Calx Mariae magazine issue 5, Summer 2019

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MARIAE CALX

Rebuilding our Christian civilisation

FOCUS:

CITY OF MAN

VS

CITY OF GOD

Global One World Order vs Christendom INCLUDING:

GENDER THEORY:

a threat to the family and the proclamation of the Christian faith

FILIAL PIETY AND NATIONAL PATRIOTISM reflections by H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

WHAT THE CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO TEACHES US ABOUT CORPUS CHRISTI 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 5

SUMMER 2019

T EN EV G IN M O PC U

VOICE OF THE FAMILY pilgrimage and formational programme for young adults

ROME, 30 SEPTEMBER  2 OCTOBER 2019 Seven churches pilgrimage Talks and discussions on the vocation and mission of young Catholic adults today Speakers include: H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Prof. Roberto de Mattei, John-Henry Westen and others Pontifical High Mass on the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels celebrated by H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament

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How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Thy word. - Psalm 119:9

MARIAE CALX

ISSUE 5

SUMMER 2019

CONTENTS 2

From the Editor

3

Marching for life in Rome

5

Gender theory: a threat to the family and the proclamation of the Christian faith

by H. E. Willem Jacobus Cardinal Eijk

3

11

FOCUS: City of man vs City of God – Global One World Order vs Christendom

13

Mysterium iniquitatis: from one world order to global chaos

by Prof. Roberto de Mattei

22

No abiding city – the challenge of St Augustine

by Dr Alan Fimister

5

13

31

Finding hope in the midst of the revolution

by John-Henry Westen

34

Highlights of the Rome Life Forum 2019

38

The infiltration of the Catholic Church and how to restore all things in Christ Interview with Dr Taylor Marshall

40 22

34

Filial piety and national patriotism as essential virtues of the citizens of heaven at work on earth

by H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

45

Liturgy, beauty, and the world

by Dr Joseph Shaw

47

What the Cathedral of Orvieto teaches us about Corpus Christi

by Maria Madise

40

47

FROM THE EDITOR

I

n May, Voice of the Family gathered for the Rome Life Forum, followed by the Rome March for Life. This Forum, the fifth organised

by Voice of the Family, had almost twice as many participants and countries represented than previous years. Its theme “City of man vs City of God – Global One World Order vs Christendom” provides the focus for this issue of Calx Mariae.

Each year we meet in Rome because, as a good priest noted, Roma è la cattedra della verità… Rome is the chair of the truth, not philosophy, theology or science but truth.

It is important, therefore, to proclaim the truth before her throne.

Our challenge today is to keep the truth of the Catholic faith, so to speak, alive in the public arena. Naturally, we must manifest this in whatever we do and say, but it must also be seen and heard publicly in the words and actions of the Church. The deepening silence surrounding the truth about life, the family and the faith must not become the new normal. We must talk about things that are now rarely spoken of – virtue, purity, sin, salvation, hell, to name a few. And we must speak in a language of faith and clarity. Our silence would not change the truth but it would change us.

Revolutionaries throughout history have used language to transform society and not just through slogans and propaganda. Radical change occurs when certain concepts can no longer be spoken of.

This can be seen in the attacks on Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island (not to be confused with Cardinal Tobin of New Jersey) after he reminded Catholics that they cannot support LGBTQ “Pride Month”. Such events, he said “promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.” The angry response of tens of thousands to this rather measured statement from a Catholic bishop shows how unthinkable Catholic teaching has already become. It would be naive to think that this process will end with expressions of shock and disbelief. However, the only conclusion for us to draw is that now is the time to affirm boldly the truth about human life and the family if we wish to rebuild our Christian civilisation.

The Forum offers the leaders and members of the pro-life and pro-family movement an opportunity to strengthen one another in fidelity to the truth. The March for Life is a chance to give a public witness to the truth that each human life begins at conception, is created in the image of God, and is willed and loved by Him (see p. 3).

We were honoured this year by the presence of three cardinals, Willem Cardinal Eijk, Walter Cardinal Brandmüller and Raymond Cardinal Burke. Jānis Cardinal Pujats of Latvia and Bishop Athanasius Schneider also joined us via video. In testing times it is a blessing to spend a few days with our extended Catholic family (see Highlights on p. 34) John-Henry Westen of LifeSiteNews recalled how the late Carlo Cardinal Caffarra told the Forum just two years ago about the letter he received from the Fatima seer Sr Lucia in which she stated: “the final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” Cardinal Caffarra felt that: “what Sister Lucia had said was being fulfilled in these days of ours.” Yet she told him: “Don’t be afraid… Our Lady has already crushed its head.” (see p. 31) We are on the winning side in the greatest battle ever. Our Mother waits for us at its end. She will surely enfold her children in her mantle, once they reach her. We need only run the course. Always guided by the Commandments we will be able to proclaim with the faithful through the ages: “I run on the way of your precepts because they have enlarged my heart.” (Ps 119:32) If you enjoy the reports in this edition of Calx Mariae, then why not join us at the next Rome Life Forum, 21-22 May, followed by the March for Life on 23 May 2020?

EDITOR Maria Madise EDITORIAL BOARD Liam Gibson Matthew McCusker John Smeaton John-Henry Westen 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 3148 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 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.

Calx Mariae is published by Voice of the Family, an international coalition of 25 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:  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.  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.  Parents are the primary educators of their children and the protection of this right is essential for building a new “culture of life”.

PRO-LIFE ACTION

MARCHING FOR LIFE IN ROME

BY LI AM G I B S O N

F

or the sixth year in a row, the Rome Life Forum was followed by the Marcia Nationale per la Vita, Italy’s biggest pro-life demonstration. Pro-life rallies around the world are not just a public challenge to the culture of death but by nature are hopeful celebrations of the gift of life. This may be especially true of the March for Life in Rome since it gathers in the city where St Peter, St Paul and countless other martyrs laid down their lives in the service of Christ. When the early Church was being persecuted by a world which attached so little value to human life, few would have foreseen that the gospel would triumph over the pagan Roman state. For the participants of the ninth Rome March for Life gathered in the Piazza della Madonna di Loreto, close to the ruins of Trajan’s Forum, it may seem equally unimaginable that the gospel of life will overcome

SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

the modern secular culture of death.

Nevertheless, those committed to the pro-life cause know that no matter how hopeless the situation might appear it is essential to carry on the fight. And this was the central message delivered by the president of the March for Life Virginia Coda Nunziante.

In her address to the crowd, Miss Coda Nunziante reminded them that they were engaged in “a great moral and civil battle”.

“It is our determination not to retreat,” she said, and “not to embrace compromises, as negotiations on innocent human lives are not acceptable.

We cannot allow even one child, to be extracted with violence, from her mother’s womb. And you subscribe to this crime when you accept a law that provides for abortion.”

Describing the culture of death as an organised ideological movement,

she said that having introduced abortion it now intends to move on and approve infanticide and euthanasia.

The justification for the legalisation of abortion was that the embryo was not a human being just an indistinct clot of cells without a human identity.

She continued: “Science has shown that from the very first moment of conception, that a human being has his own identity, he has in himself features that are unique and unrepeatable: he is a man.

“The abortionists who wanted to introduce the 194 [abortion] law in Italy lied when they denied the foetus a human identity. It was a deliberate lie, and that is proved by the fact that if yesterday they were demanding the embryo's suppression, today they ask for the killing of a human being, up to the ninth month of pregnancy, and even later when it is already perfectly

3

developed. Yesterday, they affirmed that abortion was lawful because it did not suppress a man, today they say that a man can be killed in the interests of the community, repeating Caiaphas’s rationale: ‘That it is expedient that one man should die for the people.’ It is the reasoning with which active euthanasia is justified: the elderly are useless; they are a burden for the community: ‘it is better to suppress some of them so that the entire nation should not have to perish.’

“We reject with all our strength the sophistry of Caiaphas. We have before our eyes the innocent Lamb, Our Lord Jesus Christ, unfairly condemned and immolated. In this case, also, there was no one defending him; even Peter, turned away.

“The strength of the March for Life, in Italy and in the world, does

not lie in the number of participants, nor in the importance of testimonies.

Neither does it lie in the media echo of this initiative but rather in the consistency and endurance, with which, for nine years, we have carried forward in Italy, a message in defence of innocent human life, of rejection of abortion, without exceptions and without compromise,” she said.

“The growing strength of the prolife movement in Brazil, Argentina and the United States,” Miss Coda Nunziante argued, “shows that historical trends are not irreversible, because history is made by the free will of men and the intervention of God.” “We are here in the square as Italian citizens who love their country and know that a state that allows laws that kill their children destroys the nation’s future… Nevertheless, as well as cit-

izens, most of us, are also Catholic, and proud of being such. We have to desire a society that respects the natural and divine law. We have to love a society that recognises the social reign of Christ, for this is the ultimate goal of our action,” she told the crowd.

