Calx Mariae magazine issue 11, Winter 2020

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MARIAE CALX

Rebuilding our Christian civilisation

IGHTS OF PARENTS IMARY EDUCATORS HEIR CHILDREN

of society gationConversion of parents to oppose a curriculum the moral law FOCUS:

THROUGH THE FAMILY INCLUDING:

THE RIGHTS OF PARENTS AS PRIMARY EDUCATORS OF THEIR CHILDREN and the obligation of parents to oppose a curriculum contrary to the moral law b y R AY M O N D L E O C A R D I N A L B U R K E

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY CATECHISM a n e x c l u s i v e i n t e r v i e w w i t h B I S H O P AT H A N A S I U S S C H N E I D E R A V O I C E O F T H E FA M I LY P U B L I C AT I O N

ISSUE 11

WINTER 2020

!

Y A D O T E IB R SC B SU

MARIAE CALX

MAGAZINE Rebuilding our Christian civilisation

Voice of the Family’s quarterly magazine Calx Mariae (Heel of Mary) seeks to contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation by providing essential coverage and analysis in the areas of life, family and culture.

“It is my pleasure to recommend Voice of the Family’s magazine, Calx Mariae.

Its title, with its allusion to the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15), should remind us that the Holy Virgin’s victory over our ancient enemy is already assured.

I hope that its presentation of the beauty of Catholic teaching will contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation.

I pray that its content will help all those who read it to draw ever closer to our Blessed Mother at this time of trial for the Church - like St John, those who remain close to her will not abandon the Lord.

I would encourage readers to assist this wonderful apostolate with their prayers and generous support.”

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C.

WORLDWIDE SHIPPING AVAIL ABLE F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N, P L E A S E V I S I T:

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MARIAE CALX

issue 11

w in t e r 2 0 2 0

CONTENTS 2

From the editor

6 The commercial use of aborted children in the new vaccines

by Liam Gibson 11 FOCUS Conversion of society through the family 13

The rights of parents as primary educators of their children and the obligation of parents to oppose a curriculum contrary to the moral law

by H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

21 Fathers’ call to Bishops: help us to defend our children’s purity

by John Smeaton 27 The Catholic attitude to sex education Joint pastoral letter of the hierarchy of England and Wales, 1944 6

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35 Handing on the faith in the family: the importance of family catechism An interview with H.E. Bishop Athanasius Schneider 44 The family in defence of the faith

by Dr Joseph Shaw

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35

4 7 Reflections on the necessity for widespread access to conditional baptism

by Matthew McCusker 55 Mary: the motherly Co-Redemptrix

by Michael Haynes

56 A letter from a Benedictine monk 61 The Nativity

by Fr Konrad zu Löwenstein

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61

FROM THE editor

EDITOR Maria Madise EDITORIAL BOARD Liam Gibson Matthew McCusker John Smeaton John-Henry Westen

A

DESIGN & PRODUCTION EDITOR Selina Fang EDITORIAL OFFICE VOICE OF THE FAMILY Unit B, 3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street, SE11 4AB, London, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7820 3126 Email: editor@voiceofthefamily.com www.voiceofthefamily.com/calxmariae PUBLICATION IS SPONSORED BY:

Special thanks to: DISCLAIMER: Great care is taken to credit photos and seek permission before publishing. If you have a query regarding copyright, please contact the Editor. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission.

Donations for the continuation of this magazine in print will be gratefully received by Voice of the Family at the address above or online via:

www.voiceofthefamily.com/donate

9 The procreative and unitive ends of the conjugal act cannot licitly be separated; the rejection of this truth lies at the root of modern attacks on life and the family.

9 Parents are the primary educators of their children and the protection of this right is essential for building a new “culture of life”.

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9 Marriage, the exclusive, life-long union of one man and one woman, is the foundation of a stable and flourishing society and is the greatest protector of children, born and unborn.

© VOICE

Calx Mariae is published by Voice of the Family, an international coalition of prolife and pro-family organisations formed in support of Catholic teaching on the family.

The following truths are particularly at the heart of Voice of the Family’s work:

I S S N : 25 17 -6 45 5

Calx Mariae seeks to contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation by providing features and analysis in the areas of life, family and culture. Our aim in producing this magazine is to strengthen our readers in the faith and in their witness to the truth about human life and the family.

s this extraordinary year now draws to a close, how it will be remembered depends largely on us. In this special endof-year editorial, I do not wish to discuss the course of the coronavirus crisis or how its exploitation has dominated 2020. Instead, I would like to reflect on the possible divine strategy that draws good out of evil and always works for the salvation of man.

The crisis this year has shaken the core desire of the secular culture: being in control. This year, we have not been able to maintain control in some of the most basic aspects of our daily life. Furthermore, we have been forcefully reminded of the threat, and some of us of the reality, of illness and death, a consequence of our fallen nature which will always be beyond our control.

Many have responded with fear and despair. But the Catholic attitude is never devoid of hope. Not infrequently, God uses physical illness to restore spiritual health.

In Fatima, our heavenly Mother said plainly: “Do not offend the Lord our God any more, because He is already so much offended.”

If God was much offended in 1917, the situation has certainly not improved. On the contrary, we have multiplied the offences – not necessarily as individuals but as a people.

Would it not be justified for God to react? And considering the gravity of our offences, is this reaction not more merciful than we deserve? Could not this be God, in His infinite mercy, calling His people, who often appear to have abandoned the very foundations of the faith that saves them, back to Himself and the Truth which the Church teaches?

This year, the enemy seems to have made significant progress on several fronts. At the time of writing, in Britain, as in several other European countries, the lockdown continues. In Westminster, the Mother of Parliaments, a vote was taken which resulted in the suppression of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the first time since the Catholic Relief Act of 1791. And yet, the abortion industry is protected as an essential service and has even extended its reach into British homes, taking the killing of the unborn to an unprecedented level. When the children who have been born go to school, they are exposed to compulsory sex “education” that destroys their innocence, corrupts their minds with the LGBT ideology and signposts them to contraception and abortion without the knowledge of their parents. While international travel is tightly restricted, travelling to Switzerland for assisted suicide is regarded as sacrosanct.

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Other European countries are also struggling. A snapshot of the streets of Poland this past October would show baptised “Catholics” defacing statues, vandalising churches, assaulting priests – all in retaliation for a judgment from the country’s highest court declaring it unconstitutional to kill an unborn child diagnosed with a disability.

And across the ocean, the American people are divided like never before in our living memory. In the US and all over the world, pro-life people were naturally deeply shaken by the prospect of a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris administration and its support for the slaughter of unborn children through all nine months of pregnancy.

But the darkness of this moment in world history has been made all the deeper by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in its rush to welcome Biden’s apparent victory.

In a statement published on 7 November 2020, the USCCB said: “We congratulate Mr Biden and acknowledge that he joins the late President John F. Kennedy as the second United States president to profess the Catholic faith.”

Buried at the heart of this statement is the lie that we can shed innocent blood, promote it across the globe as a human right and yet profess to be

Catholic. If we wish to stop offending God as a people, this lie must be uncovered and uprooted.

To profess the Catholic faith means to believe all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God. We cannot promote abortion and other evils that flout God’s law and remain in communion with His Church. This applies to each one of us as well as to our elected representatives and our spiritual leaders.

The situation in the world is certainly dramatic, yet the world will go the way of the world. Those who profess to be Catholics have greater duties – namely to live, protect and promote the fullness of the faith. If we are the salt of the earth, we must not lose our savour. We must remain faithful to the truth in season and out of season. And we must evangelise – by truly making reparation for widespread Communion in the hand; by strongly resisting the abundant irreverent, minimalist and reductionist treatment of our Eucharistic Lord; by deepening our interior life and growing in Christian charity.

If we do this, could we, in fact, remember this year as a time of spiritual awakening and rejoice in finding “the pearl of great price”? (Mt. 13:45) If not, are we not likely to look back on it as an opportunity wasted on a fruitless struggle to “get our life back”?

ADORATION OF THE MAGI (1423).GENTILE DA FABRIANO. THE UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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from the editor

“When we look back on 2020, let it not be remembered only as the year of restrictions, but as the year when we began to seek anew for that true freedom, which can be found in God alone.”

Our suffering is not undeserved. But it can be united with God’s great mission to save souls. Reviewing this year in the light of our apostolate, it stands out, above all, as a tremendous opportunity to evangelise. People around us have become more sensitive to the fragility of this earthly existence and, perhaps, more open to the reality of eternal life, death, judgment, as well as to divine providence that arranges everything, excluding sin, to work towards our sanctification.

Where do we go from here? In this Christmas issue of Calx Mariae, we consider how the Christian faith and civilisation were born in a family and how the family, rooted in the faith, must be the bedrock for rebuilding that civilisation. On the way forward, we endeavour to give a voice to the family – to individual human families, as well as to the family which is the Body of Christ. As members of the Church we need to give a voice to the Truth, to the Word, even when many with authority remain silent. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Eph. 4:15-16) But sin is the deadly virus that infects the body of the Church. It weakens our appetite for prayer – the breath of the Holy Spirit. It deprives us of our sense of the supernatural and, in the increasingly feverish pursuit of universal brotherhood, in lieu of the universal Church, we gradually lose the taste for the one true faith.

Death is a certainty. In fact, as St Alphonsus Liguori so often reminds us, it is the only thing certain in this life. As Catholics, we must not fear death but prepare for it, since a holy death can only 4

be the fruit of a holy life. In heaven, there are no observers, only saints. Ultimately, either sainthood or damnation are our only options.

The events of this year should lead us to renew our desire to die a saint and live forever in heaven. Certainly, we must engage in the affairs of the world as much as necessary for the completion of this mission. Politicians are not going to announce that we go back to February 2020, nor are the bishops. So we must resist the temporary measures that undermine love and reverence due to Our Lord. If we do not, soon these measures will be permanent and habitual.

But we have powerful weapons to fight against the crisis in both the world and the Church, such as adoration. This is the antidote to the offences against God. In adoration, we acknowledge Our Lord as the supreme good on Whom all life and death, all sickness and health depend. Let us then follow the example of the Magi – their generosity in the gifts they offered, their perseverance in the hardships of the journey they willingly endured and especially their humility which brought them to their knees before the Newborn King lying in the arms of His Blessed Mother.

As our Mother, too, she has promised us the ultimate hope – the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. It is the Triumph of the Heart so pure, where only God could enter.

We are not in control. But through our sacrifices, we can play a part in the divine strategy for the conversion of souls. When we look back on 2020, let it not be remembered only as the year of restrictions, but as the year when we began to seek anew for that true freedom, which can be found in God alone.

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of aborted children in the new vaccines

pro-life action

THE COMMERCIAL USE

by L I A M G I B S O N

M

any people are concerned by the news that scientists at Oxford University are using cell-lines derived from an aborted baby in the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. While it’s too early to say whether they will produce a marketable vaccine, the issue has focused renewed attention on the commercial exploitation of unborn children.

Since the widespread legalisation of abortion, the harvesting of tissue, organs and body parts from unborn children for use by the pharmaceutical industry, biotech companies, universities, and the cosmetics sector has become routine.1,2 This highly lucrative trade has also built-up a vast financial network with a vested interest in blocking attempts to protect unborn children from abortion.

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THE TRADE IN FOETAL TISSUE

In 2000, Life Dynamics3 exposed the trade in foetal tissue in the USA.4 Abortion facilities rent space to “harvesters” or procurement technicians who retrieve body parts to order and forward them to researchers. Life Dynamics obtained documents detailing what laboratories ask for. Sometimes these instructions would require tissue to be extracted within 5 to 10 minutes of the abortion to ensure that it’s fresh. The babies whose mothers meet the right criteria are delivered as intact as possible to facilitate harvesting since undamaged specimens command a higher price. This has been verified by eye-witness testimony. In March 2000, Dean Alberty, a former technician told ABC television that clinics were harvesting eyes, brains, hearts, limbs,

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pro-life action

torsos and other body parts for sale to the scientific market – universities and laboratories wanting to test new drugs or procedures. He described seeing babies still alive when technicians began dissecting them. On one occasion he witnessed a pair of twins “still moving on the table” who were “cuddling each other” and “gasping for breath”.5 Since then, the undercover videos and eye-witness evidence collected by the Center for Medical Progress, has established that the traffic in foetal tissue remains highly organised and extremely profitable.6 This trade is an integral part of research and development at major commercial laboratories, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. The harvesting of foetal tissue is a daily occurrence and likely to continue until public opposition is sufficient to end it.7 VACCINE DEVELOPMENT

Unlike bacteria, viruses aren’t capable of reproducing on their own, they can only multiply in the cells of a host. To obtain a sufficient sample for use in a laboratory, a virus must be grown in a cell culture.

It is then extracted, inactivated, and processed to make a vaccine.8

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The commercial use of foetal tissue largely began with research on vaccines.9 In 2018, Dr Stanley Plotkin, who famously developed a rubella vaccine in the 1960s while working at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wistar Institute, testified under oath in a court case in the US.10 Plotkin described how his colleague Dr Sven Gard of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden harvested organs, hearts, eyes, tongues, etc from hundreds of fully-formed aborted children to make their vaccines. At the time abortion was restricted in the US, so foetal tissue needed to be obtained abroad. It was the deliberate intention of the abortionist and researchers to secure foetal tissue for vaccine cultivation. And specific foetuses were chosen according to the medical history of their parents.

Plotkin’s team successfully isolated the rubella virus (clinically named RA273 – R for rubella, A for abortus, 27 indicating the 27th foetus, 3 means the 3rd tissue explant) which was then cultivated on WI-38, the cell line grown from tissue specimen number 38, from the 32nd of approximately 99 babies used in that project.11 There are at least 19 vaccines currently available which are grown on

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t h e c o m m e r c i a l u s e o f a b o rt e d c h i l d r e n i n t h e n e w va c c i n e s

roughly 11 different cell lines derived from tissue harvested from aborted children.12 These include vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis A and B, shingles, measles, mumps and rubella. For some of these diseases, there are alternative vaccines which are not manufactured through the use of foetal cell lines.

It is important to understand that while the final products do not contain actual foetal cells, they may retain DNA contaminants from the cell-line used in their manufacture.13 Removing all foetal DNA would make the vaccines too expensive to be commercially viable. Dr Theresa Deisher, a genetic engineer with over 30 years’ experience in pharmaceutical research warns that: “When we use human fetal produced vaccines or cosmetics, we are also injecting or transferring DNA and viruses from the human fetus used to create the cell line into our own bodies.”14 Deisher, the president of Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, argues that there are serious health risks attached to the use of these products.15 The pharmaceutical industry, of course, rejects these claims but it is the morality of these vaccines and not their safety which we are concerned with here.

THE OXFORD COVID-19 VACCINE RESEARCH

The Oxford University research which is being carried out in partnership with pharmaceutical giants Merck16 and AstraZeneca17 uses the HEK 293 cellline (Human Embryonic Kidney – derived from cells taken from a baby aborted in the 1970s).18 It is one of ten Covid-19 vaccines in development which are known to involve the use of foetal cells.

There are, however, nineteen laboratories working on a Covid-19 vaccine which do not utilise foetal cell lines.19 This shows that alternative methods of production are available if manufacturers choose to use them.

Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, for example, which the company claims is 90 per cent effective, was developed through the use of genetic sequencing on computers.20 Instead of using an actual virus, this experimental technology manipulates RNA to mimic the antibodies produced in the human body when exposed to a virus. The vaccine is intended to alter the genetic information of the inoculated person by programming an immune response to

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occur without exposure to the virus.21 If approved, Pfizer’s vaccine will be the first pharmaceutical which acts in this way to be licensed for human use. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether those who wish to be inoculated against Covid-19 through the NHS will have the option of receiving an “ethically” produced vaccine.

Earlier this year the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW)22 called on the faithful to educate themselves on this issue in light of the principles set out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Dignitatis personae23 and by the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV).24,25 While Dignitatis personae deals mostly with the culpability of researchers engaged in the scientific exploitation of unborn children, the PAV has addressed the responsibilities of parents more specifically. In 2005 it warned that: “…doctors and fathers of families have a duty to take recourse to alternative vaccines* (if they exist), putting pressure on the political authorities and health systems so that other vaccines without moral problems become available. They should take recourse, if necessary, to the use of conscientious objection…”

It called on Catholics “to oppose by all means” these vaccines and to lobby for the “rigorous legal control of the pharmaceutical industry”. It is right, it concluded, to abstain from using them provided it can be done “without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health”.

In 2017, however, this changed when the PAV issued a new statement downplaying these concerns. It speculated that its 2005 paper could soon be “revised and updated” stating: “As for the question of the vaccines that used or may have used cells coming from voluntarily aborted foetuses in their preparation, it must be specified that the ‘wrong’ in the moral sense lies in the actions, not in the vaccines or the material itself.

