“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

What Is Islam?
The Christian East Under Islam
A Reminder from Belloc
Evangelization of Muslims

July - August 2015

“Muslims rightly distrust Catholics
who pretend to see only similarities
between Islam and the Church.
They respect a convinced Catholic
who practices his religion, believes
in it firmly, and endeavors to make
known its truths and its benefits.”
(Archbishop Lefebvre, Dakar, March 26, 1961)

Letter
from the
Publisher
Dear Readers,
“Massacres perpetrated by ISIS in Egypt or Iraq”; “Islamist war expansion in central
Africa”; “Terrorist acts in France”. In the past six months, we have seen a crescendo of
cruelty and warlike atmosphere in the name of Allah. Close to half a million people have
deserted their homes and found refuge in survival camps fleeing Allah’s wrath. Books
have been written describing the attacks targeting Christians on a world scale.
These phenomena, which have escalated to an unheard of degree, deserve that we
get to the root of the question. Is the jihad, which these warriors invoke, essential to the
Muslim religion or is it a ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘extremist’ view? What is the faith professed in the Quran? And what turned Muhammad and Islam into a powerful force?
These and many other issues are pressing hard on the mind of those who wish to
get to the core of the Islamic question. Much of the problem is that we grab one Sura or
another, and misread it completely because we ignore much of its historical Islamic context. If the Crescent religion is a book religion, it is much more than that. It is a historical
empire to contend with, a most hermetic culture, a political force, and a rather shallow
religion.
If this is so, we may candidly wonder whether a Westerner and a Christian understand
properly Islam. Only those who have long lived in this ‘civilization’ can give us a real
appreciation of the Islamic movement. And they soberly estimate that, against the rise
of Islam, the decadent Christian nations are no match. Hence, the first duty of fervent
Catholics is to know about this rising enemy, which is the purpose of this publication, and
oppose to it the charity of truth and the true charity.
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Publisher

July - August 2015
Volume XXXVIII, Number 4
Publisher
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Editor-in-Chief
Mr. James Vogel
Managing Editor
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud
Copy Editor
Miss Anne Stinnett
Design and Layout
credo.creatie
(Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Mr. Simon Townshend
Director of Operations
Mr. Brent Klaske
Director of Marketing
Mr. Jason Fabaz

		
U.S.
Foreign Countries

Subscription Rates
1 year 2 years
3 years
$45.00 $85.00 $120.00
$65.00 $125.00 $180.00

(inc. Canada and Mexico)

Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: What Is Islam?
––What Is Islam?
––The Christian East Under Islam
––On Islam
––The Evangelization of Europe’s Muslims
––Insights into the Quran

6
9
14
19
25

Faith and Morals
––Catholics in the Middle East
––“I respond point by point”
––Relativism Cannot Stop Islam

30
35
38

Spirituality
––The Light of Faith
––How to Speak to Muslims

41
43

All payments must be in U.S. funds only.
Online subscriptions: $20.00/year. To subscribe visit:
www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access
back issues 14 months and older. All subscribers to the print
version of the magazine have full access to the online version.

Christian Culture
––The Hermit of the Sahara on Muslims
––La Sainte-Chapelle and the Crusades

48
51

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published bi-monthly
under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary,
Queen of Angels. Publication office is located at
PO Box 217, St. Marys, KS 66536.
PH (816) 753-3150; FAX (816) 753-3557.
Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, MO.
Manuscripts and letters to the editor are welcome
and will be used at the discretion of the editors.
The authors of the articles presented here are solely
responsible for their judgments and opinions.
Postmaster sends address changes to the address above.
©2015 by Angelus Press. Official Publication of the
Priestly Society of Saint Pius X for the United States and Canada

––Let’s Read!
––The Sacrifices of Motherhood
––Missionfields: The Lord’s Vineyard
––Questions and Answers

57
59
62
67

News from Tradition
––Church and World
––The 1974 Declaration Forty Years Later
––Letters to the Editor
––The Last Word

69
74
82
87

Theme Islam

What Is
Islam?
by James Vogel

Any history or description of Islam that is
limited to a short article is bound to speak in
generalities and over-simplify. That being said, I
hope to provide a brief introduction to the nature
of Islam and its internal differences. We often
speak of Islam as a single, monolithic entity,
whereas the reality is much more complex, both
in history and today.

What Is Islam?
To say that Islam is simply a religion,
albeit false, tells only part of the story. It is
simultaneously a set of religious doctrines, a
political worldview, a complex series of financial
and legal rules, and cultural standards. As Serge
Trifkovic put it in The Sword of the Prophet:
6

The Angelus

July - August 2015

“There is ‘Christianity’ and there used to be
‘Christendom,’ but in Islam such a distinction is
impossible. To whatever political entity a Muslim
believer may belong...he is first and foremost the
citizen of Islam, and belongs morally, spiritually,
and intellectually, and in principle totally, to
the world of belief of which Muhammad is the
Prophet, and Mecca is the capital.”
As a religion—or even a Christian heresy, as
Belloc claimed—the dogmatic principles are
relatively few and straightforward. The entire
Muslim creed is said to be summarized in the
oft-repeated sentence: “There is no God but God
and Muhammad is His prophet.” The “five pillars
of Islam” include this prayer, other daily prayers,
almsgiving, fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca
once in one’s life.
Islam appears to be a mix of various tribal

pagan religions, bits of Jewish and Christian
traditions (the latter seemingly through heretical
sects), and Zoroastrianism. Muslims believe in
a single God, though they reject the Trinity. As
for our Lord, Jesus is a mere prophet who paved
the way for Muhammad; his divinity is rejected
in no uncertain terms. There is a complex and
rich system of angels and demons which is rather
different from that of Christianity.
Predestination plays a crucial and central role
in Islamic theology. In Islam, God pre-ordained
the salvation or damnation of all men from
eternity, and nothing an individual man can
do is able change His will. Although free will
is admitted in theory, it is practically useless.
Descriptions of everlasting punishment are brutal
and graphic, while the glories of everlasting life
are sensual and worldly.
In Islamic morality, some of the gravest sins
are apostasy, adultery (though multiple wives
are allowed!), idolatry, usury, and false witness
against fellow Muslims. Divorce is easy for
husbands and almost impossible for wives.
Slavery, blood revenge, and subjugation of nonbelievers are all allowed or promoted.
The notion of jihad, or war for the sake of
Allah, is one of the three most important things
a man can do according to Muhammad. Far
from being a theory relegated to the Quran, the
history of the past 1,500 years bears witness to
this reality. This is an intrinsic part of the Muslim
religion, not an optional or debated issue.

East was lost to Islam. It is difficult to calculate
the impact of this reality in history. The Catholic
Faith, for long over a millennium, has primarily
been, and been seen as, something Western. Yes,
the Eastern Rites exist, but they are dwarfed in
size and influence by the Latin Rite. The question
is to what extent this dichotomy was caused by
the destruction of the East by Islam. As Trifkovic
notes:
“Christians numbered 30 million by A.D. 311, in
spite of imperial persecution that often entailed
martyrdom. Most of them lived not in Europe
but in Asia Minor and Africa, the home of many
famous Christian fathers and martyrs, such as
Paul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo, Polycarp
of Smyrna, Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of
Alexandria, John Chrysostom of Antioch, and
Cyprian of Carthage. The Seven Churches of
Revelation were all in Asia Minor.”
Though the European expansion of Islam was
halted in 732, Spain would spend much of the
next seven centuries in almost constant civil war
before finally expelling them in 1492. Meanwhile,
in the eighth and ninth centuries, the new religion
continued to expand in Asia and Africa: Persia
and part of India were conquered, in addition to
Cyprus and Sicily. When all was said and done,
Islam controlled almost two-thirds
of what had
www.shutterstock.com
previously been the Christian world and the
Roman Empire.

The Crusades
The History of Islam
From a relatively humble beginning in the
early seventh century, Muhammad and his
followers spread their new religion with a
rapidity that is staggering. In the first century of
its existence, from the death of Muhammad in
632 to the decisive Battle of Tours in 732, Islam
swept across much of the civilized world. In
chronological order, the territories conquered
included Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Egypt, North
Africa, Cyprus, and Spain. Were it not for Charles
Martel in France, the Muslims might well have
attained their goal of taking Rome.
In a single century, almost all of the Christian

The history of Islam would be incomplete
without a mention of the Crusades, though it is
once again a topic that is complex and worthy of
longer studies. Although Muslims controlled the
Holy Land, they initially allowed the Christian
holy sites to remain open, collecting taxes from
the steady stream of pilgrims from Europe. In
the eleventh century, however, Muslim sentiment
took a dimmer view of Jerusalem, and even called
for the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher.
Jerusalem was captured by the Turks in 1070.
Shortly thereafter, though the schism between
Rome and Constantinople was fresh in everyone’s
minds, plans were made to re-take the Holy Land.
Pope Urban II formally called the First Crusade
7

Theme Islam
in 1095. In 1099, Jerusalem was re-taken by the
Christians, but the victory would be (relatively)
short-lived. Several other crusades aimed to
recover previously Christian lands, but Jerusalem
was taken again by the Muslims under Saladin
in 1187. Succeeding crusades were more or less
unsuccessful.
Islam continued to expand and took
Constantinople, once the greatest city in the
world, in 1453. The Balkans were next, as
well as Hungary. In 1529, the Turks were at
the gates of Vienna as Europe was being rent
asunder by the Protestant revolt. After several
centuries of consolidation and internal disputes,
Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. The Ottoman
Empire would later crumble after World War
I. Islam today has no caliphate and is instead
distinguished more by religious, ethnic, and
regional differences.

The Lack of Unity
Throughout its history, the civil wars,
theological and ethnic, between Muslims have
kept Islam from expanding its reach even further
than it did. While space prohibits a discussion of
the dynastic disputes throughout history, a closer
look at the major “denominations” of Islam is
revealing. These divisions continue to impact the
growth of Islam today.
Many are aware of the main schism between
the Sunnis and Shia, which are easily the two
largest, though not exclusive, branches of Islam.
Sunni Muslims make up to 90 percent (by some
estimates) of worldwide Islam; they believe
that after the first four caliphs, any righteous
Muslim could be made caliph. (The Shia believe,
on the contrary, that only certain descendants
of Muhammad could fill such a position of
authority.)
Although the caliphate no longer exists,
the difference between the two schools goes
far beyond details in prayers and ablutions. It
affects in particular their visions of jihad; Sunni
Islam, the “orthodox” interpretation we are most
familiar with from history and in most Muslim
countries today, openly allows and promotes
violence in the cause of Allah. Shia Muslims have
8

The Angelus

July - August 2015

a bit of a nuanced approach.
The Shia believe in an imam being mystically
hidden by Allah in preparation for the end
times. This imam will lead Muslims to a final
victory over the entire earth. This apocalyptic
eschatological vision can sometimes lead to a
double perspective: on the one hand, a certain
hesitation to engage the non-Muslim world
until said imam appears; on the other hand, a
willingness to “speed up” events in the hopes that
the end comes soon. (It should be noted that the
Sunnis also believe in this figure, but that he is to
come, not already here.)
At any rate, as interesting as the internal
divisions are, they have played a pivotal role in
keeping Islam from presenting a united front to
the world. These camps continue to play a pivotal
role in Middle East unrest today. The famous El
Cid was a master at playing the various Muslim
sects against one another in Spain.

A Final Word
The difficulty in converting Muslims to the
Faith is an historical fact. Reasons include, but
are not limited to, the punishments inflicted on
“apostates” in Islam, the striking differences in
religions, and the intentional lack of serious selfreflection and criticism inherent to Islam. The
centrality of love to Christianity, the life of selfdenial and penance, and a non-sensual paradise
are immense stumbling blocks. That being said,
especially considering the mysterious nature
of grace, we may have more opportunities to
evangelize in our age than in any before. In that
case, the first step is to know something about
Islam.
James Vogel is Editor-in-Chief of Angelus
Press. He has an M.A. in philosophy from Holy
Apostles College & Seminary. He has written
and lectured on a variety of topics related to
history and Catholic culture.

The
Christian
East Under
Islam
by Anonymous

For well over a millennium the Mohammedans
have conquered, persecuted, and, at times,
attempted to wipe out the Christians of the East.
Catholic, Orthodox, and Oriental (i.e., those who
only accept the first three Ecumenical Councils)
Christians have had their identities shaped
under Islamic rule, typically with negative,
if not disastrous, results. While the rise and
cancerous spread of Islam in the Middle East
and on across North Africa into Spain is often
seen as the subject of history books, Muslim
dominance in the region is hardly a thing of
the past. With radical Islamists today carrying
out terrorist strikes among the last remnants
of Western Christendom while more organized
and brutal efforts are underway to eliminate the
last Christian populations in the Arab world,
events which began in the seventh century

under the auspices of a false prophet reverberate
today, not just at the socio-political level, but
the ecclesiastical as well. Roman Catholics,
understandably disturbed by the seemingly
daily reports of Muslim violence in their own
backyards, may recall with understandable
nostalgia the days of organized Latin resistance
against the Islamic horde, whether at Lepanto
or the gates of Vienna. But they would do well to
remember the oftentimes tragic experience of
their Eastern brethren and their heroic attempts
to keep the Light of Christ shining in the lands
where the Apostles themselves first began to
spread the Gospel.
Although a full accounting of the emergence
of Islam is far beyond the scope of this article,
it is important to recognize that within a halfcentury of the death of Muhammad in 632,
9

Theme Islam
Muslim invaders had managed to seize control
of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem—three
ancient patriarchates of the then-unified
Church—while threatening the crown jewel of
Eastern Christendom, the Byzantine capital
of Constantinople. Byzantine victory over
the Muslims, both in the seventh and eighth
centuries, was attributed to the intercession
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, called Theotokos
(God-bearer) in the East, leading to a special
commemorating hymn known as the Akathist
celebrated on the fifth Saturday of Lent in
the Byzantine Rite to this day. While certain
populations of Eastern Christians enjoyed
periods of toleration following Muslim invasion,
they often lived ghetto existences, cut off from
the rest of the Church and prohibited from
proselytizing. At other times, however, Christians
under Islam suffered terribly with many enduring
martyrdom and others finding it easier to convert
than continue on as second-class human beings.
This unhappy reality held true following
the fall of Constantinople eight centuries after
the sons of Islam had first tried to take the
city. Despite the break in communion between
East and West occasioned by the Great Schism
in 1054 and its cementation in 1439 when the
Orthodox East repudiated the reunion proposal
made by Rome at the Council of Florence, Pope
Nicholas V dispatched troops to help defend
the city from the armies of Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed II. Unfortunately, political strife and
material shortfalls in the West prevented the
Pope from offering the degree of assistance
necessary to save the city. Concelebrations
with Latin and Greek Christians took place in
the great Byzantine cathedral of Hagia Sophia
beginning in December 1452, but on Tuesday,
May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell and its emperor,
Constantine XI, perished defending the city his
saintly namesake had founded 1,123 years earlier.
As John Julius Norwich observes at the close
of his magisterial history of Byzantium, there
is a reason why Tuesday is still considered the
unluckiest day of the week.
With the Byzantine Empire lost, relations
between East and West were finally strained to
the breaking point. In order to help ensure that
there would be no rescue of Constantinople
10

The Angelus

July - August 2015

by the Latins, Mehmed II placed George
Scholarios (Gennadius II), a learned philosopher
and theologian, but anti-Roman bigot, on the
patriarchal throne, thus ensuring that the
repudiation of Florence would stick among the
city’s Greek Orthodox population. Up until the
20th century, Ottoman rulers openly interfered
in the governance of the Greek Orthodox Church,
at times offering the patriarchate to the highest
bidder while, at others, murdering those who
did not meet with their approval. The patriarchs
of Constantinople themselves quickly took on
a dual role, serving as both spiritual leader of
the Greek Church and the political head of the
Ottoman Empire’s Christian population. While
Greek Christians sometimes enjoyed the same
basic protections as Arab Christians whose
territory had fallen under Muslim control, the
grossly disparate treatment Orthodox Christians
received as compared to their Muslim neighbors
prompted many to abandon the apostolic faith.
The adverse effect Constantinople’s fall
had on the Eastern Orthodox world cannot be
understated. First, it was not long before the
political situation of the Ottoman Empire’s
Greek Orthodox population degenerated into
the identification of Orthodoxy with nationality.
To be Greek was to be Orthodox and vice versa,
a mentality which still manifests itself today
in spite of efforts by certain Greek Orthodox
theologians and bishops to remind followers that
the Gospel is universal. With respect to relations
with the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek
nationalist mentality has created numerous
complications over the centuries, including
the erroneous belief that Catholicism is merely
a “brand” of Christianity for certain ethnic
populations living in the West. Regrettably, the
identification of nationality with Orthodoxy has
spread beyond Greek borders, infecting large
swathes of the Eastern Christian world.
Second, the loss of autonomy among the
Eastern Orthodox also meant the loss, or at least
the obscuring, of their authentic spiritual and
theological patrimony. Desperate to elevate their
learning beyond what the Ottomans would allow,
some Greek clergy sought education in the West
from Catholic institutions, an anomaly which
has sadly been derided by modern Orthodox

scholars as a period of “Latin captivity” in
Eastern Christianity. Instead of serving as a
bridge between East and West, the importation
of Western Catholic thought into the East is
now seen as a disease, mostly for chauvinistic
reasons. While the reclamation of the Christian
East’s authentic heritage deserves applause, the
contempt toward the West which has frequently
accompanied this recovery is hardly a cause for
celebration.
Last, Muslim rule over the Patriarch
of Constantinople, along with the ancient
patriarchal sees in the Arab world, means that
the Patriarch of Moscow has become the center
of the Orthodox world. The Russian Orthodox
Church, a Christian body that has produced
members who died heroically in the name of
Christ during periods of savage persecution
by militant atheists, has been long beholden to
secular authorities, largely since the reforms
of Tsar Peter the Great and certainly today
during the political dominance of Vladimir
Putin. Instead of seeking unity with the Catholic
Church, Russian Orthodoxy has violently
opposed any and all efforts for those within its
territorial sphere to rejoin Rome. For instance,
the 1596 Union of Brest, which established the
Ukrainian and Belarussian Greek Catholic
Churches, remains a source of deep animosity
among the Russian Orthodox—so deep that the
Russian Church continues to use it as an excuse
to pressure other particular Orthodox churches
from making positive overtures toward Rome.
As already noted, other Eastern Christian
confessions have undergone great trials following
the rise of Islam. The year 2015 marks the
centenary of the genocide carried out by the
Turks against the Armenians—Oriental and
Catholic—and few will forget the bloody death
21 Coptic Christians suffered at the hands of the
so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in February on a
beach in Libya. Sui iuris Catholic churches in
the Middle East, such as the Maronites, Melkites,
and Chaldeans, continue to be victimized by
an increasingly radicalized Muslim population
that wishes to drive Christianity from the region
once and for all. With the contemporary, secular
West seemingly indifferent to their plight, it is
probable, perhaps even likely, that no ancient

Christian community will remain in most of the
Middle East by the close of this century.
Catholics, particularly Roman Catholics,
who are apt to recall the glory days when their
forebears bravely defended Christendom from
the Muslims should not forget the great price
paid for centuries to keep Eastern Christendom
free, such as the great sacrifice paid by the
Serbian Orthodox at the oft-forgotten Battle of
Kosovo. For it was there, in 1389, that Tsar Lazar
and thousands of his subjects met their end
demonstrating bravery that would have made
Don John of Austria and King Jan III Sobieski
nod in admiration. And, as tradition holds, it was
there that the tsar uttered this arresting curse:
Whoever is a Serb and of Serb birth,
And of Serb blood and heritage,
And comes not to fight at Kosovo,
May he never have progeny born from love,
Neither son nor daughter!
May nothing grow that his hand sows,
Neither red wine nor white wheat!
And may he be dying in filth as long as his
children are alive!
Separated though he was from full communion
with Holy Mother Church, Tsar Lazar’s words
may still perhaps serve as an unsettling but
needful reminder that we cannot be complacent
in the face of a dark force that would see all
those who profess to follow Christ put to the
sword. In this day and age where fortitude
and true Christian strength are sorely lacking,
there remains light emanating from the East to
remind us what those virtues are and, just as
importantly, what they are for.

11

The Battle of Lepanto took
place on October 7, 1571, when
a fleet of the Holy League, a
coalition of southern European
Catholic maritime states, led by
Spain decisively defeated the
fleet of the Ottoman Empire on
the northern edge of the Gulf of
Corinth, off western Greece.
Painting of the Battle of Lepanto by an
unknown painter in Saint Paul’s Church
(Paulskerk), Antwerp, Belgium

www.shutterstock.com

Theme Islam

On Islam
by Hilaire Belloc

There remains, apart from the old Paganism
of Asia and Africa, another indirect supporter of
Neo-Paganism: a supporter which indeed hates
all Paganism but hates the Catholic Church much
more: a factor of whose now increasing importance
the masses of Europe are not yet aware: I mean
Islam. Islam presents a totally different problem
from that attached to any other religious body
opposed to Catholicism. To understand it we must
appreciate its origin, character and recent fate.
Only then can we further appreciate its possible
or probable future relations with enemies of the
Catholic effort throughout the world.
How did Islam arise? It was not, as our popular
historical textbooks would have it, a “new religion”.
It was a direct derivative from the Catholic Church.
It was essentially, in its origin, a heresy: like
14

The Angelus

July - August 2015

Arianism or Albigensianism.
When the man who produced it—and it is more
the creation of one man than any other false
religion we know—was young, the whole of the
world which he knew, the world speaking Greek in
the eastern half and Latin in the western—the only
civilised world with which he and his people had
come in contact—was Catholic. It was still, though
in process of transformation, the Christian Roman
Empire, stretching from the English Channel to the
borders of his own desert.
The Arabs of whom he came and among whom
he lived were Pagan; but such higher religious
influence as could touch them, and as they came
in contact with through commerce and raiding,
was Catholic—with a certain admixture of Jewish

communities. Catholicism had thus distinctly
affected these few pagans living upon the fringes
of the Empire.
Now what Mahomet did was this. He took
over the principal doctrines of the Catholic
Church—one personal God, Creator of all things;
the immortality of the soul; an eternity of misery
or blessedness—and no small part of Christian
morals as well. All that was the atmosphere of the
only civilisation which had influence upon him or
his followers. But at the same time he attempted an
extreme simplification.
Many another heresiarch has done this, throw­
ing overboard such and such too profound
doctrines, and appealing to the less intelligent by
getting rid of mysteries through a crude denial of
them. But Mahomet simplified much more than did,
say, Pelagius or even Arius. He turned Our Lord
into a mere prophet, though the greatest of the
prophets; Our Lady—whom he greatly revered, and
whom his followers still revere—he turned into no
more than the mother of so great a prophet; he cut
out the Eucharist altogether, and what was most
difficult to follow in the matter of the Resurrection.
He abolished all idea of priesthood: most important
of all, he declared for social equality among all
those who should be ‘true believers’ after his
fashion.
With the energy of his personality behind that
highly simplified, burning enthusiasm he first
inflamed his own few desert folk, and they in turn
proceeded to impose their new enthusiasm very
rapidly over vast areas of what had been until
then a Catholic civilisation; and their chief allies
in this sweeping revolution were politically the
doctrine of equality, and spiritually the doctrine of
simplicity. Everybody troubled by the mysteries of
Catholicism tended to join them; so did every slave
or debtor who was oppressed by the complexity of
a higher civilisation.
The new enthusiasm charged under arms over
about half of the Catholic world. There was a
moment after it had started out on its conquest
when it looked as though it was going to transform
and degrade all our Christian culture. But our
civilisation was saved at last, though half the
Mediterranean was lost.
For centuries the struggle between Islam and
the Catholic Church continued. It had varying

fortunes, but for something like a thousand years
the issue still remained doubtful. It was not
till nearly the year 1700 that Christian culture
seemed—for a time—to be definitely the master.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
the Mahommedan world fell under a kind of palsy.
It could not catch up with our rapidly advancing
physical science. Its shipping and armament and
all means of communication and administration
went backwards while ours advanced.
At last, by the end of the nineteenth century,
more than nine-tenths of the Mahommedan
population of the world, from India and the Pacific
to the Atlantic, had fallen under the government of
nominally Christian nations, especially England
and France.
We no longer regarded Islam as a rival to our
own culture. We thought of its religion as a sort of
fossilised thing about which we need not trouble.
That was almost certainly a mistake. We shall
almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the
near future. Perhaps if we lose our Faith it will
rise.
For after this subjugation of the Islamic culture
by the nominally Christian had already been
achieved, the political conquerors of that culture
began to notice two disquieting features about it.
The first was that its spiritual foundation proved
immovable; the second, that its area of occupation
did not recede, but on the contrary slowly
expanded.

