$4.45 OCTOber 2008 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition Inside Some Bishops Rebel Against the Pope Spe Salvi: An Encyclical that Leaves Many Perplexed Adolescence and Reality The Church at the Turning Points of History Book Review Politics According to Calvin for the first time ever ANGELUS press is offering two calendars for one unbelievably low price! A Catholic Calendar of Culinary Customs both for only catholic battlefield chaplains $17.95 buy one get the second for 1/2 off! (Offer only valid when you purchase one of each calendar.) office boys' room sacristy kitchen laundry dining room St. Sylvester Collerette de la Saint-Sylvestre aux Trois Chocolats St. Sylvester became pope the year following the Edict of Milan by which the Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity and proclaimed religious tolerance. St. Sylvester is said to have cured Constantine from leprosy and to have baptized him on his deathbed. His feastday in the West is celebrated on the last day of the year. The Collerette de la Saint-Sylvestre aux Trois Chocolats (ThreeChocolate Collar for St. Sylvester’s Day) is a chocolate lover’s delight and a special treat for ending the old year and hailing the new. SUNDAY 1 MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SUNDAY SATURDAY MON DAY TUESDAY WEDNES DAY THURSDAY 2 3 Ferial–V (III) St. Bibiana Virgin, Martyr–R (III) Ferial–V (Comm.) St. Francis Xavier Confessor–W (III) Ferial–V (Comm.) First Friday St. Peter Chrysologus Bishop, Confessor, Doctor–W (III) First Saturday St. Barbara Ferial–V (III) Virgin, Martyr–R (Comm.) St. Sabbas Ferial–V (Comm.) Abbot–W (Comm.) 8 9 10 11 12 Holy Day of Obligation St. Ambrose Feast of the Immaculate Bishop, Confessor, Doctor–W (III) Conception–W (I) Ferial–V (Comm.) Ferial–V (Comm.) Ferial–V (III) Ferial–V (III) St. Melchiades Pope, Martyr–R (Comm.) St. Damasus Pope, Confessor–W (III) Ferial–V (Comm.) Our Lady of Guadalupe–W (III) Ferial–V (Comm.) 14 16 17 18 19 2 3 4 5 6 7 Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost–G (Comm.) (Daylight saving time ends) ALL SOULS’ DAY–Black (I) Ferial–G (IV) St. Charles Borromeo Bishop, Confessor–W (III) Sts. Vitalis & Agricola Martyrs–R (Comm.) Ferial–G (IV) First Friday Ferial–G (IV) First Saturday Our Lady on Saturdays–W (IV) 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 6 7 Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost–G (II) Dedication of the Archbasilica of the Holy Savior–W (II) St. Theodore Martyr–R (Comm.) St. Andrew Avellino Confessor–W (III) Sts.Tryphon, Respicius, Nympha, Virgin, Martyrs–R (Comm.) St. Martin of Tours Bishop, Confessor–W (III) St. Mennas Martyr–R (Comm.) St. Martin I Pope, Martyr–R (III) St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Virgin–W (III) St. Josaphat Bishop, Martyr–R (III) 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Second Sunday of Advent–V (I) St. Nicholas, Bishop, Confessor 13 Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost–G (II) St. Albert the Great Bishop, Confessor, Doctor St. Gertrude Virgin–W (III) St. Gregory the Wonderworker Bishop, Confessor–W (III) Dedication of the Basilicas of Sts. Peter & Paul–W (III) St. Elizabeth of Hungary Widow–W (III) St. Pontianus Pope, Martyr–R (Comm.) St. Felix of Valois Confessor–W (III) Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary–W (III) 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Last Sunday after Pentecost–G (II) St. Cecilia, Virgin, Martyr St. Clement I Pope, Martyr–R (III) St. Felicity Martyr–R (Comm.) St. John of the Cross Confessor, Doctor–W Doctor– Doctor –W (III) –W St. Chrysogonus Martyr–R Martyr R (Comm.) Martyr– St. Catherine of Alexandria Martyr–R (III) Martyr Virgin, Martyr–R St. Sylvester Abbot–W (III) St. Peter of Alexandria Bishop, Martyr–R Martyr–R (Comm.) Martyr (Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Day) Day 29 30 First Sunday of Advent–V (I) St. Andrew Apostle–R (II) Ferial–V (Comm.) 1 Holy Day of Obligation The Feast of All Saints–W (I) OCTOBER--09 DECEMBER--09 S M T W T F S S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 BELGIUM. 1945. St. Didacus Confessor–W (III) In USA: 15 FRIDAY 4 SATURDAY 5 In USA: (Day of fast and partial abstinence) Third Sunday of Advent–Rose (I) (Gaudete Sunday) St. Lucy, Virgin, Martyr Ferial–V (III) Ember Wednesday–V (II) St. Eusebius Bishop, Martyr–R (Comm.) (Day of fast and abstinence) (Day of fast and partial abstinence) Ferial–V (III) Ferial–V (II) Ember Friday–V (II) Ember Saturday–V (II) 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Fourth Sunday of Advent–V (I) St. Thomas Apostle–R (II) Ferial–V (Comm.) Ferial–V (II) Ferial–V (II) Vigil of the Nativity Nativity–V Nativity– –V (I) –V 27 28 29 30 31 Sunday in the Octave of Christmas–W (II) St. John, Apostle–W (Comm.) The Holy Innocents Martyrs–R (II) Day Within the Octave of Christmas–W (Comm.) Day Within the Octave of Christmas–W (II) St. Thomas of Canterbury Bishop, Martyr–R (Comm.) Day Within the Octave of Christmas–W (II) Day Within the – (II) –W Octave of Christmas–W St. Sylvester I Pope–W (Comm.) Holy Day of Obligation Ferial–G (IV) Our Lady on Saturdays–W – (IV) –W The Nativity of Our Lord–W – (I) –W (Day of fast) NOVEMBER 2009 JANUARY 2010 S MT W T F S S MT W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 St. Anastasia Martyr (Comm. in second Mass) Martyr– Martyr–(Comm. December St. Stephen First Martyr–R (II) Day Within the Octave of Christmas–W (Comm.) “Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.” Motto of Pope St. Pius X The ngelus A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition 2915 Forest Avenue “To publish Catholic journals and place them in the hands of honest men is not enough. It is necessary to spread them as far as possible that they may be read by all, and especially by those whom Christian charity demands we should tear away from the poisonous sources of evil literature.” —Pope St. Pius X October 2008 Volume XXXI, Number 10 • Kansas City, Missouri 64109 English-language Editor and Publisher for the International Society of Saint Pius X Letter from the editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fr. Markus Heggenberger PublisheR Fr. Arnaud Rostand Editor Fr. Markus Heggenberger Assistant Editor Mr. James Vogel operations manager Mr. Michael Sestak Editorial assistant Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend comptroller adolescence and reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX Politics According to Calvin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Dr. Claude Polin book review: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Church at the Turning Points of History by Godfrey Kurth Patrick McCarthy, M.A. serenity and faithfullness in the struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT customer service Mrs. MaryAnne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Miss Rebecca Heatwole Spe Salvi: An Encyclical that Leaves Many Preplexed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Some Bishops Rebel Against the Pope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Shipping and Handling catholic social revival and the sleep of reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Mr. Jon Rydholm James Kalb, Esq. Out to the ball game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Dr. Andrew Childs vocations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Bishop Richard Williamson catechism of the crisis in the church . . Part . . . . . . .17 . . . 39 Fr. Matthias Gaudron Questions and answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Fr. Peter Scott The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published monthly under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary, Queen of Angels. Publication office is located at 2915 Forest Ave., Kansas City, MO 64109. PH (816) 753-3150; FAX (816) 753-3557. Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, MO. ©2008 by Angelus Press. Manuscripts are welcome and will be used at the discretion of the editors. Postmaster sends address changes to the address above. august 2008 writing contest winning entry . . . . . 43 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 After having been labeled as “steroids” by Fr. Novak, I must confess that I understand this to be a title of honor (especially in a world that gives so much importance to sports), and I hope that the readers of The Angelus will follow me in this interpretation and not focus on another meaning of “steroids,” one that would involve illegality and cheating. I am sure that Fr. Novak meant “steroids” exclusively in the first sense, and I am looking forward to working with him and the rest of the Angelus Press staff. Of course I was familiar with books from Angelus Press before, but I was quite surprised by the scale of the operation: the number of titles in print and the number of copies that are sold. I can only say that it is a far bigger operation than that of the SSPX’s German district, but of course the potential number of English-speaking Catholics is larger as well. What I would like to mention at this time is that I consider it an honor to be in charge of Angelus Press, but I would also like to thank Fr. Novak in particular for the kind reception with which I was welcomed. I am grateful as well that he will continue to give his support to A ngelus P re s s in being responsible for the management and marketing of the book program. At this point I do not want to announce many plans or projects for the future. The first reason is that practically all the books Angelus Press will publish in the next year have been worked on and prepared independently of me. Therefore there is good reason to think that there will be continuity in the book program, and I would like to say: happily this is so! Besides, it would not be very fair if I took credit for what is in fact due to others. The second reason is that there are many ideas coming from different sources: Fr. Novak and the other staff members have some ideas, and I do as well. All of this remains to be worked out and realized step by step. And I would add: there often is a gap between having a good idea and finding a good way to make it a reality. This certainly requires our common efforts, and it is clear that good books are not born in one day. That this is the case especially for new ideas and concepts goes without saying. There is, for instance, a general idea of entering into the field of religious audio books, an idea everyone is enthusiastic about. But we have yet to see and find out how it will be possible for us to make such a project a reality. The third reason is that it takes time to get to know things, persons, and operations. Therefore, again I am grateful to Fr. Novak, who said, “Hey boss, tell me what to do; I will show you how to pull the ropes” (this is basically a literal quote!). Another question is T he Angelus Magazine. Over the years I developed a kind of allergy to printed grammatical mistakes. This is primarily because I had been the editor of the district bulletin in Germany for 11 years before I came to the US in 2004. Now it is evident that because English is not my mother language, I will need help and correction from others. It might sometimes be an exercise of humility for me and of patience for you… In your kindness, you might try to console me by saying that, after all, the content of an article is more important than the form. I would say that this argument is partly true, but only partly. We live in an age that is characterized by people sending to each other notes, half sentences and exclamations, often without being familiar with the most rudimentary rules of language. I certainly do not want to give you the impression of supporting this attitude. There have been famous books that were nothing else than a diary or a collection of letters. The collected letters of Cardinal J. H. Newman have not only been published in the original English, but even in other languages, for example, in German. This demands an effort in form and language that is no longer a part of our modern culture–or should I rather say “culture,” since in reality it is but a pseudoculture? Who is willing and able today to write a letter in correct form? We all are children of our time, but we can at least support the good efforts of others or educate ourselves by reading good books. Of course there is a part of the “form argument” above that is quite true. Form is needed to underline, to help understand, to express one’s thoughts and ideas. In this sense the idea is the first thing and the form is secondary. We might read a nicely done magazine with many pictures and a fantastic layout, but when we discover that there is no real thought, no clear ideas in it, we lose interest. At this point I might say: Angelus Press is working to interest you, and I hope very much that your interest will grow! St. Francis of Sales (patron of Catholic writers), Pray for us. Instaurare Omnia in Christo, Fr. Markus Heggenberger 3 Adolescence Reality & F r . p a u l R o b i n s o n , “Hey, why don’t you just grow up!?” “Well, ok...but how?” In our last article, we saw that adolescence is a time of great uncertainty, and that this uncertainty left unsolved or wrongly solved leads to all of the pejorative characteristics which we link to teenagers. To guide safely their children into full-fledged adulthood, then, parents must provide two things: conviction by way of an all-encompassing answer to the problem of life and courage in the strength to live that answer. This article will give some principles for parents to help give their teens that all-encompassing answer to supply the certainty they need to face life. Boys vs. Girls But first, an aside. There is a profound crisis of manhood today,1 and this crisis extends to the traditionalist camp. Traditional Catholic boys seem to have more problems “finding themselves” than the girls. The reason, as far as I can see, is this: girls are made for the home; that is their natural setting and s s p x where they are to mature and gain the strength to leave that home one day and in turn establish their own family circle. Men sanctify themselves primarily through their work, and their primary setting is outside the home. Thus, boys must find themselves in the world, achieving independence outside the home. (This is why homeschooling for boys is often a disaster: upon leaving home, they are either bound to be wild because their manhood has been crippled in the home environment, or they are dishrag-like and under-achieving because they have never faced the challenges that “make a man out of you.”) The home is small and local; we have more control over it. If a girl is happy at home, then she has no problem. Traditional Catholic families can do what they want in their homes; no matter how wretched the world is, they can make their homes godly places and, for girls, that is usually sufficient. A girl can safely go from the happy home of her parents to her happy home with a well-chosen husband–from home to home, not from home to world as boys must. www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 4 Boys must leave the home to find their fulfillment in a world gone mad. Their coming of age, making the necessary steps toward manhood, naturally entails greater demands, since traditional Catholic boys have to get along and stand firm in a world that is savagely inimical to what they have received at home. Let’s Get Real It is absolutely indispensable for teenagers to get in touch with reality if they are to find any certainty in this life. The salvation of our soul is intimately tied up with our relation with reality. First we must recognize it, second we must accept it, and third we must live according to it. I would claim that one who does all three to the best of his ability is a saint. He who falls short of any of these three separates himself from God, since everything that is real proceeds from God. Everything that exists must come from Him alone as the owner of existence. This includes not only existing beings, but also the unchangeable laws of the universe, or what some might call the “facts of life.” We can only acknowledge and please God by acknowledging and conforming to His reality, which is the only reality. The problem we find with reality is that, after the introduction of sin and the turning of God’s creation against His own order, it is often hard to face. Life is a valley of tears, and the post-sin road to fulfillment and true success is that of the cross alone. “Nothing succeeds like Christian failure,” says one author.2 There is no escaping difficulty and suffering in this life, and the only thing that makes it fruitful is its acceptance through an understanding of its role in our personal and spiritual development. With the array of faculties given to the human soul–intellect, will, memory, imagination, passions– man has the power to create, believe in, live in (dare I say, stew in?) his own reality. The most obvious example of this is the insane, who consider themselves to be someone else and act accordingly– for example, Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace. However, I would claim that we all live in our own world to a greater or lesser degree; we do not see things exactly as they are because we clutch our own false notions and imaginings which warp actual reality. A sin is an offense against the law of God. Man is so constructed by the Lord God that he can only choose what he considers to be good. When man chooses evil, that choice is not directed toward the evil, but toward the good that coexists with every evil. Thus, in every sin there is an intellectual fault, a trick bought into wherein an evil is considered good, where reality is not seen or is pushed aside in favor of a lie, an unreality. Satan is happy to have us avoid reality, because then we destroy ourselves in our false world. Both Satan and man’s fallen nature are ever creative in pushing man toward the construction of a personal and hence false reality. THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org Teenage Escape There is perhaps no time when a man is more drawn to create and live in his own virtual reality than the teenage years. For the first time, the teenager is facing the full scale of the problem that life presents. It is looming large and the temptation is to retreat within himself or re-write the script in an attempt to construct the facts of life on his own terms. Rudolf Allers remarks on teenage introversion: The appearance of phases of introversion is very often the first intimation to the older people of the changes going on in the child. The withdrawal from reality, manifesting itself as introversion, is something they were not accustomed to observe in the child. It is necessary to grasp the full meaning of and the reasons for this withdrawal. A retreat from reality is caused very often either because the individual feels scared by reality or because he has suffered defeat. Man withdraws generally from dangers or from obstacles he cannot overcome.3 But if a teenager does not learn life’s lessons in those years, chances are he will never learn them, or only learn them through the most terrible trials, as King Lear did. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” A teenager who has been avoiding life’s difficulties will hardly be able to face them as a man. “Getting real” is an indispensable condition to becoming an adult. Teenage introversion in turn leads to daydreaming–if you are not interacting with the outside world, you are interacting with an inside world of your own creation: One way of escape is open to everyone who, bewildered by this “great and terrible world,” looks out for some refuge wherein to dwell securely. This is the flight into imaginations or into the realm of dreams. One who is dissatisfied with reality will imagine another world more pleasant, more like what he desires, more able to give what reality withholds….The dreamer is indeed omnipotent in a world of unreality.…The more he is lost in dreams, the less he understands reality.4 These daydreams can be useful, but more commonly are quite harmful in being completely illusory: Daydreams are part of adolescent growth, and yet they can be very dangerous. If daydreams are an approach to real plans for the future, they are a part of the healthy romanticism of youth, and hence are good. A boy who dreams of the day when he will be a priest, a lawyer, a builder, the father of a family–a boy who makes resolutions and plans and tries to put them into practice–is using his dreams profitably, though he will hardly reach the heights of success of which he dreams.…If, however, the daydreams are wild and built of stuff far too thin for reality, they are a real peril. The dream which puts the dreamer on a pedestal with all the world in adulation at his feet, is unhealthy. It is merely a refuge from the reality which the adolescent has failed to meet. Here is the norm: If a dream has a connection with a reasonable possibility, it is good; it if is outside the realm of possibility, it is dangerous.5 Teenage brooding and moodiness, if not checked or redirected, will easily lead to the more damaging T W 5 escapes from reality that are so chillingly accessible today: impurity, television and movies, video games, Internet drivel, rock/rap/death metal music, and, the ultimate flight, suicide itself.6 There is much that could be said about teenagers crawling into these refuges, but such a discussion is beyond the scope of this article. The bottom line is that teenagers are strongly tempted to look for a way out of the difficulties facing them instead of looking them in the face. All such flights cannot fail to have short and long term side effects: their inability to cope with life grows in direct proportion to their time spent wrapped in the unreal.7 Parental Strategies We turn again to Rudolf Allers for some general strategies for making teens more comfortable with life and the problems it poses them. War against subjectivism: The first thing to do, as it seems, is to break down the habit of excessive subjectivism. The world of dreams is a merely subjective one, different from and antagonistic to reality. The more a person lives in touch with reality, and the more at home he is there, the less will he be tempted to withdraw into the dream-world. The idea of reality must be taken in its fullest sense, including not only tangible things and society and work and economics, but the world of truths and of values too. We ought to train our children in such a way that they shall become conscious of the fact that truth and value are realities or sides of reality.8 Start early: The training for reality and for the acceptance of all its laws–comprising, as has been said, those of morals too–ought to be started long before the beginning of adolescence. Make reality “safe”: The adolescent is simply not at home in reality. To make him feel so, one has to make reality homelike to him. We must try to divest reality of the note of being uncanny and dangerous. Or we must, which is perhaps more true, teach the adolescent how to face a world which, up to a certain degree, will never lose all of its threatening, uncanny, dangerous aspects. Specifically for parents, this means that they must, over the long term, teach reality and live it. There is no “reality injection” out there to be administered or “healthy dose of reality” to be drunk. Children must be reinforced in the idea that there is an immutable set of laws, outside of and independent of them, by which the universe runs. You break the laws, you suffer the consequences; you follow the laws, you reap the benefits. If you do X, Y happens. This is true for every aspect of life and applies even to such details as table manners, chores, and grooming. “If you eat with your mouth open, Johnny, everyone will think that you are rude. It is a sign of disrespect to others at the table and bad-breeding. It takes self-discipline and courtesy to keep your mouth closed; barnyard animals do not have such control.” Though such moral pressure is often insufficient to convince Johnny fully, giving the principle behind the command is giving it flesh and life, tying it to the real world that Johnny will one day have to face. The intellectual knowledge of the facts of life, however, will mean nothing to the child unless he sees them lived at home. It is enormously confusing for a child to have parents of the “do as I say, not as I do” mold. Talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. The ultimate strategy to help children become good and stable adults is for the parents to lead a good and stable life. American Catholics especially have been afflicted in the past century with a serious The Christian Father The Christian Mother What He should Be and What He should Do the education of Her Children and Her Prayer Fr. W. Cramer Fr. W. Cramer Explains the honor and responsibility of Fatherhood and its necessary virtues. His God-given role cannot be stressed enough. Fathers will understand the great obligation of their vocation which they will be asked to render an account of, and will turn to this book time and time again for important advice on raising children, heading their family, and setting a good example. Includes the prayers a father should pray for himself and his family. Begins at the door of the Church with a mother who has come for God’s blessing. Continues to explain along with this beautiful ceremony, the vocation of Motherhood and the virtues necessary to fulfill it. How should a young woman approach the sacrament of Matrimony? How to provide the proper formation to her children. Includes prayers requesting graces for her family. 