Drawing her remarks to a close she asked: “…can we imagine that God’s help would be lacking for those who generously commit themselves to defend life, both material and spiritual, which is the first good that God has given us, the one from which all other goods depend? We have immense faith in the victorious outcome of our battle!”

ANALYSIS

GENDER THEORY:

a threat to the family and the proclamation of the Christian faith

BY H. E . W I LLE M JACO B US C A R D IN A L EIJ K

G

ender theory is a modern development which sets the city of man against the City of God, and the world order against the Christian faith.

What does gender theory involve?

The term “sex” relates to the two categories, “male” and “female” because humans and the majority of living beings are categorised according to the anatomical and physiological differences in their reproductive organs and secondary sexual characteristics.

In the 1950s the term “gender” was introduced. This relates more to the social roles of the male and female.1 The fundamental notion of gender theory is that this social role has no, or merely a remote, connection to the biological sex.

In the past, gender would have carried certain social expectations for men and women, and, in many parts of the world, still does. However, in western society, with its hyper-individualism and associated ethic, the individual is urged not to accept a role imposed by society, but to make an autonomous choice regarding gender. Furthermore, the fact that, on this matter, the individual is guided by public opinion, the mass and social media, and the world of advertising, escapes that person. In practical terms, the individual merely has the impression of having autonomy.

The role chosen by the individual is called “gender identity”. The individual could choose this gender identity without social pressure and irrespective of biological sex. Hence the individual would be able, depending on their SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

chosen sexual orientation, to choose to be a heterosexual man, heterosexual woman, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgender or neuter.2 A transgender person is someone whose gender identity does not match his or her biological sex: the individual feels himself to be a woman, although biologically a man, or vice versa. A case where an individual is dissatisfied with his sex is known as gender dysphoria.

A transsexual person identifies himself as transgender when he intends to undergo a sex change or has undergone a change from one sex to the other with the help of medications and surgical operations.

There are many organisations which, even beyond the western world, aim to introduce the right for every individual to choose his or her gender identity; this is known as gender equity. In 2012 the World Health Organisation published a programme to promote and facilitate a policy requiring respect for gender equity in the context of human rights at an institutional level.3 Indeed, through the provision of financial subsidies, or a threat to withhold them, international organisations impose a requirement on national authorities, and other organisations, to guarantee individuals the freedom to choose their gender. They also impose the obligation to facilitate this choice by offering the transgender person means for medical or surgical interventions where necessary, so as to adapt biological sexual characteristics to the chosen gender. In many west-

H.E. WILLEM JACOBUS CARDINAL EIJK

ern countries, basic health insurance or national health systems partially or even fully reimburse the costs of these medications and surgery.

Education programmes seek to instil in children, at the primary school level, a need to consider and choose their gender as soon as possible while they are young. In circumstances where children who believe they are transgender but are still uncertain, the onset of puberty can be halted by administering a hormonal drug known as triptorelin.4 This gives the child in question the time considered necessary to reflect on this choice. Apart from the side effects of triptorelin, thought should be given to the fact that many young people experience periods in which they doubt their identity, including their gender. This is part of normal pubertal development. The blocking of puberty under these circumstances risks aggravating a problem which would have disappeared naturally, or in fact creating a problem which would never have existed, had the triptore5

ANALYSIS

lin not been administered. It must be observed that, after the transition to another sex, many transgender persons are dissatisfied, experience psychological problems and therefore wish to revert to their original sex.5 RADICALISATION OF GENDER AS THE ROOT OF THE GENDER THEORY

Gender theory has its roots in the radicalisation of feminism in the 1960s and 70s,6 which in fact began in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir (19081986). She wrote in the Second Sex, published in 1949, the famous section: “...one is not born as a woman, but one becomes one. No biological, psychological or economic destiny determines the figure which the female presents in society; it is civilisation as a whole which generates this product, an intermediate between the male and the eunuch, defined as female.”7 De Beauvoir argues that in pre-adolescence, there are not as many differences between a boy and a girl.

However, from the beginning of this stage, the boy is admitted to the world of men, while the girl has to remain in the world of women and is therefore obliged to assume the social role of a woman (evidently, de Beauvoir is speaking of her own adolescence, experienced in the years after the First World War). From the moment at which a girl matures physically, society develops a certain hostility towards her: her mother criticises her body, while the interest of males in her body causes her to feel like a physical sexual object.

One cannot fail to recognise in her ideas the influence of the theory of polymorphous perversity created by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).8 According to this theory, the human person 6

[G]ender theory emerged from radical feminism. It must be pointed out that this theory also had its beginnings in the introduction of large-scale hormonal contraception in the 1960s, which made possible the so-called liberation of women from their reproductive biology, thereby paving the way for the total detachment of gender from biological sex.

has no sexual orientation at the beginning. He or she is neither heterosexual nor homosexual but becomes one or the other depending on how psychological relationships with his or her parents develop. When, in the home environment, the child directs sexual desires to the parent of the opposite sex, the child will become heterosexual. If these desires are directed to the parent of the same sex, the child will become homosexual.

Under the influence of these ideas and other factors,9 radicalised feminism is convinced that the role of the married woman as an instrument for procreation and education of offspring is merely a social role, imposed on her by society. It is also convinced that she can, even must, be liberated from this through contraception and artificial reproduction. In 1970 the radical feminist Firestone said that once liberated from the “tyranny of their reproductive biology”,10 women would be able to choose their role, irrespective of their biological sex. This liberation also requires an attack on the organised social unit surrounding reproduction and subjecting women to their biological destiny, that is, the family.11 Firestone extended this demand to the destruction of all institutions which segregate the sexes from one another and children from the adult world, such as elementary schools. She adds a demand

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

for the “freedom of all women and all children to do as they wish sexually.”12 The ultimate revolution of feminism would in this way generate a new society, in which “humanity could return to its natural polymorphous sexuality – all forms of sexuality would be permitted and indulged.”13 Hence gender theory emerged from radical feminism. It must be pointed out that this theory also had its beginnings in the introduction of large-scale hormonal contraception in the 1960s, which made possible the socalled liberation of women from their reproductive biology, thereby paving the way for the total detachment of gender from biological sex. These developments once again emphasise the prophetic nature of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae, which described the use of contraceptives to prevent procreation as an intrinsic evil, that CAL X M A R IA E

is an essentially wrongful act. Paul VI clearly did not predict these developments in 1968, the year in which it was published. However, the significance of his encyclical later reached beyond the matter of procreation. For example, the French freemason and gynaecologist Pierre Simon attempted to enable the human person, rather than the Creator, to give their own form to their nature and life. He saw in gynaecology a way to accomplish this.

An initial step, for him, was the widest possible promulgation of contraceptive means to bring about a radical change in the concept of the family.14 In 1990 Judith Butler concluded that the imposition of the conventional social roles on women and of heterosexuality as the sexual norm in society was part of a political plan. Referring to the notion of Friedrich Nietzsche that “there is no being behind doing, effecting and becoming”,15 Butler says: “there is no gender identity behind expressions of gender, but identity is constituted by its ‘own’ expressions, said to be the results of the latter.”16 She says that gender imposed on a woman is constructed by power, “partially in terms of heterosexual and phallic convictions”.17 This is intended to mean that in gender, taken as the social role, there are aspects which are socially determinant: that women generally earn

SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

less than men for the same work, that until very recently it was not legal for women to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, or that even in the Netherlands, until the 1950s, a married woman could not have her own bank account or was required to give it up when she got married. Nevertheless, there are aspects which are inseparably linked to biological sex, for example, the roles of man and woman in marriage, in the family, in procreation and as father and mother.

GENDER THEORY IN THE LIGHT OF THE CHRISTIAN VISION OF MAN

The fact that public opinion today readily accepts the total detachment of gender from biological sex is a consequence of a “cocktail” – of hyper-individualism with its autonomous ethic, mentioned above, and a particular vision of man, especially dominant today in the English-speaking world. According to this viewpoint, the human person is limited – consciously or unconsciously – to the “mind”, that is the rational consciousness and centre of the autonomous will, in fact, to the highly complex biochemical and neurophysiological functions in the superior nuclei and cortex of the brain. This is, therefore, a materialist vision of the human person.18 The body, on the other hand, is seen as something secondary, not essential for the human person. The body would be, for the “mind” of man, purely a means of self-expression. The “mind”, as the autonomous human person, determines the purpose and meaning of the body, hence it could also identify its gender, without reference to biological sex.19 As a result, only two fundamental rules remain in sexual morality: one must not cause harm to or exercise power over a sexual partner.

However, this vision of almost absolute autonomy is incompatible with the experience that the human person has a certain freedom within certain limits. The human person, while created in the image of God, is not God Himself, and does not have absolute freedom.