Few Conversions
Islam would not look at any Christian mission­
ary effort. The so-called Christian governments,
in contact with it, it spiritually despised. The
ardent and sincere Christian missionaries were
received usually with courtesy, sometimes with
fierce attack, but were never allowed to affect
Islam. I think it true to say that Islam is the only
spiritual force on earth which Catholicism has
found an impregnable fortress. Its votaries are the
one religious body conversions from which are
insignificant.
This granite permanence is a most striking
thing, and worthy of serious consideration by
all those who meditate on the spiritual, and,
15

Theme Islam
consequently, the social, future of the world.
And what is true of the spiritual side of Islam
is true of the geographical. Mahommedan rulers
have had to give up Christian provinces formerly
under their control: especially in the Balkans. But
the area of Mahommedan practice has not shrunk.
All that wide belt from the islands of the Pacific
to Morocco, and from Central Asia to the Sahara
desert and south of it—not only remains intact but
slightly expands. Islam is appreciably spreading its
influence further and further into tropical Africa.
Now that state of affairs creates a very
important subject of study for those who interest
themselves in the future of religious influence upon
mankind. The political control of Islam by Europe
cannot continue indefinitely: it is already shaken.
Meanwhile the spiritual independence of Islam—
upon which everything depends—is as strong as,
or stronger than ever.
What affinities or support does this threat of
Islam promise to the new enemies of Catholic
tradition? It will sound even more fantastic to
suggest that Islam should have effect here than
to suggest that Asiatic paganism should. Even
those who are directly in contact with the great
Mahommedan civilisation and who are impressed,
as all such must be, by its strength and apparently
invincible resistance to conversion, do not yet
conceive of its having any direct effect upon
Christendom. There are a few indeed who have
envisaged something of the kind...
I will maintain that this very powerful, distorted
simplification of Catholic doctrine—for that is
what Mahommedanism is—may be of high effect in
the near future upon Christendom; and that, acting
as a competitive religion, it is not to be despised.

Anti-Catholic Forces
No considerable number of conversions to Islam
from Christianity is probable. I do not say that such
a movement would not be possible, for anything
is possible in the near future, seeing the welter
into which Christian civilisation has fallen. But I
think it improbable, and even highly improbable,
because Islam advances in herd or mob fashion.
It does not proceed, as the Catholic religion does,
by individual conversions, but by colonisation and
16

The Angelus

July - August 2015

group movement. But there are other effects which
a great anti-Catholic force and the culture based
upon it can have upon anti-Catholic forces within
our own boundaries.
In the first place it can act by example. To every
man attempting to defend the old Christian culture
by prophesying disaster if its main tenets be
abandoned, Islam can be presented as a practical
answer.
“You say that monogamy is necessary to happy
human life, and that the practice of polygamy,
or of divorce—which is but a modified form of
polygamy—is fatal to the state? You are proved
wrong by the example of Islam.”
Or again “You say that without priests and
without sacraments and without all the apparatus
of your religion, down to the use of visible images,
religion may not survive? Islam is there to give
you the lie. Its religion is intense, its spiritual life
permanent. Yet it has constantly repudiated all
these things. It is violently anti­sacramental; it has
no priesthood; it wages fierce war on all symbols in
the use of worship.”
This example may, in the near future, be of great
effect. Remember that our Christian civilisation is
in peril of complete breakdown. An enemy would
say that it was living upon its past; and certainly
those who steadfastly hold its ancient Catholic
doctrines stand today on guard as it were, in a
state of siege. They are a minority both in power
and in numbers. Upon such a state of affairs a
steadfast, permanent, convinced simple philosophy
and rule of life, intensely adhered to, and close at
hand, may, now that the various sections of the
world are so much interpenetrating one and the
other, be of effect...
There is no reason why its recent inferiority
in mechanical construction, whether military
or civilian, should continue indefinitely. Even a
slight accession of material power would make
the further control of Islam by an alien culture
difficult. A little more and there will cease
that which our time has taken for granted, the
physical domination of Islam by the disintegrated
Christendom we know.
Excerpted from Survivals and New Arrivals.

The Historia Compostelana says St. James (Sant’Iago in
Spanish) was buried at Santiago de Compostela. He appeared
to fight for Christians against the Moors at the Battle of
Clavijo, 844, gaining the title Matamoros (Moor-slayer).
“Santiago y cierra España” (“St. James and strike for Spain”) is
the battle cry of Spaniards: “St. James the Moorslayer, one of
the most valiant saints and knights... has been given by God to
Spain for its patron and protection.” (Cervantes, Don Quixote).

The Lepanto Lectures
Bring history alive with these fascinating talks by Christopher Check

The Knights Templar
Who are the Knights Templar? Who were the men who inspired St.
Bernard and stirred the hearts of all Europe, but met an infamous

1CD – 64 minutes
STK# 8557Q – $9.95

end at the hands of the King of France, accompanied by a papal
suppression of this knightly order? This talk presents the true
story of this military religious order, born in the heroic age of the
Crusades, and which was only brought down as victim to the greed
and treachery of others.

Lepanto—The Battle
That Saved the West
3 CDs – 94 minutes
STK# 8458 – $29.95

On October 7, 1571, the Battle of Lepanto decided the future of
Europe, yet few Europeans, and even fewer European Americans,
know the story, much less how close Western Europe came to suffering an Islamic conquest. Christopher Check tells the exhilarating
story of Lepanto, first in his own words and then through the poem
of G. K. Chesterton.

Understanding
the Inquisition
With his characteristic clarity, Christopher Check reviews one of
the modern world’s most frequent attacks against the Catholic
Church, the Inquisition. In this talk he examines the origins of the
Inquisition, its purposes and procedures, and explains that far from
being a horrible institution, the Inquisition was a merciful court that
protected and saved Europe in many ways.

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

1 CD – 61 minutes
STK# 8555Q – $9.95

The
Evangelization
of Europe’s
Muslims
by Fr. Patrick Laroche, SSPX

1

J.-M. Gaudeul, Appelés par
le Christ, ils viennent de
l’Islam (Paris: Cerf, 1991).

Extracts from a conference given at Paris by Fr. Laroche, a professor at
the Zaitzkofen Seminary and author of a doctoral thesis on the evangelization
of the Muslims in France (Strasbourg, 2001).

Catechumens Coming from Islam
The variety of persons and situations makes it difficult to classify
different kinds of conversion. Fr. Jean-Marie Gaudeul, the new Secretary
of the SRI (Secretariat for Relations with Islam), a few years ago wrote a
book on catechumens of Muslim origin: Called by Christ: They Come from
Islam.1 The roads which lead from Islam to Christianity are numerous, he
says, but they can be classified in five categories in which God calls these
Muslims who wish to become Christians. Without wishing to give too much
importance to classifications, we can mention: (1) those who are fascinated
by the personality of Jesus, to whom they begin to pray, experimenting with
His power and goodness, and who finish by recognizing Him as the Son of
God; (2) those who seek a community according to God, a community
19

Theme Islam
2

Service National
du Catéchumenat,
Catéchumènes venant de
l’Islam (1999).

3

Ibid., p. 30.

they find in the Church; (3) those who, after realizing that they are sinners,
seek the experience of gratuitous forgiveness—which is interpreted in
various ways by Muslims; (4) those who seek first of all a message coherent
in itself and with regard to life and who need intellectual certainty; trained
in polemics, they have discovered the Bible, and the coherence of the Gospel
attracts them; (5) those who most of all want to encounter God, to pray
to Him heart to heart—which is not the case in Islam, where prayer is an
ensemble of rites.
In addition to these motivations, two other causes ought to be mentioned.
The first is that of meeting Christians who live the Gospel: “More and
more frequent relations between Christians and Muslims can lead certain
Muslims to put the question of God differently, and to seek out what inspires
Christians. The desire to live a life of faith in the context of French society
can lead these Muslims to follow the path of their Christian friends.” They
appreciate their “spirit of welcome, their open minds, their sharing, their
freedom, and their seriousness.”2
On other occasions, the road is that of a dream—a fact which can seem
disorienting to the Western mentality. This is most often the case for
Muslims who seek a personal relationship with God and a life of prayer not
found in Islam; dreams and visions very often punctuate the itinerary of
those who seek God. This road is often the only one that makes it possible
for profound hopes to emerge in spite of the psychological conditioning
which is violently hostile to any kind of “apostasy.” God can in this way take
the itinerary of conversion in hand and supply by these means extra spiritual
fortitude in order to continue to the very end. “Whatever the explanation we
may give to these phenomena, it is important to take into account the words
of the candidate for baptism, without contesting this kind of experience. It is
indeed by the seriousness and the generosity of the catechumen that we can
judge his action.”3
Once churchmen at long last realize that they have been seriously remiss
in fulfilling their mission by putting off proselytizing the Muslims, the means
with which to do so must be selected. Three means among others seem
indispensable: They must return to traditional Catholic theology, promote
scientific studies on the origins of the Muslim religion, and remind the public
authorities that, although they may not be Christian, they have a duty to
promote the common good.

Truly Missionary Ecclesiology and Theology
Weary of fighting its enemies, the prelates of the Catholic Church, in a kind
of euphoria, opened up to the world during the Second Vatican Council. One
might have thought that the Church had no more enemies. With the Pastoral
Constitution Gaudium et Spes and its declarations on religious liberty and
non-Christian religions, the Council tried to put the Church in tune with
the modern world, with which it was entering into dialogue; it adopted the
strategy, if not the principles, of the liberal Catholicism it had up to then
condemned, for example in the Syllabus.
Islamic-Christian dialogue as it is practiced in Europe has grave
20

The Angelus

July - August 2015

4

S.-P. Kerboua, op. cit.,
[sic—no previous ref.], p.
272.

5

Cited by V. Serverat, Utrum
culpa sit in christianis
ex ignorantia infidelium,
in RSTP, 73 (1989), pp.
369-396.

deficiencies. It brings out the weakness of contemporary Catholic theology,
which seeks to approach the mystery of salvation through modern
individualistic philosophy much more than through Revelation. Only what
Pope John Paul II called the “dialogue of life” is truly useful because it can be
an effective means of integration. These contacts break down barriers, help
Muslims have conversations with Christians, and thus integrate the country
they have come to. But a Christian cannot stop there. A converted Muslim
tells us:
“There is no dialogue, and there will be none. It’s an illusion, because
Muslims, when they are together, begin with the principle that they possess
the truth. Christianity doesn’t interest them, and so they’re not ready to
discuss religion. In doing so, they would have the impression of doubting
themselves. In addition, their arguments are puerile, feeble, unconvincing.
But even if they don’t know it, many Muslims are waiting for the truth, and it
is at the level of personal relationships that the priests have a role to play. If
they love the truth, they must share it, at any price; that should be the natural
act of any Christian. And this is possible when, as in France, Muslims are
not subject to the influence of their community. Believe me, more than one
Muslim living here is thinking about Christianity. Teaching them to love the
true God, that is what the dialogue should be. Alas! Out of lassitude, out of
cowardice, the Church has given up.”4
Raymond Lully said: “Let the Church cease to be missionary and it will
immediately be threatened with internal weakness. The loss of our initial
fervor explains the advance of Islam, which has already cut off half of
Christianity’s territory and faithful.”5
...Since Vatican II, the new principles of evangelization have come down
to a dialogue which seeks to discover in non-Christian religions riches
which the Holy Ghost may have placed in them. More than a missionary
method emphasizing the importance of preparing souls for the preaching
of the Gospel through education and charitable acts, this dialogue consists
in discovering part of the Word of God in what the other believes and in
marveling at this. Not only is this method based upon a false conception of
religions which is neither founded upon Holy Scripture nor confirmed by
history, but in particular it is helpless before Islam. This theological dialogue
practiced with Muslims can only increase their contempt for Christians and
confirm them in their errors because they see in it either a trap or a sign of
weakness.
Lowering the barrier that separates Muslim from Christian, eliminating
prejudices through education and charitable acts—this is what true dialogue
should be. It is a long-term undertaking to seek, by all possible means
and with clear respect for Muslim individuals, to open them to Christian
civilization. In a word, it is a question of showing them true values rather
than turning them into atheists or rootless persons who are disgusted with a
European civilization that rejects its own roots and embodies the “culture of
death.”

21

Theme Islam
6

22

Let’s recall that at the
European Summit held at
Nice in Dec. 2000, under
the presidency of France,
a charter of fundamental
rights was adopted. The
project included a preamble
the second paragraph of
which began: “Conscious
of its religious and moral
heritage, the Union is
founded upon...” The French
prime minister, Lionel
Jospin, felt compelled to
telephone Roman Herzog,
former president of
Germany and president of
the commission charged
with drafting the charter,
to demand the correction
of the preamble, the reason
being that for France, a
secular republic, reference
to religious heritage was
“unacceptable.” The word
religious was replaced with
spiritual. But spirituality
designates an attitude or a
disposition; it expresses no
content.

The Angelus

July - August 2015

Seeking the Common Good
If the “dialogue of life” is not enough, if modern theological dialogue is
impossible, indeed harmful, if our secular world is repulsive to the Muslims
and Islamization fanaticizes them, what solution can be found for the
conversion of Muslims? Cardinal Lavigerie gave the response, and others
have repeated it after him: a policy which moves from the secular world to
Islamization is doomed to failure, and this has been amply proven by history.
The solution, which would have been the means of assimilating North
African populations, and which will be the key to the integration of Muslims
present in France and Europe, is to restore a society that renounces neither
its roots nor its Christian culture. We are obviously a long way from that,6
mainly because the men of the Church are no longer principally inspired
by the data of Revelation and of the Faith, and because politicians are no
longer guided by the search for the common good. They are all guided by an
ideology: that of the rights of man, supposedly theologically justified by a
new concept of the Faith and of the relationship of man to God.
Thus, while present conditions are ripe for a fruitful apostolate (the
possibility of missionary dialogue exists, as does that of acquiring
preliminary knowledge to facilitate it), religious indifference on the part of
the government and of the Church hierarchy is such that what could have
been a marvelous missionary opportunity has already become a serious
danger.
It was a grave error to export secularity to Muslim countries. The
Muslim is an essentially religious being, sensitive to all forms of piety. What
disgusts him profoundly is the absence of faith. In the eyes of a Muslim,
a man who does not pray is a kelb, a dog. In light of this the complaints of
the missionaries in North Africa in the 19th century concerning France’s
strategy of preaching secularization for the French and Islamization for
the Berbers are entirely understandable. They echo in the comments of the
Archbishop of Algiers in a letter written in 1872 setting forth the lessons to
be drawn from the Kabylia insurrection:
“The remarkable thing is that it isn’t the Arabs, that is to say, the original
Muslims, that are declaring holy war against us; this time it’s the Berbers.
Six hundred years ago the Berbers were Christians like us, descended
like us from the ancient indigenous race and Roman conquerors; during
our conquest, the Berbers showed no fanaticism and their practice of
Mohammedanism was limited to reciting the Prophet’s prayer. But since
they have come under our control, it seems that we have nothing dearer
at heart than to fanaticize them... In Kabylia, with money from France, we
have founded Muslim schools; they have forbidden our priests to preach
the gospel; our sisters, to exercise any charitable works. Well, we see
the fanaticism that’s been protected and fomented by us now erupting in
the burning of our villages and the massacring of our people. Will this
spectacle at last open some eyes? Will they understand that what France
has been doing for the last forty years is as odious as it is absurd? Will
they understand that we shouldn’t isolate the Arabs and park them in the
Quran, but rather assimilate them, inundate them, if I dare say, in the pacific
invasion of truly Christian colonists, not in order to create an ‘Arab kingdom’

7

La XIIe Croisade, p. 177.

8

Cardinal Giacomo Biffi,
Note pastorale (Sept. 12,
2000).

at last, but a French Catholic colony?”
As Father Charles de Foucauld wrote to René Bazin on July 1, 1916:
“If we have not learned how to make Frenchmen out of these peoples,
they will chase us out. The only way they can become French is if they
become Catholic. Otherwise, in less than fifty years we will be driven out
of North Africa.” These words, formulated by a connoisseur of Islam and of
Muslims, proved tragically prophetic. Let us hope that the following words,
equally prophetic, may also come to pass: “Learn by heart that it’s only by
Christianizing the Muslims that you will make them civilized, and it is only
by making them civilized that you will be able to integrate them into your
society, and it is by thus integrating them that you will add other Cyprians
and Augustines to your Vincent de Pauls and your Curés of Ars.”7
Let us conclude with Cardinal Biffi: “I think that Europe will either
become Christian again, or it will become Muslim. What seems to me to have
no future is ‘the culture of nothing,’ of liberty without limits and without
content, which seems to be the dominant attitude among European peoples;
it will not be able to withstand the ideological assault from Islam which is
sure to occur: only the rediscovery of the ‘Christian event’ as man’s only
means of salvation—and therefore only the determination to revive the
ancient soul of Europe—will be able to offer a different outcome to this
inevitable confrontation.”8
In conclusion, I shall summarize: Muslim doctrine, confirmed by
experience in Muslim countries, makes conversion of a Muslim almost
impossible under Sharia: whoever preaches the doctrine of Christ, like the
one who converts, is subject to severe penalties, including death. Even when
the Church benefits from some liberty in a few Muslim countries (Morocco,
Tunisia), Christian doctrine can be preached only to Christians. On the
other hand, where Christianity dominated, Muslims were free to convert if
they wished. This was the case in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is the case
today in Europe, but neither the secular government with its laicism, nor the
Church with its inter-religious dialogue and its New Theology, desires this.
And so we understand better why St. Paul invited Timothy to pray for
those in authority, that a calm and peaceful social life might be established
in piety. Indeed, God wants all men to be saved and to know the truth—
which is very difficult to achieve when the government is opposed to the
Catholic religion. In a word: missionary activity must make known the social
doctrine of the Church without cutting it off from its foundation, which is the
doctrine of Christ the King.

23

Islamic art developed from many sources: Roman, Early Christian art,
and Byzantine styles were taken over in early Islamic art and architecture;
the influence of the Sassanian art of pre-Islamic Persia was of paramount
significance; Central Asian styles were brought in with various nomadic
incursions; and Chinese influences had a formative effect on Islamic painting,
pottery, and textiles.

Insights into
the Quran
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

At the heart of the Islamic religion is the
Quran, which translates “recitation.” For the
Muslim, the Quran is the Book of Allah himself
and this is why each verse starts with: “Allah
said…”

Importance
An uncreated and divine book, it contends
that it contains all knowledge to the extent
that all other things are insignificant, including
scientifically proved miracles which “smell the
devil.” The apostate Renan concluded from this:
“The liberals who defend Islam do not know
it. Islam is the indistinguishable union of the
spiritual and temporal realm; it is the reign of
dogma; it is the heaviest chain which humanity
has ever borne.”

The Quran, so it is said, was entrusted by the
Archangel Gabriel to Muhammad on the “night
of the revelation” in the grotto of Mount Hira.
Afterwards, not unlike Moses, Muhammad came
down to the valley and gave the revelation to his
auditors, who wrote it down gradually from his
teaching.
The Quran is written in Arabic and, although
it pretends to be clear and exhaustive, the
intellectual leaders very quickly interpreted it
and produced commentaries, namely, the Sunna
(sentences drawn from the life and teaching of
Muhammad) and the Sharia (Islamic legislation).
It would be difficult to exaggerate how much
the Quran has influenced the formation of
the Muslim mind. It has given birth to many
historical and linguistic studies. It has turned
Arabic into a world language, the lingua franca
25

Theme Islam
of all Muslim peoples, not unlike what Latin
had been in the Middle Ages for Christianity. By
presenting the Islamic community as the divinely
chosen people, the Quran has flattered and
unified the “believers.” The Islamic world view
has been molded by the Quran, and this alone
explains the uniformity of its lifestyle despite the
innumerable ethnic backgrounds.

The Front Page
The book is written in a sententious style and
invites the reader to reflection. It concentrates
the attention on God’s power and His unceasing
intervention in the government of the world,
where nothing happens beyond His command.
The Quran is divided into 114 chapters called
Suras. These Suras are divided into verses
totaling more than 6,000 verses of unequal
length. Strangely enough, the Suras are classified
in decreasing order of length. This means that
the text is without logical order and any given
teaching is found in various places, and the same
Sura carries a variety of disconnected themes. A
specialist, Father Bertuel, explains that, prior to
any study, we need to reconstruct the chronology
of the Suras: 90 primitive Suras are from the
Meccan era and the 24 others from the later
period of Medina. The absence of chronology
proves a real challenge to getting a grasp of both
the history and meaning of the text.

