september 2009

$4.45

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

inside

One Pope for Two Churches

Bishop Fellay: Interview

Dr. White on Solzhenitsyn’s
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Interview with Fr. Obih

Commentary on Caritas in Veritate

Michael Davies’ monumental Apologia series!

These books are full of documentation and poignant analysis. The historical value of these works from the pen of the man who
declared at the First Annual Walter Matt Memorial Dinner (January 2004), “Archbishop Lefebvre is a saint,” cannot be overestimated.

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume I

This book is certainly one of great historical value. Portrays the dramatic conflict
relating to the grievances between Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican under
Pope Paul VI. Depicts the role of one who had the foresight to recognize that he
could not defend orthodoxy and at the same time accept reforms “themselves
oriented towards the cult of man.” Completely documented.
461pp. Softcover. STK# 3051✱ $9.95

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume II

This volume covers the story of Archbishop Lefebvre’s relations with the Vatican
up to the end of 1979. The negotiations between the Archbishop and the Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith form the principal feature of the book.
393pp. Softcover. STK# 3053✱ $9.95

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume III

Covers 1979-1982, the beginning of the pontificate of John Paul II. Davies records
many of the Holy Father’s directives, how they were opposed by the Bishops,
and why it was necessary for Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX to avoid all
compromise in preserving Catholic Truth. Completes the series by considering
Abp. Lefebvre within the broader perspective of the crisis in the Church.
461pp. Softcover. STK# 3040✱ $16.95

3-volume Apologia set, STK# 3050✱ $32.95

Liber Usualis

The Liber Usualis (pronounced Lee-behr Oos-oo-ah-lees and Latin for The Book of Common Use). The
Liber is first and foremost a practical combination of the various official liturgical-musical books
of the Roman Rite (e.g., Kyriale, Graduale Romanum, Cantorinus, Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae
Instauratus) used for both chanting the Divine Office and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It also
contains a wealth of ancient Latin hymns, ad libitum Kyriale modes, litanies, and even the Ordo
Missae (the Ordinary, Prefaces and Canon of the Mass). The Liber further explains the names of
the various components of Gregorian chant; the method for properly rendering it according to
the “Solesmes method” (ordered by the Holy See to be followed by all who use the
Roman Rite); how to chant the Lessons, Epistles, and Gospels; a universal
1962 Roman calendar; a section on general rubrics for applying the calendar and classification system (according
to the 1960 reform), in addition featuring important
particular rubrical notes as necessary (e.g., for the ceremonies
of Ash Wednesday); a general index as well as alphabetical indexes for the
various parts of the propers, antiphons, psalms (even a numerical index for
these), canticles, and hymns; and much more!
Printed in Latin (only) in black text throughout, all of the Gregorian chant
notation contains the important rhythmic signs developed by the Benedictines
of Solesmes during their lengthy chant reform (ordered and sanctioned by the
popes) in the early 20th century.
2010 pages, 7½" x 5". Black cloth hardbound with gold embossing
on spine. Red page-edging. Seven ribbons. STK# 8346 $95.00

“Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.”
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

The

ngelus
A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

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the hands of honest men is not enough. It is necessary to
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sources of evil literature.”
—Pope St. Pius X

September 2009
Volume XXXII, Number 9

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interview with bishop fellay. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 3

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One Pope for Two Churches . .Christendom
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Commentary on caritas in verItate . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 27
DICI

interview with Fr. obih . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 31
Interview by Fr. Markus Heggenberger

Church and world . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 34
catechism of the crisis in the church . .Part
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Fr. Matthias Gaudron

Questions and answers. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 43
Fr. Peter Scott

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Letter
from
the

2

Editor

In recent times, love of neighbor seems to have
taken on a special importance. Although “love of
neighbor” in the modern sense seems to be but a
remnant of Christian charity, the world believes it is
doing a better job loving its neighbor than Christian
generations in the past, notwithstanding the fact that
the modern notion of this love is very often more of a
technical skill than a commitment to sacrifice.
There is, however, a warning in Holy Scripture:
Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty,
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful,
wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers,
incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors,
stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than
of God: having an appearance indeed of godliness, but
denying the power thereof. Now these avoid. (II Tim.
3:2-5)

It seems closely connected to the prophecy in the
following chapter:
For there shall be a time, when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they
will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: and
will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but
will be turned unto fables. (II Tim. 4:3-4)

This warning essentially says that a false love
will arise and deceive people. It will give them the
impression that what they are doing is right and will
seduce them to abandon the “sound doctrine,” the
Gospel, in favor of their own ideas. Love of neighbor
will be disconnected from love of God, from the
Gospel, and from the truth.
Self-love and a hatred of truth are thus, according
to the Epistle to Timothy, not only connected but even
cause each other.
What St. Paul describes in the Second Letter to
Timothy can easily be identified with certain modern
theological currents like:
l
l

l
l
l
l

The liberal tendency to accept and excuse error,
giving equal rights to it;
Considering everyone an “anonymous Christian”
(Karl Rahner, S.J.) notwithstanding the fact that
they might not know Catholic doctrine or even
want to accept the Faith;
The practical denial of sin;
The abolition of confession;
The desertion of the religious life;
The lack of the spirit of sacrifice.

It is a sign of the decline of the Catholic Church
that it is being influenced by a general drift towards
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

self-centeredness in our society. We expect from the
Catholic Church a glimpse of eternity and stability
in its institutions and actions, not an imitation of the
world. “And be not conformed to this world; but be
reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may
prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the
perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2).
This self-centeredness is steadily growing in
contemporary (sub-) culture. “Virtual reality” and
“virtual relationships” are gradually taking over,
alienating man from friends and relatives, and often
reality itself. People become strangers and alone even
in the midst of others. We seem to be beyond George
Orwell’s vision of the future in 1984. But we got here
by our own choice and without violence.
Modern definitions provide ample pretext
for deception: “worker priest” sounds better than
“communist,” “social justice” better than “socialism,”
“love of neighbor” better than “religious indifferentism.”
Nobody can ignore the fact that the Catholic
Church has changed her image over the last generation.
Monasteries and seminaries are declining in number
and in quality. What they are doing is often not related
to the Catholic Faith, or else it smacks of a destructive
understanding of Church and Faith. Converts of
former times are asking: “Why did I become a Catholic
when the Church now seems to be like my former
Protestant church?”
The same problem exists for religious and priests.
They gave up family, possessions, and a career in this
world in order to serve Christ in a special way, being a
member of the “officers of the Catholic Church.” What
a disappointment when they realize that their ideal has
been obliterated–with the active or passive assistance
of the hierarchy!
These circumstances are the reasons why the
traditional Catholic movement has grown so much.
Fifty years ago people converted from Protestantism
to the Catholic Faith. Nowadays they convert from
NO-Catholicism (in the double sense: either “Novus
Ordo” or “no”) to Catholic Tradition. The words are
new but the direction is the same. They are in search
of God’s grace and mercy. They do not try to find it
in sentimentality nor in the mere satisfaction of their
senses, but in “losing [their] life for the sake of Christ,
in order to find it.”
Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Markus Heggenberger

3

An Interview

With Bishop Bernard Fellay
The Pope is in Valle d’Aosta for a period of vacation.
[Note: The Pope left Valle d’Aosta for Castel Gandolfo
on July 29, which means that the interview was granted
before his departure.] You are located very near him.
Have you had any contact, or has there been any kind of
contact between his entourage and you?

No, absolutely not. There has been no contact.
During his vacation, we must leave the Pope alone
[lasciare in pace]. The matters go on with the Vatican,
with the people in charge of the conversations. But we
have not disturbed the Pope. This is his vacation.

Bishop Fellay, is a trip of yours to Rome foreseen
for the near future? Has the initial date of the
dialogue been set? And, about your commission,
have you already considered who will take part in
it? How many people will form it?

There is not date set for the beginning of the
dialogue, but we may assume that it will be in the
autumn. I will be in Rome for that period, but there
is nothing yet detailed. The Commission is already
formed, by three or four people, but we cannot yet
mention the names, even if to avoid any kind of
pressure.

Do you consider that in the Vatican there is an
excessive sensibility regarding the expectations of
the Jewish world in the “Williamson affair” as well as
concerning the Good Friday prayer?

Yes, I do think so. I am myself embarrassed–after
what took place in the case of Bishop Williamson–when
I see Jews who concern themselves with matters of
the Catholic Church. It is not their religion. Leave us
alone [lasciare in pace].They are matters which concern
the Catholic Church. If we wish to pray for the Jews,
we will pray for the Jews in the manner we see fit. I do
not know if they pray for us, but I would say that this is
their problem.

Therefore, the Pope and the Vatican
receive pressures from the Jewish world?

Right. This is an extremely delicate and burning
matter, and I think that we should remove ourselves
from this climate, which is not good. There was an
unfortunate coincidence of events which must never
happen again. In this context, the anger of the Jews
can be understood; I understand it, and I deplore what
happened.

www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

4

In the motu proprio Ecclesiae Unitatem the
Pope maintains that “the doctrinal questions
obviously remain, the Fraternity does not
have a canonical status in the Church, and its
ministers cannot exercise any ministry in a
legitimate manner.” What do you think of this?

I think that nothing much has changed. What has
changed is that this new disposition will focus our
relations on doctrinal matters. But it is not a change,
it is a process that moves forward, and that we had
already asked for in 2000; the path goes forward.
What the Pope writes is in line with the usual speech
of Rome since 1976, therefore it is not new. We
maintain a clear position, which we have carried on
for a while, and that we maintain, even if we are in
contrast with this law, that there are serious reasons
that justify the fact that we exercise this ministry
legitimately: the circumstances in which the Church
finds herself, which we call a “state of necessity.”
For example, when a great catastrophe happens in
a country, its ordinary structure is put out of use,
the system goes into crisis mode, and then all those
who are able to help do help. And therefore it is not
our personal will, but the need of the faithful that
demands the help of all those who are able to help.
And this state of necessity is very widespread in the
Church–there are certainly some exceptions–in order
to secure, in conscience, the legitimate exercise of the
apostolate.

that there is a problem. Besides, even if we may give
the impression of opposing or even contradictory
declarations, there are no internal fractures. For
example, on the Council, we may say that almost
all of it is to be rejected. But it may also be said that
what is possible should be salvaged. But we all can
never say the same thing. The Council is a mixture:
there are good things and bad. Even the Pope, when
he maintains that a hermeneutic of continuity is to be
desired, that he does not want a rupture, rejects the
Council interpreted as rupture.

Is Bishop Williamson a problem?

He is a completely marginal problem. What he
said has no relation whatsoever with the crisis of the
Church, with the core issue with which we have dealt
for 30 years following the Council; it is a historical
matter. The question of knowing how many and
in what way the Jews were killed is not a matter of
faith, it is not even a religious matter, it is a historical
matter. We are obviously convinced that he did not
consider this matter as he should have, and we have
distanced ourselves. But on the religious positions of
the Fraternity regarding the Council, I do not see any
problem with Williamson.

Williamson says that the Council is a
“poisoned cake” to be thrown away in
the “dustbin.” Does this phrase not seem
to you a bit strong? Are you in agreement with it?

What juridical status do you desire for the Fraternity
of Saint Pius X? A prelature, a society of apostolic life,
or what?

It is a controversial phrase, but I do not condemn
him. So many declarations today are made in a
controversial tone. It is a provocation made in order
to make people think. I would state the concept
in another way, but I do not know if I am not in
agreement. I would say it in another way, I would
say that we must transcend the Council to return to
that which the Church has always taught, and from
which the Church cannot separate herself, and in a
certain moment we must transcend the Council which
intended to be pastoral, and not doctrinal; which
wished to concern itself with the mutable situation of
the Church. But things change, and so many things of
the Council are now worn-out.

For Williamson, the Second Vatican Council is a
“poisoned cake” to be thrown in the “dustbin”;
for Tissier de Mallerais, the Council should be
“cancelled”; and for Alfonso de Galarreta there is
not “much to salvage” from the Council: is there a
division inside the Fraternity of Saint Pius X? How
do you intend to solve it? The Vatican maintains that
there are divisions inside the Fraternity.

Bishop Williamson had promised to remain silent,
but he continues to speak: will he be punished? If he
continues to maintain that a compromise with Rome
on the Council is not possible, will he be expelled?

It will depend on Rome, obviously, that is
the authority that will decide this structure. Their
perspective is the wish to respect to the utmost the
concrete reality that we represent. My hope is that
we will be sufficiently protected to exercise the
apostolate, to be able to do good, without being
always stopped from action by juridical reasons.
The hope is for a prelature, even if I do not have a
preference. On the timetable, I cannot express myself;
it all depends on Rome.

I might say that I do not see union even in the
Vatican. The problem in the Church of our age is not
us. We have become a problem only because we say
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

It is not true that Williamson speaks often. It is
very rare...he once said something...and then we did
not ask him to keep silent about everything. The
field about which we asked for his silence was very
limited. His removal has been temporary. I downplay
it as much as possible...; it is not to be exaggerated...
At the moment, I see no grounds for expulsion. It
depends on him, on the situation in which he placed

5
himself. For the time being, it is an ongoing process. He
has seriously damaged his reputation; I cannot imagine
anything beyond the situation in which he already is. It will
depend on what he says. He has already been sufficiently
punished, pushed to the margin, with no position.

And, regarding the Council,
will you accept a compromise with Rome?

We will not make any compromise on the Council. I
have no intention of making a compromise. The truth does
not tolerate compromise. We do not want a compromise, we
want clarity regarding the Council.

The recent ordinations of priests have been seen
as a provocation: Would it have not been
better to avoid them at this delicate moment?

It was not a provocation. Some bishops profited
from the occasion to claim provocation. But it was not
a provocation, neither for Rome nor for us. It is like
preventing a person from breathing. We are a priestly
society whose goal is to form priests. And therefore to
prevent the ultimate act of formation, which is ordination,
is like preventing someone from breathing. On the other
hand, it had always been foreseen and we had always
known that with the removal of the excommunication a new
situation has taken place which is better than the preceding
one, but not perfect. For us, it is normal to move forward
with our activities, and, therefore, with the ordinations.

L’Osservatore Romano has mentioned Calvin, Michael
Jackson, Harry Potter, Oscar Wilde. What do you think of
this?

I ask myself: is the role of L’Osservatore Romano truly to
busy itself with such matters? This is a first question. And
the second question is: what is said about these people is
truly the right thing? I have a mostly critical appraisal of
such matters.

Do you believe that this tired matter of the
Lefebvrians may finally reach an end with this Pope?

I do believe that there is certainly good hope. I believe
that we must pray intensely, they are very delicate matters.
We have been in this situation for 40 years, and not for
personal considerations, but truly for serious things which
pertain to the faith and to the future of the Church. We
certainly see in the Pope an authentic will to reach the core
of the matter, and we cherish this with all satisfaction. We
pray, and we hope, that with grace of the good God we
will reach something that is good for the Church and for
ourselves.

What do you think of Benedict XVI?

He is an upright man, who regards the situation and the
life of the Church most seriously.
Copyright APCOM. Translation courtesy of rorate-caeli.blogspot.com.

www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

6
F r .

a l a i n

l o r a n s

One
Pope
for Two Churches?
Christendom
NEWS
Angelus Press Edition

Traditional Catholics are used to being accused of a
“schismatic mentality.” Often, this charge comes about from
the use of language: many Catholics today object to labels
such as “conciliar Church.” Fr. Lorans considers this question
very seriously, with all of its implications.
The title of this article is a shocking one. Is it a question, leaving room for doubt? Or else is it
an absolute affirmation, even an exclamation?
These oratory precautions are devoid of interest. Why? Because the title itself makes us feel
uncomfortable; it disturbs us in that it goes against Catholic dogma: one Faith, one Church, and
one Pope. It cannot be said that there are two Churches for one Pope. The statement “one Pope
and two Churches” is not a Catholic one. We can therefore ask ourselves whether this question,
affirmation, or exclamation has arisen due to an unfounded, malicious accusation, or rather that
it is, in fact, a sad but established fact.
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

7

I suggest the following plan. First, we will study
the historical context in which this expression
came to light, to see how Cardinal Ratzinger, now
Benedict XVI, formally challenges this dichotomy.
Afterwards, we will look at the solutions he
envisages to remedy this division. Finally, we will
ask ourselves whether these remedies will really
bring about the solution hoped for by the Pope or
whether or not they will create other difficulties.

The Context of This Expression:
“One Pope for Two Churches”
First of all it must be understood that there is no
malicious, unfounded accusation in this expression
when it is used by priests or faithful in traditional
circles. Indeed, originally it was an affirmation
which almost sounded like a claim made by an
important Roman prelate, Archbishop Benelli,
deputy to the Secretariat of State. In 1976 he wrote
to Archbishop Lefebvre on behalf of Paul VI:
If the seminarians of Ecône are of good-will and are
well prepared for a priestly ministry in true fidelity to the
Conciliar Church, we will ensure that the best possible
solution will be found for them.

The expression “Conciliar Church” was used
by the deputy for the Secretariat of State! Once
this surprising statement had been uttered, it did
indeed provoke many comments. This letter was
written just before the ordinations in June 1976
in the hopes that it would stop them from taking
place. It was Father Dhanis who was responsible
for handing it over to Archbishop Lefebvre at
Flavigny and asking him not to go ahead with the
ordinations. Afterwards it became known as the “hot
summer”: the Archbishop was suspended a divinis,
and the Lille Mass took place. It was after this that
comments about the “Conciliar Church” began
appearing in the traditional press.
An editorial written by Jean Madiran in June
1976 in a supplement to Itinéraires states:
As the deputy to the Secretariat of State speaks
about a Conciliar Church, then there are indeed two
Churches. He doesn’t say “Catholic Church,” but rather
“Conciliar Church.” There are now two Churches with
the one same Paul VI at the head of both one and the
other, and there is nothing we can do about it. We have
not invented this. We are merely stating that it is so and
have recorded Archbishop Benelli’s affirmation of this
fact. Several episcopates who declare themselves to be
in communion with the Pope, and whom the Pope has
not rejected from his communion, are objectively out
of Catholic communion. Yes, even if they are betrayers
of trust, deserters or impostors, Paul VI remains at their
head without repudiating or correcting them. He keeps

them in communion. He presides over that Church as
well.

Another text written by philosopher Gustave
Corçao in May 1978 explains how he came to the
conclusion that there were two Churches, one
Conciliar and one Traditional, after Archbishop
Benelli had made this affirmation. The article can be
found in Itinéraires, or in the winter edition of Le Sel
de la Terre, pp. 11-12:
If a reader now asks me which essential differences
separate these two religions, I reply: a different spirit,
a different doctrine, a different worship and different
morals. How did I manage to forge such an awful
conviction? Well, like all those Catholics who share this
opinion with me, by years of suffering and reflection.
First of all we confronted the new texts, new allocutions,
and new pastoral publications with the doctrine which
had been taught by the Church right up to….the day
before yesterday. Starting with the texts emanating from
the very highest ranks, a painful examination forces us to
conclude that these latter have been inspired by another
spirit, they are anchored in another doctrine.

We can then quote from the main texts of
Vatican II: Gaudium et Spes, Unitatis Redintegratio,
Dignitatis Humanae, the closing speeches of the
Council on December 7, 1965, and the Institutio
Generalis of the Novus Ordo Missae.

What Is Meant by
“Conciliar Church”?
Gustave Corçao was content to say that it was
another spirit which inspired the Conciliar Church,
because Archbishop Benelli himself didn’t supply
a definition. In the above mentioned Le Sel de la
Terre he based his views on several of Archbishop
Lefebvre’s declarations and characterized the
Conciliar Church by a search for the unity of
mankind; ecumenism in the wider sense of the
term. I also believe that we can characterize it by
that which, in the eyes of Benedict XVI, makes it its
specificity. In his discourse of December 22, 2005, to
the Roman Curia, he declared that the Council had
to determine the relationship between the Church
and the contemporary world in a new way.
It might be said that three circles of questions had
formed which then, at the time of the Second Vatican
Council, were expecting an answer. First of all, the
relationship between faith and modern science had to
be redefined. Furthermore, this did not only concern
the natural sciences but also historical science for,
in a certain school, the historical-critical method
claimed to have the last word on the interpretation
of the Bible and, demanding total exclusivity for its
interpretation of Sacred Scripture, was opposed to
important points in the interpretation elaborated by
www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

8
the faith of the Church. Secondly, it was necessary
to give a new definition to the relationship between
the Church and the modern State that would make
room impartially for citizens of various religions and
ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an
orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for
the freedom to practise their own religion. Thirdly,
linked more generally to this was the problem of
religious tolerance–a question that required a new
definition of the relationship between the Christian
faith and the world religions. In particular, before the
recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with
a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it
was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the
relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

The Pope gave us this description of the
conciliar project in the absence of a definition of
the Conciliar Church. I think we should therefore
base ourselves upon it. He quoted Paul VI, if not to
correct him, at least to clarify his comments about
this adaptation and opening to the world: “In his
concluding speech to the council on December 7,
1965, Paul VI indicated there was another specific
motivation for which hermeneutics of discontinuity
could appear convincing,” a motivation which could
allow us to understand that there was a certain
discontinuity. In other words, that the change
was not superficial but profound and that it could
effectively lead to a rupture. Here it should be noted
that Pope Benedict XVI alternatively questioned
and yet recognized this discontinuity. While saying
that this discontinuity was merely an impression,
he then claimed a continuity to which it is attached
but which, he admitted, is not always obvious. In
other words, those who think that there is a rupture
are mistaken, but they have excuses for their mis­
understanding.
Benedict XVI continued:
In the great dispute about man which marks the
modern epoch, the Council had to focus in particular
on the theme of anthropology. It had to question the
relationship between the Church and her faith on the
one hand, and man and the contemporary world on
the other.

