“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

The Religious Life
The Ceremonies of Religious Profession
The Discernment of Vocations
Teresa the Great

September - October 2015

Stained-glass window portrying five Benedictine nuns: Saints Hildegard, Walburga, Scholastica, Mechtild, and Gertrude,
located at St. Benedict’s Monastery, Bristow, Virginia (Nancy Bauer, shutterstock.com)

“When he founded our Carmel of Sebikotane,
the Archbishop was asking himself why the
Catholic missions were expanding so much and
why the pagans were converting. He felt that
the reign of God was coming closer and closer.
In answer to these questions, he explained that
‘this is because five Carmelite nuns are praying
for the apostolate.’ Really, he puts a lot of trust
in us! But again, we tried to live up to this trust.”
(Mother Superior of the Carmel in Senegal)

Letter
from the
Publisher
Dear Readers,
“The world we live in is the best one to run away from!” This quip would have
sounded like a witticism decades ago but, today, it has taken a serious tone.
The war is being waged all the way to the very citadel, and God knows how
long its walls will hold against the powerful allies of darkness. Confusion sets in
and it is hard to discern friend from foe. Yet defend the walls one must with all talent and might before it is too late. Most of us are not called to leave the world and
settle things walled up inside the convent sitting up on the hill while troubles and
sounds of war reign in the valley.
And yet, these secluded souls, whose office is prayer and penance, have also
a major part in the titanic struggle taking place. They are, no doubt, those whose
humble prayers pierce the heavens and allow the soldiers to wield their swords
without fainting in the thick of action. Among this long standing Army of contemplative souls, there stands out Saint Teresa the Great, whose 500th anniversary
of her birth we celebrate this year.
This is the reason why this Angelus issue offers an ‘un-convent-ional’ tour—
pun intended—of the traditional religious in the U.S. District. This should be an
occasion for all of us to thank God for these spiritual powerhouses which sustain
the courage and the charity of less contemplative Christians. It gives us another
reason for praising the foresight of Archbishop Lefebvre, who encouraged the
multiplication of these religious communities wherever he went to keep the religious flame alive in the midst of civil ruins around us.
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Publisher

September - October 2015
Volume XXXVIII, Number 5
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

		
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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: The Religious Life
––In, Not of, the World
––A Non-Convent-ional Tour
––The Discernment of Vocations
––Aggiornamento Comes to the Jesuits

6
10
20
25

Faith and Morals
––The Best Part
––Religious Profession
––The Angelic Virtue

32
34
39

Spirituality
––Teresa the Great
––The Little Flower

43
49

Christian Culture
––Book Review: The Inside Story of Vatican II
––Insights on The Angelus
––Chant: Song of the Sacrifice

53
56
60

“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

––Education of the Will
––Kenyan Safari
––Questions and Answers

64
66
73

News from Tradition
––Church and World
––Theological Studies: The Priest, an Apostle Consecrated
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
––The Last Word

75
79
87

Theme The Religious Life

In, Not of,
the World
by Andrew J. Clarendon

1

T. S. Eliot, “The Dry
Salvages” in Four Quartets
(New York: Harcourt, 1943),
200-205.

The monk, like all truly Christian men, is a walking paradox: one who
renounces his will to gain freedom, one who leaves the world to save those in
it, one who is an ascetic because he is a lover. The hard road of monasticism
is the easy road to paradise. In the flow of the hours of the Divine Office, in
the cycle of the Liturgical year, in the passage of the seasons and years, the
monk contemplates the eternal: for him
to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation . . .
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.1
Looking back across the centuries, it is also apparent how the founders of
various orders, while focused on the eternal, were also a product of their
own place and time. St. Benedict and St. Francis of Assisi, for example, were
two different men from different times who established two different orders
to respond to different problems, problems central to their time but always

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September - October 2015

2

Richard Weaver, Ideas Have
Consequences (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
1948), 10.

3

Ibid., 10.

4

Christopher Dawson,
Religion and the Rise of
Western Culture (New York:
Sheed and Ward, 1950), 51.

5

John Senior, The Death of
Christian Culture (New
Rochelle, NY: Arlighton
House Publishers, 1978),
167.

6

Our Lady of Guadalupe
Monastery, http://www.ourladyofguadalupemonastery.
com/therule_final_1.html,
accessed June 9, 2015.

7

Dawson, Religion and the
Rise of Western Culture, 52.

present. What reconciles the two and others is precisely the unity of the
Church that points to the unity of Heaven: in the Church as in our Father’s
house there are many mansions in one house. This is also why each saint and
each order speaks to all times and all places, but in diverse ways depending
upon the needs of the time. For us moderns, living in an age of fragmentation
in which nearly the “entire moral orientation [has been] lost”2 and in an era of
“enormous brutality . . . [resulting in] a callousness to suffering which denies
the spirit of Christianity,”3 the Benedictine and Franciscan ideals are needed
more than ever.
The rise of the Benedictine order in the sixth century was a response to a
period of transition, decay, and fragmentation not unlike our own; many, for
example, have seen parallels between the late Roman Empire and the United
States of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, at the
dawn of the Dark Ages the people who filled the vacuum of the collapsing
empire were pagans: their culture was not that of the empire, they were not
interested in Cicero or Plato—whose works were carefully preserved for
future generations—and the rise of a vernacular medieval culture of which
the Latin-Christian synthesis was only a part was centuries in the future. In
other words, the Dark Ages were not dark because nothing was happening
but because too much was happening; in an era of instability and warfare,
there was little time for the growth of culture. What converted Western
man and in turn created Christendom was the Rule of St. Benedict, which
embodies “an ideal of spiritual order and disciplined moral activity which
made the monastery an oasis of peace in a world of war.”4 Corresponding
to the Benedictine method of ora et labora, the monastery is a spiritual
powerhouse that nevertheless does not neglect the temporal; in this school
of prayer, both sides of man—the spiritual and physical—are educated and
perfected. “For the training of the body there is the ascetic
life—the habit,
www.shutterstock.com
the fare, the manual work; and for the soul, the liturgy, the Opus Dei as St.
Benedict called it, the continuous immersion in a very few texts—the Psalter
learned by heart . . . the Old and New Testaments . . . the Rule and a few
select commentaries.”5 The motto of the Benedictine order sums up the ideal
on the individual and international levels: “PAX [as in] pax Benedicti, heir
to the pax Romana, the peace of ancient Rome, the once temporal, political
peace of the Roman Empire . . . transformed into the peace of Benedict, the
peace of the Divine Order, the supernatural tranquility of order, radiating
from the interior city of the monastic cloisters to the cities of Christendom.”6
Not even a hundred years after St. Benedict wrote the Rule, Pope St. Gregory
the Great, who reigned from 590 to 604 and was himself a monk, had
“realized clearly that the monastic institution had become an essential organ
of the Church, and the chief hope for the future of Christian culture.”7 Peace,
the continual striving for perfection, and being a channel of grace for the
entire world: this is the spirit of monasticism, then and now.
Fifteen hundred years later, the West faces another crisis, although
today’s barbarism is of a post-Christian sort; that the West is largely mission
territory is not so much because souls have not heard of the Word, but
that He has been rejected. If, to use John Senior’s metaphor, the cultural
and spiritual soil of the West has been depleted, it is the ora et labora of
the monks that will help to revive it. Archbishop Lefebvre, in seeking
7

Theme The Religious Life
8

Our Lady of Guadalupe
Monastery, http://www.ourladyofguadalupemonastery.
com/benedictinetradition.
html, accessed June 9, 2015.

9

Weaver, Ideas Have
Consequences, 1.

10

Fr. Augustine Thompson,
O.P., Francis of Assisi: A
New Biography (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press,
2012), 41.

11

Ibid., 32.

12

Dante, The Divine Comedy,
Volume 3: Paradise, trans.
Mark Musa (New York:
Penguin Classics, 1986), XI,
73-78, 82.

“to restore all things in Christ,” noted that “Without monasteries, without
religious consecrated to the continual praise of God, the Church will never
be revived from the present crisis.”8 Even with the current crisis seeming
to intensify with Cardinals opposing Cardinals, there is hope in the
traditionally-oriented monasteries and orders that are attracting many young
vocations.
If modern man lacks the Benedictine peace and “has become a moral
idiot,”9 it follows that modern man is also a poor lover: he has too much love
of secondary goods, certainly, but at the root of the modern problem is the
most ancient of rebellions, excessive love of self. For this, the Franciscan
ideal is a corrective, both in cultivating humility as well as directing man’s
love to something higher. While St. Francis was consumed by love, what is
fascinating is that the manner in which the Seraphic Father expressed his
love was at once universal and very much a product of his time. Twelfthcentury Europe faced the challenges of a new civilization that had been
developing for hundreds of years. By about 1100, old difficulties had been
largely overcome or at least subdued and new achievements united differing
peoples: the end of the lay investiture controversy with the attendant simony,
the conversion of the Viking menace, and the success of the First Crusade
were all major turning points. Added to this was the rise of the new and
exotic cultural movement known as “courtly love”: the cult of amour in
which the poet-knight served and celebrated his lady. This new religion of
love—although in itself including a number of positive elements—had such
a secular and worldly focus that as a popular movement it was a real danger
to the Church. Rather than ignoring it or trying to condemn it, the Church
wisely sought to elevate courtly love; this sublimation happened artistically
via Dante’s Divine Comedy and spiritually via St. Francis, the “Holy Fool”
and Troubadour of God.
Best known for his love of nature—especially in our age when
environmentalism has become a sort of new religion—what is often quickly
passed over is St. Francis’s love of poverty, and what is altogether forgotten
is his “fierce orthodoxy.”10 The man who preached to the birds was not a
vegetarian; the man who owned nothing but his rough habit was in favor of
golden vessels for the altar11; the man who considered himself the lowest
and most ignorant traveled to the Muslim sultan not to dialogue but to con­
vert him to the true Faith. All of this makes sense only when one thinks of
St. Francis as a man deeply in love as in a high medieval romance. Dante,
himself a Franciscan tertiary, understood this, and so sings about the love of
St. Francis and Lady Poverty in the terms of courtly love:
Enough of such allusions. In plain words
take Francis, now, and Poverty to be
the lovers in the story I have told.
Their sweet accord, their faces spread with bliss,
the love, the mystery, their tender looks
gave rise in others’ hearts to holy thoughts.12
Chesterton, in his biography of the saint, calls thinking of St. Francis as a
lover the first step in understanding him: “[When St. Francis said] he was

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September - October 2015

13

G. K. Chesterton, St.
Francis of Assisi (New
York: George H. Doran
Company, 1924), 20-21.

14

Ibid., 111.

15

G. K. Chesterton, Saint
Thomas Aquinas (New
York: Image Books
Doubleday, 2001), 6.

16

Dawson, Religion and the
Rise of Western Culture,
274.

17

The Holy Bible, DouayRheims Version (Rockford,
IL: Tan Books and
Publishers, Inc., 1971), John
12:25.

a Troubadour of a newer and nobler romance, he was not using a mere
metaphor. . . . He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He
was a lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men;
possibly a much rarer mystical vocation. . . . For the modern reader the clue
to the asceticism and all the rest can best be found in the stories of lovers
when they seemed to be rather like lunatics. . . . All these riddles would easily
be resolved in the simplicity of any noble love; only this was so noble a love
that nine men out of ten have hardly even heard of it.”13
St. Francis was so in love with God that all things reminded him of Him
as “a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say
afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady.”14 Everything shone, and
was news of, an expression of God, as in a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.
The Franciscan ideal—pax et bonum—is to truly love God and neighbor; it
is what it means to be in but not of the world; it is a love that can transform
any time, including our own.
In addition to Benedictine practicality and Franciscan romance, it
would be a serious omission not to mention the Order of Preachers. The
Dominicans’ intellectual force, their quest for veritas, as expressed in their
motto, is opposed to modern fragmentation, incoherence, and artificiality.
In a world in which “things fall apart,” each of the orders has a particular
focus that is needed for the restoration, but it is not accidental that once
again the thought of one of the greatest sons of St. Dominic—St. Thomas
Aquinas—is making an academic and even populist return. As Chesterton
notes: “it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the
saint who contradicts it most. . . . So, as the nineteenth century clutched
at the Franciscan romance, precisely because it had neglected romance,
so the twentieth century is already clutching at the Thomist rational
theology, because it has neglected reason.”15 It is the spirit of monasticism
that produced St. Thomas, St. Dominic, and the rest because it is this
spirit that produced the West; in the words of Christopher Dawson, the
rise of monasticism from St. Benedict on is so culturally integral that “the
internal change [that centuries of monasticism] brought about in the soul
of Western man—[is] a change which can never be entirely undone except
by the total negation or destruction of Western man himself.”16 What is
more, monasticism brings into sharper focus the paradoxes at the essence
of Christianity: that love in this life grows in negation; that the fullness of
reality is found in leaving the world; and that to live, one must die, becoming
the grain of wheat that “bringeth forth much fruit.”17

9

Theme The Religious Life

A NonConventional Tour
Various Authors

Carmelite Life
Carmel! This word evokes a mysterious world
of grates, veils, high walls, fasting, penances…
How could any sane 21st-century girl be attracted
to such austere existence?!
Well, quite probably because she had some
experience of the Love of God which has awak­
ened in her a thirst for solitude, silence, and
separation from the world so as to best enjoy
the intimate company of her Beloved in a life of
prayer and contemplation.
Also, she is drawn to Carmel because she
wants to save souls on a grand scale and pray
for priests. “The zeal of a Carmelite embraces
the whole world. In the heart of the Church my
Mother, I will be love,” said St. Theresa of the
Child Jesus, the most famous daughter of St.
Teresa and universal patron saint of the Missions.
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September - October 2015

And, finally, to quote St. Theresa again, be­
cause “to love is to give all and to give oneself.”
Hence, the aspirant to Carmel feels drawn to a
life where there are no half-measures: “To give all
in order to possess all.”
St. Teresa wanted her daughters to possess
certain aptitudes in order to thrive in Carmel:
–– Good health and nervous balance, plenty of
common sense and a joyful disposition: “God
preserves us from gloomy saints.”
–– Great desires, a magnanimous heart capable
of loving much, a resolute will and lots of
courage: “I won’t have nuns who are ninnies…”
–– A strong faith and confidence in God, assured
that despite one’s weakness: “I can do all
things in Him who strengthens me.”
–– A tender love for Mary, the Mother, Queen and
Beauty of Carmel since Carmel is truly her

Order: “May it please Our Lord, sisters, that we
may live as true daughters of the Virgin.”
“All of us who wear this sacred habit of Carmel
are called to prayer and contemplation because
that was the first principle of our Order and
because we are descended from the line of those
holy Fathers of ours from Mount Carmel who
sought the precious pearl of which we speak,
in such solitude and contempt of the world”
(Interior Castle, Fifth Mansion, Ch. 1).

Franciscan Sisters of
Christ the King
“Francis, go, repair My house, which as you
see is falling completely to ruin!” Thus spoke Our
Lord Jesus Christ from the Crucifix in the Church

of San Damiano to Saint Francis of Assisi, who
took Our Lord’s words quite literally, and with
his own hands rebuilt San Damiano and St. Mary
of the Angels. But Our Lord was speaking of the
worldwide Church….
Our founder, Fr. Eugene N. Heidt, was drawn to
the Franciscan heritage by the close link between
Franciscan spirituality and “good Catholic sense.”
Franciscan simplicity, poverty in imitation of
Christ as an expression of charity, love of Jesus
in the Blessed Sacrament, and deep respect for
the priesthood are aspects of the spirituality of
St. Francis. Our Lord’s Incarnation, Nativity and
Holy Name, His Passion and Death, His Kingship,
devotion to Our Lady and her Immaculate
Conception, and devotion to St. Joseph—brought
by the Franciscans from the Holy Land—all are
particular Franciscan devotions and yet are
11

simply Catholic. Even devotion to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus has a Franciscan connection: Our
Lord gave St. Margaret Mary into the care of St.
Francis of Assisi because St. Francis was so close
to His Sacred Heart.
Father Heidt, working for the Society of St.
Pius X, recognized the need for teaching Sisters
who would go in groups to help staff SSPX
schools. Father Carl Pulvermacher, O.F.M.
Cap., recommended Sister Herlinda McCarty, a
Franciscan in perpetual vows since 1933. With
Fr. Heidt and Fr. Carl encouraging her, she agreed
to help the new community. Under the direction of
the SSPX district superior, in A.D. 2000, Fr. Heidt
founded the Franciscan Sisters of Christ the King,
using the 1927 Rule of the Third Order Regular of
Saint Francis approved by Pope Pius XI.
Our way of life is that of the active12

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September - October 2015

contemplative. Our prayer life gives us the
spiritual strength to sustain the active life. Our
prayers include the traditional Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass, meditation, the Little Office of the
Blessed Virgin Mary in Latin, visits to the Blessed
Sacrament, and various community prayers in
English.
Directly or indirectly, all Sisters have a share
in the works of the apostolate. Since our arrival,
our presence at St. Vincent de Paul’s Academy in
Kansas City has increased steadily year by year.
Our Sisters have extended their work of
Catholic education to include parish visits with
recollection days for first communicants, days of
conferences and crafts with girls (and sometimes
younger boys), and camps.
Candidates should have a desire to serve God
in the religious life, at least average intelligence,

a high school diploma or GED, the high ideals of
a committed traditional Catholic, combined with
the spirit of co-operation necessary for living the
community life. Candidates should be between
the ages of 18 and 35 and in reasonably good
health.
Those interested should write a detailed letter
of introduction to the Mother Superior.

Teaching Dominican
Sisters of Fanjeaux
Small voices recite lessons in unison, singsong and fluttering; other voices, broader and
more firm, uncover, discuss and instruct great
Truths; still other voices cheer and shout, rippling
odes to joy at all occasions; and all the while, the

silent voices of the heart echo the psalmist in
jubilant, insistent conversation with God. These
melodious ebbs and swells are but the voices
of the refrain sung daily by the Congregation of
Teaching Dominican Sisters of the Holy Name of
Jesus of Fanjeaux.
When Our Lord Jesus Christ was asked by the
Pharisees to silence his disciples whose voices
leapt and soared with Hosannas, he responded, “I
tell you that if these keep silence, the stones will
cry out!” Indeed, if the happy clamor of children
and the voices of the religious of our Dominican
convent and school were to be silenced, and if the
very stones were to cry out in their stead, what
would they say?
“Cor unum, et anima una!” they would
begin, inspired by the writing of our students,
themselves inflamed with a desire to possess
13

Theme The Religious Life
and safeguard the deposit of faith given to them
by their parents, nourished and brought to
fruition in the schools of St. Dominic, St. Thomas,
and St. Catherine of Sienna: “…all together with
the same goal and with the same Faith, with the
same gratitude to Him by Whom all things are
possible, Jesus Christ…uncompromising with
what is not Truth…”
In turn, the stones would next cry out with
the words of St. Dominic himself, words which
take their shape in every waking step of all
Dominicans, “Lord, what will become of poor
sinners?”
For if the all-encompassing End of the
congregation is to give glory to God in perfect
Charity under the vows of poverty, chastity
and obedience, the specific End is the work of
teaching and education according to the spirit of
the Gospel and the directives of Holy Mother the
Church.
Flying movement from chapel to class to
cell and then to chapel again might strike the
stones momentarily dumb. But the seeming
omnipresence of Sisters sheathed with Our
Lady’s rosary beads would not mute them for
long—“Caritas Christi Urget Nos!” they would
feel impelled to sing as the white habits whisper
along the hallways, paths, aisles.
And then of course, in humble chorus, they
would reverberate with the cries, “Non nobis,
Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam!” for, a
one-room convent boarding school in 1991 with
35 students and 7 Sisters has, over 25 years,
become a large and very active K-12 school (Post
Falls, Idaho), with an equally flourishing K-12
sister school (Massena, New York) and a rapidly
growing elementary school (Walton, Kentucky)
with a total of 425 students and 43 Sisters in the
United States (a fraction of the Congregation’s
200 Sisters and 1500 students dispersed through­
out France, Germany, and the United States.)
To all those who would hear, the stones might
conclude with the very words of Scripture, “Go
and teach all nations,” thereupon calling to this
life those maternal hearts with a propensity to
children and the generosity to embrace Jesus
Christ as Spouse all for the greater glory of God.

