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“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

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Roots of National Socialism

Dr. White on Dante

The Lord’s Prayer

The Pirate’s Prisoner PART 3

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The

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

ngelus
Volume XXXIII, Number 5

MAY 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

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Contents
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

2 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Fr. Markus Heggenberger, FSSPX

3 EUROPEAN ROOTS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM PART 1
Norbert Clasen

7 INTERVIEW WITH FR. FRANZ SCHMIDBERGER
Kathnews

Mr. Simon Townshend

9 THE LORD’S PRAYER PART 1

COMPTROLLER

Fr. Thomas Jatzkowski, FSSPX

Mr. Robert Wiemann, CPA
CUSTOMER SERVICE

Mr. John Rydholm
Miss Rebecca Heatwole
Miss Anne Craig

SHIPPING AND HANDLING

Mr. Jon Rydholm

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

12 DOCTRINAL DISCUSSIONS IN ROME
Fideliter

16 ON THE WAY TO A UNIFIED WORLD RELIGION: A NEW FATIMA
Frs. Andreas Maehlmann & Daniel Fringeli, FSSPX

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

29 DANTE: AN INTRODUCTION

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32 THE AUTHORITY OF VATICAN II QUESTIONED PART 5
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

35 TELEVISION: THE SOUL AT RISK PART 6
Isabelle Doré

38 CHURCH AND WORLD
42 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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ON OUR COVER: Cluny Abbey as it appears today. Cluny played a significant role in the reform of
St. Gregory VII. In this issue, the Letter from the Editor and Church and World both mention it.

2

Letter
from
the
Editor

Pope Gregory VII, canonized by the Church, became
known as a pope who made possible a reform of the
Catholic Church. One reason was that he fought against
the corruption which had taken root in the Church in the
form of simony and lay investiture. Immorality among
the clergy was a widespread evil as well, but less typical
because it seems to be an ever present consequence of
deviations from the purpose given to the Church by its
founder, Jesus Christ.
The second reason St. Gregory VII is famous is the
monastic reform known as the “Cluniac” reform. Cluny
was a Benedictine monastery in Burgundy; it became the
starting point of a reform movement which spread over
all of Europe. This reform was strongly supported by the
pope. It is true that all this happened in the Middle Ages,
but the problems of the Church today are stunningly
similar, so there is good reason to look at this historical
model.
It is revealing to compare Cluny with Vatican II. In
the first case we know from history that we are dealing
with one of the most powerful reforms ever in the Catholic
Church. In the case of Vatican II there has been a lot
of talk about a “New Church,” about “opening of the
windows” in a supposedly moldy institution. The fact
is this: In the first we see a change of life from laxity to
austerity, but in the latter an adaptation to the world.
In the first we had severe discipline and punishment
of perpetrators, but now the loss of discipline and the
covering up of “embarrassing facts.”
The headlines in the newspapers are full of accusations
against the Catholic Church. There seem to be three
motives to those.
1.) Many accusations remind us of the famous “Nazi
trials.” This type of trial existed in Communist countries
as well. Atheistic organizations try to officially denigrate
the Church. The Nazis invented scandals, or they tried to
exaggerate, or to misinterpret true facts, in order to use
them against the Church. The hateful attacks against the
mystic Therese Neumann before and during World War
II in Germany are one of the most well-known examples.
2.) The second category of accusations stem from
ideological motivations; there are, for example, those
who want to use the moral misbehavior of individuals as
an argument against clerical celibacy. These people seem
to be not so much concerned about the victims of abuse,
but, rather, they want to exempt themselves from the law.
3.) Finally, there are the true cases. And there is the
very serious question of how even a small percentage of
those can exist in an institution which claims to teach the
law of Christ and to have “holiness” as one of the four
marks.
This last category might be the most interesting group,
because, on the one hand, it does exist. The Legion of
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Christ is a proof of it; many of the female orders in the
US, in a different way, are as well; this became evident
after the Vatican decided to initiate a visitation last fall.
On the other hand, it is a proof that Vatican II can
not rightfully claim to hold the same position as Cluny
did in the Middle Ages. If Vatican II intended a “reform,”
then it was a complete failure, judging the tree according
to the fruits. The Catholic Church is evidently in so
much trouble that the survival of the Church is–humanly
speaking–impossible, were it not for the prophecy that
“the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16:18).
If the Church were an enterprise which would tackle
internal problems in a systematic manner, it would
try to analyze the situation and find causes. The most
astonishing thing is that nobody makes or names the
connection between Vatican II and the present situation.
It seems to be a question of common sense to see that
relation. But there are obstinate defenders of the Council.
The reason seems to be twofold. First, there are
those who are involved in some way and do not want to
change their lifestyle or give up their “freedom.” In this
way corruption always works. Bad habits create realities
which hinder the way to a true reform.
Secondly, there are those who tremble at the thought
that the Church has been running after a phantasm since
the last council; they try to save something from the
general shipwreck. They essentially argue: “The Council
was good but the application was bad.” They defend
the Second Vatican Council in the same way that John
Henry Newman defended the Anglican Church with his
theory of a “via media” before he converted and became
a Catholic himself.
These “via media Catholics” forget that dogma and
morals are two sides of the same coin. You find good
morals where actions are rooted in the Catholic Faith. The
anticlerical Voltaire said to his astonished friends that all
his servants were Catholics. The reason: “They are the
only ones who are honest and don’t steal.”
For years Catholics had to put up with new and
unorthodox teachings of “Catholic” priests or even
bishops. Now there is good evidence that many of them
not only had a dogmatic problem but a moral one as well.
Vatican II laid the foundation of doctrinal errors.
Moral errors are the natural consequence. Or the other
way around: Moral errors are an indicator of dogmatic
problems in the Church. Why, after all, should someone
live secluded from this world when he is told that he can
practice any kind of religion, or that mortal sin does not
exist, or simply that there is no punishment after this life?
Pope Benedict XVI may have the merit of making
some serious moves towards a cleansing of the Church.
But he also is suffering from a wrong attachment to the
Second Vatican Council as if the Council could be merely
theoretical. No, it is clearly connected to consequences
in the field of action. That the sacrament of penance has
largely disappeared is a consequence of a wrong teaching
about sin and of a wrong ecumenism.
But never mind: all true reform has to come from
the head. Therefore, let us continue to pray for the Pope.

Instaurare Omnia in Christo,
Fr. Markus Heggenberger

3

PART 1
n o r b e r t

c l a s e n

European
Roots of
National
Socialism:
A contribution to the reflection
on the Year of Darwin
National Socialism and its crimes undoubtedly
constituted a phenomenon without historical
precedent. Nevertheless, this inhuman ideology and
these crimes did not simply fall from the sky; they
have significant roots in the cultural and scientific
landscape of Western Europe and America of the
19th and 20th centuries.
The fact is that eugenics and “racial hygiene”
represented an essential foundation of the ideology
of National Socialism; they were widespread in
Western culture and had enthusiastic supporters,
especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. From
this background National Socialism drew its
“scientific” language, through which it formulated
its “biological” anti-Semitism. Together with Social
Darwinism, eugenics eventually served to justify the
war.
Pope Pius XI denounced modern racist antiSemitism on February 25, 1928, by a decree. One

of the few formal condemnations of eugenics in all
its forms was the Encyclical Casti Connubii, written
in 1930 by Pope Pius XI. The admonitions of the
Church against the spirit of the times were not
heard.
Pope Pius XII, in his first encyclical in October
1939, condemned racism, calling it a “pernicious
error,” in which “the law of human solidarity and
charity” is forgotten,
which is dictated and imposed by our common origin
and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to
whatever people they belong, and by the redeeming
Sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ on the Altar of the Cross
to His heavenly Father on behalf of sinful mankind. In
fact, the first page of the Scripture, with magnificent
simplicity, tells us how God, as a culmination to His
creative work, made man to His own image and likeness
(cf. Genesis 1:26-7); and the same Scripture tells us that
He enriched man with supernatural gifts and privileges,
and destined him to an eternal and ineffable happiness.
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

4
It shows us besides how other men took their origin
from the first couple, and then goes on, in unsurpassed
vividness of language, to recount their division into
different groups and their dispersion to various parts of
the world. Even when they abandoned their Creator,
God did not cease to regard them as His children, who,
according to His merciful plan, should one day be
reunited once more in His friendship (cf. Genesis 12:3).
The Apostle of the Gentiles later on makes himself
the herald of this truth which associates men as brothers
in one great family, when he proclaims to the Greek
world that God hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell
upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed
times, and the limits of their habitation, that they should
seek God (Acts 17:26-7).
A marvelous vision, which makes us see the human
race in the unity of one common origin in God, “one
God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all,
and in us all” (Eph. 4:6); in the unity of nature which in
every man is equally composed of material body and
spiritual, immortal soul; in the unity of the immediate
end and mission in the world; in the unity of dwelling
place, the earth, of whose resources all men can by
natural right avail themselves, to sustain and develop
life; in the unity of the supernatural end, God Himself,
to Whom all should tend; in the unity of means to secure
that end.
It is the same Apostle who portrays for us mankind in
the unity of its relations with the Son of God, image of
the invisible God, in Whom all things have been created:
In Him were all things created (Col. 1:16); in the unity
of its ransom, effected for all by Christ, Who, through
His Holy and most bitter passion, restored the original
friendship with God which had been broken, making
Himself the Mediator between God and men: “For there
is one God, and one Mediator of God and men, the man
Christ Jesus” (I Tim. 2:5). (Summi Pontificatus, 35-9.)

The Doctrine of the Church
against the Mainstream
Ideas of the Time
Although Nazism was unique, it nevertheless
had a background which is not confined to the
geographical borders of Germany and the 20th
century. An attempt to understand the persecution
of the Jews, therefore, should, on the one hand,
not overlook the uniqueness of this event. On the
other hand, it should take into account a long-term
historical development as well. It is an absolutely
ahistorical approach when German history is
transformed into an antichamber of Auschwitz
(Goldhagen), or the murder of Jews is interpreted as
a catastrophe without precedent and without reason,
as if the executioners and their actions, their means
and ideology, were not a part of their century and
the civilization of Europe and the Western world.
Interestingly enough, compared with the rest
of Europe, Germany at the beginning of the 20th
century seemed to be a kind of island of the blessed
for European Jews. France, for example, had its
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

anti-Semitic outbursts during the Dreyfus Affair;
there were numerous pogroms in Czarist Russia,
in the Ukraine, and in Bohemia. In the following,
therefore, it will be explained how far and how deep
National Socialism, with its ideology, its violence,
and its massacres, is rooted in modern Western
history.

Social Darwinist Racial
Theories and Concepts
in the 19th Century
Hannah Arendt, an influential German Jewish
political theorist who lived from 1906-1975,
described European imperialism as a major step in
the genesis of Nazism and the colonial rule of the
19th century as a first synthesis of massacres and
violence, whose perfect form were the subsequent
Nazi camps.1 From about the second half of the
19th century in Western scholarly circles there
were many debates about the “extinction of the
lower races.” For example, at the meeting of the
Anthropological Society of London in 1864, among
other things, the cofounder of the Darwinian theory
of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, declared
the “extinction of inferior and intellectually less
developed populations,” an inevitable consequence
of a natural law.2 According to the Social Darwinist
Thomas Bendyshe it was not only the right of
Americans to eradicate the red-skins, but they might
have to be given credit for it, because “they have
acted as an instrument of Providence, because they
started the extermination and defended its law.”3
The elaboration of a supposedly “scientific theory
of race” had preceded this some years earlier. The
foundations came from Count Gobineau in his
Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, which
inspired the story of Aryanism and insisted on the
supremacy of the Aryan race.4 In Anglo-Saxon
countries historians like Oxford professor Freeman
and Harvard professor Herbert Baxter Adams
highlighted especially the “Aryan-Teutonic” origin of
the “Anglo-Saxon race.”
The Oxford historian John Seeley based his
book The Expansion of England (1890) on the idea
that the Anglo-Saxons and their empire embodied
Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, a thesis which a
liberal politician like Lord Rosebery, the head of
Liberal Party, endorsed without restraint in a lecture
at the “Imperial Institute” in 1898.5
The historian Cramb from London wrote in
his book The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain
(1900) that among the peoples of the superior
Aryan-Teutonic race the first place belonged to the
British after a biological selection process because
it had the best blood of the Teutonic race. England
alone represented humanity, “the ideal and goal of a
race.”6

5
In 1901, the mathematician and eugenicist
Charles Pearson published National Life from the
Standpoint of Science, which was widely spread in
a short time in the British Empire and the United
States. It maintains the existence of an ongoing
struggle between the races. All progress is based
on the principle of survival of the fittest race. Only
the natural method of a cruel but effective selection
among the nations and races would lead to a
progress:
The path of human progress is littered with rotting
bones of ancient nations, everywhere we can see the
traces left behind by inferior races, the sacrifice of those
who did not find the narrow path to perfection. But
these dead nations and races are in reality the steps by
which mankind has risen to a higher intellectual level
of contemporary life.7

The discourse of the British naturalists had
its counterpart in France, where the rise of Social
Darwinism had a considerable influence on
anthropology. So Edmund Perrier wrote in 1888:
The spread of the human race on earth is due to its
superiority, in the same way as the animals disappear
in the presence of man, that privileged being, likewise
disappear the savage in the presence of Europeans,
before the civilization could seize him.
As regrettable as this fact may be from a moral
standpoint, it seems that civilization all over the world
spread more through the destruction of the barbarians
than through their subjection to its laws.8

An extensive literature in all major Western
languages tried to prove scientifically the law of the
“disastrous” effects of civilization on the “savage.”
“Every losing people,” wrote, for example, the
Frenchman M. Marestang in 1892 in the Revue
Scientifique, “which comes in contact with a superior
people is doomed.”9
In 1909, E. Caillot drew the same assessment:
“There is an inexorable law of nature, against which
there is no remedy and which has been confirmed
by history countless times: the stronger devours the
weaker. Thus, the Polynesian race was unable to
climb the ladder of progress. At her death, mankind
does not lose anything.”10
Darwin also in his time shared dominant notions
of “inferior races” as living fossils. In his notebook
E, we can read in December 1838 an entry that
would fit in Mein Kampf:
When two races of men meet, they act just as two species
of animals: they fight, and one eats the other, they
transmit diseases to each other, until the fatal battle;
unless one has a better physical organization or the
better instincts, she carries off the victory.11

In Descent of Man (1871) Darwin described
the death of natives in the British colonies as an
inevitable consequence of their encounter with
civilization. This confirms at the same time the
theory of natural selection.12

A few years after the release of Descent of Man the
Austrian economist and lawyer Ludwig Gumplowicz
praised the Boers because they “considered the
people of the jungle and the Hottentots as beings
that we must eradicate like the beasts of the forest.”13
In his book, The Racial Struggle: Sociological Studies
(published in 1883) he called for a “necessary
naturalization and biologization of society, which
would legitimize the merciless clash of different
human races.”14

Justification for Racial
and Social Imperialism
and Colonial Rule
A particularly fertile terrain of Social Darwinism,
racism, and the theory of natural selection, could
be found at the turn of the century in America.
Thus, the rise of the United States to a world
power was interpreted by eugenicist J. K. Hosmer
as confirmation of the mission of the Anglo-Saxon
culture. His colleague Joshua Strong announced a
new era that should be the “decisive battle between
the races,” the natural consequence of American
hegemony.15
One of the leading Social Darwinists among the
politicians was the American President Theodore
Roosevelt, who in his book The Winning of the West
saw the Anglo-Saxons as a branch of the Nordic
race and interpreted the conquest of the American
West as a continuation of the expansion of the
Germanic tribes and celebrated the “completion
of the historical power of racial development.” His
compatriot, the eugenicist Madison Grant, who was
venerated by the Nazis, propagated a biological
determinism in which “natural selection” should
be replaced by an artificial breeding selection.
According to Grant (The Passing of the Great Race;
or The Racial Basis of European History, 1916) the
extermination of the Indians was the model because
it showed that an effective policy of extermination
of the weak, incapable of civilization, makes it
finally possible to get rid of these undesirables,
“who populate our prisons, our hospitals, and our
asylums.”16
To Western eyes, especially during the 19th
century, Africa was seen as a place of “primitive”
and “wild” mankind which drew the attention of
scientists, writers, and politicians. In 1863, the
British explorer William Winwood Reade published
the travel narrative Savage Africa, which closed with
a chapter that was devoted to the “redemption” of
that continent. Under colonial rule of the European
countries the Africans would transform their
continent into a kind of garden. However, it is
possible that they would be finally destroyed in the
process. “We have to face it with tranquility. It but
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

6
illustrates the beneficent law of nature that the weak
have to be swallowed up by the strong.”17
The debate over the “extinction of inferior
races,” which were considered doomed in order
to make place for Western civilization, was
characteristic of the entire second half of the 19th
century. Ultimately, it justified imperialist conquest
and colonization. Their theoretical concepts
also influenced deeply the political language of
the era. For example, in 1898 the British Prime
Minister Lord Salisbury divided the world into
two categories: living and dying nations; two years
later, Emperor Wilhelm II, in a vehement speech,
called upon the German soldiers, who were leaving
for China in order to fight the Boxer Rebellion, to
destroy their enemies like the Huns. Such prose was
quite in line with the usual imperialist rhetoric and
practices applied by the colonial powers.18 Thus,
during the conquest of the Philippines in 1898, the
soldiers were asked by their general: “I don’t want
to see any prisoners. I wish you to kill them and
burn down their huts.”19 Ultimately, this was the
“inevitable” war among the races, whether against
the “yellow peril,” the “Slav flood,” or simply the
whites against the colored races.