This is why we can say that what made for the
specificity of the Council and the Conciliar Church
and that which Archbishop Benelli called for, was its
opening to the contemporary world. Is this opening
one that will go so far as to dissolve Catholic
identity? It is precisely what is at stake.
Obviously Pope Benedict XVI challenged the
dichotomy: there are not two Churches, there is
only one. He objected to the affirmation which
would mean that there was a Traditional Church and
a Conciliar Church. By this very fact he repudiated
Benelli. In 1985, in The Ratzinger Report between
Cardinal Ratzinger and the journalist Vittorio
Messori, we can read:
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On this point, he insists, he wants to be very precise.
“This distinction of a before and after in the history of
the Church, wholly unjustified by the documents of
Vatican II, which do nothing but reaffirm the continuity
of Catholicism, must be decidedly opposed. There is
no ‘pre-’ or ‘post-’ conciliar Church; there is but one,
unique Church that walks the path toward the Lord, ever
deepening and ever better understanding the treasure of
faith that he himself has entrusted to her. There are no
leaps in this history, there are no fractures, and there is
no break in continuity. In no wise did the Council intend
to introduce a temporal dichotomy in the Church.” (The
Ratzinger Report, p.35)

Therefore, this opening to the world is not a rupture.
As you can see, the Prefect for the Congregation of
the Faith insisted upon this fact but did not prove it.
Generally speaking, the Pope thinks that we
have made a bad argument if we unduly declare
that there was one Ratzinger before the papal
election and another Ratzinger when he became
Benedict XVI. He claims to be the same and not
to have changed. As proof, read between the lines
of the declaration made to Messori in 1985 and
you already have the discourse given to the Curia
in 2005. If we go back ten years further we can
see that he said the same thing in 1975 at the tenth
anniversary of the closing of the Council:
First: “It is impossible (‘for a Catholic’) to take a
position for Vatican II but against Trent or Vatican I.
Whoever accepts Vatican II, as it has clearly expressed
and understood itself, at the same time accepts the whole
binding tradition of the Catholic Church, particularly
also the two previous councils. And that also applies
to the so-called ‘progressivism’, at least in its extreme
forms.” Second: “It is likewise impossible to decide in
favor of Trent and Vatican I, but against Vatican II.
Whoever denies Vatican II denies the authority that
upholds the other two councils and thereby detaches
them from their foundation. And this applies to the
so-called ‘traditionalism’, also in its extreme forms.”
“Every partisan choice destroys the whole (the very
history of the Church) which can exist only as an
indivisible unity” [passages between parenthesis were
inserted in the Cardinal’s own hand]. (The Ratzinger
Report, pp.28-29)

Here too the Cardinal affirmed but did not
prove.

Hermeneutics of Continuity as
a Remedy for This Dichotomy
Is it possible to find a demonstration of this
continuity in the 2005 discourse? There is doubtless
an embarrassing affirmation–recognizable by the
style used–of a hidden continuity, adjacent yet
unobvious, coexisting with an apparent discontinuity
but inexistent in the eyes of the Pope. To go further,
let us see how Benedict XVI tried to use this
hermeneutics of continuity and how he endeavored
to make it visible by taking some examples. On

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the subject of the relationships between Church
and State, he said that he was going to show us
that continuity is real and that discontinuity is
only apparent. Let us see if this chosen example is
convincing:
It was necessary to learn to recognize that…it is only
the principles that express the permanent aspect, since
they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions
from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are
the practical forms that depend on the historical situation
and are therefore subject to change.

Here the Pope seemed to be suggesting this: as
ever, there are old things which must be expressed
in a new way; Tradition must be presented in a
new way, vetera sed noviter dicta. This is absolutely
traditional. However, is it possible to affirm that
principles which refer to changing realities are
in themselves more or less null and void? Is not
the characteristic of a principle to be so rooted in
concrete reality that it remains as an immutable
fixed point?
Let us take the example that Benedict XVI
suggested in order to illustrate his point and to
show how this hermeneutics of continuity isn’t just
a simple affirmation, but rather the expression of a
visible reality.

the Pope, there is no rupture because by thus doing
it is only reappropriating that which, in fact, is its
essential patrimony: “It has again recovered the
deepest patrimony of the Church...” This signifies
that in fact there was discontinuity with Pius IX
who, by affirming what he did, opposed himself to
this deepest patrimony of the Church. Thus, if there
is no discontinuity today, there was, nonetheless,
such a discontinuity before Vatican II.
By so doing she [the Church] can be conscious of
being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself
(cf. Mt. 22:21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs
of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the
emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tim.
2:2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused
to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion
of the State.

The martyrs certainly refused to burn incense
before emperors who were auto-proclaimed gods.
The martyrs of the early Church died for their
faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ,
and for this very reason they also died for freedom
of conscience and the freedom to profess one’s own
faith–a profession that no State can impose but which,
instead, can only be claimed with God’s grace in
freedom of conscience.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive
religious freedom as a need that derives from human
coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the
truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person
must adopt only through the process of conviction. The
Second Vatican Council recognizing and making its own
an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree
on Religious Freedom has recovered the deepest patrimony
of the Church.

Which means that Constantine brought about a
rupture and that all the Popes since then, from the
Edict of Milan onwards have in fact been in rupture!
Here we have Jesus Christ’s martyrs…and
liberty of conscience? That an act of faith is indeed
a free act is certain, but what is far less certain is
that the martyrs were martyred for religious liberty.
The least we can say is that it is an anachronism.
The idea of religious liberty didn’t exist at the
time; the liberty of an act of faith did, but, religious
liberty described as an essential principle of the
modern State certainly did not! Therefore, this
example does not work very well because it is an
anachronous example. It does not shed light on the
hermeneutics of continuity, either in a philosophical
or theological way, or even, quite simply, in a
truthful way. Certainly, early Christians did refuse to
adore self-proclaimed divine creatures; they refused
all those divinities which were adored in the Roman
pantheon, but they did not refuse the State religion
when it was the religion revealed by Jesus Christ.
Let us continue our study using other examples.
In The Ratzinger Report, Benedict XVI proposed,
as one of his important projects—to instigate “the
reform of the reform”—which must enable us to
resolve this opposition and to get rid of the rupture
between pre- and post-conciliar Church. For him,
the reform, the restoration, cannot be a return to the
past: Here is the Cardinal’s textual reply to Messori:

This concerns the opening of the Council to the
modern world. In this text, Vatican II adopted “an
essential principle of the modern State,” but, says

“If by ‘restoration’ is meant a turning back, no
restoration of such kind is possible. The Church moves
forward toward the consummation of history, she looks

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be wellgrounded, whereas the way they are applied to new
contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious
freedom were to be considered an expression of the
human inability to discover the truth and thus become a
canonization of relativism, then this social and historical
necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical
level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently,
it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the
human person is capable of knowing the truth about
God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth,
is bound to this knowledge. It is quite different, on the
other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that
derives from human coexistence…

Here, religious liberty opposes head-on
the teaching of Pius IX; it is the “anti-Syllabus”
according to Cardinal Ratzinger’s own expression.
Doesn’t this anti-Syllabus present a rupture? Isn’t
there a considerable break? Is there still hidden
continuity, coexisting in an unobvious way? Let us
continue our examination of the text:

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10
ahead to the Lord who is coming. No, there is no going
back, nor is it possible to go back. Hence there is no
‘restoration’ whatsoever in this sense. But if by restoration
we understand the search for a new balance after all the
exaggerations of an indiscriminate opening to the world,
after the overly positive interpretations of an agnostic
and atheistic world, well, then a restoration understood
in this sense (a newly found balance of orientations
and values within the Catholic totality) is altogether
desirable and, for that matter, is already in operation
in the Church. In this sense it can be said that the first
phase after Vatican II has come to a close.” (The Ratzinger
Report, pp.37-38)

Without any doubt Benedict XVI recognizes the
fact that the post-conciliar era has been disastrous:
“The Church seems like a boat about to sink, a boat
taking in water on every side...” He has said it on
several occasions. It is in this sense that the Pope
seems to converge with the analysis made by priests
and faithful of the traditional movement. Addressing
the priests of the dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and
Treviso in July 2007, he said: “I too was very
enthusiastic during the Council and had hope of a
new encounter between the Church and the world
but then we all experienced the fact that things
remained difficult.”
However, whilst he affirmed this–and it is in
this context that we must see the reform of the
reform–the Council remained, he said, the compass
of his pontificate, just as it was the compass of the
pontificate of his predecessor, John Paul II. At the
beginning of his pontificate, Benedict XVI addressed
the Cardinal-Electors in the Sistine Chapel as
follows:
I have especially in mind the testimony of Pope John
Paul II. He left a more courageous, freer and younger
Church. A Church which, according to his teaching and
example, looks at the past with serenity, and is not afraid
of the future. During the great Jubilee, this latter entered
the new millennium, carrying in her hands the Gospel,
applied to the present world through the authoritative
interpretation of the Second Vatican Council. Pope
John Paul II rightly pointed out to the Council as to the
“compass” which enables us to find our way on the vast
ocean of the third millennium (cf. Apostolic Letter Novo
Millennio Ineunte, nn. 57-58). In his spiritual Testament
he also noted: “I am convinced that it will still be given
to the new generations to draw for a long time from
the riches which this 20th-century Council has left us”
(17. III. 2000). As I am also preparing for the service
proper to the Successor of Peter, I want to state strongly
my firm will to keep the commitment to implement
the Second Vatican Council, following in the footsteps
of my Predecessors and in faithful continuity with the
bimillenary tradition of the Church.

Cardinal Ratzinger spoke to Messori about
“a new balance after all the exaggerations of
an indiscriminate opening to the world.” It is
indeed this that characterizes the post-conciliar
era but which, according to him, was due to
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poor hermeneutics. “After the overly positive
interpretations of an agnostic and atheistic world,
well, then a restoration understood in this sense”
(a newly found balance of orientations and values
within the Catholic totality) “is altogether desirable
and, for that matter, is already in operation in the
Church.” It would be a kind of new equilibrium, less
abusive, less excessive: a readjustment. Elsewhere
a new “synthesis” is invoked in order to overcome
conflicts; where there is a conflict, a thesis, an
anti-thesis and perhaps a way would be made for
yet another new synthesis. On this subject, an
interesting example, that of St. Charles Borromeo,
was given by Cardinal Ratzinger to Messori:
“It can certainly be said that Charles Borromeo rebuilt
(‘restored’) the Catholic Church, which also in the area
around Milan was at that time nearly destroyed for
awhile, without making a return to the Middle Ages. On
the contrary, he created a modern form of the Church.
How little ‘restorative’ such a reform was is seen, for
example, in the fact that Charles suppressed a religious
order that was nearly in decline and assigned its goods
to new, live communities.…
“In Charles Borromeo, therefore, we can also see what
I meant to say with ‘reform’ or ‘restoration’ in its original
meaning: to live outstretched toward a totality, to live
from a ‘yes’ that leads back to the unity of the human
forces in conflict with each other. A ‘yes’ that confers on
them a positive meaning within the totality. In Charles
Borromeo we can also see the essential prerequisite for a
similar renewal. Charles could convince others because
he himself was a man of conviction. He was able to exist
with his certitudes amid the contradictions of his time
because he himself lived them.” (The Ratzinger Report,
pp.38-39)

It must be noted that the definition of the reform
has a strong existential connotation. To “live” the
reform was to “live” saying “yes.” It is not easy to
explain but “a ‘yes’ gives a positive connotation
to the heart of the whole.” Here, the personal
existential dimension is very strong, but difficult to
conceptualize.
We may certainly review the examples given
by the Pope, not in an existentialist way, but
rather in a Thomistic way, in order to show how
his reform of the reform would work–that which
would finally resolve the opposition between the
pre- and post-conciliar Church. We could envisage
them in a totally different light. The idea of reform
is completely traditional in the Church. Indeed it is
said that the Benedictines need a monastic reform
every 100 years. Certainly not, however, a reform in
the sense of an aggiornamento, or in the revolutionary
sense, of recycling! What did a monastic reform of
a great reformer such as St. Teresa of Avila really
consist of? Above all, it was concerned with a return
to the original form, to the spirit of the foundation
and the founder. Here, it is not a case of going back
because it is not returning to a status quo ante. It is

11
neither anterior nor posterior but rather superior. It
is of a higher order. It is necessary to go back to the
original form given to a foundation by its founder.
This is not, however, exactly what we have seen in
the examples given by Cardinal Ratzinger.
We could also consider this search for balance
wished for by Benedict XVI in a Thomistic light,
but it could not be a kind of Hegelian surpassing:
thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis–it is difficult to really
know what the synthesis takes or does not take from
the thesis and anti-thesis. On the other hand, if we
regard this “surpassing” in a realistic way, inspired
by a Thomist such as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, one
rises to the apex veritatis, a summit where truth is
found, meaning not some kind of half and half
mixture: both hot and cold with a tepid result. The
apex veritatis is represented by a schema in which
the two parties at the base of the pyramid are right
in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny.
The classical example is that of Heraclites, who is
right when he affirms movement but wrong when he
denies being; Parmenides is right when he affirms
being and wrong when he denies movement. Is the
truth to be found in a vague synthesis which relies
on a tentative to conciliate opposites? Is the solution
to be found in a heracliteo-parmenidism or else in
a parmenido-heracliteism? No, it is to be found in
Aristotle. Up above! It is to be found in potentiality
and in actuality. But perhaps this example is too
metaphysical; we ought to take an example more
relevant to our present preoccupations.
Today we ask ourselves about liberty. Liberty
cannot exist without a certain order, but order
opposes liberty. Which is right? Is it an oxymoron
to talk about well-ordered liberty? Ordered liberty
seems to be the opposite of liberty. We can then
propose an inverted oxymoron and say that liberty
resides in free order, but then this is no longer
order. The Thomistic view neither defines liberty as
free order nor as ordered liberty but as vis electiva
mediorum servato ordine finis. In other words, we must
distinguish between order as an end (servato ordine
finis) and a capacity to choose among the means (vis
electiva mediorum). It then becomes clear that it does
not consist of a fragile balancing act on unstable
foundations.
These reflections enable us to question ourselves
about the efficaciousness of the reform of the
reform. To resume what has just been said, we
have the impression that we could understand the
reform of the reform, as suggested by Benedict
XVI, as a unifying reform of the first reform which
intervened immediately after the Council and which
had dissolving results. This second reform is hardly
satisfactory because it would be a compromise,
a precarious balance. It does not rise to the apex
veritatis, nor leads to a true kind of reform–not a
turning back! Rather, it would be a return to the

original form, to the spirit of the foundation where
no narrow historicist vision is to be found. The
original form is neither anterior nor posterior but
above all, superior, transcendental. It is along these
lines, I think, that it would be possible to reply to
our earlier question about principles which apply
to contingent realities, without being themselves,
however, subject to change.

Is the Council
Called into Question?
At this point in our reflection, it is necessary
to see precisely where the difficulty resides: is the
Council to be called into question or not? What
is interesting to note is the fact that the Pope
believes that there was a disastrous application of
the Council. What we fail to understand however,
is how he considers this application to be totally
independent of the Council itself. The Council is
exempt of fault, and definitely not to be blamed.
It was perfect and if we want to go back to the
texts themselves, we will find the solution to the
application which followed the Council and which
the Pope calls disastrous for lack of satisfactory
interpretation–an interpretation, please note, which
has not yet been implemented for 40 years!
The difficulty is concentrated on this point: how
do you manage to get across that there is indeed a
link between the texts themselves and the ensuing
application of the Council? Further, that this latter
is not independent, that it was not simply subverted
or perverted through an unfortunate interpretation
of the texts. This is no easy task because the Pope
considers these texts to be good and thinks that if we
return to them all will be right.
Let us now examine the Pope’s personal
vision of the Council and let us risk the following
affirmation: the hermeneutics of continuity is based
on a benign interpretation of the Council. Let us
give two examples.
Firstly, the spirit of Vatican II; here I will
let Vittorio Messori speak. The Pope tells us
that the Council is in perfect continuity with the
spirituality of the Church and that it always intended
to say what the Church has always said. The
interpretations which followed were not good but,
if we revert to the texts, all will be alright. Cardinal
Ratzinger affirmed this to Messori, who was
somewhat taken aback and so he then asked him
the following very pertinent question: “Can, then,
The Imitation of Christ continue to exist alongside
Gaudium et Spes?”
The Pope answered:
“Obviously, it is a matter of two very different
spiritualities. The Imitation is a text that reflects the great
late medieval monastic tradition. But Vatican II in no
way intended to take good things away from the good.”
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“And is The Imitation of Christ (taken, of course,
as a symbol of a certain spirituality) still among the
‘good’ things?” asked Messori, who knew very well
that anything that savored of sacrifice had to a great
extent been done away with after the Council. The
Pope replied by insisting:
“Indeed: among the most urgent objectives of the
modern Catholic belongs that of recovering all the
positive elements of a spirituality of this kind, with
its awareness of the qualitative distance between the
mentality of faith and a worldly mentality.”

The common-sense reaction of this learned
layman, a Catholic journalist, is most interesting:
Just consider: twenty years ago it was declared in
sundry tones that the most pressing problem of the
Catholic was to find a spirituality that was “new”,
“communitarian”, “open”, “non-sacral”, “turned
toward the world”. Now after long wanderings it is
being discovered that the urgent task is to find again a
connecting link with the ancient spirituality of “flight
from the world”.

The Cardinal noticed Messori’s surprise and
replied:
“The problem is once more that of finding a new
equilibrium. Apart from the legitimate, indeed, for
the Church, precious monastic or eremitic vocations,
the believer is held to live that none-too-easy balance
between a proper incarnation in history and the
indispensable tension toward eternity. It is precisely this
balance that prevents one from either sacralizing earthly
commitment or laying oneself open to the reproach of
‘alienation’.” (The Ratzinger Report, pp.115-117)

Once again we come back to equilibrium,
but which one? A compromise, an overcoming of
tensions? The hermeneutics of continuity rests on a
benign interpretation; let us see what Paul VI said at
the end of the Council, on December 7, 1965:
Secular humanism, revealing itself in its horrible
anti-clerical reality has, in a certain sense, defied the
Council. The religion of the God who became man
has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes
himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash,
a battle, a condemnation? There could have been,
but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan
has been the model of the spirituality of the Council.
A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the
whole of it. The attention of our Council has been
absorbed by the discovery of human needs (and these
needs grow in proportion to the greatness which the
son of the earth claims for himself). But we call upon
those who term themselves modern humanists, and
who have renounced the transcendent value of the
highest realities, to give the Council credit at least
for one quality and to recognize our own new type of
humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others,
honor mankind. (Closing speech of the Second Vatican
Council by Paul VI, December 7, 1965)

This really does appear to be an anti-Imitation
of Jesus Christ, especially as here the parable of the
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Good Samaritan is quoted wrongly. The Good
Samaritan does not take care of the suffering man
by saying “I too worship mankind,” but rather:
“You are ill and I am going to take care of you.” He
is a figure of Jesus Christ. This is a very favorable
interpretation compared with what Paul VI himself
said about the Council which he led to its end.
In They Have Uncrowned Him, Archbishop
Lefebvre made a judgment which conforms more to
the reality:
There you have it then, explained, in an ingenuous
and lyrical manner, but clearly and terribly, what was
not the spirit, but the spirituality of the Council: a
“sympathy without limits” towards the secular man,
for the man without God! Still, if it had been for the
purpose of lifting up this fallen man, of revealing his
mortal wounds to him, of dressing them for him with
an effective remedy, of healing him and bringing him
into the bosom of the Church, of submitting to his
God….But no! It was to be able to say to the world,
‘You see, the Church also has the cult of man.’ I do not
hesitate to affirm that the Council brought to reality the
conversion of the Church to the world. (Archbishop
Lefebvre, They Have Uncrowned Him [Angelus Press,
2003], pp.216-217).

The Shady History
of the Council
The other example concerns the history of the
Council–its disturbing beginning, which was to
considerably influence its whole development. This
is how Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about it to Messori:
“After Pope John XX I I I had announced its
convocation, the Roman Curia worked together with
the most distinguished representatives of the world
episcopate in the preparation of those schemata which
were then rejected by the Council Fathers as too
theoretical, too textbook-like and insufficiently pastoral.
Pope John had not reckoned on the possibility of a
rejection but was expecting a quick and frictionless
balloting on these projects which he had approvingly
read. It is clear that none of those texts aimed to
change doctrine. Rather, it was a matter of synthesizing
it, at most, of arriving also at a clarification of some
points not yet precisely defined and, in that way, of
developing it further. Even the rejection of these texts
by the Council Fathers was not directed against the
doctrine as such, but against the inadequate way of
expressing it and certainly also against some definitions
that had never existed up to then and are considered
unnecessary even today. What is certain is that the
Council did not take the turn that John XXIII had
expected....It must also be admitted that, in respect
to the whole Church, at least up to now, Pope John
XXIII’s prayer that the Council be for her a new spring
forward, renewed life and unity, was not heard.” (The
Ratzinger Report, pp.41-42)

When presenting this coup de force, which
consisted of rejecting all the preparatory schemata,

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meaning all those serious studies which had been
elaborated to ensure that the assembly would not
merely consist of an agitprop, but rather be a real
assembly of bishops, of theologians, Archbishop
Lefebvre did not hesitate to refer to the “fraud”
which had taken place at the Council of Ephesus:
If his testimony may appear questionable, let us
listen to Cardinal Liénart himself who was at the outset
of this coup de force and who admitted how, encouraged
by others–Cardinal Joseph Frings, Bishop Daneels,
etc., he stood up and declared: “Everything that has
been prepared is null and void.” How could this have
come about? Had they come with empty hands without
having prepared anything? Was there nothing behind
this concerted maneuver? Was it a benign, and even
angelical, vision of reality?
I would have you know that after this amazing
statement, and while leaving the hall of the Council, a
Dutch bishop hardly suspected of traditional tendencies,
expressed his thoughts in no uncertain terms, the same
as those of French and German liberal bishops, when he
shouted to a priest friend a short distance away: “Our
first victory.” Such is the historical reality. (Archbishop
Lefebvre, They Have Uncrowned Him [Angelus Press,
2003], ch.24).

