february 2009 $4.45 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition The Withdrawal of the 1988 Excommunications VO LU M E 4 of the INTEGRITY Series is here. “I really found the book to be very helpful for me personally and I’m so excited for the women who will read it.”—book reviewer for The Remnant, Mrs. Sherry Foster 208pp. Color Softcover. STK# 8335✱ $11.95 Get out of the way while God sanctifies your child through danger and suffering. Avoid the discouragement of reforming your husband according to your ideas of (feminine) holiness. Multiply the spiritual goods coming from homebirth and breastfeeding. Debunk worldly notions of love and romance for your growing girls. Use the watchwords words of common sense and courage to help your family. Invite poverty to be a necessary part of your Family Rule. Serve the Church, family, and parish as a single woman. Understand the similarities between marriage and consecrated religious life which advance holiness. Prepare for the end of active motherhood and the beginning of a gracious old age. ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ Read Mrs. Drippé’s BOOK REVIEW on p.24. “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 February 2009 Volume XXXII, Number 2 • Kansas City, Missouri 64109 English-language Editor and Publisher for the International Society of Saint Pius X PublisheR Letter from the editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fr. Markus Heggenberger Fr. Arnaud Rostand Withdrawal of the 1988 Excommunications . . . . 3 Editor Decree from the Sacred Congregation for Bishops . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Fr. Markus Heggenberger books and marketing Press Release from the Superior General of the SSPX . . . . . . . . . 6 Fr. Kenneth Novak Letter from the Superior General of the SSPX . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Assistant Editor Address of Fr. Arnaud Rostand, US District Superior . . . . . . . . . 7 Mr. James Vogel operations manager Mr. Michael Sestak Editorial assistant Miss Anne Stinnett Design and Layout Mr. Simon Townshend comptroller Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA customer service Mrs. MaryAnne Hall Mr. John Rydholm Miss Rebecca Heatwole Shipping and Handling Mr. Jon Rydholm what i owe to lourdes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 René Schwob for altar and hearth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Flemish Peasants’ War Herwig Van Moerenland The carmelite martyrs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Gertrud Von le Fort cooperators of christ the king . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Caussade, France book review: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Motherhood and Family from Integrity Magazine Mrs. Colleen Drippé Love-Education of Girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 from Motherhood and Family Mr. Marion Mitchell Stancioff Christendom timeliness of humani generis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 NEWS Angelus Press Edition Christendom Part 20 36 catechism of the crisis in the church . . . . . . . . . . . . Fr. Matthias Gaudron 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. ©2009 by Angelus Press. Manuscripts are welcome and will be used at the discretion of the editors. Postmaster sends address changes to the address above. Questions and answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Fr. Peter Scott declaration of fr. Nicholas mary, C.SS.R. . . . . . . 42 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. O 2 Letter from the Editor Toward the end of January there occurred an event that changed The Angelus at the last minute. Various documents related to the papal withdrawal of the excommunications of the SSPX bishops from 1988 had to be included. You will find them in this issue. Thus everything up to January 25, 2009, could be covered, but not the events after this memorable Sunday when, at all Masses in SSPX chapels and churches, the press release by Bishop Fellay that the excommunications had been withdrawn by the Holy Father was read. This somewhat unexpected act of the Pope will have many practical consequences. It is too early to address them now. They must be handled by the superiors of the SSPX in communication with Rome. Another point is evidently the announced doctrinal discussion between Rome and the SSPX. This is a point of the highest importance for the SSPX because doctrinal errors are–according to the late Archbishop Lefebvre–at the root of the actual crisis in the Catholic Church. Again an example: Tolerance is a Catholic concept. You find this word in the first draft of the Vatican II text about “religious liberty.” What was later changed to “religious liberty” was originally called “religious tolerance.” This evolution describes well the shifting of a social issue (religious tolerance) towards a personal and individual issue (religious liberty). The Catholic principle of old, to be tolerant in religious matters according to circumstances and for a good reason, became the modern principle of “religious liberty,” commonly understood as meaning that “all religions are equal” or “I can choose the religion that I want.” This modern understanding of “religious liberty,” however, is certainly erroneous. Why did the Pope lift the excommunications? It is striking that after 20 years it is again Archbishop Lefebvre who is right; he predicted the lifting of the excommunications. But until his death in 1991 there seemed to be no sign allowing him to believe so. The only way you can explain his view is the following: He believed–first and foremost–in the Catholic Church and its divine foundation. Second, he knew that he had always acted in light of the Catholic Faith, and this same principle of acting and deciding he conveyed to his priests and especially to the four bishops he consecrated. The conclusion was therefore simple: The excommunications had to be released one day, and the SSPX will have–somehow and sometime–to be officially integrated in the body of the Church militant. That was, for him, the only end of a lasting process of healing the wound of false doctrine and all the other evils that were a consequence thereof. We are far from the attitude of those who lost hope, split and founded their own churches. Archbishop Lefebvre is a rather outstanding example of Catholic Faith in extremely difficult circumstances. One day–we hope–it will be recognized that being faithful to the Catholic Creed in a situation where one has to resist false assumptions from the ecclesiastical superiors can be more difficult than resisting physical force... Back to the question about why the Pope lifted the excommunications. As opposed to other men in the Church, perhaps the Pope is realistic and sees what is going on. It is relatively easy to be the victim of superficial impressions and to refuse to look behind the façade. If a few hundred thousand people are cheering at you, it might be difficult to demand the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments from them and to explain to them why this is necessary and in what ways this is not done today. But in order to have a deeper insight into the situation it is necessary to see not only Catholic life at some big festival (and even there…), but also to see the daily Catholic life of the very same people. If Catholic meetings or youth group gatherings resemble more a rock concert than anything else, there is definitely something wrong. We have to pray for the Holy Father… There is probably no better example than a look at the decrease of vocations to Catholic congregations in the US: Number of seminarians 1965 2000 Decline Jesuits 3,559 389 89% Franciscans 2,551 60 97% 912 7 99% Benedictines 1,541 109 93% Redemptorists 1,128 24 98% Dominicans 343 38 89% Maryknoll 919 15 98% Oblates of Mary Immaculate 914 13 99% Vincentians 700 18 97% OFM Conventual 511 49 90% Christian Brothers Passionists 574 5 99% Holy Cross Fathers 434 132 70% Augustinians 483 14 97% Capuchins 440 39 91% Precious Blood Fathers 521 27 95% La Salette Fathers 552 1 100% Carmelites 545 46 92% Holy Ghost Fathers 159 9 94% Is it then too much to say that Pope Benedict XVI seems to realize that something very fundamental is wrong in the Church? The actions that he has taken with certain decisions seem to suggest exactly that, and this might finally be the link between the Pope and the SSPX that will begin the long-term process of healing. But the way to go is a long one, and everyone needs therein the help of the Holy Ghost. Instaurare Omnia in Christo, Fr. Markus Heggenberger 3 The Withdrawal of the 1988 Excommunications The following pages contain the important documents that are related to the withdrawal of the excommunications the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X. The first document is the decree from the Congregation of Bishops, dated January 21, 2009. The next two documents are a press release and a letter from the Superior General of the SSPX, both dated January 24, 2009. The press release and letter of Bishop Fellay were both read from the pulpit in all SSPX chapels and churches on Sunday, January 25, 2009. Finally, there is a statement of Fr. Arnaud Rostand, District Superior of the SSPX in the US. His statement comes from a sermon of January 25, 2009 in St. Mary’s, Kansas. It concerns the press release and the letter of the Superior General of the SSPX. www.angeluspress.org The aNgelus • February 2009 4 The Withdrawal of the 1988 eXcommunicAtions DeCree from The s CongregaTion for The original document (in Italian) The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org 5 e saCreD or Bishops Prot. N. 126/2009 CONGREGATION FOR BISHOPS DECREE In a letter dated December 15, 2008, and addressed to His Eminence Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Pontifical Commission, Bishop Bernard Fellay, on his behalf and that of the other three Bishops consecrated on June 30, 1988, requested again the lifting of the excommunication latæ sententiæ formally pronounced by a Decree from the Prefect of this same Congregation for Bishops dated July 1, 1988. In the above-mentioned letter, Bishop Fellay, among other things, stated: “We are still as steadfast in our determination to remain Catholic and to place all our strength at the service of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the Roman Catholic Church. We filially accept her teaching. We firmly believe in the primacy of Peter and in its prerogatives, and this is the reason why the present situation makes us suffer all the more.” His Holiness Benedict XVI–touched with fatherly compassion over the spiritual difficulty manifested by those concerned by the sanction of excommunication and confident that the commitment they expressed in the above-quoted letter of sparing no effort to go further in the necessary discussions with the Authorities of the Holy See concerning the issues still pending, and thus of being able to reach quickly a full and satisfactory solution of the problem raised at the origin–has decided to reconsider the canonical standing of the Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta with respect to their episcopal consecrations. This act expresses the desire to consolidate reciprocal confidence in our dealings, to intensify and give stability to the relations of the Society of Saint Pius X with the Apostolic See. This gift of peace, at the end of the Christmas celebrations, is also intended to be a sign for the promotion of unity in charity in the universal Church, and to thereby remove the scandal of division. Wishing that this step be followed without delay by the full communion with the Church of all the Society of Saint Pius X, in testimony of a true fidelity and genuine recognition of the Magisterium and of the authority of the Pope by the proof of visible unity. According to the faculties expressly conceded to me by the Holy Father Benedict XVI, by virtue of the present Decree, I remit the censure of excommunication latæ sententiæ pronounced by this Congregation on July 1, 1988, from Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson, and Alfonso de Galaretta, and, as of this day, I likewise declare void of juridical effects the Decree published at the time. Rome, from the Congregation for Bishops, this 21st day of January 2009. Card. Giovanni Battista Re Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops English translation (DICI ) www.angeluspress.org The aNgelus • February 2009 6 press reLeAse from the superior generAL of the priestLy society of sAint pius X The excommunication of the bishops consecrated by His Grace Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, on June 30, 1988, which had been declared by the Congregation for Bishops in a decree dated July 1, 1988, and which we had always contested, has been withdrawn by another decree mandated by Benedict XVI and issued by the same Congregation on January 21, 2009. We express our filial gratitude to the Holy Father for this gesture which, beyond the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, will benefit the whole Church. Our Society wishes to be always more able to help the pope to remedy the unprecedented crisis which presently shakes the Catholic world, and which Pope John Paul II had designated as a state of “silent apostasy.” Besides our gratitude towards the Holy Father and towards all those who helped him to make this courageous act, we are pleased that the decree of January 21 considers as “necessary” talks with the Holy See, talks which will enable the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X to explain the fundamental doctrinal reasons which it believes to be at the origin of the present difficulties of the Church. In this new atmosphere, we have the firm hope to obtain soon the recognition of the rights of Catholic Tradition. Menzingen, January 24, 2009 +Bernard Fellay Letter of the superior generAL of the priestLy society of sAint pius X Dear Faithful, As I announce in the attached press release, “the excommunication of the bishops consecrated by His Grace Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, on June 30, 1988, which had been declared by the Congregation for Bishops in a decree dated July 1, 1988, and which we had always contested, has been withdrawn by another decree mandated by Benedict XVI and issued by the same Congregation on January 21, 2009.” It was the prayer intention I had entrusted to you in Lourdes, on the Feast of Christ the King 2008. Your response exceeded our expectations, since one million seven hundred and three thousand rosaries were said to obtain through the intercession of Our Lady that an end be put to the opprobrium which, beyond the persons of the bishops of the Society, rested upon all those who were more or less attached to Tradition. Let us not forget to thank the Most Blessed Virgin who has inspired the Holy Father with this unilateral, benevolent, and courageous act. Let us assure him of our fervent prayers. Thanks to this gesture, Catholics attached to The aNgelus throughout • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org Tradition the world will no longer be unjustly stigmatized and condemned for having kept the Faith of their fathers. Catholic Tradition is no longer excommunicated. Though it never was in itself, it was often excommunicated and cruelly so in day to day events. It is just as the Tridentine Mass had never been abrogated in itself, as the Holy Father has happily recalled in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of July 7, 2007. The decree of January 21 quotes the letter dated December 15, 2008, to Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos in which I expressed our attachment “to the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ which is the Catholic Church,” reaffirming there our acceptation of its two thousand year old teaching and our faith in the Primacy of Peter. I reminded him that we were suffering much from the present situation of the Church in which this teaching and this primacy were being held to scorn. And I added: “We are ready to write the Creed with our own blood, to sign the anti-modernist oath, the profession of faith of Pius IV, we accept and make our own all the councils up to the First Vatican Council. Yet we can but express reservations concerning the Second Vatican Council, which intended to be a council “different from the others (cf. Addresses by Popes John XXIII and The Withdrawal of the 1988 7 Excommunications Paul VI).” In all this, we are convinced that we remain faithful to the line of conduct indicated by our founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, whose reputation we hope to soon see restored. Consequently, we wish to begin these “talks”– which the decree acknowledges to be “necessary”– about the doctrinal issues which are opposed to the Magisterium of all time. We cannot help noticing the unprecedented crisis which is shaking the Church today: crisis of vocations, crisis of religious practice, of catechism, of the reception of the sacraments… Before us, Paul VI went so far as to say that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan had entered the Church,” and he spoke of the “self-destruction of the Church.” John Paul II did not hesitate to say that Catholicism in Europe was, as it were, in a state of “silent apostasy.” Shortly before his election to the Throne of Peter, Benedict XVI compared the Church to a “boat taking in water on every side.” Thus, during these discussions with the Roman authorities we want to examine the deep causes of the present situation, and by bringing the appropriate remedy, achieve a lasting restoration of the Church. Dear faithful, the Church is in the hands of her Mother, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. In her we place our confidence. We have asked from her the freedom of the Mass of all time everywhere and for all. We have asked from her the withdrawal of the decree of excommunications. In our prayers, we now ask from her the necessary doctrinal clarifications which confused souls so much need. Menzingen, January 24, 2009 +Bernard Fellay Address of Fr. Arnaud Rostand, US District Superior of the Society of Saint Pius X, on the Lifting of the Decree of Excommunication First of all, I would like to thank all of you and all Americans who have prayed faithfully and diligently the Rosary Crusade that Bishop Bernard Fellay relaunched a few months ago. It is over 400,000 rosaries which have been offered in the US for the intentions of the new crusade and the worldwide total is over one million seven hundred thousand. The intention of this crusade, as you know, was the withdrawal of the decree of the excommunication for the 1988 episcopal consecrations. Once again, thank you for your generosity. Many of you must have already heard through the media that yesterday on January 24, 2009, the decree of excommunication was withdrawn by Rome. You have just heard the reading of the statement by Bishop Fellay as well as his letter of explanation. At the end of the Mass we will sing a Magnificat at the request of Bishop Fellay, in order to thank our Lady for granting us what we were asking in the Rosary Crusade. Let me please give some explanations on the situation. In the beginning of 2001, the Society of Saint Pius X made clear the three necessary steps to any real and durable/stable relations with Rome. These steps or preliminaries were seen by the Society of Saint Pius X as a necessity first to work at the restoration of the Traditional doctrine within the Church and, as a consequence, at the regularization of the canonical situation. The first of these three steps was to free the Tridentine Mass, that every priest may celebrate freely the Traditional Latin Mass. The second preliminary was the withdrawal of the excommunication. And the third one was to hold doctrinal discussions, especially on the Second Vatican Council. Many, at the time, saw these three steps as unreasonable, impractical, too difficult. Some even said that it was a way for the Society to refuse any solutions to the situation, a refusal of dealing with Rome. Six years later the first step was granted by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. On July 7, 2007, the Tridentine Mass was reinstituted. “It was never abrogated,” admitted the Pope in the now famous Motu Proprio. The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, even though imperfect and not satisfactory in many ways, www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 8 was a huge step. It was the first attempt to restore the Tridentine Mass in the Catholic Church. The full restoration of the Catholic Mass will only happen when the New Mass, which is full of Protestant spirit, the Mass of Luther, as Archbishop Lefebvre would call it, is discarded. This Motu Proprio is and will remain a historical event in the crisis of the Church–and it was for us the completion of our first preliminary, requirement. The second preliminary was the removal of the decree of excommunication. It must be understood that in our minds it is in no way recognition of the validity of these excommunications. We have always held and we continue to believe firmly that these excommunications were unfounded and null. We have asked for their removal, surely as a sign of good will from Rome, but also and mostly because these excommunications are a true injustice: injustice against our founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, injustice against our four bishops. Yesterday, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, according to the faculties expressly conceded to him by the Holy Father, has remitted the censure of excommunication. As you just heard from Bishop Fellay, we the Society of Saint Pius X, are grateful to the Holy Father for this gesture. The second step, second preliminary which only a few years ago seemed to be impractical, impossible, has been granted. We therefore, now, hope that we may proceed with our third preliminary that is some discussions with Rome about the fundamental reasons of our positions. We have always considered this third step as the most important one. It is the most important because we touch the roots of the problem, the grounds and causes of the crisis in the Church. The reason for our position today is a defense of the Faith. What was and still is at risk is the Catholic Faith, the Tradition of the Catholic Church, the handing over of the Apostolic Faith and our faithfulness to believe in whatever has been taught by the Catholic Church throughout the centuries. This is the reason of our fight, of our resistance. We refuse and have always refused to follow Rome’s neo-modernist and neo-protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it. This is what Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in his famous 1974 declaration, and we will remain faithful to it. He also said: No authority, not event the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith.… That is why, without any spirit of rebellion, bitterness or resentment, we pursue our work of forming priests, with the timeless Magisterium as our guide. We are persuaded that we can render no greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff and to posterity. We make this declaration of Archbishop Lefebvre ours, we renew it, and we remain faithful to it. It is one of the most important differences between the Society of Saint Pius X and any so-called Ecclesia Dei fraternity. We believe that the crisis has its foundation in doctrine, the Catholic doctrine or Faith. And it is not just a problem for priests or bishops, not just for the clerics. Anyone, even lay people, has the duty to keep the faith, the sound doctrine. It is a necessity for salvation. If you want to save your soul, you must believe in what the Church has always believed. You must hold to Revelation, the unique and divine revelation that only the Catholic Church has received and will maintain until the end of time. It is not what I believe which is important; rather it is whether what I believe corresponds to the Divine Revelation. The only way to keep it is to be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church. We wish therefore and pray that in the future we may be able to begin these “talks” with Rome about the doctrinal issues, and about the Second Vatican Council in particular. The new decree is of course good news for every one of us. We are grateful to the Pope for the releasing of the Tridentine Mass, for the remitting of the excommunication. Nevertheless, this does not change much our situation and our positions. It is now time to pray and sacrifice, asking the Blessed Virgin Mary to grant to the Catholic Church the necessary doctrinal clarifications. May the Blessed Virgin Mary keep us all faithful. Delivered in a sermon given at St. Mary’s, Kansas, January 25, 2009. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican Rev. Fr. François Laisney The documents and correspondence between Archbishop Lefebvre, Pope John Paul II, and Cardinal Ratzinger concerning the episcopal consecrations of June 30, 1988. Includes: Protocol of Accord, Ecclesia Dei, Consecration Sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre, Declaration of Bishop de Castro Mayer, Media Reports, Canon Law, Creation of the Fraternity of St. Peter. Explanations throughout by Fr. François Laisney, SSPX, set the historical context and detail the protocol and principles involved. 244pp, softcover, STK# 6719✱ $15.00 9 R e n é S c h w o b What I Owe to Lourdes René Schwob (1895–1946) was a French Jew who converted to the Catholic Faith at the age of 30. While a soldier in WWI, he had received a signal grace. As he lay on the battlefield seriously wounded he heard a voice tell him “You will be saved if you love me.” He always remembered this voice but fled, becoming a merchant mariner and art critic, and traveling the world. He was received into the Church in 1926, an event which marked the beginning of a spiritual journey that he chronicled in a series of books including Itinerary of a Jew towards the Church, from which the following passage is taken. I would like to reflect upon a story you already know quite well. More authoritative lips than mine have already told it. And if I were to do nothing more than repeat it, I should have only to keep quiet. But I would like to present it under the aspect of the drama as it appears to my eyes, emphasizing the benefits which my experience as a convert owes it. An Affront to the Age of Enlightenment The two main personages are the Virgin and Bernadette. We are the third. We are the crowd, the successor of the crowds to which, in the beginning, in 1858, a bishop, a curé, a prefect and his acolytes, and a policeman, served as coryphaeus. One might say that then there were two demi-choruses. One was that of the incredulous. And these personages lent it their diverse voices: Can you believe it? What a scandal! A little shepherdess saying she’s in touch with heaven. A stop must be put to it at once. 10 The curé took that duty upon himself at first. It was his role. He fulfilled it. But Bernadette persisted. The bishop, silent until then, had to get involved. As for the prefect and the policeman, it went without saying that they would belong to the party of common sense, the party of public order and good government. That is why it wouldn’t have been necessary even to mention them, had not the policeman of whom I am thinking made a reflection about the alleged apparitions of the Virgin and the trusting, ever increasing crowd that is all the more noteworthy in that it seems to me symbolic: “Isn’t it unfortunate,” he said, “to see this kind of thing in the 19th century.” These visionary’s tales seemed to him to be an affront to “the Age of Enlightenment.” But this comment betrays a certain pomposity so peculiar to our time...that it seems like a perfect touch in the mouth of this defender of society. Condemned to what we can see or touch, today we are facing an insurmountable doubt in what privileged souls may from time to time perceive. And, at bottom, our policeman was right: it is stupefying, in this selfsatisfied century, that God can still find a way to come down to us. Bernadette The other demi-chorus was that of the souls who do not shut out the word of God: a demi-chorus that was gradually to become the whole of Catholic Christendom. At first it comprised a few good women. It rarely happened that someone or other, a doctor less blind than his colleagues or a mother who dared to plunge her dying child in the icy water—and the Virgin restored it to life—rarely did it happen, I repeat, that one or two protagonists dared to detach themselves publicly from this anonymous demichorus to express their conviction. You see how the drama was divided and in what it consisted. It was divided between heaven and earth. It involved knowing whether heaven had really spoken to earth or if, on the contrary, Bernadette was insane, or a prankster, or just someone who was making fun of people... Of the twenty thousand people who eventually gathered round her, it is true that none ever saw the beautiful Lady who appeared to her, to her alone, in broad daylight, who spoke to her, said the Rosary with her; nor had anyone heard anything whatsoever. But there was Bernadette, and they could contemplate her during her ecstasy. She was a girl of great good sense; a serious, disinterested girl who would soon bury herself in the silence of the cloister and suffer until her death, according to the promises of the Grotto. For, indeed, the Lady had promised her nothing but prolonged suffering while awaiting eternal beatitude. She had promised her nothing of good for her life on earth; and poor Bernadette, daughter of poverty, would never accept the least reward offered THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org her by importunate admirers for touching their rosaries with her fingers. With a lucidity, simplicity, and playfulness worthy of Joan of Arc, the little shepherd of the Pyrenees never deviated from her initial assertions. The vocation of this confidante of the Blessed Virgin, whose immaculate conception had just been defined a few years before, was to be steadfast. It seems that her role, besides the acceptance of suffering, was to serve as a heavenly witness to the infallibility of the head of the Church, proving at the same time that this Church was truly the Church of Truth.... We know whose daughter Bernadette was. People are tempted to repeat concerning her what the Jews already said when the apostles presented them the carpenter’s son. They knew good and well that “nothing good can come from Nazareth.” Bernadette’s family, too, was despised. It may even be that the father had to steal some wood for heating. As for her, she just knew her dialect. She was scarcely fit for tending sheep. But she was of an extraordinary purity. And all day long she recited the Angelic Salutation. It was this ignorant child, this shepherdess whom the right-thinking people of the town certainly despised; it was this little peasant, lively and with a quick repartee, of an unschooled but upright and pure intelligence, whom the Blessed Virgin sought out at the foot of the Pyrenees, just as the Holy Ghost had sought her one day in the midst of a remote village, the most maligned of all Galilee. The parallel should not be pushed too far. But still, it may well be said that, for the greatest heavenly revelation in modern times, Heaven chose a soul of a quality very near to that of the Mother of Christ since, of her only one thing is know, namely that she was “the handmaid of the Lord.” And that would suffice for her glory for all the following centuries. Do not be surprised that I take Bernadette’s side passionately. One scarcely thinks of her when speaking of Lourdes. And yet, if Bernadette had not been Bernadette, Lourdes would not have become the rendezvous of the Christian universe. Such is the importance of a soul in God’s eyes. Bernadette alone revealed Lourdes to us. But she is also one of those whom we must closely question if we desire to penetrate the mysterious domain where heaven is reflected. What Bernadette reveals to us is the indubitable reality of this interior universe that escapes our measurements, where our grandeurs are little, where our weaknesses are strong, and where it is impossible to refute with the arguments we make use of in our everyday exchanges. It would not take much pressure to make me say that, even more than Bernadette giving us Lourdes, it is Bernadette that Lourdes gives us, our mystery through hers; that is to say: the proximity, the incredible closeness of the human soul and heaven. This is what must never be forgotten. And, moreover, 11 this is what we feel when we are at the Grotto. Yes, it is in this sense that the graces of place are at work at Lourdes. Elsewhere, in other places of pilgrimage, one goes to venerate a relic, or to see the body of a saint; or else, at Rome, it’s the whole history of the Church. One follows along step by step and suddenly one is standing before a human form in the person of the pope, whose blessing justifies our journey. Lourdes is nothing like that; Bernadette’s body is not even there. And I might add that at Nevers I felt no emotion before her. That is because the reality of Bernadette is of the same order as that of Lourdes; they have no need of a visible form. No outward form lends them support. Their reality is that of the soul restored, reduced to its purity. But the wonder, the point at which one discerns God amusing Himself with us, with what fatherly teasing He consents to treat our misery and blindness, is that this invisible reality—the true revelation of Lourdes—is offered to us at Lourdes in the healing of bodies. Perhaps if the testimony of these cures had not been granted us, had we not plunged deep into such a palpable marvel at Lourdes, we would not go there. A simple pilgrimage to the reality of the invisible would not be enough to set us on the road even if it concerns us so directly. What is needed is just the opposite of that by which Lourdes is Lourdes; there has to be the attraction of a promise, of suffering assuaged. And it is also in this regard that Lourdes was for me of such great help; I grasped in its reality the reflection of these contradictions of which the Gospel is full and of which the Christian life is made. That is because Catholicism is a living doctrine whose opposing precepts are presented at one and the same time. It has the suppleness of life, and likewise, Lourdes is the pilgrimage to the source of life; to the interior source that denies the flesh and at the same time heals it.... From Consternation to Conversion ...I share these confidences with you in the hope of deepening your confidence in the Virgin. I believe my difficulties in this regard especially arose from my imperfect conception of the mesh between heaven and earth. On the one hand, I believed in heaven. On the other, I was only too well obliged to believe in earth. But between the two, there seemed no other communication than prayer, the efficacy of which I did not believe. For you who have no doubt been brought up in the Catholic faith, such a separation between nature and the supernatural must seem strange. But considering that I came from total incredulity, that I received baptism and began to communicate not only without believing the in Real Presence and scarcely believing in more than a pantheistic God extended throughout nature and identical with it and, precisely because of this, blind and deaf to prayer and deprived of all personal life, you may appreciate some of the difficulties which continued to occupy me and to keep me from any real faith in a permanent commerce between heaven and earth long after I had finally received the stroke of grace and could no longer doubt the God of Revelation. The Blessed Virgin and the other saints at first seemed to me like charming characters: my ambition set them before me as models to imitate but not as intercessors whom we could implore to come to our aid. At bottom, I had really come to believe in God, but in a God less occupied with us than with Himself. I did not really believe in His paternity over us. I even wonder if in some measure I believed, not in the reality—I believed with all my might—but in the immortality of the soul. And all these difficulties, presented to my mind under the guise of an edifying humility, ultimately amounted to the monstrous pride of one who submits only to his own reason for judging of realities which it cannot embrace alone and which it cannot know save by submitting itself to Tradition. Without ceasing to have a profound faith in all the dogmas of the Church, I did not really accept anything in this Tradition that did not suit my old habits of involuntary rationalism and spontaneous incredulity. My skepticism regarding the inhabitation of the invisible world by saints capable of hearing us and of praying for us to a God who grants our prayers was supported by the fact that, despite my new faith, I dragged behind me the baggage of the after-effects of the moral miseries of which I had not succeeded in divesting myself; and it seemed to me that had my prayers been heard by powerful personages, I should have already been long delivered from the evil I detested but which continued to cling to me. This time it was not beneath the guise of humility that my pride disguised itself, but beneath that of a desire for an unattainable purity; that is, beneath the guise of a too impatient desire of a very high perfection. And this pride, lulling my weak will, would have led me quickly to despair in order to keep me from a perseverance that bore such little fruit, and from a God who listened to me so little. Without a doubt, the devil was not far from my unreasonable expectations for which I reproached heaven. Mercifully, the sacraments, to which I never failed to have recourse, kept me from this despair for a long time before I could finally admit the intercessory power of the saints. But just as I do not wish to give a sermon, neither do I intend to recount all the steps of my spiritual itinerary. I simply had to make known my objections to the invisible world in order to show how important Lourdes was to me, when, despite all the interior faults that I had been able to keep within me, I discovered, thanks to Lourdes, that communication indeed had been established between nature and the supernatural. And www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 12 that there were not so many frontiers to cross to pass from earth to heaven. At the same time, the Blessed Virgin seemed so close, so attentive, so maternal, that it became more difficult for me to doubt her power than it had been for me till then to believe in it. Yes, such was, on the supernatural plane, the greatest benefit of Lourdes, for which the example given by Bernadette would not have sufficed. For if Bernadette had shown me that heaven opens to the pure soul, the action of the Virgin was really necessary to prove to me that she dwelt in heaven and that she looked after us. Without this action, I could have continued to believe in Bernadette’s vision, but this would not have affected my deep, unexamined conviction that, in the course of life, the separation between the two worlds remained absolute. Heaven would have in some way seemed to me reserved for ecstasies. And I have never doubted that. But as to the reality of the supernatural world, as regards its permeability to our prayers, as regards the interest it might have in our human acts, without the Virgin of Lourdes I would have continued to offer it the denial of an incredulity in good faith, but absolute. You can see that physical miracles are not always ineffectual for the enlightenment and conversion of a soul. And yet these miracles, as useful as they were to me, would not have been enough had I not betaken myself to the very presence of the Virgin.... The Sick of Lourdes Offered by Mary The Virgin, Bernadette: henceforth these are invisible realities, and all souls turn to them. But now at Lourdes there only remains this other grand personage composed of those who sing and those who suffer: the active and the immobile. And the soul of these personages is constituted by the sick. In the revelations of the Blessed Virgin there had never been any mention of the sick. She never said it was the sick, but rather sinners whom she wished to gather round her to heal them. They came because the rumor of sensational cures spread far and wide; and also because the essence of every pilgrimage is the apparent cure that bears witness to the hidden cures. But never had the like been seen. And the sick flocked in such numbers that henceforth it was around them that pilgrimages were organized. Lourdes, the City of Ave’s, is the city of the sick. Their sufferings accepted and offered have become its silent, deepest prayer. Lourdes is ever after the city of suffering joyously consented to. And it is by this detour of happy suffering that we rejoin the exhortations of the Virgin when she reminded Bernadette of the urgent need for penance. Endured by the sick, assumed by the stretcherbearers and nurses, expressed by this immense multitude who offer them the help of their toil THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org and compassion, it is henceforth between these complementary pains, between these two demichoruses of this unique personage, with priests for coryphaeus, that the tragedy is played. And in the background I often seem to see the whole earth in commotion. All those they have left behind and for whom they suffer and pray. All those who are so far from suspecting that it is, in part, to all this suffering on the move that the impiety of men is indebted for being able to continue its history. The purpose of suffering, its eminent role in the working of days, it is at Lourdes that one discerns it. And I admit that despite my own sufferings and the vigor of my faith, the attention shown to this suffering, this display that seems to be made of it at Lourdes, was for me objectionable and even, I must say, repugnant. What especially shocked me was that they came to Lourdes to ask for favors. The esplanade of the Basilica dotted with constellations of supplicants stretched out on their backs looked too much like a market for my liking. All these people, I would say to myself, have only come there to display their wounds to the Blessed Virgin, to get some grace. I shall sum up what I experienced by saying that this display of deformed flesh provoked in me an insurmountable disgust at the sight of so much fallen humanity. But, what’s more, I also felt a sense of wounded modesty. It seemed inconceivable to me to undertake a pilgrimage for the purpose of invoking the favor of a hypothetical attention from heaven. It seemed to me that in this exhibition of all these infirmities there was an unjustifiable appeal to the good pleasure of whom I did not quite know, to a kind of heavenly favoritism by which I was the more irritated as I did not believe in it. For understanding Lourdes, I lacked a bit of brotherly love; also, undoubtedly, I had not yet verified myself the possibility of miracles. And then, most of all, I had lacked the opportunity to receive the confidences of some of the sick. It was thanks to the visits I paid to a good number of them that I had to relent. I recall in particular having accompanied a doctor on a walk through a northbound train carrying all kinds of seriously ill people back home. They were going to be making the same long journey in the opposite direction, and this time without being sustained by the hope of a cure, which they had had to leave before the Grotto. During the four days of their pilgrimage they had been subjected to all the trials: they were plunged in icy water, they had stayed for hours under the sun to pray—and all in vain. Now they were leaving worn out by so many efforts to which the transfer back to the train cars was soon to be added. I expected revolts and murmurs; without exaggeration, this piteous crowd was happy. I did not find a single sick person who complained. Their passage to Lourdes, the emotion of having felt around them so much fraternal charity on the part of those who had unflaggingly 13 looked after them—all of that had been sufficient to allay their distress and allow them to bear it better. And even before having seen or spoken with the miraculously cured, I was forced to yield to the overwhelming evidence: the pilgrimage to Lourdes is miraculous for all hearts without exception. I will not quote you the particularly touching words I heard from the lips of the simplest folk; I report several in Capitale de la Prière. They are all admirable. But what I want to tell you is that none of these sick people had come to Lourdes to ask to be cured; they had at heart the cure or conversion of someone else as much as their own health. All these unfortunates, yet they prayed for one another much more than each for himself. And I assure you that there was no pretense of disinterestedness in their answers. With this simplicity, which is the virtue of Lourdes, they let us glimpse the treasure of a generosity that was not even conscious of its own beauty. It was then that I understood this assembly of all the physical miseries, this “court of miracles” where you have to have a strong heart to be able to stay for long, which is at first so disconcerting. The Virgin, by the cures she works from time to time, but especially by the love and joy she spreads indistinctly in a shower of continuous graces, testifies to her desire to have the constant spectacle of so many sufferings accepted in the place chosen by her. Beneath her eyes, it is, as it were, the foundation of the Mystical Body upon which is built this suffering Church of which she has the care and which she offers at Lourdes in a unique and continuous holocaust. It is like “the army arrayed in battle” of which Scripture speaks and with which she herself blends. Without the gathering mustered on the banks of the River Gave, where would be the witness of her vigilance, the guarantee of her maternity extended to all the earth? She would have to intervene everywhere at once. But here it is all the peoples who flock to her and mingle at her