208pp, embossed hardcover, 24 illus., STK# 8230 $18.99 165pp, embossed hardcover, 26 illus., STK# 8231 $17.99 Buy BOtH and save $3.00 stK# 8255 $33.99 www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 6 disconnect between what they believe of the Faith and practice on Sundays, and how they live for the rest of the week. Let us take the typical nominally traditional Catholic family. When everyone goes to church, they are dolled up and modest, they listen carefully to what the priest says, and they fold their hands ever so beautifully. Back home, mom dons the pants and sleeveless shirts, while dad turns on the games that he watches for hours every Sunday. They are lucky to pray the Rosary together and rarely go to a daily Mass. They take steam baths in the spirit of the world on a regular basis. True, Father preaches against their lifestyle, but the parents have long had a habit of criticizing Father vehemently on those points and praising him to the skies on others. In point of fact, dad and mom don’t respect authority. They argue with each other and criticize religious, teachers, and employers. They don’t understand why their children are so disrespectful and disobedient, but the children have only learned the lesson taught: obeying and respecting authority is optional, depending on when they please you, and that applies just as much to dad and mom as anyone else. If parents expect children to believe and live the realities that God and religion are most important, that the world is empty and shallow, that the way to a happy life is through self-sacrifice and right living, then they must say these things, yes, but much more importantly, they must live them. The practical ways to bring reality home to children are innumerable.9 Much ink could be spilled specifically on eliminating technology and substituting it with substantive natural and especially intellectual culture. The aim of this article, however, is limited to this: to awaken parents to a most primal principle in the rearing of their children: objective reality understood, assimilated, and lived is the indispensable staple for their children to attain stable adulthood. This realization in the minds of parents is already a big step towards its accomplishment. Have your children live in contact with reality.…Prefer simple leisure to virtual leisure, the reading of stories, which take place in a normal universe, simple games to artificial games. Reality also means the realization that nothing is obtained without effort, difficulties to overcome, without energy and sometimes with a certain lack of material comfort.10 Fr. Paul Robinson was ordained in 2006 and is stationed at St. Mary’s Academy and College in St. Marys, Kansas. There he is a professor and chaplain to the St. Joseph Businessmen’s Association, among other responsibilities in the parish. 1 The feminist myth of the “timid” girl is meeting the reality of the disaffected boy who is willing to settle for mediocrity. Girls currently outnumber boys in student government, in honor societies, on school newspapers, and even in debating clubs. Moreover, girls read more books, girls outperform boys on tests of artistic and musical ability, and fewer girls are suspended from school, are held back, or drop out. More consequentially, more boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs. 2 Dom Hubert van Zeller, O.S.B., in his excellent meditation on the Stations, Approach to the Crucified. 3 Rudolf Allers, Forming Character in Adolescents (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, 1940), pp.28-29. 4 Ibid., pp.120, 122. 5 Henry V. Sattler, Parents, Children, and the Facts of Life (New York: Image Books, 1956), pp.150. This book has recently been republished by TAN Books & Publishers (Rockford, Illinois). 6 There is a greater prevalence of suicide among teens than any other age group. According to Meg Meeker, author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters (p.21), 11.5% of high school girls attempted suicide in 2005. Suicide is the fourth-highest cause of death among teens. And here’s a sobering adjunct: for every adolescent who succeeds in committing suicide, fifty to a hundred others have attempted it. One excellent study revealed that a staggering 33 percent of middle and high school students have thought of killing themselves. (Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters [New York: Ballantine Books, 2006], p.189) 7 THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org “When School Works,” USA Today, September 5, 2007. Is this useful? Indeed, few teenagers spend any time with adults at all. Instead, even many well-to-do students live in a bizarre teen vortex that celebrates TV, clothes and other trivia. As psychologist Robert Epstein recently told Psychology Today, “Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become.” When teens finally graduate to the real world–which is not the world of Britney Spears–they have no idea what’s going on. Conclusion God is real; in fact, He is the only reality. To possess that reality for all eternity, we must face and live up to His reality here below. But that reality is the very challenge of our existence, and as with anyone facing a daunting test, teenagers are severely tempted to retreat into a world of their own making when the full challenge of life poses itself. If they retreat into a dark shell, they alienate themselves from God, parents, and life fulfillment. Braving the reality outside the shell, they toughen and render themselves ready for all the curve balls of adulthood. Parents wanting to help their adolescents in this difficult time must plan ahead and above all live in their own lives the reality they wish to pass on to their children. The underachievement of today’s boys in relation to girls is pointed out in the April, 2001 Angelus article “Book Review: War Against Boys”: 8 All three quotations are from Forming Character in Adolescents, pp.128129. 9 As the lives of modern man are entwined ever more tightly by the toils of technological tyranny, it seems that Traditional Catholics are becoming more outspoken and proactive in their effort to get real. I mention as examples the “Sursum Corda” Crusade of St. Mary’s, the April 2008 St. Dominic School newsletter, the May 2006 Angelus among other issues, and Christendom No. 8 (a must read). [It is on line at www.dici.org. A revised version of this article was published in the Feb. 2007 Angelus under the title “Open Letter to Parents of Post-modern Children.”] All of these provide good practical applications of the principle that this article attempts to set forth. 10 “Modern World, Modern Teenagers,” Christendom, No. 8. Examples: arts, crafts, puppetry, pets, sports, music, folk dancing, nature studies, gardening, cooking. 7 C l a u d e P o l i n Politics According to Calvin It is widely understood that Catholic antiCommunism cannot accept the liberal economic model as it is practiced in Europe. But what stands behind the liberal societies of AngloSaxon inspiration? What philosophy, and even what religion, underpins it? An examination of Calvinism and its conception of society and politics are very revealing on this score. An analysis of the Calvinist conception of society and politics first of all requires an understanding of what is specific to the Calvinist religion. Calvin’s teaching can be reduced to a few essential principles, which we summarize in three points. Dependence of Guilty Man Convinced that the Christian faith was on the brink of extinction, Calvin believed that the danger was due to man’s loss of the sense of their radical dependency on God. His first idea was to make them aware of their dereliction and corrupt nature. He wanted them to feel the guilt of their sinful state, which they 8 forget all too readily, despite their having been reduced to total unworthiness. Failure of Order His second idea stems from the first. Since sin has radically corrupted human nature, Calvin concluded that in the world in which man’s sin had cast him, he could no longer discover any trace of God except through Scripture (the word of God), in which he could find in particular the Law, which he received as pure commandment (since his sin prevented him from understanding the reason for this Law). This signifies two things: On the one hand, generally speaking, the world of sin, the temporal world, reveals no particular order that man can consider as more natural than another; there is nothing to understand, and one might equally as well consider everything that happens in it as showing the will of God or as not showing it. On the other hand, and more particularly, no man can claim to incarnate more than others the divine Word; hence, no intermediary between God and the individual can exist. All men are sinners, especially those who would pretend to be less so: this thesis is at the center of the Calvinist heresy. Gratuitousness of Salvation From this reality flows a third idea. It involves considering that man’s sin condemns him to hope for salvation only from the absolutely gratuitous grace of God: man’s corruption is such that it would be presumption for man to hope to be able to do something capable of pleasing God and meriting salvation. There can be no salvation through works (hence Calvin’s dogma of predestination). That being said, it should not be forgotten that God is not a God of vengeance, but of pardon. The proof of this is that He sacrificed His Son to redeem the sins of men with an infinite love since it was entirely gratuitous; so that the true Christian faith consists not in believing that one should strive to please God by acts, but exclusively in believing in His goodness, a goodness that can overlook all sins, that is, in a “trust of the heart by which we say that our election is assured to us.” Thus the real thrust of Calvinism: the more man feels that he is a sinner, the more he must believe in the gratuitous grace of God; but the more he believes it, the more he is led to believe that he can be saved. The paradox of Calvinism is that it can lead men to convince themselves that the consciousness of sin is the beginning of salvation because the grace of God, precisely because it works upon men who do not merit it, necessarily extends to sinners, so that those whose confidence in the love of God is the greatest are also those who are THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org the most convinced of their salvation. The Calvinist will thus obey the Law not to be saved, but because he is saved: some Calvinists will even claim to have experienced their election. It is a surprising reversal: a train of thought that makes the most extreme humility the very source of what it is hard not to consider as the feeling, not devoid of a secret pride, of belonging to an elite! Better still, this humility is the source of the extraordinary conviction that the Calvinists constitute the new Chosen People, to whom God Himself confides the mission of building the new Jerusalem. Renew the World Let us develop this last point. It would be hard to overestimate the feeling the Calvinist can have of being called to regenerate the human race. The Puritans are today thought to be conservatives, but they were in fact rebels against classical society. It might be imagined that, persuaded as they were that the temporal order is sinful, they would turn away from it. Nothing would be more untrue and, after all, nothing could be more illogical on their part. For towards what else would the Calvinist turn? He cannot make his own any contemplative ideal, his original fault having stripped him of the capacity to accede to the intelligibility of the world. But his sinner’s faith leads him to consider temporal action as the only way to prove the ardor of his faith: not that his works can merit him the grace of God, but because he has no other way of demonstrating his confidence in the goodness of God than to plunge boldly into the world, obviously with the strictest respect for the letter of the Law. Neither suicide nor the refusal of the world is an option for a Calvinist; nor is simple obedience to the Law an option, since the faithful is left the task of deciding what he must do regarding everything the Law does not prescribe. It has often been assumed that the Calvinist community was a theocracy, but that is an error: how could there be a social royalty of God? In the world subject to sin there is no order of nature. Everything is to be constructed, all order must be artificially inaugurated. The new man has for his compass only Scripture and his confidence in God. He has made a blank slate of his temporal past and must inaugurate here below a novus ordo sæculorum. As much as their sin condemns men to be alone in the world, so their faith is supposed to give them the energy to renew it. Society According to Calvin The exposition of religious Calvinism has led us to sketch the conception of society to which this religion leads. Now we must complete the picture. There might be a temptation to make of 9 the Calvinist Revolution the model of the French Revolution: both have in common the desire to destroy the Ancien Régime, but this contains only a few similarities between the two social and political projects. The principles of a “Calvinist society” can be outlined from a few basic deductions. The Question of Regime The first is that Calvinism cannot lead to monarchy or aristocracy (what sinner can claim to be better than another?); yet Calvin had, without the least doubt, judged as impious the regime of popular sovereignty that Rousseau dreamt of establishing in, among other places, Calvin’s Geneva (how could a people subject to the Law declare itself to be sovereign?). Homo Homini Lupus The second deduction is that Calvin’s man has nothing in common with Aristotle’s. How could sin, which broke man’s bond with God, not have broken the bond between man and man? For, in the first place, how could a sinner be genuinely interested in another, since no sinner can help the salvation of another, God only being able to show mercy? Then, if everyone’s faith can make him believe in his own salvation, and if this can only be the object of a subjective certitude, one can always suspect sin beneath the most apparently irreproachable conduct: how then can any man trust another? Calvin’s man is more like Hobbes’s, who is, as we know, a wolf for other men. Thus the Calvinist is more carried by his nature to live alone than in society, and there is in him a reservoir of anarchism that no social tie will be able to completely obliterate. The Society-Association This does not mean, thirdly, that the Calvinist is incapable of life in society, but simply that his sociability is essentially conditional. Every Calvinist society tends to be nothing more than a simple association into which one only enters freely. From the fact that no human sovereignty is possible, it does not follow that society has nothing democratic: on the contrary, every Calvinist community is founded on the mutual consent of people who know one another. No man can legitimately command another; every man must live as he believes he must, guided by his faith in the love of God. This is the source of the affection the Calvinist has for the communities where this consent is not an empty word, that is to say, small-scale communities, whence a collective penchant for a certain provincialism, for local autonomy. Obedience and Discipline A Fourth observation: it does not necessarily follow that since the association of men is freely consented to by each individual that permissiveness must reign; quite the contrary. Firstly, because the principal reason for the association is a shared doctrine and religion, which makes the first effect of faith to be a quasi-military obedience to the law. Secondly, and perhaps even more so, because, this obedience being the only manifest sign of faith (how could a sinner know the soul of another?), the only way the faithful have to be sure that no reprobates are among them is the scrupulous adherence by all to the norms of external comportment. Thus Calvinism leads first to discipline, and from discipline to conformity, often not without hypocrisy, and at the limit to a collective intolerance that can assume brutal forms (who does not remember the Salem witch trials?) albeit for strictly internal usage (the pure have a tendency to form a closed society, to shut out the reputedly impure, and not to purify them). Every Man Is Alone Fifth observation: As has been said, the feeling of being counted among the number of the elect which the Calvinist derives from the confidence he places in the love of God, takes away nothing of the reciprocal exteriority of individuals; this accounts for the superficial character of their sociability. All men are alone before God. This spiritual solipsism quite naturally induces a social solipsism: no one can entrust to another the care of his temporal and spiritual affairs. Immured in their destiny, a gathering of individuals constitutes an aggregation of solitudes, and their communities are as closed upon themselves and closed to others as the individuals are towards one another. This feeling of not being able to count on anyone but oneself –individually or collectively—is the source of a more or less conscious pessimism about others that leads everyone to desire to depend only upon oneself–in a word, autarky. From this mutual misgiving springs the propensity to establish with others only the kind of relationship natural to men who are strangers: trade, for the relationship of exchange is the only one that does not presuppose that men are sociable before entering into it. It suffices that each partner satisfy his own interest. This is to say that Calvinism bears within it the seed of a society in which commerce is likely to develop, and through it, industry, a society www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 10 based upon economic activity, upon a market economy—in a word, a liberal society. Work in High Esteem Sixth remark: This being the case is not sufficient reason to attribute to Calvinism the development of capitalism strictly speaking, as the famous thesis of Max Weber would have it (moreover, if that were so, why would it have been necessary to wait until the end of the 19th century for it to take off?) The well-known maxim of Benjamin Franklin (“Time is money”) in truth constitutes the Calvinist version of the Parable of the Talents: it is not an exhortation to the pursuit of money, but a reminder that man is not on earth to have fun, but to work, since for him it is the only way he has to honor the grace of God and at the same time not put himself at the mercy of others. Work has an intrinsic value, and thus can as well be the solitary labor of the pioneer, hunter, farmer, or rancher clearing land to be his own master there as the commercial activity of the merchant who is equally attached to his independence but, living in town, is reduced to procuring his livelihood in commerce with others. In both cases, the work ethic does not in any way imply the hubristic characteristic of capitalism properly so-called: the Calvinist is inclined not to asceticism but to frugality, and Calvin, contrary to the legend, did not condemn all enjoyment of temporal life, provided that it respect the Law and that it remain essentially moderate, that is to say austere: Calvin’s Geneva is a far cry from the modern consumer society. Politics According to Calvin It remains for us to understand—as a seventh and last observation—what role devolves to politics in the general economy of this society devoted firstly to private activities. I believe that there are three answers to this question. Guardian of the Law First, the political power corresponds to the need, affirmed by Calvin echoing St. Augustine, to repress by force all violations of the law (“to punish the perverse and the pestilent, who cannot be corrected otherwise than by punishing them”). This is all the more logical in that, as has been seen, it never involves more than imposing conformity of comportment. Now, as Lock will say, it is not possible to emerge from the state of nature if every citizen is allowed to exact justice himself, if the “lust THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org for vengeance” is authorized: there must be a public officer, a magistrate, a policeman of morals. This cannot be done without difficulty, though, since the latter is as much as any man “perverse and unworthy of all honor”–there is no church to anoint kings. Therefore the precept Omnis potestas a Deo (all power comes from God) must be tempered by this “rule to keep above everything that the obedience due to the magistrate ought not to deflect us from the obedience due to Him before whose majesty all powers must bow.” One can see how the penchant for the strictest legalism can wed the propensity to permit a periodic reinterpretation of the terms to which obedience may be exacted. The Prince-Arbitrator In second place, and following the same logic, since it is in the nature of the sinner to have private interests and to be carried to defend them, while at the same time the bond of the Christian to God, though private, is the most sacred there can be, the political power may neither repress everything nor allow everything. In the logic of Calvinism, besides its moral and coercive role, this power should have the role of a neutral arbitrator between divergent interests, preventing their competition from degenerating into open warfare. This understanding will become the formula of a Locke or Montesquieu: Calvinism is not only the Father of economic liberalism, but of political liberalism as well. Confederate Associations Finally, the logic of Calvinism leads it to confer on government a third function—a prolongation of the second, but applied to a different matter. If it is in the nature of Calvinism to pay attention to local affairs above all, and thus to give rise to communities essentially independent of each other, federalism is in many respects a typical product of Calvinism. That completes this rough sketch of what could be called social and political Calvinism. The reading of this brief analysis has undoubtedly led the reader more than once to notice the resemblances between “Calvinist” society and the United States of America. In a future article, I shall undertake to reply to the question: does the current political situation of the United States still embody the Calvinist spirit? Translated from Fideliter, May-June 2008, pp.65-70. Claude Polin has been a professor of political philosophy at the University of Paris–Sorbonne since 1966. 