Vague Conciliar Texts
Let us now examine the texts themselves
and try to establish a link of cause and effect
between them and the present crisis in which we
now find ourselves, and which the Pope himself
acknowledges. The least we can say, if we study
them attentively and without prejudice, is that they
are highly ambiguous; they are equivocal and often
contain oxymorons. Lumen Gentium (§10), it is true,
does distinguish between the common priesthood of
the faithful and the ministerial priesthood. However,
in the following number, pages after pages talk
about the priesthood in general, confusing both
or making the priesthood of priests merely one
function among others of the common priesthood.
How can this be reconciled? Let us speak frankly: if
we do not want there be two Churches for one Pope,
it is first of all necessary to ensure that there are not
two Councils for one Church.
In Dignitatis Humanae it is stated–in §2–that
man must be subject to God’s law. But–in §3–man’s
freedom is exalted, as is personal conscience. The
objection of conscience is upheld in such a general
way as to be false.
In Dignitatis Humanae also, distinctions are made
between acts exempt from coercion by the State but
here distinctions should be made between internal
and external, private or public acts. The same
freedom should not be granted to all.
What simply needs to be done, as the Pope
invites us to do, is to examine the texts themselves.
This must be done in order to uncover what Bossuet

called variations when talking about the Protestants:
contradictions or incoherencies. This study was
undertaken during the last century by Romano
Amerio in his work Iota Unum, of which the subtitle
is precisely: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church
in the Twentieth Century (Sarto House). It would be a
case of trying, in an unpretentious way, to see how,
in these texts, the principle of non-contradiction is
respected or else flouted.
I would like to conclude by repeating that we
must not allow ourselves to be contaminated by this
vague thinking and its contradictions. Today people
talk about “dynamic fidelity”: fidelity open to the
world, a faithful opening to the Gospel... This is
worldly language, and a language which particularly
belongs to the world of politicians. Thus we have
had the “conservative revolution”; and on the death
of John-Paul II we were told that he had been a
“revolutionary conservative” pope. In a different
context we were told of “quiet strength”….We must
not bear this kind of speech. Not for aesthetical
reasons, but rather for ontological ones!
An oxymoron allows the human mind to nourish
itself with chimera, to feed on utopias. It keeps us in
the illusion that reality is supple, elastic, of variable
geometry, and that nothing opposes our will because
everything in it is made of rubber. In the real world,
it is impossible to reconcile being and non-being,
real and false, good and bad. This rhetoric gives us
the impression of being able to free ourselves from
the laws of gravity proper to human thought and
to be floating instead in the sky. Pope St. Pius X
himself denounced this “staring at a chimera.”
Let us reject the enterprise of intimidation which
wants to make us believe that a restoration within
the Church would be a turning back, whereas it
actually must be a return to fundamental principles–
not prior but superior. The remedy for the frightful
crisis presently shaking the Church consists of a
return to reality: natural reality as it exists, and to
supernatural reality as it has been revealed to us.
Taken from Christendom, No. 19. Slightly edited by Angelus Press.
This article is taken from a talk given by Fr. Lorans at the Theological Conference of the Courrier de Rome, held in Paris, France (Feb.
2-4, 2009).

www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

14

D r .

D a v i d

A l l e n

W h i t e

An introduction to

Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
CONCLUSION: One Day in the Life
of Ivan Denisovich

In this final article, let’s take a
look at some of the paradoxes in this
situation. For instance, work is the
center of the Communist vision: “He
who does not work does not eat”–
unless you happen to be one of the
bureaucrats high up. Therefore, in the
camps, everyone worked. There were
different kinds of work at different
camps. Ivan Denisovich remembers
an earlier camp he was in where
they would wake up very early to go
logging; they stayed in the woods until
they met their quota. There was no
stopping point. He thought the subsequent camps
was relatively easy since they were done when the
bell rang. Then there was the bureaucratic lineup to
make sure nobody had escaped. They were treated
like robots or animals—but at least the work day
ended up at some point.

THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

What were they working on? They
were afraid of being sent to one of
the new projects where there was no
cover and no barriers. They would
be in the wind and cold all day long.
A “good day” consisted in not being
sent there. They were sent to a place
where they had a few moments to
warm themselves at the beginning
of the day; the whole novel is filled
with attempts to get warm. It was
a question of survival. They were
building a wall for the new power
plant.
What was the power plant going to power? It
was going to power the camp in which they were
prisoners. You would think they would try to do
the shoddiest work possible so that the power plant
would fall down. No matter how hard they worked,
or how skilled they were, they were cheated on
their reward. They weren’t going to get what they

15
were promised. But they didn’t build it so it would
fall down; they built it well. They were dedicated
workers. They were a group of men joined together
building a power plant for their prison. Man works;
a real man takes pride in his work. There is more
dignity in their building the wall of their power plant
than in the whole Soviet bureaucracy. They cared.
They did good work. And they did good work
because they had to rely on each other, they were
proud of each other, and they worked with each
other. They did a good job.
This leads to an incredibly ironic scene where
Denisovich says, “Well, it’s better here because the
work stops at the end of the day.” But when the day
ends, what is he doing? He keeps building. If he
doesn’t, by the next morning the mortar will have
hardened and he won’t be able to work with it. He
must complete the last few rows of bricks no matter
what. He is a man taking pride in his work, in a job
well done. All this, building a power plant for the
prison in which he is a prisoner.
There is another extraordinary example of this
near the end of the book. A captain is hauled off. He
goes to the prison for something he had done that
morning, criticizing the Soviet government:
You have no right to make people undress in freezing
cold! You don’t know Article 9 of the Criminal Code!

The Code forbade it. But they knew; it was he
who did not know. There was no real code. The
code was whatever they said it was at any given
moment since there is no truth. And there’s no truth
because there’s no God. Why was there no God?
Because these men tried to replace Him. There was
only man—and they sought to re-make the world
better than God.
It’s you, brother, who don’t know anything yet!
The captain kept blazing away at them: “You aren’t
real Soviet people!”
Volkovoy didn’t mind Article 9, but at this he looked
as black as a thundercloud.
“Ten days’ strict regimen!” he shouted.
“Starting this evening,” he told the head warder,
lowering his voice.
They never like putting a man in the hole first thing
in the morning: it means the loss of one man-shift. Let
him sweat and strain all day, and sling him in the hole
at night.

And that’s what happened. At the end of the
day, he comes back to the hut with the others; and
then they come for him. They never forget.
“Keep smiling,” “Don’t let them get you down”—but
there was nothing much you could say. Gang 104 had
built the punishment block themselves and knew all
about it: the walls were stone, the floor cement, there
were no windows at all, the stove was kept just warm
enough for the ice on the wall to melt and form puddles
on the floor. You slept on bare boards, got 300 grams of
bread a day, skilly only every third day.

Ten days! Ten days in that cell block, if they were strict
about it and made you sit out the whole stint, meant your
health was ruined for life. It meant tuberculosis and the
rest of your days in the hospital.
Fifteen days in there and you’d be six feet under.
Thank heaven for your cozy hut, and keep your nose
clean.

They built it; and they built it well. Why did
they build it well? Pride in their work. They were
men with human dignity. I could continue with
theory and reality, with contradictions that make
no sense. But there is something higher than work,
prison, or the system. And this higher thing is
expressed throughout the novel.
They talk about the same things men always talk
about. They have political discussions. Throughout
the book, they discuss politics. They share stories.
At one point, they are talking about things which
happened overseas in different countries. Suddenly,
late at night:
Somebody in the room was bellowing: “Old Man
Whiskers won’t ever let you go! He wouldn’t trust his
own brother, let alone a bunch of cretins like you!”

“Old Man Whiskers” was Papa Joe. The
big man. Suddenly, it’s not simply a political
discussion—it’s open revolution. Remember that
what Solzhenitsyn was sent to the camps for in the
first place was being critical of Stalin in a letter.
Suddenly, in their camps, there is open political
attack on the Leader. How can they get away with
it? What was the worse that could happen to them?
To be sent to a camp? And suddenly we realize that
the only place in the country where there is free and
open political discussion is the camps:
The good thing about hard-labor camps is that you
have all the freedom in the world to sound off. In UstIzhma you’d only have to whisper that people couldn’t
buy matches outside and they’d clap another ten on
you. Here you could shout anything you liked from a
top bunk and the stoolies wouldn’t report it, because the
security officer couldn’t care less.

You can imagine how people reading this in the
first edition roared with laughter. There was free
speech in the Soviet Union! In the camps! Get sent
there and you can say whatever you want! But, you
see, the men were very aware of politics. What else
were they talking about? Art, poetry, music—over
and over.
Early on, Shukhov, who is not terribly bright,
has been sent to wash the floor in one of the officers’
huts. He had the old wives’ habit of letting his eyes
wander where they shouldn’t. And he noticed that
Kolya was writing lines of exactly the same length,
with a margin, beginning every line with a capital
letter immediately below the previous line. He knew
right away it wasn’t work, even though it wasn’t his
business. Kolya was writing poetry. Shukhov hasn’t
read poetry and so he doesn’t recognize it.
www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

16
You can not stamp out art. You can not stamp
out the creative urge. You may be in the midst of
horror. Yet what does man do? He writes poetry. We
don’t get to read it. And we don’t know what it is.
We have flashes of characters, glimpses of
actions which are never explained. There is a
distance even among these men. We get bits of their
stories, small hints of where they came from or how
they got there. But we never have the whole story.
Even Ivan Denisovich, we only get fragments of his
story.
But this was Solzhenitsyn’s experience. You meet
someone, you get to know them, and then you’re off
to somewhere else. You meet other people, get a bit
of their story, and then there’s another separation.
And yet, in the midst of this, what happens? Poetry
is written. Art surfaces in the most unlikely places.
The camps produced a very great novel. Something
the Soviet system certainly did not expect.
There is also an ongoing debate about movies.
This is in the camps! They’re living in primitive
conditions and debating movies:
“You’re wrong, pal,” Caesar was saying. “One must
say in all objectivity that Eisenstein is a genius. Now isn’t
Ivan the Terrible a work of genius? The oprichniki dancing
in masks! The scene in the cathedral!”
“All show off!” K-123 snapped. “Too much art is no
art at all. Like candy instead of bread! And the politics
of it is utterly vile–a vindication of a one-man tyranny.
An insult to the memory of three generations of Russian
intellectuals.”

And they go on with the debate. Why? Because
art matters. Art is central to human existence.
You can’t crush it out. They debated the moves of
Eisenstein in the camps. It pops up again hours later
and they’re still arguing. They made it through their
day by arguing about things that matter. Art elevates
the soul. The gruel doesn’t matter; the work doesn’t
matter at that moment; the cold doesn’t matter.
They discuss movies because art is important. For a
small moment they are elevated above where they
are, and are in touch with something good, true,
and eternal. Even if it means just arguing about that
movie. In the same way, for the Soviet citizenry in
1962, they were elevated above the cold, gray, dead
horror of life by reading this novel. And everyone
was talking about one book, one novel. It was not
just the realism; it was the elevation of soul. Great
art elevates the soul.
This is not an entertaining novel. Art has two
functions: to entertain and to instruct. Some works
are much more entertainment, others are much
more instructional; this book is hard instruction. We
have a few smiles, a couple of chuckles, but there
isn’t a lot of humor. It was instructional to let the
people know what was going on, but it’s still art
because it elevates. As people read this novel, they
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

were elevated. As with all great art, if you tell the
complete truth about one moment in time in one
location, you break through time into eternal truth.
That’s what Solzhenitsyn does in this novel.
Therefore we should not be surprised that one
of the central topics in the book is religion. They
tried to stamp it out. It was forbidden. You couldn’t
worship, you couldn’t believe, you couldn’t even
talk about it. If you were a good communist, you
knew there was no God. Right from the beginning
of the day–right from the start–one of the first things
is we meet Shukhov’s neighbor, Alyosha, the wellwashed Baptist. Even in the camps, he kept himself
clean. Why? Because he’s a good Baptist and we
know that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” It’s a
wonderful little moment: the well-washed Baptist,
reading the notebook into which he had copied
half the New Testament. They couldn’t keep the
Scriptures out of the camps; they were there. They
may be handwritten, they may be passed from hand
to hand, but then remember: that’s the way they
were passed originally. And if that’s what we’ve
returned to, so be it.
The Baptist was reading his Bible, not altogether
silently, but sort of sighing out the words. This was meant
perhaps for Shukhov. (A bit like political agitators, these
Baptists. Loved spreading the word.)

It’s a wonderful touch. And then we hear what
it is he’s reading. What we learn in the course of the
day is that they have an ongoing religious debate all
day long. And probably not just this day, but day
after day after day. They’re arguing about religious
matters. Trying to outlaw things like this is like
trying to block out stars in the sky. You can’t do it.
You could cement their mouths shut and they would
talk about God with their fingers. You cannot stop
men from talking about the ultimate truths.
“But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief,
or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers
as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that
name let him glorify God.”
Alyoshka was a champion at one thing: wiggling that
little book of his into a crack in the wall so neatly that it
had never been found by searching warders.

This is at the beginning of the day. Shukhov
just sort of ignores it and goes, “He’s at it again!
He’s always reading that thing!” But it continues. It
continues throughout the whole day. The book is
peppered with it and we get glimpses of what this
believer is like. At the work site, we read:
Alyoshka’s cheeks were hollow, he lived on his bare
ration and never made anything on the side—what had he
got to be happy about? He and the other Baptists spent
their Sundays whispering to each other. Life in the camp
was like water off a duck’s back to them. They’d been
lumbered with twenty-five years apiece just for being
Baptists. Fancy thinking that would cure them!

17
The Baptists were in the camps living out
something that they believed, unlike the Soviet
officials who did not live out their communist
beliefs. The communists were lousy communists
according to their own faith! They failed consistently
to live up to it. The Baptists were great Baptists to
the point where others in the camp were astonished
at what they were able to do. But they were not the
only ones there. Pavlo, the tough guy, is having his
dinner in the middle of the day.
Pavlo tantalized him a bit longer while he finished his
gruel, licked his spoon clean (but not the bowl), put it
away safely, and crossed himself.

He didn’t lick the bowl; there is part of that
human dignity. On the book goes. A tough guy,
hard worker, doing that. It is different from the
Baptists but it’s there, and that’s why the arguments
go on–because these questions matter. And man will
fight and argue over these things.
At one point, Shukhov is hiding a piece of metal
in his mittens. He wants to get it back into the hut
because he can do wonders with a tiny little piece of
scrap metal. But who knows what it could be?
A squeeze like that on the other mitten and he’d be
done for—into the hole, on 300 grams a day, no hot
food for two days at a time. He imagined himself getting
weaker and weaker from hunger, and thought how hard
it would be to get back to his present wiry (not too well
fed, but not starving) condition.
And he offered up a silent, agonized prayer: “Save
me, Lord! Don’t let them put me in the hole!”

He gets through and runs off forgetting to say
another prayer of gratitude; this time, because he
was too much in a hurry. Your average man, like
most men, prays: “Help me Lord, help me–oh! Got
through that one!” An average man. Solzhenitsyn
does not sentimentalize his hero. As I said at the
beginning, this is a real man.
At the end of the day, Caesar gets a parcel. It’s
loaded: sugar, sausage, biscuits. It’s a gold mine.
Everyone is sitting around. First he shares it with
the captain. The crew shares with each other; it’s
genuine. There is no brotherhood in the communist
system, designed to bring us all together and make
us one. In reality it separates. It drives apart. There’s
a passage where Shukhov talks about no longer
writing to his own family often. He told them not to
send him parcels, because they needed it more than
he did. He’d get along. He had more concern for his
family than for himself no matter how bad off he is.
Communism separates. “You will be brothers as we
tear you apart!” But thrown in prison, on their own,
the parcel is opened and they begin sharing. This is
not economic theory.
Then the moment comes where suddenly they’re
called out again for roll. If he leaves the parcel there,
it’s going to be gone. The first ones back in the hut

will carry it off. Thieves will come in while they’re
outside and carry it off. He panics. He doesn’t know
what to do. But of course, Shukhov knows. He’s
clever and bright. This is the kind of stuff he can do.
The same way he has the extra bread because he
sewed it into his bed in the morning. The meticulous
care of sewing in that piece of bread is work well
done because it’s work for a purpose. He who works
cleverly will eat a little more bread at night. That’s
not communist theory. He helps him preserve his
parcel, but we’re told he doesn’t expect anything
for it. Not that he wanted to earn a bit more from
Caesar; he just pitied the man with all his heart. You
can’t destroy that kind of decency!
There is another argument with the Baptist
again. It’s worth reading and quite amusing.
Afterwards, Shukhov says a little prayer:
“Thanks be to Thee, O God, another day over!”
He was thankful that he wasn’t sleeping in the
punishment cell. Here it was just about bearable.
Alyoshka was reading his Testament again.
“There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is asking
to be allowed to pray to God. Why not let it have its
way, eh?”
They end the day arguing again about something that
really matters.
“The Lord’s behest was that we should pray for no
earthly or transient thing except our daily bread. ‘Give
us this day our daily bread.’”
“Our ration, you mean?” Shukhov asked.
Then Shukhov says:
“There’s a priest at our church in Polomnya...”
“Don’t tell me about your priest!”

It is absolutely typical. It’s a conversation that
we’ve all been through. But why is it happening
there? Because it’s eternal. Why? Because it’s true.
“Remember what the Apostle Paul says, ‘What are
you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am
ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in
Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.’”
Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He
no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not.
To begin with, he’d wanted it very much, and counted
up every evening how many days he still had to serve.
Then he’d got fed up with it. And still later it had
gradually dawned on him that people like himself were
not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile.
And there was no knowing where the living was easier—
here or there.
The one thing he might want to ask God for was to
let him go home.
But they wouldn’t let him go home.
There it is again: “God” and “they”–and they are at
variance.
Caesar’s hand reached up to place two biscuits, two
lumps of sugar, and one round chunk of sausage on
Shukhov’s bed.

It’s a miracle. He had expected nothing, and gets
something–a lot. And then we find out he’s been
www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

18
making slippers for everybody but getting none for
himself. A simple guy, humble and decent. They go
out for another roll call. They come back in:
Now Alyoshka was back. He had no sense at all,
Alyoshka, never earned a thing, but did favors for
everybody.
“Here you are, Alyoshka!” Shukhov handed him
one biscuit.

Give us this day our daily bread. And in one
tiny act of selfless charity, the two biscuits that are
his, the man who’s complained of hunger all day
long, who obsesses about two things: bread and
cigarettes, gets two biscuits.
Alyoshka was all smiles. “Thank you! You won’t have
any for yourself!”
“Eat it!”
If we’re without, we can always earn something.

That little action overturns the whole Soviet
system. It crumbles. It cannot last because you
cannot destroy charity in the human heart. You
cannot destroy that which is good, that which God
has placed even in a humble, simple little man. You
can’t do it.
Let me end with one huge contrast to make my
point: There’s a very sad scene that comes near the
end of the book. Fetyukov is a character running
through the whole day. He compromises at every
turn. The worst thing he does is he licks other
people’s bowls–not just his own. No one will have
anything to do with him. At the work site he dumps
out some of the mortar so that the wheelbarrow will
be lighter. They find it contemptible. At the end of
this day:
Fetyukov passed down the hut, sobbing. He was bent
double. His lips were smeared with blood. He must have
been beaten up again for licking out bowls. He walked
past the whole team without looking at anybody, not
trying to hide his tears, climbed onto his bunk, and
buried his face in his mattress.
You felt sorry for him, really. He wouldn’t see his time
out. He didn’t know how to look after himself.

How do you look after yourself? By uniting with
those whom you find yourself in the midst of. That’s
how you get through. This may be my favorite
moment in the book: Shukhov is sitting down late at
night to eat:
He did notice the tall old man, Yu-81, sit down
opposite him when the place became free. Shukhov
knew that he belonged to Gang 64, and standing in line
in the parcel room he’d heard that 64 had been sent
to Sotsgorodok in place of 104, and spent the whole
day stringing up barbed wire—making themselves a
compound—with nowhere to get warm.
He’d heard that this old man had been in prison
time out of mind—in fact, as long as the Soviet state had
existed; that all the amnesties had passed him by, and
that as soon as he finished one tenner they’d pinned
another on him.
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

18
This was Shukhov’s chance to take a close look at him.
With hunched-over lags all round, he was as straightbacked as could be. He sat tall, as though he’d put
something on the bench under him. That head hadn’t
needed a barber for ages: the life of luxury had caused
all his hair to fall out. The old man’s eyes didn’t dart
around to take in whatever was going on in the mess,
but stared blindly at something over Shukhov’s head. He
was steadily eating his thin skilly, but instead of almost
dipping his head in the bowl like the rest of them, he
carried his battered wooden spoon up high. He had no
teeth left, upper or lower, but his bony gums chewed
his bread just as well without them. His face was worn
thin, but it wasn’t the weak face of a burnt-out invalid, it
was like dark chiseled stone. You could tell from his big
chapped and blackened hands that in all his years inside
he’d never had a soft job as a trustee. But he refused to
knuckle under: he didn’t put his three hundred grams
on the dirty table, splashed all over, like the others; he
put it on a rag he washed regularly.

Just as there are prisoners who will not eat with
their caps on, this old man sits proudly. No hair,
no teeth, no life–nothing left but human dignity.
He won’t bow to his bowl but lifts the spoon to his
lips and eats–not off a place mat, but a clean rag he
washed over and over again. You cannot get rid of
charity. You cannot get rid of the eternal questions.
You cannot destroy art which elevates. You cannot
in any way get rid of humanity, try as you might.
This is true in the camps, in an American city, or a
jungle in Africa.
There are all kinds living together in God’s
world, all on a pilgrimage to one end. That is the
end God has decreed, no matter what man or the
State tries to do instead. This image is the image of
the dignity of that old man; and not the beaten up,
bleeding Fetyukov who won’t make it. It is clear
there is nothing the State can do to bend that old
man’s back. They tried. There is nothing the State
can do to stop brotherhood under the name of
communism. They tried. And there’s nothing the
State can do to withhold God’s truth expressed in art
if He wishes it to get out. They tried. And they will
fail and fail and fail again.
Because there is something higher. And it is
embodied not just in this novel, but in the life of
this man. It has come to be embodied for some
mysterious purpose of God’s plan in the country of
Russia itself. We all need to keep our eyes focused
there, because at any moment we could be swept
up in its story. It is bound to happen. We need to be
ready as Solzhenitsyn was with courage to speak the
truth, and a willingness to suffer no matter what God
sends. Thank you very much.
Talk originally given at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary. Audio tapes are available at www.stasaudio.org.

