“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A Catholic Primer on Art
Beauty and Its Variations
The Beauty and Goodness
of All Things
Ecclesiastical Architecture

March - April 2013

A Catholic
Primer on Art
Art and faith: a combination that has
accompanied the Church for more than 2,000
years, a combination that still today we must
value more in our daily lives as Catholics.
The confluence of the supernatural Faith God
revealed to men and art as a human expression
of belief, adoration, and wonder before God,
His Beauty and His infinite Love is essential for
Catholic life.
May this issue of The Angelus help to disclose the
beauty of art and faith!

Letter
from the
Publisher

Every day at Mass, we priests pray part of Psalm 26 at the Lavabo: “O Lord, I
have loved the beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.” St.
Augustine tells us that the house spoken of here is a symbol of the Church. But if we
should love the beauty of the Church, what does this mean?
This issue is dedicated to art and architecture, which intrinsically involve notions
such as beauty and therefore also goodness and truth. Though we don’t pretend to
exhaust such an expansive topic, we provide herein some fundamental principles to
help us appreciate our heritage, understand some grasp of the exterior manifestations of the Faith, and the glory of God which inspires it all.
As always, there are extremes to avoid; on the one hand, a purely subjective
valuation of art and beauty that reduces everything to “the eye of the beholder.” On
the other hand, we must beware of an oversimplification of equating beauty with
truth or goodness. At the same time, we give some glimpse of the various styles of
Catholic art and architecture, each style of which alone could fill several issues with
their unique histories and philosophies. It is our hope that these pages inspire you to
read and study further!

In Christ the King,
Fr. Arnaud Rostand, Publisher

March-April 2013
Volume XXXVI, Number 2
Publisher
Fr. Arnaud Rostand
Editor
Mr. James Vogel
Assistant Editor
Mrs. Lesly De Piante
Editorial Assistant
Miss Anne Stinnett
Editorial Team
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud
Fr. Leo Boyle
Fr. Pierre Duverger
Design and Layout
credo.creatie
(Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Mr. Simon Townshend
Miss Mary Werick
Director of Marketing and Sales
Mr. Mark Riddle

		
U.S.
Foreign Countries

Subscription Rates
1 year 2 years
3 years
$35.00 $65.00 $100.00
$55.00 $105.00 $160.00

Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: A Catholic Primer on Art
– Beauty and Its Variations
– Pankalia: The Beauty and Goodness of All Things
– Ecclesiastical Architecture
– John Paul II and the Genesis of Confusion
– Stairway to Heaven

6
10
14
22
29

Faith and Morals
– Social Doctrine: Vindication of the American Dream
– Acts of the Magisterium: On Dante
– Liturgy: The Spirit of Eastertide

33
38
41

Spirituality
– Spirituality: Art and the Spiritual Life

44

Christian Culture
– History: St. Ambrose
– Education: On Literature

48
52

(inc. Canada and Mexico)

All payments must be in U.S. funds only.

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Online subscriptions: $20.00/year. To subscribe visit:
www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access
back issues 14 months and older. All subscribers to the print
version of the magazine have full access to the online version.
The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published bi-monthly
under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary,
Queen of Angels. Publication office is located at
PO Box 217, St. Marys, KS 66536.
PH (816) 753-3150; FAX (816) 753-3557.
Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, MO.
Manuscripts and letters to the editor are welcome
and will be used at the discretion of the editors.
The authors of the articles presented here are solely
responsible for their judgments and opinions.
Postmaster sends address changes to the address above.
©2013 by Angelus Press. Official Publication of the
Priestly Society of Saint Pius X for the United States and Canada

– Lives of the Saints: Garcia Moreno to the Altars!
– Family Life: The Importance of Your Child’s Confirmation

56
63

– Questions and Answers
– Church and World
– Theological Studies
– Letters to the Editor
– The Last Word

66
69
73
83
87

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art

Beauty and
Its Variations
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

Few notions of philosophy have been more
muddled and distorted and contradicted
than that of beauty. For the moderns, the
beautiful is devoid of any objectivity, according
to the statement that “beauty is in the eye
of the beholder.” Yet, this view should be
counterbalanced by the existence of factors
which, to most people, judge some things
beautiful and others ugly. Do we not all enjoy and
rest in the face of a gracious sunset or a chain of
snow-capped mountains?
St. Augustine was hinting at the reality of
beauty when he raised the following question:
“I shall ask whether things are beautiful
because they bring pleasure or rather they
bring pleasure because they are beautiful. And
doubtlessly, they will answer that they bring
pleasure because they are beautiful.”
6

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Pleasurable Knowledge
How can we define beauty? The Greeks
identified it with health, strength, virtue, and
beautiful appearance. For them, the desire
of physical beauty, as much as of artistic and
virtuous beauty, was essential in education and
culture. It is a property of the divinity because
beauty is associated with, and manifests,
perfection. Aristotle after Plato digs into the real
properties of aesthetic and moral beauty when
he defines it as what is agreeable and desirable in
itself.
St. Thomas most simply and wisely calls
the beautiful “what gives pleasure on sight.” It
involves two things: vision and pleasure. Firstly
and mainly, beauty is an act of knowledge, a
vision at first sight. This knowledge of the true

involves the mind, but also, most importantly
for us, the two most cognitive senses of sight
and hearing, which refer particularly to the
beautiful as is readily seen in the Fine Arts, say,
of sculpture and music. Secondly, beauty brings
in joy; not any joy, but the joy obtained from that
knowledge. Beauty is connected with the ‘true’
as known, but under the aspect of pleasurable.
This is the difference between receiving news
from a plain teller, and the same news eloquently
described by an actor. In the first case, we have
the truth of the news told, in the second we relish
the beauty of the tale.
The ugly breeds restlessness, disorder, and
upset; the beautiful causes peace and joy. And
for an object to delight the mind, it needs to
be perfectly proportioned to the knower. Said
otherwise, for a beautiful object to produce these
soothing effects, it needs the three conditions
of integrity (the presence of all members, say,
in a statue of Jupiter), of harmony of the parts
(the proportion which brings order and unity,
say, the balance of the musical instruments in
a symphony), and of clarity. Why clarity, why
brightness? Because light beautifies, whereas
darkness and opacity are ugly and dreary. A thing
is not beautiful simply because it has light, but
because this light is delightful and pleasing. For
the Scholastics, “beauty is the splendor of form
shining on the proportioned parts of matter.” For
instance, a color is only beautiful when it marks
the triumph of the form over matter.

The Varieties of Beauty
These basic considerations on beauty
already give us a sense of the great variety
of the presence of the beautiful in things and
its grasp by men. A beautiful color washes
the eye, and a brisk Mozart theme flatters the
ear, but the mind registers the brilliance and
rejoices in it: we cannot but love it. What is
beautiful is of necessity good, as the Greek word
kaloskagathos—pretty ’n good—was coined to
mark this twin property of things. The object
is at once delightful, lovable, and pleasurable.
Even in these cases, their beauty comes from

their relation to the mind reading in them that
clarity of form. The latter shines on matter in
most varied ways, which Maritain explains in Art
and Scholasticism (London: Sheed and Ward):
“At one time, it is the sensible brilliance of colour
or tone, at another the intelligible clarity of an
arabesque, a rhythm or an harmonious balance,
an activity or a movement, or again the reflection
upon things of some human or divine thought, but
above all is the profound splendour of the soul
shining through, of the soul which is the principle
of life and animal energy or the principle of
spiritual life, of pain, and passion. There is also
a more exalted splendour, the splendour of
Grace, which the Greeks never knew.” Compare
for example the photos of Charles de Foucault
prior to his conversion and his later years, and
especially his fiery but loving eyes.
If the beautiful is found in many different
forms according to how different objects affect
the diverse senses and reach the understanding
mind, it is going to be received by men, and
that reception is going to be greatly affected
by the viewer or hearer. If anyone is able to
appreciate the dance and contours of colours in
Raphael’s school of philosophy, not everyone is
ready to tackle the subtleties of the Sonnets of
Shakespeare. Beauty, especially expressed in
the Fine Arts, is an acquired taste, most valuable
and profitable when gained, but easily missed by
a vast majority, who long for easy entertainment
and are unprepared to unlock the greatness of
cultural masterpieces of all time.
Because it is found in such varied things,
beauty, the offspring of goodness and truth, is
analogous on a par with being, truth or life. It
is so analogous and flexible that it can be truly
said of God, Supremely Beautiful, of Whose
face things on earth and angels in heaven are
only a poor reflection. The mind rejoices in
the beautiful because in it, it finds itself again.
This allows the soul of a St. Francis of Assisi
to return thanks to their Author, speaking of
“Brother Sun” and “Sister Poverty,” or as St.
Ignatius talking to the flower: “Little rose, keep
quiet! I know Whom you want to talk about!”
Beauty of itself carries the soul beyond creation.
>
The romantic poet Baudelaire speaks of this
7

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
insatiable thirst for something beyond: “It is
that immortal instinct for the beautiful which
makes us consider the world and its pageants as
a glimpse of, a correspondence with, Heaven.”
That is why anything truly beautiful stirs some
strange, nostalgic inner nerve whereby we wish
that time would stay still forever and allow us to
contemplate and rest and delight in this timeless
contemplation, an anticipation of heaven.

Beauty in the Fine Arts
Beauty is also intimately related to arts. Some
beauty is to be found in nature outside things
artificial, but any real art—we are speaking
of the ‘Fine Arts’—aims at the production of
beauty. Poignant happiness, found in the ecstatic
sentiment of the contemplative, is typical of
beauty when seen. This is somewhat produced
in art which concentrates truth and goodness:
the riches and intensity of associations involved
in a compressed statement. Just think of the
luscious harmonies enshrined in the lively
themes of Bach’s fugues, happily mixing order
and originality. Or think of the melodious line
of St. Augustine’s Confessions (Book I, Ch. 1):
“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts
are restless till they rest in Thee,” which evokes
much more than the plain catechism answer:
“God is man’s last end who alone can give him
happiness.”
This artistic exposure which shows us a great
deal of truth in a simple glance awakens in us
the desire to see all truth in a simple glance,
which is reserved to the mystics. To saints like
Francis and Thomas Aquinas, but not to artists,
were reserved to taste the sweetness of God and
therefore to judge all things “as rubbish”: not only
the Summa Theologica, but the Parthenon and
Our Lady of Chartres, the Sixtine Chapel and the
Mass in B minor—these are all rubbish destined
to be burned on the Last Day. But the “rubbish” of
the saints is the golden straw of earthly pilgrims
in need of some human consolation.
In fact, art is meant to lead the intellect
towards its complete object and happiness.
Thus, artists and works of art are to be classified
8

The Angelus

March - April 2013

according to their civilizing ability, which
corresponds to their degree of spirituality, and
ultimately to the nature of our ‘god.’ Said in Fra
Angelico’s words: “Art demands great tranquility,
and to paint the things of Christ, the artist must
live with Christ.” Great art is always an icon, a
window opened to the invisible world. Speaking
of Christian art in general and of liturgy in
particular, Maritain has this to say: “There is
nothing more beautiful than a High Mass, a dance
before the Ark in slow motion, more majestic
than the advance of the hosts of Heaven. And
yet, the Church, in the Mass, is not searching
for beauty or decorative motifs or a means of
touching the heart. Her sole object is worship
and union with her Saviour, and from this loving
worship an excess of beauty overflows.”
Léon Bloy made a bold statement about the
muses: “Art is an aboriginal parasite of the skin
of the first serpent.” He was alluding to the
foolishness of snobbish or estranged productions.
He might also be referring to some periods, like
the Renaissance, in which art was cultivated for
its own sake. This raises the question of morality
in art. Is art for art’s sake or is it a means for
propaganda of a social or a religious doctrine?
Perhaps the best refutation of the amorality of art
is the Gospel parables, in which Our Lord uses
great poetry to lead souls to the knowledge of the
ultimate end. And, although the artist may use
very scary portraits, like Iago in Shakespeare’s
Othello, or the twisted bodies of Michelangelo’s
Last Judgment, they are necessary elements
in the entire frame, beautiful as a whole, which
describes the struggle of good vs. evil. Such
production is both pleasurable and educational,
as all great art should be.

Fr. Dominique Bourmaud has spent the past 26 years teaching at the Society
seminaries in America, Argentina, and Australia. He is presently stationed at
St. Vincent’s Priory, Kansas City, where he is in charge of the priests’ training
program.

89pp – Softcover – STK# 3072 – $10.95

I Accuse the Council
“In the discussions which appear in these pages, nothing less than
the Catholic Faith and the future of so-called Christian nations
is at stake.” — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Now back in print with a beautiful new collectible cover, this excellent work is a compilation of
twelve interventions made by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre during the Second Vatican Council. With
prophetic foresight, these twelve official statements warn against the modern errors, which have
sadly, like the smoke of Satan, entered the Church, plus additional statements on the Council itself.
Interventions on:
- The Orientation of the Council
- The Purpose of the Council
- Collegiality
- The Role of Bishops
- Ecumenism
- Religious Liberty
- The Danger of Ambiguous Expressions
- Missionary Activity
- The Church in the Modern World
- Much More!

www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art

Pankalia
The Beauty and Goodness of All Things

by Dr. Peter Chojnowski

I remember distinctly attending a lecture when I was a graduate
student in New York City. It was a lecture by Prof. John Caputo on “postmodernism.” The only part of the lecture that I recall is when Prof. Caputo
used an example given by Friedrich Nietzsche, the great Nihilist of the 19th
century, to explain his own philosophical view of the world. As regards
the “predicament” of Man in this world, Nietzsche said that, “man shouts
out his greatest hopes and dreams to the universe…and the universe turns
towards him, and yawns.” In other words, the universe in its very being has
no meaning, no purpose, no value. Since the professor was agreeing with
this nihilistic outlook on the world, someone asked him why he was against
apartheid—the social and political organization of South Africa at the time.
Since he could not really argue that some state of things was “bad” in any
kind of objective way, he had to admit that he simply “chose” it as “better”
because he simply felt it was better.
The Nietzschean valueless, purposeless and meaningless universe is
what necessarily results from portraying the Creator God as a mere “idea”
that Modern Man has “killed”; Dios o Nada (God or Nothing), as St. Teresa
of Avila said. Before the 19th century, the last time there was a full-scale
10

The Angelus

March - April 2013

1

Umberto Eco, The
Aesthetics of Thomas
Aquinas, trans. Hugh
Bredin (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press,
1988), pp. 21-22.

2

Ibid., p. 20.

assault on the Catholic understanding of the created universe as good and
beautiful in all of its parts was in the 13th century when the Albigensian
heretics sought to strip the material creation of goodness and, instead,
portray it as necessarily and essentially evil. Is a “yawning” universe much
different? The response at the time on the part of St. Thomas Aquinas, who’s
Dominican Order was intentionally directed to oppose the heretics, was
to take up the theme of the transcendental properties of being in order
to explain why all things, in so far as they exist, have an inner value and
fullness. For St. Thomas, a proper appreciation for reality showed that there
was an indispensable union between being and value.1

The Transcendental Properties
When St. Thomas Aquinas, and the great philosophers of the Western
tradition, looked at “being” or “all that exists,” they looked at it with realistic
and objectivist minds that are not prejudiced by an ideological commitment
to remove the Sovereign God from the universe. The “transcendental
properties” are like the colored light that we would see if we shined a white
light into a prism. The single white stream of light is broken up into rays of
the various colors of the rainbow. The light is the same; the prism simply
allows the light to reveal other aspects or “modes” of that same one stream
of light.2 Such is the case with the transcendental properties of being:
11

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art

3

St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth,
trans. James V. McGlynn
and Robert Milligan
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing, 1994), I, Ic.

4

Eco, Aesthetics, p. 22.

5

St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae,
I, Q. 5, Art. 4 ad 1. Cf.
Jacques Maritain, Art and
Scholasticism and the
Frontiers of Poetry, trans.
Joseph W. Evans (Notre
Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1974), p.
23.

6

Aquinas, ST, I, Q. 39, Art. 8.
Cf. Eco, Aesthetics, p. 103.

7

Ibid., p. 117.

oneness, goodness, truth, and I would say beauty. They add nothing to being
itself, they are not like other attributes like the shine on the newly waxed car
or the frost on a rose—these attributes only characterize some very definite
things; the transcendental properties can be discerned in every being and
are found in every being that is, insofar as it is. Everything, insofar as it
exists, can be grasped by an intellect—hence being is true; all can be desired
as fulfilling and, hence, is good; everything, insofar as it is a thing, has an
inner unity and self-identity—and is, therefore, one. Everything, insofar as
it is.3 Since these aspects can be recognized concerning beings that exist
around us, we can infer that such characteristics, stripped of their limiting
imperfections, exist in God who made all things ex nihilo (from nothing).
God is not good, but rather Goodness-Itself.4
When we consider the question of the status of beauty as a transcendental
property of being, a quality and characteristic which all things would have
insofar as they exist, the answer would seem to be clear-cut; St. Thomas,
when commenting on the transcendental properties of Aristotle and the
Arab Commentators on Aristotle in his De Veritate, lists the properties as:
the one, a thing, a being, something, the good, and the true. Everything that
is real has the unity of being one, it is potentially desirable (good), it can be
known by a mind (true), it is a thing, a being, and it is something. What about
beauty? Can it be that one of the most uplifting perfections of God, that He
is, as St. Augustine calls Him in the Confessions, Beauty ever ancient and
ever new, not be manifested in His Creation wherever His creative finger
touched? To push it to its extreme, just like St. Thomas had no problem
speaking of Lucifer as “good” insofar as he exists and, thereby, participates
in an attribute of God, could we not say that everything is “beautiful” in so
far as it stands outside of nothingness and possesses what St. Thomas calls
the act of existence?

The Beauty of the Good and the
Good of the Beautiful
Being the realist that he was, when called upon to define the beautiful,
he always gave very common-sense definitions that were in accord with
universal human experience. Beauty is id quod visum placet, that which
when seen pleases,5 or beauty is that “which is brightly colored” (unde quae
habent colorem nitidum, pulchra esse dicuntur).6 How can beauty have a
more transcendent and ultimate character when it must be “seen”? Not only
must it be seen, but it must please when it is seen because of its suavitas
coloris, its pleasing color.7 How can beauty then apply to all things—many of
which do not please the eye—and to God, who cannot be seen by the human
eye as God?
The belief concerning the beauty of all things was a belief and sentiment
coming into the Middle Ages from many sources. First and foremost was the
Bible, in which the beauties of God’s creation were continually extolled. The
verse in the Book of Wisdom, “But thou hast ordered all things in measure,
and number, and weight” (11:21) inspired St. Augustine’s concepts of modus,
12

The Angelus

March - April 2013

8

Ibid., p. 23.

9

Pseudo-Dionysius, The
Divine Names, trans. C. E.
Rolt (New York: Macmillan,
1920), IV, 7.

10

St. Thomas Aquinas,
Commentary on The Divine
Names, IV, 8, cited in Eco,
Aesthetics, pp. 27-28.

11

St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth,
22, 2 ad 22.

12

St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa, I, Q. 16, Art. 4.

13

Ibid., I-II, Q. 27, Art. 3 ad 1.

forma, and ordo (dimension or quantity, form, and order), which appear
everywhere in medieval philosophy and theology, employed sometimes as a
definition of beauty and sometimes as a definition of the good.8
The philosophical works which provided St. Thomas Aquinas with his
opportunity to express his teaching on the beauty of all things and the close
affinity between the good and the beautiful were the prestigious writings of
a Syrian monk of the fifth century, so called Pseudo-Dionysius. According
to Dionysius’ The Divine Names, “The beautiful and the good are the same;
all beings desire the beautiful and the good with respect to every cause.
No being fails to partake of the beautiful and the good.”9 In his attempt
to explain Dionysius’ grand vision of a world universally partaking in the
power of the good and the beautiful, St. Thomas says in his Commentary,
“Everything that exists comes from beauty and goodness that is from God,
as from an effective principle. And things have their being in beauty and
goodness as if in a principle that preserves and maintains [what Thomistic
philosophy would call the Efficient Cause]. And they turn toward beauty and
goodness and desire them as their end [the Final Cause].…And all things are
and all things become because of beauty and goodness, and all things look to
them, as to an exemplary cause, which they possess as a rule governing their
activities.”10 So not only is the Creator of All Things explicitly identified
with the Good and the Beautiful, the good and the beautiful are principles
which preserve and maintain things, attract all things toward the fulfilling
goals that God has set before them, and govern all things by serving as a
model that governs their activities. Not only this. The good and the beautiful
are both characterized by their possession of two qualities, namely claritas
and consonantia (i.e., clarity or radiance, and right-proportion). These
are the primary attributes of the things we call beautiful, while also being
“included in the essential character of the good.”11
What is the difference then between the good and the beautiful as
transcendental properties that qualify and characterize all things insofar
as they exist? According to St. Thomas, “The beautiful and the good are
identical in the subject [i.e., within the beautiful and good things themselves].
Claritas and consonantia, which are sources of beauty, are also an aspect of
the good, insofar as they are effects of the Good [i.e., the Good Itself] which
creates and orders [emphasis mine]. Nonetheless, the beautiful and the good
differ conceptually [ratione], that is, according to the way in which they are
conceived, according to the chosen point of view.”12 “Whereas the good, being
what all things desire, properly relates to the satisfaction of appetite and
with a ‘goal’ towards which action moves, the beautiful refers to something,
the mere mental or visual apprehension of which gives pleasure [emphasis
mine].”13 While good things or, rather, the goodness of all things entices us
with promises of fulfillment and ultimate happiness, the beauty of all things,
shining with the light of God-given form and with the clarity of visual or
intellectual contours, beckons us be still and merely rejoice in the splendor
of form which we find in the other.

13

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art

Ecclesiastical
Architecture
by Dr. Marie-France Hilgar

From the fall of the Roman Empire, in A.D. 476,
until almost 1200, architecture followed a style
that we call Romanesque. Seven hundred years
is a long time, and art neither stands still nor
changes over night. In the beginning, architects
tried to imitate Roman architecture, but it
became more and more altered, especially in the
11th century, because of the Byzantine element.
We can distinguish two periods: the primordial,
or Latin Romanesque style from the 5th to 11th
centuries, and the secondary Roman style in the
11th and 12th centuries.

Roman Style
Few buildings remain from the first period.
Walls are thick and built of stones or bricks.
14

The Angelus

March - April 2013

At point of stress, at the arches for instance,
builders thicken the walls with piers, or
buttresses. The early churches were rather low,
simple structures. The thick walls were pierced
by small windows with round arched heads.
The columns in the interior and exterior were
heavy and squat. They supported awkward
capitals. A typical early Romanesque church
was approached through an atrium that was
surrounded by arcades of columns and round
arches. The church itself was entered through
the narthex, or porch. Inside the building, two or
four rows of columns formed three or five aisles
that ran the length of the interior, the center aisle,
the nave, being wider. Above the rows of columns
and arches defining the nave was usually
another arcade of arches. Above this was a row
of windows. This area of windows alternating

with wall places was known as the clerestory.
Above all was the roof itself. At the far end of the
nave was a semicircular apse, or sanctuary, in
front of which was the altar. In front of the apse,
short wings, or transepts, projected to the right
and left. The early Romanesque churches were
simple, sometimes with exposed wooden roofs.
In general, the exteriors were plain in design, and
except for arcades of columns and round arches,
had little decoration. At the sides, or jambs, of the
doors and windows, several receding columns
or round shafts carried semicircular arches.
Vestiges of primordial Romanesque style are not
numerous. St. Martin de Ligugé, a Benedictine
abbey founded in 361, still shows the 7th-century
wall with arcade and twin windows. Notre-Dame
de Nazareth Cathedral in Vaison-la-Romaine
goes back to the 6th or 7th century. The chevet
consists of an apse with a chapel supported by
round Roman capitals and column drums on
either side. In 1993 foundations going back to late
antiquity were laid bare west of the cathedral.
Other examples of primordial Romanesque
style include the church of Germigny-des-Prés,

erected at the beginning of the 9th century.1 The
Abbey of St. Philibert in Tournus went through
so many turmoils for so many centuries that in
960 a church was built that was going to be able
to withstand all invaders. Rarely has a church
completely built before 1120 remained intact.
St. Bénigne in Dijon was originally built in 535.
The crypt preserves its original layout, an inner
circle ringed by an arcade of eight columns, and
surrounded by another ring of sixteen columns
with a circular ambulatory that opens onto a
small rectangular chapel in which the relics of St.
Bénigne are venerated. There is also the Basilica
of St. Rémy in Reims where Clovis was baptized
in 496 and which was totally revamped in the
11th and 12th centuries.
The secondary Romanesque style flourished
in the 11th and 12th centuries. By then the flat
wooden roofs were replaced by barrel-vaults
of stone, vaults resembling half a cylinder.
Sometimes there were cross-vaults, where the
vaulting of the nave was broken into bays or
divisions. At each pier or cluster of columns
dividing a bay, a slender column went up to

Notre-Dame de Sénanque is a Cistercian abbey
near the village of Gordes in the department of the
Vaucluse in Provence. The Sénanque Abbey was
founded in 1148 under the patronage of Alfant,
bishop of Cavaillon, and Raymond Bérenger II,
Count of Provence, by Cistercian monks who
came from Mazan Abbey in the Ardèche.

