November 2007

$4.45

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

Pope Pius XI On the Reconstruction of the Social Order
W
E
N

Economics and

$alvation
Forty Years After R erum Novarum

Quadragesimo Anno

Schemas, Introduction,
Chapter Headings by
Bishop Richard Williamson

A unique edition of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno issued on the 40th
anniversary of Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum. Contains an introduction by Bishop Richard
N. Williamson and four color graphs and charts by Bishop Williamson to help the reader gain a
deeper understanding of the text. An invaluable study guide. Written partially in response to the
Great Depression, the Holy Father sets forth the principles of Catholic social order. This includes
the right of a worker to a just wage, the proper balance of capital and labor, the principle of
subsidiarity, the twin dangers of economic individualism and collectivism, the inherent problems of
Socialism, the distribution of productive property and the restoration of the guilds.
The present state of affairs...clearly indicates the way in which We ought to proceed. For We are
now confronted, as more than once before in the history of the Church, with a world that in large part
has almost fallen back into paganism. That these whole classes of men may be brought back to Christ
Whom they have denied, we must recruit and train from among them, themselves, auxiliary soldiers of
the Church who know them well and their minds and wishes, and can reach their hearts with a tender
brotherly love. The first and immediate apostles to the workers ought to be workers; the apostles to
those who follow industry and trade ought to be from among them themselves. (§143)

57pp, softcover, charts, STK# 8223✱ $6.00

Fr. Daniel Cooper, SSPX

“Fr. Dunney’s The Mass is
a treasure trove of information on the Latin Mass. It can
benefit every Catholic over the
age of eleven. Let the youth
use it to learn the value of the
Holy Mass; let adults use it
to understand the depth and
riches of our greatest treasure.
We need to come back to the
realization that it’s the Mass
that matters; our Catholic
Faith must hold again the first
place in our hearts and minds.
This book should help us do
that. It [the book] is not just
about the Mass. It also has
many lessons for life on virtue
and character; it is loaded
with examples from the Holy
Scriptures and the lives of
the Saints, and is an excellent source of instruction on
religion and Church history.”

The Mass NEW
Fr. Joseph Dunney

The Mass is an illustrated commentary on the significance of the Latin Mass, the
teachings of the Church, and their application in everyday life. Each part of the Mass
is described with its historical and religious significances, the roles of the priest, his
vestments, altar vessels, and symbols.
Whether you have never assisted at the ancient Latin Rite of Mass or have been
doing so your whole life, this book has plenty to offer. Newcomers will be indebted to
Providence for having put this book in their hands. As for the “veterans,” they’ll wish
they had read this book years ago. Are you fervent in your faith? Fr. Dunney will give
you a greater depth of understanding.
Are you lukewarm? Have a hard time concentrating on the Mass?–Then read this
book. Not accessible to the average Catholic, you say? Too mystical? Think again.
Liturgical scholars and authorities are quoted throughout, and 126 illustrations clarify
important points.
Fr. Dunney was pastor of St. James Church, Albany, New York. He was educated
at Manhattan College, Columbia University, St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie,
and the Catholic University of America. He traveled extensively in the United States,
Europe, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific.

375pp, 5½" x 7¾",
softcover, index,
STK# 4000✱ $19.95

“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

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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 2007
Volume XXX, Number 11

• Kansas City, Missouri 64109

English-language Editor and Publisher
for the International Society of Saint Pius X

letter from the editor  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 2
Fr. Kenneth Novak

PublisheR

Fr. John Fullerton
Editor

family and education in today’s world  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 3
Rev. Fr. Franz Schmidberger

Fr. Kenneth Novak
Assistant Editor

Mr. James Vogel
jack-of-all-trades

Limbo...in “Limbo” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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LIMBO: victim of the new theology
of universal salvation . .Christendom
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Angelus Press Edition

Rev. Fr. Patrick De La Rocque

catechism of the
crisis in the church  . .Part
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Fr. Matthias Gaudron

God’s secret language  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 39
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P.

august 2007 writing contest winning essay  . . . .  43
The Angelus Monthly photo writing contest  .  .  . 44

Mr. Cory Bosley
Shipping and Handling

Mr. Jon Rydholm

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ON OUR COVER: “The Crucifix at All Saints Convent, Catonsville, Maryland.”
From an original watercolor painting by Mrs. Carol Rowzie Whitmore-Herring, who
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Letter
from
the
Editor

I have three numbers to give you. The first is zero.
This is the number of 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missals we
currently have in stock. The second number is 700. This
is the number of our daily hand-missals sold last Friday to
a church in the Chicago archdiocese celebrating the Mass
of the Extraordinary Form (a.k.a. the Latin Mass of 1962).
The third number is 105,650. This is the number of dollars
contributed in September by our apostolate partners
allowing Angelus Press to amp up its revised production
schedule for the rest of 2007.
On behalf of Angelus Press and the Society of St. Pius X
for which it publishes, I thank you for putting your money
where your prayers are in response to our Emergency
Reprint appeal. If I throw out the highest and lowest
contributions, the average donation came to $382.52. This
is remarkable generosity when I consider your precarious
job security, the plummeting value of the US dollar (now
less valued than the Canadian dollar!), the high energy
costs associated with your homes and transportation, your
generously large families of children with their schooling,
your continued sacrificial commitments to other Catholic
apostolates, health care costs, debt service (!), and the price
of milk.
My gratitude to those three separate parties, including
fellow Society priest Fr. Trevor Burfitt, who desired to
underwrite the reprinting of Most Asked Questions About the
Society of Saint Pius X. This is currently being updated by
personnel in Menzingen, Switzerland. The last 12 years
of the Society’s history is being recorded to be included
in the reprint.
Some benefactors have included comments with their
donations:
I am very pleased to know that you will reprint the Marian
Children’s Missal. It is an excellent missal for children. I have
been very disappointed that it has been out of print for so
long. Lots of parents have been wanting it [Lower Hutt, New
Zealand].

Both the Marian Children’s Missal and Jesus, Make Me
Worthy are deep into production and due for delivery
November 15.
The adult 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal, will arrive
in late November. (Call for arrival date.) We’ve had to
drop $40,000 as a pre-publication first payment on the
$137,905. It is being printed in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
As managing editor, it is based on Catholic social principle
that I insist Angelus Press books be printed in America
by US citizens, even though overseas labor is cheaper by
more than halves, especially Communist labor.
The following two notes were especially gratifying, the
first from a seminary classmate, Fr. Edward MacDonald,
ministering for the Society in Australia, and the second
from Immaculate Conception Mission, a Society chapel
in Virginia, pastored by my confrere who resides at our
Kansas City priory, Fr. Christopher Pieroni, formerly of
the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He first came

to know of the Society via the Angelus Press website while
serving as a chaplain serving in Iraq.
In answer to your appeal, here is $**** for the reprints
of these essential materials. Keep up the good work....Fr.
Bourmaud’s book One Hundred Years of Modernism is brilliant
and well-translated [Queensland, Australia].
Enclosed with this letter you will find a check in the amount
of $***. This was from our second collection last Sunday to help
in a small way with the reprinting of your books. We will put a
memo in our monthly bulletin for more contributions to help
such a great cause [IMC, Virginia Beach, VA].

Other underwriting partners understand the urgent
need:
We hope this small contribution will help in getting Novus
Ordo Catholics to come to love the Tridentine Mass and
understand and appreciate its importance [Decatur, MI].
I understand your missals are suddenly VERY popular!
But I can understand how this can be a problem–a “happy
problem” as Fr. Arnaud deVillers used to describe it. I would
like to help. Enclosed is a gift in the amount of $***...[A Priest
of the Archdiocese of Miami, FL].
All I can say is I don’t know where I would be today without
the services of the SSPX and the Angelus Press. I only wish I
could give more. May God bless you as you continue the work
of upholding the Faith [Syracuse, NY].
I am thankful you decided to issue a request for help
under these most remarkable circumstances! In a spirit
of thanksgiving and reparation, I am happy to make this
donation....I’m rejoicing as I read yet again the details you
related about the number of priests and laymen seeking the
truth through Angelus Press...[Lindonville, NY].
Please accept our donation for your emergency reprint
appeal. We are most pleased to help your efforts in helping
answer the many interested requests to learn about the Latin
Mass. What a great problem!! May God bless your hard work
and may you enjoy continued success in drawing souls to the
Faith...[El Paso, TX].
This is only a small token of our appreciation for the
wonderful work you do. Angelus Press has meant a lot to our
family [Palmetto Bay, FL].
I hope this helps. Please pray for my family, myself, and my
business. I will send more money in the future as God allows.
Please don’t hesitate to ask if you need help; I will do what I
can [Portland, IN].

Please, you can stop sending money for now. You’ve
made it possible for us to get over the money crunch and
catch up with demand. A million thanks for helping us
shoulder this glorious burden. Angelus Press, in turn, is
committed to helping bear your heavier burdens, as this
letter requested:
I am enclosing a small sum to assist you in your effort to
publish additional 1962 missals. The prayer intentions of my
husband and I are very great and I am asking you and your
associates to pray for our intentions, especially for our daughter
who has renounced the Lord for the past ten years and is
considering changing her sex. Thank you very much for your
fervent prayers in advance.

Indeed, in deed. Thanks all, again. The written word
lives!
Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Kenneth Novak



Family and
Education in
Today’s World
F r .

F r a n z

S c h m i d b e r g e r

The Problem

It has been 60 years since the great Swiss prelate Robert
Mäder published a booklet entitled Christ, the King [see p.18],
wherein he stresses that:
The woes currently afflicting our world may be traced back to the
family. The family, our first great bastion of support and stability, has
succumbed to profane values and has thus been desecrated.

How would he judge now if he were confronted with the
nameless misery and suffering that has since descended upon
marriage, family life, and society in general? What would he
make of the countless broken homes and the astronomic divorce
figures that are typical of today? The number of divorces in the
US has reached almost 50%, while the situation in Germany
is only marginally better. In Estonia 76% of all marriages are
eventually dissolved, with only one in four remaining intact. The
primary victims of such developments are the children, many of
whom come away with a spiritual trauma.
However, this is only one of many evils that have
undermined family life in recent times: a wide range of artificial
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • November 2007


contraception techniques (the pill, sterilization, etc.)
in conjunction with 50 million abortions per year
throughout the world equates to approximately
137,000 children being brutally put to death on a
daily basis. At the opposite extreme we have in-vitro
fertilization and the manipulation of unborn life.
Moreover, homosexual partnerships are increasingly
being accorded full legal status in many countries,
particularly in Europe.
Most Americans currently live without
children, and 30% of all households consist of
single occupants versus 31% sharing with one
other person. A mere 28% live with more than two
people, which translates into a fertility rate of about
2 children per American woman. A great number
of married couples no longer have children living
at home, providing they have ever had any, that
is. In addition, there is a growing number of young
married couples who are not producing offspring,
while single-parent families account for almost 10%
of all households. Hence the following observations
made by Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic
Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, issued after a synod
held on June 28, 2003, are entirely justified:
Amongst the aspects of this situation, so many of
which were frequently mentioned during the Synod,
I would like to mention in a particular way the loss of
Europe’s Christian memory and heritage, accompanied by a
kind of practical agnosticism and religious indifference
whereby many Europeans give the impression of living
without spiritual roots and somewhat like heirs who
have squandered a patrimony entrusted to them by
history.…This loss of Christian memory is accompanied
by a kind of fear of the future. Tomorrow is often presented
as something bleak and uncertain. The future is viewed
more with dread than with desire. Among the troubling
indications of this are the inner emptiness that grips
many people and the loss of meaning in life. The signs
and fruits of this existential anguish include in particular
the diminishing number of births, the decline in the
number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life,
and the difficulty, if not the outright refusal, to make
lifelong commitments, including marriage. We find
ourselves before a widespread existential fragmentation.
A feeling of loneliness is prevalent; divisions and
conflicts are on the rise. Among other symptoms of this
state of affairs, Europe is presently witnessing the grave
phenomenon of family crises and the weakening of the
very concept of the family…. (I, 7-8)

The idea of family life is now widely considered
to be old-fashioned, and it is being replaced with
alternative lifestyles, such as the single life, shared
accommodation, cohabitation, and even homosexual
partnerships.
The question that remains to be answered is
whether these phenomena are purely coincidental
or whether there is a deeper symptom? One
may indeed see a system behind it; indeed, one
must. The chief instigators of this social shift are
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

the intellectual leaders of the so-called Frankfurt
School, which evolved out of a group of people who
collaborated in the year 1923, just after World War I,
to found the Institute for Marxism. This agenda was
later retained under the somewhat less conspicuous
alias of the Institute for Social Studies. Who, then,
are the main representatives of this institute? Let us
drop just a few names: Max Horkheimer, Theodor
Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jürgen
Habermas.1
Being mainly composed of Jews (infidel Jews,
incidentally, who had forsaken the Mosaic laws),
this group fled to Switzerland even before Hitler
came to power and its members promptly went on
to settle in the US. After World War II, the school
split up into two branches, one of which returned to
Germany while the other remained in the US.
These conspirators came up with the following
calculation: a revolution could be carried out by
armed force, as had been done in Russia; but the
Red Revolution had been only partially successful
because it had been restricted to Russia until well
after World War II, whereupon it eventually took
root in Eastern Europe, China, and other parts of
Asia. It had not therefore culminated in the great
world revolution envisaged by the Bolsheviks; it had
succeeded but was still fraught with failure.
Another option was to bring about revolution by
destroying all received traditions, such that whole
peoples could be entirely uprooted and subsequently
remolded into a mass of uncultured individuals
bereft of morals and religion, and this is precisely
what the Institute of Social Studies eventually aims
to achieve: it envisages a penetrating transformation
of man and of society as a whole.
The conspirators are well aware of the fact that
the Faith and Catholic culture have constituted the
main hindrance to revolution in Western Europe.
Hence they are bent on eradicating the Western
image of mankind from the human consciousness, to
overcome the Faith, and to create a post-Christian
society that would render the Church superfluous.
Besides the Catholic Faith, there is another
institution that has opposed revolution in a very
special way: I am referring to marriage and the
family, especially the Christian family. From 1936
onwards the cultural revolutionaries therefore began
an orchestrated campaign against the family as such.
“Unless the family has been done away with as an
institution,” they pondered, “we will never achieve
our objective.”
Thus they began their work at various
universities, particularly in the US. They studied
the manipulative effects of music on human
consciousness and experimented with atonal music
(i.e. a variety that has no harmony whatever and
which subsequently causes damage to the psyche)
as a means of unleashing our basest instincts–


rebelliousness, hatred, denial and chaos–in order to use it as a vehicle
of subterfuge and social revolution. At the same time they propagated
the notion of anti-authoritarian education, and we are therefore
confronted with a systematic attempt to destroy the Western Christian
paradigm as well as the mindset that goes with it.
This plot has already been put into operation. It would be
positively naïve to assume that the ills currently afflicting Western
families are merely a series of unfortunate coincidences, and while
they cannot be exclusively attributed to the Frankfurt School, it
certainly has played a major role in the process, just as it was largely
responsible for the revolution that swept Germany, France, and
indeed the whole of Europe in 1968.
These subversive designs are most definitely contrary to the
Scriptures and to the divine order, for:
God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said, Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. (Gen. 1:27-28)

Matrimony as the
Basis of Family Life

Matrimony is the basis of family life. Marriage has three
properties: the begetting of progeny as its first and foremost purpose,
lifelong loyalty between husband and wife, and, lastly, the holy
Sacrament which allows spouses to remain devoted to one another, to
honor their mutual cause, to accept the children with whom God has
blessed them, and to bring them up in the Christian spirit.
Hence the primary aim of marriage is procreation. Spouses are
called upon to partake in the process of divine creation, to assist Him
in granting life to loyal believers in the one true God and thereby to
make them heirs to heaven.
The second objective of matrimony is subservient to the former,
in that husband and wife should love one another. In his Encyclical
Casti Connubii (December 31, 1930), Pope Pius XI uttered the
following words of wisdom on the purpose of marriage:
This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect
each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be
said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony.... (§24)

In other words, spouses should see it as their duty to guide their
partners to perfection in the Christian sense and ultimately to help
one another reach heaven.
When preparing for married life one should first of all invest
some thought into one’s choice of partner. For instance, it is obvious
that a marriage between spouses of different religious backgrounds
and beliefs can be problematic. If partners cannot agree on the most
fundamental issue that defines them as humans, then how are they
going to help each other in attaining fulfillment and perfection? If they
cannot unite in prayer or take Holy Communion in the same church,
if they cannot attend Mass together on Sundays or reach a consensus
on the way their children are to be educated, how then should their
partnership succeed, especially in view of the fact that they may not
even share the same conjugal morals? Hence one’s marital intentions
should at all times be directed toward a God-fearing Catholic who
will make a good spouse, such that the union might last a lifetime. In
this way, married couples can always pray and receive the sacraments

The conspirators are
well aware of the
fact that the Faith
and Catholic culture
have constituted the
main hindrance to
revolution in Western
Europe. Hence they
are bent on eradicating
the Western image
of mankind from the
human consciousness,
to overcome the Faith,
and to create a postChristian society that
would render the
Church superfluous.

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • November 2007


that a further child would pose a threat to her
psychological balance; 2) the eugenic indication,
where future children are likely to be physically
or mentally impaired; 3) the economic indication,
which applies in situations where the father cannot
make enough to ensure the welfare of his family if
another child were to enter the household; and 4)
social grounds, where the family premises are so
confined that begetting a further child would not be
acceptable. In his elaboration, the Pope noted that:

together, and they can educate their children in the
true Christian spirit.
In marriage, the husband represents the creator
as he gives of his own, whereas the wife represents
creation, for she is the receiving principle. In a
Christian marriage, the husband takes the part of
Christ, while his wife emulates the Church. St.
Paul puts it as follows: “This mystery is a profound
one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and
the Church” (Eph. 5:32). Spouses should always be
conscious of its deep and far-reaching significance,
especially in times of impending marital strife; for
the very thought that there is no conflict between
Christ and his Church enables them to overcome
their differences.
The mystery of marriage is so firmly inscribed in
human nature and man is so deeply rooted therein
that upon His coming upon the world to heal its
rifts, Christ Himself wished to be born into a family,
namely the little family of Bethlehem and Nazareth.
Let us also bear in mind that He worked His first
miracle at a wedding feast in Cana, where He turned
water into wine, just as He was later to transform
wine into His own blood during the Last Supper.
Furthermore, He made the state of marriage into
a sacrament, that is to say He called upon married
couples to do more than disseminate the silver
blessing of creation, for they were also given a part
in administering the golden blessing of salvation.

If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable
judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal
or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid
the fecundity of their union while continuing to satisfy
to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a
false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound
ethical principles.

In other words, if their activities are not justified by
at least one of the above-mentioned exceptions put
forward by the Pope, spouses cannot deliberately
restrict themselves to days of infertility without
encumbering their conscience.
No married couple should shy away from giving
life to four, five, or even six children. Children
represent the wealth of a family and indeed of
entire peoples. We are the richest nations on
earth yet also the poorest for children, not only
in numerical terms but also when it comes to our
hostile attitude towards them, not to mention our
marital morals. However, the statistics tell us that
each woman would need to bear at least 2.1 children
for population levels to remain constant. In other
words, we are a dying people. Demographically
speaking, the Christian West is faced with extinction.
The Muslims are well aware of this fact and they
are employing their very fecundity to conquer our
realms. A Muslim once said: “We shall overcome
Christendom in the maternity ward.”
I would now like to portray the ultimate benefits
of fecundity by means of a few figures, or rather
a game of numbers. Of course these numerical
examples would never occur in the real world, but
they are nevertheless quite revealing. Let us assume
that a family today raised two children who would
in turn beget two children, and so on and so forth.
If we take the time-span between each generation
to be thirty years on average, then the abovementioned progenitors would have 64 descendants
in the last generation after 150 years. However, if

Family and
Education
Children and Fecundity
Children should always be regarded as a gift
from God. One should continuously encourage
couples to lead a normal married life. However,
there are a limited number of circumstances where
restricting one’s connubial passions to periods
of infertility on the part of the wife would seem
advisable, albeit temporarily.
In his allocution to the midwives of Italy, on
October 29, 1951, Pope Pius XII listed four reasons
for resorting to certain permissible forms of natural
birth control: 1) Medical grounds in the case of
a woman who is either ill or under such strain

Original number
of Children

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Number of
Children
after 150 years

64

729

4,096

15,625

46,656

117,649

262,144

THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

9

10

531,441 1 Million


those same progenitors had raised three children
instead of two, then they would have not two or
three times as many descendants after 150 years, but
the figure would actually jump to exactly 729. Had
they raised four children it would increase to 4,096,
and the numbers would diverge exponentially as
time progresses. [See the table below.]
As already mentioned, the figures shown above
would almost never occur under normal conditions,
but below are two concrete examples that serve to
demonstrate the benefits of multiplication:
1) An ancestor of Archbishop Lefebvre married
around 1790. One hundred and fifty years later (i.e.
in 1940) he had 1,200 living descendants including
60 who had joined religious orders, many of whom
were priests. What a blessing for Church and society
was this good Catholic forefather!
2) One fine day in the eighties, I was a guest of
the Goyette family in French Canada. This family
had been blessed with 22 children, two of whom
had died at birth. However, 20 of their number are
alive today and they are all married with several
children, some of whom have already wed in their
turn. This works out at four generations including
the progenitors. If we are to count the in-laws as
family, then the number of Monsieur Goyette’s
descendants has by now reached 400, which would
suffice to people an entire village. Just imagine a
family gathering of such dimensions!
Large families are usually quite fertile, that is to
say people who were born into large families would
in turn tend to have many children. Moreover,
families blessed with many children will of course
produce some offspring that have a mission.
Amongst a whole group of children, we are bound
to find at least one that will be called to serve the
Lord as a priest or in a religious order, and what
could possibly be more natural?–A certain degree of
thrift combined with mutual respect and cooperation
amongst siblings constitute a sound natural basis
for the workings of grace. Joining religious life also
makes a very special reward for the generosity and
kindheartedness of one’s parents.
On January 20, 1958, Pope Pius XII gave an
allocution to the prolific parents of Italy, wherein he
stated the following:
Even from the perspective of an outsider, a properly
run family appears as a manifestly sacred thing. For
them the sacrament of baptism ranks not as a rare event
but rather as a regular occurrence that gives joy to the
Lord and renews His grace time and time again. With
numerous solemn processions to the baptismal font yet
to come within the family, the eldest are already enjoying
the equally glorious sacraments of Confirmation and
Holy Communion. Scarcely has the youngest sibling
taken off the white robes of sweet remembrance than
the white veil of matrimony may be seen blossoming
upon the firstborn daughter, once again to see parents,

siblings and relations gathered at the foot of the altar.
So the joyous chain of marriages, baptisms, and white
Sundays continues as though it were forever springtime,
and thus we might say that God never ceases to visit
these happy people and to shower them with His grace.
In this same manner divine Providence descends upon
large families, and many parents are more than ready
to testify to this, particularly the poorer ones; for they
put their entire faith in Him concerning all things that
lie beyond human competency. There is merit in such
faith and indeed it is not in vain! To put it in human terms
and dimensions, we mean that divine Providence may
be derived not so much from the number of times He
has shown extraordinary clemency but rather from the
great harmony of regular life that is due to the infinite
wisdom of the Creator, to His great goodness and to His
omnipotence.