Furthermore, the human person is not only a “mind” but a whole, made of a spiritual and a material dimension, soul and body. The human person is neither merely a soul nor merely a body but “corpore e anima unus” (Gaudium et spes, no. 14).20 Both man and woman have the same soul – otherwise, they would have different essences – and hence they have equal dignity. The difference between the two sexes is, therefore, physical in nature. However, the body – including the reproductive and sexual organs - is not something which is secondary or accessory, but is part of the human being as a person. And like the human person, it is an end in itself and not purely a means, the purpose of which can be determined by the human person. John Paul II writes in his encyclical Veritatis splendor: “A freedom which claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design.” (no. 48)21 Nevertheless, the human body is not a raw datum, because it is part of the human person. It has its own purpose and meaning which the human person cannot change. Man and woman are not two different species.

However, they have different roles complementing one another in the same human nature. This complementarity is indicative, not of a difference 7

ANALYSIS

in the degree of perfection or status, but of their reciprocal roles in procreation. Neither the man alone nor the woman alone is capable of procreation. They can only do so together: the wife makes the gift of paternity to her husband and the husband makes the gift of maternity to his wife.

Complementarity is not limited to marriage and procreation but pertains also to biopsychic differences in their relationship as spouses and with third parties and society as a whole. The man has a tendency to focus on rationality, he has a somewhat abstract interior world, he generally expresses his feelings less readily and is prone to adventures and experiments. The woman, however, focuses in particular on concrete things, has greater intuition, expresses feelings more readily and is, in general, more solicitous.

8

Through their complementarity, which excludes neither one nor the other from various social sectors, they complete one another in the family, and in social and professional life. Men and women who are not married also offer their talents in their personal and social lives according to this complementarity outside the spheres of marriage and procreation.

John Paul II enriched these tenets from a theological perspective in his Theology of the body.22 The first chapter of the book of Genesis23 shows that dividing human beings in two different biological sexes is directly connected to them being created in the image of God: “God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God; man and woman both, he created them.” (Gen. 1:27)

This is immediately followed by God’s command to man and woman to procreate and be the stewards of all creation: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth; make it yours and take command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air, and all living things that move on the earth.”

(Gen. 1:28) John Paul II combines this in his catechesis on the theology of the body with the exegesis in the second chapter of Genesis, in which marriage is described as the closest union of two human persons:24 “That is why a man is destined to leave father and mother, and cling to his wife instead, so that the two become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24)

Man and woman are not two different species. However, they have different roles complementing one another in the same human nature. This complementarity is indicative, not of a difference in the degree of perfection or status, but of their reciprocal roles in procreation.

Neither the man alone nor the woman alone is capable of procreation. They can only do so together: the wife makes the gift of paternity to her husband and the husband makes the gift of maternity to his wife.

There is one God in three Persons. God is in Himself a community of three Persons, who differ in their mutual relations, love one another and give themselves totally to one another.

Something of the “unity of the Trinity” is mirrored by the most intimate community of human persons, namely in matrimony. In matrimony, man and woman, both human persons, yet complementary to one another, love each other and give themselves totally to one another at a spiritual, emotional and physical level.25, 26 John Paul II also observed that human generation bears within itself an analogy with the divine “generating” – Father begetting the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. The total mutual gift of the couple to one another in matrimony becomes fertile in the procreation (and education) of new human persons. Generation in God, while entirely divine and spiritual, is the absolute model for the begetting of humans, which is “proper to the ‘unity of the two’.”27 Both the human person of two biological sexes and human generation have been created in the image of God. The essential aspects of masculine and feminine, SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

of husband and wife, of father and mother are therefore all created in the image of God and form a part of the order of creation.

Simone de Beauvoir and radical feminists consider that women are treated with contempt, as objects of carnal pleasures and as mothers, being destined in somewhat functional terms, for reproduction and education, in a role imposed by the society. John Paul II, on the other hand, notes that the source of contempt of women is the original sin, which has obfuscated the reality of both man and woman being created in the image of God, but with consequences more grave for the woman. Therefore God tells woman, after the fall into sin: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Gen. 3:16)28 As a remedy for the discrimination of women, observed in different forms throughout history, John Paul II recognises that both man and woman are human persons who have equal dignity, both created in the image of God. Their mutual complementarity results from their biological differences, including essential differences of their gender, but both rooted in their human nature.

CONSEQUENCES OF GENDER THEORY FOR THE PROCLAMATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

Gender theory has grave consequences for the proclamation of the Christian faith.

Firstly, the almost total detachment of gender from biological sex radically contradicts the Church’s teaching that sexual relationships can only take place between a man and a woman, within matrimony, and must always be open to procreation. On the contrary, gender theory advocates free choice of gender, irrespective of biological sex, and also accepts sexual activity in whichever way one wishes: outside of marriage, without openness to procreation. It promotes so-called marriage between persons of the same biological sex and considers it morally acceptable for such persons to adopt children. It accepts extramarital sexual relationships, surrogate motherhood and artificial reproduction. In addition, the reassignment of biological sex in the transsexual involves sterilisation.

Secondly, gender theory, which has its origin in radicalised feminism, promotes the lawfulness of abortion.

It employs the euphemistic term “sexual and reproductive rights” to suggest that women facing unwanted pregnancy do not need to assume the role of a mother - viewed as a role imposed on women in the past in western society and still today in many countries in the world.29 Thirdly, gender theory hinders the proclamation of the Christian faith per se and undermines the roles of father, mother, husband and wife.

It undermines marriage and parenthood. Holy Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church, as well as Catholic theology, use the relationships between the three Persons in 9

ANALYSIS

23.

The essential aspects of masculine and feminine, of husband and wife, of father and mother are therefore all created in the image of God and form a part of the order of creation.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

God and divine generation as a model for human generation in order to proclaim the Christian faith. Alteration in the meanings of father, mother, marriage, paternity and maternity, make it difficult to proclaim the faith in one God and in His three Persons – God the Father; Christ the Son of God the Father, made man; and the Holy Spirit, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In Revelation, God is identified as the Father and the spouse of His people, Israel. Undermining the significance of a husband and wife undermines this image. Damage is also inflicted on the relationship between Christ and the Church, which is an analogy to the relationship between husband and wife. (Eph. 5:21-33) The priest represents the person of Christ, and therefore has the Church as his spouse.

Leaving aside all other arguments, the requirement that a priest must be a man is founded on this analogy. The detachment of gender from biological sex would make it immaterial whether the priest is male or female.

CONCLUSION

Exposing the errors of gender theory is most urgent. What is at stake as a consequence of this theory is not only sexual morality, but the proclamation of the Christian Faith itself.

Endnotes: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

10

Oxford English Dictionary online version, August 1, 2014), see “Sex”, Noun 2. (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ definition/english/sex) and “Gender”, Noun 1. (http:// www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/gender#gender__12).

An alternative to the gender theory is the “queer theory”, according to which one cannot place a person in a particular gender or sexual category, but the limits between the two sexes are fluid.

The World Health Organization, “Gender, equity and human rights at the core of the health response (1 May 2012)”, see:http://www.who.int/gender/about/ger/en/.

This drug blocks the secretion of gonadotropins by the hypophysis, hormones which stimulate the gonads to produce the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen.

R.T. Anderson mentions some of these cases in his book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, New York/London: Encounter Books, 2018, Chapter III, pp. 49-76.

C. H. Sommers, Who stole feminism. How women have betrayed women, New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1994, particularly chapter 1 “Women under siege”.

S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex II: The lived experience, Paris: Gallimard, 1949, Part I, Chapter I: “Childhood”, p 13.

S. Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Leipzig/ Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1905.

Namely, the materialistic dialectic and structuralism, see: W. J. Eijk, “Christian anthropology and the gender theory,” (see: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ cfaith/incontri/rc_con_cfaith_20150114_esztergom-eijk_it.html), pp 3-6.

S. Firestone, The dialectic of sex. The case for feminist revolution, New York: Bantam Books, 1970, p. 206.

Ibid, pp 206-207.

Ibid, p 209.

Ibid.

P. Simon, On life before everything, Paris: Mazarine, 1979.

F. Nietzsche, On the genealogy of Morals, New York: MacMillan, 1897, First Essay “Good and Evil, Good and Bad”, nr 13, p 47.

J. Butler, Gender Troubles. Feminism, and the subversion of identity, New York/London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 24-25.

Ibid, p 30.

This vision of man is called the “identity theory of mind”, see D. Armstrong, A materialist theory of the mind, London/ New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul/Humanities Press, 1968 (2a published in 1993); LEWIS S.K., “An argument for the identity theory”, The Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966), pp 17-25.

One encounters this dualist vision of man in the writings of many radical feminists, cfr E. V. Spelman, “Woman as body: ancient and contemporary views,” Feminist Studies 8 (1982), n 1, pp 109-131.

II Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes (7 dicembre 1965), section 14, AAS 58 (1966), p 1035.

John Paul II, Encyclical letter Veritatis splendor (6 August 1993), AAS 85 (1993), pp 1133-1228, quotation on p.

1171.

John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein (red), Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006.

29.

General audience of 12 September 1979, in: Ibid., 2:3-5, pp. 135-137.

General audiences on 14 November and 21 November 1979, in: Ibid, 9-19, pp. 161-169.

