JUNE 2011 $4.45 “Instaurare omnia in Christo” A JOURNAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION INSIDE BISHOP FELLAY: Letter to Friends and Benefactors #78 Brideshead Revisited, A Commentary St. Maximilian Kolbe: His Very Own Words Interview with Prof. Beyerhaus Beatification and Canonization Since Vatican II A Monk Speaks Archbishop Lefebvre, Saviour of the Religious Life THE PILGRIM’S GUIDE TO ROME’S PRINCIPAL CHURCHES Illustrated Guided Tours of Fifty-One of the Most Important Churches in Rome “I am so pleased with my copy that I plan to buy one as a gift for a friend who loves to visit Rome.” Over 1,000 Sold! This monumental work is back in print after more than 15 years. Updated and checked for accuracy by the author. A must have if you plan to visit Rome. Each detailed church tour includes the history of the building, numbered floor plan, color photographs, and details of the church’s spiritual, architectural, and artistic treasures. JOSEPH N. TYLENDA, S.J., has spent a good part of his professional life in Rome. He is a member of the Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus. 448pp. Sewn Softcover with rounded corners. Maps, floor plans and 310 color photographs. STK# 8481✱ $29.95 “You don’t have to visit Rome to experience the Holy City.” • • • FULLY REVISED 51 CHURCHES 310 COLOR PHOTOS www.angeluspress.org ● 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music. The “Instaurare omnia in Christo — To restore all things in Christ.” ngelus Volume XXXIV, Number 6 JUNE 2011 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 Motto of Pope St. Pius X Contents 2 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Fr. Markus Heggenberger, FSSPX 3 ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE: SAVIOUR OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE Fr. Cyprian, O.S.B. 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ON OUR COVER: Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, Silver City, New Mexico. 2 Letter from the O Editor ne of the important questions raised during the crisis of the Church is to what extent is it suitable and permissible for a Catholic to criticize decisions of the Church’s hierarchy. Private judgment became very fashionable during the Protestant era and has been with us ever since. Based on “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture Alone) it seemed a way of declaring independence from the decisions of the Church, which was criticized for ostensibly good reasons. Was it not right to be critical about someone like Pope Alexander VI (who died in 1503), one of the most famous Renaissance popes, whose son Cesare became a cardinal at the age of ten? Did the corruption of the Church not call for confessors to speak up against it? Although this seems evident in the case of Pope Alexander VI, to use abuses as an argument against the Church is not acceptable in general. Christ gave His Church to mankind as a means for their salvation. It is not right to attack it with the argument of the sins of its members. What does this mean for the Church today? Are there good reasons to criticize the Church (the pope) for mistakes which he might have committed? Before trying to answer this question, we must make clear that such a discussion requires piety and consideration. We should not look for a pretext of despising the law of the Church but, rather, for guidance when it is difficult to find true guidance. As always, there seem to be two possible errors: “not enough” and “too much.” “Not enough obedience” to the pope is the Protestant principle. The Church has a true power, given by Jesus Christ, to direct the people of God to their end. “Sola Scriptura” sounds pious, but it is in fact THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org an excuse to have recourse to personal judgment when obedience is asked. That the Bible is inspired by the Holy Ghost there is no doubt. But who says that everyone is able to understand the Holy Ghost? And if I come to different results than, let’s say, St. Augustine, who is wrong: myself, St. Augustine, or the Holy Ghost? How, then, can you be “obedient too much”? While “not enough” seems to be a problem on the Protestant side, “too much” seems to be a difficulty of those who have the tendency to be loyal to the Church. In reality you cannot be “too obedient” towards a real and lawful authority, but “too obedient” can also express an obedience which is exaggerated, when it should be balanced. Keep in mind that, although it seems to be a fact of the history of the Church that mistakes and human limits occasionally become evident, this is always a critique of a specific decision, not of the institution of the Church itself. As an example, Pope John Paul II kissed the Koran. Do we have to say this is right just because he is the pope? There is no doubt that the example of a pope is important for the whole world, but this does not necessarily mean that his example is always a good one. During the First Vatican Council, infallibility was defined under certain circumstances. It became very clear that: 1) certain popes had made poor decisions (like Honorius or Liberius) and that 2) papal infallibility was nevertheless a dogma of the Faith. Therefore we must conclude that when papal decisions seem to contradict the teachings of the Church, it is lawful to question the prudence and legitimacy of these. Thus, are we allowed to criticize Pope John Paul II’s kiss of the Koran on May 14, 1999? Or should we say nothing since it was done by the pope? Our arguments in favor of being allowed (or even obliged) to speak up are the following: 1) Papal infallibility does not cover something like kissing the Koran. (Though nobody has claimed that it did.) It is an abusive interpretation of infallibility when people think that every action of the pope–even outside the definition of infallibility–is right and cannot be questioned. If a pope smokes, does that make it necessarily a good thing? For some, the obligation to smoke would be the 11th commandment! This would be a typical example of “too much” obedience. 2) The kissing of the Koran is against common sense. Why would Catholic missionaries die in the past for the Catholic Faith? Why did they call Mohammed a “liar”? If a Catholic can kiss the “Holy Book” of this religion, these things were done in vain. 3) Kissing the Koran is against the Tradition of the Church. St. Francis of Assisi personally went to see certain leaders of Islamic countries and preached to them in an attempt to convert them. It is not known whether there were conversions, but the Emir gave the order not to harm the founder of the Franciscan order. Apparently he found respect although he had made it very clear to them that he expected them to convert. Times change… The three pillars of the argument against the unhappy New Theology and the course of the Vatican since Vatican II are then: Catholic doctrine, Common Sense, and Tradition. Of course one can say: “I don’t care about all that.” But this position would be more Protestant than Catholic. Is that what we want? Instaurare Omnia in Christo, Fr. Markus Heggenberger 3 THe DefenSe of TrADITIon A Monk Speaks: Archbishop Lefebvre, Saviour of the Religious Life Fr. Cyprian, OSB, Prior of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery This is an edited transcript. Due to time constraints, an abbreviated form of this conference was given on October 17 at the SSPX’s 40th Anniversary Conference in Kansas City. When the Archbishop visited us while I was in France, he would bring his crosier that said “PAX” –peace, which is the motto of the Benedictines. May I use these words from our Breviary: “Propter fratres meos et proximos meos loquebar pacem de Te– Because of my brethren, because of those who are closest to me, I shall speak peace of Thee” (Ps. 121), may I apply these great words to the memory of His Grace Archbishop Lefebvre, Saviour of the Religious Life, which is the title of this conference. While preparing this conference I asked for some assistance from the other religious orders established by the Archbishop. I am happy to say that these few words come from the combined efforts of many vocations who were inspired to pursue their religious life under the infl uence of the Archbishop. Every word is either a direct or indirect quote of the Archbishop’s personal advice, sermons, spiritual conferences and diverse writings. The references are mostly from memory, if this were typed out, every line, every remembrance would continue off the page. The Archbishop was very generous to us and his words flowed as water from a fountain. The Archbishop’s religious Vocation To hear the Archbishop speak, was always a reminder of his own vocation. He had responded to the same call of God, as it is for every vocation. He was first of all attracted to the religious life through relatives and family friends. God unites disparities and contingencies, disposing all things with wisdom so that the greatest good is granted to the greatest number of souls in what appears to be a single action. The Archbishop’s vocation was the same, one calling that saved all of us. Bishop Tissier has given us the masterwork on the Archbishop’s life, while Mother Marie-Christiane, the Archbishop’s younger sister and foundress of the Carmels of Tradition as we know them today has recounted the close-up story of the Archbishop’s vocation. These works have been published much to the edification of the faithful. The vocation is the most secret, the most hidden, the most intimate www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 4 2010 conference part of one’s life. What do we do when God calls, how do we talk about this great secret which is, per force, the putting into words of what God has said to us beyond human words? To speak about the personal vocation of Archbishop Lefebvre, we can understand something of this secret part of his life by looking at what it has provoked in the Church: vocations! Hundreds upon hundreds of vocations have been the ripple effect of this one vocation. Vocation begets vocation. It is a lesser known fact that the Archbishop’s parents were drawn to the religious life, his father in particular had wanted to enter the monastery while still a young man. In many cases the vocation is born in the parents but lived out in the children. This would be the precise case of the Archbishop. The vocation is something given and something received. It is a tradition in the sense of transmission, a communication on the highest level of our life. Religious pass on something of their vocations to their followers, as priests who lay their hands on the heads of the ordinands to the priesthood. A vocation is a treasure, “the pearl of great price.” This analogy would especially describe the Archbishop’s personal vocation which has been so much more than just a positive influence for each of us. Relictis Retibus Every vocation that has in some way been influenced by the Archbishop is already a story in itself, mine is no exception. Although the Archbishop was famous for his great balance and discretion when speaking on matters of the life of the Church: his voice was indeed a faithful echo of the teachings of the popes; but whenever he spoke with his own words there was a sounding out to our ears, something also THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org of the resonance of the teaching Magisterium of the Church. Upon hearing his words we were all consoled by this voice, which in his sermons and conferences, spoke a language with such doctrinal clarity and inspiration, it was like a clarion call to join a new crusade, to drop everything, to “leave our nets behind” to come and serve the Church. As religious: Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans or Benedictines, we were following the example of not only a great archbishop, but also that of a religious who had already lived our vocation on the universal level of the Faith. We heard a call not from a charismatic leader attracting a dazed crowd of blinded and fanaticized devotees, but rather from God himself, who speaks through his most worthy intermediaries. The Archbishop influenced us as one who had lived and suffered as a persecuted servant of the Church. In this same context, he gave us his usual enthusiastic advice to go ahead without fear, entrusting everything to God’s Providence. We knew that this was indeed what he himself had done, for to move forward as soldiers embarking on a great mission, without fear and trusting in God’s Providence, is the lifelong story of the Archbishop’s vocation. I can speak with confidence on behalf of every vocation that has been influenced by him, that we all knew that he had already experienced what we were about to accept as the terms and conditions of our own personal vocations. A Vocation Born of War A child gifted with an even temperament and cheerful disposition, he was the favorite of the seven Lefebvre children. His older brother was a brilliant student and was already moving towards the seminary. Two of his sisters also entered the religious life. The Archbishop was a child during the First World War. France was occupied by the German army where the Lefebvre family lived, not far from Belgium, where the Germans had entered France. The hardships imposed on his family as well as upon his own soul endowed him with a realist lucidity beyond his years. The evil of war was on his daily horizon as he watched the casualties arrive at the hospital across from his home. He could see and hear the artillery of several battlefields nearby. The hatred and futility of war affect children for life. Perhaps, knowing that his father had died in a concentration camp, there was something about this he would never talk about with us. He would later become a soldier and later on as a bishop, would keep something of the fighting spirit of the soldier in his desire to serve his heavenly country. From a young age he resolved to do something significant for the salvation of souls through the most valid and effective means possible, through the religious life of the Church. In the years before he would make his decision regarding his vocation, he would visit the sick and destitute as a leading member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, where the first secrets of his great spirit of charity would be hidden by him but revealed by everyone else. As an altar boy at Mass he would have to go to church very early in the morning by secret routes so as to evade the German soldiers on patrol, even boys would be dealt with according to the laws of the police state. Young Marcel indeed risked his life for the Mass, but beyond the fact that all boys love danger, here we have a prophetic foreshadowing of his future vocation. 2010 conference A Monk reveals His future It was suggested that Marcel go and visit a monastery in order to meet with a holy monk who was known to have a gift of prophesy. A Trappist monk, Fr. Alphonsus, would dispel all the doubts Marcel was having about his vocation. Not thinking he could rise up to the greatness of the priesthood and its demands, and doubting his aptitudes for the studies which he knew would be all in Latin, he imagined himself being a religious brother instead, like St. Francis of Assisi. Upon meeting young Marcel, there was no waiting for questions and answers. In prophetic tones, Fr. Alphonsus declared to the young man, “You will be a priest...you must be a priest.” From that moment, there would be no more doubts, and his reference to the influence of monks would remain with him the rest of his life. He made his religious vows with the Holy Ghost Father on September 8, 1932. The need for More religious Vocations The practice of charity towards souls meant the increase of religious helpers in the apostolate. In establishing missions and parishes, the Archbishop would always insist on the one element of success, the necessary stability of the faith through the presence of religious, especially contemplative religious who would be the prayerful though invisible support of the good activism of the missions. As religious we rejoiced in hearing his words expressing the desire that for every seminary there might also be a contemplative Carmelite community nearby, and alluding to our own monasteries, he said that without more monasteries, without more souls given to a life of prayer and intercession, the Church would never be revived from the present crisis. Such was his vision of the inseparable work of action and contemplation, the two halves of the whole which constitute the integrity of the nature of the Church. Throughout his entire career as missionary, priest, archbishop, superior general and apostolic vicar under two popes; he always brought religious to his various places of ministry. As Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, he was already preparing to strengthen the American province according to this same principle. We can only dream of the way the situation would be today had the Archbishop come to America sooner. Had he not been voted out of authority by the progressive elements within the order, the situation in the American parishes served by the Holy Ghost Fathers might have survived the shock of Vatican II. The story of Fr. Charles Coughlin makes reference to the high caliber of the apostolate of the Holy Ghost Fathers, since he shared his rectory in Detroit with Holy Ghost Fathers, one of them he extolled in one of his last sermons as “a saint in heaven.” His Shining example As a religious When the Archbishop dressed in his ordinary black cassock, he would keep his black missionary cord as a cincture instead of the broad sash proper to the Roman clergy. He thus maintained his religious habit of the Holy Ghost Fathers until the end of his life. It was a small sign, very typical of his modesty and discretion, but it was an eloquent witness, a statement that he always considered himself a religious. His own attachment to the religious state was a reminder to us that we should have the same sense of fidelity in little things. Is not our religious life, as well as the ideal of the Catholic family life, indeed a mountain of little details? These 5 little signs are more than symbols, they are effective means of holiness. His room at Ecône was plain and undecorated, far from being the palace of an archbishop, nor was it the bare cell of a monk, it was something in between, understated as was his usual taste. The only decoration in the room was the only one necessary: his radiant smile and his charity towards visitors. We had to make an appointment, for he was in great demand. When we visited him, he would sit in a wooden chair at his small desk and make us sit in the plush chairs, which he would tease us about. When it was your turn, time seemed to stand still and there was no sense of being in a hurry. He was very discreet in giving advice and never imposed his counsels. He spoke rather as a friend speaks to a friend, or as a father speaks to a son who has reached maturity. As a quality of being a true religious, he seemed to be the most joyful amidst the greatest moments of suffering and persecution. I recall him laughing and joking around with us just when the greatest threats were looming ahead. He was a big teaser, and when I traveled all the way to Ecône to complain that this foundation project was getting the best of me, and that I was ready to through in the towel, he said to me, “Father, you must take more vitamins!” The crisis of Vocations The greatest revelation concerning the Archbishop’s personal vocation seems to come from his own personal pen as he writes to his confreres in the context of the crisis of the faith as it began to invade the world of religious vocations. Just before the Second Vatican Council we hear the superior general preparing his religious missionaries for something great, for the expectations of the potentially great fruits of the Council were already being www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 6 2010 conference anticipated with much enthusiasm, especially on the part of superiors. His very first letter as Superior General begins with the echo of this enthusiasm: it is the eve of the opening of the council: St. Paul said to St. Timothy... stir up the grace of God which is in you. I feel unable to resist the desire to speak to you. The Council will be a great event in the life of the Church... Then almost like the aftermath of a great bombardment, as the Council ends, the crisis intensifies, a massive loss of faith erupts, and thousands of priests and religious are abandoning their vows, returning to the world which was once their mission land of evangelization. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org Then almost like the aftermath of a great bombardment, as the Council ends, the crisis intensifies, a massive loss of faith erupts, and thousands of priests and religious are abandoning their vows, returning to the world which was once their mission land of evangelization. The Archbishop had received an exceptional formation just for this moment, it seems, and was well prepared for this turn for the worse, and he would pinpoint the causes which he had seen coming with his own eyes. We read and hear a voice crying in the wilderness at this famous intervention at the General Chapter of the Holy Ghost Fathers dated September 1968, just when the volcano erupted. This would be his last attempt to restore order in the ranks. The bombs of confusion were landing throughout the Eternal City and so the Archbishop sought to get away for a few days retreat in Assisi. Under the influence of the founders of the Franciscan order, as his middle name is François, he shares the fruits of peace and meditation, contemplating the writings of the founders who had inspired him to join the religious order of which he would be, in all probability, the last superior general. He sees this as perhaps the last chance and the final means to save his order. Let us be frank and clear about this; no hot air, no fi ne literary phrases, no poetry; let us speak plainly. Do we want the authentic religious life?...Let us return to obedience, and chastity, and poverty...under the leadership of a superior and in a community, which adopts and upholds the rule....Otherwise the renewal we desire and await will be an illusion. The evil tendencies of individualism and freedom will be confirmed, our society will become a caricature of a religious congregation, with members who are not religious at all, and a caricature of community life where anarchy and disorder reign, and each individual is free to do as he pleases. These tendencies have already clearly manifested themselves. I warn those who are allowing themselves to be infl uenced, and who think they are doing the right thing by casting their votes in this direction, I beseech them to read the writings of our founder and to seek their inspiration and their decision there, not in modern trends which will wreck the Congregation. The Archbishop here quotes from the writings of Fr. Francis Libermann: If it has pleased God to treat us so harshly, it is to punish us mercifully for our sins. Clearly He seems to want us to save this world more by our own sanctification than by our zeal; I mean that it seems to be God’s holy will that we should live, while in the midst of these [mission] peoples, a thoroughly holy life, paying particular attention to the practice of the priestly and religious virtues of humility, obedience, charity, meekness, simplicity, the life of prayer and self-denial. Let us devote ourselves to cultivating these virtues.... The Archbishop weighs his words and names off the essential 2010 conference requirements for effective apostolate in his own words: Holiness is essentially apostolic. And the apostolate demands holiness. We are determined to provide our religious with the means and conditions which will permit our members to always seek and to acquire holiness. Also required are exceptional and heroic qualities of patience, adaptability, perseverance, enlightened faith, and unfailing character–in short, outstanding holiness. It is with full knowledge of the facts, clarity of vision, understanding of human nature, and a remarkable spirit of faith that the means for sanctification are defined for us: The religious life, the life of self-denial, the life of prayer, the life of fraternal charity, all of which are necessary for achieving holiness and apostolic zeal or practical union with Our Lord which brings about the spread of holiness. The religious life is the means above and beyond all others and this means needs to be the focus of all our attention and concern. If they are holy religious they will save souls; if they are not, they are nothing, for God’s blessing is attached to their holiness. (Adapted from Lettres Pastorales et Ecrits ) Shortly after these words were spoken the Archbishop was voted out of office as Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, the position was abolished and henceforward replaced by a committee. As he departed, it was suggested to him to retire and to take a long vacation in America! Though this was a most humiliating and inappropriate counsel, how we wish, in some sense, that he could have realized this so-called vacation, coming to our country sooner. Yet we see how his presence in America is being fulfilled today far beyond our most fervent hopes and expectations! Et Nos Credídimus Caritati Armed only with his coat of arms “We have believed in Char- ity,” the Archbishop took up residence in Rome. The rest would be the living-out of the miracle of God’s Providence–“La Providence.” To trust in the providence of God. It was his favorite expression! He would soon be sought out, leaving his retirement in order to come to the aid of priests and seminarians who would eventually form the first generation of the Society of St. Pius X. “Et nos credidimus caritati ”: The inscription is famous. It reveals the secret of his vocation and permanent mission inspired by the Holy Ghost. “We believe in Charity”– the