$4.45 november 2006 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition Also inside: Dr. White Speaks on Everything Mother Herlinda, R.I.P. He Said, She Said The Single Life Episcopal Consecrations Revisited Thoughts on a Funeral st. maximilian kolbe The Kingdom of Christ Through Mary and St. Maximilian Kolbe 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 ion t i d E adopt the intentions of the psalmist as you pray. When understood correctly (this edition has a short 4th explanation 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 November 2006 Volume XXIX, Number 11 • Kansas City, Missouri 64109 English-language Editor and Publisher for the International Society of Saint Pius X PublisheR the kingdom of christ through mary and st. maximilian kolbe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fr. Albert, O.P. Fr. John Fullerton Editor Fr. Kenneth Novak Assistant Editor Mr. James Vogel business Manager Mr. Jason Greene Reverend mother mary herlinda mccarty . . . . 7 Thoughts on a funeral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Edwin Faust he said, she said . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Mr. & Mrs. Dennis Hammond Editorial assistant Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend MARKETING Mr. Christopher McCann THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT The Benefit of the Doubt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Enemy Islam: An Interview with the Bishop of Rumbek, Sudan . . . . . . 24 comptroller Miss Lisa Powell customer service Mrs. Mary Anne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Shipping and Handling Mr. Jon Rydholm Questions and answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Fr. Peter Scott interview with dr. david allen white . . . . . . . 28 Stephen Heiner the single life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. the validity of the rite of episcopal consecration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Fr. Alvaro Calderon The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published monthly under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels. Publication offices are located at 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, 64109, (816) 753-3150, FAX (816) 753-3557. Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2006 by Angelus Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Manuscripts are welcome. They must be double-spaced and deal with the Roman Catholic Church, its history, doctrine, or present crisis. Unsolicited manuscripts will be used at the discretion of the Editorial Staff. Unused manuscripts cannot be returned unless sent with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Angelus, Angelus Press, 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109-1529. ON OUR COVER: St. Maximilian Kolbe, see article on pp.2-6 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 2 The Kingdom o f and St Dominican Fr. Albert, O.P., p articipated in traditional pilg the annual rimage to the Polish nationa of Czestochow l shrine of Ou a. About 100 tr r Lady aditional Cath Warsaw to cov olics set out fr er the 18 5-mil om e distance to C days. At the d zestochowa in estination, the ten ir ranks double in attendance d to 2 00 of the for the final M fa ass in honor o f the Immacula ithful ta. The theme chosen for this pilgrimage is “the universal royalty of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” As you well know, this is a point which is spoken about already by St. Louis de Montfort in his treatise on the true devotion to Mary, where he says: “It was through the most holy Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that He has to reign in the world1.” And also: If then, as is certain, the knowledge and the kingdom of Jesus Christ are to come into the world, they will be but a necessary consequence of the knowledge and the kingdom of the most holy Virgin Mary, who brought Him into the world for the first time, and will make His second advent full of splendor.2 This theme, however, as you also know, was taken up as well by a saint of your own country, St. Maximilian Kolbe, who followed in the footsteps of the “true devotion to Mary” of St. Louis de Montfort, and in a certain sense went even further. One could compare the two saints to Elias and Eliseus: just as Eliseus received the double spirit of Elias, who came before him, St. Maximilian Kolbe seems to have received the same spirit as St. Louis de Montfort, but with a double portion. Everyone has heard about his heroic sacrifice at Auschwitz, where he took the place of another prisoner condemned to die, but few people know that the root of the spiritual life that produced this heroic act of charity was precisely his consecration to Mary. While still a seminarian at Rome he composed an act of consecration to Mary which became the charter of his whole life and the foundation of the Marian movement he founded, the Militia of the Immaculate. He himself describes Mary as his “idée fixe,” and endeavors to make her become the same for everyone else. Thus he writes to his Brothers: We live for an “idée fixe”–if someone wishes to call it that– voluntarily chosen and very much loved: the Immaculate! It is for her that we live, that we work, that we suffer, and that ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org we want to die. We desire with our whole soul to implant this “idée fixe” in the hearts of all.3 In this act of consecration, the saint explicitly states that its ultimate end is the establishment of the kingdom of Christ. In the second part of the consecration, after having offered himself entirely to Mary, he adds: Also, if it pleases Thee, use all that I am and have without reserve...in order that in Thy immaculate and merciful hand I might become an instrument fit for making Thee known and increasing Thy glory...in order that in this way the most sweet reign of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus might be extended as much as possible.4 The whole life of the saint was nothing but a living out in practice of this act of consecration, a realization of his ideal, his “idée fixe.” Near the end of his life, he writes in a beautiful prayer at the beginning of a book he was preparing on the Immaculate5: Grant that I might praise Thee, O Most Holy Virgin. Grant that I might praise Thee with my effort and my personal sacrifice. Grant that I might live, work, suffer, be consumed, and die for Thee, for Thee alone. Grant that I might lead the whole world to Thee.6 Let us look briefly then at the life of this man who gave himself entirely to the task of leading “the whole world” to the Immaculate in order that “the most sweet reign of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus might be extended as much as possible.” Let us remember also that he not only gave his life to this end, but also, as he says in his act of consecration, his eternity as well: “...deign to do with me, with my whole life, death and eternity, whatever most pleases Thee.”7 Seeing how our Lady has used the life and the death of St. Maximilian in such a marvelous way for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, we can be sure that she will not stop now, and that, according to his wish, she will use his eternity as well, and perhaps in a way even of Christ Throu gh Mar y St. Maximilian K o l b e T PAR 3 E N O F r . A l b e r t , O . P. still more spectacular. There is an interesting talk that the saint gave at the very beginning of his apostolate in Poland, where he speaks of how certain saints (like St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, for example) and even our Lord Himself did not see the fruits of their apostolate until after their death: (God) often permits those who love Him to fulfill their desires (to save souls) after their death, to carry out an apostolic activity here on earth, to pray and to work for the salvation and the sanctification of souls.... Sister Theresa of the Child Jesus said: “If I knew that in heaven, after my death, I couldn’t work any longer for the salvation of souls, I would prefer to remain here on earth until the end of the world....” In the same way, we also can nourish the hope that if now we imitate these saints..., if we burn with a desire to save souls, after our death the Immaculate will complete her own work by using us, and even more, it is only then that we will be able to console the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus much more than we have done on earth where, while extending a hand to help others, we must be careful to not fall ourselves.8 So, in [reading] the life of this saint, remember that he is still living, and even much more living than before, and even more desirous to “lead the whole world” to Mary, and more capable too, because now, as he says, he can work “with two hands”! Let us ask him to help us work for this goal too. You are all no doubt familiar with the life of St. Maximilian, so we will be able to pass quickly over certain things that you already know and concentrate on the things that relate more directly to our specific topic, namely, the theme of our pilgrimage and the way in which he can help us bring about the reign of Christ through the Immaculate. Thus, we do not have to stop and recount the famous vision he had of the Blessed Virgin when he was about ten years old in which she offered him the two crowns. Let us simply underline the primordial importance of this event. His mother writes, www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006  in the letter to Niepokalanow where she reveals for the first time this vision: The extraordinary change in the child attested to me the truth of what he said. He was constantly penetrated by it and very often alluded to this martyr’s death that he desired.9 Two years later he enters the minor seminary of the Conventual Franciscans, but he does not know yet if it is there that he will serve the heavenly Lady who appeared to him. Much later he will write about this in a memoir he wrote at the order of his superiors about the origins of the Militia of the Immaculate: At the minor seminary, while we were assisting at Holy Mass in choir, prostrate with our faces on the ground, I promised the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose portrait was over the altar, that I would combat for her. How? I didn’t know, but I was thinking of a fight with material arms, and for this reason, when the time came to enter the novitiate, I confided to the Master of novices my difficulty to enter religious life. He transformed the decision I had made into the obligation to recite every day the “Sub tuum praesidium.” Even now I still continue to recite this prayer every day, even though I know now what was the battle the Immaculate wanted.10 This little incident reveals a very important aspect of Fr. Kolbe: he is a warrior. When he uses the term “knight of the Immaculate” it isn’t just poetry. His fundamental inspiration is to fight for the Immaculate, really fight for her–to the point that he considered this promise an obstacle to entering religious life. The ultimate source of this inspiration goes back to the garden of Eden, when God said to the serpent: “I will put enmities between you and the Woman. You will lie in wait for her heel, but she will crush your head.”11 There is a war between the devil and the Immaculate, a war that will last till the end of time. Archbishop Lefebvre often quoted this text to show that the true Catholic spirit is a spirit of combat. In a retreat he preached to us at Avrillé in 1989, he spoke to us about how this was one of the key errors of the Second Vatican Council. They tied the hands of the priests so that they couldn’t fight anymore. Sent to Rome for his studies, it is there that the Immaculate shows St. Maximilian the form that this battle he must wage for her will take. He writes in the same document just quoted: While at Rome Freemasonry was manifesting itself more and more openly, bringing their banners beneath the windows of the Vatican, with St. Michael the Archangel depicted on their black flag beneath the feet of Lucifer, the idea was born to found an association that would do battle against Freemasonry and the other servants of Lucifer.12 One of his fellow seminarians at that time reports the reflections that Bro. Maximilian made about this: Is it possible that our enemies be so active, to the point where they have the advantage, while we remain idle, occupied at most at just praying, without doing anything? Don’t we have more powerful arms than they do, the protection of heaven and of the Immaculate Virgin? The Immaculate, victorious and triumphing over all heresies, will not cede the place to the enemy who rears up his head if THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org she finds some faithful servants docile to her orders: She will gain new victories greater than anything we can imagine. Certainly the Immaculate has no need of us; but she deigns to make use of us in order to give us the possibility to merit, and also in order to render more astonishing a victory won by such poor persons and with means which, according to the world, are so inapt as are the spiritual arms which it mocks and despises.13 Later, when he will have launched the weapon of a truly Catholic press against the Freemasons in Poland, it will be a veritable war, as he writes to a fellow priest in 1938: Here, thanks to the Immaculate, everything is going better and better. Freemasonry by its various tentacles fights against Niepokalanow with an ever more frenzied fury, but the Immaculate also, using her Niepokalanow, crushes the head of this serpent in ways that are more and more spectacular. Everything happens exactly like in a real battle; constantly new attacks and counterattacks, fears, instinctive agitations, exultations for victories, prayers and thanksgiving addressed to the Immaculate.14 The precise date of the conception of this idea of a spiritual army to fight for the Immaculate is January 20, 1917, which was the 75th anniversary of the apparition of our Lady at Rome to the Jew Alphonsus Ratisbonne and his subsequent conversion. That morning, as the subject of the meditation in common, the rector reads and comments on this apparition, and a light illumines the soul of Bro. Maximilian. One of his companions will testify at the process of beatification: From that moment on, Bro. Maximilian was so convinced and inspired with regard to what he had to do that he spoke to me with a face shining and overflowing with joy about the power of the Virgin Mary manifested in the conversion of Ratisbonne, and he told me, with a smile, that we had to pray in order that she triumph over all heresies and especially Freemasonry.18 During the following months he gathers together a little group of seminarians and obtains the permission of his superiors to found an association. On October 16, 1917, is held the first meeting of this association that he calls the Militia of the Immaculate. He will describe the scene himself in an article written several years later: Four hundred years after the rebellion of Luther and 200 years after the beginnings of Freemasonry,16 in a poor little cell...in Rome, seven young clerics, girded with the cord of St. Francis and armed, on their sides, with spiritual sabers (that is, with rosaries), examine the points of the first statutes of the Militia of the Immaculate. Above them, between two lit candles, was placed a little statue of the Immaculate.17 Bro. Maximilian had written their statutes on a little piece of paper: End: Seek the conversion of sinners, heretics, schismatics, Jews, etc., and especially Freemasons, and the sanctification of all, under the protection and by the intermediary of the Immaculate B.V.M. Conditions: 1) total consecration of oneself to the Immaculate, as an instrument in her immaculate hands; 5 2) wear the miraculous medal. The end, then, is the conversion and sanctification of all, but the means to reach this end is the unlimited consecration of oneself to the Immaculate. The saint explains this in a later writing: He who wishes to consecrate himself to the sanctification of souls must first of all begin with himself. For that, he must begin by approaching closer to the Immaculate in order to receive from her the graces by which, at each moment of his life, he will be able to progress more perfectly in the love of God. He approaches Mary perfectly who gives himself to her as her thing and her property. Thus the first and essential condition: the total offering of oneself to the Immaculate.18 It is clear, then: the consecration to Mary is what characterizes the movement. The saint writes, for example: The essence of the Militia of the Immaculate is the unlimited consecration of oneself to the Immaculate. We must be her servants, sons, slaves, etc., etc., etc. In a word, we must belong to her under every aspect, be hers in the strictest and the most perfect way possible, be, in a certain sense, her herself.19 O Lady, when will the day come when you will reign, sovereign over the hearts of all and of every man in particular?23 Before going on, we must sadly point out that this doctrine of the mediation of all graces of our Lady– which is, we have just seen, the very foundation of the MI–is called into question by the present president of the Militia of the Immaculate in the Conciliar Church, Fr. Galignano. In the preface to a recent book in French on St. Maximilian, he writes: (Mary’s mediation of all graces) does not rest on any explicit text in Scripture nor on any definition or official document of the magisterium of the Church. It is simply a beautiful doctrine, debated among theologians, that is received more and more by the sensibility of the faithful, and that constitutes a problem for modern-day ecumenism, which is attentive to certain susceptibilities.24 THE IMMACULATA, OUR IDEAL Fr. Karl Stehlin, SSPX But why this so great importance attached to Mary? The reason is that Mary has been placed by God Himself as the way which must lead us to Him. She is, in the proper sense of the term, Mediatrix. The saint writes: The end of every man is to belong to God through Jesus, our Mediator with the Father, and to belong to Jesus through Mary, Mediatrix of all graces.20 In saying this he does no more than repeat the teaching of the Church, expressed, for example, by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Octobri Mense in 1891 as follows: Just as no one may approach the eternal Father except by His Son, in a similar way no one may approach Christ except through His Mother. 192pp, softcover, 24 illustrations, The Militia of the Immaculate finds here, then, its StK# 8133 foundation: $16.95 The activity of the Militia of the Immaculate is based precisely on this truth, namely, that the Immaculate is the Mediatrix of all graces, because if this were not true, all our work and all our efforts would be in vain.21 For [he says elsewhere], if the Immaculate weren’t the Mediatrix of all graces, there wouldn’t be any need to conquer the whole world and each soul in particular to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her, because souls could get to heaven by another road.22 That is why the saint often lets out certain complaining sighs, like this one at the beginning of the book he was writing on the Immaculate: O Immaculate!...There are some who, even today, don’t know your name at all....Still others think they have no need of you in order to attain the purpose of their life. There are many who love you to a certain extent, who nourish a certain devotion towards you, but how few are those who, for the love of you, are ready to do anything, to accept labor, suffering, and even the sacrifice of their life? What is the first thing you think of when you hear “St. Maximilian Kolbe”? If it’s “holocaust” or “concentration camp” then you’re a victim of the “St. Max Kolbe, Patron Saint of the Holocaust” crowd. This new book by Fr. Karl Stehlin of the Eastern European District of the Society of Saint Pius X is partly biographical but primarily focuses on St. Maximilian Kolbe’s life-long apostolate of spreading devotion to Our Immaculate Lady following the method of St. Louis de Montfort. Father debunks the typical myths of this so-called “Saint of Ecumenism” and shows his concern with combatting heresy, liberalism, modernism, Freemasonry and the need to convert heretics and Jews. One of the best features of this book is that Fr. Stehlin continually relates Kolbe’s message with the Crisis in the Church...going so far, for example, as to point out how Lumen Gentium makes it nearly impossible for modern Catholics to truly understand the doctrine of this friar-knight of Our Lady. It would take a whole conference to refute all the non-truths contained in these two phrases. Let us limit ourselves to saying that it is simply not true (as we have already seen) that the mediation of Mary “does not rest on any official document of the magisterium.” All the popes, from Leo XIII, whom we have already quoted, up to and including Pius XII, explicitly teach that our Lady is the Mediatrix of all graces. The theologians before Vatican II taught even that to deny this doctrine was at least temerarious25 because of the overwhelming number of witnesses in its favor in Tradition,26 and over 300 bishops at the Council www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • November 2006  expressed the desire that it be solemnly defined as a dogma. This request was refused, however, because of ecumenism. And ever since the new conciliar Church refuses this doctrine for the same reason. That is why Fr. Galignano can make the incredible statement that there is no “official document of the magisterium” that teaches this truth because, for the conciliarists, all the documents before the Council, when their Church came into being, have no value. Five years ago, Pope John Paul II solemnly confirmed this way of acting by refusing a request made to him by a large number of the faithful to define this doctrine. In fact, what happened precisely is that he passed the question on to a congress of Mariology held at that time at the sanctuary which is the destination of our pilgrimage, Czestochowa. The theologians replied without saying a single word either about the teaching of the magisterium before the Council or about the constant witness of Tradition from the fourth century affirming this doctrine. The only two reasons given were: 1) “One must not abandon the theological line followed by Vatican II”; and 2) “The theologians, especially the non-Catholics, were sensitive to the ecumenical difficulties that would be raised by such a definition.”27 Remembering this outrage against our Lady perpetrated at Czestochowa itself, the spiritual heart 1 True Devotion to Mary, n.1. Ibid., n.13. Cf. also n.49, 158, 217, and 262. 3 SK 325, letter to Fr. F. Koziura, March 5, 1931. (SK = Scritti Kolbiani, the critical edition in Italian of the writings of the saint.) 4 For the Italian translation of the original act of consecration, cf. SK 37. The Latin text itself reads, at this point: Utaris etiam, si hoc tibi placet, me toto et totaliter...ut in tua immaculata et misericordissima manu aptum sim instrumentum ad cognitionem tui...excitandam et gloriam tuam quam maxime augendam et ita dulcissimum regnum Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu quam maxime extendendum. 5 The saint was arrested by the Gestapo before the book could be completed. 6 SK 1305. The text was published in the Rycerz Niepokalanej of April 1938, pp.129-30, but the last verse was omitted. 7 “...et de me, de tota vita, morte et eternitate mea, quidquid tibi magis placeat, facere digneris.” 8 SK 1248, which gives the original manuscript of a conference given by the saint on November 15, 1919, to the clerics of the convent of Conventual Franciscans at Cracow. 9 Cited in A. Ricciardi, O.F.M. Conv., Maximilien Kolbe pretre et martyr (Paris: Médiaspaul, 1987), p.25. 10 SK 1278. This text was written in about 1935 when the saint was in Japan, at the order of his superior there, Fr. Czupryk. 11 Gen. 3:15. 12 Ibid. 13 Ricciardi, Maximilen Kolbe, p.59. 14 SK 794, letter to Fr. G. Kolodziejczyk, May 8, 1938. 15 Ricciardi, Maximilen Kolbe, p.62. 16 And he might have added had he known: “at the very moment when Communism was coming to power in Russia.” 