How Catholics Built Civilization
America’s Deeply Catholic Beginnings
Culture and Hamlet
Christendom in the Jungle: The Jesuit
Missions in Paraguay

July - August 2020

No, Venerable Brethren, the City cannot be built otherwise
than as God has built it; society cannot be set up unless the
Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no,
civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New
City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence
and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City.
It has only to be set up and restored continually against
the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and
miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO.
—St. Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate

Letter
from the
Publisher
Dear Reader,
Many of you have asked yourselves time and again how to live in the world without being
of the world. So many of your friends and family acquaintances are fully immersed in the
world and its allurements. Few can withdraw from the world and live as cave hermits or religious behind thick walls. The difficulty is to be inserted in the whirlwind of the world without
being engulfed in the worldly spirit. After the Fall, we sons of Adam are doomed to fail miserably in keeping the precarious balance between nature and grace, between the means and
the end, between the earthly realities of temporal existence and Heaven’s bliss.
It is probably because this balance is so hard to obtain that Our divine Savior set up the
Church and told her: “Teach ye all nations.” Yes, the Church teaches that the various aspects of mankind’s duty of state are stepping-stones to Heaven. She explains that the path
to salvation is very much incarnated in their social life.
To speak of human perfection and social life is to evoke culture and civilization. Society is
the foundation of human growth, and when it is sufficiently developed to create peace and
leisure, art and literature, it has produced culture and civilization. Unless all three “Pius”
Popes of the 20th century are utterly wrong, there is no question that fullness of civilization can be brought about solely by the Catholic faith. The radical conversion of the Pagan
Roman Empire into a Christian realm under the Gospel legislation, manifests this truth
beyond doubt.
The way we see our Creator defines the way we see ourselves and us related to His
creation. It would be enlightening to oppose the civilizing influence of the Christian God to
the terror of souls subject to pagan idols, to the just revengeful Yahweh of the Jews, to the
fatherless God of the Muslims, to the Buddhist Nirvana, the bliss of nothingness. Would it
be false to say that Western civilization has surpassed by far all other modes of cultures?
Whether it be in literature or philosophy, in arts and science, in society and theology, the
heritage which Christian Europe has given to the world has been unsurpassed.
The present issue of The Angelus relates some pointed moments of Christian civilization
throughout the world, and especially in the New World. May it help souls to strengthen their
conviction in a crucial moment when some ruthless and rootless subcultures are colliding
with the timeless and sound principles of human and social life.

Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Publisher

July - August 2020
Volume XLIII, Number 4
Publisher
Fr. Jürgen Wegner
Editor-in-Chief
Mr. James Vogel
Managing Editor
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud
Assistant Editor
Mr. Gabriel Sanchez
Marketing Director
Ben Bielinski
Design and Layout
credo.creatie
(Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Mr. Simon Townshend
Director of Operations
Mr. Brent Klaske
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Contents
Letter from the Publisher

4

Theme: How Catholics Built Civilization
— America’s Deeply Catholic Beginnings
— Culture and Hamlet
— Christendom in the Jungle: The Jesuit Missions in Paraguay
— Isabel the Conqueror
— The Father of California
— Faith and Civilization According to Archbishop Lefebvre

6
18
24
30
35
40

Spirituality
— The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: The Offertory—Part Four
— There is No Greater Love

44
48

Christian Culture
— Autun Cathedral
— These Ruins Are Inhabited:
Catholic Civilization Versus “the Libido for the Ugly”
— Ismael de Tomelloso: A “Red” with a White Soul
— How to Educate the Child in the Spirit of Service
— Questions and Answers

52
56
62
67
69

“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

The Angelus (ISSN 10735003) is published bi-monthly
under the patronage of St. Pius X and Mary,
Queen of Angels. Publication office is located at
PO Box 217, St. Marys, KS 66536.
PH (816) 753-3150; FAX (816) 753-3557.
Periodicals Postage Rates paid at Kansas City, MO.
Manuscripts and letters to the editor are welcome
and will be used at the discretion of the editors.
The authors of the articles presented here are solely
responsible for their judgments and opinions.
Postmaster sends address changes to the address above.
©2020 BY ANGELUS PRESS. OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE
PRIESTLY SOCIETY OF SAINT PIUS X FOR THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Catechism
— Complex Questions & Simple Answers
— Book Review: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine
— Tradition’s Answer to the Conciliar Ecclesiology
— The Last Word

74
77
78
87

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization

America’s Deeply

Catholic
Beginnings
By Fr. William J. Slattery, Ph.D., S.T.L.

Introduction
In the minds of many, the American story is a
Protestant story. And yet, a closer examination
of historical facts reveals the unexpected: the
deeply Catholic beginnings of the United States
and Canada. Although long ignored by most
academics, since the early twentieth century
leading non-Catholic historians have pioneered
the reappraisal of North America’s Catholic
roots. Eminent among these was Herbert Eugene
Bolton (1870-1953), the University of California
intellectual who in 1932 became president of
the American Historical Association. Honored
by ten colleges and universities in the United
States and Canada with their highest degrees, he
was also acclaimed internationally, notably by
Pope Pius XII who in 1949 named him “Knight of
St. Sylvester.” In some 90 publications, such as
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Outpost of Empire (1931), Rim of Christendom
(1936) and the address, “The Epic of Greater
America,” he showed that Americans can only
understand their national identity by taking a
holistic view of all the precolonial and colonial
contexts, notably the Spanish and French ones.
In The Colonization of North America 14921783, he devoted one-third of its content to
the Catholic expeditions and settlements that
occurred before the Pilgrim Fathers disembarked
from the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620. His
writings disclose the mind of an outsider to
Catholicism who is frequently astonished at, and
in poignant admiration for, the Catholics who
with intelligence and daring, sweat and muscle
set about building Catholic regional societies
that benefited all the races of North America.
With a master-historian’s expertise, Bolton, along

7

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
with the agnostic Francis Parkman and others,
unfolded how true was Leo XIII’s declaration
to Americans: “The names newly given to so
many of your towns, rivers, mountains and lakes
show, and clearly witness to how deeply your
beginnings were marked with the footprints of
the Catholic Church.” By confronting these facts,
we will discover that there were also Catholic
Fathers of the USA and Canada.

The Viking Catholics
Who Waded Ashore
The saga of the Catholic presence in North
America begins in two locations: amid the mists
of history in Greenland and somewhere on the
east coast of our continental mainland.
Greenland had been colonized by Eric the Red
with 14 ships of settlers in 985 A.D. In 999, Eric’s
19-year-old son, Leif, “a large and powerful man,
and of a most imposing bearing, a man of wisdom
and a very just man in all things,” spent a winter
at the court of King Olaf Tryggvason. At the
persuasion of Olaf, Leif decided to convert to the
Catholic Faith. He returned to Greenland with a
priest and, on arrival, during the winter of 10001001, informed his family about his new-found
faith. His father was furious but his mother,
Thjodhild, embraced Catholicism and founded
the first church at Brattahlid “and there she and
those people who had accepted Christianity, and
they were many, offered up their prayers there.”
Leif “soon preached Christianity and the Catholic
Faith throughout the land; and he communicated
King Olaf Tryggvason’s message to people and
told them how much excellence and great glory
there was in this Faith.”
Many Greenlanders had become Catholic
by the early 1100s. In 1124, according to the
Saga of Einar Sokkesson, the Catholics sent
a delegation under Sokkesson to King Sigurd
the Crusader (1090-1130) to ask for a resident
bishop. The king proposed Arnaldur, a priest at
the royal court, as the first bishop of Gardar (now
Igaliku). Arnaldur, after a few useless protests
about his unworthiness, was consecrated by
the Archbishop of Lund, who had received the
authority from Rome to name and ordain bishops
8

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for the area. He arrived in Greenland in 1126 after
a year in Iceland, and pioneered the Diocese of
Gardar, the very first North American diocese.
It flourished under Arnaldur’s 26 years of
leadership since “Bishop Arnold seems to have
been a typical medieval prelate, humble and
devout in private life, but zealous and unbending
in all matters touching what he regarded as
the rights of his office and his diocese.” Over
the years the Norse Catholics built some 16
stone churches, among them the cross-shaped
sandstone cathedral, 82 feet long, amid whose
ruins we can still stand and pray in mystic
fellowship with our ancient Viking brothers and
sisters, filled with admiration for their faith.
The Church grew over three centuries in the
land of ice-filled fjords, flowering plains and
countless glaciers, under the leadership of the
bishops of Gardar whose lineage we can trace
over centuries in the records of the Vatican
archives. The population seems to have peaked at
around 10,000 in the 1300s.
“But the dawn is brief and the day full
often belies its promise” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The
Silmarillion). A gradual decline seized hold of
the Catholic Church in Greenland caused by
politics, ecclesiastical neglect, and economics,
exacerbated by the wild climate and geographical
isolation. In 1448, Pope Nicholas V, worried about
reports of priest-less Greenland, wrote that the
Greenlanders “have been consequently during
these 30 years past without the comfort and
ministry of bishop or priest, unless someone of
a very zealous disposition, and at long intervals,
and in spite of danger from the raging sea,
ventured to visit the island and minister to
them in those churches which the barbarians
had left standing.” A letter of the Borgia pontiff,
Alexander VI (1492-1503), written in 1492,
although silent about the ecclesiastical and
political causes, nevertheless sounds an ominous
warning bell, reminding us that the fate of the
Church in any land or century, depends largely on
the actions and omissions of men.
Then there was the mysterious colony on
the eastern coast of the U.S.A. and Canada.
The documentary evidence is quite insistent:
various ancient sources narrate that Irish monks
somewhere founded a Christian oasis that in

Junípero Serra y Ferrer, O.F.M. was a Roman Catholic Spanish priest and friar of the Franciscan Order. He is credited with
establishing the Franciscan Missions in the Sierra Gorda. He later founded a mission in Baja California and the first nine of
21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco, in what was then Spanish-occupied Alta California in the
Province of Las Californias, New Spain. Pope Francis canonized Serra on September 23, 2015 at the Basilica of the National Shrine
of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., during his first visit to the United States. Serra’s missionary efforts earned him
the title of “Apostle of California.”

Icelandic sagas and their Annals of Greenland is
named Hvitramannaland, “Whiteman’s Land,”
or Irland It Mikla, (Greater Ireland), located
westward in the sea near Vinland the Good. It
lasted as late as the year 1000 with an active
Catholic presence, as implied by the account

in the Landnámabók of a pagan Icelander, Ari
Marsson, who, driven off course, landed there in
983 and was baptized.
Archeology has now confirmed that the
Vikings had one or more settlements on the
eastern shores of present-day Canada or the
9

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
U.S.A, close to Irland It Mikla. Leif, son of Eric
the Red, on his return voyage to Greenland
from Norway in 1000 A.D., went off course and
discovered the area the Vikings named “Vinland.”
For this information we are indebted to the sober
accounts in the sagas of Thorfinn Karlsefni,
preserved in 28 manuscripts. In 1003 it was the
same Karlsefni who founded a colony somewhere
on the American coast, which, however, ended
after three years due to internal dissensions.
But there were other longer-lasting settlements
in Vinland as we know thanks to the discoveries
in the 1960s of a Norse community at L’Anse
aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Archaeologists
have dated this settlement as a thousand years
old. Since the Norse population of Greenland
was probably significantly Catholic by 1090, the
Catholic presence in Vinland is a reasonable
assumption. There is also the tantalizing

10

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reference in six different vellums of the Icelandic
annals meagerly mentioning that in 1121 “Bishop
Eric set out from Greenland to find Vinland.” Eric
was not a bishop of Greenland but a missionary
bishop, probably from Norway or Iceland, who
had gone to Greenland to ordain priests and
perform other tasks, and, while there, decided
to continue on to the colony of Vinland. No more
is known about the mysterious prelate, and, for
all we know, he may have spent the rest of his
life building up the Catholic Church on mainland
North America.
Therefore, historically we can say that the first
altar was established as early as the 11th century
on the coasts of Greenland and probably also on
Vinland; that Viking ships anchored, a Catholic
priest waded ashore, planted the Cross, and the
North American continent heard the intoning of
the sacred words of the Traditional Latin Mass

and saw the white host raised to bless it and
claim it for the Lord Jesus Christ.

To Florida, The Rockies,
and the Alamo
Five centuries later, other Catholics
disembarked and pioneered the New World’s
wilderness, plains and mountains, rivers and
lakes from St. Augustine in Florida to Los
Angeles in California, from the Alamo (“San
Antonio de Valero”) in Texas to Le Détroit du Lac
Érie.
To Florida arrived Ponce de León in 1513.
Indeed, the area received its name from the fact
that it had first been seen by the Spaniards on
Pascua Florida [Easter Sunday]. In September
1540 the Francisco Vásquez de Coronado

expedition which included Fr. Juan de Padilla,
was already at the Grand Canyon and the
Rockies. In 1542, Fr. Padilla, while establishing
the first Catholic mission in the present-day
United States, was riddled with arrows on the
plains of Kansas and so became the proto-martyr
of the nation.
By May 21, 1542, strong arms in dust-covered
robes had carried the cross on the longest march
ever made on the American continent as priests
trekked with the De Soto expedition through
Georgia, into the Carolinas, through Tennessee,
Alabama and Mississippi, continuing into
Arkansas and Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana.
“Had the priests with De Soto,” wrote the
historian John Gilmary Shea, “been able to say
Mass, the march of the Blessed Sacrament and
of the Precious Blood across the continent would
have been complete.” Nevertheless, priests

11

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
had preached the Faith on both sides of the
Mississippi, already christened since 1519 with
the splendid name “Río del Espíritu Santo.”
September 8, 1565 heard Father Francisco
López de Mendoza Grajales offer the Sacrifice
at the foundation of the oldest city in the nation,
St. Augustine in Florida. Within a hundred

years, the tireless missionaries of the region
had established over 40 settlements for some
26,000 Native Americans reaching as far north
as St. Catherine’s Island off the coast of Georgia,
bearing names such as Ascension, Our Lady of
the Rosary, and St. Joseph.
In 1598, nine years before the English landed
in Jamestown, ten Franciscan friars had arrived
with Juan de Oñate and Spanish settlers to New
Mexico which they named Santa Fe. There they
built San Gabriel, the first permanent settlement
in the area.
In 1691, Damian Massenet, Franciscan
chaplain of an expedition into Texas, camped on
the site of what is now the city of San Antonio,
christening the new settlement with the name of
the day’s saint, Anthony of Padua. 1718 saw the
foundation of the first mission, “San Antonio de
Valero” (better known today as the Alamo). The
founder of the San José Mission was the Venerable
Antonio Margil, popularly known as “the Flying
Padre,” who frequently traveled barefoot about 50
miles per day. He started hundreds of missions
in a never-a-pause lifetime of activity that ranged
from the tropical forests of Costa Rica to east
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Texas and the borders of Louisiana.
The trailblazers in the Mid-West and the West
included priests like Francisco Garcés, who, in
1775, led the first recorded white people to enter
Nevada. The same year in Utah saw Fathers
Escalante and Dominguez follow the river flowing
through Spanish Fork Canyon which they named
Río de Aguas Calientes (Spanish Fork River). On
September 24 they gazed at the lake and broad
valley of Nuestra Señora de los Timpanogotiz
(Utah Lake and Valley), which they described as
“the most pleasing, beautiful, and fertile site in all
New Spain.”
In the 19th century Catholics were often
frontiersmen in one way or another. Notable
among them were men like Father Pierre-Jean
De Smet, the Apostle of the Rockies, Fr. Ravalli
of Montana and Idaho, and Fr. Lucien Galtier in
Minnesota who built a log chapel dedicated to St.
Paul in 1841, around which the city of the same
name grew up.

To Quebec and Northern
and Western America
A transparently clear instance of “Catholic
colonialism,“ radiant in the purity of its
beginnings, was the foundation of what is
now Montréal in the province of Québec. The
inspiration was born in the heart of a French
layman known for his mystical prayer, Jérome
de Dauversière, who became convinced that he
should found a mission in the area of the upper
St. Lawrence River. Thanks to the fervent faith
of Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, a soldier,
and the efforts of 35 Frenchmen who wanted to
establish a center of evangelization for the Native
Americans, the project took off. Before these
brave men and women set sail, they gathered
under the great Fr. Jean-Jacques Olier in Notre
Dame Cathedral to consecrate themselves and
their project to the Blessed Virgin Mary. On
arrival in May 1632, they named their settlement
“Ville Marie” (present-day Montréal), sang
the Veni Creator Spiritus, and proceeded to
spend the first day in adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament.
That was Catholicism in action: noble men

and women dedicated to bringing all that was
good, true and holy to their fellow men and
women in North America, even though it meant
leaving behind their lovely land and relatives in
Europe. The purity of their motives and conduct
is a fragrance also present in the history of the
other Catholics who founded what became the
intensely Catholic land of Québec.
Notable among these were the “Black Robes,”
the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus.
From the early 1600s, some of France’s most
imposing youth crossed the Atlantic to pour out
their lifeblood in North America.
Their first headquarters was in Québec, from
where Jesuits spread out to open up mission
territories among the Hurons in Ontario,
Michigan and Ohio; with the Iroquois of New York
and the Abnakis in Maine; among the Chippewas,
Algonquins and Ottawas in Wisconsin and
Michigan; with the Illinois; and finally, among the
Creeks and other tribes, in Louisiana.
The most famous Black Robe explorer is

Jacques Marquette (1637-75). Described by
his superior as a man of “wonderfully gentle
ways,” he made a deep impression on the Native
Americans. Understandably so, for besides his
natural winsomeness, by his 38th year the priest
had already learned six native dialects during
his work with the Illinois, the Pottawatomis, the
Foxes, the Hurons, the Ottawas, the Mackinacs,
and the Sioux. His demeanor exuded an
exceptionally sensitive love for God. Parkman
spoke movingly of the French priest’s devotion to
the Immaculée in whose honor he named the last
mission he founded, seven weeks before his death
“amid the forests.”
In 1673 he and Louis Jolliet, together with
five companions, set out in birch bark canoes
from St. Ignace (Michigan) in answer to the
plea of tribesmen, among them some Illinois,
who had visited the priest to ask that he visit
their homeland close to a great river. Plying
their paddles across the waters, they traveled
more than 2,000 miles through the wilderness,

13

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization

14

becoming the first Europeans to see and chart
the northern part of the Mississippi which they
showed as emptying into the Gulf of Mexico and
not—as had been thought up to then—into the
Pacific somewhere in California. On the journey
they had spent the winter of 1674 in the area of
what is now Chicago. Bancroft, writing about
such Black Robes, exclaimed in admiration: “Not
a cape was turned, or a river entered, but a Jesuit
led the way.”
All North American Catholics can claim

Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant near Georgian Bay.
The account of their deaths is not for the fainthearted. The capturers fastened them to stakes,
scalped and mutilated them, poured boiling water
over their bodies, and applied fire and necklaces
of red-hot hatchets to their skin. Not a single cry
escaped the lips of Brébeuf. The Iroquois, in awe
at such superhuman courage, later cut out his
heart and ate it, hoping to receive some of his
spirit.
It was the heroic end of a 15-year saga filled

spiritual sonship of the martyrs Isaac Jogues
(1607-1646), Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649) and
companions. The Hurons named Brébeuf “Echon”
meaning either “healing tree” or “he who bears
the heavy load,” either because he had brought
them medicines or because the strongly-built
priest had usually carried more than his share of
the load on journeys, or perhaps for both reasons.
On March 16, 1649 the Iroquois captured Jean de

with the stuff of daily heroism, as he, in a matterof-fact manner and with a touch of humor, wrote
in a letter of 1636 to the ardent young Jesuits in
France who were hoping to join him: “When you
reach the Hurons…you will arrive at a time of the
year when fleas will keep you awake almost all
night. And this petty martyrdom, to say nothing
of mosquitoes, sand flies, and suchlike gentry,
lasts usually not less than three or four months of

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the summer.”

The New World chronicles of the 15th-19th
centuries open a window onto a landscape of
priests who are simply larger-than-life figures,
men who placed keen minds, noble hearts and

at least everywhere politicians didn’t stonewall
the Church’s efforts as happened in Anglo-Saxon
North America.
Protestant historians and other intellectuals
are critical of the Anglo-Saxon colonization of
America and at times highlight how different was
the Catholic approach. C. S. Lewis remarked,
“The English…had to content themselves with
colonization, which they conceived chiefly as a
social sewerage system, a vent for ‘needy people
who now trouble the commonwealth’ and are

tireless bodies as shields for the dignity of Native
Americans. They must never be forgotten. As
in any picture involving fallen men, there will
always be shadows. However, the blazing truth is
that thanks to Catholic priests, who left behind
family, friends, comfort and culture in order to
live with, and for, the peoples of the New World,
racial integration through marriage and not
segregation came to be the norm in the Americas,

‘daily consumed with the gallows’.” How different
were the Catholics! As the historian, John Tracey
Ellis, commenting on the Spanish missionaries
(but the same could be said of the French and of
the Portuguese also) remarked:
“There was an element of compassion for the
red man as a child of God in the ideology of the
Spanish missionaries that was entirely lacking in
the attitude of most of the English settlers along
the Atlantic Coast. It was the conviction that

Catholics and the
Native Americans

15

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
he had a soul worth saving that inspired their
extraordinary sacrifices in his behalf. That, and
that alone, will explain the dogged persistence
with which the missionaries pushed on in the
face of repeated setbacks and tragedies such
as the murder of Fray Juan de Padilla, their
protomartyr, on the plains of Kansas in 1542.
How otherwise can one account for the fact that
so many highly gifted priests like the Tyrolese
Jesuit, Eusebio Kino, and Junipero Serra, the

Franciscan from Majorca, both universitytrained men, should abandon their cultivated
surroundings to dedicate their lives to the moral
and material uplift of these savage people?”
The deeply moving scene, described by the
historian Francis Parkman, of Jesuit priests
caring for the sick among Hurons suffering from
a smallpox epidemic, was repeated thousands of
times over throughout North and Latin America:
“But when we see them, in the gloomy

Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was a French Jesuit settlement in Wendake, the land of the Wendat, near modern Midland,
Ontario, from 1639 to 1649. It was the first European settlement in what is now the province of Ontario. Eight missionaries from
Sainte-Marie were martyred, and were canonized in 1930. Sainte-Marie among the Hurons was established French Jesuit Fathers
Jérôme Lalemant and Jean de Brébeuf.

