctrine, meaning that the Church could anchor there, and usefully anchored there for a while, but in modern times the Church needs new “substantial anchorages” in doctrine. He cannot see that this antimodern Catholic doctrine of his predecessors is of such a nature that it cannot change, and not even as Pope can he change it. His poor mind, however gifted, is sick with that modern–especially German–philosophy which unhooks the mind from its object, like cutting off lungs from oxygen. 39 But–and that was my follow-up question –how can Benedict XVI not be aware of his condition? He is an educated man, a high churchman, learned in philosophy and theology! Yes, but like so many high churchmen, even before Vatican II, he is learned in the wrong philosophy! And since in our sick age the wrong philosophy (two and two are four but can be, or become, five) has become “normal,” then he cannot imagine he may be wrong. When John Paul II promoted “conservative” conciliarism, 2,000 bishops praised him for being “conservative” and the other 2,000 blasted him for being so. Only two bishops dared to protest to his face that he was not truly conservative at all, because he was conciliar. Humanly speaking, repeat, humanly speaking, how could he believe that the two were normal and the four thousand were abnormal? How could he not think he was being “normal”? Well, how could he? In the good old days, a Catholic Pope put very intelligent and orthodox theologians in the Holy Office, formerly known as the Inquisition, and these would interrogate a neo-modernist thus: “You have written that Pascendi is only a ‘substantial anchorage.’ This amounts to heresy. Either you retract, or the Pope has authority to excommunicate you. Kindly choose.” And the neo-modernist would have had to choose, having been made aware, by Church authority, of his heresy. In other words, a heretic might have blinded himself, but Mother Church used to use her God-given authority to force him to be aware of his heresy. Correct. But this last resort is unavailable to today’s churchmen, because they are the authority! As Archbishop Lefebvre said in the 1970’s to the Conciliar Holy Office when they interrogated him on his antiConciliarism, “I should be sitting in your place, and you should be sitting in mine.” God bless him, the Archbishop never lost his grip on objective Catholic truth! Then churchmen such as Benedict XVI are completely innocent of what they are doing? I did not say that. If they are the authorities of God’s Church, then logically the Lord God is offering them all the graces they need to lead the Church rightly. If then they are misleading the Church, they are refusing those graces, which means that they cannot, inside themselves, be innocent. But we are entering into inner depths upon which God alone can judge. Well, after that long but fruitful digression, may I further ask why Benedict XVI’s “Reform of the Reform” is pointless and doomed, Your Excellency? Because it’s a half-measure. (Starts singing) “With me, it’s all or nothing, Is it all or nothing with you? It cain’t be in between, It cain’t be now and then, No half and half romance will do.” So, Your Excellency, it all comes down to the flighty girl in Oklahoma ! There is wisdom in opera and even in musicals! Okay, Your Excellency, so you are an advocate of the “Universal Indult,” the first pre-condition of Curial relations. Now for the second pre-condition, how to deal with the “excommunication¨? Some say that the Society’s insistence on the “excommunications” of July 1988 is just the Society showing itself to be prideful, like a child, wanting to say, “See, I told you we were right all along!” Is it a matter of pride, Your Excellency? No. It’s a matter of truth. To handle the “excommunications” in any such way as to indicate that they at least once were valid is to suggest that 18 years ago “Rome” was right and the Archbishop was wrong in his defense of the Faith. The Faith itself requires a form of words such as, for example, “Rome withdraws the decree of excommunication.” In April, Bishop Tissier said that the Society Bishops have “no leading role.” Also, the Archbishop made it clear to you all that the four bishops he consecrated were to have no apostolic mission, but were there strictly to confirm and ordain. Yet it seems to me that the very office of bishop carries with it the character of governing. We look to the bishops of the Society for guidance, leadership, and counsel. And we would do so even had a priest been elected instead of Bishop Fellay, because as laymen, we are not governed by the Superior General. That is not disrespect, it is simply an acknowledgment that the office of bishops is larger than the Society. They serve the Church in general, simply by existing. The Church asks, in a way, all bishops to have a leading role. Your thoughts, Your Excellency? Society bishops serve the Society. Bishops of the Catholic Church serve the Catholic Church. Any final thoughts on your 30 years of priesthood? Gratitude, regrets? God has been extremely good to me for the last 30 years, and for the previous 36 years! I have no regrets except all sins and unfaithfulness. Stephen L.M. Heiner runs a tutoring and test prep company in Overland Park, Kansas. He spends his weekends in St. Marys, Kansas where he goes to the Latin Mass and spends time writing freelance articles in print and on the Internet. Photograph of His Excellency beneath the crucifix taken by Stephen Heiner. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 40 o t r e h t From Lu Solemn Abjuration o On Sunday, July 30, 2006, in St. Nicolas du Chardonnet Church, Paris, at the 10:30am High Mass, the Swedish Lutheran pastor Sten Sandmark was received into the Catholic Church together with his associate Joachim Svensson. Since the ecclesiastical authorities do not wish to exercise this function due to the errors of modern ecumenism, the Society of Saint Pius X does what the Church has always done. On this occasion, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais delivered an historic sermon. My very dear Brethren: Today, I will preach before the Mass since we have this quite extraordinary event, the conversion of Pastor Sten Sandmark and one of his associates, who want to enter the Catholic Church. It is a great joy for the Church on this Feast of St. Elina, a Swedish martyr of the 12th century. Dear Pastor, I am not going to try to retrace the course of your conversion. I’ll simply say that it was the grace of the Holy Ghost and the fruit of the intercession of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of all graces. To tell the truth, you were not really a Lutheran, although you belonged to the Swedish Lutheran Church. You did not share its doctrine, since you held the Catholic doctrines of justification, grace, transubstantiation, the Holy Mass, and many other Catholic dogmas which are denied by the Protestants. But unity was lacking to you, the unity of Christ’s true Church. You yourself, dear Pastor, were a priest. You were so for 31 years, following a ceremony of ordination. There is evidently a doubt concerning this ordination, since it is not known whether the apostolic succession in the Swedish Church is valid or not. For 31 years you celebrated what you thought to be a valid Mass in Swedish, and during these 31 years of ministry, you wanted to pursue the mission of redeeming the souls that Christ confided to His Church, as you put it in your beautiful declaration, which is available to the faithful. You wanted to pursue the mission of the Church by the preaching of the Gospel, according to Christ’s word to His Apostles: “Go forth into the whole world, preaching the Gospel to all creatures.” You wanted to do this also by the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, according to Jesus’ word to His Apostles: “Every time that you do this, you do it in memory of me,” and by the administration of the seven sacraments, the existence of which you recognized, sacraments instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ. But alas, Catholic unity and the certitude of a valid priesthood was lacking. What is, very dear faithful, the Catholic doctrine on the real Church of our Lord Jesus Christ? It is a mystery of unity professed by the Apostle St. Paul, which we profess in Apostles’ Creed, in the Creed that we will sing in a few moments: “I believe in only one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” The central mystery of the Christian religion: only one God in three persons, and we will also say: “I believe in only one Lord Jesus Christ, in only one Savior, unique s u i t a n g I to St. a m d n a S n te S r to s a P n ra e on of Swedish Luth Redeemer of souls by His precious Blood, who died on the Cross,” a dogma of faith that is currently denied by some of those who have the highest positions in the Catholic Church. “I believe also in only one baptism in remission of sins.” And, in short, “I believe in One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” It is the Mystical Body of our Lord Christ, i.e., the Body whose members are transplanted into Christ in order to live from the very Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Chief and our Head. This Catholic Church was founded on Peter, the first pope, according to the words of Jesus Christ to St. Peter: “Blessed art thou, Simon son of Jona, because it is not flesh and blood, but it is My Father in heaven that has revealed this to you,” to know that I am God’s Son. And I tell thee this in my turn, thou art Peter, and it is upon this rock that I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it....Whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Mt. 16:17-19) It is indeed St. Peter who went to Rome, where he established his episcopal seat, and which made the Catholic Church the Roman Church, mother and head of all churches of the world. It is there, in Rome, that St. Peter sealed by his blood, by his martyrdom, his mission of being the first pope. And it is there that he transmitted to his successors the supreme jurisdictional power over the whole Church, over both the sheep and the pastors, according to Christ’s word: “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep” ( Jn. 21:15-17). Christ’s true