17 SK 1277, an unpublished text written in Japan in October 1934 for the 17th anniversary of the foundation of the Militia of the Immaculate. 18 Ricciardi, Maximilen Kolbe, pp.80-81. 19 SK 634, letter to Bro. Salesio Mikolaiczyk, July 28, 1935. 20 SK 1329, text which was prepared for the book the saint was writing on the Immaculate. It was published in the newspaper Maly Dziennik, December 8, 1937. 2 THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org of Poland, let us offer up our pilgrimage in reparation for it, and ask God to permit that soon the Church might finally define this doctrine as a dogma of faith, and thus give to our Lady the honor that is due to her. And in the meantime let us realize the necessity of remaining, in appearance, “outside” the official Church and of raising up parallel structures to continue the tradition of the Church that the conciliarists have abandoned. A perfect example is the establishment of a traditional Militia of the Immaculate, which has been undertaken by Fr. Stehlin. If, as we have just seen, the president of the conciliar Militia denies, or at least puts in doubt, the mediation of our Lady, which St. Maximilian clearly stated to be the foundation of the movement, it is obvious that if the movement is to continue it has to start again, outside the official structure.28 It is a question of simple survival. Our community of Dominicans at Avrillé has had to do the same thing: the conciliarists completely changed the constitutions and abandoned the tradition of the Order, so we had to start again outside their structures. [To be concluded in the December 2006 issue.] Fr. Albert, O.P. is a member of the traditional Dominican monastery at Avrille, France, several of whose members were ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre. He is a professor of Philosophy and Theology. Title page picture taken from the over of The Death Camp Proved Him Real (published by Prow, 1971). 21 Conferences of Fr. Maximilian M. Kolbe, collected by Arnold Wedrowski, O.F.M., Conv., and Innocenty Wojcik, O.F.M., Conv. (Niepokalanow, 1976), p.41. 22 Ibid. p.80. Cf. also SK 1029 (Rycerz Niepokalanej, March, 1923, p.45): “The Militia is founded precisely on this truth” (i.e., her mediation of all graces). 23 SK 1307. 24 Jean-François de Louvencourt, O.C.S.O., Saint Maximilien Kolbe ami et docteur de la prière (Rome: Centro Internazionale “Milizia dell’Immaculata,” 1998), p.8. 25 It is the term employed by Fr. Merkelbach in his Mariologia, p.348: “ad minus temerarium.” 26 A Capuchin Father at Morgon, in France, has collected over 1200 texts of popes, bishops, saints, and theologians from the fourth century on which affirm this doctrine. Merkelbach states that the witness of Tradition for the mediation of Mary is stronger than the evidence of Tradition for her Assumption, which was, nevertheless, defined as a dogma on the basis of this evidence (since neither for it is there an “explicit text” in Scripture that affirms it). 27 L’Osservatore Romano, French edition, June 24, 1997, p.9. 28 In a conference given to his Brothers December 31, 1938, St. Maximilian himself seems to foresee the treason of those who were to come after him. The whole conference could be quoted, but we will simply cite a few lines: And even if wise and learned theologians come and preach wise and sublime things, but teach you something else than what I have taught you, don’t believe them. And even if–I don’t know how–saints come who are saints four times over, if they teach you something else, don’t believe them....Listen to what St. Paul says in his letter to the faithful: ‘Even if an angel of heaven were to come and teach you something other than what I have taught you, let him be anathema!’ (Gal. 1:8-9). In the same way I repeat to you, if someone rises up among you who does not want to honor the most holy Mother in a special way, if he dissolves the close link that unites us to the Immaculate and teaches you something else than what I have taught you, let him be anathema....We believe that the Immaculate exists and that she leads us to our Lord Jesus Christ, and if someone teaches otherwise, let him be anathema! Let him be anathema! Konferencje Swietego Maksymiliana Marii Kolbego (Niepokalonow: Wydawnecetwo, 1990), n.204, pp.322-34. 1911-2006  Mother Herlinda, O.S.F. Reverend Mother Mary Herlinda Mccarty was born in Chickasaw, Oklahoma, on January 22, 1911, with the given name of Linda. Her parents were Claude Sylvester McCarty and Agnes Lorena McCarty, née Lee. She was especially proud of the family connection with the famous Civil War hero Robert E. Lee, second cousin to her maternal grandfather. Her father’s side of the family claimed a connection with the infamous Billy the Kid, whose surname was McCarty. Her family traveled much during her childhood—she told of traveling in her uncle’s saddlebag on a horse across the prairies of Colorado at the age of six months, and the same trip in a covered wagon some years later. Linda McCarty became friends with some Catholic neighbors, and a playmate took her to Benediction and May Crowning. She had never before seen statues; there were flowers and candles flickering everywhere, and when the altar boy rang the bells as the priest raised the monstrance, she thought the sound of the bells came from the monstrance itself! She said it seemed like Fairyland to a little girl. She wanted to learn everything she could about the Catholic Faith. At the age of ten her mother made the decision to place her in a Catholic boarding school in Denver, Colorado, and she soon asked to be received into the Church. She was baptized on May 19, 1923, with the name of Theresa Amata. She made her first Holy Communion on May 20, 1923, and was confirmed the next day, receiving the confirmation name of Fidelis. She did not know that her confirmation name meant “Faithful,” but the name proved to be prophetic. By the time she reached the sixth grade, she wished to enter the convent, but her pastor told her she must wait. She prayed that if she did not have a vocation, that God would give her one, and eventually she entered the community which had educated her, the Franciscan Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, now known as the Wheaton Franciscans. When the time came to submit suggestions for her religious name, she asked her mother what name she should give. Her mother told her that she couldn’t think of a name she liked better than Linda. Sister told her Superior about it, www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006  Mother Herlinda (far left) at the Sacred Heart Orphanage, Pueblo, Colorado, in the early 1930’s. She would later become Superior of the house. (Right) In 1952, Sr. Herlinda particpated in the groundbreaking ceremony for the annex addition to Sacred Heart Home. and when her name was announced, she became Sr. Mary Herlinda of the Sorrowful Mother. (St. Herlinda was a Benedictine abbess.) When Sr. Herlinda told one of the “laundry Sisters,” she laughed, saying, “Oh, they just put a patch on it!” Mrs. McCarty appreciated the gentle tact of the community: Sister remained “HerLinda.” Sr. Herlinda completed her high school education after her entrance into the community, and in the course of time attained a bachelor’s degree in education as well as studying for a master’s degree in theology. Her perpetual vows were taken on May 19, 1933, exactly ten years after her baptism. During her years as a teaching Sister before the changes of Vatican II, Sr. Herlinda was sent on many assignments, more than once as Superior, serving in such places as Wauconda, Wisconsin; Raymond, Iowa; Denver, Colorado; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Pueblo, Colorado. Her first assignment was to teach in the same school she had attended as a child, in the same classroom. Her favorite class to teach was fourth grade, and her favorite subject was religion. She had constructed in her classrooms a miniature altar with meticulously crafted tabernacle, altar cards, vestments, and everything needed to teach the children about the Holy Mass. One of her fellow teachers remarked, “Sister, your students won’t remember you. But they will remember what you taught.” However, some of her students remembered her very well, and that remembrance later would have some important consequences. The “spirit of Vatican II” brought accelerated changes into the religious life. Updating and gradual elimination of the Franciscan habit seemed to represent further serious changes such as discontinued observance of silence, cafeteria meals replacing community meals THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org In the first of the two pictures directly below, Sr. Herlinda is pictured with her blood sister, Alene, in the 1940’s. In the second picture beneath it, the two were visiting each other again in 1987. By this time, Mother Herlinda’s mother, her sister Alene, and her two brothers all had been received into the Catholic Church.  Sr. Herlinda giving haircuts to orphan boys in 1952. in the refectory, Sisters living in apartments rather than in the convent itself. These “life-style” changes were accompanied by changes in prayer practices, modernization of the Mass, and on the part of some Sisters in the community, experimentation with Eastern mysticism. After her years of teaching, Sr. Herlinda spent several years on assignment in Rome, Italy, where she was relatively unaffected by many of these trends, but after her return to the United States, troubled by the modernization of her religious community, Sister spent three years in exclaustration. Returning to the Wheaton Motherhouse for knee surgery, after recovery she and another Sister spent three years of volunteer work at Oak Park Hospital in the Chicago area. Recalled to the Motherhouse, she spent several years in soulsearching and discussion with her superiors, as it became Mother Herlinda receives a visit at the orphanage from her mother, Agnes, in the 1950’s. Four years before she would relocate herself to the Society’s Queen of Angels Priory in Dickinson,Texas, with Fr. Pulvermacher (1997), Mother Herlinda drew this tightrope sketch. Is this how religious of conscience see themselves when balancing between Catholic Tradition and NewChurch? 10 (Right) In 1995, Mother Herlinda, now 82 years old, volunteered to teach catechism at a Catholic school near Wheaton, Illinois, to the fourth graders pictured here. Here she had prepared the children for a Feast of the Presentation Candlemas celebration.Two years later she would be collaborating with the Society of Saint Pius X. (Below) A drawing by Mother Herlinda from the 1980’s gives the impression of a coming crisis. Fr. Heidt assists Mother Herlinda. increasingly clear that she and the officials of her community held different beliefs about the practice of religious life and the practice of the Catholic Faith itself. According to Donna Steichen, in her book Ungodly Rage (Ignatius Press, 1991), “enlightenment” classes presented by one of the Wheaton Franciscans at the Motherhouse included studies in the Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Indian and Wiccan “traditions” and rituals and...the I Ching, a Chinese fortunetelling system. Sr. Gabriele explained her quintessentially New Age motives: We no longer have the luxury of a leisurely religious search. We are in the process of unfolding a new human identity, and in the balance hangs our ability of successfully navigate our initiation as planetary people. The convergence is upon us as surely as the evolution of the species. (p.251) According to Steichen, another Wheaton Franciscan spent time at community expense in India going from one ashram to another, finally returning to the United States to establish an ashram offering a variety of “spiritual services,” the Holy Mass notably absent from the list. Sr. Herlinda, acutely aware of these and other activities sponsored by her community, did not remain silent. Her differences with the Wheaton Franciscans intensified when a former student of hers introduced her to the facts about the Society of St. Pius X. She began to attend Mass at the SSPX chapel in Chicago. Her community did not approve. THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org Professed Franciscan Sisters renew their vows privately during their yearly Retreat. Sr. Mary Joseph joined Reverend Mother Herlinda, who was bedridden, for this simple and beautiful act of devotion. 11 Fr. Jean Violette heads a procession of Franciscans, Society Sisters, priests, and faithful of St. Mary’s, taking Mother Herlinda’s body to its resting place in Our Lady of Peace Cemetery, St. Mary’s, Kansas. Mother Herlinda renews her vows for the last time before her death, received by Fr. Christopher Pieroni. By 1996, she had reached the point of departure. She made arrangements with Fr. Peter Scott to leave Wheaton, Illinois to seek refuge at the SSPX priory in Dickinson, Texas, where there was a convent serving as a refuge for Sisters from different communities. She arrived in January of 1997, and said that she was filled with a joy that never left her. Toward the end of 1999, on the advice of Fr. Carl Pulvermacher O.F.M., Cap. (R.I.P. 2006, see The Angelus, August, 2006), Fr. Eugene Heidt contacted Sr. Herlinda with the idea of forming a new community of Franciscan teaching Sisters for tradition. Her initial reaction was that she was too old, but Fr. Heidt convinced her that she still had much to offer, and in February of 2000, she moved to Silverton, Oregon. The fledgling community soon had younger members joining, and Sr. Mary Herlinda became Mother Mary Herlinda, governing the Franciscan Sisters of Christ the King until February 2003, under the direct guidance of Fr. Heidt. The Community moved to its present location in Kansas City, Missouri under their direction in November of 2002. In February 2003, Mother Herlinda retired from her post as Superior to be cared for by the Sisters she had helped to form, and reached the age of 95. She received Extreme Unction a month before death, and Viaticum on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. By the next day, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady (her title day), she was no longer able to receive Holy Communion. She passed peacefully into Eternity on September 17, 2006, the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. Requiescat in pace. For information about the Franciscan Sisters (or to receive their newsletter): Sr. Mary Joseph of the Child Jesus Franciscan Convent of Christ the King 1409 E. Meyer Blvd. Kansas City, MO 64131 Phone: 816-333-1463 12 I sank into the cushions of a sofa that rested against the back wall of the funeral parlor and tried to make myself invisible. I failed, of course, and was soon recognized and drawn into labored small talk by a collection of distant relations whom I see once every few years when someone in the family dies or marries; but before being pressed into their society I had been afforded a few unmolested moments during which I was able to survey the scene. my children, their marital status, our professions and where we are domiciled, etc. Everything except how many bathrooms our houses contain and what capital improvements have been made since the last property valuation. I find this sort of thing unbearably tedious. Of course, I respond in kind, at a loss to know what else to say or do. When I first entered the funeral parlor and prayed at the casket containing the cosmetically enhanced If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. (Mt. 6:22) Thoughts At a Funeral E d w i n Many of the bereaved I recognized. They appeared on the whole a jolly bunch, unrestrained in the volume and volubility of their conversation, and most were casually attired: one might even say, in the case of certain young women, scandalously attired. The walls of the room were paneled in pale oak and punctuated at intervals with gilt-framed oil paintings or prints of the sort one sees at Thomas Kinkade galleries. There appeared to be a running theme in these paintings: the voyage. One featured a ship in full sail on the high seas; another, a young boy poised on a road that descended from some uplands onto broad plains that stretched far into the distance. The idea, I suppose, was to illustrate life not as an abrupt terminus but as a continuing journey. The colors were rich–too rich–and the texture of the images so thick as to make them appear to be almost in relief rather than on flat canvas. The artwork put me in mind of jigsaw puzzles, which often feature such garish pictures. I have never liked jigsaw puzzles. The satisfaction some derive from reconstructing a picture that has been cut into fragments I can somewhat appreciate: we do like to make sense of things, to bring the bits and pieces of our experience and perception into a recognizable image. And, indeed, contemporary life increasingly resembles a jigsaw puzzle, which, when properly assembled, yields something along the lines of modern art: more Klee than Kinkade, or perhaps more Rorhshach than Rembrandt. I was musing in this vein when my relations hailed me and began to pepper me with questions of the sort one finds on census forms: my age, the ages of ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org f a u s t remains of my relative, I faulted myself for having postponed my intention to visit him during his illness. Visiting the sick, I recalled, is a corporal work of mercy enjoined on me by my faith, and I had failed in the requisite charity. I did speak to him on the telephone from time to time: brief, awkward conversations, for imminent death made commenting on passing trivialities ridiculous, and his alienation from religion rendered sensible talk impossible. It is a fact that without God at the center of our lives, very little we can say to one another has any point. This becomes unavoidably obvious when someone is about to shuffle off the mortal coil and those near and dear to him search their brains for suitable subjects of conversation and come up empty. When my relations and I had completed the exchange of essential data, we lapsed into an uneasy silence, broken now and then by a banal observation about the weather or other topics of pressing interest. I began to think that not only the pictures, but the talk resembled a jigsaw puzzle. If one could collect these fragments of human sound and piece them together, what sort of picture might emerge, I wondered. Would an otherwise undiscerned but unified vision of life take shape, or would they coalesce into something gaudy and sentimental, more cartoon than serious composition; or might all of these vapid expressions resolve themselves into a modern abstraction: clashing angular forms with no objective meaning, or melting swirls of color that fail to achieve definition and retreat into chaos? Most of the people that I knew at the wake had been Catholics educated in the faith before Vatican 13 II. Few of them now practiced that faith. Their deportment demonstrated how far they had drifted from the sensus fidei in which they had been raised. The silence and respect and sorrow and wonder that had been usual during the viewings and funerals I recalled from my youth were conspicuously absent; in their place was a casual coarseness: loud voices, raucous laughter, a restless milling about. That present among us was the body of man whose soul had passed from time to eternity and received judgment before its Creator was a fact that appeared to make little impression on the putative mourners. It was as though they were determined that nothing, not even death, would be permitted to shake their complacency. Worldlings through and through; sensual and secular in their marrow, they would admit nothing sacred, nothing transcendent into their midst. Mortality they regarded as a morbid thought they should refuse to entertain. As the wake neared its conclusion, the funeral director, straining to be heard above the noise of the room, asked that everyone give his attention to a woman who wished to say a few words before we proceeded to the church for the Mass of the Resurrection. The eulogist was a family friend who offered some anecdotes intended to illustrate the virtues of my late relative. She described how he had enjoyed fishing and playing Trivial Pursuit, and reminisced about a group trip to Las Vegas during which he had made a killing at the slot machines. In her peroration, she anticipated the homily by assuring us that his soul was in Heaven. It seemed an odd conclusion to draw from her preceding remarks, as though playing the slots in Vegas had salvific value. We then were invited to file past the remains one last time. There would be no burial: the body was to be cremated. The noise increased to an unseemly level during this rite of leave-taking, and I found it impossible to compose my mind to say a prayer until I had exited the funeral parlor and moved away from the crowd. I then sat inside my car, undecided about what to do next. There was to be a Mass, and then a luncheon. I would be expected at both, but the prospect of enduring hours more of the sort of thing I had suffered through in the funeral parlor overwhelmed me. I knew that the Mass would be a canonization service during which some chirpy priest who had never met the departed (he had not attended Church for several decades) would declare definitively that my relative was among the saints and angels, and try to strike the upbeat tone that is de rigueur now at “Catholic” funeral Masses. The luncheon would follow and become a running recitation of the old family anecdotes that are dusted off for such occasions. We would also be eating our chicken entrees while the body was being incinerated. I could not face such an agenda and found myself driving home instead of to the local parish church. I passed about an hour on the highway, alone and pondering what changes time had wrought in the manners and morals of my family, and in me. In years past, I would have visited my relative in his illness. What alteration had I undergone that made me indifferent to such an obligation? When I got home, I slumped into a chair in the family room and noticed on the edge of a bookshelf the stack of pale green flash cards I had once used to teach my children aspects of the faith. I shuffled through them until I found the list of the corporal works of mercy. I could no longer recite them from memory, nor could I recall so many other of the things I had once known by heart. I looked at the cards one by one, and it occurred to me that all of my older relatives I had seen that day had also once been familiar with their contents. We used to have to memorize a great many things in Catholic schools, especially as preparation for Confirmation: the works of mercy, corporal and spiritual; the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost; the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost; the four cardinal virtues; the three theological virtues; the four sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance; the four principal effects of original sin; the distinction between actual and sanctifying grace; the sacraments of the dead and the sacraments of the living, etc. Most of my relations who no longer practice the faith had spent 12 years in Catholic schools memorizing these things. To what end, I wondered? Why did all of this knowledge fail to influence the conduct of their lives? They were certainly not passing on what they had learned to their children. But what had they really learned? I looked down at the cards, which now lay in my lap in a jumbled heap, and the idea of the jigsaw puzzle recurred. So many bits and pieces of the faith had been so carefully arranged, then impressed on the minds of so many children, who parroted them through so many years; yet so few seemed to have come into any lasting and vital relation to the faith through this process. Why? All of the villainies and vagaries perpetrated by ecclesial miscreants during the past 40 years go some way toward explaining the falling away of the laity, but the evil was worked with such evident ease that it would seem there must have been a predisposition toward it. How deeply implanted could the faith have been for it to be peeled away so effortlessly? The question is one of great