Colonialism and Colonial Wars
The disastrous consequence of colonialism was
primarily the decline of certain populations; it can
be described in some cases only as genocide. Thus,
the population count of what is now Sri Lanka
before colonization was about four to ten million.
By 1920 it had fallen to about one million. In the
Congo, where King Leopold II had begun exploiting
the copper mines, things had assumed the form of
destruction through labor; the population fell by half
from 1880 to 1920, from 20 to 10 million. In Sudan,
the drop from 1882 to 1903 was 75 percent; in Tahiti
and New Caledonia even 90 percent. According
to reliable estimates, the number of victims of
Europe’s conquests in Asia and Africa during the
second half of the 19th century was anywhere from
50 to 60 million. The Germans had delivered their
contribution; the German colonial wars in South
Africa in the early 20th century may be considered
extermination campaigns. The German General von
Trotha later justified the extermination of the Herero
as a racial struggle which had been led against a
decaying, even dying people. In this struggle, he
said, they had focused more on Darwinian law than
on international right. There were debates in the
Reichstag (Parliament), where, in contrast to the
Social Democrats and the Center Party (the Catholic
party), the National Socialists openly supported the
destruction of the insurgent “savages.” This shows
that terms like “race war,” “extermination,” and
“subhuman” were perfectly well known in Germany
before World War I as a result of its colonial policy.20
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

The Nazis kept this in their memories during
that period: in 1941, shortly before the start of the
“war of extermination” against the Soviet Union,
there were two films about the colonial period in
the German cinemas, Carl Peters and Ohm Krüger;
their importance was underscored by Propaganda
Minister Goebbels, who was present at the premiere
at the Berlin UFA-Palast.21
The war in Ethiopia by the Italian Fascists
was the last colonial conquest; it was a kind of
bridge between the European imperialism of the
19th century and the Nazi war for the German
“Lebensraum [living space] in the East.” In June
1936, Mussolini had given the order to start a
“systematic policy of terror and extermination
against the rebels and their allies.” Between 1935
and 1939, the Ethiopian opposition was broken
by a war in which chemical weapons were used.
The Italians dreamed of an Ethiopia without the
Ethiopians, which would be occupied by Italians
and kept under conditions of apartheid. Several
historians saw this colonial war of Italian Fascism as
a kind of genocide.22
The description of the negative side of
colonialism does not intend to deny the positive
aspects of this historical phenomenon, especially
the blessed work of the Catholic missions. We are
dealing here with the roots of a false ideology which
had in the Catholic Church its greatest ideological
enemy.
(To be continued.)
This article originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Kirchliche
Umschau. Translated by Angelus Press. Norbert Clasen is president of Initiativkreis Eichstätt, a group dedicated to promoting the traditional Latin Mass.

Cf. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Munich 1986), pp.
273-626.
Enzo Traverso, Modernity and Violence (Cologne, 2003), p. 58.
3
Ibid., p. 59.
4
Hanns Joachim W. Koch, Social Darwinism (Munich, 1973), p. 115.
5
Ibid., pp.116-118.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Traverso, Modernity and Violence, pp. 61-64.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
Jean-Claude Guillebaud, The Principle of Man: End of a Western Utopia?
(Munich, 2004), p. 333.
15
Traverso, Modernity and Violence, pp. 65-67.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., pp. 69-78.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid..
1

2

7

Interview with
Fr. Franz Schmidberger
Benjamin Greschner, the editor of Kathnews in Germany,
interviews Fr. Franz Schmidberger, FSSPX.

Stuttgart (Kathnews exclusive). The theological
discussions between representatives of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and
the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX) are
under way. More than 20 years after the episcopal
consecrations by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
there is some movement in the difficult relationship
between the Holy See and the Society. Kathnews
Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Greschner spoke with
Father Franz Schmidberger, Superior of the German
District of the Society. The main topics were the
current status of the discussions with Rome, the
liturgy, and the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.
Fr. Franz Schmidberger was born on October 19,
1946, in Riedlingen. After studying mathematics at
the University of Munich, he entered the seminary
of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X at Ecône.
There, in 1975, he was ordained to the priesthood
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In 1979, Fr.
Schmidberger became Superior of the German
District of the Society and, in 1982, became Superior
General. From 1994-2003, he was active in the
leadership of the Society. In 2003 he was appointed
Rector of the seminary in Zaitzkofen. In 2006 he
again became Superior of the German District.

Father, what is your assessment of the current status
of the theological discussions between representatives
of the Society of St. Pius X and the Holy See?

clarification have begun well. For the first time we
are able to unhurriedly bring our reservations about
the statements of the Second Vatican Council and
developments after the Council to the competent
authority. These discussions will certainly continue
for a lengthy time, perhaps years. But maybe
our partners in discussion will be able to quickly
determine that it is not possible to deny that the
Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X is Catholic, even
though there may be areas of disagreement. That
would represent enormous progress. The very
discreet nature of the discussions is absolutely
necessary for success; nothing good causes an
uproar and nothing good comes from an uproar.

Recently, in a video interview, Bishop Richard
Williamson commented about the discussions. He
expressed himself rather negatively and was obviously
unconvinced that they would result in an agreement.
What do you think about his comments? Do they
represent the official position of the Society?
Bishop Williamson’s opinion of the discussions
in Rome are regrettable, because they certainly do
not represent the position of the Society. On the
other hand, meanwhile, it is necessary to clearly
warn against exaggerated optimism with respect to
the discussions. Bishop Fellay has said it would be a
miracle if they were to conclude truly successfully.

According to the rather meager available
information, the theological discussions of

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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

8

“An agreement between the Holy See
and the Society could only mean one
thing: that Rome accepts the voice of the
preconciliar Magisterium....Since 1988,
the situation has changed to the extent
that Rome now takes our objections
seriously and is looking for answers.”
In your judgment, how realistic is an agreement
between the Holy See and the Society of St. Pius X?
In 1988, as Superior General, you were previously
involved in similar discussions. Has the situation
changed since then?

An agreement between the Holy See and the
Society could only mean one thing: that Rome
accepts the voice of the preconciliar Magisterium.
The Society has never developed a unique position
of its own, but has instead made itself a mouthpiece
of the Popes, especially those from the time of
the French Revolution up to the Second Vatican
Council. Since 1988, the situation has changed to the
extent that Rome now takes our objections seriously
and is looking for answers.

In your opinion, which are especially in need of
clarification and discussion on theological or
magisterial grounds? Are there any topics that you
would describe as “hot potatoes”?

The question of the new liturgy is doubtless a
point of discussion, but then so is ecumenism, the
role of other religions, and the relationship of the
Church to the world. As “hot potatoes” I would
especially describe the question of religious liberty
and also the question of doctrine.

A year ago, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the
excommunication of your Society’s four bishops. Has
this decision of the Holy Father had a positive effect
on the work of the Society?

The lifting of the decree of excommunication
removed barriers and brought more Catholic faithful
to us. On the other hand, the uproar in the press
has raised some new barriers. I believe, however,
that this courageous decision made by the Pope has
positively affected not only the Society and its work,
but in fact the entire Church.

How do you assess the current mood in your priories
and establishments? What do the faithful and the
priests think about the discussions with the Holy See?
As far as I can tell, the mood in our priories
and establishments is generally quite good, and in
general, our members welcome the discussions with
the Holy See. However, none of us are under any
delusions.

In April 2005, with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a prince
of the Church was elected to the throne of Peter who
represented a gleam of hope for many “traditional”
Catholics. Already now, Benedict XVI has ruled the
Church for almost five years. How do you assess these
first five years of his pontificate?

The Church has entered calmer waters with
Benedict XVI. The rehabilitation of the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass in the traditional form, the
lifting of the decree of excommunication, and the
doctrinal discussions with the Holy See are very
positive acts of this pontificate. On the other hand
we regret the visit to the Roman synagogue and
especially the statement of the Pope that we and the
Jews pray to the same God.
We Christians worship the most holy Trinity
and adore our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God,
consubstantial with the Father. The Jews of today, in
contrast, do not accept either of these fundamental
truths of our holy religion. Since there is no other
God than the most holy Trinity, no other Lord than
Jesus Christ, we do not worship the same God as the
Jews.
Things were different with the righteous of the
Old Testament. They were open to the truth of
the Trinity and the divine sonship of the promised
messiah. The Pope has distanced himself alarmingly
from those words of the first pope, St. Peter:
“Neither is there salvation in any other [than Jesus
Christ]” (Acts 4:12). This goes for every person, for
Jews and Muslims also.

Reprinted with permission of Mr. Grescher, editor of Kathnews. Translation
provided by Rorate Caeli with slight editing.
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

9

F r .
T h o m a s
J a t z k o w s k i ,
F S S P X

“the lord’S
PraYer”
Although the Our Father is the most known and popular prayer
in Christianity, it is rarely used in preaching and meditation. The
Lord’s Prayer is simply not a commonplace prayer. How easily this
prayer, which comes from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, is taken
for granted by us! The Lord’s Prayer, however, is a veritable treasure
trove; this seemingly short prayer is absolutely perfect and contains
a mysterious depth.
The question of the most ancient age of the Lord’s Prayer is
relatively easy to answer. The Lord’s Prayer has been handed down
to us in Greek in two different forms: those of Matthew (6:9-13) and
Luke (11:2-4). The text in Matthew is longer than the text in Luke. In
addition, the Didache (also known as The Doctrine of the Apostles, from
the first half of the second century), includes a version (8:2) of this
prayer which is very close to the text of Matthew’s Gospel.
Whereas the short version of St. Luke contains only five
petitions, the fuller version of St. Matthew has seven petitions. The
liturgical tradition of the Church has adopted the version from the
Gospel of St. Matthew, which has been retained to this day.

The Structure of the Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer is a common prayer which consists of seven
petitions. These can be divided into two parts: petitions directed to
God and requests related to ourselves.
While the first petitions are directed to God, such as “Thy
Name,” “Thy kingdom,” and “Thy will,” the requests from the
second half refer to us and our needs, such as “Give us,” “forgive
us,” “lead us,” and “deliver us.” Note that God comes first and then
ourselves; not vice versa! This sequence is the correct model of
praying correctly and it shows the absurdity of spontaneous prayer.
How easily man believes he is the center of the world. How easily
the worshipper believes he must make God a “fulfiller of wishes”
who has to work off of man’s personal list of concerns, needs, and
desires. Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us through the Lord’s Prayer,
paying less attention to ourselves and more to God. God does not
need our prayers and our praise, but God is God. Through the
structure of the Lord’s Prayer, prayer is brought back again and
again to the reality of heaven and earth, of God and man. Proper
prayer is therefore always an education, placing itself into reality, in
the right order of existence created by God.

Part 1 of 10
1) Introduction
2) Our Father
who art in heaven,
3) hallowed be
Thy name;
4) Thy kingdom come;
5) Thy will be done,
on earth as it is
in heaven!
6) Give us this day
our daily bread
7) and forgive us
our trespasses,
8) as we forgive those
who trespass
against us,
9) and lead us not into
temptation, but
deliver us from evil.
10) Amen.
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

10

The Lord’s Prayer as a
Measure of Prayer and Life
We have to rediscover the Lord’s Prayer as a
model and program of prayer and Christian life. We
follow in this the tradition of the great Father and
Doctor of the Eastern Church, St. John Chrysostom
(+407) and the Angelic Doctor of the Church, St.
Thomas Aquinas (+1274). St. John Chrysostom
describes the Lord’s Prayer, interestingly, as a
“yardstick of prayer.” For him, the Lord’s Prayer is
something like the standard measure of prayer in
general. Any prayer must be judged by the Lord’s
Prayer. Each praying soul has to learn how to pray
using the Lord’s Prayer.
We find a similar idea in St. Thomas Aquinas
when he writes:
The Lord’s Prayer is the most perfect....In it we ask not
only for everything that we can reasonably ask for, but we
do it also in that order in which we should ask for it; this
prayer teaches us not only to pray in the right way, but it
also shapes our whole heart. (II-II, Q. 83, 9)

St. Thomas clarifies and expands the thesis of the
model character of the Lord’s Prayer with St. John
Chrysostom, given that not only the correct form
of prayer is used, but also the correct order of the
prayers, and the shaping of the mind of the petitioner
made possible by the Lord’s Prayer.

Is It Necessary to
Learn to Pray?
The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s Gospel follows
the admonition of the Lord not to “uselessly babble
like the pagans” and not to say “many words.” The
Lord’s Prayer is the answer to the prayer, “Lord,
teach us to pray.” This request of the disciples is in
St. Luke’s Gospel in the following context: “And
it came to pass, that as he was in a certain place
praying, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to
him: Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his
disciples” (Lk. 11:1). Just as the disciples knew that
praying has to be learned, we all must learn to pray.
This is the only correct attitude for proper prayer.
Of course, this view of a necessary training in
prayer is in contrast to the excessively propagated
spontaneous and totally baseless “prayer” of modern
man, who is, on the one hand, supposed to have
an unbelievable number of skills and expertise in
many areas of everyday life, but, on the other hand,
a conversation with God, the Almighty, should be
spontaneous and without any effort. It is a common
error nowadays, as if every man with a “heart” could
pray. This is a momentous and almost fatal mistake
of confusing sighing, complaints, and rejoicing
with real prayer. Praying is often misunderstood
by modern man to be an emotional discharge, as
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

St. Matthew’s Gospel (Douay-Rheims)
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our supersubstantial
bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver
us from evil. Amen.
St. Luke’s Gospel (Douay-Rheims)
Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our
sins, for we also forgive every one that is indebted to
us. And lead us not into temptation.
Didache
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Your
name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, as in
heaven, so on earth. Give us today our daily (needful)
bread, and forgive us our debt as we also forgive our
debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver
us from the evil one (or, evil); for Yours is the power
and the glory for ever.

a spontaneous outpouring of the heart. The great
masters of Christian spirituality and prayer teach us
something else: praying does not mean letting our
emotions run wild, but inwardly freeing our hearts
and opening them to God. To pray means not to
take ourselves too seriously, but to lay everything,
including ourselves, in the hands of God.
For this reason, the disciples turn for help to our
Lord Jesus Christ: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk. 11:1).
Talking to God has to be guided. True humility is
always in a state of learning. True worshippers have
never finished learning!

The Traditional Character
of the Lord’s Prayer
It is easy to overlook and neglect a very
important aspect of the Lord’s Prayer–perhaps
because it is not in the context of today’s doctrines
of ecumenical and pluralistic spiritualities. Anyone
who prays the Lord’s Prayer enters into the larger
context of the transmission of faith through the
2,000-year-old history of Christianity. Every person
who prays this takes traditional, predefined words
from tradition. Anyone who prays the Lord’s Prayer
is linked to every generation before him that recited
the Lord’s Prayer in the same way.
Tradition today is in a particularly difficult
position because it is the antithesis of the creativity
and spontaneity of modern man with his patchwork
spirituality. It is considered modern to create your
own private, unique concept of spirituality; under
no circumstances should you accept formulated

11
prayers from a tradition that breathes the spirit of
a long-outdated theology! Only “free prayer” must
be given preference from the perspective of the
progressive faithful because supposedly everything is
right there: your own language, feelings, spontaneity,
uniqueness, creativity, etc. But this exclusivity of “free
prayer” (the importance of which is not meant to be
denied) is in stark contrast to the spirituality of all the
great masters of the Christian West. All of Christian
spirituality thrives on the repetition of certain biblical
words–and rightly so, when the worshipper should
be shaped by prayer itself, in order to come closer
to God in small increments. The whole tradition of
Christian spirituality stresses the high intrinsic value
of “free prayer,” but always in conjunction with
traditional, pre-formulated prayer; never do we find
one or the other exclusively.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi
It is precisely because prayer and faith go
together, because the propriety of our prayer depends
on the lawfulness of the Christian life, that the Lord’s
Prayer is such a beautiful and eternal model for the
right way to pray.
Lex orandi, lex credendi is an old principle from the
time of St. Augustine (+430), which means that the
way to pray in any community should reflect faith
itself in the prayer of the Christian communities. The
law of prayer (lex orandi) corresponds to the law of
belief (lex credendi). The rule of prayer determines
the rule of faith. Liturgy and common prayer are
significant sources of theological knowledge because
they show us the standard of the truth of Christian
faith from their practice in life.
That the hard-line modernists of the sixties rose
up in arms against this principle is not surprising
at all. Herbert Vorgrimler, a pupil of Rahner, for
example, writes disdainingly in his New Dictionary
of Theology (2000)–which is, of course, written in
“correct language”–about this fundamental principle:
“The wordings [including the liturgical prayers!]
often show little theological expertise of their
authors. Liturgical practice does not provide security
for historic religious exercises.” The principle
of lex orandi, lex credendi as a basic principle and
fundamental vehicle of Tradition means two things:
First, that what is believed can also be reflected and
expressed in worship in a Christian community.
Secondly, Christian prayer has an influence on
what is believed in a community. This principle of
Tradition on the one hand guarantees the unified
transfer (handing down) of the Faith; and it also
allows for the discovering and teaching of traditional
truths from 2,000 years of living Tradition.

Advantages of
Traditional Prayer
One advantage of traditional prayer consists
in an introduction to the treasure of religious
Tradition. We should also not neglect the possibility
of common prayer by using traditional wordings.
Traditional prayer frees the worshipper from narrow
self-centeredness. Traditional prayer is a relief from
so-called creativity and spontaneity; the worshipper
may profit from traditional prayers and gain spiritual
nourishment for his soul. The praying individual
learns by using traditional prayer that, in praying, the
point has nothing to do with theatricality and pathos,
but that other values are important: humility and
knowledge of one’s sinfulness, etc.

The Five Characteristics of
True Prayer in the Lord’s Prayer
(St. Thomas Aquinas)
St. Thomas appreciates the Lord’s Prayer especially
because the five requirements of any real prayer are
met; it should be confident, honest, orderly, reverent,
and humble (II-II, Q. 83).
1) The worshipper should bring a healthy dose of
confidence when he prays: “But let him ask in faith
without doubting” ( Jn. 2:1). The confidence is nourished
not from arrogance, but from the fact that a sinner who
is praying has in our Lord Jesus Christ an advocate with
God.
2) The prayer should be sincere, i.e., be done with
the right intention, including, according to Thomas,
the contents of the prayer. St. Augustine, therefore,
concerning the content of prayer, always recommends
shaping it on the prayer of the Lord; then one is always
on the right side and does not run the risk of asking for
useless things that God cannot grant because of their
foolishness.
3) Prayer should reflect the divine order of the
Creator, according to which heavenly things are always
preferred to earthly things according to the saying:
“Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and his
justice, and all these things shall be added unto you”
(Mt. 6:33).
4) Prayer should breathe the spirit of devotion.
Enemies of devotion are the length of the formulations
and lack of charity towards God and neighbor.
Conducive to devotion is the repetition of invocations.
5) Finally, prayer has to be performed in a spirit of
humility–just think of the parable of the Pharisee and
the publican. True humility does not rely onne’s own
ability, but knows its dependency in all things on the
grace of God.
(To be continued.)
Fr. Thomas Jatzkowski, FSSPX, was ordained in 2004, and is currently prior of
St. Theresa of Avilla Priory, Hamburg, Germany.
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

12

Doctrinal
Discussions
in Rome

Although many know that doctrinal discussions are currently
underway between the Holy See and the Society of St. Pius X, the
characters involved are not well known, especially in America. As
a remedy, we here provide some brief biographical information
which will grant some insight into the individuals involved.

