FEBRUARY 2010

$4.45

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION

INSIDE

Pope Benedict XVI and Interreligious Dialogue

IN DEFENSE OF PHILOSOPHY

Authority of Vatican II Questioned PART 2

Introduction to Pope Paul’s New Mass

SOUNDTRACK OF TIME

TELEVISION: The Soul at Risk PART 3

The Pirate’s Prisoner PART 3

A Catholic Child’s Picture Dictionary
The book your children will grow up
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A Catholic child’s “pictionary” of 240 inviting illustrations and 420 childlike definitions of all interesting
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God’s Alphabet
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Illustrated Catechism
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A unique catechism, profusely illustrated in color. Eleven chapters covering
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In God’s Garden
Amy Steedman
Ideal to read to pre-schoolers and younger
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My Prayer Book
For children 3-5 years old. Includes beautiful
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My Path to Heaven
Fr. Geoffrey Bliss
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Dramatic and detailed etchings make this a very
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Children’s
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A beautiful book on Communion,
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205pp. Hardcover. STK# 6747. $15.00

The

“Instaurare omnia in Christo — To restore all things in Christ.”

ngelus
Volume XXXIII, Number 2

FEBRUARY 2010
English-language Editor and Publisher
for the International Society of Saint Pius X
PUBLISHER

Fr. Arnaud Rostand
EDITOR

Fr. Markus Heggenberger
ASSISTANT EDITOR

Mr. James Vogel

OPERATIONS MANAGER

Mr. Michael Sestak

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Miss Anne Stinnett

Contents
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

2 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Fr. Markus Heggenberger, SSPX

3 POPE BENEDICT XVI AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

6 VALIDITY IS NOT ENOUGH PART 2
Fr. Scott Gardner, SSPX
The requirements for a
valid ordination and the
warning signs which
the Church has posted
in order to screen
out men who, as sad
experience has shown,
will be unlikely to
become good priests.

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Mr. Simon Townshend

COMPTROLLER

Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA
CUSTOMER SERVICE

Mr. John Rydholm
Miss Rebecca Heatwole
Miss Anne Craig

SHIPPING AND HANDLING

Mr. Jon Rydholm

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not enough. It is necessary to spread
them as far as possible that they may
be read by all, and especially by
those whom Christian charity demands we should tear away from the
poisonous sources of evil literature.”
–Pope St. Pius X

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11 SOUNDTRACK OF TIME
Dr. Andrew Childs

16 IN DEFENSE OF PHILOSOPHY
Dr. Peter Chojnowski

21 THE PIRATE’S PRISONER PART 3
Fr. Joseph Spillmann, S.J.

27 TELEVISION: THE SOUL AT RISK PART 3
Isabelle Doré

31 THE AUTHORITY OF VATICAN II QUESTIONED PART 2
Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, SSPX

33 INTRODUCTION TO POPE
PAUL’S NEW MASS
Leo Darroch

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36 CHURCH AND WORLD

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42 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published monthly
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ON OUR COVER: Sandro Botticelli’s St. Augustine (1480).

Archbishop Lefebvre
explains why
obedience is not
owed to authorities
in the measure that
they wish to impose
the Council and the
errors of liberalism
and modernism that it
conveys.

2

Letter
from
the
Editor

For many Catholics, the Catholic world and the
Catholic Church reach the height of success when a
Catholic politician speaks out against some violation
of the Ten Commandments or when a public person
expresses his opinion that the Catholic Church is an
institution which matters in society, even to Protestants.
From this perspective, John F. Kennedy and Cardinal
Spellman marked an important achievement of the
Catholic Church; for the purpose of illustration,
Bishop Fulton Sheen may be named as well. His name
is synonymous with influence and recognition of the
Catholic Church in American public life.
Bishop Sheen was for many a typical representative
of the Church of Rome, perhaps the one they knew
most intimately. But his public appearances show
the dangers and limitations of the influence which
the Church may enjoy in public life. For 20 years he
hosted the night-time radio program The Catholic Hour
(1930-50) before moving to television and presenting
Life Is Worth Living (1951-57). Sheen’s final role was on
the syndicated Fulton Sheen Program (1961-68) with a
format very similar to the earlier Life Is Worth Living
show.
No doubt, Bishop Sheen produced many Catholic
shows with good and influential explanations of
Catholic doctrine. There were times when his show
had the highest popularity rating in the whole nation.
But there was also a time when his show became less
popular and when he tried to gain the favor of his
audience by adapting his views to a more modern
opinion. It is, in fact, striking to see such a giant of
Catholic media staggering so. Evidently, he was under
the influence of modern theology. Out of his loyalty to
Rome, he felt bound to embrace the modern theology
of Vatican II. His later shows leave the impression of
an astounding liberalism.
This proves better than anything else the doublesided nature of the influence of the Church on the
world: influence is measured in “popularity” and
oscillates between elitism and conformism. The first
is a feeling of superiority over others, the second an
attempt to be equal to others to the point of denying
one’s own convictions. In the case of Bishop Sheen, we
have a bishop who had every reason to feel superior to
many of his contemporaries, but he ultimately chose
to adapt to popular tastes. Probably he followed the
course of the “New Theology” of Vatican II. Towards
the end of his life, in his autobiography, he expressed
concern about the new Roman position of compromise
with the world, i.e., Vatican II…

THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

In the light of these events we well may ask if it
is sufficient to see the Catholic religion as a cultural
phenomenon, or whether there is even a certain
natural opposition between Catholicism and culture.
A question: Do we have to despise Bach,
Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci because their
works were a part of secular culture (rather than
religious in the proper sense)? The question becomes
even more acute if we exchange those names with
the following: The Beatles (for Bach), Le Corbusier
(for Michelangelo) and Picasso (for Leonardo). Those
are names in the same fields, but it is clear that the
individuals are representatives of a secular culture
which cannot be called and did not want to be
“Christian” any longer.
There have always been two tendencies in
Christianity: the first tendency perceives “the world”
as a danger and threat to Christian life. We may
represent this tendency by the Gospel of St. John and
the Imitation of Christ of Thomas à Kempis (which
is, after the Bible, the most widely read book in
Christianity). There are non-Catholic groups of this
tendency as well; they easily lose their balance and
end in heresy, for example the Manicheans.
The second tendency is that of “espousing the
world.” Examples of this tendency are Catholic
liberalism (importing the ideas of the Protestant liberal
school into the Catholic Church) and modernism,
especially important today, as modernism is at the
bottom of the actual crisis in the Catholic Church and
of “Vatican II theology.”
To give an answer to the question of whether
culture is a viable expression of the Catholic religion
we have to say: Culture is a branch which grows on
the tree of religion, but it is not the tree itself. Culture
can be destroyed or reduced to a primitive stage.
The Church of North Africa had a highly developed
culture at the time of St. Augustine, but was reduced
to a primitive stage because of the Vandals and the
Arabs.
But to reduce a culture to poverty does not
mean that the Catholic religion will be necessarily
destroyed. In the case of the Vandals and Arabs in
North Africa it was rather the other way around: The
Vandals (of the Arian religion) and the Arabs (of the
Islamic religion) expelled the Catholic religion and
therefore this province fell back into poverty…
A more recent example is the ruin of the Catholic
religion in the West, a kind of suicide or autodestruction. What follows is the ruin of Christian
culture. You may deplore modern art, architecture, or
music, but they seem finally to be nothing else than
a valid expression of the ruin of religion in the old
Christian countries. The death of Christian culture
follows the death of theology. Here lies the real
problem. Our society is at the crossroads of continuing
to be Christian or ceasing to be at all.
Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Markus Heggenberger

3

Pope Benedict XVI and
Interreligious Dialogue
R e v .

F r .

D o m i n i q u e

Does the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI
represent a change in interreligious dialogue? Is
there a rupture from John Paul II? Is this pope really
the mediator between the Homo Vaticanus and the
Homo Tridentinus? To answer these questions, we
need to look at the facts.
The very Church leader who endeavors to
promote unity in the world is far from uniting all
traditionalists. Some reproach him for pursuing the
work of destruction begun by John Paul II. Others
see in him a conservative who is connecting the new
era with the past of the Church.
As an example, regarding the way in which Pope
Benedict conceives and practices religious dialogue,
some theologians believe that he is blazing a new
path: the dialogue of gestures (e.g. the common
prayer of Assisi) is now replaced by an intellectual
confrontation, both vivid and difficult, which forces
thinkers to come out of the shade and to address
the heart of the problems. Hence, with the Rabbi
of Rome, we may wonder whether “with this pope,
dialogue has gone back 50 years in time.”

The Inheritance
of Pope John Paul II
The Vatican II Declaration Nostra Aetate, on
the Church and non-Christian religions, and the
magisterium of John Paul II had already given
the “theological” justifications for the overture

B o u r m a u d ,

S S P X

of Catholicism to other religions. The largely
mediatic pontificate of John Paul II contributed to
accelerate the movement towards a broad dialogue.
For instance, John Paul II turned the interreligious
meeting of Assisi into a true color advertisement of
a Catholic Church promoting the UN of religions.
Other gestures no less scandalous are along the
same lines of Assisi, like the visit of the pope to
the Great Synagogue of Rome (April 1986) and his
kissing the Koran (May 14, 1999). In so doing, the
representative of the Catholic Church, for the sake
of peace on earth, in the name of the rights of man
and of the liberty of conscience, pretended to show
the way to fanatic religious groups, hermetic to any
other religion, and to invite them in this pacific
approach. These deeds performed by the pope, with
political and democratic connotations, were in fact
inspired by a new dogma which runs implicitly in
Redemptor Hominis: every man, as soon as he accepts
his own humanity, is saved because “Humanity”—the
abstract universal entity—has been saved by Christ.

The Inheritance
of Pope Benedict XVI
Let us come to the new pope. First, as head of
the Vatican State, whose authority is being daily
corroded in the media before the constant assaults
from the enemy, Benedict XVI plays the card of
interreligious dialogue to promote the “common
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • February 2010

4
good” in States; that is, peace and liberty of
conscience, even if this must be done at the price
of the loss of souls in Catholic countries. The pope
goes to the battlefront to defend modern democracy,
founded on the Declaration of the Rights of Man—a
conception quite foreign to the Beatitudes—as
testified both by his debate with Juergen Habermas
in Munich on January 19, 2004, and by his discourse
to the UN on April 18, 2008. In the context of
a secular and pluralist society, he proposes a
consensus so as to obtain a universal recognition of
the Rights of Man.
But Pope Benedict is also a theologian and the
head of the Church. And, as such, there is room
for us to wonder whether he is, in these ideas, fully
the successor and heir to John Paul II. For this it is
good to examine the attitude of Pope Benedict with
regards to false religions. Let us limit ourselves to
Judaism and Islam.

Benedict XVI and Judaism
What are the facts? On August 19, 2005, at the
Synagogue of Cologne, the newly elected pope
declared his will to walk in the footsteps of his
predecessor in these terms: “The Catholic Church
is committed...to tolerance, respect, friendship and
peace between all peoples, cultures and religions.”
On October 26, 2005, on the occasion of the
40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, he affirmed:
As we look to the future, I express my hope that both
in theological dialogue and in everyday contacts and
collaboration, Christians and Jews will offer an ever
more compelling shared witness to the One God and
his commandments, the sanctity of life, the promotion
of human dignity, the rights of the family and the need
to build a world of justice, reconciliation and peace for
future generations.

To the Great Rabbi of Rome, he addresses these
words on January 16, 2006:
The Catholic Church is close and is a friend to you.
Yes, we love you and we cannot but love you, because of
the Fathers: through them you are very dear and beloved
brothers to us (cf. Rom. 11:28b).

Moreover, no one has forgotten that, in Feb­
ruary 2008, after the Motu Proprio “authorizing”
the Tridentine Mass, Pope Benedict transformed the
Good Friday prayer in the Missal. It used to evoke
the “perfidis Judaeis” (unbelieving Jews) and asked
that the veil blinding their heart be taken away from
them. From now on, the pope makes the liturgy say
the following: “May God Our Lord enlighten their
hearts and make them recognize in Jesus Christ the
Savior of all men.”
On May 9, 2009, Pope Benedict made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On Mount Nebo, he
spoke of his “desire to overcome all obstacles to
the reconciliation of Christians and Jews in mutual
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

respect and cooperation in the service of that peace
to which the word of God calls us!” To the Great
Rabbinate of Jerusalem, he confessed:
I assure you of my desire to deepen mutual understanding
and cooperation between the Holy See, the Chief
Rabbinate of Israel and Jewish people throughout
the world....Trust is undeniably an essential element
of effective dialogue...for a genuine and lasting
reconciliation....

Finally, on June 9, 2005, at the Vatican, he
addressed the International Jewish Committee on
Interreligious Consulations:
I am convinced that the “spiritual patrimony” treasured
by Christian and Jews is itself the source of the wisdom
and inspiration capable of guiding us toward “a future
of hope” in accordance with the divine plan (cf. Jer
29:11). At the same time, remembrance of the past...
must include a continued reflection on the profound
historical, moral and theological questions presented by
the experience of the Shoah.

Benedict XVI and Islam
For Islam, as for post-Messianic Judaism, we
shall let the facts speak for themselves.
On February 20, 2006, to the Moroccan
Ambassador, Pope Benedict addressed these words:
“to encourage peace and understanding between
peoples and people, it is urgently necessary that
religions and their symbols be respected.”
The media has largely covered the event of
September 12, 2006, at the Regensburg University.
On that day, the pope deplored forcefully any
violence committed for religious purposes: God is
the Word, the Logos, the first Reason. But reason
is opposed to violence and human passions. He
quoted particularly the Byzantine Emperor Manual
II Paleologus: “Show me just what Mohammed
brought that was new, and there you will find things
only evil and inhuman, such as his command to
spread by the sword the faith he preached.” What
great turmoil in the media! A few days after, during
the General Audience of September 20, the pope
explained himself regarding the Emperor’s quote:
My intention was quite different: starting with what
Manuel II subsequently said in a positive manner, with
very beautiful words, about rationality that must guide
us in the transmission of faith, I wanted to explain that
it is not religion and violence but rather religion and
reason that go together....I wished to invite [people] to
the dialogue of the Christian faith with the modern world
and to the dialogue of all the cultures and religions.

On Easter Vigil of 2008, Pope Benedict
performed another gesture which might be
troublesome for Islamo-Christian dialogue: he
baptized a convert from Islam to Catholicism,
Madgi Allam, who is very hostile to Islam.

5
On the other hand, in May of 2009, during his
visit to the Holy Land, the pope visited the Mosque
of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

To Expound Doctrine
for the Sake of Truth
The facts which are here recorded could have
been anticipated by anyone. On May 3, 2005, on
the occasion of his election, Pope Benedict XVI,
who could not have been unaware that his first
words would be looked upon as his profound
intentions for his future pontificate, declared: “The
Church desires to continue building bridges of
friendship with the faithful of all religions. Our
efforts to meet each other and to promote the
dialogue constitute a precious contribution to build
peace upon solid foundations.”
Dialogue in view of friendship; friendship in
view of peace in the framework of religious liberty:
this is the mindset of Pope Benedict. On August
20, 2005, he found himself at Cologne in his own
country and spoke his mind:
How many pages of history record battles and wars that
have been waged, with both sides invoking the Name
of God, as if fighting and killing the enemy could be
pleasing to him.…We must seek paths of reconciliation
and learn to live with respect for each other’s identity.
The defence of religious freedom, in this sense, is a
permanent imperative, and respect for minorities is a
clear sign of true civilization.

Respect for others, religious liberty, and
dialogue involve listening to each other, but, the
pope adds, it must always be in view of the truth.
Thus, during his apostolic journey to the US, on
April 17, 2008, in front of 200 representatives of
other religions, he declared:
The broader purpose of dialogue is to discover the
truth....Christianity proposes Jesus of Nazareth....It is he
whom we bring to the forum of interreligious dialogue....
the higher goal of interreligious dialogue requires a clear
exposition of our respective religious tenets.

But what truth are we talking about? This is
what he clarified on April 18, 2008, at the UN in
New York:
Dialogue should be recognized as the means by which
the various components of society can articulate their
point of view and build consensus around the truth
concerning particular values or goals. It pertains to
the nature of religions, freely practised, that they can
autonomously conduct a dialogue of thought and life....
Their task is to propose a vision of faith not in terms of
intolerance, discrimination and conflict, but in terms
of complete respect for truth, coexistence, rights, and
reconciliation.

The Pursuit of Dialogue
In the light of these deeds and words, we cannot
but recognize that Pope Benedict, a personalist
philosopher like John Paul II, and strongly involved
in the Conciliar revolution, is proving himself to be
his authentic successor in the principle of universal
salvation, in the minimal conditions of salvation, in
respect for other religions as such. In this, Benedict
XVI continues in the straight line of John Paul II.
Everything from his presence in synagogues and
mosques, to his meetings and his speeches make
of him the “impeccable” liberal portrait. This is
true to the point that, during his trip to Israel, the
friendly gesture of Pope Benedict towards Judaism
(he deposited a prayer in the Wailing Wall) became
at once a story in the Israeli newspapers, which used
his wording for their own purposes.
Is another person hidden behind the mediatic
portrait of the pope? Here is the whole question. It
seems that Pope Benedict may not be as monolithic
as John Paul II after all. Indeed, there are the
strange sounds of bells which do not sound in
unison with the Masonic hymn of fraternal charity.
In private, the pope recalls some hard truths
forgotten for centuries. During obscure colloquies,
he reminds us of the good accomplished by Pius
XII in favor of the persecuted Jews in Germany; he
declares that the first purpose of dialogue is to affirm
the Faith and that includes obviously the option of
converting the listener. He borrows harsh but true
words from the emperor who opposed the Muslim
wave; he baptizes a Muslim with great publicity.
It is not impossible that the pope might truly be a
Nicodemus faithful to Christ, but under cover of
night, and that he may be powerless and too scared
of the risks of schism in the Church to initiate an all
out public papal revolution.
Whatever the case may be, even in the most
favorable hypothesis, the words and deeds are
problematic. It is not the tiny signs of restoration
which will outweigh the interreligious scandal begun
by Vatican II, fortified by John Paul II and de facto
pursued by Pope Benedict on the whole. Before
the paradox inherent to interreligious dialogue,
which oscillates dangerously between syncretism
and proselytism, the distinction of “public versus
private person” will be of little help to surmount
the contradiction. We are dealing with a pope
who cleans up his stables by getting rid of the
ultra-heretical excesses, but nothing proves that
this changes in any way the profound nature of
interreligious dialogue.
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud has spent the past 25 years teaching at the Society
seminaries in America, Argentina, and Australia. He is presently stationed at
St. Vincent’s Priory, Kansas City, where he is in charge of the priests’ training
program. This article originally appeared in the January/February 2010 edition
of Fideliter (n. 193).
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • February 2010

6

PART 2
F r .

