“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Baptism: Door of the Church
The Son of Tears
Interview with a Recent Convert
The Baptismal Vows

March - April 2014

Baptism
Baptism changes man from a slave of
Satan to a child of God. It completely
transforms his existence. From the very
moment of baptism he is supposed to live
out the grace he received in order to reach
the supernatural goal God has given to
him.
May this issue of The Angelus help to
comprehend how much this sacrament
should guide our Christian lives.

Milan - Baptism of Christ - relief from San Agostino

Letter
from the
Publisher
Baptism may be one of the most under-appreciated of all the sacraments.
Perhaps it is because it is so common; perhaps because few of us have a memory of our own baptism. It is fitting then to ask whether we should have a greater
understanding of that sacrament which is the initiation into the Church and the
kingdom of God?
With this issue, we have provided some perspectives that will hopefully aid
in reflecting on this great gift from God. From an interview with an adult convert, to some doctrinal considerations of the Easter Vigil and the baptismal
promises, let us thank God for the grace to be “born again of water and the Holy
Ghost” (John 3:5).
As the Catechism of the Council of Trent states: “Whoever reads the Apostle
carefully will unhesitatingly conclude that a perfect knowledge of baptism is
particularly necessary to the faithful. For not only frequently, but also in language the most energetic, in language full of the Spirit of God, he renews the
recollection of this mystery, declares its divine character, and in it places before
us the death, burial and Resurrection of our Lord as objects both of our contemplation and imitation.”
Let us then strive to live out our baptismal promises. Further, let the knowledge and recollection of baptism be an encouragement to us to frequent the
other sacraments, which we have a right to since we have been baptized. If our
Lord has given us this grace, He will not hesitate to give us others if we ask and
live our duties of state.
Fr. Arnaud Rostand
Publisher

March - April 2014
Volume XXXVII, Number 2
Publisher
Fr. Arnaud Rostand
Editor
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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: Baptism
– The Son of Tears
– A Home-Coming
– The Baptismal Vows and Slavery to Jesus and Mary

6
12
21

Faith and Morals
– Liturgy: Baptism and the Easter Vigil
– Doctrine: God Knows
– “Illiberal Catholicism” and Social Order

26
30
33

Spirituality
– Remembering Our Baptism

38

Christian Culture
– History: Legal Justice
– Lives of the Saints: St. Genesius the Comedian
– Family Life: Discipline for Life

42
48
51

(inc. Canada and Mexico)

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

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©2014 BY ANGELUS PRESS. OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE
PRIESTLY SOCIETY OF SAINT PIUS X FOR THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

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

56
61
73
84
87

The
Son
of
Tears
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

“In her dream she saw herself standing on
a sort of wooden rule, and saw a bright youth
approaching her, joyous and smiling at her, while
she was grieving and bowed down with sorrow.
But when she explained that it was my soul’s
doom she was lamenting, he bade her rest content
and told her to look and see that where she was
there I was also. And when she looked she saw
me standing near her on the same rule.”
By that time, Monica had converted her pagan
husband Patricius. Her humble and devoted
example, refusing to join in the town gossips
about her husband’s shortcomings, was the
admiration of all the town. She had two other
children of whom little is known, a son Navigius
and one daughter who later in life became a nun
and founded a monastery next to her brother’s
Episcopal palace of Hippo. The Confessions, this
unsurpassed masterpiece of classical Latin, of
psychological depth and pathos, uncovers for us
the long itinerary which finally led Monica’s son
to the Milan baptistery and gave the Church the
greatest convert after St. Paul (the only other
conversion celebrated in Church liturgy).
Augustine had received from his religious
mother the milk of Christian devotion and the
rudiments of the faith, to such an extent that he
was enlisted as a catechumen, was marked with
the sign of the cross and received the sacramental
of the salt, the preparatory steps for formal
baptism. Soon after, his health being gravely
compromised, the child himself asked for baptism.
“What agitation and with what faith I solicited
from the piety of my mother and from thy Church
(which is the mother of us all) the baptism of thy
Christ, my Lord and my God. The mother of my
flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart pure
in thy faith, she was always in deep travail for my
eternal salvation.”
But the crisis passed and, with it, the occasion
of receiving the sacrament. It may be strange
to us that the son of such a mother would have
delayed the reception of baptism to a later date,
but this was a persistent custom despite the
protests of the Church hierarchy. Since baptism
was washing all sins and could be received
only once, the faithful were inclined to purify
the stains of youth. Augustine will explain and
excuse thus his mother’s frame of mind:

“How much better, then, would it have been for
me to have been cured at once! This would have
been far better, in truth. But how many and great
the waves of temptation which appeared to hang
over me as I grew out of childhood! These were
foreseen by my mother, and she preferred that the
unformed clay should be risked to them rather
than the clay molded after Christ’s image.”

Student of Carthage and Milan
Our hero had gladly left the family estate to
turn a student in the big city of Carthage, which
laid ready snares for such youths. The theaters
displaying human love, the casual meetings of the
young students did not help matters. Augustine
was one of these predestined souls with infinite
desires, who are persecuted by the “severe
mercy” of God preventing them from resting in
creatures.
“I was looking for something to love, for I
was in love with loving, and I hated security and
a smooth way, free from snares. And I did fall
precipitately into the love I was longing for. My
God, my mercy, with how much bitterness didst
thou, out of thy infinite goodness, flavor that
sweetness for me! For I was not only beloved but
also I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment;
and yet I was joyfully bound with troublesome
tics, so that I could be scourged with the burning
iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and
strife.”
These divagations did not suit his shy and
pacific temperament. Before long, he put on
himself the chain which his parents feared for
him. He lived with the one who gave him a son,
Adeodatus, “the son of my sin.” Other snares were
laid for him in the city and he soon became an
avid listener of the Manicheans who were making
inroads in the area.
Before too long the gifted student was
promoted a rhetorician and started selling his
speaking skills and words. But things were still
troublesome for such an occupation. He decided
to move to Rome, which had protective laws
for such employments, and so doing, he would
rid himself of his mother who would not depart
from her prodigal son. Yet Rome was hardly a
7

Theme Baptism
better place for someone as refined and delicate
of sentiments as the young teacher. Thankfully,
an occasion was soon offered him to find work
in the imperial court at Milan. A post for teacher
of eloquence was offered, and Augustine won the
first place despite that African accent which was
the laughingstock of Italians.

Eyes Gradually Opened
At the time, Milan was prey to religious
factions: the Empress Justina, won over to the
Arian cause, was trying to offset the spiritual
impact made by the Catholics in the imperial
city, and used force to oust Bishop Ambrose
from his cathedral. The bishop, determined to
die with his people rather than to surrender the
church to heretics, spent whole nights in church.
To maintain the fervor of his flock during the
long vigils, he had them sing alternately the
sacred hymns he had composed for the occasion.
Monica was certainly among the laity besieged
within the walls of the Duomo. Miracles were
witnessed, certainly not ignored by Augustine.
More skeptical than curious, he decided to
attend the preaching of the saintly bishop. Soon
enough, he enlisted among the catechumens
preparing themselves for baptism in the religion
of his childhood. Not only was he cured of the
Manichean venom, but his eyes were gradually
opened to see the falsity of the accusations made
against the Church.
“With great eagerness, then, I fastened
upon the venerable writings of thy Spirit and
principally upon the apostle Paul. I had thought
that he sometimes contradicted himself and that
the text of his teaching did not agree with the
testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; but now
all these doubts vanished away. And I saw that
those pure words had but one face, and I learned
to rejoice with trembling.”

Hymn of Liberation
This predestined soul, long captive in
darkness, was now singing the hymn of
liberation. After so many errors he finally saw
8

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March - April 2014

shining the dawn of truth. But his joy was yet
incomplete. “I had found the precious pearl;
I still had to sell my goods to gain it, and I
was hesitant.” Ambrose was in admiration of
his mother, ignorant as she was of the inner
struggle which was tormenting the catechumen,
virtually despairing of finding the way of life.
St. Ambrose worked like four in instructing
the ignorant. He would be the one to teach
and baptize the famous orator. But for all his
zeal, he did not offer Augustine the warmth
and intimacy which he was so much in need of.
The bishop received him as a father and rather
episocopaliter—bishop-like—but certainly not
as a friend. Ambrose, a born administrator and a
man of action, swamped by ceaseless business,
lacked the condescendence and empathy needed
to understand this intellectual and sentimental
professor, timid to a fault and perhaps embittered
by his past disappointments.
Verba movent, exempla trahunt: actions
speak louder than words, and from the
Confessions, we see clearly that the reluctant
soul was finally won over by contagious example.
And firstly by that of his own mother who, against
her African custom, submitted to her bishop
without complaint, to the great surprise of her
son. But other stories were offered him of men
who suddenly left a brilliant literary or military
career to embrace the Church. He was struck by
the “We are going to the church and recite the
Creed” of Victorianus with whose writings he
was familiar. He was in admiration of the “We
have resolved to serve God” of two noblemen who
unhesitatingly joined the monastery of Treveris
beyond the Rhine. The duel was reaching its
climax; it was between the old habit hard to die
and chastity gently calling him.
“My old mistresses, trifles of trifles and
vanities of vanities, still enthralled me. They
tugged at my fleshly garments and softly
whispered: ‘Are you going to part with us? And
from that moment will we never be with you any
more?’ ‘Do you think you can live without us?’
And [chastity] smiled on me with a challenging
smile as if to say: ‘Can you not do what these
young men and maidens can? Or can any of them
do it of themselves, and not rather in the Lord
their God? The Lord their God gave me to them.’ ”

This is when, amidst bitter tears of repentance
and prayers for peace of mind, he heard the voice
of a child chanting: “Tolle, lege—Pick it up, read
it; pick it up, read it.” Augustine reached for the
Scripture texts and read:
“ ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in
chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts
thereof.’ I wanted to read no further, nor did I
need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended,
there was infused in my heart something like the
light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt
vanished away. Then we went in to my mother,
and told her what happened, to her great joy.
She saw that thou hadst granted her far more
than she had ever asked for in all her pitiful and
doleful lamentations. For thou didst so convert
me to thee that I sought neither a wife nor any
other of this world’s hopes, but set my feet on that
rule of faith which so many years before thou
hadst showed her in her dream about me.”

Catechumen
At the start of Lent 387, Augustine and
his friends left the country villa of sweet
Cassiciacum for the Milan capital and enlisted
in the number of those to be baptized on Easter
Vigil.
This list, like for marriage banns, was offered
to the scrutiny of the faithful to sort out the
unworthy candidates. These catechumens, called
“competent” or “elect” met frequently in the
basilica to prepare the great ceremony. Not only
did they receive the exorcisms and the imposition
of hands, but mostly an in-depth catechesis,
to initiate them into the beliefs, practices and
rites of thorough Christian living. The Gospel
manuscripts were explained by a priest as well as
detailed commentaries on the Pater Noster.
The elect were to learn by rote the Creed which
they would soon pronounce before the entire
congregation. Among the Milanese candidates,
the son of Monica was certainly the most notable,
and none so well prepared for the profession of
faith.

Baptism
The baptismal ceremonies took place within
the solemn Easter Vigil, on April 24 that year.
With the lengthy readings the neophyte—new
plant—saw passing before his mind, avid of the
Scriptures, the most striking scriptural passages:
the Creation, the Deluge, the trial of Abraham,
the passage of the Red Sea, the vision of Ezechiel,
Jonas and Nabuchodonosor.
He, so sensitive to great singing, must have
wept over the suggestive hymns and psalms
which resounded under the vaults of the basilica,
especially as he heard the final psalm which
inaugurates the baptismal ceremony: “ ‘Sicut
cervus desiderat ad fontes…’ As the hart panteth
after the springs of water, thus doth my soul
cry after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth after
the strong and living God. When shall I go and
present myself before the face of the Lord?”
The hour had come. The bishop and the whole
clergy accompanied the elect to the baptistery, an
octagonal building located outside the basilica.
There, with his face turned towards the west,
Augustine spat on the devil according to the
Milanese ritual, and thrice renounced the devil
and his work, the world and its pomps. Then,
descending into the pool and facing the orient, he
confessed the faith of Christ, responding three
times “Credo” to the three questions. This being
done, the water fell on his head, on his shoulders
and his chest while Ambrose was pronouncing
the sacramental words: “I baptize you in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost.” Then, as the water washed the skin,
divine grace was washing the soul. Coming out
of the pool, his godfather helped him put on the
white vestments and the bishop prayed over
him: “Receive the white vestment and carry it
without blemish before the tribunal of Christ.”
Confirmation followed immediately the rite
of baptism, and the ceremony ended with the
imposition of hands and the invocation of the
sevenfold Holy Ghost.
This being done, the procession returned to
the basilica and the neophytes, dressed in white
and with lit candles, processed as they heard
the words of the psalmist: “I shall approach the
altar of God, of God who rejoices my youth.”
The Gloria in Excelsis was intoned and the
9

Theme Baptism
newly baptized for the first time were allowed
to attend the sacred mysteries. At the Offertory,
the parents came to offer the oblations for the
sacrifice. It was not without emotion that the
friendly crowd witnessed the holy widow Monica
bring her offering to the altar. On this very day,
her son was going to receive his first communion
which was to seal the union of the Christians
with their Lord and with their new Christian
family. The newly baptized were to vest the white
vestments for the entire octave, and were to
attend daily the meetings which completed their
initiation. That was the chosen time to explain to
them the Eucharistic mysteries which they had
only recently witnessed. The neophyte was to live
through it as a spiritual honeymoon.
“Nor did I ever have enough in those days of
the wondrous sweetness of meditating on the
depth of thy counsels concerning the salvation
of the human race. How freely did I weep in thy
hymns and canticles; how deeply was I moved
by the voices of thy sweet-speaking Church! The

10

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March - April 2014

voices flowed into my ears; and the truth was
poured forth into my heart, where the tide of my
devotion overflowed, and my tears ran down, and
I was happy in all these things.”
This feast had its perfect epilogue in the house
of Monica. The son of tears had become the son
of joy; once more joy had flowed forth from the
depth of bitterness in a human soul. Perhaps her
other son, Navigius, felt miffed. She would have
answered with the father of the parable: “It was
just to hold a banquet and rejoice, for this your
brother had died and he arose from death; he
was lost and behold he has been found.” Before
too long, these two souls, now perfectly attuned,
were to sing God’s praises through the ecstatic
colloquies of Ostia where the mother of tears
would pass to better life.

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.

63 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8209 – $5.50

Baptism

Here is the complete Rite of Baptism in English and Latin (which can also be found in our
1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal). Every church and chapel should have these available
to the faithful. Includes: Church Teaching about Baptism, the Serious Obligations of
Godparents, the Rite of the Churching of Women, Blessing of a Woman after Childbirth
and of Her Child, Consecration of a Child to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Rite of
Baptism for Infants and Adults, the Reception of Converts.

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Theme Baptism

A HomeComing
Interview with a Recent Convert

The Angelus: How would you describe your
family at the moment you joined the Church?
Convert: We were devout Protestants who
took our faith very seriously, reading the Bible
and praying regularly, enjoying a good family life
with no deep-seated problems.
The Angelus: What types of religious
affiliation did you embrace?
Convert: The first few churches I attended
as a child and a young man were Southern
Baptist. As I had my Protestant experience of
“conversion”, I began attending a Pentecostal
church associated with a small denomination.
I met my wife as a result of this association.
I even studied to become a pastor at a Bible
College, and did study in Ministry. I left school
to get married. We then became affiliated with a
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Charismatic group that was part of “The Word of
Faith” (health and wealth) movement, and that
was the beginning of the end for us. We had a
rude awakening as we got to know the leaders
involved, the hypocrisy and the greed that was
all part of that. We recoiled from that, and that
is when we started to search for something
more mainstream and we attended again Baptist
churches and then Reformed Baptist Churches.
If I were to nail my theology down, I would say
that I believed the tenets of the Reformed Baptist
Church. I was Calvinistic in matters pertaining to
salvation, and very Baptistic in matters regarding
faith.
The Angelus: You spoke of a “conversion
experience” which led to a Pentecostal church.
What do you mean by that?

Convert: At the time I would have defined it as
“getting saved”. Now I would define it as coming
to a place where I realized I had some degree
of responsibility regarding faith and beginning
to try to live accord to my understanding of
the faith. Prior to that, I had not made such a
commitment. I was very irreligious; I attended
church sporadically, on social events or when
invited by someone. As far as making religion an
integral part of my life, that was not until I was 16
years of age.
The Angelus: How different or similar are the
various Protestant groups?
Convert: By and large, they are very diverse.
Of course there are some similarities. All Protestants would agree on small, core things: the
Virgin birth, the infallibility of Sacred Scripture
and other such basic things. But the diversity is
much more pronounced. I personally attended
churches where “Speaking in Tongues” is seen
as immediate and current acts of the Holy Spirit,
and others where they would frown on it. Some
would hold that smoking tobacco or drinking
alcohol is perfectly permissible, others would
hold that it is a damnable sin. Even something
as basic as the Holy Trinity—they all should
believe in it, but that does not mean that they do.
There are certain Pentecostal groups that deny
the Trinity and would still consider themselves
Christians. And unfortunately, many Trinitarian
people would consider them to be Christians
too, so shallow is their understanding of what it
means to be Christian. Belief in the Trinity or not
is not so important: everything goes as long as
you believe in Jesus.
The Angelus: What was satisfying about
them? What was unsatisfactory?
Convert: Some of these churches were very
satisfying. There were people who genuinely
loved the Lord and loved each other; there
was good, open, honest fellowship. It is very
rewarding to be around such people.
But also, at times, it was very frustrating
whenever a disagreement would arise. Disagreement is the very core of Protestantism since
it encourages everyone to privately interpret the
Scriptures. And so when you have a meeting of

ten Protestants, you have at least ten different
opinions as to what Sacred Scripture means. And
such people are really indifferent and really never
raise a doubt. Their thinking is: “I understand
that you believe this or that, and so, since that’s
what you believe, then that would work very well
for you.” And they would just agree to disagree.
Now, I am not one of those people. I believe that
if something is true, it is true in every time and in
every place. And so I would often find myself at
odds with many Protestants with whom I would
disagree on biblical interpretation because I
simply could not agree to disagree. We needed to
figure out what is true and wrestle the thing to
the ground to find out what is going on. The group
leaders would discard the question. For them
disagreement on, say, speaking in tongues is not
important as long as we love Jesus, so everything
is fine.
The Angelus: Do you mean to say that the
agreement is on the sentiment, the experience of
Jesus, but not on doctrine?
Convert: Exactly! But I could not understand
how we could agree about Jesus if we could not
agree about what Jesus taught. How do you define
that experience? Much of it depends on what
Jesus taught and wants me to live by. And so, at
times, it was very disheartening and upsetting
because of the constant dissension which was
essential to being a part of a Protestant church.
If you meet a Baptist or a Methodist, it does not
mean that you know what they believe. One thing
that stood out for us was the oneness of the
Catholic doctrine. With Catholics, I know what
they are supposed to believe because there is a
standard, a dogma. There is a singular teaching
of the Catholic Church which all Catholics are
obliged to believe.
The Angelus: If there is doctrinal dissension,
should there not arise some strange practices and
“moral” behaviors in Protestant circles that are
alien to Catholic morality?
Convert: Indeed, since each Protestant is
free to interpret Sacred Scripture as he (or she)
wishes, given human sinful nature, many will
have no problem watching lascivious movies and
others would object to this, and yet would go
13