The Delegates from the Society of Saint Pius X
Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta
His Excellency Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta
is probably the most discreet and least known
of the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius
X. At the time of the lifting of the so-called
“excommunications,” the famous Spanish daily El
Pais devoted an article to the “youngest Spanish
bishop.” He was born on January 14, 1957, in
Torrelavega, in the northern part of the country, but
his parents emigrated to Argentina when he was four
years old. Their son entered the diocesan seminary
of La Plata in 1975. The crisis in the Church was
raging, and those who wanted to maintain Tradition
were particularly persecuted. Alfonso de Galarreta
was one of them. Recognizing that his training did
not conform to the ideal of the priesthood which
the Church had always taught, he felt compelled to
leave the seminary after two years. He entered the
seminary in Ecône in 1978 and was ordained priest
by Archbishop Lefebvre in Buenos Aires in August
1980.
He taught for five years at the seminary of La
Reja, which the Society of Saint Pius X opened near
Buenos Aires. Then, from 1985 to 1988, he worked
nearby as the District Superior of South America,
overseeing the expanding work on the young
continent. He was one of the very first priests that
Archbishop Lefebvre considered for the episcopate,
even if he was informed of this late by telephone.
On June 30, 1988, he was consecrated at Ecône
and traveled around the whole world to confer the
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

sacraments, bless churches, and receive religious
vows. From that date, he was appointed rector of
the seminary of La Reja, which he left in 1994 when
the new superior, Bishop Fellay, appointed him as
head of the autonomous House [similar to a District]
of Spain and Portugal. Since 2002, his role in the
leadership of the Society has increased as he was
named second assistant to the Superior General of
the Society of Saint Pius X. Finally, in early 2009,
he returned to the direction of the seminary at La
Reja following the departure of Bishop Richard
Williamson. At the same time, he is responsible for
ensuring in a particular way the needs of religious
communities who are friends of the Society. As such,
for example, he celebrated the funeral of Fr. Angel
at the Benedictine monastery of Bellaigue in March
2008.
Of a simple, cheerful and tactful manner, Bishop
de Galarreta is very measured in his reactions while
being firm on principles. He has always insisted
on the futility of a purely practical agreement. His
qualities have earned him a great respect within the
Society, and his measured, prudent opinions are
particularly listened to.

Fr. Benoit de Jorna
The eldest son of four, Fr. Benedict de Jorna was
born on September 1, 1951. He entered the seminary
at Ecône in October 1978. He was ordained on June
29, 1984, by Archbishop Lefebvre. He then became

13

Bp. Alfonso de Galarreta

Fr. Benoit de Jorna

Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize

Fr. Patrick de La Rocque

director of St. Bernard’s School in Paris. Three years
later he was appointed to the seminary at Flavignysur-Ozerain, where his classes included metaphysics
and logic. He also traveled regularly to the Institute
of St. Pius X in Paris and for the apostolate at St.
Nicolas du Chardonnet.
On August 15, 1994, he was appointed superior
of the District of France, taking over from Fr. Paul
Aulagnier.
Two years later, he became rector of the
seminary at Ecône, succeeding Fr. Michel Simoulin.
In this post he holds the record for longevity as he
has held this post for nearly 14 years. His mandates
have been renewed without difficulty even though
the smooth running of the seminary was publicly
questioned in the summer of 2004 by priests who
then left the Society. Fr. de Jorna, however, received
throughout this crisis the full support of his superiors.
This reserved priest deftly employs humor in
private and is a tireless walker in the mountains. In
1999, after hitting it off with Fr. Guy Gilbert, the
“hoodlums’ priest,” who had come to visit Ecône,
he posed for photographers after their arm wrestling
match. Recently, after the accidental death of three
seminarians in the mountains, he comforted his
students in this trial.
A professor of philosophy and dogma and a great
lover of books, Fr. de Jorna is a staunch defender
of St. Thomas Aquinas and he smites the modern
philosophers in his classes. He has also worked to
refute the Cassisiacum thesis which was introduced

by Fr. Guerard des Lauriers (a view very close
to the sedevacantist theory which argues that
the Church is currently without a pope).
In his teaching, this obscure laborer likes
to use analogies and parables. However, he
is always plain-spoken when the subject is
Vatican II and its applications, of which he
rejects the “new ecclesiology.” At the last
symposium organized by the Society of Saint
Pius X in Paris, he contributed a paper on
the implementation of the Council, which has
been published.
Fr. de Jorna, while very lucid and
firm about the distance between Tradition
and Modernism, nonetheless considers as
possible the doctrinal discussions, which
must rise above mere diplomacy. About the
“Romanitas” of Archbishop Lefebvre, he
writes: “His sons, his disciples, his successors,
are of the same mind: it would be easier to
take away our souls than our love of Rome.”
This time he goes to Rome to discuss...

Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize
Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize was born on July
16, 1966. A graduate of the prestigious École
Nationale des Chartes, he has been a paleographic
archivist since 1991, when he defended his thesis on
the “Édition critique des oeuvres de François Le Roy
pour servir d’introduction à l’étude de la spirtualité
fontevriste au moment de la réforme de l’ordre:
1470-1530.” He entered Ecône the same year and
was ordained on June 29, 1996. He was appointed
professor at the seminary and placed in charge
of, among others, the apologetics course and the
theology of the Church.
His studies led him to write a book about the
founder of Protestantism (The True Face of Luther).
In 2004, relying on his formation in Latin, he
translated from the language of Cicero The Divine
Institution of the Sovereign Pontificate of the Bishop of
Rome by Cajetan and, in 2008, Tradition by Cardinal
Franzelin.
Fr. Gleize is still professor of ecclesiology at the
seminary of Ecône. He has published many articles
and given several lectures in France, particularly on
problems related to the current crisis of the Church.
By nature discreet, this learned priest, whose
meekness is appreciated, goes regularly to St. Nicolas
du Chardonnet in order to assist the priests assigned
to this church in the ministry there. For him, the
conduct of the pastoral ministry should flow from the
principles governing being and action, which serves
to make him adhere all the more earnestly to the
unaltered teaching of the Magisterium prior to the
last Council and to be circumspect amid the doctrinal
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

14
deviations that have infiltrated the holy Church
throughout the 20th century.
His long years at the seminary in Ecône have
strengthened his appreciation of the greatness of the
priesthood.

Fr. Patrick de La Rocque
Fr. Patrick de La Rocque was born on November
20, 1968. He entered the seminary in Ecône in 1985.
He was ordained a priest, like his classmate Fr. Regis
de Cacqueray-Valmenier–today the Superior of the

French District of the Society of Saint Pius X–on June
29, 1992, by the Brazilian Bishop Licinio Rangel.
He began his ministry as a teacher of philosophy
at St. Mary’s School before joining, in 1994, St.
Joseph des Carmes School in Aude, along with Fr.
de Cacqueray. Starting in 1996, he prepared students
for the priesthood at the seminary in Flavigny-surOzerain. In 2002, he was again assigned to parish
ministry, becoming prior at Toulouse and then, in
2008, at Nantes.
Along with his pastoral activities, he was
entrusted with several tasks by the French District of
the Society of Saint Pius X and the General House.

The Delegates from the Holy See
Msgr. Guido Pozzo
Born in Triest on December 26, 1951, and
ordained for his diocese on September 24, 1977. He
was professor of theology at the Pontifical Lateran
University and assistant secretary of the International
Theological Commission until July 8, 2009. This man,
close to the Pope, contributed to the work of Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger at the time when he was prefect of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. While
he was still a member of this commission, following
the lifting of the so-called “censures” of the bishops
of the Society, in 2009 he was entrusted with the
secretariat of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei,
responsible for organizing the doctrinal discussions
with Archbishop Lefebvre’s organization.
Anxious to remain discreet, Monsignor Pozzo is
interested in the traditional Mass. He also says that
he is concerned about doctrinal issues: “I have always
expressed an interest in and spiritual sensitivity
toward the Gregorian liturgy, just as I am aware of the
problems and theological controversies related to the
interpretation of Vatican II–it did not start today–and
the need to restore and strengthen Tradition and the
Catholic identity in our civilization”(Interview with
L’Homme Nouveau, November 18, 2009).

Archbishop Francisco
Luis Ladaria Ferrer
Archbishop Francisco Luis Ladaria Ferrer was
born in Manacor on the island of Majorca, Spain,
April 19, 1944. He joined the Jesuits in 1966 and
was ordained on July 29, 1973. Two years later, he
submitted his thesis on the Holy Spirit in the writings
of St. Hilary of Poitiers at the Pontifical Gregorian
University and became professor of dogmatic
theology at the Pontifical University of Comillas in
Spain and then at the Gregorian University, where
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

he became vice-rector in 1986. A member of the
International Theological Commission since 1992, he
knew Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became
secretary general of it in 2004. On July 9, 2008,
he was appointed by him who had been elected
under the name of Benedict XVI as secretary of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and
promoted to the rank archbishop.
At the International Theological Commission,
he particularly worked on the text of Limbo, which
appeared in 2007 (which says that children who die
unbaptized would be destined to paradise). He has
published books on various topics like the Trinity
(2002) and original sin and grace (2005).

Fr. Karl Josef Becker
Fr. Karl Josef Becker, a Jesuit, was born in
Cologne, Germany, on April 18, 1928. A professor
of dogmatic theology, this man close to the Pope
has long taught at the School of Theology at the
Gregorian University. Of the same nationality and
generation as the Pope (they are just one year apart),
he has been at the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith even longer than Cardinal Ratzinger, as he
began working as a consultor on September 15, 1977.
He has thus worked for over 25 years alongside the
man who became Benedict XVI. He has particularly
delved into the question of “subsistit in,” which
says, according to the pernicious doctrine from the
conciliar Constitution Lumen Gentium, that the church
founded by Jesus Christ “subsists in the Catholic
Church.” He has attempted to give a traditional
reading of this passage (which is not possible). Finally,
he worked on the note condemning the work of the
French Jesuit Jacques Dupuis on religious pluralism.

15
These included in particular the publication of the
Letter to Our Fellow-Priests, which established links
with the official French clergy, and, in the year 2006,
the development of a DVD for learning to celebrate
the traditional Mass.
He is a productive theologian who combines
the analysis of modern theories with flexibility of
mind; he does not hesitate to withdraw to think over
his subjects. He coauthored some studies published
under the name of the SSPX, including The Problem
of the Liturgical Reform in 2001, and From Ecumenism to
Silent Apostasy: Twenty-five Years of Pontificate in 2004,
presented in Rome by Bishop Fellay. On the official

web site of the District of France (La Porte Latine),
he has recently published studies on the Roman
document on Limbo and the Encyclical Spe Salvi.
Smiling and affable, for several years he has
been exchanging correspondence with prelates of
the Curia on the thorny issues that separate the
Holy See and the Society. He has also maintained
contacts with the Swiss Cardinal Georges Cottier and
the Dominican Charles Morerod. On January 9 of
this year, he participated in the theological congress
in Paris sponsored by Courrier de Rome [French
counterpart of the Italian periodical SiSiNoNo].

Fr. Charles Morerod
Fr. Charles Morerod is a Swiss Dominican,
born in Riaz, in the Vaud Canton on October
28, 1961. Admitted to the order in 1983, he was
ordained in 1988. A professor of dogmatic theology
and dean of theology at the Angelicum in Rome,
he was appointed by Benedict XVI secretary
general of the Pontifical Theological Commission
and consultor of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith. A doctor of law, he presented to the
Faculty of Theology at the University of Freiburg
a thesis on Cajetan, master general of his order
and commentator on St. Thomas. In 1994, he also
published a work, Cajetan and Luther in 1518, then
one on the Protestant John Hick, in 2006.
Heir of Cardinal Charles Journet and close
to Cardinal Georges Cottier, he made many
contributions to the journal Nova et Vetera, of which
he was editor for the French edition. A specialist
in ecumenism, he argues, paradoxically, that it is
made possible by dogma! This idea he develops in
his book, published in 2005, Tradition and Christian
Unity: Doctrine as a Condition of the Possibility of
Ecumenism.

Msgr. Fernando Ocariz Brana
Msgr. Fernando Ocariz Brana was born in
Paris on October 27, 1944. After studying physical
sciences in Barcelona, he was ordained priest in 1971
and obtained his doctorate in theology the same
year. A member of Opus Dei, of which he has been
Vicar General since April 23, 1994, he taught at the
University of the Holy Cross in Rome, which is run
by his religious society. In 1986 he was summoned
to the Curia as adviser to the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, where he became a
collaborator of Cardinal Ratzinger. Three years later,

Msgr. Guido Pozzo

Abp. Ferrer

Fr. Charles Morerod

Msgr. Brana

he was also appointed to the Pontifical Theological
Academy. In his numerous theological and
philosophical works he has worked on the concepts
of Tradition, the Magisterium, and the refutation of
Marxism. He maintains that the conciliar document
Dignitatis Humanae is homogeneous with Tradition.
According to the American Vaticanist John Allen,
he played an important role in the drafting of the
Roman Declaration Dominus Jesus, on the question of
salvation in Jesus Christ.
Translated by Angelus Press from Fideliter (Mar.-Apr., 2010, No.194). Fideliter
is the magazine of the French District of the Society of St. Pius X.
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • May 2010

16

A modern nativity scene inside
the basilica.

The interior of the
Basilica of the Holy Trinity.

On the
Way to the
Unified
World
Religion:
F r .
A n d r e a s
M a e h l m a n n
& F r .
D a n i e l
F r i n g e l i
F S S P X

THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

A New F

17

Modern crucifix
standing besides
the new basilica.
(Above) A lay woman
distributes Communion.
(Right) Directions to
pilgrims on how to receive
Communion in the hand.

Fatima

The new “Basilica of the Holy Trinity” was consecrated on
October 13, 2007. That was the final day of the 90th anniversary
celebrations that had already begun in 2006. The announced
plan of the responsible ecclesiastical authorities in Portugal is to
transform Fatima into an interreligious center; it must then be
feared that the inauguration of this new building is meant to bury
the “old Fatima” once and for all. For this new “church” displays
not only no Christian symbols (let alone a cross), but rather
embodies a Masonic and occult anti-theology.
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

18

A Brief Look Backward
On March 9, 2004, the then Bishop of
Fatima-Leiria, D. Serafim de Sousa Ferreira
e Silva, consecrated the cornerstone of the
new building: a stone from the grave of St.
Peter, which Pope John Paul II had presented
personally to the Rector of the Shrine,
Msgr. Guerra. On this occasion the Bishop
of Fatima expressed the wish that the new
sanctuary should be a permanent invitation
to “reconciliation and peace.” Who is to be
reconciled here? Between what groups would
peace be made?
The key to understanding this statement
is given by the interreligious conference held
in Fatima October 10-12, 2003. The symbol of
this conference alone speaks volumes: At the
center is a glowing circle, the border of which
consists of silhouetted buildings. At the top of
the circle is the old Fatima basilica. Around
the rest of the circle one recognizes other
places of worship, including pagan temples, all
coexisting peacefully with one another. The
circle represents the earth, the surface of which
is blended in around and below the circle.
Upon it stands a man who looks up at the circle
with a gesture of enthusiasm. In the center of
the circle the glowing sun is rising. Obviously
all this depicts the dawn of a new age and of
a “new Fatima” as well. Is it not reasonable
to suppose that the circle of the conference
logo also represents the new circular church,
of which the cornerstone was laid five months
later?
This appears to be a thoroughly realistic
interpretation, if one keeps in mind the final
declaration of the interreligious conference:
“No religion may make itself great by belittling
the others. An open dialogue is the way
to build bridges and demolish the walls of
centuries-old hatred. What is necessary is that
each religion remain true to its integral beliefs
and recognize that every other religion is
equally valid.…”
The Rector of the Shrine sang the same
tune when he said at the conference: “The
future of Fatima or the veneration of God and
his Mother in this shrine must be transformed
into a shrine where the various religions can
come together. The interreligious dialogue in
Portugal and in the Catholic Church is still in
its onic stage, but the Shrine of Fatima accepts
its universalist calling.” Furthermore: “The fact
that Fatima is a Moslem name shows that the
shrine must be opened to a convergence of
various religions.”1

THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

A Masonic lodge (above) and the newly designed altar area in Fatima:
similar in many respects! In the 2,000 years of Christian architectural
tradition, perfectly circular churches are extremely rare.The Pantheon,
temple of all the gods of ancient Rome, was a circular structure, as was
also the Tower of Babel, left an unfinished stump by divine intervention
and always depicted as a circular plan.

The Masonic World Religion
With the above quotes the Masonic vision of a unified
world religion acquires very concrete features. The words
of the French Freemason Yves Marsaudon confirm this
vision: according to him, one may say that ecumenism is
the “legitimate son” of Freemasonry. He declared:
In our time our Br[other] Franklin Roosevelt demanded for
all men the right to worship God in accordance with their own
principles and according to their own convictions! That means
tolerance and also ecumenism. We Freemasons of tradition will
allow ourselves to clarify and revise these words of a famous
statesman as follows: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Israelite,

Fas
Sto
Fat
the

19
the structure and placed to one side, so that the
exterior appears “religiously neutral.” But it is
not! The architecture itself conveys a message,
just as did that of our old Christian churches
with their wealth of architectural symbols. Here,
however, the message is an occult and esoteric
anti-theology.

What Is the Key to
Understanding This Building?

Fascinating similarity:The Celtic-Druid ring of
Stonehenge (above) and the model of the new temple in
Fatima. A new religion needs a new place of worship. Even
the cross has been removed from the peak.

Moslem, Hindu, free-thinker, free-believer–these words are
for us only first names. Our family name is: Freemason.2

Behind This Architecture
Is No Christian Concept
If, in 2003, one could still ask how all this would
come about, the answer is clear today when one takes a
close look at the new “basilica.” It is only logical that a
new religion needs a “new style” for a house of worship.
Such a temple already stands before us in Fatima. At first
glance it is evident that the architectural concept is not
Christian. The cross has been removed from the top of

In Southwest England stands a 3,000-yearold structure which New Age groups have
invested with meaning as they have done with
the Pyramids: Stonehenge.
To this day the purpose of Stonehenge
has not been fully explained, but it is highly
probable that this construction, a double stone
ring with its several concentric earthen ramparts,
served the rites of a religious cult. It measures
over 115 meters in diameter. This is a very
significant number, for if the circumference is
calculated by multiplying the diameter by pi, the
result is slightly more than 360, i.e. the number
of days required for the earth to orbit the sun.
(This is the origin of the division of a circle into
360 degrees!) In other words, the Stonehenge
structure was built so precisely that for every
day of the year there is a corresponding segment
of its outer surface measuring one meter. It
happens, therefore, that every year on the day of
the summer solstice ( June 21) the sun’s rays pass
through a pair of upright monoliths outside the
circle in the center of the site.
Although the precise meaning of this
arrangement has not yet been fully explained,
one may safely assume that it represents the
harmony of the annual cycle of the earth, and
with it human life, with the cosmos, the world of
the pagan gods. The stars of the heavens were
worshipped as deities by the heathens, especially
the sun and the moon. It is thus understandable
that the solstices had a special meaning for them
(see below).

