$4.45 march 2008 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition THE SOCIETY OF SAINT JOSAPHAT Who? What? Where? Why? How? NEW. ENHANCED. FEATURES. Faster navigation intuitive interface EaSIER ordering For Secure checkout a lim ted time F R sh i E E for p p i n ordeall reta g i i r l $10s over 0 48 c o stat ntiguo es o us nly immediate Special promotions Same-day shipping for all orders placed before noon Bookstores can order online with discounts applied and automatically receive Free shipping on orders over $250 www.angeluspress.org No Crisis in the Church? Presents the evidence clearly and concisely, and aggressively challenges those who declare that there is no crisis in the Church. Many who are concerned today about the state of the Catholic Church point to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). For some the Council represents a Second Pentecost; for others, however, it represents a Second Crucifixion. How is it possible that a Church Council could provoke such turmoil and such profound hostility amongst the faithful? And that for over 40 years now! Is it a matter of misunderstanding? Is it a matter of interpretation? Or is it a question of Dogma misrepresented and distorted? Simon Galloway’s informative reference handbook is the first of its kind. It compares the authoritative pronouncements of the Church both before and after Vatican II, in a convenient double-column format. At the turn of a page, the reader can judge which is the correct diagnosis of today’s crisis. 286pp, softcover, STK# 1004✱ $21.95 Sacred Triduum Missal A traditional missal for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Holy Week according to the 1962 rubrics. Lent is here and Holy Week is coming! Now is the time for churches to stock up on the Sacred Triduum Missal for the use of the faithful or...buy one for yourself. This book is very helpful if you do not have a 1958 or later missal which contains the revised rite of Holy Week of Pope Pius XII. Surprisingly, many people who do have the revised Holy Week in their missal, still like to use the Sacred Triduum Missal because the type is fairly large and the entire rite is laid out so that you do not have to flip back and forth. At 192 pages, this book contains the entire ceremonies for Holy Thursday evening, Good Friday’s Solemn Liturgy and the Paschal Vigil with parallel Latin and English texts with rubrics in violet. 192pp, softcover, STK# 8029✱ $6.95 Our Lady of Quito Fr. J. L. Micó Buchón, S.J. This image of Mary is well known. Less well known is the miracle associated with the image, when Our Lady literally turned her eyes towards some Jesuit schoolboys. The author relates the history of the prodigy and many of the miracles obtained through the intercession of the Mater Dolorosa, known as Our Lady of Quito. Includes lyrics to the “Hymn to Our Lady of Quito” and the Prayer to the Sorrowful Mother of the College (as she is known in Ecuador) in both English and Spanish. A mini-CD, slip-sleeved in the back cover, includes the text files of the original article, MP3 audio files of the hymns, and the score for singing it (in both English and Spanish), making it a great resource for schools. 50pp, softcover, illustrations, CD with text and MP3 audio, STK# 8253✱ $6.95 2008 Ordo A must for the clergy and laity who follow the traditional (1962) Roman Mass and Divine Office. Taking into account the various rubrics that regulate the universal liturgical calendar, the Ordo automatically implements these on a daily basis, taking the question out of what propers should be prayed at Mass or during the Divine Office so you can set up your missal in advance rather than trying to figure it out during Mass! Published annually for over 30 years, and considered by many priests who say the traditional Mass and Breviary to be the most accurate. In addition to providing the liturgical rank, color and correct ordinary and propers to be used, this Ordo also includes: l Explanation of abbreviations and symbols l Table of movable feasts, rogation and ember days, and nuptial solemnities l Various SCR (Sacred Congregation of Rites) decrees pertinent to the USA and liturgical calendar l Tables of Occurrence/ Concurrence l Appendices for the dioceses in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand (handy when traveling). 180pp, softcover, STK# 8221✱ $15.00 “Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.” Motto of Pope St. Pius X The ngelus A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition 2915 Forest Avenue “To publish Catholic journals and place them in the hands of honest men is not enough. It is necessary to spread them as far as possible that they may be read by all, and especially by those whom Christian charity demands we should tear away from the poisonous sources of evil literature.” —Pope St. Pius X March 2008 Volume XXXI, Number 3 • 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 Fr. Kenneth Novak Assistant Editor Mr. James Vogel operations manager Mr. Michael Sestak the Society of st. josaphat . .Christendom . . . . . . . . .NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Angelus Press Edition Fr. Arnaud Selégny, SSPX a talk to fathers and mothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Fr. James Doran, SSPX The pride of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Edwin Faust Editorial assistant Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend MARKETING Mr. Christopher McCann comptroller Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA customer service Mrs. MaryAnne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Miss Rebecca Heatwole information technology consultant Mr. Cory Bosley Shipping and Handling Mr. Jon Rydholm THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Priests’ Thoughts: Meditations on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass . . . . . . 19 Ecumenical Contradictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 God’s Avenging Wrath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 A catholic Critique. americanism: the fourth great western religion . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Patrick McCarthy book review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 One Hundred Years of Modernism by Fr. Dominic Bourmaud Dr. Peter Chojnowski think more, communicate less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Chilton Williamson, Jr. catechism of the crisis in the church . .Part . . . . . .10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Fr. Matthias Gaudron Questions and answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Fr. Peter Scott The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published monthly under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels. Publication office is located at 2915 Forest Ave., Kansas City, MO 64109. PH (816) 753-3150; FAX (816) 753-3557. Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, MO. ©2008 by Angelus Press. Manuscripts are welcome and will be used at the discretion of the editors. Postmaster sends address changes to the address above. january 2008 writing contest winning entry . . . 43 The Angelus Monthly photo writing contest . . . . 44 ON OUR COVER: A wooden icon of Our Lady of Kazan from the Communist Revolution in Russia. Shot repeatedly by revolutionaries in the early 20th century–the bullets still in the wood–it has been preserved for posterity. The Angelus Subscription Rates 1 year 2 years 3 years US $35.00 Foreign Countries (inc. Canada & Mexico) $55.00 $65.00 $105.00 $100.00 $160.00 All payments must be in US funds only. Online subscriptions: $15.00/year (the online edition is available around the 10th of the preceding month). To subscribe visit: www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access back issues 14 months and older plus many other site features.  Letter from the Editor Mysticism. I don’t like the word nor what it’s come to mean. A wise priest told me that “mysticism” usually begins with mist and ends with schism. In any case, Archbishop Lefebvre was neither misty nor schismatic. He proves it in The Mass of All Time, the newest book published by Angelus Press. It is constructed of 326 pages in two parts. The first is all Archbishop Lefebvre said about the Holy Sacrifice arranged smartly as running commentary in parallel with the Mass. The second is his firm analysis of the Novus Ordo Mass. Fr. Christopher Pieroni is reading the book to his fifth- and sixth-grade catechism students: “I read about the Te Igitur. It’s inspiring to these guys. On the New Mass, the Archbishop is strong without being arrogant.” A Novus Ordo priest ministering in New Jersey wrote: “Thanks for sending me the Archbishop’s excellent book on the Mass. It is very inspiring and the many details are most informative.” On the Libera Nos of the Mass (pp.137-38) where we ask to be delivered from evil, Archbishop Lefebvre includes the poem, “The Three Against the Other” ( Jacques Debout), in which Satan, railing against Our Lord, himself expresses the value of a single Mass. A cocky demon asks of Satan, “What can God use against us? What can God do?” to which the Devil replies: God stops us dead with the eternal Mass Which crushed my head, and snatches every day Souls living and dead from underneath my sway. In the true life of nations hidden from view, All Masses said are revolutions true Which are, for being unseen, the more profound And wreak such change as turns whole worlds around. Going far beyond the missal or its priest, Worldwide effects are by each Mass released; And when some obstacle stops me in my track, I know that in some church, or barn, or shack A poor weak man held up that Sacred Sign Of untold dread for me—the Host and Wine. Great stuff for priests and laity alike to remember. Here’s a notable endorsement. Una Voce New York introduced a lengthy excerpt about feminism from Iota Unum (which Angelus Press distributes) saying: ...[O]ne of the most impressive critiques of the conciliar Church yet penned. Iota Unum [is] an encyclopedic study that reveals the breathtaking dimensions of the destruction wrought by the Second Vatican Council and those who have implemented it these 40 unhappy years. Last week, the EWTN Library bought 200 copies of our True Devotion: Consecration to Mary and a Novus Ordo parish in Maryland purchased 250 copies of the 1962 Roman Catholic Missal Booklet. But, the news that takes the cake has to be this letter written to Angelus Press: Forty years ago or so, when the Church adopted the New Mass, I felt shocked and betrayed. That an institution which supposedly prided itself on its rich and timeless heritage and tradition should abandon such a large part of it in one stroke. I subsequently tried other churches (primarily Lutherans as their service and music seemed the closest) but none provided a substitute for the spiritual significance and symbolic beauty of the Latin Rite Mass....I never got very far away from the Church, though. I am, by trade, a physics teacher at a performing arts high school in ––––––– but have been a performing musician for most of my 60 years. The musical forms that I have specialized in have been very Churchrelated–Mahler symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach and Handel cantatas and oratories, Masses and Requeims of all the great and less-than-great composers, and miscellaneous works spanning the entire history of Catholic liturgical music. Several weeks ago I hit upon the St. John Cantius website and began reading up on the resurgent interest and availability of the [1962] Roman Rite Mass. I discovered to my amazement a Catholic church less than a mile and a half from my home has an 8am Latin High Mass every Sunday and Day of Obligation. I immediately ordered your Daily Missal from the church website which arrived in time for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Simply put, the experience of attending the Latin Rite Mass again, augmented by your incredibly beautiful Missal has been responsible for transformation in my life. The long spiritual void in my life had made me a virtual atheist, but participating once again in what I have always believed is the most aesthetically and spiritually beautiful and uplifting religious ritual has restored my faith to a degree that I would have found difficult to comprehend less that a month ago. I have to mention how impressed I was with your, literally, awesome Missal; both its physical and liturgical quality and value are beyond measure. I never realized such a comprehensive daily Missal for lay Catholics had ever existed. (The St. Joseph Daily Missal dominated the US market back in the 50’s.) I have been reading it daily. I have subsequently ordered the Missal cover which is most helpful, and your Traditional Hymnal; I am seriously considering the reprint of Know Your Mass. (I remember it so well from my altar boy days.) Deepest thanks and may Christ bless you all! (Luke 15:10, anybody?) By the way, the writer of this letter is referring to the same Know Your Mass that’s finding its way into the priests’ instructional kit distributed by another Latin Mass society. The feature story in the February 2008 issue of The Angelus on US Army Chaplain, Capt. Fr. Emil Kapaun, Servant of God, seems to have aroused some interest in his progress toward canonization. This leads me to inform readers of the official prayer being circulated with the ecclesiastical approval of the Wichita Diocese to that end: O Lord Jesus Christ, in the midst of the folly of war, Thy servant, Chaplain Emil Kapaun, spent himself in total service to Thee on the battlefields and in the prison camps of Korea until his death at the hands of his captors. We now ask of Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, if it be Thy will, to make known to all the world the holiness of Thy priest, Fr. Kapaun, and the glory of his complete sacrifice for Thee, by signs of miracles and peace. In Thy Name, O Lord, we ask this, for Thou art the Source of peace, the Strength of our service to others, and our Final Hope. Amen. Instaurare Omnia in Christo, Fr. Kenneth Novak F r . A r n a u d S é l é g n y , S S P X 3 The Society of St. Josaphat WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHY? HOW? On October 16, 2007, Bishop Bernard Fellay ordained seven priests for the Society of St. Josaphat in the Ukraine. What is this Society, friendly to the SSPX? Where do its priests come from? How did they become associated with the fight for Catholic Tradition? What is their present situation? This article will answer these questions. Christendom NEWS Angelus Press Edition The Greek-Catholic Church in the Ukraine The members of the Society of St. Josaphat belong to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. But no small difficulty awaits the Latin-Rite Catholic who wishes to look into this Church, what she represents, and her present situation. Indeed, Eastern-Rite Churches are often very little known in the West, and we do not realize very clearly what they truly represent. Consequently, we will try to take a glimpse at this important part of the Catholic Church. Tallinn Baltic Sea 4 Riga ESTONIA LATVIA LITHUANIA Vilnius POLAND GERMANY Kraków RUSSIA BELARUS Lodz ´ Prague CZECH REP. Warsaw Minsk Kiev Lviv GEORGIA GIA UKRAINE SLOVAKIA Bratislava Budapest MOLDOVA HUNGARY ROMANIA BULGARIA The expression “Eastern-Rite Church” actually refers to several distinct elements. First of all, it implies a geographical notion. As a matter of fact, these Churches are found especially in a definite area. However, for several of them there also exists a more or less numerous diaspora, especially in Canada, in the United States and also in Australia; yet the territorial notion remains very important. The reason is of a historical nature: most of these Churches stemmed from the reunion or union with Rome of a number of bishops and faithful from a Church which had previously separated from the Holy See. Thus, they are elements from one of the “Orthodox”1 Churches that have become attached to Rome, and since these Churches are essentially territorial, it is only normal to find the same repartition in the Catholic Churches of the EasternRite. In passing, let us note that this breaking up of Orthodoxy into national Churches is connected with their “autocephalous” conception, namely a union of Churches without a unique head. Schism with Rome unavoidably led to this atomization in Orthodoxy. We must also bear in mind that the various governments were very keen to favor such a dispersion, preferring to deal with a Church which they could control in their national territory. Thus, we find a very great number of Churches which resulted from the return of schismatics to the bosom of Rome. Next to the territorial element, an Eastern-Rite Church is also characterized by the rite or liturgy it uses. There are four great traditions: Alexandrian and Abyssinian, Syriac, Armenian, and Byzantine. The Byzantine is the most widely represented, and to it is attached the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. In this tradition, three Eucharistic liturgies are used: the liturgy of St. John THE ANGEluS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org Chrysostom, which is usually used; the liturgy of St. Basil of Caesarea, which is celebrated ten times a year; and the liturgy of St. Gregory, called the Five Pre-Sanctified Gifts, which is celebrated during Lent. The Ukrainian Rite also has some specificities, but TURKEY we leave them to specialists. Lastly, a third element must be taken into account: the sacred language. In the Churches which were gradually established in the East Slavic territory, Old Slavic, also called Slavonic, is the sacred language. It is the ancestor of today’s Slavic languages and was little modified for Church use. It is used only in the liturgical Offices of the GreekCatholic or Orthodox Churches of that area. It still uses the Cyrillic alphabet invented by St. Cyril the Philosopher.2 Now that we have some general idea of the Eastern-Rite Church, we must focus on the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Her history was very stormy, linked as it were, with that of the Ukraine itself, which in turn was indissolubly dependent upon the history of Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland. You can guess that the matter is not simple. We will nevertheless attempt to describe its main features. Around the 10th century, the Slavs of the Eastern areas united into a kingdom called Rus.3 The center of this first Russia was Kiev in the Ukraine. At that time, missionaries from Byzantium and from Rome began to evangelize the country. The first member of the reigning dynasty to receive baptism was Queen Olga, around the year 955. At first, the country looked to Germany for direction, but soon Byzantium took a decisive lead in this regard. However, Kiev was not simply annexed by Byzantium, since even after the Schism of 1054, union with the Holy See remained. The Ukraine was then repeatedly invaded: GEOR 5 The Eastern Catholic Churches and Their Traditions Alexandrinian/Abyssinian Tradition: Coptic Catholic Church • Ethiopian Catholic Church Syriac Tradition: Syriac Catholic Church • Maronite Church • Chaldean Catholic Church Armenian Tradition: Armenian Catholic Church Byzantine Tradition: Greek-Catholic Melkite • Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church • Romanian Church United with Rome • Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church • Byzantine Catholic Church • Slovak Greek-Catholic Church • Czech Greek-Catholic Church • Hungarian Greek-Catholic Church • Bulgarian Greek-Catholic Church • Croatian Greek Catholic Church • Apostolic Exarchate of Serbia and Montenegro • Macedonian Greek-Catholic Church • Russian Byzantine Catholic Church • Belarusian Greek-Catholic Church • Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church • Italo-Albanian Catholic Church • Greek Byzantine Catholic Church • Georgian Byzantine-Rite Catholic Community The Various Catholic Eastern Churches Patriarchal Churches • Maronite Church (See in Lebanon) • Coptic Catholic Church (See in Egypt) • Armenian Catholic Church (See in Lebanon) • Syriac Catholic Church (See in Lebanon) • Greek-Catholic Melkite Church (See in Syria) • Chaldaean Catholic Church (See in Iraq) Major Archiepiscopal Churches • Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church • Syro-Malabar Catholic Church • SyroMalankara Catholic Church • Romanian Church United with Rome Metropolitan Churches • Byzantine Catholic Church • Ethiopian Catholic Church Other Churches and Communities • Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church • Slovak Greek-Catholic Church • Hungarian Greek-Catholic Church • Bulgarian Greek-Catholic Church • Apostolic Exarchate of Serbia and Montenegro • Croatian Greek Catholic Church • Macedonian Greek-Catholic Church • Czech Greek-Catholic Church • Russian Byzantine Catholic Church • Belarusian Greek-Catholic Church • Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church • Italo-Albanian Catholic Church • Greek Byzantine Catholic Church • Georgian Byzantine-Rite Catholic Community Russia invaded it first, but the country was mainly taken over and devastated by the Tartars. After the Tartars, came Lithuania, then Poland, then both countries together. During that time, the Ukrainian Church was within the sphere of influence of Byzantium. However, under the influence of the Lithuanian and Polish clergy, efforts were undertaken with a view to a reunion with the Holy See. They eventually resulted in the famous Union of Brest-Litovsk, in 1596, which marked the birth of the Ruthenian Church.4 However, difficulties were far from being over, and the Ukrainians still had to fight for a long time in order to remain faithful to Rome. It is in this context that the martyrdom of St. Josaphat took place. The next centuries were fraught with difficulties, among them the lack of a national Ukrainian territory since at the end of the 17th century it was divided again between Poland and Russia. On the other hand, the Polish clergy made its superiority heavily felt. It deemed that the Ukrainian Church should go over to the Latin Rite. This was called “Latinization,” and by this means it also attempted to “Polonize” the clergy of the Ukraine. Such attempts engendered a long-lasting climate of distrust between the two countries, on the ecclesiastical level as much as in civil affairs. In this context, the Council of Zamosc took place in 1720, which remains famous in the history of the Ruthenian Church. In 1806, Russia abolished the metropolia [the eastern equivalent of an archdiocese–Ed.] of Kiev, and the Holy See re-established it in Lviv, in 1807, for the territory under Austrian rule. The 20th century saw no improvement, but on the contrary ever more violent persecutions. We must remember that 17 million Ukrainians disappeared in the convulsions of the Russian Revolution and World Wars. We only have to think of the www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 6 great famine organized under Stalin, the systematic repressions, the toll of the two World Wars, the expulsions and deportations! It is true that the Catholics were not the only ones to bear the brunt of this horrible persecution. Yet, in 1946, Russia caused a cabal in Lviv to abolish the union with Rome. From that time on, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church no longer had any legal existence. Let us remember that the national territory of the Ukraine had become one of the satellite republics of the USSR. It was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall that the Ukraine recovered its independence and that the Greek-Catholic Church was resurrected. During the intermediary period, she had lived in the catacombs. Numerous bishops and priests were arrested, expelled, condemned to hard labor or executed. Today, the Greek-Catholic Church in the Ukraine numbers 15 bishops, 2,200 priests, 750 monks, 1,100 nuns, 3,000 churches and five million faithful. But the last blow dealt to the Greek-Catholic Church of the Ukraine came from the Holy See itself, with the signature of the “Balamand Agreement” which annihilated the very reality of the Uniate fact. The ecumenical climate born after the Second Vatican Council was made to bear increasingly heavily on the Uniate Churches. Soon the word “Uniatism” was coined to designate a backward-looking method of proselytism which had to be rejected at all cost. The Uniate Churches came to be considered as a thorn in the side of Roman ecumenism. With the Balamand Agreement they were, in fact, more or less buried alive. The Society of St. Josaphat In the new Ukraine which was independent for the first time after many centuries, and intoxicated with the joy of a national union which seemed unshakable, the new liberty in religious matter looked like a miracle. Apparently everything was possible. Many were those who left Orthodoxy, and besides the Orthodox Church soon broke up into two, and then three, national Churches–something which still weakened its strength. Catholics could believe they were living in a golden age. Alas! A third world war of which they were hardly aware, shut as they were behind the iron curtain, was about to cause havoc. The first contacts of Tradition with the Ukraine were connected with the missionary visits of Fr. Rulleau of the SSPX, now Fr. Bernard de Menthon, OSB [now with the Monastery of the Holy Cross, in Brazil, affiliated with the SSPX–Ed.] Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, he traveled to the various Eastern countries just freed from the Communist yoke. Thus Basilian Sisters, just coming out of the catacombs, received the help of the SSPX. Three of them later became Oblates in the Society of St. Pius X. THE ANGEluS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org The Redemptorist Fathers (of Papa Stronsay) also made prospecting visits; Redemptorists have been supporting Ukrainian Catholics for centuries. Through them Fr. Vasyl (Basil) Kovpak came to know the traditional Catholic movement. A diocesan priest, in charge of two parishes, he felt worried about the various changes which had occurred in the Ukrainian Church. But he first wanted to take time to gather information, and he began to meet with the SSPX only in 1997. He came several times to the priory of Warsaw to obtain a better understanding of the frightful crisis which was shaking the Church, and whose extent he had not been able to fully realize because of the isolation of the Eastern countries. A decisive element proved to be the pilgrimage, organized by the Redemptorists, which he made to Fatima with the Basilian Sisters. In 1998, Fr. Stehlin, SSPX, went to the Ukraine upon the invitation of Fr. Vasyl, in order to establish a strong and lasting relationship. But what were the disquieting changes which had thus urged Fr. Vasyl to look towards Tradition? What transformations did the Ukrainian GreekCatholic Church undergo so that, so soon after leaving the catacombs, this priest was thinking of going underground again? The Ukrainian Rite, which is a slightly modified Byzantine rite, did not undergo any of the deep deviations which the liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI imposed upon the Latin Rite. Of course, some slight changes could be observed, but they were rather accidental. On the other hand, one change profoundly affected most of the Catholics: the abandonment of their sacred language, the Old Slavonic, to the benefit of the vernacular. The change was as offensive for this Church as the abandonment of Latin in the West. Besides, as was the case also in the West, it meant breaking the unity which existed thanks to this sacred language between the various Eastern Rites (with the Ruthenian Church or the Russian Church, for instance). It was also cutting this Church off from its roots, as part of its tradition is written in this ancient language. The same causes led to the same effects. Indignant, Fr. Vasyl took up his pen to protest and wrote a book in defense of Old Slavonic. He also defended it in practice by continuing to celebrate in Old Slavonic in his parishes. The priests who had come from the West to help the Ukrainian Church to achieve its aggiornamento, were thinking before all of favoring a rapprochement with the Orthodox. One of the means they used was, paradoxically enough, a traditional means. Here some explanations are needed. Since the Union of Brest-Litovsk, the Ukrainian Church had often been subjected to attempts of Latinization at various levels, as we mentioned above. Popes had always fought to protect the Eastern Churches from such an invasion. There are three main reasons for this protection. First, the defense of 7 THE BALAMAND AGREEMENT On June 23, 1993, the Declaration of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was released. This declaration condemned Uniatism, namely the 1,000 year-old practice of the Catholic Church to help the schismatics to return to the bosom of the one Church by the creation of dioceses of the same Rite as theirs. This meant the condemnation at the same time of the Uniate Churches, which had suffered martyrdom in order to remain Catholic. The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity signed a text which put forth the following ecclesiological principles: In order to legitimize this tendency, a source of proselytism, the Catholic Church developed the theological vision according to which she presented herself as the only one to whom salvation was entrusted.1 And it adds: on each side it is recognized that what Christ has entrusted to His Church—profession of apostolic faith, participation in the same sacraments, above all the one priesthood celebrating the one sacrifice of Christ, the apostolic succession of bishops—cannot be considered the exclusive property of one of our Churches....It is in this perspective that the Catholic Churches and the orthodox Churches recognize each other as Sister Churches, responsible together for maintaining the Church of God in fidelity to the divine purpose.3 Henceforth the Orthodox Churches seem to be part of the Catholic Church, without however submitting to the pope. Lastly, in the practical rules, they naturally concluded: Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church, Latin as well as Eastern, no longer aims at having the faithful of one Church pass over to the other; that is to say, it no longer aims at proselytizing among the orthodox....passing beyond the outdated ecclesiology of return to the Catholic Church.4 This is a pure and simple denial of the unity of the Church. And the document goes on: Because of the way in which Catholics and orthodox once again consider each other in relationship to the mystery of the Church and discover each other once again as Sister Churches, this form of “missionary apostolate” described above, and which has been called “uniatism,” can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking.2 venerable Catholic Rites which can all claim to answer the criterion used by St. Pius V when he codified the Tridentine Mass. All can prove that their origins went back to more than 200 years before the work of this holy pope. Consequently, it was an abuse, and a serious one, to want to eradicate rites rooted in high antiquity and belonging to the liturgical patrimony of the Church. To this must be added the concern to make the return of the schismatic churches easier. One of the recurring accusations against Rome was the suspicion that it wanted the hegemony of the Latin Rite. Union once accomplished, Eastern Rites would run the risk of pure and simple disappearance. It must be said that the Latin clergy were at times greatly responsible for this mistrust. Lastly, Latin remains incomprehensible to the members of the Eastern Churches. It is foreign to their culture. To want to impose it to entire peoples–and not only to a few scholars–was pure illusion. However, with the passing of time, some Latinization had been established at various levels in the Ukrainian Church. We must distinguish what concerned the Rite itself from more or less para-liturgical elements. For instance, statues were introduced, as well as devotion to the Sacred Heart, the Stations of the Cross, the rosary and communion received kneeling. During the period of “official” suppression of the Greek-Catholic Church in the Ukraine–from 1946 through 1991–these elements had been a strong support for the Ukrainian Catholics who had become very much attached to them. Arm-chair reformers, most of them coming from the West, wanted This is a theology of contempt. http://www.geocities.com/militantis/balamand.html, §10. Ibid., §12. 3 Ibid., §§13, 14. 4 Ibid., §§22, 30. 1 2 to proceed with the “purification” of the Ukrainian Rite without taking this historical evolution into account, and they began to remove statues and stations of the Cross. The removals were occasions for protest and confrontations. In the cathedral of Kiev, the statue of the Sacred Heart was removed several times and each time it was restored to its place during the night. But this de-Latinization also had a hidden ecumenical basis. It was a matter of bringing the Uniate Rite closer to its corresponding Orthodox Rite. On the one hand, this was along the line desired by the Roman Pontiffs ever since the beginning of the union, but on the other hand, it was now destined to show the uselessness of the Uniate Churches in order to make them disappear in the long run. Fr. Vasyl energetically fought this questioning of devotions dear to the people whose viaticum they had been during the dark years. But he did not, for all that, wish to undermine the Ukrainian Rite, which he is defending against the innovators in other respects. That there is a wish to see the Uniate Church disappear is no figment of the imagination nor a rash judgment passed on the reformers. It has been clearly manifested ever since 1993 with the famous so-called Balamand Agreement. A third element was a source of concern for Fr. Vasyl, namely the arrival of charismatics in the Ukraine in the years 1994-95. Their practices deeply shocked priests attached to their religious traditions. There is no need to insist on this point. Lastly, true Uniates were strongly concerned about the words of Our Lady in Fatima. Russia would www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 8 WHO WAS ST. JOSAPHAT? St. Josaphat was born in Wladimir, a town in Poland, from a family of modest origin. At baptism, he received the name of John. At 20, he entered the order of the United Basilians of Poland and took the name of Josaphat. The superior of the community, who had secretly gone over to schism, vainly tried to bring Josaphat to rebel against the Holy Father. To the great displeasure of the schismatics who showered abuse and sarcasm upon the saint, Josaphat denounced the archimandrite to the metropolitan who deposed him. Though merely a deacon, Josaphat exhibited a burning zeal for the conversion of those who were not in union with Rome and brought a good number of them back into the Church. Once ordained a priest, the holy Basilian monk became the apostle of the area, giving himself entirely to preaching and the hearing of confessions, while practicing a strict observance of his rules. God had granted to Josaphat a special gift to assist those condemned to death. He used to visit the sick and the poor, wash their feet, and procure remedies and food for the needy. Appointed as archimandrite of the Convent of the Trinity, which was mostly made up of young religious, he formed them to the monastic life with true fatherly vigilance. At the age of 38, St. Josaphat Koncévitch was consecrated archbishop of Polotsk in Vilnius. While the archbishop attended the Diet in Warsaw to which several bishops had been convoked, a schismatic bishop took his see unexpectedly. St. Josaphat hurried back to his fold to bring the rebellious sheep back to obedience. When he tried to speak, the mob, excited by the schismatics, pounced on him. He would have been mercilessly massacred if the armed forces had not intervened to free him. On the morning of November 12, 1623, as he was praying in the chapel of the episcopal palace of Vitebsk, a furious mob invaded that holy house. St. Josaphat promptly came forward when he heard the tumult: “If you are looking for me,” he said to these murderers, “here I am.” Two men came up to him. One of them hit his forehead with a pole, the other split his head with a halberd. Finally, he was shot twice in the head. He was 44 years old. St. Josaphat is the patron saint of the Ukraine. THE ANGEluS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org convert to the Catholic Faith, such was Our Lady’s promise. But it was permissible to wonder about the paths which would lead to this conversion. Heaven makes use of secondary causes to achieve its purpose. It seemed quite natural to think that the Uniate Church would be the spearhead, or the heart if you prefer, for the achievement of the Immaculate Heart of Mary’s promise. But how could this be so, if the Uniate Church was thus promised to sure destruction? It was then that Fr. Vasyl and six other priests–all parish priests–who wanted to join in the same fight came to ask Bishop Fellay to take them under his protection by erecting a Society according to the Ukrainian traditions, the Society of St. Josaphat of the Ukraine, which has its headquarters in Lviv. The foundation took place on September 28, 2000, and Fr. Vasyl was elected as first superior. Bishop Fellay erected the Society, as well as the Congregation of the Basilian Sisters of Divine Mercy, and he blessed the seminary on the occasion of a visit to the Ukraine in November of that same year. Eight seminarians immediately joined the Institute placed under the responsibility of our present Superior General. Let us note that the Society of St. Josaphat cannot do without a bishop as Superior, because the Ukrainian State does not accept the apostolate of any priest who is not under a bishop–whether this latter be Catholic, Orthodox, or belonging to some sect. This dependence upon the bishop would soon prove indispensable. Indeed, one of the priests of the Society of St. Josaphat who had a parish in another diocese was quickly suspended, cast out of his parish, and denounced to the government: he was in danger of being jailed. Because his apostolate was exercised under the responsibility of a bishop, he was released. He had to defend himself as often as five times before civil tribunals! From the beginning, the SSPX helped out financially to build churches and for the upkeep of  the seminary, but also with the classes regularly taught by our priests at the seminary of Lviv. After its foundation, the Society of St. Josaphat lived more or less underground, or at least it avoided showing itself in order to give time to the young community to be strengthened and to work on the formation of the faithful. This period lasted until 2002. At that time, the seminarians donned the cassock and it became difficult to hide them. Very soon the first measures were taken against them. Another priest had his parish taken from him, and a third was sentenced with a “major excommunication.” In the month of May, the first deacon was ordained by Bishop Williamson in Zaitzkofen. He was already a subdeacon when he joined the Society of St. Josaphat. In 2003, Fr. Vasyl was suspected of being the superior of the Society and a canonical inquest was set up against him by Cardinal Husar, Archbishop of Lviv and an openly declared ecumenist. Fr. Vasyl responded with a vigorous book in which he recounted the persecution against Tradition in the Ukraine and the history of the defense of Tradition in the Latin Church by Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX without omitting the action of Bishop de Castro Mayer and of Bishop Lazo. He justified his foundation by the state of necessity. Three thousand copies were printed, and the book was favorably received. On the other hand, Fr. Vasyl circulated a petition of support and gathered over 7,000 signatures in his parishes! At the same time, they undertook to build a church to make possible the apostolate of the priest who had been driven out of his parish. Fr. Vasyl was summoned by Cardinal Husar, who demanded explanations and a clear stand: “It is either me or Bishop Fellay.” Together with the other priests and their faithful–more than 10,000 souls–he was threatened with a major excommunication! In November, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais ordained the first priest of the Society of St. Josaphat at the priory in Warsaw. On February 10, 2004, on the airwaves, Cardinal Husar fulminated the major excommunication against Fr. Vasyl, because he had associated with a schismatic movement. This censure, the strictest in the Eastern Rite, was passed without any trial. A complaint was filed with Rome for legal flaws. It was accepted and the condemnation was recognized as null and void because of irregularity. The Cardinal started new proceedings. On the other hand, the hierarchy attempted to reclaim the churches, including those built by the Society of St. Josaphat. On June 1, 2004, an excommunication was again pronounced for the following motives: collaboration with the schismatic group of the Lefebvrites, the illegal foundation of a seminary and of the Congregation of the Basilian Sisters, and lastly distribution of his www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 10 book Tradition Excommunicated. Fr. Vasyl immediately filed an appeal with the tribunal of second instance. His recourse was accepted and examined. But God also gave consolations, and on the feast of Christ the King, Fr. Vasyl blessed the new church in His honor, which could seat 250 persons. In the month of November, a disused 17th-century church, given by some faithful to the Society, burnt down… and an attempt was made to set the new church on fire. The police inquest concluded that it was a case of arson. Things calmed down during the first half of 2005. The public unrest consequent upon the Orange Revolution and the disputed presidential election, which took place a second time, prevented the Cardinal from taking action. The churches of Fr. Vasyl were henceforth entirely under his control since the two curates who had been imposed upon him to watch and hinder him had withdrawn elsewhere. But in August, the hierarchy struck again. In point of fact, the tribunal of second instance had also declared his sentence of excommunication null and void because of legal flaw. New threats were made. Let Fr. Vasyl close down his seminary and the Sisters of the Society of St. Josaphat, and he would be left in peace! If he were to refuse, he would be excommunicated and his parish would be taken away! The bishop’s office stated that no recourse to Rome would succeed. Once again, some consolations were in store for the valiant soldiers. On October 13, 2004, a statue of Our Lady of Fatima was solemnly received in the Ukraine. Three thousand faithful were present to welcome it. It was first placed in Fr. Vasyl’s church. Day and night, faithful were lining up, waiting for their turn to pray at least a few moments before the statue and touch it. Any faithful above 16 years of age could enroll in the “Fatima Book,” declaring that he had the privilege of praying in person before the statue, desired the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart, and supported Catholic Tradition. When the statue left the Ukraine at the end of October, some 20,000 persons had enrolled. Astonishing facts occurred which had seldom been seen before: seven state schools requested the visit of Our Lady, and the rectors—together with the teachers and all the children—consecrated their schools to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A considerable number of faithful came back to Catholic Tradition, and some schismatic Orthodox even converted. When the statue left the Ukraine on October 31, some 6,000 persons came to wave it goodbye, and no eyes remained dry. It was a real triumph for Our Lady of Fatima in this country which suffers deeply. On the other hand, a new archbishop of Lviv was appointed in November, after the major archiepiscopal see had been moved to Kiev, where Cardinal Husar took residence. The new prelate, Archbishop Igor Vozniak, began by warning against the Society of St. Josaphat, fearing the expansion of THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org the “Lefebvrites” in the area: “The Lefebvrite Society is spreading its tentacles among us, and is gaining ground among the laity by trying to open its own chapels,” he explained. “There is a serious threat of division in the Church about which I have already warned the parish priests in a special communiqué.” He also announced that he would discuss the problem with the official authorities on the occasion of his upcoming ad limina visit. As for Bishop Viktor Skworc, of Tarnow, in neighboring Poland, he joined parish groups in Janov for a march “against the ‘Lefebvrites’ who have founded a seminary and a convent, as well as various parishes in the area.” On February 15, 2006, two members of the Society of St. Josaphat were ordained to the subdiaconate, and to the diaconate the next day, according to the custom of the Greek Catholic Church. The ordination took place in Warsaw in the presence of five priests of the Society, five Sisters, seven seminarians, and some faithful. The ceremony went very well, but as Bishop Tissier de Mallerais had forgotten to bring his crozier, we had to borrow one, which was readily lent “for a visiting French bishop” by a diocesan structure! Fr. Vasyl had been threatened with excommunication in case the ceremony would take place. It came soon after and was followed by a new recourse to the Roman Rota. This latter declared itself incompetent and sent the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which delegated Cardinal Husar to pass the final judgment, this time without any possible recourse. During the time necessary for the procedure, the Society continued to grow, and henceforth ordinations were taking place on a regular basis. The year 2007 saw new sentences against the priests of the Society of St. Josaphat. On this past October 16, 2007, Bishop Fellay ordained seven deacons to the priesthood thus bringing to 18 the number of priests in the Society of St. Josaphat. The seminary numbers 19 seminarians, and 25,000 faithful attend their various places of worship. On Friday, November 16, the final decree of excommunication of Fr. Vasyl was released… Fr. Arnaud Sélégny, SSPX, is the Secretary General to Bishop Bernard Fellay. Reprinted with permission from the November-December 2007 issue of Christendom, published by DICI, the international news bureau of the SSPX. It is available on line at www.dici.org. 1 The word is here taken in a broad sense to designate all the non-Catholics of the Eastern Rite. 2 It would seem that St. Cyril invented the Glagolitic alphabet, which was later simplified and perfected by his disciple Clement of Okhrid. 3 Actually, the word comes from Finnish, because this first kingdom was originally organized by groups of Scandinavian soldiers under a certain Rurik, called Rus in Slavic. 4 The adjective “Ruthenian” refers to Ruthenia, which is a part of the Ukraine. It long served to designate the Ukrainian Church, but at present, it designates another Uniate Church whose territory is partly in Slovakia, partly in Poland, and in the Ukraine. 11 F r . J a m e s D o r a n , S S P X Being the best parent is of vital importance to your salvation, and to your children. It is by you that the framework and general security are established in which your child is educated. The Catholic home is the place where your primary responsibility is to transmit the Faith and teach, as well as learn, to love according to charity. These two responsibilities are grounded on the Sacrament of Matrimony. From matrimony are to flow unity, order, the life of prayer, discipline, and by these security will be made firm. A Talk to Fathers and Mothers We will look at the text from Sacred Scripture: “and they two shall be two in one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). This sentence is well known, quoted by Our Lord, but its context and meaning remain hidden for most. The citation is from Genesis, Chap.2, and follows immediately upon the creation of Woman: This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man (23). Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they two shall be two in one flesh (24). And they were both naked: to wit Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed (25). This text is prophetic, and consequently practical for our consideration this evening. Note firstly that this text precedes original sin and the Fall. Man and woman were created as it were, one. In one recital of the creation man “he” is created as one, but “male and female He created them.” This is the original intent of God, and as such it is the manner in which Christ Himself quoted this This conference was given at this St. Francis de Sales School, Onex, in geneva, Switzerland. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 The property also houses a convent for a community of Sisters of the Society of St. pius X. 12 text. God intended monogamy and stability for the union between man and woman. For this reason, the Church speaks of Christ restoring the original unity of marriage. By doing away with divorce Our Lord removed an effect of sin and selfishness that had arisen in subsequent centuries. The first to take to himself two wives was Lamech, a man more wicked than, and a killer of, Cain (Gen. 4:18-24). Lamech was the son of Methuselah and the father of Noah, so it is significant that the taking of more than one wife is noted as immediately preceding the Deluge. In addition to restoring the original unity and permanence of marriage, Christ more importantly elevated it to a source of sanctification and holiness. This is the reason we call it a sacrament. It signifies and confers the grace signified: unity. For Adam and Eve marriage was meritorious and sanctifying in the sense that it was their duty of state, they were created in it. This remains true also in Christian marriage, but the sacramental reality of matrimony is much more. While a Christian man and woman merit by the fidelity to their state in life, they are also established as an extension of Christ and the Church by the Sacrament of Marriage. This brings us to our first point: the prophetic aspect of this text of Genesis. This text, recorded before original sin, is held as a prophecy of the Messiah. Note the wording: “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife.” The strangeness of this text is somewhat similar to that which speaks of the “seed of the woman.” Both are in reverse of the sense expected. It was never a Hebrew custom, nor that of Europe, that a man leave his family for marriage. The custom was contrary: a woman left her family and married into the family of her husband. For this reason a woman changed her family name, and to this day changes it, to that of her husband. The more recent practice of not changing names is more a loss in the importance of family and less the empowerment of women. Note also that this departure had not been the case of Adam specifically: he had no parents and left no one to marry Eve; if anything she had been created from him and was thus an extension of him. Adam left no one to be joined to his wife. The Fathers of the Church see this text as an image of Christ and His Spouse, the Church. The Divine Word “left” the Father, came into the world by His Incarnation and was joined to His Spouse, the Church, in the Divine Nuptials in this Epiphany. Therefore, when the Messiah quotes this text against the Jews who favored divorce He not only wished to point out the original unity and monogamy of marriage, but He also took as a prophecy of Himself. Marriage is not only monogamous; it is Christ present in the world. Marriage before Christ was a foreshadowing of the Incarnation, and once the Sacrament had been established it is a realization of His Presence. In this THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org idea you can clearly see the first responsibility of marriage which is the transmission of the Faith. This therefore is your duty of state: to make Christ present in the world by the Sacrament of Matrimony. The rest of the text, “And they were both naked… and were not ashamed,” signifies that marriage was not afflicted with concupiscence in the beginning. The union of our first parents was one of persons joined in love and affection. They were first united in grace, mind, and heart; their physical union was the result of this profound love. The pleasure found in this union was not only ordered to the spiritual love of the couple it was enhanced by the same. This is the reason that the text states that they were not ashamed. Obviously the Sacrament of Matrimony does not restore this original integrity to marriage. It only restores it to the degree that it remedies the effects of sin–a full restoration we must await in the Resurrection, but this is not to deny the fact that Matrimony is efficacious in healing to some degree the disorder introduced by concupiscence. Collaboration with grace is necessary for this rehabilitation. Grasping this messianic aspect of marriage, which belonged to it from the beginning of creation, is necessary to properly understand your place in the world as Catholic fathers and mothers. Your very first obligation as husband and wife is to work, in collaboration with grace, to restore the original unity intended in marriage. It can even be said that your responsibility is to reflect the perfect unity realized between Christ and the Church. The Catholic husband and wife are an extension of Christ and the Church: a union of charity born in the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan and reaching consummation in the Sacrifice of Calvary and in the identification of Christ with His Mystic Body. Here is to be noted the parents’ second responsibility, included in the first, which is to teach the children to love according to the Sacred Heart in charity. The original act of creating Eve was to give a helpmate to Adam, but the Sacrament of Matrimony does more than establish assistance in life; it constitutes a help and complement in life. Man and wife are to complete and complement one another on every level of life: on the spiritual level, the intellectual, the moral, and the physical level. Each of these categories could lend itself to its own conference, but we will limit ourselves this evening to the unity of matrimony. All the unnatural and anti-Christian deviations from the true conception of marriage have arisen from the failure, or the refusal, to respect the wonderful order and harmony in this human and Catholic ideal as formulated by the wisdom of Christ Himself. Marriage is above all a union of souls. As Catholic fathers and mothers, you must work to establish a united front in your households. You are not simply a man and a woman, you are joined 13 together to yield mutual enrichment to one another in your common nature as human beings and in your common faith as Catholics; this is the full meaning of two in one flesh. Two you shall always remain no matter how close the union, but the union is meant to enrich you both and form you into a single unit. This unity is the complementary reality in which you achieve your salvation, and this you must do for the sake of your children. From this let us pass to some concrete things to be noted. When we speak of parents as the first educators of their children it does not mean that they have the first responsibility to teach their children everything. It is not a question of instructing in specific topics. “Parents as educators” means that your first responsibility is to dispose your children to learn. This formation of minds and hearts is your first task. God is the first teacher of men, and no one can replace Christ as our only Master. The work of collaboration between home and school is a mutual labor under the single Hand of God, and all education is meant to lead to salvation. I would even say that education should lead to a contemplative attitude before God. St. Bernard poetically called this contemplative discourse the theoricus sermo. We must now consider the condition in which this attitude can be realized. It is more than certain that if your homes are in constant agitation and noise you will never achieve this first goal as educators. Your children can simply not develop an ordered interior if the living conditions are those of continual dissipation. Television, computers, and electronic gizmos are prime culprits here, but the very first culprit is the lack of order within the home. You simply must have a set order and schedule to your day. I do not speak of a timetable as if you were running a monastery, but an ordered day in which silence has some place. You need not go so far as St. Thomas More, who had spiritual reading done during his family’s meals, but your home must be ordered as a place where Christ can be heard. Because the task is difficult (there is true labor here) it has no chance of succeeding where no real attempt is made. The spiritual ordering of your home is even more important. There can be no learning where there is no order, and Christ cannot be heard where there is no regular prayer. Your prayer lives must be the first importance in a unified family life. It is unacceptable that prayers come in a family’s life “wherever or whenever they fit.” It should be the other way around: the daily schedule should be set around the family’s prayers. These come first and should center on the rosary. The experience of the sweetness of God will give rise to enthusiasm, and this will blossom in greater fidelity. The life of prayer, however, is not attainable where there is no life of discipline and mortification. Thus when you consider the ordering of your home, and the electronic noise which invades it, you must also consider how it is that you discipline the household. Remember that the word, discipline, comes from the word, discere, to learn. The order of your household requires that you also consider the mortification of the individual members. Surely not all the members of the family can observe the same mortifications, but the parents must be first in their example of asceticism (“effort”). Following this you must instruct, encourage, and impose mortification proper to each child’s age and capabilities. This requires prudence and wisdom on the part of the parents, but just because the task is difficult does not excuse you from the responsibility. Note here that the sense of mortification and discipline that you teach your children will not only help them in the spiritual life, it will benefit them in their studies. One of the greatest obstacles that the teachers note in a child’s learning is that they lack sufficient discipline. A dissipated attitude in a child indicates the dissipated household from which it has come. Lent is an excellent time to consider these aspects of your lives and your families. Unity, order, discipline, mortification, and example are your first responsibilities as parents. They all are meant to flow from the union established by the Sacrament of Matrimony, but they result only from your collaboration with grace. Have you been faithful thus far? Where might things be improved in your households? The education of the children is the reason for which you were married, it cannot fall to second rung, it is the reason for being of your state in life. Faith, spirituality, and an ordered household: these three realities cannot be separated in the real life of Catholic families. Without being faithful educators you cannot be deemed faithful Catholic husbands and wives, but having experienced the sweetness of God in your positions as Catholic parents, you will no longer be only seeking to be faithful, but you will desire to do so. You and your families will no longer simply try to know God, you will experience Him. Fr. James Doran was ordained for the Society of Saint Pius X in 1988 and is currently the prior of St. Francis de Sales Priory in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the former vice-rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary (Winona, Minnesota) and editor emeritus of Angelus Press. The conference was given in Onex, Switzerland, February 23, 2007 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 14 E d w i n F a u s t THE PRIDE OF LIFE Having lived the better part of six decades, I often find myself rummaging through my vast store of memory as through old trunks in the attic, pulling out this or that photo or piece of clothing or faded letter, and handling it, sometimes fondly, sometimes with regret, as I recall how well or ill I acquitted myself in that episode of which it is a relic. And recollection frequently leads to speculation. I begin to wonder how the aggregate of my actions will weigh in the final balance, for whether a man will find himself in the state of grace in his last THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org moments would seem to have some connection to justice, as well as to mercy. A man’s death is the culmination of his life, its ultimate expression, and although it may be a permissible and pious hope that a bad man be saved in extremis, it is unlikely to be realized. I have seen several people in my family die, and never have I noticed a marked change in anyone’s manner as he grew nearer the end; rather, there always appeared to be a continuity of behavior, perhaps weakening or intensifying in some respects, but no dramatic departures. Deathbed 15 conversions are not unknown, but they must be rare. Life is a preparation for death. In most cases, we will die as we have lived, either turned toward or away from God. How can it be otherwise? This is not to say that our personal histories are a record of homogeneous thought and action. A man may swing violently from one pole to another, especially in his youth, when temperament is especially volatile. The source of this volatility is, I believe, identified by St. John as the pride of life. I don’t recall when I first heard the evangelist’s catalogue of the trinity of vices opposed to our salvation: concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life. I do recall having no difficulty in recognizing how the first two temptations manifest, but being puzzled by the third. What is the pride of life? I think it arises from an exuberance that comes upon us in the first flush of youthful independence. It is, in its beginnings, a young man’s vice. As I look back now over the tortuous road I have stumbled along to arrive at my present pass, I discern the pride of life appearing at my side in my early 20s, keeping pace with me through a decade of doubt and dissipation, then falling behind me, or so it seems, until it appears to me a faintly recognizable figure from my reckless years, like some almost forgotten companion in a shameful debauch that might have proved fatal to my soul. And as my own children near that juncture in their lives where they must increase and I must decrease; where I must modify my role as paternal legislator to that of one who watches, often fretfully, while they make their decisions on their own authority, I am mindful of that ghost of my youth–the pride of life–and apprehensive of its appearance at the sides of my sons. For few, I think, make the great translation from adolescence to manhood without becoming somewhat carried away by the headiness of physical strength reaching its zenith and intellectual power being loosed from the bonds of instruction. We look in the mirror one day, and the boy we knew is gone; in his place we find an adult; one fully vested with the dignity of self-determination. We realize, with a dizzying delight, that now we are to choose what we shall do and when and how we shall do it. We easily become intoxicated with our newfound freedom. We then look to those on whom we once relied for guidance and are struck by their obvious shortcomings, which, to our amazement, had previously escaped our notice. Such credulous children, we were; so easily taken in. Now, those who loomed large before us appear smaller, stooped and shrunken by age, and what we took for sound judgment we now subject to critical review. We begin to stride like a colossus across our world, and if we bow our heads, it is only to regard with condescension those people and things that are below us. Do I exaggerate? Certainly, there are young people of solid virtue who are not made drunk by the rising sap of youth, and we dearly hope our children will be among this sober company; but the likelihood is that they will not. It is a fact worth pondering that Our Lord, in prescribing the means to salvation, counseled us to become as little children, never as young adults, for little children are trusting and humble; young adults, skeptical and arrogant. The one memorable encounter Jesus had with a young man ended unhappily, for the young man was rich, which description may be understood in a spiritual as well as a material sense. He had worldly possessions, one may presume, but such wealth would not have kept him from following Our Lord had he not possessed something else: pride of life, which may also be defined as a lack of that essential beatitude: poverty of spirit. We read that the rich young man went away sad because he owned much. Perhaps, he had second thoughts, a belated touch of grace, and did return to follow his Savior, but we have no account of it. More probable is it that his sadness was gradually transformed into self-justification and, by degrees, into a condemnation of what was asked of him as so much foolishness. When we refuse to be good, we usually acquit ourselves by discounting the necessity and even the desirability of being good. The great danger is that we may commit the sin against the Holy Ghost that cannot be forgiven: confounding good and evil. The result is spiritual blindness and hardness of heart. It may be that, like other narcissistic baby boomers, I falsely imagine my generation of singular importance, but it does strike me that even though the pride of life has posed a spiritual peril for every young man in every epoch, it took hold of my contemporaries with an unprecedented strength. This occurred because of the confluence of two things: the dissolution of church and state. By the late 1960s, the time of my youth, the moral authority of the United States and the Catholic Church were collapsing simultaneously: the first, as a result of the so-called “credibility gap,” that is, official truth exposed as deliberate deception; the second, as a result of the Second Vatican Council, which undermined all previous Church teaching, creating an ecclesial “credibility gap” from which the Church has never recovered. To be young at such at time was to find oneself balanced precariously on the edge of an abyss. Like all young people, we wanted to do great things, to become heroes in the domain of noble action, but we seemed to be deprived of such opportunities. We wanted to channel our youthful www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 16 exuberance into a worthy cause, for the obverse side of the pride of life, its remedy, is a generosity of spirit that wants to give itself wholly. But we found ourselves thrust into a backwater of disillusionment; stagnating in a fetid swamp of doubt and decay. The two occupations that young men used to dream of are that of soldier and priest, for both offer the scope for heroism in their respective fields. But arrived at man’s estate, we found the military tragically involved in a war of dubious merit being prosecuted by politicians we knew to be liars; and the Church making herself ridiculous by panting after the unholy fashions of the age. The pride of life, as a result, was given a great impetus, and we cast off all allegiance to authority of any kind. But the strength of youth, its tremendous physical and intellectual energy, cannot remain pent up; it must be spent. And so it was. No generation in our national history had so entirely rejected the values and traditions of its elders as did mine. There was an insurrection of the spirit that manifested itself exteriorly in long hair and strange clothes and dissonant music, and interiorly in a sickening of the soul whose higher faculties were subordinated to its lower. If we were deprived of heroic ideals, we would settle for what was left to us. We may have been cut off from our spiritual and moral traditions, but our bodies were young, our senses strong, our appetites sharp. If higher truth were in doubt, baser certainties remained. We began to live more and more in our animal nature. Sensual pleasure became our flag and our faith. T he late Malcolm Muggeridge, before his conversion, wrote contemptuously of my generation as one that had been given every advantage and, in the end, asked for the sop of every old reprobate in every age: dope and bed. But perhaps Muggeridge did not then realize how necessary it is to have faith; how meaningless all those advantages are without a belief in an ultimate purpose. If we asked for dope and bed, it was because we had arrived at that nullity of moral law that is the corollary of the absence of dogma. We asked for the only things that still appeared real. This is not meant to be an apologia for degeneracy, but an elucidation of those conditions that led to it: conditions that persist and threaten present and future generations. As Muggeridge noted, we were children of privilege and promise, but many of us, though clinging to privilege, threw away promise. Obscurely, perhaps unconsciously, we were affirming Our Lord’s words: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” We certainly had the world to gain, but it was an unattractive prize, for it seemed that we had already THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org lost our souls. Our parents and teachers watched in anger and perplexity as we discarded opportunities they had spent a lifetime procuring for us. Instead of availing ourselves of those means that would have secured our futures, we plunged into a hopeless hedonism. Many dropped out, as the phrase then had it. Their number became legion and I, to some degree, joined the exodus. I had been in graduate school. My prospects were bright, but only in the context of a failed world. There was the unmistakable taint of fraud in all my professors’ words; in all the books I read and classes I attended. It seemed to me that I was participating in an immense and insane masquerade. I wanted to tear away the masks and discover who lived behind the false faces, including my own. So, I did what many around me were doing: I quit and ran away. Or rather, I should say, ran toward something that I hoped to find, but of whose existence I was unsure. But even the faint possibility of an unimaginable truth was more alluring than the deadness and deception of the dark region from which I was departing. So, I sold what I had and bought a plane ticket to Europe. I had no plan; no certain destination. I did, however, have a companion: the pride of life was at my side and remained with me through many wandering days. Yet, I did not always find my companion an agreeable one, for I had been raised in the Catholic faith with Catholic morals. No matter how discredited the Church had become; no matter how disloyal, corrupt and plain silly the hierarchy and clergy appeared, I had been early inoculated by the truth, and no subsequent infection was able to overcome me entirely. At one point in my travels, I found myself in Heidelberg on the weekend of the annual wine festival. It was a crisp, clear day in autumn, pleasantly warm, with sunlight dancing on the Neckar River and the great castle perched on its hill looking down with seeming benevolence upon the revelers. The whole town was celebrating, with the streets closed to traffic and people jostling one another happily as they ate and drank and laughed and sang. I had never seen so many people in uniform good spirits. I made myself one of them, and through the long afternoon I sampled the local fare and downed more than a few glasses of cool, golden wine. As I wandered the cobbled lanes, I arrived without design at an old church whose doors appeared locked and on whose steps was gathered a different sort of crowd. Many were lying prone, other sprawled indecorously, some on the steps, some on the sidewalk and even in the street. The sexes were not easily distinguishable at a distance, as all had long hair and disheveled clothes and the 17 same abandoned posture. They represented that class of the disaffected then called hippies. Emboldened by the wine I had imbibed, and the unthreatening aspect of the assembly, I approached them and offered a greeting. One looked at me and held out his hand, which contained a small pipe from which curled smoke of an identifiable aroma: hashish. I took the pipe and looked into its glowing bowl for a few seconds, then saw another hand outstretched to receive it, so I relinquished it and took a step back. I looked at the church more closely and noticed its inscription: Heiliger Geist Kirche. As I learned later, it was a venue notorious for drug dealing. The police were said not to be much interested in curtailing the activity, so the trade took place with little circumspection. I was asked that day if I wanted to make a purchase and declined. But the atmosphere of the whole encounter stayed with me, adulterating the otherwise wholesome joy of the festival. For there was no joy at the Holy Ghost Church: just torpor, ennui, the breath of corruption, and a vast indifference that went beyond despair. I wondered what occupied the introverted attention of the lost children of the Holy Ghost as they reclined outside His church. Nothing distinct, I imagined; only confused images and sensations playing in enervated minds and bodies. As evening fell, everyone, save the Holy Ghost crowd, made for the river, where they spread blankets on the slope of the bank opposite the castle. As the sky darkened and the river grew black, the first of the fireworks exploded above the ancient battlements, and with each succeeding burst, the age-worn sandstone took on different hues: red, green, blue. The mountainside became a riot of color and the sky dotted with lights that flared, then streamed downward and faded into plumes of smoke that were extinguished in the river. I watched, exhilarated, and when it was over, I returned to my room feeling inexplicably oppressed, as though some unwanted thought were forcing itself upon me. The next day, I had resolved to leave Heidelberg and head south, I knew not where: I would take hitchhiker’s luck. But before I left, I decided to walk through the town to fix in my mind its sights and memories. I passed by the Holy Ghost Church and saw that little had changed from the previous day. I thought I recognized some of the loungers and wondered if they had stayed through the night. I supposed they had little reason to leave. I returned to the place along the Neckar from which I had watched the fireworks and stopped to rest there and collect my thoughts before walking toward the highway. The castle rested monumentally in its usual sandy-colored mass, giving no hint of the part it had played in last night’s festival nor the bright shades it had assumed, and the sky was a pacific blue. All appeared usual, quite real and steady and enduring, and the late revels seemed insubstantial, like a vague dream that even then had receded into a seemingly distant past. I formed a plan, of sorts, to proceed to Munich to see the Oktoberfest, so I walked out of town and stood on the shoulder of the road, my thumb raised in the customary gesture; and as I waited for a ride, that inchoate and oppressive sensation that had weighed upon me the night before began to take definite shape: so you will go to Munich, I thought, and drink and have a high time at the festival, and after that, perhaps you will move on to another town and another festival; but life cannot be lived at festivals. The day after arrives, sobriety returns and the festival becomes a confused memory that bears little relation to the main business of life. C ertainly, not the fugitive pleasures that had been occupying me. I had seen the terminus of such a prolonged pursuit on the steps of the Holy Ghost Church, where the only pleasure that remained was an escape from the vacancy of life into narcotized dreams. And I could not forever wander aimlessly in strange lands, for in a few years, I would no longer be young and the world would become less hospitable and indulgent, for a young man is forgiven many things for which an older man is judged culpable. The more I mused along these lines, the less attraction I found in intoxication and travel; the more I longed for order and purpose. I continued to bumble about for some time, in America as well as abroad, but my old companion, the pride of life, appeared to fall a step or two behind me, and my sense of self-sufficiency gave way to knowledge that I needed guidance. Gradually, I returned to the sanity of those truths I had known as a child. Perhaps this round of life I have briefly described used to be common, and so long as one survived the follies of youth, little harm was done and valuable lessons learned; but our culture has suffered a sea change. Most people my age represent the last generation that, as a whole, was fully instructed in the faith, a fact that greatly aided our return to sanity. Now, we are becoming grandparents. Two generations have come into the world since our greener days, and those children, with few exceptions, must face the temptations of the pride of life without our reserve of truth and recourse to grace. What was for us a temporary aberration now easily becomes for them a permanent acquisition. For if finding our way back to the Church was made difficult by the disappearance or distortion of the faith in the postconciliar epoch, it may well be near impossible for the generations that have followed us. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 18 DR. JOHN SENIOR’S The Death of Christian Culture Dr. Senior deals with the root causes of how and why Christian culture is dying. It approaches its subject through an in-depth study of literature, culture, history, and religion, to alert citizens of the West of what they stand to lose, especially as education ceases to be about the truth, and becomes merely an exercise in bureaucracy and “ticket-punching.” Ultimately, Senior warns that the cultural, literary, artistic, and social treasures of classical and Christian civilization must be preserved and lived, lest they be lost forever. Senior was an architect of the University of Kansas Integrated Humanities Program, a course that combined aspects of the Socratic and “Great Books” methods. It aimed to convince students by an immersion in the classics of Western thought, art, and literature, that there is a truth worth knowing. It resulted in numerous conversions to Catholicism and was the principal forum in which Senior worked out the keen insights presented in his books. 191pp, softcover with dust jacket, STK# 8252✱ $17.95 One thing that will always remain constant, along with the pride of life, is its remedy: selfless dedication to an heroic ideal. And no matter how flawed our church and state, God still calls people to serve Him within these ever imperfect structures. Of course, to discern and follow a noble vocation has been rendered immensely more difficult by the pandemic ignobility of society in general. Honor, it seems, must now be won individually, apart from and, indeed, often in opposition to the institutions that once supported and nurtured it. It is characteristic of our age, in which so many conventions are stood on their heads, that we face a situation quite the reverse of that described in King Lear. In its way, Lear is a play for our times, when authority has been surrendered and disorder reigns. The final lines of the play are a lament by the Duke of Albany over the sufferings of the older generation: The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. But in our time, it is the young who have the most to bear, for we who are old still have the memory of a world in which order prevailed and life’s purpose was plain. The institutional Church supported us and was a bulwark against the incursions of the age. What sort of memory of the Church have the generations who have succeeded us? When has the institutional Church been anything to them but a maelstrom of contention and corruption? When the pride of life swept us away, we knew that there remained, always within our reach, the terra firma of the faith in all its impressive manifestations. We had attended the Tridentine THE ANGEluS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org Searching for and Maintaining Peace A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart Fr. Jacques Philippe Our age is characterized by an extraordinary amount of agitation and lack of peace. This tendency manifests itself in our spiritual life, in our search for God and holiness, in our service to our neighbor... a kind of restlessness and anxiety take the place of the confidence and peace which ought to be ours. What must we do to overcome the moments of fear and distress which assail us? How can we learn to place all our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into his loving care? This is what is taught in this simple, yet profound treatise on peace of heart. Taking concrete examples from our everyday life, the author invites us to respond in a Christ-like fashion to the upsetting situations we must all confront. 118pp, softcover, STK# 8225✱ $9.95 Mass in great cathedrals and magnificent parish churches; we were schooled by devout nuns and priests; the Catholic faith was then a force to be reckoned with. But the children of these latter days have often traveled with their parents great distances to attend in halls and homes and rented spaces a Mass proscribed by Church authorities; they have not known the great religious orders that instructed us; they have not heard sound teaching from the hierarchy. Shifting improvisations have taken the place of the once great institutional structures and they are besieged on all sides. So when children raised in such circumstances succumb to the pride of life, they will have no memory of the solidity and security of the Church to lure them back to the faith. The chaos of the world may not seem to them very much different from the chaos of the Church. But there are signs of hope. We will never see again the sort of Church we knew a half-century ago, but there appears to be a turning in high places toward Catholic Tradition, both in worship and doctrine. The beginnings are small, but they can be discerned. This will help provide some structure of stability for our young people. Meanwhile, we must be ever patient with our sons, especially when they become prodigal sons. We must keep a lamp lit for them in the windows of our home and the prayers of our heart. God will not forsake His children; neither should we. And let us hope that the Holy Father will at long last open the doors of the Church to all her wandering children now cast upon the world. Edwin Faust is a longtime contributor to traditional Catholic publications. In addition to being a news editor for a daily newspaper, he lives with his wife and three children in New Jersey. 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 March 2008 Reprint #80 GUÉRANGER DE CONDREN CARDINAL PIE PRIESTS’ THOUGHTS meditations on The holy Sacrifice of the mass It is sad indeed to have to say it, but there are Catholics who faithfully receive Holy Communion but who do not know how to assist at Mass. Our fathers had an idea of the Mass that the Catholics of today no longer have. There are few great things on earth, but there is, as Bossuet says, an affair that is the affair of the ages: the incarnation of a divine Person, the immolation of Calvary, prefigured for four thousand years by the holocausts and sacrifices of the Patriarchal Age and the Mosaic Era. This great affair accomplished on Golgotha and reproduced from day to day, from instant to instant on earth—this is the great wonder of the world. If the good Lord still puts up with the world, despite what you and I see, it is because this wonder unceasingly fulfills the words of the prophet: “from the rising of the sun 19 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT even to the going down” (Mal. 1:11). And since the sun does not rise and set at the same time on every part of the globe, but sheds its light successively on the diverse countries of the world, the sacrifice of the Man-God is a perpetual sacrifice, a sacrifice always in act: “the continual sacrifice” (Dan. 12:11). The most secret part of the Canon of the Mass is indicated by the words “Intra actionem,” for indeed everything else that happens and is accomplished here below is really trifling in comparison with this act, which is the action par excellence. It is the source; it is the essentially preserving act. The psalmist said: “He shall neither slumber nor sleep, that keepeth Israel” (Ps. 120:4). The Church, Christian society, needs to be guarded; this is a need of every society on earth. We who are their pastors and official guardians sometimes slumber and sleep; but He will not sleep, who guards Israel. At every instant He descends from the height of heaven, this God made Man, in order to acquit mankind’s whole debt....To unite oneself to the Mass is to set oneself to work with Him. To say that my life is too busy for me to go to Mass is to say something nonsensical because it is the Mass that gives a Catholic’s day its motion, merit, and efficacy.—Cardinal Pie,11 Works [French], IX, 637. On the cross, Jesus Christ appeases the wrath of God by His Blood; He satisfies divine justice, expiates sin, and merits the world’s salvation. But the sacrifice that He accomplishes does not yet actually give to men the graces of which it is the source; it prepares them and disposes them to receive these graces by the general expiation He makes for sin. It is by His Blood and His Death that He does this; it is by the sacraments, and especially by the Holy Eucharist, that the grace of Jesus Christ is communicated. The sacrifice of the Cross is the sacrifice of redemption and merit, for He merits everything, but neither gives nor applies anything; and the sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice of application and sanctification, for it gives and applies everything, but merits nothing.—Fr. Charles de Condren,12 Idea of the Priesthood and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ [French], Chap.7. In a word, Calvary is the source, the altar is the canal. Calvary collected all of Jesus’ blood, the altar conveys this blood shed for us in abundance; it waters the field of souls, it fertilizes them, it germinates the seeds of holiness. Streams would spring from the mountains in vain if the river did not channel them to the plain; the immolation of Golgotha would remain without effect but for the Mass, which brings down its graces and distributes them to men. Undoubtedly, all the sacraments draw their virtue from the sacrifice of the Cross, and all communicate its merits; but because the Eucharist alone renews and reproduces the sacrifice, it, too, alone is the center of the other sacraments and their end.—Buatier, Sacrifice in Catholic Dogma [French], p.114. The heresy of our time is the rejection of the social reign of Jesus Christ. From all sides the cry of the Gospel parable resounds: “Nolumus hunc regnare super nos.—We will not have this man to reign over us.” Not only are laws no longer made in His name or in conformity with His Gospel, they are made against Him. He is the enemy, and war is declared against Him from every side in the domains of doctrine and action..... The Apocalypse speaks of a tree whose leaves heal the nations (Apoc. 22:2): this can only be the tree of the Cross. Explanation of the Holy Mass Dom Gueranger explains every part of the Mass (from beginning to end) in a clear, yet profound, way. You get a good dose of liturgical history and spirituality as he explains how each part fits together–and why. Gueranger wrote this book after his magnum opus the Liturgical Year and it is meant to complement it. This edition matches the version of the Liturgical Year that we sell. In three main parts: Explanation of the Holy Mass (where the main parts of the Mass are explained), The Canon (where each prayer of the Canon is explained), The Ordinary of the Mass (where the prayers of the Ordinary, but not of the Canon, are systematically explained). For example: Between the Epistle and the Gospel, we have the Gradual. It consists of a Responsory and its Versicle. Formerly, the whole Responsory was repeated both before and after the Versicle, in the way now used with the brief responsories, only the Responsory was exceedingly rich in notes. The Gradual is really the most musical piece in the whole liturgy; and, as the rendering of it requires great skill, there were never more than two chanters permitted to sing it. When about to sing it, they went to the ambo, which was a sort of marble pulpit, placed in the church; and it was on account of the steps which led to the ambo, that this portion of the chant got the name of Gradual; just as the Gradual Psalms were those which the Jews used to sing whilst ascending the steps of the Temple. (p.29) 266pp, Sewn hardcover with dust jacket, STK# 8238✱ $22.95 more from Dom guéranger The Papal Monarchy When 19th century Christendom shifted its allegiance from a divine vertical authority to the horizontal revolutionary ideals of egalitarian democracy, Dom Guéranger’s masterpiece contributed more than any other contemporary work to uphold papal authority in all of its divinely ordained prerogatives. This labor of the holy abbot helped to restore in Catholic Europe the spiritual sword, as well as the magisterial cathedra, to the Vicar of Christ the King. And he did so simply by appealing to the simplicity and clarity of the gospels, universal Christian tradition, and the common consensus fidelis. The brilliant hypothetical scenario, drawn by the author, of a college of a dozen apostles, called by Christ, but without a “Cephas” (a Rock) in Peter and his successors, presents the infant “collegial” church in an unenviable plight! Although written to oppose the errors of the Gallicans and those who opposed the definition of Papal Infallibility at Vatican I, this work is just as useful today as that same error has resurfaced in our times as collegiality. 308pp, softcover, STK# 8235✱ $18.95 20 THE ANGEluS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org Society is in a state of decomposition and danger only because it abhors the cross; because it turns away from the Crucified; because the idea of sacrifice is repugnant to it; because, given up to the exclusive search for material pleasures and forgetting the hopes from on high, it no longer has any courage for austere duties. To restore health to this sick body, it is necessary to make the blood of Calvary circulate in it once again and infuse supernatural life into it by means of the sacraments; it is necessary to give it back the noble rest of Sunday and the brotherly union of public prayer, and the sanctifying correction of penance together with the strength and joy derived from the Eucharist. It has been said that “the peoples that go to confession are easily governed.” A people that confess their sins and receive Holy Communion are a people in which the coalitions of self-interest are transformed into harmonious relations of devotion. This reality was observable from the earliest days of the Church, for Tertullian could remark that “The most complete Christians are also the best citizens.”... Religion on earth has its most complete expression in a society, and this society realizes the social ideal as much as it can be realized by men: the Church. A perfect and universal society established by Jesus Christ, having for its purpose the kingdom of God and for mission the salvation of souls, it has as means the virtues it produces by the sacraments. Born on Calvary, this society keeps and distributes the divine Blood, and so prolongs Jesus’ redemptive act in the world. The altar is its center, the cross its symbol, and sacrifice its life. It could be defined as the society founded on the Cross by the Crucified to lead men to heaven by sacrifice.–Buatier, ibid., 345ff. rts is a h , e s t. e o e g ger e ...[W]ere the Mass to be done away with, we should quickly fall again into the state of depravity in which pagan nations are sunk: and this is to be the work of Antichrist. He will take every possible means to prevent the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, so that this great counterpoise being taken away, God would necessarily put an end to all things, having now no object left in their further subsistence. We may readily understand this if we observe how, since the introduction of Protestantism, the inner strength of society has materially waned. Social wars have been waged one after another, carrying desolation along with them, and all this, solely because the intensity of the great Sacrifice of the Mass has been diminished. Terrible as this is, it is but the beginning of that which is to happen when the devil and his agents, let loose upon the earth, will pour out a torrent of trouble and desolation everywhere, as Daniel has predicted.–Dom Prosper Guéranger, Explanation of the Holy Mass,13 p.109. [This book is available from Angelus Press. Price: $22.95. See sidebar on adjacent page.] Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome, JulyAugust 2006, p.8. 1 Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint (25 May 1995), 8: AAS 87 (1995), 925-926. Cf. Propositio 41; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, 8, 15; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint (25 May 1995), 46: AAS 87 (1995), 948; Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (April 17, 2003), 45-46: AAS 95 (2003), 463-464; Code of Canon Law, can. 844 §§3-4; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, can. 671 §§3-4; Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of the Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (March 25, 1993), 125, 129-131: AAS 85 (1993), 1087, 1088-1089. 3 Cf. Nos. 1398-1401. 4 Cf. No. 293. 5 Note that in the very same sentence this Exhortation contradictorily states that these Churches are both intimately linked with the Catholic Church and separated from it. 6 Catechism of St. Pius X, No. 124 [French]. 7 Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868 [English version found online at www. novusordowatch.org/iamvosomnes.htm]. 8 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1399; cf. CIC, Canon 844, §3. 9 Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 5, Art. 3. 10 Ibid., ad 2. 11 Louis-Edouard-Désiré Pie (1815-1880), was the Bishop of Poitiers from 1849 until his death. 12 Fr. Charles de Condren (1588-1641), a disciple of Cardinal de Bérulle, founder of the French Congregation of the Oratory (1611). He was elected its superior general in 1629 after Bérulle’s death. 13 Dom Prosper Guéranger, Abbot of Solesmes, is well known as the founder of the liturgical movement and author of the famous series The Liturgical Year. 2 Ecumenical ArtnoCdictions On February 22, 2007, His Holiness Benedict XVI made public the Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, a document reflecting the conclusions of the 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. In general, this document can be considered both as an attempt to rein in the avalanche of liturgical abuses we have seen over the course of the last 40 years and as an effort to reverse the Church’s course by re-appropriating certain elements that were gradually lost along the way after the Council. It is an effort, though, that runs the risk of sterility as long as it confirms the principle THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 21 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT of collegiality “baptized” by Vatican II, and as long as the hierarchy hesitates to reassert the coercive aspect of law, which requires that measures be taken against those who infringe it. The purpose of this brief article is not to examine in detail the Apostolic Exhortation, much of which we welcome with satisfaction (for example, the invitation addressed to priests to return to the Latin liturgy and Gregorian chant). We shall limit ourselves to an examination of its Paragraph 56: “Participation [in the Eucharist] by Christians who are not Catholic.” We reproduce it here in full: The subject of participation in the Eucharist inevitably raises the question of Christians belonging to Churches or Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. In this regard, it must be said that the intrinsic link between the Eucharist and the Church’s unity inspires us to long for the day when we will be able to celebrate the Holy Eucharist together with all believers in Christ, and in this way to express visibly the fullness of unity that Christ willed for his disciples (cf. Jn. 17:21). On the other hand, the respect we owe to the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood prevents us from making it a mere “means” to be used indiscriminately in order to attain that unity.1 The Eucharist in fact not only manifests our personal communion with Jesus Christ, but also implies full communion with the Church. This is the reason why, sadly albeit not without hope, we ask Christians who are not Catholic to understand and respect our conviction, which is grounded in the Bible and Tradition. We hold that eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion are so linked as to make it generally impossible for non-Catholic Christians to receive the former without enjoying the latter. There would be even less sense in actually concelebrating with ministers of Churches or ecclesial communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. Yet it remains true that, for the sake of their eternal salvation, individual non-Catholic Christians can be admitted to the Eucharist, the sacrament of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick. But this is possible only in specific, exceptional situations and requires that certain precisely defined conditions be met.2 These are clearly indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church3 and in its Compendium.4 Everyone is obliged to observe these norms faithfully.” This text, which seeks to restore order to a sector in which bishops, priests, and religious have given free reign to their “ecumenical inspiration,” presents two important limits that lead to a conclusion which has never been admitted by the Church before, namely, to allow non-Catholics to receive Holy Communion in particular circumstances. The Church’s Doctrine The Exhortation posits a correct principle: “eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion are so linked as to make it generally impossible for non-Catholic Christians to receive the former without 22 enjoying the latter.” Indeed, if on the one hand Eucharistic communion unites us more intimately to the Christus totus, Head and members, it requires, on the other, that this communion already exist. St. Augustine expressed this reality in his Discourses while commenting on the formula “Corpus Christi Amen,” conserved in the Ambrosian Missal, by which he conferred the consecrated host to the faithful: If then you are the body of Christ and His members, on the table of the Lord is placed your holy mystery: you receive your holy mystery. Your respond “Amen” to what you are, and by so responding you adhere to it. Hear then “The Body of Christ,” and answer, “Amen.” Be the Body of Christ so that the Amen be true! Whoever approaches the Eucharist, by virtue of the Eucharist, becomes more profoundly what he began to be at his holy baptism, that is to say, a member of the Body of Christ. Moreover, Eucharistic Communion requires not only that the soul receiving it be already incorporated in Christ by baptism, but also that this incorporation still be current and not dead or interrupted. This incorporation becomes dead in souls in the state of mortal sin, that is to say, deprived of sanctifying grace. They are still members of the Church, but as dead members of a living Body, which is why the bond of communion is not life-giving. These souls may not approach the sacrament of the Eucharist if they have not become once again living members by means of sacramental confession (cf. I Cor. 11:27-29). There are also souls who, though having been incorporated into the Church by baptism, break off from this Body and cease to be members of it. The bond of communion produced in them by baptism is broken by heresy, schism, or excommunication. Unlike the case of sinners who though dead remain attached to the Body, these souls cease completely from being members of the Church, and that is why they cannot licitly approach the sacrament of Holy Communion. This is the doctrine the Church has always taught in keeping with a clear, internal logic. Now we shall try to see the novel elements introduced by the 1983 Code of Canon Law and ratified by the Catechism of the Catholic Church to which the paragraph of the Apostolic Exhortation we are examining refers us. “Novelties” and Contradictions First of all, in Sacramentum Caritatis we find a “classic” neologism of Vatican II, the celebrated formula “full communion,” according to which the heretical and schismatic communities would no longer be separated from the Mystical Body of Christ, and the fullness of the bond of communion would only be diminished. We shall not stop to further examine this aspect, which we have studied in detail previously. We shall only note that, this premise being posited, THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org the consequence which the Apostolic Exhortation draws from it is contradictory, to say the least. For, if it concerns members of the Church, then it is difficult to understand why they should be prevented from receiving the Eucharist. If, for example, as the conciliar document Unitatis Redintegratio affirms, the schismatic Eastern “Churches, although separated from us, yet possess true sacraments and above all, by apostolic succession, the priesthood and the Eucharist, whereby they are linked with us in closest intimacy” (§15), they have the right to communio in sacris.5 But Sacramentum Caritatis forbids communicating the Eucharist to the faithful of the [schismatic] Eastern “Churches” except in exceptional cases, which shall be addressed later. This is a point that cannot but engender confusion and serious equivocations, especially since it appears not only in texts aimed at “experts,” but also at those written for the instruction of the faithful. Let us look at the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Article 63 states: “In the churches and ecclesial communities which are separated from full communion with the Catholic Church, many elements of sanctification and truth can be found. All of these blessings come from Christ and lead to Catholic unity. Members of these churches and communities are incorporated into Christ by Baptism and so we recognize them as brothers.” If the members of these “Churches” are really incorporated into Christ, they are a fortiori real members of the Mystical Body of Christ, because those who are not attached to Christ-Body cannot be attached to ChristHead. Why then should these people not licitly be able to receive the Eucharist? This interdiction makes no sense unless it is in line with the traditional doctrine, well expressed by Pope Pius XI in the Encyclical Mortalium Animos: “Whosoever therefore is not united with the Body is no member thereof; neither is he in communion with Christ its head.” Indeed, it is logical that those who are not members may not receive the Body of Christ. We find the same clear position in the Encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pope Pius XII: “They, therefore, walk in the path of dangerous error who believe that they can accept Christ as the Head of the Church, while not adhering loyally to His Vicar on earth.” Those who are separated from the Church are in no wise in communion with the Lord Jesus, for there is no other means of entering into communion with the Son of God than incorporation into His Mystical Body. Let us consider another article of the Compendium, No.168, which in reply to the question “Who belongs to the Catholic Church?” answers: All human beings in various ways belong to or are ordered to the Catholic