Theme Baptism
for something clearly blasphemous. Coming into
the Catholic Church, the focus was laid on faith
and morality together: if you believe a way, you
behave a certain way. To see that in practice in the
Catholic Church was a very compelling argument
for me. As a Protestant, issues would come up. My
children would come to me and ask: “Dad, what do
we believe about this, and how do we know that
what we believe is true since other people believe
something different?” And there would be all these
inconsistencies. Whereas now, when issues come
up, I answer: “What does the Catholic Church say
about this? Because it does not matter what Bobby
or Joe says; what matters is the final teaching
of the Church on this. Let us find out what the
Church teaches and let us obey it.”
The Angelus: What tells you that the
universal Catholic Church is right and not wrong?
Convert: The authority of Catholic Church
rests on the authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ has commanded me to hear the Catholic
Church on pain of damnation, and if the Catholic
Church can teach error, then Jesus Christ
has commanded men to hear error and that is
ridiculous. He said that He would be with the
Catholic Church till the consummation of the
world.
The Angelus: What were you looking for that
you had never found until you knocked at the
door of the Catholic Church?
Convert: It is the consistency of the message,
the consistency of the practice together with
the doctrine, the authority and irreformable
nature of the teaching. Yes, the real thing was the
consistency going back 2,000 years, and to look
back at the writing of the early Church Fathers
and see them talking about the same doctrine,
the same practice, and the same structure that
I can see in the Catholic Church today. Nothing
has changed in over 2,000 years; it was the same
from the very foundation. Whereas Protestants
can go only back so far, and they have already
changed what they were doing five centuries ago.
One text made me realize the need of belonging
to the Church. It was from St. Cyprian (died 258)
speaking of the dissident group which refused
to allow the return of apostates to the faith,
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(they did not change the faith, the doctrine, the
structure; they simply refused to recognize the
authority of their Bishop), St. Cyprian said, “He
no longer has God for his Father, who has not the
Church for his mother.”
The Angelus: Did you have any friends who
were instrumental in drawing you to the faith?
Convert: I had experiences with three men
in my life to whom I will forever be grateful,
that were solid Catholics very well versed in
defending the Faith and answering my questions.
It was a working weekend that I spent with
two of them on the East Coast which led to my
conversion. I got to ask them questions, and I
realized how reasonable, how scriptural, how
historic their answers were. So I came home and
started to read the Catholic materials and began
to examine the teaching of the catechism.
The Angelus: How long did it take you to visit
an SSPX church after the meeting with the two
men?
Convert: It took only three weeks. I needed
to understand what Catholics believe. Within
three weeks, I was thoroughly convinced that
I absolutely had to be one. During that time, I
did a lot of praying. I described it as a “crisis of
faith” because I had spent 24 years knowing what
I believed and why I believed it, and I thought I
was prepared to defend any of these Protestant
issues. And here I am a veteran Protestant
confronted with one thing after another and
finding that I am wrong and the Catholic Church
is right. And I remember very clearly the night
sitting on my couch when I realized that I had
to become a Catholic. I had just been studying
the Eucharist, and I came to realize that Jesus
was being literal when He said: “Unless you eat
my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have
life in you.” And I had done some study to find
out whether, besides the Catholic Church, other
churches possessed the real Body of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, and none of them would teach that
the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the
Body and Blood of Christ at the Consecration.
And so, I suddenly realized that, no matter what
else, if I were to save my soul, I absolutely had
to be a Catholic. And I remember clearly that

moment. It was about two o’clock in the morning
because I had been staying up very late reading.
And the next thought was: “But what if I cannot
convince Lisa and the kids; what if they won’t
come with me.” Then I thought: “Well, I will go
alone because I have to save my soul.” Thank God
they came with me!
The Angelus: That was going to be my
next question: You are speaking of your own
conversion, but what about your wife and kids?

Convert: I was visited by a grace which I
did not deserve. As I was studying and leaning
towards the Catholic Faith, I really did not expect
such a warm welcome. She expressed her concern,
but said she knew how seriously I took my faith
and the Scriptures. Then if I would be drawn into
that direction, she owed me at least the courtesy
of hearing what I had to say and studying it with
me to see whether it were true.
The Angelus: What did she say after that?
Convert: It did not take her very long. I
proposed questions to her like: “Where in Scripture
do we read that we need to believe in ‘Scripture
alone’?” And she began to bring up this verse and

that verse, which explained that the Scriptures
were useful, but they never said that it was all that
was necessary. From time to time, she said to me
that there is no denying that this Catholic position
or that Catholic position is true. After a while it
started to add up. She was confronted by what she
had believed and what she was not aware of being
the truth which was what the Catholic Church had
said all along. Over a period of a couple of weeks, I
said that I had made an appointment with a priest
and asked her whether she would go with me,

and she said that she would. I wanted to seek out
some type of traditional church. I knew that some
churches were traditional and others were not.
So I did a Google search for a traditional Catholic
Church near my home and the SSPX mission name
came up.
The Angelus: Did you not feel alien attending
the Mass in Latin?
Convert: No, I never felt any kind of
hesitancy, resistance, or being out of place. I
had done enough reading before attending my
first Mass: I understood why the Mass was in
Latin. I understood its singleness, its oneness.
I recognized that this is a common language
15

Theme Baptism
spoken all over the world. If you look up the
names of plants in scientific journals, the names
are always in Latin and nobody thinks it is weird.
I thought it was beautiful and untouched and part
of something that stretched back a lot further
than anything I had been a part of before. If there
was any discomfort with my children, it probably
did not last more than a couple of weeks. They
understood the purpose behind it and were ready
to embrace it. Interestingly enough, both my
daughters were taking classical Latin, and it was
neat for them to recognize some of the words and
phrases.
The Angelus: What about your friends, your
social life and job?
Convert: Coincidentally or providentially,
my boss was one of those two men who were
instrumental in my conversion. He was very
pleasantly surprised when I told him that we
were going to Mass. But in my social life, it was
a lot more rocky! For instance, there are people
who pretty much dropped us off from their list as
we talked about conversion, who had been very
close to us for many years. But, looking back, we
knew which friends it would be who would shut
us out. We had kind of prepared ourselves for it.
We did realize the cost, but we realized that the
cost did not count. It did not matter; we knew
that what we were doing was to save our souls.
And, by the same token, two whole families have
converted as a result of hearing our testimony
and conversion story and arguing for the Faith.
That is very rewarding.
The Angelus: What did preparing for baptism
mean to you?
Convert: When many Protestants use the
term “born again” they are referring to that
moment of conversion when they think that
they were “saved” by a profession of faith. At
the moment when he gives himself to Jesus with
all his heart, Jesus forgives all of his sins, he is
“born again” and “saved”. As I was reading that
“challenge” by fisheaters.com, I was struck by
John, Chapter 3, when Jesus speaks of “being
born again”. He speaks very clearly of being born
of water and of the Spirit. And so, when I realized
that the Catholic Church teaches that water
16

The Angelus

March - April 2014

baptism is the act of being born again by having
original sin and actual sins washed away by the
water of baptism, I was blown away. I thought,
“Wow! Being baptized is being ‘born again’!”
Then I simply came to see that after receiving
that water, all these sins are taken away and
gone: a person is a brand new creature that was
not there before, free from original sin and from
actual sin. I began asking the question: Was my
baptism valid? Have I ever had my sins washed
away? Am I sitting here with all of my sins still
against me? Then if baptism washes away all of
your sins, there has to be a method in place for
getting rid of sin after you have been baptized
because people continue to sin. They have to be
forgiven and washed clean of that sin, which led
me to the study of confession and penance.
The Angelus: This must have been a very
humbling awakening.
Convert: Indeed, I realized that I was in a
lot of trouble whether my baptism was valid or
not. Even if I had been validly baptized and rid
of original sin, I still was carrying all the sins I
had committed afterward because I had never
made a confession and had never been absolved
of my sins. And the likelihood that I could claim
anything like perfect contrition would be zero in
my estimation… because I know myself. It was
very humbling to realize I am cloaked in sin and
there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot get
rid of it and I cannot come clean of it, and if I die
in the state I am in, I cannot go to heaven. So,
when we joined the Church at the Easter Vigil,
it was such a profound experience to make our
first confession, to be baptized and to be able to
receive the Lord’s Body, and know—not wonder,
not hope, not think—but absolutely know that my
sins were washed away, that I was in the truth, in
the faith and had a real hope of salvation.
The Angelus: What did the preparation for
baptism consist of?
Convert: We were working through one or
two chapters of My Catholic Faith every evening
and praying the Rosary, and so there was that
real sense of taking what we were learning
and practicing it at the same time. As we were
working through each of these doctrines in the

catechism, we would go to the Internet to look for
other examples of other teachings correlative to
those dogmas. It was a sort of a crash course, and
we jumped in feet first.

seriousness and awe with which they reacted to
it, all this spoke a great deal of what they really
believe about it. It was very touching, it was like
becoming a part of the family.

The Angelus: Did it change your life style at
home much, with the children, on the natural
level as well as a certain understanding of
Christian virtues?
Convert: It really did. It has taught me to
realize many things I was handling wrongly as
a parent and a husband. I realized that these
things were out of shape. We began to seek out
an understanding of the Church on intimacy
between the spouses and the role of parents
towards the children, disciplining children and
all of this. With my Protestant background, man
in the home is king of the family, the boss in
a stern and unquestionable sense. The family
exists to reflect the glory of the father. These are
Puritanical and Calvinistic views. Now, within
Catholicism, the strong role of the father figure
is taking a different aspect: he is not so much the
tyrant, but one who uses influence rather than
force. As for the children, they are children and
far from perfect. Yet I see a tendency toward
things Catholic and toward wanting to know the
faith. When at Christmas time we asked for what
they request, it was very touching to hear one of
them say: “I would like a statue of St. Rita.”

The Angelus: Were there many changes in
your Christian life after a whole year as converts?
Convert: We have just begun to associate with
people who attend church where we relocated
for my work. The other night, we were at a
parishioner’s home, had a blast, dinner, stayed
up late, good discussion, good time, discussing
matters of faith, home and job. Recently we
wanted to organize a party, spoke to the pastor
of the church, and invited some kids of the
church. There is more a sense of that parochial
parish life, and we plug into that, and of course
attending Mass as frequently as we can, going
to adoration when available. The kids need that
support of friends.

The Angelus: Would you describe the
ceremony and circumstances of your baptism?
Convert: The Easter liturgy is a very solemn
ceremony. Baptism fits in like a glove. Easter
celebrates the Resurrection of Christ coming out
of the grave. Likewise, baptism makes the soul
rise from the dead spiritually, and somewhat
echoes the Easter resurrection.
For my family and myself, the Easter Vigil
was like a home-coming and being at peace
with God. It was finally knowing that I was
where God wanted me. The parishioners were
truly wonderful because people often think
they should believe certain things and they say
that they do, but when they actually react in
real life, you realize how they actually believe.
And so, to see the way the parishioners from
all local chapels responded to our Baptism, the

The Angelus: Any last comment?
Convert: I was probably the most unlikely
Catholic anybody would have known, and it is
amazing to think that He would convert me and
use me to convert my family, and through it,
my extended family and friends. I think of St.
Paul (I Corinthians, ch. 1) saying that God has
not chosen the glorious things of the world, but
the weak and foolish things, because I was as
anti-Catholic as anyone could be. Bishop Sheen
said that there were not one hundred persons
in America who hated the Catholic Church,
but there were millions who hated what they
mistakenly thought the Church to be. I was one
of those millions. I had a very clear picture of
what I thought the Catholic Church was, and I
truly hated it. But things changed when I came
to realize that not only is it not what I thought
it was, but I began to realize the beauty of the
Catholic Church.

17

The baptism of Jesus marks the
beginning of His public ministry. This
event is recorded in the Synoptic
Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
John’s Gospel does not directly
describe Jesus’ baptism.
Place of the Baptism of Christ at the Jordan

75 pp. – Softcover – STK# 6722 – $9.95

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A Patristic Commentary
Fr. Jean-Marc Rulleau, SSPX
While visiting the U.S., Fr. Rulleau (former Professor of Dogmatic Theology
in Ecône, Switzerland) could not help but notice the specifically American
problem of the denial of baptism of desire. Rising above all polemics,
Fr. Rulleau clearly explains the mind of the Church, based upon the
Magisterium and the Fathers.

128 pp. – Softcover – STK# 3093 – $7.95

Is Feeneyism Catholic?
Fr. François Laisney, SSPX
This book examines the simple truths of our catechism regarding the true meaning of
the Church’s dogma, that “outside the Church there is no salvation.” Quoting heavily
the Church’s Magisterium, Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the writings of the
Saints, Fr. Laisney explains the Church’s teaching on Baptism of Desire. A defense
of Catholicism, not of false ecumenism. Father’s new edition is twice the size of his
original work and is enriched and made more convincing by copious quotations from
the writings of the Saints.

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

The
Baptismal
Vows
And Slavery to Jesus in Mary

by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

Sin Is Slavery
1

Cf. St. Augustine, The City
of God, on Adam’s sin (Bk.
13, Ch. 13): “The fact is that
the soul, which had taken
perverse delight in its own
liberty and disdained the
service of God, was now
deprived of its original
mastery over the body;
because it had deliberately
deserted the Lord who
was over it, it no longer
bent to its will the servant
below it, being unable to
hold the flesh completely in
subjection as would always
have been the case, if only
the soul had remained
subject to God.”

It is the glory of our modern world, we are told, to provide us with
freedom. The past was a time of tyrants and their oppressive laws, which
restricted the exercise of man’s free will. But the present has delivered us—
as far as is possible—from external impositions on liberty of choice. Now
you can think as you want, act as you want, live as you want. Nothing stands
in your way, neither God, nor moral code, nor natural law. And so you are
perfectly free.
Behind this epitome of liberal thought, however, lies a grave sophism.
To be subject to nothing is to be subject to whim. Any man who gives free
rein to his will is a slave, indentured to his lower nature, which mercilessly
carries him to his own destruction. When the intellect is not subject to truth
and the will to good, then destructive passions arise to rule the both of
them.1
In a heated argument with the Pharisees, Our Lord tells them that His
truth will set them free. They protest that they have never been slaves to
anyone, but He replies that “whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (Jn.
8:33-34). Sin, in fact, is the ultimate tragedy for a man, for its service so
21

Theme Baptism
enfeebles his will that he can no longer choose what is best for him; he can
only choose what is destructive. He becomes a slave of death.
Thus, by defining true freedom to be a total lack of constraint,
liberals “promise liberty, while they themselves are slaves of corruption”
(II Pet. 2:15).

Freedom from Sin’s Slavery
In this light, the terrible drama facing every man coming into this world is
that he is born a slave. The presence of Original Sin in the soul of an infant
places him under the dominion of sin and in bondage to the devil. His life
is out of control and headed for destruction unless he be set free. But this
freedom is not gained easily, for no chains are heavier than those of sin.
By the infinite mercy of God, of course, we are provided with a Savior,
someone who can save us from this slavery. But how does He do this?
By taking the form of a slave, says St. Paul (Phil. 2:7). To rescue us from
bondage, Our Lord placed Himself in a state of total submission, like unto
that of a slave: He constantly professes His total subjection to the will of
the Father starting with His first words (cf. Heb. 10:7); He places Himself in
a state of total dependence on His Mother for a period of 30 years; and He
dies the death of a slave (crucifixion), as if helpless before the violence of His
enemies. Sin’s shackles were broken through a life of total subjection.
From the time of Our Lord’s Redemptive Act, men are offered the freedom
of Christ (cf. Gal. 4:25), which they accept by receiving the waters of Baptism.
In this sacrament, it is not sufficient for sin to be wiped away. That would be
only a temporary solution for man’s slavery, and he would quickly be back
in a state of bondage. On the contrary, it is necessary for the candidate to
“switch sides”, to take on a new life, a new mode of existence. Quite simply,
the baptized must be brought into the life of Christ Himself.
St. Paul is at pains in many passages to make Catholics understand
that their lives are now assimilated to that of Christ. In the early Church,
catechumens walked down steps to be immersed or buried in a pool of water
before rising up and walking up the other side. This was a symbol, St. Paul
remarks in Rom. 6:3-4, of their death and resurrection, mirroring those of
Our Lord. As a result, they can “walk in newness of life”; they now live the
life of Christ.
But the life of the baptized must not only take on the features of the end of
Our Lord’s life, but of its totality. His life was one of dependence and slavery;
so must ours be. It was not a slavery to sin, which is one of unwillingness and
violence, but a slavery of total, voluntary, loving submission to God. Such is
the life that we are called to live with Christ.
This is the reason for St. Paul’s invitation: “As you yielded your members
as slaves of uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now yield your members as slaves of justice unto sanctification.…[N]ow set free from sin and
become slaves to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and as your
end, life everlasting” (Rom. 6:19-22).
The fact is that the only path that frees us from the slavery to sin is the
one of subjection to God; there is no third option for man. Our Lord traveled
22

The Angelus

March - April 2014

2

Several of the New
Testament authors refer to
themselves as the slaves
of Jesus Christ: Sts. Peter,
Paul, James and Jude.

3

True Devotion to Mary,
§68.

4

End of the treatment of
Article 2 of the Creed.

this path most perfectly, as did Our Lady, who calls herself the “slave of God”
twice in Scripture (cf. Lk. 1:38, 48).2 And it is Baptism that accomplishes this
transition from servile slavery to loving slavery, from slave of the devil to
slave of Jesus Christ.
“We do not belong to ourselves,” says St. Louis de Montfort, “but are
entirely His, as His members and His slaves, whom He has bought at an
infinitely dear price, the price of all His Blood. Before Baptism we belonged
to the devil, as his slaves; but Baptism has made us true slaves of Jesus
Christ, who have no right to live, to work or to die, except to bring forth
fruit for that God-Man; to glorify Him in our bodies and to let Him reign
in our souls, because we are His conquest, His acquired people and His
inheritance.”3
And the Catechism of the Council of Trent says that we Catholics, “above
all others, are under the obligation of devoting and consecrating ourselves
forever, like faithful slaves, to our Redeemer and our Lord.”4

The Ceremony of Baptism
This fuller understanding of Baptism’s role shines a light on the beautiful
ceremony which has been witnessed so often by Traditional Catholics,
especially those blessed with big families. It is striking to modern sensibilities how unabashedly the Church treats the candidate as being under the
dominion of the devil, as belonging to him.
In the simpler and more familiar infant Baptism, the candidate is not
allowed into the church building until two exorcisms have been performed.
The devil is driven off by the breath of the priest’s mouth and the infant is
marked repeatedly with the sign of the cross, which is like a gate barring the
demon’s re-entrance.
From the very beginning, the candidate is informed of the requirements
for his change of allegiance. The godparents ask faith and eternal life for the
baptizandus, and the priest immediately speaks of the service that he will
have to render to obtain these things: keep the commandments and love God
with his entire being.
Once everyone has entered the church and prayed together the Apostles’
Creed and the Our Father on the candidate’s behalf, the priest immediately
goes after the devil again, with a third and final exorcism, the only one
performed inside the church. That completed, he is confident that the enemy
has been definitively repulsed, and he wants to open up the passageways for
grace. To do so, the priest repeats a gesture of Our Lord (cf. Mk. 7:34), using
his own spittle to anoint the child’s senses, which sin and the devil have up to
this time stopped up and so prevented the influx of divine life.
Now comes the time for the candidate to bind himself definitively to the
new life, the eternal life that he has requested. Knowing the reality of man’s
fallen condition, Mother Church does not hesitate to exact vows from the
infant, which will oblige him forever. There are two triple interrogations, one
to reject Satan and the other to embrace Christ. Three questions, it seems,
are needed for completeness. Satan alone must not be renounced, but also
his way of acting and his way of appearing, that is, his spirit. There must
23

Theme Baptism
5

True Devotion to Mary,
§126.

be a definitive break with the slavery to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Just as necessary are the questions connected to the new life: one
concerns God the Father, one God the Son, and one God the Holy Ghost. By
believing in Them and the order that They have established for our salvation,
the candidate implicitly binds himself to live according to that order. This
is his new and blessed slavery, which he then immediately begins when the
water is poured in the name of the Three.
“Every Christian,” says St. Louis de Montfort, “before his Baptism, was the
slave of the devil, seeing that he belonged to him. He has in his Baptism, by
his own mouth or by his sponsor’s, solemnly renounced Satan, his pomps and
his works; and he has taken Jesus Christ for his Master and Sovereign Lord,
to depend upon Him in the quality of a slave of love.”5

The Baptismal
Vows
Do you renounce Satan?
I do renounce him.
And all his works?
I do renounce them.
And all his allurements?
I do renounce them.
Do you believe in God, the
Father almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth?
I do believe.
Do you believe in Jesus
Christ, His only Begotten
Son, our Lord, Who was
born for us and suffered for
us?
I do believe.
Do you believe in the Holy
Ghost, the holy Catholic
Church, the communion of
saints, the forgiveness of
sins, the resurrection of the
body, and life everlasting?
I do believe.
Groupe en pierre datant de 1549 et représentant le baptême de Saint Augustin. Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul de Troyes.

