JANUARY 2010

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“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION

INSIDE

Pope Paul’s New Mass

ST. ELIZABETH ANN SETON
News from the Asian District
TELEVISION: The Soul at Risk PART 2

On the Living Magisterium
and Living Tradition

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

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January 2010
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Letter from the editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
Fr. Markus Heggenberger, SSPX

The Asian District of
the Society of Saint Pius X . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 3
DICI

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Pope paul’s new mass . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 35
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letter to the editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43

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2

Letter
from
the
Editor

One of the most remarkable statements ever made
about the reform of religious orders is the saying
about the Carthusian order: The Carthusians were
never reformed because they were never deformed
(i.e., they never grew lax). This saying indicates
that, from time to time, a reform of religious life in
Catholic orders is normal and expected. A good part
of Church history consists in reforming and restructuring spiritual life according to the standards of the
Gospel. Some of the most famous examples are the
“Gregorian Reform,” named after Pope Gregory VII
(1073–85), the “Cluniac Reform” (Cluny is the name
of a famous abbey in Burgundy, France, founded in
910), and the Counter-Reformation after Luther as a
consequence of the Council of Trent and marked by
orders such as the Capuchins, Ursulines, Theatines,
Barnabites, and especially the Jesuits.
With the exception of the Carthusians (and even
in their case, the reality might be more relative
than absolute) it is therefore normal that religious
orders experience periods of relaxations and that
they (should) also experience periods of spiritual
reinforcements. It is a consequence of the danger of
adapting to this world according to Romans 12:2:
Nolite conformari huic saeculo–Be not conformed to this
world.
If we take the example of Cluny, we see that
the abbey had several saints as abbots soon after
its foundation. Examples are St. Odo (abbot from
927-942), St. Odilo (abbot from 994-1049) and St.
Hugh (abbot from 1049-1109). These abbots were not
only saints, they were capable rulers as well. Their
rule drew so much prosperity to the abbey that the
very excellence of their administration was a germ
of decline in later years, when successors with lesser
abilities came to rule the huge monastery.
We can say that it is a sign of vitality and an
undertaking in the spirit of the Gospel that a religious
order is able to reflect upon itself, realize that changes
are necessary, and set them into practice. This is
exactly what the Catholic faithful expect from their
Church, from priests, monks, and nuns who are (nolens
volens) exposed to the spirit of this world and will have
to reflect on the warning by St. Paul mentioned above
(Rom. 12:2).
It is, moreover, a necessity in times of decline.
About the Jesuits of the 16th century we read: “The
worldliness of the Renaissance Church had no part in
the new order.” The founding of new orders was often
a reaction to the worldliness and scandals given by
existing orders. What attracted young people was an
THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

authentic religious life. They were not looking for an
anticipated retirement, but they were rather attracted
by the authenticity–sometimes even austerity–of
certain orders. That is why the Carthusians were less
in need of reforms than any other order.
In the article “Crisis of Vocations” (p.8) in this
issue we read a description of a problem which, for
the first time, has been admitted by the episcopal
conference of France: a crisis of vocations to such an
extent that the Church can be rightfully called a “dying
church”; the situation in other European countries or
in the US is not different. The solution is not difficult
to find, although the French bishops are probably not
yet ready to admit it: A Church of scandals and bad
examples, of laxity and adaptation to this world is not
attractive to outsiders and potential converts. It will
not attract young people, encourage their generosity,
and inspire them to imitate the example of Christ.
In former times, vocations were flocking to new
orders, as the foundation of the “Sisters of Charity” by
Elizabeth Ann Seton proves (see p.15):
When the small band arrived at Emmitsburg, they
found no suitable place to live. The house on Mr.
Cooper’s property was very much a work in progress
and Father Dubourg gave them his house to live in
and moved to the seminary. It was a generous gesture,
but the crude, two-room structure was hardly adequate
for five women, one of whom was very ill. Yet, it is the
nature of sanctity that it thrives on privations.…Life
at Emmitsburg was far from easy, yet to judge by the
number of young women wishing to join the new order,
you might think it a new Eden…

What, in contrast, do so many female orders
represent today, who do not even accept a visitation
by the Vatican, the rightful authority (see p.13)?
Is it astonishing if the Society of St. Pius X names,
as the cause of the crisis in the Catholic Church,
Vatican II? It might be a disappointing statement for
many, but it is all too evident that the often invoked
“fruits of the Council” are very bitter: a dying Church,
scandals and worldliness in entire national sections of
orders…
Thomistic thinking has to evaluate the situation
as it is and not as it is desired. It is easier to correct
mistakes now than to wait longer. An end with terror
is better than terror without end!
Kyrie eleison.
Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Markus Heggenberger

3

Fr. Couture visiting the
Pacific Island of Vanuatu

THE ASIAN DISTRICT
OF THE SOCIETY OF
SAINT PIUS X
Fr. Daniel Couture is District Superior of
Asia. During his most recent visit to Paris, he
answered some questions for DICI.
Father, what can you tell us about the Asian District of
the SSPX?
The Asian District was founded in 1996, as the
union of two autonomous houses, India (founded
in 1986) and the Philippines (founded in 1992).
Singapore has had priests since 1999. And as if
this was not a large enough district (!), in 2005,
the Superior General added New Zealand (and its
mission of New Caledonia) to the District of Asia.

Our District thus includes all of these countries,
in addition to Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Vanuatu,
and other places. It is quite a vast area. From New
Zealand to India, we cover seven and a half time
zones! Half of the world’s population, more than
three billion people, is in this area. It is a very
interesting territory.
The Society has 20 priests in this District, living
in six priories: two in India and the Philippines
respectively, one in Singapore, and another in New
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgeLus • January 2010

4
Zealand. We regularly (at least every
month) say Mass in eleven countries
and make occasional trips to another
four to five countries.
The apostolate is very interesting.
Most of these countries have a
minority of Catholics, except the
Philippines, with about 80% of the
population Catholic. India has only
about 1% Catholics, while Thailand
and Japan are about 0.4% Catholic.
Singapore and Indonesia are about 5%
Catholic, with Singapore’s minority a
fairly strong one.
Singapore is a very wealthy
country with about 150,000 Catholics.
The Conciliar Church still has about
1,000 baptisms a year here. But it is
a very diluted Catholicism. In spite
of this, the Catholic Faith draws and
attracts. For instance, we recently
heard a priest teaching catechumens
that baptism was not really necessary
since everyone would be saved. In
spite of things like this, there have
recently been a large number of
baptisms. If a true Catholicism would
be offered to souls, I think there
would be a tremendous harvest of
souls and vocations.
Among these few Catholics
scattered throughout Asia, you
find smaller oases of traditional
Catholicism here and there. They vary
from as small as 10-15 people to as
large as 400-500 people. Our largest
group is in India, in a village south of
Madras. We regularly have 500 people
there on a Sunday. When one of our
bishops came recently, 2,000 people
showed up. They were not all our
faithful, of course, but they came for
the event.
Language is a constant problem.
We often have to use translators. Even
if we prepare very nice sermons, in
many places they have to go through
the understanding and language of the
interpreters. Thus, our sermons are
simplified and adjusted accordingly.
Since many of these Asian languages
are a bit like Latin in their grammar
with the verb at the end, or the
subject, etc., syllogisms have to be
restructured so that they can be
understood! And it also happens
occasionally that a sermon may have
to be translated twice if the interpreter

In the Philippines, the SSPX volunteer medical team
helps feed and treat victims of recent severe flooding.

doesn’t know the local dialect: first into the main language, then into
a dialect. It makes for interesting and lively sermons!

How does something like this, then, affect confessions?

Well, we do have different systems here. We use interpreters
or cards for places like India, Vietnam, and Korea. People do not
mind. I think it is one of the graces of confession. It is amazing
how they don’t mind using an interpreter to confess their sins—they
want the grace of the sacrament so much! That hunger for the grace
gives them humility. They know that the interpreter is bound by the
seal of confession. This happens even when they haven’t been to
confession in years.
One of the most beautiful stories I’ve experienced was to see
people coming from Beijing to Hong Kong for confession. That is a
journey of more than 1,200 miles. They hadn’t had the sacraments
in years. They wanted confession and communion so badly that they
told me that if I could not come to them, they would come to me!
This is how much they wanted the Mass, how much they wanted
to talk to a priest. They crossed all of China, north to south, to go

THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

F

5
to confession and receive Holy Communion. When
you see things like this, one is obliged to help these
people. It is true heroism. It is what keeps us going
even if we have to do a few extra hours on the plane
or in the airport, or deal with jet lag.

There has been some extraordinary weather in your
District recently. Can you tell us about this?

Indeed. Recently, in the Philippines, we had
floods, historic floods. At the end of September,
there was a massive flood, the biggest one in the last
40 years. It rained 16.5 inches in six hours, which
is the equivalent of one month’s rain for the region.
We came to the help of some areas around Manila
a few days later thanks to our medical team of
ACIM-ASIA. Another team provided food and basic
utensils, or mats to sleep on. Thus we were able to
give food to over 1,000 families. Our medical team,
in ten days, treated about 3,400 people, then a few
weeks later, another 1,000 people, who were still in
zones affected by the non-receding flood waters.
A consequence of the floods has been an
epidemic of foot disease Some places still have one or
two feet of mud. People are living in this filthy mud.
In a few weeks 100 people died due to that.
We try to help according to our means. At the
present moment, we have three French volunteers,
young ladies. They are doing fantastic work. We are
very grateful to France for their help, whether in
manpower or financial aid.
In the medical field, we work through the ACIM
network and its zealous president, Dr. Jean-Pierre
Dickes. ACIM is an association of Catholic doctors

and nurses (www.acim-asia.com). They have a
permanent office in the Philippines, which is why we
have emergency teams always on call.
Several years ago, we were able to provide
substantial help after the tsunami, particularly in
Sri Lanka. Now we are trying to do the same in the
Philippines.

How can people help the Asian District?

The best way to help the missions of the Asian
District is to go through the local superiors of the
SSPX. If this is not possible, donations can be sent
to the General House in Menzingen, in Switzerland,
with a mention that it is for the Asian Missions. We
also have a web site (www.sspxasia.com) which has
contact information.
Any money given to us is identified and used
only for the purpose for which it was given. For the
tsunami five years ago, we received over $400,000. In
Sri Lanka, we bought with that two pieces of land and
built 60 houses, thanks to one very wise parish priest.
Now, in the Philippines, we have this wonderful
medical apostolate, which reaches a yearly apostolic
summit with the Rosa Mystica Medical Mission,
towards the end of July.
Last year, in 2008, France alone provided close
to $35,000 for this apostolate. That is about 60%
of last year’s income for medical help. Considering
the economic situation, this is very impressive,
considering the expenses related to traditional school
or large families. People still have a heart. When you
can eat three times a day and you see that someone
else cannot even eat once, you are inspired to give
some of your own.

www.angeluspress.org

Fr. Couture visits a small village in Vanuatu.

THE ANGELUS • January 2010

6

Blessing of the yet veiled Sacred
Heart statue in the inner court.

Palayamkottai, India: Blessing of stage one of new orphanage
Can you tell us more about India specifically?

In India, our permanent work consists mainly
of two orphanages. One is in the south, near our
priory in Tamil Nadu. The other is near Mumbai in
the north. The one in Bombay is not strictly ours;
we are simply helping there. We have two priests
stationed in this historical Portuguese fort of Vasai,
both Americans, and brothers, Frs. Timothy and
Joseph Pfeiffer. That orphanage has 80 boys.
In the south, the orphanage was established by a
young lady about 10 years ago. She has now become
Sr. Maria Immaculata, having decided to put her
work under an Italian congregation that works with
the SSPX, the Consoling Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
Right now, there are about 20 orphans there, and
their presence has obliged us to execute a project
that we had in mind for a long time: a school.
In both orphanages we are looking for helpers.
Education in India is approached differently than it
is in the West. Much of it is memory-based; children
learn whole books by heart. But if you reformulate
a question, it becomes incomprehensible. We thus
have to teach them how to think. For now, we have
to import teachers from America, France, England,
Ireland, etc. Anyone who would like to come and
spend 6-12 months here is most welcome. Please
contact the priors.

THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

If anyone, on the other hand, would like to assist
with our medical work, the Philippines would be the
place to go.
There is plenty to do in all of Asia. It is a
tremendous apostolic field and a great adventure for
God and for souls.

Are there new missions developing anywhere in Asia?

Our great principle is to follow Divine
Providence. Hearing what is happening here and
there, one may have the desire to go ahead and
explore, like the missionaries have done in the past.
But we have to remember the rule of Archbishop
Lefebvre. Where does God want our priests to go?
Vanuatu is a good example [Vanuatu is an island
in the South Pacific–Ed.]. There is a young man
to be ordained in December in Australia whose
father was born in Vanuatu. They live near our big
school outside Melbourne. During the holidays,
this deacon’s father invited one of the priests of
the school to go on vacation with them in Vanuatu.
While he was there, they visited a small village,
and by Divine Providence, the son of a chief from
another village, a Catholic village surrounded by
Protestant villages, saw the “black robe” and invited
him to come to their village since no priest had
come in two years. Unfortunately the schedule did
not permit him to go, but he promised that the next

7

(Above left) Fr. Emmanuel Du Chalard, one of the most senior
SSPX priests, who is the ecclesiatical superior of the Sisters
of Vigne, blessing the new convent.
(Left) Sr. Maria Immaculata, the foundress of the orphanage, and now
a member of the Consoling Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Vigne, Italy.
(Above right) Blessing of the roof top. Padre Pio has played a definite
role in this beautiful project, it is befitting for him to be part of
the ceremony!

time a priest came, he would go. Thus, I made two
trips to Vanuatu this year.
Also, recently, I met a traditional Brother who
had just returned from the islands of Samoa. His
uncle happens to be nothing less than the Minister
of Foreign Affairs! This Brother spent a month
there, visiting a university Rector, giving talks to
the students, and even meeting the Archbishop.
This simple Brother said, “I am not a priest, just a
brother; may I bring a priest next time?” Not only
was he given a positive answer, but his attitude
towards the New Mass made more than one student
and professor research the whole issue of the crisis
in the Church! To paraphrase St. Paul, the door is
wide open. “Praying withal for us also, that God
may open unto us a door of speech to speak the
mystery of Christ” (Col. 4:3). We hope to make a
trip soon, early in 2010, Deo volente!
In addition to New Caledonia, Vanuatu, etc.,
the SSPX also has a mission in Fiji, but it is served
from Australia. If you include Samoa, you are now
looking at a very large territory. It could be the
beginning of a priory for the Pacific.

When you left Quebec for the seminary at Ecône, in
1978, could you have imagined being a missionary in
Asia?

Never! Although I should say that, before I
entered the seminary, I used to play ping-pong at
home, and my family used to joke saying: “Daniel,
once you become a priest, they’ll send you to
China!” Well, in Asia, I’ve had many occasions to
play with them, and in some ways, it has helped! St.
Ignatius of Loyola played pool once in Paris with
one of the professors from the Sorbonne, and with
the special help of God, managed to beat him and
thus got him to go through the 30 day retreat!
My dream was to go to the North Pole since I
owe my vocation to an Oblate of Mary Immaculate,
Fr. Pierre Henry (+1979), a Breton, of saintly
memory. He was the Apostle of the Magnetic Pole
for 39 years.
I never thought I would end up in Asia. I did,
however, always want to be a missionary, but I
thought it would be something more like Africa, not
Asia. God’s ways are surely impenetrable! But our
happiness here below and ever after depends on this
submission to the Divine will.

Fr. Daniel Couture is the District Superior of Asia, a post he has held since
1996. He was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1984 and has also served
in America and Ireland. Transcribed from DICI.org.
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2010

Church an

8

Crisis of Vocations
Le Figaro (a French daily newspaper) reported about the meeting
of the French Episcopal Conference, held in Lourdes from November 2 to 8, 2008. “While I ordain
two priests a year,” said Cardinal
Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of
Lyons, “I bury twenty.” “Forty per
cent of donors to Church contributions are over 80 years old,”
admitted Bishop Roland Minnerath, bishop of Dijon. No wonder
therefore that, faced with this grim
picture, a spokesman for the bishops notes that “Everyone seems to
be affected–priests, deacons and
lay people.”
In six years, the number of foreign priests working in France has
doubled; this speaks volumes about
the magnitude of the crisis of vocations. Ninety men were ordained in
France in 2008, compared to 101 in
2007 and 94 in 2006.
What solutions have the bishops found?
They first heard the report of
their colleague, Bishop Claude
Dagens, bishop of Angouleme,
who refuses to set up “pastoral
strategies,” and offers three ways to
renew the Church in France:
1. Start a new reflection on the
concept of “Catholic tradition.”
2. Renew “the membership of
the Church” definitely leaving aside
“the outdated idea” of a “forced
membership” in the parish.
3. Develop communication.
The French bishops also heard
speeches from Archbishop Dominique Lebrun, bishop of SaintEtienne, and Bishop Guy Bagnard,
bishop of Belley-Ars. The first
hopes to create “missionary societies” in his diocese where the priests
live in community. The latter could
explain the reasons and results of
their more traditional pastoral
options; he has established a diocThe ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin

esan seminary at Ars and promoted
the stability of the parish priest, not
without experiencing sharp criticism from some of his colleagues.
Following these discussions,
Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, archbishop of Bordeaux, admitted that
the bishops had not yet “common
beliefs about a scenario or model
to promote,” but that they knew
that the current organization was
no longer tenable.
Cardinal Vingt-Trois said in his
closing speech: “Our discussions of
these days do not provide us with
models which are ready to use,
but they give us food for thought
on our situations; the temptation
needs to be rejected to let ourselves
be overwhelmed by the regrets for
what has been yesterday or by the
anxiety to maintain at all costs what
we have known.” Clearly, there
must be no return to what has been,
although we do not know what the
future of the Church in France will
be with a disappearing clergy.