“The technical characteristics of the production of the vaccines most commonly used in child-

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pro-life action

“Make your GP aware that should you be offered a Covid-19 vaccine which has been produced using cell lines of aborted babies that you will refuse to take it on grounds of conscience.” hood lead us to exclude that there is a morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion.”26 The potential confusion for the faithful from the contradiction of the 2005 and the 2017 statements is obvious. However, it has also been interpreted by the pharmaceutical industry as evidence that the Church is now prepared to look the other way on the issue. When questioned, in 2018, about his use of aborted children in vaccine development Dr Plotkin was dismissive stating: “The Catholic Church has actually issued a document on that, which says that individuals who need the vaccines should receive the vaccines regardless of the fact …and that, I think it implies, that I am the individual who will go to hell because of the use of aborted tissues which I am glad to do.”27 CONCLUSION

In 2005, much of the PAV’s discussion had centred on the use of the rubella vaccine and the potential risk of birth defects in children whose mothers contracted the virus while pregnant. These children, themselves, could then face the additional threat of abortion because of those defects. When no alternative is available, the PAV found that the use of an illicit vaccine is to be understood as “passive material cooperation and, in its mildest and remotest sense, also active, morally justified as an extrema ratio [a last resort] due to the necessity to provide for the good of one’s children and of the people who come in contact with the children (pregnant women)”.28 Thankfully, the risks to children, either born or unborn, from Covid-19 are not as grave as those presented by viruses like rubella or meningitis.

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11 WEEKS AFTER GESTATION © LIFE ISSUES INSTITUTE

Statistics from various nations now indicate a recovery rate, in patients without comorbidities, close to 99 per cent29 and a growing range of therapeutics may increase this still further.30 It is, therefore, difficult to argue that the use of an illicit Covid-19 vaccine should be considered a morally justified “last resort”.

Until 2017, the Church urged the faithful to conscientiously object to vaccines produced by immoral means and to work to end this practice.

The recent CBCEW statement largely reverses this approach. The offence to human dignity caused by treating foetal remains as raw material is simply ignored, while the revulsion it provokes is dismissed as “moral distress” at seeming to be complicit in abortion. According to the CBCEW, the first priority for Catholics ought to be the mitigation of any risk which might arise from their refusal of an illicit vaccine.

Although the number of children exploited by “Big Pharma” is small when compared to the untold

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t h e c o m m e r c i a l u s e o f a b o rt e d c h i l d r e n i n t h e n e w va c c i n e s

loss of life in, for example, the IVF industry, this is not an issue which the Church can afford to ignore.

In April, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas wrote in a pastoral letter: “I believe today’s ugly threat of new vaccines being developed and tested using aborted children gives us an opportunity in divine providence to right this incredible wrong that strikes at the very root of the threats to the sanctity of life that continues to harm human civilisation. …our immediate task is to demand ethical vaccines for Covid-19. We must go further, however, and pursue the prevention of future development of vaccines using remnants and available cells of aborted children’s bodies and to use only ethically developed vaccines.”31 ACTION POINT: Make your GP aware that should

you be offered a Covid-19 vaccine which has been produced using cell lines of aborted babies that you will refuse to take it on grounds of conscience.

ENDNOTES: 1.

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Children of God for Life, US Aborted Fetal Products, Updated July 2020; https:// cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/fetalproductsall.pdf Andrea Byrnes, Human Life International: Products That Use Aborted Fetuses, 23 April 2019; https://www.hli.org/resources/products-that-use-aborted-fetuses/ Life Dynamics; https://lifedynamics.com/ Pro-life America, The Marketing of Aborted Baby Parts, 8 March 2000; https://www. prolifeamerica.com/marketing-aborted-baby-parts-2/11/ Investigate Daily – Fetal body parts used for research; http://mv3462p2bnv2ptxqp33ikj2j-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/INVESTIGATE-2012-Fetal-Body-Parts.pdf Center for Medical Progress, Human Capital; https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/human-capital/ A boycott of Pepsi products ended in 2012 when PEPSICO announced that it would no longer take advantage of flavour enhancers developed by Senomyx laboratories using foetal cells in their research and development. (Children of God for Life, US Aborted Fetal Products) Steven Kellmeyer, Children of God for Life, Medical Cannibals: The Moral Implications of Fetal Tissue Vaccines Medical; https://cogforlife.org/steven-kellmeyer/#more-845 As early as 1936, foetal tissue from forced abortions performed under the US eugenic laws were used in polio research. See Albert B Sabin, Peter K Olitsky,Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Cultivation of Poliomyelitis Virus in vitro in human embryonic tissue. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 1936, 34:357-359.

As early as 1936, foetal tissue from forced abortions performed under the US eugenic laws were used in polio research. See Albert B Sabin, Peter K Olitsky, Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Cultivation of Poliomyelitis Virus in vitro in human embryonic tissue. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 1936, 34:357-359.

Children of God for Life, Aborted Fetal Material Used in Vaccines and Medicines; https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/AbortedFetalCellLines.pdf Children of God for Life, Aborted Fetal Cell Line Products For USA & Canada – And Ethical Alternatives (Updated June 2020); https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/ uploads/vaccineListOrigFormat.pdf Theresa A. Deisher et al, Epidemiologic and Molecular Relationship Between Vaccine Manufacture and Autism Spectrum Disorder Prevalence (2015), Issues in Law & Medicine, 30 1; https://www.soundchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/ Deisher-VaccineManufactureAndASD.pdf DNA Mutations; https://www.soundchoice.org/research/ Open Letter from Dr Theresa Deisher to Legislators Regarding Fetal Cell DNA in Vaccines 8 April 2019; https://www.soundchoice.org/open-letter-to-legislators/ Merck: Merck Supports Jenner Institute to Reach First Milestone in Covid-19 Vaccine Manufacturing; https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/merck-sup-

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26.

27.

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29.

30.

31.

ports-jenner-institute-to-reach-first-milestone-in-covid-19-vaccine-manufacturing-891225678.html AstraZeneca: AstraZeneca and Oxford University announce landmark agreement for COVID-19 vaccine, 30 April 2020; PER C6 & HEK-293, Children of God for Life; https://cogforlife.org/per-c6-hek293/#more-776 Children of God, Covid-19 Vaccines and Treatments in Development – Updated 7 August 2020; https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/CovidCompareMoralImmoral.pdf Wesley J Smith, ‘Pfizer COVID Vaccine Not Created with Fetal Cells’ National Review 9 November 2020 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pfizer-covid-vaccine-not-created-with-fetal-cells/?fbclid=IwAR21XXINGa1HNwfNljmCmK79KJuyo-wx3Je1m2cHExkxYdM6zeOPfYhI0rM [Accessed 13 November 2020] “RNA vaccines use a different approach that takes advantage of the process that cells use to make proteins: cells use DNA as the template to make messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules, which are then translated to build proteins. An RNA vaccine consists of an mRNA strand that codes for a disease-specific antigen. Once the mRNA strand in the vaccine is inside the body’s cells, the cells use the genetic information to produce the antigen. This antigen is then displayed on the cell surface, where it is recognised by the immune system.” PHG Foundation, RNA vaccines: an introduction https://www.phgfoundation.org/briefing/rna-vaccines [Accessed 13 November 2020] COVID-19 and Vaccination Department for Social Justice Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, 24 September 2020; https://www.cbcew.org. uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/09/Covid-19-Vaccination-240920.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2020] Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith, Dignitas Personae Instruction On Certain Bioethical Questions, 8 September 2008; https://www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html [Accessed 30 October 2020] Pontificia Academia Pro Vita, Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses, Rome, 9 June 2005;https://www.immunize. org/talking-about-vaccines/vaticandocument.htm [Accessed 30 October 2020] Pontifical, Academy for Life, National Office for Health Pastoral Care (CEI), Association of Italian Catholic Doctors, Note on Italian Vaccine Issue, Rome, 31 July 2017; http://www.academyforlife.va/content/pav/en/the-academy/activity-academy/ note-vaccini.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2020] *The alternative vaccines in question are those that are prepared by means of cell lines which are not of human origin, for example, the Vero cell line (from monkeys) (D Vinnedge), the kidney cells of rabbits or monkeys, or the cells of chicken embryos. However, it should be noted that grave forms of allergy have occurred with some of the vaccines prepared in this way. The use of recombinant DNA technology could lead to the development of new vaccines in the near future which will no longer require the use of cultures of human diploid cells for the attenuation of the virus and its growth, for such vaccines will not be prepared from a basis of attenuated virus, but from the genome of the virus and from the antigens thus developed (G. C. Woodrow, W. M. McDonnell and F. K. Askari).

Some experimental studies have already been done using vaccines developed from DNA that has been derived from the genome of the German measles virus.

Moreover, some Asiatic researchers are trying to use the Varicella virus as a vector for the insertion of genes which codify the viral antigens of Rubella. These studies are still at a preliminary phase and the refinement of vaccine preparations which can be used in clinical practice will require a lengthy period of time and will be at high costs. D. Vinnedge, The Smallpox Vaccine, The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Spring 2000, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 12. G. C. Woodrow, “An Overview of Biotechnology as Applied to Vaccine Development” in “New Generation Vaccines”.

G. C. Woodrow, M. M. Levine eds, Marcel Dekker Inc, New York and Basel, 1990, see pp. 32-37. W. M. McDonnell, F. K. Askari, Immunization, JAMA, 10 December 1997, vol. 278, no. 22, pp. 2000-2007, see pp. 2005-2006.

Note on Italian Vaccine Issue.

See note 10.

PAV, Moral Reflections on Vaccines The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine reports that patients with no comorbidities had a Case Fatality Rate of 0.9%. Global Covid-19 Case Fatality Rates, 17 March 2020. Updated data 7th Oct 2020. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/ global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/ [Accessed 31 October 2020] As of October 2020, there were at least 52 drugs or therapies in trial or development globally. Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society, Regulatory Focus, COVID-19 therapeutics tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/ news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-therapeutics-tracker [Accessed 31 October 2020] Pastoral Letter from Bishop Joseph E. Strickland On the Ethical Development of Covid-19 Vaccine 27 April 2020 https://stphilipinstitute.org/2020/04/27/ pastoral-letter-from-bishop-joseph-e-strickland-on-the-ethical-developmentof-covid-19-vaccine/ [Accessed 5 November 2010]

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ADORATION OF THE MAGI (C.1440/1460).FRA ANGELICO & FILIPPO LIPPI. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

Conversion of society

THROUGH THE FAMILY

A

t Christmastime, we contemplate the story of a family. The Word became flesh in a family and so it is the family that God has chosen to be the bulwark of the Truth Incarnate. The mystery of the Incarnation gives the ultimate mission to all families: to welcome and nourish the Truth of God. Even at this time of great crisis of faith and the family, this is the never-failing reason for us to take heart: just as Christian faith and civilisation, its fruit, were nourished in the family, they are to be restored through the family.

No doubt, many Catholic parents today, countering the mounting threats to life and the family, may feel that our daily reality resembles more the persecution of the Holy Innocents than the scene of the Nativity. The attack on children’s innocence and their eternal salvation can seem as devastating as the senseless massacre of the infants of Judea.

But just as Herod killed the innocents in order to destroy God, today’s attacks on the innocence of children are targeted at the Truth of God which illuminates their immortal souls.

Sex education in schools corrupts children and grooms them for the contraception and abortion industry. It also perverts the understanding of education as it is entrusted to the family, because of its inseparability from the procreation of children, the first end of marriage. Parents who wish to fulfil their mission as primary educators would never want such “education” to enter the bosom of their family. Therefore, by such programmes, made compulsory outside of the family, parents’ trust in educational institutions is abused and their children are alienated from them.

Parents are not for the most part theological scholars – and they never have been. However, countless ordinary Catholic parents can confidently say that the commandment “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”, reaffirmed in the Gospel, establishes for all time that parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children. Today, this truth

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REST DURING THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT (1423).GENTILE DA FABRIANO. THE UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE. PUBLIC DOMAIN

is roundly contradicted and parents can easily feel overwhelmed by the powerful forces ranged against them. In this situation, fathers, in particular, the natural protectors of families, can look to St Joseph.

During the flight into Egypt, everything seemed to depend on him – God Incarnate, His holy Mother and the salvation of all mankind. With divine assistance he saved all that was entrusted to him.

In the FOCUS section of this issue of Calx Mariae, we consider the power of the family to renew society. We have included some of the talks from our recent online conference “Fathers’ call to Bishops: help us to defend our children’s purity” to address the terrible and widescale corruption of children by the introduction of compulsory sex education in all schools in Britain, including Catholic schools.

However, the hope for this fallen world comes from God, the Truth Incarnate. To rebuild our Christian civilisation we must learn to know and love our Catholic faith anew. This is why Voice of the Family has launched an entire online video catechism course for children and families, Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism, so they can put on the armour of God and take a stand against the deceits of evil as St Paul urges us to do (cf. Eph. 6:11).

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The call to the family to be the agent of evangelisation and the conversion of society may find our families in different places. Some of us may be unprepared, as the shepherds were, asleep in the field when Christ was born. Some, like the three kings, may have made great preparations and journeyed for a long time with gifts for the Saviour. Some may be physically near but close their doors to Christ because they have no room for Him. And others may prefer to keep feasting in the palace of Herod, and risk being intoxicated by the world and becoming persecutors of the family themselves. As in every age, we have to choose how we will respond to the Truth Incarnate that dwells among us.

And when we contemplate how the Truth became flesh in a family, let us not think only of the peace of the Newborn Child in the manger, with beasts and kings alike on their knees in adoration.

With the Holy Family, let us also prepare ourselves for the arduous flight across the desert, the fight for the life of Truth and the Infant Body of our Church.

CAL X M ARIA E

THE RIGHTS OF PARENTS AS PRIMARY EDUCATORS OF THEIR CHILDREN

and the obligation of parents to oppose a curriculum contrary to the moral law

by H . E . R AY M O N D L E O C A R D I N A L B U R K E

The following talk was given at Voice of the Family’s online conference “Fathers’ call to Bishops: help us to defend our children’s purity”, held on 9 October 2020.

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t pleases me very much to assist Voice of the Family in its noble work of promoting the sound doctrine and discipline of the Church regarding marriage and its incomparable fruit: the family. In particular, I am pleased to address the critical issue of education which is the essential mission of the family and a fundamental expression of our culture.

It cannot escape the attention of any thoughtful person that education today is under a ferocious attack. In both education and law, as fundamental expressions of our culture, we witness the abandonment of the understanding of human nature and of conscience by which God calls us to respect the truth of nature and to live in accord with that truth in pure and selfless love.

Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians, referring to the alienation of man from God and, therefore, from the world, declared: “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of WI N T E R 2020

the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”1 It is Christ alone Who opens the understanding and animates the heart to embrace the truth and to live it in love. Educators, therefore, cooperating with parents, lead children to know Christ and to follow Him in all things, and thus lead them to the peace which is the desire of every human heart.

Education, both in the home and in the school, opens the eyes of the child to contemplate the mystery of God’s love for us in the sending of His only-begotten Son in our human flesh and in the sending of His Holy Spirit into our souls, the great fruit of the Redemptive Incarnation.

Parents who in the past have depended upon schools to assist them in raising their children to be true citizens of heaven and earth, good members of the Church and good members of civil society, find some schools to be places of indoctrination in atheistic materialism with its concurrent relativism. Such schools, in fact, attempt to destroy the education received in the home regarding the most 13

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“Education, both in the home and in the school, opens the eyes of the child to contemplate the mystery of God’s love for us in the sending of His only-begotten Son in our human flesh and in the sending of His Holy Spirit into our souls, the great fruit of the Redemptive Incarnation.” fundamental truths: the truth regarding the inviolable dignity of innocent human life, the integrity of human sexuality and of marriage, and the irreplaceability of the relationship of man with God or of holy religion. What is more, when parents rightly try to safeguard their children from such a nihilistic ideology, these schools attempt to force the indoctrination upon their children in a totalitarian manner.

Sadly, some Catholic schools, for a variety of reasons, mimic the situation in non-Catholic schools by insisting upon the anti-life, anti-family, and anti-religion ideology which marks education, in general. The latter situation is particularly pernicious, for parents send their children to a Catholic school, trusting that it will be truly Catholic, when, in fact, it is nothing of the sort. The operation of such schools under the name of Catholic is a profound injustice to families.

At the root of the deplorable cultural situation in which we find ourselves is the loss of a sense of nature and of conscience. Pope Benedict XVI addressed this loss, in respect of the foundations of law, in his address to the German Parliament, the Bundestag, during his Pastoral Visit to Germany in September of 2011. Taking leave from the story of the young King Solomon on his accession to the throne, he recalled to political leaders the teaching of the Holy Scriptures regarding the work of politics. God asked King Solomon what request he wished to make as he began to rule God’s holy people. The Holy Father commented:

“What will the young ruler ask for at this important moment? Success – wealth – long life – destruction of his enemies? He chooses none of these things. Instead, he asks for a listening heart so that he may govern God’s people, and discern between good and evil (cf. 1 Kg 3:9).”2 The story of King Solomon, as Pope Benedict XVI observed, teaches what must be the end of political activity and, therefore, of government. He declared: “Politics must be a striving for justice, and hence it has to establish the fundamental preconditions for peace…. To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician.”3 Pope Benedict XVI then asked how we know the good and right which the political order and specif-

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CAL X M ARIA E

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ically the law are to safeguard and promote. While he acknowledged that in many matters “the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion,”4 he observed that such a principle is not sufficient “for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake.”5 Regarding the very foundations of the life of society, positive civil law must respect “nature and reason as the true sources of law.”6 In other words, one must have recourse to the natural moral law which God has inscribed upon every human heart. I think of my own homeland, the United States of America, in which the Supreme Court of the nation has presumed to define the beginning of human life, the partnership of marriage, and human sexuality itself according to materialistic and relativistic, sentimental considerations, in defiance of the law written by God on the human heart.7 What Pope Benedict XVI observed regarding the foundations of law in nature and conscience points to the fundamental work of education, namely, the work of fostering in students “a listening heart” which strives to know the law of God and to respect it by development in the life of the virtues.