14

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SSPX Sisters
At times, the work of the Sisters of the Society
Saint Pius X can be very discreet—sometimes so
discreet that it remains unknown to most of us.
The Sisters were founded by Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre and his sister, Mother Mary Gabriel,
as helpers who would facilitate and complete
the apostolate of the priests of the Society Saint
Pius X. There is an almost unlimited number of
activities by which the Society Sisters accomplish
their apostolate of “parish Sisters.” Willingly
they devote themselves to all that can help the
priests render liturgical worship more dignified,
diligently taking care of sacristies and altar linens,
arranging altar flowers, making and repairing
vestments, preparing liturgical chant and church
music.
The priest strives to develop the faith in souls;
the Sisters second his work of removing the
obstacles to this growth by teaching children their
catechism either in the parishes or by way of a
Catechism by Correspondence program, directing
youth groups and camps, forming young ladies
for their future role of Catholic mothers, helping
out with various publications and welcoming
retreatants. By providing for the needy, and caring
for and visiting the sick and elderly, the Sisters
help to open a door for the priest’s visit. As the
holy women who followed Our Lord and took care
of the humble needs of the Apostles, so also the
SSPX Sisters do not hesitate to assume the more
hidden tasks of housecleaning, laundry, mending,
and cooking in order to relieve the priests from
these worries and permit them to give themselves
entirely to their ministry.
In this variety of tasks by which the Society
Sisters serve Christ’s priests, there is a unity of
intention: their first aspiration is to serve Christ
the High Priest by offering themselves with
Him for the Redemption of souls, following the
example of Our Lady of Compassion. This places
the Mass at the center of their devotion, and they
strive to live constantly in its spirit of offering and
love. By an additional hour of adoration during
the day, they unite themselves to the Eucharistic
Victim’s adoration and pray for the whole Church,
in particular, for priests and consecrated souls.
This life of oblation results in another charac­
teristic, often expressed by our little students who

present to us one of those spontaneous drawings
of their age, saying, “Sister, this is you!” A picture
of a widely smiling Sister reminds us of that spirit
of joy and simplicity which penetrates the Sisters
of the Society.
The Sisters of the Society of Saint Pius X
arrived in the U.S. district 34 years ago when
a first house was opened in 1981 in St. Marys,
Kansas. Since then, many girls and young women
have benefitted from the presence of the Sisters in
the Academy! Many vocations as well as beautiful
families resulted from contact with consecrated
souls in the parish, former Children of Mary
keep memories of their meetings, others of their

catechism lessons… In 1986, a novitiate was
founded in Armada, Michigan, for the Englishspeaking aspirants, but soon moved to the quiet
city of Browerville, Minnesota. So far, of our 174
professed Sisters, 28 are Americans and 37 have
made their first steps in the religious life in our
American novitiate. After many years, a third
house was finally able to be opened in 2010 at
Saint Thomas Becket Priory in Veneta, Oregon.
Over the past five years many souls have already
been prepared for the sacraments by the Sisters’
religion classes, and since 2011, a Sister teaches the
Kindergarten and first grade classes full time.

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Theme The Religious Life
The Brothers of the SSPX
Archbishop Lefebvre drew his inspiration for
the Brothers of the Society of St. Pius X from
his own congregation, the Holy Ghost Fathers.
Their Brothers were of inestimable service in the
African missions as carpenters, woodworkers,
mechanics, architects, and teachers.
Our founder created the Society of St.
Pius X to preserve the purity of the Catholic
priesthood in our troubling times. He naturally
saw the need of a branch for Brothers who would
facilitate the priestly apostolate. Like their Holy
Ghost counterpart, the SSPX Brothers are not
contemplative monks. They relieve the priests of
material tasks around the priory (maintenance,
cooking, financial and secretarial work, etc.).
But they are called also to apostolic activities by
directing a choir, teaching catechism, running
the sacristy, teaching in primary schools, and
other tasks vital to the priestly ministry.
Our SSPX Brothers, who lead an active life, are
not to set aside the religious life altogether. All
external action is subject to a strong spiritual life
of prayer and contemplation tailor-made for them
in their rule. Their religious vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience are a constant reminder
of their total consecration to God through their
rule and superiors. Living their vows gives
the priory the spiritual atmosphere needed
for the community to maintain its fervor and
supernatural touch. Wherever they are sent, not
unlike the Sisters, the Brothers bring in a note of
silence, of union with God, of fraternal charity, of
zeal of God and souls. Or, to use the words of the
Archbishop, “May all those whom they approach,
and all those in the midst of whom they live, be
edified by their behavior, and never disedified.
Let them be like the guardian angels of our
communities.”
The Archbishop was aware of the odds against
the brotherly vocations “because they require
a spirit of faith which is tending to disappear
from a world wholly obsessed with human
advancement” (Marcel Lefebvre, p. 456). This
might well be because we do not really appreciate
the beauty and joy of the consecrated life and its
urgency for the survival of the Church at large.
So, needless to say, God calls to the religious
life strong, virile, responsible men of unshakable

convictions, of balanced feelings, and controlled
passions. He is calling men who are willing
to forego the founding of a family in order to
consecrate themselves to His service.

Our Lady of Guadalupe
Monastery—Benedictines
May of 1991 saw the modest beginnings of
Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, located in
southwest New Mexico. Today it is the home of
a young community of nearly 40 Benedictine
monks. The secluded, mountainous site, the
silence of the surrounding nature, the austere
beauty of the high-desert terrain all join
together to bespeak the particular vocation
of this monastic foundation: the primacy of
contemplation, a return to the spirit of the
monks of Christian antiquity who, with the
blessing of the Church, established a unique way
of life lived for the honor and glory of God alone.
Our monastic roots link us not only to St.
Benedict in the fifth century, but also to the more
recent past, to the Christendom of Europe. In the

year 1850, Pope Pius IX exceptionally created a
new branch of the Benedictine Order in order to
oppose revolution in the Church and society.
Fr. Jean-Baptiste Muard, a French diocesan
missionary, whose cause for beatification was
opened following his premature death in 1854,
was chosen by the Holy Father to lead this work
of restoration in the obscurity of the Burgundian
forest, later to become the Abbey of Sainte-Marie
de la Pierre qui Vire. Fr. Muard saw the need for a
Benedictine congregation that would embody the
original spirit of the Rule, calling it the Primitive
Observance. The heroic intervention of Pope Pius
IX to save the Benedictine Order from extinction
in his overall struggle to restore the Church in the
time of unprecedented crisis would become the
foundational principle of our present monastery.
His principle is well outlined in the masterwork
of Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, The Soul of the
Apostolate, wherein the primacy of prayer and
meditation must come before the taking of action.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre would renew
in our eyes the same vision of the urgent
need for the restoration of the Church, which
would be successful through the prayers of the
contemplative orders. His last words spoken
17

Theme The Religious Life
to the founders of this monastery remain forever
engraved in their hearts: “Now is the time to do
the impossible, you must do the impossible to
establish oases of the faith, where the true spirit
of the Church can be found. It is your duty to
persevere in the true Faith. The impossible
must be done to establish this Monastery.”
Benedictine life is Ora et Labora, prayer
and work. Liturgical prayer, which is the public
worship of God, is called by Benedictines the
Work of God, the Opus Dei. This unique prayer
is the heart of Benedictine Life. It is expressed
in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is sung
in Gregorian Chant each day, and in the Divine
Office. All eight canonical hours of the Divine
Office are chanted integrally according to the
monastic rite, unchanged since the fifth century.
The substance of the Divine Office is ancient
prayer, drawn mostly from the psalms and
inspired writings of the prophets of the Old
Testament. Holy Mother Church thus desires her
religious to pray and to think with an ancient
mind, neither affected by the fluctuations of time
and historical circumstance, nor by the shallow
concerns of the modern day.
The monk’s labors are both manual and
intellectual. With the continued growth of our
community, the construction of our monastery
is an ongoing task, supernaturally strengthened

by time spent in study and spiritual formation.
The monk works more with his soul than with his
hands, united to God with the fervent desire and
intention to carry out his Divine Will above all
other human endeavors.
Monasteries are removed from society but
not from the heat of the battle. Monasteries
have flourished in times of crisis—today is no
different. With the word “PAX” inscribed over
the entrance, peace to all who enter herein,
they know nevertheless that their life will be a
challenge.
The monks have a soldier’s heart, willingly
seeing their vocation as a mission to be carried
out for the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Like their forefathers, among whom are 55,000
canonized saints, granting them unfailing
assistance from heaven, monks are indeed heirs
of “that generation that seeks the face of God”
and willing to fight the good fight for Christ the
King and for Our Lady, the Queen of heaven and
earth. On higher levels, monks wage the spiritual
combat with the fortitude and perseverance, selfsacrifice and selfless generosity.
U.I.O.G.D. is the emblem of Benedictines, taken
from the many luminous chapters of the Rule
of St. Benedict: “Ut In Omnibus Glorificetur
Deus—That in all things God may be glorified.”

Theme The Religious Life

The
Discernment
of Vocations
Interview with Fr. Mark Stafki and Mother Mary Joseph

The Angelus: Mother Mary Joseph, what are
your connections with potential vocations?
Mother Mary Joseph: As the Mother Superior
and acting Novice Mistress of the Franciscan
Sisters of Christ the King, one of my duties is to
assess the suitability of applicants to the religious
life in our Community.
The Angelus: What are the ingredients
necessary for a religious vocation?
Mother Mary Joseph: We begin with the
broad requirements of canon law, namely, no
canonical impediments, a right intention, and
suitability to the way of life. The right intentions—
desire to serve God in the best possible way, desire
to sanctify oneself in order to give God greater
glory—are not always easy to determine. We are
creatures of mixed motives; natural and even
20

The Angelus

September - October 2015

base motives can be mixed with the supernatural.
We hope that the higher motives predominate,
through the grace of God. The right intention must
be augmented by knowledge of the practices of
religious life, and gaining this knowledge is one of
the purposes of the postulancy and novitiate.
As for suitability, some temperaments and
personalities find community life too challenging,
and some people simply are not meant for it, in
spite of their good intentions. The demands of the
apostolate also must be taken into consideration.
A certain measure of good physical health is
needed as well as good mental health and a
reasonable level of intelligence.
The Angelus: Is there a difference between the
various orders?
Mother Mary Joseph: The call to the reli­gious

life is not generic. The call to the Franciscan life
is not the call to the Carmelite life, for example.
A candidate and the superiors must consider the
prayer life and spirituality of the community, the
common life as practiced in that community, and
suitability to the apostolate.
Suitability to the apostolate of the community
differs according to the various communities.
Someone who does not want to work with
children probably will not be considering teaching
communities, for example, even if they are drawn
by preference to a Franciscan prayer life.
The Angelus: What are the personal qualities,
traits, and habits that contribute to the stability of
a vocation to the religious life?
Mother Mary Joseph: A strong prayer
life which includes devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament and the daily Rosary is a foundation
for any vocation. Without a strong prayer life,
the desire for vocation will eventually run out of
steam; there will be nothing to sustain it. On the
natural level, there should be a certain balance
to the personality, solid common sense and good
judgment. The ability to live in community is
helped by flexibility on the natural level, and by
the virtue of forbearance.
Willingness to learn the virtue of obedience
also is essential to the religious life. One cannot
live under the vow of obedience without first
acquiring the virtue. This can be humbling for
some personalities, but without obedience, there
is no true religious life. Doubtless, this virtue is
essential for the brotherhood and the priesthood
as well.
The Angelus: No one vocation is the same, yet,
there must be some common elements…
Mother Mary Joseph: Individuals often are
drawn by grace through circumstances to con­
sider the life of the counsels—circumstances such
as type of home life, prayer life, spiritual reading,
sermons, and advice received. Most candidates
have some motives in common—these often
include the desire to serve God, desire to save
their own souls in the best way possible, and zeal
for the souls of others.
The Angelus: Fr. Stafki, we turn to you for
the more theological meaning of the calling. A

vocation to a higher state of life is one of the
many options for a young adult. What are the
dispositions required for one before choosing any
state in life?
Fr. Stafki: Let us remember that, if God calls
us to a state of life, be it religious life or marriage,
He inspires in us the desire to sacrifice ourselves
through that state of life. When one chooses
his state of life properly, he simply chooses his
manner of crucifixion. That is, he chooses how
to best lose sight of self and give his all to God!
Directly, through religion, or indirectly, through
a spouse and children. In either state, we are no
longer our own. We must return love for love.
Jesus Christ gave His all for us. Let us do the same
for Him, whatever the state of life to which we are
called.
The Angelus: How would you define the call of
God to souls?
Fr. Stafki: I think it is a personal invitation
of Our Lord Jesus Christ to repose in His Sacred
Heart in a most intimate way. He offers a share
in the treasures of His Heart. This Heart has
been pierced and crowned with thorns, and so a
vocation is a special call to sacrifice. This Heart
is ablaze with the love of the Father and with the
love of souls, and so one who is “called” is offered
a special love of God and love of souls.
The Angelus: Is the call merely of the heart or
is there an official call too?
Fr. Stafki: Every true vocation consists of
a double call: a call that is within the individual
(just described above) and a call that is exterior
to the individual. The exterior call is the approval
of the Catholic Church, i.e. an approval offered (or
withheld) by one’s ecclesiastical superiors. Both
the interior and exterior call are necessary for a
true vocation. If one seems to have the first but not
the other, this means that God has not called.
The Angelus: Can we give the name of
religious to all such calls?
Fr. Stafki: Often we speak of someone who
receives a vocation as a “religious.” What this
expresses, at least in part, is that the virtue of
the “one called” is the virtue of religion. This is
the virtue that inclines us to offer to God the
21

Theme The Religious Life
worship that is due to Him as our Creator—for
a religious this offertory is to be made at every
moment of every day. The vocation is not a feeling,
but rather a God-given determination to burn
all of one’s life like the sanctuary lamp, ever in
the presence of God, rendering Him the supreme
honor that He deserves.
The Angelus: But many will say that they are
not perfect. So, how could they have a vocation?
Fr. Stafki: Many think that they are not called
because they are not perfect or their charity is not
ardent or their prayers are difficult and distracted.
On the contrary, pursuing a voca­tion is a means of
perfection. It takes time to develop a deep spiritual
life and to “grow into one’s vocation.” How does
one become “more religious”? By filling one’s days
with acts of religion. Model religious today were
once clumsy beginners like you!
The Angelus: What is the exact role and
duty of the priest or advisor over young adults
regarding a vocation?
Fr. Stafki: The priest has an important role
to play in helping individuals determine whether
God might be calling them. Having heard the call
themselves and having been invested with the
grace to guide souls, they are able more easily to
discern the signs of a vocation. Therefore, young
people should be ready and willing to pour out
the secrets of their soul to the priest. The priest is
never too busy for that!
The Angelus: Speaking of the priestly task,
what is the difference between discernment and
decision?
Fr. Stafki: As St. Peter Julian Eymard says,
it is the role of the spiritual director to stand at
the door of the heart and to help the individual
know what to keep and what to rid oneself of…
but only God is to enter therein. We must always
remember that the voice one hears calling must be
the voice of God, not the voice of a priest, a parent
or a friend. After all, it is the call of God. Often
enough it seems that young people would be happy
if the priest would just “decide for them.” We must
tell them: “I will listen to you, as you listen to God
in the depths of your soul. I will help you discern
truth from error, reality from dreams, inspiration
22

The Angelus

September - October 2015

from fantasy, empty fears from real obstacles. I
will offer advice and show you your legitimate
options, but you must decide. You will have to live
the life you choose, not me. You will be judged
by God according to how you lived your life. You
must decide. Trust in God. He loves you and wants
your good and your true happiness. He will inspire
you to desire and to choose what is best, as long
as you have taken the means at your disposal for
finding His Will.”
The Angelus: Mother Mary Joseph, is the
confessor and spiritual director in a better
position if he has access to the internal forum?
Mother Mary Joseph: It is true that advice
given by the priest in the internal forum can be
crucial for the candidate considering a vocation.
I ask the candidate if she has spoken to her
confessor about the possibility of a vocation and
whether or not he has encouraged her to pursue
one. If she has not spoken to the priest in the
confessional, she is advised to do so. One test
of a vocation is the willingness of the candidate
to follow such advice. If the priest advises a
candidate in the confessional not to pursue a
religious vocation, the superior must assume that
he has good reason to give such advice. On the
other hand, if he advises the candidate to try, this
is no guarantee that the young lady has a vocation!
Because most young women want to confide
in someone they trust, it is not uncommon for
candidates, by their own choice, to be quite open
with superiors, which does help the superior
to make necessary judgments. If this does not
occur, the question of whether or not the priest
encourages the vocation becomes a key element in
the judgment of the superior.
The Angelus: Mother Mary Joseph, how have
you personally been able to help youngsters make
a decision in life?
Mother Mary Joseph: No one really knows all
the many influences that go toward a decision of
this nature. Certainly, speaking with our visi­tors
over the years, and seeing some of them return to
the novitiate and eventually take vows makes one
hope that there has been some good accomplished,
but after all, they may have joined for any number
of reasons. In any case, it is a matter of God’s

grace in the end, and He has millions of means of
influencing a vocation.
The Angelus: Mother Mary Joseph, any in­
teresting anecdotes you wish to mention?
Mother Mary Joseph: When our community
was just beginning, a former Marine captain
came to visit our farmhouse convent in Oregon.
She saw a tiny ninety-year-old Sister lying on a
couch, dividing her time between praying and
instructing a couple of postulants and a novice.
She saw an aging priest with a bad back still ser­
ving as pastor of two traditional chapels in spite
of strokes, cancer, and severe arthritis, giving
conferences and guiding our little group. The sight
of these two old people carrying the banner for the

Faith inspired her with zeal. The situation looked
hopeless; it had to be the work of God. She felt
compelled to join. She had already left a career
in the Marines in order to take up the life of true
Catholic womanhood. She gave up the life of a
Catholic laywoman in order to take up the higher
calling of a religious.
The Angelus: Mother Mary Joseph, any last
word?
Mother Mary Joseph: God has not stopped
calling women to the religious life, but some allow
the static of the world to interfere. If they would
only stop to listen, girls would find, as I have
found, that the happiest peals of laughter come
from behind convent walls. It is the laughter of joy.

23

Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the Cross in our Society,
which we desire to be designated by the Name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and the
Church, his spouse, under the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth, should, after a
solemn vow of perpetual chastity, poverty and obedience, keep what follows in mind. He is
a member of a Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the defence
and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine, by
means of public preaching, lectures and any other ministration whatsoever of the Word of
God, and further by means of retreats, the education of children and unlettered persons in
Christianity, and the spiritual consolation of Christ’s faithful through hearing confessions and
administering the other sacraments. (St Ignatius of Loyola)

Aggiornamento
Comes to
The Jesuits
by Fr. Jonathan Loop

1

“The most important work
of the General Chapters is
the studied accommodation
of the rules of their Institute
to the changed conditions
of the times. This, however,
must be done in such a way
that the proper nature and
discipline of the Institute is
kept intact” (Address of May
23, 1964).

Toward the close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI asked that
all religious congregations update their constitutions in accord with modern
times. He reiterated this expectation in his decree Ecclesiae Sanctae
published in 1966, where he asked all major religious orders to call a special
chapter to update their constitutions.1 As the General Superior of the Holy
Ghost Fathers, Archbishop Lefebvre oversaw such a meeting in September
1968. At this congregation, Archbishop Lefebvre was saddened to find that
a majority of the delegates wished to introduce radical and far-reaching
changes to the Constitutions which would be wholly destructive of the
order. Seeing that his advice was not wanted and that the delegates were
determined to sidestep his authority, he sought counsel from Bishop Antonio
Mauro at the Congregation for Religious. After explaining his situation to
the Curial official, he received the following response: “I am going to give
you some advice that I have just given to another Superior General who
came to see me about the same thing. ‘Go on,’ I said to him, ‘take a little trip
to the United States. It will do you good.’ As for the chapter and even for
the congregation’s present business, leave it to your assistants!” Knowing
then that the Congregation would not support his efforts to preserve the
25

Theme The Religious Life

26

2

Archbishop Lefebvre loved
to preach that Christ was
the religious of God par
excellence.