Commentary

Note that, without saying so,
the bishops of France have raised

during their fall meeting the question which was hitherto a taboo: the
dizzying crisis of vocations raises
the question of the survival of the
Church in France. A bishop interviewed in private four years ago on
the subject responded that he had
asked Cardinal Ricard, then president of the EFC, to put the item
on the agenda. He was told that
many bishops do not want to hear
about the vocation crisis because it
was depressing. It seems that the
facts and figures are now taken into
account despite their depressing
effect…
However, what is not yet seen
is the responsibility that churchmen themselves have in this unprecedented crisis.
They were aware in Lourdes of
the contemporary “religious indifference”–which is undeniable–and
they proposed a better “visibility of
the Church”–which is highly desirable. But they forgot to examine
their consciences over 40 years
of pastoral “burial” when priests
were wearing secular clothes and
adopting the language and habits
of secular life.
Is religious indifference not
due, at least in part, to the lack
of separation from the world and
caused by the clergy itself in the
name of “openness to the world”?
But the burial was not only that
of dress. It has not only affected the
vocabulary and the manners of the
“renewed” clergy after Vatican II.
There was also a philosophical and
theological burial, i.e. a secularization of Catholic thought.
(Source: DICI)

and World
Holy See
Receives Anglicans
Who So Desire
On October 20, Cardinal William Joseph Levada, Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, and Archbishop Joseph
Augustine Di Noia, Secretary of the
Congregation for Divine Worship
and the Discipline of the Sacraments, presented to the journalists
a Note concerning Personal Ordinariates for the Anglicans who contemplate “uniting with the Catholic
Church.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which wrote the
text, then announced the “preparation of an Apostolic Constitution”
to respond to “the legitimate aspirations addressed to the Holy See
by groups of Anglican clergy and
faithful from all over the world,
which desire to enter into full and
visible communion.” Cardinal
Levada emphasized that “the initiative originated from various Anglican groups which had declared
that they shared the same Catholic
Faith, as it is expressed in the Catechism of the Church, and that they
accepted the Office of Peter as an
element that Christ wanted for the
Church.” He likewise indicated that
the requests come from 20 to 30
bishops. There will not be, he continued, a global agreement with the
association Traditional Anglican
Communion (TAC), but with its
“faithful,” totaling 500,000 persons
worldwide.
The cardinal explained that
“Benedict XVI [hoped] that the
Anglican priests and faithful desirous to unite with the Catholic
Church [would find] in the canonical structure an opportunity to
preserve such Anglican traditions
as are dear to them and in conformity with the Catholic faith.” He

Cardinal William Joseph Levada

specified that these faithful had
broken away from the Anglican
Churches which had decided to
ordain women and homosexuals
to the priesthood or the episcopate,
and to bless homosexual unions.
On the same day, the head of the
Anglican Communion, Archbishop
Rowan Williams of Canterbury,
and Archbishop Vincent Gerard
Nichols, archbishop of Westminster and president of the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of England
and Wales, released a joint declaration. Therein they specified that the
announced Apostolic Constitution
is “the consequence of ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic
Church and the Anglican Communion,” begun 40 years earlier, and
that this development is “further
recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality
between the Catholic Church and
the Anglican tradition.”
On October 30, Fr. Federico
Lombardi, director of the Press
Office of the Holy See, indicated to
the news agency Imedia that Rowan
Williams would meet with Benedict
XVI at the Vatican on November

9

21, 2009. The meeting will take
place on the occasion of his visit
for the ceremonies of the centennial of the birth of Dutch Cardinal
Johannes Willebrands (1909-2006)
a pioneer of ecumenism. “It is positive that they may meet,” Fr. Lombardi explained, thinking that it as
the “sign of a good dialogue existing
between the two Christian denominations.” Rowan Williams, who
has been accused by his peers for
having approved an act perceived
as a division of the Anglican Communion, likewise explained that
he did not consider the decision of
the Catholic Church as “an aggressive act,” but as “cooperation”; and
together with the Primate of the
Catholic Church in Great Britain,
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, he
was rejoicing over this “official dialogue.” “It has been years that some
groups, like the Traditional Anglican Communion for instance, have
approached Catholics to join them.
Others, who are still in the Anglican
Church, are thinking about it. It is
no secret that the issue of women
bishops is a controversial subject,”
Rowan Williams also added.
On October 31, Fr. Lombardi
answered the “observations from
supposedly well-informed sources”
of Vatican observer Andrea Tornielli from the Italian daily Il Giornale,
according to whom “a serious root
issue, to wit the disagreement over
whether celibacy will be the norm
for the future [Catholic–Ed.] clergy”
from the Anglican Tradition,
explained the delay in the release
of the Apostolic Constitution. The
director of the Press Office of the
Holy See made known that Cardinal William Joseph Levada, Prefect
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, specified that the
“delay” was “of a strictly technical
order, to ensure the uniformity in
language and canonical references.”
Moreover, Cardinal Levada also
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The ANgeLus • January 2010

10

added that if he had been asked
for precisions, he would “gladly
have clarified any doubt concerning (his) declarations during the
press conference” given this past
October 20. The high ranking
prelate also said that there was
“not matter for such speculation,”
before affirming that “nobody at
the Vatican” had “mentioned such
a problem” to him.
On November 9, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith released the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Cœtibus, concerning the institution of personal
ordinariates for Anglicans entering
full communion with the Catholic Church, as well as the Complementary Norms which were
signed by Cardinal William Joseph
Levada and by Archbishop Luis
F. Ladaria, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. The two documents were
dated November 4 and published
in Italian and in English.
A communiqué from Cardinal
Levada accompanying the two
texts specified that “the Apostolic Constitution published today
introduces a canonical structure
that provides for such corporate
reunion by establishing Personal
Ordinariates, which will allow
former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church
while preserving elements of the
distinctive Anglican spiritual and
liturgical patrimony.” The Complementary Norms would be used
for a correct application of the
process. This Constitution opens
“a new path for the promotion of
Christian unity, by acknowledging, at the same time a legitimate
diversity in the expression of our
common Faith.” The cardinal
added that it was not “an initiative from the Holy See” but “a
generous response from the Holy
Father to the legitimate aspirations
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Church an

Rowan Williams, Anglican
Archbishop of Canterbury

of these Anglican groups.” And he
continued: “The provision of this
new structure is consistent with
the commitment to ecumenical
dialogue, which continues to be a
priority for the Catholic Church.”
The possible presence, evoked
in the Apostolic Constitution,
of some married priests in the
Personal Ordinariates in no way
means that there is any change in
the discipline of the Church concerning priestly celibacy, which,
as the Second Vatican stated, is a
sign, both of the pastoral charity
and a pre-indication of the Kingdom of God, the cardinal said.
In this new apostolic constitution, the pope set up a canonical
structure in the form of “Personal
Ordinariates for the Anglicans
entering full communion with the
Catholic Church.” Thirteen dispositions deal with the formation of
the ordinariates which, according
to § 3 of the first part “possesses
public juridic personality by the
law itself; it is juridically comparable to a diocese.” Its “power is
to be exercised jointly with that of
the local Diocesan Bishop, in those

cases provided for in the Complementary Norms” of candidates to
the sacramental order, the erection
with the approval of the Holy See
of new institutes of consecrated
life and of societies of apostolic
life as well of parishes, and the ad
limina visit of Ordinaries…. The
Complementary Notes deal with
the dependence upon the Holy
See, the relationships with the
Bishops’ Conferences and of the
diocesan bishops, of the Ordinary,
of the ex-Anglican faithful of the
ordinariate, their clergy and their
bishops, of the Council of government, of the Pastoral Council and
of the personal parishes.
It will be allowed to keep
the liturgical books proper to the
Anglican Tradition, which will
have been approved by the Holy
See “to preserve the liturgical,
spiritual and pastoral traditions of
the Anglican Communion within
the Catholic Church as a precious
gift nourishing the faith of the
members of the ordinariate and as
a treasure to be shared.” According to the Apostolic Constitution,
a personal ordinariate whose official will be a former Anglican
priest or bishop appointed by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, and not by the Congregation in charge of bishops, will
be entrusted with the charge of
overseeing and pastoral leadership of these groups of faithful.
The future ordinariates will have
a structure similar to that of the
military dioceses.
This canonical model “unique
in the universal Church” foresees the “ordination as Catholic
priests of former married Anglican priests.” For the first time in
history, a Christian community,
born from the Reform, may thus
be admitted again by the Catholic
Church. But for “historical and
ecumenical” reasons, the note

and World
from the Congregation recalls that
episcopal consecration of married
men is not authorized in the Catholic Church, nor in the Orthodox
Churches. Hence, the Constitution
establishes that the “bishop can be
an unmarried priest or bishop.”
The seminarians of the ordinariate will be trained “together with
Catholic seminarians.” It must be
noted that the Roman document
does not speak of re-ordinations,
as some journalists said, but of
“ordination as Catholic priests,”
for the Apostolic Bull Apostolicæ
Curæ (September 18, 1896) by
Pope Leo XIII clearly affi rmed
that Anglican ordinations were
null and void: “Ordinations carried out according to the Anglican
rite have been, and are, absolutely
null and utterly void.”
Article 6 of the Apostolic Constitution deals with the status of
priests and seminarians. “Those
who ministered as Anglican deacons, priests, or bishops, and who
fulfill the requisites established by
canon law and are not impeded
by irregularities or other impediments may be accepted by the
Ordinary as candidates for Holy
Orders in the Catholic Church. In
the case of married ministers, the
norms established in the Encyclical
Letter of Pope Paul VI Sacerdotalis
coelibatus, n. 42 and in the Statement In June are to be observed.
Unmarried ministers must submit
to the norm of clerical celibacy of
CIC can. 277, §1.”
Lastly, “The Ordinary, in full
observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church,
as a rule (pro regula) will admit
only celibate men to the order of
presbyter. He may also petition
the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation
from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order
of presbyter on a case by case
basis, according to objective cri-

11

Church of Latin Tradition.” But “it
was only a variant inside the Latin
rite, yet not a distinct Church with
a distinct rite.” The publication
of this document “is in no way
contrary to the ecumenical commitment in the relationships with
the Anglican Communion, which
continues as previously,” said the
director of the Press Office of the
Holy See.

Press Review

Hans Küng

teria approved by the Holy See.”
In the press release published
by the Press Office of the Holy
See, Cardinal Levada moreover
explained that “this article (was
to) be understood in the logic of
the usual custom of the Church.”
He also specified that the case of
already married Anglican seminarians would be “jointly examined by the Personal Ordinariate
and the Bishops’ Conference and
submitted to the approval of the
Holy See.”
It is to be hoped that the derogation granted to ease up the
return of Anglicans into the Catholic Church will not be the opportunity expected by the progressives
who are militating in favor of the
ordination of married men and
the ordination of already married
priests. To prevent this, the precautions taken in the study of each
particular case will have to be not
only a matter of words but of very
concrete reality.
Moreover, Fr. Lombardi specified that the Holy See did not wish
to constitute “a new ritual Church”
or “a new rite within the Catholic

In an opinion column published on Wednesday, October 28,
simultaneously in Le Monde, The
Guardian and La Repubblica, Hans
Küng reacted heatedly against
Benedict XVI’s decision. For
“After Pope Benedict XVI’s clash
with the Jews and the Muslims,
Protestants and reform-oriented
Catholics, it is now the turn of
the Anglican communion,” Hans
Küng explained. He considers
the pope’s gesture as “a dramatic
changing of course: steering away
from the well-proven ecumenical
strategy of eye-level dialogue and
honest understanding,” lamented
the ultra-progressive Swiss theologian. He denounced a “luring
away of Anglican priests” which
he called “unecumenical.” This
decision, in his eyes, shows that
“Pope Benedict is set upon restoring the Roman imperium. He
makes no concessions to the Anglican communion. On the contrary,
he wants to preserve the medieval,
centralistic Roman system for all
ages–even if this makes impossible
the reconciliation of the Christian
churches in fundamental questions. Evidently the papal primacy
–which Pope Paul VI admitted
was the greatest stumbling block
to the unity of the churches–does
not function as the ‘rock of unity,’ ”
he thinks.
Hans Küng saw several dramatic consequences in what he
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The ANgeLus • January 2010

12

considers “a conservative infl ux
[of Anglicans–Ed.]”: “First, a further weakening of the Anglican
church” and the “widespread disturbance of the Anglican faithful”
as to whether Anglican priests are
validly ordained. “Third, the irritation of the Catholic clergy and
laity. Discontent over the ongoing
resistance to reform” concerning
the ordination of married men.
“And now these Catholic priests
are expected to tolerate married,
convert priests alongside themselves. When they want themselves to marry, should they first
turn Anglican, and then return to
the church?” wrote Hans Küng.
And the dissident theologian concluded: “Just as we have seen over
many centuries–in the East-West
schism of the 11th century, in the
16th-century Reformation and in
the First Vatican Council of the
19th century–the Roman thirst for
power divides Christianity and
damages its own church.”
In an editorial dated Thursday,
October 29, Giovanni Maria Vian,
director of L’Osservatore Romano,
declared that Hans Küng’s reaction was “far from reality” and
that he had “caricatured Benedict
XVI’s decision, depicted it with
exaggerated colors, and simply
rewrote it.” The director of the
Holy See’s daily assures that the
opening to the Anglicans was first
“a gesture aiming at rebuilding
the unity willed by Christ, which
acknowledging the long and painful ecumenical path traveled in this
direction.” But “Küng deformed
all this and presented it outrageously as if it were cunning Vatican diplomacy, to be read according to political criteria, obviously
of the extreme right-wing.” And
he went on: “It is not necessary
to underline the falseness and the

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Church an

Anglican Bishop Ng Moon Hing

inaccuracies in this latest text by
Küng, whose tone does no honor
to his personal history.…”
In the Anglican Church of
Malaysia, Bishop Ng Moon Hing,
of the Anglican diocese of West
Malaysia since 2006, quoted by
Churches of Asia, is a fervent partisan of ecumenism. Relationships
with the local Catholic Church
are excellent, he rejoiced, and
added that Anglican and Catholic
officials meet every month out of
concern for dialogue, especially
within the framework of the Christian Federation of Malaysia and of
the inter-religious forums. Yet, he
emphasized, we must distinguish
rapprochement with the Catholic
Church from “integration” into it,
which is “quite another question.”
Rome’s decision came as the
Anglican Communion is in full
crisis and on the verge of schism
because of divergences concerning, among others, women’s ordinations, the union or ordinations of
homosexuals to the priesthood or
the episcopacy. It is especially this

last issue which caused Bishop Ng
Moon Hing to disapprove of some
of the recent orientations taken by
his church and approved by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of the Anglican Communion. Thus he agrees with other
Anglican officials, numerous in
Asia, who rise against what they
call “theological deviations,” especially since 2003, when the fi rst
homosexual bishop living with
his partner, Gene Robinson, was
“consecrated” in the US Anglican
Church. The Anglican Church of
Malaysia is sensitive to this opening gesture of the pope, the Anglican prelate said, but “it cannot
answer it immediately, without
having more details.”
“The circulation of persons
between the two Churches will
cause ecumenism to move forward,” declared Abraham Kim
Gwang-joon, general provincial
secretary of the Anglican Church
of Korea, and president of the
Committee for Ecumenism of the
National Council of Churches (Protestant) of Korea, an early worker in
favor of unity and interreligious
dialogue. The Anglican Church of
Korea had strongly reacted to the
recent change in the spiritual orientation of the Anglican Communion, especially by opposing the
ordination of homosexual priests.
Today, the Korean community
eyes favorably the decision to welcome within the Roman Catholic
Church “the members of the clergy
or the faithful who think themselves in disagreement with their
institution and prefer to follow
Rome’s doctrinal line” while keeping their specific traditions.
(Source: DICI)

and World

13

Vatican Visitation of US Female Religious Orders
Vatican Visitation of Women Religious
to Look at Fidelity to Doctrine and
Charism

The Apostolic Visitor leading the visitation to institutes of
women religious in the United
States has sent the effort’s working document to the heads of US
orders. The document details the
aims of the visitation and encourages the orders to reflect on their
fidelity to their original charisms
and their conformity with the
Second Vatican Council.
Mother M. Clare Millea, the
sister in charge of conducting the
Vatican visitation, sent the working document, known as an Instrumentum Laboris, to the hundreds
of religious superiors around the
US on July 28, along with a letter
of explanation. With the issuance
of the working document, the first
phase of the visitation has come
to a close.
The Instrumentum Laboris contains an introduction to the nature
and purpose of the visitation, the
four phases of the process, and
references to the principal Vatican
documents.
The document also presents
“reflection topics” for all members of religious orders to consider in order to prepare for the
visitation. Topics include the religious identity of the respondents’
order, its governance and financial
administration, and its spiritual
and common life.
Questions are also presented
concerning vocation promotion,
admission and formation policies.
The reflections ask respondents about their concerns for
the future of their religious order
and how sisters in their order
understand and express the “vows
and virtues” of poverty, chastity

and obedience. They
inquire about whether
daily Mass and frequent
confession are a “priority” for sisters and how
an order expresses the
Eucharist as the source
of their spiritual and
communal life.
Liturgical norms
are also one topic of
inquiry, as is the practice of the Liturgy of
the Hours, the manner
of an order’s dress, and
the order’s provisions
for care of aging and ill
sisters.
“Is your institute
moving toward a new form of
religious life? If so, how is this
new form specifi cally related to
the Church’s understanding of
religious life?” one reflection asks.
Such questions recall concerns
voiced earlier this year by Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, concerning the “tenor
and content” of addresses at the
annual assemblies of the 1,500member Leadership Conference
of Women Religious (LCWR).
In the keynote address of
LCWR’s 2007 assembly, Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Laurie Brink
spoke with apparent approval
about religious congregations
“moving beyond the Church, even
beyond Jesus.” Saying some congregations have “grown beyond
the bounds of institutional religion,” she described them as
“post-Christian” in most respects.
The LCWR is undergoing
a separate inquiry being led by
Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo,
Ohio.

The Instrumentum Laboris
reflections also inquire about the
process for responding to sisters
who dissent publicly or privately
from “the authoritative teaching
of the Church.”