11 BooK ReVieW TITLE: The Church at the Turning Points of History AUTHOR: Fr. Godfrey Kurth PUBLISHER: IHS Press (Norfolk: Gates of Vienna, 2007) REVIEWER: Patrick McCarthy, M.A. SUMMARY: Godfrey Kurth (1847-1916) was a leading Belgian Catholic historian who wrote more than 20 books and contributed more than a dozen articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia. This highly readable and riveting book examines the Church’s history at seven critical junctures. The seven “Turning Points” are: the mission of the Church (the Church’s understanding of Her own purpose), the Church and the Jews (Council of Jerusalem in AD 49), the Church and the Barbarians, the Church and Feudalism, the Church and Neo-Caesarism, the Church and the Renaissance, and the Church and the Revolution. From the opening pages of Genesis, the Bible expounds sacred history with a backdrop anchored in both time and place: the Bible’s assertions culminating in Our Lord and His Church are historical assertions. In Genesis 2, the four rivers of the Garden of Eden are specifically identified. The reader learns that the first river is Phison; that, the river “compasseth all the land of Hevilath.” One learns, further, that “the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone.”1 Notwithstanding Joseph Campbell’s contention that Christianity is but one of numerous versions of a single universal “myth,” the Catholic religion insists that it is the religion of one God who has unfolded His plan in time. During the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the Egyptians worshipped “Ra, the sun god, whom the Theban pharaohs joined with their favorite god Amon to make one god, Amon-Ra.”2 Contrast that notion of god as a product of human art with the Bible’s pithy statement: “Jesus therefore was born in Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of King Herod….”3 The Bible consistently presents historical details of God’s, not man’s, design. Accordingly, a Catholic who wishes to deepen his understanding of the Faith will certainly profit from a closer study of the Church in history. Contemporary society, of course, puts numerous obstacles to block such learning. The Bible, if it is studied at all in the schools, is treated as literature, not history. The history that is offered instead is a hodge-podge survey of miscellaneous civilizations called global history: today’s students, offered a sampling of all civilizations, are fortunate if they learn the history of any of them. To be sure, when the history of the Church is actually studied, its actions are always treated in darker hues. Scratch the surface of any university graduate’s understanding of history and you will learn that the Crusades were bloodthirsty and the Inquisition intolerant. Individual Catholic students who know better confront additional www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 12 obstacles. Many histories suffer from one of two defects: they are either so general as to be vague, or so specific as to lose the attention of all but the specialist. Where are histories that can fill genuine Catholic need? In this writer’s opinion, Godfrey Kurth’s The Church at the Turning Points of History is one such work. The book, originally delivered as lectures in 1898 and first published in 1916, richly covers the tapestry of Church and society–from the ancient pagan world through the French Revolution and its aftermath–in less than 100 pages. Where necessary, Professor Kurth goes into considerable detail; when a more general view is better, he proceeds in that direction. In short, he was a Catholic historian who was a master of the craft: his work under review is as appropriate for a beginning (adolescent or adult) student of history as for an individual well-versed in the subject who desires a solid review. As an example, Professor Kurth’s second lecture, entitled “The Mission of the Church,” amply proves that novice history students will not find his work unduly daunting. In that lecture, the professor explains the first key challenge which the Church, afire with the proselytizing zeal of Pentecost, had to confront: “the chief danger that the Church encountered in the first years lay in her ignorance of the attitude to be assumed concerning the Ancient Law and Israel” (27). Our Lord, in Kurth’s clear exposition, did not make it easy for His first missionaries: “had He not said further that He had come first for the wandering sheep of the flock of Israel…” (Ibid.). Were Gentiles in fact entitled to join the New Israel? If so: “Was not Israel the guardian of the Law, of that Law which Christ said he had come to fulfil (sic) and not destroy?” (Ibid.). Did that really mean that Gentile men who wished to convert had to be circumcised? The beginning 21st-century student, because of Professor Kurth’s careful buildup, readily understands the core issue and quite reasonably wonders how the Church in fact settled the matter. Professor Kurth then reveals the drama of the Holy Ghost’s step-by-step resolution of the issue. He first of all allots time to the inspired encounter of the Church’s first Pope, Peter, and the Roman centurion, Cornelius. Cornelius’ subsequent conversion was only that of a single person, however. Kurth then shifts the view to the mass conversion of Gentiles at Antioch, making that city the first to be called Christian. The argument between those who wanted Gentile converts to adopt the entirety of the Mosaic laws versus those who did not could no longer be postponed. History drily records that the argument was settled in favor of the latter position at the Council of Jerusalem. Professor Kurth brings to life the major personalities at that epochal event, both the St. Paul of customary historical narration as well THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org Charlemagne St. Gregory the Great as St. James the Lesser, whose contribution is too often neglected. The novice in conclusion learns about an important chapter in Church history from a master instructor who never condescends. Veteran students on the other hand will profit from every one of Professor Kurth’s seven lectures. This 30-year veteran of teaching history certainly profited. For instance, I had known–and taught–the cracking apart of the Roman Empire in the 300s and its subsequent collapse in 476. Until reading Kurth, however, I had not sufficiently appreciated the wrench to Church sensibility that the destruction of that great Empire entailed. In 312 Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan mandated that Christianity be tolerated and, in 392, Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the Empire’s official religion. A fourth-century Church gratefully received these blessings from a civilization that was then over 1100 years old. Why shouldn’t the Church regard that age-old Empire as eternal? When it ended, why did not the Church collapse with it? Kurth brilliantly poses and answers such questions in his succinct account of this momentous historical catastrophe. The professor reminds the reader that Rome’s history stretched as far back as 753 B.C., the era of the legendary (not imaginary) Romulus and Remus. He directs the reader to the Old Testament prophet Daniel: “For what was that fourth and last empire foretold by Daniel–and compared to iron to symbolize its indestructible duration–but the Roman Empire?” (38). Accordingly, when Alaric sacked Rome in 410, Churchmen went through a profound identity crisis. Not a few Christians of that era refused to distinguish between the Roman state and the Roman church, as Professor Kurth ably illustrates through the example of Roman Britain. P 13 Pope St. Leo IX King Philip IV of France I had previously viewed Britain as Catholic since (roughly) 600, when Pope Gregory the Great dispatched Augustine on the latter’s remarkable proselytizing effort. Actually, as one learns from Kurth, Britain had been Catholic since the secondcentury pontificate of St. Eleutherius. Unfortunately, when Roman military protection began to collapse in the fourth and fifth centuries, too many Catholic Britons refused to distinguish between Catholic civilization and Roman government. Laymen fought–while priests refused to convert–the Angles and Saxons who invaded the island. I had known that matters fared differently on the continent: Roman Churchmen there had baptized Clovis and anointed him King of the Franks, thus inaugurating a thousand-year tradition. Until reading Kurth, however, I had not sufficiently understood that the Catholic Britain of the fourth and fifth centuries represented a profound temptation, then and now. I wonder, for instance, how well many of America’s Catholic intellectuals and politicians would fare with a collapse of our government or a successful invasion from abroad. If Kurth stimulates the older student of history while he simultaneously instructs the beginner, he displays an art of composition that will impress students at every level. He has the remarkable talent to distinguish between the need to be general versus the need to be specific. His fourth lecture–“The Church and Feudalism”–is a superb instance of the former. In that lecture, the professor faces the huge challenge of covering 800 years of history, from 500 to 1300. How does one do justice to a politics that combines a Charlemagne with feudal vassals, an economics that ranged from manorialism to Italian towns and guilds, and a religion that produced numerous Benedictine orders, not to mention the Pope Boniface VIII King Louis XIV later itinerant Franciscans and the Dominican instructors at the University of Paris? Kurth’s splendid device is a single institution, lay investiture, through which–as a hub of a wheel–he can radiate numerous spokes. Lay investiture was the unacceptable medieval practice of laymen, usually kings and nobles, awarding higher ecclesiastical offices. Professor Kurth brilliantly establishes the hierarchy of corruption which then ensued. First of all, from 967 to 1073, the Holy Roman Emperor actually chose the popes. The Church compromised at its highest level, the lower offices of bishop and priest in turn lost their independence. When a local bishop died, the chapter forwarded his ring and crosier to the king; unfortunately, by the time those objects had arrived, the court had already become “the steeple-chase of candidates for the episcopacy” (47). Naturally, the successful bishop had bribery expenses to settle, which meant that he, too, sold off the priesthoods at his disposal. The Church stank of simony at every level. Professor Kurth superbly explains the wideranging ramifications of lay investiture as well as the courage of the Church’s ultimate response. Concerning the former, he makes clear the average layman’s disgust: “When luxury and venality had their seats in the sanctuary and talked from the pulpits, what could be the feelings of the hearers?” (50). The laity understandably, if regrettably, listened to the siren song of Albigensianism, the most formidable of the medieval heresies. Albigensianism is usually treated as the offshoot of southern French culture: Kurth challenges that notion, suggesting that the student “have no illusion on the subject: it was everywhere” (51). Consequently, the Church had to respond–often www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 14 courageously–at many levels. Many students know of the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas à Becket at the hands of English King Henry II; a few are acquainted with the stalwart resistance of Pope St. Gregory VII to the aggressions of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Very few, I venture to say, will be familiar with the combination of tact and bravery Gregory’s predecessors, pontiffs such as Leo IX, displayed in wresting control of papal selection itself from the grasping hands of the Holy Roman Emperors. Conventional history merely notes that the College of Cardinals, begun in 1059, started selecting popes shortly thereafter. Kurth’s pages give light and inspiration to that mere date. Through Professor Kurth’s focus upon lay investiture, one better understands the entire Middle Ages. Charlemagne’s successors inaugurated the simony of lay investiture; Albigensianism, heresy that it was, was an understandable reaction; and courageous churchmen such as Popes Leo IX and Gregory VII inspired a Francis of Assisi and a Thomas Aquinas to combat the heresy successfully. No wonder that the 13th century was probably the most glorious in the history of the Church, when She “presided at the birth of communes and universities, she covered with her prestige Gothic art and scholasticism, she saw saints ascend the thrones of France and Castile” (59). It takes intellect of a high order to make lay investiture the bridge between Albigensianism and Gothic architecture, in the process compressing 800 years of history within fifteen pages. Professor Kurth equally knows when he must devote considerable detail to a brief historical time period. The outstanding example among his lectures is his fifth, entitled “The Church and NeoCaesarism,” in which Kurth spends a surprising number of pages on the conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and French King Philip IV. Ten pages, over ten per cent of the Professor’s lecture material, would at first sight appear to be too much coverage to devote to a single episode. Gradually, however, one appreciates the Professor’s decision to allot so much time to just two individuals. He begins with the concept of Neo-Caesarism itself. Neo-Caesarism quite simply is the government’s steady encroachment on more and more areas of private life until private life itself, culminating in a person’s very prayer, is suffocated. Americans today live increasingly in a Neo-Caesarist world: in 1900, neighborhood children could spontaneously build Halloween bonfires; today, local governments forbid such entertainments. At the state level, a century ago a conscientious Catholic could refuse to rent his house to an unwed couple; currently, even “conservative” states are prepared to weigh in on behalf of the couple’s “privacy” rights. More ominously still, the pre-Vatican II university whose THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org funding from predominantly Catholic sources protected its capacity to teach the Faith now accepts both federal funding and federal tutelage. Professor Kurth helps the reader see that NeoCaesarism, absent in the earlier Middle Ages, received its insidious inauguration in the conflict between King Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII. A typical medieval monarch, the Professor documents, had relatively little control: [E]verywhere–in the stronghold of the nobleman, in the walled enclosure of the communes, under the vaults of the churches and monasteries, on the lofty throne of St. Peter–it met free forces which acted as a counterpoise and did not permit the king to exceed the limits established by religion and by custom. (62) Even the exalted Holy Roman Emperor could control only so much in a world of free cities, independent nobles, and untrammeled Church. Enter the conflict of Philip IV (“the Fair”) and Pope Boniface VIII. Each stage of that late 13th-century confrontation, usually resulting in Philip’s triumphs, reverberates in modern churchstate relations. The conflict began, in 1297, when the pope tried to mediate a conflict between France and England. In doing so, Boniface mildly asserted the prerogatives of a medieval papacy strengthened by its victory over lay investiture: in 1215, for instance, Pope Innocent III had actually deposed England’s King John I. Philip, much like the modern politician, would have none of that: “he accepted the mediation of the Pope, in the capacity as a private person…but in no way in the capacity of a recognized authority” (70). Would not our Holy Father today, whether opining for peace in Sudan or the Middle East, be perfectly acceptable to a Philip IV? Later, tensions escalated between the French king and the Pope over the issue of clerical immunity from direct royal taxation: the riches of the Church, “[i]n accordance with the doctrine of the time…belonged to the poor and could not be taxed” (73). While Philip subsequently backed off on this issue, later governments have implemented his policy, and the modern Church, unfortunately, has acquiesced. Few American Catholics can afford to tithe their church but they tithe–and then some– through mandatory taxation for welfare programs of dubious value to the poor. Eventually, Boniface in 1302 felt compelled to issue the papal bull Unam Sanctam in which he unhesitatingly reminded Philip of the prerogatives belonging to the Vicar of Christ. Philip’s response was to gather a group of local Italian thugs to assault the pope, leading to Boniface’s death from shock a few weeks later. Philip then moved the papacy to Avignon, France, in 1305, inaugurating that humiliating period of French control called the second “Babylonian Captivity” (1305-78). 15 While the papacy has long since returned to Rome, Professor Kurth–through his copious detail on a single episode–has enabled the student to better understand the ominous beginnings of NeoCaesarism. Today, no pope would dare assert the doctrine of Unam Sanctam, and in fact that bull has become a staple of textbook presentation about a presumptuous papacy. In reality, the receding of papal guidance has created a social and spiritual vacuum into which a usurping Neo-Caesarist government has increasingly intruded. Professor Kurth furnishes a later historical example in the rule of ostensibly Catholic Louis XIV (1660-1715), the French “Sun King.” In reality, Louis, using the doctrine of Gallicanism4, increasingly shackled the Church. He became one of the absolutist monarchs who so populate the 17th and 18th centuries. As Kurth succinctly states: From a national point of view the absolutism has broken the equilibrium of the social body, concentrated the life in the head, atrophied free institutions.… (78) The ensuing French Revolution, as Alexis de Tocqueville has pointed out5, merely took over and further consolidated the modern leviathan state. Today, the super-state extends and strengthens its grip over all of us while the modern Church has yet to face the issue as forthrightly as Boniface VIII did 700 years ago. Ultimately, Professor Kurth’s editorial decision to devote over ten per cent of his text to just one pope and one monarch is necessary to introduce the reader to one of today’s weightiest issues. Notwithstanding his prodigious talent, not even Professor Kurth can do adequate justice to all the issues in such a short work. I found three key omissions: Protestantism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Neo-Caesarist possibilities of modern democracy. Kurth underestimates the impact and influence of Protestantism. I only noticed two references in the seven lectures, neither to Martin Luther. In both references, Protestantism is treated as at most an effect, and at best a secondary influence. I think Professor Kurth errs in understating the seminal influence of a Martin Luther in particular. At the historic (1521) imperial Diet of Worms, Luther, refusing to buckle to Church authority as explained by the Church representative Johann Eck, famously declared: …my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against my conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen. (My emphases)6 I believe the historian Will Durant, echoing the judgment of 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle–“…the greatest moment in the modern history of man”7–has accurately stated the extent of Luther’s influence (not, to be sure, the quality of that influence). Luther sprang subjective individualism on the world with lasting consequences. Religious indifferentism, rooted in the notion that our religious views are purely subjective opinions, is inseparable from Luther’s rejection of any authority other than his own judgment. Nor has Luther’s influence been confined to the theological. As I write, a woman’s “right to choose”–the standard euphemism for the state-sanctioned right to kill unborn children– continues to pass muster with a Supreme Court comprised of five “Catholic” justices. Professor Kurth also fails to do justice to the Scientific Revolution, both its historical origins as well as contemporary influence. Every civilization has pursued science; only modern civilization–beginning with the West–has become increasingly captive to the false philosophy of scientism. Scientism is the (ultimately) religious belief that unhindered science will eventually explain everything and solve all problems. As just one illustration of the extent of its influence today, consider the omnipresence of the psychiatric establishment. A troubled Catholic American in 2008 is more likely to visit a medical doctor than go to confession. His son or daughter is as likely to ingest a prescribed pill to combat “depression” than to think that the ultimate source of the problem is spiritual. Indeed, key concepts–such as “soul”–that would form part of a religious examination into a troubled interior life are almost utterly drained of meaning. The historical roots of such scientific usurpation reside in episodes such as Galileo in the 17th century and Darwin in the 19th. Conventional history is monolithic in its presentation of these matters. Even as fair-minded a historian as R. R. Palmer weights his conclusions against the Church and for modern(ist) science in his discussion of Galileo. The Church, he concludes, could not cope with the heliocentric discoveries of Galileo: he “was condemned and forced to an ostensible recantation by his church.”8 How many times has that propaganda been driven into Catholics? Similarly, conventional history records its sympathies for “science” in the 19th-century battle over Darwinism. In 1859, Darwin first popularized the idea of natural selection and followed that work, in 1871, with the less-known work The Descent of Man. In that writing, Darwin “theorized that humans and apes might have descended from a common ancestor.” While “many religious leaders believed Darwin’s theories contradicted the Biblical account of creation,” the modern textbook blandly finishes: “Darwin’s theories transformed people’s understanding about living things and their origin.”9 In today’s world, all “intelligent” people accept that non-intelligence created everything. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 16 A resurgent Catholic history will have to confront these one-sided presentations of history. Surprisingly, Professor Kurth rarely discusses the Scientific Revolution in his lectures, three times by my count. When he does, he is far too lenient toward modern science’s propagandists. In his (sixth) lecture about the Renaissance, he notes in passing that “the vast conquests of the natural sciences, dating from the 16th century” (81) paved the way for the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. He says nothing about Galileo or Darwin, not to mention their deleterious influence on the prestige of the Church. Perhaps Professor Kurth’s greatest failing is a blind spot toward the Neo-Caesarist potential of the modern democracies. When he discusses the phenomenon of Neo-Caesarism, Kurth comes perilously close to restricting such totalitarianism to the “divine right” monarchies of the 17th through 19th centuries. Kurth is certainly correct when he concludes: A great number of historians, followed by a veritable mob of second-rate minds, persuade themselves with a naïveté almost ludicrous, that these theories of royal absolutism are Catholic theories. (71) I agree with Kurth that the medieval king’s limited control of his society accorded with Catholic teaching while a Louis XIV’s ambition to dominate all of 17th-century France, the Church included, was not. However, modern democracy, with its roots in “social contract” philosophers such as the Puritan John Locke, is hardly exempt from the Neo-Caesarist temptation. One is not sure that Kurth was so persuaded. When discussing the abuse of lay investiture, he contrasts that medieval practice with “the great evangelical principle of the distinction of powers, which is the cornerstone of modern civilization” (48). In 1898, when he made that statement, the “Catholic” France of the Third Republic followed more closely the religious indifferentism of Voltaire than orthodox Church teaching. Similarly, when paying tribute to the greatness of the later Middle Ages, Kurth comments that “the Catholic spirit kept intact the great principle of the Christian republic (my emphasis) of the Middle Ages” (49). I am not certain what Kurth meant by “republic” in a world of emperors, kings and Italian city-states. Overall, however, Professor Kurth’s limitations concerning Protestantism, scientism and the modern totalitarian republic constitute minor blemishes in an otherwise remarkable piece of historical analysis. His cogent presentation is an excellent starting point for a person who wishes to begin to learn the history of the Church, the most important history of all. Besides, supplements to his weaknesses are readily available. One can go to Jacques Maritain’s Three Reformers for a devastating portrait of Luther and THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org Luther’s thought. Dr. David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion is a superb puncturing of the pretensions of scientism, just as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America thoroughly explores the Neo-Caesarist possibilities of modern democracy. Unfortunately, one cannot recover the world in which Professor Kurth lived. We in 2008 exist in a world awash in degrees and bereft of scholarly accomplishment. The prefatory remarks to The Church at the Turning Points in History note on Kurth’s behalf that “footnote citations were not provided for the facts cited, as most were presumed to be well known to readers.” I have a Master’s degree in history and yet profited from Professor Patrick Foley’s compilation of footnotes for this edition of the lectures. Bishop John P. Carroll of Helena, Montana, translated Professor Kurth’s lectures into impeccable English in 1918. Presumably, he did his work in the snatches of time available from his primary duties as bishop. I formally studied French for six years and believe an additional decade of study would not have brought me even close to equaling the quality of Bishop Welsh’s translation. I do know that I am not alone in my barbarous ignorance. The lectures were originally delivered to a “Women’s University Extension” in Antwerp. In all likelihood very few of those women had more than high school educations. Today, I venture to say, modern men and women have vastly more of the credentials suggesting education and vastly less of the knowledge that constitutes true learning. In the future, when the Church as part of its renewal takes its necessary role as the guide of learning, we can begin to return to the high scholarship of Professor Kurth and the impressive knowledge of regular Catholics. Until that time, we will be grateful for the availability of such impressive histories as The Church at the Turning Points of History. Mr. Patrick McCarthy is a retired high school history teacher, who resides in Annandale, Virginia. He received a B.A. from Georgetown University in 1973 and an M.A. from George Washington University in 1981, both degrees with history concentrations. Before retiring in December, 2006, he had taught for 27 years. 1 Genesis 2:11-12 (Douay-Rheims translation). Mounir Farah and Andrea Berens Karls, World History: The Human Experience (New York: Macmillan, third edition, 1992), p.42. 3 St. Matthew 2:1. 4 That is, the royal French version of Neo-Caesarism as embodied in the Four Articles of 1682. The first article, for example, declares the pope’s authority to be limited to purely spiritual matters. 5 The Old Regime and the French Revolution. 6 Will Durant, The Reformation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p.361. 7 Ibid. 8 R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, sixth edition, 1984), p.286. 9 Farah and Karls, p.578. 2 17 SERENITY AND FAITHFULNESS IN THE STRUGGLE A r c h b i s h o p M a r c e l L e f e b v r e We are all going through a great trial, a trial of the Church. There is no denying it; because our official standing and in some sense our juridical position, juridical at least in the purely literal sense of the word, is not normal. Thus we have no normal relations with the bishops or the priests around us who, like us, have an apostolate. Our relationship with them is obviously not what it normally would be within the Holy Church; thus no normal relations with the bishops, no normal relations with the priests around us, no normal relations with the religious communities, nor www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 18 with a large portion of the faithful, not even with Rome! It is a horrible, ghastly trial, because it is abnormal. At such a confusing time...let us avoid adopting extreme, a priori positions that are not realistic, but which disturb consciences without enlightening them. Let us avoid the bitter zeal condemned by St. Pius X in his first encyclical: In order that the zeal to instruct bear its desired fruits and successfully form Christ in all men, nothing is more effective than charity. Let us etch firmly in our memory this fact, venerable Brothers, for “the Lord is not found in an earthquake” (III Kings 19:11). It is in vain that we might hope to bring souls to God by a bitter zeal; often one does more harm than good by correcting errors stridently or condemning vices harshly. While it is true that in exhorting Timothy, the Apostle says, “Accuse, supplicate, correct...,” he also adds, “in all patience” (II Tim. 4:2). Nothing conforms better to the examples that Jesus Christ has left us. It is He who says to us, “Come to me all of you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I shall give you rest” (Mt. 11:28). In His mind these infirm and oppressed people were none other than the slaves of error and sin. What gentleness in our divine Master! What tenderness, what compassion for all suffering souls! That is why it is impossible for us to condone the attitude of those who have nothing but harsh words for their neighbor, who judge him rashly and sow seeds of discord among those leading the same fight. Yet it is equally true that we cannot understand those who, spiritually weak and ever ready to compromise, allow themselves to become dissipated and demoralized by minimizing the importance of prayer or true devotion to the most holy Virgin. Such people would rather please man than God. Rejecting the heritage of the martyrs, they would rather sacrifice truth and Our Lord Himself than incur the displeasure of the persecutors, especially if the latter are dignitaries of the Church. I do so greatly hope that the Society does not acquiesce in either of these tendencies. Let us be Catholics, true Christians, imitators of Our Lord who poured forth His blood for the glory of His Father and the salvation of His brothers. May we strive for patience, sweetness, and humility, but also strength and unbending faith. We cannot be half-hearted priests. We cannot have a tentative and vacillating vocation. This struggle and this crusade need men with deep convictions, faith, and charity. We need men preparing themselves to give their all to help usher in the victorious reign of Christ the King. You live at a time when men must be heroes or nothing. You must choose between abandoning the fight and fighting as heroes. Thus you must have the virtues of heroes. You cannot waffle, for then you will be beaten from the start; you will not be able to resist the repeated attacks of the devil. See how THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org even within the Society the devil uses every means to diminish our strength, to divide and corrupt us. Using his wiles he manages to foment oppositions and divisions in order to weaken us. I beseech you to remain attached to the See of Peter, the Church of Rome, mother and mistress of all churches; attached to the unadulterated Catholic Faith expressed in the creeds and the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in conformity with what was taught you at the seminary. Remain faithful in passing on this Faith in order that the kingdom of Our Lord may come. Moreover, you are priests of the Society, in the Society, for the Society. Be faithful to this congregation that has been so clearly and manifestly blessed by God. It is not possible that God’s blessing be lacking in all these seminaries, priories, and schools. So ask Him to watch over that spirit that was given you at the seminary. If you wish to continue fighting the good fight to which God has called you, keep to the path marked out. The good fight will be your sanctification, for it is the fight of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the fight through which He gained the victory. You will continue in this fight first for your own sanctification, but also for the sanctification of others. The cross before your eyes at Mass, continuing the sacrifice of Calvary, that is your compass. So, my dear friends, remain faithful. People are waiting for you. It is Our Lord’s desire that you go provide a model of sanctity and preach the Gospel. He wants you to give to souls faith and the other supernatural virtues. Souls are suffering and dying of hunger and thirst. We are counting on you. You must continue doing throughout your ministry what the Church has always done in all domains: liturgy, theology, philosophy, spirituality, spiritual direction, the apostolate. In you the people will find once again, and recognize, priests of the Holy Roman Catholic Church of all time. That will serve as our argument and confirm the validity of our position. Let us be true sons of the Catholic Church. Fear nothing, neither persecution, nor spite, nor any criticism directed our way because we are worthy sons of the Catholic Church. Fear not, for God is with us. Our Lord Jesus Christ is with us, as the most Holy Virgin Mary is also. Ask of Mary her help that we may honor her divine Son as she so desires. May she strengthen us in the persecution, ostracized as we are by everyone, by our very pastors who should on the contrary congratulate and help us maintain the Catholic Faith. Translated exclusively for Angelus Press by Mr. Todd Anderson of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, MN. The text is from La sainteté sacerdotale (Priestly Holiness), recently published by Clovis publishing house in France 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 October 2008 Reprint #83 SPE SALVI: AN ENCYCLICAL THAT LEAVES MANY PERPLEXED A reader writes us: Most esteemed editorial staff, As a faithful reader of SÌSÌNONO, I would like to ask you to let me convey my perplexities about the recent encyclical of the Pontiff at present reigning, Spe Salvi, dated November 30, 2007. This encyclical discusses the fundamental theme of “Christian hope,” which is hope in eternal life, promised by Christ to them that love Him and follow His teachings. The encyclical derives its title from a well-known passage of St. Paul: “Spe salvi facti sumus—In hope we were saved” (Rom. 8:24). Many have been struck by the fact, undoubtedly positive, that in this document the Pope did not once cite the Second Vatican Council, and also by the fact that 19 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT he criticized diverse aspects of modern and contemporary thought. To this, I add the fact that he has utilized extensively the letters of St. Paul and the Fathers of the Church in his discourse. St. Paul, in particular, had been shunted aside or misrepresented after Vatican II because he was clearly incompatible with the “ecumenical dialogue.” From the point of view of the use of sources, it seems to me, therefore, that the encyclical marks a return to Tradition. All of these aspects are not, however, sufficient, in my opinion, to give an altogether positive judgment about it. As far as the absence of references to Vatican II is concerned, from which some appear to draw optimistic auspices for the beginning of a “recovery” from that disastrous Council, I point out that the texts of those acts do not truthfully give particular space to the theme of “Christian hope,” all caught as they are by the desire to “dialogue” with the values of the world. Four Critical Observations With this I come to my first critical observation about the encyclical: it seems to me that even within it the supernatural dimension of authentic Christian hope is lacking. Second observation: the papal document appears to accept the absurd idea (of de Lubac and his partners), according to which the Catholic view of salvation in the writings of St. Paul and the Fathers of the Church would have been “communitarian,” only to be progressively distorted subsequently into an “individualistic” view that would have selfishly reduced it to a mere “individual” salvation (Spe Salvi, §§13-15, citing from the Vatican online edition). In §14, the Encyclical openly praises the interpretation of de Lubac, striving to continue correcting this supposed “individualism” in the appropriate manner, that is, trying to find (it seems to me) the proper balance between the communitarian and individual conception of salvation! In other words: between the New Theology and the dogma of faith! In third place, it seems to me that the hope of salvation is seen by the Pope above all from the angle of the “inner experience” of the subject (insofar as this corresponds to an “existential need” of the subject itself) more so than from the perspective of revealed Truth, which teaches us that the salvation of our individual soul is an objective reality, established by God, which will be realized in the Beatific Vision, but only for him who will have believed in Our Lord and will have died in the grace of God. The discourse on “Christian hope” involves the exposition of the doctrine of the four last things, and 20 this exposition–this is my fourth observation–in the encyclical seems to me rather ambiguous. Neither heaven nor hell ever appears as it appears in Scripture, Tradition, and, finally, in the doctrine of the Church, which has always represented heaven and hell as supernatural places completely concrete and already established by the Father, where the soul is sent after [the particular] judgment by Our Lord immediately after death, in anticipation of being rejoined with the body after the Universal Judgment, which will confirm the judgment imparted individually to everyone. For Benedict XVI, the hope of our faith is above all that of being “awaited by the Love of God” (§3). This is certainly an orthodox concept. But it is necessary to see how it is utilized. This “encounter” with the Love of God, which awaits us, should be such that it “change[s] our lives, so that we know we are redeemed through the hope that it [the encounter] expresses” (§4). One immediately notices that the “redemption” is presented in terms of an individual’s inner need of redemption, rather than as an objective reality, of supernatural origin, because it derives from the Cross and Resurrection of Our Lord. In reality, it matters little that we feel “redeemed” or less. After all, what Catholic can effectively feel “redeemed”? What matters is not our personal disposition with regard to the idea of redemption, but rather the fact of being effectively redeemed, that is to say, to achieve salvation, at the end of our earthly life. But to fulfill this objective, Revelation, and therefore the doctrine of the Church, tells us that it is not possible if we do not have faith in Our Lord and do not live according to His commandments. In short, Redemption as the effective salvation of our soul is not possible outside the Church, depositary of the divine Revelation and of the means of salvation. It does not seem to me, however, that redemption is presented in this manner in the Encyclical. An Existential Notion of “Eternal Life” What notion does the encyclical give of eternal life”? In §§10-12, the Pope poses the question: “What is eternal life?” One would expect in vain a clear and precise answer consistent with the Church’s constant doctrine: it is the life in which the elect are as ngels of the Lord, forever immersed in the beatitude of the Beatific Vision. He begins his discourse starting with what the individual believes about eternal life, if he truly desires it, if he does not desire it... We know that daily life is insufficient, and we feel that there must in some way exist another life, but we do not know what (§§10-11). These reflections are based on texts by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, in which both Fathers of the THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org Church describe the uncertainty with which the children of the world imagine a hereafter, of which they confusedly feel the need, although without believing. But to this uncertainty the Fathers would reply with the certainty of eternal life, promised and guaranteed by the Risen Christ and attainable (only) by means of faith and works in Him. But this final aspect does not appear in the reconstruction of the Pope. How does he comment, in fact, on the following sentence from St. Ambrose in the funeral discourse for his deceased brother Satyrus: “Death is, then, no cause for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind’s salvation” (§10)? In this singular way: “Whatever precisely St. Ambrose may have meant by these words–it is true that to eliminate death or to postpone it more or less indefinitely would place the earth and humanity in an impossible situation, and even for the individual would bring no benefit” (§11; my italics). The true meaning of St. Ambrose’s phrase “Whatever” precisely St. Ambrose meant to say? But what he meant to say is extremely clear: death “is a cause of salvation” for us believers since by means of death we are finally removed from the tribulations of this world, and we enter into eternal life in which we will forever contemplate God “face to face,” as St. Paul says. For this reason Christians rightly called death “dies natalis,” day of our (true) birth, because it is birth into eternal life, the only true life for man. Our “salvation,” in a concrete, material sense, begins therefore with our death, which forever takes us out of the reach of the Prince of this world. For the unrepentant sinner, death is instead a cause of perdition, as he goes into eternal damnation. This objectively salvific meaning of our death, which helps us to conquer the fear of death (result of human fragility, produced in turn by original sin), is already found in St. Paul. It suffices to think of the famous passage of the second letter to Timothy, in which he foretells his own martyrdom and considers death the desired “liberation” from the chains of this world, to be able finally to access the sempiternal prize: For I am now ready to be sacrificed: and the time of my dissolution is at [tempus resolutionis meae instat]. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord the just judge will render to me in that day; and not only to me, but to them also that love his coming. (II Tim. 4:6-8) Not only for St. Paul, obviously: for all believers who have persevered until the end in the “good fight” against themselves and the world, death is the “cause of salvation, liberation” that introduces them www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 to eternal life. Not only for St. Paul but for all true believers, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21) because it allows us to join Christ forever. St. Ambrose meant to refer to this immortal “gain” in the passage cited by the Pope. A Philosophical Notion of Eternal Life These concepts are quite clear. Yet how does “eternal life” appear in the encyclical, always understood according to the existential meditations of the individual? The term “eternal life” is intended to give a name to this known [known in the sense that it is known to exist] “unknown.” Inevitably it is an inadequate term that creates confusion. “Eternal,” in fact, suggests to us the idea of something interminable, and this frightens us; “life” makes us think of the life that we know and love and do not want to lose, even though very often it brings more toil than satisfaction, so that while, on the one hand, we desire it, on the other hand, we do not want it. (§12) Thus, how do we arrive at a concept which is not contradictory? By understanding eternal life as plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time–the before and after–no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in St. John’s Gospel: “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (16:22). We must think along these lines.... (§12) This seems to me a philosophical notion of eternal life, in which the idea of “joy” prevails, which will be proved in the “plunging ever anew into the vastness of being”: of being, in general, and not of God. The citation from St. John is used in support of this concept, which seems to me more Plotinian than Christian. And will this “plunging ever anew into the vastness of being” be granted to all, even to unrepentant sinners? “Kantism” in the Encyclical? Is the encyclical imbued with Kantian philosophy? With this last question I mean: How do we harmonize the Pope’s invitation to think “along these lines” with the truly Catholic concept of “eternal life”? Are they truly reconcilable? The “great hope” of man, writes Benedict XVI, “can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain”; God, and therefore “the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 21 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety” (§31). Have we here a clear assertion of the supernatural nature of the Kingdom of God and therefore of salvation? But the Pope continues: His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; His Kingdom is present wherever He is loved and wherever His love reaches us. (§31) The Kingdom of God is therefore “present.” Where? “Wherever He is loved and wherever His love reaches us.” In our conscience, then? The Pope seems to wish to render the concept expressed by the famous Gospel phrase: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk. 17:21). Indeed, he continues: “His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect” (§31). But immediately after he adds: “His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense [eternal life] and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is ‘truly’ life” (§31). The “guarantee” of the existence of eternal life, beyond the vague intuition that our mind can have, is given, therefore, by the love of God for us. By Revelation, then? But the Pope does not say clearly that this “love of God” is certain for us exclusively on the basis of Revelation. In my opinion, he does not say it. The hope of salvation, thus outlined, remains then an act of the inner experience of the individual, who postulates the existence of the love of God as necessary to belief in the reality of the object of this hope. Perhaps my conclusion is too “Kantian”? Does it strain the Pope’s thought? Why do I say: “Kantian?” Because, in the Pope’s discourse, the love of God appears to be understood as a necessary idea in order to believe in the existence of eternal life, which therefore would not result in an autonomous way from Revelation. Similarly, for Kant, the existence of God is an idea that reason requires to be able to legitimize the existence of morality. The god of Kant is not the living God; it is an idea of reason. However, can we say that the idea of God present in the encyclical is not that of the living God? In §26 does not the Pope say that through Christ “we have become certain of God, a God who is not a remote ‘first cause’ of the world, because his only-begotten Son has become man and of him everyone can say: ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20)”? And yet, next to the representation of God, who appears as a living God, in the encyclical one finds, in my opinion, the idea of the god of the 22 philosophers–I do not see how else to call it; that is to say, the idea of God that man’s interior experience postulates as necessary in order to satisfy his own spiritual exigencies of love, happiness, and justice. Uncertain Nature of the Last Things This impression also results, always in my opinion, from the last part of the document, in which the Pontiff explains to us the meaning of some “settings” for “learning and practising hope.” I will pass over “prayer” and “action and suffering” as a school of hope and dwell, instead, on “Judgment as a setting for learning and practising hope,” which is the part in which the four last things are necessarily discussed. Christian hope is also “hope in God’s justice” (§41). In the Judgment there is therefore the “splendor of hope.” The Last Judgment is a “symbol of our responsibility for our lives” (ibid.)