S c o t t

G a r d n e r ,

S S P X

Validity Is
Not Enough

The Vocation
and Suitability
of Candidates
for Holy Orders
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

In the previous installment, we discussed the difference
between the validity of a sacrament (whether it “worked” or not)
and its lawfulness (whether the sacrament, as given here and
now, is likely to be fruitful for souls according to the accumulated
prudence of the Church). Now it remains for us to apply the
general ideas of the validity and lawfulness of the sacraments to
the specific question of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. In this
section, we shall see the requirements for a valid ordination and
the warning signs which the Church has posted in order to screen
out men who, as sad experience has shown, will be unlikely to
become good priests.

7

Validity: Only the
Starting-Point
For an ordination to be valid on the part of the
one being ordained, it is necessary only that he be a
baptized male who has at least the habitual intention
of receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders.1 Of
course, this presupposes that the bishop conferring
the ordination is himself validly consecrated, that
he uses the essential form, and has the intention of
doing what the Church does. These are the only
requirements for a valid ordination; sometimes,
however, a particular valid ordination could indeed
be a bad idea. Stalin could have received Holy
Orders validly if he had so desired, and if he had
been able to find a bishop to ordain him.2

Lawfulness: The Warning Signs
For an ordination to be lawful, however, all of
the Church’s requirements must either be met or, at
the discretion of the legitimate authority, dispensed
for a greater good. The lawful ordinand must be
free from irregularities and impediments, and he
must possess all the positive qualities required by
the Church in order for the bishop to judge that
he has a Divine vocation. A detailed look at all of
these negative warning signs and positive qualities
will help us to see why so many modern traditional
ordinations simply do not meet the Church’s
criteria.

Irregularities:
Serious Dangers Ahead!
First, the ordinand must be free from any
irregularity. “Irregularity” is a technical term
which refers to certain disqualifications which the
Church imposes, either because of a defect on the
ordinand’s part or because of an offense which
he has committed. Irregularities are, of their very
nature, permanent. Unless dispensed by the proper
authority, they prevent a man from receiving orders
and prohibit him from exercising any orders he may
have already received–and any orders which he may
receive in the future. They are extremely serious
prohibitions, and, in order for an irregularity to be
legitimately dispensed, the positive qualities of the
ordinand in question must be very great.3
First among the irregularities arising from a
defect in the ordinand is illegitimacy. A man whose
parents were never married is not normally able
to be ordained. This may seem harsh to us today,
but consider that the priest must be a spiritual
father. Even though it is no fault of his, the young
man who has never experienced “normal” family
life will be hard pressed to act as a father himself,
especially if his own father has deserted the family.
Noble exceptions are found, but exceptions are only

recognized as exceptions because we perceive that
there is a rule to be followed.
Bodily and mental defects may also constitute
irregularities, depending on their severity. The
old manuals speak of men who are hunch-backed
or who have an uncorrected club foot or cleft
palate, but any bodily defect which may make the
future priest an object of ridicule or prevent him
physically from carrying out the priesthood in a
dignified and worthy manner will ordinarily prevent
his ordination. Blindness or deafness would also
normally hinder the exercise of the priesthood in a
serious way.
Mental defects, ranging from an inability to
complete the normal studies, to instability, to
outright mental illness, make a man irregular
for an even greater reason. The powers of the
priesthood are truly awesome, and they must
not be allowed to be exercised by anyone who
cannot do so competently and sanely. Under the
same general heading, epilepsy has also prevented
candidates from seeking ordination because of the
unpredictable nature of the attacks and the danger
that the Blessed Sacrament might be endangered.
While it is possible that a widower can become
a holy and edifying priest, the fact of having been
married more than once makes a man irregular for
Holy Orders. To understand this, it is helpful to
note that second marriages, while allowed by the
Church, have always been considered exceptional.4
The Church’s ideal for future priests is virginity, in
perfect imitation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Men who
are not virgins may certainly be ordained, but men
who have been married more than once are held
to be unsuitable for the priesthood because of the
implication of sensuality.
Another of the Church’s disqualifications for
Holy Orders is known as “infamy of law.” This
means that the ordinand has officially lost his good
reputation, and he, therefore, has a bad reputation,
by the law itself. People only become “infamous at
law” by breaking certain grave Church laws in a
public way. As an example, anyone who commits
sexual sins with anyone under the age of sixteen
(of either gender) incurs this infamy,5 but there are
many other examples.
The last of the irregularities on account of
defects is the one arising from what is called the
“defect of leniency.” The priest is the minister of
Christ’s mercy, and it is unbecoming that anyone
who is perceived as seriously unmerciful should be
ordained. A man incurs this irregularity only in the
context of the criminal law: The judge and jury who
pass a death sentence are all considered irregular, as
well as the executioner himself and his immediate
assistants. Even though a particular sentence was
perfectly just, it is still unbecoming for such a
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person to become a priest because of the probable
repugnance of the faithful.
The irregularities considered so far arise from
defects in the potential ordinand; we must now turn
to irregularities which a man may incur because of
his own sins. Chief among these sins which bar a
man from the priesthood are apostasy, heresy, and
schism. Apostasy means the deliberate abandonment
of Christianity. Heresy denotes wilfully believing
teachings contrary to the Catholic Faith. Schism
flows from one’s refusal to be in communion with
the Pope or with others who are in communion with
him.
These sins are only possible for the baptized,
and the corresponding irregularities generally only
bind those who were Catholic beforehand. It is
easy to see why a man who has wilfully left the
Church would be unsuitable for ordination, even
after he happily comes back. The priest is the man
of faith par excellence, and a grave sin against the
Faith (by apostasy or heresy) will always place a
question-mark over the firmness of his convictions.6
The priest must be a man of the Church, and a
man’s rebellion against the Divine constitution
of the Church (by schism) will inevitably found
suspicions that he might rebel again, given the right
circumstances. The Church cannot normally take
such a risk; even priests who leave the Church are
normally held to these irregularities when they
return; and Catholics who leave the Church and
are ordained by another body with valid orders are
almost always received back into the Church as laymen.
Another irregularity arises from one’s sin
in receiving the Sacrament of Baptism from a
non-Catholic, outside the case of necessity. This
presupposes that one has reached the age of reason
and that he knows that the Catholic Church is the
true Church of Christ. Such a man would be under
the same suspicions and uncertainties as those who
are guilty of heresy and schism, and his ordination
would normally be unwise for the same reasons.
The Latin Church has always preserved the
discipline of clerical celibacy–a tradition going
back to the early Church and probably of Apostolic
origin. As noted above, virginity is the ideal, in
perfect imitation of Our Lord. Clerics in major
orders voluntarily renounce their natural right
to marry, and they are thereafter bound by an
invalidating impediment from ever marrying.
Subdeacons, deacons, priests, and bishops are
incapable of marrying validly unless dispensed by
the Holy See as a part of the process of laicization.
Any cleric in major orders who nevertheless
attempts marriage becomes irregular. He is,
therefore, prohibited from exercising any order
which he has received, and he is prohibited–for
even greater reason–from receiving further orders.
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Putting the question of ideals and Apostolic tradition
aside, the scandal of the faithful alone would make
any further ordination of such a cleric profoundly
imprudent.
The same irregularity binds any man who
attempts marriage while either he or his putative
spouse is bound by a valid marriage bond or
religious vows. Such an abuse of the Sacrament of
Matrimony would be bound to cause the suspicion
that the prospective priest would not scruple to
abuse other sacraments, or even to attempt marriage
again after ordination.
Relating to the irregularity from the “defect
of leniency” above, the irregularity arising from
homicide or cooperation in abortion is most serious.
“Homicide,” here, means either that a man has
directly killed someone else or that he has been
the guilty cause of the other’s death.7 In order for
a man to be barred from the priesthood by the
irregularity for abortion, his level of cooperation
would have to be such that he would also incur the
excommunication for this crime.8
Closely related to the irregularity from mental
defect, already discussed, is the irregularity incurred
by a man who has mutilated himself in some serious
way or attempted suicide. Aside from the physical
defect which might arise from self-mutilation, the
question of the underlying motivation for such an
act would normally raise serious questions about
a man’s suitability for Holy Orders. It is the priest
who must teach others that the body is the “temple
of the Holy Ghost”; how can he do this credibly if
he has maimed himself? No one doubts that suicide
is often the result of true mental illness–or even
chemical causes in the nervous system. Nonetheless,
it also results from the sin of despair. The priest must
be a man of hope, radiating this hope to others, and
a past suicide attempt can easily undermine this
aspect of his ministry.
The last two irregularities for Holy Orders can
only be incurred by clerics; both relate to abuses
of the clerical state. For the same reason that
homicide gives rise to an irregularity, the clergy
are forbidden to practice medicine or surgery. The
constant possibility that patients will die hangs over
the clerical physician or surgeon. Even if a death is
not his fault, it will bring discredit on his priesthood,
and people are always ready to talk. For this reason,
all clerics are forbidden to act as physicians or
surgeons. If a patient dies during such a forbidden
practice, the cleric falls under the irregularity.
The final irregularity arises from the abuse of
a sacred order.9 If any cleric presumes to exercise
solemnly a sacred order which he has not received,
he thereby becomes irregular. (An example would
be for a deacon to hear confessions and simulate
giving absolution or for a lector to give Benediction
with the Blessed Sacrament.) He also incurs

9
irregularity by exercising a sacred order he has received
if he is under a canonical prohibition from doing so.

Impediments: Causes
for Serious Concern
The next group of warning signs about prospective
priests are the impediments. These are generally less
serious disqualifications from ordination, and they are by
nature temporary, since they can go away by themselves
without dispensation after a time. Nevertheless, the
Church has made it unlawful to ordain a man who falls
under any of these impediments because of the serious
concerns they raise. Dispensations from impediments
were given more readily than dispensations from
irregularities in the past, but there still had to be some
outstanding positive qualities in an ordinand by which
the concerns about negative qualities could be overcome.
The Catholic son of a non-Catholic was impeded
from receiving orders because of a concern that he might
not have sufficient Catholic convictions. Indeed, one
such priest, now deceased, was known to the author;
even up to the year he entered the seminary, in the
1950’s, he was trying to decide whether to become a
Catholic priest or a Protestant minister. This did not
bode well for his future, but, again, noble exceptions
abound. This issue, like the other impediments and the
irregularities, must be worked out with those who have
the charge of forming future priests.
A man who is bound by a valid marriage bond is
impeded from ordination in the Roman Rite, for reasons
already touched upon. The Holy See has been known to
dispense this impediment in some cases. Traditionally,
however, such men were required to separate and live
chastely, with the consent of their wives.
Clerics who exercise offices or burdens forbidden
to the clergy are impeded from receiving further orders
until they resign the offices or lay down the burdens.
These are typically cases of business administration or
trusteeship which involve serious responsibility and
require that there be an account given of money or
property. The point of this impediment is that the clergy
should concentrate all of their time and efforts on the
service of God10 and that, in the event of a fiduciary
mistake or financial failure, no one should be able to
hold the priest up to reproach.
Though it is scarcely common in Western countries
today, being a slave–in the proper use of the term–is an
impediment to orders. Such an impediment would cease
upon gaining one’s freedom.
In a similar vein, a man who is subject to an
obligatory period of military service which he has not yet
served is impeded from receiving orders. This obviously
binds those who are currently enlisted as well as those
who are subject to the peace-time military draft in the
future. Military chaplains are not bound, nor are clerics
who are drafted in war-time.
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Validity is truly not enough. The Church has told us for centuries
which warning signs to heed in order that an ordination may be
lawful and have a greater chance of glorifying God and sanctifying
souls. We ignore those signs at our peril.
Neophytes–the newly-converted–fall under an
impediment which forbids their reception of holy
orders until their new faith has been sufficiently
tested, in the judgment of the relevant diocesan
bishop or religious superior. Far too often, a
convert’s zeal pushes him farther and faster than
he should prudently go, and Holy Mother Church
insists on slowing such a man down during such a
momentous discernment as trying a vocation.
The final impediment to ordination is the
so-called “infamy of fact.” This corresponds to the
irregularity of “infamy of law,” discussed above.
Those who are infamous at law have officially lost
their reputations as a legal consequence of some
serious offense, and this state is permanent. A man
who is infamous in fact, on the other hand, has
merely behaved (or has been seen to have behaved)
in such a way as to bring discredit and ill repute
upon himself.11 Such behavior could certainly be
serious, but it would reflect a more mundane or
“garden-variety” level of scandal than the more
serious offenses necessary to incur infamy of law.
A man who is infamous in fact is bound by the
impediment only as long as his reputation is still
bad, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or
religious superior who has to make the decision.

The Point of
These Warning Signs
This section has, perforce, been a sort of catalog
of negative points about young men who may
aspire to the priesthood, and this may seem too
rigorous during a situation such as the one Holy
Mother Church finds herself in today. Nevertheless,
one must not see all of these impediments and
irregularities as so many obstacles to navigate
around or so many hoops to jump through.
Practically every one of these warning signs has
been placed on the road to the priesthood because
of the Church’s long and sad experience of human
frailty among the clergy. The Church certainly looks
for a great number of positive qualities in future
priests. The candidate who shines brightly in one
or more of those positive areas may well be able
to overcome some of the dangers indicated by the
impediments and irregularities, but the dangers
remain.
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Statistics, thankfully, never tell the whole story
about anything, but it would be grossly imprudent
of the Church–or of a superior acting in her name–
to press on with the ordination of a man who
sets off multiple warning bells by falling under
the disqualifications established for ordinands in
Canon Law. How much more reckless would it be
for such a superior not even to investigate, or to
“dispense” without taking account of the positive
qualities which would be necessary to overcome
the dangers! This is, unfortunately, what may have
happened with far too many of today’s “emergency”
ordinations.
Validity is truly not enough. The Church has
told us for centuries which warning signs to heed
in order that an ordination may be lawful and have
a greater chance of glorifying God and sanctifying
souls. We ignore those signs at our peril.
(To be continued.)
Rev. Fr. Scott Gardner, ordained for the Society of Saint Pius X in 2003, is
currently assigned to St. Mary’s Assumption priory in St. Louis, Missouri,
where he coordinates the work of the St. Raymond of Peñafort Canonical
Commission. He is also the United States District Chaplain for the Third
Order of Saint Pius X, and he serves the Society’s Chicago mission, Our Lady
Immaculate, on weekends and holy days.
St. Thomas holds that even a baptized male infant could be validly ordained,
although he would have to accept the obligations flowing from ordination
when he is old enough before they would be binding on him.
2
In fact, he had been a seminarian as a young man.
3
It may help us to consider that irregularities and impediments are not
punishments per se, but protections for the priesthood itself.
4
In the Eastern Church, the rite for second marriages is penitential.
5
Needless to say, if this irregularity had been enforced, many of the recent
clerical scandals would have been prevented because, after a first offense,
guilty priests could never have exercised their priesthood again–except
perhaps privately, after a prolonged period of penance.
6
Such a man, still in a Protestant sect and even in a Protestant seminary,
approached the author for help in pursuing a vocation to the Catholic priesthood. When told that he could not be sure of being accepted as a candidate
for the seminary, he chose to remain where he was.
7
E.g., the crimes of felony murder, voluntary manslaughter, or conspiracy
to commit murder.
8
In technical language, formal cooperation or close material cooperation
would be necessary.
9
“Sacred orders,” canonically speaking, are the subdiaconate, the diaconate,
the priesthood, and the episcopate.
10
“Cleric” comes from a root which means “the portion” [of the Lord].
11
The criterion is that one has lost his reputation in the opinion of upright
and reliable Catholics.
1

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d r .

a n d r e w

c h i l d s

The Soundtrack
of Time
Music provides a unique
insight to history. It is
revealing to know what a
particular culture or time
sung or heard whether in
sacred or secular music. This
article lays the foundation
for such an understanding.

Culture reflects the ideas that motivate history. Rarely
does history, however, call upon artists to effect the change
that charts its course. For the most part, the artist, as citizen of
time and place, plays the role of a reactive agent, providing a
specific synopsis of events recently or remotely past, cloaked
in the brilliance of technique and beauty.1 Culture is also
exclusively human, the artistic depiction of the struggle that
exists in man between nature and supernature, the physical
and spiritual realms.
We are hybrid creatures of body and soul, and this,
combined with our fallen nature, presents difficulties unique
to all creation–not least of which relates to the interplay
between head and heart. Angelic intelligence far surpasses our
own, and the angels have an infinitely superior intellectual
grasp than we do of God’s Truth—but they don’t feel a thing.
Man can never grasp the beatific in the material realm, but
neither can a pure intelligence experience the beautiful in
human terms in any realm, for such an appreciation of beauty
requires sensory capacity.
It is unlikely that heaven contains art as we understand
it, or angelic artists in the human sense, beautiful though
fanciful depictions of cherubic fiddlers notwithstanding: what
motivation could an angel possibly have to attempt to add
beauty to the Beatific Vision? Scripture confirms that the
Seraphim sing—and composers’ attempts to represent this
have yielded some spectacular music—but assuredly, as St.
Paul writes, “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared
for them that love him.”2
Cultural beauty remains a specifically human consolation.
Artists express what they know, in the mode reflective of
their specific talents, as so many different creative gifts
making up a collective artistic body.3 The preserved results
of this expression—our cultural history—represents not only
an academic record of stylistic variety and development, but
an intimate community. Each artist waits outside of time for
Certain exceptions exist: one thinks of the pamphleteer active during the political revolutions of 1776 and 1789, and how the epic poetic prose of Englishman Thomas Paine
influenced both the American Revolution (Common Sense) and the French Revolution
(The Rights of Man).
2
I Cor. 2:9.
3
Rom. 12:4-6.
1

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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

12
and the collective body of literature anchors our
understanding of the human condition as practically
applied; beyond this, however, the music of a given
age provides an invaluable means to comprehend
history and ideas in an active and sympathetic
manner, fully appreciating both intellectual and
emotional motivations behind them—as well as the
very human reactions to them.

