“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Marriage
Controversy over Marriage Vows
Marriage and the State of Perfection
The Basis of a Happy Wedlock

July - August 2014

From the colored glass of
King St. Louis’s reliquary there
flows a dimmed light of the sun
impressed on the onlooker’s
eyes. This particular stained
glass represents the wedding of
the parents of Our Savior. It is
subdued and unadorned as the
Holy Family’s lifestyle. It breathes
steadiness and is clothed with
modest simplicity. It is private
and unglamorous like the most
humble buddings which promise
a glorious flourishing—the ideal
of all Christian marriages.
Picture: Stained-glass window, Sainte Chapelle,

Paris

Letter
from the
Publisher
At the February consistory of cardinals, Cardinal Walter Kasper gave a lengthy conference on the question of the family. At the sight of innumerable divorced and remarried
Catholics he demands that the Church’s doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage be
reassessed and adjusted to reality.
While reading this conference, an association to C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
imposed itself. Two friends, one dwelling in heaven and the other in hell, are discussing
their loss of faith in college, and the slow process that led up to it. The damned soul firmly
maintains that his opinions on religion, while possibly wrong, were honestly formed, and
therefore did not merit condemnation. Then his old friend replies: “Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation
from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the
same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes
lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense
that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by
sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense
are not innocent.”
For the Catholic Church, doctrine comes first and sets out the rules for life. Cardinal
Kasper inverses the order. To him reality imposes its rules on doctrine. Facing a new
social phenomenon he seems to feel obliged to make doctrine match contemporary life.
Therefore he claims a new approach: a new ‘doctrine’ for having remarried divorcees
admitted to the sacraments.
This issue of The Angelus is dedicated to the theme of marriage. It strives to give us a
clear understanding of the Catholic doctrine on marriage, and at the same time it wants
to offer practical advice for how to put this doctrine into action.
“If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.”

Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Publisher

July - August 2014
Volume XXXVII, Number 4
Publisher
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Editor-in-Chief
Mr. James Vogel
Managing Editor
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud
Editorial Team
Fr. Leo Boyle
Fr. Pierre Duverger
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Miss Anne Stinnett
Design and Layout
credo.creatie
(Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Mr. Simon Townshend
Director of Operations
Mr. Brent Klaske
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Mr. Jason Fabaz

		
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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: Marriage
––Controversy over Marriage Vows
––Marriage and the State of Perfection
––Rites of Matrimony Past and Present
––Christian Marriage, Guarantee of the Dignity of the Woman

6
10
14
18

Faith and Morals
––Law and Marriage Go Together
––The Basis of a Happy Wedlock

25
28

Spirituality
––Male and Female He Created Them
––How to Have a Happy Marriage

31
35

Christian Culture
––Education: A Magnanimous Man!
––History: Innocent III, Marriage, and Militant Christendom

44
50

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––Liturgy: No Light from the Orthodox East on Christian Marriage 54
––Family Life: Confirmation before Marriage
59
– Questions and Answers
– Church and World
– Theological Studies
– Letters to the Editor
– The Last Word

64
69
77
84
87

Theme Marriage

Controversy
over
Marriage
Vows
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

This issue of The Angelus on marriage cannot
avoid the heated debate which has avidly fed
the media at large, for and against the Catholic
Church. What is at stake is nothing less than the
sanctity of Catholic marriage since the problem,
practically speaking, is whether or not to allow
remarried divorcees to receive Holy Communion.
On this question, the reader may refer to the
statement of Bishop Fellay and to the important
historical text of Prof. de Mattei in reply to
Cardinal Kasper.

Remarried Divorcees
and the Church
Christ said that marriage is an unbreakable
bond. In Matthew 19:3-12, Christ specifically
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July - August 2014

ruled out divorce, saying, “Moses permitted you
to divorce your wives because your hearts were
hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”
“Whoever puts away his wife and marries
another, commits adultery against her; and if the
wife puts away her husband and marries another,
she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11; Luke 16:18).
Following Christ’s condemnation, the Church
has always affirmed that remarrying after
divorce or separation was sinful. The Church
Canon Law (of 1917) imposes an automatic
excommunication on those who marry before
a non-Catholic minister (can. 2319). The Third
Council of Baltimore explains how this applies
to divorcees who remarry. Church law moreover
denies Christian burial to public sinners (can.
855), and among these are included those known
to be remarried divorcees.

Chesterton said: “We do not need a Church
which moves with the world; we need a Church
which moves the world.” The Church cannot
be the salt of the earth without becoming a
sign of contradiction. Her impeccable moral
principles based on the natural law and the Ten
Commandments (e.g. Thou shalt not commit
adultery; thou shalt not desire thy neighbor’s
wife) fly in the face of a permissive society where
liberty translates as license. However, sexual
liberation is bound to speed up the downslide
of societies. Contraception has led to abortion;
abortion led to divorce; divorce has led to
civil unions of all kinds. Families and children
are under direct attack from such immoral
legislation.
Would a slackening of Church rules and of
God’s commandments prove merciful? Some
object that the Church is merciless to those
who made hard decisions due to painful
circumstances. Yet, for these as for all sinners,
the Church has applied the balm of the faith
and understanding, and is still offering them
the support she bestows on all sinners. Indeed
even public sinners are apt to receive succor
from Holy Mother the Church, dependent on the
circumstances. In the case at hand, the Church
has always made the proper distinctions between
notorious and hidden cases, between those
locked in a free or necessary cohabitation, with
the prerequisite that they live chastely as brother
and sister to be able to receive any sacrament.
Yet such a demand, not so uncommon in lawful
marriage bonds, does not stand a hearing from a
world sunk in filth.

The Kasper Bomb
At the February consistory of cardinals,
Kasper, at the request of Pope Francis, gave a
lengthy conference on the question of the family
which will be the topic of the October Synod. In
less than ambiguous terms, he advocated for a
revision of the Church praxis of not admitting
remarried divorcees to the sacraments, given
their state in life.
In the present conference, he suggested that
the current situation is analogous to that of the

Second Vatican Council on issues of ecumenism
and religious freedom: Without violating the
binding dogmatic tradition, the Council opened
doors. We can ask ourselves: Is it not perhaps
possible that there could be further developments
on the present question as well?
He added that “we cannot presuppose that
spouses” understand the conditions which make
for a valid marriage, and asked if the presumption
of validity “is not often a legal fiction.” In light
of this, he suggested that instead of questions
of nullity being decided by a tribunal, “As an
alternative, one might think that the bishop could
entrust this task to a priest.”
Likewise, the sacraments should be made
available to the few seriously prepared couples:
“A divorced and remarried person: (1) if he
repents of his failure in the first marriage, (2)
if he has clarified the obligations of the first
marriage, if it is definitively ruled out that he
could turn back, (3) if he cannot abandon without
further harm the responsibilities taken on with
the new civil marriage, (4) if however he is doing
the best he can to live out the possibilities of the
second marriage on the basis of the faith and
to raise his children in the faith, (5) if he has a
desire for the sacraments as a source of strength
in his situation, should we or can we deny him,
after a period of time in a new direction, of
‘metanoia,’ the sacrament of penance and then of
communion?”

Our Comments
The statements of Cardinal Kasper are
pregnant with strange assumptions.
1. Progress in disorder. It is revealing to hear
Kasper use the ‘developments’ on ecumenism
and religious freedom at Vatican II to force
a similar ‘development’ on the question of
concubines. Put in less diplomatic terms, this
means that the dogmatic contradiction of
postconciliar teaching is the key which opens
the door to the more obvious contradictions
now erupting in the moral arena.
2. Devious praxis forces devious laws. The
presumption that modern-day couples
7

Theme Marriage
getting married do not know what marriage is
seems odd: it is a slap in the face of the Church
that she has not done her job of teaching the
faith for the last 50 years. And what is Kasper
trying to argue? That…majority makes the
truth? And therefore we need to annul with a
sweep of the hand all these “legally fictitious
marriages” and go counter to the sacred vows
emitted by the couples? But will not the
remedy be worse than the malady? To create
exceptions in principle means the end of the
principle. Instead of strengthening family
bonds, the Church will simply loosen it to
equate it to the status it had in Israel before
Christ’s time.
3. The end of public sinners. The last Kasperian
blow which smashes to pieces the vestiges
of Catholic marriage is the admittance of
successive polygamists to the sacraments.
Those who put themselves in a public situation
of sin are inapt to receive absolution or Holy
Communion. The question is not a legal matter,
but an inherent contradiction. There is a
logical impossibility in granting forgiveness
to a person who, not being committed to
changing his life, shows no firm purpose of
amendment and therefore no real sorrow for
his sins.
4. Communion is due to all Mass attendants.
As to Holy Communion, it is only a postVatican presumption that one is required to
receive Communion at every Mass, while the
confessionals are left unused. For centuries,
people received rarely and yet understood
that they benefitted from the spiritual goods
of the Church. By way of illustration, Cardinal
Burke had tirelessly insisted that the Church’s
teaching on refusing Communion to “manifest
grave sinners,” including politicians who
support abortion, is perfectly clear.

The Modernist Strategy at Work
It is impressive to see the momentum of a wellorchestrated campaign of disinformation at work
here.
1. One for all, all for one. We are seeing here
Cardinal Kasper spear-heading the latest
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Cardinal Kasper was born in 1933 and was ordained priest in
1957; he dedicated himself to academic work, was appointed
Hans Küng’s assistant professor of theology, and in 1989
Bishop of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. During his
ten years in that position, specifically in 1993, together with
now Cardinal Lehmann and Archbishop Saier of Fribourg
(since deceased) he drew up a plan in favor of sacramental
communion for divorced-and-“remarried” Catholics, which
was decisively rejected by the Prefect of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith at that time, Cardinal Ratzinger.

modernist attack on the few things the
Catholics still hold sacred against the godless
world. He shot the first bullet, but he is closely
followed by the drums of high-ranking officials
to set more pressure upon the Church at large
and bow before the ‘sign of the times’ which
is now ripe for some ‘relaxation’ of Church
‘discipline.’
2. Time works for the revolutionaries. The
neo-modernists know that the media are
going to propel their ‘gospel of mercy and

understanding’ urbi et orbi, and turn the
individual battle into a gigantic tsunami as
if this were gospel truth and the ‘will of the
people.’ Democratism is the new magisterium
imposing itself with an iron will. We hear
things like: “Unless the Synod makes openings
for the remarried divorcees, great expectations
will be thwarted!”
Like for the battle of the ‘pill’ in the midsixties, time works for them in as much as the
Church authority is slack in using its power
and stopping the nonsense. Humanae Vitae
of Pope Paul VI came two years too late: the
venomous discussions had gained worldwide
acceptance and many Western Episcopates
were advocating for it.
3. Situation ethics all over again. Against the
innovators, Archbishop Aquila requested
that we go back to Christ’s interchange with
the Pharisees on the question of divorce. He
strongly criticized these new gospel preachers
who denounce Christ’s “gospel of marriage,”
calling it “impractical” and, as a result, “nonpastoral.” It is typical of the modernist strategy
to oppose praxis to theory, situation ethics to
moral principles. The modern existentialist
philosophy which defines a person by his acts,
and the present moment as ‘creative’, virtually
denies human nature and all natural law. What
applies to all others can in no way apply to
me and has no right to restrain my sacrosanct
liberty!
4. Slow descent into the abyss. This is an
onslaught on the sanctity of marriage. Bishop
Fellay quotes Cardinal Caffarra, archbishop
of Bologna, explaining how the Church pillar
is that sexuality can be exercised only within
marriage bonds. And if this goes, who can
condemn any of the strange immoral behavior:
anything is up for grabs! But this final attack
was unfortunately prepared long ago with
the apparently innocuous text of Vatican II
setting the two ends of marriage on an equal
footing, echoed 20 years later by the new Code
of Canon Law which placed “mutual support
of the spouses” even ahead of “the generation
of children.” This de facto allowed the coming
of strange titles for declaring marriage nullity,
like immaturity and lack of love. The results

are there for all to see: it has opened the flood
gate of marriage annulments, which used to be
virtually inexistent before Vatican II.
5. A German schism. Part of the Kasper push
was forged from the German Episcopate,
which elected its new President, Bishop Fürst.
The Episcopal conference said that they will
press forward to allow remarried divorcees to
receive Communion. They state this despite
the repeated veto of Archbishop Müller of the
Congregation for the Faith, who tells them
that “Bishops’ conference presidents are not
‘vice-popes’…” The seeds are planted for a
schismatic German church aligning itself all
too closely to Protestant belief on marriage
vows. It is true that the issue is prevalent in
Germany, where close to 200,000 divorces
are registered each year, and a quarter are
subsequently remarried civilly. And this has
had a major impact on the tax revenues of the
Catholic Church.
Are we heading towards a renewed campaign
against the major tenet of Catholic morality?
Everything points in that direction, and please
God, the worst will be averted and the beauty
of Catholic marriage will be brought forth more
brightly and immaculate than ever before.

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.

9

Theme Marriage

Marriage and
the State of
Perfection
compiled by the Angelus editors

In offering these extracts to our readers,
our intention is to address the often asked
question of the priority between virginity and
marriage. Connected with it is the broad use
of the term vocation, which can be confusing.
Confusion seems also to be the name of the game
after Vatican II when dealing with priests and
religious.

Pre-eminence of Virginity
32. This doctrine of the excellence of virginity
and of celibacy and of their superiority over
the married state was, as We have already said,
revealed by our Divine Redeemer and by the
Apostle of the Gentiles; so too, it was solemnly
defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy
Council of Trent, and explained in the same
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way by all the holy Fathers and Doctors of the
Church. Finally, We and Our Predecessors have
often expounded it and earnestly advocated it
whenever occasion offered. But recent attacks
on this traditional doctrine of the Church, the
danger they constitute, and the harm they do to
the souls of the faithful lead Us, in fulfillment
of the duties of Our charge, to take up the
matter once again in this Encyclical Letter,
and to reprove these errors which are so often
propounded under a specious appearance of
truth.
33. First of all, it is against common sense,
which the Church always holds in esteem,
to consider the sexual instinct as the most
important and the deepest of human tendencies,
and to conclude from this that man cannot
restrain it for his whole life without danger to his
vital nervous system, and consequently without

injuring the harmony of his personality.
34. As St. Thomas very rightly observes,
the deepest natural instinct is the instinct of
conservation [self-preservation]; the sexual
instinct comes second. In addition, it is for the
rational inclination, which is the distinguishing
privilege of our nature, to regulate these
fundamental instincts and by dominating to
ennoble them.
35. It is, alas, true that the sin of Adam has
caused a deep disturbance in our corporal
faculties and our passions, so that they wish to
gain control of the life of the senses and even of
the spirit, obscuring our reason and weakening
our will. But Christ’s grace is given us, especially
by the sacraments, to help us to keep our bodies
in subjection and to live by the spirit. The virtue
of chastity does not mean that we are insensible
to the urge of concupiscence, but that we
subordinate it to reason and the law of grace, by
striving wholeheartedly after what is noblest in
human and Christian life.
36. In order to acquire this perfect mastery
of the spirit over the senses, it is not enough to
refrain from acts directly contrary to chastity,
but it is necessary also generously to renounce
anything that may offend this virtue nearly or
remotely; at such a price will the soul be able to
reign fully over the body and lead its spiritual
life in peace and liberty. Who then does not see,
in the light of Catholic principles, that perfect
chastity and virginity, far from harming the
normal unfolding of man or woman, on the
contrary endow them with the highest moral
nobility.
37. We have recently with sorrow censured the
opinion of those who contend that marriage is the
only means of assuring the natural development
and perfection of the human personality. For
there are those who maintain that the grace
of the sacrament, conferred ex opere operato,
renders the use of marriage so holy as to be
a fitter instrument than virginity for uniting
souls with God; for marriage is a sacrament, but
not virginity. We denounce this doctrine as a
dangerous error. Certainly, the sacrament grants
the married couple the grace to accomplish
holily the duties of their married state, and it
strengthens the bonds of mutual affection that

unite them; but the purpose of its institution
was not to make the employment of marriage
the means, most suitable in itself, for uniting the
souls of the husband and wife with God by the
bonds of charity.
42. Of course, it is not Our intention to deny
that Catholic spouses, because of the example of
their Christian life, can, wherever they live and
whatever be their circumstances, produce rich
and salutary fruits as a witness to their virtue…
Pius XII (Sacra Virginitas)

Is There a Vocation
to Marriage?
Vocation—calling—is a term which is used
frequently in psychology to indicate one’s attrac­
tion to a special trade or state or career. Thus we
hear that many artists were discouraged from
pursue their vocation. In the supernatural order,
the Bible mentions the vocation of Abraham
whereby God called him to become the patriarch
of the Jewish people. Next we hear of the voca­
tion of the Gentiles to receive the Gospel. All men
are called to faith and grace as God offers all
men the means of salvation, which includes the
vocation to heavenly glory.
When the term vocation is used for any profane
way of life, it loses the specific sense of a divine
calling, the predestination of someone to a holier
way of life and consecration to God. Therefore,
theologically speaking, it makes no sense to call
married life a divine vocation as such since, on
the contrary, it is the normal and common state
of life.
Hence, the term vocation has traditionally
been reserved to those who consecrate them­
selves in the religious or priestly life. St. Paul
refers to this when he speaks to the Ephesians
(4:11): “He [Christ] has established some apostles;
others, prophets; others evangelists; others
shepherds and doctors, for the edification of
the Body of Christ.” This text, among others,
reveals the role played by priestly or religious
vocations in the organism of the Mystical Body.
The priesthood, by teaching officially Christian
doctrine, by administering the sacraments
11

Theme Marriage
and exercising divine authority, perpetuates the
role of the apostles. The religious orders, by their
intense prayer life and asceticism, by the varied
spiritual and corporeal works of mercy offered
to souls, prolong in their own way the role of the
infused charisms of old—the gift of prophecy, of
healing, and of exhorting souls.
Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, XV, 2, 3148

How Can Unmarried
Persons Be Happy?
The lonely life is becoming a social
phenomenon to contend with. In Paris, half
the population lives alone. In all Western
countries, the decline is steady year after year,
and this includes divorcees. Married life, made
for bringing up the next generation, is slowly
but surely turning into an oddity in a world
prevalent in bringing pleasure as if it were real
happiness. Father de Chivré has interesting
comments on this issue. —Editor’s note
Why not ask yourselves this evening if
happiness, instead of depending on the
nature of the situation, might not depend on
the consent given to situations—consent:
that appropriation of a given situation by the
personality. This consent takes away none of
the tragic consequences of the fact: the natural
laws crucified in their most legitimate rights;
sentiments repressed to the point of unbalance,
neglected to the point of exasperation; stunted
social life; humiliating situation as a left-bythe-wayside; tense family relations; inevitable
physiological and psychological unbalance—so
the best and most healthily objective doctors will
all tell me.
“Well then,” you tell me, “are you saying it
isn’t tragic to set off in life that way, frustrated
from the outset, devalued in yourself and around
yourself, denied in advance all the natural
fulfillment of maternity or paternity?” And you
are trying to tell me that the natural sufferings
applied to those who are single are not just as
present in marriage? Let me go through them:
natural laws crucified in marriage by the sohuman law of fidelity; sentiments neglected to the
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point of exasperation; social life stunted in many
as regards intellectual and moral maturity: they
have no time; tense family relations—need I say
more?
There are activities, superior by their devotion
and by their breadth, indispensable to the life of
the community, which demand on behalf of the
human personality a time to perfect and cultivate
oneself, an independence of action to act and to
accomplish, a capacity for renouncement in order
to have authority and influence, impossible for a
married woman to carry out and possible only in
the single life.
Outlaw the single life in the country for a
week and you will hear the outcry among the
married! “So, now I’m the one who has to take
care of the children—and Aunt Susie, what has
she got to do?” Moreover, married people often
take advantage, and sometimes shamefully, of the
time and the generosity of the unmarried among
their relations because they themselves have no
thought for their own personality, or else they
would develop it, like the poor single people, by
their duty of state, rather than going “naturally”
to the movies, tossing the kids in the arms of
Aunt Susie.
Moreover, eliminate the single life and you
eliminate countless networks of social support;
invaluable apostolic activities; assistance and
delightful smiles to hundreds of the sick and
dying; phenomenal educations for thousands
of children; social initiatives on which
you yourselves rely very heavily; devotion
indispensable to the life of charitable works,
apostolates, and the eternal salvation of many.
The human person in full activity immolates
certain calls of nature, without a doubt. But, alas,
how many married women and men have, on the
contrary, renounced certain calls and certain
rights of the human person?
Fr. De Chivré, O.P.

The Post-Vatican Era
We have seen above some confusion on
the understanding of the term vocation, and
this was aired out at the time of the Council.

