“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

Russia
Solzhenitsyn: The Hero’s
Happy Ending
The Progress of
Orthodoxy in Russia
On the Russian Greek
Catholic Church
March - April 2018

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in
Moscow is one of the most imposing and
controversial buildings in Russia. It was
originally commissioned after the defeat
of Napoleon, but work did not begin on its
construction until 1839. It was designed
by the great St. Petersburg architect
Konstantin Ton, who was also responsible
for the Grand Kremlin Palace and the
Kremlin Armoury and whose church
designs pioneered the Byzantine-revival
style.
It was singled out by the Soviet government
for destruction and, in 1931, blown to
pieces to make way for a proposed Palace
of Soviets, one of the most influential
pieces of architecture never to be built.
The design approved by Stalin would have
stood over 400 meters high, with a vast
statue of Lenin at its peak.
Only the foundations had been laid when
the Second World War brought an abrupt
end to such an ambitious project, and
Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khruschev, had
no stomach for such grandiose displays of
hubris.
The symbolic significance of the site was
reaffirmed after the fall of the Soviet
Union, when the ambitious Moscow
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov joined forces with
the Orthodox Church to resurrect the
cathedral in a $360-million reconstruction
project. Completed in 2000, the new
cathedral is loosely based on Ton’s original
designs, but constructed with modern
building materials.

Letter
from the
Publisher
Dear readers,
Lately, the news has given center stage to the land of Russia. Whether it is touching
on the Crimean or Ukrainian borders, the Syrian war zone, or the alleged involvement
with the U.S. presidential election, Russia is seen stretching its muscles. The promise of
Russia’s conversion made 100 years ago at Fatima however, is not forgotten in the minds
of Catholics.
Meanwhile, it seems as if the Fatima prediction of “Russia spreading its errors,” a clear
reference to communism, has indeed been fulfilled. Materialistic atheism and overpowering socialism have pervaded the West to a degree which we are not even willing to admit.
Some people might glorify the Tsar-like regime of Vladimir Putin who, as a true nationalist, moves his Russian pawns for the rebuilding of a strong and unified state with the help
of the Russian Orthodox Church. Many have a mystical, and a quasi-mythical view of the
Eastern Slavs, of their culture, and their religion. Most people, however, are very much
aware of the huge gap which needs to be filled before Russia is ready to evolve into the
kingdom of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
In this issue, whereas we have no claim to provide you with a complete mosaic of modern Russia, it is our hope to present some religious and cultural insights into this Eastern
country, unknown to most of us. At least, many of us are familiar with its key figures—and
its prophets in their own ways—like Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn.
Along with the Russian theme running through the magazine, we left some room for
discussing the effects of the World War I Armistice of November 11, 1918 that catapulted
the world into more chaos leading up to the next war. With this twin topic in the forefront, it
is my firm hope that this introduction to unexplored terrain will provide some valuable lessons of endurance and resistance in the face of more powerful enemies.
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Publisher

March - April 2018
Volume XLI, Number 2
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

		
U.S.
Foreign Countries

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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: Russia
––Solzhenitsyn: The Hero’s Happy Ending
––The Progress of Orthodoxy in Russia
––A Star from the East: Dostoevsky and Fatima
––On the Russian Greek Catholic Church
––Destined Manifestations: World War I, Wilson, and Versailles
––The Great War, America, and the Modern Age

6
9
18
21
25
29

Spirituality
––The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Latin in the Roman Rite
––Sacro Vergente Anno
––Russian Apostolate
––War and Peace

38
44
50
54

(inc. Canada and Mexico)

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version of the magazine have full access to the online version.

Christian Culture
––The Beauty and Meaning of Sacred Art
––World War One and the Russian Diaspora: The Westward
Spread of Truths and Errors
––Punishment at School
––Questions and Answers

58
62
66
68

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

News from Tradition
––Church and World
––The Integrity of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
––The Last Word

74
79
87

Theme Russia

Solzhenitsyn:
The Hero’s Happy Ending

by Joseph Pearce

It is now over a century since the forces of secular fundamentalism unleashed an anti-Christian
pogrom on the people of Russia. Declaring the liberation of man from God, the communists sought
to murder the Mass, replacing it with mass murder. In the following decades, tens of millions were
sacrificed on the altars of atheism as man, unshackled from the constraints of Christian morality,
showed the horrific deadliness of his “enlightenment.” With perverse and infernal irony, men were
slaughtered in the name of man.
The seeming omnipotence of man was reinforced by the monolithic state, the political machine
with which man crushed men. This man-machine shoveled millions of men into death camps, feeding
them like fodder to “Man Almighty,” the new god of materialism. This was the madness of Marxism, a
madness that seemed to sweep the world before it in the first half of the last century. It seemed to be
maddeningly charming, sweeping men off their feet and out of their heads. Its kiss was a curse; the kiss
of death.

A Prophet is Born
In the midst of this Marxist maelstrom,
a child was born. His name was Alexandr
6

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March - April 2018

Solzhenitsyn. He was much like any other child
of the Revolution. He was brainwashed by the
man-machine’s “education” program and became
a clone of the system. He fought for the Machine

during the Second World War, idolizing Stalin,
the self-styled Steel-Man, who was master of
the machine, and he witnessed the raping and
pillaging of Prussia as part of the Steel-Man’s
bloodlustful revenge on the Germans. He then
committed the heresy of criticizing the Steel-Man
in a letter to a friend. Denounced as a blasphemer
against man, he was sent to prison where he
lost his faith in Almighty Man and where he
discovered, for the first time, the exiled God.

Now, aided by the Risen God, he was ready
to harrow hell itself. He was only one small,
good man, seemingly powerless against the
Soviet system, but, aided by the God-Man, he
was ready to take on the might of the manmachine. Almost single-handedly, and almost
miraculously, this one man would play a major
role in the overthrow of “Man Almighty,” at least

Liberated from the slavery of subservience
to a false god, Solzhenitsyn found his freedom
whilst in prison. Turning his back on man, he
learned to love men. The “will made steel” had
been overthrown by the Word made flesh. Later,
after almost dying of cancer, he found life in his
near experience of death. It was this near-death
experience that led to his final conversion to
Christianity. In his death was his resurrection.

in its Soviet incarnation. His devastating exposés
of the horrors of communism in works such as
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and the
monumental Gulag Archipelago undermined
the very faith-foundations of Marxism. His
books, and the living example of his courageous
resistance against the machine’s efforts to crush
him, served as a beacon of light penetrating to
the heart of the darkness.

Solzhenitsyn Against the Age

7

Theme Russia
Today, after the machine has ground to a halt,
and after the statues of the Steel-Man have been
ignominiously toppled, it is easy to forget the
sheer enormity of Solzhenitsyn’s achievement.
Quite simply, what he did was considered to be
impossible. It was beyond belief that one man
could defy the communist state and survive. It
was even more unbelievable that he should not
only survive but that he should play a significant
role in the State’s downfall and that he should
outlive the State itself. Solzhenitsyn’s life and
example flew in the face of the “reality” of the
“realists.”

The Lesson of Orwell’s Novel
The destiny of the small man who dared defy
the man-machine was epitomized in the eyes
of most pessimistic “realists” by the example
of Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel,
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Orwell’s novel was published in 1948, 70 years
ago, when Solzhenitsyn was serving his sentence
as a political prisoner of the Soviet regime. As
such, the figure of Winston Smith can be seen
as being not merely a figure of everyman in his
alienation from the man-machine (Big Brother)
but as an unwitting figure of Solzhenitsyn
himself. According to the “realistic” view,
Winston Smith would not only be crushed by
the Machine, he would also betray every ideal,
and everything he loved, in abject surrender to
the Almighty State. The triumph of Big Brother
was inevitable; it was preordained. It was fate,
and to deny or defy fate was fatal and futile. The
fact is that Orwell had failed to shake off the
Hegelian determinism of his Marxist past. He had
long since become disillusioned with Marxism,
but still believed that the forces of history
were immutable and the triumph of the manmachine inevitable. Orwell still believed, like
his former comrades, that the man-machine was
omnipotent; he only differed from them to the
extent that he hated the omnipotent god, whereas
they admired it.
Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, did not
believe that the machine was a god but merely
a demon, or a dragon, a manifestation of evil.
8

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March - April 2018

He did not believe in fate but in freedom; the
freedom of the will and its responsibility to serve
the truth. Fate was a figment of the imagination
but the dragon was real. Furthermore, it was the
duty of the good man to fight the dragon, even
unto death if necessary. Solzhenitsyn fought the
dragon, even though it was thousands of times
bigger than he was, and even though it breathed
fire and had killed millions of people. He fought
it because, in conscience, he could do nothing
else. In doing so, he proved that faith, not fate, is
the final victor. Faith can move mountains; it can
move machines that were thought to be gods; it
can move and remove Big Brother.
Solzhenitsyn has re-written George Orwell’s
novel, using the facts of his life as his pen. He
represents the victory of Winston Smith. And
that’s not all. He is also living proof that St.
George slays the dragon; that David slays Goliath;
and that Jack slays the Giant. The saints are
alive, the Bible is true, and fairy stories are more
real than so-called “realistic” novels. Truth is
not only stranger than fiction, it has a happier
ending. It is in this certain knowledge that we
know that Solzhenitsyn has reached the ultimate
happy ending that awaits all the faithful after
death. On the centenary of his birth and the tenth
anniversary of his death, we salute a true hero.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008),
requiescat in pace.
Joseph Pearce is the author of Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in
Exile (Ignatius Press, 2011)

The Progress
of Orthodoxy
in Russia
by André Julien

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Fideliter #214 in July
2013. Minor editorial adjustments for style have been made throughout.
In Russia, the era of Communist atheism has given way to a privileged
relationship between the state and the Orthodox Church. Vladimir Putin is the
kingpin of this new situation that is most advantageous for Orthodoxy though
unfortunately not for Catholicism.
The Christianization of Russia began with the baptism of Prince
St. Vladimir I of Kyiv in 988 under the Byzantine influence. In 991,
the Metropolitan See of Kyiv was erected under the Patriarchate of
Constantinople. The Christianization continued to develop quickly under the
long reign of Vladimir’s son and successor, Yaroslav the Wise, who died in
1054. Christianity took root during the following centuries, largely thanks to
the development of an active monastic life. Orthodox Christianity became the
official state religion and one of the major components of the Russian soul and
Russian unity as the principality of Kyiv grew weak and gave way to fifteen
different principalities. Among them, the principality of Moscow, created in
1276, would become the nucleus of Russia from the 14th century onward.
9

Theme Russia
Orthodoxy, the Heart of Russia

10

1

It is a general fact worth
noting that the Orthodox
Church, by its influence over
the Christian populations,
enabled the people who
belonged to it to survive
and last through the Muslim
occupation and dominion,
and resurface intact at the
end, particularly after the
Ottoman occupation.

2

An autocephalous church
is a church that directs
itself under the authority
of a leader who is the sole
authority and enjoys total
independence both on
the legal level and on the
spiritual level. This term
is applied to the churches
belonging to Eastern
Christianity, separated
from the Roman Catholic
Church, and whose theology
consists in an adherence to
two, three, or seven of the
first ecumenical councils
(from Nicaea in 325 to
Constantinople IV in 869).

3

Composed of bishops,
priests, and a high
prosecutor (ober-prokuror)
nominated by the emperor,
it was intended to direct
ecclesial affairs in a
collegial fashion. In our
days, it administers the
Russian Church during
the periods between the
episcopal councils (every
four years) and receives
its delegation from them.
Besides the patriarch, it
includes seven permanent
members (Metropolitans)
and five temporary
members chosen from
among the episcopate.
The Holy Synod is in
charge of designating new
bishops, nominating the
rectors of seminaries and
theology academies, and
overseeing the nomination
of monastic superiors. It is
assisted by several synodal
departments, including the
Department for External
Church Relations, the
Department for Mission, the
Publications Board, etc.

4

In 1940, the Russian
Orthodox Church had
only 200 priests and 6
bishops left, all under strict
surveillance and secluded in
their isolation. Since 1917, in
twenty-three years, 75,000
places of worship had been

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March - April 2018

The strength of Christianity that was like a spiritual anchor enabled
Russia to resist the Tartar-Mongol yoke of the Golden Horde that subjugated
the Russian principalities from the time of their defeat in 1226, until Moscow
broke free after the battle of the Kulikov Field in 1380.1 This period did leave
its mark with the Islamization of the population to the east of Moscow, along
the Volga, around Kazan that remains today the capital of the republic of
Tatarstan, which is mostly Muslim.
With the decline and disappearance of the Byzantine Empire, the Russian
Church declared its autonomy from the Patriarchate of Constantinople
that had been separated from Rome since 1064. This autonomy became
an institution when in 1589 the regent Boris Godunov created the
Patriarchate of Moscow and the Orthodox Church of Russia, thus becoming
autocephalous.2
Peter the Great did away with the patriarchate in 1721, and replaced it
with a Holy Synod under his control. Only in 1918 would the patriarchate be
reestablished in the person of Patriarch Tikhon, but without replacing the
Holy Synod.3
However, after the uncertain times of the Revolution and Civil War (19171919), the Bolshevik power developed its policy of antireligious persecution.
Tikhon was accused of sabotage and imprisoned from April of 1922 to
June of 1923, then deposed by a council summoned by the communist
power. After his death in 1925, a successor, Sergius, was only elected in
1943. At this time, Stalin needed all of Russia’s strength to fight against the
German invasion, and he had to offer pledges of good faith to the Russians,
many of whom remained very attached to the Orthodox faith despite the
persecutions.4
After 1945 and the Soviet victory, the persecutions and atheist
propaganda began again in full force but did not succeed in eradicating
the Orthodox religion from the souls of the Russians. The quiet or secret
baptisms continued, the babouchkas (or grandmothers) had their children
and grandchildren baptized regardless of the risks for themselves. Thus,
Vladimir Putin, born in 1952, declared he was baptized “in secret” shortly
after his birth, even though his father was a member of the Communist
party.
The Orthodox religion, with its sumptuous liturgy and its mysticism, is an
indelible part of the Russian soul, so much so that taking it away destroys
the Russian soul itself.
The life of the Orthodox Church, that alas abandoned Catholic unity, is to
be understood in an eschatological perspective, its mission being to lead the
people of God until the return of Christ, a perspective that is strengthened
in Russia by its claim to be the “Third Rome” after the disappearance of the
Roman and Byzantine empires. Human events such as the 70 years of Soviet
dictatorship, are seen as avatars of history that in no way affect the destiny
of men and the singular destiny of Russia until the Parousia. Consequently,
in this immense country with its shifting borders, no matter what events
may come to shake it, Orthodoxy makes the unity of this Russian land, the
rouskaïa ziemlia a reality, and a sacred reality; she remains united because

destroyed and 600 bishops,
40,000 priests, and 120,000
monks had disappeared in
the gulags.

she is Orthodox: pravoslavnaïa.
This Russian reality makes it impossible to consider governing Russia long
term while disregarding or rejecting this dimension. Stalin himself knew
how to make use of it during the “Great Patriotic War.”
In 1988, the Soviet regime was unable to bypass the celebration of the onethousandth anniversary of the Christianization of Russia, and the vice began
to loosen with the process of perestroïka.
This reality has to be taken into account if one wishes to study and
understand the current religious evolution of Russia, with Vladimir Putin as
its strong man since 2000.

The Progress of Orthodoxy After 1991
After the fall of the USSR in 1991, the persecution of the Orthodox Church
ceased and the revival was almost immediate.
In 1991, after the death of Patriarch Pimen (1971-1990), who had had to
submit to the Communist regime, a new patriarch of Moscow and all the
Russians were elected free from political pressure in the person of Alexis II,
whose father, a priest, had experienced the gulag.
This was the beginning of a long transition period. Alexis II succeeded
in maintaining the unity of the patriarchate and warding off the risks of
implosion due to the antagonistic tensions between opposite reformist or
traditionalist tendencies. We should note here that the proclamation of the
independence of Ukraine and Belorussia along with that of the Russian
Federation, all of which were in reality a dismemberment of the Russian
Empire as it had stood for a thousand years, did not put an end to Moscow’s
jurisdiction over the archdioceses and dioceses of these new States, even the
Orthodox diocese of the Baltic States and Kazakhstan.
After the death of Alexis II on December 5, 2008, his successor, the
metropolitan of Smolensk, Cyril, was elected patriarch of Moscow on
January 30, 2009. He presented a program for rebuilding that was identical
to that of the council of 1917: pastoral renewal, political neutrality, social
engagement. He also multiplied acts opening the Russian Church to the
outside, and in particular to Rome, in view of pursuing the long path of
reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
Even in the early months of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency (1990-1999),
Russians of all generations returned to the few churches left open by the
Soviet regime to receive the sacrament of Baptism. For many of them,
with absolutely no religious instruction, getting baptized was seen as an
assimilation of the Russian civilization relieved of its Soviet curtain. In
becoming Russians once again, they became Orthodox once again.
There were millions of baptisms and thousands of churches were
reopened. After 70 years of Communism, some 700 monasteries and 27,000
parishes have been opened again in the past decades, but also 5,000 mosques
and 80 synagogues. One of the most spectacular events of this revival was
the reconstruction according to the original blueprints of the Cathedral of
Christ the Savior in Moscow from 1995 to 2000; it had been destroyed with
dynamite by Stalin’s orders in 1931.
11

Theme Russia
The Putin Era
Boris Yeltsin accomplished the reconciliation between the State and the
Orthodox Church that had been timidly begun after 1988 under Gorbatchev,
who did not however practice publicly. The situation would change radically
under Vladimir Putin, who has been leading Russia since 2000, first as
president (2000-2008), then as prime minister (2008-2012), before being
reelected president in 2012. He presents himself as a fervent member of
the Orthodox Church and assists at the offices, especially for the feasts of
Christmas and Easter. He lost no time in growing close to the patriarchate,
while maintaining the principle of the separation of the Orthodox Church
and the State and the secular nature of the Russian State. This is a way to
avoid transforming the Orthodox Church into a sort of transmission belt for
the regime that could suffer from a possible disaffection of said regime.
The Orthodox Church has nonetheless recovered its traditional role that
consists in being both a partner to the power and the cement of society.
In the 2010, 80% of the population of the Russian federation declare
themselves Orthodox, but only 10% can be considered as practicing on a
regular basis.
Religion does, however, occupy an increasingly large amount of space in
the life of Russian society. No public manifestation takes place without a
blessing from a priest, and the media covers all of the religious feasts and all
of the patriarch of Moscow’s interventions.
The current organization of relations between the State and the Orthodox
Church consists in the State giving the Church the means to develop in
order for it to fulfill its role as a spiritual strength in the moral edification of
society. Vladimir Putin thus declared on February 1, 2013, that the Orthodox
Church should have more of a say in family life, education, and the armed
forces in Russia. “At the heart of all Russia’s victories and achievements
are patriotism, faith and strength of spirit,” he declared for Patriarch Cyril’s
fourth anniversary as head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In return, the renewed influence of the Church is expected to help support
the power, serve the Russian foreign politics and help develop the Russian
influence in the world through the interventions of the sister Orthodox
churches. Another element in this picture is the fact that Vladimir Putin does
not hesitate to present Russia as the protectress of Orthodox Christians
everywhere in the world, especially in the Middle East, a claim that has been
long-forgotten by France under the Fifth Republic, although she does indeed
have titles in this domain, not for schismatics, but for Catholics.
The State promotes the construction of new churches throughout Russia
and has begun a policy of restoring confiscated goods to the Orthodox
Church. On November 30, 2010, President Dmitri Medvedev signed the law
on the restitution of the goods of the Orthodox Church that prescribes
restoring to the Orthodox Church many monasteries and churches that had
been transformed into museums, along with many objects for the cult. This
transfer affected 6,584 religious sites5. Twelve thousand buildings are also to
be returned to the Orthodox Church after they have been restored. In May of
2011, the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, launched a program for building
200 new churches in Moscow, and the first of them was consecrated on
12

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March - April 2018

5

The famous monastery of
Novodevitchi, closed in
1922 and transformed into
a museum, was entirely
returned to the Orthodox
Church in May of 2013,
after the restoration of the
buildings.