Cardinal Rode: Feminism, Secular
Influence among Reasons for
Visitation of US Sisters

Speaking to Vatican Radio
on Tuesday, Cardinal Franc Rode
shed more light on the reasons
behind the ongoing apostolic visitation of female U.S. religious
orders, saying that a “secularist
mentality” and a “feminist spirit”
evident in the communities were
among the factors leading to the
visitation.
The apostolic visitation was
launched earlier this year with the
stated aim of helping strengthen
religious communities in the U.S.,
which are suffering from a sharp
decline in vocations.
In his Tuesday interview with
Vatican Radio, Cardinal Rode
said “some criticism arrived from
United States and an important
representative of the U.S. Church
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The ANgeLus • January 2010

Church and World
warned me about certain irregularities or deficiencies in the lives
of American women religious.”
Though Cardinal Rode did
not say who the representative
was, he also revealed the problems
include “a certain secularist mentality that has spread among these
religious families, perhaps even a
certain ‘feminist spirit.’”
“There a desire was manifested
to take steps to find a remedy to
this situation that many say is not
as good as that of past decades,”
Cardinal Rode explained to Vatican Radio.
Cardinal Rode also addressed
the general criticisms of the visitations, specifically the belief that
they are somehow fueled by mistrust of the women religious communities. “There are indeed misunderstandings,” he said, “as if it
were an act of mistrust of the U.S.
women religious congregations or
as if it were a general criticism of
their work. It is not about that.”
The prefect reiterated his earlier statement that the purpose of
the visitation is “mainly to see the
current situation of feminine consecrated life in the United States,”
and that, “it is an obvious fact that
the number of American women
religious has dropped a lot, that
their presence in schools, health
and other social institutions is
greatly diminished. The question
then is: what are the causes for this
decline in numbers and this much
weaker presence in the Church
and society in the United States?”
The apostolic visitations are
currently in phase two of a fourphase process.
(Source: Catholic News Agency)

Commentary

The reason the Vatican is doing
the visitations is clear enough from
the commentary of Cardinal Rode.
If the Catholic Church wants to

The ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

build confidence and trust among
the faithful, a reform of religious
life is urgently needed (probably
not only among female orders
in the US, although it might be a
necessary beginning–and a litmus
test to see whether certain parts of
the Church are “reformable” or
whether they are “lost” to scandals
and anti-Christian movements).
Two examples may illustrate
the questionable ways of female
religious nuns in the US.
“In France there is a ‘Joan of
Arc Association’ that presses for
the priesthood for women, while
in the United States, without any
objection from the bishops, there
is an active national convention
of American religious sisters that
makes the same demand. The
movement’s arrogance was displayed, and the world was amazed,
on the occasion of John Paul II’s
visit to America, when Sr. Theresa
Kane, the convention’s president,
confronted the Supreme Pontiff
unannounced claiming women
had a right to be admitted to the
priesthood, and urged Christians
to stop giving any help to the
Church until that right was recognized… (Iota Unum, p.202).
Dr. Gyula Mago, in an article
entitled Feminism as Antichurch (The
Angelus, October 2002), writes
about Mary Daly, a leading feminist and former Catholic religious
sister and “witch”:
“Most feminists are products
of a standardized indoctrination
called ‘women’s studies.’ (A large
grant from the Ford Foundation
in 1972 gave initial legitimacy
to these programs, and now the
majority of accredited colleges
and universities have a program
in ‘women’s studies.’) We prefer
to examine a feminist who can
be expected to understand better
the import of what she is saying,
having been a Thomist theologian

before becoming ‘unhinged’ (her
own favorite expression describing herself) and turning into a
leading light of feminism.
“Mary Daly, a former nun, was
the first American woman to have
earned a doctorate in Catholic theology (in Fribourg in 1963). Her
Catholic publications are The Problem of Speculative Theology (Washington: Thomist Press, 1965), and
Natural Knowledge of God in the Philosophy of Jacques Maritain (Rome:
Officium Libri Catholici, 1966).
“But she was really formed by
all the dissidents she encountered
in Fribourg. In 1965 she visited the
Second Vatican Council, and from
that visit ‘she came home breathing fire.’ (Donna Steichen, Ungodly
Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic
Feminism [Ignatius Press, 1991],
p.298.) Her next book published
in 1968, The Church and the Second
Sex, is considered a landmark by
feminists. Although most of it is
not original (builds on Simone de
Beauvoir, Teilhard de Chardin,
Paul Tillich, Hans Küng, Gregory
Baum, Harvey Cox, and many
feminists), it contains in rudimentary form most of the ideas still
current in religious feminism. In
this book Daly is trying strenuously to neutralize the Eternal
Woman of Getrud von Le Fort,
which strongly influenced Catholic women since 1934, and keeps
on doing so even today. All her
arguments add up to the feeble
assertion that ‘there is no such
thing as an enduring symbolic
significance of woman’ because
everything about woman is constantly changing. This coming
from the most adulated of the
feminist theoreticians shows that
their thinking is nothing but an
imitation of Marxism.”
(Source: Angelus Press)

15
E d w i n

F a u s t

THE MYSTERY
OF SAINTLINESS
When I incautiously allow my mind to loiter on the frontiers
beyond which human knowledge is barred entry, the origin of sin
sometimes perplexes me. The phrase “mystery of iniquity” appears to
represent the limit of what can be said of this terrible attraction that
encompasses all our miseries yet eludes our understanding. But there is
another and perhaps greater mystery: saintliness.
It has not been given us to know what prompted the first sin, and
to assign its impetus to pride appears to beg the question: from whence
came pride? Nor is it given us to know why certain people appear to
have been largely preserved from moral corruption from baptism until
death. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” Moses was told
(Ex. 33:19), and there the matter rests.
This is not to deny the role of human liberty, but rather to
acknowledge that its admixture with grace is woven into the human
personality in ineffably beautiful and often inextricable patterns.
Such is the case with the first American-born saint: Elizabeth Ann
Seton.
My ideas about people I have never met and about whom I
know nothing are often formed by the sound of their names. “Mother
Seton” always evoked in my imagination the image of a stout matron
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The ANgeLus • January 2010

16
wrapped in the ample folds of black cloth and the
bowed bonnet that used to distinguish a Daughter
of Charity. Then there came into my possession
a biography titled An American Woman, by the late
Leonard Feeney, S.J. It is a remarkable book about
a most remarkable soul, and the late Fr. Feeney
diligently exercises his estimable literary powers in
bringing us into the presence of this one-time belle
of New York society who became a wife, a mother,
the foundress of a religious order, and a saint. He
manages to communicate to us a quality Elizabeth
possessed so pre-eminently and that might be
described as the charm of holiness.
Had Elizabeth’s story been invented as the
plot of a novel, it would have been dismissed as
implausible. That the mother of five children should
have become a convert to the Catholic Faith after
three quarters of her short life were spent and that
she should have then devoted the remaining 12
years of failing health to laying the foundation of the
parochial school system in the United States seems
incredible, but it happened.
Far from being the corpulent yet kindly matron
of my imagination, Elizabeth was slightly built, with
large, dark eyes, delicate features and an ethereal
beauty enhanced by a refinement of mind and
manners that made her the prize jewel among the
debutantes of the 1790s.
Her father was an eminent physician. Dr.
Richard Bayley was the first professor of anatomy
at what was to become Columbia University and a
health officer for the city of New York. Her mother
died when she was three years old. Dr. Bayley
remarried and Elizabeth enjoyed an affectionate
relationship with her stepmother, but her heart
belonged to her father and her two sisters.
Dr. Bayley was Episcopalian, and there was an
Anglican minister in the family, so Elizabeth was
raised in an atmosphere of Protestant proprieties in
which manners often take the place of morals and
where to be good, it is essential to be well born. This
is not to deny that Dr. Bayley was a man of strong
natural virtue, which he transmitted to Elizabeth;
but it is to say that her hunger for genuine holiness
could not be satisfied with the abstractions and
imprecisions of her family’s faith. This was evident
from an early age.
Fr. Feeney, who lamentably is most noted now
for his denial of Baptism of Desire and for the
often bitter zeal of his latter-day disciples, wrote his
biography in 1938, and there is no adumbration
in the work of his later views. He even speculates
that before her conversion, Elizabeth, due to her
ardent desire, may have received the grace of Holy
Communion in some extra-sacramental way that lies
beyond our comprehension.
Feeney also observes that the saints are given
us not primarily for our imitation, but rather for our
THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

admiration and delight. We may imitate them in
some manner, but it will have to be after our own
manner. In this, he agrees with the great Catholic
novelist Evelyn Waugh, who in his introduction to
Helena notes that we cannot get into heaven in fancy
dress, decked out as St. Augustine or Joan of Arc.
If I am to be saved, it must be as St. Edwin Faust,
a daunting and fantastic thought, but one that the
Catholic Faith compels me to accept. And so it is
with all of us. Sanctity is an individual matter.
This is abundantly evident in the case of
Elizabeth Ann Seton, for her life is so unlike any
other. From her childhood, she shows marks of
divine election, if such can be understood in a
Catholic sense. Feeney describes her as having
a “sense of sacrament.” This phenomenon is not
uncommon among those destined to convert to
the faith. The Southern Catholic writer Flannery
O’Connor uses it as a leitmotif in many of her
stories. Her Protestant characters often find
themselves confessing their sins and performing
penances, despite the disavowal of such practices in
their professed creeds.
Young Elizabeth wore a crucifix around her
neck–not a plain cross, but one with a corpus. She
also bowed her head at the name of Jesus, even
though no one had ever taught her the practice,
and she longed to receive communion and did so
with a reverence that belied the merely symbolic
significance attached to the rite by her sect. She
would sometimes attend more than one communion
service on a Sunday and it pained her to see the
sacristan toss the remnants to the birds, so she
begged for the leftover bread and consumed it
herself.
She “married well,” as the phrase has it, and on
January 25, 1794, at the age of 19, she exchanged
vows at Trinity Church with William Seton, a
cosmopolitan young man of 26 and the son of a then
wealthy investor. Like her father, he was a good man
who gave little thought to the supernatural, and like
her father, he cherished Elizabeth, as she did him,
whom she always called, “My William.”
Elizabeth had five children in eight years. In
1801, her father, while tending the quarantined
yellow fever victims among the Irish immigrants at
the port of New York, contracted the disease himself.
That he had, through the years, repeatedly exposed
himself to these dangers is a measure of his natural
virtue and his rejection of prevailing prejudice.
Elizabeth was often moved by the plight of the Irish
and once offered to wean one of her own children
so that she might save the life of one of the starving
infants of the sickly immigrants, but this her father
would not allow.
The unaffected way in which the afflicted Irish
Catholics prayed deeply impressed Elizabeth. They
appeared to have that divine intimacy she so longed

17
for. She once wrote to her soul’s confidante, her
sister-in-law Rebecca Seton: “The first thing these
poor people did when they got their tents was to
assemble on the grass and all kneeling adore their
Maker for His mercy, and every morning’s sun finds
them repeating His praise.”
Elizabeth’s grandson, Archbishop Robert Seton,
in his edition of Elizabeth’s writings published in
1870, notes that when his grandmother was returned
the above letter after Rebecca’s death, she crossed
out “their Maker” and wrote “our Maker,” instead.
Whatever division of class or creed had once
separated her from these humble people had been
erased.
That Elizabeth was more frightened for
her father’s soul than for his life is dramatically
illustrated in a prayer she records having made in
her diary as his death approached. She took her
infant daughter Catherine, held her up to Heaven,
and said: “O Jesus, my merciful Father and God!
Take this little innocent Offering; I give it to Thee
with all my heart; take it, my Lord, but save my
father’s soul.” A softer, modern sensibility may
shrink back at such a prayer as a shocking one for
a mother to make, but Elizabeth was certain of her
baptized daughter’s salvation; she was unsure of the
condition of her father’s soul. And for Elizabeth,
then as always, life was about one thing: salvation.
Her father died holding her hand, calling out,
“My Christ Jesus, have mercy on me!” This mention
of Jesus was uncharacteristic of the impersonal,
almost deist attitude toward religion exhibited by
her father throughout his life, but it was a comfort
to his daughter and, we may hope, an aid to his
salvation. Catherine, by the way, was spared and
became a Sister of Mercy. She died at the age of 91.
During the years of her child-bearing, Elizabeth
had a very full life, surrounded by family and
friends and almost constantly occupied with
domestic duties, yet she was ever searching for her
God; ever looking for that window into eternity
that would allow her to see Him, not as a concept
to be honored, but as a Person to be loved. She
thought she had found that window in the form of
a celebrated Episcopalian preacher, the Rev. J. H.
Hobart.
That she became enthralled by his eloquence is
plain from her correspondence, and her grandson
(the archbishop) remarks that since Protestants
lack the Sacrifice, the entire effect of their service
depends upon the sermon and, therefore, the
oratorical skills of the minister. Fr. Feeney is inclined
to be kinder in his judgment of Hobart than is
Archbishop Seton, but I think Elizabeth’s blood
descendant had the more accurate appreciation:
he sees Hobart as something of a sanctimonious
windbag who tried to exercise a spiritual despotism
over the then-vulnerable soul of his saintly

grandmother and who later worked to ruin her
fortunes and reputation when she had become a
poor Catholic widow.
In any event, Hobart was destined to lose
his most prized congregant due to circumstances
that must be assigned to Providence, for human
prudence cannot adequately account for a decision
made by her husband in 1803, shortly after the birth
of Rebecca, their last child. He arranged to take
Elizabeth and their eldest daughter Anna on a trip
to Italy.
William’s health, never robust, had grown
worse with each passing year of their marriage.
His financial condition had sadly kept pace with
his physical decline. It became apparent that his
father, who died in 1798, had not been worthy of
his reputation as a sagacious money manager. The
family fortune was largely gone. William suffered
from tuberculosis and some complications that
brought on frequent bouts of dysentery, nausea,
and depression. So, with his life in the balance,
his business affairs in disarray, and a wife and five
children in his charge, he set sail in September 1803
for Livorno, Italy, where he ostensibly believed he
might recover his health and improve his finances.
The four younger Setons were left with his sister,
Rebecca.
The voyage aboard the Shepherdess took 56 days.
Livorno was known to the English and Americans
as Leghorn. It was at the dawn of the 19th century a
prosperous port on the west coast of Tuscany and a
center of international banking and trade. William
had apprenticed there in the house of the Filicchi
brothers, Filippo and Antonio, and it was to their
house he proposed to return. They happily agreed to
receive their old friend and his wife and child. And I
think there may have been this in William’s decision
to go to Leghorn: he had been happy there in his
youth, in the warmth and affection that pervaded
the Filicchi household, and he longed at the end of
his life to revisit that place of faith and promise.
But it was not to be. At least not for William.
He was seriously ill most of the voyage, and
little Anna contracted the whooping cough. So, as
the winds and high waves of the North Atlantic
buffeted the ship, Elizabeth acted as nurse to her
husband and daughter. She had the help of Capt.
O’Brien and his wife, who befriended her from the
first. Elizabeth had a way of inspiring an immediate
and lasting affection in most everyone she met. She
possessed such a ready sympathy and gentility of
manner that people of all stations in life felt both
comforted and honored to be in her company and
receive her attention.
When the Shepherdess arrived at Leghorn, the
Filicchis were there to greet their friend, but so
was the Capitano of the guard, who demanded
to see health certificates from the ship’s only
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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

18
passengers, the Setons, before he would allow
them to disembark. There had been yellow fever
in New York when they had left and Italian law
required that they present either health certificates
or be quarantined before stepping onto Italian soil.
The Setons had no papers and Capt. O’Brien was
compelled to delay docking until his passengers
were transported five miles up the coast and interred
in a stone prison called the Lazaretto. There, in
a barred cell, with an armed guard patrolling the
perimeter of the building, they were to remain for
30 days.
There, with the seas raging against the rocks and
the wind cutting through every crevice in the prison
walls, William lay atop a thin mattress on a brick
floor with his wife and child kneeling beside him.
The scene was pitiful and the heart of the capitano
was moved. He apologized, explaining he was
bound by the law but that he would do all he could
to make them comfortable. The O’Briens came and
looked and wept. The Filicchis took immediate steps
to alleviate their sufferings, providing bedding and
furnishings and food and something else: Luigi.
The old family servant of the Filicchis offered to
enter the Lazaretto and remain there in quarantine,
exposing himself to whatever deadly germs were
supposed to lurk in the place, so that he might
help tend to the needs of the poverino. He not only
brought them practical help but something perhaps
no less valuable in their circumstances: irrepressible
good humor.
When their time of detention came to its end,
the whole town had learned of the beautiful young
wife and her brave little daughter keeping watch
over the dying father and husband. Dr. Tutilli, who
had taken charge of William, recommended that
he be removed to Pisa, where the climate would
prove more comfortable for one in his condition,
which he diagnosed as hopeless. The Filicchis made
the arrangements, and eight days after his release
from the Lazaretto, on December 27, 1803, William
Seton, holding his wife’s hand, gave it a gentle
squeeze and breathed his last.
This pressure of the hand was a signal between
them: If William was unable to speak at the end,
he was to let Elizabeth know that his faith in Christ
remained by a squeeze of the hand.
William was buried in the Protestant cemetery at
Leghorn. Luigi came and wept. The capitano came
and wept. As William’s body was lowered into the
grave, Elizabeth was heard to say, “O my Father and
my God.” The locals also gathered at the cemetery,
at a distance from the grave site, to see the young
widow whose beauty and virtue had been much
talked about. As she was led away after the burial,
she heard someone in the crowd say, “If she were
not a heretic, she would be a saint.”
THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

The phrase resonated in her thoughts. She
wrote it in her diary, and no doubt she pondered
its meaning. A heretic? Was she a heretic? Was
there only one true church founded by Christ, as
these good people believed? Before she had left for
Italy, the Rev. Hobart had warned her against the
allurements of “the sumptuous worship of Italy,”
meaning, of course, the Catholic Mass. But he was
helpless now to prevent her from being exposed to
that worship. And how would his finely wrought
phrases retain their resonance for her in the prayerfilled home of the Filicchis, to which she was now
brought?
The Rev. Hobart’s rhetoric may have echoed
impressively in the recesses of the mostly empty
Trinity Church, where Elizabeth was one of only a
handful of regular congregants, but it was drowned
out in the beautiful cadences of the Missa de Angelis
and amid the crowded pews where she now sat with
the Filicchis, her heart stirring to a new, exciting
and frightening possibility: the truth of the Catholic
Faith.
Before William had died, he extracted a promise
from Capt. O’Brien that he would see to the safe
return of Elizabeth and Anna, and so mother and
daughter soon boarded the Shepherdess for its return
to New York, but a storm drove the ship back to
shore and Anna became seriously ill with a fever.
When Capt. O’Brien was compelled to embark
a second time, the doctors warned Elizabeth that
to move the child would be fatal. So, the Setons
remained with the Filicchis for some months more.
Elizabeth was to contract the same fever that had
attacked Anna, and the two of them were at times
close to death. The Filicchis prayed and fasted for
their recovery.
Filippo was the elder of the two brothers, who
both traveled frequently on business to the United
States. Filippo was so well known and regarded
in America that President George Washington
named him consul-general of the United States at
Leghorn–a rare, if not unique, honor for an Italian
national. And although Filippo had a great affection
for Elizabeth, it was his younger brother Antonio
who became her guide and mentor as she made her
way to the Catholic Church.
When Elizabeth and Anna had recovered their
health, the Filicchis took them to see some of the
rich treasures of Italy. They visited the Uffizi and
Pitti palaces in Florence. They saw more of the
“sumptuous worship” they had been warned against.
And they came to know of two aspects of the
Catholic Faith that came to obsess Elizabeth in her
search for truth: the doctrine of the Real Presence
and devotion to the Blessed Mother.
It is, of course, these very aspects of the Faith
that Protestants have come to abhor, yet Elizabeth
found herself powerfully drawn to this forbidden
(Continued on p.27)

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

●

January 2010

Reprint #90

PART 2

ON THE LIVING MAGISTERIUM
AND
LIVING
TRADITION:
Towards a “Thomistic Reception” of Vatican II
Part II:
the Speech of December 22, 2005
[Having concluded that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council do not constitute an act of
the magisterium] a new question arises: Did Pope Benedict XVI, in particular in his famous Address
of December 22, 2005, express his intention to rectify and correct the teachings of Vatican II so
as to understand them in the sense of a continuity with respect to antecedent Catholic Tradition?
In another document, his Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church dated March 10, 2009,
didn’t the Pope say, addressing “some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of
the Council” that “Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church,” and that “[a]
nyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries,
and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life.”1 There is a fairly clear allusion to
1

Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church Concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated
by Archbishop Lefebvre, on line at www.vatican.va.
19

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the “hermeneutic of rupture” which the Pope
denounced at the outset of his pontificate.2 “The
hermeneutic of discontinuity,” he said, “risks
ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church
and the post-conciliar Church.” In this distorted
perspective, the Pope says, the nature of a council
is misunderstood: “It is considered as a sort of
constituent that eliminates an old constitution and
creates a new one.”