3

Re-Formed Jesuits: A
History of Changes in the
Jesuit Order During the
Decade 1965–1975 (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1992), p. 34.

4

Ibid., p. 32. Father Sponga
was a provincial of the
Maryland province during
the latter half of the 1960s.
In other words, he held a
position roughly equivalent
to a District Superior. He
later left the Society of
Jesus and married.

5

Ibid., p. 30.

6

Ibid., p. 251. As another
example of what is
meant by “optimistically
psychological,” the author
notes that a book by
Thomas A. Harris that was
common in many of the
Jesuit novitiates throughout
the United States was titled,
I’m OK, You’re OK.

The Angelus

constitutions of the order, he handed in his resignation to the Pope.
Normally, in considering this episode, we marvel at God’s providence
which, in this manner, prepared the way for the foundation of the Society of
St. Pius X. However, it is worth considering what our founder would have
encountered in the United States had he chosen to follow Bishop Mauro’s
advice. What was the state of religious life in America in the mid to late
1960s? Perhaps the easiest way to catch a glimpse of the state of affairs at
this time is to observe what was occurring within the Jesuit order, which had
taken very much to heart the exhortation of Pope Paul VI, as reported by Fr.
Joseph Becker, S.J., in his book The Re-Formed Jesuits.

Re-inventing Religious Life
Indeed, as Fr. Becker shows, the sons of St. Ignatius were in the process
of wholly re-inventing the meaning of religious life for the members of
their order. In so doing, they would radically depart from the traditional
understanding of the religious life—best explained by St. Thomas Aquinas in
his Summa Theologica—as a whole-hearted consecration of oneself to the
service of God in order to attain perfect charity. In other words, the goal of
the religious life has always been to be conformed to Our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is the model of charity.2 The Jesuits in the United States—or at least
those who exercised the greatest influence in the order—during the 1960s
appear to have forgotten this ultimate goal.
Instead of seeking to conform men to Christ through self-renunciation,
the prevailing idea of the leading lights among the Jesuits was to encourage
personal self-fulfillment. Fr. Becker quotes one Jesuit priest who articulated
the view that “modern man is seeking . . . to found his further progress on
per­sonal fulfillment scaled out to the size of his expanding understanding of
himself and of the world.”3 In other words, “modern man”—or, more broadly,
the world—believed his true excellence depended not on being divinized
by the grace of God but rather exercising his personal liberty and taking
responsibility for his own actions, and this especially through “dialogue”
with his fellow men.
Rather than correct this view, which is starkly opposed to the Christian
spirit, he advocated that the Society incorporate this vision so as to be—in
the words of another priest, Fr. Edward Sponga4 —“relevant to the modern
world.” Fr. Becker notes that this attitude prevailed throughout much of the
Jesuit houses during the 1960s: “A sense of self-worth and a preference for
self-direction were to be encouraged steadily through speeches, papers,
& books.”5 He points out that a manifestation of this spirit could be seen
in the very décor of the private quarters of many novices of the order,
where religious art largely disappeared in favor of “an art which was more
optimistically psychological, cheery rather than strong, secular rather than
sacral.”6 In other words, Jesuits were increasingly taught not to focus on
their faults and sinful qualities nor to seek guidance from their superiors.
Rather, by focusing on developing the positives in their personality and those
activities which were “meaningful” for them, they come into contact with
God within themselves and their neighbor.

September - October 2015

7

As an example, the
author notes that in many
novitiates and houses
of study, such basic
requirements as an hour
for rising and for going
to bed ceased to exist. At
most, there might be some
recommendations which
few members followed.

8

The author quotes one
rector of a house of
philosophy writing to his
provincial and saying of
his students “that they do
what [the rector] wants
if he is reasonable, but of
course if he isn’t [according
to their judgment] they do
it anyway” (Re-Formed
Jesuits, p. 295).

9

Re-Formed Jesuits, p. 294.

10

Ibid., p. 46.

11

Ibid., p. 39.

Collapse of Discipline
As a result of this attitude, the discipline of many Jesuit houses of for­
mation effectively collapsed. The author notes that silence in most houses
disappeared, obligatory daily schedules disintegrated7, and regular
com­­mun­ity activities such as common prayer or readings at meal were
abandoned. Overall, obedience widely was practiced only to the extent that
members believed that their superiors’ commands coincided with their own
experiences and judgment.8 Indeed, Fr. Becker observes that the “most
general lifestyle change [in many houses] was a revolt against the rules:
against rules requiring attendance at class or at daily Mass or at a particular
Mass; against rules forbidding talking in certain places or at certain times,
or going to movies and plays, or being out of the house at night, or wearing
certain clothes.”9 He explains that the prevailing conviction was that
each person should be responsible for himself and his own development.
Thus, any external constraints not dependent on his own will became
automatically suspect and worthy of being disregarded.
An unsurprising fruit of this belief was that, in many places, attendance
at Mass and reception of the sacraments became less frequent. Tied to
this disgust with a prescribed rule of life, there were perhaps similar
reasons as those described at one house of formation: “Some admit to not
attending daily Mass because it does not have any particular meaning for
them.”10 Anything that did not seem meaningful to the young men was freely
abandoned.
One can only imagine what became of the status of the religious vows—
whose principle goal is to remove various obstacles to the life of charity—
in such an environment. Fr. Becker points out that the order’s General
Congregation 31, which was held in 1965, already encouraged discussion
on how best to “adapt” the vows to modern times.11 Without formally aban­
doning them, the Jesuit houses in America considerably loosened their
application in many important respects. What has been said heretofore
already illustrates the manner in which the vow of obedience was neglected,
if not outright abandoned in many communities. While the vow of chastity
was not eliminated, many vital safeguards were removed in order to permit
young men to “have a mature Christian relationship with the opposite sex.”
Furthermore, at an important meeting of American Jesuits held at Santa
Clara University in 1967, there was favorable discussion—though no formal
approval—of what was called the “Third Way,” a utopian idea in which
religious could develop non-marital relations with members of the opposite
sex. It comes therefore as no surprise that the 1960s and 1970s saw many
young men who entered the order fail to persevere and not a few who had
taken vows subsequently leave and be “married.”
As is clear, the most influential American Jesuits—especially those in
charge of formation—seem to have forgotten the principal purpose of the
religious life: to conform men to Christ. In the place of a whole-hearted
consecration to almighty God consummated by the vows—especially that
of obedience—the order attempted to give the widest possible scope to the
individual initiative and free-will of its subjects so as to permit them to attain
a meaningful experience of the divine. Instead of asking subjects to deny
27

Theme The Religious Life
12

Ibid., p. 11.

13

An excellent reference,
even if somewhat dated,
is Kenneth C. Jones’s
Index of Leading Catholic
Indicators.

14

Even though the Archbishop
did not impose two of the
vows on the members of the
Society, he consistently and
emphatically asked them
to embrace the spirit of the
vows.

themselves and to die to the world, the order encouraged them to foster their
personality and to embrace the positive aspects of the world lest it run the
danger of becoming “irrelevant” in these modern times. Fr. Becker states
in his introduction that the “Jesuit experience was similar to that of other
religious orders in the United States.”12
Thus, had the Archbishop followed the counsel of Bishop Mauro, he
would have merely witnessed many religious orders committing suicide by
abandoning Our Lord. As he would later note in a spiritual conference at
Ecône, there was no country in the Catholic world which saw as many priests
and religious abandon the consecrated life as in the United States. Even
now, most religious orders in the United States have upwards of 90 percent
fewer postulants and novices than there were in the 1960s.13 In many cases,
those which remained in the religious orders lived in a manner which would
be wholly unrecognizable to their founders. Fortunately for the Church, the
Archbishop refrained from traveling to the United States in order to “learn”
and instead later communicated to the Society the true spirit of religious
life.14
Fr. Jonathan Loop was born and raised an Episcopalian. He attended college
at the University of Dallas, where he received the grace to convert through the
intermediary of several of his fellow students, some of whom later went on to
become religious with the Dominicans of Fanjeaux. After graduating with a
bachelor’s degree in political philosophy, he enrolled in St. Thomas Aquinas
Seminary, where he was ordained in June 2011.

28

The Angelus

September - October 2015

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The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of Saint Bruno,
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called the Statutes, rather than the Rule of Saint Benedict,
and combines eremitical and cenobitic life.
Monk in Alabaster, Carthusian Monastery, Burgos

Faith and Morals

The Best
Part
by a Benedictine Monk

Interior life, spiritual life, contemplation—these
expressions all designate the same reality, and
this reality is the very reason for our bulletin.
Indeed, The Echo of Our Lady was founded to
help its readers, and especially priests, develop
within themselves a treasure more precious than
all the gold in the world. We work according to our
God-given gifts, conscious of our limitations while
endeavoring to do something useful for the good
of souls and of the Church.

The Inversion of Order
A surely inspired line from Catholic author
Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) has come down
to us: “Nothing about modern civilization can
be understood unless you recognize that it is a
32

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universal conspiracy against any kind of interior
life.” Indeed, we see the serious, deleterious
consequences of this reality accumulating
before our eyes. By the abuse of technology, our
consumer society relentlessly pursues its work of
destruction all the while defending its essential
principle: the primacy of action. Even if it had
no other purpose, it would already be more
destructive than a bulldozer crushing everything
in its way. Religious life and contemplative
monasteries no longer have any place and have
become incomprehensible, being considered
useless and unprofitable. Nowadays evil is spread
everywhere, not sparing even good Christian
families, in which vocations are scarcely able to
emerge.
Everything has been constructed to mold subhumans. Bernanos wrote that modern civilization

“deliberately encourages everything that moves,
everything that budges, but it judges everything
that fosters the interior life as a loss to the
community.” The best part of man, his soul, made
for God and heaven, is thus deliberately excluded.
Two absolutely irreconcilable conceptions of
life stand before us. If eternal salvation is not for
us an empty word, then clearly the contemplative
life ought to be our first priority. But if we limit our
aspirations to the enjoyment of terrestrial goods,
then contemplative life hardly makes any sense.
Our materialist civilization has no fear of freedom
of action, but it especially dreads freedom of
thought, of true thought. The only kind of interior
life the technocrats might allow, Bernanos said,
would be that necessary for modest introspection
under the control of doctors so as to cultivate
optimism by extirpating the least trace of otherworldly desires.
Our civilization of agitation exerts terrible
pressure on the multitude of men. Like all
tyrannical regimes, materialist democracy strives
to shape a type of man in conformity with its
system. To do so it disposes of widely varied
and considerable means unknown to previous
generations. Bernanos concludes his analysis with
a prophetic vision:
“This civilization is perfectly arranged to
gradually induce its citizens to barter the higher
freedoms for a simple guarantee of baser ones,
freedom of thought (having become superfluous
since it will seem silly not to think like everyone
else) for the right to a radio and the movies.” Today
we would substitute television and the Internet.

interior life enlightened by faith and fortified
by grace. The happiness of heaven will be
essentially interior, since it will consist in the
loving contemplation of the infinite good which
is our Lord Jesus Christ with the Father and the
Holy Ghost. This is why Jesus approved Mary
Magdalen as she stayed at His feet listening to His
words and contemplating them: “Mary has chosen
the better part, and it shall not be taken from
her.” Contemplation is the best of our Christian
life. What a pity so few understand this, and thus
deprive themselves of the sweetness of the rose
while keeping only the thorns!
We conclude with a thought from the priest and
theologian Romano Guardini (1885-1965):
“We speak, we listen, we work, we strive; there
are works and institutions, but the profound
meaning of all that lies within. The Christian
conscience has always given first place to a
peaceful interior life devoted to the striving for
truth and charity over the exterior life, however
skilful and courageous it might be. It has always
put silence before speech, purity of intention
before success, generosity of heart before the
greatness of the undertaking... Both make up life,
but the interior takes precedence.”

The Re-establishment of Order
So long as man is alive he always retains a
vestige of interior life. For our nature comprises
two facets: thought and action. Before any
action we necessarily have to think, however
rudimentarily, and then deliberate and make up
our mind. The two domains work together and
form the warp and woof of human life. But the
interior life is more important and conditions the
success of exterior action.
Our eternal salvation depends on the holiness
of our actions, and these upon the depth of our
33

Faith and Morals

The Ceremonies of

Religious
Profession
by Fr. Christopher Danel

The ceremonies for religious profession
are considered “sacramentals of persons,”
under which heading the blessing of abbots
and abbesses is also included. To consecrate
something means to separate it from the world
so that it becomes entirely dedicated to the
service of God. It becomes wholly His own. Such
is the case of the consecrated religious, and the
ceremonies of the Church have been shaped over
the centuries to not only express this separation
from the world, but also to shroud the individual
in the blessed habit and to specifically consecrate
him or her to God in conformity with the vows of
chastity, poverty, and obedience.
There are various ceremonies of religious
profession according to the different religious
orders and institutes and which reflect their
particular customs. There is some variance
34

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September - October 2015

especially between the ceremonies of the
monastic orders and those which are nonmonastic. Here we present first of all some of the
historical aspects of the profession ceremonies,
followed by the ceremonies of the Roman
Pontifical, then a glimpse at the profession
ceremonies used in some of the religious
communities of Tradition.

The Profession of Monks

The ceremonies themselves are the result of
the natural development in the religious life over
the centuries, primarily in its monastic form.
Specific ceremonies for the entrance into the
monastic life were developed in tandem with the
elaboration of monastic rules for cenobites, such

as those of St. Pachomius and St. Benedict. Texts
of these profession ceremonies are extant from
Montecassino, Cluny, Farfa, and other important
abbeys, and have been called Ordo ad faciendum
monachum (Ordo for Creating a Monk). The
historic parts of the ceremony consist in three
parts. Firstly, there is the formal request of the
postulant to enter the religious life, this request
having two forms, with an oral promise publicly
pronounced, and a formal petitio written by the
postulant’s own hand which he ceremonially
places upon the altar, and according to the
prescription of St. Benedict (Regula, ch. 58),
he sings the verse of Psalm 118, “Suscipe me,
Domine, …ut vivam—Receive me, O Lord,
...that I may live,” with which he expresses the
fullness of his mystical oblation. A text of the
petitio used at Montecassino in AD 790 reads in
part,
“In the name of the Lord. I promise before
God and his holy Angels that I will remain
now and forever in this monastery all the days
of my life in all obedience. This my promise I
have written with my own hand and attested to
before witnesses.”
Secondly, there is the clothing in the
religious habit, which is specifically blessed
as a holy garment. Thirdly, there is the oratio
benedictionis, a blessing conferred upon the new
monk so that the Lord, receiving his oblation,
will crown him with the necessary virtues for the
state of perfection. The new monk exchanges the
Pax with each member of his monastery and is
led by the Abbot and Deacon to the place he will
occupy in choir, as the psalm Ecce quam bonum
is sung. The three principal parts of the rite
(Petitio, Vestitio, Benedictio) are seen not only
in the rite for monks (monastic life), but also for
religious brothers (non-monastic).

The Profession of Nuns

For the profession of nuns in the monastic
orders, we turn to the ceremony of the Roman
Pontifical. The ceremony has historically been
known as the Velatio Virginum (Veiling of
Virgins), and in the present Pontifical, which was
compiled in the twelfth century, the title given

is De Benedictione et Consecratione Virginum
(For the Blessing and Consecration of Virgins).
Here we refer to religious profession per se, that
is, the profession of vows at the conclusion of the
novitiate. The rite is carried out as follows:
The novices are assisted throughout the rite
by two professed sisters referred to by the Greek
term paranymphae. After the presentation of
the novices and the postulation, the bishop sings
a call to them three times, echoing the Canticle
of Canticles (“Veni, electa mea, etc.”): Venite!
Venite! Venite! They in turn sing three responses,
each more elaborate than the last, concluding
with:
“And now we follow with our whole heart: we
fear Thee, and we wish to see Thy countenance;
Lord, confound us not, but do unto us according
to Thy gentleness and according to the
abundance of Thy mercies.”
This part of the rite entered into the Pontifical
in the thirteenth century. The bishop interrogates
them about their proposal, and receives their
vows as they place their hands into his. After the
Litany of the Saints, during which the novices lie
prostrate, the bishop intones the Veni Creator
and blesses their habits. When they return from
vesting in the religious habit, they enter singing
“Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum saeculi
contempsi, etc.—I have despised the kingdom of
the world and all worldly adornment, etc.”
The bishop pronounces a long consecratory
blessing over the novices, which since the tenth
century has been sung in the preface tone, as at
Ordinations. The blessing was composed by St.
Leo the Great (†461), and it concludes with an
epilogue added from the Gelasian Sacramentary
of the eighth century. Afterwards, the bishop
confers upon them the blessed veils, spousal
rings, and floral crowns, while interspersed
antiphons from the Office of St. Agnes are sung.
As each one is veiled, the bishop says,
“Receive the sacred veil, by which it will be
known that you have rejected the world, and
have truly and humbly united yourself with
your whole heart to Jesus Christ, and will be
forever his docile spouse; may He defend you
from all evil and lead you to eternal life.”
As the bishop places the ring on each
35

Faith and Morals
novice’s finger, he says,
“I espouse thee to Jesus Christ, Son of the
Most High Father, and may He preserve you
unscathed. Receive the ring of faith, the sign
of the Holy Ghost, so that you may be called the
spouse of God, and if you serve Him faithfully,
you shall be crowned in eternity.”
As he crowns each one with the floral crown,
he says,
“Receive the crown of virginal distinction, so
that, as you are crowned by our hands on earth,
so may you merit to be crowned by Christ with
glory and honor in heaven.”
Several blessings follow, including one
possibly attributed to St. Matthew. Towards the
conclusion of the rite, the bishop does something
which is rarely seen in the liturgical books:
he pronounces a long and detailed anathema
upon anyone who should attempt to deter the
newly-professed sisters from their holy life and
anyone who should interfere with the sisters’
communal goods. According to the practice of
some convents, he also ceremonially confers
the Roman Breviary to the new sisters, and
then leads them to the cloister entrance and
commends them to their abbess.
There are some symbolic aspects of the
ceremonies which shine through. One is that of
death and rebirth, hence in some communities a
black pall is placed over the prostrate religious,
for example, and there is baptismal symbolism
such as the burning candle and giving of a new
name. Another is that of mystical marriage, as
seen with spousal ring and the floral crown,
which also has its place in ancient wedding
rituals. For the Taking of the Habit, in some
communities the postulant is presented dressed
in the adornments of a bride, as she prepares
herself for spiritual union with the Divine
Bridegroom.
Thus far the ceremonies of the monastic
orders. The ceremonies of the non-monastic
orders and religious institutes retain the same
basic structure within a less complex context.
For religious brothers, the ceremonies of the
Brothers of the Society of Saint Pius X are one
example, and for religious sisters, two good
examples are the ceremonies of the Sisters of
the Society Saint Pius X and of the Franciscan
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September - October 2015

Sisters of Christ the King. For each, there is a
ceremony for the Taking of the Habit and one
for the Profession of Vows, whether simple or
perpetual.

The Profession of Brothers

For the Brothers of the Society of Saint Pius
X, the ceremonies are carried out as follows:
firstly, there is the Taking of the Habit, when
postulants become novices. Before the Offertory,
the Veni Creator is sung, then the candlebearing postulants make their petition, which is
followed by a short liturgical interrogation and
an instruction. After being clothed in the blessed
habit, the postulants pronounce their Oblation
and are given their new names in religion. They
are then given a crucifix and they receive a
blessing. Secondly, there is the ceremony of
religious profession, when novices become
professed brothers. After the customary Veni
Creator, the novices make their petition, followed
by an interrogation and an admonition; they then
make their Profession of Vows before the open
tabernacle. After Mass, they are given the Medal
of Saint Pius X, and they sign their act of oblation
and profession.