The Content
The ritual and liturgical prescriptions, dealing
with prayers and the pilgrimage, as well as
the social and penal laws are described in the
Medinan period. By contrast, it is in the earlier
Suras of the Meccan that we find a description of
the Quranic dogmas.
The Quran presents itself as the definitive
revelation which has corrected and supplanted
the other “religions of the Book,” that is to say,
Judaism and Christianity. Muhammad is called
“the last of the prophets,” meaning that he is the
only one admitted by Islam and none will appear
after him. But even the term “prophet” needs to
be nuanced, since Muhammad, a mere messenger
26

The Angelus

July - August 2015

of God, confesses his ignorance of future events
and made no pretence of defending the revelation
against early contradictors.
When delving into the content of the Quran,
we see that Muhammad started his mission
with a clearly monotheist dogma, to which
he associated eschatological views: the last
Judgment, but also the cataclysm which would
befall on the unbelievers. Allah is the only and
unequaled Master of all things. He alone created
out of nothing the world in six days and “breathed
the spirit into man.” Yet Allah the Creator has
little to do with the Christian God, who is a
merciful Father to man, and Muhammad openly
rejected the mystery of the Holy Trinity of one
God in three Persons, and he calls the Christians
polytheists.
The Quranic Christology is characteristic and
has been largely influenced by the apocryphal
Christian literature. Christ—Isa—is called “son
of Mary,” Mary being confused with the sister of
Moses. He was born of a virgin and has worked
many miracles from the cradle—a surprising
affirmation when Muhammad confesses that
he made none. Christ is the “Messiah, the Word,
and the Spirit of Allah.” Yet Muhammad rejects
Christ’s divinity and never conceded the mystery
of the crucifixion. A simple mortal man, Christ
died, but the death on the cross is an “illusion,” a
Jewish legend, and the Christians too are wrong
for giving the Messiah the title of “son of God.”
In this system, man’s acts are so dependent on
God’s almighty power that human freedom and
responsibility is reduced to nothing. Therefore,
God has predetermined man’s eternal destiny for
good or evil.
The eschatology is the work of the Meccan
Suras. One finds the affirmation of a future life, of
the resurrection and the general judgment, of an
eternal heaven but of a temporary hell, a teaching
drawn from the Talmud.
The soul is immortal but the meaning of soul—
nafs—is unclear. It seems to mean the principle
of life and of blood rather than a spiritual
principle. This is an important point which can
account for the overly material paradise which
Muhammad’s revelation offers to these “souls.”
Indeed, here the early Suras of Mecca speak of
paradise, similar to the Talmudic vision of Eden,

in very sensuous terms. In accordance with
the sensual taste of the Meccan population, it
mentions the eternal virgins and adolescents, to
the great embarrassment of the Quranologues.
Unlike the Christian creed, nowhere do we find a
belief in the beatific vision of Allah. Finally, if the
resurrection of the dead is omnipresent, Islamists
have not solved the enigma around the lot of the
souls of the dead prior to the resurrection of the
bodies.
Another thing which arrests the Western mind
is the treatment of woman. About a seventh of
the Quran deals with punctilious prescriptions
related to her. She is relegated, as in the Talmudic
tradition, to a category beneath man, who may
marry several wives and repudiate them for the
least motive. However, this inferiority of woman
deserves to be nuanced, since converts from
Islamism have explained that the culture of Islam
is a covert matriarchate. The wife and daughter
is nothing indeed, but the mother of a boy is
supreme! Besides the role of woman in society,
there are other Jewish practices still essential to
Islam, like circumcision and the ablutions.
From what we have seen of the practices and
the Quranic creed, we see a great resemblance
with the position of Judeo-Christianism, and of
Manichaeism particularly, in light of the denial
of Christ’s divinity and crucifixion. Moreover, the
personality of Muhammad greatly resembles that
of Mani, the third-century Gnostic whose works
were translated in Arabic in the eighth century.

A Largely Enigmatic Book
Despite its pretense to be written in a clear
Arabic language, the Quran remains today
in large part a book closed to Islamologues.
A recent study explained that much of the
obscurities are due to the fact that the Quran
rests on a Syro-Aramaic basis, which language
was unknown to the early interpreters, who often
stumbled across words unknown in Arabic. This,
coupled with defective punctuation and historical
losses, accounts for the misinterpretations of
earlier writers. This is why, to this day, despite
the multiple researchers who have dedicated
their life to it, at least one quarter of the
Quran remains to be properly understood and

deciphered.
Another issue is that the Quran is not available
in translation, which is seen as a betrayal of
the “sacred text.” A mere translation will not
be considered authentic to the average Iman.
This explains also why most “believers” are
ignorant of everything about their own book. Said
Mondher Sfar (Le Coran est-il authentique, Sfar
éditions, 2000): “The modern Muslim today is
ig­norant of everything about the Quran, as he is
ignorant of everything about Muhammad, if you
except the mythical clichés which he takes in as
historical data. The sacredness which surrounds
the Quranic text is a quasi physical obstacle to
understanding and discovering that it contains
senses which are not those recognized by the
orthodoxy and that it has a story which the early
Muslims have arranged in their own way to
prevent us from better understanding it today.”
Since it is necessary, in order to speak with
Muslims, to be familiar with their objections to
true Christianity, a missionary among Muslims
must study their doctrine. But if there are today
numerous Christians well versed in Islamic
studies, there are very few whose thinking is not
preconditioned by the indifference to religion
inculcated by the last Council (Nostra Aetate,
§3). This new teaching has killed the missionary
spirit. It has also led many Catholic specialists to
approach the Quran as if it were a book revealed
by God, or to explain it with the Muslim tradition,
the hadith, written to clarify the Quran.
It is urgent to apply to the study of the Quran
a healthy critical method, which has successfully
been applied to the Bible. This would allow the
formulation of intellectually rational hypotheses
about the creation of the sacred book of the
Muslims, and therefore of the entire Islamic
culture. Helping Muslims free themselves from
their arbitrary or unfounded convictions could
indeed be the result of Quran studies, but only if
they themselves are free of Islamic prejudices.
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.

27

The Kaaba or Ka’aba
(Arabic: “The Cube”),
is a cuboid building at
the center of Islam’s
most sacred mosque,
Al-Masjid al-Haram, in
Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It
is the most sacred site in
Islam. It is considered the
‘House of God’. Wherever
they are in the world,
Muslims are expected
to face the Kaaba when
performing prayer. From
any point in the world,
the direction facing the
Kaaba is called the qibla.
The sanctuary around
the Kaaba is called AlMasjid al-Haram (Sacred
Mosque).
One of the Five Pillars
of Islam requires every
Muslim who is able to
do so to perform the
hajj pilgrimage at least
once in their lifetime.
Multiple parts of the
hajj require pilgrims
to make tawaf, the
circumambulation seven
times around the Kaaba
in a counter-clockwise
direction. In 2014, Saudi
Arabia reported having
completed Hajj permits
for 1,389,053 international
pilgrims and 63,375 for
residents.

Faith and Morals

Catholics
in the
Middle East
by Fr. Christopher Danel

The Catholics of the Middle East profess the
same Catholic faith and participate in the same
sacraments as all other Catholics, according to
the liturgy of their ancient Rites. There are twelve
Rites in the Catholic Church, organized into three
liturgical families. The most widely known are the
Roman Rite and the Byzantine Rite, but that leaves
ten more, and the Catholics of the Middle East
belong to at least seven of these.
The three liturgical families are those based on
the ancient Patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria,
and Antioch. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem was
the liturgical ancestor of all of these, but did not
retain a Rite of its own. Rome is the ultimate
source of the three extant Western Rites: Roman,
Ambrosian, and Mozarabic. From Alexandria
come the Coptic and Ethiopian Rites used in Egypt
and Abyssinia. From Antioch come the Armenian,
30

The Angelus

July - August 2015

Syriac, Maronite, and Chaldean Rites used in
the Middle East, as well as the Syro-Malankara
and Syro-Malabar Rites of India. Constantinople
(formerly Byzantium) developed the liturgy of
Antioch into the form now known as the Byzantine
Rite, which is thus included in the Antiochene
family. Constantinople was elevated to the status
of Patriarchate in 381 and since then its Rite has
spread widely, with a prominent Middle Eastern
Catholic community adhering to this Rite. Each of
the current Catholic Patriarchs descending from
these ancient Sees governs the faithful of his Rite
within his Patriarchal territory in submission to
the Primacy of the Apostolic See of Rome.
In addition to the Catholics of the Middle East,
there are also sizeable communities of Orthodox
adhering to the same liturgical traditions, and
this has a significant impact on Catholic life in the

region. The Christological controversies of the
fifth century form the background of that history.
At that time, the Patriarch of Constantinople,
Nestorius, advanced the teaching that there are
two Persons in Christ, not just one. On the other
hand, the proper doctrine of Christ was defended
by St. Cyril of Alexandria, who taught clearly
that Christ is both God and man in one Person,
which means that Our Lady is the Theotokos, the
Mother of God. At the Council of Ephesus (431),
the Alexandrine theology of St. Cyril was upheld,
while Nestorianism was condemned. Subsequent
efforts to define the relationship of the human
and the divine in Christ led to the heresy of
Monophysitism (“one nature”), which taught that
Christ’s human nature was completely absorbed
by His divine nature, such that only the divine
nature remained. This teaching was condemned
at the Council of Chalcedon (451), because Christ
indeed has two complete natures, human and
divine, in one divine Person. After Ephesus and
Chalcedon, large portions of the East rejected the
Church’s dogmatic Tradition and went into schism.
While many persist in heresy and schism, many
others have returned to the Catholic Church, and
it is of their descendants living in the Middle East
that we treat.

The Chaldean Catholics
Catholics of the Chaldean Rite are descended
from the ancient people of Mesopotamia between
the Tigris and Euphrates, and are largely based in
modern Iraq, principally in Baghdad and Mosul.
They received the Faith due to a miracle. Christ
instructed St. Thomas to send two disciples to
cure the King of Edessa, so the Apostle sent the
disciples Addai and Mari with a cloth bearing
a miraculous image of Christ. They cured the
king with it, and he embraced the Faith for his
kingdom. Edessa became an important theological
and monastic center, producing St. Ephrem.
In the early fourth century, the governance of
the church was established near Baghdad. By
424, the church had repudiated its ties to Rome,
and in 486 adopted the heresy of Nestorius,
contra Ephesus. Missionary efforts of the
Dominicans and Franciscans led to the return

of the first Chaldeans in 1445, and after a long
period of contention, the Patriarch of Babylon
was recognized by Rome in 1830, as he and his
followers rejected Nestorianism and purged
all references to him and his heresy from their
liturgical books. There are about 420,000 Chaldean
Catholics in the Middle East and beyond, with
240,000 of them living in Iraq.

The Syriac Catholics
Catholics who belong to the Syriac Rite come
from the Patriarchate of Antioch, the first See
held by St. Peter. After Chalcedon, their Greekspeaking urbanites accepted the council’s
decrees, while the rural population followed a
certain priest named Fr. Jacob Baradai, who
was supported by the Empress Theodora and
consolidated the Monophysite faction into what
would be called the Jacobite Church (Syriac
Orthodox) after its founder. Contacts with the
Crusaders began some movement toward reunion
with the Church, and in the seventeenth century
Capuchin and Jesuit missionaries converted many.
In 1782, when the bishop of Aleppo was elected as
Patriarch, he declared himself a Catholic and took
refuge at the monastery of Our Lady of Sharfeh
in Lebanon. His successors, based in Beirut and
recognized by Rome, have continued the Catholic
lineage and have shepherded the Syriac Catholics
ever since. There are about 132,000 adherents in
Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and abroad.

The Maronite Catholics
The Maronite Rite uses Syriac as its official
language, which is very close to Aramaic, Our
Lord’s own language. In the late fourth century,
St. Maron and his disciples founded an important
monastery located between Antioch and Aleppo.
They vigorously supported the Catholic doctrine
of Chalcedon, and did not break communion with
Rome. In consequence, Monophysites killed 350
monks at Beit Maron soon after, and the Emperor
Justinian rebuilt the monastery for them. The
Maronites moved to the mountains of Lebanon
three hundred years later, and have been headed
ever since by their own Patriarch, who resides
31

Faith and Morals
at Bkerke, near Beirut. The Maronites enjoyed a
peaceful seclusion until the nineteenth century,
when fanatics of an Islamic sect massacred
thousands of them. Afterwards, the French took
measures to protect them, and ever since Lebanon
gained its independence in 1943, the national
constitution has required that the president
be a Maronite Catholic. About one third of the
population of Lebanon is Maronite. There are 3.3
million Maronites, including 1.7 million in the
Middle East, and thriving communities in America
and Australia.

The Melkite Catholics
After the Maronites, this is the most prosperous
and influential community. The term Melkite
comes from the Syrian word malok, or king.
After the submission of the Byzantine Emperor
to the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, the
Monophysites began to refer to the Catholics who
defended his orthodoxy as Melkites. After the
seventh century Arab invasion, these Catholics
Interior of the Coptic church in Sharm-el-Sheik, Sinai, Egypt

32

The Angelus

July - August 2015

in Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem all came
under the influence of Constantinople, and by
the thirteenth century had adopted its Rite. In
the succeeding centuries, contact with Rome
was sporadic, and some of the Melkite prelates
lapsed into schism, while others were faithful, as
evidenced by periodic contacts and professions of
fidelity to the Holy See by some of the Patriarchs
of Antioch. When a dispute about the Patriarchal
election erupted in 1724 between pro-Catholic
and pro-Orthodox factions, the Pope officially
recognized the legitimate Patriarch of Antioch,
whose successors have governed the Catholic
faithful of that Rite throughout the Middle East
ever since. There are 1.3 million Melkites in the
Middle East and abroad.

The Armenian Catholics
The Catholic Faith was first taken to Armenia
by the Apostles St. Bartholomew and St. Jude
Thaddeus. The Faith definitively took hold in A.D.
301 when St. Gregory the Illuminator baptized the
Armenian king, who declared Armenia as the first

Catholic nation. In the sixth century, however,
the Armenians broke with both Rome and
Constantinople and adopted Monophysitism. Later
contacts with Crusaders helped to nurture union
with the Church, and in 1742 the Pope confirmed
the Patriarchate of Cilicia of the Armenians, which
has led the Armenian Catholics since that time,
with the Patriarch currently residing in Lebanon.
The Armenian Christians suffered an enormous
genocide at the hands of the Islamic Turks
during and after the First World War. By 1923 as
many as 1.5 million were slaughtered, including
thousands of bishops, priests, and religious. There
are as many as 400,000 Catholics in the historic
homeland, with a few thousand more throughout
the Middle East and in other regions of the world.

The Coptic Catholics
These are the Egyptians who received the
Faith from St. Mark the Evangelist, who was then
martyred in Alexandria in A.D. 67. Their liturgy
uses the ancient Coptic (Egyptian) language.
They developed a renowned system of monastic
life, and from them came many saints, including
St. Athanasius. Alexandria became one of the
most important Patriarchates of the Church, but
after Chalcedon, it unfortunately became the
stronghold of Monophysitism. The conversion of
many Copts back to Catholicism is the result of
the Capuchin Friars and Jesuits who established
missions in Cairo in the 1600’s and there preached
the Faith tirelessly. In 1829, the Holy See erected
the Coptic Catholic Patriarchate of Alexandria,
which remains the center of Coptic Catholicity,
which numbers 162,000 members. The Coptic
Orthodox Church (Monophysite) is much larger,
numbering approximately 8 million members.

The Ethiopian Catholics
The adherents of the Ethiopian Rite are the
Semitic peoples of Abyssinia. Their rite uses
the ancient Ge’ez language for its ritual. The
conversion of the court treasurer of Candace,
Queen of Ethiopia, is told in the Acts of the
Apostles, and the Ethiopians furthermore received

the faith from two Christian youths of Tyre, Sts.
Frumentius and Aedesius, who served in the royal
court; the former was later consecrated a bishop
by St. Athanasius himself. After Chalcedon, the
Ethiopians adopted Monophysitism, leading
to prolonged isolation. Islamic attacks in 1531
compelled the Ethiopian Emperor to turn to
the Portuguese for assistance, and with them
came the Jesuit priests who laid the groundwork
for the reconciliation of the Ethiopians to the
Church. In 1623, Rome erected a Patriarchate
there, but it lasted only a decade and has not been
revived since. The Italian occupation in the 1930’s
brought additional missionary efforts, and only
thirty years later Addis Ababa was erected as an
Archdiocese. In early 2015, the Eritreans were
given a separate jurisdiction and Asmara was
elevated to the same status. The 140,000 Catholic
Ethiopians and Eritreans have emigrated to other
parts of North Africa and the Middle East, such as
Libya.

Roman Catholics in
the Middle East
In addition to those of the Eastern Rites
described, there is a large community of native
Roman Catholic Arabs, or “Latins,” in the region
and particularly in Palestine, where they number
fully one half of the Catholic population. They
depend on the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
with the longstanding vigilance of the Franciscan
Custody of the Holy Land. Additionally there are
significant numbers of Catholic workers from
Southern India who belong to the Roman, Malabar,
or Malankara rites. There are possibly up to 1.6
million Roman Catholic Filipinos working in the
region, especially in and around Dubai.
The Catholic communities in the Middle East
are particularly fragile. Massive emigration brings
the threat of demographic collapse. Persecution is
a fact of life. But a bigger issue now overshadows
all: martyrdom. How many of these souls will
be required to give their blood and their lives for
Christ? Behold how they are numbered among
the children of God, and their lot is among the
saints (Wis. 5: 5).

33

152 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8271 – $13.95

Saint Francis of Assisi

And the Conversion of the Muslims
Tells the authentic story of St. Francis’s trip to the Sultan in Egypt and efforts to convert him
to the one true Faith. Also includes a brief biography of St. Francis, including his stigmata; the
Franciscans; St. Clare; and St. Francis’s view of the Crusades. A book greatly needed in our era of
false ecumenism.

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

“I respond
point by point”
by Basilius (SiSiNoNo, November 30, 2014)

On October 14, 1911, St. Pius X wrote a
Response Letter (beginning with the words
“I respond point by point”) to the Bishop of
Cremona, Msgr. Geremia Bonomelli,1 who on his
80th birthday had sent (with an accompanying
letter) as a gift to St. Pius X a booklet he had
recently written on three Italian Senators:
Thaon di Revel, Tancredi Canonico, and Antonio
Fogazzaro, the last one having been condemned
of modernism by the very St. Pius X.
In his Response Letter Pope Sarto expresses
astonishment and dismay that the Bishop of
Cremona presents the life and works of three
characters exuding modernism, one of whom
having been formally condemned, without giving
any judgment on their doctrinal orthodoxy. St.
Pius X goes on renewing his condemnation of
modernism with very strong words and responds

to Bonomelli’s accusation of being too severe
toward modernism and modernists. Finally he
deals with the problem of the “Roman question”
raised by Bonomelli in his letter. Let us look at
the text of the letter of St. Pius X.

First of all, the Pope regrets that in Bonomelli’s
writing on the three Senators, known to public
opinion and history for their liberal, proRisorgimento, and modernist views, “there was
no attempt at an evaluation of their writings and
works.” The Pope justly observes: “It seems to me
that especially a Bishop should say something
more.” That is to say, it is a bishop’s duty to make
a clear statement on the orthodoxy or heterodoxy
of those that he presents to the public, otherwise
he leads the faithful into believing that there
35

Faith and Morals
is nothing wrong in their writings and their
works, while the Holy See has already made a
pronouncement on them (especially Fogazzaro)
condemning them for a strong veneer of
modernism.

Then St. Pius X responds to Bonomelli, who
had the nerve to recommend him “moderation
in his decrees against modernism.” The Pontiff
distinguishes between “modern as the source
of serious studies, and modernism,” that is the
cesspool of all heresies (Pascendi, September
8, 1907). Pope Sarto continues, saying: “I am
shocked that you find excessive the measures
taken by the Holy See to hold back the deluge that
threatens to spread while the modernist error
that people want to disseminate in our days is
much more deadly than that of the time of Luther,
because it aims directly at the destruction not
only of the Church (as in the case of Luther), but
of Christianity.”
It is worthwhile noting the verb “hold back”
used by St. Pius X: it is the same used by St.
Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians (II
Thess. 2:3-4) to indicate the obstacle, the one who
restrains, the katechon, the force that opposes
the final Antichrist from reigning over the whole
world: “Let no man deceive you by any means,
for unless there come a revolt first, and the man
of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who
opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called
God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in
the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were
God.”
St. Augustine says that the apostasy is
the separation from Rome of the people that
were at first all subject to her, and St. Thomas
Aquinas (Commentary on the Second Letter to
the Thessalonians, 2:3-4, Chapter 2, lesson 1,
numbers 34-35) clarifies that, as Pope Leo says in
his sermon “De Apostolis,” “the Roman Empire
has not disappeared but has transformed from
temporal to spiritual. Thus, the apostasy from the
Roman Empire must be understood not only from
the temporal one but also from the spiritual one,
which is the Catholic faith of the Roman Church.”
St. Thomas Aquinas (Booklet 68, De Antichristo,
printed in Parma, 1864) again confirms that “the
36

The Angelus

July - August 2015

obstacle” to the manifestation of the Antichrist
is submission to the Roman Church and that “the
one who holds him back” is the Papacy.
Furthermore, St. Pius X focuses well on the
gravity of the modernist apostasy, which
1. Destroys subjectively the very nature of the
Christian religion;
2. Makes Christ into a myth of the early
Christians;
3. Considers Christianity an ideology invented
by Paul of Tarsus and by the first communities
founded by him; and
4. Sees God as a logical entity, that is to say
an idea resulting from the need of religious
sentiment of man, whereas He is the most perfect
Being really and objectively existing outside the
human mind.
“Faced with so grave an evil,” continues St.
Pius X, “there will never be sufficient precautions
that, supplying prevention, put someone on guard
without hurting anyone and apply with leniency
and compassion the proper penalties.”
In summary, the Holy See advises the faithful
not to support certain theories, warns them,
puts them on guard, so that in the end only
the one who despises the admonitions of the
Church is finally condemned: the decrees against
modernism per se “do not hurt anyone”; only the
baptized who join modernism are condemned by
their own fault and not for excessive severity of
the Church.

Bonomelli had written to Pope Sarto: “With
your decrees so severe, you will either make
apostates or hypocrites.” St. Pius X replies:
“Unfortunately we have some apostates [the
modernists, voluntary and, thus, guilty—
comment of SiSiNoNo] but not made so by the
laws against modernism, and we feel sorry for
them; we shall have some hypocrites, and too
bad for them; but at least we shall not have in the
clergy teachers and preachers of the modernist
error, who would in a short time take the whole
world into apostasy.”
What makes the apostate and the hypocrite,
then, is not St. Pius X, but the bad will of the
baptized who openly embraces modernism and
leaves the ranks or of the one who is interiorly a

modernist but does not reveal it publicly in order
to remain within the Church and re-make her into
a modernist entity from within. St. Pius X is only
concerned with not allowing the clergy to teach
the modernist apostasy and, thus, lead astray all
the faithful.