In the Beginning…

us to discover the specifically timely message left
behind to console or inspire. Each specific genre adds
something to our understanding of truth, and each of
us, based on the specific set of variables we embody,
will respond more or less positively to one art form
or another. Regardless of inclination, however, all
can come to appreciate how useful a role culture as
a whole plays in helping to understand not only the
facts, but the humanity of history.
Music in particular depicts the emotional essence
of a given age, and allows the listener spontaneous,
vital access to history not as an intellectually abstract
exercise, but as something immediately pertinent.
Time has a soundtrack, just as it has a visual and
written record. But unlike images or literary accounts
that depict past events impossible to recreate (or past
descriptions of future events based on a perspective
similarly lost), the music of the past still exists in
potency as it did in the mind of the composer. The
reader or viewer must commune with visual art
or literature removed from the original sensory
experience; a highly individual exercise, the author,
painter, or poet works directly with the recipient,
drawing on memory and imagination. While
admittedly powerful, these images and cognitive
connections can only exist within the limits of the
recipient. The understanding and expertise of others
can illuminate the experience, but in no case can
the observer actually know the present that the artist
knew. The composer, on the other hand, requires
some mode of present animation in order to access
the listener, who processes through hearing the very
real and physically present thought of the composer
in the form of created sound.
I have argued for the necessity of active
engagement with culture in general and music in
particular. In fact, I argue for the impossibility of
passive ‘entertainment’ as a useful exercise. We
access history and ideas through the literary record,
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to
the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to
life and to everything.”—Plato
The ancients developed a systematic
understanding of music based on fundamental
relationships existing between sounds in the context
of harmonia, the interaction of multiple sounds,
but also understood as an overarching concept of
structural order. The mathematician Pythagoras
and astronomer Ptolemy wrote extensively on the
mathematics of music, the study of which was an
essential intellectual pursuit for the educated man.
Pythagoras generally receives credit for discovering
the mathematical ratios of the so-called ‘perfect’
intervals that form the foundations of Western
harmony—the octave (notes of the same letter name
separated by 12 half-steps on a piano keyboard), the
fifth, and the fourth—whose ratios he fixed at 2:1,
3:2, and 4:3 respectively. All of this mathematical
exploration highlights not only the seriousness and
relevance the Greeks attributed to music as necessary
in the development of thought, but also the absolute
foundations of music as a manifestation of the natural
order.
Aristotle described the potential of music not
only to reflect specific emotions, but to elicit them.
“Music,” he writes in Book VII of the Politics, “has a
power of forming the character, and should therefore
be introduced into the education of the young.” He
goes on to distinguish, however, that not all music
or parts of music has equal merit or causes identical
effects, admonishing that young students work with
music of distinct quality, “until they are able to feel
delight [only] in noble melodies and rhythms, and not
merely in that common part of music in which every
slave or child or even some animals find pleasure.”4
The accepted correlations of melody to intellect,
harmony to emotion, and rhythm (repeating patterns
found in nature) to lower functions, have their roots
in the ancient Greeks’ holistic consideration of music:
as was the case in all pursuits, harmonia, or proper
balance and ordering, remained the overriding
principle.
One of the great mysteries of intellectual
history surrounds Greek music: for all of the poetry,
literature, and philosophy that undergirds Western
4

In speaking here of rhythm, he refers more to poetic meter than to recurring
structural beat patterns as we understand them.

13
thought, the Greeks—apart from theoretical writings,
some pictures and descriptions of musical instruments,
and the numerous references to music as a necessary
element in Greek drama and poetry—left almost no
sonic trace of their music. We have some fragments—
fewer than 50 by the latest reckoning—but mostly
silence.
Perhaps this is fitting, as the Greeks ultimately
exist to show us the question answered by Revelation.
They meticulously crafted structural theories of
organized sounds, musical components, and their
effects—and left to us the benefit of building music
upon them.

Gregorian Chant:
The “Case in Ancient Times”5
Not only did the early Church develop music,
she developed a system of music perfectly ordered
and fully consonant with prayer and worship. Beyond
this, she encouraged the further progress of music
such that, for over a thousand years, nearly every
significant formal advance in music either occurred in
the Church or saw its ultimate expression there.
St. Gregory the Great, who reigned as Pope from
590 to 604, lends his name to Gregorian chant, the
“sung prayer of the Church.” Inspired by the Holy
Ghost, he undertook the collection and codification
of existing ecclesiastical chant in addition to the
composition of new chant. Sufficient chant existed to
require this process, a useful point in opposing the
theory that artists created chant as a purely decorative
liturgical element relatively late in the formative stages
of Christianity.
There is no more perfect music, and perhaps
the ultimate expression of this perfection emerges
by way of perfect analogy: as Christ chose to come
into the world as a humble infant, the sung prayer
of the Church—forebear of Western music—emerges
as a small and quiet thing, the humble, nearly
purely melodic expression of adoration, contrition,
thanksgiving, and supplication.

as in the case of ancient Greek music, however,
almost nothing exists of ancient Jewish sacred music
in terms of notation. It remained an almost entirely
oral tradition, but one familiar to all pious Jews. From
David’s harp, to the ‘psalms, hymns, and spiritual
canticles’ referred to in the New Testament, worship of
the One True God has clearly always included musical
accompaniment.
Levite clerics in the pre-Christian era chanted
Scripture as part of the liturgy, and sang psalms
in the Temple. The sounds of the Old Law surely
inspired those of the New, and yet what we know of
the formal development of Jewish liturgical music
is primarily post-Christian. No one will ever know
with certainty to what extent various dialects of the
emerging Christian chant tradition provide musical
echoes of the Old Law, but the hauntingly distinct
quality of Mozarabic and Eastern Rite chant remain
simultaneously exotic and familiar, and imply a
common source.
The perfection of chant lies in its humility. The
modern ear—accustomed to mistaking quantity for
quality, size for sublimity—cannot conceive of the
relative silence of chant as kingly music, and yet no
other music can bring us closer to the contemplation
of eternity. Proportionately flawless, all the component
parts of chant combine to create an accompaniment to
the texts of liturgy and prayer both structurally sound,
and—aesthetically—imperceptibly subtle. In chant,
word glorifies the Word in the ultimate expression of
artistic meekness, a system of music devised such that
the music in the system dissolves completely in its
service to sacred text.
Chant is a complete music in terms of elemental
construction. It conforms to a highly organized
rhythmic structure, composed on a framework of
modes—the musical equivalent of poetic feet—chosen

Joyful Noise: The
Development of Sacred Music
“Do not think that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.”—Matt.
5:17
Theoretical writings of ancient Greek
mathematicians and philosophers provide the
technical framework for understanding musical
components and their relationships not only to each
other but to human nature. But what is known of
the musical traditions of the Old Law gives strong
indications of the intimate relationship that has always
existed between music and liturgical worship. Just
5

St. Pius X, Tra le Sollecitudini.
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

14
figure of the Christian it represents—exists above all
for knowledge, love, and service of God.6

Polyphony

specifically to match the contour of the pattern of
stress indicated by the text. Yet the rhythm acts in
no way to excite a passionate response, instead,
serving to highlight important syllables and musical
climaxes. Recognizable harmony exists by way
of implication in monophonic—one line—chant:
single notes sung in melodic proximity form the
equivalent of simultaneously sounded harmonic
intervals based on the ear’s tonal memory capacity.
This implied harmony accurately depicts the ethos
of a given melodic mode without imposing an acute
emotionalism.
Further exposing as erroneous the concept of
chant as primitive in its simplicity, the system of
melodic modes employed in chant surpasses the
modern key-based tonal system (to be discussed later)
both in terms of proper complexity and expressive
capacity. The tonal composer ‘chooses’ to compose
in one of twelve supposedly different keys, but has in
fact only one scale pattern to choose from—that of the
C-C “major” white-note pattern or its “minor” variant
containing an E-flat—merely choosing the relative
highness or lowness of the initial pitch in the pattern.
Variation in mood results from chordal
progression, the linear motion of groups of multiple
simultaneous sounding harmonic intervals. The chant
composer chooses from among eight distinct scalar
patterns—called ‘Church’ or ‘Greek’ modes—each
designed to elicit a specific emotional character.
Melody, as the dominant element, serves a dual
purpose, evoking both intellectual breadth and
emotional depth.
Chant represents not only perfection in form and
function, but the metaphoric potential of a cultural
genre, fully recognizable as the Christian type. It
is one in properly ordered possession of intellect,
emotion, and passion, exhibiting unmistakable
intellectual dominance—enhanced rather than
directed by emotional capacity, controlling rather
than controlled by passionate impulse. Chant—and the
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The term means ‘many sounds.’ Polyphony
represents the next crucial phase in the formal
development of music—the emergence of harmony
from its total subservience to melody—and it reflects
the struggle of the Christian type in an increasingly
demanding and secularized society: citizens of any
age, more and more absorbed with the bustle and
industry of life, often find less and less time for the
silence of God.
The medieval Christian inhabited a world of
recognizable order, but the Church as divinely
instituted head of society faced increasing competition
for the hearts of men. Polyphony is the reverberation
of open hearts, and vulnerable minds; the emergence
of sound’s poetry, and of irresistible, gratuitous beauty
in compositional form. Reflective of a society that had
begun to shift its focus from God to man, composers
of secular and sacred music alike, in employing
innovative polyphonic techniques, began to exploit
the depth of music’s emotional potential.
God could have insured that the Church, His
corporation on earth, remain perpetually free from
error had He placed angelic agents in control of
its operation; He could have assured the purity of
music by directing the Seraphs to dictate celestial
harmonies to men. But this did not occur. That fallible
men have charge over an infallible institution—one
that God has declared shall exist until the end of
time—is one of the greatest manifestations of one
of His greatest mysteries: free will. Out of love,
God created us, according to St. Augustine, without
our permission: out of justice, He will not save us
without our cooperation. We must freely choose.
The awful responsibility of existence comes with the
spectacular promise that, as brothers of Christ—the
only creatures to share with Him a dual material and
spiritual nature—we may attain the unfathomably
disproportionate reward of eternity in heaven, if we
only submit freely to carry our little cross for the
moment we remain on earth. And yet we struggle,
collectively suffering the lingering effects of a very
bad fall.
By our intellect, we recognize these truths and
submit to them, however imperfectly. Without the
light of faith, however, free will and original sin
seem cruel, capricious, unfair; these two great truths
present such an obstacle to our emotionally clouded
minds that many if not most simply choose to ignore
them altogether. Yet God has willed these things—
6

Standard texts on chant include Gregorian Chant by Willi Apel; Western
Plainchant by David Hiley; and An Introduction to Gregorian Chant, by
Richard Crocker. The introduction and rubrics in the Liber Usualis provide
a surprisingly comprehensive overview of liturgical application; the Liber is
now available in downloadable PDF format.

15
dual natures, human frailty and utter dependence,
divine institution, free will and original sin—and He
has allowed the fall, and the permanent disorder
of sin. Our challenge lies in choosing to regain
order and retain the fullness of our nature: a man
without a brain is an animal; a man without a heart
is a monstrous machine. Given our concupiscent
nature, emotion and passion can easily—and in our
flawed estimation, justifiably—obscure reason. St.
Augustine in the Confessions summarized the dilemma,
specifically relating it to music, writing, “Thus do I
waver between the danger of sensual pleasure and
wholesome experience.”7 Nothing could more aptly
describe the musical history of the Middle Ages.
Christendom still thrived, and the development of
polyphonic techniques accompanied the flourishing of
thought in the Middle Ages, both secular scholarship
and scholastic inquiry. Though the Church continued
to add to the body of Gregorian chant, formal
advances in music occurred almost exclusively in
polyphony, both in and outside the Church. What
began with a definitive break in formal procedure—
the choice to work with multiple rather than single
sounds—continued as an often compellingly organic
approach to the establishment of a recognizable
polyphonic technique. No one knows exactly
when the first harmonic interval found its way into
the Church, or by what means; secular influence,
however, is undeniable, and for the latter third of
the first millennium, Church and State engaged
in a fascinating process of influence, definition,
and experimentation, exploring new worlds of
consonance, dissonance, and the limits of formal
structure and elaboration.
One could not simply separate music into
categories of ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ at this point in
musical history for the sake of distinguishing quality.
Although Church music consisted exclusively of
cultivated works, composers working outside the
Church did not limit themselves to purely vernacular
forms. Though plenty of the stuff of ‘wine, women,
and satire’ flowed from the pens and lutes of traveling
musicians—the English troubadours, Trouvères in
France, and Minnesingers in Germany—many of the
advances adopted by the Church had contemporary
parallels in the secular realm, where composers
developed a qualitative body of sophisticated vocal
and instrumental repertoire, as well as musical plays.8
A brilliant example of cultural cross-pollination,
the defining work of music drama of the late medieval
period was written by a Saint—Hildegard von Bingen,

7
8

Confessions, X:33.
See Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours for extended consideration. The European secular minstrel tradition is fascinating on the one
hand in its undeniable separation from the music of the Church in terms of
intention, and, on the other, its influence on the music of the Church in terms
of harmonic development. More on this later.

a German abbess who lived from 1098-1179.9 Her
magnum opus, Ordo Virtutum, musically depicts the
struggle of a soul against temptation by the Devil—
the only male role in the work, and the only role
spoken, not sung—her fall, her assistance by the
individual Virtues, and ultimate salvation. It is a work
of spectacular humanity, filled with acutely evocative
harmonies, yet fully Catholic in conception; it does
not continue in the Gregorian mode of Catholic
prayer, but rather baptizes contemporary form with
Catholic perspective.
Known as a musical mystic, St. Hildegard was
certainly a musical visionary: her musical style,
sui generis, anticipated many harmonic advances
by centuries, and retains a sort of incorruptible
freshness. God sends His prophets in every age and
every age largely ignores them. Not only impressive,
but agonizingly poignant in retrospect, this cultural
prophet perfectly superimposed Truth on emerging
secular form, with immortal results. None chose to
follow her example.
Eventually, men began to sow in earnest the
seeds of humanism. Though Church composers
avoided adopting the errors of the humanist mindset,
polyphonic Church musicians fell victim to the
emerging spirit of the age in the development of
styles and techniques which, though wondrous to
the ear in their astonishing intricacy, cannot avoid
straying into a mode of expression less reflective
of the glory of God than the grandeur of man’s
capabilities. The polyphonic organum written most
famously by clerical composers Léonin and Pérotin
at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris at the turn
of the thirteenth-century, could on the one hand be
seen as mirroring the exhaustive thoroughness of
scholastic inquiry—and on the other, as the musical
manifestation of the attempt to create a world of
human complexity “superior” to the infinite simplicity
of God. Perhaps the most famous known example
of organum, the Gradual for the Mass of Christmas
day, “Viderunt omnes,” contains nearly 12 hypnotic
minutes of melodically acrobatic, harmonically
kaleidoscopic music. It is as artistically spectacular as
it is dramatically disproportionate: the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass must wait. It is too much, and yet the
Church, as a gentle mother waits, as her little children
surpass their boundaries, straying not into sin, but
rather into excess.
Dr. Andrew Childs serves currently as Assistant Dean and Humanities Chair at St.
Mary’s College, and as Assistant to the Director of Education for the US District
of the SSPX. He lives in St. Mary’s, Kansas, with his wife and children, and two
cats of legendary girth and good nature. He has taught at Yale University, the
University of California at Irvine, Missouri State University, and Connecticut
College. An active professional performer, he has sung over 100 performances
of nearly 30 operatic roles.

9

“Seer and prophet, Sybil of the Rhine d. 1179. Never formally canonized,
but she is listed in the Roman Martyrology” (Catholic Encyclopedia).
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

16

D r .

P e t e r

E .

C h o j n o w s k i

iN dEFENsE oF
PhilosoPhy:

Why the “Useless” Science Matters
Man cannot live this way insofar as he
is man, but only insofar as something
divine dwells in him.–Aristotle1

judgment before or after falling into
There seemed nothing particularly
the well–or that he should have
“divine” about the first known
credited to him the accurate prediction
philosopher Thales of Miletus when
of an eclipse of the sun in 585 BC,
he was found by the Thracian slave
along with correctly calculating the
girl after falling into a well. In fact, the
height of the Egyptian pyramids at
ridiculous nature of the scene is what
Giza by calculating the pyramids’
provoked the most famous laugh in the
shadow at the time of day when a
history of philosophy: the girl laughed.
man’s shadow is equal to his height,
We might think that this was an
was really beside the point.3
incident of a starry-eyed philosopher
Thales of Miletus
forgetting about the practical affair of
walking around and, instead, mulling
Philosophic Mania: Why
over in his mind the ultimate nature and constitution
of things, so much so that, before he knew it, he
Philosophers Are Not Normal
was at the bottom of the cistern. Rather, Plato,
When we look at Jacques Maritain’s definition
who comments on the event, says that, “The very
of “philosophy,” it is difficult to immediately
same ridicule is awaiting everyone who engages in
discern why Plato says the philosopher should be
philosophy.”2
characterized by a certain “mania,” as in “maniac.”
It is the girl’s genuine outburst of ridicule, rather
As Maritain would have it, “Philosophy is the
than Thales’ philosophic contributions, which Plato
science which by the natural light of reason studies
sought to emphasize as an expression of the place
the first causes or highest principles of all things–is,
that “philosophers” hold in the popular mind.
in other words, the science of things in their first
That the man should have come out with the first
causes, insofar as these belong to the natural order.”4
quotable philosophical thesis, “All is Water”–it is
This definition, accurate as it is, does not seem to
not clear whether he came up with this inductive
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s

17
intimate anything which could remotely be termed
“maniacal,” nor does it indicate how ready-at-hand
philosophy can be for those who want to attempt
it. As a teacher, I find that one can always bring the
student to the level of the philosophical by simply
asking “why” they do this or that and then keep
following up his or her answer with “And why do
you do that?” As long as the question is not “Why
did you get up this morning?” and the question
refers to a school night, to which the normal
response is “Because my parents made me,” one can
keep asking them “why” they did something until
the Socratic cross-examination inevitably leads to
ultimate motivations and causes. This should not
surprise us, since it was Aristotle who said that “all
men seek to know,” meaning by this that “all men
seek to know the causes of things.” Rational thought
is simply thinking about things through their causes.
So if philosophy can be defined in such a dry
and technical way, and it can be no more esoteric
than simple answers to the question “Why did you
do that?”, why would Plato insist that, at its truest
and best, philosophy is motivated by an ecstatic
enthousiasmos or mania that is related to the mania of
the poet and the whirling dervish of Delphi? Why
aren’t philosophers, as the Thracian slave girl at the
well knew, completely “normal”?
For the simple reason that they have
experienced some passiones animae, some great
movement of the mind and desires, which have
allowed them to penetrate, perhaps just to catch a
glimpse, an aspect of the reality of things, thereby
forcing the acknowledgement that “there is more to
things than meets the eye.” This “triggering” of the
philosophical outlook can happen in many ways.
Always, if it involves true philosophical insight, it is
a result of an insight into some reality that partially
reveals itself as related to that which is of absolute
significance. These experiences can be one of an
encounter with physical beauty (passio amoris) as
is spoken of by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue the
Phaedrus or an emptying experience of the death of
a loved one, as occurred to St. Augustine when he
wrote, after the death of a childhood friend, “My
heart was made dark by sorrow, and whatever I
looked upon was death” (Quo dolore contenebratum est
cor meum et quidquid aspiciebam more erat).5
These are experiences which truly are “heaven
sent.” These kind of “life shattering” experiences
are called “shattering” for a reason. They cause
our persona (literally, our “actor’s mask”) to crack
and fall off and our soul, rather than the “face” we
put forward to the world, to confront directly the
ultimate texture of things as they really are. When
it is another’s death that tears off our mask, we can
experience an incompleteness within ourselves that
is somehow extended on to the starkly real world
that we encounter suddenly anew. We experience

the fact that we, by our very inner spiritual
constitution, are wayfarers who are never really “at
home” in this world. Our earthly home is not really
“home.” As St. Augustine recalls concerning his
outlook after the death of his friend, “My native
country was a torture to me, and my father’s house
a wondrous unhappiness” (Et erat mihi patria
supplicium et paterna domus mira infelicitas).6
The same kind of “self-shattering” experience
can occur due to an encounter with the beautiful.
Perhaps catching hold of an ideal that has evaded
one up until this time, the viewer is “seized” as if by
a superior force and “carried away.” This intense
appreciation of living color and form, if removed
from the selfishness of lust, can also create in us
a sense of longing, a longing for that which, we
implicitly feel, must be the home of the beautiful–a
home in which perfection dwells. Surely, the
beautiful that transfixes us cannot emerge solely
from the tawdriness of the mundane. Plato, again
when speaking through the voice of Socrates in
the Phaedrus, speaks of the end of such an ecstatic
(i.e., self-forgetting) encounter, says, “When [the
philosopher] comes toward the end he will suddenly
perceive a beauty of wondrous nature…not fair in
the likeness of a face or hands or another part of
the bodily frame…but beauty absolute, separate,
simple, and everlasting.”7 Small “b” beauty points to
its ultimate origin in Big “B” Beauty-Itself. For the
relatively perfect cannot have as its ultimate origin
the certainly imperfect.
The final experience I would like to mention is
a personal one. It occurred some 16 years ago when
I had not yet truly chosen a concrete path in life. It
occurred on a retreat, at St. Ignatius Retreat House
in Ridgefield, Connecticut. When sitting out near
the pond in the back of the main house, I happened
to gaze at a lily pad. I began to weep. Why? It came
to me at that moment that even the lily pad was held
up in existence by the love of God. Just as I was; just
as we all are. Held up in Love, even in sorrow and
pain. I know that I was supposed to be bringing to
mind an image of the Nativity, but the wellsprings
had been opened and metaphysics achieved.