15

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
the arched ceiling and supported a projecting
rib spanning the nave. Each bay of the ceiling
was further divided by diagonal cross arches, or
ribs. This new use of arches allowed for larger
churches to be built. Think Paray-le-Monial,
former monastery church of Notre-Dame,
Vézelay’s St. Madeleine, the early Mont St. Michel
where one arch in the arcades corresponds to
two gallery-arched windows above. The strongly
projected response extends to the edge of the
wooden barrel-vault, which looks out of place
above the nave. Also, think as well of the Abbayeaux-Hommes built by William the Conqueror,
where the exterior tall spires soar over clusters
of small ones, giving the church a vertical look;
and also Conques, Saint-Sernin, Saint-Nectaire,
Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, all built between 1065
to 1080.
Let us go back to Vézelay. It was founded in 858
by Gerard de Roussillon. The nave was rebuilt
immediately after a fire destroyed it in 1120.
Together with the narthex, which fits exactly to
the nave, there are thirteen bays. Cross-shaped
piers with engaged columns on all four sides

carry the under-arch which supports the arcades
and the transverse arches of the vaulting in both
the nave and aisles. Square responds demarcate
the semi-circular columns from the wall and
make the bay articulation clearer. A horizontal
course, which follows all the articulations, marks
the top of the first story. In the smooth wall
above, there are windows framed by the wall ribs
of the groin vaulting (a type of vaulting caused by
two equally large barrel-vaults crossing at right
angles; the angles formed by the intersecting
vaults is the groin).
The word “Gothic” is the name given to the
style of medieval architecture that prevailed for
about 300 years. The name was first used by the
builders of the Renaissance period to describe
what they considered to be a barbarous kind of
architecture. It was in memory of the Goths, who
never built anything but rather happily destroyed
everything in their way. So, at one time, “Gothic”
was a derisive term.

Transept of the Sénanque
Abbey-church, window and
ancient rosette of alabaster

16

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Light and Graceful Gothic
The distinguishing feature of the Gothic style
is the pointed arch. Gothic builders carried the
principle of forces in equilibrium, or dynamic
architecture, to a stage undreamed of by less
experienced Romanesque craftsmen. They
developed a light, graceful style. A Gothic
cathedral is composed of a skeleton structural
system, where slender piers of stone carry
light stone ribs to form a frame for the stone
vaults above. Piers and clustered columns soar
into the air, often for a hundred feet or more.
The weight of the vaulting is transmitted by
exterior arches, or flying buttresses, to piers
or vertical buttresses that extend up the sides.
These vertical buttresses often end in pinnacles
which add weight and solidity, and give an extra
decorative quality. The flying buttresses are a
mark of Gothic cathedrals. They were developed
in Gothic architecture as an external strut
system positioned above the roof structure of
the aisles. Since the walls no longer carried the
weight of heavy stone vaults, they could be made

much lighter. Gothic walls could be pierced
with many windows, and the windows could be
increased in size to fill much of the area between
the buttresses. With this freedom, came into
existence the beautiful stained-glass windows.
The plan of a Gothic cathedral is generally
the shape of a Latin cross. The short arms of the
cross are formed by the transepts which project
at right angles to the nave near the sanctuary.
The nave is usually placed in an east-to-west
direction, with the main entrance facing west.
The shape of the exterior of a Gothic cathedral
comes directly from the arrangement of the
interior. The long ridge of the steep roof extends
the length of the nave. The ridge of the transept
roof cuts squarely across, so that the two ridges
seen from above, form a cross. Just beneath
the roof of the nave, on the long side, are the
clerestory windows that light the nave. Below the
clerestory windows are the sloping roofs of the
side aisles. The main façade is usually flanked
by two towers, and between them is the main
entrance, richly sculptured, especially around
the doors.

Construction of Cologne Cathedral
commenced in 1248 and was halted in 1473,
leaving it unfinished. Work restarted in the
19th century and was completed, to the
original plan, in 1880.

17

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
France is really the cradle of the Gothic
style. During the first half of the 13th century,
nearly 150 beautiful cathedrals were erected just
north and south of the Loire. The Ile-de-France
series of cathedrals, and those of the north of
France generally, are especially homogeneous
and structurally sophisticated. Notre-Dame
de Paris is perhaps the most well-known
example. Built from 1163, it is the first cathedral
constructed of monumental proportions. It is
seen as the place where heaven and earth meet,
a reflection of divine grandeur. However, the
following phase of French Gothic derived from
Laon. In an astonishing crescendo, a series
of classic Gothic masterpieces—Chartres,
Reims, Amiens, Noyon, and Soissons—were
all constructed. Notre-Dame de Laon was built
around 1190. Thanks to the subdivision of the
west elevation into three separate sections,
created by shifting the doorways forward with
the insertion of deep porticoes while shifting the
towers backwards, the harmonic façade gained
a new spaciousness accentuated by the colossal
dimensions of the openings and the enormous

central rose windows, the focus of the whole
composition. This configuration represents a
special achievement for Gothic architecture as,
for the first time, the twin-towered façade was
connected to the internal space and was no
longer a separate, independent structure. The
cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres represents
the prototype of a true Gothic cathedral. Its
characteristic features are length, a nave and
two-aisles floor plan, a tripartite elevation
(arcade, triforium, clerestory), followed by a short
transept, terminating in a deep sanctuary with an
ambulatory and radial chapels. The streamlining
of the building lends the cathedral rare grandeur.
The façade of the cathedral of Notre-Dame
de Reims presents a continuous sequence of
thin, triangular gables above the three-deep
portals which are counterbalanced by the clever
transformation of the tympanum into windows
that allow light to irradiate into the entrance
area. The front elevation is divided into three
horizontal bands. The rose window is framed by
narrow lateral apertures.
The façade of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in

Exterior, side aisle and ceiling.
For stained-glass windows see
also pages 2-3, 46 and 51.
The cathedral of Cologne is
the largest Gothic church in
Northern Europe and has the
second-tallest spires and largest
façade of any church in the
world. The choir has the largest
height to width ratio, 3.6:1, of
any medieval church.

18

The Angelus

March - April 2013

The Annunciation:
painting on one of
the side altars

Amiens (c. 1220) is flanked by two towers which
follow the dictates of “harmonious façade.” It
is built in a tripartite configuration around the
central rose window. In accordance with the
quest of reducing the weight of the structure, the
architect reduced the thickness of the masonry,
stabilizing the towers with enormous projecting
buttresses.
The linearity of early French Gothic reached
its culmination at Noyon cathedral, second half
of the 12th century, when a marked sense of
verticality carries through the four levels of the
elevation. Fragmenting the masonry produces an
effect of lightness and transparency, enhanced by
the increase in brightness from bottom to top.
To end our very short list of Gothic cathedrals
let us take a look at the south transept of the
cathedral of SS. Gervais and Protais in Soissons,
built around 1180-1190. Some of the most visible
formal characteristics of Gothic architecture
are its linearity and its subdivision of internal
surfaces. The ribs of the vaults, which are
continued all the way down the walls, create
cellular spaces. They emphasize the impression

The Wieskirche is an oval
rococo church, designed in the
late 1740s. Construction took
place between 1745 and 1754,
and the interior was decorated
with frescoes and with
stuccowork in the tradition of
the Wessobrunner School.

of ephemerality of the walls, creating an airy and
translucent atmosphere.
Then came the Renaissance with a strong
aversion to every thing Middle-Ages, which will
last until Victor Hugo. The Renaissance means
the revival of forms from Greek and Roman
antiquity. It is marked by the use of columns and
other structural elements of ancient buildings.
Even more important was a new feeling for
space and proportion different from medieval
taste. This movement was accompanied by
much thinking on the part of architects. They
studied the past and searched for eternal laws of
architecture.

Exuberant Baroque
The Baroque style, prevalent in the 17th
and 18th centuries, was initially linked to the
Counter Reformation and is sometimes called
the Jesuit style. It was characterized by new
exploration of form, light, and dramatic intensity.
Distinctive features of Baroque may include

Everything was done throughout the church to
make the supernatural visible. Sculpture and murals
combined to unleash the divine in visible form
(see more pictures on page 28 and 62).

www.shutterstock.com

19

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
broader naves, oval floor plan, dramatic use of
light, abundance of decorations with large scale
ceiling frescoes in the cupolas, illusion effects
like trompe-l’oeil, etc. However, the Baroque in
France was always subdued. The 17th-century
Dome des Invalides with its church of SaintLouis is generally regarded as the most important
building of the century. Noteworthy are the
torsade columns of the altar. More torsade
columns are found in the church of Val-de-Grace,
considered by some as Paris’s best example of
Baroque architecture with its curving lines,
elaborate ornamentation, and harmony of
different elements.
The architect of the church of La Madeleine in
Paris made extensive use of Corinthian columns:
52 of them, each 20 meters high, carried all
around the entire building. The pediment shows
the Last Judgment and the church’s bronze doors
bear relief representing the Ten Commandments.
The church is 354 ft. long and 141 ft. wide. It has
a single nave and three domes over wide arched
bays. A little bit in the same style is the Pantheon,
built on a Greek cross plan with massive

The chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in
Ronchamp, completed in 1954, is one
of the examples of the architecture of
Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier and
one of the most important examples of
twentieth-century religious architecture.

20

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Corinthian columns. It was supposed to be the
church of St. Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, but
was caught in the torment of the Revolution and
is now the place where “great” Frenchmen are
buried. It is slightly larger than La Madeleine.
The Jesuit style of churches shows two
elevations, heaven and earth, as clearly seen in
the following: the church of SS. Paul and Louis,
which was designed by two Jesuits. The large
octolateral dome was a first in Paris and served
as inspiration for other structures.

19th and 20th Centuries
The 19th century contented itself with copying
the older styles. For instance the church of St.
Clotilde in Paris, built from 1846 to 1858, is neogothic. It is best known for its imposing twin
spires. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart, 18751914, is neo-byzantine. It was built of travertine
stones which constantly exude calcite, thus
ensuring that the basilica remains white even
with weathering and pollution.

The first half of the 20th century was not
particularly innovative. The parish of St. John
Baptiste de La Salle was born in 1910, around
a sensitive political time. The architecture
is “humble but original,” as described in the
brochure. It is bout 50 meters long and has four
naves, which is rather nonhabitual. Because
of the sloping of the terrain, it was necessary
to build steps to the porch, which makes the
entrance inaccessible to coffins. An elevator has
to be used for that function only! The building
of St. Christopher de Javelle started in 1926. It
is made mostly of bricks except for the façade.
The architect may have been the originator of
prefabricated armed concrete elements, speeding
the building process enormously. It is a milestone
in modern building. A lacy steel construction
holds up the barrel-vaulted roof. The church is
considered a landmark in the development of
modern sacred art. We must admit it has a beauty
quite its own. Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce was
built between 1937 and 1946. The pointed roof
is meant to sustain the large amounts of snow
that fall in the Alps. The foundation is solidly
anchored in the soil and the church is topped by
a massive 28-meter bell tower carefully designed
to withstand local tectonic movement. Eight
massive pillars are built to a depth of five meters.
The interior resembles a Roman chapel with
its rectangular nave flanked by two aisles. The
sanctuary is semi-circular and surrounded by
the ambulatory sitting above the crypt. Arcades
mounted on monolithic pillars separate different
portions of the structure. Notre-Dame-de-TouteGrâce is best known for its decorations painted
by some of the most famous artists of the
century: Chagall, Matisse...
After the Second World War, every architect
did his own thing. We will look first at the
cathedral of Royan and then at Notre-Dame
du Haut. Built in three years following the
bombardment of the town of Royan on January
5, 1945, the church is a major building of
contemporary religious architecture. It is 45
meters long and 22 meters wide, 36 meters high
with a bell tower culminating at 60 meters. The
architect used rough concrete and held account
of the slope of the ground so the principal

entrance is located partly high. The use of
concrete allowed a fast construction and a great
architectural audacity. Our last church was
completed in 1954. It is considered one of the
finest examples of the architecture realized by
well-known Le Corbusier and one of the most
important of 20th-century architecture. The
chapel is a simple design with two entrances, a
main altar and three chapels beneath towers.
Although the building is small, it is powerful and
complex. It is made mostly of concrete, enclosed
by thick walls. The upturned roof, supported on
columns embedded within the walls, and not
on the walls themselves, appear to float above
them. In the interior, the spaces left between the
walls and roof are filled with clerestory windows
as well as asymmetrical ones. Their openings
slant at varying degrees, thus letting in light at
different angles. The interior walls are white, the
ceiling gray. The chapel, informally known as
“Ronchamp,” has been described as the first postmodern building.
So many churches, so little time to visit them,
so little space to describe them all. Neither time
nor styles stand still. We can only wonder what
the 21st century will bring to ecclesiastical
architecture.

Notes
For more information on the churches of
Germigny-des-Prés, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe,
Notre-Dame la Grande, Saint-Sernin, Saint Peter’s
Abbey, Cluny, the Cathedral of Saint-Eulalia,
Saint Philibert’s Abbey, the Basilica of SaintMadeleine in Vézelay, please refer to my articles
in the Angelus of October 1999; July 2000; March,
April, June, and December 2002; February, April,
May, and August 2003.
See also, “Painters and Writers Quarrels: The
Val-de Grace Cupola,” Laurels, Winter 1981-82.

21

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art

John Paul II and

The Genesis
of Confusion
by Ann Marie Temple

In the first chapter [of Genesis], the narrative of the creation of man
affirms directly, right from the beginning, that man was created in the image
of God as male and female.…We find ourselves, therefore, almost at the very
core of the anthropological reality, the name of which is ‘body,’ the human
body. However, this core is not only anthropological, but also essentially
theological. Right from the beginning, the theology of the body is bound up
with the creation of man in the image of God.
—John Paul II, Nov. 14, 1979,
“By Communion of Persons, Man Becomes the Image of God”

We must understand that when Scripture had said, “to the image of God
He created him,” it added, “male and female He created them,” not to imply
that the image of God came through the distinction of sex, but that the image
of God belongs to both sexes, since it is in the mind, wherein there is no
sexual distinction.
—St. Thomas Aquinas, I, Q. 93, A. 6, ad 2
22

The Angelus

March - April 2013

1

2

See George Weigel, Witness
to Hope: The Biography
of Pope John Paul II,
1920-2005 (New York:
Harper-Collins, 2005), p.
343: “Angelo Scola, rector
of the Pontifical Lateran
University in Rome, goes
so far as to suggest that
virtually every thesis in
theology—God, Christ, the
Trinity, grace, the Church,
the sacraments—could
be seen in a new light if
theologians explored in
depth the rich personalism
implied in John Paul II’s
theology of the body.…
These 130 catechetical
addresses, taken together,
constitute a kind of
theological time bomb set
to go off, with dramatic
consequences, sometime
in the third millennium
of the Church. When that
happens, perhaps in the
twenty-first century, the
Theology of the Body may
well be seen as a critical
moment not only in Catholic
theology, but in the history
of modern thought. For 350
years, Western philosophy
has insisted on beginning
with the human subject,
the thinking subject. Karol
Wojtyla, philosopher, took
this ‘turn to the subject’
seriously; John Paul II
has taken it seriously as
a theologian. By insisting
that the human subject is
always an embodied subject
whose embodiedness
is critical to his or her
self-understanding and
relationship to the world,
John Paul took modernity’s
‘anthropological turn’ with
utmost seriousness.” The
“theology of the body” is
indeed becoming the basis
of marriage preparation
and even catechism
classes throughout the
United States and Europe,
particularly since the death
of John Paul II.
Cf. John Paul II’s Crossing
the Threshold of Hope, p.
123: “When I was a young
priest, I learned to love
human love. It was one of
the themes on which I based
my entire priesthood, my
ministry in my preaching,
in the confessional and in
my writings. If one truly
loves human love, one
feels the pressing need to
give oneself with all one’s
strength to the service of
the ‘great love.’” The tenets

Man’s excellence consists in the fact that God made him to His own image by
giving him an intellectual soul, which raises him above the beasts of the field.
—St. Augustine, Literal Interpretation of Genesis, vi. 12
John Paul II’s theology of the body offers a prime illustration of a Vatican
II time bomb in the process of detonation.1 As Archbishop of Krakow, Karol
Wojtyla was one of the principal architects of Gaudium et Spes; as pope, he
devoted 130 General Audiences from 1979 to 1984 to drawing all the potential
from the wording he had helped to fashion. Indeed, the entire “catechesis”
rests explicitly on the interpretation of Genesis contained in Gaudium
et Spes, §12, cited in one of the pope’s first audiences, November 14, 1979:
“God did not create man as a solitary, for from the beginning ‘male and
female he created them.’ Their companionship produces the primary form of
interpersonal communion. For by his innermost nature man is a social being,
and unless he relates himself to others he can neither live nor develop his
potential.”
The system is internally coherent: it represents Fr. Wojtyla’s early
preoccupation with constructing an objective moral system inherently
compelling to modern man in his subjective experience, not merely imposed
by an external magisterium; a system arising from the holistic analysis of the
person, not from abstractive Thomistic philosophy.2
The structure and the full implications of the pope’s teaching best appear
when contrasted with the traditional theology it was meant to replace.
The revolutionary nature of the new system stands out more starkly if
we translate the theology of the body into the language of scholasticism,
defining their common terms. In so clarifying the expression, we hope to
shed light on the philosophical Newspeak built into Vatican II itself, and
at the same time demonstrate the vital necessity of Thomistic realism as
a scaffolding for theological reflection. Indeed, the pope’s intention was
to found an objective system of ethics on the interpersonal relationship
between man and woman; his principles and manner of proceeding are so
flawed that they effectively demolish all possibility of relationship between
man and God.

The Exegetical Starting Point
In his audience of September 5, 1979, the pope began his presentation
of the theology of the body with the lesson of Christ to the Pharisees in
Matthew 19. Christ points to the “beginning” as the foundation of marriage
ethics, and the pope thereafter devotes his audiences to an exegesis of the
two accounts of creation, Genesis 1:26-27 and 2:7-25. These provide the
founding elements of the theology of the body: first, the notion of man as
a person both by his subjectivity and by his relativity, that is, both by his
awareness of solitude among the animals and by his entering into a relation
of mutual self-giving with Eve; second, the notion that man thus constituted
a person is in the image of God.3
The pope himself calls his system a theology “of the body” because
23

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
of the theology of the body
are already present in his
Love and Responsibility,
published by the Catholic
University of Lublin (KUL)
in 1960. The book was
itself the result of the
courses he developed and
taught at the University
starting in 1956. Fr. Wojtyla
took inspiration from the
phenomenology of Max
Scheler in particular. Cf.
Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp.
126-130. The pope likewise
points to the importance of
his contact with the youth
group “Srodowisko,” in
Crossing the Threshold of
Hope, p. 208: “When love is
responsible, it is also truly
free. This is precisely the
teaching I learned from the
encyclical Humanæ Vitæ
written by my venerable
predecessor Paul VI, and
that I had learned even
earlier from my young
friends, married and
soon to be married, while
I was writing Love and
Responsibility. As I have
said, they themselves
were my teachers in this
area” (emphasis in the
original). The title of his
second doctoral thesis at
the University of Krakow
was “An Evaluation of the
Possibility of Constructing
a Christian Ethics on the
Basis of the System of Max
Scheler.” He concluded that
Scheler’s phenomenology
was rich in potential but
needed a grounding in
realism to prevent its
descent into “solipsism.”
The immediate occasion
for the presentation of
the theology of the body
catechesis was a desire
to repair damage done
by Humanæ Vitæ, which
Cardinal Wojtyla considered
a pastoral disaster. Cf.
Weigel, pp. 207-210, 334335, and Yves Semen, La
Séxualité selon Jean-Paul
II (Paris: Presses de la
Renaissance, 2004), pp. 5859, and 188-90.
3

24

Cf. the Audience of Sept.
5, 1979, “The Unity and
Indissolubility of Marriage”;
Oct. 10, 1979, “The Meaning
of Man’s Original Solitude”;
Jan. 9, 1980, “The Nuptial
Meaning of the Body”;
Nov. 14, 1979, “By the
Communion of Persons,
Man Becomes the Image
of God.” Audience names
are taken from the Vatican

The Angelus

March - April 2013

man’s establishment as a person and as image of God depend on his physical
structure. Man’s consciousness that he is alone among the other animals and
the fact that he “can only discover his true self in a sincere giving of himself,”
depend on his perception of the body: his body first, and then the body of
woman.4 Likewise by his body is he established as image of God: “Right from
the beginning, the theology of the body is bound up with the creation of man
in the image of God.”5

The Philosophical Starting Point
Whatever the sincerity of the pope’s exegesis, his use of Genesis is a
departure from the traditional interpretation on a number of points and
seems rather a defense of his own philosophical starting point.
It is striking that man’s creation as a person is gradual and achieved by
man’s knowledge and action: “Since it took place at the ‘beginning,’ this
[awareness of the female as ‘bone of my bones’] confirms the process of
individuation of man in the world.”6 For St. Thomas, such a “confirmation of
the process of individuation” is meaningless: an individual man exists once
a particular matter is animated by a human soul. Personhood is inseparable
from man’s individuality: a person is for St. Thomas “an individual substance
of a rational nature.” Thus, in traditional philosophy, a man is a person
ontologically, by the structure of his being; he is not a person gradually, in
the development of his mature actions.
Why would the pope abandon the traditional notions of being and the
structure of reality? Because he does not think we can know them as surely
as St. Thomas claims we do—at least, not surely enough to make of them
the basis of a moral system compelling to modern man. Those scholastic
definitions assume that we can pierce and understand the structure of
the concrete beings around us by a process of abstraction and reasoning;
that we really do grasp the essence of a thing by a concept drawn from
experience; and that we may reason and form conclusions about reality
and its structure based on that process.7 The pope’s phenomenology, on the
contrary, holds that such abstraction is a falsification of reality, which we
can only describe by taking into account all of the elements of an experience;
the phenomenological method aims at a kind of sympathetic intuition of the
essence of a thing rather than at a conceptual grasp of its structure.
Whereas phenomenology would give the same importance to the entire
perception and impression, abstraction allows us to discern the constitutive
elements of a thing and distinguish between the higher and the lower,
discovering an analogy among beings and a hierarchy of causes. Thus, for St.
Thomas, the soul is superior to the body—more noble, possessing its act of
being and sharing it with the body—such that man is constituted a person by
his spiritual nature. The pope, however, specifies in the notes to his Audience
of November 14, 1979, that, “In the conception of the oldest books of the
Bible, the dualist opposition ‘body-soul’ does not appear. As we have already
pointed out, we may rather speak of a complementary combination ‘bodylife.’ The body is the expression of the personality of man.”

website.
4

Jan. 16, 1980, “The Human
Person Becomes a Gift
in the Freedom of Love.”
See also Oct. 24, “Man’s
Awareness of Being a
Person.”

5

Audience Nov. 14, 1979, “By
the Communion of Persons,
Man Becomes the Image of
God”: “It becomes, in a way,
also the theology of sex,
or rather the theology of
masculinity and femininity,
which has its starting
point here in Genesis.…
This unity through the
body—‘and the two will
be one flesh’ possesses
a multiform dimension.
It possesses an ethical
dimension, as is confirmed
by Christ’s answer to the
Pharisees in Matthew 19
(cf. Mk. 10). It also has a
sacramental dimension, a
strictly theological one, as
is proved by St. Paul’s words
to the Ephesians which
refer also to the tradition of
the prophets (Hosea, Isaiah,
Ezekiel). This is so because,
right from the beginning,
that unity which is realized
through the body indicates
not only the ‘body,’ but also
the ‘incarnate’ communion
of persons—communio
personarum—and calls for
this communion.”

6

Jan. 9, 1980, “The Nuptial
Meaning of the Body.” Also
significant is the Audience
of Sept. 19, 1979, “The
Second Account of Creation:
The Subjective Creation of
Man,” and of Feb. 20, 1980,
“Man Enters the World as a
Subject of Truth and Love,”
which seems to imply that
Adam’s sleep eliminates the
primacy which flows from
his having been created
first: “In Genesis 2:23 we
come across the distinction
‘is-’issah for the first time.
Perhaps, therefore, the
analogy of sleep indicates
here not so much a passing
from consciousness to
subconsciousness, as a
specific return to non-being
(sleep contains an element
of annihilation of man’s
conscious existence). That
is, it indicates a return to
the moment preceding the
creation, that through God’s
creative initiative, solitary
‘man’ may emerge from it
again in his double unity as
male and female.”

Man: Image or Trace?
This failure to distinguish explicitly the soul and its operations as superior
to the body means that the theology of the body redefines the notion of man
as “image of God.” Thus, St. Thomas’s statement, citing Augustine, that man
is in the image of God by his mind only, has no place in a phenomenological
system. The pope must therefore redefine “image of God” into an object of
phenomenological study: it is a picture, an external representation of God.
Better, it is an experience. The full awareness of the meaning of the body
takes place in the mutual “knowing” of man and woman; their physical
union becomes a language, expressing the nature of God to the world and to
themselves: “This language of the body becomes so to speak a prophecy of
the body.”8
What the pope calls image, St. Thomas would call a mere trace of God in
the material world, the lowest form of likeness. Man is an image or likeness
of God because his soul is capable of attaining God by its operation of
knowing and loving: “The mind is the image of God, in that it is capable of
Him and can be partaker of Him.”9
Thus, man is capax Dei by his soul, by nature, by “creation” as Augustine
says. This openness of nature allows for the entry of grace into his soul,
and a new manner of being “to the image of God” by a union of theological
virtue: imperfectly, as image of grace, and perfectly, as image of glory.10 This
properly theological union is impossible in a “theology of the body” precisely
because the soul is not clearly distinguished as being, by nature, the place
of encounter with God. Nor is there possibility of distinction between
natural image and image by grace or glory. Man approaches God by purer
union with another human; by becoming more fully gift to another, he more
fully resembles God. A recovery of the image of God and of the original
“innocence of heart” depend on living in marriage as mutual gift.11
Heaven itself and the communion of saints are to be understood in
function of this mutual giving.12 In the pope’s “theology,” there is no room
for heaven as the satisfaction of the soul’s infinite longing: “Happiness is
the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether.…Now the object of the
will, that is, of man’s appetite, is the universal good; just as the object of the
intellect is the universal true. Hence it is evident that naught can lull man’s
will, save the universal good.…Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of
man.”13

The Death of Religion
This brief presentation can only give some hint of the doctrinal, spiritual
and cultural ravages contained in the theology of the body. The mechanism
of this time bomb is therefore nuclear; it is devastating in its effects
because it acts on the very core of theology, replacing the meaning of the
philosophical terms it uses. The structure of every notion is modified, but
so is the order of the whole: God ceases to be the final cause, the end of
all being and action, that around which all revolves, because man was
25

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art

26

7

See for example
Quaestiones Disputatae de
Anima, a. 14.