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February of 1637 and the gloomier months
that followed, toiling on foot from one
infected town to another, wading through
the sodden snow, under bare and dripping
forests, drenched with incessant rains, till
they descried at length through the storms
the clustered dwellings of some barbarous
hamlet. When we see them entering one after
another these wretched abodes of misery
and darkness, and all for one sole end, the
baptism of the sick and dying…we must
needs admire the self-sacrificing zeal with
which it was pursued.”
We cannot overestimate the importance
of what all this priestly heroism achieved.
A new race—the mestizos—came into
existence, born of the marriages between
European Catholics and Native Americans.
Under the teaching and vigilance of so many
priests, the Spanish, French and Portuguese
colonists recognized the equal dignity of the
natives. It wasn’t just a matter of flowery
speeches but of concrete actions. For what
action could have been more concrete than
the thousands of marriages the priests
performed between Europeans and Native
Americans? They married them, baptized
their offspring, and educated them. Then the
Church crowned and sealed their dignity by
raising some of the natives to the highest
rank in Catholicism—canonized saints—
as occurred with the mulatto St. Martin
de Porres—whom all Catholics, whether
black, mulatto or white, pope or peasant,
bend the knee to as heroes, and pray to as
intercessors.
If only the Church had been allowed to do
the same in Anglo-Saxon America as she did
in Latin America! The Church’s achievement
in Latin America stands out by contrast
with the history of relations between the
Native Americans and colonists in the
north where the Church, in a socio-political
context often hostile to Catholicism, was
hindered in her efforts to evangelize and
promote integration. It is somewhat painful
to recall the degree of anti-Catholicism
in the U.S.A. that prevented the Church
fulfilling her mission. Even in the 13 colonies,

Catholics were barely tolerated from the early
1700s, in spite of the fact that the Catholic
colony in Maryland, founded by Lord Baltimore,
had welcomed all Christian groups. The 1704
decree of the Parliament of Baltimore forbidding
Catholics to educate, or even to serve the Mass in
public, is worthy of indignation to this very day.
The Natives themselves generally recognized
all the benefits of the missions and, with few
exceptions, loved the Catholic priests they
came into contact with. A report to the Church’s
missionary headquarters in Rome (Propaganda
Fide) in 1821 stated: “They have a great
veneration for the Black Robes (so do they call
the Jesuits). They tell how the Black Robes slept
on the ground, exposed themselves to every
privation, and did not ask for money.”
A staunch Scottish Protestant, Alexander
Forbes, although quite critical of the Misiones in
some aspects, nevertheless stated:
“The best and most unequivocal proof of the
good conduct of the Franciscan Fathers is to be
found in the unbounded affection and devotion
invariably shown towards them by their Indian
subjects. They venerate them, not only as friends
and fathers, but with a degree of devotedness
approaching to adoration. On the occasion of the
removals which have taken place of late years
for political causes, the distress of the Indians
in parting with their pastors has been extreme.
They have entreated to be allowed to follow them
in their exile, with tears and lamentations, and
with all the demonstrations of true sorrow and
unbounded affection. Indeed, if there ever existed
an instance of the perfect justice and propriety of
the comparison of the priest and his disciples to
a shepherd and his flock it is in the case of which
we are treating.”
The Catholic difference was due to the
Catholic worldview. It was summed up by the first
words in the travel log of one of the first explorers
of North America, a Protestant convert to
Catholicism and a layman, Samuel de Champlain
(1567-1635): “The salvation of a single soul is
worth more than the conquest of an empire.”

17

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization

Culture and
Hamlet
Nihilism and Belief in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By Andrew J. Clarendon

As he often said in his classes and
conferences, Professor David Allen White pointed
to the ideas in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the
beginning of the modern world. Written around
1600, the play dramatizes the conflict between
the richly Catholic culture of the Middle Ages
and the rising individualism of the early modern
age, a major shift in the worldview of Western
Civilization whose effects remain even in our
late post-modern times. A useful image of this
shift comes from the philosopher Eric Voegelin
who noted that modern man has moved from
considering himself as a link in a hierarchical
chain that comes from God to being himself the
center of the universe and of all meaning—a
“macroanthropic” view in Voegelin’s terms. It
is noteworthy that the Renaissance humanists
resurrected the sophist Protagoras’ phrase,
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“Man is the measure of all things.” Central to the
action of Hamlet is a corrosive doubt in the old
certainties that leaves the black-suited prince to
find all meaning via himself, relying on his own
mind and melancholia to act within the rotten
state of Denmark. Although a tragedy that ends
with multiple deaths, over the course of the plot
Shakespeare provides an answer and resolution
to Hamlet’s doubts and resulting anguish, an
answer that provides a foundation for restoration
and one of the great contributions to the
perennial tradition.

Hamlet’s Corrosive Doubts
A quick but telling moment in 2.2 identifies
the central problem in this early modern man. In

trying to explain Hamlet’s odd behavior earlier in
the play, the court advisor Polonius reads to the
king and queen a love letter Hamlet sent to his
daughter Ophelia. Written before the play begins
and while he was still studying at the University
of Wittenberg—famous as the place where Luther
produced his 95 Theses and so more or less the
birthplace of Protestantism—Hamlet’s letter
expresses the corrosive doubts that were swirling
around the early modern culture:
Doubt [i.e., suspect] thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt [i.e., suspect] truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers [i.e.,
verses]. I have not art to reckon my groans. But
that I love thee best, O most best, believe it.
Adieu.
Thine evermore, most dear lady,
whilst this machine is to him.
Hamlet
It is interesting that the first two verses of
the poem involve doubt about the traditional
view of the universe: thinking that the stars are

fire means that they are not made of celestial
matter as was thought; doubting that the sun
moves indicates belief in a heliocentric universe
as opposed to the Ptolemaic geocentric model.
More important is how the point is universalized
in the third verse: Ophelia is to suspect that
truth itself is false. This muddled young man can
only be sure of one thing: his personal, inward
feeling of love for Ophelia. The corrosive acid of
doubt has eroded everything but emotion, and
the subsequent plot shows that feelings, even
passionately expressed, can change. Waves
of melancholia—Hamlet is what we would
today call clinically depressed—mixed with
uncertainty, anguish, and perhaps madness
overwhelm the prince; he tumbles into the
abyss of nihilism, rejecting nearly everyone and
everything close to him, including Ophelia herself
in a terrible scene right after the famous “To be,
or not to be” speech.
After four acts of confusion, angst, madness,
and even murder, the final act begins where the
whole play has been tending: a graveyard. 5.1 is
the most important scene in modern drama; it not
only recapitulates the theme of nihilism but also
provides an answer to it. Now back in Denmark
19

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
after providentially surviving an assassination
attempt, Hamlet, with his friend Horatio, comes
upon two men digging a grave. Since graves were
reused due to a lack of space, the gravedigger and
his assistant are moving various bones aside as
he prepares the plot. The dialogue begins with
comic banter between the gravediggers and then
Hamlet himself; comedy reminds man of his
human nature, it is a bringing down to earth, and
so is in an important way appropriate for a scene
featuring the end of all men. The gravedigger asks
Hamlet to identify a particular skull, but because
death is the great leveler, Hamlet is unable to.
Finally, the gravedigger says the skull is that of
the old court jester, Yorick. What follows is one
of the most iconic moments in drama: Hamlet
holds the skull of a comedian, “a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy,” who once produced
“flashes of merriment that were wont to set the
table on a roar.” None of this matters, though,
because everything moves to dissolution, to dust.
Hamlet tells the skull to go to “my lady’s chamber
and tell her” that even if she puts on cosmetics
that are an inch thick, she will also ultimately
become a skull. For Hamlet in the nihilistic
abyss, there is no real significance: Yorick, a
beautiful lady, Alexander the Great, “Imperious
Caesar, dead and turned to clay,” all just become
stinking skulls rotting in the earth. Immediately
after these moments which anticipate atheistic
twentieth-century drama, Ophelia’s funeral
procession arrives; while Hamlet is away, the
virtuous young lady goes insane and is drowned.
Images of beauty come to the nihilistic graveyard:
Ophelia’s “fair and unpolluted flesh” and violets
that are symbols of chastity and faithfulness.
Hamlet, shocked, comes forward and makes a
vital announcement:
This is I,
Hamlet the Dane. …
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum.

Love, Not Meaninglessness
In the abyss of the grave, when someone
20

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close to him has died, Hamlet does not find
meaninglessness; he finds the most powerful
force in the universe: love. With meaning
reaffirmed, Hamlet can again be a complete
person—hence he gives his name and royal
title as he steps forward—but it is a significant
part of the tragedy that this only happens after
Ophelia’s death. In Charles Boyce’s words, only
after she is destroyed during the tragic plot can
the hero perceive “what he has lost through
his mistaken vision of the world.” With his own
death near, in the next scene, the last of the play,
Hamlet continuously expresses his belief in the
old order. He tells Horatio that “There’s a divinity
that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we
will,” that “There is special providence in the
fall of a sparrow,” and, in a clear answer to the
most famous speech in the play, “The readiness
is all. … Let be.” This is the painfully acquired
knowledge that is a hallmark of high tragedy.
In The Death of Christian Culture, John
Senior writes that “Literature is the ox of
culture, its beast of burden.” In literature, the
ideas and values of a culture are often conveyed
vicariously as the reader lives the story along
with the characters. Hamlet’s conflict becomes
our conflict, as Dante’s pilgrimage is ours and
Odysseus’ voyage is ours. In this way the great
authors are not just “the abstract and brief
chronicles of the time” but the architects of
civilization itself. To quote Senior again:
“Culture, as in ‘agriculture,’ is the cultivation
of the soul from which men grow. To determine
proper methods, we must have a clear idea of the
crop. ‘What is man?’ the Penny Catechism asks,
and answers: ‘A creature made in the image and
likeness of God, to know, love, and serve Him.’
Culture, therefore, clearly has this simple end, no
matter how complex or difficult the means.”
So it is that true culture will always repeat the
same truths in a different expression over time,
for men will always need to be reminded of what
they already know and have forgotten and will
always need to be reminded of what they love to
have that love again enkindled.

357 pp. – Softcover – Illustrated – STK# 9114 PB – $24.99

A Family of Brigands
in 1793
By Marie de Sainte-Hermine

Plunged into the disasters following the murder of King
Louis XVI, Marie de Sainte-Hermine shares this eyewitness account of her noble family’s struggle against
the tyranny of the Revolution. She tells of her gilded
childhood, the Vendean War of 1793, the massacres
and atrocities of the revolutionaries, and the sinister
prison of Nantes where her family paid the ultimate
price. In spite of the darkness brought on by the Terror,
the light and power of Christian nobility and virtue always endures. This story will inspire all who read it and
stands, to this day, as an enduring example of Catholic
heroism in times of persecution and war.
This is a Catholic historical adventure filled with
intrigue, disguises, escape, betrayal, revenge, danger,
death, and love. It exemplifies the Catholic ideals for
marriage and shows how God must be served above
all else even when revenge and hate are common
everywhere.

“In reading the history of your ancestors who have suffered so much
here below, you will understand better that there is but one irreparable disaster: to betray
one’s duty and to lose one’s soul. You will understand that the greatest evils of this life last
but for a time, and that the Christian must keep his eyes ever raised toward Heaven…
Always keep the Faith, the Faith for which your ancestors died; it
is the most precious of all goods.”
Marie de Sainte-Hermine

Reprinted countless times in French, this is, to our knowledge, the first English edition ever.

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

The Jesuit reductions were a type of settlement for
indigenous people in the Rio Grande do Sul area of Brazil,
Paraguay, and neighboring Argentina in South America,
established by the Jesuit Order early in the 17th century
and wound up in the 18th century with the banning of
the Jesuit order in Europe. The Jesuits attempted to
create a “state within a state” in which the native peoples
in the reductions, guided by the Jesuits, would remain
autonomous and isolated from Spanish colonists and
Spanish rule. A major factor attracting the natives to
the reductions was the protection they afforded from
enslavement and the forced labor.

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization

Christendom
in the Jungle
The Jesuit Missions in Paraguay

By Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara

For centuries the Church faithfully carried
out the mission entrusted by Our Lord to His
Apostles: Go, teach ye all nations; baptizing them
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you.
It is our sad lot to have witnessed the recent
Synod of the Amazon relegating that command
to the dustbin of History, a synod in which the
Church hierarchy asked to be taught by the
ancestral wisdom of its pagan former charges,
and where a venerable missionary bishop could
be heard boasting that he had not baptized an
“indigenous person” in 35 years.
To withstand the tide of forgetfulness,
cowardice, and apostasy surging around us, let us
honor the memory and the achievements of those
members of a once-extraordinary religious order
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who, literally, built the City of God in the fringes
of the same Amazonian world.

In the Beginning…
After the shock of finding peoples unaccounted
for in their vision of the world, the very first
missionaries in America, Franciscans imbued
with millenarist and apocalyptic ideals, dreamed
of establishing a utopian community, isolated
from the corruptions of the Old World, and in
which native customs would be integrated with
true evangelization—a Jerusalén Indiana,
a heavenly Jerusalem descended upon these
“Indies.”
The Jesuits arrived later, by the end of the
16th century, when Christianity was already

firmly planted in the conquered territories. They
established their houses and colleges in the
colonial cities, but directed their missionary efforts
to unexplored lands, to the boundaries between
the Spanish and Portuguese dominions. There,
they created the mission territories of Guaranies
(Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil), Chiquitos and
Moxos (Bolivia), and Maynas (Peru).

preach the Gospel to the natives and to integrate
them into a Christian polity. Hence, the Jesuits
purified and perfected the Franciscan idea of
isolated communities to effectively protect
the Indians from very real abuses at the hands
of Spanish and Portuguese settlers, lay and
ecclesiastical alike.

Religious statue at the Jesuit
ruins of the Mission of La
Santissima Trinidad, Paraguay

Realistic and pragmatic, the Jesuits were
neither naïve nor “mystically” deluded. While
pursuing a high ideal, ad majorem Dei gloriam,
they followed the paths that Providence opened
before them and what experience dictated, to

The Guarani Mission
In Paraguay, the Guaranies were a seminomadic people, practicing some minor
agriculture in temporary, small autonomous
25

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
villages under the dual leadership of caciques—
local chiefs—and shamans. As resources were
plentiful and easily available, the relative ease
of life brought along laziness, lack of prevision,
sensuality.
The beginnings of the mission were difficult.
The Jesuits went into the forests, seeking the
Indians, first on foot, later in canoes along
the rivers. The natives tended to flee from the
foreigners, but were attracted by the songs
and music they heard from the Jesuit camps.
Contact was made through interpreters, but
it was awkward and mutually confusing. The
Jesuits applied themselves to learn the language,
and soon they were composing grammars and
dictionaries for the new missionaries. Noticing
the limited capacity of the Guaranies for
abstraction, the Jesuits instructed them in the
faith as if they were children, while hoping in
the future to work towards developing a greater
facility for abstract thought.
The Jesuits were fully aware of the gifts and
failings of the Indians, and of the long lasting
effort needed for evangelizing and civilizing
them. If the Guaranies were left alone, when the
missionaries moved on or when they themselves
moved away, the knowledge of the faith would
fade, the vices would not be overcome… To
follow the Indians in their semi-nomadic life was
impossible, as there were too few Jesuits—and in
any case, the civilizing effort would be impeded.
The only feasible solution appeared to be
gathering the Indians together in the places
where the missionaries resided. This solution,
favored by the Crown and the Superiors of
the Order, was finally adopted—to reduce the
roaming territory of the Indians, bringing them
into newly-created missionary towns. These were
not called “missions” but “reductions,” gathering
points into which the scattered groups were
“reduced” to communal life, or even “doctrines,”
places where the faith was taught and preserved.
For the Guaranies, a permanent settlement
implied a profound change of social structure,
of customs and work habits. To facilitate the
transition, the Jesuits decided to preserve
as much as possible of the traditional way of
Guarani life, insofar as it was not incompatible
with Christianity and the goal of creating
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a stable, sedentary, politically autonomous
community.
The new system brought the Indians under the
direct authority and supervision of the Jesuits.
The Guaranies were protected from many abuses,
and the evangelizing and civilizing efforts were
kept going, but added an enormous material and
moral burden on the Jesuits.
Moreover, the Jesuits’ reservation of lands
and workers stirred up much opposition and
hostility—of the settlers, whose lands were
profitable only if there were Indians to work them
at very low cost; of some civil and ecclesiastical
authorities, because the Jesuits, with the powers
granted by the Crown, effectively evaded their
authority; and of other religious orders, out of
jealousy for their autonomy and envy of their
success.

Life in the “Reductions”
Even in the material life of the “reductions,”
everything—from the layout of the towns to the
Indians’ work and recreation—was devised and
organized in such a way to draw the greatest
benefit from the Guaranies’ forces and virtues,
and to correct, or at least compensate for, their
known failings and weaknesses.
In Paraguay, for the almost 100,000 Guaranies
in their charge, the Jesuits created a system of
30 interconnected towns, with their dependent
lands, structured along the waterways, the
great rivers (Paraná, Paraguay, Uruguay)
and man-made channels and reservoirs. This
communication network was complemented
by roads, with bridges, staging posts, ferries
at dangerous crossings, having chapels every
5 miles, with rooms for travelers. The network
was maintained by the reductions and centered
in Candelaria, the “capital” of the Paraguay
reductions—a system far superior to what
existed in the country in the late 19th century.
The towns were built as the Spanish pueblos,
in a grid pattern, on elevated terrain and
surrounded by defensive works. Although
they followed the same pattern and were very
similar, no two towns had exactly the same plan,
dimensions or distribution of buildings. The only

noticeable difference, even “competition,” among
them was in the originality and beauty of their
churches.
The Central Square was reached by a wide
avenue from the town entrance. It was a
communal space, for the daily meetings before
work, and also for festivities, processions, and
catechisms. Dances, games, competitions, and
theatrical performances also took place there,
usually at night, due to the climate and native
customs.
In spite of the acknowledged intellectual
shortcomings of the Indians, the missionaries
strove to build their faith and piety on a rational
foundation, teaching them Catholic doctrine
in daily religion classes for the children and
catechism and Sunday sermons for the adults.
Nonetheless, the Jesuits also made good use
of the musical potential of the Guaranies,
developing a whole catechesis through sensible
symbols, songs and dances. Dogmas were put
into verse and music, with simple melodies,
adapted to the Indian tastes, which were sung
every day before the Rosary. The theatrical
performances, similar to the medieval
“mysteries,” were used to explain to simple
people the truths of faith, moral principles and
sacred history.
On one side of the square was the Church, the
“house of God,” but also of everyone, as everyone
worked in it and used it daily, although in the
nave the sexes were kept separated. It was the
first thing to be built and itself was an assertion
of faith, placed to dominate the town and inspire
awe. Originally simple wooden structures, later
they were rebuilt in stone. Inside they were
spacious, with cedar wood beams and altars,
walls decorated with paintings on linen, and
everywhere flowers, sweet herbs, and floors
sprinkled with scented water.
Almost everybody assisted at daily Mass, even
if no one was obliged to do so—they attended in
silence, without idle conversations or immodest
looks, for they were in the “house of God”;
thanksgiving was said in common at the end of
Mass. They received the sacraments of Penance
and the Eucharist frequently, especially when
departing for longer journeys. Baptisms and
marriages were solemnly celebrated, and their

social importance was stressed by the presence
of the local civil authorities.
At the side of the church was the Jesuit
residence, closed to women. It had not only
rooms for the Fathers, but also offices and
workshops, warehouses and courtyards for work.
It allowed for the easy supervision of work and of
the use of the stores.
At the other side of the church was the
cemetery, and even there, the sexes were
separated.
Beyond it was the cotiguazú, the “big house.”
To protect morals and families, it was the lodging
for women who were alone (widows, unmarried
young women, and women whose husbands were
temporarily absent). It was walled, with only one
access, well visible from the Jesuits’ residence.
Behind the church compound there was an
orchard, where were grown vegetables, fruits,
vines for Mass wines (when possible), and flowers
for the church.
The houses for the Indians were on the sides
of the square, made of adobe and wood, although
at the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits many
were being rebuilt in stone.
Each block contained a succession of rooms,
one per family, fronted by wide verandas, as
most of their daily lives took place outdoors. The
rooms were dignified, allowing for no differences
of wealth or social position. Moreover, the singlefamily room helped the Jesuits to break the
custom of polygamy.
The families were grouped in blocks, according
to their blood and affinity relationships. This
distribution not only preserved family bonds,
but it also maintained the previous community
bonds, as the caciques of each group were
acknowledged by the Jesuits as the heads of
each “neighborhood,” thus maintaining their
leadership within their respective groups.
The housing blocks were separated by wide,
paved streets, to prevent fires spreading.
One block was reserved for the cabildo, the
town hall, seat of a local civil government,
answerable to the Crown through the colonial
officials. As the Jesuits respected the hierarchies
of the tribe, they gave a special formation and
attention to the caciques and their children, as
being the natural candidates for civil offices.
27

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
In each town there was a major (corregidor),
an Indian chosen by the caciques and confirmed
by the Spanish governor. The cabildo itself, the
town council, was formed of important Indians,
chosen by the Indians themselves, on account
of their personal reputation and capacities. It
exercised the three powers of government, as in
any other Spanish town, but under supervision of
the Fathers.
The Jesuits’ aim was to lead the Guaranies
gradually, not only to a virtuous Christian life,
but also to a social and political maturity that
would perhaps, one day, allow them to govern
themselves. It was a difficult, long-term struggle,
requiring constant supervision and guidance, due
to Guaraní character. But there were founded
hopes of success when, sadly, their effort was cut
short by the Jesuits’ expulsion.
Outside the town there was the tambo, a
guest-house for visitors. In fact, visitors were
discouraged, in order to protect the Indians from
foreign influences and to limit the curiosity and
rumors about the Jesuit operation.

the Fathers’ surveillance, with music and
song helping the work along. The produce was
stored in warehouses and held in trust for the
community, for the support of the sick, widows
and orphans, and also as reserve against famine,
for exchange for foreign goods, and for payment
of the tribute to the Crown.
The Jesuits received a small salary granted by
the Crown. All the property they administered
was Tupambaé—nothing belonged personally to
Jesuits. Anything taken from the common stores
for their personal use had to be paid, and if the
Indians did any personal work for the Jesuits,
they had to be paid for it.
Farther away from the towns there were
the estancias, cattle ranches, established in
the flatlands of southern Brazil and Uruguay,
worked by teams of Indians from each town,
and also yerbales, plantations of yerba mate,
an “energy drink” intended as an alternative for
drunkenness.

