“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Angels: The
Messengers of God
“Love’s fire”: Angels in
the Divine Comedy
The Human Side of Angels
Making artistic Sense of the Angels

January - February 2018

The Smiling Angel is a stunning piece of art from the 1200’s adorning
the façade of the prestigious cathedral of Reims. Smashed to pieces
during the heavy bombardment of WWI by the Germans, the pieces
were carefully preserved and finally restored to their original
places. Called also the “Smile of Reims,” it gives us insights into the
“psychology” of these mysterious creatures. The Smiling Angel is
evidently beaming with joy, with a real touch of humor, as he is looking
you in the face. Perhaps this is a latent message of bliss awaiting those
of us who go through this vale of tears.

Letter
from the
Publisher
Dear readers,
The Angelus magazine has a place in each traditional family because it fulfills a purpose
in the combat for Tradition. It provides food for thought to the heads of our spiritual family,
and helps them to formulate the right principles which they will apply practically to life’s
circumstances.
This is what we have been doing since the creation of the magazine, almost 40 years
ago. This is what we have done again this past year. We cannot afford to leave aside the
burning questions of the day: The American geopolitical issues, such as the Middle East,
and the papacy dilemma, along with the ecumenical thrust towards Luther.
And so, at first glance, it may seem incongruous and obsolete to focus on the abstract
question of angels. We believe in angels and in their activity among men, but this remains
most likely an academic topic with little to no impact on our day to day struggles in this
finite world of ours. Is this to say that angels have no history and are disinterested with our
lot? Anyone who has been involved with souls knows that the struggle is between good and
evil: The good influences led by our good God and His angels and the bad ones, led by the
devil and his allies within and without. Any priest will tell you that he feels like an exorcist as
he puts on the confessional stole or administers the sacraments, climbs up the altar and
defends Catholic principles throughout his day to day pastoral problems.
This issue, joined by the loose thread of the angelic kingdom, offers various spotlights
on the angels, whether it be in literature and music, in theology and human psychology
touching on repentance or fragility, or in the seeming oddity of exorcism today. It also covers interesting topics like St. Bernard and Fatima—we can never hear enough of it. Here,
we initiate the liturgical study of the Roman rite which will guide us throughout this year.
The issue concludes with The Angel of the Storm, a must read of John Senior in the section
“Theological Studies.”
It is our hope that, as you go through this magazine, you realize how close we are to the
original purpose of The Angelus, offering us the principles to combat God’s battles with all
his auxiliary troops.
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Publisher

January - February 2018
Volume XLI, Number 1
Publisher
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Editor-in-Chief
Mr. James Vogel
Managing Editor
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud
Copy Editor
Miss Jane Carver
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: Angels
––“Love’s fire”: Angels in the Divine Comedy
––The Human Side of Angels
––Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus: Making Artistic Sense of the Angels
––Exorcism Today: An Interview

6
9
13
20

Faith and Morals
––The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:
The Grandeur of the Roman Rite
––And of Persons There Are Only These:
Human, Angelic, and Divine
––Do the Angels Move the Heavens?

25
30
36

Spirituality
––The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
and Its Guardian Angels
––Fatima and the Present Life
––The Language of the Angels

41
45
48

“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.
©2018 BY ANGELUS PRESS. OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE
PRIESTLY SOCIETY OF SAINT PIUS X FOR THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Christian Culture
––Lourdes
––Singers Today, Catholics Tomorrow
––Questions and Answers

52
58
62

News from Tradition
––Church and World
––The Angel of the Storm
––The Last Word

65
74
87

Theme Angels

“Love’s fire”:
Angels in the Divine Comedy

by Andrew J. Clarendon

The Dominican Father Paul O’Sullivan
describes angels as “pure spirits, the mighty
Princes of Heaven who stand before God, gazing
on His unveiled presence…[the] burning fires of
love, filled to overflowing with the plenitude of
happiness…[who] who are the perfect images of
God, mirrors of His Divine perfections…each in
his own special way.” While the superior angels,
such as the highest hierarchy of the choirs of the
Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, especially
“are said to assist before the throne of God,” it
also true that the angels are sometimes sent by
God for a particular purpose or mission outside
of Heaven. The word angel itself is derived
from the Hebrew word for messenger, and it is
one of the consoling features of our faith that
each human being has his own guardian angel,
“a gift of divine providence.” As angels are
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January - February 2018

pure spirits who only appear to man’s physical
senses for extraordinary reasons, the images
of Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel in Scripture,
or the guardian angels in the lives of the saints,
involve the angels “stooping to our limitations,
bowing to our penchant for thinking in pictures...
[taking on] the appearances of bodies for our
comfort…that we might the more easily accept
the angel, his message, his companionship.”
It is only natural that the great artists should
follow the angels’ own direction and attempt to
convey some sense of these beings in physical
form—one thinks of Fra Angelico’s depiction of
the Annunciation or the stained glass windows
of Chartres, for example. Among the poets,
the greatest and most extensive treatment is,
unsurprisingly, that of the Divine Comedy, in
which Dante first shows angels as the helpmates

of human souls in Inferno and Purgatorio before
presenting the higher choirs in Paradiso.

Mirroring the angelic—and demonic—
influences in our earthly life, Dante not only
includes the fallen angels in his presentation
of hell, but also includes an impressive episode
of an angel who is sent by God to assist in the
Pilgrim in his journey. Having passed the sins

putti as in later Renaissance art, Dante presents
a warrior angel, a prince of Heaven who easily
opens the Gate of Dis with a wand of office and
scornfully upbraids the demons before going
back to Heaven. As human beings alone are no
match for the fallen angelic intellect, so are the
demons no match for one vested in God’s power.
Msgr. Glenn’s summary of St. Thomas’ Summa
shows how this scene illustrates the angels as
instruments: “When God has an angel apply its
powers to a creature, the angel is sent to that
creature. God is the sender and the first principle

of the flesh in upper hell, the Pilgrim and his
guide Virgil find the gates of the infernal fortress
of Dis, barred against them. From the rampart
“more than a thousand fiendish angels” scream
at them as Dante Christianizes pagan myth and
has “three hellish Furies stained with blood” call
on Medusa to turn the Pilgrim into stone. The
journey to God is unable to proceed; the Pilgrim
and his guide are completely outmatched, and all
that Virgil can do to help is to cover the Pilgrim’s
eyes lest the paralyzing despair of Medusa
destroy him. “A blast of sound, shot through with
fear” announces the arrival of God’s messenger,
and the explosion of the conflict between grace
and demonic insolence causes “Hell [to] begin to
tremble.” The demons and the damned scatter as
the angel imitates the Lord, walking on the water
of the nearby river Styx. Not one for depictions of

of the effect produced by the angel sent; God
is also the ultimate goal or final cause of the
work so produced. The angel is God’s minister
or intelligent instrument; by its being sent, it
renders ministry to God.”
Understandably, the good angels are much
more involved in the operation of Purgatory,
where, although the poor souls are much in
need of help, their salvation is sure and their
arrival home is only a matter of time. The central
metaphor of the whole Divine Comedy is that of
the exodus, so it is fitting that the souls arrive to
the great mountain of Purgatory in a boat driven
by a gloriously bright angel and are singing Psalm
113: “In exitu Israël de Aegypto.” Higher up, in a
valley that makes up part of ante-Purgatory—a
place of delay in which certain souls must wait
before beginning the work of Purgatory

The Angelic and the Demonic

7

Theme Angels
proper—Dante presents a short allegorical scene
that again illustrates the role of the angels in our
lives. Every evening a serpent, “the very one,
perhaps, / that offered Eve the bitter fruit to eat,”
attempts to enter the valley and every evening
two angels come “From Mary’s bosom…/ to guard
[the souls] from the serpent in the vale.” It is not
that the souls in Purgatory are in real danger;
the point is both that the serpent never gives up
trying and, more importantly, that the angels
always come to help the souls. Mark Musa further
compares this scene to St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s
famous sermon on the three advents of Christ:
these messengers of God are symbols of the daily
coming of Christ into “the hearts of individuals
in order to protect them from temptation and
insure their salvation.” All through the sevenstoried mountain of Purgatory, the holy angels
are there as the representations of this or that
aspect of God, from the Angel of Confession at
the gate to Purgatory proper and the Angels of
the Beatitudes at the end of each terrace, to the
angels that make up the heavenly pageants in
Earthly Paradise at the summit. These mighty
angels give glory to God by helping human souls
to someday join them in experiencing the Beatific
Vision.

A Higher Vision
Although they are great friends to men as
these instruments of God, Dante reserves the
presentation of the greater mission of the angels
for the Paradiso. After moving through the
cosmos with Beatrice, his new guide, the Pilgrim
is at the curved edge of the universe when he
has his first vision of God: a small but intense
point of light. Around the point of light “a ring
of fire whirl[s]” at great speed, followed by eight
others—the nine choirs of angels circling the
Trinity. Beatrice’s explanation makes the vision
and the meaning clear to the Pilgrim:
On that Point
depend all nature and all of the heavens.
Observe the circle nearest it, and know
the reason for its spinning at such speed
is that Love’s fire burns it into motion.
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January - February 2018

This first choir, the Seraphim, is more capable
of loving and knowing God, is closest to Him,
and therefore is more filled with His glory.
The ultimate reality of the universe, even in
the physical sense, is that it starts with God,
who communicates Himself to the choir of the
Seraphim, who in turn give all that they know
and love to the next choir—although each
of “these cannot perfectly receive all that is
given”—and so on down through the cosmos.
Also of note is the ceaseless activity; the angels
in their choirs are “showers of light…/ like molten
iron in fire spurting sparks.” It is the same in
the Heavenly Court itself. Dante pictures the
realm of the saints as a great white rose in bloom
and the angels like bees that “spread the peace
and ardor of the love” God, so many that “this
screen of flying plenitude” would block out all
light were they not diaphanous spirits. In this
hive of activity, the angels “soaring see and sing
/ the glory of the One who stirs their love, / the
goodness which made them great as they are.”
The central purpose of the angels is therefore
praise; with all of the force of their angelic wills,
forever fixed, they mirror the One Who Is, the
“Eternal Goodness that divides Itself / into these
countless mirrors that reflect / Itself, remaining
One, as It was always.”
Dante thus presents the nature and various
functions of the angels in his poem of the next
life, all the while affirming that the angels are
part of the natural world, “creatures as natural as
oaks, or sunsets, or birds, or men.” It is consoling
that these our ontological older brothers are
with us and for us, “friendly with that staunch
friendship that endures, even heightens,
throughout our weaknesses, our failures, our
pettiness, our positive malice.” To be known
and loved by such beings is itself a tremendous
thought, all the more so that these mirrors of the
Divine desire to help us poor men become as they
are—adorers of God unveiled—guiding us to the
Source of love Itself, “the love that moves the sun
and all the other stars.”

The
Human Side
of Angels
by Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, SSPX

Angels seem to live in horizons foreign
to us, so foreign that we can only babble
two words about them, make an act of
faith, and soon forget about them. Although
not accurate, this can hardly satisfy your
legitimate curiosity to delve into the angelic
state.
Angels are God’s highest creatures. The Nicene
Creed alludes to them when speaking of God’s
creative act which made all things ‘visible and
invisible... those in heaven and those on earth.”
They inhabit neither a material body nor the
material world. They live in a place rather by
acting upon other creatures: just think of the
way the devils have power from God to possess
humans. Angels are the greatest creatures that
came out of the hand of God. Their keen mind
can perceive immediately and infallibly the

consequences of their acts. One mental leap
suffices for them to reach the highest causes of
things. Their will, too, wants to jump directly
to the infinite. St. Thomas admits that, from the
purely natural perspective, the angel cannot sin.
No angel could love himself without loving firstly
and more intensely this God found in the depth of
his nature.
I realize that you are eager to get to the
question of the angelic sin. Yet, perhaps, we
need to consolidate our understanding of
the angels by contrasting them with men.
Angels indeed surpass men in natural
perfection, especially our spiritual faculties. Our
intelligence and will could never measure up
to them. Man lives in a material physical world
and knows everything from sense perception,
9

Theme Angels
groping through thick matter, slowly, painfully
and with much error. Likewise, his love may be
biased because the good he yearns for can be
colored by his passions and his sinful habits:
the lustful man runs after his mistress as the
drunkard after the bottle, and both are rushing to
their own ruin.
If this is correct, and it is, could we not
call man the diminished version of the
angel?
Is man a “diminished version,” a second rate
angel? This description would not go well with
Christian writers. Like the angel, man is created
in the image and likeness of God. Like him too,
he possesses intelligence and will and is called to
the same supernatural destiny. Indeed, it would
be difficult to speak of diminution when speaking
of the beatific vision of the greatest saints in
heaven compared to angels. There is no second
class citizen in heaven and the natural distinction
of angels and men does not seem to apply to Fra
Angelico’s frescoes of paradise. So, definitely no!
Man is not a diminished angel no more than he is
a fallen angel.
To compare man and the angel makes
the mind want to reach the skies. It seems
idyllic.
Man’s life is an adventure whose history is
made of multiple histories of men saying yes
and no to choices. He may dream of flying over
the skies with wings outspread, of becoming
pure spirituality. He may imagine shooting a
single arrow reaching its target with an assured
mind, and moving a will with no hesitation and
no flaws. He may aspire to being absolutely free
while resting in the immutable good. This ideal
scenario exists perhaps in fictional novels, never
in real life. And to dream of the angel’s life is also
to forget that this dream of a perfect life could
also be a nightmare. And for aspiring to become
angelic, man may well turn into a beast.
By the “nightmare” of “turning into a
beast”, are you hinting at the sin of the
angels?
I am indeed! The fall of the angels has always
fascinated the medieval writers, because it is a
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January - February 2018

choice topic to understand angelology. St. John
Damascene explains that “death is to man what
the fall is to the angel”: its crucial existential
moment. St. Anselm’s de Casu Diaboli—of
the fall of the devil—is a classic along with
St. Thomas’ treatises on angels and evil—de
Angelis, de Malo. St. Anselm, a Benedictine
contemplative, studied man through angelic
lenses. The monastery provided for him a
spiritual vantage point, and it gave him a quasi
angelic nostalgia of shedding off ignorance and
errors inseparable of men buried in worldly
affairs. His view of man is angelic: man is the
obscure negative of the angel, of this spiritual
sunflower ever turned to God. The perfect man
must look always up to heaven and get his feet off
the ground!
Is this elevated vision shared by all
medieval writers?
St. Thomas Aquinas, for one, has another view.
He, too, is fascinated by the fall of the angels and
uses it as a point of contrast, but also of contact,
with men. Unlike St. Anselm, he studies angels
through human lenses. We could sum it up by
saying that his angelology is an anthropological
angelology. If his study of man does not draw
much from the angels, that of angels constantly
gets its light from man. For St. Thomas, in the
act of sinning, in that eternal instant, the angel
goes through a crisis and becomes, so to speak,
almost human. And this quasi humanity tells a
lot about man’s humanity. Man constantly has to
navigate in midstream between the banks of good
and evil. His liberty too is irresolute, incapable
of a definite choice. This very imperfection is the
reason for his ability to promise and betray, and
to repent again.
To speak of the human power to err and
to sin is a daily experience. And St. Paul
spoke eloquently of that: “law of the flesh
which struggles against the law of the
spirit” whereby “I do what I should not and
do not what I should.” But what about the
angels, these pure spirits naturally unable
to commit a mistake and to have a misplaced
love?
All this is very true. True also is the fact that

angels naturally have the capacity to know and
contemplate God in his effects. They know Him
as one knows an artist through his masterworks.
This being said, every intelligent creature as
such is fallible and subject to a moral choice,
angels not excepted. And, when God makes a
sudden intrusion into the angelic world and offers
another mode of knowledge and a supernatural
life, then the angel is out of his natural depth
and is liable to drown. St. Thomas nonchalantly
explains that angels can err incidentally
regarding the special dispositions of divine
Providence.
What does this intellectual error consist of?
Angels naturally know things by bending
back onto themselves, and digging within their
own essence to find things previously infused
into them at creation. From this angelic way of
knowing, of itself inoffensive, we can surmise
that angels tend to rely on nothing but what
they have within. Added to this, their natural
knowledge of all things, in clear day light, is
amply satisfying, even if it is limited. Faced
with an intrusion of God—they could say an
encroachment—Who offered them to embark in
the adventure of salvation, by submitting to His
own terms, some angels must have hesitated.
They must have thought twice and, instinctively,
had refused to subject their minds to something
alien and outside of them, to something
offered to them in the obscurity of the faith.
We always speak of the angel’s rebellion as
a sin of pride. Is this correct?
Church tradition has always maintained
this. Each angel, created immediately in grace
according to St. Thomas, was given the choice
of rejecting or of entering the plan of salvation
offered by God. This rejection, this disobedience
of God’s plan, stemmed from pride. It was
because he positively loved his own excellence
that he rejected God’s dominion over him. The
angel chose himself and refused to be chosen. He
wanted to remain master and ruler of his destiny.
So doing, he dug his own hell, and his state
became worse than that of the worst beast.
We speak of rebellion. This suggests a group

insurrection behind the leader of the pack...
Tradition has it that many angels fell prey
to this pride and went headlong into the fire
of hell which, said Our Lord: “was created
by God for Satan and his followers.” Another
interesting light is given by St. Thomas on the
sin of the angels. Angels, unlike men, received
at creation a supernatural gift proportionate to
their nature. This means that the highest ranking
angels—and there are traditionally nine choirs
of angels—were more graced than any others.
This means that Lucifer, the greatest angel was
granted greater graces and was more loved by
God more than any other. This suggests strongly
that Lucifer, when offered to submit to God’s
plan, went back upon himself and contemplated
creatures in his own essence, and found that
he was higher and better than anyone else,
short of the invisible God. Unable to venerate
lesser creatures, and unwilling to bow before
God, he fell into self adoration. His sin was
to refuse God, the greatest being, and fall into
narcissism, embracing a warped self love and self
aggrandizement.
Yet, did we not say angels naturally are
bound to love God?
There is a dual movement within the fallen
angels. Although they are at enmity with God and
hate His punishment, each fiber of their being
has that natural propensity towards its Creator
and Lord. To me, this inner contradiction, this
schizophrenic attitude describes best the struggle
and hellish despair of the bad angels: thrust with
great force to love God with all their powerful
spirit, they have forever rejected his company and
He, in turn, says to them forever: “Depart from
Me, ye cursed!” Likewise, I believe heaven and
purgatory are explained by this same inclination
of the human soul.
Are you trying to say that there is a point
of union between the damned and the elect?’
I believe so. Let me explain myself: In heaven,
the blessed souls are free from any obstacle
which could halt their possession and enjoyment
of God. Their natural inclination is in perfect
harmony with the supernatural reward: God
appears to them face to face, throwing them
11

Theme Angels
into an endless ecstasy of love. In purgatory,
souls suffer from this same thrust towards God,
and yet, they cannot yet enjoy His presence due
to their own imperfections. And this eagerness of
wanting God is their purge and their purgatory.
Hence, the natural love of the creature for its
God has opposite effects for souls tuned up
differently. It turns into a hatred of love for
the damned; into a delayed thirst of love for
purgatory; and into the zenith of full love for the
blessed.
Our poor mind finds it difficult to
reconcile God’s justice with the eternal
punishment of one instant of madness. Is
there a flip side to this hard punishment in
the huge reward of the other angels? Or does
this short lived trial lessen their merit?
I do not believe so. The fall of the bad angels
was so culpable as to force God to create an
eternal hell for them, which suggests a grave
and indelible sin. This is because, without
extenuating circumstances of passion or error
as for men, they chose their ultimate end in that
one decisive moment. This moment of liberty
knew no repentance, and therefore, could know
no pardon. By contrast, we must say that the
decision to submit to God’s supernatural offer
was of great merit to the good angels. We know
only the names of three angels—archangels
rather—as given us in Sacred Scripture, and
St. Michael is said to have answered the ‘Non
serviam’ of Lucifer with the battle cry of ‘Quis ut
Deus’—who is like God? This angelic cry signifies
the perfect act of submission to God’s will. It
echoes the other historical intrusion of God in
the material world when Mary answers the angel
with her “Fiat.”
Who is freer in the last analysis: the angel
before the fall, or the good angel after the fall?
No one has any doubt that men have much
liberty compared to the angels, whose liberty
leaves no room for a U-turn. But, in fact, we view
liberty as the ability to choose: the more choice,
the longer we enjoy it, the freer we think we are!
Thus, we conclude that more liberty is given to
angels before the fall since they face a choice,
a single and unique choice unlike men. Angels
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‘enjoy’ the precarious and fragile liberty as they
are about to make an eternal choice: a jump
either into the abyss of hell or through the bridge
to heaven.
You seem to have reservation with this
interpretation of “liberty as the ability to
choose.” Why is that?
True liberty must lead to one’s perfection. If
this is so, it must be found eminently in God and
the blessed. Yet, neither has the choice of sin. In
Christian territory, liberty is never mistress of the
end but only of the means. Using my God-given
liberty to rebel against Him and rush into a wall
is self-destruction, not self-perfection. The ability
to sin denotes slavery and lack of liberty. Using
my liberty to change the goal posts, to reject my
last end, is an act of enslavement. This is what St.
Thomas says, not without nostalgia: “This is why
the liberty of the [blessed] angels is superior to
ours, since we have the ability to sin.”