Philosophy as Science of the All
What could possibly be the common element in
the experiences mentioned above? The profundity
of loss in death, the selfless ecstasy before the
beautiful, and the heartening insight into the
Will that underlies the existence of all things.
The common element, of course, is that all these
experiences cause us to question “the all,” the nature
of all of being and our place within this totality
of things. What the “mania” of the philosophical
mindset does is to break us out of narrowing
particular and practical concerns and, instead, cause
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

18
us to consider how things stand as such. While that
butcher, baker, and candlestick maker consider their
own particular arts and the incumbent problems
attached to each, the philosopher considers what are
the ultimate conditions which allow butchering, baking,
and candlestick making to happen at all? That “John is
running” may be interesting to fans of track. That
John is at all is interesting to philosophers.
Even though we may not like the answers that
he gave to his own question, we can appreciate
Martin Heidegger’s formulation of what he
considered to be the most basic philosophical
question: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Here we have brought into consideration the reality
of being as a whole, even though, for Heidegger
there was no ultimate answer to the question. This is
an echo of the old sage Parmenides who stated the
most sublimely obvious idea in the history of human
thought: Being is and non-Being is not. In this, up to
that moment, self-evident principle, Parmenides,
whom Plato considered to be the greatest of the
metaphysicians, tried to grasp in one concept the
whole of things and its opposite. He was reaching,
but is not philosophy itself precisely this reaching for
the whole?
Here we have what we can call the “formal”
difference between what philosophy is and what
all the other natural sciences are. There is no other
science that poses the question as to the world as a
totality.8 Whereas biology has as its object of study
living things and botany the study of plants, true
philosophy, as opposed to the sophistry taught
as “philosophy” in most universities, deals with
everything that is given in experience, within the self
and outside the self. In this search and investigation,
the philosopher does not deal with some different
reality; however, unlike the physical scientist, he
ponders and questions what is given as to its ultimate
reasons. What are the most general causes and,
finally, the ultimate cause of everything. This is the
philosophical task that must be defended.
This “object” of philosophical thought,
general and far-reaching as it is, is the reason
why the population does not typically engage in
philosophical speculation; the Thracian slave girl
laughs, the young college student questions the job
potential, the civic engineer thinks about “trees
falling in the woods and nobody being there to hear
it.” Even though they could be, even though at some
point in life they must be, most people at most times
are simply not in the mood to reflect on the ultimate
meaning of reality as such. To quote Josef Pieper,
“We cannot philosophize as long as our interest
remains absorbed by the active pursuit of goals,
when the ‘lens’ of our soul is focused on a clearly
circumscribed sector.”9 Philosophy is not possible
unless the mind is peaceful and spacious; even if
that means being at the bottom of a well!
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Philosophy in the
World of Total Work
But how can we achieve this mind that is
“peaceful and spacious?” When Josef Pieper wrote
his signature work Leisure the Basis of Culture in
the post-war Germany of 1948, he spoke of a new
society that was emerging that was the consequence
of all the forces of modernity: socialism,
totalitarianism, democratism, and industrialism.
This new social arrangement and the mentality that
was a product of the new arrangement completely
turned on its head the ancient and traditional mode
of human life. The focal point of the difference
between the old and the new was the understanding
of the relationship between work and leisure.
Whereas for the Greeks and the Romans,
certainly for Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, the
purpose of work was to achieve those moments of
leisure when the soul was perfectly itself and not
merely the performer of a useful trade or a cog
in an economic wheel. The purpose of work was to
make leisure possible. To make us, who are on the
other side of the conceptual divide, understand this
naturally human mentality, Pieper mentions that
the Greek word for the work-a-day world was “not
leisure”; they used the negative term a-scolia. Scolia
(leisure) is the word from which the Latins derived
the word scola, the Germans the word schule, and
the English the word “school.” So to be “at leisure”
was considered to be the “normal” human state,
while work allowed man to achieve the material
conditions by which he could fruitfully enjoy
leisure.10
I do not believe the word that Pieper looked
upon 62 years ago has changed fundamentally
in this particular regard. Even though chronic
underemployment, fewer working hours, and the
permanent disappearance of jobs from many sectors
of the American economy has recently altered
the shape of the World of Total Work, it seems to
me that we can say of this state that it resembles
Original Sin. Even though the thing itself is gone,
the effects on our modern minds and souls are
not easily uprooted. Will true leisure regain its
footing in human existence simply because people
are unemployed? No. We will still have the antitraditional notion that the purpose of “leisure”
(“weekends off”) is for the purpose of refreshing
us so that we can go to work on Monday or
keep looking for work on Monday. It is this new
mentality that has not only worked to destroy the
conditions necessary for the true philosophical
thought and contemplation, but has, also, done
much to undermine the human personality and,
most importantly, human joy in living? Honest
joy, authentic personal and spiritual life, and the
philosophical attitude seem to stand or fall together.

19

Acedia (Sloth): Work as
Escape from Who We Are
Without question, the most interesting and
unexpected aspect of Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis
of Culture is his consideration of one of the seven
capital vices, acedia or sloth. The main reason why
Pieper’s analysis is so interesting and unexpected
is because he rejects the notion that would equate
the vice of “sloth” (acedia) with physical laziness.11
What Pieper says is paradoxical. According to
the medieval Catholic scholastics, it was precisely
the “inability to be at leisure” that went with true
“idleness” or the capital vice of sloth. How can
“hard work” be a manifestation of “idleness” and,
hence, the vice of sloth?
This can only be the case if our Creator
wanted us to be something before He wanted us
to be butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. Our
Creator, of course, could only want us to become
something other than a “professional,” if He had made
us that basic thing in the first place. God made Man.
Our first occupation must be to perfect ourselves
as Man; if baking or candlestick making helps us in
this fundamental task, all the better. In this regard,
as–excuse the unfortunately outmoded references–
butcher, baker, or candlestick maker we cannot
philosophize; we must philosophize as men. It is as
men that we relate to the whole of things, to the totality
of the Created and the Uncreated Order. In this
regard, let us quote Pieper in full:
To begin with, it [acedia] meant something other than
what we usually mean, when we speak of the “root
of all evils.” Idleness, for the older code of behavior,
meant especially this: that the human being had given
up on the very responsibility that comes with his
dignity: that he does not want to be what God wants him
to be, and that means that he does not want to be what he
really, and in the ultimate sense, is. Acedia is the “despair
of weakness,” of which Kierkegaard said, that it consists
in someone “despairingly” not wanting “to be oneself.”
The metaphysical-theological concept of idleness means,
then, that man finally does not agree with his own existence;
that behind all his energetic activity, he is not at one with
himself; that, as the Middle Ages expressed it, sadness
has seized him in the face of the divine Goodness that
lives within him–and this sadness is that “sadness of the
world” (tristitia saeculi) spoken of in the Bible. [Emphasis
mine.]12

The “slothful” man, then, lacks peace of soul,
is perpetually restless, fundamentally because he
refuses to be the man that God has made him to
be. He may be an atheist or agnostic who refuses
to acknowledge his metaphysical status as creature
or a pusillanimous man, who, because of a false
humility, refuses the task, perhaps great, which God
has offered to him. The most fundamental task of
man is to be the man that God has made and placed
within the hierarchy of created reality; the man

whose ultimate calling is the supernatural order.
Therefore, “the opposite of acedia (sloth) is not
the industrious spirit of the daily effort to make a
living, but rather the cheerful affirmation by man of his
own existence, of the world as a whole, and of God–of
Love.”13 As Kierkegaard would have it, the human
soul is like a tall palatial edifice that looks out onto
a vast panorama; however, rather than occupying
the highest, spacious, and scenic rooms, he spends
most of his existence in the janitor’s closet in the
basement!

Liturgical Celebration as
Key to Philosophic Revival
If we ask ourselves how it is that we can
recreate the conditions for a revival of philosophical
thought, for the asking and answering of the most
basic questions concerning God, man, and the
world of being, we should not hesitate to advocate
a renewed appreciation for the liberal arts. Much
misunderstood as the stuff of “Basket Weaving
101”, the liberal arts–those “free studies of the
gentleman”14–to paraphrase the Venerable Cardinal
Newman in his Idea of a University–are those which
seek after the universal truth for its own sake, because
truth itself is what our minds are made for.
These “arts” of the mind are contrasted with the
servile arts, which have some pragmatic end as the
purpose for their study. Surely these arts must be
revived. However, the liberal arts do not include
philosophy. They are meant to be the preparation for
a philosophic mentality and philosophical thought.
That these should be considered “useless” and a
“waste of time” is simply the consequence of our
viewing philosophy as “useless” and “a waste of
time.” I would also venture that poetry, the fine arts,
and beautiful and powerful music are meant to be a
preparation for philosophical reasoning.
I believe that unless we revive an appreciation
for philosophy, in the most general sense, all of the
liberal and fine Arts will continue to be considered
an effete interest meant for those who are “relaxing”
or have “time to burn.”
How then can we create a social and cultural
milieu in which ultimate questions are common
thoughts and really serious questions are discussed
and even debated amongst serious men again? Here
I would agree with Josef Pieper that our culture–
meaning our intellectual and spiritual culture–has
so been decimated and banished from the minds
of young and old, that only ultimate things can
restore the asking of ultimate questions. What are
the “ultimate things” which can incite a return to
the pursuit of wisdom on the part of some? In this
regard, we need only consider the fact that St.
Thomas Aquinas, a consummate man of wisdom
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

20
both human and divine, reminds us that acedia–shall we call it “existential
laziness”–is a sin against the third commandment, the commandment which tells
us to rest on the Sabbath day; the Sabbath, which can only be properly observed
if it is dedicated primarily to the worship of God.15 The opposite of “sloth” is
the leisure which dwells in festive unity with God.
The Sabbath rest, for those who truly practice this rest (the Greeks even
had a special word for this type of thing: scholen agein–doing leisure), is the
perfect day to live out our life as man as we are directly related to Our Creator
and share in the creatureliness of all things. Not only can we think of ourselves
on that Sabbath as a man rather than a “professional,” but also we can affirm
in wonder the goodness and the fittingness of all things. This will do what no
amount of “philosophy courses” will do. It will ground us in the very being of
things, which true philosophy seeks to understand sub specie aeternitate.
Thankfully, we are well situated for this revival of an appreciation of the
divine festival. Many in recent decades, thanks to traditional Catholicism, have
rediscovered the liturgical life of the Church as expressed in her feasts and
seasons. This enables us to truly live that life, a life by which we participate in
the very life of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Divine Logos, the Ultimate
Principle, through Whom all things were made. At the heart of this festive living of
the divine life, we have the necessary sacrifice, the Mass.
Without the Mass, there is no true festival. It should not surprise
us to know that Plato’s Academy was not only a place of philosophical
contemplation and learning, but, also, a group of men dedicated to the cultus,
the offering of blood sacrifice to the gods.
I am convinced that the True Sacrifice, offered by the priest in persona
Christi, and everything which surrounds that free offering by Christ of Himself,
is the only possible ground on which we can stand in our attempt to revive
true human culture.
I have heard from those who knew him well that, towards the end of his
life, Josef Pieper was despairing over the seeming death of real philosophy
within our Western society. To this was added his greater sorrow over the
depths of the wounds which had been inflicted on the Church during the postVatican II period. He saw the loss of the real Catholic liturgical life and the
apostasy of many very close to him. Let us pledge not to let go of the strand
of philosophical wisdom, which unites us to the sages of old, who have known
the wisdom of God and men.
Dr. Peter Chojnowski has degrees in political science and philosophy from Christendom College, Virginia, and a
Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University, New York. He specializes in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
and Catholic Social Thought, and has written over 150 articles and reviews for The Angelus, Catholic Family News,
The Remnant, The Wanderer, Penn State’s The Lionhearted, Latin Mass, Faith and Reason and The Review of
Metaphysics. Having taught in 7 colleges and universities and 2 high schools over the course of more than 20 years,
he currently teaches at Immaculate Conception Academy and Gonzaga University. He lives with his wife and six
children on a 3-acre farm in Washington State.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, X, 7 1177b27-28 cited in Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture (South Bend,
IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), p.36.
2
Plato, Theaetetus 173c-e) cited in Josef Pieper, In Defense of Philosophy: Classical Wisdom Stands Up to Modern
Challenges, trans. Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp.23-25.
3
Samuel Enoch Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p.5.
4
Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, trans. E.I. Watkins (New York: Sheed & Ward, n.d.), p.108.
5
Cf. Peter Chojnowski, St. Augustine as Educator: The Confessions (Post Falls, ID: Pelican Project, 2005), p.33.
6
Ibid., pp.33-34, note 32.
7
Cited in Josef Pieper, Enthusiasm and Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue “Phaedrus,” trans. Richard
and Clara Winston (New York: Harcourt, Bruce & World, 1964), p.84.
8
Pieper, Defense, p.19.
9
Ibid., pp.23-25.
10
Cf. Pieper, Leisure, pp.4-5.
11
Ibid., p.27.
12
Ibid., pp.27-28.
13
Cited in Ibid., p.29.
14
Ibid., p.25.
15
Ibid., p.30. Cf. Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q.35, Art.3 ad 1. Also, De Malo, Q.11, Art.2 ad 2.
1

THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Leisure the
Basis of Culture
Josef Pieper

Leisure is an attitude of the mind
and a condition of the soul that
fosters a capacity to perceive the
reality of the world. Pieper shows
that the Greeks and medieval
Europeans understood the great
value and importance of leisure.
He also points out that religion
can be born only in leisure–a
leisure that allows time for the
contemplation of the nature of
God. Leisure has been, and always
will be, the first foundation of any
culture.
Pieper maintains that our
bourgeois world of total labor
has vanquished leisure, and
issues a startling warning: Unless
we regain the art of silence and
insight, the ability for non-activity,
unless we substitute true leisure
for our hectic amusements, we
will destroy our culture–and
ourselves.
200pp. Softcover.
STK# 8427 $13.95

Catholic Stories of Adventure in the Mission Lands

Tales of Foreign Lands
F r.

J o s e p h

S p i l l m a n n,

S. J.

The

risoner
(From Tales of Foreign Lands, Volume 2)
Continued from the December 2009 issue.

VI

The Renegade
When the market closed in the evening, Achmed
had successfully bargained for his whole booty,
except the high-priced Francesco. Most of the
captives had been sold as slaves to a Beduin sheik of
the desert.
Tired from the day’s business, the pirate leader
entered his house. Beneath one of the long hallways
that canopied the inner court, he reclined for a short
rest in the refreshing evening breeze. The deep
silence of the court was broken only by the running
well as its stream of water sprayed back into its

marble basin, supported on the backs of six carved
animals. Orange, jasmine, and rose blossoms filled
the air with a sweet odor; behind the large costly
divan rose the beautiful dark palm branches, and
busy slaves hurried noiselessly to and fro over thick
Turkish rugs to be of service to their master. After
a few moments of relaxation Achmed ordered his
servants out and commanded that Zaki be sent to
him.
In a few minutes Zaki stood before his master.
Zaki Chirallah was Achmed’s business manager and
slave master. Ordinarily he spent his time in an oasis
in the desert, which belonged to the pirate captain.
The manager of the household had long since
finished giving his master an account of all that had
happened during his absence, and still both men
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

22
seemed engaged in earnest conversation. Although
the relation be­tween Achmed and his menials was
like that of a stern despot with his subjects, neverthe­
less, he would frequently trust Zaki with affairs that
were quite confidential.
It was already close to fifteen years since
Achmed Khalil-el-Fathallah had set out from Tunis
on his first voyage of piracy, to the southwestern
shores of Italy. At the ex­treme southern end of
the Gulf of St. Eu­phemia, near Briatico, stood a
fisherman’s hut on the edge of the waters. Before the
hut sat a youth of about nineteen years, repairing
the damaged nets for the next fish-catch. His hands
quickly kept pace with the jolly tunes which he
whistled in rapid succession. Suddenly he cast his
mending aside, jumped to his feet, and peered
out over the distant rising waters. Just then a ship
appeared around the southern point of the bay:
“Could have it as good as those people out there,”
the fisher mumbled to himself; “to the dogs with this
miserable trade; day and night one must work, and
still one’s efforts are brought to naught!”
The Angelus bell rang out clearly from Briatico,
yet the youth did not bare his head for prayer.
“Antonio, did you not hear the Angelus bell?” a
woman’s voice was heard from the hut. “Child, what
shall this lead to if you do not pray any more?”
“Ah so, Mother; do you not know that I am no
longer a child? Next Sunday I shall be twenty years
old. So it is about time that I be allowed to travel my
own road.”
“That wretched Leonardo is to blame for all this;
he is the one who is misleading you. Ever since you
are associating with him, you are forgetting your
prayers; what shall become of you if you squander
your money in drinking with that careless rascal?”
“Do not worry about that, Mother. Leo­nardo has
money.”
“But how long will it last? The 800 lire which he
inherited from his uncle a year ago last fall will some
time come to an end.”
“What you do not all know, Mother!” the young
fisherman sarcastically grinned.
“Child, do you speak that way to your mother?
Have you forgotten the fourth commandment
entirely? But listen, from this very hour I forbid you
to have any fur­ther connection with that superficial
youth.”
“It shall be as you say, Mother; for you know
that I am tired of this fishing business anyway. This
very evening I shall go to my godfather, Antonio,
and offer my services to the next merchant ship that
sails.”
With these words Antonio left his mother alone
on the lowly porch of the little hut, and paying no
heed to her complaints, he strolled along the shore,
whistling the tunes of familiar sailor songs.
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The night was already far spent, and still
Petronilla awaited the return of her son. Hour after
hour passed in wearisome suc­cession, yet no step
nor sound betrayed An­tonio’s return.
The unfaithful son had already received the
punishment for his disobedience. While he was
walking up and down along the shore trying to
silence his conscience singing the jolly sailor songs,
the pirates fell upon him: Antonio was Achmed’s
first victim, and he showed himself weak enough
before the threats of the pirates to deny his faith.
While the poor mother, left alone in bitter need,
worried herself to death, Zaki, the renegade (for so
we may call one who has fallen from Christianity
into Islamism), avowed his obedience and respect to
his newly adopted superior.
But it is time that we listen to the con­versation in
which Achmed and his steward were engaged.
“Leave this young fellow to my care, sir,” said
Zaki very impressively ; “and I will guarantee you
that he will soon denounce his unbelief.”
“What good does your word do me, Zaki,”
answered Achmed, “when, some fine day, led by
the desire of freedom, you and this young rascal will
depart with my gold and look for a new home?”
“Sir, you deny me confidence?” cried the
manager, white with anger.
“You Frenchmen are all alike,” the other quietly
retorted. “Truly, you would not be the first one to do
so. It is commonly said of you people that you find
no real peace in the true religion of Mohammed,
and trou­bled by your raging conscience, you are
not satisfied until you have returned to your old
unbelief.”
“Bah,” shouted Zaki, “only a fable, sir!” Yet his
voice seemed to tremble at these words. “However,
it is immaterial to me what you intend to do with the
boy; it would grieve me very much if he fell into the
hands of these Frenchmen, and that could happen
very easily.”
“What do you say, he could fall into the hand of
a Frenchmen?”
“Yes, sir; that is exactly what I said. Do you not
know that that cursed band of un­believers have long
since been using their influence openly here? In the
prisons and courts and everywhere they have gained
ad­mission. Allah punish me! but true it is, I have
hope that —”
“That you might soon get away from here,
before the gnawing of your conscience might tear
you to pieces.”
“Achmed Khalil-el-Fathallah, spare your
sarcasm. You know that I am not your slave since I
profess the faith of the proph­ets. If I am not pleased
to be with you any longer, I am my own master.”