6

Cf. Louis Le Crom, Saint
Louis-Marie Grignion de
Montfort (Clovis, 2010), pp.
223-224.

7

True Devotion to Mary,
§120.

8

Unfortunately, it seems
that even this Scriptural
and Catholic slavery is
odious to the Conciliar
Church. On August 2,
2001, the Congregation of
Saints declared that St.
Louis de Montfort could
not be made a Doctor of
the Church. It seems that
the primary reasons were
his unecumenical Marian
devotion and undemocratic
language. See Le Sel de la
Terre, No. 84, pp. 75-86.

A More Perfect Slavery
The same St. Louis, at the beginning of his priesthood, was unsure as to
what path God wanted him to take. To know God’s will, he traveled to Rome
on foot in 1706 and obtained an audience with Pope Clement XI. Though he
spoke of his attraction of heading off to the foreign missions, the Pope told
him rather that he was to preach missions in France, and specifically that he
was to instruct the people and the children in their catechism and have them
make solemn renewals of their baptismal vows.6
From that point, St. Louis faithfully fulfilled this commission, preaching
innumerable missions and having the attendants sign contracts attesting to
the solemn renewal of these vows, which, quoting St. Augustine, he called the
greatest and most indispensable vows.
But, more than this, St. Louis saw that the most appropriate spirit for such
renewal was one of loving slavery to Jesus Christ. Only such a spirit would
go with that of the baptismal ceremony itself. To truly enter into this spirit,
it was necessary to imitate Our Lord as perfectly as possible. He became
a slave for us, subjecting Himself totally to His Mother, surrendering all.
And so we, in turn, must place ourselves in total dependence on His Mother
and give her everything that we have in the order of nature and grace. Once
we have done this willingly and lovingly—and so enslaved ourselves to
her—only then are we completely enslaved to Jesus Christ. In this way, Our
Lord’s own Mother becomes the means for the most perfect renewal of our
baptismal vows.
“The most perfect consecration to Jesus Christ is nothing else but a
perfect and entire consecration of ourselves to the Blessed Virgin, and this is
the devotion which I teach; or, in other words, a perfect renewal of the vows
and promises of holy Baptism.”7

Conclusion
The word “slave” is rightfully one to which much odium is attached,
when considered in its traditional meaning. The lovers of the world today,
especially, would hasten to say with the Pharisees that they have never been
the slaves of anyone. The Catholic, however, who has been incorporated
in Christ by his Baptism, provides a new use for this word: that of a total,
voluntary, loving submission to his Savior Jesus Christ.8 What more perfect
response could be given, in fact, to a world that is so convinced of its dignity
and so proud of its independence from God?
And, for those who wish to be the most perfect slaves of Our Lord, it is
clear that they can only do so by in turn placing themselves in a total loving
dependence on Our Lady. Let all who read this, then, live most faithfully the
vows of their baptism by happily bearing the title of “slaves of Jesus in Mary.”

Fr. Paul Robinson was ordained in 2006 by Bishop Bernard Fellay and has been a professor at Holy Cross Seminary in
Australia since 2009. He is author of an audio course on St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary, which may be
obtained at www.stasaudio.org.

25

Faith and Morals

Baptism
and the
Easter Vigil
by Fr. Christopher Danel

Easter Vigil at Jerusalem

Faith and Morals
The baptism of her children and thus their
incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ
is a matter of prime importance in the life
and history of our Holy Mother the Church.
We find myriad treatises and expositions of
sacred doctrine by the Fathers of the Church
on precisely this topic. The liturgical life of the
Church is deeply imbued, in text and symbol, by
the accompaniment of the catechumens—those
preparing to convert to the Faith—to the sacred
Font, and of the duty and joy of the Faithful
in conserving the grace received in their own
Baptism. This is particularly evident during the
liturgical seasons of Lent and Eastertide.
While the life of the early centuries of the
Church was deeply marked by the conversion
of the pagans, and thus the presence of
catechumens preparing for and receiving
baptism, we are certainly more familiar in
our own age with the baptism of the children
of Catholic parents. However, it does not take
much imagination to see how the impressive and
solemn rites of the early centuries are placed
right before our eyes during Holy Week, as well as
in the baptismal rite of infants.
Throughout the forty days of Lent, the
catechumens prepared themselves to receive
the light of Faith. That is why the Lenten texts
of the Mass are so full of imagery instructive
to them (and to us). We find Naaman the Syrian
cleansed of leprosy by the sevenfold bath,
Moses receiving the Ten Commandments,
water gushing from the rock struck by Moses,
the Samaritan woman at the well, the bath of
Susanna, and so on. On Wednesday of the fourth
week of Lent, when the catechumens gathered
for the greatest of the three scrutinies, the holy
liturgy promises: Effundam super vos aquam
mundam (I will pour upon you clean water).
The two Epistles tell the catechumens, I will
take you from among the Gentiles, and, Wash
yourselves, be clean. In the Gospel, the Divine
Physician gives sight to the man born blind, who
had never seen Light; in fact baptism was also
called photismós, or illumination. The readings
later in the fourth week are all about resurrection
from the dead: four accounts are given, one
each by Elias and Eliseus, and two by the Lord
of Life, for the widow’s son and Lazarus. The
28

The Angelus

March - April 2014

final announcement comes on Saturday, when
the Introit shouts: Sitientes, venite ad aquas
(All you that thirst, come to the waters)! Three
days before the baptisms are conferred, the Holy
Oils which will have such an important role in
these ceremonies are blessed by the bishop at the
Chrism Mass of Holy Thursday.
O beata nox! The blessed night leading to
the Resurrection of Christ will be the time of
death (to sin) and resurrection (to new life) for
the catechumens. It all happens at the Easter
Vigil. The station church for the Great Vigil is the
Basilica of St. John Lateran, the mother church of
Christendom, with its baptistery of Constantine.
The rites as we have them in our own parishes
come in fact from the Papal liturgy celebrated in
this ancient church and baptistery, based on the
ceremonies of even earlier years.
The Easter Vigil opens with the blessing of
the new fire and then of the Paschal Candle,
with the singing of the Exultet. Afterwards,
the immediate preparation of the catechumens
begins. The series of prophecies give us but a
glimpse of the providential preparation God
in His mercy laid out over many centuries for
the holy mysteries we are about to witness: the
Creation, the Exodus, the Temple, and the Law.
Meanwhile, the catechumens are taken to a
vestibule area by some of the priests and given
the Catechization, that is, the initial series of
rites preparatory to baptism: signing with the
cross, exorcisms, imposition of hands, opening
of the senses. Later sacramentaries include the
conferral of blessed salt. The catechumens had
previously been “conferred” the Creed (traditio
symboli), by being instructed in it, and were
to “return” it by profession (redditio symboli).
With the prophecies, there are also three ancient
Tracts whose Latin composition predates even
the Vulgate of St. Jerome.
After the prophecies, the procession is
formed whereby the Paschal Candle, like the
pillar of fire which led the Israelites through the
parted waters of the sea, leads the clergy and
catechumens to the baptistery. In this ancient
liturgy, the Litany of the Saints was sung thrice.
Each invocation was sung seven times, then
five times, then three times. The catechumens
and godparents arrive before the baptistery. At

this point, we have the ceremony of the blessing
of the font, of apostolic origin. The ancient
baptisteries were a reservoir of baptismal water.
Our baptisteries also serve as the basin where the
baptismal water is reserved, and during baptism,
water is not poured into an empty font, but is
taken from this very pool-basin and poured over
the forehead of the baptized. Our fonts are in
fact elevated, miniature versions of the ancient
baptismal basins.
At the baptistery, the bishop solicits the triple
renunciation of Satan, his works, and his pomps
from the catechumens. They are anointed on the
breast and back with the Oil of Catechumens.
They then enter into the baptismal basin and are
asked by the bishop three times to profess their
faith according to the articles of the Apostle’s
Creed, thus “returning” the Creed they had been
taught (redditio symboli). Then they enter the
baptismal basin, and with a hand held upon them,
they are baptized by the threefold implementation
of the baptismal water. Emerging from the basin,
they are anointed on the head with Holy Chrism
by a priest. They are given a white garment by
the bishop and, according to later texts, a candle.
Then, having gone to change into the garment,
they reassemble in the attached chapel of the
baptistery where the bishop confers upon them
the Sacrament of Confirmation, once again with
Holy Chrism. In connection with all of these
ceremonies, we find also the singing of Psalm
41: As the hart panteth after the fountains
of water… It is, of course, the beautiful Sicut
Cervus.
Imbued with the Catholic Faith, the newly
baptized, called neophytes, are led in solemn
procession back to the basilica, once again
accompanied by the Litanies, which lead into
the Mass itself. The neophytes take part in
the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—the Mass of
the Faithful and no longer just the Mass of the
Catechumens—for the first time. There they
receive their First Holy Communion, after which
three particular and symbolic refreshments are
given to them to drink: water, milk sweetened
with honey (lac et mel), and wine, in the
name of the Holy Trinity and as a sign of their
entrance into the land of milk and honey which
is the Church. The neophytes wear their white

garments during the entire octave, and out of
respect for the laver of regeneration, they do not
bathe nor go barefoot until Low Sunday.
In our own day, these identical baptismal
ceremonies are collected together in the rite for
the baptism of infants. In the vestibule of the
church the preparatory ceremonies take place:
the exsufflatio, the tracing of the crosses on the
infant/convert, the imposition of hands with two
of the prayers, the conferral of blessed salt, and
two of the three exorcisms, which harken back
to the three scrutinies. Entering the church, the
convert or godparents recite the Credo and Pater
while the priest recites them in Latin; we see here
the traditio symboli. Before the baptistery, the
preparation is completed with the third exorcism,
the Ephphatha, the renunciation of Satan, and
the anointing with the Oil of Catechumens. The
convert or infant enters the baptistery proper,
makes his profession of faith (redditio symboli),
whether on his own or through his godparents,
and is baptized, as the godparents hold him or lay
their hands on him. He is anointed on the crown
of the head with Holy Chrism by the priest and is
given a white garment and a candle.
Whether or not baptisms take place at the
Easter Vigil in one’s parish, we all have the
occasion to participate in the larger complex of
ancient ceremonies of the Vigil on the night of
Holy Saturday. From the new fire, the Paschal
Candle and the Exultet, the prophecies and
tracts, the Sicut Cervus, the blessing of the font,
the Litanies and the Mass: the ancient rites are
our own. Many of the particular characteristics
of the Easter Vigil Mass are glimpses of even
more ancient traits of the early Roman Rite,
such as the absence of candles for the Gospel,
the absence of some of the usual antiphons, and
the Litany leading into the Mass. These things
illustrate a law of the liturgy: primitive rites are
maintained with greater tenacity in the more
sacred seasons of the liturgical year.

29

Faith and Morals

God Knows
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

“O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and
of the knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33)
It is easy enough to speak of the greatness of
God and to give a list of His perfections. It is not
so easy to pin them down in detail, and perhaps
more so when dealing with such an evasive thing
as knowledge. It will be useful to situate the
different levels of knowledge before we speak of
God Himself and of what His knowledge entails.

The Ladder of Knowledge
“Know yourself” was the last word of pagan
wisdom. Knowledge is the source of wisdom. It
opens avenues to things around us. And since we
love as we know, we desire and move to obtain
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things in as much as we have cognizance of them.
This is enough to show that knowledge is central
in the acquisition of perfection for higher beings.
But knowledge varies greatly according to
the nature of the knower. Just dangle a piece of
thread before Emmy the cat and you will witness
one of the most amazing things in the universe,
something much greater than all the innumerable
galaxies put together: Emmy is reacting to
the thread because she knows it! Quasars and
super-novas are no doubt spectacular, but you
can dangle any number of threads in front of
a quasar and it won’t budge an inch. Emmy, on
the contrary, sees it and plays with it. A light
explodes in her somewhere and fills her with
the reality of this thread. Behold a profound
communion is born: Emmy is informed with the

thread.
If we climb up the ladder of creatures, we pass
onto the realm of intelligent beings. Cats sense,
but, besides sensing, men think, love, and make
decisions. Man is not any animal, he is a rational
animal. He may be a reed agitated by the wind (as
said Jesus Christ) but he is a thinking reed (as
said Pascal). His superior life is evidenced by his
rational acts. When we see a man walking with
a dog, we do not wonder which one is on a leash.
Nor do we compliment someone by saying that
“he leads a dog’s life”.
Above men, angels enjoy an intellectual
life which is broader and purer as they live
in a higher sphere of existence, devoid of
materiality: angels are pure spirits. If humans
know only progressively, with much room for
error and through the dark veil of matter, angelic
knowledge is a brilliant flash of lightning, an
intuitive perception of ideas and concepts
directly infused by God into their “brain”. Men’s
intellection cannot do without sensation: it works
like moles groping in a dark tunnel. Compared
to this, angelic knowledge resembles the eagle’s
eye which, from on high, has the pure and sharp
vision of so many more things with fewer glances.

that I have not and, somehow, knowledge makes
me possess it.
Knowledge is more perfect as the knowing
subject is more immaterial. Angels are superior
to men because they are totally immaterial
and men surpass mere animals because
their immaterial soul renders them partially
immaterial, unlike cats and dogs. An eye cannot
see colors unless its pupilla is transparent:
a man wearing pink glasses cannot see the
darker side of things. Transparency—translate
“immateriality”—allows the subject to receive
more freely colors and bodies.
Knowledge is more perfect as its object, the
form received, is more immaterial. There is a
lesser degree of “knowability” in smelling a rose
than in the concept a man can extract from the
term “rose.” Likewise, terms like “horse” and
“bulldozer” do not have the same universality
and depth as “justice”, “truth” and “being” which
are richer concepts for being immaterial in
themselves. Even if both are gazing on the same
object, say an altar, man’s concept will never
equate the angelic idea.

God has Knowledge
The Mystery of Knowledge
The comparative degrees of knowledge already
bring us some interesting data about the mystery
of knowledge which will come useful as we
discuss God’s own knowledge.
Knowledge offers a vital extension of the
individual reaching outside itself into the other
world. It is the root of “otherness”, the source of
experience. It brings us to a fuller kind of life by
expanding our horizons.
Knowledge consists in the communion
between two beings: the knower and the thing
known, living their different lives and yet united
in the act of knowing. To know is to become what
one was not. When I gaze at the house across the
street, I suddenly get hold of the house within
myself, although it still remains where it was,
across the street. In creatures, of any level it may
be, knowledge is a sign of inner imperfection
because it means that I am in want of something

There is hardly a page of Sacred Scripture
which is not marked by the recognition of the
All-knowing God. “The Lord is a God of all
knowledge” (I Kings 2:3). The Psalms (93, 138,
146) tell us how much God is in control of man’s
personal life and scrutinizes his every throb and
thought. We quoted St. Paul at the beginning of
this article: “O the depths of the riches of the
wisdom and of the knowledge of God!” And this
is why Vatican I defined that “God is infinite in
His intellect.”
God knows differently from creatures.
Creatures have knowledge, God cannot acquire
the perfection of knowledge as if He did not have
it. His knowledge expresses His being. God does
not have knowledge because God is knowledge!
Angels and men know things in order to take
hold of them and perfect themselves. “Travel is
broadening our horizons; experience and study is
enriching”, because the reception by the mind of
“information” of “forms” enlarges the circle of
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Faith and Morals
our realizations. He has no need to learn what He
did not previously know. He lives in the eternal
“Now”, completely, with infinite understanding
and total comprehension, always realized.
All creatures know things because they preexist our knowledge. God, on the other hand,
knows things and they are made. His knowledge
precedes existence. His intellect is not informed
by things, He gives them their form and their
existence. His is the science of the artist who
causes his work: “He spoke, and it was made!”

What Does God Know?
If God has knowledge, there must be an object
to this science. What does God know? There
is a double object of God’s knowledge: Himself
directly and the world He created secondarily.
Firstly, it seems easy enough to say that God
does know Himself. He gave His own name
to Moses “I am He who is” (Ex. 3”14). In His
Revelation He has disclosed something of His
nature and attributes, which He could not do if
He did not have self-knowledge.
St. Paul again reveals this divine knowledge
of God: “The things of God no one knows but the
Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:11). Our Lord in the Gospel
reveals another facet of this self knowledge of
God. “No one knows the Son except the Father;
nor does anyone know the Father except the
Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal
Him” (Mt. 11:27). There is a mutual and exclusive
knowledge of Father and Son, which echoes
the universal duality between the knowing
subject and the object known. This “duality” of
knowledge seems to contradict God’s simplicity.
And yet this very obstacle lifts a corner of God’s
inner life. In common language, the mental word
is the concept which the intellect produces when
it finally gets hold of the nature of a thing, as
when a child grabs the meaning of “weapon” by
looking at the bow and the gun and the tank. St.
John’s Prologue plunges us into the mystery of
God, of the “Word who was with God (the Father)
and who was God.” In God, the first procession is
by way of intellection, so that God the Father, as
He knows Himself, produces a perfect reflection
of Himself, and emits the Word, perfectly
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identical, perfectly distinct, and perfectly united
to the Father in the act of mental generation.
Could we not say then that the mystery of
knowledge as communion helps us plunge into
the inner life of the Blessed Trinity?
Another interesting aspect of God’s knowledge
is His connection with creation. The relation
seems most tenuous as creatures are closer
to nothingness than they are to God. How
can one know things so distant and yet be in
“communion” of knowledge with them? How can
there be such communion between so different
things as God and the world? Could there be
union and even identity at all? Here again, the
mysterious property of knowledge can lead us
into another mystery, that of divine Creation and
Providence.
It is because God knows Himself
comprehensively. He does not know Himself
through a kind of mirror-concept. He knows
Himself through Himself directly, “face to face,”
in a way no man or angel knows himself perfectly.
So doing, God knows also all His Power, His
potentiality and His causality. Thus, He knows
creatures in Himself and not in themselves. He
sees Himself and needs not see the shadow or
reflection of Himself in the Creation. He is like
the architect who reads the plans of the house
inside his mind—intus legit, and has no need to
look outside the window. Likewise, the Divinity
includes all the forms, the plans, the ideas, which
the Almighty Artist and Creator had in mind
when He made all things out of nothing. And this
divine scale and model of existence is the reason
itself for the truth of such things: this dog and
this house is true because it reflects the divine
idea of “dog” and “house” in God’s mind. Hence,
the divine Christ can truly ay that “I am the Way,
the Truth and the Life.”
And although God knows all things in Himself
and not in themselves, yet He knows each single
one of them. “Not one hair of your head will fall
without God’s permission.” “He has loved me
and has offered Himself for me.” God knows our
misery and the evil of sin, because He is more
intimate to us than we are to ourselves. He sees
us as we are. Are we such as we should be in
God’s all-knowing eyes?