The Jesuits in the Towns
The Dependent Lands
Being so remote, the towns had to be selfsufficient, to prevent the Indians’ return to seminomadism and the loss of faith, and also to have
products to trade for what could not be obtained
or manufactured in the towns.
The Guaranies had no notion of property,
much less of private property or of ownership
of land. There was no need for it in their seminomadic past, but settled life demanded at least
rudimentary forms of individual possession of
land. To that end, the agricultural fields around
the towns were divided in two sections.
The abambaé, the “portion of man,” were the
equal plots of land allocated by the caciques to
each family. The yield of each plot was sufficient
for the support of a family, and it was the
absolute property of the Indians, to be used as
they pleased.
The Tupambaé, the “portion of God,” were
fields worked by all, taking turns for two days
every week. They yielded more than the private
lots, as the work was better organized, under
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To bring forth fruits of salvation, the Guarani
mission had to be seeded by the blood of
martyrs—that of the indefatigable founder of
many of the first reductions, Bl. Roque Gonzalez
de Santa Cruz, and his two companions, Juan del
Castillo and Alonso Rodriguez y Olmedo.
As the years passed, different “waves” of
Jesuits arrived. First were the Spanish and
Portuguese, founding the missions in accordance
to the requirements of the Spanish laws.
Later came the Swiss, Germans, Austrians,
and Bohemians, establishing industries and
factories, organizing trade. Finally, the Italians—
musicians, composers, architects, and printers.
All of them enriched the missions with their
particular gifts, but all were also extremely
capable of turning their hands to whatever
needed to be done, or to rapidly learn about
it… Fr. Domenico Zipoli, Tuscan, was the most
famous composer in Spanish South America.
Fr. Anton Sepp, Austrian, was a musician,
who taught the Indians at Yapeyú how to build
musical instruments, then taught himself to be
an architect, and in his spare time devised a

method for extracting iron ore for his foundries.
Fr. Buenaventura Suárez, a Spanish astronomer,
built a telescope with the aid of Indian craftsmen
and established an observatory in San Cosme.
In each town there was usually only one priest
in residence, although in theory there should
have been two—one remaining in town, while the
other was making visits and celebrating Masses
in outlying chapels.

A Lost Paradise
By mid-18th century, with Freemasonry in
ascendancy, the attacks against the Jesuits
increased, culminating in 1773 with the
suppression of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit
“reductions,” divided between the Spanish and
Portuguese Crowns and entrusted to religious
and lay administrators, promptly fell apart,
destroyed by their incomprehension of the Jesuit
methods, by greed and personal enmities, and
by the resistance or the flight of the Indians, to
which was soon to be added the upheaval of the
independence of the former Spanish colonies.
Perhaps the best unbiased epitaph to the
Jesuits’ achievement was written in 1901 by
Robert Cunninghame-Graham, a Scottish
Protestant and socialist, who, on both counts,
was not a friend of the Catholic Church or of the
Spanish Crown:
“In America, and most of all in Paraguay,
the Order did much good, and worked amongst
the Indians like apostles, receiving an apostle’s
true reward of calumny, of stripes, of blows,
and journeying hungry, athirst, on foot, in perils
oft, from the great cataract of the Paraná to the
recesses of the Tarumensian woods.
“All that I know is I, myself, in the deserted
missions, five-and-twenty years ago often have
met old men who spoke regretfully of Jesuit
times, who cherished all the customs left by the
Company, and though they spoke at secondhand,
repeating but the stories they had heard in youth,
kept the illusion that the missions in the Jesuits’
time had been a paradise.
“Into the matter of the Jesuits’ motives I do not
propose to enter, yet it is certain the Jesuits in
Paraguay had faith fit to remove all mountains,

as the brief stories of their lives, so often ending
with a rude field-cross by the corner of some
forest and the inscription ‘hic occissus est’ [‘here
he was killed’] survive to show.
“Rightly or wrongly, but according to their
lights, they strove to teach the Indian population
all the best part of the European progress of
the times in which they lived, shielding them
sedulously from all contact with commercialism,
and standing between them and the Spanish
settlers, who would have treated them as slaves.
These were their crimes…
“That the interior system of their government
was perfect, or such as would be suitable for men
called ‘civilized’ to-day, is not the case. That it
was not only suitable, but perhaps the best that
under all the circumstances could have been
devised for Indian tribes two hundred years ago,
and then but just emerged from semi-nomadism,
is, I think, clear, when one remembers in what
a state of misery and despair the Indians of the
encomiendas passed their lives.
“The Jesuits’ aim was to make the great bulk
of the Indians under their control contented, and
that they gained their end the complaints against
them by the surrounding population of slaveholders and hunters after slaves go far to prove.
“Nearly two hundred years they strove, and
now their territories, once so populous and
so well cultivated, remain, if not a desert, yet
delivered up to that fierce-growing, subtropical
American plant life which seems as if it fights
with man for the possession of the land in which
it grows. For a brief period those Guaranis
gathered together in the missions, ruled over by
their priests, treated like grown-up children, yet
with a kindness which attached them to their
rulers, enjoyed a half-Arcadian, half-monastic
life, reaching to just so much of what the world
calls civilization as they could profit by and use
with pleasure to themselves. A commonwealth
where money was unknown to the majority of
the citizens, a curious experiment by self-devoted
men, a sort of dropping down a diving-bell in the
flood of progress to keep alive a population which
would otherwise soon have been suffocated in its
muddy waves, was doomed to failure by the very
nature of mankind…”

29

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization

Isabel the
Conqueror
By Fr. Dominique Bourmaud

“So great is her knowledge of the arts of
peace and war, so keen her penetration, that
she seems to have all the virtues in the highest
grade that the female sex permits. She is
exceedingly religious and spends so much on the
ornamentation of the churches that the results
are incredible. She shows for the Observant
religious an admirable reverence and founds their
monasteries. During the conquest of Granada,
she was always with the army at the side of
the king, and much happened according to her
advice. She sits in the tribunal of judgment with
the King, hearing the cases and the pleas, and
resolving them with a settlement or a definitive
sentence. I believe that the Omnipotent sent this
most serene lady from Heaven to languishing
Spain, so that with her king the public good might
be restored to it. What else? She is very religious,
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very pious, and very gentle.”
These lines came from the German physician
H. Münzer after visiting her in Madrid in 1495
at the summit of her power. Isabel of Castile
and Ferdinand of Aragon, her devoted husband,
gained from the Pope the unique designation of
Reyes católicos—the Catholic Kings. This was
to reward them of the immense benefits they had
brought to the church, in Spain, and in the world.

Princess Isabel Against
All Castile
But things had not been an easy road for either
of them, much less for Isabel (1451-1504). With
her kingly father dead at a young age and her
Portuguese mother helpless, her half-brother

Henry IV called the impotent, was nominally
king of Castile. In this vacuum of legitimacy
and power, Isabel was a lone princess, ten
years old, surrounded with noblemen ready to
take the lion’s share and sow trouble. The ring
leaders of Castile strongly opposed her. Her
royal half-brother wanted to marry her to an old
and dissolute man. She spent days and nights in
prayer in the chapel, offering her life and saying
over and over again, “Lord, take either me or
him.” A few days later, Isabel’s prayers had been
answered literally. On another occasion she
was threatened with life-long imprisonment if
she refused the hand of the Prince of Portugal,
traditional enemy of Castile. But again, she
turned to prayer: “God is my refuge. I call upon
Him to keep me free from so great a shame and to
guard me from such cruel injury.”
Still young in years, she was exposed to
brutal Renaissance immorality surrounding the
royal family, to the court intrigues involving
a shameless Cardinal, a vile and perjurious
nobility. She had to oppose her half-brother the
king who tried to force his own bastard son as
the pretender to Castile. It was not until she
turned 17 when Henry and the rebel noblemen
signed the pact of Toros de Guisando that Isabel
was set as legitimate successor to Henry. She was
no longer a pawn in the chessboard of Spanish
power, but she was still alone and needed to
quickly find a prince to marry.
King Juan II of Aragon, a shrewd politician
and valiant soldier made a move to marry his son
Fernando to Isabel. Isabel was far too intelligent
to pass the opportunity of uniting Castile and
Aragon as the foundation of the great Spanish
nation. She needed a husband as her political
equal who could co-operate in ruling their
respective kingdom with one soul. They met for
the first time only five days before their wedding
which occurred in Valladolid on October 19, 1469.
She was 17 and he 16. Along with their marriage
vows, the princess and the prince swore fidelity
to govern their respective kingdoms of Castile
and Aragon in common accord when together,
and this, they did to the end. Here are her own
words: “by the grace of God, you and I conform to
each other in such a way that no difference can
be.”
31

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
When King Henry died abruptly in 1474,
setting Isabel as the legitimate queen of Castile,
chronicler Thomas Miller, in Henry IV, described
the momentous change: “Chill dawn was coming
in Segovia, and as young Isabel rose to greet it…
a new day was too breaking for the kingdom, a
day which was triumphantly to free it from the
rue and fraction we have sought to chronicle and
bring it on—healed, rectified and welded—to
might, to majesty, to sway of half the globe, to
unimaginable splendor.”
Isabel lost no time in profiting by the advantage
faithful Segovia gave her: she was crowned the
next day as queen of Castile and received the
allegiance of the subjects. It was indeed going
to be an uphill battle for the royal couple to
reconquer Castile as the point of the lance against
rebel factions and Portuguese insurgence for the
next few years, besides the Moorish presence in
the South.
At a given moment when the royal army
had sought flight without a fight, the wisdom
of these two young entwined military spirits
came forth. Isabel’s passionate words came
first: “He who begins nothing finishes nothing.
Those who do not recognize opportunity when
it comes, find misfortune when they do not look
for it.” But Fernando’s wisdom for once matched
hers. “Prudence is the god of battles. We submit
ourselves, above all, to the Most High Judge,
without Whom, as St. John says, nothing is done.
Perhaps He did not wish that these people perish
in this hour, but wishes that we seek final victory
with greater work, care, and diligence.”

The Catholic Kings Reform
Church and State
The next years saw much of the royal couple
ride horses and command armies in their
respective fronts of Roussillon or Asturias.
By 1476, they were largely free to bring their
kingdoms to peace and justice, rewarding
the good and castigating the evil. A crucial
appointment was the restoration of the Santa
Hermandad—the Holy Brotherhood—acting as a
national police force. Its jurisdiction was limited
to crimes: murder, assault, robbery, arson, and
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false imprisonment. Yet, much work was imposed
on them to restore order in lands where bands
of thieves had roamed with impunity for half a
century. The Cortes, Castile’s parliament, had
approved it hastily but Isabel and Fernando
were eager to put it into action throughout their
countries. Likewise, Isabel did not fear going
South to the troublesome Extremadura and
Andalusia to restore order and formal submission
to her as their Queen. When she started to
administer justice in the sumptuous Moorish
palace of the Alcázar of Seville, 4,000 malefactors
preferred fleeing from the city rather than face
the severe judgment of their Queen.
The reformation of the Church in the troubled
Renaissance was a real challenge, in times when
the papacy and any ecclesiastical office was seen
as a political power prior to a religious function.
But the Catholic Kings made sure to appoint local
bishops physically present in their own diocese
and eager to cleanse clerical and religious
abuses. A decisive factor was appointment of
Cisneros as Cardinal of Madrid, in replacement
of predecessors who had fought physically and
led armies. Ximénes de Cisneros had been given
a six-year jail sentence by the injustice of the
Cardinal of Madrid. There, he had learned to love
contemplation and was eager to second Isabel
to reform thoroughly the Church of Spain. Isabel
had also greatly empowered the religious orders
which blossomed in her now peaceful kingdom.
Along with it came the need for another
purification. The massacre of Otranto in Southern
Italy by the Turks led Spain to provide the military
help necessary to regain the city. It also sounded
the alarm to renewed prudence, especially
regarding the conversos. Half of the Southern
population had been non-Christian. Conversos
were those Spanish Christians who had converted
from Islam or Judaism, many of whom were
genuine, but others were suspect of simulating
conversion for greed. Thus, in the light of the
Otranto event, every false converso in Spain was
a potential traitor. On the other hand, any true
converso could be open to a false accusation just
to get rid of him, and many such men had already
rendered eminent service to the Queen. This was
the reason for setting up the Inquisition. Its main
object was to sort out the sincerity of converts,

and it had no authority over those who had
remained openly Jewish or Muslim.

1492: Triumph
and Discovery
The resumption of the longest crusade in
history, just short of 800 years, was also in the
mind of the Catholic Kings when they heard of
the Otranto ordeal and the death of their Turkish
Sultan, Mohammed the Conqueror. The last
stronghold which the Moors held in the Peninsula
was the kingdom of Granada. A stronghold it was
indeed, well protected in the North by rugged
mountains and in the South by high sea cliffs, and
in easy contact by sea with Muslim Morocco and
Algeria. After epical series of battles which lasted
ten years, by January 1492, Boabdil the Sultan
gave up his Alhambra to the Christians. Their
first action was to set up an altar for Mass to be
celebrated. Boabdil’s mother’s statement might
be legendary, but it certainly sounds a note very
much like her fiery spirit: “Weep as a woman the
loss of a kingdom you could not defend as a man.”
This year of grace 1492 saw also Isabel offer
Christopher Columbus her personal jewelry to
put to execution his plan of going Westward and
become the Admiral of the Ocean sea. Portugal
had rejected his offer because King John’s
maritime experts, the best at the time, saw that
his estimate of the size of the earth was absurdly
small. No ship imaginable in the 15th century
could have come close to crossing the huge water
span between Europe and Japan, had not the
unknown America been in the way. As he left
Lisbon, Columbus turned to the Spanish Court
after the triumph at Granada. Isabel favored
Columbus’ project, putting more trust in the
man than in his fantastic project. Isabel deeply
believed that fortune favors the brave, and she
felt that Columbus had what it took. He was a
man born and driven to discover a new world,
and such a discovery was bound to bring glory,
power, and wealth to the nation that favored
it. It is not for us to recount the epopee of this
momentous journey of 36 days through the
deep blue sea to the Caribbeans. But glory and
wealth and power Columbus certainly brought to

Catholic Spain of Isabel and Fernando. He was
to make another three trips to the new world,
give his name to some of the land discovered, but
mostly open heaven to millions of natives born
under the beneficent Spanish rule. And, twelve
years later, as she laid dying at Medina del Campo
in 1504, the last order signed by “Yo la Reina” was
to take the defense and liberty of the natives in
the new world.

Isabel’s Descendants
After the glorious deeds of Isabel, she was
to grow in the hardest of virtues, of patience in
sorrow, as she witnessed the undoing of much
of her endeavors. Isabel and Fernando raised
five children. Their only son had died within
six months of his marriage. Of her children’s
marriages, two of them were broken by death
within a year. Their second daughter Juana was
slowly showing marks of insanity. When their
fourth daughter, Princess Isabel, lay dying, her
mother was able to say: “All being mortal, they
had begotten a mortal, and would not fail to give
thanks to God for the period of life that had been
granted to her.” Her older sister Mary seemed to
have had the most normal marriage with Manuel
of Portugal.
The last of her children, Catalina, was also
the strongest. During the years of suffering
and mourning of Isabella, she was her constant
companion, and the one who resembled her
most. She learnt from her last years on earth
how to endure the most painful adversity. She
would need all that strength of character when,
as Catherine of Aragon and spouse to Henry
VIII of England, she would oppose his pretense
of invalid marriage which set England ready for
heresy and schism. Also, her grandson Charles
V, Roman emperor and Archduke of Austria,
was to have a great destiny in upholding the
faith in Germany riddled by the Lutheran heresy.
Likewise, his own son Philip II would have a
prominent role in defending Spain, the new world
and the Pope against the Turks and heretics.
The strong and bold spirit of Isabel, allied to
true Christian devotion, ran in the veins of her
descendants.
33

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The Father
of California
By Fr. William J. Slattery, Ph.D., S.T.L.

The priest establishing the mission at San
Diego in July 1769 didn’t look like someone
destined to become the Father of California.
Junipero Serra (1713-1784) stood just five feet
two inches tall, was already 56 years of age, and
suffered from asthma. Moreover, his left leg was
often inflamed with huge varicose ulcers and
he increasingly suffered from chest pains as a
consequence. Of course, the surgeon Don Pedro
Prat told him that some rest would greatly help
to control these ailments, but “rest” was a word
that somehow didn’t fit into the vocabulary of
Junipero Serra. Only as the great man lay dying,
was he heard to murmur, “Now I shall rest.”
Within 15 years, notwithstanding all the
roadblocks placed by health, conquistadores,
and unmapped territory, this organizational
genius and heroic heart, all at once explorer,

colonizer and builder of civilization, one of the
greatest pioneers ever to grace American soil,
working 18 hours a day, covered thousands of
miles to found the missions that would one day
become the cities of California.

What California Owes
to Its Father
Up and down Las Californias went this
frail, thin, warm-blooded priest, limping along
wearily over the rough paths. Those who walked
alongside him did so gladly, for they knew they
were walking with a great one of the earth, for
here there was not only an indomitable will, but
a heart of pure tenderness, a man who brought
peace to the just, but who breathed priestly fire
35

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
on politicians and soldiers alike if they disobeyed
his stern warning “Stay away from the Indians.”
California owes much to its father and to the
other 146 priests who poured out their lives in
the foundation and development of its first cities.
Sixty-seven of the priests lived and died in the
missions, while the others were either given other
assignments after their ten-year term came to
an end, or else had to return to Spain because of
illness. What the Protestant historian Herbert E.
Bolton said of the co-founder of San Francisco
could be said of all those priests:
“Fray Palóu was a diligent student, devout
Christian, loyal disciple, tireless traveler,
zealous missionary, firm defender of the faith,
resourceful pioneer, successful mission builder,
able administrator, and fair-minded historian of
California.”
Junipero Serra was born on the island of
Majorca and entered the Franciscans at the age of
16. After ordination he taught theology and became
known as a powerful preacher. Yet he yearned to
be a missionary in the New World, and, finally, in
1749, the order allowed him to cross the Atlantic
to Mexico City. In 1767 he began working in the
area of Baja California where missions had been
founded by the Society of Jesus.
Then in 1769 he traveled to Alta California. At
San Diego he established the first mission of the
21 that would eventually line El Camino Real,
the 600-mile (966 kms) road from San Diego in
the south to Mission San Francisco Solano in
Sonoma to the north. In rapid succession, whether
by him personally or under his administration,
eight others were set up: San Carlos Borromeo
(1770), San Antonio de Padua (1771), San Gabriel
Arcángel (1771), San Luís Obispo de Tolosa
(1772), San Francisco de Asís (1776), San Juan
Capistrano (1776), Santa Clara de Asís (1777), and
San Buenaventura (1782). His fellow priests later
launched a further 12 missions. In 1784, at 70 years
of age, after traveling 24,000 miles, the Father of
California died at Mission San Carlos Borromeo.
San Diego had already been baptized in honor
of San Diego de Alcalá in 1602 when a mapping
expedition, headed by Sebastián Vizcaíno, stopped
to celebrate Mass there on the saint’s feast day.
However, it was on July 16, 1769 that Father Serra
planted the cross on Presidio Hill, founding the
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Mission alongside the military post that had
been established three months earlier, making it
the first permanent European settlement on the
Pacific Coast of the USA. Settlers arrived in 1774,
and amidst ups and downs by 1797 the mission
had become the largest in California, with a
population of more than 1,400.
The site of present-day Los Angeles was
noticed by Fr. Juan Crespi, who, on August 2,
1769, wrote in his journal that it had the potential
for a fine settlement. He was a member of Gaspar
de Portola’s expedition ‘traveling through Upper
California looking for suitable mission sites.
The expedition entered what is now Los Angeles
through Elysian Park and was welcomed by eight
Native Americans. Fr. Crespi recorded in his
diary:
“After traveling about a league and a half
through a pass between low hills, we entered
a very spacious valley, well grown with
cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a
beautiful river from north-northwest, and then,
doubling the point of a steep hill, it went on
afterward to the south.…
Although they experienced three earth tremors
during their brief stay, the consensus was that it
was a “delightful place,” and one that had “all the
requisites for a large settlement.”