The Profession of Sisters

For the Sisters of the Society Saint Pius X,
the ceremonies are as follows: at the Taking of
the Habit, the Veni Creator is sung before the
Offertory, followed by a sermon. The postulants
are called forward after the singing of Iesu
Corona Virginum, the renowned hymn from the
Common of Virgins:
“Jesus, Crown of Virgins, …Thou walkest
among the lilies, surrounded by choirs of
Virgins, a Bridegroom beautiful with glory and
giving rewards to his brides.”
After the blessing of the habits and veils, each
postulant is given the habit, the white veil, and
a burning candle, then they all go to vest in the
habit. Upon return, they pronounce their Oblation
and are given their names in religion. The rite
concludes with the blessing of the Rosary and the

Medal of St. Pius X. At Religious Profession, the
ceremony begins with the novices’ petitions and
the interrogation, followed by the Litany of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. Then there is the blessing
of the black veils, the rings, and the crucifixes,
followed by the Profession of Vows before the
open tabernacle. The newly-professed sisters
are each ceremonially given the items that were
blessed, with the liturgical form for the veils and
rings being almost identical to those given in the
Roman Pontifical for the monastic ceremonies,
after which the newly-professed sisters receive a
special blessing.

The Seraphic Customs

For the Franciscan Sisters of Christ the King,
the ceremonies of the Taking of the Habit and
that of Religious Profession are in close parallel
and follow the Franciscan-Seraphic use. After the
postulants and novices make their petition, there
follow an instruction and interrogation, then a
prayer for the Franciscan Order. The postulants
arrived in choir wearing bridal veils and floral
crowns; these items are now removed and the
postulants are tonsured (a shearing of their hair),
in imitation of the selfsame ceremony conducted
for St. Clare by St. Francis. Each postulant
repeats after the Celebrant,
“The Lord is the portion of my inheritance
and of my cup; it is Thou that wilt restore my
inheritance to me.”
They are given the blessed habit, cord,
scapular, and white veil, after which they retire
to vest. Returning, they are given the Franciscan
Crown (Rosary), the Little Office of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, the Holy Rule, a burning candle, and
a crucifix, and are given their name in religion,
followed by a blessing. After receiving the
crucifix, each novice proclaims,
“God forbid that I should glory, save in the
Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom
the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”
For those professing vows, their entrance is
accompanied by the antiphon Veni, electa mea.
After a special prayer to the Holy Ghost is said,
the sisters make their Profession of Vows and are
clothed with the black veils and floral crowns,

symbolizing the crown of eternal life, after which
they exchange the Pax with each member of
the convent, accompanied by the verses of the
psalm Ecce quam bonum. After the celebrant has
chanted a prayer for their perseverance, the Te
Deum is sung and the newly-professed sisters are
blessed.
This is just a brief glimpse at some profession
ceremonies used in Tradition. It is a spiritual
conquest in which these consecrated souls have
a very privileged part. “Ecce lex sub qua militare
vis—Behold the law under which thou desirest
to fight” (Cf. Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 58).

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

37

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This form of novena was originally devised by the celebrated Fr. Louis Lallemant,
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The Angelic
Virtue
Extracts from Sacra Virginitas of Pius XII

52

PL XVI, 202.

53

Matth. XIII, 46.

54

S. Thom., Summa Th., Il-II,
q. 152, a. 5.

29. Virginity fully deserves the name of angelic virtue, which St. Cyprian
writing to virgins affirms: “What we are to be, you have already commenced
to be. You already possess in this world the glory of the resurrection; you
pass through the world without suffering its contagion. In preserving virgin
chastity, you are the equals of the angels of God.”52 To souls, restless for a
purer life or inflamed with the desire to possess the kingdom of heaven,
virginity offers itself as “a pearl of great price,” for which one “sells all that he
has, and buys it.”53 Married people and even those who are captives of vice,
at the contact of virgin souls, often admire the splendor of their transparent
purity, and feel themselves moved to rise above the pleasures of sense. When
St. Thomas states “that to virginity is awarded the tribute of the highest
beauty,”54 it is because its example is captivating; and, besides, by their
perfect chastity do not all these men and women give a striking proof that
the mastery of the spirit over the body is the result of a divine assistance and
the sign of proven virtue?
30. Worthy of special consideration is the reflection that the most delicate
fruit of virginity consists in this, that virgins make tangible, as it were,
the perfect virginity of their mother, the Church, and the sanctity of her
39

Faith and Morals
55

Pontificale Romanum,
De benedictione et
consecratione virginum.

56

S. Cypr., De habitu
virginum, 3; PL IV, 443.

intimate union with Christ. In the ceremony of the consecration of virgins,
the consecrating prelate prays God: “that there may exist more noble souls
who disdain the marriage which consists in the bodily union of man and
woman, but desire the mystery it enshrines, who reject its practice while
loving its mystic signification.”55

The Image of God’s Sanctity
31. The greatest glory of virgins is undoubtedly to be the living images of
the perfect integrity of the union between the Church and her divine Spouse.
For this society founded by Christ it is a profound joy that virgins should
be the marvelous sign of its sanctity and fecundity, as St. Cyprian so well
expressed it: “They are the flower of the Church, the beauty and ornament of
spiritual grace, a subject of joy, a perfect and unsullied homage of praise and
honor, the image of God corresponding to the sanctity of the Lord, the most
illustrious portion of Christ’s flock. In them the glorious fecundity of our
mother, the Church, finds expression and she rejoices; the more the number
of virgins increases, the greater is this mother’s joy.”56
32. This doctrine of the excellence of virginity and of celibacy and of their
superiority over the married state was, as We have already said, revealed
by our Divine Redeemer and by the Apostle of the Gentiles; so too, it was
solemnly defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy council of Trent,57
and explained in the same way by all the holy Fathers and Doctors of the
Church. Finally, We and Our Predecessors have often expounded it and
earnestly advocated it whenever occasion offered. But recent attacks on
this traditional doctrine of the Church, the danger they constitute, and the
harm they do to the souls of the faithful lead Us, in fulfillment of the duties
of Our charge, to take up the matter once again in this Encyclical Letter,
and to reprove these errors which are so often propounded under a specious
appearance of truth.

Is the Married State More Useful to Society?
41. We feel it opportune, moreover, to touch somewhat briefly here on the
error of those who, in order to turn boys and girls away from Seminaries and
Religious Institutes, strive to impress upon their minds that the Church today
has a greater need of the help and of the profession of Christian virtue on the
part of those who, united in marriage, lead a life together with others in the
world, than of priests and consecrated virgins, who, because of their vow of
chastity, are, as it were, withdrawn from human society. No one can fail to
see, Venerable Brothers, how utterly false and harmful is such an opinion.
42. Of course, it is not Our intention to deny that Catholic spouses,
because of the example of their Christian life, can, wherever they live and
whatever be their circumstances, produce rich and salutary fruits as a
witness to their virtue. Yet whoever for this reason argues that it is preferable
to live in matrimony than to consecrate oneself completely to God, without
doubt perverts the right order. Indeed We earnestly wish, Venerable Brothers,
40

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September - October 2015

63

Cf. C.I.C., can. 1013, section
1.

65

S. Ambros., De virginitate,
c. 5, n. 26; PL XVI, 272.

66

Cf. Io. X, 14; X, 3.

67

Cf. AAS, XLIII, 1951, p. 20.

that those who have already contracted marriage, or desire to enter this
state, be properly taught their serious obligations not only to educate
properly and carefully whatever children they have or will have, but also
to help others, within their capacity, by the testimony of their faith and
the example of their virtue. And yet, as Our duty demands, We cannot but
censure all those who strive to turn young people away from the Seminary
or Religious Orders and Institutes, and from the taking of sacred vows,
persuading them that they can, if joined in marriage, as fathers and mothers
of families pursue a greater spiritual good by an open and public profession
of their Christian life. Certainly their conduct would be more proper and
correct, if, instead of trying to distract from a life of virginity those young
men and women who desire to give themselves to the service of God, too
few alas today, they were to exhort with all the zeal at their command the
vast numbers of those who live in wedlock to promote apostolic works in the
ranks of the laity. On this point, Ambrose fittingly writes: “To sow the seeds
of perfect purity and to arouse a desire for virginity has always belonged to
the function of the priesthood.”65
43. We think it necessary, moreover, to warn that it is altogether false to
assert that those who are vowed to perfect chastity are practically outside
the community of men. Are not consecrated virgins, who dedicate their lives
to the service of the poor and the sick, without making any distinction as
to race, social rank, or religion, are not these virgins united intimately with
their miseries and sorrows, and affectionately drawn to them, as though they
were their mothers? And does not the priest likewise, moved by the example
of his Divine Master, perform the function of a good shepherd, who knows
his flock and calls them by name?66 Indeed it is from that perfect chastity
which they cultivate that priests and religious men and women find the
motive for giving themselves to all, and love all men with the love of Christ.
And they too, who live the contemplative life, precisely because they not
only offer to God prayer and supplication but immolate themselves for the
salvation of others, accomplish much for the good of the Church; indeed,
when in circumstances like the present they dedicate themselves to works of
charity and of the apostolate, according to the norms which We laid down in
the Apostolic Letter “Sponsa Christi,”67 they are very much to be praised; nor
can they be said to be separated from contact with men, since they labor for
their spiritual progress in this twofold way.

A Remedy to the Decrease of Vocations
67. In the midst of the grave difficulties with which the Church must
contend today, the heart of the Supreme Pastor is greatly comforted,
Venerable Brothers, when We see that virginity, which is flourishing
throughout the world, is held in great honor and repute in the present as it
was in past centuries, even though, as We have said, it is being attacked by
errors which, We trust, will soon be dispelled and pass away.
68. Nevertheless We do not deny that this Our joy is overshadowed by
a certain sorrow since We learn that in not a few countries the number
of vocations to the priesthood and to the religious life is constantly
41

Faith and Morals

42

124

S. Ambros., De virginibus,
lib. I, c. 10, n. 58; PL XVI,
205.

125

Ibid., c. 7, n. 32; PL XVI, 198.

The Angelus

decreasing. We have already given the principal reasons which account for
this fact and there is no reason why We should return to them now. Rather
do We trust that those educators of youth who have succumbed to errors
in this matter, will repudiate them as soon as they are detected, and will
consequently seriously resolve both to correct them and to do what they
can to provide every help for the youth entrusted to their care who feel
themselves called by divine grace to aspire to the priesthood or to embrace
the religious life, in order that they may be able to reach so noble a goal. May
God grant that new and larger ranks of priests, religious men and women,
equal in number and virtue to the current necessities of the Church, may
soon go forth to cultivate the vineyard of the Lord.
69. Moreover, as the obligation of Our Apostolic Office demands, We urge
fathers and mothers to willingly offer to the service of God those of their
children who are called to it. But if this be a source of trouble, sorrow or
regret, let them seriously meditate upon the admonition which Ambrose
gave to the mothers of Milan. “The majority of the young women whom I
knew wanted to be virgins were forbidden to leave by their mothers....If your
daughters want to love a man, the laws allow them to choose whom they will.
But those who have a right to choose a man, have no right to choose God.”124
70. Let parents consider what a great honor it is to see their son elevated
to the priesthood, or their daughter consecrate her virginity to her Divine
Spouse. In regard to consecrated virgins, the Bishop of Milan writes, “You
have heard, parents, that a virgin is a gift of God, the oblation of parents,
the priesthood of chastity. The virgin is a mother’s victim, by whose daily
sacrifice divine anger is appeased.”125

September - October 2015

Teresa
the Great
by a Carmelite Nun

“The birth of Saints brings joy to everyone
since the benefit of it belongs to all,” says St.
Ambrose. This year has been marked by the
joyful celebrations surrounding the 500th
anniversary of the birth of St. Teresa of Jesus
(March 28, 1515–2015). The Holy Mother, as she is
often called, has been the object of the veneration
and love of generation after generation, not only
within the Order of Carmel to which she belongs,
but throughout all of Christendom and beyond.
She is known as a great saint and mystic, as
the Reformer of the Carmelite Order, and as
an invaluable guide on the subject of mystical
theology thanks to her writings, which have
earned her the praise of many saints and popes
over the ages and have caused her to be honored
on a par with the doctors of the Church long
before Paul VI officially declared her so in 1970.

The Church calls her Mater Spiritualium,
the Mother of interior souls, recognizing her
unique charism to lead them by the way of prayer
to perfect union with God at the summit of the
Mount of Perfection.
No doubt, her world-wide popularity
and renown are due, for a large part, to her
enchanting and lovable personality which
is kept alive through her books, written in a
lively, colloquial style, revealing to us delightful
qualities of virile courage and tender love, of holy
madness and robust common sense, making her
one of the most colorful women of all time.
She was a gift from God, sent at a precise
moment in history, to be a powerful antidote
against the outbreak of Protestantism in 1517 and
all its consequences by giving to the Church an
in number praying of fervent souls dedicated
43

Spirituality
exclusively to a life of prayer and contemplation,
on fire with apostolic zeal for the cause of
the “Lord God of Hosts”—Pro Domino Deo
Exercituum!

Her Background
Teresa was born on March 28, 1515, in the
ancient town of Avila in the very Christian and
rugged region of Castile, Spain, which at the
time was reaching the apogee of its golden age.
Her father, Don Alonso Sanchez y Cepeda, was
a deeply pious, noble, and wealthy silk merchant
of Jewish and Spanish roots. Her mother was
the youthful and delicate Beatriz de Ahumada,
who died at the age of 33, bequeathing to her
12-year-old daughter Teresa her tender love
for the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary in
a such a way that the sorrowful child turned
spontaneously to Mary to ask her to replace her
dead mother. All her life she felt assured that
her prayer had been answered, especially when
“Mary took her child to herself” by calling her to
the Order of Carmel.
Teresa had two sisters and nine brothers,
eight of whom would embark as conquistadores
to seek fortune and adventure in the newly
discovered American continent. From an early
age she was the life and soul of her family and the
leader among her siblings. At the age of seven,
she persuaded her favorite brother, Redrigo, who
was four years her senior, to run away with her
to Morocco to gain the crown of martyrdom.
They didn’t get very far before they were caught
by an uncle and brought back to their distraught
parents. “I want to see God,” Teresa explained,
“and to see God we must die.” She would then
resort to trying to live like a hermit in the garden
and would love to gaze at a painting picturing
Our Lord convening with the Samaritan woman
by Jacob’s well while repeating over and over the
words: “Lord, give me of this water.” No doubt she
didn’t yet understand the full meaning of them,
but do these words not express and foreshadow
her life-long quest and the happy torment of her
soul? Teresa’s desires to “see God” and to “drink
of this water” would become so great that she
would have the heroic courage to satisfy them
44

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and lead her fellow Christians in the same quest.
It is true to say that her good desires waned
somewhat when she reached adolescence and
became infatuated with the romantic tales
of chivalry, in vogue at the time, featuring
handsome knights whose deeds were frequently
all too human rather than heroic. “So completely,”
she later wrote, “was I mastered by this promise
that I thought I could never be happy without a
new book.” She even wrote one of her own of the
same kind, and all this, behind her disapproving
father’s back.
Being exquisitely pretty and talented, she
became aware of the powers of her feminine
charm. Looking back in later years, she admitted
to one of her confessors: “You know, Father,
when I was young I was congratulated for three
things in particular: they said I was a saint, that
I was witty, and that I was beautiful. I believed
two of these things. I thought I was witty and
beautiful, which showed enough vanity on my
part.” Luckily, her father had the good idea
of sending her to the nearby convent of the
Augustinian nuns to be educated, and it was
there that her prior desires returned to the point
that she reached the determined resolve to be a
nun, despite her strong natural repulsion towards
the religious state. She saw it as the safest option
if she were to save her soul. She was then twenty
years old.

A Nun Not by Halves
Once Teresa, noble Christian that she was, had
made up her mind, there was no turning back.
She left her father’s home very early one morning
in 1535 without even saying goodbye, and entered
the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation (which
lies just beyond the city walls of Avila), in such
inner distress that she later admitted: “I do not
think it will be greater when I die.”
Generous in all her undertakings, she would
not be a nun “by halves,” however, and it wasn’t
long before her “marriage of reason” turned into
a “marriage of love” and this came about mainly
when she began to lead a serious life of prayer
and reflection. “All good came to me through
prayer,” she said, and as long as she persevered

in it, she was fervent, whereas when she became
slack in prayer, her fervor dwindled.
She thus spent twenty years of her religious
life between periods of great piety and periods of
relative lukewarmness, accommodating herself
to the general ambience of her convent where the
spirit of laxity and worldliness had crept in since
the rules of the enclosure were no longer strictly

This conversion at the age of 39, impelled her
to surrender herself completely to Our Lord,
without the least reserve. She gave herself
with fresh determination to a serious life of
prayer, and it was not long before the good
Lord responded by raising her to a state of
inspired contemplation and lavishing upon her
extraordinary mystical graces. She refers to this

Bl. Anne of Jesus, Saint Teresa of Avila and Bl. Anne of St. Bartholomew

in force. During these years she was shackled
with attachments and miserable habits that she
felt too weak to break: “I wish I knew how to
describe the captivity of my soul at that time,” she
later wrote, until the day when she was granted
the grace of a profound conversion of heart at
the sight of a statue of the “Ecce Homo” covered
with wounds. As she fell in tears at her Mother’s
feet like another Magdalen, she reached the
conviction once and for all that: “All our efforts
are unavailing unless we completely give up
having confidence in ourselves and fix it all upon
God.”

time in her autobiography: “Until now the life I
was describing was my own; but the life I have
been living since…is the life which God has been
living in me.”
Through the power of this Divine Life, Teresa
would now embark on a glorious adventure of
love and conquest in the service of her Lord and
His Blessed Mother Mary “whose habit she wore”
by reviving the primitive ideal of her Order of
Mount Carmel in the spirit and strength of her
St. Elias, whose cry was: “As the Lord liveth
in whose sight I stand.…With zeal I have been
zealous for the Lord God of Hosts.”
45

Spirituality
Aflame with Divine Love
“O strong love of God!...Nothing seems
impossible to one who loves.” Born and raised
in Avila, Teresa inherited the courage of its
women, who were famous for having successfully
defended their city during a memorable siege in
the absence of their men-folk. Fuelled moreover
with Divine Love, there is nothing she would not
do for the Lord she loves so much: “The least that
anyone who is beginning to serve the Lord truly
can offer Him is his life.”
For a state of chronic bad health, plagued
with infirmities which would have kept others
bedridden, without penny and amid fierce
opposi­tion, she founded convent after convent,
extending the reform to the Friars as well as
to the Sisters, according to the will of God and
under obedience to her superiors and confessors.
Along the way she was encouraged by several
future canonized saints: St. John of the Cross
(co-reformer of Carmel), St. Peter of Alcantara,
St. Francis Borgia, St. John of Avila, and St. Louis
Bertrand.
She envied her “priest-brothers” who unlike
her could early satisfy their burning zeal for
souls by preaching and going off to the Missions.
Not content with formulating unfeasible desires,
she would make up for this by doing what lay in
her power. Firstly she would strive for greater
perfection and sanctity: it was at this time that
she made the vow of doing always what seemed
the most perfect. Secondly, she would put her
outstanding organizational and administrative
abilities at the service of her zeal by founding
convents.
In these convents, the “little dovecots of the
Virgin,” as she called them, she would assemble
little groups of fervent nuns within the confines
of a strict enclosure, thus ingeniously recreating
the solitude of the desert according to the primi­
tive spirit of Carmel, by means of high walls,
grates, and veils. Together they would dedicate
themselves exclusively to a life of prayer and
immolation for the Church, for priests, and for
souls—more especially for those priests who
were preachers, theologians, and defenders of
the Faith. “Oh, my sisters in Christ! Help me to
entreat this of the Lord, who has brought you
46

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September - October 2015

together for that very purpose. This is your
vocation, thus must be your business, these
must be your desires, these your tears, these
your petitions… Let us strive to be such that our
prayers may be of avail to help these servants of
God.”
She felt intense anguish over the great evils
which beset the Church, the spread of Luther’s
heresy, the reports of the missionaries in America
of the millions of souls of Indians who are
being lost. “Those Indians have cost me no little
suffering!...I do not know how we can look on so
calmly and see the devil carrying off as many
souls as he does daily.…To worry about anything
else seems ridiculous.”
The more Teresa progressed in Divine
intimacy the greater her apostolic desires
became. Far from distracting her and her
Carmelite daughters from contemplative prayers,
the zeal which this prayer enkindles is a spur
to ever greater apostolic immolation. United to
Our Lord they embrace the whole Christ, i.e. the
Church, the Mystical Body. Their love for their
Divine Spouse is inextricably linked with their
love for this Church and the souls that compose
it. The two grow in union, and in St. Teresa, this
will be beautifully expressed in her final words
spoken on her death bed at Alba de Tormes on
October 4, 1582: “I am a daughter of the Church.
Oh, my Beloved, the time has come for us to see
each other.”