Sanctus,
Sanctus,
Sanctus:
Making Artistic Sense of the Angels

by Dr. Andrew Childs

Angels have long held a pride of place in
art. They intoxicate the artistic imagination,
adorning countless churches in painted, mosaic,
sculpted, and carved depictions ranging from the
sublime—in gloriously idealized human form—
to the fanciful, and on occasion, the hideous.
We know that they sing—continuously, in the

case of the Seraphim surrounding the throne of
God—and composers, as we will consider below,
have made frequent and wondrous attempts to
depict their musical utterance. Of all the created
order, few things fascinate artist and observer
as angels do; from earliest childhood, we know
of their existence, and try somehow to make
13

Theme Angels
sense of them. They inspire awe, reverence,
fear, consolation, even nagging guilt—anyone
possessing even the slightest sensus Catholicus
knows deep down that he remains under
constant angelic surveillance. If we speak to
them, they answer in our own voice; when they
appear, they reveal themselves in human form.
A bridge between creation and the Creator, they
have been at work throughout recorded time,
charged to insert themselves at some of the most
spectacular moments in human history: tempting
Eve and Adam; staying the hand of Abraham;
guiding Moses and the Israelites in the Exodus;
announcing the Incarnation to the Blessed Virgin;
leading the Holy Family to safety; appearing to
the seers at Fatima; providing aid and comfort to
God Himself after His temptation in the desert,
and most poignantly, in His agony in the Garden.

angels, willfully separated from divine wisdom,
can err in knowledge of the supernatural. The
angelic intellect possesses imparted knowledge,
and as such, does not reason, though it
understands human reasoning. Though demons
can use this knowledge against us, they cannot,
however penetrate directly into minds and
wills: we remain free. Lucifer’s non serviam
was a rejection of God through pride, not a
fore-knowledge of the inheritance of human
beings—at the moment of Lucifer’s rebellion,
not-yet created rational, flesh-bound animals.
Lucifer could not deceive himself: he knew he
could not be God, but wanted to be as God. Soon
enough, he saw God’s plan for mankind—the
offer of the Beatific Vision he had rejected—and
he has focused his hatred of God on us ever since.
This promise of salvation for man represents
an inconceivable usurpation of an angelic
inheritance: beatitude bestowed upon matter.

The Place of Angels in Creation

The Devil and the demons will challenge
God for our souls, and the battleground, as we
have considered before, is the human heart.
Angels have intellectual knowledge imparted
by God, but not sense knowledge; they have
no senses—though they understand and can
influence our emotions, they have none of their
own. Of all created things, we alone feel emotion
illuminated by intellect. In one of the most
beautiful manifestations of God’s mercy and love
for us, He shares this capacity with us: the Sacred
Heart, fully human and fully Divine, rejoices
and breaks with ours. Through particularly
human, emotional means, music seeks to order
the human condition—a fantastic confluence
of intellect, will, emotion, passions, appetite,
and animal instinct—as God would have it by
elevating our lower nature, through our heart and
ultimately our intellect, toward Him. The Devil
seeks to invert and reverse this process, using
our hearts to dull our intellect, drawing us in a
passionate descent to hell.
Let us listen to the angels from Isaias 6:13:
“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
elevated: and His train filled the temple. Upon it
stood the Seraphim: the one had six wings, and
the other had six wings: with two they covered
His face, and with two they covered His feet, and

God created angels in grace, not glory. He
created them in sanctifying grace, but not
confirming grace; hence, some could fall. (St.
Thomas Aquinas considers the angels in detail
in the Summa Theologica, Qq. Ia: 50-64, 106114.) Angels either chose God and gained the
Beatific Vision, or refused God through pride and
envy—the only sins possible to the non-sensible
intelligence—losing the possibility of the Beatific
Vision forever: Angels are still bright, though the
brightest fell. (Hamlet, in Act 4, scene 3, speaks
truth: Lucifer, perhaps the brightest of the angelic
intelligences, is thought to be a Princely Seraph,
of the highest order of the ranks of angels.) What
has followed since that moment constitutes the
high drama of creation: the fight between God
and the devil for the human soul destined to
spend eternity either in heaven or in hell. “What is
man,” sings the Psalmist, “that Thou art mindful
of him? Or the son of man that Thou visit him?
Thou hast made him a little less than the angels,
thou hast crowned him with glory and honor.”
Angels, though more perfectly able to deduce
the likelihood of future events, do not know
the future—they can convince us of what may
happen, but do not know that it will. Fallen
14

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with two they flew. And they cried one to another,
and said: Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of Hosts,
all the earth is full of His glory.”
What follows will consider briefly—either
by introduction or reminder—six musical
interpretations of the seraphic utterance: motet
settings of “Duo seraphim” by Guerrero, Victoria,
and Monteverdi; and polyphonic Mass settings
of the “Sanctus” by Palestrina, Byrd, and finally
Bach. The first five of these quintessentially
Catholic works come not surprisingly from the
Counter-Reformation period, unmatched in its
outpouring of apologetic musical perfection.
The last, from the B-minor Mass—perhaps the
definitive musical masterwork, written by the
Lutheran Bach—stands in majestic opposition
to Protestant heresy: God’s “deference” to Bach’s
genius in providing the ultimate pure musical
exegesis of the unaltered Catholic Mass confirms
His unchangeable dominion, and Luther’s
ultimate shame.

Francisco Guerreo (15281599), “Duo Seraphim”
Guerreo, Cristobal de Morales, and Victoria
were the three great priest-composers of the
Spanish Counter-Reformation period. Though
certainly lesser known than Victoria, Guerrero
may well have lived a more eventful life:
returning from the Holy Land, his ship was
attacked by pirates; he was imprisoned, and had
to be ransomed by the Cathedral of Seville.
Though hardly derivative, his “Duo Seraphim”
displays an amazing breadth of Renaissance
styles, especially in the use of texture and
harmonic shifts. He treats the opening phrases,
“Duo seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum/
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Domine Deus
Sabaoth,” with a poignant clarity reminiscent
of Byrd’s Mass settings. At “Plena est omnis
terra Gloria ejus,” he dramatically enhances the
choral texture rivalling the opulent grandeur
of Gabrieli. He then grafts text from the first

15

Theme Angels
Epistle of John (as do Victoria and Monteverdi)
which references the Trinity: “Tres sunt, qui
testimonium dant in caelo; Pater, Verbum, et
Spiritus Sanctus.” Here, the dramatic harmonic
shifts resemble Gesualdo, though with superior
elegance. His repeated text, “Sanctus Dominus/
Plena est terra” resumes the broader texture;
the final “Amen,” avoids all elaboration, a proper
liturgical punctuation.

We hear in Victoria’s setting the otherworldly
seamlessness that defined Palestrina, but
expressed through lither texture, which allows for
a sublime clarity of text expression, enhanced by
tasteful, overlapping repetitions of specific words
creating a wonderful echoing effect, particularly at
the initial utterance of “Sanctus.” His subtle shift to
triple meter on the text “Et in tres unum sunt,” both
delights, and underscores Doctrinal truth.

Tomás Luis de Vittoria (15481611), “Duo Seraphim”

Claudio Monteverdi (15671653), “Duo Seraphim,” Vespro
della Beata Virgine (1610)

Historians frequently refer to Victoria as
the “Spanish Palestrina,” hardly an offense,
but unwittingly trite given Victoria’s talent and
musical service to the Church. Sent by Phillip II
to study in Rome, he established himself as one
of the most respected figures in the Church. He
returned to Spain in 1587, and, apart from various
travels, including several return trips to Rome,
remained there in the service of the Dowager
Empress Maria in the Discalced Monastery
of Santa Clara in Madrid as her chaplain and
Maestro. After her death in 1603, he demoted
himself to the position of organist, a post he
retained until he died.

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Written most likely as an audition piece for the
job of Maestro di Capella of St. Mark’s in Venice (a
job he secured in 1613), Monteverdi creates a grand
and highly virtuosic conception of the Vespers
service. At 90 minutes, it is a full-length music
drama in which Monteverdi made no attempt to
obscure his theatrical style. The piece alternates
between Gregorian antiphons coupled with Psalms
in madrigal style, and free-standing motets, such
as “Duo Seraphim,” ending with a multi-movement
Magnificat setting, and a sonata.
At the beginning of the “Duo Seraphim,”
ostensibly a duet for two tenors (it becomes a trio),
Monteverdi intertwines the two tenor voices in
a series of rising and falling suspensions on the
text “Duo Seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum”
in what may be the most glorious 45 seconds of
vocal duet ever composed. The vocal gymnastics
displayed in the “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus” are
formidable, a nod to the prevailing style, but also
an indication of the celestial capacities in question.
In the latter half of the piece, the two seraphic
tenors are joined by a third of equal facility:
admittedly theatrical, but stunningly effective.
On the text, “Et in tres,” the three individual
voices begin on separate notes, yet join to sing
in unison on the words “unum sunt,” an example
of Monteverdi’s sensitivity to word-painting, the
“literal” depiction of specific text.
This setting displays as well as any of his works
Monteverdi’s ability to transcend the period to
which he clearly belongs, confirming his closing of
the Renaissance.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
(1525-1594), “Sanctus,”
Missa Papae Marcelli
We know Palestrina simply as “The Prince
of Music.” He expressed in music, with an
unmistakable elegance unknown before and
unmatched since, the majestic renunciation of
Protestant error by the Council of Trent. Charged
to “save polyphony from banishment” at the
Council due to excesses that had overtaken
liturgical composition—and admittedly these
existed—he created a definitive “champion” in
the Missa Papae Marcelli, composed in honor of
Pope Marcellus II, in 1562.
Rather than overwhelm heaven with majesty,
Palestrina’s angels seem to whisper with
total sublimity, “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dominus Deus Sabaoth.” Though at “Pleni sunt
coeli et terra Gloria tua” he changes mood
and contrapuntal pace (the rate at which the
individual voices enter), any effect here, through
either increased tempo or volume, sufficiently
dramatic to upset the overall mood represents
interpretive excess: the supreme challenge in
reading Palestrina lies in the discipline required
to maintain ethereal calm. The music defies
theatrical effect. Palestrina supplies the needed
increase in intensity at “Hosanna in excelsis,”
by again increasing the contrapuntal pacing.
Few moments typify the “Palestrina style” as
poignantly as the “Benedictus qui venit in nomine
Domini,” a return to the hushed tones of the
opening. The “Hosanna” returns to close the
movement with restrained joy.

William Byrd (ca. 1540-1623),
“Sanctus,” Mass for Five Voices
After his retirement from the Protestant
English court in the 1490’s, Recusant Catholic
William Byrd devoted himself to the composition
of music for the persecuted English Catholic
Church. At a time of martyrs for the Faith, he
“sacrificed...everything for faith—his position,
the court, and all those aspirations common
to men who seek preferment in royal circles

as a means of improving their fortunes.” If the
Spanish Renaissance masters deserve to be
better-known, Byrd must be. He composed music
of unmatched poignancy and clarity, possessing a
uniquely pliant and delicate harmonic palette and
exceptionally sensitive contrapuntal tendencies.
His three Catholic Masses—for Three, Four, and
Five voices—represent a continuously rewarding
and humbling revelation for the Catholic listener.
If Palestrina’s seraphs sing in tones of
hushed yet joyful majesty, Byrd’s seem to weep,
expressing perfect sympathy with those suffering
gruesome torture and death for love of their God
and His Church. The opening “Sanctus, Sanctus,
Sanctus,” a full minute of heart-breaking beauty,
seems more a plea than an ejaculation of praise.
Anguish and urgency are notable in “Dominus
Deus Saboath,” setting up a textural and
dynamic contrast at “pleni sunt coeli et terra,”
a remarkably humble admission rather than an
overt statement of praise. At the first “Hosanna,”
we hear majesty for the first time, though only
briefly: the return to the hushed dynamics and
reduced texture of “pleni” at the “Benedictus”
stand out in touching relief. Though we hear
genuine joy in the final “Hosanna,” it is clearly an
expression of one who suffers greatly for love.

Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750), “Sanctus,”
Mass in B-minor (1749)
I stand by my statement that the B-minor Mass,
Bach’s final summary statement, is the greatest
single musical composition in history (“single,”
rather than a body of work like Gregorian chant,
or a set of symphonies, sonatas, or operas,
etc.) By way of an excusable tangent above the
footnote line—usually indulged below it—let me
defend the statement. Reverse engineering of the
“greatest piece ever-written” involves many steps.
Though most of these steps remain open to some
debate, probability continually shifts toward
the B-minor Mass. The process goes something
like this: Art, as all things—angels included!—
conforms to hierarchy: good, better, better yet,
potentially best, best: TGE (The Greatest Ever)
17

Theme Angels
would necessarily be “good” rather than “bad,”
and “high” rather than “low”: only a Modernist
would argue otherwise. TGE would likely be
large, rather than small—a multi-movement work
has an immediate advantage due to the range of
contrast and styles available to the composer in
his “single” piece; he also has the added benefit
of being able to create a narrative through-line
based on non-musical principles. TGE would
likely come from the top of the Western Music
“bell curve,” the 17th-19th centuries: anything
earlier or later finds itself in periods of stylistic
extremes more limiting than liberating, either
bound to a modal conception of harmony in the
case of “early” music, or in the case of modern
music, bound by...nothing, but the tyranny of
innovation, the sound of which demonstrates that
the lack of rules results not in ultimate freedom,
but utter chaos.
TGE would likely be vocal rather than
instrumental: the emotional amplification of
intellectual concepts and universal themes
provided by a text not only allows the composer
to craft formally cohesive pieces—the sum
of varying yet interdependent parts in the
case of a multi-movement work—but pieces
informed by dramatic literal narrative; ordering
through intellectual as well as emotional means
necessarily yields works of a higher order. TGE
could come from either the secular or the sacred
realm, but, again invoking hierarchy, liturgical
works would seem to have an advantage.
TGE would set the greatest possible text: the
lopsidedness of opera—magnificent music
‘glorifying’ trivial or scandalous themes—
disqualifies it as a genre, though some compelling
individual cases exist. This leads us to the
B-minor Mass, a high-art, large-scale vocal work
written in 1749, which sets—with dazzling variety
and unfathomable depth—the unabridged text of
the Mass in Latin.

Bach and the Mass
Observe not only the fact that the Lutheran J.S.
Bach composed the ultimate musical expression
of the Mass, but also the irony and necessity.
Bach neither adds nor subtracts from the Mass
18

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text, but in his organization, and in the elaborate
care he takes setting specific texts—providing
dramatic as well as musical contrasts—he
exceeds all reasonable liturgical boundaries:
it’s too big. A Catholic composer could not have
conceived of a Mass of this scale, yet Bach, free
from liturgical parameters, provides a supreme
musical meditation on the Mass that would be
impossible in the actual time of a celebrated
Mass. In short, the Mass in B-minor is the
Catholic statement only a Protestant could make.
The opening of the “Sanctus” explodes in
grandeur. The basses proclaim, reinforced
by brass and tympani, “Sanctus, Sanctus,
Sanctus,” in a way which more resembles these
instruments than the other five voices, which,
in contrast spin unbroken lines of dense but
not obscure counterpoint. The soprano hovers
in pulsating triplets throughout the “Domine
Deus Sabaoth,” while the basses punctuate
with relentless octaves, moving up and down
throughout the scale: the effect is pure majesty.
They defer momentarily to join the upper voices
in a sequence of ascending utterance of the word
“Sabaoth” that gives a glimpse of the divine.
These few moments are not so much a superlative
execution of compositional techniques as the
momentary organic absorption of the exceptional
artist into Divine inspiration: though we will
never know on earth the sounds of heaven, Bach
seems to part the veil. In the fugue that follows
on “Pleni sunt coeli et terra Gloria Tua,” Bach
unleashes on his voices a contrapuntal fury
he usually reserved for himself—and future
organists—yet this yields pure exhilaration.
Angels are real; they are numberless; they exist
to help us attain the Beatific Vision they already
possess. There exists in all these masterworks—
and many others that treat of the same subject—a
sense of the heavenly host, created by God for His
good pleasure and our aid. They angels remind us
of the supernatural end of creation, providing a
living link between earth and heaven, motivated
by God’s love for us. The artist, in daring to
represent the angelic hymn in sound, attempts in
our name to return the favor.

706 pp. – Flexible imitation leather cover with gold foil stamping and rounded corners – Sewn binding – 2 Ribbons – STK# 8680 – $39.95

A Young Catholic’s Daily Missal

The Young Catholic’s Daily Missal is designed to open up the spiritual treasures of the Mass for young Catholics
from the time of their First Communion up through their preteen years. This missal conforms to the rubrics and
norms of the 1962 Missale Romanum and includes the full Ordinary of the Mass in Latin and English, and the
Masses for Sundays and Holydays in English with paraphrases of the Propers. For all the other days of the year,
there are explanations, printed in smaller type, of the Introit, Epistle and Gospel. These, along with the Common of Saints, make this missal ideal for daily use. Finally, this missal contains morning and evening prayers;
instructions on the meaning of the Mass; and an array of traditional devotions. Illustrated throughout.

42

ORDINARY OF THE MASS

INTROIT

43

280

PROPeR OF The SeASON

FIRST SUNDAy OF LeNT

281

LITANy OF The hOLy NAMe

must love your enemies and pray for those who do
you harm. Only then will you be the children of God;
for you will do as God does. You know that God does
good even to sinners. God makes His sun shine upon
the good and the bad. Be good like the good God.

SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY

INTROIT

THE PRIEST KISSES THE ALTAR

M

y God, the Priest walks up the steps
to the altar, and kisses it with respect.
I cannot do that; but yet I should like to
assist him. So while he prays aloud and
in Latin, I will say the very same thing to
myself in English. My God, Thou hast pardoned the Priest his sins; pardon me mine,
because I am sorry that I ever did them.
I know that I do not deserve Thy pardon; for I always begin again to offend
Thee. Do not think of me, but of the
Saints whose relics are inside the altar,
and of all the Saints in glory. For their
sakes pardon me all my sins.

Read this lntroit, if you have not one marked in your little
missal. It belongs to the feast of the Sacred Heart.

T

he divine Heart of Jesus loves us; He

has delivered us from the sin that kills
the souls, and He gives us His graces.
You must not think any more of yourself: think of Him Who is about to come
as a victim on the altar.
If you wish God to be very much
pleased with you, promise Him that you
will do everything as well as you can; so
that when He comes you may be able to
say to Him: My God, I intend to work for
Thee, in order to please Thee. Whatever I
do will be done for Thee. My Jesus, I give
Thee this day.

I NTROIT. God has heard Me and has had pity on
Me, says Jesus, upon the cross. With Jesus let us say:
I thank Thee, O God, because Thou hast delivered
me from my enemies.
COLLeCT. O God, hear our prayer, and help us
to keep all the days of fasting well, by making many
sacrifices, to cure our soul made sick by sin.
ePISTLe. If you are good to your neighbor, if you
are charitable, says Isaias, God will reward you. He
brought Jesus back to life after He was dead, and
placed Him in heaven; He will give life to your soul,
and give you heaven, if you do all you should to honor God, specially on Sundays.
Tract of Ash Wednesday, p. 277.

G OSPeL . It was dark at night; the Apostles were
in a boat upon the lake, and had great difficulty in
rowing, for the wind was high. Jesus came to them,
walking upon the water, when it was broad daylight. The Apostles thought they saw a ghost and
were afraid. He stepped into the boat and the wind
dropped. When they came ashore, people brought
the sick to Him and He healed them. Always have
confidence in Jesus, and He will always help you.

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
I N the city of Rome the Mass is said today in the
church of Saint John Lateran. The patrons of this
church are Jesus the Savior and Saint John the Baptist. Jesus, who was baptized by Saint John saves us

through baptism. And Lent is to prepare those who
are not yet Christians for the sacrament of baptism
after the font is blessed on Holy Saturday; and also
Christians for their confession, through which Jesus
saves souls that have fallen into great sins after their
baptism.