Education
At birth the human child is more dependent on
parental care than any other living creature, and
these needs extend far beyond feeding, hygiene, and
clothing. What children require above all else is the
attention of other intelligent beings, people who love
them while simultaneously awakening their spiritual
and intellectual faculties. In this context, allow me
to cite a ghastly experiment that was conducted in
former times. One day it was decided that a group of
baby infants should be put away in an isolated room
and provided with absolutely nothing but adequate
temperatures, nourishment, hygienic conditions,
etc. Systematically deprived of human warmth, they
were neither loved nor smiled at, and not a word
was spoken to them. Most of these babies eventually
died on site, which goes to show that man is a social
being that is fundamentally dependent on its fellow
creatures.
Let me support this argument with yet another
poignant example based on an event that took
place approximately a century ago and which
involved a pair of infants being abducted by wolves.
Some years later these children were rediscovered
amongst the pack. They now howled just like
wolves and were evidently incapable of speech. The
younger child died shortly after being freed, and
the other never learned to speak. A child needs live
contact with other people if it is to develop into a
proper human being. This loving care on the part of
the parents, and particularly the mother, begins at
conception. A mother has to accept her child and to
be joyous in motherhood, such that she may express
her Fiat in God’s will as Mary did; she has to
embrace her task, even if the prospect of yet another
child can seem burdensome at first.
Being a Christian, the young mother will
endeavor from the start to nurture her as yet unborn
child in the presence of God, to offer it unto Him
and to bid Him turn it to good. She accepts the
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007


hardships of pregnancy and the pains of birth, and
especially the latter merits exemplification: a group
of mother sheep were one day given a sedative
before lambing, whereupon they abandoned their
young after giving birth. Natal pain apparently
triggers certain maternal instincts or at least furthers
them in some way or another. However, this is
not to say that all sedatives should henceforth be
forbidden, but they should certainly be administered
with caution, for God had intended the pains of
birth for Eve, our ancestral mother, as one of several
punishments for her fall from grace (Gen. 3:16).
A mother will desire with all her heart to have
her child baptized at the earliest opportunity. This
is an issue of which modern parents need constantly
to be reminded, for there is a tendency these days
to postpone the occasion until such a time as all
the aunts and uncles can be assembled in order to
celebrate it with the extended family. However, that
is not what baptism is about: the purpose underlying
baptism involves bringing the child to God, to raise
the heathen into Christendom, to turn the sinner
into a righteous individual, in short: to make this
little creature into a temple of the Lord, that it may
be a member of the body of Christ and an heir to
heaven. Child mortality remains a genuine threat to
this day, and it would be a terrible lot for parents to
bear if their child were to be denied adoration of the
Holy Trinity due to mere procrastination on their
part!
Children demand time, comfort, human warmth,
and love, though it should be noted that love
manifests itself not so much in emotions but above
all via that precious attitude which tells someone,
“It’s great to have you with us!” It is a question of
acknowledging the other person, of acceptance, of
condescension, of goodwill, and of benefaction.
As children grow, they will greatly appreciate
being in contact with nature, to admire all those
animals, plants, mountains and lakes that were made
by the hand of God. In this day and age dominated
by technology and automation, by cold, avaricious
utilitarianism aimed at maximizing profits, the
beauty of nature has been lost from sight, as have
her laws and the divine wisdom of her creation.
Modern men have no capacity for wonder and awe;
their souls are impoverished and crippled.
Some years ago, a farmer friend of ours related
to us how he and his family used to take in groups
of youngsters from Berlin who would spend the
holidays on their little farm. It came as a great
shock to these children when they discovered that
milk came from a cow rather than the milkman
and that eggs came not from the shelf but from
a chicken. One of our schools in the US keeps a
number of pigs, which are fattened on site and then
slaughtered. At first some of the children refused to
eat the pork coming from these filthy animals, for
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they were under the impression that shop-bought
meat was much cleaner and nicer. It took a timid
tasting session to convince them that they were in
fact dealing with the very same sort of meat and
that pork from home-reared pigs actually tasted
better than their habitual fare, whereupon these little
townies decided to try to fatten some pigs of their
own in their urban garage.
Owning a little pet greatly enriches a child’s
life, be it a rabbit, a goat, a sheep, a guinea pig or
whatever; for now he or she is obliged to feed the
animal, not just once a week to cover the remaining
six days, not just when it fancies doing so, but at
regular intervals. Furthermore, the stalls have to be
cleaned and kept in good repair, and all these chores
help foster certain virtues such as order, a sense of
duty, punctuality, patience, and stamina.
Work constitutes an indispensable element
of the educational agenda since it occupies a lot
of space in our lives. It demands planning and
foresight, effort and determination, dedication
and input, industriousness and persistence. Work
is actually very therapeutic, both physically and
psychologically.
The lack of discipline to be found in many
young people of today, even in our circles, can at
times be shocking. They have no notion of order,
and they have no routine; they do not plan their
lives, and, worst of all, they have no sense of
purpose. They live in chaos, eating, sleeping, and
rising according to their whims and fancies. The
same is true of their churchgoing habits, providing
they go to church at all.
Moreover, children need to be taught a sense
of responsibility, which begs yet another example:
When the Don Bosco School was founded in the
Brilon Woods in autumn of 1982, each child was
provided with a garden plot for which it held sole
responsibility. It was revealing to regard these
allotments as mirrors reflecting the spiritual state of
their individual child gardeners; for some plots were
well cared for, neatly designed and sensibly stocked,
while others had an air of neglect about them.
Each child worked its garden according to its own
capabilities, both technical and creative. Whenever
a child was obliged to leave the school, it had to
hand it over to a peer, evoking the idea of passing
on an estate of human traditions and acquisitions.
In this manner children are acquainted with
the nature of laws and duties in a way that allows
them to connect between them. Modern men know
only their rights and demands, but they think not
of their duty, their responsibility towards others, for
they no longer have a sense of service. One should
remember, however, that rights are derived from
duty and not vice versa! If the modern egotist does
not get what he wants, then he will have it by force,
even to the point of taking his own parents to court.


Children have to be given a sense of honor, awe, and self-respect to
guide them along their way.
Since parents are stakeholders in divine authority, children
should not address them by their forenames. Such practices seriously
undermine parental dignity. Children should call their parents
“father” or “mother,” “dad” or “mommy,” and the same applies for
daughters- or sons-in-law.
The educational process should be characterized by a healthy
mixture of benign encouragement and strict discipline. Misbehavior,
stubbornness, or rudeness on the part of a child deserve to be
chastised. For instance, if your child has broken the neighbor’s
window it should not be easily dismissed. Children know intuitively
that there is corrective merit in punishment, providing it is justified.
Above all, punishment should be administered for the child’s own
good; it must not be a mere act of violent and reckless retribution
on the part of the parents. It has to be within reason if it is to be
effective rather than harmful, though the chief problems in today’s
world are caused by the excessive lenience that is typical of a liberal,
anti-authoritarian education whereby children can get up to virtually
anything without ever being brought to justice, which ultimately
leaves them unfit for the rigors of Christian life.
Below are several quotations from the Book of Sirach
(Ecclesiasticus) to illustrate the above:
Do you have children? Discipline them and make them obedient from their
youth. (Ecclus. 7:25)
He who loves his son will whip him often, in order that he may rejoice in
the way that he turns out. He who disciplines his son will profit by him, and
will boast of him among acquaintances. (Ecclus. 30:1-2)

And, finally, a quote from the Book of Proverbs:
He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to
discipline him. (13:24)

Far be it from me to advocate child abuse; I am merely
expounding the benefits to man of reward and punishment,
depending on whether his deeds have been good or bad. Children
have a very acute sense of justice to which parents must respond,
either by rewarding them or indeed by imposing sanctions. In other
words, those who indulge their child’s every wish and allow it to run
wild, those who relinquish or soften their parental authority cannot
be said to love their own, and this form of nurture will eventually
yield catastrophic results; for they will have raised full-fledged tyrants,
egotistical beings that think only of their own gains, who neither
relent nor forgive, and who will have their way against all reason. In
short, they will have raised social misfits of the worst kind.
Parents educate their children in the service of God. They raise
them for God. In other words, parents act in His place and must
therefore teach their offspring according to His will and His laws.
Children do not belong to their parents alone, and thus they should
not be raised as their playmates, never mind playthings! Such
practices do not reflect the laws of God.
Children should be raised and trained for a Christian lifestyle,
and they have to be adequately prepared for it. As we all know, this
undertaking involves many challenges: work and exertion, success
and failure, praise and chastisement, happiness and sadness, joy and
tears. In any case, a Christian life is always a struggle wherein humans
must prove themselves in order to ennoble their souls. The purpose of
education is therefore to fortify children and youths for this task.

As children grow, they
will greatly appreciate
being in contact with
nature, to admire all
those animals, plants,
mountains and lakes
that were made by the
hand of God. In this
day and age dominated
by technology and
automation, by cold,
avaricious utilitarianism
aimed at maximizing
profits, the beauty of
nature has been lost
from sight, as have her
laws and the divine
wisdom of her creation.
Modern men have no
capacity for wonder
and awe; their souls
are impoverished and
crippled.

10
In terms of learning to obey, infants should
initially be directed to honor parental authority:
“You should do this, because dad said so!” As they
grow up, reason will gradually come to support the
straightforward imperative: “You should do this
or that, because it is good, because it is pleasing
to God, and because it benefits others. Moreover,
it will bring you closer to your goal.” The smaller
a child, the more weight should be placed on
simple authority, but as it grows one may blend in
a proportionate amount of reasonable arguments,
though both elements always go together on the
educational agenda.
Every good educator will acknowledge the
importance of consistency in the training process,
for life is constant and can at times be relentless.
Children have to learn to face the consequences of
their actions. If they have done wrong it would be
of little benefit to follow up any punitive measures
with kisses and embraces, even if they have burst
out crying. If they have offended father or mother,
they have to ask forgiveness before the full extent
of parental love is restored. In short: good deeds
should always be rewarded with praise, if not prize,
while wrongful actions require punishment or at
least chastisement.
The educational process involves viewing
humans in their entirety, that is to say every aspect
is taken into account: body, soul, social interaction
as well as the fact that human nature is marred by
original sin. We therefore have to train our bodies
through physical exercise, work, acceptable sports
practiced in good measure, and other forms of
physical activity.
However, it is the soul that matters above
all else, for there are many forces at work within
it, such as reason, determination, and a world
of emotions. A child’s intellect is waiting to be
enlightened, formed, and brought to full bloom.
Learning to read and write, to do arithmetic, and
to commit to memory are all integral to child
education, but the formation of a character fortified
with honesty, strength, steadfastness, an industrious
disposition, and above all a well-defined will is of far
greater importance.
Man is not an isolated organism, as Leibniz once
qualified humans, and this applies in an even greater
measure to children. They are companionable
beings that are profoundly influenced by the social
environment for which they are to be groomed.
Thus it is not only proper but also very important
for a child to attend school, as children need
friends and playmates in whose company they can
develop their strengths and with whom they can
venture forth and accomplish things. Conversely,
social contact can also involve resistance and
incomprehension which have subsequently
to be overcome through honing and shaping
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in preparation of a life that will not always go
smoothly.
Ever since the tragic fall from grace of our
progenitors, human reason has been clouded. Our
will does not aspire to good things alone but is often
fixated on evil desires; our souls are weakened
by the threefold concupiscence. Man is reborn
into supernatural life through the sacrament of
baptism, which diminishes the wounds of original
sin without entirely removing them. This rift in
human nature becomes particularly obvious in the
education process, and it presents new challenges
each day. These blemishes are only healed over time
through deliverance–and ultimately through the
mercy of salvation–in the course of a truly Christian
existence. It follows that a Christian education
can only be accomplished by supernatural means.
These include praying for–and with–the children
and making sacrifices for them, particularly on the
part of mothers, while simultaneously fostering in
them a spirit of sacrifice. Telling the children that
they are doing this or that for the love of Jesus, that
they are making certain small sacrifices to please the
divine Savior, or that they are abstaining from such
and such a pleasure to emulate the crucified Christ
should all come naturally to us within our families.
Similarly, receiving the sacraments should play
a major role in the educational regimen, particularly
when it comes to holy Confession and frequent
receipt of Holy Communion. It was by these two
means alone that St. John Bosco educated his boys
into good, solid Christian men, despite the fact that
several of their number had arrived at his door in
a state of utter neglect. Indeed, some of them were
later to be canonized.
In his splendid Encyclical entitled Divini Illius
Magistri (December 31, 1929), Pope Pius XI had the
following to say on the subject of education:
In fact it must never be forgotten that the subject
of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul
united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties
natural and supernatural, such as right reason and
revelation show him to be; man, therefore, fallen from
his original estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored
to the supernatural condition of adopted son of God,
though without the preternatural privileges of bodily
immortality or perfect control of appetite. There remain,
therefore, in human nature the effects of original sin,
the chief of which are weakness of will and disorderly
inclination.
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child and the
rod of correction shall drive it away” (Proverbs 22:15).
Disorderly inclinations then must be corrected, good
tendencies encouraged and regulated from tender
childhood, and above all the mind must be enlightened
and the will strengthened by supernatural truth and by
the means of grace, without which it is impossible to
control evil impulses, impossible to obtain to the full
and complete perfection of education intended by the
Church, which Christ has endowed so richly with divine

11
doctrine and with the Sacraments, the efficacious means
of grace. (§58-59)

The Importance of Games
Let us move on to a very special teaching
method, namely organizing all manner of games.
This literally plays a more important role in child
education than one might think, particularly when it
comes to fostering virtuous behavior. Everybody has
to obey rules, to follow a prescribed objective order that
has not been devised by oneself, that should not–
and indeed cannot–be changed at will lest the whole
enterprise lapse into chaos and confusion. Each
participant is bound by the same rules, just as all
humans are bound by the same laws of religious and
moral order, for the truth does not waver: two and
two make four; it has been thus since ancient times,
it remains thus today and it will not have changed
in a thousand years’ time. The truth is eternal and
completely stable, and even the greatest efforts
on the part of science will not alter human nature.
Moreover, games require intelligence, reflection,
exertion, and a precise assessment of reality: a move
on the chessboard must not be rushed, and the
winning chances have to be calculated in advance.
Similarly, one must not divulge one’s advantages to
the opponents, nor should one allow oneself to be
irritated by their tricks and ploys. At times it takes
extensive thinking to come up with a good move,
while a bad decision at the start can make it rather
difficult to win in the end, which, however, has been
known to happen. Rarely do life’s lessons come in a
more comprehensive package!
Of course, every child is inspired by the idea of
winning, and that is a good thing; but before long he
will lose the odd game, and losing is most certainly
worth learning if one wishes to avert bitterness or
discouragement, and if one is to continue enjoying
the game. In the course of their lives, humans will
be faced with disappointment, humiliation, and loss
which they must somehow take in stride. Having
lost, the first issue that needs to be ascertained is
the reason for failure: had I simply been dealt a
bad hand, or may it be attributed to lack of skill or
foolish behavior on my part?
Most games are played in teams comprising
honest players who abide by the rules and cheaters
who do not. Whether their trickery is to be exposed
or whether it should be borne in silence depends
on the circumstances and is ultimately a matter of
common sense, for one may either come down on
the side of justice or on the side of magnanimity.
What happens, for instance, if the opponents decide
to give up? Should one allow them to leave, or
should they be urged to prevail? Again, I cannot
emphasize enough the value of games for acquiring
life skills!

Another game entirely is drama–and a
particularly challenging one at that, since it involves
acting one’s part to maximum effect. In former
times, drama used to play a major role on the Jesuit
curriculum, and it was systematically employed in
their institutions as an educational measure, because
the Jesuits knew how beneficial it could be in terms
of the formation of the soul. For a start, one has to
learn a text which can take many hours and much
sweat. Moreover, the players have to appropriate
their respective roles; they must identify with their
characters and immerse themselves in whichever
world the play happens to be set. Finally, they must
take to the stage and learn to act with a natural grace
that is devoid of fear or affectation.
When acquiring virtue, it is the three theological
ones that come before all the others: faith, hope,
and love. Furthermore, one should strive to develop
and ultimately bring to fruition the cardinal virtues,
such as prudence (which must not be confused with
cunning but should rather be understood as the act
of systematically directing one’s means towards a
worthy end), proper reflection coupled with seeking
advice from wise people, taking correct decisions,
and, finally, bringing a task to completion. The
second cardinal virtue is justice, which gives to all
what they deserve, unto God His due, unto one’s
neighbors theirs. Indeed, we must do justice even
unto ourselves. In third place comes fortitude, which
enables us to envisage great things and to carry
them through; which grants us endurance in the face
of many trials and tribulations, no matter how long
or painful. It is want of this quality that characterizes
our contemporaries, leaving them fickle and
restless. In fourth place comes temperance, which
serves to rein in the lust for money, property,
honor, fame, sex, and food and to subjugate these
desires to our reason. We should remember that
the aforementioned drives are inscribed in human
nature solely in order to conserve the individual
and to keep it from starving, whereas the latter is
designed to conserve humanity as a whole and to
avert extinction.
Beyond the three theological virtues and the four
cardinal ones, we should also endeavour to obtain
all the others: humility and self-control, politeness
and modesty, honesty and selflessness, plainness,
loyalty, helpfulness, magnanimity, bravery,
propriety, mercy, and punctuality. Virtues can be
acquired through practice, just as regular practice on
the piano makes an accomplished pianist.
Another important issue on the educational
agenda is developing an appreciation of the bonum
commune, a sense of the common good. What exactly
do we mean by this concept? The common good
is the sum of those possessions that are shared by
any given community, be it a family, a State, or the
Church. The common good of the latter is faith and
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

12
the life of grace, which is epitomized in the Body of
Christ and its mysterious composition. The common
good of a family on the other hand is their mutual
harmony as they dwell together in an ambiance of
peace and joy that allows individuals to develop
freely and without material cares.
The bonum commune ranks above the bonum
individuale, i.e. individual property. Let us look at a
few examples to illustrate this point: A mother has
to make sacrifices for her family. Above all, she has
to share her husband’s responsibilities and to forget
her own advancement for the sake of the children.
If she were acting primarily in her own interests she
would not only become unhappy herself but she
would also cause her family to suffer, whereas her
selfless quest for the greater good of the family will
make her thrive. Once again, we may put our faith
in the word of Christ, for He said: “Seek first the
Kingdom of the Lord and His justice,” which means
in effect that both the common and the individual
property, lesser though it be, “shall follow.”
Here is another example: A soldier goes to war
and puts his life at risk for his homeland, leaving
his wife and children in order to defend a larger
community that ranks even higher than his kin,
namely his people. This means in effect that the
greater common good goes before the family.
This truth manifests itself to an even greater
extent in the case of priests, bishops, and members
of the religious orders; for these people have
relegated their own interests and their personal
success to the margins in order to devote themselves
entirely to God, to the Church, and to the human
soul, even at the risk of losing their lives in the
process.
The concept of the common good is being
disregarded in this day and age; it is being
shamefully neglected and even scoffed. Modern
men seek nothing but their own satisfaction, their
own wealth, their own comfort, their own holidays,
and their own success. Nobody wants to serve any
more. The idea of serving is these days considered
degrading and contrary to one’s dignity. People are
no longer prepared to care for orphans, invalids,
lonely individuals, or needy people in a selfless
manner, nor are they willing to take up voluntary
work. Love is dying.
Let us look at one last issue pertaining to the
duties of parents and teachers in the strenuous
business of education. They have a part in the
three offices of Jesus Christ which involve teaching,
preaching, and administering pastoral care. Parents
must teach their children, they must enlighten their
minds, and they cannot simply evade some of their
more bothersome queries by pretending to be stuck
for time.
It is up to the mother to instruct her children in
faith and in prayer when they are still very young.
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She must teach them to fold their hands and she
must narrate the first prayers to them in order to
guide them towards the Eucharistic Christ. She must
mold her children’s souls in her own spirit of faith
and Christian love. Moreover, parents hold a stake
in Christ’s priestly office, i.e. they must pray for
their children and make sacrifices for them while at
the same time praying with them and encouraging
them to make offerings. They should also bless their
children as often as possible. Finally, parents share
in the pastoral work of Christ and His Church, since
they watch over their children as they guide their
offspring towards good pastures, good friendships,
good books, and good music while simultaneously
cautioning them against harmful weeds, such as bad
companionship and adverse influences. They have
to take an active interest in the lives of their children
through encouragement and stimulation, but they
must also stay any danger that might lie in their
path.