The New Church
as Stonehenge II?
While a bird’s-eye view of the new church
in Fatima shows some similarity to Stonehenge,
one could still assume from this viewpoint
that the likeness could be pure coincidence.
However, such an assumption breaks down
under the analysis of the ground plan of the new
church. To begin with, it measures 115 meters
in diameter! It also corresponds geocentrically
with the sun’s orbit. A further parallel is obvious
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

20
from the fact that as the sun shines into the heart of
the Stonehenge circle, so it does in Fatima. A glass
beam pierces the roof across the diameter line of
the circular church. It resembles an upward-slanting
staircase following the sloping roof from front to
back. By means of this “light beam” the interior of
the church, especially the altar area toward which
it points, is illuminated. It is of further interest that
within the church is a smaller concentric circle (105
meters in diameter), just as there is a second, smaller
circle in Stonehenge. Mere coincidence?

An Attempt at Interpretation
In order to supply an exact interpretation of
this architecture, one must become familiar with the
occult language of symbols used by the Freemasons
and the esoteric sects. It is apparently possible even
for an outsider to identify the “rough outlines” on
the basic of what is generally known about Masonic
symbolism and the beliefs of New Age neopaganism.
At the present time we are witnessing a rebirth
of the ancient heathen cult of witchcraft, called
“Wicca,”3 in relation to the New Age movement.
Each year at the summer solstice tens of thousands
of Druids and witches come together at Stonehenge
to await the “Beginning of the Sun.” On June 21,
2003, there were 30,000 people there! The name
Wicca comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for a
“practitioner of witchcraft,” wicca (masculine) or
wicce (feminine). This phenomenon is directly
connected to the rise of feminism as a social force
since the 1960’s. The modern cult of witchcraft is
essentially a nature religion with the Great Goddess
as principal deity. Her symbol is the moon. The
witches honor the natural lunar and solar cycles.
The solar cycles are divided into eight “Sabbaths,”
which together comprise the “Wheel of the Year.”
The Witches’ Sabbaths are the two solstices, the
two equinoxes, and the four seasons in between.
The Wheel of the Year represents not only the
cycle of the seasons, but also concretely the fertility
cycle in nature. This is reflected in the great Wicca
initiations, which climax with the marriage of the
god and the goddess, whose union brings forth new
life.
Halloween or Samhain (October 31) is the
traditional pagan New Year. Samhain means
“summer’s end.” According to the myth, the dying
god goes to sleep in the underworld and awaits
his rebirth. In the womb of the Great Mother, the
Queen of Darkness, the seed of new life ripens.
Imbolc (February 2) is the awakening of the
year, the first onic movements of spring in the womb
of Mother Earth. Imbolc means “in the [mother’s]
belly.” The myth tells that the goddess becomes a
virgin.
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Walpurgis Night or Beltane (April 30) may have
its second name from the Celtic deity Bell or Balor,
god of light and fire. Beltane is the celebration of
the meeting of the sun god with the fertile earth
goddess, who now becomes pregnant.
Lammas or Lugnasad (August 1) marks the
beginning of autumn and harvest time. Lugnasad
brings, in the myth, the beginning of the death of
the sun god, but also celebrates fulfillment and
maturity.
Wicca is thus first and foremost a goddessreligion, but it is clearly recognizable that the role
of the sun god in the mythical cycle of the great
Sabbaths is no less important. The Celts recognized
that the sun god goes through the phases of death
and rebirth in the same way that the moon goddess
has, in the course of her lunar cycles, ascending and
descending phases.

Conformity of These
Pagan Notions with
Masonic Symbolism
Among the obligatory furnishings of a Masonic
temple are three floor lamps that stand on three of
the four diagonal points of the square platform on
which rests the altar like a stone cube dominating
the center of the room. These lamps signify the sun
and the moon (!), and the Master of the Chair, who
sits enthroned at the end of the room (where in a
Catholic church the high altar with the tabernacle
normally stands). Here again we find the heathen
sun-moon principle of the deities. These two cosmic
bodies represent, in Freemasonry as in heathenism,
the “incarnation of the creative primeval forces.”
The president of the lodge, bearing the title of
“Master of the Chair,” represents the “Son” (thus
aping the Logos), who emanates the spiritual light.4
It is completely obvious that this is a demonic
mimicry of Catholic teaching, as Lucifer (which, in
Latin, means “Lightbearer”) places himself upon
the throne of the Incarnate Word (Logos), our Lord
Jesus Christ. Here is the devil’s antithesis to the true
Church of God.
A comparison of the altar area of the new
Fatima church and the Scottish Rite temple in
Washington, D.C., shows astonishing similarities:
As in the Masonic temple, the candles do not rest
on the altar, as customary in Catholic churches, but
instead on freestanding candleholders diagonally
to the altar. And in that place where the tabernacle
ought to be, a large throne flanked by two seats
stands on a platform several steps higher than the
altar–precisely as in the Masonic temple!

21

The Vertical View
of the New Church
The new “basilica” is like a short stump of a
column sawed off at an angle, bearing a sloping
upper surface. At the lowest point its outer wall
measures nine meters high; the average height is 15
meters and the maximum height (behind the throne)
measures 20 meters. The glass beam admitting
daylight follows the roof slant in the middle. If one
looks toward the new church from the vantage point
of the old basilica, this beam looks like an ascending
stairway or ladder leading away from the old church
in exactly the opposite direction!
The sawed-off column strongly suggests the
unfinished Tower of Babel. Babel stands for the
attempt to build a world independent of God. The
only dogma of Liberalism is: “Nothing is true,
everything is allowed.” (Motto of the Masonic
Illuminist Movement.) The tower is intended to
reach up to heaven; in other words, man is to reach
his goal on his own strength. He climbs upward,
i.e. he achieves self-redemption. This is the pivotal
point around which Freemasonry, New Age, and
occultism in general revolve: self-redemption,
not redemption through Christ. It is therefore no
wonder that the ladder to heaven and the Tower
of Babel are popular symbols in occultism. A
placard on which this was used as an illustration
was distributed some years ago by the European
Council on Cultural Cooperation. In the new church
at Fatima, the building of the tower is to be achieved
via the “ascending ladder.”

The Pantheon
The circular form of this church, which we have
already examined from a variety of aspects, finds a
further correspondence to paganism in the Pantheon
of Rome. This temple was also circular and received
its light through an opening in its dome. As the
name signifies, the Pantheon was dedicated to all
the gods of the Roman Empire. After Christianity
gained the upper hand, Pope Boniface IV had the
temple transformed into a church in honor of the
Mother of God and of all martyrs. It was dedicated
on May 13 (!), 609 or 610. That is the origin of our
feast of All Saints. With the unified world religion
which is the goal of Freemasonry, this Christian
development is to be thrown into reverse. Whereas
previously Christ alone was king, He is now to be
reduced to one among many deities of the Age of
Religious Liberty and Ecumenism.
There is another reason for the circular plan:
With the exception of grave-churches (usually of
martyrs) patterned after the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the traditional Catholic
church building is almost never a perfect circle

without an apse. This is because the Catholic church
is oriented toward Christ in the tabernacle, whereas
a church with a circular floor plan has no distinct
orientation. An additional internal and symbolic
problem lies in the dimension of the new Fatima
church, which has a circumference of almost exactly
360 meters: If one adds successively each of the
numbers from 1 to 36 to the next (1+2+3…etc.), the
sum is 666.

Conclusion
Even if one does not accept every detail of this
interpretation of the new “basilica” of Fatima, it is
certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that behind
this architectural concept lurks the antithesis of
tradition. The devil apes God and the Church,
imitating everything in order to turn it into its
opposite. He opposes the Mother of God and
her Son with a pair of pagan gods; he opposes
the Redemption through Jesus Christ with selfredemption; he replaces the Church, outside of
which there is no salvation, with the Masonic
pantheon of all religions. These three contradictions
to that which the “old Fatima” represents are
embodied in the architecture of the “new Fatima.”
Thus the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, which
describes the decisive battle between the Woman
and the Dragon, the Mother of God and the devil, is
visibly confirmed here. Today this battle has become
reality. It is raging worldwide. Each person must
make his decision, either to accept Liberalism and
conform to its adage that “nothing is true, everything
is allowed”–or to submit in humble obedience to the
commandments of God.
For our part, we have already decided. We take
refuge in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, revealed to
us at Fatima as our last means of attaining salvation.
It will be our refuge and the way that leads us to
God.
Fr. Maehlmann is an SSPX priest in Germany, ordained in 2001. Since 2006
he has been involved in various campaigns of the German District of the SSPX,
providing information nationwide to Catholic priests about the celebration of
the Traditional Latin Mass, etc. Fr. Daniel Fringeli was ordained in 2005 and
is a priest in the German District of the SSPX.

See www.streitpunkt.fatima.de.
Yves Mersaudon, L’oecumenisme vu par un franc-maçon de tradition, p. 126,
in: Daniel le Roux, Peter, Lovest Thou Me?, German transl. Petrus, liebst
du mich? Johannes Paul II., Papst der Tradition oder Papst der Revolution?
(Stuttgart: SSPX, 1990), p. 206.
3
The following description is from Nevill Drury, Magie: Vom Schamanismus
und Hexenkult bis zu den Technoheiden (Baden, Switzerland, 2003), pp.
162-165.
4
See Manfred Lurker, ed., Wörterbuch der Symbolik, 5th edition (Stuttgart,
1991), s.v. “Freimaurerische Symbole.”

1

2

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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

22

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 February 2010 issue.

IX

Sorrow and Suffering
The days seemed as months for Francesco in
the lonesome desert. The pirates’ oasis was, indeed,
a beautiful little place, but alas, it only constantly
reminded the boy of the cozy little villa at Catania
where he spent all his happy, peaceful years under
the watchful eyes of his loving parents.
It was now the third day after their arrival
in the desert. The sun was sinking to rest behind
the western sand hills; a light evening breeze
passed leisurely over the wide expanse, and found
resistance only in the branches and leaves of a few
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

scattered trees. Francesco sat beneath one of the
high palm trees, and the tears flowed freely over his
youthful cheeks as the renegade pirate came from a
near-by hut and approached him. His eye twinkled
with satanical joy as he saw the boy. But soon
he changed his frowning brow and with seeming
friendliness sat upon the ground beside the boy.
The little captive drew back shyly from his
enemy; the latter, however, took hold of the boy’s
hand and said, as flatteringly as his uncouth nature
would permit: “Look at me, dear Cecco; I mean well
with you, you must not weep. Come with me into
the house: there you shall see the fine clothes which
Achmed, your good master, has sent here for you
from Tunis.”

23
“I do not want to buy clothes. I do not care to be
a Turk. Bring me back to my good parents, as you
have promised me you would.”
“Oho, young sir,” Zaki grinned sarcasti­cally,
“how well you can give commands; but wait, we
shall break that stubborn little head of yours.”
“If you keep me here, you have lied; and
whoever lies, will go to hell.”
“Yes, if I only could let you go,” said the
overseer, trying to appear sad; “how quick­ly would
I give you your freedom! For, see, it grieves me
very much that you should think a man of my high
standing would try to lie to you. Now come, Cecco,
tell me you will not say that again, for, the way
through the desert is very long, and alone you would
be lost and die on the road.”
“But you could go along with me, Zaki; that bad
man who stole me also stole you. My father will give
you much gold when you bring me home to him,
and I, too, would never forget you when I grow up;
in the meantime I will pray very earnestly to the
Madonna for you.”
“Come into the house now,” the renegade
broke off abruptly; “it is growing dark, and the wild
animals will soon be leaving their hiding-places, and
you will not be safe here.”
This was the beginning of a new trial for the
sorrowful lad, which, perhaps, was to last for a long
time.
Hardly a day passed on which Achmed’s servant
did not devise some new means to torture the boy.
Indeed, the pirate captain had given orders to treat
the young captive with kindness and friendliness;
but alas, Zaki soon became tired of acting contrary
to his nature. The tears and entreaties of the
innocent child had awakened his own conscience
again; the consciousness of his own wickedness let
him no rest, and conse­quently he allowed his anger
to rage freely at the expense and discomfort of the
inno­cent little boy. The most cruel treatment that
had to be experienced by Francesco, or Abdallah,
as he was now generally called by the men on the
oasis, was the occasion when the renegade caught
him at prayer.
The helpless child had to allow himself to be
stepped upon and knocked about by his rag­ing
inhuman master, who ruthlessly abused his authority
over the fearing, timid boy. Yet, with all this, the
former fisherman, An­tonio, was by no means
satisfied. Above all, he was set upon shattering
the faith of the child in the true God and breaking
his trust in the Blessed Mother, the most pow­erful
Virgin. Francesco trembled in every limb whenever
the terrible blasphemies and curses of the wretched
man fell upon his ears—those ears that were
accustomed on­ly to words of kindness and prayer.
At first the child dared to remind the unfortunate

sinner of his grievous offense; but alas, the repeated
lashes and blows soon brought him to silence.
One day Zaki seemed to be in better hu­mor. He
sought the boy out from the rest of the slaves and
heaped an untold amount of flattery upon him; but
Francesco would not allow himself to be misled, and
as the renegade became impatient and dared again
to burst forth in shocking blasphemies against Christ
and His Virgin Mother, the boy became enraged
with holy indignation. “Stop, you unfortunate
wretch!” he shouted with fiery stare at the speaker;
and as the latter tried to continue in his slanderous
language, the boy struck a heavy blow upon the
unholy lips that uttered pious words so impiously.
“You shall pay for this,” shouted the rene­
gade in raging anger; “wait, I will teach you how
to act towards your master!” He reached for his
long whip, jerked the boy by his long curly hair,
so that he sprawled head­long over the ground,
and unmercifully cut loose with the sharp lash
over the tender shoulders of his little victim. Like
a worm, the poor boy squirmed under the fearful
blows; his entreaties and groans were of no avail;
the tyrannical master would not cease from this
inhuman treatment until his arms grew tired. For
many days afterward the mistreated child could only
drag himself painfully through his daily services.
It may have been about a month after this
painful suffering when Achmed, entirely unhoped
for and unexpected, came to visit his fisherman in
the desert. Because of the unpleasant situation of
the little boy, Zaki Khirallah was much disturbed
by the ap­proach of his master. Indeed, Francesco
understood very little of the Arabian Ianguage,
so that it was impossible for him to bring his
complaints before the pirate; yet, among all the rest
of the slaves there was a feeling of dissatisfaction
towards their over­lord, so that one of them might
easily be moved to make unpleasant revelations
to his master. Secretly, therefore, he called all the
slaves before him and threatened them with the
severest punishment if any one among them dared
to report to Achmed oth­er than that Zaki had
constantly showed the greatest patience, kindness,
and friendliness toward the little boy captive.
However, al­ready on the first day Achmed’s sharp
eyes and keen observance did not fail to notice
how timidly Francesco acted in the presence of his
overseer. The deep lines that de­stroyed the youthful
vigor of his face, and the pale, lifeless glare of his
eyes soon prov­ed to Achmed that the assurances
the rene­gade had given him, that the boy was
per­fectly contented and was gradually becom­ing
accustomed to his new place in life, were but lies
and exaggerations. This only made Achmed more
firm in his plans to take the boy along back with

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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

24
him to Tunis, where he himself would rear him as a
Moslem.
“The man with the warrant from the dey of the
city will in the meantime have left Tunis without
having accomplished his work,” he said to himself.
“At most, they will make one more attempt, and
that, to visit my estate here in the desert. If I keep
the boy hidden in my house, there will be no
danger any longer. During that time he will become
a Moslem, and after he has once given up his
Christian belief, he will remain in Tunis for the rest
of his life.”
So thought Achmed, and after another day of
rest he broke up camp and departed with Francesco
for Tunis.
Francesco heartily rejoiced that Achmed had
saved him from the hands of his most fearful
torturer. True, the rough pirate did not handle his
young slave with great kindness, but the boy at least
did not have to fear that any minute he might be
struck down and roughly beaten; nor did he have
to listen any more to the terrible blasphe­mies and
curses, such as only a fallen Chris­tian understands
how to utter.
The journey progressed monotonously, without
mishap, until noon of the second day. The midday
sun stood in the heavens directly above them. In
benediction it fell upon the poor travelers below.
The camels dragged themselves on with great effort
over the burning sand and seemed to show a pecu­
liar unrest. The loud shouts of Achmed’s servants,
urging their camels to greater speed in the intense
heat, gradually died down to a mumbling of timid
voices; then the awful suspense closed the complete
cara­van in mysterious silence. The expression of the
greatest anxiety rested on every face. Achmed and
his servants suffered untold thirst in the pressing
sulky atmosphere, for their provision of water
had become warm and undrinkable. The sun was
growing darker and darker. The travelers appeared
like mysteriously white-mantled ghosts in their
light garments, against the darkened sky. Suddenly
Faiek, who up to this time was riding ahead of the
caravan, turned his horse about and galloped toward
Achmed. “Sir,” he gasped, as he came to a sudden
halt before his master, “may Allah take un­der his
mighty protection all his faithful who may be found
traveling through the desert! We shall encounter an
angry storm.”
“So it seems; let us hurry so that we can get
behind those sand dunes ahead; there we shall be
protected,” the pirate gave as ready answer.
“Too late, sir; do you not hear how the shrill
wind is howling yonder, like mysteri­ous spirits
through the midnight air? It is a whirlwind! See
there, how the sand winds itself into strings and
twists into the air: Quick, down from your camels,
and lie flat on the sand!”
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

In a moment all the brawny comrades were
stretched out headlong upon the ground. The
camels had let themselves down upon their knees
and sought to protect their heads with their bodies.
Francesco crawled next to one of the slaves and
cov­ered his head with his mantle. The storm rushed
on from the south with insane mad­ness. The wind
threw the yellow sands of the desert through the air
as if at play with feathers. The shrill whistling and
howling of the wind struck unharmonious chords
with which the dull rumbling thunder and the
sudden flashes of lightning through the dark clouds
made the whole atmosphere un­pleasant.
Francesco had never prayed with greater fervor
than he did right now. Half covered with sand,
he feared, at each flash of lightning and blast of
thunder, that his last mo­ment had come, and that he
never would see his dear father and mother or old
Ignatius again.
Finally the raging storm calmed, and a heavy
rainfall followed. The travelers rose from their floor
of safety, still shivering from fright, and brushed
the fine sand from their faces, that had become
very painful. Achmed immediately ordered that the
leath­er buckets be emptied of the stale water and
refilled with the refreshing waters from the heavens.
After all had quenched their thirst, the march
proceeded. When the sun ap­peared again through
the clouds, it was barely above the hilltops, and the
caravan halted for the night at the side of the next
sand hill.
Seven days later they came to Tunis. On the
return trip Francesco did not suffer so much from
the hardships of traveling as he did on his way
to the desert. Achmed did not urge his camels to
constant march, as Zaki had done; and furthermore,
Francesco was consoled by the hope that he might
possibly find some evidence of his parents when
he came to the city. Had the child only known how
close he was to a faithful friend on this last day of his
jour­ney!
It may have been about six o’clock in the
morning. The caravan of pirates had trav­eled
practically two hours from their last night’s camp,
when all of a sudden Faiek, who was again in
the lead of the march, re­ported a contingent of
riders coming from the direction of Tunis. At once
Achmed gave the command to make ready for
battle; for, it was not a rare occasion when a band
of greedy Beduins of the desert would at­tack a small
group of travelers and com­pletely rob them. The
riders grasped their spears tighter and held them
threateningly over their heads; two of the men who
car­ried guns loaded with fresh powder and deathdealing bullets set their weapons in readiness. Faiek
in the meantime had dash­ed to the next mound; he
left Mizra, his horse, below, and carefully crawled
on his hands and feet to the top of the elevation.