moment for those of us who are trying to hand on the faith to our children. St. Augustine says that we cannot love what we do not know, so it is essential, of course, to know the faith. The things we memorized should have been memorized and must continue to be learned by heart by our children. But that is just a beginning. To know is one thing; to love, quite another. Too few Catholics who knew the faith genuinely loved the faith. If this were not so, the depredations that followed Vatican II would have met with such entrenched resistance that www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 14 those who were behind them would have retreated and recanted. But many of us raised in the pre-Vatican II Church learned the faith in bits and pieces, some of which we fitted together, but most of which we carried around as fragments in our pockets for a time, then placed in a drawer of memory, where they lay, disconnected and forgotten. Accepting a radically different picture of the faith proved not at all, or not very, unsettling, because few of us had a coherent and compelling image of it impressed on our minds and hearts. Those who were, and continue to be, responsible for the wreck of the faith maintain that their new religion is but a return to the primitive and animated Christianity that had been superseded by a deadening formalism. Such a claim, fraudulent and self-serving as it may appear, should not be rejected without extracting from it what modicum of truth it may contain. Obviously, the current corruption of morals and doctrine that issues from the Vatican and the chancery offices like a breath of the plague cannot be considered a revitalization of the faith along the lines of the ancient Church. It is clearly a product of modern decadence. But has it superseded a deadening formalism? To some degree, it has. The enemies of the faith usually follow what St. Ignatius describes as Satan’s standard battle tactic: they survey the edifice of the Church in search of places where the structure is weak and most vulnerable to attack. The Church before the Council did suffer, as it is prone to suffer at all times, from a certain amount of what might be called pharisaism: too much emphasis on external observances to the detriment of the spirit of the faith. We had priests who gabbled their Latin and children who unthinkingly recited their catechism and parishioners who mechanically attended Sunday Mass. And although the old adage applies–abuse does not take away proper use–those who wished to tear down the old edifice and erect a new one deliberately confused abuse with proper use until the two appeared inseparable. Thus, we who are now styled Traditionalists are caricatured as the heirs and wouldbe propagators of a moribund formalism that elevates the accidental at the expense of the essential. How do we respond? Our most effective rejoinder, it seems to me, is to avoid all degrees of pharisaism in our personal conduct and in our teaching of the faith. We must get rid of the jigsaw puzzle approach to Catholicism. Memorized lists and creedal formulas and ritual obligations provide a structure, like the outline of forms in a painting, but it is the animation of the structure, like the laying on of color, that imparts significance and unity to the whole. Our faith is the most beautiful of all beautiful things, but it will only appear so to us when we see it in its full splendor, that is, when we see it in the person of Christ. Not long ago, I met an old acquaintance who had moved from the Northeast to the rural South. He told me of his esteem for his Protestant neighbors, who, despite the manifold errors of their faith, made THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org a genuine effort to be “Christian,” as they understood it. He sighed his regrets that they seemed more committed to an imitation of the Christ they posited than were many traditional Catholics to the true Lord. Such an indictment is not without cause, yet, to an extent, such a failing is understandable, for we are in a pitched battle to defend the integrity of doctrine; and we run hither and yon to this and that spot in the fortress where the enemy has made a breach, and our spiritual life can become a series of skirmishes of such preoccupying intensity that we sometimes forget the purpose of the war and the face of our commander. But we fight for Christ. And we win, not so much by encountering the enemies of the Church, both within and without, but by becoming immersed in the love of our Savior, so that, as St. Paul says, we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. I submit myself to correction in the following matter to those who may know better, but it appears to me that there are two ways to come by knowledge of the faith: by learning and by loving. The two are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, but there are simple souls who acquire great depths of perception more by means of piety than study. The devout layman, innocent of all erudition but unswervingly loyal to a daily meditative recitation of the rosary, is likely to have greater rectitude of judgment than a heavily credentialed theologian, at Fribourg or Tubingen or Rome, who never prays. Likewise, one can perform the works of mercy through the impulse of grace without being able to recite them from memory. I am not, of course, counseling the abandonment of catechetical instruction. We must know the faith and teach it. But replicating the sort of pharisaism that my lapsed Catholic relatives may have represented is a thing to be avoided. Occasionally, some traditional Catholic parents will express their dismay that a child raised in a scrupulously correct manner has abandoned his faith as an adult. Where did we go wrong, they wonder? Perhaps, they didn’t go wrong at all, for there are such things as the mystery of iniquity and free will; but perhaps they did go wrong, and the faith they imparted was more formal than fervent. The moral strictures of our creed appear crippling to the those who would walk with the times, as all young people are tempted to do; and it is only through love that that which appears binding becomes liberating. To know the faith without loving the faith is to risk losing the faith. We may keep our flash cards, by all means, and continue to teach our children the articles of faith, but let us never forget charity, which is Christ. And the only way to teach Christ is to live in Christ. So, to make our children saints, it is only necessary that we become saints ourselves. Charity truly begins at home. Ed Faust lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children where he attends the traditional Latin Mass. He has written for The Angelus, Catholic Family News, and The Latin Mass among other publications. 15 HE SAID She said M r . D e n n i s M r s . H a m m o n d C o l l e e n H a m m o n d This is the first of a new regular contribution featuring the male and female understandings of real-life situations encountered in the sacrament of matrimony. All with a smile, of course, but with a purpose and lesson as well. Tickets, please! Autumn’s crisp air, the leaves crackling under my feet, and the smell of pumpkin pie baking always bring back the memory of our first outing to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. I had wanted season tickets for years, but at the beginning of our marriage I didn’t make that explicitly clear to Dennis. I didn’t think I should have to! Dennis didn’t care about the Symphony. I knew that. But as a young and immature woman, I selfishly thought that if he really loved me he would know how much I wanted season tickets and would purchase them for me…um, I mean us. Obviously, at the time I did not have a full grasp on our supernatural mission of getting each other to heaven. Growing up, our family would listen to classical music, visit museums, and—because my Dad was an athlete, coach, and official—we’d go to an occasional sporting event. My love of the Arts and the Faith was fostered at an early age—especially music, which touches the soul in a distinct way. I always feel at peace and relaxed listening to classical music—especially Bach or Mozart. The waves of melody uplift my soul, creating a peace I would www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 16 never find in the cacophony of noise and busyness of the world. In college, my friends and I would go to the theater and museums, and we’d also attend athletic events. At the time, I felt that my leisure time was well rounded. Then I met and fell in love with Dennis. The sports fanatic. Through the grace of God, I’m now a Catholic. But I wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up that way. Religion was an afterthought in our home—if a thought at all. Sports and recreation were our idols. I whiled away many autumn Sundays engrossed in the NFL. My ‘liturgical year’ revolved around the NFL, NBA, March Madness, the World Series, etc. No museums. No theater. Any musical or “arts” exposure was strictly pop culture. In fact, about the only exposure I had to classical music was the Looney Tunes production of “Marriage of Figaro” starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. To say that I was secularly and inwardly focused would be an understatement. Because I loved Dennis so much and wanted for him to be happy, I put my needs on the back burner. I focused all my energy on making him happy and I thought he would do the same! But I didn’t realize one important fact: women have the God-given gift of intuition. Men do not. Reality check: God gave many gifts to men, but intuition wasn’t one of them. If a man wants or needs something, he will ask for it. Using himself as a point of reference, Dennis assumed that if I didn’t ask for help he must be fulfilling all of my needs. While I was anticipating his needs and trying to fill them, I assumed he was doing the same. He wasn’t. I was annoyed. I did things for him with the expectation of receiving things in return. I sure wasn’t taking the opportunity to grow in charity. During those first years of marriage, my resentment built. I’m embarrassed to admit this now, but I used to “test” Dennis’s love by purposefully not asking for things I wanted…or needed. Childish, I know. I remember one weekend in December when I returned from grocery shopping and saw my beloved engrossed in a football game. I was already annoyed that he hadn’t gone to the supermarket with me. “I bought a bit more at the store than I intended!” I hinted. “The trunk is full!” “Ummm….” he replied, absorbed in a fourth-andgoal play. Fumbling my bags noisily, I tried again. “Must be 20 bags out there…” This time he didn’t even reply. Aggravated, I flumped the bags down on the counter and stormed between him and the television set back out to the car. His eyes never left the THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org screen. By the time I came in with a second load, a commercial was on. Exasperated, I pleaded, “Can you please help me unload the car?” When I finally asked for his help and support, it wasn’t a request. It was a demand. Guess what? Men don’t respond well to demands. Frankly, who does? If I had been upfront and asked in a straightforward manner, he probably would have said, “Sure! But this is an important play. I’ll get it all for you on the next commercial.” But because of my oblique references, that never happened. Looking back at our early marriage, it’s amusing and unfortunate how many times I wasn’t frank. But in my defense, being ‘blunt’ isn’t innate for most women—we need to learn it! After a while, I was tired of sports and longed for a trip to a museum. A night at the Symphony. Some Shakespeare in the Park. I hinted around it. I alluded to it. I left Fort Worth Symphony brochures on the table. Nothing. Finally, I realized my strategy wasn’t working. I called Bass Hall and got two tickets to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. “If Dennis doesn’t want to go,” I fumed, “I’ll take a girlfriend!” After a bit of cajoling on my part and grumbling on his, Dennis finally agreed to go to the Symphony with me. Ah, the symphony! At the time I would rather have faced down a grizzly bear than spend time (and money) on symphony tickets. I had nothing against classical music; it just wasn’t high on my priority list. Actually, it wasn’t even on the list. But fortunately, spending time with my wife was a high priority. I’m no fool. I say this not because of the wayward but all-too-popular thinking that goes as follows: “Better do what your wife tells you or she’ll make it miserable for you.” No, I simply enjoy my wife’s company. I do even more now as we’ve grown through the years. But, oh that Symphony–where’s the grizzly?! Growing up, my idea of fun revolved around sports and recreation. I would feel ridiculously out of place at a Symphony. I finally relented. We got tickets (actually Colleen did) and onward we went to the very impressive Bass Hall in beautiful Fort Worth. It is quite a place, and I must admit that the Symphony was not anywhere near the ordeal that a bear would be. Over time it actually grew on me and has become for us a welcomed, even cherished evening out together. After the initial expedition to the Symphony, the ride home revealed a somewhat subdued wife. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Oh, nothing,” she sighed. Hmmm. Millions of men have heard that sigh and “nothing.” Translation: it is something. Now, how to find out what that something really is. After some small talk and a bit of coaxing, she told me that it hurt that she had to be the one to get 17 tickets, and it felt like I was just tagging along. I was simply going because she had worn me down. It would have all been perfect if it had been my idea, and if I’d taken the initiative to purchase the tickets and arrange the evening. Huh? Head scratching ensued. Mine, of course, as she knew exactly what she meant. Her feelings were that if I loved her and understood her, I could and should anticipate her needs and take the initiative. No real woman wants a puppy dog for a husband. She’ll never be able to respect him! We want a virtuous man to be in charge without being an ogre. Growing up, all I heard was the false mantra, “I am woman, hear me roar!” I was encouraged to go into battle and conquer the world. For many years, I did just that. But deep in my soul, I wasn’t fulfilled by conquering the work world. I had grasped the ‘brass ring’ and it wore me out. I was weary of being the supervisor and longed for a virtuous man to lead me! I think even Gloria Steinem longs for a man she can admire, trust, and, yes, even follow. So when Dennis agreed to go to the Symphony with me I thought, “So what?” I was resentful that it had to be my idea. It was almost as if to say, “If it’s my idea and you go with me, your participation doesn’t count as a loving act.” I desired an evening at the Symphony for years. But what did I do that night? Full of pride, I sulked. I moped. I pouted. The weather wasn’t the only thing chilly that evening. On the drive home, I was staring out the window at the barren trees, feeling empty and sorry for myself when Dennis gently wheedled out of me the reason for my sulking. When I poured out my frustration, he was stunned. Even though he thought it was “good enough” to come with me, I was dissatisfied because he didn’t come up with the idea first. I wasn’t asking for clairvoyance. I just wanted him to give some forethought, support, and attention to the activities that I enjoy. I didn’t think I was asking too much. After all, I reasoned, my girlfriends are all that way… WHOA!! I am usually not ultra tuned-in to the needs of others. And most of the men I know are not, either. We as a collective have to be asked to do things, and then we jump in full force. But help without being asked? Anticipate someone else’s needs? Now we’re in foreign territory! The good news is that masculinity isn’t mutually exclusive with anticipating the needs of others. Countless saints have proven this over the ages. The difficulty of this particular foreign territory is that as men we typically ask when we need something. Women in general will anticipate and offer their help. “But I didn’t ask for your help,” is a thought that often went through my mind when Colleen offered to lend a hand with something. I found it intrusive. And if she didn’t ask me for something, then she obviously didn’t want for anything, right? But I could not escape the idea that I should be able to better anticipate and be more attentive to my beloved, not to mention others. I asked for her to be more open and specific about asking for what she needed and, in turn, I would work harder at being more selfless and focused on her and others. I can tell you, it isn’t easy for me. All too often I fall into the “Don’t Ask” trap. If she’s not asking, then there’s nothing wrong or needed. Our warm and candid conversation on the ride home that evening put our marriage on the right track. We were finally starting to grow in virtue. I strove to be straightforward about my needs and feelings with him, and Dennis endeavored to be more perceptive to my needs and to lend a hand without waiting to be asked. But there was more work to be done. Fighting Original Sin is a lifetime struggle! And that’s really what we’re up against. It’s not Dennis and I fighting each other. It’s our individual fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The tendency toward complacency and the temptation to coast in our spiritual lives (and in our marriage) is always present. It is critical for us to stay in tune with each other. Fighting out of the trap and staying out of it is, interestingly enough, tightly linked with living a sacramental life and frequent prayer. Amazing, eh? And that old cliché of “communication is the key to a successful marriage” is a cliché for a reason. It may be overly familiar–even hackneyed–but it’s correct. My grandmother told me more than once, “Dennis, God gave you two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion!” True communication, whether with my spouse, children, parents, siblings, or colleagues at the office, is all about listening. Hearing is one thing. Listening is completely another. You can tell what people say by hearing, but you can only tell the underlying meaning by listening. I’ve learned to focus intently on Colleen without distractions. If she wants to talk, I’ll make sure there won’t be any disruptions, and I’ll put down anything that I’m reading and give her eye contact. Usually, we try to make time when the kids are in bed, or we’ll go for a walk together. And we make an effort to do it every day so it’s a habit, and not something that is turned on or off once or twice a month like a lawn mower. For me, I didn’t really understand how to read and anticipate Colleen’s (or others’) needs and wishes until I learned to listen without distraction. Putting www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 18 away distractions, whether material or mental, can be a challenge in our busy lives. But invariably, giving someone my undivided attention is a benefit for both of us. Growing closer to my wife so I can help her get to heaven should be at the top of my list! So that’s the ears; now for the mouth. Many times the listener, when they hear (or is it fear?) silence, immediately jumps in with the solution. Or what they feel is the solution. This seems especially true for us men. We want to be ‘Mr. Fix It’ or ride in on the charger and save the day. Colleen will sometimes say to me, “I need to vent, and I don’t need you to solve the problem!” Hmmm, could it be that I jumped to a hasty “solution” a time or two? Or three? I’ve learned to listen and ask leading and thought provoking questions. It takes practice–more practice than perfecting a jump shot or hitting a nine-iron. It’s also a lot more rewarding. I’ll ask, “How did that make you feel?” or “Tell me about that specifically…” or “What happened then?” because that’s what she needs. Talking things out for Colleen is the answer–or even the solution in many cases. And I know that by attentive listening and engaging with good questions, our communication is a positive lever for spiritual growth for both of us. On the flip side, there are times when the last thing I want or need is questioning. After a full work day and commute–especially a challenging one–the one question I dreaded, almost feared was “How was your day”? I can feel the chill down my spine just writing it! After a day of diapers and baby-talk, I was ready to pop like a jack-in-the-box. By the time Dennis came home, I needed adult conversation. What a relief when he walked through the door and I could ask him about his day. Oops! I learned to be considerate to Dennis’s needs. Most days, he preferred to enter his castle, kiss everyone hello, and then to be left alone for a bit to change clothes, wind down, and refocus. Most days, it took less time for him to decompress than it did for rice to cook. However, sometimes he needed a full evening to hole up and recuperate. Either way, by the evening Rosary he was usually back up to speed. Understanding that the devil can work through our imagination and our emotions, I’ve learned to prevent my passions from taking me for a ride. I no longer imagine what might have gone wrong during his day that caused him to be so withdrawn. Knowing that God gave women the gift of intuition, I’ve learned to distinguish between my hunches and my passions run amok. And Dennis has learned to respect my intuition. THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org To get honesty in discussions with Colleen, I had to put into practice something I learned at a marriage retreat many years ago: Don’t dismiss Colleen’s emotions. Don’t be insensitive to her feelings and intuition. Feelings are neither right nor wrong…they just are! The lines of marital communication and trust will break down at breakneck speed the moment that I dismiss Colleen’s feelings with a careless comment like, “Ahhh, you shouldn’t feel like that,” or “Come on, that is silly!” Hint: don’t try this at home! God created women more in tune with the emotional life, as it comes in handy raising children. As men in Western culture, we have long been taught to fight through, don’t give in to, or even to dismiss our emotions. Who doesn’t remember as a kid getting hurt and hearing, “Big boys don’t cry!” or “Walk it off!” That thought carries with us. Yet society encourages women, for the most part, to go with their feelings. They are not taught to moderate their emotions, but instead to nurture and understand them. Maybe it heightens awareness of others’ needs and hones “woman’s intuition.” But without moderating these emotions, the devil can move in and have a field day. As men, that’s where we come in. We shouldn’t be afraid of “feelings.” Don’t misunderstand. I am not walking around as a blubbering, giddy, hearton-the sleeve, gooey stew of emotions. But I do try to be honest with myself about them. Prudence and moderation must carry the day! In turn, she has learned to assess and temper her sentiments. Helping each other grow in virtue has put a new vitality into our marriage. Instead of doing something with the hope of “getting something in return.” we are learning to walk in each other’s shoes. We are growing in charity, unselfishness, and patience. As a Catholic woman, I endeavor to create a virtuous Catholic home—and to be the heart of that home. Dennis leads the family by example in our religious life, not just his words. As we headed to the Symphony this month, the crisp air reminded me that God can work through something as simple as two tickets to the Symphony to rechart the entire course of a marriage…and a family. Deo gratias! Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Hammond are the parents of four children, the eldest just having entered high school. Dennis is a freelance writer, part-time public speaker, and works in Executive Marketing for IBM. Colleen is the author of the best-selling book Dressing with Dignity. A former On-Camera-Meteorologist for The Weather Channel, model, actress, and Miss Michigan National Teenager, Colleen abandoned her career in television to become a stay-at-home mother (www.ColleenHammond.com). The family lives on ten acres outside Fort Worth, Texas, and assists at the Latin Mass. si si no no THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT let your speech be, “yes, yes,” “no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37) ● November 2006 THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT Reprint #72 A while ago, a reader wrote to Courrier de Rome: Dear Courrier de Rome: I read with great interest your article of September last about our new Pontiff. At last! Indeed, the recommendation to pray for the Holy Father and to show filial respect, as distinguished from the obedience commonly invoked, are well taken, for indeed these are due him a priori and in every instance, even before we see what he says and what he does.... ...It seems to me that the judgment made about the election should be wider than the judgment made about the person elected, about whom we should know the interesting aspects—such as his recognition of the crisis in the Church and his critiques of the liturgical reform—as well as his limitations, in particular his non-Thomistic formation. And I implore the newly elected pope, who has asserted that he desires to apply Vatican II in faithful continuity with Tradition, to emphasize its continuity with acts of the magisterium such as Quanta Cura with its Syllabus of Errors, Aeterni Patris (on the necessity of Thomistic philosophy), Mortalium Animos (against “common way” ecumenism), and Humani Generis (against the “new theology”). It is also necessary to consider the direction of the election. In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger was elected by three or four “more or less conservative” cardinals against the “progressives.” With all the limits of the moderates (the two factions of the conclave were not progressives and traditionalists, (continued on p.20) 19 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT (continued from p.19) but rather progressives and moderates, both of which have liberal Catholicism as their frame of reference), the bloc that supported Cardinal Ratzinger...concentrated on themes such as recognition of the grave problems of the present hour even in the bosom of the Church, desire for greater attention towards doctrine, and the will to prevent any further evolution in a progressive direction.... If we consider that those who elected Benedict XVI were all made cardinals on the criterion of their alignment with the new ecclesial direction, the choice of a candidate whom they knew would meet with strong disapprobation from the world and the Church’s numerous enemies is humanly surprising. These are some considerations that deserve to be met with joy; they give us reason to hope that the diabolical blindness that has weighed on the human element of the Church and paralyzed it since 1960 has begun to lose its grip. For understanding the reality, it is also necessary to take into account the considerable effect that external conditions have upon the Pontiff himself. That is why, on the one hand, I do not know what the real significance of his initial acts is. Cardinal Siri asserted that the discourse outlining the program of Pope John Paul I (Albano Luciani) was in reality the work of the Secretary of State, Cardinal Villot; Paul VI, during his coronation ceremony, declared that he wanted to defend the holy Church against errors, which is not what we observed subsequently (it is clear that he wanted to reassure the “conservatives,” defeated during the conclave); Pope Roncalli did not seem revolutionary during the first years... And it is likely that the reigning Pontiff was also elected thanks to some agreements. On the other hand, we think of the old tactic of “the carrot and the stick.” I was struck by the way some progressives, who had feared this election, hastened to try to gain the ascendancy with the newly elected pope by protests of solidarity. And I was not surprised by the blackmail perpetrated at Cologne by the Franco-German episcopate: if he makes concessions to the traditionalists, then they, the standard-bearers of progressivism, will create a real schism. And what Ratzinger himself said during the enthronement Mass is significant: “Pray for me that I do not flee before the wolves....” What will the pontificate of S.S. Benedict XVI be like? The man Ratzinger, considered by many as a “restorer,” is in reality an oscillating centrist: where will the pendulum stop? It will probably take some time to tell. At present, he seems to be a little less bad than his predecessor: fewer trips, more sobriety, more time devoted to governing the Church; but, as was foreseeable, he still has not broken with the fundamental evils, and limits himself to a moderate reading of Wojtylism.The name he chose also leads one to think of a moderate liberal orientation. In the best of cases, he will be a “transition pope” like John XXIII, but in the opposite direction, and transition implies oscillations... There are some elements that incline us to prudent expectations, and there are unknowns. I appreciated the comment of H.E. Bishop Fellay: when Benedict XVI finds his back to the wall–and reality is pushing him in that direction–he will come to a decision and go in the right direction. But let us pray a great deal to the Blessed Virgin, who is “on our side,” that Pope Ratzinger, who has read the actual Third Secret of Fatima, will not wait for the gangrene to spread before he passes from “extreme evils” to “extreme remedies.” Signed, S. P. We preferred to let some time elapse before responding to this letter, which obliges us to make an assessment, insofar as this is possible at present, of the new pontificate. Let us begin by remarking that...it was permissible for us to prefer to remain silent on the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s passing away without thereby personally failing in our duty to pray for the deceased pope, the pope to be elected, and the new pope. We did not think it opportune to remind our readers of this duty because every Catholic knows, if only by a supernatural “sense,” that he must pray for the Church and for the Pope, and that he must do so 20 all the more as it seems that the object of his prayers seems to be failing, or runs the risk of failing in his very high duties as Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. As regards his first point, our friend will allow us not to share his optimism in the invitation he addresses to the Pope to emphasize the continuity [of the post-conciliar Church] with Tradition, and especially with Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, Mortalium Animos, and Humani Generis. It is not that we think that Benedict XVI does not want to highlight this continuity; we think that he cannot. Subjectively, this is impossible for him ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org because of what our reader tactfully calls his “nonThomistic formation,” and which for our part we do not hesitate to call his “neo-modernist deformation,” strengthened in our judgment by what the same Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his autobiography about the theological studies of his youth, as well as the content of numerous of his works. Objectively, it is impossible for him to highlight any sort of “continuity” between the encyclicals mentioned and the conciliar documents: the opposition between them is such that either one continues to adhere to the first and refuses the latter, or else embraces the latter and abandons the first. And we have as confirmation on this point, if any were needed, Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Principles of Catholic Theology, in which he explicitly calls the conciliar Constitution Gaudium et Spes an anti-Syllabus, and, implicitly, an anti-Pascendi. “the development of Catholic originality” vis-à-vis the Protestant world, in keeping with the Council of Trent.1 Some German bishops warned Pius XII against the seriously negative aspects of the liturgical movement; Pius XII wrote the Encyclical Mediator Dei specifically to condemn the numerous errors of the liturgical movement, errors, he wrote, “touching Catholic faith and ascetical doctrine” (§8), and “approximating to the errors long since condemned” of Protestantism. A disciple of Rahner, H. Vorgrimler, wrote that in Germany the liturgical movement was one of the movements that arose to deliver the Church from the yoke of “the Roman system.”2 All these considerations do not make us pessimistic about the intentions of the new Pope as regards the liturgy, but simply prevent us from becoming too easily enthusiastic. Words and Deeds “Prevented by Affection” Our friend considers as one of the “interesting aspects” of the new pontificate the recognition that there is a crisis in the Church. But we ask him: Did not Paul VI recognize it also? Did he not speak of the “auto-demolition” of the Church, and of the “smoke of Satan” in the temple of God? And what did he do to remedy it? Did he not use his authority rather to favor the demolishers within the Church, and did he not, conversely, strike his faithful children who attempted to resist this ruin. Did not John Paul II also say that the Council must be interpreted in the light of Tradition during the consistory of November 6, 1979, personally telling this to Archbishop Lefebvre and thus raising many hopes? But what happened afterwards? Did he not inaugurate a new notion of Tradition, “living Tradition,” which allowed them to declare the death of mere Tradition, which is not only living but also coherent with itself such that it cannot teach today the contrary of what it taught yesterday? Liturgy As for the liturgy, we know that the new Pope seems to love the beauty and the solemnity of the offices, and that he personally has tried to restore to them a dignity that, with John Paul II, had completely disappeared. We rejoice over it, but we are nonetheless far from attributing to this fact the importance our friend does. We know from the Ratzinger autobiography that in his youth he adhered to the “liturgical movement,” and however simple and sincere this attachment might have been, we shall keep from forgetting that the liturgical movement was one of the “movements of aggiornamento,” having as its goal to “be done with” the Counter-Reformation of the Council of Trent, and to become open to the “separated brethren,” in contradistinction to the Marian movement, devoted, on the contrary, to And assuredly it is a great trial when one whom thou believest to be a prophet, a disciple of prophets, a doctor and defender of the truth, whom thou hast folded to thy breast with the utmost veneration and love, when such a one of a sudden secretly and furtively brings in noxious errors, which thou canst neither quickly detect, being held by the prestige of former authority, nor lightly think it right to condemn, being prevented by affection for thine old master. (Commonitorium, X) These words of St. Vincent of Lerins describe very well the frame of mind about the Pope besetting many Catholics in these sad years. Sincerely attached to the papacy, “prevented by affection” for the person who is, or at least who ought to be, in the highest degree “a doctor and defender of the truth,” these Catholics have a hard time accepting the harsh reality, and the least glimmer of hope suffices to nourish their illusion of a real and radical resolution of the crisis in the Church. We perfectly understand this mentality. But we also understand how much any hope that is not based on the facts of the matter is dangerous to faith. We cannot reasonably hope if we do not have a real motive for doing so, and we should not cultivate illusions simply because we would like to have reasons for hope. That would be tantamount to rendering useless a resistance that has been ongoing for 40 years and to accept without any rational basis that which, with reason, we would not accept in order to preserve the faith in its entirety, the faith without which it is impossible to please God. Now, if we hold to the facts of the matter, we have heard the new Pope reaffirm at Cologne, on August 19, 2005, in his discourse on non-Catholics, the unacceptable principles of ecumenism.3 “We all know THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 21 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT there are numerous models of unity,” he affirms. But we all know, or at least we should know, that our Lord Jesus Christ wanted for His Church a very precise model of unity, and that He established its principle and foundation in the primacy of Peter: When the divine Founder decreed that the Church be one in faith, and in government, and in communion, He chose Peter and his successors in whom should be the principle and as it were center of unity.4 The First Vatican Council had already affirmed: But, that the episcopacy itself might be one and undivided, and that the entire multitude of the faithful through priests closely connected with one another might be preserved in the unity of faith and communion, placing the blessed Peter over the other apostles He established in him the perpetual principle and visible foundation of both unities.5 Since this is the model of unity established by our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church, this model of unity must be reaffirmed with apostolic courage and firmness before those who stray far from His one true Church. Inversely, so-called “dialogue” constitutes a betrayal of revealed truth and a lack of honesty and charity towards the separated brethren. The Pope assured the assembly: This unity, we are convinced [is it then a subjective opinion and not a truth of faith?], indeed subsists in the Catholic Church....On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not!6 Are we then to believe that there are as many “faiths” as there are “sects,” and that the infallible Church was wrong when it affirmed that there is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it; for far from that one true Church they have in the past fallen away.7 It [this unity] does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity.8 We could accept this if it really meant “expressions of theology and spirituality,” of “liturgical forms” and “discipline” that were different but totally orthodox (as in the Catholic Eastern Churches united to Rome). But unfortunately this is not what he means. Consequently, what place will the countless heresies of the Protestants and the heresies, less numerous but no less real, of the Eastern schismatics have in this “unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity”? And what place will their refusal of the primacy of jurisdiction (and not simply of honor) of the successor of Peter, 22 which Christ placed as the foundation of the unity of His Church, have? Benedict XVI does not say. And yet it is this that counts if unity is not to be an empty word to which no reality corresponds. More than an exchange of thoughts, an academic exercise, it [ecumenical dialogue] is an exchange of gifts in which the Churches and the Ecclesial Communities can make available their own riches.9 We would simply like to know what “riches” the schismatic and heretical communities could place at the disposition of the Catholic Church which she does not already possess in full. We stop here, for the citations could go on and on, but it should be clear to any Catholic that no one, still less the Pope, has the right to reduce the Church founded by the God made man to the level of the sects that have proliferated because of the pride of men. The December 22 Discourse In his Christmas Address to the Roman Curia10 Benedict XVI explained what he means when he says that he “wants to apply Vatican Council II in faithful continuity with Tradition.” He begins by rejecting “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” according to which “it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts [of Vatican II] and make room for the newness in which the Council’s deepest intention would be expressed” since these texts “are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless.” But what does Benedict XVI oppose to this “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”? He sets against it “the hermeneutic of reform,” that is to say, “innovation in...continuity”: continuity of “principles” and innovation in “practical forms” because “[b]asic decisions [that is, the principles]...continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change.” Pope Benedict XVI gives the example of the conciliar Decree Dignitatis Humanae, maintaining that the “discontinuity” or “rupture” in the domain of “religious freedom,” which he unequivocally calls “freedom of conscience,” is not a substantial discontinuity or rupture because, he says, “the principles” of the doctrine remain, even though the “practical forms that depend on the historical situation” have changed. But what would these principles be that have remained intact in Dignitatis Humanae? That the human person is “capable of knowing the truth about God” and that he “is bound to this knowledge,” Benedict XVI tells us. The conciliar declaration on religious freedom will have preserved these principles, and thus it did not canonize “relativism”; it simply considers “religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence [society], or indeed, as an intrinsic THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed.” The principle thus enounced, according to which man is “capable of knowing the truth about God,” would require many clarifications. But this is not what interests us. What interests us is knowing whether these are all the “principles” of Catholic doctrine on “religious freedom.” Let us open Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas, which enables us to recapitulate what a long series of Popes have affirmed and defended against the “modern liberties” promoted by liberalism. The Church has always affirmed that everyone has the duty to profess the true religion (and to seek it when he has a doubt about the false religion he professes): And if it be asked which of the many conflicting religions it is necessary to adopt, reason and the natural law unhesitatingly tell us to practice that one which God enjoins, and which men can easily recognize by certain exterior notes, whereby Divine Providence has willed that it should be distinguished, because, in a matter of such moment, the most terrible loss would be the consequence of error. [§20] The Church has always affirmed that from this duty of man towards Divine Revelation proceeds his right to freely profess, even in public, the true religion; and that not only individuals, but also civil societies, being “from God,” have the duty to honor Him: Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraved upon it. [§21] The Church has always affirmed that “the need that derives from human coexistence” [Benedict XVI, Christmas Greetings] in no wise derives, as a logical consequence, from the “freedom of religion,” but rather from the tolerance of false religions, if this tolerance proves to be necessary “for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good” (§33). But “if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake,” (ibid.), and “the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection.” Lastly, it always remains true that “it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights” (§34). Moreover, if indeed “the truth cannot be externally imposed” (the Church has never done this; she has even forbidden Christian princes to do so when they intended to), that in no way means that error has the right to be freely promulgated; to not externally impose the truth does not dispense from the obligation to impede the diffusion of errors that would render the search for truth and its possession more difficult for men. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 Now, where are these principles to be found in the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae and the conciliar doctrine on “religious freedom”? For in this doctrine of “religious freedom” no distinction is made between true and false religions, so that, as Leo XIII said of liberalism, they “end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty.” Once this fundamental distinction has been omitted, false religions are ascribed the “right” to be publicly professed and propagated on a par with the true religion, even in Catholic countries. From the initial error, it follows that the State can have no duty either to the true God or to the true religion, but that it has only one duty: neutrality towards religion, and, as liberalism teaches, “to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges” (§21). There is yet another consequence: one no longer speaks of the tolerance of false religions; this principle has been supplanted by “the freedom of religion” as Benedict XVI clearly states. From this distorted perspective, the duty of the Catholic State to impede the diffusion of false religious doctrines has no more basis; it is even considered as an intolerable violence against “the freedom of religion.” What emerges clearly is that all the Catholic principles regarding religious liberty have been abandoned one by one. But Benedict XVI affirms in his speech to the Roman Curia that they have all been maintained. He even added: The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt. 22:21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time....while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State. Should we thus believe that Jesus taught what the Roman Pontiffs call “that fatal principle of the separation of Church and State” (Libertas, §38)? Or that the martyrs gave their lives, not to bear witness to the true religion, but to demand liberty for false religions as well as for the true religion? Or that the Church, despite the promises of her divine Founder, for centuries strayed from her “deepest patrimony” and only recovered it with Vatican II, accomplishing all this with the Decree on Religious Freedom, by “making its own an essential principle of the modern State”–the modern State that takes no account of either faith or revealed morality? To ask the questions is to frame the answer. THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 23 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT As regards the “external conditions” imposed upon the new Pope, it should be observed that: no pope is obliged in conscience to respect “agreements” that may have influenced his election, especially when these are bad for the Church and for souls. The new Pope must liberate himself from being “hedged in” by prudently choosing his collaborators (such is the secret of every good pontificate). Will Benedict XVI do so? And especially, is he able to distinguish between good and bad collaborators? The trust he has placed in personages like Walter Kasper and Bruno Forte make us highly doubtful. We are in perfect agreement with our reader when he characterizes the theologian Ratzinger as oscillating. However, he is not really a centrist: to date, his pendulum has swung more in the direction of the “new theology” than in the direction of Catholic theology, and his books, which he has never retracted and which are selling today more than ever, are the proof. For the moment, Benedict the Pope does not seem very different from Ratzinger the theologian, and, having studied him for years, we did not expect that he would be: the Lord has promised the grace of state to his Vicar, a great grace and in certain conditions, He also promised him infallibility; but He never promised that He would work miracles, and changing a man’s entire intellectual formation would require a miracle, in our opinion. This does not mean that the Divine assistance–at the very least that assistance which consists in preventing irremediable mistakes–will be lacking to the Church; nor will there be lacking, our reader may rest assured, our prayers for the Church and for the new Pope. Hirpinus Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, May 2006, pp.5-8. 1 E. Fouilloux, “Theologico-spiritual Movements and the Council,” in On the Eve of Vatican II (Lovanio, 1992), pp.188, 198. 2 Herbert Vorgrimler, Understanding Karl Rahner (New York, 1986). 3 Address to the Ecumenical Meeting held at the Bishop’s House during the World Youth Days at Cologne, August 19, 2005. The English version has been taken from the speech posted on the Vatican website. 