–an obscure sentence, in my opinion, because, among other reasons, the Judgment is not simply a “symbol of our responsibility,” but the infallible decision of the Just Judge that forever establishes our responsibilities, that is, our faults and our merits. However, the Pope continues, iconography has given, in time, “more and more prominence...to its ominous and frightening aspects,” hiding that of “hope” (ibid). The authentic meaning of the Judgment would then seem to be one of hope, and not the “ominous and frightening” one. Why “ominous and frightening”? The Pontiff does not say, but it is understood that he is referring to the judgment of the damned. In the Last Judgment, divine justice is, however, executed. Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgment is first and foremost hope....I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfillment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing (emphasis added). (§43) Are not the Parousia of Our Lord and the universal Judgment then to be considered “fully convincing” on the basis of Scripture and the doctrine of the Church? And it is in an Encyclical that we must find such an affirmation? And what is the “fully convincing” argument for the children of the world?—Always the one able to satisfy the inner need of the individual, which, according to THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org the Pope, would suffer in seeing injustice triumph in history. To prevent this triumph, it is necessary to believe in the justice that will “undo” past suffering and set things aright at the resurrection of the dead. Certainly, this is an argument in favor of the existence of God: given the injustice that there always is in the world, there must also be a God who one day will put everything back in place. But that this should be the argument upon which to establish “Christian hope” in a “fully convincing” manner is, in my opinion, at the very least dubious, since “Christian hope” in salvation is based on facts testified by Holy Scripture and Tradition, and on the teachings of the Church. Our hope has an objective foundation based on revealed Truth and kept in the “deposit of faith”–a supernatural foundation, therefore. It is not based on the so-called spiritual needs of the individual, on his subjective inner experience, always in search of something he does not find. However, if in the Judgment, the “hope of justice” is fulfilled, will it be just or not that the wicked (the unrepentant sinners) go to eternal damnation? Should not the Encyclical have, at this point, reaffirmed traditional doctrine on hell, precisely in order to conclude the explanation of the idea of the “hope of justice” coherently? And instead, nothing. The text of the Pope seems to propose the image of the Judgment as that of a “hope” possibly stripped of the “ominous and frightening” aspect, that is, of sentences to eternal damnation! In fact, the encyclical interprets the parable of Lazarus and the rich man as if it showed us the existence of purgatory, not of hell www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 (§44). If some sinners exist, the document does not say so. The notion of sin as a specific notion does not even appear. Nor does hell appear–hell, which in fact is not the place of eternal damnation (“Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here,” Dante, Inf., III, 8), but the way of being of people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. (§45) Are all saved, then? Indeed, we read that our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love [Reach out, how? In the intention?]. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of Judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of His love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. (§47) Signed Letter Translated from SISINONO, March 15, 2008. THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 23 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Some Bishops rebel against the Pope: Yet Another Fruit of the Council’s Reformed Collegiality? What are we to make of bishops who rebel against the Pope? One of our readers asked this question in relation to the open rebellion of a part of the episcopate against the Motu Proprio of the reigning Pontiff (Summorum Pontificum of July 6, 2007), which “liberalizes,” as they say, the celebration of the holy Mass according to the ancient Roman rite, the so-called Tridentine Mass, as well as the sacraments also of the ancient rite. This is what we think: the modernizers will not let go. They are, moreover, always the same ones. Among the rebellious bishops, one finds the names of Cardinals Martini and Tettamanzi. The first has for years been considered the principal representative of the progressivist (that is to say, neo-modernist) faction in the bosom of the hierarchy. The second, of the same tendency, recently made the papers when, in the Cathedral of Milan, he celebrated the Epiphany with “multiethnic” rites that included the participation of Asian dancers (from Sri Lanka) in clinging costumes that bared the midriff. But for years the ecumenical rites of the Novus Ordo have been celebrating a so-called “festival of peoples” in conjunction with the Epiphany. The faithful are used 24 ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org to it. What caused a scandal at Milan, more than the ceremony itself, was the kind of participation the Cardinal felt obliged to allow. But it is clear that, abstracting from the more or less scandalous costumes worn by the participants, the real scandal is constituted by the ecumenical rite itself, which makes possible the sacrilegious medley of sacred and profane thanks to the “liturgical creativity” ratified by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. The Negative Effect of the New Collegiality With this last reference, we broaden the response to the question raised by our reader. For we think that if Vatican II had not confounded the traditional meaning of collegiality by obscuring the institutional relationship between the bishops and the pope, the bishops who are against papal directives would never have dared to openly defy the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. The fact is, whether we like it or not, that after this reform, the bishops taken as a coetus united in a college with the pope can consider themselves equal to the pope as titulary of the summa potestas over the Church. What is the essential notion of the reform? Romano Amerio expressed it clearly and concisely in Iota Unum: The Nota praevia rejects the familiar notion of collegiality, according to which the Pope alone is the subject of supreme authority in the Church, sharing his authority as he wills with the whole body of bishops summoned by him to a council. In this view, supreme authority is collegial only through being communicated at the discretion of the Pope. But the Nota praevia also rejects the novel theory that supreme authority in the Church is lodged in the college together with the Pope, and never without the Pope, who is its head, but in such a way that when the Pope exercises supreme power, even alone, he exercises it precisely as head of the college, and therefore as a representative of the college, which he is obliged to consult in order to express its opinion. This view is influenced by the theory that authority derives from the multitude, and is hard to reconcile with the divine constitution of the Church. Rejecting both of these theories, the Nota praevia holds firmly to the view that supreme authority does indeed reside in the college of bishops united to their head, but that the head can exercise it independently of the college, while the college cannot exercise it independently of the head.1 A Novelty Dangerous to Papal Primacy Such is the novelty that was introduced in the teaching of the hierarchy, a novelty that seems to fall midway between the traditional doctrine and more revolutionary theories. In effect, a supreme power of the college of bishops “together with its head” did not exist in the constitution of the Church before Article www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 22 of Lumen Gentium. In the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which was then still in vigor, there is no trace of it (see Canons 218 and 219, which define the figure of the Roman Pontiff, and 329, consecrated to that of the bishop). It is question of an undeniably important novelty. Before, the supreme power of governing and teaching in the Church had always been recognized iure divino to the Sovereign Pontiff alone, and not to the college of bishops, even with the pope at its head. But given the fact that, in the exercise of this power, the pope is superior to the college since the college cannot exercise its authority independently of its head, requiring as it does his authorization, while the head exercises it independently of the college, does this not preserve the primacy of the pope, thereby avoiding a dogmatic rupture with tradition? This is precisely what must be established. The Council clearly affirmed its desire to conserve the primacy. This intention comes through explicitly in the declarations contained in Article 18 of Lumen Gentium. But this is not enough, obviously. In this delicate matter, declarations of intention, however sincere, do not suffice. It is necessary to see how the primacy was effectively conserved, whether it is intact or not, and whether it was conserved in a conceptually clear manner that does not contradict (even in part) the previously taught doctrine. Does the supremacy of the pope in relation to the college of bishops concern just the exercise of the summa potestas, or also (which would be logical), the titularity of that power. In effect, if he lacks supremacy in the titularity of the summa potestas, by virtue of what can the Pontiff exercise it over the bishops? But how can this supremacy also include (as it should) the titularity of this power if the latter is now also attributed to the order of bishops in union with the Pope? Lumen Gentium 22 states: “The order of bishops...is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff.” The word also appears here because it has just recalled the traditional understanding of primacy: “In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power.” Does not the extension to the college of bishops (together with its head) of the titularity of the summa potestas imply the diminution of the pope’s superiority vis-à-vis the bishops, introducing a crack in the primacy? And it is even more than a crack, it seems to us. This extension seems to attribute the THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 25 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT summa potestas to two distinct subjects as organs of the Church’s constitution: to the Pope an uti singulus and to the college of bishops together with the pope, as a coetus with the pontiff as head. But can a summa potestas, which is in itself of divine origin, be attributed to two subjects constitutionally distinct and, what’s more, hierarchically subordinated, given that it is the pope who appoints and directs the bishops, and not the reverse? Obviously not. That would create an unacceptable diarchy, a source of confusion, both conceptual and practical, in the Church. These ambiguous yet essential aspects of the “reforms” introduced by Vatican II should be clarified once and for all, for the good of souls. The need to open the debate on Vatican II in the Church is becoming increasingly urgent. It seems unwise to us to continue to impede it by retreating behind a façade that everything is going well since the pope was not subordinated to the Episcopal college, as the revolutionaries, the new theologians, desired; and it preserved the primacy, which allows him to exercise the summa potestas alone, unlike the Episcopal college. In reality, the superiority of the pope is no longer the same as it was in the past; it has even become less clear in its foundation if the titularity of the summa potestas is henceforth also attributed to the college with the pope. By reason of the new constitutionally guaranteed position of the Episcopal body, in the general mentality the image has faded of the Sovereign Pontiff as the Vicar of Christ unilaterally exercising the primacy without having to render an account to anyone as his sovereign prerogatives of divine right monarch allow him to do, limited only by the divine and natural law. That is why a motu proprio like Summorum Pontificum, in which the Pontiff exercised the primacy by substantially ordering the bishops not to oppose those who request the celebration of the holy Mass following the ancient Roman rite, was greeted with such coldness and an attitude of passive resistance visible to all, and even causing a veritable rebellion amongst the most audacious. Canonicus Translated by Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, April 2008, pp.1-2. 1 Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century (Kansas City: Sarto House, 1996), p.90. The new collegiality was introduced by the conciliar Constitution Lumen Gentium in its Article 22. But since it seemed ambiguous to many, a nota praevia (in reality posterior) was added to the Constitution that gave the authentic interpretation of this article so as to remove all doubts. $2.00 per SiSiNoNo reprint. Please specify. Shipping & Handling US $.01 to $10.00 $6.95 $10.01 to $25.00 $8.95 $25.01 to $50.00 $10.95 $50.01 to $100.00 $12.95 Over $100.00 13% of order Foreign $11.95 $13.95 $15.95 $17.95 18% of order Airmail surcharge (in addition to above) Foreign 21% of subtotal. Available from: ANGELUS PRESS 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, MO 64109 USA Phone: 1-800-966-7337 www.angeluspress.org 27 J a m e s K a l b, e s q. The Twilight of Reason We cannot work to revive the influence of Catholic principles on social life without an understanding of the present situation and its difficulties. At Regensburg and elsewhere, Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out that the present-day understanding of reason is a very serious difficulty for us. At bottom, the way people make sense of things no longer makes sense. In this series I will discuss that difficulty and suggest ways of dealing with it. Our understanding of reason is simply our understanding of how to reach reliable conclusions regarding what is good, beautiful, and true. It is our way of aligning our thoughts with the world. Such understandings can be more or less adequate. The understanding that orders public life and discussion today is radically defective. It takes a fragment of reason–scientific method–and treats it as the whole. The result is that it restricts what can be known, and therefore what can be treated as real, in such a way as to leave no place for God or ultimately for humanity. It makes it impossible for the Faith to have any relevance to public discussion. History The modern understanding of reason has deep roots. Its components, such as the demand for simple, universal, and mechanistic explanations, have been with us since antiquity. Such tendencies have led www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 28 on occasion to views much like modern scientific materialism. An example is provided by the Greek philosopher Democritus (ca. 460–370 B.C.), who proposed that in reality there are only atoms and the void. Until modern times such views might be held by particular thinkers but they never attained general currency. Today, however, they have come together in an outlook that dominates public life and holds that modern natural science is the only knowledge worthy of the name. That outlook may be called scientism or scientific fundamentalism. It is difficult to map the exact process by which something as all-embracing as an understanding of reason attains dominance. However, the thought of Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and René Descartes (1596–1650) evidently marked a decisive stage in the rise of the modern view. Both men aimed at a general intellectual reform that would make knowledge much more useful and certain than it had been. Bacon, a practicallyminded statesman, wanted to reconstruct knowledge on experimental principles for “the relief of man’s estate”—that is, to make life easier, safer, and more pleasant. He said that “knowledge is power,” and with that in mind he wanted knowledge to reject tradition, base itself on observation of the natural world, and become a tool. In effect, he wanted it to become modern technology. Descartes, a mathematician and scientist, wanted knowledge that would stand up against any possible doubt. He could not doubt the reality of his own experience—as he said, “I think, therefore I am”—so he tried to base knowledge on his own experience, together with the most rigorous reasoning possible. Put the two views together and you get a narrow, focused, and—it turns out—very effective view of knowledge. According to that view, we should be as skeptical as possible, take nothing on faith, and base knowledge and our whole way of acting as much as possible on our own experience and on mathematics and logic. And we should treat the purpose of knowledge as practical: it has to do with getting what we want. It comes from, and exists for the sake of, our sensations, feelings, and goals. Such a view excludes from knowledge all traces of the transcendent, of anything that goes beyond human purpose and experience. The transcendent, it seems to tell us, is beyond us. We do not know what it is, and there is nothing we can do with it, so why take it into account? Some of the consequences of such a view, and the length of the process that has led to the present situation, can be seen in the history of the word “speculation.” That word comes ultimately from the Latin specere, to look at or view. When it appeared in English around 1374, it meant “contemplation” or “consideration.” By 1575, at the dawn of the modern age, it had taken on the disparaging sense of “mere THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org conjecture.” And by the eve of the great modern revolutions, in 1774, it had come to mean “buying and selling in search of profit from rise and fall of market value.”1 So in four hundred years “speculation”—taking a view not based on knowledge as power—had gone from man’s noblest faculty, contemplation or speculative reason, to making things up, to trying to get money without knowing what you are up to. Scientism Modern natural science has great intellectual and practical appeal. It can be extremely successful when applied with discipline, attentiveness, and ingenuity, so it calls forth high-quality intellectual effort. Further, its rigorous attitude toward evidence and inference causes it to take an extremely critical attitude toward tradition, revelation, common sense, and other nonscientific forms of knowledge. Those features have led to a scientistic view that limits knowledge to a very few sources, those upon which modern natural science relies most explicitly. Those sources are: Disinterested observations that can be repeated and verified by any properly trained observer, especially observations that can be made numerical. Induction: what happened in the past will happen in the future. Formal logic, mathematics, and measurement, which enable us to organize and connect our observations and make them exact, impersonal, and usable. If an observation cannot be made numerical it is not taken seriously. When necessary, additional assumptions that comply with Occam’s Razor—that is, are as few and simple as possible—and can be tested by experiment. Occam’s Razor Runs Wild Occam’s Razor is important. It is used, in fact, to provide a theoretical basis for scientism. When someone tells you “That is just your opinion” or “You are just trying to force your values on other people,” they are making an appeal to Occam’s Razor. You are, it is said, bringing in something that is not proved and not needed, so you are just being willful. The problem is not Occam’s Razor in itself, which is a perfectly sensible injunction to keep things simple, but its over-extension. Modern natural science has enormous strengths. It has solved a great many problems, continues to support fruitful inquiry on a very wide range of topics, and narrowly restricts what counts as evidence and proof. Many of its supporters conclude that the progress of knowledge requires us to support it wholeheartedly, adhere to the critical attitude that has guided its success, and reject appeals to any principle outside it. Such an appeal, it is argued, would add complications that 29 may be unnecessary and so violate Occam’s Razor. It would compromise an extremely successful strategy of investigation for the sake of some particular concern that may yet be dealt with—to the extent it is legitimate—within science itself. And that, it is thought, would be an attack on the process through which we attain knowledge, and thus on knowledge itself. To reject scientism—to look for reliable public truth from a non-scientific source—is, we are told, simply irrational. Consequences of Scientism It is worth noting the consequences of trying to understand the world only scientifically. Those consequences pervade present-day life. Science enables us to know things that can be observed and measured by any trained observer who follows the appropriate procedures and things that are connected to observations by a theory that makes predictions that can be confirmed, and is as simple, mathematical, and consistent with other accepted theories as possible. If science is our only source of knowledge, those are the only things we can treat as real. Everything else is opinion, feeling, taste, prejudice, or fantasy. Also, scientific method creates an essential relationship between what we know and what we can cause to happen. The meaning of the experimental method is that knowledge is knowledge of how events depend on other events, especially those we can control. If scientific knowledge is the only knowledge, then knowledge has to do with the control of nature, and rationality becomes difficult to distinguish from dealing with the world technologically. If such views are correct, then contemplation is no longer knowledge. Knowledge is experimental and oriented toward control, while contemplation does not affect what it contemplates. It does affect the one who contemplates, however, so it becomes a social or psychological technique. Religion, which was once thought to concern our relation to God, becomes a sort of therapy concerned only with our own states of mind. The tendency toward subjectivism extends beyond religion to evaluative concepts such as beautiful and good. Scientism tells us that the beautiful and good are real only if they can be observed and measured. To make them observable and measurable, however, they must be identified with what is liked and preferred, so that they can be dealt with by the methods of the social sciences. But if “good” means “preferred,” it is simply a matter of what we want, and the triumph of the good becomes indistinguishable from the triumph of the will. The resulting pragmatic orientation transforms our understanding of the world. If knowledge has to do with control, and willfulness is our basic guide to action, then stable relationships dissolve. That dissolution is part of what defines the technological outlook. An industrial process has no loyalties. A computer does not care what you program it to do, it works the same in all settings, and it can interact with equal facility with any other computer anywhere. The technological outlook thus puts us in a sort of eternal now without past, place, context, or future, in which everything is a neutral resource for the achievement of the projects of whoever is in control. As Marx put it, “all that is solid melts into air.” Hence the abolition of traditional culture, for example traditional American, Western, or Catholic culture, which is always based on particular connections and meanings. Hence also the belief that history has ended, that “essentialism”—the belief that things have a particular nature and meaning—is ignorance and bigotry, and that “discrimination”—treating one person, act, or thing as essentially different from another—is supremely irrational and wrong. Such tendencies have transformed the whole of life. The absence of a public system of meaning based on cultural tradition has turned artistic expression into a diversion or into a vehicle for fantasy, ideology, obsession, rage, joyless hedonism, or mindless rebellion. The state of disconnection becomes literally concrete in the design of buildings and cities, which now feature sprawl, placelessness, and monofunctionally zoned urban areas emblematic of valuesfree material production.2 As Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, in a technological world there is no there there. A Note on Postmodernism I have said that scientism reigns supreme. You sometimes hear from academics and others that is old hat, that the Cartesian outlook has been superseded, that our condition of placelessness puts us in an openended postmodern age, and so on. Do not believe it. Social constructivism, cultural relativism, and multiculturalism do not answer questions. When decisions have to be made, there has to be some way of making them, and announcing that nothing has any real connection to anything else will not do the job. The effect of such views is to put an even greater premium on claims to neutral scientific expertise, because that—along with money—seems to be the only means of negotiating the differing and equally valid views of various cultures. In fact, postmodern views make it harder to contest claims of scientific expertise since they debunk nonexpert knowledge so totally. Science came into being in response to skepticism and is designed to defend itself against skeptical objections. Less formal modes of knowledge, such as tradition and common sense, are not so fortunate. Today they are identified with ignorance and irrationality, and it is thought outrageous even to mention them. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 30 In practice, the slogans we hear—diversity, tolerance, multiculturalism, openness to change—all mean the same thing: “What you think as a nonscientific layman is on a level with what a witch doctor or flat earther thinks. You cannot prove your view is better, and there is nothing special about you, so shut up, be a good boy, abandon everything you ever thought you knew, and do what the experts say.” Scientism and Social Life I have suggested that scientism extends to morality and politics along with everything else. That might seem surprising. The principles of scientific thought are designed to deal with objects in space. Since men sometimes concern themselves with things that are not objects in space, like the good, beautiful, and true, it seems that science should have only limited applicability in human affairs. Nonetheless, we are, among our other attributes, objects in space. It follows that we can apply the methods of the modern natural sciences to ourselves. Since we can do so, the scientistic version of Occam’s Razor insists that we should do so—exclusively. We should try to rely, not just in physiology and physical anthropology but even in politics, morality, and social relations generally, on something as close to scientific reasoning as possible. It is thought irrational to do otherwise. The Logic of Liberalism In traditionalist circles discussions of liberalism are often dismissive. Liberals are crazy, they are stupid, there is something wrong with them or whatever. Dismissive theories have some truth in them, but they are obviously not the whole truth. If liberalism is so stupid, why does it always win? If it is so crazy, why does everyone know what it requires? And how did it get to be so pervasive? In fact, liberalism is backed by an extremely powerful logic. If scientistic reasoning is applied to human relations, it gives us both a highest good and a highest standard of justice. From those two principles it is possible to generate a complete political and moral system. That system is liberalism (using the term in the American sense).3 The highest good scientism gives us is freedom, understood as satisfaction of desire. Preference and aversion are observable, and they tell us what to do. Since they are available as guides, scientism tells us, why not stick with them, and concentrate on setting up a system that gets us what we want and gets rid of what we do not want? Why bring in other standards based on things that are harder to demonstrate, like God or the good, beautiful, and true? That, it is thought, would be unscientific and therefore irrational. THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org The standard of justice that corresponds to scientism is equality. What is good is simply what is desired, scientism says, and since all desires are equally desires, all goods must equally be goods. It follows that the desires of all men deserve to be treated equally. To say one man’s desires are less valuable than another’s is simply to value him less. That is arbitrary, discriminatory, and oppressive. It is the sort of thing that leads to Auschwitz, and it cannot be allowed. In effect, scientism tells us that there are no transcendent goods, just desire, and there are no essences of things that we have to accept and respect, the world is what we make of it. So the point of politics, social life, and morality must be to treat the world simply as a resource and turn the social order into a kind of machine for giving people whatever they happen to want, as long as what they want fits the smooth working of the machine. That ideal is the same as the present-day liberal ideal. It follows that liberalism can be demonstrated to be correct given the present understanding of reason. That feature gives liberalism an insuperable advantage in political and moral discussion. If you reject it you are irrational. Consequences for the Liberal Order The specific features of the liberal order follow from its basic logic. These include: Universality. Reason is universal. Whatever it demands applies always and everywhere. Since liberalism follows from reason, it too must be universality applicable. Absolute validity. A system based simply on reason is the only possible legitimate system. Dissidents are not properly part of political discussion, since they reject reason. They should be ignored or suppressed lest they corrupt social discourse. Insistence on practical abolition of all standards and institutions at odds with the unity, clarity, universality, and efficiency of the system. The last point is very important but not often made explicitly. The insistence on rational unity is what lies behind the demands for “inclusiveness” and “tolerance,” and indeed all the “culture war” issues. For a rational technological system to exist and perfect itself, everything has to be transparent and manageable from the point of view of those on top. All institutions have to have a clear, rational orientation toward maximizing preference satisfaction or equality, and it has to be possible to supervise them and intervene to correct irrationalities. The only institutions that measure up to those standards are markets (especially global markets) and bureaucracies (especially transnational bureaucracies) 31 that are run on liberal principles. In contrast, traditional and local institutions—family, nation, religion, and non-liberal conceptions of personal dignity and integrity—are Opaque and resistant to outside control. They resist change. Not oriented toward maximum equal satisfaction of individual preference. They are oppressive. Not based on expert scientific knowledge. They are ignorant and prejudiced. Dependent on distinctions and authorities that are not required by liberal market and bureaucratic institutions. The family, for example, depends on distinctions of age, sex, and blood. It follows that such institutions are bigoted and hateful. Accordingly, liberalism tells us, institutions other than bureaucracies and markets have no right to exist. Their very existence makes a just, rational, and efficient social order impossible. If you cannot simply get rid of them then you must redefine them as something else or reduce them to private choices that are not allowed to affect social relations that matter. You must privatize sex, family, religion, and personal morality, and redefine nation and culture as ethnic cuisine and folk dancing. And that is just what has been done. Example Suppose you are an official who accepts all this, and you are presented with a claim by a gay rights group that they have a right to live in a society free of homophobic attitudes, and a claim by Christians that they have the right to educate their children in the principles they think best—which include the view that homosexual inclinations are intrinsically disordered. The two claims conflict. Who wins? Obviously, the gay rights group. People have a right to freedom from oppressive social structures. Defense of that freedom is a basic function of liberal government. Christian morality is at odds with the equal standing of tolerant desires, and so is intrinsically oppressive and should not be allowed to affect social relations. Further, the justification for parental involvement in the upbringing of children is its contribution to their ultimate ability to choose and pursue their own tolerant goals. The Christian parents reject that principle, which is the only principle that could justify their authority. So why, from the liberal viewpoint now dominant, should they be allowed to determine their children’s education on such an issue? The Immovability of Liberalism intelligent and well-meaning person have a problem with? Their opponents are therefore not just wrong but so obviously wrong that there must be something wrong with them. If you oppose liberalism You are ignorant, confused, and irrational, since what you favor is not based on knowledge and is against reason. You are trying to get what you want at the expense of what other people want. You are greedy. Since you want to stick other people with what you want them to have instead of what they want, you are willful and oppressive. You are a bigot and a hater. Those views are now fundamental to the legal and public moral order. They are taught in the schools, presented by reputable public figures, and guide respectable statecraft. That is why in much of the West you can now be fined or put in jail for saying there are problems with homosexuality or Islam. And they are views that we ourselves are often tempted by, at least to a degree. It is very hard to avoid falling into the basic assumptions on which the people around us carry on discussions. The most basic of those assumptions is their understanding of reason, and liberalism is required by reason as now understood. That is why even people who officially do not believe in the basic principles of liberalism— would-be followers of religious tradition for example— most often largely accept them in practice. That is also why Catholic traditionalists are so suspicious of “dialogue.” It is not that it is bad to discuss things with people, Jesus and Paul and Thomas Aquinas did it all the time. It is that the rules of discussion—the accepted understandings of what is reasonable—are stacked against us. They make it conceptually impossible for our points to be understood. Public discussion must be based on principles acceptable to all parties, but the only principles liberals will accept for purposes of debating their opponents are stripped-down scientistic principles that when taken as the basis of discussion automatically give back liberalism. James Kalb is a New York attorney, a Catholic convert through the Traditional Latin Mass, and a widely published commentator on the history of liberalism. He holds a B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Yale Law School. His book The Tyranny of Liberalism will be published by ISI Books this fall. 1 Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com. A phrase due to Dino Marcantonio. 3 Other forms of political modernity, like communism and fascism, have turned out not to work and have mostly been abandoned. They are now seen as inferior or incomplete, and therefore less rational, representations of modernity. 2 Liberals say they believe in reason. On their understanding of reason, they are right beyond all possibility of discussion. What part of maximum equal satisfaction of legitimate preferences could any www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 32 ut to th e Ball D r . the deba sement o A n d r e w C h i l d s f an Ame Game: rican pas time On August 5th of this year, my wife, Krista, took me out to a ball game, which the Kansas City Royals lost to the Boston Red Sox 8-2 at Kauffman Stadium in the Kansas City suburbs. I will attempt in what follows to relate the sense experiences that I and 22,000 other souls shared; more importantly, I will attempt to relate, as Krista has come so patiently and resignedly to expect, its metaphysical ramifications… In 1908 a man named Jack Norworth—who had never seen baseball played—wrote a set of strophic lyrics about the game that included the very famous refrain: “Take me out to the ball game/Take me out with the crowds/ Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack™/I don’t care if I never get back/Let me root, root, root, for the home team/If they don’t win it’s a shame/For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out/At the old ball game.” Popular composer Albert von Tilzer set the text to music, and the resulting song has remained a part of the American consciousness ever since. Tilzer was a “Tin Pan Alley” composer, part of a turn-of-the-20th-century tradition of popular music most examples of which follow a predictable formula, suggesting that the USA was a peaceful, happy, prosperous country during these decades [1880-1920], making an easy transition from rural to urban life. The songs about the past describe warm memories of a happy and innocent childhood, usually in a rural or small-town setting. Songs about the present are nearly always set in the city, pictured as a gay, lively place. The persistent image of the “gay Nineties” as one of the happiest and least troubled times in American history has been derived largely from these songs.1 ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org : e 33 Social engineering at its best, the images portrayed in popular musical forms bore—and bear—little resemblance to reality; yet sentimental recollection and forced, mechanical optimism sold— and sells—by the millions, the public wholeheartedly embracing genres of music “divorced from the unpleasant or difficult realities of the time or of their own lives.”2 “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” provides a good starting point for consideration not only of the importance of setting life’s experiences to music, but of the qualitative changes to our recreational experiences and expectations that have taken place over the past century. Music composed for specific events or occurrences enhances, invokes, and ultimately comes to represent these events apart from their specific occurrence: the more universal the application, the more unifying the music becomes despite the discrepancies that exist among the specific experiences of the listeners. Irrespective of time, place, team, league, or quantitative and qualitative rooting history, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” means baseball for any who hears it, creating a unified general association out of the nearly infinite diversity of personal experience. Though an enjoyable aspect of theme music—on some levels, its purpose— this renders listeners susceptible to emotional manipulation in a more specific manner due to the fact that the composer can make accurate assumptions about emotional orientation given the listener’s deliberate choice to participate in the activity he has set to music. Poignantly, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the de facto theme song of baseball, seems incongruous with the modern ballpark experience, more anachronistic and nostalgic—certainly more innocent—than reflective of the atmosphere. The music that accurately depicts and inspired the behavior that inspired this discussion—predictably, the anthems of ‘hip-hop nation’ blasted out of hundreds of loudspeakers—does not represent baseball specifically, but its ubiquity at ballparks and stadiums gives insight into how base we have become in our recreation. A consideration of issues of morality at the ballpark will follow, but what of moral theology at the ballpark? St. Thomas speaks of baseball as generally morally indifferent, an act neither conforming specifically to nor contravening moral goodness (admittedly, I have extended St. Thomas’s general consideration of recreation somewhat in assuming he speaks specifically of baseball, but the principle of indifference applies nonetheless). However, certain acts, though not specifically directed toward the end of moral goodness, may take on the character of goodness by circumstantial extension: [I]t is not necessary, in order to be morally good, that an act should be referred to a positively good end. It is enough that the end is seen to be not evil, and that in the performance of the act the bounds set by right reason be not transgressed. Thus the acts of eating, drinking, taking recreation, and the like, while, in the abstract, they are neither conformable nor contrary to our rational nature, in the concrete, by reason of the circumstance of their being done in the manner and the measure prescribed by reason, become fully in accord with our rational nature, and hence morally good.3 Baseball’s moral goodness, quod erat demonstrandum. Active recreation as it supports clarity of mind and soundness of body represents something of a positive good, but, as indicated above, this assumes that we recreate “in the manner and the measure proscribed by reason.” We fail to employ recreation to positive ends when we recreate—either as a participant or an observer—unreasonably, without proper measure, or in a manner objectively opposing morality. Athletic competition in general acts as a potent metaphor for life (you won’t always win though you ought to perform in such a way that you allow winning to happen…), and provides valuable life lessons: subjection of nature to intellect, discipline of body and mind, humility and grace in victory and defeat, camaraderie, sportsmanship, and perseverance. Baseball specifically as a traditionladen game appeals on many levels. Perhaps most fascinatingly, multiple planes of intellectual appreciation for the game exist all seemingly enjoyable to inhabit, as people will observe—based on their specific knowledge of the game—either a leisurely almost lazy pastime, or a chess-like cerebral competition of intensely subtle strategic intricacies. As a student of technique, I enjoy professional baseball as I enjoy all sports, primarily as an opportunity to observe those most specifically talented perform physically and intellectually challenging pursuits as well as humanly possible. My rooting interest relates to this almost exclusively: a fan of the game rather than a specific team, I want to see the game—whatever game—played well. Winston Churchill describes a fanatic—from which the word fan derives—as “someone who can’t change his mind, and won’t change the subject.” Commentary benefits more from objective, informed observation than raw zeal, and the so-called “true fan” can find himself in the awkward position of supporting his team or favorite player even at the expense of the sport. I understand the allure of extreme physical activity as a frequent participant and can appreciate the measured subjectivity of a loyal fan. I find offensive, however, the boorishness of overgrown adolescents who reckon their asocial behavior as a sort of virtue—proof of their passion as fans—but by their behavior show that they have no concept of the personal discipline required to compete at the highest level of physical activity. Take me out to the ball game… A sports stadium represents a singular feat of engineering and practical inefficiency. At 162 games, www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 34 the baseball schedule surpasses all others, but with half of these games played away from ‘home,’ the baseball stadium sees intended use something on the order of three months a year. Football teams play their 16 games—again, half home, half away—once a week: the Kansas City Chiefs play eight Sundays per year in Arrowhead Stadium, located, conveniently enough, in the same ocean of parking lot as Kauffman Stadium. Corporations, individuals—and increasingly municipalities—pay hundreds of millions of dollars to construct spectacularly engineered sports basilicas (Google “University of Phoenix Stadium”…) which lay dark much of the year. The subject of stadium architecture and its reflection of the state of society will require separate consideration, but suffice it to say that baseball parks, “fields,” and stadiums come literally in all shapes and sizes (interestingly, no specific parameters exist for outfield dimensions, an accepted advantage for the home fielder), and invariably reflect their cities: Yankee Stadium is huge and loud and decrepit; the old Kingdome in Seattle (where I twice sang the national anthem) was as 60’s-era modern un-cool as the new Safeco Field is technology-money spectacular; Fenway Park is impossible to get to, engineered like a catacomb, and filled largely with rude, defensive foul-mouths insisting that it represents everything good and traditional about the game (certainly more than anything in New York ever could). Kauffman Stadium is—much as the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis was— perfectly Midwest, a sort of blandly beautiful thing of inoffensive symmetry, lacking any real character, but a good place to see a game. “Buy me into the ball game” may most accurately reflect the current professional sports event: $9 parking, $40 tickets, $7 beer, and $5-$8 concessions (not to mention $20 “team” caps, and $100 “authentic” jerseys) all add up. You can cut some corners, but more and more, the stadium experience represents a serious investment, and teams know this. Here the problem begins. Understanding the costs and inconveniences involved with consuming their product, teams try to enhance the experience as much as possible, almost to the extent that the on-field action exists on the periphery. As we entered the stadium, we met our primary companion for the evening—GIANT TV—a screen of phantasmagorical proportions in straightaway center field. Not only would GIANT TV entertain, educate, and console us throughout the night with a team of expert cameramen trained to spot and zoom in on ridiculous and embarrassing behavior, each fan could hope for the opportunity of having a full mouth or compromising gesture publicly displayed several stories high. NOISE acted as GIANT TV’s primary accomplice in convincing people that they would get their money’s worth, as loud music or generally silly background sound effects played nearly continuously. Coming to the ballpark may well render concentrated THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org attention on the game impossible, but one surely won’t lack stimulation. …take me out with the crowds… As attendance goes, 22,000 won’t impress anyone (and considering the now unseemly popularity of the opposing Red Sox, an objectively small number for a summer evening), yet rarely will you find yourself in such close proximity to as many souls, and the number proves sufficient to inspire a sort of mob mentality. It seemed a purposeful decision on the part of those who engineered the event—through GIANT TV’s videos, music, and ‘activities’—to encourage unnecessarily a sense of vulgarity, all in the name of “fun.” Fun it seems now relates to a sort of physical-comedy slapstick absurdity to which television cartoons and sitcoms have accustomed us, and public events have become an excuse to live out such asocial behavior, as if the company of thousands of strangers justified boorishness. Most in attendance seemed to tolerate the slovenly-screaming-rudeness element as part of the price of admission. Luckily for us, given my journalistic mission, the couple to our immediate left provided the quintessential example in this regard; I could scarcely believe my good fortune as my ideal research subjects nearly fell—literally on several occasions—into my lap. Sporting event engineers use music very effectively. Short clips of extreme up-tempo dance music serve to keep the energy level in the stadium unnaturally high and the legitimate fatigue people feel as a result further serves to convince consumers of the substantive “value” of their collective purchase. Each home team player chooses his own “bumper” music as he comes to bat, a five-second mini theme song, invariably rap or heavy metal, designed to provide him a jolt of inspiration and familiarity. My research subjects had immediate, subconscious physiological reactions to these bits of songs, in every instance breaking into perfectly synchronized choreographed gyrations expertly adapted to their sitting position. Frequently, the young woman managed to break into her little dance while maintaining keen focus on her cell phone, on which she ‘texted’ furiously the entire night. She was not alone in doing this. Much to her good fortune, at one point GIANT TV declared a “texting” contest, the winner of which “texted” the phrase displayed on GIANT TV to an indicated number and won a prize. After GIANT TV informed us all of the winner—about the time I had confirmed that I had my phone turned on—I decided that if I couldn’t focus on the action on the field or take meaningful part in the action in the stands (neither can I text, nor did the cameramen give us a chance to perform on “KissCam”), at least I could console myself with food. 35 … buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack… Here some solace: the ballpark provides an extreme culinary experience centered entirely on the four fundamental American food groups—sugar, fat, salt, and beer. Again, sound plays a pivotal role, as vendors of specific foods—peanuts, nachos, hot dogs, ice cream, drinks—have emitted the same calls from the dawn of time. Like the nightingale or whale, these calls don’t necessarily include recognizable words, yet never fail to communicate the nearing presence of the substance in question (I don’t for instance recognize the sounds “ASKO BEE HEE” as English, yet they somehow make me thirsty). Vendors wear large buttons with the price of their concession written on them so as both to maximize efficiency and avoid unnecessary verbal communication altogether. One of the more heartening—if not mildly disgusting—ballpark food traditions, your row mates will pass your food to you from the vendor (NB: critical mass of bacteria accumulation on a hot dog accrues after seven or eight people, so try to get an aisle seat. Alternately, you can choose to have the vendor throw your food at you, a surprisingly satisfying experience). I began to suspect some sort of employee/corporate-baron conspiracy regarding the vending pattern, however, in the fact that the frozen custard man walked through the stadium only once (at a distance of several hundred yards) and as quickly as possible seemingly in an attempt not to sell a single unit, while several times each half inning I could have bought cotton candy larger than my head, containing a dosage of pure sugar fatal to adults, and sufficient to induce Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children instantaneously. I did, however, feel satisfied with my $6.50 beverage bargains, saving fifty cents on eight more ounces of beer sold on the concourse. …I don’t care if I never get back… As alluded to above, moral responsibility does not preclude active or passive recreation but rather extends to it. Herein lies the problem: many, it seems, use recreation as an opportunity to cast aside moral responsibility, and worse, allow a spirit of irresponsible recreational license—“fun”—to extend further and further into everyday life. Recreation represents no threat when kept in proper balance and in proper perspective as an element of our physical reality; the danger lies in allowing the attitudes and affect associated with recreational experiences to become an alternative to moral reality. The competitive nature of athletic competition can extend to fan support, and can expand to become an entire lifestyle, one in which the line between objective moral goodness and indifference invariably blur, allowing participation in an objectively indifferent activity to inspire moral indifference, ultimately habituating the participant to actual badness. …let me root, root, root for the home team… I could not have anticipated the number of Boston Red Sox fans we saw at our Kansas City Royals home game; in terms of numbers and certainly noise, the Royals realized no fan advantage by playing in their own stadium. “Red Sox Nation”—the active nationwide Red Sox fan base—is a documented and curious sociological phenomenon, on the one hand, easily explained as a by-product of the steady diaspora of New Englanders over the last half century. On the other hand, by their own admission many of the Red Sox “faithful” in attendance—our dancing friends among them—live and work in the Midwest. For the transplant, the chance to see the old home team represents an important reconnection with heritage and history; what of the local fan rooting, in effect, against the home team? In either case, a www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 36 hint of danger exists, the edge of proclaiming foreign allegiance in “hostile” territory. The New England affect includes many laudable traits; loyalty, superior work ethic, perseverance among them. The culture of pessimism born of the Calvinist heritage of neo-Manichean misery and the inherent ability to find fault in any scenario, however, need not spread across the land. As a native New Englander, I have seen innumerable instances of this in the stands at every level of sporting competition. A sort of delight in fatalistic rudeness has longed marked the rooting of Northeast fans, and sports offer a sort of twisted socioeconomic downward behavioral leveling: many of the true Boston fans (the ones in Boston) seem to rally around an attitude of bluecollar coarseness—ironic as the price of supporting a team in Boston now largely excludes all but the properly moneyed—as if screaming and cussing like a dock worker somehow provided a unifying element between demographics otherwise at supremely antagonistic odds. There is also a poignant fickleness to the camaraderie: brothers-in-arms inside the park would cross the street to avoid each other in everyday life. In terms of support, fans rain down cheers and jeers on their heroes with equal intensity based on their performance in the moment. The displaced New Englander finds solace in the Sox, a bit of home away from home; conversely, the local Red Sox National recruit wittingly or unwittingly fosters a sort of disdain of the familiar, local, and traditional in his opportunistic embrace of the exotic which costs him little as it puts him conveniently in the midst of an increasingly comfortable trend. Rooting has always filled the fan with an unrealistic sense of importance (players will publicly acknowledge the importance of the fans, but when pressed, often admit that the nature of their work on the whole requires them to ignore the objective distraction of the crowd), and perhaps more importantly—and just as unrealistically—a sense of ownership of the experience. …if they don’t win it’s a shame… The home team will lose; in the case of the Royals, frequently. Yet, some nobility along the lines of indifference to human respect exists in supporting them nonetheless. By refusing to deny a connection to your home town underachiever—while simultaneously providing whatever support possible might facilitate achievement—the local fan exhibits in his rooting sportsmanship a type of charitable character that transcends winning. The long-suffering fan of the old Red Sox knows this more than any (save perhaps the now longer-suffering fan of the Chicago Cubs), and finds himself in the horns of a painful dilemma: the dearly bought yet perhaps cheaply earned Red Sox championships of the past decade—cheered on THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org increasingly by bandwagon hoppers who have had no stake in the anguish and morbid dysfunctional dependence kept alive through preceding decades of ineptitude and futility—must have something of a hollow ring to them. The eleventh-hour Red Sox Nation hireling takes his reward, but in this case, the master of the vineyard has sold out to a mercenary system of opportunism and greed where loyalty has no place. Increasingly in a sports world of rented superstars and hired guns, the shame is in the winning. …for it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out at the old ball game. Some would say that in leaving during the 8th inning I had learned too much from my years of living in southern California; in reality, we chose to avoid the final ignominy of sitting for an hour in postgame traffic. We left somewhat dazed, but with neither rancor nor regret, and on the contrary convinced that we would come again, with eyes wide open (and ears as shut as possible). The goodness of the experience trumps the bad, but as is often the case with worldly, morally indifferent pursuits, this goodness depends on the intention of the participant. I would love to recreate the rooting atmosphere I experienced as a boy watching the Montreal Canadiens play in the old Forum, where well-dressed, seated fans would show appreciation for the action with applause and a real person playing a real organ would only occasionally fill time with silly yet real music. I would love for my children to gain a cerebral appreciation for high-level athletic competition in person, though at present this seems unlikely to happen. I will still choose, however, as a loving parent to teach them the value and beauty and goodness and truth in sports as I was taught by a loving parent who knows and loves sports. As we drove away listening on the radio to the final inning, I finally heard the game I had hoped to see. As we listened we resolved—relatively unscathed by what we had experienced and filled with all manner of not so good for you good things—to return. And so we will occasionally come and feast wellintentioned on a worthy pastime, and inasmuch as we root, we will root for the home team. Dr. Andrew Childs serves currently as Professor of Music at St. Mary’s Academy and College in St. Mary’s, Kansas, where he lives with his wife and daughter, and two cats of legendary girth and good nature. He is also Assistant to the Director of Education for the US District of the Society of Saint Pius X. He has taught at Yale University, the University of California at Irvine, Missouri State University, and Connecticut College. An active professional performer, he has sung over 100 performances of nearly 30 operatic roles. 1 Charles Hamm, “Popular Music,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (MacMillan, 1980), XV, 105. 2 Ibid. 3 Catholic Encyclopedia, “Acts.” 37 Letter from La Reja Vocations Dear Friends of The Angelus and Benefactors of La Reja, Since this regular article in The Angelus began a few months ago as a means of appealing for help for the Latin American Seminary of the SSPX in South America, then it is fitting that Angelus readers should have a little news of the Seminary and its young men. The particular need for help arose this last March when 21 young men presented themselves to enter the Seminary for the beginning of the new school-year (March in the Southern Hemisphere is the equivalent of September in the North). When they arrived, there was an occupant for every single cell available in the Seminary, except one. Never had the Seminary been so full. In the course of the school-year since then, eight seminarians, humanists and postulant Brothers have left (for a variety of honorable reasons), but in Argentina where the rate of inflation is now maybe 20% per year (maybe more), the food bills (amongst others!) make us truly grateful for the assistance of each one of you that helps. Please accept here the gratitude of all of us at La Reja! An interesting question is why so many young men are knocking at the door of the Seminary, compared with previous years. Part of the answer is particular circumstances, such as the SSPX opening a priory in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We had this year an influx of young Brazilians, good young men, generally more docile than Argentinians, for instance. But we also had a larger number of Argentinians entering than for many a year past, also good young men, and not necessarily lacking in docility. So why are they coming? Angelus readers in the USA are probably aware that there has been also at the SSPX’s North American Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, a larger than usual number of entrants over the last several years (ever since I left!). So part of the answer must be that in the Americas in general some young men are seeing that the modern world is a busted flush in which it may after all make sense to give their lives to God. Unless they are wilfully blind, a number of them must be seeing that the discotheque for society, Rock for music, fast food for nourishment, sloppy tee-shirts and jeans for dress and today’s girls for a wife do not make much of a life in prospect! Let me hasten to add that I for one do not primarily blame these girls, or these boys, for the way their world has been shaped around them. Even their parents I would hesitate to accuse, because they too, if they married after the 1960’s, inherited a bad scene. Today’s world is a masterpiece of diabolical confusion, mounted over a long time. The Devil is primarily to blame–our war is not against flesh and blood, but against fallen angels, says St. Paul. Nevertheless, secondarily to blame is each adult who knowingly gives up on what he knows to be true and right. In any case by a miracle of God there are still these relatively numerous youngsters finding their way in the Americas to the door of the SSPX Seminaries. I would have to say that one thing which surely helps is the so-called Year of Humanities, now up and running both in Winona and La Reja, a preliminary year to the six classic years of Seminary studies proper, a year in which young men can withdraw from all the craziness they have known, take a deep breath–lasting ten months!–and see if the Lord God is not maybe calling them to His service. Today’s world is so noisy that it www.angeluspress.org ThE ANgELuS • October 2008 38 can take such a prolonged retreat from the hubbub to hear if there is a quiet call from God. But the Year of Humanities is not only to enable the youngsters to catch their breath again in a godly environment of peace and quiet, where they have the help especially of the Catholic sacraments, to see “how good it is to dwell in the tabernacles of the Lord.” The year is also filled with sane reading and studies of a kind which should have filled the last 12 years of their education, but which have been driven out of their schools by physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc., etc., subjects which may earn more money, but which as such give little nourishment to the human mind, human heart and human soul. However, what will be future priests without a human heart, mind and soul? What will a future world be without them? The answer is that it will not be, as we are now seeing in 2008. Such a world is filled with a deep-down instinct of suicide, manifest in the widespread crime of abortion, and now manifesting itself in the drive towards World War III, Heaven help us! Indeed so necessary are these studies to form human beings to form priests, and so lacking are they in the products of modern education, that the Rector of the Society’s Seminary in Winona is thinking of extending the one year of Humanities to two. “Needs must,” says the proverb. The philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas which form the staple diet of studies in a Catholic Seminary are a marvel of divine and human wisdom, but if they come to land in a head empty of human experience or studies, they risk being learnt by heart, like a telephone directory, with little sense of how they apply to the human, all-toohuman, reality of the souls around us. That is why the American Seminaries are providing a preliminary year of Latin, Spanish (or English) grammar (badly taught, if at all, in today’s schools), catechism, history, literature and–very important–classical music. Another whole letter could be written on this choice of subjects. Most interestingly, when I asked La Reja’s humanists at the end of last year which of these subjects they had most appreciated or enjoyed, half of them replied, the Latin! They are well aware that their modern education has been somewhat deficient in vitamins, and there is no way in which one year can make up for all they have missed, but they have the Faith and good will, and these can make a little teaching of Humanities go quite a long way. Nevertheless even two years of Humanities, let alone one, cannot make up for an emptiness of a whole preceding “education.” It is the common experience of all educators today who have any sense of what education is truly about, that year by year the youngsters coming through their hands are more and more empty, and not only empty of human values, but filled with the inhuman or anti-human values which they have mostly been taught. THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org How could it be otherwise? The Lord God, Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church have been largely stripped out of their world, so how could there be any humanity left in their schools? As far as modern man is concerned, God has no part to play in politics or economics, in the law or in medicine, in the home or in the school, in the universities or in the media. The message is, “Lord God, kindly move over. We men are taking your place, and we are going to show you that we can do a better job than you have done!” (God, have mercy on us!) But what is there left in man when he strips out of himself everything that is of God? God’s grace has been thrown away, strangled even by Catholics with their Vatican II. Nature has been left to fend for itself, but without grace it is totally vulnerable, so it too is now being stripped out. Proclaim “Liberty” throughout the schools for the youngsters to run wild with original and personal sin! The result is “education” more devilish by the day–look around! Yet who does our basic nature (not the sin) come from? Who fully knows it? Who created it? Who alone can know the full extent of the damage wrought in it by sin? Who alone could repair that in-depth damage? Who died on the Cross to redeem it, and if we co-operate, save it? Only Our Divine Lord, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Here is why a world stripping everything Catholic out of its system can only teach, ultimately, confusion against the Way, lies against the Truth, and death against Life. No wonder so many youngsters today are more and more empty, or even devilish! But take courage, dear friends. It is impossible for God to abandon His Church. Young men are then coming forward towards the priesthood. Many respond splendidly to the milk and honey of the Year of Humanities in our seminaries. At the end of it, about half of them (in La Reja) stay behind to enter the Seminary. The other half go back into the world, where apparently they stand out in SSPX priories. Not all is lost, and even if things get much worse, as they are set fair to do, Our Lord will still be looking after His sheep! Meanwhile thank you seriously for all your help for those of His sheep who are in La Reja! May God bless you and repay you with the priests you need, to save your souls. Bishop Williamson is the Rector of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Seminary in La Reja, Argentina. If you would like to help the seminary in La Reja: To ensure that a check sent to help the seminary in La Reja will be tax-deductible in the US, make it out to “Society of St. Pius X,” accompanied by the request that it benefit the South American seminary and send it to: US District Headquarters, SSPX, 11485 North Farley Rd., Platte City, MO 64079-8201 Attn: Mr. Tim Eaton, Bursar www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 PART 17 39 F r . M a t t h i a s G a u d r o n Is the Mass essentially a Supper? The import of this idea, which cropped up in the Common Declaration of the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Commision, is examined. Catechism Of the Crisis In the Church 59) Was the Tridentine Mass abolished? Since the introduction of the New Mass (Paul VI’s Mass, in 1969), Rome endeavored to make people believe that the traditional Mass was abolished and its celebration prohibited. But in his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum ( July 7, 2007), Pope Benedict XVI publicly recognized that it had never been abrogated. All those who were accused of disobedience for nearly 40 years because of their fidelity to this Mass indeed suffered persecution for justice’ sake. l Could the traditional Mass have been abolished? Celebration of the traditional Mass could not easily be prohibited, for the Church has always respected rites of immemorial custom instead of forbidding them. Moreover, in promulgating the Tridentine Missal (by the Bull Quo Primum, of July 14, 1570), St. Pius V granted a perpetual privilege by which no priest could ever be prevented from being faithful to this rite for the celebration of the Mass. l Were not the stipulations of St. Pius V’s Bull Quo Primum abrogated by Paul VI’s Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum (April 3, 1969) promulgating the New Mass? It is difficult to determine the exact juridical scope of Paul VI’s Constitution Missale Romanum because of the ambiguities it contains. What is sure is that it did not attempt to abolish the privilege accorded by St. Pius V. The defenders of the traditional Mass saw this right away and said so, but the bishops, and even Pope Paul VI, tried to make the faithful believe that the new Mass was obligatory. l So it took nearly 40 years for Rome to notice that the traditional Mass had not been abolished? The Roman authorities were well aware, at least since 1986, that the traditional Mass had not been abolished. But it was necessary to wait 20 more years for the fact to become official. Cardinal Stickler related: “In 1986, Pope John Paul II asked a commission of nine cardinals two questions. First: Did Pope Paul VI www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 40 or any other competent authority legally forbid the widespread celebration of the Tridentine Mass in the present day? The Cardinal explained, “I can answer because I was one of the Cardinals.” He continued: “The answer given by the nine Cardinals in 1986 was ‘No, the Mass of St. Pius V (Tridentine Mass) has never been suppressed.’” In answer