feet. And their unanimous joy shows the measure of her grace. In truth, even though she never spoke of it to Bernadette, when questioning the sick at Lourdes one understands at last that it is they who give the most thanks to God, and Lourdes indeed would be nothing if their presence were lacking. The fervor imparted to these hearts, which will be such a great help to them in the hard months ahead, is a light they carry to others; it is the fervor of the prayer they will henceforth raise in union with the prayer of their long sufferings. I say this because now I know it: Lourdes cannot be judged on appearances; no one should ever judge Lourdes so long as he has not conversed with some of the sick who have come there to offer their suffering. It is through them that the splendor of Lourdes shines. The Sick and the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament In a well-regulated order, like a slow, monotonous ballet, people from all over the world come to blend their prayers and offer them to God in their midst, who blesses them. Then is truly the triumph of Christ in His Eucharist. All the hierarchy at Lourdes participate. It is the high point of the whole day. And when, in its turn, the Host leaves the cortege preceding it and the crowd following for the blessing of the sick, it dawns on the viewer that this is what the Blessed Virgin had in mind when she told Bernadette that she wanted people to come to Lourdes in procession. Even more than seeing at her feet all her people gathered together before her, it was so that her Son might be brought near all the suffering of the earth; it was perhaps especially to enable all the sorrows of the earth to come and confront the suffering of her Son. The unity of earth affirmed in suffering, but in a suffering that is surmounted to be transformed into joy at the feet of God who blesses it: I ask you whether a similar office, such an overwhelming rite, can be accomplished anywhere else in the word? It is in this evening Credo, this midday Benediction, that Lourdes’ reason of being is rooted, that the life of the pilgrimage reaches fulfillment. And I have never found anywhere, not at Jerusalem, not at Rome, a revelation more full of Catholic truth. The revelations of the city of the servant of the servants and the revelations of the Holy Land are different. They yield us nothing more essential than this intimacy with the Eucharist, where the little Jewish Virgin become the Mother of the human race wanted all the human race to reunite. But it really seems that it was us, who are living at present such a tragic epoch, that the Virgin foresaw, us who must contemplate in their utmost effects the jealousy, egotism, and hatred of a world separated from God and condemned to division against Him. Confronted by the self-destructive clashes of peoples, classes, and races, the Virgin of Lourdes, whose insignificance we once believed we could descry, tirelessly exhorts us to prayer and to the love of reciprocal sacrifice. Such is the highest, the most urgent lesson of Lourdes: that we must have recourse unceasingly to the power of the Rosary against the forces of evil. What Lourdes teaches us, in short, is fraternal charity, trust, simplicity, and, from the depth of our sufferings, the joy of the Virgin in her first mysteries. This account is an excerpt from René Schwob’s book, Itinéraire d’un juif vers l’Église [A Jew’s Journey towards the Church] (Paris: Spes, 1939), pp.47-89, published in Le Sel de la Terre, Autumn 2008, pp.6776, with added subtitles. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 14 M r . H e r w i g v a n M o e r e n l a n d FOR ALTAR AND HEARTH: SWEDEN North The Flemish Peasants’ War Sea DENMARK UNITED KINGDOM NETHERLAND FLANDERS BELGIUM The year 2008 saw the 220th anniversary of the Flemish Peasants’ War. In 1798 the best of the Flemish people took up their weapons to defend the Catholic Faith against a new religion and social order that were forced upon them by a foreign occupier. This alone is reason enough to commemorate and bring to attention the heroic courage of the Flemish farmers. From 1789 on, a bloody revolution raged in France against all the abuses of the “old regime.” From a religious viewpoint there was a schismatic movement, separated from Rome, moving towards a national church. But very soon the anger of the people turned against the priests; the Faith was blamed for exploitation and oppression. Rationalism, which had found its spokesman in the Encyclopedias for over ten years, and in the sarcasm of Voltaire, which had snapped at everything holy, taught that no truth forced from the outside could be accepted. Thus, in a “return to reason,” divine revelation was rejected. Under the slogan “freedom,” intolerance grew; a hatred and confusion not found in another era spread. On January 23, 1793, the French king ascended the scaffold. A year earlier, 1792, the armies from the south came to Flanders for the first time; in 1794 they definitively conquered the Flemish people from Austria. Flanders would experience the French “freedom.” Museums, churches, monasteries, libraries, stables, private safes, barns and fields: all plundered with an unusual anger. The Flemish people began to organize opposition. In 1794 and 1795, thousands of Flemish men, women, and children starved to death. In the soul of the Flemings a dogged anger arose against the new Republic. PORTUGAL The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org GERMANY CZECH RE FRANCE SWITZERLAND The Persecution Breaks Out Explicit persecution of religion had not yet happened. In 1795 the anti-religious storm calmed down a bit in France, during the establishment of the new rule named le Directoire. The regime of the guillotine, which, in 1793-94 with Robespierre, raged so severely against priests and nobles, was replaced with the (in theory unacceptable but practically milder) separation of Church and state. The tempering did not last. On September 4, 1797, the Directoire fell into the hands of extremists, who thought they noticed a revival of royalism. The next day, the laws of terror came into force again, and a few days later they demanded that every priest and civil servant swear hatred against the monarchy. This rule was not just a formality: In October 1797 the Flemish clergy was summoned to take the oath of loyalty. Almost 90 percent of the priests said “No!” The persecution ensued. The churches were set ablaze or shut down, ceremonies stopped, and the clergy were hunted down like wild animals. Those who were captured were thrown into dungeons or banished to the Rhé or Oleron Islands near the French coast or deported to the hell of Guyana. The Flemish people, however, did not SPAIN ITALY Saraj 15 let their clergy get captured or starve to death without a fight: Of the 9,000 priests who were blacklisted, fewer than 1,000 fell, over a period of three years, into the hands of the tyrants. They hid in the woods, in chimneys, in barns, in attics. They disguised themselves as street-traders and craftsmen. What appeared to be a stable became a church; and a mug, a chalice. Mass was offered at night, quietly, but… it went on. “I have baptized all the little children,” wrote a priest of Tielt. In Tielt, French thieves broke into a farm at the end of the “Hoogstreet.” “Where is the priest hiding himself?” “Jan,” says the landlady, “these men need your help.” Jan was peeling potatoes. He laid down his knife and stood up. The French rats began their search for the priest under the guidance of…the priest! In the year 1797 the rebellion of the people started to grow. The old combatants of the Brabant rebellion– when they had kicked Austria out of Flanders for a short time in 1789–started to feel their fists itching for battle. The old slogan began to turn around in their heads: pro aris et focis–For Altar and Hearth! But resistance would be difficult: To organize resistance from region to region in an occupied country without traffic would be a hard, almost superhuman task. Was there even a chance of success without foreign help? Austria had definitively handed Flanders to the young Napoleon at the peace treaty in Campo Formio, in October 1797. Would Germany help? England? Months dragged on with no response. The decision was made to fight by themselves. In September 1798, an order suddenly came from Paris: all Flemings from the ages of 20-25 were to become soldiers for the Republic! The first batch: 200,000 men, in a land that did not know military service under the occupation of Austria. Fight, fight and fall for the godless Republic! They would fight indeed—but against the Republic, not for it. The boys did what their priests had done at first: hid. But then the bell rang: thousands of Flemings went to arms. England promised help. In the middle of October, 1798, the alarm bell rang, the flag with the cross flapped in the wind, and the horns blew: the battle broke loose. The Peasants’ War was carried out by about 40,000 improvised soldiers. They had no cannons; only scythes, pickaxes, a few guns and a little money from England. The uprising spread as fast as a flame over Waas and Westland, Flemish Ardennen, KleinBrabant, Hageland and the Kempen. The war took about 15,000 lives; “Not even one Fleming ducked for the bullet.” It lasted only about two months among the storms of the late autumn and in the biting cold of the hard winter. As an organized force, the Peasants’ War ended in bloodshed in Hasselt on December 5, 1798. What was the Peasants’ War? It was the cultural battle of a small people for its highest values: its freedom, its Catholic family life, its religion. It was a defeat, but a defeat in which future generations at least saw and felt a victory of the spirit! For altar and hearth! No page of Flemish history is so full of love and suffering, grief and victory. This was 1798. The Persecution of the Church in Flanders When the French troops penetrated the southern part of the Netherlands in 1794, they showed clearly with what kind of ideals the revolutionaries were inspired. A few churches and abbeys were burned to the ground, and crucifixes as well as images of saints were shot at on purpose. That was just the beginning of what the pious people of Flanders would come to expect. The southern part of the Netherlands stood on the brink of a true persecution of the Church. Once conquered, Flanders was incorporated in 1795 and considered a part of France. All new laws of France counted for the new territory. The government was at first reluctant to introduce all anti-clerical laws. They did not want to turn the Flemish people against them, especially not when the French had not full power and control in every region. Nevertheless, at the end of 1794, the first churches were claimed and transformed into “temples of Reason.” Different houses of God were violated by acts of desecration. “The Church Has to Disappear from Society” From September 1796 onwards, abbeys and monasteries were disbanded, their goods taken into custody. Only female monastic orders dealing with education and the care of the sick were left untouched. The main goal of the revolutionaries was to banish the Church from society: all external signs of religion should be exiled from public life. Processions were forbidden: no more religious ceremonies outside the doors of the church. The French even tried to prevent the pious Flemings in Brugge from kneeling down before the chapel at the yearly ceremony of the Holy Blood, but the Catholics did not allow themselves to be chased away. The bells could not call the believers to religious services anymore; statues of saints and crucifixes, which decorated uncountable street corners and house fronts, were removed. In Brugge, a Marian city, the old statue of Our Lady at the corner of the city hall was destroyed. The resistance against all these measures grew: the people went on pilgrimage ostentatiously. In 1797 the clergy was forced to swear an oath of hate against the monarchy and to swear an oath of loyalty to the Republic. The clergy of Flanders refused this unanimously. Now the aggressor showed its real face. The “Beloken Tijd” started: All goods of the parishes as well as the property of the Church were confiscated. Even secular associations and seminaries were abolished. In most regions, the churches were www.angeluspress.org The aNgelus • February 2009 16 all shut down. Only in the department of the Leie (the present province of West-Flanders), most churches were simultaneously re-opened and they would not be closed anymore. Only sworn (or “juring”) priests could lead the ceremonies. The persecution of the clergy and the closure of churches was the prelude of a real demonic work. The remaining golden and silver consecrated goods were sent to the “Money factory” in Paris; paintings and statues of tremendous artistic value–untouched by previous plundering–were transported to French museums. Expensive books and writings were scattered here and there. The furniture was destroyed; remarkable woodcuttings sold as firewood; marble pillars and communion rails destroyed and sold like clods of stones. Nothing remained safe from the desecration of iconoclastic fury. Revival of the Era of Catacombs The refusal of the majority of the clergy to swear the oath in this region led to schism; a small number of sworn priests, loyal to the Republic, stood against the priests loyal to the Church of all times. Those who refused to swear the oath awaited arrest and deportation. The Flemish clergy went into hiding. They did not intend to let themselves be captured, and they could not abandon their loyal flock. The era of the catacombs was thus born again. Priests were outlaws, hunted down by the French. Real round-ups and raids followed one after the other–but this was without taking into account the people. In almost every village and town, priests could find a good and safe shelter. The population went to extremes to keep their priests out of the claws of the French. This was not, however, without any risk. The republicans tried to choke out religious life, but normal services went on. Priests walked disguised down the streets to hand out the sacraments. The Hidden Priests Tirelessly the priests stayed faithful to their vocation. One of the many confessors of faith at this time was Fr. Charles Nerickx. Fr. Nerickx founded first a shelter in Ninove and from 1798 onwards, a hospital in Dendermonde, where his aunt was a nun. (Nuns in hospitals were “of public use” and therefore not hunted down.) He was a priest first, everywhere and always. At 2:00am daily he offered the Holy Mass for the nuns. He studied and prayed frequently. When the French searched the hospital–which happened several times— he would disappear into a small shelter in the attic. Even in the garden he had a good hiding place: in the chicken coop. During the Peasants’ War, some prisoners were brought to the hospital to await their execution. Fr. Nerickx devised a way to help them; the nuns would inform the prisoners of his plan. When they went to their execution, they walked under a specific window. THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org Fr. Nerickx instructed them to raise their arm if they were contrite and wished to receive absolution. Fr. Nerickx would later be sent to America where he founded the Sisters of Loretto. Islands of Peace The situation was not tense and dangerous everywhere. Here and there were some small islands of a little peace and rest. The deep-rooted loyalty of the believers to the faith of their ancestors was unshakable. To spread discord, the government allowed a limited number of “sworn” priests to celebrate in a few churches. But this had an opposite effect: A sworn priest wanted to remove something from the tabernacle at St. Salvator in Brugge to prevent the believers from worshipping the Most Holy Sacrament. He was prevented from doing so, however–by the bell ringer and a milk woman. Once on the street he was attacked by the people. Women shouted: “Beat the schismatic priest dead.” In a Catholic school in Brugge a Sister refused to follow with her students the Mass said by a sworn priest; together with other Sisters she left the monastery and started their own school. In the still open churches in Brugge the people gathered and prayed the Rosary and the Litany of Our Lady very loudly. Step by step, some para-liturgical services arose. On the altars, candles were lit, the organ was played, and the normal hymns of the Mass were sung. A clearer refutation of the sworn clergy was not thinkable. The Church of the Concordat In the meantime, Napoleon was committing his revolt in 1799. He made a concordat with the Holy See in 1801. Pope Pius VII hoped to see a new dawn of peace as churches were opened again and the persecution seemed to have stopped. But Bonaparte added a huge number of conditions to the concordat, the 77 Organic Articles. For many, these were unacceptable. For everything, the approval of the state was needed. Even holy days were dictated by the concordat. Many priests and believers who had risked their lives during the persecution for the true faith took up their weapons again. The Church of the Concordat was for them the Church of Napoleon, not the Church of Rome. Resistance arose mostly in Brabant and WestFlanders. The persecution in Flanders was a time of heroism and love, the time of the new catacombs and martyrs, a time of battle to keep the Catholic Faith. This era is untaught in schools today. Even the Church no longer speaks of it because of political correctness and ecumenism. Translator: Lucas Feliers, Fleming and member of the Third Order of St. Pius X. Note: Out of respect for the Flemish people, the names of the Flemish towns, cities, and of the people have been kept in their original language. Information in the biographies came from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and other sources. Angelus Press thanks Fr. Eric Jacqmin, SSPX, for his invaluable help with this article. F Flemish Missionaries 17 Fr. Charles Nerinckx Born in Herffelingen, Oct. 2, 1761. He was the eldest of fourteen children and was noted for his zeal among the working classes. He wrote several theological treatises. The French Directoire resented his activity and ordered his arrest, but he eluded them and and for four years was in hiding at the Hospital of Dendermonde, where he continued his ministry amid continual dangers. He came to America in 1804, Bishop Carroll assigning him to Kentucky–a district of over two hundred miles in length. He lived in the saddle; every year of his apostolate was marked by the organization of a new congregation or the building of a church. Of all the missionaries none deserves so well the title of “Apostle of Kentucky.” He founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Loretto in 1812. He went to Missouri in 1824, intending to consecrate the last years of his life to the Indians, but death overtook him at Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, August 12, 1824. Fr. Ferdinand Verbiest Born at Pitthem, October 9, 1623. He entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 17. In 1658 he was called to China to assist, and eventually to replace, Fr. Adam Schall in his astronomical labors. He was among those imprisoned during the persecution of 1664. In 1668 the young emperor commanded a public test, which allowed the priest to prove beyond dispute the merits of European astronomy compared with the ancient astronomy of China. The results of the test, which the emperor, ministers, and nobles established in person, were a triumph for the missionaries. Fr. Verbiest was immediately placed at the head of the Bureau of Mathematics, and, out of consideration for him, his exiled brethren were authorized to return to their missions. He died in Peking in 1688 after being appointed superior for the Jesuit missions in all of China. Fr. Damien (Joseph de Veuster) Born at Tremeloo on January 3, 1840. He Fr. Pedro de Gante Fray Pedro de Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet Famous Fr. Constant Lievens The Apostle of Gante or Pedro de Mura was a Franciscan missionary in 16th-century Mexico. He was born in Geraardsbergen around 1480. Pedro de Gante was a relative of King Charles V; he was allowed to travel to the colonies of New Spain as one of a group of Franciscan monks, the first Christian missionaries in the New World. In Mexico he spent his life as a missionary, educating the indigenous population in Christian catechism and dogma. He learned Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and composed a catechism. One of his most significant contributions to Mexico was the creation of the School of San Jose de los Naturales. This was the first school set up by Europeans in the Americas. He died in 1572 in Mexico City. In 1988 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II. missionary among the North American Indians. Born at Termonde January 30, 1801. He emigrated to the United States in 1821 through a desire for missionary labors and entered the Jesuit novitiate at Whitemarsh, Maryland. In 1823, however, at the suggestion of the United States Government a new Jesuit establishment was determined on and located at Florissant near St. Louis, Missouri, for work among the Indians. De Smet was among the pioneers and thus became one of the founders of the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus. He worked with and was revered by almost every Indian tribe west of the Mississippi. Even Protestants considered him the greatest friend of the Indians; his influence was so great that he was able to encourage Sitting Bull to agree to a treaty. He died in St. Louis, Missouri on May 23, 1873, at the age of 72. entered the novitiate of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and was admitted to the religious profession at the age of 20. Three years later, he was sent to the mission of the Hawaiian Islands, where he was ordained at Honolulu. On 10 May, 1873, Fr. Damien arrived at the leper settlement at Molokai as its resident priest. There were then 600 lepers. He not only administered the consolations of religion, but also rendered them such little medical service and bodily comforts as were within his power. He dressed their ulcers, helped them erect their cottages, and went so far as to dig their graves and make their coffins. After twelve years of this heroic service he discovered in himself the first symptoms of the disease. He died at Molokai, Hawaii, on April 15, 1889. He will be canonized in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. Chota Nagpur was born on April 11, 1856, in Moorslede. A Jesuit priest, he was a missionary among the tribal peoples of central India. Born into a large rural family, he had a desire to enter the Jesuits from a young age. He was ordained in India at the age of 26. Central India was then opening up to missionary work and Lievens was sent to the area in 1885. By 1888, there were 15,000 baptized and some 40,000 catechumens. Suffering from tuberculosis, he was sent by the doctors to the mountains of Darjeeling in 1891, but the urgency of the work–and disquieting news of apostasies–brought him hurriedly back to the Chota Nagpur where he again spent himself without counting. In a few months he baptized some 12,000 people. A serious relapse forced him to stop definitively. Lievens died in Leuven on November 7, 1893. 