6

Five young female members
of the punk group “Pussy
Riot,” with masks, guitars,
and a sound system, danced
and sang a “punk prayer” or
a parody prayer in February
of 2012, in the cathedral
of Christ the Savior in
Moscow, asking the Blessed
Virgin to “dispel Putin.”
Patriarch Kirill called their
act a “sacrilege.”

7

In September of 2012, a
survey by the Poll Institute
revealed that 82% of
Russians were in favor of
heavier penalties for attacks
on religious sentiments, 85%
of them being Orthodox.
Only 12% of the population
categorically refused antiblasphemy laws: mostly the
faithful of non-Orthodox
religions, young people,
atheists, and the electors of
minority parties.

September 25, 2012.
The state ensures that the Orthodox religion, like the Church, is respected,
a normal, natural attitude, that scarcely exists any longer in the deChristianized European West.
Thus it was that the provocation and blasphemy committed by the “Pussy
Riot”6 group, led to three protagonists being condemned to prison. A law
punishing blasphematory acts is in the making with the support of a large
part of the population,7 but there are diverging opinions on the details, for all
prefer to avoid putting the Orthodox Church and its beliefs at a disadvantage
through too much severity, as was the case with the law on sacrilege in
France during the Restoration.
The Orthodox Church is attentive to any deviation that could affect it.
Thus, for apologizing without authorization in the name of the Orthodox
Church for the condemnation of the Pussy Riot, the priest Dmitri Sverdlov
was banned from all liturgical service for five years, while another, Yohann
Privalov, incurred an identical penalty for trying to popularize Mass in
Russian instead of Slavonic, which remains the liturgical language.

Russia, the Exclusive Domain of Orthodoxy?
Russian Orthodoxy goes beyond the limits of Russia and its immediate
neighbors. The government also openly supported Patriarch Alexis II’s
efforts to reassemble the Russian communities separated from Moscow
since the revolution of October 1917. It was Vladimir Putin himself who
launched the reconciliation with the Russian Church Outside Russia founded
by the white emigrants after the October Revolution, that led to the Act of
Canonical Reunification signed on May 17, 2007, by Metropolitan Laurus
of New York and Patriarch Alexis II after 80 years of division, a symbolic
reconciliation of the Russian people.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also actively supports the patriarchate
of Moscow’s attempts to gain control over the Russian churches and
monasteries belonging to other jurisdictions, both in the Holy Land and in
Europe.
However, there remains an important division: that of the Old Believers
or raskol that dates back to the 1650’s when Patriarch Nikon reformed the
Russian Orthodox liturgy to harmonize it with the Greek liturgy from which
it had drifted away. Before 1917, there were about 15 million Old Believers
in Russia and in 2000, there are close to 1 million. In 1971, the Patriarchate
of Moscow revoked the anathema on the old rites and books and declared
that they are an equivalent means of salvation. However, this did not
lead to the disappearance of the rupture, since for the Old Believers, this
equivalence is unacceptable. In the Orthodox Church, the attitude towards
the Old Believers is ambivalent: there are those who appreciate them and
those who reproach them for their refusal to submit to the decisions of
the ecclesiastical hierarchy over a “minor” difference of opinion. Since the
2000’s, there have nonetheless been ongoing discussions between the two
sides.
There remain the relations with Catholicism and Protestantism: they are
13

Theme Russia
8

These four dioceses
are: the archdiocese of
the Mother of God of
Moscow, the diocese of St.
Clement of Saratov, the
diocese of St. Joseph of
Irkutsk, and the diocese
of the Transfiguration
of Novosibirsk, whose
bishop is also the bishop
of the Ukrainian GreekCatholics of the Russian
Federation. Bishop
Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz
was made archbishop
and metropolitan by John
Paul II. In January of 2005,
Archbishop Joseph Werth
succeeded him before being
made Catholic metropolitan
of Minsk and Moghilev in
Ukraine in 2007 by Benedict
XVI.

9

Thus, in 2009, the Patriarch
Kiril, while still patriarch
of Smolensk, complained
during a UN meeting that
“in many countries, freedom
is used as a pretext to
promote an amoral way of
life and…to encourage the
moral relativism of society,”
to which the Community
of Protestant Churches in
Europe responded: “Human
rights are rights given
to all human beings, in
conformity with the dignity
willed by God for them.”

marked by much mistrust.
The Russian Orthodox Church is traditionally hostile to the development
of Catholicism in Russia in general, and particularly to Catholicism of
the Byzantine Rite, which it sees as an aggression and a provocation.
This “problem” is currently preventing the Roman Catholic Church’s full
recognition and support for the Russian Greek Catholic Church, as the
former wishes to maintain and develop good relations with the Patriarchate
of Moscow. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, on the other hand,
collaborates closely with the Latin ordinaries of the Russian Federation,
where certain parishes are bi-ritualist like the St. John Chrysostom parish in
Novokuznetsk.
In the late 1980’s there were only two legally functioning Catholic
churches in Russia: St. Louis Church in Moscow and the church of Our
Lady of Lourdes in St. Petersburg. The Russian Catholic Church follows the
Byzantine Rite and the Julian Calendar; the Filioque is not added to the
Nicaean Constantinople Creed that is recited in its original version.
Ever since the disappearance of the USSR, the Catholic Church of the
Latin Rite in Russia (present since the year 250 with the parish of Astrakan)
has been growing and now has about 500,000 faithful and it has obviously
adopted the Mass of Paul VI. In April of 1991, two apostolic administrations
were erected in Russia, then in February of 2002, the Conference of Catholic
Bishops of Russia was created, with four dioceses.8
As for Protestantism, it has only 400,000 faithful in Russia. The Orthodox
need for theological rigor—a rigor that, alas, does not respect dogma—has a
hard time accepting its liberalism.9

Muslim Presence
A complete panorama of the religious situation in Russia obliges us to
mention the strength of Islam, that is currently the second religion in Russia,
with some forecasts saying it will be the first around 2050, since by that time
the Muslims could represent half of the country’s population.
According to various estimates, Russia has between 11 and 20 million
Muslims, which is 8 to 15% of the country’s population, but only 7 to 9 million
are practicing; the rest are Muslim by ethnic affiliation only.
The Muslim communities are concentrated in the minority nationalities
residing between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, especially in Caucasia.
There are also Tartars and the Bashkir, many of whom are Muslim, living in
the Lower Volga Region around Kazan. It is no coincidence that in August of
2003, Vladimir Putin began a policy of rapprochement with the Organization
of the Islamic Conference. It has the status of observer since the summer of
2005.
In the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian empire had about 12,000
mosques. In the USSR in the mid 1980’s, there were only 343 left, mostly in
Central Asia. The process of restoring former places of worship and building
new mosques began in 1985. In 2010, on a smaller territory than that of pre1917 Russia, there were 4750 officially registered mosques, but at least 7000
in reality.
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Beginning in 1990, new médersas were born in all the important centers
of the Muslim population. The first Islamic University was founded in 1999 in
Moscow, on the basis of the Spiritual Islamic College open since 1994 under
the spiritual direction of Muslims from the European part of Russia. The
rebirth of Orthodoxy in Russia has caused Muslims in Russia to be identified
as a political force. New Muslim organizations and Muslim political parties
continue to appear.
Two million Muslims live in Moscow, with only four mosques. But the
Russian government remains deaf to requests to build new mosques. It is
worried, in fact, about the development of Islam, that clearly threatens the
future of Russia herself.
Vladimir Putin’s support of Orthodoxy is thus connected to his desire to
restore Russian power and he knows that Russian awareness cannot survive
without belief in Jesus Christ: the spiritual and moral principles without
which no healthy society can exist or last. The spiritual and cultural roots
are thus indispensable for the future development of Russia. Especially
insofar as this tradition is the transmission of a moral legacy and reveals the
architectural plan according to which a people built its history, as it lived,
created, and evolved, faithful to the specific impulses of its soul. Without
ever breaking its fundamental baselines, it remained consubstantial with its
past, its fathers and its own proper genius.
The day Russia converts to Catholicism, the Russia of before Michael
Cerularius that she should never have ceased to be, will transfigure and
restore the plenitude of this genius. May Heaven hasten this day.

15

It is obviously true that the Soviet state has fallen, but it is by no means clear that the
Moscow Patriarchate now operates free of state or government interference. According to
many commentators, the present socio-political situation in Russia is even more deleterious
than it was under the Soviets, and it appears that the Church is deeply involved in many
aspects of what seems to be a “Gangster State” in a way that is less excusable than its
subservience to the Soviets, which after all was a totalitarian tyranny.
Putin’s role in the present process has also caused widespread disquiet. One appreciates that
perhaps he was only a catalyst for contact, and no one has any wish to decry his personal
piety or adherence to Orthodoxy, but it does appear that his “zeal” is not always according
to knowledge. Soon after meeting our hierarchs, it is reported that he went to Rome and
proposed some kind of rapprochement between Rome and Moscow. Further, his interest
at the best seemed to be to support the Russian state. This aim might be laudable and
something we would all like to contribute to, but it is not the purpose of the Church, which is
to save souls.
Letter of Archimandrite Alexis to Metropolitan Laurus and all faithfull children of ROCOR, March 2004

Theme Russia

A Star from
the East
Dostoevsky and Fatima

by Andrew J. Clarendon

In a 1985 interview, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
best known as the Nobel Prize winning
chronicler of the GULAGs of the Soviet Union,
stated:
“Over a half century ago, when I was still a
child, I recall hearing a number of old people
offer the following explanation for the great
disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have
forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
Since then, I have spent well-nigh fifty years
working on the history of our revolution...but if
I were asked today to formulate as concisely as
possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution
that swallowed up some sixty million of our
people, I could not put it more accurately than to
repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all
this has happened.’”

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Dostoevsky’s Warning
to the World
While Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), who spent
eight years in various forced labor camps as well
as years of exile, had first-hand knowledge of the
revolution, he was not the first Russian to warn
about the various effects of atheistic materialism
and to propose a real solution, a spiritual one.
Such a prescient vision was granted to Fyodor
Dostoevsky (1821-1881). A novelist renowned
for his psychological insight, Dostoevsky
nevertheless captured the great ideas of his time
and charted out their disastrous consequences.
The vision is dark, but not without hope. While in
his earlier novel Demons he predicts a socialist
revolution that will demand the sacrifice of
millions; in his magnum opus The Brothers

Karamazov, he calls for spiritual renewal as the
only way to save both East and West from the
horrors of rejecting, forgetting, and finally trying
to replace God.
Demons, published in 1872, is, in Ronald
Hingley’s words, Dostoevsky’s “greatest
onslaught on nihilism,” showing how earlier
liberal ideas have led to a loss of the Russian
soul, a sort of possession. As the translator
Richard Pevear perceptively notes in his
introduction, the demons in the title are, more
than anything else, ideas, “that legion of isms
that came to Russia from the West: idealism,
rationalism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism,
and, underlying them all, atheism.” Like all great
thinkers, Dostoevsky takes the phrase that “ideas
have consequences” seriously in his works: “is
the possibility of an evil or alien idea coming to
inhabit a person, misleading him, perverting him
ontologically, driving him to crime or insanity.”
At one point in Demons, one character says to
another: “It was not you who ate the idea, but the
idea that ate you.”
The philosophy of the new Russian man,
who has replaced the liberalism of the French
Revolution with atheistic materialism, is given
in social terms. It is in Demons that Dostoevsky
predicts a future socialist revolution “as a final

solution” to the social question. Shigalyov, the
political philosopher of the novel, describes
his theory: “Starting from unlimited freedom,
I conclude with unlimited despotism…[there is
to be] the division of mankind into two unequal
parts. One tenth is granted freedom of person and
unlimited rights over the remaining nine tenths.
These must lose their person and turn into
something like a herd.” As the Grand Inquisitor
argues in one of the most famous sections of
The Brothers Karamazov, the mass of men are
incapable of handling their freedom and will in
fact welcome slavery. Hence, Shigalyov answers
his critics by saying, “What I propose is not
vileness but paradise, earthly paradise”; the idea
of God having been killed, the next step is for the
members of “the party” to take His place. The
only remaining question is how to get a society to
accept the new order; propaganda will not really
work, “especially if it’s in Russia,” but Dostoevsky
can foresee a quicker and more effective solution:
“however you try to cure the world, you’re not
going to cure it, but by radically lopping off a
hundred million heads.” Solzhenitsyn thought
some 60 million of his fellow Russians had
perished due to the Revolution; some historians
put the worldwide casualties due to communist
regimes at as many as the “hundred million
19

Theme Russia
heads” Dostoevsky mentions.

Rays of Hope in Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky’s vision is not all bleak, however,
even in this modern day and age, God remains
God. Like the possessed Gerasene man described
by St. Luke whose story is one of the epigraphs
of Demons, Dostoevsky hoped that his people
would embrace a spiritual cure. In a letter to a
friend, the novelist writes that the Gerasene man
is like the Russian people who, once exorcised
by Our Lord, will sit at His feet, while the
revolutionaries are like the herd of swine that
the demons enter into and are driven over the
cliff. As Pevear notes, writers like Dostoevsky
opposed the corrosive nihilism from the West
with a nationalistic cultural vision, “their notions
of the Russian earth, the Russian God, the
Russian Christ, the ‘light from the east,’ and so
on.”
Even so, in The Brothers Karamazov, the
spiritual antidote is treated in a more extended
and universal fashion. There are two basic
elements to the cure, a negative and a positive
one. First is a call for a profound union with
Christ crucified by considering oneself as
“guilty for all,” imagining oneself as guilty
not just for one’s personal sins but for all the
sins of the world. This leads to humility and
penance, of course, but above all else charity
for one’s fellows. Secondly, one is to practice
what Dostoevsky terms “active love.” It is not
enough to love man in the abstract as Madame
Khokhlakov, the “lady of little faith” does, or even
as the revolutionaries like the Grand Inquisitor
and Ivan do, but concretely in the circumstances
Providence puts one in. The Elder Zosima, the
monk who expresses the core spiritual themes
of the novel, teaches that active love is to “try to
love your neighbors actively and tirelessly…[it
is] to reach complete selflessness in the love of
your neighbor…active love is a harsh and fearful
thing compared to love in dreams…[it is] labor
and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps,
a whole science.” To imitate and be united with
Christ, to realize “our living bond with the…
higher heavenly world” that is our true home, is
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the answer to the riddles that perplex mankind;
in the words of Dostoevsky’s own Credo, the
answer is “to believe that nothing is more
beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable,
manly, and perfect than Christ.”

Dostoevsky’s Blind Spots
For all his insight into humanity and ability to
predict future events due to the consequences of
ideas, even Dostoevsky could not have foreseen
the full nature of the spiritual cure he sought.
In fact, there is a decidedly anti-Catholic bend
in Dostoevsky’s novels, mainly because his
exposure to Rome was through French socialists;
one wonders how he would have reacted if he
had been exposed to the fullness of Church
teaching. In any event, outside of direct heavenly
intervention, it is not possible that Dostoevsky
could have guessed that Heaven’s answer would
be revealed by the Mother of God herself in a
remote village in Portugal 36 years after his
death.
Our Lady’s words at Fatima—that the “errors
of Russia” would lead to the “annihilation of
nations” unless Russia was “consecrated to the
Immaculate Heart” and converted—certainly
resonate with Dostoevsky’s own vision. As
Dostoevsky called for the conversion of his Holy
Mother Russia and her people, holding to the
“precious image of Christ,” so too the Mother
of God called for the full conversion of Russia
to bring about a “period of peace.” While the
future union will not be under the unfortunately
schismatic Russian Orthodox, Dostoevsky
was profoundly right about the mysterious
importance of Russia both then in the early days
of modernism and now in our putative postmodern age. To borrow and modify the context
of the words of one of the monks in The Brothers
Karamazov, conversion and subsequent renewal
“is the great destiny of Orthodoxy on earth. This
star will shine forth from the East….And so be it,
so be it.

On the
Russian Greek
Catholic
Church
by Gabriel S. Sanchez

The Catholic Church, as the Universal Church of Christ, is a mansion with many rooms, some of
which have been closed off throughout the centuries due to the outbreak of heresy, schism, or the
invasion of alien religions and ideologies. The East, one of the historic fonts of Christendom, began
breaking from the Catholic fold during the first millennium, with 1054—the so-called Great Schism—
marking a low point in East/West relations. Truth be told, reconciliation efforts between the See of Rome
and various Eastern churches continued for centuries with the Council of Florence representing a high
point. That was not to last. In 1453, with the Turkish invasion of Constantinople, Eastern Christendom
was firmly under Islamic rule. Russia alone would be the last substantial Christian imperial power in the
East, albeit one out of communion with the Catholic Church.

The Long Path to Reunion
Russia, like its neighbors Ukraine and Belarus,
traces its Christianization back to 988 A.D.
with the baptism of St. Vladimir the Great in
the ancient principality of Kyivan-Rus’. Largely
isolated from the controversies that had placed

Rome and Constantinople at odds, by the close
of the 15th century most of the bishops in
these lands had opted to join the other Eastern
Orthodox churches in their rejection of Rome.
However, in 1596 at the Union of Brest and 50
years later at the Union of Uzhorod, the churches
that are today known as the Ukrainian and
21

Theme Russia
Ruthenian Greek Catholic churches rejoined the
Catholic Church. (The term “Greek Catholic” was
introduced under the Austro-Hungarian Empire
not to denote ethnicity, but rather the historic
Greek origins of the Eastern Slavic peoples’
Christian patrimony.)
The Russian Orthodox Church, and the
imperial power behind it, opposed these reunion
efforts from the beginning. Through military
force, many newly reunited Catholics (referred
to derisively as “Uniates”) were brought back
to Russian Orthodoxy by force. At the same
time, Greek Catholics in the region saw a
rapid deterioration in their culture due to poor
educational opportunities and living conditions.
This began to change in the 18th and 19th
centuries as Greek Catholics learned to embrace
their unique spiritual, theological, and liturgical
heritage and efforts were made to correct Latin
misapprehensions concerning the “legitimacy” of
their Eastern brethren.
Historically rooted disciplinary and ritualistic
differences between Latin and Greek Catholics
led to suspicions on both sides. For instance,
per the reunion agreements approved by Rome
in 1596 and 1646, Greek Catholics continued to
ordain married men to the priesthood (though not
to the episcopate); celebrate all of their feasts,
including Easter (Pascha) according to the Julian
Calendar; retained the Church Slavonic language
for their liturgy; and celebrated according to
the Byzantine Rite exclusively. Furthermore,
Greek Catholics did not have to expressly affirm
the doctrine of Purgatory according to Latin
theological understanding and had the option
of keeping the filioque (“and from the Son”) out
of their recension of the Creed. In order to quell
suspicions that they were not “true Catholics,”
many Greek Catholics adopted a number of
Latin practices over the centuries, including
hybridizing the Byzantine Rite with the Latin.