Church is therefore the Roman Church. And this Roman Catholic Church is necessary to salvation–the third truth of faith. The first is that 41 rk the Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic; the second, that the Roman Church was founded on Peter; and the third is that the Roman Church is necessary for the salvation of souls, outside of which no one can work out his salvation. This means that someone who would know that the Catholic Church is Christ’s true Church and who, nevertheless, would stay outside of this Church, could not be saved according to Christ’s words: “He who listens to you, listens to Me; he who despises you, despises Me; and who despises Me, despises the One that sent Me, God the Father.” Of these truths, dear Pastor, you were convinced and this is why you desire to rejoin Catholic unity, because you felt truly that in the Lutheran Swedish Church you were not at home. Indeed, since Martin Luther rebelled in 1517 against the Church and provoked the schism and the Protestant heresy, these communities separated themselves from the Catholic unity and split increasingly into a multitude of sects, all different as to the various dogmas that they either accept or reject, and of which not a single one can prove itself to come from the Apostles by an uninterrupted and legitimate episcopal succession as in the Catholic unity, in submissiveness to Peter’s successor. To this was added lately, in this Swedish Church separated from Rome, the ordination of “priestesses,” which is lamentable, as well as the nuptial blessing granted to those called “homosexuals,” an abominable thing in God’s eyes and which is the best proof that this Church is not at all the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why you felt obliged to take the serious resolution to convert. Ten years ago you approached the Catholic bishop of Sweden, asking him: “Your Excellency, I would like to become a Catholic.” And 42 this bishop shamefully answered you: “No, remain as you are, it’s good for ecumenism.” Here is what the new Church of the Council, which we call the Conciliar Church, does! She prevents the conversion of those who want to come back to Catholic unity. “Stay as you are, it’s good for ecumenism!” What a serious error! So for over ten years you were anxious, when providentially, last year, the pilgrimage of UNEC [United Nations of Christian Europe] to Sweden and to the tomb of St. Bridget, passed not far from your house. And you welcomed our pilgrims for the celebration of the Mass because the churches were refused to them. That’s how you became acquainted with what we call Catholic Tradition, i.e., the core, the elite of the Catholic faithful, faithful to the Faith of all times. Thus you decided to come back to the unique fold of our Lord Jesus Christ, even though this Church is herself currently shaken by a very severe crisis, by the “worship of man” established in place of the worship of God, a “banquet table” replacing the altar of sacrifice, “dialogue” replacing the sacrifice offered to God. I was told that in Sweden, one day, some Catholics asked for permission to borrow a Lutheran church to be able to celebrate the Mass, the “new Mass.” In your Lutheran churches, you have an altar and a communion table; these Catholics, however, found the way to put a table to celebrate their Eucharist, instead of using the altar that still exists in Lutheran worship. There are things that we discover, dear faithful, that put to shame the Conciliar Church. You approached therefore, dear Pastor, our Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, especially for the perpetuation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that is, of the sacrifice of the Cross, reproduced, reactualized on the altar in an unbloody manner, according to the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ to His Apostles: “Do this in memory of Me.” And it is with this objective, if it please God, to be able to receive Catholic ordination one day, that you (as well as your associate) want to join the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, knowing full well the painful situation in which she finds herself in the Catholic Church. You want thus, dear Pastor (I regret calling you by this title because you are now Catholic), to join this fight for the Faith which is currently the main goal of our Priestly Society. With the help of God and through the intercession of the most holy Virgin Mary, whom we implore today for you as well as for your associate, you are going to make the solemn abjuration of all heresy and the solemn profession of Catholic faith; and, if it please God, you will pursue your studies until you receive Catholic ordination in order to renew and to prolong the unique Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on our altars. Amen. The President of UNEC, Mr.Winfried Wuermeling, to rejoin the Augustinians of Fr. Sten, God willing. who is well acquainted with Pastor Sten Sandmark Pastor Sten told us that he became aware of the invalidity and who helped him on the road to Rome, provided of his masses in September, 2005, due to the lack