$4.45 august 2008 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition papal visit to the USA sspx in Japan By the author who compiled the St. Andrew Daily Missal N EWI NG ER O FF How to Understand the Mass Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B. Unique in that it strongly focuses on the sacrificial aspect of the Mass. The first seven pages are dedicated to explaining “What is a Sacrifice?” The remainder of the book focuses on each part of the Mass, explaining it in simple, doctrinal terms along with 39 brilliant illustrations (see below) by classic St. Andrew Missal artist Joseph Speybrouck. Each illustration has three parts. In the foreground to the right, we see the action of the priest from the “pew-view.” To the left, we see a close up image of the priest. In the background, there is an historical or eschatological image depicting the action at the altar or the prayer being said. THE GREAT SCRIPTURE COMMENTARY OF FR. CORNELIUS A LAPIDE The Gospels in Four Volumes With this new edition, the full genius of Fr. Cornelius a Lapide is available in English for the first time. Over the last 400 years this has been the most complete commentary in use by the Catholic Church. His age was that of the Counter Reformation, so Fr. a Lapide included plenty of apologetics. He is responsible for receiving St. John Ogilvie (hanged in 1615) into the Church and for administering Extreme Unction to St. John Berchmans. This is a line-by-line reading of all the Gospels, applying history and the richness of the Church Fathers, with from a half-page to two pages of commentary for each verse. N EWI NG ER F F O ✚ St. Louis de Montfort quotes Fr. a Lapide in True Devotion to Mary. ✚ Used heavily by St. Gaspar Bertoni and St. Anthony Mary Claret. ✚ Used by St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church and Patron Saint of Catechists. ✚ Praised by Dom Gueranger, and Fr. Denis Fahey. ✚ Essential for priests: sermon-writing, catechism classes, and convert instructions. ✚ Great for laymen who wish to study the Church’s understanding of the Gospels. 2,900pp. 4 gold embossed, sewn, leather-bound hardcover volumes with ribbon. STK# 8284✱ $199.95 Special two-month payment plan for bookstores only. Call our front desk for details. brand new 121pp. Softcover, illustrated. STK# 8285✱ $16.95 Handbook for Laundering Liturgical Linens Twelve-page pamphlet loaded with everything you need to know to care for liturgical linens. Forty step-by-step drawings. How to identify the various linens by their folds and embroidered markings. Detailed and definitive folding instructions. (Yes, there is a right way to fold and several wrong ways to be avoided.) Glossary of altar linen terms. Illustrated quick reference chart. Guidelines and tips for laundering, ironing, and mending. (Just when to use spray starch and how much.) Includes tidbits that even the “old-pros” will find useful. Recommended for everyone who launders or mends liturgical linens, or who wishes to volunteer to do so. Indispensable. Authored by a SSPX Brother. 12pp. Softcover, illustrated. STK# 8286✱ $2.95 “Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.” Motto of Pope St. Pius X The ngelus A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition 2915 Forest Avenue “To publish Catholic journals and place them in the hands of honest men is not enough. It is necessary to spread them as far as possible that they may be read by all, and especially by those whom Christian charity demands we should tear away from the poisonous sources of evil literature.” —Pope St. Pius X August 2008 Volume XXXI, Number 8 • 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 Editorial assistant Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend pope benedict xvi visits the usA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 DICI the noonday devil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Timothy J. Cullen Leadership and the gift of self. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. Questions and answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Fr. Peter Scott june 2008 writing contest winning entry . . . . . . . . 18 MARKETING Mr. Christopher McCann THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT comptroller customer service Two Interpretations of Vatican II? Myth or Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Erosion of the Council’s Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Mrs. MaryAnne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Miss Rebecca Heatwole under the sign of the assumption Christendom . . . . . . . .NEWS . . . . . . 27 Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA information technology consultant Mr. Cory Bosley Shipping and Handling Mr. Jon Rydholm Angelus Press Edition Christendom catechism of the crisis . . . . . .15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 in the church . .Part Fr. Matthias Gaudron heraldry: part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Dwyer Quentin Wedvick The Angelus Monthly photo writing contest . . . . 44 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. ON OUR COVER: Pope Benedict XVI visits New York. 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. 2 Letter from the Editor Steroids are on the way to Angelus Press. Like steroids for the brain. German steroids. Fr. Markus Heggenberger, most recently from a professorship at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary and, before that, St. Mary’s Academy and College, will join the Angelus Press staff in September in order to someday lead it. On behalf of those who depend on Angelus Press and those who are coming to depend on it in the days of the lingering crisis and the Summorum Pontificum kickstart, I thank Bishop Fellay and Fr. John Fullerton for their attention and graciousness. For myself, I tell you, Fr. Heggenberger will be most welcome. From this desk, over the last 16 years, little seems to have changed. The Church’s enemies have become more refined, but Angelus Press has stayed a few footsteps ahead of them by simply broadcasting and applying the perennial principles in order to make distinctions and provide clarity to its ever-growing audience. In the first issue under my editorship (October 1992), The Angelus published the sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre given on the day of the priestly ordinations at Ecône on June 29, 1978: A decade of silence on the anathemas of the Council of Trent and of Pius VI against the Council of Pistoia; silence on the documents of the Church’s social teaching–the Syllabus of Pius IX, Libertas and Immortale Dei of Leo XIII, Pascendi Dominici Gregis and the condemnation of the Sillon made by Pope St. Pius X, Quas Primas and Divini Redemptoris of Pius XI–to quote a few of the documents which treat of the authority of the Popes. This silence increases the suspicion that the Church is occupied by a “counter-Church” of protestant origin and committed to spreading all the errors which the popes have condemned for more than four centuries. Make that four decades, Archbishop. The suspicion unfortunately remains even 30 years later. Heck, in this issue, you’ll read how the Holy Father told Americans on his April 2008 tour that he believes the fundamental American model of secular society is the pattern for Europe to imitate. (Read our overview of all the US papal addresses starting on p.3.) I remind you, reader, our US is founded in rebellion against the Catholic Faith– read authentic US history–and Europe, home of the Pope, no longer is synonymous with It… The good news is that the Holy Father, in this case, implicates himself to believe in a hermeneutic of rupture when it comes to cultures. The bad news is that he insists there is a hermeneutic of continuity when it comes to pre- and post-Vatican II (see SiSiNoNo, p.19ff.), a logical impossibility defying the law of non-contradiction. But he is blinded by their being connected. And the recently “liberated” 1962 Latin Mass, held up to be the same as the Novus Ordo, is used as a pawn to prove this “hermeneutic of continuity.” Happy days are not here again; more confusion is. At best, he builds with one hand and tears down with the other. What would Pope Leo XIII say? …[T]he true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring the overthrow of the State: but rather in this, that through the injunction of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law. So much for California’s “legal gay marriage”–itself a contradiction–signed into law by a nominally Catholic governor. By the way, tell me what State concerns itself about being “overthrown” which no longer has a population? Please, Holy Father, do not praise American independence and personal autonomy to us on one hand, and sorely lament the lack of Catholic communities in our country on the other (“Address to the Bishops of the United States,” April 16, 2008). How do you understand causality? Read Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI, not the stuff you wrote when you were a Cardinal. Here’s a secret: America thinks of itself as completely modern and profoundly religious at the same time. Read that again. It’s a society in contradiction. Why?–Because to be “completely modern” is to be essentially evolving and rebellious, and to be “profoundly religious” (that is, to be of the One and Only True Religion–all others are imposters) is to be essentially changeless in substance and obedient. America lives in contradiction and your head lives here, Holy Father. Let us praise the Word of the Gospel of Gettysburg. In any case, you are hitching your cart to a dying horse. The last century was America’s; this one is China’s. Cardinal Pie (1815-80) is not in contradiction. Here is an excerpt from his writings on Naturalism freshly translated into English for the first time by seminarian Todd Anderson for Angelus Press: A morality that consciously and deliberately holds to the basic laws of nature will henceforth offer salvation neither to individuals nor to societies, neither in this life nor the life to come. For that morality is insufficient and incomplete; moreover, it cannot be observed integrally without the supernatural help of grace. Now, God does not pour out His blessings on those who have contempt for His Son. You philosophers who proclaim the dethroning of Jesus Christ will not take His place, and if it were true that all Catholic societies disappeared from the face of the earth, you would still be unable to re-establish a society of upstanding pagans. After human passions have managed to throw off the yoke of Jesus Christ, they will not stop there. If philosophy comes to the conclusion that there are no longer any plausible motives keeping it from claiming for itself the ancient and legitimate sovereignty of religion, be certain that philosophy’s recent usurpation of sovereignty will in turn find itself contradicted and despised by others. The masses that your impious doctrines have perverted will be but little touched by your platonic homilies. And since the only barriers you set up before them are those of the natural law, you are going to find out that certain leanings of nature will not be stopped by such barriers. For nearly a century, philosophical ideologies have covered the world in blood, tears, and ruins. The revolutions that have so shaken society are the fruits of such ideologies. They will produce in the future what they produced in the past. In 1978, as Archbishop Lefebvre was gaining traction worldwide, The Angelus began publishing Catholic Truth in Dickinson, Texas. Thirty years later in 2008, it still does the same as yesterday, for today, and–please God–forever. Thanks for the ride. By the way, Fr. Emil Kapaun’s (The Angelus, Feb. 2008) cause for sainthood was officially opened on Sunday, June 29, at his hometown church of St. John Nepomucene in Pilsen, Kansas. Instaurare Omnia in Christo, Fr. Kenneth Novak 3 POPE BENEDICt XVI VISItS tHE USa Here are the main excerpts of Pope Benedict XVI’s declarations in the United States (April 15-21, 2008). This visit to the United States which the Pope considers to be a model of religious liberty was very important. His various addresses allow us to have a better grasp of the contrasted facets of his thinking. During a Brief Press Conference on the Plane On April 15, in the special plane from Alitalia taking him to Washington, the Pope answered the questions put to him by the journalists aboard. Thus he said that he was “ashamed” by the sexual abuses committed by priests in the United States. He mentioned the “suffering of the Church in the United States and of the Church in general.” “It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible for priests to fail in this way in the mission to give healing, to give God’s love to these children,” he confided. “We will do everything possible to ensure that this does not happen in future. We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry,” he added. “It is absolutely incompatible, and whoever is really guilty of being a pedophile cannot be a priest.” The Pope spoke of three levels on which they would have to act: the level of justice, the pastoral level, and the level of discernment to prevent further abuses. First, he wished to “help the victims, because they are deeply www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgElus • August 2008 4 affected,” and he repeated that “pedophiles cannot be priests.” On the pastoral level, Benedict XVI wants to promote “healing and help and assistance and reconciliation.” Lastly, concerning seminarians’ formation, the Pope urged bishops to have “a strong discernment,” pointing out that “it is more important to have good priests than to have many priests.” “We will do in the future all that is possible to heal these wounds,” the Sovereign Pontiff concluded. The Church in the United States has numbered 4,000 victims of sexual abuses committed by priests in the country over the last 50 years. The scandals did untold harm to the credibility of Church authorities, and have already cost more than two billion dollars of compensation since 2002. Several American bishoprics financially ruined on account of the compensation to be paid to the victims have requested the protection of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. Benedict XVI also spoke about the presence of religion in the United States. “In Europe we cannot simply copy the United States: we have our own history,” he said before talking about the “positive concept of secularism” in this country. Considering the historical origin of the United States, the Pope spoke of “a secular State that gives access and opportunities to all denominations, to all forms of religious practice”; he even added that it was “secular precisely out of love for religion in its authenticity.” In face of the “attack of a new secularism” “the situation became complicated” in the United States, Benedict XVI acknowledged before affirming however that “the fundamental [American] model also seems to me today to be worthy of being borne in mind in Europe.” The Pope also mentioned his upcoming visit to the United Nations on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. While the visit was to take place at a time of value crisis, the Pope recalled that “human rights, rights that express non-negotiable values constitute the foundations of all the institutions.” He said he wished he would be able to reaffirm this “fundamental concept,” and he also explained that “the United Nations were founded precisely on the idea of human rights.” Benedict XVI further affirmed that they were “common values that must be observed by all.” At the White House Officially received at the White House on April 16, 2008, his 81st birthday, Pope Benedict XVI greeted an America guided by a “moral order” and inspired by its “religious beliefs.” Thus he affirmed that: “America’s quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator.” “Religious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force,” which guided America all through the course of history. “In our time, too, particularly in moments of crisis, Americans THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideals and aspirations,” the Pope added. “As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more humane and free society,” he said. According to the Sovereign Pontiff, Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility....The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, [and] it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Next, Benedict XVI and George Bush had a private meeting in the Oval Office of the White House. The two men, said the joint communiqué, discussed a number of topics including: the respect of the dignity of the human person; the defense and promotion of life, matrimony and the family; the education of future generations; human rights and religious freedom; sustainable development and the struggle against poverty and pandemics, especially in Africa. In regard to the latter, the Holy Father welcomed the United States’ substantial financial contributions in this area. The two reaffirmed their total rejection of terrorism as well as the manipulation of religion to justify immoral and violent acts against innocents. They further touched on the need to confront terrorism with appropriate means that respect the human person and his or her rights. At the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington In the presence of 400 American bishops gathered at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Pope talked once more of the “deep shame” caused to the Church by pedophile priests, yet he denounced at the same time pornography, violence, and “the crude manipulation of sexuality” so prevalent today, especially in the media. He also asked the bishops to be examples for their priests, and, several times, he mentioned the dangers of secularization. While it is true that this country is marked by a genuinely religious spirit, the subtle influence of secularism can nevertheless color the way people allow their faith to influence their behavior. Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Pope Benedict XVI also wondered whether it was “consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to 5 formation” and invited the clergy to “move beyond sterile divisions” and “disagreements.” At the Mass at the Washington Nationals Stadium When he celebrated Mass on April 17, in the presence of 45,000 faithful at the Nationals Stadium, Benedict XVI invited the American Church to renounce “all divisions.” In response to the “challenges confronting us,” the Pope encouraged a “comprehensive and sound instruction in the truths of faith,” and invited Catholic faithful to “set aside all divisions.” “To a great extent, the renewal of the Church in America and throughout the world depends on the renewal of the practice of Penance and the growth in holiness which that sacrament both inspires and accomplishes,” he insisted, lamenting “the troubling realization that many of the baptized, rather than acting as a spiritual leaven in the world, are inclined to embrace attitudes contrary to the truth of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI also affirmed that ours adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death.” And he stated the necessity of resisting “any tendency to treat religion as a private matter”: For an affluent society, a further obstacle to an encounter with the living God lies in the subtle influence of materialism....It is easy to be entranced by the almost unlimited possibilities that science and technology place before us; it is easy to make the mistake of thinking we can obtain by our own efforts the fulfillment of our deepest needs. This is an illusion. In this long homily, the Pope also spoke with satisfaction of an American Church which is close to the poor, of the religious fervor of the American people and the fact that “they do not hesitate to bring moral arguments rooted in biblical faith into their public discourse.” Pope Benedict XVI also praised American citizens, “known for their great vitality and creativity” and for their generosity; they are the first donators to the Holy See. Answering some questions afterward, the Pope underlined that in America, unlike many places in Europe, a secular mentality “was not intrinsically opposed to religion.” The Pope also answered a question about the drop in religious practice by pointing out that “faith cannot survive if it is not nourished.” “Inasmuch as faith becomes a private matter,” stated Benedict XVI, “it loses its soul.” Lastly he mentioned the vocation crisis, he expressed his desire for an “intellectual and human is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many ways drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the same time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger, and polarization on the part of many of our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a coarsening of social relations; and a growing forgetfulness of Christ and God. On the Occasion of the Meeting with Representatives of Other Religions On April 17, late in the afternoon, when he spoke before 200 Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain representatives at the “Rotunda” Hall of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center of Washington, the Pope pointed out that it is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many ways drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the same time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger and polarization on the part of many of our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a coarsening of social relations; and a growing forgetfulness of Christ and God. However, he specified that “religious freedom, interreligious dialogue and faith-based education aim at something more than a consensus regarding ways to implement practical strategies for advancing peace. The broader purpose of dialogue is to discover the truth.” Pope Benedict XVI spoke to the representatives of various religions of “ethical values” which all “share,” and stated: “The world begs for a common witness to www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 6 these values.” But, “in our attempt to discover points of commonality, perhaps we have shied away from the responsibility to discuss our differences with calmness and clarity,” he said, and he reminded them that “the higher goal of interreligious dialogue requires a clear exposition of our respective religious tenets.” The Pope also warned that, “Protecting religious freedom within the rule of law does not guarantee that peoples–particularly minorities–will be spared from unjust forms of discrimination and prejudice.” And he requested a “constant effort on the part of all members of society to ensure” religious liberty. Next, Benedict XVI spoke briefly with the members of the Jewish community, to whom he gave a message conveying his good wishes for the upcoming Jewish Pasch. In this letter dated April 14, the Pope reaffirmed the “confidence” and “friendship” between Jews and Catholics. He also wished for “renewed efforts” and “new attitudes” from those “responsible for the future” of the Middle East and the Holy Land. On the Occasion of the Meeting with Catholic Educators On the occasion of a meeting with Catholic educators at the Catholic University of America, in the north-east of Washington, on April 17, Benedict XVI reaffirmed the necessary “identity” of Catholic education. “A university or school’s Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction.” “Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools?” Next, the Pope pointed out the particular urgency of what we might call “intellectual charity,” which “upholds the essential unity of knowledge against the fragmentation which ensues when reason is detached from the pursuit of truth.” Benedict XVI explained that this “articulates the relationship between faith and all aspects of family and civic life.” “Clearly, then, Catholic identity is not dependent upon statistics,” the Pope repeated later in his address, but upon “faith and truth.” In the matter of education, Pope Benedict XVI also complained of a “lowering of standards” “within a relativistic horizon.” We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom. We witness an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. Benedict XVI also reaffirmed “the great value of academic freedom.” However, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned that “any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university’s identity and mission.” At the end of his address, the Pope made an appeal to priests and religious not to “abandon the school apostolate”: THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org In places where there are many hollow promises which lure young people away from the path of truth and genuine freedom, the consecrated person’s witness to the evangelical counsels is an irreplaceable gift. Address to the United Nations Organization At the headquarters of the United Nations, in New York, on April 18, Benedict XVI denounced a “relativistic conception” of human rights. Before the representatives of the 192 member States, the Pope also invited the UN to support interreligious dialogue and to respect the right to religious liberty. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Pope thus stated that: “ at the same time, the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights all serve as guarantees safeguarding human dignity.” The Pope next warned against a “relativistic conception of human rights, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks.” Benedict XVI said: The merit of the Universal Declaration is that it has enabled different cultures, juridical expressions and institutional models to converge around a fundamental nucleus of values, and hence of rights. Today, though, efforts need to be redoubled in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration and to compromise its inner unity so as to facilitate a move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests. In his long address delivered both in French and in English, the Pope also explained that Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian....The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order.... It is inconceivable, then, that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves–their faith–in order to be active citizens. Pope Benedict XVI also invited the United Nations to support interreligious dialogue. “The United Nations can count on the results of dialogue between religions, and can draw fruit from the willingness of believers to place their experiences at the service of the common good.” The “recognition of the transcendent value of every man and woman favors conversion of heart, which then leads to a commitment to resist violence, terrorism and war, and to promote justice and peace,” he stated. The Pope also warned against “the way the results of scientific research and technological advances have sometimes been applied,” and denounced “a clear violation of the order of creation.” He next invited 7 the UN to “adopt a scientific method that is truly respectful of ethical imperatives.” After his discourse, Benedict XVI addressed the staff members of the UN before paying a visit to “the meditation room,” a place of worship for this “God whom man worships under several names and in various ways,” according to the terminology and ideology of the UN. At the Synagogue in New York For the second time in his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI entered a synagogue, in New York on April 18 in the afternoon. The brief ceremony, added to the Pope’s schedule a few days before his arrival in the United States, took place in the small Park East Synagogue, New York. “Shalom,” greeted the Pope in Hebrew, saying that he had come to tell his “proximity” and “prayer” to the Jewish community, shortly before the “Pessah,” the Jewish Pasch. The rabbi of the synagogue, Arthur Schneier, also greeted the Pope. He considered Pope Benedict XVI’s visit as a reaffirmation of his good will and of his commitment to the improvement of relationships between Jews and Catholics. He said he thought that much had been done for this since the Second Vatican Council. “At a time when religion is used erroneously by some, we must intensify our commitment to the healing of our torn apart world,” he affirmed. “The fact that we are here together conveys the message that interreligious dialogue is possible and vital to solve conflicts,” he stressed. During the ceremony, before the Pope, Rabbi Schneier drew aside a curtain hiding a Torah and explained certain details to him. When came the exchange of gifts, the two men joked together and cordially shook hands, noted Apic news agency. Several Roman observers pointed out that this kind gesture of the Pope towards the Jewish community did not happen by chance, a little over two months after the modification of the prayer for the conversion of the Jews contained in the Tridentine Missal. The modification had been openly criticized by the Jews because it is an invitation to pray “that God and Our Lord enlighten” (their) hearts that they “may know Jesus Christ, Savior of all men.” During the Ecumenical Meeting at the German Parish in New York On April 18, in the evening, the Pope denounced “a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine” in St. Joseph’s Church, the German parish of New York. Before 250 representatives of ten Christian denominations, Benedict XVI warned against the “disturbing” signs of globalization and the “secularist ideology.” He deplored the “relativistic approach to Christian doctrine similar to that found in secular ideologies, which, in alleging that science alone is ‘objective,’ relegate religion entirely to the subjective sphere of individual feeling.” The Pope next underlined that, though “scientific discoveries, and their application through human ingenuity, undoubtedly offer new possibilities for the betterment of humankind, this does not mean, however, that the ‘knowable’ is limited to the empirically verifiable, nor religion restricted to the shifting realm of ‘personal experience’.” The Pope also shared his concern before “the spread of a secularist ideology that undermines or even rejects transcendent truth.” According to him, the very possibility of divine revelation, and therefore of Christian faith, is often placed into question by cultural trends widely present in academia, the mass media and public debate. For these reasons, a faithful witness to the Gospel is as urgent as ever. Christians are challenged to give a clear account of the hope that they hold. Meeting with Young People at St. Joseph’s Seminary of New York Late in the afternoon of April 19, Benedict XVI addressed 25,000 young people at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York. He reminded them that his “own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers; its influence grew–infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion–before it was fully recognized for the monster it was. It banished God.” He rejoiced over the fact that, for the most part, young people today could “enjoy the liberties which have arisen through the extension of democracy and respect for human rights.” “The power to destroy does, however, remain,” he continued. “To pretend otherwise would be to fool ourselves.” He went on to mention “those affected by drug and substance abuse, homelessness and poverty, racism, violence, and degradation–especially of girls and women.” Speaking of the “darkness” of our time, the Pope strongly denounced the manipulation of truth, and once again, relativism. The Sovereign Pontiff, on the other hand, spoke of the new injustices, some of which “stem from the exploitation of the heart and manipulation of the mind.” Next, he deplored that earth itself “groans under the weight of consumerist greed and irresponsible exploitation.” The Pope also considered at length the “four essential aspects of the treasure of our faith: personal prayer and silence, liturgical prayer, charity in action, and vocations.” www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 8 During the Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York Mass at Yankee Stadium in New York During the Mass celebrated on April 19, 2008, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in the middle of Manhattan skyscrapers, Benedict invited the world to consider the Church “from the inside” in order to see it as it truly is and penetrate into her mystery. In the presence of several thousands of priests and religious, Pope Benedict XVI thus used the image of the stained glass windows which “from the outside…are dark, heavy, even dreary,” and said that it is only from the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life that we see the Church as she truly is. The Pope expressed the wish that the Church draw everybody inside of “the mystery of light.” This is no easy task in a world which can tend to look at the Church, like those stained glass windows, “from the outside”: a world which deeply senses a need for spirituality, yet finds it difficult to “enter into” the mystery of the Church. And he acknowledged that even inside the Church the light of the faith may be dimmed, and the splendor of the Church obscured by the sins and weaknesses of her members. In his homily, Benedict XVI also emphasized that “one of the great disappointments which followed the Second Vatican Council, with its call for a greater engagement in the Church’s mission to the world, has been the experience of division between different groups, different generations, different members of the same religious family.” On April 20, when he celebrated Mass at the Yankee Stadium in New York before some 60,000 people, Benedict XVI asked Catholics to “counter false gospels of freedom and happiness.” “In this land of religious liberty, Catholics found freedom not only to practice their faith, but also to participate fully in civic life,” rejoiced the Pope. He then summoned the faithful to “move forward with firm resolve to use wisely the blessings of freedom, in order to build a future of hope for coming generations.” He urged Catholics to “reject a false dichotomy between faith and political life,” to “overcome every separation between faith and life, countering false gospels of freedom and happiness.” During the Visit to Ground Zero in New York On April 20, in the morning, Pope Benedict XVI went to pray at Ground Zero, the location of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in memory of the 3,000 victims. He first knelt down for a silent prayer, before lighting a candle. Then in the presence of 24 persons representing the members of the rescue teams, the wounded, and relatives of the victims of the attacks, the Pope said a prayer: “God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the earth.” In the company of a few survivors and relatives of the victims, the Pope also invoked God’s “compassion” for those who, because of their presence here that day, suffer from injuries and illness.” “Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy,” he asked. May you find the courage to proclaim Christ and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in Him.... These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world–including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb. Back at the Vatican, a Review of the Visit On April 21, at the end of Benedict XVI’s six-day visit in the United States, Fr. Lombardi, spokesman of the Holy See, was interviewed on the airwaves of Radio Vatican, and stated: “It seems obvious to me that the visit reached its goal in an almost unexpected way.” Thus, he evoked the meeting between the Pope and the American people as a meeting of friendship, respect and recognition of the positive characteristics of this people and of its vocation to be at the service of all of mankind. Reviewing the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the headquarters of the UN, Fr. Lombardi emphasized that the Pope had given “a message for all of mankind,” an “extremely important message,” which deserved to be deeply considered by the representatives of the peoples, to rediscover the foundation of the edifice of human rights and the dignity of the human person, to build the future upon solid bases. On the day after the end of the Pope’s visit, American observers commented upon Benedict XVI’s style. The image which was found most often on American blogs as well as in the media was that of a “meek and humble” German Pope. Benedict XVI is not a “rottweiler” or “German shepherd,” as the press used to described Cardinal Ratzinger, for whom it had little sympathy. Now he is “a good shepherd” according to Sally Quinn, a reporter for the Washington Post, who wrote on the blog On Faith: We saw a man who was quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, selfeffacing, a bit solemn and non-confrontational.…He was THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org 9 diplomatic and gracious in his approach to all subjects, never seeming to admonish but instead to call people to their better natures. Peter Steinfels, a columnist with the New York Times, added that: “The face of himself that Benedict chose to show to a public that did not know him well, the face of the papacy that he chose to emphasize, was the face of the pastor. Not the theologian, not the governor, not the ‘decider’—all of which he is, in addition—but the pastor.” None of the thorny issues that the American Church must face “will be adequately addressed without the kind of pastoral sensibility that Benedict, very deliberately I believe, chose to project,” according to Peter Steinfels. Like many others, Catholic journalist David Gibson, on Beliefnet, pointed out that the Pope could have gone further in his declarations. He stressed the lack of direct discussion of the priest shortage that makes evangelizing so problematic, or the role of women who make parishes run, and Catholic families, the “domestic church,” or accountability of bishops, or the laity, or the Iraq war, or social justice issues, or global warming, or the death penalty. Our Comment We note the particularly laudatory declarations of the Pope on “American-style” secularization: “a positive concept of secularization,” “secular out of love for religion”; “the fundamental American model is a sound secularization from which Europe could draw its inspiration,” because in America, unlike several places in Europe, the “secular mentality” is not intrinsically opposed to religion; a “sound secularization” which thus contributes to the building of a society worthy of the human person and brings the United States to the rank of one of the main actors on the international level. To understand the attraction that the secularized American model has for Pope Benedict XVI, we must go back to his Christmas Address to the Curia on December 22, 2005. In this address, which gave the program of his pontificate, he defended an “hermeneutic of continuity” of Vatican II, and strove to show that the novelties introduced by the Council, such as religious liberty, ecumenism, or interreligious dialogue, were inscribed in the constant Tradition of the Church. [For further analysis of this speech, see “The Benefit of the Doubt,” The Angelus, November 2006.–Ed.] He acknowledged, however, that Vatican II had sought to “determine in a new way the relationship between the Church and the modern era.” He justified this evolution by a change of historical circumstances where the United States played a major role. We give here a synthesis of the Pope’s way of thinking in his address of December 22, from which are taken all the quotes which follow: At the end of the 18th century, “in the radical phase of the French Revolution, an image of the State and the human being that practically no longer wanted to allow the Church any room was disseminated.” Under Pope Pius IX, the clash between the Church’s faith and a radical liberalism…had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age....[But] in the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution (our emphasis)....So it was that both parties [the Church and modern State] were gradually beginning to open up to each other....It was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practice their own religion. Linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance–a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions....The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. It is on this capital issue of religious liberty that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre opposed the conciliar doctrine, especially in his book They Have Uncrowned Him [available from Angelus Press; price: $15.00–Ed.]. On the other hand, we wonder how to conciliate the address at the UN with the homily at Yankee Stadium. In the former, the Pope warned against a “relativistic conception” of human rights “according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks”; this means that these rights are anterior and more fundamental than all these “various outlooks…even religious.” In the latter, Pope Benedict XVI wished: May you find the courage to proclaim Christ, “the same, yesterday, and today and for ever” and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in him. These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man. And we can think here that the unchanging truths which have their foundation in Christ are anterior to human rights, unless these truths only serve to guarantee respect for these rights. Taken from DICI, No.175, May, 2008. www.dici.org www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 10 T i m o t h y J . C u l l e n The Noonday Devil There is nothing quite like a retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola to cause one to “reminisce” in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with memories of the “good old days.” When one prepares for general confession, one must almost certainly look back on a lifetime (short, long, middle of the road, doesn’t make a difference) in which sin played all too prominent a role. Trust me: it does indeed leave a bad taste in the mouth until the Sacraments do their purifying work. THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org When the bells justle in the tower The hollow night amid Then on my tongue the taste is sour Of all I ever did. A.E. Houseman January is the month in which the feasts of St. Paul the Hermit and St. Anthony Abbot (both are founders of monastic tradition) are celebrated. Both saints were desert fathers, the former the first known hermit, the latter generally considered the founder of monasticism. Both were well acquainted with the “noonday devil” of Psalm 90, sung during Compline on Sundays and in the Mass on the first Sunday of Lent. “[T]hou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night…or of the noonday devil,” reads the Vulgate. The “noonday devil”? St. John Cassian (c. 360-435, a desert father who emigrated to Europe), in his fifth-century Monastic Institutes, knew it for what it is: accidia, a “spiritual weariness or distress of heart…akin to dejection.” When the noonday bell rings out the Angelus— three notes, then nine—, the means is at hand to drive off the noonday devil with a hearty “Apage, Satanas!” followed by “And the angel of the Lord…” Prayer is a powerful arm against sloth, against accidie, against despair, against the devil in all his forms: daytime, nighttime, indoors and out. Once upon a time, Catholics all across Christendom paused at noon to pray the Angelus, as they did at daybreak and at sunset; this is a custom that cries out for renewal. Church bells, once ubiquitous in the West, chiming in every city, town, village and hamlet, in cathedrals, churches and chapels, are largely silent now. When once they called the faithful to prayer, rang out to celebrate marriages, military victories, tolled to commemorate the passing of the souls of the dead, now they sound seldom, far less often than the five calls to prayer a day broadcast from the minarets of mosques throughout the world, the mosques of Muslims who will not renounce their faith or tradition to placate the demands of the secular materialists who want the West’s church bells muffled for good and all. The enemies of our Faith will never succeed, of course. The bell that opens the sessions of the New York Stock Exchange, the modernists’ “temple,” will long since have fallen silent when the bells rung at the altar still sound the consecration, sound it until the end of days. 11 Where church bells sound, neither the days nor the nights are “hollow,” and for the soul in a state of grace, the taste of the host on the tongue of the repentant sinner is sweet, not sour. A smaller bell rung by a seminarian walking the long corridor sounds at 6:30am to arouse the retreatants from sleep. We are lodged in a school of mines, except that the eight of us are here not to learn to mine minerals, but to dig deeply into ourselves. Silently. The purpose of the Spiritual Exercises is straightforward and simple: to save one’s soul. Just as the flabby body benefits from exercise, so does the slothful soul respond to spiritual exercise, and the Church has in the time-honored and now sadly neglected Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola the solution to the problem. A retreat dedicated to these exercises will be of far greater benefit to the melancholy than two weeks at the fat farm might be for the overly self-indulgent. The noonday devil stalks the burnout, the weary, the alienated, the disappointed, the frustrated, the stressed…The noonday devil “makes hay while the sun shines” among the masses of the disillusioned who have been led astray from God and among Catholics who have fallen away from the habit of daily prayer—morning, noon and night—and examination of conscience. As is easily understood, the desert fathers of old found the heat of midday a time of great vulnerability to lethargy, even stupor, as the merciless desert sun beat down upon them. Dozing off both spiritually and physically left them prey to the depredations of the noonday devil, sibilantly whispering into their inner ears a message of futility and despair of ever achieving their spiritual goals. This year’s January retreat at the school of mines took place in early summer here in the Southern Hemisphere, and the lecture hall was bright with glare and hot. As noon approached, one of our two Retreat Masters would be at his desk, the sunlight toasting him in his black cassock. The noonday devil knew better than to approach; he was biding his time until we eight returned to our rooms for the contemplation. The noonday devil had been in my room before, I realized. When I stood facing the wall to place www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 12 myself in the presence of God, I looked up at the coffered-wood ceiling and there on the beam saw a graffito: “Mi templo el baile/Mi religión el cuarteto/ Mi dios la Mona.” That translates as “My temple: dance/My religion: the cuarteto (a vulgar and insipid local pop music)/My god: la Mona (the nickname of the best known performer, about whom I will say nothing, having learned something of charity during the retreat). Ah, youth! This in what was once an overwhelmingly Catholic country, but one in which we are now treated to photos of a recent presidential candidate at a “séance” Mass: a group of women seated around a dining table with a rather androgynous priest officiating. Viva V-II, the Devil’s own antiquated “spiritual ballistic missile.” Pray for the poor, benighted soul who scrawled in his dorm room that little blasphemous paean to a pop star. Pray for those poor, deluded kaffeklatch “worshippers” and their enabler. That day’s contemplation, appropriately enough, was on Hell. Three bells rang as the seminarian made his way along the corridor: time to begin and the contemplation ended: time to enter into