The Mission of San Gabriel
In 1771, Fr. Serra built the Mission of San
Gabriel Arcángel near Whittier Narrows, in what
is now known as San Gabriel Valley. Thanks to
the recommendation of Fr. Crespi, the Spanish
governor of California, Felipe de Neve, decided
to found a settlement there. On September 5,
1781, 44 settlers, “Los Pobladores,” accompanied
by two priests, four colonial soldiers, and the
Governor, established the town called El Pueblo
de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del
Río de Porciúncula. Two-thirds of these settlers
were mestizo (of racially mixed ancestry), a
tribute to the ethnic integration promoted by
Catholic priests in the Americas.
The site for modern-day San Francisco was
discovered on November 1, 1769 by Fr. Juan
Crespi and Don Gaspar de Portola, accompanied

by a group of soldiers, while traveling north from
San Diego. From November 6 and 11 the group
camped down around a giant redwood (palo
alto), and the priest noted in his journal that
there was “a very large and fine harbor.” Three
years later in 1772, Fr. Crespi and Lt. Pedro Fages
traveled along the east shore of San Francisco
Bay: the first white men to trek through the
area of modern Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond,
Hayward, and San Leandro.
On September 29, 1775, Juan Bautista Anza
and Fr. Pedro Font led 200 pioneering colonists
from Sonora and Sinaloa on the first stage of
a 1,600-mile journey to the Bay of St. Francis.
Fr. Font, a Catalan, was a man of many talents.
In addition to his knowledge of the backstaff
(English quadrant) that enabled travelers to
determine their latitude to within a few miles,
the priest also brought music to the Californian
nights of the tired travelers with his psalterio,
a type of harp. At Monterey he and Anza left the
group momentarily in order to travel further on
and select the precise site for the mission and
fort on San Francisco Bay. On March 28, 1776,
the Presidio (Fort) was founded. On June 29, Fr.
Francisco Palóu and Lieutenant José Joaquin
Moraga founded the Mission of San Francisco.
The settlement was popularly known as Misión
Dolores due to the nearby creek named Arroyo
de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. Pedro Font
wrote the following about the spot chosen for the
Mission:
“We rode about one league to the east [from
the Presidio], one to the east-southeast, and one
to the southeast, going over hills covered with
bushes, and over valleys of good land. We thus
came upon two lagoons and several springs of
good water, meanwhile encountering much grass,
fennel and other good herbs. When we arrived at
a lovely creek, which, because it was the Friday
of Sorrows, we called the [creek] Arroyo de los
Dolores … On the banks of the Arroyo … we
discovered many fragrant chamomiles and other
herbs, and many wild violets. Near the streamlet
the lieutenant planted a little corn and some
garbanzos in order to try out the soil, which to us
appeared good.”
The city now often called Ventura was
originally named San Buenaventura in honor

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
of the thirteenth-century Doctor of the Church.
On March 31, 1782 Fr. Junípero Serra founded
the mission, in the presence of the governor, Don
Felipe de Neve, and Lieutenant José Francisco de
Ortega.
The city of Santa Barbara owes its name to
Sebastián Vizcaíno, who, in 1602, named it out
of gratitude to the saint for her intercession
during a violent storm. On December 4, 1786,
Father Fermin Lasuen, successor to Father Serra,
founded the “Queen of the Missions” on a site in
a hilly area, a mile northeast of the fort, with a
splendid view of the valley and waters. Around
it clustered some adobe huts, the nucleus of the
future city. The priests also built a sophisticated
water system—still partly in use today—with
a stone aqueduct carrying the water from a
dammed creek in the hills to the mission, where
there was even a filtering system to provide safe
drinking water.

The Conversion of the Natives
Thanks to Fr. Junipero Serra many of the
Native Americans came to know and love Jesus
Christ. The priest had always sought, amidst all
the socio-political limitations of colonial Spain,
and the mindset typical of his era, to bring only
truth and goodness to the Native Californians.
One enterprise succeeded another in an overflow
of ardent efforts to offer the people self-sufficient
missions in which they might be protected from
the colonists and would prosper materially as
well as spiritually. By 1830, some 40,000 Catholic
Native Americans “were in possession of nearly
400,000 head of cattle, over 300,000 hogs, sheep,
and goats, 62,000 horses, and farms that yielded
over 120,000 bushels of grain plus the products of
orchards, gardens, wine presses, looms, shops,
and forges.”
The chief of the Kechis in San Luis Rey told
John Russell Bartlett, a United States government
commissioner working in California from 18501853, “that his tribe was large and his people
happy, when the good Fathers were there to
protect them. That they cultivated the soil,
assisted in rearing large herds of cattle, were
taught to be blacksmiths and carpenters, as well
38

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as other trades; that they had plenty to eat, and
were happy… Now they were scattered about, he
knew not where, without a home or protectors,
and were in a miserable, starving condition.”

The Formation of a
Catholic America
An examination of the feats of Eusebio
Kino, Junipero Serra, and other pioneering
priests shows not only how much they explored
and founded settlements, but also how they
contributed to the formation of a Catholic
culture within huge regions of Canada and the
United States, something that belies the mirage
of almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon Protestant
origins. The foundation of the first permanent
English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 and
the arrival of the Mayflower with the Pilgrim
Fathers in 1620 were certainly events of first rank
in the colonial beginnings of the nation. But to
the south and in the west another sophisticated
culture, a Catholic one, had already been born
with the establishment of the nation’s first city, St.
Augustine in Florida (1565), soon to be followed
in 1608 by Santa Fe at the foot of the Sangre de
Cristo Mountains.
Hence, while we take pride for instance in
the colonial architecture of New England, we
cannot but be enchanted by the pure lines of the
white Spanish-style buildings of Texas, Arizona,
New Mexico, and California. These we owe to
Catholics who bequeathed them to the nation
as a heritage that is just as characteristically
American as New England colonial architecture.
And what can an unprejudiced mind think as
he gazes on the lovely Misiones of California?
Surely, amidst the limitations of anything human,
they were the most effective racial-integration
establishments in U.S. history, where the Native
Americans found oases of security and where the
priests preserved knowledge of the languages,
lifestyles, and native handiworks of the Indians
through the dictionaries, grammars and histories
they composed.
A U.S. government commissioner, John Russell
Bartlett, asserted that the missions of California
accomplished so much “not by the sword, nor

Statue of Saint Junipero Serra at the Dolores Mission in San Francisco

by treaty, nor by presents, nor by Indian agents,
who would sacrifice the poor creatures without
scruple or remorse for their own vile gains…
the Society of Jesus (and other religious orders)
accomplished more towards ameliorating the
condition of the Indians, than the United States
has done since the settlement of the country.”
The track record of Catholicism in integrating
the races of the Americas, both North and South,
is unsurpassed. The more we are aware of
this—and of so many other achievements—by

our Catholic forefathers, the more forcefully will
resound within our hearts the call to emulation in
the present and future.

39

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization

Faith and
Civilization
According to Archbishop Lefebvre

By Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais

When the young Marcel Lefebvre, at 18 years old, entered the French Seminary in Rome, on via
Santa Chiara, he was under the direction of priests who were members of a missionary congregation,
the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, under the title of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Right away he felt
at ease, and gladly soaked in the spirit of the first founder, the Venerable Claude Poullard des Places
(+1705). The priests, formed in a piety grounded in theological Faith, that is to say, pure Roman doctrine,
often left, beginning in 1732, for the foreign missions in Canada, Indochina, and Senegal (1770).

Venerable Libermann
and Missionary Work
In 1848, the Congregation, suffering from
the decrease of its members due to the French
Revolution, joined with the young society
founded by Father Francis Liebermann, a
converted Jew, to send missionaries to Africa.
Fr. Liebermann explains to one of his
missionaries:
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“This mission does not consist solely in the
word of faith that we have to proclaim, but in
the initiation of peoples into our European
civilization. Thus, the faith, the mold of
Christians, on one hand, and the instruction, the
knowledge of agriculture and mechanical arts,
on the other, will lend a mutual support and will
propagate and perfect each other […] leading
the African people to take part in the benefits of
Christianity, according to the customs and the

civilization of the European people” (Letter of
October 19, 1846).
We have underlined the idealistic words of
the second founder, so strange as the Christian
civilization in Europe is almost moribund in 1846.
Certainly during this time the Church is full of
charity and missionary zeal; however society,
the “City,” is radically atheistic, destroyed by the
secular ideology of the Freemasons who are in
power in nearly all of the European countries.
Which civilization will missionaries be able to
import to Africa?
Well, a year later, the same Francis
Liebermann seems to have sanctified his idealism
and passed to an outlandish realism:
“Despoil yourself of Europe,” he writes to the
same missionary in Dakar. “Detach yourself from

its customs, from its spirit; become African with
the natives, and you will judge them as they ought
to be judged; become a native with the Africans
in order to form them as they ought to be, not
in the manner of Europe, but leave them what
is theirs; be to them like servants ought to be to
their masters, as to the customs, the genres, and
the habits of their masters” (Letter of November
19, 1947).
Fr. Pierre Blanchard explains that, by writing
in 1947 to his missionaries, the founder reveals
his definitive conception—we should say
matured—of one of the conditions: psychological,
social, spiritual, of evangelization, a condition
that he judges more important than the
promotion of a given type of civilization brought
to them. Thus, Europe ought to safeguard the

41

Theme How Catholics Built Civilization
“values,” that is to say, the virtues and proper
principles of what we ought to call the “African
civilization.”

it one of the goals of his priestly life: “I always
wanted to construct—to help construct—
Catholic societies.”

Years of Formation for
Marcel Lefebvre

Missionary Apostle

Without needing to experience such a
conversion, Marcel Lefebvre, from his seminary
years, learned from his dear teachers, Frs.
Henri Le Floch and Joseph Voegtli, that there
is no other true civilization than the Christian
civilization. It is very simple: the history of the
Church for two centuries (1715-1925) is but one
battle carried out especially by the Popes against
Liberalism, Socialism, and Modernism.
“It is Fr. Le Floch who truly made us
understand this battle waged by the Popes with
an absolute continuity, so as to try to preserve
the world and the Church from these calamities
which oppress us today. This was a revelation for
us.”
These “calamities” are the City (the State)
without God, atheistic, the free exercise of
false religions in the State; economic liberalism
which produces a miserable proletarian people,
victims of the greed of the bourgeoisie class;
and conversely a state interventionism which
confiscates all the initiatives of individuals and
intermediary bodies.
The teachings of Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX,
Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI outline these
errors with a remarkable continuity, which adds
authority to their teaching.
During this time (1925-1930), the Holy Roman
See was at the forefront of the struggle for the
reconstruction of a healthy society, of a true
civilization. This is what the priests and the
missionaries were to teach and inculcate to the
Catholic laity, namely the social reign of Our Lord
Jesus Christ. Only Christ can, through His grace,
heal the triple concupiscence of the soul derived
from original sin, namely, the concupiscence of
the eyes (greed), the concupiscence of the flesh
(lust) and the pride of life (ambition). Likewise,
only Christ can elevate souls to an amicable,
peaceful, and charitable conception of society.
Marcel Lefebvre retained this lesson and made
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As a new missionary in Gabon in 1932,
assigned to the Libreville Seminary, Father
Marcel Lefebvre formed his future priests with
this integral concept of Christian civilization,
conforming to the teaching of Pope St. Pius X to
the French Bishops in his letter on “Le Sillon” :
“No, venerable Brothers, there is not true
fraternity outside of Christian charity … If we
wish to arrive…at the highest possible sum of
well-being possible for society and for each of
its members, … the union of minds in the truth
is necessary, the union of wills in morals, the
union of hearts in the love of God and of His Son
Jesus Christ. This union is not realizable except
through Catholic Charity, which alone is able to
lead the people of the world in progress towards
the ideal of civilization.
“No, … we will not build the city other than
God builds it; we will not edify society if the
Church does not lay the foundations and direct
the work; no, civilization is not to be invented,
nor the new city to be built[.] She always has been
and is; it is Christian civilization and the Catholic
City. All we have to do is establish and restore
it without ceasing, upon the natural and divine
foundations, against the reviving attacks of the
unhealthy utopia, of revolt and of impiety: Omnia
instaurare in Christo—To restore all things in
Christ.”
In his Priestly Jubilee sermon at Paris on
September 23, 1979, Msgr. Lefebvre described
the social conversion obtained in Gabon in
the villages of the country by the Sacrament
of Baptism, that of Marriage, and the public
Christian life that was established there by the
work of the missionaries, of whom he himself is
one of the most active between 1938-1945:
“This Christian civilization, which penetrated
these more recently pagan countries, transformed
them. The populations have wished to give
themselves Catholic leaders. I was able myself to
assist with these changes and know personally

leaders of these Catholic countries. The Catholic
people desired to have Catholic leaders so that
they may also submit their government and all
their country’s laws to those of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, to the Ten Commandments.
“If France, at this time the so-called Catholic
France, if she had really fulfilled her role with
the (power) of Catholicism, she would have
otherwise assisted these countries in their faith
and if she had aided these countries in their faith,
these countries would not be as they are now,
menaced by Communism. Africa would not be
what it is today.”

A Flourishing African
Civilization
This is substantially what Msgr. Lefebvre,
Apostolic delegate in French Africa, said to Pius
XII during the audiences that this Pope granted
him:
“Most Holy Father, certainly, our Catholic
schools give to non-Catholics, to Muslims in
particular, an esteem of Catholicism, of the
Church, since we receive up to 15% of Muslim
students in Senegal for example. But the goal,
the end of our Catholic school is to form a
true Catholic elite for these young future
independent countries, in order that Catholic
leaders govern them. Isn’t this the fullness of
the Church’s mission, let’s be frank, which is not
solely religious, but also formative of all virtues,
including the social and political virtues?”
In the same sermon of 1979, the Archbishop
insists on the socio-political subject of his
mission, that is to say its Catholic nature,
essentially Catholic, of the civilization that the
missionaries ought to bring and plant in the
pagan countries.
“And there, I’ve seen, yes, I’ve seen what
the grace of the Holy Mass can accomplish, I
have seen it in the holy souls of some of our
Catechists. Pagan souls were transformed
by the grace of Baptism, transformed by the
assistance at the Eucharistic Sacrifice and by
Holy Communion. These souls understood the
mystery of the Sacrifice of the Cross and united
themselves to Our Lord Jesus Christ in the

offering of His Cross; they offered their sacrifices
and their suffering with Our Lord and lived as
Christians. I can provide names: Paul Ossima,
of Ndjolé, Eugene N’dong of Lambaréné, Marcel
Mebale of Donghila. And I shall continue with
a name from Senegal, Mr. Forster, Treasurer
in Senegal, chosen by his co-workers for this
delicate and important function because of his
honesty, because of his integrity. … I have been
able to see these villages become Christian,
transform themselves, not only I will say,
spiritually and supernaturally, but transform
themselves physically, socially, economically,
politically, because these pagan people that
they were became conscious of the necessity
to accomplish their duty, despite trials and
sacrifices; to keep their engagements, and in
particular the commitment of marriage. And then
the villages transformed themselves little by little
under the influence of grace, of the grace of the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and all the villages
wanted to have their own chapel, the visit of
the priest, missionaries! They were awaited for
with impatience in order to be able to assist at
Holy Mass, to be able to confess and receive
Holy Communion afterwards. Souls were thus
consecrated to God, Brothers, Sisters, Priests,
gave themselves to God, consecrated themselves
to God. Here are the fruits of the Holy Mass!”
This is Christian civilization: budding,
flourishing, fructifying: fruit of the preaching
of the faith and fruit of sanctifying grace, of the
virtue of Charity. Having seen this during 30
years in Gabon and 13 in Senegal, having himself
planted this Catholic faith and engrafted this
sanctifying grace, what could Msgr. Lefebvre
conclude, if not the full truth and the integral end
of true civilization alone!
“Omni instaurare in Christo. To restore all
things in Christ,” souls and political societies,
family life and economic life, the interior life and
the public life!
Translated by Lauren Marie Webb

43

Spirituality

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:

The
Offertory
Part Four

By Fr. Christopher Danel

In this article we examine the continuation and conclusion of the Offertory, presenting the work
of Msgr. Nicholas Gihr in his fundamental liturgical commentary The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:
Dogmatically, Liturgically, and Ascetically Explained. Msgr. Gihr was a priest 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 Saint Pius X. The early years of his work were contemporaneous
with the last years in the work of Dom Prosper Guéranger. (The English translation of his study appeared
in 1902; the original is: Gihr, Nikolaus. Messopfer dogmatisch, liturgisch und aszetisch erklärt. Herder:
Freiburg im Breisgau, 1877.)

In Spiritu Humilitatis
The Church prays that God would sanctify
not only the elements of bread and wine just
offered, but that He would also, by the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, make us wholly worthy to be presented
to Him as an eternal sacrificial gift. Thus the
priest in the name of all the faithful recites the
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following prayer of offering:
“O Lord, accept us, animated with a spirit of
humility and contrition of heart; and grant that
the Sacrifice we offer in Thy sight, this day, may
be pleasing to Thee, O Lord God.”
These words are taken from a longer
penitential prayer recited by the three young men
in the Babylonian furnace (Dan. 3:24-45). Praising

God, they walked about in the flames which did
them not the least harm, and because they were
prevented from offering exterior ritual sacrifices,
they offered themselves as a propitiatory sacrifice
for their sins and for those of their people, in
order to obtain mercy.

The Oblation Invocation
The Invocation, the prayer that the Eucharistic
Sacrificial gifts may be transubstantiated by
the operation of the Holy Ghost, is found in all
liturgies. But in the Greek and Oriental rites, it
follows the act of Consecration; in the Roman
it has its place among the oblation prayers
which precede the Consecration. The priest
solemnly invokes the Holy Ghost, whilst looking
heavenward, then at the word benedic (bless), he
traces the Sign of the Cross over the chalice and
Host, praying: “Come, Sanctifier, O Almighty and
eternal God, and bless this sacrifice, prepared
for the glory of Thy holy name.”
While in reality all three Divine Persons
accomplish the act of Consecration, it is most
frequently ascribed to the power of the Holy
Ghost. The proximate reason for this lies in the
great similarity between the accomplishment
of the Eucharist on the altar and the mystery of
the Incarnation of the Son of God in the bosom
of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, a relation often
commented on by the Fathers. The Incarnation
is, in a manner, renewed and enlarged in the
Eucharistic Consecration.
As it is said in the Creed that the Son of God
“became incarnate by the Holy Ghost, of the
Virgin Mary,” we also acknowledge that the
Holy Ghost, by His creative power as Lord and
Dispenser of life, changes the inanimate elements
of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood.
“How shall this be done,” says the Holy Virgin,
“because I know not man?” The Archangel
Gabriel, answering, said to her: “The Holy Ghost
shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most
High shall overshadow thee.” How shall the bread
become the Body of Christ, and the wine, mingled
with water, become the Blood of Christ? The Holy
Ghost shall overshadow each and shall effect that
which is beyond language and conception.