25
There he fell flat to the ground; shielding his eyes
with his hand, he stared steadily at the approaching
horsemen. At intervals between the rising clouds
of dust he could clearly distinguish the glitter
of pointed lances and the flashes reflected from
unshielded guns. Suddenly he slid down the incline
from his post of advantage, swung himself upon his
horse, and dashed at top speed towards Achmed.
He swung his lance high in the air and directed
the fleeing caravan to the right. In a second the
marching herd turned its course, the horses galloped
to the right, the camels ran as fast as they could
and, like the wind, they raised the loose sand into
clouds of dust and soon the train disappeared in the
distance.
There was no reason whatever why the pirates
should have so greatly feared the approaching
riders; for they were no Beduins but were soldiers
of the dey from Tunis, who were given orders from
their ruler to visit the various oases of the desert
and gather the customary tribute. The French priest
with one of the guards given him by the dey had
joined the group on their official visit to the desert.
The zealous missionary left no stone unturned in
order to find the trail that might lead to the lost
boy, even after the unhappy father had departed.
They thoroughly searched through the city and its
entire surroundings. The influence of the French
consul gained admission for him everywhere, but
in spite of this advantage all his efforts remained
without success. He had been near giving up his
search when new clues, given by the soldiers in the
desert, spurred him on to further efforts. From Don
Isidore, to whom he had already secretly brought
Holy Communion, he learned that the pirate had
most likely kept the boy for his own servant. So it
did not seem unlikely to him that Achmed would
keep Francesco at his stronghold in the desert for
the time being, for greater safety’s sake. The untiring
priest set out on this difficult journey, prepared with
the necessary warrants; however, this, too, like all
previous efforts, was without result.

X

New Dangers Lurking
Thus Francesco was back again in Tunis. His
lot had thereby improved somewhat. For the
present, at least, he would not be exposed to any
abusive treatment. Yet, if the captivity would last
too long, the boy would be placed in the wake of
a still greater misfortune. How would a twelveyear-old boy, left entirely to himself, without any

outside support, successfully preserve his faith and
innocence? Indeed, Francesco found much strength
in prayer; but alas, this powerful safeguard, too,
could be wiped from his memory if he remained
too long in the company of these unbelievers.
Clearly, Achmed’s efforts were bent upon bringing
the unexperienced boy over to the Mohammedan
religion in an underhand way. Above all, he must
not fail to have his young captive learn the Arabic
language.
Next to his house stood the dwelling of the
old merchant Nagib Abuchakra. From the back
door one could easily cross over the little yard that
separated his house from Nagib’s modest store. One
day the pirate paid a visit to his neighbor about
noontime, as then practically all the stores of the
city were closed. Old Abuchakra sat with crossed
legs in a corner of his little room, the floor of which
was covered with a rather threadbare carpet, and
leisurely smoked his long pipe. Without rising, he
greeted the new arrival by touching the floor with
his right hand, and passing it in a long sweeping
gesture to his forehead.
“Salaam Aleikum, noble Achmed by Khalil-elFathallah; may the deity bless your entrance into my
dwelling, may he increase the number of your days,
and let your good fortune have no end.”
“Salaam, Nagib, you crown of all merchants of
Tunis; may Allah fill your shelves with the richest
wares, and may he fill your coffers with gold and
silver,” the pirate answered with a bit of sarcasm, in
reply to the long address of the old shopkeeper.
“Sir, I thank you for your good wishes, may
Allah grant them fulfillment; but, what brings you
here? The goods of your last piracy have not yet
been sold.”
“Very well, very well,” interrupted Achmed. “I
know your zeal for our common business; today I
have come because of a different matter. From my
last trip—Allah punish the unbelieving dogs from
Spain, who spoiled it for me—I still have a little
boy left. The deity knows, I could have sold him
for a nice piece of gold. Now it is too late; I cannot
put him on the public market any longer without
running the risk of losing the boy, and money, too.
What do you think of taking this young fellow under
your roof and care? You know, old friend, that I am
not stingy in repaying favors.”
“Do not feel offended, noble Achmed,”
answered Nagib; “but that does not enter into our
business agreement. I have promised to place your
wares before the best selling opportunities for one
fifth of the selling price, but this transaction of yours
would be too dangerous; for, I do not care to have
the dey of the city and these unbelieving Christians
fall upon my neck.”
“You do not understand, clever Abuchakra; the
sale I will easily manage myself; but you understand,
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

26
though, that the greater the ability of the boy, the
more glittering will be the profits of his sale. Up to
now, Allah’s holy law is still unknown to him. If I
am not mistaken, your son Hares attends the school
of the wise sage Raschid; how would it be, then, if
he would teach my lit­tle one the sayings and prayers
of the Koran together with our mother tongue?
There would be no danger whatsoever for you;
but it shall be as you wish. After his Salat­al-Masa
(evening prayers) you could easily bring your boy
daily to my house through the rear door, across the
yard; I will see to it that he is secretly brought to the
little unbeliever. If our plans are successful, all that
remains for me is to pay your reward.”
“Good, sir! And when shall my son re­port to
you for the first time?”
“If possible, today.”
“One thing more. Guard well that not a word,
not even an echo of our secret con­versation, may
fall upon the ears of any one, not even your dearest
friend.”
“Sir, did you ever hear a deaf and dumb one
speak? Your interests have sealed my mouth, and
your interests alone can liberate my tongue.” With
these words Nagib rose from his crouched position
and accompanied his visitor through the dusty
counters to the street.
For the rest of the afternoon Achmed leisurely
strolled up and down the business streets of the city.
Here and there he would step in to visit one of his
friends and ask how business was progressing and
then pass on indefinitely on his way again. As eve­
ning approached, and the narrow dark streets grew
darker, the pirate retraced his steps homeward; for
soon it would be time for evening prayers, which he,
as faithful Moslem, would not dare to miss. Hardly
had Achmed entered the inner room of his dwelling
and reclined comfortably upon his soft divan, when
the voice of the minaret sounded through the house,
warning the members of the household for prayer:
“Rise for prayer! Praise the living king, who
neither sleeps nor dies! I Lord, Thou everlasting
one, God, Thou great one! There is no God except
the Great Allah, and Mo­hammed is his prophet!”
As soon as Achmed heard the summons to
prayer, he spread a mat out on the floor, and
solemnly and ceremoniously knelt down, and
bowed his head to touch the floor seven times; then
he spread his arms out as for prayer, and turning
towards Mecca, mum­bled the prescribed sayings
from the sacred Koran, the official prayer book.
The pirate was not a pious man, or he would not
carry on his criminal robberies on the high seas; but
in spite of all, like all Turks, he clung firmly to the
detailed regulations of the false prophet. Many of
our Catholic children can be put to shame by these
unfortunate, blind­ed Mohammedans, when they
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

unwillingly say their morning and night prayers, or
even, perhaps, at times neglect them entire­ly.
Achmed had hardly taken his place again upon
the cozy couch when one of his ser­vants entered
and approached him. With hands crossed upon his
breast, he bowed deeply before his master and said:
“May Allah’s blessing rest upon you, sir! Hares,
the son of the merchant Nagib Abu­chakra, is waiting
in the hallway and begs to appear in your presence.
What is your wish, that he be sent on his way, or
shall his foot cross the threshold of your sacred pri­
vacy?”
“Bring him in!”
Silently the slave retreated to call the boy in.
The youth was about three years older than
Francesco. Apparently he was re­solved to carry
out Achmed’s plans; for he already had the thick
leather-bound volume of the Koran from the school
of Raschid under his arm. Hares bowed profoundly
before the pirate and addressed him majes­tically:
“Salaam (greeting), noble Achmed, your word
has brought me here before you; speak, your servant
heareth.”
“Hares! You go to the school of the learned
Raschid, near the great mosque, do you not?”
“Yes, sir. And may all the evil spirits grievously
repay him for all the whippings he has wasted
on me; the prophet knows, were my father not
continually after me, I would have said farewell to
the old gentle­man long ago.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Achmed. “Splendid, Hares,
you are a clever boy; you have the makings of a
great man. It is only too bad that you must waste
your good talents amongst the stuffy shelves of
Nagib’s store; really too bad. I really believe we
could make something out of you.”
“Do you think so, sir! Well, a merchant—that will
never do, noble Achmed, but if you really want to
make something out of me, I’m willing.”
“Later. Now you have a new task to un­dertake;
tell me, do you understand the language of the
Franks?”
“Oh, just enough to be able to fool any giaour.”
“That is enough. You will not have any great
difficulty with my little slave.”
“I hope not, noble Achmed; but if the re­ward
will be big enough, my efforts will nev­er become
wearisome or discouraging.”
“Well, how high do you place your de­mands,
Hares?” asked the pirate.
“That is difficult to determine just now, clever
Achmed,” was the boy’s prudent an­swer. “To begin
with, I would feel satisfied with a glittering pistol
and a good dagger. But, as far as tinkling coins are
concerned, well, it is a pleasure for me as well as
an honor to have you for my master—so I would
ask you only for half the amount that you give my
father.”

27
The conditions laid down by the lad of barely
fifteen years brought a hearty laugh from the sturdy
pirate.
“So; then it is for me to state the price. Nagib has
likely told you that you are to teach my little slave
our language and help him to learn the prayers of
the holy Koran. Evidently, you do not take a great
pleasure in exercising your worthy talents over the
dusty pages of the learned books; however, we shall
not take the matter too seriously. The important
matter at stake is that the boy learn the great Salavat—
formula of prayers.”
“Must I be a very kind and patient school­master
over this little fellow? The prophet knows! I believe
I have assimilated the stern teaching methods of the
old Raschid.”
“What do you mean?” asked Achmed.
“Oh, you can not believe how much easier it
is to remember your lesson under the force of a
few painful reminders. Whips make more lasting
impressions than words.”
“Do not misunderstand me, you rascal! I usually
do not become worried and nerv­ous over the wellbeing of my slaves; but remember, I still have some
money to make out of this youngster; therefore, be
careful in the choice of your methods.”
“Good, I shall be as meek as a lamb,” Hares said
jokingly. If you command, I will instruct my pupil
under your observa­tion.”
“Bah, that would be too tiresome, but I may
perhaps surprise you from time to time; come now, 1
will introduce you to your pupil, Abdallah.”
Both left the room together to begin their unholy
work of destruction of the precious heritage which the
parents had given the boy through many sacrifices.
Francesco was stored safely in the last room in the
rear of the house. The boy had just knelt beside the
hard couch to say his night pray­ers, when Achmed,
with his new master, entered the lonely dwelling. At
a nod from the pirate, Hares approached the boy and
addressed him with a hypocritical friendli­ness in the
so-called Lingua Franca—a mixture of the French and
Arabic lan­guages.
“Salaam, Abdallah, I want to be your new friend
because you are so lonely.”
Francesco became much astonished at the sight of
the new visitor. He did not under­stand the language,
but when he saw the young Arab before him, he
believed that he, too, was one of Achmed’s captives,
and therefore in a friendly manner grasped his hand
in sympathetic greeting. The young Turk became
impatient as he noticed that the new victim could
not understand him, for he feared that the pirate
might withdraw from him his profitable office and
look for another teacher for the boy. Achmed, on the
contrary, did not seem to notice this circumstance at
all. He rather grinned pleasantly at Hares. “Well, you

chatterer, have you lost your speech? You stand there
like a dumb ox.”
“No, sir,” replied the merchant’s son; “but by
the prophet! you sure made a good catch when
you picked up this fellow. I was just consulting with
myself as to how I might make myself most useful in
helping you to get as much out of him as possible.”
“Hold your tongue and do not mix in my
business affairs, which do not concern you,”
threatened Achmed.
“Good, as you wish,” murmured Hares with
determination; and both left the room together,
leaving the boy pondering alone over the significance
of this mysterious visit. So Francesco was all alone
in his lonesome little room. What a sad picture he
presents for our observation. The bare wall disclosed
the rough thick stone, out of which the whole house
was built as a special protection against the intense
heat. Without a win­dow, without an opening, the
walls rose to a height of over ten feet and then
converged together at the top, making a domelike
ceil­ing over the little prison. In the center there was
a round opening about a yard in diameter, which
served as a means of ad­mitting light and air. Not even
a table or a chair was in the room. To make his abode
more homelike and comfortable, only an old dusty
mat covered a portion of the hard stone floor before
a wooden bench which served as his couch during
the day and his bed for the night. In the corner across
from his bed a few old boxes and barrels had been
thrown together in a disorderly heap, for this room
formerly had been used as a store­house, wherein
Achmed kept some of his wares that he brought along
from his trips of piracy, to hold them for a profitable
bar­gain. In the back of the pile there was a rattling
and rustling of uncanny noises, and it seemed as if
all the rats and mice of the building had gathered
there for their Olym­pic games and for the pleasure
or displeasure of the young spectator. Night was
gradual­ly closing off the last bit of light that en­tered
through a round opening above the darkened cell.
The boy sought out his water jug from among the
rubbish to quench his thirst; then he took a little
medal of the Virgin of Loretto from under his jacket,
kissed it devoutly, and placed it carefully again in its
place of security. Good old Brother Christopher had
given it to him on the occasion of his last nameday
and told him of the interesting story, how the gra­
cious abbot, on his last pilgrimage to the House of
Loretto, touched the treasured rel­ic to the remains of
the little plate from which our Lord ate during His
holy child­hood. Thereupon he recommended himself
once more to his guardian angel and laid himself to
rest upon his hard bench. In this manner Francesco
passed week after week in his sad desolation. Every
evening when the bells announced the time for
evening prayer from the tower, Hares came from
his father’s house, crossed over the back­yard, and
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

28
entered through the rear narrow gate. Gradually
Francesco became more and more acquainted with
the Arabic language, and soon the young instructor
began to teach him to read the prescribed verses
of the sacred Koran. More than once Achmed was
present at these hours of instruction, and each time
when he noticed the rapid progress of the little
captive, he rubbed his hands with miserly glee. The
more Francesco became acquainted with the Arabic
language, the better also became his condition
in Achmed’s house. Now whenever he asked the
pirate for any favor, the latter willingly granted it;
however, in his petitions to be allowed to go out into
the open yard, he was unsuccessful up to the present
time; but to make up for this defect, his master
presented him with many other conveniences and
comforts. First of all, the room had been cleaned
of all the dirty rubbish that destroyed every bit of
freshness that might have entered through the little
opening in the ceiling. On one side, behind a rather
artistic table, stood a softer cot to replace the former
hard bench which served as his bed. Even the food

Volume
now 2
availabl
e

which the youngster now received was often very
choice and palatable. Clearly, Achmed was trying to
soften the child, and thereby more easily bring him
to his downfall. Occasionally Hares brought a little
sorbet along and allowed the young pupil to taste
the sweet drink, and when he saw that it pleased the
boy, offered also intoxicating drinks, even though
the sacred Koran strictly forbids such action.
So it happened that Francesco more than
once omitted saying his evening prayers. Had his
guardian angel not watched over him so carefully,
he undoubtedly would have succumbed to the force
of increasing dangers. One night as he kissed the
medal in the customary way, before he fell asleep, it
seemed to impress him more than ever, that he had
been negligent in his prayers; and he recalled the
parting words of his respected friend, Don Isidore:
“My child, keep God and the Blessed Virgin ever
in your mind, and do not forget your prayers.”
Immediately he made the resolution never again to
taste the intoxicating drinks.

...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 Two combines four of these stories into a single volume.

The Shipwreck.The world of the Irish lad Willy Brown is turned upsidedown when his sinister uncle appears on the doorstep to take his schoolmate
Joseph, a Chinese orphan, away with him aboard the good ship “St. George.”
But things gets out of control when a mighty hurricane steers the ship off
the coast of the Solomon Islands, driving them to crash upon the reefs of a
cannibal-infested island.
Crosses and Crowns.The story opens with a scene from the pages of
history: “The Emperor Tue-Dueck, a terrible persecutor of Christians,
lay dying.” The young Christian page, Thuan, is at the Emperor’s bedside
and tells him how he may yet obtain eternal life. The emperor’s rage at the
sight of the cross earns the boy a flogging, and soon a new persecution is
unleashed. The Christian spirit shines through in all his actions in this
mission land where bloody persecution is still a threat to those who hold the
faith of Christ.

332pp. Color Softcover.
STK# 8455✱ $14.95
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

Prince Arumugam. Having been cured by Father Francis after the native
doctors and snake-charmers failed, Arumugam asks of his father, the rajah,
to let him go to the missioner’s school. The rajah consents, on condition that
the priest not try to convert his son. Arumugam enters the school. But the
progress of Arumugam towards Christianity, and his courage to profess his
beliefs in the face of his father’s tenacious opposition, is challenged by the
rajah's plans to uproot his son’s new-found faith by all means fair and foul…
The Pirate’s Prisoner. Little Francesco goes down to the water’s edge
alone to await his father’s return from the sea. Instead of meeting his father,
lurking pirates carry him off to their ship. The pirate Achmed hopes to
induce the boy to become a Muslim and his successor, while the boy’s father
tries desperately to ransom his beloved son.