explanation is sublime. Faith: we believe. Charity: Love. We have believed in Love. It is the very definition of God. Only God is love. Only what comes from God can be love... Faith and Charity: the twofold spirit of the Archbishop as represented on his episcopal coat of arms. This twofold spirit of the Archbishop resembles another St. Elias who was about to rise to heaven in a flaming chariot; we know this story well from our reading of Sacred Scripture. Eliseus, the faithful disciple of St. Elias, asked one last grace before the saint would depart, one final favor of the great saint. This was to be the heir of his mysterious “twofold spirit,” then Eliseus received the mantle of the saint as he departed in the whirlwind. Have we not also asked to be heirs of this “twofold spirit” of the Archbishop, and has he not said “yes” to us every day of our lives, ever since that day when everything was supposed to come to an end with his forced retirement, that ending which has become our beginning. Have we not, each and every one of us here present, have we not received as our inheritance the great twofold spirit of Faith and Charity? Has that coat of arms not been our 7 shield of protection as well? And have we not worked wonders with his miraculous mantle–the garment of grace, of sanctifying grace received exclusively through the traditional form of each of the seven sacraments? Or would this miraculous clothing not also be the vestments he blessed and placed on our shoulders, the wedding gowns worn by Catholic brides who received the traditional nuptial blessing, the habits of the religious orders brought back to life–all of this holy controversy stirring disbelief to the eyes of the world at the glorious ascent of St. Elias. A rule of faith and charity The Archbishop’s great love of the religious life is reflected in the establishment of the Society of St. Pius X. He composed the rule for his priests while on retreat in a Benedictine monastery. He wanted the Rule of St. Benedict to be the invisible foundation beneath his own rule for his priestly society. He wanted the spirit of this rule to be the inspiration for his rule. He combined the writings of his own founders with something of the monastic life in order to create a new generation of clerical and religious life, as well as an effective support for the life of the laity. Why Become a religious of Tradition? As a Religious who owes his vocation to the influence of the Archbishop, I summarize this final and definitive role of positive influence in the three words that have been ringing like bells throughout these three days of conferences: Fidelity, Integrity and Continuity. In seeing the habits of many religious orders represented at this event, I hope to answer the question: Why do we decide to become religious who are branded by that condemning name of Lefebvrist, or www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 8 2010 conference Lefebvrian which is a little better since it doesn’t rhyme with terrorist...? By being so named, it is said that we are rebels, it is said that we are not really and truly religious, that we have no right to call ourselves validly and legally who we are, that our works are successful in all appearances, but that we have chosen a separate peace. Why have hundreds of religious accepted as part of their vocation to be marginalized by the Conciliar establishment, to be accused of pretending to be religious, persecuted by other religious orders, to be considered excommunicated, to be forbidden and threatened to the point of lawsuits for calling themselves Dominicans, Carmelites, Benedictines, Franciscans, whose habit the Archbishop has encouraged them to wear? Not to mention the religious who come under the direct protection of the Society. In answering the call we accept that we will not be welcome, neither in the local parish church, nor in the order having its official house in Rome. We accept that the local bishop will warn the faithful that we are not part of the Church, and that it will be a mortal sin to pass through the gates of our monasteries and convents. fidelity to the Lineage of Holiness Fidelity: You have heard this word throughout these conferences. It would be difficult to argue our position if the only motive we could produce in our self-defense would be some sort of fanatical or superstitious attachment to a leader who thinks and acts for us, hiding behind this person and taking shelter from criticism. This would have vanished with the death of the Archbishop. But, to the contrary, there has been an increase of vocations since his death. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org What attracted most vocations who have chosen to follow the Archbishop has been the desire to belong to the lineage of holiness which has marked all of his works. What greater superior can be found than one like the Archbishop who is concerned for the holiness of his subjects? He knew that the religious life cannot be lived without the desire for sanctity. The personal vocation of the Archbishop has been the proof of this holiness. His famous intervention in Rome we outlined a few moments ago did not fall upon deaf ears. The new generation of traditional religious has taken to heart every word of that moving speech. The Archbishop would say it again and again: “Faith gives us fidelity. Fidelity is the requirement for holiness, it is our promise to God.” faith Is Greater Than obedience Obedience is the highest of the moral virtues but still comes after the theological virtue of Faith in the hierarchy of all the virtues. The obedience to our ancient rules and to the true spirit of canon law, to the teachings of the successors of St. Peter, especially in matters which touch upon the religious life, is what we mean by formal obedience. This is the virtue of obedience as explained by the doctors of the Church and her greatest theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas. This is the obedience practiced by Our Lord during his passion, when he would prefer the will of his Father to his own will. This obedience is one of the four virtues of the Passion as listed by St. Thomas Aquinas, the other three being charity, patience and humility. The true virtue of obedience in the imitation of Christ is the virtue which saves souls. It is the obedience which is from the Cross of our Redeemer, the obedience which opened the side of our Sav- iour to reveal his Sacred Heart and to cause his Precious Blood to flow forth unto the redemption of souls. This is the obedience which is the foundation of religious life. “Whenever I go to Rome they want me to sign something! I must give some kind of proof, ‘I, Marcel Lefebvre’...as if they do not know who I am! I must sign my name to say I am obedient!” There is a suspicious deviation from this formal obedience given to us by Our Lord in the obedience of the Conciliar Church today. It is rather a material obedience, a servile obedience, a political obedience being demanded by the authorities of the Conciliar Church. Yet when they are confronted about this, they always say that we don’t understand the true council or the true spirit of the reforms. To be a religious today, and we purposely avoid saying “traditional religious” because there is only one kind of religious, since there is only one model of religious, Our Lord Jesus Christ–to be a religious today practically requires a heroic act of faith and an unshakable will to step into the long procession of saints who were religious and who suffered in the most faithful imitation of the sufferings of Christ that is humanly possible. Archbishop Lefebvre walked in this procession before us. To have the heroic faith of these great saints is something he constantly encouraged in our religious houses. The study of the faith according to the lives of the saints especially of the Middle Ages, which was the Archbishop’s favorite era of Church history, to study the faith according to the doctrine of the popes who fought against modern errors, to study the faith according to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, is the Archbishop’s program of perseverance, lest we follow our feelings and emotions before the doctrine of the faith. 2010 conference This traditional study of the faith is absolutely in opposition to the modernist concept of the faith which has emptied the monasteries and convents of today. In the French Seminary in Rome, the Archbishop received an extraordinary formation in matters of the faith. His professor was Fr. Le Floch, famous for his emphasis placed on the teachings and warnings of the anti-modernist popes such as Pope St. Pius X. Looking back now we can easily see that this exceptional formation was a precursor for our exceptional times today. To be a religious today is to recognize this context of exception, especially in matters of the faith. The sermon at Lille would turn Ecône not only into the citadel of tradition but also into a target. “Give us back the Mass, give us back the Mass of the saints, give us back the catechism, give us back the Faith...!” The sermon was the shot heard around the world, now we could say it out loud: we have had enough of this crisis. One day, the Archbishop’s sister who had become a Carmelite complained that she was troubled by doubts about the faith. She was reluctant to reveal this to anyone, but mentioned it to her brother Marcel. His answer was strong: “How can anyone reject the faith, when everything speaks to us of God?” and he continued to expound on this thought. She remembers having left the parlor completely transformed. (From “My Brother Archbishop Marcel” by Mother Marie-Christiane Lefebvre) Fidelity is akin to simplicity, infidelity is akin to duplicity. How can we be true and trustful sons of God if our attitude is false and twofaced? How can there be an atmosphere of trust if promises made are not kept! It is high time for everyone to examine himself concerning this beautiful virtue of fidelity which earns for us the trust of our neigh- bor and above all, the trust of God. (Adapted from Lettres Pastorales et Ecrits) How often he would invoke Our Lady in ending his sermon... we knew it was almost over! But he would most frequently invoke the Virgin most Faithful, Virgo Fidelis. Her example, her faith: “Blessed art thou because thou hast believed”; he would recapitulate and summarize his entire sermon in Our Lady. Integrity There is integrity as well, the structural integrity necessary for every work of reconstruction. The religious life is built on 2,000year-old foundations, it has been a rebuilding upon ruins, but the foundations are intact and will support the restored edifice. In terms of integrity, the Archbishop has given us the example of religious life, which is not a veneer of superficial externals, but strengthened beneath its outward observances by living foundations. Traditional religious have embraced a divine way of life. The entire being of religious is formed through the study of Church history, fluency in the Latin language, exclusive use of the Latin Liturgy which includes the traditional eight canonical hours of the Breviary, and the traditional Latin Mass, which occupies the first place in our religious life. The religious of tradition, including those who will not become priests, pursue the study of Thomistic theology and philosophy as well as the anti-modernist teachings of the popes as a way to face the present crisis. These teachings are not exclusively destined for intellectuals. Our brothers who milk the cows and shear the sheep are the most enthusiastic students of St. Thomas. Religious life as envisioned by the Archbishop wants the formation of the whole man; body and soul together comprise a human being, and both parts 9 work together in joyous harmony to glorify God. Human nature is a “balance of imbalances,” heavier on the side of the soul, as the earth which spins on a tilted axis. The compassionate and sympathetic knowledge of human nature is where the Archbishop has truly handed on what he received in his own religious formation. The religious who can work with his own hands and pray and think with his mind is the true religious. To be able to both think and work according to the faith is what the traditional religious formation aims to produce. The Archbishop was photographed in Africa with the only car in the region and with his two legs extending out from beneath the car–he was also the mechanic! He raised the funds to import some of the first printing presses in his mission diocese. He blessed them as well, taking special interest in their operation, and thanks to them we have the very words I am reading to you today! This spirit of integrity is confronted with violent opposition in the modern Church. To follow the outspoken teachings of the antimodernist popes, to follow St. Thomas Aquinas, to uphold the traditional liturgy has a price: we are called fascists, “integrists,” dissidents, rebels and the like. It was suggested by Rome that since we love Latin so much why not just say the New Mass in Latin and the new breviary in Latin, or confer the new sacraments in Latin? The Archbishop repeatedly said that it is not a question of language, the Conciliar Church has given us a new religion. The traditional teaching on religious life is upheld and maintained in the Archbishop’s directives. Beyond the outward signs of traditional life, “for which we are at odds with the conciliar church” as he mentioned in his first letter to seminarians about the boldness in wearwww.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 10 2010 conference ing the pre-Vatican II cassock. “The habit maketh not the monk,” but the integrity of the religious life indeed includes such elements as the uninterrupted wearing of the traditional habit never removed or exchanged for civilian dress. The religious uniform does indeed affect the faithful, as an encouragement to always wear their uniform of religious modesty regardless of place or season. This is the famous “sermon” of St. Francis of Assisi; to be visible in public as uniformed religious is an effective preaching without words, especially in non-Catholic countries such as our own. For all the “oldness” of our battle for tradition, this is definitely something very new in America: to never remove the religious habit, wearing it in public, no matter where we are. I mentioned the knowledge of human nature. Integrity is the solid sound when struck in the manliness of the traditional religious men’s communities and in true feminine virtues in the convents of religious women. The scandals of the modern clergy always point to moral decadence. Even our ultra-liberal modern society will not tolerate unworthy religious or clergy. The Church of today, as the religious life of today, will never be rebuilt by effeminate men or emasculated women. The saints were holiest in the heroic practice of the virtues according to their proper gender. Our founders, in encouraging both priests and brothers as to the dignity of manual labor, reminded us that the hands our Our Saviour were calloused. Artists have been wrongfully criticized for portraying Our Lord as being strong and physically fit. Integrity also, in the unmitigated observance of the religious rule. The time-proven austerities and penances of 2,000 years of religious history are maintained as the secondary means to promote fervor THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org and holiness as read in the lives of the saints who were founders of the great religious orders. The religious life is at times heroic; the faith inspires us to heroic desires and sustains us in heroic action. We all wonder what it was like to live with the great saints, to live in the midst of Jesus and the Apostles, to see miracles with our own eyes. The truth is, the great saints do have a successor today, and we have all seen the miracles: he is the Archbishop. continuity Continuity also–our life is not our own, it is greater than we are in the sense of a participation in something greater. Our works are the works of God, greater also than what we can do. St. Paul speaks of our role as only part of what is being done. Since we are concerned with the work of God, the causes as well as the effects are eternal. Continuity is the part of God in our vocation; his grace precedes us and follows us. In a certain sense, Religious live a life received, faithfully passed on, a torch of tradition handed forward, a flame of light, that part of our life which is common to all the saints from all the ages of the Church. The spirit of continuity dusts off the books of the past and presents them to us as timeless. This spirit has been given to us thanks to the Archbishop who has made the magisterial teaching of twenty centuries actuality. He has enabled us to live the same religious life and religious spirit with no interruption from the time of the Apostles. The Archbishop has been our bridge of continuity. But all bridges work in both directions: the spiritual bridge is the same. If the Archbishop has linked us to our rightful heritage of the past, he is also our bridge to the future. Religious and clergy whom we meet always say the same thing: they were taught that the Church really began to live at Vatican II. Two thousand years of tradition disappeared at the great renewal, the new Pentecost of the Council. The moments of difficulty in Catholic history have been exaggerated to modern clergy and the line of continuity has not been portrayed as unbroken. The lives of the saints are no longer believed to be timeless models; their heritage has been fossilized. The Church fathers are misquoted out of context, making them the first modernists. Psychology has replaced asceticism: we are told that we are very different from our ancestors, and their example is not able to be lived today, it is either too hard or too out-dated, tradition is a dead letter, we have a different mentality today... The Archbishop has cried out to the Church to let us have our faith back! To give us back the tradition of the saints. He called the Latin Liturgy “the Mass of all time.” The modernists call it the old liturgy as if it were a relic or an antique. And yet Tradition is mostly young families and young vocations. People exclaim to us that we are too young to be monks! The Archbishop has opened the doors to the world of the past and shown by his own example that the Faith cannot change with the times, the times must change according to the precepts of the Faith. There is a fixed point, an absolute norm. The immutability of God shines forth in all his works! He also said that the majority does not make the Truth but Truth makes the majority, even if this majority were reduced to a remnant. Although the monasteries and convents established with the encouragement and blessing of the Archbishop are all overflowing with vocations, they remain small by pre-Vatican II standards. We have seen the analysis graphs of Cath- 2010 conference olic statistics, showing the growth of Catholic numbers before the Council, then the sharp drop afterwards. The situation is worse than we think. The increase in vocations should have continued since it is the nature of the Church to increase. There should be today a new generation in every field of apostolate: more Catholic schools with new and larger generations of teaching nuns and brothers, there should be more Catholic hospitals with more nursing nuns and Catholic doctors and chaplains, there should be more monasteries and convents of contemplative religious. Catholic numbers should be greater across the board than before the Coun- cil. Instead we have almost nothing. It is the “crisis” we are accused of inventing! The Virtue of religion: conversion If there is one word that sums up the life and teaching of the Archbishop, it would be: Conversion. The saints tell us that something is the will of God when there is conversion. It is the sign of all signs that God is blessing what we do. Conversion is the permanent preoccupation of the missionary. The conversion of his mission people, the conversion of souls, the conversion of sinners, the conversion of unbelievers. In our own case, who has 11 not come to the traditional practice of the faith without experiencing some kind of conversion. Changes have had to be accepted, sacrifices have had to be made, we have had to convert back to the true faith of the Church. Each and every one of us is a convert in this sense. We are surprised by the circumstances that have led us back to the integrity of our Catholic religion; sometimes it has been an inexplicable series of events. It is a sign. It is the sign. Only God could do what has happened to us. God has been at work in our lives. God has willed this change and has supported it with his grace. The missionary work of the Archbishop has been marked by The Archbishop has cried out to the Church to let us have our faith back! To give us back the tradition of the saints. He called the Latin Liturgy “the Mass of all time.” The modernists call it the old liturgy as if it were a relic or an antique. And yet Tradition is mostly young families and young vocations. People exclaim to us that we are too young to be monks! www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 12 2010 conference all these signs. The present numbers of Catholics having returned to the true faith is staggering. The work of this great missionary keeps producing fruits today long after his death. We are his final converts. And for the first time in decades the religious ideal has been put forth as the universal model: that is, for everyone. For the first time in many decades, parents would encourage their children to consider the priesthood or the religious life before deciding their vocation. Family portraits showing children in the cassock or the traditional religious habit are the testimony of the successful missionary work of the Archbishop. The practical application of conversion would be part of one of the Archbishop’s favorite subjects, the virtue of religion. He spoke of this virtue from first-hand experience. He knew all too keenly that the religious life is also a target. Being involved both in the creation as well as in the guidance of numerous religious communities, he knew of the problems encountered through contacts with the modern world. The virtue of religion was a favorite theme of the Archbishop’s sermons whenever he visited religious houses. The vocation is a return to God for all he has done for us. He considered the study of this virtue to be the antidote to the breakdown of religion today. The empty convents, the empty monasteries, the empty schools where teaching religious taught every grade, the hospitals where nursing religious once cared for the sick, this crisis is worldwide, a great battle has been waged and the enemy has prevailed. “The knock-out blow of Satan has been to cause disobedience in the name of obedience.” Religious today are without habits, disoriented, ecologists, humanitarians, social workers, non-conformists, “disfunctionaries” without any real mission. The THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org Archbishop cried out with indignation before this spectacle of religious disintegration: What is a religious, what is a religious man or woman, whether a religious brother, monk or a nun? These are persons who offer their lives as victims with the Victim who offers Himself on the altar. This is what a religious man or woman is and nothing else. This is the founddational principle of the entire religious life. If there is no more Victim upon the altar, if there is no more sacrifice upon the altar, then there is no more reason to be a religious. It is no surprise if there are no more! This is very important to understand. (From A Bishop Speaks) The traditional sense of religion tells us that life is a spiritual combat. A life of self-sacrifice, of self-renunciation, the spirit of victimhood is the normal way of the saints because it was the way Our Lord chose to redeem us. No one wants to be a victim any longer if there is no longer any Victim on the altar. This is the essence of the religious life: to live the holy sacrifice of the Mass. To be a living Mass is precisely what a religious is. The Mass is the driving force of the religious. Without its source religious life quickly disappears. It is less necessary to probe into the internal forum of the clergy and to analyze the modern rites of Mass than it is to see and to judge the fruits. Religious life, although not a sacrament in itself, is nevertheless born of the sacramental grace which is the essential effect of the Mass. True religious have disappeared where the source of religion, the true Mass which is the sacrifice of the Cross, has disappeared. operation Survival Thanks to the Archbishop, thanks to the return of the traditional religious ideal, we are reminded that there must be a truthful way of looking at the forces of irreligion, what we call “the spirit of the world.” This analogy of rescue is the essence of what the Archbishop called “Operation Survival.” It was first used at the consecration of the four bishops in 1988. To henceforth have the means to survive, to continue, but to continue what? Through sermons, retreat conferences, even debates–in 40 years since the close of the Council, the world has forgotten what the truth sounds like, until now. This is the present tense of the ongoing work of the Archbishop! One aspect of Operation Survival is the preaching of the religious ideal as the most effective means to save souls. Among the truths that we have not heard in many years is that our Catholic faith is a war. We also hear of the need to convert. And conversion is a spiritual battle. Spiritual combat is the daily living out of the religious ideal. The Archbishop used the word “combat” before any other whenever he described his work, and therefore his own vocation. In visiting the monastery a preacher of the Exercises of St. Ignatius stated that “this is what we try to reproduce in the five days of retreat: to put our retreatants