Likewise, we hear about the priesthood of the
laity, the priesthood of the People of God, and
by now the ministerial priest is confused as to
what is his specific role in the Church. He is
the one presiding over the assembly on Sunday
(Institutio Generalis of the Novus Ordo Missae,
§7). Thanks to the modernist twist, instead of
preaching God’s word with authority, his sermon
is only the echo of the grassroots, expressing
the mind of the flock which, responsibly, either
accept or reject his statements.
Last year was called the Year of Evangelization
and apostolate. We have here another confusion
with the word apostle—sent on a mission—which
has always applied to men acting as ambassadors
duly authorized to preach the word of God. This
was reserved to priests acting by the authority of
their legitimate bishops who, in their turn, had
received their mission directly from the Pope.
In the Vatican II decree on religious life, the
ambiguity is also felt at every turn. The title
Perfectae Caritatis is the only time in which the
decree mentions perfection, and nowhere do we
see the term sanctity or state of life. This absence
was due to the fact that the Protestants had
complained about this ‘discrimination’ between
those who live a common life from those who are
in a state of perfection and sanctity.
Another issue is the silence over the term
vows. Where the Church used to speak of
the three vows, now Vatican II speaks of the
evangelical counsels. This may seem to be a
mere battle of words, but it reveals something
else. A vow is an act of religion which defines
properly the religious, or as St. Thomas defines
the religious state: a state of perfection because
of the virtue of religion. This explains why the
New Code substitutes the term “Institutes of
Consecrated Life” for “Religious.”
Perhaps even more revealing of the change
of mind is the twist given to the evangelical
counsels. Where the vows were directing and
tying the religious to the worship of God, the
counsels now are seen as a development of the
person: “Chastity is a good which contributes
to the integral development of the personality”;
poverty must be “a collective testimony.”
“Religious obedience, far from diminishing the
human person, leads it to maturity by increasing

the liberty of the children of God.” On the other
hand, authority becomes a service ordained to
the respect of the person and not to the common
good. Obedience is seen as a collaboration and
group dynamic!
How could one reconcile the fact that religious,
who by definition have left the world to apply
themselves to things divine, should now adapt
to the same world they ran away from? The truth
of the matter is that, together with the loss of
the virtue of religion, of the vows, of the state of
perfection, other basic Christian truths have been
silenced: the concept of personal sin, the need to
repair for our sins by a sacrifice of propitiation.
Was it not what Paul VI referred to in his message
at the close of Vatican II: “We too, more than
anyone, have the cult of man…”?
Taken mostly from Fr. Billecocq,
Fideliter, No. 219, p. 110

13

Theme Marriage

Rites of
Matrimony
Past and Present

by Fr. Christopher Danel

More than any other sacrament, the liturgical ceremonies of matrimony are nuanced by long-standing
social customs native to the various nations where the light of the Catholic Faith has penetrated. This is
understandable because marriage is the sine qua non for establishing home and hearth; it constitutes
the foundational unit of civil society, and thus has social and religious implications that are paramount.

The Church has been careful to preserve
these customs when possible. The Council of
Trent declared: “If any regions follow other
praiseworthy customs and ceremonies when
celebrating the sacrament of marriage, the
Council earnestly desires that by all means these
be retained” (Session XXIV, De matrimonio). Due
to this variety of national customs, the liturgical
sources for the sacrament of matrimony also tend
to be more scarce than for other aspects of the
Church’s liturgical life. Some texts are present
in the Leonine Sacramentary, attributed to Pope
14

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July - August 2014

St. Leo the Great (440-461). Additional texts, with
French influences, are found in the Gelasian
Sacramentary (VI-VII century), as well as in the
Gregorian Sacramentary, sent by Pope Adrian I
(771-795) to Charlemagne. Beyond these, scholars
must turn to glimpses from the Church Fathers
and from extant texts of various local rituals.
Based on all of these, one can trace an outline
of marriage customs and ceremonies from the
ancient Greco-Roman world, through the fourth
to tenth centuries, into the mediaeval period and
to the present day.

Greco-Roman Customs
and the Early Church
For both Greeks and Romans, two family
ceremonies took place: betrothal and marriage.
The heads of the families would meet to agree
on the betrothal, the formalities of the marriage,
and the dowry. In the Roman Empire, the
agreement (stipulatio) was a firm contract, and
was itself celebrated with family festivities. The
betrothal took place with a simple question to the
youths (Spondesne? Spondeo—Do you pledge? I
pledge), the joining of their hands (dexterarum
coniunctio), and the conferral of a ring. Held
some time later, the marriage celebration
itself was naturally more exuberant, but the
formalities associated with the marriage contract
had already taken place with the betrothal.
Thus, the marriage day was essentially a festive
commencement of marital life by the newlyweds,
and celebrated by the whole clan.
Amongst the Greeks, a banquet was held
at which the spouses would appear crowned.
Afterwards, the bride would be led by her father,
with a torchlight procession, to the house of
the groom’s family. There the bride would be
crowned again with symbols of fertility (figs,
dates, etc.) and she and the groom would process
around the hearth and into the bridal chamber.
Amongst the Romans, the young bride would
wear a simple white tunic tied with a cord, and a
particular flame-red bridal veil (flammeum). A
banquet would be held in the bride’s home, under
the charge of a steward (architriclinus), during
which the newlyweds would eat of a wheat cake
together as a sign of marital union, seated on
two special seats and wearing floral crowns,
with a common veil held above them (the veiling,
or velatio nuptialis). Afterwards, there was a
spectacular procession to the groom’s house at
the conclusion of which he would carry the bride
over the threshold, loosen the cord of her tunic,
and all would withdraw.
By and large, Catholics of the early centuries
adhered to these customs, and the primary
ecclesiastico-juridical act concerned the
exchange of consent as described. St. Ambrose
wrote simply, “The contract entered into
by the spouses constitutes a marriage” (De

institutione virginum. “Facit coniugium pactio
coniugalis”). Obviously, many similar customs
shine through in the Gospels: the betrothal vs.
the wedding—consider Our Lady and St. Joseph
during this interval—the wedding banquets and
garments, the torchlight processions where the
wise virgins had their lamps, and the abundant
references to Our Lord as the bridegroom Who
comes to lead us into His wedding banquet, that
is, into the beatific vision.

The Fourth to Tenth Centuries
With the vows of consent remaining funda­
mental to the contract of marriage, and social
customs still prevailing for the festivities, the
Church in addition endeavored to confer copious
blessings. These are primarily upon the bride due
to her role in childbearing, as this constitutes
the primary raison d’être of the union being
contracted. These were initially conferred at
different points in the ceremonies, whether
during the veiling of the couple, the crowning (in
the East), at the joining of hands, or at the bridal
chamber (in thalamo), but eventually the nuptial
blessing would be given in the context of the
Nuptial Mass.
The Leonine Sacramentary provides a
blessing for the couple under the title of Velatio
nuptialis (nuptial veiling), with veiling being the
predominant custom at both Rome and Milan
(Ambrosian Rite). The titles in the Gelasian and
Gregorian Sacramentaries are respectively Actio
nuptialis (nuptial action) and Orationes ad
sponsas velandas (prayers for veiling brides).
This nuptial blessing was sung according to
the preface tone, just as the ordination prayers,
and the blessing of fonts and sacred chrism. It
placed before the bride the examples of the Old
Testament matriarchs and invoked the blessing
of God for her fruitfulness. It was sung after the
Pater noster, and during this blessing a special
nuptial veil would be placed on the bride, which
in later years became a larger veil either extended
above or placed upon both bride and groom. The
Gelasian Sacramentary adds a special prayer
for both bride and groom after Communion.
The Gregorian Sacramentary amplifies
15

Theme Marriage
the nuptial blessing, proclaiming that neither
Original Sin nor the Deluge abolished the blessing
of God upon the union of man and woman,
that the institution of marriage is ordered to
the propagation of the human race (quibus
propagationem generis humani ordinasti), and
that it forms an indissoluble bond. In addition,
these sacramentaries include a special preface
and Hanc igitur for the nuptial Mass. In many
places, the Mass formulary itself, apart from
these prayers, was a Votive Mass of the Blessed
Trinity.

The Eleventh Century
to the Present
In order to make the contracting of marriage
more public—perhaps due to difficulties of
private or clandestine marriages, later resolved
by the Council of Trent—the “home” betrothal
and “church” nuptials became fused together,
so that the consent, joining of hands, and
conferral of ring all took place in a public setting,
that being at the door of the church (in facie
ecclesiae), and immediately before the Nuptial
Mass. The conferral of the ring took on a greater
significance, and it was specially blessed.
Traditionally the groom would give a ring to the
bride as a symbol of Christ making a covenant
with his Spouse the Church (a symbolism
especially extolled by St. Paul), but it is clear
that both spouses are bound by this covenant.
The ring itself has a special name in some places,
e.g., in France the alliance (pact) and in Italy the
fede (faith). Along with the ring, the groom gave a
monetary token (instrumentum dotale), a silver
or gold coin, as evidence of his conjugal goodwill.
The laws of the Holy Roman Empire even required
this act by the groom. This practice in many
places later disappeared, while being retained
in a few places. The ceremony at the door of the
church was later transported into the church
itself, where the spouses now marry before
the altar. The Roman Ritual of Paul V (1614), in
current use, enriches the blessing of the priest
upon the spouses in context with the exchange of
their consent, and adds in particular the words of
the priest confirming the bond, Ego coniungo vos.
16

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July - August 2014

Thus far the West. In the East, the marriage
rite is called the Office of Crowning and retains
the ancient Greek customs. The formula of the
Byzantine crowning of the spouses is: “N., the
servant of God, receives as his crown, N., the
servant of God,” which is repeated for the bride,
after which they process around the Gospelstand in a brilliant ritual.
It is a hallowed union. The original union of
man and woman, blessed by God from Adam and
Eve, was raised to a higher dignity, even that of
a Sacrament, by our Divine Savior at Cana. As a
young man and woman come before the altar of
God to enter this new state in life, they are the
recipients of an invisible cascade of His blessings
upon their union. As the Armenian Ritual puts it:
“The witness to these words [of consent] is the
God who is enthroned invisibly above this altar.”
This blessed covenant is also a foreshadowing
of eternal life, the union of Christ and His Bride
the Church, and His union as Bridegroom with
the soul. The Syrian Rite of marriage eloquently
points to this mystical dimension of Matrimony:
“Make us worthy, O God, to share the joy of Thy
endless feast, the unfailing gladness of Thy bridal
chamber, the happiness of Thy banquet that is not
limited by time.”

Fr. Christopher Danel was ordained in
2000. After completing the philosophical and
theological curriculum, he took up specialization
in the study of sacred liturgy, and is stationed in
Atlanta, Georgia.

108pp. – Softcover – STK# 8601 – $9.95

Advice for
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More than just a collection of principles—though you will find them here—this new work
takes the principles and applies them practically to daily life. Almost everything is covered in this work, from technology to scheduling, from true marital love to divorce and
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208 pp. – gold-embossed hardcover – 24 illustrations – STK# 8230 – $19.95

The Christian Father
Fr. Cramer explains the high dignity, honor, and responsibility of the vocation of Fatherhood and the virtues necessary to fulfill this important vocation. Since God gave fathers
the title He would have us call Him when He entrusted children to their care, the importance of the role of a father cannot be stressed enough. Fathers will understand the great
obligation of their vocation which they will be asked to render an account of, and will turn
to this book time and time again for important advice on raising children, heading their
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The Christian Mother
Fr. Cramer begins at the door of the Church with a mother who has come for God’s blessing upon her—The Churching of Women. He continues to explain along with this beautiful
ceremony, the vocation of Motherhood and the virtues necessary to fulfill it. Fr. Cramer
explains how a young woman should approach the sacrament of matrimony and then assists her in the proper education of her children. Includes the prayers she should daily raise
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Theme Marriage

Christian Marriage, Guarantee of the

Dignity of
the Woman
by Archbishop Lefebvre, taken from Against the Heresies

By proposing to women the model of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, whom God himself chose
to be the mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Church proves the esteem in which she
holds womankind. Whereas in all the ancient
civilizations, and in all the history of paganism,
one finds universally the contempt of woman. She
is considered as a mere object. She has no civil
rights; she can be repudiated and even sold.
The Church gives to women freedom, and she
guarantees it. I was able to observe in Africa that
in all the pagan tribes that I encountered, the
great problem is always that of the woman. The
men spend their time selling their daughters or
purchasing wives or reselling them. They term
this arranging the dowry.
This is false, for it constitutes a real commerce.
Scarcely have they been born when the girls
18

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July - August 2014

become the object of trade; someone puts down
money to purchase them. As soon as someone
else comes along with more money than what
a husband has paid, the parents arrange for the
daughter to leave her present husband. They
return the “dowry” to the husband who had
purchased her first, and keep the rest. If a woman
is sold for two hundred dollars and another
comes along with four hundred, they return two
hundred to the first and keep two hundred. It is a
real traffic that is almost impossible to imagine.
The missionaries had to fight to uphold
Christian marriages, and even then it was
difficult because this habit is so deeply rooted
in their mores. And then, the parents were not
always Christian, but pagan, and acted towards
the daughter who had become a Christian and
married in the Church as if she were a pagan.

Dakar, 1955, Feast of
Corpus Christi: Mothers
and girls participate in
the procession

Senegal, Ngasobil: Sisters and girls, 1953

Theme Marriage
The women who had left their husbands at the
behest of their parents had nothing against them;
they simply were obeying the injunctions of the
parents, who always command. If the father
tells his daughter to come home and that he
will marry her to another, the daughter can do
nothing. She is subjugated by her father. If her
father dies, she belongs to her oldest brother. She
always belongs to someone; she is not free.
Sometimes we were obliged to go and seek in
the villages a wife who had thus left her husband.
We would go off like commandos with a few
young men in a dug-out in pursuit of the woman
because the catechists advised us that if the
missionary Father did not go and fetch her, all the
others would go too. Going to look for women in
this way struck me as a rather droll duty.
We made a few examples. But when the
parents learned that we were coming to fetch
the wife they were intimidating, they made her
go and hide in the forest to keep us from finding

Cotonol, 1953:
Mothers during
the Mass

School visit of
Archbishop
Lefebvre

her. There was always someone in the village,
though, who would inform us, and so we always
succeeded in finding the woman, for often the
woman desired to return to her husband. But in
front of her parents she had to show the opposite.
Then she would start screaming to prove that she
left without her consent. The parents dared not
say much in front of the priest. Sometimes we
even had to take the woman by force, binding her
and putting her in the boat to take her back to the
village. As soon as the boat had put out a little
distance from the parents, the woman would
clap her hands, and show her pleasure at finding
herself back with her husband. But before, oh,
she put on such incredible scenes: I am going
to kill myself... (and then she would jump into
the river)... I am going to drown myself. And the
young people would go and fetch her back. All
this proved quite well that these poor women
were not free to dispose of themselves and that
they were the object of a veritable traffic.

To protect Christian marriage in such
conditions is very difficult!
When one considers Islam and the conduct of
Moslems, one observes the same contempt of the
woman. When I was in Algeria and Morocco I had
a chance to visit some harems. It is atrocious; the
women are enclosed their entire lives in a very
restricted space, three or four together. They too
are bought, sold, and resold. It is an abominable
traffic.
Christian marriage is the guarantee of the
respect paid to the woman, respect that still
exists, thank God, in our Christian families and
in many of the Christian regions. But, to the
degree that the Masonic doctrines spread with
divorce, we see that the woman is more and
more despised, less and less respected. Marriage
is one of the marks of Christian civilization;
that is why the Church has tried to do all in her
power to prevent the legalization of divorce. But
currently, in most of the countries where divorce

Msgr. Lefebvre
in Lourdes with
pilgrims from
Togo

First Communions
in Senegal

has not yet been admitted, the Freemasons have
launched campaigns and exerted pressure to
introduce its legalization.
Catholics even, and bishops, have helped to a
certain extent to encourage divorce, like Cardinal
Tarancon, who recommended the institution
of two types of marriage, one for those who
desired an indissoluble union, and then a civil
marriage for those who might eventually like
to divorce. I read this in a renowned Spanish
journal; the Cardinal explicitly campaigned for
the establishment of two kinds of marriage. Yet
it is known that Spain is a country of Catholic
tradition, therefore he was not speaking of
marriage for people who are non-Catholics, but
for Catholics. It is inconceivable to see such a
proposition emanate from a cardinal!
All this comes from the fact that it is the
Freemasons who are at the origin of these ideas,
because it involves a worldwide movement. If
this were only occurring in a single country, one

Sisters of Providence in Madagascar

might think that it was being instigated by the
head of the government. But no, it is in every
country, one after the other, that the legislative
assemblies are occupied with legislation for
laws instituting divorce. And that is the work of
Masonry: it wants the heads of government to
have power over the marriage bond.
21

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

It’s no stretch to say that children
have a serious advantage in
life if they come from a loving,
supportive and stable family.
Knowing that our parents love us
and learning life lessons at home
make all the challenges of dayto-day living that much easier to
face.

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

Mother Love
The life of the mother is not an easy one. Between her duties as a wife
and mother, and all the details that arise from managing a home, the
life of a mother can lose its proper focus: the glory of God. To help
Catholic mothers sanctify themselves in their state in life, we have
printed the original, unadulterated version of Mother Love, a complete
prayer and devotional book, just for moms! Originally written in the
late 1800s by a priest of the Capuchin order, this “manual for Christian mothers” contains:
-- Morning and Evening Prayers for Mothers
-- Devotions for the Holy Rosary
-- Points of Doctrine a Christian Mother Should Teach to Her
Children
-- Prayers at Mass
-- The “Ten Commandments” of Christian Education
-- Devotions for Confession and Communion
-- Devotions for the Poor Souls, and for the Way of the Cross
-- Prayers for the Various Special Necessities of a Christian
Mother
-- Prayers to Some of the Special Patrons of Christian Mothers
-- Indulgenced Prayers
-- A short book of instructions for Christian Mothers on the Christian Training of Children
Purchase this book for yourself, or for the Catholic mothers you
know. It contains almost everything a mother needs to nurture and
grow her spiritual life, so that through their sanctification they may
sanctify their husbands and children, and truly become the heart of
the Catholic home.

Part I
Morning Prayers
On awaking, raise your first thoughts to God, and making the sign of the
holy cross, say:

In the name X of the Father who has created me, X
of the Son who has redeemed me, X of the Holy Ghost
who has sanctified me, do I begin this day.
May the Most Holy Trinity bless, govern, and protect
me and mine, and lead us on to eternal life. Amen.
On arising and dressing, say the following prayer, either mentally or orally:

Glory be to the Father! Glory be to the Son! Glory be
to the Holy Ghost! Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ in expiation of my own sins
and for the wants of all my family!
Divine Savior, clothe us with Thy virtues, with humility, meekness, patience, charity, and purity. Make our
hearts like unto Thine!
O God, the Holy Ghost, adorn us with Thy seven
gifts! Preserve us from vanity, pride, and worldliness!

Prayers at Mass
Preparatory Prayers
Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, a
poor sinner, come before Thee, to assist at the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the only one worthy of Thy Divine
Majesty, the only one that can render Thee the honor
Thou deservest. I make the intention, therefore, by it to
adore and thank Thee, not only for myself and those
dear to me, but for the whole world. I desire to satisfy
for all our sins and negligences, and to beg of Thee all
that will be beneficial to us for soul and body. I pray especially in this holy Sacrifice for my children, beseeching
Thee to grant me the grace of training them in a Christian manner, and to cast around them the shield of Thy
paternal care through life, and especially at the hour of
their death.
Saints of God, help me by your merits and intercession that I assist at this holy Sacrifice with true devotion,
being lovingly and gratefully mindful of my Redeemer,
who instituted it in memory of His bitter Passion and
painful death on the cross. Amen.

Sprinkling yourself and your children with holy water, say:

May the peace and blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the power of His bitter Passion, the sign X of the holy
Cross, the assistance of Mary, the Immaculate Virgin
and Mother of God, the protec tion of the holy angels,
the merits and prayers of all the saints shield us from
all dangers of soul and body, guard us from all enemies,

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

The Priest goes up to the Altar.
Jesus ascends the Mount of Olives with His disciples.
O my Jesus, Thou dost ascend the Mount of Olives,
to begin Thy sufferings for us! Ah, cleanse my heart
and sanctify my will, that I may have no other desire
than that God’s will may in all things be accomplished!
Amen.

Law and
Marriage
Go Together
by Brian McCall, J.D.