The Angelus English-Language Article Reprint

Let your speech be “Yes, yes: no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37)  September 2009

Reprint #88

Romano Amerio and
the Crisis of the Catholic
Church in the 20th Century
The whole of Iota Unum, the
masterpiece of Romano Amerio
and one of the most important
works of Catholic theology in the
20th century, is, in the author’s
eyes, vindicated by one undeniable
fact: the extremely serious crisis
the Church has been undergoing,
a crisis the Philosopher of Lugano
does not hesitate to define as
the most serious the Church has
ever experienced. The attack,
essentially perpetrated by men
who belong to the Church’s
hierarchy, comes from within and
not without.
For Amerio, however, the
crisis of the Catholic Church
is an absolutely obvious fact,
which it would be madness to
deny, and which, moreover, as
is true of every fact, cannot be
demonstrated, but only shown.
It is not a question of deducing it
from a series of logical steps, but
of seeing the reality as it is and of
self-training in intellectual honesty
that allows one to call everything

Available from Angelus Press.
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by its right name, the name that fits,
expressing a thing’s true essence.
In keeping with the first
principle of his methodology, which
is never to impose one’s own ideas
or personal opinions on reality,
Amerio prefers to rely upon the
words of the Pontiffs who have
on several occasions declared the
gravity of the crisis. Here are the
most famous declarations quoted in
Iota Unum:
In his speech to the Lombard
College in Rome on December 7,
1968, Paul VI said: “The Church
is in a disturbed period of selfcriticism, or what would better be
called self-demolition. It is an acute
and complicated upheaval which
nobody would have expected after
the council. It is almost as if the
Church were attacking herself.”1
In the famous speech of June 30,
1972, he said “that from somewhere
or other the smoke of Satan has
entered the temple of God.” In the
December 7, 1968, speech he went
on: “In the Church too, this state of
uncertainty reigns. It was believed
19

THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT

that after the council a sunny day in the Church’s
history would dawn, but instead there came a day of
clouds, storms and darkness.”2
John Paul II, at a conference on missions,
described the state of the Church in these terms:
We must admit realistically and with feelings of deep
pain, that Christians today in large measure feel lost, confused, perplexed and even disappointed; ideas opposed to
the truth which has been revealed and always taught are
being scattered abroad in abundance; heresies, in the full
and proper sense of the word, have been spread in the area
of dogma and morals, creating doubts, confusions and rebellions; the liturgy has been tampered with; immersed in an
intellectual and moral relativism and therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism,
vaguely moral enlightenment and by a sociological Christianity devoid of defined dogmas or an objective morality.3

As for the cause of the crisis, Paul VI
unhesitatingly links it to internal problems within
the Church itself: “A great range of these evils do not
assail the Church from without, but afflict it, weaken
it and enervate it from within. The heart is filled with
bitterness.”4 In another passage quoted by Amerio
from Paul VI’s speech of November 16, 1970, the
Pope depicted the unhappy state of the post-conciliar
Church:
It is for everyone a cause of surprise, pain and scandal
to see that within the Church itself there arise disturbances
and unfaithfulness, often on the part of those who ought to
be most loyal and exemplary because of the commitments
they have made and the graces they have received.5

He also mentions “doctrinal aberrations,” “a
casting aside of the authority of the Church,” a general
moral license, a “lack of concern for discipline” among
the clergy.6
Finally, the author quotes an exemplary document
of utmost importance by the one who was then Prefect
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Cardinal Ratzinger, published by L’Osservatore Romano
of November 9, 1984: “The results of the council,” he
said,

the Church, in particular within its hierarchy, and
by entire episcopal conferences; 2) the attack against
Church doctrine is conducted by clerics who remain
within the Church.
In Iota Unum, Amerio not only bases his
arguments on the words of the popes who have
recognized and denounced the crisis with the greatest
lucidity while trying to understand its causes, but he
also adduces other facts that show the painful state of
the Catholic Church, which we enumerate briefly: 1)
the defection of priests by the tens of thousands, with a
great many priests reduced to the lay state by Paul VI;
2) the unprecedented defection of monks and nuns,
with whole orders, once glorious, drastically reduced
in membership; 3) the collapse of religious vocations
among women; 4) the collapse of regular Sunday Mass
attendance; 5) the referendum on abortion in Rome in
1981, in which only 22 percent of voters opposed its
introduction; 6) the doctrinal crisis revealed in a poll
published by L’Osservatore Romano in November 1970,
in which 50 percent of persons calling themselves
Catholic stated their disbelief in heaven and in hell;
7) the collapse in the number of conversions of
Protestants and Jews after years in which their number
had significantly increased, especially in the United
States.

The Causes of the Crisis in the
Church in Amerio’s Analysis
Iota Unum is not a systematical work: its many
chapters are not organized following a precise
hierarchy of importance or of methodological,
philosophical or theological priority. But there are,
in our opinion, five overarching, closely linked
main themes that can guide the reader: Pyrrhonism,
dogmatic mobilism, the principle of dialogue and
ecumenism, democracy in the Church, and the failure
of authority.

Pyrrhonism

seem cruelly to contradict the expectations everybody had,
beginning with John XXIII and Paul VI: it was expected
to produce a new unity among Catholics, but instead dissension has increased to a point where it has moved from
self-criticism to self-destruction....It was expected to produce
a leap forward, but we have been confronted instead with
a continuing process of decay that has gone on largely on
the basis of appeals to the council, and has thus helped to
discredit the council in the eyes of many people. The result
would therefore seem negative....It is undeniable that this
period has been decidedly unfavorable for the Catholic
Church.7

The theme of Pyrrhonism, named after Pyrrhon
of Elis (c. 365-275 B.C.), the most important Sceptic
philosopher of the Hellenistic Age, is based on
Amerio’s observation of the fact that, starting with
Vatican II, the crux of every aspect of the crisis is
to be found in a general crisis of faith. It is based on
the presence of scepticism regarding the truths of
faith within the members of the Church and even the
hierarchy.
Amerio asserts that a widespread scepticism,
permeating the sentiments of churchmen, is at the root
of crisis:

In addition to the theological and more strictly
doctrinal aspects of the crisis, Amerio never tires of
underlining that the key characteristic of the postconciliar crisis comprises two closely linked elements:
1) the crisis results from an attack led by forces within

Underlying the present confusion there is an attack on
man’s powers of cognition, an attack that has implications
for the metaphysical constitution of being in general and of
primal Being as well, that is of the Holy Trinity. We will call
the attack by its historically expressive name of Pyrrhonism;

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it is something that attacks the very principle of all certainty,
not merely this or that truth of faith or reason, since what it
impugns is man’s capacity to know any truth at all.8

It is Romano Amerio the profound student of
modern thought speaking here. He identifies the
underlying epistemological weakness of modern
thought: Because of its fundamental naturalist
presupposition, it cannot keep the link between
the knowing subject and the object known within
the limits of metaphysical realism, and results in
antimetaphysics, scepticism, immanentism, and
subjectivism. In fact, the Zeitgeist dominating
20th-century philosophical thought for the last fifty
years also pervaded Catholic thinking: this defection
from a strong, realist, rigorous idea of man’s cognitive
capacity (in short, the dislocation of theological
reflection from a firm Thomistic, scholastic conceptual
basis) rendered the Church’s task of teaching
authoritatively much more difficult by enclosing it
within a kind of intellectual ghetto in which teaching
could only be proposed if couched in sufficiently
interrogative or dubitative expressions that lessened its
value and scope.
For Amerio, this is the deepest, most crucial aspect
of the crisis; it can be said that in his analysis all the
other elements of the crisis stem from this first and
decisive weakening, not to say collapse, of a sound
metaphysical vision. In effect, the consequences of
the scepticism that permeates post-conciliar Catholic
thought at every level, from the Popes to simple
priests and faithful, are far-reaching indeed, for the
phenomenon constitutes a dislocation of the Blessed
Trinity.
This epistemological and metaphysical Pyrrhonism
explains, in Amerio’s analysis, the primacy of praxis,
that is to say, of will and action, in modern thought.
Moreover, if doubt about our faculty of cognition is
already, implicitly, a kind of atheism, it is obvious that
Catholic thought cannot accept being contaminated
by modern thought without being corrupted: in other
words, either Catholicism is realist in metaphysics
or else it deviates. If “the root of the confusion in
the world and the Church is Pyrrhonism, that is the
denial of reason,” no “friendship” or “sympathy”
with modern philosophical systems will be possible,
nor any incorporation of these systems into Catholic
theology. In effect, how can the Catholic hierarchy
teach with the requisite firmness if it has internalized
the sceptical doubt proper to moderns concerning
man’s capacity to know?
One of the clearest proofs adduced by Amerio
of the new relativist mentality, and of the sceptical
style employed by the hierarchy, is the way the
catechisms now state the doctrine of the Church:
whereas the Catechism of St. Pius X (or any other
earlier catechism) authoritatively states the articles of
faith to be believed (for example, Art. 104: “How long
will heaven and hell last? Heaven and hell will last
eternally”), the post-conciliar catechisms set forth, not

what must be believed, but what the Church teaches
must be believed (for example, Art. 1035: “The
teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell
and its eternity”). It is unnecessary to underline the
extraordinary difference between these two ways of
expressing the same truth: in the first case an objective
truth is presented as such by expressing the nature of
things; in the second case, the content is presented by
underlining that it is an element of Church teaching,
thus relativizing it and cloaking it, albeit implicitly,
with a patina of scepticism.
Amerio then remarks:
If one denies the capacity of our intellect to form concepts
corresponding to the real, the more the mind is unable to
apprehend and conceive (that is take with itself) the real,
the more it will develop its own operation within itself by
producing (that is bringing forth) mere excogitations. These
latter will be occasioned by something that touches our faculties but is not present in the concept which we form of it.
Hence come all the ancient and modern sophisms that trust
in thought while at the same time lacking any confidence
that we can grasp the truth.
If thought does not have an essential relation with being,
it is not subject to the laws governing being and ceases to be
measured because it becomes itself the measurer.9

Dogmatic Mobilism
One immediate and inevitable consequence of
philosophical Pyrrhonism is dogmatic mobilism: if
nothing can be known with certitude, it is obvious that
even truths long held and taught will not be able to
escape a fundamental scepticism, with modern thought
as its impassable horizon. Since many churchmen
and faithful no longer have the capacity to consult
the depositum fidei–unchangeable dogma–the Church
has passed from the order of certitude to the order of
probability in matters of faith in fifty years. Dogmas
are not formally denied, but interior adhesion, the
assent of the intellect and will, no longer possesses
the radical and absolute character that ought to
characterize the faith of a believer in immutable Truth.
Amerio calls this new attitude of theologians and
the faithful towards the articles of Catholic doctrine
dogmatic mobilism. In modern thinkers, a philosophy of
Heraclitean extraction has emerged, with the primacy
of becoming and history over being; “the mentality that
values becoming more than being, motion more than
rest, action more than the goal,”10 the active virtues
over the contemplative virtues,11 both in theology and
in religious practice.
Citing a great many quotations, Amerio shows
the increasing importance and widespread acceptance
even in the Catholic world of this vision of the truths
of faith and of being in general as a reality in fieri,
going so far as to introduce becoming within God
Himself and to deny the Word, “that is, …that the

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forms of created and creatable things exist eternally in
God.”12
Amerio shows us that the destruction of the very
idea of the immutability of dogma also overturns
the domain of moral theology by opening the door
to the negation, or the progressive subversion, of
the key idea of the Catholic system: the eternity and
immutability of the moral law.
Once dogma has been dissolved in an historicist
vision, once the natural law has been dissolved,
dogmatic mobilism issues in the primacy of praxis,
that is to say, in what could rightly be considered a
form of implicit atheism. The harmonization with the
modern world, which in philosophy is modeled on
Hegelian dialectic, can only lead to a very grave crisis
in the Church because modernity is founded upon
the impossible independence of dependents, on the
finite absurdly taken to be infinite as causa sui. This
deviation is what Amerio calls “the loss or inversion
of essences,” resulting in “a dislocation of the divine
Monotriad,” that is to say, in the conceptual violation
of the Trinity itself.
Among the numerous violations of Catholic
Tradition committed after Vatican II by many
theologians and churchmen, perhaps none has had
more serious consequences than this one, because it
undermines the defense and the transmission intact of
the deposit of faith itself, which is no longer thought
of in light of the immortal principles established by
St. Vincent of Lerins. The historicization of dogma, its
slow erosion and alteration conducted on the basis of
an illegitimate and heterodox hermeneutic, has finally
led to what could be called a faith without dogmas, a
faith increasingly emptied of stable, firm, and certain
doctrinal content. That is tantamount to saying that
the life of many Catholics is henceforth marked by a
relationship with a Protestant-style life of faith, taken
in a sentimental and subjective fashion.
Amerio is categorical: “Within the Church too,
the idea has caught on that changeability is a positive
quality and should be accepted; it has replaced the
ideas of stability and immutability. The religious
injunction remains clear nonetheless: Stabiles estote et
immobiles.”13

The Principle of Dialogue and Ecumenism
Epistemological and metaphysical scepticism:
Nothing whatsoever can be said to be known with
absolute certitude; truth, even in the domain of
religion and doctrine, thus can never be considered
as fully possessed, and everything must be considered
as in a state of becoming, as historical, as precarious
and uncertain: dogmatic mobilism. But if even the
Catholic Church does not possess the truth in a
stable, immutable way; if, on the level of morals,
only the search for truth has value and dignity; and if

22

the very idea of the stable possession of truth is, in
general, presented with quasi contempt, it follows
that the only culturally acceptable Church will be a
dialoguing Church, one that is not searching for truth
but incessantly discusses everything, “problematizes”
itself and its constant teaching, and, notably, refuses
to condemn error (for the condemnation of error is
essential to teaching but is excluded from dialogue):
The new-fashioned mentality abhors anything polemical,
holding it to be incompatible with charity even though it be
in reality an act of charity. The idea of polemics is inseparable from the opposition between truth and falsehood. A
polemic is aimed precisely at overthrowing any pretended
equality between the two. Thus polemic is connatural to
thought, since it removes errors in one’s own thinking even
when it fails to persuade an opponent. From the Catholic’s
point of view, the end of dialogue cannot be heuristic, since
he is in possession of religious truth, not in search of it.14

As on every other topic, Amerio abounds in
pertinent quotations on dialogue, and it should
never be forgotten that his file of documentation
stops midway through the 1980’s (when the theme
of dialogue had not yet reached its zenith in Church
praxis).
With his customary linguistic genius, the
philosopher speaks of the “discussionism” that
has entered the Catholic Church and spread with
impressive speed. Although the principle of dialogue
can lay claim to no tradition nor to any support
in Sacred Scripture, but springs from Vatican II,
Amerio shows us that it is henceforth the common
denominator of every ecclesial initiative, to the point
that dialogue with heretics or schismatics seems to be
more important than pastoral action for the sake of
the Catholic faithful (or rather, it is as if the pastoral
dimension has been absorbed by and reduced to the
continual search for dialogue and confrontation with
every kind of heterodoxy), contradicting the word of
the Gospel: “Erat docens eos sicut potestatem habens–He
was teaching them as one having power” (Mt. 7:29).
Teaching, and not dialogue, Amerio reminds us,
is the normal form of the relationship between the
Church and the world, and the notion that dialogue
is but a modern, coded, covert form of teaching, a
teaching under the more benevolent and conciliatory
guise of a serene discussion of opposing themes, is
untenable. In effect, in Amerio’s analysis, Catholic
doctrine is not the equivalent of a philosophy or a
science or a human activity for which it is natural to
search with others by means of a progressive process
of argumentation, dialogue, and refutation, for it is
founded on divine Revelation itself, and it has, in the
person of the Sovereign Pontiff and in the Church, a
guide assisted by the charism of infallibility.
Amerio also points out that dialogue with heretics
cannot be productive for the simple reason that the
two interlocutors do not share the same principles:
Secondly, there is the situation where instead of helping
the participants, dialogue presents them with an impossible
task. St. Thomas envisages the case in which it is impos-

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sible to prove the truth to the person one is addressing
because there is no jointly held principle on which to base
the argument. All that can then be done is to prove that
the opponent’s arguments are not conclusive and that his
objections can be met.15

If it is true that principia negantibus non est
disputandum, Amerio is right to underscore the
fruitlessness of ecumenical dialogue, the impossibility
of its producing concrete results through its unending
process of discussion, which saps the conviction with
which the Catholic people holds its faith (for, how
can one firmly believe what is incessantly subjected to
the heat of critical exchange and dialogue for decades
with those who belong, for example, to a Protestant
sect or some other confession?).
Moreover, Amerio masterfully observes that, for
a Catholic, dialogue implies the fact of his assuming
a position either of real doubt concerning his own
faith or of a pretense of doubt solely for the purpose
of engaging in “dialogue” (since it is impossible to
have an effective inquiring dialogue if one of the
parties takes the position of possessing absolute and
inalienable certitudes). But in both cases, there are
serious consequences:
But the difficulty returns: if the doubt or rejection of
faith is real, it implies a loss of faith and a sin on the part of
the believer. If it is hypothetical or feigned, the dialogue is
flawed by a pretense and rests on an immoral basis.16

In the analysis of the Philosopher of Lugano,
there are particularly moral objections to ecumenical
dialogue, based on the fact that with the choice of
the method of dialogue comes the accompanying
rejection of the attempt to convert persons in error or
heretics; for there is a failure to perform the spiritual
works of mercy that consist in instructing the ignorant
and correcting the sinner:
We may conclude by saying that the new sort of dialogue
is not Catholic. Firstly, because it has a purely heuristic
function, as if the Church in dialogue did not possess the
truth and were looking for it, or as if it could prescind
from possessing the truth as long as the dialogue lasted.
Secondly, because it does not recognize the superior
authority of revealed truth, as if there were no longer any
distinction in importance between nature and revelation.
Thirdly, because it imagines the parties to dialogue are on
an equal footing, albeit a merely methodological equality,
as if it were not a sin against faith to waive the advantage
that comes from divine truth, even as a dialectical ploy.
Fourthly, because it postulates that every human philosophical position is unendingly debatable, as if there were
not fundamental points of contradiction sufficient to stop
a dialogue and leave room only for refutation. Fifthly,
because it supposes that dialogue is always fruitful and that
“nobody has to sacrifice anything” [OR, Nov. 19, 1971], as if
dialogue could never be corrupting and lead to the uprooting of truth and the implanting of error, and as if nobody
had to reject any errors they had previously professed.17

Moreover, it should be noted that in
Amerio’s analysis, the principle of dialogue and
“discussionism” are not envisaged as goals but
as means, the real goal being ecumenism, which,

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according to his reading, is the most significant and
most serious development in the Catholic Church
during and after the Council, and which flows directly
from the “loss of essences,” the heart of the newfangled theology.
Amerio’s critique is based in particular on the
magisterial act synthesizing the Church’s traditional
doctrine on relations with non-Catholics: the Instructio
de Motione Œcumenica of December 1949, reiterating
the four principles that must guide Catholics in
this matter: 1) The Catholic Church possesses the
plenitude of Christ; 2) union should not be sought by
way of progressive assimilation or by compromising
Catholic dogma; 3) true union can only occur
per reditum of the separated brethren to the true
Church of God, which is the Catholic Church; 4)
the separated who return lose nothing essential in
entering into the Catholic Church.
If these principles are abandoned, which has
largely happened during the post-conciliar period,
according to Amerio, the aggravation of the evils
afflicting the Church will ensue because ecumenism in
the new sense (the Catholic Church and non-Catholic
confessions are bearers of partial truths and must
converge in the Una Sancta, towards a new Church
of the Spirit, in which they will mutually complete
each other) is the anti-principle of Catholicism, and
in reality of the faith in general, which is the full
adhesion to a truth proposed and affirmed as absolute.
In the sequel to Iota Unum, the work Stat Veritas
published in 1997, Amerio assessed the effects of
ecumenism of recent decades with even more clarity
and firmness:
In order to come to the conclusion that conciliar and
post-conciliar ecumenism is a false, or at least incomplete,
ecumenism, it suffices to notice that the actions of the separated brethren have not been actions that caused them to
advance on the path to Catholicism, but actions that took
no account of the faith, or which contradicted the faith;
some were even actions that excited worldwide interest,
such as the ordination of women. These events contradict
the optimism of all those today who wish to consider that
the ecumenical movement has borne good fruit. It hasn’t
borne any fruit. On the contrary, it has sown confusion
among the multitude of the faithful.18

Besides, how could we fail to recognize the
solidity of the reasons for Amerio’s scepticism? He
emphasizes several times that the problem can be
reduced to the heretic’s habitus–to believe only what
my reason or my feelings consider as worthy of belief;
whereas it is a Catholic principle to believe in virtue
of the Authority belonging to the one who enjoins
me to believe: the Church, and in the last instance,
Christ Himself. It is stating the obvious to recall that
if heretics do not abandon the principle that makes

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them heretics, all ecumenical dialogue, however long,
will be fruitless.