A Time for Renewal for Russia
At the very time that Greek Catholics enjoying
the protection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
were experiencing ecclesiastical renewal leading
into the 20th century, some native Russian
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Orthodox began questioning their church’s
breach with Rome. In 1439, at the aforementioned
Council of Florence, Metropolitan Isidore of
Kyiv, along with several other Russian bishops,
signed the Act of Union with Rome and returned
to their respective jurisdictions to promote
the union. However, when Isidore traveled to
Moscow in 1441 to inform Tsar Basil II of the
union, the Tsar—primarily for nationalistic
and political reasons—had Isidore arrested,
deposed, and replaced by Metropolitan Jonah, an
anti-unionist Russian bishop. Isidore eventually
escaped captivity and died a cardinal in the West.
However, those Russians who chose to the follow
the union with Rome were quickly persecuted
and conversion to the Catholic Faith among
Russians was sparse for centuries.
Even so, a learned and eccentric Russian
philosopher and theologian, Vladimir Soloviev,
introduced the theory into 19th/20th century
Russian intellectual life that Rome and the
Russian Orthodox Church never formally broke
communion and that the schism between the
two was de facto rather than de jure. Soloviev’s
thinking, along with growing dissatisfaction with
Russian state control over the Russian Orthodox
Church, prompted some members of the Russian
intelligentsia to convert to Catholicism. The
desire soon spread to all strata of Russian
society though, up until the 1890s, the only
option these Russians had was to become Latin
Catholics. Not until the conversion of the Russian
Orthodox priest Fr. Nicholas Tolstoy in 1893 did
Russian Catholics have a Byzantine-rite cleric to
administer the sacraments to them. The seeds
for the emergence of the Russian Greek Catholic
Church (RGCC) had been firmly planted.

Russian Greek Catholics
and St. Pius X
Following Russia’s 1905 Decree on Religious
Toleration, the RGCC was in a position to expand
and hold public liturgies. In 1908, Pope St. Pius
X appointed a special administrator for Russian
Greek Catholics with the following instructions
from the Vatican Secretary of State: “Therefore
His Holiness commands the [administrator]

to observe the laws of the Greek [Byzantine]Slavonic Rite faithfully and in all their integrity,
without any admixture from the Latin Rite or
any other Rite; he must also see that his subjects,
clergy and all other Catholics, do the same.”
Later, when an inquiry was made to Pius X
whether the Russian Catholics should hold to
their ritual heritage or adopt Latin practices, the
Saint replied: “nec plus, nec minus, nec aliter”

nationalism, believing that Russian nationality
and Russian Orthodoxy go hand-in-hand (a
problem which persists to this day). A monastic
community was established for Russian Catholics
and groups of Old Believers—Russian Christians
who broke from the mainline Russian Orthodox
Church in the 17th century over liturgical
reforms—united themselves to the RGCC. Many
of these Old Believers (also sometimes referred

Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in 1896. The Coronation of the Russian monarch was a religious
ceremony of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Tsar was crowned and invested with regalia, then anointed with chrism and
formally blessed by the church to commence his reign.

(no more, no less, no different). In other words,
Pius X desired that the RGCC should be a true
particular Catholic Church with its roots firmly
planted in the soil the Russians had brought
over from the Byzantines. To be Catholic did not
exclusively mean to be Latin.
While the years following 1905 were years of
growth, they were not without harassment. Many
Russians still drank deep from the waters of

to as Old Ritualists) had gone centuries without
many of the sacraments due to the elimination
of any sympathetic bishops by the Russian state.
As part of the Russian Catholic community, not
only did these Christians now have access to the
grace of the sacraments, but they were allowed
to preserve their form of the Byzantine Rite as it
had existed in Russia up until the 1660s.
Meanwhile, as Catholicism continued
23

Theme Russia
to slowly spread in Russia, the head of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Metropolitan
Andrei Skeptytsky, had his own hopes of
bringing Eastern Orthodox Christians over to
Catholicism. During the course of World War
I, Metropolitan Andrei was held under arrest
in Russia, only to be freed by the provisional
Russian government following the 1917 Russian
Revolution. Metropolitan Andrei convened the
RGCC’s first sobor (council) in 1917 which, among
other things, drew up a list of canons to govern
Russian Catholics and appoint its first exarch, Fr.
Leonid Feodorov. (An exarch, who is typically a
bishop, is given administrative and jurisdictional
powers over an area larger than a regular
diocese. It remains a matter of dispute whether
Metropolitan Andrei secretly consecrated Exarch
Leonid bishop or not during the former’s stay in
Russia.)

Decline and Persecution
Just as the Soviet takeover of Russia spelled
disaster for the Russian Orthodox Church, the
Russian Catholic Church began to experience its
own passion at the hands of communism. Exarch
Leonoid, along with other Russian Greek and
Latin Catholic clergy, was arrested, tried, and
sentenced to harsh imprisonment at the Solovky
prison camp in northern Russia. While Leonid
and his fellow Catholics did all they could to
keep the Faith alive during this period, the brutal
treatment administered by the camp guards left
Leonid’s health in tatters. He reposed in the Lord
in 1935, not long after his release. Exarch Leonid
would prove to be only one of countless martyrs
for the Faith under communism.
Russian Catholic priests, religious, and laity
continued to be harassed, arrested, tortured,
and outright murdered by the Soviets throughout
the 1930s. With the death of Exarch Leonid, Fr.
Clement Sheptytsky, the brother of Metropolitan
Andrei, became the RGCC’s exarch until his
death in a Soviet prison camp 1951. With an
increasing number of Russian Catholics fleeing
their native soil, it quickly became imperative
that they should have their own bishop appointed
to keep the RGCC alive. In 1936, Alexander
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Evreinov was appointed bishop for the RGCC
during the reign of Pope Pius XI, before being
succeeded in 1958 by Andrei Katkov, the last
bishop up to this date for the RGCC. He retired in
1977 due to ill health.

The State of Russian Greek
Catholicism Today
The failure of the Vatican to appoint a new
hierarch for the RGCC following Bishop Andrei’s
retirement in 1977 is no accident. The RGCC, like
its sister churches in Belarus and Ukraine, had
to survive in the catacombs and diaspora during
the dark decades of communism with limited
support from the Vatican. In the lead-up to the
Second Vatican Council, Roman ecumenists
hoping to curry favor with the Eastern Orthodox,
marginalized the plight of the Greek Catholic
churches. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church,
for instance, had been forcibly liquidated in 1946
by the communist authorities acting in concert
with the Russian Orthodox Church and its leader,
Metropolitan (later Cardinal and Patriarch)
Joseph Slipyj, who had been locked away in a
Soviet camp along with his fellow bishops.
Following the Council and running up to the
present day, the policy of the Vatican toward
the Orthodox world, particularly Russia,
has been one of détente or, more accurately,
capitulation. Though Pope John Paul II beatified
Exarch Leonid and many other Greek Catholic
confessors under communism, he did little
to help the revival of the RGCC in Russia. To
this day, Greek Catholicism is anathema to the
Russian Orthodox and its existence is often used
by the Russians as an excuse to delay ecumenical
talks with Rome.
In 2017, a congress of Russian Greek Catholics
was held in Italy to ask Pope Francis for the
appointment of a hierarch for the RGCC along
with other provisions to support the growth of
Greek Catholicism in Russia. These requests
have, not surprisingly, gone unheeded. May
the prayers of Our Lady of Fatima and the holy
martyrs of the RGCC usher new life into Russian
Catholicism so that the Faith may continue to
spread throughout the world.

Destined Manifestation:

World War I,
Wilson, and
Versailles
by John Dredger

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany, officially bringing America into World
War I. President Woodrow Wilson stated in his April 2 speech to Congress that the U.S. congressmen
should vote for war against the German Empire for several reasons. The President first raised the issue
of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare policy. In February 1917, the Imperial Government had
instituted this policy to combat the British blockade of the Central Powers, which had reduced the
German and Austro-Hungarian peoples to starvation. Wilson described unrestricted submarine warfare
as a violation of not only American rights, but also of human rights, and a challenge to all mankind.

Making the World Safe
for Democracy
Using the Germany policy as a segue to
his main point, the U.S. President reached the
primary reason why he desired war with the
Central Powers: “The world must be made safe
for democracy.” The alignment of the opposing
sides in the Great War made the U.S. choice of

supporting the Entente powers obvious. The
Entente, composed of Great Britain, France,
Russia, and Italy, had no powerful monarchies by
April 1917. The communist revolution in Russia
had overthrown the Tsarist rule in March, the
month before U.S. entry into WWI. The monarchs
of Britain and Italy held little control over their
representative governments, which the prime
ministers dominated. The Third Republic had
25

Theme Russia

26

ruled France since 1870. On the other side, the
Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire all had
monarchies with more prominent figures. These
countries, however, also had well-established
elected assemblies with ministers who controlled
policy as much or more than the monarchs. The

observance of those principles. Neutrality is no
longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the
world is involved and the freedom of its people,
and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in
the existence of autocratic governments backed
by organized force which is controlled wholly by
their will, not by the will of their people.”

age of absolute kings and emperors had long
disappeared from European politics.
Wilson, ignoring these facts, depicted the
German government as the enemy of all free
peoples. “Our object now is to vindicate the
principles of peace and justice in the life of the
world as against selfish and autocratic power and
to set up amongst the really free and self-governed
peoples of the world such a concert of purpose
and of action as will henceforth insure the

The U.S. Senate voted 82-6 to declare war
on Germany, and the House of Representatives
endorsed the declaration by a vote of 373-50. The
majority of congressmen clearly agreed with
Wilson. Another consideration that affected the
U.S. decision to support the Allied powers against
Germany came from American economics.
During the years preceding the U.S. entrance into
World War I, American trade with France and
Great Britain had tripled while U.S. trade with

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Germany had fallen by 90% because of the British
blockade. In 1916, the Entente powers had bought
$500 million of American munitions. In addition,
private U.S. businessmen had loaned enormous
sums to the Allies; the banker J.P. Morgan loaned
$2.3 billion on his own. Both economically and
politically, the United States felt much closer ties
to the Entente than the Central Powers.
Wilson himself felt the desire to wage this war
to make the world “safe for democracy” and “to
end war,” borrowing the latter phrase from H.G.
Wells’ book The War That Will End War. The
son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson had lived
during the latter half of the 19th century, a time
when the idea of Manifest Destiny prevailed in
American domestic and foreign policy. Manifest
Destiny contained the belief that the United
States had a mission from God to spread its
democracy, freedom, and culture to other peoples
because of the superiority of American virtue and
institutions, and thus redeem and remake the rest
of the world in the image of the United States.
Wilson took this idea, originally stemming from
the Puritan/Calvinist sense of elitism, to mean
that he should apply Manifest Destiny to Europe.
In his 1920 message to Congress, Wilson said: “I
think we all realize that the day has come when
Democracy is being put upon its final test. The
Old World is just now suffering from a wanton
rejection of the principle of democracy and a
substitution of the principle of autocracy as
asserted in the name, but without the authority
and sanction, of the multitude. This is the time
of all others when Democracy should prove its
purity and its spiritual power to prevail. It is
surely the manifest destiny of the United States
to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.”
Thus, Manifest Destiny coincided perfectly
with Wilson’s desire to make the world safe for
democracy and end all wars.

The End of the War
and its Aftermath
After the United States helped to bring
about the Allied victory in 1918, the practical
problem remained of how to bring about an
everlasting peace. The removal of monarchs,

including Wilhelm II of Germany and Blessed Karl
of Austria-Hungary, did not simply result in the
establishment of a world without war. Realizing
that peace needed a system to preserve it, Wilson
drew up his Fourteen Points on which to base the
Treaty of Versailles, which officially brought the
Great War to a close for most belligerents.
Wilson presented the Fourteen Points to the
U.S. Congress on January 8, 1918. In his speech
the President described the foundation for peace
that he and his advisors had planned, and which
he considered the only means to prevent future
wars. The first five points addressed the removal
of what Wilson saw as the main causes of World
War I: 1) abolition of secret diplomacy, 2) complete
freedom of the seas, 3) elimination of economic
barriers to free trade, 4) reduction of armaments,
and 5) impartial adjustment of colonial claims.
According to Wilson, if the major powers could
agree to these points, no conflicts would take
place. Points six through thirteen consisted of
territorial adjustments for Europe based on the
principles of self-determination, autonomous
development, and nationality. For the last point,
the President envisioned a League of Nations that
would guarantee independence and territorial
integrity to all nations. This league would serve
as the primary means to ensure a lasting peace
because all the nations belonging to the league
would cooperate for their mutual benefit and the
avoidance of future wars.
Clearly Wilson’s idealism permeated the
Fourteen Points. The expectation that the major
powers would act in concert, putting aside their
own individual agendas for the good of all nations
both large and small, represented an unrealistic
approach to international politics. Great Britain
and France, allies of the United States, had
differing ideas for the basis of peace. Another
problem stemmed from the fact that the peoples
of Europe did not necessarily know what kind
of government they wanted, and in addition no
definite lines divided the different nationalities
from one another. Instead, many people had
been mixed together for centuries, living in the
same boundaries, but hating one another and
their neighbors. Thus, carving up the former
German and Austro-Hungarian empires into
small, independent states composed solely of
27

Theme Russia
one nationality each became an impossible task.
Nevertheless, Wilson insisted that his Fourteen
Points be the basis for the Treaty of Versailles.
The negotiations for the treaty lasted from
January 1919 to June 1919. The discussions took
place among the “Big Four”: Prime Minister
David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Prime
Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, Prime
Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and President
Wilson. The Allies did not allow any of the
Central Powers to participate in the negotiations
but merely presented the treaty to Germany to
sign. Although publicly most nations lauded the
Fourteen Points, the leaders of Britain, France,
and Italy had their own ideas for the treaty. Lloyd
George did not agree with Wilson’s point on
freedom of the seas as it would mean the loss of
British naval predominance. Clemenceau desired
to punish and cripple Germany so severely that
it would never be able to rival France as the
greatest industrial nation of Europe. Orlando
wanted to take large pieces of the former AustroHungarian empire for Italy without any regard to
self-determination or autonomous development
of the various nationalities.

The Treaty of Versailles
With these conflicting ideas, the negotiations
dragged on for months and resulted in the Treaty
of Versailles, a document which has sparked
controversy for almost one hundred years. Article
231 declared Germany and its allies responsible
for the war and all ensuing damages. Therefore,
the Allies required Germany to pay $5 billion
by May 1921, as part of a total of $27 billion.
The losing nation had to give up its overseas
possessions, large pieces of territory with natural
resources, its entire merchant marine, and allow
its army to be reduced to a mere 100,000 men
with restrictions on the manufacture of weapons
and ships. Certainly, the treaty crippled Germany,
though Clemenceau remained dissatisfied.
Wilson also expressed dissatisfaction with
the treaty, but for the opposite reason. He
had not wanted such harsh punishment for
Germany, though later he expressed approval
for it. However, he agreed to the peace terms
28

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that he did not like primarily because the other
nations accepted his idea of the League of
Nations. This agreement did not extend to the
U.S. Senate, though, which refused to ratify
the Treaty of Versailles precisely because of
the inclusion of the League of Nations. While
travelling the country in an attempt to convince
the American people to support the ratification of
the treaty, Wilson underwent a series of strokes
that rendered him incapable of performing his
presidential duties for the rest of his term.
As for the Treaty of Versailles establishing
an everlasting peace, the document did nothing
to alleviate the economic depression following
the Great War. On the contrary, the crippling
of Germany only added to the privation caused
by the British blockade and the expense of
fighting such an immense war on multiple
fronts. With the loss of its merchant marine,
overseas possessions, and a large part of its
natural resources, Germany found it impossible
to pay the war indemnity, while falling into an
economic situation in which hyperinflation ran
rampant. The exchange rate for German marks
to buy one U.S. dollar rose from 48 in late 1919
to 4,210,500,000,000 by late 1923. The severity of
this situation and the inability of the republican
Weimar government of Germany to solve it
became one of the primary reasons for the rise
to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party,
who promised a solution for the dire monetary
problems.
With Germany incapable of paying the war
indemnity, the Allies also could not pay off
their debts to the U.S. as the war had taken an
immense economic toll on all nations involved.
In addition, the remapping of Europe and the
Middle East after World War I created more
disputes than had existed previously, while
none of the countries viewed the Treaty of
Versailles as a positive answer for their desires.
The combination of political and economic strife
resulting from the treaty did not make the Great
War “the war to end war,” but in the words of
British field marshal Archibald Wavell, the “peace
to end peace.”

The Great
War, America,
and the
Modern Age
by Dr. Louis Shwartz

The musings of a medievalist concerning
the First World War and its impact on modern
American society may seem misplaced, yet they
possess one great strength: perspective. Indeed,
having long studied the culture of pre-modern
Europe—a cultural heritage which still, albeit
increasingly obscurely, informs and sustains
the Western world—allows one to identify the
distinctive social elements which distinguish
modern America. Moreover, I posit that the
genesis of certain contemporary American
“cultural trends” (to use a trendy term) can
be traced back to the First World War. These
include a rapid industrialization of warfare, a
revolutionary shift in the public workforce away
from patriarchal dominance, and the rise of
America not only as a leading world power but
as the great arbiter of international affairs. Thus

while we patriotically commemorate the many
sacrifices made for Western democracy on this
centennial of America’s decisive entry into the
Great War, it may also be useful to recall how
“the war to end wars” helped create the American
society we know today.

America’s Role in the War
America was uniquely positioned to impact the
course of World War I. By the first year of the war,
1914, the annual production of the United States
was 800% higher than in had been in 1865 and
equaled the combined industrial productions of
Britain, France, and Germany; moreover, during
this same fifty year period, the U.S. population
tripled. American steel and petroleum industries
29

Theme Russia
boomed, the former material often used to make
armaments, the latter to fuel warships and
merchant vessels. Yet initially America swore
to remain neutral in the growing conflict that
gradually engulfed all of Europe, the Middle East,
Russia, Africa, and Asia.
American neutrality, however, was more
illusory than real. At the start of the war, the
British imposed a devastating naval blockade
on the northern ports of Germany, essentially
prohibiting the United States from trading
with the Central powers, even to provide such
basic commodities as food. Instead, the British
and their allies received the vast majority of
America’s ample resources, and in the 32 months
preceding America’s entry into the war, the U.S.
economy grew by 60% as it supplied the English
and French with war matériel. At the same time
Germany, which relied heavily on imports to feed
its people during times of war, was starving—an
estimated 500,000 German civilians died from
the ensuing famine. The desperate Germans
soon developed their own form of economic
warfare, evading Britain’s vastly superior
surface fleet through the use of submarines.
German U-boats surrounded the English coast
and might, without warning, sink any vessel
engaged in trade with the British (who also
relied very heavily on imports to sustain their
war effort). Since the United States had been
trading regularly and heavily with Great Britain
throughout the course of the war, American
casualties were inevitable. Additionally, early
in 1917, the German Foreign Office sent a secret
telegram to Mexico discussing the possibility of
forming an alliance against America should she
enter the war; British intelligence intercepted and
decoded the telegram, ultimately passing it on to
the American authorities. The imminent danger
posed by German U-boats to U.S. trans-Atlantic
shipping and the threat to national security
posed by a potential German-Mexican alliance
prompted President Woodrow Wilson to push for
America’s entry into the war on the side of her
long-standing trading partner, Britain.
When Congress ratified Wilson’s request in
April of 1917, the whole might of the American
economy was focused on supporting the war
effort. New federal institutions such as the War
30

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Industry Board, the National War Labor Board,
and the War Finance Corporation funneled
resources into the great American war machine.
Chemical plants sprung up across the country,
and leading scientific minds such as Thomas
Edison headed research committees which
sought to develop new technologies capable of
locating and destroying German submarines.
Congress approved huge grants to support
shipbuilding and research into aviation (a new
field at the time). Financial resources were
then matched by human resources. Thanks
to the leadership of George Creel, the federal
Committee on Public Information developed
a powerful propaganda campaign (the famous
Uncle Sam recruiting posters date from this
time). In one short year, roughly 3 million young
men were drafted into the armed services, and
many of these were soon deployed to Europe.