of apostolic succession. It was this that decided him to leave the Lutheran these details about his conversion. Church for good. In truth, he says, he always felt like “a Catholic T he Lutherans do not have religious orders, except in Sweden, following the example of the Anglo-Catholics of England. “The Swedish Church” was the established Church of State until 2000; then the Swedish parliament was constrained to allow the possibility of Lutherans founding congregations and for the king to convert. In 1992, Pastor Sten Sandmark, still a Lutheran, founded the Order of Augustinians (Luther’s order) with a few friends. He made the three perpetual vows. That is why he still wears his religious habit even after his reception into the Catholic Church. His companion, Brother Joachim Svensson, 19 years old, took temporary vows for a year in July, 2005.That is why he laid aside his religious habit the eve of his abjuration at Paris. Because he speaks German well, Fr. Sten has gone to Zaitzkofen, Germany, for a year “for supplementary theological studies,” and should be ordained priest in 2007, whereupon he will return as a missionary to Sweden. He began a 30-day Ignatian retreat on July 31, 2006 [Feast of St. Ignatius], to be preached by Fr. Franz Schmidberger at Zaitzkofen. Joachim accompanied UNEC on a pilgrimage to Catholic Norway from August 5-14. In September he began two years of studies at St. Mary’s College (the SSPX’s university in St. Marys, THE ANGELUS October 2006 www.angeluspress.org Kansas), since• he speaks English. He anticipates entering the SSPX seminary at Winona, Minnesota, in 2008. Later on, he plans in the Lutheran Church.” During his last Lutheran office [see “Last Sermon” p.44], he told the whole truth to his congregation, and made a general call to conversion to the Catholic Church. Fr. King, an SSPX priest in England, attended this “mass,” and after the “mass” was even able to speak from the pulpit to the congregation at Pastor Sten’s invitation. Pastor Sten thinks that about 30 of his flock are equally ready to convert, including six of the parish staff who resigned at the same time he submitted his own resignation. They await the return of Fr. Sten in 2007 before they formally convert. Meanwhile, a mothers’ group to help save the babies of Oskarshamn from abortion has begun meeting to “maintain the ties.” According to Fr. Sten, a real mission in Sweden awaits. Two hundred other Lutheran pastors belong to the “traditional” branch within the Swedish Lutheran Church (a little like the High Church in England), and they are all watching how Fr. Sten’s path to the priesthood proceeds. There are currently two Swedish SSPX seminarians (one at Ecône, one at Zaitzkofen). A permanent traditional Catholic mission to Sweden will soon begin, with God’s help. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the Society’s French District web site La Porte Latine (http://www.laportelatine.org/communication/presse/2006/ceremonieabjuration/pasteurstandmark/pasteursatndmark.php). F y c n c e l X ” t y d t f n o ” e s t l e - 43 Fr. Lorans Fr. Lorans’s Meeting with Sten Sandmark On Saturday, July 29, the day before his abjuration at St. Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris, I was able to meet with Pastor Sten Sandmark thanks to Mr. Winfried Wuermeling, the President of UNEC. We had to record an interview for Radio Silence [www.radio-silence.org]. Doctor Jung, who put together a thorough file for [the website] Donec Ponam, joined us. Sten Sandmark is dressed in the black habit of the Augustinians, the order to which Martin Luther belonged. When I ask him how he discovered the traditional Catholic Mass, he tells me he waited for this moment for 40 years. In 2005, the pilgrims of UNEC, following the footsteps of St. Bridget of Sweden, asked permission for their chaplain to celebrate the Tridentine Mass in his church, which he granted. And there he saw the Mass he had seen celebrated by Catholic priests in Sweden before Vatican II when he was just ten years old. “Today,” he says, “these Catholics only have a hideous Mass…no more Gregorian Chant, a liturgy in the vernacular, etc. For it must be said,” he adds, “that the Lutheran service in Sweden has preserved much of the pre-conciliar Catholic rite.” He then shows us photos of his church in Oskarshamn where the altar is still turned toward the cross and where the communion table still separates the choir from the nave. “But,” he confesses, “We don’t have apostolic succession, and my Mass was invalid: there was no transubstantiation. When I discovered this, I was shocked.” “At what moment did you realize your Mass was invalid?” “After the UNEC pilgrimage, I received a visit from Fr. Schmidberger. We talked for two days and at the end I said to myself: I am nothing.” When he confided to the only Catholic bishop of Sweden his desire to convert, the bishop advised him to remain Lutheran while being “Catholic at heart.” This was, according to him, a way to be a Catholic missionary in the midst of Lutheranism. As a means of spiritual support, he sent him a Christmas card! As to the question of whether