18 G E r T r U D V O N L E F O r T The Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne The grim days of Terror during the French Revolution have been made familiar to all by the works of Dickens and others. The German novelist Gertrud von Le Fort conjures up the atmos­p here of those days in her fictionalized account of the Carmelites of Compiègne, who suffered martyrdom on July 17, 1794, and have been beatified by the Church. All the gates were under guard for several days, a regulation not uncom­mon in those times. Marie de l’Incarnation could not leave the city. And soon the news of the arrest of the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne arrived! Marie de l’Incarnation, who had been the very soul of sacrifice, was the only one who had escaped, who had been excluded from the sacrifice. At that time I had my first interview with her. Monsieur Sézille, who had come to me in the course of his searches for Blanche, took me to her. I did not suspect how much my memories of those September days must mean to her. She received me with the request to speak openly without trying to spare her. And this I did. My friend, I told her about Blanche’s dreadful fate. She listened to me with marvelous composure but suddenly I saw that she had lost all control of herself. It seemed as if she were emptying the same cup of horror that had been put to Blanche’s lips. When I related the incident to her she trembled from head to foot. It was a most peculiar experience to see this great and noble woman, whose every feature was marked with fearlessness, tremble so THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org violently. I assure you, my friend, that never, not even on that September night, did I behold on the faces of the murdered victims so complete an expression of horror as on the most heroic lineaments I ever saw. It would have been insulting to offer her a word of consolation. I simply stated my conviction that Blanche could not possibly be alive. She shook her head mournfully. (I felt that she had forgotten my pres­ence entirely.) It was evident that at this moment she abandoned all hope. “Oh, yes, she is alive,” she said softly. “She is alive.” And, with won­derful intuition, “Is not this poor country alive too? Is not the unhappy little King of France alive in all his agony?” And then as if she were plunging desperately into the depths of her own despair: “It is harder to live than to die! Life is more difficult than death!” ... In the meantime the Carmelites of Compiègne had been conducted to the Conciergerie in Paris. Their suit was approaching its end. I de­scribed the details in a former letter. The whole thing was just as brief as it was typical. In such cases the outcome was fixed in the beginning. I do not hesitate to designate such predetermined judgments as the dark­est pages in the history of the Revolution. (But perhaps chaos cannot be termed history. It was something beyond all history.) On the feast day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, these sixteen Carmelite nuns of Compiègne were condemned to death by the guillotine. Marie de l’Incarnation was included in this sentence. Try to imagine, my friend, what a storm of emotion this must T e s e 19 The Sixteen Blessed Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne guillotined at Paris, July 17, 1794. They are the first sufferers under the French Revolution on whom the Holy See has passed judgment, and were solemnly beatified May 27, 1906. Before their execution they knelt and chanted the Veni Creator, as at a profession, after which they all renewed aloud their baptismal and religious vows. The novice was executed first and the prioress last. Absolute silence prevailed the whole time that the executions were proceeding. The heads and bodies of the martyrs were interred in a deep sand-pit about 30 feet square in a cemetery at Picpus. As this sand-pit was the receptacle of the bodies of 1,298 victims of the Revolution, there seems to be no hope of their relics being recovered. have unleashed in her soul! Sézille informed her of the facts. He had done his honorable and hopeless duty in defending the 16 Carmelite nuns. Marie de l’Incarnation believed that her Sisters would mount the scaf­fold singing, for this had been prearranged in the convent. She begged the Abbé Kiener to be permitted to accompany him, for he had offered to give absolution to the condemned on the way to the place of execution. (Absolution disguised by the strains of the Carmagnole in the midst of the hooting crowd! That was the only possibility in those days!) But he refused her. “And this,” Rose Ducor said later, “was a moment of most bitter sorrow to her.” “My father,” she cried, bursting into tears, “you are robbing me of my last hope.” “And what is your hope?” he asked almost with severity. At this question the full beautiful force of her personality broke through. She did not rebel. She was simply overwhelmed. “I wanted to sing too,” she cried. “Oh, if I could only be the last, the very last for whom it is hardest of all!” He answered, “Sacrifice your voice also, my daughter, yield up your voice to the very last one.” She wept again. “My father,” she said, “my sacrifices have not been accepted. You know it. I shall be the most abandoned of all.” “Remember how Christ was abandoned,” he answered gently, “and re­member the silence of Mary.” Her resistance broke. “At that time,” Rose Ducor reported later, “her face first showed that peculiar expression in which one could suddenly see how she must have looked as a child. It was as if an early, most lovely and delicate painting became visible under some splendid Baroque restoration.” Without a word she crossed her arms on her breast. And now, my friend, we have arrived at the question in your letter, the query concerning the touching voice of young Blanche de la Force. Monsieur Sézille begged me to be present at the Place de la Revolu­tion on that day. He wanted me to identify Blanche with the former novice, for he had learned that the women were going to bring her to the scaffold to witness the execution of the Carmelite nuns of Com­piègne. (Another protective measure, most likely.) But do not think, my friend, that at this point I expect you to visualize the bloody guillotine! I myself cannot endure the sight of that horrible machine. Believe me, I had rather see a living executioner at work, a man who has the courage to wield the knife, and a hand of flesh and blood that knows at least that it is perpetrating an awful deed. Life should not be shattered by machinery. And yet this is the very symbol of our destiny. Ah, my friend, a machine cannot discriminate, it is not responsible, it shudders at noth­ing, it destroys indifferently everything that is brought to it, the noble and the pure as well as the most criminal. Truly, the machine is a worthy tool of chaos. Perhaps it is the very crown of chaos, a crown worn by the enthusiasm of the soulless mob that knows no divine creation but only satanic destruction. I stood in the midst of the jeering crowd. Never have I felt the hope­lessness of our position as desperately as then. You know that I am not tall. Chaos surged above me. I was lost in it. I actually www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 20 could not see what happened. I could only hear. All my powers of perception centered in the sense of hearing and increased it incredibly. The Carmelites arrived singing at the Place de la Revolution, just as Marie de l’Incarnation had expected. Their psalms could be heard from afar and penetrated the screams of the populace with strange clarity, or did the howls of the cruel audience cease at the sight of the victims? I could clearly distinguish the last words of the Salve Regina (this, you know, is sung at the deathbed of a nun) and soon afterwards the first line of the Veni Creator. There was something light and lovely in their singing, something tender and yet strong and calm. Never would I have thought that such a song could leave the lips of those condemned to death. I had been deeply disturbed. But when I heard this singing I grew quiet. Creator spiritus, Creator spiritus, I seemed to hear these two words again and again. They seemed to cast anchor within me. And the song flowed on full and clear. To judge by the sound, the cart must have been moving very slowly. Probably the crowd blocked the way. I had the feeling that they were still far from the square. For this singing effaced all sense of time, it effaced space and the bloody Place de la Revolution. It effaced the guillotine and Creator spiritus, Creator spiritus! It effaced even chaos. All at once I had the sensation of being among human creatures again. And at the same moment some­one seemed to whisper into my ear: “France is not only drinking the blood of its children, it is spilling blood for them too, its purest and noblest blood.” I started. There was absolute silence on the Place de la Revolution. (My friend, even at the execution of the King there had not been such utter stillness.) The song seemed lower too. Probably the cart had gone on, perhaps it had already reached its goal. My heart began to beat. And I became aware that a very high voice was lacking in the chorus–a moment later another. I had thought that the execution had not even begun and in reality it was almost over. Now only two voices sustained the song. For a moment they floated like a shining rainbow over the Place de la Revolution. Then the one side was extinguished. Only the other continued to glow. But already the faded shimmer of the first was taken up by a second, a thin frail childish voice. I had the illusion that it was not coming from the heights of the scaffold but from the thick of the crowd, somewhere–just as if the crowd were making a response. (Lovely illusion!) At the same moment the crowded lines were swayed by a violent up­heaval. Right in front of me (just as on that September night) I saw an empty gap: I saw, and I saw exactly as on that night, Blanche de la Force in the seething mass of those dreadful women. Her small pinched face stood out from its surroundings and discarded those surroundings like a wrap or a shawl. I recognized the face in every feature and yet I did not recognize it. It was quite without THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org fear. She was singing! With her small, weak, childish voice she sang without a tremor, exultingly as a bird! All alone across the great terrible square she sang the Veni Creator of her Sisters to the very end. Deo Patri sit gloria, Et Filio, qui a mortuis Surrexit ac Paraclito In saeculorum saecula. Distinctly I heard the profession of faith to the Trinity. The amen I did not hear. (You know that those furious women fell upon Blanche at once.) And now, my friend, the rainbow over the Place de la Revolu­tion had died away. And yet I had the feeling that the Revolution was over. (As a matter of fact the Reign of Terror collapsed ten days later.) When I entered the singer’s house in company with the Alsatian Abbé a little girl I did not know was sitting on the steps. She came up to us confidingly and produced a small bundle she was carrying under her apron. She handed it to the priest: it was le petit Roi de Gloire . The child had found Him in the street covered with mud. Someone in some blasphemous procession must have thrown the little figure away. Together we went to Marie de l’Incarnation. She looked like a Mater Dolorosa. The priest took her hand. “Come, Marie of the Incarnation,” he said. In his native language the significance of her name became more evident. Or was he speaking with special emphasis? He drew her over to the cabinet where Rose Ducor had concealed a little shrine of the Madonna, opened it and laid down le petit Roi de Gloire. Then he began to pray. He prayed the Regina Coeli Laetare, the Easter greeting to the Mother of God. I prayed too. In that hour I was like a child who drops through all the layers of being to the very foundation of all things which is a foun­dation everlasting because it belongs to God–And now, my friend, it is your turn to speak! In your warm eyes I seem to see two tears. They are falling on your grave hands. Your lips are closed, I might almost say, folded. You are moved but you are disquieted and I know why. You expected the victory of a heroine and you saw a miracle in one so weak! But is it not this that kindles exceeding hope? The human element is not enough, not even when it is “admirably human,” as we said so en­thusiastically before the Revolution. (Ah, my friend, fundamentally this whole epoch teaches us only what we have already learned from poor little Blanche.) No, the purely human is not enough. It is not even enough to offer as a sacrifice. My friend, up to now the bond that ex­isted between us included a union of ideas. Can you endure the change in your friend? Well–it is your turn! Taken from A Treasury of Catholic Reading (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudary, 1959). Gertrud von Le Fort (1876-1971) was a German writer of novels, poems, and essays. She came from a Protestant background, but converted to Catholicism in 1926. Traditional Religious Orders 21 Cooperators of Christ the King Caussade, France T St. Ignatius of Loyola receives the Spiritual Exercises from the Blessed Virgin Mary. he Cooperators of Christ the King affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X is not really a new congregation, but rather a new branch of the Parish Cooperators of Christ the King, which was founded by Fr. Francis de Paule Vallet in 1928 in Spain. A Jesuit, Fr. Vallet had a charism for preaching the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, and the Company of Jesus had appointed him director of the Retreat Center of Manresa in Catalonia, Spain. (Manresa is the place where St. Ignatius received in 1522, by an inspiration of the Blessed Virgin, the plan of the retreat that was to raise a barrier against Luther’s private interpretation and Protestantism.) 22 From 1923 to 1927, Fr. Vallet with other Jesuits preached the Spiritual Exercises throughout Catalonia. He methodically organized the recruitment and perseverance of retreatants, and to this end founded the work of Parish Exercises. His work could be schematized by the words: men, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, the parish. In four years, in an atmosphere of sustained enthusiasm, more than 12,000 men were formed by the Ignatian Exercises. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), nearly 5,000 of these 12,000 men were martyred by the Reds. Fr. Marziac (circled) with retreatants. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Exercises Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre invited two preachers of the Cooperators of Christ the King to Dakar to preach the exercises while he was Archbishop there. Others copied his action in the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, with remarkable success. When he was Archbishop at Tulle upon his return to France, he recommended them to his faithful in his pastoral letters. As founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, he incorporated into the Statutes a paragraph on the continuation of the spiritual formation of seminarians and priests. He prescribed: “They will also love the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, highly recommended by the Popes, and which will be one day for them a powerful tool of their ministry.” Fr. Ludovico-Marie Barielle, a former member of the Parish Cooperators of Christ the King, joined Archbishop Lefebvre at Ecône and helped him in the task of training his seminarians and priests in the preaching of the Spiritual Exercises. Beginnings of the New Congregation of the Cooperators of Christ the King Encouraged by Fr. Franz Schmidberger during his tenure as Superior General of the SSPX, Fr. The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org Fr. Vallet (circled) with retreatants after preaching an Ignatian Retreat in 1938. Jean-Jacques Marziac founded a new branch of the Parish Cooperators of Christ the King. Its constitutions were canonically approved by the Most Reverend Bernard Tissier de Mallerais on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, June 15, 2007. His Excellency Bishop de Galarreta erected it as a “pious union” on the Feast of Christ the King, Sunday, October 28, 2007. Taking Root: Eleven Years of Ministry It was on July 25, 1996, the Feast of St. James, Patron of Spain, on the tomb of Fr. Vallet at Pozuello, near Madrid, that Fr. Marziac began to draft the Constitutions of this new branch of Cooperators of Christ the King. The new congregation settled in St. Joseph’s House, at Caussade, France, (near Montauban, 50 miles north of Toulouse and 380 miles south of Paris). Since then, Fr. Marziac has preached 266 retreats with a total of 2,517 priests, seminarians, and gentlemen following the exercises. A good number of conversions and religious vocations resulted–Deo gratias. 23 A Call to Generous Vocations Fr. Marziac turned 84 on July 2, 2008. He is not immortal. His fledgling congregation presently comprises one priest, two Brothers, and five Cooperatrices. Waiting for the congregation to get off the ground in the months ahead, for he is presently assisted very generously in his ministry by priests of the SSPX, fresh troops to take up the relay are needed. Fr. Marziac invites every unmarried, pious young man, in particular the docile and generous, who is attentively reading these lines to ask himself, like St. Paul: “Lord, what would You have me to do?” These young people absolutely must not ignore the immense battle underway: the survival of Christian civilization, nor these words of Pope Pius XII: The exercises of St. Ignatius will always be one of the most effective means for the spiritual regeneration of the world and its right ordering, but on condition that they continue to be genuinely Ignatian. Likewise, these words of his predecessor on the See of Peter: St. Ignatius learned from the Mother of God herself to fight the combats of the Lord. It was as if from her hands that he received this most excellent code, which is the name we can give it in all truth, of which every good soldier of Jesus Christ must make use. Let him who has understood this, take himself in hand and come... The same appeal is addressed to generous girls, because Sister Cooperatrices are needed for running the households of the retreat centers: office, sacristy, laundry, kitchen, etc. Time passes, and thousands of souls are being lost. The Exercises of St. Ignatius would be their salvation! For information: Reverend Father Jean-Jacques Marziac St. Joseph’s House Le Treilhou 82300 Caussade France Telephone: [33] (5) 63.93.00.88 Fax: [33] (5) 63.93.94.03 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 24 BooK ReVieW TITLE: Motherhood and Family AUTHOR: Various Women PUBLISHER: Angelus Press REVIEWER: Mrs. Colleen Drippé SUMMARY: Sixteen essays from Integrity, the famous American Catholic journal from the 1940’s and ’50’s. As a compliment to Volume Three, which focused on topics particularly relevant to fathers and men, this volume is primarily for mothers and women. For quite a few years now, Angelus Press has been bringing forth one edifying book after another of both new and reprinted material. For a number of reasons, this current project–reprinting themed collections of articles from Integrity Magazine–is one of their most enriching contributions to our Catholic culture, a very happy choice, and especially appropriate to our own present situation. Integrity was the inspiration of cartoonist and writer Ed Willock, who himself wrote many of the pieces reprinted in the series, including a couple of those selected for Angelus Press’s newest offering, Volume 4, Motherhood and Family. Like Volume 3, Fatherhood and Family, the Motherhood book contains a practical and inspiring collection of material, much of it written by Mrs. Mary Reed Newland, whose name should be familiar to most readers and whose books on the education of Catholic children are still in print. With the exception of Mr. Willock, the contributors to this volume are all ladies, some married, some not, one of them a Sister. They all The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org share in common a great deal of practical sense combined with a timeless vision of woman’s place in the home and in the community, strengthening the very foundations of Christendom. The reign of Christ the King, beginning in Christian families with the small, steady light of faith and hope, grows and grows until it must burst forth (and often does) into the community, setting souls and institutions afire. That is the hope and purpose of this book and of the others in the series–to advance the social reign of Christ. Considering that these articles were written over half a century ago, mostly during the middle of the 20th century, they speak to us now with remarkable relevance. The problems, follies, temptations, and heartrending impasses discussed are, if you change the exteriors a bit, no different from many of the difficulties today’s wives and mothers must face. And the solution is the same–eternal in fact. Over and over, the reader is led back to the teachings of the Church, the guidance of Our Lady, the pure love of Christ. 