into a monastery, where the noisy world is left outside and the things of the soul can be put back in the first place. God is first served. Then when the retreatants return home, the corrective restoration spreads to others.” The fruits of the traditional apostolate bear the signature of the same archbishop, and it is a living signature: Men and women who have sacrificed everything in order to raise truly Catholic families, are now giving their children to God, young men and young ladies anxious to answer the call to the religious life. These are only a few of 2010 conference the miracles that were not supposed to happen in our day. Shortly before the Archbishop died, I explained to him the many difficulties I was encountering in establishing a monastery still in its beginning stages. He shared with me what I consider to be his secret to success. He told me it was time to do the impossible. The impossible has to be done in order to keep going. The impossible has to be done to establish our monastery. Crosses are meant to be carried. Obstacles must be overcome. I am sure this advice was not limited to only one monastery and to only one founder...! A great religious, a great missionary, a great archbishop has encouraged the revival of the religious orders, especially the contemplative and semi-contemplative orders. As a missionary he knew the last end of all active apostolate, the ultimate purpose for setting up Catholic missions and Mass centers, the final reason for Catholic schools and retreat houses, and it was certainly part of the great genius of this man whom we consider a saint. The intensity of the active life and the zeal for the salvation of souls find their fervor in the realization of the final purpose of all holy apostolates, and it comes as no surprise that a contemplative saint was named patroness of the missions. St. Therese of the Child Jesus covered vast distances on her knees in prayer, motionless in the chapel yet spiritually accompanying the travels of the most zealous missionaries. When will there be enough priests, enough chapels, enough schools? When will the missionary know his work has achieved its end? The end of all missionary activity is to bring souls to God. That they may begin to contemplate his glory while still on the earth, that they may possess God in their souls, that they may live united to God through the effects of grace, that a society built upon the divine order be restored– this is the crowning achievement of missionaries. The contemplative life is nothing else. Where the missionary work has ended, the contemplative life has begun. The contemplation of God is the Great End, it is the beginning of heaven. It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be introduced to the religious life through the influence of Archbishop Lefebvre in 1979, and to be ordained a priest by him in 1986. When I asked him what I should do in the face of all the confusion surrounding each and every one of us today, he smiled and said, “You are a monk!” “Be what you are. Stay what you are. Be a monk for the glory of the Church. It is your duty to continue as you are, as a contemplative religious.” These words are not limited to only one personal case. He repeated them to every religious who has had to “jump the wall” in order to escape the religious “disorder,” fleeing to sanity, to the perennial religious life. He encouraged the refounding of many religious orders, including Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines, teaching orders, nursing orders, mis- 13 sionary orders, all of them wearing their traditional habits like banners, all of them flourishing today. He also created the ideal complement to his new order of religiousminded priests with the establishment of the religious Sisters and the Brothers of the Society of St. Pius X, whose extraordinary history is yet one more miracle of the Archbishop’s genius, sanctified by the Providence of God. By borrowing from the treasury of the ideals of the great religious orders, under the patronage of the greatest saints who were also religious, they are living the very essence of the religious life beneath the guiding light and spirit of the great rules of contemplative and missionary religious life. His own words still resound in my ears “Without monasteries, without religious souls consecrated to prayer and to the service of God, the Church will never recover from the present crisis.” These words are the mission statement of our monastery. These words are the mission statement of every monastery and convent faithful to tradition today. May each of these houses be a living thank-you of gratitude to our great Archbishop. Thank you for your attention and for your encouragement. “Without monasteries, without religious souls consecrated to prayer and to the service of God, the Church will never recover from the present crisis.” These words are the mission statement of our monastery. These words are the mission statement of every monastery and convent faithful to tradition today. May each of these houses be a living thank-you of gratitude to our great Archbishop. 14 LeTTer #78 LeTTer #78 to Friends and Benefactors H.E. Bishop Bernard Fellay Dear Friends and Benefactors, T he new year has brought us quite a few surprises which are rather unpleasant, not to say dramatic. Obviously we are speaking about events that affect the Church, and not the catastrophes cascading over Japan, nor the troubles in Arab countries and in Africa, which nevertheless should serve as a warning to everyone! But who still understands them in that way? Yes, much more damaging than any natural catastrophe—with its deaths, tragedies and very painful sufferings—are the catastrophes that wound or kill souls. If people took as much care of their souls as they do of their bodies, the face of the earth would be transformed. But the thing that rightly makes us react and seek healing at the level of the human body—because of the immediate pain that is felt—is almost nonexistent, alas, at the level of our minds. Sin, which causes so much harm to all humanity and to each human being, is perceived only very little, and that is why people do not seek adequate remedies for it. We are talking about a spiritual catastrophe: indeed, what other name can be given to an event that leads a multitude of souls astray? That imperils the salvation of millions, if not billions of souls? Now at least two events, likely to result in nonTHE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org conversion and therefore the eternal loss of souls, were announced in Rome at the beginning of this year: the beatification of Pope John Paul II and the revival of the Day of Prayer in Assisi on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the first meeting of all religions organized in Assisi by the same John Paul II. For those who may have difficulty understanding the significance of these two events, we simply quote what was written by Fr. Franz Schmidberger, the first successor to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as head of the Society of St. Pius X, twenty-five years ago in this same “Letter to Friends and Benefactors.” In it he made a partial list of the acts performed by John Paul II, the pope who is about to be beatified: And on January 25, [1986], the Pope, in a sermon given in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, invited all religions to Assisi to pray together for peace. It suffices to cast a glance over the events of the last three years to see just how close we are now approaching to the establishing of a great worldwide religion presided over by the Pope, having for its one and only dogma the liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution and the Masonic lodges. 1. The new Canon Law promulgated by the Pope himself on January 25, 1983 abolishes the clerical state. Henceforth the Church is “The People of God” in a Protestant and egalitarian sense, without subordinates and without superiors. The hierarchy is no more than “a service” according to the explanation of Pope John Paul II in his Constitution [Sacrae Disciplinae Leges—Ed.], the Church is to be defined as “a communion” and by its “concern for ecumenism.” Canon 844 explicitly allows intercommunion, Canon 204 confuses the priesthood of the priest with the spiritual priesthood of the laity, etc. 2. On Sunday, December 11, 1983, the Pope preached in a Protestant church of Rome after having more or less invited himself to do so. 3. The Bishop of Sherbrooke, Quebec (Canada), has repeatedly invited Protestants into his cathedral for their false ordinations. He himself LeTTer #78 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. took part in one of these ceremonies and received “communion” from the hand of a newly-ordained female minister. On February 19, 1984, a new concordat was agreed upon between the Holy See and Italy: henceforth, applying the Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, Italy is no longer a Catholic State but a lay State; that is to say, an atheistic State; according to the same document, Rome is no longer the Holy City! On May 10, 1984, the Pope visited a Buddhist temple in Thailand; he took off his shoes and sat down at the feet of a Buddhist bonze, who himself was sitting in front of the altar on which there was a large statue of the Buddha. In their pastoral letter of September 16, 1984, the Swiss bishops came to the important conclusion that “the desire to receive together the same bread at the same table, that is to say, the desire that the Mass and the Supper be no longer separately celebrated, comes from God. However,” add the bishops, “careful thought must be given to the timing of the realization of this desire.” Moreover, they supported a law project to undertake the change of marriage law thereby destroying more or less marriage and the family. Well, thanks to their support, this new marriage law was accepted in Switzerland on September 22, 1985. Once more, the bishops are proving to be the gravediggers not only of the supernatural order but even of the natural order established by God. The French episcopate continues to impose the heretical catechism Pierres Vivantes (Living Stones) for religious instruction to the great detriment of children. “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt. 18:6). A joint statement by Cardinal Hoffner and Mr. Lohse, president of the German Evangelical Church Council, signed on January 1, 1985, grants to the partners in a mixed marriage the freedom to marry, to have their children baptized and to raise them in either church. Now the Canon Law of 1917, canon 2319, punishes each of these three crimes with a special excommunication. 9. In his book The Ratzinger Report (1985), Cardinal Ratzinger claims that in extreme cases the other religions are “extraordinary” means of salvation. No, your Eminence: Jesus Christ and He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; nobody comes to the Father but by Him! 10. In a note on how to present Judaism in the catechism, published on June 24, 1985, Cardinal Willebrands claims that, like the Jews, we are waiting for the Messiah! And he refers to the Pope’s own words, who stated in front of the Jews on November 17, 1980, in Mainz, that the Old Testament is not yet abrogated. 11. During the summer of 1985, the Vatican sent an official delegate to the laying of the foundation stone of a large new mosque in Rome. 12. In August of 1985, the Holy Father proclaimed to young Muslims in Casablanca that we Christians adore the same God as they do— as though there is a Most Holy Trinity and an Incarnation of God in Islam! A few days later, he went with some animist priests and their escorts to the outskirts of Lohomay, to a cult in the “holy forest” where “the force of water” and the divinized souls of the ancestors are invoked. And at least two times at Kara and Togoville—at Kara just before celebrating Holy Mass!—he poured water and cast corn flour into a dried-out cucumber skin, a gesture professing a false religious belief. 13. A Catholic-Evangelical Commission, set up to close the visit of the Pope to Germany in 1980, declared in its final report published on January 24, 1986, that there are no more divergences between the two confessions as far as justification, the Eucharist, the priesthood and the papacy are concerned. The attentive observer does not fail to notice that the unified ecumenical religion is being openly proclaimed here. 15 14. And now on January 25, 1986, he called upon all religions to gather together in Assisi to pray for peace. According to the newspapers, the date of October 24, the anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, might be chosen. “What God are people going to pray to, who explicitly deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? Truly the devil came up with that idea,” commented Archbishop Lefebvre. 15. Lastly, in the course of his journey to India, the Pope spoke only of dialogue and mutual comprehension between religions in order that they promote together human brotherhood and social well-being. Do you think, my dear friends, that to lay out these things gives us joy? It fills us with grief to write them down, our sole concern being the welfare of Mother Church. Similarly, we are far from wishing to judge the Pope—we gladly leave this delicate task to a later judgment of the Church. We do not belong to those who hastily declare that the Papal See is vacant, but we let ourselves be led by the history of the Church. Pope Honorius was anathematized by the Sixth Ecumenical Council because of his false teachings, but no one has ever claimed that Honorius was not Pope. However, it is impossible for us to close our eyes in front of the facts. And the secret instructions of the Carbonari [Italian Freemasons— Ed.], like their correspondence around the year 1820 are also facts! This is what we read: “The work which we are going to undertake...may last several years, perhaps a century...what we must strive and wait for, like the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to our needs....With that, in order to smash the rock on which God built His Church...we have the little finger of Peter’s successor involved in the plot....To be sure of a Pope of the kind we wish, we must first of all make him a generation worthy of the reign that we are dreaming of for him....Get yourself the reputation of being a good Catholic....This reputation will gain easy access for our doctrines amongst www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 16 LeTTer #78 the young clergy....In a few years the young clergy will in the normal course of things have taken over all functions...it will be called upon to choose the Pontiff...and this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will necessarily be imbued with the humanitarian principles...that we are going to put into circulation. “We must little by little, very gradually, arrive at the triumph of the revolutionary idea through a Pope....This project has always seemed to me a superhuman calculation.” Moreover, we read in the Little Exorcism of Leo XIII, in its original version: “Now most cunning enemies have filled with bitterness the Church, Bride of the Immaculate Lamb, have made her drink absinth, have laid their wicked hands upon everything beautiful within her. Where the seat of blessed Peter and the throne of Truth was established like a light for the nations, there they have set up the abominable throne of their wickedness, so that having once struck the pastor they might scatter the flock.” What are we to do, faced with this situation which from a human point of view is desperate? Pray, work and suffer with the Church. Twenty-five years later, have these words lost their power? One might have hoped, with the coming of Benedict XVI, for a rectification of the situation, since he himself recognized that Holy Mother Church was in a tragic situation. And in fact he laid down a few markers which certainly can foster a restoration, despite much hostility. We have very much in mind the benevolent acts that he performed on behalf of our priestly society, which we remember with gratitude. But the Assisi revival, even though it has been sweetened and modified, which seems to be his intention, will inevitably recall the first Assisi meeting, which was scandalous in so many respects; one of the most noteworthy was the lamentable, distressing spectacle of seeing the THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org Vicar of Christ side by side with a colorful multitude of pagans invoking their false gods and their idols— the placing of a statue of Buddha on the tabernacle of St. Peter’s Church in Assisi remains the most shocking and horrible example. When one intends to celebrate the anniversary of such a meeting, by that very fact one rules out blaming the organizer. To an Evangelical Lutheran pastor who protested against this new Assisi, Benedict XVI wrote that he would do everything he could to avoid syncretism. But will somebody tell the participants from other religions that there is only one true religion that saves? Will anyone tell them that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved except the name of Jesus, as St. Peter, the first pope, taught? (Cf. Acts 4:12.) These are dogmas of the faith, though! If the organizers remain silent about such essential truths, they are deceiving the participants! If they hide from them the one thing necessary, unum necessarium, by causing them to believe that all is well this way, because the Holy Ghost makes use of other religions too as means of salvation—even if they are talking about extraordinary means, according to the new magisterium of the Second Vatican Council—then they are leading them into error by depriving them of the means with which to be saved. As for the beatification of John Paul II, its immediate effect will be to consecrate his pontificate as a whole, all his undertakings, even the most scandalous, the ones described above and others, like kissing the Koran and the repeated ceremonies of repentance that make people think that the Church is responsible for the schisms that have caused countless Christian souls to be lost through separation from our Holy Mother the Church, and through adherence to error and heresy. Practically speaking, all this leads to indifferentism in everyday life, and the few efforts that Rome makes to correct somewhat a course that is so harmful to the Church produce only meager results: the Church herself is anemic. They will tell us that we are exaggerating, that we are being melodramatic or that we are using tendentious rhetoric; however this dramatic assessment is found even on the lips of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But it appears like a shooting star in the firmament and is quickly forgotten, leaving totally indifferent the multitude that has no concern to look up to Heaven. What is to be done? For our part what can we do, my dear friends? “Prayer and penance” was the watchword given by our dear Heavenly Mother, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, both in Lourdes and in Fatima; these celestial instructions are still valid and even more so today than when they were pronounced. Many of you are wondering about the effect of our Rosary Crusade that ended last year. We forwarded the results of it along with our request to the Supreme Pontiff, who has not deigned to reply, not even with a letter acknowledging receipt. But that must not discourage us. Our prayer was sent up to Heaven, to Our Lady, such a kind and merciful Mother, and to the God of Mercies; therefore we do not have the right to doubt that our prayers will be answered, according to the infallible arrangements of Divine Providence. Let us trust in the good Lord. Nevertheless, the situation of the Church and of the world prompts us to ask you insistently not to stop this movement of prayer for the good of the Church and of the world, for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The intensity of the crisis, the multiplication of all sorts of misfortunes that strike or threaten humanity, demands on our part a corresponding attitude: “We ought LeTTer #78 always to pray and not to faint.– Oportet semper orare et numquam deficere” (Lk. 18:1). Therefore it seems to us urgent and more than opportune, given the redoubled intensity of the evils that are swamping the Holy Church, to launch once more a Rosary Crusade, a campaign of prayer and penance. Starting on Easter of this year until Pentecost of 2012, we invite you to join all your efforts, all your strength, so as to make a new spiritual bouquet, a new garland of these roses that are so pleasing to Our Lady, to beg her to intercede on behalf of her children with her divine Son and the Almighty Father. Confusion is only increasing among souls; they are being handed over to the ravaging wolves even in the sheepfold. The trial is so difficult that even the elect would be lost if it were not shortened. The few reassuring developments of the past few years are not enough to allow us to say that things have really changed fundamentally. They give us great hopes for the future, but like the light that one perceives while still in the depths of the tunnel. And so with all our hearts let us ask our Heavenly Mother to intervene so that this terrible trial may be cut short, that the Modernist cape muffling the Church—at least since Vatican II—may be torn in two, and that the Authorities may perform their salvific duties for souls, that the Church may regain her spiritual splendor and beauty, that souls throughout the world may hear the Good News that converts, receive the Sacraments that save, and find the one sheepfold. Ah! How we would love to be able to use less dramatic language, but it would be a lie and culpable negligence on our part to soothe you by letting you hope that things will improve by themselves. We are counting on your generosity to collect once more a “Therefore it seems to us urgent and more than opportune, given the redoubled intensity of the evils that are swamping the Holy Church, to launch once more a Rosary Crusade, a campaign of prayer and penance....Confusion is only increasing among souls; they are being handed over to the ravaging wolves even in the sheepfold. The trial is so difficult that even the elect would be lost if it were not shortened. The few reassuring developments of the past few years are not enough to allow us to say that things have really changed fundamentally.” bouquet of at least twelve million rosaries for the intention that the Church may be delivered from the evils that oppress her or threaten her in the near future, that Russia may be consecrated and that the Triumph of the Immaculata may come soon. So that our prayers may be even more efficacious and each one may derive a greater benefit from them, we wish to conclude by recalling that when one recites the Rosary, the most important thing is not the number of Hail Marys, but rather the way in which one prays them. The risk of monotony or distraction can be fought effectively by praying the Rosary according to the instructions of Mary herself: while counting off the rosary beads, it is a matter of meditating 17 on the scenes from the life of Our Lord and of His Holy Mother and the mysteries that they present. The most important thing is this contact with the life of our Savior, which is established when one thinks lovingly about the events announced with each decade, the “mysteries” of the Rosary. The decades of Hail Marys become like background music accompanying and sustaining this powerful, gentle contact with God, with Our Lord and Our Lady. Sister Lucy of Fatima could say, following the popes, that God has willed to confer a very special power on this prayer, so that there is no problem that cannot be resolved by this magnificent devotion. We venture to insist on prayer within the family, which daily gives proof of its efficacy in protecting children and young people from the temptations and appalling dangers of the modern world, which protects family unity in the midst of so many perils that threaten it. Let us not allow ourselves to become discouraged by the apparent silence of Divine Providence after our last crusade. Is it not so that God loves it when we prove to Him, in important matters, that we know how to appreciate the true value of what we ask for and that we are ready to pay the price? As we are about to enter into the Passion of Our Lord, Holy Week and the glorious Resurrection of our Savior, we ask Our Lady to deign to bless your generosity, to take you under her kindly protection and to answer your persevering prayers. Menzingen, Passion Sunday +Bernard Fellay, Superior General www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 Brideshead Revisited A commentary Dr. David Allen White In Part 4 of Dr. White’s lecture on Brideshead Revisited, he gives an overview of the novel, presenting its major themes, plot structure, and characters. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org Part 4 What did Waugh mean when he said Brideshead Revisited was a book about God? The first edition which appeared in England carried a warning on its dust-jacket that did not appear on the American versions. Waugh was aware that he was presenting to the public something different than what they had come to expect from him. Hence, the warning said: When I wrote my first novel, sixteen years ago, my publishers advised me, and I readily agreed, to prefix the warning that it was ‘meant to be funny.’ Now, in a more somber decade, I must provide them with another text, and, in honesty to the patrons who have supported me hitherto, state that Brideshead Revisited is not meant to be funny. There are passages of buffoonery, but the general theme is at once romantic and eschatological. It is ambitious, perhaps intolerably presumptuous; nothing less than an attempt to trace the workings of the divine purpose in a pagan world, in the lives of an English Catholic family, halfpaganized themselves, in the world of 1923-39. The story will LITerATUre be uncongenial alike to those who look back on that pagan world with unalloyed affection, and to those who see it as transitory, insignificant and, already, hopefully passed. Whom then can I hope to please? Perhaps those who have the leisure to read a book word by word for the interest of the writer’s use of language, perhaps those who look to the future with black forebodings and need more solid comfort than rosy memories. For the latter I have given my hero, and them, if they will allow me, a hope, not indeed, that anything but disaster lies ahead, but that the human spirit, redeemed, can survive all disasters. The last line is especially magnifi cent. But how do you write a book about God? It presents an artistic problem. Waugh is writing about grace in the world. To do this, he designs a novel in which he tries to chronicle the presence of God, and His operations through grace, indirectly, by showing the impact of that grace on the lives of human beings. It is obviously not possible to show that grace directly, although we see many characters moved by grace. The whole novel builds to the great deathbed scene and the final moment of grace for Lord Marchmain. But we see this impact operating in one way or another: it is either accepted or rejected by the characters. Some are dragged, kicking and screaming against their will, by God’s grace, to a good end. Others simply acknowledge God’s grace all along and move quite comfortably to the end. The book may be easily misunderstood. If the novel has a starting point and an ending point, and if the ending point shows a character or many characters finally accepting God’s grace and acting on it, then the novel must begin by presenting characters devoid of or rejecting grace. Waugh chooses to begin the world of the novel as a place in which it is difficult to find God’s grace, a world filled with many char- acters who quite clearly, from the start, are without grace. I bring this up because there are things in the novel which disturb many readers. It is a novel filled with sin. There is no getting around it. I suspect you can find all seven of the deadly sins in it somewhere, some more prominent than others. The author is not reveling in sin. In some of the most disturbing or extreme moments, Waugh presents these sins in the way a great artist does: slightly removed with a deliberate style that makes it almost possible to overlook them completely if you do not understand what is going on. If you are writing a novel about the modern world, how can you present the characters as other than gravely sinful? This is the world Waugh knew, a world that he said had rejected God, or, as he wrote to his brother at one point, a world that “needs more religion.” By that he meant the Faith, not some generic religion. If the world does not have the true Faith or rejects the true Faith, then the world will be composed of gravely sinning characters. It would be entirely possible to take these same materials, in the hands of a bad novelist, and make an extraordinarily bad novel. Particularly in our day and age, you can imagine what an inartistic or tasteless writer could do with this same material. Waugh in the past was quite ready to shock an audience. He does not try to shock in this novel. He is reflecting hard truths. One of the duties of the artist is to hold a mirror up to nature. The artist must reflect the reality of the time and age in which he lives and which he knows. Those realities are his basic materials. Rare is the writer who can create elaborate fantasy and make it believable. But even in most fantasies, you find the basic ideas rooted in a particular age. It is necessary to touch on these unpleasant things in order to have a pilgrimage out of the modern 19 world, out of the enslavement of sin, towards the moment when God’s grace acts on these lives. Let me quote Waugh again: “Many modern novelists, since and including James Joyce, attempt to represent the whole human mind and soul, and yet omit its determining character: that of being God’s creature with a defined purpose.” Waugh’s point is that if you leave this notion out of the novel, you cannot have a whole novel because you do not have complete characters. What defines human nature is that we are creatures of God and that we have a defined purpose. Waugh gives us a fi rst-person narrator, an artistic device not used in his earlier novels. We have one character telling us the story. The Prologue, set in 1942, introduces us to Charles Ryder, in the midst of World War Two. He is, as the novel begins, giving us a sense of the time and place in which he finds himself: the midst of war. If this book was religious propaganda rather than literature, Charles, from the beginning, having converted (a fact we do not fully learn until the end) would be upbeat, chipper, and handing out rosaries to his fellow infantrymen. There are all too often occasions, especially in the modern world, when even Catholics become discouraged. Events can overwhelm any individual. As the book begins, Charles is in a state where he finds himself empty and his life drained of meaning. Waugh shows he is a master in the very first paragraph of the Prologue. Any good introduction to any piece of writing should set out the major themes. Waugh does it right away: “When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the gray mist of early morning.” That is the whole novel in miniature in one sentence. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 20 LITerATUre Our narrator has climbed to the top of a hill. He has paused and is looking back. The title suggests “Brideshead Remembered.” The novel will be one of retrospection and memory. At this point, he is just looking back at the camp. But the bulk of the novel will be him looking back at his immediate past. As he looks back, the camp comes into full view below him. Why do we look back? Why do we reminisce? When we are moving through life, and are in the midst of any event, action, or point in time, we cannot see it all clearly. As I grow older, I am more and more convinced that, as things happen to you in this life, you often do not understand them while you are in the midst of them. But as you look back, you always see a pattern or design that makes sense. That is what this novel is about. It assumes that, by looking back, and re-tracing steps, one can find a design or purpose. Here we merely have an artistic creator designing a complex narrative. But he is giving us a sense that, in the larger sphere of human life, there is design, because there is a divine Creator Who gave a defined purpose to each human being. Our job is to co-operate with grace to find that purpose. It is not easy to see the past clearly or honestly; it will take Charles the whole book to understand his own life. The Epilogue also takes place in 1942. But between the Prologue and Epilogue, the novel is divided into two unequal books, each of which has a particular design. But in the Prologue itself, we get more of a sense of who Charles is and what has happened to him. We get an echo, in the present moment, of the story of his life: We were leaving that day. When we marched in, three months ago, the place was under snow. Now the first leaves of spring were unfolding. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org So spring is on the horizon. The first shoots are coming up. It is a hopeful beginning although it is still winter. I had reflected then that, whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us, I never feared one more brutal than this, and I reflected now that it had no single happy memory for me. This is the present speaking. By the time he finishes his account, he is a changed man. Let us look at the final two sentences of the novel: I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our anteroom. “You’re looking unusually cheerful today,” said the second-incommand. By the time the book ends, there has been a total change of attitude. There will be another happy memory that our narrator can hold to. But it is very different from anything he can imagine as the novel begins. He is in a state of desolation at the beginning and does not think anything can pull him out of it. At the end, he is unusually cheerful. It is because of the understanding of events, of design, and of signs he has been given. We have this transformation, which is not of his own efforts. “Here love had died between me and the army.” The military life is not a congenial one. Please notice that, throughout the novel, we get lines like these which structure the whole book for us: “Charles Ryder, seeking love, and having love die.” At the beginning of Book One, Charles is a failed young man. He does not know himself. He is leaving a desolate world with no sense of belief or purpose. He is simply going through the motions. He goes to Oxford as that was what was expected. Throughout the first section of the novel, in meeting Sebastian and living through that “romantic friendship”, he thinks he has found a kind of love. But the love fails. What we watch is a painful chronicle of Sebastian falling to pieces and Charles having no idea how to help him. He says at one point “How could I, who could so little help myself, help anyone?” By the end of Book One, he has become a real artist. But then Lady Marchmain dies almost simultaneously as he begins his art studies in Paris. There is a pattern: the failed young man becomes a successful artist. In the midst of this, in the process of becoming an artist, he believes that he has found a new real love in his art, but this attachment will also fail him. Book One ends with the death of Lady Marchmain and the closing of the chapel at Brideshead. Book Two begins with Charles Ryder, the failed artist. He is coming back from Latin America where he has created a set of architectural paintings. Everyone loves them, but we learn from the harsh and severe critic, Anthony Blanche, that they are not good. Anthony actually calls them an “imposture.” He is an abusive and cruel evaluator and so we know that Charles has failed as an artist. But he thinks he has found love again, this time with Sebastian’s sister, Julia. He states Sebastian was the forerunner. And throughout the book we have this comparison between brother and sister: they have the same looks, the same features, and many of the same attitudes. Sebastian actually says at one point: “My sister is very like me, which is why I don’t like to spend much time around her. Although she doesn’t have my character; I couldn’t love anyone with my character.” It is witty, but it is indicative of his self-hatred that ultimately causes his self-destruction through alcoholism. Charles’ love for Julia also fails. But at the end of the Second Book, he becomes a real saved soul. What accomplishes this serious transformation? Lord Marchmain’s death. This novelistic structure is simple, LITerATUre but done with artistic perfection. Failure to success: failed man to successful artist; failed artist to successful Catholic. What got in the way? False loves that fail. The first love failed because of Sebastian’s selfdestruction. The second love failed because Julia returned to the Faith. Lady Marchmain dies at the end of Book One, and the chapel closed. Lord Marchmain dies at the end of Book Two, and the chapel is reopened. Everything is balanced. This is indicative of the simple design and solid structure that Waugh believed in, as fundamental to story-telling as to cabinet-making. There are, however, many other strands in the weaving of the narrative. What we are doing is trying to get a sense of what the journey is about. The basic story is the pilgrimage of a single soul, the salvation of Charles Ryder. It is one soul receiving grace, coming into contact with the Flyte family. Grace is everywhere. In the end, many characters are saved. There is a subtitle to this novel: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. The book is being written during the time Charles spends in the military as the war grinds on. They are sacred memories due to the ending, when Charles becomes a Catholic; grace works on his soul and he finds the true Faith. But, as stated before, this is a profane pilgrimage as these characters are immersed in the modern world that is profoundly desolate, godless, and empty. In the midst of this sinful world, Waugh presents profane and sinful love. But as God always brings good out of evil, life moves forward through Providence, and Charles finds the Church. Even the name “Ryder” implies a pilgrimage, a movement. (Many of the character names have their own similar significance.) Waugh gives us one narrator, but two perspectives. Captain Charles Ryder is writing the book at a particular time and so we are given the perspective of age looking back on youth, as well as the immediacy of life as first experienced in youth. In this sense, the novel is about youth and maturity and the two different perspectives. In the original manuscript, Waugh included an epigraph at the beginning of the book, which he dropped before it was published. It was a quote from Hebrews, 13:14: “For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.” In terms of it being a memory-novel, there is no lasting city. Everything that makes up the core of the novel is memory. Charles is seeking something permanent in terms of love, a permanence that he can only find in the love of God. He is also looking for something to anchor him, which cannot be found in the worldly city. Of course, this comes straight from St. Augustine. Augustine actually permeates the entire book; his ideas appear in many places, but very clearly in this novel the City of God stands in opposition to the City of Man. The two cannot be one. The City of Man will vanish; it is corrupt and profane. The City of God is eternal. “We seek one that is to come”; that is Charles’ search. Again, we are talking about a lasting city. And a city is made up of many, not just one. At the end of Book One, there is a wonderful discussion. Charles has been painting in London at Marchmain House before it gets torn down for a block of flats. This is a vision of the constant change of the modern world: we are always ripping things down and building something new in its place. Anyone who lives in a city or suburb realizes a year doesn’t go by without construction of this sort. I’m tempted to think that America’s motto should not be “In God We Trust,” but “What can we tear up next?” There is an insane desire to rip things up and replace them in a false delusion of progress. 21 We are told Marchmain House is quite beautiful but nevertheless it is going to be ripped down. Charles is painting it, and in the process being inspired to do some of his best work. The lovely Cordelia is watching him, shedding grace wherever she goes. It is almost as if at this moment she is his muse. She asks if he will take her out to dinner; he agrees. As they are walking to dinner, she talks about the chapel being shut at Brideshead. She asks him if he has ever been to Tenebrae. He says, “Never.” She responds: “Well, if you’d had, you’d know what the Jews said about their temple: quomodo sedet sola civitas. It’s a beautiful chant; you ought to go once, just to hear it.” The words are the first verse of the Lamentations of Jeremiah from Tenebrae: “How doth the city sit solitary, that once was full of people!” This sense of the desolation of the modern, worldly city that has turned its back on God never left Waugh. At the very end of the Epilogue, Charles is thinking over what happened to Brideshead. He says: “The house built, generation from generation, until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper. The place was desolate and the work all came to nothing. Quomodo sedet sola civitas.” Now he knows it; he’s been to Tenebrae at some point. He echoes Cordelia’s words. Brideshead is, in a sense, desolate in the end. It has been taken over by the army. Everything that Charles thought at first was beautiful or important has been affected. The soldiers have been romping through, destroying some of Charles’ own paintings and knocking the heads off of statues. But he finds the tabernacle lamp re-lighted at the end. It is a sign of the City of God, a permanent and lasting hope. So even if there is desolation in the earthly city, there is always hope in the heavenly city. Again we see this balance. The point is that there is an extraordinary www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 22 LITerATUre structure to this book. It is very well put together. Every detail is somehow, in the course of the novel, balanced. Nothing is there that does not have a reason. Charles at one point remembers the first time he saw Sebastian at Oxford, in a barber shop: I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable, for from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behavior, which seemed to know no bounds. My first sight of him was in the door of Germer’s, and on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks and more by the fact he was carrying a large teddy-bear. We find out that the teddy-bear is named Aloysius. Sebastian has come to the barber to get a hairbrush with “Aloysius” engraved on it. It was not for brushing, but for threatening the bear when he was sulky. Yet the barber is charmed by him. We see the deadly charm that Anthony Blanche warns against, the charm which permeates the whole family. Charles says, “I, however, remained censorious and subsequent glimpses of Sebastian, driving in a hansom cab and dining at the George in false whiskers, did not soften me, although Collins, who was reading Freud, had a number of technical terms to cover everything.” What we will learn is that Sebastian is a complex, mysterious human being, not someone easily explained by Freud. At the beginning of Book One, Sebastian runs around in a fake beard. At the beginning of Book Two, we see Charles with a beard when he meets Julia. The first thing he does when he meets her is have it shaved. This is artistic precision and structure. The book is loaded with this. It is why you can read it over and over, and be delighted and surprised. It is unbelievably complex. Yet it is also an easy read as it is so well-written. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org We see a peopled city, a whole family, a whole world in time. Any novel gives us particulars. The novel is able to render complete and whole worlds. Moby Dick gives us the whaling industry in 19th-century America. The Scarlet Letter gives us Puritan New England. War and Peace gives us the Napoleonic wars in Russia. David Copperfield gives us Victorian England. Novels give us, through accumulated details, a sense of time and place. Brideshead Revisited gives us Britain between the wars. We get Britain during the Second World War in the military camps. We get Oxford in the ’20s. We get the “bright young people” in London. We see how the upper class lived. We see the world of politics in the concerns of Rex Mottram. We see Venice in the ’20s and even a glimpse of Paris—the fine French restaurant at which Charles dines with Rex. We get a bit of Latin America, including what it was like to make a shipboard crossing at that time. It is a believable, real world and yet, as Waugh creates it, we are told that it has already vanished. Everyone agrees that the Oxford pages are simply extraordinary. What Waugh is doing is capturing his own memories as an undergraduate in the ’20s. He does it through Charles going back and re-creating the moment through memory: That day, too, I had come not knowing my destination. It was Eights Week. Oxford—submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in. Lyonnesse is where King Arthur supposedly had his court in southwest England. The Oxford Charles knew is now as distant and vanished as the world of King Arthur. It only lives now in legend, myth, and memory. The notion of the flood brings a clear sense that, for all of its beauty, it had to go. It could not last. Indeed, as the life of Oxford is presented to us—and we take a kind of delight in it—we are enchanted to meet Sebastian and his luncheon parties. Waugh himself is reveling in the memory of his youth to some extent. Even Anthony Blanche, for all of his peculiarities, is very funny. We see the wit and grace but we see it must be swept away. It is worldly. What lasts? The novel asks this in its opening pages. It will tell us by the end. Looking back, at the beginning, Charles speaks about his loss of love for the army: “I felt as a husband might feel who suddenly realized he was out of love with his wife.” Of course, that is what has happened to Charles and his marriage at the beginning of Book Two. A failure of love is everywhere in every sphere. Sadly, the least important and interesting of the failed loves is Charles’ failure of love with his own wife. When we find out about it, at the beginning of Book Two, we are shocked. When did he get married? To whom? He gets married “offpage.” It is clearly Waugh’s sense of his own first failed marriage, a marriage undertaken whimsically for no serious reason. There are only a few exceptions. There is a moment when Sebastian is in disgrace because of his drunkenness. Sebastian tells Charles that he is coming to stay with him in London. As Charles is leaving Brideshead, Cordelia asks him if he will see Sebastian. He tells her he will and she asks him to give Sebastian “my love; my special love. Remember my special love.” Charles mentions this to Sebastian and Sebastian does not even reply; he changes the subject. And yet, our final vision of Sebastian comes from Cordelia. She is the last one of the characters to see him alive, the person through whose lips we learn about his probable end. Cordelia’s love has not failed; she has gone in search of her brother and finds him. Her love cannot fail because her love is based on the highest love. Cordelia is a believer LITerATUre 23 Josef Pieper, in A Defense of Philosophy, says that there are only two things that can shake a mind out of its stupor and get it thinking again: love and death. These are the two big events which are so shattering that they start the reflective process. Brideshead Revisited is about love and death. from the beginning. She is a scamp at times in her delightful youthful days, but she has her eyes set on the heavenly city, and her love cannot fail. Josef Pieper, in A Defense of Philosophy, says that there are only two things that can shake a mind out of its stupor and get it thinking again: love and death. These are the two big events which are so shattering that they start the reflective process. Brideshead Revisited is about love and death. The first part of the book, Et in Arcadia ego, “Even in Arcadia I am there,” is inscribed on the skull that Charles has at Oxford after he has met Sebastian. Even in the midst of the beauty and glory of those first days at Brideshead, when Charles said “I believed I was very close to Heaven in those days,” he wasn’t really. He was getting a glimpse of something beautiful, but even there, death was waiting. The destructive force which eventually descends on Sebastian has been already present. Since I am not doing this analysis in a systematic order, let us consider the entire Flyte family. Charles cannot be understood apart from this. It is the Flyte home that Charles is invited to. Note the name: “Flyte.” Most of them are in flight from the Church, from truth, particularly the head of the family who most clearly should be the head and guide, Lord Marchmain. The family is divided into two. Lord Marchmain, the patriarch, who should be ruling his estate and family, has flown the coop. He was first married, built the chapel for his wife, and then left for the war. He could not bear to come back. Why? Because, as Cara tells us, “he hates her.” This is the same conversation where Cara tells Charles his “romantic friendship” is a Northern trait, not a Latin one. Lord Marchmain’s “romantic friendship” was with his wife. And it ended. Cara asks Charles if he thinks Marchmain loves her. Charles is embarrassed that she even asks. Cara opines that he does not love her, but stays with her only because she protects him from his wife. “He won’t go back.” It is very odd, but this hatred for Lady Marchmain, an intense dislike shared by many of the characters (and incidentally by many readers) is defined for us by Cordelia. Cordelia speaks the following words shortly after Lady Marchmain’s death: “I got on best with her of any of us. But I don’t believe I ever really loved her.” This from Cordelia, who is a veritable fountain of love. What she means is that she did not love her mother as she should. “It is odd I didn’t, since I am full of natural affection.” Charles says, “I never really knew your mother.” She replies: “You didn’t like her. I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God, they hated Mummy.” Waugh, in one of his letters, said that he did not like Lady Marchmain either—but that God does. It is an absolutely true fact of life that, oftentimes, the best people in the world, those who make us tow the line, those who keep us responsible and who call us to duty, setting the ideal, are not likable people. Often we want nothing to do with them. They are a living reproach to those who are not living properly. It is what Archbishop Lefebvre was to the other bishops. It is what the Society of St. Pius X has been to the rest of the Church. Hence, the anger and rage. How dare we set a good example. Charles replies to Cordelia, asking her to clarify. She says: “She was saintly, but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God either. When they want to hate Him and His saints, they have to find something like themselves and pretends it’s God, and hate that. I suppose you think that’s all bosh.” Charles replies that Lord Marchmain hates Lady Marchmain, as Sebastian does also. Julia doesn’t hate her, but also didn’t love her. Sebastian was more like his mother, and Julia more like her father; it’s why Lord Marchmain leaves the estate to her. Those two children are the descendants of Lord Marchmain and are known as “Julia Flyte” and “Sebastian Flyte” and are both fleeing the truth and their mother. The other two children, Brideshead and Cordelia, are quite different. They are plain compared to Julia and Sebastian. The two plain offspring are devout, never shaken in their faith. The family is quite literally divided into two. And this plays a large role in the whole story. 