8

Aug. 22, 1984. See also Feb.
20, 1980 and Nov. 14, 1979.

9

Ia, q. 93, a. 6. See also St.
Augustine’s De Trinitate,
bk. 14, ch. 8 and ch. 12.

10

Ia, q. 93, a. 4.

11

April 2, 1980, “Marriage
in the Integral Vision of
Man”: “Those who seek the
accomplishment of their
own human and Christian
vocation in marriage are
called, first of all, to make
this theology of the body...
the content of their life
and behavior.” See the
commentary by Weigel,
Witness to Hope, Ch. 10,
“The Ways of Freedom,”
segment entitled “Marital
intimacy as an icon of the
interior life of God,” p. 326
ff.

12

Dec. 16, 1981, “The Words
of Christ Concerning the
Resurrection Complete the
Revelation of the Body”:
“This reality [of the world
to come] signifies the true
and definitive fulfillment of
human subjectivity and, at
the same time, the definitive
fulfillment of the ‘nuptial’
meaning of the body”
(translation our own).

13

Ia-IIae, q. 2, a. 8.

14

Nov. 14, 1979, “By the
Communion of Persons Man
Becomes an Image of God.”
See also the commentary
by Weigel in Witness to
Hope, ch. 10, “The Ways of
Freedom,” segment entitled,
“Marital intimacy as an icon
of the interior life of God,”
p. 326 ff.

15

Gal. 5:24, 25.

The Angelus

March - April 2013

created as a “particular value for himself,”14 whom Gaudium et Spes calls
“the only creature on earth which God willed for itself.” This, ultimately,
is the “anthropological turn,” the revolution which John Paul II took with
“utmost seriousness.”
The origin of the confusion is a refusal to accept the abstractive realism
of St. Thomas: if we have no way of attaining the structure of the real, we
have no way of discerning the soul—no way, therefore, of affirming in what
way man may be united to God. Willed for himself, man remains alone with
himself; deprived of a spiritual soul distinct from their bodies, man and
woman cannot meet as equal images of God; taught to seek innocence by
plunging himself more fully into the flesh, shall man ever “live in the Spirit”
and “walk in the Spirit,” having “crucified his flesh”?15
Sanguis Christi, germinans virgines, salva nos.

Ann Marie Temple has been working with traditional Catholic schools in France and the
United States since 1997. She is primarily a teacher of modern and ancient languages
but has taught at all levels, and spent time as the principal of St. Anthony Academy in
Manassas, Virginia. She is a graduate of Christendom College in Front Royal, VA (B.A. in
philosophy), the Institut Saint-Pie X, Paris (Maitrise in the philosophy of education), and
the University of Paris IV, Sorbonne (Master’s in Thomistic philosophy). She is currently
working as a curriculum advisor for the Society of Saint Pius X. She is a freelance
translator in her spare time.

362pp – Gold-embossed leatherette cover – Sewn binding – Rounded corners – Gilt edges – Ribbon– STK# 8555 – $24.95

Mother Love
Purchase this book for yourself, or for the Catholic mothers you know. It contains almost everything a mother needs to nurture and grow her spiritual life, so
that through her sanctification she may sanctify her husband and family, so that
she may truly become the heart of the home. Contains:
-- Morning and Evening Prayers for Mothers
-- Devotions for the Holy Rosary
-- Points of Doctrine a Christian Mother Should Teach to Her Children
-- Prayers at Mass
-- The “Ten Commandments” of Christian Education
-- Devotions for Confession and Communion
-- Devotions for the Poor Souls, and for the Way of the Cross
-- Prayers for the Various Special Necessities of a Christian Mother
-- Prayers to Some of the Special Patrons of Christian Mothers
-- Indulgenced Prayers
-- A short book of instructions for Christian Mothers on the Christian Training
of Children

DVD – Standard (4:3) and widescreen (16:9) – 48 Min – Color – STK# 8537 – $19.95

Forty Years of Fidelity
As we enter a new papacy, it is more important than ever to discover the role of
Tradition in the past 40 years. From its humble beginnings to the worldwide presence today, the Society of St. Pius X has been the driving force of Tradition in the
Church. This inspiring documentary will take you through the events of those years
and show clearly that the Society stands firmly for the purity of Faith and the glory
of Catholic Tradition, and is sure to be a treasure for years to come.

Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

The Wies Church has a
deep meditative quality
coming from the important
theological themes which
are treated there. In the
main ceiling fresco the
resurrected Christ, who
will come again, sitting on
the rainbow; the judgement
throne; and the door to
Eternal Life.
“Hoc loco habitat fortuna,
hic quiescit cor.”
(In this place abideth happiness,
here the heart findeth peace.)

www.shutterstock.com

Art, Architecture, and the Baroque:

Stairway to
Heaven
by John Rao, Ph.D.

My students regularly accuse me of inventing
stories regarding things that happen to me in
order to startle and shock them out of their
normal state of intellectual and spiritual slumber.
Actually, I encounter the same “stuff of life”
every day that they do, but somehow manage
to get something out of it that eludes them. The
difference is due to a complex of factors, among
which exposure to the message of Baroque art
and architecture plays a significant role. And
in fairness to my students, that message only
became “real” to me when I was twenty-two years
old and saw and experienced in person what it
had to say.
This happened during the first of what were
to prove to be over one hundred glorious trips
to Rome. It was late summer, I was at the
beginning of my graduate studies, and I needed

to clarify some initial questions regarding
a possible dissertation topic at the office of
La Civiltà Cattolica, which was not that far
from the Spanish Steps. Since there was no
particular holiday in the offing, the city was
uncharacteristically empty—although all too
characteristically hot and humid. With the library
shut from lunchtime until quite late in the day, I
developed the habit of wandering at random after
having had a bite to eat. Since I did not yet know
Rome at all well, that meant that I often found
myself utterly lost.

Lift up the Spirit
Trapped one particularly sultry afternoon
in a welter of medieval streets, and eager to
29

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
locate some cover from the sun and quench
my ripening thirst, I was rapidly losing all my
interest in tourism. No café offered shelter and
grog. As narrow lanes led to tinier passageways
and then through what appeared to be nothing
more than escape-tunnel size cracks between
the walls of citadel-like palaces, my frustration
grew apace. Finally, when all hope seemed
lost, lo and behold, there I was—luxuriating
in a magnificent Baroque piazza, equipped
with refreshing fountains, watering holes, and
stunning architecture, sculpture, and painting,
both religious and secular.
What dawned on me, and was then confirmed
and sharpened by reading the commentaries of
art historians, was that the architects and artists
who had conceived that piazza, whose whole
complex lifted up the spirit while nevertheless
offering all that the body could wish, were
extraordinary psychologists as well as builders.
Having taken stock of the area surrounding their
project, and having rightly judged that those
caught in its mesh of little lanes might indeed
feel miserably confined by them—its regular
inhabitants perhaps even more than the passing
tourist—they decided to teach all these myopic
grumblers an eye-opening lesson. They resolved
to show them that just beyond yet another “dead
end,” a seemingly meaningless, frustrating,
convoluted path to nowhere could suddenly
and surprisingly open up onto the splendor of
a Piazza Navona. And perhaps they hoped that
such a pleasurable surprise would then lead these
frustrated but now bedazzled souls to realize
that “much more than meets the eye” might lie in
store for them elsewhere; that there might well
be “surprises” to be found everywhere in this
earthly valley of tears; maybe even inside the
drab alleys giving way to the piazza themselves.
In any case, I spent the rest of my free time,
both in Rome as well as in those parts of Europe
that I visited on my way up to Oxford for the start
of the university year, looking for other examples
of Baroque encouragement of the hunt for “more
than meets the eye” and the “surprises” hiding
behind the drab or frustrating surface of ordinary
daily experiences. This did not prove to be a
difficult task at all.
30

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Explore the Baroque Message
Such encouragement could be found on
the façades and ceilings of many palaces and
churches, whose bare construction materials
were shown to be mere springboards for
whimsical artistic elaborations giving the
impression that even the simplest functional
building block might be transformed into a
sugar cake with icing on top. It was visible at
the incomparably beautiful Borromeo Palace
on the Isola Bella near Stresa in northern Italy,
where rooms of spectacular fancy and brilliance
emerged from the stones and grottos of Lago
Maggiore, revealing the true vitality that could be
drawn from their unnaturally frozen “natural”
exteriors. And it was palpable at Oxford, my
home for the next four years, which was replete
with dark little lanes “headed nowhere” that
unceasingly guided the pilgrim who gave himself
up to their secrets from one enchanted courtyard
or piazza to another.
Such exploration of the Baroque message
made it clear that the call to expect and discover
“more than meets the eye” in the “stuff” of
daily existence was also a summons to an
awareness of life’s constant movement and
dramatic character. This explains why visitors
praying before an altar at a Baroque side chapel
and glancing upward to their right or left can
often find themselves face to face with a gallery
populated by sculpted figures—probably the
patrons of this sacred niche—several of them
plunging their arms into the walls to embrace
invisible guests arriving from somewhere outside
to swell their number, and others leaning over the
balcony’s edge, gesticulating enthusiastically and
urging passersby to join them in their urgent and
fervent worship. Visiting faithful may thus well
be given the impression that they must all “get
on with the dramatic action” and make sure that
their beginning act of worship, now in full swing,
be brought to a successful conclusion. What were
the inhabitants of the gallery praying for, they
might ask? Whatever it could be, it would seem to
be important to them, perhaps deadly important,
and so crucial as to require enlistment of the aid
of others in their supplications to obtain.

Finally, investigation of this effort to awaken
those “with eyes to see” to the “surprises” to
be found everywhere around them indicated
just how much Baroque success in illuminating
all the nooks and crannies of a movement and
drama-filled nature was tied to commitment
to the supernatural message coming from the
Father of Lights and grasp of the goal of His
glorious Creation. This commitment, associated
with the work of the Catholic Reformation in
general and the Society of Jesus in particular,
allowed Baroque artists and artisans to mobilize
all natural tools with full respect for the proper
“hierarchy of values,” and use them to create an
entire world dedicated ad majorem Dei gloriam.

Aesthetic Genius
Sometimes the aesthetic geniuses engaged
in this enterprise showed their respect for the
primary role of the supernatural in understanding
nature’s real character and capabilities by
playing with the camera image of persons and
objects, twisting, turning, and exaggerating their
physical aspects for the purpose of revealing
the vital spiritual energy giving ultimate
meaningful direction to their action. Sometimes,
as with Bernini in his depiction of the mystical
experiences of St. Theresa of Avila, they can
leave the physical aspects of nature startlingly
untouched, while driving home the teaching that
one can only understand what the senses tell
us all too strongly by interpreting what earthly
experiences really mean with our eyes focused
upwards, on just exactly how God sees them.
But whatever their approach, Baroque painters,
sculptures, architects, and city planners, working
under the twin impulses of Revelation and
Grace, brought together all the tools of nature
to construct of it one magnificent stairway to
heaven.
The Baroque spirit did not appear ex nihilo.
Its love of nature and its depiction of movement
in nature were stirred, to a large degree, by the
preceding work of the classicizing Renaissance.
At its best, however, it developed classical
achievements still further through its own

passionate insights, reintroducing elements into
the construction of the stairway to heaven that
would also have been familiar to Byzantine and
Romanesque and Gothic artists.

Reaction to Despair
But Baroque art was also very much a reaction
to the despair of the late Middle Ages regarding
the real possibility of “transformation in Christ.”
This despair, growing since the 1200’s under
the impact of Church-State battles, the Avignon
Papacy, the Plague, the Great Western Schism,
the collapse of the Crusading Movement, and the
crimes of Renaissance churchmen, was given
voice, theologically, by Martin Luther, Ulrich
Zwingli, and Jean Calvin in the supposedly Biblebased doctrine of the total depravity of man and
the universe after Adam’s sin. The logic of this
doctrine, as Joseph de Maistre later lamented,
was to kill the transforming strength of the Word
in the name of bare and badly interpreted words.
But Baroque art and architecture, along with the
Catholic Reformation and the Society of Jesus
working in union with them, raised their mighty
swords in the defense of Grace and Nature, giving
the project of constructing the stairway to heaven
the long-term contract that it needed.
In practice, most Protestants could not bring
themselves to draw all of the drab conclusions
their fundamental principle clearly dictated.
They could not destroy within them entirely the
longing for beauty. Nevertheless, their attacks
on the very concept of Holy Church and their
fear of doctrinal disputes revealing their inner
contradictions forced them to give control
over the guidance of art and architecture (and
everything else as well) to State and secular
forces. These then enlisted the tempting Baroque
spirit in the task of adulating princes and
potentates on the one hand, and playful earthly
passions on the other.
Even under such circumstances, that spirit’s
innate strength allowed for the creation of
some fine works of art. But as the proper fuel
propelling Baroque vitality ran out, and political
authorities and private patrons lost any feel
31

Theme A Catholic Primer on Art
for where to go to mine it, this degenerated
into productions of grandiose pomposity and
pretentious or precious silliness. Corruptio
optimae pessima! Hence, blessed Italy got the
Via della Conciliazione, with its destruction of
the narrow streets leading to the “grand surprise”
of St. Peter’s Square, and the hideous “wedding
cake” of the Altar of the Fatherland at the Piazza
Venezia. And the United States got Baroque
banqueting halls for the churning out of overly
expensive and tasteless marriage feasts.
Still, there were all too many logically minded
men and women influenced by the Protestant
doctrine of total depravity determined to
reveal nature for what it “truly” was—namely,
a wretched jungle dominated by the war of
all against all. Its naturalist and functionalist
offspring, through all their aesthetic forms,
literature included, have relentlessly sought to
produce painting, sculpture, architecture, and
whole cities that present no “surprises,” nothing
“more than meets the eye,” and definitely no
illumination coming down from the Father of
Lights concerning Creation’s ultimate meaning
and destiny. Not only do they do this directly,
but also indirectly, seeking to “destroy what
other men cherish” by placing their specific
interpretations of nature as a sinful, meaningless
jungle in immediate proximity to great Catholic
works of art and architecture in order to mock
and undermine their influence on people. If there
is any holistic meaning to their project at all, it is
to make of our entire environment a trapdoor to
Hell.

Stairway to Heaven
Yes, the truly productive Catholic Baroque
spirit fought mightily on behalf of construction
of an alternative stairway to heaven in the City
of Man. Nevertheless, individual Catholic princes
and rich private individuals with passionate
whimsies admittedly did their part to cheapening
its vital energy alongside their Protestant
brethren. Worse still, Jansenists and their ever
increasing number of allies in the eighteenth
century so successfully fought against the
32

The Angelus

March - April 2013

concept of transformation of all things in Christ
in a world that they deemed much too steeped
in sin to be saved that they practically crushed
its influence within the Church herself by the
time of the Revolution. In the name of fighting
a “Baroque Catholicism” that was actually
Catholicism pure and simple, and in the cause of
producing a cultural climate shaped by what they
called “noble simplicity,” all they did was hasten
the victory of that naturalism and functionalism
that equates Creation with Hell—inside the
Church as well as without.
All this brings me full circle. The Baroque
first revealed its deeper meaning to me in Rome
while I was trying to determine what it is that I
should work on for my doctoral dissertation. The
dissertation that I chose involved the Catholic
Revival Movement of the nineteenth century. It
was that Revival Movement that rediscovered the
pre-revolutionary, pre-naturalist world in which
Catholics were building out of their environment
a stairway to heaven based upon the doctrine of
the Mystical Body of Christ and transformation
of all things under His Kingship. It was that
Revival Movement that showed me just how
correct the Baroque spirit was in looking for
the surprising hand of God in everything in life,
small and insignificant as it first might seem.
It was that Revival Movement that told me that
if I did not seek to make of my environment
a stairway to heaven with every single tool at
my disposal—with what could be seen and
experienced by people at the top of the list—
then those who wished it to be a trapdoor to
hell would do with it what they wished. And this
makes my stories to my students an aesthetic
and artistic act in their own right—one designed
as an act of worship to my God and a weapon
in my defense and the defense of my fellow
Catholics.

John Rao, Ph.D., is a professor of history at St. John’s University in New York,
New York. He is the author of Removing the Blindfold, and, most recently, Black
Legends and the Light of the World: The War of Words with the Word Incarnate
(Remnant Press, 2011). He has written articles for The Angelus, The Remnant,
and other periodicals.

A Vindication of the

American
Dream
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

A Debate on Tolerance
and Religious Liberty
The previous article on “The Two Swords” [The
Angelus, Jan.-Feb. 2013] expounded the social
doctrine on the relations of Church and State
in the ideal circumstance of a Catholic State:
this is when there is harmony between the two
powers working towards a common good. Added
to this is another principle which regards those
cases where the Catholic faith is not that of the
great majority of the citizens. This is called the
principle of tolerance, and it is also an essential
element of Church doctrine.
After a brief exposition of the question, we
shall bring out the two groups involved in the
dispute, before concluding with the results
reached at Vatican II.

Magisterium on Tolerance
“The Church, indeed,” Pope Leo XIII in
Immortale Dei teaches, “deems it unlawful to
place the various forms of divine worship on
the same footing as the True Religion, but does
not, on that account, condemn those rulers who,
for the sake of securing some great good or of
hindering some great evil, patiently allow custom
or usage to be a kind of sanction for each kind of
religion having its place in the State.”
In the footsteps of Leo XIII, Pius XII in Ci
Riesce (Dec. 6, 1953) explains the double aspect
of tolerance: error has no right, but for a higher
good like the common good of society, it may be
tolerated. And in fact, given the international
relations between states, it may well be that
toleration becomes universal.
33

Faith and Morals
“The two principles are clarified to which
recourse must be had in concrete cases.…
-- First: that which does not correspond to truth
or to the norm of morality objectively has no
right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.
-- Secondly: failure to impede this with civil laws
and coercive measures can nevertheless be
justified in the interests of a higher and more
general good.
“Let Us return now, however, to the two
propositions mentioned above: and in the first
place to the one which denies unconditionally
everything that is religiously false and morally
wrong. With regard to this point there never has
been, and there is not now, in the Church any
vacillation or any compromise, either in theory or
in practice. Her deportment has not changed in
the course of history, nor can it change whenever
or wherever, under the most diversified forms,
she is confronted with the choice: either incense
for idols or blood for Christ.
“Concerning the second proposition, that
is to say, concerning tolerance in determined
circumstances, toleration even in cases in which
one could proceed to repression, the Church—
out of regard for those who in good conscience
(though erroneous, but invincibly so) are of
different opinion—has been led to act and has
acted with that tolerance, after she became the
State Church under Constantine the Great and
the other Christian emperors, always for higher
and more cogent motives.”
Liberty is not an absolute faculty to use at
will; it is the faculty to choose what is good, not
evil. No man is morally free to choose good or
evil, true or false. Error is the evil of the mind,
and even though it is not always a sin, it is
always evil and damaging for souls. A real right
is something objective, based on truth. Applied
to religion, no Catholic can defend the “freedom
of religious worship” if it means that everyone
has a natural, God-given right to accept and to
practice whatever form of religion appeals to him
individually. The only religion that has a genuine
right to exist is the religion that God revealed and
made obligatory on all men; hence, man has a
natural and God-given freedom to embrace only
the one true religion.
34

The Angelus

March - April 2013

The Dynamic Group
For about ten years (1946-56), the United
States was the theater of a heated debate which
opposed the holders of the “received” doctrine
on Church and State, called by their opponents
the static group, and those who wished for new
blood to be infused in the matter, who liked to
call themselves the dynamic group. Fr. John
Courtney Murray, S.J., was teaching theology
from 1937 in Woodstock, Maryland, and, in
1941, was named editor of the Jesuit journal
Theological Studies, and he held both positions
long years until his sudden death in 1967.
Murray seemed to stir trouble within the
theological world on various grounds. He had
misgivings on the doctrine of salvation, when
in 1944, he endorsed full co-operation with
Christians and theists, raising some eyebrows
about dangers to the faith. He turned to
questions of how the Church might arrive at new
theological doctrines. If Catholics were to arrive
at new truths about God, they would have to
converse “on a footing of equality” with theists.
But Murray’s main effort dealt with the Church
and State relation. He contended that every man
by right of nature (jure naturae) has the right
to freedom of religion following his conscience,
and therefore, that no state can forbid religious
worship simply because it is religious. He also
contended that the state was incompetent to
judge the true religion or to bring it into the state
constitution.
A good summary of his plight was given
when his ideas had already taken root in the
conciliar aula (America, Nov. 30, 1963): “This
principle, which asserts the incompetence of
secular political authority in the field of religion
is deeply embedded in the true political tradition
of the Christian West. It is also affirmed with
the theological tradition of the Church. Leo XIII
for instance made it quite clear that political
authority has no part whatsoever in the care
of souls, or in the control of the minds of men.
It is, of course, true that this political principle
was obscured in Europe for centuries, largely in
consequence of the rise of royal absolutism and
the ‘Union of Throne and Altar.’ The true tradition

was, however, preserved in the American consti­
tu­tional system. Absolutism never set foot in
America, much to the joy both the Church and of
the American people.…I should like to see this
principle asserted in the final conciliar text on
religious freedom. It is, I think, essential to the
case for religious freedom in society.”
It is interesting to note the reasons he
furnished to back up his pet theory. It is because
this is the true doctrine of the Church, but also
because the Church needs to assume a universal
patronage of the dignity of the human person
in the age of growing totalitarian tyranny. It is
because we are living in the age of the religiously
pluralist society, where men of all religions and
of no religion must live together under equitable
laws that protect the whole range of human right.
Finally, and this is perhaps the underlying motive
to his effort, it is because we are living in an
age in which a great ecumenical hope has been
born, and the path to this goal can lie only along
the road of freedom—social, civil, political, and
religious freedom.
Murray had had some skirmishes with his
opponents all the way to Rome in the early
1950s. But what precipitated things was the bold
address he gave in March 1954. He suggested that
Pope Pius XII’s Ci Riesce was largely a refutation
of Cardinal Ottaviani’s more conservative
interpretation of the Pope on religious liberty.
This incident culminated in Murray being
silenced the next year, forbidden, under pressure
from Rome, to write or publish on the topic.
His superior Fr. McCormick told him: “You may
write poetry.” Yet he managed to publish His
landmark book, We Hold These Truths: Catholic
Reflections on the American Proposition, which
garnered him the Time coverage.

critical of Murray’s ideas since 1948. Another of
his targets was another Woodstock theologian,
Fr. Weigel (AER, May 1953).
Fr. Weigel argued thus against the statics: “The
dynamic expositors simply cannot understand
the final position of the static group. This position
is that American Catholics can be loyal to, and
satisfied with, the American Constitution, in spite
of the fact that there is an objective obligation
to go counter to it.…Does not such a stand
make the Catholic’s situation most ambiguous
to himself and more so to his non-Catholic
fellow Americans? Obviously the principle
of tolerating what cannot be remedied is a

John Courtney Murray, (Sept. 12, 1904 – Aug. 16, 1967), was an American Jesuit priest and
theologian who was especially known for his efforts to reconcile Catholicism and religious
pluralism, particularly focusing on the relationship between religious freedom and the
institutions of a democratically structured modern state. During the Second Vatican
Council, he played a key role in persuading the assembly of the Catholic bishops to adopt
the Council's ground-breaking Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae.

The Tandem Fenton-Ottaviani
Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton headed the
static group. He was professor of fundamental
dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of
America for twenty-five years and editor of the
American Ecclesiastical Review (1943–1963). He
had embellished the Review with regular articles
35

Faith and Morals
sound one, but even toleration in the face of an
objective obligation must do everything possible
to correct the condition.…Could the American
Catholic who de facto feels no conflict between
his religion and his Constitution be intelligently
honest with himself? Do not the static expositors
agree fundamentally with the claim of some that
there is a chasm separating Catholicism and
American democracy?”
Fr. Fenton explained to his readers that this
was really getting old hat. Already, back in 1946
(sic), Time magazine had made a similar false
accusation about our Catholic teaching: “Nothing
about Catholicism so confuses—and often
dismays—U.S. Protestants as the stand of the
Church on freedom of worship. Does Catholicism
support the first article of the Bill of Rights? In
U.S. practice, yes; in principle, no.”
It seems thus that the opponents of the
Catholic principles misconstrued and caricatured
the true position so as to better attack it, but they
were having a go at a straw man, and not at the
Catholic position. Here are some rebuttals made
by Fenton.
The attacks of Time magazine were directed at
the article “Freedom of Worship” by Fr. Connell,
Fenton’s associate at C.U. But Fr. Connell never
said that religious toleration was an anti-Catholic
principle. On the contrary, he echoed Ci Riesce:
“Indeed, a Catholic would not be inconsistent
with any principle of his faith if he held that in the
circumstances that prevail at the present time, it
would be the most feasible plan to have complete
religious toleration throughout the whole world.
But it must ever be remembered that a Catholic
cannot advocate such a plan on the basis that all
religions have a genuine, God-given right to exist.
Such a right belongs only to the one religion
founded by Jesus Christ for all men.”
“It would seem, that the side of the controversy
to which Fr. Weigel has devoted his sympathies
and his efforts is in some way more American
in tone or in tendency than that defended by Fr.
Connell. Actually, nothing could be farther from
the truth and nothing could do more harm to
the cause of Catholic truth in this country than
the naïve acceptance of such a misconception.
Truth is not a matter of nationality.…Thus when
36

The Angelus

March - April 2013

the validity of the concept of a ‘Catholic state’
was defended and when we argued that a state
made of Catholics had a definite obligation, as
a social unit, to worship God according to the
rites of the true religion…we advanced these
theses because and only because they were in
line with the declarations of the ecclesiastical
magisterium and with the teachings of Scripture
and tradition.”
“A lecturer [Murray] gave the appearance
(end March 1953) that Ci Riesce of Pius XII
constituted a repudiation of the teachings of
Cardinal Ottaviani on ‘Church and State.’ He
contended that since Ci Riesce, those who have
hitherto accepted the teachings of the Cardinal’s
article as true are faced with the obligation of
reconsidering their position to avoid coming
into opposition with the doctrine of the Pope.
This, of course, is an extremely serious charge.
It is also utterly baseless and incorrect.…What
has attracted opposition to Cardinal Ottaviani’s
paper may possibly be due to what the Cardinal
had to say about the permanent validity of
authoritative ecclesiastical doctrine, affirming
the identical and constant teaching between Pius
XII, Pius XI and Leo XIII.” And Fenton concluded
that both documents “gave new support to what
is, after all, the standard teaching of Catholic
manuals of fundamental dogmatic theology and
of public ecclesiastical law.”
At that juncture Cardinal Ottaviani
intervened. He wrote the following:
“The controversy recently carried on between
two authors of opposite views in a country
beyond the Atlantic is widely known. One of the
disputants has defended the thesis we have just
mentioned and holds:
1. The State, properly speaking, cannot
accomplish an act of religion.
2. The State’s obligation to worship God can
never enter the Constitutional sphere.
3. Finally, even for a State composed of
Catholics, there is no obligation to profess
the Catholic religion. With regard to the
obligation to protect it, this does not become
operative except in determined circumstances
and precisely when the liberty of the Church
cannot be guaranteed in any other way.