Finally the Pope responds to a sibylline
question of Bonomelli that saddens St. Pius X.
The Bishop of Cremona has asked him to “put
an end to the struggle in Italy, to the conflict
between State and Church” [after September
20, 1870—Comment of SiSiNoNo], adding that
“it would take but one word from the Pope to
save so many souls.” St. Pius X challenges Msgr.
Bonomelli and forces him out into the open,
writing: “What is this prodigious word you
expect of me?...Let’s be clear: [do you expect]
the renunciation of the temporal power of the
Church?”
Here he recalls the doctrine of the Church
on temporal power, constantly re-affirmed by
Pius IX and Leo XIII in numerous encyclicals.
The temporal power is a means that Providence
wanted to grant the Church in order to keep its
spiritual, doctrinal, and moral independence
vis-à-vis the human powers that have followed
each other in the course of centuries. Just as
man needs a home of his own so as not to depend
on others, so the Church needs a State of her
own to be mistress “in her own house.” Thus,
Pius X, like Pius IX, “cannot, must not, and wills
not” to renounce what God has given “for so
many centuries as a bulwark to the liberty of
the Church....Because it is not with the temporal
power that one wages war but with the spiritual
one.” This has constantly been taught by the
Pontifical Magisterium to which also Msgr.
Bonomelli must consent.
To Bonomelli’s suggestion that he trust the
guarantees the Italian Government has promised
to the Church, Pius X responds that one cannot
trust guarantees “assured by a government
slave to the sect [Freemasonry—comment of
SiSiNoNo] and that changes every month.”
Then the Pope asks Bonomelli an explicit
question: “Now I ask you if in the present
circumstances, after forty years of evidence, in

which all the Italian Governments that followed
each other have treated the Holy See and the
Pope much worse than its fiercest enemy, it is
possible to pronounce the word you recommend.”
In conclusion, St. Pius X reminds Bonomelli
that “no-one more than the Pope really loves
Italy, but an Italy that is not slave to the sects, an
Italy that responds to the mission assigned to her
by Providence to be the first Nation in the world,
because she knows how to appreciate properly
the privilege of having the Papacy in her bosom.”
The question for St. Pius X is not Italy but
the Government of the House of Savoy, which
is enslaved to the Masonic sect and pursues the
destruction not only of the Papal State but, if it
were possible, of the very Church of Christ.

At the end of this reading anyone will be
able to verify how correct St. Pius X was when,
before dying, he lamented the fact of not having
been helped by the Bishops in his fight against
modernism. In fact, the Bishops were either
modernist or philo-modernist, or some, as
Benedict XV confessed about himself, did not
realize the gravity of the danger (see Disquisitio
of the Franciscan Ferdinando Antonello
charged by Pius XII with shedding light on the
“repressive” activities of which St. Pius X was
accused even during his process of beatification
and canonization). It is this body of Bishops,
modernist or rebellious and reckless, that
prepared the triumph of Vatican II.
1

Born in 1831, died in 1914, Bishop of Cremona. In 1904 he sent to
St. Pius X a memorial in which he proposed the rapprochement
between science and faith, between the Italian Government
and the Church. In 1889 he had written an article titled “Rome
and Italy” for the Rassegna Nazionale in which he favored the
reconciliation of Church and State, with the Church renouncing
its claim to all temporal powers. On April 13, 1889, his article was
put on the Index of forbidden writings, and Msgr. Bonomelli made
an act of submission (but only exteriorly as demonstrated by the
letters subsequently sent to St. Pius X).

37

Faith and Morals

Relativism
Cannot
Stop Islam
by Roberto de Mattei

“Marcher contre la Terreur” (March against
Terror) was the title Le Monde, the Corriere della
Sera, and the major Western newspapers used
to present the grand, secularist demonstration of
January 11, 2015. Never has there been a slogan
more hypocritical than this one, imposed by
the mass-media as a reaction to the massacre
in Paris on January 7. What sense is there in
speaking about Terror without adding the
adjective “Islamic”? The attack on the editorial
staff at Charlie Hebdo was carried out to the yell
of “Allah akbar!”vindicating Muhammad, insulted
by the caricatures, and behind the terrorists’
kalashnikov there is a precise vision of the world:
the Muslim one.
It is only now that Western secret services
are beginning to take seriously the threats by
Abdu Muhamad al Adnani published in a multi38

The Angelus

July - August 2015

lingual communiqué spread widely on September
21, 2014, by the on-line daily The Long War
Journal. “We will conquer Rome, we will break
its crucifixes, we will make slaves of the women,
with the permission of Allah, the Exalted One,”
the spokesman of “the Islamic State” declared
to his followers, and he didn’t simply call for the
extermination of the “infidels” wherever they
may be, but also indicated the procedures: “Place
explosives in their streets. Attack their bases,
burst into their homes. Cut off their heads. So
that they don’t feel safe anywhere! If you can’t
find the explosives or the ammunition, single out
the American infidels, the French infidels, or any
of their allies: smash their craniums with a rock,
kill them with a knife, run them over with your
cars, hurl them into mid-air, suffocate them, or
poison them.”

We have been deluded into thinking that the
war in course is not the one declared by Islam
on the West but a war that is being fought inside
the Muslim world itself, and that the only way
to save ourselves is to help moderate Islam to
defeat fundamentalist Islam, as was written in
the Corriere della Sera on January 11 by Sergio
Romano, an observer, who is even considered
intelligent as well. The most repeated slogan

weapon of intellectual hegemony. The mosques are
the propelling center of that cultural war which
Bat Ye’or defines as “soft-jihad,” while with the
term “hard-jihad” he defines the military war to
terrorize and annihilate the enemy. The choice
of the means can be discussed, and certainly it
is inside Islam, but there is agreement on the
final objective: the extension into the world of the
sharia’a—the law of the Quran.

“The people of
the Enlightenment
have saved Europe...
Faced with the peril
they were running,
liberty, equality,
and brotherhood
have ceased being
abstract concepts by
becoming incarnate
in millions of people.”
Julia Kristeva

in France is to avoid “amalgam,” that is, the
identification of moderate Islam with radical
Islam. However, the common aim of all of Islam is
the conquest of the West and of the world. Those
who don’t share this objective are not moderates,
but simply not good Muslims.
The differences, if any, do not concern the ends,
but the means: the Muslims of Al Qaeda and of Isis
have embraced the Leninist way of violent action,
while the Muslim Brothers use the Gramscian

Islam, in any case, is a noun which can be
translated as “submission”—submission in order
to avoid “The Terror” and the future European
scenario imagined by the novelist Michel
Houellebecq in his latest book, precipitously
withdrawn from French book-shops. No to
Terror for our statesmen means no to the violent
submission of the jihadists, yes to a peaceful
submission, which is carrying the West sweetly
into a condition of dhimmitude.
39

Faith and Morals
The West says it is disposed to accept Islam
“with a human face,” but in reality, what it
refuses in Islam is not just the violence, but also
its religious absolutism. For the West there is a
license to kill in the name of moral relativism, but
not in the name of absolute values. Yet abortion
is systematically practiced in every Western
country and not one of the Heads of State who
marched in Paris against “The Terror” has ever
condemned it. But what is abortion if it is not the
legalization of “The Terror,” the terror of the State
promoted, encouraged, and justified? What right
do Western leaders have to demonstrate against
terror?
In La Repubblica of January 13, 2015,
while the former leader of Lotta Continua
[Lotta Continua (“continuous struggle”) was
a far left extra-parliamentary organization
in Italy (1969)], Adriano Sofri, is celebrating
Europe’s rebirth under the Bastille, the postmodern philosopher Julia Kristeva, so dear to
Cardinal Ravasi, affirms that “the people of the
Enlightenment have saved Europe” and that
“faced with the peril they were running, liberty,
equality, and brotherhood have ceased being
abstract concepts by becoming incarnate in
millions of people.” However, who invented the
Terror if not Republican France, which used
it to annihilate all opponents of the French
Revolution? The ideology and the praxis of
terrorism appeared for the first time in history
with the French Revolution, for the most part
starting on September 5, 1793, when “The Terror”
was made an everyday affair by the Convention
and became an essential part of the revolutionary
system.
The first genocide in history, in the Vendée,
was perpetrated in the name of the Republican
ideals of liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
Communism, which claimed to complete the
process of secularization inaugurated by the
French Revolution, activated the standardization
of Terror at a planetary level, causing, in less
than seventy years, more than 200 million
deaths. So what is Islamic terrorism if it isn’t
the contamination of the “philosophy of the
Quran” with the Marxist-Enlightenment practices
imported by the West?
From its very foundation, Charlie Hebdo has
40

The Angelus

July - August 2015

been a newspaper wherein satire was placed
at the service of a philosophy of libertarian
life, the roots of it being imbedded in the antiChristian ideas of the Enlightenment. The French
satirical newspaper became famous because of
its caricature of Muhammad, but its disgusting,
blasphemous vignettes to vindicate homosexual
unions should not be forgotten. The editors of
Charlie Hebdo can be considered an extreme but
coherent expression of the relativist culture now
widespread in the entire West, in the same way
as the terrorists who slaughtered them can be
considered an extreme but coherent expression
of the hate against the West by the entire, vast
Islamic world.
Those who claim the existence of Absolute and
Objective Truth are put on the same level as the
fundamentalist Muslims by the neo-enlightened.
We never compare relativism with Islamism,
since both are associated with fanaticism.
Fanaticism is not the affirmation of truth, but
the intellectual and emotional imbalance that
is begotten of departing from the truth. Further,
there is only one truth wherein the world may
find peace, which is the tranquility of order: Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, in Whom all things must
be ordered in heaven and on earth, so that the
peace of Christ is achieved through the Reign of
Christ indicated as the ideal of every Christian
by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas of
December 11, 1925.
Islam cannot be fought in the name of the
Enlightenment and even less so by relativism.
The only thing that can oppose it is the natural
and Divine law, denied radically by both
relativism and Islam. For this reason we are
raising the Crucifix, which secularism and
Islamism reject, and we are making of it a banner
of life and action. St. Paul said: “We preach Christ
Crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block
and unto the Gentiles foolishness” (I Cor. 1:23).
We would like to repeat: “We preach Christ
Crucified, a stumbling-block to the Muslims and
foolishness to the Secularists.”
Corrispondenza Romana, January 14, 2015 (http://rorate-caeli.
blogspot.com/2015/01/christ-crucified-scandal-to-muslims.html). A
Rorate translation by Contributor Francesca Romana.

Spirituality

The Light
of Faith
by a Silver City Benedictine Monk

While travelling through a major European
city several years ago, I had to stop for fuel a
few miles from the scene of a riot. The local
government officially identified it as “racial
and religious unrest.” A group of Muslims were
protesting what they considered to be an injustice
against the laws of their religion. There was a
long line of vehicles carrying police and Special
Forces, with sirens screaming, snaking their
way to and from the scene of the conflict. While
paying for the gas, the Arabic-looking cashier
asked: “As a Catholic priest, what do you think
that we, as Muslims, must do to be at peace
in this country?” I replied, “Seek to know the
absolute truth about Jesus Christ.” Her response
seemed to be a mixture of irony and despair as
she said something like: “You are probably right,
but do you think we really can?”

A few years later I had the joy of baptizing
an adult Muslim, and I finally understood the
despair with which the gas station attendant
asked her question. I was able to observe the
development of the gift of faith in a soul leaving
the error of Islamism, and it was only then that I
realized the total sacrifice that God asks of them.
The Muslim religion is so structured that to leave
it is a type of social suicide. All ties are broken
with their society and often even with their own
family. A good Muslim family is encouraged by
their religion to murder the family member that
has left Islamism. For a Muslim to become a
Catholic they are literally risking their lives. God
gives all that the soul needs to embrace the faith,
but that soul must courageously sacrifice all that
God asks of him. For a Muslim, this sacrifice
sometimes includes martyrdom.
41

Spirituality

God seems to convert the Muslims by the gift
of a great interior light of faith needed to abandon
everything to God. On the natural level, light is
an extraordinary creature. It is the means by
which we see the visible world that surrounds us.
An entire mountain can be placed inside of us by
means of light. The surprising thing about sight is
that the image that arrives on the retina is upside
down and is mysteriously turned around by our
mind so that we see the objects as they really are,
that is to say the sky above the mountain instead
of below it.
The light of the faith acts in like manner. If
we use the eyes of our soul only to materially
satisfy our intellect, the image that we perceive
is in a certain way upside down. We would be
lacking a supernatural perspective. We therefore
need the light of faith to place the object of our
intellect in its proper position with respect to
God. It is precisely this gift of faith that the
Muslims lack. Many government officials, all over
the western world, would like us to believe that
the Muslim religion is essentially the same as
the “Christian religions” with a few exceptions.
This is profoundly false. Their perspective of
religion is very materialistic, as is their god of
war and self-destruction. Their idea of heaven is
sensual pleasure. Without the light of faith their
supernatural world is really upside down.
The Muslim that I baptized several years ago
had an intense desire of God. The first time he
came to Mass was a Christmas day. He was
seeking to discover, as he said himself, something
42

The Angelus

July - August 2015

spiritual about the feast of Christmas. Although
he was not baptized, he stood in the confession
line. Once inside, he asked why people looked
worried coming in and left apparently relieved!
His journey to God took seven years. During this
time, two Novus Ordo priests encouraged him
to remain Muslim. One priest even asked that he
explain the Quran to him.
He was finally convinced to seriously study the
Catholic faith by the example of a young and large
Catholic family, not by their words, but rather by
what they were…, i.e. charitable. He observed
charity amongst the members of the family
and the mutual love of the spouses. He saw the
presence of God in the pure hearts of that young
family. Seeing the fatherhood of a good family he
wanted to be able to call God his Father. By God’s
grace, and the courage to risk his life for God, he
was baptized. …“But as many as received Him,
He gave them the power to be made the sons of
God, to them that believe in His name.”
God decided that this earth would be a
battleground of good and evil. On one side is
the Church with her children, on the other is the
wickedness of Satan and his slaves: the children
of light opposed to those dwelling in darkness.
God has sent light into the darkness and He helps
all who wish to receive it. The Muslim religion
is so devised as to block out that light, but there
are some “seated in darkness and in the shadow
of death” that yearn for this light. It is our duty in
charity to pray for them and help them to receive
the light of faith.

How to
Speak to
Muslims
by Joseph Fadelle

Joseph Fadelle, from Iraq, was born in 1964 into a Muslim family.
He was baptized and received into the Catholic Church in the year 2000. Ten years later he published his
autobiography, The Price to Pay, in which he recounts his conversion to the Catholic religion.
(Interview conducted by Ladislas Anquetin.)

The Angelus: How did you look upon the
Catholic religion before your conversion?
Joseph Fadelle: All I knew about Christians
is what the Quran tells us; namely, that Christians
are polytheists, ungodly, and impure. That’s the
only idea I had of Christianity.
The Angelus: Did you consider Christians to
be your enemies?
Joseph Fadelle: I did not consider them so
much as enemies as misguided. The Quran tells
us that these are people who are far from the

right path, therefore people gone astray: They
are unclean, ungodly, and so we don’t mingle
with them, we don’t go near them. In fact, in the
Quran there are also verses that say: “Kill the
polytheists.” But I didn’t know any Christians; I
had never been around any or approached them
or tried to get to know them.
The Angelus: At what point in your life did
you begin to have doubts about Islam?
Joseph Fadelle: It was the first Christian I
met who invited me to read and understand the
43

Spirituality
Quran. It was beginning with this invitation that I
began to ask myself questions.
The Angelus: What kind of questions?
Joseph Fadelle: When I wanted to
understand the Quran, I addressed myself to a
specialist in Shia Islam, asking him to explain
how I ought to proceed and to help me. He
told me the obstacles were knowledge of the
language, the grammar, and the context of every
verse... He gave me to understand that it would
be difficult. Nevertheless, I began to read it verse
by verse, and I went and consulted him so that he
could explain it to me.
The Angelus: Then what happened?
Joseph Fadelle: Quite a few of the verses
really struck me, those calling for violence,
murder; those humiliating to women; those
calling for the violation and abuse of children. I
reached the conviction that these verses and the
Quran are not the word of God.
The Angelus: Was it hard for you to come to
that conclusion?
Joseph Fadelle: My research on the Quran
lasted five months, so it did not come about
in a day. It was not just one verse that struck
me. There are numerous examples. In addition
to delving into the Quran, I studied the life of
Mohammed. I consulted all the authoritative
references in Islam, and I discovered that
Mohammed killed, stole, committed adultery,
said one thing and did the opposite. There is no
wrong that he did not commit during the course
of his existence.
The Angelus: Despite these conclusions, you
could have had a tranquil Muslim life because
you had a privileged place in Iraqi society. Why
didn’t you just settle for that?
Joseph Fadelle: At first, when I reached
the conclusion that the Quran is not the word
of God and that Mohammed is not a prophet,
that’s what I did. I remained to all appearances a
Muslim. I continued to live without deepening my
practice, and I continued, in effect, to profit from
all the privileges of my family position. Without,
however, losing faith in God.
44

The Angelus

July - August 2015

But the second stage in my life was my
encounter with Christ. Once you encounter
Christ, you don’t play around anymore with truth.
You don’t turn away from the light. From that
moment, you leave everything for Christ.
The Angelus: How did this encounter happen?
Joseph Fadelle: I had asked this same
Christian who invited me to read the Quran and
understand it to bring me a copy of the Gospel.
He had answered me: Read the Quran first,
understand it, and then I’ll bring you the Gospel
afterward. And so, after my study of the Quran, a
few months later, the Christian remembered his
promise and brought me a New Testament.
I should tell you that before this Christian
brought me the Gospels, I had a dream. I was
standing at the edge of a stream about a yard
wide, and on the other side was a man. I was
attracted by his presence, and I had but one
desire—to be on the same side, to join him. I
began to step across the stream, which was not
that wide, and there I found myself suspended
mid air, unable to land on the other side nor go
back! Hanging in the air, unable to touch the
ground! The man notices me, he sees that I am
lost and unsteady; he reaches his hand out to me
and brings me near him, and he tells me: “Before
coming to me, you have to eat the bread of life.”
The Angelus: Did you understand this
sentence?
Joseph Fadelle: No, not at all! The expression
meant absolutely nothing to me; it was entirely
new, alien to my culture. No one in my entourage
had ever used it. I did not understand the
meaning and I didn’t try to understand it, but the
memory was engraved in my heart. It was that
very morning that the Christian brought me the
Gospels. I took it, I opened it at random, and I
fell at once on the Gospel according to St. John,
Chapter 6, and I read: “I am the bread of life.”
The Angelus: How do you interpret this?
Joseph Fadelle: It was a personal invitation
to read the Gospel. I was going to read it, and
it was through the reading of the Gospel that I
came to meet and to know Christ.

The Angelus: Was this dream decisive for you?
Joseph Fadelle: Yes and no. The dream is not
the foundation and basis of my faith. I met Christ
in the Gospel. The dream was only the invitation
to enter the Christian religion and to know Christ
Jesus.
The Angelus: Subsequently you were shot at,
chased, imprisoned... You had to flee from your

The Angelus: Even your family and friends
are supposed to kill you?
Joseph Fadelle: What is important for them
and what comes first, even before bonds of blood
or friendship, is pleasing God, satisfying him,
doing his will. So it is the commandment of their
God to kill anyone who leaves Islam that takes
precedence. Obviously, they are going to obey.
That may seem surprising, but even the family

As for the Church,
her principal mission
is evangelization,
she ought to be
preoccupied with
evangelizing the
whole human race,
and, therefore,
Muslims too.

family, who threatened you, your country, your
friends. Why is it so difficult to leave Islam?
Joseph Fadelle: In the Quran, which is
considered to be the word of God, it is written:
“Kill anyone who leaves Islam.” Besides that,
there is a “hadith” of Mohammed—and whatever
Mohammed says is very important for Muslims—
that says: “Whoever among you should leave
Islam, kill him.” That is the reason why it is so
difficult to leave Islam.

is going to kill in order to accomplish the will of
God.
The Angelus: Have you ever had a chance to
explain yourself to Muslims or to your family? In
other words, how can one proselytize Muslims?
Joseph Fadelle: I am in touch with many
Muslims in France, but also through the Internet
with Muslims in Arab countries. The basis of the
contact and of the discussion with them is to
45

Spirituality
invite them first of all to reflect on the Quran, to
seek the truth about the Quran. That’s the first
step.
I draw their attention to the verses which
cannot logically be adhered to. I make them
reflect by asking questions: Do you think the
content of this or that verse is good? They are not
familiar with these verses; they are surprised,
shocked. These verses are going to revolt them,
and I am going to ask them via the Internet to
seek to understand these verses.
The Angelus: You dialogue with Muslims.
The hierarchy of the Church does too, but one
sometimes has the feeling that they do not really
want to convert the Muslims. Is this also your
impression?
Joseph Fadelle: First of all, I want to say
that I am totally in favor of dialogue. It is truly
worthy of humanity to dialogue when there’s
conflict. As for the Church, her principal mission
is evangelization, she ought to be preoccupied
with evangelizing the whole human race, and,
therefore, Muslims too. The problem today is
the choice of individuals who are responsible
for dialogue with Islam: These people are not
competent. They do not give themselves over
wholeheartedly to the mission of evangelization.
It seems to me that the goal of these people is
simply to calm things down, to arrange things so
that people get along and can live together... That
is not dialogue in depth and in truth.
The Angelus: Do you have a feeling that
converts from Islam bother a certain part of the
Church’s hierarchy?
Joseph Fadelle: Yes. Instead of considering
us as an encouragement for true dialogue, as
a proof that it is possible to reflect and that
Muslims can make their way to the true God,
they see us only as an obstacle. One begins to
wonder what the purpose of their dialogue is. If
they are uncomfortable asking Muslims What
do you think of this or that verse? or if they
have an insufficient knowledge of the Quran, we
can do it, for we have already carried out this
in-depth reflection. We can ask for an answer to
this or that verse, an explanation of this or that
incoherence in the Quran. We can be first in line
46

The Angelus

July - August 2015

for this kind of dialogue. We have the competence
and the legitimacy.
The Angelus: So this is not being done now?
No one is asking for your participation?
Joseph Fadelle: Not only do they not invite
us to speak—for they see very well what we
say and proclaim—but, what’s more, they try to
discourage others from inviting us.
The Angelus: How do you explain the
conversion of Europeans of Christian culture to
Islam?
Joseph Fadelle: Everyone of this sort that
I’ve met has never read the Quran and does not
understand what’s in the Quran. They don’t know
the life of Mohammed; no spiritual conviction
attracts them. They often convert to marry a
Muslim. It is often for quite other reasons than
having read and reflected upon the Quran.
The Angelus: It has been nearly fifteen
years since you became a Catholic. Do you feel
fulfilled?
Joseph Fadelle: We converts that have
made their way from Islam toward the light are
transformed. Our whole life is changed. When
one recognizes the light, one is happy, and
nothing can turn us away from this light and this
happiness.
The Angelus: What relationship do you have
with Christ?
Joseph Fadelle: Christ is not a stranger to
me. He is in me; He lives in me; He is all. I cannot
find words to describe the bond of love I have
with Him. He is my whole life. He is everything
for me.
Translated by A. M. Stinnett from Nouvelles de Chrétienté,
No. 151, pp. 9-11.