Holy Madness and
Robust Common Sense
The last twenty years of her life, Teresa the
mystic was most often seen traveling throughout
Spain on mule back or in a covered wagon found­
ing convents. She came to rub shoulders with
people of all ranks: muleteers, beggars, bankers,
bishops, theologians, saints, miners, dukes and
duchesses, princes and princesses, and even
kings and queens. Her extensive correspondence,
which has happily been passed down to us, shows
that no less than a thousand people crossed
her path. She became past master in the art of
dealing with them all and, thanks to her charm
and her gift of persuasive humor, she managed to

win over everyone from the most cantankerous
neighbor to the good Lord Himself. “God be
praised!” exclaimed Princess Juana of Spain after
a meeting with her, “He has granted us to see a
saint whom we can all imitate. She talks like us,
sleeps and eats as we do, and her conversation is
unpretentious!!”
Her down-to-earthness would sometimes
cause others to overlook the mystic in her who,
all the while, was living in profound union with
God amidst raptures, locutions, and visions.
From 1572 onwards, she was experiencing the
most elevated mystical grace of all, that of
“spiritual marriage” whereby she had a near
continual vision of the Trinity dwelling within
her soul. She could have happily spent her time
savoring this sublime intimacy with the Three
Divine Persons, but no, as she says herself: “The
Lord wants deeds, He wants works. This is the
reason for prayer, this is true union with His will,
the purpose of Spiritual Marriage: the birth of
good works.”
She therefore gracefully descended from the
lofty heights of her mystical union to suffer and
to work in the service of her Lord and His Church
until her death, thus becoming a true mother to
all through the fecundity of her Spousal love.

Teresian Teaching
Teresa’s wise and perceptive confessors, who
realized the great value of her experience in
the ways of prayer, ordered her to write for the
benefit, not only of her Carmelite daughters, but
for all interior souls. Here are some points which
she particularly insists upon:
1) “We are not able to please God, nor is God
accustomed to impart this gift to us except
through the most holy humanity of Christ in
whom He is well pleased.”
2) We best find Jesus in the “Interior Castle”
of our souls, in the innermost mansion where he
resides with the Father and the Holy Ghost.
3) The gate by which we enter the “Interior
Castle” is prayer and recollection, which is
“nothing but a friendly intercourse, and frequent
solitary converse, with Him who we know loves
us.”

4) And since prayer consists “not in thinking
much but in loving much,” it will kindle a strong
desire within the soul to return love for love and
make it understand the necessity of complete
detachment from created things and of laying a
firm foundation to its prayer life by the practice
of the virtues, humility and fraternal charity
especially. The soul becomes “a servant of love”
embracing the ascetical life for the sake of the
mystical life.
5) Asceticism is a labor of love and as “love
has the power of making us forget our every
satisfaction in order to please our beloved” (far
more effective than the most rigorous spirit of
penance would!), it demands the surrender of
absolutely everything: “To give all in order to
possess all.”
6) Thus freed from all attachments to self and
to creatures, joyous and ardent, the Teresian
soul revels in “the holy freedom of spirit which
our souls seek in order to soar to their Master
unburdened by the leaden weight of earth.”

Conclusion
“God gave her a heart as wide as the sand
that is on the sea shore” (Introit of the Mass
of St. Teresa). Well might we rejoice, then, in
celebrating the anniversary of her birth. That
great heart, which the good God created for the
benefit of us all, longs to embrace all souls to lead
them to Divine Intimacy.
“Christians, the Lord’s mercy is so great that
He has forbidden none to strive to come and
drink of His fountain of life…indeed he calls
publicly and in so loud voice to do so.…So take
my advice and do not tarry on the way, but strive
like strong men until you die in the attempt…
The Lord never tires of giving, let us never tire
of receiving.…All thing pass away, God alone
suffices.”

47

360 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8659✱ – $21.95

The Second Vatican Council
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by Michael Davies

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Spirituality

The Little
Flower
by Fr. Delmanowski, SSPX

“ ‘You really are a saint!’ some one said to her.
‘No, I am not a saint; I have never done the works
of the Saints. I am a very, very little soul on whom
the good God has outpoured the abundance of His
grace. You will see in Heaven that I am telling you
the truth.’ ” Perhaps the most popular saint since
her canonization, St. Therese of Lisieux is known
for her child-like spirituality. Often referred
to as the Little Way, this spirituality has been
promoted and encouraged by the popes since her
death. Providence raises up special souls for each
era. If one but read the lives of famous saints, for
example, St. Benedict or St. Ignatius of Loyola,
one sees that God used them in order to reform
the Church, to bring back Christian fervor in a
time where charity had begun to grow cold. Yet,
in all of them we find nothing more than the reechoing of the Gospel.

The Carmelite from Lisieux is no different. In
his book A Retreat with St. Therese, Fr. Liagre,
C.S.Sp., points out that “Thérèse is the living
commentary of the Gospels, the most beautiful
commentary because the most simple.” In her
one finds a soul appointed by Divine Providence
to show what souls presently require, a holiness
aimed at the prevailing lack of interior life and
profound narcissism. With the help of Fr. Liagre’s
book, a beautiful synopsis of the essential ele­
ments of her spiritual life, one sees that her “Little
Way” is simply an application of the Gospel.

Faith in Merciful Love
“And we have believed in the charity which
God hath to us” (John 4:6). These words are a
49

Spirituality
perfect summary of what was the foundation of
her interior life, for St. Therese rested completely
upon the belief in God’s love for her. Without this
principle, we will understand nothing about her.
For any real union with God the primary and
indispensable condition is faith in God’s unfailing
love, a reality outside of which St. Therese never
seemed to consider God. Due to the death of her
mother at a young age she was constantly near
her father, a very holy soul. Through him, her
earthly father, she formed a conception of who
her Heavenly Father was. She realized the great
reality of what it meant to be a child of God and
to be infinitely loved with a Divine Love. From
this faith sprang all her other virtues and, even
amidst the dark night of the soul, kept her fixed
in her Father’s Love for her. It was the key to her
sanctity. As the Council of Trent puts it: “faith
is the beginning, root, and foundation of all
justification.”
Towards the end of her life God had
allowed Therese to suffer one of the greatest
mortifications of an interior soul like hers: the
dark night of the soul. In this state the soul
is left to feel its own nothingness, feeling no
consolation or joy from anything, even in the
beautiful and quiet moments of peace it used to
find in prayer. Her only source of consolation
was to keep her eyes upon the “Sun of Love,” as
she called Him, knowing that through the clouds
of her soul He was there watching over her, but
communicating Himself to her now only through
the light of faith.
However, St. Therese’s faith was not in any
love, but in Merciful Love. St. Paul explains that
“when we were dead in sin, [God] has quickened
us together in Christ” (Eph. 2:4). Despite the
wretched state of man after the Fall God still
loved him, or rather, He loved him because of that
destitution into which he had fallen. It was this
Love that led Him to the Cross to be crucified. His
glory lies in our believing in this wholly Merciful
Love. St. Therese understood this and dared to
enter into a filial relationship with God her Father
because she believed herself infinitely loved by
the Father of Compassion. “What delights God
in my soul,” she writes in one of her letters, “is to
see me loving my littleness and poverty, to see
the blind trust I have in His Compassion.”
50

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September - October 2015

Victim of Merciful Love
St. Therese strove to make herself a victim
to Merciful Love. At a very early age she had
a great desire to enter the Carmel and give
herself to God. She knew that it was there that
Our Lord was waiting for her. She would have
to go through much discouragement and many
disappointments before she would enter. By the
time she had reached the age of fourteen she
had set her heart on entering the Carmel by that
following Christmas. However, this desire would
find her much disappointed, for she would have to
wait months before the local bishop would allow
one of her young age to enter. This was only after
she herself had implored him many times for the
dispensation, for which she had even personally
petitioned the pope during an audience when on
pilgrimage in Rome. As she herself states, the call
of God was so urgent that she was ready to pass
through fire itself to prove her great desire to be
the victim of His love. In her autobiography she
expresses this beautifully: “To offer oneself as
a Victim to Divine Love is not to offer oneself to
sweetness—to consolation; but to every anguish,
every bitterness, for Love lives only by sacrifice;
and the more a soul wills to be surrendered
to Love, the more must she be surrendered to
suffering” (Autobiography, Ch. XII).
A soul which truly strives to please God will
offer itself and its own miseries, after having
given everything and still finding an obstacle:
its own inability to love. With such a soul God
is able to come and delight Himself within it,
satisfying His desire to be loved. The more it
does this the more it sees its wretchedness and
the more it understands that it is a fit subject
for the manifestation of Merciful Love. Therese
expresses this well when she writes: “try to
understand, that to be a victim of Love, the
weaker and more wretched we are, the more fit
we are for the operations of this consuming and
transforming Love. It is sufficient to desire to be a
victim, but we must be willing to remain poor and
helpless always, and that is what is so difficult.”
(Autobiography, 360).
It is in this line of thought that she intimated
to one of her sisters, almost in a pathetic manner,
that the committing of a fault was, from this point

of view, a great joy to her because it gave her
another opportunity to express her helplessness
to Jesus. And in her childlike manner she added
that this profits the soul so much that she would
almost look for more ways to be found at fault,
not that she would want to offend the good God,
but so that she could be ever more plunged into
the mercy of God.

The Desire to Love
St. Therese goes still further. “You want me to
tell you a means to become perfect. I know only
one, Love” (Autobiography, p. 367). The only
proper response for love is love itself. Therese,
therefore, when she understood herself loved by
Merciful Love was aroused with a great desire
to love in return. She later wrote: “The cry of
the dying Jesus ‘I thirst’ goes on echoing in the
depths of my heart, kindling within it new fires
of zeal. I would give my Beloved to drink...”
(Autobiography, p. 88). As St. Augustine writes:
“God thirsts to be thirsted for.” The soul, in
seeing its own misery and wretchedness, and
being loved because of it, will be drawn to love
in return and will be filled with a great desire to
love.
St. Therese was known to say that her “one
desire is to please Jesus” (Autobiography, p.
152). This is a beautiful expression of the Gospel
because it shows that great desire to love God.
Her soul was full of humility because of her
wretched state as a sinner and yet still full of
confidence because she counted on Merciful Love
to implant into her nothingness the love that was
lacking. Here we can see the necessity of faith
in Merciful Love, for it makes our wretchedness
the condition for believing ourselves capable of
loving God and opens the soul to God to allow
Him to accomplish His work in it.
When a soul thus surrenders itself to Merciful
Love God places in it His own desire to be loved.
“Our God is a consuming fire” and He consumes it
with strengths like His, measureless and infinite.
The soul is divinized and made like Him, for “He
who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit” (I Cor.
6:17). St. Therese’s life is an illustration of this
sublime doctrine. As she told one of her sisters on

the night of her death: “There is no more to say…
love is the only thing that matters.” In this one
word is found the whole summary of the Gospel.
She once wrote in a letter to her sister Céline: “In
times of aridity when I am incapable of praying,
of practicing virtue, I seek little opportunities,
mere trifles, to give pleasure to Jesus; for
instance a smile, a pleasant word when inclined
to be silent and to show weariness. If I find no
opportunities, I at least tell Him again and again
that I love Him; that is not difficult and it keeps
alive the fire in my heart. Even though this fire of
love might seem to me extinct I would still throw
straws upon the embers and I am certain it would
rekindle.”

The Virtues of St. Therese
Faith in God’s Merciful love for her and
51

Spirituality
aban­donment to Him by her great desire to love
Him in return is the secret to all her virtues. Fr.
Liagre comments: “It is strange how when we
contemplate St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, each
virtue we examine seems to be her secret. And
the reason is, I think, because all virtues in her
are one and the same perfectly simple thing. They
are only different aspects of one single virtue
which, in her, more than dominates, even more
than fosters all the rest, a virtue which is their
very soul and foundation: Love” (A Retreat, p. 32).
A soul will be truly humble when it abandons
itself as a victim of Merciful Love. It will love to
see and acknowledge its misery and littleness
before God because that is the very condition
which draws that love to itself. One’s nothingness
is now seen through the eyes of God. Every new
manifestation of weakness is another reminder of
what Merciful Love does and an opportunity for
abandonment of itself into that Love.
St. Therese is a model of confidence because
a soul can only be at peace when faced with
its nothingness if it is certain that by this very
means it places itself in the hands of Merciful
Love. This is the confidence of a child knowing
that his father is in control. Here is the key
to her little way, for she abandon’s herself
into the arms of her Father, leaving all to him
and accomplishing all in the hands of His allpowerful love. “One day, seeing one of the sisters
distressed at the sight of her sufferings, she said:
‘Oh, don’t worry! If I suffocate, God will give me
strength. I love Him. Never will He forsake me’ ”
(Novissima Verba, p. 89).
A little soul like St. Therese is filled with the
gifts of the Holy Ghost as she is habitually led by
His promptings, having placed all her confidence
in Him. St. Paul exhorted that “If we live in the
Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).
This is definitely true of St. Therese.
Prompted by the love of God, to love for St.
Therese was to renounce and sacrifice self. “As I
never seek myself, I lead the happiest life in the
world” (Autobiography, p. 305). This gave birth
to the virtue of patience, which is love in action.
Suffering is indispensable for fallen human
nature, a necessary remedy from a loving Father
for man’s egoism. St. Therese understood that
it was through suffering that one is forced to go
52

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September - October 2015

out­side of oneself and fly to Merciful Love. She
had the intelligence to know why God allowed
suffering: “Time is but a dream; God sees us
already in glory. Oh, how much good I derive
from this thought. Now I understand why He lets
us suffer” (Autobiography, p. 338).
Filled with this great desire to love, prayer was
something very simple for St. Therese, which for
her, was nothing other than a loving communion
between the creature’s wretchedness and the
Creator’s loving compassion. Often she would
look to the Gospels to meditate upon, letting
what they said about Christ’s actions and words
be imprinted on her soul. She looked for Love and
was able to penetrate beyond the words into the
spirit of life which animated them. She learned
from Jesus, or rather saw in Him, how to love
God as her heavenly Father. Her great desire to
love is a summary of her prayer life.
Being filled with the love of God, fraternal
charity came spontaneously to St. Therese. She
wrote: “The more united I am to Jesus, the more I
love my Sisters” (Autobiography, p. 163). “It was
by loving Him that He made me understand to the
full the great duty of charity” (Autobiography, p.
162). To love God is to love our neighbor, and to
love our neighbor is to love God.

Conclusion
In St. Therese we find a simple soul, devoid
of any artificiality and completely focused on
God. In short, we find in her true peace, that
tranquility of order of which St. Augustine
speaks. From where does this tranquility
come? Her unwavering faith in Merciful Love,
confidence, and her desire to love. Fr. Liagre
sums up his commentary on St. Therese with
these simple words: “Let us establish ourselves
in that peace. What is asked of us? A firm faith
in God’s Love for our wretchedness; humility;
confidence; the desire to love. That is the whole
of her ‘Little Way’: but, once more, it is also the
whole of the Gospels” (A Retreat, p. 125).

Book Review

The Inside Story of Vatican II
By Rev. Ralph M. Wiltgen, S.V.D.

When it comes to Vatican II, we need not indulge
on the mystifying ‘spirit’ of the Council, nor even
thumb through Sheed’s Is it the Same Church?
To get the record straight there is nothing like
the good old The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, in its
new edition called The Inside Story of Vatican II. A
professional historian, journalist and eye-witness,
Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen presents the modern reader
with a history of that council which is at once factual, authoritative, impartial, thorough, and totally
interesting.
The Inside Story describes how each of the 16
conciliar documents was painstakingly hammered
out. And it brings to light how the Council’s activity
was guided constantly by groups rather than by individuals. Yet key individuals were quite pivotal for
writing the history of Vatican II. Cardinal Liénart,
not five minutes into the first general meeting,
asked to give more time to select the candidates
for commissions of study, which led to a striking
victory of the liberal alliance in re-directing the
Council’s course.
Partisan spirit was gaining ground as things
went on, and it appeared as if St. Peter’s basilica
was turning into an immense pressure cooker.
No one knew what stew would result from it
except that things would never be the same after.
Wiltgen’s original title suggests the prevailing of
the group from the Rhine River countries. Said
Yves Congar: “In short, the Rhine was in reality that
broad current of vigorous Catholic theology and
pastoral science which had got under way in the
early 1950s…” What Congar celebrated indeed was
what had been condemned only 15 years earlier by
Humani Generis of Pius XII as the “new theology”;
headed by French and German avant-garde crypto
modernists.
Those who revel in mystery novels will enjoy
reading this volume, which has the breadth of an
open landscape and the sharpness of the finest
details on persons and events. One feels like enter-

ing the maze of in-depth theological themes, but
having a sense of direction as such doctrines are
incarnated in historical and personal lives. One
comes across totally extravagant personages,
subtle periti and veritable armies in battle alignment of conservatives vs. liberals, each vowing to
die rather than surrender.
These pages were written by an outsider, simply
gleaning information to feed his Council News
Service, who could truly say: “What I saw and what
I heard, and the facts that I ferreted out, I now
pass on to you.” For those who still believe with the
publisher of TAN Books that “the Holy Spirit mysteriously worked within the Council to bring about
what God desired for His Church”; each of the 400
pages of facts will quickly set the record straight.
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud

488 pp. – Softcover – STK# 8464 – $22.95

53

The Mission San Carlos Borromeo was the headquarters of the Alta
California missions headed by Father Junípero Serra from 1770
until his death in 1784. It was also the seat of the second president,
Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen. The mission buildings had
fallen into disrepair by the mid-19th century, after the Mexican
secularization act of 1833, but were restored beginning in 1884. It
remains a parish church today. It is the only one of the California
Missions to have its original bell tower dome.

Christian Culture

Insights on
The Angelus
Interview with Fr. Kenneth Novak, Editor Emeritus

The Angelus: Fr. Novak, could you reintroduce yourself to our readers?
Fr. Novak: I have been a priest in the SSPX for
22 years. I got involved with the apostolate of The
Angelus in 1992, 17 days after being ordained,
and I stayed there for 17 years.
The Angelus: Why were you chosen to be the
editor?
Fr. Novak: That is a good question! I think
the word got out that I was involved with the
yearbook and worked at a newspaper when I
was in high school. Perhaps they thought that I
had the gift of gab, and was able to keep people
interested in the magazine.
The Angelus: What was the state of the
Angelus Press and the magazine when you began?
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Fr. Novak: Angelus Press was in debt but
had a reputation for printing books that Englishspeaking traditional Catholics should read on
Archbishop Lefebvre and the crisis. Some of
the books published under me were Archbishop
Lefebvre and the Vatican, Spiritual Journey,
The Mystery of Jesus, Open Letter to Confused
Catholics (three or four reprints), and I Accuse
the Council.
The Angelus: Do you know what had been
printed before you came on the scene?
Fr. Novak: There was The Church’s Year by
Goffine. And even earlier, Angelus Press had
printed the Apologia books of Michael Davies.
The Angelus: Which books do you remember
printing as you came in?