“From such principles spring attacks directed
against the teaching set forth in manuals of
public ecclesiastical law, no account being
taken of the fact that such teaching is based,
for the most part, on the doctrine expounded in
Pontifical Documents.”

The Liberals Take Over
On the eve of the Council, while working on
the preparatory schemas, the most dramatic
session took place between Cardinal Ottaviani
and Cardinal Bea during the debate on religious
toleration with Archbishop Lefebvre as a witness.
Ottaviani declined that Bea’s commission (of the
Secretariat for Christian Unity) had any right
to present a second schema on religious liberty
since it was a doctrinal matter. It was as if the
Pope had made use of Hegelian dialectics in order
to arrive at a satisfying result. The Ottaviani
schema was called “Relations between Church
and State and Religious Tolerance,” comprising
fourteen pages of quotes from Pius XI and Pius
XII. The Bea text, entitled “On Religious Liberty,”
had only five pages of notes with no references to
the magisterium of the Church. The Archbishop

concluded that the liberals wanted to introduce
Liberalism and the Declaration of the Rights of
Man into the Church.
Msgr. Fenton, a peritus, or theological expert,
at Vatican II fighting on the side of his Roman
friend, Cardinal Ottaviani, had gone to Rome
convinced there was no way that the Council
would propound a “revolution in Catholic
attitudes.” On November 11, 1963, there was a
crucial meeting between the Roman theologians:
Cardinal Ottaviani and Msgr. Fenton on one
side, and Cardinal Bea, John Courtney Murray,
and Karl Rahner, on the other. A vote was taken
at that meeting which secured John Courtney
Murray’s new teaching on religious liberty as
the official position at the Council. This was a
position that Fenton understood well, and had
consistently fought throughout the entire 1950s.
Msgr. Fenton immediately returned from
Rome and resigned as editor of the American
Ecclesiastical Review, allegedly for health
reasons. Yesterday’s heresy had become today’s
orthodoxy, and Msgr. Fenton resigned his post
rather than promote a teaching he knew to be
incorrect, a teaching which was the glorification
of the American dream.

37

Faith and Morals

On Dante
A selection from In Praeclara Summorum, encyclical of Pope Benedict XV

To Professors and Students of Literature
and Learning in the Catholic World.
Among the many celebrated geniuses of
whom the Catholic faith can boast who have left
undying fruits in literature and art especially,
besides other fields of learning, and to whom
civilization and religion are ever in debt, highest
stands the name of Dante Alighieri, the sixth
centenary of whose death will soon be recorded.
Never perhaps has his supreme position been
recognized as it is today. Not only Italy, justly
proud of having given him birth, but all the civil
nations are preparing with special committees
of learned men to celebrate his memory that the
whole world may pay honour to that noble figure,
pride and glory of humanity.
38

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Profess Catholic Religion
4. And first of all, inasmuch as the divine poet
throughout his whole life professed in exemplary
manner the Catholic religion, he would surely
desire that this solemn commemoration should
take place, as indeed will be the case, under
the auspices of religion, and if it is carried out
in San Francesco in Ravenna it should begin in
San Giovanni in Florence to which his thoughts
turned during the last years of his life with the
desire of being crowned poet at the very font
where he had received Baptism. Dante lived in
an age which inherited the most glorious fruits
of philosophical and theological teaching and
thought, and handed them on to the succeeding
ages with the imprint of the strict scholastic

method. Amid the various currents of thought
diffused then too among learned men Dante
ranged himself as disciple of that Prince of
the school so distinguished for angelic temper
of intellect, Saint Thomas Aquinas. From him
he gained nearly all his philosophical and
theological knowledge, and while he did not
neglect any branch of human learning, at the
same time he drank deeply at the founts of
Sacred Scripture and the Fathers. Thus he
learned almost all that could be known in his
time, and nourished specially by Christian
knowledge, it was on that field of religion he drew
when he set himself to treat in verse of things
so vast and deep. So that while we admire the
greatness and keenness of his genius, we have
to recognize, too, the measure in which he drew
inspiration from the Divine Faith by means of
which he could beautify his immortal poems with
all the lights of revealed truths as well as with the
splendours of art. Indeed, his Commedia, which
deservedly earned the title of Divina, while it
uses various symbolic images and records the
lives of mortals on earth, has for its true aim
the glorification of the justice and providence of
God who rules the world through time and all
eternity and punishes and rewards the actions
of individuals and human society. It is thus that,
according to the Divine Revelation, in this poem
shines out the majesty of God One and Three,
the Redemption of the human race operated
by the Word of God made Man, the supreme
loving-kindness and charity of Mary, Virgin and
Mother, Queen of Heaven, and lastly the glory on
high of Angels, Saints and men; then the terrible
contrast to this, the pains of the impious in Hell;
then the middle world, so to speak, between
Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, the Ladder of souls
destined after expiation to supreme beatitude. It
is indeed marvellous how he was able to weave
into all three poems these three dogmas with
truly wrought design. If the progress of science
showed later that that conception of the world
rested on no sure foundation, that the spheres
imagined by our ancestors did not exist, that
nature, the number and course of the planets and
stars, are not indeed as they were then thought to
be, still the fundamental principle remained that

the universe, whatever be the order that sustains
it in its parts, is the work of the creating and
preserving sign of Omnipotent God, who moves
and governs all, and whose glory risplende in
una parte piu e meno altrove; and though this
earth on which we live may not be the centre
of the universe as at one time was thought, it
was the scene of the original happiness of our
first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as
too of the Redemption of mankind through the
Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Therefore
the divine poet depicted the triple life of souls
as he imagined it in such a way as to illuminate
with the light of the true doctrine of the faith the
condemnation of the impious, the purgation of
the good spirits and the eternal happiness of the
blessed before the final judgment.

Reverence to Holy Scripture
5. But among the truths that shine out in the
triple poem of Alighieri as in his other works We
think that these things may serve as teaching
for men of our times. That Christians should pay
highest reverence to the Sacred Scripture and
accept what it contains with perfect docility he
proclaims when he says that “Though many are
the writers of the Divine Word nevertheless there
is but one Dictator, God, Who has deigned to
show us His goodwill through the pens of many”
(Mon., III, 4). Glorious expression of a great truth.
Again, when he says that “The Old and the New
Testament, prescribed for eternity, as the Prophet
says, contain ‘spiritual teachings transcending
human reason,’ given ‘by the Holy Ghost who
by means of the Prophets and sacred writings,
through Jesus Christ co-eternal Son of God and
through His disciples revealed the supernatural
truth necessary for us’” (Mon., III, 3, 16). And
therefore regarding the life to come “It is assured
by the true doctrine of Christ who is the Way, the
Truth and the Life: the Way because by that way
we advance without hindrance to the happiness
of that immortality; the Truth because He is free
from all error; the Light because He enlightens
us in the darkness of ignorance of this world”
(Conv. II, 9). And no less reverence he pays to
39

Faith and Morals
“those venerable Great Councils the presence of
Christ in which no one of the faithful doubts”; and
great is his esteem for “writings of the Doctors,
Augustine and the others, and if any one doubt
that they were aided by the Holy Ghost either he
has not seen their fruits or if he has seen he has
not tasted” (Mon., III, 3).

Intellectual Enjoyment
8. Wonderful, therefore, is the intellectual
enjoyment that we gain from the study of the
great poet, and no less the profit for the student
making more perfect his artistic taste and more
keen his zeal for virtue, as long as he keeps his
mind free from prejudice and open to accept
truth. Indeed, while there is no lack of great
Catholic poets who combine the useful with the
enjoyable, Dante has the singular merit that while
he fascinates the reader with wonderful variety
of pictures, with marvellously lifelike colouring,
with supreme expression and thought, he draws
him also to the love of Christian knowledge, and
all know how he said openly that he composed
his poem to bring to all “vital nourishment.” And
we know now too how, through God’s grace,
even in recent times, many who were far from,
though not averse to Jesus Christ, and studied
with affection the Divina Commedia, began by
admiring the truths of the Catholic Faith and
finished by throwing themselves with enthusiasm
into the arms of the Church.
9. What We have said above suffices to show
how opportune it is that on the occasion of this
world centenary each should intensify his zeal
for the preservation of that Faith shown by Dante
pre-eminently as support of learning and the
arts. For We admire in him not only supreme
height of genius but also the immensity of the
subject which holy religion put to his hand. If his
genius was refined by meditation and long study
of the great classics it was tempered even more
gloriously, as We have said, by the writings of
the Doctors and the Fathers which gave him the
wings on which to rise to a higher atmosphere
than that of restricted nature. And thus it comes
that, though he is separated from us by centuries,
40

The Angelus

March - April 2013

he has still the freshness of a poet of our times:
certainly more modern than some of those of
recent days who have exhumed the Paganism
banished forever by Christ’s triumph on the
Cross. There breathes in Alighieri the piety that
we too feel; the Faith has the same meaning
for us; it is covered with the same veil, “the
truth given to us from on high, by which we are
lifted so high.” That is his great glory, to be the
Christian poet, to have sung with Divine accents
those Christian ideals which he so passionately
loved in all the splendour of their beauty, feeling
them intimately and making them his life. Such as
dare to deny to Dante this award and reduce all
the religious content of the Divina Commedia to
a vague ideology without basis of truth fail to see
the real characteristic of the poet, the foundation
of all his other merits.
10. If then Dante owes so great part of his fame
and greatness to the Catholic Faith, let that one
example, to say nothing of others, suffice to show
the falseness of the assertion that obedience
of mind and heart to God is a hindrance to
genius, whereas indeed it incites and elevates
it. Let it show also the harm done to the cause
of learning and civilization by such as desire to
banish all idea of religion from public instruction.
Deplorable indeed is the system prevalent today
of educating young students as if God did not
exist and without the least reference to the
supernatural. In some places the “sacred poem” is
not kept outside the schools, is indeed numbered
among the books to be studied specially; but it
does not bring to the young students that “vital
nourishment” which it should do because through
the principle of the “lay school” they are not
disposed towards the truths of the Faith as they
should be. Heaven grant that this may be the fruit
of the Dante Centenary: that wherever literary
instruction is given the great poet may be held
in due honour and that he himself may be for the
pupils the teacher of Christian doctrine, he whose
one purpose in his poem was “to raise mortals
from the state of misery,” that is from the state of
sin, “and lead them to the state of happiness,” that
is of divine grace (Epist. III, para. 15).

The Spirit of
Eastertide
by Fr. Jordan Fahnstock, SSPX

March and April are months central to the
Paschal cycle which comprises several sections:
the time of Septuagesima, Lent, Easter, Ascension,
and Pentecost. After the forty days of the tithes
each Christian offers God come the fifty days
of the Paschal time called Eastertide. As we
concentrate on the latter, we wish to grasp its
leitmotiv, and then concentrate more specifically
on the Easter celebration itself and some of its
popular customs.

The Eastertide
God willed that the Christian Easter and
Pentecost should be prepared by the Mosaic Law,
fifteen hundred years before the fact, and this
reality is our own heritage. During these days,

what is placed before our eyes are two great
manifestations of God’s benefits to man: the Pasch
of Israel and the Christian Pasch; the Pentecost of
Sinai and the Pentecost of the Church.
What is the meaning of the Pasch? To the
Hebrews, the Pesach or Passover referred to the
passing of the exterminating angel who spared the
Hebrew families protected by the blood of lambs
spread on the door posts, just before they would
flee towards liberty and the Promised Land.
For the Christians, eternity is the true Pasch.
The human race was dead, victim of the sentence
passed on Adam, condemned to lie mere dust
in the tomb; the gates of life shut against it. But
the Son of God rises from His grave and takes
possession of eternal life. And He is not the only
one: “He is the first-born from the dead,” says
St. Paul. In the Church’s eyes, we have already
41

Faith and Morals
risen with our Jesus, and already possess eternal
life. That is why we sing the Alleluia, with which
the streets and squares of the celestial Jerusalem
resound endlessly. After going through Lent, as we
have resolved to die no more that death which kills
the soul, we are entitled to sing our Alleluia.
Eternity is the true Pasch and it needs be
celebrated on Sunday, the first day of the week.
The Synagogue by God’s command kept holy the
Saturday in honor of God’s resting after the six
days of creation. The Church honors Christ’s work.
Early on the eighth day, He rises to life and the life
is one of glory. Abbot Rupert explains: “Rightly
was the seventh (day) changed into the eighth,
because we Christians put our joy in a better work
than the creation of the world… Let the lovers of
the world keep a Sabbath for its creation: but our
joy is in the salvation of the world, for our life, yea
and our rest, is hidden with Christ in God.”

Said otherwise, after the seven ages of the Church
militant there will come the eternal day of the
Church triumphant.
If Lent leads us through the Purgative Life,
Eastertide is referred to as the Illuminative Life.
It reveals to us the grandest Mystery of the ManGod, the risen Christ, but also the three admirable
manifestations of divine love and power, the
Resurrection, the Ascension and the Descent of
the Holy Ghost. Easter is truly the perfection of the
work of Redemption. Here Christ is expressing in
His own sacred Humanity the highest degree of the
creature’s transformation into his God. And with
the coming of the Holy Ghost adding up brightness
and intimacy, there result those several Christian
exercises which produce within the soul an
imitation of her divine Model and prepare her for
that Unitive Life to which her Redeemer invited
her.

The Easter Celebration

www.shutterstock.com

The mystery of the seventh followed by an
eighth day, as the holy one, is again brought
up front by the number of weeks which form
Eastertide. These weeks are seven; they form
a week of weeks, and their next day is again a
Sunday, the feast of Pentecost. St. Hilary explains
it thus: “If we multiply seven by seven, we shall
find that this holy season is truly the Sabbath of
sabbaths; but what completes it, and raises it to
the plenitude of the Gospel, is the eighth day which
follows, eighth and first both together in itself.”
42

The Angelus

March - April 2013

The feast of the Resurrection is exalted above
all other feasts. The saints and Church Fathers
refer to it as the “peak (akropolis) of all feasts,”
surpassing “all others like the sun among stars.”
The Church used a pious artifice to infuse of the
spirit of Easter into all, including ‘carnal minds.’
Abbot Rupert explains: “It happens that while the
body is being mortified, and is to continue to be so
till Easter Night, that holy night is eagerly looked
forward to even by the carnal-minded; they long
for it to come; and meanwhile, they carefully count
each of the forty days, as a wearied traveler does
the miles. Thus the sacred solemnity is sweet to
all, and dear to all, and desired by all, as light is
to them that walk in darkness, as a fount of living
water is to them that thirst, and as ‘a tent which
the Lord hath pitched’ for wearied wayfarers.”
The English term Easter and the German
Ostern come from a common origin, which to
the Norsemen meant the season of the rising and
growing sun, the season of new birth. The same
root is found in the name for the place where
the sun rises, East, Ost. It meant originally the
celebration of the spring sun, which had its birth
in the East and brought new life upon earth. This

symbolism was transferred to the supernatural
meaning of our Easter, to the new life of the Risen
Christ, the eternal and uncreated Light.
Since there is an intimate bond between
the Resurrection of Christ and the sacrament
of baptism, the Church united these two
‘resurrections’ in a common ritual. It celebrates the
‘new life’ not only of Christ as the Head, but also of
His Mystical Body. This is why the prayers of the
liturgy in the Paschal week constantly reflect those
two thoughts: the Resurrection of Our Lord and the
baptism of the faithful.
The rising of Christ is symbolized particularly
with the Paschal candle, lit from the Easter fire,
originally a pagan Germanic tradition of setting big
bonfires at the beginning of spring. The celebration
of light gave rise to many poems, the most known
being Inventor Rutilis of Prudentius in 405:
Eternal God, O Lord of Light,
Who hast created day and night:
The sun has set, and shadows deep
Now over land and waters creep;
But darkness must not reign today:
Grant us the light of Christ, we pray.
With the procession of the Easter candle came
the Easter Song or Exultet, followed by long
passages of the Bible called the “prophecies,”
finishing the formation of the catechumens.
Towards midnight, the bishop and clergy went
in procession to the baptismal font, originally a
large basin built in a round or octagonal structure
outside the Church. There they were formally
baptized into the “life-giving waters.” It is in
relation to this that the Church today offers all
the faithful present the chance to renew their
baptismal vows. Long after midnight, the vigil
was concluded with the customary prayers of the
litanies and celebration of the Holy Sacrifice.

Easter Customs
The Easter greetings are still quite common
in the Greek Church: “Christos aneste”—Christ
is risen—with the answer “Alethos aneste”—
He is risen truly. So do the Russians “Christos
voskres. Vo istinu voskres.” The Poles offer a wish
“Wesolego Alleluia”—a joyful alleluia to you!

Among the hymns to celebrate the feast, most
famous is the Alleluia! O Filii et Filiae, by the
Franciscan Jean Tisserand in 1494. The Regina
Caeli Laetare is a 14th-century poem, sung during
the entire Eastertide, which serves also as the
substitute to the thrice daily Angelus. Handel’s
oratorio of the Messiah offers the Hallelujah
Chorus during which all audiences rise from their
seats. Goethe in his Faust of 1832 offers us a brief
and forceful Easter song.
Christ is arisen:
Joy to all mortals
Freed from the threatening
Creeping and deadening
Serpents of evil.
The providence of God has harmonized the
visible with the supernatural work of grace by
designing that the Resurrection of Christ take
place during the season where Nature herself
seems to rise from the grave. This is symbolized
in food. The Easter egg among Indo-European
races is the symbol of fertility. To pagans, it was a
most startling event to see a new and live creature
emerge from a seemingly dead object. In Christian
terms, the egg becomes a symbol of the rock tomb
out of which Christ emerged to the new life of His
resurrection. Moreover, the egg, formerly forbidden
all along Lent, gave significance to the Easter joy.
The Easter bunny has its origin in pagan fertility
lore. Hare and rabbit were the most fertile animals
pagans knew, serving as symbol of abundant new
life in spring. This has never been a Christian
thing. Yet, the bunny has acquired a cherished
role in Easter as the legendary producer of Easter
eggs for children in many countries. In Germany,
the Easter bunny was believed to lay red eggs on
Maundy Thursday and eggs of other colors the
night before Easter Sunday. They are a favorite
Easter pastry in Northern Europe.
We shall close this folkloric tour with sweet
things. In Hungary and thereabout, people bake
their ham (the pig is a symbol of abundance and an
Easter favorite) with bread dough. The bread of the
Slavs is called Paska. The German and Austrian
oblong or twisted bread with raisins is called
Osterstollen. The Poles’ favorite is the mazurki
filled with nuts and fruit.

43

Spirituality

Art and the
Spiritual Life
by Fr. Jonathan Loop, SSPX

1

III Kings 8:10-11.

2

Ps. 92:5.

3

I Cor. 3:16-7.

In the Old Testament, God Almighty directed Solomon, the son of David, to
build in His honor a glorious temple which would serve as His abode among
the Jewish nation. When this house of God had been completed after seven
years of construction, we are told: “A cloud filled the house of the Lord and
the priests could not minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord
had filled the house of the Lord.”1 For this reason, the Psalmist exclaims:
“Holiness becomes thy house, O Lord, unto length of days.”2 However, this
earthly temple was meant only to serve as an image of the dwelling place of
the good God in the New Testament.

The Temple of God Is Holy
In the first of his letters to the Christians at Corinth, St. Paul writes:
“Know you not, that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you? For the temple of God is holy, which you are.”3 In this
light, we may better understand the words of Our Lord to the Samaritan
woman who had said that the Jews worshipped God in Jerusalem while the
44

The Angelus

March - April 2013

4

Jn. 4:21-4.

5

On the author’s first visit
to Europe he travelled
Spain. Together with a
young Mormon friend, he
entered the cathedral of
Seville and was floored by
the immensity and majesty
of the building. As both
craned their heads to take
in the whole expanse of
the interior and to glimpse
the ceiling, the normally
loquacious teenagers were
reduced to expressions of
monosyllabic wonder.

6

Sermon of March 27, 1975.

Samaritans worshipped Him at Mt. Garizim. He told her, “The hour comes
when you shall neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem adore the Father.
The hour comes and now is when the true adorers shall adore the Father in
spirit and in truth. God is a spirit, and they that adore Him must adore him
in spirit and in truth.”4 In other words, wherever there is a Christian soul in
the state of grace, there we find the temple wherein true worship may be
rendered to God Almighty.
Let us take, therefore, a few moments to see how we may be able to render
our souls worthy dwelling places of the Creator of heaven and earth. To do
so, let us briefly consider some of the qualities that characterize the beautiful
cathedrals—Chartres, Notre Dame of Paris, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, to
name but a few—which were constructed during the Ages of Faith. These
churches were designed principally in order to give honor and glory to the
good God; everything in them was directed to this purpose. Although many
different styles have dominated various periods of church architecture,
there are various elements which remain constant over the centuries. Among
these, we shall focus on the great order found in Catholic churches, the
frequent presence of natural light, and the fact that these buildings were
traditionally built from stone.

The Altar Is the Center
As one enters a Catholic cathedral, one cannot but be impressed by
the grandeur of the edifice as well as by the harmonious arrangement of
everything contained within it.5 These two elements contribute to the sense
of order which pervades the temples of our religion. Of course, if we speak
of order, we necessarily imply something which both establishes and defines
that order. In Catholic cathedrals—and, indeed, even in the most humble
parish church—this principle of order is nothing other than the altar. In a
sermon, Archbishop Lefebvre asked rhetorically: “The altar is the center of
all of our basilicas and our churches, is it not?” He goes on to say, “What do
missionaries do in the lands they want to evangelize? The first thing they do
is set up a chapel, a place of prayer. And in this place, what do they put in the
middle? An altar.”6 The whole design of Catholic churches is meant to direct
souls to the altar. Why? For there is offered the holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
which is the sacrifice of the Cross renewed in an unbloody manner, and there
is tendered to God the most perfect act of praise and adoration possible.
The beautiful art—the statuary, the stained-glass windows, the vestments
and ornaments—as well as the nobility of the majestic proportions of our
cathedrals are meant simply to help our minds grasp more perfectly the
sublime reality which is effected on these sacred stones.
As it is in our cathedrals and churches, so it ought to be in our souls.
Every faculty, every desire, every possession of our soul must be directed to
reproducing within us the sacrifice which Our Lord offered on Calvary and
continues to offer on our altars. What does this mean for us in practice? To
answer this, we must first ask what lies at the heart of Our Lord’s sacrifice.
We may truly say that the sacrifice which Our Lord Jesus Christ offered
45

on Calvary—and thus which He continues to offer upon our altars—was
essentially one of obedience to the will of His Father: “He humbled himself,
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”7 We may see the
final oblation which Our Lord makes in the garden of Gethsemane: “Father,
if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will,
but as thou wilt.”8 Calvary, however, was merely final expression of Christ’s
whole life. St. Paul teaches that when Our Lord entered the world, the first
movement of His soul was to exclaim: “Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst
not, but a body hast thou fitted for me. Then said I, ‘Behold, I come; in the
head of the book it is written of me that I should do thy will.”9 Throughout
His public life, He never ceased to repeat, “My meat is to do the will of Him
who sent me.”10 Our greatest passion ought to be to find and to accomplish
the will of our Father in heaven. This will invariably mean sacrificing that
which is most dear to us—our own will—upon the altar of our hearts.
Everything which is in us—our mind, memory, emotions, physical gifts—and
even our outward possessions must be ordered to this spiritual altar and the
spiritual sacrifice which is offered upon it.