23
“Ho, noble Zaki, it was not meant that way. I
did not mean to insult you ; what I said was only a
harmless joke about your fable.”
“Good, then we shall speak of it no more. But
what I wanted to say is this: the boy is not safe as a
slave; the French priests would soon discover him.”
“To the hangman with you; is there no dagger
here that would relieve them of their efforts?”
“’Twould bring unpleasantries, sir; it is better
that I take the youngster along.”
“And what do you intend to begin with him?”
“How can you ask that, sir? It must naturally be
my first care to convert him from his unbelief.”
“If it fails, Zaki?”
“Fail, sir? Do I look as though I would allow my
plans to be defeated by a mere sapling? Just allow
me a free hand, and it shall soon be easily done; for,
do I not know his language?”
“Do not be too sure about that. By the prophet!
That rascal would not be the first one whose
stubborn head the Moslems were unable to break.”
“Sir, I believe you might display greater
confidence in me. I would be a fool if I began by
using force.”
“What of it, that will finally bring us to the same
results; I remember quite well how, fifteen years
ago, our friend captive paid no attention to the
friendly admonition of my people.”
Zaki pretended not to hear this remark, but
the white pallor of anger which drew across his
face proved clearly how much he resented the
retort. “It shall be as I have said, sir,” Zaki said as
coolly as possible; the boy shall go with me to our
encampment, where he shall be under my special
care. If I have not converted him from his unbelief
through kindness and flattery before the month has
run its course, then we shall use force.”
“Why the rush?” said Achmed. “I will give
you double that time. Let the rascal have as much
freedom as possible; children are inquisitive;
thereby we will reach our goal all the sooner—but
once more I warn you, be careful of yourself lest the
youngster turn your own head.”
“There you come, again with your old sarcasm,”
raged the overseer.
“Only joking, noble Zaki; harmless joking—but
now let us drop the matter; the night is already far
advanced. I am tired and in need of rest; and you,
most likely, have many things to prepare for your
coming journey.” With these words the two men
parted for the evening.

VII

A Journey in the Desert
The morning dawn found Zaki quite refreshed.
The courts below had awakened from the stillness
of night and become lively again with the hustle
and bustle of men preparing for the day’s journey.
Achmed’s men were leading their camels to their
places, in order to load them for the long journey in
the desert.
After all had been set in order, Achmed’s slave
master came out of the house, carrying an effective
tool in his right hand, namely, a long dangling whip,
with which he accomplished his work. Suddenly
the slaves drew back at the sight of their master,
and the loud shouts with which the Arabs usually
accompany their work died away into mere echoes
of fear and dread of what might happen next. Zaki
Khirallah was evidently in bad spirits this morning;
his dark-brown eyes stared angrily, and the deep
folds across his brow forebode an ill temper.
“Get to work, you lazy scoundrels! do you begin
the day by loafing?” he shouted at the servants,
and his whip fell unmercifully upon the thinly clad
shoulders of the unfortunate ones within his reach.
Weeping and groaning with pain, they sought to
gather their strength to double their efforts. After an
hour everything was prepared for the march. In the
meantime the overseer had returned to his master in
order to receive the final instructions for the journey.
It was now about 8 o’clock. The caravan had left
Achmed’s court and made its way to the limits of the
city, there to join the slave overseer of Omar, who
was also returning to his master’s camp in the desert.
Zaki, two servants, and Francesco remained in the
rear. The poor boy’s eyes were filled with tears; the
healthy freshness of his cheeks had turned into a
pallor of suffering, and his dark hair hung disorderly
over his forehead. For the second time in his life he
was experiencing the gnawing pangs of hunger. On
the ship with the other captives he could hardly eat
the hard pieces of bread that Achmed threw before
them, and this morning the other slaves had kept
his intended breakfast for themselves. With all the
kindness his rough nature could elicit, the renegade approached the boy, softly parted the heavy
locks from his face, raised his head gently with his
hand, and touched a soft cord in the boy’s heart by
addressing him in the familiar Italian:
“You must not weep, my little friend; soon you
will have it nice again; come, give me your hand.”
Francesco looked up astonished, as he suddenly
heard his mother tongue again.
“Oh, I am so hungry,” he said pleadingly. “Have
they not given you anything today?” asked Zaki.
“No sir; I have received nothing.”
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

24
Immediately Zaki ordered some food to be
brought to the boy. Eager though he may have been
to swallow the food at once, nevertheless, the boy
did not forget to make the Sign of the Cross and say
a little prayer before he began to take part of the
simple food.
“My, what a pious boy you must be!” the
overseer addressed him flatteringly. “That is right;
you must never fail to say your prayers before you
eat.”
“Surely, they must have stolen you, too,”
suggested the boy after he had satisfied his hunger
and became more disposed for conversation.
“Yes, my little friend; but come now, it is time
that we break away from here.”
“Oh, that will be fine,” Francesco shouted with
new enthusiasm and clapped his hands with joy;
“then you will bring me back to my dear parents?”
“Later; first we must leave the city, as we are not
safe here.”
This disappointment was unexpected, and tears
began to flow freely, and flattering words were
unable to restrain them.
“Be quiet, my little friend, all will soon be better
again; then you shall be as happy and gay as you
were before.” With these words the renegade hoisted
Francesco to one of the slaves seated upon a camel,
whispered a short command in the driver’s ear, and
the little group started upon their way through dark
and secluded streets to the outskirts of the city.
The travelers were on their wearisome road
for three days and still had not reached their goal;
for, from Tunis to the desert lands was a distance of
about two hundred hours of actual traveling. Poor
Francesco had to endure much. As one forsaken,
he sat upon the camel with Achmed’s slave. The
thumping steps of the camel jolted the poor boy
about in his uncomfortable seat and caused him
much misery at first. Over and over he begged to
be let down and allowed to walk for himself; alas,
at each entreaty the renegade drove on with greater
speed, which only added to the boy’s discomfort.
The caravan came to a halt only to seek a bit of
shelter from the burning midday sun, and Francesco
could then snatch a short hour of rest. Even Zaki
was no longer so friendly as before to his little
prisoner, whose complaints and petitions were
becoming annoying. Had only Don Isidore been
there, the boy would have had at least one friend to
offer a bit of consolation. Finally, at the end of the
fifth day, the caravan reached the city of Rhodaves,
which was the last city that lay between them and
the vast desolate sands of the desert. Mansor, the
man in charge of the slaves of Omar, remained in
the city overnight. The renegade, however, led his
men on a few hours more, that he might put up for
the night in the secluded confines of the desert; for
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he still feared, even though without reason, that
Francesco might be secretly snatched from his care.
It was a beautiful evening, not a cloud marred
the clearness of the heavens above. The evening
moon mildly spread her soft light over the vast
desolation and cast a few lean shadows through the
scattered trees that found their miserable existence
in the sands. The few bushes that stood boldly in the
desert’s heat became more active in the refreshing
slumber. Only the thumping steps of the camels
and the dull monotonous song of the brawny slaves
interrupted the solemn stillness. It was almost
midnight before Zaki halted; stakes and canvases
were unpacked from the camels’ backs, and soon all
was in readiness for the night.
The beasts of burden were carefully tied so that
they would not run off during the night into limitless
freedom. After a large fire had been enkindled as
a means of protection against the attack of wild
animals, the weary travelers lay themselves to rest.
In spite of the disturbance caused by the erection
of the tents, Franoesco still remained sound asleep.
Zaki carefully took him from the basket-like cradle
that hung from the side of one of the camels,
tenderly wrapped him in a covering, and put him to
rest in his own tent.
As soon as morning dawned, the slave who
acted as guard during the last night’s watch aroused
the camp into life of the new day. Quickly the
glowing embers were enkindled into glaring flames,
and the “acida” prepared for breakfast. The water
began to boil quickly over the hot fire, rye flour
was added from a tin box, and then a little butter,
and the meal was ready. In the meantime the sun
had already risen above the sand hills to the east;
Zaki was angry because Omar’s people were not
at hand to continue the march. Impatiently he sent
one of his riders to the nearest point of vantage to
see whether the delayed companions were in sight;
as, however, the man returned without having seen
any signs of the awaited caravan, the whole camp
was broken up and prepared for the journey; for,
the most difficult part of the journey, the last day
of march, had to be traveled under a blistering sun
before they would reach their destination.

VIII

Too Late
Late in the evening the caravan reached the
pirate’s secluded estate in the desert. On the
morning of that same day a ship from Italy landed
on the shores of Tunis. Hardly had the passengers
been discharged and safely brought to land when
one of those who were on board was seen speaking

25
nerv­ously to a group of men at work at the far end
of the harbor. Disappointed, Giovanni turned back,
for it was none other than he, looking for his lost
son; but his Francesco was not among the group
of slaves. Through­out the whole day the unhappy
father tramped the streets of the city; wherever he
saw a boy, he felt that it must be Francesco; but at
each investigation the pangs of sor­row cut deeper.
Over and over he called aloud the precious name,
in the public places, but his cries merely fell upon
the dis­interested ears of gazing bystanders. De­jected
and tired as evening was about to enclose the city
in darkness, Giovanni made a last effort to wander
through all the streets once more. The thought that
his tiresome efforts should be all in vain tended to
tear his heart from the cords that held it in place.
The picture of his inconsolable wife was indelibly
impressed upon his im­agination; it was to console
her in her sor­row that he made this hurried trip to
Tunis, with the promise not to return unless he could
bring Francesco back with him. Be­fore the altar of
the convent church, at which Francesco so longed
to be able to serve Mass, the parents had promised
to dedicate their loved one entirely to the service
of God and to the protection of the Blessed Lady,
if he would be returned to them un­harmed and
unsoiled. Good old Brother Christopher was not to
be consoled, and wept like a child.
“My own life I would present to God as an
offering if He would accept it in the place of that
of your dear son,” he said to the sad father. “Go to
Tunis, sir, and when you have found any traces of
your little Francesco, tell me what you have heard
and seen. I will fall upon my knees before the feet
of our kind abbot, and shall not rise again until he
grant me freedom to have those chains of slavery
thrown about me that now hang so heavily upon
your little child.”
Moved by the earnest plea of the good old
Brother, the parents thanked him very freely,
but did not choose to take advantage of the great
generosity that friendship of­fered.
“My dear Brother,” answered Giovanni; “I will
gladly give all that I have for my child, and would
offer my service as an or­dinary day-laborer, or walk
the streets and beg my food from door to door,
before I would allow you to offer yourself for my
child.”
“You are wrong, my friend; I am old and not
useful any longer, what difference will it make if that
ungodly Turk tortures me to death? On the contrary,
it will give this poor sinner a safer chance to earn
his way to heaven. You, however, must provide for
your wife, Angela. But, come now, it is time for you
to be on your way; may God and His holy angels
accompany you safely to your son.”
While Giovanni had thus pondered over past
scenes, with the sorrow of his wife weighing heavily

upon his sad heart, and the loving kindness of the
good old Brother urging him on, he suddenly stood
in the midst of the busy market-place. “Frances­co!
Francesco!” he cried out. Just then he felt a hand,
of some one back of him, tap­ping him lightly upon
the shoulders. A tall figure, with noble features,
concealed in rather Turkish garments, stood back of
him.
“You are Giovanni Fione from Catania and are
surely searching for your stolen boy?” asked the
stranger.
“For the sake of my good wife, tell me where my
Francesco is that even today I may hold him in my
arms.”
“Sir, if I only knew, how gladly would I give you
the consoling information,” an­swered the stranger
in a quivering voice. Just then a small ugly figure
dashed out of a near-by house and rushed towards
the two with snarling words: “Assad, you good-fornothing wretch, how long must I wait for you? If I
see you speaking to the people on the street again,
you will never take an­other step from the house.”
Vanquished, the poor servant listened to the
cutting words; then, quietly, but in a firm tone,
he answered: “Sir, I have, indeed, through God’s
design, become your property, but my Christian
name you can never take from me; my name
is Isidore, and not Assad.” Then, in spite of the
warning of his enraged master, the priest turned
to the fa­ther of Francesco again: “Giovanni, I was,
indeed, brought here with your child, but what has
become of him since then, I do not know. Perhaps
the French priest who resides here in the city can
give you better information. May God bless your
efforts. And when you find Francesco, greet him
from Don Isidore, and please remember me in your
prayers.”
This was a new ray of hope to brighten his faith.
At once the father hurried to the French consul in
order to learn from him where the missionary had
his quarters. Luckily, the priest had just gone to the
con­sul to consult with him on some matter re­garding
his missionary work, and Giovanni found him there;
but, alas, he could give no more information than
Don Isidore; never­theless, the good priest promised
to lend whatever assistance he could, and his con­
soling words gave the sad father new hope for the
next day. But all efforts to find the child, for the next
whole month, brought no result.
After due consideration the consul advised the
father, in a last effort, to go to the dey, the highest
ruler of Tunis, who incidentally held very friendly
relations with the king of France. The consul himself
offered to pre­sent the father to the city’s magistrate
and to support him in his petition, and suggested
that if Giovanni would offer the ruler a suit­able
gift, the latter surely would grant him a “fermen,”
a written order, by the force of which he would be
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

26
able to demand his child from whatever powerful
hands might now be retaining him.
Naturally, Don Giovanni most heartily agreed
with this suggestion. He bought two beautifully
gilded vases at the street bazaar, for which he
generously paid one hundred zechinen. With these
he and the French consul went to the magnificent
home of the city’s highest magistrate. They were
immediately admitted into a cozy meeting-room,
where they found the ruler ready to receive them,
and presented their petition as a last effort to find
the lost child.
The ruler beheld the shining vases with pleasing
admiration and said smilingly: “Yes, yes; I will
accept your offer. Go and report to that rascal
Achmed, the pirate, who has more than once
brought me into difficulties with my western friend,
the mighty king of the Franks. At your demand he
shall restore the boy he has stolen from the Franks,
or—by the prophet—his round head shall roll in the
dust of the earth, and his entire gold possessions

shall find their way to my treasury-coffers—Selin,
draw up the necessary ‘fermen’ for this man.”
The warrant was immediately made out; but
even before it was written and sealed the pirate
Achmed had obtained word of the whole situation
from one of his friends at court. “They will soon find
out that I sent the boy to my estate in the desert, and
will hurry there with one of the officers of the dey
in order to free him. Hm—I will beat him at his own
game. What, even without ransom I should give up
my booty? By the Kaaba in Mecca, I would rather
murder the boy! But, no, he shall become a Moslem
for me!”
“Too late!” sobbed the disheartened father, and
he went back home to his wife sadder than when he
had come.

...to be continued.VI

Fr. Joseph Spillmann’s Tales of Foreign Lands series contains 21 booklets,
consisting of edifying and tastefully illustrated stories for the young. They
have been translated into many languages. Newly reprinted by Angelus
Press, Volume One combines four of these stories into a single volume.

Love Your Enemies. The Maoris of New Zealand have had enough of being

cheated by the English and rebel. Meanwhile, the Patrick O’Neal family, trying
to start a new life there, are overtaken by a marauding tribe and must flee for
their lives, all the while trying to practice in earnest that hardest of Christian
maxims: “Love Your Enemies.”

Maron. It is Lebanon in 1860, and the Druses are persecuting the Christians
under the complicit eye of the Turkish government. The Mufti of Sidon
incites the mob to kill the Christian dogs even as his son Ali, sickened by the
slaughter, helps his Christian friend Maron flee to the hills, and learns from
his actions the reality of grace and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

The Festival of Corpus Christi. Don Pedro and his nephew have accepted
their government’s commission to shut down the Jesuit missions in Bolivia.
Reaching the mission, they discover a village where the Indians are living a
civilized, Christian life. Their preparations for the annual Corpus Christi
procession and the taming of a savage tribe form the backdrop of this tale.

320pp. Color Softcover.
STK# 8109✱ $14.95
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

The Cabin Boys. It is 1798, the ninth year of the bloody French Revolution,

and fifteen-year-old Paul and twelve-year-old Albert embark as cabin boys on
a sea voyage with unusual cargo in the hold: 200 priests, condemned to forced
labor in Cayenne. Gripping adventures await the boys, aided by wise priests at
sea and on land, until the tale brings them back home again.

TELEVISION
27

THE SOUL AT RISK

PART 3

This is
the third
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.

I s a b e l l e

D o r é

TELEVISION AND TRUTH
In the hypothesis that people watch television programming to stay
informed, does television give us access to truth? We all can remember
direct lies that were broadcast by the media. But there is also a more
subtle form of lying–the indirect lie.