The Role of Women
in the War Effort
Women too were an essential part of America’s
victory. Tens of thousands served in the U.S.
Armed Forces as auxiliaries, many actually
travelling overseas. Yet the most important
contribution of the “fairer sex” was back at home,
working office, factory, and railway jobs left
vacant by male soldiers. Here is how one women’s
rights activist described the situation in 1918:
“For every American man in khaki there is
an American girl in industry. At the time the
American Army numbered 1,500,000 there were
1,500,000 girls at work in war industries, working
on shells, munitions of other kinds, all kinds
of machine processes or airplane motor parts,
painting camouflage, doing machine work on
Government trucks and working in the chemicals
that are used to make ammunition….In shop
after shop, as you look down the long rows of
flying belts and clanking, buzzing machines, you
see fair heads bent over big drills, grinding their
way through fat pieces of steel, or a pretty brown
mass of hair showing under a machinist’s cap
with its long black visor.”
This portrayal is accurate. Historians estimate
that, between 1917 and 1918, roughly two

America WW1 woman arsenal worker. 1918. She is welding a water jacket
for a machine gun. The waterjacket keeps the guns from overheating.

Theme Russia

million women held jobs associated directly
with the war effort. In many cases, women
began working jobs traditionally considered only
appropriate for men, particularly those involving
taxing manual labor, long hours, and heavy
machinery. Yet women also came to dominate
lower-level clerical posts inside growing office
buildings. They began advocating (effectively)
for wages comparable to those earned by men,
for shorter hours, and even for union protection.
In response to these new realities and pressing
demands, the U.S. Employment Bureau created
a women’s section in 1918. Women even began
to wear men’s clothing while doing men’s work.
Finally, once the war drew to a successful close,
women’s suffrage activists convinced Congress
that women were just as much citizens of the
United States as were their male counterparts
and had played a crucial role in winning the war;
therefore, they should be given the vote. In 1920,
an amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution
granting all women this right, the culmination
of decades of social advocacy undertaken by
suffragettes.

1924). As president from 1913 to 1921, Wilson
guided the U.S. through the Great War and
played a leading part in establishing peace with
Germany following the Allied victory. A staunch
Presbyterian, Wilson harbored a lofty, quasireligious vision of the role America should play in
international affairs. As early as 1912, he stated:
“we [Americans] are chosen…to show the way
to the nations of the world, how they shall walk
in the paths of liberty.” Similarly on April 2, 1917,
when Wilson asked Congress to declare war on
Germany, he insisted that the U.S. should fight
“for the ultimate peace of the world and the
liberation of its peoples … [in order to establish]
the rights of nations great and small and the
privilege of men everywhere to choose their
way of life.” Democracy should thus be exported
from America to the rest of the world; moreover,
the peace talks at Versailles following the end
of the war served as a prime venue for Wilson
to promote his new vision for world peace and
stability.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points
America’s International
Ascendency
In addition to the rapid growth and
industrialization of the U.S. military and to
the increasing prominence of women in the
public sphere, the ascendancy of America
as the great arbiter of international affairs
can also be credited to World War One, and
specifically to one man: Woodrow Wilson (185632

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In preparation for the peace negotiations,
Wilson developed his famous Fourteen Points.
Here he advocated for elective government and
rule by the people; for unimpeded, unrestricted
trade across the high seas; and for political
self-determination in lands such as Poland,
Romania, and Hungary. Most importantly, Wilson
insisted that “a general association of nations”
be formed to promote political independence
and mutual security throughout the world. This

Rosie the Riveter, a symbol of women in the workforce
during World War Two and, later, of modern feminism
“Our Right to Democracy! What’s Yours?” Woman Citizen
(28 Dec. 1918)depicting a women’s suffrage activist
appealing to a senator for the right to vote
World War One recruiting poster featuring “Uncle Sam”
Poster depicting war-time contributions
of women workers, 1918
Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson
and Lloyd George after signing the treaty
of Versailles at the end of World War I.

general association of nations would, by the
end of the peace talks, become the League of
Nations. In order to convince the leading nations
of Europe to support his new League, Wilson
was prepared to compromise on other issues; for
example, he reluctantly agreed to support France
in demanding huge indemnities from Germany,
and he grudgingly acknowledged Great Britain’s
right to claim former German colonies in Africa.
Finally, according to Wilson, those nations which
threatened his vision of a new, democratic,
cooperative world order should be excluded from
membership. Germany, for example, was forced
to renounce its empire and was encouraged to
establish an elective form of government; only
after a period of probation, during which it had
to prove its commitment to democratic principles
and international cooperation, could Germany be
admitted to the League. Likewise Russia, which
had recently embraced Bolshevism, was viewed
as an enemy of liberty and of democracy and was
also excluded.
With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles
on June 28, 1919 by the European powers, the
League of Nations became a reality and a new
world order was established thanks to the
tireless advocacy of Woodrow Wilson. In fact,
the establishment of the League occupied the
very first of the lengthy treaty’s 440 articles, a
testimony to the overriding importance Wilson
ascribed to this new international body. Indeed,
Wilson was willing to go to great lengths to
promote the League. By personally attending
the peace talks at Versailles, Wilson became
the first U.S. president to travel abroad during
his time in office. Additionally, Wilson had to

convince Congress to adopt the treaty as well.
Soon after he returned home, Wilson addressed
the U.S. Senate, insisting that the League was
the “indispensable instrumentality for the
maintenance of the new world order.”
Yet, ironically, Congress never authorized
the United States to join the League of Nations.
Many women, too, despite their achievements in
the workforce during the war, had to cede their
jobs to the men returning home from battle.
These facts, however, should not obscure the
new realities for American society inaugurated
by World War I. The United States asserted
itself, in the person of Woodrow Wilson, as the
leading power in world politics and as the great
champion of international democracy during
the post-war peace talks at Versailles. Women
proved that they could do the work of men, that
they had helped carry their nation to victory,
and that they thus deserved to be acknowledged
as full citizens possessing the right to vote.
Economically, the war served as a great stimulus
to American industries and trade, simultaneously
prompting the development of a larger, highly
industrialized military. Unquestionably these new
realities—America as the international guardian
of democracy, women as full citizens with the
right to vote, national industry and technology as
the guarantees of overwhelming military force—
guided America through the Second World War
by inspiring the creation, respectively, of the
United Nations, of the women’s labor movement
(symbolized by Rosie the Riveter), and of the
atomic bomb. These realities still persist today
and now define, problematically, our modern
American culture.
33

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in Rhineland, Germany, was founded in the year 1093 by the Palsgrave Henry II of Lorraine.
The monastery, which was handed over to the Cluniac Benedictines from the Abbey of
Afflighem in Belgium, welcomed its first abbot in the accomplished Gilbert, in 1127, and thus
became independent.

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The Knighthood of the Immaculate Virgin Mary

Fr. Karl Stehlin, SSPX
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of the Immaculate), along with quotations from St. Maximilian Kolbe and the official documents of the Militia. This little book will inspire the reader to a greater devotion and zeal
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Fr. Karl Stehlin, SSPX

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Spirituality

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:

Latin in the
Roman Rite
by Fr. Christopher Danel

Introduction
Why has the Mass of the Roman Rite been
celebrated in the Latin language for almost two
thousand years? In this article, we examine
the important reasons for this, presenting the
explanations and work of Monsignor Nicholas
Gihr in his fundamental liturgical commentary
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically,
Liturgically, and Ascetically Explained.
Monsignor Gihr was a priest of the Archdiocese
of Freiburg in Breisgau whose work of liturgical
research took place during the time frame
spanning the pontificates of Popes Pius IX to
Pius XI, including that of Pope St. Pius X. The
early years of his work were contemporaneous
with the last years in the work of the eminent
Benedictine liturgist Dom Prosper Guéranger of
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Solesmes. The English translation of his study
appeared in 1902; the original is: Gihr, Nikolaus.
Messopfer dogmatisch, liturgish und aszetish
erklärt. Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau, 1877.

The Vernacular Polemic
Every element of the sacred liturgy comes
from the organic and harmonious development
of the rites over time, not from mere human
ingenuity. Each is perfectly suited to its end,
and this includes the liturgical language of the
Roman Rite, which by the Providence of God is
Latin. In the retention of this language which
is now consecrated to the things of God, which
is precise and unchanging in its expression,
universal and unifying, one admires the

supernatural wisdom of the Church.
The use of Latin has frequently been the
subject of attack, but it is a fact that these
attacks have come chiefly from a spirit that is not
interested in the advancement of Holy Church,
but rather hostile to her. They betray a schismatic
and heretical spirit adverse to the sanctification
of souls. One can consider only the Anglicans’
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion; their twentyfourth article claims that the use of the Latin
language is “repugnant to the Word of God.”
Other attacks come from the naturalistic spirit
of rationalism, which is incapable of grasping
the essence and object of the Catholic liturgy.
Its proponents claim that the vernacular would
benefit the masses by way of instruction, but it
must be kept present that the Holy Sacrifice is not
primarily didactic. While the truths of the faith
are taught from the pulpit for the understanding
of the faithful, as well they should be, the
Mass is of a completely different order. It is the
propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary, the supreme act
of adoration to the ineffable God. For this reason,
the renowned theologian Fr. Francisco Suarez
wrote in 1597 that the purported usefulness
of the vernacular is not only uncertain but
even fraught with danger, and that the vaunted
benefits may easily be obtained by other means
(“illa utilitas et incerta est et multis periculis
exposita, et alio securiori et sufficiente modo
suppleri potest,” Disp. 83, section I, n. 21).
Some of the vernacular polemicists point to
the Eastern rites of the Church to make their
case, declaring that they have maintained the
vernacular tongue in their rites, but in fact,
as Monsignor Gihr points out, “the Oriental
churches also reject the principle that the
vernacular language should be used in the
celebration of Holy Mass. The Greeks celebrate
the Holy Sacrifice in the ancient Greek, which the
people do not understand. The Abyssinians and
Armenians celebrate Holy Mass respectively in
the ancient Ethiopian and the ancient Armenian,
understood only by the learned. The same holds
true with regard to the Syrians and Egyptians,
who celebrate Holy Mass in the ancient Syrian,
and also with regard to the Melkites and
Georgians who at Holy Mass make use of the
ancient Greek. The same is observed by the

Russians, who use only a Slavonian dialect.” One
may also include the example of the Israelites,
who maintained ancient Hebrew as their

“Being formed of all nations
and tribes and peoples
and tongues, the Church
constitutes a kingdom not
of this world, but exalted
above every nation of the
earth. Therefore, it is proper
that the Church, when
offering the divine Sacrifice,
should make use not of
the language of one single
country or nation, but of a
language that is universal,
consecrated, and sanctified.
Thus, at the altar, she is
a figure of the heavenly
Jerusalem.”
- Monsignor Nicholas Gihr

language of worship even though their own daily
idiom had since undergone great mutation. Thus,
even when Our Lord Jesus Christ stood to read
39

Spirituality
the scroll of Isaias in the synagogue of Nazareth
(Lk. 4:16 ff), he did so using a sacred liturgical
language which was not the language of the
people.
The Church’s response to the attacks on
her liturgical language is one of anathema: “If
anyone says that the rite of the Roman Church…
ought to be celebrated in the vernacular
tongue only…let him be anathema” (Council of
Trent, Session XXII, Canon 9). The same was
reiterated strongly by Pope Pius VI in his 1794
Bull Auctorem Fidei in response to what he
termed the errors and “perverse doctrines” of
the Synod of Pistoia, which advocated for a
Mass facing the people and celebrated in the
vernacular. These condemnations are for good
reason. As Monsignor Gihr writes, “In the attempt
to suppress the Latin language of the liturgy and
replace it by the vernacular, there was a more or
less premeditated scheme to undermine Catholic
unity, to loosen the bond of union with Rome,
to weaken the Catholic spirit, and to destroy the
humility and simplicity of the faith.” In the three
sections below, we see how the famed liturgist
presents Latin as the tongue of the Sacred, a
language which is unchangeable, and which is an
admirable means of preserving the unity of the
Catholic Church in her doctrine and worship.

The Language of the Sacred
The Latin language is consecrated by the
mystic inscription attached to the Cross, as well
as sanctified by the usage of nearly two thousand
years, and hence it is most closely interwoven
with the primitive Roman Catholic liturgy of
the holy Sacrifice. The inscription on the Cross:
“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, was written
in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (Jn. 19:19-20). These
were the three principal languages of that epoch,
and by divine dispensation they were destined
and consecrated on the Cross for the liturgical
use of the Church.
Divine Providence selected Rome as the
center of the Catholic Church; from Rome the
messengers of the Faith were sent forth in all
directions to spread the light of the Gospel. Along
with the grace of Christianity, together with the
40

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Catholic Faith and its divine worship, the western
nations also received Latin as the Churchlanguage; for in that tongue the Holy Mysteries
were always celebrated, though the nations
recently converted spoke a different language
and did not understand Latin.
For centuries, the Latin language has ceased
to be spoken in the daily life and intercourse of
the world, but it will continue to live immortally
by ecclesiastical usage and in the sanctuary of
divine worship. It is without doubt elevating and
inspiring to offer sacrifice and pray in the very
language and in the very words which resounded
in the mouths of the primitive Christians and our
forefathers in the dark depths of the Catacombs,
in the golden apses of the ancient basilicas,
and in the sumptuous cathedrals of the Middle
Ages. In the Latin language of divine worship,
innumerable saints, bishops and priests of all
times have offered sacrifice, have prayed its
magnificent liturgical formulas and sung its
sublime hymns.

The Language of the
Unchangeable
Latin is a so-called dead language because
it survives no longer in the conversation of the
common people. As such it is unchangeable,
while the languages of the people undergo
constant improvement and remodeling, and are
ever liable to go on progressing and altering.
What would become of liturgical books, if,
with time and the changes of the vernacular,
they were subjected to perpetual change and
reconstruction? By such necessary, incessant
remodeling and alteration of the liturgical
formulas of prayer, the original text and context
would lose not only much of their incomparable
force and beauty, but often notwithstanding strict
surveillance on the part of the Church, would
be disfigured and spoiled by circumlocutions,
interpolations, omissions, incorrectness, errors
and misrepresentations. Hence it would be
impossible to preserve and maintain uniformity
of divine worship at different times among even
one and the same people, much less throughout
the world. All these inconveniences are obviated

by the use of an unchangeable language for divine
worship. In the unchangeableness of the Latin for
divine worship, the Roman Missal appears as an
intangible and inviolable sanctuary, deserving of
admiration and profound respect.
Since the Latin language has been withdrawn
from daily life, it possesses in the eyes of the
faithful a holy, venerable and mystic character.
Under this aspect also, it is eminently suited for
the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The celebration of this mystic Sacrifice fittingly
calls for a language elevated, majestic, dignified
and consecrated. Just as the silent recitation
of the Canon, so also the use of a sanctified

language of worship, different from that of
worldly speech, points to the unfathomable and
unspeakable depth of the mystery of the altar,
and protects it against contempt and desecration.
Thus the Latin language—elevated above the
time and place of everyday life—is a mystic veil
for the Adorable mysteries of the Holy Sacrifice.
Latin is, therefore, no hindrance to the Catholic
Christian, preventing him from deriving from the
source of the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice life,
light and warmth, in order to nourish his piety
and devotion. It serves rather to awaken a holy
awe and reverence in the presence of the obscure
mysteries of the Divine Sacrifice.

Altar with chalice and Missal during a traditional old latin rite Mass in the basilica of St Nicholas in Rome

41

Spirituality
The Language of Catholic Unity
As a universal language of worship, Latin
is an admirable means not only of presenting,
but also of preserving and promoting the unity
and harmony of the Church in divine worship,
in divine faith, and in conduct. The unity of the
liturgy for all time and place can be perfectly
maintained only inasmuch as it is always and
everywhere celebrated in the same language.
By the introduction of the various national
languages, the uniformity and harmony of
Catholic worship would be imperiled and, in a
measure, rendered impossible.
The unity of the liturgical language and of the
divine worship in the Church is furthermore a
very efficient means for preserving the integrity
of faith. The liturgy is, indeed, the main channel
by which dogmatic tradition is transmitted;
dogma is the root of all ecclesiastical life, of
discipline and of worship. Worship is developed
out of the doctrine of faith; in the liturgical
prayers, in the rites and ceremonies of the
Church the truths of Catholic faith find their
expression, and can be established and proved
therefrom. But the more fixed, unchangeable
and inviolable the liturgical formula of prayer is,
the better it is adapted to preserve intact and to
transmit unimpaired the original deposit of faith.
Therefore, all the primitive liturgies proclaim and
prove that our faith is in perfect harmony with
that of the first ages of the Church.
Unity of liturgical language and the consequent
uniformity of divine worship form, finally, a
strong bond for uniting indissolubly the churches
dispersed all over the world. This unity is seen
among themselves and with their common center
the Roman Church, the chief and Mother-Church
of them all. The bond of a universal language
of worship, which embraces the head and the
members of the Church, supports and promotes
everywhere the unity and the common life and
operation of the Church. While the use of the
various vernacular languages for divine service
is peculiar to the national sects, the use of Latin
as the common language for divine worship
harmonizes perfectly with the essence, the object
and the workings of the One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church.
42

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March - April 2018

How beautiful and sublime is that uniform
celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in the Catholic
Church from the rising to the setting of the sun!
Thus every priest is enabled to celebrate Mass,
over the whole world, no matter what country he
visits. And how consoling is it not for a devout
Catholic, whilst dwelling in a foreign land in the
midst of strangers, to be able to hear again the
words of a language which he has listened to
from childhood as a second mother-tongue in
his native country. He feels then that he is in his
spiritual home.

Conclusion
While Latin is the language of the Roman Rite,
the Mass contains in fact three languages apart
from Latin: there are fragments of Greek (Kyrie
eleison, Trisagion of Good Friday) and Hebrew
(Amen, Alleluia). Monsignor Gihr writes that
through the inscription on the Cross these three
languages proclaimed to the whole world the
dignity, power and glory of the Redeemer, the
royalty and dominion of grace which He acquired
by His bloody death; at the altar these languages
continue to live throughout all ages, and serve to
announce and to celebrate until the end of time
the death of Christ for our redemption, whereby
the reign of grace is ever more widely extended
and firmly established.