25 In the Fatherhood book (equally readable for both men and women), the emphasis was on building up Christendom, family by family. Motherhood and Family, is the ladies’ step-by-step guide to help make sure this happens, to do their part and to fulfill–to celebrate woman’s vocation. Christian civilization may not have been built by women, but women, and specifically one particular Woman, certainly inspired it. There can be no Christendom without Christian homes–without mothers and fathers and children and all the daily efforts that go into making saints. And there can be no Christian homes that are not patterned on the home at Nazareth. As might be expected, then, in a book about laying foundations, there are quite a few articles on raising and teaching children. We start off with Miss Houselander’s “Children and Creative Activity” and Mrs. Newland’s “Children and the Imitation of Mary” and go on to cover such subjects as recreation and prayer, sacrifice and sainthood, and finally the art of knowing when to let go. There is one very good essay debunking worldly notions of love and romance for your growing girls and another on how to get out of the way when God directs your child to that hard high road of sanctity through suffering and danger of the sort only God can ordain. Our enemy the world, personified in the Protestant and pagan culture that surrounds us, slips quietly into our homes, wounding parents and children alike by teaching us and them to flee the cross. Here are the weapons, the watchwords; we need to repel these insidious attacks and to hold onto common sense and courage in about equal proportions. Then come two essays on issues that were quite novel to the 1950’s reader: homebirth and breastfeeding. While modern readers need no persuasions or apologies with regard to the health and financial benefits of these, we may not have also considered the many spiritual goods that come from doing things the natural way. Here are the words of yesterday’s mothers, both their stories and their encouragement. It seems hard to believe that they had to fight both the medical establishment and their own culture for these rights we take for granted, but it was so. You will be amazed at some of the accounts these woman give of their experiences. The second half of Motherhood and Family focuses more specifically on marriage, spirituality for single women, and a look at the future–that’s us. When you read about the effects of paganism on women, the pressures and defeminization of the career girl, you have a fair picture of woman’s place in the world today. By God’s mercy, the actual state of modern culture in all its vileness was beyond the imagination of these good ladies, and so a few of the nastier things were left out. Not all, you understand– our mothers and grandmothers weren’t stupid, but they concentrated more on positive actions where they could. Their idea was and is to build and secure the good, to inspire their readers to do likewise, and to let the evil slither quietly back to its infernal source. Definitely this latter half is the hard-hitting part of the book. In “Marriage and Spirituality,” Mrs. Newland shows us what marriage is not when we meet the perfect couple “charming, devoted, beautifully adjusted,” held up as an example to a young lady who fears to enter the married state. When economic woes strike, things come apart quickly and we learn that they were not even married in the first place. This is, alas, a scenario more familiar and, God help us, less shocking today than it was in the 1950’s, but the message is the same. Marriage is a sacrament, a spiritual union. The glossy bits may come first, but if the intention is marriage then something stronger than mere mating will soon be forged. Good will and the imagination to recognize holiness, God’s hand in the mundane and not particularly noble events of everyday are the real stuff of spiritual growth. And the graces of the sacrament are as bountiful as God can make them. All we have to do is use what He gives us. In case we don’t see the parallels between marriage and the consecrated religious life, Mrs. Newland goes right down the list: mortification, silence, prayer, penance, and poverty. Marriage has them all, as she is very careful to show us, using plenty of concrete examples. This is one of the finest and most encouraging essays in the book. “He Married an Angel,” written under a pseudonym (is that the pen of Mr. Willock?) discusses another situation that often comes up in a Catholic marriage–the efforts of a more “spiritual” wife to reform her husband. Nothing can be more discouraging to a woman than her failure to make over some poor man according to her own ideas of (feminine) holiness. And nothing can be more discouraging to a husband than his wife’s officious and unrelenting piety. A humorless “saint,” whether it be the husband or the wife, can do a lot to sour religion for the whole family. This is when prayer comes in–prayer and practical charity (as opposed to the tight-lipped sighing kind that is no charity at all). This one is going to hit a lot of us wives where it hurts–right in the middle of the truth. Then comes Mr. Willock on poverty. He was, as father of a large family, an expert on that subject. A quick discussion of the types of voluntary poverty clears up a popular misconception–that radical lilies-of-the-field poverty is the only sort you can actually choose. That otherwise, you just ignore the issue or offer it up if Lady Poverty knocks on your own door. But Mr. Willock doesn’t leave things there. He distinguishes between the poverty of St. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 26 Francis which, as a means to holiness, could only be the choice of an individual, and the poverty of the Cistercians. The latter is the poverty of an institution–and the family is an institution. Poverty remains a necessary part of the “rule,” but you also have to keep the institution going. The author goes on to speak of specific choices, obligations, and creative ways to deal with both poverty and that rarer problem (especially in Catholic families) of abundance. He also discusses the family’s responsibility for others in the community, making it clear that we need to bear one another’s burdens in the realm of financial as well as in spiritual matters. This article is followed by another of Mr. Willock’s pieces, this time on marital fidelity and how to teach it and ensure it. The twin problems of unfaithfulness and divorce are as prevalent, if not more so now, than they ever were, but the solutions have not changed. There are three in a marriage–a man, a woman–and the God Who made them. Temptations come when we forget this fundamental truth. Then Mrs. Newland returns with a discussion of mothers-in-law and family interference in general. Such things still occur in our modern communities, though not perhaps as frequently as they did in days before the greater mobility and fragmentation of extended families. More essays reiterate the necessity for spirituality in marriage and cover other subjects such as how vocations to the single life have been tarnished by the Protestant revolt, and the need on the part of unmarried women to serve the Church, the family, and the community. To complete the collection, a Mrs. Malley has written an essay, “The Latter Day” on the last days of the married vocation, the end of active motherhood and the beginning and duration of old age. Again, human beings remaining unchanged, there are useful things said, especially about personal holiness and preparing for eternity. My Life with Thomas Aquinas Vol.1, the INTEGRITY series With such a guide for women–a proper companion book to Volume 3 in the Integrity series–we are left wondering what if anything was accomplished by the original publication of these essays. Did the renewal of Christendom come forth from families ripe with holiness? Were vocations as plentiful as stars in the sky, the births of Catholic children even more so? Are we living in a world that now recognizes Our Lord as King? I don’t think so. Integrity Magazine brought forth plenty of good fruit in its day. Souls were undoubtedly saved, converts made, vocations fostered, children raised up to serve God. But fruitful spiritual movements are no new thing in history. First the Holy Ghost inspires someone with a compelling idea, a crusade results and before you know it, Jerusalem is in Christian hands. Then come the trials, the shadows, the loss of vigor and the slow, discouraging retreat. This time, the shadow came from the Second Vatican Council–a sort of silver lining with a cloud inside. To be sure, the evil must have begun earlier with the very disorders Integrity was meant to combat, but the great betrayal of the faithful that came out of the Council could not but put finis to any serious efforts to renew Catholic life. The dream driveled off into sentiment, into ecumenism, into sloppy heresy. So what about that dream? What about these books–the series of Integrity reprints? What became of those precious jewels, bought with so much effort and suffering? Who takes up the standard now for the kingship of Christ in modern society? Who leads the crusaders? God has not abandoned us. The Society of Saint Pius X, already spread, to quote Tolkein, “like butter over too much bread” is, through the Angelus Press, restoring another lost treasure. Who takes up the standard now? Well just reach out your hands. All the books in the Integrity reprint series are worth buying, worth reading, worth passing on. But don’t just read them–do them! Raising Your Children Vol.2, the INTEGRITY series Carol Robinson How to apply St. Thomas’s teachings to modern society–and why we must do so if we are to have any hope of leaving this world with our souls intact. Not an esoteric philosophical treatise, this book is eminently practical, entertaining, engaging, and highly rewarding. Confusion prevails about the job of bringing up children. l Teaching Children to Pray l Purity and the Young Child l Creative Activity l The Dating System l Crisis of Faith in Youth l The Vocation of Parents l Marriage for Keeps l and much more. 398pp. Softcover. STK# 4094✱ $12.95 256pp. Softcover. STK# 6598✱ $11.95 Fatherhood and Family Vol.3, the INTEGRITY series Fathers are essential for a Catholic America.The question is, “What do fathers do?” l Men, Mary, and Manliness l The Family Has Lost Its Head l Economics of the Catholic Family l Afraid to Marry? l Glorifying the Daily Grind l The Heroism of the Big Family l Bringing the Church into Work l Forward to the Land. 200pp. Softcover. STK# 6721✱ $11.95 The INTEGRITY Series The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org Motherhood and Family 27 pp.25-36 Love-Education of Girls m r . M a r i o n M i t c h e l l S t a n c i o f f This essay concerns one of the most delicate topics. Parents should read this with much prayer and consideration, especially as the modern world has influenced this question to the greatest degree. “From my own errors I have plucked one fruit; that is measureless pity...for adolescents. For in our own time their education is so little cared for that young people seem to have no greater enemies than their own parents and teachers. These are the people who in a hundred miserable ways deprave generous youths. Not only do they lead them away from piety and study, but they teach them to live in pride and luxury and lasciviousness. Open, Lord, the eyes, not only of these blind parents and teachers, but of the stupid ones also!...” St. Peter Canisius wrote these ardent words of accusation in the sixteenth century. They are even more applicable today to the great majority of persons responsible for the upbringing of children. The word “upbringing” is, however, a misnomer for the process to which our young are subjected. They are not brought up so much as brought low, not assisted in reaching their potential, but abetted rather in their own undoing. Education has increased in volume as it has decreased in quality. Our children are being consciously educated in their cradles; their very toys are educational, with an almost doctoral gravity. What is the purpose of all this education? At what do parents and teachers aim? Few would dare maintain, in a non-Christian or only nominally Christian society like ours, that children are being educated toward membership in the kingdom of heaven. There survives as yet enough humanitarian liberalism for many people to believe that children are being educated for useful membership in society. How unsubstantiated is this belief anyone knows who has watched the rise of youthful delinquency and the flood of unhappy marriages. If the large majority of parents, however, were to analyze their motives, they would have to acknowledge—what some openly admit—that they are educating their children to get on in the world. The gospel of success, the virtue of ambition, a knowledge of practical values, consciously or unconsciously form the basis of most modern education. “What does the world offer? Only gratification of corrupt nature, gratification of the eye, the empty pomp of living.” And the education of Catholic children which should be unshakeably set against “these things that take their being from the world, not from the Father” is deeply corrupted by them. For what must be said of parents and teachers in general must—as were the words of Peter Canisius—be said of Catholic parents and teachers in particular. They are by far the more seriously to blame, for “they have no cloak of ignorance to cover their sins” of omission and commission. This is true especially of those in the wealthier layers of society, for they seek the most earnestly to conform with the standards of the world. In the effort to end for their children the rebuffs and disabilities which a low financial status had in this country so long imposed on them, most of our enriched Catholics www.angeluspress.org The aNgelus • February 2009 28 Motherhood and Family dress their children as grotesquely, feed them as foolishly, entertain them as emptily, and altogether educate them as fashionably as their non-Catholic neighbors. Soon they are indeed as indistinguishable from these as their fond parents could desire; fond parents who forget how little this protective coloring will serve to protect them in the ultimate day. Let us examine some of the steps leading to this lamentable end. For present purposes I shall study but one aspect of education, the love-education of girls, not only because it is important but because laboratory conditions make it easy. In the playpen parents and friends suggest the “boy-meets-girl” situation. At kindergarten mothers laughingly refer to every little boy as a potential “boy friend.” The infant does not see the joke but hears the emphasis and begins to divide her playmates according to sex rather than to affinity. Modern psychologists have furnished solid evidence of what the old ascetics taught, that the innocence of childhood is a figment of forgetful minds. Bossuet in his treatise on concupiscence and Freud in his analysis of child-sexuality recognize this equally, and, though the hope of the one is founded in grace and the optimism of the other in psychoanalysis, both see the necessity to redress nature by education. What parents are doing, however, is not only to follow nature’s bent, no matter how crooked, but to make smooth her paths, removing every obstacle upon her way. In their mental confusion they talk of Freud but believe in Rousseau. They people the world with complexes and fixations, with traumas and inhibitions, yet they treat their children as noble savages who can think no wrong. So the babies are given some physical training, a little intellectual instruction, and left with no moral direction at all. Meanwhile our little girl, in preparation for her diversified future as (1) a Popular Girl and (2) an American Wife and Mother, is given to understand that the universe revolves around herself. She is trained to keep her hair curled and wear frills around her bare midriff. (These were designed for her elders in the movies, with the same purpose as the cutlet-frills of former days, to make the morsel they surround appear more toothsome and the whole easier to handle.) When, by dressing her like a diminutive follies girl she has been given the idea that she should act like one, she naturally tries The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org her best to do so. She begins to imitate the women she sees photographed everywhere or reads of in magazines. Their smiles are so radiant, their lives so glowingly told, that obviously they must possess the secret of happiness. This, she soon finds, from every ad, is an open secret and its name is love; a special love that has clearly nothing to do with what the people in her orbit seem to experience but for which all the older girls are searching. She longs to discover this wonderful thing, attainable, curiously enough, only by an elaborate process which includes the conscientious use of various makeups, perfumes, garments, toothpastes and deodorants. She no longer enjoys her childhood but has a single-minded ambition to leave it behind as quickly as may be. Her greatest suffering is to be held back from entering the enchanted land of the grownups, where alone, she has read, love is to be found. Meanwhile she has been told at school some interesting but remote facts about the sexual ways of bees and birds which appear to have no relation to her own life. She probably has heard a few equally unrelated facts and legends about human sexuality from one of her contemporaries. Her mother has perhaps given her some information regarding the birth of babies which the child tucks away for reference in that unreal other world: her distant future. All this has nothing to do with her present life which flows on in its undirected search for the much more convincing and immediate thing called love. All the things she has been told, all this physiological information, is not much use to her, for it is still outside the realm of her experience. The one thing that is not outside her scope is love in its spiritual aspect, and that is the one thing she does not hear about. She is told nothing of the Cause of love: “He Who first created love,” and so drifts on always further from her aim. She wishes, therefore, to grow up and tries to do so by imitating not so much the flesh and blood grownups around her, but the paper ones who are around her just as much. She sees only the pleasures of being adult, and none of the pains and obligations and responsibilities because most of the adults behave as if they had none. Since full-grown people dress and act like adolescents why should children not do so? Some parents have misgivings and try to forbid this or that aping of their ways, but soon give up when they find their children secretly moping or openly rebellious. The papers some weeks ago 29 published an interview with the wife of a political personage. She explained that her eleven-­year-old daughter was permitted no grown-up privilege until she could show that a majority of her classmates enjoyed it. She had thus conquered the right to paint her nails and was looking for­ward to the day when she could use lipstick. The well-meaning parents’ desire for their child’s happiness had evidently kept them from following this principle to its logical and bitter end. If the majority creates rightness and if most people eat human flesh, then it’s fine to be cannibals. This majority-mania is a caricature of democratic theory and, if followed far enough, may extinguish our liberty. “But we don’t want our child to be different,” parents will cry. “We want her to be happy. Being different hurts...” What they are really doing is not only preventing her from being hurt but from being happy by training her to exist on a level where she will feel as little as she possibly can. They do not want her to be capable of loving deeply or of making sacrifices, but they want her to be loved deeply and able to induce the sacrifices of others. In a word, they want her to be “popular.” Popularity is the criterion by which everything is to be judged, the end to which everything tends, and for which real sacrifices are often made. To be popular the child must not be different, she must not be choosy about her friends, she must be ready always to join them in their “fun.” One of the amusements the parents often suggest is kissing games. A very devout and welleducated Catholic mother of seven assured me once that kissing games are “good fun.” If the twelveyear-old finds no pleasure in a kiss there is no point in kissing. If she finds pleasure in it, no precedent could be more dangerous. I have seen charming, cultured women at dances for their fourteen-yearold children turn off the lights and heard them squeal when the tactless father switched them on, “Poor dears, let them have fun a little longer.” Many parents think all this quite useful training for the business of dating so soon to begin. These games and parties help to overcome the natural distaste of the young for the caresses of strangers. They help in breaking down the instinctive desire to be inviolate, a desire as deep as its opposite, if not eventually as powerful. The psychology of yesteryear­—which still holds the popular field—erred in believing chastity to be unnatural. Chastity is the natural atmosphere of human love, the essential element in which love lives, its necessary condition. Unchastity is unnatural for it injures sensibility (“petrifies the feeling,” as Burns admitted) and thus reduces the chances for happy love. But parents whose conception of love is radically vitiated can only see their child’s happiness in conforming with social usage. They have kept a single standard in the confusion of these years: that physical virginity is desirable for their daughters. Short of that they either close their eyes, hoping for the least possible promiscuity, or else cheerfully permit it as the na­tural right of youth. There has grown up as strong a convention of promiscuity as there formerly was a convention of chastity. Society urges what it once forbade; and urges it for no fruitful purpose but as an end in itself. This preoccupation of our society with sexual things may be a symptom of infantilism or a sign of senility, but it is a certain indication of impotence. All things are approached from a single angle. Advertising is one long aphro­disiac designed to end in an orgasm of buying. Not conception but consumption is the fruit of our caresses. Thus with minds conditioned by conversation since infancy and bodies conditioned before puberty by haphazard contacts, the children are prepared for the indiscriminate intimacies of the dat­ing period. The sterility of this form of sexual experimentation has been pointed out by sociologists, who have proved that dating does not lead to mating. Dating is, as we have said, a sport rather than a part of courtship. It is more often, in the girls’ case, a product of vanity than of sensuality, though it eventually comes to include the latter. A Catholic girl of my acquaintance tells how she and a friend at the age of thirteen or fourteen, went out on their first date with two fellow students from the parish school. When the moment for serious kissing drew near the girls got panicky and blurted out as an excuse that they were both going to become nuns. They were “dropped cold” then and there, and for months, she says, not a single boy spoke to them. Terrified by this ostracism they determined to re-enter the normal school world again, and only succeeded by doing more than they had in the first instance avoided. A Catholic psychiatrist tells me that she was consulted by one of her relatives who with evident anxiety confided that her daughter was not a www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 30 Motherhood and Family “success,” that she had once been asked down to a nationally popular dance and had never been asked again, while all her cousins were regularly invited. The psychiatrist, feeling that this was not a “case,” made tactful inquiries of the girl’s friends and drew the following reply: “Oh, poor D—? She just hates being pawed. She can’t help it. But of course the boys think she’s a lesbian and so they don’t ask her out.” These cases are not so very exceptional. Often the necessary routine of necking is secretly distasteful to one or both parties, but such is the force of convention that they submit to it smilingly. She cannot offend him who pays (often at a great sacrifice) for her dinner by withholding what he has been taught to expect; he cannot slight her by failing to demand what she has learned to give. The formality which rules each phase of these encounters, from the first flower to the last farewell, is