Contemporary Threats
Let me move on to the third point of this
article, namely the dangers of contemporary life
threatening our children, our youths, and our
educational system. The first threat I would like
to mention is television, which has a disastrous
influence on the soul. Apart from a few exceptions,
modern television programs are permeated with
scenes of violence and indecent behavior, and it is
only natural that children should desire to re-enact
or even imitate some of them, while exposure to
on-screen indecency will necessarily undermine
a child’s baptismal innocence. The television is a
direct route to sin; it furthers vice and sinful habits
and can ultimately lead to hell. On top of these
threats, television induces inertia: children will
lounge about in front of the screen instead of going
out into nature to admire God’s work. It keeps
them from playing and from tinkering about, from
drawing, singing, reading, and storytelling; it drains
people of their creative drive.
Another area of danger is the world of
computers and computer games, which lure children
into a virtual environment where they can learn to
humiliate others, or perhaps even to shoot them.
When an adolescent then proceeds to try this out for
real, we react with bewilderment and ask ourselves
how such a thing could possibly have happened!
More perilous still than television is the Internet,
insofar as it allows people to pick and choose their
own images and programs. A book entitled Vorsicht
Bildschirm (Beware the Screen) that has recently been
published even goes so far as to expound the grave
threats posed by the electronic media to the physical
aspects of child development.

13
Rock music likewise causes great damage to a child’s soul. Let us
briefly revert to an issue mentioned at the very beginning, namely the
Frankfurt School and their research into how atonal music could be
systematically employed as a vehicle for bringing about an incisive
social shift. Equipped with cell phones and walkmans, contemporary
adolescents find it impossible to build real relationships, and any interest
in edifying intellectual pursuits such as literature, music, culture, and
religion is nipped in the bud. Just look into their apathetic faces that have
lost all the freshness and spontaneity of youth!
A young priest from a diocese in Argentina who has recently joined
our ranks related to me how he used to deny absolution to youths in his
own parish if they were known to frequent nightclubs, and he was right
in doing so; for those who wilfully expose themselves to the threat of sin
must somehow be prepared to bear it and cannot therefore be said to
show genuine contrition. Hence they cannot receive absolution.
Apart from the virtual world of the screen that drags our youths into
oblivion, drugs also play a major role in their flight from day-to-day
reality, i.e., the objective world in which we must work for the good of all.
Drug addicts and those who have been damaged by drug abuse often end
up as mere shadows of their former selves. They are no longer capable of
leading regular working lives, and they have no sense of mission, which
in turn induces a psychological trauma that frequently ends in suicide.
This is true in particular of younger victims.
Another source of danger to children is lurking in the toy department,
for in this day and age toys are far from innocent. Do not be too naive,
my dear parents, when you go out shopping for your children: many toys
are designed in the service of destructive ideologies.

The School
Canons 1372-74 in the 1917 Code of Canon Law make it absolutely
clear that parents are obliged to send their children to a Catholic school.
It says in these statutes that religiously neutral institutions, especially
schools with an anti-Catholic agenda (i.e., a curriculum that goes against
the teachings of the true Church), are quite simply not acceptable for
children of Catholic parentage.
In terms of theological law a child’s education is the responsibility of
those who brought it into life, that is to say its parents and the Church.
The former have given it biological life, whereas the Church has raised
it into supernatural life. Mandatory state schooling therefore ranks as a
manner of expropriation whereby both the parents and the Church are
robbed of their rights. What is more, modern schools are contaminated
with materialism as well revolutionary and interreligious notions, where
children are exposed to a threefold threat:
1) A flawed education that is heavily biased towards the natural
sciences, whereas the humanities, comprising languages, literature,
history, and geography, are no longer accorded enough space on
the curriculum. In fact students are being pushed in an entirely new
direction. In the wake of World War II, the American government
effected a number of changes to the German curriculum, which were
to have catastrophic consequences. Influenced by Freemasonry and the
Frankfurt School, it aimed to alter fundamentally the Western mindset
by moving away from the humanities, from the occidental Christian
perception of man by furthering the natural sciences instead. Children
were made to learn biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics in order
to turn them into technicians, if not to say nerds, and hence to foster a
new image of man wherein humans featured as machines, commodities,
objects rather than beings who were wrought in the image of the Holy

Equipped with
cell phones
and walkmans,
contemporary
adolescents find it
impossible to build
real relationships,
and any interest in
edifying intellectual
pursuits such as
literature, music,
culture, and
religion is nipped in
the bud. Just look
into their apathetic
faces that have lost
all the freshness
and spontaneity of
youth!

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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

14
Trinity. These days, children rarely learn how to
read or do arithmetic; they do not get taught how
to analyze a sentence according to subject (the key
component of a sentence), predicate (the statement
being made), and object (which complements the
sentence). Indeed, our youngsters are no longer
capable of writing so much as a properly drafted
letter comprising an address and a conclusion.
2) The moral temptations of sex education.
Of course children have to be made aware of
these things in accordance with their age and their
respective levels of maturity, but this can only be
achieved with due responsibility on a case-by-case
basis and should, moreover, fall within the purview
of the parents themselves. On top of this particular
threat we still have all the other temptations listed
above: drugs in the school yard, computers, cell
phones, and rock music.
3) Religious corruption. Providing religion
is taught at all, contemporary lesson plans
tend to marginalize the one, true, God-given
Faith in favor of discussing numerous religious
traditions–Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,
and Christianity–as representing different routes to
salvation which are all accorded a certain degree of
validity. Yet other schools do not offer any religious
instruction, which will lead children into perceiving
religious knowledge as an insignificant issue that has
no bearing whatever on the meaning of life or on
one’s happiness. All that will subsequently matter
to them is indulging their personal happiness, their
own enjoyment of life, their own holidays, their
own comfort and wealth, and such things may be
obtained without God, without His foresight or
His commandments, without prayer, without the
Church, and without the sacraments!
In his aforementioned encyclical, Divini Illius
Magistri, Pope Pius XI cites a man who was very
much tainted by the ills of liberalism but who
nevertheless made the following lucid remark:
“The school if not a temple, is a den. When literary,
social, domestic and religious education do not go
hand in hand, man is unhappy and helpless” (Nicolo
Tommaseo, Pensieri sull’ educazione, parts 1,3,6). A
successful education requires parents, pastors, and
teachers to work together in perfect harmony.

which they must run astutely with all due foresight
and circumspection. They must plan on their own
but they should also seek advice from others as
regards decision-taking in the management of their
charges. What is more, fathers should set a good
example by striving to be honest, upright Catholic
men at all times.
The role of fathers in society has currently hit
rock bottom. In his lovely booklet entitled Christian
Fatherhood, the French author Fr. Jean-Dominique
makes the following observation:
Of all the tribes and regimes in the world, the most
successful peoples to this day owe their expansion
and their wealth to paternal authority. This becomes
particularly obvious under despotic rule, affecting for
instance the farmers of Russia, and it is clear for all to
see in the various liberal governments as witnessed in
England and its colonies throughout both hemispheres.
Conversely, all those peoples that eventually sink
into insignificance commit the error of weakening the
position of the paterfamilias.

He elaborates by remarking that:
The success of a nation is fundamentally threatened
wherever paternal authority is robbed of its two
mainstays. The supreme decadence of the ancien régime
followed by a revolution that destroyed the Faith and
did away with heritage has caused such deep damage to
our nation that no amount of effort has so far succeeded
in repairing it. (Frederic Le Play)

Fathers play an exceptionally important role not
only within the family but also in society as a whole.
Their wives and their children should be able to
look up to them for support and direction.
In order to illustrate the responsibilities of a
father towards his children, let us quote once again
from Christian Fatherhood: Fathers are to
play with their children, to sing, to go for walks, to
act with them; they must do physical work with them
(gardening, carpentry, etc.) but they should also check
their school work and correct it for them, to rejoice at
their successes and to praise them.

Similarly, fathers should
keep a close eye on what sort of company their children
keep and to warn them of bad friendships at the earliest
possible opportunity, so as to enable them to make
worthy friends.

They have to

The Father’s Role
Within the Family
The father is a figure of authority, for he is the
head of his household. His chief duties include
nourishing the family and guiding his own safely
past all dangers that might befall them. “Thou shalt
earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow!” God
declared unto Adam. Metaphorically speaking,
fathers have been entrusted with the foreign office,
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

develop a personal relationship with their children and
to use every incentive to write them a letter or to give
them presents.

Fathers exert a considerable influence on the
character formation of their children, particularly on
the boys. They must therefore teach them
to appreciate the merits of good, thorough work and to
encourage them to put their whole heart into any given
project. Fathers have to encourage their children to be
neat from a very early age on, to dress and to behave

15
with all due modesty, not least when it comes to bodily
issues: they should respect other people’s bodies as
well as their own, for the body is not their property and
it most certainly is not a toy. Hence the human body
should remain clothed at all times: “To remain God’s
friend, you have to make sacrifices.”

Looking beyond these issues,
fathers should take charge of the spiritual life of their
household. They should bless their children each evening
by making the sign of the cross on their foreheads; they
should introduce them to prayer and adoration and
they should pray at the head of their family. Similarly,
it would be advisable for them to erect a little shrine in
the home.

They should
go on little pilgrimages and processions with their
family, whilst Church feasts should be adequately
prepared in advance and then celebrated in a most
special way. Fathers should prepare their children for
learning the catechism and quiz them on it; they should
listen to tapes with their children and read to them the
biographies of holy men. On Sundays at the very least,
they should read them the Bible and take their children
to confession (or if they are as yet too young, they should
prepare them for it).

Such are the duties of fathers, which are,
however, shared by the mothers, whom God has
entrusted with the “ministry of the interior” so to
speak; but both parties must work closely together
in governing their household.
Fathers necessarily resemble Joseph of Nazareth
and Bethlehem, head of the Holy Family. Joseph
cared for his own and saved the Child from Herod’s
murderous intentions by fleeing to Egypt. Similarly,
many fathers in the modern world must protect their
household from the stranglehold of contemporary
ills, the Herod of our times, which entails escaping
from the local environment. For instance, they may
have to leave their home parish in order to find the
nearest chapel where the holy Mass is celebrated, or
they might even have to move altogether in order to
be near a truly Catholic school.

The Role of
Mothers in the Family
The mother’s role is primarily one of sacrifice
and love, for she makes the children feel at home by
giving them all the comfort they need. Furthermore
she teaches them the rudiments of life and she acts
as their nurse when they fall ill. Mothers resemble
Mary, who was a mother and a virgin. Like her,
Christian mothers have to be immaculate and
modest in their thought and in their entire attitude,
whilst they must also be maternal. As Eve was sent
to Adam to support him in his daily chores, so they
too shall be strong and steadfast partners to their
husbands. In the Book of Wisdom, the Holy Spirit

describes them not in the light of meek housewives
and still further removed from the image propagated
by feminists and women’s libbers:
Who can find a good wife? She is far more precious
than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good,
and not harm, all the days of her life. She seeks wool
and flax, and works with willing hands. She is like the
ships of the merchants, she brings her food from afar.
She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her
household and tasks for her maidens. She considers a
field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants
a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength and makes
her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is
profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night. She puts
her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.
She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her
hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her
household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.
She makes herself coverings; her clothing is fine linen
and purple. Her husband is known in the gates, when
he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen
garments and sells them; she delivers girdles to the
merchant. Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she
laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with
wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household, and does
not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and
call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.
“Many women have done excellently, but you surpass
them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a
woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her
of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in
the gates. (Prov. 31:10-31)

Such words of praise does the Bible lavish upon
the wise and loyal housewife that is the mainstay of
her husband and a true mother to her children. It
is no secret that most great men that had an impact
on world history were aided in their work by loyal
and loving wives. In the order of creation, man and
woman are fundamentally dependent upon one
another.

The Family
The family is a little kingdom with Jesus living in
its midst and where everything is organized around
His true presence. Its members flock about Him
and live by the motto ora et labora (work and pray).
In other words, it is not enough for members of a
family to pray individually; the whole household
must do so, and it should constantly implore the
Lord’s grace if it is to prevail. Like the Holy Family
of Nazareth, which every Christian family endeavors
to emulate, there will be hours of innocent joy
and healthy relaxation, but there will also be
many a cross to bear, many trials and tribulations.
A Christian life is always led in preparation for
heaven; it is not an end in itself upon this earth. The
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

16
Imitation of Christ states that the road to heaven is a
thorny one.
Moreover, a truly Christian family is
characterized by a continuous mutual striving to
live virtuously at all times, to aid and support one
another on the path to maturity and perfection.
After work, there shall be song, pastimes,
storytelling, and communal prayer. Similarly, there
is much fun and adventure to be had together on
walks and excursions, or by the camp fire. We
should not neglect our rich store of folk songs,
whether they be songs for the highway, patriotic
songs, love songs, or odes to nature. This beautiful
and wholesome treasure has almost completely gone
under in recent times.
Modern families are tainted by the ills of our
materialist world. The emphasis is today placed
firmly on acquiring wealth, on attaining a high
standard of living, on earnings and on possessions;
but these worldly riches are offset by spiritual
poverty: it is not what you have but what you are
that ensures happiness. The low birth rate and
lack of sympathy for children that prevails is truly
shocking. Half a century ago, a book entitled The
End of Western Civilization was published. That end
is now upon us. Wherever a culture begins to fade,
the vacuum it leaves behind promptly attracts
other peoples that are as yet brimming with vitality.
The ancient Greeks and Romans paid for their
decadence in a similar manner.
Let us take another look at the large family,
which is generally composed of father, mother,
and their children plus the grandparents at another
level. Living together with grandparents is of great
importance to children because the former are no
longer working to earn. If mothers are involved in
a business or if they have to run a farm together
with their husband, there may not be enough time
to answer children’s queries, to play with them,
to read them stories, or to tell them of old times.
Grandparents on the other hand will have their
active life behind them and are thus at leisure to
pass on their wealth of knowledge and experience to
the young ones. Alternatively, this task can also be
taken on by an unmarried uncle or aunt.
When their grandparents pass away, children are
suddenly confronted with death, and this gives rise
to all manner of questions: Where has grandfather
gone? Will he ever come back? Will I perhaps have
to die one day? Such experiences leave a lasting
impression on a child’s soul. However, our modern
consumer society looks upon grandparents as a
burden; there is no space for them in the house
and they are subsequently packed off to the nursing
home. The family of three generations is reduced
to a mere two, and this impoverishment in terms of
human warmth causes pain to the children. Hence
they, too, leave home at an early stage to seek
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

out a room or an apartment of their own, and the
family of two generations quickly dwindles to one.
The parents are left with an empty nest, but the
development does not end there.
Now living as singles, the children soon discover
that they are not cut out for solitude and promptly
cast around for other young people to share their
hobbies and their time with them. They want to
have fun with their peers, and this desire results
in the genesis of a new type of “family,” such as
communes and, in the worst cases, rock bands.
These young people will stick together and defend
their interests with their own lives if need be. The
traditional family has gone out the window, and
what came in the door but a totally contorted
alternative!

Clothing
Clothes have three separate functions: they
provide exterior protection for the body, especially
against the cold, and, secondly, they are a mark of
modesty, for they cover the flesh and they veil the
contours. In this context I would like to cite yet
another booklet written by Fr. Jean-Dominique,
entitled Christian Motherhood:
Clothing shall neither emphasise the material body,
nor shall it attract attention in such a way as to draw
gazes upon a woman. On the contrary, it should signal
to everyone that woman is a spiritual creature with a
very special mission, that God has given her very special
privileges. It would take too long to expound the way
in which the design of a garment, its length, its cut, its
folds, can be employed to express a woman’s soul and
her spiritual relationship with God. Suffice to say that it
is one of modesty and peaceful trust. A simple appeal
to personal experience will do to remind us all that a
long garment expresses a certain degree of nobility,
commanding respect and propriety. Conversely, a
manner of dress that underscores the contours will
neglect the soul and accentuate the carnal side, even
if the flesh is concealed. Wherever there is mention in
the Bible of women’s attire, it is always in respect to
their attitude, the state of their souls and their personal
dignity.

Thirdly, clothing is an expression of one’s
personality by means of which inner values are
projected outwards. People who dress shabbily
evidently do not value themselves, whereas persons
that are neatly clothed signal to the outside world
that their souls must likewise be in order. Pope
Pius XII tells us that clothing has to be aesthetic,
for it should mirror the spiritual nobility of man.
It must not be soiled or slatternly, nor must it be
too luxurious. Let us remember the maxim that
truth, goodness, and beauty are inseparable from
one another. Truth is always good and beautiful;
goodness is always true and beautiful, and beauty is
always good and true.

17

Our Responsibilities
Our youngsters have been betrayed by the older generation and
misled by godless demagogues; they have been deprived of true
happiness. They are only partially to fault for their pitiful condition,
whilst most of the blame lies with others.
We have a responsibility towards our nation and towards our
future. Whether the Christian West will prevail or not is entirely up
to us. Future numbers of chosen people and their respective merits
depend on our own commitment, our efforts, and our apostolic deeds.
On the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee on September 23, 1979, in
Paris, Archbishop Lefebvre called for a new crusade that was also to
be a crusade of the families. His words make a fitting summary to the
postulates of this article:
You Christian families who are here, consecrate yourselves to the Heart
of Jesus, to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary. Oh, pray together in the family! I know that many of you already do
so, but may there always be more and more of you who do so with fervor.
Let Our Lord truly reign in your homes!
Cast away, I beg of you, anything which impedes children from entering
your family. There is no greater gift that the Good God can bestow upon
your hearths than to have many children. Have big families. It is the glory of
the Catholic Church–the large family. It has been so in Canada, it has been
so in Holland, it has been so in Switzerland and it has been so in France–
everywhere the large family was the joy and prosperity of the Church.
There are that many more chosen souls for heaven! Therefore do not
limit, I beg you, the gifts of God; do not listen to these abominable slogans
which destroy the family, which ruin health, which ruin the household, and
provoke divorce.
And I wish that, in these troubled times, in this degenerate urban
atmosphere in which we are living, that you return to the land whenever
possible. The land is healthy; the land teaches one to know God; the land
draws one to God; it calms temperaments, characters, and encourages the
children to work.
And if it is necessary, yes, you yourselves will make the school for your
children. If the schools should corrupt your children, what are you going to
do? Deliver them to the corrupters? To those who teach these abominable
sexual practices in the schools? To the so-called “Catholic” schools run by
religious men and women where they simply teach sin? In reality that is what
they are teaching to the children; they corrupt them from their tenderest
youth. Are you to put up with that? It is inconceivable! Rather that your
children be poor–that they be removed from this apparent science that the
world possesses–but that they be good children, Christian children, Catholic
children, who love their holy religion, who love to pray, and who love to
work; children who love the earth which the Good God has made.

Conclusions
1) If we wish to rebuild Christendom as best we can, given our
limited powers, we must begin this task in the family. If, as Msgr.
Robert Mäder maintains, the woes of this world are indeed to be
blamed on a de-Christianization of the family unit, then the key to
rejuvenating society also lies with truly Christian families. The best
means of bringing about such a rejuvenation is the enthronement of
the Sacred Heart whereby our Lord and Savior shall be made king
of this little empire of His, with His spirit, His Gospel, His sacrifice,
and His love. He shall reign! Naturally, all families that are devoted
to Him must thereafter live by their faith and by the Gospel. They
must turn their backs on this decadent age and return to their roots as
spouses and as family people, without making any compromises; they

Our youngsters have
been betrayed by
the older generation
and misled by
godless demagogues;
they have been
deprived of true
happiness. They
are only partially to
fault for their pitiful
condition, whilst
most of the blame
lies with others. We
have a responsibility
towards our nation
and towards our
future. Whether the
Christian Occident
will prevail or not is
entirely up to us.

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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

1
must live in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The extent of
our love and our faith will be revealed through the
Christian culture we engender.
2) Christian families that are currently living in
isolation must unite in mutual support. They must
encourage one another and share their experiences
when it comes to raising children. Unity is strength,
especially in the battle against the ills of our times.
Young families must bond in friendship and learn
from one another.
3) Family gatherings and outings are
indispensable in this day and age of isolation.
4) Catholic families should not hesitate to
co-operate with their peers in finding means and
ways of founding their own little primary schools
to ensure the purity and chastity of their children’s
souls. This responsibility lies not with pastors alone
but is shared in equal proportion by the parents.
5) Finally, I should like to present you with a
wholesome reading list:
l

l

l

l

l
l
l

The Encyclical Casti Connubii on marriage,
and the Encyclical Divini Illius Magistri on
educational issues, both written by Pope Pius
XI;
the two booklets respectively entitled Die
christliche Vaterschaft (Christian Fatherhood) and
Die christliche Mutterschaft (Christian Motherhood)
by Fr. Jean-Dominique, which every father
and mother should own;
a little booklet entitled Reife (Maturity) by
Fr. Pascal Schreiber, which makes good
reading for both young and old;
a thorough investigation called Vorsicht
Bildschirm (Beware the Screen) by Manfred
Spitzer, as mentioned in this paper;
Das christliche Leben (Christian Life), published
by the Rex Regum Verlag;
the tape on the enthronement of the Sacred
Heart;
and, finally, a book which takes a keen and
poignant look at the ills of our times called
Schluss mit lustig–Ende der Spaβgesellschaft
(Let’s get serious: The end of shallowness) by
Peter Hahne.

Christian society takes life seriously, and it
must succeed a shallow world that seeks only
to have fun. A sense of duty, generosity, virtue,
and propriety must replace consumerism. Our
Christian families can learn all these qualities
from the Holy Family of Nazareth.
This is a revised version of a talk given on November 6, 2005, by Fr. Franz
Schmidberger at the Priorat Sankt Joseph in Littau, Lucerne, Switzerland.
Fr. Franz Schmidberger was Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius
X (1982-94) and is currently District Superior of Germany.
1

Cf. Arnaud de Lassus, “Cultural Revolution: The Frankfurt School,”
The Angelus, July 2006.