Democracy in the Church
The whole of Chapter XXXIII of Iota Unum is
devoted to the subject of democracy in the Church,
which is closely linked to the subjects analyzed so far.
Pyrrhonism, dogmatic mobilism, and the primacy of
dialogue require as their corollary and culmination
adherence to ideological democratism.
The profound problem is the relationship of the
Church with the French Revolution and the principles
inspiring 1789: liberty, equality, fraternity. Amerio
observes that the basic idea governing the French
Revolution, and in its aftermath modern political
philosophy, is its antimonarchical essence. The
idea that “the exercise by one person of the right to
govern society in accordance with the requirements
of justice, ceases to be a legitimate species or form
of government, and is to be regarded as illegitimate”
has been widely spread and become common; but
naturally it involves a sophism demolished in St.
Pius X’s great encyclical Our Apostolic Mandate on the
Sillon (regarding Christian Democracy and liberal
Catholicism).19
For Amerio, this essentially anti-Christian idea
that democracy would be the only form of legitimate
government, that it would constitute the type of all
legitimate government, penetrated the Church and
infected it at every level of the hierarchical ladder.
But against this democratist deviation, Amerio
observes that the Church as a perfect society of divine
right is a monarchy and will eternally remain such
because it is the form that our Lord Himself wanted
to give it. Iota Unum reminds us moreover that
the attack on the supreme monarchical authority
of the Sovereign Roman Pontiff comes through
the exorbitant role given to the national episcopal
conferences, which hinder, when they do not
completely impede, the autonomy of decision-making
and power of every bishop such that it becomes very
difficult for bishops to act and decide against the
direction set by their episcopal conferences.
Amerio’s critique is developed along a twopronged argument: in the first place, show the
intrinsic weakness and the groundlessness of the
democratic idea as such, by rejoining the Catholic
polemic of the 19th century; secondly, he goes
into detail about the functioning of the episcopal
conferences, and shows that they irremediably alter
the bishop’s traditional role (of divine institution):
The second consequence [of the introduction of episcopal conferences] is the stripping of authority from individual
bishops; they are no longer directly accountable to the
Holy See or to their own people: individual responsibility
is being replaced by a collegial responsibility which is dispersed throughout the whole body and cannot be located

24

in any one member. In episcopal conferences, decisions are
taken by two-thirds majorities, but although this may ensure
unity of action, it still leaves the minority at the mercy of
the majority.20

In Amerio’s vision, the acceptance of the
sophisms of modern democracy as normative even
for the Catholic hierarchy has certainly weakened the
unity of the Church, placing more than one episcopal
conference in a pre-schismatic state21 (insofar as papal
pronouncements on matters of faith are continually
discussed, critiqued, subjected to the judgments of
the conferences themselves, as if the validity of a
magisterial act of the pope depended on or required
approbation of the episcopal college). But on the
other hand, democratism and parliamentarism have
weakened authority at every other level, since every
priest, monsignore, expert, episcopal vicar, theologian,
Catholic university professor, abbot, etc., finds his
authority hobbled by a tightly woven network of
councils, synods, meetings, assemblies, encounters,
polls, indications, deliberations, etc., which ultimately
wear, consume, and exhaust the moral and
intellectual qualities necessary for making decisions
(and decision-making being one of the supreme acts
of the intellect and will, that is to say of freedom, that
a man can do, democratism first and foremost breaks
the humanity of the Church’s men).

The Failing of Authority
All the elements analyzed so far have as a
common foundation and outcome one single reality:
the destruction of the principle of authority. We are not
speaking about one more element, but the very
heart of modernity since Luther. If modernity can be
conceived of as revolution, that is to say the European
civil war against Christianitas, its essence consists
precisely in the ideological aggression and practical
destruction of the principle of authority.
Amerio sees—correctly, in our opinion–in this
demolition of the traditional idea of authority as it
had always been conceived of in the Catholic world,
the keystone of the crisis in the Church. In effect, the
Church is hierarchical and founded on the principle
of authority by its very nature, inasmuch as it is
founded, not on man, but on God and His Revelation,
on His Law and His Word. It is from above, from
God Himself, that the Church’s power to govern,
to teach, to educate the nations, to preach, and to
sanctify individuals and nations descends. To attack
the idea of authority and of hierarchy is tantamount
to removing the cornerstone that supports the entire
edifice: a Catholic Church with a Pontiff deprived of
even a part of his authority or who renounces the full
exercise of his powers is wounded to its very heart.
Unfortunately, recent decades of the Catholic
Church’s existence have been deeply affected by the
radical questioning of pontifical authority: the process,
which Amerio several times calls “breviatus manus,”
consisted in the weakening of the Vicar of Christ’s
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power, resulting in the renunciation or practical
impossibility of his pronouncing sanctions, punishing
delicts, reproving or publicly denouncing evil.
But, with great simplicity and his habitual clarity,
Amerio reminds us that a society cannot subsist
without the power to impose sanctions, and the
Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is and remains
a society even if she is divinely founded and assisted.
The failing of authority is the supreme problem
because error, if it is not combatted with the greatest
firmness, can only spread.22 But in the Amerian
perspective, after the Council the very possibility
of defining error as such, and heresy as heresy,
disappeared: the very words used for centuries to
condemn have disappeared, subjected to a kind of
unprecedented linguistic genocide.23 Amerio lists a
few of the “disappeared” terms: orthodox, orthodoxy,
heretic, error, sin, hell, etc. But the list is much longer
and includes dozens of words.
In Iota Unum, the failing of authority is also
closely linked to the problem of the character and
psychology of Montini, or, if you will, to his way of
interpreting his role:
Now, the peculiar feature of the pontificate of Paul VI was
the tendency to shift the papacy from governing to admonishing or, in scholastic terminology, to restrict the field of
preceptive law, which imposes an obligation, and to enlarge
the field of directive law, which formulates a rule without
imposing any obligation to observe it. The government of
the Church thus loses half its scope, or to put it biblically,
the hand of the Lord is foreshortened.24

Amerio cites some exemplary, and rightly famous,
instances of the failure of authority: the opposition to
the Dutch and French catechisms ending with Rome’s
capitulation, and the opposition over Küng and its
very lenient conclusion for the theologian about
whose faith and orthodoxy serious doubts were—and
are—allowed.
Amerio makes the following observations about
the crisis of the very idea of authority and of the idea
of the Roman Pontiff in particular:
The renunciation of authority is not merely a prudent
bending of a principle in the light of contemporary circumstances: it has instead itself become a principle. The Prefect
for the Congregation of the Clergy, Silvio Cardinal Oddi,
admitted as much at a conference of eight hundred members of “Catholics United for the Faith” held at Arlington
in the United States in July 1983. The Cardinal admitted
that there was confusion about the faith and said that many
catechists today choose certain articles of the depositum fidei
which they are going to believe, and abandon all the rest.
Doctrines such as the divinity of Christ, the virginity of
the Mother of God, original sin, the real presence in the
Eucharist, the absoluteness of moral obligation, hell and
the primacy of Peter are publicly denied by theologians and
bishops in pulpits and in academic chairs.25

representatives of the hierarchy, is followed by a
lapidary commentary worth citing:
Charity is held to be synonymous with tolerance, indulgence takes precedence over severity, the common good of
the ecclesial community is overlooked in the interests of a
misused individual liberty, the sensus logicus and the virtue
of fortitude proper to the Church are lost. The reality is that
the Church ought to preserve and defend the truth with all
the means available to a perfect society.26

Conclusion
What is the great lesson given us by Iota Unum
and the exemplary Catholic life of its author? We
can summarize it as follows: on the one hand, in
extreme times of very great crisis such as those in
which we are living, the need of critique, of a vigilant
and attentive, circumspect and prudent life of faith so
as to avoid being devoured by these shepherds who
are not “good,” but who rather are “mercenaries”;
on the other hand, the requirement that this criticoprudential stance be joined to the most intense charity
and sincere fervor: all reflection on the crisis in the
Church that is not animated by an intense desire for
personal sanctification is in vain.
Perhaps the Church, in the disquieting words of
Paul VI, “will be a handful of defeated men”; perhaps
Amerio is right when, in the majestic and terrible
epilogue of Iota, he speaks of the “emptying and
abasement” of the Church, a Church almost back in
the catacombs and reduced to humanly discouraging
existence, a Church condemned to practical
extinction within the limits of the “non praevalebunt,”
and which challenges the faith of even the most
sincere and fervent believers, the most desirous
of personal sanctification, to recognize in its face
disfigured by sin and the treason of many the intact
face of the mystical Spouse of Christ, and thereby
enduring the same trial as that lived by Mary and St.
John on Calvary, recognizing in the disfigured face
of the Crucified the face of the Savior, the face of the
Man-God.
The great lesson given us by Iota Unum is: against
all human hope, to hope; against all incredulity, to
believe; in extreme solitude, to be comforted by the
peace the Lord gives, not as the world gives, but a
mysterious and secret peace that prepares within
hearts the place wherein may shine the steady,
undying light which alone illumines and fortifies.
When will the Church be resplendent once again
in all her strength and purity? We do not know. But
we do know the nature of the seduction that caused
and directed the entire crisis: the seduction that
can be placed in the Amerian category of secondary
Christianity, that is to say, the idea that the Christian

This passage, which is first and foremost a
proof of the fact that Amerio really constructed
his Iota Unum by relying only on statements taken
from the speeches and acts of the most important
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faith derived its legitimacy from its ability to produce
culture and progress on the civil and purely human
level:

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…the Church is setting aside its specifically supernatural
nature, and blending its mission with the task of advancing
civilization, fitting itself in as a help towards a more just and
brotherly world. The aim is to create a civitas hominica without
denying a higher civitas dominica, but the links between the two
are deliberately loosened with the aim of establishing a purely
humanitarian world order.27

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Translated for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome, February 2009, pp.1-6.
Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth
Century, tr. from the Second Italian Edition by the Rev. John Parsons (1985; Kansas City:
Sarto House, 1996), §7, p.6.
2
Ibid.
3
L’Osservatore Romano, February 7, 1981.
4
Speech of September 1974, Iota Unum, §77, p.173.
5
Ibid., §78, p.174.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., §324, p.731.
8
Ibid., §147, p.335.
9
Ibid, p.336.
10
Ibid., §161, p.360.
11
Which could be defined as an arrogant return of Americanism.
12
Ibid., p.366.
13
“Be firm and stand fast” (I Cor. 15:58). Ibid., §159, p.361.
14
Ibid., §154, pp.352-3.
15
Ibid., §155, p.354.
16
Ibid, §156, p.355.
17
Ibid., p.356.
18
Romano Amerio, Stat Veritas: A Sequel to Iota Unum (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi Editore,
1997).
19
	On democracy, the French Revolution, and the persecution of the Church during the
Revolution, see A. Reyne and D. Brehier, Les martyrs d’Orange: La persécution des
catholiques dans la France jacobine.
20
Ibid., §233, p.525.
21
Ibid. Amerio speaks of “a pre-schismatic state of affairs.”
22
It should be recalled here that the abdication of authority, understood as the refusal to
condemn error, was already implicit and even announced in the John XXIII’s famous
inaugural speech opening Vatican Council II, October 11, 1962.
1

26

For an in-depth study of the theme of the destruction of the language of traditional
Catholic theology, cf. M. d’Amico, “Typologie de la crise présente: Le principe
du dialogue et l’Église catholique–la catastrophe de la raison,” in Les crises dans
l’Église: Les causes, effets, et remèdes, Acts of VII Theological Congress of SiSiNoNo
(Publications Courrier de Rome, 2007), pp.285-356.
24
Amerio, Iota Unum, §65, p.144.
25
Ibid., §68, pp.152-3.
26
Ibid., p.153.
27
Ibid., §299, p.667.
23

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27

27

A Commentary on the Encyclical

Signed by Pope Benedict XVI’s hand on June 29, 2009, the encyclical Caritas in Veritate
was made public on July 7. On a first reading, the Roman document gives the impression
expressed by Jean-Marie Guenois in Le Figaro:
While it is remarkable in several of its passages, it is not easily accessible overall. Wishing no doubt to
touch upon many subjects, the text goes off on many tangents, and the central theme, “charity in truth,”
is not an obvious one to follow throughout. This is the lot, so they say, of writings with many editors….
The risk is that the form of the text will lessen its impact.

Vatican-watchers have tried to identify the different personalities consulted by the
Pope for the drafting of this social encyclical of more than 150 pages. Named were
economists like Stefan Zamagni or experts in finance like the banker Ettore Gotti Tedeschi,
the editorialist of L’Osservatore Romano on economic and financial matters; as well as the
expert on social doctrine, Archbishop Reinhard Marx, the second successor of Archbishop
Ratzinger to the archdiocese of Munich. In spite of everything, the document still shows the
work of Benedict XVI, who offers a practical exercise in “the hermeneutic of continuity”as
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28
he defined it at the beginning of his pontificate
before the Roman Curia in December 2005.
This is what he himself writes in chapter one
of Caritas in Veritate, in which he situates himself
clearly in continuity with the message of Paul VI’s
encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967), while stating
that both of their encyclicals are also in line with the
Church’s constant teaching:
The link between Populorum Progressio and the Second
Vatican Council does not mean that Paul VI’s social
magisterium marked a break with that of previous popes,
because the Council constitutes a deeper exploration of this
magisterium within the continuity of the Church’s life….It
is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one preconciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another:
on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at
the same time ever new. It is one thing to draw attention to
the particular characteristics of one encyclical or another,
of the teaching of one pope or another, but quite another to
lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus.
Coherence does not mean a closed system: on the contrary,
it means dynamic faithfulness to a light received. The
Church’s social doctrine illuminates with an unchanging
light the new problems that are constantly emerging. This
safeguards the permanent and historical character of the
doctrinal “patrimony” which, with its specific characteristic,
is part and parcel of the Church’s ever-living Tradition. (§12)

Refusal of a break between the pre- and postconciliar, the guide and goal of a faithfulness that
is not closed but dynamic, the affirmation of an
ever-living Tradition: such are the themes that have
become the hallmark of the current pontificate.
Two questions arise: 1) Did Paul VI’s encyclical
Populorum Progressio really not introduce any break
with the Church’s teaching prior to Vatican II? 2) If
there was a break, how can Caritas in Veritate repair
it?

Populorum Progressio
Analyzed by Romano Amerio
In his work Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the
Catholic Church in the 20th Century (1987; English
version tr. by the Rev. John P. Parsons; Sarto
House, 1996), Romano Amerio analyzes Paul VI’s
encyclical in these terms:
…at Vatican II, [the Church] took on the role of directly
advancing man’s temporal welfare and has thus attempted
to make secular progress part of the purpose of the Gospel.
Populorum Progressio develops this line of thought. (§328,
p.742)

The Italian philosopher then denounces
the change in perspective that tends to undermine Catholic
doctrine by making technological progress and an increase
in wealth a necessary precondition for man’s spiritual
perfection, and for any activity by the Church….It is true
that the encyclical presents the goal of development as being
“an integral growth,” a humanism destined to be integrated
into Christ, thus becoming a transcendent humanism. But
all this leaves the connection between man in his humanly
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28
developed state and man in his supernaturalized state quite
undetermined. (pp.742-3)

In other words, integral human development
conceives only vaguely, that is to say in a fuzzy or
confused way, the relationship between nature and
grace. And this brings up another question: Does
the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which specifically
intends to treat of “integral human development,”
escape the influence that the work Integral Humanism
of Jacques Maritain, who had become a personalist,
had upon Pope Paul VI? A sentence, in §42, gives
the answer:
The truth of globalization as a process and its fundamental
ethical criterion are given by the unity of the human
family and its development towards what is good. Hence
a sustained commitment is needed so as to promote a
person-based and community-oriented cultural process of
worldwide integration that is open to transcendence.

Let’s get back to Romano Amerio, who calls
the anthropocentric tendency displayed at Vatican
II, especially in Gaudium et Spes (§§12 and 24),
“secondary Christianity.” He explains:
It is indeed true that religion has a civilizing effect,
and the whole history of the Church bears witness to the
fact; but Christianity does not primarily aim at advancing
civilization, that is, at achieving an earthly kind of perfection.
Modern society is pervaded by a spirit of independence and
self-sufficiency: the world rejects dependence on anything
other than itself. Faced with this fact, the Church seems to
be afraid of being further rejected, as it already has been
by a large part of the human race. Therefore it sets about
watering down its own characteristic set of values and
playing up the things it has in common with the world: all
the world’s causes are thus taken up by the Church. The
Church offers its assistance to the world and is attempting
to put itself as the head of human progress.
This is a tendency that arose in the 19th century, and I
have elsewhere given it the name of secondary Christianity.
(p.503)

Amerio provides the theological critique of this
“secondary Christianity”:
The specific flaw in secondary Christianity, which it
shares in common with the civitas hominis, is its setting aside
of the transcendent. This is the sin which St. Augustine
calls inadvertentia and St. Thomas calls inconsideratio, and
which they both say was the sin of the angels who fell. This
ignoring of our heavenly goal turns religion upside down
by reversing its perspectives: habemus hic manentem civitatem
nec futuram inquirimus—“Here we have an abiding city,
nor do we look for any future one” (the opposite of Heb.
13:14). Therefore: ultimate vision merely earthly, reduction
of Christianity to a mere means to an end, apotheosis of
civilization. This is to deny the “either or” the Gospel
presents, and to replace it with a sort of “both and” that
combines heaven and earth in a compound, in which the
world is the predominant element that gives the character
to the whole.

Caritas in Veritate aims to oppose this “ignoring
of our heavenly goal,” especially in its introduction:
In the present social and cultural context, where there
is a widespread tendency to relativize truth, practicing
charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to

29
the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential
for building a good society and for true integral human
development. (§4)

Likewise [we read] in the conclusion:
…ideological rejection of God and an atheism of
indifference, oblivious to the Creator and at risk of becoming
equally oblivious to human values, constitute some of the
chief obstacles to development today. (§78)

But one cannot help seeing that this denunciation
of contemporary atheism, indifferentism, and
relativism is frustrated and weakened by the
insistence upon continuity with the conciliar
doctrine of which Amerio neatly pinpointed
the fundamental spirit underlying its equivocal
formulation.

Caritas in Veritate on the
Question of Religious Liberty
In Caritas in Veritate, does Benedict XVI succeed
in eliminating the opposition between the pre- and
post-conciliar? We shall give just one particularly
significant example, which will be among the
themes to be studied during the upcoming doctrinal
discussions between the Vatican and the SSPX:
religious freedom.
Concerning religious freedom, Benedict XVI
writes:
For this reason, while it may be true that development
needs the religions and cultures of different peoples, it is
equally true that adequate discernment is needed. Religious
freedom does not mean religious indifferentism, nor does
it imply that all religions are equal. Discernment is needed
regarding the contribution of cultures and religions,
especially on the part of those who wield political power, if
the social community is to be built up in a spirit of respect
for the common good. Such discernment has to be based on
the criterion of charity and truth. Since the development of
persons and peoples is at stake, this discernment will have to
take account of the need for emancipation and inclusivity,
in the context of a truly universal human community. “The
whole man and all men” is also the criterion for evaluating
cultures and religions. Christianity, the religion of the “God
who has a human face,” contains this very criterion within
itself. (§55)

But just before this passage, the Pope does
not exclude the other religions that also fulfill,
according to him, these criteria: “Other cultures
and religions teach brotherhood and peace and
are therefore of enormous importance to integral
human development” (ibid.). Consequently, if the
Church, the sole Ark of Salvation, is set on the
level of other religions, how should the encyclical’s
introduction be understood where it says, “adhering
to the values of Christianity is not merely useful
but essential for building a good society and for
true integral human development”? Christianity is
essential, but not exclusive? Other religions (which
ones the encyclical does not say) can contribute to
integral human development, that is, development

open to the transcendent, but is this transcendence
identical with eternal salvation? Does it not rather
confuse, as Amerio pointed out, the natural and the
supernatural orders?
In the next paragraph, the Pope states:
The Christian religion and other religions can offer their
contribution to development only if God has a place in the
public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social,
economic, and particularly its political dimensions. The
Church’s social doctrine came into being in order to claim
“citizenship status” for the Christian religion. Denying
the right to profess one’s religion in public and the right
to bring the truths of faith to bear upon public life has
negative consequences for true development. The exclusion
of religion from the public square—and, at the other
extreme, religious fundamentalism—hinders an encounter
between persons and their collaboration for the progress of
humanity. Public life is sapped of its motivation and politics
takes on a domineering and aggressive character. Human
rights risk being ignored either because they are robbed of
their transcendent foundation or because personal freedom
is not acknowledged. (§56)

Despite this claim to “citizenship status,” the
social reign of Jesus Christ and Christian institutions
are missing from the encyclical. The Pope indeed
denounces the practical atheism of the State, but
he does not see the secular State at the root of this
practical atheism:
When the State promotes, teaches, or actually imposes
forms of practical atheism, it deprives its citizens of the
moral and spiritual strength that is indispensable for
attaining integral human development and it impedes
them from moving forward with renewed dynamism as
they strive to offer a more generous human response to
divine love. (§29)

In so stating, Benedict XVI is consistent with
what Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger declared to Peter
Seewald in Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of
the Millennium (1996; Ignatius Press, 1997):
I think that in this sense the development of modernity
brings with it the negative aspect of subjectivization, but the
positive side of this is the opportunity for a free Church in a
free state, if one may put it like that. Here are opportunities
for a more vital, because more deeply and more freely
grounded, faith, which, however, must fight against being
subjectivized and which must continue to try to speak its
message publicly. (p.240)

Elsewhere, the Pope observes the fact of
globalization, but he does not seem to want to
recognize in this fact the effect of an ideology—
globalism, an ideology that is foreign and even
hostile to Catholicism:
In our own day, the State finds itself having to address
the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context
of international trade and finance, which is characterized
by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means
of production, material and immaterial. This new context
has altered the political power of States.
Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current
economic crisis, which sees the State’s public authorities
directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions,
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30
it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and
their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and
remodeled so as to enable them, perhaps through new
forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today’s
world. (§24)

Should the States only be “correcting errors and
malfunctions,” the fruit of globalization, without
also attempting to combat the globalist ideology
producing them? In Caritas in Veritate, no ideology
is designated by name—not liberalism, nor socialism,
nor globalism. The effects are denounced but
the causes are not named. Could it not be clearly
said here what Romano Amerio stated: “Modern
society is pervaded by a spirit of independence and
self-sufficiency: the world rejects dependence on
anything other than itself”? Then the remedies to be
prescribed would not treat the symptoms only, but
would target the cause of the disorder.
The difficulty becomes clear in the section on
world government. In chapter five, entitled “The
Cooperation of the Human Family,” Benedict XVI is
very critical of the real effectiveness of international
organizations. He renews the appeal made by his
predecessor John XXIII in the encyclical Pacem
in Terris (1963) for the creation of a “true world
political authority”: “There is urgent need of a true
world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed
John XXIII indicated some years ago” (§67). In
that encyclical, the pope who convoked the Second
Vatican Ecumenical Council thought:
Today the universal common good presents us with
problems which are world-wide in their dimensions;
problems, therefore, which cannot be solved except by
a public authority with power, organization and means
co-extensive with these problems, and with a world-wide
sphere of activity. (Pacem in Terris, §137)

Benedict XVI does not hesitate to outline the
structure of this new global entity:
Such an authority would need to be regulated by law,
to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and
solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make
a commitment to securing authentic integral human development
inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an
authority would need to be universally recognized and to
be vested with the effective power to ensure security for
all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously, it
would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with
its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated
measures adopted in various international forums [emphasis
added]. (§67)

Is the Pope here recommending concrete and
effective means of “integral human development”?
Will this global authority consider Christianity as
“essential for building a good society and for true
integral human development”? Will it not remain
fundamentally independent of all religion, taking
its inspiration from “the values of love and truth”
understood in a secular sense?

THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

The commentaries of the Roman prelates
who presented the encyclical to the press on July
7 are particularly revealing. Questioned about
the “urgency of reforming the United Nations”
called for by Benedict XVI, Archbishop Giampolo
Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace, stated that since John XXIII’s
Pacem in Terris “the configuration of problems has
changed,” and noted the “inadequacy acknowledged
by the United Nations itself.” He underlined the
need for international institutions better adapted
to deal with complex problems as they arise.
However, from Archbishop Crepaldi’s standpoint,
“It is unreasonable to expect the Holy See to offer
a comprehensive, technical plan, that is…a political
and juridical proposal for reforming the United
Nations.”
Caritas in Veritate is not calling for a “supergovernment, a world government,” stated Cardinal
Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Council
for Justice and Peace. But for all that, the present
organizations should have this worldwide political
authority: “That is why the Pope is calling for a
reform of the United Nations.”
“The Holy See, like the Pope, is asking for this
reform of the United Nations but does not suggest
what needs to be done or how to proceed,” he
insisted.
When Caritas in Veritate speaks of an authority
for governing globalization, it is asking for a new
form of “governance” and not for a new “global
government,” said Stefano Zamagni, a member of
the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Would then “authentic integral human
development” really be promoted by a new world
governance? In spite of the ideal portrait of it
sketched by the Pope, some clarification on the real
influence of this governance would be welcome.
The encyclical asks for “dynamic faithfulness,”
a “new humanist synthesis,” a “person-based and
community-oriented cultural process of worldwide
integration that is open to transcendence.” This
constant quest for a new, forthcoming equilibrium
shows that the “reconciliation” of the pre-conciliar
Magisterium and the post-conciliar Magisterium
is hardly in evidence. “The Church’s social
doctrine illuminates with an unchanging light the
new problems that are constantly emerging,” the
encyclical declares. The illumination is very feeble;
the light of Tradition cannot be filtered.
From DICI (No.200, July-Aug. 2009). DICI is the official news bureau of the
Society of Saint Pius X.

31

Interview

Fr.

Gregory
Obih
Fr. Obih, thank you very much for allowing me to ask
you about your history and how you came to the SSPX.
Can you first outline this history? How did you come to
Tradition at all? How did you meet the Society first?

My contacts with the Society began with a meeting
of a Nigerian priest from the Fraternity of St. Peter.
This priest had come to America for his studies. While
in the United States, he did not like the liturgical
abuses in the Novus Ordo, which were more terrible
than they were in Nigeria. This encouraged him to go
to Tradition, and he decided to join the Fraternity of
St. Peter. He returned to Nigeria, where the bishop
gave him a specific chapel where he continues to say
the traditional Mass. This was the first contact I had to
introduce me to Tradition.
This priest and I became friends. My first visit
was in 2001, only two years after my ordination. The
first traditional Mass I ever saw was the one offered
by this priest. I was not immediately attracted to it. In
the seminary, we had been taught that the old Mass
was bad; that it was good the priest no longer “faced
the altar”; that we had deliberately moved away from
Latin; thank God Vatican II came because we’ve never
had it so good! We were never taught anything good
about the traditional Mass.

Did you know Latin at this time?

Yes, we had a bit of Latin in the seminary.
When this priest finished saying Mass, I wanted to
know more from him. He gave me a book by Cardinals
Ottaviani and Bacci, what they call The Ottaviani
Intervention. This was still 2001. I went home and read
the book. I began to reflect on it. Then he gave me
some more literature about Tradition: The Angelus, The
Remnant, Catholic Family News. Reading all of this, it
took me two years to reflect.

Full Name: Fr. Gregory Chukwudi Obih
Born in: Afikpo, Eastern Nigeria
Birthday: September 29, 1966
First contact with SSPX: 2004
Joined the SSPX: December 8, 2007

In 2003, I had a month-long vacation which I spent
with this priest. He taught me how to say the traditional
Mass. He gave me even more literature like Michael
Davies’s Pope John’s Council and Pope Paul’s New Mass,
Archbishop Lefebvre’s They Have Uncrowned Him and
Open Letter to Confused Catholics, and many others. After
reading all these, I decided to join the Fraternity of St.
Peter in 2003.
I requested permission from my superior. But it was
not possible to get permission to join the Fraternity of
St. Peter. So I remained in my parish. During 2004, I
continued to reflect, and I applied to the Society of St.
Pius X in April of that year. I applied to the Society
because, having reflected more on the differences
between the Fraternity and the Society, I made a choice
partially based on Archbishop Lefebvre’s principled
defense of the restoration of the dignity of the Catholic
priesthood and disciplined religious life. I had been
a religious and realized how far things had fallen in
my own religious community. Discipline had been
eroded. The statutes of the congregation had been
relaxed. Democracy was common; there was no proper
authority. There was a collapse of authority.
All of these things helped me to see. Open Letter to
Confused Catholics was my first contact with Archbishop
Lefebvre’s writing. They Have Uncrowned Him was the
second. I saw that the Archbishop’s position was more
principled in trying to restore the Catholic priesthood,
discipline in the liturgy and in doctrine. These three
things: discipline, liturgy, and doctrine: this is why I
chose the Society.

What is your personal background? Where did you go to
seminary? What kind of changes did you have to make
when you came to Tradition?

I joined the Augustinian Order in 1991. I was
formed in philosophy and theology. After that, I was

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32
sent to a novitiate. I made my solemn profession
of vows in 1998. I was ordained a priest in 1999.
After that, I was assigned to a parish affiliated with
the Augustinian Order in the town of Ibusa in Delta
State, Nigeria. It was while I was there that I began to
study Tradition and where I met the priest from the
Fraternity of St. Peter.
As I waited for a reply from the Society, in July
2004 I requested permission to take a sabbatical. This
request was granted; I was given permission to take a
sabbatical to live with the Fraternity of St. Peter. I went
to live with the priest who introduced me to Tradition.
While I was there, I learned how to say the traditional
Mass better and continued to read all the literature on
Catholic Tradition I could find.
It was not easy for me. The bishop of the diocese
had told me that he did not want other priests joining
this priest from the Fraternity of St. Peter. He told me
that the Fraternity existed to bring back to the Church
followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The bishop
thus advised me to return to my congregation.
Moreover, I gave a conference to the faithful; they
asked me to talk about the Mass. After this conference,
I mentioned some things about the New Mass that were
not pleasing to the authorities. Some of the comments
I made went all the way to Cardinal Arinze, the Prefect
for the Congregation of the Sacraments. He was angry
about what I had said, and he wrote a letter to the
bishop of the diocese where the Fraternity of St. Peter
was located. He asked the bishop to call me to order.
The bishop then wrote to my superior and complained
to the Fraternity priest.
I was asked by the bishop to write a letter of
apology to the Holy See and the diocese. I was also
asked to recant what I said condemning the New Mass
and Vatican II. I had mentioned, in my conference,
that the liturgical changes mandated by the Second
Vatican Council had vitiated the sacredness of the
Holy Mass thereby almost emptying it of its power
to sanctify. These were the words that the Cardinal
underlined and which I had been asked to recant.
Of course, there was a lot of pressure from my
religious superior, the bishop of the diocese, and
the priest of the Fraternity of St. Peter (with whom
I was living), who was afraid that his chapel might
be withdrawn from him. So I eventually made some
reluctant apologies for what I had said, even though
I was not convinced that I had to do that. The whole
episode helped me to realize the problem of having
to defend the truth today, to stand for Tradition and
doctrine. It is not sufficient to defend the traditional
Mass; you must also defend doctrine.

How did you then join the Society of St. Pius X?
Obviously, we don’t have the same kind of presence in
Africa as we do in Europe or America. How did you find
us, so to speak?

I had already applied to the Society before I went
to live with the priest of the Fraternity of St. Peter. I did
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

not receive a reply to my initial application. Eventually,
one of the faithful of the Society who lives in California
came to visit this priest from the Fraternity in Nigeria.
She goes to Mass both to the Society and the Fraternity.
I spoke to her when she was visiting Nigeria and
she helped me get in contact with a priest when she
returned to the United States.
In the United States, she spoke to Fr. Couture in
Los Gatos. Fr. Couture, the District Superior of Asia,
was visiting at the time. She told him that she knew
of a Nigerian priest who had applied to the Society
with no response. She further told him that I was
currently living with a priest from the Fraternity of St.
Peter. Fr. Couture then took up my case and began to
communicate with me by e-mail. From there, once he
got to know a bit about me, he reminded Bishop Fellay
about my application.
Bishop Fellay responded exactly one year after
my application. I was asked to go to Gabon in 2005. I
thus went to the Society’s mission in Libreville, Gabon.
While I was there I began to properly learn Tradition.
I stayed in Gabon for two years; they helped me learn
to say the Mass better, and they introduced me to a
deeper understanding of the liturgy. It was while I
was there, for instance, that I learned of my obligation
to pray the whole Breviary daily. I had had no such
idea. I also learned many prayers, I helped distribute
Communion to the sick, and participated in the
liturgical and community life of the Society there.
Also, I would go to Nigeria once every three
months to say Mass for some faithful who had
remained with me when I left the Fraternity of St. Peter.
They had supported me in my decision.
In 2007, after two years in Gabon, I went to
Switzerland and met Bishop Fellay. I repeated my
intention to join and make an engagement in the
Society. He suggested I go to the seminary in Winona
in order to take some classes in philosophy and
theology to improve my seminary formation. I stayed
at the seminary in Winona for two years.
In my first year, I studied metaphysics, Latin,
liturgy, ethics, and psychology. In my second year, I
took dogma, Canon Law, and moral theology.

Do you know what the future holds for you?

On December 8, 2007, I made my first engagement
in the Society. I became a member of the Society with
full awareness of my obligations. Having completed
my studies in Winona, I was appointed to their priory
in Nairobi, Kenya, Our Lady Help of Christians. I will
arrive in August. The District Superior of the Society in
Africa is very much interested in encouraging vocations
from Africa. He has received permission from the
Superior General to open a house for the Oblate Sisters
of the Society in Kenya. So I will also collaborate with
the foundation of these Oblate Sisters there. This will
thus be my apostolate.

33

You mentioned the Fraternity of St. Peter, which helped
you know the old Mass. Were there other groups or
persons which were important to you in finding Tradition
before you came to the Society?

I would mention the books I read, especially those
of Michael Davies. They were very helpful in coming to
know Tradition. I was interested in his work with Una
Voce, although I was never a member. There was also
his promotion of the Latin Mass Society too. The priest
of the Fraternity in Nigeria made efforts to encourage
the faithful to write to their bishops and request the
traditional Mass. Of course, Pope John Paul II, in
Ecclesia Dei, had already said that those who wished
could request the old Mass from their bishops. All the
bishops refused to accede to the requests of the faithful.
This also helped me in my decision to join the
Society. We are not bogged down by the hierarchy, a
hierarchy which is not ready to listen to Rome. Rome
says the faithful have the right to request the old Mass
from their shepherds; the faithful then go to their
bishops, only to be intimidated. Then they are forced to
remain with the New Mass. No matter what Rome has
said.

How would you characterize the attitudes of the bishops,
especially in Nigeria, but in Africa in general, towards
the old Mass and Tradition?

In Africa, the bishops are not in favor of Tradition.
They are Novus Ordo conservatives; they follow the
tempo of Rome. This was especially the case during
the pontificate of John Paul II. Many of the current
bishops were appointed under him. Many of them are
in favor of inculturation; they love the New Mass. They
are convinced it encourages participation on the part of
the faithful. You find African drums, dancing, and other
cultural practices which are allowed. The New Mass has
a way of appealing to the people in this way. And they
like it because people come and express themselves.
Many of the bishops think this is wonderful. For now, at
least, they are not supporting Tradition.

What about the general moral situation of the African
Church? Sometimes, in the news, it seems rather
difficult, if not a catastrophe. For example, the origin
of AIDS. I imagine it must be difficult to be a Catholic
priest in many of these countries.

In Africa, priests have to deal with the state of
the continent, the situation of the modern world, and
Westernization, which is eroding African culture.
Many of the various tribes in Africa have high cultural
practices like a respect for marriage and the punishment
of immoral behaviors. But urbanization, Westernization,
the coming of new technologies, like computers, and
materialism all combine with the collapse of authority
in the Church to affect the environment there. The fact
that no one is in control affects the life of the priests.
This affects the identity of the priests.

When you say “Westernization,” you don’t mean Catholic
missionary work, but, rather, the subculture of the West,
such as computers, television, the Internet, and so
on? These are more the negative products of Western
culture.

Yes, this is what I mean, the negative products of
Western culture. I especially refer to Western countries,
previously Catholic nations in Europe which have lost
the Faith, which promote secularism. All of the things I
mentioned above have combined to affect Christian life
and ministry in Africa.

You joined the SSPX before the lifting of the excom­
muni­cations last January. What is your assessment of
this latest development between Rome and the SSPX?

The lifting of the so-called excommunications,
which the Society never accepted in the first place,
developed on the part of Pope Benedict XVI, especially
since he has been there from the beginning. In the
1980’s, he was negotiating with Archbishop Lefebvre.
Now that he is Pope, he decided to remedy a question
of justice concerning what was done in 1988 for the
consecration of bishops. It is a positive development.
Many people accused us of being excommunicated,
so this development is helpful for many people in the
Novus Ordo at least to approach the Society and see what
is happening. Many faithful have been kept away by
the libel that we are excommunicated. Now, some will
have the courage to come closer and to see the Society
for what it is. Perhaps it will help them to return to
Tradition.
In Africa, it is a positive development for Catholic
Tradition as well. The hierarchy follows whatever
comes from Rome. If the Pope says it, it is good. It
is important in the battle for the restoration of the
Catholic Faith.

However, it was evidently not the most important factor
for your decision...

True. When I wanted to join the Society, it was
brought to my knowledge that the Society was not in
good favor with the hierarchy of the Church. I was
told to be aware of what I was doing. And I originally
accepted that. When I decided to join the Society,
the libel of excommunication still existed. But I was
convinced of what I was doing, especially after studying
the life of Archbishop Lefebvre.
The year I went to Gabon, Fr. Schmidberger sent
me a copy of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’s biography
of Archbishop Lefebvre. After I read it, I was no longer
deterred by the libel of excommunication. I knew it was
a principled position where the history of the Church
was being made. In the Catholic Church, truth will
eventually triumph over falsehood.
Exclusive interview conducted for Angelus Press by Fr. Markus Heggenberger.

www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

Church a

34

Letter from
Fr. Morgan,
District Superior
of Great Britain
My dear Brethren,
I recently received a dossier
from the Anglican Church Commissioners containing some 180 representations opposing our application
to purchase the redundant Church
of St. George in Gorton, Manchester. The representations in question, from politicians, religious and
civic groups, a number of individuals, generally expressed objections
which I have tried to summarise in
my letter of reply, which I include
here for your interest and commend
to your prayers:
The Church of England
Church Commissioners
Closed Churches Division
25th June 2009

Dear Sir,
Further to your letter of the 5th
June 2009, I am happy to submit the
following comments for the consideration of the Church Buildings (Uses
and Disposals) Committee. With
regard to the Society’s application
to purchase the redundant church of
St. George in Gorton, Manchester,
a certain amount of opposition has
been voiced based upon a number
of misrepresentations. The aim of
this letter is to summarise and to
answer those same misrepresentations which have deflected attention
from our bona fide application to
acquire and restore this fine Edwardian Gothic church as a place for
Christian worship

OBJECTION 1: “SSPX is anti-Semitic”

The phrase “anti-Semitic” is
vague to say the least, but taken as
‘hatred for the Jews because of their
race’ is something abhorrent to any
Catholic. Our Lord and His Holy
Mother were of the Jewish people,
as were the Apostles. The Society
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

rejects entirely the accusation that
it hates Jews. The fundamental law
of Christian charity is to love God
above all things and to love one’s
neighbour as oneself, regardless of
ethnic background or skin colour.
In this country our congregations
are from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, including those of Jewish
race. Also amongst the priests of the
Society we are happy to have several
priests who are also of Jewish stock.
On a personal level, my own family
took in Jews from occupied Holland
during the Second World War. The
Society’s church in Gateshead is in
the centre of a Jewish district and we
enjoy cordial and peaceful relations
with the neighbouring community,
and this has been commented upon
favourably by the local police!
Obviously the Catholic religion
differs with the Jewish religion, and
fundamentally so with regard to the
recognition of the Messiah in the
Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But
to have different and indeed opposing beliefs in no ways constitutes
hatred for the people who hold these
beliefs.
Similarly, to question the political agenda of the Jews in Israel or
elsewhere cannot be termed “antiSemitic,” otherwise the Ultra Orthodox Jews, who oppose the foundation of the State of Israel, would
themselves deserve this description!

OBJECTION 2:“SSPX would cause
division if it came to Manchester”

The Society has had a church
in Manchester for 20 years and has
never once been accused of causing civil unrest or disturbing the
peace, let alone presenting a danger
to the fabric of society! Such scaremongering is entirely gratuitous and
is unworthy of local community
leaders.
Regrettably the claims of Manchester being a tolerant, just and
harmonious city sound rather hollow
in the context of the Society’s denunciation here by various groups and

individuals. Our ordinary, churchgoing faithful are now the ones feeling
harassed by the media-generated
campaign to discredit us and our
work.

OBJECTION 3 : “Bishop Williamson
should not be allowed to purchase a
church in Manchester”

There was never question of
Bishop Williamson’s purchasing the
church in Gorton. The Society’s
formal offer for the church was made
via an estate-agent months before
the media storm surrounding Bishop
Williamson’s regrettable remarks on
Swedish Television. The Society’s
Superior General has distanced himself from the private “revisionist”
opinions voiced by Bishop Wiliamson, then sensationalised by the
media around the word, and consequently it is entirely unjust that the
Society as a whole be criminalised
for some unguarded comments in
this much-vaunted age of “freedom
of speech”!

OBJECTION 4 : “Rome does not
approve of the SSPX so neither should
Manchester”

The Society of Saint Pius X was
founded with ecclesiastical approval
in 1970 for the maintenance of Catholic Tradition. In recent times Pope
Benedict XVI has manifested goodwill towards “Traditional Catholics”
by allowing the universal celebration
of the Traditional Mass, by lifting
alleged censures affecting the Society’s four bishops, and by inviting
the Society to talk with the Vatican
on doctrinal issues in relation to
Vatican II.
Consequently it is somewhat
ironic that, in the name of good
“ecumenical relations,” the Catholic
diocese of Salford and the Anglican
diocese of Manchester have both
expressed their opposition to our
purchasing a more suitable church
in Manchester.
In light of the above clarifications, I would again appeal to the

nd World
Church Commissioners to consider
our application based upon its merits
as opposed to the manipulations of
“public opinion”. I enclose a petition
of several hundred names, all collected in just one day, in support of
our application, and my colleagues
and I look forward to the opportunity of speaking further on this
matter at the Church Buildings Committee meeting on 15th July 2009.
Yours sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Paul Morgan
Superior SSPX-GB
(District Newsletter, July 2009)

Another Letter
from Fr. Morgan
My dear Brethren,
Given recent media reports
many of you will have heard by
now of the Church of England
Commissioners’ decision to reject
our application to purchase a disused
church in Manchester following an
official meeting held on 15th July
in Church House, Westminster. The
two reasons given for this refusal
were firstly because the application
was not of a local nature(!), and
secondly because of a possible
negative impact on local community
relations. A full report has yet to be
published.
The (Anglican) Church Buildings
Committee was composed of Church
Co m m i s s i o n e r s , e c c l e s i a s t i c s ,
lawyers and other officials, a total of
some 15 individuals. Parties against
and for the proposed scheme were
able to speak before the committee.
Two officials from the Anglican
Diocese of Manchester spoke
against the draft “Pastoral Scheme”
allowing us to acquire the property,
as did a representative of the Jewish
community in his capacity as vicechairman of the Council of Christian
Jews (Manchester Branch). Speaking

in favour of the scheme was myself
and Mrs Beryl Hartley, one of
the faithful from our Manchester
congregation, who delivered a
courageous and comprehensive
refutation of the accusations levied
against us.
Fo l l o w i n g e a ch p a r t y ’ s
intervention against and for the
scheme (in that order), committee
members then presented questions,
and in my own case these ranged from
enquiries about Bishop Williamson
to issues regarding Vatican II, the
Ecclesia Dei Commission’s new
Fr. Franz Schmidberger
place under the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, and the
forthcoming doctrinal discussions
between Rome and the Society.
Of particular interest was the
statement made by the Jewish
spokesman who opposed the sale,
not primarily for reasons to do with
revisionist history and the Holocaust
question, but rather because of the
Society’s opposition to Vatican II
and specifically the conciliar decree
on Non-Christian religions, Nostra
Aetate. Furthermore he went on to
say that the Jewish community could
not be at peace or live without fear
as long as the Society of Saint Pius
X remained in this country! In turn
I was able to express my protest at
these intolerant and inflammatory
words which smacked of that same
language of persecution which the
Jews themselves denounce so wholeheartedly when it concerns them.
Had I been the one to utter such a
threat doubtless I would have been
arrested on the spot for hate crimes...
The obvious question which
presents itself is why the Jewish
community is purportedly so
concerned about the Second Vatican
Council and the Society’s opposition
to the conciliar errors.
To a n s w e r t h i s w e m u s t
understand that the Jewish lobby
was highly instrumental in the
composition of Nostra Aetate, and had,
particularly since the Second World