A. Benedict XVI and the
“Hermeneutic of Reform”
Benedict XVI counters the hermeneutic of
rupture with what he calls “the hermeneutic of
reform,” which corresponds to the initial intention
clearly expressed by John XXIII during the opening
of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962,
when he said that the Council
wishes to transmit the doctrine pure and integral, without any
attenuation or distortion….Our duty is not only to guard this
precious treasure…but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest
will and without fear to that work which our era demands
of us….
…But from the renewed, serene, and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and
preciseness…the Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of
the whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal
penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and
perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however,
should be studied and expounded through the methods of
research and through the literary forms of modern thought.
The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith
is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.
And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration
with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the
forms and proportions of a magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character.3

Benedict XVI comments that, in order to respond
to the program Pope John XXIII proposed, the
Second Vatican Council had to accomplish “the
synthesis of fidelity and dynamic.”4 The hermeneutic
of reform corresponds to a “commitment to
expressing a specific truth in a new way,” requiring
“new thinking on this truth and a new and vital
relationship with it.”5 The truth had to be presented
by taking into consideration “the methods of research
and…the literary forms of modern thought.” In
the eyes of Benedict XVI, Vatican II thus intended
Benedict XVI, Allocution to the Roman Curia Offering Them His Christmas
Greetings, 22 December 2005, on line at www.vatican.va. All quotations from
the document are taken from the official English version.
3
John XXIII, “Pope John’s Opening Speech to the Council,” The Documents
of Vatican II with Notes and Comments by Catholic, Protest, and Orthodox
Authorities, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. et al. (New York: The American Press,
1966), p. 715.
4
Christmas Allocution of December 22, 2005.
5
Ibid.
2

20

to inaugurate a new stage in the relationship that
ought to exist between faith and human thought.
This relationship should, in effect, evolve according
to the dictates of history, for the Faith must seek to
be expressed in a manner adapted to contemporary
thought. The Second Vatican Council was to the
modern thought that issued from the 18th century
what St. Thomas was to the Aristotelian philosophy
of the 13th century. The intention of the Council
was indeed to propose the truths of faith in terms of
modern thought and thus to be reconciled with it. As
St. Thomas did in the 13th century, it was necessary
to “set faith in a positive relationship with the form of
reason prevalent in his time.”6

B. The Council’s Actual Intention
The task of Vatican II was “to determine in a
new way the relationship between the Church and
the modern era.”7 This relationship had become
“somewhat stormy”:
In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the
Church’s faith and a radical liberalism and the natural sciences, which also claimed to embrace with their knowledge
the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make
the ‘hypothesis of God’ superfluous, had elicited from the
Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the
modern age. Thus, it seemed that there was no longer any
milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding, and the
rejection by those who felt they were the representatives of
the modern era was also drastic.8

The Syllabus of 1864 is like the quintessence of
this opposition. But with the Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council wished
to take the opposite view from what the Syllabus
taught, and to inaugurate a new type of relationship
with the modern era. In his book Principles of Catholic
Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology,
published in 1982, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stated
that the fundamental intention of Vatican Council
II is contained in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium
et Spes. A section of the epilogue is entitled “The
question of the proper reception of Vatican Council
II.” In it, the [then] Prefect of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith stated:
If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text as a whole,
we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious
liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of
Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus…the Syllabus established
a line of demarcation against the determining forces of the
nineteenth century: against the scientific and political world
view of liberalism. In the struggle against modernism this
twofold delimitation was ratified and strengthened….the
one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under
Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by
the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in
6
7
8

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the
relationship that should exist between the Church and the
world that had come into existence after 1789.9

Twenty-three years later, in a lecture that took
place at Subiaco when he received the St. Benedict
Award for the promotion of life and the family in
Europe, on Friday, April 1, 2005, the day before
the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger
explained the Council’s intention in greater depth.
The Council wished to effect the adaptation of the
truths of the Church to the thought of the Age of
Enlightenment and of the French Revolution of
1789. Enlightenment thought acknowledges religious
values without confounding them with the world
and its profane values; it thus makes possible a
conciliation of Christianity and modern thought,
in a manner different from that achieved in the
Middle Ages and the period before 1789, because it
accepts in principle the absolute rights of freedom.
Such is the new modern mentality which calls for
another type of relationship with the Church. “In
the pastoral constitution, On the Church in the
Modern World, Vatican Council II underlined again
this profound correspondence between Christianity
and the Enlightenment, seeking to come to a true
conciliation between the Church and modernity,
which is the great heritage that both sides must
defend.”10

C. Rupture or Continuity?
In the eyes of Benedict XVI, the initial intention
of the Second Vatican Council does not imply any
rupture or discontinuity. By proposing the Faith in
such a way as to place it in a positive relationship
with modern thought as it developed from the
Enlightenment and the 18th century, the Council
intended to accomplish “the synthesis of fidelity
and dynamic.” This is the central idea of the 2005
speech, which completes the development of
Ratzinger’s reflections on this point over the years
1982-2005. “It is precisely in this combination of
continuity and discontinuity at different levels that
the very nature of true reform consists.”11 Vatican
II could present itself as a sort of countersyllabus
without effecting a discontinuity or rupture with
the teaching of Pius IX; and this can be explained
because, Benedict XVI tells us, the decisions
the Church makes in a contingent domain are
themselves contingent:
In this process of innovation in continuity we must
learn to understand more practically than before that the

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (1982; San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp.381-2.
10
“Cardinal Ratzinger on Europe’s Crisis of Culture,” July 27, 2005, www.
zenit.org/article-13687?l=english. The complete article in English is posted
at http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0143.html.
11
Christmas Allocution, December 22, 2005.
9

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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

Church’s decisions on contingent matters–for example,
certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation
of the Bible–should necessarily be contingent themselves,
precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is
changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize
that in these decisions 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.
Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded,
whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can
change.12

It is true that there is an absolutely fundamental
difference between science (or even opinion)
and prudence. Science must give the ratio pure
and simple, that is to say, the reason for which a
predicate is attributed to a subject. This attribution
is universal and necessary. If you say, for example,
that the bishop of Rome is the successor of St. Peter,
this proposition is true always and everywhere,
and it cannot not be true–it is absolute. Whatever
the individual who was legitimately elected by the
cardinal bishops of Rome, whatever may be the
era of the Church’s history, this individual is the
successor of St. Peter. Prudence must give the recta
ratio agibilium, that is to say, not the reason that
explains a universal and necessary definition, but
the reason that explains why a particular action is
decided upon here and now. This reason comes at
the end of a train of thought; it is the conclusion of
a practical syllogism: in this syllogism, a universal
and necessary premise is combined with another,
particular and contingent premise. The conclusion
indicates what is true, no longer absolutely, but
relatively; no longer always and everywhere, but
in the context of certain circumstances. The goal
of such a syllogism is not to pass from an obscure
universal to another, distinct universal. One ought
to go from a universal to a particular. In effect, law
is a principle that remains too universal for it to be
applied as such; it contains in potency a multitude
of equally possible conclusions. One must choose
the conclusion that is not only possible, but also
probable or likely, that is to say, true in particular,
taking into account all the circumstances comprising
this particularity. While it may be true in one set of
circumstances, the same conclusion would be false
in different circumstances. The prudential judgment
is thus relative to circumstance.
The relativity of a judgment is thus not bad,
no more so than its absolute character. What is
faulty is to be mistaken about the nature of the
12

Ibid.

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situation and to pronounce a relative judgment
in a necessary matter13 or an absolute judgment
in a contingent matter.14 St. Thomas explains this
in his Commentary on the Ethics of Aristotle: one
cannot apply a mathematical demonstration to
moral matters. A relative judgment is not a false
or insufficient judgment. It is a judgment that is
true in a certain domain up to a certain point. It
suffices in a particular context. Such a judgment
will change with the circumstances. More precisely,
the goal of a prudential judgment is to determine
the means to employ for obtaining an end, not the
means in general, which is always and everywhere
obligatory, but the means required in these particular
circumstances.

D. Relativity and Relativism
However, a judgment, even a prudential
judgment, relative to circumstances, is never purely
relative, for it has a necessary component: the end
does not justify every means. Similarly, when the
Church makes decisions relative to circumstances,
decisions which are made in contingent domains,
even so, these correspond to something necessary
as regards principles: the principles applied in a
contingent matter are not necessarily contingent.
Moreover, there is a significant difference between
making a decision in a contingent matter (that is to
say, to make a prudential act) and to pose an act
in a contingent manner (which characterizes every
human act, whether prudential or scientific). It is clear
that every act emanating from a human subject is
performed contingently, in the sense that the human
subject, being endowed with reason and liberty,
could have not posed this act; and in the sense that
this act is inscribed in history in the framework of a
duration in which no one moment exactly resembles
another. But this does not imply that every act of a
reasonable and free agent, inscribed in time, can only
be done in contingent matters.15 If by his body man
Which is quintessentially characteristic of liberalism, the successor of skepticism.
14
Which is quintessentially characteristic of mathematicism, practised by
Descartes or Spinoza. The latter erected a moral system with the title Ethica
ordine geometrico demonstrata.
15
The opposition that exists between necessity and contingency can be understood
in two distinct senses. In the first sense, it can be understood in reference to
“modus operandi,” and in this sense, a necessary operation is the opposite of
a contingent operation as the operation of a natural agent devoid of reason is
the opposite of the operation of a free agent. In his Commentary on the Physics of Aristotle (Book 2, lesson 13) St. Thomas explains that a natural agent
always acts in the same manner because, devoid of reason, it is incapable of
varying its means, unlike a free agent, who can vary his art. Thus all spiders’
webs resemble each other in a way that house dishes (normally) do not. In the
second sense, the distinction can be understood about the matter constituting
the object of the operation, and in this sense a necessary operation contrasts
with a contingent operation as the operation of science contrasts with that
13

22

is the subject of movement, is inscribed in duration,
and is partly contingent, by his soul he can attain
necessary and immutable truths that prescind from
historical contingence. And in fact, in large part,
the declarations of the magisterium of the modern
era prior to Vatican II concern necessary matters.
Even though they are inscribed in the historical
context of the 19th century, an age different from
ours, the declarations of Pope Pius IX condemning
religious liberty and the false principles of the
Enlightenment are definitive and necessary: Pope
Pius IX condemned the error of liberalism per se, as it
must be expressed always and everywhere, and which
is formulated in a principle that remains in universal
and necessary opposition to divinely revealed
doctrine.

E. The Continuity of Faith and
Reason according to St. Thomas
It is, moreover, inexact to say that St. Thomas
Aquinas achieved the conciliation between faith
and Aristotelian philosophy, “thereby setting faith
in a positive relationship with the form of reason
prevalent in his time.”16 St. Thomas reconciled faith
and reason, and not the Faith and Aristotelianism,
or faith and the rational thought of his time, which
would be the modern thought of the 13th century.
The Thomist synthesis is good for all times. As Pope
Pius X said in the Motu Proprio Doctoris Angelici of
June 29, 1914, it represents a body of principles
which are the means “of refuting all the errors of
all the ages.” He adds: “…the capital theses in the
philosophy of St. Thomas are not to be placed in
the category of opinions capable of being debated
one way or another, but are to be considered as
the foundations upon which the whole science of
natural and divine things is based.”17 Pope Pius XII
was to say the same thing some 30 years later in
the Encyclical Humani Generis of August 12, 1950:
“For this philosophy, acknowledged and accepted
by the Church, safeguards the genuine validity of
human knowledge, the unshakable metaphysical
principles of sufficient reason, causality, and finality,
and finally the mind’s ability to attain certain and
unchangeable truth” (§29). The synthesis achieved
by St. Thomas at a specific moment of history is the
definitive, necessary and sufficient reconciliation
of the Faith and the philosophy natural to human
reason. It is possible, certainly, to make progress in
a better understanding of Revelation and to try to
delve more deeply into the divine mysteries, having
recourse to the lights of reason guided by faith. “And,
indeed, reason illustrated by faith, when it zealously,
of art or prudence. That is why all mathematics classes are alike, whereas
no artistic masterpiece or diplomatic treaty resembles another.
16
Benedict XVI, Allocution of December 22, 2005.
17
English version online at http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/doctoris.htm.

THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

piously, and soberly seeks, attains with the help of
God some understanding of the mysteries.”18�But in
this search, reason illustrated by faith cannot change
instruments: its natural and necessary tool continues
to be the perennial philosophy in its basic principles,
perfectly synthesized by St. Thomas. That is why
there is no continuity possible between the Faith
and the modern thought that issued from the 18th
century; churchmen cannot entertain the ambition
of expressing the Faith “through the literary forms
of modern thought,” if by that is meant the modern
philosophy of the Enlightenment.

F. The Rupture of Relativism in
the Thought of Benedict XVI
In his speech of December 2005, Pope Benedict
XVI reasons as if every decision, by the very fact
of its belonging to history, can only concern a
contingent matter and only express a truth relative
to circumstances. One could not be more explicit
in making doctrinal relativism a matter of principle.
And, moreover, the example the Pope adduces to
illustrate the nature of true reform, which according
to him consists in a “combination of continuity
and discontinuity,” indicates very clearly that it
is not only the application of the principles that
changes, but the principles themselves. He tells us:
“…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.” Yet there is no continuity, but rather a
complete discontinuity between the new principle of
Dignitatis Humanae, equivalent to the new definition
of the relationship between Church and State, and
the principle reiterated by Leo XIII in the Encyclical
Immortale Dei of November 1, 1885, according to
which
it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So,
too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as
something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or
out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes
in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship
God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who
rule, therefore, would hold in honour the holy name of God,
and one of their chief duties must be to favour religion, to
protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the
laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that
may compromise its safety. (§6)

It is absolutely inexact to assert, as does Benedict
XVI, that “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
Vatican Council I, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, Chap. 4, Dz. 1796.

18

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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

the Church.” The teaching of Vatican II on religious
liberty effected, rather, a rupture with respect to all
of Tradition and thus with respect to the deepest
patrimony of the Church.

G. The Real Significance of the
Speech of December 22, 2005
The hermeneutic of reform as conceived by
Pope Benedict XVI is not, then, the expression of
a return to the Tradition of the Church. Benedict
XVI doubtless is trying to establish a continuity
between Vatican II and the teachings of the previous
magisterium. But this is not continuity as the popes
have always understood it until the last Council,
continuity in the unaltered transmission of the same
substantially immutable doctrine. Continuity as
understood by Pope Benedict XVI is the continuity
of a new living tradition, continuity in the relativism
by which one thinks it possible to overcome
contradictions by employing the principle that the
teachings of the Church are expressed in a matter
that is always contingent.
To conclude, we shall examine more closely this
new notion of living tradition, at least as understood
by Pope Benedict XVI.

Part III:
The New Relativism
of Living Tradition
The doctrinal relativism expressed in the
Christmas address of December 22, 2005,
corresponds in the current pope’s thinking to the
distorted notion of Tradition that is in line with the
Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei Adflicta of John Paul II.
This notion is described in Pope Benedict XVI’s
catechesis on the Church found in the general
audiences of April 26, May 3, and May 10, 2006,
published in L’Osservatore Romano. Tradition is no
longer defined as the transmission of the deposit of
divinely revealed truths. It is first of all conceived as
an Experience and a Life.

A. Tradition Redefined
In the fifth allocution of April 26, Pope Benedict
XVI expressed himself thus:
The Holy Spirit appears to us as the guarantor of the
active presence of the mystery in history, the One who
ensures its realization down the centuries. Thanks to the
Paraclete, it will always be possible for subsequent genera-

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23

THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT

tions to have the same experience of the Risen One that
was lived by the apostolic community at the origin of the
Church, since it is passed on and actualized in the faith, worship and communion of the People of God, on pilgrimage
through time….The Church’s apostolic Tradition consists in
this transmission of the goods of salvation which, through
the power of the Spirit makes the Christian community
the permanent actualization of the original communion.19

Tradition is not first and foremost the
transmission of dogmas, the perpetual teaching
of revealed truths, nor the administration of the
sacraments and the celebration of divine worship.
It is undoubtedly this transmission, but as the
prolongation of the communitarian experience
of the origins: by means of this transmission, the
communion of today continues the communion of
yesterday, the lived experience of past generations
continues in the lived experience of present
generations.
A little farther on, we find another definition that
expresses again the same idea:
Tradition is not the transmission of things or words, a
collection of dead things. Tradition is the living river that
links us to the origins, the living river in which the origins
are ever present, the great river that leads us to the gates
of eternity.20

In the sixth allocution of May 3, Benedict
recapitulated his theme:
[Apostolic Tradition] is not a collection of things or
words, like a box of dead things. Tradition is the river of
new life that flows from the origins, from Christ down to us,
and makes us participate in God’s history with humanity.21

A little farther on he adds:
So it is that Tradition is the living Gospel, proclaimed by
the Apostles in its integrity on the basis of the fullness of
their unique and unrepeatable experience: through their
activity the faith is communicated to others, even down
to us, until the end of the world. Tradition, therefore, is
the history of the Spirit who acts in the Church’s history
through the mediation of the Apostles and their successors,
in faithful continuity with the experience of the origins.22

B. A Coherent Discourse, But
Contrary to the Church’s
Teaching
One readily understands what Benedict XVI
means when he states that “Vatican II embraces the
entire doctrinal history of the Church,” and that
“Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council
Benedict XVI, “Communion in Time: Tradition,” General Audience, April
26, 2006, www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/audiences/2006.
20
Ibid.
21
Benedict XVI, “The Apostolic Tradition of the Church,” General Audience,
May 3, 2006, www.vatican.va/ holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2006.
22
Ibid.
19

24

has to accept the faith professed over the centuries,
and cannot sever the roots from which the tree
draws its life.”23 The “entire doctrinal history of the
Church” and the “faith professed over centuries” of
which he spoke in March 2009 is the living Tradition
of which he spoke to us in May 2006, namely “the
history of the Spirit who acts in the Church’s history
through the mediation of the Apostles and their
successors, in faithful continuity with the experience
of the origins.” The Pope’s theme holds together
perfectly from one end to the other. But it is a
theme that gives an absolutely new definition to the
magisterium and Tradition, in complete opposition
to the teachings of the magisterium prior to the
Second Vatican Council.