The ANgeLus • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

Recommended Reading
from Fr. Schmidberger
Haurietis Aquas

ON DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART.
The 2-fold love of Christ’s Sacred Heart —love of God
and neighbor—is the essence of the Catholic. “If, as Robert Mäder maintains, the woes of this world are indeed
to be blamed on a de-Christianization of the family unit,
the the key to rejuvenating society also lies with truly
Christian families. The best means of bringing about
such a rejuvenation is the enthronement of the Sacred
Heart.”–Fr. Franz Schmidberger
46pp, softcover, STK# 5320 $1.50

Casti Conubii

ON CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.
Necessary reading for every couple. Covers Matrimony’s purpose, aims, sanctity, blessings, pitfalls and the
importance of the Christian family in society. In short–make
saints of one another.
69pp, softcover, STK# 5302 $3.50

Divini Illius Magistri

ENCYCLICAL ON CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.
The inviolable principles which this document lays down
regarding the Church, family and State in the matter of
education, are based on the very nature of things and on
revealed truth. They cannot be shaken by the ebb and flow
of events. The encyclical is a real Magna Carta of Christian
education, “outside which no education is complete and
perfect.” In times of difficulty, it provides, with its clarity
of doctrine, a certain guide for the courageous efforts of
Catholic parents and teachers who are desirous of assuring youth of a formation fully in conformity with the requirements of the faith. “A SPLENDID ENCYCLICAL!”–Fr.
Franz Schmidberger
59pp, softcover, STK# 6725 $4.25

Fatherhood and Family

Vol.3, The Integrity Series

Fathers are essential for a Catholic America.The question is, “What do fathers do?” Forward-thinking INTEGRITY
Magazine gives answers: l Men, Mary, and Manliness l
The Family Has Lost Its Head l Economics of the Catholic
Family l Afraid to Marry? l Glorifying the Daily Grind
l The Heroism of the Big Family l Bringing the Church
into Work l Forward to the Land.
200pp, softcover, STK# 6721✱ $13.00

Raising Your Children

Vol.2, The Integrity Series

Confusion prevails about the job of bringing up children.

INTEGRITY Magazine, a post-WWII journal by lay Catholics

for living an integral Catholic life, has been sifted for
insights on every aspect of raising children.
l Teaching Children to Pray l Purity and the Young Child
l Creative Activity l The Dating System l zCrisis of Faith
in Youth l The Vocation of Parents l Marriage for Keeps.
256pp, softcover, STK# 6598✱ $15.00

Cross and Crown
Fr. Robert Mäder

Meditations of this famous German priest. Father's
delivery was so powerful that he was called “The Thunder
of the Holy Ghost.” In three parts: 1) Thoughts for Lent 2)
Christ's Sufferings 3) Christ the King. A sampling of topics:
How to make resolutions, hunger for the Blessed Sacrament, fasting, freedom from money, crucifixion of passions,
detoxification through the Blessed Sacrament, unconditional obedience to Divine Providence, the “rights of God,”
enthronement in the home, the “Queen Mother.”
166pp, softcover, STK# 6718✱ $14.00

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) l November 2007

Reprint #78

Limbo...in “Limbo”
the problems with the international theological Commission Document on limbo
The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without
Being Baptized is the title of the report on limbo
drafted by the International Theological Commission
(ITC), which was instituted by Pope Paul VI with
the mission of helping the Holy See and principally
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the
examination of doctrinal questions of great importance.
The President of the Commission is the Cardinal
Prefect ‘pro tempore’ of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith.1
The report is thus the fruit of a consultative body
bereft of magisterial authority, and Cardinal Levada
approved its publication in his capacity as President of
the ITC and not as Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith. The oral “approbation” given
for its publication by Benedict XVI at the audience of
January 19, 2007, does not engage papal authority and
does not oblige the consciences of the faithful.2

The Principal Objections
Advanced by the ITC against the
Traditional Doctrine on Limbo
First Objection
The ITC writes:
It is clear that the traditional teaching on this topic has
concentrated on the theory of Limbo, understood as a state
[and place; but for the “new theology” and for Pope John
Paul II, even hell is not a place] which includes the souls of
infants who die subject to original sin and without baptism
and who therefore neither merit the beatific vision nor
yet are subjected to any punishment because they are not
guilty of any [actual] personal sin. This theory, elaborated
by theologians beginning in the Middle Ages, never entered
into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium even if that

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The ANgeLus • November 2007

same Magisterium did at times mention the theory in its
ordinary teaching up until the Second Vatican Council. It
remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis.3

Response: The assertion that limbo is “a theory
elaborated by theologians beginning in the Middle
Ages” is not true. The same holds for the assertion that
the doctrine of limbo “never entered into the dogmatic
definitions of the Magisterium,” which Magisterium
would have limited itself to mentioning it “in its
ordinary teaching” (whether ordinary, universal and
constant, or simply authentic, is not specified in the
text.)
In reality, it was not long before Tradition (the
Greek and Latin Fathers) and the Magisterium began to
expound, with a deepening understanding, the import
of the Gospel passages that affirm the necessity of the
means of holy baptism ( Jn. 3:5; Mt. 28:19; Mk. 16:16).4
Not only did the Greek Fathers affirm in unison with
the Latin Fathers the exclusion of unbaptized infants
from the beatific vision of God, but they were the first,
in particular St. Gregory of Nazianzen5 and St. Gregory
of Nyssa,6 to deduce from this truth of faith (necessity
of means of baptism) and from a truth of reason (the
justice of God) that children who die without baptism
have a destiny very different from that of the damned
in hell, expressing this “theory,” which the ITC tells us
was elaborated “beginning in the Middle Ages,” with
great exactitude.
In the West, it was the Pelagian heresy that
provided the Magisterium (and the Latin Fathers, in
particular St. Augustine) occasion to pronounce on the
fate of infants who die without baptism. We refer the
reader to the exposition given in the issue of Si Si No
No referred to above. Here we must clarify that in the
traditional doctrine on limbo, three points need to be
distinguished (which the ITC did not do):

19

Point 1: Baptism, at least in desire, is a necessity
of means for a soul to be cleansed from original sin, and
consequently whoever dies in original sin is excluded
from the beatific vision, which is the case of children
who die without baptism before reaching the age of
reason, and who are thus incapable of such a desire.
This truth has been the object of dogmatic affirmations
several times. Pope Innocent I, on January 27, 417, in
his Letter 182 to the primate Silvanus and to all the
bishops of the Council of Milevum, teaches that “It is
the height of folly (perfatuum est) to affirm that children
can obtain the reward of eternal life even without the
grace of baptism” (Ch.5). Fr. Attilio Carpin, O.P., writes
that these words have “a dogmatic character insofar
as they constitute an intervention by the Sovereign
Pontiff on a matter of faith.”7 The Council of Florence
reiterated the teaching of the Council of Carthage when
it affirmed that for children without the use of reason
“no help can be brought to them by another remedy
than through the sacrament of baptism” (Dz. 712).
The Council of Trent teaches that it is not possible to
pass from the state of sin to the state of grace without
baptism or [at least] the desire for it (Dz. 791), and in the
wake of the same Council of Carthage, it reaffirms that
“by reason of this rule of faith...even infants...are truly
baptized for the remission of sins” (Dz. 791).
Clearly, these statements are not mere “mentions”
made by the Magisterium “in its teaching”; the
exclusion from the beatific vision of those who die with
original sin only, as is the case of unbaptized infants, is
a defined truth of divine and Catholic faith.8
Point 2: The damned and children who die
unbaptized suffer different fates. This truth, too, is not
just “mentioned” by the Magisterium, but has been
the object of repeated dogmatic declarations. Pope
Innocent III: “The punishment of original sin [in which
unbaptized children die] is the privation of the vision
of God, whereas the punishment of actual [personal]
sin is the torment of everlasting hell.” The Council of
Lyons: “The souls of those who die in mortal sin or
with original sin only, however, immediately descend
to hell, yet to be punished with different punishments”
(Dz. 464, Profession of faith imposed on the Emperor
Michael Paleologus). The Council of Florence
incorporates this text verbatim in its “Decree for the
Greeks” (Dz. 693).
Point 3: The difference between the punishments
resides in this: those who die with original sin alone
(unbaptized infants) are not subject to sensible torments
as the damned are, and they suffer no sadness from
the privation of the beatific vision. To the contrary, the
children who die without baptism even enjoy a natural
happiness. This is the most common teaching and the
most likely.9 This teaching (and not the existence of limbo)
has not yet been made the object of dogmatic affirmations by
the Magisterium. It would have been defined by Vatican
I, had the Council not been interrupted by the taking of

20

Rome (the revised and corrected schema on the state of
souls in limbo still exists), and it would probably have
been defined by Vatican II at the request of certain
Fathers had the Council not been hijacked by the neomodernist wing, enemy of the dogma of original sin
and thus of the traditional teaching on limbo.
Be that as it may, it is clear that the doctrine on
limbo, based upon passages from Sacred Scripture
and, at least as regards the first two points set forth
above, incorporated into dogmatic statements of
the Magisterium (from the Council of Carthage to
the Council of Trent) is at a minimum a “theological
conclusion,” and, as such, is a part of “Catholic truths”
or “Church teachings,”10 and cannot be lowered
(as the ITC does) to the rank of a simple “possible
theological hypothesis.” Indeed, these hypotheses or
theological opinions are free judgments in matters of faith
and morals which are neither directly supported by
Revelation nor decided by the Magisterium. But the
existence of limbo—as we have seen—is based upon both
Revelation and the affirmations of the Magisterium.
Pius XII spoke of it as recently as October 29,
1951: “...there is no other way to communicate that
[supernatural] life to the child who has not attained the
use of reason.”
All of Catholic theology prior to Vatican II (even
by the ITC’s own admission) attests Catholic doctrine
on limbo. For instance, Albert Michel writes that the
teaching on limbo is “a teaching proximate to Faith
and susceptible of a dogmatic definition.”11 The Civiltà
Cattolica12 quotes St. Augustine on limbo: “If you wish
to be Catholic, do not believe, do not say, and do not
teach that children who die without baptism can obtain
the remission of original sin,”13 and the Jesuit review,
an official organ of the Holy See, comments: “He does
not say: if you do not wish to be temerarious, but ‘if
you wish to be Catholic.’”14 Thus La Civiltà Cattolica
considers it to be a matter of definable faith.
In La volonté salvifique sur les petits enfants,15 Cardinal
Journet writes that the Magisterium had made a
pronouncement on the subject in a manner that was
not only canonical or prudential or practical, but also
speculative and dogmatic, apt to “define the revealed
deposit....These pronouncements require of us an
assent of faith in a divinely revealed truth” (p.137).
Cardinal Journet recalls that formerly the Church,
at the Councils of Milevum and Carthage (416–418)
“defined the necessity of infant baptism” (pp.145-46) in
terms later adopted by the Council of Trent, and that
the practice of infant baptism is “of apostolic origin”
(p.147). It is “a doctrine belonging to the divine Faith of
the Church” that there can be no hope of supernatural
salvation for unbaptized children [who die before
reaching the age of reason]; this is not “a doctrine
that would merely constitute the common teaching of
theologians” (p.152).
In 1971, Msgr. Pier Carlo Landucci wrote that the
existence of limbo “is a solid theological deduction,
corroborated by Tradition and the Magisterium,”

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and, against present-day modernism, he recalled that
“beyond the definitions, often incidental, there is the
solid theological teaching determined by the ensemble
of the Fathers and theologians, and by the ordinary
Magisterium of the Church, which, when it is universal,
is infallible.” He concluded: “Limbo will always be
a reminder of the supreme transcendence and the
gratuity of supernatural life.16
To conclude, it will suffice to say that the existence
of limbo must be held for certain (eius existentia certo
tenenda est),17 and this is not a simple theological
opinion. Unless, of course, one should wish to say, as
has already been said about hell, that “limbo exists, but
it is empty.”

Second Objection
The idea of Limbo, which the Church has used for many
centuries to designate the destiny of infants who die without
baptism, has no clear foundation in revelation even though
it has long been used in traditional theological teaching.
Moreover, the notion that infants who die without baptism
are deprived of the beatific vision, which has for so long
been regarded as the common doctrine of the Church,
gives rise to numerous pastoral problems.18

Response: The foundation of the traditional
doctrine on limbo is found in Revelation (Sacred
Scripture and Tradition), and this foundation is clear.
Sacred Scripture: “Unless a man be born again of water
and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom
of God” ( John 3:5). “Go ye into the whole world, and
preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth
and is baptized, shall be saved” (Mark 16:15-16).
Tradition: The Greek and Latin Fathers, as we have
seen, are unanimous in their teaching of the exclusion
from the beatific vision of infants who die unbaptized,
and it is in this sense that, in regard to these infants,
they speak of “damnatio” (privation of the vision of
God). They differ only in their conception of the
condition reserved to these children (neither the pain of
the senses nor the pain of loss), milder in the thinking
of the Greek Fathers, and more severe in the thinking
of many of the Latin Fathers under the influence of
anti-Pelagian polemics.
Finally, if the doctrine of limbo “gives rise to
numerous pastoral problems,” this is often due to the
imprecise and incomplete manner in which it is taught,
and that is why it would have been truly opportune for
Vatican II, which claimed to be principally pastoral,
not to elude the question of the bishops who asked
for the definition of Point 3 of the traditional teaching
about limbo. In any case, the purported “pastoral
problems” cannot be construed as an authorization to
alter a truth taught by our Lord ( Jn. 3:5) and constantly
proposed by the Church to the faith of Catholics: “No
one, unless he is born of the water and the spirit,
can see the kingdom of heaven,” that is to say, as
the Church has clarified in her teaching against the
schisms of the Pelagians, eternal life and thus the
beatific vision.

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Third Objection
“...[P]eople find it increasingly difficult to accept
that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants
[who die unbaptized], ...from eternal happiness” (§2).
Amongst these people, the members of the ITC must
necessarily be counted, since they judge the doctrine of
limbo as “an unduly restrictive view of salvation...that
ultimately calls into question the very omnipotence of
God and his mercy” (§2).
Response: Since the doctrine adjudged by the
ITC to be “unduly restrictive”is a truth attested by Holy
Writ and professed and taught uninterruptedly in the
Church (Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Councils,
Magisterium), as we saw in Point 1, we must conclude
that, for the ITC, those who “call into question the
very omnipotence of God and his mercy” are Sacred
Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors, the Councils, and
the ordinary and extraordinary Magisterium of the
Church—a statement that, for an organ of study such as
the ITC, is not without a certain effrontery.
Complete and perfect natural happiness, however,
is due. According to the common and most probable
teaching (which still awaits a dogmatic definition; see
Point 3 above), God accords this natural happiness to
unbaptized infants who die without personal sins, but,
because of original sin, lack sanctifying grace and are
thus incapable of acting supernaturally (“agere sequitur
esse”) and of seeing God “face to face as He is,” in His
essence. God commits no injustice when He leaves the
baptism of newborns to the general play of secondary
causes, which can ultimately deprive some souls of the
free gift of supernatural happiness. God desires, with
a universal will, that all be saved, including infants,
and He instituted the general means of salvation for
all, even for infants, but He is not bound to guarantee
by continual miracles or by a series of miracles that all
infants be baptized when the secondary causes (parents,
family, society, the State) oppose it.
In the doctrine on limbo, there is thus no “unduly
restrictive view of salvation.” On the contrary,
those who deny it or call it in question display the
same pretension to the supernatural and to grace
as things due to man that St. Pius X condemned in
the modernists (Pascendi) and Pius XII in the neomodernists (Humani Generis):
Others destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since
God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without
ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.19

Fourth Objection
Reflecting on the question of the destiny of infants who
die without baptism, the ecclesial community must keep in
mind the fact that God is more properly the subject than the

21

Fifth Objection
object of theology. The first task of theology is therefore
to listen to the word of God....However, with regard to the
salvation of those who die without baptism, the word of
God says little or nothing. (§4)

Response: This objection could have been
written by a Protestant: they speak of the “ecclesial
community,” which “reflects” on the theme of
infants dying without baptism; they speak of “the
word of God,” but not one word about the Church’s
Magisterium. Yet God has not only given His Church
Sacred Scripture and Tradition, but, as Pius XII
reminded the modernists:
For, together with the sources of positive theology God
has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to
elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of
faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our
Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation
not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to
the Teaching Authority of the Church.20

This Teaching Authority or Magisterium, to which
has been entrusted by Christ our Lord the whole
deposit of faith and which must be “in matters of faith
and morals...the proximate and universal criterion
of truth for all theologians”21 is “sometimes as little
known” by the ITC “as if it did not exist.”22 Or rather,
it is contradicted, for against the constant teaching of
the Church, the ITC document dares to affirm that
“with regard to the salvation of those who die without
baptism, the word of God says little or nothing,”
while in reality, the Word of God says of those who
die without baptism that they are not saved, and the
Church, in its authentic interpretation, explains that
this holds true in particular for all infants who, without
the use of reason, cannot have, unlike adults, the desire
for baptism, with the consequence that they have no
other way to be saved than by water baptism or to be
killed for Christ like the Holy Innocents.
And what does it mean to say that “God is more
properly the subject than the object of theology”? This
thesis is essentially modernist; it leads to subjectivism
and to philosophico-theological relativism. For the
“material” object of theology is principally God, and
secondarily created things as they are ordered to God,
who is their end and their efficient cause.23 Whereas
the “formal” object of supernatural theology is God
knowable by faith through Revelation, that of natural
theology or “theodicy” is God (His existence, and
certain attributes of His essence) known from creatures
by means of natural reason.24 To assert that God is
more the subject than the object of theology is to fall
into nihilism or theological agnosticism, also called
“apophatism” (God is totally unknowable), to which the
ITC explicitly refers (see note 30 below).

22

There has even been an important liturgical development
through the introduction of funerals for infants who died
without baptism....The Roman Missal of 1970 introduced a
funeral Mass for unbaptized infants.... (§5)
Before Vatican II, in the Latin Church there was no
Christian funeral rite for unbaptized infants, and such
infants were buried in unconsecrated ground....Thanks
to the liturgical reform after the Council, the Roman
Missal now has a funeral Mass for a child who died before
baptism. (§100)

Response: By the ITC’s own admission, this
change does not constitute a true, homogeneous
“liturgical development,” but rather a liturgical
corruption because it is heterogeneous, that is to say,
in contradiction with the 2,000-year-old doctrine and
practice of the Church. If the Church never allowed a
Mass for infants who die without baptism until 1969,
it is certainly and infallibly true (by the practice of
the Church, which is a dogmatic fact) that these souls
do not benefit from the fruits of the sacrifice of the
Mass insofar as they lack the capacity or potency for
the supernatural order. The ITC’s objection can be
turned against it, in that a new practice originating
a mere 30 years ago cannot supplant the contrary
ancient and traditional practice of apostolic origin that
has always subsisted peacefully in the Church: If a
new practice contradicts an ancient one, it is certainly
erroneous by reason of the principle of identity and
non-contradiction, and it is to the ancient practice that
it is necessary to hold fast, as the Church has always
taught.25
In reality, by changing the “lex orandi” with the
introduction of a Mass (which had never existed) for
unbaptized infants, they sought to change the “lex
credendi,” effacing the existence of limbo. This was
done gradually but resolutely: In 1970, Pope Paul
VI implicitly introduced the negation of limbo in the
Novus Ordo by inserting in it, contrary to 2,000 years
of practice, a funeral Mass for unbaptized infants. In
1984, Joseph Ratzinger, while Cardinal Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, affirmed
explicitly that limbo is only a “theological opinion.”
In 1992, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (No.
1261) included the teaching that the Church entrusts
the children who have died without baptism to the
mercy of God “as she does in her funeral rites for
them” (introduced only after Vatican II by Paul
VI). Finally, in 1994, the ITC, presided by Cardinal
Ratzinger, began its studies on limbo, which issued last
April in the current “novelty,” which gives a blow to
the traditional teaching of the Church.
Sixth Objection
So, while knowing that the normal way to achieve
salvation in Christ is by baptism in re, the Church [?] hopes
[sic] that there may be other ways to achieve the same end.