Direct Lies
Do independent television chains exist, whether public or private?
Even viewer-supported television channels seem to have a very noticeable
“religiously correct” position.
Falsehood or disinformation exists everywhere, in every domain:
the news, documentaries, fiction, and in the hybrid category called
“docufiction.” According to the dictionary, docufiction is a dramatized
television movie that reconstructs real events mixed with fictionalized
elements, scenes played by actors, or authentic documents. In fact, in a
docufiction, everything can be invented. There can be no real facts; the
mendacious prefix “docu” merely serves to deceive the viewer about the
merchandise.
Disinformation: a classic example is the production of Timisoara
[about the Romanian revolt against Communist rule in 1989], which was
acknowledged to be such by the management of the television station.
Another way to lie consists, for example, in denigrating Catholics
faithful to Tradition as “Lefebvrists” or in designating illegal aliens under
the fallacious label “undocumented workers.”
Lies can be mixed with works of fiction: it is very easy in a movie to
assign the role of a bad guy to a Catholic, a military man, or a father of a
large family.
Docufiction consists in mixing documentary (for the form) and fiction
(for the story), which amounts to passing off fiction under the serious
appearance of documentary.
Space Odyssey, a television series on evolutionary prehistory, belongs to
the genre of docufiction. But how many viewers were able to comprehend
that it really involved pure science fiction and not historical reconstitution?
The viewers who were already informed about the question of evolution
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

28
judged it severely: It’s stupid, lame, and idiotic;
they really take people for morons! Other viewers,
teachers, compromising Catholics, were seduced by
this faux-documentary.
Lastly, whether it involves documentary, news,
fiction, or docufiction, it is very difficult to know
whether what is being said is true or not. Bad
books also convey lies, but “the relationship with
a book is more rational than the relationship with
images.”1 At first, Darwin’s Origin of Species only
seduced the ambitious; men of science and the
Christians perceived the weaknesses of Darwin’s
argumentation. It took the required teaching of
Darwin’s doctrine in the schools and the absence of
a reaction from the Church for this lie to sink into
people’s minds. With a movie or docufiction, lies are
spread more easily. Moreover, as we shall see later,
a book is not conceived of or realized like a film or
newscast.

Indirect Lies
In the hypothesis that a broadcast had been
conceived without any ulterior political or ideo­
logical motives, one might suppose that lies would
not occur. Television and movies cannot broadcast
lies uninterruptedly. Except for flagrant lies, the rest
should be an exact reflection of reality. But things
are not so simple. There is what can be called “the
model effect”: reality is not shown, but rather a
model of reality, an appearance of reality. We are
used to watching the world not as it is, but through
the prism of the media, regardless of the film crew’s
good will.
The presence of the media stands between the
world and us in various ways. What’s interesting is
the spectacular: add the constraints of staging and
human selection, more or less innocent, more or less
rational, and you will understand that the image we
see cannot be raw reality.
I shall use a personal experience to illustrate the
“model effect” in four stages: a TV crew came to our
house to film a report on homeschooling.
At Home
We ourselves had thought about the setting:
what would we show? What were we going
to hide? For our family, the stakes were high
because we had had some real trouble with the
government. A physician, a staunch defender of
allopathic medicine and president of the local parish
leadership committee, was making an issue about
our preference for homeschooling, homeopathy,
and, undoubtedly, for Tradition. We sorted out what
we could say and what had better be left unsaid. We
decided not to bring up questions about religion or
medicine; not to criticize academic programs; not
to criticize the students or teachers of neighborhood
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

schools; to give the positive reasons for our choice of
homeschooling; to show the children participating in
outside activities; to convince the inspector of their
good socialization; to put out of sight books, images,
and publications deemed “politically, religiously, or
scientifically incorrect.”
We reflected upon what to wear, and we tidied
up the house. We might even have prepared and
reviewed the lessons for the news, but we didn’t: all
our children had whooping cough, two of them had
just been hospitalized, and we had been taking turns
at their bedsides for a month. Yet, for the day of the
shoot, we pretended that it was an ordinary school
day. In short, we had done a bit of staging ourselves.
The Film Crew
For technical reasons, the film crew proposed a
few limits, a few modifications of reality: assemble
the children in the same room to spare the camera
man and sound man from having to move about
(one of the children was filmed kneeling on a sofa
while normally he would be sitting at a table in
another room); assemble the children for other
activities to make the scene livelier (gathering eggs
in the chicken coop, for example); modify our daily
schedule to facilitate the maximum number of shots
during the few hours the journalists were present.
The viewer would also be unaware that several
apparently spontaneous scenes had been repeated
for incidental or even trivial reasons: a bothersome
object in the field of vision, a coughing spell, etc.
The Arrangement of Sequences
The production crew that filmed our family for
nearly seven hours kept only a montage of seven
and a half minutes for the televised broadcast.
The journalist in charge of the broadcast gave top
priority to the unusual sequences and those showing
the children moving about. Ultimately, you see very
little of the children working; you see them playing
outside, playing with the dog, fetching eggs from
the coop, playing soccer, whispering during a piano
lesson. Of course, it is scarcely exciting to show a
child doing a dictation, but we could perceive the
journalist’s deliberate intention to minimize the
children’s school work.

The Interpretation
The film was first shown to a group of people
invited to give their opinions before it was broadcast
on the TV channel a few weeks later. The guests
often expressed peremptory opinions and made
commentaries based on these few images as if they
were sufficient to get a sound grasp of the situation.
For example: the inspector of National Education
declared that I had exceptional authorization to
follow the course of the CNED because my children

29
announced that all the Masses in the neighborhood
had never been sent to school. But his perception
were cancelled because of the presence of a film
was erroneous: I use a private school curriculum,
crew at the Rue du Bac the following Sunday and
and I do not know why the inspector kept silent
that Sunday Mass would only be held in the Chapel
about the existence of private correspondence
of the Apparitions.) An unknown priest, brought
courses for homeschoolers. Out of ignorance,
by the film crew, came that day to preach. The
perhaps?
faithful flocked to Mass that Sunday because of the
Another participant at the screening, a mother
cancelled Masses or out of simple curiosity. Many
of a family and a “top model” in the public eye,
communions were received that day (according to
noticed one of my children by himself on the soccer
the account in the local bulletin), even by people
field and inferred that he was alone and had no
who do not practice the Faith regularly and who
friends. Yet her perception was inexact: he had
“felt called” to approach the communion table.
been assigned to a different soccer team that day
Apparently there was no warning from the
for the sake of the filming; the soccer coach
pulpit or call for discretion.
had told the children to spread out for
Multiple parish meetings were
their exercises; my son, sick with
held weeks ahead in order to
whooping cough, had been advised
prepare for the broadcast. The
not to get near the others.
church was cleaned; the furniture
Did this news report on
In the hypothesis
and ornaments were refurbished
homeschooling serve any
that people
for the occasion. In other
purpose? Did it inform the
words, it was not a matter of
television viewers? For us, it was
watch television
an impromptu filming, but of a
very useful: thanks to the prestige
programming to
carefully prepared and practiced
(!) of being on television, no one
celebration–which is perhaps
bothered us any more. Those
stay informed, does
normal for filming but which
who watched the broadcast–
television give us
does not reflect current practice.
relatives, parents, or friends–
Beneath the guise of a news
remained in the dark; they
access to truth? We
report, it’s pure cinema.
were disappointed not to learn
anything about the children’s
all can remember
academic level, the only thing
direct lies that were
The Choice of Protagonists
that interested them. We received
two telephone calls from
broadcast by the
We observed that the choice
interested strangers who had
of
our
parish for filming The
media. But there is
watched the program: a mother
Lord’s Day was not innocent; we
of a family, who had been
also a more subtle
could perceive an intention to
wishing to remove her children
put a certain face on the Church
form of lying–the
from public school for a long
in France. They chose a young,
time in order to protect them
indirect lie.
sympathetic, likable pastor even
from the meanness, violence, and
though the average age of parish
daily “racket” in their school; and
priests is quite high. They chose
a father of a family, who had already
a priest who never uses the Roman
created a web site on homeschooling
Canon, nor wears a cassock or clerical
and wished to add a few things to his site.
attire or Roman collar. They chose a parish
Conclusion: the only people really interested
whose organizers do not use Gregorian chant, but
in the broadcast had in fact already thought a
accept the most whimsical kyriales and allow only
great deal about the subject and were already well
the most resolutely modern “canticles.”
informed.
From these two examples, we can define a few
To give another example: the film crew of The
elements of the “model effect” in indirect lying.
Lord’s Day came to film Sunday Mass at our parish.
There, too, even though we watched the proceedings
Omission
from afar, we could observe quite a few things.
In a news report, it is impossible to put to use
The Setting
the miles of footage shot: it would be too long and
boring. They cut what they prefer not to show for
To swell the attendance, the anticipated Mass
various reasons, which are not always innocent. For
of Saturday evening was cancelled as well as one
instance, in a broadcast of Knowledge of the World
generally well-attended Sunday Mass. (A few years
about India, we saw no dirt, no misery, and no
ago, we saw the same thing while passing through
violence. No Christians were filmed. They presented
the Rue du Bac and the Lazarists’ chapel. A sign
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

30
us a wonderful country in which the inhabitants
dwell in peace and beauty, make merry, and pray or
work a little.
In a fictitious film, bothersome scenes can be
suppressed for perfectly honorable reasons: in the
film Quo Vadis, the carnage in the coliseum is not
shown, only suggested. Until the sixties, erotic
scenes were suppressed.
In movies, what is remarkable is that the hero’s
life is singularly simplified. Like comic strips, the
action dictates that the lives of the characters be
simplified. The heroes have a reduced family life
or no family life at all: Tintin, Asterix, Lucky Luke,
Rusty (the hero of Rin Tin Tin), and Zorro, whose
father played only a decorative role. The mother of
the young heroes of Flipper the Dolphin is dead and
the father, very busy with his work, gives his sons a
great deal of freedom: it is likely that the presence
of a mother would have been troublesome in the
scenario.
The heroes never experience the daily worries
of the common run of mortals: waiting rooms,
administrative forms to fill out, car trouble, a flat
tire to repair, scattered papers, the newborn’s crying
at night, visits to the orthodontist, sciatica pain,
toothache. If this type of scene exists, it is for comic
relief or else it is the starting point of the action.
“Easy, boring” works are not of great interest in
an action film, but by dint of ignoring it and of living
in a world peopled by heroes always ready to go
into action, you end up having a false representation
of real life.
Literature can also lead to this kind of confusion,
but in that domain the critical spirit is more alert.
Thus Langlo, a young secret agent, an orphan and
unmarried, lives incredible adventures at the age
of 18, but a single sentence can suggest other, less
glorious activities and link him to a duller, more
routine reality.

Distortion
Whether it concerns movies, documentaries, or
news, they show what is spectacular or sensational:
war, violence, sordid affairs, corruption of morals.
They also feature what may serve the political or
ideological causes favored by the station directors
or by those who pay them. They will show footage
of people demonstrating for the right to housing,
but they will leave out a much more sizable
demonstration of farmers.
In documentaries and other “windows to
reality,” certain personages are shown in preference
to others: provocative priests or bishops, rather
than others; police or military blunders, rather
than successes due to hard work or laborious
investigations; politically favored unions and
NGOs, rather than others. For the French, the
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

expert on ecology and agriculture is José Bové, even
though he is far from being universally approved
by the farmers and even in his own movement.
On questions of science and faith, the primary
spokesman on television is Hubert Reeves. It
becomes very difficult to explain that the model
imposed by the media is not ours, nor the best, nor
the most serious.

Exaggeration
Whatever the movie or television program, we
always see extraordinary things (even if it seems that
we have moved on from the era of the television
spectacular to reality TV). Of course there are the
special effects, stunts, and decor. But subtly, even
without resorting to any kind of trickery, they
arrange reality so that it is always more beautiful,
more viewable, more sensational.
In a news report, schooling at home or The
Lord’s Day, the subjects are playing a role before the
camera. Things are disposed so that everything will
go well that day: the children work hard, they are
ready on time, they don’t argue with each other; the
house is pleasant and attractive. No one is shorttempered, no one is tired. The telephone is turned
off. In short, everything happens for the best. The
children are calm, the baby doesn’t cry, the meal is
ready on time without rushing… In reality, things go
differently, but it is not reality that is being shown; it
is a touched up image of reality.
In the news report on The Lord’s Day, there could
not be any false notes, mistakes in the readings–
everything had been so minutely prepared! More­
over, the film crew had arrived the day before to
install their equipment and test everything. But
in reality, the songs are sung badly, the readers
stumble, and the attendance is sparse.
In the movies, the heroes are extraordinary:
they give and receive blows without being hurt;
the children are beautiful, “super intelligent,”
resourceful, clever. In the film Home Alone, a child
accomplishing all sorts of unbelievable technical
and intellectual exploits is idolized. It isn’t science
fiction, there aren’t really any special effects, but
one is very far from reality and the real abilities of a
child that age.
The same excesses can be found in comic books:
the Gaulois fight and receive blows on the head
without suffering any brain injury; the Lone Ranger
never misses a shot. One might imagine that such
things exist in children’s literature, but images are
able to convey the irrational while in a book there
has to be rationality: one does not so readily accept
the unlikely.
(To be continued.)
Translated from La Télévision, ou le péril de l’esprit (copyright Clovis, 2009).

31
a r c h b i s h o p

m a r c e l

l e f e b v r e

thE authoRity oF

VatiCaN
ii
QuEstioNEd

PART 2

The Declaration
of November 21, 1974,
Charter of the Society

In a spiritual conference
given at Ecône on
December 2, 1974,
Archbishop Lefebvre
commented on the
document that summarizes
the Society’s position
toward the conciliar
authorities. He explains
why obedience is not owed
to these authorities in the
measure that they wish to
impose the Council and
the errors of liberalism and
modernism that it conveys.

I have adopted a principled position that need not change
with events, a principled position which seems to me to have
been, in a sense, the seminary’s and the Society’s from the
outset. Obviously, the terms in which it is expressed have
become firmer, clearer, and more definitive, because the crisis
keeps getting worse, not better! If we could see that the crisis
were diminishing and some benefit from the reform accruing,
then maybe, to the contrary, we should be less firm. But such a
perception seems to me completely illusory, and the longer we
go along, the worse the situation in the Church gets. So here are
a few words:
We cleave, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome,
the guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary for
the maintenance of that faith, and to eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom
and truth. On the other hand we refuse and have always refused
to follow the Rome of the neo-Protestant trend clearly manifested
throughout Vatican Council II and, later, in all the reforms born of
it. All these reforms have contributed and are still contributing to the
destruction of the Church, the ruin of the priesthood, the abolishing
of the sacrifice of the Mass and of the Sacraments, the disappearance
of the religious life, to naturalist and Teilhardian teaching in the
universities, seminaries and catechetics, a teaching born of liberalism
and Protestantism, and often condemned by the solemn magisterium
of the Church.
No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us
to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, clearly laid down and
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THE ANGELUS • February 2010

32

thE authoRity oF

VATICAN ii Q

professed by the magisterium of the Church for nineteen
hundred years. “But,” said St. Paul, “though we or an
angel from heaven–si nos aut angelus de caelo–preach any
other gospel unto you than that which we have preached
unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). St. Paul would
anathematize himself were he to teach novelties, were he
to teach something he had not taught before.
Is not that what the Holy Father is telling us again
today? And if there appears to be a certain contradiction
between his words and his deeds as well as in the acts of
the dicasteries, then we cleave to what has always been
taught, and we turn a deaf ear to the novelties which
destroy the Church. It is impossible to profoundly modify
the lex orandi without modifying the lex credendi. To the
new Mass there corresponds the new catechism, the new
priesthood, the new seminaries, the new universities,
the “Charismatic” Church, and Pentecostalism [the
Archbishop tapped his finger on the table from “To the
new Mass” to “Pentecostalism”]–all of them opposed
to orthodoxy and to the age-old magisterium of the
Church. This Reform, deriving as it does from liberalism
and modernism, is poisoned through and through. It
derives from heresy and results in heresy, even if not all
its acts are formally heretical. It is therefore impossible
for any informed and loyal Catholic to embrace this
Reform or submit to it in any way whatsoever. The
only attitude of fidelity to the Church and to Catholic
doctrine appropriate for our salvation is a categorical
refusal to accept this reformation….That is why, by
the grace of God, we hold firmly to everything that has
been consistently taught and practised by the Church
(and codified in books published before the modernist
influence of the Council) concerning faith, morals,
divine worship, catechetics, priestly formation, and
the institution of the Church. Doing this with the grace
of God, the help of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and
St. Pius X, we are certain that we are being faithful to
the Catholic and Roman Church, to all the successors
of Peter, and of being the faithful dispensers of the
mysteries of our Lord Jesus Christ in Spiritu Sancto [the
same tapping of the finger from “in any way whatsoever”
to the end of the paragraph].

This Declaration, obviously, may seem rather
strong to you, but I think it’s necessary. We can no
longer keep silent before such a disaster affecting
souls. For that is what we should see: institutions are
a small matter even though they’re divine, whereas
souls are being lost; the number of souls going to
hell because of this reform is increasing: souls that
no longer believe in the Real Presence, souls that no
longer believe in the sacrifice of the Mass, souls that
consequently no longer respect the Holy Eucharist;
souls that don’t go to confession any more; souls,
people that no longer baptize their children, that
wait until their children reach the age of reason;
souls that no longer ask for extreme unction because
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

uEstioNEd

the priests now refuse to come and give it, or what
have you. And all these deserted convents, the
religious dispersed, the seminaries empty; they
don’t want seminaries any more, they want another
formation–which one? God only knows!
Just as, at the time of the Protestant revolt,
Catholics resisted the tidal wave of Protestantism
in the countries invaded by Protestantism, so too
must we, before this wave of neo-Protestantism and
neo-modernism, say no! We cannot say, let’s take
one part and leave the other! This isn’t possible
because everything holds together: for a new liturgy,
a new faith. The new liturgy is inspired, is it not, by
the same principles and the same ideas inscribed in
the catechism? It corresponds, it is the same thing,
for what is the liturgy if not the living catechism,
the catechism applied? I cannot say it better: the
living catechism is the catechism lived, the liturgy–
it is nothing else. So you cannot have completely
transformed a liturgy with new principles and not let
them transpire in the catechism, or vice versa; you
cannot make a new catechism with new principles,
new ways of conceiving your faith, and keep the true
liturgy and the liturgy as it has always been taught–
it’s impossible!
That is what happened to Protestantism: Luther
changed the liturgy, and by changing the liturgy he
changed people’s faith; he changed the catechism
and so changed the priesthood, necessarily! If
you profoundly change the liturgy, you change
the priesthood because the priesthood is entirely
oriented towards the liturgy; that is its very
definition. The priest is made for the sacrifice! If you
begin to denature the sacrifice, you denature the
priest; if you denature the priest, you denature the
seminary! Because what is a seminary, if not a house
for the formation of priests? All of that is absolutely
integrated. It is impossible to say that you’re going
to take one thing but leave the rest. All of that is
logical. Automatically, slowly, all of that enters
people’s minds and everything is transformed.
People end up entirely losing the faith, allowing
everything and adopting everything!
(To be continued.)
Fr. Gleize is a professor of ecclesiology at the seminary of the SSPX in Ecône
and now a member of the commission involved in the doctrinal discussions
with the Holy See. In 2006, he compiled and organized Archbishop Lefebvre’s
thinking about Vatican II. It was published by the Institute of St. Pius X, the
university run by the SSPX in Paris, France. Although slightly edited, the
spoken style has been preserved.