some of his congregation might join him and convert to Catholicism, Sten Sandmark responds that there will perhaps be some conversions. He advised them not to rush off to the conciliar Church and to stay in contact with the Society of St. Pius X. I ask him if he wants to celebrate a Mass he knows is valid some day. He says that after 31 years in Lutheranism he would like to know that in his Mass there is truly the presence of Christ. But, abandoning himself to the designs of Providence, he adds: “If the bishop [one of the four bishops of the SSPX–Ed.] does not permit me to become a priest, I will submit.” I asked Sten Sandmark about the validity of confession. He tells me that this question is very important for him. For five years, he heard confessions in a psychiatric environment or in prisons, but his absolutions were invalid: he did not have the power to grant absolution. He heard confession like a psychiatrist hears his patients. He read many books to try to understand the life of these people, but he recognizes: “I did not absolve them.” Members of his family, particularly his mother, told Pastor Sandmark they were not surprised by his conversion, that they even expected it. I asked him, “Which saints prepared the way for your conversion by their example and writings?” I read the revelations of St. Bridget, St. John of the Cross, Thomas à Kempis, and St. Teresa of Avila. They have been my spiritual guides, but one day I discovered the Blessed Virgin Mary [Here the converted pastor takes a long pause, his eyes filled with tears]. We certainly have some beautiful statues of Mary in our churches in Sweden, but they are only statues. Now I’ve discovered her, herself, and I speak to her. I feel the intimate connection there is between the prayer of consecration of the Mass and the Blessed Virgin Mary. That’s why I can no longer remain among the Lutherans who do not believe in it. The next day, the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, after his abjuration and his profession of the Catholic Faith, Sten Sandmark received confirmation and made his first Communion. Monday morning, he took the train from the Gare de l’Est to go to Zaitzkofen, Germany. There, he will make the 30-day Exercises of St. Ignatius. The interview with Fr. Lorans is taken from DICI, No.140; the news stories are re-printed with permission from UNEC, Nos.28/29 and 30/31 of RU, their news bulletin. Edited by Angelus Press. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2006 44 The Pastor’s Last Parish Sermon The Reverend Sten Sandmark, pastor of the Lutheran parish of Oskarshamn, Sweden, celebrated his last Lutheran office on Sunday, July 16th, in order to finish the contract which bound him to the national Church of Sweden. This is the last sermon he addressed to his 300 practicing churchgoers (of a total of 12,000 members officially registered in the parish). My dear Friends: Why do I return to the Church of my ancestors from before 1517? There is only one God, who reveals Himself as a Trinity, the Father, the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost who proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Son of God, sent by the Father, became incarnate and was made man to free us from sin and death through His sacrifice on the Cross. He founded only one Church, and founded her on St. Peter (Mt. 16:16-19). She is His own institution for salvation and for continuing the Lord’s work after His Resurrection and Ascension through the preaching of the Gospel, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the administration of the seven sacraments, and the office received of shepherding the flock. “As my Father hath sent Me, even so I send you” ( Jn. 20:21). Because there is only one God, there is also only one Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ. In the same way, there is also only one religion instituted by the Son of God Himself, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ (I Cor. 12:27). Only St. Peter received the power to lead the flock ( Jn. 21:15-17). He founded the local church in Rome, where he was to be martyred. In the Roman pope we find the legitimate successor of St. Peter. It is necessary to belong to this Church for salvation. “He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me” (Lk. 10:16). In 1517 Martin Luther separated himself–to his own perdition–from this Church in doctrine, worship, and discipline. Many countries were separated from the Church through this unfortunate action. As a consequence, innumerable sects have THE ANGELUS • October 2006 www.angeluspress.org been founded, all of which refer to Christ. In these sects there is no continuous line of apostolic succession in unity with the successor of St. Peter and Christ Himself. Not even the Swedish Church has any such apostolic succession. In order to see how far this [Swedish] Church today has departed from the order of things as they were given to us by Christ and the doctrines of the apostles, it suffices to mention the ordination of women and the blessing of homosexual couples. After many long years of struggle and prayer, I have decided to