224 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8635 – $16.95

The Price to Pay
A Muslim Risks All to Follow Christ

The Price to Pay is the powerful story of Joseph Fadelle’s conversion to Catholicism. He risks
everything—family, friends, his inheritance and home, and even his life—in order to follow Christ.
In a dramatic and personal narrative style, Fadelle reveals the horrible persecution endured by
Christians living in a violent and hostile Muslim world.

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

Spirituality

The Hermit
of the Sahara
on Muslims
by Mme Danièle Masson

Charles de Foucauld was a former military
officer in Algeria. Later on, after a sudden
conversion at the feet of Father Huvelin in Paris,
he was ordained priest at the turn of the 20th
century. His mind was set on evangelizing those
regions he had visited earlier, and he became a
hermit dwelling in Western Algeria near Morocco.

An Urgent Need
He committed to paper his intention: “To do
the most good that can be done at present for
the Muslim populations, so numerous and so
abandoned, by bringing into their midst Jesus
in the Most Blessed Sacrament, just as the most
Blessed Virgin sanctified John the Baptist by
bringing Jesus near to him.”
48

The Angelus

July - August 2015

In 1905 he wrote to Raymond de Blic about
the need to convert the Muslims: “The work I’m
doing is preparatory. It may be that a few souls of
good-will come before the others: all these souls
are made for truth, for the true religion, heaven;
they all must and consequently can secure their
salvation and sanctify themselves. But outside
the Catholic religion, especially outside the
Christian religion, few souls are not in a habitual
state of mortal sin. The three concupiscences—
sensuality, pride, avarice—reign as queens in
most souls. The outsides of the Muslim world are
seductive, as persons with heavy make-up and
tawdry finery seem from afar: when you see them
up close, they are horrid.”
The same haunting thought comes as a refrain
in his writings. In a letter to Father Huvelin,
dated 1907, he reproaches the million European

inhabitants of Algeria for living utterly separated,
and outlines their duties: “...To see in these
peoples backward brothers whose education we
should undertake and whose mind and character
we ought to uplift as high as possible; in short,
fulfill toward them our duty as good brothers...”

The Obstacles
He was soon confronted with the drama of
slavery. He wrote to a powerful friend, Henri
de Castries: “It is woefully shameful that boys
who were kidnapped four or five years ago from
their families in the Sudan are being kept here by
force by their masters while French authorities
make themselves complicit in these abductions
and rivet the shackles on these unfortunates by
allowing it to go on.”
Father de Foucauld himself redeemed slaves,
one of whom was a black youth he named
Joseph of the Sacred Heart. But he clashed with
the government, which in its work of pacifying
southern Algeria relied on the support of the
Muslim holy men, the marabouts, and the chiefs
of the nomadic tribes, who considered the
ownership of slaves a right and an asset. Father
Foucauld was reduced to silence but let his
thoughts be known to his friend again:
“The natives know that we reprove slavery,
that we do not allow it in our country, and that
we forbid it in Algeria: that is why, seeing that
we tolerate it among them, they say: ‘They don’t
dare, they are afraid of us,’ and they despise us.
And they are right; it is just to despise those
who act against their conscience... No human
power has the right to rivet the shackles on these
unfortunates whom God has created as free as
us...”

The Strategy
Despite the multiple obstacles on the road to
the Christian faith of the population, not least
of which was the French government itself, he
mapped out clearly his strategy for conversion.
When at the Hoggar in 1904, he wrote to Father
Huvelin: “I try with all my might to demonstrate

and to prove to these poor wayward brethren that
our religion is all love and brotherhood, and that
its emblem is a heart.”
He dreams of the evangelization of Morocco.
He defines the means: “Alms, hospitality, the
redemption and liberation of slaves, and, even
more, the offering of the Divine Victim, will
conciliate hearts and pave the way to preaching
openly. The time for preaching openly will be
hastened by the fervor and number of this silent
avant-garde.”
He sees in the Tuaregs of South Algeria
lukewarm Muslims and a society divided into
five distinct castes: nobles, bourgeois (whites),
laborers, artisans, and slaves (blacks and
mulattoes). Having become the friend of the
amenokal Moussa ag Amastane, he outlined for
him advice aiming at gently leading him from
Islam to Catholicism, among other things.
“Surround yourself with good people. Don’t
keep any rotters in your entourage… A man’s
first duty is to love God with his whole heart and
above all things; the second, to love all men as
himself. From this love of neighbor as oneself
follows the triple law of brotherhood, equality
(imrad), and liberty (slaves). When Adam was
hoeing and Eve spinning, where were the nobles?
where were the peers? where were the slaves?”
The priestly work must be pioneered by the
laymen living among the indigenous tribes:
“It is not only by means of material gifts that
we should work for the conversion of infidels,
but by encouraging the establishment among
them of excellent Christians of every rank and
station in their capacity as farmers, colonists,
merchants, artisans, proprietors, etc., destined
to be the precious support of the missionaries,
and to attract the infidels to the faith by their
example, goodness, and personal contacts, and
to constitute the center around which the infidels
can regroup one by one as they convert.”
And again, he outlines clearly his agenda to
Abbé Caron: “In dealing with the Muslims, who
are semi-barbarians, the path is not the same
as with idolaters and fetishists, people who are
complete savages with a totally inferior religion,
or as with the civilized... It seems that with the
Muslims, the way to proceed is to civilize them
first, to instruct them first, and to make them
49

Spirituality
into people like ourselves; this having been
achieved, their conversion will soon follow
almost of itself. For Islamism does not stand up
to instruction...”
“Whatever the Muslims may be, they are
not more difficult to convert than the Romans

and the barbarians of the first centuries of
Christianity; however much against the Church
the government of their country may be, it is not
more so than Nero’s and his successors’.” A few
months before his death in 1916, he wrote: “If we
have not known how to make Frenchmen of these
peoples, they will chase us out. The only way they
can become French is if they become Catholics.”
The hot question of integration of the races
and of those from other civilizations was
answered in no uncertain term, and prophetic at
that, by the Christian hero. From the evidence
of his life and his writings, Charles de Foucauld
certainly had no love of Islam itself. His efforts
to bring the Tuaregs back to their own Berber
culture and to distance them from the Arabic
language and the Quran bear witness to this. But
he did love Muslims, which is not the same thing.
And the reason for this attachment which led to
the supreme sacrifice of his life (killed through
the betrayal of a servant) is that their souls were
capable of knowing the truth in all its plenitude.
The way to win them over was not by dialogue
or mere philanthropy, but by a profound, lived
Catholic faith and by drawing them in gradually,
firstly by civilizing them, then instructing them,
and finally making them like their instructors.
Translation of “Charles de Foucauld et l’Islam,” from the
online Encyclopédie de l’honnête homme, slightly edited
for our readers. The references cited in the article come
principally from two works: Charles de Foucauld,
Lettres et carnets (Ed. du Seuil, 1966); and
Marguerite Castillon du Perron, Charles de
Foucauld (Ed. Grasset, 1982).

50

The Angelus

July - August 2015

Christian Culture

La SainteChapelle
and the Crusades

by Dr. Marie-France Hilgar

The Sainte-Chapelle, located within the
Palais de Justice complex on the Ile de la Cité
is a diminutive yet perfect example of the
Rayonnant Style of Gothic Architecture. It was
erected by Louis IX, king of France, to house
the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the True
Cross, precious relics of the Passion. Louis had
purchased them in 1239 from the Byzantine
Emperor Beaudoin II for the exorbitant sum
of 135,000 livres (the chapel only cost 40,000
livres to build). Two years later, more relics
were brought. Louis commissioned the SainteChapelle to serve as a reliquary casket enlarged
to an architectural scale. In the flamboyant
thinking of the 13th century, the idea was to
elevate the Kingdom of France to be the leader
of Western Christianity. The original plan of the
Chapel dates from 1241. After breaking ground in

January 1246, the Sainte-Chappelle was rapidly
constructed, and completed April 25, 1248. The
structure is 118 ft. long, 56 ft. wide and 139 ft. in
height.
Fronted by a two-story porch, the SainteChapelle has the emphatically vertical
proportions of Gothic architecture which had
been perfected during the 12th century. The
architectural model is that of a building with a
single nave culminating in a chevet with seven
panels. Outside the design concentrates on the
essentials—a sober base and heavy buttresses
contrasting with the lightness of the upper parts.
The slate roof is dominated by a spire made of
cedar, 108 feet high, a masterpiece of finesse,
made in the 19th century, but the exact replica of
the 15th-century piece.
The lower chapel is dedicated to the Virgin
51

Christian Culture

52

Mary. Low vaulted ceilings rest on fine columns.
The walls are decorated with trifold arcades and
12 medallions representing the Apostles. Fleurs
de lys are on an azure background. The towers
are an homage to Blanche de Castile, St. Louis’s
mother. The vaulted ceiling is painted to resemble
star-filled heavens. The floor contains tombstones
of important reverends. The lower chapel used to
be reserved for palace staff.
The upper chapel is resplendent in its Gothic
architecture—light, color, and space blend to
inspire a sense of harmony between art and
religious faith. This part of the building was
reserved for the King, his close friends and
family, as well as for displaying the religious
relics. Supported by slender piers, the vaulted
ceilings seems to float over magnificent stained

are the dominant colors, in contrast with 15thcentury western rose windows. In these panes
the full biblical story of humanity is recounted,
from the Creation to Redemption through Christ.
Over the centuries, the Sainte-Chapelle
suffered the vicissitudes of time. It was damaged
by fire in 1630 and again in 1776. The stainedglass windows of the lower chapel were removed
following a flood when then Seine overflowed in
1690. Perceived as a symbol of both religion and
royalty, the Sainte-Chapelle suffered considerable
damages during the French Revolution. Its fur­
niture and rood screen disappeared. The organ
was transported to Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.
The spire was knocked down, the tympanums
damaged, the holy relics scattered. Most of the
statues were saved.

glass windows. Most significant of the sculpted
decorations are the statues of the 12 Apostles,
which lean on the columns marking the bays.
Their finely featured faces impart a sense of
serenity in all who contemplate them.
The Sainte-Chapelle is renowned for its richly
hued stained-glass windows comprising 6,456
square feet in area. Two-thirds of the pieces are
original works representing the finest examples
of 12th-century craftsmanship. Reds and blues

Following a period of disaffection, in 1803
the stained-glass windows were stored in a
two-meter space in order to use the building as
a repository for the state’s archives. Starting in
1837, significant restoration was undertaken and
by 1868 the Sainte-Chapelle was returned to its
previous splendor. The stained-glass windows
were removed during World War II in anticipation
of the German invasion of Paris. Following the
war every piece was meticulously replaced. While

The Angelus

July - August 2015

some of the relics were never to be found again,
others are today kept in the treasure of the Notre
Dame Cathedral and at the National Library.
Louis IX, king of France, better known as
Saint-Louis since his canonization by Pope
Boniface VIII in 1297, twenty-seven years after
his death, is best known for his immense piety,
his sense of justice, and his kindness. The sixth
Crusade led by Frederic II, an excommunicated
emperor, had been a huge success. Without shed­
ding any blood, the emperor had negotiated by
treaty in 1229 the restitution of Jerusalem. The
treaty remained in force until 1244. Afterwards,
any pilgrim wanting to pray at Our Lord’s grave
was risking his life. Because of his love for Our
Lord, because he could not stand the idea that
pilgrims were being massacred, Louis decided to
take action.
Through Louis’s meticulous planning, the
seventh Crusade was the most carefully prepared
of all the Crusades to the East when he embarked
at Aigues-Mortes on August 25, 1248. Louis had
decided to attack Egypt rather than going on a
campaign in the Holy Land itself. It made sense:
it was in accordance with a general change of
strategy since the third Crusade, because of the
wealth and importance of Egypt within the Ayyubid Empire established by Saladin. If Egypt could
be taken, then the Latin East could be restored
much more easily.
Louis landed in Cyprus on September 17, and
his army gradually became ready. The Sultan of
Egypt had gone with most of his troops to Syria,
attacking the ruler of Aleppo. But Louis was
aware of the fact that the forces available to him
were limited in numbers, 15,000 according to
some sources, including 2500 Knights Templar.
Because of political turmoil in Germany and in
Italy, very few men from those two countries
had joined. If Louis were to take Egypt, he
would need every man available. He decided to
wait until the end of May 1249 before sailing for
Damietta.
On June 6, 1249, Damietta was captured with
minimal losses. When entering Damietta, the
king sang the Te Deum. He also forbade the
killing of any infidel taken prisoner and arranged
to have classes available to any of them showing
an interest in the True Religion. The Egyptians

were in disarray while crusader morale was high.
Perhaps Louis should have pushed on to Cairo,
but the Nile flood, which had contributed to the
destruction of the fifth Crusade, was imminent.
Louis also was expecting reinforcements from
France. He advanced toward Cairo on November
20, 1249. He and his army proceeded slowly down
the Damietta branch of the Nile until they were
forced to halt opposite Mansur, where most of
the Egyptian forces were, and the Crusaders
were unable to bridge the waterway. After weeks
of waiting, an unguarded ford downstream was
discovered and on February 8, 1250, some of
the Crusaders led by Louis’s brother crossed the
river.
Louis had instructed that once across, his
brother Robert d’Artois should wait until the rest
of the army could join him, but Robert, against
everybody’s advice, decided not to wait and led
himself and his men to their destruction in the
streets of Mansur. Louis arrived with the main
army and scored a victory, but a costly one. It
was his last success and a critical turning point.
Louis had lost too many men to try to advance.
The sultan of Egypt was back in Cairo and
temporarily dominated the dissident factions.
Supply ships from Damietta were intercepted,
and before long the crusaders were suffering
from disease and famine. Louis perhaps delayed
too long ordering a retreat. For eight weeks the
army held out while disease took its toll. On April
5, the retreat began. Refusing the pleas of others
to protect himself by fleeing, Louis remained to
lead his soldiers and was captured with many
others as the Muslim forces closed in. Half way
to Damietta, Louis surrendered. The king and
nobles were held for ransoms while many nonnoble captives were killed. During his captivity,
the king recited the Divine Office every day with
two chaplains and had the prayers of the Mass
read to him. His great Crusade had failed totally.
And Cairo might have fallen if it had not been for
Robert’s behavior. The queen managed with great
courage to secure sufficient food and to persuade
the Italians not to evacuate Damietta until it
could be ceded formally by treaty and the king’s
ransom arranged.
Louis showed his remarkable commitment
following his release from captivity on May 6,
53

The Sainte-Chapelle,
or Holy Chapel, in the
courtyard of the royal
palace on the Île de la Cité,
was built to house Louis
IX’s collection of relics
of Christ, which included
the Crown of Thorns, the
Image of Edessa and some
thirty other items. Louis
purchased his Passion
relics from Baldwin II,
the Latin emperor at
Constantinople, for the
sum of 135,000 livres,
though this money was
actually paid to the
Venetians, to whom the
relics had been pawned.
The relics arrived in Paris
in August 1239, carried
from Venice by two
Dominican friars. For the
final stage of their journey
they were carried by the
King himself, barefoot
and dressed as a penitent,
a scene depicted in the
Relics of the Passion
window on the south
side of the chapel. The
relics were stored in a
large and elaborate silver
chest, the Grand-Chasse,
on which Louis spent a
further 100,000 livres.
The entire chapel, by
contrast, cost 40,000 livres
to build and glaze. Until
it was completed in 1248,
the relics were housed at
chapels at the Château de
Vincennes and a specially
built chapel at the Château
de Saint-Germain-enLaye. In 1246, fragments
of the True Cross and the
Holy Lance were added to
Louis’s collection, along
with other relics. The
chapel was consecrated
on April 26, 1248, and
Louis’s relics were moved
to their new home with
great ceremony.

Christian Culture
1250, on payment of half his enormous ransom,
and the surrender of Damietta. He sailed to Acre
and remained in the East for another four years
acting to strengthen the security of the Latin
kingdom. He negotiated a treaty with Egypt in
1252 and a truce with Damascus and Aleppo in
1254. He also worked on the liberation of those
Christians still held captive. He embarked on
a massive program to improve the Kingdom’s
defenses. He rebuilt the fortifications of Acre,
Caesarea, Sidon and Jaffa. His mother, Blanche
de Castille, whom he had appointed regent during
his absence, had died on November 21, 1252. The
kingdom was in stable condition and could very
well continue without king nor regent, but it was
time for Louis to return. He finally sailed for
home on April, 24, 1254, when he felt he could do
no more. He left behind a force of one hundred
knights to reinforce the garrison of Acre, the
start of a French Royal Regiment in the Holy
Land, which remained until 1286. It was plain
that Louis had every intention of returning in
person to try again to liberate the holy places.
Louis kept very much in touch with the fate of
the Latin East and continued to wear the Cross
on his shoulder to show his intention of going
back to succor the Eastern Christians. In 1260,
after murdering his predecessor, Baybars became
sultan of Egypt. Though this “famous” Mameluke
sultan did not live to see the fall of the Latin
States, he had reduced them to a few coastal
outposts. Baybars was ruthless. Most of his
conquests were followed by a general massacre
of the inhabitants, including, of course, the native
Christians. In 1265 he took Caesarea, Haifa and
Arsulf. The following year he conquered Galilee
and devastated Cilician Armenia. In 1268 Antioch
was taken and all the inhabitants slaughtered.
The great hospitaler fortress of the Krak des
Chevaliers fell three years later. These disasters
again brought pleas for aid from the West. King
Louis once again took up the Cross.
Louis informed Pope Clement IV of his
intention in late 1266, then gathered the French
nobles on March 24, 1267. The response was
not enthusiastic. He finally gathered 12,000
men. Louis, once more, planned very carefully,
insuring that he would receive tax money, get­
ting Genoa and Marseille to supply thirty-nine
56

The Angelus

July - August 2015

vessels. He left Aigues-Mortes on July 2, 1270,
for a rendez­vous at Cagliari, Sardinia, where he
an­nounced that Tunis was his target. Soon after
though, on August 25, 1270, at a fort constructed
on the site of ancient Carthage, Louis IX died,
vic­tim of the dysentery or typhus that had

been sweeping through the army in the intense
summer heat. He had received Extreme Unction
and had himself laid out on a bed of ashes. It is
said that his last words, after commending his
spirit to God, were: “O Jerusalem! O Jerusalem.”
It emphasizes the fact that no man was more de­
voted than he to the liberating of the Holy Land.
O Jerusalem! How he must have regretted never
being able to enter the city where Christ was
entombed.

Let’s Read!
Learning to Love Reading

by SSPX Sisters

“If my children liked to read, they’d get a solid
formation, they wouldn’t go stir crazy on rainy
days, they wouldn’t be easy targets for media
propaganda.” So then, how does one awaken in
children such a desirable attribute?
The number of qualities a child acquires by
imitating those around him is incalculable. If
you yourself read regularly with visible pleasure
and interest, if family conversations pleasantly
revolve around books read by members of the
family, then a large part of the work has already
been done.
Before learning to read, a child gets familiar
with books on mother’s lap. Quite often, a little
one left to himself will have “read” a picture book
in 30 seconds; he will have seen everything and
looked at nothing. With mother, one takes the
time to examine every drawing: Where is the

cock? What color is the cat? So doing, the child
develops an ability to concentrate while acquiring
a rich and precise vocabulary.
When books are a part of the family’s universe,
at about five or six, a child will ask to learn to
read. He wants to do as the grown-ups do; he is
tired of having to have help to read a story; he
wants to understand the allusions he hears in
the conversations of the older children. Offer
him a alphabet book, and until it’s time to go to
school, teach him to recognize the sounds of his
language. Home instruction may go further if
mother has some training or a teacher’s advice.
The apprenticeship of reading is paramount.
Reading must become easy enough so that the
child’s attention is no longer on the act of reading
but on the content of the book. Relentlessly
banish books that employ the global or semi57

Christian Culture
global method; they only produce a catastrophic
percentage of illiterates or mediocre readers.
Only the phonics method conforms to the
analytical processes of the intellect as exercised
by the brain.
As soon as the child begins to know how to
read, provide him books adapted to his still
limited capacity (simple vocabulary, big letters,
short stories or longer ones divided in short
chapters) and do not hesitate to read with him,
taking turns in order to help him and to spark
his interest. What should be done if his reading
is still not fluent by the end of first grade. Not all
children progress at the same pace. If mother
is unable to help a child catch up over summer
vacation, or if the gap is too great, it might be
better to have him repeat first grade, with the
teacher’s agreement, in order to assure a solid
foundation rather than advancing to the next
grade where he may have trouble keeping up and
run the risk of becoming discouraged.
An enjoyable book may become the basis
of other activities which in turn may call for
further complementary reading: a novel about the
Crusades might inspire the child to construct in
cardboard his own knightly accoutrements, but
for this to be more exact, he’ll have to research
it further in books. And what did fortresses look
like? What about the life of King St. Louis?
For truly reluctant readers, one might devise
a big game-contest that will occupy the family
during vacation and send the children back to
their Mother Goose or Brothers Grimm or Middle
Earth for clues and answers.
Reading needs a few favorable conditions: a bit
of solitude and silence. The noisy games of the
little ones and compact quarters may constitute
real obstacles for some children, who need to be
helped. During summer vacation, the warm hours
early in the afternoon offer a propitious time for
reading. While the little ones lie down for their
nap, the older ones take to their books and the
household enjoys a moment of quiet.
It is understood that only good books find
entrance into the house. For a book to be
declared good, its hero need not be a saint, but
a wholesome, upright background in which the
action unfolds is indispensable. Much is gained
by talking with the children about their reading,
58

The Angelus

July - August 2015

asking them what they liked and why, and what
they might have found to criticize and why.
Can the reading of comic books contribute to
developing a taste for reading in children who
don’t have it? Without entering into the debate on
the advantages and shortcomings of comics, let’s
be realistic: experience shows that a child who
already likes to read and often reads real books
will be able to relax with a comic book without
detriment; but that the exclusive reader of comic
books rarely develops into a genuine reader since
his laziness is satisfied with merely “reading” the
drawings.
Where can families find good reading on a
reasonable budget? Public libraries offer too
many frankly bad books for it to be prudent to let
children explore them alone. Parents will be able
to find in bookstores the classics of children’s
literature at modest prices. Lending books
between families, while affording the opportunity
to teach children to be careful with books and
respectful of other people’s property, is also a
solution. Traditional Catholic publishers make
an effort to offer high-quality books for children,
and grandmothers and godparents will find many
gift ideas there.
So, good reading to you!
Translated, with slight adaptation for English readers, from Fideliter,
No. 190, July-August 2009. For reading suggestions for the whole
of childhood, you might like to consult Dr. John Senior’s “What
Everyone Should Read: The Thousand Good Books,” The Angelus,
May 1997.