The headlines have been dominated in the past
year over the topic of the relationship between
law and marriage. Can and should state law
prohibit or permit the “marriage” of two people of
the same sex? Are such laws consistent with the
Constitution of the nation? A few months ago I
attended a presentation by the ACLU of Indiana at
Notre Dame University, where I was visiting as a
professor for the semester. The contingent argued
that denying the “right to marry” to those of the
same sex was contrary to our jurisprudence. The
proposed amendment to the Indiana Constitution
would “discriminate” against these people who
want to get married and is inconsistent, they
argued, with our evolving notion of marriage.
These debates, if one can use such a term to
describe them, often end in incommensurable
positions being staked out and lack any apparent

resolution. The problem is fundamentally
philosophical. Those discussing the particulars
of civil law and its relation to marriage do not
understand the nature of things and as a result
cannot understand the nature of the legal issue.
The heart of the issue lies in the antithetical
philosophies of Creation and evolution. The
Catholic Church has always and everywhere
taught that God created everything ex nihilo.
Philosophically this means that God established
the essences of all things that exist. To
create something out of nothing requires the
establishment of a form that did not previously
exist to inform matter. Thus, by asserting that
God created all things, that must mean that He
established the form, or definitional essence,
of all things. The essence of something is the
definition of what something is. The definition
25

Theme Marriage
distinguishes one thing from another. By stating
that God created everything, the Church means
that the definitional essences of things have been
fixed, or legislated, by the mind of God. In the
physical world, this means that a zebra is not
a mouse, and a rock is not water. Yet even nonmaterial things have essences. Charity, liberty,
justice, and marriage although immaterial are
real [Although such beings are not substantial
beings (i.e., they cannot exist other than inhering
in a substance), they are nonetheless real.] and
have definitional essences. The modern world
abhors definitions. They are too restricting to
human license. The modernists thus invented
the antithesis of Creation—evolution. This false
philosophy holds that there are no fixed essences;
everything is evolving. Rather than “being,”
everything that exists is in a state of “becoming.”
On the material level, a human being does not
have a fixed essence. At a prior time, that which
is now a human being was an ape or an amoeba
in the process of becoming Man. Likewise, on the
immaterial level, evolution holds that things like
marriage are not constrained by fixed definitions
deriving from the mind of God, a Being incapable
of becoming as His Essence is pure being—“I AM
who AM.”
For those indoctrinated into the evolutionary
philosophy, marriage like all reality is simply an
artifact at a point in time of evolutionary change.
For them there is no contradiction in stating
that marriage formerly was defined as a lifelong
relationship between a man and woman but now
it is a state of revocable commitment between
any two people. And as emerged during the
ACLU presentation in Indiana, there is nothing
to prevent it from “evolving” to include nonhuman beings. As one student asked, what is to
prevent your position from permitting someone
to “marry” their dog? The ACLU attorney could
only answer, “Nothing is; except that most
people are not accepting of such a change, yet.”
This possibility of marriage evolving to include
animals is no more surprising than the alleged
“fact” that Men used to be little tadpoles and are
likely to be something very different in millions
of more years. If Men can change so radically,
why not something like marriage, they assert.
This evolutionary mindset, which sees
26

The Angelus

July - August 2014

everything as in a state of evolutionary
becoming, requires a very different
understanding of law than that of our ancestors,
who understood that God created the essences
of everything. This new jurisprudence sees law
as always in a state of having to be updated to
conform to the latest evolutionary developments.
Law no longer rules and measures human
behavior, but is ruled and measured by evolving
reality. By contrast, if God has already defined
the essences of all that is, then such a task is not
entrusted to human lawmakers. All that human
lawmakers can do is establish rules regarding
the use of things by Men living in a community.
Human law cannot define what constitutes a
horse, but can require that we not let ours run
free and trample our neighbor’s flower garden.
The “what” of things is not entrusted to human
law; the “how” of things is. God in His infinite
wisdom has entrusted a great liberty to Man with
respect to the created universe. He is charged
with ordering the use of what God has created,
but Man is not capable of creating, of defining the
essences of things. The actual liberty of Man is
evident from the first moments of Creation. One
of the first acts of Adam is to name the creatures
of the earth. God brings to Adam that which He
has already made and permits Adam to assign a
name, a linguistic reference which assists Man in
ordering his use of these pre-existing things. In
this first legislative act of the first Man, we can
see the proper liberty of human law. Man cannot
create; he can order. Laws can pronounce the
name and place within human society of that
which exists, but this act does not cause the
thing’s existence nor change the essence of it.
Marriage, like bees and fire and dogs, was
created by God when he took Adam’s rib to form
a helpmate for him and commanded the two to go
forth and multiply. Human law, whether made by
ecclesiastical or human agents, can declare the
name of this pre-existing essence and can order
its use within society. Human laws can define,
within the limits of justice, the effects upon
property of marriage and its dissolution upon
death. Yet no human agent can alter the definition
or essence of marriage as a lifelong union of a
man and a woman for the purpose of begetting
and rearing children. An attempt to do so is

merely a failed attempt at naming. It would be as
if Adam incorrectly named both a dog and a cat
to be a dog. The assigned name is for the purpose
of identifying one essence as distinguished from
another. Thus, the name dog if assigned both
to dogs and cats is a false name. It equivocally
refers to two different essences. Likewise, those
who assert that human law can assign the name
“marriage” to something which is not contained
within the essential definition of the reality
exceed the scope of human law.
Since modern positivist legal theory recognizes
no law above or beyond human-made law, the
debates over marriage law appear interminable
and irresolvable. If marriage is merely what
people, or their lawmakers, want it to be, there
is no rational way for resolving these disputes.
The only rational way to resolve the disputes is to
appeal to an independent authoritative standard
or definition. Yet modern legal positivism is a
product of philosophical relativism. Definitions
of things are merely the product of evolving
human consensuses on those things. Relying
on the philosophy of evolution, marriage can
become anything into which we will it to evolve.
A true understanding of Creation, as opposed to
evolution, precludes this never-ending becoming.
Marriage was created from the foundation of
the world and cannot change. Our human acts
and relationships can fail to measure up to the
definition of the reality of marriage. What exists
in such acts is something other than marriage,
a perversion of marriage. Whenever human law
explicitly declares or implicitly treats something
other than marriage as if it were a marriage, the
law is false. Such law does not adequately reflect
reality. Further, it is an illegal law, for such a law
is superseded by the higher law, the eternal law,
which legislates the essence of marriage.
This conclusion should inform our efforts to
resist these attempts to formulate illegal laws
promoting and facilitating acts and relationships
that are not marriage as if they were. Flowing
from our obligation to work for the common
good, we must resist these laws. We need not fear,
however. Even if the enemies of God temporarily
succeed in declaring the opposite of reality, they
cannot change reality. They can no more make
a non-marriage into a marriage than can they

turn iron into gold. They might doctor up the
appearance of the iron to make it appear to be
gold, but it is not. Their attempts are merely the
pointless rebellion of defiant children who stamp
their feet wishing reality to be other than it is.

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. In 2014 he 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.

27

Theme Marriage

Excerpts from Pius XI’s Casti Connubii

The Basis
of a Happy
Wedlock
by Pope Pius XI

109. So, Venerable Brethren, we make entirely
Our own the words which Our predecessor
of happy memory, Leo XIII, in his encyclical
letter on Christian marriage addressed to the
bishops of the whole world: “Take care not to
spare your efforts and authority in bringing
about that among the people committed to your
guidance that doctrine may be preserved whole
and unadulterated which Christ the Lord and
the apostles, the interpreters of the divine will,
have handed down, and which the Catholic
Church herself has religiously preserved, and
commanded to be observed by the faithful of
every age.”
110. Even the very best instruction given by
the Church, however, will not alone suffice to
bring about once more conformity of marriage
to the law of God; something more is needed in
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addition to the education of the mind, namely a
steadfast determination of the will, on the part of
husband and wife, to observe the sacred laws of
God and of nature in regard to marriage. In fine,
in spite of what others may wish to assert and
spread abroad by word of mouth or in writing,
let husband and wife resolve: to stand fast to
the commandments of God in all things that
matrimony demands; always to render to each
other the assistance of mutual love; to preserve
the honor of chastity; not to lay profane hands
on the stable nature of the bond; to use the rights
given them by marriage in a way that will be
always Christian and sacred, more especially in
the first years of wedlock, so that should there
be need of continency afterwards, custom will
have made it easier for each to preserve it. In
order that they may make this firm resolution,

keep it, and put it into practice, an oft-repeated
consideration of their state of life and a diligent
reflection on the sacrament they have received
will be of great assistance to them. Let them
constantly keep in mind that they have been
sanctified and strengthened for the duties and for
the dignity of their state by a special sacrament,
the efficacious power of which, although it does
not impress a character, is undying. To this
purpose we may ponder over the words full of
real comfort of holy Cardinal Robert Bellarmine,
who with other well-known theologians with
devout conviction thus expresses himself: “The
sacrament of matrimony can be regarded in
two ways: first, in the making, and then in its
permanent state. For it is a sacrament like to
that of the Eucharist, which not only when it is
being conferred, but also whilst it remains, is a
sacrament; for as long as the married parties are
alive, so long is their union a sacrament of Christ
and the Church.”
111. Yet in order that the grace of this
sacrament may produce its full fruit, there is
need, as we have already pointed out, of the
cooperation of the married parties; which
consists in their striving to fulfill their duties
to the best of their ability and with unwearied
effort. For just as in the natural order men must
apply the powers given them by God with their
own toil and diligence that these may exercise
their full vigor, failing which, no profit is gained,
so also men must diligently and unceasingly
use the powers given them by the grace which
is laid up in the soul by this sacrament. Let
not, then, those who are joined in matrimony
neglect the grace of the sacrament which is in
them; for, in applying themselves to the careful
observance, however laborious, of their duties
they will find the power of that grace becoming
more effectual as time goes on. And if ever they
should feel themselves to be overburdened by
the hardships of their condition of life, let them
not lose courage, but rather let them regard in
some measure as addressed to them that which
St. Paul the Apostle wrote to his beloved disciple
Timothy regarding the sacrament of holy Orders
when the disciple was dejected through hardship
and insults: “I admonish thee that thou stir up
the grace which is in thee by the imposition of

Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (31 May
1857 – 10 February 1939), reigned from 6 February 1922 to
his death in 1939.
Pope Pius XI issued numerous encyclicals, including
Quadragesimo Anno on the 40th anniversary of Pope Leo
XIII’s groundbreaking social encyclical Rerum Novarum
(highlighting the capitalistic greed of international finance
and social justice issues), and Quas Primas, establishing the
feast of Christ the King. The encyclical Studiorum Ducem,
promulgated 29 June 1923, was written on the occasion of
the 6th centenary of the canonization of Thomas Aquinas,
whose thought is acclaimed as central to Catholic philosophy
and theology. The encyclical also singles out the Pontifical
University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum, as the
pre-eminent institution for the teaching of Aquinas. He
further issued the encyclical Casti Connubii (Of Chaste
Wedlock) in response to the Lambeth Conference of the
Anglican Church, stressing the sanctity of marriage and
prohibiting Catholics from using any form of artificial birth
control, and reaffirming the prohibition on abortion. It also
explained the authority of Church doctrine on moral matters,
and advocated that civil governments follow the lead of the
Church in this area.

my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of
fear; but of power, and of love, and of sobriety.”
112. All these things, however, Venerable
Brethren, depend in large measure on the due
preparation remote and proximate, of the
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Theme Marriage
parties for marriage. For it cannot be denied
that the basis of a happy wedlock, and the ruin
of an unhappy one, is prepared and set in the
souls of boys and girls during the period of
childhood and adolescence. There is danger that
those who before marriage sought in all things
what is theirs, who indulged even their impure
desires, will be in the married state what they
were before, that they will reap that which they
have sown; indeed, within the home there will be
sadness, lamentation, mutual contempt, strifes,
estrangements, weariness of common life, and,
worst of all, such parties will find themselves left
alone with their own unconquered passions.
113. Let, then, those who are about to enter on
married life approach that state well disposed
and well prepared so that they will be able, as
far as they can, to help each other in sustaining
the vicissitudes of life and yet more in attending
to their eternal salvation and in forming the
inner man unto the fullness of the age of Christ.
It will also help them if they behave towards
their cherished offspring as God wills: that is,
that the father be truly a father, and the mother
truly a mother; through their devout love and
unwearying care, the home, though it suffer
the want and hardship of this valley of tears,
may become for the children in its own way a
foretaste of that paradise of delight in which the
Creator placed the first men of the human race.
Thus will they be able to bring up their children
as perfect men and perfect Christians; they
will instill into them a sound understanding of
the Catholic Church, and will give them such a
disposition and love for their fatherland as duty
and gratitude demand.
114. Consequently, both those who are now
thinking of entering upon this sacred married
state, as well as those who have the charge of
educating Christian youth, should, with due
regard to the future, prepare that which is good,
obviate that which is bad, and recall those points
about which We have already spoken in Our
encyclical letter concerning education: “The
inclinations of the will, if they are bad, must be
repressed from childhood, but such as are good
must be fostered, and the mind, particularly
of children, should be imbued with doctrines
which begin with God, while the heart should be
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strengthened with the aids of divine grace, in the
absence of which, no one can curb evil desires,
nor can his discipline and formation be brought
to complete perfection by the Church. For Christ
has provided her with heavenly doctrines and
divine sacraments, that He might make her an
effectual teacher of men.”
115. To the proximate preparation of a good
married life belongs very specially the care in
choosing a partner; on that depends a great deal
whether the forthcoming marriage will be happy
or not, since one may be to the other either a
great help in leading a Christian life or a great
danger and hindrance. And so that they may not
deplore for the rest of their lives the sorrows
arising from an indiscreet marriage, those
about to enter into wedlock should carefully
deliberate in choosing the person with whom
henceforward they must live continually: they
should, in so deliberating, keep before their
minds the thought first of God and of the true
religion of Christ, then of themselves, of their
partner, of the children to come, as also of human
and civil society, for which wedlock is a fountain
head. Let them diligently pray for divine help, so
that they make their choice in accordance with
Christian prudence, not indeed led by the blind
and unrestrained impulse of lust, nor by any
desire of riches or other base influence, but by
a true and noble love and by a sincere affection
for the future partner; and then let them strive
in their married life for those ends for which the
State was constituted by God. Lastly, let them not
omit to ask the prudent advice of their parents
with regard to the partner, and let them regard
this advice in no light manner, in order that by
their mature knowledge and experience of human
affairs, they may guard against a disastrous
choice, and, on the threshold of matrimony, may
receive more abundantly the divine blessing of
the fourth commandment: “Honor thy father and
thy mother (which is the first commandment with
a promise) that it may be well with thee and thou
mayest be long-lived upon the earth.”

Male and
Female
He Created Them

by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

1

St. Thomas, in I, q. 102,
a. 4, says that Adam was
created outside the Garden
to indicate that it was not
owed to him according
to his nature, but was
something added.

2

This and succeeding
quotations are taken from
the Confraternity Douay
Rheims Bible.

In recounting God’s creation of the universe, Moses makes clear that man
is unique. For the rest of the cosmos, God merely speaks a word to bring
things into being from nothing, but man’s body He forms specially from the
slime of the earth, the adamah, and then breathes life into him with His own
breath (Gen. 2:7). And so, unlike the others, man is created in God’s image
(Gen. 1:27).
Something that naturally intrigues us about the Mosaic account, however,
is the two-stage production of the sexes. Gen. 1:27 tells us, “Male and female
he created them,” but we learn in Chapter 2 that Adam was created first,
taken into the garden,1 and given the command to tend it and not eat of the
forbidden tree. Then God immediately says, “It is not good that the man
is alone; I will make him a helper like himself” (Gen. 1:18).2 Was woman,
then, an afterthought to God’s order, a last minute addition to address an
unforeseen need? Certainly not!
We know that Adam was appointed head of the human race and was
given dominion over the creatures of the earth. To fit him for this role, God
infused clear and ample knowledge of the created order into Adam’s mind.
At the same time, Adam had no experience; as yet, he had received no
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Faith and Morals
3

Cf. Orchard, A Catholic
Commentary on Holy
Scripture, §143i. About
being alone when you are
not with your own kind, see
I, q. 31, a. 3, ad 1.

4

The City of God, bk. 13, ch.
3.

5

Cf. Pius XII, Summi
Pontificatus, Denzinger
2280.

6

Fr. Sutcliffe, S.J., in
Orchard, A Catholic
Commentary on Holy
Scripture.

7

32

Cf. Leo XIII, Arcanum
Divinae, §7: “[M]an
assumed right of dominion
over his wife, ordering her
to go about her business,
often without any just
cause; while he was himself
at liberty ‘to run headlong
with impunity into lust,
unbridled and unrestrained,
in houses of ill-fame and
amongst his female slaves,
as if the dignity of the
persons sinned with, and
not the will of the sinner,
made the guilt.’ When the
licentiousness of a husband
thus showed itself, nothing
could be more piteous than
the wife, sunk so low as
to be all but reckoned as a
means for the gratification
of passion, or for the
production of offspring.
Without any feeling of
shame, marriageable girls
were bought and sold, like
so much merchandise, and
power was sometimes given
to the father and to the
husband to inflict capital
punishment on the wife.”

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confirmation of his vast understanding from the data of the senses that
comes from living life. As yet, he had not felt the sensations of loneliness.
To this end, God brings a vast array of animals into the Garden. Adam, as
their lord, stands before them and gives to each its name. He goes through
the cattle, the birds, the beasts of the field, every last animal. But, despite,
their presence, he is still alone, because Adam “found no helper like himself”
(Gen. 2:20). He had experienced his need for the companionship of one of his
own kind. And this was the right moment for God to complete His creation of
the human species.3

The Creation of Eve
As Adam’s body was not created ex nihilo, so too Eve’s. In an action that
the Fathers always understood as being of utmost significance, God made
Eve from Adam’s own flesh. What did He wish to indicate by this?
Firstly, following the teaching of Holy Mother Church, we are to infer the
unity of the human race. All of its members come from a single source. Adam
came from God (cf. Luke 3:38), Eve came from Adam, and everyone else
has come from them, the first parents of the entire human race. “The whole
human race,” says St. Augustine, “which was to become Adam’s posterity
through the first woman, was present in the first man.” 4 Thus, we are to love
all men, not only because we share a rational nature, but also because we
have a common origin.5
We also see from this, following St. Thomas (I, q. 92, a. 2), the great dignity
given to Adam, since, as God is the principle of the whole universe, so the
first man, in likeness to God, was the principle of the whole human race.
Likewise the dignity of Eve, whom Adam fittingly names “Mother of all the
living” (Gen. 3:20).
Secondly, the taking of Eve from Adam’s side and her naming by him
indicates her dependence upon him. “The manner in which her formation is
described,” says a Catholic commentator,6 “is designed to teach that in the
institution of the family the husband and father is the natural and divinely
instituted head to whom all the other members are subordinate as good
order requires a central authority in every society.” St. Thomas remarks that
this subjection was necessary, even in the state of innocence, but was not a
servile one (I, q. 92, a. 1 ad 2). In 1 Cor. 11:9-10, St. Paul uses the episode as
a motive for women to have their head covered in church, as a sign that they
are under the authority of another.
At the same time, thirdly, it is clear that Eve, while being under Adam, is
in another sense equal to him. She is a helpmate “like himself.” While the
ancient pagan and patriarchal civilizations often degraded women, placing
them on a lower level than men,7 as if they were of a different nature, Moses
repeatedly asserts the equality of the sexes in their common species. Adam
understands that Eve is his very own flesh, “bone of my bone” (Gen. 2:23),
and gives a name to the female sex meaning “taken from man.”
A fourth inference from this scene is the perpetuity of the matrimonial
union. God designed the family unit such that man and woman are to stay
together for life, whereas this is not true for many animals. To indicate this

close union, He makes them in a sense inseparable by giving them a common
flesh. St. Thomas remarks that God fashioned Eve from Adam that he might
love her all the more and cleave to her more closely (I, q. 92, a. 2). Divorcing
himself from her would be equivalent to despising his own flesh. And, indeed,
we may wonder if the Fall would have ever happened if Adam had been with
Eve at the moment of the Satanic temptation.
Gen. 2:24 applies the union of Adam and Eve to the entire human race. It
gives a veritable definition of marriage, saying that, in it, a man leaves his
father and mother to become one in flesh with his wife. Exegetes are divided
as to whether these words were spoken by Adam or are an insertion to the
narrative by Moses. Regardless, Our Lord uses them in one of his contests
with the Pharisees in Matt. 19:5 to condemn divorce, attributing the words
to God Himself. The consequence He draws from this union in flesh brought
about by marriage is immediate, “What God has joined together, let no man
put asunder.”
Pope Leo XIII sums up these implications of this rich Genesaic passage
(Gen. 2:18-25) in his encyclical on Christian Marriage, Arcanum Dei, §5:
“We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God,
on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth,
and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion,
whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in
sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband
and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it
might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout
all futurity of time. And this union of man and woman, that it might answer
more fittingly to the infinite wise counsels of God, even from the beginning
manifested chiefly two most excellent properties—deeply sealed, as it were,
and signed upon it—namely, unity and perpetuity.”
Franz Joseph Haydn, who was a devout Catholic, dwelt long on the scene
of the meeting of Adam and Eve, and set it to beautiful music in the third
part of his oratorio Creation. The pair join together in acts of adoration and
praise of God, before turning to one another and delighting in each other’s
company and in the Paradise that God has made for them. They conclude
with a duet, singing to one another:
With thee is ev’ry joy enhanced,
with thee delight is ever new;
with thee is life incessant bliss;
thine it whole shall be.

A Symbol of Christ and His Church
Before we leave the lovely scene of the union of our first parents, and
without treating of its tragic aftermath, we must turn to the spiritual sense
for one last signification: the union of Adam and Eve as symbol of the union
of Christ and His Church. God, being master of all reality, can cause an event
at one point of time to be a type of another event that will occur far off into
the future.
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Faith and Morals
8

The City of God, bk. 22, ch.
17.

St. Augustine explains that God put Adam to sleep and took Eve from his
side as a symbol of Christ sleeping in death on the cross and, His side being
pierced, bringing forth the life of the Church, His Spouse: “[T]hat sleep of the
man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross,
was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and
these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is ‘built up.’ For
Scripture used this very word, not saying ‘He formed’ or ‘framed,’ but ‘built
her up into a woman’; whence also the apostle speaks of the edification of the
body of Christ, which is the Church.”8
In this deeper signification, upon which St. Paul elaborates in Eph. 6:2133, we see again that marriage is indissoluble. If it is impossible for Christ to
abandon His Spouse, and the union of Adam and Eve is a prefiguring of His
marriage, then the union of our first parents was also meant to be for life.

Conclusion
Just as it belongs to God to bring men into existence as their Creator, so
too it belongs to Him to establish the goals that they are to pursue, and order
them to those goals. From the very beginning, in the two-stage creation of
our first parents, He clearly indicated His design that the human race was
to propagate its kind by men and women joining together in a perpetual
union. In this sense, God alone is at the origin of marriage and has complete
ownership over it. When men enter into this divinely ordained construct
and pursue its God-given goals, they attain an end of their very nature.
When, however, they reconfigure the family to satisfy the aspirations of a
perverse independence, they necessarily destroy the humanity that has been
conferred upon them from above.

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.

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A Pastor’s Perspective

How to
Have a Happy
Marriage
by SSPX priests

This interview was given to SSPX priests
who have had extensive experience in
preparing couples for their wedding and
working out their differences during
marriage. There is little doubt that this
refresher can be a useful reminder of the
real purpose and the wonderful effects of
the vows for those who live up to them.

Marriage Preparation
What, in your opinion, are the prerequisites
of young adults who contemplate marriage?
By and large, they must be good Catholics who
understand that marriage requires self-sacrifice.
Said otherwise, they need to be responsible and
take fidelity and their potential children seriously.