colloquy. The Exercises focus the soul, the heart and the mind on the most important “conversation” one can imagine: talking directly to God. The conversations the retreatant has with the Masters are of great importance—one always has doubts, and these priests are the men prepared to resolve them—, but when Christ Himself is listening to you….Speak sincerely, tell Him what you will, and be assured grace will enter into you and the noonday devil will go off to sulk in his corner. What one tells Him, one tells one’s confessor, and all that is sour within one will be purged. What greater grace can one wish? What better way to drive away the noonday devil? The noonday devil dislikes church bells; so do his human allies. So, too, do the unrepentant, for whom at all times, but especially when alone, upon their tongues “the taste is sour of all they ever did,” and, more often than not, are doing and will do; their lives lack supernatural grace and thus lack joy, lack peace, lack the savor of faith, hope and charity. Church bells chiming are meant to call our attention to matters of the spirit, to bring a prayerful pause to the daily spiritual disorder created by the modern world, an inquietude far greater than that experienced by our rural ancestors. Church bells notwithstanding, for a greater spiritual “wake-up call,” nothing compares with a retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises. THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org We have the inestimable good fortune to have available to us the Spiritual Exercises as well as well-schooled, sanctified and serious clergy to direct us in them, so we have a highly effective means of combatting the noonday devil and his allies, witting and unwitting; we should make sure to take advantage of retreats when we can. The colloquy with Christ continues until six bells sound. Out of the spiritual “starting gate” and out of the improvised monastic “cells” that are the dorm rooms come the retreatants: the directors await them for colloquy designed to help them resolve doubt, deepen their spiritual “mining.” These dialogues are the only occasions upon which silence is broken; given the wisdom of the Fathers Director, they serve to focus the retreatant’s silence and clear away doubts and insecurities that can cloud the mind and spirit. Even lingering noonday imps are sent packing after these sessions. The “noonday devil” is relentless in his attacks during our everyday lives in the “world.” He works 24/7 to undermine our true purpose on this earth: the salvation of our individual souls. The retreat provides a welcome respite from the noonday devil’s doings and provides us with renewed spiritual strength to combat his wiles when we must leave the cloister behind and return to the thousand and one distractions the noonday devil is determined to place in our paths, to divert us from the straight way down the dead-end street that is paved with doubt, indifference and despair: slow but sure spiritual death. Retreat from the tumult of the world ruled by the noonday devil. Grant yourself five days that will be of more spiritual value to you than the remaining thirty dozen that make up the year. Rid yourself of the sour taste of spiritual sloth, of sin, of anxiety and despair. Fill the “hollow night” with the words of the psalmist: He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of heaven. He shall say to the Lord: Thou art my protector and my refuge: my God, in him I will trust… There shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling. For he hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. (Ps. 90:1-2; 9, 10) Neither the noonday devil nor “the business that walketh about in the dark” (Ps. 90:6) stands a chance. When the bells justle, their notes will be music to your ears. Timothy Cullen, a regular contributor to The Remnant and a former equities trader who lived for many years in Spain, is the happily married father of adult children. He and his wife now live in a rural area in Argentina in a straw bale house they designed themselves. Mr. Cullen is a graduate of Cornell University. Twenty Minutes with Fr. de Chivré: Leadership and the Gift of Self Fr. de Chivré’s original audience for this conference was made up of French boys who were members of the movement known in the US as the Boy Scouts of America. The advice he offers to the scouts, however, is applicable to any leader and, first mostly, men and young men called to lead. Among the laymen, we can imagine applications for those who coordinate a chapel, lead a Holy Name Society chapter or that of a Legion of Mary, perhaps a chapter of the Eucharistic Crusade or of the Archconfraternity of St. Stephen, organize a pilgrimage, or plan a church project. This is not to promote specifically the Boy Scouts as an organization, but to let Fr. de Chivré’ highlight its high ideals in the best of their Catholic sense. 14 The attractiveness of youth is that it makes a gift of itself without counting the cost. In the practice of his duty, the ways by which a leader gives himself will be imposed on him. He gives himself according to the Scout spirit, its Law and its Oath. He gives himself according to the demands of those under his charge, though they may be quite unforeseeable and as diverse as the number looking to his leadership. For instance, the leader never makes fun of the secret confidence of a young charge. He does not judge it rashly according to his own preference. He will always draw out its higher resonance. Being all things to all men, even to the subordinate, he makes himself flexible enough to appreciate the form of the ideal confided. The gift of the leader goes beyond praying merely with words. His prayer is an existence wholly given over to the demands of the whole. It is the Catholic Mass itself which illustrates how to give oneself without counting the cost: “Teach us to be generous, to give without counting.” Consisting of avarice of oneself, sin made us unlearn the sense of giving. That is why we incline towards egocentrism and enjoyment of oneself though these are, in fact, the abuse of life. The formation of a leader to sacrifice the gift of self for the common good purifies him from the traces of sin of selfishness. This formation is analogous to that of the Mass, which itself teaches us the gift of unselfish existence. “The Leader” Consider the etymology of the Latin word caput, that is, “the head.” The job of the head is to animate. This is done directly by words that express thoughts or affections, and/or “awarenesses” that observe in order to decide. It is done indirectly by the feet moving things forward and the hands organizing. True leaders are rare. What thoughts should he be putting into words? His own?–Never. He is responsible for knowing and expressing those thoughts and words entrusted to him, specifically the Scout Law and Oath. By voicing these, a leader reveals who he is. If he doesn’t believe what he says, then he is lying. If he doesn’t do what he says, then he is cheating. If a leader wants his words to have authority, he needs to ask himself before he speaks, “Do I do what I say?” If the answer is no, then he must keep his mouth shut. He may have the uniform, the gestures, and the talk, but he has no authority. The head is the source of speech that has first been thought through. Affectionate speech must be carefully aware of justice. It must be uniform in tone, without excesses of sympathy or antipathy because it is far above them both. It must will itself to be spoken in assuming responsibility for the good, the true, THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org and the noble. The affectionate words of a leader must be attentive to kindness–not a preferential, sentimental kindness–a collective kindness of which tone is inspired according to age, status, and temperament for the common goods of the Scout life and Scout ideal, without coldness but without sentimentality. You can start to see that being in command calls for a great purity of heart, humility of heart, liberty of heart. A leader looks over all–observing in order to take in information–but not expressing anything on the spot unless it is necessary for upholding the Scout Law and appropriate behavior. A leader observes so he may reach conclusions for the benefit of the common good or of a particular good, anxious to maintain objectivity, free of emotion or sectarianism. The gaze of a leader creates confidence and optimism through his known concern for reaching a decision in harmony with duty, the Scout Law. The head animates the feet, the other extremity of the body. For a leader, the group is not divided between the big and small, important and unimportant. Everyone, even the less gifted, has a right to the attention of a leader. He should animate all of the details of the group through the intermediation of his subordinates, otherwise he is a tyrant. He should be informed of everything in the manner of being a partner in the work, not as an emperor. The ultimate reason for common effort is to activate a partnership of all elements in order to move things forward toward a deeper understanding of the goal, of the nobility of protocol, of acknowledgement of jobs well done, toward a more successful practical result and initiatives for making things even better. A leader commands to activate the parts of a group for the benefit of the whole group. The head animates the hands. The role of hands is to organize and construct. A leader organizes by not acting with precipitation. He avoids “playing it by ear” and never acts for his own self-glorification. The activity of a leader should always be preceded by serious thought because his action is ultimately upon consciences, not upon camping tents or such. He acts upon fellow members of the group, upon states of spiritual and physical health, which have been entrusted to him. May a leader never twist a conscience, disrespect a fellow scout, nor compromise safety unreasonably by frivolous use of time, by undue counter-orders, last-minute directions, or by lack of precision which seriously threatens the order of the camp. To organize means to bring into existence by thinking long and hard about all the details 15 in advance. God held all creation in His thought from all eternity before He created. A leader thinks of his leadership in his prayer, reflection, in his uprightness, to the greater benefit of tranquility, clearheadedness, and his duties as a leader. Contrary to right organization, the main defect of any leader is in his disorder and inconsistency. To organize is to consult God deeply about the share of sacrifice he will ask of those looking to him, to consult his conscience and rectify his intentions, to consult his official orders, and to consult those with more experience than him. To be a head, a chief, an animator, a leader must be free of those “sicknesses” proper to the head, that is, the migraine headache of prideful selfabsorption, the facial paralysis of indifference, and the brainlessness of conceited ignorance. One begins to be a potential leader when he starts to believe he is unworthy of being a leader and begins to have a healthy fear of the implications of his responsibility. For the sake of those whom a leader leads, he knows a solemn urgency of his own moral and spiritual perfection. A leader loves to form his mind, ask for counsel, and pray, in order to set free his potential for being a great leader, irresistible by his attraction and influence. A leader appears, takes action, and disappears. The head is a great lover of silence about himself, about the superficial, about the faults of others. The chief is a great lover of silence who observes, who thinks, and who prays in order to act straight and true. The Head–the One Who Thinks. A leader is a wheel in a gear works chosen to inspire a group or a part of a group, not according to what he thinks, nor another scout, nor according to what Mom and Dad think, but according to what the Scout Law says and the Oath he has taken. Above all, a leader belongs to the Law and the Oath. He knows it by heart and thinks it with his heart. He is a wheel in a gear work that should fulfill its role as a gear wheel, turning at its proper place, speed, and in the right direction. The place, the speed, and the direction determine the function of the other wheels. gear works, for instance, the second-in-command, the camp assistants, the team leader and his second, the treasurer, etc. We render ourselves respectable when we give respect to others. Otherwise, it is simply pride, silliness, and pretension. Leadership presupposes that authority ultimately comes from God and not from human qualities so threatened by our defects. It presupposes the intervention of grace in a leader to prevent his authority from going off the rails. Turn at the proper speed. Every gear wheel turns at a speed commanded by its dimensions, which determine the possible and proper speed of the gear wheel. What are these “dimensions”?–A leader understands the scope of his responsibility, the speed with which he must choose duty before pleasure, and the necessity for prudence in manning his post day and night. He must be patient yet determined in calculating the speed by which his voluntary sanctity is developed, that is, his openness and humility by not exaggerating his role (hardness), not taking center stage by means of his role (pride), and not taking advantage of his role for his own benefit (lying). Turning at his proper speed, a leader participates in the perfection of Christ, prays for his subordinates, and self-sacrifices for his responsibilities. The leader is not the one who wants to be, who seeks to be, who wishes he were, or who imagines he is. A real leader is the one who decides to be one at the cost of his life, in the direction of the Scout Law, to the benefit of the troop, and with the help of God. This conference was translated by Angelus Press for the first time into English. Heavily edited and abridged for clarity by Fr. Kenneth Novak. Fr. BernardMarie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984. Originally published as “Ohé garçon, toi qui doutes!” in Le Scoutisme, collection of conferences by the Rev. Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré (Touraine: Micro-Edition, 2007), p.113. Turn in the place given to you. The gear wheel that seeks to replace another admits he is incapable of occupying the place entrusted to him. The only solution for him is to step back into the gear work. He must understand what his proper place means by the enthusiastic perfection with which he fills it, a source of prestige, influence, and example. A leader is present amidst the group, but not so that he can go swimming or just sit there and read. A good leader has absolute respect–internally and manifested externally–for the other wheels in the www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 16 F R . Ought traditional Catholic chapels to have “cry rooms”? p e t e r R . s c o t t Q Are there two different kinds of Secularism? It is certainly true that before the Second Vatican Council Catholic churches did not have a specially constructed, sealed-off and sound-proof room in which it was possible for mothers with crying children to assist at Holy Mass. However, there was no need, and the situation at the time was radically different to the situation in which most traditional Catholics find themselves. Each parish had several Masses on a Sunday, and the church was close to home, so that in case of need the parents could each assist at a different Mass while the other parent minded the little children at home. However, this is not the case for many traditional Catholics, who often have to travel long distances to assist at Mass, and have little or no choice as to which Mass to attend. It is to provide for this real need, and to prevent the disturbance of the sacred action of the most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that the custom has been introduced of constructing a separate cry room at the back of the chapel, from which mothers with upset babies can assist at Mass. Some people object to them, saying that babies should not be at Mass in the first place, or that the children and mothers who are present are so distracted and removed from the altar that they are not really assisting at Mass anyway. They object that these rooms encourage laziness of parents in disciplining their children, and that children ought to be in the church proper, learning to be respectful and attentive from a very young age. It seems to me that the objections come from the abuse of cry rooms rather than from their existence. It is certainly very true that they encourage laziness on the part of parents, who bring young children of all ages into the cry room so that they can make noises, play, be distracted and act in a generally undisciplined manner. This certainly does not teach them how to assist at Mass correctly, as they will be obliged to do after the age of seven years. They ought, rather, to be disciplined to sit still, be quiet, and pay attention according to their age. However, there are many cases of mothers with babies whom they are obliged to bring to Mass with them, and who cannot be stopped from fussing, or even crying. In the absence of a cry room, they are obliged by consideration for others to leave the church. The end result is that they do not assist at Mass. For such mothers, under limited circumstances with their babies (not toddlers), the cry room within sight of the altar and with a speaker to hear what is going on, is a valuable asset, both for the mother and for the rest of the congregation. It is because experience has demonstrated this that cry rooms have been built. However, it remains for parents to pay attention that they not abuse them. The idea that there might be two different kinds of Secularism is one promoted by Pope Benedict XVI himself. It was, in fact, on the airplane on the way to the US on April 15, 2008, that he presented the long-standing US practice of Secularism as “a positive concept,” a great improvement on the European practice of union of Church and State, to be contrasted with “a new, completely different, Secularism” that undermines the rights of the human person, and in particular religious liberty. The Pope had this to say about the American experience: A THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org What I find fascinating in the USA is that it began with a positive concept of Secularism. Because this new people was made up of communities and persons who had escaped the State religions and wished to have a lay, secular State, which opens the doors to all confessions, to all forms of religious exercise. It was thus a willingly secular State, but secular truly for love of religion, of its authenticity, which can be lived only freely. And thus we find this fusion of a willingly and honestly secular State, but really for a religious will, to grant authenticity to religion….This seems to me a fundamental and positive model to be considered also in Europe.…Now there is even in the US an attack of a new Secularism, a new, completely different Secularism, and therefore, new problems. To see whether or not such a distinction is justifiable, we need to have a precise idea of what Secularism really is. This is clearly given in the 1925 encyclical of Pope Pius XI instituting the Feast of Christ the King as “an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society” (Quas Primas). This “plague,” which he also calls an “evil spirit” is precisely Secularism. “We refer to the plague of Secularism, its errors and impious activities.” The Pope then goes on to explain in what it consists: It has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ Himself to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions, and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the State and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers.…There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. It follows from this text that the essential element in all Secularism is the refusal of the State to acknowledge the rights of Christ and the Church to teach and govern on moral and religious matters. It also indicates that there are degrees in the application of this same error. A first degree is the separation of Church and State, the refusal of the State to acknowledge Christ and the Church’s authority in all that pertains to eternal salvation. A second degree is the equality of all religions before the State (= Religious Liberty as promoted by Vatican II and the First Amendment). A third degree is the radically anti-religious regime of atheistic Communism, 17 or of radical modern Liberalism that reduces religion to an interior, psychological experience, and that consequently denies all morality, all duties before Almighty God and hence all rights. However, whatever the degree of Secularism, the error is the same, and it falls under the same condemnation of Pope Pius XI: The rebellion of individuals and of nations against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable effects. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi Arcano. We lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed…a blind and immoderate selfishness…society, in a word shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. (Ibid.) If Pope Benedict XVI rightly deplores and fears the attack of the new Secularism, the third degree of Secularism, it is nevertheless a great error to consider the first and second degrees as in some way positive. The principle of removing God from public life is the same, and it is the very principle that ultimately produces the third degree of Secularism. There are not two Secularisms. There is one Secularism that is evil and destructive, that is anti-God because opposed to Catholic teaching, and it proceeds advancing in different degrees. Even if the Church is freer with the first two degrees of Secularism than with the third, they manifestly cannot be treated as a good thing. There is only one answer, and it is the “remedy for this great evil” that St. Pius X gave in his inaugural encyclical, defining so well the goal of his Papacy: “To restore all things in Christ” (§4). These are his words: Who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is–apostasy from God. Are there two different kinds of Pluralism? Pluralism is the acceptation of others’ teachings, doctrines and opinions, even though they may be in contradiction with one’s own. It is a characteristic of modern society that it is pluralistic, meaning that, embracing the principle of liberty of speech and religion, it allows the expression of all beliefs, convictions, philosophies and ideas on an equal level, provided that they do not harm the common good. Pluralism entered into the Catholic Church as a consequence of the embracing of the principle of Dialogue between the different religions. It is the practical expression of Religious Liberty as taught by Dignitatis Humanae and of Ecumenism as taught by Unitatis Redintegratio (Vatican II documents). This new kind of dialogue is specifically required to be pluralistic, that is, accepting of all opinions and ideas. In fact, it was already stated in 1968 that it is not considered permissible to refute errors or to convert one’s interlocutor in such dialogue (“Instruction for Dialogue” of the Secretariat for Non-Believers quoted in Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, p.352). The danger of subjectivism and relativism escapes no-one. If everybody’s ideas have equal rights of expression, then they must be equally true. This means that truth is purely in the eye of the beholder, and not founded on any objective reality. This is subjectivism. The other consequence is that everybody can have his own convictions, and consider that they are true for him, regardless of what others think. Truth is, then, by nature relative to the individual, and not the same for different persons. This is relativism. This in turn leads to agnosticism, the belief that we cannot know in fact if God exists outside of ourselves. All that we can know is our inner feeling about him. These ideas are all major features of Modernism, as condemned by St. Pius X in his Encyclical Pascendi of 1907. In his 1998 encyclical on Faith and Reason, Pope John Paul II admitted this danger, when speaking of modern philosophy, that abandons “the investigation of being” (§5). He explains the consequence: This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism, which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread skepticism. (Ibid.) One would have expected the Pope to draw the conclusion that one ought to avoid all kinds of dialogue with false philosophies and false religions. Not so. His conclusion was to make a distinction between two kinds of pluralism, one that is legitimate, supposedly avoiding relativism, and one that is not legitimate, which he called “undifferentiated,” meaning that it treated all opinions as equal: A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today’s most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth… assuming that truth reveals itself in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another. (Ibid.) On December 14, 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization, attempting to reconcile the novelties of religious liberty, ecumenism and dialogue with the Church’’s mission to teach all nations. It quotes the above-mentioned text of Pope John Paul II, applying it to all forms of dialogue, and claiming to find there the key to the resolution of the contradiction between dialogue and the mission to teach. The contradiction is said to exist only when pluralism is “undifferentiated,” that is, when it admits that all religions are equally true. Otherwise the principle of pluralism in society and pluralism in contacts with other religions is still to be retained. In other words, there is a mitigated form of pluralism, and there is a real dialogue that is not subjectivist, and that these can both be consequently called Catholic. However, the difference between these two kinds of pluralism is really only in the mind of the Catholic, not in reality. In the mitigated or “legitimate” form of pluralism and dialogue, the Catholic does not www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 18 personally, subjectively admit that all positions are equally valid. However, he must act as if he does if there is to be any true dialogue and any real pluralism. In the “undifferentiated” form, he actually personally believes according to his outward words and actions, namely that all religions are equal. There is this in favor of the “undifferentiated” form of dialogue and pluralism, that it is not a lie, that thus a man acts outwardly as he believes inwardly. The man who engages in dialogue and allows equal expression and rights to opinions that he believes to be erroneous (as is essential to dialogue), is dissimulating what he really thinks. Is this a way for dialogue to become “Catholic”? Hardly. If you pardon the length of this passage, I would like to quote from Romano Amerio’s conclusion on whether or not dialogue can be Catholic in Iota Unum (p. 356): We may conclude by saying that the new sort of dialogue (i.e. not for conversion of the interlocuteur) is not Catholic. Firstly, because it has a purely heuristic (= each person in the dialogue seeking truth by his own trial and error) function, as if the Church in dialogue did not possess the truth and were looking for it…. Secondly, because it does not recognize the superior authority of revealed truth…. Thirdly, because it imagines the parties to dialogue are on an equal footing, albeit a merely methodological equality, as if it were not a sin to waive the advantages that comes from divine truth, even as a dialectical ploy. Fourthly, because it postulates that every human philosophical position is unendingly debatable, as if there were not fundamental points of contradiction sufficient to stop a dialogue and leave room only for refutation. Callia Watner Gramling, South Carolina Fifthly, because it supposes that dialogue is always fruitful and that “nobody has to sacrifice anything,” as if dialogue could never be corrupting and lead to the uprooting of truth and the implanting of error. These objections apply to all dialogue, whether mitigated or undifferentiated, whether the person personally believes in the equality of opinions that his discussion expresses or not. You might wonder why a person would want to indulge in dialogue in which he dissimulates the fact that he does not believe that all religions and all opinions are equally valid (so-called “legitimate” dialogue). There is a very simple theological principle, and it is contained in the texts of Vatican II. Here it is: “Truth can impose itself on the mind of man only in virtue of its own truth” (Dignitatis Humanae, §§1 & 3). It is the word “only” which is the problem in this statement, for it denies that religious truth is known by divine revelation, taught to us on the authority of the Church. It is the Church that obliges us to believe revealed truth, and not the truth itself. The Faith is adhering to the teachings of the Church on the authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Faith consequently excludes dialogue on all things that concern the Faith, that are divinely revealed; that is unless one has a modernist and subjectivist notion of faith. The very concept of a “legitimate,” mitigated dialogue is consequently a part of Modernism. 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 “Examine Thy Heart” With familiarity and time frequently comes love. How often is this so with our own homes. After many comfortable years in one house, we grow to love the place. We do not observe its defects, or we just ignore them. My home is the one place I love most. Of course, the walls are scratched and the floors are rutted, but I cherish it despite the myriad of homeimprovements it needs. Nor are our homes the only things in which familiarity breeds love. Our hearts are perfect examples. The older we become, the more time we have to love ourselves: to become selfish and selfcentered. Too often we lovingly embrace our hearts’ desires, dreams and natural tendencies, blinding ourselves toAugust their defects. We do not wish to THE ANGELUS • 2008obvious www.angeluspress.org ruin the illusion we have of ourselves. Deep within, all JUNE 2008 humans know that if they examine themselves, they will find much to clean and purify. Our houses are like our hearts. We prefer not to refinish the floors, because then we will notice the unevenness, and we will have to find the cause of this warping. That may lead us to the foundation, and heaven knows what time and money it will take to rebuild that! In ourselves, we must not refuse to examine the “floors” of our hearts. As Elizabeth Leseur says in My Soul Rejoices, “[We must] hunt down ‘self’ to its last perfidious hiding place.” Even if it means throwing all the furnishings of our “home” out the front door. 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 August 2008 Reprint #82 TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF VATICAN II? MYTH OR REALITY More than 40 years after the Council’s close, we are faced with the paradox of a Council that meant to speak a new language more comprehensible to modern man, yet which today remains the object of discussions about its correct interpretation. We have grown accustomed to hearing of the “two hermeneutics of Vatican II,” two interpretations of the conciliar documents that have been championed in the turbulent post-conciliar period with two very different, if not opposite, readings of the same documents. The Hermeneutic of Rupture The first reading is that of the progressivists, incarnated in Italy by the Bologna School, inheritor of the school founded by Don Giuseppe Dosseti. Theirs is the revolutionary view. This view places the emphasis on the points of rupture between Vatican II and the pre-conciliar Church, which include some doctrines (papal primacy, the powers of the bishop, the priesthood, religious freedom, ecumenism, the role of the People of God, marriage and sexual morality, liturgy) comprised under the heading of ecclesiology. 19 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT According to the revolutionary view, the Council was the occasion of a “new Pentecost,” a radical refounding of the Church by a purification of all the blemishes that disfigured its face and hindered its mission. The new Church would be a more “spiritual” Church, outlined in Pope Paul VI’s famous speech closing the Council and in the “sympathy” this speech expressed for the modern world. The ecclesiology underlying the hermeneutic of rupture adopts as its strategic axis the laicization of the clergy and the clericalization of the laity for the purpose of bringing about a utopia imagined by some to be the way to redouble the fervor and intensity of the life of faith. It consists in dissolving boundaries between clergy, religious, and laity; confusing the secular and religious worlds, to culminate in an indistinct, egalitarian, gnostically hyper-democratic reality. In this view, several theologically central and symbolically decisive aspects of the “ancient” Church are questioned: the celibacy of priests and the power of Peter and the bishops. But it is equally obvious that in this interpretation, the new idea of “the People of God” could not have prevailed without effecting the desacralization of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which, in the Tridentine Missal, was much too evocative of the majesty of God and the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Dossettian view outlined here, the new, post-conciliar Church is conceived of as true insofar as it aligns with the values that came to the fore in the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and in socialist and modern liberaldemocratic political theories. Salvation is no longer conceived of as a supernatural reality, ultimately, the result of the action of grace and the free cooperation of the baptized with it; rather, it is seen as a process—it matters little that it is implicit—of immanentizing the Christian eschaton as a politico-social terrestrial praxis of redeeming humanity by freeing it from war, injustices, poverty, divisions, and the lack of rights or of work. Salvation thus becomes the result of man’s work, of which Jesus becomes merely the perfect symbol or human archetype, and the Church is conceived of as the conscious and most enlightened forerunner of this process. For the hermeneutic of rupture (or revolution), the crisis in the Church after the Council is not disturbing for two reasons: like every revolutionary view of history, it is based on the conviction that the destruction of the past and of every sign referring to it is the indispensable condition of the inauguration of the New World Order and the full incarnation of Good in history, and that this destruction coincides with the advent of the revolutionary world dreamt of by the utopians. In the second place, the forms which are weakening or becoming extinct (ministerial priesthood, cloisters and monasticism, liturgy, confession, the authority of bishops, Catholic schools, etc.) were seriously imperfect and would have hindered, had they remained, the 20 dawning of the new Church of the Spirit esoterically adumbrated in the documents of Vatican II. If the Church is sick, its current crisis is in reality a sign of healing and rebirth. It is not out of bad faith that they choose not to complain or speak of it (they know there is a crisis, but tactically prefer not to say so), but because they really think that nothing negative is happening. Those who resist this transformation by defending the now pathetic “ancient forms” and their embodiment of the Faith are not containing the spread of error and iniquity so much as hindering the chiliastic advent of the Age of the Holy Spirit. Those who, like Cardinal Martini, call for a Vatican Council III are calling for an explicit, public ratification of the “new Church” announced obscurely and equivocally in the documents of Vatican II. The hermeneutic of rupture is based inevitably upon a theology of modernist inspiration, that is to say, subject to modern philosophy, anthropology, and political philosophy. Consequently, it sees no difficulty in speaking of a rupture, a surpassing, a revolution, a change on the level of authority, theology, dogma and morals: the essence of modern culture, indeed, is the negation of the very idea of immutability and the eternity of Truth, and hence the refusal, in general of the fact that problems can be expressed in terms of truth and falsehood, that is, of non-contradiction. But if the essence of modernity is the negation of truth in general (which, if it is, is immutably and eternally equal to itself), then its essence is the negation of the Word, the negation of God–atheism. Now it is evident, on the theological plane, that the hermeneutic of rupture is indefensible, for were it correct, that would mean that for almost 2,000 years, the Church has taught error— which is impossible given its holiness and infallibility—or that a truth of faith, a dogma, can change, which is logically absurd. “Rupture” would mean that in fact the Church is not a divinely founded institution, and that the Christian faith is thus false. Hermeneutic of Continuity What is presented to us as the hermeneutic of continuity aims to propose the thesis according to which there is no break, no discontinuity, between Tradition, the Magisterium before Vatican II, and the doctrines advocated during and after the Council. According to this view, the Council must be read and interpreted in light of Tradition as a homogeneous development, as a modernization and restatement of the same truths in a language and with a cultural awareness adapted to modern man. In this view, there has been no leap, no qualitative break between the pre-conciliar and the postconciliar Magisterium. In this view, indeed, only the application of a bad interpretation by many theologians or churchmen has deformed the spirit of Vatican II and disoriented the faithful, making them believe they were dealing with a new Church, and not simply a renewed Church. The hermeneutic of rupture is herein abstractly condemned as erroneous, without, however, disciplinary THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org measures being taken against its defenders by the hierarchy and the Roman authorities. A very high price must be paid by those who decide to adopt this strategy of interpretation, for the destruction of the Church is being brought about especially by churchmen themselves. By acting in accordance with this view, slowly, day after day, even doctrines or practices that are repugnant to a truly Catholic mind will be accepted: first they are tolerated unwillingly, then they become customary, and finally they are accepted with conviction. By diminishing the combat against the novelties that destroy the Faith, by ceding interiorly on the level of cultural forms and modalities of philosophical thought which underpin the heterodox new theology, the adherents of the hermeneutic of continuity eventually become convinced that there is really nothing negative in the modernist doctrine now professed universally by entire episcopates and multitudes of priests. Faced with veritable heresies or extreme positions, they are no longer scandalized, refusing as they do to see in these positions the fruits of the Council, its inevitable culmination, and taking refuge in the myth of erroneous interpretations that deformed its meaning and spirit. It is easy to identify the doctrinal domains in which, slowly, the defenders of the hermeneutic of continuity have come round with conviction to the new doctrines: ecumenism, religious freedom, the liberal conception of the relation between Church and State, and conjugal morality. If, in the case of the hermeneutic of rupture, the danger is loss of faith, in the case of the hermeneutic of continuity, the danger is renunciation of the principle of non-contradiction, logical rigor, correct thinking, because one must convince oneself that two things placed in a relation of contradiction are in fact the same thing, like post-conciliar ecumenism and the condemnation of ecumenism by the preceding Popes; the traditional vision of the relation between Judaism and the new heterodox conception of Judeo-Christian “dialogue”; the condemnation of religious liberty and liberalism by the Syllabus and the new Catholicliberal conception of politics. This deterioration of thought cannot, in the long run, fail to have an effect upon the life of faith. Moreover, the proponents of the hermeneutic of continuity renounce, or rather, avoid addressing the crisis in the Church; they minimize it, they do not speak of it for the simple reason that they have excluded a priori that the crisis might have been caused by Vatican II. In the Catholic journals on the right, secretly opposed to the conciliar novelties but tied to the hermeneutic of continuity, excellent, worthwhile articles are to be found against Communism or abortion, but at no price will they dare to speak of the shortcomings of the Council, of the heterodoxy of numerous stances taken by the hierarchy who have followed the Council, or of the sometimes openly heretical positions of priests or Catholic theologians; the condemnation of a seriously erroneous position or declaration by a bishop or cardinal will never occur. The crisis will be blamed on the world, secularization, or left-wing culture, while it will be forgotten that the triumph of these anti-Christian positions in countries that had been Catholic for 15 or 16 centuries is the result and not the cause of the crisis. It will be forgotten that the laws in favor of divorce, abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and against every principle of order and authority, were imposed on the countries of Christian tradition during the decade that followed Vatican II. Indeed, for the enemies of the Church, it is clear that with the Council, the Church—or rather the men of the Church who represented it then—renounced the fight against the world and its perversity. In this view, in order to avoid giving the lie to the absurd myth of continuity between Tradition and the Council, the proponents of the hermeneutic of continuity explain the documents of the Council and the post Council in such a way as to emphasize in every way possible the coherence between the Church’s constant teaching and the new doctrines professed, by extrapolating on their common elements and by never pointing out the essential differences between them, whether in the letter or the spirit, which irremediably divide Tradition and Vatican II. The crisis is an embarrassment, for it is the proof that the Council not only was not fruitful, but that it caused an unprecedented collapse in the life of faith, the sacraments, vocations, religious orders, and liturgical practice. To recognize or admit the crisis would cast doubt upon the presumed continuity between Vatican II and the previous Magisterium. The result is an impasse: either minimize or deny the crisis, or else admit it but refuse to explain it by its only likely cause, by linking it to the Council. Why Two Hermeneutics? We must consider the conditions that made possible the coexistence for 40 years of two radically different interpretations of Vatican II within the bosom of the Church. Normally, after a Council, a period follows in which special commissions are created with responsibility for resolving the most difficult points of interpretation, and answering the doubts and questions that a part of the episcopacy or clergy might express. Quickly, the exercise of the Church’s magisterium at every level of authority should concur to give a clear and unequivocal interpretation of the conciliar documents: Roma locuta, causa finita est. The papal magisterium, as the first norm of Revelation (Sacred Scripture and Tradition) ought first and foremost to fulfill this duty: to prevent heterodox, erroneous, or heretical elements from being introduced into the theological interpretation of traditional texts, including those of a recent council. But the “theological stabilization” of the interpretation of conciliar texts cannot go on for 40 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 21 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT years and more. It seems that what we have here is an infinite hermeneutic and an insoluble conflict between two contradictory interpretations in the case of the Council. What is happening is clearly one of the signs– one of the most important signs–of the current crisis in the Church: in effect, the Magisterium, the proximate norm of Revelation, is becoming “the proximate norm of the proximate norm”: it has been sterilely exercising its authority on itself; it no longer interprets Revelation, but its own interpretation, all the while skeptically doubting its own competence in the matter. By a kind of transcendental, dubitative, questioning, dialogical, and circular self-absorption, instead of studying and interpreting the grand Tradition, the Church’s teaching authority is progressively transformed into a vague and uncertain gesture, perhaps fascinating culturally, but incapable of guiding and orienting the faithful. Moreover, it should be noted that, since two contradictory, mutually exclusive visions of Vatican II exist, one of the two should appear to the papal authority as not only different but also erroneous and dangerous to faith. It is not enough to oppose an error solely by enouncing the correct interpretation, for that is not enough to eradicate the error itself. If those who are mistaken refuse to abandon their error, it must be necessary to invoke against them the sanctions and penalties provided by the Code of Canon Law. The abnormality and perversity for the Church of having two contradictory hermeneutics coexisting for 40 years leads us a step further. Beyond the Myth of Two Hermeneutics So far we have considered the theme of the hermeneutic of the Second Vatican Council abstractly, stating the problem in terms of a conflict between interpretations or of opposition between differing schools of thought. But certain clarifications are necessary. In the first place, if it is true from an academic standpoint that two hermeneutics exist, it is also true that the dominant hermeneutic till now has been that of rupture. Indeed, given the general mood in the Church, the majority opinion among the faithful, and the convictions increasingly taking root amongst the clergy, we are painfully obliged to recognize that we are confronted with a situation in which an ensemble of doctrines increasingly unrecognizable as Catholic has spread. Heterodoxy in every domain and at every level is now so widespread that it has come to seem normal and not symptomatic of a grave pathology in the life of the Church. On many issues of paramount doctrinal importance, such as the theology of marriage and sexual morality, the vast majority of the faithful, and part of the clergy, are no longer in agreement with Catholic teaching and act according to their own heterodox ideas without regard for authority, 22 convinced that it is the Church that is “backward” and will eventually change its doctrine. This means that the Lutheran notion of universal priesthood and sectarian, protestant anarchy have become a habitus of the majority of Catholics. While the number of the few who profess allegiance to the hermeneutic of continuity is diminishing, the hermeneutic of rupture has in fact triumphed, at least materially, in the hearts of the Catholic people. Thus the “School of Bolgna” [or the revolutionary school] is not the cause of the doctrinal deviations: despite its ideological dominance, it merely rides the neo-modernist wave that has swept away the majority of churchmen, even at the top. The unprecedented crisis in the Church will not be brought to an end by expatiating on the different hermeneutics and their value, but by denouncing false or heretical interpretations and excluding their authors from ecclesiastical functions or teaching. Infallibility in matters of faith and morals is not the prerogative of the theologians of Tübingen, the editorialists of La Repubblica or Avennire, or of the “historians” of the Bolognese School, but of the Sovereign Roman Pontiff, who is the Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, and who alone possesses the power, the authority, the means, the duty, and the assistance of the Holy Ghost, to destroy infallibly heresy and error, and like a beacon to enlighten the people of God, the new Israel, the holy Catholic Church. The fact that after 40 years the debate over the proper interpretation of Vatican II is still going on is proof that, for these 40 years, there has only been an appearance of magisterial activity. Indeed, if it is true that there are two hermeneutics in opposition, and if we admit, as we seem compelled to do, that at least one of the two is completely erroneous, there can be no authentic act of the Magisterium unless this is accompanied by or implies the condemnation of the error that must be refuted. But since the Council, these errors—beginning, symbolically, with the Council’s scandalous failure to denounce Communist tyranny— have been granted official standing beside Rome’s teaching. This fact alone suffices to belie this teaching and to reveal its interlocutory, non-authentic character, lacking as it does the will to forcefully impose itself with indisputable, universal authority over the Church militant and every man. Our most fervent wish and liveliest hope is that Peter, who since the Council was and continues to be Peter, no longer content himself with being Peter but that he act as Peter. In these hours of uncertainty and hope, we all have the duty to pray for this intention with renewed fervor. Matteo D’Amico (La Tradizione Cattolica, No.1, 2008). Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome (Mar. 2008, pp.1-4). THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org The Erosion of the Council’s Authority More than 40 years after its close, the debate about the correct interpretation of the Council continues. But an even more fundamental question must be examined: What authority can a council have when the contending interpretations of its documents involve the Church in something far more serious than academic disputes? For if the thesis of rupture with the previous magisterium were true, there would be two legitimate teaching authorities without continuity between them; it would spell the birth of a new magisterium and thus a new Church. If, on the contrary, the conservative, typically Ratzingerian thesis of continuity between the pre- and post-conciliar Church were true, it would be necessary to reconcile the irreconcilable: ecumenism, collegiality, religious liberty, and modern ecclesiology with the traditional magisterium; the dogmatic tenor of the Tridentine Mass with the dogmatic tenor of Pope Paul VI’s Mass, and so on. In the first case, the Church of all time would be finished for ever, having given way to a new Church; in the second case, the Catholic Church would continue to exist while legitimately and magisterially teaching the opposite of what was taught by the traditional Magisterium. The first thesis affirms the truth about “the rupture” between the two Teaching Authorities, but it destroys the indefectibility of the Church, which would have ended and then recommenced under a new identity; the second certainly saves the indefectibility of the Church but, despite considerable efforts, it entails renunciation of the principle of non-contradiction. Solution The solution to this impasse is literally Lefebvrian: this conciliar magisterium, which has succeeded in imposing itself as the keystone of the whole theological, liturgical, and pastoral edifice of the Council, never availed itself of the supernatural guarantees that make the Church’s magisterium what it is, as distinguished from simple affirmations having another value, another scope, and other objectives. This explanation certainly is not new; what is new, however, are the frank and important admissions of a prelate of considerable authority, the former Archbishop of Bologna and papabile, Cardinal Biffi. It is in light of his recent statements concerning the authority of the Council that we would like to reflect on this crucial problem. But we must first recall what the Council itself affirmed on the subject of the authority and scope of its decrees. The Council Secretary’s Notices On several occasions the Council was obliged to examine and to express itself on the dogmatic weight of its decrees, a clear sign of the doubt and unease which the Council Fathers did not conceal, aware as they were of the decidedly atypical character of the Council. An initial official declaration of the Theological Commission on the question dated March 6, 1964, was reprised several times by the Secretary General of the Council, Msgr. Pericle Felici, in particular on November 16, 1964 (in regard to a question about the theological qualification of Lumen Gentium), and on November 15, 1965 (in regard to a similar question about Dei Verbum). We cite in full the text of this last announcement, nearly identical to the others: The question has been raised, what ought to be the theological qualification of the doctrine which is set forth in the schema of the dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation and is being voted on. The Theological Commission gave the answer to this question by referring to its own Declaration of March 6, 1964...: “In view of conciliar practice and the pastoral purpose of the present Council, this sacred Synod defines matters of faith or morals as binding on the Church only when the Synod itself openly declares so. “Other matters which the sacred Synod proposes as the doctrine of the supreme teaching authority of the Church, each and every member of the faithful is obliged to accept and embrace according to the mind of the sacred Synod itself, which becomes known either from the subject matter or from the language employed, according to the norms of theological interpretation.”1 The repeated questions of the bishops and the repeated responses about the theological qualification of the conciliar documents clearly indicate that the Council Fathers themselves were aware that they were dealing with a Magisterium sui generis, about which they could not but question themselves as to its obligatory character long before the Society of Saint Pius X did. It becomes evident that we are far from the uncritical, enthusiastic acceptance that made of the Council a super-dogma, so imposing as to silence not only every objection but even the preceding magisterium of the Church. A detailed examination of the conciliar texts themselves to determine what the Council “explicitly intended to impose upon THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 23 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT ings that would be obligatory for all. And in fact, this original indication was continually followed.3 the Church,” yields the response that, concretely, it imposed nothing except what had been declared as such by the previous magisterium. And it could not be otherwise, “according to the spirit of this holy Synod.” The very finality of the Council, convoked with the explicit2 intention not to define truths of faith and not to condemn error (cf. Gaudet Mater Ecclesia), inaugurated a magisterium with a novel method and approach, even before its content is considered: a magisterium which, in the last analysis, was not intended to constitute an act of teaching, but rather a new style of conduct towards the world, a way to present the Church in a less strictly doctrinal, more existential aspect. The goal was to impart a completely new spirit rather than to communicate dogmatic content. According to the explicit intention of the Sovereign Pontiff who initiated it, the Second Vatican Council was convoked not to define dogmas, correct errors, or condemn doctrinal deviations as in the past, but to bond with the modern world. This decision to leave aside any intention of imposing certain truths of faith meant that the Council was intended to abstain from teaching in the objective, traditional, and magisterial sense of the term. It is because of this novel intention that the Council was deprived of the assistance of the Holy Ghost, who would have guaranteed the infallibility of its affirmations, which, in fact, are no longer teachings. It must be remarked that in this regard, it is not a posteriori that Vatican II appears bereft of infallibility, that is, by the fact that errors can be found in its documents; rather, it is the fact that it deprived itself a priori of this infallibility because of an intention objectively not in conformity with the intention of a Church council, hence allowing the introduction of error. In other words, our argumentation does not consist in an examination of the errors of the Council, in light of which we desire to discuss its authority, in the measure that it is not possible for there to be contradictions in the assisted infallible magisterium: we do not wish to adopt a behavior towards the magisterium equivalent to that of the Protestants towards Sacred Scripture, that is to say, a sort of free examination; rather, we simply wish to verify if the Council actually constitutes an act of the infallible Magisterium, or whether it involves something else. The Assertions of Cardinal Biffi In his recent autobiographical work, Cardinal Biffi, through his extremely lucid and balanced judgments on the Council, authoritatively confirms the reading which to us seems the only one possible. John XXIII aspired after a council that would obtain the renewal of the Church not by condemnations, but by the “remedy of mercy.” By refraining from reproving errors, the Council by that very fact avoided formulating definitive teach- 24 The Cardinal’s remark is fundamental, especially the weight of this “by that very fact” contained in this statement. Why should this be so? Because to affirm a notion while categorically refusing to deny the opposite notion precludes the will to consider the enounced notion as definitive and obligatory for all minds. This does not exclude the possibility that subsequently such a notion might be imposed peremptorily (as is the case for the conciliar documents after 40 years), but this imposition would not be the consequence of the intrinsic and absolute truth of the notion, which would imply “by that very fact” (that is to say, by a logical exigency) the condemnation of the opposite, but would be due to other, more or less valid, contingent motives: dialogue with the modern world, ecumenical relations, international relations (cf. the case of the “silence” about Communism), the politically correct, etc. It is thus clear that this way of teaching is alien to that traditionally present in the ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church, which consisted in clearly “formulating definitive teachings obligatory for all.” Pope John XXIII had no explicit intention of so obliging. To express this difference of intention from the traditional intentions of the Church, the designation “pastoral council” was adopted. Cardinal Biffi comments on this nomenclature as follows: ...in spite of myself, I felt rising within me some difficulties. The notion [pastoral council] struck me as ambiguous; and the emphasis with which “pastorality” was attributed to the sitting Council, a little suspicious: did they mean to imply that the previous councils had not had been “pastoral” or that they were not “pastoral” enough? Was it not pastoral to affirm clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is God and consubstantial with the Father, as they defined at Nicaea? Was it not pastoral to clarify the reality of the Eucharistic presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass, as they did at Trent? Was it not pastoral to set forth the primacy of Peter in its full value and with all its implications, as was taught by Vatican Council I? Clearly, the explanation of truth and the condemnation of error cannot but be pastoral in that they confirm the faithful in the Faith and shelter them from heresy and error. Thus, as the Cardinal points out, every council is pastoral. For what reason did they wish to define Vatican II as a pastoral council? “One understands,” continues the Cardinal, “that the declared intention was to study the best ways and the most effective means of reaching the hearts of men without diminishing their positive consideration for the traditional teaching of the Church.” This last affirmation comprises two fundamental elements: 1) the declared intention of the Church was “original,” extraneous to the safeguard of the depositum and the condemnation of errors; 2) the avowal that Vatican II (and John XXIII, who convoked it) did not want to “diminish positive consideration for the traditional magisterium of the Church” signifies that this Council is placed beside the tradition of the ecumenical councils, THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org and not necessarily in continuity with it. Vatican II was limited to not diminishing the Church’s traditional magisterium, rather than being in perfect continuity with it. We can deduce that a particular intention characterized the Council different from the will to impose a teaching. The Intention to Teach: The Theological Viewpoint Let us take, for example, the case of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. What particularly distinguishes the Catholic point of view from the Islamic point of view is the fact that divine inspiration in no wise substitutes itself for the faculties of the authors of Sacred Scripture, as would be the case if their writing were considered to be a kind of dictation. On the contrary, divine intervention supposes and uses their human capacities. We meet with the Thomistic principle according to which the first cause (the divine inspiration) conserves all the characteristics proper to the secondary cause (the human author) such that the latter is, in his proper order, a true cause. Now let us think of a sacramental action. The Church teaches that the minister of the sacrament must have the intention, even if it is not actual, to do what the Church does, that is to say, to ordain his action to the end for which Jesus Christ instituted it, so that without this intention, the sacrament is invalid. If this principle holds for the sacraments (munus sanctificandi), all the more true is it for the magisterium (munus docendi). Indeed, whereas in the case of inspiration or the sacramental economy, man is merely an instrument, in the case of the magisterium, the Catholic hierarchy acts in a way so as to be simply “assisted” to be preserved from error. In other words, the hierarchy is not “inspired,” as in the case of the authors of Holy Writ; this means that in the case of the hierarchy, God leaves men a much wider sphere of freedom than exists in the case of scriptural inspiration or the administration of the sacraments. Teaching the Faith is accomplished by ministers ordained to that end. These ministers are human beings and they keep their proper human characteristics. If then the pope or a council in the act of presenting a teaching does not intend to teach it as something revealed by Jesus Christ, as always taught by the Church, or if they do not intend to authoritatively demand assent, there seems to be no reason why God should guarantee the help promised to the Church Teaching when it has no intention of teaching. This human will is a condition both necessary and sufficient for guaranteeing its preservation from error by the Holy Ghost. The key Thomistic principle comes into play, according to which grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. In His assistance to the Church, God does not replace the mediations of men, but supposes them in the integrity of their faculties and uses them by elevating them above simple human possibilities. The acts of the Magisterium corroborate this understanding. Let us take for example the document of Vatican Council I that defines the Sovereign Pontiff’s infallibility. It affirms: ...the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when carrying out the duty of the pastor and teacher of all Christians in accord with his supreme apostolic authority he explains a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, through the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, operates with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished that His church be instructed in defining doctrine on faith and morals; and so such definitions of the Roman Pontiff from himself, but not from the consensus of the Church, are unalterable.4 We can thus deduct that infallibility presupposes the pope’s free will to exercise his function of supreme doctor of the Church by binding the Church, that is, by imposing upon every mind the content of its definitions. This is what we call teaching; when the pope does not intend to exercise this function, the assistance promised him does not come into play. Another text, cited this time from the Ordinary Magisterium, affirms: But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter till then under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot any longer be considered a question open to discussion among theologians.5 We again find a reference to intention expressed in this passage; absent an intention to define, to decide definitively, or to condemn anything, infallibility is not guaranteed. The Intentions of the Council In this article we cannot examine everything that researchers have learned about the direction John XXIII intended to impart to the Council; however, we will summarize the declared intentions of the Council so that we can understand that they objectively differ from the Church’s intentions. These are John XXIII’s intentions: 1) Aggiornamento: “The salient point of this Council is not, therefore, a discussion of one article or another of the fundamental doctrine of the Church,” but to study and expound doctrine “through methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought.”6 2) The unity of the human race: “...such is the aim of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which... prepares, as it were, and consolidates the path toward that unity of mankind which is required as a necessary foundation, in order that the earthly may be brought to the resemblance of that heavenly city ....”7 3) The non-condemnation of errors: “Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.”8 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 25 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT brethren when he teaches. Yet this is what man today desperately needs. The declarations of Paul VI are equally clear: 1) The self-awareness of the Church: “The time has come...when the truth concerning the Church of Christ must be explored, arranged, and expressed more and more, not perhaps in the solemn formulas called dogmatic definitions, but rather in declarations by which the Church may declare with greater clarity and understanding what she understands about herself.”9 2) Ecumenical intention: “...the convocation of this Council...tends towards an ecumenism seeking to be total, universal.”10 3) Dialogue with the contemporary world: “Let the world know that the Church regards it with a profound understanding and genuine admiration, and is sincerely disposed not to subjugate it but to serve it; not to depreciate it, but to enhance its dignity; not to condemn it, but to sustain and save it.”11 Conclusion For teachings of the Magisterium to engage the guarantee of infallibility, the intention with which they are pronounced is an essential factor. An act of the Magisterium must be made with the intention of teaching a truth of faith or morals, or condemning error, or settling a controversy, etc. Using Cardinal Biffi’s recent contribution, we have shown that the Council’s intention was different from the habitual intention of Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church. To us the conclusion seems obvious: It is legitimate to question the Council. All of contemporary theology, as well as the encyclicals of the last Pope, has been built upon the shifting sands of the Second Vatican Council. It has not been built on the rock of Peter because Peter did not wish to teach, but to propose; he did not wish to oblige, but to dialogue; he did not wish to avail himself of the guarantees our Lord promised him to confirm his Fr. David Pagliarani, SSPX (La Tradizione Cattolica, No. 1, 2008). Fr. Pagliarini is the District Superior of Italy for the Society of St. Pius X. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome (Mar. 2008, pp.4-7). 1 English version: The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., general editor (New York: The America Press, 1966), pp.97-98. 2 It is necessary to distinguish between the explicit intention, openly declared, and the secret intention, of which God alone is judge. Of course, we can only speak of the first. 3 Giacomo Biffi, Memorie e digressioni di un Italiano Cardinale (Sienna, 2007). 4 Vatican Council I, Pastor Aeternus, July 18, 1870 (Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, 1839). 5 Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, §20. 6 John XXIII, Pope John’s Opening Speech to the Council, The Documents of Vatican II, p.715. 7 Ibid., p.718. 8 Ibid., p.716. 9 Paul VI, Speech Opening the Council’s Second Session, September 29, 1963. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. $2.00 per SiSiNoNo reprint. Please specify. 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The emperor was stripped of any political power, but remained the head of the traditional religion of Japan, Shintoism, and he was venerated as a descendant of the gods. He was the guardian of traditions. The history of Japan is a long series of conflicts between lords and of civil wars to obtain the shogunate. The political situation at the time of the missionaries’ arrival was favorable to the development of Christianity. The daimyo, local feudal lords, were absolute masters in their domains and jealous of their independence. The daimyo could accept or prescribe in all freedom the Christian religion with no one to contradict them. Moreover, by embracing this religion, they gave themselves greater independence. Through the missionaries they could enter in relations with the heads of foreign states and send or receive embassies. This also explains why Christianity obtained so much success among the territorial nobility, whose example obviously had a strong influence on samurais and on the people. Catholic missionaries also arrived at the right moment when Buddhism, which had come from China to Japan several centuries ago, was decadent. The immorality of the bonzes was known to all. They were “inclined to sins abhorrent to nature.…These bonzes have many boys, sons of noblemen, in their monasteries, whom they teach to read and write, and they commit their abominations with them.”1 People www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 28 held the leaders of Buddhism in contempt. In contrast, the missionaries edified by their disinterestedness, their morals, and the absolute conformity between their life and their teaching. People ran to them first out of curiosity, which soon turned into real enthusiasm for these strangers who preached the contempt of riches and did not care to acquire any; who preached humility and answered insults with kindness; who preached abstinence and did not get drunk; who preached purity and did not live with women. As they practiced celibacy and occasionally organized pompous ceremonies, they did not shock the traditional Japanese concepts of priest and worship.