35

War, sought to “purify” the Church
of its ‘inherent anti-Semitism’ which,
it continues to claim, stems from the
Gospels and the early Fathers!
The leading spokesman of the
influential Jewish lobby was one Jules
Isaac who said that Auschwitz was
the logical outcome of Christianity
because the Church’s traditional
teaching–that the Jews were guilty
of Deicide–necessarily [led to]
persecution against the Jewish
people. With impunity he wrote
large works in which he described
“the Evangelists as liars, the Fathers
and the great saints of the Church as
scurrilous pamphleteers, perverters
of the truth and torturers, and in
which he called upon the Church to
recognise, abjure and make amends
for her criminal wrongs towards the
Jews.” Finding a sympathetic ally in
the person of Cardinal Bea and the
Secretariat for Christian Unity, secret
negotiations took place between the
Cardinal and the leaders of great
American Jewish organisations, and
in particular the B’nai B’rith ( Jewish
Freemasonry), in order to influence
the Council into issuing a decree
aimed at rehabilitating Judaism.
Whilst the text of the draft
decree as introduced in 1964 was
not ratified by the pope, and was
subsequently modified when it went
to the vote in October 1965 so as
to include the other main “world
religions,” it minimised the part
played by the Jews in Our Lord’s
Passion and Death by absolving the
Jewish people of any responsibility
for the decision of their leaders,
whilst inferring that the Church
herself was somehow responsible
for anti-Semitism over the course of
time. Taken as a whole, the document
gave rise to a spirit of indifferentism
towards the true religion and the
whole supernatural order.
In spite of some 250 bishops
at the Council voting against the
decree, the large majority–1,763
bishops–supported it, and
www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

36

immediately newspapers ran such
headlines as, “Jews Not Guilty”, or
“Jews Exonerated in Rome.”
It is said that the Council’s
acceptance of the decree was due to
many bishops’ being ignorant of the
part played by Jules Isaac and the
powerful Jewish lobby, as well as to
their ignorance regarding the wider
Jewish question.
When the Society comes to
discuss this particular decree with
Rome, albeit initially away from the
public gaze, one wonders if there
might be an even greater furor than
there was in January of this year
following the infamous Swedish
interview...
Wishing you every grace and
blessing through Mary Assumed into
Heaven,
Fr. Paul Morgan
(District Newsletter, Aug. 2009)

Indulgences for the
Year of the Priest
June 19, 2009–June 19, 2010

In a Decree published on May
12, 2009, the Major Penitentiary,
James Francis Cardinal Stafford, “in
express conformity with the wishes
of the Supreme Pontiff,” granted the
following indulgences, valid between
June 19, 2009, and June 19, 2010:

Plenary Indulgence for Priests

Every priest who devoutly
recites at least Lauds or Vespers
in the presence of the Blessed
Sacrament (exposed or reposed in
the tabernacle) and offers himself
with a ready and generous heart for
the celebration of the Sacraments–
especially the Sacrament of
Penance–after the example of St.
John Mary Vianney, may gain the
plenary indulgence under the usual
conditions. This indulgence may also
be applied to the souls of deceased
priests.
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

Church a
Plenary Indulgence for the Faithful

On June 19, 2009, and June
19, 2010, as well as on August 4,
2009 (the sesquicentennial of St.
John Vianney’s death), and on the
first Thursday of each month (or
any other day established by the
local Ordinary for the benefit of the
faithful), any of the faithful may gain
the plenary indulgence under the
usual conditions, if, in any church
or chapel, they “devoutly attend the
divine Sacrifice of the Mass and offer
prayers and any other good works
which they have done on that day to
Jesus Christ the Eternal High Priest,
for the priests of the Church, so that
He may sanctify them and form
them in accordance with His Heart.”
Special provision is made for
the home-bound: “The elderly,
the sick, and all those who for any
legitimate reason are confined to
their homes” may gain the same
indulgence, provided that “on the
above-mentioned days they recite
prayers for the sanctification of
priests and confidently offer the
illnesses and hardships of their
lives to God through Mary, Queen
of Apostles,” and that they have
the intention of fulfilling the usual
conditions as soon as possible, at
home or wherever their impediment
detains them.

Partial Indulgence for Priests

All priests may gain a partial
indulgence every time they “devoutly
recite the duly-approved prayers to
lead a holy life and to carry out in
a holy manner the offices entrusted
to them.” This indulgence may also
be applied to the souls of deceased
priests.

Partial Indulgence for the Faithful

All of the faithful may gain a
partial indulgence every time they
“devoutly recite five Our Fathers,
Hail Marys, and Glorias, or other
expressly approved prayers, in
honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,

that priests be preserved in purity
and holiness of life.”
(DICI, No.196, June 2009)

Thirteen New
Ordinations
On June 19, the Feast of the
Sacred Heart, 13 new priests–
including two Benedictines and
one Dominican–were ordained by
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais
at the Seminary of Winona in the
US. On June 27, Bishop Alfonso
de Galarreta ordained three new
priests at the seminary of Zaitzkofen
in Germany; and Bishop Bernard
Fellay ordained seven priests for
the SSPX and one Capuchin friar
in Ecône on June 29. At the end
of the year, two priests are due
to be ordained at the seminary of
Goulburn in Australia, and four
at La Reja in Argentina. And one
more priest might be ordained in
Zaitzkofen, thus bringing to 27 the
number of priests ordained this year
for the SSPX, versus 16 last year.
German bishops, and more
specially Bishop Gerhard Ludwig
Müller of Regensburg, the diocese
in which the seminary of Zaitzkofen
is located, and Bishop Heinz Josef
Algermissen of Fulda, wrote to the
pope to ask him how they should
react to these ordinations, which
they considered as a provocation.
Bishop Robert Zollisch, President of
the German Bishops’ Conference,
even spoke of “an affront to the unity
of the Church.”
Bishop Mülller had warned that,
as long as the issue of the canonical
status of the SSPX had not been
resolved, ordinations were not
authorized and were consequently
liable to disciplinary penalties. “Our
bishop is expecting an advice from
Rome concerning the response to
be made,” declared Jakob Schotz,
a diocesan spokesman at the end of
June. “But he feels quasi certain that
it will end with excommunications

nd World
against the priests and the bishop
who ordains them.” Bishop Müller
even went to Rome to advocate his
viewpoint.
In a declaration dated June 13,
Fr. Stephan Frey, superior of the
seminary of Zaitzkofen, expounded
on the state of necessity in which the
Church in Europe finds itself today:
“An emergency requires and
justifies corresponding emergency
measures. Is there an emergency in
the Church today? We refer to an
appendix attached to this declaration,
in which representative statements
from popes, cardinals, bishops, and
theologians are documented. Pope
Paul VI, for example, speaks of the
‘self-destruction of the Church,’
Pope John Paul II speaks of ‘silent
apostasy.’ Additionally we give
two numerical examples: In 1950
in Germany, 13 million Catholics
regularly attended Sunday Mass.
Today it is less than 2 million–a
reduction of more than 85 percent.
The number of priestly ordinations
in German dioceses in 2008 reached
a record low of less than 100.
“It is a question of the existence
or the dissolution of Christianity in
Europe. Should the ordination of
these new priests, who have been
formed on the solid foundations
of Catholic tradition and who are
so necessary for the survival of the
Church, be postponed? Instead, as
true vocations become more and
more uncommon, should we not,
with great devotion, thank God
for the grace of such vocations?
There can be no talk of an insult
to the unity of the Church and
most certainly not of a rebuff of
the outstretched hand of the Holy
Father, for whom we pray daily.”
For Bishop Müller–who said
so to KNA agency–“the state of
emergency” does not exist in
any way, objectively speaking.
According to him there is no
oppression of the Church coming
from the outside, as could have been
the case in Czechoslovakia in the

days of the Iron Curtain. Besides,
it would not belong to the SSPX to
define such a state of emergency if
it existed. With genuine or feigned
candor, the bishop of Regensburg
takes into account persecution only
as coming from exterior enemies,
such as the communists during
the Cold War. But Paul VI, who
was hardly to be suspected of
excessive traditionalism, spoke of
self-destruction, which means that
there are destructive agents in the
very bosom of the Church.

Our Comment

A year ago, an interview was
published in which the superior
general of the SSPX clearly declared:
“If the decree of excommunication
is withdrawn, it becomes possible to
make the experiment of Tradition
according to the wish of Archbishop
Lefebvre. Namely, it will be possible
to judge the fruits of Tradition at
last ‘de-diabolized.’ I do mean that
Tradition should be judged upon
its ‘fruits,’ i.e., its results and not
upon the infamous labels too easily
given it.”
To put it in a nutshell, the bishops
do not want a de facto exemption
which would enable us to “make
the experiment of Tradition”! If they
are usingagain the old defamatory
labels–more and more outdated–it
is because they fear that the young
priests ordained in 2009, in their
ministry with souls, will provide
the opportunity to judge the tree of
Tradition upon its fruits.
(DICI, No.198, July 2009)

Pope Benedict
Laicizes Priest
Connected to
Alleged Medjugorje
Apparitions
Po p e B e n e d i c t X V I h a s
approved the laicization of Fr.

37

Tomislav Vlasic, a priest leading
the claims that the Virgin Mary
has been appearing in the Bosnian
town of Medjugorje. The priest has
reportedly decided to leave the
priesthood and his religious order.
The action follows an investigation into concerns surrounding the
alleged apparitions, the Mail Online
reports.
When the apparitions allegedly
began in 1981, Fr. Vlasic was named
as the “creator” of the phenomenon by the local Bishop of MostarDuvno, Pavao Zanic.
Fr. Vlasic became the “spiritual
advisor” of the six children involved
in the supposed apparitions. The
children now say that the Virgin
Mary has visited them 40,000 times
over the last 28 years.
On January 25, 2008, Fr. Vlasic
was suspended by the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith.
An inquiry was made into allegations that he exaggerated stories
of the Virgin Mary’s appearance,
taught “dubious doctrine,” manipulated consciences, engaged in “suspect mysticism,” and disobeyed
legitimately issued orders. He was
also investigated for sexual immorality after he allegedly made a nun
pregnant, the Daily Mail says: “Fr.
Vlasic was sent to a monastery in
Lombardy, Italy, and was forbidden to communicate with anyone
without the permission of his superior. He was also required to take a
course of theological-spiritual formation and make a solemn profession of faith.”
On Sunday it emerged that
Fr. Vlasic has chosen to leave the
priesthood and his religious order.
Pope Benedict approved of his
laicization in March, thus removing
his priestly status.
According to the Daily Mail,
several of the alleged Medjugorje
seers now live in wealthy conditions
and own expensive cars. One seer,
Ivan Dragicevic, has married a
www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

38

former American beauty pageant
queen.
The shrine at Medjugorje has
attracted an estimated 30 million
pilgrims. Millions of Catholics hope
the Vatican will one day legitimize
the alleged apparitions.
(Catholic News Agency, July 27, 2009)

“The New Priests”
Fr. Alain Lorans, SSPX

The novel Les Nouveaux Prêtres
(The New Priests), published by French
author Michel de Saint-Pierre in
1964, describes the new generation
of clerics who, at the height of the
conciliar storm, “identified opening to the world with a conversion
to secularization,” according to the
recent and belated admission made
by Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès,
Secretary of the Congregation for
Catholic Education. To open the
Church to the world, as John XXIII
wished, was it not to expose it to the
danger of espousing its spirit?
What are the results of this conversion today? Before the Council,
in 1956, 825 priests were ordained in
France; 12 years after the end of the
Council, in 1977, 99 were ordained
for all of France. During the pontificate of John-Paul II, the annual
average number of ordinations was
between 100 and 140. Since 2004,
this average number has often been
less than 100 ordinations per year.
There remain 15,000 diocesan priests
in France; only 10% of them are less
than 45 years old. The average age
of the remaining priests in many dioceses is around 75 years old. Such is
secularization in progress!
The Year for Priests which
Benedict XVI has just opened is
placed under the patronage of the
Curé of Ars. The French daily La
Croix merely considers him as “a
19th-century country priest, whose
popular fervor advocated the spirit
of sacrifice and the fight against the
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

Church a
devil,” and wonders: “What can the
example of John Marie Vianney and
his figure of a typical Council of
Trent priest bring us? How can young
priests draw from him answers to the
challenges of today’s urbanized and
secularized society?” The answer
of the Curé of Ars is the same as
that already given by St. Paul to the
Romans (12:2): nolite conformari huic
sæculo, “be not conformed to this
world,” if you wish to transform it
under the action of divine grace.
(DICI, No.198, July 2009)

Roma Aeterna:
Between Extreme
Solutions
Rev. Fr. Nicholas Mary, C.SS.R.

“In order to remain truly within
the Church,” Archbishop Lefebvre
used to say, “one must be able to
make the necessary distinctions in
order to stay on the sure path.” Presented with so many contradictions
between faith and obedience over
the last 40 years, faithful Catholics
have had to learn to make distinctions in order to persevere in their
fight against modernism and for the
salvation of souls. And yet, our critics object, is not this need to make
distinctions merely self-delusion and
blind stubbornness, a spirit which
will rather lead us off the sure path,
and into schism and heresy?
No, it is none of these things.
Though we are today habitually ready
to disobey the modernist authorities
in order to keep the Faith, the spontaneity of our reactions proceeds not
from a lack of Catholic spirit, but
from a well-formed Sensus Fidei–a
sense of what truly is Catholic–which
is ever on red alert thanks to the bitter
experience of the last 40 years. Our
wariness of whatever comes from
the recent popes and bishops is no
knee-jerk reaction. It proceeds not
from the spirit of schism and heresy,

but from its very opposite, the spirit
of Eternal Rome and of St. Thomas
Aquinas, the spirit which informs
the mind of the Catholic Church:
“Prove all things: hold fast that which
is good.”1
It is this Catholic spirit which
helped the Archbishop keep the Faith
in the post-conciliar pandemonium.
In remaining objective in the face
of so much subjectivity, we are not
thereby succumbing to the spirit of
private judgment. We are doing so
because the Catholic Faith is objective truth, revealed by God and kept
by grace. And in holding fast to Tradition, we are not defending some
party line at all costs, but seeking to
do justice to that objective truth.
It is this spirit of distinction which
keeps us moored at all times to reality.
Part of reality is that Benedict XVI is
the Pope. He has freed the Mass of
All Time and confirmed that it was
“never abrogated.” He has taken a
number of initiatives to restore the
sense of the sacred to the liturgy, as
well as other small steps in the traditional direction, most of them related
somehow to the liturgy. He has lifted
the excommunications–invalid in our
eyes–inflicted on the SSPX bishops in
1988, and, even though he has done
this for ecumenical reasons, he has
thereby accomplished an act of justice. All these things are in harmony
with our Faith and the objective spirit
of judgment it creates within us, a
spirit wholly different to the private
judgment of Protestantism, and so we
agree with them.
But it is this same Pope Benedict
XVI–and not merely his predecessor–that patently believes it consistent with being the Vicar of Christ
to enter a mosque (in 2006), remove
his shoes, and pray in this temple
of a false religion, notwithstanding
the confusion and scandal that this
has brought. He believes that the
teaching of the “distinction between
Church and State” as understood
by Vatican II is “a great progress of

nd World
humanity,” despite the break it represents with Tradition. 2 He clearly
believes that his work as Cardinal
Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to
2005 can be reconciled with Catholic
truth, for he has not reversed any of
the questionable decisions which he
issued in that capacity even in recent
years: the rehabilitation (2001) of the
thought (and not merely the personal
virtues) of Antonio Rosmini, whose
beatification he approved in 2007;3
the declaration of the validity of an
anaphora (or canon) used by the oriental Nestorians which does not contain the words of consecration;4 his
justification in 2000 (albeit nuanced)
for referring to the schismatic Orthodox groups as “Sister-Churches”; 5
his essential approbation (and more
recent praise as Pope) of the Joint
Declaration on Justification with
Lutherans in Augsburg, Germany,
in 1999.6
Then there is his approval–
now as Pope–of the International
Theological Commission’s document “The Hope of Salvation for
Infants Who Die without Being Baptised,”7 his constant encouragement
of the charismatic movement (which
tries unsuccessfully to reconcile the
errors of Protestant Pentecostalism
with the Faith), and his recent praise
(2008) for the Ravenna Document,
an exploration by Catholic and schismatic Orthodox theologians of a way
in which the papacy might become
less of an obstacle to ecumenism.8
In every instance faithful Catholics sense a contradiction with
what the Church has always taught.
Not private judgment, but Faith–
that supernatural gift of God which
enables us to believe without doubting whatever He has revealed–has
brought us to this conclusion in each
case, and there is thus a difficult contradiction to resolve. Those whose
message is simpler seem to have it
easier. It is less complicated to turn
a blind eye to the contradiction by
saying, for example, “Benedict XVI

is the Pope, and therefore everything’s OK.” Similarly, one could
avoid having to resolve it by proclaiming that “All of these things are
bad, but that’s OK since Benedict
XVI is not really the pope.” But neither approach is faithful to reality,
and, simple though these messages
may be, sooner or later they lead to
still greater contradictions. Then one
has either to make new distinctions
or to resist the known truth.
And so we make all the distinctions necessary to prove that Pope
Benedict can be infallible (and that
he might well one day use that infallibility), and yet not to deny that his
words and deeds cause great harm
to souls. This is not as simple at first
glance as the conservative or sedevacantist positions, but it does square
up with reality and the teaching of
the Church. And by making such
distinctions we do not have to live in
a permanent contradiction.
But once we have been forced
to make a distinction and choose
faith over obedience, then it is not
up to us to resolve these contradictions either. Clearly it is up to the
Magisterium, and more specifically
to the Pope himself, ultimately to
resolve this crisis. Our role lies in
the clear, uncompromising confession and handing down of what is
certain, the Catholic Faith, and in
drawing to the attention of the Holy
Father and the hierarchy the contradictions that they have created to it
and which they must resolve. In this
we are truly the greatest supporters
of the papacy, in which we fully–
though unfashionably–believe, and
the greatest enemies of the modern
errors and doubts which have seen
it paralysed and subdued. In making
such a stand, as the Archbishop
declared in 1974, “we are persuaded
that we can render no greater service
to the Holy Catholic Church, to the
Sovereign Pontiff and to posterity.”
And never has it been more
imperative for us not to yield through
weariness of the fight to the tempta-

39

tion of a purely diplomatic solution
to our anomalous situation than at
the present moment, when the Pope
himself has declared, in his letter of
10 March, that in our regard “the
problems now to be addressed are
essentially doctrinal in nature.” It is
now no longer possible even for those
who wish to practise blind obedience
to the unproblematic pope they have
created in their imaginations to deny
that it is doctrine, and not merely the
permission to say the Mass that is the
crux of the matter. And so the work is
beginning, perhaps long and difficult,
whereby the voice of Tradition will
be heard again in Rome, and the doctrinal nature of the crisis will have to
be resolved by Rome itself. Each one
of us must accompany that theological labour by unwavering fidelity to
the truth and humble perseverance
in our crusade of prayer. We do not
know how long it will take, but we
do have Our Lord’s promise that the
gates of hell will not prevail against
His Church, and Our Lady’s promise
that in the end her Immaculate Heart
will triumph.
Fr. Nicholas Mary is a traditional Redemptorist
priest working with the SSPX and looking after its
faithful in Orkney, Scotland. He may be contacted
at frnicholas@runbox.com.
1

I Thessalonians 5:21.

Address during his visit to the Italian Embassy to
the Holy See on 13/12/08. http://www.vatican.va/
holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20081213_autorita-ambasciata_en.html.
3
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_20010701_rosmini_en.html.
4
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_
councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_
doc_20011025_chiesa-caldea-assira_en.html.
5
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_20000630_chiese-sorelle_en.html.
6
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_
en.html.
7
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html.
8
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/ch_orthodox_docs/
rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20071013_documentoravenna_en.html.
2

www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

PART 28

40

F r .

M a t t h i a s

G a u d r o n

This part of the Catechism deals with the rite of
extreme unction and with a final consideration of the
sacraments in the new rite taken together.