Fr. Novak: We did the Divine Office, which
was a big project for us. The idea was to give the
priests the ability to teach it to the faithful, who
could have the Divine Office in their hands. Good
fruits came out of it as it is still quite popular
and our Third Order members are using it often.
There were some handbooks on Communion in
the hand, the liturgy, and children’s books. And,
of course, the magazine!
The Angelus: Speaking of The Angelus, could
you give us some historical background?
Fr. Novak: The magazine had existed
since 1978. It contained interesting issues like
announcing the opening of Ecône and other
Society news. Before me, Fr. Doran was in charge
for a short time, and before him, Fr. Cooper and
Fr. Pulvermacher. Fr. Terry Marx did it for a
time also. When Fr. Scott became the District
Superior, he wanted the crisis in the Church
to be put on the front burner, so that people
would understand why the Society existed, why
Archbishop Lefebvre was proven right given the
deterioration of the Church. We wanted to justify
the charism of the SSPX in preserving the Mass
and the priesthood.
The Angelus: You are describing the
magazine as a vehicle to defend the SSPX with
sword uplifted, correct?
Fr. Novak: Absolutely! And to shine a bright
light on bishops misusing their authority and
on the unfortunate behavior of some clerics in
the Church. There was a critical desire to show
our faithful that they should avoid participating
or supporting in any way the Novus Ordo. But
also, we wished to show them how to live the
traditional Mass and the lifestyle which flows
from the Mass.
The Angelus: What were practically the types
of articles you presented?
Fr. Novak: We always tried to keep a little
text of Archbishop Lefebvre. We touched a lot
on family life, on life as it was meant to be led,
politics, economics, medicine, moral issues,
embryology, cremation. When computers became
popular, we wrote about them too. Social issues
became prominent and we pushed them to stay

grounded in reality.
The Angelus: You also had some foreign
writers, didn’t you?
Fr. Novak: French Dominican Father de
Chivré became very famous in later years.
Examples of his articles would be What a Soul Is
or Walking with Mary. He had an attractive style,
maybe more conversational and spontaneous. We
introduced him to the English-speaking world.
We also translated SiSiNoNo of Don Putti,
and that was big as well. It was reproduced
at least every other month, exposing so much
wrongdoing. Then, Fr. Scott wanted more
emphasis on the family. Thus, on the alternate
months, we would republish articles that were
being written in Australia by Fr. de la Tour under
the title of Catholic Family. Although written
in a popular tone, at home, there was too much
other material that people could read about
Catholic families and therefore we realized it was
not our readership.
The Angelus: What, then, was the
demographic makeup of your readership? At
the present moment the average reader of the
magazine is of middle age and is eager to share it
with family members. What was it before?
Fr. Novak: I think that statistics haven’t
changed much, in fact. You’ve got people who
have read themselves into Tradition. They saved
the Mass by bringing it to the local drugstore,
2nd floor, every other Tuesday night! They made
it a point to preserve the Mass that matched the
lifestyle that they had been raised in, and that
Mass is what nourished them. They had to have
that Mass! These people were interested in The
Angelus. We constantly had letters of people
thanking us for The Angelus, and the readership
stayed strong.
Now it may be that the lifestyle has been
compromised in the next generation and the Mass
is what they haven’t had to fight for. It has become
easier and more casual, and so the necessity for
the laity to read and inform themselves has been
compromised.
The Angelus: What was the most popular of
all the articles?
57

Christian Culture
Fr. Novak: It was always Questions &
Answers, especially those written by Fr.
Pulvermacher. Archbishop Lefebvre, of course,
was always appreciated. Another popular
thing was Father Schmidberger’s or Bishop
Fellay’s conferences and their Letter to Friends
and Benefactors, always including the latest
developments with Rome. They always spoke
cogently, simply, with little parables: it was
excellent. They were quite lengthy, running for
several pages, and I think the readership went
outside of Society circles. We always made a flyer
out of those so that they could be distributed.
People would have them and pass them on to
their friends and acquaintances.
The Angelus: Do you think that there was a
real crusading spirit among these readers, which
does not seem to be so visible today?
Fr. Novak: Bingo! You have it right here. That
was before people could communicate easily
with emails and computers. Even things like the
Regina Coeli Report (which we typeset) was
a lifeline for people: they liked to read about a
particular mission or parish, which provided a
human element to the work of Tradition. Too
often today this personal touch has been lost.
The Angelus: Did you sense that there was a
time when the tone had to change?
Fr. Novak: We pretty much kept up the same
line. You must keep in mind that there was a
time when Angelus Press was treated like a
leper, which is why we started Sarto House,
with an address in New York City, to print books
under a different label. For instance, even other
traditionalist publications would not advertise
our books because we were schismatics at best
and excommunicated at worst. So, we started
another publishing house with a secretary hoping
we would get these books outside of the regular
Angelus Press customers into Catholic circles.
The Angelus: Was that successful?
Fr. Novak: It worked! Iota Unum went out,
and other books as well, under the Sarto House
imprint. I think Fr. Dörmann’s books were a
big publishing effort and they will always be
a reference to what went wrong with Vatican
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September - October 2015

II. We published much of the Integrity series:
Fatherhood and Family, Motherhood and
Family, My Life with Thomas Aquinas. The
laymen who directed the Integrity magazine
in the 40’s and 50’s were already seeing that
the Catholic Faith was on the verge of a crash
because it was not being lived at the parish level,
at the seminary level.
The Angelus: What were the great successes
of Angelus Press under your leadership?
Fr. Novak: The 1962 Roman Catholic Daily
Missal, even if we had a lot of problems getting
it out. Also, the Divine Office. And I will never
forget the one addressed to most Novus Ordo
priests of this country: Priest, Where is Thy
Mass?
The Angelus: Which other items did you
address which you felt were important?
Fr. Novak: We would take many issues, like
art, virtues, warfare, agriculture, and pull them
apart. We had good books too: anything that was
available written by Archbishop Lefebvre. Now,
we are getting Digest Anthologies, where we have
excerpts from everything he said on the Mass of
All Time or on the Priesthood by Fr. Troadec,
and now the Spiritual Life. The Archbishop is
like a doctor of the Church; we need to keep him
alive, and his writings need to be made available.
The Angelus: Although things are very
different from twenty years ago, would you have
any advice to give Angelus Press in order to
expand its apostolate?
Fr. Novak: Junior needs to read! Twenty
years ago, people read because that was what
everyone did! Now, you can surf the internet and
get your three minutes’ satisfaction and then go
to the next topic. Or you can search around for
what you want to read, and if you do not find it,
you leave it. But the problem remains: how can
you educate a mind to read? The challenge is
there: how can you move people today to take up
a writing and read—Tolle, lege—and let the Holy
Ghost speak to them?

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:
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Christian Culture

Chant:
Song of the
Sacrifice
by Fr. Thomas Hufford, SSPX

“And so they sang a hymn, and went out to
mount Olivet.”
Sacrifice gives to chant its reason for
existence, and not only because it stirs up our
devotion and moves us to offer.
We read in Psalm 21, after the narration of
the passion of our Lord, that divine praise is a
fruit of His sacrifice: “In the midst of the Church
will I praise thee.” Derived in part from the joy
of glorifying His Father and redeeming souls,
this praise gives a perfection to His sacrifice.
Likewise when the Church offers sacrifice with
our Lord, the divine praises sung in her sacred
music lend something to the perfection of that
sacrifice.

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September - October 2015

Song as Musical Art
St. Thomas’s elevated teachings about song
will be clearest if we first examine closely today’s
common usage. Some today employ the term
“song” as a gauge of value, and they reveal a wide
discrepancy in their appraisals. One figure of
speech found in dictionaries belittles songs: “for
a song, very cheaply.” To make one only requires
a breath and a voice and a school-boy’s training,
if that much. Thus the expression, “I got it for
a song,” which indicates that it cost me almost
nothing.
The contrary estimation recognizes some­­thing
in the song that is beyond price. An example
appears in Our Mutual Friend, by Charles
Dickens, where a cabinet maker ingenuously
charms a dolls’ dressmaker: “I’ve heerd tell that

you can sing most beautiful; and I should be
better paid with a song than with any money,
for I always loved the likes of that.” Perhaps
this second evaluation stems from a greater
appreciation for things of the spirit.
A musician makes of the mind an interior
studio. There, he fashions and orders the sounds
into a spiritual composition within the soul. The
concert artist Pablo Casals was asked how he
would set out to learn a new piece. He explained
that he would take the music and study it at his
desk; then he would put the music down and go to
his cello and play it. A violin student asked Peter
Salaff, violinist of the Cleveland Quartet, “So
when you perform quartets, you are constantly
pre-conceptualizing the pitch and the sound
quality and the expression?” That teacher replied,

“Well, if I don’t, I’m soon reminded that I should!”
Students of music know that music is not just
an exterior work, because their directors and
teachers declare time and again that they should
“hear it in the head” before they sing or play.
The song in this way already precedes the
breath and the voice. As a word is first inside
the intellect before it passes through the voice
into something sensible, so the song is complete,
in a way, inside the higher part of the soul
before it becomes an external work. This power
to reproduce the song in the mind is a virtue
called art. So when St. Thomas had occasion
to define song, he could have referred to the art
somewhere in the definition by calling it a work
of musical art or “a musical composition for
singing,” as we find it defined in one of our own

Orchestra of the Blessed in Heaven, Döbling Carmelite Church, Vienna, Austria. (Renata Sedmakova - www.shutterstock.com)

61

Christian Culture
dictionaries.
But St. Thomas’s definition has a surprise...

The Thomistic
Definition of Song
According to the prince of theologians,
song is an “exultation of the mind,” a joy in the
higher part of the soul. If song proceeds from a
sorrow of the mind it is “improperly so called.”
Concerning the canticle of the beloved’s vineyard
in the fifth chapter of Isaiah, St. Thomas writes:
“Properly, a song is a thing of exultation, whence
here the song is improperly so called, since it’s
one of sadness, like the lamentation that David
made for Saul and Jonathan.”
Exultation is not a hidden joy, but rather a
joy that must get out. It can express itself in
numerous ways, for example through a smile,
through a dance, or through the gesture of
throwing down the football in the end-zone.
“Exultation of the mind” has many possible
specific differences. Song is an exultation
“bursting forth into vocal sound.”
The author of this definition could have toned
down his description of the passing of joy from
the quiet interior of the soul to the exterior
world of things apparent. But without any
apology, he chose a word that we could apply to a
torrent, suggesting a wild uncontainable energy,
“prorumpens in vocem,” “bursting forth into
vocal sound.”
According to its full notion, a song requires
one more specific difference, but here a word of
caution is in order. By a way of thinking that is
too “black and white,” we might infer falsely that
travel songs, sea shanties, harvest songs, etc.,
are not songs at all, and that would be a false
conclusion. St. Thomas does indeed call secular
songs by the same name, for example when
exposing the literal sense of the harlot’s song in
Isaias 23. Hers is a song, but not according to the
complete sense.
For St. Thomas, the full notion of song is
present if it is a spiritual joy that is possessed,
not from things temporal or worldly, but from
things eternal, “de aeternis habita.” Something
of eternity moves the mind to rejoice, and the
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September - October 2015

man who has it inside him has to put it out, and
the result is a song.
Thus the three parts of the full definition:
“exultatio mentis de aeternis habita,
prorumpens in vocem.” Song according to St.
Thomas is an exultation of the mind dwelling on
eternal things, an exultation bursting forth into
vocal sound.

The Reason for Distinct
Definitions of Song
Now compare this definition with the
dictionary definition: “A musical composition for
singing.” Not quite the same thing, is it? Notice
that the two definitions are not completely
different; common to both is at least something
of the “prorumpens in vocem” idea.
One consequence of this difference has
already appeared in the kind of division that his
definition generates. What is the salient source of
distinction among songs? In the music classroom,
songs usually divide according to differences
of function or form, because we regard the
song chiefly to be a kind of art. But because St.
Thomas instead grounds the very nature of song
in its fullest meaning in the disposition of the
mind, his division of songs follows more from
their greater or lesser share in that complete
meaning. It’s as if to say that songs are in no way
equal, but that there is a paradigm of song, and
all others are songs in the measure that they bear
a likeness to the paradigm.
The difference in the two definitions also
carries implications for our notion of sacred
vocal music. Is chant a species of musical art
that is regularly joyful, or is it rather a species
of spiritual joy that passes into vocal sound?
Perhaps the difference is not so important if
we regard sacred music only as something that
adds beauty to the ceremonies. If, however, we
regard sacred music according to its purpose of
giving honor to God, the difference becomes very
important, because the chief way in which we
honor God is through the act of religion called
sacrifice. Now to St. Thomas’s notion of sacrifice,
art is not necessary, but joy is.

Joy Belongs to the
Perfection of Sacrifice

Chant Is the Song
of the Sacrifice

A sacrifice is a work of love, and the sure mark
of a loving sacrifice is the quality of cheer, which
gives to the sacrifice a certain splendor and
perfection. Our Lord provides this example of
praise that is derived in part from the joy of His
Father’s glory and our redemption. Jesus “having
joy set before Him, endured the cross,” says St.
Paul.
It is because joy is necessary for any who
would approach the heavenly altar that priests
begin Holy Mass with the recitation of Ps. 42 with
its reference to approaching “the altar of God, the
God who gives joy to my youth.” St. Thomas goes
so far as to say that through grief a man becomes
unfit to offer sacrifice, citing the example of
Aaron. While he was mourning the loss of his two
sons, Aaron would not finish the food that was
sacrificed: “...how could I eat it, or please the Lord
in the ceremonies, having a sorrowful heart.”
There are martyrs who sang on their way
to their death; did not their songs manifest an
undisguised exultation that made the splendor of
their sacrifice more evident? Maximilian Kolbe
and companions, upon being locked into the
starvation bunker, astonished the guards by their
singing. The Sisters of the Compiègne Carmel
sang for more than an hour, all the way to the
square where the guillotine stood waiting. Among
the songs chanted on their way were the “Salve
Regina” and the “Te Deum.” At the foot of the
scaffold they sang the “Veni Creator.”
The generous offering of tribulations should
also be cheerful, and its joy can be a song. In the
Roman Missal, the Church represents to us this
ideal through the example of the young men of
the Book of Daniel who were cast into a fiery
furnace for refusing to adore a golden statue.
Their song is called “the hymn of the three
young men, which the Saints were singing in the
furnace of fire.” It is a kind reminder to the priest:
“You are a sacrifice in a fiery furnace that forges
saints. Your sacrifice has a song: ‘All ye works of
the Lord, bless the Lord. O ye angels of the Lord,
bless the Lord. O ye heavens, bless the Lord....’
Keep singing.”

Much of what this conclusion asserts could be
claimed for other forms of sacred music, but it is
hoped that we would enter into the higher reason
of the chant, the paradigm of all sacred music.
To clarify our common use of the term chant, we
could, dictionary-like, define it as a liturgical text
set to a melody and adopted by the Church for
the solemn celebration of her liturgy. But such a
definition falls short of the reality.
For St. Thomas, chant is an exultation of the
mind no different from the joy that accompanies
the sacrifice and makes our own part in it more
perfect. The song by itself may cost us nothing,
but if it is rendered with true devotion then it
is a sign of an invisible sacrifice that costs us
dear. Whenever we chant the sacrifice of praise,
we cheerfully offer everything that we are and
everything that we have.
Moreover, since the sacrifice of praise is
a prayer by which the Word Himself honors
the Father, the chant in its proper context is a
participation in the prayer straight from the heart
of the King, exulting exceedingly in His power
and rejoicing in the salvation of God. Our poor
voices are brought up into this most noble work;
our poor voices unite to represent the song of
the Word and our union with Him. This song
of the Church is a great swell of holy laughter,
a confident torrent of felicity exulting in the
folly of the cross. For centuries the Church has
continued to pour forth this song of the sacrifice
of Christ from the rising of the sun to its setting,
because of the great glory that sacrifice gives
to God, because of the many benefits we have
received and hope to receive through its power,
and because through it we are brought into the
work of the greatest Love; and the effect of love is
joy, which sometimes is a song.

63

Christian Culture

Education
of the Will
by the Sisters of the SSPX Translated from Fideliter, March-April 2015.

The two chief faculties of the soul are intellect
and will, splendid powers of the human soul
created in the image of God but in which original
sin has left deep wounds: ignorance in the intellect
and malice in the will. The education of the will
is of crucial importance for a child’s entire life.
This is what will make of him or her an adult and
a Christian. Dear mothers, the education of a
child’s will is a noble and arduous mission that is
the keystone of its entire education. Indeed, before
God and men, your child will be worth what its
will is worth. If it is good and strong, your child,
with the help of God’s grace, will inherit heaven; if
it is weak and craven, your child is headed for the
worst downfalls.
The education of the will consists in cultivating
in the child the love and pursuit of the good despite
the obstacles. To do this, we must strive to teach
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September - October 2015

the love of what is good, to provide worthy models,
and to stimulate daily the training of the will by
means of the most ordinary actions.
Let’s teach our children first of all to love what
is good. We ought to know how to encourage them,
and to acknowledge their good deeds. We should
be interested in what they love and what they seek,
so as to be able tactfully to guide—or correct—
their choices, form their tastes, and guide them in
their choice of friends.
Children need to be stimulated by examples, so
let’s give them models: in the life of our Lord, in
the lives of saints and Christian heroes, let’s teach
them to love and to admire virtue and valiance.
Love calls for and leads to imitation. Let’s also
point out to the children the example of the simple,
hidden virtues in those around us. The mother
ought to speak to them about the courage of their

father, who sets out daily, despite weariness or bad
weather, to work for the family’s livelihood. The
father ought to point out to them all their mother
does tirelessly: cooking, housekeeping, countless
thoughtful acts of devotedness to her family, and
so on. The example of those around them in their
daily life ought to be a stimulant to the children to
do good too. We should often remind our children
that we are made for heaven, and that this life is
only a pilgrimage, more or less long, and that we
must be heading for our goal: God, God whom
we must love above all things in and through the
least actions of daily life. “To please Jesus” should
become a child’s genuine desire.
It is the daily repetition of little efforts
sustained by grace that gradually forges the
will: the children will become habituated to do
what they ought to do before doing what they
like. For example, at the end of a short break,
necessary after school, the children will do their
homework before going out to play; they will tidy
up their room and make their bed in the morning
(once they’re able to) before running off to other
occupations. The children should be trained to
eat whatever they are served and not to snack
between meals, to obey promptly and willingly,
not to procrastinate, not to whine over trifles...
How many little occasions there are in daily life
in which the children, prompted by an adult, can

little by little form and fortify their will! What an
inestimable treasure for the future!
The child must learn to will, but also to will
with perseverance in spite of the obstacles
encountered on the way. Only those who persevere
reach the goal. Let’s encourage our children to
keep on going till the end: to start over a badly
written homework assignment, not to tolerate
sloppily done homework. Let’s teach them to finish
what they begin, to remount if thrown from a
horse, not to turn back if it starts to rain during
a walk. The children must learn to ardently and
wholeheartedly desire a greater good. It’s raining
and the weather’s bad? Well, let’s sing as we walk.
A child is sulking, he doesn’t like these vegetables?
then let’s have a big smile to please Jesus! Doing
a chore takes a lot? Then yes, I’ll do my best for
the salvation of souls. When a child takes up an
activity (learning a musical instrument, a sport,
or even a game), in the beginning he discovers
the attraction of the novelty, which quickly wears
away when it comes to daily practice. That is when
the child should be encouraged to persevere by
showing him the desired goal. Except for obvious
lack of aptitude, do not let the child give up an
activity when he “doesn’t feel like it anymore,” but
help him to will it.
Dear mothers, the good seed will spring up for
eternal life!

65

Senanque Abbey was founded in 1148 under the patronage of Alfant,
Bishop of Cavaillon, and Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona,
Count of Provence, by Cistercian monks who came from Mazan
Abbey in the Ardèche. Temporary huts housed the first community of
impoverished monks.
The abbey church is in the form of a tau cross with an apse projecting
beyond the abbey’s outer walls. Somewhat unusually, its liturgical
east end faces north, as the narrow and secluded valley offered no
space for the conventional arrangement.

Christian Culture

Kenyan
Safari
Interview with Fr. Matthew Stafki

The Angelus: Father, would you kindly
introduce yourself and explain the reasons for
your first appointment?
Father Stafki: My family is from the Twin
Cities area and I was ordained last year. But I
sincerely do not know why I was sent right away
to Africa. I suspect that my exposure to other
cultures might have something to do with it since
I lived in Quebec and France.
The Angelus: Did you settle immediately in
Nairobi, Kenya?
Father Stafki: It was not quite as simple as
that. I had to get to South Africa while things
were getting settled in Kenya. I stayed at the
priory of Johannesburg, and helped around the
school and the missions. Later on, I went to
Kenya but stayed as a guest at the Missionary
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September - October 2015

Sisters of Karen near Nairobi. So it was not until
December that I was able and relieved to unpack
my bags in my own room at the Holy Cross Priory
in the capital city.
The Angelus: What was your first impression
of Kenya?
Father Stafki: I was expecting a Third World
country. I was surprised to see a country half
Westernized. I was shocked at the amount of
people everywhere. They are out of the house
all the time, and they walk everywhere. Kenyans
by and large are no lazy bones. When you drive
on the left side as all English former colonies,
you are always on the watch because the road
belongs to the pedestrians!
Another interesting thing is that, although
Kenya is predominantly Protestant, the Catholic

Church is well implanted. If you wear the
cassock, everybody knows who you are, and just
being out taking a walk is a preaching by itself.
The people, even the Muslims of Mombasa, are
cordial and respectful to us as priests.