172 pp – Softcover – 12 pages of photographs and illustrations – STK# 8700 – $14.95

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

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

Spirituality

Sacro
Vergente
Anno
by Pope Pius XII, July 7, 1952

Editor’s Note: On the occasion of the feast of
Sts. Cyril and Methodius, apostles to the Slav
countries, Pope Pius XII answered the request
of consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart
of Mary. In the opening paragraphs, the Pope
alludes firstly to the birth of the Church in
Ukraine and Russia. The remainder of the letter
is directed primarily to the people of Russia,
Catholics and Orthodox alike, along with those
laboring under the error of atheistic communism.
We are publishing large excerpts from the
remaining parts of the letter.
Admirable Page of Generosity
[Editor’s Note: Pius XII is referring to relations
between the Roman and Russian churches.]
Meanwhile, because of the multiplicity of
adverse circumstances such as, on the one
44

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March - April 2018

hand, the difficulty of communication and,
consequently, the more difficult, the union of
minds, this in general, however, should not be
attributed to the Slav people and certainly not
to our predecessors, who always manifested a
paternal love to these populations and, when
possible, took care to sustain and help them
in every way. Until 1448, there were no public
documents declaring the separation of your
church from the Apostolic See.
We omit many other historical documents in
which the benevolence of our predecessors was
manifested towards your nation, but we must
briefly mention the actions of the sovereign
pontiffs Benedict XV and Pius XI when, after
the first European conflict and especially in the
southern part of your country, a huge number
of men, women, and innocent children were

Pius XII consecrates the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

struck by a terrible famine and in extreme
misery. These popes in fact, moved by a paternal
affection towards your compatriots, sent to these
populations food, clothes, and the many funds
received from the entire Catholic family, to be
offered to these hungry and unhappy souls in
order to alleviate in some way their calamities.
And our predecessors provided, according
to their own possibilities, not only for the
material necessities, but also spiritual ones…
they wished that public prayers be added for
your religious condition which had become so
perturbed and vexed by the deniers and enemies
of God[.]…Thus, the Sovereign Pontiff Pius XI
in 1930 established that, on the Feast of St.
Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, “there
be common prayers in the Vatican Basilica
for the unfortunate condition of the religion

in Russia[.]”…[I]n the solemn consistorial
allocution, Pius XI exhorted all with these words:
“It is necessary to pray to Christ, the Redeemer
of mankind, so that the peace and the liberty to
profess the Faith be restored to the unfortunate
faithful of Russia. And we wish that the prayers,
which our predecessor of happy memory Leo
XIII impressed on priests to be recited after
Mass along with the people, to be recited for this
intention, that is for Russia; let the bishops and
the priests, both regular and secular, with all
care, try to inculcate this and often remind their
faithful or whoever attends the holy Mass.”
Impartiality of the Sovereign Pontiff
We willingly confirm and renew this
exhortation and this command, since the
45

Spirituality
religious situation among you [in Russia], in the
present moment, is certainly not any better, and
because we feel animated with the same vivid
affection and the same care.
When the last tremendous and long conflict
broke out [World War II], we had done everything
in our power, with words, exhortations, and
actions to heal the disputes by means of an equal
and just peace, and so that all nations, without
distinction of race, be united amicably and
fraternally, and likewise, collaborate to gain a
greater prosperity.
Never, even in that time, there came from
our mouth a word which could seem unjust or
bitter towards any one part of the belligerents.
Certainly, we had reproved, as it was our duty,
whatever injustice and whichever violation of law
then occurring; but we did this in such a way as
to avoid with all diligence anything which could
become, even unjustly, the cause of a greater
affliction for the oppressed nations. And when,
from any section, pressure was made on us in
any way, in word or in writing, to approve the
war against Russia in 1941, we never consented
to do this. This we expressed clearly on February
25, 1946 in the discourse held before the Sacred
College and the entire Diplomatic Corps attached
to the Holy See.
For the Liberty of Souls and for Justice
When it is a question of defending the cause of
religion, of truth, of justice, and of the Christian
City, certainly we cannot be silent. Our thoughts
and our intentions have always returned to
the truth that nations are not governed by the
violence of weapons, but by the majesty of
justice; and each of these, in possession of the
proper civil and religious liberty…be led towards
concord, peace, and that laborious life, by which
all citizens can obtain the things necessary for
life, housing, sustenance, and government of their
own families.
Our most ardent charity included all nations,
including those in which the leaders had
professed to be enemies of the Apostolic See, and
also those in which the deniers of God ousted
fiercely all that was Christian and divine, and
almost deleted it from the minds of the citizens.
46

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March - April 2018

In fact, by a mandate of Jesus Christ, who
entrusted the entire flock of the Christian people
to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles (Jn. 21:1517)—of whom we are the unworthy successors—
we love with intense love all nations and we wish
to procure the earthly prosperity and eternal
salvation of all.
Therefore, all of them, whether in armed
conflict or at peace between themselves,
in disagreements and serious disputes, are
considered by us as so many beloved children; we
desire nothing else, we request nothing else from
God with our prayers than their mutual concord,
just and true peace, and an ever increasing
prosperity. And, if some, deceived by lies and
calumnies, profess open hostility in our regard,
we are animated towards them with a greater
commiseration and with a more ardent affection.
Condemnation of Error and
Charity Towards Those in Error
Doubtlessly, we have condemned and
rejected—as the duty of our office demanded
it—the errors and the leaders of atheistic
communism and their endeavor to propagate
great loss and ruin for their citizens. But to those
in error, far from rejecting them, we wish that
they return to the truth and be redirected to the
right path. We have thus shown light on these
lies and reproved them. These lies were often
presented under the false appearance of truth.
We reprove those in error because we love them
with a paternal will and we wish their happiness.
In fact, we have the firm certitude that, from
these errors, you can derive only the greatest
damage, because they not only take away from
your souls the supernatural light and the supreme
comforts which come from piety and the worship
of God, but they deprive you of the human dignity
and of the just liberty due to citizens.
Powerful Protection of the Mother of God
We know that many among you preserve the
Christian Faith in the intimate sanctuary of
your own conscience, who in no way favor the
enemies of religion, but rather desire ardently to
profess Christian teachings, the only and secure

foundations of the civil life, not only in private
but also openly as free persons. And we know
also, with our greatest hope and great comfort,
that you love and honor with a most ardent
affection the Virgin Mary Mother of God, and that
you venerate her sacred images. We know that,
in the Kremlin itself, a temple was built—today,
however, no longer a place for divine worship—
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Assumed into
Heaven. This is just one very clear testimony of
the love that your forefathers and yourselves bear
towards the great Mother of God.
However, we know that the hope of salvation
comes when the souls turn with sincerity and
ardent piety towards the Most Holy Mother of
God. In fact, the more impious and powerful men
endeavor to destroy from the hearts of citizens
holy religion and Christian virtue, the more
Satan intends to promote with any means this
sacrilegious struggle according to the Apostle of
the gentiles: “...our struggle is not against flesh
and blood, but against the Principalities and
Powers, against the Dominations of the world of
darkness...” (Eph. 6:12). Yet, if Mary applies her
powerful protection, the gates of hell will not be
able to prevail. In fact, she is the most benign and
powerful Mother of God, and never was it heard
in the world that anyone who had recourse to her
with supplications did not experience her most
powerful intercession.
Persevere, thus, as is your custom, to venerate
her with fervent piety, to love her ardently, and to
invoke her with these words, which are familiar
to you: “To you alone has been granted, most holy
and pure Mother of God, to have your prayers
answered always.”
Fervent Appeal for Peace
Along with you, we raise our supplication,
so that Christian truth, beauty, and support for
human life be strengthened and invigorated
among the peoples of Russia. Moreover, we pray
that all the deceits of the enemies of religion, all
their errors and their perfidious arts, be rejected
by you so that your private and public lives
may once again conform to evangelical norms.
We pray that those among you who profess
the Catholic Faith, although deprived of your

pastors, may resist with great strength against
the assaults of impiety until death….We pray
that true liberty first be given back to the Church
which holds the divine command of teaching all
men religious truth, and that virtue shines in your
most beloved nation and on all mankind. And
we pray that the peace founded upon justice and
nourished by charity may lead all nations happily
to that common prosperity of peoples and nations
which derives from the mutual concord of souls.
May Our most benign Mother look with
benevolent eyes upon those who have even joined
the ranks of militant atheism….May she illumine
their minds with the light which comes from
above, and direct with the divine grace their
hearts to salvation.
Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate
Heart
And therefore we, in order that Our and your
prayers may be more easily answered, and in
order to give you a special attestation of our
benevolence, likewise a few years ago, We
consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate
Heart of the Virgin Mother of God, so now, in a
very special way, consecrate all peoples of Russia
to the very same Immaculate Heart, in the safe
confidence that with the extremely powerful
protection of the Virgin Mary, the wishes
expressed by us, by you and by every good person
for true peace, for fraternal concord and due
freedom for everyone and for the Church in the
first place, may be answered as soon as possible;
in such a manner that, through the prayer that
We send up to heaven together with you and
all Christians, the reign of Christ, harbinger of
salvation, which is “kingdom of truth and life,
kingdom of sainthood and grace, kingdom of
justice, of love and of peace,” may triumph and
steadily consolidate itself everywhere on earth.”
And with fervent invocation we pray the same
most clement Mother, that she assist all of you in
the present calamity and obtain from her Divine
Son and for your minds that light which comes
from Heaven, and beg for your souls that virtue
and strength, by which, supported with divine
grace, you may victoriously conquer all impiety
and error.
47

O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
I led thee out of Egypt having drowned Pharao in the Red Sea: and thou hast delivered Me to
the chief priests.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.I opened
the sea before thee: and thou with a spear hast opened My side.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
I went before thee in a pillar of cloud: and thou hast led Me to the judgement hall of Pilate.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
I fed thee with manna in the desert; and thou hast beaten Me with whips and scourges.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
I gave thee the water of salvation from the rock to drink: and thou hast given Me gall and
vinegar.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
For thy sake I struck the kings of the Chanaanites: and thou hast struck My head with a reed.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
I gave thee a royal sceptre: and thou hast given to My head a crown of thorns.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
I exalted thee with great strength: and thou hast hung Me on the gibbet of the Cross.
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
Detail from Deposition of the Cross scene over St. John of the Cross side altar by P. Verkade (1927) in the Carmelite church in Dobling.

Spirituality

Russian
Apostolate
by Fr. Shane Carlo Pezzutti

Before his death in March 1991, Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre received a letter from some
Catholics from Moscow begging him to help
preserve Catholic Tradition in Russia. When,
finally, the Eastern Block crumbled and opened
its borders to the West, the Society of Saint Pius
X (SSPX) began to develop other missions in
Eastern Europe rather quickly (Poland, Belarus,
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), but somehow
Russia became virtually the last on the list of
“things to do.”

Missionary Work in Russia
Traditional Catholic missionary work in Russia
compounds the difficulties found in other Eastern
countries. Besides being the very heart of the
50

The Angelus

March - April 2018

former atheistic Soviet Union, most Russians are
nominally Orthodox, and therefore, staunchly
anti-Catholic. Also consider this difficulty: how
could the SSPX begin to try and explain to the
Russian people that outside of the Catholic
Church there is no salvation, and yet, because
of the modernist crisis, they should support the
Society and disobey the pope?
Because of these and other practical
difficulties, progress in our missionary work has
been very slow over the two decades that we
have been present in the country. After offering
holy Mass in hotel rooms and apartments for
years, we are finally renting small chapels in
both Moscow and St. Petersburg. Although
they are only provisional, they certainly give
us the stability needed to further solidify our
missionary work. Unfortunately, because of our

limited forces, we are only able to visit these
chapels twice a month. It is the absolute bare
minimum needed to keep these missions alive.
However, God willing, this year will see the
ordination of our first Russian priest, bringing
much hope for the future of Tradition in Russia.
Many in the West currently have a naive idea
about Russian anti-liberalism, and a religious
rebirth of Russia. However, they should not
forget that Russia is still filled with statues of

situation in Russia is similar to the Catholic
situation in other former Soviet countries
because of having been virtually isolated from
the West for about one hundred years. Of course,
the ideas of Vatican II and the post-conciliar
liturgical reforms were known in all Eastern
Europe, but the Church was in no hurry to
implement these changes because it was too
busy simply trying to survive in an atheistic and
godless environment.

SSPX Chapel in St. Petersburg

Vladimir Lenin and other communist “heroes,”
while subways and streets are still named
after KGB murderers. The Soviet Union has not
been publicly repudiated, and it is still used to
strengthen Russian nationalism. Compared to
Western liberalism, communism itself appears
quite “conservative,” but in my opinion, it is a
little bit too romantic to see Russia as a new
“Christian Conservative” political power,
although it is undeniable that there are signs of
improvement inside Russia.
Spiritually speaking, things are worse.
Atheistic communism has had a terribly enduring
negative effect on the minds of most Russians.
Religion is something still very foreign, strange,
or simply an object of intellectual curiosity.
Orthodox practice has gone down to less than
5% of the population. As for Catholicism, the

SSPX’s Apostolate in Russia
About 95% of our faithful are converts from
either atheism or from Russian Orthodoxy.
That means that most of them received no
Catholic upbringing or formation. The Latin
Catholic Church itself was always something
very foreign for all of them. Try to understand
that Catholicism has had little success in Russia
for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is very
difficult for us to understand the common
Russian person’s ideas about the priesthood,
religion, and prayer. For example, being in Russia
all of their life, Russians are used to priests
always having beards, long hair, and a wife.
Also, during the Orthodox liturgy they only
stand, and they sing everything. There is no
silence. Therefore, many of them found it very
51

Spirituality

52

difficult to kneel and pray or to even be still and
quiet during prayer. I found one group of our
faithful standing in Church while praying the
Rosary. I was certainly not used to seeing that!
Basic things that we take for granted are very
different for them. But Russians come from a very
different religious background. That is not to say
that they practiced their Orthodox faith regularly
(because very few actually attend the Divine
Liturgy every Sunday), but just by being Russians
they are surrounded by Orthodox culture, films,
art etc., and this permeates their ideas about
religion.

of the apparitions in Fatima.
Truly Russia holds a special place in the
Immaculate Heart of Mary and therefore, it
is a blessing that Providence gives us this
opportunity to work in this spiritually ravaged
land. The Church has tried to help souls in need
here, but the Orthodox or the communists have
prevented it for centuries. Now the door is much
more open for the Church. Now, we can actually
do something in Russia, and so therefore we
must! In my opinion, if you look at Russian
history, it is one of the greatest opportunities
for the Catholic Church to work in Russia.

Most of our faithful are good people who are
intellectual converts who understand theology
and history better than most priests, but because
of a lack of Catholic upbringing, they require a lot
of training of the will and basic education on how
to pray. It is certainly a unique apostolate, and
our priests have to know their theology very well,
but also be very merciful and patient because
there can be a lot of misunderstandings and
disappointments.
Divine Providence blessed our two Russian
missions with the visit of Bishop Bernard Fellay,
our Superior General, in November 2017. He
visited both St. Petersburg, and then traveled
to Moscow where he participated in a two-day
Conference organized by the Society and the
Fatima Center in Moscow. The Conference was
purposefully organized for the 100th anniversary

Unfortunately, the modernists and ecumenists
are also now freely working in Russian and with
many more priests and resources than the SSPX.
That means that they are filling the minds of
Catholics and Russians with a new Catholicism.
That is why our little mission is so vital.

The Angelus

March - April 2018

Fr. Pezzutti, born in Columbus, Ohio, was
ordained in Winona in 2010, and exercised his
apostolate primarily in Lithuania and Russia.
He is presently prior in Kaunas, Lithuania.

556 pp. – Softcover – Illustrated – STK# 8716 – $35.00

The Realist Guide to
Religion and Science

With this volume, the student will be able to safely navigate through the busy halls
of philosophy.
Fr Joseph Azize, Ph.D.,
Honorary Associate, Dept of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney;
Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame, Australia.
The Realist Guide to Religion and Science is an historical and radically interdisciplinary
work that provides clear answers to the intellectual confusion that besieges the
modern world.
Dennis Bonnette Ph.D.,
Professor of Philosophy (Retired), Niagara University.
Fr Robinson knows that talking about the absoluteness of truth is not very pleasant
to a modern scholar … but it is—de facto—a very scholarly thing to do. In my opinion,
the author of the Realist Guide deserves praises for this attempt.
Jakub Taylor, Ph.D. (Seoul National University),
Professor Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea.

paul robinson

hy do some religious believers slaughter those who refuse to
convert to their faith, refuse scientific evidence for an ancient
universe, or hold God to be an utterly arbitrary being? Why do some
scientists believe that universes pop into existence from nothing, that aliens
seeded life on earth, or that fish turn into reptiles by chance processes? The
answer, for both, is the same: the abandonment of realism, the human way
for knowing reality.
In The Realist Guide to Religion and Science, Fr Paul Robinson explains what
realism is all about, then undertakes an historical exploration to show how
religion and science become irrational when they abandon realism and
intellectually fruitful when they embrace it.

the realist guide to religion and science

W

Fr Paul Robinson, a native of Kentucky, USA, received a Masters degree in
Engineering Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Louisville.
After two years in the field, he entered a Catholic seminary to discern his vocation.
Since his ordination in 2006, he has been teaching Thomistic philosophy and theology.

GRACEWING
9

780852

GRACEWING

ISBN 978-0-85244-922-6

449226

by Fr. Paul Robinson
Why do some religious believers slaughter those who refuse to convert to their faith, refuse scientific
evidence for an ancient universe, or hold God to be an utterly arbitrary being? Why do some scientists
believe that universes pop into existence from nothing, that aliens seeded life on earth, or that fish turn
into reptiles by chance processes? The answer, for both, is the same: the abandonment of realism, the
human way for knowing reality. In The Realist Guide to Religion and Science, Fr Robinson explains what
realism is all about, then undertakes an historical exploration to show how religion and science become
irrational when they abandon realism and how they are intellectually fruitful when they embrace it.

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

Spirituality

War and
Peace
by a Benedictine Monk

On one Christmas Eve, the trenches of World
War I witnessed a seeming contradiction. A
German soldier entered no-man’s land between
the trenches armed only with a Christmas tree.
A few warning shots were fired, but he stood his
ground. His battle cry was the chanting of the
well-known carol: Silent Night. Other voices
slowly joined in and the French replied with their
own carols. The habitual roaring of the cannons
and the cries of the wounded and agonizing
ceased for a brief moment, being replaced by the
carols honoring the birth of Christ, the Prince of
Peace. The next day they exchanged handshakes,
small gifts of chocolate and cigarettes and even
worked together to dig a common grave for
the fallen of both sides. Some claim that there
was a small soccer match before they resumed
their positions and unfortunately their war of
54

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fratricide. What a strange night that must have
been and yet it is very similar to a nearly daily
occurrence within our own souls.
The presence of Christ heals wounds and
restores peace in the very midst of the trench
warfare of the spiritual life. The spiritual life is
at the same time both a brutal war and profound
peace. St. Benedict explains this same reality in
the Prologue of his Rule: “To thee are my words
now addressed, whosoever thou mayest be, that
renouncing thine own will in order to fight for
the true King, Christ, dost take up the strong and
glorious weapons of obedience.” He teaches that
the monastic life, is a battle against our own will,
our disordered self-love, which is our principal
enemy. A few paragraphs later, St. Benedict tells
us to seek out peace while we battle against
our evil inclinations. “If thou wilt have true and

everlasting life, keep thy tongue from evil and thy
lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil
and do good: seek after peace and pursue it.”

War and the Slavery of Sin
War is essentially a division between two
or more sides. At one and the same time, one
country can be at war with many other countries.
The soul is also at war on many fronts. The soul’s
enemy depends upon its choice: with God or
against Him. If we choose to separate ourselves
from God, we are also divided with our neighbor
and within our own soul. We become our own
most bitter enemy. We refuse to accomplish the
plan that God has foreseen for His creature,
frustrating the very goal of our existence. All is
ordered towards our selfish plan for personal
happiness, without any concern for God or
neighbor. Revolt against God entails hatred and
jealousy with our neighbor. It destroys our life
by disordering our passions. When the passions
begin to dominate the soul, they become tyrants
and the soul becomes the slave of their impulsive
whims. Every disorder of sin becomes, with
repetition, a type of slavery. Alcoholism, drugaddiction, pornography and impurity are the
more obvious slaveries, but lying, gossiping,
stealing, and disobedience are also slavery. If
the soul declares war on God, it tries to find
peace in the pleasure of sin. This rest can only be
superficial and temporary because it destroys the
order willed by God. If we place our hope in the
passing things of this world, all is lost when we
pass from this world.
If we choose to fight for the “true King, Christ,”
He directs our battle against our spiritual
enemies. When He is present, the soul knows
great peace in the midst of spiritual battle. The
surface of our souls is often troubled by worries,
stress and anxiety because of some exterior trial
that we are obliged to undergo, but the depth of
our soul is at peace. It is similar to when Jesus
was asleep on the ship during the storm. The
apostles were afraid and waking Jesus, sought
His help. “... and rising up He rebuked the wind
and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind
ceased and there was made a great calm” (Mk.