Catechism
Of the Crisis
In the Church
l Was the rite of extreme unction also altered?
In the traditional rite of extreme unction, the five
senses are anointed by the priest, who at the same time
prays that God deign to forgive the sins committed
by these senses: “Through this holy unction and of
His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon thee
whatsoever sins thou hast committed by sight [hearing,
speech, etc.].” This symbolic action was ruined in the
new rite.
l How does the new rite of extreme unction spoil this
symbolism?
In the new rite, only the forehead and hands are
anointed; the sacramental words only mention sin in
general.
l What other changes were made to extreme unction in
the new Ritual?
The new Ritual also tends to make of extreme
unction a group celebration. There are directions for
the “common celebration of extreme unction for a
large assembly.”
l Is this communal celebration of extreme unction
blameworthy?
Such communal celebrations encourage the
administering of this sacrament without distinction
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

between the healthy and the sick during gatherings of
the elderly, whereas only someone seriously sick can
validly receive the sacrament.
l What can be said of the new exorcisms?
The reformed Rite of Exorcism was first published
provisionally [ad interim] in 1990, then definitively
in 1998. It was one of the last areas affected by the
liturgical reform.
l Why did the innovators tackle exorcisms so late?
The innovators tackled exorcism so late because it
was the least of their concerns (in general, the devil’s
influence is minimized or passed over in silence
throughout the new liturgy). The German episcopate
even declared that it was pointless to publish a new
Ritual of exorcisms since henceforth exorcisms
shouldn’t be performed at all!1
l Are the new exorcism prayers bad?
Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the chief exorcist of the
Diocese of Rome and honorary president of the
International Association of Exorcists, frankly accused
the new exorcism prayers of being ineffectual:
Efficacious prayers, prayers that had been in existence
for twelve centuries, were suppressed and replaced by new
ineffective prayers….We exorcists have all tried out the new

41
prayers in the New Ritual ad interim and we have come to
realize that they are absolutely ineffectual.

l How can the ineffectiveness of the new exorcism
prayers be explained?
Fr. Amorth stated that “this influence [of “the world
beyond”] has had a hand in many of the liturgical
reforms.” He also denounced the incompetence of the
two commissions that drafted the new Ritual:
None of the members of these commissions had ever
performed an exorcism, had ever been present at an
exorcism and ever possessed the slightest idea of what an
exorcism is. Here lies the error, the original sin of this Ritual.
Not one of those who collaborated on it was an exorcism
specialist.

l Isn’t it excessive to accuse the authors of the new
Ritual of incompetence?
Fr. Amorth proves their incompetence by the facts:
Point 15 treats of evil spells and how one should behave
when dealing with them….The Roman Ritual used to explain
how one should confront it. The New Ritual on the other
hand categorically declares that it is absolutely forbidden to
perform exorcisms in such cases. Absurd. Evil spells are by
far the most frequent causes of possessions and evil procured
through the demon: at least 90% of cases. It is as good as
telling exorcists they can no longer perform exorcisms.

l Are there other facts proving this incompetence?
Fr. Amorth continued:
Point 16 solemnly declares that one should not carry out
exorcisms if one is not certain of the presence of the devil.
This is a masterstroke of incompetence: the certainty that the
devil is present in someone can only be obtained by carrying
out an exorcism.

l Did the exorcists’ protests have any result?
The exorcists’ protests obtained one thing only: the
insertion of a Notification from the Congregation for
Divine Worship stating that exorcists are not obliged
to use the new Ritual and that, should they wish to do
so, they may ask their bishop for authorization to use
the old one. In this case, the bishop must in turn ask
for authorization from the Congregation which, as the
Notification states, “willingly accords it.”
l Are there similar deficiencies to be found in the new
Ritual for Exorcists?
Fr. Amorth reported, concerning the new
Benedictionary:
I have read its 1200 pages minutely. Well! any reference
to the fact the Lord must protect us against Satan, that the
angels protect us from the attacks of the demon, has been
systematically suppressed. All the prayers for the blessing of
homes and schools have been suppressed. Everything should
be blessed and protected, but today there is no longer any
protection against the demon. There no longer exists any
defense or any prayers against him.2

l What are the consequences of these modifications and
suppressions?
The consequences of these changes are visible
everywhere: the influence of the devil is making itself
felt more and more in our societies.
l What can be said, very briefly, about the new funeral
rite?
The new funeral rite no longer says anything about
the soul, the gravity of judgment, the possibility of
damnation or purgatory. It gives the impression that
the deceased is assuredly saved and already with God.
l Does the new funeral rite leave out the existence of
sin?
Like all the other new rites, the funeral rite leaves
much latitude in the choice of prayers; the celebrant
may make mention of sin and guilt, or he may omit
it. As for the word “soul,” it no longer appears in any
prayer. During an era when the existence of the human
soul is often denied, its mention would be, to the
contrary, necessary.

90) Are the sacraments celebrated
according to the new rites valid?

The sacraments administered according to the new
rites can in principle be valid. However, a doubt exists
about the validity of confirmation and extreme unction
administered without olive oil. In a certain number
of other cases, bad translations of the sacramental
form can also cause doubts about the validity of the
sacraments.
l Why must confirmation and extreme unction be
administered with olive oil?
Just as the word wine in the primary meaning of
the term designates the fermented juice of grapes—even
if it is employed secondarily to designate wine from
palm, rice, etc.—so the word oil (oleum) in Antiquity
designated in first place, in the proper sense, the liquid
obtained from the pressing of olives. Thus, just as only
wine from grapes and bread from wheat constitute
the valid matter of the Eucharist, likewise olive oil is
the valid matter of confirmation and extreme unction.
Such was the traditional and common opinion of
theologians.3
l Is this opinion based solely upon a philological
reason?
This opinion is not based primarily on philology,
but on the fact that, just as Christ used wheaten bread
and grape wine during the Last Supper, so also the
anointings that He recommended to the Apostles could
only be anointings with olive oil. It would never have
occurred to the Apostles to use anything else than
oil taken in the proper sense–in the noble sense of
the term. The use of another kind of oil renders the
validity of the sacrament at least doubtful.

www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

42
l Are there other arguments in favor of olive oil?
It may be observed that on the same Holy
Thursday on which He instituted the priesthood—the
day also when He took bread and wine to institute the
Eucharist—our Lord watered the Garden of Olives with
His sweat and blood in proximity to an olive press as
if to sanctify the matter of which the holy oils would
be made. In fact, it is also on Holy Thursday each year
that the bishops consecrate the holy oils during the
Chrismal Mass.
l When and how did the use in the sacraments of oils
other than olive oil originate?
On December 3, 1970, a decree of the
Congregation of Rites authorized the utilization
of other vegetable oils in the administration of the
sacraments.4
l How did the Congregation of Rites explain this
change?
The Congregation of Rites offered no explanation
of how something that had always been considered as
probably invalid had suddenly become possible.
l Was there, then, no explanation forthcoming for this
change of oil?
No doctrinal explanation for this change was
given. The decree only invoked a practical reason,
which Paul VI adopted two years later in the Apostolic
Constitution Sacram Unctionem Infirmorum:
…since olive oil, which hitherto had been prescribed for
the valid administration of the sacrament, is unobtainable or
difficult to obtain in some parts of the world, we decreed, at
the request of numerous bishops, that in the future, according
to the circumstances, oil of another sort could also be used,
provided it were obtained from plants, inasmuch as this more
closely resembles the matter indicated in Holy Scripture.5

l Doesn’t this explanation resolve the question?
This practical explanation tends rather to increase
the problem, for it is evident that it has never been as
easy as today to obtain olive oil in every corner of the
globe.6 Now, if till the present, in spite of much greater
transportation difficulties, the Church always refused
to change the matter of the sacrament, it is because she
had good reasons.
l Isn’t the change in the form of certain sacraments—for
example, the new form for consecrating bishops—a
reason for doubting their validity?
Some have argued that the change in the
formula for episcopal consecration invalidated new
consecrations from 1968 on. But in reality, the new
Ritual uses a form close to that of certain Eastern Rites.
Thus its validity cannot be seriously challenged even if
this dismembering of the Roman rite is deplorable.7
l Are there other reasons for doubting the validity of
the new sacraments
The presence of correct matter and form are not
sufficient to assure the valid confection of a sacrament.
The minister must also intend to give the sacrament as
the Church wishes to give it.
THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

l Then a priest who does not believe in the efficacy of
the sacraments is incapable of validly administering
the sacraments?
The problem does not lie in the faith of the
minister, but in his intention. A priest who has lost the
faith can still validly administer the sacraments if he
wants to be, at least in this regard, a minister of the
Church (if he has the general intention of doing what
the Church does). If, on the contrary, he knowingly
refuses to be an instrument of Christ and the Church,
the sacrament is not valid.
l Is it really thinkable that there are priests who
administer the sacraments while knowingly refusing
to do what the Church does?
Numerous are the priests today who, during
their years of study, were deliberately indoctrinated
against the Catholic notion of sacrament (mocked
as magic and sleight of hand). It cannot be excluded
that, in the administration of the sacraments, they
quite consciously refuse to effect a sign that gives
grace, desiring merely to preside over a community
celebration and to fulfill a social function.

91) Should one receive the
sacraments in the new rites?

Because of the defects presented above, one should
not receive the sacraments in the new rites, but only
in the traditional rites, which alone are worthy and
certainly valid. Receiving the sacraments under a
form that is even slightly doubtful is not allowed. An
exception should be made, however, for the last rites,
when in case of emergency it is impossible to summon
in time a priest faithful to Tradition.
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.
A fact reported by Fr. Gabriel Amorth, interviewed in 30 Days, June 2000
(posted online at www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1320032/posts).
The subsequent statements by Fr. Amorth are quoted from this interview.
2
Promulgated on May 31, 1984, AAS, LXXVI, 1085-1086.
3
Concerning extreme unction, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches: “On the contrary,
oil is appointed (James 5:14) as the matter of this sacrament. Now, properly speaking, oil is none but olive oil. Therefore this is the matter of this
sacrament.”(Suppl., Q. 29, Art. 4).
4
Ordo Benedicendi Olea et Conficiendi Chrisma, nos. 3-4. The 1983 Code of
Canon Law (Can. 847) says: “In administering the sacraments in which holy
oils must be used, the minister must use oils pressed from olives or other
plants and, …consecrated or blessed recently by a bishop….”
5
November 30, 1972 (text online at www.vatican.va).
6
In the 13th century, St. Thomas had already answered the argument according to which olive oil is not available everywhere: “Though olive oil is not
produced everywhere, yet it can easily be transported from one place to
another” (Suppl., Q. 29, Art. 4, ad 3).
7
See on this subject the study of Fr. Pierre-Marie, O.P., Sont-ils évêques?
(Editions du Sel, n.d.).
1

F R .

p e t e r

R .

s c o t t

Questions and Answers
What is the morality
of “embryo adoption”?

As is well known, one of the by products of artificial fertilization as a treatment for infertility or for
genetic selection is that many more ova are fertilized
than can in fact be used. This is inseparable from the
process of artificial fertilization on account of the high
rate of loss in the process. Consequently many more
embryos are produced than can in fact be used. These
embryos are frozen for future use. This has caused
a huge moral dilemma. To discard these embryos is
nothing short of murder of the innocent. Is it licit for
Catholics to “adopt” these embryos by having them
implanted in the womb of a married woman, who
will then carry the child to term? Many have thought
that this would be a great act of charity, and not a
few Protestants actually promote this practice, based
upon the observation that hundreds of thousands of
frozen embryos exist in those countries in which in
vitro fertilization takes place, and that they all remain
orphans, abandoned by their parents, and indeed of
whose parents in general all trace has been lost.

“Dignitas Personae”
This difficult and delicate question has in fact
been resolved, in a little-known instruction of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on certain bioethical questions, published December 12,
2008, and entitled Dignitas Personae. This instruction,
approved by Pope Benedict XVI on June 20, 2008,
gives a moral analysis of a host of modern issues
concerning life that have arisen as a consequence of
modern medical technology. Although one might find
the continual insistence on human dignity, rather than
God’s law, to be humanistic, it must nevertheless be
admitted that all throughout this document defends
the principles of the natural law.
Before understanding the Church’s answer to
the question of “embryo adoption,” it is important
to understand why it rejects all forms of surrogate
motherhood, by which it means any technique that
would enable a mother to carry in her womb a child
conceived other than by the natural process of the
marital act.
Pope Pius Xii
This was already clearly declared by Pope Pius
XII in an allocution of May 19, 1956, on artificial
insemination to the Second World Congress on Fertility and Sterility. In that declaration, the Pope taught
the fundamental principle on the basis of which all
the difficult modern situations can be resolved: “The
relation which unites mother and father to their child
is rooted in the organic fact, and further still in the
deliberate action of husband and wife, who give themselves one to the other and whose will to surrender

43

themselves is revealed and finds its true result in the
being they bring into the world. Only this consecration of self, generous in its principle and arduous in
its realization, with the conscientious acceptance of
the responsibilities it carries, can guarantee that the
work of educating children will be followed with the
diligence, courage and patience required.” (In Papal
Teachings, Matrimony, Solesmes, §737). It is consequently in the natural law that the engendering of
children be accomplished ONLY via the marital act.
It is, therefore, permissible for medicine to do all that
it can to enhance fertility through the marital act, but
reprehensible for it to do anything to promote fertility
that bypasses that act.
Pope Pius XII goes on to apply this teaching to
the question of artificial insemination:
Artificial insemination exceeds the limits of the right
which the married couple has acquired by the matrimonial contract, namely, the right to exercise fully their
natural sexual capacity in the natural accomplishment
of the matrimonial act.…The matrimonial contract does
not confer this right, because it has for its object not the
offspring but the natural acts capable of procreating a
new life and which are destined to this. So it must be
said that artificial insemination violates the natural law
and that it is contrary to justice and morality. (Ibid. §740)

A clearer statement of the Church’s teaching on
morality could hardly be made.
The most recent instruction embraces this same
teaching, although expressing it a little less clearly:
The Church moreover holds that it is ethically unacceptable to dissociate procreation from the integrally
personal context of the conjugal act: human procreation
is a personal act of a husband and wife, which is not
capable of substitution. (§16)

Consequently the immorality of using artificially
fertilized embryos is not just a question of freezing
embryos and deliberately allowing for the destruction
of large numbers of them, in itself entirely immoral. It
is much more fundamental than that. It lies in the role
that marriage and the marriage act play in the natural
law, in God’s plan for the engendering of children.
Consequently in vitro fertilization would remain
immoral even in the impossible case that there would
be no deliberate destruction of excessive embryos,
and even if the fertilization were accomplished from
the seed of both parents who were to raise the child.
No Surrogate Motherhood
The above-mentioned instruction has this to say:
The proposal that these embryos could be put at the
disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility
is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which
make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as
any form of surrogate motherhood. (Ibid. §19)
www.angeluspress.org    THE ANGELUS • September 2009

44
It goes on to condemn the proposal of “embryo
adoption” or “prenatal adoption.”
It has also been proposed, solely in order to
allow human beings to be born who are otherwise
condemned to destruction, that there could be a form
of “prenatal adoption.” This proposal, praiseworthy
with regard to the intention of respecting and
defending human life, presents however various
problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.
No Moral Resolution
The instruction goes on to teach that in fact there
is no moral resolution to the question of these frozen
embryos: they cannot morally be adopted, and they
cannot morally be destroyed. Hence the gravity of the
moral crisis that the practice of in vitro fertilization
has created.
All things considered, it needs to be recognized
that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a
situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved.
Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience
of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to
doctors, that the production of human embryos be
halted, taking into account that there seems to be no
morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the
thousands and thousands of “frozen” embryos which are
and remain the subjects of essential rights and should
therefore be protected by law as human persons. (Ibid.).

This teaching has certainly to be considered as
a teaching of the Church’s Authentic Magisterium,
clarifying her unchanging teaching according to
true and unchanging principles. It consequently
binds Catholics in conscience. It is not permissible
for a Catholic to ask for the implantation of such
an embryo, nor to adopt it, no matter how good his
intentions might be. It is to participate in a process
that denatures God’s plan of procreation and destroys
the sanctity of marriage, and in particular of the
marriage act, as clearly explained by Pope Pius XII.
A Catholic who knowingly would refuse to follow this
teaching would be objectively guilty of serious sin. We
can only admire the depth of Catholic moral teaching,
going beyond simple good intentions to the real and
profound nature of man’s acts, which when vitiated
cannot be made right by good intentions.

Q

Is it permissible for
Catholics to use Reiki therapy?

Reiki therapy has become popular amongst
some Catholics interested in alternative medicine.
The practitioner pretends to bring about healing by
placing his hands on certain parts of a person’s body
in a special position and manner, in order to facilitate
the flow of what is called a “universal life energy”
or “Reiki.” It has the attraction of being natural and
having no known side effects.
It has attracted such attention that the US
Bishops’ Conference felt obliged to study the question

A

THE ANGELUS • September 2009    www.angeluspress.org

and to determine whether or not it could be used in
Catholic health care facilities. The negative answer
is well explained in the “Guidelines for Evaluating
Reiki as an Alternative Therapy” on March 28 this
year (usccb.org/dpp/doctrine.htm). The pagan origin
of this practice is clear by the statement that this
technique of healing “was invented in Japan in the
late 1800s by Mikao Usui, who was studying Buddhist
texts.” Likewise this form of therapy is presented
somewhat as a religion, being “described as a spiritual
kind of healing” and “a way of life.”
The statement goes on to point out that there are
only two kinds of healing, the miraculous healing
which is divine in its origin and the healing by the
powers of nature that is the object of science. Reiki is
neither: it cannot be supernatural, for it is based upon
a false spiritualist theory, nor can it be considered
as healing by the powers of nature, for “reputable
scientific studies attesting to the efficacy of Reiki are
lacking, as is a plausible scientific explanation as to
how it could possibly be efficacious.”
Consequently, medically this method can only
be considered as a placebo, having its effect entirely
through the confidence of the person who receives the
therapy, psychologically convinced by the practitioner. From the perspective of the Faith, though, such a
spiritualist therapy that has no scientific basis must be
considered as superstition. This is the conclusion of
the above-mentioned guidelines:
To use Reiki one would have to accept at least in an
implicit way central elements of the world view that
undergirds Reiki theory, elements that belong neither
to Christian faith nor to natural science. Without
justification either from Christian faith or natural
science, however, a Catholic who puts his or her trust
in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition,
the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science.
Superstition corrupts one’s worship of God by turning
one’s religious feeling and practice in a false direction.
While sometimes people fall into superstition through
ignorance, it is the responsibility of all who teach in the
name of the Church to eliminate such ignorance as much
as is possible. (Zenit.org, April 1, 2009)

It is a pleasant surprise to find such a clear
analysis from the US Conference of Bishops, and
credit must be given for it. The consequence is that
the practice of Reiki is at least objectively a grave
sin against the Faith, and that likewise the use of
this therapy is a sin of superstition, which could be a
grievous sin if serious confidence were placed in it in
important questions of health.
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.

The Liturgical Year in GREGORIAN CHANT

Music moves minds and souls. In the Catholic Church, St. Pius X
taught that liturgy without music is incomplete. Music is not neutral
nor can anyone be neutral towards it. Though Gregorian Chant is
the foundation of Western music, few appreciate it and fewer can
sing it. Yet it is not too late to start. The lyrics and translations are in
our missals. These recordings were produced under the direction
of Fr. Bernard Lorber, SSPX. Technically excellent recordings let you
follow along at home to this great spiritual treasure. Excellent for
choirs and individuals learning to sing Gregorian Chant.

Vol. 1: Advent to Epiphany

VOL. 6: 7th-14th Sunday after Pentecost

Includes Propers for the Sundays of Advent, the three Masses of Christmas, the Octave of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
and the Mass of Epiphany.

2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6615. $40.00

2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6610. $40.00

Vol. 2: Feast of the Holy Family
to 2nd Sunday of Lent

Includes Propers for the Feast of the Holy Family, 2nd Sunday after
Epiphany, 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Septuagesima Sunday, Sexagesima Sunday, Quinquagesima Sunday, Blessing of Ashes, Mass of Ash
Wednesday, 1st Sunday of Lent, 2nd Sunday of Lent.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6611. $40.00

Vol. 3: 3rd Sunday of Lent-Holy Week
Includes Propers for the 3rd and 4th Sundays of Lent, Passion Sunday,
Palm Sunday, Evening Mass of Holy Thursday, and the Liturgy of Good
Friday. Also includes Hymns and Propers for the Blessing and Procession with palms on Palm Sunday.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6612. $40.00

VOL. 4: Easter Vigil to the Ascension
Includes Propers for Easter Vigil, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Low
Sunday, 2nd-5th Sundays after Easter, the Rogation Mass, Feast of the
Ascension, and the Sunday in the Octave of the Ascension.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6613. $40.00

Vol. 5: Pentecost-6th Sun. after Pentecost
Includes Propers for the Feasts of Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and the
Sacred Heart; Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart and Masses for the
Sundays between Pentecost and the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6614. $40.00

Includes Propers for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost to the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

VOL.7: 15th-Last Sunday after Pentecost
Includes Propers for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost to the
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost and the Last Sunday after
Pentecost.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6616. $40.00

VOL. 8: The Kyriales and Credos
18 Kyriales include Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Ite Missa
Est. Also includes Vidi Aquam, Asperges, and 19 organ pieces.
3 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6618. $50.00

VOL. 9: Sanctoral I (Dec. 8-July 1)
Includes propers for the major feasts of the Sanctoral cycle from December 8th-July 1st. Including Immaculate Conception, Purification of the
BVM, St. Joseph, Annunciation of the BVM, St. Joseph the Worker, Sts.
Peter and Paul, and the Precious Blood.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6619. $35.00

VOL. 10: Sanctoral II (Aug. 6-Nov. 1)
Includes 10 Masses from August to November: the Transfiguration, the
Assumption, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Pius X, the Exaltation of
the Holy Cross, the Seven Sorrows of Mary, St. Michael the Archangel,
the Holy Rosary, Feast of Christ the King, and All Saints.
2 CDs in case with booklet. TAP# 6621. $35.00

The Liturgical Year in GREGORIAN CHANT
Vols. 1-7: The Temporal Cycle
Special price on set of 14 CDs
(7 Volumes), STK# 6620. $265.00

Traditional Roman Hymnal
A massive all-in-one Hymnal for parish use

Contains hymns, responses, chants, and ceremonies of the Traditional liturgy. Eight most
used sets of the Ordinary Chants of the Mass–Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei plus three
Credos, Tones for the Gloria Patri, Tones for Mass Responses, Asperges and Vidi Aquam.
Hymns and chants are proper to the liturgical season and various devotions (Sacred
Heart, for example). English translations, Gregorian notation, Litanies, Confirmation
and Burial Service.
345pp. 8¼" x 6¼". Embossed hardcover. STK# 6435✱ $25.00

#1059

Iota Unum
A Study of Changes in the
Catholic Church in the 20th Century
Romano Amerio
Archbishop Lefebvre on Iota Unum: “In my opinion, it is the most perfect
book that has been written since the Council on the Council, its consequences, and everything that has been happening in the Church since. He
examines every subject with a truly remarkable perfection. I was stupefied
to see with what serenity he discusses everything, without the passion of
polemics, but with untouchable arguments.... I do not see how the current
attitudes of Rome can still persist after the appearance of such a book. They
are radically, definitively condemned, and with such precision, for he only
uses their own texts....The whole is absolutely magnificent.
“One could base an entire course on this book, on the pre-Council, the
Council, and post-Council....The Popes take a licking...but he recounts their
deeds, their words, everything. They stand condemned. In his epilogue he
shows how the consequence is the dissolution of the Catholic religion....
there must be a remnant; after all, the good God said that the Church will
not perish, therefore there must be a...remnant that will keep the faith and
tradition.”

816pp. Color Softcover. STK# 6700✱ $23.95
Color Hardcover. STK# 6700H✱ $33.95

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