The
Sacrifices of
Motherhood
by Michael J. Rayes

“How big is he?”
Karisa Bugal had barely enough strength left to
whisper her question. She struggled to look up at
the doctors who delivered her baby while medical
staff wheeled her to intensive care.
Mrs. Bugal knew she was sacrificing her own
life to save her baby on that cold November day
in 2014. Her doctors made this very clear during
labor and presented grim options to the young
mother and her husband. Mrs. Bugal chose to
have an emergency delivery to save her son. Her
baby boy was delivered, but the mother died soon
after, leaving behind a husband, a toddler, and a
healthy newborn baby.
Motherhood involves the formation and
management of your children. But this requires
sacrifice; sometimes, incomprehensibly deep
sacrifice. How do we make sense of the call for

sacrifice—ultimately, surrender to God’s will
when we would rather have things go our way?

The Depth of Sacrifice
We parents may sometimes be deluded by the
wonders of modern medicine and technology. We
do a good job of subduing the earth and ruling
over it (Gen. 1:28). But our own strong wills may
be mixed up with this dominion. We oftentimes
struggle when we must resign ourselves to
circumstances because we don’t want to let
go of control. This dichotomy of control and
resignation brings the sacrifices of motherhood
to mind.
There are many mundane sacrifices, or daily
hardships, of living as a Catholic wife and
59

Christian Culture
mother. These can be hard enough to bear. But
there is another type that could require the
very life of the mother, as in the case of Karisa
Bugal. Can’t modern medicine do something? Do
first-world women really still die in childbirth?
Haven’t we gotten past this with our post-modern
technology and medicine?
Yet, examples abound. Modern medicine could
not save Mrs. Bugal. Another instance occurred
last year in Italy, where a woman chose to let
her baby live even though she knew that to do
so would kill her. A British woman also made
headlines when she died in childbirth from an
infection. And early this year in the southwestern
United States, a woman with high blood pressure
died giving birth.
The horror of such situations is realized
because they seem so wrong. Babies are not
supposed to die. Young mothers are not supposed
to die. We desperately want to hold onto life,
at least life that we can measure in terms of
“quality” and “productivity.” Yet Original Sin is
what it is. We feel its effects all around us. Roses
have thorns. People get sick. Death happens,
even during the miracle of conception and human
development.
We may talk about resignation to God’s will,
but sometimes it takes extreme examples to
make a point. A mother’s love is sacrificial in so
many ways. When her own life is asked, she is
practicing “no greater love” for another (John
15:13). When women bear children and give them
life on this earth, we men give nothing in return,
comparatively speaking. We stand by helplessly
while holding our breath, waiting for our wives
to give completely of themselves for the sake
of bringing our babies into this world. As Dr.
Andrew Childs marveled in a conference given in
Phoenix, Arizona, on February 7th of this year,
“Women give us people. We men give our women
toasters.”
Maternal sacrifice during childbirth shows
the rightness and the resignation which souls
must have in following the natural law. It is
never morally permissible to directly commit an
evil act against innocent life to obtain a good
outcome. Rather, Catholic parents who follow
God’s will may have confidence that they are
doing the right thing. “In proportion as you draw
60

The Angelus

July - August 2015

near to Truth by prayer, you inevitably increase
your own conformity to the true pattern of
yourself as it exists in the mind of God. And
this means that, whatever it feels like, your
life is going right” (Van Zeller, Holiness for
Housewives, p. 62).
There is no easy answer to the sacrifices
mothers must sometimes make. The vale of tears
is sometimes a valley so vast we cannot see out
of it. Yet, when it comes to hardship and sacrifice
and what seem to be unbearable extremes, even
death, we must remember that joy and peace
come from doing the will of God. There is joy
in the extreme sacrifice of motherhood, even
though there is suffering.

Making Sense of Suffering
This is not to deny the very real pain caused
by hardship, especially the death of the mother
or the death or suffering of a child. These
are the times when our Catholic catechetical
formation matters the most. Who made you?
Why? What is Original Sin? What must we do
to gain the happiness of heaven? Those without
solid Catholic catechesis will stumble when
confronted with the pain of severe loss and
injustice.
Catholic parents can rest their hearts in the
absolute confidence that God is not the author
of death and suffering. These things are a result
of the first sin which shook the whole universe.
God created us out of love, and this love bears
our free will and the terrifying chain of events
that result from the choices men make. God
endures this so that He may delight in receiving
love freely from us. If love is a real human choice,
we must necessarily have the power to choose
not to love. The fallen natural order of things
demonstrates this: death, suffering, selfishness,
crime, all sorts of vice, diseases, sickness, and so
on.
God never promised us happiness in this life.
We are to persevere through the vale of tears, the
vale of sorrow and joy and pleasure and growth
and anguish and tedium—the vale of the whole
experience of humanity pining for God. The
alternative to following God is not a good sign, as

St. Alphonsus de Liguori points out:
“Oh! What a chastisement is it when God
abandons the sinner into the hands of his sins,
and appears not to demand any further account
of them!...Miserable the sinner that prospers in
this life! His prosperity is a sign that God waits
to make him a victim of His justice for eternity”
(Preparation for Death, p. 177).
Mothers and fathers may take solace and
encouragement in the knowledge that if they
follow God and the natural law, and their
motivation is love of God, He waits for them in
heaven. The fruit of this is peace. The fruit of
resignation to the hand of God is a tranquility
even as we may experience sorrow in our
circumstances. God sees your suffering and He
wants you to offer it up to Him.
In some ways, it may seem easier to give
entirely of self in one overwhelming sacrifice
and be done with it. But no, you instead must
go to the grocery store with your children and
bear curious onlookers. Or you may have worldly
relatives, asking in exasperated tones if you are
done having children yet. These are sacrifices—
temptations to compromise—little sacrifices that
simply must be borne for the love of God. Yet,
they all add up. It is a spiritual martyrdom, one
day at a time. As Ven. Fulton Sheen wrote in 1957:
“It is well known that women are capable of
far more sustained sacrifice than men; a man
may be a hero in a crisis, and then slip back to
mediocrity. He lacks the moral endurance which
enables a woman to be heroic through the years,
months, days and even seconds of her life, when
the very repetitive monotony of her tasks wears
down the spirit....Not only her mind, but her body
must share in the Calvary of motherhood” (Way
to Happiness, pp. 79-80).

She did not trust God and certainly did not trust
her husband; rather, she manipulated him into
taking the fruit. Adam bears full responsibility
for his action but he did not act alone.
Mary, on the other hand, practiced
unconditional trustful surrender to God at all
times, always choosing the greater good. She
ignored the more reasonable voices of those
around her, whether they were relatives, high
priests, or anyone else. Redemption is beyond
human reason. Mary turned to her Son, who
waited for her prompting to begin His public
ministry at Cana. Our Blessed Lord used His own
divine power to effect Redemption, but He did so
with Mary acting as co-redemptrix. As He is the
new Adam, she is the new Eve.
Mothers today are confronted with a dynamic
choice of following their own devices or
surrendering to God and their husbands. This
choice must ever be renewed daily, sometimes
moment by moment, and thus it is a purposeful
choice. We are not angels with instant thinking
skills, who were given one shot at heaven or
hell. We are human creatures, slowed by our
physical bodies and thus we need many, many
opportunities to continue practicing our love.
This human practice of love is shown by your
daily surrender to your husband, your God,
and even, to an extent, your circumstances.
Your consolation is a joyful heart and the peace
of knowing that you are doing all you can to
sanctify your own soul and get your family to
heaven.

Michael Rayes writes from Arizona, where he lives with his
wife of 29 years and their seven children. He is a counselor,
catechism director, and author. Rayes holds a B.A. in
education, an MBA, and a Master’s in professional counseling.

Two Archetypal Women
Remember the juxtaposition of the two women
who are leaders of humanity: Eve and Mary. Eve
let her curiosity and feminine pride get the best of
her. She looked at the fruit, walked closer to the
fruit, toyed with the idea of eating the fruit, and
then decided for herself that she should have this
knowledge and power from the forbidden fruit.
61

Christian Culture

The Lord’s
Vineyard
by Fr. Ferrelli, SSPX

The Angelus: Father Ferrelli, could you
introduce yourself?
Fr. Ferrelli: I was ordained in June of last
year. And my first assignment has been Argentina
and now Chile.
The Angelus: Were you surprised when they
told you that you had been assigned to South
America?
Fr. Ferrelli: Usually most priests remain in
their native country at first, or somewhere using
their own language. So I was about as surprised
as anyone with Italian ancestry and a certain
inclination towards studying languages could
be. My first thoughts were, “This isn’t going
to go over very well with the family, Mom in
particular.” After some sweet-talking and a bit of
time, however, we all got used to the idea that it
62

The Angelus

July - August 2015

wasn’t all that bad.
The Angelus: How did you prepare for such a
change in language and culture?
Fr. Ferrelli: I did what anyone would have
done; try not to think about it too much: final
exams were just around the corner. My superiors
advised me wisely to immerse myself in Mexico
undergoing intensive Spanish. Prior to that time
I didn’t really know too much Spanish, so it
was pretty necessary. One of my best memories
during the preparation for the big leap was
to commit myself to trying the various wines
from Mendoza which one can find in the States.
There is no better way to assimilate oneself into
another culture than by the assimilation of the
various foods and drink it has to offer!
The Angelus: Where were you stationed first?

Fr. Ferrelli: I was originally stationed in
Mendoza, Argentina. Like any good product
of modern public schooling, I had no idea
whatsoever as to where Mendoza was located in
Argentina. If I knew where Argentina was it was
probably due only to the presence of a certain
seminary professor in Winona. Accepting the
reality of my situation was made much easier by
news that Argentina was famous for its renowned
grilled beef, or asado and that Mendoza was
famous for its Malbec wine of international fame.
The Angelus: What is Argentina like?
Fr. Ferrelli: I simply passed through places
like La Reja, Buenos Aïres, Cordoba, and San
Luis, the vast majority of my time being spent in
Mendoza. So whatever I say about Argentina in
general should be regarded as suspect.
The country is very large and very beautiful.
To the east lies the Atlantic Ocean while to the
west and south it is bordered by Chile. Heading
north one encounters a smattering of countries,
the largest of which is the enormous, Portuguesespeaking Brazil.
The culture is Spanish in its roots. During
the years of Italian immigration, however, many
came to settle in Argentina, bringing with them
their culture, accent, character, and food. As a
result, modern Argentina is distinctively Italian,
at least in comparison with its fellow LatinAmerican countries.
You can’t be too generalistic when it comes
to Argentina. Within the various provinces
and cities there are striking differences in the
manner of speaking, acting, and thinking—the
very culture of each has its own particular flavor.
The popular conception of the Argentinian is
the porteño, the people who live in Buenos Aïres
who are loud, chummy, pronounce their ll’s and
y’s with a not-too-quiet “shhh”, and on the whole
very amiable. The truth is otherwise, as any
Argentinian who isn’t a porteño will tell you.
Of late, despite the charm of our fellow
Americans in the real Deep South, the country
has fallen prey to a government with strong
communistic tendencies that is at present
devastating this great country. This, combined
with the disaster of the Conciliar Church and the
typical state of modern Catholics, has gone to

bring low this once great Catholic nation. That’s
Argentina in a nutshell—a very small nutshell.
The Angelus: And Mendoza?
Fr. Ferrelli: Mendoza lies to the west at the foot
of the Andes Mountains, just over the border from
Santiago, Chile. The climate is desert-like, but due
to human industry there is a good deal of plant life
in the area, using the water which flows from the
mountains.
Wine is a huge part of life in Mendoza. Seri­ously,
you can’t have a parish function or sit down with
the local men to discuss Church doctrine if there
isn’t a bottle of wine or three at hand. I recall one
time after having very interesting discussions
concerning the social reign of Christ with about
15-20 Mendocinans being unable to count on two
hands the number of empty bottles of wine.
A number of people told me upon arriving
that the Mendocinan was a bit colder than other
Argentinians, cliquish even. I never experienced
any such thing. What did strike me was their un-

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, Santiago, Chile

Anglo-Saxon forwardness. They don’t mince
words usually, nor are they given to “beating
around the bush.” It’s a refreshing frankness, you
could say.
One of the first families I went to visit with
my fellow priests demonstrated this perfectly.
They were preparing a scrumptious asado served
with delicious Malbec wine. Having grasped at
the opportunity to speak a bit of English with
someone at the table, the conversation turned
63

Christian Culture
towards languages in general. One person, who
was partial to French (for legitimate reasons of
family ancestry), began to speak of its qualities.
I, playing the role of pacific foreigner, said, Sí, sí;
pero inglés, etc. It wasn’t very long before this
person—a wonderful person whom I came to
esteem very quickly—exclaimed (to be dramatic)

help in order to live the Catholic life in this
perverse world.
There are various well-attended organizations
in place by which the faithful seek to live more
fully the Catholic life, help with the liturgy, or
study the Church’s doctrinal and moral teachings.
I won’t say that I was the busiest of the priests

Our Lady of Solitude, Mendoza, Argentina

something along the lines of “English is an
ugly and brutish language!” I was shocked. If
something like that happened in America when a
foreign priest arrived at the parish, there would
be no shortage of red faces and down-cast eyes,
followed by something along the lines of, “What
I meant to say was..., etc.” But no; everything
carried on quite naturally. It was a first cultureshock I am grateful to God to have experienced.
There is nothing that opens the mind and helps
one to develop character like being immersed in
a different culture, especially when upon your
understanding of them and their manner of living
depends to some extent the salvation of souls.
The Angelus: What about the apostolate?
Fr. Ferrelli: Beautiful. There is constant life
and activity in the parish and school attached
thereto. The large number of children, young
adults, new and large families are a source of joy
for any priest. One witnesses numerous baptisms,
marriages, many preparing for marriage, full
catechism classes, and plenty of souls seeking
64

The Angelus

July - August 2015

in the priory, far from it, but even so, I had the
wonderful experience of never lacking priestly
work.
As I must have mentioned by now, Argentinians
seem to be generally more intimate, open, and
familiar. I don’t think I would be exaggerating
if I were to say that the apostolate in Mendoza,
as far as I experienced it, was like the work of
a father in his family. True, I was only a vicar,
and every parish is a spiritual family, but there’s
something different here, I think. It is not easy
for Americans, it seems to me, to arrive at the
balance between overly familiar and a distant,
wary respect. I wouldn’t say things are perfect—
they never are, but one really gets a sense of
profound trust and deference...even while the
faithful are joking with their priests, joking with
you about you, and even though the men don’t
hesitate to give you a slap on the back or un gran
abrazo more or less publicly.
The Angelus: Now, you were only in Mendoza
for six months and then moved to Santiago, Chile.

How is Chile different from Mendoza?
Fr. Ferrelli: That’s not an easy question to
answer, mostly because there is a bit of rivalry
between the two. As I don’t want to get involved
in that, let’s say that they’re...different.
What is more, I’ve only been in Chile for four
months now, so my opinions aren’t terribly

the East Coast, plenty of mountains, volcanos in
the South, and damper regions like in Washington
State.

well developed. Chileans don’t have the Italian
influence of which Argentina boasts (I use
this word for reasons of ancestry, not really
to pass judgment). In fact, there was a marked
immigration of Germans, and Chile has always
had good relations with the British. So even
though the people are certainly Latin-Americans,
you could say that they are not as “chummy.”
I don’t necessarily mean that as a negative
comment, and there are plenty of exceptions.
On the whole, the Chilean is very respectful and
better organized.
What was particularly interesting to me was
the appreciation for the U.S. which seems to
mark Chile. They are very well disposed towards
estadunienses and even their economy and
modern architecture are very similar. Arriving in
Chile gave me the sense of arriving home. Chile
also has many diverse climates and beautiful
locations, even though it is so narrow, because it
spans a huge distance along the Western coast of
South America. It has beautiful coastal climates
like San Diego, pine forests like you might find in

has created men with such diversity of culture,
vision, and behavior, and yet they are all united
under His single Catholic Church. One who has
lived in his home country, surrounded by material
prosperity all along, might find himself unable to
adapt to other ways of life. If we are called to the
imitation of God, Who is able embrace the whole
of the human race and make them His saints and
friends, how is it that we so easily anathematize
this or that man who thinks differently than we
do? To an American, the openness and frankness
of a Mendocinan might be a lack of delicacy
and necessary Christian reserve, while the
Mendocinan will see in the distance and reserve
of the American ostentation or a puritanical
façade.
To see the two as legitimate ways of acting,
to be able to go outside of ourselves and think
instead of this person in front of me, would go
a long way towards union in understanding and
charity between Catholics, especially those of us
who follow Tradition against the modern current.

The Angelus: Do you having any closing
remarks?
Fr. Ferrelli: It really is amazing how God

65

330 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8425 – $18.95

The Battleground
Syria and Palestine, the Seed Plot of Religion

In this religious-biblical oriented history, Belloc provides a full and fair treatment of the ancient
Jews and other Middle Eastern cultures and their impact in history and in today’s world. He affirms
a special divine design in the story of Syria and particularly of Israel, reaching a climax in the event
of the Crucifixion of Christ. His famous motto,”Europe is the Faith, the Faith is Europe” has been
interpreted as a form of religious ethnocentrism. But he was making the point that what we regard
as the greatest cultural, politica, and artistic achievements of Western civilization stem from the old
creed. Without the one, the other would not exist.

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

by SSPX priests

Can a Catholic use
Google, Amazon, and
similar corporations?
On the website of the Society of St. Pius X,
there is a fund-raising appeal that entails using
Amazon, using Google Inc. What is the duty of a
Catholic regarding the use of a corporation one
knows to have a reprehensible agenda and to use
its profits to foment evil purposes?
The case mentioned here seems to be one of

necessity. As long as one is going to do online
shopping through Amazon—which has become
the rule—some tax money will necessarily go to
some tax-exempt company which has a good or
an evil purpose. If it profits the SSPX, it will be
used for a good purpose and that is a good effect.
This case also is a perfect illustration of what
the moralists call the principle of “double effect
or indirect voluntary.” One action, in itself good
or indifferent, has two effects, the first good
and the other evil. Can I morally perform this
action? As long as I intend the good effect and
67

Christian Culture
as long as there is a reason for doing the action
proportionate to the unintended evil effect, it
is lawful to do it. One may have a warm shower
although it could give him strange sensations;
one may walk down the street although he
might come across improperly dressed people; a
salesman may then sell wine although he foresees
that some customers will abuse alcohol. When I
do these acts, I do not intend the evil which could
ensue but only the good purpose, yet, I allow the
evil which might ensue. This is because life is
not lived in a sterile bubble and not everything is
black and white.
It is difficult for anyone to shy away from all
companies which use their profits for an evil
purpose, such as Starbucks and the like. This is
because we have to use all types of materials and
items and buy foods which somehow or other
are connected with such companies. Are we to
feed ourselves only with the carrots and spinach
from our veggy patch? Are we to not buy anything
“made in China”? So, in this particular case, we
are only applying the principle used by St. Paul:
“not to keep company with fornicators. I mean
not with the fornicators of this world, or with
the covetous, or the extortioners, or the servers
of idols; otherwise you must needs go out of this
world” (I Cor. 5:9-10).

May Catholics read the Quran?
From the very beginning of the censures
placed by Church authorities on the reading of
materials, the Quran was put in the Index of
Forbidden Books, which, obviously, oblige under
pain of mortal sin.
This is one particular application of the
Church’s Magisterium, whose office, given by
Christ, is to teach all nations in God’s name and
to safeguard souls from error. Hence, within
the part on Church teaching in the 1917 Code of
Canon Law, there is a section on “The previous
68

The Angelus

July - August 2015

censure of books and their prohibition” (c. 13841405). For until the mid sixties during the reign
of Pope Paul VI, all books having to do with faith
or morals had to receive the Nihil Obstat and
Episcopal Imprimatur in order to be released
and read by Catholics. As we can see, the reason
for forbidding books is the preservation of the
faith of Catholics, and, as in matters liturgical,
the Church has always condemned the mixing of
prayers and teachings with non-Catholics. Faith
is a delicate virtue and can be lost in contact with
heresy for those unwarned or poorly prepared.
And in this, the Church’s law only codifies
the natural law which commands us to avoid
anything which endangers the faith (can. 1405).
The Index was the list of the forbidden books
which, as such, could not be edited, read,
conserved, sold, translated, or communicated.
There was grave sin on the part of one who would
read that section of the book which caused the
prohibition even if it were only one paragraph.
Canon 1399 gave the various motives for
including books in the Index, particularly those
which defend heresy or schism or attack the
foundations of religion, those which attack good
customs, and those written by non-Catholics
which speak specifically of religious matters,
even if they mention nothing against the Catholic
Faith.
This being said, bishops and major religious
superiors may give to some chosen subjects the
license to read certain forbidden books as long
as there is a just and reasonable cause (can.
1402). Hence, students in sacred Scripture may
use a Bible version from heretics as long as their
teacher is with them and guides them through
the text and errors of the said forbidden book.
Likewise, a university professor or priest may
know what the Quran teaches in order to write
an article or a book explaining the tenets of
Islam so as to better refute it. But the exception
only confirms the rule, and the rule is that most
Catholics are not sufficiently instructed or
trained to be able to handle books of heretics
written to defend heresy or paganism.