leave this community so as to return to the Church which was founded by Christ Himself, the bride of the Lamb that was slain. The Church to which I return is herself presently afflicted by a severe crisis. Yet to her (and only to her) has Christ promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against her” (Mt. 16:18). I promise to pray for all Christians, and I myself ask all of you to include me in your prayers. It is my hope that all of us shall return to the safety of Christ’s flock and that we shall in the end find eternal salvation. This prayer full of hope I address in a special way to our Lady, the Mother of the Incarnate God, who, in her immaculate and virginal state, is the prototype of the Church. St. Bridget, strong in the faith and united with the only Church of Rome, pray for your country and mine, Sweden. “Veritas liberabit vos–the truth shall make you free” ( Jn. 8:32). http://www.laportelatine.org/communication/presse/2006/ceremonieabjuration/ceremonieabjuration.php The new book from 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.’” 352pp, softcover, 77 photographs, STK# 8159 $19.95 The Angelus Magazine Grab Bag: 10 issues for $5! One of the most interesting things one can do at Angelus Press is to browse through over 28 years of Angelus issues. Great articles and events long forgotten. Here’s our way of sharing that experience with you. $5 gets you ten random back issues from 1978-2002. Ten back issues, STK# 8220 $5.00 Calvary and the Mass Bishop Fulton J. Sheen In this 1936 work, then Msgr. Sheen takes Our Lord’s seven last words from the Cross and correlates them to appropriate parts of the Mass–the sacramental representation of that same sacrifice. A fascinating book that will give you a new perspective on the Mass: 1) The Confiteor: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 2) The Offertory: “Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” 3) The Sanctus: “Woman, behold thy son...behold thy mother.” 4) The Consecration: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me!” 5) The Communion: “I thirst.” 6) Ite, Missa Est: “It is finished.” 7) The Last Gospel: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.” Hence the Mass is to us the crowning act of Christian worship. A pulpit in which the words of our Lord are repeated does not unite us to Him; a choir in which sweet sentiments are sung brings us no closer to His Cross than to His garments. A temple without an altar of sacrifice is non-existent among primitive peoples, and is meaningless among Christians. And so in the Catholic Church the altar, and not the pulpit or the choir or the organ, is the center of worship, for there is re-enacted the memorial of His Passion (from the Prologue). 71pp, softcover, STK# 8214 $8.00 N EW NG RI O FFE Bishop Fulton J. Sheen 2007 Liturgical Calendar W E N The 2007 Liturgical Calendar features 14 months (includes December 2006 and January 2008) to showcase one each of the 14 Stations of the Cross from Society of St. Pius X chapels from around the United States. Each Station is identified with the name of the church from which it came. But the most compelling reason to have a fourteen month calendar is to make the secular calendar dove-tail with the Church’s liturgical year. Secularly speaking, the first of the year is January 1. In the liturgical year, the first of the year is the first Sunday in Advent, which, this year, is December 3, 2006. So start the year(s) off right with the only liturgical calendar that starts at the beginning of the liturgical year! The Stations of the Cross, the Way of the Cross (Via Crucis), the Way of Sorrows (Via Dolorosa)– these are the names given to the traditional 14 images corresponding to particular incidents in the Passion of Christ. The object of the Via Crucis is to help the faithful make a pilgrimage in spirit to the chief scenes of Christ’s sufferings and death, the origin of which may be traced to the Holy Land where tradition says the Virgin Mary used to visit the sites of her Son’s Passion. No other devotion sponsored by the Catholic Church enables Catholics to so literally obey Christ’s injunction to take up their cross and follow Him. This year’s calendar features plenty of room for your notes and appointment reminders. It is large-holed for easy hanging! All the feast days of the year according to the 1962 Roman Missal are listed with class and liturgical color marked along with reminders of days of fast and abstinence. It also includes the latest directory of Latin Mass locations and traditional Catholic schools in the US and Canada. 10¾" x 10¾" Full color throughout, STK# CAL2007 $9.95 Shipping & Handling US/Canada Foreign $.01 to $10.00 $3.95 $7.95 $10.01 to $25.00 $5.95 $9.95 $25.01 to $50.00 $6.95 $12.95 $50.01 to $100.00 $8.95 $14.95 Over $100.00 9% of order 12% of order Airmail surcharge (in addition to above) Canada 8% of subtotal; Foreign 21% of subtotal. angelus Press 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, Missouri 64109 1-800-96ORDER 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org l 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.