29

“Dante and Shakespeare
divide the world between
them; there is no third.”
–T.S. Eliot

PART 1

DANTE

An Introduction

D r .

D a v i d

T. S. Eliot once said, “Dante and Shakespeare
divide the world between them; there is no third.”
This is an astonishing statement, but I am absolutely
convinced of its truth. In the sphere of literature,
these two men loom above all others. As a result,
they deserve our time; we cannot but benefit by
spending our time studying them.
Shakespeare was lucky in one sense. This “luck,”
as I call it, is partially explained by the fact that he
comes nearly 300 years later. Dante sets The Divine
Comedy in the year 1300. It begins on Good Friday.
Chaucer dies in 1400 and leaves The Canterbury Tales
uncompleted. Shakespeare writes Hamlet in 1601.
From these dates, one gets a sense of sequence.
I say Shakespeare was “lucky” because he had
a foot in the modern world. Dante was a poet who
wrote an extraordinary epic poem about a voyage
through the afterlife and he wrote in a Catholic
world; Shakespeare was a dramatist who wrote in a
very different world. His great dramas were created
out of the clash of two different worldviews–the
medieval and the modern. Drama is conflict, and
Shakespeare lived in a time that was nothing but
conflict.
Because Shakespeare was partially modern,
because he wrote in a Protestant nation, and because
he had to veil much of his Catholic thought (since
it would have meant the end of his public and
social ambition to do otherwise), the modern world
still studies him. He remains popular because he
allows the drama to act out his thoughts. As more

A l l e n

W h i t e

scholars research his Catholic connections and as
this religious dimension of his work becomes more
recognized, the tide may well shift against him. But
today he is still well known and his works are acted
on the stage and studied in the classroom. He is one
of our last links with literary tradition and the riches
of the literary past.
Dante is only a name today. Educated people
may know who he was, but few have read him.
For those who have read him, they have read only
the Inferno. They stop there (and there are reasons
for that). The fact of the matter is that he is more
respected as a great writer than actually read.
I found myself in graduate school, working on
my doctorate, about to begin teaching, before I
had read a word of Dante. This means I had gone
through 13 years of public schooling, 4 years as an
undergraduate as a literary major at the University
of Minnesota, and had not read Dante at all; I had
received a master’s degree in literature from the
University of Wisconsin, but had not read Dante. I
had a sense of the name and knew vaguely what he
did, but knew nothing directly.
As I was preparing to teach for the first time,
one of my first classes was on modern poetry: Ezra
Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats. When
I started reading Pound and Eliot, I realized that
Dante was hugely important. Suddenly I realized
that I needed to read Dante himself. Then the next
semester, I was fortunate to be a teaching assistant
to a professor teaching a class on the epic, a course
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

30

which included the Inferno. So I finally read it. Thus
my introduction to Dante came late in my postgraduate work. And that was nothing but a fluke.
When I finally began to read Dante, I was
stunned. It was overwhelming. I then realized I had
to read the entire Divine Comedy. I was mystified.
At this point, I was not yet a Catholic and knew
virtually nothing about the Faith other than the old
horror stories I was given as a young Protestant:
Catholics adore graven images, they don’t read
the Bible, they worship wafers, etc. My knowledge
of Catholicism resided in a bundle of prejudices.
Without solid Catholic formation, I could not
understand a good bit of the Inferno. Nevertheless,
despite my ignorance, I was pretending to teach
a great masterpiece that I neither knew well nor
understood. I was paid to do this; young students
had paid to listen to me talk about something about
which I knew little. This was over 30 years ago. It
is worse now. But it is a clear example of the fraud
called Modern Education. May God forgive me for
my part in this scam. I have spent the remainder of
my career trying to make up for this great wrong. At
any rate, at that time I was baffled and mystified by
the Divine Comedy.
After I converted, I re-read it. Coming to it as a
Catholic, having just been instructed in the Faith, I
was entranced by the Purgatorio. For the first time,
I got a sense of what purgatory meant. Dante’s
depiction is a fascinating lesson for Catholics. It
helps explain things which too often are merely
abstract ideas. The Paradiso, however, still baffled
me. I found it interesting, but unapproachable.
I eventually did something that I had done in
graduate school, and that I had not done since: I
went and consulted the great commentaries. I was
absolutely overwhelmed by the volumes of material.
I realized that Dante is a world unto himself. Given
the fact that he has been around for so long, and
given the greatness of the poem, almost anything
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

you bring towards the poem lights up. As I began
sorting through the commentaries, I realized much
of it was crazy: Marxist, feminist, and Freudian
interpretations abounded. What struck me the most,
however, was that the heavy volume of commentary
actually discouraged reading the text itself.
I was overwhelmed. Anyone setting out to read
a great work needs to be aware of this. In a way,
this is what modern scholarship is all about: to make
people think that it is impossible to understand or
comprehend a text without an enormous investment
in “scholarship.”
When it comes to the great poets, we have
Homer, Virgil, and then Dante. These are the major
figures. And yet they are not taught. It is likely that
you will today go through the educational process
without encountering any of these figures. If you
decide to read something like the Divine Comedy on
your own, however, you can be overwhelmed by a
sense of inadequacy. It is 700 years old, clearly set in
a time period so remote that historical knowledge is
absolutely necessary for the reader. It is filled with
theological concepts and dense religious vocabulary.
In a way, it is a summation of medieval thought in
poetic form. It is also a personal vision, one man’s
journey through the three spheres of the after-life.
Further, it is an internal journey on the part of
Dante. But if you want help, you find 40 shelves of
books on every possible related topic, most of them
more obscure than the poem itself. At this point, one
is reluctant to attempt to read it at all.
Do not be afraid of it. It is something you must
read. This is the case even if no one else reads it.
Dante has been buried, but he has been buried
alive; he is still breathing. The poem lives. It is
essential reading. I cannot encourage you enough to
read all three canticles. It is long: 100 cantos total.
But it is not difficult reading. Much of it may on
occasion be obscure, and there is an enormous cast
of characters—Dante meets hundreds and hundreds

31
of people. Commentary may help but footnotes can
often kill it. If this latter is the case, read it without
footnotes first. The most important thing to keep in
mind is that it was the first great poem written in the
vernacular.
Dante began his life writing Latin verse. That
was what an educated poet did. When he sat down
to write the Divine Comedy, he considered writing
it in Latin as scholarly verse. He chose to write it
in Italian so as to reach a wider audience. It is not
meant to be intellectually intimidating. This is still
the case 700 years later. It is still readable.
A decent translation is critical. There are some
out there. If you have a little knowledge of Italian,
you should be able to make your way through
the original and get some sense of the music of
the verse. Poetry is, of course, very difficult to
translate. Dante was a great verbal musician and
his poetry reflects that. As you read it, you will get
a sense of the truth the man is telling. His vision is
extraordinary. It is thoroughly Catholic. And that is
why it is gone. That is why you have not read it; it
is unequivocally Catholic and loaded with Catholic
theology. The modern world hates all things
Catholic so the modern world secretly despises
Dante. They will praise him but go out of their way
to insure that few ever read him.
I can think of few better ways to introduce
intelligent young people to the Faith than to sit
them down with Dante and go through it, line by
line, canto by canto. The awe and wonder of what
is being explored, and the vision of Dante, is a
powerful thing. Reading the poem is something of a
personal journey. Virgil and Beatrice may be leading
Dante through his journey, but Dante is leading us
through the epic. He takes us by the hand.
Along with Don Quixote, that greatest of all
novels, so much of our Catholic literary heritage has
been jettisoned. Nobody reads these texts anymore.
I am convinced that most professors simply try to

scare people away from reading these: “They’re
long, they’re intimidating, they’re confusing. You
need 40 reading guides.” These men wrote for
normal people. It is demanding, but it’s eminently
readable.
Do not be overwhelmed. There is much to be
read, an abundance of fine books. But there are
certain things that you must read. The great Catholic
poet, Dante, must be read. The great Catholic
novelist, Cervantes, must be read. Shakespeare, the
great Catholic dramatist, also must be read. The
giants must be read; that is what defines them as
giants. They speak such profound, timeless truths
that they are the greatest writers of every age.
I have read many English translations. Some of
them are awful, usually the ones by modern poets
who are highly praised by other modern poets.
Some translations are competent. I only know one
in English that gets to the core of Dante’s verse
and thought. It is in the Penguin paperback series;
the translator’s name is Mark Musa. Do not launch
onto these boundless waters in any other vessel.
The Mark Musa translation is both readable and
beautiful, and his notes are excellent, clear, concise,
and never overwhelming. There are other good
translations, including that done by Dorothy Sayers
(who attempted to maintain the rhyme scheme
in English and in doing so often goes awry; her
introductions are wonderful).
Do not be intimidated. If you have eyes and a
brain, you can read it. We have a duty to know the
great Catholic writers and artists; Dante looms large
at the top of the list.
(To be continued.)
Dr. David Allen White taught World Literature at the Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Maryland, for the better part of three decades. He gave many
seminars at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, including
one on which this article is based. He is the author of The Mouth of the Lion
and The Horn of the Unicorn. Illustrations by Gustave Doré.

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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

32
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 5

The Faith Is the Foundation
of Legality in the Church
In this spiritual conference given to the seminarians
of Ecône on February 27, 1976, Archbishop Lefebvre
once again explains why the Society cannot be taxed
with disobedience for its attitude. Obedience to laws is
subordinate to the transmission of the Faith.–Fr. Gleize

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.
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

This shall be a bit of a repeat of what I already told
you on September 14, but I think that there are still some
who are a bit worried. I do understand them, and I am
the first to be concerned about these things: the legality
of ordinations, the legality of incardinations, the legality
of our situation. We ought to be ready, I think, to accept
living in a state of illegality so as to live truly the life of the
Church. For legality as it is being employed currently in
regard to our situation, such as it is being used quite often
even in the Church, no longer exists when it comes to the
people who are destroying the Church. For them, legality
is not applied, and they are left completely free to do as
they like. At that point, there is no longer any law; there is
no longer any authority for them; they are given complete
freedom.
As for those who would like to keep the life of the
Church, to keep the works of the Church, to keep the
Church’s priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments–they
have the right to have the law applied to them in a wholly
unjust, illegal manner. Consequently, what matters in a
situation like the one in which we find ourselves is for
us to seek in earnest the purpose for which these laws
have been made. What is the purpose for which canon
law was made? Canon law was made for preserving the
Faith and for the application of the Faith for the sake of
our sanctification and the life of perfection. That’s why.
But now the laws are being used, on the contrary, to

33
hinder and, as it were, to prevent us from keeping
the faith; to prevent us from observing the laws of
sanctification.
For example, let us take the destruction of the
liturgy: it is clear that it makes people lose their
faith and that it does not help them at all in their
sanctification; far from it. So must we say: “Well,
well, the superiors are ordering it, and so we must
submit”? Should we say, as have some progressivist
priests who have written me: “As for me, in a choice
between the Pope and Archbishop Lefebvre, I
choose the Pope”? I told them: “Of course, choose
the Pope, agreed. I also choose the Pope, but that
is not what is at stake; that is not the question. The
question is whether we choose 20 centuries of the
Church, 20 centuries of Tradition, 20 centuries of
faith, or 15 years of the Church’s self-destruction.”
That is the problem. It is not Archbishop
Lefebvre and the Pope; it is 20 centuries of the
Church’s Tradition and now the Church’s selfdestruction–the Pope himself says so; I am not
making it up. So it is a matter of knowing whether
we really want to join this current and lend a
hand to those who are in the process of destroying
the Church, or whether we say no to those who
want to oblige us to do so by force of law and the
compulsion of obedience.
“You are going to obey; you must obey.” So,
they say it is the Pope, the bishops, the cardinals;
it’s Rome. “You have to obey; you have to join the
movement demolishing the Church.”
So we say: “No, that is impossible; it goes against
all the laws of the Church. All the laws of the Church
exist for the Church’s edification, not its destruction.
You want to make us join in the demolition–
contribute to the demolition of the Church. We
refuse. We want no part of it; we want to continue
building up the Church as the Church has always
done.”
But then, you are going to find yourselves
outlaws. They may apply penalties to you–perhaps
suspension, perhaps excommunication, or what have
you. It is very serious; you see the kind of situation
in which you are going to find yourselves. You are
going to find yourselves in the situation of people
who are unjustly persecuted–there’s no getting
around it. While we desire to keep the faith, we do
not want to become Protestants. People tell us: you
must become Protestant, you must be ecumenical,
you must join in this movement. Well, no; because
by this movement we lose the faith and we become
Protestants. We do not want to lose the faith, and we
do not want to become Protestants.
We have adopted a line of conduct that is the
Church’s: to uphold what the Church has done for
20 centuries. Canon law was the result of what was
asked by St. Pius X, and this body of laws is the
result of 20 centuries of customs, traditions, Church

laws, and the faith of the Church–all of that is in
canon law. So suddenly now, I do not know what is
going to emerge with the new Code of Canon Law,
what laws they will give us. If it is to say that all the
religions have the same rights, then we are not in
agreement. That is not possible.
Today, it seems that everything has changed,
everything is new; the provisions concerning all
the religions–Freemasons, Protestants, Muslims,
Buddhists–all of that has changed; now we are all
brothers. These are serious illusions, and that is why
we cannot enter into this sort of indifferentism nor
fail to put our Lord before all as King of society,
King of individuals, and King of families. We have
only one God, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom
dwell the Father and the Holy Spirit. And so there
is no question of our changing. Obviously, we
find ourselves at loggerheads with those currently
occupying the Church and who wish, once again,
to make use of these laws contrary to the reason for
which the laws were made.
“But, after all, it is pride for you to resist the
Church like that; you are the only ones to step
outside the mainstream of the Church!”
We are not the only ones; we are with Tradition;
we are with 20 centuries of Tradition. That is not
pride. Is it pride to say that the Catholic religion
is the only true religion? Then evidently truth is
synonymous with pride. Then God is proud because
God is truth. There is no truth outside of God. When
our Lord said “I am the Truth, I am the Way and the
Life,” He committed an act of pride! Yes, that is what
they are telling us, after all is said and done.
We are saying nothing else. We are saying that
we believe in the truth and in the one true Catholic
Church, the only way of salvation. That is what
our Lord said; that is what the Apostles taught us,
and what the Church has always taught. We are
not prideful. By proclaiming [these truths], on the
contrary, it is we who are practicing charity, it is
we who are charitable, it is we who are the true
missionaries. Because it is deceiving people to tell
them the opposite. It is deceiving people to make
them think that one can be saved in any religion; it
is deceiving them; consequently, it is to lack charity;
it is to leave them in the way that leads to hell.
You shouldn’t have any qualms about this, I
think. You should think it over and rely upon this
constant Tradition in which one cannot be deceived.
Or else the Church is wrong, and the Church is no
longer infallible.
“But the pope is infallible today as he was
yesterday.” I concede that the pope is infallible when
the pope really declares that he is saying things in
such wise as to make a definition. But the Pope, on
the contrary, has been careful almost every time
to say that he did not intend to define; he said it in
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

34
several documents: I do not want to exercise my
infallibility.
And then, what is the pope’s infallibility? Why
does the infallibility of the pope exist? Why did
our Lord give him this infallibility? To confirm his
brethren in the faith. That is the very purpose of
infallibility. Therefore it is impossible for the pope
to use his infallibility in order not to confirm his
brethren in the faith, in order not to confirm us in
the faith, the faith of 20 centuries–to which we are
attached above all else, you see.
What is the criterion of infallibility, for example,
in the ordinary magisterium? If there is an act of the
extraordinary magisterium, and the pope speaks ex
cathedra, it is clear; he acts in a way that is absolutely
infallible; he declares it: he canonizes someone, for
example. It is clear. He proclaims a dogma like that
of the Assumption, for example: It’s clear; it is ex
cathedra. But there is also an ordinary magisterium;
you must believe in the ordinary magisterium. And

IOTA UNUM

just what is the criterion of the pope’s infallibility
for the ordinary magisterium? It is that he confirms
a truth of faith that has also been proclaimed by
all his predecessors. That is it. He repeats; he says,
“Such a pope, such a pope, such a pope, said this,
and I confirm what the popes have said and what
20 or 30 popes have said; I confirm, etc.” Then he
is infallible; that is the criterion of infallibility. But if
he does not confirm what has come before, what the
faith of old proclaimed, the faith of all time, then he
does not exercise his infallibility, what he says is not
the object of infallibility.
(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.