True education aims to bring the human person “to full human and Christian maturity.”8 Suffice it to say that parents must be vigilant that the education given to their children be coherent with the Christian education and upbringing in the home. Even as the family is essential to the transformation of culture, so also is education because of its intrinsic connection with the growth and development of the child.

The thoroughly galvanized anti-life, anti-family, and anti-religion agenda of our time advances, in large part, because of a lack of attention and information among the general public. The pervasive mass media, the powerful promoter of the agenda, confuse and corrupt minds and hearts, and dull consciences to the law written by God in nature and upon every human heart. In his Encyclical Letter on the Gospel of Life, Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II declared: “What is urgently called for is a general mobilization of consciences and a united ethical effort to activate a great campaign in support of life.

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All together, we must build a new culture of life: new, because it will be able to confront and solve today’s unprecedented problems affecting human life; new, because it will be adopted with deeper and more dynamic conviction by all Christians; new, because it will be capable of bringing about a serious and courageous cultural dialogue among all parties. While the urgent need for such a cultural transformation is linked to the present historical situation, it is also rooted in the Church’s mission of evangelization. The purpose of the Gospel, in fact, is ‘to transform humanity from within and to make it new.’ Like the yeast which leavens the whole measure of dough (cf. Mt. 13:33), the Gospel is meant to permeate all cultures and give them life from within, so that they may express the full truth about the human person and about human life.”9 What Pope John Paul II affirmed about the mobilization of consciences regarding the inviolability of innocent human life surely applies as well and as strongly to the mobilization of consciences regarding the integrity of marriage and family life, and regarding the irreplaceable relationship with God, which is holy religion.

Pope John Paul II did not fail to note that such efforts must begin with “the renewal of a culture of life within Christian communities themselves.”10 The Church herself must address the situation of so many of her members who, even though they may be active in Church activities, “end up by separating their Christian faith from its ethical requirements regarding life, and thus fall into moral subjectivism and certain objectionable ways of acting.”11 This separation of faith from practical life is particularly devastating when it influences education. The child, who is taught to have a “listening heart”, who is naturally attuned to his conscience, to God’s law written upon his heart, is corrupted by those in whom he is led to put his trust. One only thinks of the corruption wrought by a pervasively false education in human sexuality. Parents cannot be attentive enough to the possibility of such corruption entering into what should be the education of their children.

Catholic education of children and youth is a complete education, that is, the development of rea15

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son through the competent imparting of knowledge and skills within the context of the faith through the study of God and of His plan for us and our world, as He has revealed Himself and His plan to us. Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical Letter Divini Illius Magistri, described a Catholic or Christian education with these words: “The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by baptism, according to the emphatic expression of the Apostle: ‘My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you.’

For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ: ‘Christ who is your life’, and display it in all his actions: ‘That the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh.’

For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accord with the example and teaching of Christ.

Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character.

For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as it is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same ‘the man who is just and firm of purpose.’ And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does.” 12 It is only such a complete education which can guide our children and young people on the way

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of the happiness for which God has created each of us. With the help of a sound education at home and in school, children know happiness both during the days of their earthly pilgrimage and eternally at the goal of their pilgrimage which is Heaven.

It is only such an education which can transform our culture.

The family is the first place of education, a truth which defines essentially the mission of the school.

The school serves the family and, therefore, works intimately with the family in bringing children to ever greater maturity, to the fullness of life in Christ.

Regarding Christian marriage and the family, and the mission of education, Pope Saint John Paul, in his 1981 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Familiaris Consortio, declared that “the Christian family, in fact, is the first community called to announce the Gospel to the human person during growth and to bring him or her, through a progressive education and catechesis, to full human and Christian maturity.”13 Christian education in the family and in the school introduces children and young people, in an ever more profound way, into the Tradition, into the great gift of our life in Christ in the Church handed down to us faithfully, in an unbroken line, through the Apostles and their successors.

Education, if it is to be sound, that is, for the good of the individual and society, must be especially attentive to arm itself against the errors of secularism and relativism, lest it fail to communicate to the succeeding generations the truth, beauty and goodness of our life and of our world, as they are expressed in the unchanging teaching of the faith, in its highest expression through prayer, devotion and divine worship, and in the holiness of life of those who profess the faith and worship God “in spirit and in truth”.14 The Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis, of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, made clear that the primary responsibility for the education of children belongs to parents who rely upon sound schools to assist them in providing any part of the total education of their children, which they are not able to impart in the home.

The essential good of marriage which is the gift of children includes both the procreation and the CAL X M ARIA E

t h e r i g h t s of pa r e n t s a s p r i m a r y e d u c at or s

education of the child. I quote from Gravissimum Educationis:

received in earliest infancy in the sacrament of Baptism.”15

“As it is the parents who have given life to their children, on them lies the gravest obligation of educating their family. They must therefore be recognized as being primarily and principally responsible for their education. The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute. It is therefore the duty of parents to create a family atmosphere inspired by love and devotion to God and their fellow-men which will promote an integrated, personal and social education of their children. The family is therefore the principal school of the social virtues which are necessary to every society. It is therefore above all in the Christian family, inspired by the grace and the responsibility of the sacrament of matrimony, that children should be taught to know and worship God and to love their neighbor, in accordance with the faith which they have

Certainly, society, in general, and the Church, in a particular way, also have a responsibility for the education of children and young people, but that responsibility must always be exercised with respect for the primary responsibility of parents.

Parents, for their part, should be fully engaged in whatever service of education is provided by society and the Church. Children and young people should not be confused or led into error by an education outside of the home which conflicts with the education given in the home. Today, parents must be especially vigilant, for some schools have become the tools of a secular agenda inimical to the Christian life. One thinks, for example, of the compulsory so-called “gender education” in some schools, which is a direct attack on human sexuality and on marriage and, therefore, on the family.

For the sake of our young people, we all must give particular attention to the fundamental ex-

THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND SAINT JOSEPH WITH CHRIST CHILD. ENGRAVING BY J. COUCHÉ (1750-1836) AFTER ANNIBALE CARRACCI (1560-1609). WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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“Good parents and good citizens must be attentive to the curriculum which schools are following and to the life in the schools, in order to assure that our children are being formed in the human and Christian virtues and are not being deformed by indoctrination in the confusion and error concerning the most fundamental truths of human life, of the family, and of religion, which will lead to their slavery to sin and, therefore, profound unhappiness, and to the destruction of culture.”

pression of our culture which is education. Good parents and good citizens must be attentive to the curriculum which schools are following and to the life in the schools, in order to assure that our children are being formed in the human and Christian virtues and are not being deformed by indoctrination in the confusion and error concerning the most fundamental truths of human life, of the family, and of religion, which will lead to their slavery to sin and, therefore, profound unhappiness, and to the destruction of culture.

At the heart of a solid curriculum is both respect for the dignity of the human person and for 18

the tradition of beauty, truth and goodness in the arts and the sciences. So often, today, a notion of tolerance of ways of thinking and acting contrary to the moral law seems to be the interpretative key for many Christians. According to this approach, one can no longer distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false, and the good and the evil. The approach is not securely grounded in the moral tradition, yet it tends to dominate our approach to the extent that we end up claiming to be Christian while tolerating ways of thinking and acting which are diametrically opposed to the moral law revealed to us in nature and in the Sacred Scriptures. The approach, at times, becomes so relativistic and subjective that we do not even observe the fundamental logical principle of non-contradiction, that is, that a thing cannot both be and not be in the same respect at the same time. In other words, certain actions cannot at the same time be both true to the moral law and not true to it.

In fact, charity alone must be the interpretative key of our thoughts and actions. In the context of charity, tolerance means unconditional love of the person who is involved in evil but firm abhorrence of the evil into which the person has fallen. All education should be directed to forming the students in the charity by which the mind and heart respond to the beautiful, the true, and the good, as God has created us to do.

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Education which takes place first in the home and is enriched and supplemented by schools and, above all, by truly Catholic schools is directed fundamentally to the formation of good citizens and good members of the Church. Ultimately it is directed to the happiness of the individual which is found in right relationships and has its fulfilment in eternal life. It presupposes the objective nature of things to which the human heart is directed, if it is trained to be a “listening heart”,16 that is, to follow a correctly formed conscience. It seeks an ever deeper knowledge and love of the true, the good, and the beautiful. It forms the individual to this fundamental pursuit throughout his or her lifetime.

May God inspire and strengthen parents and all of us in the work of forming “listening hearts” in our children and young people for their salvation and for the transformation of our culture. Under the maternal care of the Virgin Mother of God, may we seek and find in the Heart of Jesus the wisdom and strength to safeguard and promote the constant teaching and practice of the Church regarding human life, regarding human sexuality, marriage and the family, and regarding holy religion.

Thank you for your kind attention. May God bless you.

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Eph. 2:13-22.

“Was wird sich der junge Herrscher in diesem Augenblick erbitten? Erfolg – Reichtum – langes Leben – Vernictung der Feinde? Nicht um diese Dinge bittet er. Er bittet: „Verleih deinem Knecht ein hörendes Herz, damit er dein Volk zu regieren und das Gute vom Bösen zu unterscheiden versteht“ (1 Kön 3,9).” Benedictus PP. XVI, Allocutio “Iter apostolicum in Germaniam: ad Berolinensem foederatum coetum oratorum,” 22 Septembris 2011, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 103 (2011), p. 663.

[Hereafter, Bundestag]. English translation: L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English, 28 September 2011, p. 6. [Hereafter, BundestagEng].

“Politik muss Mühen um Gerechtigkeit sein und so die Grundvoraussetzung für Frieden schaffen.… Dem Recht zu dienen und der Herrschaft des Unrechts zu wehren ist und bleibt die grundlegend Aufgabe des Politikers.” Bundestag, p. 664.

English translation: BundestagEng, p. 6. “...kann die Mehrheit ein genügendes Kriterium sein.” Bundestag, p. 664. English translation: BundestagEng, p. 6. “...in den Grundfragen des Rechts, in denen es um die Würde des Menschen und der Menschheit geht.” Bundestag, p. 664. English translation: BundestagEng, p. 6. “...Natur und Vernunft als die wahren Rechtsquellen.” Bundestag, p. 665. English translation: BundestagEng, p. 6.

Cf. Roe v. Wade :: 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Obergefell v. Hodges :: 576 U.S. 644 (2015); and Bostock v. Clayton County :: 590 U.S. ___ (2020). “… ad plenam maturitatem humanam et christianam ....” Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Adhortatio Apostolica Familiaris Consortio, “De Familiae Christianae muneribus in mundo huius temporis,” 22 Novembris 1981, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 74 (1982), 823, n. 2. [Hereafter, FC]. English translation: Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familaris Consortio, “Regarding the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World,” 22 November 1981 (Vatican City State: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1981), p.

4, no. 2. [Hereafter, FCEng].

“Quam primum inducantur necesse est generalis conscientiarum motus moralisque communis nisus, qui excitare valeant validum sane opus ad vitam tuendam: omnibus

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

nobis simul coniunctis nova exstuenda est vitae cultura: nova, quae scilicet possit hodiernas de vita hominis ineditas quaestiones suscipere atque solvere; nova, utpote quae acriore et alacriore ratione omnium christianorum conscientiam permoveat; nova demum, quae accommodata sit ad gravem animosamque culturalem suscitandam comparationem cum omnibus. Huius culturalis conversionis necessitas coniungitur cum aetatis nostrae historica rerum condicione, at praesertim inhaeret in ipso evangelizandi munere quod proprium est Ecclesiae. Evangelium enim eo spectat «ut perficiat interiorem mutationem» et «humanitatem novam efficiat»; est velut fermentum quo pasta tota fermentatur (cfr. Mt.13:33), atque, qua tale, perfundere debet omnes culturas easque intus pervadere, ut integram declarent de homine deque eius vita veritatem.” Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Litterae encyclicae Evangelium vitae, “De vitae humanae inviolabili bono”, 25 Martii 1995, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 87 (1995), 509, n. 95. [Hereafter, EV] English translation: Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, “On the Value and Inviolability of Human Life,” 25 March 1995 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995), pp. 168-169, no. 95. [Hereafter, EVEng]. “… vitae cultura renovanda intra ipsas christianas communitates.” EV, 509, n. 95.

English translation: EVEng, p. 169, no. 95. “… seiunctionem quandam inferunt inter christianam fidem eiusque moralia circa vitam postulata, progredientes hac ratione ad moralem quendam subiectivismum adque vivendi mores qui probari non possunt.” EV, 509-510, n. 95. English translation: EVEng, p. 169, no. 95.

“Eo proprie ac proxime intendit christiana educatio, ut, divina cum gratia conspirando, germanum atque perfectum christianum efficiat hominem: ut Christum scilicet ipsum exprimat atque effingat in illis qui sint Baptismate renati, ad illud Apostoli vividum: «Filioli mei, quos iterum parturio, donec formetur Christus in vobis». Vitam enim supernaturalem germanus christianus vivere debet in Christo: «Christus, vita vestra», eandemque in omnibus rebus gerendis manifestare «ut et vita Iesu manifestetur in carne nostra mortali». Quae cum ita sint, summam ipsam humanorum actuum, quod attinet ad efficentiam sensuum et spiritus, ad intellectum et ad mores, ad singulos et ad societatem domesticam atque civilem, christiana educatio totam complectitur, non autem ut vel minime exenuet, verum ut secundum Iesu Christi exempla et doctrinam extollat, regat, perficiat. Itaque verus christianus, christiana educatione conformatus, alius non est ac supernaturalis homo, qui sentit, iudicat, constanter sibique congruenter operatur, ad rectam rationem, exemplis doctrinaque Iesu Christi supernaturaliter collustratam: scilicet, homo germana animi firmitate insignis. Neque enim quisquis sibi consentit et sui propriique tenax propositi agit, is solido ingenio est, sed unus ille qui aeternas iustitiae rationes sequitur, ut agnovit ethnicus ipse poëta, «iustum» una simul «et tenacem propositi virum» extollens; quae, ceterum, iustitiae rationes integre servari nequeunt, nisi Deo tribuatur – ut fit a vero christiano – quidquid Deo debetur.” Pius PP. XI, Litterae Encyclicae Divini Illius Magistri, “De Christiana iuventutis educatione”, 31 Decembris 1929, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 22 (1930), 83.

English translation: Five Great Encyclicals, ed. Gerald G. Treacy (New York: The Paulist Press, 1939), pp. 64-65. “… christiana enim familia est prima communitas, cuius est Evangelium personae humanae crescent annuntiare eamque progrediente educatione et catechesi ad plenam maturitatem humanam et christianam perducere.” FC, 823, n. 2. English translation: FCEng, p. 4, no. 2.

Jn 4:24.

“Parentes, cum vitam filiis contulerint, prolem educandi gravissima obligatione tenentur et ideo primi et praecipui eorum educatores agnoscendi sunt. Quod munus educationis tanti ponderis est ut, ubi desit, aegre suppleri possit. Parentum enim est talem familiae ambitum amore, pietate erga Deum et homines animatum creare qui integrae filiorum educationi personali et sociali faveat. Familia proinde est prima schola virtutum socialium quibus indigent omnes societates. Maxime vero in christiana familia, matrimonii sacramenti gratia et officio ditata, filii iam a prima aetate secundum fidem in baptismo receptam Deum percipere et colere atque proximum diligere doceantur oportet; ...” Sacrosanctum Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum II, Declarato Gravissimum educationis , “De Educatione Christiana,” 28 Octobris 1965, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 58 (1966), 731, n. 3. English translation: Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents ed. Austin Flannery, new rev. ed. (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Company, 1992), pp. 728-729, no. 3.

1 Kgs 3:9.

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Leaders of the Coalition in Defence of Primary Educators praying the Rosary in front of Westminster Cathedral before delivering a letter to H.E. Vincent Cardinal Nichols regarding the CBCEW’s support for legislation imposing pro-LGBT Relationships and Sex Education on school-children in England, 12 September 2020.

FATHERS’ CALL TO BISHOPS: help us to defend our children’s purity

by J O H N S M E AT O N

The following talk was given at Voice of the Family’s online conference “Fathers’ call to Bishops: help us to defend our children’s purity”, held on 9 October 2020.

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n 1944, the Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales sent a pastoral letter to be read out in all the churches and chapels of England and Wales on the third Sunday after Easter. The pastoral letter was entitled: “The Catholic Attitude to Sex Education” and it offered very clear advice to fathers on this matter. Quoting Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Illius Magistri, the bishops of England and Wales declared, “in treating of these delicate matters, ‘every precaution must be taken’ even by parents”. Hence “it is of the highest importance that a good father while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this deadly hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it might happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child.”

The 1944 letter of the Bishops of England and Wales, quoting Divini Illius Magistri, continued: “Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.”

Reflecting today on the pastoral advice of the Bishops of England and Wales in 1944, I thank God for it, especially because of the impact the bishops’ teaching so clearly had on my own father and mother, as my siblings and I were growing up in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It’s that kind of Catholic leadership parents are longing for today.