Concretely, I would suggest the following four
points in ascending order of importance:
1. The physical preparation—that’s hardly worth
mentioning, it happens all by itself, normally at
an age far removed from a reasonable age for
marriage!
2. The financial preparation—when the couple
marry they don’t need to be able to support a
family of ten children (unless a man marries a
widow with ten children!) but they do need to
have a reasonable financial plan.
3. The emotional preparation—there is a certain
level of maturity needful for this sacred state
of sacrificial love. They must be unselfish, that
is, love the other more than themselves.
4. The spiritual preparation—far too many lose
sight of the fact that marriage is a sacred state
instituted by God for the sanctification of men.
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Christian Culture
This lack of understanding hobbles a couple,
resulting in a number of problems that could be
easily overcome if they worked with God’s grace.

At the least difficulty, they will give up Church
practice and, with the loss of sacramental life,
comes inexorably the decline.

What are the duties of the Pastor towards
these young adults arriving at the marital age?
Obviously, the preparation for marriage cannot
begin when the couple approaches the priest
to “start the classes.” There must be sermons,
catechism classes, perhaps even youth groups
where they can receive formation before the
choice of a spouse is even contemplated. Even
more remotely, we priests should strive to form the
parents of the future spouses so that they can form
their children properly from a very young age.
More proximate preparation will include the
pre-marriage conferences wherein the pastor
should stress the beauty and grandeur of this
state of life stemming from the fact that it is
a symbol of the bond uniting Christ and the
Church.

There is often the complaint that the
Pastors in the SSPX offer little by way
of formation of young adults. What do
you have to say about this?
The problem is not with the priests, I don’t
think, but with the world in which they live.
The young people today are all “plugged-in”
to something: the phone, computers, Internet,
music. We preach on the primacy of the spiritual
life, but we have difficulty competing with the
world’s influence. How long do they listen to us?
How can twenty minutes of the Sunday sermon
and another five in confession fare with all the
Internet sites they peruse, the movies and TV
shows they watch?

In your long years of practice, have you
noticed a progress or decline in the formation,
understanding, and sense of responsibility of
married life among the young adults?
In general, there has been a gradual lessening
of fervor among our long-time faithful which
infects all areas including marriage and
marriage-readiness. The decline of maturity
is rooted in an overwhelming materialist
atmosphere. This atmosphere breeds selfish men
like flies. They want instant gratification, video
games and pleasure at their finger tips.
Against this bleak background, we can still
say that, in our traditional circles, there has been
an increase of understanding, due to their being
raised in our parishes, attending our schools,
following our retreats, etc. Moreover, newcomers
to Tradition are often much more fervent in
wanting to do the right thing, even if they may be
less informed about what it is.
But, generally speaking, there’s little hope for
those raised in the Novus Ordo or away from
Tradition. They simply have no understanding
of the duties of married life, especially on
raising a Catholic family. I also notice a lack of
perseverance in the conversion of those who
become Catholic on the occasion of the marriage.
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Is the choice of a fiancé(e) the
first question to be raised?
It is a pity that most envisage marriage as the
only thing up the road. Most launch into it as if
there were no other higher option to which God
could call them and miss the graces attached to
their proper state in life.
What, in your opinion, could be done
to better insure the proper choice
of a companion for life?
First, parents educated in and living the Faith
are of paramount importance. If young people are
sure that they are destined for marriage, before
they start “going steady” with someone, I would
advise them to choose their partner from the
Communion rail—someone whom they regard
as better than themselves. I instill in their minds
the troubles which usually accompany mixed
marriages. If this is emphasized in their high
school years, there is much less chance that they
will come to us asking to marry a non-Catholic.
What is to be advised for living a
courtship profitable for their perseverance
in the married state?
Once the partner is properly chosen, let
them come and see me quickly. I will then offer

spiritual counseling and tips about their potential
drawbacks and incompatibility, which might save
them much future heartache. I also teach them
the need for chaste dating, which will so much
affect their mutual respect later on, and I make
sure that they are faithful to the Sacraments.
After the wedding, I like to see them stay
involved around the parish: these young adults
are often great examples for others. I would also
ask how things are going and offer to give them
further time or even further instructions if need
be. I was once asked to continue the instructions
after a marriage, which was most edifying for me.
What marriage instructions do you always
give before the wedding? How important are
these for redressing romantic or
worldly views of marital life?
Aside from prayer, the Mass and sacraments,
marriage preparation is one thing we do which
has the most potential to bring about positive
change for the future of the Church. Most societal
problems—and very many Church problems—
have their root in children’s malformation: never
being told no, for example, and never being
inspired to strive for excellence whatever it
costs! Helping young people to get ready to be
the spouses and parents God wants them to be
increases our chances of restoring all things in
Christ very substantially.
One such preparation experience really
stands out for me: It was a young couple who
had, unusually, a great desire to read and study
and to ask questions and clarifications in the
marriage conferences. I could see them getting
more serious as the months went by, and, without
trying to canonize them, I do think that they have
made a very good start to their marriage and
family life. The gratifying cases make the normal,
more difficult ones, easier to take.

Guidance and Counseling
How do you define marriage guidance
from the viewpoint of the Pastor?
Marriage guidance is more akin to group
spiritual direction than marriage counseling:
listening to them, praying with them, and
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Christian Culture
trying to help them determine the will of
God and how to carry it out, first of all by the
necessary supernatural means: the sacraments
(especially calling upon the sacramental grace
of matrimony), prayer, sacrifice, cultivating true
charity which is protected by mutual respect and
kindness. Guidance offers also a supernatural
vision of God’s will for them precisely in their
roles as husband and wife, father and mother.
I would say that marriage counseling would
keep much more to the natural level: techniques
to avoid fights and de-escalate conflict and the
natural aspects of the supernatural principles
listed above.
Do the partners usually knock at your door
when it is too late?
Most of the time, I would say that those
formed by us come for help too soon! Rather
than learning to carry the cross, they tend to
want the priest to wave a magic wand and “fix it.”
They come to us first before they start seeing a
professional counselor.
In my experience, most of the problems come
from people not formed for marriage in Tradition,
and so it is true to say that they come for help too
late, after having already learned horrible habits
and suffering from years of malformation—this
is not to say that some of our own confreres

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are guiltless in this regard. I said to a couple
one time: “You want me to solve in 25 minutes a
problem which has lasted 25 years!”
Would you say that men are usually
more reluctant to involve the priest
in a crisis situation?
Sometimes—rarely, thank heaven—it’s
because they no longer care. Other times it’s out
of a false sense of shame; a reluctance to admit
they have failed to keep their families on track.
Other times it’s because they fear the meeting
with the priest will turn into a session in which
they are continually bashed and put down. A lot
of men—and women—assume the bulk of the
problem lies with the husband. One does not have
to look far to understand why. Television has
consistently disseminated certain lies: men are
stupid, women are smart; men are irresponsible,
women are responsible; men cannot be faithful,
women are practically without temptation in this
regard; men are clueless when it comes to family
life, only women can properly run a household.
We must not be deluded into thinking that these
lies benefit only the side of women taking control.
It opens the door wide for men to shirk their
responsibilities. A lot of men figure, since they’re
not expected to be responsible, why bother? Why
not be self-centered and selfish?

Often, the wife runs to the priest right away,
and the priest may be prejudiced against the
husband’s side of the story. This is why, before
seeing them together, I insist on seeing each
spouse separately while the other is praying in
the chapel or looking at books in the bookstore.
How could this distance from
priestly guidance be shortened?
One way is to suggest that troubled couples
get guidance when the warning signs start to
appear in confession. Another would be to advise
couples preparing for marriage that there will be
problems and that there is no shame in seeking
counsel. Follow-up conferences on marriage and
family life can also be of assistance. Regarding
the conferences, though, it is sadly the case that
very often those who need such conferences most
are the very ones who absent themselves.

Pitfalls to Be Avoided
What makes families
vulnerable in today’s world?
They are vulnerable to the extent that they
are not committed to living the Faith with the
balance needed to avoid falling into the opposite
extremes of worldliness and proud pietism. They
have original sin’s effects just like everyone else.
And what are the causes of troubles? They are
the wounds of original sin and of their own sins,
a certain “formalism” about the Faith which I call
“card-punch Catholicism,” and ultimately the lack
of a deep spiritual life which would ground them
in the supernatural and keep them balanced.
Does this apply in the same degree
to our traditional families?
Our families are a little less vulnerable, but
not much. The sacraments and a good spiritual
life can help keep them on the right path, but the
influence of the world is so great—especially the
Internet. They follow too easily the deadly trends:
porn, contraception, alcoholism and gambling. In
recent years, pornography (for men) and social
media (for women) have increased selfishness
and vanity, which is egocentric—when marriage
is the opposite. In marriage, one cannot be

egocentric, but must first think of one’s partner.
Many of our traditional families are lacking a
serious spiritual life with regular frequentation of
the sacraments.
And what are the causes of troubles
on the part of the husband first?
Husbands can be inattentive for various
reasons. Selfishness is one reason. Sometimes
one finds a husband that wants nothing more
than to pursue his own interests, leaving the
wife at home to cook, clean and other. Often,
young men especially need to be reminded that
after they are married they are no longer free
to live the life of a bachelor. Basketball with the
guys five nights a week is no longer an option.
Another reason lies in simply not knowing how
to communicate with their spouse; not knowing
how to make her feel loved. Although this stymies
a relationship, the saddest thing is that it’s easily
corrected. Many couples never correct it.
And what are the causes of
troubles on the part of the wife?
There tends to be an exaggerated focus on
the children. It isn’t hard to see where this error
originates. The primary purpose of matrimony
is children, hence many conclude that when
children arrive the bulk of their attention must
go to the children, to the detriment of the spousal
relationship. This results in the couple growing
apart and the children developing an entitlement
mentality. Parents must realize that the time they
spend fostering their own relationship—the only
one in the house that is sacramental—they are
not depriving their children of anything. They
are, in fact, providing their children with a stable
home environment. For the home to be stable
Mom and Dad have to be on track.
What occurs all too often when one
marries a non-traditional partner?
They usually stop going to our Mass centers. As
a “compromise” they will attend the Fraternity of
St. Peter, or a Latin Mass in the archdiocese. Soon
they are away from the family rosary and other
devotions; their children attend public schools.
The Faith has become for them just a Sunday
obligation. They are not living the Faith.
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Christian Culture
Could you advise the reading of some
books which could help build their marriage
and family, and help discern the symptoms
of incoming problems?
There are a number of good books on the
subject. If parents get one really good idea
from a book, it was probably worthwhile. I
do recommend that parents—and people in
general—read consistently. If a person reads
just ten pages a day from a book, that will help
them improve in some way. That translates into
between 15 and 20 books per year. Here are some
such books: Beginning Your Marriage, Cana
Is Forever, Three to Get Married, The Catholic
Marriage Manual (by Rev. George Kelly). Also,
from the natural standpoint: Men Are from
Mars, Women Are from Venus, Fighting for
Your Marriage, The 5 Love Languages, by
Gary Chapman. This last book, whatever its
flaws, has helped a lot of couples improve their
communication issues.
Could you cite examples of positive
outcomes of talking with the priest?
One may tend to be pessimistic as they are
often not really interested in following the advice
I give, even though I try to convince them very
kindly. They want the priest to “fix it” or at least
side with one over the other. But, in and of itself,
talking to the priest can motivate people to
things they often would not do otherwise. The
very knowledge that on such and such a day one
has an appointment with Father and will have to
make a progress report can be very motivating,
indeed. Father becomes the accountability
person.
Is this the only ‘positive’ example
you might offer us?
Here is a positive experience. I did find this
highly educated wife with four young children,
who came to me after having left her husband
for three or four years. She was willing to talk
to me, separately and then with her husband,
basically to announce that she had decided to
file for divorce, that she had the Okay from her
priestly Novus Ordo uncles, and that the dice
had already been cast! The conversation with
both rolled over their differences and issues, and
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I requested that her husband seek a therapist.
A week later, I heard that she had gotten the
divorce papers and that it was all over! I never
saw so clearly someone making the one fatal
decision in life. Yet, lo and behold! A month later,
they were not only on speaking terms but on the
road to recovery, and I certainly had people pray
that they may both revert to their state in life, the
cross God gave them for their own salvation!
How much does the official Church
mentality (the ease in having Catholic
marriages declared null) have an impact
on our own traditional marriages?
Quite a lot! The ones with any intelligence
know that if we married them, they can always
“get out of it” if things get bad by going to the
diocese for an annulment. Knowing that the door
is open is extremely harmful when things get
tough and the temptation to run is great.
How can one instill the concept of
‘indissolubility’ on a contract when all society
and social behavior is so unstable?
It is important to first stress the need for
personal accountability. People often look for
a way out because shirking responsibility and
blaming others has become the modern way of
life. I really emphasize this in the first class we
have: Marriage is until death. It matters not if a
judge, a lawyer, a bishop, or even the pope says
“you’re not married” because “What God has
joined together, no man can put asunder.” I think
if they go into their marriage fully understanding
that there’s no way out, they won’t look for a way
out, but they’ll work to fix it.

Final Questions
Could you give one of the best cases you
relish in preparing souls for marriage?
I often use the example of a couple I married
years ago. The man was not Catholic. He worked
with this traditional Catholic girl and loved the
way she conducted herself. He asked her out, and
she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t date non-Catholics
since dating is meant to lead to marriage, and
I cannot marry a non-Catholic.” Well, he was

so impressed by her that he came to see me for
instructions. I said, “Just because you become
Catholic doesn’t mean she’ll go out with you.”
He said, “I know, but I am convinced that the
Catholic Faith is the true Faith because of the
way she is.”
To be brief: he became Catholic. She did go out
with him and fell in love with him and accepted
his marriage proposal. But when it came time to
marry, he was the most nervous person I have
ever seen! I said, “But you have loved her since
you first met her. How could you doubt that she’s
the one?” He said, “It’s not her that I doubt, but
myself. I don’t know if I will be a good enough
husband for her.” That humility and unselfishness
was what made him a good husband. On her part,
it was her strength as a Catholic that drew him
to the Faith, and I’m sure enabled her to pass on
the Faith to her children. Last I heard, they have
a big family and a happy marriage in one of the
principal SSPX parishes.
Any other cases you might remember?
Here are another couple of cases. I remember
having given convert classes to two Protestant
ladies whose fiancés did not seem too serious
about their commitment. They took to the faith
like a duck to water. Afterward, they were the
ones to put pressure on their husband and make
sure that they would live up to their family
responsibilities. To the first one, I mentioned that,
as she received her first communion, she could
ask for anything and God would grant it to her.
She came after and revealed to me that she had
asked God to preserve her from committing any
mortal sin!
Have you any opposite experience of offi­ci­
ating at a wedding that did not turn out well?
When I first came out of the seminary I did not
have the necessary experience. I knew this young
man was simply going through the motions. But
I didn’t stop it. They had the marriage annulled
in a year! Sadly, this happened more than once.
I think (perhaps) marriage instructions should
be given by priests with at least several years
experience. Those first few years, we can be
intimidated by the families or even by the couple
that we have to marry them. I should have simply

told them, “No, I cannot in conscience perform
this marriage.” But I think our young priests
today are stronger in this area than I was.
Any other type of the worst case scenario?
It was the convalidation of a civil marriage
where they just wanted to “get it done.” They
did act pretty heroically in order to separate
before the marriage, but it was pretty clear that
they weren’t really listening or accepting the
formation I was trying to give. They separated
within six months after a horrible fight during
which he beat her. To top it off, he told the police
that I had told him it was permitted to beat her
if she refused the marriage debt! I was even
nervous about being in trouble with the police
as an accomplice to assault and battery! He had
clearly only heard what he wanted to hear in the
marriage instructions, since I did explain the
obligation of the marriage debt and its limits, but
of course it was very clear that spousal abuse
was not allowed…
Would you give some final words of wisdom
to young adults preparing to wear the ring?
Start thinking and praying about what to do
in life very early on. If it is clear that there is
no vocation, start reading and studying about
marriage; go on retreat; get established in a
career; get or stay out of debt and start saving
money to start a family; go to places (ordination,
etc.) where it is possible to meet a serious
Catholic spouse; talk to successful married
people and to your pastor about what to do to get
ready for a successful marriage. Strive to develop
the qualities of good spouses and parents through
reading, instruction, advice, and observation
of those who do it well! Don’t just run into a
marriage because you’re old enough to do so!
Would you give some final words of
wisdom to younger priests preparing
couples for marriage?
Stress the need to think with the Church!
Stress the beauty of the sacred symbolism of the
unity between Christ and the Church. Stress the
need to make Christ the King and center of the
home from their wedding day!

41

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

“It is true; a bond can at times
constitute a burden, a slavery,
like the chains which bind
the prisoner. But it can also
be a powerful aid and a sure
guarantee, like the rope which
binds the alpine climber to his
companion during the ascent,
or the ligaments which unite the
parts of the human body, making
its movements free and easy.
This is clearly the case with the
indissoluble bond of marriage.”
Pope Pius XII, Audience with newlywed
couples on April 22, 1942
Picture: Celebration of a marriage in St. Joseph’s Church,
Brussels

Christian Culture

Commencement Address, Notre Dame
de LaSalette Academy, 2014

A Magnanimous
Man!
by Brian McCall, J.D.

Reverend Father McMahon, Reverend Fathers,
Holy Religious, Esteemed Faculty, Parents,
Family, Friends, Benefactors, and boys, about
to become young men, of the graduating class of
2014, I am truly honored to address you today. I
have not come here today to teach you. The time
for teaching you on this hallowed ground has
come to an end. All I can do in these final few
moments of your precious time here is to attempt
to distill for you the essence of this esteemed
institution. I hope to pull together the threads of
what you have been doing here these past few
years, to summarize why it is that your parents
have made such heroic sacrifices, of which I am
deeply aware, to give you the great gift of a La
Salette formation.
What then is the essence of La Salette? To
know the essence of something is to know it
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for what it is—to know it through its causes.
Simply put, the essence of La Salette, known
through its final cause, is to form young men. You
entered the doors of the chapel in September of
2010 boys and you will process out the doors of
this Coliseum men, albeit young men. This final
cause of La Salette is what makes her a sign of
contradiction to our world. Although there are
still a small number of institutions who school
only males, these few do not form men. There is
a significant difference between simply being a
male and being a man.
What does it mean to be a Man? Shakespeare
places these words on the lips of his character
Hamlet: “What a piece of work is a man! How
noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form
and moving how express and admirable! In action
how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a

god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of
animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence
of dust? Man delights not me.”
Hamlet poetically captures the position of Man
as a creature between purely spiritual and purely
corporeal beings. In his highest faculties Man
is capable of rising to the level of angelic action
and participating in the very nature of God. Yet,
although capable of the operations of an angel
and the apprehension of God, rather than rising
to the height of his potency, Man can also be
drawn down to the level of the brutes. He can
sink to the dust of the unmanly family members
who disgust Hamlet. To form a Man is
to educate him to apprehend like
God, to rise to his highest
faculty.
St. Thomas more
philosophically defines
the divinely established
end of Man when
he teaches that the
common good of Man
is his “proper virtue”
or “that which makes
its subject [Man] good.”
The common origin of
the Latin words for Man
(Vir) and Virtue (Virtus)
demonstrates that even the
pagan Romans understood this
inextricable connection between
Man and the call to virtue. Simply stated,
a true Man is he who is virtuous.
This common end of Man found in virtue
consists in that tranquility of order (tranquillitas
ordinis) spoken of by St. Augustine and St.
Thomas. St. Augustine defines it thus: “Peace
between man and God is the well-ordered
obedience of faith to eternal law. Peace between
man and man is well-ordered concord.”
Things can only be well ordered by reason.
Doing so requires obedience to Eternal Law,
which St. Thomas defines, in part, as nothing
other than the Divine Reason (ratio) directing
all things to their due end. This action involves
both intellect and will. It is the power of the will
directing according to the power of the intellect.
The tension in such is between ordering which

consists in a power or strength (again virtus
connotes not only virtue but strength or power)
rationally directed to a due end. Hence tranquility
of order requires both strength and peaceful
concord, both intellectual and moral virtues. One
without the other deflects Man from his true end
and results not in a Man but a deformation of
Man. Peace can only be if it is rightly ordered.
These facsimiles of Men malformed by the
World today emerge by emphasizing one of these
components over the other. One facsimile of a
Man is produced by directing males to peace
without the strength found in obedience to
Eternal Law. This produces the effeminates so
prevalent all around us. These hollow
men, whom T.S. Elliot lamented a
century ago, seek peace at any
price. These Chamberlains
abandon the powerful
strength of obedience to the
Eternal Law chasing after
an elusive false peace.
They are blown about by
the winds of time, not
fixed to anything real but
in a false hope of concord
flitter through history. They
have invaded the Church
and seek to make disordered
peace between the Church and
the World, between the princes
of the Church and the Prince of this
World, between vice and virtue, and ultimately
between God and the devil. These Churchmen
seek to transform your beloved motto: Contra
hostes tuos into Cum hostibus tuis, neglecting
the reality that a Man cannot be cum hostibus
tuis until the hostes become fili tui and thereby
Fratres nostri.
When the world does not turn males into
effeminates it perverts the balance towards the
power and strength of order. In so doing they
pervert authority into the authoritarian. They
deform strength into brute force, drawing these
males down to the level of brute beasts (the
dust which disgusts Hamlet). This unbridled,
disordered authoritarian force produced the
bloodiest century in the history of the world,
a century in which males reduced to beasts
45