“Illiberal
Catholicism”
And Social Order

by Gabriel S. Sanchez

When speaking with faithful Catholics today
on politics, it is common to hear the lamentation
that neither half of America’s political duopoly—
the Democratic and Republican parties—represents Catholic interests as set forth in the
Church’s social teaching. An increasing number
of Catholics, particularly traditional Catholics,
have sought refuge in historically marginal
movements such as libertarianism and its more
mainstream offshoot, the Tea Party, in order
to secure themselves from illicit government
intrusion in such sacred spheres as family life.
Thanks to libertarian luminary Samuel Gregg’s
book by the same name, the term “Tea Party
Catholic” has even entered the contemporary
political lexicon while, at the same time,
Catholic-run think tanks like the Acton Institute
pour resources into supporting socio-economic

policies that align with the Tea Party’s platform
of limited government and free markets.
Accompanying this promotion of Tea
Party politics among Catholics is a vitriolic
assault on so-called “illiberal Catholicism,”
a loosely designated body of believers who,
for diverse reasons, oppose the questionable
union of Catholicism with all forms of political
liberalism. These “illiberal Catholics” include
a significant number who are unwilling to
abandon the Church’s traditional theological
moorings in Scholasticism and the teachings of
the 19th- and early to mid 20th-century popes
and counterrevolutionary thinkers. They have
embraced the “illiberal Catholic” moniker as
nothing other than a symbol of fidelity to the
Church’s classic social magisterium—one which
takes its bearings from the Social Kingship
33

Faith and Morals
of Christ rather than the rogues’ gallery of
libertarian intellectual heroes: Ayn Rand, Ludwig
von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and so forth.
Before delving further into the assault on
“illiberal Catholicism” and what it means for
traditional Catholics, a few words seem in order
concerning those who, with their instincts in the
right place, have opted to support libertarian
or libertarian-esque movements such as the
Tea Party. In this day and age where the federal
administrative state runs rampant, “crony
capitalism” appears ubiquitous, and the core
moral teachings of the Catholic Church are
under regular assault from political agencies
captured by left-wing ideologues, it makes a
great deal of sense that Catholics might assign
their allegiance to groups which, among other
things, fight for freedom from unjust government
intrusion in their private and economic lives.
But this “promise,” whatever its worth, cuts
two ways. For on the one hand, libertarianism
offers a zone of freedom for Catholics to raise
their families in accordance with the precepts
of the Church and hold back their lawful
earnings from being applied to immoral political
projects such as publicly funded abortion,
contraception, and sterilization. On the other,
it also guarantees pornographers, prostitutes,
and even drug dealers the “free-market space” to
ply their respective “trades” without the fear of
government coercion. By dialing-down the level
of legitimate government power to a de minimis
level, libertarianism looks to the highest
degree of freedom or, more accurately, noninterference for all without regard to moral truth.
Every citizen is afforded the fallacious right to
construct privately his own idea of “the good life”
without necessary recourse to the One who is
“the way, the truth, and the life,” Christ our God.
Of course, all Catholics living in the United
States today must recognize that they are part
of a pluralistic landscape that is dominated by
the creed of secularism—that anti-Christian
Weltanschauung routinely and forcefully refuted
by such Popes as Pius IX, St. Pius X, and, closer
to our own day, Benedict XVI. As such, it is
not enough to long romantically for the social
reign of Christ; society, on all levels, must be
converted first. Part of that conversion process
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includes scrutinizing the false presuppositions
of otherwise seemingly attractive political
movements. As Christopher Ferrara has detailed
in his two landmark works, The Church and
the Libertarian and Liberty, the God That
Failed, libertarianism is nothing other than a
high-octane version of the political liberalism
repudiated by the Church for centuries. Even
in its populist, Tea Party guise, libertarianism
falls into the same error as the late 19th- and
early 20th-century French “Sillon” movement by
sourcing political authority in “the people” while
absolutizing democracy, two views condemned
by St. Pius X in his encyclical on the Sillon,
Notre Charge Apostolique, and reaffirmed by
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in his masterful
commentary on that document found in his
book Against the Heresies. Moreover, by
promoting an economic ordo which places its
faith in the “invisible hand” of the free market
rather than the requirements of natural justice
rooted in a thoroughly Christian anthropology,
libertarianism often runs counter to the
teachings of Popes Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum
and Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno on the
dignity of human labor and the fair distribution
of goods in society.

Common Socio-Political Cause
Carrying forth this project of calling not just
libertarianism, but all forms of liberalism, to
the carpet are those aforementioned “illiberal
Catholics” who, despite their mixed intellectual
pedigrees, have come to reject the false narrative
that Catholicism and liberal ideology share a
common socio-political cause. Although, as
noted, “illiberal Catholicism” does not constitute
a uniform or even organized movement, what
may be called its “traditionalist wing” has
become more vocal in recent years in response
to the tendency of some traditional Catholics to
turn toward libertarianism in order to find some
bulwark against the rising tide of unchecked
and unprincipled government power. Despite
the hyperbolic accusations of certain critics, the
“illiberal Catholic” rejection of libertarianism
does not mean a full-on embrace of the Leviathan

State in all domains of human life, nor does
it mean a call for public persecution whereby
Protestant prayer houses will be put to the torch
and non-Catholics compelled to convert at the
end of the sword. On the contrary, many “illiberal
Catholics” seek a return to authentic community
life through subsidiarity, property ownership, and
a wide distribution of the means of production.
Attending, and in fact superseding, these
organizational mechanisms, is an unwavering
dedication to the Faith of Jesus Christ and His
Holy Church, which is nothing less than “the
pillar and ground of the truth.”
Some might still object to “illiberal
Catholicism” on the grounds that its aims are
impracticable, especially given current political
realities. While that is certainly true at the
macro-level, there is nothing stopping “illiberal
Catholics,” or, more properly, all traditional
Catholics from following the advice given by Fr.
Arnaud Rostand in his concluding remarks at the
2011 Angelus Press Conference, The Kingship
of Christ, namely to form worker and other
positive associations, run in local elections, and
use the editorial pages of newspapers and other
public fora to promote Catholic socio-political
ideals. Above all, Catholics must not be afraid
to be unpopular by remaining out of step with
the Zeitgeist. None of this means that Catholics
ought to be overly polemical or outright refuse
cooperation with non-Catholics on matters of
common interest. What it does mean, however,
is that Catholics faithful to the teachings of the
Church must not compromise those teachings in
exchange for dubious, and often fleeting, political
relevancy.

however, the Great Commission must take center
stage. In addition to the millions of non-Catholics
living in America who have yet to hear about the
Faith unadulterated by modern sentiments, there
are also millions of Catholics who, for disparate
reasons, remain improperly catechized on
matters ranging from basic doctrine to the beauty
and integrity of the Church’s timeless liturgy. The
traditionalist iteration of “illiberal Catholicism,”
then, is not simply about combating the errors
of political liberalism, but is also centered on
attacking the pathologies of religious liberalism
which often manifest themselves in the form of
indifferentism, relativism, and false ecumenism.
While political prognostication is always a
perilous exercise, the current evidence seems
to indicate that the situation of Catholicism
in America will become more difficult in the
coming years as special-interest groups attempt
to leverage the rule of law against traditional
morality and the rights of the Church. Even
so, the answer cannot be capitulation, even for
supposedly “prudential considerations”; prudence
never trumps principle. Now is the time for the
faithful to recall their common bond in Christ
the King and apply the teachings bequeathed by
Sovereign Pontiffs, theologians, philosophers,
and orthodox political commentators for the
arduous but imperative task of rebuilding a
proper social order on the unwavering foundation
of Catholic truth. That is the mission of “illiberal
Catholicism.” Indeed, it must never cease to be
the mission of all Catholics everywhere.

Gabriel Sanchez is an attorney and independent researcher living in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, with his wife and four children.

Prudence Never
Trumps Principle
The project does not end there. As laudable
as the socio-political elements of “illiberal
Catholicism” unquestionably are, they must not
be pursued at the expense of, or in isolation from,
evangelization. For too long traditional Catholics
have contented themselves with an unfortunate
but understandable ghetto existence in order
to preserve the Catholic Faith; at some point,
35

Consecration of the Host
Quam pridie quam pateretur. [“Who, the day
before He suffered.”] These words were added by
Pope Alexander I, the sixth Successor of St. Peter.
This he did, in order to recall the Passion, because
the Sacrifice of the Mass is one and the same with
the Sacrifice of the Cross; for the same Lord, when
He first immolated Himself in the Cenacle, on
the eve of His Sacrifice, was to be immolated the
next day on Calvary. Accepit panem in sanctas
ac venerabiles manus suas. [“He took bread into
his holy and venerable hands.”] At these words
the priest does the very same, he takes the bread
into his hands, et elevatis oculis in cælum [“and
having lifted his eyes to heaven”], he too raises his
eyes to heaven, imitating what he is saying that
Our Lord did. It is not mentioned in the Gospel that
Jesus raised His eyes to heaven on this occasion,
but tradition tells us so—a tradition so certain
that Holy Church makes a point of giving it here
her full acceptance. Ad Te Deum Patrem suum
omnipotentem, tibi gratias agens. [“Unto Thee, O
God, His Father almighty, giving thanks to Thee.”]
This is the Eucharist, or thanksgiving; and Holy
Church is careful to call attention to it, for, late as
we ever necessarily are in paying our ceaseless
debt of gratitude to God for His countless benefits,
we should constantly have thanksgiving in our
hearts and on our lips. Benedixit (at this word
the Priest signs the cross upon the host) fregit
deditque discipulis suis. Accipite et manducate
ex hoc omnes. [“He blessed, broke it, and gave it to
His disciples, saying: Take, all of ye, and eat this.”]
HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM. [“FOR THIS IS
MY BODY.”]
Taken from Notes Made at the Conferences of Dom Prosper Guéranger, Abbot of Solesmes

Side altar in Notre Dame Cathedral, Ottawa

Spirituality

Remembering
Our Baptism
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Excerpt from a spiritual conference given by
His Grace in the eighty-second year of his life to
the seminarians at Ecône.
The idea of the Church can scarcely be thought
of without baptism coming immediately to mind.
Baptism is a reality we ought to think about
often. We were baptized, for the majority of us,
as infants, newborns just a couple of days or a
week or two old. We were not aware of what was
happening; obviously, we did not realize what
was going on. This is a serious matter. It was
God’s will, that’s just the way things are, yet in all
of that there is something we shouldn’t overlook:
the forgetfulness of our baptism simply because
we did not consciously participate in it.
Then we were prepared by our good parents,
those who brought us up, and especially by the
catechism, for our First Communion, for union
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with Our Lord. It was the greatest celebration
of our childhood, the great event. Then came
confirmation, and our solemn communion
and profession of faith [customary in some
Catholic countries]. And thus our soul grew in its
attachment to our Lord, to the Church, and to the
sacraments.
Even so, our baptism stayed somewhat of an
unknown reality. Yet it is the most important. It is
baptism that distinguishes souls that are Christ’s
and souls that aren’t. It is baptism that puts us in
direct communication with the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ and His divine life. It already puts
us in heaven; baptism already transports us now
to heaven. The water of baptism resuscitates us;
the water of baptism gives us Our Lord’s grace.
The grace and light with which the soul is clothed
are symbolized by the white garment given the

Baptismal font, Oudenbosch, Netherlands

39

Spirituality
newly baptized baby after baptism and the candle
placed in its hand. It is already, in a way, in the
glory of heaven.
It’s a new life that is beginning. We become
separated from others by the very fact because
we become members of a family, indeed the
very members of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
is the head of the Mystical Body which is the
Church. We have to think about it often. During
confirmations I like to remind the children that
confirmation confirms the grace of baptism, and
consequently they should know and understand
what baptism is.
I find that there is something wonderful in the
first words the Church puts on our lips through
our godparents when we come to church for the
first time. At our first contact with the Church,
the priest asked: “Quid petis ad Ecclesia Dei—
what do you ask of God’s Church?” What do
you want? what have you come here for? And
our godparents answered for us: “We ask for
faith—Fidem.”
We need to think well on it. What the Church
puts on our lips at the door of the Church the first
time we enter a church is supremely important.
She says: Ask for faith. Nothing else. A single
word.
The priest continues: “Why do you ask for
faith?” What do you get from faith? “Eternal life—
vitam æternam.”
It is magnificent. In these two seemingly
insignificant questions, spoken so quickly, is the
whole program of our life here below and for
eternity. We ask for faith, to live by faith, because
it is the way to eternal life. How sublime, I should
say, is the sacrament of baptism. And if there is
one thing we ought to remind ourselves of today,
this is it.
We asked of the Church—and we ask every day
of our life—for faith: Priests, give us the faith.
Bishops, give us the faith. Pope, give us the
faith. You were the ones who told us to ask for
it. Before we could speak, before we knew how
to talk, that is the first thing you placed on our
lips: Ask for faith. Give it to us, then, since you
told us to ask you for it.
How earnestly, how carefully, ought we to
ask of the Church faith, and we must refuse
to let anyone diminish it, or cheat us out of it,
40

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or change it. In the very first moments of our
existence, at our baptism, that’s what we were
asking.
This is the essence of our fight.
Men, the world, will attempt to deceive us,
to lead us into error, to make us live heedless
of God’s presence, to attack our faith. The devil
prowls round about us, trying to make us lose
our faith. And we must strive to keep the faith.
This is what the sacrament of confirmation is for.
Confirmation imparts the particular power to
hold onto our faith in the midst of the difficulties
we meet in our spiritual life and throughout
the course of our Christian life. How splendid
is this institution of our Lord Jesus Christ; how
wonderful is the simplicity of the Church, the
simplicity of our spiritual life!
The faith gives us the life of grace. That’s why
the priest repeats these questions just before
administering baptism: “Do you believe in God
the Father? Do you believe in God the Son? Do
you believe in the Holy Ghost? Do you believe in
the Catholic Church?”
“Yes, we believe. Yes, we believe. Yes, we
believe.”
We have to hold on to all of this. They ought
not to change the Church on us [but] they are
changing the Church; they want to make another
Church. We have believed in the Catholic Church,
not in a liberal Church, not in a modernist
Church; no. So you see, let us strive as much as
we can to live these great realities, of capital
importance for us. If you have kept the faith till
now, if the good Lord has preserved your faith, if
you have the signal grace of keeping your faith,
well then, give thanks to God and promise to
keep it in its perfect, absolute integrity. For the
denial of a single article of faith suffices to make
you no longer Catholic, to exclude you from the
Church, to cut you off from the Church. Just one
article of our faith! Hence we must jealously keep
this treasure, and jealously keep the treasure of
divine life within us.
It is the role of confirmation to give us the Holy
Spirit in abundance in order to preserve us, in
order to protect the precious life that the good
God has placed within us that is a preparation for
eternal life. The life of grace is already eternal
life, a life of faith, a divine life, a life of charity. It

is very beautiful. These are the true realities that
we must live by, and we should help all those to
whom we are sent live by them, too. Christians
need to appreciate these things and not forget
the grace of their baptism. They must not forget
that they were chosen by God to be members
of the Church, members of Christ’s Mystical
Body. It is something extraordinary. Our Lord
indeed said: “Those who will not be baptized will
not have eternal life” [adapted from Mk. 16:16].
Baptism is absolutely necessary by a necessity
of means and not only by a necessity of precept,
as is confirmation. It is an indispensable means
and not only a commandment. Whoever is not
baptized, either by water or by desire, will not
enter the kingdom of heaven.
That is why all [those who are to go to heaven]
do so through the Church, because baptism
of desire is precisely the baptism of being
attached to the Church and of being able to
be a member of the Church so as to live of the
life of our Lord Jesus Christ. This has nothing
to do with the false religions, in which may be
found persons who desire baptism, who desire
baptism implicitly, eventually. On the contrary,
all the false religions turn them aside from it.
How then can they say that the false religions
have worth for salvation. Without our Lord Jesus
Christ? without baptism... This is no longer the
faith, this is no longer the Catholic faith. [Such
teaching] depreciates baptism; it depreciates our
attachment to our Lord Jesus Christ by baptism.
“Confirmation presents us the Church filled
with the power of God and terrible as an army
in battle array. The Eucharist initiates us into
its intimate life, its spousal joys, its maternal
tenderness. Penance and extreme unction make
us see at work the powerful means of which
the Church disposes for the destruction of sin
and the accomplishment of all justice. Holy
Orders places before our eyes the variety of
her ministers, the power and perpetuity of her
hierarchical action. As for marriage, in it the
Church shows us how even the succession of
human generations is subordinated to the giving
birth of the elect. The seven sacraments thus
afford us seven viewpoints from which we may
consider different aspects of the Church.”
Let us have, then, this simple view that our

holy religion gives us so that we ourselves may
be deeply convinced of these truths and of these
realities, and then let us try to transmit them.
Let us have zeal for the sacraments, zeal for a
ministry that now has been abandoned by all the
progressive priests because they no longer have
faith in the grace of Our Lord. They do not believe
that the sacraments give divine life; they do not
believe that baptism gives divine life. For them,
baptism is simply an initiation that attaches us
to a family, a community, a communion—that’s
all. They don’t see the grace, the gratia sanans
and the gratia elevans, that is given by baptism, a
grace that heals and lifts up. It is a divine reality
that happens in the infant’s soul, a complete
change.
Of that we must be convinced so as to do
everything for baptism. The administration of
baptism will also be the joy of our priesthood.
Obviously, there will be no trouble in baptizing
children when they are in the desired conditions,
but adults, of course, must be prepared for
baptism. But it is a great joy for priests to baptize
them because, truly, they resuscitate souls, souls
that are under the influence of the devil, that are
dead. These souls are restored to life by the grace
of baptism.

41

Christian Culture

Navigating the Dangers of Scylla and
Charybdis During the Crisis in Civil Society

Legal Justice
by Brian McCall

Traditional Catholics have been struggling to carry one of the unique
crosses of our time of crisis. Catholics responding to one of the deepest
and severest crises to rock the bark of Peter must avoid jumping ship and
unilaterally declaring the pilot’s seat empty at the same time that they must
avoid rowing in the direction of so many of their superiors, a direction
running straight into the tsunami of Counciliar novelties. Thus, many
Traditional Catholics are keenly aware of avoiding both points of excess: the
abandonment of authority by the Sedevacantists and the embrace of novelty
through irrational obedience by those groups which have compromised with
the Modernists.
There is an old saying: As goes the Church so goes the world. Since the
Church is the soul of the body politic, or civil society, if the soul is sick
or disoriented, the body will be likewise affected. History is replete with
examples of the state of the Church, good or bad, being reflected in the state
of civil society. It is no surprise then that the devastating crisis of Faith
that pervades the Church of recent decades is reflected in a crisis of civil,
and particularly political, society. All one need do is read the newspaper to
see daily evidence of all aspects of civil life spiraling toward dissolution:
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1

See St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica, II-II, q.
57.

2

For a summary of the
doctrine of St. Thomas on
this matter see Jeremiah
Newman, Foundations of
Justice: Historico-critical
Study in Thomism (Cork:
Cork University, 1954), pp.
2-3.

3

Ibid., p. 6.

4

ST, I-II, q. 90, arts. 2 and 4.

5

ST, I-II, q. 95, art. 2.