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A new coalition, Parents in Defence of Primary Educators, has been established in the UK, comprising Catholic Man UK, the Latin Mass Society and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Our coalition wants to protect our children and grandchildren from the British Government’s pro-LGBT, pro-contraception and pro-abortion relationships and sex education policy – now enshrined in law.

Tragically, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) has repeatedly welcomed and expressed their support for this terrible law, which came into force in September 2020.

It’s our conviction, in the Coalition, that, in the terrible crisis we face today not least in our Catholic schools because of the false teaching of many of our spiritual fathers, it’s time for natural fathers to step forward, and to protect our children by imploring Our Lady’s help, and by correcting our bishops and by urging them to lead the public and parents in resisting legislation which threatens the immortal souls of our children.

Yes, Catholic parents are praying that our bishops change direction and that they begin to lead Catholic resistance to the British Government’s wicked legislation which makes Relationships Education compulsory at primary school and Relationships and Sex Education compulsory at secondary school.

The significance of the bishops’ betrayal of parents of all faiths, who want to protect their children’s purity, can be clearly seen in statements made by British government ministers. For example, Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Standards, speaking in the House of Commons debate on 25 June 2019, dismissed objecting parents saying, 21

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“Yes, Catholic parents are praying that our bishops change direction and that they begin to lead Catholic resistance to the British Government’s wicked legislation which makes Relationships Education compulsory at primary school and Relationships and Sex Education compulsory at secondary school.”

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“I am afraid that it is unlikely that we will bring those extreme ends of the debate into that consensus, but I am very content that we have secured the support of the Catholic Church, the Church of England and organisations such as Stonewall for the guidance we have created.”

The sentence, in paragraph 58 of the document, reads:

Stonewall is a militant homosexual organisation which campaigns against Catholic teaching.

On 12 September 2020, my fellow Coalition leaders in Parents in Defence of Primary Educators and I delivered a letter to H.E. Vincent Cardinal Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. Our letter expressed our deep concern about the bishops’ position.

If you want to get involved in our coalition, you can go to our website primaryeducators.org.uk and sign up to hear about our future initiatives. You will find there our letter to Cardinal Nichols – and you may wish to write yourself to your local bishop to express your concerns, respectfully but firmly, or raise the matter with your local clergy.

In the autumn issue of Calx Mariae, Dr Tom Rogers went into distressing detail of the extent of support the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has given to the British government programmes and you will find Dr Rogers’s full article on the topic also on the Coalition website.

For my part, I want to put the terrible situation in Britain into global ecclesiastical context.

On 24 October 2015, 94% of the bishops attending the Ordinary Synod on the Family in Rome voted to approve a paragraph in the final report which rejects the right of parents to choose to be the sole educators of their children in sexual matters.

This paragraph is directly contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

In his Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (10 January 1890), on the chief duties of Christians as citizens, Pope Leo XIII teaches:

“The family, while maintaining its primary space in education (cf. Gravissimum Educationis, 3), cannot be the only place for teaching sexuality.”

“By nature parents have a right to the training of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which by God’s blessing it was begotten. Therefore it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety.”

Pope Leo XIII’s words are given greater weight by virtue of their being cited by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Divini Illius Magistri on Christian Education (31 December 1929). In this encyclical, Pope Pius XI goes on to say: “65. Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely CAL X M ARIA E

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imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers.

“66. Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.”

The teaching of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI was also upheld by Pope Pius XII in an address to French fathers on 18 September 1951. The words of these Popes are steeped in Divine Law, in apostolic teaching and the tradition of the Church,

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as well as in a sensitive and holy knowledge of the reality of the constant battle between good and evil in the soul of every human being.

Catholic parents today have an obligation to compare and contrast the teaching of these three Popes on sex education to the following words from Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio, his apostolic exhortation on the family in 1981, which sadly fails to convey the full teaching of the Church on the sacred obligations of parents to guard their children from temptation: “Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centres chosen and controlled by them. In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents.” (No. 37) Pope John Paul II’s instruction appears simply to take for granted the teaching of sex education in schools, falling into the very error described by Pope

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Pius XI fifty-two years earlier “the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education”.

Anyone familiar with what was happening in practice in Catholic schools in the 70s and 80s and even more so today – as I am, having taught in a respected Catholic grammar school in London in the mid-70s and as chief executive of SPUC with reports from throughout Britain of appalling abuses of children’s innocence taking place in Catholic schools – would understand how Pope John Paul II’s teaching, departing from the teaching of previous popes, has catastrophically failed to protect our children from evil.

Even more so, Catholic parents today have an obligation to compare and contrast the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII to the position now adopted by the Vatican and Pope Francis: a few months after the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia, an apostolic exhortation in which Pope Francis called for sex education in educational institutions, the Pontifical Council for the Family published a sex education programme called The Meeting Point at the World Youth Day in Poland in July 2016.

This programme, which is intended to be taught in schools, in mixed classrooms, adopts a secularised and secularising approach, and exposes children to obscene and pornographic images.

Finally compare and contrast the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII to the teaching of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales who in a training document for teachers say that an “exalted form of love exists just as powerfully in relationships between people of the same sex as it does in heterosexual relationships”.

Returning to the synods on the family which took place in Rome in 2015, and in the previous year, in the interim report [the Relatio post discepatationem] of the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 and in the preparatory document, the Instrumentum Laboris, of the Ordinary Synod in 2015 there were passages that suggested that homosexual unions, while not equal to marriage, nonetheless have some degree of legitimacy. The synod fathers, bishops from around the world, rejected this approach: no such passages are found in the final reports of either synod.

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The rejected approach however was reintroduced in Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation, which states, in paragraph 52, that: “We need to acknowledge the great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability, but de facto or same-sex unions, may not simply be equated with marriage.”

This implies: (i) that “same-sex unions” are one of the “great variety of family situations” (ii) that “same-sex unions” offer a “certain stability” and (iii) that “same-sex unions” can be “equated” with marriage on some level, albeit not “simply”.

Furthermore paragraph 52 of Amoris Laetitia states that “only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life.” To state that only marriage has a “plenary role” essentially means that other forms of union do have some role to play in society.

On 19 September 2016, four cardinals, the Italian Carlo Caffarra, American Raymond Burke and Germans Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner – sent five questions, called dubia (Latin for “doubts”) to Pope Francis and to Gerhard Cardinal Müller, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), along with an accompanying letter. The cardinals said their aim was to clarify “contrasting interpretations” of Paragraphs 300-305 in Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, relating to admission of remarried divorcees to the sacraments, and the Church’s moral teaching.

Dubia are formal questions brought before the Pope and the CDF aimed at eliciting a “Yes” or “No” response, “without theological argumentation”. The practice is a long-standing way of addressing the Apostolic See, geared towards achieving clarity on Church teaching.

In a lecture delivered in 2017, Prof. Roberto de Mattei, the distinguished Italian historian, commented powerfully on Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia and the dubia issued by the four cardinals the previous year:

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“Parents today are not for the most part theological scholars. However, countless unlearned, but faithful Catholic parents both know and can confidently affirm, that God’s commandment ‘Honour thy Father and thy Mother’ , reaffirmed by God the Son during His life on earth, establishes for all time that parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children.” divine and natural law does not admit exceptions. Those who allow the exception destroy the rule. In one of the dubia addressed by the cardinals to the pope we read: ‘After Amoris Laetitia n. 301, is it still possible to affirm that a person who habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of God’s law, as for instance the one that prohibits adultery (cf. Mt. 19:3-9), finds him or herself in an objective situation of grave habitual sin?’ The fact that today a doubt of this sort can be presented to the pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith indicates how very grave and deep is the crisis in which the Church is immersed.”

“At Fatima, Our Lady showed the three little shepherds the terrifying vision of hell where the souls of poor sinners go, and it was revealed to Jacinta that it was sins against purity that lead most souls to hell. Who could possibly have imagined one hundred years later that the public profession of impurity would have been added to the immense number of impure sins that are committed, under the form of sexual liberation and the introduction of extramarital unions, even homosexual, into the laws of the most important nations of the West?

“And who could have ever imagined that a pontifical document – Pope Francis’s Postsynodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, issued on 8 April 2016 – would endorse adultery? The WI N T E R 2020

What do Catholic parents do when Popes disagree on sex education, on adultery, on homosexual relationships?

The answer must surely be that parents must reflect on Catholic doctrine on faith and morals, as revealed in the scriptures, particularly in the Gospel, and as revealed by sacred tradition, that is the teachings of the Apostles, as transmitted faithfully from one generation to the next, at times infallibly, from the time of Christ.

What a blessing it is for parents, then, to hear the words of Christ in St Matthew’s Gospel: “At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father: for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.” (Mt.11:25-26) 25

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Parents today are not for the most part theological scholars – and they never have been since the time of Christ. However, countless unlearned, but faithful Catholic parents both know and can confidently affirm, without fear of being contradicted by any authority in this world or the next, that God’s commandment “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”, reaffirmed by God the Son during His life on earth, establishes for all time that parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children.

Faithful, unlearned, Catholic parents are also fully capable of understanding Christ’s words concerning giving scandal to children: “… he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea”. Catholic parents know, and Catholic fathers in particular must remind their bishops that these words provide a terrible warning to all those, who promote the showing of pornographic images in the classroom to children, young and old, and who allow false ideas about human sexuality, including homosexuality, to be taught in the classroom.

Why fathers, in particular? It’s the father’s special duty to set moral boundaries for his children – and to be firm in doing so “in the discipline and correction of the Lord”, as St Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians.

The social, spiritual, and psychological impact of natural fathers abandoning their children, is overwhelming society, and individual human beings today. The impact of our spiritual fathers, our Catholic bishops, abandoning our children to the corrupt ideology being imposed by the British government in compulsory pro-LGBT relationships and sex education is even more overwhelming.

Natural fathers, therefore, have a duty, proclaimed in Scripture, to step forward, and to protect our children by imploring Our Lady’s help, and by correcting our bishops and urging them to lead the public and parents in resisting legislation which threatens the immortal souls of our children.

The biggest threat to the culture of life is the corruption of our children in schools, in Catholic schools, and it’s our duty as fathers, as parents, to speak to our bishops and priests, respectfully and firmly, and urge them to join us in defending our children’s purity.

To be informed and get involved, please visit:

WWW.PRIMARYEDUCATORS.ORG.UK

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THE CATHOLIC ATTITUDE TO THE ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS OF ENGLAND AND WALES TO THE CLERGY AND FAITHFUL OF THE SAID COUNTRIES HEALTH AND BENEDICTION IN THE LORD Dearly Beloved Brethren and Dear Children in Jesus Christ: The publication of the Board of Education's pamphlet on sex education in schools and youth organizations1 has brought the subject into prominence and calls for some statement concerning the Catholic attitude towards the problem. We have no desire to minimize the necessity of some attention being paid to the problem both now and continuously in the future. But the remedy is to be found not so much in the imparting in public of fuller and more systematic knowledge of sex from the physiological or biological standpoint as by the removal of external temptations and by the general and determined inculcation of the practice of Christian virtue and our dependence on divine grace.

“Far too common,” said Pope Pius XI, “is the error of those who, with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term, propagate a so-called sex education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, exposing them, at an early age, to the occasions in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. Such persons,” says the Pope, “grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind2 and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions and unsupported by the means of grace.”3 INSTRUCTION BY THE PARENTS If the problem with which we are concerned is accentuated in these days it is due, apart from wartime conditions, (1) to certain general influences which are responsible for placing before young people lower moral standards of life and conduct, and (2) to the failure on the part of many parents to fulfil the obligation which is theirs of

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“The proposed instruction in the schools would be largely unnecessary if the causes of the evils which it is intended to remedy were, first of all, removed – bad literature, bad pictures, bad theatre displays, shocking housing conditions. It is our opinion that these evils can and should be removed. As regards the parental instruction of children in the matters concerned, we are convinced that herein lies the chief cause and the remedy which is being sought.” instructing their children in the things which concern the welfare of body and soul. The proposed instruction in the schools would be largely unnecessary if the causes of the evils which it is intended to remedy were, first of all, removed — bad literature, bad pictures, bad theatre displays, shocking housing conditions. It is our opinion that these evils can and should be removed. As regards the parental instruction of children in the matters concerned, we are convinced that herein lies the chief cause and the remedy which is being sought.

There is to-day a lamentable decline in family education due largely to an ever-increasing tendency on the part of parents deliberately to shirk their obvious duty. Parents should remember that the obligation to see to the religious and moral education of their children rests primarily on themselves and that there are certain aspects of this education which cannot satisfactorily be delegated to others.4 “However eminent school teachers may be in their profession,” said Pope Pius XII, addressing Catholic mothers, “they will have little success in the formation of your children without your collaboration.”5 “To women, more than to anyone else,” continued the Pope,” is entrusted the first education of the child in its early months and years.”6 The omission of parental instruction and parental discipline is undoubtedly responsible for many of the moral and social evils which we regret to-day. At the same time we are aware that even good parents sometimes feel themselves unprepared or ill-equipped for their work as educators, not only with regard to subjects which are now universally taught by specially trained teachers in the schools, but also with regard to matters which have, so far, been considered of a more intimate and personal nature and, accordingly, are more properly the sphere of the home.

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THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND SAINT JOSEPH WITH THE CHRIST CHILD. ENGRAVING BY J. JENKINS AFTER N. POUSSIN (1594?-1665). WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE The Catholic Church does not encourage such unpreparedness on the part of parents nor does she, as some have thought, favour a policy of complete secrecy between parents and children concerning the mysteries of life. Any doubts upon this have been set at rest by the pronouncements of recent Popes. “Train the mind of your children,” said the present Holy Father to the gathering of Catholic mothers on the Feast of Christ the King, 1941; “do not give them wrong ideas or wrong reasons for things; whatever their questions may be, do not answer them with evasions or untrue statements which their minds rarely accept, but take occasion from them lovingly and paternally to train their minds, which want only to open to the truth and to grasp it with the first ingenuous gropings of their reasoning and reflective powers.” Catholic parents can depend on the grace of the sacrament of matrimony and upon the additional help which comes from prayer and the frequent reception of the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist to carry out this advice of the head of the Church with the desired results. Those seeking suggestions as to how the counsels of the Pope can be carried out with more full effect will find help in an increasing number of publications from reliable Catholic sources.

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Nevertheless, in treating of these delicate matters, “every precaution must be taken” even by parents.7 “Such is our misery and inclination to sin,” says a well-known Christian writer quoted by Pope Pius XI, “that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this deadly hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that, instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally,” concludes the same writer, “during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.”8 THE POSITION OF TEACHERS Unfortunately, until parents are better equipped for their task, and do in fact carry out their obligations, there will always be some children lacking in the knowledge of those things intended by God for their own progress in virtue and for the fulfilment of God’s designs. But we do not admit that, therefore, the duty of imparting this knowledge necessarily falls upon the school teachers. Teachers have no strict right to arrogate to themselves parental duties; if called upon by the parents to deputize for them in this delicate matter they

ST JOHN BOSCO BLESSING HIS STUDENTS

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“ ...The Church is opposed to collective or public sex education with or without supposed ‘safeguards’... This attitude of the Church is not obscurantist, as some may suggest, but is based on her two thousand years’ experience and upon her unrivalled knowledge of human nature.” may very properly do so. Whilst we willingly and readily pay tribute to the highmindedness of the majority of the school-teachers of this country, and whilst we acknowledge with deep appreciation their contribution towards the welfare of our children and the common good, we feel it necessary to insist that the teacher is primarily “in place of the parent” (in loco parentis) and not a civil servant doing the work of the State. Accordingly, a teacher must always respect the rights and wishes of the parents concerning the education of children, and rather than taking over parental duties should regard it as their task to help parents towards the proper fulfilment of obligations.

This is not to belittle or depreciate the help which individual teachers have, in their charity, given to individual children concerning even the more intimate matters of life. There will, unfortunately, always be some parents who neglect their obvious duties towards their children and whose omissions call for attention by someone else.

In such cases the teacher or experienced youth-leader, animated by Christian charity and having the necessary competence, may be the best person to make up the deficiency. But it is advisable that the approval of the parents should always be sought. This help, however, on the more intimate matters of life must always remain personal and individual. Class or group instruction of children or of youth on the physiological aspect of sex would be fraught with grave dangers and would be against the traditional teaching of the Church.

METHOD RECOMMENDED BY THE CHURCH To the question whether the method called “sexual education” or even “sexual initiation” could be approved, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, on 21st March, 1931, replied “in the negative”, and directed that “the method of educating youth employed by the Church and holy men in the past, and commended by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical on ‘The Christian Education of Youth’, 31st December 1929, must be preserved”. The method commended by the Pope, in the encyclical referred to, is clear. “In this extremely delicate matter,” says the Holy Father, “if, all things considered, some individual instruction is found necessary and opportune from those who hold from God the commission to educate and who have the grace of state, every WI N T E R 2020

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“The supernatural Christian formation must always provide the foundation of the ideal education or youth.