Christian Culture

46

legally killed babies in their mother’s wombs,
a century in which millions of people were
exterminated in an interminable series of wars.
This accentuation of power and authoritarian
strength is why the streets of our cities are no
longer safe to walk and why totalitarian brutes
have usurped the good of government across the
globe.
Unlike the malfunctioning institutions referred
to as schools, the La Salette formation cultivates
both halves of the balance of the tranquility of
order. Strength and power are required to direct
to an end. Forceful strength is cultivated through
active and consistent training. Aristotle and Plato
recognized thousands of years ago that one could
not come to understand virtue through dialectic
unless one lived virtuously, at least to some
extent. One must practice virtue to understand
it. For this reason all your powers—physical,
intellectual, and spiritual—have been trained
by being tested and pushed to what seemed to

which you had to defend every statement you
uttered. Your intellect was pushed when you
were on this hot seat so that you probably felt
you wished the floor could swallow you. This is
why your history teachers forced your mind to
remember what color the Tiber flows or which
of Henry VIII’s “wives” were “married” by proxy
or why your literature teacher quizzed you
on the type of car Julia drove in Brideshead
Revisited. Spiritually you were challenged every
early morning to push your spiritual faculties
to make the most challenging act of all prayer,
mental prayer. You cultivated the spiritual power
to tame your tongue during silent recollections.
Finally before commencing this final year, you
took up the challenge of St. Ignatius across the
centuries to make the Spiritual Exercises on
your retreat at Ridgefield. All of these strengthbuilding experiences pushed your faculties to the
limits and have formed physical, intellectual, and
spiritual power.

be their limits. This is why you were pushed to
survive Father McMahon P.E.s. Then just when
you thought your body could not be pushed any
more physically, Mr. Schelstrate appeared to
challenge you even more. Intellectually, this is
why your Latin teacher pushed you to master
the uses of the passive periphrastic (which you
would have needed to utilize in translating my
greeting to you). This is why you were required
to pass oral examinations in religion, during

Yet, this power has been formed in concert
with the formation of orderly concord.
Tranquility comes from things being in their
proper place, from doing what one should be
doing at the right time and place, and ultimately
from being ordered to one’s due end. This is the
consistent commitment to our duty of state so
eloquently spoken of in Father Sick’s sermon at
the Solemn Mass this morning. Examples from
the lives of the saints illustrate this harmonious

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commitment to doing what one should when one
should. I have heard similar stories associated
with many saints, but I will relate one in the life
of St. Gerard. One day at recreation his turn came
in the game the religious were playing. He was
asked what he would do at that moment if he
knew he were about to die. He replied he would
take his turn at the game because that is what he
was supposed to be doing at that very moment.
That is the essence of the tranquility of order.
To form this tranquility is why you have moved
through a hierarchical progression of assigned
jobs. Whether it was washing dishes or shoveling
snow or mopping out the Fieldhouse basement
which flooded yet again, you were practicing
this well-ordered harmony by doing your duty.
This is why you have learned the answer to the
literary question and discovered it was you for
whom the bell tolls. This is why you followed a
schedule that accounted for every hour, waking
or sleeping, of your day. This devotion to your

The Class of 2014 at La Salette
Academy

Students’ time to relax

duty of state has formed a concord between you
and God and among yourselves. This harmony
of order produces a serenity that is palpable to
anyone who sets foot on this sacred campus.
Every time I have come to La Salette this
serenity is immediately a salve to a soul normally
dwelling in the disordered, discordant world out
there. I observed it; I felt it just yesterday upon
arrival while sitting quietly on the porch of the
Golightlys’ sipping peach tea. As I looked out
across the campus I saw boys scurrying about
setting up for the play and graduation. Yet they
moved with a serenity that was unmistakable.
It would be inconceivable to the world that a
campus of over eighty boys could be so quiet.
It is the quietness of an ordered harmony. This
serenity of La Salette is the essence of the wellordered life.
Now that you have received this great
formation, this perfect balance of strength and
tranquility, what comes next? The external

Christian Culture
must from now on become internal. Starting
tomorrow there will be no bell for you; you must
be your own bell. Father McMahon will not be
posting a schedule for you. You must make your
own schedule that lives this tranquility of order
formed within you. You must maintain the vigor
of this well-ordered strength amidst a disordered
world of effeminates and brutes. Do not permit
your newly formed powers, obtained at such a
great price by your parents, to atrophy.
You are about to become young men, but this
is not the end but merely the beginning. Man,
in this life, always both is and is becoming.
This is the answer to the ancient question of
the Greek philosophers: are things always the
same or always becoming. For finite creatures,
the reality of potency and act solves the riddle.
Man always is what he is but always becoming
something else, either the perfection of what he
is or its degeneration. After this ceremony you
will be Men; from that moment you must become

Magnanimous Men. We have discussed what is a
Man. What is a Magnanimous Man?
St. Thomas explains that “Magnanimity
by its very name denotes stretching forth of
the mind to great things. [A] man is said to be
magnanimous chiefly because he is minded to do
some great act.” You must now stretch forth your
well-ordered strength to do great things. What
is the great act you are called to stretch forth to
perform? It is to be a Man amidst the effeminates
and beasts of our world. The accidentals of this
great act will vary for each of you. Some of you
may be called to be a Magnanimous Man by being
sent as a missionary to the Philippines, following
in the footsteps of Father McMahon. Others may
be missionaries to the pagan land here at home.
Still others may be called to be religious brothers
tilling the field so that it may be fruitfully sown
by the priests. Others may be called magna­
ni­mously to be fathers of Catholic families, to
beget and rear Men for the future. Some of you

may be called to reclaim the professions from
the malformed males dominating them. Perhaps
some of you will become doctors to practice the
art of medicine subject to the science of ethics.
Others may be called to be lawyers or to reclaim
the good of government so perverted in our time
by re-subjecting human law to the natural and
divine law. Some of you may be called to master
the crafts disappearing from history. Although
we live in an Athanasian time when they have the
buildings but we have the Faith, someday we will
have the buildings too. We will then need master
craftsmen to reverse the reckovations of the
buildings by beasts directed by the effeminates
seeking to make peace with the ungodly. Stone
masons, carpenters, and other craftsmen will
need to restore the sanctuaries to be fitting
homes for Christ the King.
Whatever the details of your calling, you have
been formed to fulfill your duty as Magnanimous
Men formed in the tranquility of order. As you go

forth remember that behind every Magnanimous
Man there first was a mother. I am reminded
of the story of Pope St. Pius X. Following his
episcopal consecration he showed his ring to
his mother. She holding up her wedding ring
reminded him that before he could have that ring
she had this one. You go forth with two mothers
who have come first—your natural mother and
the mother of your formation here, Notre Dame
de La Salette. Do not forget she is behind you as
you go forth to confront her enemies. She will
always be there behind you. As your natural
mothers have learned these past four years,
sending you forth does not bring you further
from her but rather closer. Notre Dame de La
Salette will grow ever closer to you the further
forth you stretch your soul toward greatness. My
challenge to you today is to make her proud of
you! Stretch forth and be minded to perform your
great act! Be a Man! Be a Magnanimous Man!

Christian Culture

Innocent III,
Marriage,
and Militant
Christendom
by Dr. John Rao

For the popular mind, no pope symbolizes the majesty and glory of the
Roman Catholic Church at its height more than Lothario dei Conti di Segni.
Born around 1160, the future Innocent III was educated in Rome, Bologna, and
Paris. Cardinal Deacon at the age of twenty-nine, he became Supreme Pontiff
a mere decade later, while still under that of forty (1198-1216). Caricatured
by enemies of the Faith as a purely secular-minded “lord of the world” (See
Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World, ed. James M. Powell,
Catholic University, 1994), presiding over a power-hungry Catholic political
machine with an admittedly great energy and efficiency, Innocent III was
actually an icon of the entire spiritually-focused reform movement of the High
Middle Ages. It was transformation of all things in Christ that was his primary
concern, and he underlined this theme in writing with reference to the topic of
central importance to this issue of The Angelus: marriage.
One cannot look to the pope’s most famous work, On the Misery of the
Human Condition, for proof of my point. Innocent intended to complement
this “negative” text with another “positive” volume that he never had a
chance to finish: On the Dignity of Human Nature. In any case, a much more
complete guide to the spirit of Innocent’s thought can be found in his Fourfold
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Character of Marriage.
For Innocent, all of life is symbolized by
marriage. In this book, he shows that (1) the
marriage of man and wife is one of the glorious,
sacramental tools raising the individual to eternal
life with a God (2) who is married to the just soul
because of (3) the marriage of the Logos with
human nature and (4) of Christ with His Church.
Through these marriages, the fruitful, sublime,
corrective, transforming union of nature and the
supernatural can take place and have its intended
effect upon the world.
Unfortunately, however, and precisely because
of the “misery of the human condition” after the
sin of Adam, the task of making all such marriages
truly “fruitful” in their consequences requires

a great deal of difficult and humbling effort on
our part. Innocent, as pastor, always reflected a
practical—and often quite humorous—awareness
of the number and strength of the stumbling
blocks rendering fallen man’s labors towards
fulfillment of the exalted goals of the fourfold
union somewhat less than satisfactory. What
angered him was any sign of outright rejection
of the truth that everyone, and in every sphere of
life, was capable of successful accomplishment
of this arduous climb up Mount Tabor to ensure
his transformation in Christ. Such rejection was
an insult to the unlimited consequences of the
marriage of the Logos with human nature in a
world that was meant to serve as our pilgrim route
to eternal life with the Trinity.

Pope Innocent (1161-1261) was central in supporting the Catholic Church’s reforms of ecclesiastical affairs through his decretals
and the Fourth Lateran Council. This resulted in a considerable refinement of Western canon law.

Two particular practical influences on
Innocent’s firm commitment to stimulate the
multiplication of marriage and its fruitfulness in
all its forms must especially be addressed.
One of these came from Peter Cantor (d.
1197), one of his teachers in Paris. Cantor
underscored the importance of developing
pastoral strategies appropriately proportioned

to the different character of each specific human
activity. He recognized the need to expand upon
the approach taken by the tenth- and eleventhcentury monks of Cluny—in many respects, the
“founders” of the medieval reform movement.
Just as the Cluniacs aimed to tame the lawless
soldiers of the age (whom they referred to as the
malitia rather than the militia) by showing
51

Christian Culture
what the “marriage” of their specific military
activity to Christ should really mean, good
shepherds must learn how to “marry” every other
human activity shaping the daily lives of men and
women in their own unique ways to the Incarnate
Word and make them spiritually fruitful.
It was the second influence on Innocent that
confirmed his conviction that the task of making
the manifold consequences of such variegated
types of marriage fruitful had to be an intensely
militant one—that which came from the
Crusading Movement. Medieval Christian culture
might have taken on a different flavor if bakers
had been the initial problem for Cluniac monks
rather than the malitia. As it was, however, once
the redirection of the soldier’s martial vocation
to proper Christian goals became the first object
of the reformers’ attention, it was inevitable that
a certain military “feel” would serve as a model
for similar endeavors in other spheres of life,
working smoothly together with the basic human
sense of being engaged in a battle for daily
survival.
Now the Crusading Movement was in a bad
state when Innocent took over as Supreme
Pontiff. Despite the labors of the Holy Roman
Emperor and the Kings of France and England in
the Third Crusade, Jerusalem was still in infidel
hands. Worse still, the Fourth Crusade had led to
a downright criminal assault on fellow believers
in Zara and Constantinople. If external crusading
against the infidel were not succeeding, Innocent
thought that it must be because Christians were
not correcting those sins in their daily lives
that prevented fruitful marriage of their souls
with God; a correction that the marriage of
the Word and nature made efficacious through
that of Christ with His Church. This left them
spiritually “asleep” in a wretched, uncorrected
natural condition rendering them unworthy
of success in any of their endeavors. Victory
in the external crusade for the defense of the
Holy Land was therefore intimately connected
with victory in an internal European crusade
against the individual sins preventing the
transforming marriage from becoming fruitful. If
sham Christians—both among the fighting men
abroad and that vast majority of believers who
remained at home—could honestly be turned into
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true Catholics, then the success of the external
Crusade would perhaps be guaranteed. Victory in
such an internal conflict could only be achieved
by intensifying an awareness of the primacy of
the spirit in every vocation in life, not just that
of soldiering. Peter Cantor’s variegated pastoral
approach had to have a sword in its hand.
Innocent’s entire pontificate must be seen
from the perspective of a militant, disciplined,
and highly nuanced pastoral effort to ensure the
fruitful marriage of souls with God, a project
always intimately connected with the other three
forms of marital union. It was this that dictated
his exalted sense of the role of the pope as a
figure peculiarly “married” to the Incarnate Word.
It was this that stimulated his paternal concern
for the rest of the Catholic clergy, “married” to
their dioceses and their parishes. It was this that
caused him to call the Fourth Lateran Council in
1215, the most important of the medieval councils
for the practical work of “marrying” individuals
and societies in which they lived to God.
It was also this that opened Innocent’s mind to
every innovative pastoral endeavor that proved
itself to be effective in ensuring an increase in
the number of marriages of souls with God—
with the intellectual work of the Universities of
Paris and Bologna marrying men’s minds with
heaven, and the hands on “marital guidance” of
the mendicant Franciscans and Dominicans on
every level of human endeavor at the top of the
list. And given his crusading mentality, it was
hardly a wonder that scholarly battles inside the
university got so intense; or that St. Francis of
Assisi (1181-1226) could adopt the language of a
crusading knight committed to deeds of derringdo on behalf of his Lady, Apostolic Poverty, or
that of a chivalric soldier on mission to Egypt
to convert the Sultan; or that St. Dominic (11701221) and his followers would go on militant
attack against Catharist Albigensians who denied
that transformation in Christ was possible at all.
Despite what his detractors say, our so-called
“Lord of the World” was never interested in
political sovereignty over any place other than
the Papal States. The “sovereignty” he sought
was as Vicar of Christ standing guard against
anything blocking marriage of the soul with God.
Once again, his work in this regard was what

our hopelessly parochial contemporaries would
probably call “modern” because of its tenderness
and nuance—hence, his concern for the poor
tormented more and more by usury in an ever
more complex medieval economic society.
Sometimes dedication to an exalted theme—
such as the marriage of souls with God—can
cause a person to be rather casual with respect
to its literal meaning. This was not true for
Innocent. Concerned with marriage in three other
senses though he was, his serious treatment of
the ordinary marriage of a man with a woman
was always just as vigorous. As one might expect,
such concerns could take Innocent down highly
nuanced pastoral pathways, as this bull of April
29, 1198, indicating his dedication, as “marital
matchmaker,” to the plight of ladies of ill repute
well illustrates:
“Among the works of charity that the authority
of Holy Scripture proposes to us, there is one of
real importance, which consists in correcting
him who wanders on the road of error. Thus, it is
necessary to ask women who live voluptuously
and permit anyone indifferently and without
concern to have relations with them to contract a
legitimate marriage in order to live chastely. With
this thought, we decide by the authority of these
presents that all who will rescue public women
from brothels and marry them will be doing an
act which will be useful for the remission of their
sins.” (Powell, p. 70.)
Let us end by noting that Innocent III’s deep
regard for marriage on its most literal level
extended to the rich and powerful as much as
to the poor and emarginated. And therefore, as
Augustin Fliche notes in his entry in Powell’s
book, even “at the risk of wounding a prince
whose friend he was and who was liable to
render still greater services to the church,” he
considered himself “a prisoner of doctrine before
whose demands the temporal interests of the
church ought to bend, so imperious were they”
(pp. 69-70). Hence, his letter to Queen Marie, the
wife of King Peter of Aragon on January 19, 1213,
denying an annulment because of the terrible
assault this would make on the sacred marriage
bond:
“He who is our faithful witness in heaven, to
whom every heart is open and no secret remains

hidden, that in the marriage undertaken a long
time since between you and our very dear son in
Christ, Peter, king of Aragon, your husband, we
have never departed from the right path and we
have not deviated either to the right or to the left.
We have acted, as our conscience is a witness,
as in all the cases brought for our examination,
for, by His will, we take the place on earth of
Him who, just and loving justice, judges without
taking account of persons. Thus, although among
other princes of this world we feel for this king,
by reason of his deed, a particular affection
and we desire honors and personal advantages
for him; nevertheless, from the fact that it is
a question of justice, as we are not allowed to
protect the poor and honor the visage of the
powerful, we can not and we ought not, neither to
him nor to any other, grant the lesser favor since
it pertains to the sacrament of marriage, which,
instituted by the Lord in Paradise before sin,
looks not only to the perpetuation of the human
race but represents the union of Christ with the
holy church, that of God with the faithful soul,
that of the Word with human nature, according
to the testimony of the apostle, who in treating of
marriage expresses himself in these terms: I say
that it is a great Sacrament in Christ and in the
Church (Eph. 15: 22)” (Powell, pp. 69-70).
Hence, a pope caricatured as being obsessed
with political issues would not curry the favor
of the true sovereign powers of the world if
such fawning threatened the sacrament of
marriage, even in its most obvious form. His
duty to protect marriage weighed heavily upon
him, because he, as pope, was married with the
Incarnate Word in a special way, and responsible
for multiplying the number of souls married to
God more than anyone else on earth. Nothing
would cause him to mar his militant commitment
to his own special marital vows. Let us pray
that the example of Innocent will influence his
contemporary successor to defend all four forms
of marriage with equal crusading zeal. The task
of dealing with the powers of this world in a way
that avoids currying their favor and protecting
the marriage of the Papacy with the Incarnate
Word is never an easy one—but Deus lo vult!

53

Christian Culture

No Light from the

Orthodox East
on Christian
Marriage
by Gabriel S. Sanchez, J.D.

The Eastern Orthodox Church, though
having remained in a state of schism for nearly
a millennium, still holds on to much which
can instruct and inspire Roman Catholics. As
I wrote in the January-February issue of this
magazine, Orthodoxy’s liturgical ethos should
inspire traditional Catholics to go the extra mile
with respect to restoring Rome’s own liturgical
patrimony. With respect to certain moral matters,
specifically marriage and the family, there is,
lamentably, no light coming from the Orthodox
East.
Instead of keeping fast to Christ’s admonition
that “[w]hat God hath joined together, let no man
put asunder” (Mt. 19:6), the Orthodox Church,
through the application of oikonomia (a vague
principle of canonical flexibility which will be
discussed further below), allows its members
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to contract second and third marriages even
where the first spouse is still living. This laxity
has had an unfortunate spillover effect into the
current intra-Catholic debate over the future
of the Church’s practice with respect to giving
Communion to those faithful who divorce and
remarry without having their first sacramental
union annulled. Catholic bishops, priests, and
laity who advocate for a more “flexible” or, as
they say, “pastoral” approach to illicitly remarried
Catholics routinely cite the Orthodox as their
model with nary a glance to the confused
and inconsistent nature of that communion’s
approach to the sacrament of marriage.
Before delving further into that confusion,
it would be helpful to get some grasp on the
theological and practical differences between
Catholicism and Orthodoxy with regard to

marriage. While the Catholic Church recognizes
that the baptized Christians to be married
minister the sacrament to each other with a
bishop, priest, deacon, or, in exceptional and
limited circumstances, another individual
witnessing the union, the Orthodox place a
premium on the priest serving as the minister
of the sacrament. In general this means that
the Orthodox reject the sacramental status of
any marriage performed outside of its walls,
including instances where an Orthodox Christian
marries a Catholic before a Catholic priest.
In Orthodoxy, a Catholic can be married to
an Orthodox Christian so long as the service
is ministered by an Orthodox cleric and both
parties agree to baptize and rear their children in
the Orthodox Church.
This contrasts with the Catholic under­
standing, which contemplates not only the
sacramental status of a marriage between two
baptized non-Catholic Christians, but also the
elevation of purely natural marriages between
non-Christians when they receive Trinitarian
baptism and, hopefully, are united in full to the
Catholic Church. Orthodoxy, which is today
plagued by a shaky understanding of natural
law, has, at best, an inadequate view of natural
marriages and the rights and duties that attend
to them. Indeed, for the Orthodox, there is no
full understanding of marriage except for those
performed by its priests according to its rites.
This would seem, at first blush, to indicate a more
exacting standard for not only what constitutes
a marriage, but also a deeper appreciation for its
indissolubility as well. Sadly, that is not the case.
Following a tendentious reading of Matthew
19:9, the Orthodox, along with Protestants,
believe Christ left a loophole in His instruction on
marriage’s indissolubility in cases of adultery—a
proposition explicitly condemned by Canon 7 of
the 24th Session of the Council of Trent. But in
reality the Orthodox go even further, arguing that
“adultery” does not mean sexual relations outside
of the marriage bond only, but any married
person’s disordered attachment to worldly things
to the exclusion of their spouse: pornography,
alcohol, narcotics, gambling, etc.
Although true adultery is typically at the
center of marriage dissolution within Orthodoxy,

it is important here to recall the open-endedness
of the aforementioned principle of oikonomia,
which, according to Orthodox canon law, is “the
suspension of the absolute and strict application
of canon and church regulations in the governing
and life of the church” that “only takes place
through the official church authorities and is
only applicable for a particular case.” In other
words, the practice of oikonomia does not set
precedents that have to be adhered to in later
cases, a point which, on the one hand, safeguards
the integrity of Orthodox doctrine and canon
law while, on the other, leaving a wide spectrum
of discretion to local priests and bishops on
how to address a range of issues, including
divorce. Is an Orthodox marriage dissolved on
the basis of a single act of adultery or multiple
acts sustained over a particular period of time?
What if the unfaithful spouse repents and the
other refuses to accept it? What if no physical
adultery is present at all but rather an addiction
to Internet pornography that could, in theory, be
treated through a mixture of pastoral counseling
and professional help? There are no set criteria
in place, only particularized judgments that can
be informed by a myriad of subjective factors.
The end result of this canonical flexibility is a de
facto shift in Orthodoxy away from a belief in the
indissolubility of marriage to one that still favors
marriage’s permanence, albeit with a rider of ad
hoc exceptions to the rule.
Aside from staging a general defense that the
principle of oikonomia, even when applied to
marriage, is rooted in Scripture as an image of
God’s love and kindness toward human weakness
(a contestable point), the Orthodox often attempt
to deflect criticism of permitting second and third
marriages on the grounds that the ceremony
for these unions is penitential in character and
lacks certain elements found in the first-marriage
rite, such as the crowning of the couple (one of
the “high points” of the Slavo-Byzantine Rite
wedding ceremony). Though the Eucharist is not
celebrated at these second and third wedding
ceremonies, both spouses are allowed to receive
Communion at any Divine Liturgy (Mass) from
thenceforth so long as they are adequately
prepared and not in a state of (any other) serious
sin. The fact that the couple lives together and
55