The Incensation
The oblation rites considered up to this point
are followed in Solemn and Sung Masses by
the incensing, which has been observed in the
Roman liturgy in this part of the Mass since the
eleventh or twelfth century. This incensing partly
differs from the one that took place at the Introit
of the Mass, since it has a richer rite and a more
significant symbolism. While the priest puts the
grains of incense on the live coals, he says:
“By the intercession of blessed Michael the
Archangel, standing at the right hand of the
Altar of Incense, and of all His elect, may the
Lord vouchsafe to bless this incense, and receive
it in odor of sweetness. Through Christ our
Lord. Amen.”
The prayers of the Church are always heard. By
incensing the sacrificial gifts, the Church would
emulate the celestial choirs in paying homage
to the Divine Lamb on the throne. St. Michael
stands at the right hand of the altar of incense
and presents the incense of prayer and sacrifice in
golden censers before the face of God. On Mount
Gargano St. Michael appeared with a censer in
his hand, on the spot where a church was to be
built; hence it is said of him in the Office of the
Church: “The angel stood before the altar of the
temple, having a golden censer in his hand”; an
unmistakable allusion is here made to the vision
of the heavenly altar which St. John saw (Apoc.
8:3-4).
The sacrificial gifts are first incensed by tracing
the censer three times in the form of a cross and
then three times in the form of a circle over the
Host and chalice, twice to the right and once
to the left to indicate that the Divine Sacrifice
may avail us both in prosperity and in adversity.
Meanwhile, the following prayer is recited: “May
this incense which Thou hast blessed, O Lord,
ascend to Thee, and may Thy mercy descend
upon us.”
The incensing is now continued and extended
to the Crucifix on the altar, to the relics or images
of the saints, to the altar itself, to the celebrant
together with his attendants, to the clergy and
people present. The words said while incensing
the Cross and altar are as follows (Ps. 140:2-4):
“Let my prayer, O Lord, be directed as
45

Spirituality
incense in Thy sight: and the lifting up of my
hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O
Lord, before my mouth, and a door round about
my lips. That my heart may not incline to evil
words, to make excuses in sins.”
The clouds of incense which envelop the altar
itself from all sides indicate that it becomes
a transcendent Mount Calvary, the mystical
mountain prefigured already in the Canticle of
Canticles: “Till the day break, and the shadows
retire, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and
to the hill of frankincense” (4:6). Inasmuch
as the clouds of incense then spread from the
altar throughout the entire house of God, they
symbolize the divine benediction of grace. Grace
is dispensed from the Sacrifice, first to the priest
and through his ministrations to the faithful. This
idea is conveyed in the ceremony of incensing,
first, the celebrant, then the clergy and finally the
faithful. At the same time the incensing of persons
co-operating in and assisting at the Sacrifice
contains a lesson and an admonition to them
ever to be mindful of their nobility as members of
Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost, that by their
conduct they may spread everywhere the good
odor of piety and godliness. That this incensing
is also to be understood as a mark of honor, as
a religious distinction in favor of all those who
are incensed, is self-evident from what has been
said of the signification and use of incense in
general. When the priest returns the censer to the
deacon, he says, “May the Lord enkindle within
us the fire of His love and the flame of eternal
charity. Amen.” And this wish the Lord will
assuredly fulfill, since He Himself came to bring
this heavenly fire upon the earth, and He desires
nothing more than that it be kindled in all hearts
and that it continue to burn without ever being
extinguished (Lk. 12:49).

The Lavabo
This washing dates from the earliest antiquity.
After receiving in his hands the offerings of
the people, the celebrant found it necessary
to cleanse his hands again by washing them,
and especially the fingers which were to touch
the Most Blessed Sacrament; nevertheless, the
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symbolic signification of this action is mainly
taken into consideration. The outward washing
of hands symbolizes the interior purification of
the whole man from all that sullies the soul and
body; the circumstance of washing in reality only
the tips of the consecrated fingers (both thumbs
and both forefingers) is supposed to signify that
the officiating priest should cleanse his heart
and preserve it undefiled from even the slightest
faults. The verses of the Psalm that the celebrant
recites in the meantime (Ps. 25:6-12) are:
“I will wash my hands among the innocent:
and I will compass Thine altar, O Lord. That
I may hear the voice of praise, and tell of all
Thy wondrous works. O Lord, I have loved the
beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy
glory dwelleth. Take not away my soul, O God,
with the wicked, nor my life with men of blood.
In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand
is filled with gifts. But as for me, I have walked
in my innocence: redeem me, and be merciful
unto me. My foot hath stood in the right way: in
the churches I will bless Thee, O Lord. Glory be
to the Father, etc.”
“I have loved the beauty of Thy house.” The
priest is consumed with zeal for the house of the
Lord; he adorns it as worthily and as splendidly as
possible, since the King of Glory does not disdain
to dwell so silently and so hidden near us and
among us. The place where the Savior has built
His throne of grace is the cherished place of the
priest; there he spends the most delightful hours;
he gathers there the most precious graces.

Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas
After the washing of the hands, the priest
returns to the middle of the altar; full of
confidence he raises his eyes to the Crucifix,
presently lowering them again; he then bows and
prays:
“Receive, O Holy Trinity, this Oblation, which
we offer unto Thee, in memory of the Passion,
Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and in honor of the blessed Mary ever
Virgin, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy
Apostles Peter and Paul, of these and of all the
Saints; that it may be to their honor and to our

salvation: and may they vouchsafe to intercede
for us in heaven, whose memory we celebrate on
earth. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.”
In this prayer the previous oblation of the
Host and chalice is developed and perfected by
the incorporation of new aspects. Firstly, while
the first two Oblation prayers were directed to
the Father and the Invocation was made to the
Holy Ghost, the Church now offers the Sacrifice
prepared on the altar to the Holy Trinity.
Secondly, while it is self-evident that the Sacrifice
of the Mass can and may be offered solely to the
triune God, nevertheless, by an ecclesiastical
ordinance which dates back to Apostolic times,
frequent mention is made of the saints during
the celebration of Mass; by this, great honor and
distinction are evidently shown them. This we
intend to express by saying, that we offer this
Sacrifice “in their honor.” These words, indeed,
signify the fruit accruing to the denizens of
heaven through the Holy Sacrifice; the Mass being
also offered to obtain for the saints the spread of
their veneration on earth.

The Orate Fratres
After the Suscipe sancta Trinitas has been
concluded, the priest again summons all the
faithful by turning to them and saying the words:
“Pray, brethren” (orate, fratres) in an audible
voice; then while again turning to the altar, he
continues in silence, “that my sacrifice and yours
may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty.”
The Eucharist is the Sacrifice of the whole
Church (“my sacrifice and yours”); the laity
partake in a variety of ways and in different
degrees in the offering of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, while the priest in their name and
for their benefit alone completes the sacrificial
action itself. Thus priest and people are at the
altar bound together in a communion of sacrifice;
and they offer not only the Host and chalice, but
themselves also. In compliance with the invitation
of the priest, the acolyte answers in the name of
the faithful:
“May the Lord receive the Sacrifice from thy
hands, to the praise and glory of His name, to
our benefit, and to that of all His holy Church.”

The Secret
The Orate fratres here takes the place of the
customary Oremus, which was already said
before the Offertorium, and introduces us to the
prayer called the Secret. The prayer has this name
because, from time immemorial, it has been said
in an inaudible voice (voce secreto). Thus, Secret
can be translated as the “silent prayer” (oratio
secreta).
In regard to their construction, the Secrets
harmonize perfectly with the Collects, but their
contents are entirely distinct. The Sacrifice is not
referred to in the prayers of the Collects, which
ask some special grace regarding the mystery of
the day celebrated; the Secrets, on the contrary,
are oblation prayers, prayers that contain almost
the same thoughts as those expressed in the
Offertory. In the whole oblation rite, including
the Secret, two closely connected petitions are
present: first the petition that the sacrificial
gifts prepared on the altar be accepted, blessed,
dedicated, sanctified and consecrated; then the
petition that the abundant and manifold graces
of the Sacrifice be bestowed. After the priest has
recited the Secret reverently in silence, in ending
the last prayer, he raises his voice, saying aloud or
singing: “per omnia saecula saeculorum” (world
without end).
To this majestic conclusion the acolyte or choir
answers in the name of the people “Amen,” that is,
may what the priest has implored in secret of God
be granted and fulfilled in every respect. This was
done by the first Christians and has been done
ever since; the Faithful restricted themselves to
answering “Amen” after the priest had prayed
in silence, thus making an act of faith, really
sublime in its simplicity; as if they said: we know
not what is best for us, but God knows it; now the
Church has prayed, for in her name and by her
commission the priest has prayed; the Church
has placed on his lips the prayers which he has
recited, we assent thereto, whatsoever they may
contain, we can desire nothing better than what
the Church desires, we can say nothing better
than what the Church utters. So be it: Amen.

47

Spirituality

There is No
Greater Love
By a Benedictine monk

“This is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you. Greater love than
this no man hath, that a man lay down his life
for his friends. You are my friends if you do the
things that I command you” (Jn. 15:12-14).
Our Lord invites His disciples to lay down their
life for their friend. He clearly states that there
is no greater love than this. Following Christ
crucified, the sacrifice of one’s entire human life
for the love of God, our greatest friend, is the
most perfect way to obey God. There are many
ways that a man or woman can accept this divine
commandment of charity. The married life asks
in a certain way that the spouses sacrifice their
lives for their children and for each other. Many
live a celibate life of perfect chastity in the world,
sacrificing their lives for some charitable work.
Soldiers also, in a certain way, sacrifice their
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lives for their country. However, two of the more
perfect ways of “laying down one’s life” for one’s
neighbor are the cloistered religious life and the
life of a missionary. These two states of life have
essentially built Christendom.
The missionary builds Christendom from
the inside out. From the spiritual ordering of
souls flows the necessary order for the material
advancement of society. The true goal of all
missionary activity is the sanctification of souls.
Only after establishing the general practice
of virtue can the missionary begin to see the
material benefits of society. If the cannibal has
not learned to stop eating his neighbor, or the
barbarian to stop waging war and pillaging the
innocent, there can be no real harmony or any
kind of structure in society. Sin and vice, which
are the fruits of a disordered self-love, are the

most powerful elements of self-destruction of any
society. The pagan soul must first recognize that
God has the right to ask of him great sacrifices
concerning his personal life. Only then would he
be capable of thinking charitably of his neighbor.
This is where the contemplative life comes to
the assistance of the missionary. No human being
can enter into the heart of man. The interior life
of a soul belongs exclusively to God, our Creator.
By the sacrifice of their entire life, the religious
pleads with God for the salvation of the souls.
Through the prayer and sacrifice of the religious,
God enters the barren wasteland of souls to
give them His grace using the missionary as His
instrument. The missionary cannot enter the soul
of his faithful and neither can the contemplative,
but God, as Master of that soul, has the right of
entry.
In 1985, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre blessed
the cloister of the Carmelite sisters in the United
States. In his sermon he explained the life of a
Carmelite monastery: “The Carmel is a house
of sacrifice and prayer.” The house illustrates
the family life of the contemplative religious
living in the “home” of their community. The
sacrifice of their whole life is poured out at the
foot of the cross in union with the sacrifice of
Our Lord. Their mortification purifies their souls
and those of their fellow man. Their prayer is
offered for the glory of God and the salvation of
souls. They are closely united with the prayer
of the missionary priests, almost sharing the
priest’s prayer mentioned by the prophet Joel:
“Between the porch and the altar the priests,
the Lord’s ministers, shall weep and shall say:
Spare O Lord, spare thy people, and give not
Thy inheritance to reproach, that the heathen
should rule over them.”
The Kingdom of God is founded upon this spirit
whether we are layman, religious or missionary.
Unfortunately, the modern world built the ‘City
of fallen man’ by negating these values. The
modern family may have a comfortable house
as a shelter, but they often do not have a home
with a family. The idea of sacrifice is eliminated
from their comfortable life where pleasure is
the only real goal of their existence. Prayer has
been exchanged for complaining, despair, and a
type of mocking of God. Our modern society has

built a civilization on the ruins of the Catholic
notion of Christendom. We have established a
comfortable homeless shelter where the parents
abort their children and practice euthanasia to
eliminate their own parents, where sensuality of
personal gratification is the reference point for
all decisions to be taken, and where a despairing
blasphemy mocks our Creator. The “house of
sacrifice and prayer” has become “a homeless
shelter of sensuality and blasphemy.”
Our Lord teaches us that the Kingdom of
God is within us. He also tells us to seek first
the Kingdom of God and all else will be given to
us. For the rebuilding of Christendom, we must
first of all establish Our Lord as the King of our
souls, become His friend and lay down our lives
for Him. We must live habitually in His “house of
sacrifice and prayer.”
Christendom, or the spiritual kingdom, is the
real building of civilization. “…Hallowed be Thy
name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven…”
49

The Autun Cathedral is a magnificent display of Romanesque
Art and Architecture. The sculptures created by Gislebertus
successfully integrate biblical iconography relating to the New
and Old Testaments with ease and amazing artistic ability. The
size and quality of the tympanum of the Last Judgment, and the
lintel of the Temptation of Eve are impressive and exquisitely
detailed pieces of art.

Christian Culture

Autun
Cathedral
By Dr. France-Marie Hilgar

The monument which can be admired today was not originally built as a cathedral. A cathedral
had already been built not far away in the 5th century, right opposite the lateral doorway. This first
cathedral was probably built in the form of a basilica, with round columns and an apse decorated with
mosaics. Successive bishops took care of its maintenance and decoration. The cathedral was altered
and reconstructed many times throughout the centuries until its ruinous state forced its demolition in
the XVIIIth century. All that now remains is a fine archway and a 14th century chapel. The Monastery
of Vézelay was established on land belonging to the diocese of Autun. Relics of Mary-Magdalen were
venerated there.

Rapid Progress on
a New Church
Progress was rapid when the new church was
built. By 1146 the entire structure was finished
with the exception of the porch which was added
a few years later. From the cathedral square the
visitor cannot really imagine being in front of a
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Roman church. The remarkable spire was built in
the late 15th century, lightning having destroyed
the original Roman tower of which no trace, not
even a drawing, now remains. A Cardinal decided
on the construction of the spire which has
watched over the inhabitants of Autun for more
than 500 years. The 14 chapels which line both
sides of the nave were built in the 16th century.
Viewed from the square only two traces of the

building’s Roman origins can be seen: the small
gallery under the roof of the nave and the west
portal. Since 1766 the lateral doorway has been
without a carved tympanum. It was in fact sold to
a local builder who used it in the construction of
houses throughout the town. The famous “Eve”
was discovered in 1866, by chance, in the wall
of a house in the main square of Autun. The two
towers and the portico were built in the late 12th
century, the towers being modified in the 13th
century, and partially rebuilt in the 19th century
on the model of the towers at Paray-le-Monial.
The graceful fountain next to the cathedral dates
partially from the 16th century. It is dedicated to
St. Lazarus, patron saint of the church.
The imposing porch housing the tympanum
of the Last Judgment is the most remarkable

aspect of the entire cathedral. The works of the
sculptor are characterized by their elegance,
their distinction, and their sobriety. His works
have been widely imitated throughout Burgundy,
unfortunately not always successfully. One thing
in particular, throughout the cathedral all the
decorations bear his touch. This aesthetic unity
of sculpture is rarely equaled outside Autun.
The style of sculpture, idealized, deliberately
contemptuous of anatomy, has not always been
appreciated during the successive centuries.
In 1766, the canons decided that the carvings
were mediocre and childish, and had the
tympanum filled with a layer of plaster, without
realizing that, by doing so, they would preserve
this work of art from vandalism during the
revolutions. In 1837 another priest had the

53

Christian Culture
inspiration of scratching away the plaster: he
found the original tympanum in a perfect state
of conservation. Only the head of Christ was
missing: being in relief, it had hindered the work
of the plasterers, so they simply hacked it off.
It was finally replaced in its original position in
1958. Description of the tympanum: on the right
is depicted the “Resurrection of the Damned”;
details to note are the two hands of the devil
seizing a sinner by the throat, Impurity being
symbolized by a female figure whose breasts are
devoured by two serpents, and Avarice shown
by a man whose fortune is hung from his neck.
On the same lintel to the left are the Elect, far
more numerous than the Damned. At the extreme
left, two Bishops carrying their crooks make
their way to Heaven. Towards the center are
two pilgrims one of whom is from Compostela
and wears a Saint James scallop-shell on his
haversack. A giant figure of Christ in His Glory,
flanked by four angels presides over the ultimate
ceremony. To the right can be seen the weighing
of souls with an elegant figure of Saint Michael
applying his weight to one side of the scales so it
will tip in the right direction despite the efforts
of a devil to make it tip the other way. At the
extreme right several devils accomplish their
sinister task by plunging their victims into Hell.
Above are the Apostle St. John, holding his
Gospel, and his brother St. James, both sitting
in the place of honor, on the other side of Christ,
to the left. The other Apostles watch their
Master, Christ, approvingly, all except Saint
Peter who turns his back in order to control
the entry into Heaven, depicted as a series of
small arcades. Above the Apostles is seated
the Mother of Christ, jointly presiding over this
solemn ceremony. The medallions surrounding
Christ depict, from the left, the first two of
the four seasons, then the work of the twelve
months of the year, and the signs of the Zodiac,
beginning with the month of January, shown as
a country man warming his feet whist cutting
himself a slice of cake. He is visibly happy and
judging by the size of the cake is well nourished.
At the far right next to the last two seasons the
last medallion shows the month of December,
with the farmer armed with an axe, preparing
to slaughter two large pigs, in preparation for
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the Christmas festivities. The eighth medallion
toward the left shows the winegrower treading
his grapes while eating a bunch. The three
statues on the central pier date from the 19th
century. They depict Saint Lazarus and his two
sisters, Martha and Mary-Magdalen.

A Powerful Interior
A surprise awaits the visitor on entering
the cathedral. The shape of the vaulting and
the fluting applied to the pillars are rather
disconcerting. This fluting, and the triforia
all round the interior are above the level of
the arches. They are inspired simply by the
decoration of some Roman structures which
could be seen at that time. Some of these can
still be admired. As for the vaulting, it should
be stressed that it is by no means Gothic; there
are no crossed diagonal ribs. It is merely an
equilateral form of semi-circular Roman vaulting.
This style of architecture prevented the vaulting
from collapsing from the center and, in theory,
enabled it to be far more solidly constructed.
This type of vaulting was known as Burgundian
Roman and spread throughout Europe and even
to the Near and Middle East. Nonetheless the
Burgundian architects were extremely careless.
By wanting direct lighting of the nave, they built
side aisles of very low elevation compared to
the principal vaulting. Flying buttresses had not
yet been invented, and so the side aisles acted
as buttresses. As they were not tall enough, the
vault was left to its own devices. The thrust not
being transmitted through the center of the vault,
it was applied laterally to the side walls which,
being insufficiently protected gradually began to
move outwards. Luckily it took a century to reach
a dangerous degree. By that time, the technique
of flying buttresses had been perfected, so by the
mid-13th century they were added to stabilize
the structure. Although lacking in elegance,
they were efficient. In the 19th century, afraid
of another relapse, it was decided to lighten the
vaulting even further and so to this day it no
longer represents a danger. The upper part of the
choir was rebuilt in the 15th century, following
the collapse of the Roman tower, struck by

lightning. The upper windows date from the 19th
century, and the stained glass windows of the
two lower levels from 1939.
It is well worth touring the cathedral to admire
the carved capitals, most of which are worthy of
study.
1. A griffon stabbed by a man lying on the
ground.
2. Saint Vincent protected by two eagles. Saint
Vincent, a late 3rd-century Spanish deacon
was abandoned, naked, after his martyrdom
in order for his body to be devoured by wild
animals. An eagle intervened to protect him,
but for the sake of symmetry, the sculptor used
two.
3. The ascension of Simon the Magician. Simon
was a wizard who lived at the time of the
Apostles. He tried to buy from Saint Peter the
secret which enabled him to perform miracles.
Saint Peter refused. Simon tried to prove his
superiority by rising into the sky. He fitted
wings to his arms and legs. The carving shows
him rising into the air in the presence of Saint

Peter, holding his key, and of Saint Paul.
4. The fall of Simon the Magician. Saint Peter and
Saint Paul having prayed, Simon falls abruptly
to the ground, much to the amusement of a
devil who laughs contemptuously. This is one
of the finest carvings in the cathedral. Simon
the Magician is the patron of the Simoniacs,
those persons who pretend to buy spiritual
powers with money.
5. The fourth tone of music. Gregorian chant,
practiced since the late Middle Ages, consists
of eight tones. At Cluny, the figure carrying
handbells represents the fourth tone, that of
sadness. At Autun it may depict a music lesson
for two children.
6. Washing of the feet.
After visiting the Cathedral, it is essential to
visit the nearby Rolin Museum. There can be
found amongst other exhibits the famous “Eve”
from the lateral doorway, the remains of the tomb
of Saint Lazarus, the Virgin of Autun, and the
paintings by Maitre de Moulins showing Cardinal
Rolin kneeling before the Virgin and Child.

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Christian Culture

These Ruins
Are
Inhabited
Catholic Civilization Versus
“the Libido for the Ugly”

By John Rao, D.Phil. Oxon.

A Zone of Habitation
“Here, dull and dreary people inhabit a dull
and dreary landscape.” This was the sole line
written to me by a downcast friend on a postcard
depicting what had to be labeled a “zone of
habitation” rather than an honest to goodness
city. Jobless, the poor wretch had been forced
to take up work and lodgings amidst these ruins
of civilization for the punishment of his sins.
Abandoned to his barbaric, atomistic fate without
any sursum corda from the zone of habitation
around him was already sufficient torture on its
own. Still, what pained him much more was the
fact that his fellow citizens took such blind pride
in their soulless environment that they actually
marketed it on the souvenir card that he posted
to me.
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Students of Church history know that a
somewhat equivalent “postcard” is available
to them for their research purposes, this one
“mailed” to them from varied circles of zealous
19th-century European Catholic clerics and
laymen, particularly those working out of
Germany, France, and Italy. All these circles
depict in their academic postcard a body of
Christendom in ruins, its soul extracted from
it not only by the Revolution and the spirit of
the Enlightenment lying behind it, but also the
rather pathetic acquiescence of the Catholic
Establishment to the work of naturalist
destruction, already in the decades before 1789.
There is, however, one obvious and crucial
way in which this “postcard from the past”
differs from the one sent me by my friend in our
time. Its picture was meant to evoke revulsion

over the reduction of Christendom to a “zone of
habitation.” Those nineteenth century thinkers
and activists who marketed it hoped to stir up
anyone contemplating what it depicted to a
massive work of rebuilding the kind of civilized
Catholic society needed to help the human person
“lift up his heart” to the truth, goodness, and
beauty of things eternal rather than lower it into
the swamp of fallen nature.
Such a rebuilding project, they argued, could
only be undertaken properly when men’s eyes
were aimed on Christ, His Incarnation, His
Mystical Body, and the truth and grace provided
through them. This was because “every good
and perfect gift is from above, coming down
from the Father of lights” (Jas. 1:17). The
Incarnation’s confirmation of the innate value
of God’s Creation coming from above, made
them recognize that the contemporary ruins of
Christendom could not be completely destroyed;
they were “still inhabited,” offering some building
blocks for the work at hand. With eyes aimed
upwards, they hoped to nurture the existing,
indestructible goods of nature while correcting
their sinful failings and transforming them in
Christ, thereby constructing a new Catholic
world on the rubble of its butchered predecessor.
In this new Christendom, the state, the economic
order, and even—as the Nazarenes, a group of
artist-converts founded by Johann Friedrich
Overbeck (1879-1869) and working in Rome
fervently claimed—the beauty expressed by the
painter, the sculptor, the architect, the musician,
and the poet, playwright, and novelist could rise
to the highest level imaginable (George Goyau,
L’Allemagne religieuse, I, 237, 248), providing
the best possible natural civilization suitable
for lifting up the hearts of individuals seeking
eternal life.