C. An Unchangeable Tradition
and a Living Magisterium
It is true that the Church renders more explicit
the expression of revealed truths and thus procures
to the faithful a deeper understanding of the deposit
of the Faith. It is in this sense that it could be said
that the traditional magisterium was also a living
magisterium. “Living” contrasts with “posthumous.”
This attribute concerns the subject and the act of
the magisterium (magisterium as understood in its
first and second senses), but not the object of the
magisterium (magisterium understood in its third
sense).
From the viewpoint of the second sense
(magisterium understood as the act of teaching), the
posthumous magisterium is the simple repetition of
the teaching formerly given authoritatively by the
living and authentic magisterium after it ceased. It
is carried out by writing. The living magisterium is
the ongoing exercise of the authentic magisterium.
It is carried out principally by oral preaching and
incidentally by writing.
From the viewpoint of the first sense (magisterium
understood as the subject who exercises the act of
teaching), the magisterium is living in the sense that
in every age of history the prudence of pastors is
always sufficiently inventive for enlightening the
minds of the faithful and proposing to them the
same truth in a manner more thoroughly adapted
to their circumstances. In the disputed question
No. 11 in the series De Veritate, St. Thomas shows
in Article 4 that teaching is a work belonging to the
active life. In effect, the act of teaching concerns a
twofold object, a twofold matter. There is the truth
to be taught: in relation to this object, teaching
is a work of the contemplative life. There is the
audience to be taught: in relation to this object,
23

Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church Concerning
the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated
by Archbishop Lefebvre, on line at www.vatican.va.

THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

teaching is a work of the active life.24 Affecting the
audience to be taught are variable circumstances
to which the preaching should be adapted. The
audience is not uniform, and it may appear in
quite different conditions. These diverse conditions
will be, for example, errors holding sway over the
faithful which endanger their correct understanding
of revealed truth and render necessary a more
explicit exposition of doctrine.25 These diverse
conditions also correspond to the diversity of
time and place which make necessary diversely
appropriate explications at the level of positive
ecclesiastical law.26 In this sense, the transmission
of Catholic doctrine is a living preaching because
it is a pastoral preaching, the pastor being the one
who uses discernment and takes into account the
dispositions of his flock (according to the scholastic
adage: quidquid recipitur in aliquo est in eo per modum
recipientis–“whatever is received into anything
must be received according to the condition of the
receiver”27). This is why such teaching is principally
oral.28
But this has nothing to do with the “pastoral
magisterium” Vatican II claims to express. Actually,
the magisterium of the Second Vatican Council
was intended to be pastoral because it changed the
truth under the pretext of adapting the preaching
of the truth to the understanding of modern man.
Now if the magisterium is living in the first and
second senses of the word, objective Tradition,
which is identical to the magisterium understood
in the third sense (and which equates to dogmas,
namely, divinely revealed truths which are the
object of the preaching of the magisterium), is
not living, but unchangeable. The ecclesiastical
preaching only becomes more precise when the
pastors of the Church exercise their magisterium
in order to give a deeper understanding of dogma.
But the dogma does not change. There is progress,
not in the dogma, but in the understanding of the
dogma by the faithful, who are better protected
against the assaults of error. It is the passage from
an implicit knowledge to an explicit knowledge; the
change affects the mode by which the minds of the
faithful will exercise their adherence to the object
of faith. The object of faith remains unchanged, and
it is formally revealed before being defined by the
pope as it is afterward. For example, the faithful
implicitly believed in the Immaculate Conception
This duality of matter is well rendered by the construction of the Latin verb
“docere,” which takes a double accusative.
25
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 1, Art. 9, ad 2.
26
Ibid., Art. 7, ad 2 and ad 3
27
Summa Theologica, I, Q. 76, Art. 2, 3rd objection.
28
Written expression involves certain limits oral teaching escapes. That is
why the latter is the preferred means expression of prudence, which must
maintain enough flexibility to deal with circumstances as they arise. This
reality shows us why the Catholic religion is not a “Religion of the Book.”

by believing explicitly that the Blessed Virgin
possessed the fullness of grace (a truth taught in
Sacred Scripture in the Gospel according to St.
Luke, 1:28). This fullness of grace involves many
things, and in particular the conception free from
original sin. This particular consequence was made
explicit by the definition of Pope Pius IX (whereas
another particular consequence was to be made
explicit by Pius XII when he proclaimed the dogma
of the Assumption). Since then, the faithful must
believe not only implicitly, but explicitly in the
truth of the Immaculate Conception. The evolution
bears precisely and exclusively upon the mode of
belief: the way in which the believer exercises his act,
implicitly or explicitly, and not on the object of the
belief.

D. From the Living Magisterium
to the New Living Tradition
In short, a certain merely extrinsic development
of dogma can be admitted, but never intrinsic,
that is to say a development, not of the dogma qua
dogma, but of the understanding of it possessed by
the faithful. On the one hand, the progress of this
understanding must be “in the same dogma, with
the same sense and the same understanding,”29
without calling in question the objective nature of
the revealed deposit. On the other hand, it is the
infallible and constant magisterium, the traditional
magisterium of the Church and it alone, that must
give this understanding, not simple natural reason
nor philosophy alone. In the Constitution Dei
Filius, the First Vatican Council consecrated by its
authority this essential property of the ecclesiastical
magisterium, namely, that it is to be a constant
magisterium:
[T]hat understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once
declared; and there must never be recession from that
meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding.30

To this definition corresponds the following canon:
If anyone shall have said that it is possible that to the
dogmas declared by the Church a meaning must sometimes
be attributed according to the progress of science, different
from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.31

Even if the Church’s preaching is exercised
contingently, in the framework of historical

24

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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

Vatican Council I, Constitution Dei Filius, Chap. 4, in Dz. 1800.
Ibid.
31
Ibid., Canon 3 of Chapter 4, in Dz. 1818.
29
30

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25

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$2.00 per SISINONO reprint. Please specify.
circumstances, its object is the transmission of
divinely revealed truths, which are not contingent, but
necessary and immutable. The confusion introduced
by the Discourse of December 22 is on this level: one
has passed from a living magisterium (ecclesiastical
preaching that is done in order to transmit the
same truth in a contingent manner, namely, by taking
circumstances into account) to a living Tradition
(ecclesiastical preaching that is exercised in contingent
matters, namely, in order to establish a renewed and
changing relationship between faith and contemporary
thought as it changes from age to age). Thus one has
passed from extrinsic and homogeneous dogmatic
development to intrinsic and relativist development.

Epilogue
The program of the Toulouse colloquium was to
“focus on the ways in which Thomistic theology can
contribute to a reception of Vatican II that honors the
Council as an act of living Tradition.” We can say here
and now, without fear of being mistaken, that their
reflection will be trapped by the difficulty in which it
has been circumscribed from the outset. If you admit
the assumption of the living Tradition, then no serious
critique of the conciliar teachings will be possible.
It will be necessary, willy-nilly, to admit religious
freedom, ecumenism, and the new ecclesiology
into the common patrimony of the Church, even
at the price of contradiction, or rather thanks to
the contradiction raised to the first principle of all
theological reflection. For if Tradition is living, then
movement is being and everything becomes possible…
and imaginable.

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The only “Thomistic reception” which seems
to us conceivable is the one that will begin by
unambiguously defining Tradition and magisterium
in conformity with the teachings of Pope Pius IX and
the First Vatican Council. In these conditions, and
only in these conditions, can we nourish the hope of
interpreting the teachings of Vatican II “in the light of
Tradition,” understood as all the popes and Catholic
bishops understood it until the Council.
Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize
Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from the Courier de Rome, June-August
2009, pp.1-5.

The ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

27

(Continued from p.18)

country. However close she may have been to
conversion, she resisted it while she was abroad. She
returned to New York in spring 1804, accompanied
by Antonio, for the Filicchis did not like the look
of Capt. Blagg, commander of the Flamingo, and
chivalrously insisted upon providing the young
widow and child with their protection.
After being reunited with the four children she
had left in the care of Rebecca Seton, Elizabeth had
to appraise her new situation: she had no husband
and, she soon discovered, almost no money. William
had not been entirely aware of the extent of his
financial losses and spent the last weeks of his life
bequeathing property and investments he no longer
owned. Elizabeth had family and friends, not the
least important of which were the Filicchis, who
served as her benefactors, financially as well as
spiritually.
Aside from all her observable difficulties,
however, she had a secretly kept one that was soon
to be revealed: Elizabeth was suffering an intense
spiritual ordeal. Her children sensed her suffering
and would often talk about “poor Mama,” whose
health had also suffered greatly during her sickness
and trials. She felt compelled to confide in her old
friend and mentor, the Rev. Hobart, that she was
considering converting to the Catholic Faith. He,
in turn, expressed disbelief, disappointment and, of
course, deep disapproval. He cast the situation much
in personal terms, as though she were considering
some betrayal of him and her friends and family.
He sent her tracts detailing the corruptions of
the Roman Church. The Filicchis responded in kind,
providing her with answers to all the charges. And
thus, the battle for the soul of Elizabeth Ann Seton
broke with full fury.
Relatives and friends would visit her with
admonitions about deserting them to embrace
popish superstitions. She would receive
recommendations to attend this service or listen to
that preacher. She would be asked how she could
possibly consider participating in a form of worship
indulged in by the servant class? The Catholic Mass
was attended by chamber maids and stable hands;
by people who cleaned out rubbish bins and blacked
shoes. How could she ever think of debasing herself
by sharing a pew with unwashed Irish laborers?
And there were the children to consider. She
was reminded by her relations that the five souls
in her charge would follow her to perdition if she
made the wrong choice and joined the forces of
the anti-Christ. She was even given Newton’s book
of prophecies in which he proclaims the eternal
damnation of Catholics.
The Rev. Hobart appealed strongly to her
loyalties: how could she leave the church in which
she had been baptized? The church of her fathers?
But he had no answers to the doctrinal questions she

asked. He spoke of everything except the one thing
that mattered to her: the truth.
This torment could not go on endlessly. She
must decide. On Ash Wednesday, February 27,
1805, Elizabeth Ann Seton entered St. Peter’s
Roman Catholic Church and declared to a Fr.
O’Brien her intention of becoming a Catholic. This
was a momentous decision, not just for Elizabeth
and her children, but for a nation and its children
for generations to come.
She was received into the Church on March 14,
presented to the priest to make her profession by
her spiritual brother, Antonio Filicchi. On March
25, the Feast of the Annunciation, she experienced
her greatest joy: her first Holy Communion.
She wrote to Antonio’s wife, Amabilia: “At last,
Amabilia, at last, God is mine. Now let all earthly
things go as they will. I have received Him.”
Earthly things did not go well, at least by our
often shallow and imprecise reckoning. The onetime belle of New York society now became its chief
scandal. Her defection to Rome was accounted for
in various ways. The prevalent theory was that she
was mentally unbalanced. The death of husband,
her own and her child’s illnesses, the collapse of her
finances–all had conspired to deprive her of reason.
And, of course, there were dark influences at work
to take advantage of her mental incapacities.
Elizabeth’s children did follow her into the
Church, and did so quite happily, even exultantly,
especially Anna, who had asked sadly as they
were leaving Italy: “Ma, are there no Catholics
in America? Will we never go to the Catholic
Church there?” It was on her children’s account
that Elizabeth felt the social ostracism of their
accustomed society so keenly.
Still, Elizabeth had mouths to feed and, despite
the generosity of some loyal friends, such as the
Filicchis, she felt a responsibility to exert herself to
provide a livelihood for her family. She tried her
hand twice in New York at being a school teacher,
but neither enterprise succeeded for long. One of
them was sabotaged by the Rev. Hobart, who joined
another Protestant minister in warning the good
people of New York that they could not trust their
children to the perverse influence of Mrs. Seton.
Her situation in New York became increasingly
difficult to sustain. When her sister-in-law, Cecilia
Seton, became seriously ill at the age of 15, she
insisted on having Elizabeth by her side. The family
yielded. She confided to Elizabeth that she intended
to become a Catholic, too. When Cecilia recovered
and told her family of her decision, Elizabeth was
practically declared a public menace. Incredible as it
seems, the Setons considered having the legislature
expel Elizabeth from New York City. Cecilia’s sister,
a Mrs. Ogden, was married to the governor, so it
was within the realm of the possible.
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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

28
Cecilia was locked in her room. She
was threatened with being deported to
the West Indies and told that her passage
was being purchased. But nothing could
daunt her spirit or weaken her resolve. In
June, she left the house of Mrs. Ogden,
where she had been living, and made her
profession of faith.
With Cecilia’s conversion, the
ostracism of Elizabeth and her children
was consummated. The Filicchis proposed
that she come to Italy and live with them
permanently. There were plans to relocate
to Canada. Finally, in the summer of 1807,
Fr. DuBourg, the president of St. Mary’s
Seminary in Baltimore, visited New York
City and met the infamous Mrs. Seton
while she was visiting the pastor at St.
Peter’s. He was impressed by her faith
and her learning and asked if she would
be willing to help him realize a long-held
dream of opening a children’s school in
Baltimore, should he be able to obtain the
funds. “Would you come?” he asked. “Oh,
I would come and beg,” she answered.
Archbishop Carroll, of Baltimore,
and Bishop Cheverus, of Boston, were
consulted and both, knowing something of
Mrs. Seton, endorsed the project. It took
another year, but in June 1808, Elizabeth
Ann Seton left New York City, much to
her own and the city’s relief, and sailed to
Baltimore with her children.
Fr. DuBourg had rented a house
for her in Paca Street. Her sons were
boarded at Georgetown. And soon, the
first Catholic elementary school was under
way. Elizabeth was happy, and so were
the Catholics of Baltimore, who sent their
daughters to her in ever growing numbers.
Soon, Elizabeth was joined in her work by
a young woman from Philadelphia, Cecilia
O’Conway, who wanted to become a nun.
She and Elizabeth formed a regimen.
Other young women wanted to join them.
They became provisionally a community
known as the Sisters of St. Joseph. The
school was overflowing. It became plain
to all involved, to Archbishop Carroll and
Fr. DuBourg, that something large and
important had begun and that it must be
allowed to grow.
About this time, a wealthy convert,
Mr. Samuel Cooper, was studying for the
priesthood at St. Mary’s. He decided to
help and used a large part of his fortune
to buy a piece of property for Elizabeth
at Emmitsburg, about 50 miles west
THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

St. Joseph’s Academy,
founded by St. Elizabeth
Ann Seton in 1809 as a
Catholic school for girls

of Baltimore and two miles from a seminary called Mount
St. Mary’s headed by a devout priest named Fr. DuBois.
There was as yet no proper building at Emmitsburg, but a
motherhouse was envisioned for a new religious order of
teaching sisters to be headed by Elizabeth. On the feast of
Corpus Christi 1809, five ladies boarded a covered wagon and
began plodding their way from Baltimore to the mountainous
country in the west.
Among the small band was Cecilia Seton, who had come
to live with Elizabeth but who was in very poor health. Also
arrived at Paca Street and now part of the Westward migration
was Harriet Seton, not yet a Catholic but very attached to
Elizabeth and Cecilia. Harriet was considered the most
beautiful girl in New York and was engaged when she left to
be with her sister and sister-in-law. It must have seemed to
New York society that Elizabeth was draining the town of its
debutantes and hoarding them in her convent.
When the small band arrived at Emmitsburg, they found
no suitable place to live. The house on Mr. Cooper’s property
was very much a work in progress and Fr. DuBourg gave
them his house to live in and moved to the seminary. It was
a generous gesture, but the crude, two-room structure was
hardly adequate for five women, one of whom was very ill. Yet
it is the nature of sanctity that it thrives on privations. It is as
though the saints hunger for hardship and sacrifice like the rest
of us hunger for comforts and ease.
It was a hard winter in Emmitsburg, with little warmth
and less food, but I don’t think a happier group of people
could have been found in the finest mansions in the world.
“All hearts,” wrote Mother Seton, “applied themselves to
mortification with such good will that they found the carrot
coffee, the buttermilk soup, and the stale lard, too delicate
food.”
In February 1810, the motherhouse was completed. It was
necessary, however, for the community to be established in a

H
M
N
(
w
S
a
h

y,
h
a
s

29
Her home in
Manhattan,
New York City
(building at right
with columns, 7
State Street), now
a shrine in her
honor

regular canonical way. After some discussion, it was agreed that
a modified rule based on that of the Daughters of Charity of
St. Vincent de Paul would be most suitable. Their dress would
be that adopted by Elizabeth since she had become a widow
in Italy: a black dress with a muslin bonnet. There remained,
however, one large and unique problem: the first putative head
of this new order had five children. There were no suitable
homes in which they could be placed and Elizabeth thought it
her duty to continue their care and education herself.
She acknowledged to Archbishop Carroll that she could
wish for nothing better than to be a teaching sister in a
Catholic school, but her own happiness must be subordinated
to the needs of her children. Rather than surrender her
responsibilities to them, she would have to withdraw from her
position at Emmitsburg.
But the archbishop realized that Elizabeth was as much a
mother to the new community as she was to her own children.
She was, in every sense, Mother Seton. So, he managed
a special permission to allow her to remain the legal and
maternal guardian of her two boys and three girls.
Life at Emmitsburg was far from easy, yet to judge by the
number of young women wishing to join the new order, you
might think it a new Eden. Mother answered all inquiries with
frank descriptions of the austere living conditions and great
demands that postulants would face, but still they came, and
the order grew, and the convents and schools and orphanages
multiplied. Soon, the Daughters of Charity were recognizable
on the streets of Philadelphia and New York as well as in
Baltimore and Emmitsburg. It was as though there were great
pressure building behind a dam of vocations and that Mother
Seton opened the dam.
The parochial school system in the United States was
certainly among the most astounding achievements of the
Catholic Church. How many generations were formed in
the Faith by the religious who staffed its classrooms and

maintained its buildings? I am a product
of this system, as was my mother and her
parents and her parents’ parents.
The Protestant luminaries of New
York City were right to fear Elizabeth Ann
Seton. She almost succeeded in making
America a Catholic country.
But the system of parochial education
depended on vocations, and the reform
of the religious orders following Vatican
II, along with other changes in the
Church, has succeeded in destroying the
religious orders, most of which can now
be described as moribund. And with the
death of the religious orders has come the
imminent death of the parochial school
system. Who would have thought that
the flood of vocations Elizabeth released
would have been damned up by those
charged with propagating the Faith?
Still, who can gauge the amount of
good Elizabeth and her Daughters of
Charity have accomplished? I count
myself among those in their debt, and
how can one repay the gift of faith? And
I am but one of millions of the parochial
school children of Mother Seton.
On January 2, 1821, at the age of 47,
surrounded by her spiritual daughters,
among whom was her child Catherine,
the one whose life she once offered for
her father’s soul, Mother Seton, long
weakened by tuberculosis and worn out
by ceaseless labors, breathed her last. Her
final request to her sisters was that they
recite with her the Anima Christi of St.
Ignatius. She had asked that they repeat
each line after she had pronounced it, but
they faltered near the end, when all that
could be heard was weeping and Mother
Seton’s soft voice intoning: “At the hour
of my death, call to me, and bid me come
to Thee, that with Thy saints I may praise
Thee, forever and ever. Amen.”
And then, with her last breath, she
said, “Jesus.”
A beautiful woman. A beautiful life. A
beautiful death.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton,
Mother Seton, pray for us and for our
children.
Edwin Faust is a retired newspaperman who writes for Traditional Catholic publications and lives in New Jersey with his
wife, Kathleen. They have three sons.

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2010

30

TELEVISION

THE SOUL AT RISK

PART 2

This is
the second
installment of
a series on
television.
It was
originally
published as a
book by Clovis
in France
(Clovis is
the publishing
house of the
French district
of the SSPX).
The series
will continue
every month in
The Angelus.

The ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

I s a b e l l e

D o r é

Television and the Intellect
The intellect is the faculty by which we apprehend truth. Does
television enable us to apprehend truth in the same way that reading or
real-life action does? First we must consider how we watch television and
what we see.

Television and Brain Function
Television mainly works the right side of the brain and induces a
relaxed state of vigilance. The television viewer looks at a screen and a
light source; he sees moving images and hears sounds.

I. THe SCreen
AnD THe lIgHT
The “average” television viewer looks at a lighted screen in a
particular way that differs from the normal way of looking at things. When
passing through a waiting room or hospital corridor, it is easy to tell who
is watching television even if you cannot see the screen. The television
viewers’ eyes are fixated. In real life, people generally do not stare; their
eyes are constantly in motion, switching from the overview to the details,
from things close to things at a distance, and breaking away.
By focusing the eyes on the screen, not only is peripheral vision
blotted out to the advantage of foveal vision, focused on the entire screen
(indeed, the viewers always seem to open their eyes wide), but the eyes
also become slightly defocused. In effect, [because of “the visual activity
at the contour of the image”1] it is difficult for the eyes to focus on
details, a state which can even cause nausea, and so the eyes settle into a
defocused fixation on the screen. The eyes cease their normal movement
and autonomy. The camera can change the perspective from close-up to
distance or change the field of vision or show something else, but it isn’t
the viewer who chooses these shifts, their frequency or pace.

N

K

31

What do we see on television? We see images
and hear the accompanying sounds.

blinked its eyes three or four times; it turned about
four or five times, and stretched its wings five or
six times. The spectacle was clearly fascinating and
rather impressive. The same half hour watching
the great-horned owl broadcast on television would
be deathly boring; for a program, a report or a
documentary, they would have kept but two minutes
of the wing flapping, the eye blinking, and its
moving around.
We all have memories of our having taken
pleasure in the contemplation of an ordinary
scene of everyday life: children playing in a park,
domestic animals frolicking in a yard, a music or
dance rehearsal, a fire on the hearth, a game of
table football, chess or other board games. The
same scenes in real time shown on a television
screen quickly become boring. There are multiple
reasons for this: in real life, the eyes move, the other
senses are engaged (for a fire in the fireplace there
is the smell, the sight of the flames, the sensation of
heat, which attract us), the mind and the memory
function.
Not long ago there was an educational television
program scheduled on the public broadcasting
channel, and I remember watching a program
on the raising and milking of goats. This type of
programming was so unsuccessful among students
and teachers that this type of educational television
disappeared.
A lot of sports are broadcast on television,
but not just any sport: one sees very little golf
or badminton, little fencing or ping pong; and
when they are broadcast, they don’t show long
tournaments. They only broadcast the spectacular
sports: tennis, football, rugby.
Music has a place on television, but not just any
kind of music. They broadcast variety shows, rap
concerts, all kinds of musical events that I cannot
begin to identify, but they rarely show, so far as
I know, classical music concerts. Classical music
is not spectacular, excepting ballets and operas.
Occasionally, you may come across a medley of
selected pieces. Rarely is an entire classical work
offered: the television viewer who watches music
on television needs noise, excitement, movement,
fast-paced sequences, or scenes of audience hysteria.
Classical music only comes across in snippets,
serving as background for a film or advertisement.

Images

Sounds

On television or in movies, the images move at
a quick pace; that is the nature of the audio-visual:
they only show things that move, and when they
don’t move enough, very short clips are shown.
One summer, my children found a wounded greathorned owl in a barn: they spent a good half hour
watching it. During these 30 minutes, the animal

The images moving across the screen are
accompanied by sounds: music, noise, or words.
The words naturally follow the pace of the images,
that is to say, the sentences are short and rapid.
The truly discursive style rarely appears on
television (the President’s annual State of the Union
address). Even in cultural or political broadcasts,

What’s more, the television viewer is watching
a flickering light source; he is staring at a light. But
looking at a light can induce sleep. Researchers
speak about television viewers’ “hypnotic” state.
Sometimes they speak of a “semi-hypnotic” state
because there is not actual slumber.
We should point out that the cinema does not
present quite the same danger: the light source is not
the screen–it is behind the spectator; the danger of
falling into a hypnotic or quasi-hypnotic state at the
movies is perhaps reduced. And LCD screens, which
have begun to replace cathode ray tubes, do not
project the same kind of emanations. Even though
the soft light they radiate reduces the hypnotic
effect, it does not suppress the other perceptual
anomalies.
Defocused fixation on a constantly moving
image and a light source present two audiovisual
aspects that explain why the television viewer’s
brain emits alpha waves (the brain wave pattern
typical of an intermediary state between waking
and sleep: for some television viewers, after the first
few minutes they drift into sleep; others are less
susceptible), whereas the brain of an alert person
emits beta waves.
Of course, one can always try to remain vigilant,
to retain one’s lucidity, to escape hypnosis, to
pause an image (something possible with VCRs
and DVDs), to take notes for reviewing the film
or program, to reflect, memorize, break away
from the screen to comment or critique, but this
is not the way television is usually watched, and it
certainly isn’t the way children watch it: they enter
directly into the particular universe of the television,
consisting of rapid succession of images. Even after
they have reached the age of reason, children do not
have a rational relationship with the screen. Even
most adults thus lose their rationality and vigilance
while viewing television, especially those who watch
it a great deal.

II. IMAgeS
AnD SounDS

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The ANgeLus • January 2010

32
him was watching the images, not understanding the
which are normally aimed at intelligent people,
words!
the speeches do not last long. In advertisements or
I’ve verified this with other children: whether
children’s programming, everything moves a lot,
the sound track is inaudible or the film is in a
and the music is fast-paced and rhythmic.
foreign language or they cannot read the subtitles,
As for advertisements, their goal is to prevent
they still want to watch.
the spectator from thinking. The creators of
If the discursive style is rare and if speech is
advertising clips put their knowledge of human
secondary to the image, it will not be surprising
psychology at the service of “hidden persuasion”
that television especially stimulates the right side
(Vance Packard2). By means of the discontinuity of
of the brain, the hemisphere governing non-verbal
the images and the rapid rhythm, they dispose the
thought, analogy, and the recognition of forms.
spectator to a state analogous to daydreaming.
The damage is undoubtedly less for a child who
Programming for children also presents
is used to conversing at home, speaking,
rapidly paced sequences. It seems that to
listening, asking questions, reasoning,
keep children in front of the screen,
reflecting, and analyzing. But this
a rapid pace is required, with lots
is not the case for all. Nor does
of action and movement and
the global method [of teaching
dramatic content that provokes
As for advertisements,
reading], with its system of
strong emotions. When watching
their goal is to prevent
learning by the recognition of
children’s programs in which the
forms, help the child to develop
images change rapidly, the young
the spectator from
the left side of the brain, the seat
child has difficulty coordinating
of logic, analysis, and reasoning.
thinking. The creators
vision and hearing. He stares at
Is it possible to watch
the screen, content to watch the
of advertising clips put
television and stay alert, to make
images without really paying
the effort to grasp the words, to
attention to the words, retaining
their knowledge of
retain them, to critique them, to
only snatches. The image
human psychology at
think over what has been seen? It
outweighs the sound.
is certainly easier for a cultivated
Growing up, the children
the service of “hidden
adult to maintain such vigilance:
manage to combine the two
persuasion” (Vance
he can integrate what he hears
senses better, but do they really
2
and sees into his reflections and
have the time and the habit of
Packard ). By means
his store of knowledge. But such
grasping and memorizing the
of the discontinuity
is not the usual way television
words?
is watched. Infrequent viewers
In real life, a child can
of the images and the
retain the capacity to memorize,
easily manage sight and hearing
rapid rhythm, they
critique, and analyze. But the
simultaneously. The images are
more people watch, the less of
not constantly parading before
dispose the spectator
an effort they make to cultivate
his eyes; he lives in a rather
themselves or to think over
to a state analogous to
static universe; he can readily
what they have seen. They let
pay attention to the words spoken
daydreaming.
themselves be “inundated” by the
to him; he even listens to them
images and the background music.
with great attention when they are
Vigilance is only maintained in the
addressed to him personally. He can
hypothetical cases in which instruction is the
take the time to repeat them, memorize
goal, which is not often.
them, and reflect.
As for children, they watch for the sake of
My experience has taught me that it is very
watching: one teacher explained that sometimes she
difficult to retain the attention of a child accustomed
used to watch films with her high school students.
to watching television images; not only does he only
She would prepare the screening ahead of time by
listen intermittently, but he has a very hard time
explaining to them what they were going to see and
repeating and retaining simple expressions.
providing a worksheet. Without this preliminary
Another example of the secondary place of
work, the students would have learned nothing
sound in relation to sight: children living abroad
from the film. This teacher eventually gave up using
or watching a movie in the original language are
slides: “they’re too slow” and the students act up.
not bothered by the foreign language. One family
that lived for several years in Japan relates that the
youngest child spent a lot of time watching Japanese
cartoons in the original language even though he
did not speak the language at all. What mattered to
The ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

33

III. A Powerful
Learning Tool?
Even though it is rarely the goal and even
though it would be difficult, is it possible to become
an educated person by watching television?
If you ask a television viewer to assess what
he has learned during his years of television
consumption, there will be few precise answers. He
knows the names and faces of actors, show-business
stars, and football players. He knows that there are
wars, in the Middle East, for instance, but without
knowing why. He knows the name of the president
and the secretary of state and his representative.
He has a vague recollection of some murderous
affairs or serious crises in domains that affect him
personally: health, security, the economy.
Firefighters watch films during their training, but
is this how they learn to be firefighters? No, the film
is an aid that, when commented on and viewed with
pauses on different images, can help them to reflect
and anticipate situations they may not necessarily
have experienced. But it is not by watching Backdraft
that you learn to be a firefighter; it is not by
watching Emergency that you learn to be a doctor or
an E.M.T., no more than you can become a good
player by watching a football game. Filmed scenes
can be used to complete training, but only insofar as
one is able to watch with a critical mind.
A child, who has neither experience nor training
nor maturity, needs to live in the real world, not
only in order to become educated, but simply to
learn how to live, to live in accordance with reality.
Television only engages the long-range senses:
sight and hearing; and even then, image dominates
speech. But the child needs to touch, to feel (the
fire’s heat, the cold’s bite). He needs to have all
these experiences of real life that television cannot
occasion: he needs to experience the dizziness of
danger, the anguish of being wrong, the painfulness
of waiting, leniency, pardon, mercy, sorrow, fatigue,
the anguish of responsibility; he needs to overcome
difficulties and failures, and to solve problems.
The director of Science City, interviewed on the
radio, justified her refusal to introduce audio-visual
animations into the children’s pavilion: “We mustn’t
settle for what’s easy; what is important for a little
child is to shape himself by interaction with reality.”
A recent event, but one that recurs often enough
in different forms, happened: two young reckless
drivers fled the scene after running down six
pedestrians, killing three. This is behavior typical
of the television viewer who has never really been
confronted with real life: driving at an irresponsible
speed in a small town (60 mph) and flight from a
difficulty. Even the second driver, who was following
and had no part in the accident, preferred to spare

himself rather than to help the wounded or report
the accident. These youngsters, typical of their
generation, had to have seen car accidents. But on
television, nothing is demanded of them. Everything
is handled without them. Someone takes care of
the wounded, or else the action continues and the
victims are left to their fate.
In psycho-pedagogical medical centers, the
psychologists have to re-educate children having
difficulties adjusting to reality and experiencing
learning difficulties. The children have to be taught
to utilize their senses, to speak, to act on things,
to interact with people. “Practice makes perfect,”
and parents are very naïve to think that watching
something on television can replace the experiences
of real life.
An accident in the mountains prompted the
following observation by the inhabitants: “The
young people live in a virtual world and don’t
realize that nature is dangerous.”
A young woman recently confided how happy
she was to be working: “I need to prove myself.”
This is a sign of maturity, but the children of this
generation often do not have a chance to prove
themselves. They live in a diminished, artificial
universe: school, computer games, television. There
is not much room left for real life.
Are not the young people who adopt crazy
and destructive behaviors (speed, drugs, alcohol)
trying to prove something to themselves? Aren’t
they trying to experience some of the sensations of
real life of which they have always been defrauded?
They are trying to experience fear, anguish,
overcoming obstacles, and the excitation of the
senses, but in keeping with the logic of a consumer
society: “everything–right now.”
But, to get back to the question, can one acquire
valuable and useful knowledge thanks to television?
The example of the teacher quoted above shows
that just watching a program is not enough to benefit
from it. Another teacher lost her patience with her
students one day. She had advised the seniors to
watch televised news in order to keep abreast of
what is happening in the world. While studying
the battles of World War II in North Africa, she
observed that the students knew nothing about
Libya, its geographical situation or its capital, even
though the TV news had been talking about nothing
but Kaddafi for several weeks.
The reason is that an educated adult is able
to link information about Libya to knowledge he
already possesses and to his worldview, while a
child or adolescent only remembers a few snatches
that have no meaning for him and to which he will
never assign any meaning. In the best of cases, he
will have a spontaneous reaction to the information:
Kaddafi is a bad guy; he sent bombers somewhere.
The adolescent is then ripe for being manipulated:
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • January 2010

34
In spite of Sesame Street’s success with the children,
he absorbs information without thought, without
the school teachers did not discern any notable
analysis, without understanding. In real life, one also
progress among their pupils. While the children
absorbs information, but one understands the ins and
may have happened to pick up some elements of
outs of a situation; reality dominates. A simple tourist
knowledge, the teachers noticed that for all classes
residing in Libya would have a better understanding
there were increasing difficulties in expression,
of the event.
memorization, concentration, and voluntary attention.
A teacher visiting a commercial farm quickly
Yet, studies seemed to show progress
comprehends that a bull is a dangerous
among children who watched Sesame
animal, that a storm can cause
Street. One review of the study showed
irreparable damage, that a single
that the children involved had been
tractor tire costs a fortune, that
“You cannot use
taken in hand by the adults in
work is tiring, that real life on a
charge of them, who had prepared
farm has nothing to do with the
television shows and tape
them, had watched the program
unreal considerations that can be
cassettes or astroturf or
with them, and had checked their
found in textbooks on the need
learning before the coming of
for the farmers to restructure
astrodomes to foster the
the researchers. It was the adult
their operations, to adapt to
healthy, natural gymnastics
intervention and not the program
the market, to invest in more
itself that had enabled these
profitable techniques…
and poetry right reason
children to learn something.
One day I watched a
presupposes. Nor, as I
A study by Professor Marcel
documentary on the Caucasus
Rufo
established a link between
produced by Knowledge of
have said, is it just the bad
children’s hyperactivity and
the World in a movie theater.
contents of the media:
television: when the results
I was very interested in the
were graphed, an almost perfect
subject and had gone to the
We don't need bigger
correlation was found between
show intending to learn. During
an increase in hyperactivity and
the film I took notes, and a few
and better nature-shows
time spent watching television.
months later when I reread them
by Jacques Cousteau. It
Professor Rufo teaches Child
I was surprised to see that I
Psychology at the University of
had completely forgotten some
is the artificiality of the
Marseille, and his test involved
astonishing scenes. I had notably
television itself even when
hundreds of children, evaluating
forgotten a scene in which a
their ability to memorize and to
priest of the Armenian Orthodox
the material is supposed to
associate images, ideas and words
Church was sacrificing birds: he
be real. A sixty foot whale
(the Ruz test). This study showed
decapitated the birds brought to
a diminution of the intellectual
him by the faithful and stacked
splashing across nineteen
faculties of the children and
them in a pile next to him. From
inches of your living-room
adolescents questioned, linked
this I concluded that a television
to time spent in front of the little
viewer, despite the best of
while you sip your Cocascreen.
intentions, could only grasp and
Cola is not reality.”–John
An American study informs us
retain information with difficulty.
that 15 million American children
With a DVD or video, he can
Senior, The Restoration of
are taking high dosages of drugs
pause at an image, go backwards,
prescribed for neuropsychiatric
rewatch the film or program and
Christian Culture
disorders: stimulants to combat
notice and remember what had
difficulty concentrating (“attention
escaped him the first time. Television
deficit”) and antidepressants to combat
and the cinema do not allow this kind
manic depression. The study did not bear
of review.
upon the causes of these disorders, but on parents’
What should we think of parents who say that
rights to refuse the medications; it is highly likely that
their child learned to read by watching television? I
these disorders have a direct link with television as
was able to ascertain that the claim was false in the
direct cause or as an aggravating factor.
cases announced in my circle. Either the parents
deliberately lie, or else they are mistaken.
During the sixties, the program Sesame Street was
A fuller explanation of the physical causes for this “defocused fixation” is found in one
very successful in the United States. It was both an
of the books referenced by the author: Marie Winn’s The Plug-in Drug (1977; Penguin
educational and fun program whose purpose was to
Books, 2002), p.27.–Tr.
American social critic, lecturer, and author, who wrote several best-selling non-fiction
help the children of less-advantaged backgrounds fill
works, including The Hidden Persuaders (1957).–Tr.
in their gaps before going to school.
1

2

The ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Michael Davies

35

POPE PAUL’S
NEW MASS
Recently reprinted by Angelus Press, Pope
Paul’s New Mass is the famous critique by
Michael Davies of the new liturgy. As a
sample, and to demonstrate its relevance
still today, we here reproduce Chapter Four,
entitled “A Successful Revolution.”

It was then that falsehood came into our Russian land. The
great misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss
of faith in the value of personal opinions. People felt that it
was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they
must all sing the same tune in chorus, and live by other
people’s notions, the notions which were being crammed
down everybody’s throat.
—Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago, Chapter 13

There was definitely no widespread desire for
liturgical change in English-speaking countries
before Vatican II among the laity, the parish clergy,
or the bishops. Even where desire for change did
exist it rarely envisaged more than a greater use
of the vernacular. Those who advocated change

were looked upon as cranks by most of the faithful.
Writing in 1964, Evelyn Waugh commented on
the fact that proponents of the changes then being
imposed had been “with us in parts of the United
States and northern Europe for a generation. We
had looked upon them as harmless cranks who were
attempting to devise a charade of second-century
habits. We had confidence in the abiding Romanità
of our Church. Suddenly we find the cranks in
authority.”1 The late Archbishop Paul Hallinan
of Atlanta also noted that: “We have come to the
end of an era. What used to be uncharitably called
the ‘way out ideas’ of the ‘way-out litniks’ are now
universal Church law.”2
In an editorial on page six of the Spring 1962
issue of Catholic Truth, official journal of the Catholic
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The ANgeLus • January 2010

36
Truth Society, its editor, Fr. Francis J. Ripley, made
the following remarks:
We firmly believe that most priests in this country will
have sighed with relief when they read the Apostolic
Constitution Veterum Sapientia issued by the Pope on 22
February forbidding attempts to supplant Latin as the
language of the Church.
In its editorial comment, The Tablet wrote “some
sentences in this document seem to indicate that even
the campaign for the vernacular is to be considered
over, at any rate as far as Ecclesia Docens* is concerned;
that Roma locuta est causa finita est **.” This is one of the
revolutions that will not be made by a militant minority.
For the past few years the vernacularists have been
extraordinarily vocal in certain sections of the Catholic
press. Even when the late Pope said that there are many
and grave reasons for retaining Latin in the Mass, they
did not cease to continue their agitation.
As I travelled round the country coming into contact
with hundreds of priests from every diocese, I formed
the impression that a generous estimate of the strength
of the vernacularists amongst the clergy would be not
more than one in ten. This authoritative document
from the Holy Father demonstrates how superficial and
misleading the arguments against the use of Latin are.
We hope and pray that the corpse of vernacularism will
not be disturbed.