so rigid that beside it Mrs. Post’s etiquette appears bohemian. The strict pairing off at young people’s meetings, the unwritten game laws so sportingly observed with regard to each other’s dates, prevent any general exchange of ideas, any true conversation, let alone any comradeship from developing between those who are not dates. And between the dates themselves there is the convention of a spontaneity so artificial that true expression of feeling is banished, and it is a great wonder that genuine love sometimes comes to life in spite of all. Social convention, the desire for popularity, the fear of being different, do not succeed, however, in altogether blocking the Catholic girl’s horizon. The religious instruction she has not been able to avoid has opened some chinks through which misgivings creep in. If she is at college she will find these doubts about the rightness of playing with the power and the privileges of love reinforced by some of the more intelligent and outspoken nuns. A very holy nun said to me once, emphatically tossing her veiled head, “Why, we here in our cloisters know more about love, and I mean human love, than most of these girls who play at it for years and never learn a thing about it, nor to value its work.” The Catholic college girl will find plenty of teachers who believe that “their” girls would never do anything wrong. If pressed, they would agree that perhaps a goodnight peck-on-the-cheek was The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org exchanged at the door, but no more, and they do not seem to see the superfluity of that. They listen sympathetically to the girls’ descriptions of their dates and patiently admire the dresses they will wear to their next meetings. These painstaking souls no doubt believe that this is a part of being “all things unto all men.” The girl will find others who, instead of teaching a healthy contempt for the ways of the world, a cheerful independence of outside opinion, and the unconventionality which is the heritage of the saints, never tire of repeating: “Don’t be different. Try to adapt yourself. Do like the others in your class.” These women would be deeply shocked if they knew to what activities their lessons in conformism were being applied by their preconditioned pupils. If the college girl finds most parents and teachers closing their eyes to her problems, she finds other adults offering tacit complicity. One girl (known at her non-Catholic college as “the Icebox” because she does not kiss) mentioned to the woman doctor during a routine medical examination that she was having trouble with her gums, and received this reply: “How many boy friends did you kiss last week? One of them must have had a gum disease...” Another girl asked the fashionable doctor who was giving her shots for anemia whether the latter might be causing delay in menstruation. Without so much as an examination the doctor assured her there could be only one cause (sic) pregnancy, and added that although he did not approve of the ways of college girls, she must not hesitate to consult him, etc. This taking unchastity for granted gradually breaks down the resistance of the mind and accustoms it to accept any impurity. Confessors in colleges are to be pitied. How far to go in the condemnation of evil without risking the loss of influence by excessive severity is their painful problem. Their every reluctant concession is brandished as a permission. Confessors have been known to grow popular overnight thanks to a phrase capable of “wide” interpretation. There are clerics who pride themselves on “frankly facing the situation,” and they are much in demand as lecturers. A particularly popular one has tried to delimit the dangers of petting by dividing the process into a system of “zones,” some of which are dangerous, he warns, and must not be entered until 31 shortly before marriage. His elaborate instructions, given in all good faith before the tabernacle of the Lord, are thirstily lis­tened to by girls seeking authority for their actions. They leave, triumphant topographers of sin, who know just to what point they may go, and refuse to realize that unless they wish to go beyond they had better not enter these zones at all. If we agree—and as Catholics we must agree— that promis­cuous caressing is an inordinate use of a God-given faculty, then we cannot “let it go.” We are under the obligation to fight it. Yet how can we hope to do so successfully at this eleventh hour? We clearly cannot “fight it.” It is the children themselves who must fight this battle. The parents and teachers who were their accessories or their accomplices must become their new allies. Let us look at the means. In chastity as in all things education must be positive. We cannot expect children to value something they have never heard of. We dare not mention chastity, but dare to let them grow up unchaste. We must encourage the sense of inviolability that the Creator has put in them, cultivate in them a vivid knowledge that they belong body and soul not to Tom, Dick and Harry but to Him. In their friendships they must learn to keep true charity. Al­though every soul is to be loved “even as ourselves,” yet they will and should find themselves loving some better than others, playing or talking more happily with them, not for any external reason of sex or wealth or beauty but because of an inner compatibility given them by God. If there were more discriminating and articu­late friendships there would be fewer confused and unhappy marriages. We have found that in many cases it is not their senses which lead girls into promiscuity, but their vanity. From earliest child­hood we should have been helping our children to overcome this evidence of human failings. If they were trained in simplicity, taught to deflate their own vanity, girls would not go on dates as if they were collecting scalps. They would want to go out alone only with tried and trusted friends. Their common interests would make conversation so abundant that no kissing would be needed as a substitute. In most cases, however, we will find that sensuality does play a part and a very important one, in these encounters. This is only natural since God gave us our senses. Since He gave them to us for definite purposes, and since they are by their very nature more immediately compelling than our reason, not only must we en­lighten children’s minds as to their purpose, but it is normally prudent to avoid exciting their senses and to teach them to avoid doing so. All this is needful and all this is nothing. For we cannot overcome passion with reason. We can only overcome passion with a stronger passion. We sometimes see an intellectual pas­sion overcome sensuality with an arid austerity of its own. But the only sound conquest of an essentially fruitful passion such as physical love is by one yet more fecund. Otherwise there is a sense of frustrated life, a search for being, impossible to fill. There is only one love large enough to fill that need. We must awaken in children the fire of the love of God. Not a vague, sentimental tenderness for “Jesus mild,” but the “love which is as strong as death.” As Fr. François Charmot says, “Let us tell children from the outset that the source of human love is in God, as is the source of all love. Let us tell them early by example as well as by word that all love must be ordered to divine ends. We hear talk of ‘sublimating love.’ To sublimate is to draw purity from impurity. We have in the corporal phenomena of love a part only, though indeed a true one, of the elements which compose the total synthesis which is love. In it are contained elements of a spiritual order, even before any sublimation is attempted....Love has been made in the image and likeness of the Holy Spirit.” We will therefore help children to acquire chastity and charity and humility and simple prudence. We will teach them the Beginning and End of love, and the human love which is only a part of the whole, and explain to them its ordered relation. But chiefly we will try with the grace of God to awaken in them the flame of His love, which will show them all these things better than we can do and which alone can save them in the heat of temptation. “The only hope, or else despair, lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—to be redeemed from fire by fire.” And we can only hope to make them believe us when we tell them this if we ourselves are truly changed, ready to be born again. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 Christendom NEWS 32 Angelus Press Edition In Saint-Malo, on this past August 15, during the sermon he gave on the occasion of the Procession to fulfill the vow of King Louis XIII, Bishop Bernard Fellay invited the faithful to read and study a Roman document published in 1950: I encourage you very much to re-read Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis, concerning modern errors. It is the last great condemnation of the errors in the Church. It has some similarity with St. Pius X’s Pascendi, which condemned Modernism. In this sermon, following in the footsteps of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X denounced the intrusion of a foreign body inside the Church: We see this foreign body which spreads something else than the Catholic Church inside the very Church. It wants to be friends with all the religions, claims that you can be saved in any religion, and that the Holy Ghost uses them all as means of salvation. All this is false. It never has been the teaching of the Church! Today we have a Church which is promoting what was condemned less than fifty years ago. And we see that it all happened during the Second Vatican The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org Council. This Council did not so much invent novelties as give its approval to and legalize what was condemned as erroneous ten years earlier. Indeed, when we read Humani Generis, we can observe that what was said in the document emanating from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on July 2007, Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church, is singularly drifting away from the teaching of Pope Pius XII who had written: Some say they are not bound by the doctrine explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. (Cf. Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943). Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. The recent Roman Note which claimed to bring an answer to the difficulties raised by the affirmation of the Second Vatican Council according to which “the Church of Christ subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church” merely reiterated an attempt at conciliation already proposed in the Constitution Lumen Gentium (I, 8). It said it plainly, while acknowledging its thoroughly paradoxical character: The Second Vatican Council used the phrase “subsistit in” in order to try to harmonize two doctrinal affirmations: on the one hand, that despite all the divisions between Christians, the Church of Christ continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand that 33 numerous elements of sanctification and truth do exist without the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church whether in the particular Churches or in the ecclesial Communities that are not fully in communion with the Catholic Church. For this reason, the same Decree of Vatican II on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, introduced the term fullness (unitatis/catholicitatis) specifically to help better understand this somewhat paradoxical situation. Humani Generis clearly stated: “The Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing.” Nowadays, the document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith paradoxically says that there “is full identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church.” Yet, the separated Churches, without being in full communion are not “by any means ‘deprived of significance and importance,’” because they possess “many elements of sanctification and of truth.” We note that it is truly in the name of ecumenism that the second sentence is placed side by side with the traditional definition of the Church. Now, Pope Pius XII stated: Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Archbishop Lefebvre in They Have Uncrowned Him wrote explicitly: The Council took pleasure in exalting the salvific values, or the values–period–of the other religions. Speaking of the non-Catholic Christian religions, Vatican II teaches that “Although we believe them to be victims of deficiencies, they are not in any way devoid of meaning and of value in the mystery of salvation.” This is a heresy! The only means of salvation is the Catholic Church. Insofar as they are separated from the unity of the true faith, the Protestant communions cannot be used by the Holy Ghost. He can act only directly on the souls or make use of the means (for example, baptism) which, in themselves, do not bear any indication of separation. One can be saved in Protestantism, but not by Protestantism. If, answering Bishop Fellay’s invitation, we continue with our reading of Humani Generis, we can only see how the analysis made by Pope Pius XII is still relevant now. Thus the Pope, like St. Pius X, did not hesitate to denounce an enterprise of subversion within the Church, all the more pernicious because it hid under the appearance of good: There are many who, deploring disagreement among men and intellectual confusion, through an imprudent zeal for souls, are urged by a great and ardent desire to do away with the barrier that divides good and honest men; these advocate an “eirenism” according to which, by setting aside Selections from HUMANI GENERIS (Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine) 1. Disagreement and error among men on moral and religious matters have always been a cause of profound sorrow to all good men, but above all to the true and loyal sons of the Church, especially today, when we see the principles of Christian culture being attacked on all sides. 5. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism. 10. However, although We know that Catholic teachers generally avoid these errors, it is apparent, however, that some today, as in apostolic times, desirous of novelty, and fearing to be considered ignorant of recent scientific findings, try to withdraw themselves from the sacred Teaching Authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them into error. 11. Another danger is perceived which is all the more serious because it is more concealed beneath the mask of virtue. There are many who, deploring disagreement among men and intellectual confusion, through an imprudent zeal for souls, are urged by a great and ardent desire to do away with the barrier that divides good and honest men; these advocate an “eirenism” according to www.angeluspress.org ▲ 6. Such fictitious tenets of evolution which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for the new erroneous philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and pragmatism, has assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their immutable essences. The aNgelus • February 2009 34 the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in the field of dogma. And to carry out successfully this odious enterprise, neo-modernists do not hesitate to question traditional theology and its methods, because, according to them, these should not only be perfected, but also completely reformed, in order to promote the more efficacious propagation of the kingdom of Christ everywhere throughout the world among men of every culture and religious opinion. A little further in the text, Pope Pius XII criticized “some more audacious” who held that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. Justifying the opposition of the Society of Saint Pius X to a new teaching, foreign to Tradition, Bishop Fellay declared on August 15: “We do not set ourselves up as judges. We simply ask the pope of Selections from HUMANI GENERIS (continued) ▲ which, by setting aside the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in the field of dogma. And as in former times some questioned whether the traditional apologetics of the Church did not constitute an obstacle rather than a help to the winning of souls for Christ, so today some are presumptive enough to question seriously whether theology and theological methods, such as with the approval of ecclesiastical authority are found in our schools, should not only be perfected, but also completely reformed, in order to promote the more efficacious propagation of the kingdom of Christ everywhere throughout the world among men of every culture and religious opinion. 14. In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents. 15. Moreover, they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. 31. If one considers all this well, he will easily see why the Church demands that future priests be instructed in philosophy “according to the method, doctrine, and principles of the Angelic Doctor,” since, as we well know from the experience of centuries, the method of Aquinas is singularly pre-eminent both of teaching students and for bringing truth to light; his doctrine is in harmony with Divine Revelation, and is most effective both for safeguarding the foundation of the Faith and for reaping, safely and usefully, the fruits of sound progress. 32. How deplorable it is then that this philosophy, received and honored by the Church, is scorned by some, who shamelessly call it outmoded in form and rationalistic, as they say, in its method of thought. They say that this philosophy upholds the erroneous notion that there can be a metaphysic that is absolutely true; whereas in fact, they say, reality, especially transcendent reality, cannot better be expressed than by disparate teachings, which mutually complete each other, although they are in a way mutually opposed. Our traditional philosophy, then, with its clear exposition and solution of questions, its accurate definition of terms, its clearcut distinctions, can be, they concede, useful as a preparation for scholastic theology, a preparation quite in accord with medieval mentality; but this philosophy hardly offers a method of philosophizing suited to the needs of our modern culture. They allege, finally, that our perennial philosophy is only a 35 today to explain how what he tells us corresponds to what his predecessors have said.” In this, the successor of Archbishop Lefebvre was only repeating the teaching of Humani Generis which said that to replace inviolable dogmas by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. Pope Pius XII concluded his encyclical by advising theologians not to think, Church, if the whole truth found in the Church is not sincerely taught to all without corruption or diminution. In Saint-Malo, Bishop Fellay declared: We ask the faith from the Church, and we know that the Church alone can give it to us. So, we maintain this first request made at baptism. We do nothing else. We could sum up all our combat in this. The integral translation of the sermon given by Bishop Fellay on the occasion of the Procession in Saint Malo, on August 15, is found in DICI, No. 181, of September 27, 2008. This article is reprinted with permission from Christendom, No. 17 (Sept.-Oct., 2008), published by DICI, the international new bureau of the SSPX. www.dici.org. indulging in a false “eirenism,” that the dissident and the erring can happily be brought back to the bosom of the philosophy of immutable essences, while the contemporary mind must look to the existence of things and to life, which is ever in flux. While scorning our philosophy, they extol other philosophies of all kinds, ancient and modern, oriental and occidental, by which they seem to imply that any kind of philosophy or theory, with a few additions and corrections if need be, can be reconciled with Catholic dogma. No Catholic can doubt how false this is, especially where there is question of those fictitious theories they call immanentism, or idealism or materialism, whether historic or dialectic, or even existentialism, whether atheistic or simply the type that denies the validity of the reason in the field of metaphysics. 33. Finally, they reproach this philosophy taught in our schools for regarding only the intellect in the process of cognition, while neglecting the function of the will and the emotions. This is simply not true. Never has Christian philosophy denied the usefulness and efficacy of good dispositions of soul for perceiving and embracing moral and religious truths. In fact, it has always taught that the lack of these dispositions of good will can be the reason why the intellect, influenced by the passions and evil inclinations, can be so obscured that it cannot see clearly. Indeed St.Thomas holds that the intellect can in some way perceive higher goods of the moral order, whether natural or supernatural, inasmuch as it experiences a certain “connaturality” with these goods, whether this “connaturality” be purely natural, or the result of grace; and it is clear how much even this somewhat obscure perception can help the reason in its investigations. However it is one thing to admit the power of the dispositions of the will in helping reason to gain a more certain and firm knowledge of moral truths; it is quite another thing to say, as these innovators do, indiscriminately mingling cognition and act of will, that the appetitive and affective faculties have a certain power of understanding, and that man, since he cannot by using his reason decide with certainty what is true and is to be accepted, turns to his will, by which he freely chooses among opposite opinions. 34-36. ...the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter–for the Catholic Faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from preexisting and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question. 37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own... www.angeluspress.org The aNgelus • February 2009 PART 20 36 F r . M a t t h i a s G a u d r o n The chapter on the New Mass concludes with a study of Communion in the hand, including the historical background to its treacherous introduction, and a vigorous defense of the Church’s use of its sacred language, Latin. Catechism Of the Crisis In the Church 68) How should Holy Communion be received? Holy Communion must be received reverently, for it contains our Lord Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. The best way to express this reverence is to receive Holy Communion on the tongue from the hand of the priest while kneeling. l Did Jesus Christ Himself state that He is really present in the Eucharist? Yes, Jesus Christ solemnly affirmed His Real Presence in the Eucharist: “For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him” ( Jn. 6:56-57). l Did our Lord express this truth other times? Our Lord clearly expressed what the holy Eucharist is during its institution when He celebrated the first Mass during the Last Supper: Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins. (Mt. 26:26-28) l Who denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist? For fifteen centuries, with a few very rare exceptions (for instance, the heretic Berengarius of Tours in the 11th century, who ultimately abjured his error), Christians unanimously believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. They held this sacrament in great honor, considering it the Lord’s most precious gift. It was only during the 16th century that the leaders of the Protestant revolt succeeded in dragging the multitudes into rejecting faith in the Holy Eucharist. 