… Besides, guided by the example and advice left by St. Francis Xavier, they tried to adapt to native customs whenever possible and were extremely careful never to hurt the susceptibilities, so easily aroused, of this people proud and jealous of its independence. Oda Nobunaga waged war against the Buddhist monasteries and brought the rebels back to obedience. He showed much interest for European culture and was collecting Western artworks, weapons and breastplates. He is one of the first Japanese to have worn Western clothes. The Beginning of Christendom (1549-51) The history of Christendom in Japan began with the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in Kagoshima, on the Island of Kyushu, on August 15, 1549, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was accompanied by Paul of the Holy Faith, John, and Anthony–three Japanese he had met in India who had converted and followed the Spiritual Exercises–as well as by Fr. Cosme de Torres and a young Jesuit Brother, Bro. Juan-Fernandez. He brought with him a cargo of gifts for “the King of Japan” because he wished to be introduced to him as apostolic nuncio. In a letter, St. Francis Xavier gave details about his arrival in Japan and the beginning of his apostolate: On the Feast of our Lady in August 1549, God thus brought us to these lands which we had so ardently desired to reach. And since we could find no other harbor in Japan, we sailed to Kagoshima, the land of Paul of the Holy Faith, where we were received with great love by all, both by his relatives and by those who were not.2 His first impressions were very favorable, and in the same letter sang the praises of the Japanese people: The people with whom we have thus far conversed are the best that have as yet been discovered; it seems to me that no other pagan race will be found that will surpass the Japanese. They have, as a race, very fine manners, and they are on the whole good and not malicious. They have a marvelous sense of honor, and esteem it more than anything else....They are a people of great good will, very sociable, and eager to know.3 The first care of St. Francis Xavier was to have the catechism and the explanation of the Creed translated THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org into Japanese. Since most Japanese could read and write, it was important to provide them with Christian literature. A little more than a year later, more than 100 Japanese had converted. But the bonzes excited the lord of the land against the Christians, and he forbade his subjects to embrace the faith of Christ. Seeing the hostility of the lord, St. Francis Xavier and his companions decided to evangelize other areas of Japan. They left Paul of the Holy Faith in Kagoshima to support and instruct the newly converted Christians. Fr. de Torres settled in Yamaguchi, a town to the south of the Island of Honshu, the largest of the islands of the Japanese Archipelago. The lord of the place received them with pleasure, and after a few days of preaching, about 100 people had embraced the Faith. St. Francis Xavier evangelized the district of Bungo, in the north-east of the Island of Kyushu. Even though he had received permission to preach and baptize freely, there were few neophytes for lack of an interpreter since he had left the Brother who was fluent in Japanese with Fr. de Torres. Observing that the support of the leaders was a powerful help in converting a people, St. Francis Xavier resolved to meet with the Mikado (the emperor of Japan). He managed to enter the palace, yet he did not meet the Mikado, and gave up his dream to convert him and thus bring the whole Japanese people to Christianity. He came to think that the best solution would be to convert China first, and then the Japanese would follow suit. In November 1551, St. Francis Xavier left Japan, and appointed Fr. Cosme de Torres and a Brother at the head of the young church of about a thousand faithful. The Golden Age (1551-87) After the departure of St. Francis Xavier, the golden age of Christianity in Japan began. The churches of Yamaguchi, Bungo, and Hizen–this area corresponds to the present prefectures of Nagasaki and Saga–very soon reached a high degree of prosperity. In the state of Omura,4 the daimyo Sumitada was baptized in 1563 and had 5,600 Christian subjects. In 1571, threatened by a local rebellion, he launched a military campaign against the bonzes; in 1575, there were no longer any non-Christians in his possessions. The conversion of this daimyo was followed by that of many other Japanese lords, some of whom enjoyed considerable influence. Further north, in Kyoto, where Fr. Vilela had settled in 1579, and in Central Japan the progress of Christianity was no less spectacular. Bonzes, samurais, daimyos, and even kuges (members of the court nobility) converted. Political troubles interrupted the progress of the Faith between 1564 and 1568. But with the return of peace, Christianity made new progress. Daimyo Oda Nobunaga openly protected Christianity, doubtless for political reasons, in order to counteract the influence of Buddhist monasteries. In 1577, the Jesuits Na K 29 Sapporo Hokkaido Sea of Japan JAPAN Honshu Kyoto TOKYO Osaka Saga Shikoku NORTH Nagasaki Kyushu PACIFIC Kagoshima OCEAN Political System in Japan and Some Relevant Terms The emperor was considered as a descendant of the Goddess Sun. Until 1945, this belief was an official dogma in Japan. From the 9th century onwards, the emperor began to lose his power, and from the 12th century, though the old form of civil government was not abolished, Japan was in fact governed by warriors. The emperor remained venerated but without actual power. The shogun, chief general of the imperial army, from the end of the 12th century became the head of the government. The imperial court, in Kyoto, remained without actual authority and was deprived of the administration of the country. The shogunate became a hereditary charge. The Ashikaga family reigned from 1338 until 1597, and established the capital in Kyoto. This 250-year shogunate was troubled by continual civil wars of which the daimyos and the Buddhist monastery took advantage to form their own armies and territories. After 1603, the Tokugawa family seized power and made Tokyo its capital. The daimyos [say: dī-myō] were feudal lords, vassals of the shogun. They lived in their domains. The continual civil wars from the 14th to the 16th century weakened the power of the shogun to the benefit of the daimyos who became quite powerful. The kuge was a nobleman living at court. The samurai [say: săm′ (y)ərī′] was the knight of feudal Japan. These aristocratic warriors had the privilege of carrying two swords. Their particular virtues were indifference to pain and death, and especially an unfailing loyalty to their lords. built a beautiful church in Kyoto, which they dedicated to the Assumption of Our Lady. Nobunaga also allowed them to build another church with a school for young boys of the nobility, and a seminary in Azuchi,5 on Lake Biwa.6 In 1581, 22 years after the introduction of Christianity, 75 missionaries were spreading the gospel in Japan, and there were 150,000 Christians. On February 20, 1582, a delegation of four young Japanese, representing three Christian daimyos of Kyushu, sailed for Europe. They had a private audience with Pope Gregory XIII on March 23, 1585. One of them, Julian Nakaura, later became a Jesuit priest and was martyred on the hill of martyrs in Nagasaki on October 21, 1633. In 1582, Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his generals and committed suicide. His castle in Azuchi was burnt together with the school, the seminary, and the church of the Jesuits. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of Nobunaga’s lieutenants, seized power and at first showed the same benevolence towards Christians. The Jesuits settled in Osaka, near him, and there they worked famous conversions, among others that of Konishi Yukinaga, Hideyoshi’s grand admiral, and of Kuroda Yoshitaka, general of his cavalry. In 1587 Persecutions Began In 1587, Toyotomi Hideyoshi decided to expel the Jesuits and took from them the flourishing port of Nagasaki, which had been given them by his predecessor. Besides, he decreed that Christianity was henceforth forbidden. The underground missionaries found it difficult to visit regularly the many thousands of Christians living in Kyushu and part of Honshu. No wonder then that these Christians on various occasions wrote letters and sent messengers to Manila begging the Franciscans to come to Japan. Their letters were addressed in particular to a Franciscan Brother, Gonzalvo Garcia, who had previously spent eight years among the Jesuits as a catechist before joining the Franciscan order in Manila in 1587. In 1593, Hideyoshi revised his position and gave missionaries a certain freedom, which lasted four years. In December 1596, he believed calumnies told him by some of his governors concerning the missionaries and decreed a new extermination of all missionaries and Christians. On December 30, of that same year, Yakuin, a Christian hater, had an audience with Hideyoshi, who then gave strict orders to mutilate the faces of the Franciscans www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 30 and their faithful who had been arrested in Kyoto, to carry them around in the cities of Kyoto, Osaka and Sakai, and to bring them to Nagasaki to be crucified. The official list of those condemned to death bore only 24 names. Two more Christians were added to the group on the way to Nagasaki. The prisoners had their left ear cut off. The 500-mile journey from Osaka to Nagasaki was made partly by land and partly by sea in small boats and lasted 26 days. They suffered much from the cold. On February 4, they eventually arrived at Sonogi, about 20 miles from Nagasaki. The place of martyrdom of the 26 martyrs was a hill now called Nishizaka,7 facing the city and Nagasaki Bay. It was a place of execution. In Japan, as in ancient Rome, the cross was abhorred because the worst criminals were crucified. More than once, Japanese said: “A religion which adores a crucified man cannot be good.” Fr. Peter Baptist,8 a Spaniard, had often insisted on the scandal of the cross, and he now had to reproduce in his flesh the image of Christ crucified. On the way up the hill, a nobleman tempted the youngest boy, who was only 12 years old, to renounce his faith. But young Louis would not yield but eagerly asked: “Where is my cross?” When they pointed out the smallest one to him he immediately embraced it, and held on to it as a child clings to his toy. As soon as all 26 martyrs reached the top of their Calvary, they knelt down and sang the canticle “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel because he has visited and ransomed his people” (Lk. 2:68-79). Then Fr. Martin of the Ascension delivered a beautiful discourse on the excellence and inestimable grace of martyrdom which God had bestowed upon them. All were soon fastened with cords and iron rings to the crosses and raised aloft almost simultaneously. Paul Miki was too short for the cross they had fashioned for him. They stretched his legs to meet the rings on the lower leg beams. The crosses had been arranged in a semi circle with the Franciscans in the center. A sign with the inscription “Condemned to the death of the cross because they preached the forbidden Christian law” was placed in the center of the semicircle. Hanging on the cross, Fr. Peter Baptist intoned the Te Deum, in which they all joined. Bro. Paul Miki, seeing the crowd of people, began to preach. The general idea of his sermon was: The sentence of judgment says that these men came to Japan from the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I was teaching the doctrine of Christ. I thank God that this is the reason for which I die. After Christ’s example, I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope that my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain. The first to shed his blood was a Mexican Franciscan, Philip of Jesus, who had arrived on the San Filipe,9 and had been arrested in Kyoto. The iron ring by which his neck had been fastened to the cross was suffocating him, so he asked that it be adjusted so THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org he might die consciously. The executioner answered by piercing forthwith his chest with a spear. The last to arrive, he was the first to die with the name of Jesus and Mary on his lips. Among the martyrs were three boys. The two youngest, Anthony and Louis, were placed to the right of Fr. Peter Baptist. He had told them to sing the psalm Laudate pueri Dominum from the cross. Anthony asked him: “Should we start singing?” Fr. Peter Baptist, lost in contemplation with his eyes fixed on heaven, did not hear him. So the boys began to sing by themselves with a clear voice: “Praise the Lord, ye children, praise ye the name of the Lord.” Scarcely had they finished this beautiful song of praise when their tender bodies were transfixed with a lance in each side. St. Peter Baptist, the leader of this holy band of martyrs, was reserved till the last. Filled with holy joy and consolation at seeing all the rest bravely shed their blood, he ceased not to encourage the assembled Christians to remain steadfast in the Faith, and to exhort the pagans to convert. Then, having forgiven his executioners, he was pierced with a lance in each side whilst a smile played on his lips. Among the martyrs, St. Gonzalvo was born in India of a Portuguese father and an Indian mother. He is the first canonized saint born in India, and the patron saint of Bombay. At the age of 16, he came to Japan and worked for eight years as a catechist with the Jesuit Fathers. Having met a Franciscan Brother, John Pobre Diaz, who happened to visit Japan in 1582, Gonzalvo later went to Manila, where he became a Franciscan Brother in 1587. Brother Gonzalvo was fluent in Japanese, hence he was chosen to accompany Fr. Peter Baptist as an interpreter in 1593. In Japan, he greatly helped to establish the Franciscan mission. He was about 40 years old when he died, continually repeating the holy name of Jesus at Nagasaki. St. Thomas Kozaki was the son of Michael Kozaki, a bow and arrow maker. As a boy of 11, he became acquainted with the friars when helping the carpenter to build the friary in Kyoto. He then became a student of the friars. He made good progress in doctrine and virtue and would certainly have become a good preacher. Later Thomas was an altar boy and a helper in the friary in Osaka. After the arrival of the San Filipe, he was with Philip of Jesus when he was arrested. After his martyrdom, a Portuguese found a letter, wet with blood, in the sleeve of his father, Michael. It had been written by Thomas to his mother. In it he told his mother not to worry about him and his father since they were going to heaven together and would wait for her to come. “Please come early,” he wrote. You must fear sin very much, since that causes Our Lord much suffering. If you commit a sin, you must confess and ask Our Lord’s forgiveness. The pleasures of this world appear like a dream and fade away to nothing as a dream does. You must not forget everlasting happiness. If there is anyone who persecutes you, never hate him. Love him as Our Lord did on the cross. Please take care of my dear younger brother. I am always praying for you. Short Chronology of Persecutions in Japan 1565 Missionaries banished for the first time 1587 Edict forbidding Christianity and ordering all missionaries to leave Japan 1597 Death of the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki 1619 Great Martyrdom of Kyoto 1622 Great Genna Martyrdom, 55 Christians, priests and lay people put to death in Nagasaki 1623 Franciscans and other Christians martyred in Edo (today Tokyo) 1626 Martyrdom of Frs. Pacheco, and Torrès (Jesuits) and their companions in Nagasaki 1629 Introduction of the fumie, a ceremony during which Japanese were forced to trample Christian images 1637 Shimabara Uprising: insurrection of Christians and peasants which ended in a bloody repression 1642-43 Fr. Rubino, Jesuit, and his companions were captured soon after their arrival in Japan and executed in Nagasaki. 1708 Fr. Sidotti, Jesuit, was captured upon his arrival and martyred in his prison six months later. 1790 First Urakami persecution 1839 Second Urakami persecution 1844 First priest returns to Japan, on the Island of Okinawa 1856 Third Urakami persecution 1858 Fumie discontinued–Religious freedom recognized for foreigners 1860 First missionaries returned to Kyushu Island 1867 Fourth Urakami persecution 1868 Signboards reappeared proscribing the Christian religion–13 Urakami Christians executed and 114 others sent into exile 1870 Over 3,000 Urakami Christians arrested and exiled 1873 Abolition of signboards proscribing Christianity– Liberation of the Urakami Christians 1889 Religious freedom in Japan. Masses of Thanksgiving were offered in all the churches in Japan. 31 Thomas was 15 years old. The memory of this martyrdom was never forgotten even in the darkest hours of persecution. Christians would come secretly to the Holy Mountain to implore the martyrs to obtain from God fidelity for themselves and the conversion of their fellow men. The 26 martyrs of Nagasaki were canonized in Rome by Pope Pius IX on June 8, 1862. Hideyoshi died on September 16, 1598, at the age of 63. A new but short period of prosperity for the missions in Japan began under his successor, Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa Shogunate, which was to govern the country until 1867. In September 1601, the first two Japanese priests were ordained in Nagasaki. In 1602, taking advantage of the benevolent attitude of the shogun, Augustinians and Dominicans arrived in Japan. But in the month of April 1612, Christianity was again forbidden in the district directly controlled by Ieyasu, and Christians were martyred in Edo (now Tokyo). On January 27, 1614, Ieyasu issued an edict banishing all missionaries. The persecution continued with increasing fury during the next 20 years, until all outward signs of the Christian religion had been wiped out. By November, all the churches in Kyoto and Nagasaki had been destroyed. There were some 220,000 Christians in Japan at the beginning of the 17th century. Thousands of them gladly suffered the most cruel torments rather than deny their faith, among them let us mention the 55 martyrs of Kyoto. Of those who suffered martyrdom between the years 1616-32, 205 were beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1867. A few missionaries tried to enter the country, but they were soon arrested and executed. Many Japanese were also martyred, among them, the 55 martyrs of Kyoto, who deserve a special mention. On October 6, 1619, they were burnt alive on the banks of the Kamo River in the presence of some 30,000 people. Young children were thus burnt in the arms of their mothers, who were crying: “Jesus, receive their souls!” When the firewood was lit, the martyrs said farewell to the crowd of Christians, who intoned the Magnificat and continued to sing psalms until the last martyr had died. As it had rained the night before, the firewood was wet and burnt slowly. After death had put an end to the victims’ suffering, the crowd began the Te Deum. Among the martyrs was the heroic family of John Hashimoto Tahyoe, his wife Thecla and their five children: Catherine 13, Thomas 12, Francis 8, Peter 6, and Louisa 3. Thecla was holding little Louisa in her arms, and was seen wiping the tears on her daughter’s cheeks. When the flames and smoke cleared, the mother was still holding her child in her arms, but both were dead. Fr. Peter Kassui Kibe, a Japanese convert to Christianity, had managed to escape persecution and go to Rome. There he entered the Jesuits and was ordained to the priesthood. Later, he returned to Japan to minister to the oppressed Christians, but he was caught, tortured and suffered martyrdom in Tokyo in 1639. The Hidden Christians For more than 230 years, the Japanese Christians who survived persecutions had to hide their faith. In 1629, the ceremony of fumie was introduced. During the ceremony, Japanese were obliged to trample upon Christian images, especially bronze images of the Blessed Virgin, so as to discover hidden Christians. Missionaries, seeing themselves hunted down like wild beasts and condemned to be exterminated, had taught www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 32 Nishizaka: memorial for the twenty-six martyrs. Relocated portion Stained glass window in the church of Shimabara, depicting the great martyrdom of Kyoto. the faithful the capital importance of the act of contrition. They left them a little 3- or 4-page instruction on this act of repentance. The families which managed to keep the leaflets and even more the practice of the act of contrition, persevered in the Faith for more than two centuries. Those who gave up the practice lost the Faith. During all that time, there was no priest in Japan; the families of hidden Christians handed the Faith and baptism down from one generation to the next. These communities lived especially in villages in the area of Nagasaki. On September 1, 1790, the first persecution began in Urakami (Nagasaki): hidden Christians were discovered and arrested. In 1797, the faithful hidden in Hishi Sonogi (Nagasaki) took refuge on the Island of Goto. In 1839, a new wave of persecution was launched in Urakami. But soon after, for economic reasons, Japan opened its ports again to foreigners and missionaries hastened to come back. On May 4, 1844, Fr. Forcade of the Foreign Missions of Paris landed in Naha10 together with a Chinese catechist to prepare the evangelization of Japan. He was appointed first Apostolic Vicar of Japan two years later. Other Fathers from the Foreign Missions of Paris also arrived in Japan. In 1856, a third persecution broke out in Urakami, and 80 Christians were imprisoned. THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org Ruins of the Catheral of Urakami after the explosion of the atom bomb.The portion indicated by the arrow has been kept and is relocated nearby. One of the bells of the cathedral was not damaged by the blast, and is still used in the new cathedral. At last, things looked up, and in 1858, the end of the fumie was announced in Nagasaki. That same year, the government allowed churches to be built in the districts reserved for foreigners. In 1863, Frs. Petitjean and Furet, from the Foreign Missions of Paris, landed in Nagasaki. Their first care was to build a church in the Urakami district, which they naturally dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption. In March 1865, the hidden Christians having heard that a priest was present, sent a delegation to Nagasaki. In order to ascertain that the stranger was truly a Catholic priest, they asked him who was his chief, if he prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and whether he had children. When the priest told them that he was a subject of the Pope in Rome, that he loved the Blessed Virgin and prayed to her, and that he had neither children nor wife, they knew that he was the Catholic priest they had been expecting for years. With great joy, Fr. Petitjean discovered that in the neighboring villages, there were some 25 communities numbering several thousands of hidden Christians. Alas, during all these years many pagan practices had crept into Christian homes, and all did not agree to renounce them and submit to the priest. About 50 families of Crypto-Christians who practiced a mixture of Catholicism and Buddhism are still to be found nowadays in areas of Nagasaki, and more live on the Island of Goto. The persecution of the Urakami Christians was rekindled in 1867 with the arrest of about 100 faithful, who were eventually V the yrs. 33 in Urakami, he pronounced a famous funeral address on the occasion of the Requiem Mass offered for the 8,000 Catholics killed by the atomic bomb. On August 15, the Imperial Decree which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated and the whole world saw the light of peace. August 15 is also the date that St. Francis Xavier, our first Christian preacher, arrived in Japan. August 15 is also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant, I believe, that the Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her....Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole-burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all nations during World War II?...Let us be thankful that Nagasaki has been chosen for this holocaust. Let us be thankful, for through this sacrifice, peace has been given to the world as well as religious freedom to Japan. Vespers in the SSPX chapel of Tokyo. released following protests from foreign consulates in Japan. In 1868, 13 Christians were executed. The representatives of foreign governments co-signed a letter of protest, which, however, did not prevent more than 3,000 Christians of Urakami to be arrested and exiled between 1868 and 1870. Evangelization was tacitly accepted in Japan only in 1873, and all the Urakami Christians were freed. In December 1882, three Japanese priests were ordained. At long last, in 1889, the new constitution guaranteed religious liberty in Japan and put an end to three centuries of persecution. Nagasaki: the Expiation The blood of martyrs, a seed of Christians, made Nagasaki one of the largest Catholic centers of Japan in the 20th century. Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, who had come to Japan on April 24, 1929, had built the City of the Immaculata near Nagasaki, but on steep ground sloping away from the city. His choice had surprised many who thought it unwise. On August 9, 1945, at 11:02am, the Americans dropped their second atomic bomb over Nagasaki. It fell almost right on the cathedral located in Urakami district. This area, so deeply connected to the Christian history of Japan and which had given so many martyrs to the Church, became a real hell. After the bomb exploded, the temperature went up to over 7,000°F. That morning, many Japanese Catholics were going to confession in the cathedral, and were instantly killed by the explosion. At midnight, the remains of the cathedral burst into flames and it burnt to the ground. At exactly that same time, the emperor made known his decision to end the war. Today, nothing remains of the cathedral save a tiny portion of wall and the half-charred head of the statue of Our Lady of the Assumption. Because of its location, the City of the Immaculata was protected, and all acknowledged the wisdom of the choice made by Fr. Kolbe. Beyond the controversies concerning the use of the atomic bomb, Dr. Paul Nagaï, a Japanese radiologist converted to Catholicism and whose wife was killed by the bomb, looked upon the event from a Christian viewpoint. On November 23, 1945, in front of the ruins of the Cathedral of the Assumption Catholic Japan Today Figures speak for themselves: out of 127 million inhabitants, Japan numbers today 450,000 Japanese Christians and 550,000 Christian immigrants. The Society of Saint Pius X has one Japanese priest: Fr. Thomas of Mary Onoda, who was ordained in 1993. He is in charge of the apostolate in his homeland, a difficult apostolate, which is reduced to a five-day visit every month to two Mass centers: Osaka (20 Japanese), and Tokyo (40 faithful, 10 of whom are foreigners). Japanese bishops are very modernist, anti-Roman, and anti-scholastic. They violently oppose the Society of Saint Pius X. St. Francis Xavier and all of the Japanese Martyrs, pray for us! This article is reprinted with permission from Christendom (April 2008), published by DICI, the international news bureau of the SSPX. It is available on line at www.dici.org. 1 St. Francis Xavier, Letter 90, To his Companions Living in Goa, from Kagoshima, November 5, 1549. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 In today’s prefecture of Nagasaki, on the island of Kyushu. 5 Nobunaga had built his castle on Mount Azuchi. 6 Lake Biwa, or Biwa-ko is the largest freshwater lake in Japan (670 km2). It is located in the center of the prefecture of Shiga, to the north-east of Kyoto. 7 The 26 Japanese martyrs of 1587 were followed by 600 others who underwent martyrdom on that hill during the bloody persecutions in Japan. 8 Franciscan Fr. Peter Baptist had arrived in Japan on August 27, 1593, and had a private audience with Hideyoshi at the time. 9 The San Filipe, a Spanish galleon, had run ashore near Japan and sought shelter in the port of Urado. Hideyoshi had taken the ship’s cargo. Rumor had it that the angry captain had told him that the Emperor of Spain could conquer Japan by first sending missionaries as spies. Were these unfortunate words uttered by an angry man, or sheer calumny? After this incident, Hideyoshi gave orders to exterminate all missionaries and Catholics. 10 Naha is a city located on one of the small islands to the south of Kyushu and not far from the Island of Taiwan. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 PART 15 34 F r . M a t t h i a s G a u d r o n Chapter 7 on the New Mass begins with this installment. To understand what the New Mass did, it is first necessary to know what the essential nature of the traditional Mass is—a sacrifice. The preliminary questions examine Luther’s rejection of the sacrificial nature of the Mass. Catechism Of the Crisis In the Church 54) What is the holy Mass? The holy Mass is the renewal and the representation of the sacrifice of the Cross. By the intermediary of the priest, Christ offers to His Father in an unbloody manner His Body and Blood, which He offered on the Cross. Thus the Mass is a true sacrifice by which the merits of the sacrifice of the Cross are applied to us. l Where is the Church’s teaching on the holy sacrifice of the Mass to be found? The Council of Trent teaches: He, therefore, our God and Lord...at the Last Supper, on the night He was betrayed, so that He might leave to His beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands), whereby that bloody sacrifice once to be completed on the Cross might be represented, and the memory of it remain even to the end of the world and its saving grace be applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit...offered to God the Father His own Body and Blood....”1 l Is it certain that the Mass is a true sacrifice strictly speaking? The Council of Trent is explicit: “Canon. 1. If anyone says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God...let him be anathema.”2 The same Council declares that by the words “Do this in THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org commemoration of me,” Christ constituted the apostles priests of the New Testament and gave them power to celebrate this sacrifice.3 l What precisely is the relation between the sacrifice of the Mass and that of the Cross? The sacrifice of the Mass has the same victim, the same priest, and the same intentions as that of the Cross; it is the same sacrifice but offered in a different manner.4 l What victim is offered in the sacrifice of the Mass? Our Lord Jesus Christ is the victim of the sacrifice of the Mass as He is of the sacrifice of the Cross; it is He who is essentially offered at Mass, and not the bread and wine, which cease to exist during the consecration. l Might it be said that our Lord is present in the holy Eucharist as victim? Yes, it is as victim that our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the holy Eucharist. l How can our Lord, whose body is henceforth glorious, be present in a state of victimhood? Our Lord is in a state of victimhood in the holy Eucharist because in it His Body and Blood are sacramentally separated in order to represent the physical separation effected by the Passion. 35 l Yet isn’t our Lord entirely present–Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity–under the appearances of both the bread and the wine? Since our Lord Jesus Christ is now living (risen and glorious), the presence of His Body or His Blood necessitates the presence of His whole person (body, blood, soul, and divinity); His Body and Blood can no longer be separated physically. And yet, per se, merely by the power of the consecratory words, it is the Body that is made present under the appearances of the bread, and the Blood under the appearances of wine; the Body and Blood of Christ are in a certain way separated by the sacrament (because of the double consecration). l Does this sacramental separation of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ constitute immolation? The sacramental separation of the Body and Blood of our Lord constitutes an immolation in that it represents the physical separation that took place during His Passion, and, by the Savior’s will, applies its fruits. l In the Mass, then, there really is an immolation? In the Mass there is an immolation, a sacramental immolation. The Council of Trent affirms that in the Mass, Christ “is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner.”5 l Who is the priest of the sacrifice of the Mass? The true priest of the sacrifice of the Mass is our Lord Jesus Christ, as He was on the Cross. The only difference is that Christ offered Himself on the Cross, whereas in the Mass He makes use of a human priest, who acts as Christ’s instrument. l What are the intentions of the sacrifice of the Mass? Like the sacrifice of the Cross, the sacrifice of the Mass is offered by our Lord Jesus Christ for four great intentions: to adore God, to thank Him for His favors, to make reparation for the offenses committed against Him (in this sense, the sacrifice is called propitiatory or satisfactory), and to obtain graces for men. l In what way is the sacrifice of the Mass offered differently from that of the Cross? On the Cross, Christ was sacrificed in a bloody manner, while in the Mass He is sacrificed in an unbloody manner. l Is this the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church? St. Augustine teaches that “Christ was sacrificed once in Himself, and yet He is sacrificed daily in the sacrament”6; and St. Ambrose teaches that “just as what is offered everywhere is one body, and not many bodies, so also is it but one sacrifice.”7 55) Who has denied that the Mass is a sacrifice? For more than a thousand years, no one dared to deny that the Mass is a sacrifice. Catholics enjoyed peaceful possession of this truth. It was not until the 12th century that some sects began to attack it. But it was especially Martin Luther and Protestantism that induced numerous Christians to reject this dogma. l How did God reveal to us that the Mass is a sacrifice? The fact that the Mass is a sacrifice emerges clearly from Sacred Scripture. In the Old Testament, God, through the prophet Malachias, announced a future sacrifice in these terms: From the rising of the sun even to the going down my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. (Mal. 1:11) l What is noteworthy in this prophesy of Malachias? The Jews had the right to offer sacrifice in only one place: the Temple at Jerusalem. Yet the prophet foretells a clean oblation that will be celebrated in every place. From the beginning, Christians recognized in this statement the sacrifice of the Mass. l Are there any other prophecies of the sacrifice of the Mass in the Old Testament? In the Old Testament, Christ’s priesthood is figured by Melchisedech’s (St. Paul says that Jesus Christ is “a high priest according to the order of Melchisedech”8). Melchisedech is only mentioned in the Bible for having offered a sacrifice of bread and wine (Gen. 14:18). This was a figure of the sacrifice of the Mass, instituted by Christ and offered under the species of bread and wine. l Do the Gospels speak of the Mass as a sacrifice? During the institution of the Mass on Holy Thursday, Christ used words expressive of a sacrifice: “This is my body, which shall be delivered for you” (I Cor. 11:24); “this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Mt. 26:28). l Are there other passages of Sacred Scripture that can be cited? In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul opposes “the table of devils” and “the table of the Lord” (10:18-21). As the expression “the table of devils” designates the sacrifices pagans offer to idols, the expression “the table of the Lord” thus designates the Christian sacrifice. Similarly, the Epistle to the Hebrews affirms: “We have an altar, whereof they have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle [ Jewish worship]” (Heb. 13:10). Now, by definition an altar is made for the offering of sacrifice. l What do the early Fathers of the Church say about the Mass? The most ancient ecclesiastical writings speak of the Eucharist as a sacrifice. One might cite, among others, the Didache (c. A.D. 100), Pope St. Clement (d. 101), and St. Cyprian of Carthage. l What does the Didache teach? The Didache, one of the first Christian writings, declares: www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 36 But every Lord’s day do ye gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.9 l What does Pope St. Clement teach? St. Clement of Rome (pope from 92–101) wrote: The Lord prescribed that sacrifices and liturgical actions be accomplished at specific seasons and times.10 l How does St. Cyprian speak about the sacrifice of the Mass? St. Cyprian of Carthage (+258) devotes his Letter 63 to the sacrifice of the Mass. In it he states that Christ offered His Body and Blood in sacrifice to the Father (n. 4), that He commanded that this sacrifice be celebrated in memory of Him (n. 14), and that the priest acts as Christ’s representative. l Can you cite another Father of the Church on the sacrifice of the Mass? St. Gregory Nazianzen (+390) exhorts a priest thus: But, most reverend friend, cease not both to pray and to plead for me when you draw down the Word by your word, when with a bloodless cutting you sever the Body and Blood of the Lord, using your voice for the glaive.11 l What do we observe in this passage of St. Gregory Nazianzen? St. Gregory very clearly mentions the unbloody sacrifice of Christ effected by the separation of His Body and Blood by means of the double consecration. l What can we conclude from all these passages from Sacred Scripture and the Fathers? The passages cited and many others plainly show that one cannot deny that the Mass is essentially a sacrifice without betraying Christ’s teaching. l Is this truth about the sacrifice of the Mass very important? All the truths revealed by our Lord Jesus Christ are important, and none of them can be neglected with impunity. But the sacrifice of the Mass is truly at the heart of the whole Christian life. An error on this point would have disastrous consequences. l How is the sacrifice of the Mass at the heart of Christian life? The Jewish religion of the old Testament was already centered on the sacrifices offered in the Temple. It would be surprising if these numerous sacrifices had no counterpart in the new Testament. In fact, our Lord essentially came on earth to offer Himself in sacrifice to His Father. In the name of all mankind, He offered this perfect sacrifice of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation for sin, and petition. The essential of our Christian life must be to unite ourselves, day after day, to this sacrifice. It is precisely by the Mass that we do this. l Thus Christianity without the Mass is inconceivable? Even in the natural order, sacrifice is an essential element of the worship due to God. All the ancient religions have their sacrifices (one of the proofs of THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org the caducity of the Jewish religion is the very fact that since the year 70, date of the destruction of the Temple, its sacrificial rites can no longer be performed). In the modern era, the Protestants tried to invent a Christianity without the Mass; the result was a complete denaturing of Christian faith and morals, which led rather rapidly to contemporary humanism. When man ceases offering sacrifices to God, he quickly tends to take himself for God. l Isn’t it especially the real presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament that is denied by the Protestants? Luther did not deny some kind of real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, even if he understood it in an heretical way. However, he rejected the teaching on the sacrifice of the Mass and proffered scurrilous insults against it. l What did Luther say about the holy sacrifice of the Mass? Luther announced clearly that he wanted to destroy the Mass in order to strike at the heart of the Church. For example, he said: Once the Mass has been overthrown, I say we’ll have overthrown the whole of Popedom. It is indeed upon the Mass as on a rock that the whole Papal system is built, with its monasteries, its bishoprics, its collegiate churches, its altars, its ministries, its doctrine, i.e., with all its guts. All these cannot fail to crumble once their sacrilegious and abominable Mass falls.12 l But doesn’t Luther admit that the Mass can, in a sense, be called a sacrifice? Luther admits and sometimes employs the term sacrifice to designate the Mass, but only in a broad sense (“a sacred thing”). He obstinately refuses to believe that the Mass is literally a sacrifice: The principal element of their worship, the Mass, exceeds every impiety and abomination; they make of it a sacrifice and a good work.13 l What is the Mass, then, for Luther? For Luther, the Mass is simply a memorial of the Passion. His goal is to instruct the faithful, to remind them of the sacrifice of Calvary in order to prompt an interior act of faith. If he speaks of sacrifice, it is solely in the sense of a sacrifice of praise or thanksgiving without redemptive value. l What does Luther absolutely refuse in the Catholic doctrine of the Mass? Luther absolutely refuses the doctrine that the Mass has a propitiatory or satisfactory value, that is, that it really and effectively applies to our souls the fruits of the sacrifice of the Cross, thereby acquitting the debt we have incurred towards God because of our sins. l What exactly do the words propitiatory and satisfactory mean? The sacrifice of the Mass is said to be propitiatory because it renders God propitious, favorably inclined, towards us by destroying the reasons for the wrath He 37 may bear towards us because of our sins. It is called satisfactory because it satisfies divine justice, that is, it does enough (satis facere = to do enough) to appease it. ways of destroying the Church. Several Catholic authors have remarked that this would be the work of Antichrist. l What does Luther have to say on this subject? Luther teaches: l Can you quote some of these authors? St. Alphonsus Liguori alerts us: The Mass is not a sacrifice or the action of a sacrificer. Let us regard it as a sacrament or a testament. Let us call it benediction, Eucharist, or remembrance of the Lord.14 The Mass is the best and most beautiful thing in the Church....That is why the devil has always sought to deprive the world of the Mass through the actions of heretics, making them precursors of Antichrist.20 The blessed Sacrament was not instituted to be made into an expiatory sacrifice...but to serve to awaken faith in us and to console consciences; ...the Mass is not a sacrifice offered for others, whether living or dead, for the remission of their sins, but...a communion in which priest and faithful receive the sacrament, each for himself.15 Dom Guéranger gives the same warning: ...were 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.21 It is a blatant and blasphemous error to offer or to apply the Mass for sins, in satisfaction for them, or on behalf of the deceased....16 l What were the liturgical consequences of Luther’s errors on the Mass? For Luther, the “liturgy of the Word” must hold the first place and communion, second. By progressively modifying the traditional rites and ceremonies of the Mass, Luther intended to induce the faithful gradually to change their faith. He advised his co-revolutionaries not to go too fast: To reach the goal safely and successfully, certain ceremonies of the ancient Mass must be kept for the sake of the weak, who might be scandalized by too sudden a change.17 l Did the Protestants deliberately introduce their new belief in a calculated way, by changing the liturgy little by little? The Anglicans in particular adopted this cunning strategy,18 but Luther had articulated it very clearly: The priest can very well manage so that the man of the people is still unaware of the change that has taken place, and can assist at Mass without finding anything to scandalize him.19 l What changes did Luther introduce into the liturgy? Luther attacked the Offertory, which he eliminated, and the Canon, which he modified considerably. He kept the general outline of the Mass, but skillfully erased the essential. At Christmas, 1521, the Lutheran worship service comprised the Confiteor, Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, Epistle, Gospel, sermon, no Offertory, the Sanctus, narration of the institution of the Supper recited aloud in the popular language, Communion under both kinds (in the hand and from the chalice) with no preliminary confession, the Agnus Dei, and Benedicamus Domino. Latin would only disappear little by little. l What can be said of the hatred with which Luther pursued the Catholic Mass? Luther was right about one thing: the whole Christian life rests upon the sacrifice of Calvary renewed in an unbloody manner on the altar. Denaturing the Mass is one of the most effective l Does Sacred Scripture foretell that the Antichrist will attack the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? Concerning Antichrist, the Prophet Daniel says: “And strength was given him against the continual sacrifice, because of sins (Dan. 8:12).” 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. Council of Trent, Session XXII, Chap. 1, DS 1740 (Dz. 938). Ibid., DS 1751 (Dz. 948). 3 Ibid., DS 1740. 4 Ibid., DS 1743 (Dz. 940). 5 Ibid., DS 1743 (Dz. 940). See also DS 1741. 6 St. Augustine, quoted by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica, III, Q. 83, Art. 1. 7 Statement attributed to St. Ambrose, cited by St. Thomas, ibid., ad 1: “Sicut enim quod ubique offertur unum est corpus et non multa, ita et unum sacrificium.” 8 Hebrews 6:20. 9 The Didache, Chapter 14 [English version: available online at www. newadvent.org/fathers]. 10 St. Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 14. 11 Letter 171, to Amphilochium [English version: available online at www. newadvent.org/fathers]. 12 Luther, Contra Henricum regem Angliæ (1522), Werke, X, 220. [English version: Michael Davies, Cranmer’s Godly Order (Ft. Collins, Colorado: Roman Catholic Books, 1995), p.55-56.] 13 Luther, De votis monasticis judicium (1521), Werke, VIII, 651. 14 Luther, Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Werke, XI, 774. 15 The Confession of Augsburg, Art. 24, “Of the Mass.” 16 Luther, De Captivitate Babylonica (1520), Werke, VI, 521. 17 Ibid., XII, 212. 18 See Cranmer’s Godly Order by Michael Davies. The first Anglican Book of Prayer (1549) suppressed the Offertory, altered the Canon, and adopted the Lutheran version of the Institution narrative: no mention is made of the propitiatory sacrifice, but it is not explicitly denied. This was but the first stage: once it was widely adopted, a second Prayer Book was published (1552), which more closely resembled the Calvinist Supper. 19 Luther, quoted by Jacques Maritain in Three Reformers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), p.181-2. 20 Oeuvres du B. Alphonse de Liguori (Avignon: Seguin, 1827), p.182. 21 Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B., Explanation of the Holy Mass (1885; reprint: Loreto Publications, n.d.), p.109. 