33

L e o

D a r r o c h

INTRODUCTION TO

POPE PAUL’S
NEW MASS
On the occasion of the new edition of Pope Paul’s
New Mass, Leo Darroch, President of Una Voce and
friend of Michael Davies, penned this foreword,
which will be included in future printings of the
book.
Although he had his own views on certain
questions, Michael Davies was a friend of
Archbishop Lefebvre and wrote many books in
defense of Tradition and the traditional Latin Mass.
This includes the famous Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre
series, the most detailed study of Archbishop
Lefebvre’s struggle against the suppression of
Tradition by Rome in the the 1970s. He was
president of Una Voce (1992-2004); he remained
close to the SSPX until his death in 2004.
In 1963, when Michael Treharne Davies had qualified as a
teacher from St. Mary’s College, his Senior Lecturer in English
stated in a testimonial that he was the most hard-working student he
had known. He said he had an incisive, scholarly, questioning mind
and an insatiable curiosity which made him willing to range widely
and tackle any topic that was presented to him, and carry out his
own research and probe into it. In spite of the scope and success of
his activities, he said there was no sign of superficiality in Michael
Davies’ work or of affectation in his general outlook. He went on
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Michael Davies, the schoolmaster.

THE ANGELUS • February 2010

34
to say that Davies regarded every piece of work
as a job to be done, did it with thoroughness and
intelligence, and was then very diffident about his
own achievement–not looking for applause, but
only anxious to get on with the next task. He ended
by describing him as open, reliable, co-operative,
firm in his religious faith and tenacious in pursuing
his ideals without fuss or outward show. It was an
admirable and perceptive summation of the qualities
that Michael Davies would display throughout his
life.
As a schoolteacher, and also as a parent,
Michael knew the importance of guiding young
minds along the path of truth; and especially so in
matters of the Faith. It is well known that initially
he had a degree of enthusiasm for Vatican II but he
quickly realized that things were not as he and many

were put under the microscope and found, in the
most part, to be groundless. His life’s work was
spent meticulously researching these supposed
new insights, this new scholarship, and exposing it
for public scrutiny as the baseless and destructive
movement it was. He had discovered in his late
teens and early twenties that the Truth existed in the
Catholic Church and he was not prepared to allow
anyone to take it away from him, his children, or the
children he taught.
For Michael, the truth was everything and he
was appalled at the way the modernist pseudointellectuals and their fellow travellers had infiltrated
the Catholic media, the seminaries, the publishing
houses, and were introducing a new religion to our
churches and schools to the detriment of the faithful.
He was also equally appalled not only that the

For Michael, the truth was everything and he was appalled at
the way the modernist pseudo-intellectuals and their fellow
travellers had infiltrated the Catholic media, the seminaries,
the publishing houses, and were introducing a new religion to
our churches and schools to the detriment of the faithful.
others had expected. He joined the Latin Mass
Society in February 1967 and very quickly became
actively involved. In October 1968, he addressed a
conference in Cambridge and gave a talk on “Mass
and the Under Elevens.” Later that month he spoke
in London on “Children and the Mass.” He had
been a Catholic for only ten years and a teacher for
only four years but he could see immediately the
damaging effect the changes in the Church would
have on the faith of young people. He was to be
their champion and he threw himself entirely into
the battle.
Maria Davies clearly remembers Michael’s
first foray into print. In May 1967, The Tablet had
printed an article on the Vietnam War by a priest
who had made various claims about Americans
bombing Catholic churches in North Vietnam
and killing people on their way to Mass. Michael
simply did not believe the story and checked the
information. His letter to The Tablet ( June 24,
1967) proved that the entire article was groundless
and based on Communist propaganda. This
insistence on checking information in the search
for truth became the cornerstone of everything
he produced subsequently. This was never more
clearly demonstrated than in his clinical analysis
of the new order of Mass. It became a continual
source of irritation, and more, to those ‘experts’
who wished to steamroll liturgical change upon the
laity, that their spurious claims and grand plans
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

hierarchies of the world had abandoned their duty
to their flocks and allowed these ‘experts’ to peddle
their destructive theories unchallenged, but even
worse, that many actively supported them while
condemning as divisive those Catholics who were
not prepared to abandon the faith of their parents
and earlier generations.
By the early 1970s, Michael Davies had already
established a reputation for being a formidable
defender of the Faith and Tradition. In all his writing
he encapsulated the theological virtues of faith, hope
and charity. He was possessed of a wonderful faith
that even in the darkest moments never wavered;
he never lost hope that Tradition would be restored
to our altars, and though he criticised endlessly the
disastrous reforms inflicted upon the Church he
never resorted to personal abuse of those who were
responsible for them. Michael truly appreciated
that we as individuals were not important, it was
the restoration of the traditional liturgy that was
paramount and that anything we could do should be
focused totally on this cause.
By the mid-1970s the crisis within the Church
was deepening. In his general research on the
various novelties that were being introduced he
had amassed a huge amount of data on the Council
and how the great majority of the Fathers had been
deceived by the well-orchestrated plan of a clique
of European bishops and their liturgical advisers.
Michael Davies argued that the Church’s attempted

35
headlong rush into unity with other Christian bodies
would, in fact, have the adverse effect to that being
claimed and was leading swiftly to its decline. Thus
was born his great trilogy, Liturgical Revolution. His
first volume, Cranmer’s Godly Order (1976), examined
the Protestant Reformation, what happened, and
why. His second work, Pope John’s Council (1977), was
written “to provide an objective and documented
explanation of the fact that the Church in the West
is disintegrating and that the responsibility for this
disintegration must be laid at the door of the Second
Vatican Council.” His third volume, Pope Paul’s New
Mass (1980), provided a detailed examination of
the development of the Roman rite, the liturgical
legislation pouring out from the Vatican during and
after the Council, the prayers and rubrics of the
new rite of Mass, and the devastating impact of the
changes on the Church throughout the world.
Michael Davies’ books were read by many
priests and prelates. One bishop commented to
me that he had found Michael to be a man of the
highest integrity, vision and commitment. He said
he had ploughed a lonely furrow for many years
and, specifically, in his writings on the Mass, he had
kept an awareness of Pope St. Pius V to the fore in
all our minds. He ended by saying that his writings
will, in time, reveal his real greatness. Another
prelate said that he had hoped and prayed that he
would meet him but was disappointed that it never
happened. It was Michael, he said, who had led him
to a true appreciation of the sacred liturgy.
Perhaps the publication in July 2007 by Pope
Benedict XVI of the motu proprio Summorum
Pontificum was the greatest vindication of Michael’s
unceasing public support for Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger. It was a relationship based on mutual
trust and on the occasion of Michael’s death in
September 2004 His Eminence sent this tribute to
the Latin Mass Society:
I have been profoundly touched by the news of the
death of Michael Davies. I had the good fortune to meet
him several times and I found him as 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 about the Sacred
Liturgy. Even though he suffered from the Church in
many ways in his time, he always truly remained a man
of the Church. He knew that the Lord founded His
Church on the rock of St Peter and that the Faith can find
its fullness and maturity only in union with the successor
of St Peter. Therefore we can be confident that the Lord
opened wide for him the gates of heaven. We commend
his soul to the Lord’s mercy.–Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,
9 November 2004 (Translated from the original German)

His legacy, and what an immense legacy
he has left us–seventeen full length books and
several dozen booklets and pamphlets–provides a
body of work of truly Catholic genius which will
enlighten, educate and sustain Catholics in future

generations. While it is true to say that Michael
Davies was a man who was hugely admired
and respected within the world of traditional
Catholicism, and well known in the corridors of
power in Rome, it must also be recognised that he
was relatively unknown to the great majority of
Catholic faithful who still attend Sunday Mass in
their parish churches. The immensity of the man
will only be fully appreciated in the years and
decades to come when his writings, particularly
on the Mass, will be recognised as a major
contribution to the resurgence and restoration
of the traditional liturgy and faith of the Church.
Since the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum
the debate concerning the liturgy has been
re-ignited and more and more senior figures in
the Church are raising their voices in support of
a new analysis of the failed policies of the 1960s.
The re-publication of Pope Paul’s New Mass will
come as a timely and valuable contribution to
this debate and will surely bring Davies’ work to
a new audience; an audience that has no firsthand knowledge of the years surrounding the
Second Vatican Council and who will appreciate
his clinical assessment of the changes that were
imposed, and his exposé of the flawed and false
scholarship that drove the changes. It is a book
that deserves pride of place in the libraries of all
Catholic seminaries. Perhaps the greatest tribute
we could pay him for his service to the Church,
and to the faithful, is for each of us who has one
or more of his books, to make his name known to
those who have no knowledge of him or his work.
If we are indeed serious in our desire to restore
the ancient liturgy to our altars we must make
it our apostolate to persuade our parish priests
to read his trilogy on the liturgical revolution–it
could produce remarkable fruit.

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All netting!
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Pope Paul’s New Mass

Liturgical Revolution: Vol. III
THE 8424
ANGELUS✱February
2010
752pp. Color hardcover. STK#
$28.95
www.angeluspress.org

•

36

Church an

Exclusive:
Excerpts from
The Ecumenical
Vatican Council II:
A Much Needed
Discussion
DICI offers its readers a preview
of substantial excerpts from the
book by Msgr. Brunero Gherardini,
soon to be published in English
under the title: The Ecumenical Vatican Council II: A Much Needed Discussion. The book, released in Italy
before the summer, has already
been reprinted twice. We translated
the following excerpts from the
French version of the book.

On the Notion of “Living Tradition”:
Excerpts from Chapter 5,
“Tradition in Vatican Council II”

Up to Vatican II, to clarify this
point, the theologian had at his disposal a fairly precise elaboration of
the concept of Tradition from which
he could draw an argument to assess
suitably his judgment.
I have already alluded to this
elaboration in the first part of the
present chapter, considering Tradition from various viewpoints,
and calling it accordingly, apostolic,
divino-apostolic, humano-apostolic,
inherent, declarative, and constitutive.
Now Vatican II, which made
one exception for apostolic Tradition—yet without ever presenting it
with the meaning henceforth considered as “traditional” of this qualification—systematically ignored all
the others. On the other hand, we
find in the Council a different qualification: living Tradition, which I will
discuss later on.
We are confronted with a
manner of expression which, while
desirous of simplifying the message,
ends up by making it more complicated because of a too generic

THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

language, its amphibological use
and its lack of specificity. And I am
not talking about the fact that living
could open the doors to all kinds of
innovations which could be born of,
or germinated from the old plant.…
I make one last observation
concerning the so-called living Tradition of the Church. Apparently
it is an irreproachable expression,
yet it is in fact ambiguous. It is
irreproachable because the Church
is a living reality and Tradition is
its very life. It is ambiguous because
it allows the introduction into the
Church of any novelty, even the
least recommended, as expression
of the Church’s life.
Dei Verbum speaks of the living
Gospel, the living Magisterium and
the living Tradition. Already this
large array of usage does not plead
in favor of the univocality of the
concept.
In number 7, for instance, it
affirms: “In order to keep the Gospel
forever whole and alive within the
Church, the Apostles left bishops as
their successors.”
In number 8, we read: “The
Holy Spirit, through whom the
living [emphasis mine] voice of the
Gospel resounds in the Church,
and through her, in the world, leads
unto all truth those who believe.”

Next, we find in number 10 the
following statement: “The task of
authentically interpreting the word
of God, whether written or handed
down, has been entrusted exclusively to the living [emphasis mine]
teaching office of the Church.”
A little further down, in number
12, it is recommended as a duty that
“no less serious attention [must] be
given to the content and unity of
the whole of Scripture,” and “the
living [emphasis mine] tradition of
the whole Church must be taken
into account.”
From all these statements we
vaguely perceive a certain analogy
in the use of the adjective “living,”
but certainly not its true meaning,
nor the reason for its use.
What guarantees the vitality
of the Gospel–we know it well–is
the Gospel: through it resounds
the Word of the living God, which
is the very Person of God speaking, and hence the expression of
His very life. That there exists also
a Magisterium is a truth of our
Faith, in the sense that anyone in
charge of the Magisterium continues, thanks to the apostolic succession, the uninterrupted transmission
of the teaching of Christ and of His
Apostles.
In fact, this succession causes
the teaching of Christ and of His
Apostles to reach the Church at
every period in time, because it is a
living and vital element of the very
existence of the Church. On the
other hand, the concept of “living
Tradition” is more nebulous.
The conciliar text does not
oblige to abide only by it, but also
by the analogy of the faith, i.e. the link
which binds together in a reciprocal interdependence each of the
revealed truths and makes of them
an unbreakable unity.
The objective of the double
obligation tends to trespass the
limits of the written word, this word

and World
coming from the living Word, which
constitutes the beginning of ecclesiastic Tradition.
But why is it said to be living?
The Council does not say, or at least
not with the requisite clarity. Probably because of the unity—at least
substantial (hence the continuity)–
between the first stage of Tradition
which is apostolic, and the following
stages beginning with that which
was immediately post-apostolic,
down to the others, concerned with
the great historic periods of the
Church, and eventually all the way
to the present stage.
This is probably what is meant.
But silence about this continuity
also implies, and unfortunately so,
the absence of any certitude on
this issue. “Living” might certainly
indicate a link between the various stages and avoid more or less
serious ruptures, thus ensuring the
living and vital continuity of Tradition. But the text remains silent on
the subject. It merely states that
Tradition is living.
Now it does not suffice to declare
it to be living for it to be really so.
The vital communication between
its various phases must not only be
proclaimed, it must first and foremost be proved, and in such a way
that the proof coincides with the
continuity–at least substantial–of its
contents with that of the preceding
phases.
Tradition is living not when
it becomes integrated into some
novelty, but when we discover in,
or deduce from it, some new aspect
which had before escaped notice;
or when some new understanding
of its original contents enriches the
present life of the Church.
This life does not progress by
leaps and bounds unconnected with
each other, but along the main line
of the “quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus creditum est,” which Vatican I, following in the footsteps of

Trent, expressed by referring to the
meaning “quem tenuit ac tenet sancta
Mater Ecclesia” (DS 1507 and 3007).
The “always,” the “everywhere”
and the “by all” are not concerned
with an identity of words and hence
of the statement as a whole, but
really with the meaning that the
Church, by means of her solemn
and ordinary Magisterium, has
always upheld, and still upholds
now in her theological and dogmatic
assertions.
The principle of the “living Tradition” was not the subject of any
discussions, yet, it is prone to pave
the way to a falsification of the
sacred deposit of the truths contained in Tradition.
In an atmosphere such as that
prevalent during and after Vatican II, when only what was new
appeared to be true, and when novelty was coming under the guise of
the immanentist and fundamentally
atheistic culture of our time, the
doctrine of all times was but a vast
graveyard.
Tradition has remained mortally
wounded and is still agonizing today
(unless it be already dead) because
of stands taken which were radically
irreconcilable with its past. So, it is
not sufficient to define it as living, if
there is not longer anything alive
in it.
The truth is (and this is serious)
that we speak of living Tradition
only to rubber stamp any innovation presented as the natural development of truths officially handed
down and received, even if the
innovation has nothing in common
with the said truths and is something
far removed from a new shoot out
of the old trunk.
As a matter of fact, Tradition
is living only inasmuch as it is and
continues to be the same apostolic
Tradition, which presents itself
anew–unaltered–in and through the
ecclesiastic Tradition. The former car-

37

ries in itself a rather passive meaning: it is what is handed down, equal
to itself, included in its transmission, because the deposit must be
kept unaltered. The latter, on the
contrary, displays a more active
meaning as the official organ which
ensures the faithful transmission
of the deposit and finds, in this its
end, the justification of the adjective
“living.”
Hence, a data which would not
have its roots in the contents handed
down would not be a data of the
living Tradition, even in the case—in
itself and per se absurd– that this data
would be officially proposed.
A blatant example: it will never
be possible for the transcendental
theology of Rahner to be declared
an element of the living Tradition,
because it is in fact its tomb.
Something in the Council, and
many things in the post-Council era
have contributed to dig this grave.
The legitimacy of the adjective
“living” with regard to the progress
in the knowledge we may have of
Tradition is unquestionable, as we
have already said. In this case, it
belongs to the field of “dogmatic
progress.”
As a matter of fact, the duty of
the Church’s Magisterium is not
only to present anew the apostolic
Tradition, but also to study it thoroughly, to analyze and to explain it.
The living character of Tradition is then manifested, not by
measuring the apostolic contents in
comparison with the level and the
contents of the culture of such or
such a historical period, but by the
fact that it initiates a transition from
an implicit to an explicit statement of
the contents.
In any case, the present call to
living Tradition can be summed up
as a genuine danger for the faith of
each Christian and of the Christian
community as a whole.
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • February 2010

38

The changes already mentioned and those which will be
studied further down will fully
prove this.

Concerning Religious Liberty: Excerpt
from Chapter 7, “The Great Problem of
Religious Liberty”

So is it possible to inscribe
Dignitatis Humanæ within the
hermeneutics of continuity? If
we are satisfied with an abstract
proclamation, certainly so; but at
the level of historic pertinence, I
cannot see how it could be.
And the reason boils down
to stating the obvious: the liberty proclaimed in the Decree
Dignitatis Humanæ, which does not
concern one aspect of the human
person, but his very essence and,
together with it, all his individual
and public activity since he is
free from any political and religious conditioning, has very little
in common with, for instance,
Mirari Vos by Gregory XVI, Quanta
Cura and the Syllabus appended by
Blessed Pius IX, Immortale Dei by
Leo XIII (especially with regard
to all that pertains to the relationships between civil authority and
the government of the Church),
Pascendi Dominici Gregis by St.
Pius X and the Decree Lamentabili
released shortly before by the Holy
Office, or with Humani Generis by
Pius XII.
In fact, it is not a matter of a
different language. The diversity is
substantial and hence irreducible.
The respective contents are different. The content of the preceding
Magisterium finds neither continuity nor development in that of
Dignitatis Humanæ. So, are there
two Magisterii?
The question should not even
be asked because, by its very
nature, the Church’s Magisterium
is one and indivisible: it is that
created by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Church an
Many are those who, given the
climate of the present time, while
reaffirming its unity and indivisibility, do not at all distinguish
the danger of the split in two. The
idea that today, as homage to the
present changed circumstances,
the Magisterium applies a principle in a way different from, or
even counter to yesterday does not
frighten them.
I could also declare myself
in agreement, provided that the
requisite and unquestionable condition of the “eodem sensu, eademque
sententia” be always saved. Unfortunately, everyone obviously
seems to be going his own way,
and this may well give the impression of a Magisterium split in two.