Building a New Christendom
Such Catholic builders of the new Christendom
issued two practical warnings regarding this
work, the first of which was that no one could
take for granted that it could somehow be
mechanically guaranteed, since the constant
temptation to sin in a fallen universe would

remain a basic fact of life for each and every
one of us until the end of time. Moreover,
the naturalist, Enlightenment, revolutionary
insistence on having us look for “every good
and perfect gift” from below rather than from
above had politically and socially intensified the
enticement to reject transformation in Christ
wherever it had gained a foothold. A naturalist
project of this kind worked overtime to put man
and society “to sleep” regarding the pull of sin,
encouraging a “spirit of independence” from the
truths of reality that could not help but fuel a
kind of “libido for the ugliness” of wickedness,
spiraling farther and farther away from the
beauty of God and God’s Creation, and ending in
the construction of “zones of habitation” rather
than civilized societies. This citation from the
“circle” around the Jesuit journal La Civiltà
Cattolica makes that point nicely:
“Starting with the words ‘I am free’ and
their newly found spirit of independence, men
began to believe in the infallibility of whatever
seemed natural to them, and then to call ‘nature’
everything that is sickness and weakness; to
want sickness and weakness to be encouraged
instead of healed; to suppose that encouraging
weakness makes men healthier and happy; to
conclude, finally, that human nature possesses
the means to render man and society blissful on
earth, and this without faith, grace, authority, or
supernatural community…since ‘nature’ gives
us the feeling that it must be so” (La Civiltà
Cattolica, I, 6, 1851, 497-498).
A second “builders’ warning” concerned
the proper hierarchy of values. Crucially
important as the construction of a civilized
Catholic society was in aid of the sursum corda.
Individuals seeking eternal life with God need
to get from the environment in which they live.
The effort to reconstruct Christendom as such
had to be understood as an indirect endeavor.
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” had to be
the activist’s order of the day, since it is only
through the human person primarily aiming
at his transformation in Christ that the rest of
the world could secondarily go through the
crucially necessary purgation provided by the
truth and the grace of the Incarnation at his
hands. To cite La Civiltà Cattolica once more,
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Christian Culture
there would be a real perfection of the world
around us only when it was “transfigured vitally
through individuals,” “by means of the individual
operation of each member of the faithful…
divinized by grace” (La Civiltà Cattolica, ii, 9,
1855, 134-135; iv, 3, 1859, 414-426).

Christianity and Civilization
In other words, Christ’s mission was not to
build a civilization but to make men Sons of God
who, in following His teaching could not help but
work to that civilizing end anyway. Christianity
was not to be taken seriously because a beautiful
civilization bore its name—this was the error of
a contemporary of the circles we are considering,
René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848). Rather, it
was to be taken seriously because it was true,
and it created a beautiful civilization because its
faithful took these truths to heart and followed
them. To think and act otherwise would be to
invert the hierarchy of values and set oneself up
for the kind of fall that we will address below.
One poignant way of coming to grips with the
complex hopes of the project under discussion,
along with the perils of neglecting the “builders’
warnings” concerning how its foundation might
collapse, is by taking a closer look at one of
the most important among the circles involved
in this work. This was the Congregation of St.
Peter, which the charismatic Abbé Félicité de
Lamennais (1782-1854) assembled at his estate
of La Chênaie to study methods for resuscitating
dormant Christendom through vigorous Catholic
Action. The Mennaisiens, as their opponents
contemptuously labeled them, included in their
ranks a large number of men who were to play
major roles in all fields, clerical and lay, for many
decades to come, often vociferously so.
Lamennais was primarily an activist, with
the real theologian and “all around intellectual”
of the operation being the Abbé PhilippeOlympe Gerbet (1798-1864), who from 1854
onwards served as the Bishop of Perpignan.
Gerbet always remained deeply inspired by his
mentor’s initial zeal for transforming the world
in Christ. In 1836, along with several other
former members of the La Chênaie circle, he
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founded a religious, philosophical, scientific,
and literary monthly review of eighty pages
an issue entitled L’Université catholique (The
Catholic University), designed to serve as an
institution of higher education for the faithful,
substituting for the state structures, which
were highly secular. Through forty published
volumes in the nearly twenty years of his
involvement with it, this journal offered courses
in five realms deemed necessary to building the
New Christendom, from letters and the arts to
religious, philosophical, psychological, physical,
mathematical, and social sciences—discussions
of the nature of a Catholic economic order
being particularly important in the last of these
categories and destined to have a wide influence
in the future.
The circle at La Chênaie was very much
concerned with freeing the effort to build a new
Christian civilization through transformation
of all things in Christ from the political
constraints that even self-proclaimed Catholic
states, reflecting the continued influence of
both ancient Regalism and Enlightenment
Naturalism upon them, still sought to maintain.
The tragedy of Lamennais lay in the fact that his
passionate concern for breaking through these
chains caused him to join the chain makers
himself, forging these in a new and yet more
insidious naturalist fashion that earned him
excommunication in 1834 but survived to emerge
triumphant in our own time.

A Distorted Vision
His chain-making error was connected with
the nineteenth century concept of historical
“palingenesis” or successive “rebirth.” The Comte
Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and the school
of thought founded by him are the most famous
promoters of the palingenesist vision. Horrified
by the destructiveness of the Revolution, the
Saint-Simonians argued that valuable forces in
the progress of human life could never be tossed
into the rubbish heap of history. Christianity was
perhaps the most important of these. Even when
there have been moments in time that it looked as
though it were disappearing, it has always been

reborn anew, but in different form, preserving
what is of eternal value to it at base.
Since the Saint Simonians believe man and
society to be in a continuous progress from
theological to philosophical to “positive” (i.e.,
naturally demonstrable) scientific, technological
modes of expression of the truth, Christianity,
in our present, positive, scientific, technocratic
“third age of humanity” must be reborn again to
reflect its requirements. Christianity, Science,
and Technocracy must all work as one. In other
words, the modern rebirth of the religion of the
Father of Lights has to take on its contemporary
expression by looking downwards rather than
upwards, and by baptizing the mechanical,
technocratic civilization that will come into being
under its banner as just as spiritual and beautiful
as past Christian cultures.
Lamennais did not become a palingenesist in
Saint-Simonian form. In his passion to be freed
from the constraints upon transforming all
things in Christ imposed by obviously politicallymotivated governments and the all too many
clerical forces painfully subservient to them,
he came to the conclusion that the liberation
of the Catholic voice required a new rebirth of
society in which Church and State would be
totally separated from and therefore incapable
of corrupting one another. This new society
would nevertheless be much more Christian
than its predecessor, because it would be guided
and governed by the Voice of the vital, energetic
Catholic People, expressed democratically,
whose vitality and energy could not help but
transmit the infallible will of the Holy Spirit.
“How far we still are from that religion of
devotion, of self-forgetfulness for the good of all;
in sum, of that fraternity of which one speaks
so much! I only find it in the People; the People
surround the cradle of the future, just as the
shepherds at Bethlehem surrounded that of the
God about to be born. Blessings on the little ones,
the simple of heart. It is those who will save the
world” (Mayeur, Histoire du christianisme, x,
p. 866).
But to his dismay, Lamennais could not rouse
even the Catholic People of his day to do its
God-given work of giving birth to a new Christian
Commonwealth. It remained for Lamennais, who

knew himself to be the Prophet of the Will of
the People once awakened, to be the energetic,
vital, popular Voice of the Holy Spirit in the
meantime. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), another
democratic revolutionary who had no interest in
the Catholic Faith as such worked to bolster him
in his palingenesist mission:
“Why do you only write books? Humanity
awaits something more from you…Do not deceive
yourself, Lamennais, we need action. The thought
of God is action; it is only by action that it is
incarnated in us…So long as you will be alone,
you will only be a philosopher and a moralist in
the eyes of the masses; it is as a priest that you
must appear before it, a priest of the future, of the
epoch which is beginning, of that new religious
manifestation of which you have a presentiment,
and which must inevitably end in that new heaven
and new earth which Luther glimpsed three
centuries ago without being able to attain it, since
the time had not yet come” (Mayeur, X, p. 893).

Overcoming the Problem
Ironically, the Abbé and then Bishop Gerbet
played a major role in identifying the problem
with his former mentor’s thinking, both through
his elaboration of a Catholic Social Doctrine
separating the wheat from the chaff in the project
of rebuilding Christendom, as well as by being
one of the early promoters of what was to become
Blessed Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors of 1864.
Like other activists in Catholic circles committed
to the project that many of them had begun at
Lamennais’ side, they knew where his error lay.
His eyes were no longer aimed upwards towards
the Father of Lights to gain guidance for “every
good and perfect gift” necessary to construction
of a Catholic civilization, but downwards towards
the “vital, energetic will” of the purely natural
“Voice of The People,” whose desires, interpreted
during its dogmatic slumber by The Prophet were
equated with the commands of the Holy Spirit.
In making this dreadful choice for uncorrected
humanity, Lamennais had deprived himself of all
means of judging whether what he was listening
to in himself as the agent of the slumbering
People was really the Voice of God or that of
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Christian Culture
man’s fallen nature spiraling ever downward into
a positive libido for the ugliness of sin incapable
of a sursum corda of any kind.
Nineteenth century Catholics hungry for
rebuilding Christendom indeed found that
revolutionary Enlightenment naturalism had
gained a foothold, and was a hard enemy to
overcome. Nevertheless, they at least knew by
the time of Blessed Pius IX, that they had the
ecclesiastical authorities on their side. This,
of course, is no longer the case. For despite its
initial condemnation, Lamennais’ downward
looking “reborn” Catholicism, never died out
and has come to dominate the Zeitgeist friendly
“pastoral” vision of social order and civilization
of the Modern Church, which interprets following
the Spirit of the Times and the State authorities
enforcing it as the Voice of the Holy Ghost. It is
the swamp rather than the heavens that fuel the
construction of “Catholic Civilization” today.
“This is Venice; my house is not a grange!”
Brabantio shouts down to Rodrigo and Iago
in Shakespeare’s Othello, thereby dismissing
straightaway their loud and wicked call to take
immediate action upon what are but slanderous
lies. Brabantio’s instinct is not to heed them
precisely because everything in his environment
gives him an initial “push” to look upwards to
determine the truth, goodness, and beauty of
what is being said before acting upon it. Othello
later lacks this crucial push when left to his own
devices in Cyprus. The awful result is that he
looks downwards into himself and believes the
absurdities that Brabantio in “Venice”—and that
is to say in the atmosphere of the truly civilized
Catholic city, lacking the libido for the ugly—was
first inclined to spit out like a piece of tainted
meat.
Othello in Cyprus is operating without
restraint in the fallen “civilization” that St.
Augustine called the “City of Man.” This City
of Man will tempt the human race to join its
ranks until the end of time. Why it should have
such seductive powers over us is part of the
incomprehensible mystery of iniquity. For it
ultimately operates with that bizarre libido for
the ugly that the naturalism of the Enlightenment
and the Revolution, the palingenesist vision
of Lamennais, and the dominant forces in the
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Church in our own time have made the guide
for contemporary man and contemporary
civilization. To paraphrase a line from H. L.
Mencken—whose biting essay on the subject of
the “libido for the ugly” gave me the title for this
essay: “Enlightenment naturalism has chosen to
build its clapboard horror of a civilization with
its eyes open, and having chosen it, let it mellow
into its present shocking depravity. It likes it as it
is: beside it, the Parthenon would no doubt offend
it.”
Nineteenth century Catholics knew men were
meant to be part of the civilization of what St.
Augustine calls the City of God. They knew that
seeking to create this, on earth, as far as was
humanly possible in a universe that would be
subject to sin until the end of time was a duty
that flowed from their primary task of gaining
their personal salvation. And they knew that if
they did not work to their utmost to give flesh to
this project that nations would be comprised of
nothing but “dull and dreary people populating
dull and dreary zones of habitation.”

Softcover – STK# 8759 – $22.95

Educating a Child
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In this first volume (of two), Father Duhr begins by
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teaching him to master his instincts and passions,
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Ultimately, it is to establish God as Master and King
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Having laid the foundations, Father then describes
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61

Christian Culture

Ismael de
Tomelloso
A “Red” with a White Soul

By Anonymous

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39),
Communist “Republicans” sought to wipe out
all Catholic resistance to Spain’s amoral secular
government. General Francisco Franco, who was
the chief military officer of Spain, understood
the viciousness of the Republican leaders and
mustered allies to combat for the Faith and the
fatherland. In 1936, Franco and other generals
rose up against the Republican government, a
duly elected but Communist-centered coalition
that quickly implemented an atheist agenda.
It persecuted the Catholic Church, destroyed
places of worship, martyred thousands of priests
and religious, tore down Catholic schools,
and otherwise attempted to remake Spain
according to a Soviet model. The severity of this
persecution cannot be underestimated. The civil
war left countless dead: estimates vary from
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500,000 to one million.

Upbringing in the Church
Ismael Molinero Novillo, better known as
Ismael de Tomelloso (Province of Ciudad Real,
south of Madrid), was born on May 1, 1917, the
fifth of eight children. His father and mother
raised their large family with admirable selfsacrifice and devotion.
His mother, a very devout woman, taught
Ismael his first prayers. At the age of ten, the
headmaster of his school said that he was a good,
smart and hard-working pupil who had been
rewarded several times for his application and
punctuality.
At the age of 14, Ismael had to begin working.

August 7, 1936: “Execution” of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Communist militiamen at Cerro de los Angeles in Getafe

Because of his open, merry, congenial
personality, he became a necessary presence at
every feast and party in Tomelloso. He played
the guitar and the mandolin well, was stylish and
versed in the social arts. He loved to entertain
his friends with songs, jokes, recital of poems,
and with all sorts of tricks that made people
laugh. Highly successful, he became less and less
concerned about the Church and the salvation of
his soul.
One day some youths of his age spoke to him
about the recently founded Catholic Action Youth
Center. Much later, Ismael gratefully recalled all
that he owed to that friend who introduced him
to Catholic Action:

“So many live plunged in the darkness of
sin, pulled down by the chains of vice, because
they lack a friend’s hand to pull them from such
wretchedness! Although raised a Christian, I
would undoubtedly have lost myself forever. I
was pulled irresistibly towards the pleasures of
the world, in which I would have wallowed, if
another boy from my town hadn’t come to stand
by my side like a guardian angel. He was from
the very first Catholic Action Youth group that
the chaplain had founded in my town. He sought
us out and began to educate us, taught us the
value of sacrifice; and, finally, prepared us for
martyrdom…”
Ismael began to change his friendships
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Christian Culture
and discard anything that would slow his walk
towards perfection. He did not put away his
guitar or burn his mandolin, put on a sad look
or hide his attractive personality. Simply, he had
found a direction.
One of his friends wrote: “I saw that from
day to day the call of Divine Love was growing
stronger in his heart. I understood that a change
was taking place in him, which, though not
as sudden as St. Paul’s, was still quick. This
perfecting was visible because he fulfilled his
obligations day in and day out, in town as well
as in the Church. We could see a gradual change
in his conversations, his dealings with people,
his comportment, and his absorption in church,
which was especially noticeable.”
In Tomelloso, the hospital-shelter where the
homeless elderly of the town lived was Ismael’s
frequent field of apostolate. “Every Sunday and
often during the week as well,” one of his friends
commented, “after Mass at the parish Church
and after breakfast, or even missing breakfast,
he would walk to the Shelter to offer his charity
and his good cheer to the elderly. He always tried
to make them laugh and give them as pleasant a
time as possible.”

The Road to Perfection
Soon, those who had invited him to the
Catholic Action Center looked to him as their
superior, and were amazed to realize that he had

overtaken them and was cheerfully signaling to
them from afar, inviting them to follow on the
road to Christian perfection. In him they saw
a strong, dominating will, extraordinary selfmastery, and an abundance of sacrifice. They
admired him when they saw him kneeling in deep
meditation. This change happened quickly once
he answered yes to the call of grace.
In 1935 he was able to do the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius in the seminary of
Ciudad Real. He could not hide his happiness at
being in the Seminary, where his only thoughts
were about his eternal salvation. When taking
leave, he said to one of the seminarians: “How
I envy you, who know much more than we do
how to go about being good… and it’s so easy
to be good in here!” The Exercises gave a more
pronounced profile of fortitude to his character,
but without erasing his good humor.
On July 18, 1936, civil war broke out in Spain.
The Republican army, which ruled the region
of Tomelloso, needed more manpower and on
September 18 they called up Ismael’s class to be
enrolled in the Popular Army. The night before he
left for the front, he sewed a medal of Our Lady
between the fabric of his vest and departed with
the friends who had been mobilized with him.
Many of these, at the risk of their lives, escaped
the red trenches, passing over to the National
Army, to fight under the command of General
Franco for God and for Spain. God would ask
Ismael for a special combat: the sacrifice of
silence…
He had to suffer hearing blasphemies against
God, and countless torments which would
undermine his delicate constitution. Much later
he stated that he had suffered more from the
blasphemies and the conversations he had heard
in the trenches than from the freezing weather
and deprivation of those terrible days. “When that
happened,” he confessed, “I would squeeze my
Rosary tight and pray…”

A Victim of Hate
On the left, Fr. José María Mayor, his mother, Miguel Montañés
and his sisters Consuelo and Lola. Fr. Bernabé Huertas Molina
(sitting) and his sister Rosario; Fr. Vicente Borrell, Ismael and
Fr. Amador Navarro.

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Ismael was a victim of satanic hate: there
were many times when those godless soldiers
wanted to force him to blaspheme. He kept quiet.

The Catholic Action Youth group of Tomelloso with Fr. Vicente Borrell and Fr. Bernabé Huertas (to his right, above, Ismael).

For the love of God, he suffered with exemplary
resignation, and came out triumphant from those
infernal attacks. Much later he would exclaim:
“The trenches, I am horrified at the memory!…I
was so close to getting the palm! What a torment
not to have been a martyr! I so envy the Catholic
Action boys who have died a martyr’s death. But
that is God’s will, and may He be blessed.”
On February 5, 1938, the Battle of Alfambra
began, in which the Popular Army was defeated.
In the battle, eyewitnesses tell us, Ismael offered
himself as a holocaust: “…he threw his rifle,
remained standing, clutched the Virgin’s medal in
his hands and began a feverish, trusting prayer.
Hissing balls barely missed his silhouette; his
fellow soldiers were running and cursing, or
falling heavily to the ground, mortally wounded.
Upright on his feet like a praying statue, Ismael
waited until he heard a harsh voice order: ‘Hands
up!’ He surrendered and was taken prisoner.”
Ismael unassumingly stood in the line of the
defeated… When they started to card everyone,
he saw that his companions who offered up
excuses and past merits were released; those

who said nothing were imprisoned. So, Ismael
decided to say nothing “because I wanted to
suffer for God, for souls and for Spain.”
Soon he was taken to the Concentration Camp
near Saragossa. There he lived anonymously
until the disease secretly undermining him
finally overcame him. The chaplain of the camp
recounts:
“On March 18th, 1938…I noticed a noble
attitude in one of the patients, like a halo of
holiness. I approached him, asking the usual
questions one asks when starting a conversation.
He made a general confession of his life, then
we talked a good while. As I was affectionately
reproaching him for not revealing his identity
sooner, he replied with sublime spontaneity:
“‘Father, I’ve been here a long time. Whenever
you came to visit, I was deeply moved, and when
you left I would become despondent. But I wanted
to suffer for God and for Spain, and I knew that
if you had known who I was you would have
deprived me of this chance, or at least mitigated
my pain. Now that I feel my situation is serious
and you can do nothing for me, it doesn’t matter
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Christian Culture
anymore. I feel so happy, Father! Talk to me about
suffering, troubles and crosses, they have been
my golden dream and were alive and real in me,
especially since the war began. How well I now
understand the words that the Catholic Action
chaplain repeated so often: “Children, know that
God’s immense graces only fall into empty, lonely
hearts. And how lonely is my heart! I have neither
parents nor friends, nor glory nor wealth, nor any
human comfort… And yet, I’m happy!”
“When I wished him a promising future,
should God want to save him, he sat up on the
bed, looked at the Crucifix that presided over the
room, pointed his finger and said: ‘I want nothing
to do with this world. I am from God and for God.
If I die, I will belong entirely to God. If I don’t…
I want to be a priest! Yes, I want to be a priest.
A good priest. Like the ones God needs to work
for Him gratis. I want to live absorbed in Him,
lost in His immensity, totally delivered over to
Him. No selfishness or money, comforts, family,
or honors, only Christ! Tomorrow, when I receive
Communion, I will complete the detachment I
started days ago and haven’t been able to achieve.
I will leave my whims, my likes, the needs of my
poor nature with Christ.’”