Father Stafki: They live close by, and when
needed, you enjoy the silence of the area, but
also because they have a wonderful spirit, always
joyful, full of energy. They are lovely and a real
blessing. In the long run, subject to the generosity
of benefactors, the plan is to buy the property

The Angelus: Besides these pleasant things,
did you get less attractive impressions?
Father Stafki: What struck me getting into
the city was the stench, burning plastic and trash
everywhere, and big trucks burning diesel like
crazy. Then, one of the most unpalatable things I
have come across is to be approached by a beggar
at every street corner. If you are a priest, and a
mzungu at that—a white man—you are bound
to have shillings in your pocket and to give alms
away in favor of these fake poor!

behind the priory and set up a convent. They
will be teaching and helping around the mission
complex. This is their main apostolate along
with the care for the sick, and the older nuns are
already busy and working.

The Angelus: Did you mention that your first
lodging was at the convent?
Father Stafki: Yes, I stayed at the convent of
the Missionary Sisters of Jesus and Mary. They
were established in 2010 and they took over the
former priory of Karen, a peaceful suburb of
Nairobi. At present, there are about twenty such
Sisters at the convent, under the direction of four
Oblate Sisters of the SSPX to help them establish
themselves until they have enough professed
Sisters. They are doing very well, slowly growing.
Some are from Europe, some from Kenya,
Uganda, and Nigeria.
The Angelus: How would you describe
the presence of the missionary convent in the
shadow of the priory?

The Angelus: How is the relation with the
Kenyan government?
Father Stafki: It could not be better.
The “Marcel Lefebvre Society” is a Catholic
organization officially recognized by the Kenyan
government: compliments of former Archbishop
Ndingi, friendly to Tradition, who resigned his
position a few months after giving us the green
light.
The Angelus: Tell us about your new home,
which the Society had acquired just before I left
Kenya in 2009.
Father Stafki: When I finally settled in
the priory, my first impression was something
oppressive, dark, dingy, not very home-like. The
new prior, Fr. Bély, felt the same way. Whenever
someone was visiting, they would go straight
to the sisters. That told me that there was
something off-putting about the priory. So, right
away, we started cleaning the place, repainting
the inside, redecorating, getting new furniture.
The place needed fresh blood to come in to
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Christian Culture
invigorate it. We have worked on the exterior
as well: the old parking lot has been cleaned up
and earth brought in, new gravel, new border
stones, the garden areas turned pretty, the messy
backyard has been removed, and we are getting
a gazebo. The priory needs to have the good

Besides, every Saturday, I am busy with
non-­school children and particular those from
the slum next door. They receive tuition and
extra teaching classes. I am in charge of the
catechism, teaching the catechists and setting up
the program. We feed them and offer them altar
boy practices while the girls follow the Sisters,

atmosphere of home and privacy, inviting you to
rest.

who provide them with slide shows, cooking, and
games. Saturday is a good day for them!

The Angelus: Besides the Church and
the rectory, what do you have in the mission
complex?
Father Stafki: We are building a new school.
The school started in 2012, and was recognized
by the government only in 2014. Kenyans start
school very young. We have three years of preschool and then four years of primary school
at the moment. When all is completed, the new
school will receive as many as 250 children
although the City Council would allow us to raise
the number to 400, stacked like sardines! When
it is complete, we should have three preschool
levels and all primary to the equivalent of U.S.
eighth grade. The school goes for three terms
of three months and one month each time in
between.

The Angelus: How does an American priest
fare in the company of two Frenchmen at the
priory?
Father Stafki: We are always poking at each
other on national issues, but it is all in good fun.
Fr. Bély, the prior, is Parisian and has lived ever
since his ordination in 2003 in all priories of
Africa (Gabon, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and District
Bursar at Johannesburg). He is bringing a vast
experience which is a Godsend to Kenya. He is
very good with administrative tasks. He has put
the finances in order, and this is critical since we
have to deal with governmental approval. Then,
we have another Frenchman, Brother Rémy, a
hard worker but very reserved, and so he feels
better around older people. All things considered,
we work very well together and are able to
discuss things in an atmosphere of mutual trust.
But also, I was forgetting, we have nearby the
presence of Fr. Becker, the Sisters’ chaplain, and
we visit each other frequently.

The Angelus: Are you involved with the
school?
Father Stafki: I am helping only occasionally,
when the prior is absent, for the early morning
prayers and few words of encouragement… and
when I walk the dog, because the kids just jump
all around him!
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September - October 2015

The Angelus: Do you feel isolated from the
other confreres?
Father Stafki: Africa is a continent much

larger than the United States, and Nairobi is
2,000 miles away from the next priory, which
does not make things easy. Fr. Loïc Duverger, the
District Superior, comes about twice a year, but
we also get regular visits from the two Menzingen
Assistants, who watch over the Sisters regularly.
Also, for the first time this year, we’ve had a

Father Stafki: I visit monthly Mombasa, the
Kenyan sea port, which is 10 hours away by bus.
And, whereas Nairobi on the Equator enjoys a
very pleasant 70 degrees all year long due to
its altitude, Mombasa by contrast is hot and
humid. At least I have the joy of using the white
cassock but, to my sorrow, my superiors have

District priests’ meeting and it was a unique
chance for most priests to get to know each other.

forbidden me to grow a beard! We have a little
group of twenty faithful, still reduced because
we are still renting a private house for Mass.
Lately, we bought some property and we intend
to build. Swahili is the lingua franca there, and I
am working on mastering the language but it is a
slow process.

The Angelus: How indebted are you to the
pioneers who sowed the seeds before you?
Father Stafki: The work accomplished
since 2003 is simply amazing. Today, we have
so much: the convent, Holy Cross church and
priory, and the missions as well. All this is the
fruit of these pioneers who went in search of
faithful throughout the country. Fr. Étienne
especially, now the new District bursar, did a
marvelous work in Mombasa and Nyeri, uniting
and encouraging the faithful.
The Angelus: If my memory serves me, the
priory of Nairobi used to service also other
missions outside Kenya?
Father Stafki: Indeed, we used to have
‘foreign’ missions, but we have dropped them,
mostly for practical reasons. Dar el Salam of
Tanzania, to name but one of them, is being taken
care of by Fr. Étienne from South Africa because
they speak only Swahili.
The Angelus: You spoke of Mombasa and
Nyeri. Can you explain what these names mean
to you?

The Angelus: You were speaking of another
mission.
Father Stafki: Nyeri is another week-end
mission run, about three hours away from
Nairobi. I make a couple of stops before getting
there, one at the house of Fr. James Ngaruro,
who was ordained a couple of years ago, and the
next is Carico. We have our larger group of about
thirty persons mostly from one family, and I have
to manage a rather primitive high Mass there!
And, finally, I arrive at Nyeri for Sunday with
Mass at the hotel. We have our eyes on a property
on which to build a church which would gather
these different groups into one. We want to avoid
the clans and oblige the faithful to make the great
sacrifices of a day’s travel to have a more normal
parish life.
The Angelus: What would you say are the
main difficulties of your apostolate?
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Christian Culture
Father Stafki: Besides mastering the Swahili
language, which would open many doors, I have
had to deal with a very different culture. You have
to get to know the people before you understand
the way they think, how they view life in general.
They often say what you want to hear and not

the tuition is modest sum of $70, but many
families struggle to get there.

the truth. They are rather reserved and wait for
you to make the first step, call them by their first
name before you may gain their trust. Then you
can work with their souls.

very close to home. It was good to see how they
have received me and enjoyed hearing of my
apostolate in these foreign lands. We rely on their
support and their prayers. And, like in many other
mission countries, we depend greatly on foreign
countries.

The Angelus: Is it difficult to size them up?
How can you judge their attachment to the
Society?
Father Stafki: It is like everywhere. There
is a minority which understands the why of
the crisis and the liturgical combat, but most
are simply attracted by the Mass. In Kenya,
the changes have not had a major change. The
dancing with the singing goes along with their
folk customs and for the most part, the hierarchy
remained conservative, and the churches are full.
I saw that firsthand when the local parish had
a Palm Sunday procession followed by a huge
crowd. In order to provide a solid formation, we
have to start with the basics, like whether hell
is eternal. And then, start organizing special
catechism classes and conferences for adults.
The Angelus: What is the main job at hand?
Father Stafki: First and foremost, we need
to finish the project of the school at Holy Cross.
Kenyans prize very much a good education which
allows them to get ahead and have a decent job
and perhaps rise to middle class. For a trimester
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The Angelus: Any last word or wish?
Father Stafki: I have been visiting my own
parish, and they love the slide show as it comes

P.S. To make donations from the US to the missions, send
checks to the US district payable to Society of St. Pius X
Foreign Mission Trust-Africa. Mail to: 11485 N. Farley Rd,
Platte City MO 64079 (with the memo: Kenya Priory).

by SSPX priests

Is Catholic Trivia faithful
to Catholic teaching?
I recently purchased the traditional version of
Catholic Trivia. The first question was: “Anger is
considered a sin against which commandment?”
The answer given was: “The fifth,” and the fifth
commandment tells simply: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Now here is my first question. Is Catholic Trivia
faithful to Catholic teaching? And if yes, how
do you explain that anger applies to the fifth
commandment?

Thank you for your email and your inquisitive
eye which is obliging us to check some of the
questions and answers of Catholic Trivia.
Without a doubt, it is absolutely faithful to
Church teaching, and you may certainly use
is without scruples or worries as a tool and
illustration of the Catechism. As regards the
fact that abusive anger is an act against the fifth
commandment, this is not quite as subjective as
we might think at first sight. Killing the innocent
is a violent act committed against one’s neighbor
and is usually the final blow which comes out of
a person in a fit of anger or, on the contrary, with
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Christian Culture
cold calculation. Our Lord, naturally enough,
connects “Thou shalt not kill” with the use of
harsh words like “Racca” which would be said in
anger (Mt. 5).
This is what the Baltimore Catechism does as
it connects anger with the fifth commandment,
listing with the grievous sins the venial sins,
and especially those which children are prone
to commit. It is conveniently tied up with one of
the commandments as it fixes the mind of the
little ones with some clarification even if the
connection is not altogether perfect.

How do we explain
the anger which Jesus
displayed in the Temple?
Now, here is another less clear question.
The Baltimore Catechism states that anger is a
“strong feeling of displeasure often resulting in a
loss of temper, one of the capital sins.” Then how
do we explain the anger which Jesus displayed in
the Temple?
I do think that you are right regarding anger
as being in itself not sinful, in the same way
as theologians define it as a passion, which
can be used for good or bad, depending on
circumstances. For example, Our Lord showed
anger to the sellers of the Temple. Truly enough,
the average Catholic connects anger with
abuse. So, perhaps it would have been best for
Catholic Trivia to express the question in this
way: “When we sin against anger, against which
Commandment do we sin?” which is more proper.

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What is the gravity of
the sin of anger?
Does that make this capital sin of anger less
sinful? But, if this is the case, would not this
involve a contradiction to say it would be capital
and yet less sinful?
Here, I think that you are partially right in as
much as the seven capital sins are the mothers
of all other vices and each of them causes many
others as a mother brings forth various children.
You are less clear when you seem to indicate that
they are not necessarily sinful of themselves. If
they are capital sins, that means that they are
sins, and not necessarily deadly because this
depends on the circumstances and the gravity
or parvity of matter. Sloth and gluttony are
capital sins, but they certainly do not always
cause a mortal sin. As a rule, anger is tagged as a
mortal sin by moral theologians only in extreme
cases of hurting the body or soul of another or
damaging his property.

“We are at the end. Europe is dying!”
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, the archbishop of
Bologna, Italy, in a recent interview stated the
following concerning societies that embrace and
glorify homosexuality:
We are at the end. Europe is dying. And
perhaps, it doesn’t even want to live, because no
civilization has ever survived the glorification
of homosexuality.
I am not speaking of the practice of
homosexuality. I am speaking of the
glorification of homosexuality. For various
ancient peoples, homosexuality was a sacred
act. The word used in Leviticus to condemn this
glorification of homosexuality clothed with a
sacred character in the temples and pagan rites
was “abominable.”
The only two civilizations which have resisted
homosexuality for thousands of years are the
same that have opposed homosexuality: the Jews
and Christians. Where are today’s Assyrians?
Where are today’s Babylonians? And yet the Jews
were merely a tribe, a “nobody” in comparison
to the other political-religious societies. But the
laws concerning sexual acts as we find within
the book of Leviticus became the highest form
of civilization [Christianity]. Hence my first
thought: we are at the end… My second reflection
is purely of Faith. Before such facts as these, I
always ask myself: how is it possible that the
mind of man be so blind to such fundamental
evidence [that glorifying homosexuality leads
to the destruction of society]? And I came to
the conclusion: all this is literally a diabolical
work. This is the last defiance which the Devil is
throwing at God the Creator.
Although speaking of Europe, there can be no
doubt that His Eminence’s words can certainly be
applied to American society as well.
In another interview, Cardinal Caffarra spoke
about a letter which he received from Sr. Lucia
dos Santos of Fatima while he was charged with
beginning the Pontifical Institute for Studies
on Marriage and Family. When asked about a
prophecy by Sister Lucia which concerns “the
final battle between the Lord and the kingdom
of Satan” his Eminence responded: At the

start of this work entrusted to me by… John
Paul II, I wrote to Sister Lucia of Fatima
through her Bishop as I couldn’t do so directly.
Unexplainably however, since I didn’t expect
an answer, seeing that I had only asked for
prayers, I received a very long letter with her
signature—now in the Institute’s archives. In
it we find written: “The final battle between
the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about
marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid,”
she added, “because anyone who works for
the sanctity of marriage and the family will
always be fought and opposed in every way,
because this is the decisive issue.” And then she
concluded: “However, Our Lady has already
crushed its head.”
It seems fair to say that these two interviews
should be read in conjunction with one another:
his Eminence sees the clear hand of Satan in
the pushing of the homosexual agenda and that

the attack on marriage and the family is tied
to Fatima. This should remind all of us of the
importance of fulfilling in our families the desires
of Our Lady as she proclaimed to the three
children at Fatima in 1917, particularly the daily
Rosary and the five First Saturdays.
1

rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/06/cardinal-what-sister-lucia-toldme.html#more.

75

News from Tradition
The Illogic of the Worldly Mind
For a number of weeks this past summer,
all media outlets were abuzz with the
“transformation” of former Olympic athlete Bruce
Jenner into a “woman” who now wishes to be
called Caitlin. Needless to say, all these worldly
thinkers were praising Bruce for the courage
it took to make his “transformation” a public
spectacle and immediately began to call him
Caitlin and use the feminine pronoun “she” when
referring to him. As we well know, no amount of
surgical or hormonal treatments can ever change
the fact that Bruce Jenner is a male genetically and
therefore can never be a female. We should also
note that these “treatments” are sinful in that they
are contrary to the Fifth Commandment in that
they mutilate an otherwise healthy body.
While praise was being heaped upon Jenner
and supporting his “choice” to live and dress as
a woman even though he remains genetically a
man, another news story broke concerning Rachel
Dolezal, who was head of a local branch of the
National Association for the Advancement of
Coloured People (NAACP) in Washington. It turns

out that Dolezal is actually a Caucasian woman
who made the “choice” to be black even though she
is genetically white, as testified to by her parents.
For a week or so, the media chose to berate this
woman for masquerading as something she is not,
and she was even forced to resign as head of the
NAACP chapter and from some other boards of
directors.
The irony and illogic of the reactions of the
world to these two events is obvious to anyone
using their God-given intellect. While Jenner is
praised for living out his desire to live as a woman
although he is genetically a male, Dolezal is
ridiculed and criticized for her desire to live as a
black woman although genetically a white woman.
Why is Jenner praised and Dolezal maligned for
effectively doing much the same thing? Simply
because our society has bought whole and entire
into the homosexual propaganda that seeks to
destroy marriage and family life as God intended
it to be and as humanity has understood it since
creation.

Legalized Euthanasia in Belgium
Although Belgium had legalized euthanasia
for the terminally ill a number of years ago, the
European country has now widened the definition
of those able to end their lives to include those
who have persistent suicidal thoughts.

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A 24-year-old Belgian woman who suffers
from depression and has had a “death wish” since
childhood has been granted the right to die—even
though she’s not terminally ill.
Doctors gave approval for the woman, identified
only as Laura, to be euthanized by
lethal injection after she spent her
life battling suicidal thoughts and
has been in a psychiatric institution
for the past three years. “Life, that’s
not for me,” she said.
In charity, we can only hope
and pray that Laura will not take
the step of ending her life but this
new-found “right” and that Belgium
will not sink ever deeper into its
godlessness whereby man himself
becomes the sole arbiter of right
and wrong.

Frightening Days for Ireland and the United States
On May 23, Ireland became the first country
to approve homosexual “marriage” by a national
referendum. The vote to amend the Irish
Constitution was 62 percent in favor of the
measure nationwide, while in Dublin, the nation’s
capital, the favorable vote was even higher. In 1937,
the Irish Constitution was adopted and contained
the following preamble:

individual may be assured, true social order
attained, the unity of our country restored, and
concord established with other nations,
Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves
this Constitution…
It is hard to imagine that a nation founded in
the name of the Holy Trinity and acknowledging
its obligations towards our Lord Jesus Christ

In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from
Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final
end, all actions both of men and States must be
referred,
We, the people of Ireland, humbly acknowledg­
ing all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus
Christ, Who sustained our fathers through
centuries of trial,
Gratefully remembering their heroic and
unremitting struggle to regain the rightful
independence of our Nation,
And seeking to promote the common good,
with due observance of Prudence, Justice and
Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the

only 80 years ago, could so easily abandon the
Faith defended through so many hardships during
English persecution. There is no doubt that the
abandonment of the social kingship of Jesus
Christ in the years following Vatican II played a
major role is bringing about this event as did the
milquetoast public pronouncements of the bishops
of Ireland in the weeks preceding the referendum.
There was not one bishop to be found who
spoke in clear terms that a vote in favor of this
amendment would be sinful and that the duty of
Catholics was to defeat it.
As difficult as it was to see Ireland falling into
such chaos regarding true marriage and family life,
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News from Tradition
the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on June
26 stating that homosexuals had a constitutional
right to be “married” was even more jarring. The
5-4 majority decision was authored by Justice
Anthony Kennedy, who regards himself as
Catholic.
Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice
John Roberts both wrote dissenting opinions
which pointed out the dangers of this ruling for
“individuals of faith.” Both of the justices pointed
out that since there is now a constitutional right
to “marriage” for people of the same sex, those
opposing this right could face legal action for
their opposition, and churches who oppose it face
losing their tax-exempt status. One can easily

foresee the day when Catholic priests will face
lawsuits and possibly fines and/or imprisonments
if they refuse to witness the unions of
homosexuals. All of us should also realize that
this will not just affect clergy; many lay folk will
face the same possible penalties or the loss of
their employment if they refuse to go along with
this clearly immoral ruling.
Unfortunately, here in the United States just
as in Ireland, the bishops who issued statements
were feeble in condemning this decision. Most
protested the fact that this ruling would impinge
upon Religious Freedom (and therefore could
well hit the bishops in their pocketbooks), rather
than upon the immorality encouraged by it.

Instrumentum Laboris for 2015 Synod Published!
At the end of June, the Vatican released
the Instrumentum Laboris (i.e., working
document) for the 2015 Synod. This document
contains all the proposals that are to be
discussed and voted upon at the Synod this
October as well as summations of various ideas
put forward at the Extraordinary Synod on
Marriage and the Family which took place in
October of 2014.
Not surprisingly, the proposal of Cardinal
Kasper that the divorced and civilly remarried
should be admitted to Holy Communion after
some sort of penitential period is presented
at length. The document also contains much
of the same ambiguity of meaning found in
the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
Simply put, although a number of the bishops
in attendance at last October’s synod made
it clear that this proposal is clearly contrary
to the teaching of our Lord and the perennial
Tradition of the Church, this October will bring
another attempt to make Kasper’s proposal a
“pastoral solution” for the divorced and civilly
remarried. We must also recall that Raymond
Cardinal Burke, who was one of the strongest
critics of this so-called “pastoral solution,” will
not be present at the synod this October since
he was removed from his post as Prefect of the

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September - October 2015

Apostolic Signatura by Pope Francis at the end
of 2014.
The document does pay “lip service” to the
Traditional understanding of marriage, but
at the same time goes on to propose pastoral
practices which are directly contrary to the
dogma presented. Although Cardinal Kasper’s
“solution” did not pass with the required
two-thirds majority during last October’s
Extraordinary Synod there is every reason to
think that it may well do so this October.