4:39). The presence of God calms the storms of
the soul. The battle may continue, but the soul
is at peace because its Creator is present. We
are made for God and we must undertake the
necessary means to achieve our goal. God asks
us to fight against our own fallen nature inclined
to evil and malice. The war is painful because
as St. Paul says “the old man,” which is a part
of who we are, must die. At the same time this
war gives great peace because it restores us

to our true inheritance as children of God. To
resist temptations, to refuse thoughts of anxiety
and worry that trouble the soul is to live in the
presence of God. His presence communicates
great peace in spite of the battle we undertake to
refuse our evil inclinations.
That World War I German soldier with his
Christmas tree and carols brought with him
a certain presence of Christ to that bloody
battlefield. For a moment, peace was given to the
men of good will. May this be the image of our
soul in the midst of our worries and temptations,
may we call upon our true King, Christ and
peacefully wage war against all of His enemies.
“These things I have spoken to you that in Me
you may have peace. In the world you shall have
distress; but have confidence I have overcome the
world” (Jn.16:33).
55

We know Christ is truly
risen from the dead!
To us, victorious King,
have mercy!
Amen. Alleluia

The fresco of Resurrection of Jesus in Chiesa
di Santa Rita by Giulio Campi (1547). Cremona,
Italy. shutterstock.com

Christian Culture

The Beauty
and Meaning
of Sacred Art
by Daniel Mitsui

Traditional sacred art visually expresses the
thought of the Church Fathers; symbolism is one
of the governing principles. God is the author
of all life and all history, and is reflected in
every created thing. Animals and plants, stones
and celestial bodies are symbols of doctrines
or moral truths. The Sun represents the New
Testament and the Moon the Old. The events of
the Old Testament are like dim, moonlit types of
the life of Jesus Christ, who taught this doctrine
Himself as he prophesied his Crucifixion and
Resurrection. He is like the serpent lifted up by
Moses in the wilderness, like Jonah in the belly of
the whale.
The Church Fathers interpreted all of the
numbers in the sacred scriptures symbolically,
for it was God who ordered all things in number
and measure and weight. Three represents
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divinity, for God exists in three Persons. Four
represents mankind and the created world; the
time and space inhabited by mankind have four
basic divisions, the seasons of the year and
the cardinal directions that correspond to the
rivers flowing out of Paradise. The interaction
of Heaven and Earth, of God and Man, is
represented by twelve and seven, the product and
sum of three and four. This is why twelve and
seven appear again and again in holy writ.
No theologian contributed more brilliant
interpretations of nature, numbers, or the Old
Testament than Augustine of Hippo. It was St.
Augustine who articulated an important rule of
symbolic exegesis, that the literal sense of things
remains sacrosanct:
“Believe before all things when you hear the
scriptures read that the events really took place

as is said in the book. Do not destroy the historic
foundation of scripture, for without it you will
build in the air.... All that the scriptures say of
Abraham really happened, but he is at the same
time a prophetic type.”

Multiple Layers of Meaning

may in part be because the idea has so long been
expressed in visual art.
In the fifteenth century, Humanist artists made
innovations in painting that eventually were
adopted all over the world. Filippo Brunelleschi
invented a method of linear perspective that
requires the artist to establish vanishing points
toward which parallel lines converge. The
intersections of those lines place objects in the

God has always written His
allegory with fact. Greater
meanings do not obliterate
lesser meanings. Moses really
saw the burning bush; Jonah
really emerged from the great
fish. A butterfly emerging
from its chrysalis represents
the Resurrection not because
some poet imagined it. The
symbolic meaning is really
there. God put it there when
He created the first butterfly.
The Augustinian principle
stands in opposition to two
errors. The more common
one, held in nearly every
modern mind, is to think
that the symbolic meaning
is pure fancy. And to think
that reality—cold, hard,
objective reality—is a matter
of quantities and extensions
moving within a grid of space.
Reality, to the modern mind,
is a matter of physical science.
It is mathematical, but its
numbers are not symbols of
anything—as far as physical
science is concerned, they are
the only things that actually
exist!
In truth, it is the
mathematical description of
the world that depends on
human imagination. There is
no grid; there never has been
a grid. Why does the whole
modern world believe that
things exist within a grid? It
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Christian Culture
picture, like coordinates. Leon Battista Alberti
wrote the first treatise on the method; he actually
instructed artists to paint while looking through
a frame in which a perpendicular network of
strings has been fixed. Other artists developed
a method of shadow projection compatible with
linear perspective. This requires an artist to fix
not only vanishing points but also light sources;
the manner in which shadows are cast by objects
in the painting onto other objects in the painting
is determined analytically.

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A Change in Perspective
The conventional wisdom says that these
artists simply discovered the way to paint
realistically—that medieval men had always seen
the world this way, but were not clever enough
to figure out how to make pictures of it. But any
mind that has not been trained to do otherwise
will place objects in the field of sight in relation
to other objects, not in relation to an invisible
grid. It will consider their significance; not merely
the way that they occupy space
and obstruct light. Medieval art
looks a certain way because
medieval men saw the world that
way!
Perhaps nothing represents
the way that modern men have
learned to see than a digital
photograph, a rectangular grid
of pixels. And to a man with a
camera, everything looks like
a photograph. Have you ever
seen somebody look at the real
world that God made, then
crane back his neck, close one
eye and hold up his thumbs and
forefingers at arms’ length to
create a small rectangular frame
for his field of vision? This is no
way to comprehend, with all the
sain­­ts, what is the breadth and
length and height and depth....
A digital photograph is the
visual expression of one error,
the modern way of considering
reality. There is an opposite
error, one that dismisses not
the symbolic sense of things but
the literal. Arguably, the Church
Father Origen strayed this
way. An artistic expression of
this error might be an abstract
expressionist painting, or an
inkblot. You can make it mean
whatever you want, because
it does not actually represent
anything. It is nothing but its
significance.

Many historians of art understand any artistic
development relative to these two extremes,
conventionally named abstraction and realism.
They place Cubism close to the inkblot, and the
stylized sacred art of the Byzantine and Coptic
churches just a little further away. They see
Gothic art as a movement toward the digital
photograph, and Neoclassical art as a movement
further still.

Gothic Art and the
Augustinian Principle
These different kinds of art would better be
understood as different paths corresponding to
different ideas. The path to the digital photograph
is Cartesian; the path to the inkblot is Origenist.
Gothic art is not an intermediate place between
these two, but a different path altogether,
corresponding to the Augustinian principle.
Gothic art, like no art before or since,
presents both the literal and allegorical senses
as convincingly true. It began in France around
1140; almost immediately, almost miraculously, it
displayed a symbolic order more perfect than any
art that preceded it. Over the following centuries,
the anatomy, landscapes and natural forms
within its pictures became more detailed and less
stylized. It became realistic without becoming
meaningless.
This was possible because the world presented
in Gothic art is not the world imagined by the
physical scientist. It is rather the world whose
dimensions God established - qualitatively, not
quantitatively. He established them by making
the perceptible differences between light and
dark, sky and water, land and sea—not by
extending homogenous time or space, as along
the axes of a Cartesian grid.
The means by which mankind knows and
understands this world are God-given: the bodily
senses, those five wits that medieval laymen
daily prayed God would rule and protect. The
world described by sense perception is the
primary reality that mankind inhabits, the reality
from which he might ascend to a higher realm.
That higher realm is the realm of the spirit, not
the realm of physical science.

And Gothic art, like patristic exegesis and
like the sacred scriptures themselves, describes
the world in the terms of sense perception, not
the terms of physical science. To the senses,
things like cold and darkness obviously exist.
They are things; they can be depicted as things.
The description of them as the mere absence
of energy—no matter how true in the terms of
physical science, no matter how proven from
experiment—does not overrule the shivering of
hands or the squinting of eyes. A thing that does
not really exist cannot bless the Lord, praise and
exalt Him above all forever!
As a contemporary artist who wishes to be
true to the principles of Gothic art, I know how
deeply ingrained the modern ways of seeing
are. I must make a conscious effort to place
objects with a picture according to principles
of hierarchy, symmetry and symbolism—to do
what medieval artists did instinctively. I must
remind myself that when I see a cross, I perceive
it immediately as a cross, as two beams joined at
a perfect right angle, and that I may as well depict
it as such, no matter how many rules of linear
perspective I break. When I see a pattern on a
draped piece of fabric, I perceive the pattern as
a whole, regardless of the folds. Many Byzantine
iconographers and Gothic painters depicted
fabric patterns unbroken over folds and creases. I
follow their example. These aspects of traditional
sacred art are not marks of crudity or inability,
but of an older way to apprehend the world.

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Christian Culture

World War One and the Russian Diaspora:

Spread of
Truths and
Errors
by Dr. John Rao

Editor’s Note: In order to maintain flow and
limit confusion over institutional names and
historical figures, the designation of “St.” has been
retained throughout even for individuals who are
only recognized as such by the Russian Orthodox
Church.
One of the major consequences of the First
World War was the tearing away of many people
from the embrace of Mother Russia. Most of
these men and women actually left that embrace
quite happily, creating the independent nations of
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland
in doing so. Prominent among those ripped from
the bosom of the old Empire very much against
their will were faithful members of the Russian
Church, forced out due to Bolshevik persecution.
Their numbers included fervent clerical and lay
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supporters of an Orthodox religious revival that
had seriously begun in the 1790’s; believers who
had been greatly encouraged in their hopes for
ever more significant national spiritual growth
since the relaxation of state controls over
ecclesiastical life began with the first Russian
Revolution in 1905.
Although this diaspora grew to be active in
many places in Europe and America, France and
England were its most important intellectual
centers after the Great War. Especially notable in
this regard were both the community of exiles in
Paris, where the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological
Institute was founded in 1925, as well as émigré
centers in Britain, which became home to the
Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, a product
of the Anglo-Russian Student Conferences of 1927
and 1928. The names of those connected with

these eclectic circles and institutions constitute
a “who’s who” of Russian Orthodox influence in
the entirety of the West from the 1920’s to the
present, with the “founding fathers” of Sergii
Bulgakov (1871-1944), Nicholas Berdyaev (18741948), Alexander Elchaninov (1881-1934), Georgii
Florovsky (1893-1979), Lev Zander (1893-1964),
Nicholas Zernov (1898-1980), and Vladimir
Lossky (1903-1958) preparing the way for the next
Orthodox wave, including Alexander Schmemann
(1921-1983), Oliver Clement (1921-2009), John
Meyendorff (1926-1992), and Timothy Kallistos
Ware (b. 1934).

A Personal Connection
to the Diaspora
I must confess that this Diaspora exercised
a positive influence on my own development.
Nicholas Zernov, probably the chief inspiration
behind the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius,
was one of my tutors at Oxford in the 1970’s,
where he had taught since 1947 and long been in
charge of St. Gregory and St. Macrina House, the
chief center for Orthodox life at the University.
Zernov was a fine Christian man, reflecting that
concern for the liturgy, the Church Fathers, and
the doctrine of “divinization”—which westerners
tend to prefer to speak of as “transformation in
Christ”—that were central to the discussions of
the local Russian Orthodox community. I look
back fondly upon his forthright encouragement
of a young Roman Catholic student struggling
with the disaster of the Second Vatican Council,
despite the disagreements that appeared through
my participation in these discussions.
For disagreements there were, and of a type
that I can only relate here very broadly, with
reference to the “tone” coming through the
diaspora message in general. That “tone” involved
a marked tendency to denigrate the role of
reason and communal authority in the Christian
dispensation. This Russian Orthodox tendency
was not without its influence over developments
in the Roman Catholic Church from the end of the
First World War onwards—especially in those
realms of spirituality, dogma, and ecumenism
where the role of reason and communal authority

were perhaps most seriously needed. Moreover,
such influence seemed to me to be all too
painfully manifesting its dangerous character in
that first and most dreadful post-conciliar decade,
which happened to coincide with my interaction
with the Russians in Oxford. A brief treatment of
two of the diaspora’s great concerns, hesychasm
and sobornost, regarding which its teachers
felt something of an evangelical commitment,
underline the tone and its impact neatly.

Hesychasm and
Eastern Mysticism
Hesychasm can be translated from the Greek
as meaning “to keep still.” It is an essentially
quietist mystical approach, based upon both very
early eastern monastic writings as well as those
of Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022) and
gaining its most influential expression in the work
of Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). Many hesychasts
claimed to have found a method for achieving
individual union with God based upon continual
employment of a simple “Jesus Prayer,” along with
a cultivation of the proper physical position and
environment in which to recite it. They argued
that commitment to their method allowed for
a quiet divinization of its individual mystical
practitioner, the depiction of whose sanctity,
which was said to glow with the kind of light that
illumed Christ on Mount Tabor, provided endless
stimulation for iconographers.
Hesychasm became very strong in eastern
monastic circles, gradually driving the earlier,
communal-minded Studite monastic tradition into
the shadows. Although they generally looked upon
all things western with suspicion, hesychasts
of the Palamas variety nevertheless shared
with many late medieval Latin mystics a similar
contempt for scholasticism and the role of any
logical, speculative theology in paving a pathway
to union with God.
But eastern critics of Palamas joined with their
Latin counterparts in criticizing a spirituality one
of whose main effects was abandonment of the
mental tools needed to distinguish an erroneous
from an acceptable form of mystical union. They
were horrified by his apparent claim that the
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Christian Culture
hesychast could achieve a union with God while
on earth equivalent to that to be experienced in
eternity. Worse still, they insisted that the unity
he spoke of was not a complete one. Rather,
it was limited to a union with God’s so-called
“operations”; the “uncreated light” that was said
to shine down from Mount Tabor.
Palamas, in their minds, thus appeared to
recoil from the idea that even the blessed in
heaven could touch the actual “core” of divinity
and see God fully, in His very essence. Separating
the essence of God from His uncreated light
was tantamount to positing the existence of
two divinities: one that man could fully reach,
even in this life, but through one particular
anti-rational path to transformation in Christ
alone; and another “god” who would remain
forever unknown and unknowable. Whatever the
outraged objections the passionately icon-friendly
hesychasts might hurl at their opponents, this
meant that such mystics once again had thrown
the doctrinal work accomplished through the
defeat of Iconoclasm into jeopardy. For the total
divinization of man in Christ and the proper
estimation of the glory of the universe was
therefore precluded, with both the individual
and the fullness of nature shut off from the truly
inclusive, transforming embrace of God.

Hesychasm and the Russian
Orthodox Church
Hesychasm entered dramatically into the
life of the Russian Church in 1793 with Paisius
Velichkovsky’s (1722-1794) translation into
Church Slavonic of a number of writings on
the subject, most importantly, the so-called
Philokalia or “love of the beautiful,” put together
by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain of Athos
(1749-1809) and St. Makarios of Corinth (17311805). Velichkovsky’s writings were passed
down through the Optina Monastery where
he lived and worked, in nineteenth century
vernacular Russian translations, by means of a
popular book entitled The Way of the Pilgrim,
and also in novels of Dostoevsky. But so was
the criticism of hesycham’s seemingly nondogmatic, non-sacramental approach to holiness,
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with its Russian mixture of individual mystical
effort and obedience to the guidance of the lay
monastic spiritual directors known as startsy.
And love for the Philokalia, The Way of the
Pilgrim, hesychasm, the Jesus Prayer and the
anti-rational, quietist mysticism of its individual
practitioners migrated to France and England
with the Russian Diaspora, promoting twentieth
century translations of their basic literature into
western languages, prompted by men like T.S.
Eliot among many others.

From Hesychasm to Sobornost
The westward movement of hesychasm,
with its focus on individual mystical effort, was
paralleled by that of the concept of sobornost,
which aimed at explaining the nature of the
“spiritual community of many jointly living
people,” as its name indicates. First associated
with the Russian thinkers Aleksey Stepanovich
Khomyakov (1804-1860) and Ivan Vasilyevich
Kireyevsky (1806-1856), sobornost was intended
to contrast an Orthodox vision of Catholicity—
diversity in unity—with a western presentation
of the same vision that was castigated as
being theologically and legally precisionist and
hidebound on the one hand, yet anarchically
individualist in character on the other. Supporters
of the concept said that Orthodox believers
forming a truly catholic community inspired
by sobornost were united by a free and loving
abandonment of themselves to the absolute values
and the society that they cherished, whose bonds
were cemented by a consciousness of being one,
by common prayer, and by a common liturgy; not
by their dull recitation of intellectual dogmatic
formulae and their bending of the neck to
communally-enforced legal precepts.
But critics of sobornost were baffled by a
number of historical anomalies that the concept
seemed to ignore. Why in heaven’s name was the
accusation of theological and legal perfectionism
laid at the doorstep of a rather sleepy western
world that was only awakened to the need for
precision in these matters from the intellectually
much more picky East of the first seven
ecumenical councils? How was it that bending

the fingers into the absolutely precise liturgical
position was less legalist than accepting the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception? In what
way could the “free communities of Orthodox
believers” be compared to the papal “tyrants” and
Catholic “robots” who so often fought heroically
against the will of the Caesaro-Papists to which
the Eastern churches repeatedly subjected
themselves? And how would you know if you were
truly united as a loving community committed to
absolute values if intellectual and legal precision
regarding what these values actually might
be were disdained? One was left with merely
celebrating, liturgically, a union that in practical
terms might not really exist.

The Ecumenical Movement
It seemed to me, the more that I learned about
the phenomenon while at Oxford, that there was
no wonder that the hesychasm and sobornost
promoted by the Russian diaspora were of interest
to supporters of the ecumenical movement,
personalists, new theologians, and enthusiasts
for esoteric spiritual insights of the years leading
from the end of World War I down to Second
Vatican Council. The anti-rational, anti-legal,
anti-communal authority approach that such
mysticism and such a vision of Christian society
embraced allowed all of them to escape the “dry,
hidebound, dogmatic and spiritual legalism” of a
Roman Church bewitched by the call for clarity
demanded by the modern papacy since the days
of the Syllabus of Errors. How much easier it
would be for them to unite Christians in both a
spirit of love as well as in a fight for the true Faith
if all that Roman fuss and bother regarding what
such a spirit, love, and truth faith actually meant
were to be abandoned! And what better way was
there of humbling Rome’s parochial pettiness
by calling up the example of good-willed fellow
believers who had so obviously been persecuted
by secularist totalitarians!
Alas, the more I argued with precisely such
good-willed, persecuted, fellow Christians at
Oxford—along with their Anglican and Roman
Catholic fellow travelers—the more I grew
confirmed in my still embryonic traditionalist

conviction that everyone succumbing to the lure
of the anti-rational, anti-dogmatic, anti-legalist,
anti-communal authority message that their
“tone” and “tendency” dictated were doomed—
doomed to see their substantive faith and its
morals dismantled around them by whatever
forceful presence in the group could impose itself
as an electrifying spiritual director or community
guide. Any stepping back to determine whether
such a force de la nature and his followers were
rationally and morally on the right path would
reintroduce the boogeyman of dogma and law
back into the picture, disturbing the celebration
of their community of prayer, love, and spiritual
union. I know this for a fact, because having
attempted to probe some of the things that I
heard, brought me up against the immediate
reproach of “trying to pin the spirit down
according the lifeless precepts of Roman law”; of
“not allowing the Holy Spirit to speak His message
to me”; of “not opening my heart to the superior
(and somehow never to be judged) spirituality and
special mission of the East”; of “failing to grasp
the special lessons the inspired Russian Church
had learned about the evils of relying on the state
to protect her”—as though the western concept of
legitimate authority were the same as the exercise
of Tsarist, Caesaro-Papist power.
Once again, I am grateful for what I have
learned from Eastern Christianity—and Russian
Christianity in particular. I agree with the
argument that the Church breathes with two
lungs—one from the East and one from the
West. But that means that I can take pride in
a Western Church that has indeed inherited a
Roman concern for law and put this to work in
her understanding of authority, community, and
spiritual transformation in Christ; a Western
Church that has done so in union with a dogmatic
rigidity whose importance she very much first
grasped under pressure from her Eastern Sister
of the early Ecumenical Councils. And it is these
two lungs together that tell me to use all the tools
of my Faith and reason to ensure that Russia
spreads her truths—and not her errors—to the
rest of the globe.

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Christian Culture

Punishment
at School
by SSPX Sisters

“So, Vivien comes home from school with lines
to do because he was talking too much. Last
week, Jean, the eldest, was already deprived of
a special outing, and yesterday, Amelie’s pencil
sharpener was confiscated by Sister because she
was playing with it in class. Still, they’re good
children! I know how to raise them after all!
It’s always mine that are punished. I wouldn’t
go so far as to say they are being picked on, but
really…” And there is mom, all upset.
When a child comes home from school with
a punishment, the first thing to do is not to be
surprised. All children are born with the stain
of original sin, and so, notwithstanding their
baptism, they all have a tendency to prefer
laziness to work, ease to effort, dissipation to
obedience. Even with the best education in the
world, each one is inclined towards evil. Even as
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adults we are still the same, as St. Paul already
complained. The surprising thing would be a
child who never got into mischief, never had bad
grades and was never reprimanded!
Obviously, the parents would prefer their child
to be always the top of the class and to come
home every evening with their backpack full of
good grades, but we must be realistic.