Comfort from God
Much later he said to him: “Father, I feel so
much happiness! Indeed, how can God give me
so much comfort?! What’s heaven going to be like
if I already feel so happy here? Father, so many
men live plunged in darkness, pulled down by
the chains of vice, because they lack a friendly
hand to pull them up from their terrible state! …
I will serve Spain anonymously; I will offer all
the discomforts of my illness and the pain of my
sacrifice to God. I craved martyrdom and I finally
succeeded. Not because I am shedding my blood
for the faith, but because of the abandonment, the
drawn-out suffering, the anguish of dying without
my saintly mother at my side.”
Seeing that Ismael was seriously ill, the
camp physician ordered his transfer to a
Saragossa hospital. The priest wrote a letter
of recommendation for Ismael to deliver to the
chaplain of the hospital, but he, wishing to go
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on with the sacrifice that God had asked of him,
decided not to deliver the letter. Ismael, being
questioned by his nurse who suspected his
Catholic identity, was obliged to confess: “God
was asking this sacrifice from me, and with His
help I was able to achieve it!” It was she who
found among Ismael’s belongings the letter of
recommendation which he brought from the
chaplain of the concentration camp.
Fr. José Ballesteros, who met Ismael in 1935,
met him for a second, and longer, time at the
Saragossa Hospital. He testifies: “Due to his
heroic spirit of sacrifice, his restraint in asking
for help, and especially his supernatural modesty,
he told no one about the terrible sores and ulcers
that festered on his back and his legs. It was
only by chance that I saw them, and he allowed
only me to care for them.” During the Holy Week
of 1938 his sufferings increased so much that it
clearly seemed that Our Lord wanted to associate
him with His Passion. He murmured: “Finally I
have the joy of offering something to Jesus!”
On May 5th, he fervently received Communion,
as he usually did, and in giving thanks told
Jesus that he would “see Him soon.” He received
Extreme Unction with full consciousness. With
a weak voice, the dying man replied to the Ritual
versicles. Until his last breath, with an almost
imperceptible voice, he repeated: “Mother of
Pilar, save me! My God, mercy! Sacred Heart of
Jesus, in Thee…”
His remains were enclosed in a plain coffin
and interred in a plot. Soon his tomb began to
be frequented by the Catholic Action Youth from
Saragossa. They published in their bulletin a
beautiful article dedicated to his memory: a
testimony of admiration to that little unknown
soldier, who being reckoned as a red prisoner,
suffered like a saint and died as such. If he had
lived, he wanted to be a priest to resemble Jesus,
to celebrate Holy Mass, to unite himself with
Christ in the sacrifice of the altar. God gave him
to live this sacrifice with Jesus on Calvary, joined
to Mary, making every instant of his life sacred,
sacrificial.

How to
Educate the
Child
in the Spirit of Service

By the Sisters of the Society Saint Pius X. Translated by Lauren Webb

Is there a mother who doesn’t desire happiness
for her child? Her secret is in forgetfulness of self;
every mother has experienced this. The happiest
are those who give themselves! Do we wish then
to educate our little ones in true joy? This begins
with service.
Children are not always helpful. Some are
skilled at leaving the table right after the meal
or when father puts on his work clothes; others
calculate minutely if their brothers and sisters
have done as much as they have and mother, a
bit distraught, doesn’t know if she should bother
them or wait for what comes spontaneously on
their end. What’s to be done? There is, however,
deep in the hearts of children, a certain real
heroism, asleep and hidden perhaps. How can we
awaken this?
This is the question, for there are many ways to

solicit this generosity, and very often the manner
determines the response of the children. Service
is fulfillment. Why not present it as such? Let us
know how to penetrate the hard and repulsive
shell of effort in order to discover to our children
the beauty of the act they are asked.
Let us make service attractive. There is an
enthusiastic way to say, “Do the dishes,” “Sweep
the floor,” or “Set the table.” We can kindly ask,
“Would you like to do me a favor—or please
God—and clear the table?” or maybe, “Show your
father how well you can sweep,” or “Would you
like to do the dishes? The other day you did them
so well!” Let us not hesitate to develop healthy
ambitions in our children, by evoking the ideal
they can become by surpassing themselves.
Yes, service is more than a sacrifice or an effort.
Always presenting it under its arduous aspect
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Christian Culture

could discourage certain children. That is why it
is necessary not to ask for their help only when
we are in a hurry or irritated, they would then
feel obliged and respond reluctantly. The bitter
side of the act will be emphasized, often because
of a request that is a little harsh. On the contrary,
let us appeal to their hidden heroism; they may
very well have many surprises in store for us!
But what if the child refuses to submit to the
request? Should we oblige him to obey? It will
be necessary to adapt to the temperament of
the child, appealing to his love for his mother
or to his sense of duty, according to the case. If
he remains rebellious, we may oblige him, but
sometimes it is also time to put him in his place:
shame will be far more powerful than an angry
speech! As for those who willingly accept, we will
affectionately take them with us in the beginning,
explaining to them how to do the task.
Once the service is completed, the satisfied
smile of our gratitude will be a real ray of
sunshine for them. For the youngest, it will be
accompanied with a gesture of affection. Our
little ones need us to see their good will behind
the deficiencies of their act, that we can see their
efforts. This encourages them to start again,
but especially shows them the qualities they
can and should acquire. They lack experience
and confidence in themselves. You will find kind
words to encourage them, each in their own
way. Certainly, the child is not to do whatever he
wants, but can we not help him to will all that he
ought to do?

Of course, the example of the mother will have
a great weight. It is by her that this education
in the spirit of service begins. The image of a
devoted mother with an aunt who is ill, or helping
with the housecleaning in a priory, will remain
engraved in the child’s mind. And when we are
little, we are so proud to be like mom and dad!
Dear mothers, let us summarize in two words
the attitude that will awaken devotion in their
hearts: be encouraging and above all trust.
Let us never refuse the service that a child
offers, however clumsy and annoying it may be.
How many young girls today cannot prepare a
meal because their mothers will not let them do
so, under the pretext that it will be quicker for her
to cook herself. How many teenagers are looking
for a friend’s motorcycle because their father will
not let them use a drill or a lawn mower!
Thus, little by little, the work that was once
so obscure and repulsive will become beautiful
and attractive. The desire to please others will
transform family life! You will procure true
happiness for children in having them taste this
profound joy of sacrifice: the joy of pleasing
others and God. Small services naturally
rendered, will amount to deeper supernatural
acts. This is what will invite them to be ever more
generous and happier!
O, Our Lady, who, in your hidden service in the
home, have hidden your incomparable holiness
and your joy in serving the Lord, pray for all
mothers!

By Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, SSPX

What is a “human right”?
“Right” (ius) is defined by St. Thomas in
strictly objective terms as ipsa res iusta, a just
thing, something that is due. Such “just thing”
is always an honest good. Therefore, it is a
contradiction in terms to talk of sinful actions as
“rights.”
To explain better the notion of what is due,
Catholic doctrine distinguishes between innate
and acquired rights.
Innate rights are strictly natural, absolute,

founded on nature of man. They flow from the
necessary end of man, to which he is destined by
his nature. This natural necessity gives him the
right to procure, without hurting others, what is
needed to attain his end. Such rights are inherent
in human nature; they cannot be alienated or
perish in what regards their substance, although
an individual may abstain from their exercise
when he is not obliged, and even formally
renounce them to attain a greater perfection.
Acquired rights are founded on a free,
contingent fact—that is, on something that
69

Christian Culture
could have happened or not, depending on the
free action of somebody. For example, I may
choose to buy a book or not, but once I have
decided to buy a book and reached an agreement
with the seller, the book is due to me at the same
time that the payment is due to the seller. Such
rights can be lost or transferred to another.
In consequence, we can say that the true
natural rights of man are inherent to his very
nature. In relation to God, man has no rights, but
in relation to other men, he has right to enjoy the
goods that are in conformity with his nature—
that is, those goods are due to him.
They are also anterior to the State, who
cannot violate them. Primordial and inalienable,
these rights exist before any temporal authority;
they are not granted by it. The State must
acknowledge and protect them, and never
sacrifice them to the general good.
And last but not least, they are founded upon
God. As human nature is given by God, the rights
of nature are thus founded upon God. True rights
flow from man’s duties towards God—we have
rights regarding our life, family, patrimony, cult,
because on those things we have duties towards
God.
Hence, considering that man is composed of
spiritual soul (intellect, free will) and a material
body (senses, movement), there are two principal,
totally imprescriptible natural rights—the right
to know the truth and the right to pursue the
good necessary to attain happiness and our
ultimate end (i.e., God and all that helps to
attain Him). God does not take these rights away
from man in this life; consequently, no man can
take them away from another man.
There are two other natural rights which are
not imprescriptible—i.e., they may be lost as a
legitimate punishment for crime: the right to
exercise our liberty in what is not contrary to
our duties towards God and our neighbor, and the
right to preserve our person and goods.
Unfortunately, the modern world proclaims
and protects as “human rights” things that are
not such. Some of them are false because their
foundation is bad, as they are founded solely
upon the will of man, not on nature (that is, on
God, the creator of nature). Others are false
because their objects are unjust, as they are
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against divine and natural law—for example,
the so-called “right to abortion.” Finally, some
are false because their extension is abusive, as
when some acquired rights are claimed as natural
(innate).

Is it permissible to
tolerate an evil?
In itself (per se), in the face of evil and error,
the only practical attitude permitted is war,
repression, hatred. In normal circumstances, it is
the only way to stop what is evil and procure the
good.
But exceptionally (per accidens), there may
exist cases in which the repression of an evil
risks causing greater evils than the one that we
are trying to stop, or cases in which, through the
patient, temporary endurance of the evil, great
goods are expected.
As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, “The
government of men derives from the government
of God and must imitate it. Now, God—almighty
and infinitely good—permits the evil that
happens in the universe: while He could banish
it, He endures it, either to draw a great good, or
to avoid greater evils. In like manner, [we] can
lawfully tolerate certain evils, to avoid greater
ones, or to obtain a great good” (II-II, 10, 1, ad
corpus).
In exceptional circumstances, then,
an exceptional change of attitude is
understandable—instead of immediate
repression, tolerance.
Tolerance is the negative permission of an evil.
Its object is an evil that, for a serious reason,
here and now cannot be avoided. It constitutes a
simple permission: it allows that evil to subsist.

The permission is simply negative: it is given
because one cannot do otherwise.
Tolerance is not simply passive endurance, but
a positive act of will by which one abstains, in
this concrete and limited case, from repressing
what should be repressed. It does not imply
an approval or the granting of freedom to act,
because freedom regards only what is good. In
fact, it strongly implies the disapproval of that
which is tolerated. Tolerance is a good­—but the
evil tolerated remains evil.
We can choose, will and love tolerance,
because—in the concrete circumstances—it is a
good. But even in exceptional circumstances, we
cannot choose, will and love the evil tolerated,
because it is always an evil. If we are impeded to
fight the evil, we nevertheless have to hate it and
to avoid any compromise with it.

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 Child Rearing
– Science and Medical Matters

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

– Life After Death

– The Mass and the Liturgy

– Church Practices and Customs

– The SSPX and the Crisis

– The Papacy and the Church Teachings

71

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius
XII defined the Assumption of
Mary to be a dogma of faith: “We
pronounce, declare and define it
to be a divinely revealed dogma
that the immaculate Mother of
God, the ever Virgin Mary, having
completed the course of her
earthly life, was assumed body
and soul to heavenly glory.” The
pope proclaimed this dogma
only after a broad consultation
of bishops, theologians and laity.
There were few dissenting voices.
What the pope solemnly declared
was already a common belief in
the Catholic Church.

Catechism

Part Four: Prof. Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F. Pauwels, O.P.

Editor’s Note: This article continues the series of straightforward responses to frequently-encountered questions and
objections concerning the Catholic Faith. The questions and answers are adapted from Professor Felix Otten, O.P. and C.F.
Pauwels, O.P.’s The Most Frequently Encountered Difficulties, published originally in Dutch in 1939.

Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary effectuated salvation for all peoples at
all times, yet the Roman Catholic
Church teaches that Christ is offered
daily at the Mass. Does this not deny
the sacrifice of the Cross and St.
Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews?
We might presume that the Holy
Mass offering would certainly be a denial of
74

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the Cross’s offering if the Mass were a sacrifice
other than the Cross offering. But that is not the
case according to Catholic doctrine. The Church
clearly states that the Holy Mass offering is the
same as the Cross offering and only differs in
the manner of offering. The same Christ, who
sacrificed Himself bloodily for the people on
Calvary, sacrifices Himself in the Mass.
The Sacrifice of the Mass could also be called
a denial of the Cross-sacrifice if it has the same
intention. That is not the case either. After
all, on the Cross, Christ earned salvation
and all graces for men. In the Holy Mass, the
merits of the sacrifice of the Cross that have

already been acquired are applied to the people
and are distributed to them. That is quite
different. And now it is so beautiful that Holy
Mass is the mystical commemoration of the
sacrifice of the Cross. Thus, the remembrance
thereof is kept alive among men, and therefore
precisely the graces earned through the sacrifice
of the Cross are given to men.
And so, the Sacrifice of the Mass is not a denial
of the Cross-sacrifice. The texts of St. Paul,
with which the Protestants want to prove that
there is no other sacrifice other than the Cross
offering, can be found in the ninth chapter of
the Letter to the Hebrews, especially verse 12:
“Christ … has entered the sanctuary … by His
own blood … once and for all”; verse 25: “Neither
did He commit himself repeatedly”; and verse
29: “Likewise Christ was offered once.” Here
the Apostle contrasts the repeated sacrifices of
the Jews under the Old Covenant with Christ’s
single sacrifice, which has brought salvation once
and for all. These texts do not refer at all to the
sacrifice of Mass. And, of course, Catholics fully
subscribe to that teaching of St. Paul because
we don’t say that the daily sacrifice in the Mass
offers a new redemption. Further, the numerous
sacrifices of the Jews cannot be compared to the
Mass, for those sacrifices were only pre-images
of the Cross-sacrifice. Holy Mass, however, was
instituted by God to share with us the fruits of
the Cross offering.

Christ is the Savior of the world and
the Salvation of all men. Yet if the
Catholic Church teaches that Mary
is Immaculate, hence spotless, how
then can Christ be Mary’s savior?

by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and proclaimed in the
following terms: “We declare … that the doctrine
which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in
the first moment of her conception, by a special
grace and a special privilege from Almighty
God in view of the merits of Christ Jesus, the
Savior of the human race, is kept free from all the
stain of Original Sin, has been revealed by God.”
The solution to the accusation raised, namely
that according to Catholic doctrine Mary would
not need Christ to be her savior, is clearly set
forth in the italicized words quoted above from
Pius IX’s solemn declaration that Mary was
indeed redeemed by God. In this very special
sense, Mary was saved from Original Sin by God.
As a descendant of Adam, Mary should have
been stained with Original Sin, just like all other
people who have ever lived.
And that is what God has done in view of the
forward-working merits of Christ. Just as the
righteous in the Old Covenant were also saved
by the forward-working merits of Christ, so Mary
was indeed redeemed by Christ, but again in a
more sublime sense than we are. Her redemption
consisted not of removing the Original Sin
that was already there, but of preventing the
contamination of sin. And that is why Mary
rightly called God her “Savior” in the Magnificat.
The reason she was redeemed in such a special
way was that she was chosen to be Christ’s
mother. Meanwhile, the supernatural way in
which Christ was born, namely from a virgin
mother, has nothing to do with the Immaculate
Conception of Mary. That is a completely
different privilege of Mary.

Many misunderstand the Catholic doctrine of
Mary’s Immaculate Conception. This doctrine
holds only in that Mary, because of her high
election as Mother of God and by a special grace
of God, has been freed from Original Sin. This
is a longstanding view of the Roman Church
which was solemnly declared an article of faith
75

Boxed CD Set – 12 Lectures - STK# 8721 – $49.95

War

A Catholic Symposium Audio

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War while offering an in-depth Catholic analysis
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and extending to numerous battles of the modern
era, discover what Church has to say, and what it
means to be a true Catholic Soldier.
A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE OF WAR
In this political climate we, as Catholics, need to understand what the Church teaches
on War and this symposium is the most interesting, enjoyable and informative way to do
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This CD boxed-set also includes a debate on the Civil War that is sure to peak your interest and spark further conversation with family and friends. This debate is conducted
in the full historical character of the Lincon-Douglas Debates and takes place as if the
outcome of the war is unknown to the debators. Enjoy!
Track List
1 - Introduction - Fr. Michael McMahon
2 - Just War Theory - Dr. Brian McCall
3 - The Machabees - Fr. Michael McMahon
4 - The Crusades - Fr. Daniel Chavarria

8 - North vs. South - The Civil War Debate Dr. Brian McCall & Mr. Christopher Ferrara
9 - World War I - Trenches and Poetry Mr. Joshua Hayes

5 - The Military Orders - Mr. J. Marlow Gazzoli

10 - 1916 - The Easter Rising - Mr. Dominic O’Hart

6 - Military Chaplains - Fr. Daniel Couture

11 - Fatima and the World War -

7 - The Art of Rhetoric and Debate - Dr. Brian McCall
& Mr. Christopher Ferrara

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12 - The Catholic Soldier - Fr. Michael McMahon

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The Angelus
July - August
76

Book Review

An Introduction to Catholic
Social Doctrine
Fr. Dominique Bourmaud (Angelus Press, 2019)

In Fr. Bourmaud’s book, we find a concise look at
what Catholics should know about the social reign of
Christ the King drawn from what the great minds of
the ages have always taught.
To start, Father outlines in clear and bold
brushstrokes the Church’s unique doctrine about
“the relationship of individuals with society.” He
begins with the often-denied but nevertheless true
reality that man is composed of a material body
and a spiritual soul. He then moves on to address
man’s perfection, which is “the proper use of his
properly human powers, the mental faculties and,
among them, specifically his will because the will is
what makes the saint and the scoundrel.” Christian
perfection, however, takes this a step further and
“consists in belonging totally to God by denying ourselves anything which is not God, and in using things
of earth only in as much as God wants it.”
Moving on to society, it is “an order between men
who work together to realize a common work for
the same purpose.” In society, individuals must—by
their discipline—have “intelligent and voluntary selfmastery against cupidity, passion, and pride” in order to practice social virtues and avoid total chaos!
For society to exist, authority must also exist, and
this to command, to govern, and to educate. Those
in authority must realize that—equal to the work
over the minds of their subjects—is the movement
of their wills. With this true authority comes true
liberty.
Also worth noting is Father’s clear insight about
parental authority and parental responsibility in
education and how this compares to that of the
State. Father gives details here that apply timeless
principles to very current issues facing parents the
world over.
Fr. Bourmaud also addresses the problem of
labor and the economy from the Church’s standpoint, delineating the basic tenets of “an economy
worthy of the name,” and explaining that it must be
humane, at the service of the whole man, not existing merely to satisfy the “false needs” that marketing firms are so eager to promote! “The goal of a

humane social
economy is to
offer, in a stable
way, all members
of society the
material conditions required for
the development
of their cultural
and spiritual life.
It should insure a
quiet and happy
life with sufficient means of
existence, ‘the
greatest spiritual and material welfare possible in
this life’.”
Father then moves along to address the social
economy, including intermediary bodies such as
professional organizations and their relationship
with the State, before bringing the focus to political societies and diverse forms of government.
He also outlines the proper relationship between
Church and State, what the Church must do in less
than ideal situations, and what the Christian must
profess regardless of political environment: that
Christ is first among men, He is the universal king of
creation, and that “All power has been given to [Him]
in heaven and on earth.”
Finally, Father exposes the false and anti-God
agenda of the communists, the errors of the socialists, and the tyranny of the totalitarian regimes with
which history is too familiar. Neither does he spare
the Liberals, bent on their own personal gain and
paying heed to neither fellowman nor the laws of
God.
In short, Christians will learn from this book that
Christ is King and that the Church teaches this to facilitate men’s entry into their heavenly home, where
they will sing always and in unison: Gloria in excelsis
Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
—Christina Kochanowski

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Tradition’s
Answer
to the Conciliar Ecclesiology

By Fr. Davide Pagliarani

At Courrier de Rome’s 15th Congress that took place on January 18, 2020, on the theme “Is there a risk of
schism in the Church today?” Fr. Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, gave the final conference
entitled “Tradition’s Answer to the Conciliar Ecclesiology.”

As the years go by, we can see very clearly in the
current crisis a continuity with Vatican Council II,
but at the same time, there is an acceleration and
also a new contribution. And there are reactions to
this contribution—we will explain what sort of reactions. To what extent? That is what the first part of
my conference will discuss: to what extent is there
continuity, to what extent is there novelty? We will
see how everything that has been said today can be
brought back to a single basic principle.