69) Is Communion in the hand a worthy way to receive Holy Communion? As it is practiced today, Communion in the hand does not respect our Lord Jesus Christ truly present in the host. It thwarts faith in the Real Presence, and so it must be rejected. Moreover, it has never existed in this form in the Church. 37 l Is not the distribution of Communion in the hand a practice of the early Church? Holy Communion was indeed distributed in the hand in certain parts of the early Church, but quite differently from the way it is today. The communicant bowed to receive it and, at least in some places, had to have his hand veiled. The priest would place the host in the right hand, and the faithful carried it to his mouth without picking it up with his other hand. l Do these differences of detail really matter? These differences reveal a different attitude from that which prevails at present. The manner, widespread today, of taking the host resembles an act of taking possession of or domination, which is out of place in the reception of the Body of Christ. l Does this difference in attitude between the practice of the early Church and the current practice show up in any other way? The difference in attitude is revealed in the very great attention formerly given to particles of the hosts. St. Cyril of Jerusalem exhorted the faithful to take care lest the least particle fall on the ground: Take care that nothing fall on the ground. What you would let fall would be as the loss of one of your members. Tell me: if someone gave you gold powder, wouldn’t you gather it so carefully that none of it would be lost to your disadvantage? Should you not then be much more attentive that not a crumb be lost, which is much more precious than gold or diamonds?1 l What does St. Cyril’s exhortation show? Everything about it exudes reverence! Where do we hear such warnings today? With Communion in the hand, many particles fall on the ground without anyone’s noticing. It is an objective lack of respect for Christ. l But if Communion in the hand was practiced before in the Church, how can it be rejected now? This argument relies on one of the major sophisms of the liturgical revolution: the sophism of archaeologism, already denounced and condemned by Pius XII.2 l In what way is this argument a sophism? This argument presupposes that what was good in Christian antiquity is necessarily better now, and must be preferred to whatever the Church instituted over the course of centuries. This is obviously false. What was in the beginning without danger thanks to the early Christians’ fervor, and because there had not yet been any heresy against the Real Presence, could become dangerous since the Protestants’ denial of transubstantiation. Moreover, love is inventive, and progressive development is the law of life in creatures. So it is normal that the Church should have developed over time the expression of its faith in and reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament. The desire to revert to the (material) practices of the early Church in reality betrays its spirit, for it means refusing the development it carried within itself and to which it imparted the impetus. l Might it not be said that the refusal of Communion in the hand today is tantamount to refusing the impetus and the progressive development which is natural to the Church? A change can only be qualified as “progress” in relation to a set of criteria by which to evaluate it. (The anarchic proliferation of cells in a living organism marks a progress of a sort, but that of a cancer and not that of life.) The right criteria, in this instance, are these: the manifestation of faith and of reverence towards our Lord. It is obvious that Communion in the hand does not constitute progress, but rather regression. Moreover, this practice was introduced in a revolutionary and subversive manner into the Church. l Why do you say that Communion in the hand was introduced in the Church in a revolutionary and subversive way? Communion in the hand was first practiced without any authorization in a few very progressive groups against the explicit rules of the Church. On May 29, 1969, the Instruction Memoriale Domini took cognizance of this disobedience and reiterated in detail the advantages of Communion on the tongue. It reported that a survey of the Latin-Rite bishops showed that a very large majority of them were opposed to the introduction of Communion in the hand.3 It concluded that the traditional usage was to be maintained, and vigorously exhorted the bishops, priests, and faithful to carefully respect the custom. l How did Communion in the hand spread after having been thus condemned? Communion in the hand spread because this document (drafted in Paul VI’s name by Cardinal Gut and the ubiquitous Annibale Bugnini) was liberal. Having set forth all the reasons necessitating the retention of the traditional usage, and having stated the Pope’s desire to maintain it, it closed by allowing the contrary! Just when the question seemed to be resolved by all that went before, the authors added that, in those places where the habit of giving Communion in the hand had already been formed (that is to say, where they had already been disobeying the Church’s rules), the episcopal conferences could authorize this new practice under certain conditions if the faithful requested it. l What was the aftermath of the Instruction Memoriale Domini? The Instruction Memoriale Domini actually authorized Communion in the hand even as it made a pretense of forbidding it. In Western Europe and North America, the consequences were immediate: the new practice, which the Pope had only authorized with reservations and for the sake of toleration, and because of the pressing demand of the faithful, was www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 38 imposed almost everywhere on the faithful who had never asked for it in the name of obedience to the Pope. 70) What are the consequences of Communion in the hand? Besides occasioning sacrileges, Communion in the hand (received standing) is at least partly responsible for the loss of faith of many Catholics in Christ’s Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. One who seriously believes he receives the Man-God in Holy Communion cannot approach this Sacrament without showing his respect. Communion in the hand thus leads first to lukewarmness and indifference, and then to loss of faith. l Can loss of faith in the Real Presence of our Lord correctly be attributed to Communion in the hand? Communion in the hand is probably not the only cause. Errors or gaps in catechesis and preaching certainly share the blame since the Real Presence has often been presented as a symbolic presence, denying the actual change of the bread into the Body of Christ. But Communion in the hand prepared the faithful to accept these false teachings, for if the host is merely a symbol of Christ, it is not surprising that people receive Communion without any special sign of reverence. 71) Is it necessary to celebrate Mass in Latin? Just as it is fitting to change out of one’s workclothes for an important ceremony, it is likewise most fitting that the language of sacred liturgy be different from that of everyday life. The vernacular is not apt for the sacred action. In the West, Latin has been the liturgical language for centuries. But in other parts of the Church, and even in numerous non-Christian religions, there is also a sacred language. l Do non-Catholics also use a sacred language? The establishment of a fixed liturgical language while the common language evolves seems to be a constant of mankind. The Schismatic Greeks employ ancient Greek in their liturgy; the Russians use Slavonic. At the time of Christ, the Jews already utilized ancient Hebrew for the liturgy, which was no longer the common language (and neither Jesus nor the Apostles criticized this). The same thing is found in Islam (literary Arabic, the language of prayer, is no longer understood by the multitudes) and some Oriental religions. The Roman pagans also had archaic formulations in their worship that had become incomprehensible. l How can this universal custom of the use of a sacred language for divine worship be explained? Man naturally has a sense of the sacred. He understands instinctively that divine worship does not depend on him, that he must respect it and transmit THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org it as he has received it, without allowing anything to disrupt it. The use of a fixed, sacred language in religion is in conformity with human psychology as well as the immutable nature of divine realities. 72) Don’t the faithful understand the Mass better when it is celebrated in their own language? The Mass works ineffable mysteries that no man can perfectly understand. This mysterious character finds its expression in the use of a mysterious language that is not immediately understood by all. (It is for this reason that some parts of the Mass are recited in a low voice.) The vernacular language, on the contrary, gives the superficial impression of a comprehension which in reality does not exist. People think they understand the Mass because it is celebrated in their mother tongue. In fact, they generally understand nothing of the essence of the holy sacrifice. l Is the function of Latin, then, to place a barrier between the faithful and the holy mysteries? The purpose is not to build an opaque wall that would conceal everything, but, rather, to better appreciate the perspectives; for that, a certain distance is necessary. In order to penetrate a little into the mystery of the Mass, the first condition is to humbly acknowledge that it involves a mystery, something that goes beyond us. l If the mysterious character of Latin is so beneficial, should the faithful be dissuaded from learning it, and those who do understand it be pitied? The use of Latin in the liturgy keeps up the sense of mystery even for those who know this language. The mere fact that it involves a special language, distinct from one’s maternal tongue and common speech (a language which, of itself, is not immediately understood by all even if in fact it is understood), is enough to create a certain distance that fosters respect. The study of Christian Latin should be heartily encouraged. The effort it requires helps to lift up its students towards the mystery, whereas the liturgy in the vernacular tends to bring it down to the human level. l Doesn’t the use of Latin risk leaving some of the faithful in ignorance of the sacred liturgy? The Council of Trent imposed upon priests the duty to preach often about the Mass and to explain its rites to the faithful. In addition, the faithful have missals in which the Latin prayers are translated, so they can have access to the beautiful prayers of the liturgy without the advantages of Latin being lost. Experience also proves that in Latin countries, the understanding of liturgical Latin (if not in all its details, then at least globally) is relatively easy for anyone who is interested. The demand it makes on their attention fosters the 39 faithful’s genuine participation in the liturgy: that of the mind and will; whereas the vernacular language, to the contrary, is likely to encourage laziness. l Doesn’t the use of a sacred language in the liturgy introduce an arbitrary break between everyday life (“profane”) and the spiritual life, while the role of Christians should be, on the contrary, to consecrate everything to God (even one’s everyday language)? In order to keep the spirit of prayer in all our activities, we must sometimes break away from these activities to devote ourselves to prayer. The same applies here: sometimes using a sacred language in order to realize more deeply the transcendence of God will be an aid, and not an impediment, to continual prayer. 73) What other reasons militate in favor of using Latin in the liturgy? Three more reasons militate in favor of using Latin: 1) its immutability (or, at least, its very great stability); 2) its almost bimillennial use in the liturgy; and 3) the fact that it symbolizes and fosters Church unity. l In what way is the immutability of Latin an advantage? An immutable faith requires a proportionate linguistic instrument; namely, a language that is as immutable as possible and which can serve as a reference. Latin, which is no longer a modern language, no longer (or rarely) changes. In a modern language, on the contrary, words can rapidly undergo significant changes of meaning or tone (they can acquire a pejorative or derisive connotation which they formerly lacked). The usage of such a language can thus easily lead to errors or ambiguities, while the use of Latin preserves both the dignity and orthodoxy of the liturgy.4 l In what way is the nearly bimillennial use of the Latin language in the liturgy an advantage? Used in the liturgy for nearly two thousand years, the Latin language has been, as it were, hallowed. It is a comfort to be able to pray with the same words that our ancestors and all the priests and monks have prayed for centuries. We feel concretely the continuity of the Church through time, and we unite our prayer with theirs. Time and eternity converge. l How does Latin symbolize the unity of the Church? Latin not only manifests the Church’s unity in time, but also in space.5 Favoring union with Rome (its usage kept Poland from the Slavic schism), it also unites all Christian nations with one another. Before the Council, the Roman-Rite Mass was celebrated everywhere in the same language. On five continents, the faithful would find the Mass as celebrated in their own parish. Today, this image of unity has been shattered. There is no longer any unity in the liturgy, neither in language nor in rites. This is true to such an extent that someone attending a Mass celebrated in an unfamiliar language has a hard time even distinguishing the principle parts of the Mass. l How might one sum up the utility of Latin? Our Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The Latin language in its way contributes to each of these characteristics.6 By its native genius (an imperial language), its hieratic character (a “dead” language), and, especially, the consecration it received, together with Hebrew and Greek, on the titulum of the Cross,7 it perfectly serves the sanctity of the liturgy; by its universal, supranational usage (it is no longer the language of any one people), it manifests catholicity; by its living link with the Rome of St. Peter and with so many of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church who were both the echo of the Apostles and the artisans of liturgical Latin (they forged not only its prayers, hymns, and responses, but Christian Latin itself, which is, in many aspects, a complete renewal of classical Latin), it is the guarantee of its apostolicity; by its official usage, lastly, which makes it the language of reference for the magisterium, canon law, and liturgy, it contributes efficaciously to the Church’s triple unity: unity of faith, unity of government, and unity of worship. 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 from the second edition (Schloß Jaidhof, Austria: Rex Regum Verlag, 1999) as translated, revised, and edited by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé in collaboration with the author, with their added subdivisions. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Fifth Mystagogical Catechesis, 21; PG, XXXIII, 1126. See above Question 63. 3 Of 2,115 valid responses, 1,233 bishops [more than 58 percent] were categorically against the introduction of Communion in the hand, while only 567 [fewer than 27 percent] approved it unconditionally. 4 “The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is...an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal truth” (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, §60).– “For immutable dogmas, an immutable language is necessary, which will guarantee that the formulation of these same dogmas will not be altered....The Protestants and all the enemies of the Catholic Church have always harshly reproached its use of Latin. They feel that the immobility of this breast-plate wonderfully defends against any alteration of the ancient Christian traditions whose testimony crushes them. They would like to shatter the form in order to strike the heart. Error willingly speaks a variable, changing language” (Msgr. De Segur). 5 “The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of unity...” (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, §60). 6 “For the Church, precisely because it embraces all nations and is destined to endure until the end of time, and because it totally excludes the simple faithful from its government, of its very nature requires a language which is universal, immutable, and non-vernacular” (Pope Pius XI, Apostolic Letter Officiorum Omnium, August 1, 1922.) 7 “And the writing was: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews....and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin” ( Jn. 19:19-20). 1 2 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 40 F R . p e t e r Is it permissible to have a tattoo? The sporting of tattoos is not something new in the history of humanity. The defacing of one’s body is seen in many primitive societies as a mark of bravery and achievement, a real sign of honor. Is the modern practice of tattoos comparable? Tattoos come under the category of self-mutilation. Self-mutilation is certainly permissible when performed for the good of the entire body, according to the principle of totality, that the part is for the whole. This common sense understanding underlies these words of Our Lord: If thy right eye is an occasion of sin to thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish than that thy whole body should be thrown into hell. (Mt. 5:29) Consequently nobody disputes the excising of organs or mutilation of external appearance that comes from the treatment of serious and lifethreatening illnesses, such as cancers. But tattoos are a defacing of the body that is not directed to any good, either of the body or of the soul. Is it permissible to perform such a cosmetic deformity without any objective purpose, simply because one wants to? The morality depends upon what authority a man has over his body. According to the modern way of thinking a man has absolute authority over his body, to do with it as he wills. However, such is not the teaching of the Church. We are but stewards of our bodies, for we belong to Almighty God. Our domain over our body is limited to using it for the end for which it was created. This was clearly taught by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on Christian marriage, condemning the self-mutilation of sterilization: Christian doctrine has established, and it is entirely evident by the light of human reason, that man has no right to destroy or mutilate his members or make them in any way incapable of attaining their natural purpose To the objection that tattoos do no harm to the functioning of the body must be responded that every human action has to have a purpose, upon which its morality is based. There is no such thing as an indifferent action in practice. An action that is not good is necessarily bad. If there is no purpose for a tattoo, then it is at the very least vanity or human respect, the desire to draw attention to oneself or shock others. But these are all disordered motives. If a tattoo is not virtuous and reasonable, then it is wrong, offensive and sinful. This sin can be venial if the tattoo is not an attack upon God or religion nor immoral in its symbolism, and if it is done out of vanity, in itself a venial THE ANGELUS • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org R . s c o t t disorder. However, it can be mortal if the tattoo is blasphemous or irreligious, or applied as a direct attack on God’s dominion over the body. It is sometimes objected that some fervent Catholics have tattooed themselves with crosses and holy symbols. In such a case a tattoo could have as a purpose to profess the Faith and to demonstrate exteriorly the sacredness of the body, consecrated to Almighty God through baptism. Thus we read in the life of St. Jane Frances Fremiot de Chantal that she carved the most holy name of Jesus Christ on her chest with a red hot iron. However, this is the exceptional inspiration of a saint. In our time, more often than not such symbols are applied mockingly, and are more a sign of the desecration of the temple of God that we are (I Cor 3:16-17) than the contrary. They refer to a sub-culture that is atheistic and sometimes pagan. They are a degrading of man to the level of the animals, which are branded, for their bodies have a purely utilitarian purpose. Here lies the real morality of tattoos. They are applied in a spirit of rebellion, and generally depict one or other aspect of that rebellion, often impure, crude, violent, ugly, frightening, repulsive, if not frankly blasphemous and diabolical. It is precisely that rebellion against the natural order, that rejection of man’s submission to his Creator, that is symbolized by tattooes, by which man pretends to have full power over his body, defacing the body that God in His goodness has given to him. It is a rebellion against protocol, against decency, a rebellion against all social expectations, against man’s social character. It is on account of this opposition to the natural order that tattooes were forbidden in the judicial precepts of the old law: You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh, for the dead, neither shall you make in yourselves any figures or marks: I am the Lord. (Lev. 19:28). Although these precepts certainly do not in themselves bind in conscience, nevertheless they were not in general entirely arbitrary, and the commandment not to cut one’s flesh is listed along with those forbidding the consultation of wizards and soothsayers, the divining of dreams and of making one’s daughter “a common strumpet.” It is likewise a rebellion against the supernatural order, for tattooing symbolizes a man insisting on his right to do as he pleases without rendering an account to His Redeemer, even to self-mutilation and self-desecration. It symbolizes the rejection of the sacredness of the human body. It is a sign of the ultimate despair that is so characteristic of modern society–our bodily life is an end in itself and there is nothing beyond it. Q A Q What is supplied jurisdiction, and what makes the Society’s bishops think that they have it? We must first understand what jurisdiction itself really is. It is the power to feed a portion of the flock of the Catholic Church, an authorization that