John Paul II, Apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem (15 August 1988), AAS 80 (1988), pp. 1653-1729, in particular 1664-1667.

John Paul II, Post-synodal exhortation Familiaris consortio (22 November 1981), AAS pp 81-191, in particular pp 91-93.

John Paul II, Apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem, op. cit., p. 1670.

Ibid sections 9-10, pp. 1670-1677.

R. Copelon, Chr. Zampas, E. Brusie, J. Devore, “Human rights begin at birth: international law and the claim of fetal rights”, Reproductive Health Matters 13 (2005), pp.

120-129. Cf. Sen G, P. Östlin, Unequal, Unfair, Ineffective and Inefficient Gender Inequity in Health: Why it exists and how we can change it. Final Report to the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2007, p 17, see:http:// www.who.int/social_determinants/resources/csdh_media/wgekn_final_report_07.pdf.

CAL X M A R IA E

FOCUS City of man

vs

City of God

GLOBAL ONE WORLD ORDER VS CHRISTENDOM

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

The sixth annual Rome Life Forum, the fifth organised by Voice of the Family, took place from 16 -17 May 2019 at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. The theme of the Forum this year was “City of Man vs City of God – Global world order vs Christendom.”

P

ope Leo XIII summarised the eternal confrontation between the two cities in his encyclical Humanum Genus (1884) as follows: “The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil’, separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so

SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God. This twofold kingdom St Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the 11

efficient cause of each in these words: ‘Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.’ At every period of time, each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardour and assault.”

Being the children of our time, it may be difficult for us to judge the intensity of warfare between the two cities at this period of history. However, we must consider an important feature that characterises this perennial warfare today. This is the widespread idea that there is no real conflict. Some may also suggest that it is “un-Christian” to act as if there was a conflict; that such warfare belongs to the past, while in our era a harmonious coexistence of the city of man and the City of God has been established and that the notions of sin and sacrifice have been reformed to this end.

Such denial of the eternal conflict between the City of God and the city of man has the most serious consequences because it is the denial of the tremendous difference between truth and falsehood, self-sacrifice and self-love, our eternal destiny in Heaven or in Hell. Such denial forces retreat upon the Church Militant while the enemy vigorously continues to advance his attacks on the greatest gifts that humanity has received from God – life, family, Church.

The global new world order today seeks to enthrone man, preach human rights and reform the Church’s teaching according to man’s passions and desires. Such “order” is in fact disorder, another manifestation of the ancient fall of man. Christian people of all ages have sought deliverance from it through the merits of Jesus Christ, forming a new community of the redeemed, that City which gives glory to God in all things.

Our advocacy in defence of life and the family today is a real opportunity to rebuild our Christian civilisation by perseverance in witness to the intrinsically related sanctity of human life hidden in the womb and the Divine Life hidden in the tabernacle. Our fight for natural goods, for the right to life and the wellbeing of the family, can only be fruitful if we acknowledge and affirm the rights of Christ, the Author of Life. As pro-life and pro-family advocates we are committed to defending the sanctity of human life. However, as Catholics, we are also called to counter the attacks on the Divine Life and defend the reverence and adoration due to Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

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The Rome Life Forum, followed by the Italian March for Life, is a unique opportunity for leaders within the pro-life and pro-family movement, and leaders of lay movements concerned with the defence and diffusion of Catholic moral and social teaching, to strengthen one another in fidelity to the truth, while working for the restoration of a truly Christian civilisation with Christ acknowledged as king over individuals, families and societies. But the Forum can only bear fruit if our pledge of allegiance with the heavenly city is put into practice at home persistently and faithfully for the greater glory of God. This FOCUS contains a selection of talks and highlights from the recent Forum to help us all to renew our commitment to the rebuilding of Christendom, while we make our pilgrimage to the “new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev. 21:2) Let us draw courage and fortitude from considering the beauty of the Heavenly City to undertake our service with ever greater love. Truly, “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Cor. 2:9) St Augustine proclaimed the City of God to the pagans in Rome in a manner that well resonates in our times saturated with the view of the man-centred global government: “It is to this country that we invite you, and exhort you to add yourself to the number of our citizens. The refuge we offer is the true remission of sins. Do not listen to those degenerate sons of yours who disparage Christ and the Christians, and criticize these times as an unhappy age, when the kind of period they would like is one which offers not a life of tranquillity but security for their vicious pursuits. Such satisfactions have never been enough for you, even in respect of your earthly country. Now take possession of the Heavenly Country, for which you will have to endure but little hardship; and you will reign there in truth and forever. There you will find no Vestal hearth, no Capitoline stone, but the one true God, who fixes no bounds for you of space or time but will bestow an empire without end.”

The Rome Life Forum was co-sponsored by Associazione Famiglia Domani (Italy), Family Life International New Zealand, LifeSiteNews, Population Research Institute (USA) and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (UK).

CAL X M A R IA E

CIT Y OF MAN VS CIT Y OF GOD

Mysterium iniquitatis:

FROM ONE WORLD ORDER TO GLOBAL CHAOS

BY PROF. ROBE RTO D E M AT T EI

The following talk was delivered at the Rome Life Forum, held at the Angelicum, 16-17 May 2019.

THE MYSTERIUM INIQUITATIS ACCORDING TO LEO XIII

I

n seeking to throw a little light on the Mysterium iniquitatis, it is necessary to look back at the first moments of universal history.

In his encyclical Humanum genus of 20 April 1884 against Freemasonry, Leo XIII asserts: “The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil’, separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.”1 SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

Pope Leo XIII therefore teaches that humanity is divided into two camps which are in incessant combat: the kingdom of God, consisting of the Church of Christ, and the kingdom of Satan, consisting of followers of the Devil. The combat is not merely an episode in history, but dates from the first moment of the creation of the universe, and will continue until the end of time.

Angels were created together with light, but when God separated light from darkness, some angels separated themselves from the light, which is God, and plunged into darkness. This is repeated throughout history and in fact constitutes the mysterium iniquitatis: a mystery impenetrable in itself, because our intelligence is not capable of comprehending either the intimate essence of the Supreme Good, or the profundity of Evil, whose existence is allowed by God, although against His will. This is “an unapproachable light” (1 Tm. 6:16), in which God lives, but there is also an unapproachable darkness which the divine light does not illuminate. This is why we say that Satan works in the mystery. Like every mystery, the mystery of evil is beyond the understanding of reason, yet does not contradict it. Through reason illuminated by faith, we can grasp a reflection of light in this mystery which, as St Paul assures us, will be revealed in time (2 Thess. 2:6-8). Only “God is light, and in Him there can be no darkness.” (1 John 2:5)

PROF. ROBERTO DE MATTEI

To explain this mystery of evil, Leo XIII refers to the two cities, described

by St Augustine in his classic work The City of God in these words: “The one is a society of the devout, the other of rebels, each with their angels, in which, on the one hand, the love of God prevails, and on the other, love of self.”2 The forces of attraction and cohesion which generate and maintain these cities is love. “Two forms of love have generated two cities: the earthly city, love of self to the extent of disdain of God; the heavenly city, love of God to the extent of disdain of self.”3 The radical choice is between God, to whom humility of heart is intimately joined, and the devil, to whom pride and self-love binds us. The essence of this encounter is moral and rooted in human liberty: a choice must be made according to the gravitational pull impressed on our life by love.4 THE “MYSTICAL BODY OF SATAN”

The City of God is the Church in its three states: militant, suffering and triumphant. A spiritual bond brings together, in a single Mystical Body, the 13

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faithful who fight on earth, the souls who suffer in purgatory and the blessed who rejoice in Heaven. Man is in fact a social being not only in the natural, but also in the supernatural order. The vital communication of supernatural blessings among members of the three churches is the Communion of Saints.5 An intimate solidarity also exists among the children of darkness. The link which binds them is hatred. They hate and detest one another, yet come together in the struggle against Good, as stated in the Psalm: “convenerunt in unum adversus Dominum et adversus Christum eius” (Psalm 2:2).

Civitas diabuli is not merely a whole made up of errors and moral perversions, but an organised structure. It has dogmas, rights and hierarchies, representing as it does an imitation of the true Church. It is a counter-church, defined in the Apocalypse as the “synagogue of Satan”. (Ap. 2:9; 3:9) Tertullian describes the rituals used in the second century, revealing that, even at that time, a diabolical parody of Christian mysteries was in existence.

St Irenaeus speaks of the Cainites, who heralded as liberators the great rebels against God, Caine, Esau and Judas.9 The seven mediaeval Gnostics,

The City of God is the Church in its three states: militant, suffering and triumphant. A spiritual bond brings together, in a single Mystical Body, the faithful who fight on earth, the souls who suffer in purgatory and the blessed who rejoice in Heaven.

Fr Sebastian Tromp, a Jesuit theologian who collaborated in drafting the encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pius XII and, in the II Vatican Council, was adviser to Cardinal Ottaviani, added an appendix to his treatise Corpus Christi quod est ecclesia to De corpore diabolic,6 demonstrating, on the basis of scriptural and patristic citations, that the City of Satan assumes the guise of a mystical body of the devil.