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Continuity and Novelty in Pope Francis’s
Pontificate
I think that the answer to our first question is to
be found in the encyclical Laudato si’. Its essential
contents have been discussed during this congress,
but at the end the Pope sums up brilliantly—you
have to admit—everything he has said. He presents
a synthesis of his long encyclical in paragraph 245,
in the form of a principle: “In the heart of this world,
the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always
present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave
us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our
earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new

ways forward.”
“God has united Himself definitively to our earth.”
Is this a new claim compared to the Council and
everything we have heard since the Council? Yes. It
is a new and original claim. And this new claim gives
us a clear idea of the acceleration Pope Francis has
implemented.
It is obvious that an immanentist bent was taken
with the Council, resulting in a new conception of
Revelation, a new conception of the Faith, and therefore a new mission of the Church.
I shall take the liberty of recalling some of these
ideas, even though everyone already knows them,
and they have already been explained several times,
in order to show the specific difference Pope Francis
has introduced into them, while still in keeping with
the Council.
The Triumph of Personalism
The great intuition of the Council, and above all
the major focus of John Paul II’s pontificate, was the
idea, as discussed in last year’s Congress, that in
becoming incarnate, Our Lord united Himself to every man in a certain way. That is the major theme of
Redemptor Hominis, the encyclical that announced
John Paul II’s program. If Christ is already united
to every man, the Church’s mission is to help all
men become aware of the fact that they are already
united to Christ. They are already saved, in a way,
so the Church has to bear witness to this; properly
speaking, evangelization becomes a testimony
and this testimony is that of the People of God, a
sacrament—a sign in the midst of humanity—of this
union of the Word with every man. John Paul II had
his own specific term for this process; he called it
self-awareness, each man’s ability to become progressively aware of the fact he is already united in a
way with Christ, and therefore has already entered
into the mystery of salvation through Our Lord’s
incarnation.
That is John Paul II’s perspective, which is perfectly representative of the entire post-Conciliar
development on this major point, even though he
was not, of course, the only one, and there has been
a linear continuity ever since the Council between
the various popes who have succeeded each other
in Rome.
This perspective is profoundly personalistic.
It focuses on the person; the person is already

“dignified” by its union with the Word, and needs to
become aware of this union. This personalistic perspective produces a morality that is still relatively
demanding. Why? Because the person—in the perspective of the Council and John Paul II in particular—is a relation, a “being for,” a being that, we might
say, subsists and fulfills its being to the extent that
it gives of itself, hence the demanding morality. For
example, all of Pope John Paul II’s family morality, all
of his teachings on the family, are fairly traditional,
at least in their conclusions, compared to the teachings of Pope Francis—I think there is no doubt about
that—but the general perspective is profoundly
personalistic.
From the Person to the Earth
Keep this idea in mind: the person is a relation,
therefore it subsists to the extent to which it gives
of itself, and for that it also needs freedom, since
to give of itself it has to be free. And there, in relation and freedom, you have the two great pillars of
the morality developed by Pope John Paul II. Pope
Francis takes things much farther. There is no
rupture, but he goes much farther. Why? Because
Christ is not simply united to all men, Christ is united
to the earth. The issue is no longer self-awareness,
which of course is not denied; Francis’ perspective
is far more radical. In a certain sense, it is even simpler, or if you prefer, the immanentist seed produces
riper fruit.
What we have to understand is that in the new
perspective offered by Pope Francis, all of morality
is contained in the idea of being in harmony with nature, with the earth. Why? Because Christ is already
united to the earth. The pope insists greatly upon
the unity and connection between God, man, and
the environment. As man and the environment are
creatures of God, a whole new code can be written,
or, if you prefer, we can rewrite the entire moral code
based on this respect we owe to the earth and to
nature. For “everything is connected.” By respecting nature as fully as I should, I also respect the law
of God and my neighbor; that is the great intuition
of Laudato si’, hence the fact, as was discussed this
morning, that a forest becomes a theological topic.
I am going to quote for you a passage from the
Final Document on the Synod in which youth itself is
considered as a theological topic! And yet youth is
dependent, for especially since the creation of the
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world and original sin, it needs the care of others,
the care of adults, teachers, parents, the Church,
the State, because it is a difficult age. Teenagers
also sometimes need the example of simplicity and
purity set for them by younger children. But no! For
the synod, youth is also a part of nature and therefore a theological topic. I quote: “Young people want
to be protagonists—we already knew that—and the
Amazon Church wants to offer them room and accompany them in listening, recognizing youth as a
theological topic.”
Youth is a theological topic; in other words, theologians are to draw the principles of their theology
from their observations of young people’s behavior.
And I continue to quote: “as ‘prophets of hope,’ committed to dialogue, ecologically sensitive and attentive to our common home.” In fact, as they have no
memory, these young people are ideal revolutionary
subjects. And we could give many other examples.
The Church Is Attentive to the Environment, Youth,
and the World
So, the forest and youth are to be our model, they
are both theological topics. In other words, we need
to be in harmony with ourselves and the environment, with nature, the cosmos, but in a perspective
that denies original sin. With Pope Francis, this relation with Christ becomes more distant, for our immediate relation is with the earth. This can be seen
in the great attention paid to the “Common Home,”
this preoccupation with the “Common Home,” which
makes the relation even more universal than ever.
Moral requirements are reduced to this harmony
and balance, which, when it comes down to it, are
nothing much.
We have to understand that the entire Church
is supposed to adopt this perspective. The Synod
on the Amazon was not just a special moment
dedicated to that part of the world and its particular problems; it is a paradigm, a model that the
entire Church is supposed to follow. That is why
there is talk of “integral ecology” and “ecological
conversion.”
In this ecological conversion, we also see another
difference—to keep it simple, I will say between John
Paul II and Pope Francis: the mission of the People
of God becomes passive. With John Paul II, there
was still a Church, a People of God whose mission
was to bear witness to something for humanity, to
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bear witness to Christ’s union with each man. Today,
with Francis, the Church has become a disciple; she
is a Church that no longer has anything to teach, a
Church that listens, a Church that observes. She
is still a sacrament of something, but much more
passively now. And therefore, her exemplary role,
her role as “sacrament of the human race,” to use
the expression of the Council, becomes a listening
role. She sets the example because she is the first to
listen.
Why does her role inevitably become passive?
By listening to the world, she recognizes that the
world, inevitably, always has something to teach
that the Church does not yet know. For example, in
scientific areas, the men of the world are generally
more cultivated and better prepared than the men
of the Church. In the Final Document of the Synod
on the Amazon, the Church speaks of reducing the
emission of carbon dioxide, moderating our consumption of fish and meat. She reminds us that we
should plant trees. She inevitably degenerates into
triteness and makes a fool of herself. Why? Because
there are institutions in the world that know how to
do this far better and far more professionally. So
again, the Church inevitably listens to a world that is
superior. She wishes to discuss and devote herself
to the things of the world, she seeks to sacralize
worldly elements on which others are far more
competent than her. That is what a Church attentive
to the world does.
Three Concrete Consequences of Pope Francis’s
Doctrine
If Christ is united with the earth, this revelation
through the earth continues. God continues to
reveal Himself, not only and simply in man’s conscience as we had grown used to hearing, but now in
the very life of the world, and therefore everything
can become a theological topic. The Church commits to receiving everything that may appear in the
world as an element of revelation. And above all, this
attentive Church, this observant Church, is a Church
that has to always be ready to introduce into her
structures and her way of thinking whatever emerges in the life of the world and the life of humanity.
The Church Must Assimilate the Phenomena of the
Contemporary World
Let’s take a concrete example: women’s role.

Women’s role is a typical element of the so-called rehabilitation of woman that is supposed to be accomplished, a typical element of contemporary culture.
One can disagree with it, but it cannot be denied.
We have to say that our contemporary revolutionary
culture has sought to give women an entirely new
role. In this context, the Church has to accept the
fact that humanity has placed women in the spotlight, and she has to welcome this element of the life
of humanity and make it an element of revelation.
Consequently, she, too, needs to introduce women
into the organization of the Church, for example,
by giving them a position of authority. The pope
has just done this, he has just placed a woman in a
high-ranking position in the Secretariat of State. The
Final Document of the Synod on the Amazon ends
with a chapter on the role of women. It is “time for
women’s presence,” says the Document in chapter V
that presents “New Paths of Synodal Conversion.”
Living Tradition, to use a typical post-Conciliar
expression, is therefore not only the experience
Pope Benedict XVI spoke of. He used the image of
a river that passes on the same experience that the
Apostles had at the beginning of Christianity when
Our Lord rose from the dead. Here, with Francis, the
water continues to flow, but it is enriched with something that has nothing to do with the experience of
the Apostles when Our Lord rose from the dead. It is
enriched with the values of the world. Why? Because
it is in the life of the world that God continues to
reveal Himself. So it is clear that Pope Francis is in
continuity with the seed of immantentism that was
already present in the Council, but he goes much
farther. We are harvesting the truly ripened fruits of
the Council.
The Desacralization of Everything the Church
Holds Dearest
Another consequence of this new perspective is
that Pope Francis—I think we can say—gives the impression of desacralizing, by using shocking expressions. For example, he said in a sermon in December
that the coredemptive role of Our Lady is foolishness! It really is going very far to say something
like that, or to make a caricature of the attitude of
missionaries, as if in preaching the Gospel they were
“casting stones” instead of listening. These expressions are shocking. What should we think of them?
It is not simply a desire to shock or show a certain

scorn, it is something far more profound.
In every revolution, desacralization has an educational function: one has to desacralize little by
little, progressively, in order to do away with what is
considered to be a prejudice. Desacralization helps
men to rid themselves of the idea that they have to
answer to a transcendent God. Everything sacred
reminds man of transcendence; there is someone
to whom I have to answer, someone who is going
to judge me. Desacralization helps to get past this
disposition that is a natural disposition, confirmed
by the Faith, to believe that there is a God above me.
Why? Because everything is reduced to an immanent vision, in the most radical way.
A similar consequence affects the authority of
the pope and his prestige. Does Pope Francis realize
that he is losing his prestige, that the papacy itself
is losing its prestige? This, too, is part of a naturalistic perspective, the perspective of a Church that
is listening. Paradoxically, authority’s role today
is no longer to teach, to impose facts and truths,
on intelligences. Therefore, if authority no longer
has this role, its only purpose is to self-destruct, to
disappear in order to teach by doing so that there is
no longer any need for a magisterium in the traditional sense of the word. The Church has to listen,
to convert in order to learn to listen; the Church has
to unlearn in order to learn all over again, she is a
disciple Church, a sister Church.
Absorption of the World and the Desacralization of
the Priesthood
If we wish to grasp the perspective of Pope
Francis, who shocks with some of his moves, we
have to consider him in the light of everything we
have just considered. It is not just vulgarity or an
excessive simplicity on his part, no, it is something
far deeper. We might say that the priesthood is
completely absorbed in a role, a mission that has
become political.
In conclusion, before we go on to see how we
should respond to this new phase into which the
Church has entered, we can see that there is a
continuity but there are also new elements, and
they explain the reactions that the pope is currently
causing. In a word, with this radical immanentism—
this project of placing man in harmony with nature,
with the environment, because God is united with
the earth and we are each an integral part of this
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earth—with this immanentism, it becomes impossible for man to accomplish the religious act on
which all other acts depend: adoration. It is tragic,
but it is simply logical. That is why I think it is important to bring everything back to a few very simple
principles.
In reality, man does have his place in creation, but
it is a specific place, for he has a specific difference
from other creatures: man is created as a rational
being and he is such in order to be able to adore. The
ultimate specificity of man as a rational creature
is the ability to adore, to worship God voluntarily.
This presupposes a distinction between the rational
creature and a transcendent God, whom we know,
adore, and recognize not in nature but above nature,
above creation, absolutely distinct, separate from
creation, absolutely infinite. We are able to adore
only insofar as we recognize this abyss between
God and the world. And if God became man, it was
in order to teach us to adore. The humanity of Our
Lord was not the means of uniting Himself to the
earth but the means, the exemplary cause to teach
men to adore.
Away with Fables, a Return to Christ’s Submission
to His Father
What did Our Lord do in His humanity? What is
the purpose of His priesthood? He says it Himself,
with His very first words upon entering into the
world: “Behold, I come to do thy will.” In accomplishing the will of the Father, Our Lord, as man and
priest, submits Himself entirely to the will of the
Father, and He knows very well that this submission
includes the Cross and the Passion. And this first act
of Our Lord in the Incarnation is in perfect continuity
with the Cross. Our Lord’s entire life was one long
uninterrupted act of adoration. It is magnificent!
It is the complete opposite of the perspective the
Church is adopting with this “ecological conversion.” It is not just an error, it is not just a detour, it is
abominable! We cannot measure the gravity of this,
or even find the words to express it.
How should Tradition respond? That is the title
of this conference, but I think that we first have to
consider the response of Sacred Scripture.
First of all, is there a response in Sacred
Scripture? Yes. “Ad fabulas convertentur. They will
turn to fables.” That is what we are seeing. This
entire encyclical Laudato si’ is a fable: hundreds of
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paragraphs, hundreds of fables. The highest authority on earth teaching fables to all men, all men
without distinction. It is unbelievable!
Tradition’s Threefold Response to the Conciliar
Crisis
Now, let us consider Tradition’s response. There
are three aspects to it.
Our Lady of the Rosary and the Salvation of the
Church
The first response is the Blessed Virgin who
crushes all heresies, and she crushes them through
the Rosary. We must not commit an error similar
to that of the modernists and seek new answers
simply because the errors are new. The errors may
be new, but the seeds that produce them are always
the same, and therefore the remedy is the Rosary.
Our Lord entrusted the Church and the Faith to the
Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the one who crushes,
who will crush all heresies. When? We do not know.
Perhaps we will still have to wait. Have we touched
bottom? That has been said so many times!
What is sure is that the solution will come through
the Blessed Virgin Mary and through the Rosary;
and we have a role to play in this, a very important
role. It is through this prayer that God is going to restore life, miraculously no doubt, for humanly speaking, there is no hope. But God has His hour, His
plans, His way, as we have already experienced; we
know that if we know the history of the Church. God
wishes to show the divinity of His Church and He
always does so by leaving us in humanly inextricable
situations for a while; yes, that makes the sanctity of
the Church shine out so much more.
But I think there is also another figure who can
help us and who deserves to be mentioned this
evening: the figure of St. Francis. Our pope is a
Jesuit, but he chose the name Francis. We can see
why; after a few years it has become clear. The
Synod on the Amazon began on the feast day of St.
Francis. The great encyclical we have been discussing, a central element of Pope Francis’s pontificate,
begins with the words of St. Francis’ Canticle of
the Creatures: Laudato si’. Its intention is clearly to
claim as its own a great saint of the Church, a great
founder, and I would like to stop to consider this for
a few moments. There are truths and conclusions to
be drawn.

For the Honor of the Poverello
The fate of St. Francis these past 50 years has
been tragic: his image has been completely disfigured. It is a tragic fate that has not been inflicted
upon St. Bernard or St. Ignatius or St. Benedict.
Why St. Francis? Because he received a very specific
mission from Our Lord. It was the beginning of the
13th century. St. Francis was the perfect prototype
of a reformer in the Church; that was his charisma, a
special grace he received from Our Lord. He received the mission, but he also received the grace
he needed to accomplish this mission. The figure
of St. Francis thus reformed the Church. He was a
reformer first of all in the order of being, he was the
exemplary cause of the reform. He incarnated the
Gospel perfectly and received from Our Lord the
mission of reforming the Church, and because of
this, his figure had an impact, an influence capable
of changing all of Christianity.
Now this specific charisma of St. Francis is
inexhaustible. Until the end of time, the example of
the life of St. Francis and his writings will have this
ability to transform souls and transform the Church.
When you are faced with a charismatic figure, you
cannot deny the charisma. Why? Because everyone
is affected by it, and that is the case with St. Francis.
He affects even people outside of the Church; he
causes conversions even outside of the Church, he
has an aura. Since this strength cannot be denied,
it has to be disfigured, it has to be channeled into
something foreign to it. It is exactly the same fate
that has affected the very figure of Our Lord in a
similar way. Our Lord cannot be denied, the historical figure of Our Lord cannot simply be denied, but
there is a whole rationalistic interpretation that
seeks to diminish the figure of Our Lord in order to
deny His divinity and His miracles.
Something similar has been done for St. Francis;
he has been turned into the saint of ecology and nature, as everyone knows. And this is extremely serious: it is not right to manipulate charismas that have
an impact on the Church and on souls and channel
them into something completely foreign to the person and mission of the Poverello. St. Francis offers
us the answer we are looking for in this conference.
St. Francis was the perfect reproduction of
Christ. Yes, the perfect reproduction of Our Lord
through his sanctity, his stigmata. And if St. Francis
was that, we can say it was a consequence of the

Incarnation. If God became incarnate, it was not to
unite Himself with the earth; if God became incarnate, it was to offer men in His humanity an example
they can imitate. And who have succeeded in imitating Him? The saints.
This imitation, which is a consequence of the
Incarnation, is possible thanks to the Incarnation.
This perfect reproduction of Our Lord is the driving
force behind reform, it is the continuation of Our
Lord in souls. That is the true and most complete
response that Tradition offers us to the current
cataclysm. I wanted to mention this this evening because this abuse of his charisma, this disfigurement,
has cost him dearly. Once again, sanctity is accomplished through the Cross; assimilation to Our Lord
is accomplished through the Cross.
The Response of the Society of Saint Pius X
The final response is the specific response of the
Society of Saint Pius X. What can we do as a Society,
as simple priests, religious, and faithful? Like we
just said: try, to the best of our ability, to imitate the
saints and to imitate them all the more today when
they are no longer known. But what can the Society
do as such? There are several reactions in the
Church, but they are reactions that can go in varying
directions, and above that can go at their own pace,
sometimes with a few steps backward. Positive
reactions overall, yes, but with shortcomings, reactions that generally still have a hard time going back
to the causes.
What can the Society do, then, to help these
reactions, all of them without exception, granted
that they are diverse, that each has its own rhythm,
its own perception of things, and also of the crisis.
The answer is very simple: all of these reactions and
all of the reactions to come need a reference point
that does not change. They all need an exemplary
cause that remains what it should be. We must not
think that to encourage these reactions we need to
lower the standards a little. No, because if we lower
the standards, if we keep quiet for example, these
reactions from well-meaning souls will no longer
have an exemplary cause in which they can see, in
a way, what Tradition is in its integrity. That is what
souls need. The greatest, most priceless service
we can render—and it is our duty to the Church at
present—is to offer this integral Tradition, to show it
in its integrity, to preach it fully, without diminish83

Theological Studies
ing it in any way. We must not change, and that is
very important; that is what those who are currently
reacting need. And after that, each will walk at his
own pace.
It is Providence itself that has placed us in this
position in spite of ourselves; a privileged position
that allows us to freely bear witness to our Faith, and
to freely proclaim our attachment to the Church of
all time and her Tradition.
How shall we conclude? Let us think of these
souls, of all these souls for whom a Catholic life is
no longer possible in their parishes. We have to be
realistic, it is impossible to have a Catholic life if we
follow the encyclical Laudato si’, if we put its principles into practice; it is impossible, and, I repeat, a
true life of the Faith is the most precious service we
can render the Church.
We are sometimes accused of not having a sense
of the Church, we are accused of focusing on ourselves, our chapels, our own development, without
worrying about the Church’s need to recover her
own Tradition, without considering souls’ need
to readopt and benefit from the Tradition of the
Church. This accusation is false and unacceptable.
It is because we love the Church that we cannot
budge an inch. It is not only to preserve our communities but to preserve a treasure we have received,
that does not belong to us, and that we must offer
to all indiscriminately, and that is why we must not
change an iota.

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The
Last
Word
Dear Reader,
“We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.”
Since “we pray as we believe,” the key to understand the Social Kingship of Christ here
on earth, and all the efforts that have been made to establish it over centuries, is simply to
look at its model and end, the kingdom of Heaven, as we pray in the Our Father: “Thy will be
done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
St. John, who was privileged to see and described for us the celestial beauties of that
heavenly kingdom, highlighted the fact that, in Heaven, everything, absolutely everything,
is centered on the Lamb:
“And every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such
as are in the sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying: ‘To him that sitteth on the
throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever’”
(Apoc. 5:13).
It is not surprising then that also on earth, around the altars and the churches built over
them, Catholic villages, cities and whole civilizations have sprung up as a prelude to Heaven,
our true fatherland. St Paul showed how the great saints of the past never lost sight of that:
“For they, confessing that they are pilgrims and strangers on the earth, do signify that
they seek a country, a better, a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be
called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13-17).
The longing to reach this Heavenly Jerusalem at any cost is another key to see and accept His will on earth in our daily lives. As the liturgy sings, we are the living stones with
which that Heavenly Jerusalem is built up on high:
By many a salutary stroke,
By many a weary blow, that broke
Or polished, with a workman’s skill,
The stones that form that glorious pile;
They all are fitly framed to lie
In their appointed place on High.
Archbishop Lefebvre understood and expressed that perfectly well in his famous Golden
Jubilee sermon:
“Keep the Mass of All Time! And you will see civilization reflourish, a civilization which
is not of this world, but a civilization which leads to the Catholic City which is Heaven. The
Catholic city of this world is made for nothing else than for the Catholic City of heaven.”

Fr. Daniel Couture

The Society of Saint Pius X is an international priestly society of almost 700
priests. Its main purpose is the formation and support of priests.
The goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its
fullness and purity, not changing, adding to or subtracting from the truth that
the Church has always taught, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through
the Roman Catholic priesthood. Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and
the traditional liturgy are its primary means to foster virtue and sanctity and
to bring the divine life of grace to souls.
The Angelus, in helping the whole man, tries to be an outlet for the work of the
Society, helping them reach souls. We aspire to help deepen your spiritual life,
nourish your studies, understand the history of Christendom, and restore the
reign of Christ the King in Christian culture in every aspect.

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