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. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 Part 5 fr. Maximilian Kolbe o.f.M. conv. His Very Own Words To BecoMe Her (We must) belong to the Immaculate as servant, son, slave, thing, property, and so on: in a word, belong to Her under every aspect. Annihilate oneself and become Her. The fundamental element of such a transformation consists in conforming, in fusing, in uniting our will with Hers. (SK 579, April 18, 1934) Let us disappear in Her! May She alone remain, but us in Her, a part of Her. But is it licit for us, such wretched creatures, to rave in this way? Nonetheless this is the truth, this is reality. (SK 461, Oct. 27, 1932) She is of God. She is perfectly of God, even to the point of being, as it were, a part of the Most Holy Trinity, although She is a finite creature.… And then we are Hers, of the Immaculate, Hers without limits, most perfectly Hers; we are, as it were, She Herself. Through us She loves the good God. With our poor heart She loves Her divine Son. We become the means through which the Immaculate loves Jesus and Jesus, seeing us Her property, a part, as it were, of His Most Beloved Mother, loves Her in us and through us. What exceedingly beautiful mysteries!… We have heard of persons who are obsessed, possessed by the devil, THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org through whom the devil thought, spoke, acted. We want to be obsessed in this way, and even more, without limits, by Her: may She Herself think, speak and act through us. We want to belong to such a point to the Immaculate that not only nothing else remains in us that isn’t Hers, but that we become, as it were, annihilated in Her, changed into Her, transubstantiated into Her, so that nothing remains but She Herself. That we might be Hers as She is God’s. (SK 508, April 12, 1933) She Herself wants to love this Heart (of Jesus) in (souls) and through them, be them themselves and make them become Herself. (SK 1168, March 3, 1933) Let us open our heart to Her, let us let Her enter there and let us generously give Her our heart, soul and body and everything without any restriction or limit…in order to be Her servants, Her sons, Her thing and Her unconditional property in such a way that we become, in a certain way, She Herself living, speaking, acting in this world.…She Herself is the Immaculate Conception. Therefore She is such also in us and She transforms us into Herself as immaculate….When we shall have become Her, then also all our religious life and its sources will be Hers and She Herself. (Our) supernatural obedience will be Her will; chastity, Her virginity; poverty, Her detachment from earthly goods. (SK 486, Letter to clerics of the OFM Conv., Feb. 28, 1933) She Herself must conquer our soul. (We must) give ourselves to Her alone to be led, permit Her to lead us, so that She Herself–Herself–acts. Someone says: No, I also will act, and may the Mother of God help me. No, no. May She Herself act. Let us just have recourse to Her.… In the same way the Most Holy Mother has everything from God and She knows it. (K, July 29, 1933) Mary Herself does everything. (SK 1291, notes written before May 1939) She alone, however, will do all this. (SK 382, Dec. 2, 1931) Neither do I know in theory, and even less in practice, how one ought to serve the Immaculate, be Her instrument, servant, son, slave, property and, and…She Herself. She alone must instruct each of us every moment; She must lead us, transform us into Herself, so that it no longer be we who live but She in us, just as Jesus lives in Her and the Father in the Son. fr. MAxIMILIAn KoLBe Let us permit Her to do in us and through us whatever She desires and She will surely accomplish miracles of grace: and we ourselves will become saints and great saints, very great, since, becoming really like Her, She will conquer, through us, the whole world and each individual soul. (SK 556, Feb. 8, 1934, to the clerics at Cracow) We must tend towards this, that we love Our Lord Jesus as She loves Him; that our love be directed towards this summit, that it be the love of the Immaculate Herself. (K 36, June 23, 1936) The soul of the Immaculate must live in us and work in us. (K 55, Nov. 8, 1936) MISSIonAry zeAL He who wants to live the supernatural life clings to the Mother of Divine Grace. He who wants to convert and sanctify himself must have recourse to the Mother of God, for She is the Mediatrix of all graces. This mystery, that we receive everything through the Immaculate, is still little known. That is why we must propagate it; more, we must conquer the whole world to the Immaculate. (K 101, Sept. 4, 1937) The end of the M.I. (is) to conquer to the Immaculate the whole world and every single soul that now exists and will exist in the future. It seems to me that insofar as She is “Mediatrix of all graces” she does not just desire to give sometimes and in some places the grace of conversion and sanctification, but She wants to regenerate all souls. (SK 343, June 6, 1931) We show the greatest love for the Immaculate, then, if we transmit Her love to our neighbor. (K 129, Feb. 15, 1938) It is a matter of this, that the Immaculate be more and more loved, and not only that we love Her. And we offer our own love as fervently as possible, but our end is to spread the love of the Immaculate throughout the whole world. (K 314, Feb. 10, 1941) (He who enters the Militia), experiencing in his own life how much sweetness this closeness to the Immaculate gives, seeks to make others who live around him participate in his happiness. (SK 1226, March 1938) But he who loves the Immaculate disinterestedly, that is, who loves Her not for himself, but for Her alone, doesn’t content himself with just loving Her, but will take action so that others will love Her as well. (SK 634, Feb. 28, 1935) We, her knights, who are part of Her bodyguard, cannot let this day go by without offering Her our best wishes. But what can we wish still for Her who, exalted above all creatures in heaven and on earth, has become the Mother of God and now reigns eternally in Paradise? She is the Queen of heaven and earth, She is the Mediatrix of us all; through Her hands each grace flows upon the earth. What must we wish to You, then, O most illustrious and most sweet Lady?… Many still do not know You… 25 because they were born in paganism, or brought up in Judaism or imbued with the deadly principles of the Protestants. Many know You but…they flee from You or… they have abandoned You and now sink in the mud of immorality! Well, then, O Queen, in this dear day of Your feast, we wish You with all our hearts and souls that You might take possession as quickly as possible and completely of our hearts and the hearts of all and of everyone in particular without exception, be they Catholic, schismatic or Protestant, Jew or pagan, good or evil. O reign over all of us and in all of us, poor inhabitants of this terrestrial globe that flies through space in the heavens… We, for our part, accompanying our wishes with our work and paying personally the price of our efforts, our goods, our health, our reputation and our life, and with Your powerful help (for alone we can do nothing) we will liberate for You the maximum number possible of souls from the slavery of the devil, of the world and of the flesh and, having been made happy, we will offer them to You as Your property, until we will meet with You, little Mother, in Paradise…. (SK 1037, Rycerz Niepokalanej, September 1923) Let us permit Her to do in us and through us whatever She desires and She will surely accomplish miracles of grace….She will www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 26 fr. MAxIMILIAn KoLBe conquer, through us, the whole world and every single soul. Let us hasten this moment by deepening our consecration to Her by an ever more perfect obedience, an assimilation of our will and Hers, a union that is so intimate that it succeeds in almost eliminating the differences between our will and Hers. (SK 556, Feb. 8, 1934) Bend the proud neck of the world before the feet of the Immaculate: this is the end of the M.I., conquer the whole world and every single soul to Her, and this as soon as possible, as soon as possible, as soon as possible and the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus will take dominion over the world through Her. It is absolutely necessary to conquer the whole world to Her so that the dominion of sin cease. (SK 1301, Aug. 5-20, 1940) Humility and obedience. Conquer the world to the Immaculate. (SK 982, Spiritual Exercises, September 1935) The Immaculate will conquer, through us, the whole world and every single soul. (SK 556, Feb. 8, 1934) After death we will be, as it were, images sanctified by the Immaculate that will glorify Her, spreading and deepening love for Her. (K 311, Feb. 5, 1941) conTrA HoSTeS TUoS I get irritated sometimes when I’m reading something and I notice that the author underlines with an excessive precaution that Our Lady is “after Jesus” all our hope. Obviously this can be THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org understood in a proper way. Nonetheless this exaggerated worry not to omit this little clause–which is no doubt intended as a sign of veneration for Jesus–is rather, I think, personally, on the contrary, offensive to Him. Let us take an example (in our own publishing activity): when the ordinary machines became insufficient, we added the rotary press, and we can rightly affirm that, in order to print The Knight on time, all our hope is placed in the rotary press. But if each time we said that, someone were to add, with a worried air: “(Yes, but) after the factory that constructed it,” we would manifest the conviction that this machine could fail and that it would be necessary to have recourse to the factory. All of which would indicate that the factory had not constructed the machine with the necessary solidity, something which would certainly not be to the honor of the factory. How little the Immaculate is known still, in theory and even less in practice! How many prejudices, misunderstandings and difficulties agitate many souls! May the Immaculate grant to Her Niepokalanows to illumine this darkness, and dissipate these cold clouds and revivify souls and inflame them with love for Her, without any limit, with full liberty, without these vain fears that restrict and chill the hearts of men! So that the King not be sought outside of His palace but within, deeply within its interior, in its inner rooms. (SK 603, November 10, 1934) Yesterday I was reading a book in French on the Immaculate. The authors have such hesitations with regard to that which concerns the honor of the Divine Mother. They are of the opinion that yes, it is fitting to honor Mary, but like the devil they do not want to bow before Her; as soon as a temptation presents itself they immediately panic and start having doubts…. We who are here, dear brothers, let us not let ourselves be fooled by the devil. We believe in the Immaculate, we believe that She is, after God, the most perfect, the holiest, the most powerful being that exists. Why do I tell you that? It is so that if the devil tries to attack you, you won’t believe him. And even if wise and learned theologians come and preach wise and sublime things, but teach you something else than what I have taught you, don’t believe them. And even if–I don’t know how–saints come, who are saints four times over, if they teach you something else, don’t believe them. With the help of the Immaculate you will do all things. Listen to what St. Paul says in his letter to the faithful: “Even if an angel of heaven were to come and teach you something other than what I have taught you, let him be anathema!” (Gal. 1:8-9). In the same way I repeat to you, if someone rises up among you who does not want to honor the Most Holy Mother and to do so in a special way, if he dissolves the close link that unites us to the Immaculate and teaches you something else than what I have taught you, let him be anathema.…We believe that the Immaculate exists and that she leads us to our Lord Jesus Christ, and if someone teaches otherwise, let him be anathema! Let him be anathema! (K 204, Dec. 31, 1938) THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT Let your speech be “Yes, yes: no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37) ● June 2011 Reprint #97 Beatification and Canonization Since Vatican II PART 1 “It is a manifest work of divine inspiration that, spurning visible things, men should seek only what is invisible.”1 The heroic virtue of the saints is the most telling indicator of the divinity of the Church. And ordinarily, this mark is itself authenticated; it receives the seal of the Church, which answers for its own holiness by canonization, the solemn act by which the Sovereign Pontiff, making a final, definitive judgment, declares the heroic virtue of a member of the Church. Canonization comes under the category of disciplinary facts, among which theologians classify the various laws promulgated for the good of the whole Church and which correspond to secondary objects of the infallible teaching authority [magisterium]. Among these are the universal liturgical law, which prescribes the manner by which the worship due to God is rendered; canonization, which is the law by which the Church prescribes the veneration [cultus] of one of the faithful departed who exercised perfect holiness during 1 St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith (Summa contra Gentiles), tr. Anton C. Pegis, F.R.S.C. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1955), p. 72. 27 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT his lifetime; the solemn approbation of religious orders, which is the law by which the Church prescribes respect and esteem for a rule of life that is a sure means of sanctification. The infallibility of these laws is understandable because by them the Church manifests to all the faithful the means required for conserving the deposit of faith.2 These laws, therefore, are not the expression of a purely legislative power; they correspond formally to the exercise of the Church’s teaching power because they are intrinsically linked with revealed truth.3 By establishing infallibly certain facts which are outside the domain of revealed truths, the Church presupposes the profession of a formally revealed principle which is to be defended through its concrete applications. On this point as on so many others, the conciliar aggiornamento was to leave its traces. The reforms that resulted from the Second Vatican Council affected every domain. They imposed on faithful Catholics, and continue to impose, not only a new magisterium and a new theology, but also a new liturgy, a new Mass, new sacramental rites, new saints, new canonizations, and new communities, new “orders”–the religious character of which is open to question. All of this has not come to pass without posing real problems, the thorniest being that of the infallibility of the new laws. The question of infallibility itself depends on another, namely the validity of this legislation. In effect, these laws are infallible qua laws in the same way that a supreme teaching is (under certain conditions) infallible precisely insofar as it is an act of the supreme teaching authority. Infallibility is a property which supposes the essential definition of the act to which it corresponds. If the definition is changed, by the very fact the property attached to it changes. If the act becomes doubtful, its infallibility becomes doubtful also. That is why, if one wishes to resolve the difficulty posed by the post-Conciliar novelties, there are only two possible solutions. In the first solution, one establishes that the new laws resulting from Vatican II are legitimate laws in accordance with the requisite conditions and then one must state that they are infallible. In the second solution, one establishes that the new initiatives resulting from Vatican II are more often doubtful and lacking Cardinal Louis Billot, S.J., L’Église: Sa Constitution Intime (Courrier de Rome, 2010), Nos. 578-582, pp. 189-193. 3 The power of the supreme teaching authority [magisterium] is not only the power to expound purely speculative truth: it also has as its object practical truth, which leads a good number of authors to consider the power of jurisdiction as a potential totality [un tout potentiel], of which the analogous parts would be teaching authority (magisterium) and government. On the status of the question, cf. Timothy Zapelena, S.J., De Ecclesia Christi, pars altera, thesis XVI, p. 120ff. 2 28 sufficient guarantees to be considered legitimate laws in the traditional sense of the term, and this authorizes a legitimate doubt about their infallibility. But, in any case, one cannot give a solution that both admits the new post-Conciliar initiatives are legitimate laws in accordance with the requisite conditions and denies their infallibility. For this infallibility, though not yet solemnly defined, is a long- established position of both theology and of the Church’s ordinary authoritative teaching [ordinary magisterium]. One may say that it is proximately definable and its denial would be rash. Following Archbishop Lefebvre, we defend the second solution. We say that the new postConciliar legislation (new Mass and new liturgy, new canonizations, new Code of Canon Law) is not infallible and does not oblige because we have serious reasons to doubt its very nature as law. In this argumentation, everything will depend on the legitimacy of the new canonizations and beatifications. In the first part we shall reiterate the traditional principles concerning the nature and infallibility of canonizations in comparison with beatifications. In the second part, we shall examine the difficulties posed by the post-Conciliar initiatives. Part I: the tradItIonal PrIncIPles In order to proceed with order, we shall begin this part by defining beatification and canonization before demonstrating that canonization is infallible as such, leaving aside the circumstances that have arisen with the aggiornamento of Vatican II. 1. Some Definitions (a) Beatification Beatification is an act by which the Sovereign Pontiff grants permission to render public honor to the beatified in certain parts of the Church until canonization. This act is therefore not a precept; it is a temporary, not definitive, act; it is reformable. Beatification amounts to authorization of public veneration. The act of beatification does not directly assert either the glorification or the heroic virtues of the servant of God.4 (b) Canonization Canonization is the act by which the Vicar of Christ in an irreformable judgment inscribes a previously beatified servant of God in the catalogue 4 Billot, L’Église, No. 600, n. 152, p. 206. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org of saints. The object of canonization is threefold, for this act does not involve the cultus only. Firstly, the pope declares that the faithful departed is in the glory of heaven; secondly, he declares that the faithful departed merited to reach this glory by the exercise of heroic virtues which serve as an example for the whole Church; thirdly, in order to better set these virtues as an example and to thank God for having made them possible, he prescribes that public veneration be rendered to the faithful departed. Regarding these three points: canonization is a precept; it obliges the whole Church; it constitutes a definitive and irreformable act. The catalogue of saints is not the Martyrology; and, moreover, the expression “inscribe in the catalogue of saints” does not refer to a physical document, but it merely evokes the intention of the Church, which by the act of canonization henceforth counts among the number of saints the newly canonized person and commands all the faithful to venerate him as such. The act of canonization declares definitively the sanctity of the canonized person as well as his glorification, and consequently it prescribes the cultus for the whole Church. (It is another thing to prescribe the celebration of a Mass and recitation of an office in honor of the saint: this is a determination that requires a supplementary act, specific and distinct from canonization.) The enrollment of a person in the Martyrology does not signify the infallible canonization of the individual. The Martyrology is the list that includes not only all the canonized saints, but also the servants of God that could have been beatified, either by the Sovereign Pontiff or by the bishops before the twelfth century, the date at which the pope reserved to himself the privilege of conducting beatifications and canonizations. The titles of “sanctus” and “beatus” do not have in the Martyrology a precise meaning which would enable us to distinguish between canonized saints and blesseds. account as signs that attest the heroic virtue. Without heroic virtue, there can be no sanctity and no veneration. (c) Similarities and Differences 2. Infallibility Beatification and canonization both have as object to make possible the cultus of one of the faithful departed, which supposes that during his lifetime this person exercised exemplary virtues and attained glory. The difference is that beatification only makes the cultus possible (it is a permission), while canonization renders the cultus obligatory (it is a precept) and imposes on the faithful the duty to believe explicitly in the reality of the glory and the heroic virtues of the saint. In all of that, the essential is the exemplary (or heroic) virtue of the faithful departed, and this is what one seeks to verify in the two inquiries, that of the beatification and that of the canonization. In effect, the cultus presupposes this virtue as the effect presupposes its cause. The miracles of themselves are only taken into (d) Consequences There is a difference between a saint and a canonized saint. Canonization does not cause, but indicates a person’s holiness, and it indicates it as a model. This explains why neither all nor many people are canonized. Good example, to make an impression, must be unique or rare. Inflating the number of saints reduces their value as models.5 Indeed, even if saints were numerous, only a small number of them and not the majority should be elevated to the honor of the altars. Then again, the Church has always given the examples of which the faithful are in need in their particular era. In this sense, canonization is a political act in the best sense of the term: not an act of partisan demagoguery, but an act that procures the common good of the whole Church, an act benefitting the commonweal, an act that takes into account present circumstances. St. Joan of Arc was canonized in 1920, more than 500 years after her death; St. Therese of the Child Jesus was canonized in 1925, less than 30 years after her death. These two examples were beneficial to the Church, but the first would have been hard to comprehend had it occurred earlier, or too soon, before the passage of time had blurred the context and the aftermath of a century-long conflict… There is another difference to be noted, the one between salvation and sanctity. A person who dies in the odor of sanctity is saved, but one can be saved without having lived like a saint. In the eyes of the faithful, the chief purpose and immediate effect of canonization is to point out (to set as an example) holiness of life. Even if they have been saved and gone to heaven, one is not going to canonize people who have not given the example of holiness during their lifetime. The question of infallibility is twofold. First, is the sovereign pontiff’s judgment infallible when he canonizes a saint (2.1)? Then, is it of faith that this judgment is infallible, such that denying it would be heretical (2.2)? Each of these questions could be 5 “John Paul II carried out more canonizations than did all the popes of the 20th century. But so doing, the dignity of canonization has been diminished. If canonizations are numerous, they cannot be, we do not say invalid, but highly esteemed, nor can they be the object of veneration of the universal Church. If canonizations abound, their value diminishes” (Romano Amerio, Stat Veritas [Italian], Glose 39 on §37 of the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millenio Adveniente, p. 117). THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 29 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT answered preliminarily following the indications given by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) during the final consistory that preceded the canonization of St. Didacus in 1588: Basing his arguments upon Holy Scripture, theological reasoning, and all manner of proofs, the Pope demonstrated that the Roman Pontiff, the true successor of St. Peter and prince of the Apostles for whom Christ prayed, asking that his faith fail not, who is the veritable head of the Church, foundation and column of truth directed and led by the Holy Ghost, cannot be mistaken nor induce into error when he canonizes saints. And he affirmed that this truth must be believed not only as a pious belief, but as the object of a very certain and necessary act of faith; and to establish this point he adduced all the weighty arguments of reason and divine authority. To which he added also, something quite obvious, that the laws of the Church and of the pope are certain and guaranteed whenever they concern the discipline of faith and morals and rest upon sure principles and solid foundations.6 Nevertheless, these words of the pope proceed from him in his capacity as a private doctor. That is why this twofold question must be examined in greater detail and take into consideration the hypotheses of different theologians. 