In his books entitled Moralium, St Gregory the Great speaks frequently of the corpus diabuli, which is the devil and his followers. “Just as the saints are members of Christ, so the ungodly without faith are members of the devil.”7 “The devil is the father of all the iniquitous and all the ungodly are members of this leader.”8 14

like the Cathars, considered Cain, and those who built the tower of Babel, the inhabitants of the city of Sodom, to be their precursors. Freemasonry, which inherits the faith and customs of Gnosticism,10 formed the visible driving force of the civitas diabuli from the XVIII century onwards. No other sect has been the subject of such condemnation from the Church during the last three centuries, of which the encyclical Humanum genus of Leo XIII is, to some extent, a compendium.11 The Mystical Body of Christ and the Corpus diabuli are two kingdoms which oppose one another in history, as life and death, good and evil, light and darkness: their aim is to annihilate one another. The struggle between the two armies is perpetual and implacable,

as summarised in these words: “And I tell you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

(Mt. 16:18) On one side, the Church, which is the Kingdom of Christ, and on the other an enemy described as “the gates of hell”, which will, in vain, make every effort to prevail over the Church.

THE DEVIL AND HELL

It is important to emphasise that we cannot speak of the devil without speaking of hell. Earth, purgatory and paradise are places inhabited by souls which make up the Civitas Dei. But members of the Civitas diabuli also inhabit places, which are earth and hell, because for them there is no purgatory. According to Catholic doctrine, hell refers not only to the state of the damned, but also the place where the rebel angels and those who have died in mortal sin are eternally punished.12 Why do members of the Civitas diabuli speak of the devil, yet not of hell, except to negate it? Because he who loves a person tends to speak of them always, for good or evil, and the devil can be spoken of seductively, can be presented as a victim, as a rejected angel who retains his sinister beauty, thereby smoothing the path for his cult. However, to speak of hell is to describe a place of eternal torment, in itself hideous and repulsive, and evoke the justice of a God who judges infallibly and condemns irrevocably. For this reason, the perpetrators of evil disregard hell and only speak of it to deny it or affirm its emptiness.

Fr Garrigou-Lagrange states that the denial of hell by Freemasonry is evidence of its existence.13 Indeed, the fruit reveals the tree. He who hates God not only acknowledges His existence, because if he did not CAL X M A R IA E

CIT Y OF MAN VS CIT Y OF GOD

acknowledge Him, he would not fight Him, but, in his satanic perversity, also proves the existence of hell. What else are the profanations of the Eucharist, the sinister liturgies which culminate in blasphemies against all that is divine, if not manifestations of a hatred which has its source in hell and the devil?

The gravest consequence of Adam’s sin was not the introduction of the death of the body, but the introduction of the death of the soul, the severance of the sublime relationship which bound God to the rational creature.

ORIGINAL SIN

The struggle between the two cities can be explained not only by the action of Satan, but also by the original sin passed down by Adam to his descendants. Sin is a hereditary disease.

Everyone, after Adam, is born into sin, at any time and in any place. Humanity is therefore diseased, but not dead, because sin inclines the nature of man towards evil, but does not wholly corrupt him. The nature is diseased, but evil does not constitute the essence of the nature.14 Original sin wounds the soul and body of man, producing a moral disorder culminating in sin, and a physical disorder culminating in death. However, the gravest consequence of Adam’s sin was not the introduction of the death of the body, but the introduction of the death of the soul, the severance of the sublime relationship which bound God to the rational creature. Death, disease, suffering, anguish, error, doubt, conflict: all are the outcome of original sin.

Donoso Cortés writes: “Sin covered heaven with mourning, hell with flames and the earth with weeds. It brought disease, pestilence, hunger and death to the world. It dug the grave for the most illustrious and populous cities, presided over the destruction of Babylon, the city of the magnificent gardens, Nineveh the magnificent, Persepolis, daughter of the sun, Memphis of the profound mysteries, Sodom the impure, Athens the SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

ADAM AND EVE (DETAIL). (1526). LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER. THE COURTAULD GALLERY, LONDON

cradle of art, Jerusalem the ingrate, Rome the great. Sin is responsible for the groans which emerge from the breasts of men and the tears which, drop by drop, flow from the eyes of men. Yet the gravest aspect of sin, which no intellect can conceive of and no words express, is that it could rend tears from the most holy eyes of the Son of God, the meek lamb nailed to the cross, burdened with the sins of the world.” In the Garden of Olives “He experienced sadness and agita-

tion, and the horror of the sin was the cause of this extraordinary agitation and sadness. His brow sweated blood, and the spectre of the sin was the cause of this extraordinary sweating of blood. He was nailed to a wooden cross, and it was the sin which nailed him there; it was the sin which gave Him agony, the sin which gave him death.”15 However, the origin of the mysterium iniquitatis was not the sin of Adam and Eve, but the sin of Lucifer. The disobe15

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dience of Adam and Eve was in fact under the influence of Satan, but no one influenced Satan, whose sin did not merit God’s pardon, unlike that of our progenitors, because Satan was the cause of the sin. For this reason, if Christ, the new Adam, is the leader of the City of God, it is not Adam, but Lucifer who is the leader of the Civitas diabuli. Therefore, according to the Book of Wisdom: “Invidia diabuli mors intravit in orbe terrarium.” (Wis. 2:24)

The devil wishes to extinguish the light of the world, plunge the world in darkness, in the image of his kingdom.

But darkness does not contain in itself the strength to defeat the light entirely and definitively, because it is from the light that darkness draws its existence.

REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

While St Augustine is the genius who, in unequalled depth, describes the antithesis between the two cities, no one except Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995), in his succinct work Revolution and Counter-Revolution,16 has better described the history of the struggle between the Civitas Dei and Civitas diabuli in recent centuries. For the Brazilian thinker, a revolutionary process exists whose origins date from the XIV to the XV centuries, when Europe was experiencing a profound change in the spirit of the age. The philosophy of pleasure associated with humanism triggered the Protestant religious Revolution which, excluding apparent divergences, was one with humanistic beliefs. The French Revolution welcomed the liberal and egalitarian tendencies of humanism and Protestantism and introduced them to the political and social spheres.

The Communist Revolution spread throughout the world and led the egalitarian hatred of the French Revolution to its ultimate consequences.

A new worldwide civilisation was to have replaced Christian civilisation.

During the French Revolution, on 17 June 1790, a Prussian revolutionary, Anacharsis Clootz (1755-1794), presented himself to the Assembly as “the orator of the human race”, heading a 16

ST DOMINIC LEADS THE DEMON INTO THE CHAPTER HOUSE (1581-84). SIMONE DA POGGIBONSI. GRAND CLOISTER, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE

deputation of persons of different languages and nationalities, announcing the construction of a universal Republic which would embrace all peoples of the earth.17 Another protagonist of the Revolution, Abbot Henri Grégoire (1750-1831), demanded, in the name of universal equality, abolition of the “aristocracy of the skin”. On 4 June 1793, at a masquerade, Grégoire announced: “Citizens, there still exists an aristocracy: that of the skin. You will make it disappear.”18

The utopia of multiculturalism is therefore of early date and an expression of the egalitarian pantheism of the French Revolution, which claimed that they would destroy every inequality, whether social or in nature, to create an imitation of the mediaeval Christian Republic. It was only after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 that this utopia was apparently realised, with the (almost contemporaneous) advent of the dictatorship of the Communist proletariat, the CAL X M A R IA E

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National Socialist Third Reich and the League of Nations, later renamed the United Nations Organisation.

However, all these projects failed miserably. The dream of building the “novus ordo saeculorum”, emerging at the beginning of the XX century, was replaced by an opposing dream, that of destruction: the Kingdom of Chaos.19 The New World Order is in reality worldwide chaos, which today has the colours of the Amazonia, the happy paradise in which indigenous peoples pass on the wisdom of the cult of nature, and the Earth Charter replaces the Declaration of Human Rights, now superseded by the tribal phase of the fourth and fifth Revolutions. The Amazonia has been elevated from a physical territory to a theological place, the object par excellence of geolatry, the cult offered to Mother Earth which embraces all creatures, animate or inanimate, where everything coexists and nothing is, because, once every inequality is eliminated, nothingness is revealed as the ultimate secret of the universe.

The metaphysics of the nothing is the heart of the new religion.

Yet even this nihilistic dream is of early date. In the period when Clootz and Grégoire were presenting their utopias, the Marquis de Sade (17401814), secretary of the notorious Jacobin section of the Pikes, revealed the true objective of the Revolution in his pamphlet entitled Frenchman, greater effort is needed if you wish to be Republicans,20 in which he celebrated the apotheosis of evil and the dissolution of all moral standards.

Before de Sade, the theoretician of the metaphysics of dissolution was Dom Léger-Marie Deschamps (1716-1774), an atheist Benedictine monk, who secretly influenced Diderot and the French Encyclopaedists.

SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

His manuscripts were discovered almost a century after his death and first published in Bolshevik Russia in 1930. The Russian scholar Igor Safarevic21 and the Polish academic Bronislaw Baczko22 emphasise the significance of these writings, which deify evil. Deschamps proclaimed a general equality in which everything coincides with nothingness: “All beings flow out and into one another and all persons are merely different aspects of a single universal race.”23 Pantheism coincides with nihilism, because everything is nothing and everything must make itself nothing. Nothingness is the only rigorous antithesis of being.

Anticosmism, which is the negation and annihilation of every reality, is manifested in the dissolution of every ethic, every right, every society, every family, every propriety.24 If we apply to our own times a celebrated page written by Mons. JeanJacques Gaume (1802-1879), we can say: “If, stripping the mask from the Revolution, you will ask: Who are you?

I will tell you: I am not what people believe. Many speak of me and very few know me. I am neither the financial oligarchies, nor American globalism, nor the Russian Moloch, nor the Chinese Dragon. I am not the Islamic migrants who invade Europe to conquer it, nor the homosexuals who demonstrate against the family in order to destroy it. I am neither Marco Pannella nor Emma Bonino. I am neither Obama nor Soros. These people are my children, they are not me. These things are my works, they are not me.

These men and these things are shortlived and I am a permanent state.

I am hatred for every religious and social order which man has not established and in which he is not king and God together. I am the proclamation of human rights against the rights of

God. I am the philosophy of rebellion, the politics of rebellion, the religion of rebellion: I am the armed negation (nihil armatum); I am the foundation of the religious and social state underlying the will of man instead of the will of God! In a word, I am anarchy, because I am God dethroned and man instead of Him. This is why I call myself Revolution, that is overthrow.”25 Nihil armatum: this definition captures the essence of the Revolution, which is not nothingness, because if it were nothingness, it would not exist.

But it is an organised march, an armed march towards nothingness, guided by the dark power spoken of so frequently in the letters of St Paul. (Eph. 6:12; Col. 1:13; Lk. 22:53) THE SUICIDE OF REVOLUTION

To the Lord who says of himself “I am He who is” (Exod. 3:14), Satan, leader and animator of the Revolution, shrieks: “There is nothing beyond me and I hate myself because I am.” The devil wishes to precipitate the creation of nothingness and cast himself into nothingness. The mysterium iniquitatis is the mystery of the urge of evil towards nothingness, without the ability to reach that goal. If this total suicide could be accomplished, the Revolution would have prevailed over God, since annihilation is the supreme act of dominion, possible only for God,26 but also because evil exists only as the privation of good, and without the good it cannot exist, just as disease cannot exist without the body of the diseased person attacked. Death signifies the end not only of the diseased person, but also of the disease.

This is why the journey of the Revolution towards nothingness cannot achieve its purpose, namely the radical and definitive destruction of the Church and Christian civilisation.

17

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The good which remains and which the Revolution needs to survive is the germ of its defeat.

We perceive this principle in history, where God always uses a small number of the truly faithful to achieve the grand return of the truth and the good. An eminent biblical scholar, Mons. Salvatore Garofalo, has written an exhaustive study on The prophetic notion of the “Remainder of Israel”27, in which he shows this concept to be the cornerstone of the prophetic tradition.

This principle is expressed as: residuum revertetur.28 In fact God wishes to make use of the weak and the small before men and defeat the powerful.

of the wicked, men and demons, and imposes itself through cunning and violence, not through the peaceful and conquering force of the truth and the good. It is in this sense a “nihil armatum”.

Jesus says “I am the light of the world… he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) The devil wishes to extinguish the light of the world, plunge the world in darkness, in the image of his kingdom. But darkness does not contain in itself the strength to defeat the light entirely and definitively, because it is from the light that darkness draws its existence.

Yet the souls to whom the devil most clings are those called to sainthood. Satan seeks out in particular those who, like himself, have received most graces from God.

The self-destructive march of the Revolution is destined to shatter against a remnant of truth and good which is the principle and prerequisite of its defeat. Where there is a candle which burns, light shines, with greater or lesser intensity, depending on the flame of love which consumes it. The, albeit minimal, remnant of light which shines in the night contains in itself the irresistible force of dawn, the potential of a new day as the sun rises. Light penetrates, illuminates, warms and revives, as does the good, by nature communicable, fertile and extensive.29 Evil is by nature sterile and barren. The drama of evil is this: it cannot extinguish the final remnant of the good which survives. Evil can certainly be propagated. However, its strength is not intrinsic, but extrinsic.

It is propagated through the actions 18

The infernal world is the world of dark chaos, expressed in the malformed creatures sculpted on the outside of mediaeval cathedrals and the grotesque figures depicted by Hieronymus Bosch.30 The image of Heaven cannot be portrayed in a painting. Perhaps only a Gothic or Romanesque cathedral can give us a distant reflection. If a cathedral burns, this means hell has penetrated it, because the language of symbols does not, even in the twenty first century, lose its expressive force.

THE DEVIL’S SEDUCTIVE WORKS The Revolution is satanic in essence, because it aims to undo the work of the creation and Redemption to build the social Kingdom of the devil, a hell on earth which foreshadows that of eternity, just as the social Kingdom of

Christ also foreshadows the kingdom of the celestial paradise.

It is the truth of faith: demons exist, they fight men, they tempt and at times invade them.31 Satan’s primary activity is temptation. The devil insinuates, instigates, induces us to sin. He is, at least indirectly, in this sense the cause of our sins.32 Jesus Christ himself experienced this act of the tempter, who said to him: “Haec tibi omnia dabo, si cadens adoraveris me” (“All these things I will give you if you prostrate yourself before me and adore me.”) (Mt. 4:9) The mystical Body of Christ rests on two pillars: its visible structure, whose leaders are the pope, the Vicar of Christ, and its invisible structure, which is made up of the saints, of which Our Lady is the model and epitome, who can also be defined as the “Vicar of Christ”, because of the authority which is not visible, but invisible, exerted over the truly devout, who are the heart of the Church.

The primary work of the devil is to conquer both the visible and invisible leaders of the Mystical Body of Christ: the authorities which guide the Church and the saints who profess and live the Truth.

The temptation for men who represent the visible Church is power. The devil suggests that they serve not the Church, but their own ambitions, to satisfy their own cupidity. Yet the souls to whom the devil most clings are those called to sainthood. Satan seeks out in particular those who, like himself, have received most graces from God. The seduction consists in convincing those souls that the good which they do is the fruit of their own strength and their own merit, leading them to forget that all the good they perform is accomplished in them by God. To these souls, the tempter offers the gratification of gifts they have received, to CAL X M A R IA E

change them from the humble to the proud and, where this is not possible, tempt them not to aim for the utmost good, which is perfection, but content themselves with the lesser good, which is frequently an evil, substituting the rough way of the Cross with an accommodating spirituality, which renounces heroism.

Satan prefers to conquer men of the Church rather than the laity, and from among the men of the Church, those who have the highest vocation; to lose a pure and generous soul, to lose a saint, to lose a bishop, to lose a pope: these are Satan’s greatest conquests. This requires the highest level of seduction possible, which consists in offering his victim not vulgar material goods, but alternative spiritual goods, appealing to man’s desire for the absolute.33 As testified in his work Exorcism, Leo XIII saw the throne of abomination and godlessness, positioned even “ubi sedes beatissimi Petri et Cathedra veritatis ad lucem gentium constituta est.”34 THE GATES OF HELL AND THE GATES OF HEAVEN

In the book of the Apocalypse, St John speaks of the abyss of which Satan is king (Ap. 9:11), because he holds the keys to it (ivi 9:1); when he opened the gates to unleash his henchmen on the world “smoke rose from the shaft as smoke rises from a great furnace, until the sun and the air were darkened.” (ivi 9:2) Demons and infernal vapours arose from hell, spread throughout the earth, penetrated the temple of God. The smoke of Satan anaesthetised, before producing death. And yet the gates of hell will not prevail, because the gates of Heaven will also be thrown wide, and from them will emerge torrents of grace which purify the air and awaken the sleeping, giving them the strength SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

THE LAST JUDGEMENT (C.1430-40). JAN VAN EYCK. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

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to fight. The strength of grace reaches us through the sacraments, through the Blessed Virgin Mary, and through the innumerable actual graces we receive and to which we are equal. From the gates of Heaven also now pour out onto the earth legions of angels in combat with demons. While it is true, as declared by St Thomas, that “all physical things are governed by the angels”,35 this means that everything which surrounds us, everything which happens, is governed by the angels, present at every moment and in every place, protagonist of the divine plans, guides in the struggle against the devil, the world and the flesh in which we engage every day.

The two cities, made up of angels and men, are always and everywhere close on earth and their clash is therefore continuous and universal. Between them there is no possible compromise. For as long as blood continues to flow, we believe we are at peace.