Occupational Hazard
The fact remains that certain children are
punished more frequently than others. Some
children have a more difficult temperament
than others: more fidgety, more noisy, more
antagonistic, more talkative, and so their
escapades are more disturbing to the class.

These children won’t necessarily end up as
delinquents later on, but in the meantime they
greatly test the patience of their teachers. Of
all his misdemeanors, Monsignor Prosper
Augouard, nicknamed “bishop to the cannibals,”
was punished many times for his insolence; he
didn’t turn out so badly. As one young primary
school pupil said to his classmate to console
him for being reprimanded, “Don’t worry, it’s an
occupational hazard” (true story!).
Still, the punishment needs to bring about
the reform of the culprit. For that reason, the
most useful thing is to follow the direction of the
teacher who gave the punishment.
“My poor darling, you’ve been disciplined
again. It really isn’t fair. The teacher doesn’t
understand you—he doesn’t know how to
handle you. You won’t be doing this punishment,
it’s much too long anyway. I’ll write a note
excusing you.” If his mother reacts in this way,
the miscreant will certainly take advantage
of the bargain: “I act up and thanks to Mom, I
escape the worst and we carry on as before—it’s
really quite funny.” But if on the other hand he
hears: “What? You’ve been disciplined again? I’m
ashamed of you!”—it isn’t often that his father
puts on his big voice but when he does it’s all the
more intimidating—the wrongdoing becomes
much less attractive, even more so because
dad has decided to deprive him of dessert this
evening, just when it was chocolate mousse. That
night, the miscreant takes stock: the teacher’s
punishment, his father’s dressing down and going
without dessert—the prank was actually pretty
costly…and so the child calms down for a week
or so.
When a teacher asks for the punishment or the
zero-graded work to be signed by the parents,
it is a way of alerting them: there is a problem
and it won’t be resolved by shutting our eyes so
as not to see it. The best thing to do is to ask
for a meeting with the teacher in order to find a
solution together.

Hypothetical Injustice
But then Louis comes home from school with
a huge punishment: a long and very tedious

piece of supplementary work. He is up in arms:
“You see, Mom, it’s not fair. The whole class
was disciplined and I had nothing to do with
it. The others were behind it all. It’s just not
fair.” Children are very quick to sense justice
and injustice and a punishment which seems to
them unfair is sure to wound them deeply. What

should be said to Louis? Ask him to recount what
happened and see whether in fact, objectively
speaking, he isn’t in some way responsible. “The
others started the misbehavior, but didn’t you also
gain by it just a little? No? So you are less guilty
than the ringleaders but you aren’t completely
blameless. Even if the punishment is a little strong
for you personally, you’re an equal member of the
class. I’m not scolding you, because you haven’t
done very much wrong, but you have to do the
punishment anyway. Come on, it’s not so bad! This
one will serve for all the other times when you
might have deserved it but weren’t found out.”
Thomas is grown up now. He remembers the
tomfoolery of his childhood and the monumental
punishments they merited. It’s not necessarily a
bad memory. Those punishments helped him to
become a man.
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Christian Culture

by Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara, SSPX

We want to be holy, but how
should be our desire for
holiness to be truly efficacious?
We know that God has called us to be holy; we
know that we should aspire to holiness and tend
to it with our whole heart, soul, mind and forces
(Mk. 12:28-30). As St. Teresa of Avila explained,
our holiness consists in the perfect identification
and conformity of our human will with the will
of God, to be united to Him by love, to reproduce
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Our Lord Jesus Christ in ourselves, as St. Paul
repeatedly insists.
In the midst of our weaknesses and misery,
when we do what we can to approach this ideal
and try to fulfill this obligation, we are in the
right path. Our duty is to aspire to holiness,
truly and sincerely desire it. The problem is that,
far too often, we do not have a true desire for
holiness. When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked
what one should do to attain holiness, he simply
answered: To want it!

Thus, to obtain its entire efficacy, our desire
for perfection must be, first of all, supernatural—
that is, it must proceed from divine grace,
directed to the greater glory of God, the ultimate
end of our existence. The true desire for holiness
is already a great gift from God, which we should
ask for with humility and perseverance, until we
obtain it from His divine goodness.
It must also be humble, never relying upon our
own forces, always aware of our misery before
God. We must not make of our aspiration to
holiness a motive of pride, a means of glorifying
ourselves, but see in such desire, a most excellent
means to love and glorify God with all our forces.
It must be confident. We must be convinced
that, while by ourselves we can do nothing, we
can do everything in Him who strengthens us
(Phil. 4:13).
This desire must be predominant, that is, it
cannot be one more desire among many, and
it must be more intense than any other. The
greatest good is the glory of God and, as a
means to it, our own sanctification. Everything
else must be subordinated to this supreme
end—knowledge, health, honors, apostolate...
everything is less valuable than holiness. Seek
first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all
these things shall be added unto you (Mt. 6:33).
It must be constant. All too often, after a good
beginning, we get tired with the constant effort
to overcome ourselves, or discouraged by the
first contradictions, and little by little, our desire
for holiness cools down. Sometimes we give
ourselves a bit of a “vacation” in our spiritual
pursuits, with the pretext of gathering our
strength, but such slackness weakens the soul
and to get back in the path we were following
now requires an even greater effort. The pursuit
of holiness must be constant and progressive,
steadfast, without losing heart, without violence
or excesses, but without weakness or tiredness.
Finally, it must be practical. It is not a wish
that we are not really working to make come true,
“I would like to be holy,” but a decisive “I want”—
here and now, in practice, using all the available
means to pursue this perfection. Perhaps in a
moment of fervor we convince ourselves that we
desire perfection, but this desire must be shown,
proven with concrete actions, without delays.

Otherwise, little by little, from delay to delay, our
days pass without doing what is necessary, and
we risk coming before God with our hands more
than empty.

Do we need spiritual direction?
The object of spiritual direction is to show to
souls the path to be followed in the spiritual life,
towards an intimate union with God. The path
must be followed by the soul, but the director
traces the road, the steps to be followed in every
stage of the spiritual life. The director does
not push or force the soul, but gently guides it
forward—firmly, without deviations or shortcuts, without jumps or imprudent precipitation;
always attentive to what the soul can and cannot
do at that stage, and to the graces that God has
granted; always encouraging the soul to a greater
perfection.
The direction should begin as soon as the soul,
under the impulse of divine grace, decides to
advance in the road towards holiness. At every
stage of that road there will be obstacles and
difficulties, which, according to the ordinary
providence of God, cannot be overcome without
the vigilance and help of a spiritual director.
The whole of Catholic tradition affirms that
spiritual direction is morally necessary to attain
perfection.
“A person who has a director by whom he
allows himself to be guided, whom he obeys
in all his actions, great and small, will more
easily and quickly arrive at perfection than he
ever could by himself, even were he gifted with
an extraordinary degree of intelligence and
supplied with books explaining the nature of all
the virtues and the means of acquiring them….
Our Lord, without Whom we can do nothing,
will never bestow His grace on one, who having
at his disposal a man capable of instructing
69

Christian Culture
and directing him, neglects this powerful means
of sanctification, believing himself to be selfsufficient and that, by his own powers, he is
capable of seeking and discovering the things
necessary for salvation” (St. Vincent Ferrer). It is
asserted not only by Sacred Scripture but also by
the universal practice of the Church, even from
apostolic times.
Certainly, some men and women have attained
holiness without having spiritual directors,
which proves that such direction is not absolutely
necessary, but the general rule shown by divine
Providence is that at the side of great saints is
to be found a wise and prudent director who has
guided them to those summits of holiness.
Usually, a priest is the spiritual director who
guides a soul to perfection. It is not strictly
necessary that the director should be a priest,
but it is most convenient that it should be so: the
general economy of salvation has reserved to the
priest the role of teacher and guide; he is also
the confessor of those souls, and he has special
graces of state.
It is not strictly necessary, either, that the
spiritual director should be also the confessor
of the souls directed—they are two different
functions which can be separated, and
sometimes it is materially impossible. But it is
most convenient that director and confessor
should be the same priest, as both ministries are
intimately related.

Is it always sinful to
reveal a secret?
Ordinarily, yes, it is a sin. But in extraordinary
circumstances, higher duties of justice or charity
towards our neighbor or to the common good
of society may demand its disclosure, without
committing a sin.
In itself, a “secret” is something that is
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occult and must remain hidden. Therefore, “to
keep a secret” means that, having come to the
knowledge of that which is occult, one assumes
the obligation of not manifesting it.
Moral theologians distinguish three kinds of
secrets: (1) natural, in which the obligation to
keep it occult arises from the very nature of the
thing; its manifestation cannot be made without
damage or reasonable displeasure of the person
involved, who has a strict right not to be thus
hurt without sufficient, reasonable cause; (2)
promised, in which the obligation arises from the
promise made after having acquired knowledge
of the thing; he who makes the promise (to whom
secret was confided) obliges himself to keep it
faithfully—even if the thing does not oblige to
secrecy from its very nature; and (3) entrusted,
in which the obligation arises from the promise
made before having knowledge of the thing, that
is, one party obliges itself to manifest it, and the
other to keep it occult, even if by its very nature it
could be revealed.
The obligation to keep the secret exists per
se, out of justice or fidelity. The natural secret
obliges in justice, by reason of the damage that
can be caused; its violation is sinful, mortally
or venially, according to the gravity of what is
revealed and the sadness or damages that it may
cause, with the eventual obligation of making
reparation. The simply promised secret obliges
by a motive of fidelity, by reason of the promise
made; its violation constitutes a venial sin. The
entrusted secret obliges in justice, by reason of
the special contract, and its violation is a sin,
which, again, may be mortal or venial according
to the damages and sadness that its revelation
may cause.
Therefore, in general, it is illicit to seek
knowledge of secrets, by listening to private
conversations, or by opening letters or private
papers, reading them when kept in a reserved
place, etc. But there is no sin at all if such papers
are read with reasonably presumed permission,
or out of grave and founded suspicion of
imminent, grave damage to self or to others,
which can be averted by the examination of the
letters (it becomes thus self-defense). Letters
thrown away or voluntarily abandoned in public
places may be read without injustice, as the

owner is considered to have relinquished his
right. But if they contain something that, if
revealed, could cause damage, out of charity, the
content must be kept occult. It is not licit to read
torn letters, especially if in such small pieces that
it is clear the owner’s intention of not allowing
others to read them.
It is also illicit to manifest what another justly
wants to keep secret, as its manifestation would
cause damage or displeasure to the “owner” of
the secret—a damage that must be avoided out
of charity, fidelity or justice. Finally, it is illicit
to use the secret for one’s or another’s benefit,
against the reasonable opposition of the “owner,”
especially if this causes him some damage.
Nonetheless, and with the exception of the
case of the seal of confession, the obligation
to keep a secret is not absolute, but relative
and limited, in such a manner that in certain
circumstances it is permissible to reveal the
secret: the duty of justice and charity towards our
neighbor does not oblige in every circumstance

and in spite of any detriment to self or another;
moreover, the demands of the common good may
override the obligation to keep the secret.
Thus, it is licit to seek knowledge of a secret
for reasons of public utility (for example, in a
country at war, regarding secrets of the enemy,
or the Church investigating the life and morals
of candidates to the priesthood, or a civil
magistrate investigating crimes committed, etc.).
It may be also licit for reasons of private utility,
as sometimes this inquiry is equivalent to selfdefense against an imminent, proportionately
grave damage.
A secret may—and even must—be revealed
to avoid damages for the persons involved, or
for a third, private person, or for the common
good. In those cases, the owner of the secret
can be presumed to grant permission to reveal
it, or he could not be reasonably opposed to its
revelation. But even if he were to oppose, higher
obligations of charity or justice would permit or
even demand its revelation.

344 pp. – Hardcover – STK# 8343✱– $25.55

The Best of Questions
and Answers
The best questions and the best answers of 30 years of The Angelus. This will be a
family’s heirloom reference book for everyday Catholic living to match the Catholic
Faith we believe and the Latin Mass we attend. Over 300 answers classified under
30 subtitles.
–– Marriage, Parenting, Family Life
and Rearing Children
–– Science and Medical Matters
–– Life After Death

–– Bible and Biblical Matters
–– Trinity, Jesus Christ, Virgin Mary,
Angels,
and Saints

–– Church Practices and Customs

–– Mass and the Liturgy

–– The Papacy and the Church

–– SSPX and the Crisis

Teachings

71

Statue of Saint George slaying the dragon
in the Cathedral of Stockholm, Sweden

When she was there, St. George
passed by, and when he saw
the lady he demanded the
lady what she made there and
she said: Go ye your way fair
young man, that ye perish not
also. Then said he: Tell to me
what have ye and why weep ye,
and doubt ye of nothing. When
she saw that he would know,
she said to him how she was
delivered to the dragon. Then
said St. George: Fair daughter,
doubt ye nothing hereof for
I shall help thee in the name
of Jesus Christ. She said: For
God’s sake, good knight, go
your way, and abide not with
me, for ye may not deliver me.
Thus as they spake together
the dragon appeared and
came running to them, and St.
George was upon his horse,
and drew out his sword and
garnished him with the sign
of the cross, and rode hardily
against the dragon which
came towards him, and smote
him with his spear and hurt
him sore and threw him to
the ground. And after said to
the maid: Deliver to me your
girdle, and bind it about the
neck of the dragon and be not
afeard. When she had done
so the dragon followed her as
it had been a meek beast and
debonair. Then she led him
into the city, and the people
fled by mountains and valleys,
and said: Alas! alas! we shall
be all dead. Then St. George
said to them: Ne doubt ye no
thing, without more, believe ye
in God, Jesus Christ, and do ye
to be baptized and I shall slay
the dragon. Then the king was
baptized and all his people,
and St. George slew the dragon
and smote off his head, and
commanded that he should be
thrown in the fields, and they
took four carts with oxen that
drew him out of the city.
(Legenda Aurea, St. George)

News from Tradition
More Contradiction from Pope Francis
On January 8, Pope Francis gave the annual
papal address to the members of the diplomatic
corps (ambassadors accredited to the Holy
See from approximately 180 nations). For the
content of the address, the pope looked to
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The
Holy Father then proceeded to explicate the
various ways in which human rights are still
being violated throughout the world. He made
specific reference to the slaughter of the
unborn by stating: “In our day, there are more
subtle means: I think primarily of innocent
children discarded even before they are born,
unwanted at times simply because they are ill
or malformed, or as a result of the selfishness of
adults.”
Of course, many “conservative” Catholic
commentators lauded this statement by the
pope waxing eloquently about what a champion
he is for the unborn. Unfortunately, as good as
these words are from Pope Francis, the Holy
Father’s actions seem to applaud those who
advocate and even carry out the discarding of
innocent children before they are born. Two
rather notorious examples come to mind.
In 2016, Pope Francis called the abortionist
Emma Bonino one of Italy’s “forgotten greats”
supposedly for her efforts on behalf of refugees,
seeming to ignore the fact that Bonino, on her
own admission, performed illegal abortions
using her own homemade device. The outcry
from Catholic pro-life Italians fell upon deaf
ears and Pope Francis never recanted his
praise.
Towards the end of 2017, Bonino was
instrumental in the passage of the Italian
government’s passive euthanasia law. Some
have claimed that Pope Francis’ refusal to
comment on the parliamentary debate on the
issue assured the passage of the law.
In January of 2018, it became public that
Pope Francis honored Lilianne Ploumen, former
minister for Foreign Trade and Development
Cooperation in the Netherlands, with the title of

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Commander in the Pontifical Equestrian Order
of St. Gregory the Great. All of this despite
the fact that she is proudly pro-abortion and
worked to raise over 300 million dollars for the
“She Decides” program to fund organizations
providing abortion services, including Planned
Parenthood International. The “She Decides”
program was instituted after President Trump
reinstated the Mexico City Policy which
cut United States funding for international
organizations which promoted or provided
abortions.
So now we once again come face to face
with contradiction coming from this pope.
In one breath he condemns the taking of the
slaughter of innocent unborn children while at
the same time praising and publicly honoring
two women who worked tirelessly for the
slaughter he supposedly condemns. Intellectual
contradiction has been the hallmark of this
papacy and, not only this papacy, but also of
the entire Vatican II juggernaut. We should
be thankful to Pope Francis that he has so
boldly and publicly brought this acceptance
of contradiction to light so that many right
thinking Catholics are now beginning to
acknowledge the great crisis facing the Church.
Emma Bonino and Pope Francis

Papal Nuncio Makes an Astonishing Statement
Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, an American
born in 1950 who is the current Apostolic Nuncio
(Vatican ambassador) to Switzerland, recently
had a meeting with the priests in Switzerland who
celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass. During the
meeting, the Archbishop made the statement that
“the Old Latin Mass is the future of the Church.”
Although the statement was only reported by one
of the priests in attendance, the veracity of the
statement cannot be questioned since there has
been no denial of it by Archbishop Gullickson
who certainly would have done so if it were not
true, considering the amount of publicity the
remark engendered. What makes the words of the
Archbishop astonishing is not that it isn’t true, but
that a papal diplomat to a European country has
made it.
Although Archbishop Gullickson’s name is not
one that normally comes to mind when speaking
of “tradition friendly” bishops, it certainly should.
He began his Vatican diplomatic career in 2004
by being appointed nuncio to the many island
nations of the Antilles and consecrated bishop
on November 11, 2004 (the Feast of St. Martin of
Tours). In 2011, he was named nuncio to Ukraine
and remained in that post until being named
nuncio to Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 2015 by
Pope Francis. The Archbishop has written a blog
from each of his diplomatic postings. If one goes
back to his first posts and progresses through his
later postings, it is obvious that his appreciation
for Tradition, particularly in the liturgy, has grown
and developed.
In one of his latest posts, Archbishop Gullickson
has questioned the wisdom of religious liberty as
being the best way to further the mission of the
Church. Archbishop Gullickson writes:
“Believe it or not, the Church has its inalienable
hallmarks, which are born of necessity and flow
from the will of God for the sake of the life of the
world.
No doubt, the only right place to start a
conversation of this sort is by calling bishops and
priests to account in terms of their faithfulness
to the Gospel. We need more honest, integral,
bold witnesses like St. Charles Borromeo, who by

prayer and penance sought to conform their lives
to that of our loving Savior, thus credibly speaking
His Truth and shepherding His Flock. Maybe it is
too much to expect that we can walk hand in hand
with a given temporal power for the sake of the
good of society.
What I’d like to say is that past schemes (ancien
regime) may have been unacceptable vehicles
for establishing Christ’s Church and furthering
its mission. As I read, look and listen, however,
I am missing the restless search for whatever
that better or adequate vehicle might be. As I say,
religious liberty comes up more than short, when it
comes to guaranteeing unfettered discourse in the
public square, about the truth which comes from
God in Jesus Christ. But ‘it’s all we’ve got’ does not
do it for me as a response and hence my insistence
that we stand somewhere between a pipe dream
and an untried hypothesis when we appeal to
religious liberty as the better mousetrap.”
Given his statements and writings, it should
come as no surprise that the groups in the uberliberal Swiss church have been pushing for his
removal as nuncio, claiming that he is dividing the
church in Switzerland. One example they give is
that he sympathizes with the “schismatic” Society
of St. Pius X! In charity, it would be well for us to
remember Archbishop Gullickson in our prayers in
the days ahead.
Archbishop Gullickson celebrates
the Traditional Mass in Switzerland

75

News from Tradition
Academy of Life Reborn?
As had been extensively reported elsewhere,
Pope Francis removed all the members of the
Pontifical Academy for Life and appointed an
entire slate of new members which included
some proponents of abortion. In addition, Pope
Francis gave a new mandate regarding the
workings of the Academy and insisted that it
include immigration and environmentalism in
the scope of its work.