41. Rejection of the council preparations.
The breaking of the council rules.

As we have said, a distinctive feature
of Vatican II is its paradoxical outcome,
by which all the preparatory work that
usually directs the debates, marks the
outlook and foreshadows the results
of a council, was nullified and rejected
from the first session onward, as successive spirits and tendencies followed one
upon another. This departure from the
original plan did not happen as a result
of a decision made by the council itself,
operating within its duly established
rules, but by an act breaking the council’s legal framework, which although
not prominent in accounts given of
these events, is now certain in its main
outlines.
When the schema on the sources
of revelation which the preparatory
commission had drawn up came under
discussion at the thirty-third session,
the doctrine it propounded aroused a
lively difference of opinion, although it
had already been sifted by numerous
meetings of bishops and experts. Those
Fathers who were more attached to the
Tridentine formula stating that revelation is contained in libris scriptis et sine
scripto traditionibus, (“In written books
and in unwritten traditions.” Session IV
of the Council of Trent.) taken as two
sources, found themselves at odds
with those who were keen to reaffirm
Catholic doctrine in terms less unpalatTHEto
ANGELUS
May 2010 www.angeluspress.org
able
those• separated
brethren who
reject tradition. The very lively disagree-

ment between the two groups led to a
proposal on 21 November that discussion should be discontinued and the
schema entirely redrafted. (One must
admit that the official account given in
the O.R. has a comical flavor to it: “all the
Fathers recognize the schema has been
studied with the greatest care, being
the fruit of the work of theologians and
bishops from a great variety of nations.”
How then could it be decided that it was
unfit to be advanced?) When the votes
had been collected, it was discovered
that the move to suspend discussion did
not have the two-thirds majority that
the council’s rules required on all procedural questions. The secretary general
therefore reported that: “The results of
the voting mean that the examination of
individual chapters of the schema under
discussion will be continued in the
coming days.” However, at the opening
of the 34th session on the following
day, it was announced in four languages
as well as Latin that, in view of the
prolonged and laborious debate which
might be expected, the Holy Father had
decided to have the schema recast by
a new commission, in order to shorten
it and to make the general principles
defined by Trent and Vatican I stand out
better.
This intervention, which at one blow
reversed the council’s decision and
departed from the regulations governing the gathering, certainly constituted a

breaking of the legal framework and a
move from a collegial to a monarchical
method of proceeding. I do not go so
far as to say this breaking of procedure
marked the beginning of a new doctrine, but it did signify the beginning of
a new doctrinal orientation. The behind
the scenes activity which led to this
sudden change in papal policy is today
public knowledge, but it is considerably less important than the exercise
of power superimposing itself on the
due legal structure of the council. The
result of the vote could have been
challenged by the Pope if there had
been a fault in procedure, or if a change
in the rules had been introduced, as
in fact happened under Paul VI, who
decreed a simple majority would do. In
the circumstances in which it happened,
however, this intervention constituted
a classic case of a Pope imposing his
authority on a council, and is all the
more remarkable in that the Pope was
at that time portrayed as a protector of
the council’s freedom. The exercise of
authority was not, however, something
the Pope did on his own initiative, but
the result of complaints and demands
by those who treated the two-thirds
majority required by the council rules as
a “legal fiction” and ignored it in order
to get the Pope to accept the rule of
a bare majority.–Romano Amerio, Iota
Unum, pp.82-83. [Available from Angelus Press. Price: $23.95]

TELEVISION
35

THE SOUL AT RISK

PART 6

This is
the sixth
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

In some cases, the TV watcher is so dependent on television that he is
reduced to a zombie-like state: his will, his capacity for loving the good, is
annihilated, like that of the millionaire American Howard Hughes (or his
double), deceased in 1974,
who spent the last fifteen years of his life…watching television! Installed in luxurious hotel suites, surrounded by an escort of Mormon guards and domestics
who isolated him from the outside world, Hughes spent his days all alone in a
room with the curtains drawn, stretched out on his bed all day long. Before him:
a television turned on fifteen hours a day. He would rapidly consume some sandwiches or canned food without taking his eyes off the screen. He even refused
to cut his fingernails or have his hair cut. Solitary, half mad, thus died Howard
Hughes, consumed by television.

Not every television watcher under the sway of television has reached
that point; even if the will is blocked or turned away from the good, it is
not completely so. Just as television is an obstacle between the real and
us in the order of knowledge, it is also an obstacle between the real and
us, between our neighbor and us, between God and us, in the order of
charity. The real, God, our neighbor, are mediatized. The audiovisual may
incite to evil by its impious or immoral content, like the spectacles of the
Renaissance or the time of the Roman Empire (and denounced as scandals
by St. John Chrysostom and Bossuet). But before it incites to sin or evil,
television paralyzes the will. We do not know if Howard Hughes watched
pernicious spectacles: he was not harming his neighbor’s life, he was not
committing adultery; he contented himself with doing nothing.
The audiovisual is dangerous firstly because it turns us away from our
real neighbor in favor of some remote abstraction. It also turns us away
from an alternate activity that might draw us closer to the good and to our
neighbor. To set one’s hand to something, the Church reminds us, is the
first degree of contemplation. Our Lord began by being a carpenter.

(

TeleVision anD The
VirTue of religion

T

One sometimes hears a surprising statement when Catholics speak
about their faith: “I believe that there’s something.” How can our God,
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THE ANGELUS • May 2010

36

living and true, be reduced to “something”? This
is surely an effect of television, where God, the
neighbor, the real, lose their consistency for a
habitual viewer. How can one be devout–as St.
Francis de Sales defines it–when one is “hooked”
on television? St. Francis defined devotion as
“promptness and diligence in the observance of the
commandments and the accomplishment of inspired
or counseled good works.”
Can the inspiration to accomplish good works
come through television? Is there not a contradiction
between promptness and diligence in keeping the
commandments and the habit of relaxing in one’s
armchair to follow programs designed to hold us in
front of the set? How can a Christian apply himself
to God while his soul is encumbered with scandals,
phantasms, and foolishness?
A missionary to India a few years ago related:
In the places where television has not yet come, the
children preserve the purity of their souls until the age
of 18 or 20. In the villages where television has spread,
the souls of the children are sullied by seven or eight.
In the towns, relentless advertising urges people to buy
a set for every room so they don’t have to depend on
anyone else in their choice of programs.

Yet it is the pure of heart that will see God.
What become of faith and religious practice
among habitual viewers? We observe that faith (like
religious practice) is rather inconsistent and vague.
The proclamation “I believe in something” as one’s
Creed is an indicator of a failing faith.
In a diocesan parish bulletin, some young
confirmands were interviewed about the reception of
the sacrament: not once did they speak of God, the
Holy Ghost, or His gifts. They spoke of encounters
and discussions about love and films. They told
about the big moments of their preparation: the
meeting with the bishop, the day of the ceremony,
their friends, the relatives who came; they speak
about themselves and their pride, their emotions,
their joy, the banquet after the ceremony… They
completely left out God, the Christian life, the
apostolate, and their vocation as apostles.
The Parable of the Sower
The Christian life and religious practice amount
to little, by the avowal of practicing Catholics and
their priests. The pastor responsible for our area
designates practicing Catholics as “the visible
individuals in our human and ecclesial community.”
That means that religious practice consists merely in
being visible in the human and church community.
Lukewarmness and false devotion have always
existed, but what should be rare and abnormal
becomes current and normal. Does television
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

play a part in this refusal of the Christian life, in
the difficulties with being prompt and diligent in
the observance of the commandments and the
accomplishment of counseled or inspired good
works? The parable of the Sower can give us some
keys if indeed we allow that, in spite of the novelties
sown since Vatican II, the Good News is still being
sown to a certain extent in the Church today since
passages from the Old and New Testaments are read
in the churches.
“[The seed] was trodden down; and the fowls of
the air devoured it.” The Church instructs us that
this designates superficial souls or hardened hearts
that will not open to teaching or grace. Television
certainly plays a leading part in the fabrication of
shallow souls and hardened hearts, with its fare of
silly programs and horrible scenes. The people who
spend a lot of time in front of the TV set and who
rarely go to church (for family occasions) resemble
the superficial souls and hardened hearts of the
parable: they receive the seed, but in vain: the noise
of the world prevents the good tidings from taking
root.
“And some other fell upon a rock. And as soon
as it was sprung up, it withered away”: The Church
teaches us that this passage designates passionate,
enthusiastic, generous souls living in the excitement
and agitation of feelings and emotion. These souls
can be touched by grace; they can have been
moved, they can be drawn by someone, but it
does not last. They let go of the Christian life once
desolation, trials, or renouncement comes.
Television sustains this excitation of the feelings
and emotions. We still find many of these Christians
in the Church, like the young confirmands who
speak of their emotions, their feelings, but not at
all of the sacrament that makes apostles. We meet,
especially in charismatic circles, many Christians
who are looking for intense experiences. But
the Christian life does not consist only in felt
experiences, and all the spiritual writers agree that
for advancement in the spiritual life, periods of
trial and desolation are most fruitful. This group of
Christians watches television less avidly than the
first: their hearts are not hardened because they do
not care for the spectacle of violence and evil, but
the seed scarcely sprouts.
“And other some fell among thorns. And
the thorns growing up with it, choked it”: The
Church teaches us that the thorns represent the
smothering exterior world: pride, money, vanity.
The seed begins to grow but finally it is choked by
the world. These are the people who have talents,
but the world comes to them through television,
and their talents are spoiled. We recognize in the
Church such people among “involved practicing

37

Catholics,” the members of parish leadership teams,
the “vicaresses” who like to take the priest’s place,
the ladies who take advantage of every opportunity
(readings, announcements, songs) to make an
exhibition of themselves.
While our ancestors used to hear Mass turned
towards the Lord, making their own these words of
the hymn: “Let all efface themselves here, for Jesus
on the altar appears,” in many churches we get the
exact opposite impression. Those who attend the
New Mass are turned towards ladies who, by their
conduct at least, seem almost to proclaim: “Let the
Lord efface Himself while we at the altar appear.”
Here too, a link with television can be
established: these liturgical “shows,” as Cardinal
Ratzinger called them (before being elected pope),
are inspired by televised spectacles and variety
shows. The talent of these Christians consists first
of all in modeling the Church on the world and
then putting the Church at the service of their social
ambitions.
Churchmen in charge of parishes continually
make use of the vocabulary from the world of
entertainment: they speak of the parish leadership
team or the liturgical leadership team. For many
Christians, attending Mass means paying attention
to the extras. In another recent issue of our diocesan
bulletin, the priest invited the leaders of the local
team to make the Mass livelier so that children
would attend more willingly.
One wonders by what means these Christians
will one day be able to be oriented towards the
Tridentine Mass!
Active Catholics often designate themselves as
“actors”: “I belong to the liturgical leadership team
because I want to be an actor in the Church,” one
often reads in their testimonials. One gathers that
the non-actors are spectators. Moreover, these active
Catholics are suffering, like priests, from an identity
crisis. They do not appreciate, perhaps more often
than they confusedly express, being lumped together
with the passive spectators by the “actors.” In the
parish bulletins, thanks and congratulations are
invariably addressed to the “actors” of the liturgical
leadership team, who liven up the Mass and who
make the parish run.
Applause is now common among the official
parish staff; yet St. Pius X forbade it. “One does
not applaud the servant in the Master’s house.” But
there are no more servants, only actors!
A priest of the diocese explained that he had
to command silence during the Offertory because
the parishioners were taking the Offertory for an
intermission and would begin to chat.
Of course, the parable of the Sower was taught
well before the existence of television. The souls

displaying these defects have always existed in the
Church, and we may recognize ourselves in each
one of these descriptions, but by its effects television
contributes to the transformation of souls into a
terrain that is hardly apt to bring forth a fruitful
harvest, and Christendom now resembles a ground
in which the good seed does not grow very often.
One finds very many hard, shallow souls, very
many souls on the look out for intense experiences,
very may actors and actresses and leaders, but few
Christians. The good word sown during the Mass
is unfortunately often stripped of its meaning, and
it seems that the media are not extraneous to this
misappropriation.
In some parish bulletins one finds an inversion
of the steps of the Ignatian method: Memory,
Understanding, Will. Memory: one systematically
chooses something that is not supernatural.
Understanding: instead of clarifying the mystery
or parable in light of the faith, one obscures it
with considerations of contemporary issues. Will
or resolution: the act of the will is always turned
towards the world, towards others–not towards one’s
neighbor, but towards a vague, distant object.
For instance, in a parish bulletin, the parish
pastor presents the Holy Family: the father, the
mother, the child (memory); he explains that there
are new models of families… (understanding); he
invites us to welcome these new models and to
be attentive to others (will). Now, in this parish,
the practicing Catholics are still, overall, normal
families. Where then did the priest-editor of this
editorial draw his inspiration?
Another example: Jesus sends forth the apostles
two by two without gold, silver, sandals, purse, or
staff (Mt. 10:10) (memory). At present, we dispose
of a number of means of modern communications
like the Internet (understanding). Let us know how
to make use of these new means of communication
(will).
Behind all these considerations one surmises
the deleterious influence of the media, a refusal of
realities both natural and supernatural, a desire to
pattern oneself on the world, a total submission to
the world as it is shown, transformed, and fashioned
by the media. Instead of transmitting the things of
God, our preachers have transmitted the media,
especially television, the principal vector of hidden
persuasion: they have made a god of their TV.
(To be continued.)
Translated from La Télévision, ou le péril de l’esprit (copyright Clovis, 2009).