6

See ST, I-II, q. 95, art. 4.

political, economic, legal, cultural, educational and social. Laws against
nature are enacted regularly, whether they be to harbor or promote abortion
or confer the benefits of marriage on those incapable of entering into this
sacred bond. Yet, as Catholics attempting to live up to our obligations we
face countervailing dangers when confronting the crisis of civil society. As
with our response to the crisis in the Church, our response must be rooted in
the proper understanding of Catholic virtue, which avoids both extremes.
To understand our obligations towards civil society we must briefly
discuss the virtue which regulates our exterior acts, Justice. Justice is
the virtue whereby we possess a constant and perpetual will to render to
others their due.1 As Men can have three different types of relationship and
interaction, the virtue can be considered in three contexts or particular
forms of Justice. (1) Men can interact directly one with another (as in
buying and selling goods), and these types of external acts must be ruled
by commutative justice, which requires equity in such personal exchange
transactions. (2) As a social being, Man also interacts with other Men
mediated through society. One form of Justice must regulate the relationship
of that society to the individual Men comprising it. This particular form of
Justice is distributive, and it requires that common goods be distributed
among the members of a society proportionately according to merit. (3) The
final type of justice regulates the relationship of the individual towards the
society of which he is a part. It is this third type of Justice, legal, which must
guide our balanced reaction to the crisis in civil society.
St. Thomas speaks about legal justice as having two purposes. It is the
virtue which directs us to obey the law and the virtue that ordains the
exercise of the other virtues to the common good of society.2 By examining
both of these aspects we can gain a deeper understanding of our proper
response to a society mired in injustice. There is an “essential connection
between legal justice and law.”3 One of the key aspects of St. Thomas’s
definition of law is that it must be ordained to the common good.4 Laws
are made to make determinations of Natural Law applicable to particular
circumstances in a society. Those vested with legal and political authority
bear the burden of making these determinations in the form of laws so as
to coordinate all individuals in the pursuit of the common good. Obedience
to human laws is the usual method by which we order our individually
virtuous action to, and harmonize them with, the common good. Thus, legal
justice is the virtue by which we maintain a constant and perpetual will to
obey the law. Yet, unlike modern Men who have been drunk on the illusion
of Legal Positivism for centuries, St. Thomas, and the Catholic Tradition he
embodies, understands the term “law” in a much deeper and broader sense.
Although human laws are generally our first point of contact (in the order of
knowledge), they do not exhaust the genus of law. Human laws to be binding
in conscience must derive their authority from the higher forms of law,
the Natural and Divine Law and ultimately the Eternal Law.5 A purported
human law which is contrary to these higher laws is in fact no law at all but
rather a violation of law.6 When St. Thomas explains that one aspect of legal
justice is that it orients us to obey the law, he means law in its complete
sense.7 Modern Men who speak of obedience to law speak only to that part
of the law composed of human laws which they have amputated from the
43

Christian Culture
7

44

Newman, Foundations of
Justice, pp. 10, 12, and 13.

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higher law that gives them life. Thus, legal justice is the virtue by which we
obey all the laws God has envisioned for us, from Eternal Law all the way
down to human. In a good society, doing so will entail no conflict because
all of the laws will conform to and in fact be derived from the Natural or the
Divine Law. Much as Catholics living in the late nineteenth or early twentieth
centuries could simply follow the advice and statements of the reigning
Pontiffs to conform to Catholic truth and praxis, in well-functioning societies
they can simply obey the particular human laws on the books. Yet, as in the
time of ecclesiastical crisis the latest interview of the Supreme Pontiff may
not be a safe guide to Catholic truth, so too in a civil society in crisis the
latest enacted laws may not be a sure guide to obeying the law. The virtue
of legal justice guides our discernment of what the law, in its fullest sense,
requires of us so that we can obey the law. In times of crisis, legal justice
demands we refuse to conform to unjust human laws in order to obey the law
in the fullest sense of the term.
Yet, as St. Thomas’s teaching indicates, mere obedience to the law is only
part of the virtue of legal justice. More generally, it orders our individual
acts to the common good. All members of a society are obligated to work for
the common good. What this obligation entails in practice will vary greatly
depending on abilities, talents, resources, and the obligations of our station
in life. Yet, at a minimum it requires that we desire the common good of
our society, which precludes a complete rejection in principle of life in an
ordered society governed by political authority. This obligation involves
avoiding the same twofold danger as in the context of the Church.
We cannot simply throw ourselves into the spirit of the secular age
and make peace with the enemies of the Kingship of Christ who wield
the levers of power. We cannot support or accept the decomposition of
society represented by the promotion of abortion, sodomy, contraception,
liberal indoctrination called education, and cultural obscenity. We cannot
participate in government if such participation constitutes a formal
cooperation with evil.
Yet, as with the crisis in the Church, legal justice precludes a rejection
of the good of political authority in principle even when legal justice
requires we disobey the unjust actions of those currently holding political
authority in our society. The crisis in civil society may be so great that all
of the candidates standing for a political office would likely accomplish a
disproportionate evil to any good they might achieve, which would preclude
our voting for any candidates. Yet, such refusal can never be construed in
our own mind or in our external behavior as a rejection of participation
in the political life of our community on principle. Voting—if a legitimate
aspect of our customary form of government—is not intrinsically evil.
Political and legal authority is a good established by God to perfect our
social nature. God’s plan for authority is revealed in the first moments of
creation when He establishes Adam as the authority among the first human
community. The making of just laws and our participation in that process
(to the extent consistent with the particular form of government customary
in our particular nation) is oriented to the common good and demands our
participation, to the extent consistent with our station in life. If we must
absent ourselves from most or all of the aspects of political life due to its

Note: This article is based on a
conference given to the students
of St. Mary’s College, and, Notre
Dame La Salette Boys Academy in
September 2013.
Brian M. McCall is Associate Dean
for Academics and the Orpha and
Maurice Merrill Professor in Law at
the University of Oklahoma College
of Law and in 2014 is a Visiting
Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law
School. He has received degrees
from Yale, the University of London
and the University of Pennsylvania.
He is married and has six children,
and serves as the coordinator of the
SSPX chapel in Oklahoma City.

great corruption today, we must not translate this into a rejection of political
life in principle. We must be careful to identify ways in which we can work
for the common good even if quite limited. It may involve participation
in local elections. In towns in which traditional Catholics constitute a
substantial percentage of the population the opportunity to work for the
common good of the local community is likely more feasible. Traditional
Catholics should not absent themselves in this case in the vein of a liberal
philosophy (be it libertarian or anarchist). At a minimum we should maintain
an appropriate respect for the offices of authority even if those offices are
sullied by unfit holders at present, and we should always pray sincerely for
those holding any office of civil authority—in particular, we should pray that
their minds and wills be moved to work for the establishment of the Kingdom
of Christ.
To absent ourselves completely and on principle acts as a practical
rejection of the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Ironically,
Traditional Catholics who reject any obligation to work for the common good
of the societies in which they live act no differently from Modernist Catholics
who pay mild lip service to the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the
King but reject the doctrine in practice. This attitude, exemplified by the
transferal of the Feast of Christ the King to the last Sunday of the Liturgical
Year, expresses the understanding that the doctrine is of no importance to
us here and now. The Reign of Christ the King is only relevant to some far
off time and place, the end of time. Traditional Catholics may display more
external piety on the traditional date of the Feast, the last Sunday of October,
than their Novus Ordo counterparts, but if they act as if working for the
establishment of the Reign of Christ the King has no practical claim on their
lives throughout the year then they agree in praxis with the Modernists and
relegate the doctrine to pious sentiments.
The ultimate restoration of civil society, as with the Church, will only be
accomplished by the omnipotent power of Divine Providence. Yet, as with the
crisis in the Church, Our Lord wills our participation in this restoration. We
must do our part even if that only means the lifting up of our mind and heart
to this intention in prayer.
Man’s supernatural and natural ends require two perfect communities, the
Church and the Civil Society. Our nature demands an ordered authority to
govern each. When this ordered authority is in crisis the time is “out of joint,”
to use Shakespeare’s phrase. In both spheres two great dangers present
themselves to one navigating to his natural and supernatural ends. One
danger represents a blind obedience to corrupt authority, reconciliation with
the crisis and its corruptions. The other danger involves a total rejection of
God’s design. In a desire to guard against giving into the spirit of novelty one
simply secedes from the Church or political life, crashing into an atomized
individualism contrary to nature. Legal justice points the way through both
perilous paths, avoiding imbibing the dangerous spirit of the age while
skirting the temptation to reject our social nature.

45

IPrayer
am theto
good
TheSea
theshepherd.
Star of the
O Mary,shepherd
Star of the Sea,
see me
good
giveth
hishere,
lifekneeling down
before thy throne of grace, where so many lovers of
for
his sheep.
hireling,
thy motherly
heartBut
havethe
already
received the greatest
favors:
where
thou
obtainest
consolation
and he that is not the shepherd,for the sad,
help for the poor, health for the sick, forgiveness for the
whose
sinners. own the sheep are not,
seeth the wolf coming, and
O dear Mother, I now come to thee with the greatest
leaveth
the
and flieth:
confidence.
Thesheep,
many miracles
which have happened
and
the wolf
and
here thanks
to thycatcheth,
intercession,
fill me, poor sinner,
with
great
hope
that
thou,
Mother
Mercy, wilt
scattereth
the sheep: And of
the
also hear my prayer. Yes, I beseech and pray thee, O
hireling
flieth,O because
heofis
sweetest Mother,
amiable Star
theaSea, do not let
me
go
away
from
here
without
being
hireling: and he hath no careheard. Thou canst
help me, for thou art the mightiest after God. Thou art
for
thetosheep.
I am the
good
willing
help me because
thou
art full of love for all
thy children. and I know mine, and
shepherd;
mine
know
me. Asmother,
the Father
Remember,
O merciful
that never was it heard
that anyone me,
who fled
protection
knoweth
andtoIthy
know
the with confidence
was left unaided by thee. Should I then be the first
Father:
and I lay down my life
unhappy man whom thou lettest go unheard? No, no, O
for
sheep.
10:11)
goodmy
Mother;
in this(John
holy spot,
thou wilt, through thy

almighty intercession, obtain for me help in my distress
and consolation in my sufferings. Amen.
Sanctuary of Our Lady, Star of the Sea,
Maastricht, Netherlands

Christian Culture

St. Genesius
The Comedian
from Butler’s Lives of the Saints

Father Delehaye classes the story of St.
Genesius in the category of imaginative
romances. It is possible that Genesius never
existed at all, but is a western version of St.
Gelasius of Heliopolis, of whom (and of others)
a similar tale is told. The legend of Genesius is
narrated by Alban Butler as follows.
The Emperor Diocletian coming to Rome, he
was received with great rejoicings. Among other
entertainments prepared for him, those of the
stage were not neglected. In a comedy which
was acted in his presence one of the players
took it into his head to burlesque the ceremonies
of Christian baptism, which could not fail to
amuse the people, who held our religion and its
mysteries in contempt and derision. This player
therefore, whose name was Genesius and who
had learned some things concerning Christian
48

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March - April 2014

rites from friends who professed that religion,
laid himself down on the stage, pretending to
be ill, and said, “Ah my friends, there is a great
weight upon me, and I would gladly be eased.”
The others answered, “What shall we do to
give you ease? Would you like us to plane you
and reduce the weight that way?” “Idiots!” he
exclaimed, “I am resolved to die a Christian, that
God may receive me on this day of my death as
one who seeks His salvation by turning from
idolatry and superstition.”
Then a priest and exorcist were called, that
is to say, two players who impersonated these
characters. These, sitting down by his bedside,
asked, “Well, my child, why did you send for us?”
But here Genesius was suddenly converted by a
divine inspiration and replied, not in mockery but
seriously, “Because I desire to receive the grace

of Jesus Christ and to be born again, that I may
be delivered from my sins.”
The other players then went through the
whole ceremony of baptism with him; but he
in earnest answered the usual interrogatories,
and on being baptized was clothed with a white
garment. After this, other players, dressed like
soldiers, to carry on the jest, seized him and
presented him to the emperor, to be examined
as the martyrs were wont to be. Genesius then
declared himself openly and seriously, standing
upon the stage, “Hear! O emperor, and all you that
are present, officers, philosophers, senators and
people, hear what I am going to say. I never yet so
much as heard the word Christian but I reviled
it, and I detested my very relations because they
professed that religion.
“I learned its rites and mysteries only that I
might the better ridicule it, and inspire you with
the utmost contempt for it; but when I was to be
washed with the water and examined, I had no
sooner answered sincerely that I believed, than
I saw a company of angels over my head, who
recited out of a book all the sins I had committed
from my childhood and having plunged the book
into the water which had been poured upon me in
your presence, they showed me the book whiter
than snow. Wherefore I advise you, O great and
mighty emperor, and all people here present who
have mocked these mysteries, to believe with me
that Jesus Christ is the true Lord; that He is the
light and the truth; and that it is through Him you
may obtain the forgiveness of your sins.”
(Assuming the story to be true, the “baptism”
administered would not be valid, for lack, on the
part of the sacrilegious actor, of any intention
even “to do what the Church does” when she
baptizes. Genesius received the baptism, not of
water, but of desire and of blood.)
Diocletian, enraged at these words, ordered
him to be beaten, and afterward to be put into the
hands of Plautian, the prefect of the praetorium,
that he might compel him to sacrifice. Plautian
put him upon the rack, where he was torn with
iron hooks and then burnt with torches; but
the martyr persisted in crying out, “There is no
other Lord beside Him whom I have seen. Him I
worship and serve, and to Him I will cling, though
I should suffer a thousand deaths. No torments

shall remove Jesus Christ from my heart and my
mouth. Bitterly do I regret that I once detested
His holy name, and came so late to His service.”
At length his head was struck off.

49

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Discipline
for Life
by Michael J. Rayes

Habits ingrain either vice or virtue. Most
adults are a mixed vessel of both. Focusing
on the virtuous adult, one can often see their
growth in virtue stretching back in time to
childhood. Today, Catholic parents can ensure
that their children grow in virtue by instilling
consistent discipline, not only as a consequence
administered for bad behavior, but as an overall
discipline of life.
Discipline as a way of life is a consistent
regimen of self-restraint combined with
occasional consolations, or rewards. It is a
balanced, deliberate, and careful way of life. How
can Catholic parents raise their children with this
balance of discipline without pushing them too
hard and thus driving them out of the Church?

Your Motivation
Pause occasionally to reflect on your child’s
future. You are raising a future Catholic adult.
Your child is not your own; this is a child of
God, and He has entrusted you with the child’s
care. You are the one responsible for this child’s
upbringing, his Catholicity, his innocence, and
his virtues. You are the one who needs to instill
a consistent prayer life. At the same time, the
child’s faith must eventually grow to be his own.
If an older adolescent only goes to Sunday Mass
to fulfill his parents’ wishes, by age 21 he will no
longer darken the door of a church.
Thus, the motivation for instilling discipline in
your family must be love. The theological virtue
of charity is your guiding light. This animates
everything, from the constant compromising of
51

Christian Culture
your will to maintain harmony with your spouse,
to dragging your exhausted body upstairs to kiss
the kids good night, as well as everything else
you do in your family life.

Self-Discipline
Discipline is a tiered process that flows in
proper order. When any level is wanting, it affects
everything below it. The first level is you. How
disciplined are you?
There is a link between individual temperance
and the ability to instill discipline in others.
More temperance makes it easier to discipline
others. Less temperance in oneself makes it
more difficult to exact discipline in others, and
especially in the various areas of your life.
St. Thomas Aquinas discussed temperance as
one of the four cardinal virtues. Aquinas taught
that prudence is in the intellect and justice in
the will, but temperance and fortitude are in the
sensory appetites. You need fortitude to temper
your sensual appetite (an “appetite” here is your
inclination toward pleasure and ease). You need
to temper your appetite to be effective in guiding
others toward a disciplined, virtuous life. In your
own life, fasting, patience, humility, hard work,
modesty, and abstinence may all be viewed as
daughters of the virtue of temperance. These
attributes are how temperance is practiced.
One might think that he may simply commit
a mortal sin with impunity, or perhaps succumb
to temptations of lesser sins because they are
“private” and do not affect anyone else. This is
not the case for a parent. Your imperfections,
sins, and bad habits directly impact your children
in two ways. The first, and more malignant,
impact on your family is direct harm. By
damaging your own soul, you also thereby cause
harm to the souls of your spouse and children.
A material analogy is a parent who goes out
and spends grocery money on vice. The children
thus go hungry and directly suffer. When a parent
commits actual sin, the children go spiritually
and morally hungry. Demons thus see a way to
get in your household. It may become harder for
you to assert your parental authority because you
lost, even temporarily, the Holy Ghost’s gifts of
52

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fortitude and piety. Life becomes harder. It seems
harder to discipline the children. It seems that
God’s angelic shell of protection over your family
has cracked. Who cracked it?
The second consideration is what is lost. Sin
and virtue are mutually exclusive. When you sin,
you are not practicing virtue that will benefit
your family. Thus, the secondary impact of sin
is lost graces which are not bestowed upon your
family.

A Disciplined Marriage
If the first level of discipline is the self,
the second level for parents is sacramental
matrimony. Marriage is like a business in that it
never stays the same. It is always either growing
or dying. There is no such thing as “maintenance
mode” in matrimony. You either continue to
work at it or the relationship begins to grow
cold. Again and again. This requires discipline.
Fortitude. Diplomacy. Patient communication. It
requires true Christian charity for your spouse.
Can you expect your children to obey you and
grow in Catholic virtue if you no longer express
love and respect for your spouse?
This is why it is so important to make time
for your spouse. Find ways to build up both
your affectionate love and spiritual love for each
other. Affectionate love is a natural love that
one mind has for another, but spiritual love is a
supernatural love that one soul has for another,
for the love of the God who created them both.
Affectionate and spiritual love are necessary in
marriage and require consistent attention each
week.
Thus, discipline in the marital relationship
can be practiced, among many other examples,
by having a consistent date night each week,
devotional practices the two of you perform
together, mutual leisure activities on a consistent
basis, and regular prayers for each other.

Discipline of Children
After self-discipline and a disciplined marriage
comes the discipline of your children. This may

be seen on the natural level as a combination of
positive motivation (rewards, encouragement)
and negative motivation (punishment, fear of
offending, fear of punishment).
On a higher level, discipline of children should
be regarded as a long-term plan of life and mode
of being. What does a disciplined child look
like? On the playground, or on a sports team
in the heat of play, the difference between the
disciplined and undisciplined child may not be
apparent. This is because discipline is a balance
and not necessarily rigid. Children need a lot of
time outdoors to simply be themselves. Put both
children in a theater, music hall, medical office
lobby, or a church, and the difference is striking.
The parent who does not instill a disciplined
life does no favors for the child. The child who
grows to adulthood requires a lot of tenacity,
fortitude, and sacrifice to conquer oneself
and overcome the inflamed passions of young
adulthood. These character traits may be
seen as gifts from the parent who consistently
trained the child for the child’s sake and out of
love of God, regardless of how tired the parent
felt or whatever else the parent wanted to do.
When Johnny needs corrected, just do it! Forget
whatever you are working on or the conversation
in which you are engaged. Your child needs you
right now.

Household Discipline
Perhaps the final tier of discipline after that of
self, marriage, and children, would be the proper
operation of the household. This would include
both the unity and microculture of the family,
as well as its smooth operation as a domestic
entity. Household concerns are a purely natural
topic and thus outside the scope of this article.
How the nuclear family presents itself, however,
follows the lead of the family’s head.
It is not a Catholic practice for mom, dad,
and each child to come and go as they please,
each family member engrossed in his own video
game or concern, without having consistent
time together as a whole family. Families that
operate in this separated manner practice a sort
of functional divorce. A truly Catholic family

eats at least one meal together daily, as long as
your occupational circumstances allow it. A truly
Catholic family performs lengthy, meaningful
activities together as a family, even if they are
only once or twice a year, such as day trips or
deliberate planning of board games.
The more cohesive, united activities you
deliberately ingrain into your family’s life, the
less likely that you and your spouse will divorce.
These unified activities also form the child’s
character for the rest of his life. You want to
deliberately, but perhaps subtly, build your child’s
habits of virtue, guiding their leisure activities
as well as their moral and faith formation. You
as the Catholic parent will thus give back to God
what He lent to you: A beautiful Catholic soul,
created to love and be loved.

Applied Virtue
The four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice,
temperance, and fortitude are critical not only
to you as an individual but for your marriage
and family life. Discipline for life must begin
and end with you. Your spouse and especially
your children will reflect and manifest your
virtues—or your vices. Consider the fact that sin
is essentially choosing the self over God. Virtue is
choosing God over self. Which choice ultimately
gives your soul more peace?
The disciplined soul is a serene soul and
naturally attracts others. St. John Bosco’s
“preventive method” of education only worked
because the saint’s virtues were attractive to
those rough, undisciplined boys. Eventually
the boys wanted to be good, disciplined, and
educated on their own. That’s the preventive
method: To make children want to behave.
Applied to your family, your own practice of
virtue will similarly be the foundation for your
family’s disciplined way of life.
Michael J. Rayes holds master’s degrees in professional
counseling and business administration, and a B.A. in
education. He and his wife are lifelong Catholics with seven
children. Rayes is the author of 28 Days to Better Behavior
and Bank Robbery!, a mystery for both children and adults
(published by Rafka Press). His articles have appeared in
Latin Mass Magazine and others.