In reality, we are at war. The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius remind us of the militant attitude of the Christian, called upon to choose from two banners,36 simply the two cities referred to by St Augustine. St Ignatius and St Augustine merely expound the Gospel maxim that “no-one can serve two masters or he will hate the one and love the other”or vice versa (Mt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13). Our lives are but a moment in this struggle, the story of a relentless war between the servants of the order of God and the followers of infernal chaos. However, St Hildegard of Bingen properly writes that rationality, the highest prerogative of spiritual souls “consists in the possibility of choosing between two sides, embracing the side chosen and rejecting its opposite, because one cannot, in one choice, embrace two conflicting things at the same time.”37 20

God does not instil into the heart of man unrealisable desires and the aspiration of so many devout Catholics to the social Kingdom of Christ is destined to be realised in history before the end of time.

KINGDOM OF THE ANTICHRIST OR KINGDOM OF MARY?

Today victory appears to be smiling on the devil and we can ask ourselves whether this era is coinciding with the era of the Antichrist, the supreme expression of evil in history. However, if this were the case, we would have to conclude that we are at the end of the world and have reached it while knowing the social reign of the devil, but not the social reign of Christ. Protestants, modernists and their precursors and followers, while acknowledging Christ, deny the Church or, while not denying it, hold it to be invisible, and therefore deny its triumph. Their notion is that of an Ecclesia spiritualis or invisibilis, reduced to a congregation of the predestined, and an Assembly of saints, destined to be persecuted, without ever, throughout history, being victorious.

This generates an eschatology associated with catacombs and a victim mentality, which denies what is called the Constantinian Church and the ideal of the social Kingdom of Christ. Today many Catholics endorse this theology of Protestant and modernist history.

Secularisation is regarded as irreversible and the Church is reduced to a minority of faithful who abandon attempts to conquer the public domain.

Hence the temptation to believe that we are at the end of the world, we should lay down our arms and take refuge in waiting. We do not fight the world, because we do not believe in the duty to “instaurare omnia in Christo”,

to rebuild Christian civilisation on the ruins of the modern world, according to the grand plan of St Pius X. However, God does not instil into the heart of man unrealisable desires and the aspiration of so many devout Catholics to the social Kingdom of Christ is destined to be realised in history before the end of time. This means we are not living in the times of the Antichrist, but merely in an anti-Christian era, on which St John writes: “Nunc Antichristi multi facti sunt.”

(1 John 2:18) An era in which many are witnesses or according to St Gregory the Great, “little witnesses”of the Antichrist, without being the Antichrist.38 The primary evidence for this lies in the battle we are waging against the Revolution in order to reinstate the social Kingdom of Jesus and Mary, which will be simply the triumph of the Holy Church in society and men’s hearts. We fight because God has placed a love of the fight in our hearts.

THE OBJECT OF OUR HOPE

Ours is not a battle without hope. He who does not hope abandons the struggle and he who continues to fight does so because animated by hope. Hope is the virtue which illuminates the darkness of the night.39 In the night, we do not see, and the object of hope is precisely that which our senses do not see, because hope is only practised when we cannot see that for which we are hoping.40 For this reason, we only practise the virtue of hope on this earth: in CAL X M A R IA E

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Heaven, we will possess what we now hope for. In this sense, he who hopes is similar to he who possesses. In hoping, man already possesses, imperfectly on earth, what he will one day possess perfectly in eternity.

The Council of Trent teaches that hope is a duty of the Christian: “In Dei auxilio firmissimam spem collocare et reponere omnes debent.” 41 Given that, as the theologians say, one cannot hope without faith,42 the primary virtue of the militant Church is the mixture of faith and hope which is called trust, which means believing in and hoping for blessings which our senses tell us are most distant. St Paul defines confidence as “gloriam spei”, “the glory of hope” (Heb. 3:6) and St Thomas defines it as “spes roborata ex aliqua opinion”, “hope strengthened by solid belief ”.43 Hope fortifies our actions and renders our prayers effective. It is a fine thing to fight in defence of a Church, whose dazzling beauty is concealed, but which we love, because we believe and hope in it. If in Heaven there will be no hope, because we will possess the thing hoped for, in hell there will be eternal despair, because one will suffer the absence of the thing in which one has not believed and not hoped for.

What we believe and hope for is none other than God and all the blessings which bring us close to Him. We must therefore repeat, with St Claude de la Colombière: “Je Vous espère Vous-même de Vous même, ô mon Créateur.”44 We can lose everything, except trust. We trust not only that we will receive a reward for good works but also, according to St Augustine, for performing these good works with the help of God.45 We trust in the struggle until victory because we hope in it and because the object of our hope is God himself. We hope not only one day to possess it in heaven, but to glorify it on SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

earth, fighting for the social Kingdom of Jesus and Mary, for the realisation of which He leads us to hope. The Lord ignites hope in the hearts of those who hope in Him; and he who hopes will do so because he has already received the gift of hope. An immense trust, nourished by the promise of Fatima, animates our struggle in the battle on earth, which is pleasing to Heaven.

Translated from Italian by Mary Latham

Roberto de Mattei is a former professor of Modern History and History of Christianity in the European University of Rome. He founded, and oversees, the Lepanto Foundation that operates in Washington and in Rome.

He directs the magazine Radici Cristiane and the Corrispondenza Romana News Agency.

Endnotes: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

Leo XIII, encyclical Humanum genus, de secta massonum of 20 April 1884 in Leonis Acta, vol. IV (1885), page 43 (43-70).

St Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book. XIV, Chapter 13,1.

Ivi, Chapter 28.

Mons. Antonino Romeo, The present and future in biblical Revelation, Desclée, Rome 1964, pp. 1-32.

Mons. Antonio Piolanti, The mystery of the communion of saints in the revelation and theology, Desclée, Roma 1957, pp. 353-355.

Sebastian Tromp S.J., Corpus Christi quod est ecclesia vol.

I, Introductio generalis, Apud aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, Rome 1937, pp.151-154.

St Gregory the great, Moralium, Book. 13, Chapter 34 in Patrologia Latina,vol. 75, col. 1034; cfr. also Book, Chapter 28, ivi, col. 883.

St Gregory the great, Commentary on twelve psalms, Psalm 35, 27 in Opera omnia, New city, Rome 1980, pp. 142, 143.

St Irenaeus, Adversus haereses,1, 31.

Albert Maria Weiss o.p., Apologia for Christianity with regard to custom and culture, vol. II, Humanity and humanism, pp. 452-54.

Giovanni Cantoni, Freemasonry in the documents of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, in Freemasonry and religions, edited by Massimo Introvigne, ElleDiCi, Leumann, Turin 1994, pp. 133.161.

Mons. A. Piolanti, Hell, in Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol. VI, col. 1942 (coll. 1942-1949).

Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange o.p., Eternal life and the depth of the soul, tr. it. Faith and Culture, Verona 2018, pp. 125-128.

A. M, Weiss o.p., Apologia for Christianity, cit., pp. 56-57.

Juan Donoso Cortés, Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism, translated into Italian, Rusconi, Milan 1972, pp. 211-212.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution Counter-Revolution, translated into Italian, Sugarco, Milan 2009.

Cfr. Armando Saitta, From the Christian Republic to the United States of America, pp. 133-134.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

Cfr. Mons Jean-Joseph Gaume, The Revolution. Historical research. Secrétariat Société Saint-Paul, Lille 1877, pp. 94-95.

Cfr. Roberto de Mattei, From the utopia of progress to the reign of chaos, The Age of Man, Lausanne 1993.

Alphonse François de Sade, Frenchman, greater effort is needed if you wish to be Republicans, in Philosophy in the boudoir, Gallimard, Paris 1976, pp. 187-267.

Igor Safarevic, Socialism as a worldwide historical phenomenon, La Casa di Matriona, Milan 1980, pp. 108-160.

Bronislaw Bazko, Utopia. Social imagination and Utopian representations in the age of the Enlightenment. Einaudi, Turin, 1979, pp. 102-156.

In Safarevic, op. cit., p. 144.

Agostino Sanfratello, Polis and Antipolis. Notes on the anticosmism of Utopia, Bibliotheca Romana, Rome 1981, pp. 17-57.

Mons. Jean-Joseph Gaume, op. cit, pp. 18-19.

St Thomas of Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 3.

Salvatore Garofalo, The prophetic notion of the “Remainder of Israel”, Lateranum, Rome 1962.

Cfr. On this principle Roberto de Mattei, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Apostle of Fatima, Prophet of the Kingdom of Mary, Edizioni Fiducia, Rome 2017, pp. 360-364.

St Thomas of Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I-IIae, q. 2, a. 3.

Hans Sedlmayr, The secularisation of hell in The death of the light. Art in the age of secularisation, Rusconi, Milan 1970, pp. 33-58.

Mons. A. Romeo, Satanism, in Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol.

X, col. 1955.

St Thomas of Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 114, aa. 2-3.

Henri Ramière, O Reino de Jesus Cristo na Historia, Livraria Civilizaçao, Porto 2001: O plano satanico, pp. 97-98.