to the second question, Can any bishop forbid any priest in good standing from celebrating the Tridentine Mass?, Cardinal Stickler replied, “The nine Cardinals unanimously agreed that no bishop may forbid a Catholic priest from saying the Tridentine Mass.... There is no official interdiction, and I believe that the Pope will never issue one...precisely because of the words of Pius V, who said that this Mass would be valid in perpetuity.”1 60) Is the new rite of Mass an adequate expression of Catholic teaching on the holy sacrifice of the Mass? In the judgment of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, the new rite of Mass promulgated in 1969 “represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass.”2 All the changes tend to silence any mention of propitiatory sacrifice in favor of the Protestant Supper. l How, concretely, does the New Mass resemble the Protestant Supper? The most serious changes were those touching the Offertory and Canon. It could be said that the demands of Luther, who called for abolishing the Offertory and the Canon, are substantially satisfied in the New Order. l What did Luther say about the Offertory? Luther affirmed: “That abomination called the Offertory, and from this point almost everything stinks of oblation.”3 l Why did Luther so hate the Offertory of the Mass? The ancient Offertory clearly expresses that the Mass is a sacrifice offered in propitiation for sins. The priest prays: Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life. l What might be noticed in this new prayer? Besides its markedly naturalist tone (there is no allusion to supernatural truths revealed by God), this prayer completely voids the notions of sacrifice and propitiation. It is the equivalent of a simple prayer before a meal. l But isn’t the most important thing that the Canon of the Mass–the very ancient and venerable Roman Canon–was preserved? It cannot really be said that the Roman Canon was retained in the new liturgy. Firstly, it lost its character of canon, that is to say, a fixed, obligatory rule: now it is but one option among others (it became “Eucharistic Prayer I,” to which, in fact, one of the other three “Eucharistic prayers” introduced in 1969 is often preferred, or else one of the many others authorized by the Holy See). Secondly, even “Eucharistic Prayer I” distorts the Roman Canon. l Isn’t “Eucharistic Prayer I” the same as the Roman Canon? At first glance “Eucharist Prayer I” of the new liturgy may seem to be the ancient Roman Canon, but in fact several modifications have been introduced. Noteworthy among these are the following: 1) recitation in a loud voice (which leads to a desacralization of the Canon); 2) the alteration of the formula of consecration (made to resemble the Lutheran rite); 3) the banalization of the formula of consecration (henceforth recited in a narrative tone rather than in the customary low voice); 4) the suppression of the priest’s genuflection between the consecration and the elevation (which favors the heresy that teaches that the faith of the assembly, and not the words of consecration, are the cause of the real presence); 5) the elimination of numerous signs of the cross; 6) the addition of an ambiguous acclamation after the consecration. Receive, O holy Father, almighty, eternal God, this spotless host which I, thine unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my own countless sins, offenses, and negligences, and for all here present; as also for all faithful Christians, living or dead; that it may avail for my own and for their salvation unto life eternal. Amen. l Are these new ways of doing things really bad? Taken separately, these practices are not necessarily bad in themselves (one or the other of them can even be found in an Eastern rite). But taken together and compared with what was previously done, they all tend toward a weakening of the faith. l What has become of this Offertory in the new rite? In the new rite, the Offertory was suppressed and replaced by a preparation of the gifts, the text of which was taken from a Jewish table blessing: l Are the three other “Eucharistic prayers” also contestable? The three new “Eucharistic prayers” add several grave deficiencies to the defects of the first, which Fr. Roger Calmel summarized thus: THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org 41 They begin by putting the larger part of the Preces Eucharisticae after the consecration, with just a short invocation to the Holy Ghost bracketed between the Sanctus and the narrative of the institution. By all means they want to rush the priest into the consecration without leaving him suitable time to become focused on what he is going to do, without allowing him to prepare himself for the infinite mystery he is to accomplish....Lastly, if, despite everything, certain ideas from the Roman Canon on the nature of the Mass and its effects have been retained, they have been systematically weakened by well-calculated omissions: the Lord God to whom the sacrifice is offered is no longer invoked under the titles of His omnipotence or His infinite mercy; there is not a word of our condition of servants and sinners, constrained by these two titles to offer the holy sacrifice; nothing on the Church as Catholic and apostolic....4 l Aren’t these criticisms a bit severe? These criticisms are true. And many more omissions common to the three new “Eucharistic prayers” could still be catalogued: the propitiatory end of the sacrifice of the Mass is never explicitly affirmed (even if the words sacrifice and victim figure in Prayers III and IV); all the types and figures of the sacrifice of Christ (Abel, Abraham, Melchisedech) have disappeared; the Virgin Mary is never called ever virgin; the merits of the saints are ignored (the saints themselves being reduced to anonymity: even St. Peter is not named); hell is never mentioned, etc. l Isn’t “Eucharistic Prayer II” very old? “Eucharistic Prayer II” does deserve a special mention for, as has been written, “a priest who no longer believed in either Transubstantiation or the sacrificial character of the Mass could recite it with perfect tranquility of conscience,” and “a Protestant minister...could use it in his own celebrations just as well.”5 Not once does the notion of sacrifice occur, yet it is the most often used because it passes for ancient and venerable, and especially because it is the shortest of the four (it has been nicknamed the “mini-canon”). l Is not this Eucharistic Prayer II the Canon of St. Hippolytus (3rd century)? Some claim that this prayer is the ancient canon of Hippolytus, but: 1) at best, it would only be a truncated version of that canon (the passage affirming that Christ voluntarily gave Himself up to suffering in order to “destroy death, to break the bonds of the devil, to trample hell underfoot, and to enlighten the just” has, for example, been suppressed6); and 2) it is forgotten that Hippolytus was the second antipope, and that it is not at all certain that his liturgy was ever celebrated in the Catholic Church. Hippolytus does not give his text as a canon, that is to say a fixed, obligatory rule, but rather as a model for improvisation; his text, then, was probably never pronounced as written. Lastly, he was a very reactionary character, so opposed to the Roman hierarchy as to play the antipope (which he redeemed by martyrdom) and it is highly likely that he presented his anaphora in opposition to the Eucharistic prayer then in use by Rome.7 l What are the consequences of the deficiencies of these new Eucharistic prayers? Fr. Calmel remarked: As a result of these alterations and manipulations, the inexhaustible but well-defined riches of the consecratory rite are no longer suitably set forth. The interior dispositions required for receiving the supernatural fruits of the holy sacrifice are no longer fostered as they ought to be. The unavoidable consequences seem to be that priests and the laity cease to perceive the significance of the Mass and the Catholic Mass more closely resembles the Protestant Supper.8 l Are all the deficiencies of the New Mass fortuitous, or do they correspond to some overarching idea? The new liturgy is the bearer of its own spirit, which is a new spirit. Its principal author, Fr. Annibale Bugnini, could declare: “The image of the liturgy given by the Council is completely different from what it was before.”9 (Question 60 will be continued in the next installment.) 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. Cardinal Alphonse Stickler, Latin Mass Magazine, May 1995. Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, letter to Pope Paul VI dated September 29, 1969, accompanying the Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass written by a group of theologians. [In English, it is known as The Ottaviani Intervention, tr. Fr. Anthony Cekada (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books & Publishers, 1992). 3 Luther, in Formula Missæ et Communionis (1523), XII, 211. 4 Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P. “Apology for the Roman Canon” [French] Itinéraires, No.157, Nov. 1971, p.38. In the rest of the article, Fr. Calmel fully develops the facts enumerated here. 5 Ottaviani and Bacci, The Ottaviani Intervention, Chapter VI. 6 See Hippolytus of Rome, La Tradition apostolique, texte Latin, edited by Dom Botte, O.S.B., Sources Chrétiens (Paris: Cerf, 1946), p.32. 7 Amon-Marie Roguet, O.P., Pourquoi le canon de la messe en français? (Paris: Cerf, 1967), p.23. 8 Calmel, “Apology for the Roman Canon,” Itinéraires, p.38. 9 Annibale Bugnini, Documentation Catholique, No. 1491, Jan. 4, 1967, col. 824. 1 2 l But isn’t this Hippolytus a saint? Father Roguet, who cannot be suspected of hostility towards the new liturgy, explains: www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • October 2008 42 F R . p e t e r Is it permissible for a divorced person to perform public functions within the Catholic community? Membership within the Catholic Church is a privilege that brings with it certain obligations, notably that of remaining faithful to one’s baptismal vows. A person who remains in deliberate mortal sin is unfaithful to these vows, and consequently cannot receive without sacrilege any of the sacraments of the living before a good confession. However, if the sin is a private or hidden one, there is no scandal involved in him performing a public function in the church, such as singing in the choir, serving on the altar, leading the Rosary, arranging fundraisers and sports events. It is not even strictly forbidden by Canon Law for such a person to be a sponsor in Baptism or Confirmation, the state of grace not being listed under the conditions for licit sponsorship (Canons 766 and 796 of the 1917 Code). However, it is eminently inappropriate for one in mortal sin to be a sponsor, or greatly desirable that he should first go to Confession, for it is the function of sponsors at Baptism “to take care that he (the baptized person) leads a truly Christian life, as in the solemn ceremony they (the sponsors) pledged that he would do” (Canon 769) and for the sponsor at Confirmation “to take care for his Christian education” (Canon 797). The unrepentant mortal sinner is living a lie if he takes such a public role. Likewise, it is not forbidden for a person in private mortal sin to stand as a proxy for a sponsor, but also quite inappropriate. The question of the public sinner is different. A person who deliberately remains in a public sin, known to the community, and makes no effort to amend his life, drags others into sin by his bad example, and is thus a cause of scandal. The Church refuses the sacraments of the living (without previous confession) to such persons, such as Holy Communion, until such time as they have made reparation for the public scandal that they cause (Canon 855, 1917 Code). The Church says the same for the sacrament of Confirmation (Canon 786 excludes all those in mortal sin) and also for the sacrament of Extreme Unction (Canon 942). Such persons, whose crime is publicly known, are excluded from licitly performing the functions of sponsor at Baptism and Confirmation. The question of the divorced person can now be understood. The divorced person who has remarried outside the Church is a public sinner, for remarriage is a public fact. Consequently, he cannot be a sponsor at Baptism or Confirmation, and it would be most inappropriate for him to be a substitute for the sponsor as a proxy, for this would give equally bad scandal. It would also be inappropriate for the Church to use his services for spiritual functions, such as leading the Rosary and serving on the altar, on account of the scandal of hypocrisy that his examples gives. However, many priests feel that excluding such persons from R . s c o t t non-spiritual functions would cause more harm than good, provided that they are not directly involved with the spiritual life of the parish, such as organizing fundraisers, sports activities and the like. Making them welcome in this way can, in fact, encourage them to return to the practice of the Faith. Some priests might even extend this privilege to singing in the choir and playing the organ, although these really are acts of participation in the liturgy. However, if this were ever allowed, it would have to be regarded as a very exceptional and temporary circumstance, possible only on account of the sincerity and good intentions of the divorced person. However, there are many divorced persons who are practicing Catholics. They may or may not have been partly responsible for the breakdown of the marriage. But this is in the past, and they are now determined not to remarry and they live a chaste life, observing the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church. Such persons are frequently not in the slightest bit scandalous, but to the contrary edifying in their fidelity at carrying a very heavy cross. The fact of their divorce is not in itself a scandal, for it is not a sin. They must, however, be now willing to do anything in their power to return to a common dwelling, if truly it is prudent and reasonable to do so. The Church does not deprive them of any of their rights in participating in parish life, sacramental or otherwise. Q Ought I to be proud to be a Catholic? Pride is a horrifying and frightening vice. It is not only a capital sin; it is the root of them all, and one of the three concupiscences that is “of the world and not of the Father” (I Jn 2:16), and directly opposed to the will of God. However, the evil disorder of pride is not the simple affirmation that there is good in us, but rather the inordinate love of ourselves that makes us consider ourselves as our first principle and last end, as the source and purpose of any goodness we might have. It is consequently the vice of those who explicitly make themselves their last end: atheists, who say there is no God; rationalists, who deny we can know divine revelation; heretics, who choose their own truth and refuse to submit to the Church. It is likewise the sin of those who implicitly refuse to acknowledge the divine origin of their natural and supernatural qualities, their intelligence, their capacities, their virtues, either by exaggerating them or attributing them to themselves. This is the terrible vice that prepares the way for lukewarmness and a fall. However, when forced by the rebelliousness of the Corinthians, St. Paul had no hesitation in commending himself, explaining all the things that he had had to bear for Christ. After pointing out that he dare not compare himself with others, but only with himself, he gives the principle: “But we will not glory beyond our measure; but according to the measure of the A THE ANGELUS • October 2008 www.angeluspress.org rule, which God has measured to us, a measure to reach even unto you.” (II Cor. 10:13). From this he draws two conclusions, the first adapted from the prophet Jeremias (9:24): “But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (II Cor 10:17). It is Christ Himself, true God, who is the source and end of all goodness, and consequently “through Him and with Him and in Him is given to God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory” (Canon of the Mass). The second conclusion concerns ourselves: “If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern my infirmity” (II Cor 11:30). It is consequently not forbidden to speak of how God’s grace has overcome my weakness. However, the hidden danger of self-glorification must be carefully avoided, which is why in general it is better to say nothing of oneself nor to speak of one’s own experiences (cf. Protestants, whose faith is entirely based upon their own so-called own personal experience of God, and of which they speak constantly, leading into the trap of self-centeredness). There can consequently be a duty to be proud: proud of our Faith, and of our holy Mother Church. It is a sense of honor for that which is truly great, and it acknowledges that the Holy Trinity is the source of all goodness and love, and that it is to the glory of His divine Majesty that it is directed. We are proud of our Faith, proud of the Cross, proud of the love of the Son of God made man, proud of our Mass, proud of the superabundance of graces that the Church bestows upon us. There is no self-love here, but simply the consequence of the Catholic Faith. Far from being a personal initiative, a self-centeredness, this Faith is a complete submission. Our defense of the Faith, and of the Church is likewise a submission. The Crusaders were proud to die at the hands of the infidels, marked with the sign of the Holy Cross. Likewise must we be proud to be Catholic: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation” (II Cor 1:3,4). We can likewise be proud to be traditional, for the attachment to Tradition is nothing more or less than submission, obedience to the deposit of the Faith, as passed down by the Church. Yet, there is here a grave danger, and it is the danger of the boasting of the Pharisee: “O God, I give Thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men” (Lk. 18:11). In point of fact, if we are to be proud of being traditional, it is purely and simply because we know how great sinners we are, and how much we desperately need Catholic Tradition, for our constantly repeated prayer, both during and outside Mass, is “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Lk. 18:13). If such were not our prayer, we would indeed be in grave danger of losing our soul and our faith, of abandoning what is most essential to being a Catholic and traditional: understanding of the difference between the Creator and the creature, the Almighty and our weakness. Fr. Peter Scott was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. After assignments as seminary professor, US District Superior, and Rector of Holy Cross Seminary in Goulburn, Australia, he is presently Headmaster of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy in Wilmot, Ontario, Canada. 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 43 august 2008 Callia Watner Gramling, South Carolina A Special Type of Mother Clarissa Bryant reached down to pluck one last flower for her dandelion bouquet. “Are you ready, girls?” she called to her schoolmates. The five other girls clustered around Clarissa. They were all about the same age, with the same radiant six-year-old faces. “Follow me, ladies,” Clarissa instructed in a grown-up manner. She held her bouquet in front of her daintily. The others followed, imitating her perfectly. They had skipped past the door of St. Paul’s church, when their leader whispered, “Let's hide here!” The last of the six had disappeared behind the side of the church when Clarissa was heard to say, “Here they come–quick!” The girls could see Sr. Germaine Marie coming down the church steps. She was followed by five other sisters. Clarissa knew the teaching sisters of St. Paul's Academy always visited the Blessed Sacrament before their morning classes. “Sisters...” called Clarissa timidly. “Sisters!” she cried more confidently. Six veiled heads turned, but at the same time the little girl continued, “Will you please turn around, so you don't see? We have a surprise.” The sisters, smiling, turned around patiently and waited. The girls arranged themselves in a linear fashion, and when the sisters turned, they beheld a delightful group of girls, each presenting a nosegay of flowers. The cheerful sunshine of the dandelions was reflected in the faces of the youngsters. “What a privilege it is, indeed,” thought Sr. Germaine Marie, www.angeluspress.org “to be mothers THE of none, and yet ANGELUS • October 2008 mothers to all.” The Liturgical Year in GREGORIAN CHANT, Complete Set Christian culture is under attack from all sides. In many ways, the major threat has not come from television, the media or “trash” literature, but from music. The power of music to move the mind and soul has long been testified to by the greatest minds. In the Catholic Church, St. Pius X in his motu proprio argued that music is an integral part of the liturgy without which it would be sadly incomplete. Thus, one cannot be neutral towards music; it either nourishes or corrupts. Gregorian chant is the foundation of Western European music, but few people appreciate Chant and even fewer can sing it. Yet it is not too late to start. We already have the lyrics and translations in our missals. The following CD volumes were produced by the Schola Bellarmina of Brussels, Belgium, under the direction of Society of Saint Pius X priest Fr. Bernard Lorber. These excellent recordings give you a chance to sit down and follow along at home to this great spiritual treasure the Church has provided us. Excellent for choirs, scholas and individuals just learning to sing Gregorian Chant. Special price on entire set of 14 CDs (7 Volumes), STK# 6620. $225.00 VOLUME 1: Advent to Epiphany VOLUME 4: Easter Vigil to the Feast of the Ascension 2 CDs in case with booklet, TAP# 6610. $35.00 2 CDs in case with booklet, TAP# 6613. $35.00 Includes Propers for the Sundays of Advent, the three Masses of Christmas, the Octave of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus and the Mass of Epiphany. 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Also includes Vidi Aquam, Asperges, and 19 organ pieces. 3 CDs in case with booklet, TAP# 6618. $50.00 VOLUME 9: Sanctoral I December 8-July 1 Includes propers for the major feasts of the Sanctoral cycle from December 8th-July 1st. Including Immaculate Conception, Purification of the BVM, St. Joseph, Annunciation of the BVM, St. Joseph the Worker, Sts. Peter and Paul, and the Precious Blood. 2 CDs in case with booklet, TAP# 6619. $35.00 MOntHLY PHOtO WRItIng COntest For the moment, the monthly Photo essay Contest has been discontinued. thank you to all who participated. New f r Ang om Preelus ss a a b b C C d d e e f f g g h h i i j j k k l l m m n n o o p p q q r r s s t t u church churches u v 1. The Church is made up of people who are baptized, who believe the same things, receive the same sacraments, and follow Jesus through the same leader, the pope. 2. A church is a building where people worship God. Jesus is on the altar in the Blessed Sacrament. v w x y 10 z 11 a w x y z a b b c c d d e e f f g g h h i i j j k k l l m m n n o o p p q q r r s s t t u u v v w w x x y y 20 z 21 a z a b b c c d d e e f f g g h h i i j j k k l l m m n n o o p p q q r r s t u s g t u v v w w x x y y z 22 23 z Fresh from Angelus Press! Just the book your children will grow up looking at, reading, and remembering. A Catholic child’s “pictionary” of 240 inviting illustrations and 420 childlike definitions of all interesting Catholic persons, places, and things from “Abraham” to “Zeal” to which your child must be introduced. That introduction is better made earlier rather than later, especially with the help of Daddy and Mommy. A great resource for the early education of your Catholic child. Bite-sized definitions and charming pictures satisfy the most challenged attention spans. By ages eight or nine, they’ll be reading it all by themselves. 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