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Because by his incarnation the Son of God ‘in a certain
way united himself’ with every human being.... (§6)
What we may ask and are asking is whether infants who
die without baptism necessarily die in original sin, without
a divine remedy....We may perhaps compare this to God’s
unmerited gift to Mary at her Immaculate Conception.
(§§83, 87)

Response: This is the crux of the matter. Since
baptism is the normal way and normally necessary to
take away original sin, normally the infants who die
without baptism do not enjoy the beatific vision (de
fide); exceptionally or miraculously, God can sanctify
someone (St. John the Baptist) in his mother’s womb,
but the exception always remains the exception and
cannot become a rule. And since it would involve an
exception to a universal law established by Christ and
ratified by the Church, “Unless a man be born again
of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God” ( Jn. 3:5), any derogation that is not
revealed by God Himself, as in the case of St. John
the Baptist or the Blessed Virgin Mary is inadmissible.
The exceptions to a general law, Cardinal Journet
reiterates in agreement with all Catholic theology,
cannot be presumed, but must be proved.26 The ITC,
on the contrary, not only presumes the exception, but
it makes of it a rule without demonstration.
In reality, it is not true that, as the ITC writes, “the
Church hopes that there may be other ways to achieve”
salvation for the children who die unbaptized. To the
contrary, the Church has always denied the existence
of these “other ways” from the first Council of Carthage
until the Holy Office’s Monitum of February 18, 1958.
It is thus that Cardinal Journet, after examining the
texts of the Magisterium, could write that “in response
to the question of whether children who die without
baptism, before attaining the use of reason, have some
other way of salvation..., all the indications of the
Magisterium converge towards one response: No”27;
and he considers this truth to be a truth of faith.
In reality, the ITC bases itself not upon the
constant teaching of the Church (of which, as we
have shown, it takes no account), but on the following
sophism: A. It is of faith that without grace (with
original sin) one cannot enter heaven; B. Baptism,
however, is not the only way to efface original sin; C.
Therefore, even for infants who die without baptism,
there can be another way to go to heaven. But the
minor premise is obviously ambiguous and erroneous,
for baptism is the ordinary or normal way to efface the
stain of original sin: it is not a question of establishing
what God can or could have done, but what He did do.
Of course, God in His omnipotence and His
freedom can communicate grace even in a purely
spiritual way. He was not obliged to institute the
sacraments.28 However, since man is not a pure spirit,
but is composed of a soul and a body, Christ instituted
the sacraments (outward signs that produce grace) as
ways to give us supernatural life. Now, in this state of
things, baptism, by a positive divine disposition, is a
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necessary means of salvation, even if there are exceptions
in a few extraordinary cases. The Council of Trent
defined that “this translation after the promulgation
of the Gospel cannot be effected except through the
laver of regeneration, or a desire for it” (Dz. 796, cf.
Canon 5 on baptism). Now, since it is formally and
directly revealed that without baptism, or at least the
desire for it, one cannot have grace, and without grace
one cannot have glory, it is at least strictly connected
to the “per se revelatum” that infants, since they are
incapable of baptism of desire, can only obtain grace
and thus glory by water baptism or by martyrdom, if
they are killed out of hatred for Christ as were the Holy
Innocents, to whom the ITC alludes incorrectly in its
report.
The “hope” expressed by the ITC that there may
be “other ways” for children who die without baptism
to be saved is thus a hope that is opposed by the
general principle established by Christ Himself and
ratified by His Church, according to which no one can
be saved unless he is born again by baptism (or at least
the desire for it). But there it is: the “new theology”
encourages “hopes” that have no basis in the Faith
and, just as its proponents “hope” that hell is empty,
likewise they “hope” that limbo is empty, too. But what
is a “hope” without a foundation in the Faith? It is
pure sentimentalism or illusion, if not this “ideological
romanticism” of which Msgr. Ugo Lattanzi (+1969)
spoke, which seeks to introduce errors into Catholic
doctrine and the minds of the faithful by means of
“lyricism or poetry” (for example, Hans Urs von
Balthasar).
The comparison with the Immaculate Conception,
which has its foundation in the Divine maternity, leads
one to think of this immaculate conception of man, the
fundamental principle of naturalism and liberalism, and
adopted in turn by the anthropocentrism and the cult
of man specific to the “new theology,” which, despite
Pius XII’s condemnation of it (Humani Generis, 1950)
just twelve years removed, exerted such tremendous
influence on Vatican II.

Seventh Objection
It can be asked whether the infant who dies without
baptism but for whom the Church in its prayer expresses
the desire for salvation can be deprived of the vision of
God even without his or her cooperation. (§7)

Response: Original sin is the privation of
sanctifying grace, which is the seed of glory in potency.
Consequently, whoever is deprived of grace in act is
also deprived of glory in potency. Without “his or her
cooperation,” that is to say without personal sin, the
infant cannot be punished by hell, but without grace,
neither can it obtain glory, since it is impossible to pass

23

into act from nothing; at least the potency is necessary:
Ex nihilo nihil fit. Ens in potentia non reducitur ad actum
nisi per ens in actu. Now, since infants ordinarily obtain
the life of grace only by water baptism, normally
(without miraculous exceptions certified by God: the
Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist) the infant
who dies without baptism is deprived of grace and
glory.

The ITC Is Not Ignorant
of the Traditional Doctrine
Is the ITC ignorant of the traditional teaching on
limbo that we have just presented? Not at all! It knows
it very well. The Commission cites the Greek Fathers,
then the Latin Fathers, especially St. Augustine;
it does not fail to cite the Gospel ( Jn. 3:5) (even
though it denies that the doctrine on limbo has any
foundation in Sacred Scripture); it speaks of Church
praxis (which is an infallible norm of truth), which
accorded baptism to “newborns in danger of death...
to assure their entrance into the kingdom of heaven”
(§16). It cites the Magisterium with the Council of
Carthage (418), and skips directly to the Scholastics
(St. Anselm of Canterbury, Hugh of St. Victor, Peter
Abelard)....It returns to the Magisterium (Council of
Lyons, John XXII, the Council of Florence, taken up
in turn by the Council of Trent), and explains that with
the Schoolmen and the medieval Magisterium, the
Church reached a “common view” (§23) (they continue
to downplay the dogmatic value of the doctrine on
limbo) that these unbaptized children go to limbo,
where they suffer no pain and even enjoy a full natural
happiness, feeling no regret of their lack of the beatific
vision, which is essentially supernatural, since they
are without habitual grace and do not know what
Revelation teaches about heaven. The ITC even quotes
St. Thomas Aquinas, for whom
faith alone allows us to know that the supernatural end
of human life consists in the glory of the saints, that is,
in participation in the life of the triune God through the
beatific vision. Since this supernatural end transcends
natural human knowledge and since unbaptized children
lack the sacrament that would have given them the seed
of such supernatural knowledge, Aquinas concluded that
infants who die without baptism do not know what they
are deprived of and hence do not suffer from the privation
of the beatific vision. (§23)

Still, the ITC insists that the ordinary way of baptism
does not exclude other extraordinary avenues by
which the power and the mercy of God can, if He wills,
raise to the supernatural order even those who are not
baptized and die before attaining the use of reason
(§66).
The ITC does not hide the fact, either, that Pius
VI condemned as “false, rash, injurious to the Catholic
schools” the Jansenist proposition that denies the

24

doctrine on the limbo of children, but it affirms that
this doctrine is not of faith; it would merely be “the
common Catholic teaching until the mid-20th century”
(§26). In short, the members of the ITC show that they
know perfectly well the Catholic doctrine on limbo, but
they reduce it to the rank of “common teaching”under
the pretext of the lack of a dogmatic definition,
forgetting that, in the words of Msgr. Landucci quoted
above,
Beyond the definitions, often incidental, there is the solid
theological teaching determined by the ensemble of the
Fathers and theologians, and by the ordinary Magisterium
of the Church, which, when it is universal, is infallible.

How the ITC Circumvents
the Traditional Teaching
The ITC tells us, among other inexactitudes
over which we cannot tarry, that during Vatican
II the “issue” of limbo “did not enter into the
Council’s deliberations and was left open for
further investigation.” In reality, Pius XII, in 1950,
condemned the “new theology” according to which the
supernatural order is something due to human nature
and thus is not gratuitous. It would have been risky to
change the doctrine on limbo diametrically between
1962 and 1965, scarcely a dozen years after such a
severe condemnation, and only four to six years after
the Holy Office’s Monitum (February 18, 1958), which
reaffirmed the traditional doctrine and condemned as
vain and bereft of any foundation the “novelties” that
were popping up here and there about the destiny of
children who die without baptism. So they let some
time elapse and introduced the change gradually.
However, Vatican Council II, in particular in Gaudium
et Spes (GS) §22, had introduced a very ambiguous
phrase that would subsequently allow the “novelties”
on limbo to slide by: “By his Incarnation, the Son of
God has united himself in some way (quodammodo),
with every human being.”
Indeed, the ITC refers to GS §22 to affirm:
“Although the Council did not expressly apply this
teaching to children who die without baptism, these
passages open a way to account for hope in their
favor” (§31).... “In theological research, the perception
of the divine will to save as ‘quantitatively’ universal
is relatively recent” (§33). It follows that “humanity’s
solidarity with Christ (or, more properly, Christ’s
solidarity with all of humanity) must have priority over
the solidarity of human beings with Adam” (§91). Now,
“a major weakness of the traditional view of Limbo
is that it is unclear whether the souls there have any
relationship to Christ” (§90), whence it can be said that,
if it is of faith that the privation of the beatific vision is
the punishment of original sin, baptism is not the only
way to remove the obstacle (privation of grace) to the
vision of God. The children who die without baptism
are not necessarily deprived of sanctifying grace
and hence of the vision of God (§37). The traditional
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teaching itself does not oblige us “to think that these
infants necessarily die with original sin, so that there
would be no way of salvation for them” (§37). The
doctrine of limbo is thus the “common doctrine”
but is not de fide: it remains a possible theological
hypothesis,29 today outstripped by the recent conciliar
teaching. They even resort to invoking “the apophatic
perspective of the Greek fathers” for resolving the
problem of limbo, which is “a limit case as regards
theological inquiry.”30
Response: Firstly, it is ridiculous to define limbo
as “a limit case as regards theological inquiry” when it
has been tranquilly taught by the Catechism of Saint
Pius X and tranquilly learned by the children who
prepare for their First Holy Communion. As for the
universal salvific will of God (§52), it is divided into (a)
the antecedent and conditioned will that offers all men
sufficient grace for salvation on condition that they
desire to be saved; and (b) the consequent and absolute
will that desires the salvation of those who accept it,
but not of those who refuse it.
In theology, the term “quantitatively universal”
(§33) does not exist. It is a term forged by the ITC to
express in a new, foggy way an ancient and obscure
heresy: apocatastasis or pantheism or the “Cosmic
Christ” (which is essentially the same thing).
The relation of man with Adam is that of one who,
descending from him, does not inherit habitual grace,
which was given by God to Adam in the garden of
Eden. Our first parent lost it by his fault and cannot
transmit it to his children, who are necessarily born
deprived of sanctifying grace, and thus with the stain
of original sin. On the contrary, in the relation of
man with Christ, if there is on the part of Christ a
redemptive and universally salvific will, on every
man’s part there must be free cooperation in the work
of redemption. Hence “all men” are not necessarily in
union with Christ (as GS §22 wrongly asserts), because
they can refuse Christ’s salvation. In potency, every man
is in relation with Christ, but in act he is not necessarily
united to Him by sanctifying grace, while he is in
actual relation with Adam, and he necessarily is born
deprived of grace—that is to say, with original sin. It
follows that the “solidarity” of man with Christ does
not have, in general, priority over his solidarity with
Adam; it is even the reverse.
Conclusion: According to the ITC, the principal
weakness of the traditional doctrine on limbo is that it
is not sufficiently clear about the relation each soul has
with Christ. But the “new” doctrine on limbo conceives
the relation of each soul with Christ in a heretical way,
by referring to GS §22: “By his Incarnation, the Son
of God has united himself in some way (quodammodo),
with every human being.” This sentence was
interpreted by Pope John Paul II in Redemptor Hominis:
“God...in him draws near again to humanity, to each
human being, giving him the thrice holy Spirit of truth”
(§9). Moreover: “the dignity that each human being
has reached and can continually reach in Christ [is] the

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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

dignity of both the grace of divine adoption and the
inner truth of humanity” (§11). John Paul II explains, so
that no doubt can remain, that
What is in question here is man in all his truth, in his
full magnitude. We are not dealing with the “abstract”
man, but the real, “concrete”, “historical” man. We are
dealing with “each” man, for each one is included in the
mystery of the Redemption and with each one Christ has
united himself for ever. (§13)

And he adds: “Man—every man without any
exception whatever—has been redeemed by Christ,
and because with man—with each man without any
exception whatever—Christ is in a way united, even
when man is unaware of it” (§14). And this “from
the moment he is conceived beneath the heart of his
mother” (§13). This is the “counter-definition” of the
immaculate conception of every man, and this is why
the children who die without baptism go to heaven,
while limbo goes...to limbo (and hell goes...to hell).
In the Encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem, John
Paul II extends the pantheist theme of pan-Christism
beyond man:
The Incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up
into unity with God not only of human nature, but in this
human nature, in a sense, of everything that is “flesh”: the
whole of humanity, the entire visible and material world.
The Incarnation, then, also has a cosmic significance, a
cosmic dimension....[God] is not only close to this world
but present in it, and in a sense immanent, penetrating it
and giving it life from within. (§§50, 54)

He specifies that:
The “first-born of all creation,” becoming incarnate
in the individual humanity of Christ, unites himself in
some way with the entire reality of man, which is also
“flesh”—and in this reality with all “flesh,” with the whole
of creation. (§50)

In its report, the ITC is simply applying this “cosmic
dimension” of Redemption.
Clearly, what is happening is the clash of
two “races,” “cities,” “standards,” doctrines, and
faiths diametrically opposed, one of which is the
contradiction of the other. It follows that limbo exists
or not depending upon one’s “faith”: the faith of God
who became Man to save the man who cooperates with
God, or the faith of the man who pretends to be God
by the mere fact of existing because his nature requires
grace.
The negation of the doctrine of limbo is of
enormous gravity because the principles from which
it proceeds are utterly false (naturalism, pantheism,
“the Cosmic Christ”). All of its underlying erroneous
principles have been refuted and condemned
previously, but the International Theological
Commission reproposes them today. What is even

25

more serious is that even the simple faithful have
been disturbed by this report because, in general,
only theologians are capable of grasping its other,
subtler errors. Still, it is obvious to all (and not only the
learned) that this undermining of belief in the existence
of limbo also strikes at the tranquil possession of a
certain doctrine that is learned by all the faithful, even
by children, and taught by the Roman Catechism (Part
II, Chap.2, No.32). This “passive scandal” (endured by
the faithful) presupposes the “active scandal” committed
by the pastors. In the Gospel Jesus said: “He that shall
scandalize on of these little ones that believe in me, it
were better for him that a millstone should be hanged
about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the
depth of the sea” (Mt. 18:6); the ones scandalized are
the “simple, uneducated children.”31 Scandal that is
given publicly must be publicly repaired. This is what
we demand.

negation of limbo would compromise the divinely revealed and defined truth
of the absolute necessity of baptism, at least of desire.
11
Children Who Die Without Baptism [French] (Paris: Tequi, 1954), p. 17.
12
June 12, 1968, pp. 709-720.
13
De anima et eius origine, Bk. III, Ch. 9.
14
La Civiltà Cattolica, June 12, 1968, p. 715.
15
Desclée, 1958. Page numbers in parentheses refer to this volume.
16
Msgr. Pier Carlo Landucci, “Limbo for Unbaptized Children” [Italian],
Palestra del Clero, No. 18, September 15, 1971, pp. 1092, 1097.
17
Sacrae Theologiae Summa, IV, 150.
18
ITC, The Hope of Salvation, §3.
19
Humani Generis, §26.
20
Ibid., §21.
21
Ibid., §18.
22
Ibid.
23
Summa Theologica, I, Q.1, Art.1, ad 2.
24
Ibid.,
25
Cf. St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitories.
26
Cf. Cardinal Journet, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, s.v. “Baptism,”
and Sacrae Theologiae Summa, IV, 150.
27
Journet, La volonté divine salvifique sur les petits enfants).
28
Summa Theologica, III, Q.72, Art.6, ad 1.
29
Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die..., Introduction.
30
Ibid., §41.
31
Roberti-Palazzini, Dictionary of Moral Theology [Italian] (Rome: Studium,
1968).

1

Pontifical Annuary, historical notes.
International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants
Who Die Without Being Baptized (January 19, 2007). It is the report (with 103
sections and 135 notes) of the ITC, which met in plenary session at Rome in
December 2005 and October 2006.
3
Ibid., introduction.
4
Cf. “Teachings of the Church Fathers on Limbo,” Si Si No No, September
2007, pp.1-4.
5
In Sanctum Baptisma, No. 23, PG, Vol. 36, col. 390.
6
De Infantibus qui Proemature Moriuntur, PG, Vol. 46, col. 177, 180.
7
A. Carpin, Augustine and the Problem of Children Who die Without Baptism
[Italian] (Bologna: ESD, 2005), p. 17.
8
Cf. Sacrae Theologiae Summa (Madrid: BAC), II, 1004.
9
Cf. Ibid., II, 1009 ff.
10
The Church’s Magisterium has as its first and direct object to faithfully guard
and infallibly interpret natural and infallibly revealed truths (Dz. 1800). Nevertheless, the infallibility of the Magisterium also extends to all those truths
and facts which are either a deduction from revealed doctrine (theological
conclusions) or its presuppositions. This is the secondary and indirect object
of the Magisterium. For these truths and facts, while not immediately and
directly revealed, are so linked to Revelation that to deny them is tantamount
to compromising Revelation itself: in the case that concerns us here, the
2

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F r .

P a t r i c k

Some days ago, the front page headlines were
announcing: “The Catholic Church closes down
Limbo.” That was how the press reported the
document published by the International Theological
Commission [hereafter ITC–Ed.] dealing with the
question of Limbo. Commenting upon this document
on the airwaves of France Info, Cardinal Poupard
expounded: “The merciful love of the saving God
extends to all, even to the infants who die without
being baptized.” On his part, the Roman Press
Agency, Zenit, run by the Legionaries of Christ,
commented in its French edition: “A 41-page
document entitled The Hope of Salvation for Infants
Who Die Without Being Baptized, prepared by the
International Theological Commission and approved
by Benedict XVI, confirms that infants who die
without being baptized are destined for heaven”
(Zenit, April 23, 2007).
Even before we consider the contents of the
text, let us note the disinformation surrounding
it. First, it is inexact to say that the Church is
speaking or making a pronouncement through this
document. As a matter of fact, the ITC is in no
way a magisterial organ. Instituted by Pope Paul
VI in 1969, it is merely a group of theologians in
charge of advising the pope and the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith. Consequently, it is
only an instrument of theological research. At the
request of John Paul II, a sub-commission of this
group had been working for several years on the
issue of Limbo, and the text is merely the document

d e

l a

R o c q u e

summarizing the work of this sub-commission. On
April 19, Cardinal Levada presented this document
to Benedict XVI, who gave an oral permission to
publish it. Although this acknowledgment is not
without value, Zenit’s statement that Benedict XVI
signed the document confers undue authority upon it.
This is disinformation; it is an attempt to impose upon
everybody a text which, from a juridical point of view,
is only the thesis of a theological school.
Nonetheless, the contents of the document raise
serious problems. The major thesis of the text is
summed up in the conclusion:
The many factors that we have considered above give
serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that
unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the
beatific vision.1

We must be aware of what the Church teaches–or
does not teach–about Limbo, and also realize how this
subject is closely connected with several truths of our
faith, if we wish to appreciate the full significance of
this new thesis.

reminders of
caTholic docTrine

Firstly we will briefly recall the teaching of
Catholic doctrine concerning original sin, baptism,
and Limbo. It is important to distinguish between
what the Church declares as being of faith (de fide),
what she presents as a common doctrine, and
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The ANgeLus • November 2007

28
finally what she leaves to the free investigation of
theologians. Indeed, by refusing an affirmation under
the first category, we would lose the Catholic Faith.
If we ventured without serious reason outside the
common doctrine it would be dangerous for our faith.
As for investigating the field left to free theological
speculation, even this cannot be done without a
thorough knowledge of the question and a deep
humility.
Since we are speaking of Christ our Savior, who
“came to seek what was lost,” we must first know why
we had to be saved, hence it is logical to begin with the
doctrine of original sin. The next step is to study the
remedy of our ill and the conditions of its application.
Consequently, we will deal with baptism, which is
the first means by which Redemption is applied to us.
Lastly, we will consider how the Catholic doctrine on
original sin and baptism throws light on the fate of
children who die without baptism, and on this whole
question of Limbo.

The Teaching of the Church
Concerning Original Sin
It is a dogma of faith that every man is born with
the stain of original sin. The only two exceptions are
the Blessed Virgin, because of the privilege of her
Immaculate Conception, and, of course, Our Lord
Himself. The Council of Trent stated that original
sin “transmitted to all is in each one as his own by
propagation, not by imitation.”2 What is this stain
which is in every man by the very fact that he is
Adam’s descendant? It is a state of privation: man is
deprived of the supernatural friendship with God; and
connected to this, there is in man a disposition to evil,
a disposition to concupiscence. Original sin is not a
personal sin, but a state inherited from Adam. Pope
Innocent III asserted:
A distinction must be made, that sin is twofold: namely,
original and actual: original, which is contracted without
consent; and actual, which is committed with consent.3

Already long before, in 530, the 2nd Council of
Orange4 had explained–and condemned!–:
If anyone asserts that Adam’s transgression injured him
alone and not his descendants, or declares that certainly death
of the body only, which is the punishment of sin, but not sin
also, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man
to the whole human race, he will do an injustice to God,
contradicting the Apostle who says: “Through one man sin
entered in the world, and through sin death, and thus death
passed to all men, in whom all have sinned.”5

This teaching was taken up by the Council of Trent6
which anathematized the following proposition:
If anyone asserts that Adam’s transgression injured him
alone and not his descendants, or declares that certainly death
of the body only, which is the punishment of sin, but not sin
also, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man
to the whole human race, he will do an injustice to God,
contradicting the Apostle who says: “Through one man sin
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

entered in the world, and through sin death, and thus death
passed to all men, in whom all have sinned.”7

Anyone who denies one single truth from this teaching
on original sin is anathema; he no longer has the
Catholic Faith.
To this doctrine is connected a second teaching,
which is not directly of faith, but is a common
opinion held by the Church, the Church Fathers, and
theologians, and consequently it would be extremely
rash to deny it. It was summarized by Innocent III:
The punishment of original sin is deprivation of the vision
of God, but the punishment of actual sin is the torments of
everlasting hell.8

The two pains specific to hell are here
distinguished: the pain of loss, which is the privation
of the beatific vision, and the pain of sense, which
constitutes the torment and bodily tortures of the
reprobates. The common opinion declares that this
pain of sense is only the punishment of actual sin and
not of original sin. This element will be important for
us later on.