4 Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, on the Unity of the Church, Dz. 1960. 5 Dogmatic Constitution I on the Church of Christ, Dz. 1821. 6 Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Ecumenical Meeting, August 19, 2005. 7 Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, on Fostering True Religious Unity (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1998), §15. 8 Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Ecumenical Meeting, August 19, 2005. 9 Ibid. 10 Text of the speech is taken from the English version on the Vatican website. Enemy Islam ��������� An interview with the ��������� Bishop of Rumbek, Sudan A reader wrote: Dear Editor: Sudan 24 Rumbek ...We must weep over the green light given by the ambiguity of the Conciliar Acts to the slogan about the “three monotheisms” and of “multiethnic and multiracial society.” The Arabs have seized the opportunity for the planned conquest of the Christian West through immigration ever since 1967, by subsidizing with petrodollars the pro-abortion campaigns of the 1970’s and by organizing the massive illegal influx of the most rigorously Islamic masses. And what does our hierarchy do? It suppressed from the concordat [between the Church and the Italian government] the Catholic religion as the “religion of the State,” thereby opening the way to the construction of a mosque in Rome itself. The only hope we have left at present is that Italy is not one of the nations that has lost the faith, as the prophecy of Fatima puts it, and the recitation of the rosary in families and churches continues to be widely practiced and propagated. Dear Friend: Il Giornale of May 23, 2004, published an interview by Stefan Lorezetto with Bishop Cesare Mazzolari, M.C.C.I., a member of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus [and Bishop of the diocese of Rumbek], in the Sudan, in a zone which at that time had not yet fallen completely under Muslim domination, which gave him (we do not know if that is still the case) a certain freedom of action and of speech. The frankness and courage of this “frontier” bishop are admirable, as is his insight that we would not have so much to fear from the Muslims if we were not such bad Christians. It is to be feared, conversely, that Islam is the “scourge” of God, as the Assyrians were in olden days for the chosen people. As He did then, God finally will break the “scourge,” but only after having used it to correct His rebellious sons. [The interview is reproduced below.] “The moment of martyrdom approaches,” the Bishop says. “I hope that the Lord will give us the grace to endure this shedding of blood. There is a need for purification. Many Christians will be killed for the faith. But from the blood of martyrs will spring a new Christendom....Either God will send us a strong leader capable of forging a new path, or He will permit a chastisement, a measured trial that will lead us to wisdom. The world is blind and dumb. We need a big electroshock.” we are right and they are wrong. We boast of a Christian tradition that we no longer practise in our daily lives. The Muslims are consistent in their daily practice and their proselytism is superior to ours. When a Muslim teaches you to say sukrna (thank you), he is already a missionary, for Arabic is the language of the Koran. And yet very many of your confreres in Italy have agreed to the conversion of churches into mosques. The Muslims will be the ones to convert us, and not the other way around. Wherever they settle, sooner or later they become the dominant political force. The Italians have a very naive notion of hospitality. They will quickly perceive that the Muslims have taken advantage of their kindness, by bringing in ten times as many people as were agreed upon. They are much slier than we. They demolish my schools, and you, you open wide your church doors to them. If someone is a thief, do not give him a room in your apartment. Is Sharia [Koranic law] in full force in the Sudan? The fundamentalist government maintains that it will only be applied to Muslims. We don’t know what will happen to a Christian accused of something since there is no right to self-defense. Do you convert many Muslims? Roberto Hamza Piccardo, secretary of the Union of Muslim Communities in Italy, tells me that in the Sudan, the flagellations are only symbolic, because “the flogger holds the Koran under his arm so as to lighten the lashes.” Are there Catholics who embrace Islam? Piccardo tells me that certain articles of Sharia law, such as cutting off a hand, represent “very rare cruelties committed by local bosses who torment poor folk.” Absolutely not. To approach a Muslim would mean sentencing him to death. Those who spontaneously convert are subsequently forced to flee. But they are caught and punished even a thousand miles away. Yes, unfortunately. At least three million persons have migrated toward the north, pushed by famine, and they have had to pronounce the shahada, the [Muslim] public profession of faith in order to obtain work. The converts are marked with a red-hot iron. They are branded on their side, like cattle, to distinguish them from infidels. Is the the God of the Christians the Allah of the Muslims? No! Where is the notion of the Trinity? The greatest of prophets [for the Muslims] is certainly not Jesus Christ [and for them, Christ is not God]. Do those who speak of a clash of civilizations exaggerate? No. And we are just at the beginning. The Church...is only now beginning to recognize Islam’s challenge....What is at issue is not that www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 I know the man. If you begin to listen to him, he’ll tell you a thousand more lies like that one. That is not true. It is the State that rigorously applies Koranic law, which cuts off the hands and feet even of Muslims, and which arrests people without proof. He also told me that the leader Hassen El Turabi, “an eminent jurist,” is against the application of capital punishment to apostates, that is to say, to Muslims who become infidels, contrary to what the Koran prescribes. El Turabi is the sliest person in the world. He is very intelligent; he is a lawyer; he speaks English better than the English and French better than the THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 25 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Are you afraid? French. He has a forked tongue. I’ll give you a specific example: in the English-language version of the Sudan constitution, it is affirmed that the religion of the State is Islam, and that the other religions are tolerated. In the Arabic-language version, on the contrary, the line about tolerance does not appear. But in November of last year [2003], El Turabi went to pay his respects to Gabriel Cardinal Zubeir Wako, Archbishop of Khartoum, the first Sudanese cardinal. As for you, after 23 years spent in the Sudan, no one has touched a hair of your head. Haven’t you noticed though that all my hair has turned white? The greatest punishment the Arabs know how to inflict is oppression–deceit in their relations with strangers. If he can trick you, he does it wholeheartedly. He brags of his capacity to set a snare for you; being called a liar is for him a compliment. El Turabi leads someone like Bush around by the nose where and when he wants to, to say the least. As for me, rather than be ridiculed and played for a fool, I prefer to receive a slap. The Muslims fill you with fear; they hold you in a state of permanent insecurity. It is a psychological torment worse than torture. Does slavery exist in the Sudan? They swear that it does not. They even went to Geneva to say so. Yet my missions are full of ex-slaves. In 1990, I personally redeemed 150, by paying less for them than for a pure-bred dog: $50 for women, $100 for men. I did not do it after that, because I realized that it could become a vicious circle. They use them as shepherds or they place them in service in wealthy families in Khartoum. They are obliged to attend Muslim schools. Society of Saint Pius X District of the United States of America Regina Coeli House 2918 Tracy Avenue Kansas City, Missouri 64109 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED I would not be doing the work I do if I were afraid. When someone is afraid, he cannot survive. When I realize that one of my priests is afraid, I remove him from the mission. It is a contagious disease. If one day I become afraid, I pray that God will take me. Will you return to Italy? My country is the Sudan. I have promised my faithful that I will not abandon them, even when I’m dead. They already know where they should bury me. Is there something that our readers and I can do for you, Father? Pray very much. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, January 2006, pp.7-8. $1.95 per SiSiNoNo reprint. Please specify. Shipping & Handling US/Canada $.01 to $10.00 $3.95 $10.01 to $25.00 $5.95 $25.01 to $50.00 $6.95 $50.01 to $100.00 $8.95 Over $100.00 9% of order Foreign $7.95 $9.95 $12.95 $14.95 12% of order Airmail surcharge (in addition to above) Canada 8% of subtotal; Foreign 21% of subtotal. Available from: ANGELUS PRESS 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, MO 64109 USA Phone: 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID KANSAS CITY, MO PERMIT NO. 6706 F R . p e t e r Why do Masses in the churches of the Society of Saint Pius X have a third Confiteor before Holy Communion? St. Pius X in his Bull Quo Primum in 1570, codifying the Tridentine Mass, included an additional Confiteor before Holy Communion in those Masses in which Holy Communion was to be administered to the faithful. In so doing, he accepted a custom that was already immemorial. However, it is certainly true that in the ancient Roman rite there was no additional Confiteor before Communion, but simply the two Confessions at the beginning of Mass, one for the priest and the other for the ministers and faithful. The incorporation of an additional Confiteor derived from the ceremony of Holy Communion outside Mass, where such a confession is prescribed. Custom then introduced this ceremony into Masses in which Holy Communion was administered. We can certainly understand how providential is the prayer of the Confiteor before Communion, and why the faithful have always appreciated it. It expresses the duty of examining one’s conscience before approaching to receive Holy Communion, and is a reminder that those who are unworthy because of mortal sin must not receive Holy Communion. It is also a very salutary reminder for all Catholics that we ought to have a profound sorrow for our venial sins, deliberate or not, and that it is only through this contrition that Holy Communion can become, as defined by the Council of Trent, “an antidote, whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sins” (Session xiii, 2; Dz. 875). One of the changes introduced by Pope John XXIII in 1960 was the omission of this additional Confiteor. The Society priests are consequently accused of mixing rites and showing an arbitrariness in picking and choosing what pleases them, given that they use the rubrics of 1960, but maintain also the Confiteor before Holy Communion. In fact, there is no arbitrariness at all, nor the presumption of picking and choosing amongst the rubrics. Far from it. It is a question of custom, which has force of law if it is reasonable and it has been constantly observed for the required period of time (40 years in the 1917 Code and 30 years in the 1983 Code). In fact, this practice is a custom which is centennial and immemorial, having been constantly practiced for at least five centuries. If custom is a source of law in every area of Church discipline, it is particularly the case with the liturgy, the prescriptions of which are not contained in the Church’s Canon Law. Provided that such customs have not been explicitly reproved, it is up to the local Ordinary to judge whether they are to be retained or not (Canon 5 of 1917 & 1983 Codes). Moreover, general laws (e.g., omission of the additional Confiteor) do not abolish particular customs, nor do they abolish centennial or immemorial customs, unless they make R . s c o t t 27 explicit mention of it (Canon 30 of the 1917 Code and Canon 28 of the 1983 Code). Such is the case of the particular custom in the churches of the Society of Saint Pius X of retaining the additional Confiteor. It must be remembered that this custom did not come into existence by anybody’s arbitrary decision, but by the general observance of the great majority of traditional Catholics. Just as the 1960 rubrical changes were generally accepted by traditional Catholics the world over, not bringing about any substantial change in the Tridentine Mass, so likewise was the abolition of the final Confiteor not generally accepted. This became a question of a particular custom, maintain the centennial practice approved and accepted by Saint Pius V. All that the Society did was to acknowledge this general custom, and thus explain that it had become a particular law in its churches. This was done by Archbishop Lefebvre in Ecône, Switzerland, on September 21, 1979, meeting with his council, stating that since this practice already existed in many priories in different countries, and that all ought henceforth to conform to this custom in all the Society’s houses and chapels. As Superior General, he had the ordinary authority over the priest members of the Society to permit that such a custom be recognized as law. Q Is it permissible to go to Confession during Sunday Mass? It has always been the custom for confessions to be heard during Mass whenever this is possible, preferably during weekday Masses, but also during Sunday Masses. This gives some of the faithful the opportunity of going to confession who would not otherwise easily be able to do so. A quick confession during Sunday Mass does not interrupt the assistance at the Mass, for it is a prayer, like the Mass, and does not involve a notable part of the Mass. However, if a person were to spend a notable part of Sunday Mass in the confessional, for example receiving spiritual advice and direction from the priest, then he would not have fulfilled his Sunday obligation and would have to stay for the next Mass. A person does not have the right to place himself in this situation, and he ought not to go to confession after the Offertory or before Communion when he anticipates that the confession might take a long time. Furthermore, there is also the question of respect. In general, the confessor who is hearing confessions during Mass will stop during the sermon, so that the penitents also can receive instruction, and he will also stop during the Consecration of the Mass, out of respect for this great miracle. These times should be avoided when going to confession during any Mass. A www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 28 Int Dr. David Al 29 “America’s Professor,” Dr. David Allen White continues to gain admiration for his literary exposition and social commentary. The release of his newest book, The Horn of the Unicorn, a publication of Angelus Press, has given him renewed notoriety and reason to interview him. Our thanks to Stephen Heiner, who caught up with him at a recent Catholic cultural conference. nterview with Allen White S t e p h e n l . m . H e i n e r Dr. White, at the time of this interview we are still dealing with the aftereffects of Pope Benedict’s Regensberg address. I have two questions: 1) What was your opinion of his remarks, and 2) What does the Muslim response mean? In a way I was not surprised by the Pope’s remarks insofar as he still views himself as an academic and an intellectual. I seriously believe he pulled out the quotation to prove his scholarly credentials and ignored his other role, if you will, as the leader of the Catholic Church. He did not consider the potential for anger erupting among the Muslim community. The Pope was probably as surprised as everyone else by the reaction of the Muslims to that particular remark that he made, but he shouldn’t have been. He has not yet directly apologized for it. But instead he is again trying to use the equivocation that connects with everything of the post-Vatican II Church, i.e., not making clear statements, not making a clear denial, even coming out and making the outrageous statement that Muslims worship “the one true God,” which sounds to me like heresy. It certainly borders on heresy, but clearly he defends it, which means it’s an equivocation. The Muslims have right now what they call in football “Big Mo”–momentum. And for the leader of the severely weakened, apparently nearly-dead Catholic Church to provoke the Muslims at their moment of their great strength seems to me foolhardy, and I believe it was an act of foolishness. I don’t think the Muslim response was surprising. If you had been living in Medieval France at the height of the Catholic Faith and someone made a public statement attacking the Catholic Church–you’d expect a huge reaction. The Muslims have the energy, a faith, sadly, a heretical faith, they don’t hold the true Faith by any means but they have a faith that they are committed 30 to and they believe in. They actually believe in their religion to the point of dying for it. One would be hard pressed to find many 21st-century Catholics who would be willing to die for their faith. Would that the Catholic faithful would take offense on behalf of the Triune God, the true God, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is insulted daily everywhere around the world! It would seem that the Muslims are the lone real defenders of the principle “error has no rights.” That is absolutely correct. They are holding to that part of perennial Catholic doctrine. Sadly, they do not realize that they are indeed in error. Let’s go to the beginning of Pope Benedict’s reign, when you were interviewed by Hugh Hewitt (The Angelus, April 2005). Two quotes that just jumped out at me were: “I have a number of quarrels with him (Benedict), in terms of certain things he said in some of his books, statements he’s made. I’m not going into those tonight; it’s not the time or place to do it.” And the sentence after: “But I would say this. He went and studied philosophy in the modern German university as a young man. For a bright mind, the modern university is not the place to go.” In the October 2006 Angelus, Bishop Williamson seemed to echo you: “…Like so many learned churchmen…he is learned in the wrong philosophy.” Three quotes, two questions. First, what quarrels? Again I think most of the quarrels I would have are already out there; there are remarks that are well reported and that have appeared in numerous books. Let me simply say insofar as he was one of the architects of the Vatican II church, the errors of the Vatican II church permeate his thinking. There are errors that came out of the unfortunate liberal intellectual training he got as a young man. There is a refusal to deal with doctrine directly, clearly, and explicitly. Everything is ambiguous, everything can be interpreted in two ways, and there is a sentimental belief that God loves everyone: everyone is faithful, everyone goes to heaven, God is in His heaven, all is right with the world. This sentimentalism is detached from modern reality and the historical truths of the Faith, the eternal truths of the Faith as it has been handed down for two-thousand years. One can only shake one’s head in sorrow at the Pope’s confusion, imprecision, and material heresy. It is not for me to comment on the interior state of his soul. But the comments he continues to make should disturb any faithful Catholic. Second, why is the modern university not the place to go for a bright mind? A number of traditional faithful seem to think modern university and college is a non-negotiable norm for men and women. I have spent my entire life in modern universities. I first entered the university in the fall of 1966 as an THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org undergraduate and I hope to retire within the next year or two, so it has been an entire lifetime. All I can say is that in the modern university there are a few un-stated, unofficial functions that they pursue above all others: 1) First and most importantly–to destroy any corpuscle of true faith that might reside in any young man or woman. 2) To render those same young men and women incapable of even dealing with questions of faith, goodness, truth, and beauty, to render them incapable of dealing with those questions in any serious way. 3) To distance them from and destroy any respect they might have for family, nation, superiors, and any authority figure whatsoever. 4) To indoctrinate them with liberal social doctrine and make them little machines that will make them spout automatically the liberal dogmas that are pounded into them every second they are in a modern university. 5) And, finally, to lead them into corrupt personal behavior that will sink them so in sin that they will be incapable of self-knowledge, self-analysis, and any kind of self-reflection that could pull them out of the degenerate pit that surrounds the modern university. Under no circumstances whatsoever would I recommend anyone send any child to any modern university. That’s certainly unequivocal. If I could expand on the topic, there is a book–it is shocking and should only be read by serious adults who are aware that there are scenes in it that go beyond the bounds of taste and decency. But it is the single best representation of the modern university. It is a novel by Tom Wolfe called I am Charlotte Simmons. Mr. Wolfe captured with absolute accuracy the truth of the modern university to such a degree that that book was crushed instantaneously upon its publication so that no parents anywhere could read it and find out what is actually going on in the colleges and universities. Mr. Wolfe, as Hamlet says, “held the mirror up to nature,” and gave a perfectly accurate rendering of the modern university in America, in our time. That honest depiction is now preserved in art to our shame, and it should disgust and horror the parents of students and college-bound students themselves. I have not read it. I know that it is particularly lurid… It’s not that exactly. The artist has two functions, to instruct and to delight. It is very difficult to delight now because the other thing the artist must do is hold the mirror up to nature. Any real artist has to record accurately the age in which he lives. Tom Wolfe is doing that in holding up a mirror to the modern university, and he is being brutally honest in setting down what is going on there. To be quite honest, I do think in some ways he keeps his novel from being called pornographic by making those scenes clinical, cold, analytical, by just reporting what is happening. In some ways from what I observe going on ‘‘ 31 in the modern university the situation is even worse. He is selective in his details and he moderates to an extent what he is showing but he is absolutely accurate. There was a terrible incident at the Naval Academy that received national attention over the last few months. The quarterback of the Navy football team was accused of rape, he went to trial (and it was a military trial), and the facts came out which were there: 1) The young female midshipman had been out in town that night with friends. She drank three rum and diet cokes, two shots of tequila, two shots of Southern Comfort, and a Kamikaze. 