News from Tradition
Centenary of the Armenian Genocide
This year marks the 100th anniversary of
the forced death marches of some 1.5 million
Armenian Christians at the hands of the Ottoman
Turks. Though there were a variety of motives
involved, much of the violence inflicted was justi­
fied as being part of the jihad against infidels
called by the Sultan. There is little doubt that the
Armenians were slaughtered not just because of
their ethnic identity but particularly because of
their Christian faith.
Pope Francis, in a Mass celebrated in St. Peter’s
Square on Low Sunday (“Divine Mercy” Sunday
in the Novus Ordo calendar), clearly stated that
this action of the Turks was an act of genocide. In
categorizing it as a genocide, the Pope unleashed
a storm of protest from Turkish officials, who
continue to deny the facts of the event. At the
Mass, attended by many Armenians, the Holy
Father stated:
“In the past century our human family has
lived through three massive and unprecedented
tragedies. The first, which is widely considered
‘the first genocide of the twentieth century,’ struck
your own Armenian people, the first Christian
nation, as well as Catholic and Orthodox Syrians,

Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks. Bishops and
priests, religious, women and men, the elderly and
even defenseless children and the infirm were
murdered…
“Dear Armenian Christians, today, with hearts
filled with pain but at the same time with great
hope in the risen Lord, we recall the centenary
of that tragic event, that immense and senseless
slaughter whose cruelty your forebears had
to endure. It is necessary, and indeed a duty,
to honor their memory, for whenever memory
fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester.
Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a
wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it!”
Although the Pope’s words were clear and
strong in condemning the tragedy and calling it
what it genuinely was (a genocide), he neglected to
state that the motivation of those who slaughtered
the Christians was rooted in the “religion” of
Islam. This should come as no surprise since Pope
Francis has referred to Islam as a “religion of
peace” numerous times, despite so much evidence
to the contrary.

Cause for the Beatification of Helder Camara Begun
Earlier this year, the cause for the
beatification of Archbishop Helder Camara was
officially opened in Rome. In 1946 Camara’s
name was proposed by the Archbishop of Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, to become an auxiliary
of the archdiocese; he was rejected at that
time because of his pro Nazi activities during
the previous years. This not withstanding,
Camara was named an auxiliary bishop in 1952
and then the archbishop of Olinda e Recife,
Brazil, in 1964. Attending the second Vatican
Council, Archbishop Camara became a leading
voice amongst the “progressive” Council
Fathers. Following Vatican II, Helder Camara
was, without question, one of the leading
voices encouraging Liberation Theology and

Communism in general. He also was a very
loud voice in opposing Pope Paul VI’s encyclical
Humanae Vitae. Camara retired as archbishop
in 1985 and died in 1999.
It would appear that the push for his
beatification has to do with his “love for the
poor and marginalized” which so clearly
echoes the message of Pope Francis. Sadly, we
are once again faced with the prospect of the
beatification of someone who openly rejected
much of the traditional teachings of the Church.
Simply put, the process for beatifications and
canonizations has been reduced to a political
process rather than a religious one.

69

News from Tradition
Archbishop Cordileone Under Attack
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, the
archbishop of San Francisco, was faced with a
full-page ad in the April 16th edition of the San
Francisco Chronicle asking Pope Francis to
remove him as archbishop. The ad was placed by a
group of “catholics” who said, among other things,
that the archbishop “fostered an atmosphere of
division and intolerance [and that] Instead of
your [Pope Francis’s] famous words ‘Who Am I to
Judge,’ Archbishop Cordileone repeatedly labels
the behavior of our fellow brothers and sisters
(and their children) as ‘gravely evil’… The City of
Saint Francis deserves an Archbishop true to our
values and to your teachings.”
This ad was in response to Archbishop
Cordileone inserting a “morals clause” in the
contracts of teachers in the archdiocesan schools,
which, among other things, states that teachers
cannot support homosexual unions and other
immoral behavior.
While this sort of public “request” by a small
but wealthy group of disgruntled “faithful” would
normally have been effectively ignored in the
Vatican, over the past six months Pope Francis
has removed three bishops from their sees for
being “divisive” and “intolerant,” so there is every
reason to believe Archbishop Cordileone may face
a similar treatment. It should certainly be noted
that the three bishops who were removed are
very sympathetic to Tradition and have offered

the Traditional Latin Mass often, which can also
be said of Archbishop Cordileone. All should
certainly keep His Excellency in their prayers.

The case of one of the three conservative
bishops is interesting because of its similarity
with the San Francisco bishop. Bishop Finn of the
diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph “resigned” on
21 April at the request of the Pope. For the past
18 months, the National Catholic Reporter, whose
headquarters is located within Bishop Finn’s
former diocese, has continually called for the
bishop’s removal. It should be noted that Bishop
Finn had, a number of years ago, informed the
NCR that they could no longer call themselves
Catholic because of their continued denial of many
points of Catholic doctrine and morals.

Nepal Earthquake Miracle
As we must sadly recall, on 25 April of this
year, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Nepal.
The damage caused was almost financially
incalculable, but worse still were the over
10,000 residents who lost there lives. But in the
small village of Okhalhunga, located in eastern
Nepal, there were no casualties, though many
homes and buildings were destroyed. The
reason for this miraculous preservation of the
inhabitants of this town was because almost
all were attending an ordination to the Sacred

70

The Angelus

July - August 2015

Priesthood of two local men being held outof-doors and thus away from any collapsing
structures.
Although fewer than one percent of the
population of this land-locked country between
India and China are Roman Catholic, the lives
of the residents of Okhalhunga were preserved
because they were witnessing to their faith,
a faith preached to the region by countless
missionary priests and religious over the years.

Chimpanzees Are People Too
So say a group who have presented a case in a
New York City court. Manhattan Supreme Court
Justice Barbara Jaffe has granted a hearing to
decide whether two chimpanzees living at the
State University at Stony Brook (Long Island)
are “persons” who deserve to be released.
The case was brought in the name of the
two chimps (named Leo and Hercules) by the
Nonhuman Rights Project. The Project wants
the court to find that Leo and Hercules have
been “unlawfully detained”—and to order
the university to release them to an animal
sanctuary.
The animals qualify as persons, the group
says, because they show highly complex
cognitive functions including empathy, the
ability to engage in mental time travel, and the

capacity to suffer the pain of imprisonment.
Although this attempt may seem utterly
absurd to most logically thinking human beings,
there is a grave danger of the Court’s finding
that the chimpanzees do qualify as persons.
This is simply because “personhood” has been
reduced to what a person does (their actions)
as opposed to what a person is (their being).
This rationale was part of what was used by
the Supreme Court to justify its “legalizing”
abortion in the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973.
If, indeed, Leo and Hercules are found to be
“persons” based upon their actions or abilities
rather than their “being,” we have indeed
entered a new phase in the degradation of the
human person.

Persecution of Christians by Muslims Continues
On Sunday, 19 April, ISIS released another video,
showing the shootings and beheadings of two
groups of Ethiopian Christians in Libya. Twelve
of the victims were shot to death in the desert
and sixteen others were executed by beheading
on a beach. This video was released almost two
months after another which showed the beheading
of twenty-one Egyptian Christians by the same
Islamic State. In the video, the masked murderers
said the following:
“You will not have safety even in your dreams
until you accept Islam… Our battle is a battle
between faith and blasphemy, between truth and
falsehood… The Islamic State has offered the
Christian community this [converting to Islam or
paying a tax] many times and set a deadline for
this, but the Christians never cooperated.”
While many in the media and in government
continue to say that these acts are carried out
by Islamic extremists and that Islam does not
condone violence, there is another report that a
14-year-old boy in Pakistan was beaten and then
set ablaze after saying he was a Christian. The boy
was working as a tailor’s apprentice when he was

approached by two young Muslims after leaving
his job. They asked the boy what his religion was
and when he said he was a Christian, they began
beating him and poured kerosene over him and
set it alight when he tried to flee. The youngster
was hospitalized with burns covering more than
half of his body. This act was not carried out by
representatives of ISIS, but by Muslim neighbors
of the boy. Once again we are reminded that these
murderers and persecutors are acting in the name
of Islam and following the dictates of the Quran;
pretending otherwise is foolhardy.

71

“As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Savior and God and the giver of life
and immortality, has been endowed with life by him, she has received an eternal
incorruptibility of the body together with him who has raised her up from the tomb
and has taken her up to himself in a way known only to him.”
The Encomium in Dormitionem Sanctissimae Dominae Nostrae Deiparae Semperque Virginis Mariae, attributed to
St. Modestus of Jerusalem, n. 14.

www.shutterstock.com

Theological Studies

The 1974
Declaration
Forty Years
Later
by Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, SSPX

1. Titular Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of
the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, recently
gave an interview about the relations between Rome
and the SSPX.1 No-one can put himself above the
supreme teaching authority of the Church [magisterium], he said; and since the teachings of the
Second Vatican Council must be considered as
those of the genuine Catholic supreme teaching
authority, the Roman authorities cannot require
less of the SSPX than does the 1989 Profession of
Faith. The Profession of Faith, in effect, enounces
submission in principle to the teachings of Vatican II
according to the different degrees of assent indicated. Msgr. Pozzo is very clear: at the very most
the Holy See is ready to grant to the SSPX that “the
teachings of Vatican II have an extremely variable
degree of authority and binding character, depending on the texts.” For example, “the declarations
on religious liberty, non-Christian religions, and the
decree on ecumenism, have a different and inferior
degree of authority and binding character” than

74

The Angelus

July - August 2015

the Constitutions Lumen Gentium on the Church
and Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, which “have
the character of a doctrinal declaration, even if
they include no dogmatic definitions.” The nuances
notwithstanding, it remains that the two types of
documents are both authoritative and binding. The
only concession made is the recognition of a mere
difference in the degree of authority and of requisite
assent. What conclusion may be drawn, if not that
the Society ought to recognize, in varying degrees,
the authority and binding character of all the specified documents. Now, this is precisely what is not
acceptable. For it is precisely in the documents
named that the Rome of neo-modernist tendencies
is clearly manifest, the Rome that “we refuse and
have always refused to follow,” whatever may be the
degree of authority ascribed in vain to these texts.
2. In the eyes of Msgr. Pozzo, the funda­men­tal
reason for which the authority and binding character
of these teachings cannot not be called in question

is that the present authority intends to impose them
as being those of a real and proper magisterium.
The very possibility of a breach between Vatican II
and Tradition would be obviated because today’s
authority asserts in principle the continuity between
the teachings of Vatican II and Tradition. Ultimately,
the argument at the basis of Msgr. Pozzo’s interview
is taken from that of Benedict XVI, an argument
according to which only the present authority may
declare what is revealed and impose it as such.
The magisterium of the past also depends on this
authorization because it must be understood in light
of what the present authority has to say about it: the
latter has authority to preserve, guard, and interpret the former. That is why one may not contest
the declarations of the present authority by relying
upon those of the past. The presupposition of this
approach is that only the living magisterium, magisterium in the true and proper sense of the term, is
the one exercised by the current authorities.
3. The nature of the living magisterium, however,
was clearly defined by Pope Pius XII: “...God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority [magisterium] to elucidate and explain what is contained
in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly.
This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given
for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching
Authority of the Church” [magisterium]. This is
why “this sacred Office of Teacher [magisterium] in
matters of faith and morals must be the proximate
and universal criterion of truth for all theologians,
since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the
whole deposit of faith–Sacred Scripture and divine
Tradition—to be preserved, guarded, and interpreted.”2 Therein lies a principle. A principle is an
indemonstrable truth containing within itself its own
justification. In this instance it amounts to saying
that the nature of the ecclesiastical magisterium is
such that its teaching must be taken as a whole or
left. No-one can invent it or refashion it according
to his own will, for it is God who has set its limits by
His definitive Revelation. The role of the magisterium, or supreme teaching office of the Church, is
limited to preserving, guarding, and interpreting
the deposit of faith, that is to say, the ensemble of
divinely revealed truths that have been consigned
in the sources of Revelation which are Sacred

Scripture and divine Tradition. It is said to be “living”
by reason of the threefold activity it exercises in the
service of the deposit of faith.
4. “Living” is in contradistinction to “dead.”
The magisterium is said to be living in relation to
Revelation which is said to be dead, just as an ongoing activity is in comparison with one that has
definitively ceased. In effect, Revelation came to a
close with the death of the last of the Apostles, and
these did not have successors in the prophetic office
which was theirs in order to proclaim for the first
time all the truths revealed by God. On the other
hand, the Apostles must have successors in their
teaching office, or magisterium, till the end of the
world. The purpose of this function is to preserve,
guard, and interpret the truths revealed by God.
It merges with Tradition understood in the active
sense of the term. It must be exercised as such, that
is to say, as a continually living magisterium until
the end of the world and at all times. The fact of
being past or present is thus accidental to the living
magisterium from the very fact that the temporal
aspect is accidental to preserving, guarding, and
interpreting Revelation. Past magisterium is no less
living than present magisterium, for both give the
authentic meaning of the truths of faith.
5. Consequently, the living magisterium is
unique. Indeed, its unicity is not that of its subject,
to wit, the one who exercises the supreme teaching office. From the standpoint of the subject, we
should rather say that there have been, that there
are, and that there will be in the Church as many
‘magisteria’ as popes and bishops in the Catholic
Church from St. Peter and the Apostles until the
end of the world. But this plurality is accidental to
the magisterium, whereas its essential oneness
flows from another standpoint, that of the object of
its act. Whoever may be the subjects that exercise
the magisterial office over the course of time, this
function is always exercised to preserve, guard,
and interpret the ensemble of the truths revealed
by God precisely as having been revealed. One may
certainly speak of unity and plurality in different
senses. Numerically there are multiple subjects that
successively exercise the magisterium, and for the
same subject there are several successive acts of
the magisterium. Numerically, there are multiple
75

Theological Studies
revealed truths proposed successively as revealed.
This plurality is measured by time, in which case
present magisterium can be distinguished from past
magisterium, the one succeeding the other. But this
standpoint of numerical plurality remains accidental
to the magisterium, and it is essentially (or specifically) one and unique like its object: the object is the
truth already revealed by God, and the magisterium
has to preserve, guard, and interpret it always in
the same meaning. From this viewpoint, there is no
distinction between past and present magisterium
because the former is as alive as the latter. There
are not two magisteriums, one past and another
present. There is only one magisterium, which is the
magisterium of always.
6. The error contrary to the principle indicated
by Pius XII would be to say that the magisterium, by
definition unique, is the one taught today. The error
consists in taking into account only the numerical oneness of the present holder of the supreme
teaching office. Now, the magisterium is not defined
in terms of its subject, and that is why it is not as
such today’s, nor yesterday’s, nor tomorrow’s. It is
that which is always, for it is defined in terms of its
object, and its unicity is independent of the subject
who speaks in the course of time.3 The error lying
at the outset of what today’s churchmen for the
last forty years have been holding forth consists in
identifying the living magisterium [object], with the
present magisterium [subject].4
7. This is precisely the error underlying Msgr.
Pozzo’s interview. What shall we answer him, if
not (for the umpteenth time over the last five
years when the famous “doctrinal discussions”
were inaugurated) to remind him of the principle
clearly enounced by Pius XII in Humani Generis.
We cannot subscribe to the teachings contained in
Lumen Gentium (the “subsistit in” and collegiality),
Dignitatis Humanae (religious liberty), and Unitatis
Redintegratio (ecumenism) because these teachings contradict the sense of revealed truths already
declared by the living magisterium of the Church. It
is not because these teachings have come up today
that they should outweigh those of yesterday. Nor
is it because they benefit from the assurance of the
authorities of the present hour that they should be
considered to be in continuity with Tradition and

76

The Angelus

July - August 2015

that Catholics ought to refuse to see the rift perpetually inscribed between them. It is precisely because
the magisterium is “the authentic tribunal that
judges interpretations of Scripture and Tradition
whencesoever they emanate” that we refuse to
subscribe to the 1989 Profession of Faith. For this
Profession of Faith has already been judged by the
living magisterium of the Church, and it is obvious
that it includes several interpretations of Scripture
and Tradition that are incompatible with that which
is given by the magisterium of always.
8. It is, therefore, because “we hold firmly with
all our heart and with all our mind to Catholic Rome,
Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions
necessary to the maintenance of this faith to the
eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth” that
“we refuse on the other hand, and have always
refused, to follow the Rome of Neo-Modernist and
Neo-Protestant tendencies, which became clearly
manifest during the Second Vatican Council, and after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from
it.” The defense of the Catholic faith is still the top
priority. We do suffer from being separated for all
practical purposes from the one who still is Mother
and Mistress of all the churches. But our Mother and
our Mistress is contagious. So long as the epidemic
of which she is the source continues, we cannot take
the risk of drinking from the same cup as she and
of letting ourselves be contaminated by the germs
that have more or less infected all the churches of
“Catholicity.”
9. Msgr. Pozzo concludes his interview by saying
that he cannot give “a precise idea yet of the time
needed to reach the end of this path” of full reconciliation of the Holy See and the FSSPX, “with the
clear goal of promoting unity in the charity of the
universal Church guided by the successor of Peter.”
For our part, we know quite well that this reconciliation cannot happen without there first being unity
in the faith, the Catholic Faith to which the men who
are currently leading the Church must return, having renounced spreading the errors of the Second
Vatican Council. “It is because of our obedience
to the Church that we are considered disobedient,
since it is the others who have taken a new course in
the Church, and who have instigated a new tendency
in the Church, a liberal tendency....I deem that we

are in the Church, and that we are those that are
in the Church, and that we are the true sons of the
Church, and that the others are not. They are not
because liberalism does not belong to the Church.
Liberalism is against the Church; liberalism is the
destruction of the Church; in this sense, they cannot
call themselves sons of the Church. We can call ourselves sons of the Church because we continue the
doctrine of the Church, we maintain the whole truth
of the Church integrally as the Church has always
taught it.”5
10. The Declaration of November 21, 1974, hence
is still relevant.

The Conciliar Impasse
Forty Years Later
1. The discourse addressed by Rome to the
FSSPX has remained substantially unchanged for
forty years. Nonetheless it must be said that over
time, the Holy See has seen itself more seriously
obliged to respond to the arguments advanced
by those who carry on the work of Archbishop
Lefebvre. In this regard, Benedict XVI’s speech of
December 22, 2005, was a milestone. The current
considerations of Msgr. Pozzo are its perfect, and
symptomatic, echo.
2. Until the end of his pontificate, Pope Paul VI
was content to answer the objections of Archbishop
Lefebvre by simply dismissing them on his own
authority, even going so far as to present Vatican
II as having “no less authority,” and as being “in
certain respects...even more important than that of
Nicaea.”6 Today this simplistic tautology prompts a
wry smile, and, remarkably, even the current authorities scarcely take note of it. In fact, it was cruelly
disavowed by the second successor of Paul VI, and
this disavowal was all the more cutting in that it was
undoubtedly less conscious. For soon after the episcopal consecrations of 1988, a surprising reflection
started within the Roman Curia itself. In a conference held before the Chilean Episcopal Conference
in 1988, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expressed
himself about the Second Vatican Council, its
nature and its reception in these terms: “Although it
proclaimed no dogma and intended to present itself

more modestly as a pastoral council, some hold up
Vatican II as if it were, so to speak, a super-dogma
that makes all the rest irrelevant.”7 If he does not
repeat the literal expression “super-dogma,” the
key discourse made by Benedict XVI eight months
after his election reaffirmed the same observation
and denounced what he called the “hermeneutic of
rupture,” a “will to make the Council into a kind of
constituent assembly that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one.”8
3. In the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei Adflicta of July
2, 1988, in which he excommunicated Archbishop
Lefebvre, John Paul II denounced without further
explanation “an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition, incomplete, because it does not
take sufficiently into account the living character
of Tradition....”9 The response is still not an answer,
because it is content to utter words whose definition in the mind of the one using them is hard to
grasp. To say that such language does not have
much consistency would be to resort to litotes. Here
again, the successor of John Paul II will be obliged to
acknowledge, albeit implicitly, that such an explanation is inadequate. It is moreover remarkable that
the expression of John Paul II is not employed in the
Christmas 2005 Address and Benedict XVI does not
even attempt to explain in what precisely the living
character of Tradition consists. For he even admits,
“Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed.” And if
he asserts that “a continuity of principles proved
not to have been abandoned,” he also concedes:
“It is easy to miss this fact at a glance.” In order to
realize this continuity of principles, it was necessary
to make “the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements.”
We shall see later on what this entails; but let us
note the fact that interests us here; for the first
time since the Council closed, a pope felt obliged
to answer the objections of Archbishop Lefebvre
other than by arguments of authority and without
resorting to stereotyped verbiage. One should also
recognize that Benedict has the merit of authorizing
for the first time a lucid and fair theological exchange between the representatives of the Society
and of the Holy See. At the end of this exchange,
the Vatican is obliged seriously to take into account
what is clearly a serious reason.

77

Theological Studies
4. This was already contained in the Declaration
of November 21, 1974. The new fact is that it now
has gotten the attention of an official representative of the Sovereign Pontiff and is the basis for the
fundamental issues addressed in his speech.
5. Developing the presuppositions of the 2005
speech,10 Msgr. Pozzo distinguishes between what
he calls maximalist and minimalist positions. The
distinction is readily grasped: of those subscribing
to a “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” the first group
designates those who tend to make of Vatican II a
“pastoral super-dogma” according to which pastoral practice would be the principle by reason of
which it would be legitimate to relativize Traditional
Catholic doctrine and dogma. The second term designates the attitude of the FSSPX, which separates
the past magisterium, held to be doctrinal, from the
present magisterium, held to be pastoral, thereby in
fact introducing a division in the magisterium itself.
Above these two excessive positions, the hermeneutic of renewal in continuity would represent the true
solution, which moreover would fit in with the exact
interpretation of the pastoral nature of the Council.
To believe Msgr. Pozzo, who is only developing the
thought of Benedict XVI, the doctrinal principles
remain unchanged (albeit with the clarifications and
the greater understanding owing to the homogeneous development of Catholic doctrine), but the
pastoral applications are contingent because the
historical situation in which the Christian message is
embodied is itself contingent. The minimalist position claims that the principles have changed, while
it is only their application in the pastoral context
that has introduced the novelty. Therefore Vatican II
could not be contested on the basis of this novelty. That is why, after the doctrinal discussions of
2009-2011, Benedict XVI had clearly announced his
intention, which was to make the FSSPX accept all
the acts of the magisterium after 1962: “ ...the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal
in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of
the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar
magisterium of the Popes....The Church’s teaching
authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962—this
must be quite clear to the Society.”11
6. Obviously, the Society has no desire to
“freeze” the authority of the Church’s magiste-

78

The Angelus

July - August 2015

rium to one period of Church history, as do the
Orthodox schismatics, who accept only the first
seven ecumenical councils. They accept the entire
magisterium as such. But the fact is that, on at
least a certain number of points, which are clearly
presented as principles, the teachings of Vatican
II cannot be interpreted in conformity with other
teachings already contained in earlier documents of
the ecclesiastical magisterium. To be sure, pastoral applications are contingent. Prudence takes
circumstances into account. Pastoral practice can
and ought to find a renewed application of the same
principles. It is not over this point that we contest
Msgr. Pozzo’s response. It is rather when he tells
us that in Vatican II, principles remain unchanged,
or, if change is observable, it consists in expressing in more explicit terms the same meaning of the
same truth. A reasonably attentive examination
of the texts proves that, to the contrary, the social
doctrine of the Church has undergone a veritable
Copernican revolution and that, far from being a
case of homogeneous development of doctrine, the
perplexed Catholic is the spectator of a profound
alteration and an unprecedented obscuration of the
principal truths of the Faith as well as the introduction of liberal principles in the Church.
The response of the 2005 Christmas speech
consists in saying that the application of the same
principles has changed because the context has
changed. In reality, it is the principles themselves
that have been changed. The dogmatic constitution
Lumen Gentium, the decree Unitatis Redintegratio,
and the declaration Nostra Aetate give to the relation
between the Catholic religion and other religions a
different definition from that taught by the Syllabus
of Errors, Satis Cognitum, and Mortalium Animos.
Instead of condemning the principle that the nonCatholic religions have a certain value for eternal
salvation as did previous popes, Vatican II adopts
it.12 The declaration Dignitatis Humanae and the
pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes give to the
relation between the Church and the modern State
a different definition from the one taught by Quanta
Cura and Quas Primas. Instead of condemning the
principle of religious liberty and the indifferentism of
the State as did Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI, Vatican
II adopts it.13
Moreover, even if Vatican II deviates from
Tradition only on certain points, the other points

News from Tradition
on which it remains in conformity with it do not
suffice to make this Council acceptable. Malum ex
quocumque defectu: a few bad passages suffice
to make the Council bad, for the mere presence of
good passages does not make the bad ones acceptable. Indeed the presence of traditional teaching
side by side with novelties contrary to tradition
would prove moreover that there are contradictions
in the Council: which is a supplemental motive not to
accept it. In any case, most of the conciliar reforms,
if not all, are not based on the good texts of the
Council, but on those that cause a problem from the
fact that they deviate from Tradition.

initial error, already brought to light. It does not introduce duality into the magisterium. It maintains that
the living magisterium is unique, but that it involves
only the present magisterium.