I NTROIT. With Jesus in the desert we
pray to God, for He has promised to help
us if we say our prayers well.
PRAyeRS. O God, every year we begin
the holy season of Lent on this day as the
Church wishes us to do. Grant that we
may be really good, and make our little
sacrifices generously.
ePISTLe. Saint Paul repeats what the
prophet Isaias said: Now is the right time
to do penance; do not let the chance slip
away. Now is the right time to correct our

VARIOUS DEVOTIONS
DEVOTIONS TO OUR LORD
Litany of the Holy Name

L ORD, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Jesus, hear us.
Jesus, graciously hear us.
God the Father of heaven, have mercy on
us.
God, the Son, Redeemer of the world,
God the Holy Ghost,
Holy Trinity, one God,
Jesus, Son of the living God,

663

Jesus, splendor of the Father, have mercy
on us.
Jesus, brightness of eternal light,
Jesus, King of glory,
Jesus, sun of justice,
Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary,
Jesus, most lovable,
Jesus, most admirable,
Jesus, mighty God,
Jesus, Father of the world to come,
Jesus, Angel of great counsel,
Jesus, most powerful,
Jesus, most patient,
Jesus, most obedient,
Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Jesus, lover of chastity,
Jesus, lover of us,
Jesus, God of peace,
Jesus, author of life,
Jesus, example of virtues,
Jesus, zealous lover of souls,
Jesus, our God,
Jesus, our refuge,
Jesus, Father of the poor,
Jesus, treasure of the faithful,
Jesus, Good Shepherd,
Jesus, true light,
Jesus, eternal wisdom,
Jesus, infinite goodness,
Jesus, our way and our life,

662

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Theme Angels

Exorcism
Today
Interview with an Exorcist

Editor’s Note: The following is an interview
with an exorcist. The conversational style has
been retained throughout.
In many countries, more people believe
that Satan is superior to God. Could this
increased belief in Satan be a way to get
people back to God?
To me, this phenomenon suggests that most
people are desensitized about Satan, and treat
him as a fairy tale evil spirit. This has been
promoted by Halloween celebrations as well as
Harry Potter movies. There is a sick fascination
for Satan, in the exact proportion as the Catholic
religion is losing ground unfortunately.
In the course of the exorcisms which you
have performed, how could you recognized
20

The Angelus

January - February 2018

the presence of Satan?
I think that his personal characters are hatred,
the fake and the ugly, typically the opposite of the
Christian disciple who is enamored of charity, the
true and the beautiful. In all the exorcisms I have
performed, there is this terrifying abominable
side of Satan who hates souls, whose aim is
to deter them from their eternal destiny and,
to reach his goal, will use all types of lies and
disgusting behavior.
Have you experienced something
comparable to the session in the movie The
Exorcist?
Yes, I was in the Philippines and, accompanied
by a doctor, we assisted a lady, whose past had
been involved with a sorcerer who finally cast
a spell on her. She is Catholic and suffers much

from being possessed. During confession and
communion, she falls into a trance. But, I must
let the doctor describe the session: “What I
witnessed was the first part of the movie The
Exorcist. Plunged into a state of catalepsy,
two demons with different tones of voice
spoke through her mouth. We were in extreme
conditions. What took place then is beyond any
medical concept. The symptoms of this kind
lady, who explains her case with her soft voice,
refer to no classification or clinical graphic ever
described in medical literature.” The bishop of
the place had already imposed hands on this lady
but without success. What was needed was to
practice the Great Exorcism with the necessary
authorizations. Her husband, Mike, dedicated
to the work of Tradition, told me: “It does not
happen when she goes to the Novus Ordo!”
Have you not thought that, among those
who approach you for an exorcism, they
would be better off seeing a doctor?
It is often difficult to discern psychological
illness from possession. In a society where
people have lost their bearings and their roots
along with their faith, mental unbalance is on
the increase. Yet, there are still real cases of
diabolical activity. One might say that, of all
those who approach the Church, just a few would
do well to undergo an exorcism, whereas most
would be treated by medicine and another large
number by prayers and frequent sacramental
practice.
Am I to understand that the Church gives
a warning of prudence to the priest?
Indeed, and to prove it, let me simply quote
one of the guidelines before the great exorcism
given from the Church ritual: “Especially, he
[the exorcist] should not believe too readily that
a person is possessed by an evil spirit; but he
ought to ascertain the signs by which a person
possessed can be distinguished from one who is
suffering from melancholy or some other illness.”
Are there any sure signs of possession?
Again, the ritual gives some sure signs: “ability
to speak with some facility in a strange tongue or
to understand it when spoken by another; display

of powers which are beyond the subject’s age and
natural condition; and various other indications
which, when taken together as a whole, pile up
the evidence.”
How does the devil manifest unusual
activity on people?
We often speak of possession, which is the
taking control of the body by the demon. But
there are also less radical influences. The lighter
ones are called infestations, limited to a place
or an object, of which St. John Vianney suffered
much during the nights in his rectory of Ars.
Then, you have corporal obsessions where the
demon attacks directly persons with exterior
visions, as those mentioned by St. Teresa of Avila.
Finally, you have the interior obsessions which
affect the mental faculties with either drowsiness
or, on the contrary, excitation of the imagination,
or unusual temptations against faith, purity or
life.
Are these troubled souls the initiators or
the victims of their sorry lot?
Well! Satan is not the god of Evil. He can act
only in as much as God allows him to. So, usually,
he cannot reach someone unless he is allowed
to come in, like a dog on leash is dangerous only
to those who approach him. And, so, a Catholic
assiduous to sacraments will have little to
fear from Satan. Obviously, he will be subject
to temptations, but he will be protected from
extraordinary evil force. On the other hand, he
who does not practice his religion is an easy prey
for Satan. And it is noticeable that possessions
and suchlike are often the results of sins of
explicit superstition invoking evils spirits. You
call them, and they come in force! Sometimes,
however, it comes from an outsider: magic,
incantations and spells cast by sorcerers on the
victim.
Isn’t the priest as a man in a lesser
position against the angelic adversary?
The priest as a man is obviously limited.
But, in as much as he is acting as God’s
representative, under proper obedience to his
superiors’ command and after due inquiry of
the case, he has a divine mandate. He is also
21

St. Exuperus drives out a demon, Cathedral of Bayeux, France

equipped with formidable prayers from the
ritual. And, as the ritual indicates, “He will bid
the unclean spirit keep silence and answer only
when asked. Let him pronounce the exorcisms
in a commanding and authoritative voice, and at
the same time with great confidence, humility
and fervor; and when he sees that the spirit is
sorely vexed, then he oppresses and threatens
all the more.” That is why it is important for him
to use the Church prayers, speaking properly the
Latin he uses. We had cases in which the evil one
mocked the sloppy pronunciation of the priest’s
prayers, but also, I said the Hail Mary in English
with no effect whereas the devil was really upset
when I pronounced it in Latin!
Have these exorcisms helped souls to
progress spiritually?
Absolutely! It is wonderful to see the power of
the Church manifested through the exorcisms,
because, once more, this is a struggle between
the Church and Satan. That is why the Church
sets strict laws to the “wrestling match” so to
speak. The priest is God’s athlete who must
firstly go to confession, fast and say his Mass
before affronting the evil one. Moreover, he is to
stick to the text of the ritual. And, as long as he
remains within the obedience of the Church, he
has nothing to fear. In these rites and prayers, it
is easy to notice the power of the dogma of the
Holy Trinity which Satan cannot bear... or of the
Blessed Virgin, “powerful as an army in battle
array,” against whom Satan can only lament and
hide. I have often witnessed that those victims
of possession, once delivered, made a true
conversion to God. They naturally feel gratitude
towards the Church who liberated them from
the devil’s clutches, and much confidence in the
Blessed Virgin who has great power over him too.

exorcism proper, there is always the eternal
struggle between God and Satan about taking
possession of the human soul. In this, there is no
anachronism to speak of casting out devils. But,
getting back to this specific apostolate, renowned
exorcists usually compare the battle going on
against the devil to the dual between the exorcist
and the sorcerer, whose arena is the possessed
body, whose weapons are the sorcerer’s spell
and, for the exorcist, the rites of the Church, the
sacramentals, the penances and prayer.
So, to conclude, in this day and age, can we say
that there is more work than ever for exorcists?
I would not dare give a straight answer to this
quibble. But I would say the following: what is
clear is that Satan is running a race against the
clock and he knows that in the end, he won’t
be able to harm souls. And that is why he is
multiplying his influence today. On the other
hand, that is why it is our duty as priests to use
this religious priesthood and our faith to give
souls to God and God to souls, knowing that our
heavenly Father will ensure our protection.

Do you not think that this apostolate is an
anachronism in the 21st century?
Not at all. If it will raise some smile from
some who are skeptical about Satan’s influence,
this priestly power given has a place and time
for its exercise. We often sense the struggle
with the evil spirit simply by hearing long
lines of confessions and teaching the faith
to catechumens. In other words, beyond the
23

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Faith and Morals

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:

The Grandeur
of the
Roman Rite
by Fr. Christopher Danel

“Countless goods, incomprehensible wonders
and mysteries are contained in the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass. This holy Sacrifice is too great,
too precious and too glorious to be adequately
expressed in words or to receive an appropriate
name: it surpasses all created knowledge, it
is unspeakably grand and sublime.” – Msgr.
Nicholas Gihr

Introduction
Of the commentaries on the liturgy of the
Roman Rite, one of the most edifying is The
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically,
Liturgically, and Ascetically Explained, by Rev.
Dr. Nicholas Gihr. We will henceforth examine
some aspects of the Mass of the Roman Rite

based on his fundamental opus and presenting
his work.
A word about the author is in order. Monsignor
Gihr was a priest of the Archdiocese of Freiburg
in Breisgau, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany,
whose liturgical expertise was appreciated
in Rome during his lifetime. He earned his
doctorate during the pontificate of Pope Pius
IX and published his principal study at the very
end of the same, sealing it with his preface from
St. Peter’s Basilica in 1877. He was active during
the pontificate of Pope St. Pius X, was created a
Monsignor by Pope Benedict XV, and was later
honored also by Pope Pius XI.
The French translation of the study was
received with great acclaim, after which the
first English translation appeared in 1902,
published by Herder in St. Louis. The
25

Faith and Morals
priests of the American Ecclesiastical Review
described the work as follows: “The immediate
object of Dr. Gihr’s volume is not so much to
rehearse the historical data which mark the
development of the Catholic liturgy, as rather to
lead his readers to a deeper appreciation of the
devotional significance of each rite.... It treats
of the reality, the essence and efficacy of the
Eucharistic sacrifice, and shows us its distinctive
and important place in the organic structure of
the Church” (AER, vol. XXVII, n. 6, pp. 692-3).

26

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The original study is: Gihr, Nikolaus. Messopfer
dogmatisch, liturgish und aszetish erklärt.
Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau, 1877.

The Term Missa
This article will focus on some preliminaries
of the Mass: its name, its origin, and its grandeur.
We begin with the name customarily given to the
Holy Sacrifice in our Rite. Almost the only one

used since late antiquity is the term Missa. In the
beginning it referred to the dismissal of those
assisting at the Holy Sacrifice, and by extension
became applied to the divine worship itself.
Although it is unclear precisely when this took
place, by the time of St. Ambrose (+397) it was
commonly employed. This Doctor of the Church
used the term in his writings in such a way that
it clearly was already in his time the traditional
term used to refer to the Holy Sacrifice.
After this primary explanation, Msgr. Gihr

expounds upon a second one which was
developed by the liturgists of the Middle Ages.
“The Eucharistic Sacrifice is called Missa,
because in it there is a sending forth (missa =
transmissio) from earth to heaven and from
heaven to earth. The Church sends up to the
throne of God by the ministry of the priest
the Eucharistic Sacrifice and prayers, and the
necessities and desires of the faithful; God
in return sends down upon men the riches of
heavenly grace and blessing. Or we may put it

27

Faith and Morals
in a different way: Christ is sent into the world by
the Father as a sacrifice, and in turn He is sent
back again to heaven by the faithful as a sacrifice,
in order to reconcile us to the Father and to
procure for us all blessings. This signification
of the Missa is implied by the very nature of
the thing, and thus far undoubtedly contains
truth; but this point of view probably did not
determine the selection of the expression Missa
to designate the, Holy Sacrifice : in other words,
the faithful of the first ages did not choose the
word Missa to express that in the Sacrifice the
above mentioned mission or sending forth from
God to man and from man to God takes place; it
was only later that this was so understood and
explained.”

Jesus Christ and the Apostles
The First Mass was offered by Our Lord Jesus
Christ in the Cenacle in Jerusalem on the evening
of Maundy Thursday, the eve of his Crucifixion.
At the Last Supper, He gave the Apostles the
mission and mandate to continue this Sacrifice
in His Church for all time and conferred His
Priesthood upon them. By His command, then,
they celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
wherever they went on their missionary journeys.
The Mass of Christ was their sole model and
they devotedly carried out what He had done
before them. According to His instructions and
the light given to them by the Holy Ghost, they
added various prayers and ceremonies to the
essential act of the Sacrifice according to the
circumstances of time and place, so that the
greatest glory would be given to God by the
sacred liturgy and that souls would be supremely
edified by its observance.
Msgr. Gihr describes this development of
the Apostolic liturgy in the East and West:
“The Apostles, who had been instructed by the
Lord Himself in the mysteries of the kingdom
of God, and were filled with the Holy Ghost,
assuredly observed a fixed order in the daily
celebration of the Holy Sacrifice[.] The essential
and fundamental features of the sacrificial rite,
introduced and enlarged upon by the Apostles,
were preserved with fidelity and reverence
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in the churches founded by them and their
successors; but in the course of time, according
as it was deemed necessary or expedient, it was
always more and more developed, enriched and
perfected, yet after a different manner, in the
various churches of the East and West. ‘The
Lord never ceases to be present to His beloved
Spouse the Church, never fails to be at her side
in her office of teaching and to accompany her in
her operation with His blessing,’ consequently,
He had the power, as He also had the will, to
bequeath to the chiefs and shepherds of the
Church the right to give to the Sacrifice instituted
by Himself the most natural and the wisest
development and the best adapted form, that is,
to give it due liturgical form and solemnity.”
Thus it is clear that the Church’s liturgy traces
directly to the twelve Apostles themselves. The
liturgy of the Roman Rite, furthermore, traces
directly to St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles
and first Pontiff of Rome. Pope Innocent I (402417) wrote to the Bishop of Gubbio about the
ceremonies of the Mass, adding, “Who does
not know that what has been handed down by
Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, to the Roman
Church is still observed unto this day, and
must be observed by all?” Therefore St. Peter is
recognized as the founder of the Roman Rite, and
in celebrating it and establishing it in Rome, he
followed the outline given out by Christ and laid
the essential foundation for all of its later organic
development. The nineteenth-century liturgist
Rev. Dr. Joseph Kössing of Regensburg aptly
described, “This liturgy, as yet a tender plant, was
brought by St. Peter, the Prince of the Church,
into the garden of the Roman Church, where
by his nursing care and that of his successors,
assisted by the Holy Ghost, it has grown to a
large tree, and although the trunk has long ago
attained its full growth, it nevertheless shoots
forth in every century new branches and new
blossoms.”

The Grandeur of the Rite
Msgr. Gihr describes the grandeur of the
Roman Rite, the grande dame amongst Holy
Church’s liturgical rites, in the following elogium:

“Thus has the Church in the course of time
set the jewel of the Holy Sacrifice in the most
magnificent manner with heavenly wisdom and
skill for the praise of God and the edification of
the faithful, by surrounding it with the precious
decorations of holy prayers, of holy hymns,
lessons and ceremonies. She has enveloped
the celebration of the adorable Sacrifice in a
mystic veil, in order to fill the hearts and minds
of the faithful with religious awe and profound
reverence, and to urge them to earnest, pious
contemplation and meditation. The beauty, the
worth and the perfection of the Roman liturgy
of the Mass are universally acknowledged and
admired.”
Father Faber referred to the Holy Sacrifice as
the most beautiful thing this side of heaven. He
furthermore remarks, “It came forth out of the
grand mind of the Church, and lifted us out of
earth and out of self, and wrapped us round in a
cloud of mystical sweetness and the sublimities
of a more than angelic liturgy, and purified us
almost without ourselves, and charmed us with
celestial charming, so that our very senses seem
to find vision, hearing, fragrance, taste and touch,
beyond what earth can give.”
The liturgical prayers of the Church exceed
all others, as Cardinal Wiseman of Westminster
wrote in 1854: “If we examine each prayer
separately, it is perfect; perfect in construction,
perfect in thought, and perfect in expression.
If we consider the manner in which they are
brought together, we are struck with the brevity
of each, with the sudden but beautiful transitions,
and the almost stanza-like effect, with which
they succeed one another, forming a lyrical
composition of surpassing beauty. If we take the
entire service, as a whole, it is constructed with
the most admirable symmetry, proportioned in
its parts with perfect judgment and so exquisitely
arranged, as to excite and preserve an unbroken
interest in the sacred action. No doubt, to give
full force and value to this sacred rite, its entire
ceremonial is to be considered. The assistants,
with their noble vestments, the chant, the
incense, the more varied ceremonies which
belong to a solemn Mass, are all calculated to
increase veneration and admiration. But still,
the essential beauties remain, whether the holy

rite be performed under the golden vault of St.
Peter’s, with all the pomp and circumstance
befitting its celebration by the Sovereign Pontiff,
or in a wretched wigwam, erected in haste by
some poor savages for their missionary.”
The Rite is admirably structured and
composed, as the Prussian liturgist Fr. J.
H. Oswald wrote in 1877: “That overruling
influence of the Spirit of God, that directs even
in secondary matters the affairs of the visible
Church, nowhere else appears so marked and
evident as in the arrangement of the rite of the
Holy Mass, which,…in its present state forms
such a beautiful, perfect whole, yea, a splendid
work, that it excites the admiration of every
reflecting mind. Even the bitterest adversaries
of the Church do not deny it; unprejudiced,
aesthetic judges of good taste admit that even
from their own standpoint the Mass is to be
classed as one of the greatest masterpieces ever
composed. Thus, the momentous sacrifice is
encompassed with magnificent ceremonies: it is
our duty to study, to penetrate more and more
into their meaning, and to expound what we have
learned[.]”

Conclusion
In concluding his treatment of what he terms
the preliminaries of the rite, Msgr. Gihr sums
up with fervor: “The Roman liturgy has for
some centuries been a complete masterpiece of
art wonderful in the harmony and union of its
parts. The most sacred and venerable prayers
and chants, breathing religious fervor and
tenderness, follow most ingeniously upon one
another, and together with the most appropriate
and significant actions and ceremonies, form a
beautiful whole, serving as a protecting garment
and a worthy ornament to the divine mystery
of the Holy Sacrifice. Their language, for its
kind and object, cannot be surpassed; for it is
biblical, ancient, simple, grave, dignified, solid,
full of the spirit of faith, humility and devotion,
and penetrated with the perfume of piety and
holiness.”

29

Faith and Morals

And of Persons There Are Only These:

Human,
Angelic,
and Divine
by Dr. Michael Berton

It is impossible for anyone to have no notion of angels. However, contemporary depictions are often
caricatures of their true nature. Many ancient cultures evidenced belief in immaterial agents of good
or evil. Moreover, certain philosophical movements in those eras postulated spiritual beings that
complemented earlier mythical depictions. These attempted to explain reality in terms of a great chain
of existents above material things that mediates the sub-lunar world with its ultimate cause or principle.
Such often implied that things necessarily poured forth from that source in a cascade of evermore
complex, changeable, limited beings. The virtually infinite highest principle, seemingly, acted without
liberty and from necessity, finding its power exhausted in the formless, unlimited, infinite potentiality of
the co-eternal, uncreated principle of unformed matter.

The Assumptions of Man
A central assumption was that the universe
has an eternal duration of endlessly great
repetitive cycles, with its ultimate necessity only
occasionally disrupted by idiosyncratic, chance
events and actions. To accept this narrative
30

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about the universe and ourselves, of course,
raises unsolvable problems concerning human
liberty. Such assumptions imply the ultimate
source of existing as being unable to bring forth
limited, less simple, material things without
the necessary assistance of co-eternal spiritual
intermediaries to assure that it may remain pure

and uncorrupted by lesser effects, yet in some
way be credited with bringing them forth.
As many Fathers and Doctors of the Church
pondered the full implications of the Book of
Genesis and the Incarnation of the Second
Person of the Eternal Trinity, it was apparent the
aforementioned assumptions had to be corrected.
How could it be otherwise if one ponders
attentively the insistence in Genesis that the
Creator made “be” the universe and sustains or
conserves it in “being” here and now? This must
also apply to purely spiritual beings. Further,
how could such be reconciled with the Revelation
made to Moses of the Proper Name of the Creator
as “I AM (Who) I AM,” an affirmation profoundly
reiterated in a different context by our Lord Jesus
Christ when He confirmed that “Before Abraham
was, I am?”
These certitudes granted by Faith in
Revelation confirmed that the entirety of creation
presupposed absolutely nothing, except the
Infinite, Subsisting Being of the Eternal Trinity.
In an instant, with no necessity imposed on that
supreme act of loving generosity, the unified
Divine Will made this entire contingent universe
of myriads of interacting kinds of existents.
And it was freely chosen as the most fitting to
manifest the Divine Goodness from among all
possibles within the Infinite Understanding of the
Trinity.

The Experience of Orders
Henceforth, purely spiritual beings could only
be understood as creatures that came “to be”
at an instant coinciding with the origin of the
universe initiating time. Each, like all things,
must be sustained in being by the same act of
generosity that was Creation, even though their
existing is not inherently measured by time but
rather “aevum.” This notion was assimilated
from prior philosophical reflections based upon a
reasonable conclusion: things encountered within
experience, evidence different kinds or orders in
which the highest, most interior acts of one rank,
approximates the lowest acts of other kinds or
orders.
Since each rank or order is distinguished by

its innermost, comprehensive, intensive acts,
we may truly distinguish a human from all
living, sensing, animate things by referring to
ourselves as reasoning animate beings. At the
heart of reasoning to learn further truths there
is operative an enduring, intuitive intellective
inclination to discern true from false, and a
willful inclination towards what seems good from
non-good or evil. Such approximate the lowest
acts of angelic intellectual intuition and volitional
efficacy.
In contrast, an angel’s inmost life is to be a
purely immaterial intuitive intellectual, volitional
person. Once an angel’s choice was made about
accepting supernatural Beatitude, no further
determination would be possible. Unlike human
persons, who can continue purgation after death
if not stained by Original Sin or Mortal sin,
demons can neither repent nor reform.