Every other form of education is false and unsound and will lead neither to spiritual nor temporal well-being.” precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education.” These words, taken in conjunction with the decree of the Holy Office, leave no room to doubt that the Church is opposed to collective or public sex education with or without supposed “safeguards”. She teaches that, in place of such methods of sex education, “care must be taken, in the first place, to give a full, firm, and uninterrupted religious instruction to youth of both sexes; that an esteem and desire for and love of the angelic virtue be instilled into them; that they shall be urged, especially, to be instant in prayer, assiduous in the reception of the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist; that they shall cultivate a filial devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of holy purity, and place themselves under her protection; and that they shall carefully avoid dangerous reading, immodest shows, bad company, and all occasions of sin.”9 THE CHURCH’S UNRIVALLED KNOWLEDGE This attitude of the Church is not obscurantist, as some may suggest, but is based on her two thousand years’ experience and upon her unrivalled knowledge of human nature. Moreover, it is an attitude which is supported by eminent educationists and psychologists. The late Professor Münsterberg, the noted American psychologist and, incidentally, a non-Catholic, in his famous essay on “Sex ‘Education’”, wrote: “It is hardly possible to disagree on the one factor of the situation, the existence of horrid calamities, and of deplorable abuses in the world of sex. To recognise these abscesses in the social organism necessarily means for every decent being the sincere and enthusiastic hope of removing them. There cannot be any dissent...

But while there must be perfect agreement about the moral duty of the social community, there can be the widest disagreement about the right method of carrying on this fight. The popular view of the day is distinctly that, as these evils were hidden from sight by the policy of silence, the right method of removing them from the world must be the opposite scheme, the policy of unveiled speech. The overwhelming majority has come to this conclusion as if it were a matter of course.

The man in the street and, what is more surprising, the woman in the home are convinced that if we disapprove of those evils we must first of all condemn the silence of our forefathers. They feel as if he who sticks to the belief in silence must necessarily help the enemies of 32

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society, and become responsible for the alarming increase of sexual affliction and crime. They refuse to see that on the one side the existing facts and the burning need for their removal, and on the other side the question of the best method and best plan for the fight, are entirely distinct, and that the highest intention for social reform may go together with the deepest conviction that the popular method of the present day is doing incalculable harm, is utterly wrong, and is one of the most dangerous causes of that evil which it hopes to destroy.”10 RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TRAINING The reason for the recent agitation in certain quarters for more general sex instruction is not altogether clear to us. If its main purpose is a social one, namely, to safeguard the physical welfare of the nation, then the advocates of sex instruction on the lines suggested are doomed to disappointment, since the evils concerned are the effect not so much of ignorance as of a weakness of will unsupported by the means of grace. Information alone will not produce a healthy and sound nation; much less will it be sufficient to prepare souls for their eternal destiny in the next life. It is not so much information as formation which is required – formation of character, the training of the mind, the heart, and the will with the necessary assistance of religion. The religious and moral training must continue to be the main method of approach in the schools and youth movements to the problems we are seeking to solve. The psychological aspect will

THE APOTHEOSIS OF ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1631). FRANCISCO DE ZURBARÁN. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, SEVILLE. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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doubtless have increasingly interesting contributions to offer, but the supernatural Christian formation must always provide the foundation of the ideal education or youth. Every other form of education is false and unsound and will lead neither to spiritual nor temporal well-being. We exhort our Catholic teachers and youth leaders, therefore, to continue in their holy vocation and to be instant in helping to form those in their charge in the ways of Christian virtue. We regard our Catholic schools as sanctuaries wherein our children are mightily strengthened in the faith and its practice. Nevertheless, the school or the youth centre must always remain complementary to the home and must not supplant it. Even if parents are found to be neglecting duties which are essentially parental and which cannot be normally undertaken as satisfactorily by others, the State should hesitate, by teaching in the schools or by other means, to encourage parents in their neglect. The State should rather take steps to see that parents themselves are better equipped for their parental tasks.

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY This encouragement of the fulfilment of parental responsibility will, indeed, be the first endeavour of the Church. With this in view we endorse the appeal of Pius XI to all pastors of souls “to use every means, by catechisms and instruction, by word of mouth and in widely published writings, to ensure that Christian parents are well instructed both in general and in particular regarding their duties in the religious, moral, and civic education of their children, and regarding the best methods — apart from their own example — of attaining that end.”11 In carrying out this commission the clergy will, no doubt, find helpful those gatherings, organizations, and confraternities of Catholic parents, mothers, and adolescents which the Holy Father refers to as “worthy of all praise and encouragement.”12

We appeal to all Catholic parents to respond to the general effort which will be made on their behalf and to co-operate wholeheartedly in trying to equip themselves adequately for their noble task.

We feel sure that with generous co-operation on the part of parents we shall not only go far to remove the present grave social and moral evils but that we shall help to build up a generation whose delight it will be to “seek the things that are above” and whose purity and integrity of life will be a joy both to God and man.

Given at Westminster on the Feast of St Anselm in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-four, and appointed to be read in all the churches and chapels of England and Wales on the third Sunday after Easter.

(Signed by all the members of the Hierarchy) 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

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H.M. Stationery Office, 1943.

Rom. VII. 23.

Encyclical Divini illius magistri, 31 Dec. 1929. cf. Code of Canon Law, Cn. 1113.

Alloc., 26 Oct. 1941.

Ibid. cf. Pius XI, Divini illius magistri.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Silvio Antoniano, Delreducazione cristiana dei figliuoli, lib. II, c88, ibid.

Decree of the Holy Office, 21 March 1931. cf. Psychology and Social Sanity, by Hugo Münsterberg.

Divini illius magistri.

Ibid.

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HANDING ON THE FAITH IN THE FAMILY:

the importance of family catechism

Fr Anthony Pillari interviewed His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider about the crucial importance of the family catechism today, when launching Voice of the Family’s new programme Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism.

has been handed on in a true way by the parents in a family. This is the true way because it is the most organic way. What is organic is stronger — it lasts and it has a deeper impact.

I had the great grace to be born in a deeply Catholic family. Both parents and also my grandparents from both sides, and even their grandparents had the same deep Catholic faith. For me, it is an unspeakable grace from God that I could grow up in a “soil” which was filled with the Catholic faith through generations.

So I learnt the catechism firstly from my mother.

She taught the catechism regularly to me and my

Well known to the readers of Calx Mariae, Bishop Schneider is the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan. He holds a doctorate in patristics, speaks German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Italian, and reads Latin and ancient Greek. He is especially known for his great love of the Catholic faith and for his ability to communicate its great truths clearly “in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2).

FR PILLARI: Your Excellency, it is a real blessing and honour to have you with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: You are welcome. I greet especially, with much love, young families and their children. They are the true hope for the renewal of the Church. Large families represent the domestic church as the Church fathers taught. It is a joy for me to speak to these young Catholic families.

FR PILLARI: And would you be willing to share with families throughout the world some of your own experience of studying the catechism as a young boy?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: I learnt the catechism within the family, from my parents. I consider this the most appropriate place, since God has already established the family as a small church, a domestic church. Through all generations, the Catholic Faith WI N T E R 2020

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siblings. It was the good old German catechism.

My mother was very wise, she taught us the most basic important truths in a very simple way, which we had to memorise.

FR PILLARI: Memorising the catechism is something that many young families today are not as familiar with. Was that difficult to do? Could you say a few words about what it was like for you as a young boy to memorise the catechism?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: In those times it was still in the general culture, also in the schools, to memorise poems and so on. Unfortunately, today it is not the case anymore. Children can memorise more easily than adults. God gave this capacity to children – the ability to memorise quicker and easier, and what you have learnt in your childhood remains in the memory through all your life. These basic truths will accompany you in moments of difficulty – when you remember them, they give you strength and renew your faith. Therefore, it is necessary to restore these proven methods of learning the catechism.

FR PILLARI: Did you find as you grew older, as an adolescent and as a young adult, that these truths were helpful in a concrete way for you in your own life?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Of course, without doubt, they were very helpful. When growing up you receive a lot of information – you study theology, you hear different opinions, you study the heresies; and then as a priest and as a bishop, you are witnessing the great crisis of the Church today. When hearing ambiguities, even errors and heresies, from the mouth of the shepherds of the Church, unfortunately, and many theologians as well, it helped me very much to remember the basic truths which I learnt as a child in the good old catechism.

For example, let us take the Ten Commandments of God. I memorised these and the first commandment is: you shall not have other Gods beside Me. This is so evident and now when we are witnessing the confusion, that God allegedly wills other religions or the plurality of religions, spread even from the Vatican and the Pope, we know that it directly contradicts the first commandment. When

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I heard this, I thought of the first commandment which I learnt as a child: you shall not have other gods, which is so clear and evident.

Let us take another example. The sixth commandment: you shall not commit adultery. It is clear. When discussions started about the implementation of Amoris Laetitiae and the admittance of divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion, when bishops stated that these people could receive Holy Communion in certain cases without being asked to stop committing adultery – again, it directly contradicts the commandment of God. These are only two examples. When you keep the Catholic Truth in your soul – I call it the good old catechism – it really reflects, even breathes the spirit of the Catholic faith of all ages. This clear, unambiguous language helps when studying theology, when becoming a seminarian. It was my experience as a priest and even as bishop with keeping this childlike, firm, clear, Catholic faith.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said in the Gospel “Unless you will become like little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (cf. Mt. 18:3) I consider these words of Our Lord evermore important: a childlike faith – not childish but childlike – in the spirit of Our Lord. Every seminarian, priest, bishop and pope has to keep this pure, firm, childlike faith, just as when they first learnt the catechism. If you do not keep this firm childlike faith, you will become a scribe. In time, your faith will vanish and you will only be a sterile scribe, a Pharisee, or an agnostic. Your faith will only be a theory which can be changed in your mind.

I remember the words of St Paul to his disciple Timothy when he says: “Remember the faith of your grandmother, the faith of your mother.” St Paul praises the simple strong faith of these holy women from whom St Timothy received the faith, who nurtured his faith until he was in a new and deeper manner confirmed by St Paul, and ordained a bishop.

FR PILLARI: It is moving to hear how the truths you learned as a young boy are playing today a key role in your episcopal ministry. I know from a number of families throughout the world that parents are rather nervous about taking on more of a role in CAL X M A R IA E

handing on the faith in the fa mily

“God gave children the ability to memorise quicker and easier, and what you have learnt in your childhood remains in the memory through all your life. These basic truths will accompany you in moments of difficulty – when you remember them, they give you strength and renew your faith. Therefore, it is necessary to restore these proven methods of learning the catechism.” teaching their children. Our hope is that Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism will provide them with the support of a priest teaching their children, but nonetheless they will have a crucial role. Would you be willing to say a few words about how your own mother taught you the catechism?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: We were four siblings.

She gathered us together in the evening, we sat down and she opened the beautiful old catechism.

She read a small part. We repeated it and then she moved on to the next part. The next time we repeated the last part and so on. This repetition was very helpful. It was not long, maybe half an hour because children cannot concentrate for a long time. It is better to take a short time but to do the basic repetition with the children and then slowly move on.

We also had another tool. We had a book which was called Bibelgeschichten in German, biblical stories.

It was a good book where the most important events of the Bible, from the creation of the world to the last book of Revelation, were related. It summarised the content of these stories with beautiful pictures for children. These beautiful pictures made a deep impression – for example, when Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, the passage through the Red Sea, the sacrifice of Abraham, the Apostles and so on. It is a good method, complementary to the catechism, to use such a book of bible stories with beautiful pictures for children.

FR PILLARI: That is very encouraging to hear because, in fact, the Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism will begin every lesson with a story from the Bible accompanied by beautiful sacred images,

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but I really hope that families will take to heart what you just said and will obtain a book which tells the key stories from sacred history so they can pass them on to their children.

When you were learning the catechism did there come a moment when you had to pass an examination? What was that process like for you?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Of course, my mother did not allow us to go to our first Holy Communion without an exam. She checked the most important things which we had to memorise and this was very helpful. For example, we had to know by heart the acts of faith, hope, and charity and the act of contrition. And this remains with you all your life.

Even as an adult, as a bishop, I pray this same act of contrition in the evening. Why not? It so deeply expresses the truth.

Also a prayer my mother taught us before going to Holy Communion is a very beautiful old German 37

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“I would say to all young families: please consecrate your little family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Make your preparations and invite a priest, so that in his presence you pray the Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart and he can give a blessing for this consecration.” prayer, a song. It expresses the desire to go to Holy Communion, inviting Jesus to come to you before you go to Him. It is a kind of spiritual communion immediately before going to Holy Communion. It says: “Jesu, Jesu, komm zu mir. O wie sehn ich mich nach dir!” – “Jesus, Jesus, come to me. O how much I long for Thee!” “Meiner seele bester Freund” – “You are the best friend of my soul”.“Wann werd’ ich mit dir vereint?” – “When can I be united to Thee?” From my childhood until now, I say this prayer during the day to renew my spiritual communion. This prayer and the instruction I received as a child still accompany me and every day I pray more deeply this prayer desiring the Eucharistic Jesus and to be with Him. It is also important for parents of course, as you know, everyone who teaches another is also learning themselves.

FR PILLARI: Yes, and this is a question I wanted to ask you: many parents today feel that their own formation was inadequate or that the catechetical education their older children received was inadequate. Our hope is that this catechism programme will allow the entire family to sit down together and study these lessons as a family. But what would be your advice? Can this traditional method of memorising questions and answers be helpful also for parents and older children?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Yes, it is never too late to learn. We can always learn something. This is also true for parents. Why not? Be humble and learn because what you are studying is not something temporal, it is the eternal truth you are learning with your children. Therefore, I would encourage young parents, even if you did not receive adequate Catholic instruction yourself, take time to read these 38

passages, meditate on them and then transmit this to your children.

FR PILLARI: Thank you. I know you have a particular love for Our Lady of the Rosary who appeared at Fatima, we have placed this entire catechetical programme under her patronage. In your opinion, is the message given at Fatima, over 100 years ago, still relevant today for young families and children?

Is it something that can still be helpful for them in today’s world?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Of course. The message of Fatima stresses the most fundamental truths of our faith.

To begin with, the Angel shows the children the mystery of the Eucharist, which is at the heart of our faith, at the heart of the Church. Without the Eucharist, without Mass, we cannot live.

The Angel then taught the children the prayer to the Holy Trinity, the central mystery of our faith.

We have to uphold this truth against the dangers in today’s Church when other religions are placed on the same level with our faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of God. Then Our Lady showed the children the last things: the judgement of God and even Hell. I consider that the most important words which Our Lady spoke to the children and which have the same importance for us today were those when she said: “Do not offend God Who is already so much offended.” This is the most grievous aspect of the world and of our life in the Church: sin. Sin is an offence to God, to the love of God. Our Lady then gave us the summary of the Gospels with the Rosary. What is the Rosary, if not the synthesis of the Gospel, of the mystery of our redemption, of Christ’s work for us?

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FR PILLARI: I think it will be very helpful for the young families who are participating in this programme. I know a number of these families struggle with being faithful to the daily Rosary, they say: “Father, it’s hard for us. We have young children.

It is hard for the children to be quiet, we’re really struggling with the daily Rosary.” Or others who will say: “We’re familiar with the message of Fatima and we want to respond but we are so far from holiness, we’re discouraged.” What advice do you have for families who struggle with the daily Rosary or who feel discouraged along the path to holiness?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: When it is a large family and the children are still young, it is, of course, natural, that a small child cannot always be quiet for the entire half-hour of the Rosary. Therefore, for the little ones maybe one decade would be sufficient, but older children could pray with the parents the entire Rosary.

There are always temptations and there will always be reasons to drop it, but I would encourage families to remain faithful to the daily Rosary, to schedule this important event – the daily Rosary in your family. Our Lady will reward this fidelity with many graces.

FR PILLARI: And for families that, beyond the Rosary feel discouraged or are really struggling along the path to holiness, what advice would you have for them as to what steps they can take to respond to Our Lady’s request, what steps can they take to go forward along the path of holiness?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Yes, holiness for parents and for a family is different from that of priests and religious as St Francis de Sales explains in his famous book on the devout life, Philothea. The holiness

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THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

The basic Christian truths in the message of Fatima are so helpful for families. And as a concrete tool, we received the call to consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

I would say to all young families: please consecrate your little family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Make your preparations and invite a priest, so that in his presence you pray the Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart and he can give a blessing for this consecration.

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of a family basically consists of parents doing the daily duties of fathers and mothers, and children doing their basic daily duties. When you fulfil these duties faithfully, trying to do them with greater love for God and for your children or parents, this already is holiness.

And since we are human beings and weak, it is very important for families to always practice mutual forgiveness. The humility to ask forgiveness and, therefore, to always try to keep the peace in the family, this is also a sign of holiness. When you ask forgiveness, when you make an act of humility and really try to put Christ in the centre of your family life, this keeps you on the path of holiness.

Family life is a school – a school of love. We have to learn with humility. When parents as well as children aim to love God, then they are on the path of holiness.

Take the examples of holy couples, say, the parents of St Thérèse of the Child Jesus. They did nothing extraordinary. They fulfilled their daily duties and tried to do them with love of God, with patience – accepting the crosses which every family has, but accepting them from the hands of God. And God crowns such families with a lot of graces. The parents of St Thérèse of the Child Jesus had much suffering. The mother died at a relatively young age and left her husband with five children.

They had already lost four children when they were little. What a suffering for St Louis, the father, to lose his four children and then his beloved wife?

But he accepted this with the love of God. And God granted such blessings through these crosses.

He gave this family one of the greatest saints of the Church’s entire history – St Thérèse of the Child Jesus. In almost every church of the world, you can see an image or a statue of St Thérèse of the Child Jesus, in all the continents and nations she has really become one of the most beloved saints and even a doctor of the Church.