53

Lourdes
The Society of St. Pius X is organizing an
international pilgrimage to Lourdes on
October 25 and 26, 2014, “for the triumph of
Christ the King, for the glory of Mary, and
for our sick.” It is also the occasion of the
centenary of St. Pius X’s pontificate.

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 as
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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, whereas
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 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
57

Questions and Answers
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
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
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ambiguous words exists, as often as it is necessary
or useful to guard the well-being 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.

Is there such a thing
as a God particle?
In July 2012 took place in Melbourne, Australia,
an international meeting of 800 physicists,
gathered for the announcement of the discovery
of a subatomic particle, called the Higgs boson,
which discovery was only made possible by
multi-national cooperation for the construction
of a multi-billion dollar, 17 kilometer long,
underground tunnel to act as an accelerator. They
called this newly discovered subatomic particle
the “God particle,” for it is, they state, the ultimate
explanation of the world in which we live.
That there exist such sub-atomic particles,
whose existence can be postulated and verified
on the basis of experimentation, is not questioned.
The question is, rather, whether such particles can
be considered as an explanation of reality, and in
particular of the physical universe.

The keen observer of nature that Aristotle
was, saw that there are four kinds of causes of
the things around us. The most obvious cause is
the material cause, that out of which something
is made. However, the identity of something,
or ability or characteristics do not principally
depend upon that out of which it is made. An
animal is not a deer or a dog because it is made
up of various cells that have molecules made up
of carbon, hydrogen or oxygen atoms, much less
because of sub-atomic particles that might be
contained in the atoms. There are other causes
that make the animal a deer or a dog, but which
cannot be measured as physical weights, electrical
charges, magnetic fields, or anything else which
is contained in the material make-up. This must
be another cause, which unites all the atoms,
molecules, cells, organs, tissues together to make
it a deer or a dog, and to give it life, characteristics,
and ability to act. It is called the formal cause,
because it gives the form or nature to a physical
thing. This is obvious for all living beings, and is
particularly so for man, whose form is his soul.
However, the same applies to inanimate material
things. Water is much more than the simple
combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Its
vast and necessary range of necessary qualities
are the consequence of what it is, its nature, its
form. Consequently, the material cause cannot be
the ultimate explanation of what a thing is, and it
is a denial of the simplest logic to consider that the
Higgs boson might be an ultimate explanation or
“God-particle.”
But even these two causes do not explain
how things come into existence. There must be
something that acts in such a way as to unite
form to matter, so that the material thing can
have the nature which belongs to it. Without such
an efficient cause, nothing would happen, and
there would be no explanation for the obvious
observation that changes exists in the physical
world around us. To say that Higgs bosons
themselves, by a manner of evolution, create
matter, is nonsense. It is like saying that the plaster
makes a statue, or that the wood makes the house.
It is the total lack of explanation of how something
comes about. This is one aspect of the physical
impossibility of evolution for the creation of the
universe. It is the denial of the efficient cause.

Moreover, the real scientist will note that there
is always a further cause, without which nothing
would happen, which makes the agent act to bring
about any change. It is the reason why something
happens. It is the ultimate explanation of reality,
for without it no efficient cause would act and
nothing would happen. In nature a purpose is
constantly observed in all the actions of any living
thing. It eats to sustain life; it mates to maintain
the species; flowers produce pollen for the bees;
the bees pollinate the flowers so that they can
multiply. Even in the inert material world purpose
is clearly present. The clouds produce rain, and
evaporation produces the clouds. Likewise for
the minerals that constitute the soil. The ultimate
explanation of reality is, then, the answer to the
question as to why it is that this particular matter
has this particular form, that is why it was brought
into being, and what purpose it plays in creation.
If, then, there is a “God-particle,” an ultimate
explanation of reality, it truly is the final cause
and not the Higgs boson.
It is characteristic of the modern atheistic
scientist that he refuses to look at anything
beyond the material cause. Why would he fall
into such an absurdity as to deny the other
three causes of the reality that he studies and
measures? Why would he be so lacking in logic
as to fail to see that the true richness and beauty
of God’s creation exist in the explanations as
to what something is, how it comes about and
why? There is no other explanation than that of a
radical prejudice, a presupposition that underlies
all that he studies, namely that there is no God.
Consequently, he refuses the perfect order of the
universe, with its coordination of purpose, that is
of final causality, amongst all of God’s creatures.
He refuses the evidence of the senses that God
exists, and that is the reason, the only reason
and the full reason why he proposes a theory of
evolution, evacuating every cause but the material
cause, and giving to this material cause the power
to give a nature to things, to make things happen,
and to make them happen for a reason. The only
reason, then, why he proposes that the Higgs
boson is a God-particle is that he has substituted
the material cause for God; he has made a God
of matter; he has fallen into the most radical and
insane idolatry imaginable.
59

196 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8623 – $14.95

Removing the Blindfold
19th-Century Catholics and the Myth of Modern Freedom
Dr. John Rao

Among American Catholics, there is a certain unwillingness to see anything amiss with modern civilization
as embodied in the American dream of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Often, this is because the
only alternatives to democracy we know are the much more frightening specters of socialism and communism. To many, it seems the only way to have an effective voice in the American political arena is to align ourselves with the so-called conservative “Right.” Yet if we follow the logic of the “Right” today, we may wonder
why people who support individual rights and freedom of conscience in the economic and political realm are
so vehemently opposed to the supremacy of individual rights and freedom of conscience in the moral realm.
Many Catholics give up following the logic at this point and cast their vote in favor of freedom of conscience
as the most important principle—because it is the most advantageous to them at this moment.
The Catholic Church, however, has never been concerned primarily with what is the most advantageous
political system at a given point in history, but rather with the truth.
In Removing the Blindfold, Dr. John Rao explains the conundrum that modern Catholics face in dealing with
the current socio-political climate and traces the roots of this problem back to the French Revolution and the
principles it espoused. He shows how most modern Catholics have embraced some form of revolutionary
thought without even being aware of it, and reveals how revolutionary ideals are incompatible with Church
teaching, and always have been.

Order yours today at www.angeluspress.org
or call 1-800-966-7337

“Half the
World in
19 Days”
Report of an Asian Tour

by Father Georg Kopf, SSPX

In the last year, the world’s attention has been focused upon the earthquake in the Philippines.
Typhoon Haiyan followed, claiming thousands of human lives and causing immense destruction.
Millions of people are bewildered, people with whom I became acquainted last year when I visited this
beautiful, impoverished land.
This was the origin of my travel journal, which is summarized below. It permits you, dear reader, to
become acquainted through my experiences with the Philippines and with our Society’s faithful there.
Between November 9th and 27th, 2012, I humbly accompanied Fr. Niklaus Pfluger, First Assistant
of the Society of St. Pius X, on his visitation tour of Asia. After spending 36 hours in airplanes and at
airports (Zurich, Amsterdam, China, and Manila), we arrived safely in the Philippines on November 10.

The Philippines
Permit me first to write a general description
of this archipelago in Southeast Asia. The
Philippines are a group of 7,107 islands in the
Pacific Ocean, near China. The two largest islands

are called Luzon (North) and Mindanao (South).
The archipelago is about 1,150 miles from north
to south and almost 700 miles from east to west.
The tallest mountain is Mt. Apo on the island of
Mindanao at nearly 10,000 feet. The Philippines
also possess 37 volcanoes, of which 18 are
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Church and World

classified as active.
Ninety-six million people reside in the
Philippines, dispersed over 2,000 islands.
The climate of the Philippines is tropical, that
is, hot and extremely humid, which we found
stifling. A priest assigned there, Fr. Coenraad
Daniels, spoke as follows: “In the Philippines, it
rains not only from above, but also from below.”
In other words, if you are soaked through, it is
not only the rain, but your own sweat as well. The
average annual temperature runs at 79 degrees
Fahrenheit.
The renowned seafarer Ferdinand Magellan, a
Portuguese in Spanish service, landed on one of
the small islands to the west of the Philippines on
March 16, 1521. Twenty-two years later, in 1543,
the Spaniards conquered the island kingdom,
which they christened, “The Philippines,” in
honor of King Philip II of Spain.
Catholic missionaries arrived in this land
with the Spanish. Their achievements have been
both beneficial and enduring. Today, 82 percent
of the population is Catholic. The churches are
well-attended and the Faith is not only alive,
but was everywhere around us. An island in the
southwest continues to have a Muslim majority.

The SSPX’s Asian District
The Society has been active in the Philippines
since 1990. We presently possess two priories:
one in the capital city of Manila (400 faithful)
and a southern one in Davao (150 faithful).
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We also possess seven chapels and four Mass
centers where the Holy Sacrifice is offered and
the catechism is taught. On Iloilo, there is also a
brothers’ novitiate and a convent of sisters.
In this land, there are 12 resident priests,
the brothers, the sisters, and many active laity.
The District Superior, Father Daniel Couture, is
Canadian. His District embraces the Philippines,
India, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Indonesia, and
Singapore.
This is a very large territory and Father
Couture is thus often traveling by air. His longest
period without flying was four weeks. When
asked for the reason, Father Couture answered,
“Because my passport was expired and a new one
had not arrived.” This comes from a priest who
spends more time in the air than on land.

General Santos
Our visitation began in the southern city of
General Santos. After being warmly greeted
by a banner of welcome, we visited a group
of catechists in the poor quarter. There were
roughly 80 children assembled and they greeted
us with the Latin hymn, “Ave Maria.”
All pressed forward to greet “the Father”
by seizing his right hand, placing it on their
foreheads, and bowing slightly. Every time they
did so, I silently thought, “God bless you.” There
was even a young Muslim mother who came to
this event with her children.
Every Sunday, enthusiastic women from the
Legion of Mary beat drums to assemble together
these boys and girls aged four to twelve. Then,
they instruct them in the Catholic Faith and in
moral philosophy. They are taught the Sign of
the Cross, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the
Morning and Night Offerings.
These male and female catechists are the right
hand of Fr. Timothy Pfeiffer, who also travels
every weekend to Davao. As I saw and noted, this
is a genuinely lay apostolate. They go throughout
the neighborhood, speak to both children and to
their elders, and invite them all to the classes and
to Holy Mass. After the classes, they invariably
visit the sick and pray with them.
Afterwards, we assisted the children and their

mothers. They insisted that we “stay for the next
Catechism group!”
Soon after, we left this neighborhood in a landrover. We drove adventurously over the “streets”
and then for an hour on tarred roads. We then
arrived in a small bush settlement, located off
the road. We were received with the same joy and
with song. Again we were greeted with the same
hand-to-forehead gesture.
This community, numbering around 40 people,
more than half of whom are children, have
erected a small chapel. It is 13 by 10 feet, built of
palm wood beams, and covered with plywood.
They have also built an altar.
After the First Assistant for the Society spoke
a word of thanks and praise for their loyalty,

Catechismclass at General Santos

63

Church and World
we had to depart on a journey to the chapel
in Marbel. There, the Holy Mass is available
every weekend in what appears to be a garage.
In the Philippines, the priest always carries a
microphone so that the neighbors and passersby
can also follow the events of Holy Mass via an
electric loudspeaker.
After two afternoon Masses accompanied by
confessions, they served us a supper of roast
chicken and rice. This revealed something to us,
and not for the last time. Asians love their rice
every bit as much as the Swabians adore their
Spätzle or the Swiss their chocolate.
The following morning, the 23rd Sunday after
Pentecost was commemorated by a sung High
Mass and a sermon in English. Around 70 faithful
attended. Our driver then brought us to the
second chapel, 45 minutes by car, and located

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on a heavily-frequented street in the center of
General Santos.
During the High Mass, it was stiflingly hot.
The face of the celebrant, Father Pfluger, was
streaming with sweat. So was mine in the
confessional. This was because the ceiling fans
didn’t want to work properly. We first joined the
faithful for another hearty meal and, following
it, we journeyed for three hours to the priory in
Davao.
Along the way, we again experienced the usual
Philippine traffic. We spent nearly the entire
route traveling along the shoulder of the road
near more huts. One wonders how the building
permits were ever obtained.
Meanwhile, it was raining heavily and fog
arose—pacing up and down, as we often see in
the Swiss Alps.

Davao
Upon our arrival in Davao, Fr. Niklaus Pfluger
successfully offered his third Sunday Mass.
The chapel and priory there are constructed
of bamboo poles and wickerwork. The interior
of the chapel shines bright blue—the color of
the plastic tarp that serves as a roof. They are
presently building a new chapel—with stones.
Most Filipinos live in flimsy bamboo huts.
The means of building one is thus: four fat
bamboo poles are set up as corner posts, a set
of crossbars are erected for the walls and roof,
and one meter of earth is used to elevate the
floor. The walls are then covered with bamboo
wickerwork, the roof is covered with sheet metal,
and the house is finished. Few can afford window

frames or panes, as many empty window holes
attest. Sanitary arrangements are always found
to the rear of the house.
Electricity is carried everywhere. We often
saw electric poles with a dozen slender cables
attached to a fat conductor. This is so that
people, sadly, are not deprived of television.
It must be said, however, that in such a climate
both central heating and insulation are both
unnecessary. There are also “normal” stone
houses, but many people cannot afford them.
When I saw these bamboo huts for the first
time, they were so small and primitive that I
thought them to be garden sheds. But, no: entire
families live within them. In the Philippines,
families are not just one or two kids, but often
five, six, or seven. Tragically, this will change
due to the destructive new abortion law. I was
Dinner in Davao

65

Church and World
surprised and astonished, however, by how many
millions of people came out in protest against it.

Traffic
Now, a word about the traffic—about
which the proverb “other lands, other ways” is
especially valid.
All drivers in the Philippines must prevail
against heavy traffic. En route, one sees a
colorful array of vehicles: cars, Jeepneys,
tricycles, bicycles, and, in the countryside,
oxcarts.
First of all, I shall describe the Jeepney. Richly
varnished with chrome, Jeepneys can transport
up to 30 people. They stop wherever anyone
wishes to get on or off—which makes them
superior to the local army of tricycles.
Homemade from a motorbike and a sidecar, a
Jeepney would never pass a security inspection.
They are very efficient, however. Once, we
counted ten people riding upon a single one.
These vehicles are major polluters. Why any
pedestrian continues to walk publicly without a
face mask remains to be seen.
There are many people in Switzerland who are
also reckless drivers. But in the Philippines, all
driving practices are legal. When there is not an
Manila traffic

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opening, as is often the case in the cities, people
switch lanes and drive against oncoming traffic.
The lanes widen, which creates serious dangers.
When you find an opening, whether to the
right or left lanes, the only determining factor is
feasibility. At times, very little seems unfeasible.
Shockingly, deviators have the right of way.
When they drive against the lane, oncoming
traffic merely honk their horns before pulling
away and stopping. Lights are never used, except
in Manila. In all fairness, I must say that those
who use the road drive with their eyes open and
surprisingly few accidents take place.

Back to Davao
We shall now return to the priory in Davao.
Father Prior Timothy Pfeiffer, an American, and
Father Hora, a Filipino, live there.
After supper with our assembled colleagues,
we spent another stifling night there. We lay
sweating in our beds, slept very little, and
endured the night’s accelerating heat. We arose to
a very sleepy morning. I hope that our colleagues
in Asia endure it better than we. I suppose that,
with time, their bodies grow more accustomed to
the climate.
The next day had to be one of recuperation

from our program. In Switzerland, we would
have spent such a day in the mountains. In the
Philippines, we spent in on the seashore.
We journeyed to a nearby island on a small
boat and searched for a deserted section of the
beach. With so many beaches, this was not at
all difficult. We enjoyed the sun, the turquoise
sea, and the coral. I thought to myself, “Let us
continue to live like this.”
But such days are a rare exception. Most days
for our priests in Asia are very hard and filled
with heavy, heavy work in a sweat-inducing
climate. On the next day, my fortieth birthday, we
again bid farewell to the priory.

Iloilo
At 12:40 a.m. we traveled by airplane to Iloilo.
A brother dressed in a white cassock and a black
cincture picked us up from the airstrip. In Asia,
all of the clergy wear white cassocks due to the
tropical climate.
We traveled over an uneven road to the St.
Bernard’s Brothers’ Novitiate, located in a
relatively idyllic setting between rice paddies. I
say, “relatively idyllic,” because the Novitiate was
attacked a year ago and one of the brothers was
wounded by a shotgun.
In this pastoral setting live Fr. Coenraad
Daniels, a South African of Dutch descent, Father
Cacho, a Filipino, and Father Devasahayam,

Cathedral of Iloilo

SSPX church in Iloilo

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Church and World
an East Indian. There are also two brothers
and six postulants. They make a very beautiful
community.
As we arrived, the Master of Novices was
sitting on a tractor and leading the excavation of
their new church’s foundations. Thus the Master
gave us all a very good example. He tells us,
“Giving orders? Bruises are a better example!”
Currently, the Novitiate’s chapel is located in a
garage. Now is the time to build a proper church
for the Brothers’ Novitiate.
Morning classes for the aspiring brothers are
far more extensive than what is taught elsewhere.
They are not only taught how to cook and how
to look after the chapel and sacristy. In the
Philippines, the aspiring brothers are taught ricecultivation, as well as tending to cattle, pigs, and
chickens. Coconut palms and banana trees are
also growing there. In all, this forms a place well
suited to this apostolate.
Ten minutes’ drive from the city of Iloilo is a
large, Spanish-style cathedral. Inside, like almost
everywhere else in the Philippines, there were
many people at prayer.
Beside the cathedral, a breathtaking poster
had been erected to advertise religious vocations.
It read, “Nobody is Born a Priest or a Nun.
Pray. Encourage. Support… Vocations to the
Priesthood and the Religious Life.”
This is very plausible in the Philippines. The
Society has only one church in this city, and it is
indeed a beautiful one. Adjacent to it, we found
the home of the Sisters of the Society.
That night, the whole community sat together
to receive us. The high point of the evening was
when Father Daniels brought out and played his
accordion. What sights have we not seen in the
Philippines?
The following morning, they showed us the
building site. We saw how the excavators had
opened a foundation pit. A troop of workers were
bending iron supports for the church and binding
them together with cables. In the evening, Father
Pfluger spoke to the priests.

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Manila
The next day shortly before noon, the brother
returned us to the airstrip. There, we again went
through baggage and passport control, before
waiting for the pilot. Then, we traveled to the
capital city of Manila.
Manila is immensely large with more than 11
million people living there. Fathers Morgan and
Couture first established the Society here in 1990.
Our Manila Priory has around 300 faithful, its
own school since 2008, a Legion of Mary chapter,
and a large and very beautiful church, which our
Superior General, Bishop Fellay, consecrated in
1995.
On the evening of our arrival, a night of
reparation was being held because of the
proposed bill which would legalize abortion and
impose the evil and destructive Enlightenment.
That night, I prayed my first rosary in English.
I hoped that both Our Lady and my fellow
supplicants understood the words I was saying.
The following day began at 6:30 with the
morning Divine Office for priests. It was
immediately followed by a Low Mass before the
Spanish Baroque-style altar. After breakfast, the
prior, Father Onoda from Japan, showed us the
school-building—or more accurately, the schoolbuildings. The school is situated inside numerous
interlocking structures, as is common in the
Philippines.
The headmaster of the school is Father Fortin
from the United States. The pupils all come from
the surrounding area and a majority of them
return home at night. On the weekends, so do the
others. There has been a grade-school there since
2008 and a high school since 2010.
On Sundays, the schedule is entirely the same
as in the rest of the Catholic world: morning
prayers followed by Low Mass and then a sung
High Mass. Afterwards, Father Pfluger delivered
a lecture inside the church on the subject of “The
Society of Saint Pius X and Rome.”
During the afternoon, I was permitted to
attend a meeting with the Legion of Mary. Again
I witnessed the great zeal of the apostolic laity.
The following morning, we rose at 4:00. We
then departed the megacity of Manila and, after
a three and a half hour flight, we arrived in
Singapore.