The Creation of the Angels
At the instant of each angel’s creation, its
intellective understanding was infused with
all knowledge proportioned to its capacity and
mission, and its will was granted all power
required to execute its intentions instantly and
effortlessly. This approximates, analogically, the
intuitive comprehension of Divine Knowledge
and Divine Power. However, all known within
Infinite Divine Knowledge as actual or potential
is grasped eternally, totally, simultaneously, as
subject to the unqualifiedly all-powerful Divine
Will that alone can truly make knowns be, so long
as they imply no contradiction.
Granted immediately an efficacious will to
desire and act in relation to what they intuitively
know, angels need not reason or analyze to
comprehend causes, nor meditate to achieve
a comprehensive synthesis of what they know
and love, as human persons must. What angels
know and will to act upon may be measured by
time, but angelic intentionality is not. Any angel
instantly is where he intends to be and act.
Being relegated to instrumental roles, angels
no longer could be viewed as supernatural,
except in the sense that, being purely
spiritual persons, they are “supra” material
31

Faith and Morals
and temporal natures. Due to their pure
immateriality, they better image the utter
infinite simplicity of the Divine Being. Yet, they
are creatures that began “to be” in an instant
in relation to the Eternally Subsisting Divine
Persons, and like all others, their existence is
sustained continually by the unique, Infinite,
Omniscient, and Omnipotent Triune Creator.
Scripture offers many insights into angels’
roles. In all instances, angels are portrayed as
having comprehension of specific things and
persons. This contrasts with certain ancient
philosophical depictions of spiritual beings
as knowing little or nothing of corruptible
particulars. How can one accept such after
hearing the assurance in Psalms that God
commands His angels to guard us in our ways,
referring to an angel for each created human
person? Even the highest ranks of angels
comprehend all that lower angels know and do
in detail through ever more comprehensive and
extensive intuitive vision.

A Whole and Dynamic
Relationship
For those who confirm the Faith by living
in accord with orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the
existence and nature of angels are woven into
the fabric of ordinary daily life. Of course, we
have no commonly available sensible evidence
to demonstrate their existence and nature, and
this is why empirical-mathematical sciences
can say absolutely nothing about either issue.
Nonetheless, their incredible numbers have
been acknowledged by saints and mystics. Saint
Thomas Aquinas insisted that the number of
angels exceeds all created things comprising
the universe; and mystical visionaries such as
Venerable Catherine Emmerich remarked that if
we could behold the angelic hosts ministering to
Creation with physical eyes it would seem that
the light of the sun would be eclipsed and the
world cast into shadow.
Not only are our physical sciences unable to
aid us concerning the existence and nature of
angels; they also are inadequate in explaining
what life essentially is in different biological
32

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sciences. Such sciences analyze and explain
in meticulous detail how physical processes of
living things function, but what life is can only
be answered philosophically, and even then, only
fully with inspiration from Revelation and sacred
theology. Measuring quantitative magnitudes
does not directly aid us in considering what
essentially lies at the heart of what it is to
be a human person. Persons, alone, possess
immaterial powers of intellect to attain the true
and will to desire the good in order to exercise
true liberty, which finds its ultimate goal in Truth
and Good.
Unlike ourselves, who partake the species of
humanity, for being material and bodily enters
into our personal nature, every created pure
spirit is a unique species of angel. Michael, said of
an angel, designates a specifically distinct angelic
person from Gabriel or Raphael, and so on. There
are more species of angels than we can possibly
imagine or calculate in this life, even in the light
of Faith. Since no angelic person is generated
with ancestral heritage, none share a common
transmitted nature with others. Yet, we rank
them according to the infused comprehension of
creation proportioned to their nature and dignity
that accords with their roles and missions. And
so, we distinguish Angels, Archangels, Seraphs,
Cherubs, Thrones and Dominations, and so on.

On the Nature of Angels
and Ourselves
Each angel intuitively and directly
comprehends, according to its proportional
capacity, the Eternal Life of the Triune Creator,
even though certain ranks also direct their
intention to attend to created particulars
measured by time. This is why the guardian
angel of one human being may act in regard to
his charge in ways contrary or opposed to that
of another human being. Yet both are faithful
to their mission and the common good deigned
by Providence. Consider, for example, angels
of honorable soldiers locked in mortal combat
representing differing countries or principalities
in a war.
St. Thomas Aquinas judged that angels were

created perfect in regard to the happiness or
blessedness their natures could attain, something
that human persons can only achieve by timely
action and effort. However, no angel possessed
ultimate, supernatural Beatitude whereby “We
shall see God as He is.” Such is beyond the
power of any created intellect to consider or
will to secure. This is central in explaining how
bad angels perversely desired equality with
the Creator. By choosing to remain fixed in the
fullness of natural beatitude granted through
their created powers, certain angels refused the
gift of supernatural Beatitude God would have
granted them. Thus, they condemned themselves
to aeviternal bitter torment by choosing natural
beatitude as an idol that precludes supernatural
Beatitude. Lucifer and his allies may enjoy
residues of their natural ontological splendor, but
as persons they are most wretched.
Some have postulated that the Triune Creator,
having made the natures of angelic and human
persons, might “mercifully” annul the causal
efficacy of the supreme natural gift He instilled
in them as created images of the Trinity,
namely, their personal liberty. These counterfeit
theologians suggest that no consequences proper
to the nature of created persons misusing liberty
can be irrevocable.
Such conjectures covertly retrieve aspects of
the doctrine of apokatastasis that was considered
plausible by some early Church Fathers imbued
with Neo-Platonic philosophical teachings. Such
sentimentalism or outright heresy ultimately
imply erroneous views mentioned earlier,
such as eternity of the universe in endless
cycles; nebulous views of the status of purely
spiritual beings and human souls that permit
transmigration to be rationalized, and ignoring
real, discernible, differences between substantive
natures of beings. Such also implies that the
Infinite Creator’s original intention lacked
integrity and was only apparently coherent, as
well as that Christ’s Redemptive Sanctifying
Grace is the least precious of all goods.
Human persons, in common with angels who
chose rightly in accepting the gift of supernatural
Beatitude, can only fulfill their inmost nature by
striving to maintain a unified intention of loving
the Creator above all things. This intention to

compensate for the loss of Original Justice is why
our lives must constitute a “tradition,” a unity of
habituation or enculturation in which perfective
refinements only are added to our understanding
and love. Just as with civic and sacred traditions
into which we are born, no subtraction or
eradication of what preceded ought to occur
except in regard to what is discerned to be an
impediment to true human integrity, what is evil.
To believe one might subtract, abrogate, or
obrogate that which was good and true, or add
that which contradicts the same, implies autodestruction of one’s history and destiny. It is
analogous to claiming that what definitely was
established as being inherently evil or untrue now
may be considered its opposite, whether about
physical things or moral action. Angels need not
have these concerns since their choice instantly
determined their eternal destiny. We, however,
from our instant of fruitful conception, restlessly
desire a goal grasped as in a glass darkly. But it
is the same granted to angels who chose wisely:
union with the Infinite, Omniscient, Omnipotent
Trinity of Eternal Persons, Subsisting Truth and
Good.

33

St. Michael the Archangel, whose name means,
“one who is like God,” led the army of angels who
cast Satan and the rebellious angels into Hell
at the end of time. He is depicted as leading the
souls of the departed from this life to present
them to our Lord for the particular judgment.
Mosaic of Saint Michael on the facade of the Serbian Orthodox Church in
Trieste, Italy

Faith and Morals

Do the
Angels Move
the Heavens?
by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

If you take some time to head outside each
evening for a month and make some close
observations of the stars, you will notice two
things. Firstly, the stars make a complete rotation
in the sky roughly every 24 hours. Secondly,
the stars always keep the same positions
relative to one another. Practically all of the
ancient civilizations were profoundly, and even
obsessively, aware of these two facts about the
heavens. For them, the heavens seemed the best
place to start in order to discover the ultimate
meaning of the universe, and so they gazed
intently at the skies, looking for answers.
A persistent question naturally arose for the
ancient stargazer contemplating these two star
facts, their perfectly circular and seemingly
eternal rotations: what makes the stars go round?
In this article, we will consider three different
36

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answers: the ones of Aristotle, the medieval
scholastics, and Newton.

Aristotle’s Notions of Motion
Aristotle of Stagira, affectionately dubbed
“The Philosopher” by his fans throughout the
ages, had an answer for just about everything. As
such, there was no chance that he would leave
the celestial motion question unaddressed. His
answer, in itself, was simple: Love makes the
world go round. The philosophical argumentation
behind the answer, however, takes some effort to
untangle.
The question, for Aristotle, was not so
much, “What moves the stars?” as “Where does
movement as such come from?” One’s answer to

the first question would only be satisfactory if the
second question could be addressed.
To discover the origin of all motion that exists
in the entire universe, The Philosopher had to
think very carefully about what motion is in itself.
By all accounts, he did a great job. According to
Etienne Gilson, “No one has ever better discerned
the mystery that the very familiarity of movement
hides from our eyes.” Aristotle formulated a key
principle for understanding causes of motion,
the principle that “Whatever is moved is moved
by another.” In other words, all motion requires
two aspects, one mover and the other moved, one
active and the other passive. If mover and moved
are the same in every respect, then movement
does not take place.
Consider my fingers typing this article. For
my index finger to move, it has to receive a nerve
impulse that has its origin in my brain. If I were
not to send that impulse to my finger and instead
waited for my finger to move itself, I would be
waiting forever. The reason is that my finger
cannot be both what moves itself and what is
moved by itself at the same time. For that to
be so, it would have to be both active and nonactive at the very same moment, and in the same
respect, which is a contradiction.
Back to The Philosopher, he leveraged his
motion principle to discover where motion comes
from. “If everything in motion, he reasoned, has
a certain dependence on a mover, then all of the
motions that I see around me must have their
source in something independent of movement,
in something unmoved.” The ultimate source of
motion must be an Unmoved Mover, a being that
causes movement in other things, but himself
does not move. Unless such a being exists, there
is no way for us to account for the existence of
any movement at all.
But how do you move other things without
being in motion yourself? Easy, says Aristotle.
You do it by way of attraction. Consider a
painting hanging on the wall at The Louvre. It is
not moving. It is just existing there, in its artistic
beauty. Even though it does not move, however,
it has the power to move everyone in the art
gallery. They are attracted to the painting and so
walk towards it, without the painting having done
anything other than hang on the wall.

Thus, Aristotle concludes, the ultimate reason
for the movement of the heavens is the attraction
exercised by the First Unmoved Mover on the
stars. This is “the love that moves the stars” of
which Dante speaks in the last line of his Divine
Comedy.

The Angels of the Schools
It is one thing for your ideas to hold sway for
a few years. It is another thing for them to hold
sway for a few millennia. Such was the case with
Aristotle’s notions of motion. When the scholars
of the Catholic Middle Ages started translating
Aristotle into Latin and studying him closely,
they found his ideas extremely compelling.
To their credit, however, they did not become
“Aristolators” or worshippers of Aristotle who
thought he was some demi-god gifted with
philosophical infallibility.
The reason they did not follow Aristotle in
every iota of his works and pomps was that he
contradicted the Catholic Faith in some of his
teachings. For instance, to prove that a First
Unmoved Mover must exist, The Philosopher first
tries to prove that the motion of the universe is
eternal. The Catholic Faith, meanwhile, teaches
that the universe came into being at some limited
time in the past.
Scholastic philosophers, then, had to do some
sifting when they encountered the Aristotelian
corpus. When they came to his teaching on
physical motion, they did not like the idea of stars
moving by an innate attraction. They knew from
Genesis that the heavenly bodies are lower than
human beings. Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter cannot
not be closer to the deity than souls endowed
with sanctifying grace. As such, the heavenly
bodies are surely not striving to imitate God. The
reason for their motion must be assigned to some
other cause.
The best way to please both Aristotle and be
faithful to the faith was to say that the angels
were moving the heavens. “Most [medieval
natural philosophers] assumed that [God]
assigned an angel to move each orb.” This idea
enabled medieval scholastics to keep Aristotle’s
system of astronomy, wherein the heavenly
37

Faith and Morals
bodies had the same motions he had envisioned.
It was just the cause of the motion that was
different.

Buridan’s Impetus
One medieval thinker of the 14th century,
however, realized that we do not need the angels
to explain celestial motion. His name was Father
Jean Buridan and he taught at the medieval
University of Paris. In one of his works, Buridan
sets out to explain why rocks move the way that
they do when we throw them.
Aristotle, of course, said that a certain
attraction explains their movement (as we saw,
he explained the totality of motion in this way).
Rocks really, really want to be on the ground.
When they are thrown, the air surrounding the
rocks keeps them off the ground for a while until
their attraction for the ground overcomes the air,
enabling them to return to terra firma.
For Buridan, this did not make much sense.
With all due respect to Aristotle, he said, it is
obvious that air does not help rocks to fly, but
rather hinders them. Just like when we are
running, we are held back by the wind, so too
the air around a rock must slow it down. The
real reason why the rock stays above the ground,
Buridan claimed, was that our hand imparts an
impetus to the rock that remains in it for a time,
before slowly dissipating.
This makes sense and seems quite reasonable,
especially to modern ears, accustomed to
scientific notions of force. But Buridan went
further. He realized that physical motion on Earth
is really not essentially different from physical
motion in the heavens. Thus, he said, perhaps the
heavenly bodies are moving in space for the same
reason that rocks move in space: they have been
pushed. Perhaps, at the moment of Creation, God
pushed the planets and, since there is no friction
or contrary winds in space, they have been
moving ever since, without needing the angels to
keep them going around in circles.

38

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January - February 2018

Newtonian Physics
When the apple dropped out of the tree to
plunk down on the head of Isaac Newton (1642–
1727), in the perhaps apocryphal story, Newton
simply repeated the same reasoning process that
Buridan had performed centuries before. The
physical force that makes the apple fall to the
ground—gravity—must also exist in the heavens.
Perhaps gravity, then, is what is making the
planets turn.
This apple-induced idea led Newton to
construct mathematical formulas for the way
gravity works on earth. Then, he applied those
formulas to the movements of the planets
around the sun. What he discovered was that his
formulas—what today are called Newton’s three
laws—were able to describe planetary motion
almost perfectly.
With his achievement, Newton was able to
provide a purely physical explanation for the
motions of the heavens, without, by any means,
excluding the need for divine causality. God
provides to the planets their being and the
natural laws by which they operate. And they
dutifully follow those laws.
For Aristotle, stars move because of their
attraction to the First Unmoved Mover. Today,
we know that this is incorrect, thanks to the
Catholic Middle Ages. Using ideas taken from
divine revelation, medieval scholastics were able
to formulate ideas about forces that pushed the
planets forward. The impetus from these thinkers
was what ultimately pushed the human mind
forward to give birth to what we now know as
modern science.
Author’s Note: The subject of this article is covered in detail
in chapters 4 and 5 of my book The Realist Guide to Religion
and Science (Gracewing, 2018).

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Fatima:
The Message for Our Times

The 20th and 21st centuries must be understood in the light of Fatima. Mary’s visit to this
little hamlet in Portugal is a fact that is part of contemporary history. The Message of
Fatima concerns all of us. Its blessed influence can touch all of us, touch families, touch nations: “If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.”
This book brings to life the extraordinary marvels of Fatima

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Spirituality

The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century and Its

Guardian
Angels
by Dr. John Rao

Any Christian interested in the springtime
of western Christendom—and the absurdity of
Enlightenment denigration of the “Dark Ages”
along with it—should pick up the Harvard
historian Charles Homer Haskins’ classic work,
The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. This
justly celebrated text, published and republished
since 1927, catalogues the manifold intellectual
and cultural achievements, as well as the general
spirit of rebirth and hope, characterizing what
was an overwhelmingly religion-driven age,
Catholic to its very core.

A Formidable Challenge
Even if the renaissance in question brought
up many problems that profound thinkers and

saints would be forced to struggle to overcome
from the 1100s down to our own time, these
dilemmas emerged in the midst of a commitment
to one unified goal: the need to fulfill the
message of the Incarnation by transforming
all things natural through the supernatural
teaching and grace of Christ. Aside from its
consequences for civilization in general, what
that commitment engendered was a substantive
respect for the complexity of social life and the
central importance of the individual person
within it underscoring our purely naturalist
contemporaries’ celebration of “diversity” and
“human dignity” for the empty sloganeering that
it really is.
Every era has its key movers and shakers—
its “guardian angels”—and I would like to call
attention to two of these with respect to the
41

Spirituality

42

twelfth century renaissance, the first of whom
is unfamiliar to most of us: a professor at the
budding University of Paris known in his day by

always in the context of a rich and diverse social
order that cannot be reduced to one, monolithic
Leviathan.

the name of Peter “the Cantor” (d. 1197). Peter
Cantor insisted that transformation in Christ
required ecclesiastical guidance not of some
undifferentiated mass community, but, rather,
of a multifaceted network of societies with
immensely varied vocations in life, each made
real through the work of its individual members,
and each presenting peculiar obstacles to
holiness. In short, the Church had to construct
as many supernatural pastoral ladders to heaven
as there were distinct natural human activities,
socially organized, but always with the awareness
that it was the individual representatives of these
activities who were destined for eternal life.
It was this project of individual redemption
through recognition of different pastoral
approaches to diverse social vocations that
Innocent III, perhaps the most famous and
grateful pupil of Peter Cantor, took up at the end
of the century. Innocent applied it to individual
Christians in general by means of a more refined
spelling out of the basic social activity of the
Church as a whole in the Fourth Lateran Council.
He also utilized it in dealing with more specific
concerns, as with his support for institutional
guidance of persons engaged in higher education,
men and women committed to St. Francis’ life of
Apostolic Poverty, and even the special pastoral
labor involved in redemption of those who had
fallen into the unacceptable “profession” of
ladies of the night. If time and space permitted, it
would be equally possible to demonstrate that the
great scholastic systems of men like St. Thomas
Aquinas are characterized by their concern for
individual minds, souls, and redemption, but

St. Bernard’s Heroic Witness

The Angelus

January - February 2018

Our second and much more famous
protagonist in this task of sanctifying the
individual through a natural world of varied
human vocations is St. Bernard of Clairvaux
(1090-1153). Yes, it is true that the great saint’s
suspicion of the possibly secularizing effects
of the work of contemporary philosophers
illustrates the kind of battles that emerged as
a result of the century’s mobilization of all of
the manifold natural tools at man’s disposal.
Nevertheless, he served as a “guardian angel”
for one of the most dangerous and destructive of
the many human social groups whose individual
members were in desperate need of redemption;
the group that historically was the very first
target for transformation in Christ: the military,
whose natural soldiering vocation had to be
redirected from its march to hell to the service of
a just cause that might actually aid it in its own
peculiar ascent of Mount Carmel.
This labor—so politically incorrect in our own
time, which loves to deal with its most difficult
problems by refusing to acknowledge them as
such—began in the tenth century through the
monks of Cluny and their efforts to turn the
existing, anarchic soldiery, sarcastically labeled
“the malitia”, into an honest Christian militia.
They accomplished this work by convincing at
least some members of the malitia to abandon
their evil ways and use their arms to guard
otherwise helpless pilgrims on the perilous road
to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella in Spain
instead. This enterprise ultimately gave birth

to the crusading movement, the justification
for which lay in its call to protect pilgrims en
route to Jerusalem, to defend an Eastern Roman
Empire under renewed threat from the Moslems,
and to recover a Holy Land unjustly taken from
the Christian world five hundred years earlier.
And it was this work that also led to the creation
of the Knights of the Temple, those “fighting
men of prayer” who dedicated themselves to the
safeguard of worshipers coming to King David’s
city and found their own individual guardian
angel in St. Bernard. Our guardian angel took up
this role in a letter to Hugues de Payens (c. 10701136), the Templars’ founder, entitled In Praise
of the New Knighthood. Eager to aid the Knights
both in their recruitment as well as in their hunt
for material support, he expressed therein his
admiration for their ability to root their peculiar
natural vocation in its proper supernatural end.
“Thus in a wondrous and unique manner they
appear gentler than lambs, yet fiercer than lions. I
do not know if it would be more appropriate to
refer to them as monks or as soldiers, unless
perhaps it would be better to recognize them as
being both. Indeed they lack neither monastic
meekness nor military might. What can we say of
this, except that this has been done by the Lord,

to be just as multifaceted as the Renaissance
Christendom world in which it was born,
also creating a whole new genre of chivalric
literature in its train, one that sang of the
Christian soldiery as a force defending all that
was beautiful, deserving of love, and generally
weak in consequence. In doing so, it also aroused
in its “guardian angel” a conscious desire to
adopt—and purify—this often rather capricious
troubadour tool, utilizing its theme of romantic
love to lead the soldiers under his guidance to
the deepest form of loving union: that sought
by God Himself with each and every individual
soul. Hence his commentary on the Canticle
of Canticles and its symbol of human love as
a ladder conveying us to the loving union God
set out to achieve on a higher level through the
Incarnation:
“But if she loves with her whole being, nothing
is lacking where everything is given. To love so
ardently then is to share the marriage bond; she
cannot love so much and not be totally loved,
and it is in the perfect union of two hearts that
complete and total marriage consists. Or are we
to doubt that the soul is loved by the Word first
and with a greater love?
Because we are carnal and born of

and it is marvelous in our eyes? These are the
picked troops of God, whom he has recruited
from the ends of the earth; the valiant men of
Israel chosen to guard well and faithfully that
tomb which is the bed of the true Solomon, each
man sword in hand, and superbly trained to war.”