2.1. Canonization Is Infallible The infallibility of canonizations is today held to be a common and certain doctrine by the majority of theologians.7 All the manuals after Vatican I (and before Vatican II), from Billot to Salaverri, teach it as a common thesis in theology.8 The chief representative of the adversaries of the infallibility of canonizations is Cajetan (1469-1534) in the eighth chapter of his treatise on indulgences. According to him, the infallibility of a canonization is neither necessary nor possible.9 This opinion had already been defended before Cajetan by Agostino Trionfo, or Augustine of Ancona, (1243-1328) in his Summa on the Power of the Church. His fundamental reasoning is identical to that of Cajetan. It consists in saying that, since it is impossible to directly judge the internal forum of consciences, the Church cannot infallibly discern a person’s sanctity. Since Vatican II, some conciliar theologians have adopted this anti-infallibilist position. Some of them have alleged difficulties of an historical nature to call Quoted by Benedict XIV, On the Beatification and Canonization of Saints, Bk. I, Ch. 43, No. 2. 7 Billot, L’Église, No. 601, pp. 208-9; Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira, “Appendix: Laws and Infallibility,” La nouvelle messe de Paul VI: Qu’en penser? (DPF, 1975), p. 164. 8 Salaverri in his De Ecclesia, Thesis 17, §726, affirms that it is a theologically certain truth, if not implicitly defined. 9 Cajetan, “Treatise 15 on Indulgences,” Chapter VIII in Opuscula Omnia (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1995), p. 96. 6 30 in question the infallibility of canonizations.10 The opinion defended by Augustine of Ancona and Cajetan was recently reprised by Fr. Daniel Ols, O.P., professor at the Pontifical University of the Angelicum and a relator for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in a study on the theological basis for the cultus of saints.11 Lastly, Msgr. Brunero Gherardini in an article published in Divinitas drew up an assessment of the controversy over this subject.12 This study revived the issue insofar as it takes into account the various reactions prompted by the recent canonizations by John Paul II.13 The end of the article presents a series of objections contrary to infallibility. Following St. Thomas,14 the great majority of canonists15 and theologians16 defend the thesis of the infallibility of canonizations. Let us remark that the proposed question is very precise: St. Thomas does not ask if the pope is infallible when he canonizes a saint. The focus of his questioning is to know whether all the saints who have been canonized by the Church are in glory or if some of them may be in hell. This way of asking the question already affects the answer. For St. Thomas, canonization calls for infallibility not in the first place as disciplinary law, but as the profession of a truth that is virtually revealed. This does not exclude the other two aspects: the example of the saint’s life and the prescribed cultus. But there is an order among the three judgments the pope makes when he canonizes a saint. The first judgment bears upon a theoretical For example, the Benedictine De Vooght cites the famous case of St. John Nepomucene [about whom some historical controversy exists] to conclude: “I believe that we can draw from the story of John of Pomuk the conclusion that the pope is not infallible in the canonization of saints” (“The Real Dimensions of Papal Infallibility,” Infallibility: Its Philosophical and Theological Aspects, Acts of the Colloquium of the International Center for Humanist Studies and of the Institute for Philosophical Studies, Rome, February 5-12, 1970, pp. 145-49). 11 Daniel Ols, O.P., “Fondamenti teologici del culto dei Santi,” AA. Vv. Dello Studium Congregationis de causis sanctorum, pars theologica (Rome, 2002), pp. 1-54. Hypothesizing an error on the part of the Church in the canonization of a non-existent or even a damned person, Fr. Ols affirms that this would not present any drawbacks for the faith. Since infallibility is necessary only if the error would be harmful to faith, canonizations do not require it. In effect, there is a disadvantage for the faith if the Church’s error in a canonization were to induce the faithful to a practical profession of either heresy or immorality; but this condition does not occur since the practice of the faithful influenced by a canonization prescinds from the existence and the glorification of the canonized saint: in case of error, the personal conviction of the faithful would be a sufficient basis for their devotion. 12 Msgr. Prof. Brunero Gherardini, Canonizzazione ed infallibilità, Divinitas, Second Semester, 2003, pp. 196-221. 13 These positions, more or less recent, are presented in ibid., §6, pp. 211-14. 14 Quodlibet 9, Article 16. 15 Cited by Benedict XIV, On the Beatification and Canonization of Saints, Bk. I, Ch. 43, No. 5. Billot, L’Église, No. 601, n. 157, pp. 208-9. 16 Let us cite in particular: Dominic Bannez (On II-II, Q. 1, Art. 10, dubium 7, 2nd conclusion); John of St. Thomas (On II-II, Q. 1, disputatio 9, art. 2), Melchior Cano (De Locis Theologicis, Bk. V, Ch. V, Q. 5, Art. 3, 3rd conclusion, §44). 10 THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org fact and states that a deceased person persevered to the end in the heroic exercise of supernatural virtue and is at present glorified in eternal beatitude. The second judgment gives the heroic virtues practiced during the canonized person’s lifetime to the whole Church as a model to imitate. The third judgment is a precept that imposes public veneration of the saint on the whole Church. Canonization gives the heroic virtues of the saint as a model and makes his cultus obligatory. But it assumes the fact of the saint’s glorification. Benedict XIV, who quotes and adopts these reflections of St. Thomas, considers that, in the last analysis, the judgment of canonization rests upon a statement of a speculative truth deduced from revelation.17 It remains to prove that this threefold judgment is infallible. To do so, we do not have at our disposition any argument of the supreme teaching authority, for the infallibility of canonizations has not been defined as a dogma. St. Thomas limits himself to giving what would be the equivalent of an argument from authority: a reductio ad absurdum, which is, if you will, the authority of the first principles of reason and of logic. There are two reductions: denial of the infallibility of canonization would incur an unlikely, twofold detriment, one in the practical order, and the other in the speculative order. The first reductio ad absurdum on the practical level: if canonization were not infallible, it might happen that the faithful would venerate a sinner as a saint; those who had known him in his lifetime would be led to believe on the Church’s authority that his sinful state was not in reality what it was; but that would result in confounding virtue and vice in the minds of the faithful, and this would be an error deleterious to the Church. The second reductio ad absurdum is on the theoretical level: St. Augustine says that if there were an error in the teaching of divine revelation consigned to the Scriptures, faith would be deprived of its foundation; but just as our faith is based on the teachings of Sacred Scripture, it is also based on the teaching of the universal Church; hence, if an error were found in the teachings of the universal Church, our faith would likewise be deprived of its foundation; now God cannot deprive the faith of its foundation; hence, like the teaching of Sacred Scripture, the teachings of the universal Church, including canonization, must be infallible. Dominic Bannez completes this argument by specifying that if one affirms the possibility of error in the canonization of saints, the Church Militant would be scandalized in its morals, its profession of faith would be made suspect, and the Church Militant in heaven would be insulted. 17 Benedict XIV, On the Beatification and Canonization of Saints, Bk. 1, Ch. 43, No. 12; Billot, L’Église, No. 600, p. 207. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 To corroborate these defensive arguments, St. Thomas then uses an argument of theological reason. The judgment of canonization is a judgment of the pope in a matter that implies a certain profession of faith, since to venerate a saint and imitate his virtues is to say implicitly that one believes he has attained the glory of heaven. Now, in these matters that touch upon the profession of faith, the pope’s judgment is infallible because of God’s promise. The judgment of canonization is hence infallible. It is at this point useful to turn to clarifications given by John of St. Thomas in order to understand why the divine assistance is here required in particular. The judgment of canonization can be understood as a conclusion resulting from two premises. The first is a formally revealed conditional: whoever perseveres to the end in the heroic exercise of supernatural virtues obtains an eternal recompense in glory. The second is a probable fact attested by human testimony: such a one of the faithful did persevere to the end in the heroic exercise of the supernatural virtues. The conclusion that flows from these two premises is thus obtained by means of testimony, and that is why it does not flow from a real, absolutely compelling, scientific demonstration. The judgment of canonization involves a line of argument which the classical logicians would have considered as probable. We find there what must normally be proved in every theological reasoning, since the proposition stated in the conclusion in this case is linked, albeit indirectly, to a truth of faith.18 This link is only indirect, for between the truth formally revealed and the conclusion intervenes the mediation of a truth the certitude of which is not that of faith. Though only indirect, the link exists, and the conclusion is rooted despite everything in a formal and explicit profession of faith. The difference that leads one to say that this argument 18 John of St. Thomas, ibid., No. 11: “quasi reductive pertinet ad fidem.” Cardinal Billot, L’Église, No. 601, pp. 208-9: “Some have thought that St. Thomas was not certain of the infallibility of the Church in the canonization of saints, given that he says in the quodlibetal question No. 9, Q. 5, Art. 16: ‘One must believe piously that the judgment of the Church is infallible in these matters.’ Firstly, we answer that, even if St. Thomas had remained undecided on this point, our conclusion would lose nothing of its certitude. In effect, it would not be something unheard of in the Church, and it has even often been seen that a doctrine at first considered as probable or more probable subsequently became absolutely certain once the question had been clarified, and even before the Church solemnly defined it. Secondly, we answer that the Angelic Doctor never hesitated on this point, for he says not ‘one may piously believe’ but ‘one must believe piously,’ and unequivocally refutes all the arguments invoked in support of the negative. As for the argument invoked in favor of the affirmative, if he does not refute it, it is that he considers it as conclusive, as does usage.” THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 31 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT is only probable is that, to establish a theological conclusion, one reasons from an evident and certain proposition of reason, whereas to establish the judgment of a canonization one reasons from testimonies. That is why divine assistance is necessary, precisely at the level of the discernment of the testimonies: infallibility cannot accompany an act in which one appeals to contingency and of which the certitude remains only probable. One could object that if canonization is considered as infallible, it is placed on the same level as solemn, ex cathedra definitions, which seems inconceivable. Benedict XIV answers, with all of the most assured theological tradition,19 that such assimilation is, on the contrary, in the order of things. Certainly, one cannot univocally reduce canonization to an infallible dogmatic definition; but one may nonetheless consider that the act of the infallible solemn magisterium happens in analogically various ways. An act of the pope having as its end the conservation of the common good of the entire Church is an act of infallible definition. Now, the pope conserves the common good of the whole Church not only when he acts strictly as supreme Doctor in teaching, but also when he acts more broadly as supreme Pastor in governing. The teaching of the doctor does not exhaust all the activity of the pastor. And it is incumbent on the pastor to make the laws that provide for the common good of the whole Church; as such these laws do not express formally revealed truth; but insofar as they are given for the good of the unity of faith, these are analogues of an infallible definition. 20 Let us add one additional reason to justify this analogy: we have shown above, based upon St. Thomas and his commentators, that if canonization is in consequence a model and a law, it is also formally and foremost a mediate profession of faith. One could already rightly assimilate it to a definition. Canonization could be reduced to the exercise of the infallible and personal solemn magisterium of the sovereign pontiff as its secondary object. Among other authors, Fr. Salaverri cites several examples in which one sees that the terms 19 20 32 Ibid., Ch. 44, No. 4. In the study cited above, Fr. Ols examines the classic formula used in the solemn proclamation of canonization: “Decernimus” or “Definimus.” By having recourse to expressions of this kind, he says, and contrary to what happens in the framework of dogmatic definitions, the popes never say that they are proposing a truth to be believed or that they are propounding it while requiring assent of some sort. The author concludes from this that the solemn formula of canonization expresses nothing infallible. Certainly, the formula of canonization expresses something other than a dogmatic definition, and that is why this expression is only analogous to the dogmatic definitions that express formally revealed truths. But this does not prove that only the latter express an infallible judgment or that only the latter are defining. employed by Popes Pius XI and Pius XII express without the least doubt their explicit intention to exercise a solemn, infallible act.21 Archbishop Lefebvre would often say that Pope St. Pius V had “canonized the rite of Mass”: he meant thereby to signify the infallibility of liturgical laws by analogy with that of canonizations; and he thus supposed the latter as very probably equivalent to a personal act of the pope’s solemn magisterium. 2.2 The Doctrinal Value of This Infallibility Benedict XIV shows that the theologians are not unanimous when it comes to pronouncing on the doctrinal value of the infallibility of canonizations. Some think this infallibility is not a defined dogma of faith: among these are the Dominicans John of St. Thomas and Dominic Bannez, the Jesuit Francis Suarez and the Carmelites of Salamanca. Others think this conclusion is equivalent to a dogma of faith. Let us remark that the question is twofold: two aspects of the doctrinal value of the infallibility of canonization can be discerned. There is the value of the faithful’s assent called for by the theoretical fact on which the judgment of canonization bears: is it of defined faith that a canonized saint is indubitably in the glory of heaven? There is also the value of the infallibility of the act of canonization: is it of defined faith that the pope cannot be mistaken when he proceeds to an act of canonization? The authors (Benedict XIV, John of St. Thomas, and Bannez) are interested in both aspects, but give priority to the first. Is it of defined faith that a canonized saint is indubitably in the glory of heaven? The most common thesis in theology is that in which one demonstrates that the glorification of a canonized saint can be infallibly defined not as of faith, that is to say as formally revealed, but as virtually revealed. Denial of this truth does not entail the note of heresy because it is not a formally revealed truth and because its negation would only indirectly be detrimental to faith. If this virtually revealed truth is the object of an infallible definition in the context of an act of canonization, it will be defined, not as of divine and catholic faith, but as certain or of catholic faith; its denial would thus be erroneous or false; and according to John of St. Thomas, it would also be scandalous for the whole Church, for one would 21 De Ecclesia, Thesis 17, §725-726: Infallibilem Nos, uti catholicae Ecclesiae supremus Magister sententiam in haec verba protulimus”; “Nos ex Cathedra divini Petri uti supremus universalis Christi Ecclesiae Magister infallibilem hisce verbis sententiam solemniter pronuntiavimus” (Pius XI); “Nos universalis catholicae Ecclesiae Magister ex Cathedra una super Petrum Domini voce fundata falli nesciam hanc sententiam solemniter hisce pronuntiavimus verbis”; “Nos in Cathedra sedentes, inerranti Petri magisterio fungentes solemniter pronuntiavimus” (Pius XII). In consideration of which, Salaverri thinks the infallibility of canonizations is implicitly defined by Pius XII and Pius XII. See also Billot, L’Église, II, No. 601, 209. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org ‘ ‘‘ ‘‘ But it is undeniable that by the very terms of the new procedure, it is no longer as rigorous as formerly. It realizes all the less the guarantees that should be forthcoming from churchmen for divine assistance to assure the infallibility of canonizations and, with greater reason, the absence of factual error in beatifications. Incidentally, Pope John Paul II decided to bend the current procedure (which stipulates that a cause for canonization cannot begin until five years after the death of a servant of God) by authorizing the introduction of the cause of Mother Teresa scarcely three years after her death. Benedict XVI has acted likewise for the beatification of his predecessor. Doubt can only be the more legitimate considering the wisdom of the Church’s proverbial slowness in these matters. induce the faithful to sin by giving them a damned person for a model; impious, for it would go against the worship due to God; insulting, for it would go against the honor due to the canonized saint. Is it of defined faith that the pope cannot be mistaken when he canonizes a saint? Benedict XIV affirms that the infallibility of the act of canonization is not yet defined as of faith but that it could be. In favor of this eventuality, one might consider that the Council of Trent teaches in its decrees that cultus must be rendered to the canonized,22 and that their relics are to be venerated.23 In the Bulls of canonization the sovereign pontiffs pronounce an anathema against those who would call in doubt their declaration. John of St. Thomas thinks that denying the infallibility of an act of canonization merits the censure “sapiens haeresim et proximum errori in fide,” for it would amount to calling in question the ecclesiastical power and good government of the society of the Church, and to denying the infallibility of the universal laws which have as their end the safeguard of faith and morals. Benedict XIV affirms that denial of this infallibility would warrant, if not the note of heresy, at least that of temerity; Council of Trent, Session XXV, Decree of December 3, 1563, Decretum de invocatione, veneratione, et reliquiis Sanctorum, et sacris imaginibus, in DS 1821. “Those who deny that one ought to invoke the saints who enjoy eternal happiness in heaven; or those who assert that these do not pray for men or that to call upon them to pray for each of us is an idolatry, or that this is in opposition to the Word of God and contrary to the honor of Jesus Christ, sole mediator between God and men; or that it is stupid to supplicate vocally or mentally those who reign in heaven: all those think impiously” [our translation]. Benedict XIV states that this text equals an infallible definition. 23 Ibid., DS 1822: “Also, those who assert that neither honor nor veneration should be given to the relics of saints, or that it is futile for the faithful to honor them, as well as other sacred mementos, and that it is futile to visit the places of their martyrdom in order to gain their support, must be wholly condemned, as the Church has previously condemned them and condemns them still today” [our translation]. 22 www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 this negation would imply an insult to the saints and scandal for the Church. It would merit the gravest sanctions. Part II: the dIffIcultIes resultIng from the councIl In point of fact, the difficulty has arisen undeniably so far over one canonization, that of José Maria Escrivá de Balaguer (1902-1975), beatified on May 17, 1992, and canonized on October 6, 2002, by Pope John Paul II. There are also two surprising beatifications ( John XXIII’s and Mother Teresa’s), but since beatifications are not infallible, the problem has not thus far had the same urgency. This is no longer so since the official announcement of the imminent beatification of John Paul II, for this will palpably legitimate this pontiff’s work, which was the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, principally as regards the two crucial principles of religious freedom and ecumenism. Then again, if it is true that a beatification is a transitory act which calls for canonization as its normal consummation, we may fear that, because of the stakes, John Paul II’s cause will not stop mid way. In this matter as elsewhere, the perplexity of Catholics is indeed justified. Without pretending to get to the bottom of the business (which is THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT 33 THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT reserved to God), one may at least raise three major difficulties which suffice to make the cogency of these new beatifications and canonizations questionable. The first two cast doubt on the infallibility and unerringness of these acts. The third calls in question their very definition. The First Difficulty: Inadequacy of Procedure The guarantee of infallibility does not dispense its holders from due diligence. The divine assistance that causes the infallibility of dogmatic definitions works providentially. Far from dispensing the pope from having to examine carefully the sources of Revelation transmitted by the Apostles, it requires this examination by its very nature. During the First Vatican Council, the bishop charged with defending in the name of the Holy See the text of the fourth chapter of the future Constitution Pastor Aeternus defining the pope’s personal infallibility, laid stress on this point: The infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is obtained, not by way of revelation, nor by way of inspiration, but by way of divine assistance. That is why the pope, in virtue of his function, is bound to employ the means required in order to elucidate the truth sufficiently and to expound it correctly; and these means are the following: meetings with bishops, cardinals, and theologians, and having recourse to their counsels. The means will vary according to the matters treated; and we must believe that when Christ promised divine assistance to St. Peter and to his successors, this promise also included the requisite and necessary means so that the Pontiff could state his judgment infallibly.24 This is truer still for canonization: it supposes the most serious of human testimony attesting the heroic virtue of the future saint, as well as an examination of the divine testimony of miracles, at least two for a beatification, and two others for canonization. The procedure followed by the Church until Vatican II was the expression of the utmost rigor. The process for the canonization itself relied upon a double process carried out at the time of the beatification, one that took place before the tribunal of the Ordinary acting in his own name; another that depended exclusively on the Holy See. The process of canonization comprised the examination of the brief of beatification, followed by the examination of two new miracles. The procedure concluded when the Sovereign Pontiff signed the decree; but before giving his signature, he held three consecutive consistories. By the Apostolic Constitution Regimini Ecclesiæ Universæ of August 15, 1967, and the Motu Proprio Sanctitatis Clarior of March 19, 1969, Pope Paul VI modified this procedure: the essential innovation was the replacement of the twofold inquiry of the Ordinary and the Holy See by a single inquiry carried out henceforth by the bishop in virtue of his own authority and with the reinforcement of a delegation of the Holy See. The second reform took place following the 1983 Code of Canon Law with the Apostolic Constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister of John Paul II on January 25, 1983. This particular law, which the Code of Canon Law references, abrogated all previous laws pertaining to the matter. It was completed by a decree of February 7, 1983. According to the new norms, the essential part of the inquiry is confided to the local bishop: he is the one who investigates the life of the saint, his writings, virtues, and miracles, and establishes the dossier sent to the Holy See. The Sacred Congregation examines this dossier and makes its pronouncement before submitting everything to the judgment of the pope. Only one miracle is now required for beatification and, once again, only one for canonization. Access to the dossiers for causes of beatification and canonization is not easy, which hardly affords an opportunity to assess the seriousness with which the new procedure has been implemented. But it is undeniable that by the very terms of the new procedure, it is no longer as rigorous as formerly. It realizes all the less the guarantees that should be forthcoming from churchmen for divine assistance to assure the infallibility of canonizations and, with greater reason, the absence of factual error in beatifications. Incidentally, Pope John Paul II decided to bend the current procedure (which stipulates that a cause for canonization cannot begin until five years after the death of a servant of God) by authorizing the introduction of the cause of Mother Teresa scarcely three years after her death. Benedict XVI has acted likewise for the beatification of his predecessor. Doubt can only be the more legitimate considering the wisdom of the Church’s proverbial slowness in these matters. Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize Translated from Courrier de Rome, No. 341, February 2011, pp. 1-5. 24 34 Discourse given on behalf of the Deputation de fide by Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser, Prince-Bishop of Brixen, Austria Tyrol, during the 84th general assembly of July 11, 1870, in reply to the 53rd amendment of Ch. IV of the Constitution De Ecclesia in Mansi, t. 52, col. 1213. See also Billot, L’Église, II, No. 991, p. 486. THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org 35 INTERVIEW WITH PROF. BEYERHAUS The interview with Prof. Beyerhaus is a translation from Kirchliche Umschau, Nr. 4, April 2011, a traditional monthly magazine in Germany. The interest of the interview resides in the fact, that Prof. Beyerhaus (born in 1929) is a protestant opponent of the inter religious Assisi meeting. The evangelical clergyman was professor of mission studies and ecumenical theology in the University of Tübingen from 1965 until 1997, teaching Joseph Ratzinger from 1966 until 1969. In 1978 he was the chairman for the International Conference of Confessing Communities (Internationale Konferenz Bekennender Gemeinschaften). Dr. Beyerhaus, you are presently one of the most prominent professors of missionary science, founder of the Conference of Confessing Communities, manager of the Diakrisis Institute and long-time chairman of the International Conference of Confessing Communities. Twenty-five years ago you raised your voice as one of the most important representatives of the evangelical Protestants against the interreligious prayer gatherings at Assisi. Why? When we heard, in our Confessing Evangelical Communities, of the intention of the late Pope John Paul II to invite the representatives of not only all churches and church fellowships, but also the non-Christian religions to Assisi on October 27, 1986, to pray together for peace, we were profoundly horrified and concerned. I myself was especially concerned because I, as the professor of mission and religious studies and ecumenical theology, constantly find in my research that the idea of religious syncretism (or the mixing of religions) can be dangerous to the Christian faith. This had already begun during my time as a missionary in South Africa, where I met widespread syncretistic sects, harmlessly named things like the “African Nondenominational Church,” and therefore observed how this spiritual uncertainty and danger of falling back into pagan animistic religion spread throughout our mission community. In 1965, at our Lutheran seminary in Natal, I had invited my colleagues from other training facilities to a study conference during which we analyzed this phenomenon. Finally, we published our findings to exhort our missions and also our church. It gives us no little sorrow to know that here, through the somewhat hidden union of biblical faith and ancestor worship, the First Commandment is violated; no other gods besides the God of Israel can be adored. Now, however, I have seen this danger break out within the Catholic Church in Europe and worldwide under the initiative of the Vatican. I had a private audience with Pope John Paul II only six years before the Assisi gathering, on March 30, 1980, in which I spoke with him about the new dialogue program of the Geneva World Council of Churches, and there conceived the notion that the Holy Father had a full understanding of the anxiety of the International Conference of Confessing Communities. Therefore it seemed incomprehensible that he himself called for the interreligious prayer meeting in Assisi. The Conference of Confessing Communities presented an open letter to the Pope to ask him to distance himself from this plan. I asked my former colleague from Tübingen, Joseph Ratzinger, by now a cardinal in the curia, to give this letter to the Pope along with a personal letter, which he did. Do not all men pray to a higher being? Do we not all pray to the same God? Has not any kind of syncretism been avoided in Assisi? Did not John Paul II confess Christ before all? Of course, in one way or another, almost all men pray in their different religions, but not all pray to one higher being, for there are also polytheistic religions, in which many gods and powerful spirits are called upon. But also, the highest divinity in monotheistic religions is in no way alike. There is, for instance, a huge difference between the God that we Christians worship, who is triune and whose being is love, and the all-powerful god Allah that the www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 36 InTerVIeW Muslims call upon, whose existence is unrecognizable and is never spoken of in the Koran as being our loving Father. Now, we already find in the time approaching the prayer gathering, growing organizations of concerned evangelical and Catholic Christians–for instance, the Society of Saint Pius X–who warned against the immanent syncretism in Assisi. A representative from the Vatican answered with the dialectical formula, “The representatives of the different religions are not coming to Assisi in order to pray together; rather they come together in order to pray.” One seeks to nullify the impression of mixing religions by saying that no prayer rituals will take place in which all pray together with the same words, but every representative of a religion comes forward when it is his turn and prays in his own rite. And therefore it is openly known that many different gods will be called upon here in the same place and at the same time before the eyes of the presiding Pope: Allah through the Muslims, Rama through the Hindus, Manitu through the Indians, and the God of the Old and New Testaments through the Jews and Christians. In his own speech to the crowd, and also in his prayers, the Pope confessed that God, called in the New Testament the Father of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:14), is our peace. That was a clear testimony for the biblical faith, for which I was very thankful to the Holy Father. However, he stressed that this was his personal belief, suggesting he was tolerant towards the beliefs of the other religious leaders and that he had respect for them. I watched the video along with my students to see this example of clear relativism. You are close to Joseph Ratzinger, who was for a time your colleague in Tübingen. Now Pope, he seemed to many until now to be “reserved” toward the prayer meeting of the religions. What do you expect from the “Anniversary Meeting” in October? THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org Yes, there has been a friendly relationship between my Catholic colleague Ratzinger and me, despite our different confessions, as we united together, along with another prudent professor, in the face of an outbreak of turbulence in both our theological faculties during the student revolt of 1968, and this was on the basis of our same biblical background. There we were fortunate to be united by our confession of the same faith in Christ. This was always the case in later situations. Because I remained in contact with Joseph Ratzinger through writing after he left for Regensburg, and then Munich and finally Rome, I was sure in 1980 that he also would share our concerns as a cardinal in the curia and prefect of the Congregation of Faith. Therefore I trustingly turned to him, as I mentioned before, with the request for mediation. This expectation was fully justified, for he, unlike his fellow cardinals, did not take part at any of the Assisi prayer meetings. Also, during the second meeting of the kind in the year 2002, he rode in his train with his back symbolically to the engine as a mere observer. It was a puzzle to me to see the surprising manner with which he himself looked forward to Assisi III. So I decided, encouraged by the board of our International Conference of Confessing Communities, to write him a personal letter in which I expressed my astonishment and asked about his intentions, for we had been like-minded for many years. Already, after only three weeks, he sent me a detailed answer, dated March 4, 2011. In this letter it was indicated that the initiative to assist at the meeting, however, did not come from him. He will go, however, and, as he writes word for word, “seek to define the direction of the whole and do everything possible to demonstrate how a syncretistic or relativistic interpretation of the event will be impossible.” He told me explicitly that I was free to give an open opinion, but he asked, “there- by to acknowledge that I trust that the Pope stands by what he is called to by his office–to strengthen his brothers in faith in Jesus Christ as the only Son of God and Redeemer, and he himself unmistakably confesses this.” This I will do gladly. If the current Pope will set other priorities, a biblical critique seems however difficult to avoid. Yes, Benedict XVI will set “other priorities” as he did as a professor and as archbishop–and he already has–as he has entered a tradition with his election to the papacy, that of his predecessors, and in this particular case, already began with his decades-long association with John Paul II and his firm installation in the theology and politics of religion of the Roman praxis. It also necessary that evangelical and orthodox ecumenical groups dialogue with the other religions to set a goal for a common endeavor; to protect the earth from that which threatens world peace in multi-religious crisis areas. As long as it is on a strictly political and academic basis, without a cultish exaggeration through common prayers and rituals, nothing has to be changed. Obviously a healthy realism is sought after, so that one does not have a quixotic hope for the realization of a reign of world peace with such dialogue. For that would open the way to the biblical revelation of the one world government of the anti-Christ (Apoc. 17:11-14). Aside from the denominational controversy, is not the hasty beatification of John Paul II an approval of the theology behind Assisi? One can see it that way, and many observers have seen it that way. However I do not think that this is the intention of Benedict, for the rash beatification was caused by a group who gathered at St. Peter’s Square, who adored the Pope’s predecessor, and already shortly after John Paul II’s death, challenged the Pope. For me and my evangelical friends, the practice of beatification and canonization is foreign, InTerVIeW and we are sorry to say that this is a fact; a colleague in Erlangen asked me directly to ask Pope Benedict to intervene in all the things that I cannot because of my ministry. The prayer meeting at Assisi in 1986 had a long ideological incubation period and a paradigmatic function for many similar meetings. Key word: from Chicago to Hans Küng’s “global ethic.” Could you show us a short panorama of this development? That would need its own composition, if not an entire book. Actually, a colleague from Münster, who unfortunately passed away two years ago, who became my friend during his last year of life, the prominent professor of missionary science, Professor Johannes Dörmann, did that in an entire series of remarkable books. In them he shows that Assisi was not just a spontaneous idea of the Pope at the time, but the philosophy of history and theology as well as anthropology–the idea of man–of Karol Wojtyla, that had been anchored deeply in his thinking for a long time. Dörmann was mostly of the school of Ratzinger, and had graduated with him in Münster and had sent his publications that criticized Assisi to the responsible doctoral advisor of the curia for the Preservation of the Roman Catholic Faith. I do not know whether and how Cardinal Ratzinger answered him; at least he has not put him in a teaching discipline, as Dörmann gladly expressed to me. It is also generally true that the practice of reconciliation of religions in Assisi has a long previous history which is founded on the changing theology about the non-Christian religions. Here the dogmatist from Munich, Rahner, played an ominous role with his theory that the believers of other religions are “anonymous Christians.” No one has advanced that to such an historically pivotal central theme as Hans Küng with his global ethics program. Did Assisi distort ecumenism or did it empower it? It depends on how one understands the word ecumenism. The leaders of the Geneva World Council of Churches were invited to Assisi in 1986 and came gladly. They will happily be there this year also, for they had developed a program of dialogue with other religions and saw this was only strengthened by Assisi. In 1971 a sophisticated Program of Dialogue with ideologies (ÖRK) was started, but it failed, and in facing the present financial crisis of the World Council of Churches almost all the associates of this program left. The International Conference of Confessing Communities, of which I am an honorary chairman, has a different conception of ecumenism, what we call “Christ-centered creed ecumenism.” I am currently writing a book about it. We remain critical of the Assisi initiative of Rome, as has already been said, and accordingly reacted with concern to the announcement in January of the anniversary in October in the same place. We ask ourselves also whether one can see the warning signs here that were seen by many faithful Catholics and Evangelicals on September 26, 1997, when the church of San Francesco was badly damaged by a terrible earthquake, which took the lives of four men, including two Franciscan monks. Against a rejection of the gathering of religions is often quoted the speech of St. Paul on the Areopagus (Acts 17:1734). Whoever says that only has a shallow understanding of the speech of St. Paul on the Areopagus. He has firstly failed to see that this quote begins with verse 16, which is: “Now whilst Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city wholly given to idolatry.” In face of the “unknown god” whose altar he found on his way, he says in verse 23: “What therefore you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you.” And the apostle concludes the message of 37 his mission sermon in verse 30 with an exhortation: “And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should everywhere do penance.…” The penance that should be done by the believers of different religions that convert to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only divine Lord and Redeemer was not preached in the church of San Francesco on October 27, 1986! That would be hard to tolerate with a peaceful interreligious dialogue and a united prayer community! Today biblical theology is dominated by the catch phrases “exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism.” Is this the case with mission studies? Yes, those are the three categories that one uses to categorize the different forms of interreligious dialogue. Either one sees the revelations and holy laws of the other religions as excluded from the authentic biblical revelations, or one sees them as implicit and common together, or one see them all, non-Christian and Christian religions alike, as identical. Most of the mission and religion scholars lean toward inclusivism or pluralism. Therefore the idea of the mission of the Church as being to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Redeemer to the non-Christian world, the men of all religions and world views, “so that all men would believe in him and be saved” as it was defined in 1961 during the third assembly of the ÖRK in New Delhi for the Commission on World Mission and Evangelization, is disappearing from more and more theological faculties of both confessions. I am very glad that Pope Benedict XVI shares this view in the letter he wrote to me in explanation of Dominus Jesus (2000). What can we do? We should seek to bring into account the biblical interpretation of events in every matter, especially in our hopes for the formation of the upcoming interreligious meeting in Assisi this October. www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 Church an 38 Dhimmitude on the March: The Prefect carenco forbids “The March of the Pigs” But Permits an Islamic congress L ike the Prefect Poubelle,1 but for other reasons, the Prefect of the Rhone-Alpes region, Jean-François Carenco, may also leave his name to history, but in a different category: “Dhimmitude.”2 Last May 4, he made an administrative decision to prohibit the organization of a demonstration, “The March of the Pigs,” the purpose of which was to denounce compliance with halal [the Islamic equivalent of kosher regulations– Tr.] in public establishments...and State enterprises. Prefect Carenco explained: “This Islamophobic and provocative demonstration is an attack on the consensus of our Republic.” If we understand correctly, yielding to anti-republican demands of some Mohammedans constitutes sharing the consensus of our Republic, but decrying them would constitute an attack upon the aforesaid consensus. Perhaps they ought to stop taking the French for idiots. When one brings up the issue of “freedom of expression” to Commissar...of the Republic Carenco, he retorts: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle, but this is provocation.” Indeed? More than the burqa, the niqab, halal, prayers in the street, demands for accommodating Islamic prayer times in the work day, and more and more aggressive communal conflicts? What does the name Carenco stand for? One begins to wonder… The decision forbidding “The March of the Pigs” is all the more provocative as the same Carenco has concurrently authorized a seminar for May 28 at the Grand Mosque of Lyons, featuring Saïd Ramadan Al-Bouti, theoretician of THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org jihad, and Muhammed Al-Hawari and Tahir Mahdi, both members of the European Council for Fatwa and Research... A keen observer of the Islamic thing, Joachim Veliocas stated concerning Saïd Ramadan Al-Bouti: We had already analyzed his works and position papers…with passages of his works where he preaches secret, subversive action to overthrow the miscreant governments when outright jihad does not turn to the advantage of Islam. In short, the Syrian professor of Arab Thought at the University of Bordeaux, Ghassan Finianos, stated in his book Islamistes, Apologistes et Libres Penseurs (Bordeaux: PUF, 2006) that the charismatic leader of the Lyons mosque “justifies using violence in the pursuit of power and, consequently, the propagation of Islamic values.” Such, in point of fact, are the people who, according to the criteria of the dhimmitesque Carenco, share our republican consensus. And so, in 2011, at Lyons, capital of the ancient Gauls and of ...stuffed saveloy, chitterlings, pork scratchings, and the like, the pig has become an accursed halouf. That’s what happens when the Islamists come marching in. (Source: Alain Sanders, Présent) Eugene Poubelle (1831-1907), a French administrator whose name became the household word for dustbin in France, a result of his beneficial work in behalf of public sanitation. 2 Dhimmitude is a neologism first found in French denoting an attitude of concession, surrender, and appeasement towards Islamic demands. It is derived by adding the productive suffix -tude to the Arabic language adjective dhimmi, which literally means protected and refers to a non-Muslim subject of a sharia law State. (Wikipedia) 1 When Professor Vincent Becomes Miss Martine When in June 2010, the physics and chemistry teacher at St. Dominic’s High School in Saint-Herblain, France (near Nantes), said goodbye to his pupils at the end of the school year, his name was Vincent. When school resumed in September, it was Martine. During the summer holidays, he had a sex change, he explained. Faced with the students’ surprise and the dissatisfaction of some parents, the headmaster stated: “This identity change is obviously a personal development, and we do not have to take a position on the matter. What counts is the teacher’s professionalism.” The diocesan director of Catholic education simply dispatched a psychologist to the school to help the students with any ensuing turmoil. This story is the practical application of a theory called “gender,” according to which human beings may choose whether to be a man or a woman. The theory rests on the distinction between a person’s sex, which is a biological reality, and his or her gender, which is a psychological reality. A human being of the feminine sex would not thereby be a woman. This theory is based on an erroneous philosophy called existentialism. Its leading representative, Jean-Paul Sartre, said: “Man is freedom….Man exists first and defines himself later. There is no human nature....Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.” In the same vein, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre’s companion in sin as well as in intellectual absurdity, wrote: “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” She even dared to add: “Motherhood is incompatible with women’s liberation.” and World How should we react to such aberrations? By opening our eyes, keeping our feet on the ground, and thinking straight. That there is a human nature is self-evident. Otherwise, how would we distinguish human beings from animals or plants? Dogs do not have kittens. Camels do not beget apple trees. Never will a crayfish be mother to a water-lily. And if we use the terms human being or man, is this not proof that these words denote a reality? Or else language means nothing. There would be nothing to do but keep quiet! Let’s go further. A human nature exists, but in this human nature there exists a distinction between two categories of persons: men and women. Some would like to be able to choose. Being unable to do so would hamper their freedom! Alas, just as we do not choose our nature, and the man who would be a bird will stay a man, neither do we choose our sex. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that soul and body form a whole, and not two independent parts. Thus, when the body is male, the soul is too. A woman is thus a woman in all of her soul and her psychology. One cannot therefore make a distinction between sex and gender. Behind this debate, which would be laughable did it not reflect a sorry reality, lies a pernicious doctrine infecting people’s minds. The modern world would have us believe that there is no difference between men and women; perhaps a few physical differences, but nothing more. Consequently, women would have exactly the same rights and duties as men. They would have the same role to fill in the family and in society. To convince ourselves that these assertions are false, let us remember creation: God created Adam first, then observed that he suffered from 39 Many Bishops resist Latin Mass W ith this headline Reuters news agency comments on the Roman Instruction of May 13, 2011 (Feast of Our Lady of Fatima). According to commentaries, many bishops said “they had more pressing issues to deal with or put it on the back burner” (Reuters). The interpretation is therefore, that the new instruction tries to enforce the Motu Proprio of July 7, 2007, which allowed all priests worldwide to celebrate the traditional rite of the Mass. loneliness, and so created Eve, “a helper like himself.” God then commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. Although man and woman were created in the image of God, the creation story shows that a woman is not a man. It is mainly through procreation that their differences appear. While the father gives life as source, the mother welcomes and nurtures it. The father gives life. The mother transmits it. The mother’s body is like a nest where life will develop; where the child will be protected and loved, nourished and warmed; where it will be safely sheltered beneath her heart. The woman’s mission, then, consists mainly in motherhood: childbearing and childrearing. “She shall be saved by childbearing,” says St. Paul (I Tim. 2:13). As for girls called to consecrate their virginity to God, they become mothers too, but spiritually, by an invisible but very real generation. The union of Christ’s love with the consecrated virgin’s love gives birth to the supernatural life in souls. The first consequence concerns the place they will occupy in society. The mother’s presence near her children is more indispensable than the father’s. Women have an essential place in the family circle, a place that men have neither the vocation nor the capacity to hold. A teacher of disadvantaged children remarked: “The woman is the heart of the family. If today we have serious problems to solve, it is because the woman is no longer the heart of the family; and when the child comes home, he no longer fi nds his mother there to welcome him.” Pope Pius XII made the same observation: “It is the woman who makes the home and is responsible for it, and the man can never replace her at this task. It is the mission imposed on her by nature and by her union with man, for the good even of society. Draw her outside her family, and you will see the woman neglect her home; and what will become of it without her flame? The atmosphere of the house will become chilly; the home will practically cease to exist, and will turn into the precarious refuge of a few hours.” Some feminists feel that the work of the housewife is humiliating. But what did the Blessed Virgin Mary do every day? But was she www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 40 Church and World not the mother of God? Did not her divine Son reserve for her the activities most beautiful and most suited to her nature? Moreover, to make a good housewife, the requisite skills are elevated and numerous: the woman must be at the same time cook, seamstress, nurse, laundress, landscaper, teacher, gardener, taxi driver, hostess, secretary, and bookkeeper! Who would dare maintain that the harmonious conjunction of these manifold crafts is degrading? We see instead that the mother at home must be very competent, hence the need to prepare her for this noble task from an early age at home, at school, and in her other activities. If the mission of women is in motherhood, that of man is summed up in authority, as Pius XII explained: Husbands, you have been invested with authority. In your home, each of you is the leader, with all the duties and responsibilities that title entails. Do not hesitate, then, to exercise that authority; do not abdicate these duties; do not flee from these responsibilities. Do not let laziness, carelessness, selfishness, and pastimes make you let go of the rudder of the ship of family entrusted to your care. It is a lofty mission that supposes many qualities, including strength of character, self-control, prudence, kindness, decisiveness, and a sense of duty. By analogy with the human body, if the mother is the heart of the family, the father is the head. Similarly, it is up to men rather than to women to exercise the important responsibilities outside the home in politics or in the business world. The second consequence of the divine plan concerns specific qualities. As the man has a different role from that of the woman, God has given him different qualities. Ordinarily, we fi nd that men are endowed with a certain height of THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org view, thoughtful and logical judgment, a sense of the abstract and universal. As nature does nothing by chance, these qualities allow them to exercise their leadership role well. As for women, God gave them complementary qualities: more than men, they are endowed with a keen sensibility, tenderness, intuition, tact, and a flair for detail. These qualities allow the woman to fulfill her maternal mission. Feminism, seeking equality at all costs, wants to erase all differences between men and women, not only in terms of dress, by imposing pants for women, but also socially and professionally. It is unthinkable, say the feminists, that some professions should be reserved for men, and others for women. Yet our Lord chose only men to be priests. This is explained by the fact that the priesthood is a function of authority in the Church. It will be easily recognized that some physically demanding jobs such as movers, legionaries, or firefighter are specifically masculine because men are stronger than women physically. In contrast, motherhood is reserved for women, and all related crafts are better performed by women, because the care of young children requires love, insight, and sensitivity, areas where women are superior to men. Think, for example, of midwives and kindergarten teachers. Note also that there are more women teachers than men teachers, especially of kindergarten and elementary school. So let us admire the harmony of God’s work. But who says harmony says order, and therefore hierarchy and inequality. In the family, the man is the head, and his wife is his companion, not his servant. By her specific qualities, she brings her husband a precious enrichment that complements his masculine qualities. It is therefore essential that men should be manly and that women develop their feminine qualities. Only on these conditions will the natural and divine order be preserved, and thus the family and society will survive. We must emphasize the differences because one of the vices of our time is to seek simplification in uniformity. The disorder of our time consists in the tendency towards a society without classes, beings without a specific nature, life without rules, and humanity without distinctions. In contrast, the society we desire to build is richly differentiated and distinctly hierarchical. It would be impossible to paint a pretty picture were the red not different from the blue. It would be equally impossible to play beautiful music were all notes of the same pitch. Imagine what would happen to us if all the veterinarians decided to be as much as possible like plumbers, and vice versa. Veterinarians would seek to heal animals with the techniques of welding and drainage! Such egalitarianism would not benefit either animals or plumbing. No society can afford to tolerate the idea that animals and plumbing are substantially the same. No society can afford to tolerate the idea that men and women are substantially the same. The more feminine women are and the manlier men are, the better we shall get the genuine, vital order that is the foundation of human happiness. (Source: Fr. Bernard de Lacoste, La Porte Latine) QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 41 Fr. Peter R. Scott, FSSPX What is a Requiem Mass? Masses in the Church’s calendar all take their names from the first words of the Introit, which is the first part of the Proper which is sung. Thus it is that the Mass from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary is called Salve, sancta parens, that for the Third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete, and that for the Fourth Sunday of Lent Laetare. All the Masses that are specifically offered up for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed, whether they be funeral Masses, or the Masses for All Souls’ Day, or anniversary Masses, or the daily Mass for the faithful departed, have the same Gregorian Propers, the Introit of which begins “Requiem aeternam.” Hence they are all called Requiem Masses, although each of the six different Masses has different readings and prayers, begging in a variety of ways for the eternal rest of the departed souls now suffering in Purgatory. They are characterized by the use of black vestments. It is very sad for the poor souls, the suffering of whose separation from God on account of their sins is represented by black. It is also a betrayal of the charity upon which they depend that the liturgical revolution of 1969 did away with Requiem Masses altogether, and this despite the condemnation by Pope Pius XII, as recently as 1947, of those who “wish to radically suppress black from the liturgical colors” (Mediator Dei ). The Church requires that a priest celebrate a Requiem Mass in the case of funerals, and on All Souls’ Day. At other times they are optional, but may be said, according to the rubrics, such as for anniversaries, or the daily Mass for the faithful departed on ferial days. However, it is not only Requiem Masses that are offered up for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed. Every Mass is offered for this intention, and it is a part of the General Fruits of every Mass that it is offered up to obtain the relief of the temporal punishment of the suffering souls in Purgatory, as is specifically prayed for in the Canon of the Mass at the Memento for the faithful departed. In addition, the Mass of the liturgical day that a priest celebrates every day can be offered up for the repose of one or more departed souls, and frequently is. When this special intention is requested of a priest, this intention obtains the Ministerial Fruit of the Mass, namely the effect of impetration, propitiation and satisfaction which comes from a priest applying the Mass to the special intentions that are requested of him. When a priest receives a donation, or Mass stipend, he takes upon himself, in justice, the obligation of applying the Ministerial Fruit for the particular intention of the person who offers the stipend. The Ministerial Fruit can be applied either to the living or to the dead, or to both. This fruit depends upon the sacrifice of the Mass itself, and the intention of the priest in applying it. It does not essentially depend upon the rubrics or ceremonies followed. Thus it is not essential to the ministerial fruit that the Mass offered up be a Requiem Mass. It is for this reason that “the theologians commonly teach that the obligation of celebrating a Mass for the living can be satisfied by a Requiem Mass, and that the obligation of celebrating for the faithful departed can be satisfied by a Mass in honor of a saint” (Prummer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis, III, 193-194). This being said, when a priest accepts a Mass stipend, he implicitly agrees to accept the particular conditions under which that stipend is given, at least under pain of venial sin. Consequently if a priest accepts to celebrate a Requiem Mass, rather than simply to celebrate a Mass for the repose of a particular soul, then he is bound to celebrate it as a Requiem Mass. The faithful should be mindful, though, that they make it very difficult for the priest if they ask him to celebrate a Requiem Mass, and this only for an accidental gain of some additional prayers for the poor souls. For one, the rubrics frequently forbid it, and secondly it makes it very difficult if the priest has to celebrate Mass for a community or parish, in which for the common good he is bound to celebrate the Mass of the liturgical day. Consequently, when Masses are offered for the repose of the faithful departed, the faithful ought not to ask for Requiem Masses unless they first of all check with the priest that he is able to celebrate them as such, as he will willingly do for anniversaries of death, for example. Should I attend the New Mass when I cannot travel to attend the traditional Mass? The answer to this question is fundamental to our understanding of the crisis in the Church. The answer that will be given by the priests who celebrate under the 2007 Motu Proprio of Pope Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, is quite clear. The New Mass is the “ordinary” form of the Roman rite, and the traditional Mass is the “extraordinary form.” While a person might have a personal preference for one or the other, such a personal preference does not exempt him from the general law of the Church making the assistance at Mass on Sundays an obligation in conscience. Such can be the only logical answer of those priests and communities approved by the bishops and post-con- www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 42 ciliar Rome, but who celebrate the traditional Mass. However, the answer to this question from a priest who celebrates the traditional Mass in virtue of the perpetual right guaranteed by the Papal Bull Quo Primum of Saint Pius V (1570) will be quite different. Such a priest will clearly be free to answer the truth, namely that the New Mass of Paul VI is a compromise on the principles of Faith, in particular undermining belief in the divinity of Christ, in the Real Presence, and in the propitiatory value of the sacrifice of the Mass; that it is a compromise that attempts to fuse together some (not all) Catholic externals with a neo-protestant and neo-modernist way of thinking and acting. If you, a traditional Catholic, assist at the traditional Mass, it is not because of personal preference for an old-fashioned “extraordinary” form. It is because you want to keep the Faith, live the Faith, sanctify your soul and go to Heaven, and because you know that the traditional Mass, hallowed by 17 continuous centuries of use by saints, is the most powerful means to do this that God has given to His Church. If you were to go to the New Mass when unable to travel to the traditional Mass, you would risk losing your Faith, you would be scandalized by the disrespect for God made man in the Blessed Sacrament, and you would not only fail to grow in the Faith and in the love of God, but would be in grave danger of bitterness and cynicism about a Church that has become so lukewarm as to allow such an abuse on such a widespread basis. Consequently, for the love of Jesus who died for our sins, who lives in the Blessed Sacrament, always interceding in our behalf, do not participate in the New Mass. All the moral theologians say that the positive laws of the Church (such as attendance at Sunday Mass) do not oblige under grave inconvenience. That is why a person is not obliged to travel more than one hour to get to Sunday Mass. One hour travel time is considered a grave inconvenience. In this case, the grave inconvenience is the participation in a liturgy that is offensive to God, and quite simply evil, deliberately deprived of the beauty, goodness, truth, integrity and holiness that characterize all the prayers and ceremonies of the true Catholic Mass. Fr. Peter Scott was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. After assignments as seminary professor, U.S. 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. Catholic Contraception? (continued from p. 43) of periodic continence, or Natural Family Planning: a) It must be done for serious reasons. b) Both parties need to mutually and freely agree to use it. c) The danger of sin must be avoided for both parties. d) It can only be practiced for the duration of these serious reasons. 3) The serious reasons given by the Pope are medical (e.g., the mother’s health is at risk), eugenic (e.g., the health of the child), economic (e.g., if the family can’t afford to feed another child, as may be the case in third world countries), or social (e.g., the prolonged absence of one parent). THE ANGELUS • June 2011 www.angeluspress.org One should remember that Pope Pius XII warned the medical world and priests of the danger of falling into an “unjust and inappropriate” propaganda in favor of these so-called “methods.” Perhaps the Pope said this because the prolonged regulating of private life by the calendar engenders a sort of contraceptive mentality, where children are not really welcomed and where parents can do away with their natural responsibilities and turn to pleasure. Christian couples would gain tranquility of conscience by seeking the advice of a prudent confessor in doubtful cases or hard circumstances since nemo judex in causa sua–no man is the judge of his own case. A priest can provide an objective perspective about the reality of one’s circumstances. Also, in all medical questions, which fre- quently involve the psychological fragility of the parents, the advice of a competent medical professional seems both mandatory and wise. In any event, one must remember that the rule is a large family, and exceptions are only that. Of course, the modern world has made certain things more difficult than they were in previous times, but let us remember the advice of Pius XII: This teaching of Ours has nothing to do with Manichaeism and Jansenism, as some would have people believe in order to justify themselves. It is only a defense of the honor of Christian matrimony and of the personal dignity of the married couple. The Pastor’s Corner, www.sspx.org THELASTWORD 43 Catholic Contraception? Y ouCat, a version of the New Catechism designed for the youth, was intended as a major tool in the Church’s approach to the secular world. It was touted on Vatican Radio recently as a “young and user-friendly” way for young people to learn how to answer common secular objections to unpopular Catholic teaching on topics such as contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. The problem is that YouCat, originally written in German, has been poorly translated. The Italian version contains errors on the Church’s teachings about euthanasia and contraception, and the French edition has other errors. On the specific matter of contraception, the Italian edition answers “yes” to the question: “Can a Christian couple have recourse to contraceptive methods?” The Italian publisher will be recalling the book and correcting the error. But are we dealing only with a mere translation error or are we pursuing a slippery road which the Roman authorities started long ago? A Roman document, in 1997, directed to confessors on matters of conjugal morality, shows a weakening of positions since Humanae Vitae in practical advice given to penitents who use contraception. Not only does it favor personal conscience and “good faith” over the Church’s teaching, but it advises giving absolution to those who contracept without repentance. Then, the papal book Light of the World sent different vibes from what has always understood on the same subject of contraception. It maintains the prohibitions of Humanae Vitae, “but finding ways allowing to live by them today is another story…expressing all this on the pastoral, theological and intellectual context of the present research on sexuality and anthropology, in such a way that it will become more comprehensible.” Here we simply understand nothing, except that the Church seems afraid to tell the truth! Returning to YouCat, the English-language version says that Catholic couples are entitled to plan the size of their families by “regulating conception” and that the Church “recommends” Natural Family Planning. With this seemingly innocent question, we find raised the spectrum of the modern ideal “Catholic” family: two kids, two cars, two houses, two dogs! Sounds like the good old life of the Protestant couple of 40 years ago! So what has happened since then? It is no mystery that the modern Catholic pastoral approach to couples is to force Natural Family Planning literature on them as soon as possible. The couples are told that they have to be responsible in raising a family and consider the size, etc. We are told that this is quite legitimate in God’s eyes and that there is absolutely nothing wrong about a couple using their marital rights “responsibly.” Is this not in line with the inversion of the marriage ends, between procreation and mutual help, which was made official with the new Code of Canon Law in 1983? Yet things are not so simple. In fact, the marriage act is licit only if, in the couple’s intention, it is open to new life. The practice of N F P can beget a mentality which is foreign to the Catholic outlook on life and the spirit of sacrifice. The Church has universally and constantly encouraged the growth of large families, which are the gardens of many vocations. Indeed, the crisis in vocations is due in great part to the dwindling of the Catholic family spirit. There may certainly be hard times in a couple’s life, which tempts one to limit the burden of mouths to feed, but there is also the alternative of abstinence, always the surest and best way, which one must acquire by a proper education even from puberty. The main magisterial document to be used as a reference here is the Address to Midwives, given by Pope Pius XII on October 29, 1951. Here are a few principles he establishes: 1) The Pope warns married people who are able to have children against the habitual practice of sensual self-gratification with the intention of excluding offspring. Marriage grants rights to spouses to satisfy natural inclinations but also imposes the function of providing for the conservation of the human race. Hence, young people who are unwilling to have children should not marry. 2) There are four conditions which must be met before one may consider the moral possibility (continued on p. 42) www.angeluspress.org www.angeluspress.org THE ANGELUS • June 2011 Any lad who reads this book is bound to be better and to have a better understanding of the great privilege that is his. Fr. Thomas O’Donnell, C.S.C. Director of the Knights of the Altar Six Our Lady s Boy of the Altar use you d of you beca really prou she sees you mother is happy when I’ll bet your e her very warmer spot boy. You mak have won a are an altar Deep Mass. You an altar boy. priest at Holy use you are assisting the you are beca t use er’s hear y also beca in your moth you are happ d of you. heart I’ll bet and so prou down in your are an altar er so happy you moth use making your loves you beca . Our Lady ly mother even more If your earth en loves you her in heav boys. boy, your Mot much? g for altar loves you so special likin ed Mother has a very Son. And why our Bless her divine Do you know ne who loves Lord. Of anyo our she loves altar boy loves First of all, in the that every early up me get tell to you need not he is willing responses, . That is why learns the Latin course he does and makes , and why he serve Mass rs’ meetings, morning to e. fully to serve comes so faith boy must mak altar an h and why he whic r sacrifices the many othe FIVE Don’ t Say It The other day I had a little experience which did my heart a lot of good. As I was going around the back of the church on my way to the garage, I heard the closing sentences of an argume nt. Joe was telling two of his companions what he thought about the languag e they were using. Joe is quite a boy— one of the biggest and the strongest we have among the Knights of the Altar. “It isn’t cool, and it’s not right for an altar boy to be talking like that,” Joe was telling his friends. His two friends looked at Joe to see whether or not he was serious. But the look on his face soon convinced them, and they didn’t have much to say in reply, for all the boys respect Joe very much. It seems that almost every boy runs into a period in his life when he thinks he is showing his manhood by using Letters to an Altar Boy by Fr. David Rosage STK# 8497 120 pp. Softcover. Color photographs. $15.95 Through letters penned by a priest to his altar server, Fr. Rosage explains how serving at the Holy Sacrifice is the greatest of all honors and the most serious job at the parish. But this job demands great sacrifice. Written in an easy flowing style, intelligible even to very young boys. “This is a great book! I bought it for my son who has just started serving.” “I wish I had had this book when I was a boy.” “There are practical pointers about what to do with your hands when you serve, making a thanksgiving after Mass, keeping silent, seeing Mary as the mother of altar boys…I found this book charming!” Angelus Press “Viva Christo Rey!” Prepare yourself for one of the greatest catholic war stories of all time. The average American’s understanding of Mexican history is incomplete. American Catholics, however, should know Mexican history because much of Mexican history is Catholic history. In the early part of the 20th Century, Masonic, Marxist revolutionaries, who were nothing less than the enemies of Jesus Christ, seized control of the government of Mexico and attempted to destroy the Church. They very nearly succeeded. In the midst of the terror, courageous priests clandestinely made their way through the countryside dispensing the sacraments and ministering to the Mexican faithful. Many received the crown of martyrdom; the most famous is Blessed Miguel Pro. As these holy priests fulfilled the duties of their divine vocations, an army of laymen rose up and challenged the godless government. They were the Cristeros. Their battle cry was “Viva Cristo Rey!” Their tale is one of the greatest Catholic war stories of all time. 1 CD. 44 minutes. STK# 8499✱ $9.95 Christopher Check graduated from Rice University with a degree in Literature before serving for seven years as a Marine Corps officer in expeditions in the Far East and the Persian Gulf. He is the executive Vice President of the Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois. The Official Liber Usualis STK# 8346 $95.00 Leatherette Liber Cover — Hard Cover STK# 8501H $45.00 2010 pages, 7½” x 5”, black hardbound with gold-embossing on sewn spine, red page edging, plus 7 ribbons. Leatherette Liber Cover — Soft Cover STK# 8501 $40.00 High quality, handmade, vinyl covers made specifically to fit our Liber Usualis. Protect your costly investment to ensure your book lasts a lifetime. Excellent quality and extremely durable. Fits and protects the Liber Usualis perfectly. Angelus Press Square Notes The ultimate student's guide to learning Gregorian chant! Grouped into five sections (Symbols, Simple Neums, Rhythm, Special Neums, and Modes), Square Notes clarifies the basics of Gregorian ch-ant. Each fundamental of chant is covered with a short explanation followed by written exercises to be done in the workbook — fill in the blank, identifying notes, writing notation, drawing rhythmic waves, and much more. Square Notes: A Workbook in Gregorian Chant 118 pages. Large format softcover. STK# 8011✱ $14.95 The Audiobook Open Letter to Confused Catholics ½ hours). 6 C D’s (over 6 9.95 STK# 8477 $2 “For over a decade, I have tried to explain to my sister why I attend the traditional Latin Mass. For over a decade, she has refused to discuss the matter with me. Last month, I sent her this audiobook and said a prayer. She called me up and said: ‘I listened to the entire book, beginning to end. I finally understand. Thank you for opening my eyes.’” Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Archbishop Lefebvre’s popular study of the crisis in the Church written for all to understand. Covers the Mass, Sacraments, Priesthood, the New Catechisms, Ecumenism, etc., and demonstrates the new spirit in the Church which has caused doubt and confusion among the faithful. Has served as a beacon for thousands; certain to become a classic. Essential listening for Catholics everywhere. The crisis of the Church explained in terms any Catholic can understand. SHIPPING & HANDLING 5-10 days 2-4 days USA For eign Up to $50.00 $50.01 to $100.00 Over $100.00 $4.00 $6.00 FREE 25% of subtotal Up to $50.00 $50.01 to $100.00 Over $100.00 $8.00 $10.00 $8.00 FLAT FEE! ($10.00 minimum) 48 Contiguous States only. UPS cannot ship to PO Boxes. angelus Press 2915 Forest Avenue Kansas City, Missouri 64109 www.angeluspress.org ● 1-8 00-9 6 6-73 37 Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.