2) She then went back to the dormitory and at 3:30am called her boyfriend to come and “cuddle” with her. He refused, he was sleeping. She then called the Navy quarterback and invited him over. He came. 3) They then proceeded to some unedifying activities with her roommate in the room. And then she passed out, and he left. Some days later she accused him of rape. That is at the Naval Academy and it is on the record, and all I can say is, sadly, that it was not an isolated experience. Wolfe in his novel is rendering artistically and creatively (but accurately) similar situations going on in universities from coast to coast. Going back to Pope Benedict for a moment, you also said: “I’m hoping that God will use the heart of this man much more than necessarily the intellect.” Has this statement borne out, and have you seen evidence for the use of either? I have seen no evidence of it yet, but I do see God’s Providence in action, particularly in the reaction of the Muslim community, which I am sure has caught the Pope off guard. He is intellectually unequipped at the moment to deal with what is happening to him. His response to the outrage of the Muslims and the subsequent actions of the Muslims, which seem to prove the truth of the remark he made by simply stating “this shows we need to open dialogue.” Meaning intellectually, God’s grace has not yet touched his mind. However, as events continue transpiring, I think the Pope may be in the same state as one of the characters of Flannery O’Connor– forced to confront grace when it comes in a shocking manner through unexpected violence. Meaning… As she says, sadly in the modern world, the only way God’s grace can get through to people is through a shock or a violent action. We are so desensitized, we have lost our ability to reason. It seems that charity won’t do it, so God in His infinite Mercy sends violence. It’s the title of her final novel–The Violent Bear it Away–“From the beginning of time until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.” Violence is allowed–it often seems to triumph. But God permits violence–we know He can bring good out of it, and He may even permit violence as an avenue for grace because it may be the only avenue available to closed-off rigid modern men. Well–tying together your remark on the Wolfe novel with what O’Connor says here: violence and vile behavior–what is the antidote? Charlotte Simmons –the everygirl–has been duped into this life. It is everywhere. In one sense the major doctrinal tenet of the false faith of the last centuries has been the lie of progress. We all believe in the modern world: life is getting better, we have to “look forward,” each individual can make his contribution, we’ll all leave the world a little better off when we leave than when we entered it, we are all building towards a glorious tomorrow. The universities and colleges have become the temples of progress. That is the place where progressive ideas can be formed, new visions can be created, good hearted, noble minded individuals can be given the tools to go out and turn the world into a better place. And everyone has bought this lie to some extent. No one can believe that the universities and colleges can be destructive, soul-destroying, that they are not temples of progress, but dens of iniquity–mentally, morally, and spiritually. The actual statistics are that only 20% of Americans read one book a year. And of that 20% who read one book a year, 80% read one work of bestseller fiction. That means nobody is reading. ‘‘ 32 Pope Pius XII said in the late 40’s, that at that time, the world was in a worse state than before the Flood. If you look at the evils unleashed in the last half century, then imagine how much greater our suffering must be than that of those who went through the first great Chastisement. It seems very clear to me that until we return to the very real vision of man as a creature possessed of original sin who needs God’s grace, who falls and repents and keeps on falling, who is a pilgrim on a journey toward Heaven, flawed, stumbling, and often helpless on his own, there can be no restoration of the intellectual life, serious education, or culture as a whole. Modern schools are founded on a big lie. Until that lie is broken and swept away the insanity will continue. One of my colleagues called it “university professors in the robes of a false priesthood” after what she saw in opening ceremonies at an Ivy League college. It is very interesting in a way. The way in which they play this game–it is the temple of progress because it is the temple of science. And the one area that you can still get an actual education in modern universities is in math or the sciences. They are taken seriously, they do research, they are indeed making discoveries in the natural world. Though, I fear, they are crossing boundaries that we are not meant to cross because, in their pride, they have no humility and, being full of themselves and their progressive notions, they don’t know that they too are touched with Original Sin. But it is true, they are the priests in this temple, this house of heresy. If science at its best is the exploration of the natural world given to us by God, then the humanities are the study of man in his supernatural nature. Literature, music, fine arts, philosophy, should tell us something about what it means to be human, live and die in this world as a complex human being possessed of both body and soul. At its highest, it should teach us the Catholic truths. What has happened with the poisoning of the humanities, is that as with everything else in this increasingly satanic world, the humanities have been overturned and are removing everything human from students and teaching them that they have no soul, they have no immortal life, they have no morality, there is nothing in the world worth learning, the great literature is nonsense, the great art is drawn by monkeys, music is banging on a hollow log with a stick, and philosophy isn’t worth their time. The humanities have become poisoningly inhuman. Well, this begs the question, “Doc White, what do I do with my smart kids who want to go to college? How are they supposed to get ahead in this world?” I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: send them to the local community college or maybe if necessary a state school where they can hide among a mass of humanity. First, don’t send them anywhere without full body and soul armor. Second, send them to the local community college or state school where they can hide in their anonymity. Third, they should absolutely stay at home. Don’t let them near a dormitory. And fourth, keep in mind that in the modern world a college degree is a piece of paper that represents nothing other than that you “served your time.” It is the equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card… Except it comes with a lot of debt… Except it comes with a huge amount of debt but no employer will be interested in anything other than that you have the piece of paper. If it means you can’t get into one of the Ivy League grad schools, then that is an additional blessing. We are just a few weeks after the erection of the new Institute of the Good Shepherd. Before we get to this, I think it’s helpful to revisit Campos. In your Open Letter to the Priests of Campos, I noted that in response to the idea that the Campos priests were now “in perfect communion with the Church” you said: “I never knew you left.” In leaving Tradition to join the Conciliar Church, what have these priests gained, and what can we glean from three years of reflection on this event? What they gained was the approval of the world. And sadly the temptation now is to seek the approval of the world rather than the blessings of God Almighty. To be a traditional Catholic in the present time is to be an outcast, to be scorned, 33 to be spat upon, to be lied about, to be humiliated. To try to understand why many of the priests of Campos went along with this agreement, I would have to, out of human sympathy–many traditionalists are tired–and therefore weak. And once you compromise with modern Rome and are accepted back into the fold, which is really patrolled by wolves disguised as sheep, the world will give its approval. Conservative Catholics will sing your praises, you will get to be on EWTN, certain newspapers will trumpet your great wisdom, you’ll get to go to Rome and be wined and dined; you’ll feel as if you’ve come home. But sadly it’s as if the prodigal son forgot where his real home was and goes off to the wrong house and is welcomed by false parents and any feast which is thrown for him will turn to ashes in his mouth. Regarding this new Institute of the Good Shepherd, what is the point of this group when the Society has 450 priests? The larger scope of that question is really twofold: 1) What is the purpose of this group, which is already facing large scale resistance in its “home diocese” in France in the person of the Vicar General; and 2) What does it bode for “negotiations” with the SSPX, recently reannounced just this week as “still ongoing” by Cardinal Castrillon in an I-Media interview? 1) The purpose of the group is to show traditionalists very clearly that even if they try to compromise, the real princes of the Church, the bishops who are in control, will not even permit a teeny, tiny move towards Tradition and will block any such effort. You have the bishops in France turning on Cardinal Castrillon and basically telling him and his superior, the Pope, how things are going to be–this is clear evidence of the destruction of the hierarchy, and it is clear evidence that any traditional group that tries to reconcile with Rome is going to come to grips with overwhelming opposition from the conferences of bishops, who are the ones who are really in control of the Church right now. I think the reaction stands as a clear warning: “Don’t be fooled and don’t bother.” 2) There is a quotation from the Archbishop which I don’t have at hand, and he gave it near the end of his life, and he stated it simply as he saw it: there was no point to further negotiations until Rome returned to the Catholic Faith of Tradition. I would just stand with the Archbishop on that. So I took you back to 2003 and Campos; let’s step back further to January 2002 and an article you penned called “Verbicide.” In it you say that you reversed your previous position on television being a semi-useful instrument and had only one prescription for it: death by firing squad. Can I take this a bit further? I run a book and movie review website, and am often asked why I am cooperating with Satan by supporting Hollywood implicitly by viewing and reviewing these movies. Have movies occupied the same place as television? Why or why not? Movies are the granddaddy of television, and, speaking objectively, created the world of images that its grandchild television then brought into every home. Having said that, I am a man that grew up going to movies two times a week, I have a deep love for movies, and I see them as part of my past. I learned certain profound lessons from them when I was young that prepared me to receive the Faith later on. I am of two minds here. I still believe the medium is extremely dangerous–I no longer go to movie theaters to see movies, I find them to be junk. I do, however, still watch the great films of the past, especially those of my two favorite directors, both Catholic: John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. I find even now that my time is not wasted by returning to those great films of those great Catholic filmmakers because there are some profound truths held within them. So if you wish to compromise, and I might understand why some might still want to watch movies, then get your TV a good DVD player and a complete set of the John Ford films and the Alfred Hitchcock films and satisfy that gnawing hunger with the best art that the medium has produced. I do believe that movies, as much as I love them, are a second rate art form because they are totally dependent on technology, and when the day comes, I imagine sooner than any of us imagines, when the “plug is pulled,” that art form will vanish completely and forever. MOUTH OF THE LION Dr. David Allen White Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer was the only diocesan bishop in the world to simply NOT implement the new Mass. This is the fascinating decades-long saga of his fight to preserve tradition in “the last Catholic diocese” in the world: Campos, Brazil. His priests were eventually banished from their churches, yet they managed to remain faithful for many more years. 298pp, 2 maps, 27 photos, softcover, StK# 1020. $34.95 Well, let’s get the top three picks for both directors while we are on this topic. John Ford: 1) The Searchers, which is a great American work of art that I will mention in the same breath as Moby Dick, the greatest work of American literature; 2) The Quiet Man; and this isn’t fair, because it’s a trilogy, but anyway, 3) The Cavalry Trilogy: Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande. Those are the films that lead me to call John Ford the American Homer. He created the Western art form, he understands the basics of combat, of men in combat, of the conflict of families in combat. I was on an Alaskan cruise recently lecturing on the Iliad, and as I was lecturing on it, I kept drawing parallels with this trilogy. www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 34 Alfred Hitchcock: 1) Vertigo, my absolute favorite; 2) Shadow of a Doubt, which was Hitchcock’s own favorite; and 3) Psycho, because it is a terrifying and frightening and devastating look into the dark reaches of the human soul worthy of Edgar Allan Poe. I’ll add a fourth–for the clearest expression of Hitchcock’s Catholic faith–I Confess. In that same article ”Verbicide,” you lament the movie Gladiator. Since this article is no longer available in print, can you summarize why you don’t like it, and why you think it’s a bad movie? My problem with Gladiator is that there was no narrative. From the first ten minutes I had a sense of everything that was going to happen afterwards, and it all seemed to be proven correct. There was nothing to watch. The sign of absolute crisis in modern films is that you no longer have narrative, you no longer have directors who know how to tell a story. The stories are trite, predictable, and as a result, completely uninteresting. They try to dazzle you with special effects… My favorite example of this–I go back to John Ford again–I sat through this dreadful movie years ago, it was hugely popular and brought to the Naval Academy hundreds of new people who all wanted to fly, called Top Gun. It was about Naval aviators. About a week after I saw it I saw an early John Ford film called Airmail, which was about the early days of the airmail service in the United States. In the first ten minutes of Airmail John Ford used the entire plot of Top Gun and then went on and had a real story to tell. Why is narrative so essential? Narrative is essential because we have a longing for stories. Stories teach us about life–but they also provide an ordering mechanism by which we can view life in a more serious way. Aristotle in his Poetics defines tragedy as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. My students always chuckle when they read that, and I have to explain to them that it is a profound notion. It suggests there is movement in action from an initiated episode, through complications, to a final resolution. And the more complex that vision is the closer it can come to life itself. One problem with modern film is that the puny, malnourished narratives suggest how little we understand of the world we live in, and these movies can give us virtually nothing to hold on to, explore, or learn from. That’s certainly true for movies. As for books, why don’t people read anymore? Your most recent work, The Horn of the Unicorn, was written in this milieu of non-reading insofar as you wrote much of this book in “soundbite” format. Is this what authors will have to do in the future, or are there THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org other practical measures we can take to read more, or frankly, read at all? The actual statistics are that only 20% of Americans read one book a year. And of that 20% who read one book a year, 80% read one work of bestseller fiction. That means nobody is reading. I sincerely think that the publishing industry will soon downscale itself to the point of non-existence. The reading public will be gone forever. We are getting an indication of this from the fact that young people no longer read newspapers. And if they don’t read newspapers they certainly are not reading books. They read on the Internet, but what they read is comprised entirely of their insipid instant messenger conversations or each other’s blogs about what they did yesterday at some party. Even in many institutions of so-called “higher learning” book collections are disappearing. There is a debate at the Academy right now. They are about to build a new library because after 40 years the present library has become outmoded. They don’t have room for all their special collections that they’ve had donated throughout the years. So the question is, do we just get rid of them or do we find some place else to keep them? The new library that they are talking about, of course, will have many more computers, will be much more electronically oriented, so that again, when the power goes out, God let it be soon, not only will movies disappear but those books that were put online will be gone as well. Let me say this, and I think this is a good measure of the crisis. Two years ago, with my plebes–the freshmen–at the Naval Academy–I had a class who had tested out of the first semester of freshman composition, so they were bright. They were very good students. I assigned Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, a 500-page novel, one of the great works of our age. I could tell they were falling behind in the reading. I told them that I could tell that they were behind and that I wanted to work with them so that they get through it. And when I posed this to them, the best young student replied: “Doc, to be honest, I cannot read for more than ten minutes at a stretch.” All of the other midshipmen agreed with him. This was the best young student we had created–a student with a ten-minute attention span when it comes to reading. In a world filled with a thousand distractions that take no effort at all, we know it is all too easy to not bother, because reading demands concentration, focus, thought, and attention. The simple fact is that Gresham’s law of economics and currency–“bad money drives out good money”– applies to the reading young people do today: bad reading drives out good reading. They’ve been raised with soundbites. If one communicates with them it will have to be through sound bites or images. It doesn’t bode well for the future. God has His purposes. 35 Where do you see hope? There are two great and blinding indicators of hope: 1) God has seen to it through modern saints that the Catholic Church with all its truth and glory as the ark of souls will sail forward. 2) It is also clear that He is about to send great suffering. Those of us who claim to have the Faith will soon have a chance to prove it by going through suffering that is unimaginable just as the sinful nature of this world is unimaginable. Pope Pius XII said in the late 40’s, that at that time, the world was in a worse state than before the Flood. If you look at the evils unleashed in the last half century, then imagine how much greater our suffering must be than that of those who went through the first great Chastisement. Because the Catholic Church has continued and we know will continue, because we know Our Lord is still with us in the sacraments and has been nourishing us even as Rome herself tried to remove those sacraments from us, then we must be prepared for our own personal Way of the Cross, ready to mount Golgotha and be nailed to that wood, and be grateful to God that He has given us the chance to, as St. Paul says, fill up the sufferings of Christ. What were your biggest surprises in writing The Horn of the Unicorn? I think there were two surprises. The first was the discovery of a major theme of the book that I didn’t know I was going to put down. As I worked on The Horn of the Unicorn and looked at the life of Archbishop Lefebvre, I kept writing the same sentence over and over again, which was “But God had other plans.” I became aware at some point in writing his life story that The Horn of the Unicorn as a reflection of the life of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is really a book about the workings of Providence. God knows what He intends for each of us to do in this world, even if we don’t. Often as we are disappointed in what He gives to us, or forces upon us–if we accept it with all humility at some point we will end up at the place He intends us to be, doing the work He intends for us to do. And there can be no one who shows forth this better than the Archbishop. The second was that I knew I was writing a work about a great man, but what became increasingly clear to me was that I was writing a book about a modern hero, and for someone who has taught literature for a lifetime I didn’t think there could be modern heroes. I had only one name on my list, and that was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And I realized that Archbishop Lefebvre was heroic in much the same way. That’s why there is one place in the book where I put quotations from these two men side by side. One, a great secular hero who was still teaching some great lessons that God wanted him to give to the world, and the other, a great saint of the modern world, who stands as a tower of strength and inspiration for those who have the faith and as a reproach to all those who have compromised it. Solzhenitsyn strikes me as someone who is not normally read by the average reader. Can he be recommended broadly? Yes, he can be recommended broadly if you find the right venues into his works. First and foremost, the work that brought him international fame, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, can be read by any reader. It is short, it is clear, and it contains all of the major themes of the larger works. Secondly, one of the most beautiful short stories ever written by anyone in any time is called Matronia’s House, and I recommend it to every reader. In fact, one of the great bits of news in the literary world in the last few years is that Solzhenitsyn, now in his late 80’s, has begun writing short stories again. I would also recommend very highly his later novel Cancer Ward, where the only off-putting problem is the Russian names. However, that problem crops up for anyone trying to read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy as well. I’ve said this repeatedly, and I do believe it: the great work of our age is the Gulag Archipelago, and Solzhenitsyn himself said that readers should feel free to flip through pages until they find passages they want to read in it, so one does not have to read that book the way one might read Scripture. Frame Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn for the Catholic mind. The traditional Catholic should have a profound understanding of why the great literature of the last two centuries has come out of Russia. We know for a fact, because we were told by our Blessed Mother herself, that the signal event of world history and the sign of the restoration of the Church is going to be the conversion of Russia. Eyes have been turned to Russia because of its great artists for the past two centuries. The messages they have been giving to the world are messages the Church has been neglecting: man has a soul, modern atheistic attempts to arrange a utopia on earth will fail, the greatest good that can come to us is suffering because from great suffering comes great wisdom, and that curiously enough, Russia herself will play an important role in the future of the entire world. This is particularly true of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. Tolstoy is a special case, and while he is a great writer, he is a lesser thinker and doesn’t quite convey the same lessons as those two giants. Give us a must-read from both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The must-read from Tolstoy is Anna Karenina, which indeed is a profound moral work that gives a brilliant vision of 19th century Russia. The great Dostoevsky work is, of course, The Brothers Karamazov, but I have a special place in my heart for Demons. There you will find many predictions made which align with the prophecies of Fatima. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 ‘‘ 36 Continuing with reading, there is an Angelus (December 1990) “Ambrose Observes” which discusses Brideshead Revisited. That’s not the only time we’ve heard you speak about that work. Let me ask a threefold question for our readers who may not be familiar with Waugh’s work: 1) In a sentence, what is the greatness of this work? Let me quote the author himself, who can say it better than I can. Waugh stated he wrote the book to show the operation of God’s grace even in the modern world. 