ultimately comes down from the Sovereign Pontiff to teach, govern, and sanctify souls for their eternal salvation. It is usually related to a territory, such as a diocese or parish. It is required for the licitness of every exercise of authority by a priest or member of the hierarchy, including every sermon, every Mass, and every administration of a sacrament. In addition, it is required for the validity of the two sacraments whose administration the Church has traditionally limited to certain priests only–Penance and Matrimony. However, it is always to protect souls, for the good of the Church, that jurisdiction is required for every priest to function. Supplied jurisdiction is an extraordinary and unusual thing. It is not the ordinary jurisdiction that is given by the Pope to the bishops or by a bishop to his priests. It is provided immediately and directly by the Church when the salvation of souls and the good of the Church itself is at stake, and in particular to protect the faithful from the danger of invalid sacraments. Cases indicated in the Code of Canon Law, in which the Church supplies jurisdiction, include when there is a common error of the faithful or possibility thereof, on whether a priest has jurisdiction, or whenever there is a probable and positive doubt, or whenever there is danger of death, or whenever a person requests a sacrament, even of an excommunicated priest. Of course, the particular case of the crisis in the Church is not one that could have been foreseen by the Code of Canon Law, such as the gravity of the crisis and the great danger for the salvation of souls that follows from the errors of Vatican II. These errors concerning the teaching of the Faith as well as the administration of the sacraments oblige the faithful Catholic to apply the principles of juridical analogy and canonical equity, through which the Church supplies jurisdiction whenever the salvation of souls requires it, for “the salvation of souls is the highest law” (Can. 1752 of the 1983 Code). The salvation of our souls and the good of the mystical body of the Church require that we have bishops, successors of the Apostles, who teach us the integrality of the Faith, who condemn the modern errors against the Faith, who refuse to cooperate in the new adulterous rites, who can guarantee the validity of the holy oils they consecrate, who administer Confirmation worthily and with the certitude of validity, who ordain only priests truly well formed in their priestly knowledge A 41 and duties, who can guarantee the validity of priestly ordinations, who direct religious to a life of perfection according to the mind of the Church, who resolve marriage cases according to traditional principles. All these acts, performed all over the world, would be illicit if there were no crisis in the Church. However, in this crisis, the Church supplies the jurisdiction that is necessary for their licitness. Did Archbishop Lefebvre consider it important that the religious communities of the traditional movement be united to his consecration of bishops? He most assuredly did, as was manifested by his desire to consult with them and form a common front in the negotiations that preceded the consecrations. Faced with the increasing opposition of Rome, he called together a meeting of all the superiors of the traditional communities, which took place at Le Pointet, France, on May 30, 1988. He there asked for their prayers and counsel, explaining the difficulties with Rome, namely that the atmosphere of these contacts and talks, the reflections of both sides during the conversations, clearly manifests to us that the desire of the Holy See is to bring us back to the Council and to the reforms, also to place us back into the bosom of the conciliar church as a religious congregation. (Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican, p.105) He went on to explain that the real problem was not that of the formality of jurisdiction but rather that of protecting ourselves from the “contaminated atmosphere” of Rome and the dioceses. In order to strengthen and protect ourselves, he said, it is a true Catholic and religious atmosphere and way of life that we must create. Otherwise there can be no resistance to the bait of gradually giving in to the conciliar spirit. Thus a moral problem is posed for all of us. Must we run the risk of contacts with this modernist atmosphere… or must we, before all else, preserve the traditional family to maintain its cohesion and vigor in the Faith and in grace, considering that the purely formal tie with modernist Rome cannot be as important as the protection of this family, representing those who remain faithful to the Catholic Church. (Ibid., p.106) All agreed to the obvious conclusion, and so two days later Archbishop Lefebvre wrote to the Holy Father, on June 2, 1988, explaining his determination to consecrate bishops, even without permission: Being radically opposed to this destruction of our Faith and determined to remain with the traditional doctrine and discipline of the Church, especially as far as the formation of priests and the religious life is concerned, we find ourselves in the absolute necessity of having ecclesiastical authorities who embrace our www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • February 2009 42 concerns and will help us to protect ourselves against the spirit of Vatican II and the spirit of Assisi. (Ibid., p.108) However, just as the fidelity of the various Dominican, Franciscan, and Capuchin communities, the Carmelites, and the priests of the Transfiguration, as well as the Benedictines from Brazil, was a great strengthening for the traditional movement, so also was the betrayal of Dom Gérard from Le Barroux deplorable. In fact, when Dom Gérard came to see Archbishop Lefebvre on July 26, 1988, the Archbishop refused to grant his approval to the project of separate recognition of the monastery, after which meeting the Archbishop refused even to see him, since Dom Gérard had hidden from the Archbishop his letters of July 8 to the Pope and to Cardinal Ratzinger. The rectitude of Archbishop Lefebvre´s assessment is confirmed by the fact that since that fatal day the monastery of Le Barroux has not only embraced the errors of Vatican II, but even become a proponent of its religious liberty. However, this is hardly surprising given the superficiality of the reason given by Dom Gérard for accepting an agreement with Rome, a reason that showed that he had not understood the danger of the “contaminated atmosphere” which the Archbishop so feared: Lastly the reason, perhaps the determining one, which inclined us to accept that the suspense a divinis be lifted from our priests, is a missionary reason: should not the maximum number of faithful be enabled to assist at our Masses and liturgical celebrations without being hindered by their local priests or bishop? (Ibid., p.200) 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. Statement of Fr. Nicholas Mary, C.SS.R. A terrible crisis in Faith has shaken the hierarchy and members of the Catholic Church these past 40 years, and as a result there has been increasing and general confusion amongst them as to what must be believed and done for salvation. This gradual and, indeed, diabolical disorientation of Catholics away from the Church’s supernatural mission of eternal salvation has only been possible through the failure of so many pastors of souls to understand, prevent and dispel the climate of silent apostasy which is the true story behind the façade presented by the Church today, seemingly at peace with the world, and nominally a billion strong. It has been the devil’s masterstroke, as Archbishop Lefebvre repeatedly pointed out, “to have succeeded in sowing disobedience to all Tradition through obedience.” From the point of view of Tradition, that obedience has not been in accord with the true virtue of religious obedience, just as, conversely, any disobedience to pastors commanding through the spirit of innovation has been in truth fidelity to the Magisterium, or teaching authority, of the Catholic Church, which, even in its ordinary form, must be universal over both space and time in order to be infallible. We live in an age of paradox. Thus, through obedience to the agents of change, many Catholics have been led unwittingly into (at least material) heresy and schism. On the other hand, those who, through no merit of their own, have been given the wonderful grace to keep the Faith in its entirety, have preserved their Catholic unity in the heart and mind of the Church through a resistance to the dilution of doctrine and worship which some have called schismatic, but which, in reality, is a necessary duty. It has been the sad but inevitable consequence of all this confusion that Catholics have become increasingly divided amongst themselves, and will remain so until the Pope himself begins to command orthodoxy with the authority he has from God. Where faith is weak, there true charity must grow cold. Every Catholic faithful to Tradition knows the pain of this division from sad experience. Family relations and friendships have been strained or broken as different paths have been chosen in response to all that has happened. Religious families have been no exception, and we have seen communities split, and the sorrow of division has been shared by all who know and love them. And now, as is perhaps common knowledge, that family division has come to the Transalpine Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, founded 20 years ago with the blessing of Archbishop Lefebvre, a division which has surely surprised and saddened many. The aNgelus • February 2009 www.angeluspress.org 43 Since the initiative was taken unilaterally by Fr. Michael Mary and the majority of the members of our community to seek regularization from the Roman authorities this year, a parting of the ways with the Society of St. Pius X was inevitable, even though unprovoked by the latter body. The Society and its allies believe that no integration into the official structures of the Church can take place until there is some satisfactory resolution of the serious doctrinal problems which have caused the crisis in the Faith. Hence also the divergent paths within our community. Of course, as its members have had to choose which path to follow there has been much soul-searching and examination of conscience before taking the grave step of either breaking with the Society of St. Pius X, to whom we owe so much, or splitting from former superiors and confreres, who have been fathers and brethren in God. Yet no community can exist without a unity of hearts and minds, and whilst charity may overlook many minor differences of opinion, it cannot make light of fundamental principles. There is no unity worthy of the name which is not a unity based on truth. Such true unity–be it in the Church as a whole, or in a particular religious family–means, paradoxically, that truth, or differing views as to what is true, are sometimes the occasion of division, just as Our Lord Himself warned that acceptance of Him would not only unite, but also inevitably divide (Mt. 10:34-35). In my own case, my difference of views concerns a matter in which no-one can remain neutral, or merely “agree to differ”; it is one of principle. There are many aspects to this problem (and this statement is not the place to argue them, important though they may be) but, in essence, the cause of rupture is this. Up until recently our community held that there exists a crisis of Faith so great that it has created a state of emergency which has justified, and even urged us to work as Redemptorists outside the official framework of the Church for the last 20 years. Its superiors and many of its members have now chosen to see in recent developments in Rome an indication that this state of emergency no longer exists to the extent of justifying such a position, but rather that integration into the official structures is now both possible and imperative. Others–and this is my own position–believe that the situation has not changed substantially even since the Motu Proprio of 2007 (which is nevertheless clearly a step in the right direction), and that the primary cause of the state of emergency is not liturgical, but doctrinal and still unresolved. For my part, I shall continue to support, and work with the Society of St. Pius X whilst endeavoring to remain faithful to, and persevere in, my Redemptorist vocation as and where Providence indicates. Addressing my dear Redemptorist confrères, I should like to make my own the words of Dom Lourenço Fleichman, O.S.B., (a Brazilian priest who left the Benedictine monastery of Le Barroux in France in 1988 when his community sought a similar regularisation of its status by the Vatican authorities whilst the doctrinal questions remained then, as now, unresolved) to his superior, the late Dom Gérard Calvet. These words he repeated to the priests of Campos, Brazil, when they too sought to put their own good above the common good of Tradition in 2001: Thousands of the faithful anxiously wait for you to confirm them in the Catholic Faith, in the combat that Divine Providence requires of us, without our succumbing to fatigue, weakness, or the siren song of legality. What our Lord requires is martyrdom endured drop by drop, and a clear and simple profession of Catholic Faith without compromising with the modernists in the Vatican. The Pope, yes; legality, yes; but above all, respond to God’s clear call to the combat of the Faith. Yours faithfully in Our Lady of Perpetual Succor and our Holy Father St. Alphonsus, Fr. Nicholas Mary, C.SS.R. Published in the newsletter of the Society of St. Pius X, District of Great Britain (December 2008). www.angeluspress.org The aNgelus • February 2009 Best Selling 1 2 3 4 5 God’s Alphabet M. H. Ruane & Janet Robson This book was so popular in 1938...it was later reprinted five times. Features gorgeous illustrations representing each letter of the alphabet, with a short poem on each page. Built with a strong hardback cover to withstand a young child's playtime. Reprinted in vivid color. ● durable, hardcover, with vellum bristol pages. ● 26 gorgeous color illustrations for each letter of the alphabet. ● short poems on each page, describing each letter. ● originally published in the 1938, and reprinted five times! 28pp. Color hardcover. Durable pages. STK# 8301✱ $16.95 A Catholic Child’s Picture Dictionary Rugh Hannon 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. 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. We’ve built this to last forever with a big 8½” by 11” durable hardcover that will withstand rough treatment, your children’s book box, and peanut butter and jelly. A title which should become a family standard. 58pp, 8½ x 11. Color hardcover. 240 four-color illustrations. STK# 8299✱ $19.95 For the Visitor at Mass Fr. Richard Ginder Intended primarily for new-comers (Catholic or not) to the Tridentine Mass. Forty-seven striking color photos accompany the explanations of every major part of the Mass. The photographs are mini-meditations in themselves, clearly evoking the nature of the liturgical actions taking place. The explanations are rich in concise spiritual, doctrinal, liturgical and historical insights. Most importantly, you will learn to unite yourself to the Sacrifice of the Altar. This is a form of active participation that is little understood today... consequently, this book will deepen the faith of all Catholics. 48pp. Softcover. STK# 8266✱ $2.95 The Mass for Boys and Girls Fr. Joseph A. Dunney Written by Fr. Joseph Dunney, the author of our popularly acclaimed The Mass, which we reprinted earlier this year. This book was penned specifically with boys and girls in mind. Fr. Dunney speaks on lofty subject matter, but on the child’s level, so that young minds can grasp the grandeur and mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (1962 Rite). A valuable read for every child (Ages 8-12). 171pp. Softcover. Illustrated. STK# 8300✱ $10.95 Marian Children’s Missal Sr. Mary Theola, S.S.N.D. If you have children aged 4-8 and are looking for a Missal suited to their capabilities, look no further. We consider this the best missal for children in this age bracket. Originally published in 1958, we, at one point, acquired and sold thousands of originals. After those supplies were exhausted, we decided to reprint this classic in full color. The large print, sturdy SEWN construction, and color illustrations make it a great missal for children. 156pp. Sewn, sturdy gold-embossed soft cover. STK# 8239✱ $12.95 Best Selling 1 2 3 4 5 Back in the Day Michael Powell If you have an inkling that the modern world has dumbed you down, that your grandparents or great grandparents knew how to do things you don’t, or you want to increase your repertoire of valuable timeworn life skills, this book will fit the bill. Ancient tips, careworn advice, bygone suggestions, and step-by-step instructions introduce you to the things we don’t know how to do anymore, some useful and some just for fun. 191pp. 7" x 5". Durable color flex-cover. Hundreds of drawings, illustrations, pictures, diagrams. STK# 8322✱ $7.95 The Boy Mechanic Popular Mechanics With the rawest of materials, a minimum of technology, and a maximum of ingenuity, men and boys used to dedicate themselves to crafting wonderful items, both practical and fanciful. These were skills that revealed an important part of the measure of a man. By recalling them, this book honors those handy and remarkable fellows hard to find in our high-tech era but whom the Catholic Church wishes to return. Wasn’t Our Lord a Carpenter? A book to inspire a working knowledge of the general sciences, a proficiency in outdoor skills, and an ability to craft projects in wood and metal. Fascinating and encouraging stuff. 272pp. 5" x 7". Durable flex-color. Hundreds of drawings, illustrations, pictures, diagrams. Indexed. STK# 8318✱ $9.95 The Boy Camper Popular Mechanics A book Bishop Tissier de Mallerais wants boys to read because the Catholic Church wants them to grow up to become providers, protectors, and guides. A camping trip or a rough-and-tough pilgrimage are the ideal testing grounds for a boy becoming a man, physically and spiritually. Explore the physical survival adventures in the woods and on the water that boys experienced 100 years ago. Over 160 projects are profusely and whimsically explained, pictured, blueprinted, and photographed. 255pp. 5" x 7". Durable color flex-cover. Hundreds of drawings, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, and blueprints. Indexed. STK# 8321✱ $9.95 The Education of Catholic Girls Janet Erskine Stuart Mother Janet Erskine Stuart, head of the order (1914) of the girls’ Teaching Sisters founded by Mother Madeleine Sophie Barat and brought to America by St. Philippine Duchesne, wrote this definitive book on the accommodations necessary to be made in methods of educating Catholic young women. Favored by the female Franciscans of Catholic Tradition. Mother Stuart says: “[We insist on] the teaching of handicrafts, training of the senses in observation. Development of knowledge, taste, and skills which are useful for life, and for girls especially on things which make the home.” 165pp. 9¼" x 7½". Softcover. STK# 8307 $12.95 Forgotten Household Crafts John Seymour A “home” does not lie in the direction of a take-out way of life and a machine-for-living. This book celebrates the home makers of past and present and their homes. It recognizes and records the diligence, high skills, and love of sacrificial women who create and nurture the family home, the basis of Christendom. Ladies, read a beautiful book and rediscover the glories of your brave and creative womanhood as manifested in your home. 256pp. 7" x 8½". Hardback with color jacket. Hundreds of illustrations. Indexed. STK# 8309 $22.00 History for Everyone A Saint Under Moslem Rule Dom Justo Perez de Urbel, O.S.B. A book of unusual power, scholarship, and interest. Chance of victory there was none for Cordova at this bleak hour. One could only show that men and women would never be wanting to carry on the conflict until the victory should be won. We see the ancient Moz­arabic rite up close as we listen to chants and prayers, attend a baptism, wedding, ordination and lastly the solemn services performed over the mar­tyred body of the leader of the Mozarabic Christians. 245pp. Softcover. STK# 8274✱ $23.95 James Fitzhenry An inspiring new biography of the extraordinary “Knight of Vivar” chosen by God to save his nation from Islam. Known as El Cid, Rodrigo Diaz is a legendary hero who is directly relevant to modern times. Exiled by his king, insulted and maligned by those who should have supported him, he selflessly fought against seemingly insurmountable odds to save Christian Spain. An example of what can be achieved through devotion to duty, prayer, and trust in God. For children 12 and up. 186pp. Softcover. 50+ illustrations & maps. STK# 8275 $15.95 #1050 El Cid: God’s Own Champion Back in the Day 101 things everyone used to know how to do (and the rest of us should learn). Michael Powell If you have an inkling that the modern world has dumbed you down, that your grandparents or great grandparents knew how to do things you don’t, or you want to increase your repertoire of valuable timeworn life skills, this book will fit the bill. Ancient tips, careworn advice, bygone suggestions, and step-by-step instructions introduce you to the things we don’t know how to do anymore, some useful and some just for fun:  fight with a rapier and dagger  make bread and butter  find berries in the wild  pluck a chicken  read Roman numerals  write a sonnet  can food  read a coat of arms  make a fire without matches  set broken bones  write calligraphy  besiege a castle  use an abacus  make a stained glass window  mount and dismount a horse (for men, for women)  thatch a roof  wear a toga  hurl a battleaxe  make a lasso and throw it Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways [which]…provideth her meat for herself in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.–Proverbs 6:6 191pp. 7” x 5”. Durable color flex-cover. Hundreds of drawings, illustrations, pictures, diagrams. STK# 8322✱ $7.95 The Horn of the Unicorn ed! redasu$c20.00 w Biography of Archbishop Lefebvre now 5 $12.9 Dr. David Allen White Like a motion picture on paper, Dr. White weaves poetry, Scripture, anecdotes, news, and history into the story of the life of Archbishop Lefebvre. The result is a thought-provoking appreciation of his life from one of America’s most distinguished Catholic writers. INCLUDES 77 PHOTOS–many published here for the first time. ✗ 352pp. Softcover. 77 photographs. STK# 8159 $20.00 $12.95 Shipping & Handling 5-10 days 2-4 days USA Foreign Up to $50.00 $50.01 to $100.00 Over $100.00 $4.00 $6.00 Free 25% of subtotal Up to $50.00 $50.01 to $100.00 Over $100.00 $8.00 $10.00 $8.00 Flat fee! ($10.00 minimum) 48 Contiguous States only. UPS cannot ship to PO Boxes. angelus Press 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, Missouri 64109 www.angeluspress.org l 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.