The Church’s Teaching
Concerning the
Necessity of Baptism
We must now consider the Catholic doctrine on
baptism. No one can be saved except by the Blood of
Jesus Christ. Our Lord is the only Savior, and there is
no salvation outside of Him; the New Testament repeats
this again and again. This teaching was recalled by the
councils, especially the Council of Arles in France, in
483, of which one of the aims was to bring a heretical
priest back to the Faith. The pope made him sign a
profession of faith in which we read:
I declare further that...from the beginning of the world, they
were not set free from the original slavery except by the
intercession of the sacred Blood.9

No one can be saved without the shedding of the
Blood of Our Lord. And the Council of Trent reiterated
this teaching in reverse order in a canon which
condemned:
...If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam...is taken away
either by the forces of human nature or by any remedy other
than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ:
let him be anathema.

Yet this Sacred Blood can save us only inasmuch
as it is applied to us. The mere fact that Christ died for
our sins does not suffice to save all men automatically.
Without a personal application of the Blood of Christ,
we cannot be saved. To the act of Christ, who died
for our Redemption (objective Redemption), must
consequently be added another act, by which this
Redemption is applied to individuals (subjective
Redemption). Let us quote, for instance, the Council of
Quiercy10:
There is, there has been, and there will be no man for
whom Christ did not suffer, although all are nevertheless not

29
saved by the mystery of His Passion. That all are not saved
by the mystery of His Passion has nothing to do with the
grandeur nor the abundance of the redemption, but with the
part of the infidels and of those who do not believe with the
faith “that worketh by charity,”11 for the cup of the salvation
of mankind, made up of our weakness and of divine power,
does contain what is useful for all; yet if we do not drink from
it we shall not be healed.12

What is the act by which Redemption is applied to
individuals? In his address to Nicodemus,13 Our Lord
is adamant: “Unless a man be born again of water and
the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God.” Jesus Christ Himself revealed that the application
of the fruits of Redemption is only made by baptism.
The Church expounded the teaching of her Spouse,
specifying that there are three kinds of baptism:
l Sacramental baptism received at the baptismal
font; it is an act of Christ and the Church, freely
given to an individual, without even any moral act
on his part when the individual is an infant.
l Baptism of desire: it is still an act which associates
the individual to the Redemption of Christ, but
this act no longer comes firstly from the Church
and from Christ; it comes from the individual who,
with God’s grace, unites himself to Jesus Christ
through faith and desire. Such is the case with the
catechumen who prepares for baptism and begins
to reform his life. He has the baptism of desire, and
the fruits of grace already begin to be applied to
him. This baptism of desire includes the desire of
sacramental baptism at least implicitly; hence it is
ordained to sacramental baptism, and is understood
in the word of Christ: “Unless a man be born again
of water and the Holy Ghost.…”
l Lastly, there is the baptism of blood. The example
of the first persecutions is well known: while the
pagan executioners were putting the first Christians
to death, it happened that they converted
seeing the heroic virtues of their victims. They
forthwith declared themselves Christians, and
were immediately put to death. Their blood was
shed out of hatred for Christ and for the Faith;
they are martyrs in the strict sense of the term,
thus benefiting from what we call the baptism of
blood. The Holy Innocents also benefited from
this baptism of blood: they were put to death out
of direct hatred for Christ, out of hatred for the
Messianic faith.
Thus there are three forms of one baptism,
ordained one to the other, and all are contained in the
sentence of Our Lord: “Unless a man be born again
of water and the Holy Ghost….” If there is not an
application of the Redemption through one form or
another of baptism, there is no kingdom of heaven.
Such is the teaching of the Catholic Faith.
In 1442, the Council of Florence declared:
Concerning infants, by reason of the danger of death to
which they are often exposed, since it is not possible to help

them by any other remedy than by the sacrament of baptism,
by which they are taken from the domination of the devil
and are adopted as children of God, the Church warns that
baptism must not be deferred.

Let us note the significant words: “since it is not
possible to help them by any other remedy than by
the sacrament of baptism.” Since these infants do not
have the age of reason they are consequently unable to
perform personal moral acts, and can only be united to
Christ in a purely passive manner, by the reception of
sacramental baptism. This is what the Church teaches
concerning baptism and its necessity. This teaching of
the Church on baptism and its necessity is a dogma
of faith. Baptism of blood alone is not of faith. But
if no dogmatic definition declares its efficacy, it is
nonetheless a constant tradition in the Church.

The Situation of Infants
Who Die Without Baptism
Now that we have recalled the teaching of the
Catholic Faith concerning original sin and baptism, we
can tackle the specific question: Limbo and the destiny
of children who die without baptism.
First of all, it is very important to emphasize that
the Church has NEVER considered that those infants
might enjoy the beatific vision. Such a supposition was
declared14 by Pope Innocent I to be “most absurd” and
besides, contrary to the faith of the Church:
That infants may enjoy the rewards of eternal life even
without the grace of baptism is most absurd. Indeed, if they
do not eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood,
they shall not have life in them.15
It seems to us that those who hold that these children will have
this life without being born again seek to make void baptism
itself, by preaching that these children have what the Faith
says can be conferred upon them only by baptism.16

In this text, which echoes all of the patristic
tradition, Innocent I engaged the faith of the Church.
No Church Father ever considered that infants who
died without being baptized could enjoy the beatific
vision; on the contrary, the whole debate consisted in
knowing what their hell would be like. The Church
Fathers and early theologians may well seem very harsh
to us if we judge them according to standards of our
modern sensitiveness.
The quarrel arose when St. Augustine opposed the
Pelagian heresy. Like most of the Fathers, the Bishop
of Hippo thought initially that if these infants did not
enjoy the beatific vision, they did not on that account
suffer the pain of sense. However his position changed
when he confronted the Pelagian heresy; and he came
to suppose that these children suffered only the “lightest
punishment of all,” hence divergences among the
subsequent Fathers. We must note that the debate was
not concerned with knowing whether these children
were or not in heaven, but whether they were in hell or
in a middle place, a “bordering” place–etymologically
the word Limbo comes from border. In this domain,
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

30
the Church never made any pronouncement. Many
councils and professions of faith employed very generic
terms, which must be translated correctly. Concerning
infants who die without being baptized, it is said that
they go down to a lower place (in infernum), but this
cannot be translated univocally as “hell”! The word
merely indicates a lower place, in opposition to Heaven
where they cannot go. Such a profession of faith was
imposed upon Emperor Michael Paleologus by Pope
Clement IV in 1267. The same formula was later taken
up by the 2nd Council of Lyons in 1274,17 and by the
Council of Florence in 1439.18
Only one single theologian ever thought that these
children might go to Heaven: the eminent Cajetan, the
greatest commentator of St. Thomas of Aquinas. His
thesis caused such a surprise that for a time the Council
of Trent considered condemning it, but refrained from
doing so out of respect for the august theologian. Pope
St. Pius V merely ordered that all allusions to this thesis
be removed from the works of Cajetan. In nineteen
centuries, this was the only instance of a theologian
who put forth the hypothesis that infants who died
without being baptized were in Heaven, and you can
see how strongly the Church reacted.
So far, let us recall that the Church only affirms
one point, and this in a negative manner: infants who
die without baptism do not enjoy the beatific vision.
She does not go any further in her pronouncements.
The rest is entrusted to the care of theologians; hence
it does not belong to what has been revealed, and does
not engage the Catholic Faith. From the 12th century
onward especially, theologians sought to explain the
exact state of children who died without baptism.
First they repeated that these children do not suffer
the pain of sense, supporting their opinion on the
text of Innocent I that I have already quoted and on
many other texts of the Church Fathers. For instance,
concerning these infants, St. Gregory of Nazianzus said
that
they would have neither heavenly glory, nor torments.
The one who does not deserve punishment is not thereby
worthy of praise, and the one who does not deserve praise is
not thereby deserving of punishment.

And the eminent Church Father went on to explain
that a bad or faulty disposition can be punished only by
the privation of some advantage, which is the legitimate
consequence of the subject’s inaptitude--thus, for
instance, ignorance is an obstacle to the reception of
the priesthood. Now original sin is only a disposition to
concupiscence, a disposition which adults alone cause
to pass from potency to act. Hence, according to the
common thesis on Limbo, children do not suffer the
pain of sense.
The second point asserted by theology is that
even though the privation of the beatific vision is
objectively a pain inasmuch as the supernatural destiny
is not attained, nevertheless these infants do not suffer
from it. The reason is that faith alone reveals to us
our supernatural destiny, hence without the Faith,
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

we cannot know that grace makes us capable of the
beatific vision. Now these children do not have the
Faith, consequently they cannot know the supernatural
destiny which they have failed to reach. Even though
this destiny is not achieved in them, they are not aware
of having missed any supernatural end, and hence they
do not suffer. On the contrary, the damned know that
they are damned because of their own personal sins.
They have received graces of conversion, and know
that they were made for God, who had given them
the means of salvation; they know that they are in hell
because of their own fault, and the privation of the
beatific vision is their most cruel torment.
Theology also adds that children who die without
being baptized enjoy a real happiness in their whole
being. St. Thomas Aquinas said:
Although separated from God from a supernatural
viewpoint [they do not have the beatific vision, they do not
know God as God knows Himself, for such is the beatific
vision], they remain united with Him through the natural
goods they possess, and this is sufficient to enjoy God through
natural knowledge and love. They have their lives, their light,
their joy, and their happiness in God.

They know God like man can know him, and
this is already a real happiness. In other words, these
children do have their lives, their happiness and their
joy in God, but in a natural manner, i.e., through the
shadows of their thoughts, reasoning, and human
meditations.
To summarize: the common teaching of the Church
concerning Limbo is that children who die without
being baptized have no personal sins and hence do
not suffer the pain of sense, they are condemned to the
pain of loss, but without suffering from it, and finally
they enjoy a natural happiness in God. This is common
doctrine, not a dogma of the faith.
Considering this doctrine of Limbo to be a revival
of the Pelagian heresy, the Jansenists wanted to send
all these children to the depths of hell. Pope Pius VI
intervened to express the deep respect of the Church
for this common teaching of theologians:
The doctrine which rejects as a Pelagian fable, that place
of the lower regions (which the faithful generally designate
by the name of the limbo of children) in which the souls of
those departing with the sole guilt of original sin are punished
with the punishment of the condemned, exclusive of the
punishment of fire, just as if, by this very fact, that these
who remove the punishment of fire introduced that middle
place and state free of guilt and of punishment between
the kingdom of God and eternal damnation, such as that
about which the Pelagians idly talk,—false, rash, injurious to
Catholic schools.19

The pope did not say that the doctrine of Limbo
was a dogma of faith, yet he considered it false and
injurious to Catholic schools to sweep it aside. Lastly,
the First Vatican Council had planned to engage the
faith of the Church by asserting that
those who die with original sin only will be forever
deprived of the beatific vision, whereas those who die with
one actual grave sin will suffer besides the torments of hell.

31
However, this definition was never declared,
because the Council was interrupted before its
completion. And so the doctrine of Limbo remains
today what we call a common doctrine of the Church.
It would be rash to deviate from it, yet to do so would
not question our adhesion to the faith of the Church,
provided however that the affirmations concerning
original sin and baptism listed above be safeguarded.

The Document of
The International
Theological
Commission
A Fundamental Presupposition:
A False Conception
of Universal Redemption
The doctrine on Limbo which we have expounded
above is the common doctrine of the Church from
which it would be “rash and injurious” to deviate, yet
it is quite simply denied by the ITC:
“The idea of Limbo has no clear foundation
in revelation” and “the notion that infants who die
without baptism are deprived of the beatific vision
gives rise to numerous pastoral problems”20; “we
consider such a solution [Limbo] problematic.21
In what respect does the doctrine raise difficulties
for our new theologians? Let them answer for
themselves: Because the theory of Limbo represents
“an unduly restrictive view of salvation.” They could
not state more clearly the problem which is at the
root of the document: the theory of Limbo does
not fit in with the theory of universal redemption
according to which all men are saved. Since there is
an incompatibility between the two theses, the former
must be swept aside, or even reformed. Such was the
mission entrusted to the members of the ITC.
Now comes to light what is really at stake in the
document. By tampering with the doctrine of Limbo
which, it is true, is not of faith, these theologians
question or “sweep under the carpet” two other points
of doctrine which do belong to revealed doctrine,
namely the doctrine of original sin and of the necessity
of baptism. And they set to the task with relish.

Original Sin Forgotten
With regard to original sin, the description
given by the document of the evil in the world is
symptomatic:
From the moment the human race began to increase
on the earth, God had to reckon with the sinfulness of
humankind.22

A description of the flood follows. The great absentee
is obviously Adam’s sin, committed even before the

human race increased, and which became the source
of all sins. No mention is made here of this sin. It is
merely said that when humankind began to increase,
God had to reckon with sinfulness. The first fault, a
central event in the history of salvation, is swept aside.
A few paragraphs above,23 the universal salvific will
of God is said to be “sincere on the part of God but at
times is resisted by human beings.” Such a statement
is once again deceiving with respect to original sin.
To say that humans resist at times is to admit the
possibility of actual sin, and this is correct. But the text
omits to say that it is in Adam that all men are in fact
established in a state of resistance to the salvific will of
God, and that this state can be overcome only through
a special grace from God. On this point, the document
is absolutely silent, just as it had passed over the event
of original sin. Now, the document says elsewhere,
“infants, for their part, do not place any personal
obstacle in the way of redemptive grace,”24 so these
theologians conclude:
It can be asked whether the infant who dies without
baptism...can be deprived of the vision of God even without
his or her cooperation.”25

The reasoning is elementary: God wants to save
everybody, and the only obstacle is personal sin; but
infants do not have any personal sins, and so these
infants are in heaven. Their logic is simple, yet it is
false, because the major premise of the syllogism is
false. It ignores original sin. This is the whole problem
with the document.

Magisterium and
Tradition Relativized
If the thesis is simple, the methodology used by
these theologians is more subtle, and it comprises a
significant proportion of the document. They have
indeed 19 centuries against them, something that is
a nuisance for them and that they somehow have to
explain away. Or rather, they have to “enervate” the
Magisterium and Tradition in order to remove all
their constraining power. The tone is set already in §4:
“The first task of theology is therefore to listen to the
word of God.” Simple as this statement may sound, it
is surprising in what it omits: God does not speak only
through Scriptures, but also through the unanimous
Tradition and Magisterium. But for these theologians
the Magisterium and Tradition are not sources of
sure truth, they belong to mere human history. Thus
the document asserts with surprising candor: “The
tradition and the documents of the magisterium which
have reaffirmed this necessity [of baptism] need to be
interpreted.”26 So all these documents will be reread in
order to be re-interpreted. Indeed, continues §10,
a hermeneutical (i.e., interpretative) reflection is needed as
to how the witnesses of tradition (it is no longer Tradition,
but merely witnesses!) (Church Fathers, the Magisterium,
theologians) read and used biblical texts.

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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

32
In other words, all those people, Church Fathers,
the Magisterium, theologians and so forth, read Holy
Scripture in a certain manner. Was it the correct one?
In all simplicity and humility, the members of the ITC
believe themselves capable of a better interpretation!
Let us take a few instances of this rereading.
Above, we saw that the Council of Florence asserted:
It is not possible to help them [infants] by any other remedy
than by the sacrament of baptism, by which they are
taken from the domination of the devil and are adopted as
children of God.

Our modern theologians comment:
The Church does not know of any other means which
would certainly give little children access to eternal life.27

Impossibility is replaced by ignorance. The Church
of that time did not know any other means, but our
modern theologians know them and will tell us all
about them, as we will see later on.
In his beautiful address to Italian midwives, Pope
Pius XII declared:
The state of grace is absolutely necessary for salvation:
without it supernatural happiness, the beatific vision of
God, cannot be attained. In an adult an act of love may
suffice to obtain this sanctifying grace and thus supply for
baptism; but for the unborn child or the infant, such a way
is not open.

What are they to do with such a text? The response of
the ITC is baffling in its levity: Far from prohibiting
the theological search for “other ways of salvation,”
Pope Pius XII
rather recalled the limits within which the debate must
take place and reasserted firmly the moral obligation to
provide baptism to infants in danger of death.28

Numbers 26 and 27 alone sum up the attitude of
these theologians with regard to the Magisterium and
Tradition:
Limbo, however, was the common Catholic teaching until
the mid-20th century....In the 20th century, however,
theologians sought the right to imagine new solutions,
including the possibility that Christ’s full salvation reaches
these infants.

They could not have said it more clearly!

The Bible Re-Interpreted
The second step in the method used by the ITC is
the re-interpretation of the Bible. Indeed, the Church
Fathers and the Magisterium were not the only
problems for the new theories; on certain points, the
Scriptures themselves seem to contradict our modern
theologians; hence the need for a re-interpretation.
The major text on this issue is obviously Chapter 5,
verse 12 of the Epistle to the Romans: “By one man
sin entered into this world, in whom all have sinned.”
This fundamental point explains that in Adam all men
have sinned, not personally, but inasmuch as they
were incorporated in Adam, the father of mankind.
Such an assertion must be re-interpreted, hence a
new translation, which passes over in silence the
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

key expression: “in whom all have sinned.” This is
the revised version: “Therefore as sin came into the
world through one man and death through sin, and
so death spread to all men because [Gr. Eph’ho; other
possible translations: “on the basis of which” or “with
the result that”] all men sinned.” Instead of saying that
“all have sinned in Adam,” it is merely said: “all have
sinned.” Original sin is thus swept under the carpet,
so that only the universal existence of personal sin is
affirmed. And a footnote (note 82) explains: “Eph’ho,
then, would mean that Paul is expressing a result, the
sequel to Adam’s baleful influence on humanity by
the ratification of his sin in the sins of all individuals.”
This explanation is directly condemned by the
Church, because it amounts to saying that original sin
is not transmitted by generation but only by imitation.
But such a condemnation does not seem to bother our
modern theologians, since they care so little about the
Magisterium.
Here is another instance, quite typical of
progressivist methodology:
The numerous baptismal statements in the New Testament
(e.g., “unless a man be born again of water and the Holy
Ghost…”) in their variety articulate the different dimensions
of the significance of baptism as understood by the early
Christian community.29

The Gospels are no longer considered as the
inerrant word of God, but simply as a testimony of
the early Christian community which explains how
it considered Christ. On such a basis, it is possible to
relativize. To the quote from St. John (3:5): “Unless a
man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God” is added the
following comment which relativizes it: “from which we
understand the need of sacramental baptism”30; suggesting:
from this sentence the Church understood the need
of sacramental baptism--but did she not understand
incorrectly?

Hierarchy of Truths
and Change of Perspective
Thus they have done away with the common
doctrine of the Church concerning Limbo. It remains
to be discovered how these theologians elaborate
their thesis. They explicitly invoke the principle of
the hierarchy of truths.31 I will present this complex
thesis in a somewhat simplistic fashion; and indeed it
is used in a simplistic way by the ITC. It distinguishes
the fundamental revealed truths from those of
secondary importance. The fundamental truths have
priority over the truths considered as secondary
in cases where there is an apparent contradiction.
Rather than showing that the contradiction is merely
apparent, they overestimate it, and consequently
pass over in silence the truths classified as secondary.
In such a case, it is said that these secondary truths
remained to be discovered. We can illustrate this with
§91 of the document: “Where sin abounded, grace

33

A Hackneyed Phrase: “To Read
the Signs of the Times”

superabounded! That is the emphatic teaching of
Scripture; but the idea of limbo seems to constrain
that superabundance.” In a word, they focus on one
passage from the Bible, chosen according to the
need of their thesis, in order to interpret all the rest
of Holy Scripture in the light of this one passage.
The argument then becomes simplistic: where sin
abounded, grace superabounded; now, limbo seems
to constrain grace because the souls in Limbo do not
benefit from grace. Consequently, Limbo is swept
under the carpet.
This same method is used in paragraph after
paragraph:

If our theologians believe they have a right to
question the logical and chronological priority which
the Church had always respected until recently, it is
on account of “the signs of the times,” those famous
signs of the times which the Second Vatican Council
had invited us to scrutinize and let ourselves be
carried along by. In the present case, these signs of
the times can be reduced to two: the feelings of the
parents, and the contemporary mentality preoccupied
with subjective right. §2 tells us:

When reflecting theologically on the salvation of infants
who die without baptism, the Church respects the hierarchy
of truths and therefore begins by clearly reaffirming the
primacy of Christ and his grace, which has priority over
Adam and sin.32

Parents experience great grief...and people find it
increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful
if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from
eternal happiness, whether they are Christian or nonChristian.

The lack of logic of this order is passed over in
silence; although we cannot understand the salvation
brought by Christ without a prior knowledge of the
evil from which He delivered mankind, the document
merely affirms here what it considers as a must: the
priority of universal salvation over original sin. Hence
we read these inconsequent propositions: “Christian
hope is that the living God, the Savior of all humanity
(cf. I Tim. 4:10), will share his glory with all people.”33
Such a hope cannot be Christian: because it will not
be accomplished, and certitude is a characteristic
feature of Christian hope. Christian hope has for its
object God Himself, and God is certain. For instance,
we hope for the second coming of Christ in glory,
because we know that this Parousia is certain, we
know it will take place. But to say that Christian hope
is that the living God will share His glory with all
people is an assertion which is manifestly false: it is
certain that there are souls in hell, it is certain that
hell is not empty; consequently, it is certain that God
does not share His glory with all people.
In spite of the errors it leads to, this priority
choice in favor of universal salvation is constantly
repeated throughout the document:

Such are the signs of the times which should compel
the Church to change her doctrine.
The reason adduced here forgets that every gift,
and even more so the gift of supernatural grace, is
gratuitous. The poverty of the argument becomes
even more evident when applied to daily experience.
Imagine siblings who on Christmas evening bring the
bill for the presents they received, and complain of
injustice because not all the presents cost exactly the
same! Such children do not understand that liberality
is not justice; nor do our modern theologians. God
is not bound to give the same to each, and unless we
fall into the crass conception of subjective right, we
cannot consider unjust the fact that God grants to
some a supernatural bliss and to others only a natural
happiness.
Then they call upon feelings: “People everywhere
are scandalized by the suffering of children and want
to enable children to achieve their potential.”37 Some
paragraphs above we read:

There is a fundamental unity and solidarity between
Christ and the whole human race.34
We wish to stress that humanity’s solidarity with Christ
(or, more properly, Christ’s solidarity with all of humanity)
must have priority over the solidarity of human beings with
Adam and that the question of the destiny of unbaptized
infants who die must be addressed in that light.35
The traditional view is that it is only through sacramental
baptism that infants have solidarity with Christ and hence
access to the vision of God. Otherwise, solidarity with Adam
has priority. We may ask, however, how that view might
be changed if priority were restored to our solidarity with
Christ.36

Yet is this priority choice of universal salvation
justified? The theologians of the ITC believe it is,
since they rely upon the “signs of the times.”