Attention to Our Lord
Another aspect of church architecture reveals to us an additional
characteristic of the symbolism inherent in Christian temples. Traditionally,
Catholic churches were constructed to face east in order to be directed
towards the rising sun. Thus, when Mass was said, the light of the new day
would be pouring into the church. Though this evidently serves a practical
purpose, it also draws our attention to Our Lord, who is the “light of the
world.” In the Gospel according to St. John, Our Lord is recorded to have
spoken on this subject on numerous occasions. For example, immediately
before His Passion, He explained: “I am come a light into the world; that
whosoever believeth in me, may not remain in darkness.”11 In orienting the
churches which they built, our ancestors meant in this way to highlight the
fact that the Holy Mother Church is illumined by the Sun of Justice.
Here again we may draw a valuable lesson for our spiritual lives. We too
must design our spiritual edifice in such a manner as to permit Our Lord
to cast His light abundantly within our souls. In the prologue of St. John’s
Gospel, we read: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”12 What
does this mean? We must study our Faith. What is the Faith if not the truths
which Our Lord revealed to us? What are the truths which Our Lord revealed
to us if not supernatural lights far brighter than even the brightest natural
knowledge of the greatest philosophers? Archbishop Lefebvre used to say
that a five-year-old child that knows its catechism understands reality
better than the most renowned scholars [who do not know it]. The more we
absorb the teachings of God Incarnate, the more He shall dispel from us the
darkness of our ignorance and error. He said: “I am the light of the world: he
that followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”13

7

Phil. 2:8.

8

Lk. 22:42.

9

Heb. 10:5, 7.

10

Jn. 4:34.

11

Jn. 12:42.

12

Jn. 1:4.

13

Jn. 8:12.

14

I Cor. 3:11.

15

III Kings 14:25 ff. The
temple was despoiled
about 30 years after it was
completed.

16

Lk. 23:45.

Christ Himself the Cornerstone
Finally, it is worthy of note that the building material of choice for the
glorious churches of Christendom was invariably stone. In addition to
being a strong and noble substance, it has the happy character of recalling
to our minds the fact that “Jesus Christ Himself [is] the chief cornerstone”
of the Church. He is also the solid foundation of the Church, “For other
foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus.”14
As it is with the Church, so also in our interior lives. If we are to have a
solid and balanced piety, we must base it wholly on Our Lord Jesus Christ
as He has made Himself known to us through the public revelation which
He has bequeathed to the Church. Indeed, there is no need for a multiplicity
of private devotions or pious practices in order to please God. We have only
to draw near to Jesus and rest on Him. It is only in this manner that our
spiritual lives will have the necessary stability which will enable us to avoid
being excessively elated by spiritual consolations or dejected by desolations
and trials.
Our spiritual lives will necessarily contain both highs and lows. The
glorious temple dedicated by Solomon would be despoiled of its treasures
within a few short years15 and eventually destroyed when the kingdom of
Judah was led into the Babylonian captivity. Later, He would both resume His
dwelling in the second temple built under the supervision of Nehemias and
maintain His presence there until the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.16 God
will allow the spiritual temple of our souls to suffer a like fate inasmuch as
He will permit it—should we faithfully strive to serve Him—to be despoiled
of the riches of His consolations. We may even go so far as to say that He
will allow it to be destroyed insofar as He works to annihilate anything in it
unworthy of Himself. Only in the measure that we have placed Christ as the
foundation of our spiritual edifice, ensured that His light bathes its interior,
and placed at its center the altar upon which is to be sacrificed our will, shall
we be able to endure the constructive work of God in our souls. Then Our
Lord and His Eternal Father shall gladly come to take everlasting possession
of our souls and fill them with His glory.

Fr. Jonathan Loop was born and raised an Episcopalian. He attended college at the University of Dallas, where he received the
grace to convert through the intermediary of several of his fellow students, some of whom later went on to become religious
with the Dominicans of Fanjeaux. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political philosophy, he enrolled in St. Thomas
Aquinas Seminary, where he was ordained in June 2011.

47

Christian Culture

A Worthy Bishop

St. Ambrose
by Fr. Emanuel Herkel, SSPX

The Election
The bishop was dead and it was time to choose
his successor, but there was no agreement. The
cathedral of Milan was noisy. Outside, a crowd was
shouting slogans about one God in three Persons
and don’t give up one iota. Inside, all of the priests
and the leading Christians had the right to speak
and to vote. It wasn’t a very good system, and it was
threatening to turn violent. Milan was the capital
of northern Italy, where the people were mostly
Catholic and loyal to the pope. Many Christians of
this diocese, however, were Arian heretics, like the
late bishop. Arianism denied that Christ was the
eternal God; it had been condemned and was fast
disappearing, but Milan had been holding out.
Ambrose, the governor, was concerned. Why
couldn’t these Christians hold an election without
48

The Angelus

March - April 2013

starting a riot? A column of soldiers dispersed the
crowd. Everyone fell silent as Ambrose entered the
cathedral and addressed the gathering: “Enough of
this nonsense! You Arians hate the Catholics and
you Catholics hate the Arians. Well then, choose
somebody else!” The Christians stared at him in
silence. Of course, that was the answer! A voice
from the back cried out: “Ambrose for bishop!”
Every mouth opened and repeated the same cry:
“Ambrose for bishop!”
Now it was Ambrose who stood in silence and
fear, facing this mob. How was this possible? His
only hope was to talk his way out of this mess. “I
cannot be your bishop,” he shouted, “I am not even
a Christian. I admire your religion, but I hardly
understand it. I am not yet baptized!” Several of the
priests stepped forward and said simply: “You are
the man! You are chosen! Baptism can be arranged

immediately.” Breathing deeply, Ambrose collected
his thoughts. He had no intention of letting this
silly proposal continue; there was one way to
stop it. He stepped up to the pulpit and calmly
addressed the crowd. He thanked them for the
honor of being chosen as bishop and informed
them that his responsibilities with the Imperial
Government regrettably precluded the possibility
of such a nomination. He called for prayer and
silence, promised that a new election would be
held soon, and adjourned the meeting.

The Right Stuff
In his simplicity, Ambrose probably thought that
was the end of the matter. The people dispersed,
but both the Catholics and the Arians agreed on
one point: “Ambrose was the man for this job.”
His objections were strong, but they could be
overcome. The fact that he was not yet a Christian
was in his favor, since he had no preconceived
opinions about the Arian heresy. Eventually he
would make up his own mind. His responsibilities
as governor could also be seen as an asset. Some
of the leading citizens put together a petition to the
Emperor, asking for Ambrose as their bishop. The
Emperor was flattered by the idea that one of his
men had been elected to this position in a capital
city. He sent Ambrose a letter, relieving him of his
responsibilities. Within a week, at the beginning
of December 374, Ambrose had been baptized,
ordained priest, and consecrated bishop.
Ambrose took his new job seriously. He began
with a thorough study of the Bible and the writings
of the great Catholic teachers, Origen and St.
Basil. The Arians probably thought that Ambrose
would accept their heresy, or at least tolerate it.
But he learned theology so well that he converted
most of the heretics in Milan. Now St. Ambrose is
honored, with St. Basil, as a Father of the Church.

Pagans and Heretics
When he was a pagan, Ambrose had understood
the shallowness of worship offered to the Roman
gods. Very few people really believed in Jupiter

or Juno. The offering of incense in the temples
was a formality supported by tradition and
government approval. In 313, when the Edict of
Milan legalized Christianity, there was a great
increase in conversions to Christianity. Ambrose
saw the need to do more, so he convinced
the Emperor to disestablish paganism. Pagan
temples had endowments of property. It was all
confiscated. Pagan priests had tax exemptions
and special status. They were taken away. Pagans
were not forced to be baptized, but it ceased to be
convenient to be a pagan. Ambrose was clearing a
way for the establishment of a Christian state.
Looking back, it is easy to say that the most
important man converted by Ambrose was
Augustine. But, at the time, Augustine was just
a minor government official, a rhetorician at
court, and a heretic. Augustine had learned about
Christianity from his mother, St. Monica, but
he was unconvinced. He went to listen to the
sermons of St. Ambrose out of a professional
interest in rhetoric; he came away convinced
of Catholic truth. Thus, in September 386, one
future doctor of the Church baptized another. St.
Augustine later wrote of St. Ambrose: “He was one
of those who speak the truth, and speak it well,
judiciously, pointedly, and with beauty and power
of expression” (De Doct. Christ., iv, 21).

The Things That are
Not Caesar’s
When the Emperor died, his widow, Justina,
was left as regent for her young son. She was an
Arian and she wanted some of the churches of
Milan to be given to Arian priests. The bishop
refused. Justina commanded: “You must obey the
Emperor!” Ambrose answered: “No. Palaces are
a matter for the Emperor’s concern, but churches
belong to the bishop.”
Ambrose won the day, but this same problem
was going to keep recurring. Milan had replaced
Rome as the Italian capital, so Ambrose, rather
than the Pope, had to deal with the Emperor.
His most famous conflict came in A.D. 390, with
the Emperor Theodosius the Great. Here, in a
dramatic scene, Ambrose asserted that the
49

Christian Culture
Emperor was subject to the church.
At Thessalonica, in Macedonia, a local hero,
a charioteer, was arrested. The crowd at the
stadium rioted, threw stones, and killed a high
official. It was murder, committed by a crowd,
and Theodosius the Great planned to take his
revenge on the crowd. He ordered the chariot
races to continue. A crowd of 7,000 gathered in the
stadium; then the army surrounded and murdered
the crowd. It was imperial revenge at the cost of
7,000 lives for one.
Ambrose tried to deal with it quietly. He sent a
private letter, for the Emperor’s eyes only, begging
the Emperor to repent. He tactfully recalled the
story of King David, who repented the murder of
Urias. Theodosius did not reply, but he passed
a law requiring a one-month delay between a
sentence of death and execution.
Perhaps he thought that was enough.
Theodosius went to the cathedral for Mass and
the bishop met him at the door. In a voice for all
to hear, Ambrose told the most powerful man in
the world that he was not allowed to enter. For the
first time ever, an emperor was excommunicated.
For months the matter gnawed on the
Emperor’s soul. He was a man who had sinned
publicly, and he knew that his sin could only be
forgiven by public penance. Finally, on Christmas
Day, Theodosius removed his royal robes, lay
down on the cathedral floor in front of the bishop,
and confessed his sins. Ambrose pardoned
Theodosius by the power of Christ; then he gave
him Holy Communion. Afterwards, Theodosius
said: “I know no bishop worthy of the name,
except Ambrose.”

Beautiful Music and
Beautiful Death
After a public confession, the seven penitential
psalms were probably sung by a choir. Ambrose
loved church music, especially the chanting of
psalms. He wrote many hymns, including some
still used in the Roman Breviary. A style of singing
called Ambrosian chant (with a simpler melody
than Gregorian chant) is still used in connection
with the Ambrosian rite of the Traditional Mass.
50

The Angelus

March - April 2013

In January 395, Emperor Theodosius the Great
died at Milan. His favorite bishop was at his
bedside. Ambrose was always solicitous about his
pastoral duties; he probably worked himself to an
early death.
The Ambrosian hymn sung at None (3 p.m.), is
a testimony to St. Ambrose’s attitude: “Largire
lumen vespere, quo vita nusquam decidat,
sed praemium mortis sacrae perennis instet
gloria—Grant us light in the evening so that life
may not decay at any point of its activity, but
everlasting glory be the immediate reward of a
happy death.”
After twenty-three years as a bishop, Ambrose
collapsed. He was carried to his cathedral where
he lay on the floor with his arms extended in the
form of a cross; he received Holy Communion,
and after swallowing it, he died peacefully on
Good Friday, 397. That year the Easter baptisms
of adults were performed by five bishops; they
had trouble doing what Ambrose used to do by
himself.

Fr. Herkel was born in British Columbia, Canada, and graduated
from boarding high school at St. Mary’s, Kansas, in 1992. He
studied for the priesthood at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary
in Winona, Minnesota, and was ordained in 2001. Since then
he has been stationed in Canada. He is currently stationed at
Immaculate Heart of Mary Priory in Calgary, Alberta.

Stained-glass window in the
Cathedral of Cologne
Top part: Christ hands
over the keys of the
Church to St. Peter
Center Part:
Our Lady surrounded by
the apostles on the
day of Pentecost
Bottom part:
The four Latin Church Fathers
(right bottom corner: St. Ambrose)
Right:
Detail of St. Ambrose from the
above picture

Christian Culture

Saying What Is, Is, Beautifully

On Literature
by Andrew J. Clarendon

52

1

Dante Alighieri, The Divine
Comedy in The Portable
Dante, trans. and ed. Mark
Musa (New York: Penguin
Classics, 2003), Paradiso
I.1-3.

2

Daniel J. Sullivan, An
Introduction to Philosophy
(Rockford, IL: TAN Books,
1992), 78.

3

Dante, Inf. XI, 105.

4

John Oesterle, Logic:
The Art of Defining
and Reasoning, 2nd ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963),
250.

5

Ibid., 250.

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Dante opens the third part of his supreme literary achievement with a
universal statement: “The glory of the One Who moves all things / penetrates
all the universe, reflecting / in one part more and in another less.”1 Here,
at the summit of the medieval cultural synthesis, is a poetic expression of
the essence of nature, that creation is a varied manifestation of the unity
of the logos Who was there from the beginning and before the beginning.
It has always been the quest of humanity to seek to know as much of the
Creator and His creation as possible; this leads to the sciences of theology,
philosophy, mathematics, and the rest. From the beginning, however,
there has been another way to try to capture the Word: the road to God
that involves imitating His creative power. These are the arts, an activity
of creation that “presupposes knowledge on the part of the artist . . . [a]
knowledge [that] knows not in order to know, but in order to produce,”2 an
imitation of nature that can be considered “God’s grandchild.”3 The most
intellectual of the traditional seven fine arts, the only one to engage in
argumentation,4 the one practiced by the Word Himself while on earth, is
literature. This mode of creative imitation uses the mysterious connection
between ideas and words—which can only be known by the intellect5 —in

6

William Shakespeare,
Hamlet in The Complete
Works of Shakespeare, ed.
David Bevington, 4th ed.
(New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc., 1992),
3.2.22.

7

Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics, trans. James E. C.
Welldon, in On Man in the
Universe (New York: Walter
J. Black, Inc., 1943), 173.

8

Oscar Wilde, preface to The
Picture of Dorian Gray
(New York: Lancer Books,
Inc., 1968), 5.

9

Condé B. Pallen, The
Philosophy of Literature
(1897; reprint, Whitefish,
MT: Kessinger Publishing
Legacy Reprints, 2008), 93.

10

Oesterle, Logic, 250.

11

Sullivan, Introduction to
Philosophy, 77.

12

Oesterle, Logic, 250.

13

Ibid., 250.

order to convey truth. By way of definition, literature is the art of creating
beautifully truthful statements in order to teach and entertain.
It is significant that the word for poet is derived from the Greek word
poiein, which means to create. The artist imitates the creative power of
God because he cannot help but do so. There is a breathing forth of the self
that seeks to share the artist’s inner life with his fellow men, mind speaking
to mind and heart to heart. In trying to understand himself and his world,
the artist “holds the mirror up to nature”6 and describes what he sees using,
in the literary sphere, language in various ways. However, it is not enough
merely to make, to be a master of grammar and form. Aristotle, at the dawn
of literary criticism, stresses that in order to be good, this “creative state of
mind [must be] under the guidance of true reason.”7 Although the collection
of statements that make up a work of literature must be well written, the
primary focus cannot be on this because all literature has as its principal
aim the truth. In his sly preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
seemingly shocks the reader with the claim that “They are the elect to whom
beautiful things mean only beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an
immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”8 In fact,
it is quite impossible for something to be beautiful without being true. Beauty
itself is “the splendor of truth [and] truth is absolute unity . . . [so], the law of
beauty in the visible order consists in the manifestation of the unity of truth
in sensible variety.”9 In other words, to state that literature is the creation of
beautifully truthful statements is really to state the same thing twice from
differing points of view—an ontological necessity. As a speaker of the truth,
the author, in the presentation of human beings, “has the obligation . . . to
represent good human action as good and bad human action as bad.”10 For
an author to present good as evil or evil as good would be both immoral and
inartistic. Prefaces aside, Dorian’s picture does turn horribly ugly.
The final cause of literature, to teach and delight, stems from this. What
the author offers is what St. Thomas terms “connatural”11 knowledge: an
understanding of reality as it is lived and experienced among men. The
artist is one who sees more deeply into human nature than ordinary people
and one who can, at least to a degree, communicate this knowledge. This
knowledge has a universal quality but is necessarily put in terms of the
singular; in other words, literature is a vitalized, striking, and concrete
presentation of universal principles.12 Everyone knows from at least the
natural law that murder is an evil—the catechism reminds us it can lead one
to hell—but to witness Macbeth’s descent or to contemplate Count Ugolino is
to convey the point in a more vivid fashion. Since fallen man lives in a fallen
world, literature, to be truthful and realistic, must be concerned about vice
as well as virtue, but always with the end of trying to persuade humanity to
acquire virtue. Although the poetic form of argumentation is the weakest
in terms of logic, in its teaching office it is more influential because men
are more likely to understand and appreciate representations of virtue than
reasoning upon moral truths.13
This movement of the human mind and heart is initially and powerfully
accomplished by the other purpose of literature, to entertain and delight. It
is not enough for the author to accurately convey truth; the representation
53

Christian Culture

14

Ibid., 249.

15

Sister Miriam Joseph,
C.S.C., The Trivium,
ed. Marguerite McGlinn
(Philadelphia: Paul Dry
Books, 2002), 228-229.

16

Oesterle, Logic, 250.

17

William Wordsworth, “Ode:
Intimations of Immortality”
in William Wordsworth:
Selected Poems, ed. John O.
Hayden (New York: Penguin
Books, 1994), 204.

18

Hamlet, 2.2.309.

19

Inf., I, 60.

of truth must be pleasing to the reader in order to win his assent to the
author’s judgments.14 Since the medium of literature is words, the first
aspect of delight involves pleasure created by sound. The words themselves,
along with their combinations in devices such as rhyme or alliteration, are
analogous to the effect of music. Dante’s definition of poetry as a “rhetorical
composition set to music” includes this aspect of literature. Another element
of the joy caused by literature involves the images created by the author’s
words. While a painter uses colors and lines to convey his message, an
author paints with words. An ancient Greek saying describes the parallel:
“Poetry is a talking picture, while painting is poetry keeping silent.” The
imagination delights in the images conveyed by beautiful words while the
intellect is fed by the most important truths; this is concisely expressed,
for example, in Samuel Johnson’s famous definition of poetry as “the art of
uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason.”
Literature, although related to the great sciences of theology and philosophy,
is, so to speak, more human: it embraces the whole of the reader, using all
three of Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals15 to persuade while achieving “the
ordering of the passions.”16 The delightful wisdom experienced by literature
is what keeps the reader returning again and again to hear the same poetic
music, to contemplate “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”17
In an increasingly technological and materialistic age, humanity is in
danger of rejecting and then forgetting what life is for; we are busy reducing
man to a consumer and ultimately to nothing but the “quintessence of dust.”18
Nevertheless, since the lessons are universal and human nature is a constant,
the works of the great masters have permanent value, transcending their
own time, even in a decadent age. The great literary tradition, stretching
back millennia, “saves us”—as Chesterton puts it—“the degradation of being
children of our age.” Even after 2700 years, we can still learn from Homer,
but Homer must be read and understood if he and the rest of the wise old
masters are to save us. Tender is the thread of civilization that connects
these guides to the present, and delicate is the living culture tended by
the preservers and restorers for the next generation. We abandon these
beautifully truthful expressions of the Word, indifferently forgetful, fleeing
down “back to where the sun is mute,”19 at our peril.

Andrew J. Clarendon, M.A., holds a M.A. in English
Literature from the Catholic University of America. In
addition to being one of the founding faculty members
of Notre Dame de La Salette Academy, he is now a
professor at St. Mary’s Academy and College.

54

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Integrity Series
Why aren’t Americans contemplative? Is today the best of all possible worlds? How should a Catholic approach television, Catholic Action, job hunting, and more? These and other pressing questions are tackled in the first volume of the
beloved Integrity Series.
Taken from the far-sighted journal Integrity (1946-1955), these four volumes examine the necessity of a Thomistic approach to life, the Catholic approach to raising solid Catholic children, the role of the Father, and finally, the role of Mother.
The unique approach of these thought-provoking books is that they examine all of these pressing questions through the
lens of a classical Thomistic approach. You will return to these easy-to-read articles again and again.

398pp – Softcover –STK# 4049 – $15.95

256pp – Softcover –STK# 6598 – $12.95

200pp – Softcover –STK# 6721 – $13.95

208pp – Softcover –STK# 8335 – $12.95

Visit www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

Christian Culture

Garcia
Moreno to
the Altars!
by Fr. Paul Kimball, SSPX

The president-martyr of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, who was
assassinated by order of Freemasonry for being a model Catholic statesman,
ought to be raised to the altars for the following reasons:

Papal Promoters
Such was the explicit desire of Pope St. Pius X. It was November 1, 1907,
when Monsignor Manuel Maria Polit was in Rome and received episcopal
consecration. In an audience with his Holiness Pope Pius X, he heard
these words from his lips: “You ought to introduce Garcia Moreno’s cause
of beatification. Take advantage of my Pontificate. You Ecuadorians will
never find a Pope like me, so desirous of placing your Hero on the altars,
nor a College of Cardinals like the present one, so eager to contribute to the
glorification of such an exalted person.”
“Oh, Holy Father,” the newly-consecrated bishop answered, “the situation
in Ecuador, as Your Holiness well knows, is horrifying. The government
would never permit the least step in this regard. Unfortunately, in our
56

The Angelus

March - April 2013

1

Fr. Severo Gomezjurado,
S.J., Vida de Garcia
Moreno, Vol. 11, p. 268,
and La Consegracion, pp.
278-279.

2

Augustine Berthe, C.SS.R.,
Garcia Moreno (Dolorosa
Press, 2006), p. 334.

3

Gomezjurado, Vida de
Garcia Moreno, Vol. 12, p.
406.

country antichristian political circumstances prevail to such a degree that
it would be a dangerous temerity to initiate this so praiseworthy cause.
For now, it only remains for us to wait in patience and to trust in God for a
favorable, or a perhaps less adverse, future time for our immortal hero.”
His Holiness listened to these words with sorrow, and went on to treat of
other matters.1

Distinguished by the Spirit of Justice
Venerable Pope Pius IX spoke of him as a martyr worthy of public
honor by the Church: “In the midst of all this, the Republic of Ecuador was
miraculously distinguished by the spirit of justice and the unshakeable
faith of its President, who showed himself ever the submissive son of the
Church, full of devotion for the Holy See and of zeal to maintain religion and
piety throughout his nation. And now the impious, in their blind fury, look
upon, as an insult to their pretended modern civilization, the existence of
a Government, which, while concerning itself with the material well-being
of the people, strives at the same time to assure its moral and spiritual
progress. Then, in the councils of darkness organized by the sects, these
villains decreed the murder of the illustrious President. He fell under the
steel of an assassin, as a victim to his faith and Christian charity” (Address
of Pope Pius IX to the pilgrims of Laval on September 20, 1875).
Pope Pius IX did not limit himself to words. A few days later he had a
magnificent funeral service celebrated for the soul of Garcia Moreno in
the Basilica of Our Lady in Trastevere, as Pontiffs do when God has taken
away one of the most eminent children of the Church; and when certain
Italian Catholics determined to erect a statue in his honor, Pius IX largely
contributed to it, and placed it in the South American College in Rome. On
the four sides of this monument is the following inscription: “To the faithful
guardian of Religion, patron of the sciences, most devoted to the Holy See,
upholder of justice, avenger of crime. Gabriel Garcia Moreno, President of
the Republic of Ecuador, was treacherously assassinated by the hand of the
wicked on August 6, 1875. Good men of the whole world celebrated his heroic
virtues, his glorious death for the faith, and wept over the crime which took
him from the world. The Sovereign Pontiff Pope Pius IX, by his munificence
and by the gifts of a great number of Catholics, has raised this monument to
the courageous defender of the Church and society.”2
Pope Pius XII called him a martyr in 1948:
“In 1948, the former Cardinal, Eugenio Pacelli, was the Supreme
Pontiff, Pius XII, who, when responding to the introductory address of the
Ecuadorian Ambassador, Don Carlos Manuel Larrea, recalled President
Garcia Moreno and honored him with these epithets: ‘Great statesman,
faithful son of the Church and martyr for his faith.’ This was on eighteenth of
July of the aforementioned year.”3
In 1954, when speaking with Cardinal Dacosta, Archbishop of Florence, he
said to him, “One of the causes of canonization that I would most willingly
like to see in Rome is that of Garcia Moreno.”4
57

Christian Culture

58

Beatification Started

4

Ibid., p. 407.

5

Ibid., p. 348, where
footnote 25 reads in these
terms: “It was Bishop
Ordonez, an eyewitness,
who told me of the energetic
expression and words of the
Metropolitan, who always
took pride in valiantly
promoting the beatification
of Garcia Moreno without
taking notice of the
Masons.”