FR PILLARI: I’d like to follow up with another question about the spirit of sacrifice: all families following this course will begin with several videos introducing the message that Our Lady gave at Fatima and how generously the children responded to the spirit of sacrifice on behalf of poor sinners.

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What advice would you have for parents as to how they can teach their children to say yes to God as the children of Fatima did, in particular, how can young children begin to embrace this spirit of sacrifice out of love for God and for the conversion of sinners?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: This is a good question.

Yes, it is important that parents teach their children from a young age the spirit of abnegation, the spirit of sacrifice because the consequence of original sin manifests itself in our lives from childhood on. You can see egoism even in little children – they want all for themselves and they want it immediately. If they are not taught, they will become great egotists when they grow up. This is damaging for themselves and others. Therefore, it is good that parents teach their children from a young age some small sacrifices.

Not too much – we have to be very careful not to overload children – but a little bit.

Parents can explain: today you will not receive, say, this sweet. Maybe there are a lot of children who do not have what you have, or you can make this sacrifice for the love of Jesus who is suffering for you on the Cross. Maybe tomorrow you will receive it or on Sunday. So the child understands that it’s not a complete negation but he can practice a little bit of renunciation. This is only a little example, every parent has to decide how to do this. It would also be very helpful when there are many siblings to teach them to share with another, or say, “you could give a part of this chocolate to the neighbouring family, they have not received anything today.”

It may also be good to visit an orphanage to let them see that there are children who have less than they have, so they can grow in a feeling of compassion and true charity. It is very important to nurture in children a spirit of sacrifice.

FR PILLARI: And is there any advice that you would wish to give to the young families throughout the world who are about to embark on studying the catechism together as a family with children as young as ages 8-10 through Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism, who are trying to respond to Our Lady’s call at Fatima?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Yes, the basic thing is, of course, prayer, fidelity to prayer, the transmission of faith through the catechism and other ways.

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“Dear parents and families: believe deeply in the power of prayer.

And trust that when you have built your family in the Lord, when you have put Him at the centre of your life, of your family and of your house, He will never abandon you.”

I would also suggest making Sunday the day of the family so the children can experience it as the day of the Lord. The culture of our time is destroying Sunday with so many distractions; it would be good for parents to cultivate Sunday. Maybe in the afternoon or evening, they can read a biography of a saint or watch a good video about the life of a saint and be together.

On Sunday you can relax together, play together or have some recreation together as a family – at least when the children are still in the family home.

When they are older they can do other things but when they are still at home, it would be good to always keep the day of the Lord.

It is also very important to pray for one another.

Firstly, the spouses have to pray for one another, then the parents for the children and the children for the parents.

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one child is not obeying or is going in a different way when he has grown up, then you have to pray and make sacrifices so one day the Lord will give His graces. We have to believe in the omnipotence of prayer.

So, I would say to you, dear parents and families: believe deeply in the power of prayer. And trust that when you have built your family in the Lord, when you have put Him at the centre of your life, of your family and of your house, He will never abandon you. You will always have His assistance. As I have already advised you, consecrate your family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and also invoke the guardian angels of all your family to protect you from the evils of body and soul.

Do not forget that the aim of a true Catholic family is Heaven and there you will be going to the eternal family. This is your vocation and your privilege: to collaborate in raising future citizens of Heaven. May God bless you and Our Lady of Fatima, her Immaculate Heart and all your saints protect you, may all your holy patrons and your guardian angels guide and protect you always.

Fr Anthony Pillari JCL, MCL, STB presents Our Lady of the Rosary Family Catechism, an online video catechism course (see p. 42). He is currently studying for a doctorate in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He has been engaged in apostolates for children and young families for the past 20 years, including a variety of home-schooling apostolates.

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THE FAMILY in defence of the Faith

by DR J O S E P H S H AW

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’m currently reading Mgr Hugh Benson’s extraordinary and prophetic book Lord of the World, written in 1917 and set more or less today. Like most prophetic books it is really about Mgr Benson’s own time, and it is interesting to see which of the trends of his day, which he extrapolated into the future, have continued, and which have petered out or gone into reverse. Even where he has turned out to be wrong, it is interesting to see where he thought threats were coming from, and what form of defence would prove effective.

Mgr Benson’s image of the Church is that of Pope St Pius X: archaic, embattled, unyielding, and ever more centralised. The centralisation of the Church, he explains, is the natural and correct response to an increasingly centralised world. Where the threat is centralised – notably, in Benson’s imagined world, a united and secularised Europe – so must the defence be.

This part of Benson’s vision has not aged well.

We know, with hindsight, that the centralisation of the Church has made her painfully vulnerable to the capture of central institutions by corrupt individuals or misguided ideas. It is no new thing in the history of the Church for there to be corruption in Rome (as I write, the disgrace of Cardinal Becciu is in the news). What is new, and disastrous, is the diminishment of alternative sources of influence, initiative, and prestige, from which Roman problems could be addressed without their immediately being cut off by the very people causing the problems. I have in mind things like monastic reformers, reforming bishops, fearless preachers, or even the Holy Roman Emperor. In the secular realm, the invader of a centralised state like the ancient Persian Empire will 44

face a powerful and united army, but if the army is defeated and the central apparatus of control captured, then success, like that of Alexander the Great, could be complete in a bewilderingly short time. By contrast, when England’s King Edward III, and later Henry V, invaded medieval France, they quickly had disaffected French lords as allies, but faced an apparently endless task in tackling one local centre of power after another, while ceaselessly beset by small rebellions and counter-attacks.

Their brilliant victories apparently counted for little in dealing with the hydra-like resilience of a state where power was widely diffused.

Benson, for all his prophetic insight, was wrong on this issue: what the Church needs in dealing with a unified threat is not the brittle strength of the centralised control centre, but the flexible resistance of ten thousand little platoons with the self-sufficiency and initiative to carry on guerrilla warfare even when the enemy has won the big battles. What it needs, in fact, is the family.

Why did popes like St Pius X think that centralisation was the way forward? It was because they could not trust local centres of authority. The autonomy of religious orders and the independence of bishops had to be restricted because, under intense political and also intellectual pressure from protestantising and secularising influences, they could not be trusted to hold the line otherwise. To prevent the appointment of Modernist bishops, the appointment of bishops had to be centralised. To prevent the teaching of Modernism in seminaries, seminary syllabuses had to be centrally approved.

And so it went on, inevitably, perhaps, but ultimately unsuccessfully.

This isn’t the place to go into exactly how and why things worked out as they did, but just to note that a different approach is needed, if only because the central authority in the Church today has no interest in engaging in a campaign against heresy like that carried on by St Pius X. The final capture of CAL X M ARIA E

the fa mily in defence of the faith

the Church as a human institution by her enemies will not be prevented by clever and zealous men in Rome with their hands on the levers of centralised power. It will be prevented, if it is prevented, by the refusal of ordinary Catholics to go along with it.

I am not, however, thinking of an atomised collection of individuals. Not only does resistance still have to be coordinated to some extent, but even more importantly the spirit of resistance, the spirit, in fact, of truth, must be inculcated in us, and in the next generation. In this, magazines (like Calx Mariae), associations of the faithful, parishes, dioceses and religious orders, schools, and so on, all have great importance, but the importance of the family is paramount. Let me explain why.

First, the family is a natural institution. While we have seen all kinds of attempts to weaken and belittle the family, and attempts to create parody-families, it is to the traditional family that people are drawn most strongly by nature. Young men and women, despite many temptations and distractions, are strongly drawn to a life-long monogamous and exclusive relationship ordered towards children.

They see this instinctively as fulfilling and whole-

some. We have moved into a time where this instinct is often frustrated, and even made to seem impossible, but these dystopian conditions serve to emphasise the fundamental and irreplaceable quality of this yearning. While our approach to relationships and child-rearing owes much to our own upbringing and experiences, they have a foundation which is not learned, but arises from the depths of human nature.

This means that the family can never be erased.

The other things I mentioned – magazines, associations, parishes and so on – can, and from time to time are, destroyed. For three centuries England had no dioceses or parishes. Every now and then the French state sees fit to abolish religious orders and Catholic schools. The time may come when one can only read Calx Mariae on the “dark web”. But even the Soviet Union could not abolish the family.

The bonds of family life, between spouses, between children and their parents, and between siblings, are not invincible, but they are extremely powerful, and they create and sustain an environment where the whole person can be nourished: emotionally, intellectually, and physically.

THE HATCH FAMILY (1870–71). EASTMAN JOHNSON. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART , NEW YORK. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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Secondly, the family is not just a natural institution. Marriage has been raised to the dignity of a Sacrament by Christ, and the Christian family is a powerful means of grace for its members. Its prayer in common is a microcosm of the Church at prayer. The authority exercised in the family – paradigmatically, by the pater familias – is a reflection of the authority of our Heavenly Father. The effect of the Sacrament is to make the natural bonds of marriage unbreakable, to sanctify the natural love of the spouses, and to reinforce their natural efforts in raising their children with divine assistance.

This is familiar stuff which can be found in every orthodox catechism, but reflect for a moment: these things are not given to lay associations, to magazines, or even to parishes. Even religious orders are not sacramentally established, and as noted, even dioceses are not an essential feature of the life of the Church.

Not everyone, at every stage of life, can identify a family of which they are a member, and not all families are open to grace. The family is the building block of society not because everyone is in one, or must fulfil their personal vocation through one, but in a different sense. It is the normal and ideal environment for the raising of children, and for this reason has the vocation of passing on to each new generation religion, culture, and even language itself. These things can be acquired in other ways, certainly, but only with difficulty. It is the family which is the proper instrument, by nature and in the sacramental economy, for this task, and it is for other social institutions, and the Church, to assist the family in its work, and never to displace it.

To return to these structures the question of the Church’s resilience, considered as a society here on earth, the family has a key role because it is extraordinarily robust, and because it is the family which has the task of passing on the spirit of truth to each new generation. By this I mean not just an intellectual grasp of the truths of the Faith, important as that is, but the virtues: natural virtues, passed on through example and training, and supernatural virtues, whose giving by God is prepared for and facilitated by the family environment.

I would like briefly to mention two practical implications of this. First, parents like myself have a 46

very serious burden of responsibility. This should not be felt as a crushing one – we are, after all, promised divine assistance – but it may come as a bit of a shock to people conditioned by popular culture to see romantic relationships solely as means to self-fulfilment. The state, the school, and the parish, are not going to do this work for you, especially not today.

Secondly, the family environment in which one can relax and breathe freely, in which one can find solace and pass on wisdom and experience to one’s children, is sustained by sacramental graces, for Christian families, but as always God prefers to work through secondary causes where possible. An environment in which parents and children can truly feel at home is not built exclusively on prayer and the sacraments. The family needs culture. It needs a tradition of cooking, of clothing, of architecture, of home decoration; it needs Christmas carols and fairy stories. In today’s world not everyone can have a very meaningful connection with the soil, and many are separated from the experiences of their parents and grandparents by space as well as time, but we can still sustain a world of shared reference points, attitudes, and affections. Catholic culture is a natural culture as well as a supernatural one, and it is the family’s task to maintain it, to develop it, and to pass it on.

The family is the ultimate bulwark of Christian society. It is our task to strengthen our own families, and to help to strengthen others’ as well, against this storm which seems to gain greater and greater power. We know, however, what our opponents do not: that Christ has already gained the victory.

Dr Joseph Shaw teaches Philosophy in Oxford University.

He has published on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion and has edited a book on the liturgy: The Case for Liturgical Restoration: Una Voce Position Papers on the Extraordinary Form (Angelico Press). He is the Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and Secretary of Una Voce International. He is married with nine children..

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reflection

conditional baptism

REFLECTIONS ON THE NECESSITY FOR WIDESPREAD ACCESS TO

by MATTHEW MCCUSKER

This paper was first published on Lifesitenews in September 2020 after the revelation that two priests in the United States had been baptised, confirmed and ordained after being invalidly baptised as infants. It explores the potential consequences of the breakdown of sacramental practice in many parts of the post-conciliar church, in contrast to the sacramental security enjoyed in the Catholic Church prior to the Second Vatican Council. The full scale of the crisis of sacramental validity – which will vary widely from place to place – is as yet unknown.

PART I: MORAL CERTAINTY AND CONDITIONAL BAPTISM 1. The sacrament of baptism is necessary for salvation. Baptism is “the outward washing of the body done together with the prescribed form of words.”1 Baptism is valid when the required matter and form are used with the intention of doing what the Church does.

2. Baptism of blood and baptism of desire are extraordinary means of salvation, whereby a person receives certain effects of the sacrament of baptism, but not the sacrament itself.2 3. Only baptism by water confers an indelible sacramental character upon the soul. Only baptism by water makes it possible for the other six sacraments to be validly received. A person who is not baptised WI N T E R 2020

DETAIL FROM THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST (C.1448–50). PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA. NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

“Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (Jn 3:5)

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“Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (Jn 3:5) will not be validly confirmed or ordained, and will not validly receive the sacraments of Penance, Holy Communion, or Extreme Unction. A non-baptised person cannot enter into a sacramental marriage.

4. It is therefore of the greatest importance that each individual, and the Church as a whole, has moral certainty that a given Catholic has validly received the sacrament of baptism.

5. Moral certainty is that certainty which admits of no reasonable doubt.

6. Prior to the Second Vatican Council the formation of priests placed particular emphasis on the valid administration of the sacraments. Priests knew the correct matter and form, and understood the

far-reaching consequences of invalid sacraments.

Clergy would be vigilant both of their own practice and that of others. The words and rubrics of the received sacramental rites helped ensure the valid celebration of the sacraments. Knowledge of the necessary matter and form of the sacraments, and especially of baptism, was widespread among the laity – who were often instructed how to baptise – and many would be able to identify invalid baptisms easily. Parish priests, religious superiors, local Ordinaries and the Holy See were assiduous in securing sacramental validity and in taking appropriate action in the case of doubtful sacraments.

7. As a result of the above any individual who was baptised by a Catholic priest and whose baptism was recorded in the appropriate register possessed

DETAIL FROM WAY OF SALVATION (1365-68). ANDREA DI BONAIUTO. SPANISH CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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moral certainty of the validity of their baptism, of their membership of the Mystical Body of Christ, and of their ability to validly receive the other sacraments of the Church.

8. Since the beginning of the prolonged period of crisis following the Second Vatican Council the conditions enumerated in section 6 no longer exist throughout much of the Church. It can no longer be assumed that clergy have received appropriate formation in the celebration of the sacraments.

It can no longer be assumed that they accept or understand the Church’s sacramental theology or what is required for the valid celebration of the sacraments. Experimentation with sacramental and liturgical forms has been widespread. Lay people are much less likely to be able to identify invalid sacraments and take effective action. Bishops and superiors have neglected to govern the clergy and have not maintained discipline effectively.

9. There are a number of clearly documented examples of invalid celebrations of the sacraments, including baptism. Other cases will no doubt come to light. Many lay people and clergy have had personal experience of priests using invalid or doubtfully valid forms of absolution, and having failed to adhere to the words and rubrics of other sacramental rites.

10. A particularly disturbing example is that of Fr Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit. He was “ordained” to the priesthood in 2017 but discovered in 2020, after watching a home video, that his baptism had been invalid because the deacon, Mark Springer, used the words “we baptise” instead of the correct form “I baptise.” The invalidity of his baptism – and of all the sacraments he thought he had received – was confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He had to be baptised, confirmed and ordained absolutely. All the Masses he had celebrated (more than 1000) and all the absolutions he had given were invalid. If he had not viewed that particular home video, this situation could have continued for many decades. If he had become a bishop he may have “ordained” dozens of “priests” who would have perpetuated the invalid celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and of the sacraments of Penance, Confirmation and WI N T E R 2020

Extreme Unction, not to mention a whole range of other deleterious spiritual consequences. Deacon Mark Springer had been invalidly baptising for a decade.3 How many of those who received invalid baptism will now be baptised? How many souls will be eternally lost? How many other priests and deacons followed the same practice as Deacon Springer, but have not been identified and perhaps will never be so?

11. On 16 September 2020 it was revealed that Fr Zachary Boazman, of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, had been recently baptised, confirmed and ordained after being invalidly baptised in the diocese of Fort Worth in 1992. As in the case of Fr Hood, the form “we baptise” was used in place of “I baptise”, and Fr Boazman only realised after watching a home video. How many other priests are in the situation of Fr Hood and Fr Boazman? It is highly unlikely that they are the only two examples.

12. Another instructive example is that of the parish of St Mary’s in the Archdiocese of Brisbane, Australia. In 2004 the Archdiocese announced that invalid baptisms – “in the name of the redeemer, the liberator and the sustainer” – had been taking place for the last ten years in the parish and admitted that hundreds of children in the Archdiocese were in fact not baptised.4 Despite this the parish priest was not removed until 2009, after the Archbishop admitted (in August 2008) that he was still unsure “whether they baptise the correct way” in the parish.5 The breakdown of teaching, practice and discipline in the post-conciliar Church is such that for 15 years invalid baptisms could take place publicly, close to the centre of one of Australia’s largest cities, without any effective action being taken.

13. As a consequence of this disintegration of Catholic teaching, practice and discipline many Catholics can no longer have moral certainty that they have been validly baptised simply because there is a record of a baptism in a register. There are reasonable grounds for considering that, as a result of the factors enumerated above, something may have occurred to render their baptism invalid.