7. The foregoing has been explained over and
over. The point we’d like to focus on is the following: Msgr. Pozzo objects that our attitude, which
he describes as minimalist, leaves unanswered the
question of the authority that can decide whether
the current teaching of the Church’s supreme
teaching authority [magisterium] is coherent with
its past teaching. In other words: what authority is
to judge decisively the continuity of the (present)
living magisterium with the past magisterium, not
only from the point of view of the subject, but also
from the point of view of the object, namely, the res
de fide et moribus? According to the secretary of the
Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” the answer
of the doctrine of the Church on this subject has always been the same: it is up to the magisterium and
to it alone to judge the authentic interpretation (that
is, exercised with the authority of Christ) of the word
of God written or transmitted.

9. As Pius XII taught in Humani Generis, the supreme teaching authority [magisterium] is exercised
in order “to elucidate and explain what is contained
in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly,”
and not for the clarification of its own teachings.
Pius XII carefully distinguishes between the teaching of the magisterium and the deposit of faith:
“This sacred Office of Teacher [magisterium] in
matters of faith and morals must be the proximate
and universal criterion of truth for all theologians,
since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the
whole deposit of faith—Sacred Scripture and divine
Tradition—to be preserved, guarded, and interpreted....God has given to His Church a living Teaching
Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained
in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly.
This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given
for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching
Authority of the Church.” 14 As such, the Teaching
Authority [magisterium] interprets and clarifies
divinely revealed truths; the fact of being present
or past is accidental to the fact of the interpretation
or clarification of these truths. Whether it is past or
present, the Teaching Authority [magisterium] is
defined by its acts as the permanently authorized
teaching of the same revealed truths. It always
remains “living.”

8. This is the decisive point, for the issue it introduces is radically skewed. The way the question is
framed already dictates the way to answer it. Msgr.
Pozzo starts from the principle that it is a question of
establishing coherence between the current teaching of the magisterium and its previous teaching, or
between the living magisterium, which is the present
magisterium, and past magisterium. In his mind,
there is then a single living magisterium, which is the
present magisterium. Only this [teaching authority] is in a position to establish the coherence of its
own teachings with past teachings. And so only this
present magisterium would be authorized to give the
authentic interpretation of the word of God written
or relayed, that is, revealed truth. Here we find the

10. The living magisterium has as its object to
interpret and to clarify certain revealed truths, and
not all, depending on whether it is past or present.
For the Teaching Authority [magisterium] as present
only has for its object the interpretation and clarification of those revealed truths not yet addressed by
the past Teaching Authority. For example, the teachings of the First Council of Nicaea bore upon the
Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Second
Council of Nicaea addressed a different point of
Trinitarian doctrine not addressed by the first,
relative to the Third Divine Person. In such wise,
the activity of the Teaching Authority progressively
clarifies and interprets the deposit of revelation by
successively bringing its attention to bear on each

79

Theological Studies
of the revealed truths, one after the other, but each
of its clarifications is definitive and does not call
for a subsequently new interpretation. It remains
forever an act of the living magisterium, which is
timeless. A posterior act of the magisterium cites an
earlier act of the magisterium in order to support its
statements precisely because it is an act of the living Teaching Authority [magisterium], and in order
to draw the attention of the faithful to a truth that
has been clearly and adequately proposed but upon
which it is necessary to insist once again because
of circumstances. For example, the primacy of
the Bishop of Rome has been the object of several
successive propositions by the living Teaching
Authority: the Fourth Council of Constantinople
in 870, the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, the
Council of Florence in 1439, and the First Vatican
Council in 1870. When the Constitution Pastor
Aeternus cites the Councils of Constantinople,
Lyons, and Florence, it simply involves noting the
constant and unanimous Tradition of the living magisterium and not the establishment of an apparently
problematic coherence between the two.
11. To escape the error introduced by Msgr.
Pozzo, it suffices to reject the false principle in which
it is rooted. The question is not and cannot be how
to establish coherence or continuity between present and past teachings of the Teaching Authority
and to choose who has the authority to make this
judgment. The unique living magisterium is the
rule that makes us know revealed truth at all times.
When the present Teaching Authority [magisterium]
clarifies a truth heretofore obscure, it goes without saying. But when a present teaching obviously
contradicts an interpretation already made by the
Teaching Authority [magisterium], or if it obscures a
clarification made by the same [Teaching Authority],
then this teaching, while it may be present, cannot
lay claim to the authority of the living magisterium,
even if it emanated from an ecumenical council.
12. If, as is obvious, Vatican II contradicts the
magisterium, Vatican II does not belong to the
magisterium. Now, it contradicts the magisterium
in Art. 2 of Dignitatis Humanae, Art. 3 of Unitatis
Redintegratio, and Arts. 8 and 22 of Lumen Gentium.
And if on other points Vatican II is not clear, it is
useless to take Vatican II as a criterion, since the
80

The Angelus

July - August 2015

teachings of the earlier magisterium, which are
already clarifying and thus clear by themselves,
cannot be clarified by relying upon equivocal teachings. “The impreciseness of the Council,” it has
been justly remarked, “is admitted even by theologians most faithful to the Holy See, who go to great
lengths to exculpate the Council. Now, it is clear
that a felt need to defend the univocal character of
Council teaching is already an indication of its lack
thereof.”15 For example, the question of religious
freedom was clearly and definitively propounded
by the pontifical magisterium, from Gregory XVI to
Pious XII: all these popes condemned the civil right
not to be restrained from the public profession and
practice of an objectively false religion, specifying
that their condemnation bears upon the right as
such, whether limited or not. Dignitatis Humanae
affirms this right “within due limits” without specifying the nature of these limits. Not only does Vatican
II contradict on this point the teachings of the earlier
magisterium, but it also maintains a deliberate
equivocation and clarifies nothing. Another good
example of obscuration is to be found in Art. 10 of
the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium. This passage evokes the existence of a “priesthood” proper
to the baptized as such, distinct from the priesthood
proper to ministers endowed with the sacramental
character of order. And it gives the explanation:
“Though they differ from one another in essence
and not only in degree, the common priesthood of
the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated. Each of them
in its own special way is a participation in the one
priesthood of Christ.” Pius XII had already spoken
(only once, it is true) of the “common priesthood,”
but in terms otherwise clear and precise than those
of Vatican II. If one may speak of a certain “priesthood” of the faithful, this expression amounts to
a merely honorific title, and there is an essential
difference between the reality of this interior, hidden (spiritual) priesthood on the one hand and the
priesthood truly and properly so-called.16 This last
precision has completely disappeared from Lumen
Gentium 10: the common priesthood is presented as
essentially different from ministerial priesthood, but
the difference is no longer designated as that which
exists between a spiritual priesthood and a priesthood “truly and properly so-called.” This omission
goes against the teaching of Pius XII insofar as it

authorizes the definition of the common priesthood
of the faithful as a priesthood in the proper sense of
the term. The speech of Pius XII had explained and
clarified the point, while Lumen Gentium renders it
obscure and ambiguous.
13. This example alone (and it is not unique) suffices to belie Msgr. Pozzo’s explication. No, it is not true
that in the texts of Vatican II “the doctrinal principles
remain unchanged, although with the clarifications
and insight due to the homogeneous development
of Catholic doctrine.” Article 10 of Lumen Gentium
represents neither an explication nor development.
This text quite simply makes the teaching of Pius
XII disappear and introduces an ambiguity fatal to
Catholic doctrine, where the “living magisterium” of
the previous pope had taken every precaution to obviate the risk of error. In reality it should be said that
this passage of Lumen Gentium represents a veritable
regression, and that it is not faithful to the teaching
of the magisterium. As much could be said about
the other problematic passages already mentioned.
Regardless of what Msgr. Pozzo says, it must be
admitted that till now, no explanation has succeeded
in establishing convincingly the conformity of Vatican
II with the living magisterium of the Church. The
Christmas Speech of 2005 in this domain represents
another failure. The prose of the secretary of the
“Ecclesia Dei” Commission only aggravates it.
14. This is why Archbishop Lefebvre’s Declaration
of November 21, 1974, retains its importance.
It finds its confirmation in another, more recent
declaration by which the successors of Archbishop
Lefebvre intended to reaffirm the principles that are
the foundation of their attitude:
“The Society continues to uphold the declarations and the teachings of the constant Magisterium
of the Church in regard to all the novelties of the
Second Vatican Council which remain tainted with
errors, and also in regard to the reforms issued
from it. We find our sure guide in this uninterrupted
Magisterium which, by its teaching authority,
transmits the revealed Deposit of Faith in perfect
harmony with the truths that the entire Church has
professed, always and everywhere. The Society
finds its guide as well in the constant Tradition of the
Church, which transmits and will transmit until the
end of time the teachings required to preserve the

Faith and the salvation of souls, while waiting for the
day when an open and serious debate will be possible which may allow the return to Tradition of the
ecclesiastical authorities.”17
Translation of “40 ans plus tard” and “40 ans passés autour du
concile,” Courrier de Rome, December 2015, pp. 3-7.
1

Jean Dumont, interview with Msgr. Guido
Pozzo, Famille Chrétienne, October 20, 2014
[English version: sspx.org/en/news-events/news/
no-capitulation-what-unity-pozzo-interview-5434].

2

Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, “Some False Opinions that
Threaten to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine,”
August 12, 1950, Dz. 2314 [English version: vatican.va; cf. The
Sources of Catholic Dogma, p. 640-1].

3

Archbishop Lefebvre, Conference of April 10, 1982, in Vu du Haut,
No. 13, Ch. 18, pp. 55-6.

4

For further elucidation of this point, cf. Courrier de Rome,
October 2014, Nos. 3-6.

5

Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Conference at Ecône, December
21, 1984 (Cospec 112).

6

Letter of Paul VI to Archbishop Lefebvre, June 29, 1975, quoted by
Michael Davis in Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol. I, Ch. 7.

7

Joseph Ratzinger, “Unità nella Tradizione della fede,” Allocution
to the Bishops of Chile, Cuaderno Humanitas (Santiago), No. 20,
December 2008, p. 38.

8

Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, December
22, 2005.

9

John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, No. 4.

10

We are referencing the lecture given on Friday, April 4, 2014, to
the Institute of the Good Shepherd and published on the Web site
Catholicae Disputationes.

11

Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the Lifting of the
Excommunications of the Four SSPX Bishops, March 10, 2009.

12

Cf. the Courrier de Rome issues of September and December 2010
and December 2012.

13

Despite what Msgr. Pozzo asserts in the first part of his lecture. Cf.
the July-August 2008, June 2011, December 2012, and March and
October 2014 issues of Courrier de Rome.

14

Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, “Some False Opinions that
Threaten to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine,”
August 12, 1950, Dz. 2314 [English version: vatican.va; cf. The
Sources of Catholic Dogma, p. 640-1].

16

Romano Amerio, Iota Unum (Nouvelles Editions Latine, 1987), p.
91.

16

Pius XII, Speech of November 2, 1954, in AAS, 1954, p. 669:
“Quaecumque est hujus honorifici tituli et rei vera plenaque
significatio, firmiter tenendum est commune hoc omnium
christifidelium, altum utique et arcanum, sacerdotium, non gradu
tantum sed etiam essentia differre a sacerdotio proprie vereque
dicto quod positum est in potestate perpetrandi, cum persona
Summi Sacerdotis Christi geratur, ipsius Christi sacrificium.”

17

Statement of the General Chapter of the FSSPX, July 14, 2012,
online at DICI.org.

81

Letters to the Editor

Dear Angelus Press,
During your last trip, you asked us to tell you what we really think. For
many years, you have been trying to explain to our friends in France how
the very existence of the oldest Christian community in the Near East is
threatened. But will you dare tell them today the terrible truth about the
danger our souls are in? For it is not so much the Christians they are killing
in Syria, but their faith. Contrary to public opinion, we think the Sunni
Muslims who behead our brothers and eat their hearts constitute a lesser
danger to our Christendom than a Church that has stopped giving us the
faith. The dramatic truth is...that the proportion of practicing Catholics has
declined to 20 to 30 percent.
Our clergy is dying out. I don’t want to talk about priests who’ve
abandoned their flock for safety in America or Europe, but the actual
number of vocations, which are becoming rarer and rarer. Can we find an
excuse for those who stay among us while deploring the fact that they have
not benefitted from any serious formation in doctrine, theology, or even
morals? Add to this that, under the pretext that the faithful would have more
confidence in a married rather than celibate clergy (it is not too hard, alas!
to guess the reasons), it scarcely takes a few months generally to ordain
married men priests.
Since the 1970s in the Near East, the secular clergy has scarcely been
receiving a better formation. Not to mention the “monks” who are monks
in name only, attached to opulent convents in which the servants are more
numerous than the religious, who are free to come and go without any check.
The plain truth is that today the Christians have no more confidence in their
priests than the priests have in the hierarchy. The result is dramatic: faced
with the indescribable sufferings they’ve been enduring since the outbreak of
war, more and more Christians in Syria are declaring: “God does not exist!”
While the war has been going on for three years with its train of suf­fer­
ings, deaths daily, booby-trapped cars in the street or shells falling from the
sky into your yard, the fear everyone experiences at every instant could be
relieved by the comfort of prayer. But no one any longer teaches us how to
pray—except for the army’s success and the end of the war.
Do you know, my dear friend, that there is an impressive number
of Muslims (Sunnis, Shiites, and Druze) who would ardently like to be
baptized—even, as is allowed in certain circumstances, secretly—and
they cannot find a priest willing to grant their request and to take the time
to instruct them? Not so much from fear of family reprisals against the
neophyte, but because they are afraid for themselves should the fact get out.

82

The Angelus

July - August 2015

Four hundred years of occupation by the Ottoman Turks has so affected
our spirit that we’ve acquired a habit of refraining from evangelizing. It’s
deplorable.
With dollars, the free distribution of bad Bibles, and effective indoctrina­
tion, the Protestant sects are experiencing a clear success among the numer­
ous families of refugees who are not being helped by their Church. But our
Catholic priests never warn us against them; the important thing for them
is not to be proud or to belong to one Church rather than another, but to feel
like a “Christian” among Christians.
At Damascus extraordinary things are happening, like the Sunni grand
mufti of the Mosque of the Omayyads, Sheik Khani, and other important
Muslim dignitaries going to Soufanieh to pray to the Virgin Mary on the
anniversary of her miraculous apparition there. No one is making them recite
the Our Father and wear a rosary around their neck, displaying a courage
that could be the envy of many a priest and religious.
Under the pretext that the Orthodox do not—with exceptions—practice
individual confession, the Catholics have given it up. Even for our children,
the teaching of the truths of faith has vanished. Formerly we were taught
that to receive Communion without being in a state of grace was a sin,
but they no longer speak to us about confession except to say that it is an
outmoded “occidental” custom. I was dismayed to learn that among the
Latins, they receive the most holy Body of the Lord in the hand, which is not
authorized in the Orient.
When we saw newscasts showing President Assad turn his back on the
Israeli ambassador during the funeral of Pope John Paul II we were proud
of him, but when we saw the photo of Pope Francis kissing the hand of the
grand rabbi of Jerusalem, our heart ached.
All of this to explain to you, my dear friend, that, despite the brave face we
put on over our daily fears, the moral despair and the spiritual abandonment
experienced by the Arab Christians of Syria is even more poignant than
their material distress. So when you get back home, please tell our fellow
Christians that we have need of no other arms than the Truth. Very truly
yours,
Milad K., Retired Schoolteacher
Translated from the November 2014 issue of the Bulletin of the Association of St. Peter of Antioch and the
Orient (JASPA, La Malaunière, 61400 St Langis-lès-Mortagne, France).

83

393 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8439 – $21.95

Isabel of Spain: The Catholic Queen
One of the most powerful and compelling figures of all history, Isabel of Spain was a force
with which to be reckoned and should rightfully eclipse the better-known Elizabeth of England, both as a woman and as a national leader. The first full scholarly biography of Queen
Isabel in English for nearly 75 years, Isabel of Spain is extensively annotated and eminently
readable.

336 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8407 – $11.95

Saint Fernando III
A Kingdom for Christ
Personally leading his armies into battle, he took back more territory from Islam than
any other king in history. First cousin of St. Louis IX of France, he died a saintly death
in the year 1252. His incorrupt body can still be seen in the Cathedral of Seville, and his
feastday, May 30th, is a holy day of obligation in Spain.

190 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8509 – $14.95

Crusader King
A new historical novel about the unusual life of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, the leper crusader
king who—despite ascending to the throne at only 13, his early death at 24, and his debilitating disease—performed great and heroic deeds in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Teenagers and avid readers of all ages will be amazed at this story and be inspired by a faith that
accomplished the impossible!

345 pp. – Hardcover – STK# 8485 – $23.45

The Lion and the Crescent
The Life of Don John of Austria
Follow the exciting and blessed life, as told most excellently by Margaret Yeo, of Don John
of Austria, a valiant warrior and hero of Christendom, as he embarks on his numerous and
epic adventures throughout sixteenth-century Europe.The life of Don John of Austria makes
for the most astounding of stories. From his earliest days as an unknown child of Emperor
Charles V through his role as the great hero of Lepanto, and finally to his death in poverty and
apparent failure, the life of Don John of Austria will stir the heart and awaken deeply Catholic
inspirations.

188 pp. – Hardcover – STK# 8121 – $16.95

The Blood Red Crescent
It was fall 1570, and rumors of an invasion by the Turks were spreading throughout Venice.
Down by the docks, Guido Callata listened to the sailors as they discussed past battles and
speculated about more fighting in the future. From the altar of St. Mark’s, a message from
His Holiness Pope Pius V had been read, calling for crusade to repel Turkish advances. A fleet
of Venetian and Spanish vessels would be assembled, and Guido’s father, like other wealthy
Venetians, had agreed to build and equip a galley for the Christian fleet... How Guido finally
manages to join the fleet and help to defeat the Turks in the memorable Battle of Lepanto is
a colorful tale of danger, suspense, and adventure in 16th-century Italy. (First published in
1960.)

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

Simply the Best Journal of
Catholic Tradition Available!
“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

For over three decades, The Angelus has stood
for Catholic truth, goodness, and beauty
against a world gone mad. Our goal has
always been the same: to show the glories of
the Catholic Faith and to bear witness to the
constant teaching of the Church in the midst
of the modern crisis in which we find ourselves.
Each issue contains:
• A unique theme focusing on doctrinal
and practical issues that matter to you,
the reader
• Regular columns, from History to Family
Life, Spirituality and more
• Some of the best and brightest Catholic
thinkers and writers in the Englishspeaking world
• An intellectual formation to strengthen
your faith in an increasingly hostile
world

Subscribe Today
Don’t let another year go by without reading
the foremost journal of Catholic Tradition.

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

Please check one
United States
$45.00
 1 year
 2 years $85.00
 3 years $120.00

Foreign Countries (inc. Canada & Mexico)

 1 year
 2 years
 3 years

$65.00
$125.00
$180.00

All payments must be in US funds only.

Online only subscriptions
To subscribe visit: www.angelusonline.org. Register for free to access back issues 14 months and older plus many other site features.
Plus, all magazine subscribers now have full access to the online version of the magazine (a $20 Value)!

The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,
“To him that will overcome, I will give…”
The mysterious book of the Apocalypse—of which every word contains thousands of mysteries (St. Jerome)—can be summarized in these words which are
heard as a chorus at the end of the letters to the seven churches, in chapters two
and three.
Chapter after chapter, under prophetic language and images, St. John announced the history of the Church until the end of the world, a history of battles, of
beasts and Angels, of temporary victories and losses, until the final victory.
Twenty centuries later, we see that Divine Justice has indeed used all kinds of
means to purify men and the members of His Church, just as It had done in the Old
Testament with His people. Then, He used the Egyptians, the Philistines, or the
Assyrians to bring His people to their knees, to sanctify them, to lead many to heroism. In the New Testament, Divine Providence has not changed its strategy, for
“all things work out for good to them that love God.” The scourges used by Divine
Justice to chastise the world for its sins, and at the same time to purify the elect
“as gold is purified in the fire,” can be tagged “Diocletian”, “Attila”, “Robespierre”,
“Mao Tse-tung”. Whichever God will use for us in the near future, let us always live
by faith and never forget God is always in command, as He was in the boat, sleeping, in the middle of the storm.
The last book of the Bible is a book of hope: the Lamb of God will always have
the last say. “I have overcome the world.” He alone is the Almighty. He can even
use the “dragon” and the various “beasts” to make him “that is just, be justified
still: and him that is holy, be sanctified still.”
“Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb: that they may
have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city.”
Fr. Daniel Couture

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

$ 9.00
Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: The Angelus, 480 McKenzie Street, Winnipeg, MB, R2W 5B9