The Angelus

March - April 2013

His cause of beatification was begun in Quito by decree of Archbishop
Carlos Maria de la Torre in the following words:
“Serious and prudent men well versed in Sacred Theology, and who have
studied with special care and diligence, inside and outside of the Republic,
the death of Lord Doctor Don Gabriel Garcia Moreno and the cause which
motivated it, believe that they have discovered in these the essential marks
and characteristics of a true martyrdom.
“It seems to them that the deaths of Saint Canute, Saint Wenceslaus, Saint
Thomas of Canterbury, and of the English Catholics sacrificed during the
fateful days of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, maintain perfect consonance and
analogy to the death of the Ecuadorian President; and that, if the infallible
decision of the Church has decorated them with the aureola of martyrdom,
she could well encircle the brow of this man with it also.
“Such an assessment is far from negligible indeed, as is the interest that
not only simple and devout faithful but even conspicuous members of the
College of Cardinals have shown so that, within the canonical framework,
everything possible would be done for the extremely upright President to be
placed upon the altars, who, notwithstanding the incredulity and apostasy
of his century, gloried in his Faith and his unwavering adherence to the
Church and to the Vicar of Christ, in his innermost conviction, expressed
by constant and superhuman efforts, that only the nation which recognizes
Christ’s sovereignty in its customs, its laws and its constitution, will be
happy. They have moved us to take the first steps toward the clarification of
such an important point.
“How much glory we would give to God, with what new splendor the
Church would be clothed, and what unfading honor would redound to our
country, if with infallible lips the Roman Pontiff would declare that Garcia
Moreno was and ought to be called ‘a martyr of Christ!’5
“…Therefore, after invoking the light of the Holy Ghost, having heard
the views of our Fiscal Promoter; fearful of incurring Divine indignation,
if perchance we put forward some resistance to the designs which perhaps
God may have upon the privileged soul of whom Pius IX said that ‘he had
fallen victim of his faith and of his Christian charity,’ and Leo XIII that
‘he surrendered his life for the Church at the hands of the wicked,’ and
the Congress of 1875, that ‘he shed his blood for the holy cause of religion,
morality and order, peace and progress,’ in compliance with that which
has been ordained by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the document
cited above: we deem it beneficial to constitute the Historical Commission
which will have for its end to gather all the historical documents relating
to the death and the cause that motivated it, or the long standing fame
of martyrdom of Dr. Gabriel Garcia Moreno, who died riddled with gun
wounds in the Plaza of Independence of Quito, the first Friday, August 6,
1875. This commission will be composed of the Very Reverend Juan de Dios
Navas, Magisterial Canon of our Metropolitan church and archivist of our
Ecclesiastical Curia; of Reverend Father Joel Monroy, Provincial of the Order
of Ransom; and of Reverend Father Jose Le Gohuir of the Company of Jesus.

6

Gomezjurado, La
Consagracion, pp. 341-344.

“Given in Quito, on the 20th of December of 1939. Carlos Maria,
Archbishop of Quito. Angel Humberto Jacome, Secretary.”6

7

Boletin Eclesiastico de la
Archidiocesis de Quito
(1921), p. 508. Gomezjurado,
Is Garcia Moreno a
Martyr? [Spanish], p. 151.
Vida, Vol. 11, p. 385, and La
Consecracion, p. 319.

Support for Canonization

8

Gomezjurado, Vida, Vol. 11,
p. 308.

9

Ibid., p. 308.

10

Ibid., p. 376.

11

Ibid., p. 385.

In Rome the renowned theologian, Cardinal Louis Billot (+1931), strongly
supported his canonization: “[Bishop Carlos Maria de la Torre’s] allocution
about the great man and renowned martyr, who was Garcia Moreno, has
awakened in my soul such a lively joy that I cannot find words to express it. I
have read it from beginning to end. Oh, what a beautiful figure, truly worthy
of being placed on the altars; worthy of being proposed as an example to
our modern Catholics who, unfortunately, let themselves be more and more
corrupted every day by the deadly principles of Liberalism! I fervently pray
that the political conditions of Ecuador will finally permit his cause to be
initiated in the Sacred Congregation of Rites. How happy I would judge
myself to be if I were the Postulator!”7
The Ecuadorian bishops likewise supported his canonization.
-- His Excellency Bishop Heredia, Bishop of Guayaquil, has said, “I have
always maintained my opinion that God is asking two equally obligatory
things of us: firstly, the construction of the National Basilica, so that
national and perpetual worship may be given there; and secondly, the
glorification, as far as possible on our part, of the Martyr of God and of
country amongst us.”8
-- The Bishop of Riobamba, Monsignor Andres Machado, said, “The day will
come when Garcia Moreno will be exalted on the altars.”9
-- The Archbishop of Quito, Monsignor Polit on January 22, 1922, referred to
“the Ecuadorian Hero whom I firmly hope will rise one day to the altars as
a martyr of Jesus Christ.”10
-- The words of His Excellency Carlos Maria de la Torre, Bishop of Riobamba
[who became the Cardinal Archbishop of Quito]: “The moral greatness
of Garcia Moreno had soared to such a height that without the glorious
martyrdom that was its worthy conclusion, God’s work would have been
unfinished and imperfect…”11
The bishops of France added their support to Garcia Moreno’s
canonization.
When His Grace, Archbishop Manuel Maria Polit of Quito returned
to Guayaquil from a three-month stay in Europe, he gave the following
discourse on August sixth, the anniversary of the death of Garcia Moreno:
“In Paris, while conversing with some eminent bishops, I said to them
that one of the objectives of my trip consisted in delivering the Informative
Processes of our Servants of God, Reverend Father Jose Maria Yerovi and
[Saint] Brother Miguel Febres Cordero. This statement not having been well
received, those French prelates opposed me with these words: ‘Put these
Causes aside for now, and undertake the Cause of Beatification of Garcia
Moreno. Bishops and religious of eminent virtue abound on the altars;
whereas the exaltation of someone like Garcia Moreno would be the first
59

Christian Culture

12

Ibid., Vol. 12, pp. 181-182.

13

I.e. the picture of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus used
by Garcia Moreno for the
consecration of Ecuador
that inspired Father
Mateo to begin spreading
the practice of the Home
Enthronement of Families
to the Sacred Heart.

14

Gomezjurado, Vida, Vol. 11,
p. 129.

15

The Jivaros are South
American Indians of eastern
Ecuador and northeast
Peru.

16

Gomezjurado, Vida, Vol. 13,
pp. 408-409.

and sensational case of a president of a republic haloed with such honors.
Commission the Ecuadorians to collect all the documents that exist in your
country regarding the death of Garcia Moreno, and all the rest will be done
by the French Episcopate.”12
Fr. Mateo Crawley, the founder of the home enthronement of the Sacred
Heart, longed for his canonization.
“Even more, I dare say that it was Garcia Moreno who, with his hands
anointed with his glorious blood, put the precious Labarum13 into my hands.
Oh! And how happy I would consider myself to be if one day it were given to
me to contribute in some way to his exaltation on the altars, in order to pay
for the gift that he gave me, which gave a definitive direction to my vocation
of social apostolate! If then, one day, the Church renders such glory to the
President-martyr, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts should attain that
Rome would assign him to us as Patron of the Enthronement Crusade, since I
made my debut in the shadow of his standard.”14

Miracles through His Intercession
At the end of November 1943, the historic oleograph of the Heart of
Jesus of Garcia Moreno was exposed in the Cathedral of Loja, receiving
the homage of the crowds, when the Franciscan Brother Diego Navarrete
joined them and raised the following prayer: “O Garcia Moreno, you who
consecrated Ecuador to the Heart of Jesus before this picture, work a
miracle, make me recover the use of my ears. I was given no hope in Quito,
a cold climate; I was given no hope in Guayaquil, a hot climate; I was given
no hope in Loja, a moderate climate. I want to be a missionary in Zamora,
to teach the catechism to the Jivaros.15 But how can I do it being deaf? You,
who consecrated Ecuador to the Heart of Jesus before this picture, make
me hear.” A few minutes passed; he paid attention and related that he heard
everything: the bell that rings, the people who pray. He exclaimed, “Now I
can go to Zamora.”
Some eight years later he spoke with me in Gualaceo and said to me, “I
was unable to hear for six months. I can swear that I was given no hope in
Quito, in Guayaquil, and in Loja. The doctors who attended me can swear
that they gave me no hope.”
Here is a case that can be considered a first class miracle; an oath was
signed by Brother Navarrete and by each one of these three doctors.… I am
confirmed in the persuasion that the Cause did not fail for lack of first class
miracles.16

Worldwide Importance
In war-torn post World War II Belgium, Garcia Moreno is compared to
Charlemagne and St. Louis of France in a booklet explaining his worldwide
modern importance:
“Garcia Moreno was far from being the passing of a meteor, without
60

The Angelus

March - April 2013

17

Ibid., Vol. 12, p. 239.

18

Luis E. Cadena y Aleida,
Mensaje Profético de
la Sierva de Dios, Sor
Mariana Francisca de
Jesus Torres y Berriochoa
(Quito: Jesus de la
Misericordia, 1985), pp.
68-69.

19

Berthe, Garcia Moreno, p. i.

20

Gomezjurado, Vida, Vol.
13, p. 417. This prayer has
been approved not only by
the bishops of Ecuador, but
moreover by the bishops
of Pasto in Columbia,
of Santiago in Chile, of
Sao Paulo in Brazil, and
by another in Argentina
through the mediation of Fr.
Hervé Le Lay. It has been
translated into Portuguese
and English. More than
100,000 holy cards of Garcia
Moreno with these prayers
were distributed within
forty years.

leaving a trail behind itself. Not to present his personality in all its glory
would be not to give God the glory of His works, and to this great man the
immortality which is due to him even on earth. It would be, moreover, to
deprive the human race of an enormous help, since the life of Garcia Moreno
presents a providential lesson to ward off the cataclysm which he alone
undertook to remedy.
“What more beautiful example could be offered to our rulers, faced with
almost superhuman difficulties which characterize these post-war years?
“In fact, the clearing of a heap of ruins, the bringing of prosperity, and
above all the rectifying of the standards now so wrong, and the leading of
nations according to the principles of the Christian life under the gaze of God
and of His Church, did he not achieve all this in a splendid manner in a few
years, within the sphere in which he had to act?” (Imprimatur, Mechelen, the
eleventh day of November 1944, Jose Carton de Wiart, Vicar General).17
Our Lady of Good Success praised Garcia Moreno as a model Catholic
statesman and a martyr 276 years before his heroic death for the faith.
“On January 16, 1599, Our Lady of Good Success appeared to Venerable
Mother Mariana of Jesus Torres, Abbess of the Royal Convent of the Order
of the Immaculate Conception, in Quito, Ecuador. Our Lady spoke to Mother
Mariana these prophetic words: ‘In the nineteenth century a truly Christian
president will come, a man of character, to whom our Lord God will give the
palm of martyrdom in the plaza on which this convent is located. He will
consecrate the Republic of Ecuador to the Divine Heart of my beloved Son
and this consecration will sustain the Catholic religion in the subsequent
years, which will be ill-fated for the Church. In these years, in which
Masonry, that accursed sect, will seize control of the civil government, there
will come a cruel persecution of all the religious communities and it will rage
against mine.’ ”18
“This great Catholic statesman can only be Gabriel Garcia Moreno. He was
assassinated in the square in front of the Cathedral and also the convent of
Mother Mariana. As President of Ecuador, he had officially consecrated his
country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by a legislative decree on October 8,
1873. Our Lady’s prophecies were fulfilled to the letter! On August 6, 1875, the
first Friday of the month, Garcia Moreno was assassinated. Before he died,
he was carried into the Cathedral and laid at the feet of Our Lady of Seven
Sorrows, where he received the last sacraments and forgave his assassin.”19

Prayer for the Canonization (With Ecclesiastical Approval)
O Sacred Heart of Jesus! Remember the consecration that President
Gabriel Garcia Moreno made to Thee of his Republic; of the enthronement
of Thy sacred image in his presidential home; and of his blood, shed to seal
his unshakeable adherence to Thee and to Thy vicar, the Pope, and grant us
the canonical glorification of such an exemplary ruler, that men powerful in
deeds and words may rise up for the cause of religion and of country, and
finally the particular grace which we ask of Thee, in accord with Thy good
pleasure. Amen. (Ask for a particular grace and end with a Glory Be.)20
61

The Wies Church, which is oval in plan, is preceded to the west by a semi-circular narthex.
Inside, twin columns placed in front of the walls support the capriciously cut-out cornice and
the wooden vaulting with its flattened profile; this defines a second interior volume where the
light from the windows and the oculi is cleverly diffused both directly and indirectly. To the
east, a long, deep choir is surrounded by an upper and a lower gallery.

The Importance of Your Child’s

Confirmation
by Michael J. Rayes

One of the main duties of parents is to make
sure your children have what they need to grow
into men and women. At the most basic level,
this entails food, shelter, and clothing. Children,
however, need much more than that. Man is born
into eternity and must one day return to the God
Who created him.
Our parental mandate is to prepare our
children for this meeting with our loving Savior.
Such preparation involves spiritual and
intellectual formation. The sacrament of
Confirmation is a major part of this development.
Children should usually be confirmed
somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12. Earlier
than this, and the child faces an undue hardship
from memorizing doctrine. Much later, and the
child is deprived of some necessary graces and
help from the Holy Ghost.

When receiving Confirmation, children receive
the strength of the Holy Ghost just when their
young minds are beginning to comprehend ideas,
but before they begin the journey of adolescence.
Confirmation is also, in the psychological order,
a rite of passage. These passages are important
because they mark a clear transition from an
earlier level of maturity to a new, stronger level.
This helps your child grow.
Confirmation has four effects: It increases the
sanctifying grace your dusty 11-year-old received
when he was a squeaky clean, newly baptized
baby. It strengthens his faith, puts an indelible
mark on his young soul, and also gives him the
seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.
These four effects are indeed not easy to
measure. How do you know they are really
there? Your son or daughter might not “feel”
63

Christian Culture
much different, any more than you did at your
Confirmation. This is because the effects of
the sacrament cause a change in your state of
being, but are not tied to your passions, nor
your sensory appetites. In other words, the
soul is changed, but the emotions are usually
unaffected. If one uses a strong presence of mind
to reflect on the reception of the sacrament, the
emotions could then be excited enough to cause a
reaction: perhaps tears of joy, elation, a feeling of
contentment.

Seven Gifts for Your Child
The importance of Confirmation is not in what
we can see or feel; rather, it is essential for your
family because of what it does for your soul and
the souls of your children. Let’s take a closer look
at the gifts of the Holy Ghost and how to gauge
their effect on your child.
The enumeration of the seven gifts comes from
Isaias 11:2-3:
Wisdom,
Understanding,
Counsel,
Fortitude,
Knowledge,
Piety,
Fear of the Lord.
How do you know someone receives the
gifts? It certainly may be easier to see virtues
in practice, but what about the gifts? Keep in
mind that when the Holy Ghost comes, one of
the manifestations of His presence is a gentle
wind (3 Kings 19:12-13; cf. John 3:8; John 20:22).
In nature, wind cannot be seen. We can feel it
rushing by, and can see its effects by watching
leaves or other objects blowing past. The gifts of
the Holy Ghost are similarly measured. You will
eventually have evidence that the gifts are really
there.
Considering these gifts, look for their effects
and compare this to the child’s reactions before
his or her Confirmation. You may notice that the
child goes to confession a little more often. Or
perhaps he or she explains matters of the Faith
to younger siblings differently than before. There
64

The Angelus

March - April 2013

could be a very strong resistance to novelty in
prayer or liturgical practice. One of my sons at
the ripe old age of 13 told a visiting relative that
her parish church is not “Catholic.” (Later that
evening, we discussed the virtue of prudence.)

The Gifts in Practice
St. Thomas Aquinas differentiates between
worldly attributes and gifts of the Holy Ghost
(Summa, II-II, Q. 45, A. 4). This is important
because they usually have the same name. For
example, a seasoned gang-member in an inner
city, or a liberal university professor, may have
a lot of worldly wisdom which St. Thomas
considers “acquired by the study and research
of reason” and can be held by men in the state of
mortal sin. Wisdom as a supernatural gift, on the
other hand, is to relish the things of God and to
direct one’s actions to God’s glory.
Wisdom as a gift of the Holy Ghost is an effect
of charity. Wisdom as a worldly attribute has
nothing to do with charity, but rather is simply
the applied use of acquired worldly knowledge.
For yourself and your children, you want both.
When your 10-year-old suddenly stops running
and remembers to look both ways before crossing
the street, she is exercising worldly wisdom.
When your 19-year-old turns in an assignment
early so he can attend the rosary at his chapel
instead of doing homework, he is exercising both
the gift of wisdom and the worldly attribute.
You may begin to notice the effects of piety and
fear of the Lord in your older teens. These two
gifts balance each other: Piety directs the heart
to love God as a Father and to obey Him out of
love. Fear of the Lord directs the heart to dread
sin out of fear of offending God as a Father. Piety
is motivated by a peaceful aspiration; fear of the
Lord is motivated by a dreadful aspiration. Both
are necessary and considered gifts of the Holy
Ghost.
How are we to understand this fear, this
dread? St. Jerome used the same word for fear
in two different verses when he translated
the Latin Vulgate from Greek. Isaias 2:3 uses
timor Domini (fear of the Lord) and Eph. 5:33

uses “timeat virum” (women should fear their
husbands). This should be understood to mean
fear of offending. In other words, “fear” in this
context is respect, not fright.
Your older teen may sometimes seem to have
a peaceful, happy aspiration to give love to
God. He may other times finally drag his way
into the confessional and even then appear not
very happy about practicing his Faith. St. John
Bosco put it dramatically in one of his dreams.
Teenage boys avoided the symbolic bad meat of a
poisonous snake, but they looked longingly back
at the meat!

Preparation for the Sacrament
Psychologically, preparation for Confirmation
may be considered a “hybrid” preparation.
Parents make the child receive the sacrament
and do some of the work, as with Baptism; but
the recipient also has to desire it and do most of
the preparation on his or her own. It is important
that your child truly have a desire to receive
Confirmation. Otherwise, the young soul may not
be properly disposed to receive the fullest effects
of the seven gifts. Perhaps one of the best ways
to build this desire in your child is to spend time
preparing for it, and to attend other Confirmation
ceremonies before the child receives his. This
gives him something for which he can yearn.
The preparation, of course, is to memorize
prayers and doctrine from the catechism. One
must show a serious effort to learn and practice
the Faith in order to receive the benefits from
the sacrament. This preparation of the child
also shows your pastor that Confirmation and
subsequent practice of the Faith will be taken
seriously.
Preparing for Confirmation could take a span
of a few months before its reception. Angelus
Press produced an excellent, concise booklet,
Preparation for Confirmation, containing all
the minimum knowledge needed to be properly
prepared for the sacrament.

The Fruit of Hard Work
There are clear benefits to the drilling,
quizzing, reciting, and testing. All this rote
memorization of doctrinal content earlier in life
becomes truly valuable when dealing with a life
crisis. Many adults must deal with elderly parents
dying, stillborn babies, funerals of loved ones,
and other heart-rending events. Those without a
solid foundation of Catholic doctrine may be illprepared for these events, and thus grapple with
the meaning of life and death. They invariably
come up with a vague, humanistic, on-the-spot
philosophy because they have no other answer.
The educated Catholic, on the other hand,
almost instinctively knows the reason and
meaning of suffering. He knows why death
came into the world in the first place. The
catecheticized Catholic first falls back on his
knowledge of the Faith, and then uses his will to
accept or reject it.
The body of catechetical knowledge is not
simply for times of adult crises, however.
Adolescents will find that their formation comes
in handy when they begin sorting out all the input
they receive from worldly events and ideas. The
15-year-old no longer simply takes what Mom says
at face value. He investigates. He questions. It’s a
wonderful, and sometimes scary, time of life.
Confirm this boy before his mind reaches this
point. Get that indelible mark on his soul so his
intellect has a frame of reference. Give him those
seven gifts, so he can more easily fight temptation
and love God. You are thus preparing your child
for his or her eventual judgment before our
blessed Redeemer.

Michael J. Rayes is a lifelong Catholic, a husband,
and father of seven. He has been published by
Rafka Press, Latin Mass Magazine, and others.

65

Questions and Answers

by Fr. Peter Scott, SSPX

May one hide a part of the truth
when swearing under oath?
An affirmative oath is the calling on God as
witness to the truthfulness of one’s statement
concerning a past event. The purpose of an oath
is the confirmation of a certain truth, and as such
is based upon the divine attribute of omniscience.
God, knowing all things, cannot be deceived. An
oath confirms the truth of one’s affirmations,
for no one can be presumed to be culpable of
such impiety and irreverence as to call upon God
66

The Angelus

March - April 2013

as witness to a falsehood, and thus to subject
himself to the justice of the Almighty.
It is of faith that oaths are licit under the
right conditions, in particular when there is
a proportionate reason, as is the case when
witnesses are asked to swear under oath in a
court of law. Moreover, such oaths are virtuous,
being acts of the virtue of religion. The taking
of God as a witness is, indeed, a profession of
His indefectible truthfulness and His universal
omniscience. However, the converse is also the
case. The taking of an oath to a falsehood is

not just a venial sin, as is a lie, but a mortal sin
against the virtue of religion. Moreover, there
is no light matter in such a sin. Any falsehood
stated under oath, even one of lesser importance,
is a mortal sin against the virtue of religion.
Theologians state that there are three
conditions for an oath to be licit, as explicitly
declared by the prophet Jeremias (4:2). These are
also explicitly stated in the 1917 (Canon 1316)
and 1983 (Canon 1199) Codes of Canon Law. The
first condition is the judgment of prudence as
to whether there is a sufficient reason to swear
an oath, so that it is truly an act of reverence
of the divine majesty. Swearing the truth for
trivial reasons is a venial sin. Clearly, there is
a sufficient reason when a witness swears in a
court of law. The common good requires it. The
second condition is that it is a just and honest
thing to swear, and not something evil (e.g.
heresy) or simply the revelation of another’s
hidden fault, so as to destroy his reputation.
The third and most important condition,
which concerns us here, is that of truthfulness.
By truthfulness is meant not only that the sworn
assertion is in conformity with the external
reality, but also that it is in conformity with the
mind of the person who swears to the truth. For
truthfulness on the part of a witness excludes all
lies, that is, speaking against one’s own mind or
personal conviction, but it does not exclude all
error. Consequently, a person who swears to an
erroneous statement that he is firmly convinced
is true does not commit the sin of perjury, where­
as a person who swears to a statement that
happens to be true although he believes it to be
false does commit the sin of perjury. Moreover,
a person can only swear to something as certain
when he is truly convinced that it is certain, and
not just doubtful or probable. If he thinks that
it is only probable, or that it is doubtful, then he
must state as much, and not mislead others under
oath into thinking that it is certain, again under
pain of perjury.
The purpose of an oath being to guarantee
that the witness’s statements are in conformity
with his personal conviction as to the objective
truth, it is customary in English to administer
it with the expression: “Do you swear to tell the

truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
Although not essential to an oath, it emphasizes
that the witness in his assertions of answers to
questions must tell the entire truth that is on
his mind without suppressing a part of the truth
(=the whole truth), nor misleading by suggesting
something that is not true (=nothing but the
truth). In this way, mental reservations are
excluded.
There are two kinds of mental reservation.
A mental reservation in the strict sense exists
when the witness limits the meaning of the words
to a special meaning that is not manifested
outwardly and cannot be figured out from the
circumstances. It is quite simply a lie and is never
permissible. Innocent XI condemned the contrary
opinion in 1679, namely, the opinion that the
person who swears in this way “does not lie and
is no perjurer” (Prop. 26, Denzinger 1176).
A mental reservation in the broad sense
exists when the limitation of the meaning of the
words to one particular sense can be deduced
from the circumstances of things, persons, and
places, as for example when a physician testifies
under oath that he knows nothing, meaning by
this that he knows nothing that he is able to
reveal, since knowledge in this case is under a
professional secret. In such a case, it is not a lie.
However, the use of such a mental reservation is
not permissible without a proportionately grave
reason, and then only provided that there is no
intention to deceive and that there is no other
honest means of protecting a secret to which
one is bound, or some other right due in justice.
Furthermore, when an oath is sworn, a major
and grave reason is required to use such a mental
reservation in the broad sense, on account of the
reverence that is due to the holy name of God
(Merkelbach, Th. Mor., II, §860).
A witness called to give evidence in a court
of law will consequently commit the crime of
perjury if he uses a mental reservation that the
judge and jurors cannot possibly understand,
for example if he were to say that he met the
accused on the day in question, understanding in
his own mind a meeting by video-conferencing,
but allowing everybody else to understand
that he met him in person. This is a mental
67

Questions and Answers
reservation in the strict sense, which nobody
could understand. If he were to use a mental
reservation in the broad sense without sufficient
reason, he would be likewise guilty of a sin
against the virtue of religion. This is what Father
Merkelbach has to say about this case: “He who
uses a mental reservation (in the broad sense)
without sufficient reason moreover commits a
lie because, if there is not sufficient reason, the
circumstances do not sufficiently indicate the
restriction in the meaning of the words placed
in the mind. Hence he who confirms such a
statement with an oath, commits perjury strictly
speaking” (ibid., §861).
The attempt to hide a portion of the truth or
evidence in a sworn testimony by a witness is
effectively a mental reservation, allowing the
judge and jury to think that he has given all the
relevant information when in fact he has not. If
he deliberately omits the cause of an accident
or an important circumstance in a crime it
would usually be with the intention of deceiving
the judge and jury. If this evidence pertains in
some way to the substance of the case, such
as why an accident happened, or what kind of
crime was committed, or how the crime was
committed, then it is perjury. It will generally be
a mental reservation in the strict sense, which is
equivalent to a lie. However, there are occasions
in which it is a mental reservation in the broad
sense, as for example when a criminal pleads “not
guilty” to a crime that he committed. This could
be understood, and even expected, by anybody.
In the case of the criminal who pleads “not
guilty,” there is a proportionately grave reason,
and everybody understands that nobody is bound
to accuse himself in a court of law.
This will not easily be the case for other kinds
of broad mental reservations. Firstly, it is very
difficult to be sure that they are broad and not
strict. If they truly are broad, it is also necessary
that there be no deception involved. However,
if some information is hidden, then there is in
general the intention to deceive or lead astray,
at least to some extent. In such a case, even if
it is a broad mental reservation, it is illicit, and
is effectively the same thing as a lie. The usual
motives for such a mental reservation under oath
68

The Angelus

March - April 2013

are the safeguarding of property, or obtaining
a larger financial settlement. These are not
sufficient to justify a broad mental reservation,
as is clear from the following statement, also
condemned by Pope Innocent XI: “A just reason
for using these ambiguous words exists, as often
as it is necessary or useful to guard the wellbeing of the body, honor, property, or for any
other act of virtue, so that the concealing of the
truth is then regarded as expedient and zealous”
(Prop. 27, Dz. 1177).
In conclusion, therefore, it will not be licit
to swear under oath and at the same time to
hold back a substantial fact or cause or piece
of information or other truth which concerns
the case upon which one is a witness, unless
it is clear that one has a right to withhold that
information, and there is no other way of doing
it (such as refusing to testify) and there is a
grave reason to do so (e.g. the protection of the
professional or confessional secret). A witness
under oath must consequently tell everything
that is relevant to answering the questions asked
or the facts upon which he is making sworn
deposition.