concupiscence and of the flesh, our love must
needs come from the flesh. If this love be well
guided, it will gradually become, under the
influence of grace, a spiritual love, for “that was
not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; afterwards, that which is spiritual” (I
Cor. 15:46).
Our twelfth century renaissance knew that
redemption of distinct individuals through the
diverse social institutions organizing their varied
vocations in life gains its crucial aid from the

A New Knighthood
In the long run, this “new knighthood” proved

43

Spirituality
revelation and grace coming through the Mystical
Body of Christ the Incarnate Word. Hence, it
cannot come as a surprise that a man like St.
Bernard would probe these for an ever- deeper
understanding of their treasures. Such probing
led this “guardian angel” to a study of the real
guardian angels, to whom, as Fr. Pierre Pourrat
says, “Christian piety had hardly directed its
attention” before his homilies on the subject.
(Christian Spirituality, II, 60).
In a characteristic application of twelfth
century developments, the Abbot of Clairvaux
does not discuss angels as watching over us
in some monolithic fashion, but with clear
distinctions. As Pourrat indicates, he sees
angels as the protectors not only of the Church
as a whole, but of each and every single
Christian edifice in its own way, so much so
that “the heavenly spirits, in choir, blend with
the psalmody of the monks” (p. 60). Marvelous
as this is, their protection is distinguished
still further, with St. Bernard proclaiming his
astonishment with God that “His angels, those
sublime spirits so happy and so near His throne,
His familiar and, we may say, His intimate
friends” are given the task of protecting each
and every individual in each and every one of
their vocations in life. (p. 60) His exhortation to
us to honor these extremely personal protectors
and the incalculable aid that they offer to us can
be summarized in the homily that is read in the
Breviary on October 2nd:
“Although we may be but little children, and
the way that remains for us to pass over before
we reach salvation be very long, and not only
very long but also full of danger—for all that,
what is there for us to fear, who are guided by
such guardians? It is impossible for them to
be overthrown or seduced, still less for them
to seduce us, they who keep us in all our ways.
They are faithful, they are prudent, they are
powerful; wherefore fear? Let us follow them,
let us cling to their footsteps, and we shall thus
abide under the protection of the God of
heavens.
“Shouldst thou foresee a grave temptation or
fear a great trial, invoke thy guardian, thy guide,
thy refuge in oppression and in distress. Call
on him and say, ‘Lord, save us, for we perish.’
44

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January - February 2018

He does not sleep, he does not slumber….O my
brethren, may your guardian angels be your
intimate friends; be unceasingly with those who,
when you often think of them and devoutly pray
to them, guard and console you every moment.”
I may be wrong, but I believe that the Church
has generally counseled against our attempting
to dwell any further on this magnificent reality,
as, for example, by “naming” our individual
guardian angel. Perhaps this is deemed much
too arrogant on our part. Perhaps it is due to the
fact that our guardians themselves carry out
their labors as members of their own diverse
angelic societies, and, that it is best to make
clear that they, just like we ourselves, can only be
what they are meant to be individually through
the communities that God has placed them in.
Perhaps any human project of personalizing
them further than Scripture, which has named
only a few angels, would cheapen their grandeur
and work for us, just as the naturalist demand
for individuals to think and act purely on their
earthly plane alone actually cheapens and
destroys us in the Divine plan.
Whatever the case may be in this regard,
it strikes me as particularly fitting that in the
mysterious Providence of God, the development
of devotion to our guardian angels should have
been left to the twelfth century. For nothing can
be more aesthetically complete than seeing how
a renaissance that achieved its work by plunging
into the “dirt” of all earthly vocations marred by
sin—the particularly “dirty” one of soldiering
included—discovered, as it went about its labors,
that all of the angels of God were there beside
them, individually aiding each and every man
and woman to be truly reborn and transformed in
Christ.

Fatima
and the
Present Life
by Fr. Alvaro Calderón, SSPX

The message of all anti-modernistic or
counterrevolutionary apparitions – if we may
use these ugly names for such beautiful realities
– correspond to the first law of Divine love: the
deeper the human misery, the greater God’s
mercy manifests itself. For instance, Saint John
of the Cross, in the first of his Sayings of Light
and Love, says: “The Lord has always revealed
the treasures of His wisdom and spirit to souls,
but now when the face of evil exposes itself
more and more [he is speaking at the time when
Protestantism had engulfed half of Christendom],
so does God reveal His treasures more.”
To young Lucia, anxious because she will not
be taken to heaven soon, the words of the Blessed
Mother, “My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge
and the way that will lead you to God”, are but an
echo of the loving words to Juan Diego at Tepeyac,

“Am I not here, who am your mother? Are you not
under my protection?”
The way to God in these terrible times of the
manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, and our
refuge, are the Two Hearts united: the devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary. This is what Heaven and the Popes
have proposed as the means of protection for
the faithful and the Church. And it is what the
message of Fatima states formally and explicitly.
The message of Fatima has a special character:
the Blessed Mother came to warn us of the
seriousness of the times.
“Seriousness”: this is the term that describes
the tone, the mood of the soul, so to speak, of the
Fatima message. The word serious is short for
severe, which has more negative connotations,
but we would dare say is more accurate in this
45

Spirituality
instance. Severe means rigorous here, with the
rigor of truth. While the Blessed Mother appears
at Fatima very loving indeed, she is also serious.
The little shepherds say so time and again. She
does not cry, but neither does she smile. She spoke
to those truly innocent children of sinners, of how
deeply God is offended, of the punishments men
are calling on themselves by their sins. Unlike at
La Salette, the Blessed Mother at Fatima did not
cry because the confidence in her intercession
softens her sadness; but she did not smile either,
and that showed her indignation at the offences
committed against God.
Everything the beautiful Lady said and asked of
the children is serious, even severe, very severe.
They were small children and yet she showed them
hell, a vision that would have literally scared them
to death had she not been present with them. She
talked to the children about a girl that will be in
purgatory till the end of time. She asked of the
children prayers and sacrifices and encouraged
them to a life of prayer and penance that would
seem to us cruel, had she not been their guide.
Furthermore, the Blessed Mother told the children
that she would soon take them to heaven; news
that did not sadden them, but would so sadden
their parents. Jacinta’s mother, though a good
Catholic woman, nevertheless rejected the idea
of her two older daughters becoming nuns, and
Jacinta prophesied that the Blessed Mother would
take them to heaven while still young (as it indeed
happened). Could it be that the Blessed Mother
warns us that in these times it would be preferable
for the children to die while still young rather than
remain in families that will not protect them? The
miracle of October 13th, by which the Blessed
Mother confirmed her presence, was terrifying and
was obviously a preview of what will take place
on the Dies Irae, the day of the wrath of God at
the end of time, when “the sun shall be darkened,
the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of
heaven shall be moved.”
The message of Fatima which in itself is a
loving one, at the same time is a message of rigor,
severity, and seriousness. After the apparition, the
little shepherds of Fatima ceased to play. We, too,
must get to work.
This begs repeating especially to us, priests.
The Blessed Mother told us to “Pray and make
46

The Angelus

January - February 2018

penance for sinners”. The Society of Saint Pius X
received a great grace of preservation amid these
perverse times; and yet we, its priests, perhaps
have not taken it all very seriously.
Parents, you may not have taken your duties
seriously, either. How many dads are wasting
their time on the internet, [on video games, on
Netflix]; how many moms are going about here and
there [spend time on Facebook, Pinterest], when
the education of the children demands so much
dedication. The Blessed Mother gave us a lesson
on how to educate children. Her pedagogy with the
little shepherds, so loving and therefore so strict
(because reality is hard), is not an extraordinary
pedagogy for visionary children, it is an example
for all moms and dads. A mother must be able to
tell her children, “Do not be afraid, my heart will
be your refuge and the way that will lead you to
God.” If the fathers have a generous and provident
love, they will be able to be demanding in regards
to their children’s faults, leading them to God. The
times do not allow for anything else.
Dear young men, do not waste your time, as
so many do. Do not get distracted, claiming to be
Catholic and even calling yourselves champions of
Tradition whilst accepting yet another drink.
Dear young ladies, how many of you are
wasting time chatting on your cells, wasting so
much time and money on makeup and tempted by
immodest fashions. These are the fashions that
lead to the abyss that terrified the little Fatima
shepherds. Jacinta, young as she was, cautioned
us in very somber terms.
Let us, therefore, get to work. We are living
in very serious times; let us, therefore, be more
serious. True love is serious. Let us, then, pray;
let us pray more. Let there not be one day without
praying the rosary, let us not miss attending a
single Mass. And let us do penance, especially the
conscious performance of our duty of state. Our
duty of state, if done in earnest is a constant and
significant penance. As the world has not only not
converted, but has deteriorated more and more,
for sure we will have to face calamities; but let us
not fear, we have a safe refuge in the Immaculate
Heart of Mary.
Editor’s Note: This article by Fr. Alvaro Calderón was
translated by Laura Garza from Iesus Christus #158, pp. 22-23

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Spirituality

The
Language of
the Angels
by a Benedictine Monk

One of the greatest difficulties of being a foreigner is the lack of communication with the citizens of
his adopted country. The language barrier separates him from the others in a sometimes-brutal way. The
Jewish people of the Old Testament departing from Egypt certainly experienced this: “...when he came
out of the land of Egypt: he heard a tongue which he knew not” (Ps. 80:6). Their sense of confusion in a
foreign land, listening to a strange tongue, perpetually wandering through the desert must have been a
cause of great suffering. They were guided by a supernatural presence of a pillar of light by night and a
column of cloud during the day until they finally reached the Promised Land.

In Search of Our
True Fatherland
This pilgrimage of the Jews in the desert is
often compared to the earthly existence of man
wandering through life like a foreigner seeking
his true Fatherland. Like the wandering Jews,
our souls were born into this land of exile,
surrounded with great dangers and even greater
48

The Angelus

January - February 2018

graces. We too were granted a guide, like a
pillar of light, from the Fatherland to lead us
into the Kingdom of Heaven. Our guide is our
Guardian Angel who is a citizen with full rights
and privileges of our true Fatherland. We were
born in this land of exile and we do not even
speak the language of our real family. We are like
foreigners, separated from the citizens of our
own country, on the wrong side of the border and
listening to an unknown language. Our guide is

here to teach us the new language, which was
intended to be our mother tongue, the language
of God and His angels. Like foreigners struggling
with a new language, we strive to learn to
speak with the angels in heaven. What is this
mysterious language spoken in this Kingdom of
Light where only “adorers in spirit and truth” are
admitted?
God is a pure Spirit and therefore His language
must be spiritual. He eternally pronounces His
Word. In the infinite depths of His Being, He
speaks only One Word, “... and the Word was with
God and the Word was God.” All of God’s thought
is completely contained in His Word, which
expresses His Being in the most perfect way. His
Word is so perfect and beautiful that there can
be no other spoken by Him; He has been saying
and will say this same Word for all of eternity.
His Spoken Word is, of course, His Only Begotten
Son Jesus Christ. The angels, being pure spirits,
communicate with God in a language that cannot
be expressed with material words. They must
be able to listen to the Word of God to be able to
repeat it. The good angels opened their spirits
to this divine Word and being filled with light
they were admitted to the Kingdom of the Father
where they contemplate His divine beauty.
The bad angels refused to receive this light and
willfully threw themselves into the darkness of
hell. Their words are of despair and blasphemy,
anger and bitterness, incessant bickering, murder
and war; motivated in their angelic intellects
by the darkest of hatreds. They chose to never
listen to God and they refuse to speak His onlybegotten Word. The fallen angels try to persuade
man to learn this horrible language of hatred,
which belongs to the kingdom of the world, the
flesh and the devil. This is the language of sin
and despair, the language of bitter revolt against
God composed by love of self that excludes God
and neighbor. Modern man in this valley of tears
speaks it fluently.

The Language of the
Kingdom of God

this language spoken by the citizens of heaven.
Since the blessed in heaven see God, they see all
creatures in and through God, and only as God
sees them. Their manner of speaking is through
God and only as God speaks to them. The words
spoken in the kingdom of heaven can only be
motivated by charity, that is to say our love of
God and neighbor.
The common Preface that we pray almost
every ferial day at mass encourages us to
mysteriously join our voices with those of the
angels:
“... through Christ Our Lord. Through whom
the angels praise Thy majesty, the Dominions
worship it, the Powers stand in awe. The heavens,
and all the heavenly hosts and the blessed
Seraphim join together in celebrating their joy.
With whom we pray Thee, join our voices also
while we say with lowly praise: Holy, Holy, Holy,
Lord God of hosts...”
Our Holy Mother the Church asks that we
join our voices with the nine choirs of angels to
chant the praise of God. The spiritual language
they speak is that of Charity. To join our voices
to theirs, we must learn this foreign language,
which was meant to be our mother tongue. The
language of the angels is one of truth, goodness
and beauty. They refuse to communicate
anything false, evil, ugly and impure. This is our
true mother tongue, which we have lost through
negligence, disuse and sin. God, in His infinite
wisdom and mercy has given us a guardian angel
that speaks this language fluently. He lives in the
Kingdom of our Fatherland and in order to guide
us there, he teaches us our mother tongue that
our first parents were unable to teach us. This
mysterious language is essentially contained
in the person of Our Lord. In a Kingdom where
there is no hatred, bickering or war, the subject
of conversation can only be an expression of
what God is. Once the soul knows God, all
that his intellect is concerned with is God. The
resulting conversations can only concern the
things that please God. “May our conversation
be in heaven...” with our angel who eternally
contemplates the beauty of the Face of God.

As human beings we must learn the language
of the Kingdom of God. Our good angels teach us
49

In the evening of February 11, 1858,
Bernadette Soubirous went to fetch
some firewood with her sister and
another companion when a Lady
who was indescribably beautiful
appeared to her at the Massabielle
grotto. Although the Lady did not
tell Bernadette her name when
asked at first, she told her to return
to the grotto. On subsequent visits,
the Lady revealed herself to be the
“Immaculate Conception.”

Christian Culture

Lourdes
Apparitions of the Immaculate Conception
February 11 - March 2, 1858

by Dr. Marie-France Hilgar

Who was Bernadette Soubirous? Born on
January 7, 1844, she was the daughter of a miller
reduced to poverty. A simple young shepherdess,
submissive, sickly, unappreciated, but who had
the incredible possibility of seeing, many times,
the mother of Our Lord.

The First Apparition
The first apparition took place on February
11, 1858 in the grotto of Massiabelle. Here is
the manner in which Bernadette narrated what
happened: “I saw a lady dressed in white; She
wore a white dress and a white veil with a blue
waistband and a yellow rose on each of her feet.
Her rosary was yellow too. She took the rosary
from her arm and made the sign of the Cross. I
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managed to do likewise. The Apparition moved
the rosary beads between her fingers without
moving her lips. When it was over she made a
sign to me to come near her, but I did not dare.”
The second apparition took place three days
later with about ten people present who saw
Bernadette in ecstasy. The third apparition, on
February 18, was one of the four longest. For the
first time, the Virgin spoke: “Would you be so
good as to come back here for fifteen days. I do
not promise you happiness in this world, but in
the next.” The fourth and fifth apparitions took
place on the following two days. By then, 30
people were present at the grotto. The next day
was for Bernadette her first official questioning
by Jacomet, the commissaire de police. The
next day the Virgin did not appear, and on her
way back from the grotto, Bernadette said in a

discouraged voice: “I don’t know what I did to
cause the Lady not to appear!”
Dr. Dozous was invited to come to the grotto
the following day to observe Bernadette first
hand, and to uncover in the name of medical
science the “sham of Massiabelle.” Dozous
went home deeply shaken in his incredulity. He
became, however, one of the most prominent
witnesses in the events at Lourdes. On the
following day, 300 people were present. The
Apparition said to Bernadette: “Repentance!
Repentance! Repentance! Pray to God for
sinners” and asked her “to climb on her knees
into the grotto and to kiss the ground in a sign
of repentance for sinners”. The ninth apparition
explains the origin of the spring of water.
Bernadette explained: “The vision told me to
go and drink from the spring. Since I did not
see it, I went to drink from the river. She told
me it was not there I was to drink and with her
finger pointed under the rock. I went there and
found only a little brackish water. I put my hand
into it but was unable to take any. Then I dug
with my hands and so could take some. Three
times I threw the water away since it was dirty;
the fourth time I managed to drink. She made
me eat some of the grass which grew around
the spring.” On that evening of February 25th,
Bernadette was interrogated by the Imperial
Procurator. She was threatened with prison if
she did not promise not to return to the grotto,
but Bernadette made no such promise. On
Friday the 26th, there was no apparition. By
contrast, the next day the apparition occurred
as 800 people looked on. The apparition indeed
came the following day; nearly 1,100 people
were there. There was an unpleasant surprise in
store for Bernadette: a policeman invited her to
accompany him to appear before the Examining
Magistrate. Jacomet, the Commissaire de Police
and the bailiff were present for the interrogation.
This was Bernadette’s third questioning. She
responded to their usual threats of imprisonment
with serenity and firmness.
On March 1, the twelfth apparition took place.
Some 1,300 people were present. For the first
time, a priest, Abbé Dézirat, was there to witness
Bernadette’s ecstasy. The following day, 1,600
people were present at the grotto. In Bernadette’s

words: “The Lady told me to go to tell the priests
to build a Shrine there. I went to the parish priest
to give him the message. He stared at me for
a moment and then spoke to me reassuringly:
‘What is this Lady’s name?’ I told him I did not
know. He told me to ask her name. The next day
I asked but she only smiled.” The parish priest of

Lourdes assumed a position of doubt regarding
the seer.

Making Sense of a Miracle
The priest’s uneasiness about the events at
Massiabelle provoked him into saying a few
rather unkind words. Bernadette was nervous
53

Christian Culture

“I do not promise to make you happy
in this world but in the other.”

Christian Culture
and afraid and forgot to tell him the second part
of the message: the desire to make the grotto
a place of pilgrimage. Bernadette went back to
the priest that evening. He heard her out and
then said: “Ask this Lady’s name and when we
know it we shall build the Shrine and organize a
pilgrimage.”
On March 3, there was no apparition in the
early morning, but after school, Bernadette felt
that “irresistible force to return to the grotto”
and Our Lady indeed appeared. For the third
time, she went to see the parish priest. No longer
is he uncertain and tolerant but rather skeptical
and reproving. The following day, some 7,000 to
8,000 people were at the grotto. The apparition
lasted some 45 minutes with the usual prayers,
ecstasy and penitential gestures. Once again,
the Apparition just smiles when she is asked for
her name. The crowd is not happy but the public
authorities are. The parish priest refuses to make
a move before knowing her identity. There is
no apparition for some 20 days. For many, the
events of the grotto became a fading memory.
Bernadette returned to silence and to anonymity.
On the Feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette felt
again that “irresistible force.” The Lady appeared,
and Bernadette, again, four times, asked her who
she was. Finally, the answer came. Bernadette
explains: “She raised her eyes to heaven, joined
her hands about her breast and said to me: ‘I am
the Immaculate Conception.’ These are the last
words she addressed to me.” Bernadette ran to
the priest.
He suddenly came to realize the meaning
of the whole thing. He became more and more
convinced that the events of Massiabelle were
of supernatural origin and that little Bernadette
was becoming the messenger to the world of the
Immaculate Virgin of Lourdes. Then there was
another interval when no apparitions occurred:
it lasted 10 days. The events of the 26th had
brought the grotto to the forefront of public
attention and renewed the influx of pilgrims.
The local authorities were alarmed and took
drastic measures. On March 27, Bernadette
was subjected to a medical and psychiatric
examination. The intention of this examination
was to confine Bernadette in a sanatorium
for those suffering from mental problems and
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mental imbalance. After two hours, the doctors
advised that the whole thing be adjourned.
During the 17th apparition, the miracle of the
candle occurred. During her ecstasy, Bernadette
held her hands cupped around the flame of
her candle. Dr. Dozous examined the child’s
hands: they were completely unharmed without
the least sign of a burn. Two days later he told
Jacomet: “Now I believe! I have seen with my
own eyes.” The third interval of three months
was the longest in the history of the apparitions.
During that time, Bernadette made her First
Holy Communion, and Jacomet promulgated a
decree: the taking of water from the spring at
the grotto was prohibited; access to the property
called Massiabelle was prohibited; a barricade
was going to be erected to prevent access to
the grotto; any contravention of this Ordinance
would be prosecuted. Bernadette did not mention
the 18th and final apparition in her account. Why
this silence? Because she regarded it as being
private, as exclusively to her personally. The
grotto was blocked off, but she felt the irresistible
force. She took another path and came to a
meadow that lay on the other bank of the river.
From this spot, she saw the Immaculate Virgin
for the last time. Her ecstasy lasted 15 minutes.
When it was over, Bernadette rose to her feet
in her customary slow and recollected way. Her
Mission accomplished, Bernadette entered the
convent of Nevers in 1866. She learnt how to read
and write. Her health took a turn for the worse
and she died on April 16, 1879. Her incorruptible
body can be seen in a crystal reliquary in the
convent.