On Ecumenism: Excerpt of Chapter 8,
“Ecumenism or Syncretism”

Yes truly, let us ask once more
what is the Protestantism of Unitatis Redintegratio.
Left to this uncertainty, the
post-council Church did not spare
her attention to everyone, accepting the inclination of all men for
the world, as if it were a “principle
and foundation” (cf. Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius) of a new kind.
She took charge of the world’s joys
and hopes, as well as of its contradictions, and forgot the Apostle’s
warning: “If I yet pleased men,
I should not be the servant of
Christ” (Gal. 1:10).
They displayed the results
obtained consequently to this
agreement with the world, which,
if it is not necessarily a betrayal
of Christ, is always, when all is
said and done, a rupture with the
venerable Tradition. Volumes of
the Enchiridion Œcumenicum were
filled with these ruptures, without
any concern for the scandal, or at
least the astonishment, to which
these facts gave rise in the mind
of any serious Catholic.

Only one single example, and
“ab uno disce omnes” (Virgil, Aeneid,
II, 65): the astonishing joint declaration concerning the Lutheran
doctrine of “justification.” Anyone
possessing minimal information
knows that this doctrine is about
original sin, its devastating effects
on human nature, and its remission
by grace alone, independently of
any contribution on the part of
man’s free will. It only admits a
purely exterior application of the
merits of Christ which supposedly
cover sin, with the consequence
that the justified person remains
at the same time both sanctified
and sinner, “simul iustus et peccator.”
I have recalled above that
Luther (in 1537) would have been
precisely disposed to any kind of
concession towards “popery”; yet
one single thing could not be questioned: the doctrine of justification
by faith alone.
It took five centuries, but he
won the day: the post-conciliar
Church eventually proved him
right, and carried his doctrine into
the antechamber of the Faith.

A Plea to Pope
Benedict XVI
The idea (which I dare now to
submit to Your Holiness) has been
in my mind for a long time. It is
that a grandiose and if possible
final clarification of the last council
be given concerning each of its
aspects and contents.
Indeed, it would seem logical,
and it seems urgent to me, that
these aspects and contents be studied in themselves and in the context of all the others, with a close
examination of all the sources,
and from the specific viewpoint
of continuity with the preceding Church’s Magisterium, both
solemn and ordinary. On the basis

and World
of a scientific and critical work—as vast
and irreproachable as possible—in comparison with the traditional Magisterium
of the Church, it will then be possible
to draw matter for a sure and objective
evaluation of Vatican II.
This will make it possible to answer
the following questions (among many
others):
● What is the true nature of Vatican II?
● What is the connection between its
pastoral character (a notion which
will need to be specifi ed authoritatively) and its possible dogmatic
character? Is the pastoral character
reconcilable with the dogmatic character? Does it suppose it? Does it
contradict it? Does it ignore it?
● Is it truly possible to define the
Second Vatican Council as “dogmatic”? And consequently, is it possible to refer to it as a dogmatic council? To base upon it new theological
assertions? In which sense? And
within which boundaries?
● Is Vatican II an “event” in the sense
given to the word by the professors of Bologna,1 i.e., something
which severs the bonds with the past
and establishes a new era in every
aspect? Or does all the past revive
in it “eodem sensu eademque sententia”?
Monsignor Brunero Gherardini,
a priest of the diocese of Prato (Italy),
has been at the service of the Holy
See since 1965, especially as professor
of ecclesiology and ecumenism at the
Lateran Pontifical University until 1995.
He is the author of about a hundred
books and of several hundreds of articles
in reviews dealing with three concentric fields of research: the 16th century
Reform, ecclesiology, and Mariology.
Msgr. Gherardini is at present a canon
of the Vatican Arch-basilica and editor
of the international review of theology
Divinitas.
(DICI)
1

Progressivist historians of the Second Vatican Council
grouped around Professor Giuseppe Alberigo–Ed.

39

Russia, Poland,
and Austria
Stand by Italy
Concerning
Crucifixes in
Classrooms
In Russia, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, President of
the Department for Foreign
Relations for the Patriarchate of Moscow, declared, on
November 11, that he absolutely stood by the Vatican and the
Italian government after the sentence of the European Court
of the Rights of Man condemning the presence of crucifixes
in classrooms of public schools on this past November 3. “We
think that the activity of the European Court must not become a
farce and that these hyper-liberal ideas must not prevail,” added
the Orthodox prelate addressing foreign newsmen. Moreover,
touching upon the meeting between the Patriarch of Moscow,
Cyril, and Pope Benedict XVI, Bishop Hilarion said that up until
now the place and precise date had not been considered, but that
there was a “desire to take a step forward.”
In Poland, some 50 Polish members of Parliament, from
the government coalition and from the conservative opposition, signed a resolution for “the protection of religious liberty”
against the ruling of Strasbourg. They accused the European
Court of the Rights of Man of violating the rights and feelings of
the believers and of jeopardizing social peace. On November 19,
the Polish press indicated that only the Social-Democrats did not
join the movement. Most of the signatories belong to the civic
platform of President minister Donald Tusk.
On November 19, in Austria, the parties of the OVP and
SPO coalition brought in a bill to the National Council to protect
themselves against the prohibition of crucifixes in classrooms.
Thus it is required that the government take necessary measures
so as to guarantee the presence of religious symbols in public
places and of the cross in classes numbering a majority of Christian students in the future. The Austrian National Council gave
charge to its government to explain to the European institutions
that the ruling of the European Court of the Rights of Man and
the consequences which flow from it cannot be supported by
Article 9 of the European Convention of the Rights of Man
on freedom of belief, of conscience and of religion. (See DICI,
No.205.)
(DICI, No.206, December 2009)
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • February 2010

40

Open Letter to
Cardinal George
Andy Martin, an Episcopalian
candidate for the U.S. Senate, wrote
an open letter to Cardinal George of
Chicago. In it, he asks the Cardinal,
from the perspective of one interested in converting to the Catholic
Church, why he allows pro-abortion
politicians to receive Holy Commu-

Church an
nion. Here are some excerpts from
his letter:
“I am a member of the Episcopal Church. Some years ago I studied for Holy Orders in my church,
but I ultimately elected not to enter
the ordained ministry. I though my
secular work fighting corruption and
working for the improvement of this
state and the United States was an
honorable calling....
“Two months ago the Holy
Father invited Episcopalians (Anglicans) such as me to rejoin the Roman
Catholic Church. I was startled by
the boldness of Pope Benedict’s
invitation. And I have studied his
words carefully.
“In the Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
the first paragraph challenges all of
us ‘who wish to enter into full visible
communion.’ The Note confirms
that the holy sacrament of communion is a visible manifestation, perhaps the most visible manifestation,
of our call to follow Christ.
“But before I can accept the
Holy Father’s invitation to join the
church, and before I can even make

an informed and intelligent decision
on how to decide, I need to ask you
a clear question.
“If Holy Communion is such
a ‘visible’ and universal sacrament
of the Church, how can you allow
apostates such as Senator Richard
Durbin to receive communion when
Durbin mocks the church’s teachings on abortion and the right to life,
both for the unborn and those facing
the end of life? How indeed?...
“If you allow Durbin to defy and
mock church teaching, and to glory
over his victories in defeating the
most precious right to life, you allow
a sinner to elevate himself over the
church and over the authority of the
Holy Father.
“I ask you to consider requesting that Senator Durbin refrain from
receiving the sacrament of communion. I most respectfully ask you
to explain to me how any church
leader can tolerate the defiance of
mockery for church teaching manifested by Senator Durbin.”
At the time of printing, we knew
of no response.
(Angelus Press)

Ordinations in Argentina and Australia
In December, the Society of St. Pius X welcomed five new priests into
its family. On December 19, 2009, at Holy Cross Seminary (Goulburn, Australia), Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais conferred the Sacred Priesthood
on two deacons. On the same date, at Seminario Nuestra Senora Corredentora in La Reja, Argentina, Bishop de Galaretta ordained three priests.
(Angelus Press)
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

and World
United States:
“Manhattan
Declaration”
against Proabortion Ideology
of Barack Obama
On November 22, more than a
hundred Catholic, Orthodox, and
Evangelical religious leaders made
public their manifesto against the
pro-abortion ideology of President
Obama and its administration. The
text, entitled “The Manhattan Declaration,” has already collected
more than 175,000 signatures.
Among other things, it says: “We
will not comply with any edict that
purports to compel our institutions
to participate in abortions, embryodestructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other

anti-life act; nor will we bend to
any rule purporting to force us
to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or
the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it,
about morality and immorality and
marriage and the family.” Among
the Catholics signatories are the
names of fifteen Cardinals and
bishops, among them the archbishops of New York, Timothy Dolan,
and of Washington, Donald Wuerl;
Cardinals Justin Francis Rigali,
archbishop of Philadelphia, and
Adam Maida, emeritus archbishop
of Detroit.
(DICI, No. 206, 12/17/2009)

41

Eminent Pius XII
Specialist Rev.
Dr. Pierre Blet Has
Passed Away
On December 1st, Radio Vatican announced the passing away of
the French Jesuit in the following
terms:
“Father Pierre Blet, famous
Church historian, professor in
Rome, renowned Jesuit scholar
and a great defender of the memory
of Pius XII (Pius XII and the Second
World War by Perrin, and Pius XII
and Second World War according to
Archives of the Vatican), died of a heart
attack at the age of 91 at Rome’s
Hospital Santo Spirito. He divided
his time between Rue Grenelle in
Paris and Rome where he taught
modern history in the Pontifical
Gregorian University. With this loss
the Company of Jesus loses one of
its most heroic members.”
The Osservatore Romano gave
tribute to this “Vatican historian”
who, along with three other Jesuits
–Robert Graham, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider–was
commissioned by Paul VI (196378) to publish the most important
documents concerning the Second
World War to throw light on Pius
XII’s (1939-58) alleged silence.
Pius XII and the Second World War:
According to the Archives of the Vatican was published in 12 volumes
and contains Holy See documents
dating between 1939 and 1942. The
first volume was published in 1965
(Acts and Documents of the Holy See
related to the Second World War), just
seven years after Pius XII’s death.
The last volume was published in
1982. The French Jesuit compiled
a summary of his research: Pius XII
and the Second World War according
to the Archives of the Vatican. It was

published in 1997 and has been
translated into about ten languages.
Father Blet recently published
another book based on unexplored
documents about Church and State
under Cardinal Richelieu: Richelieu and the Church, Editions Via
Romana, 2007 (not yet translated
into English).
Born in 1918, Father Blet
entered the Jesuits in 1937. He was
invited to Rome in 1950 to teach
Modern History at the Pontifi cal
Gregorian University. On June 21,
1958, he finished his Doctorate in
the Sorbonne. From 1965 to 1995,
he taught Diplomatic History at the
Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastics
(dedicated to training priests).
He was a reserved and discreet
person. A few days before his death
he gave an interview to Avvenire,
the Catholic Italian daily, where
he announced that historians who
would one day have access to the
Vatican Archives concerning the
1939-2005 period, would not find
more than what was already published in the Acts.
(DICI, No. 207, December 2009).

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • February 2010

42

F R .

p e t e r

R .

s c o t t

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Is it true to say that the
Church has never sinned?

even though at times they are little fitted to the place
which they occupy in this venerable Body. (Ibid. §92).

This is a question of fundamental importance,
for the most frequent reason given for not
converting to the Catholic Church is the belief
that it is in some way tarnished by the sins of its
members and hierarchy. The difficulty in answering
it lies in the fact that the Church is not just an
invisible reality, as conceived by Christ Our Lord,
but made up of real men, visible, then, in its
hierarchy, its teaching, its government, and in its
members, all of whom are sinners. It does not take
much knowledge of history to realize how frequently
men of the Church have made erroneous decisions,
bad judgments and sinful compromises with the
world.
However, it is certainly true to affirm that the
Church, which St. Paul affirms to be “holy and
without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing” (Eph. 5:27) has never sinned. Firstly,
this is because sin is the act of an individual who
breaks God’s law, and not of an institution, even
though sins be committed in its name. However,
there is a second and much more profound reason
why the man of Faith cannot admit that the Church
has sinned. For although a human community,
composed of men, it is, as Pope Leo XIII declares,
“a society divine in its origin, supernatural in its
end and in the means proximately adapted to the
attainment of that end” (Satis Cognitum). The soul
of the Church is the Holy Ghost, and the life of the
Church is that of divinely infused Faith, Hope and
Charity, of grace, by which we share in the life of
Christ.
We must consequently love and venerate the
Church, Christ’s mystical body, as we do Christ
Himself. As Pope Pius XII so well wrote in his 1943
encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ: “We must
accustom ourselves to see Christ Himself in the
Church. For it is Christ who lives in His Church,
and through her teaches, governs and sanctifies”
(§93). Hence the indefectibility and the infallibility
of the Church, that no man can harm in any way.
Men can fail and abandon the divine life and
principles and sanctity of the Church, but it is not
the Church that fails. All the while, Christ continues
to live His supernatural life of Faith and Charity,
and of the Cross in some of His members. Yet, as
pure and immaculate as the Church certainly is,

Here we are the heart of the mystery of the
Church, endowed with the divine life of Christ
Himself, and yet made up of sinful, fallible, weak
men. Far from being a reason to be scandalized, it
is the occasion of the greatest possible wonderment,
that God made man would deign to continue His
admirable Incarnation in this way, being present
in weak human flesh. It follows from this mystery
that no man, however high in the hierarchy, can
divide, split, harm, injure the Church, and that the
Church as a divine institution can neither do wrong
nor teach error. All that is truly of the Church is
good, true and holy, and those things that are not
good, true and holy (such as the New Mass and
Ecumenism) are not of the Church at all.
Heresies and schisms, like sins of Catholics,
cannot and do not harm the Church herself in any
way, nor diminish her authority and credibility.
They in no way belong to the Church, but entirely
to fallible men, whether they be united to her or
separated from her. It is for this reason that it is
regrettable, to say the least, that Pope Benedict XVI
stated in his Apostolic Constitution providing for
personal Ordinariates for Anglicans that “Every
division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds
that which the Church is and that for which the
Church exists.” Nothing could be further from the
truth than this very human way of thinking. As
much evil, division, harm and suffering as the false
Anglican religion has brought to the world, it cannot
be said to have in any way harmed the one true
Church herself. Of course, if one maintains, as does
Vatican II (Lumen Gentium §8), that the Church of
Christ subsists within the Catholic Church, but also
outside of her, then the Church is no longer divine,
and is greatly wounded by the schisms, heresies and
sins of the baptized, and can be blamed for certain
excesses done by its members, as Pope John Paul II
did in his repeated apologies!

Q

There are two separate questions here. The
first concerns liturgical items that were at one time
blessed or consecrated. The purchase of such items
on public auction or public sale is permissible. This
is precisely the case with e-bay. Canon 1510 of the
1917 Code states that such items, having lost their
consecration or blessing, may be freely acquired
by lay persons and used for honest purposes, such
as museum pieces. However, since the chalice

A

Nor does it suffice to love this Mystical Body for the
glory of its divine Head and for its heavenly gifts; we
must love it with an effective love as it appears in this our
mortal flesh–made up, that is, of weak human elements,
THE ANGELUS • February 2010 www.angeluspress.org

May I purchase a used chalice on e-bay
to have Mass celebrated in my home?

43

loses its consecration in such instances, it must be
re-consecrated by a bishop if it is to be put to sacred
use.
In normal circumstances in the Church, it would
not be permissible for persons to set up chapels
in private homes, together with all the liturgical
requirements, such as a chalice and vestments.
In fact, the 1917 Code of Canon Law forbad
priests from celebrating Mass outside a blessed
or consecrated church, chapel or oratory, except
with the permission of their major superior or local
Ordinary and for a just and reasonable cause as an
exception in extraordinary situations (Canon 822,
§4). Clearly, the situation is different at the present
time, at which most Catholic churches are either
closed to traditional Catholics, or desecrated by the
sacrilegious ceremonies. Nevertheless, the mind
of the Church is to only celebrate Mass in private
homes when necessary, and then not in a bedroom.
This state of necessity would not generally exist
when a traditional church or chapel is close by. A
priest ought to consult his superior for special cases.
Consequently, the setting up of private chapels by
laypersons should be limited to those places and
situations in which a traditional church or chapel is
not easily accessible.

May one participate in a
government-funded health care
system that funds abortions?

This is a question of material cooperation in
evil. It is not a formal cooperation for the Catholic
who does all in his power to stop abortions from
taking place. Material cooperation exists when one
does not will the evil in itself in any way at all, but
when for entirely different reasons one initiates an
action that in some way contributes to the evil, albeit
involuntarily. Material cooperation is permissible

for grave reasons, the gravity of the reason required
being in direct proportion to the proximity of the
cooperation and to the gravity of the evil that ensues.
Abortion being such a great evil, immediate material
cooperation is sinful, as would be the case if a nurse
or doctor participated in an abortion procedure.
Participation in a health care system that funds
abortion is not a proximate cooperation in the
evil of abortion, but in truth far removed. The
cooperation is greater if it is a private health care
system, into which one makes financial contributions,
than in a government funded system. Inasmuch
as possible, Catholics ought to avoid such private
health insurance with companies that fund abortions.
However, this obligation of avoiding them does
not hold if a grave inconvenience would follow
from doing so, for example if otherwise it were not
possible to find good and affordable health insurance.
The reason for this is that the material cooperation in
the abortion is very far removed.
The material cooperation is even less and
even further removed when the health care system
is government funded. In such cases, it is very
frequently the only kind of health care that a
person can afford. There would be a very grave
inconvenience in refusing such material cooperation.
Consequently, it is permissible to take advantage of
the system, and one is certainly not bound to reject
all participation, and risking one’s health care and
employment by doing so. This being said, it certainly
is the obligation of Catholics to register their
objections in conscience and to do whatever they can
to be freed from such material cooperation.
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
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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 • February 2010
www.angeluspress.org
THE ANGELUS

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The Holy Rosary
Praying your family Rosary does not have to be an arduous experience.
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Rosary Album
Michael C. Buccino
A Visual & Scriptural Meditation on the Rosary. Over 200
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How to Pray Always
Fr. Raul Plus, S.J.
“Our Lord taught us to ‘pray without ceasing.’ Now, how far
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Douay-Rheims Bible with Leather Soft Cover
This is the most accurate English translation of the Bible available today.
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1394pp., 6" x 9", BLACK soft leather cover. STK# 8406✱ $49.95
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Text shown at actual size

GENUINE LEATHER MISSAL
ngelus Press announces the fourth printing of the first totally
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A

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THE FAITH
Simplified
Theology for Beginners
Frank Sheed
Acclaimed as one of the outstanding modern introductions
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To Know Christ Jesus
Frank Sheed
This modern classic is a riveting study of the life of Christ.
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Map of Life
Frank Sheed
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