2) What are two or three major lessons or themes to be thought well upon? I have trouble with this one, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve just been teaching Flannery O’Connor’s short stories to my Midshipmen, and I read to them a commentary she made once in which she gets upset when someone asks her what the theme of her stories is as if it were a string holding a sack of chicken feed together– and if you could pluck that one string then the whole sack of chicken feed would open up to you. As she would put it, “the meaning of the story is the whole story,” so I hate to do this, but I have to say the major themes of Brideshead Revisited exist in the whole book. 3) Who should read it? I believe everyone should read it. Certainly Catholics should know the great works of their own time. But I have been blessed by God to see a number of young souls into the Church and into Tradition during my teaching years at the Naval Academy. Among the first books I would hand them was always Brideshead Revisited because it reflected much of the world they lived in, and the exact place they were coming from, in that the narrator himself is an agnostic atheist who is abandoned by all those around him who should have guided him. It has been for me the single greatest instrument of the conversion of the young– but I fear that the world may now have even moved beyond Brideshead. Well, in thinking of your thoughts above on universities, I think of Vile Bodies… The disadvantage of the Internet is that it makes each man feels allpowerful. It gives us a sense of godlike powers–all knowledge is at our fingertips ....[T]his is terrible temptation towards pride. It’s a magnificent work. I’ve been teaching it lately, in fact, and my students recognize themselves in it, even though the book is decades old. It is not about universities, it’s about young life completely out of control. For the Catholic reader I would follow up with his two great directly Catholic works: Helena, which is a fictional life of St. Helen, finder of the True Cross, and his great biography of St. Edmund Campion. I would certainly recommend Vile Bodies, and then I would recommend his great WWII work, Sword of Honour. You can get all three novels in one volume. It is one of the few novels to come out of the war that tells the truth about the war, which is that it was a great victory for the Soviet Union and a great defeat for the West. But even beyond that, Waugh has beyond that experience, which he puts in that novel, a sense of the dark time that lay ahead for all Catholics. There is a horrible scene in which the hero goes to Confession only to find out later that the priest is a spy, and has passed on things said under the seal of the confessional. He didn’t even tell him things of a military nature. It’s just that the priest is a spy and much more concerned with spying than his priestly duties, meaning, he’s more concerned with worldly politics than the care of souls. That reminds me of Ingmar Bergman’s masterful Seventh Seal in which Death hears the protagonist’s confession so as to cheat him in the chess game. I think one of the very first tapes I heard “against” rock music was yours–I don’t recall when you gave it. What’s changed since then? This will sound very odd, but my sense is that rock music has become even more isolating for the young people who listen to it. At the time I made that tape there were 12-15 big name rock groups that had huge records sales that all the young people were listening to. And I never heard any of them, but I knew all their names because I heard all my students talking about them endlessly. What I’ve discovered now is, that as with protestant sects, the number of rock bands keeps multiplying over and over again, and now each individual rock listener has a favorite rock band of his own and there is very little communal connection even among those young people who listen to rock. The society we live in is becoming more and more 37 atomistic. We are individual tiny cells whirling around all by ourselves, and it seems to be that even rock is helping in this isolation. So much sound and fury, signifying nothing, delivered directly to your always-in-your-ears iPod. Precisely, with your own favorite group. It’s crazy. The basic nature of rock has not changed. Some have expressed a great desire for you to teach at a traditional Catholic school. Could you ever be pulled away from the plebes? Let me just say that the greatest joy and consolation in my life is that I know I have been right where I was supposed to be doing the work God intended me to do. I have been fortunate enough to see many of my students come into the Catholic Church and become strong proponents of Tradition. I’ve also taught for 36 years, and I am worn out. I am looking forward to some quiet time, and I hope God allows it to me. But I just wrote a book about a man who thought he was going to retire also, and then the major work of his life began…so let me just say “man proposes, but God disposes.” What do you think are the pros and cons of the Internet? The one great advantage of the Internet is that you can find obscure information quickly. I remember going into class one day, needing a copy of Pope Benedict XV’s encyclical on Dante. I had one in my office but I couldn’t find it. I was able to pull it up on the Internet in about two minutes. I have a colleague that was ill, and I agreed to teach her class on Tennyson, and the poem she had them read was “Tithonus.” I knew it very well, hadn’t seen it for ages, couldn’t find my copy of it, and pulled it up on the Internet in 20 seconds. That’s the great advantage of the Internet. The disadvantage of the Internet is that it makes each man feels all-powerful. It gives us a sense of godlike powers–all knowledge is at our fingertips. I can communicate with everyone, everywhere. My voice will be heard by those in the far reaches of the world– this is terrible temptation towards pride. It also allows people to pull up dreadful, corrupting material as quickly as they can pull up a papal encyclical on Dante or a poem by Tennyson, and we know in fact that the vast majority of Internet use is for those darker purposes. And as I mentioned earlier, more and more printed material is now assumed to be online so we don’t need to keep it in books anymore, we will have it at our fingertips so that when the power goes out, it will vanish, which is why we might be getting close to the point of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. It’s not my favorite novel, but it is an interesting novel. I think it might be useful for traditional Catholics to memorize a piece of poetry, a drama or a novel, or some philosophy, theology, or history, so that when the power does go out, we will have insured a way to preserve it. Well, this is the third time you’ve mentioned it, so let me ask, what do you mean “power going out”? Well, here is Doc White’s crackpot theory. To my mind one of the great essays written in my lifetime is Solange Hertz’s essay “Hell’s Amazing Grace.” In this essay she talks about electricity itself as a satanic invention that stands in opposition to God’s true light. If the universe began with “fiat lux,” then God is the creator of light, and that light was given to us through the sun, which defined day and night, allowed the crops to grow, and gave us the seasons. It connected us to nature in a profound and beautiful way. But the invention of electricity has allowed us to turn night into day, winter into summer, and summer into winter, with air conditioning and heating. It has allowed us to feel as if we have the world at our fingertips. It’s a brilliant essay. It occurred to me recently that we are now totally dependent upon power and electricity for every aspect of our lives. All that Satan needs to do is turn out the power, and then his false son can step forward to perform the great miracle of restoring the power to us if we fall down and worship him. And I think even many good souls, perhaps even traditional Catholics might be tempted to worship him if it meant they could get their garage door opener back and have the fridge back, so the beer will be cold again, and have their TV and Internet back. That is not a crackpot theory. Well, it seems to me that we are getting increasingly close to that. It’s been five years since 9/11. What are your thoughts and reflections, especially someone who lives so close to an area that was attacked? This may be a mark of age but politics has ceased to interest me altogether. I find it a cacophony and yammering of confused voices, all shouting the same message in different dialects. I believe politics is a serious study and a serious endeavor, but as with most serious endeavors in the modern world it has been reduced to nonsense, and I find it difficult to take seriously any longer. It seems to me, the direction we are going, whether we choose path A or path B, we are going to wind up at the same place…. A short route to Chaos, as Robert Bolt put it. Yes. A place of severe chastisement, justly merited. Thanks for your time, Dr. White. A pleasure, likewise. Conducted by Stephen L.M. Heiner, in St. Paul, Minnesota, September, 2006. 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 writes freelance articles in print and on the Internet. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 Fifteen Minutes 38 with Fr. de Chivré: The Single Life On this earth, legion are the malcontent: the farmer dreams of the town, the senator would like to be president, these are married and miss their single life, those sigh to be married and feel condemned to be forever single. If we had to organize the parade of people happy with their lot, it would not take long: a great many children, a few retired people, not a single businessman, and a handful of union members. The other day, while having coffee, some joker placed an ashtray near me on which I read, painted in lovely round letters, this rather original declaration on happiness: “If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk; if you want to be happy for a week, get married; if you want to be happy forever, be a priest.” I took the ashtray and denied nothing, since I am a member of the guild. “Ah!” you tell me, “you chose to be unmarried. That changes everything.” Why not ask yourselves this evening if happiness, instead of depending on the nature of the situation, might not depend on the consent given to situations— consent: that appropriation of a given situation by the personality. This consent takes away none of the tragic consequences of the fact: the natural laws crucified in their most legitimate rights; sentiments repressed to the point of unbalance, neglected to the point of exasperation; stunted social life; humiliating situation as a left-by-the-wayside; tense family relations; inevitable physiological and psychological unbalance–so the best and most healthily objective doctors will all tell me. “Well then,” you tell me, “are you saying it isn’t tragic to set off in life that way, frustrated from the outset, devalued in yourself and around yourself, denied in advance all the natural fulfillment of maternity or paternity?” Does not the countless army of the single have the right to criticize Providence for having badly made the days and the events of their age, since they consider themselves the refuse of an age with which they cannot fully communicate? Are they not condemned to solitude of heart, solitude of sensibility, solitude of thought, solitude of activity. How alone one is when one is single—alone and exposed to the consequences of solitude: selfishness, narrow-mindedness, pettiness, bitterness! Whatever the post of the poor single man or single woman, it will never be more than a way to pass the time, they think; a way to put bread on the table: never a reason for being. I share, I approve, I recognize all of these lamentations, naturally speaking, that is to say, considering only the nature of the individual. They are cruelly true for our nature, they are a defeat of our nature, a lessening of our nature; but humanly speaking, I no longer agree, and to prove my point I first call marriage to witness, then I will call to witness the philosophy of the human person, and finally I will call God to witness. Love in Marriage Let’s be fair: we will consider only the nature of the two spouses in marriage, abstracting, as we did with the single life, from the deeper aspects of their humanity— and you are trying to tell me that the natural sufferings applied to those who are single are not just as present in marriage? Let me go through them one by one: Natural laws crucified in marriage by the so-human law of fidelity. What married man will claim that this suffering does not exist? 39 Sentiments repressed to the point of unbalance: in some, by resisting a guilty passion, in others, by being constantly misunderstood. Sentiments neglected to the point of exasperation of that same misunderstanding. Social life a success on the worldly or the business level, but stunted in many as regards intellectual and moral maturity: they have no time. Tense family relations–need I say more? Happiness frustrated from the outset, alas! “Those are the bad couples,” you throw back in my face, which is precisely what I was waiting for, to answer you very politely: there are also bad singles, unfaithful to the fact of being single, as a husband is unfaithful to his wife. The ideal would be to teach the single person to espouse his unmarried state. “What luck!” he could say: “I am married, with all the advantages of being alone.” Looking cool-headedly at the facts, the laws of nature satisfied in their procreative, sentimental, affective powers, are obviously insufficient to make up a true marriage, as they prove by the infidelities that result, the repeated betrayals, the divorces they demand; these laws themselves have to endure certain sacrifices within marriage for there to be a marriage, and therefore happiness. The law—not natural, but human—of sacrifice, will always preside over the law of happiness, and already there begins to appear and take shape the admirable shadow of Jesus Christ, source of all happiness, because He is above all spirit, capable of containing, of dominating and of mortifying, by His authority over nature, its material and materialist excesses, for nature needs be solicited by the spirit of sacrifice whatever the situation, when one desires to know real happiness. “Well then,” you reply, “everything is tragic– marriage and the single life!” Absolutely, as soon as a need for ease, or cowardice, or a craving for pleasure, make you refuse to acknowledge that man has the means and the possibilities of taking his nature in hand in order to draw it into authentic happiness. I take this reasoning as far as it can go: if the sole condition for happiness in the single life is an authentic preference for that life, without your having voluntarily to bring to it anything of yourself, of your heart, of your thought, of your soul, and of your faith; if its sole condition in marriage is an authentic preference of nature for the man or the woman before you, without your having to seek in marriage anything more or better, and without having to bring to it, voluntarily, anything of yourself, of your heart, of your thought, of your soul, and of your faith, then I tell you that not one person in this room is happy, for the laws of nature are a source of pleasure, they are not a source of happiness. Pleasure is common to animals and to man; happiness is the privilege of the spirit, which forms it out of anything, by the virtuous bearing which it adopts toward everything. We always imagine being happy as knowing all pleasures and knowing them with ease, with lots of fun, with abundance, even with intemperance. For many, happiness consists in an abdication of vigilance and control over the appetites of nature, and the poor single man, considered absolutely impoverished as far as nature goes, is stigmatized as unhappy, incomplete, whereas he is in a position to be very rich indeed by his personality. And if I went name by name through the litany of those diminished by marriage, once upon a time someone, and today a something angry—emotional, bestial, base—without influence, without prestige, without authority, and without integrity as regards his conjugal engagements? You tell me that being single is a tragedy; do you really believe that, for certain men and women, it is not a tragedy to be married naturally, too naturally, without having made a sacrament of it, that is to say, a divinized human reality, source of spiritual happiness? Precisely because it is a source of happiness—like all that is human—marriage, like every situation, stops being a tragedy when the nature of each person, under the sweet and imperious authority of the conscience and the spirit, is caught up in the blessed demands of the spirit by a sacrifice and a self-control that put a check on the blindness of pleasure. There will always be tragedy wherever man holds to the pretension of knowing more than God about the meaning of the laws of nature, and about his rights to demand of nature a happiness to which it can and must contribute, though all incapable of shaping it alone. The Human Person Whoever would understand the definite possibility of happiness in the single life has to raise the discussion much higher than the worldly slogans, the criticism of companions, scientific declarations, or false spiritualities. He must climb as high as the human person. We agree: naturally speaking, a girl is made for marriage; without a doubt, her nature as a woman finds there both psychological fulfillment and the joys of motherhood, well designed to fulfill her as a woman, but not necessarily as a person. What did God say in speaking of the human race: “Male and female have I created them.” Therefore masculinity and femininity are two adjectives which modify another reality common to both: the adjective demands a noun; the adjective may change, the noun does not change. The adjectives beautiful, overcast, stormy, calm, apply to the noun sky; the adjectives masculine and feminine apply to the noun human person. To meet a gentleman or a lady in the street is always to meet a person independently of the adjective masculine or feminine; and when the Incarnate Word shows a glimpse of this mystery to the Apostles— curiously bothered at hearing the Master tell them that a man was only allowed one wife, and that on the other side there would no longer be man and woman but www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 40 human personalities, transfigured in the fire of eternal Love into Presences full of Life and Affection, all the more able to communicate themselves for no longer being dependent on the manner man or woman of doing so—one feels the horizons deepen and one’s own reality awaken to its essentially personal value, to the flowering of which the single life, like marriage—and often better than marriage—can and should result in a splendid success! “Let those who have ears to hear, understand,” said Jesus Christ to a crowd hungry for sensations and to which He spoke of those who have understood by birth or by generosity this great problem of the human being who is a success without having recourse to the senses. “What is that supposed to mean?” would snap back at you any diocesan catechism. It is supposed to mean that it is not nature that organizes individual or social happiness, but rather the person proprietor of that nature, drawing it into his ideals, activities, enthusiasm, developments, generosities–into that spiritual and moral verdure which rises like a springtime loaded with the perfumes of its prestige and with the fecundity of its value, over a family, over a social circle, over a village, over a region, over a country. There are activities, superior by their devotion and by their breadth, indispensable to the life of the community, which demand on behalf of the human personality a time to perfect and cultivate oneself, an independence of action to act and to accomplish, a capacity for renouncement in order to have authority and influence, impossible for a married woman to carry out and possible only in the single life. Outlaw the single life in France for a week and you will hear the outcry among the married! “So, now I’m the one who has to take care of the children—and Aunt Susie, what has she got to do?” Moreover, married people often take advantage, and sometimes shamefully, of the time and the generosity of the unmarried among their relations, because they themselves have no thought for their own personality, or else they would develop it, like the poor single people, by their duty of state, rather than going “naturally” to the movies, tossing the kids in the arms of Aunt Susie. Eliminate the single life and you eliminate countless networks of social support; invaluable apostolic activities; assistance and delightful smiles to hundreds of the sick and dying; phenomenal educations for thousands of children; social initiatives on which you yourselves rely very heavily; devotion indispensable to the life of charitable works, apostolates, and the eternal salvation of many. The human person in full activity immolates certain calls of nature, without a doubt. But, alas, how many married women and men have, on the contrary, renounced certain calls and certain rights of the human person? Materialized as we are, with vulgarity or with elegance, we throw discredit on the single life without suspecting that we are acknowledging our ignorance of what a human person can do of itself and by itself THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org when it draws its nature, not into following its every call, but when it draws its nature into the development of the person by the sacrifice of certain of these calls. Everything is tragedy when there is an abdication of the person in face of his nature, folding under its demands; everything is victory when one possesses a personality capable of keeping the upper hand with nature and with the unending complaints of a society obsessed with pleasure; a personality determined to trim out of the cloth of its existence material for a flag or for a cross, around which countless married people will be thrilled to gather in case of necessity, as though they had become the big, happy family of the single people. “If you want your life magnificent, ask yourself if, every day, you are capable of being someone, freer and stronger than your nature of man or woman. Then gather up for Me all of your powers, your loves and your gifts, as one gathers a handful of seeds in the hollow of one’s hand, striving not to lose a single one. And then advance along the human path with a movement that is young whatever your age, vigorous and unhesitating, laughing with the laughter that rings out like clarions sounding the reveille, cast it all for Me on the soil of your life at the disposition of others, who will come running from all sides: the hungry will regain their strength by eating of your reserves and, thanks to your goodness, from their tears you will draw cascades of diamonds. You will know before God the most considerable of joys: that of having remained pure without even noticing; that of having become someone without bringing any pride to it because, hearing the world weeping, and forgetting your self-seeking flesh, you gave the world your heart, and your heart pounded with happiness.” The great weakness of modern men is to imagine their value conditioned by the exterior and to feel lost the minute they are psychologically single, that is to say, faced with themselves, faced with themselves alone, deprived of reasons to forge their happiness and by it the happiness of others, because deprived of thoughts, interiority, and silence, those three anvils on which are forged characters: the determined, the happy, the persons. They live from day to day following their sensations, their studies, and their whims; they are sad and rich, sad and scholarly, sad and busy; nature pulls them in every direction, they go begging after a succession of exterior variables: one after leisure, one after a salary, one after love, one after pleasure; and they come back even sadder and with their activities depersonalized. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Christ declared; but the kingdom is only peopled by persons, and only the person can enter the kingdom within us, not around us. Does the kingdom still exist for all those who are hearing me now? The Plan of God This rosary of ideas and considerations is like every rosary: it ends with a Glory be to the Father, Son, and Spirit, in honor of the single life. 41 Deliberately leaving the springboard of philosophical reasoning, I lose myself in the infinitely deep accents that characterize the views of the Faith and, listening to them, I feel all of the recriminations of nature over the so-called “forced” single life suddenly bathed in a tremendous peace. Indeed, the quality of the Faith is to offer us a complete vision of the human situation. The Faith alone can give a total to the additions of all our reasoning, and an accurate total, judging by the pacified and pacifying results that it brings. For God, before having a nature, we have a mission. Of this mission, one aspect is given to us, another escapes us, for, well beyond nature, our personalities are registered to fill a role in a play of which God alone knows the detailed program, the reason for being, and the significance for us, for others, for the present, the future, and eternity; the minutiae of the adventure escape us, but we know enough to play it with confidence and understanding. What do we know of the single life as it relates to God? We know that God has need of pure souls, and that, by the single life, He proposes to a certain number to live that purity. We know that His joy is to be among the children of men, and that He loves those lives that are more available to receive His secret confidences thanks to the liberty of their heart. We know that He saved the world only by the Cross, and that He gives to certain souls to bear the cross of their single life to compensate and make reparation for the abuse which others make of their sensibility. We know that hundreds and thousands of young men and young women, by resisting the call of their vocation and of their consecration to God, have upset the balance of the Redemption, and, mercifully, God partially assures its recovery by the admirable zeal and the hidden devotion of thousands of young girls who understand their single life enough to rediscover the Redemption in their social service, and to continue it by their share of immolation and of unseen consecrations. We know that God, in His own plan—which is not natural but super-natural—sees the map of personal destinies with a wisdom which involves the whole world and His very glory. Can we then be surprised that, surpassing our shortsighted views, both human and natural, He draws some into His eternal strategy—the only one which ultimately matters—by calling them to marriage, not so much for their natural satisfaction as for their supernatural mission by natural means; others by calling them through the single life to the honor which He has set aside for His favorites: that of imitating His Son in one manner or another, and of giving to them more intimately than to others: “Whatever you do unto one of these little ones, you do unto Me,” “He who takes up his cross is worthy of Me,” worthy of My intimacy, of My Presence, and while the world pities the solitude of the single life, the single life accepted and embraced will understand very quickly how much it can pity the solitude of the happy of this world. Secularism, Nazism, Fascism, Communism–in a word, practical, social, or political materialism has disoriented all of us in our personal reasons to live to the full, because we are no longer reasoning based on a complete program of our destiny. They lie to us all across the board by reducing that board to the inferior, prideful, selfish measures of a thought that instructs on everything except the truth about man; of a thought that flatters nature to the point of suicide, supreme avowal of the abdication of the person; of a thought that dismisses the problem of God by surreptitiously dismissing the problem of man, whom it claims to exalt and whom in reality it abases. Then an army of young people, promises of the tomorrows which await us, betray the todays held out to them under the pretext that today no longer corresponds to the needs of their nature. Victories flourish on decisions, on valiant and audacious choices, because superior to the aptitudes of nature, and on sacrifices which are the honor paid by our person to our flesh and blood, espoused to the renouncements imposed by the spirit. Then the wastage of tremendous qualities and admirable graces and dispositions becomes the unavoidable conclusion of fruitless waiting, of activities with no zest, of professions with no soul, and of presents with no enthusiasm. And yet there are great joys set aside for a single life sufficiently personal to say yes, to choose, to will, and to experience the joy of living one’s game in company of God and of oneself. Modern life holds out a wealth of personal activities to the young women of this age, which already consecrate them someone, value, and, by the very fact, happiness. From the nursing student to the magnificent intellectual, political or social positions open to them; they have there, for their heart of a woman and for their faith, if they are believers, horizons to make them burst into song; but do they want to be someone in face of life, or do they only want to stamp their feet with regret and anger before the frustration of dreams which are infinitely respectable but not necessarily indispensable for looking happiness in the face? This evening and tomorrow, we need to rediscover valor, smiles in the face of the cross, decision in the face of the facts, and prayer in the face of decisions, and then, all of us together, think, believe, and will the salvation of all of us together by the enthusiasm of each one to bring to all the cooperation of one’s life such as God proposes it to us: that is to say, boldly employed in surpassing ourselves in the single life or in marriage in order to put a little happiness on this poor planet reddened with the blood of God who awaits. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Carnets Spirituels: L’Amour Humain, April 2006, pp.19-30. Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 S N O I T EC 2 J B O THE VALIDITY OF THE O T S E I L RITE OF EPISCOPAL P E R CONSECRATION E H T F r . A l v a r o C a l d e r o n In its December 2005 and January 2006 issues, The Angelus had translated into English a study of the Domincans of Avrillé and published it under the title “Why the New Rite of Episcopal Consecration Is Valid.” This contribution answers the objections raised, especially those of Fr. Anthony Cekada.1 It does not seem that Fr. Cekada weakens the argument in favor of the validity of the new rite of episcopal consecration made by Fr. Pierre-Marie. Fr. Pierre-Marie compares the new rite with the Apostolic Tradition, the Coptic rite, and the Maronite rite, then he argues in favor of its validity based upon the resemblance of the new rite to the Coptic and the Maronite rites. Fr. Cekada rightly sets aside the Apostolic Tradition because it is not a rite the validity of which is assured (nothing is known about it on this point). He also sets aside the Maronite rite because it involves the enthronement of a patriarch, who is already a bishop, so this rite would not have any sacramental value. Fr. Pierre-Marie has replied to these arguments in a subsequent note, but we shall not engage in that discussion: the Coptic rite alone suffices for our response to Fr. Cekada. ThE ANgEluS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org Fr. Cekada rejects the resemblance to the Coptic rite for two reasons: 1) the form2 is shorter (42 words versus 340); and 2) it omits the phrases indicative of the bishop’s power of Order, which would in fact be the substantial defect of the new form. Form The first reason is fallacious because Fr. Cekada takes as the “form” the entire Coptic preface (in reality, a single sentence must be “formal-effective”); and, at the same time, he denies that the context of the new preface can take away the ambiguity of the “formal-effective” phrase of the new rite. But one must choose: if the context does not determine the signification of the form, it would be necessary to identify the “formal-effective” sentence NS 43 of the Coptic rite and to compare it with that of the new rite; if, on the contrary, the context determines the signification, then it is necessary to compare one complete preface with the other complete preface. It is fallacious to compare a complete preface, on the one hand, with the “formal-effective” sentence on the other. It is necessary to bear in mind that Roman theology, imbued with a more rational and juridical spirit, has always sought to specify what constitutes the “formal-effective” sentence in its various consecratory prefaces, whereas Eastern theology does not seek these specifications. That is why, for instance, the Romans arranged the Eucharistic consecration around the words of our Lord, thereby signaling that it is these words that effect transubstantiation; whereas the Orientals did not proceed in that manner, with the consequence that later they did not know whether the consecration occurred at that moment or during the epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Ghost). If Denzinger presents the complete Eastern prefaces as “forms,” it is because Eastern theology never determined with precision what constitutes, in each preface, the essential proposition (the “formaleffective”) that produces the sacramental effect. According to St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching, it must be a single, simple sentence (with a single subject and a single predicate, which can have several determining complements) that produces what it signifies. Fr. Cekada’s argument does not seem fair, for by comparing the rites (as Fr. Pierre-Marie did in his article) the parallel between the majority of the phrases is obvious (the Coptic rite is a little longer). Fr. Cekada counts the words: 340 to 42! But he does not point out that the majority of these 340 words occur in the rest of the new preface. Moreover, the likely “formal-effective” phrase of the Coptic rite (which corresponds to the phrase considered to be such in the new rite) is shorter than that of the new rite; and, consequently, is equally, if not more, ambiguous. If it is licit to say that the entire preface constitutes the form of the consecration, that is because the context in which the “formal-effective” phrase is inserted affects the determination of its signification. Context Fr. Cekada’s second reason does not seem sufficient to cast serious doubts on the validity either. Indeed, it is a question of defects in the context, and this context is very ample because it cannot be reduced to the preface alone; the complete rite must be taken into consideration. On the importance of context in the determination of the form and the matter, Leo XIII is clear enough in Apostolicæ Curæ3: For once a new rite has been initiated in which, as we have seen, the Sacrament of Order is adulterated or denied, For chapel vestibules? Friends and family? “Doubting Thomases”? Doomsdayers? WHY THE NEW RITE OF EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION IS VALID Both Parts I and 2 in one handy publication, together with this “Replies to the Objections” inserted. Rarely does Angelus Press reprint an article from a current issue, but it has done so with “Why the New Rite of Episcopal Consecration Is Valid.” For years people have been suggesting that the new rite does not suffice to create bishops, and without bishops there are no priests or cardinals, and without cardinals...there is no Pope! From there it is a simple step to conclude that the Roman Church, but for the few bishops consecrated according to the old rite, is now without a hierarchy! From suggestion to affirmation, and restricted circles to the dining tables of traditional Catholics worldwide the question is being debated. In this study by Fr. Pierre-Marie, O.P., a serious, complete, and cogent answer to the question has been prepared. Following the Thomistic method, he strongly states the case against the validity of the new rite...and then more strongly exposes the reasons for it. Includes exposition of the drafting of the new rite as told by the man in charge, Dom Bernard Botte, lengthy quotations from unpublished letters from official archives, and parallel comparisons of the new rite against the ancient Eastern rites that served as a basis for the new rite in the Western Church. We have now added to this reprint, an insert of Fr. Calderon’s response (The Angelus, November 2006) to the objections of Fr. Cekada. 36pp, STK# 8150 $2.95 NOW $0.78 (no additional bookstore discount) www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • November 2006 44 and from which all idea of consecration and sacrifice has been rejected, the formula, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” no longer holds good, because the Spirit is infused into the soul with the grace of the Sacrament, and so the words “for the office and work of a priest or bishop,” and the like no longer hold good, but remain as words without the reality which Christ instituted. [§31; emphasis added.] He obviously recognizes that if, in the rest of the rite, consecration and sacrifice were involved, the words of the form could have “consistency.” The certain and assured validity of the Coptic rite, consequently, seems to be a serious argument in favor of the validity of the new rite. A Thomistic Insight Note: As Fr. Pierre-Marie points out, the great variety of forms in the consecratory rites (the same holds true for sacerdotal ordinations) shows that our Lord did not specifically determine the words to use, but that He merely indicated the general purpose of the sacrament. Moreover, both the matter (imposition of hands) and the formal words of the prefaces are, in general, rather ambiguous and general, even in the traditional Roman rite (the imposition of hands is used in all the sacraments, though not always as part of the matter, and is also used in many of the sacramentals). That is why the Romans, who love precision, judged4 that the right of sacerdotal ordination obtained its effect, not in the preface, but in the tradition of the instruments, by which the power conferred5 was signified. This shows that, on the one hand, they were aware of the ambiguity of the formulas, and on the other, that the Church possesses a very ample power to determine the form and the matter in the sacrament of Order.6 St. Thomas gives a profound reason explaining why it is so: in the other sacraments, the minister acts as instrument, and he must determine very precisely 1 Fr. Anthony Cekada is a former priest of the Society of Saint Pius X. He left the Society because of his sedevacantist ideas. He has summarized the principle arguments of the partisans of the systematic nullity of the new rite of episcopal consecration in an article that has been widely diffused on the Internet. 2 In a sacrament are distinguished matter (for example, pouring water as an ablution during baptism) and form, which consists of the words pronounced by the minister of the sacrament (in baptism: “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”). The sacramentality of the episcopacy (that is to say, the fact that the episcopacy confers a different character from the one received in the priesthood) is today commonly held by the theologians, but the question has not yet been definitively decided by the magisterium: see Canon Berthod’s article in Sel de la Terre, No.29, p.8ff. Even if the episcopacy were not a sacrament, one could still speak of matter and form in the broad sense.–Sel de la Terre. 3 In this encyclical, Pope Leo XIII decided–in the negative–the question of the validity of Anglican episcopal consecrations.–Sel de la Terre. 4 Until Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis of November 30, 1947, DS 3860.–Sel de la Terre. 5 At the beginning of his teaching, St. Thomas said that by the imposition of hands (and thus by the words of the preface) the grace was given, but not the power: “Per manus impositionem datur plenitudo gratiae, per quam THE ANGELUS • November 2006 www.angeluspress.org the effect he produces in the name of the Holy Trinity. But in the case of Order, he acts as a secondary cause, a progenitor as it were, since the minister transmits a power as he possesses it himself (or a part of this power): Now power is conferred by power, as like proceeds from like....Hence in this sacrament there is a kind of universal communication [of power]....[The bishop] has some power with regard to the power of Order, which power he confers, in so far as it is derived, from his....[T]hat which is bestowed in the other sacraments comes from God alone, and not from the minister who dispenses the sacrament; whereas that which is conferred in this sacrament, namely the spiritual power, comes also from him who gives the sacrament, as imperfect from perfect power.7 For this reason St. Thomas points out that the efficacy of the sacrament does not reside solely in the sacramental sign, but also in the minster himself who dispenses it–the bishop, and that the matter is added in order to specify what participation of power is conferred: ...the efficacy of this sacrament resides chiefly with him who dispenses the sacrament. And the matter is employed to show the powers conferred in particular by one who has it completely, rather than to cause power....8 What he says of the matter holds equally true in a certain way of the form. Because of this, the imposition of hands constitutes sufficient matter from the fact that they are the hands of the bishop; from this it also holds that the Church could also add the tradition of the instruments for sacramental validity, and that the forms can also be varied; from this it also holds that the Church was able to divide the diaconate into divers minor orders. Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Le Sel de la Terre, No. 58, Fall 2006, pp.213-16. Fr. Calderon, ordained for the Society of Saint Pius X in 1986, is a professor of theology at the Society’s Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Seminary at La Reja, Argentina, where Bishop Richard Williamson is rector. ad magna officia sint idonei” (Supplement, Q. 35, Art. 7). Subsequently, he certainly changed his mind since he was to teach that grace is infused by means of the character in such a way that it cannot be given apart from it; but, alas! he did not treat of this sacrament again in the Summa (which remained incomplete). Anyhow, this allows us to see that he thought that the grace of the sacrament was clearly expressed in the words of the preface, but not the power of Order: for this, the tradition of the instruments was in order. [Author’s note.] 6 See Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis.–Sel de la Terre. 7 ST Supplement, Q. 34, Art. 4 and 5 passim. “Potestas a potestate traducitur sicut simili ex simili...in hoc sacramento est quasi quaedam communicatio univoca....episcopo habet aliquam potestatem respectu potestatis ordinis quae confertur per ipsum, inquantum a sua potestate derivatur....Hoc quod in sacramento confertur, in aliis sacramentis derivatur tantum a Deo, non a ministro, qui sacramentum dispensat: sed illud quod in hoc sacramento traditur, scilicet spiritualis potestas, derivatur etiam ab eo qui sacramentum dat, sicut potestas imperfecta [sacerdoti] a perfecta [episcopi]. 8 Ibid., Art. 5. “Efficacia hujus sacramenti principaliter residet penes eum qui sacramentum dispensat. Materia autem adhibetur magis ad determinandum potestatem quae traditur particulariter ab habente eam complete, quam ad potestatem causandum.” The Valiant Woman, Conferences for Women Dressing with Dignity Mrs. Colleen Hammond ng Dressi “Hopeignity sells” ies with D n on cop a millick Buchana i r t a P – Msgr. Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims The most valiant of all women is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although this virtue is most manifest as a gift of the Holy Ghost, it is also manifest in the daily trials of the soldier of Christ who conquers inordinate self-love with God’s grace. The valiant (strong) woman does not have to be a St. Joan of Arc, but she must rule well her home in prudence, mercy, justice and truth. In Proverbs 31, the Holy Ghost Himself describes the “valiant woman.” This book is an extended version of talks given to married women. Each talk begins with a theme drawn from the Bible. Landriot then explains the moral of the passage with a brilliance that could only come from a confessor whose heart was well seasoned in discerning the particular characteristics and maternal predispositions of the feminine soul. What emerges is an achievable ideal for every truly Catholic woman. Not one page fails to demonstrate what grace, what beauty, and what joy supernature can bring forth in the life of a woman called to the vocation of Christian motherhood. 213pp, softcover, STK 8141Q $18.95 In this ground-breaking book, Colleen Hammond challenges today’s indecent, demeaning fashions and provides you with the information you need to dress attractively rather than dressing to attract. Colleen shares real-life examples of how women can accentuate the grace and beauty of their femininity, and she shows that “modest” definitely does not mean “frumpy.” The author is a former cable network anchor, image consultant, actress, model and Miss Michigan, who abandoned it all to be a stay-at-home mother. She is also an award-winning writer, radio and televi­sion talk show host and speaker, who is widely sought after because of her lively, interactive style and fresh approach to living out the Catholic Faith in daily life. 138pp, color softcover, STK# 8069 $10.00 Raising Your Children Fatherhood and Family Christ in the Home The purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of children. If a couple fails in this, they have failed in their most important God-given duty. A collection of articles from Integrity Magazine to help you with your duties as a parent. A collection of articles from Integrity Magazine specifically chosen to help fathers fulfill their crucial God-given duties as husband and Father. Ideal for the engaged, marriage instruction classes, and for those married many years. A guidebook to finding and keeping a happy marriage and raising Catholic children. Lots of practical and spiritual advice. Vol.2, The Integrity Series Rev. Fr. Raoul Plus, SJ Vol.3, The Integrity Series 200pp, softcover, STK# 6721 $12.95 343pp, larger type, softcover, STK 8128 $18.95 256pp, softcover, STK# 6598 $14.95 Great Wives and Mothers Rev. Fr. Hugh Francis Blunt “One of the greatest glories of the Church is her noble women. 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 of recalling the inspiriting stories of the women who sought first of all for the kingdom of God.” Full of 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 stories, both famous and obscure, are collected. 424pp, softcover, STK# 8219 $24.95 Dear Newlyweds Pope Pius XII Pius XII made it a regular practice to address scores of newlyweds who came to seek his blessing. His words to them were not off-the-cuff remarks, but, when taken together, form a complete course of instruction on married life, which is why it is NOT just for newlyweds, but all married couples and anyone contemplating marriage. It is a book to read, ponder, cherish, and be guided by, all through married life. You will be inspired by Pius XII’s explanation of Matrimony and his insight into the practical problems of everyday married life: the rearing of children, temptations against fidelity, relationships with elderly parents, and SO MUCH more! Ideal for marriage preparation classes, marriage counseling, or as an engagement, wedding, or anniversary gift. 269pp, softcover, STK# 6730 $14.95 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 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.