Lourdes Today
A town of 15,000 inhabitants, Lourdes sees
5 million pilgrims every year. The shrines
consist of five basilicas. They are, in respective
order of construction: The Crypt, The Basilica
of the Immaculate Conception, The Basilica of
the Rosary, The Basilica of St. Pius X, and The
Saint Bernadette Church. The first three named
are built one on top of the other. The Basilica
of St. Pius X has a modern design being built in
reinforced concrete. Four basilicas may seem

like a lot but, granted the influx of pilgrims, they
are not enough. So, a fifth church with a capacity
of 5,000 was built. The first building, The Crypt,
is the response to the desire of the Immaculate
Conception in her 13th apparition. The Basilica
of the Immaculate Conception is noted for its
stained-glass windows. On the upper level, they
depict biblical scenes involving the Immaculate
Conception from the origins of mankind until the
solemn definition of the dogma by Pius IX. Below,
23 stained-glass windows narrate the story of
Lourdes. It is known as the upper basilica since
it stands on top of the other two. It is built in
Gothic style. It consists of a single nave 170 feet
long and 70 feet wide. The nave and choir are
surrounded by fifteen chapels. The bell tower
is square-shaped with an octagonal steeple
rising to 230 feet. The upper basilica can hold
some 600 people. The Rosary Basilica shows a
façade with a majestic doorway which encloses
a bas-relief of a group of figures: Our Lady holds
the infant Jesus in one arm and a rosary in the
other. The internal structure is in the form of a
Greek cross; its architectural style is, however,
Romanesque-Byzantine. The church is 170 feet
long, 158 feet wide and can accommodate 2,000
people. Its main attractions are the 15 Mysteries
of the Rosary represented in splendid mosaics.
The huge mosaic in the apse represents the
Immaculate Conception.
The spring of water flows from the bottom of
the grotto to the left as you face it. It is protected
by a pane of crystal and is also illuminated.
The first immersions in this water and the first
cures began at once. Every year, about 400,000
pilgrims, the sick and the healthy alike, bathe in
the tubs. The water is channeled into a reservoir
of some 120 thousand gallons which was
constructed under the basilicas. This feeds the 20
little fountain heads on the left side of the grotto
and the 16 baths on the right. Hundreds of people
bathe in this water daily. The water is changed
twice every twenty-four hour period. No one has
ever contracted an illness from it. If you go in
May as I did, the water in the tub is in fact melted
snow from the mountains.

The Miracles of Lourdes
To speak of Lourdes is to speak of miracles.
What procedure is used to determine conclusively
whether these really are miracles? In 1882, the
Lourdes Medical Bureau was set up. Since 1947, a
second permanent body has existed in Paris: The
International Medical Committee. The doctors
have access to the medical records. If the cure is
held medically inexplicable, the miraculous cure
is or is not confirmed. The criteria used in the
evaluation are as follows: The cure itself must
be sudden, unforeseen, total, without any period
of convalescence, and permanent. It will only
be accepted after 4-5 years. The sickness prior
must have been grave, organic and objectively
ascertained. Since 1858 about 6,000 have been
examined. Of these, only 67 have been declared
miracles.
When in Lourdes, you cannot miss the Way
of the Cross. It winds around a green hillside
which rises beside the Basilica of the Immaculate
Conception. It extends nearly one mile. The path
for the most part is beaten earth. The groups of
statues in cast-iron are a little larger than lifesize. Recently, a fifteenth station has been added:
The Resurrection.
During the pilgrimage season, from Easter
to mid-October, two processions take place
daily. The Blessed Sacrament Procession begins
at 4:30 pm. It begins from the grotto, winds
its way slowly along the Gave stream, across
the Esplanade and ends in front of the Rosary
Basilica. It is followed by Benediction. The
Torchlight Procession follows the same route and
ends with the singing of the Salve Regina.
The story of Lourdes is destined to be one
of faith, a message of hope, a constant call to
repentance and prayer, and a beacon lighted by
the Immaculate Virgin for millions of people
longing to find or better understand the meaning
of God in their lives.

57

Christian Culture

Singers
Today,
Catholics
Tomorrow
by SSPX Sisters

So many Catholic mothers today weep over
a child gone astray in our poor world! When the
prodigal son hastened home, it was because of
the thought of the incomparable joy he had once
known in his father’s home. Parents have a very
simple means of developing and fostering this
joy in their children: song. Education is above all
a respiration, and song spreads the perfume of
good humor that is so conducive to physical and
moral health, it helps to awaken the intelligence,
removes the danger of vice and corruption, and
contributes to the flowering of virtue. And it is so
natural an inclination for human beings that they
can scarcely refuse to quench their thirst with it.
What will our children sing later on, when their
heart fills with enthusiasm, if no one forms them
with beautiful music? They will take pleasure in
modern songs, those influential agents of moral
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depravation. Yes, song is powerful over the heart of
man, for the bad or for the good. And we might add
that it stimulates the capacity to listen, which can
spare a child many difficulties in school; plus, the
study of rhythm influences the order of the brain,
developing logic and the capacity to reason.

Music and Music
How to go about it concretely? By listening to
beautiful pieces of music or songs, we form our
children’s ear; prefer baroque music (Vivaldi, Bach,
Handel, etc.) or classical music (Haydn, Mozart,
etc.) and folk songs. The harmony of the sounds
should elevate the sentiments and not excite
them; romantic music that is more passionate is
to be used sparingly. We must obviously keep the

doors of our homes resolutely closed to diabolical
music such as rock music that too many young
Catholics enjoy listening or dancing to, because of
their parents. Yes, we must know how to give our
children their fill of beauty, and later on ugliness
will disgust them. Parents should play a CD
sometimes in the car or on Sundays and feast days
in the living room. And they should be the first
to sing; fathers can sing for their children a good
old folk song or Catholic song, with a tone and
gestures that will captivate their audience; when
putting the little ones to bed, mothers can reward
them for a day well spent by singing them a hymn
or lullaby.

In All Circumstances
Little ones will quickly learn the children’s
songs that the whole family sings for them with
the appropriate gestures and dances (“Here we
go Looby Loo”). As they grow, they will join their
voices to those of their parents in the car, while
doing dishes, and during evenings spent together
as a family. It is good to sing rounds; they are
easy and teach children to hold their voices
without being thrown off by the others. Thus, song
becomes a pastime and banishes boredom. But
that is not all, like we said: we should also use it in
difficult, more tense moments (“No matter what, I
always go on smiling…”). How many conflicts are
calmed, how many disputes between brothers and
sisters can be dissipated by singing together: there

is nothing like a song for creating a common spirit.
We can sing while working to keep the atmosphere
joyful, or on walks to encourage the little ones
(“Row, row, row that boat”). Holidays should be
full of song; before opening their presents, the little
ones can process to the nativity scene in the living
room to sing a hymn to the Child Jesus. And it is
often a simple way of pleasing others. It is good to
prepare a song for a visit to the grandparents, for
a family party, a wedding anniversary, and why
not with adapted lyrics composed by the older
children. Older children should be encouraged
to participate in the school choir where they
will learn a healthy control of their breathing
and voices along with a priceless collection of
polyphony pieces.
Lastly and above all, we must not isolate this
need for song and this joy found in singing from the
spiritual lives of our children: we can sing at night
prayers, sing the Gloria Patri’s in the rosary, and
grace before and after meals, and we should love
to participate in the sung Mass on Sunday. Singing
is praying twice, with one’s body and soul. And as
the dispositions of the body help those of the soul,
song makes prayer more ardent and more fervent:
see how abundantly the liturgy uses chant.
“Singing belongs to one who loves,” says St.
Augustine. Where there is love, there is joy, and
joy is the mother of song. For the Church, song is a
need, it is the expression of her love. Let us foster
this need in our children, and the day will come
when they will be constantly singing deep down in
their souls the interior song we call thanksgiving.
59

And behold there was a man in Jerusalem named
Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting
for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Ghost was
in him. And he had received an answer from the Holy
Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen
the Christ of the Lord. And he came by the Spirit into
the temple. And when his parents brought in the child
Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the
law, He also took him into his arms, and blessed God,
and said: Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord,
according to thy word in peace; Because my eyes have
seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before
the face of all peoples: A light to the revelation of the
Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
Luke 2:25. Stained glass window, Ridgefield

Christian Culture

by Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara, SSPX

Note: This set of questions and answers
has been prompted by the recent discussions
over Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia, and its
“pastoral” consideration of allowing the divorced
and remarried to be admitted to the sacraments.
Here we set down the moral principles which
should guide the answer to be given, not only to
that particular problem, but also to a question
that we are often asked in our ministry. (This set
of Q&A is based on the excellent article by Rev.
Fr. Hervé Gresland, SSPX, published in Le Rocher
c’est le Christ n. 109, October-November 2017. )
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What (or who) is a
“public sinner”?
A “public sinner” is a person who lives
habitually in the state of grave sin—which
sin is also notorious and scandalous. “To live
habitually in sin” means that the person has
not simply committed isolated sinful acts, but
lives in such a manner that the situation of sin
is perpetuated. “Notorious” means that this
habitual sinful state is known by many as a fact
and is therefore impossible to conceal. Moreover,

the sin committed has the particular malice of
being “scandalous”—it offers the public a bad
example which also encourages others to commit
the same sin.
Among “public sinners” are to be counted
those who have abandoned the Catholic faith,
either by going over to non-Catholic groups or
sects, or by habitually living in impiety, that is,
habitually refusing to worship God, to follow His
law, or to accept the truths of faith. Among such
sinners are also to be counted those who have a
state of life or an occupation that is gravely sinful
(for example, usurers, prostitutes, “psychics,”
etc.) and also those who live as husband and wife
without being truly married.

fold.
To be readmitted to the reception of the
sacraments, the public sinner must dispose
himself, first as “sinner,” by a sincere contrition,
and second as “public,” by a public manifestation
of his repentance and by repairing the scandal
given. Therefore, if his sinful behavior is tied to a
permanent external circumstance (such as living
in concubinage, or keeping what he has stolen,
etc.), he must publicly remedy that situation.

What should be our attitude
towards public sinners?
What is the Church’s attitude
towards public sinners?
From her origins and urged by Our Lord’s
command (Mt. 7:6), the Church has maintained
towards public sinners a severe policy of
exclusion—they cannot be admitted to
communion, they cannot act as godparents, they
cannot receive a Catholic burial....To admit public
sinners to the sacraments would constitute a
formal cooperation in their public sacrilege and
in the ensuing scandal, as well as an implicit
acceptance or approval of the sin that has
brought them to this state.
Such exclusion of the unworthy is a grave duty
of the ministers of the Church, who must also
act with supernatural prudence and fortitude. In
this matter, the Church proceeds, not with the
intention of offending or hurting anybody, but with
the intention of defending the honor of God and
of our holy religion, and saving souls. The sinner,
who is thus excluded from the reception of the
sacraments, must see this exclusion as a special
call to penance, as the last recourse of a loving
mother, the Church, to bring a lost sheep to the

The attitude of the Church teaches us how we
are to behave with public sinners: we must follow
what Catholic moral doctrine dictates regarding
participation in an evil action perpetrated by
another.
Although sin is a personal act, we share
responsibility for any sin in which we cooperate
in some way. We may cooperate in the
commission of a sin by directly and voluntarily
participating in it, or again by ordering, advising,
praising, or approving of it. But we may also
become responsible for a sin by omission, that is,
by not hindering or denouncing a sinful action or
by remaining silent when it is committed.
Sin cannot be approved or encouraged in any
way. To approve of a sinful action is to associate
oneself with the evil intention of the sinner,
and thus renders one culpable of sin. Allowing
another to commit a sin may also be culpable,
because we have the duty not only of avoiding sin
ourselves, but also of opposing sin. If there is no
grave obstacle or inconvenience, charity towards
our neighbor demands that we try to stop him
from committing a sin or, at least, that we do not
participate in his sin in any way, whether by our
silence or inaction.
In today’s world, we see immorality all
63

Christian Culture
around us, widely promoted by the media,
who also presses us to accept it in the name of
tolerance and out of respect for our neighbor’s
liberty to do as he pleases... The possibilities
for confronting such an onslaught of moral
deviance are limited, but we must at least be
firm in defending the law of God and upholding
especially the Catholic moral principles regarding
family and marriage, which are currently under
violent attack. We must strive to conform our
personal lives to God’s law and, in the measure
possible, to make His law respected around us,
beginning with our own families. In this respect,
one of our foremost duties will be (again, insofar
as we are able) to protect our families from the
scandal of public sinners.

What should we do when
asked to attend a relative’s
“marriage” that will certainly
be invalid in God’s eyes?
The general moral principles stated above are
clear, but their application to concrete cases is
difficult and delicate: if we do not react, we risk
getting used to sin and, in the end, accepting it
as normal; if we react in the wrong way, we risk
doing more harm than good...We cannot treat as
husband and wife those who are not such in the
eyes of God. To do so would be to participate, by
our consent, in their sin. At the same time, the
matter must be handled with great prudence,
charity and fortitude.
Therefore, we should not attend the “nuptials”
of a Catholic who marries outside the Church,
because such a ceremony is not a true marriage.
The Catholic “spouse” commits a mortal sin by
attempting to marry in such a way, and enters
into a state of life which will perpetuate the
sin, thus becoming a “public sinner.” Likewise,
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we should not attend the reception after the
“wedding,” for what is there to celebrate? That
a soul has chosen to sin and to remain in sin?
Certainly not.
To receive an invalidly married couple in the
context of family gatherings undermines the
very notion of the Catholic family, which must be
based on true marriage. The family may receive
one of its members who is in the state of sin, but
alone, without the putative “spouse,” who is not
part of the family. Perhaps the family member
who is in sin will refuse to come without the
“spouse.” Then, painful as it will be for the rest of
the family, he or she will not be able to come – the
moral good of the family must take precedence.
Outside of family gatherings, it is permissible
to meet the so-called “spouses” in order not
to break completely the family ties that may
lead them back to the fold, however, there must
be some basis for the hope that one day their
consciences will be enlightened and open to
grace. If such meetings do take place, it must be
clear to the couple and to other, that they are not
in approval of the sinful situation, even if years
have passed since the situation began.
The firmness of these principles does not
exclude charity towards the persons involved,
quite the contrary! God hates sin, but inclines
with mercy towards the sinner who is willing to
return to Him. We must imitate Him. There is no
need to lose our temper or to be unnecessarily
hurtful. We must explain our attitude calmly
and with great charity. True charity towards our
neighbor demands both that we help the sinner
abandon the state of sin and also that we do
not allow the scandal of sin, by our inaction, to
spread to others.
A prudential note...
These guidelines are dictated by the general
moral principles, but what appears here as
a straightforward analysis, is, in real life, a
complex and usually painful decision.
Each concrete case will be different, according
to the circumstances and the persons and
families involved. In these situations, there
are many variables which, when taken into
consideration, may incline us more towards
leniency or perhaps to greater severity.

News from Tradition
And So “Synodality” Begins to Take Shape
On September 3 2017, Pope Francis issued
a Motu Proprio entitled Magnum Principium
by which he modified Canon 838 of the Code of
Canon Law (the Code of 1983). Canon 838 deals
specifically with the translation of liturgical
texts from Latin into the various vernacular
languages, and mandated that the Holy See must
give its official approval to any translations of
the Roman Missal and Ritual before they can be
used. The modification ordered by Pope Francis
removes this requirement and allows the
various National Episcopal Conferences to give
approval to the official texts of the Mass (Novus
Ordo) prepared in the vernacular.
While this change seems relatively minor and
of no real concern to Catholics assisting at the
Traditional Mass, it does signal the beginning

to introduce into the Catholic Church practices
found in the various schismatic and heretical
Orthodox churches. Synodality is one of the
major cornerstones of the Orthodox and is
best defined as doctrine being defined and
guarded by a synod of bishops rather than in
the Petrine Office. This effectively dismantles
two of the four marks of the Church (Oneness
and Catholicity) by destroying the unity and
universal nature of doctrine.
When questioned about the Motu Proprio
Magnum Principium, Cardinal Sarah, the
Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship
(CDW), wrote that Rome would still have final
approval of any translations prepared by the
various Episcopal Conferences. Within a few
days of the publication of the Cardinal’s words,

of one of Pope Francis’ stated goals: the giving
of doctrinal authority to the various National
Episcopal Conferences. This would open the
door to the possibility that Catholic dogma
could vary from country to country (although
an impossibility in reality since truths of the
Faith are perennially valid everywhere and
unchangeable), much the same way as various
Episcopal Conferences have made divorce
and remarriage not an obstacle to receiving
the Sacraments in some countries, while
others have upheld the traditional teaching of
the Church in this matter in light of Amoris
Latitiae. Ever since becoming Bishop of Rome,
Pope Francis has made no secret of his desire

Pope Francis wrote a public letter to Cardinal
Sarah correcting the Cardinal and stating
that he fully intended to cede control over the
translation of Liturgical texts to the Episcopal
Conferences. This sort of public rebuke of a
cardinal by a pope was unheard of until now.
Following this, there is legitimate speculation
as to how long Cardinal Sarah will remain as
Prefect of CDW. Additionally, Cardinal Mueller
stated, in reference to the Motu Proprio that: “In
case of doubt, the final authority cannot be with
the bishops’ conferences. This would destroy
the unity of the Church’s faith, commitment and
prayer.”

65

News from Tradition
The “Celebration” Continues
As has been mentioned in previous “Church in
the World” columns, the Vatican of Pope Francis
has been encouraging the “celebration” of the
500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s revolt
against the Church including a joint prayer service
presided over by Francis and a female Lutheran
“bishop” which took place in Sweden last year. In
October of last year, the seeming rehabilitation
of Martin Luther continued unabated, as several
bishops made remarks (either in print or verbally)

which effectively praised Luther as a reformer.
Bishop Nunzio Galantino, the secretary-general
of the Italian Bishops Conference went so far as
to call Luther’s revolt “an event of the Holy Spirit”
in a conference given at the Pontifical Lateran
University on October 19, 2017. Bishop Galantino
was appointed to his post by Pope Francis.
In response to Galantino, Cardinal Gerhard
Mueller, the former Prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote an article for
an Italian Catholic journal rebuking those who try
and see Luther’s actions as anything but a revolt
against the Church herself. Mueller stated:
“…in the book written by Luther in 1520, De
captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae, it is absolutely
clear that Luther has left behind all of the
principles of the Catholic Faith, Sacred Scripture,
the Apostolic Tradition, the magisterium of the
Pope and the Councils, and of the episcopate.
In this sense, he upended the concept of the
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homogeneous development of Christian doctrine
as explained in the Middle Ages, even denying
that a sacrament is an efficacious sign of the grace
contained therein. He replaced this objective
efficacy of the sacraments with a subjective faith.
Here, Luther abolished five sacraments, and he
also denied the Eucharist: the sacrificial character
of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and the real
conversion of the substance of bread and wine
into the substance of the Body and Blood of Jesus
Christ. Furthermore, he called the sacrament of
episcopal ordination, the sacrament of Orders,
an invention of the Pope—whom he called the
Antichrist—and not part of the Church of Jesus
Christ…
It is therefore unacceptable to assert that
Luther’s reform “was an event of the Holy Spirit.”
On the contrary, it was against the Holy Spirit.
Because the Holy Spirit helps the Church to
maintain her continuity through the Church’s
magisterium, above all in the service of the Petrine
ministry: on Peter has Jesus founded His Church
(Mt. 16:18), which is “the Church of the living God,
the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (I Tim. 3:15).
The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself.
While Cardinal Mueller’s response is laudatory,
it must be remembered that he no longer speaks
on behalf of the Congregation of the Doctrine of
the Faith, and therefore he is not in a position to
penalize Bishop Galantino or demand a retraction
of his statements.
Aside from the public statements of various
bishops, the Vatican itself has been working on
painting the Protestant revolt in a positive light.
The Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper
of the Holy See has itself published numerous
articles consistent with Bishop Galantino’s
understanding of Luther. The Vatican Philatelic
Office issued a stamp commemorating the
anniversary which shows the Crucifixion of Our
Lord and at the base of the Cross are the figures
of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon (the
original “theologian” of Protestantism). The stamp
is an affront to Catholic sensibilities since it
replaces the traditional figures of Our Lady and St.
John with arch heretics!