unity of the people of God. Fully incorporated into the Catholic Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, are joined to the www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 Church by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government and communion. The baptized who do not enjoy full Catholic unity are in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Once again, we are confronted with two contrary conceptions: for the Compendium, all men belong to the Church or are at least ordered to it. The Catholics, heretics, and schismatics belong to it equally, but in varying degrees of fullness: the Catholics possess all the qualities required and belong to it “fully”; the heretics and schismatics, not possessing all the conditions, are nonetheless “in a certain, although imperfect communion.” According to the traditional doctrine, on the contrary, whoever does not fulfill all the conditions (valid baptism, profession of the true faith, and “permanence” of ecclesial communion) is not a member of the Church: “Outside the Church are...the damned, the infidels, the Jews, heretics, apostates, schismatics, [and] the excommunicates,” even if they are in good faith.6 Pius IX states that, it will be easy to convince [“whoever thus gives proper attention and reflection to the situation which surrounds the various religious societies, divided amongst themselves and separated from the Catholic Church”] that in none of these societies, and not even in all of them taken together, can in some way be seen the one and Catholic Church which Christ the Lord built, constituted, and willed to exist. Neither will it ever be able to be said that they are members and part of that Church as long as they remain visibly separated from Catholic unity.7 The logic is implacable: Either those who belong to heretical and schismatic communities belong to the Church, in which case there is no reason to refuse them Holy Communion, or else they are outside the Church, in which case the 1983 Code of Canon Law, echoed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, absolutely cannot maintain that A certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, “given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged.8 The “Exceptional Situations” The other aspect that must be considered is that of the conditions in which, according to the dispositions of the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the new Catechism, it would be permissible to allow nonCatholics to receive Holy Communion. The Apostolic Exhortation mentions it: Yet it remains true that, for the sake of their eternal salvation, individual non-Catholic Christians can be admitted to the Eucharist, the sacrament of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick. But this is possible only in THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 23 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT specific, exceptional situations and requires that certain precisely defined conditions be met. These are clearly indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in its Compendium. Everyone is obliged to observe these norms faithfully. Let us see what these “specific, exceptional situations” and their “precisely defined conditions” would be by examining the texts to which the Exhortation refers. The first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1399) treats of Eastern “churches” and states: The Eastern churches that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church celebrate the Eucharist with great love. “These Churches, although separated from us, yet possess true sacraments, above all–by apostolic succession—the priesthood and the Eucharist, whereby they are still joined to us in closest intimacy” (UR §15). A certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, “given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged” (cf. CIC can. 844, §3). Paragraph 1401 tells us what the “suitable circumstances” are: When, in the Ordinary’s judgment, a grave necessity arises, Catholic ministers may give the sacraments of Eucharist, Penance, and Anointing of the Sick to other Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, who ask for them of their own will, provided they give evidence of holding the Catholic faith regarding these sacraments and possess the required dispositions (cf. CIC, can. 844, §4). Notice that nothing states what constitutes “grave necessity,” which implies that it is not limited to the danger of death, an inference confirmed by Canon 844 of the Code of Canon Law to which the Catechism refers: If the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments licitly also to other Christians.... It is left to the judgment of the Ordinary or to the Episcopal Conference to establish the presence of this “grave necessity,” after which it would be licit to administer the Eucharist if three other conditions are fulfilled: 1) the request to receive the sacrament; 2) evidence that the party holds the Catholic faith regarding the sacrament; and 3) the required dispositions. The Compendium (Art. 293) is clearer than the Catechism on this point, distinguishing between the conditions required for the members of the Eastern “churches” and for those of other ecclesial communities: Catholic ministers may give Holy Communion licitly to members of the Oriental Churches which are not in full 24 communion with the Catholic Church whenever they ask for it of their own will and possess the required dispositions. Catholic ministers may licitly give Holy Communion to members of other ecclesial communities only if, in grave necessity, they ask for it of their own will, possess the required dispositions, and give evidence of holding the Catholic faith regarding the sacrament. Note that in the Compendium, the requirement of a “grave necessity” expressed in the Catechism disappears for the members of the Eastern Churches (which might suggest a broadening of concessions), while the condition of having a good disposition (precisely what that would consist of is not clear), which does not appear in the Catechism, is added. Among these required conditions, two would seem to be subjective (the freedom with which the request is made and the suitable disposition) and one is objective (possession of the Catholic faith regarding the sacrament to be received). Are these conditions sufficient for members of non-Catholic communities to receive the Eucharist? For the 1918 Codex Juris Canonici, on the contrary, the possibility of receiving the Eucharist for heretics and schismatics is illicit whenever the elements of separation from the Catholic Church exist objectively, such that even in case of danger of death, it is not licit to give them Communion (under certain conditions, however, it is permissible to confer absolution and administer extreme unction). In the domain of canon law, which implies practical rules of conduct, the Church judges objective conditions, which does not exclude that the subjective dispositions may be good, but de internis non iudicat Ecclesia (the Church does not judge interior dispositions). It is often assumed that the Church (of the past) considers that all members of heretical or schismatic communities consciously adhere to schism or heresy. This is not the case. Catholic theology has always made the distinction between material heresy and formal heresy. Outside of the sacraments, the Church has never arrogated to itself the right to judge consciences; the Church only judges objective conditions. That being so, the only way the Church can judge the good dispositions of these non-Catholic Christians is if they are revealed externally, namely, by the renunciation of the schism or heresy. The only objective element named in the two cited texts is the evidence of holding the Catholic faith regarding the Eucharist. It must be stated that this condition, while necessary, is insufficient to render licit the administration of the Eucharist to a non-Catholic, for heresy is by definition a negation of a part of Catholic truth. That is why if someone who requests the Eucharist shows his adherence to the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding this sacrament, his position as a heretic or schismatic does not disappear, for one is a Catholic not by believing some of the dogmas taught by the Catholic Church, THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org but by believing them all because they have been revealed by God and taught by His one Church. St. Thomas Aquinas explains this very well: St. Thomas applies this principle to those who object that someone can have faith in several articles but not in others: Neither living nor lifeless faith remains in a heretic who disbelieves one article of faith. Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith. Even so, it is evident that a man whose mind holds a conclusion without knowing how it is proved, has not scientific knowledge, but merely an opinion about it. Now it is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will.9 Faith adheres to all the articles of faith by reason of one mean, viz. on account of the First Truth proposed to us in Scriptures, according to the teaching of the Church who has the right understanding of them. Hence whoever abandons this mean is altogether lacking in faith.10 The same holds true for a non-heretical schismatic (granting that there can be schism without heresy): although he adheres to the Catholic Faith, he separates himself from the authority that teaches it, and so separates himself from Christ. Lanterius Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome, June 2007, pp.1-3. God’s Avenging Wrath In 2006, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, though quite aware that “to speak in defense of life and the rights of the family is becoming a crime against the State in some societies” and that “the Church risks being summoned before some international tribunal,” still did his duty by reminding the readers of the Famiglia Cristiana that “the destruction of an embryo is the equivalent of an abortion,” and that for this deed “excommunication is incurred by the mother, the doctors, and the researchers who destroy the embryo.” For this clear teaching the Corriere della Sera ( June 29, 2006), called him “the hardest and most intransigent cardinal of the Sacred College.” There is nothing astonishing in this: The disciple must not expect the applause that the world, Christ’s enemy, refused and continues to refuse to his Master (and also, despite appearances, to the churchmen of “aggiornamento”). More interesting is the commentary of a left-wing Italian senator “considered to be very close to the Catholic higher-ups,” and who states that she shares completely the idea that “it is forbidden to commit abortion or to manipulate human embryos,” but claims to be “astonished by the tone taken by the Cardinal, who evokes the idea of a God angry [sic] with men because they disagree with Him.” “I would have expected,” she continued, “the accent to be put on welcoming measures than on punitive ones, by reference to the Church’s principles of solidarity, magnanimity, and pardon.” THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 25 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT It would seem that the senator’s objection is merely a matter of “tone” and “accent,” and not of substance. And yet in her remarks we find ourselves at the very heart of modernism: the falsification of charity, even the charity of God, with all the logical consequences. Who gave this senator, “considered to be very close to the Catholic higher-ups,” the idea of a “god” to whom it would be a matter of indifference whether men agreed with him or not? Who gave her the idea that the Church fails in regard to “the principles of solidarity, magnanimity, and pardon” when churchmen accomplish their duty (which is also a work of spiritual mercy) to “correct sinners”? St. John, the Apostle of love, is also the prophet of the avenging justice of God (the Apocalypse), and there is nothing contradictory in this. God’s avenging justice is nothing else than the proclamation by the Supreme Good of His right to be loved above all things. This divine attribute, which cannot be lacking to the perfect Being, only manifests itself after His mercy has been repeatedly despised, in spite of all the means deployed—such as salutary temporal pains—to wrest the guilty from perdition. But the modernists of “an empty hell” and undifferentiated “welcoming measures,” even for public sinners, have managed to spread the idea of a “god” who also pardons those who continue to say “no” to Mercy, having no intention of amending their lives, resolved as they are on the contrary to persevere in their state of sin. The logical consequence: this “charity” of God (and the Church) falsified by the “new theology” encourages sinners to despise the right of God to be loved above all things, to abuse His mercy, to resist obstinately God’s love, and finally to be lost. Indeed, if God is charity without justice, if He is a “god” all sweetness and honey, if he is a “god” who does not love the good nor hate evil, but complacently regards both impenitent sinners, defiled by their sins, and the just who do penance for their faults, then why pray? Why observe the law? Indeed, why should there be a law? In short, why strive to merit what he will give us anyway whether we have done good or evil? Following this logic, it is no longer apparent why “it is forbidden to commit abortion or to manipulate human embryos.” As for the Church, which “risks being summoned before some international tribunal” for merely stating the (divine and) natural law in certain domains, it is high time that the ecclesiastics of the “separation of Church and State” make their examination of conscience: does not history teach, and was it not said to the “liberal Catholics,” their precursors, that a State that does not collaborate with the Church sooner or later ends by persecuting her? Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome, January 2007, p.8. $1.95 per SiSiNoNo reprint. Please specify. Shipping & Handling US $.01 to $10.00 $6.95 $10.01 to $25.00 $8.95 $25.01 to $50.00 $10.95 $50.01 to $100.00 $12.95 Over $100.00 13% of order Foreign $11.95 $13.95 $15.95 $17.95 18% of order Airmail surcharge (in addition to above) Foreign 21% of subtotal. Available from: ANGELUS PRESS 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, MO 64109 USA Phone: 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org ★ ★ ★ this is a message book, not a history book. It has messages for three types of persons. For modern secularists: the american religion is humanist in the best sense of the world....Christians and jews ought not to see americanism as a blasphemous replacement for Christianity or judaism. anyone can ask a theologian, “What does Christianity say about this problem?” If the answer is satisfying, it is incorporated into the questioner’s religion. the american religion is traditional religion’s response to modern political reality. It is an extension to the structure of judaism or Christianity, an extra room out back. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ For Christians specifically: you built america and americanism. In so doing you gave mankind one of the greatest gifts it has ever received. Do not allow yourselves to be spiritually dispossessed in your own homes! this country will never have an established, official religion; it will never abandon religious freedom. But neither should it be allowed to abandon its history and origins, or lie about them. Christians are (rightly) prohibited from preaching Christianity in public schools; secularists should be prohibited from preaching secularism, too!”–from aMErICanISM: ★ ★ 7 ★ ★ a CatholIC CrItIQuE. AMERICANISM: THE FOURTH GREAT WESTERN RELIGION P a t r i c k Americanism as an issue for Catholics first surfaced during the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878-1903). The Holy Father initially sounded his concerns in Longinqua Oceani, addressed in 1895 to America’s archbishops and bishops. In that document, the Pope paid tribute to the progress of the faith in the US, even allowing that America’s 19th-century government policy of Lockean toleration tacitly contributed: “For the Church... unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation...is free to live and act without hindrance.” Leo XIII, however, M C C a r t h y refused to conclude that American political conditions represented the ideal government for Catholics: Yet...it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. Clearly the Pope did not think that the American idea of religious freedom applied to all peoples. The Pope’s warnings became more pointed when he issued Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae in 1899. Superficially restricting his comments to Cardinal www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 8 Gibbons of Baltimore, the Holy Father clearly wanted the whole American hierarchy to hear. The controversy began with a biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker, a 19thcentury American convert and founder of the Paulists. When Leo saw the French translation of the biography, he became disturbed. Whatever Fr. Hecker’s views actually were, the Holy Father saw–particularly in the book’s preface–a troubling set of views that he characterized as “Americanism,” the first time a Pope had used that term. At its core, the Holy Father noted, Americanism posited a false distinction between the “passive” and “active” virtues. The Holy Father rejected the idea that the “passive” medieval monasteries had had their time “while our age is to be characterized by the active (virtues).” Such a distinction was false anyway because each virtue contributes to the others: ultimately, the “passive” and “active” virtues are indissolubly united. Leading contemporary bishops, like Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop John Ireland of MinneapolisSt. Paul, roundly denied that “Americanism” actually existed in America. They, as well as their later biographers,1 suggested that the Pope had much more concern about such tendencies in the French clergy: after all, Leo, they contended, had reacted to a French translation of Fr. Hecker’s biography. Therefore, “Americanism” was a “phantom” heresy. However, the public statements of Archbishop Ireland consistently radiate Americanist views. In an 1890 essay about Fr. Hecker published in Catholic World, the Archbishop stated: Each century calls for its type of Christian perfection. At one time it was martyrdom; at another it was the humility of the cloister. Today we need the Christian gentleman and the Christian citizen. An honest ballot and social decorum among Catholics will do more for God’s glory and the salvation of souls than midnight flagellations and Compostellan pilgrimages.2 Ireland’s biographer, interestingly, noted that the published essay was “brief and relatively bland” compared to the original version!3 Reduced to a sentence, Gelernter’s theme is: America constitutes a “biblical republic” whose embodied ideals of liberty, equality and democracy represent the deepest yearnings of all mankind. Here follow a few samples of his argument, chronologically arranged. What God first adumbrated to the Old Testament Jews was more fully articulated by 17thcentury New England’s Puritans. The American Revolution, far from reflecting Enlightenment principles, had John Locke who “turned repeatedly to the Bible as an authority” (76) as its fountainhead. Abraham Lincoln shepherded America through the Civil War, Lincoln another Moses with the Americans as Israelites (145): like Moses on Mount Pisgah, the subsequently “martyred” Lincoln could only glimpse the “promised land” of full racial equality. Later Presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman took necessary steps toward global implementation of America’s ideals. Their religiosity laid the foundation for the THE ANGEluS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org luminous League of Nations and its subsequent muscular embodiment, the Truman Doctrine. Bible Christians, which is to say Protestant Christians, need to reclaim the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, both “Judeo-Christian” epiphanies. Gelernter is a Yale University professor of computer science. The book abounds in the errors of scholarship. Professor Gelernter commits the classic mistake of conflating the Old Testament exclusively with the Jews: if a Pilgrim Governor Bradford “is again equating the arrival of Englishmen in Plymouth, Massachusetts, with the Jews in Israel (67),” he is mistaken, and Gelernter should note as much. Catholics cannot state often enough that Moses led the 12 tribes of Israel, not the one tribe of Judah (source of today’s Jews), out of Egyptian captivity.4 A Catholic understanding of the New Testament is not even tacitly acknowledged: Matthew 16:18, a primary verse on behalf of the Papal office (“thou art Peter, and upon this rock”) is yoked to Lincoln’s understanding of the Declaration of Independence. Nor does the historical Church fare any better. Blessed Ramon Lull’s 13th-century guide to chivalrous behavior inculcates the knight as one who must “protect the weak, women, widows and orphans (33-34).” The author globalizes the requirement: “In other words, knights were to make the world (my emphasis) safe for decent people (Ibid).” Gelernter even slips into glib generalizations of entire peoples, my favorite being (Protestant) England’s cultural  The religious idea called “America” is religious insofar as it tells an absolute truth about the meaning of human life, a truth that we must take on faith. superiority to (Catholic) France: “France is the place for good food, England for good men (86)”. A closer view of the work actually does return the Catholic reader to the issue of Americanism. On the book’s back jacket can be found the endorsement of Bill Bennett, a Catholic: “David Gelernter is a national treasure, a patriot-scholar (my emphasis)....The City on a Hill has no greater or more powerful advocate.” In his acknowledgments, Prof. Gelernter thanks another well-known Catholic, Michael Novak: “Novak and Leon Kass...are national treasures of the first order.” He goes on to state that the “work and conversation” of both have “helped me understand America, religion and the Bible (my emphasis)” (ix). Just as one can reasonably conclude that an early 20th-century Archbishop Ireland did espouse Americanist tenets, one more quickly decides that Bill Bennett and Michael Novak possess undiluted Americanist ideas. The very Americanism Ireland denied possessing, Bennet and Novak enthusiastically embrace. A review of Pope Leo’s century-old rejection of Americanism applied to their heartily endorsed The Fourth Great Western Religion is certainly in order. Longinqua Oceani (1895) rejected the idea that America’s government represented the best possible government for Catholics worldwide. In contrast, on page two, the reader encounters the following: What exactly is the American idea of religion? Whatever it is, a 1783 Ezra Stiles sermon makes clear that Catholicism forms no necessary part. He is pleased that the (Catholic) Holy Roman Emperor “ ‘is adopting, as fast as he can, American ideas of toleration and religious liberty’” (85). While Stiles goes on to limit such liberty to varieties of Protestantism, Gelernter provides a 21st-century update: “Yet Americanism is a religion that atheists...can and do profess, ardently” (11). America’s proper religious idea, thus, is religious indifferentism, a doctrine far removed indeed from traditional Catholic teaching: “But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Apoc. 3:16). In contrast to Catholic adherence to the one true Faith, Gelernter proposes a menu of religious preference that can constantly change. Our current President began as an Episcopalian. When nine years later he married a Methodist (Laura), he changed to that religion. Later still he became, or added, bornagain Christianity. Interestingly, Michael Novak himself has had an influence in this context. He taught Gelernter that the Continental Congress added “Supreme Judge” and “divine Providence” to Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence (101): therefore, Gelernter (with Novak’s assistance) concludes, the Declaration is much more religious than commonly depicted. In such a formulation, the concept of religion becomes totally meaningless. That does not matter, however, because the essence of the Americanist God is abstract and consequently susceptible to any formulation today’s American citizen desires. Professor Gelernter believes that America’s religious indifferentism is “an absolute truth,” one appropriate to the entire world. Here, with the assistance of Testem Benevolentiae’s citation of the phony divide between the virtues, one better understands Gelernter’s initially surprising ejection of FDR from the pantheon of great American presidents. The professor consistently embraces the superiority of the “active” virtues. For Gelernter, presidents who energetically promote America’s religious creed get the highest marks. Lincoln, for instance, was great because he knew that America’s drama applied to the whole world. In his first inaugural, the Union president cited the Declaration of Independence as a gift of “liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time” (142). Woodrow Wilson later proved comparably great because he acted after World War I to implement these ideas in the League of Nations: America came into existence, my fellow citizens, in order to show the way to mankind in every part of the world to justice, freedom, and liberty. (156) America then lapsed into the passivity otherwise known as isolationism. For Gelernter, isolationism is always bad: in its 1920s incarnation, the US “shut the windows, pulled down the shades, and went back to www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 30 sleep” (150). Subsequently, a Harry Truman proved a greater president than FDR because he acted while the latter reacted. The Truman Doctrine, superficially restricted to protecting the liberty of Greece and Turkey, applied to everyone in its