Christian Culture
continues in conjugal relations despite the fact
that one, if not both, still have living first spouses
is, for the Orthodox, a nonissue.
In the context of Orthodoxy in America,
which is comprised of more than a half-dozen
overlapping jurisdictions that trace their
establishment and/or governance back to various
Eastern European and Middle Eastern mother
churches, the penitential rite for second and third
marriages is rarely celebrated at all. In instances
where a formerly married Christian, Catholic or
otherwise, converts to the Orthodox Church, it
is commonplace for bishops and priests to ignore
the convert’s first union (or unions) on the ground
that it wasn’t “sacramental,” thus paving the
way for the individual to receive the full nonpenitential marriage rite. And even many lifelong
Orthodox Christians who have had their first
Orthodox marriages ecclesiastically dissolved
can have the requirement for a penitential
marriage rite waived by their local bishop on the
basis of—you guessed it—oikonomia.
The Orthodox Church’s muddled approach to
marriage does not end there, however. On the
grave moral matter of contraception, Orthodoxy
blinks. In the original 1963 edition to his popular
explication of Orthodoxy, simply entitled The
Orthodox Church, Bishop Kallistos Ware
stated unequivocally that “[a]rtificial methods
of birth control are forbidden in the Orthodox
Church.” Less than two decades later, in the
1984 edition, Ware noted that the Orthodox had
“recently begun to adopt a less strict position”
on contraception before confessing in the 1993
printing that while “[i]n the past birth control was
in general strongly condemned...a less strict view
is coming to prevail” since “[m]any Orthodox
theologians and spiritual fathers consider that
the responsible use of contraception within
marriage is not in itself sinful.” For the Orthodox,
“the question of how many children a couple
should have, and at what intervals, is best
decided by the partners themselves, according to
the guidance of their own consciences.”
This is not a surprising development, partic­
ularly in the West, which lacks a united Orthodox
governing body with the power to teach
authoritatively on matters of faith and morals.
In practice, each jurisdiction—Greek, Russian,
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Romanian, etc.—is an island unto itself, and
more often than not, the “magisterium” each
individual Orthodox Christian experiences is the
interpretation and views of his local parish priest.
If one priest speaks out against contraception
or counsels a couple under his pastoral care not
to be too wilful with respect to having children,
there’s always another Orthodox cleric in the
parish across town who may be inclined to offer
the exact opposite answer. For Roman Catholics
who have already been led into scandal by
imprudent, if not flat-out heretical, statements
on contraception and family life from wayward
bishops and priests, the indefectible teaching
of Holy Mother Church provides a life boat of
doctrinal surety that many of their estranged
brethren in the Orthodox East desperately lack.
Outlining the problems that currently beset
the Orthodox Church’s approach to marriage
should not be an occasion for triumphalism from
Catholics, including traditional Catholics who
continue to defend the Church’s official teachings.
The centuries of Catholic-Orthodox division
have allowed the smoke of Satan to more easily
infiltrate both confessions. Catholicism continues
to witness to the indissolubility of marriage and
the impermissibility of contraception in the face
of ignorance and dissent while the Orthodox,
strong in liturgy and deep in spirituality, have
lost full sight of the truth. Only when Catholics
and Orthodox are again one Church, united fully
in faith and morals while being nourished by
legitimate liturgical, theological, and spiritual
diversity, is this difficultly likely to be overcome.
Until then, the light of truth, in this instance at
least, shines exclusively from the West.

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

Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Catherine of Siena
received visions, in which they went through a mystical
marriage wedding ceremony with Christ, in the
presence of the Virgin Mary, consecrating
themselves and their virginity to him.
Giovanni di Paolo, The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena

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Confirmation
before
Marriage
by Michael J. Rayes

Imagine for a moment an eager farmer’s son.
He is excited and anxious to take over a field
of his own. Ignoring his father’s advice, the son
immediately sows seeds in the field without taking
time to properly cultivate the soil. Now imagine the
outcome.
Many couples presenting themselves as
candidates for matrimony wonder why they should
be confirmed before getting married. Matrimony
without confirmation is like a field without
cultivation: proper preparation has not been done.

Preparation for Marriage
A proper preparation for the sacrament of
holy matrimony takes longer than simply a few
months of pastoral meetings before the wedding.

Preparation, rather, begins in earnest at the
sacrament of confirmation. Ideally, confirmation
would have already taken place several years
previous to marriage. The Catechism of the
Council of Trent puts the appropriate time for
confirmation after the age of reason, but no later
than 12 years old.
The time span between confirmation and
matrimony gives the Catholic soul plenty of years
to practice virtue and use the gifts of the Holy
Ghost received at confirmation. These virtues and
gifts should gradually manifest themselves in the
young soul, their actual practice being honed as
the confirmed—now a solider of Christ—grows
into adolescence and young adulthood. There will
be plenty of opportunities for interaction with
others as well as the ongoing battle with mastery
of self.
59

Christian Culture
One of the effects of confirmation is the
imposition of specific gifts from the Holy Ghost.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches in the Summa
Theologica (II-II, on virtues) that these seven gifts
have corresponding virtues which are perfected
by the gifts. This gift/virtue relationship is
summarized as follows:

Gift of the Holy Ghost

Corresponding Virtue

Understanding

Faith

Fear of the Lord

Hope and Temperance

Wisdom

Charity

Counsel

Prudence

Piety

Justice

Fortitude

Courage and Patience

Knowledge

Faith

Using the Gifts
One example of a gift of the Holy Ghost
perfecting a virtue is when a young adult uses
prudence to hold his tongue. This virtue is
animated by the gift of counsel. Other times,
holding one’s tongue is not necessary as the
listener may consider what is said, or actually
seeks the advice of the young adult. In those
situations the gift of counsel helps him know
what to say. Later in married life, the husband
will certainly use both counsel and prudence in
conversations with his wife. This is evidence of
a dynamic relationship between the sacraments
of confirmation and matrimony. The gifts of one
affect the graces of the other.
Another example is the adolescent’s attending
Mass every Sunday and developing his or her own
prayer life, growing into a young man or woman.
Perhaps without even realizing it, the Catholic,
now a young adult, intuitively knows that it is
against justice to knowingly keep extra money
accidently received from a hurried cashier. The
young adult would feel the sting of conscience
when tempted to take advantage of large sums of
cash or goods entrusted to him. The practice of
piety while developing into an adult also develops
the virtue of justice.
Later, when the confirmed Catholic is married
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and consistently offers God the piety that is due to
Him in justice, the Catholic is also better able to
reconcile differences in the marriage relationship.
Rather than stubbornly refusing to apologize or to
communicate after a disagreement, the Catholic
animated by the gift of piety will recognize that
his marriage is no longer functioning as it should.
Something is wrong, the soul realizes, and in all
justice, it must be corrected.

Reasons for Seeking Marriage
Once the confirmed Catholic reaches young
adulthood, a certain ambivalence may develop
regarding the sacrament of holy matrimony. This
may stem from a fear of lifelong commitment to
the “wrong” person, or perhaps a recoiling from
the multitudinous bad examples of married life. As
Abbot Guéranger lamented more than a century
ago, “Never was there such lack of energy as now;
never was the worldly spirit more rife.”
I refer here to Catholics who prolong their
single life well into their late 20s and 30s without
a strong impulse to move toward matrimony, holy
orders, or the religious life. Perhaps what is needed
is the confidence born of knowing that the Holy
Ghost will give the grace needed to fulfill a state in
life. The gift of fortitude can make the difference
between a soul who does not move toward the
sacrament and one who, trusting in God and the
intervention of the saints, goes around obstacles to
receive the grace of holy orders or matrimony.
Consider matrimony and the reasons for seeking
it. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, known
as the “Roman Catechism,” teaches that marriage
is a sacrament because it is a sacred union, with
the souls generated from the union brought up to
serve and worship Christ. No other relationship
binds two people so closely. The Roman
Catechism’s section on matrimony shows that
sacred Scripture uses marriage when explaining
the relationship of Christ to the Church. It is a
relationship of complete giving born of love.
The Roman Catechism lists the specific reasons
for seeking matrimony as, first, companionship
and mutual aid throughout life; second, to create
a family of souls for heaven; third, to alleviate
amorous passion. The Roman Catechism adds

natural ends as well, “such as the desire of leaving
an heir, wealth, beauty, illustrious descent,
congeniality of disposition—such motives, because
not inconsistent with the holiness of marriage, are
not to be condemned.”
In other words, it is perfectly legitimate to
marry a young woman because she is sweet and
pretty, and it is perfectly acceptable to marry a
man because he has money. These should not be
the predominant reasons and certainly not the only
reasons, but they are valid.
The spouses will quickly realize that married
life becomes mostly about companionship
regardless of the initial reasons that attracted the
partners to each other. Thus, their values should
have already been in harmony before the wedding.
This companionship and the seemingly constant
practice of patience and adjustment of one’s
expectations is where the effects of confirmation
can be seen. It takes perseverance and humility to
maintain a vulnerable, loving relationship. These
virtues come from the practice of temperance,
which is perfected by Fear of the Lord.
Confirmation makes marriage easier to endure
and indeed helps to generate both spiritual and
natural consolations in the marital relationship.
One sacrament builds upon the grace of another.
Thus, those devout, traditional Catholics who
may have some reticence toward the sacrament of
matrimony are probably already very well prepared
for it. They are perhaps especially prepared for
the sacramentality of a lifelong marriage, as this
hinges on the spiritual love of two souls.

Spiritual Love in Marriage
There are different levels of love, which were
learned from the ancient Greeks and are still
taught today. There are already plenty of secular
articles about physical love, affectionate love, and
relationship concerns. But it is spiritual love in
a sacramental marriage that gets the spouses to
heaven. Our Lord refers to spiritual love often in
sacred Scripture. It is love of God and love of His
creatures as His children. The Lord calls these
the two greatest commandments (Mark 12: 2834). Spiritual love is an act of the will, choosing to
desire the genuine good for another.

Dr. Alice von Hildebrand pointed out in an article
comparing natural and supernatural love that St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Clare had a spiritual love
for each other. St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa
of Avila had a similar love (“Eros and Agape,”
Homiletic and Pastoral Review, May 2005).
St. Therese of Lisieux relates in her Story of a
Soul her realization that she grew fond of another
nun as a friend. The saint saw this natural friend­
ship as a barrier to the saint’s spiritual love for her
colleague. St. Therese thus spent less time with the
nun but more time praying for her.
In marriage, this is not an option. You’ll need
to do both: spend time together and pray for each
other. But it brings to mind a good point. You can
pray for your spouse anytime, anywhere. I have
two school-age daughters, one of whom is adamant
that she will become a nun, and the other is already
pining for family life. I told her that she could begin
praying for her future husband now, although she
hasn’t entered high school yet. She never thought
of that. She has already learned how to sew, hold
babies, and do a myriad of domestic duties, which
she knows is natural training for matrimony and
family life. She is also undergoing supernatural
training for that state of life, or toward whichever
direction she allows God to lead her.

Marital Harmony
Catholic matrimony is a sacrament which
should build upon the effects of other sacraments,
particularly confirmation. It is a lifelong expression
of our Lord’s exhortation to have spiritual love
of neighbor. This sublime reality is certainly not,
however, the only legitimate way to love one’s
spouse. There can and probably should be plenty of
romance in courtship and Catholic marriage, but
it must be considered together with the virtuous
characteristics of humility, kindness, and patience
to make a harmonious marriage between two
real people. As G. K. Chesterton wrote in What’s
Wrong with the World, “I have known many happy
marriages, but never a compatible one.” Catholic
matrimony may thus be a happy state of affairs, as
two companions spend their lives together utilizing
the gifts of the Holy Ghost to help get each other to
heaven.
61

The Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven according to
the beliefs of the Catholic Church is the bodily taking up of the
Virgin Mary into heaven at the end of her earthly life.
The Catholic Church teaches as dogma that the Virgin
Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was
assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” This doctrine was
dogmatically defined by Pope Pius XII, on November 1, 1950,
in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus by
exercising papal infallibility.
In Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII pointed to the
Book of Genesis (3:15) as scriptural support for the dogma in
terms of Mary’s victory over sin and death as also reflected in
I Corinthians 15:54: “then shall come to pass the saying that is
written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Assumption of Our Lady, Basilica of St. Servais, Maastricht, Netherlands

Questions and Answers

by SSPX priests

The Synod on the Family
has been in the news now for
months. But is this the first
Synod of the kind? Or has there
been some history behind it?
It was during Vatican Council II that Pope
Paul VI himself decided to establish the Synod
of Bishops: “The advanced information that We
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Ourselves are happy to share with you is that
We intend to give you some institution, called
for by this Council, a ‘Synod of Bishops’, which
will be made up of bishops nominated for the
most part by the Episcopal Conferences with
our approval and called by the Pope according
to the needs of the Church, for his consultation
and collaboration, when for the well-being of the
Church it might seem to him opportune.”
The Synod of Bishops then expresses its
“opinion on very important and serious subjects”
(Paul VI, Address to Cardinals, 24 June 1967).

In the 40 years since, the Synod has met every
two, and later on every three, years. Whereas
earlier on, it touched on topics which involved
the whole Church, the later synods have dealt
with the problems relative to a specific continent.
Unfortunately, this collegial tool has been de
facto a platform for the avant-garde theologians
to publicize their disparaging and (im)moral
theories, which allowed the conciliar Popes to
sound a more reproachful and conservative note
when it was time to draft the final document.
This may sound familiar to our reader as the
typical revolutionary strategy: three steps
forward, two backward.

What is the forecast regarding
this coming Synod?
It is very likely that Pope Francis is disposed
to use the Synod to make some revolutionary
changes, unless there is a real backlash from
cardinals and bishops. Among these, Cardinal
Müller has spoken quite forcefully against
Cardinal Kasper’s reckless proposals on
Communion for the divorced and remarried (see
1st article of this issue).
Needless to say, heavy clouds are quickly
gathering on the horizon. On June 26, the Vatican
released its Working Document, Instrumentum
Laboris. Besides a few good items, three most
radical proposals are brought forward:
1. A new “pastoral solution” to allow divorced
and remarried Catholics to receive Holy
Communion;
2. A new “pastoral approach” that permits the
baptism of children from same-sex couples,
thus indirectly legitimizing these unions;
3. A recasting of natural law in “new language,”
which threatens to undermine our entire
ethical foundation of true morality.

What is the theological value of
this meeting? Does it qualify as
a magisterial act of the Church?
The Synod is mainly a consultative body, and
its proceedings have no “magisterial” weight. The
Synod has its extended blathering of dialogue.
Not all the world’s bishops attend, but only
delegates from various countries. In any case,
all of these speeches and interventions are
gathered and placed on the Pope’s desk. It gives
the impression of a world-wide consultation and
collegial approach. The Pope then sifts through
and produces virtually what he wants, usually set
in the form of an Apostolic Exhortation.

We have already dealt
extensively on the first
problem of Communion for
remarried divorcees in articles
of this issue. The second is
certainly a mine field. What
about the third issue? What
are we talking about when we
speak of the natural law?
The natural law is not so much a matter
of faith as a truth of reason. It is, in fact, an
objective reality written in the nature, not of
this or that man, but in human nature itself
considered as such, in its permanence and
stability. In this sense it is not a law imposed
65

Questions and Answers
by man or by force from the outside, but engraved
in the genes and soul of every man. Natural Law
is the sum total of those universal and mandatory
judgments which bind them to do good and avoid
evil, and discovered by all men of right reason
from human nature.
All the popes after Vatican II have strongly
rested their moral teaching on the natural law.
Paul VI in Humanae Vitae referred to the natural
law in order to reiterate that, according to the
Church, “every marital act must of necessity
retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation
of human life.” In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul
II explains that: “every person sincerely open to
truth and goodness can, by the light of reason
and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize
in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom
2:14-15) the sacred value of human life from its
very beginning until its end.”
Finally, Benedict XVI, in February 12, 2007,
referred to the importance of this doctrine: “there
is an urgent need to reflect upon the question of
natural law and to rediscover its truth” which “is
common to all mankind....All legal systems, both
internal and international, ultimately draw their
legitimacy from their rooting in natural law, in
the ethical message inscribed in human beings
themselves. The natural law is, definitively, the
only valid bulwark against the abuse of power
and the deceits of ideological manipulation.”

From the statements of these
recent popes, it seems as if the
natural law is a fixed item in
the Church’s teaching, not an
object of “manipulation,” to use
the words of the late Pope?
All manuals of Apologetics teach that the
ordinary Magisterium is infallible in exposing
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the deposit of the faith and, alongside, whatever
is connected to it, like the natural law. Therefore,
the natural law, of which the Church is guardian,
enjoys infallibility. No one in heaven or on
earth, not even Christ, much less the Pope, can
modify or render relative the Divine and Natural
Law. The Pope’s duty is to transmit, diffuse and
defend the deposit and natural morality, not to
adulterate it. Those who are asking the Church
to update her morality, like putting cohabitating
couples on a par with the family, are asking the
Church to exercise an authority which she does
not have. No one can impose such things on the
Church since it would be a typical case of abuse
of authority.

Instrumentum Laboris
proposes to improve the
language traditionally used
in explaining ‘Natural Law’.
What are we to think of this
project of the October Synod?
In Instrumentum Laboris, we find this: “In a
vast majority of responses and observations, the
concept of natural law today turns out to be, in
different cultural contexts, highly problematic,
if not completely incomprehensible” (n. 21). The
solution suggested would be to abandon the
concept and term of natural law, or “to re-read”
it in accessible language. Are we to understand
then that, since the Catholic world no longer
comprehends the idea of the natural law, it might
as well be shelved and replaced by something
more suited to the current mentality?
The problem with this seemingly mere
grammatical exercise is that it will trigger a
full-fledged tsunami effect before long. For
starters, if the concept of the natural law is lost,
we will be compelled to accept the theory of

gender based on the denial of the very concept
of human nature. Man is thought of as a purely
material entity, modifiable at will, according
to the needs and interests of the moment. The
natural law, which comes down from God, is
replaced by positive law imposed by pressures
from political and mass-media groups. Instead
of reflecting on the natural and Divine Law, laws
and human behavior are adapting to the opinion
of fluctuating and anti-Christian trends.
In the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope
John Paul II, who was allegedly canonized
by no less than Pope Francis, denounced the
rejection of the natural law as the fruit of “a
more or less obvious influence of currents of
thought which end by detaching human freedom
from its essential and constitutive relationship
with the Truth.” This moral relativism would
be destructive of all the social order built up by
Christendom. Could one Pope with impunity
so swiftly uproot what his predecessor had
endeavored to protect?

Should we repeat our
prayer intentions each time
we recite the Rosary?
It would seem that since God is omniscient and
His Providence is immutable, there is no point in
telling Him in prayers that we are asking for any
special favors or graces, and that we certainly
cannot expect our prayers to change His eternal
dispositions one iota. St. Thomas Aquinas
answers these and similar objections in the IIa
IIae, Q. 83, a. 2 of the Summa.
He lays down the principle in this way: “Divine
Providence disposes not only what effects shall
take place, but also from what causes and in
what order these effects shall proceed.” Our
prayers are causes of this kind, through which
in God’s plan proceed the effects that God wills

us to obtain through them. “For we pray, not that
we may change the Divine disposition, but that
we may impetrate that which God has disposed
to be fulfilled by our prayers, in other words
that by asking, men may deserve to receive what
Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give,
as Gregory says.”
Consequently, we ought to repeat our prayer
intentions explicitly and often, that our prayers
might be the effective instrument that God wants
them to be, and “that, by our prayers, we may
obtain what God has appointed” (ibid. ad 2). This
repetition of intention is, of course, not necessary
for God, who knows all things. It is rather
necessary for us, for it places us in more complete
submission to His plan, to His Omnipotence and
to His Omniscience. The more we actualize the
intentions of our prayers by thinking of those
intentions or by expressing them verbally or
in our minds, the more effectively we submit
ourselves to the Almighty and the more powerful
our prayers become. This follows, indeed, from
St. Thomas’s answers to the objections: “We need
to pray to God not in order to make known to
Him our needs or desires, but that we ourselves
may be reminded of the necessity of having
recourse to God’s help in these matters” (ad 1).
It is consequently a grievous error to think
that we ought simply to say our prayers without
any special intention, for God knows everything.
The more expressly, frequently and precisely
we express our intentions, in conformity with
the Divine Will, the more will we grow in faith
and express our humility. It is upon this faith
in particular that the efficacy of our prayers
depends, as St. Thomas points out: “Prayer
depends chiefly on faith…for its efficacy in
impetrating, because it is through faith that man
comes to know of God’s omnipotence and mercy,
which are the source when prayer impetrates
what it asks for” (II-II, Q. 83, a. 16, ad 3).
It is good to have specific intentions for our
prayers, offerings, Masses and communions,
that the power of obtaining graces and blessings
given by Christ may not be wasted. Then we will
understand the blessing of these words of Our
Lord: “Ask and you shall receive; that your joy
may be full” (Jn. 16:24).