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17. However, it will often be the case – especially after many years have passed – that there is no reliable witness who can testify to what took place.

There may also be no priest or lay person who can give reliable testimony of an individual priest’s character and practice.

18. In such a case the individual concerned has no moral certainty as to the validity of his baptism. He may presume, almost certainly correctly, that the overwhelming majority of baptisms have been valid, but he will also know that a significant minority of priests and deacons cannot be relied upon to have baptised validly, because of the disintegration of doctrine and discipline in the Church. Thus, in the absence of corroborating evidence, reasonable doubt remains and the validity of the baptism remains a probable opinion only.

19. The fact that the vast majority of these baptisms are highly likely to have been valid in no way removes the reasonable grounds for doubt provided by the facts related in section 8-12. These can only be removed by the kind of verification specified in section 15.

14. Moral certainty can therefore only be attained by further investigation.

15. In many cases moral certainty will be attained because of factors such as the following: (i) an adult convert has a clear recollection of his own baptism, (ii) parents, godparents or other adults present at an infant baptism are morally certain of what they witnessed, (iii) the individual has later, personal, knowledge of the character and practice of the priest, (iv) other reliable individuals can testify to the character and practice of the priest, (v) the priest has a well-established reputation for adherence to the correct matter and form of the sacraments, and so on. In these cases, the factors enumerated in sections 8-11 no longer offer grounds for reasonable doubt and moral certainty has been attained.

16. In a small number of cases clear evidence will be found of practices that render baptism invalid or doubtfully valid. In these cases, it should be relatively easy for the individual concerned to receive absolute or conditional baptism as required.

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20. As baptism by water is necessary for salvation (except in the extraordinary circumstances of baptism by blood and desire), for membership of the Church, and for the valid reception of all other sacraments, Catholics who lack moral certainty not only may, but must, receive conditional baptism followed by conditional confirmation, and, if necessary, conditional ordination.

21. The contention of sections 8-19 is supported by the traditional practice of the Church of conditionally baptising the majority of converts from Protestantism, including from denominations which possessed a baptismal rite that was certainly valid.

The Westminster Synod of 1852 commanded that: “All converts from Protestantism be baptised conditionally, unless it is most surely ascertained from evidence beyond all doubt that all that regards the matter and form of the sacrament was duly performed.”

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In Ireland a Synod at Maynooth in 1875 determined that: “Converts to the Catholic religion in our territory are conditionally baptised because it is evident that there are very many among the Protestants who disregard baptism and others who administer it without using the proper matter and form.

This usage we wish to be maintained unless it is quite evident from trustworthy testimonies that the person in question has been validly baptised.”

The Holy Office decreed in 1878 that the baptism of a convert must be investigated. If found to be valid it was to be accepted without conditional baptism, if doubt remained the sacrament was to be conferred conditionally.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) explains: “If there were one authorized mode of baptizing among the sects, and if the necessity and true significance of the sacrament were uniformly taught and put in practice among them, there would be little difficulty as to the status of converts from the sects. But there is no such unity of teaching and practice among them, and consequently the particular case of each convert must be examined into when there is question of his reception into the Church. For not only are there religious denominations in which baptism is in all probability not validly administered, but there are those also which have a ritual sufficient indeed for validity, but in practice the likelihood of their members having received baptism validly is more than doubtful.

As a consequence converts must be dealt with differently. If it be certain that a convert was validly baptized in heresy, the sacrament is not repeated… If it be uncertain whether the convert's baptism was valid or not, then he is to be baptized conditionally. In such cases the ritual is: ‘If thou art not yet baptized, then I baptize thee in the name’, etc… Practically, converts in the United States are almost invariably baptized either absolutely or conditionally, not because the baptism administered by heretics is held to

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be invalid, but because it is generally impossible to discover whether they had ever been properly baptized. Even in cases where a ceremony had certainly been performed, reasonable doubt of validity will generally remain, on account of either the intention of the administrator or the mode of administration. Still each case must be examined into (S. C. Inquis., 20 Nov., 1878) lest the sacrament be sacrilegiously repeated.”

In England, as in the United States, conditional baptism was generally performed very freely. For example, in 1957 in the diocese of Salford, England, priests were instructed that: “All converts must be baptised at least conditionally, unless it is certain that they have already been validly baptised. Priests shall not decide in favour of the validity of a Baptism conferred in heresy without consulting the ordinary.”

In the period since the Second Vatican Council there has been a lack “of unity of teaching and practice” in the post-conciliar Church similar to that which prevails in many Protestant denominations. It is this which necessitates individual examination of each person’s baptism, rather than an unquestioning reliance on baptismal registers.

The willingness of the Church to conditionally baptise converts from Protestantism, without any particularly protracted process of investigation, provides a clear and convincing precedent for clergy to conditionally baptise Catholics who, due to the crisis prevailing in the Church, lack moral certainty regarding the validity of their baptism.

PART II: REPLY TO POTENTIAL OBJECTIONS Many of these objections have already been substantially dealt with above but it will be useful to consider them in more detail here.

1. Lack of positive probable doubt It may be suggested that conditional baptism would only be appropriate if there is concrete evidence that a particular baptism, or the routine practice of a particular priest, indicated invalidity and that in the absence of such evidence the doubt raised is

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merely “negative” and therefore cannot be grounds for conditional baptism.

This argument could be rendered “If there is a record of the baptism, and it was performed by a minister within the Catholic Church, it must be regarded as valid unless evidence comes to light that it is otherwise.”

This was a perfectly reasonable position to hold prior to the Second Vatican Council because, as argued above, structures existed to protect sacramental integrity and provide the required moral certainty.

It is the breakdown of these structures of that provides grounds for reasonable doubt. It is certainly true that the scale of abuses will differ from place to place. In some parts of the world it is likely that there have been thousands of cases, whereas in other parts of the world there may have been few or even none. The argument contained in this paper is therefore not perhaps equally applicable in all parts of the world.

And yet, baptism is so essential to salvation, and the very existence of the Church, that bishops should be assiduous in arriving at moral certainty and not merely assuming that no problem exists in their diocese or locality.

The crisis in the Church, which provides the grounds for doubt, is universal, even though the way it manifests is not uniform.

There were undoubtedly baptismal records for Fr Matthew Hood and Fr Zachary Boazman, and on that basis, they were “confirmed” and “ordained”. Yet, the recorded “baptisms”, and many like them (we know of hundreds), never in fact took place. The consequences of relying on a certificate – and thus failing to acknowledge the potential impact of the ecclesiastical crisis on sacramental integrity – were devastating for hundreds of men and women who received invalid sacraments – including at the moment of death. If Fr Hood or Fr Boazman had been “consecrated” as bishops, the situation would have been even more catastrophic.

In much of the world, it is no longer safe or reasonable to assume the validity of a baptism simply because a record of it exists. There must also be (i) reliable witnesses to the event or (ii) moral certainty

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that the specific priest or deacon concerned could be relied upon to baptise validly.

Only when the unity of teaching and practice has been restored will it be possible once again to assume that the Church’s registers give an accurate account of valid sacraments.

2. Baptism cannot be repeated without sacrilege It may be objected that repetition of the sacrament of baptism is sacrilegious and therefore great caution must be applied before having recourse to conditional baptism.

It is certainly true that the three sacraments which confer an indelible sacramental character – baptism, confirmation and holy orders – cannot be repeated.

However, in conditional baptism there is never any intention to repeat the sacrament, or to confer for a second time that which has already been received, and the possibility of doing so is deliberately excluded by the form used.

We have already seen that the traditional practice of the Church in regard to converts has been to confer conditional baptism very freely in order to eliminate any reasonable doubt of invalidity, including when the convert comes from a denomination which officially uses a certainly valid rite.

There is another instructive example of recourse to conditional baptism: the traditional practice of conditionally baptising infants previously baptised by a lay person e.g. in danger of death.

There must have been many occasions when clergy conditionally baptised children who had been baptised by lay people who it was known could be trusted to baptise correctly, e.g. experienced midwives. Nonetheless, these children were still conditionally baptised by the clergy.

Priests did not need to scruple over repeating a sacrament, they acted rightly in administering conditional baptism so that nobody might have any doubt, in the present or the future, that the individual concerned – perhaps a potential priest, bishop or Pope – was truly a member of the Catholic Church.

3. “Trust in God” A lay person who raises concerns about the validity of their baptism might be accused of being scrupulous and be encouraged to simply “trust in God”.

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A faithful Catholic will trust that God will always impart sacramental grace when the correct matter and form is used with the correct intention. He will not blindly trust in men, when the evidence of his own experience teaches him that a significant number of the post-conciliar clergy cannot be trusted to act correctly when it comes to celebrating the sacraments.

Nobody who has experienced the frequency with which post-conciliar clergy alter the form of absolution, or liturgical texts, or expound a heretical understanding of the sacraments, could reasonably be expected to trust, prior to further investigation, that any given priest used the correct matter and form at their baptism.

To ask any individual to accept without question that a post-conciliar cleric, of whose personal integrity they know little, certainly baptised them validly, is unreasonable.

4. “Baptism of desire” Concerned lay people may also be told that they have nothing to worry about because if they were not validly baptised, they will receive baptism of desire.

Baptism of desire is an extraordinary means of salvation. St Thomas Aquinas taught that it was possible that “a man receives the effect of Baptism by the power of the Holy Ghost, not only without Baptism of Water, but also without Baptism of Blood: forasmuch as his heart is moved by the Holy Ghost to believe in and love God and to repent of his sins: wherefore this is also called Baptism of Repentance.”6 In this baptism of desire, or repentance, man cooperates with God and receives sanctifying grace prior to receiving the sacrament of baptism. However,

THE BAPTISM (1755). PIETRO LONGHI. FONDAZIONE QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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as stated above, baptism of desire does not confer an indelible sacramental character, and does not allow the valid reception of the other sacraments.

Every Catholic must have moral certainty that they have received valid baptism by water.

5. “The sacraments cannot be so easily

invalidated!” OR “The Church supplies!”

Each sacrament has matter and form. The matter of baptism is the washing of the body with water.

This can occur by immersion, pouring or sprinkling. In the Roman rite the form of sacrament is “I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”. In the Byzantine rite the form “The servant of God [N] is baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” is used.

If invalid matter and form is used the sacrament will not be conferred. The Church cannot “supply” anything to make up for the lack of the required matter and form. Only jurisdiction – which is required for the valid celebration of certain sacraments – can ever be supplied by the Church, in certain circumstances, to enable the celebration of sacraments that would otherwise be rendered invalid by its lack.

6. “If we conditionally baptise lots of people it will cause scandal and confusion”

The sacrament of baptism is necessary for salvation.

The hierarchy of the Church has the responsibility to guard those entrusted to it and ensure that not one is lost (cf Jn 6:39). The hierarchy has already caused scandal and confusion by failing to ensure the integrity of the celebration of the sacraments.

It would be an even greater failing if bishops and priests were to refuse to act to remedy this failure by refusing to acknowledge the existence of significant numbers of invalid celebrations of the sacraments and by denying conditional sacraments to those in need of them.

If there is the slightest reasonable doubt that a baptism (or confirmation or ordination) was invalid, the clergy are obliged to administer conditional baptism (and conditional confirmation or ordination).

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CONCLUSION For the past sixty years the Catholic Church has been enduring the worst crisis in her history. Many clergy, poorly formed or adhering to heretical doctrine, have failed to ensure the integrity of the sacraments. There are many documented cases of sacraments, including baptism, having been celebrated invalidly. The full extent of the problem is unknown, in large part because of the breakdown of ecclesiastical discipline.

This crisis in and of itself creates reasonable doubt as to the validity of many baptisms that cannot be verified by reliable testimony of either (i) what took place on a particular occasion, or (ii) the established integrity of the celebration of the sacraments by the particular minister involved.

All Catholics who have a reasonable doubt, which still remains after a sufficient (and not overly prolonged) investigation of the facts, ought to receive conditional baptism and conditional confirmation and, where necessary, conditional ordination.

“See, here is water: what doth hinder me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36) Matthew McCusker has a Master’s Degree in History from the University of York, where he specialised in ecclesiastical history.

He currently works for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children as General Secretary and Director of Fundraising.

He can be contacted at: matthewmccusker@spuc.org.uk.

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

ST III q.66 a.1 ST III q.66 a.11 Rev Matthew Hood, “Why the words of baptism matter”, First Things, 9 March 2020, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/09/why-the-wordsof-baptism-matter.

“Australian priests stop ‘New Age’, retake Trinitarian formula”, Catholic News Agency, 26 November 2004, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/australian_priests_stop_new_age_baptism_retake_trinitarian_formula.

“Archbishop acts on St. Mary’s Priest”, The Catholic Leader, 15 February 2009, https://catholicleader.com.au/catholic-news-top-stories/archbishop-acts-onst-marys-priest_44966.

ST III q.66. a.11

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MARY The motherly Co-Redemptrix

by MICHAEL HAYNES

T

MARY, THE MOTHERLY CO-REDEMPTRIX.

he Marian title of earth giving her motherly care Co-Redemptrix, can be to the frightened apostles and the A work of love and MARY, THE MOTHERLY learning, humbly CO-REDEMPTRIX. dedicated toespecialMary, easily misunderstood, early Church. (Acts 1:14) Mary in the hope that these pages might ly when certainbringmembers of cannot abandon her Son, nor others to her.

Michael L J Haynes the hierarchy even object to the His Church, for she is linked in recommendation by Bishop Schneider. phrase.

However, the term has a bond of deepest love to both.

Herein lies an explanation of the term, Co-Redemptrix, in an been part of the teaching of the The Church is the mystical body attempt to reduce any confusion Church thealso daysto ofhighlight the earof Christ and Mary, as Mother about from Mary but the beauty of this doctrine. For ly Fathers, through to thewhat mediof God and Co-Redemptrix, is those seeking to understand Co-Redemption means and how it evalis saints and rightunchanging up to the forever ‘with Jesus’. part of the constant, teaching of the Church, this short present day.

The word Co-Redemptrix book is perfectly suited.

Christ’s entire life is one of has its origins in the Latin lanredemption and at Mary’s humguage and is made up of the two ble fiat, “sheISBN gave herself entirely words “Cum” and “Redimere”. It 978-0-244-54926-8 90000 to the person and to the work literally means “she who buys 9 780244 549268 of her Son; she did so in order back with”, Co-Redemptrix beto serve the mystery of redemption with Him and ing a co-operation in Christ’s salvific action. One 1 dependent on Him, by God's grace”. Pope John can see that at no point does the word “Cum” ever Paul II teaches that at this moment, Mary gave hermean “equal to” or “interchangeable”, unlike the self to God with a “full submission of intellect and manner in which a “co-pilot” refers to one who is will”. (Redemptoris Mater, no. 13) Due to her plenitude interchangeable with the pilot.5 of grace and role as the Mother of God, she was In studying this truth I have discovered a wealth “especially predisposed to cooperation with Christ, of beautiful truths, but I have also truly learnt just the one Mediator of human salvation. And such how much I do not know and fallen in love with the cooperation is precisely this mediation subordinated Blessed Virgin even more than before. Please God to the mediation of Christ”. (no. 39) this short and insufficient work will bring others to Mary’s work with Christ is not performed in develop a loving devotion to her, particularly under her own right, but rather “carried out under Christ the title of Co-Redemptrix. and in union with Christ from whom it receives all DETAILS: its efficacy”.2 As Fr Neubert explains, Mary’s role “Mary, the Motherly Co-Redemptrix” involved “a certain union of wills, of sufferings,

By Michael L J Haynes and of self-oblation” in order to do everything.3 88 pages, Lulu.com Mary acknowledged her complete dependence ISBN: 978-0-244-54926-8 upon Christ when her mission was revealed to her at the Annunciation. Dr Miravalle expresses the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §517, 494, 124, (Washington D.C, United States Catholic Conference, 2000). special union most succinctly, “In a phrase: Mary Fr Emil Neubert, Mary in Doctrine, (Milkwaukee, Bruce Publishing Company, 1954), p. 72. is ‘with Jesus’ from the Annunciation to Calvary”.4 Ibid, 73.

This is very true, but even more can be addDr Mark Miravalle, With Jesus - The story of Mary Co-Redemptrix (Goleta CA, Queenship Publishing, 2003), p. 11. ed to that, for Mary is with Christ even after the It is interesting to note here that some of the entries in Latin Dictionaries have ‘cum’ as being used to denote acting under an authority, and taking orders from Crucifixion. She remains by the side of her Son another. as He is lowered from the cross: she remains on Michael L J Haynes

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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A Letter from a Benedictine monk T H E W E A P O N S O F O B E D I E N C E I I : F O RT I T U D E Calx Mariae is pleased to publish the fourth in a series of letters from a Benedictine monk. Each letter discusses one of the most important virtues and principles in the Rule of St Benedict – the rule on which the Western monastic tradition and Christian civilisation in Europe were founded.

In the Prologue of his Rule, St Benedict, the patron saint of Europe writes: “We have therefore to establish a school of the Lord’s service, in the institution of which we hope we are going to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice or the preservation of charity, do not therefore in fear and terror flee back from the way of salvation of which the beginning cannot but be a narrow entrance. For it is by progressing in the life of conversion and faith that, with heart enlarged and in ineffable sweetness of love, one runs in the way of God’s commandments, so that never deserting His discipleship but persevering until death in His doctrine within the monastery, we may partake by patience in the suffering of Christ and become worthy inheritors of His kingdom.”