citation of “everyone’s freedom of speech and religion” (191). In his 1948 recognition of Israel, Truman likened himself to Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem (193). FDR, in contrast, only reacted: the attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s ensuing declaration of war on us meant that “America entered the Second World War because it was pushed” (183). Not even FDR’s successful promotion of the UN can sufficiently compensate to the professor for his earlier passivity. Catholics like Bennett and Novak promote the very Americanism Pope Leo XIII criticized. Unfortunately, the consequences go well beyond policies of war and diplomacy. When Leo XIII rejected virtue’s fragmentation, he reminded us that good action flows from good thought: remove time for contemplation and mere manic activity ensues. Gelernter’s argument illustrates the point all too well. One is not surprised he heartily endorses the “‘gospel of work’; the Lord approved of hard work and successful businesses” (61). Europe in contrast is derided as a place where “it used to be considered admirable to have nothing to do, to enjoy absolute leisure” (ibid). With the medieval monasteries long since dissolved, even leisure and occasional introspection become increasingly rare in a society influenced by such ideas. Perhaps that condition helps account for the author’s consistent support for modern war. Such statistics occasion no pause for serious reappraisal in him. In fact, Gelernter is annoyed at any sustained criticism of modern war. Thus, he sharply criticizes Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial wall because “it buries the honored names in a ditch (meant to suggest a wound or scar)” (151). The author explains that Europe after World War I engaged in just the same sort of self-lacerating criticism through memorials like those at Ypres and the Somme. World War I battlefields were not that bad, he thinks. A Mary McCarthy short story and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (a World War I veteran) are employed toward the same conclusion: “It was possible for a soldier of the Great War to enjoy (author’s emphasis) it” (167). Such blatant Americanism, unwittingly absorbed by American Catholics, will cumulatively obliterate all their Catholic cultural awareness. The Bible itself that Prof. Gelernter cites disappears in verbal mist. The Catholic Bible–as witnessed by the labeling of Machabees as “apocryphal” (34)–shrinks to Protestant dimensions. What remains of sacred Scripture is willfully interpreted. Deuteronomy (1:13), where Moses (not God) decides to choose subordinate officials, becomes a divine mandate in Thomas Hooker’s 1638 Fundamental Orders for Gelernter’s conclusion that: “The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people” (73). A more thorough study of Exodus suggests that Aaron, subservient to the masses THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org in episodes like the golden calf, more truly embodied the “free consent of the people.” The prophet Samuel (28) is later invoked as a relentless critic of monarchy, when closer inspection suggests that it was the people who offended God when they asked Samuel to “make us a king, to judge us, as all nations have” (I Samuel 8:5). Catholic historical consciousness disappears as well. “The English Bible was a needle that punctured the ancient weave of medieval ignorance” (60). Granted such a characterization of the Middle Ages, who could possibly know what St. Jerome did, much less what the Vulgate entailed? Similarly with major episodes in more recent history. Queen Mary I was “Bloody Mary” whose “brutal, beastly persecutions...created a disgust with Catholicism that lingered for centuries” (45). Elizabethan Catholics who died for the Truth at Tyburn disappear into historical oblivion. To be sure, St. Thomas More will probably remain but only within the shackles of the Americanist creed: he died for religious toleration, not the one true Faith. The Jefferson Memorial is a key shrine in the Americanist religion. Inscriptions of his most telling declarations cover the walls of the domed interior. From a 1786 letter to George Washington, one reads: But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered...institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. Consider whom those “barbarous ancestors” included: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, the builders of the Gothic cathedrals, Dante, Giotto, Palestrina, etc. To absorb unheedingly the ideas of a Jefferson is to endanger fatally the truth, goodness and beauty our Faith has brought, and can still bring, to the world. One hopes that a Bill Bennett and a Michael Novak did not have sufficient time to carefully read Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. Possibly, they were too busy in the frantic world that unleashed Americanism has helped bring about to give more than a quick perusal to the work. One sincerely hopes that they, more conversant with the book’s actual contents, will, first, distance themselves from it; and, second, use their considerable influence among fellow Catholics towards reclaiming our faith and heritage. Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (Doubleday, 2007), 230 pages. Mr. Patrick McCarthy received an M.A. in History from George Washington University in 1981. He is a retired high school history teacher with 27 years teaching experience, and resides in Annandale, Virginia. See John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons (1963), and Marvin R. O’Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (1988). 2 O’Connell, 288-289. 3 Idem. 4 United Israel only fragmented into northern Israel and southern Judah (with Benjamin) after the death of King Solomon, over 450 years after Moses. 5 Given Gelernter’s anti-monarchy prejudice, very ironic. 1 31 BooK ReVieW TITLE: One Hundred Years of Modernism: A Genealogy of the Principles of the Second Vatican Council AUTHOR: Fr. Dominic Bourmaud, SSPX PUBLISHER: Angelus Press DISTRIBUTOR: Angelus Press. Price: $17.99 REVIEWER: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski SUMMARY: The history of Modernism up to the Second Vatican Council. Reconstructs a family tree of Vatican II, uncovering the chain of causes that resulted in its novelties. An Everyman’s survey of the history of philosophical ideas from Aristotle to Luther. It shows that modernism reached the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Divided into five periods: Christian Truth, Protestant critical modernism in Germany, modernism in France, neo-modernism in Europe, and triumphant modernism in Rome itself. From here onwards faith in Christ will see the beginning of a movement in which dismembered humanity is gathered together more and more into the being of one single Adam, one single body–the man to come. It will see in him the movement to that future of man in which he is completely “socialized,” incorporated in one single being…Christ, the last man. These words written by the theologian Josef Ratzinger in his 1969 book Einführung in das Christentum (Introduction to Christianity), and never retracted, expressed some 40 years ago what the Catholic Church has been living since Vatican II. We live the dream of Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard’s dream, as articulated in his works, presents for the “sleeping” Church a vision in which mankind will achieve a complete fulfillment of itself by an integration of individual human egos in a final superego. Concretely this “integration” will be achieved when there is a general convergence of all religions into a final, syncretist religion which will represent the final convergence of all religions into a universal Christ satisfying to all parties; such is the only possible conversion of the world and the only conceivable religion of the future. FR. DOMINIC BOURMAUD [say: boor-mo- ´], born in 1958 at Rocheservière, France (in the Vendée region of western France), was ordained a Catholic priest in 1981 for the Society of Saint Pius X. After some years of ministry in Spain, he has taught philosophy and theology in the United States, Argentina, and, currently, Australia. Often when individuals are in a “dream-state,” they know that they are merely dreaming. The judgment that one is in a dream-state necessitates a choice: do you continue to dream or do you try to jar yourself into consciousness of the real. The clear point of Fr. Dominic Bourmaud’s book One Hundred Years of Modernism is to awaken Catholics from a dream that many recognize to be a nightmare. The first step to getting out of a dream is to recognize that one is dreaming. After this comes the choice. The dream metaphor to explain the Modernist crisis in the Catholic Church is apt in light of the fact that it was René Descartes’s example of our frequent inability to distinguish a dream from reality that led him to put all previously gained knowledge under the “doubt.” The only thing we can be certain of–at least during the first stage of philosophical awareness–is that what I know are my own ideas. The question which was to cause the wreck of philosophy in modern times was whether or not those ideas that I was sure that I had, conformed to anything in the external world. Ideas became that which we know, rather than that by which we know things. If what we know are mere subjective ideas–what is to become of that grand www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 32 vision of how things in heaven and earth actually are that we call the Catholic Faith? Can an “idea” be born in a cave at Bethlehem? Die on a cross? If man is relegated to subjective consciousness alone, how can anything be revealed to him? Birth of Classical Realism Fr. Bourmaud begins by tracing the development of what has come to be called the philosophia perennis, the perennial wisdom of the ages, which came to be fully articulated in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. Beginning with the Natural Philosophers who, St. Thomas states, “could not rise beyond their imaginations,” philosophy would leap forward with the identification, by Plato, of essence as that which constituted a thing’s nature and was the source of a being’s knowability. It was the place of Aristotle to philosophically articulate the obvious: essence is not a self-existent reality, as Plato would have it, but rather, an aspect of things–making them be what they are, making them knowable and, hence, subject to human awareness. Here we touch something which is self-evident, but, strangely enough, recently relegated to oblivion. Aristotle realized that when the human mind knew, it was uniting itself to an essence that existed, in a certain way, in the real concrete thing that was encountered in the world of existing things. It was this essence, entertained by the human mind as an intelligible form, which was the bridge between the mind and the concrete world of nature. Since the intellectually entertained form is the same as the essence embodied and individuated in the real thing existing independent of the mind, we can state that the mind knows things as they are. It is not only that the concrete thing outside of the mind was the goal or intentional object of knowledge, an encounter with the concrete thing was necessary to actualize the human potential to know. It was in fact that independence and distinctly objective existence of things that made human knowledge possible. God made man to dwell, knowingly, within a cosmic kingdom of Divine Order and Love. There was one aspect of things which particularly attracted the attention of St. Thomas, the existence of things. As Fr. Bourmaud states in his chapter, “St. Thomas and Dogmatic Theology”: St. Thomas was the first to discover something so naturally evident that it might have been known from the dawn of mankind. He saw that everything was related to being or, more precisely, to the act of being–esse–which defines God perfectly. Revealing His own name to Moses, God said: “I am who am.” Jesus used the same words: “Before Abraham was, I am.”1 It was with this philosophical awareness of the act of existence and with it the accompanying knowledge of God as Existence-Itself, that St. Thomas would create a grand synthesis of human and revealed knowledge, philosophy and theology, in his Summa Theologica. THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org The German Assault on Faith and Reason If Descartes began his philosophical withdrawal from the external world through his own doubt concerning the certainty of his own knowledge, Martin Luther began his withdrawal from objective and “external” religious authority by a very personal reaction to a scrupulous conscience. Since he never “tasted” the perfect purity of grace, he reacted by denying the efficacy of good works. This rejection of the meritorious nature of human actions and his consequent explanation that all human acts are by their very nature sinful, did much to undermine any confidence he might have once had in the ability of the human mind to encounter an objective “external” truth. This withdrawal of Luther into himself was the beginning of the personal withdrawal from the divinely-staged drama of existence that characterizes the entire “modern” period. The interior self created, in Luther’s case, a new theology and Christianity. For such a mind, the stark objectivity of the Catholic scholastic philosophers and theologians could only be seen as a strange venture into the “coldness” of objectivity. Here we have the birth of anti-intellectuality. It will be this antiintellectuality–a rejection of the mind’s true capacity to know the real–that will characterize every stage of the Modernist movement. Moreover, Luther initiated another Modernist attitude that will, also, mark every Modernist mind: the rejection of Scholastic philosophy and theology. According to Luther: It is impossible to reform the Church if Scholastic theology and philosophy are not torn out by the roots….Logic is nowhere necessary in theology because Christ does not need human inventions.2 It took Kant to present a systematic denial of the possibility of knowledge of things-in-themselves. For Kant, things were not things unless they were “thought” by the mind. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says that after his philosophy is accepted–and man recognizes that things conform to his mind rather than the mind conforming to things–“mankind will no longer be led around by the apron strings of nature.” If nature and reality are only nature and reality in so far as they are thought by man, then it is a small step to Hegel’s divinization of human thought. Man’s thought becomes the “absolute.” What is truly amazing about the beginnings of Modernism, as presented in One Hundred Years of Modernism, is the egotism of the leaders of the movement. From Luther insisting that “the angels themselves cannot judge my doctrine,” to Kant’s belief that he had permanently liberated man from external nature, to Hegel’s assumption that Absolute Spirit had achieved its fulfillment in his own thought, we perceive the arrogance of the Modernist personality. 33 From Oxymoron to Movement If the “Catholic” Charismatic Movement had its source in an outbreak of “speaking in tongues” at a Protestant fundamentalist church in Topeka, Kansas, so too the clergymen who generated “Catholic” Modernism first took their inspiration from sources equally alien to the Catholic mind and sensibility. For their view of revelation, Scripture, and dogma they looked to the 19th-century German Liberal Protestant exegetes and theologians Strauss, Schleiermacher, and Bultmann. For their understanding of conscious “reality” they looked to the French Jewish philosopher Henri Bergson. Of the primary “Catholic” Modernists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the life and thinking of Fr. Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) is the most characteristic. His trek from rural French farm boy to secular excommunicated professor at the College of France, from simple piety and faith to a pantheistic worshipper of humanity, tells us much about the natural intellectual trajectory of Modernistic notions. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili, listed 65 errors of the primary Modernist thinkers, 50 of them were taken from the writings of Loisy. As is normally the case with those who end up ejecting Church authority and infallible dogma, Fr. Alfred Loisy began his departure from orthodoxy with good motives in mind. He was under obedience to his superior at the Catholic Institute of Paris, Louis Duchesne, when he was instructed to study the works of the agnostic French sceptic Renan in order to better refute his errors. This study, along with his increasing familiarity with the French Liberalism (i.e., embrace the Revolution) and his conversion to the radical mancentered position of Kant, caused the young priest and scholar, by 1886, to view the Catholic Faith as an obstacle to the intellectual development of humanity. Loisy began to read Sacred Scripture according to the requirements of skeptical German exegetical technique and subjectivist philosophical presuppositions. What he ended up with was an understanding of the Sacred Scriptures as latent with mythological additions to the basic story of the “empirical” life of Christ. It was the evolving consciousness of, shall we say, the “People of God,” which produced the Jesus Christ of the Gospel account and of Catholic dogma that we now have it. Having “debunked” the account of Our Lord as given to the Church by Scripture and dogmatic Tradition, Loisy, after the condemnation by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili in 1907 and his own excommunication in 1908, the Jesuit George Tyrell, in a worship of Humanity–an abstraction that is truly “inhuman” for concrete man, along with being idolatrous. To quote Auguste Comte, whose religion of Humanity Loisy sought to revive at the College de France after the excommunication, “The great notion of Humanity…will eventually and irrevocably eliminate that of God.”3 Note, if we start viewing God and mankind as mere “notions,” Comte is probably right! To understand how low the Modernist mind can fall, including the minds of those souls that have been dedicated and consecrated to His service, we only need to read the disparaging remarks of Fr. George Tyrell, S.J., concerning the “modern irrelevance” of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Revelation: Are we to frame our minds to that of a first-century Jewish carpenter, for whom more than half the world and nearly the whole of its history did not exist; to whom the stellar universe was unknown; who cared nothing for art or science or history or politics or nine-tenths of the interests of humanity but solely for the kingdom of God and His righteousness?4 The Church as Super-Ego Any Catholic who believes that Modernism was some arcane problem dealt with a long time ago by St. Pius X and having little relevance in today’s “conservative” post-John Paul II Church, needs to read Part V of Fr. Bourmaud’s book, which includes such chapters as, “Vatican II: The Ecumenical Revolution”; “Paul VI: The Gravedigger of Tradition”; “The NonHistorical Gospel According to Ratzinger” (written prior to Josef Ratzinger’s accession to the papacy); and, finally, “Another Paul: John Paul II.” After reading these chapters, every Catholic trying to be faithful to what every authentic Catholic has always been faithful to will realize that the question for our own juncture in the Modernist crisis is not whether or not things are beginning to look similar to what the Church has always done, but rather, whether the doctrine being taught is similar to what has been taught semper et ubique (always and everywhere). When reading this book, we must not neglect the somewhat difficult chapter on Karl Rahner. Here we see Modernism not only attempting to transform the meaning of the Church and the Redemption, but much more, we find an “anthropological inversion” in which God requires man in order to attain His Trinitarian existence. Can there be any difference starker, from a religion that speaks of man needing God, even for his basic act of existence, to a religion of God needing man in order that He be Son and Holy Ghost. As Bucer promised, “Take away St. Thomas and I will dismantle the Church!” Let us all use our Catholic egos to fight against absorption into the super-ego of global Modernism. Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and another in Philosophy from Christendom College. He also received his master’s degree and doctorate in Philosophy from Fordham University. He and his wife Kathleen are the parents of six children. He teaches at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, and for the Society of Saint Pius X at Immaculate Conception Academy, Post Falls, Idaho. 1 Fr. Dominic Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism: A Genealogy of the Principles of the Second Vatican Council, translated by Brian Sudlow and Ann Marie Temple (Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 2006), p.37. 2 Ibid., p.54. Citation comes from Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), pp.30-34. 3 Ibid., p.125, Note 13. 4 See, George Tyrell, Christianity at the Crossroads (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), p.270. Cited in Bourmaud, p.138. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 34 C h i l t o n W i l l i a m s o n , J r . Think More, Communicate Less A coffeehouse at the close of the 1600’s. Note the papers on the table in the foreground and the tables in the rear devoted to conversations on different subjects. For as long as democracy has existed in the modern world, universal edu­cation and rapid mass communica­tion have been highly regarded in democratic societies. An educated people, democrats have assumed, is a people capable of informing and gov­erning itself. And a society in close and regular communication with its own citizens, and with foreign soci­eties, will be tolerant of itself and of its neighbors, near or distant. Thus, expectations for modern systems of mass communication have tradition­ally been high. Progress in creating and perfecting a global communi­cations system would expand hu­manity’s self-knowledge and mental reach to nearly godlike proportions, while bringing all nations and peo­ples together in a spirit of amity and forbearance. But as the achievement of universal education, where it has been accomplished, has resulted in universal semiliteracy and semi-ig­norance, the realization of efficient global communication has created widespread mental confusion, in­duced national paralysis alternating with periods of hyperactivity and bel­licosity, and aggravated international tensions. Since the invention of the telegraph and the tabloid press in the 19th century, mass communica­tion has made the world increasing­ly unintelligible, unmanageable, and ungovernable. THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org After the yellow press, the radio; after the radio, television; after the airwaves and the cables, the satel­ lites. And now, the personal com­puter, the newest and most efficient of an increasingly destructive and disruptive line of idiot boxes, and the Internet. In Liberty and the News, published in 1920, Walter Lippmann observed that The world about which each man is supposed to have opin­ions has become so complicat­ed as to defy his powers of un­derstanding. What he knows of events that matter enormous­ly to him, the purposes of gov­ernment, the aspirations of peoples, the struggle of class­es, he knows at second, third, or fourth hand. He cannot go and see for himself. Even the things that are near to him have be­come too involved for his judg­ment. In everyman’s attempt to under­stand that world better, Lippmann charged, the newspapers (still syn­onymous in those days with what we now call the media) were more of a hindrance than a help. This was the result, he asserted, of the haphazard and confused means by which reporters gathered and re­ported the news and editors decided what articles (dealing usually with highly complex subjects) to print and what prominence to give them. A further consideration was what tired and distracted readers made of the news the papers fed to them. Any trial lawyer who understood the business of giving and e 35 taking evidence, Lippmann noted, would recognize instantly the problem of dealing with “facts” presented in such a fashion. Moreover, to pursue the metaphor, The jury is the whole com­munity, not even the quali­fied voters alone. The jury is everybody who creates public sentiment–chattering gossips, unscrupulous liars, congeni­tal liars, feeble-minded people, prostitute minds, corrupting agents. To this jury any testi­mony is submitted, is submit­ ted in any form, by any anon­ymous person, with no test of reliability, no test of credibility, Lippmann, conceding that the problem was a vast and vastly com­plicated one, made no pretense of of­fering a solution, though he did make suggestions. One was for the self-re­form of the news business before the voters demanded action by the gov­ernment against the press. Another was for greater integrity on the part of individual newsmen. A third was for professionalization of the indus­try, in part through the establishment of schools of journalism. This latter suggestion has since been acted up­on, to no great effect. Eighty-eight years after Lippmann’s little book, print journalism and journalists are more dishonest and incompetent than ever, while the media as a whole–—print, television, radio–have largely become an extension of the entertain­ment industry, illustrating the truth of the maxim that no problem is ever solved but simply fades away, having been turned into, or replaced by, an­other problem. Today, the Internet is popularly ac­knowledged as the summa scientiae. In truth, it is the ultimate facilitator, if not always the purveyor, of mass ig­norance, mental and emotional dis­traction, illiteracy, relativism, solip­sism, the retreat from society, and the withdrawal from reality. As with ra­dio and television, it is possible to “communicate” for 12 or 16 hours per day over the Internet without ev­er writing anything worth saying, or reading anything worth knowing. The computer-Internet combination is a prayer answered for people who wish to communicate without thought and are eager to do so without ascertaining the identity of their partners. The Internet, its enthusiasts claim, by virtue of its unimaginable extension in cyberspace, delivers the universe to our desktop and makes all intelligible. Instead, the opposite is true. Whether one views it as an educational resource or as a mode of unlimited communi­cation, the Internet lacks the curricu­lum that is essential for learning and knowledge. As Churchill would have said, it is a pudding without a theme. The Internet is more shapeless than any splashedout galaxy, and, being formless itself, it is incapable of com­municating form. Imagine download­ing the entire contents of the web, printing it out in hard copy, and bind­ing it into a single book–or a series of volumes composing one book. The re­sult would be a work of the most com­plete chaos, quite unlike the library at Alexandria or the British Museum. Indeed, the Internet is chaos: It is sim­ply that we cannot see the formless wood because we are capable of view­ing only a single disconnected twig­ or website at a time. The Internet makes the world unintelligible in a way that disorganizes and demoraliz­es both the individual and the collec­tive mind, as simple ignorance could not possibly do. Besides the absence of a curricu­lum, the Internet’s other great fault is its want of intellectual authority. Neither its contents nor the sources of that content have been verified by anyone with the competence to re­view and examine them. Moreover, if competent reviewers were available for the job, they would not be con­sulted, since it is precisely freedom from every and all authority upon which the Internet’s populist appeal as a mode of communication is based. The Internet knows no rules or stan­dards. Not the blogs, chat rooms, and interactive websites merely, but the majority of what appears “in print” on the web is enough to make the most wary and resentful professional au­thor, veteran of a score of skirmish­es with his publishers, long for the overbearing exertions of a New York editor with his fat blue pencil. The Internet, which is writer, typewriter, editor, publisher, publicity manager, distributor, and retailer all in one, en­courages writing without reflection and careful research, facile thought and prose over mastery of subject and skillful expression. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the land of the Internet, the man with no mind is one emperor among mil­lions of emperors–an imaginary man wearing real clothes, usually a sweat­shirt, jeans, and sneakers. The web is the fully realized domain of the Last Man. It is democracy raised to the nth power, democracy ad absurdum. This is why the Internet is an object of idol­atry, like democracy itself. It is democ­ racy as it can never be attained in the real world. Quite naturally, this virtu­al democracy of the ether is based not on fact but on opinion. [M]en who have lost their grip upon the relevant facts of their environment are the inevitable victims of agitation and propa­ganda. The quack, the charla­tan, the jingo, and the terrorist can flourish only where the au­dience is deprived of indepen­dent access to information. But where all news comes at sec­ond-hand, where all the testi­mony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. Walter Lippmann, in seeking to describe the public press of his day, might have been looking forward to the Internet, which, so far from me­liorating or obviating the faults of its predecessor, has aggravated them ex­ponentially. Like the newspaper, but far more convincingly, the Internet creates the illusion that it delivers the world to the subscriber’s home or desktop, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” hav­ing been replaced with a virtual real­ity more intense, satisfying, and com­plete than its wan, open-air original. Tocqueville noted during his stay in America that Americans, in the ab­sence of a meeting to address, would button-hole individual fellow citi­zens to deliver a political harangue in which they frequently www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 36 addressed their audience of one as “gentlemen.” The Americans, Tocqueville report­ed–not entirely approbatively–talk­ed of almost nothing but politics and read almost nothing but newspapers. In modern America, newspaper sub­scriptions have been declining for decades, and political conversation in public has become a rarity, save among groups of safely likeminded people. Television news is a bland wasteland, where frankness, honesty, and truth itself are avoided as being “controversial” and “divisive.” And so we have the Internet, where ex­pression is (so far) unregulated, like-­minded correspondents are easy to find, and the option of prudent ano­nymity is available. But cyberspace is hardly a satisfac­tory substitute for the coffeehouse, the tavern, the marketplace, the general store, the town hall, the local newspa­per office, the workplace, the court­house, or the hustings. We may infer from the 19th-century American novel that a great many politically conscious Americans of the era were boors. It re­quires no inference at all to recognize that their contemporary counterparts, the bloggers, are simply nerds, intel­lectually onanistic freaks who couldn’t for the life of them carry a meeting, make a compelling speech, or bring their audience to its feet, let alone hold a satisfying political conversation. (It may be telling in this respect that In­ternet writers, in attempting to dis­cuss even the most serious subjects, cultivate an aggressively conversa­tional style that includes such inar­ticulate ejaculations as um and ah.) Lippmann was only anticipating the Internet writers of the 21st century when he wrote: The environment in which they act is not the realities them­ selves, but the pseudo-environ­ment of reports, rumors, and guesses. The whole reference of thought comes to be what somebody asserts, not what ac­tually is. Lippmann recognized further that a culture of opinion is a culture that encourages false hopes, irrational ex­citements, and belligerent instincts. As the recent history of the United States–and that of many other coun­tries–shows, this belligerency may exert itself equally in the domestic and in the international arenas. Thus, strong support among many Repub­ licans and others for the Bush ad­ministration’s attempt to subvert the Constitution by making the execu­tive branch more equal than the two other equal branches of the federal government comports with their en­thusiasm for the administration’s ar­rogant military and diplomatic aggres­sion abroad. So much for mass communication’s contribution to intelligibility and do­mestic peace. What has it accom­ plished in helping to make the world less chaotic and more governable? The perennial liberal view, originat­ ing in the mists of that philosophy’s history, is that to know the other is to like, or at least to tolerate, him. In fact, a major lesson of human history in the era of mass instant communications is that to learn about the stranger is to discover that he is intrinsically your enemy as well. Pierre Manent, the contemporary French political phi­losopher, puts the matter somewhat THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org differently. “[C]ommunication,” he says, “does not produce community.” Rather, it produces contempt, enmity, strife among the peoples of the world. By way of example, Manent offers the attacks of September 11, 2001, against the United States by terrorists from Saudi Arabia, long an “ally” of Wash­ington. This is not an argument cal­culated to please Francis Fukuyama, but it certainly seems one that Samuel P Huntington would endorse. Communication with the strang­er entails serious risks, whether the impressions created through repeat­ed contact are favorable or not so fa­vorable. For example, the majority of Muslims in the Middle East and northeast Africa clearly have failed to be impressed by what they have seen of Americans and American popular culture either at first hand, through personal contact with American troops, or electronically, via American television, films, and music. While Washington’s uncritical support of Is­rael during the last half-century was the proximate motive for the attacks on September 11, the perception by Middle Eastern Muslims of the Unit­ed States as the Great Satan was the broader one. Muslim activists think they know the enemy from what they have learned of him from television and Hollywood movies, and they are eager for jihad to remove the abomi­ nation from the face of the earth. On the other hand, intercultural commu­nication that creates an enviable im­pression of the United States abroad frequently inspires a determina­tion among foreigners to emigrate to America, and even to invade it. Thus admiration, as well as hatred, often injects resentment and enmity, rath­er than comity and community, into international relations. Global communications are a con­stant and ubiquitous goad to ill-feel­ing and strife, at home and abroad. Instantaneous news reports are a curse laid on humanity by Mars or the Devil, or both. There is much to be said for what we moderns would think of as stale news–news re­ceived, as Americans in the days of the early Republic received it, three or four weeks after the event, a de­lay that allowed for the slowing, even the avoidance, of the chain reaction typical of the modern era. Instan­taneous news produces a nearly in­stantaneous response, and so the se­quence of human events has been greatly, and disastrously, accelerated in the last century and a half. Nowadays, thanks to mass commu­nications and international travel, we all know far too much about one an­other than is good for any of us, and we are far too much in touch, mentally as well as physically speaking. Appar­ently, we like it that way. “I communicate; therefore, I am.–Communico, ergo sum.” Chilton Williamson Jr. is senior editor at Chronicles and the author of Mexico Way, a novel to be published in Spring. He may be reached at: chiltonwilliamson.com. This article, used with permission, originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. To subscribe to Chronicles, call 800-877-5459. PART 10 F r . M a t t h i a s 37 G a u d r o n Our serialization continues with the chapter of the Cathechism devoted to questions of civil society. The debate about religious liberty is further explored with an analysis of the additional development of ecumenism. Catechism Of the Crisis In the Church 40) Isn’t religious freedom a result of man’s freedom? Freedom is not an absolute value. It was given to man so that he might freely choose the good. That he might choose evil is only a consequence, and at the same time an abuse, of this freedom. More precisely: freedom was not given to man so that he might choose between good and evil, but so that he could freely direct himself towards the good. l Why did God give man freedom? Freedom of the will is a consequence of reason; it is necessary for man to be able to love God (which creatures without reason cannot do). It thus confers on men a great dignity that places them well above creatures without reason. l Doesn’t freedom imply the power to do evil? In the actual state of things, for man freedom implies the ability to do evil, but not the right (a murderer does not have a right to kill his neighbor). A man who chooses evil abuses his freedom. l For man, what is the rule of good and evil? Is it his conscience? It is true that man must act according to his conscience, but he first has the duty to enlighten it, because the conscience is not the ultimate criterion of good and evil: it is only an intermediary transmitting an obligation that does not depend on it. l Can a man incur guilt by following his conscience? Yes, a man can be guilty though he follow his conscience–guilty, not because he follows his conscience, but because he previously warped it (for example, a doctor who persuaded himself that abortion is not a crime), or because he was negligent in forming it correctly in the first place (for example, an unbeliever who was never concerned about religious truth). l Cannot a man have a warped conscience without it being his fault? Yes, a man can have an erroneous conscience about something or other (believe that a bad action is good) without it being his fault. In such a case one speaks of an invincibly erroneous conscience (or of a person in www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 38 a state of invincible ignorance). In this case, ignorance prevents the man from being guilty, but the action remains bad in itself. l Must the State respect such a person’s conscience? Let’s suppose that a murderer is subjectively innocent because his false religion inculcated in him the conviction that murder is licit in certain conditions. Yet this subjective conviction does not give him an objective right: the policeman who stops him from carrying out his act does not commit an injustice. Someone who would affirm that murder is certainly bad, but that the murderer has, because of his human dignity, a right not to be prevented from killing would be called crazy. l Who maintains such a thing? This is just about what Dignitatis Humanae claims. This document indeed teaches that all men have the duty to seek the truth and to receive it, but it adds that if someone, knowingly or unknowingly, adheres to error, he has a right not to be prevented from acting in accordance with the error, in the name of his human dignity. l Does not someone who is mistaken in good faith deserve a certain indulgence? Someone who is mistaken in good faith no doubt deserves to be treated with charity and prudence, but he does not thereby acquire a right to disseminate his error. A food distributor would never have a right to distribute products dangerous to health under the pretext that he is acting in good faith. Likewise, religious error being deadly to souls, it is normal for the State to prevent its propagation. l Is the diffusion of heresy a great evil? The Church rightly considers the diffusion of heresy as murder committed against souls. 41) Did the new liturgy keep the Feast of Christ the King? The new doctrine introduced by Vatican II is translated into the liturgy: in the new missal (1969) the Feast of Christ the King was moved from the last Sunday of October to the last Sunday of the liturgical year in order to signify that the reign of Christ the King will not come until the end of time and that it cannot (or must not) be accomplished at present. They removed from the hymn for the Vespers of this feast the three stanzas which speak of Christ’s reign over society: Scelesta turba clamitat Regnare Christum nolumus Te nos ovantes omnium Regem supremum dicimus. Though evil crowds cry once again With frenzied will, “Christ shall not reign,” Yet our exulting voices sing, And hail Thee, universal King. THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org Te nationum præsides Honore tollant publico Colant magistri, judices Leges et artes exprimant. The rulers of the nations all Shall at Thy feet adoring fall, All judges magnify Thy name, All laws and arts show forth Thy fame. Submissa regum fulgeant Tibi dicata insignia Mitique sceptro patriam Domosque subde civium. Let kingly crowns more glorious shine When consecrated, Lord, as Thine: Place Thou our land and homes today Beneath Thy mild and gracious sway. l Why did the Church’s authorities denature the Feast of Christ the King in this way? Lex orandi, lex credendi, the saying goes. The formulas of prayer are also the expression of the faith. Now, religious freedom is in total opposition to the principles formerly professed by the Church. That is why the promoters of religious liberty cannot invoke in their favor either Sacred Scripture or the Tradition of the Church. It was always the enemies of the Church (heretics, rationalists, the “Enlightenment” philosophers, Freemasons, etc.) who clamored for religious liberty.1 l Is Vatican II explicitly opposed to the social reign of Christ? Dignitatis Humanae completely ignores Christ the King; given the subject being spoken of, it is a very serious omission. The text does not forbid States to profess Catholicism (that would be too contrary to Tradition), but it gives no encouragement whatsoever. It merely tolerates the public profession of the Catholic religion on the same basis as that of false religions.2 In practice, since 1965, the Vatican has worked at the suppression of Catholic States.3 l What was the Church’s conduct in this regard before Vatican II? As soon as the Church obtained her freedom [Edict of Milan, A.D. 313], she exhorted the kings and princes, especially if they were Christians, to protect and defend the true religion. In mission lands, she principally strove to win over the princes to the Catholic Faith in order to facilitate the establishment of a society permeated with the Christian spirit. 42) What are the consequences of religious liberty? The first consequence of the religious liberty preached by Vatican II was that the States that were still officially Catholic had to change their constitutions. Thus religious freedom led to the laicization of the State and an ever-widening dechristianization of society. Since the same rights are given to erroneous beliefs, the true faith is disappearing more and more. Man who, because of his fallen nature, generally tends to follow the path of least resistance, needs the help of Catholic institutions. In a society marked by the Catholic Faith, more men will save their souls than in a society where religion is a 39 private affair and the true Church must exist side by side with innumerable sects possessing the same rights. l Which countries had to change their constitutions following Vatican II? A characteristic example is that of Colombia. The population of this country was 98% Catholic, and the Catholic religion was the only one officially recognized by the Constitution. The president, reluctantly, had to yield to the pressure exerted by the Vatican in the name of the Council, and to change the Constitution, which was done on July 12, 1973. About the same time, the Protestant sects, financially supported by the United States, set out to conquer Latin America. Today, the country is overrun by the sects. Some towns have more Protestant temples than Catholic churches.4 l Has the Council’s religious freedom been imposed on other countries? Two Swiss cantons, the Tessin and the Valais, under pressure from the Apostolic Nuncio, also had to change their constitutions.5 In Italy, a new concordat was signed on February 11, 1984: the false religions obtained equal treatment with the Church, etc.6 It is Rome that has demanded these changes! l Can you give a final example? The case of Spain is particularly interesting because the concordat signed on August 27, 1953, between Spain and the Holy See was considered by Pius XII as a model of its kind. The first article began like this: “The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion continues to be the religion of the Spanish nation.” The concordat ratified the Fuero de los Espagnoles [the Spanish Charter] of July 13, 1945, whose Article 6 was particularly clear: The profession and practice of the Catholic religion, which is that of the Spanish State, will enjoy official protection. No one shall be disturbed for his religious beliefs or the private exercise of his religion. There is no authorization for external ceremonies or manifestations other than those of the Catholic religion.7 l What happened after 1965? The Declaration Dignitatis Humanae openly contradicted this Article 6. Under Vatican pressure, in 1967 Spain granted liberty to other religions, explicitly citing Vatican II: After this declaration of the Council, the necessity arose of modifying Article 6 of the Spaniards’ Charter in virtue of the aforementioned principle of the Spanish State. This is why the organic law of the State dated 10 January 1967 has modified the aforementioned Article 6 as follows: “The profession and practice of the Catholic religion, which is that of the Spanish State, enjoys official protection. The State guarantees the protection of religious liberty, which shall be guaranteed by an effective juridical provision which will safeguard morals and public order.” l What does the example of Spain show? Spain’s example shows the flagrant contradiction between the traditional doctrine and that of Vatican II, since what was praised before 1965 became worthy of condemnation immediately afterwards. l What does the application of the Vatican II document on religious freedom prove? The years following Vatican II have shown the truth of Leo XIII’s statement that religious liberty necessarily leads to immorality. In formerly Catholic countries, it is not only faith that has disappeared, but also Christian morality. Marriages fail, families break up, criminality rises, and one can scarcely find anyone willing to exercise authority. Anyone taking a candid look at things today has to recognize that our society is descending into chaos. The situation will never really change until society once again recognizes Christ as its King and refuses to give free rein to error. For, as Cardinal Pie stated, “When He does not reign by the benefits attached to His presence, He reigns by the calamities inseparable from His absence.”9 43) What is meant by ecumenism? The word ecumenism designates the movement that arose in the 19th century among non-Catholics, the goal of which was to foster the reconciliation and collaboration of the various Christian confessions. This movement led to the foundation of the World Council of Churches in 1948.10 The same ambition subsequently led to a movement of mutual understanding with nonChristian religions. This is what is called interreligious dialogue. l Where does the term ecumenism come from? “Ecumenical” means “universal.” Fr. Charles Boyer, S.J., explains: The renewed use of the word ecumenism is due to the fact that the Protestants, desiring to designate a universality and finding the word catholic already employed by the Roman Church, chose its equivalent: ecumenical.11 l Why did the Protestants feel the need to work towards the unity of Christians? Having rejected the authority of the Church’s teaching authority, or magisterium, which alone can guarantee unity in the true faith, the Protestants very rapidly split into countless sects and confessions. To preserve some credibility and retain their members drawn by Catholic unity (the threefold unity of faith, worship, and government), they needed to find a way to unite in a different manner: the ecumenical movement was born. It must be noted that this modification had been approved by the Hoy See before publication.8 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • March 2008 40 l What was the Church’s attitude towards the ecumenical movement? In the beginning, the Catholic Church clearly kept its distance. It was only during Vatican II that ecumenism officially entered the Church. l Did Vatican II treat of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue? Vatican II consecrated a special decree to ecumenism, called Unitatis Redintegratio. It also promulgated the Declaration Nostra Aetate, which treats of the relations of the Church with the non-Christian religions. l Where can one find the veritable Catholic position on ecumenism? The true Catholic position on ecumenism is expressed in the Encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928). In it, its author, Pope Pius XI, describes the efforts of the “ecumenists” in a way that remains pertinent: Assured that there exist few men who are entirely devoid of the religious sense, they seem to ground on this belief a hope that all nations, while differing indeed in religious matters, may yet without great difficulty be brought to fraternal agreement on certain points of doctrine which will form a common basis of the spiritual life. With this object, congresses, meetings, and addresses are arranged, attended by a large concourse of hearers, where all without distinction, unbelievers of every kind as well as Christians, even those who unhappily have rejected Christ and denied His divine nature or mission, are invited to join in the discussion.12 l How did Pius XI judge these ecumenical activities? He continues: Now, such efforts can meet with no kind of approval among Catholics. They presuppose the erroneous view that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as all give expression, under various forms, to that innate sense which leads men to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Those who hold such a view are not only in error; they distort the true idea of religion, and thus reject it, falling gradually into naturalism and atheism....13 l How does the Pope conclude? He concludes: To favor this opinion, therefore, and to encourage such undertakings is tantamount to abandoning the religion revealed by God.14 44) What judgment in keeping with the Catholic Faith should we make of ecumenism? Since the Catholic Church is the only Church founded by Christ and the sole possessor of the fullness of truth, the unity of Christians can only be reestablished by the conversion and return to its bosom of all the separated brethren and communities. Such is the teaching of Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos: THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org There is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it; for far from that one true Church they have in the past fallen away.15 This judgment is simply the logical consequence of the Church’s claim to alone possess the truth, for there can only be true religious unity in the true faith. l Before Vatican II, was the Church disinterested in the separated communities? The Church has always striven to bring the members of separated Christian communities to the unity of the Mystical Body. More often its efforts were brought to bear upon individuals, but sometimes, too, upon entire separated communities. During the Councils of Lyons (1245 and 1274) and of Florence (1439), for instance, the hierarchy was intent upon restoring the union of the Eastern schismatics separated from the Church since 1054. In 1869, while convoking the first Vatican Council, Pope Pius IX invited the separated Christians to put an end to the schism and to return to the bosom of the Church;16 Leo XIII addressed a similar appeal to all the Christian confessions in 1894.17 l How did these initiatives differ from today’s ecumenism? These initiatives differed from current ecumenism because they were accompanied by the firm conviction that it is not up to the Church to change, but to those who are separated from it. The Church was always ready to facilitate their return, but never at the expense of faith. 