67

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United States: Black Mass at Harvard Canceled
that there was to be “an activity that separates
people from God…and brings the participants
dangerously close to the destructive forces of evil.”
Catholics stressed, furthermore, that a black
mass was “by nature a parody of a Roman Catholic
ritual including the profanation of a consecrated
host.” When questioned by the American weekly
newspaper on this subject, the Satanic Temple
replied that “anyway, no one would notice the
difference” since it was only a “piece of bread.” The
fact that Satanists profane
consecrated hosts in black
masses is proof positive that for
them it is not just a “piece of
bread.”
The Archdiocese of Boston had
urged Catholics not to respond
by demonstrating in the street,
but instead with a prayer vigil
that was attended by 1,500, on
May 12, in a church near the place
where the black mass was to be
held. The faithful of the chapel of
the Society of Saint Pius X also
reacted by organizing, that same
evening, a procession behind the
statue of Our Lady of Fatima. The
procession, led by Father Nicholas
Established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for
Gardner, stopped in front of the
John Harvard, Harvard is the United States’ oldest institution of higher learning.
place where the satanic ritual
Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College
primarily trained Congregation­a list and Unitarian clergy.
was to take place. Many hymns in
honor of the Blessed Virgin were
the American newspaper National Catholic
sung and a Rosary was recited.
Reporter (NCR) dated May 8, 2014, this student
At the same time, from May 11-13, at the school
association insisted that the event “was meant
of La Salette in Georgetown, in northeast Illinois,
to be educational, not offensive.” Nevertheless,
where a Eucharistic Congress was being held with
according to a report by Fox News, these students
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais presiding, ten
did intend on that occasion “to reaffirm their
priests, several seminarians, the students of the
respect for the satanic faith.”
school and around a hundred faithful observed
According to the article in the National
three days of adoration before the Blessed
Catholic Reporter, when the Catholic chaplain
Sacrament exposed in reparation for the black
on campus, Fr. Michael Drea, complained to the
mass, which finally was canceled. No doubt the
authorities about an attack “on the dignity of
fervor of the Catholic reaction helped to win this
the Catholic faith,” the university administration
victory over the forces of evil.
indicated that it supported the “right of the
(Sources: apic/National Catholic Reporter/Fox
students to express themselves and to gather
News/Le Figaro/sspx.org – DICI, No. 297, June 6,
freely.” The Archdiocese of Boston regretted
2014)

Prestigious Harvard University, on the east
coast of the United States, had authorized a reenactment of a satanic ritual on its property on
May 12, 2014, until it was canceled as a result of
pressure from Catholics.
The sacrilegious ceremony was planned by an
association of students on the university campus,
the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club,
conjointly with the organization of the Satanic
Temple. According to an article published by

69

Church and World
On the Ecumenical Meeting between Pope
Francis and the Patriarch Bartholomew
The Pope’s journey to the Holy Land from
May 24 to 26, 2014, took place on the fiftieth
anniversary of the historic meeting between
Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople,
Athenagoras, on January 5 and 6, 1964.
At the time, this meeting had a great impact,
since it had been 525 years (from 1439) since a
pope, Eugenius IV, had received the patriarch of
Constantinople, after four centuries of schism. It
was in Ferrara, and the Eastern Church seemed
ready to return to the Catholic communion. But is
that the case today?
50 Years Ago

On Sunday, January 5, 1964, Athenagoras visited
Paul VI in the buildings of the Apostolic delegation
in Jerusalem. After their historic embrace,
exchanged on a level of strict equality as dictated
by the protocol, a 20-minute private conversation
was held between the two men. The patriarch
declared to the pope “that it was time to put an
end to the division. Why remain separated when
there is nothing fundamental to divide us?” He
then addressed to the representative of the “most
Holy Church of ancient Rome” a speech in which
he expressed the wish that this meeting might be
“the dawn of a luminous and blessed day” that
would end “the night of separation” in which “the
Christian world has been living for centuries.”
The next day, on the morning of January 6,
Pope Paul VI visited Patriarch Athenagoras in his
residence on the Mount of Olives. He evoked the
figure of John XXIII as the man who had begun
bringing the Catholic Church and the Patriarchate
of Constantinople closer together “after centuries
of silence and waiting.” Above all, he laid out the
path that ecumenism ought to follow with regard
to the Eastern schismatics. He declared: “The
paths that lead to union may be long and strewn
with difficulties. But the two paths converge and
end up at the sources of the Gospel.” In other
words, since Rome and Constantinople both
claim to come from Christ and His Gospel, their
destination—the unity of the Church willed by
Christ—must also be the same. Which clearly
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comes down to considering that since 1054 the
Church founded by Christ has been no longer one.
“The doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary
divergences will have to be examined at the right
time and place,” continued Paul VI. But fraternal
charity between Christians should begin to
progress now, especially by forgiving the offenses
of the past. A common statement was published,
in which a prayer was voiced “that the truth
of the one Church of Christ and of His Gospel
might shine forth ever more, in the eyes of all
Christians.”
Since this first meeting, others have followed.
Paul VI met with Patriarch Athenagoras on
October 25, 1967, after the mutual revocation
of the excommunication decrees of 1054, on
December 7, 1965. His successor, John Paul II, met
with the patriarch of Constantinople in 1979, and
kept up this dialogue with several meetings.
In parallel, a mixed international Commission
was created to meet regularly and study pending
questions (apostolic succession, authority in the
Church, Uniatism, the primacy of the bishop of
Rome, etc.).
In 1981, the Metropolitan Archbishop
Damaskinos, while still in a state of schism,
was invited to preach to Catholics in St. Peter’s
Basilica at Rome. A few years later, on December
6, 1987, Patriarch Dimitrios I co-presided at a
“liturgy of the Word” with John Paul II. The next
day, a common declaration rejected “any form of
proselytism.” This position led to the agreements
of Balamand, so called after a monastery in
Lebanon, whose common declaration on June 23,
1993, in its Article 22, saw the Catholic Church
renounce “any will to expand that would be
detrimental to the Orthodox Church.” Which
meant forbidding any return to the communion of
the Church in Eastern Europe…
In the Balamand Declaration, it is written
that “the Catholic Church and the Orthodox
Church recognize each other as sister churches,
responsible together for keeping the Church of
God faithful to the divine plan, especially as far as
unity is concerned.” This expression was repeated

in the common declaration signed by John Paul II
and Bartholomew I on June 29, 1995, in Rome. But
it was included neither in the declaration signed
on November 30, 2006, by Benedict XVI and the
same patriarch of Constantinople, nor in that of
Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew on May
25, 2014.
50 Years Later

Pope Francis met with the successor of
Patriarch Athenagoras on the same site that
saw the historic embrace of 1964. The pope and
Patriarch Bartholomew published a common
declaration presenting “this brotherly meeting”
as “a new and necessary step on the path towards
the unity to which the Holy Spirit can lead us,
that of communion in a legitimate diversity.” After
recalling the steps of this ecumenical dialogue, the
declaration mentions different essential points:
1. “The possibility of being able ‘to profess
our faith in the same Gospel of Christ, as it
was received by the Apostles, expressed and
transmitted to us by the Ecumenical Councils
and by the Fathers of the Church. While we are
aware that we have not obtained the goal of a full
communion, today we confirm our commitment to
continue walking together towards the unity for
which Christ Our Lord prayed to the Father ‘that
they may all be one’ (John 17:21)” (§2).
We must point out that the Councils in
question are only the seven first Ecumenical
Councils, since the Orthodox Church refuses the
fourteen others.
2. The goal remains to one day share “together
the Eucharistic banquet,” which supposes “the
confession of the same faith, a persevering prayer,
an interior conversion, a renewed life and a
fraternal dialogue” (§3)
3. The privileged means remains the
theological dialogue undertaken by the mixed
international Commission. Here, it is interesting
to point out that the declaration pays homage to
this “exercise in truth and love that requires an
ever deeper knowledge of the other’s traditions
in order to understand them and learn from
them,” all the while refusing to “seek the lowest
common denominator on which to conclude a
compromise,” for theological dialogue “is rather
destined to deepen the understanding of the whole

truth that Christ gave His Church, a truth that we
never cease to understand better when we follow
the impulse of the Holy Spirit. Consequently,
we declare together that our fidelity to the Lord
demands a brotherly meeting and a true dialogue.
Such a quest does not draw us away from the
truth; on the contrary, through an exchange of
gifts, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, it will
lead us to the full truth” (§4). (See John 16:13).
It would seem therefore that neither of the two
parties in question holds the whole truth, for it still
must be found through meeting and dialogue. Can
we be satisfied with such a position?
The declaration then mentions the grounds on
which Catholics and Orthodox can “work together
in the service of humanity, especially by defending
the dignity of the human person in every step
of life and the sanctity of the family based on
marriage, by promoting peace and the common
good, and by responding to the suffering that
continues to afflict our world.” “Hunger, poverty,
illiteracy, and unequal distribution of wealth”
are then mentioned, along with exclusion and
marginalization in society, saving the planet and
the fight against waste (§§5-6).
Lastly the common declaration exhorts
Christians to “safeguard everywhere the right
to express [their] faith publicly and to be treated
justly when promoting what Christianity continues
to offer contemporary society and culture. On
this point, we invite all Christians to promote
an authentic dialogue with Judaism, Islam and
other religious traditions. Mutual indifference and
ignorance can only lead to mistrust, and even,
unfortunately, to conflict” (§7).
After expressing their deep concern for the
Christians in the Middle East, “especially for the
Churches in Egypt, in Syria and in Iraq” (§8), the
two signatories voiced a call to all Christians,
and to all believers in all religious traditions
and to all men of good will, to recognize the
urgency of the times that obliges us to strive for
the reconciliation and unity of the human family,
while fully respecting legitimate differences, for
the good of all humanity and of the generations to
come” (§9).
A False Vision of the Unity of the Church

The ecumenical procedure with the Eastern
71

Church and World
Church over the last 50 years has consisted in a
dialogue between two sister churches on an equal
level, one founded by Peter in Rome, the other by
Andrew in Constantinople. It presupposes that the
Church is no longer one, but divided, and that the
path towards the full truth, under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, “requires an ever deeper
knowledge of the other’s traditions, in order to
understand and learn from them.” This ecumenical
process hopes for a mutual enrichment that will
allow all to reach the full truth and to reconstitute
a unity that has been broken for almost a thousand
years. This vision is doubly false. For one, it
is unaware of the true nature of the Church
of Christ, founded upon Peter and always one
regardless of departures, schisms, and heresies.
And while it is legitimate to regret division and to
work to put an end to schisms, bring back those
who are lost and extinguish heresies, we must use
the means that the one, holy Church has always
used.
On the True Nature of the Church

Before Vatican II, the popes did not fail to
explain how God wished, in order to save the
greatest possible number of souls, to found
a society that would be not only interior and
spiritual as to its goal and its causes that produce
grace and sanctity, but also exterior and visible in
its members and the means used to transmit the
spiritual goods. To the great merit of Leo XIII, he
defined this unity of the Church that is the first of
her four marks. In his remarkable encyclical Satis
Cognitum, he explained that just as Christ is one
by the union of His divine and human natures,
in the same way the Church is one by the union
of her invisible Head with her visible members:
“There is one God, one Christ, one Church of
Christ, one faith, one people, established in the
solid unity of one body by the bond of concord.
The unity cannot be broken: a body that remains
one cannot be divided by fractioning its organism”
(St. Cyprian of Carthage).
The Church is one “even though heresies try to
tear her apart into different sects” (St. Clement of
Alexandria). Her members form but one society,
one kingdom, one body, according to the will of
the Lord (See John 17). The basis of this union
is the unity of faith, indispensable for concord
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between men, since understanding and union of
intelligences is necessary if they wish to work
together. But God could not have willed this
unity of the faith without providing the means for
preserving it; that is why Jesus Christ established
an exterior principle of unity in the faith by giving
His Apostles a divine summons and trusting them
with a public mission to save souls: “As the Father
sent Me, so I also send you” (Matt. 28:18-20).
Christ thus established the Church as the
guardian of the faith, to conserve its integrity
and purity. To do this—continues Pope Leo XIII
—He instituted “a living, authentic and perpetual
magisterium” that He invested with His own
authority, giving it the spirit of truth and ordering
“its doctrinal teachings to be received as His own”:
“He who hears you, hears Me; He who despises
you, despises Me” (Luke 10:16).
And Christ built His Church as a perfect society
in which all nations are to be united. Both divine
and human, she is governed by a sovereign power
that requires by divine right a unity of government
and of communion. It is the authority of Peter, to
whom the care of the whole flock was confided
(Matt. 16:18; John 21:15-17): “The Lord spoke to
Peter: to one only, in order to found the unity on
one only” (St. Pacian of Barcelona).
Peter alone received the power of the keys that
ensures the permanence and solidity of the whole
edifice. True pastor of the one flock, the Roman
Pontiff is the only one who has the authority to
govern the whole Church—what we call universal
jurisdiction, which is a proper and true power,
and not only an honorary primacy as the Eastern
schismatics claim. As the support of the faith of
his brethren that he must strengthen (Luke 22:32),
he enjoys the privilege of infallibility in order to
ensure the transmission of the immutable divine
faith. His sovereign, universal and independent
authority is exercised over all the pastors and
sheep of the flock.
The Fathers of the Church, the councils, and
the unchanging Magisterium of the Church have
not ceased to affirm the primacy of the Roman
pontiff and his authority over the other bishops
and over councils, by divine right: “Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church”
(Matt. 16:18). “The Roman Church, through the
disposition of the Lord, holds dominion and

ordinary powers over all other Churches, in its
capacity of mother and mistress over all the
faithful of Christ” (4th Lateran Council). “Root
and mother of the Catholic Church” (St. Cyprian),
“one cannot keep the Catholic faith without
teaching that one must keep the Roman faith” (St.
Augustine).
It is indeed through the mouths of his
successors that Peter continues to speak (Council
of Chalcedon and Council of Constantinople
III, profession of faith of Pope Hormisdas). The
principle and center of the unity of faith, of
government and of communion, he holds from his
proper Chair the place of Christ of whom he is the
vicar on earth. To him is confided in particular the
care of leading the one flock, and of recalling to it
those who may have had the misfortune of leaving
it.
The teaching of the Church, the one Bride of
Christ, on the nature of its unity, is at the root of
a proper understanding of Catholic ecumenism.
It is explained by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical
Mortalium Animos on the unity of the true
Church, and by Pius XII in Mystici Corporis
on the Mystical Body of Christ. In the name of
dialogue and of fraternal encounters, this doctrine
has been set aside since Vatican II because it is
refused by non-Catholics. It is nonetheless an
article of faith. How can we “dialogue in truth” if
we deliberately ignore it?
Legitimate Means of Encouraging a Return to the
Unity of the Church

After World War II, the ecumenical movement
took the shape of the foundation of the Ecu­
menical Council of Churches (ECC). The Holy
See forbade Catholics to take part in it. Pius
XII instructed the Holy Office to regulate the
eventual participation of members of the Church
in discussions with non-Catholics. In response
the Holy Office sent an Instruction to the bishops
throughout the whole world, which were published
in the Osservatore Romano on March 1, 1950. The
Vatican newspaper summarized the spirit that
must guide the hierarchy of the Church “in these
delicate matters”: “It is out of the question that, in
hopes of a result desired by all, the requirements
of the Faith—the first step towards unity—be in
any way diminished or concealed.…True Christian

unity can only take place in the Faith of the
Catholic Church which has been entrusted to the
care of its hierarchy….”
The Instruction of the Holy Office sets forth the
prudential measures that must be respected in
accordance with the wishes of the Holy See. The
chief concern is that any approach must be devoid
of ambiguity, and that care be taken “so that,
under the false pretext that we must consider what
unites us much more than what separates us, we
do not nourish a dangerous indifferentism.…” This
must be absolutely avoided: “...that in a spirit
known today as irenic, Catholic doctrine, whether
dogma or related truths, be through comparative
study and a vain desire to progressively assimilate
different professions of faith assimilated with the
doctrines of dissidents or accommodated to suit
them, to the point that the integrity of Catholic
doctrine should suffer or that its true and certain
meaning be obscured.”
To be avoided with even more care is “this
dangerous fashion of expressing oneself that gives
rise to erroneous opinions and fallacious hopes
that can never be realized, by saying for instance
that the teachings of the Sovereign Pontiffs
in the encyclicals on the return of dissidents
to the Church, should not be taken into much
consideration since not all of it is of faith, or
worse yet, that in matters of dogma, not even the
Catholic Church possesses the fullness of Christ,
and that it can be perfected by other Churches.”
So that vain hopes and doomed illusions are
not encouraged, the Instruction insists on the
essential: “Catholic doctrine must therefore be
proposed and explained in its whole entirety;
that which Catholic truth teaches on the reality
of nature and the steps required for justification,
on the constitution of the Church, on the primacy
of jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, and on the
one true unity to be obtained through the return
of separated Christians to the one true Church
of Christ, must not be passed over in silence or
obscured with ambiguous terms. It can certainly
be said that in returning to the Church they will
lose nothing of the good that the grace of God has
accomplished in them until the present, but by
their return this good will be completed and led
to its perfection. We must avoid speaking on this
point in such a way that those returning to the
73

Church and World
Church believe themselves to be bringing it an
essential element that it previously lacked. These
things must be said clearly and without ambiguity,
first of all because they seek the truth, and then
because no true unity can exist outside of the
truth.”
The great prudence of the Holy See is
motivated by the “grave danger of indifferentism”
presented by such meetings, because of the risk
of confusion. It is incidentally for this reason that
“any mutual participation in sacred functions” is
to be absolutely avoided.
To summarize in brief the Church’s circumspect
attitude in matters of dialogue and ecumenical
relations, it keeps ever in mind the idea that “unity
can take place only in the Catholic Church and
through the Catholic Church; it can only take
place in the truth.”
Forgetting the Principles of Catholic Unity

In light of the traditional teaching of the
Church, the new step taken in Jerusalem by Pope
Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew on May 25th
cannot be accepted without question by Catholic
consciences, such is its apparent disregard for
the true nature of the unity of the Church and the
deviation from the prudential rules established by
apostolic authority.
This new dialogue was inaugurated by
the Vatican Council II in its decree Unitatis
Redintegratio (November 21, 1964), in which the
Church adopted a benevolent attitude toward nonCatholic Christians, whether heretic or schismatic.
Its latest manifestation follows in the wake of
actions taken by the predecessors of Pope Francis,
in particular John Paul II, who did not hesitate to
state:
“If in the course of centuries the dolorous
break between the Eastern and Western Churches
took place, a wound from which the Church
still suffers today, the duty to rebuild unity
imposes itself on us with a special urgency, that
the beauty of the Spouse of Christ may appear
in all its splendor. For from the very fact that
they are complementary, these two traditions
are to a certain extent imperfect if they are
considered separately. It is in their reunion, their
harmonization that they complete each other and
present a less inadequate interpretation of the
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“mystery which hath been hidden from ages and
generations, but now is manifested to his saints
(Colossians 1:26).”
Such an understanding totally undermines the
constant teachings of the Roman pontiffs.
Yet, it could be said, it is undeniable that
today the Church continues to recognize
the persistence of doctrinal, liturgical, and
disciplinary differences. Pope Francis himself,
in the ecumenical prayer meeting over which he
presided in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem on May 25, 2014, admitted that “there
is still a long way to go before we arrive at the
fullness of communion that can be expressed in
sharing the same Eucharistic Table.” But he does
not hesitate to maintain the illusion of a common
faith before his audience, and in order to overcome
the differences that exist he renews the “vow
already made by [his] predecessors, to maintain
dialogue with all our brothers in Christ so that a
manner of exercising the ministry proper to the
Bishop of Rome, who, in keeping with his mission,
is open to a new situation, can be found; may it
be in the current context a service of love and of
communion recognized by all (see John Paul II,
encyclical Ut Unum Sint, May 25 1995, §95).” This
inversion is gravely damaging: the Pope, the visible
foundation of the unity of the Church instituted
by Jesus Christ, whose responsibility is to lead
His whole flock of shepherds and sheep, lowers
himself to the level that those who deny his office
are inclined to grant him.
Conclusion

Today the doctrinal differences of fifty years
ago remain. They include the fourteen Ecumenical
Councils of the Catholic Church held between
the ninth and the twentieth centuries, which
the Eastern Church refuses to recognize, and
with them the dogmas that were proclaimed
or reaffirmed, and all the moral teachings that
followed… They include the Filioque clause, the
universal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff and
his infallibility when speaking ex cathedra, as
well as Marian dogmas such as the Immaculate
Conception... These are not minor points, in spite
of Athenagoras’s words in 1964: “Why remain
separated when nothing fundamental divides us?”
The truth—to return to the proper terms of

the Holy Office under the Angelic Pope—is that
an irenic spirit is preferred to the immutable
doctrine of Catholicism and that, through a vain
desire for progressive assimilation, we should
accommodate the spirit of error that led so many
souls to distance themselves from the one Bride
of Christ—to the point of attacking the purity of
Catholic doctrine and clouding its true and certain
meaning.
Pope St. Pius X worked for true unity, exhort­
ing pastors to work tirelessly “that the sheep
lost through dissension might be reunited in the
profession of the one Catholic faith, under one
supreme Shepherd.” He explained that indeed
“any effort can only be vain if the Catholic faith
is not maintained whole and faithful, as it was

transmitted and consecrated in Holy Scripture, the
tradition of the Fathers, the consent of the Church,
and in the general councils and decrees of the
Sovereign Pontiffs. Let those who defend the cause
of unity take heart then; armed with the helmet
of faith, holding firmly to the anchor of hope,
burning with the fire of charity, may they work
with all their zeal at this most divine task. And
God, the Father and friend of peace, the master
of times and of hours, will hasten the day where
the peoples of the East will return triumphant to
Catholic unity and, in union with the Apostolic
See, purified from all error, will enter the port of
eternal salvation.”
(Source : SSPX/GH – DICI, No. 297, June 6, 2014)

United States: An increasingly Hispanic Catholic Church
The Catholic Church in the United States is
becoming more and more Hispanic. But in a
parallel trend, the Hispanics are becoming less
and less Catholic: raised in the Catholic faith,
they become Protestants or profess no religion
(the “nones”). This was revealed by a new study
published on May 7, 2014, by the Pew Research
Center: The Shifting Religious Identity of
Latinos in the United States, reviewed by the
American weekly newspaper National Catholic
Reporter (NCR) on May 9.
“Both trends can occur at the same time,”
the Pew Research Center explains, “because
of the growing size of the Hispanic population,
which has increased from 12.5% of the total U.S.
population in 2000 to 16.9% in 2012. Indeed, if
both trends continue, a day could come when the
majority of Catholics in the United States will be
Hispanic, even though the majority of Hispanics
might no longer be Catholic.”
Since 2012, a third of American Catholics
are Hispanics, but the percentage of Hispanic
Catholics has fallen from 67% in 2010 to 55% in
2013. Of the 12% that left Catholicism, 4% became
Evangelical Protestants and 8% abandoned all
religious identity. If this trend does not change,
Catholics will make up less than half of the
Hispanic population in 2015: 45% of young Latinos

(aged 18 to 29) are Catholic, but 70% of those who
leave the faith do so before the age of 24.
The study explains that these departures
from the Catholic Church by Hispanics are an
international phenomenon. The main causes
for leaving mentioned by the Hispanics are a
gradual detachment from the religion in which
they were raised (55%) and the fact that they no
longer believe in the teaching of their childhood
religion (52%). Thirty-one percent say that they
were looking for a community that was closer
to its members and offered more support, and
23% associate their departure with a “profound
personal crisis.”
In October 2012, the Pew Research Center
announced that during the past five years, those
who are religiously unaffiliated (the “nones”)
increased by a little more than 15% to make up a
little less than 20% of all adult Americans. This
study on persons with no religious affiliation
revealed that a third of adults aged 30 or over
have no religious affiliation (32%), as opposed
to only one out of ten aged 65 or over (9%). In
conclusion, today’s young adults are much
more likely to be unaffiliated than preceding
generations were at the same age.
(Sources: apic/ncr/pfc – DICI, No. 297, June 6,
2014)

75

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Theological Studies

What God
Has Joined
by Roberto de Mattei

Kasper cannot erase history and doctrine with
“a resounding revolution of culture and praxis”
“The doctrine does not change; the only change
concerns pastoral praxis [practice].” This slogan, now
repeated for a year, on the one hand reassures those
conservatives who measure everything in terms of
doctrinal statements, and on the other hand encourages those progressives who attach little value to
doctrine and who trust only in the primacy of praxis.
Subordination to worldly powers
A striking example of the cultural revolution proposed in the name of praxis is offered to us by the
presentation devoted to “The Gospel of the Family”
with which Cardinal Walter Kasper opened the work
of the Extraordinary Consistory on the Family on
February 20. The text, described by Father Federico
Lombardi as “in great harmony” with the thought
of Pope Francis, deserves also for this reason to be
evaluated in its full extent.