The Priest
A Apostle Consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

by Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta

“O bone Jesu, fac cor nostrum secundum Cor
tuum!” “Oportet Illum regnare” (I Cor. 15:25). These
two sentences sum up, as it were, the intimate link
that exists between the priesthood and devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus: firstly, that we have a heart
like unto the Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then
that we consecrate our life to bring about the reign
of the Heart of Jesus. These intimate links might be
summarized by saying that the priest must consecrate himself to the Heart of Jesus, he must consecrate himself to reparation, and he must be an apostle
of the Heart of our Lord.
St. Thomas Aquinas says that man is a debtor in
relation to God for two reasons. Firstly, because of
the benefits he has received; for example, the whole
of creation, the Incarnation, the Redemption, our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But he
is also a debtor in relation to God because of his sins,

and therefore his need to make reparation, expiation, and satisfaction for sin, which offends God. To
consecrate oneself means to give to our Lord, to His
Heart, our person and our goods—our exterior and
interior goods, goods of a material, corporal, and
spiritual nature, goods both natural and supernatural.
Consecration then involves renouncement of ownership of these goods, and at the same time donation of
all.
Consecration is a donation that is by definition
entire and for always. At the same time, one dedicates
one’s life to the service of our Lord Jesus Christ, for
the priest is the man of God, the religious of God. He
is consecrated and dedicated to God. His entire life
is offered and devoted to God. That is why we, more
than anyone else, must fulfill the duty of charity, of
love, which fulfills and perfects the essential act of the
virtue of religion.

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Theological Studies
At the same time, this life totally consecrated to our
Lord and to His Sacred Heart achieves and establishes
the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Pope Leo XIII
has shown. In his Encyclical Annum Sacrum1 the pope
attaches the consecration particularly to the kingship
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has a right by nature and
by conquest to this consecration and this service. He
has real dominion over us, over everything, but desires
that, from love and in order to requite His love, truly
and spontaneously we should consecrate ourselves to
His service and by that very means proclaim His kingship. In other words, devotion and consecration to the
Sacred Heart are the best ways to establish the reign
of our Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts, in the hearts of
the faithful, and in society. For this devotion defines
better than any other the very nature of our Lord’s
kingship, which is a kingship of love; this love arises
from the love of our Lord—it is established by the
charity of our Lord—and of the love that we give Him in
return. But the essential characteristic of devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus is, at the request of our Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, reparation, the obligation to offer
satisfaction, reparation, and expiation for sins—our
own, the sins of the faithful, and for the sins of all men.
For our Lord Jesus Christ Himself was pre-eminently
one who makes reparation, and His love is essentially
redemptive and reparative.
Reparative Love
Reparation is a kind of compensation offered freely
to God, to our Lord, to uncreated love; compensation for the omissions, the indifference, the offenses,
outrages, and insults. According to Pope Pius XI, we
must offer reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for
two reasons: for justice’ sake, but also and especially
for the sake of love. That is why, by the spirit of reparation, as you know, we can offer satisfaction for our
own sins and for the sins of others. We can offer satisfaction for others; we can make reparation for others.
This is what is explicitly demanded in this devotion.
It is especially during the holy sacrifice of the
Mass that we can accomplish this and, as Archbishop
Lefebvre taught us, we unite ourselves with the reparative spirit of our Lord principally by the holy sacrifice
of the Mass, by conforming ourselves to the dispositions of our Lord on the cross. If consecration establishes us firmly in a union of love with our Lord Jesus
Christ, the spirit of reparation, says Pope Pius XI,
establishes us in the same way as the consecration.

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September - October 2015

This loving union with our Lord is established first
when we purify ourselves from sin; then, by making
us compassionate the sufferings of our Lord Jesus
Christ. This is the motive, arising specifically from
love, that makes us embrace the spirit of reparation
which is that of compassionating our Lord Jesus
Christ patiently suffering and dying on the cross. It
also means repairing and compassionating the sufferings of holy Church, which is His mystical body.
Christ continues to suffer in His body which is the
Church—we ought to complete in our flesh what is
lacking in the Passion of Christ for the Church, which
is His body.2 It means making reparation for the offenses committed against our Lord Jesus Christ in
His Body which is the holy Church. The passion the
Church is undergoing ought to move us to embrace
the spirit of reparation and of consolation of our Lord
Jesus Christ, of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
One consoles someone who is suffering, someone
sad. Well, it is we priests of our Lord who ought to
make reparation and console. And finally, says Pope
Pius XI, the spirit of reparation establishes union with
Christ in us, making us offer ourselves as holy, pure,
immaculate oblations; by making us like Christ, to immolate ourselves, to sacrifice ourselves for souls and
for their salvation.
Apostolic Devotion
Something else is also needed, which appears
clearly in the revelations of the Sacred Heart to St.
Margaret Mary. We must also be apostles of the Heart
of Jesus and of devotion to the Sacred Heart. This is
precisely the vocation of the priest, to make known
and loved the Heart of Jesus, to make it honored and
to render it public worship, for it is a devotion of social
and public significance. Hence we must apply ourselves to discovering the treasures within the Sacred
Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, treasures of truth and
grace, as we have just heard in this beautiful epistle of
St. Paul—I desire that we increase in the interior man,
by the Spirit, so that Christ may dwell in us by faith so
that, being rooted and grounded in charity, we may
know, we may taste, we may discover and aid souls to
discover the eminent knowledge of the love of Christ.3
Such is the super-eminent science that we must
preach and that we must teach souls! It is the knowledge of charity and of the love of Christ, as well as all
the treasures of truth and grace, of charity, of virtue
and holiness that are enclosed within the Heart of our

Lord. If He is not loved more, it is surely because He
is not known, or is not known well enough, or deeply
enough, or supernaturally enough. Well then, there’s
our mission! We must be apostles of the Heart of
Jesus.
The popes who’ve spoken about this devotion have
shown that it is an extraordinarily powerful means of
apostolate and conversion. Our Lord Himself said as
much to St. Margaret Mary: the priest who is truly a
disciple of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and conducts
his ministry according to this Heart will be particularly
effective in his ministry, and he will know the art of
converting even the hardest hearts. The popes have
insistently asked of all the faithful, of all Christian
people, but particularly priests, to practice, to study,
and to live this union with the Heart of Jesus and to
practice devotion to the Sacred Heart in the face of
the evils worsening day by day, piling up in front of us.
Now, it is obvious that this reason is even more valid
today.
It is even more valid, for we see on all sides,
whether in civil society or in the Church, the situation
getting worse. Things keep going from bad to worse.
We have to open our eyes. If we look at the world and
the political or social situation, we see how the world
becomes more and more hardened [in its rejection of
Christ]: “We will not have this man to reign over us”
[Luke 19:14]—we do not want Jesus Christ to rule over
us. And so society slides into the very hatred of our
Lord Jesus Christ and of God.
This is what we are faced with, what’s right in front
of us. St. Thomas Aquinas asks how it is that man can
hate God when God is the sovereign good, perfect,
and the source of every good thing for us all, for each
one of us. He explains that it is the depraved will of
man that does not want to renounce the world, his
sins, and that hates God firstly as legislator: He hates
God because he does not want to keep God’s laws.
Secondly, he hates God as rewarder, as judge. Now,
it is indeed our Lord Jesus Christ who is the supreme
legislator and who will come to judge the living and the
dead. It is for this reason that today we see in society
a clear tendency to reject our Lord Jesus Christ, His
law, and His judgment. Being legislator and judge is
the attribute of a king, and consequently “We will not
have this man to reign over us.”
Present Apostasy
Ultimately, that would be irrelevant but for an

infinitely greater, more serious problem: immanent
apostasy; and we could even say, to borrow a somewhat modern order of ideas, that this apostasy, from
immanent, is becoming transcendent. It consists in
the folly of Churchmen bent on being reconciled with
the world, the enemy of God and of His Christ, of His
Church and of His doctrine. That is the Utopia, the
chimera, the madness of these men of the Church
who want to be acceptable to God but at the same
time to be on good terms with the world, which is
moving toward hatred and rejection of Christ and of
God! This is what we are living through. God is not a
legislator; God does not demand anything of us; God
forgives everything! Is that right? Obviously this is a
way to evade hatred of God by misrepresenting what
God is in Himself, as well as the Catholic Faith as it has
been handed on to us by the apostles, by Tradition,
and revealed by our Lord.
You see, I think that in order to remain above
personalities and to keep a rather general, supernatural outlook, one might say that we have reached the
stage of consequences, the maturing of the events
which are as it were the most representative fruits
of fifty years of the conciliar spirit, that is to say, of
a liberal and modernist spirit. For fifty years, the
authorities have done nothing but apply—more or less
intensely but in every case in the same direction—and
gradually establish in holy Church this spirit, this outlook which is profoundly liberal and modernist.
So what is happening? What’s happening is what
the popes of the 19th century and the first half of
the 20th century predicted: firstly, dogmatic relativism—doubt and uncertainty are now alright. Truth is
what agrees with life, evolves with life and thus with
man; it must adapt to modern man. Principles are left
untouched but traditional doctrine is not adequate to
respond to today’s pastoral needs. Doctrinal relativism, and therefore relativism of belief, necessarily
results over time in what we are actually experiencing
in a particular way, somewhat new, in any case more
serious. For there has been, all the same, a substantial change. Now we have relativism in the moral order,
the calling in question of the moral order itself—in
the first instance the revealed moral law, but also the
morality inscribed in nature.
“Who am I to judge?” In other words, my function
is to help everyone follow his conscience—a postulate
and principle of the autonomy of conscience that has
no objective relationship with an external law, be

81

Theological Studies
it natural, revealed, supernatural, or divine, and certainly not with God. This is what religious indifferentism leads to necessarily. Everything is reduced to the
level of opinion, and all the religions are opinions, they
are all valid. There may be some that are better, some
less good, but in any case they all lead to salvation,
and more than that—all these religions can obtain for
us natural and supernatural goods, including peace,
brotherhood, and concord among men.
This is where we are. This is taken for granted, this
is normal, this is what is practiced without any qualms
or scruples or concern. According to a great pope,
all this results in a kind of naturalism, a humanist
naturalism. Everyone stays on the natural level, with
natural values, with a humanist, humanitarian veneer.
We reach the starting point of this evolution, religious sentiment. For modernists, religion is a sentiment, a feeling of God, of the sacred, and especially a
humanist, brotherly, humanitarian feeling that stands
in admiration of the dignity of man, of the greatness
of man. We’ve heard it said recently: I believe in man,
I believe in what is in man’s heart, I believe in the
dignity of man. It’s the echo of what Pope Paul VI said:
“We more than anyone else have the cult of man.”4
At the same time, systematic demolition is going
on; it’s the melting away of authority—magisterial
authority, moral authority, authority in relation to worship and governance. It’s the demolition of the institution, of the hierarchy, of principles, for of course they
want to control the situation, they want to steer the
ship, after all, while at the same time destroying the
notion and the very nature of Catholic authority and of
the institution as such: the papacy, the Holy See. Such
things have never been seen before.
Do Not Dissolve Jesus
St. Hilary commented on the text where St. John
says, “You have heard it said that the Antichrist is
going to come.” Now, St. John says that there are already many antichrists (I Jn. 2:18). St. Hilary says that
the fact that the Antichrist will be at the end of time—
someone, a person, an individual—does not prevent
there being over the course of the development of the
mystery of iniquity which is already among us, as St.
Paul says,5 antichrists, who will abound; they will be
numerous and will succeed one another in preparing
the advent of the son of perdition.
St. John explains what it means to be an antichrist.
An antichrist is one who denies the divinity of our

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September - October 2015

Lord Jesus Christ, or one who denies His humanity.
An antichrist is one who consequently denies what
follows upon the divinity and humanity of our Lord
Jesus Christ; that’s why he adds: whoever dissolves
Jesus Christ,6 that is to say, whoever dissolves the
mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ and all the consequences of His being true God and true man. An
antichrist, St. John also says, denies the doctrine of
Christ. St. Hilary comments: One who denies Christ
as He has been preached and taught by the apostles
and hence handed on by Tradition, such a one is an
antichrist, for, he says, properly speaking antichrist
signifies someone who is against Christ.
There you have the drama and the passion of the
Church; for it is the very authorities of the Church that
are against Christ. It’s the starting point of the world
that hates God: “We do not want this man to reign
over us.” And they began by demolishing the kingship
of Christ.
So, as you can see, it is all the more urgent and
necessary that we truly be genuine servants of the
Heart of Jesus, true repairers and consolers. Faced
with all that, we must reaffirm our faith, as we have
learned from our founder Archbishop Lefebvre, who
centered everything on Christ and on the mystery of
Christ and the sacrifice of our Lord wherein the Heart
of Jesus is especially revealed.
We must, therefore, first and foremost profess
and preach our Lord Jesus Christ, His divinity, His
humanity, and all that flows from that reality. We must
defend the honor of our Lord, the rights of our Lord
Jesus Christ. That is what separates us, that is what
opposes us, that is the point of contradiction—there is
no other. It is our Lord, it is our faith in our Lord Jesus
Christ, who is the Truth, who is the Life and the Way.
It is in Him that are all the treasures of knowledge,
of wisdom, of truth. He is the author and keeper of
our faith and its principal object. It is our Lord Jesus
Christ who has the fullness of grace and all holiness
and every virtue. But our Lord is also the way as High
Priest, and the way as King.
And so, confronted by this surge of antichristic
anti-Christianity, we must more than ever preach and
reassert in season and out of season that our Lord
Jesus Christ is the only mediator, the only pontiff,
the only saviour; that our Lord is the only redeemer,
the only repairer, and the only restorer. It is only in
Him that we can renew all things.7 He is the only door
through which one can go to the Father, and by which

one can enter heaven. There is no other foundation
on which one can build anything whatsoever in the
supernatural order, there is no other name under
heaven give us whereby we may be saved. That is our
faith, and that is what puts us in opposition to official
Rome—or modernist or conciliar Rome, or whatever
you prefer to call it.
Apostles of Jesus and Mary
It is always interesting to reread the Book of
the Apocalypse, especially to find out what are the
particular dispositions that God, the Holy Spirit, our
Lord Jesus Christ, expect us to have during the time
when the mystery of iniquity will be growing and will
reach its apogee to climax, as we know, in the advent
and reign of the Antichrist. Of course, it is essentially
a revelation of hope and victory: of hope, because our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself has said: “Have confidence;
I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), “And behold
I am with you all days, even to the consummation of
the world” (Matt. 28:20); of victory, for it concerns the
definitive, final and eternal victory of our Lord Jesus
Christ and of holy Church. But in this revelation we
can see what are the particular dispositions needed in
the last times. Our Lord Jesus Christ is presented as
the truthful witness, faithful and true. Throughout the
Apocalypse, St. John stresses that this testimony of
our Lord Jesus Christ is faithful and true. He tells us
that it is by the blood of the Lamb and by the confession of the word that the Christians of the last times
will persevere.
So it is indeed by the holy sacrifice of the Mass,
by the blood of the Lamb and the profession of
the Catholic faith that we will persevere. In the
Apocalypse we are shown that what causes God to
intervene and our Lord Jesus Christ to come are the
prayers of the saints that ascend on the golden altar
that is before God, before the Divine Majesty. These
prayers accumulate on the altar of God—Christians’
prayers of distress under persecution, the patience of
the saints in suffering and persecution. It is the longsuffering patience that we have to have in all adversity
and in every trial, those which are already past and
those that are doubtless at the door. Patience and
meekness and gentleness before what Providence
sends us, and, I would even say, love, true love of the
cross, for we well know that it is by the cross that redemption is effected and that we priests carry on the
redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apocalypse also shows us that during these
last times the rampart and refuge of Christians will
be the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the refuge of the
Church, our Lady, the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We
know that the shortest, quickest, safest, most perfect
way to reach our Lord is through our Lady. We well
know that the shortest, quickest, safest, and most
perfect way to go to the Heart of Jesus is the Heart of
the most blessed Virgin Mary.
So, my dear faithful, my dear confreres, let us be
more than ever apostles of Jesus and Mary,8 let us be
more than ever apostles of the Heart of Jesus and of
the Heart of Mary. Amen.
Translated from Nouvelles de Chrétienté, No. 148, July-August 2014,
pp. 12-17. The oratorical style of the homily has been kept. The title,
headings, and footnotes have been added by the editor. Translated by
A. M. Stinnett.

1

Encyclical letter on the consecration of the human race to the
Sacred Heart, May 25, 1899. According to Leo XIII’s declaration, this
letter constitutes his spiritual testament.

2

Cf. Col. 1:24.

3

Cf. Eph. 3: 16-19.

4

Paul VI, Closing Speech of the II Vatican Council, December 7,
1965: “The Church of the Council [Vatican II] ...was also much
attached with man as he really is today, with living man, with
man totally taken up with himself, with man who not only makes
himself the centre of his own interests, but who dares to claim that
he is the principle and final cause of all reality....Secular, profane,
humanism finally revealed itself in all its terrible stature and, in a
certain sense, challenged the Council. The religion of God made
man has come up against the religion—for there is such a one—of
man who makes himself God. And what happened? A clash, a
battle, an anathema? That might have taken place, but it did not. It
was the old story of the Samaritan that formed the model for the
spirituality of the Council. It [the Council] was filled only with an
endless sympathy. The discovery of human needs—and these are
so much greater now that the son of the earth has made himself
greater—absorbed the attention of the Synod. Recognize at least
this our merit, you modern humanists who have no place for the
transcendence of things supreme, and come to know our new
humanism: we also, We, more than anyone else, have the CULT OF
MAN.”

5

Cf. II Thessalonians 2:7.

6

Cf. I John 4:3.

7

Cf. Eph. 1:10. It’s the program of the pontificate of St. Pius X.

8

As the statutes of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, drafted by
Archbishop Lefebvre, show, its actual name is the Brotherhood of
the Apostles of Jesus and Marie.

83

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The
Last
Word
Dear Readers,
“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.”
There is still out there, in the midst of a crazy world, a generous youth aspiring
to purity of heart and nobility of soul, seeking “a higher chivalry.”
Some time ago, when the war against the Holy Mass led to the destruction of
religious life seen as something impossible to live, a saint gave some wise rules, a
sort of ‘Catholic spirit check-list.’ It included these two:
- "To praise much Religious Orders, virginity and continence, and not so much
marriage as any of these.
- "To praise vows of Religion, of obedience, of poverty, of chastity and of other
perfections of supererogation” (St. Ignatius).
The very existence of souls striving to live up to the evangelical counsels is
an apologetic proof of the one true and holy Church; it draws souls. Archbishop
Lefebvre observed that to see some modern-day youth living in such an impure
world and nevertheless wanting to be “eunuchs for the kingdom of God” is a proof
that God is still with His Church.
Nothing is new under the sun. There has always been and will always be youth
taking up the challenge of the Beatitudes.
Remember a young Anthony filling the deserts with monasteries, or the disquieted and about-to-be-conquered Augustine hearing Lady Continence “honestly
alluring me to come and doubt nothing, and extending her holy hands, full of a
multiplicity of good examples, to receive and embrace me; there were there so
many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows
and ancient virgins…” (Confessions). Tolle! Lege!
Every century has had its legions of generous hearts. Some just know how to
tap these “fountains of living waters.” The good mothers of the Italian village of Lu
did so with their weekly holy hour for vocations. In about 50 years, 323 vocations
(priests and religious) came out of a tiny village of 3,000 souls! Their motherly
prayer was perfect:
O God, grant that one of my sons may become a priest! I myself want to live as
a good Christian and want to guide my children always to do what is right, so that I
may receive the grace, O God, to be allowed to give you a holy priest! Amen.
Go and do likewise!
Fr. Daniel Couture

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The main goal of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic
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Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its
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