45) What is the new conception of ecumenism? At Vatican II, the Church adopted a new attitude corresponding to a new doctrine. The Catholic Church is no longer presented as the unique religious society leading to salvation; the other Christian confessions, and even the non-Christian religions, are considered as other expressions (undoubtedly less perfect, but nevertheless valid) of the divine religion, paths really leading to God and eternal salvation. It is no longer question of the conversion of non-Catholics to the Catholic Church, but of dialogue and religious pluralism. l Can you give an example of this new attitude? The Decree on Ecumenism uses the word “Church” (in the plural) to designate the other Christian communities, whereas previously this had always been avoided. When “Churches” were spoken of, local Churches were meant, like the Church (that is to say, the diocese) of Lyons or Milan. 41 l Wasn’t the word “Church” used to designate the Eastern schismatics? The word “Church” was sometimes used broadly to designate the schismatic confessions that have conserved the apostolic succession and all the sacraments, but it was firm teaching that there is only one Church in the strict sense, because our Lord has only one Spouse. The heretical dissidents received the name of confessions or communities, but they were not ascribed the title of Church. Today, however, this has become completely common. l What is the theological foundation of this new attitude? The theological foundation of this new attitude has already been indicated in Question 29: it is the “subsistit in” of Lumen Gentium.18 Instead of saying that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church, the document of Vatican II says that the Church of Christ “subsists in” [subsistit in] the Catholic Church.19 l Why did Vatican II introduce the expression “subsistit in”? By the expression subsistit in, Vatican Council II posits a distinction between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church (whereas for traditional theology, these two terms are synonymous: The Church of Christ, that is to say the supernatural society founded by our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of mankind, is the Catholic Church.) 1 The high Freemasonic dignitary Yves Marsaudon, 33rd degree, minister of the Supreme Council of France of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) in his book Ecumenism Seen by a Freemason of Tradition [French] (Paris: Vitiano, 1964), p.121, speaks of religious liberty as “the revolution desired by John XXIII.” He insisted: “One can truly speak of a revolution” that “originating in our Masonic lodges, wonderfully extended to the dome of St. Peter’s.” 2 Vatican II is content to say: “If, in view of peculiar circumstances obtaining among peoples, special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional order of society, it is at the same time imperative that the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom should be recognized and made effective in practice” (DH 6). 3 Moreover, Vatican II intends to forbid any discrimination based on religion, going so far as to put it on the same level as discrimination because of race, color, or class: “The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion” (Nostra Aetate, §5. See also Dignitatis Humanae, §7). 4 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, L’Eglise infiltrée par le modernisme (BroûtVernet: Fideliter, 1993), pp.111-13. 5 See Documentation Catholique, 1653 (May 5, 1974). 6 See Documentation Catholique, 1872 (April 15, 1984); Romano Amerio, Iota Unum (Sarto House, 1996), pp.167-72. 7 See Documentation Catholique, 948 (September 30, 1945), p.691 [our emphasis]. 8 See Michael Davies, “Dignitatis Humanae and Spain,” The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty (Neumann Press, 1992), pp.275-82. 9 Cardinal Pie, Discourse at Chartres, April 11, 1858, Oeuvres Épiscopales, I, 84. 10 This Council defines itself as “a community of Churches that recognizes Christ as God and Savior.” The religious denominations which belong to l What exactly does the expression “subsistit in” mean for Vatican II? Vatican II indeed is willing to admit that the Church of Christ has its perfect realization (its “subsistence”) in the Catholic Church,20 but it conveys the idea that it is not identical to the Catholic Church: the Church of Christ would extend beyond it, imperfectly, thanks to “elements of the Church” present in other Christian confessions. l Is this really the correct interpretation of the “subsistit in”? This interpretation was officially confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Declaration Dominus Jesus of August 6, 2000: With the expression subsistit in, the Second Vatican Council sought to harmonize two doctrinal statements: on the one hand, that the Church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand, that “outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth,”21 that is, in those Churches and ecclesial communities which are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church. (Question 44 will be continued next month) 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. it remain independent. The Council has no authority over them; they can accept or reject its decision as they wish. It is no longer necessary for each of its members to recognize the other communities as Churches in the strict sense. The Catholic Church is not a Member of the WCC, even if it has moved closer to it. 11 Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, s.v. “Christian Ecumenism” [French]. In its primary meaning, the word ecumenical (“universal”) was used to designate the general councils of the Church, distinguishing them from particular councils (see Q.19 of this Catechism, The Angelus, July 2007, pp.13-15). Today the word has acquired a new meaning. 12 Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos (January 6, 1928), §2 [English version: Angelus Press, 1998]. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., §15. 16 Pius IX, Letter Iam Vos Omnes (September 13, 1868). 17 Leo XIII, Letter Præclara Gratulationis (June 20, 1894). 18 See the November 2007 issue of The Angelus, pp.35-38. It should be remembered that father of the expression “subsistit in” is a Protestant: Pastor Wilhelm Schmidt. 19 Vatican II, Constitution Lumen Gentium on the Church, I, 8. The same expression is employed in the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae §1: “We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church.” 20 Note 56 of the Declaration Dominus Jesus (August 6, 2000) specifies that the Church of Christ only has this concrete realization (has its “subsistence”) in the Catholic Church. 21 Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, §8; see John Paul II, Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, §13. See also Lumen Gentium, §15 and the decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, §3. 42 F R . p e t e r What is meant by the expression “sensus fidei”? This expression is not properly speaking theological, nor is it consequently precisely defined. However, it is used to mean a “way of thinking that is governed by the truths of the Faith.” It is in this sense that it is used, for example, by Archbishop Lefebvre, when speaking of the Novus Ordo Missae and how it is rejected as by a kind of supernatural instinct by those who still think as the Church has always thought, governed by the principles of the Faith. Allow me to quote the following text, written by Archbishop Lefebvre for the Cor Unum newsletter on February 16, 1980 (§269): We had always said that we consider the Novus Ordo Missae to be dangerous for the faith of both priests and faithful, and that, consequently, it was inconceivable to group and form young aspirants to the priesthood around this new altar. The facts prove us to be right. The sensus fidei of the faithful, there where it is not yet corrupt, gives us total approval… Understood in this sense, the “spirit of the Faith” is directly analogous to St. Ignatius’ Rules for Thinking with the Church. These 18 rules contained in the book of the exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are a treasure, a summary of the attitudes, convictions, way of thinking that characterize the profoundly supernatural man, who is penetrated by the principles of the Faith. They describe perfectly well the sense of the Faith, as being a spirit of submission to the Church’s judgment and way of thinking, and include such things as the praising of frequent sacramental Confession and Holy Communion, the frequent assistance at Mass, the recitation of long prayers and the Divine Office, the religious life and its three vows, the relics of the saints and their veneration, the precepts of the Church and acts of exterior and interior penance, the veneration of sacred images and so on. It follows from this that a person can have the Faith, without the “spirit of the Faith”. For the Catholic Faith itself is destroyed only by formal heresy, the pertinacious denial of a revealed dogma. However, the spirit of the Faith is lost by any way of thinking that is contrary to the Church’s way of thinking, that does not take into account divine revelation and supernatural Truth. This is particularly the case of the modernists and those who promote the New Mass. They are not, in general, heretics, and are careful not to deny a defined dogma of Faith. However, little by little the assistance at the New Mass undermines the convictions of Faith that ought to govern the lives and in particular the prayers of Catholics. They become humanistic, man-centered, directed towards personal experience, rather than towards THE ANGELUS • March 2008 www.angeluspress.org R . s c o t t the salvation of the soul and the greater honor and glory of God. It was for this reason that St. Pius X condemned the Sillon movement in 1910. He did not say that it was heretical, but rather that “judging the words and deeds, we feel compelled to say that in this action as well as in its doctrine, the Sillon does not give satisfaction to the Church” (§30). Archbishop Lefebvre comments on this observation that the spirit of the Sillon was not the spirit of the Church: In the same way, when he (St. Pius X) says that Modernism is the synthesis of all the heresies, he does not add that all those favorable to Modernism are heretics. He only says that it is the synthesis of all the heresies in its doctrine. (Against the Heresies, p.281) However, that the various manifestations of modernism, whether it be the New Mass, whether it be Ecumenism, whether it be secularism, indifferentism or religious liberty, demonstrate clearly the loss of the spirit of the Faith. This is well described by Romano Amerio: For the new theology, it is not stability that characterizes real faith, but rather the mobility of an endless searching. People even go so far as to say that an authentic faith must go into crisis…This dynamic view of faith is immediately derived from modernism, which holds that faith is procured by a feeling for the divine, and that conceptual truths that the intellect produces are merely changeable expressions of that feeling…The mistake in this position lies in regarding as humble an attitude that is really an intense form of pride…In short the Object is being valued less than the subject and an anthropocentric view is being adopted that is irreconcilable with religion… (Iota Unum, p.375). In this way the spirit of the Faith, the objective submission of the intellect to divinely revealed Truth, is destroyed. The importance of this spirit of the Faith in present day Catholics can, consequently, escape no one. Without it, we will fall to the novelties of the post-conciliar church. In another of his newsletters ( June 26, 1982) Archbishop Lefebvre pointed out that the spirit of Faith is identical with the spirit of the Church: “The spirit of the Society is the spirit of the Church, the spirit of faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work.” He goes on to explain that this spirit of faith is the fruit of prayer, by which the Faith penetrates into our souls: This spirit of faith is essentially a spirit contemplating the crucified and glorified Jesus. The faith is the seed of the beatific vision, which is an eternally blessed contemplation. He further points out that the spirit of faith is to be found where the life of the Church is to be found: If the teaching that is contained in the liturgical life is so admirable and draws us towards an ever greater 43 sanctification of soul, then the practical directives of the Church throughout its history, as well as its approval of the many foundations destined to sanctify soul, not to mention the examples of the saints, are all equally precious guidelines for our souls. In following them, according to the grace God grants us, we can be sure of not deceiving ourselves. Contemplation, obedience and humility are all the elements of one sole reality: the imitation of Jesus Christ and participation in His infinite love. This passage holds the key to understanding whether or not we have the spirit of Faith. The love of the Church’s traditional spiritual teachings, and saints, and the longing for contemplation, obedience and humility are the sign that we are truly seeking the spirit of Faith. For it really is the fruit of the gift of the Holy Ghost that we call the gift of Understanding, through which we penetrate into the depth of supernatural truths and unveil their secrets. This is well explained by Archbishop Martinez: It is the gift of understanding given to every Christian which makes him apprehend supernatural truths when this is necessary for the attainment of his salvation. And as it increases, this gift produces things even more wonderful in our sou; it makes us penetrate into the very mysteries of religion; by it we understand the beautiful harmonies in spiritual things. (The Sanctifier, p.183) Fr. Peter Scott was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. After assignments as seminary professor and the US District Superior, he is currently the rector of Holy Cross Seminary in Goulburn, Australia. Those wishing answers may please send their questions to Q & A, in care of Angelus Press, 2915 Forest Ave., Kansas City, MO 64109. WrItInG ContESt WInnEr To Heaven Through Keys The phone rang and Helen answered it. It was her husband asking her to bring him a set of keys since his were accidentally locked in his car. Unfortunately she didn’t have a clue where they were and consequently had to search for them. One place in which she happened to look was an old chest of drawers. On opening a drawer she saw what looked like an ancient book. With a little further investigation she saw that it was rather a picture of her First Communion. She suddenly remembered all that she had lost: prayers, devotions, etc., not to mention her Catholic Faith. Another thing she noticed about the picture was the girl standing next to her. After a moment’s reflection, she remembered her best friend, Mary, who always talked about wanting to join the Franciscan Sisters at Christ the King Convent. At once she realized that her old friend Mary was more than likely a Sister by now. While still pondering over this mystery the phone rang again but she was too absorbed in thought to notice it until she heard the furious voice of her impatient husband telling her to hurry up and bring him the keys. He also gave her a very valuable piece of information, that is, that the keys were on the hook where they were supposed to go (a very rare occasion in that house). That night when her husband did get home, Helen thought of asking him about going to visit Mary but knew it would be no use in the mood he was now. The next morning after breakfast she put the question forward and finally got a positive answer from her not completely corrupt husband. After much discussion of the past, our two friends talked about the future, primarily what Helen should do in reparation for her sins and how to come back to the Faith. Here we see a very good example of how God can make something good out of bad, even if it is finding the Faith from losing our keys! Jerome Nienaber Kansas City, Missouri january 2008 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGEluS • March 2008 The Angelus 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 MarCh 31 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) jesus, make me worthy “Both books are excellent for children, and I can only hope that they will augment and deepen the spiritual growth of many, many children.” 287pp, 4" x 5½", sewn, gold-embossed lexotone cover, BLACK STK# 8246 $14.95 287pp, 4" x 5½", sewn, gold-embossed lexotone cover, WHITE, STK# 8248 $14.95 Fresh ints r p Re Impro cHILDREN’S 1962 mISSAL and life prayer book In Black... Bishop Bernard Fellay BOTHs book New and ved Originally published in 1960, Angelus Press was fortunate enough to acquire and sell thousands of originals in years past until those supplies dried up. It has now reprinted this classic in stunning full color. A prayer book for the young boy and girl in a language so simple that every child can understand, combining much useful instruction for Communion and Confirmation with a large selection of devotions and prayers. It is a handsome and instructive little book. Ideal for First Holy Communions and post-Communion. Everything a Catholic child must know about the practice of the Catholic Faith and spirituality–all packed into 287 pages. Includes tons of prayers and over 90 illustrations (half in full color). ...or White • • • • • Crucifix page with indulgenced prayer First Holy Communion remembrance page Some things you must know about God The meaning of life “My Child, Give Me thy Heart” Morning prayers Evening prayers The Holy Mass Meaning of Mass A method of following the Mass (profusely illustrated) Prayers after Mass Things every Mass server should know Manner of Serving at Mass The Seven Sacraments On Sin Confession Examination of Conscience After the Examination Holy Communion Prayers before Communion Prayers after Communion Preparation for First Communion The Sacrament of Confirmation Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament The Stations of the Cross (each Station illustrated in full color) Litany of the Sacred Heart Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary Litany of St. Joseph The Catholic Child and Parents The Catholic Child and the Priest The Catholic Child and the Religious Sister The Catholic Child in Church The Catholic Child and Confession The Catholic Child and Holy Communion The Catholic Child and the Rosary The Catholic Child and Indulgences The Catholic Child and the Sacred Heart The Catholic Child and the Blessed Virgin The Catholic Child and St. Joseph The Catholic Child and the Saints The Catholic Child and the Souls in Purgatory The Catholic Child and Vocation The Ten Commandments The Six Precepts of the Church The Beatitudes A short and simple Way of Life for a Child. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • If you have a child aged 5-10 and are looking for a pre-Vatican II Missal suited to their capabilities, look no further. Angelus Press considers this to be the best missal for children in this age bracket. Originally published in 1958, Angelus Press had acquired and sold thousands of originals. After those supplies were exhausted, we decided to reprint this classic in full color. It includes the Ordinary of the Mass in large print English (with 35 color photos), the readings for all Sundays and major Holydays (with 13 color illustrations), instructions on when to sit, stand, and kneel, prayers for before and after Holy Communion, the indulgenced Prayer Before a Crucifix, a child’s preparation for Confession and the prayers of the priest and responses of the laity for the dialogue Mass (in Latin and English) of 1962. The large print, sturdy construction, and color illustrations make it a great missal for children. Mar ian CHILDR EN’S MISSAL 156pp, 4" x 5½", sewn, gold-embossed burgundy lexotone cover, STK# 8239 $12.95 the church’s ye ar Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine A great book for family reading. Part I: Texts and commentaries for all the Epistles, Gospels, sewn with and most other Mass prayers (e.g., Introit, Collect, Gradual, etc.) for every Sunday and Holy hardbound cover Day of the liturgical year. Part II: The Saints–Epistles and Gospels. F ocuses on teaching color sold 4,000 doctrine and morals through the liturgy. Question and Answer format. Almsgiving  Manner of Following Mass at Home  Bible and Tradition  Blessings  Process of Canonization  Excommunication  Detraction  Education of Children  Consolation in Sickness  Love of Enemies  Indulgences  Holy Orders  Why Christ Spoke in Parables  The Rosary  Processions  Relics  Holy Water  Temptation  The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass  Ceremonies  Regarding the Spirit of the Liturgical Seasons  Miracles  Sacraments  Origins of Church Feasts  Drunkenness  Good Intention  more Hows? Whys? and What-fors? The Church’s Year follows the calendar in effect at the time it was first published (1880), yet all of it is applicable with the use of the 1962 Missal. Totally retypeset. Keepsake edition. “It will bring blessings on any house in which it is kept and used” (Wm. Henry Elder, Archbishop of Cincinnati, 1884). 814pp, 6” x 9”, smyth-sewn hardbound color cover, STK# 6720✱ $39.95 • • 814 pages not le ab a av il il unt 15 march The Mass of All Time Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre The Archbishop is known for his courageous defense of the Tridentine Mass but never before have his insights been collected in such an accessible and complete format. A very timely book, especially now with a renewed interest in the “Extraordinary Form” due to the Holy Father’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The Mass of All Time is a collection of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s sermons, classes, and notes on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass...a compendium of what he taught on the Mass–its rites, spirit, prayers, theology, spirituality, and grace. Fr. Patrick Troadec, rector of a Society of St. Pius X’s seminary collected and organized the Archbishop’s many writings and speeches on both the Old and New Masses to present them here in two parts: Part One is a running commentary, gleaned from all the works of the Archbishop, on the prayers, parts, and actions of the entire liturgy. Part Two covers the New Order of Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and includes commentary on liturgical history, the liturgical revolution and the history of the SSPX’s defense of the old and rejection of the new. This is a “positive” book coming from him who is too often considered as the “rebel” Archbishop. Here we see the love and depth of understanding that Marcel Lefebvre had for the Mass of All Time. Polemics are not excluded, but they take a back seat in this volume. With the release of the motu proprio, it seems there has never been a more ideal time for traditional Catholics AND those who are being introduced to the “Old” Mass to reflect on this side of Archbishop Lefebvre. This book proves his love of truth and the Mass that fueled his battle to defend them. 325pp, softcover, indexed, 795 footnotes, STK# 8249✱ $25.00 Infant Homicides Dr. Bogomir Kuhar A fascinating booklet by a Catholic pharmacist on how most contraceptives do not really prevent pregnancy, but actually abort children shortly after conception. This will certainly come as a disturbing revelation to many people! The consequence is that the abortion plague is far worse than most of us realize. In addition to the 1,300,000 surgical abortions per year, we must add nearly 10,000,000 more due to contraceptives. Ideal to give to Protestants who are “pro-life” but practice contraception and to “cafeteria Catholics.” Gives actual drug names and explains how each works. 58pp, 4 x 7½, softcover, STK# 8251✱ $3.00 Consecration Back itn to Mary Prin Fr. Helmuts Libietis, SSPX True Devotion to Mary, by St. Louis de Montfort, is THE book on consecration to the Blessed Virgin. THIS book is the perfect way to make that Consecration. All the readings necessary for consecration preparation are here: the Bible, The Imitation of Christ, True Devotion to Mary, The Love of Eternal Wisdom, The Secret of the Rosary, The Secret of Mary and Friends of the Cross. Over 18,000 in print! 330pp, color softcover, STK# 6713✱ $18.00 #1025 During the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Revelation, the mysteries of Faith, the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, are made real. From the Mass, the liturgical and unbloody re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the efficacy of all good works proceeds.–Archbishop Lefebvre E-mail Updates from Angelus Press! If you would like to receive our bi-weekly e-mail, ­updating you on new titles, sales and special offers (most available only online), simply send your e-mail address to: listmaster@angeluspress.org. You can change your e-mail reception preferences or unsubscribe at any time. Shipping & Handling USA $.01 to $25.00 $7.50 $25.01 to $50.00 $10.00 $50.01 to $100.00 $12.50 Over $100.00 10% of order Foreign 25% of order subtotal angelus Press 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, Missouri 64109 1-800-96ORDER 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org l 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.