In the November-December 2012 issue, we accidentally attributed all three Q&A’s
to Fr. Dominique Bourmaud. While he did indeed write the third one, the first
two were written by Fr. Peter Scott.

Church and World

SSPX: Communiqué on the Election of Pope Francis I
With the news of the election of Pope Francis, the
Society of St. Pius X prays to Almighty God that He
abundantly bestow on the new Sovereign Pontiff

the graces necessary for the exercise of this heavy
charge.
Strengthened by Divine Providence, may the new
pope “confirm his brethren in the Faith” (Lk. 22:32),
with the authority which St. Pius X proclaimed at the
beginning of his pontificate: “We do not wish to be,
and with the divine assistance never shall be aught
before human society but the Minister of God, of
whose authority We are the depositary. The interests
of God shall be Our interest, and for these We are
resolved to spend all Our strength and Our very life”
(Encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus).
St. Francis of Assisi, whose name the new pontiff
has taken, heard the Crucified Savior say to him, “Go,
Francis and rebuild my Church.” It is in such a spirit
that the bishops, priests, and religious of the Society
of St. Pius X assure the Holy Father of their filial
desire “to restore all things in Christ, so that Christ
may be all and in all” (Eph. 1:10; Col. 3:11) according
to their means, for the love of the Holy Catholic and
Roman Church.
Menzingen, March 13, 2013
(Source: FSSPX/MG – DICI, March 13, 2013)

Cardinal Bergoglio and the SSPX in Argentina
DICI obtained the opinion of Fr. Christian
Bouchacourt, District Superior of South America,
on the evening of the Pope’s election.
Cardinal Bergoglio wishes to be a poor man
among the poor. He cultivates a militant humility,
but can prove humiliating for the Church. His
appearance in the loggia of St. Peter’s in a simple
cassock without his rochet and mozzetta is a
perfect illustration. He is a fine politician… An
idealistic apostle of the poverty of the 1970s, he is
completely turned towards the people, the poor,
but without being a disciple of the theology of
liberation.
Very conscious of the dilapidated state of his
clergy, he did nothing to fix things. Never has the
seminary of Buenos Aires had as few seminarians

as today. It is a disaster, as have been the liturgies
presided over by the “Cardinal of the Poor.” With
him, we risk seeing once again the Masses of
Paul VI’s pontificate, a far cry from Benedict
XVI’s efforts to restore to their honor the worthy
liturgical ceremonies.
He was firmly opposed to abortion. But while
he wrote a beautiful letter to the Carmelites of
Buenos Aires against the homosexual “marriage”
bill—which was unfortunately voted through in
the end—he had a regrettable speech read during
the protest against this bill in which the name of
Our Lord was not pronounced even once, while the
Evangelical pastor who spoke before him to excite
the crowd delivered a more courageous one… (see
DICI, No. 219, July 24, 2010).
69

Church and World
During an ecumenical meeting, he knelt to
receive the blessing of two pastors.
He is a man of consensus who hates
confrontations. He kept his distance from the
Catholics who denounced the blasphemous
expositions that were held in Buenos Aires.

The Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith Repudiated
In early February 2013, the Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, had suspended
the decision made by Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani,
Archbishop of Lima (Peru) to forbid the theology
professors of the Catholic University of Peru to teach.
In a letter whose contents had been circulated by
the Peruvian press, Abp. Müller asked the Peruvian
cardinal to justify his prohibition, indicating that
it did not have to be implemented so long as the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had not
decided the question.
On February 13, 2013, Cardinal Cipriani announced
that the sanctions against the professors of the
Faculty of Theology stood and that they were not
authorized to teach. According to the Peruvian
Catholic news agency ACI Prensa, the Archbishop
of Lima considers Abp. Müller’s letter asking him to
lift those sanctions to have no legal force because
it was not sent through official channels—indeed,
it was a simple fax. Moreover it is invalid, because
every bishop is autonomous in his pastoral decisions:
“The only person who can give orders and make a
bishop change his mind is the pope,” not a Roman
Congregation. In the estimation of the Archbishop of
Lima, the letter from the Prefect of the CDF is merely
a response to a petition that had been addressed to
him by the professors of the Faculty of Theology.
The Italian website Vatican Insider reveals, in an
article penned by Andrés Beltramo Álvarez, that in
mid-February, at the pope’s orders, Cardinal Tarcisio
Bertone, Secretary of State of the Holy See, convoked

70

The Angelus

March - April 2013

I have met him five or six times, and he has
always received me with benevolence, seeking to
grant me what I wished without going out of his
way to overcome obstacles….
(Sources: SSPX – DICI, No. 272, March 15, 2013)

a meeting of cardinals which in effect invalidated
the “personal” initiative of Abp. Müller, which had
been written without the required formalities and
dispatched through improper channels, without
consulting the specialists of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith and contrary to canon
law. Cardinal Bertone thus informed Cardinal Juan
Luis Cipriani that Abp. Müller’s act was null and
void, and that the Holy See was changing nothing
of what he had decided in June 2012, namely, to
withdraw from the University of Peru its canonical
titles as a “Catholic” and “Pontifical” university.
Andrés Beltramo Álvarez concluded: “Some Curia
insiders are beginning to wonder whether Abp.
Müller is really the right man for a post of such
enormous responsibility, which allows for no error or
improvisation, either in form or substance.”
When Benedict XVI appointed Abp. Müller to head
the CDF, the English journalist William Oddie wrote in
the Catholic Herald (July 6, 2012): “[Abp. Müller is]
also an old friend of the most renowned (or notorious)
of liberation theologians, Gustavo Gutiérrez. He has
written a book with him; and according to [American
Vaticanist] John Allen, every year since 1998 has
travelled to Peru to ‘take a course’ from Gutiérrez.
In 2008, he accepted an honorary doctorate from
the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, which is
widely seen as a bastion of the progressive wing of
the Peruvian Church. On that occasion, he praised
Gutiérrez and defended his theology. ‘The theology
of Gustavo Gutiérrez, independently of how you look
at it, is orthodox because it is orthopractic,’ he is on
record as saying: ‘It teaches us the correct way of
acting in a Christian fashion since it comes from true
faith.’” —No comment.
(Sources : La Croix/KNA/Apic/Vatican Insider/
Catholic Herald – DICI, No. 271, March 1, 2013)

Syria: “May God have mercy on us!”
Thus exclaimed the Patriarch of
Antioch Gregoire III Laham and Msgr. Pascal
Gollnisch on the situation in Syria.
“We are out of bread and vegetables… The
message of Christianity is becoming above all
a message of the redeeming Cross, of love and
forgiveness. Will we have the prophetic courage to
take on the adventure?” asked Archbishop Samir
Nassar, Maronite archbishop of Damascus in
November 2012. “Facing this challenge, this
solitude of chaos and bitterness, we have great
need of your prayers and your friendship,” he
continued. “Besides lodgings and food, the
refugees need clothing and medicine,” stated
Archbishop Nicolas Sawaf of the Greek Catholics
in Latakia. Msgr. Pascal Gollnisch, director of the
Oeuvre de l’Orient, a French Catholic organization
supporting Eastern Christians, read on November
23 from a letter of the Carmelites in Aleppo,
expressing their fear: “There are more and more
bombings and gunfire! May God have mercy on
us!”
In Syria, it was no Arab Spring, according to
Archbishop Mario Zenari, Apostolic Nuncio to
Damascus. From early November on, he told the
Italian Catholic agency AsiaNews on November
17, 2012, the situation had deteriorated extremely
rapidly; first there were bombings and then
reprisals from political and religious groups
along with local criminal activity. Hundreds of
kidnappings, encouraged by the atmosphere of
instability, had decimated families. Not only were
the rich targeted, but now the poor as well. Several
of the Archbishop’s own employees, he added,
were living in the nunciature because they were
afraid to return home. Others had no roof left and
were sleeping in basements or temporary shelters.
Parish locales had become dormitories. Convents
were extending hospitality to as many as they
could, filling every space, even the gardens. The
Church had made every building available, from
offices to shops to places of worship. The Patriarch
of Antioch, Gregory III Laham, called the situation
“tragic and chaotic.” In his opinion this war is a
“revolution” with neither face nor identity. “Two
thousand groups claim to adhere to the revolution

and to the rights of man; it is unclear whether they
are Syrians or foreigners.”
On October 22, 2012, Christians in Damascus
told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), “The
number of kidnappings is growing. Very recently,
Qatar reduced its financial support. The opposition
resorts to kidnapping Christians, Alawites, and the
Druze, and holds them for ransom to obtain the
financing they need.” In Damascus, more generally,
the majority of institutions are closed. The armed
opponents of the government are pushing to halt
civilian life.
On January 30, 2013, Archbishop Boutros
Marayati of the Armenian Catholics of Aleppo
described what residents in the Syrian metropolis
are experiencing to news agency Fides: “The
consequence of the conditions in which we have
been living for over a year is that we have become
accustomed to daily horrors. There is always news
of further massacres. There is the constant sound
of bombing. We live in a state of tension and fear,
day and night. It is difficult to survive when you
cannot even find drinking water or fuel to heat
your home. We are so overwhelmed by all these
things that we have barely any time to reflect on
the terrible events in which we are immersed.
“News is always misreported. You cannot
believe what you hear, and there is no way to verify
the facts, not even for events that take place in our
own areas, at little distance. We are in the middle
of a war, but we live as if we were in the dark,
without fully understanding what is happening. We
only wonder when and how it will all end.”
On February 9, three priests were detained in
Aleppo and Damascus. On February 21, ACN said
it had not heard from them. The three in question
are Armenian Catholic priest Michel Kayal, Greek
Orthodox priest Maher Mahfouz (who was
travelling by bus to the Salesian house in Kafroun),
and Greek Catholic priest Hassan Tabara. The
Syrian Church has never paid and never will pay
ransoms for kidnapped Christians, reported Fides
on February 18, 2013. A crusade of prayers and
sacrifices to save Syrian victims of kidnapping has
been launched.
Seven hundred thousand emigrants (mostly in
71

Church and World
Turkey, but also in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and
Iraq), 3 million refugees within the country (of
which the majority are destitute), 80 percent of
the population unable to go to work, 70 percent of
the population living below the poverty threshold:
these are the numbers given by ACN on February
21, and at the same time there is a shortage of fuel,
bread, water, blankets… On February 13, for the
fifth day in a row, Aleppo experienced a power
outage and hospitals were out of basic supplies.
“It seems that the rebels cut the power lines from
the Tabqa dam,” the biggest power dam in the
country, built on the Euphrates River, now in the
revolutionaries’ hands.
On February 21, Archbishop Mario Zenari,
after attacks struck the center of Damascus that
very morning, told Fides, “We are still walking
among corpses. Now, in Damascus too, when we
walk in the streets, everywhere we find places
where innocent human blood has been shed: that
of civilians, of women, of children. The number
of victims of this conflict—70,000—is even more
overwhelming when you consider the manner in

which these people died.”
But while the Syrian people are sacrificed, “the
international community continues to play Pontius
Pilate,” whereas the only possible means of putting
a stop to the spiral of death and destruction is to
“force the opposing parties to negotiate a peaceful
end to the crisis,” said the Nuncio.
As for the rumors repeated by the Alef Agency
of a possible attack on his person, Archbishop
Zenari explains, “I do not know whether these
rumors can be believed. Usually people plotting
an attack do not announce their plans via the
media ahead of time. My appeals are only based
on the observation of the sufferings this conflict
has imposed on the Syrian people, sufferings
perpetuated by the indifference of a significant
part of the international community.” And he
concludes, “Christians are suffering in this tragic
situation just as everyone else is.”
(Sources: kipa-apic.ch/Fides/Oeuvre de l’Orient/
ACN/AsiaNews/ Missionary International – DICI,
No. 271, March 1, 2013)

Indonesia: Catholic Schools Threatened with Closing
Six Catholic schools of the Diocese of Surabaya,
in the province of East Java, Indonesia, are
threatened with closing. They refuse to submit to
the new directives of local authorities obliging all
establishments to teach Islam and the Koran to
their Muslim students. Up until now, the custom was
for Muslim students in Christian schools to receive
private religious instruction, generally from Muslim
associations.
According to a dispatch published on January 18,
2013, by Eglises d’Asie, the information agency of
the Foreign Missions of Paris, Aan Ansori, head of
the Islamic Anti-Discrimination Network, took up the
defense of the Christian schools. He declared that he
doubted that the same would be demanded of Muslim
schools, asking: “If these rules are applied, are
Muslim schools, which are much more selective than
Catholic schools in accepting students of different

72

The Angelus

March - April 2013

religions, really going to give classes for Buddhists,
Christians, or Hindus?”
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country.
With 206 million inhabitants, the Muslims make up
86.1 percent of the population according to the 2000
census, while Christians only make up 8.7 percent.
Religious instruction is obligatory in the Indonesian
school system.
(Sources: Apic/EDA – DICI, No. 271, March 1,
2013)

Theological Studies

The New Theological Babel

The Renunciation
Of Juridical
Language and Its
Consequences
By Mario Palmaro

One of the aspects which characterize the language
used by the texts of Vatican II is the renunciation of
juridical language.
To use a language means to acquire a certain
mental elasticity coherent with it. When one studies a foreign language it is said that the language is
learned well when one begins to think in that language,
because between the language one uses and one’s way
of thinking there is a strong connection.
Naturally, the use of language most adapted to
the ears of men, we could say, and to the changes in
society which are seen over time is not scandalous in
itself, but is in keeping with a concern which is always
present in the Church. The mistake, sometimes, is
in presenting the ‘pastoral approach’ as something
absolutely new or absolutely unheard of, as if there
were eighteen hundred years of absolute pastoral
insensitivity, and that at a certain point it was suddenly
discovered.
In reality, this is a problem which presents itself in
repeated cycles, because it is true that history and the

world change, that cultures, society, and customs tend
to undergo transformations, so it would not even be
correct to think of a total immutability of language.
Nonetheless, it would likewise be erroneous to think
that language can be transformed, or even completely
changed and abandoned without consequences. Thus
a point of balance is achieved in that which serves as
communication, as was the case, for example, with
the Native Americans or with the Indians of South
America which the Christians found at the beginning
of the fifteenth century, because the missionaries did
not wait until 1962 to have this pastoral concern. At the
same time, though, it must be clear what in this attention to language—which has been called inculturation
of the Faith—can be negotiable, or what can be put in
play and what, on the other hand, cannot be negotiated
because it would no longer communicate the truth.
Considering the topic of Vatican II and looking at the
history of the Church, we realize that in its communication the Catholic Church has used three columns.
These three columns of Catholic communication,

73

Theological Studies
which I and Alessandro Gnocchi have briefly analyzed
in our book,1 are: the use of the Latin language, a style
of preaching based on apologetics, and the definitional
and juridical style.
Definitional Language
The third column of the communication of the
Church is the use of the juridical-definitional style
which historically has characterized the language of
the Church over time and has produced some objective consequences. It has been fundamental, for
example, for the counteracting of heresies.
The Church has continued defining her doctrinal
patrimony progressively, even solemnly, and responding stroke by stroke to those tendencies which from
her midst have come out with certain ideas and opinions which were truly theologically heretical.
Definitional language is a perfect, ideal language
to counteract heresy. A language which is instead
descriptive, existential, or empathetic would have been
able with great difficulty to shave the edge off heresy,
which is basically always a definitional affirmation of an
error. Juridical-definitional language has allowed the
Church over time to make Catholic doctrine precise
without equivocations and ambiguities. Thus the
method is to be succinct, because a good school of
writing teaches that a text is finished when it has been
cut, shortened.
When does one write well? When one has time to
edit. When one does not have the time to write, one
writes too much. When one wants to write a nice
article, a nice book, one starts using scissors, rather
than adding. A text is more effective when it is concise,
based also on the theory of communication which
uses the image of the bullet. If I send out a single message, I am much surer that this message will reach its
destination. I have a precise target and I shoot a shot
in a certain direction. If, instead, I have the ambition to
shoot several messages, in the end no one knows what
I even wanted to say. This rule of communication holds
true in a particular way for texts of the Magisterium.
Juridical-definitional language has been an antidote
to an experiential, emotional, and existential idea of
the Catholic Faith, exactly the type of idea which, not
coincidentally, has spread in these last decades.
Now, to say one has an experiential, emotional, or
existential idea of the Catholic Faith does not mean
that one has a totally erroneous idea because the

74

The Angelus

March - April 2013

Catholic Faith is certainly also a communication of
experience, it is a life that has been lived, an effort
of coherence between what one believes and what
one lives. But the error is in the fact of reducing the
Catholic Faith to existence only, to experience only, to
an empathetic tendency only, because at that point
doctrine becomes absent. If one lives only of empathy,
of sensation, even of great emotional rapture, things
which may have their due place and are also a help, at
a certain point if you put ten of such emotional people
around a table comparing their faith, you find, perhaps, ten completely different beliefs.
It is beyond discussion that this juridical-definitional
style has been abandoned in the many wide-ranging
texts used by the Second Vatican Council. These three
“columns” of communication have been set aside, in
fact, precisely because juridical-definitional language
is not used. It is not rejected in a formal and unequivocal way. There is no single line in the texts of the
Second Vatican Council which clearly says no to apologetics or to Latin, even though on Latin the question is
more controversial, but the problem is that a language
is chosen which, in the name of a pastoral approach, is
no longer juridical-definitional language.
Therefore, certainly one can say without having
any derogatory intent, that from the point of view of
linguistic analysis, the Conciliar texts, or at least some
of them, appear verbose, complex, long-winded, and
characterized by a fluctuating communicative technique in which the paragraphs sometimes give the
impression of contradicting each other or of changing
their sense as the discourse continues. All of these
are characteristics which objectively are at odds with
juridical-definitional language.
You can make a comparison with the budget law.
The budget goes to parliament in a certain way, then
amendments are added, and in the end one no longer
recognizes the original. Undoubtedly, the dialectical nature that characterized the debate within the
parliamentary sessions finds itself poured out into this
fluctuating style. There is a new mode of expression
that has these characteristics.
Principle of Non-Contradiction
A key requirement of the definitional style
is the constant employment of the principle of
non-contradiction.
I will not go into the merits of the Council’s topics,

because my interest is to emphasize that there is a
problem of communication technique that deeply affects the substance.
To accept or not to accept the principle of noncontradiction is not just a nuance; it changes a lot.
Obviously in this case there is not a rejection of the
principle of non-contradiction, but there is not a habit
of proceeding logically, guided by this principle. It is
difficult to say that one rejects openly the principle of
non-contradiction, but it can happen that one proceeds without realizing that it is being forgotten, that
it is being left aside. If I were an Italian composition
teacher I would say that it is an issue of sloppy logic.
The definitional style focuses on what is essential.
For example, when it was said that someone was a heretic, it is not that this term was used in a derogatory
way, but rather a truthful judgment was given which
focused on the essential question. This person, for
example, could be a very nice Lutheran, even leading a
pious life, a good father, a good husband—all elements
that are to his merit and also make the evaluation and
judgment of this soul even more complex.
But what does definitional language say here? We’re
focusing on something that is essential to our discussion: that the man is a heretic. Maybe he’s a great
striker in soccer, but then we simply know that he is an
excellent heretical striker.
The abandonment of definitional language is precisely the source of the loss of the essential element
in which, in my opinion, there is nothing aggressive.
Saying that someone is a heretic does not mean that
you want to insult him, but you’re stating a true fact
with regard to his position on the truth of the Faith.
Nevertheless we are great friends, we visit each other,
we like each other, right?
One of the paradoxical effects of the abandonment
of definitional language is that it prevents us from saying how things are, because if we say how things are,
then it is assumed that we want to offend someone.
And this is paradoxical. Of course, we must be vigilant
in our conscience, in the purification of our intentions,
because maybe we can say to someone that he is a
heretic because we want to insult him, but this is a
problem of the improper use of the truth, using the
truth like a club to knock someone over the head. This,
objectively, is never good and one must be careful not
to make that mistake.

Meaning of Words
A definition is the obligatory beginning of every
possible argument. Definitional language is interesting
because, in addition to the principle of non-contradiction, in order to think you need to know what you mean
when you use a word. This is a fundamental Thomistic
approach.
First of all, let’s clarify what the words we use mean.
Today, most of the problems of the Catholic and nonCatholic world stem from a misunderstanding of the
meaning of words. One says: “I am for the family, my
four wives are fine.” He, perhaps from the subjective
point of view, is convinced he is for the family. Then
this problem, mutatis mutandis, moved from the
cultural environment on to theological matters is due
to weak definitions. But what does one mean when one
says a certain word or a certain thing? Without clarity
on the concepts one cannot make judgments, or they
are ambiguous ones. You see, then, what sort of landslide comes simply from the abandonment of a certain
type of style.
Historians say that, in preparing the Second Vatican
Council, almost two thousand pages of preparatory
outlines had been prepared that reflected largely the
classical outlines, using definitional language.
Apparently, John XXIII gave a generally positive
opinion of these outlines; however, he did not defend
them when confronted with the decision to scrap
them. Therefore, the outlines were thrown away and
everything began again from zero. This revolution in
the use of language brought with it all of the problems
pointed out by several parties.
The Roman Curia, then, had arranged the outlines,
which could be likened to the tracks on which the train
of theological discussion must somehow travel, forcing
it to use the principle of non-contradiction and definitional style, and still in keeping with the pastoral concern for which the council itself had been convoked.
It is clear that this methodology, undoubtedly, has
the effect of simplifying the work of the interpreter.
The work of the interpreter, usually the Church herself,
is always a bit like the relationship that exists with
Sacred Scripture. In Catholic tradition, the relationship with Sacred Scripture is not based on subjective
free examination, but on the fact that it is the Church
that helps one to grasp and to understand in truth the
meaning of the text. There is an interpretative action,
but, of course, in continuity. If the text follows defini-

75

Theological Studies
tional and juridical language, the work of the interpreter is decidedly simplified.
Mixture of Truth and Charity
What was the motive that led to the abandonment
of definitional language? The motive was that definitional language has an assertive, categorical, sure, and
concise style. With these characteristics, it is clear that
the language of definition could, but not necessarily
should, annoy the listeners’ ears. That is, carrying the
message with assertive, categorical, sure, and concise
characteristics can upset someone because essentialness is effective, it is a sharp word. Jesus, meeting the
Samaritan woman, tells her: “Thou hast said well, and
the man whom thou now hast is not thy husband.” In
some ways it is a match more than a meeting.
To all this, the Church has always responded with
a good mixture of truth and charity that cannot be in
contradiction. That is, to be charitable one does not
have to sacrifice truth on a pagan altar, and on the
other hand, if one wants to impart the truth fully, it
cannot be done without charity.
This is another big issue that is posed by this concept of a pastoral approach, in which one seems to
discern a contrast between truth and charity, which
comes from many components which are perhaps
understandable, but dangerous.
If the main problem of the apostle, the Christian,
the priest, of whoever is called to be a missionary, is
not to disturb the listener, we are faced with a serious
problem.
It is not that the disturbance of the listener is something that, to be clear, should not concern us. Think,
for example, of the dialectic which for two thousand
years has been held together by the Church between
preaching and the relationship with the penitent.
Preaching, the place of full and even harsh communication of the truth, is also the place of reproach. To the
penitent it is the place of reproach, but it is also a place
of forgiveness. The Church has found this balance in
the way of imparting doctrinal firmness, but together
with the understanding that we are all sinners.
The modern world, the atheistic world, the world
which we face every day, does not understand and
does not digest so many things about Catholicism,
but this in particular. The modern world is a world that
denies that it commits sin because it does not want
to be forgiven. And that is what makes it horrific in its

76

The Angelus

March - April 2013

relationship with Catholicism and which makes it more
sympathetic instead towards that typically Protestant
attitude that we cannot be like what God would like us
to be, so we just modify our teaching.
Protestantism does exactly this. The bar is too high,
so they let it down, and then let it down some more,
until they just discard it. They remove, therefore, that
moral tension that is found in Catholicism: “You have
sinned, but get up again.”
This idea concerning the consciences and the souls
of men, is, paradoxically, defended by definitional
language because to realize one needs a confessor,
a priest, one needs to realize that one is sinning. In a
mish-mash in which true is false and good and evil can
no longer be told apart, it is difficult to understand that
one is sick.
There is an analogy—it seems to me that we have
written it in the book—in the relationship between doctor and patient. The good doctor is a doctor who cares
about how his patient will respond to some news. You
know that now it is very fashionable to theorize about
transparency between doctor and patient with an approach, however, which is typically rationalistic.
We need to see how the truth is communicated to
the patient, as this may become a burden that crushes
him. This concern must be taken together, however,
with the need to say how things are to the patient, also
for the good of his soul. If a patient has a very serious condition and the doctor moved by pity hides the
truth, saying, “Be calm, go home and don’t worry,” and
the patient does not know he has little time left to live,
the doctor does not even give him a chance to see his
life in spiritual terms.
Somehow, the abandonment of definitional language is likely to make all of us, all of mankind, patients
who go home still thinking that they have nothing
wrong.
Additional Observations
On the topic of juridical language I would say that
it is in fact definitional language, but some additional
observations seem important to make.
The language of the Church is definitional but also
juridical. What is juridical language? It is a prescriptive
language. The rule of law is characterized as prescribing something one must do or must not do: “If anyone
thinks that this thing is true, let him be anathema,” or
“If he thinks this thing is false, let him be anathema.”