The proportion of laity wishing for a vernacular
liturgy was probably far smaller than among the
clergy. This is admitted by Fr. Clifford Howell, a
leading member of the small clique of English clerics
which has succeeded in imposing its foibles upon
the entire Church in that country. According to
Father Howell, the lack of interest in the vernacular
among the laity derives from their ignorance:
In this country the people at large have not desired
to have English in the liturgy because our liturgical
movement has lagged far behind that of the Continent.
Until very recently only a small minority knew enough
about liturgy to realise that full, active, and intelligent
participation in it cannot be attained by the use of Latin
alone.3

If this is the case it seems strange that the
Fathers of Vatican II did not order the use of the
vernacular in at least certain parts of the Mass in
order to make such participation possible. Father
Howell himself admits that Vatican II gave no such
order: “The Council has granted powers to the
various hierarchies to permit the introduction of the
mother tongue within certain limits, but has by no
means ordered them to do so.”4
Writing in The Universe of 28 March 1969,
Douglas Woodruff summarised the attitude of the
faithful to the liturgy: “To judge by The Universe
editor’s mailbag, the great majority of the readers
of The Universe have felt no need for liturgical
*
**

The Teaching Church.
Rome has spoken, the matter is closed.

THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

experiments, and were deeply happy in the Church
as She was up to three or four years ago.”
The truth is that not the least account was ever
taken of whether or not the laity wanted change.
Clerical bureaucrats had evolved a theory of what
the liturgy ought to be like and this was what it was
going to be like, even if it emptied the churches.
Dom Gregory Murray typified the attitude of these
bureaucrats perfectly when he wrote in The Tablet:
“The plea that the laity as a body do not want
liturgical change, whether in rite or in language, is, I
submit, quite beside the point.” He insisted that it is
“not a question of what people want; it is a question
of what is good for them.”5
Father Bouyer had been one of the most
enthusiastic members of the liturgical movement
before the Council. He is now one of the most
severe critics of the post-conciliar revolution. He has
noted that there is a qualification to the frequently
reiterated claim that “It is now the laity’s time to
speak.” The qualification, Father Bouyer explains,
is that if the laity speak it is on “condition that they
keep docilely repeating what they are told. If they
protest and want, for example, to retain at least the
familiar chants of the ordinary of the Mass in Latin,
they are told that their protest is worthless. They
are not ‘trained’. There is no reason to take account
of what they say! (Which is all the more curious
since they are asking precisely for what the Council
recommended.)”6
Apologists for the reform claim that it has been
a pastoral success because the majority of those
who assisted at Mass before the Council still do so.
On the contrary, as the next chapter will show, the
reform has been a pastoral disaster and in some
countries less than half of those who assisted at Mass
before the reform now do so. However, in Englishspeaking countries active opponents of the reform
have been in a small minority when compared
to the large numbers who still attend their parish
churches on Sundays, stand up when told, sit down
when told, and read whatever their missalettes tell
them to read.
Many of those who are heart-broken at the
destruction of the Roman Rite, and the banality of
what has replaced it, are scandalised at the spectacle
of so many of their fellow Catholics accepting the
reforms without complaint, if without enthusiasm.
Those who are scandalised by such a situation
are clearly unfamiliar with the manner in which
revolutionaries operate. Revolutionaries do not
require massive support to succeed, they require
only minimal opposition. This is particularly true
of those who are able to impose a revolution from
a position of legitimate authority—an apparent
paradox but a fact of contemporary society. No
objective observer could deny that there has been
a revolutionary change in accepted standards of

37
public morality during the past two decades. Let
one example suffice. Twenty years ago a doctor who
performed an abortion would have been prosecuted
by the State, apart from very rare cases where it
was considered necessary to save the life of the
mother. Now, Catholic doctors who are unwilling to
perform abortions are finding that there is no future
for them in the public health service. This is a truly
revolutionary turn-about and indicates that respect
for the sanctity of life, which once characterised
the average non-Catholic citizen, no longer exists.
There are many non-Catholics who do not approve
of this development, many who are worried about
it, but very few who are prepared to take an active
part in the pro-life movement. Sadly, the number of
Catholics prepared to take an active part in the prolife campaign is also relatively small, which shows
the extent to which religious minorities are affected
by the prevailing standards in society.
The Catholic faithful provide the ideal
subject for a revolution imposed from above. In
his monumental work, The Great Terror, Robert
Conquest notes: “It was one of Stalin’s most constant
principles that most minds are not critical.”7 The
average man in the street or the pew does not think
deeply about such matters as politics or religion. The
percentage of adults who have actually read a book
on these subjects is very small indeed. Such people
are thus very susceptible to propaganda emanating
from an accepted authority or those they consider to
be experts. Thus, when the English bishops initiated
their campaign to impose Communion in the hand
upon the faithful, an editorial in Britain’s largestcirculation Catholic paper, The Universe, told its
readers: “Pope Paul has given permission for Holy
Communion in the hand because he believes, as do
the bishops, that it will emphasise the sacred nature
of the communicant as a temple of the Holy Spirit,
as well as the sacred nature of the Eucharist as the
Body and Blood of Our Lord.”8
The ordinary reader would not ask: “Is this
true?” He would assume that it was true because it
had appeared in The Universe and this presumption
would be reinforced when he heard the same
statement from his pulpit. The statement, in fact,
is false. Pope Paul had urged Catholics to retain
the traditional manner of reception on the tongue.
But effective propaganda is not based on truth, it
is based upon what the majority of those it seeks to
influence can be made to believe. The propaganda
for the liturgical reform had the added advantage
of an habitually docile audience. Writing in the
Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Fr. Rawley Myers
observed:
Also we must remember that parishioners were never
asked at all about what they might like or if they were
satisfied with most of the old ways, and when changes
were handed down from on high don’t feel involved.

They tolerate these things mostly because they think
the clergy want them, and many were brought up to go
along with the clergy.9

All that was needed to initiate a successful
liturgical revolution within the English-speaking
countries was that the innovations should be
authorised by the Pope. The bishops proved to have
a totally bureaucratic mentality and passed on any
directives they received without the least thought as
to whether they were beneficial or harmful. Many
of the parish clergy didn’t like the changes, but the
idea of questioning anything ordered by the bishop
didn’t occur to them. And as for the laity, well, their
duty was to accept what their parish priest told them
to accept.
These remarks are not intended to be
patronising or even critical, at least where the
parish clergy and the laity are concerned. They are
statements about the manner in which Catholics
thought and behaved at the close of Vatican II.
There was a great deal to be said in favour of
docility; a long line of prudent and holy popes
stretching back for generations had given the
impression that Catholics could and should have
absolute confidence in anything coming from Rome.
The situation of Catholics as a minority in Englishspeaking countries implanted a special sense of
loyalty to the clergy and to the Holy See, there was
a natural closing of ranks and reluctance to “rock
the boat”. It is not surprising that there was so little
opposition to the reforms; it is surprising that there
was so much.
It must be stressed at this point that the
phenomenon of large-scale public dissent from
official teaching had not then manifested itself. As
the next chapter will show, the liturgical reform
was instrumental in destroying the stability of
Catholicism. The ordinary Catholic had accepted
that the Church was right on such matters as
contraception (even if he did not practice Her
teaching) because he saw the Church as the stable,
unchanging, inerrant rock upon which his life was
based. In most cases the only contact the ordinary
Catholic had with the Church was at Sunday Mass.
Sunday Mass was always the same, the Church
was always the same. Then, suddenly, the stability
vanished. About the only thing you could be sure
of at Mass on Sunday was that something would be
different from the week before. The psychological
impact of such a break with tradition should have
been foreseen: it wasn’t, at least not by the mainly
orthodox bishops who imposed the changes. The
liturgical reform thus prepared the ground for the
disintegration of Catholic life which followed so
soon afterwards.
The imposition of the new liturgy was
accomplished by a sustained barrage of propaganda
from the pulpit and Catholic press. The faithful were
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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

38
told that these changes were for their good and for
the good of the Church; that they would welcome
and enjoy them; that, in fact, they had been
clamoring for them for decades; and that, to clinch
the matter, the unquestioning acceptance of these
changes would be the acid test of their loyalty to
the Pope. The minority of Catholics, often converts,
who recognised the dangers implicit in the changes,
had no opportunity of presenting their case. A few
letters did get into the Catholic and secular press,
but their effect, in comparison with the sustained
barrage of propaganda from the official media,
the pulpit in particular, was minimal. The average
reaction was: “Father says it’s good for me so it must
be good for me.” It is a fundamental axiom of the
advertising world that if you tell people they enjoy
something often enough, they will enjoy it—and
now there is certainly a large proportion of Massgoers who have convinced themselves that they do
like the changes and would certainly object to any
attempt to reverse the process. Thus there is a ready
audience for the type of propaganda churned out
to justify Communion in the hand: that it is more
mature and adult, in keeping with the dignity of
modern man.
It is also important to stress the effect of
introducing the revolution by stages. This was
precisely the policy pursued by Cranmer, who, at
the beginning of his liturgical revolution, avoided
any drastic changes “which would needlessly
provoke the conservatives and stiffen the attitude of
that large class of men who, rightly handled, could
be brought to acquiesce in ambiguity and interim
measures”.10
The shallowness of the propaganda intended
to induce the Catholic people to accept or at least
not to resist change was obvious to the discerning
layman from the very beginning. Writing in The
Tablet in March 1966, Christopher Sykes, the
biographer of Evelyn Waugh, observed:
The average Catholic layman is most aware of
the Aggiornamento movement in the Church by the
experience of going to church and attending Mass in
the new liturgy. We love it; we are deeply grateful for it;
we have never had it so good; so we are repeatedly told.
Those who don’t like it are a small unintelligent minority
who would cling to anything, good or bad, just because it
happened to be old. We are repeatedly told this too. We
are also told by many of our clergy that we were most
dissatisfied with the Mass as it was; that when attending
it we paid no heed to its significance but, on the contrary,
regarded it as the priest’s business and nothing to do with
us laymen, to whom it was merely a meaningless gabble
in a language we particularly disliked. We were all very
happy, so we are told, to have done with the old Mass.
The propaganda in favour of the new rite, which
I have not caricatured above, strikes me as being
particularly weak in respect of the alleged general
dislike of Catholics for the former rite. It is weak as a
THE ANGELUS • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

propaganda point, because the same clergy told us for
years, certainly since I can remember first hearing a
sermon or a religious instruction, that the Mass bound
us into a fellowship because [doctrine apart] love of
the Mass was an emotion which we shared….[The
vernacular] would weaken that majestic unity of the
Church reflected in its ceremony. We were told that such
a custom would offend far more people than it would
please, and do far more harm than good. When the same
people turn round and congratulate us on having got rid
of the bad old liturgy, and promise us more vernacular
and less and less of the Mass as we were said to love it,
what are we to believe? Were they consciously talking
nonsense all those years or are they really sincere in their
criticisms [which sometimes amount to denigrations]
today? Either way, the clergy who indulge in this
propaganda are weakening their authority in the minds
of people who can remember.11

Sadly, very few people were as discerning as Mr.
Sykes. I recollect, to my shame, travelling to another
parish for Mass on these early Sundays because
in my retrograde parish there was no vernacular,
no offertory procession, and no Mass facing the
people. My parish priest had failed to “keep up
with the times” and, I felt, keeping up with the
times was a top priority. There is nothing surprising
about my attitude. My only source of information
was the Catholic press, and the Catholic press was
united in extolling the merits of the innovations.
These innovations were endorsed by our bishops,
originated with a General Council, and came
with the authority of the Pope. It would, in fact,
have been presumptuous of me to question them
in any way. I wonder how many readers actually
felt uneasy at that time, 1964, ’65, and ’66? I am
sure that there were few who spoke out against the
changes. It needs to be stressed again and again
that docility to legitimate authority was the most
notable characteristic of English-speaking Catholics
in those days. It still persists among many orthodox
Catholics today. They will accept changes they
detest without active opposition simply because they
would not oppose their parish priest, let alone the
Pope.
Added to this attitude of docility is the fact that
the vast majority of ordinary parishioners were not
and are not “active” parishioners in the sense the
term is used today. The average Catholic would
assist at Mass on Sundays, send his children to
Catholic schools, give money for special collections,
and attend parish fund-raising functions (but not
help to organise them). Apart from this, his life did
not differ significantly from that of his non-Catholic
neighbours. This is a subject which will be examined
in detail in the next chapter, where it will be shown
that one of the great psychological blunders of
the Conciliar Church is the attempt to turn every
parishioner into an activist.

39
Thus, there was no more chance of the ordinary
parishioner’s taking an active part for or against
liturgical changes than there was of his playing an
active role in his political party or trade union. He
voted at elections, he paid his union dues—and that
was that. The number of Catholics who have been
prepared to fight for the traditional liturgy is small,
but understandably small. The same can be said of
Catholics prepared to fight for orthodox catechetics,
a point which conservative detractors of the
traditionalist movement conveniently overlook.
On the other hand, the number of Catholics who
have displayed any active support for the changes is
infinitesimal. Liberals are acting dishonestly when
they interpret attendance at Mass as a vote in favour
of the changes. Most of those still attending Mass
would have been attending anyway. The reality
of the situation is that, following the Liturgical
Revolution, millions have stopped assisting at Mass
throughout the English-speaking world.
Opposition to the reforms began to arise when it
became obvious that the pastoral benefits which had
been confidently prophesied, did not materialise.
The police did not need to be called to Catholic
churches each Sunday to hold back the hordes of
lapsed Catholics whose faith had been rekindled
at the prospect of saying the Confiteor in English.
The initial interest, which anything new is bound to
evoke, soon began to wear off. English in the liturgy
became a matter of routine and the liturgy began
to appear banal. It eventually became clear to me
that the changes had been detrimental. One day at
school I asked my eleven-year-old pupils to write an
essay on the changes in the Mass, without indicating
my own preference in any way. Almost all preferred
the Latin Mass—and gave sound reasons for their
preference. I then joined the Latin Mass Society. I
am sure that like most of those joining at the time
this was for aesthetic reasons. The innovations were
affecting the ethos of the Mass. We did not see them
as undermining Catholic Eucharistic teaching.
Then, suspect translations began to appear.
This immediately added a doctrinal dimension
to the reform. The direction in which those who
had taken control of the implementation of the
reform wished the liturgy to move was clear. There
was to be a playing down of all those aspects of
the Mass which were unacceptable to Protestants.
Prayers referring to the Real Presence or sacrifice
would be considerably toned down—this was made
particularly clear with the publication of the ICEL
translation of the Canon in 1969. I well remember
my own priest, Fr. Desmond Coffey, listing its
serious omissions, mistranslations, distortions,
and outright heresies. But, by the time this Canon
appeared, there had been so many changes, clergy
and people had become so used to accepting them,
that this additional change was accepted with very

little protest. The pattern of compromise described
in Chapter XVI of Cranmer’s Godly Order had
become firmly established. Indeed, many clerics
like my own parish priest who did make a protest
were regarded as a nuisance by most of the clergy.
If the bishop had approved it why should they make
a fuss? And priests like Father Coffey, with a zeal
for orthodoxy, had an alternative to open conflict
with their bishops—they could continue to use the
Latin Canon. When the New Mass came they could
go on using the Roman Canon in Latin. They were
thus kept within the system and their presence did
far more to induce concerned laymen to accept the
changes than any amount of liberal propaganda.
All this was unwitting, of course. They imagined
that by remaining within their parish rather than
resigning, as Fr. Bryan Houghton did, they were
protecting the faithful from liberalism. All that they
were doing, in fact, was to postpone the liberal
triumph until they died or were forced to retire.
With hindsight it is easy to see what they should
have done. They should neither have resigned, as
did Father Houghton, nor remained to celebrate the
New Mass in as traditional a manner as possible,
as did Father Coffey. They should have emulated
Fr. Oswald Baker and simply carried on using the
Tridentine Mass. Had a sufficient number done this,
the revolution might have been thwarted. But all this
is written with hindsight. The revolution had been
won even before the New Mass was introduced.
It had, in fact, been won in 1967. It had been won
when the clergy first agreed to celebrate some
portions of the unchanged Mass in English and the
people were induced to accept this innovation. And,
in the circumstances prevailing in 1964-1965, it
would clearly have been unthinkable for the clergy
to so much as question this innovation.

Notes

The Tablet, 15 February 1964, p. 195.
Emmanuel, October 1975, p. 419.
3
The Liturgy and the Future (Worcestershire, 1966), p. 94.
4
Ibid., p. 102.
5
The Tablet, 14 March 1964, p. 303.
6
DC, p. 30.
7
The Great Terror (Pelican Edition), p. 740.
8
Editorial in the 21 May 1976 issue.
9
Homiletic and Pastoral Review, February 1978, p. 26.
10
ESR, p. 194.
11
The Tablet, 12 March 1966, p. 297.
1
2

Michael Davies is the author of numerous books and booklets about the traditional Latin Mass and the defense of Tradition, many of which are published
by Angelus Press. He died in 2005.

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THE ANGELUS • January 2010

40

F R .

p e t e r

R .

s c o t t

QuEStionS And AnSWErS

How can we deny that non-Catholic
Christian religions are means of
salvation, given that they have
(frequently) valid baptism?