Christians are people of hope. They set their hope “on
the living God, who is the savior of all, especially of those
who believe. They ardently desire that all human beings,
unbaptized children included, may share in God’s glory and
live with Christ....So Christians, even when they do not see
how unbaptized children can be saved, nevertheless dare to
hope that God will embrace them in his saving mercy.38

The theological depth of such arguments leaves us
dumbfounded.
Yet, quite seriously–and alas not without reason!–
our theologians go on to show how these signs of the
times have been taken into account by the Church for
40 years:
Thanks to the liturgical reform after the council, the
Roman Missal now has a funeral Mass for a child who died
before baptism...This liturgical prayer both reflects and
shapes the sensus fidei of the Latin church regarding the fate
of unbaptized children who die: lex orandi, lex credendi.39

Moreover,
In its 1980 instruction on children’s baptism the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed that
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

34
“with regard to children who die without having received
baptism, the church can only entrust them to the mercy of
God, as indeed she does in the funeral rite established for
them.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) adds that
“the great mercy of God, who desires that all men should
be saved [I Tim. 2:4] and Jesus’ tenderness toward children,
which caused him to say, “Let the children come to me, do
not hinder them” (Mt. 10:14), allow us to hope that there
is a way of salvation for children who have died without
baptism.40

All these “go-ahead signals” that have been given
for 40 years by the Conciliar Church represent so
many encouragements for modern theologians to go
forward with their thesis.

Propositions Which
Do Not Lack Creativity
It remains to be seen how, according to our
theologians, salvation is achieved for children who die
without baptism. Here we reach the domain of pure
suppositions which are at times quite surprising.
Thus with §85:
Broadly, we may discern in those infants who themselves
suffer and die a saving conformity to Christ in his own death
and a companionship with him. Christ himself on the cross
bore the weight of all of humanity’s sin and death, and all
suffering and death thereafter is an engagement with his own
enemy, a participation in his own battle, in the midst of which
we can find him alongside us.

Christ’s enemy is no longer sin itself which Christ
expiated on the cross, but rather death; consequently,
the instinct to survive proper to any threatened living
being is considered as “an engagement with his
(Christ’s) own enemy,” a “participation in his own
battle.” A child would sum up the reasoning as follows:
I fight against death, Christ fought against death, we
are fighting against the same enemy; that means we are
on the same side! I leave you to judge for yourselves
the high theological level of the argument.
However, I think we reach the peak of ridicule
with note 124,41 where they “imagine” the rudimentary
votum which the infant without the use of reason
could exercise in order to assimilate his case to that of
baptism of desire: “Some theologians have understood
the mother’s smile to mediate the love of God to the
infant and have therefore seen the infant’s response
to that smile as a response to God himself.” We might
as well say that when you feed your cat, you are
mediating God’s love for it, God’s love which feeds
the birds of the fields. Consequently, when your cat
8
Dz. 410.
International Theological Com9
Dz. 160b.
mission (ITC), §102.
10
2
In 853.
Dz. 790, The Sources of Catholic
11
Gal. 5:6.
Dogma, tr. Roy J. Deferrari from
12
DS 624 (translation ours).
the 30th ed. of Henry Denzinger’s
13
Jn. 3:13.
Enchiridion Symbolorum (1955;
14
In the year 417.
reprint by Loreto Publications,
15
See Jn 6:53.
n.d.).
16
3
DzH 219 (translation ours).
In the year 1201.
17
4
DzH 858.
Dz. 175.
18
5
DzH 1306.
5:12.• November 2007 www.angeluspress.org
THERom.
ANGELUS
19
6
DH 1526.
DS 789.
20
7
ITC, §3.
Rom. 5:12.
1

wags its tail, this could be its saving response to God!
This is the kind of theological argument they dare to
offer us! It seems to me more worthy of Polnareff (a
French 1980’s pop singer who sang a song entitled “We
Will All Go to Paradise”) than of a document from the
International Theological Commission!

Conclusion
Reading these last “reflections” from the document
of the ITC, I cannot help thinking of St. Paul’s
prophecy: “For there shall be a time, when they
will not endure sound doctrine [“we consider such a
solution (Limbo) problematic”]; but, according to their
own desire [signs of the times proposed: nowadays
people wish to see all men saved], they will heap to
themselves teachers [150 theologians of the ITC],
having itching ears: and will indeed turn away their
hearing from the truth [we have seen how they swept
aside the Magisterium, Tradition, and even Sacred
Scripture], but will be turned unto fables [we see what
kind of fables these theologians came up with].”42
Benedict XVI did not sign the text, but he did
authorize its publication by word of mouth, something
which is not insignificant. All this is painful to learn.
Nevertheless, we know that God draws good out
of evil. I believe that through this document God is
reminding us that what is at stake in Tradition is not
just the liturgy. Such a reminder proves very timely
as the Latin Mass is being liberalized. Obviously, we
desire the Mass of all times for everyone, but it is not
the end of the fight for Tradition. It is a first victory,
over which we are entitled to rejoice, but it does not
mean that we can lay down our arms. There still
remains another aspect of the crisis of the Church to
resolve, an aspect which is even more fundamental:
the doctrinal dimension. As long as Rome has not
unequivocally resumed this fight, it will be the duty of
each one of us not to behave like children who allow
themselves to be “tossed to and fro, and carried about
with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of
men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait
to deceive,”43 but on the contrary, “doing the truth in
charity, we may in all things grow up in him who is the
head, even Christ.”44
Reprinted from Christendom, (No. 11, May-June, 2007, pp.4-13). Christendom
is a publication of DICI, the press bureau of the Society of Saint Pius X (www.
dici.org). This conference was given by Fr. Patrick de La Rocque shortly after
the publication of the ITC’s report, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die
Without Being Baptized.

21

34

22

35

ITC, §95.
ITC, §53.
23
ITC, §46.
24
ITC, §7.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
27
ITC, §29.
28
ITC, §39.
29
ITC, §62.
30
ITC, §99.
31
ITC, §7.
32
Ibid.
33
ITC, §9.

ITC, §88.
ITC, §91.
ITC, §93.
37
ITC, §75.
38
ITC, §68.
39
ITC, §100.
40
ITC, §5.
41
ITC, §94.
42
II Tim. 4:3-4.
43
Eph. 4:14.
44
Eph. 4:15.
36

part 6


F r .

M a t t h i a s

G a u d r o n

The chapter on Vatican II continues with an
account of the “time bombs” carefully planted
in the conciliar documents by Fr. Rahner & Co., and
the admission by a Protestant observer that he was
the originator of the key phrase “subsistit in.”

Catechism
of the Crisis
in the Church
29) Should all the Vatican II
documents be rejected?

The documents of Vatican Council II can be
divided in three groups: 1) Some are acceptable,
because they are in conformity with Catholic doctrine,
as for example the decree on the formation of priests;
2) others are equivocal, that is, they can be understood
correctly, but can also be interpreted erroneously; and
3) some cannot be understood in an orthodox way; in
their present formulation, they are unacceptable. This
is the case for the declaration on religious freedom.
The ambiguous texts can be accepted if they are, in
Archbishop Lefebvre’s words, interpreted in the light
of Tradition. The texts of the third group cannot be
accepted until they have been rectified.

l What accounts for the ambiguous nature of certain
Vatican II documents? The equivocations were
deliberately introduced into the conciliar texts to
deceive the conservative Fathers. They could be
deluded by insisting on the fact that fundamentally
the text did not mean anything else than what the
Church had always taught. But afterwards, it was
possible to use these passages to defend heterodox
theses.
l Is there any proof that these ambiguities were
deliberately introduced? Karl Rahner and Herbert
Vorgrimler confirmed this when they wrote, for
example, that “a certain number of important
theological questions about which no agreement
could be reached were left open by choosing
formulations that could be interpreted differently
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The ANgeLus • November 2007

36
by particular groups and theological tendencies
at the Council.”1
l How could such imprecision in the conciliar
documents be justified? This deliberate ambiguity
was justified by the fact that the Vatican Council
II was only meant to be a pastoral council,
and that it was thus not necessary to draft its
documents with the theological clarity required
for a dogmatic council.
l Can you provide some examples of these
calculated ambiguities? One example of this
ambiguity is the notorious expression “subsistit
in” introduced in the Dogmatic Constitution
Lumen Gentium, on the Church (I, 8), which
declares that the Church of Christ “subsists in
[subsistit in] the Catholic Church.
l What is the traditional teaching on this subject?
The traditional teaching expressly says that the
Church of Christ is the Catholic Church. This
word “est” is still found in the first drafts of this
constitution on the Church. It was subsequently
replaced by the expression subsistit in. It is
evident that this change was not made without a
reason.
l Why is the word “est” here important?
The Catholic Church is not only a certain
embodiment of the Church of Christ: it is the
Church of Christ, which signifies that there is an
absolute identity between the Church founded
by Christ and the Catholic Church. The other
ecclesial communities never belong to the
Church of Christ. The expression “subsistit in”
introduces an ambiguity on this point.
l How is this expression ambiguous? It is possible
to understand the “subsistit in” in an nearly
traditional manner. But this expression was
introduced by the innovators to justify a new
conception of the Church after the Council.
According to this conception, the Catholic
Church is but one realization of the Church
of Christ, and other Churches can also be
considered as belonging to the Church of Christ.
l Who backed this new conception? Cardinal
Willebrands, for example, declared:
The subsistit in underscores yet another aspect, which,
in the spirit of the conciliar discussion on Lumen Gentium,
is as important as the preceding one. In the formulation
that was inspired by Humani Generis and especially Mystici
Corporis [two Encyclicals of Pius XII], the est was exclusive.
It established quite simply what Cardinal Liénart, in his
discourse, presented as a strict identity between the Roman
Catholic Church and the Mystical Body, “as if the full
Mystical Body were limited to the boundaries of the Roman
Church.” Subsistit in is meant to signify, on the contrary,
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

that the Church, which we profess in the Creed as being
one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, is found in this world as
an established, organized society in the Catholic Church,
although it extends farther than its visible borders....Subsistit
in thus expresses both the conviction that the Church
founded by God in the beginning is found in the Catholic
Church, and the certitude that it extends nevertheless
beyond the Catholic Church, albeit incompletely.2

According to this interpretation, the Catholic
Church is perhaps the best form of the Church of
Christ, but it is only one among others. This statement
is in absolute contradiction with the Catholic faith.
l Is the identity of the person at the origin of
this new expression “subsistit in” known? The
Protestant pastor Wilhelm Schmidt claimed the
paternity of this new expression. Here is his
testimony:
At the time I was pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross
at Bremen-Horn, and during the third and fourth sessions,
an observer at the Council as the representative of the
Evangelical Fraternity Michael, at Cardinal Bea’s invitation.
I submitted in writing the formulation “Subsistit in” to the
man who was then the theological adviser of Cardinal
Frings: Joseph Ratzinger, who relayed it to the Cardinal.3

30) What are the principal
errors of Vatican II?

The two most harmful conciliar errors are
religious liberty and ecumenism, which shall be
treated of in detail in the next two chapters. To these
must be added the teaching on episcopal collegiality.
Finally, there is to be found in many conciliar
documents a naive belief in progress and wonder at
the modern world which are truly frightening.
l What is episcopal collegiality? The principle of
episcopal collegiality rises in opposition to the
exercise of authority. The pope and the bishops
must no longer use their power, but must direct
the Church collegially, or collectively. Today the
bishop is the head of his diocese in theory only;
in practice, he is bound, at least morally, by the
decisions of the bishops’ conference, the priests’
councils, and different assemblies. Rome no
longer dares uphold its own authority over the
episcopal conferences, but in general yields to
their pressure. The idea of equality propagated
by the French Revolution has been imposed. It
is based on the false notion of Rousseau, which
denied the existence of an authority willed by
God and attributed all power to the people.
This theory is contrary to the teaching of Holy
Scripture: “Let every soul be subject to higher
powers: for there is no power but from God: and
those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he


that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance
of God” (Rom. 13:1-2).
l Is there a link between collegiality and the
two principal errors of the Council (religious
liberty and ecumenism)? These three errors of
the Council–religious liberty, collegiality, and
ecumenism–correspond exactly to the principles
of the French Revolution: liberty, equality,
fraternity. This correlation illustrates Cardinal
Suenens’s statement that Vatican II was 1789 in
the Church.
l In which conciliar texts does one find a naive
belief in progress? The most serious example
of a naive belief in progress is found in the
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World, Gaudium et Spes. It rhapsodizes
in an astonishing manner on the progress of the
modern world, even though it daily strays farther
from God. We read in Section 12: “According to
the almost unanimous opinion of believers and
unbelievers alike, all things on earth should be
related to man as their center and crown.” And
in Section 57, Christians are exhorted “to work
with all men in the building of a more human
world.” A world in which man is the center and
end, and in which all should collaborate in the
realization of an earthly paradise corresponds
to the Freemasons’ idea of the world, and not to
that of Catholics.
l What is the Christian teaching on this point?
Catholic doctrine teaches that God alone is the
end of all creatures, and that there cannot be
true peace or happiness on earth unless men
give themselves to Jesus Christ and follow His
commandments.

l In the final analysis, what judgment can be made
of Gaudium et Spes? Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
called Gaudium et Spes a counter-Syllabus, and
rightly so. This Vatican II document in effect
positively affirms what Pius IX denied and
condemned in the catalogue of contemporary
errors that he established in 1864 and which
bears the name of Syllabus.
l Did Cardinal Ratzinger explain why he described
Gaudium et Spes as a “counter-Syllabus”? The
Cardinal justified his analogy by explaining that
in the 1960’s the Church appropriated “the best
values of two centuries of liberal culture,” values
which, he said, “originate outside the Church”
but which now have found a place within it.4
l Is it a bad thing for the Church to appropriate
values that originate outside it? The real question
is, rather, can there be genuine moral values
outside the Church? The Church received from
Christ the plenitude of religious truth and good.
Liberalism is only the corruption of Christian
ideas gone mad, as G. K. Chesterton would say.
Everything good it might possess was stolen
from the Gospel; but everything that belongs to
liberalism properly speaking (unbridled liberty,
rejection of authority established by God, etc.)
is, of itself, anti-Christian. That is why Pius
IX repeatedly condemned liberalism, and in
the last proposition of his Syllabus denounced
the following error: “The Roman Pontiff can,
and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to
terms with progress, liberalism and modern
civilization.”5 It is precisely this reconciliation

iArchbishop
aCCuseMarceltHeLefebvreCounCiL

For further reading on the dangers of the documents of Vatican II, we recommend I Accuse the Council by
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. This is a collection of the 12 interventions (a speech at the Council drawing attention
to a deficiency in a proposed text) of Archbishop Lefebvre. Some of these interventions are accompanied by
Archbishop Lefebvre’s proposed re-wording, some have a short commentary by the Archbishop on that session of
the Council. You will see that most of his interventions dealt with ecumenism, collegiality and religious liberty, but
also on The Missionary Activity of the Church, among others. We often forget that Archbishop Lefebvre was the
Superior of the Holy Ghost Fathers at that time–the largest missionary order in the Church. And he had spent most
of his priesthood as a missionary priest and bishop in Africa.
In 1966, Cardinal Ottaviani was so concerned about the effects of the Council, that he wrote to every bishop
in the world and asked for their thoughts on the matter. Archbishop Lefebvre’s devastating reply is included:
He warned that the faithful would become confused, doubting the necessity of the Church, the sacraments, the
conversion of non-Catholics, and the necessity of authority.
89pp, softcover, STK# 3072✱ $10.00

www.angeluspress.org

The ANgeLus • November 2007

38
and this friendship that are advocated by Vatican
II in general and Gaudium et Spes in particular.

l Do the current Church authorities acknowledge the
non-infallibility of Vatican II? Cardinal Ratzinger
expressly stated in 1988 that Vatican II is not
infallible:

31) Isn’t Vatican II infallible
insofar as it is an organ of
the ordinary magisterium?

The truth is that the Council itself did not define any
dogma, and limited itself to a more modest level, simply as
a pastoral council. In spite of this, numerous are those who
interpret it as if it involved a “super-dogma” that alone has
importance.7

Some claim that even if Vatican II did not produce
any acts of the extraordinary magisterium, it would
possess the note of infallibility as an organ of the
ordinary and universal magisterium, since almost all
the bishops of the world were present. Moreover,
they say, ecumenism and religious liberty are taught
nowadays by the bishops of the entire world, which
would also be equivalent to the exercise of the
ordinary and universal magisterium, which is infallible.
But this argumentation is flawed. Vatican II, a
“pastoral” council, refused to invoke its authority to
define anything; it did not impose religious liberty and
ecumenism as truths of faith, and that is why it escapes
the extraordinary magisterium. But, by the same token,
it also escapes the infallible ordinary magisterium,
for there can be no infallibility if the bishops do not
authoritatively certify that the teaching they dispense
belongs to the deposit of the faith (or is necessarily
linked to it), and that it must be held as immutable and
obligatory.
l Are not some Vatican II teachings presented
as “based on Revelation,” “in conformity with
Revelation,” “handed down by the Church,”
or “decreed in the Holy Spirit”? Those are
pious formulas, but very insufficient to assure
infallibility. It would be necessary to impose this
teaching authoritatively as necessarily linked
to divine Revelation, which is immutable and
obligatory. But religious liberty and ecumenism
are novelties, contrary to previous Church
teaching. In fact, the bishops do not impose
them firmly and precisely as immutable truths.
In preaching them, they do not invoke their
authority as guardians of the deposit revealed
to the Apostles, but rather they present them
in a liberal (“pastoral”) fashion as the fruit of
a dialogue with the modern world and as the
reflection of what Christians believe today. This is
enough to exclude infallibility.6
l Thus one cannot invoke the Church’s ordinary and
universal magisterium with regard to ecumenism
and religious liberty? One cannot invoke the
ordinary and universal magisterium in favor of
ecumenism and religious liberty, but one could
justly affirm that it is the condemnations declared
over the course of the last two centuries against
religious liberty and ecumenism that are infallible
by reason of the ordinary magisterium.
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

l Why are the current authorities so attached
to Vatican II, since they recognize at the same
time that it is not infallible? In fact, from the
beginning, Vatican II has been the object of a
dishonest trick. During the Council, they insisted
on its pastoral character in order to avoid having
to express themselves with theological precision;
but afterward, they pretend to give it an authority
equal or even superior to that of previous councils
and pontifical documents. This dishonest trick
was denounced by one of the participants at
the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre, in 1976: “It
is imperative, therefore, to shatter the myths
which have been built up around Vatican II–this
Council which they wanted to make a pastoral
one, because of their instinctive horror for dogma,
to facilitate the introduction of Liberal ideas into
an official text of the Church. By the time it was
over, however, they had dogmatized the Council,
comparing it with that of Nicaea, and claiming
that it was equal if not superior to the Councils
that had gone before it!”8
Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Katholischer Katechismus zur
kirchlichen Kriese by Fr. Matthias Gaudron, professor at the Herz Jesu Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The original was
published in 1997 by Rex Regum Press, with a preface by the District Superior
of Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger. This translation is based on the second
edition published in 1999 by Rex Regum Verlag, Schloß Jaidhof, Austria. Subdivisions and slight revisions made by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé have
been incorporated into the translation.

1

		K. Rahner and H. Vorgrimler, Kleines Konzilskompendium: Sämtliche Texte
des Zweiten Vatikanums (Fribourg: Herder, 1986), p.21.
2
		Johannes Willebrands, Mandatum Unitatis (Paderborn: Bonifatius Verlag,
1989), p.352.
3
		Pastor Wilhelm Schmidt (not to be confused with the ethnologist of the same
name), letter of August 3, 2000, to the author of this Catechism. (Pastor
Schmidt made clear in his letter that “I have no objection to the publication
of this information.”)
4
		Interview of Cardinal Ratzinger by the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori,
published in English as The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on
the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985).
5
Condemned proposition, DS 2980.
6
See on this subject the arguments developed by Fr. Calderon in Sel de la
Terre, No. 47, pp. 60-69 and 91-95.–Note of the Dominican Fathers.
7
Cardinal Ratzinger, Allocution to the Bishops’ Conference of Chile, July
13, 1988 (quoted in Itinéraires, February 1989, p.4.
8
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council (1976; Angelus Press,
1982), p.x-xi.

39

Twenty-Seven Minutes

God’s

with Fr. de Chivré:

Secret

Language:

God’s Hidden Way of Expressing Himself
The mystical life is the only complete life. This is
true as much on the part of God (Who is free to act in
the soul) as on the part of the soul, which is entirely at
God’s disposition. But this is done through the medium
of “secrets” which are personal to the soul and which
God uses to draw near to the soul’s essential existence.
What exactly are these “secrets”?
We here call “secrets” those psychological realities
that dwell in us without an initial reference to an
external source. External things can sometimes awaken
them, like the way a beautiful mountain scene awakens
the virtue of adoration of God by the intermediary of
Creation. But the exterior does not create them. They
appear in us, in spite of us, even from our birth, without
any possible explanation, without a natural origin. They
command our attention, wanting to take the initiative of
conversations between us and ourselves, and between us
and God.
These conversations go beyond earthly questions;
they present us with demands: the choice of God, of
virtue, of value, of an existence without self-interest.
Or else other, more intimate demands: that of a
permanence of attention upon God, of relations made
as constant as possible by exchanges that engage the
Redemption in itself, or the redemption of souls, or
the rectification of an interior direction towards a more
consciously consented sanctification.
They are secrets because they have no relation with
the banality of every-day life. They are secrets because
they define us so personally that we are afraid of others’
catching a glimpse, because it really is our true face, the
face that only God has a right to see.