That is to say, “This is the truth, this is what you must
hold as true.” Precept and then penalty.
So, the pairing of precept-penalty is a typical result
of juridical language. If one strays from that perspective, it is no longer said what must be firmly held and
no longer said what happens to those who do not hold
it. And this is a great lack of charity.
Of course, even here it seems fair to underscore
that juridical language, like all things human, has its
limits and even its risks. Therefore, in evoking the need
for a return to definitional-juridical language we must
not fall into a legal formalism which would be fatal
for the faith. The first to complain of this formalism
was Our Lord in His relationship with the Pharisees.
The Pharisees are a perfect example of orthodoxy in
respect to the religion of the time, characterized by a
formalism against which Jesus is fiercely critical, to
the point that He heaps invective on them reserved to
no other class of men in the New Testament.
The return and the recovery of definitional and
juridical language must not slip into formalism, or into
a kind of legalism that would not be Catholic.
In juridical language there is also, however, the
dialectic between law and reality that is played, for
example, by the Roman jurists, with the instrument of
fairness. There is a Latin saying: Summum ius, summa
iniuria. What does this mean? It means that the truth
is one thing, the law is one thing, and it cannot be
changed as a favor to someone. The priest, confessor,
spiritual director evaluates the circumstances, conditions, and helps set a path in which there is no room
for a changing of the law itself, because the law cannot
change, but there is room for a law of change.
So, realistically I think that there should not and
there cannot be room for a changing of the law, but we
have to somehow recognize that there may be some
law of change.
But for this more time is needed.

1

A. Gnocchi and M. Palmaro, La bella addormentata: Perché dopo il
Concilio Vaticano II la Chiesa è entrata in crisi, perché si risveglierà
(Vallecchi 2011).

77

Theological Studies

Continuity or
Discontinuity?
By Roberto de Mattei

The time has come, perhaps, to step outside the
hermeneutical box in which Vatican II specialists have
been confined. All who approach the historiographical
discussion of the Council by highlighting, albeit from
different viewpoints, the elements of its objective
deviations from the preceding era are hastily labeled
partisans of the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” in opposition to the magisterium of Benedict XVI and his
predecessors. Such, for example, is Msgr. Agostino
Marchetto’s chief criterion of judgment in his recent book Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Per la sua
corretta ermeneutica,1 as it had been in his previous
study, Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Contrapunto
per la sua storia.2
In these two books, Msgr. Marchetto does the
work, not so much of an historian, but of a reviewer
scrutinizing everything that has been published over
the last decade about Vatican II. This is not necessarily a limitation. The limitation is his resorting to
accusations of “discontinuism” against the reviewed
authors, thereby hiding behind a presumed teach-

78

The Angelus

March - April 2013

ing authority on the subject in order to conceal the
substantive weakness of his argumentation. But
Benedict XVI in his speech to the Roman Curia of
December 22, 2005, stated that the hermeneutic of
discontinuity is not in opposition to a simple hermeneutic of continuity, but to a “hermeneutic of reform”
the very nature of which consists in “this combination
of continuity and discontinuity at different levels.” It
may well be that acknowledgment of the existence of
different levels of continuity and discontinuity should
henceforth be the starting point.
The continuity or discontinuity of Vatican II in
relation to the Church as it was before can be considered under two aspects: (1) the historical and human dimension of the Church, and (2) its ontological
dimension, which is expressed by the immutability
of its Tradition. It is a distinction that corresponds to
the twofold nature of the Church, human and divine,
and which makes for a much richer and more nuanced discussion than Msgr. Marchetto and other
authors would like. The first level of study belongs

to the historian, whose criterion of truth consists in
the verification and evaluation of facts. The second
level belongs to the theologian, the pastor, and in the
last instance the Sovereign Pontiff, supreme guardian of the truths of faith and morals. It involves two
distinct levels, yet linked and interdependent, as are
soul and body in the human being. But it is only after
the historical reconstruction, and not before, that the
pastors may step in to formulate their theological and
moral judgments.
The two levels, historical and hermeneutical, cannot be conflated, unless one were to concede that history coincides with its interpretation. This means that
the Second Vatican Council must be studied not only
on the theological level, but first of all on the historical
level as an event. The theologian brings his mind to
bear on the documents; the historian, without neglecting the texts, focuses his attention in particular
on their origin, their consequences, and their context.
The historian and the theologian both seek the truth,
which is the same, but they reach it by different, not
opposite, paths.
Historical Work
It seems that Cardinal Ruini entrusted Msgr.
Marchetto the duty of opposing the historical work
of ultra-progressive stripe coming from Giuseppe
Alberigo and his “Bologna School.” But in order to
counter Alberigo’s and fellow-scholars’ tendentious
history it is not enough simply to assert that the conciliar documents have to be read as being in continuity with, and not as breaking off from, Tradition. For
instance, when in 1619 Paolo Sarpi wrote a heterodox
history of the Council of Trent, he wasn’t challenged
with the dogmatic canons of Trent, but with a different history, the famous history of the Council of Trent
written at the behest of Pope Innocent X by Cardinal
Pietro Sforza Pallavicino (1656-1657). History is challenged with history, not theology. That is why Msgr.
Marchetto’s criticism of my own study, Il Concilio
Vaticano II: Una storia mai scritta3 missed the mark. I
am in fact neither a “discontinuist,” as Marchetto insists on repeating, nor a “continuist,” because I judge
this label to be as unmeaningful as the first.
I am simply an historian who intends to tell truthfully and objectively what happened, not only during
the three years the Council was held, from October 11,
1962, to December 8, 1965, but also during the years

preceding it and immediately following it, the socalled postcouncil. I take as my own the wish Cardinal
Ruini expressed on June 22, 2005, concerning Msgr.
Marchetto’s endeavor (“It is about time historiography produced a new reconstruction of Vatican II that
is also, finally, a factual history”), but I do believe that
it is counterproductive to hide historical truth behind
the veil of a “hermeneutic of continuity” poorly
understood. My reading of the Council diverges radically from that which the School of Bologna historian Giuseppe Ruggieri proposes in his recent work
Ritrovare il Concilio [Recovering the Council] (Einaudi,
2012), but I cannot disagree with him when he affirms
that the duty of the historian consists in “knowing
from the primary sources what really happened and
understanding the import of what really happened,”
and when he explains why the Second Vatican Council
cannot be equated with its decisions (pp. 7-11).
I have already had occasion to write as much:
Councils can promulgate dogmas, truths, canons,
which emanate from the Council but which are not
the Council. The Council is distinct from its decisions
which, only when they are promulgated infallibly,
become an integral part of Tradition (Apologia della
Tradizione: Proscritto a Il Concilio Vaticano II, una Storia
mai scritta). How can it be denied that Vatican II has a
“specificity” in relation to other historical events, and
that it constituted in many respects a “revolution”?
Testimonials to that effect were expressed on the
occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of
the Council and reported by Avvenire, as well as that of
the Canadian sociologist Charles Taylor, who remembered the event with these words: “It was like the fall of
Jericho” (Avvenire, July 26, 2012).
Pastoral Dimension
The chief novelty of Vatican II was its pastoral nature. Cardinal Walter Brandmüller gave a good explanation of it. Councils, beneath and together with the
Pope, exercise the solemn teaching authority in matters of faith and morals, and they stand as supreme
judges and legislators in matters of law and discipline
in the Church; but Vatican II, unlike previous Councils,
“did not exercise jurisdiction, nor legislate, nor deliberate about questions of faith in a definitive manner.
It was rather a new kind of council insofar as it defined itself as a pastoral council intending to explain
to the contemporary world the doctrine and teaching

79

Theological Studies
of the Gospel in a more appealing and instructive way.
In particular, it pronounced no anathemas....On the
contrary, the fear of uttering both doctrinal censures
and dogmatic definitions resulted in the emergence
from the Council of statements of which the degree
of authority and hence the binding character were
extremely varied....The conciliar documents command different levels of acceptance by Catholics. This
is also something completely new in the history of the
Councils.”4 The studies of Msgr. Brunero Gherardini
remain the fundamental reference point for an evaluation of the degree of assent required by its teachings
characterized as pastoral—a surprising characteristic, for in the twenty preceding ecumenical councils,
the form has always been doctrinal and normative. As
Enrico Maria Radaelli observed in his thorough study
of the language of Vatican II, “doctrinal definition”5 is
the “natural form of the Church’s language.”6
Pastorality was not only a “fact,” that is to say, the
natural explanation of the dogmatic content of the
Council adapted to its time, since that had always
been the case. Neither Vatican Council I nor the
Council of Trent was devoid of a pastoral dimension.
“Pastorality” was, on the other hand, elevated to
the level of an alternative principle to “dogmatism,”
implying a priority of the former over the latter. The
pastoral dimension, of itself accidental and secondary in relation to the doctrinal dimension, became
primary in fact, effecting a revolution in language and
mentality. An author not belonging to the School of
Bologna, Fr. John O’Malley of Georgetown University,
defined Vatican II as a “language-event,” explaining
that in place of professions of faith and canons was
substituted a “literary genre” he identifies as “panegyric-epideictic,” that is, the “art of persuasion.”7
The Church discarded its dogmatic habit in order
to don a new pastoral, persuasive one, no longer
binding and defining. But expressing oneself with
a different vocabulary from that of the past means
accomplishing a deeper cultural transformation than
is apparent. Style of discourse and the way in which
things are presented in fact reveal a way of being
and thinking: “Style,” O’Malley reminds us, “is the
ultimate expression of meaning. It does not adorn
meaning but is meaning.”8 One might add that revolution in language does not only consist in changing the
meanings of words, but also in omitting certain terms
and notions. Numerous examples could be given: the

80

The Angelus

March - April 2013

assertion that hell is empty, which the Council did not
do, is certainly a rash, if not heretical, proposition.
Omitting or limiting as much as possible any reference to hell as the Council did avoids the formulation of any erroneous statements, but constitutes
an omission that paves the way for an error worse
than an empty hell: the idea that hell does not exist
because no one talks about it. When something is
ignored, it is as if it did not exist. But this language
did not prove to be adapted for effectively expressing the religious and moral message of the gospel.
By declining to teach the whole truth with authority,
the Church has also declined to choose between yes
and no, between black and white, thereby opening up
broad zones of ambiguity.
It is not by chance that the chief characteristic of
the conciliar documents is ambiguity. Romano Amerio
was the first to spotlight the “amphibological” character of the conciliar texts, that is, their fundamental
ambiguity, which enables them to be read either in
continuity or discontinuity with previous Tradition. An
ambiguous document can be explained in the sense
of continuity, as Benedict XVI strives to do, or in the
sense of discontinuity, as the progressive theologians
do, but it never has the limpidity and clarity possessed by the great Council documents from Nicaea to
Vatican I, to which one can refer without error.
According to the School of Bologna, the pastoral
dimension must be considered as a doctrinal novelty implicit in the opening speech of John XXIII who
presented the Council as “a step forward toward a
doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness.” Ruggieri declared that it was question of a
“new doctrinal orientation consisting especially in the
reinterpretation of the vital substance of the Gospel
in the language required by the present history of
men and women....” The apparently merely verbal
rupture was in reality, according to the Bolognese,
a doctrinal rupture, because for them the way one
speaks and acts is doctrine becoming praxis. How
can we not see in this conviction, which was then that
of Dossetti, and which is the conviction today of his
successors through Alberigo, the transcription within
the bosom of the Church of the Gramscian category
of praxis in fashion during the 1960s?
Praxis was the way the Church related to the
world; and the Church in fact changed over the years,
abandoning, for example, ...the Latin language, a style

of preaching based on apologetics, and its definitional, juridical style.9 Vatican II did not deliberate in
an explicit, solemn manner about their suppression,
and yet the wind from the Council swept away these
three pillars of Catholic communication, replacing
them with a new way of expression and of speaking to
the faithful. Once the primacy of praxis was accepted,
then came adoption of modern communications
methods as veritable ecclesiastical categories.
The adoption of the language of communication
proper to the world compelled the Church to submit
to its rules. This explains the role of the “paracouncil,”
to which responsibility was assigned for consequences that resulted from the conciliar event itself.10 The
error of the School of Bologna is not to highlight the
scope of the pastoral revolution, which “continuist”
theologians and historians try to minimize, but to
present it as a “new Pentecost” for the Church while
passing over in silence its catastrophic results. Their
error does not lie in their historical reconstruction,
generally correct, but in the pretention, typical of
modernist immanentism, to make of history a theological locus.
“Listening to the Word of God” becomes for them
listening to the Word being revealed in historical
becoming. For Ruggieri, the truest expression of this
historical hermeneutic would be the Constitution Dei
Verbum, while in its introduction and No. 2, “it does
not separate revelation from the event of its being
heard, and thus introduces history itself as a constitutive element of the auto-communication.” The
most direct expression of this historical hermeneutic
is certainly Gaudium et Spes, for in the drafting of this
constitution the fundamental orientation was that of
an appreciative look at history as the place in which
the call of God actually occurs, an explicit recognition
that “the Church herself knows how richly she has
profited by the history and development of humanity”
(GS, 44).
The road to be taken is not the one indicated
by Giuseppe Ruggieri, nor that indicated by Msgr.
Marchetto, but by a return to the grand historiographical tradition of the Church. Contemporary Biblical
hermeneutics postulates the utilization of the historical-critical discipline for the analysis of the human
dimension of Sacred Scripture, and for bringing out
its truths above and beyond simple apologetics. But
if, as contemporary exegetes affirm, the royal road

to studying Sacred Scripture is the historical-critical
method, it is hard to understand why the same type
of study should not be applied to an historical event
like Vatican II. One is amazed to see on the one hand
the attempt to demythologize Scripture pursued to
the point of denying central dogmas of the Catholic
faith, and on the other the attempt to divinize Vatican
II by making it a “superdogma” that admits of no
critique nor revision of any kind.
In 2012, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, president
emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for Historical
Sciences, sponsored a few study seminars on Vatican
II, assembling specialists of differing perspectives.
These sessions were a good opportunity to remove
from Vatican II the veil of “untouchability” that has
prevented serious inquiry, and made of it the object
of a calm analysis aiming to place it within the context
of Church history, not as the first nor the last, but as
the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Church. It
is to be wished that the Year of Faith inaugurated by
Benedict XVI will contribute to this work of historical revisionism, so important for understanding the
causes of the contemporary moral and religious crisis.
Translated from the Courrier de Rome, November 2012, version of an article first
published in Il Foglio, October 9, 2012.
1

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: For a Correct
Interpretation (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012).

2

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A Counterpoint for the
History of the Council (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005).

3

Lindau, 2011. The English translation has been published: The
Second Vatican Council (an unwritten story), tr. Patrick T.
Brannan et al., ed. Michael J. Miller (Loreto Publications, 2012).

4

Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, “Il Vaticano II nel contesto della storia
conciliare [Vatican II in the Context of the History of the Ecumenical
Councils]” in Le ‘chiavi’ di Benedetto XVI per interpretare il
Vaticano II [Pope Benedict XVI’s Keys for Interpreting Vatican II]
(Siena: Cantagalli, 2012), pp. 54-55.

5

“la forme définitoire.”

6

Il domani–terribile o radioso–del dogma [The Tomorrows–Terrible
or Radiant–of Dogma] (Edizione Aurea Domus, 2013).

7

John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II? (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 47-52.

8

Ibid., p. 49.

9

La Bella addormentata: Perché dopo il Vaticano II la Chiesa è
entrata in crisi, Perchè si risveglierà [Sleeping Beauty: Why the
Church Fell into a Crisis after Vatican II and Why She’ll Wake Up].

10

Don Enrico Finotti, Vaticano II 50 anni dopo [Vatican II fifty years
later] (Fede & Cultura, 2012), pp. 81-104.

81

The Lepanto Lectures
1 CD – 60 minutes – STK# 8557 – $9.95

The Knights Templar (Audio Lecture)
The newest addition to our Lepanto Lectures series is here. The Knights Templar examines the
true story of the knights who inspired St. Bernard and stirred the hearts of Europe. Who were these
heroic men who met an infamous end at the hands of the King of France and Pope Clement V, and
have been maligned throughout history? Listen to the real history in the exciting and compelling
format you’ve come to expect from Mr. Check.

1 CD – 61 minutes – STK# 8555 – $9.95

Understanding the Inquisition
In this lecture, Mr. Christopher Check examines the origins of the Roman, and later Spanish Inquisition, its purposes and procedures, and some of the most persistent myths surrounding it. Point by
point, he shows that heresy was not merely a religious oddity or a difference of opinion, but a dangerous and violent thing that tore asunder the political and cultural life of a Christian kingdom. An exciting
and informative talk.

The Cristeros and the
Martyrs of the Mexican Revolution

The War of the Vendée
1 CD – 60 minutes STK# 8546 – $9.95

1 CD – 44 minutes STK# 8499 – $9.95

Henry VIII and the Anglican Schism
1 CD – 55 minutes STK# 8827 – $9.95

St. Joan of Arc
1 CD – 58 minutes STK# 8550 – $9.95

Order these and the other great titles in our renowned Lepanto Lectures series. Each lecture only $9.95!

www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

Letters to the Editor

Dear Angelus Press,
I was particularly drawn to the article in your November-December 2012
Issue called “Ten Ways to Improve the Catholicity of Your Marriage.” I don’t
think I’m speaking just for myself when I say that as a married man with a
family it can be tough to make a plan for the spiritual growth of your family
and actually implement it. It always seems that something (dinner, clean-up,
homework) gets in the way of progress. I love that Mr. Rayes offered very
specific, and easy ways to work on this, but the thing that intrigued me the
most was his sixth point: “Choose a ‘virtue of the month’ for your family.”
I know he says that the father should choose the virtue of the month and
then work on it with his whole family, but I’ll be honest and say I don’t know
where to start. Are there any traditional guidelines for this?
Thanks,
Chris, Ohio
Ed. Note: We asked Mr. Rayes to respond to the above question; his answer is below.

Dear Chris,
Thank you for the kind words. Following the wisdom of the Church,
virtues may be categorized into three areas: Intellectual (natural), Moral
(also known as cardinal), and Theological.
The intellectual virtues include wisdom, knowledge, and understanding
(as a natural virtue, not a gift of the Holy Ghost). The cardinal virtues are
prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. The theological virtues are
faith, hope, and charity.
From these “principal” or “directing” virtues, a whole host of other
virtues may be practiced. For example, humility and modesty are daughters
of temperance. Of all these virtues that strengthen and refine us, only one
remains within the human soul in heaven: charity. Everything else ultimately
points to or takes away from this virtue, because it flows directly from the
essence of God Himself. See the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas
for a strong explanation of the virtues. A great reference is also the old
Catholic Encyclopedia. You can find the entire set online, available free,
including searchable keywords. Trust your own God-given judgement as a
father. When you notice your kids elbowing each other to scoop more pasta,
generosity would be an appropriate virtue. Modesty is a good virtue for the
summer. Docility might be good for December when children tend to build up
anxious hope and attachment to their pending Christmas gifts.

83

96pp – Softcover –STK# 8559 – $5.95

Confession
Deepen your love and appreciation for this beautiful sacrament with our brand new
booklet on Confession!
Newly available from Angelus Press, this comprehensive book will help Catholics understand and prepare for the great sacrament of Penance. Contains:
- A Catechism on the Sacrament of Penance
- A General, Short Examination of Conscience
- A More Comprehensive Examination Specifically for Adults for Monthly Spiritual Growth

640pp – Softcover – STK# 8557 – $27.95

The Second Vatican Council:
An Unwritten Story
Read the Internationally Acclaimed New Book by Roberto de Mattei
Taking up a subject that has been studied and debated by countless scholars in the past
50 years, respected Italian historian Roberto de Mattei looks at the real story behind the
Second Vatican Council.
Certainly, in the history of the Church in the modern age, no event has so changed and
shaken the Church and the world more than this Council. This intense, eye-opening, and at
times troubling book sets out to answer the question that has not really been fully answered:
What happened at the Council?

www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

Simply the Best Journal of
Catholic Tradition Available!
“A splendidly serious and deeply Catholic journal.”
For over three decades, The Angelus has stood for Catholic truth, goodness, and beauty against a world gone mad. Our goal
has always been the same: to show the glories of the Catholic Faith and to bear witness to the constant teaching of the Church in
the midst of the modern crisis in which we find ourselves.
With a renewed focus and a redesigned layout, our magazine is now better than ever. Each issue contains:
-- A unique theme focusing on doctrinal and practical issues that matter to you, the reader
-- Regular columns, from History to Family Life, Spirituality and more
-- Almost all original content
-- Some of the best and brightest Catholic thinkers and writers in the English-speaking world
-- An intellectual formation to strengthen your Faith in an increasingly hostile world
If you’re tired of wishy-washy Catholicism, confusing presentations of the Faith, or a lack of Catholic fighting spirit in the face
of the modern world, then The Angelus is right for you.
And the best part is that it only costs $35 to subscribe for a full year! Visit www.angleuspress.org today and help strengthen
your Catholic Faith.

Subscribe Today
Don’t let another year go by without reading the foremost journal of Catholic Tradition, especially when the cost is only $35!

print subscriptions
Name______________________________________________________________________________________________
Address____________________________________________________________________________________________
City______________________________ State______________ ZIP______________ Country______________________
 CHECK  VISA  MASTERCARD  AMEX  DISCOVER  MONEY ORDER
Card #_______________________________________________________ Exp. Date_____________________________
Phone # _____________________________________E-mail_________________________________________________
Mail to: Angelus Press, PO Box 217, St. Marys, KS 66536, USA

Please check one
United States
$35.00
 1 year
 2 years $65.00
 3 years $100.00

Foreign Countries (inc. Canada & Mexico)

 1 year
 2 years
 3 years

$55.00
$105.00
$160.00

All payments must be in US funds only.

Online only subscriptions
To subscribe visit: www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access back issues 14 months and older plus many other site features.
Plus, all Magazine Subscribers Now Have Full Access to the Online Version of the Magazine (a $20 Value!)

401pp - Softcover - 66 photos and drawings - STK# 3097 - $19.95

Garcia Moreno
“The death of Garcia Moreno is the death of a Martyr.” — Pope Pius IX
It is fashionable, even among those principally opposed to religious liberty, to
claim that in today’s world, a Catholic nation is no longer possible. The time, they
say, for this is long passed, even if we oppose the false doctrine of religious liberty.
Is the Blood of Christ less efficacious than it was 2,000 years ago? Against those
who would argue in this way, the martyred president of Ecuador, Garcia Moreno
stands out as a resounding no! In this truly definitive biography, Fr. Berthe examines
the entire life of Moreno from his childhood, through his political life, and finally for
his death at the hands of Christ’s enemies. A must-read for anyone who wishes to
restore Christ to His rightful place in society.

Free Additional Content Online!
In the midst of deafening noise, the Angelus Press blog stands
alone as a traditional Catholic blog bringing the weight of 35
years of experience in the Catholic publishing world. The site
contains:
- Little-known information from the traditional Catholic world
- Interviews with authors and conference speakers on topics that
matter to you
- Exclusive and unique articles that just didn’t quite fit into the
magazine
- Sneak-peaks of upcoming books and projects
- A regular, weekly Catholic online book club
- Breaking SSPX news and commentary

www.angeluspress.org/blog

www.angeluspress.org — 1-800-966-7337
Please visit our website to see our entire selection of books and music.

The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,
Producing art presupposes a mind using material means such as words, sounds, colors,
measurements, materials in order to express realities that go beyond the realms of material
things. Art for this reason is only conceivable for a mind imbued with higher ideas, gifted
with special sensibilities, for a mind gifted with an exceptional talent for expression. An artist has to use the material world and means, and at the same time he has to raise it up to a
higher level.
The Gothic cathedral, for example, is a building supported, not by walls, but by pillars.
The stone structure is supposed to be pointed; the accentuation of the vertical axis is one
of the defining characteristics of Gothic architecture. A large number of huge glass windows replace the stonework and makes the edifice extremely transparent. Light plays an
important role in this design.
This transparency applies to multiple aspects of the visible and invisible world: the cathedral does not only want to be transparent to the light of the sun, it wants to be transparent to supernatural reality, to heaven, to the divine light. The cathedral provides much more
than a roof over one’s head: it is a reminder that forces the visitor to look up, to raise his
eyes and to fix his desires upon the things which are above the world.
Gothic master builders were convinced that order is based on the laws of mathematics.
The ratios we find in geometry, in music and in the cosmos should be found in the proportions of the cathedral so that it will be harmonious and perfect. Architects therefore studied
these laws and found out about the correspondence between musical harmonies and the
geometric system of measurement in order to apply them to their buildings. The cathedral
as a model of order is a reflection of geometrical and cosmic proportions, is music translated in the language of stones. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: “I have the impression
that the whole temple is singing.”
Modern times—materialistic, practically minded, profit seeking and following utilitarian principles as major guidelines—have a limited appreciation of what is beautiful, timeless and ingenious. A large section of the population in reference to beauty and aesthetics
would rather prefer easy pleasure and emotional satisfaction.
The challenge and aim of the Angelus team was to offer a useful guide to the source of
spiritual and artistic richness of Catholic life. To the alert eye, going attentively through this
edition, the exceptional value of beauty will become apparent. We hope the diligent reader
will learn that art is much more than just a mere human work and that real architecture
transcends the sphere of lines and numbers.
In Christo,
Father Jürgen Wegner

The Society of St. Pius X is an international priestly society of common life
without vows, whose purpose is the priesthood and that which pertains to it.
The main goal of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic
faith in its fullness and purity, to teach its truths, and to diffuse its virtues.
Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its
primary means of bringing this life of grace to souls.
The Angelus aims at forming the whole man: we aspire to help deepen your
spiritual life, nourish your studies, understand the history of Christendom,
and restore Christian culture in every aspect.

$ 7.00
Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: The Angelus, 480 McKenzie Street, Winnipeg, MB, R2W 5B9