SSPX Church in Manila

Singapore
The country of Singapore is also an island
nation. It consists of a little over 440 square
miles and has 5.3 million inhabitants. In a
very short time, Singapore has changed from
an underdeveloped country into an industrial
powerhouse. They are now the third richest
nation in the world.
One of the reasons is that the Port of Singapore
is along the seaway which connects China and
Japan with Europe. It is therefore one of the
world’s most important places for loading and
unloading cargo containers.
Singapore also possesses a priory, which also
serves as Headquarters for the Society’s District

of Asia. The priory is located in a housing row,
squeezed between several other residences.
Although the office is relatively large, the priory’s
chapel and rooms are both small, but very
beautiful.
Inside the chapel, both the altar and
communion rail are carved from genuine marble,
not from Italy, but rather from China. The pews
are constructed of a reddish colored tropical
wood and look very majestic. Although daylight
punctually illumines the office and sacristy, it
never reaches the chapel interior.
The District Headquarters made a very strong
impression upon me. There is no dreaming there,
only hard labor, journey preparations, stopovers and, above all, sweating. Considering that
Singapore averages 80% humidity every month, in
both summer and winter, I found the climate
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Church and World
there so horrible that it was painful to breathe.
There priests live in the priory when they are
not traveling. They include the District Superior,
Fr. Daniel Couture, the District Manager, Fr.
François Laisney, and Fr. Emerson Salvador, who
has authority over the chapel in Sri Lanka.
In the evenings, these priests also look after
the chapel in Kuala Lumpur. Rather than drive,
they must fly. Kuala Lumpur is, after all, about 220
miles away from Singapore. Around 50 faithful
attend the priory in Singapore. About 15 of them
were present for the evening Mass and subsequent
lecture.
In Singapore, I realized how very well the
traditional laity have spread their faith throughout
the Asian continent. The results could be seen
everywhere: in their frank sincerity, modest attire,
and deep piety.
Our evening meal in Singapore was not one
which I shall soon forget. It naturally included a
dessert called durian—a large and prickly fruit
which somewhat resembles a pineapple. I found
the durian’s yellow pulp to be barely edible,
although many will argue this point. Of all the
other foods set before us, the durian’s taste stood
out before everything else.
The durian’s odor is so intense that it is illegal
to carry it while riding public transportation.
This fruit is so well loved, however, that this law
is never enforced. We would not be staying in
Singapore much longer, but would never desire to
bring the durian fruit on our journey!

Sri Lanka
The next day, we traveled once again to the
airport with Father Couture. Our destination was
Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was formerly called—
the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.
When we arrived, we were picked up at the
airport by Fr. Emerson Salvador in an old Nissan
Transporter. After a 20-minute drive, he brought
us to the Society “chapel” in Negombe. I typed
quotation marks around chapel because the
chapel is furnished only with walls, and the
sanctuary is barely covered by the roof. As it is
always so hot, there are no screens, doors, or
windows.
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One year before, the Society had a school and
a priory here. The school no longer exists and,
instead of a priory, there is only a chapel without
any resident priests. Father Salvador visits every
second weekend. I treasure the zeal of the 30
faithful there. When Father Salvador is absent,
one faithful soul looks after both the house and
the chapel.
The next morning, we heard a surprise
announcement—we were to travel inland and
tour a tea plantation. After Holy Mass followed
by breakfast and black tea, we traveled on a
small bus past many villages and tall mountains.
Tea-plants thrive at high elevations, and we
found that the plantation is located on Mount
Bogowantalwa, almost 4,000 feet up. A welcome
change awaited us there from the stifling
climate—a comforting coolness for which
Brother Donkey gave thanks.
Before our tour of the Mackwoods Tea
Plantation, we were served fresh black tea with
milk and sugar. It was delightful! We then joined
a tour of the production room. We were shown
the process of tea production—step by step.
It takes six stages and only one day—from the
picking of the tea leaves to the packaging of
the finished tea for shipping. Altogether, 1,000
employees work on this tea plantation.
The following day, we visited the seminary
of the White Fathers in Kandy. Alas, the
seminarians were not at home. Only a single
robust and venerable missionary was present.
After their ordination to the priesthood, these

missionaries must ask themselves, “Heat or
cold?” They can express their wishes, either for
the Tropics or for the Far North, i.e. Canada or
Alaska. The Fathers in Sri Lanka have chosen
heat.
We returned to Negombe for evening Mass. As
he had done elsewhere, Father Pfluger delivered
another lecture to the faithful. The Catholic
Faith is not as widespread in Sri Lanka as in the
Philippines. I was deeply grieved by the many
statues of the Buddha that stand along the roads.
I was reminded of the many wayside crosses
and shrines in Germany. In Sri Lanka, however,
they are depictions of a false god. I often recalled
the words of Our Savior: “The harvest indeed is
great, but the laborers are few” (St. Luke 10:2).
Sri Lanka needs many, many missionaries! Let
us wholeheartedly pray the post-Rosary prayers
for this intention: “O Lord, grant us priests! O
Lord, grant us many holy priests! O Lord, grant us
many holy religious vocations!”

Malaysia
On a previous morning, Father Couture had
flown back to Singapore by himself. We flew on
to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. There,
we were picked up by Mr. and Mrs. Ho. Again we
encountered active laity. They had already placed
an apartment at our disposal. We certainly have
a very small chapel in this city, but no priory.
Father Laisney looks after this community of 45
faithful from Singapore.
Near Kuala Lumpur lies Malaga. In a local
church, which is now in ruins, the Blessed
Sacrament is brought once a month. This
location is a very popular site for tourists to visit.
Therefore, this kind married couple brought us
there as well.
In the harbor, we were able to tour an old and
historic Spanish ship which has been converted
into a museum. It is very large, but is a mere
nutshell compared with the ships traversing the
ocean today. In those days, it was an adventure to
visit Malaysia and far from a safe one.
The following day was a Sunday. Just as in
Switzerland, there was a morning High Mass and
a sermon. Only the hymns were in English. That

evening, we were shown the “Twin Towers,” two
colossal skyscrapers made of glass and steel.
For the last year, a young woman from the
chapel in Kuala Lumpur has been attending the
high school in Schönenberg, Germany. So small is
the world of Catholic Tradition!
Kuala Lumpur was the last stop on our long
journey. On November 12, 2012, we returned to
Zürich via Amsterdam. After 19 days, I returned
to my duties in the Canton of St. Gallen.
For me, this had been a deeply fascinating
journey. I had become acquainted with many of
my colleagues and scores of heroic traditional
faithful.
At this stage, I must not neglect to extend my
deepest thanks to Fr. Niklaus Pfluger for this
special experience. Over the course of 28,000
miles, I became truly aware of how the Society is
spread throughout the earth.
The tree of Tradition, which was planted by
our esteemed and just as often reviled founder
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, continues to spread
its branches over the entire globe. To witness this
gave me new strength. It also revealed the honor
due to those who labor on in this noble task.
Translated by Brendan D. King.

71

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Theological Studies

Fiddling While Rome Burns:

Vatican II
in Retrospect
by Martin Blackshaw

By way of introduction, I wish to declare with all
faithful Catholics who value their eternal salvation
my absolute fidelity to the Holy See of Rome and my
unceasing prayers for our Holy Father, Francis. I make
this declaration so that no one may misconstrue or
misrepresent what my duty as a Catholic now obliges
me to write in charity and with the greatest respect
concerning the reigning Pontiff and his immediate
conciliar predecessors.
St. Pius X said at the beginning of the twentieth
century that the main cause of the loss of souls
was religious ignorance, ignorance of the truths of
the faith. Sadly, this ignorance is everywhere in the
Church today and it is getting worse as the decline in
priests and sound Catechetics continues apace.
One of the principal errors to have arisen from this
ignorance in our times is the belief, in thought if not
by open declaration, that the pope is not just sometimes infallible but rather at all times impeccable.
Therefore, no matter what the pope says or does in
the exercise of his ordinary magisterium it is incum-

bent upon all to blindly obey him. A similarly erroneous thought is held with regard to the bishops.
How far this mistaken belief is from the teaching
of the Church, however, is exemplified by St. Paul in
Galatians 2: 11-13, who recounts how he “withstood
Peter to his face because he was to be blamed.”
A Right to Resist
Commenting on this Scripture passage, St.
Thomas Aquinas writes: “There being an imminent
danger to the Faith, prelates must be questioned,
even publicly, by their subjects. Thus, St. Paul, who
was a subject of St. Peter, questioned him publicly on
account of an imminent danger of scandal in a matter
of Faith...” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 33, a. 4).
St. Robert Bellarmine concurs with St. Thomas in
this matter and distinguishes for us between legitimate resistance and forbidden judgment. He writes:
“Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff who aggresses
the body, it is also licit to resist the one who aggresses the soul or who disturbs civil order, or, above all,

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Theological Studies
who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is
licit to resist him by not doing what he orders and
preventing his will from being executed; it is not licit,
however, to judge, punish or depose him, since these
are acts proper to a superior” (De Romano Pontifice,
lib. 2, chap. 29, in Opera Omnia [Paris: Pedone
Lauriel, 1871], vol. I, p. 418).
In his Encyclical Letter Pastor Aeternus, Pope
Pius IX gives a certain rule by which the faithful may
gauge the fidelity of popes to the primary duty of
their sacred office. He writes: “The Holy Spirit has
not been promised to the successors of Peter to
permit them to proclaim new doctrine according to
His revelations, but to keep strictly and to expound
faithfully, with His help, the revelations transmitted
by the Apostles, in other words the Deposit of Faith.”
Retrospect
I now propose by this rule to present a painful
insight into the crisis of faith in the Church today,
a crisis which is the result of fifty years of radical
conciliar alteration of our Catholic religion.
On the election of John XXIII to the papacy in
1958 the Church was in a very healthy state. Her
seminaries and religious houses were full, vocations were booming, city parishes each had at least
three priests and three Sunday Masses to meet high
attendance numbers, the foreign missions were
converting millions to the true religion and Anglican
intellectuals were leading an exodus of Church of
England affiliates back to Rome.
In addition to this, when the Holy Father spoke
the world listened. Such was the respect commanded by the Holy See globally that only a very few nonCatholic men of influence dared to put themselves in
public opposition to the Church’s moral teaching.
Inside the Church it was unheard of that any
Catholic, clerical or lay, questioned the infallible
teaching of the Magisterium, much less dissent
from it as is so widespread at present, and sound
Catechetics were everywhere forming the souls of
our Catholic children in faith and virtue.
In every part of the world there was unity among
Catholics. They were unified in faith, in doctrine, in
morals, in the sacraments and by the same ancient
universal liturgy and liturgical language that could
be traced in its essentials all the way back to St.
Peter himself.
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As in other ages of Church history, however, all
was not perfect; there were certainly issues within
and without the walls of the Church that afflicted
her to some degree or another. But the popes were
strong in teaching authority, condemning and
proscribing by various authoritative Encyclicals and
Syllabi the grave errors of the times while re-affirming the divine truths of the Catholic religion and the
indispensability of membership of the Church for
salvation.
Such was the confidence of the faithful in the
reigning popes and bishops to uphold the Deposit
of Faith, personally as well as in their official capacities, that very few clergy or laity felt it necessary to
acquaint themselves with past magisterial teaching, much less with the wisdom of the great saintly
theologians and Doctors of the Church.
“Renewal”
Hence it was that when the Second Vatican
Council, the first Pastoral Council in the Church’s
history, commenced, it was pretty much expected
that matters would be settled quickly without serious alteration to the everyday life of Catholics. How
wrong this assumption was!
At the very first session of the Council, on
October 11, 1962, all the documents prepared by the
Preparatory Commissions over a three-year period
for consideration by the Fathers were rejected at
the behest of a liberal faction of theologians, a faction that was much larger and more organized than
anyone had expected.
Although Pope John had made it clear that the
Council was intended to be purely pastoral in nature, remaining on a “modest level, not treating of
doctrine,” it soon became evident that others had
an altogether different agenda, a program to open
the Church entirely to the spirit of a modern world
then on the brink of cultural revolution and rebellion
against God.
What resulted from this “Renewal” experiment
was later described by Cardinal Suenens as “The
French Revolution in the Church.”
It is a great tragedy that so many Catholics were
ill-prepared for the onslaught that was to follow in
the wake of Vatican II. If only more had been familiar,
for example, with the prophetic wisdom expressed
by Pope Gregory XVI in his 1832 Encyclical Mirari

Vos, who wrote: “To use the words of the Fathers of
Trent, it is certain that the Church ‘was instructed by
Jesus Christ and His Apostles and that all truth was
daily taught it by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.’
Therefore, it is obviously absurd and injurious to
propose a certain ‘restoration and regeneration’ for
her as though necessary for her safety and growth,
as if she could be considered subject to defect or
obscuration or other misfortune. Indeed these
authors of novelties consider that a ‘foundation
may be laid of a new human institution,’ and what
Cyprian detested may come to pass, that what was
a divine thing ‘may become a human Church’...”
Contrast these words of Gregory XVI with this
astonishing declaration of Pope Paul VI in his closing
speech to the Council:
“Profane and secular humanism has shown itself
in its own terrible stature and has in a sense defied
the Council. The religion of God made Man has come
up against the religion of man who makes himself
God....You can be grateful to it [the Council] for this
merit at least, you modern humanists who deny
the transcendence of supreme things, and learn to
recognise our new humanism: we too, we more than
anyone else, subscribe to the cult of man.”
This statement of Paul VI is all the more worrying
when considered together with an earlier action of
the Pontiff, as I shall now relate.
For more than a thousand years up to Vatican II,
newly elected popes underwent a coronation ceremony in which a triple crown was placed upon their
heads with the words: “Receive the tiara adorned
with three crowns and know that thou art father of
princes and kings, ruler of the world, vicar on earth
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom is honour and
glory for ever and ever.”
The ceremony was of course primarily supernatural—the crown and the words of coronation symbolizing the reality of the universal Kingship of Christ
and of the spiritual primacy and authority of the
Petrine See instituted by Him.
Imagine the dismay, then, when, at the end of
the second session of the Council in 1963, Pope
Paul VI descended the steps of the papal throne in
St. Peter’s Basilica and ascended to the altar, on
which he placed and renounced the pontifical tiara
as a gesture of papal rejection of worldly power and
honour.

It was a significant act of misplaced humility
which His Holiness would soon equal in respect to
charity when, in 1969, he supplanted the Church’s
ancient Latin Liturgy with a new Protestantfriendly vernacular Mass to complement conciliar
ecumenism.
Suddenly, the pre-Council fear expressed by
Pope Pius XII took on prophetic significance: “I am
worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of
Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning
against the suicide of altering the Faith in her liturgy,
her theology and her soul.…I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel,
destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject
her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her
historical past. A day will come when the civilised
world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt
as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that
man has become God” (Msgr. Roche, Pie XII devant
l’histoire, pp. 52-53).
Discounting bad will on the part of Paul VI, the
inference from this Pontiff’s ill-judged acts was that
his predecessors throughout the ages had indeed
been, as the Church’s hereditary enemies always
claimed, corrupt men attached to earthly power
and wealth which expressed itself in the pomp and
splendor of meaningless ceremony.
Pope Francis, by similar poor judgment today,
speaks of it as a Church “closed within herself,”
populated with “narcissists,” “Neo-Pelagians” and
men of “spiritual worldliness.” It’s almost as if the
Holy Spirit is considered to have been absent from
the Church until Vatican II.
In this respect, it is noteworthy that while the
present Holy Father makes numerous references
to Vatican II and its popes in his lengthy Apostolic
Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, he omits altogether
any reference to pre-Council magisterial teaching.
Also worthy of note is that each of the conciliar
popes from John XXIII to John Paul II has had his
process of beatification and/or canonization accelerated beyond that of the last of the pre-Council
popes, Pius XII, whose cause, the late Bishop
Canisius van Lierde assured me during a meeting in
the Vatican in 1992, is long proven and ready.
The most questionable of these hurried causes
is that of John Paul II which has proceeded from
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Theological Studies
zero to imminent canonization in just nine years;
and on the basis of a significantly weakened postVatican II process stripped of Devil’s Advocate and
including only a single controversial miracle that has
hardly stood the test of time.
Likewise in the case of John XXIII, Pope Francis
has dispensed altogether with the required canonization miracle on the grounds that his predecessor’s initiation of the Council is proof enough of his
great sanctity. Worryingly, the Anglican Communion
agrees and has already instituted a feast day for
Pope John.
Taken together, these various signs are of great
concern to many of the Catholic faithful who look
beyond human emotion to a candidate’s practice of
heroic virtue, particularly his fidelity to the integrity
of the faith.
For these troubled faithful such hasty proceedings give the impression that the Church’s traditionally cautious and solemn processes have been
replaced with something akin to a religious Academy
Awards system that scores candidates more on
their human popularity than their supernatural
qualities.
I emphasise here that I am neither insinuating nor asserting deliberate bad will on the part
of the conciliar popes. Rather, I am attempting to
demonstrate that there exists a significant rift in
mindset between the pre-Council Pontiffs and their
post-conciliar successors, the latter representing
that Modernist school of thought so ably dissected
and refuted by St. Pius X in his Encyclical Pascendi
Dominici Gregis.
Sorrowful as it is to admit, Cardinal Suenens was
correct when he stated that Vatican II renewal was
the French Revolution in the Church. Pope Paul VI
had already inferred as much in his closing speech
to the Council when he spoke of “the cult of man.”
Tragically, His Holiness later failed to make the
connection when, in 1975, he lamented: “Through
some fissure in the walls, the smoke of Satan
has entered the Church and set her on a path of
auto-destruction.”
The French Revolution in the Church
This “smoke of Satan,” predicted by Our Lady
of Fatima as “a diabolical disorientation,” consists
in the principal liberal tenets of the anti-Catholic
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French Revolution—Liberty, Equality and Fraternity—being adapted to our holy religion post-Council
and promoted as Religious Liberty, Collegial Equality
and Ecumenical Fraternity.
Concerning the most damaging of these principles, religious liberty, it is asserted that “the dignity
of the human person” is the basis upon which each
man is free to hold inwardly and outwardly to whatever religion he chooses.
This is in contrast to the Church’s perennial
teaching on “Religious Tolerance,” which states
that the “dignity” of man depends on his fidelity
to truth—as Our Lord said “the truth will make you
free.” There can be no dignity, then, where truth
is compromised or absent, particularly in religion,
for this would be to accord dignity to error, nullifying both the First Commandment and the infallible
dogma “outside the Church no salvation.”
The dignity of man was lost with the Original Sin
committed by Adam and Eve. It can only be restored
by the grace of the Redemption wrought by Our Lord
Jesus Christ on the Cross. As St. Paul reminds us in
Acts 4:12: “...there is no other name under heaven
given among men by which we must be saved.”
Consequently, to reject Our Lord and the Church
founded by Him is to reject the only source of man’s
true dignity, the dignity of the redeemed “sons of
God.”
Only those in “invincible ignorance,” says the
Church, those who through no fault on their part are
prevented from explicitly entering the true Church
but who nevertheless belong to her implicitly by reason of their seeking to do God’s will and keeping the
Commandments written in the hearts of all men, will
have the great mercy of Our Lord extended to them.
Concerning these souls, the Church allows that
they can be saved in their false religions but not by
their false religions. What conciliar religious liberty
does is turn this teaching on its head so that the
exception becomes the general rule.
Hence the seriousness of Pope Paul’s renunciation of the papal tiara representing the universal
Kingship of Christ in favor of a “new humanism”
that recognizes the right of all to hold to their false
religions on the basis of the “dignity of the human
person.”