God speaks to these secrets and expresses Himself
by them. He speaks in ways inseparable from His divine
nature, and specific to each one of the souls to which He
addresses Himself.
The first of all those ways: God is outside of time,
and He addresses Himself to a particular moment
in a spiritual existence localized in time. How does
that work? Since it is outside of time, the divine
word expresses itself without necessarily using the
intermediary of temporal means. I mean without
obligatory reference to the rational thought that dwells
in us. His word springs forth so complete that it requires
the total attention of reason and heart to foster its
nourishing development and so allow it to blossom into
conclusions that will lead us beyond the relative, the
logical, and the rationally argued. With His word, there
is no link between the natural thought which preceded
it and which it suddenly replaces, breaking into our
thought and commanding our attention. We find it
again in us with the same expression we found ten years
earlier, or centuries before in Holy Scripture, in a form
adapted to our destiny, but analogous to the “official”
revelations (which it never contradicts). “Ego sum: it is I
who am speaking to you with the same words, inviting
you to turn away from the human words that you are
accustomed to hearing and that build up your earthly
happiness, your immediate success, your personal
fortune; I am situating you where I come from: outside
of time; I am waiting for you as of right now, in your
mind and in your soul.”
The result is a kind of interior attention to the
decisions that these words inspire, words spoken outside
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

40
of time: words which do not change but which have the
firm intention of changing our way of thinking; which
solicit an audience within the intimacy of a reflection
inaccessible to those around us, incommunicable to
our friends. Words in tune with God: always, definitive,
absolute, completely, seeking to set in motion our consent,
so uncertain, so hesitant, so fearful. They situate us in
a perfect attitude, encouraging us toward the insatiable
repetition of a “yes” never quite like the one before,
always more complete, constantly recommenced
without the slightest weariness, and offering an echo to
God’s infinity by the absolute open-endedness of that
blessed obsession to draw near to His mind and His
heart.
“You think of ‘fortune’, and My word says to you:
‘And then what?’ With Me, it is not about fortune but
about the use you will make of it in order to place
it outside of time by how it is used. Do this with
scrupulous honesty and unconditional charity giving
birth to the secret fortune of an absolute fusion with My
love.”
“You think ‘pleasure for tomorrow’, and I tell you:
self-possession, privation, crucifixion of pleasure in its
excess, to situate you in a state of soul outside of time:
Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.”
By His sudden illuminations from on high, without
reference to some logically constructed argument,
God penetrates through the realities of here below:
earthbound realities, stunted, mediocre. He renders
them translucent so that we might see beyond what they
are, through to the eternity that they can help prepare
by our way of using them and of raising them up at the
expense of the earthly advantages that they hold out to
us.
I always remember the example of the word
“Eucharist,” spoken from the pulpit, which fell upon a
soul who was listening, penetrating through him with
an implacable light, showing him all the repulsion of
his past life and bringing him back to God in one fell
swoop. God had made use of a natural word, charging
it with an “outside of time” potential to strike down the
naturalism of that soul.
This manner of expression is completed by God’s
second way of speaking to us, proper to His divine
nature: density.
The hallmark of false mysticism is the caricature
of density: pious verbiage, a mass of emotionallycharged imaginings, woven together by the intensity
of a trembling imagination and by the individualism
of a mind busy building the profusion of his ravings
on a basis of total unreality. On the contrary, true
mysticism participates in the divine density by that
certain reservation which is its necessary effect in a
soul, charged with speaking the inexpressible and the
untranslatable. This spiritual density leads our attention
back to a unity of interior attitude with respect to God:
A unity of insistence on a particular struggle to be
accepted; a unity of the importance of recollection,
THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

to be desired even in the agitation of a busy life; a
unity of the permanent responsibility to accept a
given sacrifice, meritorious for the body, or for our
dignity, or for the esteem we would hope to have,
a veritable tidal wave rising up from the divine
density to the benefit of a disposition pronounced at
the expense of self-love and in favor of pure love;
a tidal wave building up from very far away, from
the depths of a thanksgiving, from the depths of
a prayer, from the depths of a sudden realization
forbidding us to doubt under pain of bad faith; a
supplication both strong and tender to accept the
language of the Uncreated by imposing silence on
the pleas of the created.
God acts like the teacher toward his students who
are looking out the window at the little birds or at the
weather outside: with a word of authority, with a more
insistent tone, he centers the attention of the children
back on the primary reason of their presence in class: to
learn. The divine density draws our giddy malleability
back to the unchanging and attentive love: learning to
know Existence and realizing a little more about our
own existence, present and future. In this way, tirelessly
nourishing our eager appetite with the density of grace,
the interior word teaches the consequences of these
divine conversations: a perfect continuity of attitude
throughout the infinite variability of the events of a day.
The unification of our manner of conducting ourselves
even throughout the contrasts brought on by tears,
then joys, weariness, triumph, the always unexpected...
stretched over a single day. In a word, a mentality of
eternity, outside time, inflicting on time the defeat that
always arises from a lack of continuity in love. This
mentality of continuity freely lived puts us in a position
to conduct ourselves as Jesus did in the midst of the
crowds: healing, improving, resurrecting–the mark of
God, the restoration of life. The mystical life obtains
for us this participation in the prestige of our Lord
over human miseries: it heals events of their disrupting
emotions, of their crushing, discouraging influence, of
their pessimism, so damaging to love.
Jesus said: “Stand up and walk,” and, by his
courageous continuity, the mystic lifts up his stretcher of
misery and continues his progress with secret patience.
Jesus said: “Silence!” to the agitated winds and to
the angry waves, and the mystic imposes his spiritual
authority on the interior struggle by the pacifying effect
of continuity, holding fast and not changing direction.
He imposes on existence the authority of a continual
regard of faith–lived out, loved and chosen. He stares
down doubt, with the authority of the “I believe in
God.”
Constantly nourished on this spiritual continuity,
arising from the density of interior conversation with
God, St. Francis and St. Dominic lived with scandalous
optimism the adventures of voluntary poverty, of
beloved detachment, to such a point that their earthly

41
trials provoked their interior smile and their secret song
of thanksgiving.
In fact, mysticism brings to life in society an
intelligent optimism of attitude, which is a living
sermon for those all around and an irresistible
distribution of example and influence, infinitely
superior to our falsely-intellectual talking heads when
they start to try to explain God, without the speaker’s
really living of God. Mysticism imposes a balance
and equilibrium in our daily living which confounds
all of the bitter and unhealthy criticisms expressed
against it by human pride, in the name of science and
observation–as if He who acts outside of time within
time were going to make Himself accessible to the
microscope and to the methods of research of doctors
submerged in the changing of time. The response of the
true mystic is irrefutable: when everyone else jumps
ship, he stays; when nearly everyone else holds their
tongue, he affirms and holds his ground; when almost
all of the others step away, like the disciples at the
announcement of the Eucharist, he steps closer and
holds firm. He is the contrary of a deserter. A Church
filled again with mystics could only be a Church filled
with saints.
But be careful! There can be no question of
discrediting reason and denying its duty to participate
in the mystical life by verification, reflection, judgment–
not so as to diminish the interior word but so as to
help maintain it worthy of God, to preserve it from
the excessive wanderings which are always a risk for
the imagination and passions; to oblige it to remain in
harmony with the wisdom of the Faith by remaining
courageously determined not to bend before the
wisdom of the world.
“Always maintain reason” used to be the motto of
the Kings of France, and St. Louis was an admirable
example. Why? Because God will never contradict
reason, but He may ask that it be raised up to functions
which, though seemingly unreasonable for the normal
conduct of its “job” by the results obtained, in a “superreasonable” role, are the opposite of unreasonable.
Jesus’ forty-day fasting in the desert was seemingly
unreasonable, but in reality it originated in a lifting
up of reason by grace, preparing Him to affront the
combats of His public life, beginning with the assaults
of the Accursed. It terminated in the marvelous
result of Satan’s defeat by the strength of soul of
Jesus’ answers. Whereas the fasting of a hunger strike
proves itself unreasonable by the disproportion of the
decision, giving rise to no virtue and only provoking
astonishment by its unreasonable character, not “superreasonable” in the least.
Jesus assured us, “You will recognize a tree by its
fruits”; the infused virtues, raising reason up to the level
of a courage above the norm, prove their influence
by the superlatively reasonable results of perfection
developed, virtue acquired, sanctification obtained.
That is to say these virtues, directly infused by the Holy
Ghost into human judgment, prove their authenticity

when they give a surplus of value to our reason beyond
its natural capacities. I give the example of a religious
mobilized as an Air Force officer: learning that one
of his comrades, a father of eight children, had been
chosen for a reconnaissance mission over enemy lines,
in practically fatal conditions, he spontaneously took
the initiative to leave in his place, considering that his
state as a religious owed it to itself to give this testimony
of heroic charity, which ended up costing him his life.
Yet, this priest also had a right to his mother’s affection,
and his mother to the affection of her son; far from
yielding to the unreasonableness of an impulse, he had
decided in a lucid and super-reasonable manner to offer
this witness of an absolute gift of self.
In a much more continual manner, St. Francis of
Assisi was nearly constantly under the influence of the
infused virtues which made him run the adventure of
an apparently unreasonable material life, whereas in
fact they gave him the mission to affirm the spiritual
fecundity of poverty pushed to the point of a heroism
inexplicable for reason. Taking this example, we can
show the three degrees of perfection with which God
can ask us to possess material wealth:
l The first degree: to possess it in order to manage
it honestly, in all justice, in the light of the natural
virtue of a reason rectified according to duty,
l The second degree is to manage it under the
influence of an habitual supernatural virtue
inspiring its management in view of detaching
oneself from it morally by the benefit that the poor
can draw from it, thanks to the many alms which
already underline a human detachment from the
goods of the earth.
l The third degree is “Go, sell all that you have and
follow Me.” This is the infused virtue inciting the
rich child to give up the exploitation of his goods
in order to affirm himself super-reasonable with
regard to the command of Jesus, asking him to
leave everything in order to save his own soul and
the souls of others.
The harshness of worldly judgments toward certain
decisions–which utterly confound its rationalistic
manner of considering life, supposedly upright and
excellent–comes from a kind of self-defense mechanism
at the thought of grace’s total intervention in existence,
an existence whose use the worldly man intends to
maintain for himself, according to his desire and
according to his material or psychological avarice.
There is always some form of self-surpassing lying
in ambush for us. There is a kind of self-surpassing in
evil, upon which the Pharisees let fall their scornful
anathemas. There is the hard-hearted, indifferent selfsurpassing practiced by “oblivious Pharisees,” with the
kind of thoughtlessness that Jesus despised. There is the
self-surpassing in sanctity which affirms the presence of
God acting in us, engaging the conversation with the
best of ourselves.
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THE ANGELUS • November 2007

42
The first case is the self-surpassing of weakness, the
second, that of pride, while the third is a self-surpassing
by humility–a form of “psychosis” which no one need
fear nor try to heal, so incompatible is it with original
sin: nothing exalting for instinct nor for vanity, simply
the strength to allow God to take our place and that
of our judgment, because we have had the humility
to listen to Him down to the very end. Only souls
determined to take their commitment to the absolute
limit have that authority of proving its absolute moral
fruitfulness.
“To the absolute limit,” whether in quantity, quality
of application and consent, according to the passing
of grace, whether in decisiveness under the impulse
of the Holy Ghost, whether in perseverance under the
influence of the Faith. The encounter with God is at
this price; being outside of time, God does not offer
Himself through parcels of time used to love Him, but
with the totality of a love proven over the length of
time.
Contrary to an unhealthy self-surpassing inspired
by pride and the desire to show off our perfection,
self-surpassing in humility presents characteristics
typical of that fundamental virtue of the mystical life:
the fear to be mistaken, the need to obey, the concern
to have one’s personal inspirations ratified, prudence
and reserve in keeping to oneself about the graces
heard and received. Infused virtue is accompanied by
an entire escort of delicate timidities which reveal that
God has the principal initiative in the lights received
and understood. If the saints were so audacious in the
defense of the Faith and in the gift of themselves for
the salvation of souls, it is because they were so timid,
delicate and strong in their relations with the interior
word. Their fear of being unreasonable confirms the
super-reasonable origin of graces that took command
over their slightly panicking judgment; before yielding–
contrary to the unbalanced–they feel that what is asked
of them is beyond their strength, although they are
ready to obey; they are fearful, though consenting, like
Jesus in the Garden of His Agony.
On the contrary, the unbalanced have as a rule
a kind of natural sympathy with the abnormal, the
moment the opportunity arises for an inaccurate
imitation of the super-reasonable. It is evident when
you see their ease in putting this imbalance before duty
of state, before obedience–something a saint would
never do. The fruits of an imbalanced spirituality are
directly opposed to the simple common sense natural
to an everyday piety that is nonetheless strong and
solid. When God directs a soul toward the conversation
by which He means to penetrate into it, He never goes
beyond a certain depth, marking the limit of that soul’s
reasonable balance. On the contrary, He reinforces its
fidelity by the reinforcement of a pacified reason. The
“leave everything” is proportioned to the degree of
union or to the mission which God means to confide to
that soul.

THE ANGELUS • November 2007 www.angeluspress.org

The fear of abandoning one’s self-will is the first
enemy upon which we have to declare war when God
begins to express Himself by way of the conscience
or by way of a directly supernatural light. We are so
deeply rooted in ourselves that Jesus even said it to
His beloved apostles: “You do not know of what spirit
you are...” It is going to be the role of the priest, in
the direction of souls, to distinguish of what spirit
they are and of what spirit God means for them to
be. Imprudence consists in wanting to decide all
alone, in a misunderstanding in which we are always
both judge and defendant. Spiritual direction is not
an authoritarianism nor a taking command; it is a
direction, an orientation, facing the soul toward the
destination which God holds out to him, and which it
is his own duty to reach, strengthened by obedience
and by the wisdom of the grace of the priesthood. The
first mission of this grace is to help the soul renounce
the individualistic affirmation of his self-love or of his
ever-so-slightly pharisaical virtue, enclosed within its
little human recording-studio where all it can hear is
its own monotonous conversation. The true mystic
is more anxious to receive than to affirm, and what
he receives in spiritual direction helps him allow
God to affirm Himself in his place. “Who hears you
hears Me”; knowing how to “hear” the sonority of a
soul is the first duty and the heaviest responsibility of
spiritual direction, in order that the soul might hear,
in the priest, the echo of God Himself; providing an
atmosphere of understanding which the soul needs in
order to be able to reveal its secrets and the secrets
of God for him; the most merciful and paternal of
functions, for whomever knows how to appreciate
the priestly vocation: “sacra dare”–to give the sacred
of divine light, after having given the sacred of the
sacraments.
This intelligent mysticism of personal existence
has been all but discredited, not only by excessively
materialistic doctors but by excessively human
confessors, or by theologians excessively de-valorized
by their personal points of view on a problem which
must always remain the problem of God seeking to
draw as close as possible to souls, in order to engage in
conversation with them.
Mysticism recovers man before the Fall; it places
him there where God planted the tree of life after He
eliminated the garden of happiness: the Cross, where
the soul finds himself in company of the life that cannot
die: with the love of his God and with the God of his
love.
Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the private archives of the Association du R. P. de Chivré. 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.

43

august 2007

writing contest winner

Nicholas Ballester
Dayton, Ohio

A lonely trail delves into the depths of the forest. Minimal sunlight penetrates the leafy canopy overhead,
rendering the air moist and cool. The only sounds to be heard are the songs of the birds, the faint babble of a
brook, the rustle of leaves in the soft breeze.
This is a different world from the hectic one most people are accustomed to. This world is safe, enclosed,
secluded; it has a calming effect on overwrought minds and stressed nerves. It is relaxing to all five senses:
the eyes are soothed by the shady greenness; the sounds of nature, which are not disturbing in themselves, are
muted, and made even gentler, by the dense foliage; the nose is refreshed by the smell of clean earth, fresh
leaves, and damp wood; the air is unpolluted and invigorating; the trees are rough to the touch, yet firm and
supporting, the leaves are tender and gentle, and the water in the streams is clear, cold, and refreshing.
Here, peace and serenity reign; here, the mind can relax, think clearly, and meditate easily; here, in the
midst of the beauties of nature, God seems very near. In the quiet stillness, His voice can be heard.
By the side of the trail, a little shrine to the holy family has been erected. It is simple and elemental, yet
it is beautiful; it does not detract from its surroundings, but rather blends with them, gently reminding the
passers-by of who created all this loveliness.
Pause once in a while to thank God for His infinite goodness and love.

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • November 2007

The Angelus

Due to a shipping error,
the September 2007 issue of The Angelus did
not arrive in time for submissions to be received.
We here reprint the photo from September
to give those eligible another chance.

Monthly photo writing Contest
Any member of a household aged 10-18 whose family address has a current subscription to
The Angelus (either in print or online) is eligible. There may be more than one entry
per address if more than one child is eligible. (Please include your family’s address and
phone number, especially if you are a contestant writing from a boarding school.) Pricing
for The Angelus is found at the bottom of the “Table of Contents” page.

The Angelus is offering $150 for a 250-word creative writing composition on the above

picture. (This may include, but is not limited to, any poem, dialogue, short story, song lyrics,
script, explanation, etc.) If none is deserving of the prize, none will be awarded. The winning
essay may be published if there is a winner. An extra $50 is available if one is a member of
the SSPX Eucharistic Crusade (verified by your chaplain with your entry).
Entrants must submit a creative-writing composition in their own words about the featured
monthly picture. Submissions must be handwritten and will be judged on content, legibility,
and creativity. The essays will be judged by parties outside of Angelus Press.

essays must be postmarked or faxed by noVeMBer 30 and be addressed to:
attention: the angelus Monthly photo writing Contest
2915 Forest avenue, Kansas City, Mo 64109
FaX: 816-753-3557 (24-hour dedicated line)

“Thank you for publishing the Roman Catholic Sunday Missal Booklet. I am sure it will help many Catholics
unite themselves with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and discover its richness, especially if they are not
yet acquainted with it and do not possess a complete hand missal.” –Bishop Bernard Fellay

1962
Roman Catholic

Sunday
Missal
Booklet

W
E
N

In the early 1980’s, Angelus Press printed its first LatinEnglish Missal booklet. Others have come and gone since
then, but we believe that our new edition is the best available.
From the durable cover to the two-color printing (rubrics in
red), this missalette is a gem. The complete Mass is in Latin
and English.
Features include: Short Instruction on the Holy Mass;
Ordinary of the Mass for High and Low Masses; the Propers
of Trinity Sunday; 22 original illustrations to help newcomers
follow the Mass; directions for kneeling, sitting, and standing;
copious commentary in the margins on the Mass itself taken
from St. Thomas Aquinas and the writings of Frs. de Chivré,
Gihr, and Beaubien; the after-Mass Leonine Prayers, Prayer
for the Sovereign of England, Thanksgiving Prayer of St.
Thomas Aquinas, Anima Christi, indulgenced Prayer Before a
Crucifix, and the Prayer for All Things Necessary to Salvation.
Also includes the Rite of Exposition and Benediction of the
Blessed Sacrament.

64pp, 5½" x 8½",
durable softcover,
STK# 6636✱ $5.00.
(10-pack, STK# 6640✱
$30.00)

Bishop Richard Williamson

The R idgefield Letters
From “The Nine”
to the Episcopal
Consecrations of 1988

N EWI NG
R
O FFE

Sixty-two letters of then Fr. Richard Williamson from his
appointment as Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary
in early 1983 to June 1, 1988–just preceding the episcopal
consecrations. Utterly fascinating, the letters break down into
three main categories dealing with: Sedevacantism (the split
of “the Nine”), relations and contacts between Rome and
Archbishop Lefebvre, and the disastrous ecumenical meeting at
Assisi and the “build-up” to the 1988 episcopal consecrations. Of
course, not all the letters deal with these three topics, but these
three topics run as a theme through these ALWAYS entertaining
and edifying letters. For example, one letter is on the death of
Fr. Williamson’s father; another gem is his first impression of the
seminary property in Winona. There are many more like it. Yes,
this IS one of those books that you can’t put down.

302pp, softcover, STK# 8222. $24.99

“What an excellent idea to have published this first volume of His Lordship Richard
Williamson’s Letters! It is a book full of history, philosophy, sound doctrine and
practical advice; a rich commentary of a small part, a big part, of one decade of the
ending of the 20th century.” –Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais

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more

Sofanctuaries
Sacrifice

International Altars and Churches of Catholic Tradition

10¾" x 10¾" Full color throughout,
STK# CAL2008 $12.00

The 2008 Liturgical Calendar features 12 INTERNATIONAL Traditional
Sanctuaries OF THE
sspx with their histories
and explanations. Why
an altar calendar again?
Because the Catholic
Church considers the altar
as the whole reason for the
existence of the building in
which it stands. Not only
does she look upon it as
the sacrificial stone, upon
which Christ, our Priest and
Victim, offers Himself daily
in His Eucharistic Sacrifice,
which is the central act of
her liturgy; but she has proclaimed that the altar represents the Lord Himself. He is
Altar, Victim, and Priest; and
the reverence for the altar
symbolizes the reverence
due to Christ Himself.
Room for your notes
and appointment reminders. 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.

#1015

2008

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