There is little doubt that Pope Francis is just
ramping up the “ecumania” which has been the
hallmark of Vatican policies since Vatican II. It
appears that any and all teachings of the Faith are
to be sacrificed at the altar of intercommunion
with the various Protestant sects.

(The translation of Cardinal Mueller’s article is
from Lifesite News and is available here: https://
www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-muellerluthers-reform-was-against-the-holy-spirit )

Young Americans are losing the sense of Christmas
Based on a survey organized by the Pew
Forum website in December 2013, Christmas
in the U.S. is becoming less religious and more
“cultural.”1 As Christmas and Easter are the
main religious feasts for Christians and remain
attended by virtually all of them (96% to be
precise), only one American out of two will
attend Christmas services this year, vs. two
out of three in the previous generation. Young
adults under age 30 are far less likely than older
Americans to say they see Christmas as more
of a religious than a cultural holiday, and this
applies also to Christians: young people are
more likely than older adults to view Christmas
as more of a cultural than a religious holiday

On an more optimistic mood, Nine-in-ten
Americans celebrate Christmas, and threequarters say they believe in the virgin birth of
Jesus. The non-Christians celebrate Christmas
too, but mostly as a cultural and family holiday.
The way they celebrated Christmas is rooted
in their past experience as children: mostly
with family gatherings, caroling around the
Christmas tree, and the exchanging of gifts.
But fewer Americans sent Christmas or holiday
cards this year, and the trend is to send family
pictures and news.
1

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/18/
celebrating-christmas-and-the-holidays-then-and-now/

67

News from Tradition
Capuchin Theologian Dismissed by the USCCB
Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, a Capuchin
Franciscan priest and well known theologian,
was fired by the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops as a theological advisor within
hours of publishing the letter he wrote to Pope
Francis expressing his concern about Francis’
words and actions. Fr. Weinandy decided to
make his letter to Pope Francis public after
receiving no response from the Pope, even
though he had hand delivered the letter to
Francis personally.

In the letter, which was very respectful in its
tone, Fr. Weinandy called the pope’s attention to
the fact that:
“…a chronic confusion seems to mark your
pontificate… Allow me to offer a few brief
examples. First there is the disputed Chapter
8 of Amoris Laetitia. I need not share my own
concerns about its content. Others, not only
theologians, but also cardinals and bishops,
have already done that. The main source of
concern is the manner of your teaching. In
Amoris Laetitia, your guidance at times seems
intentionally ambiguous, thus inviting both a
traditional interpretation of Catholic teaching
on marriage and divorce as well as one that
might imply a change in that teaching… Second,
too often your manner seems to demean the

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importance of Church doctrine. Again and again
you portray doctrine as dead and bookish, and
far from the pastoral concerns of everyday life.
Your critics have been accused, in your own
words, of making doctrine an ideology… the
Church is one body, the Mystical Body of Christ,
and you are commissioned by the Lord himself
to promote and strengthen her unity. But your
actions and words too often seem intent on
doing the opposite. Encouraging a form of
‘synodality’ that allows and promotes various
doctrinal and moral options within the Church
can only lead to more theological and pastoral
confusion. Such synodality is unwise and, in
practice, works against collegial unity among
bishops.”
Towards the conclusion of his letter, Fr.
Weinandy states:
“Holy Father, this brings me to my final
concern. You have often spoken about the need
for transparency within the Church. You have
frequently encouraged, particularly during the
two past synods, all persons, especially bishops,
to speak their mind and not be fearful of what
the pope may think. But have you noticed that
the majority of bishops throughout the world
are remarkably silent? Why is this? Bishops are
quick learners, and what many have learned
from your pontificate is not that you are open to
criticism, but that you resent it. Many bishops
are silent because they desire to be loyal to you,
and so they do not express—at least publicly;
privately is another matter—the concerns that
your pontificate raises. Many fear that if they
speak their mind, they will be marginalized or
worse.”
It is very clear from the USCCB’s immediate
firing of Fr. Weinandy that his final observation
is completely accurate. Many have expressed
similar concerns that any deviation from the
“party line” being promoted by the Vatican of
Pope Francis will not be tolerated and those
who do will be immediately crushed without
mercy.

St. John Paul I?
The Italian press is reporting that the cause
for the canonization of Pope John Paul I is
accelerating. Cardinal Albino Luciani, the then
Patriarch of Venice, was elected to the papacy in
September of 1978 following the death of Pope
Paul VI which occurred the preceding August 6,
and took the unusual dual papal name of John
Paul. Given the moniker “the Smiling Pope” by
the press, John Paul reigned for a mere 33 days
and died on September 28, 1978. As of now, Papa
Luciani is the only post Vatican II pope who
has not been either beatified or canonized. The
report states that the heroic virtue of John Paul
I has been established and is simply awaiting the
approval of the Congregation for the Causes of
Saints and Pope Francis.
Many conspiracy theories have arisen over
the past 40 years as to the exact cause of death
of John Paul I. Officially his death was ruled as
natural, the result of a heart attack, but some
began to speculate that Cardinal Luciani was on
the verge of exposing the activity of Freemasons in
the Vatican as well as financial improprieties of the
Institute for Religious Works (the “Vatican Bank”)
and was therefore murdered to stop his speculated

actions. Other theorists have speculated that
Luciani was of a traditional mindset and was ready
to reverse many of the progressive actions of Paul
VI.
Irrespective of these conspiracy theories, there
is little doubt that the proposed canonization of
John Paul I will be used as a tool to shore up the
legacy of the Second Vatican Council.

Ancient Fresco Discovered in Norcia
In the autumn of 2016, a major earthquake
caused massive destruction in the Italian city
of Norcia, the birthplace of St. Benedict, the
Father of Western Monasticism. In addition to
the destruction of the town, the Basilica of St.
Benedict was almost completely destroyed, as
was the Benedictine monastery attached to it
(the monks of Norcia had begun celebrating
the Traditional Mass with the approval of Pope
Benedict XVI some years ago).
News has now come from the Heritage Office
of Umbria that in the process of clearing away
the remains of the Basilica, an ancient fresco
of St. Benedict has been discovered. The fresco
had been covered over some centuries ago and is
considered to be of great cultural, not to mention
religious, significance.
Sadly, it is also being reported that although

the Basilica will be rebuilt, the diocesan plans
are calling for a modern structure as opposed to
attempting to replicate the original architecture.
There is no information on whether the newly
discovered fresco will be incorporated into the
new Basilica or placed in a museum setting.

69

News from Tradition
The Clandestine Church Takes Action for a Bishop’s Liberation
A prayer chain was launched in December of
2017 for the liberation of the bishop of the diocese
of Wenzhou, who has been under house arrest for
seven months.
On May 18, Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin
disappeared from his diocese after being “invited”
to meet with the local Bureau of Religious Affairs.
Six months later, the faithful of the diocese have
decided to pray and fast for their bishop on the
18th of every month.
A few days before the 19th congress of the
Chinese Communist Party, the prelate was
supposedly led from Beijing to Xining, a city in the
province of Qinghai, 1,500 miles from his home.
This is the fourth time the bishop has disappeared
like this since he succeeded Bishop Vincent Zhu
Weifang at the head of the diocese in September of
2016.
Last June, the German ambassador in Beijing
and Greg Burke, director of the Holy See Press
Office, both asked the Chinese authorities to
restore Bishop Shao’s freedom.
According to Ucanews, the authorities have

informed Bishop Shao that in order to obtain his
freedom he will have to recognize the Church’s
independence from the Holy See and concelebrate
a Mass with a bishop not recognized by the
Vatican.

Human Stem Cells Used as Spare Parts
With a revision of the law on bioethics
scheduled for 2018, a team of French biologists
has just tested a therapy using embryonic
human stem cells to treat an eye disease.
Retinitis pigmentosa affects nearly 30,000
patients in France. Macular degeneration due to
age affects over 1.5 million.
The December 20, 2017 issue of the journal
Science Translational Medicine reveals the
results of an experiment conducted on rats.
After placing on the surface of their retina a
“patch” made of modified embryonic human
stem cells, researchers observed that the rats
with transplants performed better and for a
longer period of time on the visual acuity test
that animals of other groups.
In the light of these results, an authorization
request for a clinical trial on human patients

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January - February 2018

will be filed in March of 2018.
Based on natural law and God’s sovereignty
over all creatures, the Catholic Church forbids
the manipulation—and destruction—of human
embryos, even for therapeutic purposes: one
cannot do wrong for a good cause.

125 pp – Softcover – STK# 8663Q – $12.95

Prophetic Messages For Our Times
Quito • La Salette • Lourdes • Fatima

Provides, in a brief and profound manner, the history and meaning of four of the most
relevant Marian apparitions for our day: Quito, La Salette, Lourdes, and Fatima. The
messages of Our Lady, while sometimes dire, offer hope and consolation to the faithful,
yet, more importantly, reveal sure remedies for overcoming the evils of today and the innumerable graces to those that follow her direction. How fortunate we are to have such a
Blessed Mother, so desirous to draw souls into the heavenly embrace of her Divine Son.

158 pp.—Flexible hardcover—STK# 8698—$16.95

Luther’s True Face
by Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, SSPX

Written by French scholar and clergyman, Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, of the Society of Saint
Pius X, Luther’s True Face provides an in-depth look at the “Father of Protestantism.”
More than just a theological analysis, Fr. Gleize’s study offers crucial historical details
about Luther’s life, the times in which he lived, and the state of the Catholic Church in the
early 16th century. Also included in this first English edition of Luther’s True Face is an
introduction by Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, several appendices, and a copy of
Pope Pius XI’s landmark encyclical Mortalium Animos (on religious unity). While Fr. Gleize
approaches his subject matter through a Thomistic lens and delves deeply into Luther’s
doctrine, this volume is accessible to all Catholics who wish to learn about the origins of
Protestantism and come away with a deeper understanding of what continues to divide
Catholics and Protestants to this very day.
152 pp.—Softcover—Photographs—STK# 8699—$12.95

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Letters to Her Spiritual Brothers

Correspondence between St. Thérèse of Lisieux and missionaries Fr. Adolphe Roulland
and Fr. Maurice Bellière covering the practical and spiritual aspects of religious, clerical,
and missionary life in the 19th century. The letters offer a unique glimpse into the soul
of one of the most beloved saints in recent history. Although more than a century has
passed since they were written, these letters confront perennial themes familiar to all
Christians. Every Catholic, whether clerical, religious, or lay, will discover immense spiritual benefits in this unique collection.

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

St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck (Marienkirche, officially St. Marien zu Lübeck) was built
between 1250 and 1350. It has always been a symbol of the power and prosperity of the
old Hanseatic city. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the old Hanseatic
City of Lübeck. St. Mary’s epitomizes the northern German Brick Gothic and sets
the standard for about 70 other churches in the Baltic region, making it a building of
enormous architectural significance. St. Mary’s Church embodied the towering style of
Gothic architecture using northern German brick. It has the tallest brick vault in the
world, the height of the central nave being 126 ft.

Theological Studies

The Angel of
the Storm
by Dr. John Senior

As you go by a field of buckwheat after a thunderstorm, you will often notice that the buckwheat
has been scorched quite black. It looks as though a
flame had passed over it, and then the farmer says
“It’s got that from the lightning.” But how has it
happened? I will tell you what the sparrow told me,
and the sparrow heard it from an old willow tree that
stood—and is still standing—by the side of a field of
buckwheat. It’s quite a venerable great willow, but
wrinkled and aged, with a crack down the middle—
and grass and brambles growing out of the crack!
The tree leans forward, and the branches hang right
down to the ground like long green hair.
In all the fields round about, there was corn growing, rye and barley and oats—yes, the lovely oats
that have the appearance, when ripe, of a whole
string of little yellow canaries on a bough. The corn
was a wonderful sight; and the heavier the crop,

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the deeper it stooped in meek humility. But there
was also a field of buckwheat; it was just in front of
the old willow. The buckwheat didn’t stoop like the
other corn; it held itself up proudly and stiffly. “I
must be just as rich as the grain,” it said, “and I’m
much better-looking. My blossoms are beautiful, like
apple-blossoms; it’s quite a pleasure to look upon
me and mine. Do you know anyone finer, my dear
willow?” The willow tree nodded his head as if to say,
“You may be sure I do!” But the buckwheat was simply bursting with pride and said, “The stupid tree!
He’s so old that his stomach has grass growing on
it.” And now a terrible storm blew up. All the flowers
in the field folded their leaves or bent their delicate
heads while the storm passed over them. But the
buckwheat stood up straight in its pride. “Stoop
down like us!” cried the flowers. “No need whatever
for me to!” answered the buckwheat. “Stoop down

like us!” cried the corn. “Here comes the angel of the
storm in full flight. He has wings that reach from the
clouds right down to the earth; he will strike straight
over you, before you can cry for mercy!”
“Very well, but I refuse to stoop,” said the buckwheat. “Shut up your blossoms and bend down
your leaves!” said the old willow. “Don’t look up at
the lightning when the cloud bursts; even mankind
daren’t do that, for in the lightning one may see into
God’s heaven. But even man can be blinded by the
sight of that; what ever would happen to us plants,
if we dared so much—we who are far inferior?” “Far
inferior?” said the buckwheat. “Well, now I’m going
to look into God’s heaven”; and in arrogance and
pride it did so. The lightning was so fierce that the
whole earth seemed to be wrapped in flame. When
the storm passed away, there in the pure still air
stood flowers and corn, all refreshed by the rain;
but the buckwheat had been scorched coal-black
by the lightning. It was now a dead useless weed on
the field. And the old willow stirred his branches in
the wind, and big drops of water fell from his green
leaves, just as though the tree was crying. And the
sparrows asked, “What are you crying for? It’s so
lovely here. Look how the sun is shining, how the
clouds are sailing by. Can’t you smell the perfume of
the flowers and bushes? Why should you cry, dear
willow?” Then the willow tree told them about the
buckwheat’s pride and arrogance—and punishment,
for that always follows. I, who tell the tale, I heard it
from the sparrows. It was they who told it to me, one
evening when I begged them for a story.
Cardinal John Newman’s Warning
At the end of this tale as it is finely printed on
thick rag paper in the little edition published at
Odense, Denmark, in its rich, red leather cover embossed with a golden flower, is an illustration taken
from the original drawings by Wilhelm Pederson of
the great Angel of the Storm, grasping bolts of lightning in his hands, his long hair flying in the wind, his
huge wings spread behind him in his flight.
“Stoop down like us,” cried the corn. “Here comes
the Angel of the Storm in full flight. He has wings
that reach from the clouds right down to the earth;
he will strike straight over you, before you can cry
for mercy.”
Do you think there really are angels of the

storms?
Before you start to answer that, take note of two
severe warnings Cardinal Newman gives to anyone
who writes or speaks on angels: In a sermon he
preached on the Feast of St. Michael, he says: “Many
a man can write and talk beautifully about [the angels] who is not at all better or nearer heaven for all
his excellent words.”
He means that in meditating on the joys of heaven
and in particular the choirs of angels, we run the risk
that these anticipations will satisfy us prematurely
as a sentiment; as if we could enjoy the end without
placing the necessary means whereas these things
have been revealed to us for a definite, practical
purpose.
Cardinal Newman says:
“Let us beware lest we make the contemplation
of them a mere feeling, and a sort of luxury of the
imagination. This World is to be a world of practice
and labour; God reveals to us glimpses of the Third
Heaven for our comfort; but if we indulge in these
as the end of our present being, not trying day by
day to purify ourselves for the future enjoyment of
the fullness of them, they become but a snare of our
enemy. The services of religion, day by day, obedience to God in our calling and in ordinary matters,
endeavours to imitate our Saviour Christ in word
and deed, constant prayer to Him, and dependence
on Him, these are the due preparation for receiving
and profiting by His revelations.”
Newman’s second warning is even more severe
than the first, because the consequence of failing to
heed it is worse even than a snare of the enemy—it
is a vice, the more dangerous for its attractive,
highly-polished, spiritual appearance. Newman calls
it the vice of a dark age. He scarcely thought of it
as a present danger in his own; but in ours—well,
anyone with an eye can see that this dark age is in
fact returning now.
The New Gnosticism
Gnosticism, which infected the Church of the first
centuries, reappearing under different names and
guises several times since, is born again today in the
super-spiritualism associated with the new theology
and in extravagant forms of charismatic prayer. In
the ancient days it festered first in the synagogues

75

Theological Studies
of Alexandria and from them the infection spread
to the Christian churches as well. St. Paul himself
condemns the idolatry of angels practiced among
the Colossians who had fostered a false ecumenism between the Church and the pagan cults of the
Aeons, or Intermediaries, so-called emanations of
God, just as Thomas Merton, Teilhard de Chardin
and even Jacques Maritain in our time tried to bridge
the abyss between the Catholic mystics like St. John
of the Cross and the Oriental swamis. One thinks
of Merton or Teilhard more in pity than in anger because they were neither learned nor smart, but what
are we to think of Maritain who was certainly both?
Jacques Maritain
This sensitive, gifted intelligence, distinguishing
with exquisite subtlety and precision the teaching
of St. Thomas on the mysteries of grace, proceeds
to isolate the truth that Christ died for all from the
other truths which limit and define it. He cites a
contemporary Carmelite theologian in support of his
view, who writes,
“St. Thomas, speaking of those who lived before
the coming of Christ and who were saved by following the voice of conscience, says: “Even though they
did not have explicit faith (in a Mediator), they did
nevertheless have implicit faith in Him through their
faith in Divine Providence, believing that God would
save men by such means as pleased Him.” Thus,
believing God saves men by means pleasing to Him
is having an implicit faith in Christ, the Redeemer. It
is difficult to contend that conditions have changed
for those who, because they lived after Christ, have
never heard mention of him.”
Well, yes, provided that we add the note of invincibility to their never having heard and provided that
we have clear knowledge of their definitions of God,
Providence, Mediator and Salvation. For example, if
there were evidence (which there is not) that Plato
or Aristotle believed God “saved,” one could, I think,
at least morally conclude from what St. Thomas
says and the study of their work to their implicit faith
in Christ. But Maritain applies this carefully discriminated argument indiscriminately to an appalling assortment of cases in which there is certain evidence
to the contrary.
“We know [Maritain writes] that unbaptized
persons, even though they are not stamped with the
seal of faith, so as to participate through the virtue

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of the Church in the proper work of the Church
(which is the redemption continued), can nevertheless (inasmuch as they receive without knowing it
the supernatural life of the selfsame blood which
circulates within the Church and of the same spirit
which rests upon it) belong invisibly to Christ’s
Church. Thus they can have sanctifying grace, and,
as a result, theological faith and the infused gifts.”
So far so good, but look at the utterly imprudent
judgment which follows:
“Works like those of Louis Massignon and Asin
Palacios on Islam, present-day studies devoted to
Hassidism, the personal testimonies to a Mukerji or
a Father Wallace to Hindu spirituality, or even the
works of contemporary ethnologists on the prayer
of primitive peoples—all these being precious factual confirmation to this view of the spirit. And those
are but the first explorations in a complicated and
difficult terrain.”
From St. John of the Cross to Ramakrishna
He even goes so far as to include some whom
anyone of common sense would either pity as lunatics or flee from as demonic. For example, he writes,
“The saints who visibly belong to the Church enable us to recognize their far-off brethren who do not
know Her and yet belong to Her invisibly—St. John of
the Cross enables us to do justice to Ramakrishna.”
Ramakrishna was an atheist, a pervert, and,
worse, a sentimentalist. One of his American imports, Swami Nihilananda, in the introduction to a
widely circulated book blasphemously entitled The
Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, gives the biographical
details:
“Some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna
was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the
truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to
readings from the Bible...[and] became fascinated
by the life and teachings of Jesus.”
Comment: What has become of invincible
ignorance? St. Thomas has been cited speaking about those who, living before the coming of
Christ could not have known him; a contemporary
Carmelite theologian extends this saving ignorance
to those living after Christ but who “have never
heard mention of him,” and Maritain now saves Sri
Ramakrishna who explicitly studied and “became
fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus.”
But it is worse than that:

“One day [Nihilananda reports] he was seated in
the parlour of Jadu Mallick’s garden house...when
his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna
and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually
overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in
the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul.... And breaking
through the barriers of creed and religion...[Note
that phrase: when a Catholic does that he fulfills the
formal definition of apostasy]... breaking through
the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new
realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. On the
fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the
garden, he saw coming toward him a person with
beautiful large eyes, serene countenance and fair
skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out
in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna’s soul: “Behold the
Christ, who shed His heart’s blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish
for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, Love
Incarnate.” The Son of Man embraced the Son of the
Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna
realized his identity with Christ, as he had already
realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuma,
Radha, Krishna, Brahman and Mohammed.
[Mohammed would have slit his throat.]
Thus [Sri Ramakrishna] experienced the truth
that Christianity too was a path leading to GodConsciousness. Till the last moment of his life he
believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But
Christ for him was not the only Incarnation; there
were others—Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.”
St. Thomas teaches that if in invincible ignorance
one believed in Jesus’ Name which means “God
saves,” even though he didn’t know the Jesus born
in Bethlehem and died on Calvary, that such belief
could constitute an implicit and sufficient faith. But
Ramakrishna thinks that all gods save, that salvation is something called “God-Consciousness” and
that God is a symbol of one’s self. Ramakrishna also
practiced forms of sexual yoga, achieving states
of consciousness which psychiatrists identify as
pathologically regressive and clinically insane. I
could quote some passages to shock and disgust,
but it is even more shocking that Maritain, a Nobel
Prize winner, by everyone’s account a brilliant
Catholic philosopher, and a strong influence on Pope
Paul VI and many bishops and periti at the Council,

should have confused such stuff with sanctity. Such
stuff has no more to do with St. John of the Cross
than theology with insanity.
Extraordinary in the Service of the Ordinary
True doctrine is always sound doctrine, by which
I mean healthy doctrine; and the practices deriving
from it have always had the ring of common sense.
Fanaticism, excess, especially spiritual excess,
enthusiasm, the exotic, the Oriental, primitive,
depraved, and, worst of all, the simpering sentimentality of “Ah, we all love God, you in your way, I in
mine”—these are symptoms of an avarice of spirit, a
gluttony, and, finally, a lust.
There are extraordinary and sometimes shocking
cases of authentic Catholic charismatic grace, but
nonetheless in the ordinary way of salvation, grace
inheres in sound minds and bodies in a healthy
Christian culture which might be best summed up
as a good sense of humor and humility.
God for His reasons has enriched the Church with
prophecies and other extraordinary graces—but
always for the purpose of leading souls to heaven
by converting them back to the ordinary things. The
extraordinary is for the sake of the ordinary—not
the other way around. Our Lady at Fatima did not
tell us to have visions—even of her loveliest self; but
to pray the Rosary, wear the scapular, do penance,
make reparation and exercise the natural and spiritual virtues according to our station in life.
St. Louis
Once a priest who doubted the Real Presence was
given the miraculous grace of conversion when at
his Mass the Sacred Host bled on the corporal right
in front of him. The congregation was amazed. One
of them immediately ran across the city and found
the King, where he often was, sitting alone before
the Tabernacle in his private chapel. When the
messenger blurted out the news, the King sat still.
“Sire,” the man said, “Will you not come at once to
see this great vision?” St. Louis replied, “I am grateful for this grace; it is a blessing to the priest, the
congregation and our city. But as for myself, I must
confess—Deo gratias—I have so far had the greater
grace to have no need of such events to believe Our
Blessed Lord dwells behind that little golden door
there on the altar. Blessed are they who see and
believe, but more blessed are those who believe

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Theological Studies
not having seen.”
St. John of the Cross
St. John of the Cross explicitly says that if you do
receive extraordinary graces, you must earnestly
pray for them to be taken away—even if they are
real. If God wants you as His instrument, the graces
will be given to you willy-nilly; but to desire them is a
sin of spiritual avarice.
The Noonday Devil
Twenty years ago I was struck by the title of a
book, the contents of which I have since forgotten; it
was called The Noonday Devil, taken from one of the
great prayers of Compline, Psalm 90: “Non timebis
a timore nocturno, a sagitta volante in die, a negotio
perambulante in tenebris; ab incursu, et daemonio
meridiano.”—“Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror
of the night, of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the
business that walketh about in the dark, of invasion,
or of the noonday devil.”
Who is this noonday devil? The book, as I remember, suggested that he represents the temptations
that come to us in middle age—at the mid-life crisis
as they call it; which is sensible enough. But reading
the psalm week after week at Compline, especially
late at night, I had often felt that this daemonium
meridianum who appears in the brightness of high
noon must be something worse; and he is.
The Church, of course, has never left us alone,
like the Protestants, with private interpretation of
scripture. We have the whole Catholic Tradition;
and St. Bernard has devoted no less than eighteen
sermons to this one psalm alone. When I came upon
them in the course of tracking down something
else not long ago, I immediately stopped what I was
doing, eagerly searching out his explication of this
phrase that had haunted me for twenty years.
The Four Principles of Temptation
St. Bernard says that the four things listed in the
verse—the nightly fear, the arrow, the business,
and the noonday devil—are the four principles of all
temptation. By a principle he means the beginning
which virtually contains its possible developments,
as an acorn virtually contains the oak or at the
moment of conception the fertilized ovum virtually contains the man. St. Bernard says that all the
thousands of varieties of temptation can be reduced

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to these four principal kinds:
Night, in Scripture, usually means adversity; and
the first adversity for souls who turn to God is the
rebellion of the flesh, which fights the stronger as
it is suppressed. No wonder it produces a fear that
we shall lose the fight! And fear itself becomes a
worse temptation than desire if it stifles recourse
to the one sure remedy—prayer and meditation on
these sins in the light of truth. Concupiscence is like
a furnace, St. Bernard says; but if truth is the fire,
it teaches so as not to burn us up, but purify—the
word “pure” derives from pyr, the Greek for “fire.”
But, then, if truth succeeds and conquers fear
and the night of sin dissolves as it will, beware the
delicate but deadly arrow of vainglory. This is the
second temptation that never attacks the fearful
soul still struggling with his ups and downs; this
one attacks the fervent who succeed and become
susceptible to praise and self-esteem. This is the
devil of the devout Catholic who goes to daily Mass,
confession every month, says his rosary and thinks
that’s all there is—when there is so much more!—
failing to remember in the light of truth that goodness is not an achievement but a gift: What have you
that you have not received?
All right, suppose you have survived these first
two temptations. Suppose the devil finds he can’t
assail you with your fears of failure or your vain illusions of success? Then he will try you with some
real success. When vain failure and vainglory fail,
he will offer you real glory. This is the business
walking in the darkness, the third temptation to
use your gifts for real accomplishment in business,
teaching, preaching, writing, professional practice,
politics, ecclesiastic office, even to the mitre and the
hat. Whereas, whatever your ambition is, the truth
is, it is nothing, because the world is nothing and
nothing profits if you lose your soul. Even spiritual
success is nothing if it is measured by the world,
and they say: “How good he is; he is a saint.” This is
the temptation facing Catholics who at last break
from the ghetto to become senator or member of
the board. It is then that the devil suggests that he
can win an even greater good—for God and for the
Church, of course—if he reneges on only this or this;
for example, that he can win against abortion if his
party overlooks contraception, failing to see that
though abortion is the worse evil in its immediate

consequences, contraception is worse in its malice
because it is more spiritual deliberately to use a faculty against itself, contra naturam, even than, praeter
naturam, to commit murder, as lying, for example, is
more spiritual than theft.
These first three cardinal temptations constitute
exactly those the devil tried against Our Lord. Not
even Lucifer, St. Bernard says, dared tempt him with
the fourth: This is the devil at noon who brings us
visions, spiritual locutions, mystical feelings, words
and touches, the devil of the “neo” in Neo-Thomists
who, like Maritain, adapt St. Thomas to the genius of
themselves; the devil of false ecumenism, experimental liturgies, the pseudo-spirit of Vatican II. This
is the devil who appears when we think our prayers
are finally answered and we have begun to become
theologians, mystics and saints.
St. Bernard writes:
“What does [the devil] do against those he sees
really love justice and hate iniquity? What else but
clothe iniquity in the image of virtue. The ones he
knows are perfect lovers of the good, he tries to
persuade to evil under the appearance not just of
ordinary but of perfect good; so that the person who
most loves good will consent the quickest and easily run and fall. This is, therefore, the devil not just
of the daytime but of noon. Is this not what Mary
feared at the novel salutation of the angel?”
Materialists have always sought to justify sin as
natural good—birds do it, bees do it; it is a universal urge and I can’t help it. This is a low-grade devil
not even of the terror of the night, but of the night
before. You find him hanging out in low places like
the writings of Sigmund Freud and Margaret Meade,
and he has wormed his way from them through the
sinks and drains of post-Conciliar reform into neoCatholic catechisms and marriage manuals. But the
noonday devil proposes something far less gross,
more subtle and especially attractive to sensitive
souls, to those advanced in spiritual life, especially
to contemplatives. This is the devil who says that
there is a “spirituality of the body.” It is not as Freud
and the others taught, that religion symbolizes sex;
sex, to them, symbolizes religion. “Concupiscence is
caritas. Copulation is a form of prayer.” As a father
and grandfather I want to make clear I have nothing
against copulation, but from considerable personal
experience I can assure all these contemplatives
that it isn’t prayer. These oh so sensitive theologians

begin by stating what the Church has always taught,
that there are two ends of marriage; children, yes,
but also mutual love—lets call it “unitive experience”
which is a mystical term. “So sex, you see, is a sign
of the mystical marriage St. Bernard and St. John
of the Cross describe, which is, you see, a kind of
tantric or sexual yoga!” Suffice it to say that some
of this has actually infected Catholic monasteries,
convents and seminaries where the sin of singular
friendship has sunk to actual vice. In the face of
which our best and instant recourse is a special
prayer to St. Michael authorized by a prophetic pope
as early as Newman’s day when these devils still
seemed fast asleep. They are wide awake and prowling now at noon, seeking the ruin of the most tender,
most generous and vulnerable souls:
“O glorious Prince of the heavenly host, St.
Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle and
in the fearful warfare that we are waging against
the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil
spirits....That first enemy of mankind and a murderer from the beginning has regained his confidence. Changing himself into an angel of light, he
goes about with the whole multitude of the wicked
spirits to invade the earth and blot out the Name
of God and of His Christ....This wicked serpent like
an unclean torrent, pours into men of depraved
minds and corrupt hearts the poison of his malice,
the spirit of lying, impiety and blasphemy, and the
deadly breath of impurity and every form of vice and
iniquity. These crafty enemies of mankind have filled
to overflowing with gall and wormwood the Church,
which is the Bride of the Lamb without spot: they
have laid profane hands upon her most sacred treasures. Make haste, therefore, O invincible Prince,
to help the people of God against the inroads of the
lost spirits and grant us the victory. Amen.”
Darkness at Noon
These are the sins of an age of darkness—at
noon. But, of course, this darkness would never
have occurred if the grosser and simpler sins of the
age of light had not occurred first—I mean the false
light of rationalism; the light of a materialist and
skeptical age which denied the presence and even
the existence of angels.
Many a parent, horrified at a son or daughter trafficking with the noonday devils of the Oriental cults,
has failed to see that his own addiction to the

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business walking in the darkness—that is, to his own
ambitious drive for money, power and success—had
cut that son or daughter off from the holy Angels
of the true, Catholic and once perfectly ordinary
spiritual life. If Hindus and their Catholic converts
practice a false angelism, the great mass of western
men, including Catholics, exclude the holy Angels
from their daily lives. Traditional Catholics, of
course, continue to hold the existence of angels as
a dogma of the Faith and most of us recite a prayer
to our Guardian Angel every night and morning. But
we do not integrate this dogma of the Faith into our
daily lives, our businesses, schools, political and
social institutions, and do we especially fail to recognize their presence in the science of physical nature
which dominates the age? As Newman stressed,
the most common and most pernicious form of
infidelity is not conscious heresy in which doctrine
is denied, but the failure to take doctrine seriously.
Materialism had been the ordinary unacknowledged
philosophy of the vast majority of Catholics long
before the great disaster of the Vatican Council.
Generations who accepted the Creed in the abstract, had nonetheless practiced an idolatrous
science as pragmatically true. Many a Catholic, fervently praying to his Guardian Angel in the morning,
has gone to the office, school or shop utterly failing
to acknowledge the existence much less the presence of angels in the chemical, biological and social
processes of the actual work he does.
The Reality of the Angels
Is there an Angel of the Storm? Carissimi, as
the old writers would say at this point—Beloved in
Christ; I am embarrassed to use such language,
unused to it as I am, but the subject calls for it; we
are on holy ground. I wonder if you thought Hans
Christian Andersen’s fairy tale was just fiction?
That angels of the storms, like talking sparrows and
weeping willows are just pretty metaphors, just
ways of talking, in a word, just fantasy?
St. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor—angelic both in
his chastity and in his doctrine on the angels—says
that there really are spirits presiding over all the
species and motions of the universe, moving, governing, regulating the stars and the motions of the
elements such as winds and tides.
“It is generally found both in human affairs and in
natural things [St. Thomas says] that every par-

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ticular power is governed and ruled by the universal
power of the king. Among the angels also, the superior angels who preside over the inferior, possess a
more universal knowledge. Now it is manifest that
the power of any individual body is more particular
than the power of any spiritual substance; for every
corporeal form is a form individualized by matter, and determined to the here and now; whereas
immaterial forms are absolute and intelligible.
Therefore, as the inferior angels, who have the less
universal forms, are ruled by the superior, so are all
corporeal things ruled by the angels.”
The Four Roles of the Angels
Angels work at four assignments in the physical
universe exactly as they are enumerated in the well
known prayer to our Guardian Angel: “Ever this day
(or night) be at my side, to light and guard, to rule
and guide.” Illumina, custodi, rege et guberna. The
act of illumination proper to angels is the light of
understanding, not of the sun, moon, stars or any
physical or chemical variety of light. St. Augustine
says that on the first day of creation when God said
“Fiat lux— Let there be light,” He created the angels.
The sun and other stars of course were not created until the third day. When angels perform their
office of illumination, it is an act of understanding
the principles and reasons of things, perfectly and
instantly without any need of science, experiment
and reason. When angels guard, they perform their
military service against the inroads of the fallen
angels—they keep watch and keep off. When angels
rule, they discern by prudence how the natural law
applies to particular cases; when they guide, they
actually apply force and direction in the execution of
those laws.
Newman’s Sermon on the Angels
There have been ages of the world as Newman
said, in which men have thought too much of angels,
attributing to them divine prerogatives; and many
highly gifted souls are trafficking with devils at noon
today; but for the great, slow majority of Catholics,
the body of Newman’s “Sermon on the Angels” still
holds true. He directs it to the scientific and technological spirit of the age:
“There have been ages of the world in which men
have thought too much of angels, and paid them
excessive honor; honored them so perversely as to

forget the supreme worship due to Almighty God.
This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what is
called an educated age, such as our own, is just the
reverse: to account slightly of them or not at all; to
ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency,
but to certain assumed laws of nature. This, I say, is
likely to be our sin, in proportion as we are initiated
into the learning of this world; this is the danger of
many pursuits, now in fashion—chemistry, geology,
and the like; the danger that is, of resting in things
seen, and forgetting unseen things.
Why do rivers flow? Why does rain fall? Why does
the sun warm us? And the wind, why does it blow?...
These events which we ascribe to chance or to
nature are duties done to that God who maketh His
Angels to be winds, and His Ministers a flame of fire.
For example, it was an Angel which gave to the
pool at Bethesda its medicinal quality; and there is
no reason why we should doubt that other healthsprings in this and other countries are made such,
by a like unseen ministry. The fires on Mount Sinai,
the thunders and lightnings, were the work of
Angels; and in the Apocalypse we read of the Angels
restraining the four winds. The earthquake at the
resurrection was the work of an Angel. And in the
Apocalypse the earth is smitten in various ways by
Angels of vengeance.
Thus wherever we look abroad, we are reminded
of those most gracious and holy beings, the servants of the Holiest, who deign to minister to the
heirs of salvation. Every breath of air and ray of light
and heat, every beautiful prospect is, as it were, the
skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of
those whose faces see God in heaven....Vain man
would be wise, and he curiously examines the works
of nature, as if they were lifeless and senseless; as if
he alone had intelligence, and they were base inert
matter....So, tracing the order of things, seeking for
causes in that order, giving names to the wonders
he meets with and thinking he understands what he
has given a name to. At length he forms a theory,
and recommends it in writing, and calls himself a
scientist.
Now let us consider what the real state of the
case is. Supposing the inquirer I have been describing, when examining a flower, or an herb, or a
pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as something beneath him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered that he was in the presence of

some powerful being who was hidden behind the
visible things he was inspecting, who, though concealing his wise hand, was giving them their beauty,
grace, and perfection, as God’s instruments for
their purpose, nay whose robe and ornaments those
wondrous objects were, which he was so eager to
analyze—what would be his thoughts?... The very
lowest of His Angels is indefinitely above us in this
our present state; how high then must be the Lord
of Angels! The very Seraphim hide their faces before
His Glory, while they praise Him; how shamefaced
then should sinners be, when they come into His
presence!”
Five Practical Proposals
Well, one must conclude upon some practical advice: Surely Newman is right and surely we
have failed to integrate our faith in general, and the
doctrine of angels in particular into the business of
everyday life, particularly in science. It is also true
in politics. Just as there are angels of the storms, so
there are angels of institutions: angels of the United
States, of the several states, angels of cities. His biographer says that St. Francis de Sales on entering
Chablais, saluted the angel of the province. Because
they enjoy the Beatific Vision, in the strict sense,
angels can’t be sad, but metaphorically it can’t be
false to say the angels of our cities weep at our sins
and infidelities and I suggest nothing less than the
restoration of our gratitude and the recognition of
our dependence on these great insulted beings as
they preside over nature, nations, cities, institutions
and persons. So I propose five practical actions:
First, that you restore the nightly reading in your
homes of tales and stories like Andersen’s, derived
from the great Catholic culture of the Middle Ages,
so that the memories and imaginations of children
are nurtured on these holy presences, so that your
sons and daughters will grow like the corn and oats
and not the arrogant buckwheat of a scientific age.
Of course I read that tale of Andersen’s not only
in illustration of how good literature contains in a
poetic mode true doctrine; but also because I think
it is itself a prophecy: If Fatima is true, and the world
grows worse; if no sufficient number is found to
carry out Our Lady’s strict commands, the Angel
of the Storm will come with bolts of lightning in his
hands; but if we fold our leaves and bend our

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heads, when the storm has passed away—if not in
this world, hopefully the next—in the pure still air
we shall stand with the flowers and the corn, all
refreshed by the rain.
Second, when you get up in the morning, sit
before a window facing east, where St. Thomas says
the angels gather, and watch the work of this great
spirit of the sun, singing the glory of God with his
brothers of the earth and the air; so that you don’t
just pray to them as blank abstractions, but love
them in their beauty and truth.
Third, whenever you approach a city, salute its
angel; after all, you stop for the traffic signs; recognize his governance as well. And whenever you pass
by a Masonic Temple or some other place where
there is the real presence of evil, invoke the angels,
for your own protection, and, as Psalm 8 says: ut
destruas inimicum et ultorem.
Fourth, remember every time you say the perfect
prayer to your Guardian Angel, that his little offices
are precisely the same four for the greater spirits—
the Virtues—work for every species and every force
throughout the universe: to light and guard, to rule
and guide. This is true of sun, moon, wind, tides, the
tides of history and the Church.
Fifth, there are also angels of the Church: of these
St. Michael has been named. In honor of the Queen
of Angels, to whom our lives and hopes must be
consecrated, as the angels are, to whom the whole
creation is a gift of her Son—a marvelous play full
of music, color and light, which the angels perform
just to please the Queen of Heaven every day, and so
to honor her and save the world from the evil angels
and ourselves—we might recite the other famous
prayer to her great servant:
“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day
of battle, be our protection against the wickedness
and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we
humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly
Host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan
and the other evil spirits who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
Our Lady, Queen of Angels, pray for us.
82

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January - February 2018

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The
Last
Word
Dear readers,
“Take Notice of him, Hear His Voice”
“They have ears and hear not” (Ps. 113:14). This is said firstly about the idols of pagans,
it is clear, but since “what things soever were written for our learning” (Rom. 15:4), I ask our
readers the question: have you ever heard your guardian angel talking to you?
Such a question implies a number of other questions: Can angels talk? Do they talk to each
other? To us? How can we hear them? How can we discern their voice? Can we talk to them?
Can they speak at a distance?
St. Thomas Aquinas studies at length the “speech of angels”. It is one of these odd questions which, nevertheless can have a deep effect on our spiritual life as it can constantly lift us
into the supernatural world any time, anywhere. It can make us say like the Apostle: “Our life
is in Heaven” (Phil. 3:20).
“To speak to another only means to make known the mental concept to another.” We
humans must use our tongues to speak to the ears of others. Angels, however, not having
bodies, put thoughts directly in the mind of others, other angels or men, and he does this at
will, i.e., to many or to all as he wills, and “in this way one angel speaks to another”.
“Behold I will send my angel, who shall go before thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and
bring thee into the place that I have prepared. Take notice of him, and hear his voice…”
(Ex. 23:20)
In order to discern which thoughts comes from our angel, we have to be familiar with the
rules of discernment of spirits as they are taught by St. Ignatius. Since our angel wants our
sanctification, his thoughts will be directed to the fulfillment of our duty of state, towards the
avoidance of anything sinful, towards the practice of virtue and of sacrifices.
Let us indeed “take notice of him”.
And when we think that our angel is in Heaven, contemplating the Most Holy Trinity, receiving orders from his Queen, while at the same time at our side, devotion to our angel will truly
dispose us to be docile to do God’s will in all things.
“Angel of God, my guardian dear… be at my side! From stain of sin, oh, keep me free, and at
my death my helper be!”
Fr. Daniel Couture

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

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