In December of 2017, one new member of the
Pontifical Academy, Fr. Maurizio Chiodi gave
a lecture entitled Re-reading Humanae Vitae
in light of Amoris Laetitia at the Pontifical
Gregorian University in Rome. During the
lecture, Fr. Chiodi stated that, “an artificial
method for the regulation of births could be
recognized as an act of responsibility that is
carried out, not in order to radically reject
the gift of a child, but because in those
situations responsibility calls the couple and
the family to other forms of welcome and

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hospitality. [This would be the case when]
natural methods are impossible or unfeasible.”
Fr. Chiodi further explained that the basis
for this “new” understanding was Chapter Eight
of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
There had been talk in recent months that Pope
Francis was indeed considering reversing the
Church’s immemorial teaching that artificial
contraception is always immoral and this
lecture certainly adds credence to these rumors.
Of course, no papal decree of Francis could
make that which is immoral and sinful become
moral and good, especially in this matter in
that many respected moral theologians (Msgr.
William Smith as just one example) hold that the
prohibition of artificial contraception is actually
an infallible teaching of the Church. (Because of
this “new direction” of the Pontifical Academy
for Life, some of the former members who were
summarily dismissed by Pope Francis have
joined forces to form the John Paul II Academy
for Human Life and the Family. This was
announced by Professor Josef Seifert in Rome
last October. It should be recalled that Professor
Seifert was removed from his teaching position
by the Archbishop of Granada because of his
printed critique of the Apostolic Exhortation
Amoris Laetitia which the Archbishop claimed
was causing division in the Church.)
Fr. Chiodi’s conclusions regarding artificial
contraception based upon Amoris Laetitia
highlight the fact that the greatest danger of the
infamous Chapter 8 is not the admittance of the
divorcees and remarried to Holy Communion (as
sacrilegious as this may be), but the premise put
forward in that chapter that sinful actions can,
depending upon circumstances, now become
good and moral. As Professor Josef Seifert
pointed out in the article which got him fired by
the Archbishop of Granada, this understanding
(i.e., that an immoral act can become a good
act) turns all of the Church’s moral teaching on
its head.

Some Highlights From the “New Springtime” of Vatican II
From the Vicar General of the Diocese
of Oakland, California regarding the new
“Cathedral of Christ the Light”:
“I write today to update you regarding our
investigation of the design and construction issues
at the Cathedral Center. As I have previously
reported, the Catholic Cathedral Corporation
of the East Bay board of directors approved a
plan recommended by our expert consultants
for comprehensive physical testing on Cathedral
Center buildings. This is part of our ongoing legal
action to ensure the responsible parties pay for the
necessary corrective work.
The initial physical testing, which focused
on the Chancery, rectory and parking garage,
was completed in December 2016. As part of our
continued investigation, we reviewed the design
of the Cathedral and its foundation, in light of the
defects discovered in those areas adjacent to and
surrounding the Cathedral itself. Unfortunately,
this review has uncovered underlying conditions
similar to those found in other parts of the
Cathedral Center. We are deeply disappointed to
discover the Cathedral is also affected.
A full list of defects has recently been reported
to the court-appointed special master for our
case and to the parties named in our claim. The
court-appointed special master is overseeing
the development and exchange of information
between the parties in preparation for mediation.
Since this is a complex case, it is not possible to
predict the timeline or outcome of the mediation.
The special master is making sure the case moves
along as quickly as possible without sacrificing our
rights or the rights of the defendants.
Our goal is to ensure the safety of all who use
these facilities, and to be good stewards of the
generosity which built our Cathedral and the
Cathedral Center. The Cathedral of Christ the
Light should stand as a reminder of the beautiful
radiance of Christ’s light in our community. The
project architect and structural engineer have
advised us that the Cathedral Center buildings are
safe for our employees, visitors and parishioners
to occupy, while we continue to seek resolution of
the design and construction issues.

To limit further deflection of the floor slab and
future repair costs of the B1 level of the parking
garage, it will remain closed for the foreseeable
future. We have also asked our expert consultants
to identify recommended repairs to limit further
deterioration and future repair costs throughout
the Cathedral Center and the Cathedral itself.”
So it seems the huge expenditure of funds from
the Catholic faithful of Oakland to build a new
cathedral of dubious architectural beauty has
resulted in a less then safe “worship environment.”

From the Archdiocese of New York:
“The Archdiocese of New York released an
update today on the Independent Reconciliation
and Compensation Program (IRCP), its outreach
program to victim-survivors of sexual abuse by
members of the clergy of the archdiocese. The
IRCP was announced in October 2016, and ran for
nearly 13 months, concluding on November 1 of
this year, and more than 200 individuals applied
to participate in the program. The program was
administered by noted mediator Mr. Ken Feinberg
and his associate, Ms. Camille Biros, who were
given total independence to evaluate claims
and determine compensation. The Dioceses of
Brooklyn and Rockville Centre have subsequently
begun their own IRCP program.
As of November 30, 2017, 189 victim-survivors
had resolved their claims through the archdiocese’s
IRCP, with compensation totaling $40,050,000.
There are additional claims which were made prior
to the November 1 application deadline that are still
being processed by the program administrators.
77

News from Tradition
The report also provides a summary of the
Church’s efforts to combat the scourge of sexual
abuse of minors, which have resulted in the
Church being a leader in the prevention of abuse,
and in the care for victim-survivors. At a time
when nearly every institution that involves minors
has had to face allegations of abuse, the Church is
now a model in how to respond to this horror.
By any measure, the reconciliation program
has been a success. Many of the victim-survivors
have expressed their gratitude that the Church
extended an invitation, listened, and responded
with compassion and understanding. All left
knowing that the Archdiocese of New York was
willing to make a genuine act of reparation for the
harm that was done to them.”
“By any measure, the reconciliation program
has been a success”—over 40 million dollars
of donations from the faithful Catholics of the
Archdiocese of New York paid out to victims
because of the malfeasance of archbishops and
chancery officials who did not do their duty in
removing priests who abused vulnerable children.
This is what is now considered a successful
program?

From the Vatican:
The number of people attending Pope Francis’s
Urbi et Orbi Christmas message and blessing
has diminished substantially. In 2014, St. Peter’s
Square was filled with faithful who came to hear
the Pope’s message. In 2017, the Square was only
half full. It should be noted that the weather on
Christmas in both years was sunny.

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From the Bucks County Courier Times
(Pennsylvania):
“Members of the general public visited the
National Shrine of St. Katharine Drexel in
Bensalem on Friday before it was set to close
permanently late Saturday afternoon.
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament order
announced in May 2016 that it would reduce
its financial burdens by selling the Bensalem
property where Drexel’s body is entombed. The
saint’s remains will be moved in early 2018 to
the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in
Philadelphia.

The heiress, who used her inheritance to serve
the black and Native American communities, died
in 1955. Drexel became the second Americanborn person to be canonized in 2000 after two
miracles involving hearing were attributed to her
intercession.
The Bensalem property (off Route 13) became a
shrine during Drexel’s canonization, and faithful
from around the world flocked there to pray for
her intercession with God. It is one of two sites
the nuns are in the process of selling. The other
is a 2,200-acre property they own in Powhatan,
Virginia, that previously had been the site of two
schools for black students.
The order, which has missions in the United
States, Haiti and Jamaica, has worked with a
Michigan-based real estate agent to sell the
properties. The sisters are awaiting approval from
Pope Francis at the Vatican before they announce
the transactions.”
The once-thriving religious orders are now
forced to sell their properties because of a lack
of vocations. Particularly distressing is the fact
that Mother Catherine Drexel’s order was one of
the first in the United States to begin educational
institutions for blacks in the United States.

Theological Studies

The Integrity
of Archbishop
Marcel
Lefebvre
by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

Part I
Introduction
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was well-known,
throughout his life, to be a man of great integrity. He
was unwavering in his principles, honest in all of his
dealings, and charitable to a fault. Among the foundational ideas that guided him were the Catholic
notions of authority and obedience, which directed
the heroic prudence of the Archbishop in the many
difficult decisions he had to make in his relations
with Rome.
Certain figures, however, seem to deny that the
Archbishop was a man of principled integrity in his
ideas about the Church and in his relations with
Roman authorities. Some accuse him of having held
contradictory principles, while others accuse him
of having changed his principles after the episcopal

consecrations.
This article will attempt to defend his good name
by considering the Archbishop’s position and showing that he never changed it. We will first consider
the Archbishop’s notion of authority and how this
notion influenced his attitude towards the Roman
authorities. Then, secondly, we will show that the
consecrations did not cause the Archbishop to
change either his principles or his application of
them.
The Archbishop’s Principles on Authority
The most helpful way to consider the
Archbishop’s principles on authority is to compare
three different positions that have been taken with
regard to the authority of the post-Conciliar hierarchy, wherein a majority of churchmen have been
infected with Modernism to a greater or lesser

79

Theological Studies
degree. These three positions are the following:
1. A Modernist hierarchy has no authority
2. A Modernist hierarchy has unlimited authority
3. A Modernist hierarchy legitimately exercises
authority when it commands according to the
faith but does not legitimately exercise authority
when it commands against the faith
The first position judges authority on the basis of
persons. If the person uses his authority badly or is
wayward in theology, then he loses his office. He no
longer possesses any authority. This is a Protestant
model for judging authority, and the sedevacantist
camp leans towards this notion of authority.
The second position judges authority purely on
the basis of office. If a person holds a certain office,
then one must do everything he says. The neoconservative Catholics lean in this direction, for they
hold that the Pope must be followed blindly, unless
he commands something obviously sinful, such as
the commission of murder.
The third position corresponds to the Catholic notion of authority and was the one held by Archbishop
Lefebvre. He judged authority according to both
office and persons. Those who hold an office receive
their authority from God and continue to hold that
office legitimately, even when they abuse their authority. A distinction must be made, however, in the
way in which authorities use their position. If the one
commanding demands something that is morally
licit, then he is to be obeyed; if he commands something that is against God, however, then he is acting
outside of his authority and is to be disobeyed. This
is the Catholic position on obedience that holds for
all situations.
The conformity or disconformity of a command to
God’s laws, then, is what dictates the duty to obey or
disobey the authority commanding. When subordinates are confronted with a clear case wherein those
in authority are commanding what is offensive to
God, they are to disobey; otherwise, they are to obey.
References to the Principle
The Archbishop consistently applied the Catholic
notion of obedience throughout his life. This was especially true in regard to the authority of the Church.
We will take one example of him obeying authority
when it was not being abused and one example of
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March - April 2018

him disobeying authority when it was being abused.
In the first example, he was addressing a crisis
in the United States District. Some of his priests,
including Seminary rector Fr. Donald Sanborn, were
refusing to use the 1962 missal. After all, they said,
it was promulgated by a Modernist Pope, John XXIII.
This was a classic case of considering the person
exercising authority (Pope John XXIII), without
considering whether he was using his authority well
or ill.
No, said Archbishop Lefebvre. There is nothing
in the 1962 missal that poses a danger to the faith.
As such, the SSPX has no justification for refusing
it. As he explained to the American seminarians at
the time, he was, in this decision, only applying the
principle of the Church:
“The principle of the Church is the principle of
St. Thomas Aquinas….So, what does St. Thomas
Aquinas say about authority in the Church? When
can we refuse something from the authority of the
Church? Only when the faith is in question. Only in
this case. Not in other cases. Only when the faith is
in question.”
The second example concerns disobeying an
authority that is being abused. The Archbishop expressed the principle on this question in 1978:
“Obedience presupposes an authority which gives
an order or issues a law. Human authorities, even
those instituted by God, have no authority other than
to attain the end apportioned them by God and not
to turn away from it. When an authority uses power
in opposition to the law for which this power was
given it, such an authority has no right to be obeyed
and one must disobey it.”
Ten years later, the Archbishop cited the same
principle in order to explain the basis for moving
ahead with the consecration of four bishops against
the will of the Roman authorities. Rome would not
allow the SSPX to continue as it was. But it was
necessary for it to continue as it was in order to keep
the faith. Thus, the consecration of four bishops was
an “Operation Survival,” a drastic step needed in
order to maintain the Faith. As such, it was justified,
even though it was contrary to the will of the Roman
authorities.
Application to the Crisis
Let us return to the three positions on authority
laid out above to see how they are applied to the

prudential decision of whether or not one should be
under the authority of a Modernist hierarchy:
1. Sedevacantists: Modernists do not have authority
one must not put oneself under the authorities in
Rome in any way whatsoever until they return to
Tradition.
2. Neo-conservatives: Modernists have all authority
one must put oneself under whomever has
authority, no matter what those authorities
command.
3. Archbishop Lefebvre: Modernists legitimately
exercise authority when they command in
accordance with the faith one should submit to
the authority of Rome when one may be assured
that he will be able to keep his Catholic Faith. The
basis for this assurance, in the case of the SSPX,
would be exemption from modernist influence,
by the granting of a separate entity such as a
personal prelature. If the SSPX were granted a
canonical recognition “as is,” then it would be left
as it is, while being under Roman authority, and
so be able to keep the faith.
It should be clear that the position of the
Archbishop was completely consistent with the
Catholic notion of authority. It should also be clear
that his prudential decisions in relation to the
SSPX’s regularization under a Modernist hierarchy
were simply an application of that notion. Thus, he
was a man of integrity in his principles and their
application.
Let us now turn to the objections against this
position. First is the objection that the Archbishop’s
principles were incoherent and second is the objection that he changed them after the consecrations.
The Inconsistent Principles Objection
In 1994, eleven years after he had been expelled
from the Society of St. Pius X, sedevacantist Bishop
Donald Sanborn wrote an article entitled “The
Mountains of Gelboe.” He maintains there that the
Archbishop was not a man of fixed principles. If his
argument were put into a syllogism, it would run as
follows:
Major: There are only two possible positions for a
man of fixed principles to hold in this crisis:

–– the hard-liner: reject the authority of the postVatican II Church and maintain the faith
–– the soft-liner: accept the authority of the postVatican II Church and compromise the faith
Minor: But Archbishop Lefebvre wanted to accept and
be under the authority of the post-Vatican II Church
(soft-liner), and he wanted to maintain the traditional
faith (hard-liner).
Conclusion: Therefore, he was not a man of fixed
principles. “It is evident…that there were two opposing sides to Archbishop Lefebvre, capable of dictating their own distinct and contradictory theory and
course of action.” As a man of faith, the Archbishop
was a hard-liner; as a man of the Church, as a diplomat, he was a soft-liner. As a man of principles, he
was neither. As such, he was not a man of principles
at all.
What the SSPX should do, then, at its General
Chapter of 1994, is the following:
–– recognize that their founder was wishy-washy
on principles, but that he was, at heart, a
sedevacantist
–– reject the Archbishop’s false ecclesiology that
recognizes the authority of the Pope and accept
the true, hard-liner ecclesiology
–– denounce the Conciliar hierarchy as heretics
–– abandon all attempts at regularisation
Refutation of the Argument
Sanborn seems to struggle to comprehend the
higher principles by which Lefebvre operated and so
proposes a false dilemma. For him, one must either
accept authority wholly or reject it wholly if one is
to have consistent principles. He does not see that
there is a third scenario under which it is possible to
be consistent: accepting authority in one respect and
rejecting it in another.
It is true that it is contradictory to hold that
authority is to be both obeyed and disobeyed in the
same respect. But Archbishop Lefebvre held that the
post-Conciliar authorities were to be obeyed in one
respect—in what does not pose an immediate danger
to the Faith—and disobeyed in another, in that which
does pose an immediate danger to the Faith. No contradiction exists in such an obedience, but it is rather
the very definition of virtuous Catholic obedience.

81

Theological Studies
Once we realize that the Archbishop obeyed the
Pope as Pope but did not obey him as God, the false
dilemma of hard-liner and soft-liner, which tries to
split the single vision of the Archbishop into two
competing personalities, evaporates of itself.
Logical Strategy
Somewhat tangential to the subject of this article,
and yet important to note, is the fact that Sanborn’s
conclusions about the Archbishop do follow from his
premises. If we were to accept his premise that the
Archbishop had a contradictory ecclesiology, then
it would only be logical for us to have nothing to do
with Archbishop Lefebvre. Traditional Catholicism,
if it is anything, is a question of holding firm to the
unchanging truths of the faith, to that which has
been believed always, everywhere, and by everyone.
But if the Archbishop was not firm in his principles
on the Church and its authority—if he held that the
authority of the Church should be both accepted
and rejected, in the same respect—then he was
surely, in that area at least, closer to Modernism
than traditionalism.
Moreover, it is common knowledge that
Romanitas was one of the key characteristics of the
Archbishop. He was formed at the French Seminary
in Rome, he served faithfully and zealously the direct
authority of Rome as Apostolic Delegate in Africa,
he was constantly professing to the members of
his priestly society his attachment to Rome and the
Church. Thus, when Sanborn attacks the stance of
the Archbishop towards the conciliar hierarchy, he
is attacking an aspect of the Archbishop that was
close to his very priestly identity. If the Archbishop
was wrong in such a matter, in something that was
so important to him, we could only conclude that his
entire spirit, his entire manner of looking at the crisis
of the Church, was also wrong.
The strategy of Sanborn, then, is coherent:
1. Establish that the Archbishop was a man of
wavering principles in ecclesiology.
2. Argue that, on this account, the Archbishop
should not be followed in those principles and,
really, in anything else of principle.
3. Conclude that the stance of the Archbishop
should be rejected in favour of the so-called
hard-liner position, which logically leads to
sedevacantism.
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March - April 2018

The one who accepts the first point should logically accept the ones that follow. We have shown
above that the first point is false. For that reason,
there is no need for us to refute the second and the
third points.
There is, however, a class of people who accept
the first point without accepting the second or the
third. They are those who put forward the second
objection against the Archbishop’s integrity by
claiming that he changed his principles in 1988.
They are the members of a loose conglomeration
of hard-liners that work under the name of “The
Resistance.”

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Divini Redemptoris
On Atheistic Communism (1937)

Pope Pius XI
Communism is atheistic because it is based on a materialist philosophy which analyzes
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2017: Fatima—Our Lady’s
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The
Last
Word
Dear readers,
“The continual prayer of a just man availeth much” (Jas. 5:16).
The First World War is framed by the sacrifice of two saints. On August 20, 1914, Pope St.
Pius X offered his life to prevent it (we will only know in Heaven the effect of this papal sacrifice) and on September 21, 1918, Padre Pio, after months of asking the Divine Justice to end
the bloody war, and of continuously offering himself as a holocaust for this intention, found
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sleeping at night. Doctors could not understand how he was alive. Nevertheless, he would
carry his sacred wounds a solid 50 years, until three days before his death, which occurred
on September 23, 1968.
Indeed “[t]he continual prayer of a just man availeth much.”
“From pestilence, famine and war, deliver us O Lord” (Litany of the Saints). War unleashes
the most inhumane passions, it is true, but it is also the occasion of the greatest acts of heroism, heroism of self-denial, of sacrifice, of acts of mercy, of charity. If the fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom, Almighty God knows how to use the calamity of war to put some
wisdom in man’s heart.
At Fatima in 1917, Our Lady also made use of the prayers of little children to accelerate the
end of that Great War. “I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, and to continue
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the world and the end of the war, because only She can help you… Continue to say the Rosary
to obtain the end of the war.”
If prayer and self-sacrifice can end a bloody war, and it did, it can also bring peace to the
Church who is in the midst of this frightening spiritual warfare. Let us be encouraged by the
lessons of history and the teaching of Sacred Scripture.
Fr. Daniel Couture

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