After looking at humility, obedience, and prudence in the Rule of St Benedict, in this edition we continue with the virtue of fortitude. May these reflections on one of the core virtues of monastic life help us to fulfil the duties of our state in life.

ST. BENEDICT SENDING MAURO TO FRANCE AND PLACIDO TO SICILY (1540). BARTOLOMEO NERONI. FRESCO FROM THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT IN THE GREAT CLOISTER OF THE BENEDICTINE MONASTERY OF MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE IN TUSCANY.

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A

s I explained in my last letter, the human soul is endowed with three capacities or aspects: the intellectual, the desiring, and the spirited. The intellectual part exercises the blessed gift of reason; it determines what is to be done or sought and thus should steer the other two parts of the soul. The desiring part of the soul is the seat of the wants and yearnings that arise from the God-given instinct for preservation of self and species as well as the desire for personal fulfilment and happiness. The spirited or irascible part of the soul, finally, is the seat of the vitality, energy and drive that impel a person to overcome the obstacles that either impede the acquisition of some good or threaten its own well-being.

We have already discussed the virtue of prudence and how fundamental it is for St Benedict as well as for our spiritual lives. In fact, prudence, with its interconnected virtues of discretion and wisdom, is the mother of all the virtues; it is, as St Thomas Aquinas says, the form of all the virtues, insofar as every virtue is simply prudence in some particular respect. Thus, the virtue of temperance is merely prudence as regards the pleasures of the body; the virtue of fortitude is prudence in relation to any fearful or difficult thing that threatens our well-being or impedes our happiness; finally, justice is prudence in our relationships with others – with our neighbour and, above all, with God. Turning now to the virtue of fortitude, St Benedict refers precisely to this virtue at the end of the Prologue when he speaks about the strictness of the monastic life: “And so we are going to establish a school for the service of the Lord. In founding it we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome.

But if a certain strictness results from the dictates of equity for the amendment of vices or the preservation of charity, do not be at once dismayed and fly from the way of salvation, whose entrance cannot be but narrow.” St Benedict does little more than echo the words of Christ Himself in the Sermon on the Mount: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!”

(Mt. 7:13) The monastic life offers the way of life, since it offers the path of evangelical perfection.

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And just as the law of the Gospel is difficult (far more difficult than the Old Law, according to St Gregory Nazianzen), so the monastic life is difficult because it presents us with the same call to continual conversion, to a continual death of the “old man” so that the new man “created in justice and the holiness of truth”1 may not only live, but flourish in the peace of Christ.

It is natural, therefore, that the “old man” in us, upon encountering the “strictness” will experience not a little alarm and want nothing else than to turn and flee back to the world and the comforts it offers. Thus St Benedict (like Virgil does to Dante before facing the last and most formidable suffering of purgatory),2 immediately intervenes in order to encourage, indeed to coax, his new convert by showing him that the way won’t always be so difficult; though the road ahead remain narrow and arduous, the Lord will come to meet us in our weakness, “for as we advance in the religious life and in faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God’s commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love.” Thus it is not the path which changes, but we ourselves who are so changed by God’s grace that what was once difficult becomes not only easy, but pleasant, thanks to the virtue of fortitude, which enables us to confront and endure the sufferings God has ordained for our purification and sanctification. The particular lesson regarding fortitude to be learned here is that it is nourished and sustained by hope in God’s continual help. That is why we end each hour of the Divine Office with the prayer “may the divine assistance always remain with us and with our absent brethren”.3 But the ultimate object of our hope is the heavenly bliss of the beatific vision; it is this which most engenders fortitude. For this reason, right after St Benedict reminds us of God’s unfailing assistance, he then directs our gaze to our heavenly homeland: “Thus, never departing from His school, but persevering in the monastery according to His teaching until death, we may by patience share in the sufferings of Christ and deserve to have a share also in His kingdom.” In this sublime passage St Benedict shows us that the sufferings we encounter along the path of following Christ are not accidental; they are not merely to be tolerated as necessary evils as we journey towards heaven. Rather, they are an 57

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essential part of the journey; it is precisely those sufferings, when humbly accepted, that conform us to Christ in His humility, longanimity, obedience and meekness; it is for this reason that the Desert Fathers relished trials4 and that Sts Paul and Barnabas would preach that “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God”. (Acts 14:22) Nevertheless, St Benedict places the emphasis on the reward, not on the means to the reward; in this way he merely echoes St Paul: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us.” (Rom. 8:18) An important element in the passage from the Prologue we have just looked at is perseverance, a virtue that is tightly interconnected with fortitude.

As Benedictine monks we make a vow of stability to persevere in the monastic discipline in the monastery until death. Our vow of stability thus provides us with an ongoing opportunity to exercise the virtue of fortitude, especially under the forms of patience, longanimity and meekness.5 The sister virtues of patience and longanimity (also known as long-suffering) are in many ways two sides of the same coin. They both demand a calm endurance of unpleasant or even painful circumstances. The main difference between the two, as far as I can tell, is that longanimity is the endurance of a painful situation that continues for some time.

Thus, it is patience that has been prolonged.

St Benedict requires that the novice in the monastery be “thoroughly tested in all patience”.6 Indeed, even before being admitted to the novitiate he must show “himself patient in bearing harsh treatment and difficulty of entry”.7 Once admitted to the novitiate, he must demonstrate that he truly seeks God by his eagerness for trials, or humiliations (opprobria) in addition to zeal for the Divine Office and for obedience. “Let the novice be told all the hard and rugged ways (dura et aspera) by which the journey to God is made.” St Benedict is remarkably realistic. He has no romantic ideas about a pleasant life of roses within the cloister. Some romance is important, of course, and for some temperaments and personality types it may even be necessary. But in order to be faithful to one’s calling a realistic appraisal of the cross that calling entails is even more 58

important than the romance. It would be good to apply this realism of St Benedict to marriage and other states of life in the Church; perhaps fewer life-long commitments would be made, but those few would be stronger and have a much greater chance of enduring the test of time.

“Let the novice be told all the hard and rugged ways (dura et aspera) by which the journey to God is made.” The path of obedience to God requires much toil, and the monastic life offers daily opportunities to experience this toil, the novitiate being the mere beginning. Often the monk is placed in circumstances that stretch him, so to speak, beyond his strength. There are the penances and mortifications imposed by the Rule and common life such as the fasting, vigils and common dormitory. The monk is sometimes asked to do things which he finds humiliating, or to work with brothers with whom he does not get along, or refrain from doing things which he strongly desires to do. Thus in the fourth step of humility, St Benedict asks that the heart (or conscience) of the monk quietly embrace suffering (or patience, patientiam) when it comes to practicing obedience under difficult, unfavorable, or even unjust conditions. Sometimes a monk feels inadequate or incapable of doing something commanded him; if, after humbly explaining his position, the superior sticks by his command, our holy father says that he should obey “in love, trusting in the help of God” (RB 68).

How is the monk to endure and persevere in these trials? St Benedict asks him to have a supernatural point of view; armed with the Scriptures, he encourages the monk to keep his mind fixed on our heavenly reward, as well as on the love of Christ: “Then, secure in their hope of a divine recompense, they go on with joy to declare, ‘But in all these trials we conquer, through Him who has so greatly loved us.’” (RB 7; Rom. 8) But it is to the Psalter, above all that, St Benedict turns: “Let your heart take courage, and wait for the Lord!” (Ps 26); “You have tested us, O God”; “You have tried us as silver is tried, by fire”; “You have brought us into a snare”; “You have laid afflictions on our back”; “You have set men over our heads” (Ps 65). The Psalter reveals itself to be the most preferred and beloved of all prayer books for St Benedict, and CAL X M ARIA E

SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL. ENGRAVING BY G. FOLO (1764-1836) AFTER B. NOCCHI AFTER G. RENI. (1575-1642). WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

it should become so for every monk as well. One of the main reasons for this is because the Psalms are prayers for and about fortitude; they continually present to us the experience of facing daunting and fearful trials, of hoping in God amidst these trials, and of facing and overcoming them with His help.

“I will love thee, O Lord, my strength: the Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer” (Ps 17); “Our God is our refuge and strength: a helper in troubles, which have found us exceedingly” (Ps 45); “Help us, O God, our saviour: and for the glory of thy name, O Lord, deliver us: and forgive us our sins for thy name’s sake” (Ps 78); “Blessed be the Lord my God, who teacheth my hands to fight, and my fingers to war. My mercy, and my refuge: my support and my deliverer” (Ps 143).

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The last psalm quoted has imagery of warfare and combat; God is blessed for teaching us how to fight. How are we to interpret this passage, and so many similar ones in the Psalter which seem to encourage us to anger and hatred of our enemies? The answer is that they are supposed to be interpreted and understood spiritually, that is, as referring to our spiritual enemies, which primarily are our evil passions, and secondarily are the demons who continually incite us to follow our evil inclinations. It is against them that our warfare is waged, in accordance with the words of St Paul: “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Eph. 6). When 59

fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s

properly prayed, the Psalms lead us to overcome the passions of anger and hatred and make it possible for us to love even our enemies.

Indeed, just as, on the one hand, fortitude is thwarted by the vices of acedia, sloth, sadness, cowardice and faintheartedness, so it is likewise undermined on the other hand by anger and the desire for vengeance. Both extremes fail to correctly use the irascible faculty of the soul, which, when perfected by fortitude, enables us to face and overcome the obstacles that either impede the acquisition of some good or threaten our well-being. Anger in particular destroys this virtue, and makes us alien to God, “for the anger of man worketh not the justice of God”.

(James 1:20) That is why St Benedict, echoing the teaching of Christ, tells us not to give way to anger; not to nurse a grudge; not to forsake charity; to bear injuries patiently; to bless those who curse us; to endure persecution for the sake of justice; and finally, to love our enemies (RB 4). It is here, in the patient observance of these instruments of good works, that the virtue of fortitude comes to its full blossoming, for it is perfected in the virtue of meekness, which responds to injuries, injustices and insults with gentleness and love, and which has always shone in God’s saints. We read in the Book of Numbers that Moses “was a man exceeding meek above all men that dwelt upon earth” (Numbers 12:3); we sing in the Psalms “O Lord, remember David, and all his meekness” (Ps 132:1); and finally, our Lord says of Himself, “Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart.” (Mt. 11:29) Our holy father himself is a shining example of meekness: like King David before him, he wept when he learned of the death of his enemy, and mourned the fact that death had overtaken him before he had been converted from his sinfulness.8 In order to exercise the virtue of fortitude to such a heroic extent, we must realise that our strength alone is not enough; we must implore the Holy Ghost to come to our aid with his gift of fortitude, which enables us to suffer for God’s sake. This gift of the Holy Ghost is received in a special way in the Sacrament of Confirmation. It is the gift that seals us as soldiers for Christ, prepared to do battle for the faith even unto death. It is for this reason that 60

the bishop, in the traditional rite of confirmation, gently strikes the cheek of the newly confirmed Christian, to remind him of the trials which he would inevitably meet in striving to serve Christ.

Let us, therefore, tap into this deep source of grace within us; let us ask God to renew and confirm that gift in us, so that we too may be soldiers for Christ.

May God bless and strengthen you all.

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Creatus in iustitia et sanctitate Veritatis (from the rite of novice oblation).

Figliuol mio, qui può esser tormento, ma non morte. My little son, here there can be torment, but not death. Purgatorio XXVII, 20-21.

Divinum auxilium maneat semper nobiscum et cum fratribus nostris absentibus.

Cf. Sayings of the Desert Fathers; Evagrius, 5: Take away temptations and noone will be saved. Also Theodora, 2: Amma Theodora said, “Let us strive to enter the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they have not stood before the winter’s storms cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.”

Cf. Galatians 5:22: But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness (meekness), faith, modesty, continency, chastity.

RB 58: Probetur in omni patientia.

RB 58: si…iniurias et difficultatem ingressus…visus fuerit patienter portare.

Cf. Life of St Benedict, Chapter 8.

CAL X M ARIA E

by FR KONRAD ZU LÖWENSTEIN

I

n the story of the Nativity, the Blessed Virgin “meditated all these things in her heart”. The Latin word “conferens”1 suggests a drawing of comparisons between the human and the Divine: the human in the birth of a child of a mother in the poorest and meanest of conditions, and the Divine in the Nativity of God, as announced by an Archangel, surrounded by a multitude of angels and heralded by the star, preceded by the conception of St John the Baptist, who leapt for joy in the womb of St Elizabeth as foretold for St Elizabeth and Zachariah. The signs of Divine intervention include the nature of the birth and the presence of ministering angels.

The conception and birth did not affect the virginal integrity of the Mother of God, who was perpetually a virgin, before, during, and after the birth; nor did the birth cause pain because no pains were inherited by Our Holy Mother, exempt as she was from all stain of original sin. However, Eve, the

t h e n at i v i t y

THE NATIVITY mother of death, gave birth in pain as punishment for her sin; no pain afflicted the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of Life, who gave birth in joy, free from all sin.

AT THE MOMENT OF BIRTH Our Lady revealed to St Bridget: “He went forth from my closed virginal womb with unspeakable joy and exaltation... I brought him forth... kneeling alone in prayer in the stable.

For with such exaltation and gladness of soul did I bear Him, that I felt no trouble nor any pain, but straightaway I wrapped Him in the clean clothing which I had long before prepared.”

In the Angelic Discourse we read: “Moreover when the Son of God was conceived, He entered, with His Divinity, into the whole body of the Virgin, so when He was born, with

THE NATIVITY (1470-75). PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA. THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. PUBLIC DOMAIN

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His humanity and His Godhead, He was poured forth from her body, just as the fullest sweetness emerges from the heart of a rose, while the glory of virginity stayed in His Mother.”

Where did Our Blessed Lord lie at His birth? Barradius asserts that, in His Divine humility, He lay on the ground. According to a tradition related

by Ribadaneira, upon seeing Christ, the Blessed Virgin was struck with wonder at God made man and prostrated herself on the ground before Him, greeting Him with the deepest reverence and joy of heart with the words: “Thou art come to me, who has longed for Thee, my God! my Lord! my Son!” – not doubting at all that she was understood by Him, Infant as He was, and thus she adored Him, kissing His feet as her God, His hands as Her lord, His face as her Son. Others are of the opinion that He was placed by angels in the arms of His Blessed Mother; others still, including St Bridget and Fr Cornelius a Lapide, hold that the Divine Infant raised Himself up through His own power into the arms of His most sweet Virgin Mother.

THE PRESENCE OF ANGELS On the presence of ministering angels, Fr Cornelius a Lapide properly remarks: “If the stars of the morning praised God and all the heavenly beings (that is the Angels) rejoiced at the creation of the world as Job says (38:7), how much greater joy did they express at the moment of the Incarnation and Nativity of the Word? Indeed, St Paul states (Heb.1:6): ‘When [the Father] brings forth His firstborn into the world, He says: And let all the angels of God worship Him.’” And we may readily imagine that, not only in the sky above the shepherds, permeated by a new and majestic divine light, but also in the very stable of Bethlehem, hosts of angels were in adoration.

As also commented by Fr Cornelius a Lapide: “All the angels accompanied Christ their Lord and God to earth, as all royal households accompany a King wherever he travels.” They were filled with wonder at the God who could not be measured, because reduced to conceivable dimensions in an immense light, and venerated Him and adored 62

Him... And so it came to pass that the stable in Bethlehem had become the highest Heaven, replete with angels, cherubim and seraphim, who, leaving Heaven, had come down to adore their God made man, achieved through the Incarnation and Nativity of the Word, until that time unimaginable and entirely beyond the belief of angels. This was the supreme and gracious work of the Divine Power, Wisdom, Justice and Clemency, beyond all the understanding of men and angels. And so Our Lady, in her maidenly silence and modesty, her heavenly prudence, her strong Faith and Hope, contemplated all these things, both human and Divine, drawing comparisons between the signs of deepest lowliness which she saw, with what she knew of God's Supreme Majesty: the stable, with heaven; the wondrous swaddling clothes in which He Himself was covered, who was “wrapped in light as with a garment” (Psalm 104); the crib, with the throne of the Most High; the beasts, with the seraphim: seeing in them all a wondrous harmony such as to confirm her faith that it was the only begotten Son of God Himself Who was born of her, Who would, in the course of time, unfold and bring to consummation the mysteries in the Redemption of the world.

THE HEART OF HUMANITY And just as the Revelation of God as an Infant Child arouses wonder in the angels at this sublime novelty, so it raises the hearts of mankind, and above all of Our Blessed Lady, to adore the Godhead, as the Church sings in the Preface of the Nativity: “Because by the mystery of the Incarnate Word, a new effulgence of Thy glory shone upon the eyes of our soul so that, when we came to know God visibly, we were enraptured by a yearning for things invisible.”

And so Our Blessed Lady, all the angels and mankind rejoice together, and so we too rejoice together and thank God for coming to earth, out of love for us, so that we too might love Him as an Infant Child, as our God, our Redeemer, and our Infinite Good.

1.

“Maria autem conservabat omnia verba haec conferens in corde suo.” - “But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

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THE ANNUNCIATION (1480–89). HANS MEMLING. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK. PUBLIC DOMAIN