Truth Sacrificed
We see the consequences of this grave error
today in those many statements of senior prelates
distancing themselves and the Church from any
intention to convert non-Catholics and non-Christians. It was also most notably evident in the unprecedented actions of Pope John Paul II who kissed the
Koran, received on his forehead the mark of a Hindu
deity, participated in Animist rites in Togo and finally
orchestrated those Assisi gatherings of the world’s
religions, during which the Buddhists worshipped
an image of their false god atop a tabernacle while
other pagans ritually slaughtered chickens on a
Catholic altar.
In light of these very grave actions one wonders
why the Christian martyrs chose death rather than
burn a grain of incense before the false “gods of the
Gentiles,” which St. Paul called “demons.” To quote
one senior Church prelate in relation to this incredible development: “The martyrs sacrificed their lives
for the truth. Now they sacrifice the truth.”
Modernist Confusion and Contradiction Today
And on the subject of truth, here is a comparison
of pre- and post-Vatican II papal quotes demonstrating that the same Modernist confusion and contradiction continues under the present Pontiff.
In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium,
Pope Francis, in keeping with conciliar teaching on
Religious Liberty, writes: “The Synod Fathers spoke
of the importance of respect for religious freedom,
viewed as a fundamental human right. This includes
‘the freedom to choose the religion which one
judges to be true and to manifest one’s beliefs in
public.’ ”
However, in his Encyclical Quanta Cura of 1864,
Pope Pius IX writes: “They do not fear to foster that
erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the
Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by
Our predecessor, Gregory XVI, an insanity, viz., that
‘liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s
personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed
in every rightly constituted society’…But, while they
rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider
that they are preaching liberty of perdition.…”
The same contradiction is found in respect to
Ecumenical Fraternity. In Evangelii Gaudium Pope
Francis writes: “Commitment to ecumenism re-

sponds to the prayer of the Lord Jesus that ‘they
may all be one’ (Jn. 17:21).” Yet, in his 1928 Encyclical
Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI declares:
“When there is question of fostering unity among
Christians, it is easy for many to be misled by the
apparent excellence of the object to be achieved.
Is it not right, they ask, is it not the obvious duty of
all who invoke the name of Christ to refrain from
mutual reproaches and at last to be united in charity? Dare anyone say that he loves Christ and yet not
strive with all his might to accomplish the desire of
Him who asked His Father that His disciples might
be ‘one’? (Jn. 17:21)....If only all Christians were ‘one,’
it is contended, then they might do so much more
to drive out the plague of irreligion which, with its
insidious and far-reaching advance, is threatening to
sap the strength of the Gospel. In reality, however,
these fair and alluring words cloak a most grave
error, subversive of the foundations of the Catholic
religion…”
We have seen this error with our own eyes these
past fifty years since Vatican II in a series of compromises on the part of Catholic ecumenists that
have not been reciprocated by their Protestant
interlocutors.
From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy
Hence, we now have a liturgy and liturgical
practices that mirror very strongly the Protestant
meal service, “subversive of the foundations of the
Catholic religion” to the extent that seminaries and
religious houses everywhere are closing for want of
vocations, millions have abandoned the practice of
the faith, reverence for the Blessed Sacrament is
greatly diminished, the Sacrament of Confession is
largely ignored, as is the Church’s moral teaching,
and children no longer receive even basic catechetical formation.
Further, in the name of “dialogue” we have seen
actual interfaith worship with Protestants take
root at every level in the Church, including, sadly,
such unprecedented spectacles as Cardinal Jorge
Bergoglio a few years ago kneeling before 7,000
witnesses in Argentina to receive the blessing
of Protestant pastors, and the recent scandal of
Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston “re-affirming”
his baptism at the hands of a female Pentecostal
minister.
77

Theological Studies
How opposed these actions are to the teaching of
Gregory XVI, who wrote in Mirari Vos: “With the admonition of the Apostle that there is ‘one Lord, one
faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4:5), may those fear who
contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation
is open to persons of any religion whatever. They
should consider the testimony of Christ Himself who
said ‘He that is not with me, is against me’ (Luke
11:23), and that they disperse unhappily who do not
gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they
will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith
whole and entire…’ ”
To use the measure of orthodoxy given
us by Pope Benedict XVI, there is, in fact, no
“Hermeneutic of Continuity” between pre- and
post-conciliar teaching on Religious Liberty and
Ecumenism. That’s why no pope or council prior to
Vatican II is ever quoted in a post-conciliar document or speech in reference to these innovative
doctrines.
From Autocracy to Democracy
Nor is there continuity with the past in respect to
Collegiality. In his Open Letter to Confused Catholics,
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre explains that Our Lord
instructed individuals, not a collectivity, to tend His
sheep. The Apostles obeyed Our Lord’s orders, and
until the twentieth century it remained thus. The
pope alone enjoyed supreme power and jurisdiction
over the universal Church, and each bishop, subject
to this Petrine authority, enjoyed full power within
his diocese.
Then the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium appeared hinting at a new democratic structure of government, according to which the College of Bishops
together with the pope exercises supreme power
over the Church in habitual and continual manner.
It was a novel idea of double supremacy that ran
contrary to the definitions of Vatican Council I and to
Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical Satis Cognitum.
Notwithstanding this contradiction, however, and
largely dismissive of the footnote of correction attached at the end of the conciliar document in question, the post-conciliar Church has since witnessed
a universal transformation of National Bishops’
Conferences from those purely consultative bodies
approved by St. Pius X to decision-making entities
operating on the principle of the democratic vote
and ‘majority rule’; whereby the government of the
78

The Angelus

March - April 2014

pope and that of each bishop in his diocese has frequently been trumped in practice by pressure from
the presbyterial college.
Hence the universal imposition and extension
against the expressed wishes of the popes of such
abuses as Communion in the hand and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, the scandal of
U.S. marriage annulments that rose from 700 in
1969 to more than 50,000 by 1995, the introduction
of doctrinally unsound Catechisms into Holland,
Canada and France without corrections ordered by
the Holy See having been made, etc.
I could quote many such examples, but perhaps
the most revealing proof is the letter of explanation
Pope Benedict XVI felt obliged to issue to the various Episcopal Conferences in an attempt to soothe
a less than favorable reception of his 2007 Motu
Proprio Summorum Pontificum.
What this letter highlighted was the pressure
the popes have experienced since the advent of
Collegiality; reducing them to issuing reassurances,
suggestions and advice instead of issuing the orders
needed to get the Church back on the right track,
condemning when necessary, as the popes have
hitherto done as primary guardians of the deposit of
faith.
Well did Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani once observe
that the only recording in history of Collegiality at
work among the Apostles was when they collectively
abandoned Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane!
Adding further to the confusion is the teaching of
the new Code of Canon Law (1983) that power resides in the “people of God.” This tendency towards
what they call bringing the base into sharing the
exercise of power can be found all through present
structures—synod, episcopal conferences, priests’
councils, pastoral councils, Roman commissions,
national commissions, etc.; and there are equivalents in religious orders.
So now pastoral councils instruct the priests; the
priests’ councils instruct the bishops; the bishops’
vote in the conferences and the conferences dictate
to the pope. In effect, it is authority turned on its
head so that what was once a top-down structure
of Church government has become a bottom-up
structure of so many contradictory opinions and
methods that it can truly be stated that collegiality
of the magisterium has resulted in paralysis of the
magisterium.

This great tragedy was further compounded
when Pope Benedict XVI “resigned” his papal office
in 2013. Never in the sacred history of the Church
has a pope “resigned.” Two have abdicated for very
serious reasons, but none has ever resigned.
Resignation is proper to the CEO of a corporate
company, not to the one who sits on the divinely
instituted Chair of Peter. And so now we have the unprecedented and demeaning spectacle of two living
Popes in the Vatican at the same time, one reigning
and one emeritus, both “inaugurated,” not crowned,
according to the new ceremony introduced by Pope
John Paul II to better reflect the Socialist norms of
the modern world.
For his part, Pope Francis has taken the innovations even further by recently appointing a Council
of eight Cardinals to assist him with the running
of the Church. His Holiness makes no secret of his
intention to continue down the road of Collegiality
even though it ultimately undermines the supreme
and unique authority of the Vicar of Christ, as we
already see by the Pontiff’s preference to refer to
himself constantly by his lesser title of “Bishop of
Rome.”
So we may say that in just four steps since
Vatican II—i.e., renunciation of the papal tiara,
introduction of Collegial Equality, more power to the
people and the first ever “resignation” of a pope—
the autocratic structure of Petrine authority instituted by Our Lord for His Church has been transformed
into a Socialist democracy by which papal teaching accrues in practice to little more than just one
amongst many varied opinions. And why not, since
the popes themselves no longer preach or write in
the clear, concise and authoritative Petrine tone of
their pre-conciliar predecessors.
“Turned unto Fables”
On the contrary, Pope Francis’s recent “Who am
I to judge?” statement to the press in relation to homosexuals did more to promote the gay lobby than
that aggressive lobby could have hoped to achieve
itself by decades of campaigning.
Perhaps the faithful will now understand why
there was barely a whimper of protest recently
from the Church’s hierarchy when secular governments unilaterally moved to impose gay marriage on
society.
Wherever we look in the Church today all we see

is this invasion of the secular, rebellious spirit of the
world constantly in search of novelty, constantly
“renewing,” constantly chipping away at the last
remnants of the Traditions handed down unaltered
through the generations until Vatican II.
Quite how this “pastoral” Council, declared to be
non-doctrinal and non-infallible, came to impose
a new ecclesiology, a new liturgy, a new Code of
Canon Law, a new Catechism and a new orientation centered on the “dignity of the human person”
rather than on baptism in Christ through His Church,
is a mystery known only to the Almighty.
God knows, it has been a whirlwind of evolution
which for forty years has sown confusion in the true
Church of Our Lord. It has eroded authority, suppressed dogmatic teaching, disrupted unity, left
many Catholics bewildered, broken many hearts
and resulted in mass apostasy from the faith. There
simply is no more diplomatic a way to put it.
And now Pope Francis seems to be focussing
on even more radical changes that will see greater
deterioration take place.
All the talk is about the poor, the hungry and the
marginalized, and about pursuing social justice and
global peace through greater “dialogue” with other
“faith traditions.” At no time in Evangelii Gaudium
does the Pontiff make reference to the great Social
Encyclicals of his pre-Vatican II predecessors, such
as Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, or of the fact that the
Church has championed the cause of the poor and
marginalized for two thousand years through the
missions.
It is almost as if His Holiness considers that
legacy to be tainted on account of the traditional
theology underlying it, a theology which identified
the worst poverty of all to be that of the absence
of Christ and His grace from souls, and which
condemned and proscribed interaction with false
religions under the pretext of improving man’s condition on earth.
To be fair to Pope Francis, he does say some very
good things in Evangelii Gaudium that are perfectly
in line with Catholic teaching. But it is this apparent
disdain for the old Church Militant in favor of a kind
of United Nations of inter-religious social work which
is of particular concern.
The Church does not exist on this earth primarily
to feed the poor, clothe the hungry and win justice
for the downtrodden, noble as these corporal works
79

Theological Studies
of mercy are. Rather, the Church exists principally
for the true worship of God and to convert souls to
the Catholic religion that they may be saved for all
eternity.
Hence, this novel idea of a “poorer Church for the
poor,” a Church which follows the Puritan model of
cutting down the great tree of authoritative Catholic
teaching and liturgical majesty for a return to the
simplicity of the mustard seed is an illusion that
does injustice to Christ the King and great harm to
souls.
The examples of Sts. Francis of Assisi and Jean
Marie Vianney (the Curé of Ars) should help to
demonstrate what I mean by this. Both of these
saints were renowned for their personal lives of
holy poverty and penitential austerity in imitation
of Our Lord, the poor carpenter of Nazareth. Yet,
both insisted on the most expensive and exquisite
adornments that could be afforded to beautify their
respective parish churches, wherein Christ the King
resided in the Blessed Sacrament.
What these examples of the saints highlight is
that our Catholic religion is first a supernatural religion instituted for the true worship of God and the
preaching of divine truth both “in season and out of
season,” as St. Paul said, for the salvation of souls.
Any social program for the betterment of humanity on earth is by far subordinate to this principal
mission.
Consequently, this post-Vatican II reorientation
of the Church is, with the very greatest respect to
those responsible, a madness exceeding that of
Nero who fiddled while Rome burned.
Surely forty years of devastation of the Catholic
religion together with an exponential increase in
global violence, poverty and immorality is evidence
enough of the futility of trying to adapt the divine
Catholic Faith to the spirit of the world and the “cult
of man.”
There can be no spiritual renewal, no lasting
world peace and no global social justice attained by
such a union; much less by a continued promotion
of false Religious Liberty and Ecumenism, which
doctrines equate to mere human respect denying
to our non-Catholic and non-Christian neighbor the
greatest act of charity, namely, the truth that they
must embrace Christ and His Catholic Church for
salvation.
In his Encyclical Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI puts
80

The Angelus

March - April 2014

it this way: “As long as individuals and States refuse
to submit to the rule of Our Saviour, there can be
no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among
nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the
Kingdom of Christ...His Church, the one source of
salvation.”
How different this fearless teaching is to post-Vatican II Religious Liberty, which has seen our popes
address Jewish and Islamic congresses as fellow
“children of Abraham,” believing in the same one
true God as Catholics.
But how can such statements find justification
in Our Lord’s own testimony, who said: “Abraham
saw my day and was glad...” (John 8:56); and: “He
who rejects me, rejects the one who sent me” (Luke
10:16)?
Equally at odds with Our Lord’s testimony is this
new conciliar process of sending Vatican greetings to the representatives of other non-Catholic
religions, those of pagan origin such as Buddhism,
Shintoism and Hinduism, on their various religious
feast days as though they were somehow pleasing
to the Holy Spirit and conducive to holiness and
salvation.
I have already highlighted this syncretist mentality as it manifested itself in the Assisi gatherings
organized by Pope John Paul II.
Again, I ask how any of this is justifiable in light
of the First Commandment and the infallible dogma
“outside the Church no salvation”? Where are these
dangerous novelties condoned anywhere in the
bimillennial teaching of the Popes and Councils, or
by the teaching of the saints? Did not our Saviour
Himself admonish that “Unless a man be born again
of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God” (John 3:5)?
The faithful have the right and a duty to ask these
questions of the shepherds entrusted by Our Lord
with the care of their souls. Many indeed have asked
but, alas, the response is usually silence or an unjust
command of obedience to the Council.
Since Vatican II was not a Council bearing the
hallmark of the extraordinary magisterium, however,
and since none of these modern novelties have been
imposed formally by the extraordinary magisterium
on the faithful, which would be impossible in light of
two thousand years of contrary infallible teaching,
then troubled and discerning Catholics, myself included, have chosen to side with Tradition and reject

these destructive innovations.
The Rule of Resistance
Yes, for the love of Our Lord, His Holy Church, our
holy Catholic religion and the Petrine See, we follow
St. Paul’s respectful example and “resist Peter to his
face” in these matters of very grave scandal threatening the faith, following as our method of resistance the recommendation of St. Vincent of Lerins.
Having fresh in his memory the devastation
wrought in the Church in the fourth century by the
Arian heresy, a devastation so great that St. Jerome
felt constrained to declare “the whole world awoke
and groaned to find itself Arian,” this fifth-century
saint proposed the following question and answer
for future generations who might be faced with
similar tragedy:
“But what if some novel contagions try to infect
the whole Church, and not merely a tiny part of
it? Then he [the Catholic] will take care to cleave
to antiquity, which cannot now be led astray by
any deceit of novelty” (The Vincentian Canon, in
Commonitorium, ed. Moxon, Cambridge Patristic
Texts, chap. IV, 434).
Since divine faith is a higher virtue than obedience, if follows that no man, however exalted, may
legitimately command obedience of Catholics in
matters that endanger their faith. Hence, there can
be no such thing as schism on the part of subordinates who respectfully refuse the dangerous
religious innovations of their superiors in favor of
the security of antiquity, regardless of hysterical assertions to the contrary.
Sadly, the same cannot be stated with any
confidence in respect to those who choose obedience to men above obedience to God. In this regard,
Archbishop Lefebvre lamented after Vatican II that
“Satan’s masterstroke has been to sow disobedience through obedience.”
I think it fitting to leave the final word to St. Paul
as food for thought: “...Preach the word: be instant
in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke
in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a
time when they will not endure sound doctrine; but,
according to their own desires, they will heap to
themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will
indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but
will be turned unto fables...” (2 Timothy 4:2).

81

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Letters to the Editor

Dear Angelus Press,
Thank you very much for your recent issue on canonizations. The articles
did a great job exposing the unfitness of John Paul II for canonization, but
there wasn’t much said about John XXIII. What can you say about him that
would make him unfit for canonization? (Submitted via e-mail)

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your interest in reading the issue of canonizations. You
bring up a very good point about the case of John XXIII which is virtually
ignored by the issue. In truth, the media, and Rome firstly, have put all the
stress on John Paul II. He was known to all, popular, and reigned for over
a quarter of a century. In comparison, Pope John XXIII figures indeed as a
shadow, the “next best”, hardly known to most except for his convoking the
Council. If he started the revolutionary movement in the Church, it is no
doubt John Paul II who instituted the Revolution as a permanent fixture, with
the merry-go-round ecumaniac mood of Assisi and other sacrilegious events.
Yet, there is much to be said about Good Pope John. We find in him a real
contrast between the private devout priest, as testified by his personal diary,
and the public man imprudently following the lead of neo-modernist minds.
The Angelus published, starting in September 2000, a series of three articles
on him written by Fr. Simoulin, then superior of the Italian district. Also, in
a similar note, Roberto de Mattei explained his view in a recent interview
with John Vennari of Catholic Family News. Professor de Mattei quotes Fr.
Innocenzo, on whom Fr. Simoulin’s article relies heavily:
“Having studied the Second Vatican Council, I examined in depth his
biography and consulted the acts of his beatification process. When the
Church canonizes one of the faithful, it is not that she wants to assure us that
the deceased is in the glory of Heaven; rather, she proposes them as a model
of heroic virtue. Depending on the case, it is a perfect religious, pastor, father
of a family, and so on. In the case of a Pope, to be considered a saint he must
have exercised heroic virtue in performing his mission as Pontiff, as was, for
example, the case for Saint Pius V or Saint Pius X. Well, as far as John XXIII,
I am certain, after careful consideration, that his pontificate was objectively
harmful to the Church, and so it is impossible to speak of sanctity for him.
Dominican Father Innocenzo Colosio, one who understood sanctity and is

considered one of the greatest historians of spirituality in modern times,
affirmed this before I did in a famous article in the Rivista di Ascetica e
Mistica (Journal of Ascetical and Mystical Theology).”
Signed by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, Member of the Editorial Team

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The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,
Even though we uphold the dignity of baptism as one of the seven sacraments, we are somewhat oblivious of its real nature and effects. Most of us were
baptized a few days after birth. Our parents brought us to the church and our
godfather or godmother answered the questions put to us by the priest. Our
godparents then pronounced the Creed on our behalf and solemnly promised to
forsake Satan and all his pomps. Several years later, when we attained the use of
reason, we were (hopefully) instructed in all these matters, but few of us really
appreciate how profoundly baptism has forever changed our lives. Over time, the
reality of being baptized has, for many of us, become ordinary and mundane.
Guided by St. Paul, let us quickly review the profound truths of baptism. The
Apostle to the Gentiles proclaims: “Know you not that all we, who are baptized
in Christ Jesus, are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with him
by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the
Father, so we also may walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4). In these few words,
St. Paul explains that baptism is the sacrament which joins our lives to the life of
Christ. Even more, baptism conforms our lives to Christ; we die with him and with
him rise from the dead!
This sacrament is much more than an external ceremony. Its inward effects
are much more important than the outward signs. Through baptism we are
forever linked to Christ. From the moment when water flows over our foreheads
and the formal words are pronounced, we die to our purely natural life, one filled
with sin and anxiety, and are resurrected in the supernatural life of Christ. Our existence takes on an entirely new orientation, for we are called to heaven! We may
continue living in the same circumstances as before, performing the same daily
duties, yet after baptism we are no longer children of the devil, bound for hell, but
children of God, called to eternal bliss.
Sincerely yours in Christ,

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.

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