The starting point of Cardinal Kasper is the observation that “between the Church’s doctrine on
marriage and family and the convictions lived out
by many Christians, a chasm has been created.”
The Cardinal, however, avoids formulating a negative judgment on these “convictions” antithetical to
the Christian faith, evading the fundamental question: why is there such a chasm between Church
doctrine and the philosophy of life of contemporary
Christians? What is the nature, what are the causes of
the process of dissolution of the family? In no part of
the presentation is it pointed out that the crisis of the
family is the result of a planned attack on the family,
the result of a secular worldview that is opposed to it.
And this despite the recent document on Standards
for Sex Education by the World Health Organization
(WHO), the approval of the “Lunacek Report” by the
European Parliament, and the legalization of samesex marriages and the criminalization of homophobia
by many Western governments. And the question still
remains: Is it possible in 2014 to devote 25 pages

77

Theological Studies
to the subject of the family, ignoring the objective
aggression that the family, on both a Christian and
natural level, undergoes all over the world? What
might be the reasons for this silence if not a psychological and cultural subordination to those worldly
powers that promote the attack on the family?
Change doctrine without seeming to change it
In the key part of his presentation, devoted to
the problem of divorced and remarried persons,
Cardinal Kasper does not express a single word
of condemnation about divorce and its disastrous
effects on Western society. But is it not now time to
say that much of the crisis of the family dates back
to the introduction of divorce and that the facts
show that the Church was right to fight it? Who
should say it if not a Cardinal of the Holy Roman
Church? But the Cardinal seems to be interested
only in the “paradigm shift” that the situation of
divorced and remarried persons requires today.
As if to prevent the immediate objections, the
Cardinal immediately puts his hands forward: the
Church “cannot propose a solution different from or
contrary to the words of Jesus.” The indissolubility
of a sacramental marriage and the impossibility of a
new marriage during the life of the other spouse “is
part of the Church’s binding tradition of Faith that
cannot be abandoned or undone in the name of a
superficial and cheap understanding of mercy.” But
immediately after proclaiming the need to remain
faithful to Tradition, Cardinal Kasper advances two
devastating proposals to circumvent the perennial
Magisterium of the Church in matters of family and
marriage.
The method to be adopted, according to Kasper,
is that followed by the Second Vatican Council on
the issues of ecumenism and religious liberty: to
change doctrine without seeming to change it. “The
Council,” he says, “without violating the binding
dogmatic tradition has opened the doors.” Opened
the doors to what? To the systematic violation, on
the level of praxis, of that dogmatic tradition to
which allegiance is claimed only with words.
The first way to frustrate this Tradition is inspired
by the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio
of John Paul II, where he says that some divorced
and remarried persons “are subjectively certain
in conscience that their previous and irreparably
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destroyed marriages had never been valid” (§84).
Familiaris Consortio states, however, that the decision on the validity of the marriage cannot be left to
the subjective assessment of the person, but to the
ecclesiastical tribunals established by the Church
to defend the sacrament of marriage. Referring to
these very courts, the Cardinal strikes the blow:
“Because they are not of divine law, but have developed historically, one wonders sometimes if the
judicial process should be the only way to resolve
the problem or if other more pastoral and spiritual
procedures would not be possible. As an alternative,
one might think that the bishop could entrust this
task to a priest with spiritual and pastoral experience as a penitentiary or episcopal vicar.”
The proposal is destructive. The ecclesiastical
tribunals are the organs to which the exercise of
the judicial power of the Church is normally entrusted. The three main courts are the Apostolic
Penitentiary, which judges cases of the internal
forum, the Roman Rota, which receives on appeal
the judgments from any other ecclesiastical court,
and the Apostolic Signatura, which is the supreme
judicial body, comparable to the Supreme Court
in relation to lesser courts. Benedict XIV, with his
famous constitution Dei Miseratione, introduced for
marriage cases the principle of automatic appeal
of every affirmative judicial decision. This practice
protects the pursuit of truth, ensures a just outcome
of the case, and shows the importance which the
Church attaches to the sacrament of marriage and
its indissolubility. The proposal by Kasper puts into
question the objective judgment of the ecclesiastical tribunal, which would be replaced by a simple
priest, who is called no longer to safeguard the good
of marriage, but to satisfy the needs of an individual’s conscience.
Judicial dimension absorbed
Referring to the speech of January 24, 2014, to
the officials of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota in
which Pope Francis says that the judicial activity
of the Church has a deeply pastoral connotation,
Kasper absorbs the judicial dimension into the
pastoral dimension, stating the need for a new “legal
and pastoral hermeneutic” which sees, behind every
case, the “human person.” “Is it really possible, one
wonders, to make a decision for the good or ill of

people in the second and third instance [tribunals
of appeal] only on the basis of acts, that is to say
papers, but without knowing the person and his situation?” These words are offensive to the ecclesiastical tribunals and to the Church herself, whose acts
of governance and teaching are based on papers,
declarations, juridical and doctrinal acts, all directed
to the salus animarum. One can easily imagine how
marriage annulments would explode, introducing
Catholic divorce in fact if not in law, with devastating
harm precisely to the good of human persons.
Cardinal Kasper seems to be aware of it, because he adds: “It would be wrong to try to solve
the problem just with a generous expansion of the
procedures for nullity of marriage.” We must “take
into account the more difficult question of the
situation of ratified and consummated marriage
between baptized persons, where the communion
of marital life is irretrievably broken and one or both
spouses have entered into a second civil marriage.”
Kasper cites at this point a statement from the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1994
according to which the divorced and remarried
cannot receive sacramental communion, but may
receive spiritual communion. It is a statement in line
with the Tradition of the Church. But the Cardinal
makes a leap forward, asking this question: “He
who makes a spiritual communion is one with Jesus
Christ, so how can he be in contradiction with the
commandment of Christ? Why, then, can he not
also receive sacramental communion? If we exclude
divorced and remarried Christians from the sacraments...do we not put into question the fundamental
sacramental structure of the Church?”
Sacramental structure of the Church
In reality there is no contradiction in the centuries-old practice of the Church. The divorced and
remarried are not discharged from their religious
duties. As baptized Christians, they are always expected to observe the commandments of God and
the Church. They have therefore not only the right
but the duty to go to Mass, to observe the precepts
of the Church, and to educate their children in the
Faith. They cannot receive sacramental communion because they are in mortal sin, but can make a
spiritual communion because even those who find
themselves in a position of grave sin must pray to

obtain the grace to get out of sin. But the word sin
is not within the vocabulary of Cardinal Kasper and
never emerges in his presentation to the Consistory.
Should we be surprised if, as Pope Francis himself
said on January 31, today “the sense of sin has been
lost”?
The early Church, according to Cardinal Kasper,
“gives us an indication which may serve as a way
out” of what he calls “the dilemma.” The Cardinal
said that in the early centuries there was a practice
whereby some Christians, after a time of penance,
lived in a second marriage even though their first
spouse was still living. “Origen,” he says, “speaks
of this practice, describing it as ‘not unreasonable.’
Also Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen—two
Fathers of the still-undivided Church!—refer to this
practice. Augustine himself, otherwise quite strict
on the issue, at least at one point seems not to
have ruled out any pastoral solution. These Fathers
wanted, for pastoral reasons, in order to ‘avoid the
worst,’ to tolerate what is in itself impossible to
accept.”
It is a shame that the Cardinal did not give his
patristic references because historical reality is
quite different from how he describes it. Father
George H. Joyce, in his historical and doctrinal study
on Christian marriage (1948) showed that during the first five centuries of the Christian era you
cannot find any decree of a council, nor any declaration of a Father of the Church which supports
the possibility of dissolution of the marriage bond.
When in the second century Justin, Athenagoras,
and Theophilus of Antioch refer to the evangelical
prohibition of divorce, they give no indication of an
exception. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian are
even more explicit. And Origen, although looking
for some justification for the practice adopted by
some bishops, states that it contradicts Scripture
and the Tradition of the Church (Comment. in Matt,
XIV, c. 23, Patrologia Greca, Vol. 13, col. 1245). Two
of the early church Councils, those of Elvira (306)
and of Arles (314), reiterate this clearly. In all parts
of the world the Church believed the dissolution of
the bond was impossible, and divorce with the right
to remarriage was completely unknown. The one
among the Fathers who treated the question of indissolubility most widely was St. Augustine, in many
of his works from De diversis Quaestionibus (390)
79

Theological Studies
to De Coniugiis adulterinis (419). He refutes those
who complained about the severity of the Church in
matrimonial matters and is always unshakably firm
on the indissolubility of marriage, showing that once
marriage is contracted, it cannot be broken for any
reason or circumstance. It is to him that we owe the
famous distinction between the three goods of marriage: proles, fides, and sacramentum.
Equally false is the notion of a dual position,
Latin and Eastern, in regard to divorce in the first
centuries of the Church. It was only after Justinian
that the Church of the East began to yield to
Caesaropapism, conforming to the Byzantine laws
that tolerated divorce, while the Church of Rome
affirmed the truth and the independence of her
doctrine in relation to the civil powers. Regarding St.
Basil, we invite Cardinal Kasper to read his letters
and to find in them a passage that explicitly authorizes a second marriage. His thinking is summed up
by what he writes in the Ethica: “It is not lawful for a
man to put away his wife and marry another. Nor is
it permissible for a man to marry a woman who has
been divorced by her husband” (Ethica, Regula 73,
c. 2, Patrologia Greca, Vol. 31, col. 852). The same
is true of the other author cited by the Cardinal, St.
Gregory Nazianzen, who clearly writes: “Divorce is
absolutely contrary to our laws, although the laws
of the Romans judge differently” (Epistola 144 in
Patrologia Greca, Vol. 37, col. 248).
Paradoxical position
The “canonical penitential practice” that Cardinal
Kasper proposes as a way out of the “dilemma” in
the early centuries had a meaning exactly the opposite of what he wants to attribute to it. It was not
done to atone for a first marriage, but to repair the
sin of the second, and obviously demanded repentance for this sin. The Eleventh Council of Carthage
(407), for example, issued a canon thus worded:
“We decree that, according to the evangelical and
apostolic discipline, the law does not permit a man
divorced from his wife, nor a woman divorced from
her husband, to move on to another wedding; but
that such persons must remain alone, or be reconciled to each other, and that if they violate this law,
they must do penance” (Hefele-Leclercq, Histoire
des Conciles, Vol. II (I), p. 158).
The position of the Cardinal becomes paradoxi80

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July - August 2014

cal here. Instead of repenting of the sinful situation
in which one finds himself, the remarried Christian
should repent of his first marriage, or at least of
its failure, for which perhaps he is totally innocent.
Also, by admitting the legitimacy of post-matrimonial cohabitation, it supposes that premarital
cohabitation should be allowed, if stable and sincere. It means the collapse of the “moral absolutes,”
which John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor
had so strongly emphasized. But Cardinal Kasper
calmly proceeds in his reasoning. “If a divorced and
remarried person: (1) repents of his failure in the
first marriage; (2) has clarified the obligations of
the first marriage, if a return is definitively excluded;
(3) cannot without further fault leave behind the
commitments assumed by his new civil marriage;
(4) strives to live in the second marriage to the best
of his ability from the standpoint of the faith and to
educate his children in the faith; (5) and has a desire
for the sacraments as a source of strength in his
situation, should we or can we deny him, after a time
of reorientation (metanoia), the sacrament of penance and communion?”
To these questions the answer has already
been given by Cardinal Müller, prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (“La forza
della gratia,” L’Osservatore Romano, October 23,
2013) invoking Familiaris Consortio, which in No. 84
provides precise indications of a pastoral nature
consistent with the dogmatic teaching of the Church
on marriage: “Together with the Synod, I earnestly
call upon pastors and the whole community of the
faithful to help the divorced with solicitous charity so that they do not consider themselves as
separated from the Church, as they are able to
and indeed required to share in her life as baptized
persons. They should be encouraged to listen to the
Word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to
persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity
and to community efforts for justice, to bring up
their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the
spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day
by day, the grace of God. May the Church pray for
them, encourage them, and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope.
The Church, however, reaffirms her practice, based
on Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic
Communion those who are divorced and remarried.

They are unable to be admitted from the moment
that their state and their condition of life objectively
contradict that union of love between Christ and the
Church signified and effected by the Eucharist.”
The Church’s position is unequivocal. Com­mun­
ion for divorced and remarried persons is denied
because marriage is indissoluble, and none of the
reasons given by Cardinal Kasper allows the celebration of a new marriage or blessing of a pseudomatrimonial union. The Church would not allow it to
Henry VIII, thus losing the Kingdom of England, and
will never allow it because, as pointed out by Pius
XII to the parish priests of Rome on March 16, 1946:
“Marriage validly contracted and consummated
between the baptized cannot be dissolved by any
power on earth, not even by the Supreme ecclesiastical Authority.” In other words, not even by the
Pope, and certainly not by Cardinal Kasper.

81

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The congress was held at La Salette Boys Academy May 13-15 at the same time Harvard’s
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included six conferences.
– Fr. Arnaud Rostand, U.S. District Superior: St. Pius X and the Blessed Eucharist
– Fr. Steven McDonald, Assistant to the District Superior: Our Lady of the Most Blessed
Sacrament
– Fr. Patrick Rutledge, District Bursar: St. John’s Gospel, Chapter VI – The Miracle of the
Loaves and Fishes
– Fr. Patrick Abbet, Vice-Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary: Thanksgiving after
Communion
– Fr. Joseph Wood, Professor of Liturgy and Latin at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary:
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Pope St. Pius X Commemorative Medal
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My Confession for Little Catholics The Story of the Mass
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The Rosary for Little Catholics
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St. Monica: Model of Christian Mothers
The famous persevering mother whose prayers, patience and good example at last obtained the conversion of her wayward son, the great St. Augustine, as well as her pagan
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The Art of Catholic Mothering
Catholic child rearing as told by twelve experienced Catholic mothers. –How does a Catholic mother instill the Faith in her children? How does she deal with issues of education
and discipline? How does she maintain her own faith in the face of life’s challenges? To
answer these questions, editor Maura Koulik has gathered the stories of twelve Catholic
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Great Wives and Mothers
Throughout our history, Catholic wives and mothers have taken up the banner of faithful
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transformed the lives of those whom they have touched. From early mothers and martyrs
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Letters to the Editor

Dear Angelus Press,
Thank you for this past issue of The Angelus focusing on Pope St. Pius
X who was famous for warning us that “Modernism is the synthesis of all
heresies.” That leads directly to my question. Bishop Fellay said at last year’s
Angelus Press Conference that Pope Francis is a “genuine modernist.” If
that is the case, and modernism is a heresy and even the “synthesis of all
heresies,” then does that mean that Pope Francis is a heretic or a Catholic or
is he somehow both a Catholic and a heretic?

Dear Sir,
This question of the heretical Pope has been a regular subject among
theologians who used to discuss it​​a s a curious question, not unlike the
number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Unfortunately, the theoretical
question of the 17th century ​is​becoming an acute issue in our unfortunate
age of latent apostasy.
To respond to the question, theologians are divided as to whether one
falling into heresy would lose ipso facto the Papacy. The reason against this
thesis is that the Church is a visible society, and deposing anyone from his
See must be done by a visible and competent authority. In this case, a large
enough College of Cardinals would have to declared formally and openly the
Pope deposed because of heresy.
Bishop Fellay had very strong words from St. Vincent’s pulpit last year in
October when he wondered how long it might be before he would be forced
to declare that the present Pope is a real heretic. The Synod on the Family
would​​certainly provide some arguments along such lines if the Pope were to
force all priests to offer sacraments to​​remarried divorcees. But God alone
knows the​​future. In any case, it is our earnest duty to pray for the Holy
Father as the children of Fatima requested. May we not think that they​​might
have had an insight of the present crucial dilemma breaking the heart of
every Catholic?

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Dear Newlyweds
Build a Marriage to Last a Lifetime
Over the span of his 20 years reigning as the Vicar of Christ, Pope Pius XII took
time out of his constantly busy schedule to visit with, console, and advise young
newlyweds. These are those talks.
Dear Newlyweds should be placed in the hands of every newly-married couple. It
is a book to read, ponder, cherish, and be guided by, all through married life. Newlywed, married, and engaged couples will be inspired and uplifted by Pius XII’s
explanation of Matrimony and his insight into the practical problems of everyday
marriage. Dear Newlyweds is a book to turn to again and again. It is a sure guide
as new difficulties arise—problems of discipline in the rearing of children, temptations against fidelity, relationships with elderly parents, and much more!

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The Nature, Dignity
and Mission of Woman
This excellent work from the author of Who Are You, O Immaculata? offers a Catholic
understanding of the role of woman with all of the importance attached to that role.
Against the modern error of women’s “liberation” and against a Protestant conception of woman as the doormat of man, Fr. Stehlin strikes a blow for true femininity,
showing that a woman’s real dignity comes from being conformed to God’s order.

“Who shall find a valiant woman?
Far and from the uttermost coasts
is the price of her.” —Prov. 31:10

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The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,
In a sermon now famous, in 1979 Archbishop Lefebvre launched a crusade of
fathers of families in order to restore all things in Christ. (You’ll find the sermon in
Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, II, 332-344.) How much is this crusade still necessary today, 35 years later!
“Charity begins at home,” the saying goes. Indeed. Vocations too, by the same
token. “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits,” the Divine Master said. As a
proof of this, most of the SSPX vocations in recent years have come from our own
families and schools. “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit.” Here are a few
wise comments of St. Pius X on this crucial subject, written more than 100 years
ago.
“A well-founded and universal complaint can be found today on the lips of
all kinds of people concerning the immorality and the corruption, not just of the
young adults, but also of children, even the youngest ones. Of these, one can
deplore that, from the very awakening of their reason, they are led by fatal tendencies to detestable vices, which should make tremble any one in society bearing some responsibilities. The Holy Ghost has said that children resemble their
parents. With the exception of a few rare branches which do not correspond to
the nature of the tree to which they are united, the wickedness of children must be
attributed to the negligence, carelessness, and, God forbid, to the malice of the
parents. That is why, if anything good can be expected for society, it must above
all come from the family” (Oct. 29, 1907, The Christian Home, Solesmes, nn. 10-11).
“My program, my star, my banner, has never changed: to restore all things
in Christ, that is, to ensure that all men, if that were possible, but especially all
Christians, live according to the faith that they profess, that they live following the
Christian law” (Oct. 12, 1908, Actes de St. Pie X, B.P., vol. VI, pp. 69).
Dear parents and future parents, the future of the Roman Catholic Church is in
your cradles.
God be with you.
Father Daniel Couture

The Society of St. Pius X is an international priestly society of common life
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