1 2 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • August 2008 Part 2 38 D w y e r Q u e n t i n W e d v i c k with illustrations especially painted for this article by the late Michael Francis McCarthy Heraldry The heraldry and history of six pontiffs before and after St. Pius X Gregory XVI Bl. Pius IX Leo XIII St. Pius X did not live in a vacuum, but was part of the pontifical environment of his times, an era from 1832-1958. I have picked six popes who included in their various agenda the priority to hand down the Tradition of the Roman Catholic Church intact. These were Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII. Pope Gregory XVI (1831-46) Bartolomeo Alberto Mauro Cappellari was born on September 8, 1765, at Belluno, Italy (then in Venetian territory), to a noble family, his parents deciding on the nickname Mauro for him. In 1783, at age 18, having displayed evidence of a religious vocation but with some opposition from his parents, Mauro joined the Benedictine Camaldolese order, amongst whom he rapidly gained distinction for his theological and linguistic achievements, and was ordained a priest in 1787. His thinking was consistently ultramontane throughout his life; this became evident publicly when in 1799 he published the book Il Trionfo della Santa Sede, which upheld papal infallibility and temporal sovereignty. Dom Mauro was named Abbot Vicar of THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org Benedict XV Pius XI Pius XII the Monastery of San Gregorio in 1800. He survived the difficult Napoleonic times to be named Cardinal “in petto” by Leo XII in 1825 with the creation published the following year. In 1831 he was elected pope after a conclave lasting seven weeks. Pope Gregory immediately faced revolution on two fronts. The first was spiritual, with the ideas of the Enlightenment entering the minds of intellectually-minded clergy all over Europe. The Pope’s response was his encyclical Mirari Vos, which concerns liberalism and religious indifferentism. This encyclical, of course, upset the liberal thinkers of his day. The other revolution was temporal: the Papal States exploded into flaming rebellion on February 4, 1831, mere days after Gregory’s election. He could only put the revolution down with military assistance from Austria, who quickly sent troops. Order was restored by April 3rd. The Pope, listening to an international commission, instituted widespread reforms in an effort to set his peoples’ minds at ease politically. The revolutionaries were unsatisfied and started another rebellion in July; again the Austrians intervened with troops, and because the Austrians did, the French did too. 39 Pope Leo XIII Born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti into a noble family, the dei Conti Ferretti, on May 13, 1792, in Senigallia, Italy, studied for the priesthood at the Roman Seminary and was ordained in April 1819. He worked as rector of the San Giovanni Institute in Rome, then assisted the Papal Nuncio in Chile and Peru, returning to Rome to head the hospital of San Michele. He was consecrated Archbishop of Spoleto in 1827 at age 35 and was named a cardinal in 1840. The Archbishop was considered liberal during his episcopate in Spoleto and Imola as he supported administrative changes in the Papal States and sympathized with the nationalist movement in Italy. Elected pope on June 16, 1846, his first political act was a general amnesty, which gave the wrong signal and provoked greater demands from the revolutionaries. He was faced with the same twin difficulties of spiritual challenges from the liberal clergy and temporal challenges from the political radicals as his predecessor. When he realized what was going on, he pulled no punches. Starting with spiritual liberalism he issued the important encyclical Qui Pluribus on November 9, 1846, which dealt with faith and religion in relation to liberalism, rationalism, pantheism, naturalism, communism, secret societies, and so on. He said these forces were “linked in guilty fellowship.” The liberal clergy of the Enlightenment cringed. His Syllabus of Errors, issued in 1864, condemned 80 propositions and firmly established his pontificate as the enemy of secularism, rationalism, and modernism in all its forms. This made it clear he was the enemy of liberalism and a leading conservative. Pope Pius IX’s temporal problems with the Papal States became exacerbated and a political disaster. He conceded to having a lay minister and a constitution in 1848. But revolution broke out that year anyway, his Prime Minister was murdered, and he was run out of town to seek sanctuary in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ruled by his friend Ferdinand II, a devout and loyal Catholic and family man. The revolutionaries set up a Roman republic. However, the wheels were set in motion for him to return to the Papal States. Louis Blessed Pope Pius IX Blessed Pope Pius IX (1846-78) Pope Gregory XVI This time the rebellion remained quelled, but the Pope now couldn’t get rid of the French till 1838. Pope Gregory was typical of the rulers of his times, believing in autocratic rule. As an amusing example: The Papal States geographically looked like a sinister band across Italy. Pope Gregory decided at one point to ban railways in his territories, saying they were chemins d’enfer (ways of the devil), the French word for railroad being chemins de fer (iron ways). Thus, for a time, going north or south from Rome one had to take the stagecoach in the Papal States and could only board trains at the border. Pope Gregory was the last priest (not bishop) elected Pope, ruling till his death on June 1, 1846, leaving the treasury about empty, the temporal revolutionary problems shoved under the rug, and the spiritual revolution to be further dealt with by his successor. The arms of Pope Gregory are of interest for the fact that early on he combined his family arms with that of the Benedictine Camaldolese order of which he was a member and later leader, and kept them impaled as Pope. The blazon (see color plates on p.43): Dexter: OSB Cam: Azure, a chalice surmounted by a comet tail in pale, or, two doves facing each other to either side of the chalice, argent, impaling to Sinister, Per fess azure and argent, a fess gules with three stars or, in chief an ecclesiastical hat with one tassel to each side Proper. Pope Pius XII Pope Pius XI Pope Benedict XV 40 Napoleon, President of France, sent troops which crushed the republic and restored order so that Pius IX could return safely in April 1850. Then the (now) Emperor Napoleon III kept Imperial troops–as did Emperor Francis Joseph II of Austria–in the Papal States to keep order permanently and the Pope safe until 1870. Meanwhile Victor Emmanuel II and the Garabaldi crowd started the Risorgimento, aiming to unite Italy whilst giving the boot to King Francis II of the Two Sicilies along the way. In 1870, France had to withdraw her troops for the Franco-Prussian War, never to return. The Austrian forces left also. Victor Emmanuel then grabbed the Papal States, less the Vatican, and granted the Pope 3.25 million lira per year. The Pope rejected this in his encyclical Ubi Nos of May 15, 1871, and called himself “a prisoner in the Vatican.” Other matters of note in the reign of Pius IX include the restoration of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. In 1854, he defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which pronouncement is considered infallible, and organized the first Vatican Council of 186970. He died on February 7, 1878, with the longest papal reign to date (excepting St. Peter) of over 31 years. Pope Pius IX was raised to the altars first as a venerable in 1985, then as beatified in 2000, both by Pope John Paul II. The blazon: Quarterly, 1st & 4th, Azure, a lion rampant crowned standing on a ball or; 2nd & 3rd, bendy argent and gules. Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffsele Luigi Pecci was born on March 2, 1810, at Carpineto, Italy, to a noble family as the sixth son of Count Lodovico Pecci and his wife Anna Prosperi ­Buzi. Unusually, Pecci was appointed a domestic prelate (Monsignor) whilst still in minor orders in January 1837 by Gregory XVI and was ordained a priest on December 31, 1837. Named Archbishop of Perugia in 1846, he achieved note as a popular and successful prelate, looking out for the welfare, both spiritual and temporal, of his diocesan flock as well as his clergy for 31 years. As Bishop of Perugia he sought chiefly to inculcate piety and knowledge of the truths of faith. He took particular interest in the formation of his priests, how they preached to the laity of their parishes and insisted they catechize all their parishioners, adults as well as children. He supported the popes in their temporal polices but was not strident about it, preferring to coexist with whomever the civil authorities were. He was named cardinal in 1853 and Camerlengo in 1877 and was elected pope as Leo XIII on February 20, 1878. One of Leo’s early acts was the restoration the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Scotland in 1878. As pope he is well known for his encyclicals, particularly on his social teaching, in which he argued against the flaws of both capitalism and communism. His encyclical Æterni Patris of 1880 recommended the study of scholastic philosophy, especially that of St. Thomas Aquinas. His encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 focused on the rights and duties of capital and labor towards each other. And in his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Leo gave new encouragement to Biblical study. There are many other encyclicals and letters which could be mentioned. In 1887, Leo approved the foundation of what came to be Catholic University in America. Other information indicates he was the first pope of which there is a sound recording and the first to be filmed. Leo held the record for being the oldest pope when he died at age 93 on July 20, 1903. The blazon: Azure, from a mount vert, a pine tree issuant, proper, between in dexter chief a comet, or, and in base two fleur-de-lis or, overall a fess argent. Heraldic Terms 41 Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914) For the biography and arms of, see Part 1 of this article, The Angelus, July 2008. Pope Benedict XV (1914-22) Giacomo Giambattista della Chiesa, Marchese della Chiesa, was born in Pegli, Italy, on November 21, 1854, the son of Marchese Giuseppe della Chiesa, who came from the nobility of Genoa. He earned a Doctorate of Laws in 1875 was ordained a priest in 1878. He was brought into and served in the Vatican diplomatic service until his appointment as Archbishop of Bologna in 1907. He was made a cardinal in 1914 and elected pope a few months later as Benedict XV on September 1, 1914. He decided the Vatican would take a neutral stance in the War, and he continued the ideas of social thought started by Leo XIII and the traditional moral and doctrinal policies of his predecessors but in a muted way. He instituted a Vatican bureau to help prisoners of war (run by Eugenio Pacelli) but was frustrated by both sides, who both distrusted him, and thus Benedict made many unsuccessful attempts to negotiate peace. His effectiveness, even in Italy, was undermined by his pacifist stance. This led to his being uninvited to and ignored by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Benedict also promulgated a new Code of Canon Law in 1917 initiated by his predecessor, St. Pius X, and in his first encyclical, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, repeated St. Pius X’s condemnation of modernist scholars and the errors in modern philosophical systems. Other items of interest are his promotion of Eugenio Pacelli to Archbishop on May 13, 1917, and his canonizations in 1920 of St. Joan of Arc and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. He died on January 22, 1922, at the age of 67. The blazon: Per Bend azure and or, overall a church with a tower to sinister argent, roofed, gules, a chief, or, an eagle displayed issuant sable, membered, gules. Of interest here is that Pope Benedict XV’s surname translates as “of the Church,” so the charge of a church makes them canting arms. Benedict himself added the chief, which could be mistaken for a Capo Dell’ Imperio but is not. Pope Pius XI (1922-39) Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti was born on May 13, 1857, to a family armigerous (that is, having a coat of arms) since the thirteenth century and was the son of a prosperous silk factory owner in Desio, Milan. Ordained a priest in 1879, he earned triple doctorates in philosophy, canon law, and theology and proceeded to work as a scholar (in libraries and museums) for decades. As a hobby, he was a mountain climber, climbing Monte Rossa, the Matterhorn, and Mont Blanc. With his gift for languages, Benedict XV asked him to enter diplomatic service in 1918 and sent him to Poland, where he did so well that the ArGenT: silver AZure: bright blue BenD: a colored band running from the upper right corner of the shield to the lower left BlAZOn: a formal description which enables a person to depict a coat of arms with accurate detail. ChArGe: anything borne on a coat of arms Chief: the first of the Ordinaries, and occupying about one-third on the shield from the top downward DeXTer: right-hand side of the shield GuleS: red iMPAleMenT: the practice of joining two coats of arms side-by-side in one shield iSSuAnT: used to describe a charge or bearing, rising or coming out of another MeMBereD: a bird having legs of a different color from that of the body MOunT VerT: literally a “grassy mound,” a landscape niMBeD: having the head encircled with a nimbus (a solid disk of light or gold) Or: gold OrDinArieS: a simple geometrical figure on the arms, often bounded by straight lines PAle: a term used to describe a charge on a coat of arms that takes the form of a band running vertically down the center of the shield PASSAnT: a beast facing and walking toward the viewer’s left with one front leg raised Per feSS: a field parted horizontally PrOPer: When a charge is borne of its natural color it is said to be proper SABle: black SiniSTer: left hand side of shield www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgElus • August 2008 TOrTeAuX: circular objects 42 pope consecrated him as titular archbishop in 1919. In June 1921, he was named archbishop of Milan and simultaneously was named a cardinal. On February 6, 1922, Ratti was elected pope as Pius XI. His first act was to revive the traditional public blessing given from the balcony urbi et orbi, “to the city and to the world,” discontinued since 1870. Some of his notable encyclicals were: Miserentissimus Redemptor of 1928, strongly encouraging devotion to the Sacred Heart; Divini Illius Magistri of 1929, stating the need for Christian over secular education; Casti Connubii of 1930, praising Christian marriage and family life as the basis for any good society and condemning contraception; Quadragesimo Anno of 1931, on the 40th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, reiterating its statements of distaste for socialism and unrestrained capitalism; and Mit Brennender Sorge of 1937, roundly condemning Nazism and its anti-Semitic racism. In 1929 the Lateran treaty between the Vatican and Italy was signed, which settled their differences, but now the Pope had to face the difficulties of dealing with socialist, fascist, and Nazi governments. He established the Vatican Radio in 1931, and was the first pope to broadcast. Pius XI canonized some important saints: St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Theresa of Lisieux, St. John Vianney, and St. John Bosco, and named new Doctors of the Church: St. John of the Cross, St. Albert the Great, and St. Robert Bellarmine. Pius XI, in declining health, died on February 10, 1939. The blazon: Per fess, a Capo Dell’ Imperio (Or, an eagle displayed, sable, membered, gules) and argent, three torteaux, two and one, gules. Of interest here is the Capo Dell’ Imperio (Chief of the Empire) indicating allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor (SRE ). The family motto, which Pius XI changed from “Omnia cum Tempore” (everything comes with time) to “Raptim Transit” (everything happens quickly), relates directly to his phenomenally quick rise in the Church to Pope. Pope Pius XII (1939-58) Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born on March 2, 1876, to a noble Roman family. His father, Filippo Pacelli, was made a Papal Marquis and also an Italian Prince by Victor Emmanuel III, both in 1929 for the part he played in the Lateran treaty. Pacelli’s grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli, was founder of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Ordained a priest in 1899, he first served as a curate at Chiesa Nuova, where he had served as an altar boy. Made a Papal Chamberlain in 1904, Pacelli became in 1905 a domestic prelate. From 1904 until 1916, Msgr. Pacelli assisted Cardinal Gasparri in his codification of canon law. In 1914 Pacelli also started serving in the Vatican diplomatic service, and immediately had success with a concordat with Serbia. Appointed Nuncio to Bavaria in April 1917, he was consecrated as a bishop in the Sistine Chapel. The following month Pacelli was THE ANGELUS • August 2008 www.angeluspress.org promoted to Archbishop. Archbishop Pacelli served as de facto nuncio to the German Empire for the rest of WWI and to the German Republic in 1920 and Prussia in 1925. He was named cardinal on December 16, 1929, and named as secretary of state on February 7, 1930. In the 1930’s Cardinal Pacelli was extremely active in securing concordats and visiting countries around the world in pursuance of the Church’s affairs. In 1935, Cardinal Pacelli was named as the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. He came to America in 1936 and met Joseph P. Kennedy (Senator Ted Kennedy, as a four year old, got to sit on the Cardinal’s lap and was observed playing with the Cardinal’s pectoral cross.). He also met Fr. Charles Coughlin and had a private meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park. (On the way there he was seen to stop his motorcade to get out and speak with, pat the heads of, and to make the sign of the cross over the parochial school children who had been cued to line the roads on the way to Hyde Park to see the Papal Secretary of State pass by. Additionally, the Cardinal addressed Fordham University (in English), then left for Rome (all this, we believe, in about a 48-hour period). Pius XI died suddenly on February 10, 1939, and Pacelli was elected pope as Pius XII on March 2, 1939, his 63rd birthday. The German government quickly issued statements such as that of Das Schwarze Korps (the SS newspaper), As nuncio and secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli had little understanding of us; little hope is placed in him. We do not believe that as Pius XII he will follow a different path. Events proved them right! During World War II the Vatican was officially neutral. Pius XII repeatedly issued statements denouncing Nazi acts. According to Pinchas Lapide, Jewish author of Three Popes and the Jews, he declared that the Church under Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” The Vatican hid and moved Jews around anywhere to save them, issuing passports to those seeking asylum abroad. We suspect not one other major government saved anything like so many Jews as the Vatican State did under Pope Pius XII. Some of his encyclicals include Summi Pontificatus (1939), a condemnation of the “ever-increasing host of Christ’s enemies”; and Humani Generis, in 1950, criticized those who “imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution...explains the origin of all things.” His canonizations included: St. Pius X, St. Catherine Labouré, St. Louis de Montfort, St. Maria Goretti, and St. Dominic Savio. Between 1949 and 1955, Pius XII revised the Roman Missal, making it a bit simpler to use. Pope Pius XII died October 9, 1958, and was declared venerable by Pope John Paul II. The blazon: Azure, a base barry wavy, argent, and, azure, issuant therefrom on a grassy mount with thereon three colle, argent, 43 with perched thereon a dove of peace regardant, proper, holding in its beak an olive branch vert. Of interest here is that Pius XII somewhat changed his arms from those he used as a cardinal. A rainbow was dropped, the dove went from displayed to perching, and the grassy mount was added over water. Dwyer Quentin Wedvick was born in 1940 and has been a soldier, a sometime Captain in the US Army, a stockbroker, a yacht restorer, and owner of a contract delivery business. In his semi-retirement he pursues his ambition to be a student of heraldry. A Catholic and parishioner at Christ the King Church in Ridgefield, CT, he is a Knight of the Constantinian of St. George (Madrid). Angelus Press is acknowledged for permission to include quotations from the biography of Pius X (Yves Chiron, 2002). REFERENCES Bottum, Joseph & David G. Dalin. The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII. New York: Lexington Books, 2004. (For background on Pius XII.) The Catholic Encyclopaedia, 1907-1914, for Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, for background and quotations. Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald. Times to Remember. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1974. (For background information on the Kennedys’ relations with Pope Pius XII.) Martin, Cardinal Jacques. Heraldry in the Vatican. Gerrards Cross: Van Duren Publishers, 1987. (For ecclesiastical heraldic background and blazons.) McCarthy, Michael Francis. Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium, 1800-2000. Darlinghurst, Australia: Thylacine Press, 2000. (For ecclesiastical heraldic background and blazons.) McCarthy, Michael Francis. A Manual of Ecclesiastical Heraldry. Darlinghurst, Australia: Thylacine Press, 2005. (For ecclesiastical heraldic background and blazons.) The late Michael Francis McCarthy, of Darlinghurst, Australia, well known Catholic heraldic artist for blazon input and for rendering the arms in color. Papal arms blazons used were drawn primarily from Michael Francis McCarthy’s Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium, 1800-2000 with input from A Manual of Ecclesiastical Heraldry and Heraldry in the Vatican, see above. Sainty, Guy Stair. The Orders of Chivalry and Merit of the Bourbon Two Sicilies Dynasty. Madrid: Sacred and Military Order of Constantine St. George ( SMOCSG), 1987. (Background for Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies.) Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, http://en.wikipedia.org. (Information scoped and quoted on all the popes particularly on Benedict XV, Pius XI and Pius XII.) Pope Gregory XVI Blessed Pope Pius IX Pope Leo XIII Pope Benedict XV Pope Pius XI Pope Pius XII 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 august 31 and be addressed to: Attention: The Angelus Monthly Photo Writing Contest THE ANGELUS March 2008 2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109 FAX: 816-753-3557 (24-hour dedicated line) • www.angeluspress.org Life of the Blessed seOlrliignignals $5 00 for Virgin Mary on Fr. Demetrius Manousos Covers the life of Mary in engrossing full color. Starting in the Garden of Eden when God promised to send a woman who would battle Satan...a battle “between thy offspring and hers” through her Assumption into Heaven. ebay 64pp. Softcover, full color. 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You can change your e-mail reception preferences or unsubscribe at any time. Liturgical Revolution: Vol. I King Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer understood that if you change the way people pray, then you will change what they believe. Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer (1549) began a process that changed the Catholic Church in England to the Anglican sect. Davies compares these changes to the modern liturgical “reform” and the similarities are shocking. 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