The denomination of false religions as “means
of salvation” is a novelty unheard of before Vatican
II. The text that promotes this idea is the Decree on
Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, which states that
“the separated churches and communities as such…
have been by no means deprived of significance
and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the
Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as
means of salvation…” (§3). It is likewise stated in the
Vatican II document on the Church, Lumen Gentium,
that “many elements of sanctification and truth are
found outside its visible confines”–that is, outside of
the Catholic Church (§8).
There is, in both of these statements, a
deliberate ambiguity, depending on how we
understand that “means of salvation” or “elements
of sanctification and truth” could exist in a religious
group. It is certainly true that, in a purely material
sense, such means of salvation that require no
specific disposition on the part of the subject can
exist in the various Protestant denominations.
The valid administration of the sacrament of
baptism to children is such a case. If administered
with the correct matter and form and the intention
of doing what the Church does, it is valid and
confers grace, since the child who has not yet
attained the age of reason cannot place an obstacle
in the path of grace. However, it is in only a material
sense that this sacrament is administered by the
Protestant group. It does not belong to it, nor does
it follow at all that the false religious community
itself is a means of salvation. In effect, every valid
and fruitful baptism is a sacrament of the Catholic
Church and makes the baptized child a member of
the Catholic Church, as Pope Benedict XIV taught
quite explicitly in 1749: “He (i.e., a child) who
receives baptism validly from a heretic, in virtue
of this very fact is made a member of the Catholic
Church” (DS 2567). The pope goes on to state that
the child receives the infused virtue of Faith (that
is, the Catholic Faith), although the minister was a
heretic. Consequently, truly and formally speaking
the baptism is administered by the Catholic Church
although the child is not aware of it and the minister
denies it. It is only after having attained the age of
reason, and after having formally adhered to the
heretical or schismatic group, that the baptized child
leaves the Church. Although this is canonically

The ANgeLus • January 2010 www.angeluspress.org

presumed from the age of 14 years whenever a
person continues to participate in the religious
ceremonies of the sect, it is entirely possible that
a particular individual could be in invincible
ignorance even well after that age, and hence not
formally heretical or schismatic.
The question then arises as to those elements of
salvation that require the correct disposition of the
subject, such as the baptism of adults, or any other
of the sacraments that might be valid in these sects,
or concerning which the teachings of these sects
might contain certain elements of the truth. Again,
in a purely material sense, it can be said that these
sacraments or teachings can be given in a heretical
or schismatic church. However, they can only be
efficacious when there is invincible ignorance on the
part of the person who receives these sacraments
in this false religious environment. In such a case,
he does not voluntarily refuse to belong to the true
Church, but has an implicit desire of belonging
to it. It is consequently formally and properly to
the Catholic Church that these sacraments belong
and through the Catholic Church that they are
salutary, even if perchance they are sometimes
received materially speaking outside of her. An adult
validly and fruitfully baptized with such invincible
ignorance is in reality a member of the Catholic
Church, despite appearances to the contrary.
Not only does the Council of Florence teach
that heretics and schismatics cannot be saved
“unless before the end of life the same have been
added to the flock,” but also that “the unity of the
ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those
remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of
benefit for salvation” (Decree for the Jacobites, Dz.
714). The consequence is that anyone who is truly
and with pertinacity a member of a false religion,
explicitly refusing to be a member of the Catholic
Church, cannot possibly receive any means of
salvation nor any elements of sanctification from his
Protestant or schismatic sect. He might appear to
do so, and to go through the motions of receiving
means of salvation and elements of sanctification,
but this is only in a purely material, exterior sense,
and none of them will be of any profit to his soul,
as St. Paul says of the Holy Eucharist: “For he that
eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
judgment to himself” (I Cor. 11:28).
In such cases the sacraments are valid, but
not efficacious for salvation, on account of an
impediment placed by the subject who deliberately
refuses to submit to the true Church, her teaching,
and her authority. This teaching is very clear in the

41

Fathers of the Church, such as St. Augustine, who
has this to say:

contradicts the affirmation that the Catholic Church
is the unique possessor of the means of salvation, it
approaches heresy” (ibid.).

Q

The comparison of the Church with Paradise shows
us that men may indeed receive baptism outside her
pale, but that no one outside can either receive or retain
the salvation of eternal happiness. For, as the words
of the Scripture testify, the streams from the fountain
of Paradise flowed copiously even beyond its bounds.
Record is indeed made of their names; and through
what countries they flow, and that they are situated
beyond the limits of Paradise, is known to all; and yet
in Mesopotamia, and in Egypt, to which countries those
rivers extended, there is not found that blessedness of
life which is recorded in Paradise. Accordingly, although
the waters of Paradise are found beyond its boundaries,
yet its happiness is in Paradise alone. So, therefore, the
baptism of the Church may exist outside, but the gift of
the life of happiness is found alone within the Church,
which has been founded on a rock, which has received
the keys of binding and loosing….This indeed is true,
that “baptism is not unto salvation except within the
Catholic Church.” For in itself it can indeed exist outside
the Catholic Church as well; but there it is not unto
salvation, because there it does not work salvation; just
as that sweet savour of Christ is not unto salvation in
them that perish, though from a fault not in itself but in
them. (On Baptism against the Donatists)

Can one claim to be a phenomenologist
and still be a Catholic?

The term “phenomenology” is used to describe a
twentieth-century philosophy of personal experience
developed by Husserl. In an effort to escape from
all a priori presuppositions, it pretended that man
could know nothing beyond the inaccessible realm
of personal possible experience. It is consequently
essentially subjective, based upon the Cartesian
principle of universal doubt. It consequently denies
the reality of anything beyond personal experience–
that is, of objective reality, of essences or natures
of things in themselves, as something beyond the
observable, personally experienced phenomena.
Thus,

A

Pope St. Leo the Great also taught that baptism
received outside of the Church is fruitless.
For they who have received baptism from heretics are
to be confirmed by the imposition of hands with only
the invocation of the Holy Ghost, because they have
received the bare form of baptism without the power of
sanctification. (Letter CLIX)

The consequence of the fact that it is only
perchance, by invincible ignorance and lack of
pertinacity, that sacraments can be valid in such
communities is that no sacrament or means of
salvation can be said, properly speaking, to belong
to the false religious community. This what is St.
Augustine had to say against the heretics of his time,
called Donatists:
It [baptism] does not belong to you. That which is
yours are your bad sentiments and sacrilegious practices,
and that you have the impiety to separate yourselves
from us. (Quoted in From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy,
§28)

It is not only ambiguous, but misleading and
false to affirm that these communities have elements
of sanctification and means of salvation. Moreover,
such a statement leads inexorably to the denial of
the doctrine “Outside the Church, no salvation,”
nor can this statement be denied, sent by the four
bishops of the Society to all the cardinals in 2004:
“In the degree in which this assertion of the Council

with all beliefs placed in abeyance as a matter of
method, one can speak of “pure subjectivity,” or of “pure
experience.” It is a “radical” procedure because all natural
and traditional assumptions whether metaphysical or
theoretical have been suspended. (Concise Encyclopedia
of Western Philosophy, p.293)

The logical conclusion of such a philosophy
is obvious. It denies the natures of things, and
ultimately the nature of God Himself, reduced
to the level of a personal, subjective experience.
It denies all theology, which uses natural human
concepts on the natures of things to understand the
content of divine revelation, e.g., nature, substance,
accident. It denies also the very concept of a content
of divine revelation that must be accepted because
it is objectively true, without being experienced.
It is, consequently, a philosophy fundamentally
opposed to the Catholic Faith and unable to express
it. Ultimately, and in its logical conclusions, it is
incompatible with the Faith.
It is acknowledged that Pope John Paul II
embraced the phenomenologist way of thinking
in his 1967 book The Acting Person, although he has
since attempted to reconcile this with the Thomist
philosophical approach. This attempt to reunite all
philosophies, provided that they do not degenerate
into “widespread skepticism” in which “everything
is reduced to opinion” (§5), is contained in his 1998
encyclical Fides et Ratio. He there praises at length
the historical contributions of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
philosophy (§§43 & 44) and accepts the scholastic
principle that “philosophy verifies the human
capacity to know the truth” (§82), namely objective
truth. Furthermore, whilst not rejecting entirely pure
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42
phenomenology, he certainly points out its inherent
weakness: “A radically phenomenalist or relativist
philosophy would be ill-adapted to help in the
deeper exploration of the riches found in the word of
God” (§82).
In the same encyclical John Paul II further
goes on to point out the necessity of a metaphysics,
or a philosophy of being, denied as it is by
phenomenology (§83). However, one has every right
to wonder what he is talking about here. For he is
certainly not speaking of the necessity of a realistic
metaphysics, namely a philosophy of the nature of
things, as is Thomism. He uses the term metaphysical
in a much broader sense of transcending human
experience rather than of attaining to objective
reality, expressing
the need for a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical
range, capable, that is, of transcending empirical data
in order to attain something absolute, ultimate, and
foundational in its search for truth….Here I do not mean
to speak of metaphysics in the sense of a specific school or
a particular historical current of thought [i.e., Thomism].

For John Paul II this metaphysics is essentially
humanistic, and is related to the speculative
perception of such absolute and transcendent values
as the dignity of the human person, the rights of man
and his freedom:
Wherever men and women discover a call to the
absolute and transcendent, the metaphysical dimension
of reality opens up before them: in truth, in beauty, in
moral values, in other persons, in being itself, in God….
We cannot stop at experience alone; even if experience
does reveal the human being’s interiority and spirituality,
speculative thinking must penetrate to the spiritual core
and the ground from which it arises. (Ibid.)

The metaphysical for John Paul II is not being
in itself, as it is for the Thomist, but the values that

exist in the depth of man’s personal being (i.e., his
interiority and spirituality), which values certainly
are beyond the realm of sense experience (or pure
phenomena) but are personal to man. The term
“metaphysics” is consequently used to describe a
spiritual humanism, which is why for John Paul II
metaphysics is essential in the defense of human
dignity (ibid., §102) and dialogue (§104).
Although John Paul II has a profoundly
non-traditional view of metaphysics, and one
imbued with the subjective thought process of the
phenomenologist thinkers, so that values have
taken the place of natures or essences, it cannot be
considered to be in itself a denial of the Faith. It
remains, nevertheless, very dangerous for the Faith
on account of the practical denial of the importance
of a philosophy of essences. It would be a very easy
step from this to accept the modernist evolution of
dogmas that is the foundation of the denial of the
nature of grace, the sacraments, the Real Presence,
and so many other Catholic doctrines.
How different was the approach of Pope Leo XIII
in 1879 (Aeterni Patris) and St. Pius X who “prescribed”
Thomistic Philosophy, for
the principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas
Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed,
because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge
of creation as is most congruent with the Faith; of refuting
all the errors of all the ages, and of enabling man to
distinguish clearly what things are to be attributed to God
and to God alone. (Doctoris Angelici)
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 BESt of

QuEStionS And AnSWErS
The book our readers wanted. The BEST questions and the BEST
answers of 30 years of The Angelus are printed in this hardback edition.
This will be a family’s heirloom reference book for everyday Catholic
living to match the Catholic Faith we believe and the Latin Mass we
attend. Over 300 answers classified under 30 subtitles, authored by
Frs. Pulvermacher, Laisney, Doran, Boyle, and Scott:
Marriage, Parenting, Family Life and Rearing Children Science and
Medical Matters Lives After Death Catholic Citizenship Catholic
Vocabulary Church Practices and Customs Canon Law The Papacy
and the Church Teachings Bible and Biblical Matters Trinity, Jesus
Christ, Virgin Mary, Angels, and Saints Mass and the Liturgy SSPX and
the Crisis Religious Orders and Lives

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344pp. Hardcover. STK# 8343✱ $23.95

LEttEr tO tHE EDItOr

43

Dear Editor,
The following I only bring to your attention because there has been animated discussion/
concern here by some members of the parish and by students of the school on the article
by Michael Rayes in the November issue of The Angelus. The main concern involves his
categorical declaration forbidding teenage boys to be alone with sisters, cousins, etc. We
know well that there can be problems, exacerbated by our pornographic age, even in
good Catholic homes; however, the reaction to such a declaration was one of revulsion at
the thought and at the imprudence of mentioning such a thing in The Angelus. While there
certainly should be caution in this domain and removal of all naiveté, does his prohibition
have the backing of traditional ethics and moral theology?
Please accept these comments coming from one who has nothing but the greatest respect
for The Angelus, its important apostolate, and, in particular, the fine work that you have
been doing. I look forward to hearing your comments.
Oremus pro invicem.
In Christ the King,
(A priest of the SSPX in the US district)

answer from the Editor
Dear Father,
Thank you for your letter. I think that the view of Michael Rayes does not reflect a Catholic idea of the
family.
An explanation (but not justification) may be that the author has been teaching in public school for many
years. Influenced by this environment, his view seems to be very legalistic in the sense that avoiding
legal trouble is his fi rst concern.
While the author’s view makes you understand the possible legal problems to which persons in an official
position are subject today, I do not think that it can be the last word in family matters. We expect from
the family–before any other social institution–the restoration of culture and the training of responsible
social behavior. Where should it be conveyed to young people if not in the family? Where should virtue
towards others be formed if not fi rst in the family?
To be more specific, I would like to point out that it has been rightly said that often the proper attitude
towards young people of the other sex is due fi rstly to the example of the parents, and their faithfulness
and loyalty in difficult times. Again: the training in the family is the main cause of a sound attitude in
young people, especially given the threat of a society in dissolution, moving towards paganism.
If you ask, however, about the relevance of traditional ethics or moral theology, I do not think that this
question is directly covered. It seems to me that we are confronted here with a question of prudence that
will normally fi nd–I am happy to say–a different answer than the rule given by Mr. Rayes.
Thank you and God bless.
Fr. M. Heggenberger, Editor
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgeLus • January 2010

A Song for Nagasaki
Fr. Paul Glynn, S.M.
The story of Takashi Nagai, a pioneer in radiology research and convert to the Catholic Faith, and his
remarkable spiritual journey from Shintoism to atheism to Catholicism. After the atomic bombing of
Nagasaki, Nagai threw himself into service to the countless victims, even though it meant deadly exposure
to the radiation which eventually would cause his own death. Nagai became a highly revered man and
is considered a saint by many Japanese people.
275pp. Softcover. STK# 8430 $16.95

Swords Around the Cross

The Nine Years War: Ireland’s Defense of Faith and Fatherland, 1594–1603
Timothy T. O'Donnell
Swords Around the Cross presents one of the few full-length treatments of the heroic struggle of the
Irish clansmen in their effort to defend their faith and country against English encroachment and conquest in the sixteenth century. This book has infuriated establishment academics for its honest and
thorough treatment of the Irish past. In so doing, the image of a “golden age” under Elizabeth I is dealt
a serious blow.
311pp. Softcover. STK# 8440 $15.00

The Battleground

Syria and Palestine: The Seed Plot of Religion
Hilaire Belloc
In this religious-biblical oriented history, Belloc provides a full and fair treatment of the ancient Jews and
other Middle Eastern cultures, and their impact in history and in today’s world. He affirms a special divine
design in the story of Syria and particularly of Israel, reaching a climax in the event of the Crucifixion
of Christ. His famous motto, “Europe is the Faith, the Faith is Europe” has been interpreted as a form
of religious ethnocentrism. But he was making the point that what we regard as the greatest cultural,
political and artistic achievements of Western civilization stem from the old creed. Without the one, the
other would not exist.
330pp. Softcover. STK# 8425 $17.95

1917: Red Banners, White Mantle
Warren H. Carroll
A captivating account that narrates, month by month, the events of 1917, Red Banners, White Mantle
is popular Catholic history at its finest. The drama of the Great War and the Russian Revolution are
juxtaposed with the spiritual dimension of the age: the diabolism of Rasputin, the Apparition of the
Virgin at Fatima, the malignancy of Lenin, the saintly courage of (the now blessed) Charles of Austria.
Few standard histories have ever given such a high degree of consideration to the supernatural and
the Christian interpretation of history as does 1917.
137pp. Softcover. STK# 6403 $12.00

A Shepherd in Combat Boots
William L. Maher
The hit biography of Kansas boy Fr. Emil Kapaun, chaplain in the Korean Conflict, who became a POW
and set an extraordinary example for American captives. When starving, he found food. He defied prison
rules and prayed with the captives. When Communist guards mocked his God, he publicly defended
Him. The Communists watched him die; however, they could not extinguish the memories of how he
served other prisoners recounted in this book. With photographs.
189pp. Softcover. Photographs. Index. STK# 8233 $17.95

Saint Fernando III
James Fitzhenry
Personally leading his armies into battle, he took back more territory from Islam than any other king in
history. First cousin of St. Louis IX of France, he died a saintly death in the year 1252. His incorrupt body
can still be seen in the Cathedral of Seville, and his feastday, May 30th, is a holy day of obligation in Spain.
336pp. Hardcover. STK# 8407 $22.00

Saint George: Knight of Lydda
Anthony Cooney
Anthony Cooney has re-examined the historical sources for the life of St. George, and has forged these
into a stirring and original historical novel. Here we rediscover St. George as Giorgios Theognosta, the
Roman cavalry officer from Lydda in Palestine, a Christian during the last days of the pagan Empire,
a brave man who stands up for his faith during the final great wave of persecution. The action-filled
narrative reveals much about the Christian Church of the third century, about life in the Roman army,
and about how extraordinary legends can arise through the affectionate exaggeration and symbolic
story-telling of a devoted scribe.
320pp. Softcover. STK# 8387 $24.95

Angels in Iron
Nicholas Prata
Their tiny island-fortress of Malta is all that stands between the armies of Suleiman and the very heart
of Christendom. What follows is a desperate struggle between East and West, Cross and Koran, faith and
despair. Angels in Iron is based on the actual events surrounding the Siege of Malta in 1565.
313pp. Softcover. STK# 8432 $16.95

The Conquest of New Spain
Bernal Díaz
A first-person account of the Spanish victory over the Aztecs. The landing, battles, civilization to a pagan
world....Diaz says that he and his soldiers gave the dignity of the sons of God to the Indians.
416pp. Softcover. STK# 8178✱ $16.00

El Cid: God’s Own Champion
James Fitzhenry
Known as El Cid, Rodrigo Diaz is a legendary hero who is directly relevant to modern times. Exiled by
his king, insulted and maligned by those who should have supported him, he selflessly fought against
seemingly insurmountable odds to save Christian Spain. An example of what can be achieved through
devotion to duty, prayer, and trust in God. For children 12 and up.
186pp. Softcover. 50+ illustrations & maps. STK# 8275 $15.95

Isabel of Spain: The Catholic Queen
Warren H. Carroll
One of the most powerful and compelling figures of all history, Isabel of Spain was a force with which
to be reckoned and should rightfully eclipse the better-known Elizabeth of England, both as a woman
and as a national leader. The first full scholarly biography of Queen Isabel in English for nearly seventy
five years, Isabel of Spain is extensively annotated and eminently readable.
393pp. Softcover. STK# 8439 $20.00

“...I had the good fortune to meet him several times and I found him
to be a man of deep faith and ready to embrace suffering. Ever since
the Council he put all his energy into the service of the Faith and left us
important publications especially on the sacred liturgy....”

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (2004)

ew g!
n
l
l
A ettin
s
typepdated
U out!
Lay over!
c
Hard

Pope Paul’s New Mass
Liturgical Revolution: Vol. III
Michael Davies
A veritable liturgical encyclopedia. Demolishes the case for the New
Mass and deepens your faith by presenting the teaching of the 22nd
session of the Council of Trent on the Sacrifice of the Mass.
Pope Paul’s New Mass is the third and final book of the Liturgical Revolution trilogy. It is the unparalleled history of how the New Mass was
devised, created, and implemented. Beyond this, a list of the manifold liturgical problems of the past generation is documented: from Mass facing
the people and revolutionary legislation to Communion in the hand and the
problem of the Offertory. For over thirty years this book has been considered the most thorough critique of the New Mass in the English language.
(From the back cover)

752pp. Color hardcover. STK# 8424✱ $28.95

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