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • May 2010

Church an

38

The Catholic Church at the Crossroads:
Decline or Reform?
It is difficult to talk about the
Catholic Church without mentioning the present crisis which is published in every newspaper. In this
documentary section we want to
make known some of the facts as
well as the essential solution: The
Church needs a reform “in the head
and members” (an expression from
the time of the Gregorian Reform
in the Church during the Middle
Ages).
```

Document 12
Attacks against
Clerical Celibacy
The scandal of pedophile
priests that has shaken the Church
for several years is providing the
secular media with an opportunity to accuse the Pope himself
of wrongdoing and to call for the
abolition of clerical celibacy. The
Parisian daily newspaper Le Monde
offers a selection of these attacks,
in which one finds insinuations
aimed at discrediting Benedict XVI
personally, alongside an implicit
demand for married priests. The
readers may judge for themselves:
• A forthcoming Roman document on pedophile priests “will not
remove the questions about what
Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith for more than twenty
years, knew about all those scandals” (page 6).
• “Of all the monotheistic religions, the Roman Catholic Church
is the only one faithful to this disTHE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

cipline (of clerical celibacy). Such
a widespread phenomenon [as the
recent scandal] has never been
observed in religions where the pastors are married. The Church ought
to re-examine its view of sexuality
instead of fostering immaturity in
its clerics. In Austria, the Most Reverend Aloïs Kothgasser, Archbishop of Salzburg, deemed that
‘the Church must ask itself whether
it can keep up this way of life or
whether it must change it.’ In 2008
the head of the German Church,
the Most Reverend Robert Zollitsch, asserted that ‘the connection between the priesthood and
celibacy is not a theological imperative.’ The Church is not out of
the world. If it wants to espouse
contemporary humanity, it would
do well to put an end to this anachronism.”
The journalists who faithfully
relay and amplify the theses of progressives [within the Church] sound
surly, and no wonder: on March 12,
during an audience granted to the
participants in a meeting organized
by the Congregation for the Clergy,
Benedict XVI clearly reaffirmed
“the value of sacred celibacy, which
is a charism required for ordination
in the Latin Church and is held in
very high esteem in the Eastern
Churches.”
Concerning the media campaign against the Pope, Fr. Federico Lombardi, spokesman for
the Holy See, issued a press release
dated March 13: “[T]he archdiocese of Munich has replied, with
a long and detailed communiqué,
to questions concerning the case
of a priest who moved from Essen
to Munich at the time in which

Cardinal Ratzinger was archbishop
of that city, a priest who subsequently committed abuses. The
communiqué highlights how the
then archbishop was completely
unconnected with the decisions
in the wake of which the abuses
took place. Rather, it is evident
that over recent days some people
have sought—with considerable
persistence, in Regensburg and
Munich—elements that could personally involve the Holy Father in
questions of abuse. To any objective
observer, it is clear that these efforts
have failed.”
On the same day, March 13,
L’Avvenire, the daily newspaper of
the Italian Bishops’ Conference,
printed an interview with Msgr.
Charles J. Scicluna, promoter
of justice of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, whose job
it is, among other things, to investigate members of the clergy who
are accused of abusing minors. The
most illuminating excerpts from
this interview follow:

Nonetheless, that document (a Roman
document establishing norms to follow
in cases of solicitation during Confession and of other “particularly serious
crimes” of a sexual nature, such as
the abuse of minors—Editor’s note) is
periodically cited to accuse the current
Pontiff of having been—when he was
prefect of the former Holy Office—objectively responsible for a Holy See policy
of covering up the facts….

That accusation is false and
calumnious. On this subject I would
like to highlight a number of facts.
Between 1975 and 1985 I do not
believe that any cases of pedophilia committed by priests were

and World
brought to the attention of our
Congregation. Moreover, following the promulgation of the 1983
Code of Canon Law, there was a
period of uncertainty as to which
of the “delicta graviora” [“particularly serious crimes”] were reserved
to the competency of this dicastery. Only with the 2001 “Motu
Proprio” did the crime of pedophilia again become our exclusive province. From that moment
Cardinal Ratzinger displayed great
wisdom and firmness in handling
those cases, also demonstrating
great courage in facing some of
the most difficult and thorny cases,
“sine acceptione personarum” [“without regard to persons,” i.e. without favoritism or human respect].
Therefore, to accuse the current
Pontiff of a cover-up is, I repeat,
false and calumnious.

What happens when a priest is accused
of a “delictum gravius”?

If the accusation is well-founded,
the bishop has the obligation to
investigate both the soundness and
the subject of the accusation. If the
outcome of this initial investigation
is consistent [with the accusation],
he no longer has any power to act in
the matter and must refer the case
to our Congregation, where it is
dealt with by the disciplinary office.

Who staffs that office?

Being one of the superiors of
the dicastery, I’m on that staff,
along with a bureau chief, Fr. Pedro
Miguel Funes Diaz, seven other
priests, and a lay lawyer who follow
these cases. Other officials of the
Congregation also collaborate,
depending on the language and
specific requirements of each case.

That office has been accused of working
little and slowly….
Those are unjustified comments. In 2003 and 2004 a great
wave of cases flooded over our

39

cases, some of which are particularly sensational and have caught
the attention of the media, there
has been no acquittal. It’s true that
there has been no formal condemnation, but if a person is obliged to
a life of silence and prayer, then
there must be a reason….

That still leaves 20 percent of cases…

Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger

desks. Many of them came from
the United States….In recent years,
thank God, the phenomenon has
waned, and we now try to deal with
new cases as they arise.

How many have you dealt with so far?

Overall in the last nine years
(2001-2010) we have considered
accusations concerning around
3,000 cases of diocesan and religious priests, which refer to crimes
committed over the last fifty years.

Of the 3,000 accused, then, how many
have been tried and condemned?

Currently we can say that a full
trial, penal or administrative, has
taken place in 20 percent of cases in
the diocese of origin—always under
our supervision. Only very rarely
is there a trial here at the Vatican,
which allows us to speed up the
process. In 60 percent of cases
there has been no trial, above all
because of the advanced age of the
accused; administrative and disciplinary measures have been taken
against them instead: they may be
prohibited from celebrating Mass
in public or from hearing confessions, or obliged to live a penitential life in seclusion. It must be
made absolutely clear that in these

We can say that in 10 percent of
cases, the particularly serious ones
in which the proof is overwhelming,
the Holy Father has assumed the
painful responsibility of authorizing
a decree of dismissal from the clerical state. [For those priests, “laicization”] is an extreme but unavoidable measure. In the remaining
10% of the cases, the accused priests
themselves requested dispensation
from their priestly duties, requests
which were promptly accepted.
Among these were priests who had
been sentenced by the civil authorities for that crime.

Where do these 3,000 cases come from?

Mostly from the United States,
which, in the years 2003-2004,
represented around 80 percent
of the total number of cases. In
2009 the United States’ “share”
had dropped to around 25 percent
of the 223 new cases from all over
the world. In recent years (20072009), the annual average of cases
reported to the Congregation has
been 250. Many countries report
only one or two cases; although a
growing number of countries are
involved, the phenomenon itself
is much reduced. Recall that there
are 400,000 diocesan and religious
priests in the world—a statistic that
does not correspond to the perception that is created when these sad
cases occupy the front pages of the
newspapers.
(DICI, 3/22/2010)

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • May 2010

40

Church an

Document 22
Pope Sends Letter
to Irish Bishops
On March 19, 2 010, Pope
Benedict XVI sent an open letter
to the bishops of Ireland in the
wake of the recent scandals. Here
are some excerpts:
“Dear Brothers and Sisters of
the Church in Ireland, it is with
great concern that I write to you
as Pastor of the universal Church.
Like yourselves, I have been deeply
disturbed by the information which
has come to light regarding the
abuse of children and vulnerable
young people by members of the
Church in Ireland, particularly by
priests and religious. I can only
share in the dismay and the sense of
betrayal that so many of you have
experienced on learning of these
sinful and criminal acts and the way
Church authorities in Ireland dealt
with them....
“In recent decades, however,
the Church in your country has had
to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the
rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced
social change has occurred, often
adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the
sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable
it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual
retreats, were neglected. Significant
too was the tendency during this
period, also on the part of priests
and religious, to adopt ways of
thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference
to the Gospel. The programme of
renewal proposed by the Second
Vatican Council was sometimes
THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

misinterpreted and indeed, in the
light of the profound social changes
that were taking place, it was far
from easy to know how best to
implement it. In particular, there
was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal
approaches to canonically irregular
situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand
the disturbing problem of child
sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the
weakening of faith and the loss
of respect for the Church and her
teachings....
“It cannot be denied that some
of you and your predecessors failed,
at times grievously, to apply the
long-established norms of canon
law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognize how
difficult it was to grasp the extent
and complexity of the problem,
to obtain reliable information and
to make the right decisions in the
light of conflicting expert advice.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted
that grave errors of judgement were

made and failures of leadership
occurred....
“I encourage you to discover
anew the sacrament of Reconciliation and to avail yourselves
more frequently of the transforming power of its grace. Particular
attention should also be given to
Eucharistic adoration, and in every
diocese there should be churches or
chapels specifically devoted to this
purpose. I ask parishes, seminaries,
religious houses and monasteries
to organize periods of Eucharistic adoration, so that all have an
opportunity to take part. Through
intense prayer before the real presence of the Lord, you can make
reparation for the sins of abuse
that have done so much harm, at
the same time imploring the grace
of renewed strength and a deeper
sense of mission on the part of all
bishops, priests, religious and lay
faithful.”

and World
Document 32
Prominent Jewish
Businessman
Comes to Defense
of the Church
Sam Miller, a prominent businessman in the Cleveland area,
had these words to say in 2008 in
the May/June edition of the Buckeye
Bulletin:
“I’m going to say things here
today that many Catholics should
have said 18 months ago. Maybe
it’s easier for me to say because I
am not Catholic, but I have had
enough, more than enough, disgustingly enough.

“During my entire life I’ve
never seen a greater vindictive,
more scurrilous, biased campaign
against the Catholic Church as I
have seen in the last 18 months....
“The Church today, and when
I say the Church keep in mind I am
talking about the Catholic Church,
is bleeding from self-inflicted
wounds. The agony that Catholics
have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of the Church. You
have been hurt by an infinitesimally
small number of wayward priests
that, I feel, have probably been
totally weeded out by now.
“You see, the Catholic Church
is much too viable to be put down
by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer
take your choice, they can’t do

41

it, they’re not going to do it and
sooner or later they are going to
give up. But you’ve got to make
sure that you don’t give up first....
“Walk with your shoulders high
and your head higher. Be a proud
member of the most important
non-governmental agency today
in the United States. Then remember what Jeremiah said: ‘Stand by
the roads, and look, and ask for
the ancient paths, where the good
way is and walk in it, and find
rest for your souls.’ And be proud,
speak up for your faith with pride
and reverence and learn what your
Church does for all other religions.
Be proud that you’re a Catholic.”
(Source: Angelus Press)

Document 42
British Newspaper Features Striking Editorial
The Daily Telegraph, one of England’s most popular newspapers, featured an editorial by Gerald Warner
on March 22 entitled “Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal: Time to Sack Trendy Bishops and Restore the Faith.”
In it, Mr. Warner argues:
“It has become fashionable to claim that the sex abuse scandal currently afflicting the Catholic Church
is ‘its biggest crisis since the Reformation’. Oh, really? Tell me about it. The abuse issue is just a small part
of the much larger crisis that has engulfed the Church since the Second Vatican Catastrophe and which
is more serious than the Reformation...
“Should bishops be forced to resign? Oh yes–approximately 95 per cent of them worldwide. These
clowns in their pseudo-ethnic mitres and polyester vestments with faux-naïve Christian symbols, spouting
their ecumaniac episcobabble, have presided over more than sexual abuse: they have all but extinguished
the Catholic faith with their modernist fatuities. They should be retired to monasteries to spend their
remaining years considering how to account to their Maker for a failed stewardship that has lost countless
millions of souls.
“Benedict XVI should take advantage of a popular wave of revulsion against the failed episcopate to
sack every 1960s flared-trousered hippy who is obstructing Summorum Pontificum. It is a unique opportunity to cull the hireling shepherds and clear away the dead wood of the Second Vatican Catastrophe. It
is time to stop the apologies and reinstate apologetics; to rebuild all that has been destroyed in the past
40 years; to square up to liberals and secularists as so many generations of Catholics did in the past; to
proclaim again the immutable truths of the One True Church that, in the glory of the Resurrection, can
have no legitimate posture other than triumphalism.”
(Source: The Daily Telegraph/Angelus Press)
www.angeluspress.org

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QUESTIONS AN

Having no choice, I went to a Novus
Ordo priest for Confession, who gave
me absolution saying “I bless and
forgive you all your sins, in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.” Was it valid?

Penance is one of those sacraments in
which Christ instituted the form according to
the signification of the words, rather than in the
precise words themselves. It is for this reason
that the different rites of the Church use different
expressions, and historically the precise words of the
form were somewhat different in the Latin rite of the
first ten centuries thanthey are now. All these forms,
however, indicate the direct remission of sins by the
priest, as was the power entrusted by Our Lord to
the Apostles: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are
forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they
are retained” ( Jn. 20:23).
Consequently, the only words of the sacramental
form of Confession necessary for validity are “I
absolve you from your sins.” The expression “in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost,” although necessary for the validity of
the sacrament of baptism, is not necessary for the
validity of the sacrament of penance. If the Church
has included this in the formula of absolution, it is to
express that it is only by the power of the Most Holy
Trinity, of God Himself, that sins can be absolved.
The word “absolve” is used rather than forgive, to
indicate that the power to forgive is delegated by
Our Lord, who being God properly has the power
to forgive sins. However, the term “forgive” is still
valid, for it indicates the personal remission of the
fault by the minister, standing in Christ’s place.
Consequently the absolution received was certainly
valid.
However, the importance of this question
remains. How can it be that a Catholic can be
placed in front of a crisis of conscience as to
whether a sacrament is invalid or not, because a
priest changes the words of the form of absolution
according to his own liking? This is unheard of
in the Church, and is a sacrilegious and grave
disrespect for the sacrament to which Christ gave
a divine efficacy, even when it does not invalidate
the sacrament. It is an immediate consequence of
the novelties introduced since Vatican II, which, by
modifying the rites of the Church and the form of
all the sacraments, has taken away the sacredness
of what was once treated as the sacred, timeless
prayer of the Church. The problem is in fact the

Second Vatican Council, which stated: “The rite
and formulae of Penance are to be revised…”
(Sacrosanctum Concilium, §72).
These doubts, created by the post-conciliar
revolution, threaten not only the validity of the
sacraments, but also, and much more frequently,
their licitness. Once the Council laid down the
principle of changing the formulae, why would
a priest not think that he could do likewise?
Thus it comes about that highly illicit personal
improvisations, undermining the sacredness of
the Church’s action through the sacraments, have
become common place. The only solution to these
doubts, which a regular layperson is generally
unable to resolve, is to receive the sacraments only
in the traditional rite. Nothing else will stop these
abuses.

Q

Am I obliged to make restitution,
although I have not gained anything by
my action harming another’s property?

Restitution is the making up for the harm done
to another. It is owed in justice, as can easily be
understood in the case of theft. There can be no
true contrition, nor valid sacramental absolution,
without the determination to return the stolen item
or to make up for its value to the owner, as soon as
possible.
However, it is not so clear in the case in which
one has harmed another person’s property in some
way without profiting in any way. Very frequently
the excuse is given that the person who does this
does not even have the means to make restitution. Is
he really bound?
This is what the moral theologians call unjust
damnification, and it take places either deliberately,
such as the case of vandalism, or accidentally as in
the case of a vehicle accident that destroys another
person’s vehicle. When the damage done to another
person’s property is voluntary and deliberate and
truly the result of his personal action, then he
is personally responsible for the damage and is
morally bound to make it good, even if nobody
knows about it, and even if he has not profited by it
in any way and does not presently have the means
to do so. He must have at least the determination to
make restitution over time, as he becomes capable
of doing so, and the priest must require this as a
condition for giving absolution.
However, most frequently the damage to
another’s property is not intended nor deliberate,
but happens on account of imprudence or
negligence that is not intentional. This is the case

A

THE ANGELUS • May 2010 www.angeluspress.org

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s c o t t

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AND ANSWERS
of at-fault motor vehicle accidents. In such cases,
there is harm to another’s property, but a person is
not necessarily responsible for all the damage, since
he did not want it or intend it. In this second case,
which is called material damnification, civil law is
to be followed. If a just law requires that a person
make restitution for the damage thus caused and
imposes it upon him, then he is also morally bound
to do so. Likewise, if he has a civilly valid contract,
such as a worker or builder who through negligence
produces a defective building (e.g., by imprudently
using defective materials). Although the defect was
not intentional, yet on account of the valid contract,
he is bound in conscience to correct the defect that
his negligence or professional fault caused.

May Catholics patronize thrift stores
owned by and benefiting false religions
(e.g., the Salvation Army)?

This is a case of material cooperation with a
false religion and is really an application of the
principle of double effect, otherwise known as the
indirect voluntary. This is permissible for as long
as the act is not in itself evil, as would be the active
promotion of a false religion, and provided that
there is a sufficiently grave reason to justify the
material help that such patronage would give to a
false religion. The sufficiently grave reason would be
the need of poor people to obtain cheap clothing.
In effect, the act of purchasing cheap clothes
to provide for one’s family is a good act, done with
an upright intention. The help that the organization
receives from this is not willed in itself. It is true
that a Catholic cannot directly will to benefit such
an organization. However, the duty to prevent
any possible profit to such an organization does
not bind under pain of grave inconvenience. It
would be unreasonable to expect this, especially
in items of small value, in which no one stands to

make much profit. Consequently, although it would
be preferable to support a Catholic organization,
such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a person
would not be bound to do so under pain of grave
inconvenience, such as a long drive to the other side
of town.
Consequently, a person ought not to have a
scruple about taking advantage of such thrift stores.
Moreover, the desire to help the poor could be a
sufficient reason to donate items to them, provided
that there was no other practical way to help the
poor and no Catholic charity readily available to
take them and perform the same acts of mercy. The
act of charity is good, and the support of the false
religion not directly willed; but since there is a much
closer material cooperation in donating items, a
much greater effort would have to be made to find a
Catholic charity than if one were simply purchasing
items for one’s own family. Hence the real need
for Catholics to organize their own works of
charity so as to avoid, as much as possible, material
cooperation with false religions.
The same principles apply to yard sales and
fundraisers that are organized to benefit a false
religion. Formal cooperation is sinful, as in the case
in which one would actively participate in making it
a success—for example, by working a stall or seeking
out donated items. However, the fact of simply
purchasing cheaply some items of which one is in
need is in itself only material cooperation, and is
permissible provided that there is a proportionate
reason (e.g., a real need for these items) and that
they are not conveniently available from another
source that does not support a false religion.
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.

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After Death Catholic Citizenship Catholic Vocabulary Church Practices and Customs
Canon Law The Papacy and the Church Teachings Bible and Biblical Matters Trinity, Jesus
Christ, Virgin Mary, Angels, and Saints Mass and the Liturgy SSPX and the Crisis Religious
Orders and Lives

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344pp. Hardcover. STK# 8343✱ $23.95

The Catholic Faith Explained
My Catholic Faith
A Catechism in pictures

The classic 1954 edition of the best catechism you will ever find. Perfect for adults and children. As young children look at the picture, you read the simple caption and explain it further. At the same time, there are questions
and answers for older readers. The answer in large type is for adults and older children. This is followed by an
explanation in smaller text which gives a full explanation for adults. The perfect way to pass on the Faith.
Abundant Scriptural quotations make it excellent for proving Catholic Doctrine to “Bible-believing” Protestants. It’s
also an excellent tool for dealing with liberal Catholics because two subjects of utmost importance are thoroughly
treated: the true nature of the Catholic Church (today denied by false ecumenism) and the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass (today obscured by the New Mass). Profusely illustrated !
415pp. 8" x 11". Gold-embosed hardcover. Hundreds of illustrations. Durable gold-embossed hardcover. STK# 3006✱ $42.00

College Apologetics

Proof of the Truth of the Catholic Faith
Fr. Anthony Alexander
The classic apologetics at the adult level. It is precisely reasoned, and carries the reader through a series of logic
gates that begins with the proof of the existence of God and follows logically through the proof of the existence
of the human soul, the necessity of religion, the reliability of the Gospels, the claims of Christ and the proofs
thereof, the reason for His coming, the nature of His Church, its four classic identifying marks, and, finally, its
infallibility as the religious Teacher of mankind.
Not only is the book's logic ironclad, it also unveils the great historical evidence for the veracity of the Church
from extant writings of some of the greatest historical figures of the first centuries after Christ.
The identity of the True Church of Jesus Christ will not be a mystery after reading this book!
248pp. Softcover. STK# 8450✱ $15.00

The Best of Questions and Answers
The book our readers wanted. The best questions and the best answers of 30 years of The Angelus are printed
in this hardback edition. This will be a family’s heirloom reference book for everyday Catholic living to match the
Catholic Faith we believe and the Latin Mass we attend. Over 300 answers classified under 30 subtitles, authored
by Frs. Pulvermacher, Laisney, Doran, Boyle, and Scott:
Marriage, Parenting, Family Life and Rearing Children ● Science and Medical Matters ● Life 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.
344pp. Hardcover. STK# 8343✱ $23.95

You and Thousands Like You

Fr. Owen Francis Dudley
Written in the form of An Open Letter to the Men and Women of Today, this dynamic book constitutes an excellent apologetic for the Catholic Faith. It shows what Christianity means and involves, and demonstrates how its
practice could stave off the impending disaster which looms over our world. Fr. Dudley's presentation is logical,
forceful and thought-provoking. He writes in a vivid and dynamic style familiar to his readers. “If certain things
I shall say are resented, please believe me that it is not my intention to hurt, but only to draw attention to the
truth. A quality of truth is that it hurts when refused; when accepted it no longer hurts.”
157pp. Sewn hardcover. STK# 3082 $15.50

Fundamentals of
Catholic Dogma

Dr. Ludwig Ott
The greatest summary of Catholic dogma ever
printed. Church teachings on any particular topic.
Tells when the pronouncement was made and its
sources from Scripture, Church Councils, Papal
statements, the Fathers and Doctors. Complete.

544pp. Sewn hardcover. Indexes. Bibliography.
STK# 4095✱ $44.95

Map of Life

Frank Sheed
A just-give-me-the-facts intro to the Catholic
Church. The best book to give to anyone finally
coming around to looking for the Truth. Contains
one of the best explanations of the Trinity.
150pp. Softcover. STK# 6447 $9.95

c
y
s

GENUINE mited
Li
LEATHER supply
ngelus Press announces the fourth printing of the first totally retypeset, 1962
Latin-English daily missal for the laity since Vatican II. This is the most complete
missal ever produced in the English language. We have included everything
in a missal that is affordable while being of the highest durability. The Roman Catholic
Daily Missal will become your life-long liturgical companion—at church, at home, and
on the road.
 All new typesetting—not a photographic reproduction. Clear and crisp type. 
According to the 1962 juxta typica edition of the Missale Romanum  1,980 pages 
All liturgical texts in Latin and English (both Propers and Ordinary)  All readings
in English (Douay-Rheims) and Latin  All music in Gregorian notation  Ordinary
with rubrics in RED  Gilt edges  5 liturgically-colored ribbons  Smythe Sewn,
rounded back binding with durable cover (genuine leather or leather-like Skivertex
polymer)  Rounded corners on pages and cover  Reinforced 80 lb. resinimpregnated endsheets for extreme durability (which will not tear like printed paper
endsheets)  Fully and thoroughly Indexed  Printed and bound in the USA 
The finest ivory Bible paper.

A

1980pp. Sewn binding.
Gold-embossed
GENUINE LEATHER cover.
STK# 8043L $68.00

(Limited Supply! Retail orders only.)

1980pp. Sewn binding.
Gold-embossed SKIVERTEX cover.
STK# 8043 $63.00

SAFEGUARD
YOUR
ROMAN CATHOLIC
DAILY MISSAL
BLAC K,
STK# 8043CB
$19.95
BU RG UN DY,
STK# 8043CW
$19.95
DARK BLUE,
STK# 8043CN
$19.95

High quality, handmade, vinyl
covers made specifically to
fit our 1962 Roman Catholic
Daily Missal. Very durable.
FITS LIKE A GLOVE.

bringing the
catechism
to life
Today, examples are more necessary
than ever. Our Lord taught the multitudes through stories and examples.
In The Commandments of God,
you will hear and understand the
catechism in the same manner Our
Lord Jesus Christ preached on earth.
Listen in the car or at home to 186
riveting stories which help to illustrate
the meaning and importance of the
10 Commandments. Both children
and adults will love this professional—
and highly entertaining—recording.
This audiobook makes the perfect
gift for your family or your friends.
Every Catholic family should own
this audio gem.

4 C Ds — 280 Minu
(almost 5 hours of

tes

audio!)

STK# 8408 $34.9

5

A ‘MOBILE CATECHISM’
of STORIES

Available for the first time in a durable DVD case to protect your discs
during travel. Four vivid designs for each CD. Nearly 5 hours of listening!

“These things Jesus spoke to them in parables...
and without parables he did not speak to them.”–Mt. 13:34

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www.angeluspress.org ● 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37
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