Acta Sanctae Sedis, 23 (1890-1891), pp. 743-747 The Exorcism was included in the Rituale Romanum in 1903, the final year of Leo XIII’s pontificate.

St Thomas of Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 110, a. 1.

St Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, nos. 136-138, translated into Italian by Fr Giovanni Filippo Roothan S.J., Editrice Ancora, Milan 1967, pp. 166-169.

Hildegard of Bingham, The book of divine works, translated into Italian, Mondadori, Milan 2014, p. 1007.

St Gregory the Great, Moralium, Book 32, Chapter 16, in PL col. 76, p. 653.

St Augustine, Sermones, 37, 11.

St Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos,144, 23.

Concilium Tridentinum, Canones et decreta, sessio VI, c. 13.

Antonio Royo Marin o.p., Theology of the Christian life, Edizioni Paoline, Rome 1965, p. 585.

St Thomas of Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-IIae, q. 129, art. 6 ad 2.

Spiritual retreat of R. P. Père Claude La Colombière of the Company of Jesus, Anisson et Posuel, Lyon 1694, pp.

240-242.

St Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos,77, 45.

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NO ABIDING CITY

the challenge of St Augustine

BY DR ALAN F IM IS T ER

The following talk was delivered at the Rome Life Forum, held at the Angelicum, 16-17 May 2019.

O

n the City of God Against the Pagans was written in response to the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410.

It is hard to grasp the scale of the catastrophe represented by this event. A century earlier Constantine the Great saw the vision in the sky of a cross of light that led to his conversion to Christianity.1 Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea applied to the new Christian Emperor the words of the prophet Daniel “the saints of the Most High shall inherit the kingdom”.2 He considered this their literal sense i.e. that Christians would inherit the Roman Empire.

The sovereignty of Constantine and his successors would be different in kind, Eusebius insisted, from that of his predecessors: “For how should he whose soul is impressed with a thousand absurd images of false deities, be able to exhibit a counterpart of the true and heavenly sovereignty?”3 But for Constantine the conversion of the Emperor was not the repudiation but the climax of Roman history. The emperor himself perceived a prophecy of the birth of Christ in the writings of Virgil – Rome’s greatest poet – transferring, by implication, the ecstatic hope invested by the pagans of the first century in the person and line of Augustus, the first emperor, to the true Son of God and universal ruler, Christ.4

22

The history of Rome and its universal claims harmonised perfectly – so it seemed – with the triumph of Christ and His Church.

The two last bastions of ancient paganism were the Roman Senate and the Academy of Athens. The latter would endure for another century after Augustine’s time but the crucial fight for the soul of the Senate came four years before his conversion in 382 when the Altar of the goddess Victory was removed from the Senate House.

Shortly after this trial of strength between the new religion and the pagan aristocracy the last ruler of the undivided Empire Theodosius (who formally adopted Catholicism as the religion of the empire in 380) extinguished the vestal fire, hearth of the city. The dying of this flame had long been thought to portend disaster. The vestal priestesses were also the guardians of the Palladium traditionally brought by Aeneas himself from Troy.

Constantine had already removed this totemic object from Rome some sixty years earlier and taken it to Constantinople. The morning of the One True God had dawned upon the Roman Empire and from their last refuges the shadows of superstition were driven and exposed.

The remote causes of Rome’s fall from greatness are rooted deep in military and political developments stretching back many centuries.

Even before Theodosius’s campaign against idolatry the empire had bare-

DR ALAN FIMISTER

ly survived a mass armed migration of Goths across the Danube in 376.

Order had never entirely been restored, nor, in fact, would it ever be.

As Christopher Dawson observed “the storm was only beginning. It was to last, not for decades, but for generations, until the very memory of peace was gone. It was no ordinary political catastrophe, but ‘a day of the Lord’ such as the Hebrew prophets describe, a judgement of the nations in which a whole civilisation and social order which had failed to justify their existence were rooted up and thrown into the fire.”5 The fatal blow would be a natural disaster. On 31 December 406 the other great European frontier of the Empire, the Rhine, froze solid and Vandals, Alans and Suebi swarmed across. It was a blow from which the people of the ancient world would never recover. Centuries of anarchy stretched before them.

Civilisation itself would in time be raised upon new foundations and, in large part, these would be the founCAL X M A R IA E

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dations to which Augustine pointed in the City of God but first he must turn the sword of blame from the Church for the temporal ruin which engulfed his flock.

The actual words of the pagan reproaches have not survived but we can well imagine what they said. Immortal Rome had flourished for more than a thousand years tending the altars of her gods. Even in her darkest hours the capitol itself had never fallen. Now eighty years after the Palladium was removed, fewer than thirty after the altar of victory was destroyed and a mere twelve years from the extinction of the Vestal fire the greatest city on earth had been put to the sword.

Already the pagans charged that the virtues admired by Christians were inimical to the qualities that sustained the civic culture of antiquity. Now the consequences of that conflict and the vanity of the Judean superstition were plain for all to see.

How would the bishop of Hippo in North Africa respond to these charges?

Celebrated convert from Paganism, baptised by St Ambrose himself the man who secured the removal of the Altar of Victory, Augustine had turned from a career as a statesman to the cloister and then (under protest) the cathedra. He was precisely the sort of person whose talents had been wasted by this new Christian age and might have prevented the fall of Rome.

Augustine’s response came in the form of the twenty-two books of the City of God. His defence of the Church against her critics was so profound and radical that it defined the Christian vision of history and society in the Latin West for a thousand years. Augustine completely rejected the priorities and assumptions of his pagan critics. He put their ideals on trial and cast them aside. As Das Kapital was to the SoSUM ME R 2 0 1 9

viet Union so was the City of God to Mediaeval Christendom with dramatically different results. Charlemagne considered it his favourite book and St Thomas More lectured on it to the Carthusians of London (with whom he would later give his life for Christ) while he discerned his vocation as young man. At the beginning and the end of the ages of Faith Augustine was there guiding the thoughts and actions of the Church’s children.

refuted by the sack of Rome. It is the presupposition Augustine ignored and rejected in the City of God. There are two senses of “the world” in the New Testament. There is the sense used in John 3:16: “God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” In this sense the world is good. God loves it and has saved it. Then there is the sense of

Christ’s Church is first and foremost the Church Triumphant in Heaven with which we are associated through baptism. The faithful of the Church Militant here below have no abiding City. Happiness cannot be found in this life. Those who seek it here below share in the rebellion of Lucifer who imagined he could make himself like the Most High (Is. 14:14). There is no common project to which the Catholic Church might contribute.

No neutral space in which the brethren of Christ and the slaves of the evil one might labour in common.

About ten years ago a public debate was held in England between some Catholics and some opponents of the Church. The Catholics were generally not considered to have had the best of it (to put it mildly). The event triggered some trauma. An organisation was even founded to ensure that in any similar contest the Catholics would hold their own. What no one seemed to notice was the erroneous nature of the proposition the Catholic speakers were defending: that The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. This is the error into which too many of the faithful had fallen in the century of their triumph from 310 to 410. It is the assumption the pagans thought had been

the world used in John 17:9: “I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them whom thou hast given me: because they are thine.” In this sense the world is not good. Not at all. The Catholic Church is either the only force for good in the world or she is the world’s implacable enemy. She is never a force for good in this world. As Bl. John Henry Newman put it: “Is not the world in itself evil? Is it an accident, is it an occasion, is it but an excess, or a crisis, or a complication of circumstances, which constitutes its sinfulness? or, rather, is it not one of our three great spiritual enemies, at all times, 23

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and under all circumstances and all changes, ungodly, unbelieving, seducing, and anti-christian? Surely we must grant it to be so. Why else in Baptism do we vow to wage war against it? Why else does Scripture speak of it in the terms which we know so well, if we will but attend to them? St James says, that ‘the friendship of the world is enmity with God,’ (James 4:4) so that ‘whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.’ And St Paul speaks of ‘walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’; (Eph. 2:2) and exhorts us not to be ‘conformed to this world’, but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our mind’; (Rom. 12:2) and he says that Christ ‘gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world.’ (Gal. 1:4) In like manner St John says, ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ (1 John 2:15) Let us be quite sure, then, that that confederacy of evil which Scripture calls the world, that conspiracy against Almighty God of which Satan is the secret instigator, is something wider, and more subtle, and more ordinary, than mere cruelty, or craft, or profligacy; it is that very world in which we are; it is not a certain body or party of men, but it is human society itself. This it is which is our greatest enemy.”6 This is a fundamental insight of the City of God. Christ’s Church is first and foremost the Church Triumphant in Heaven with which we are associated through baptism. The faithful of the 24

Church Militant here below have no abiding City. Happiness cannot be found in this life. Those who seek it here below share in the rebellion of Lucifer who imagined he could make himself like the Most High (Is. 14:14).

There is no common project to which the Catholic Church might contribute.

No neutral space in which the brethren of Christ and the slaves of the evil one might labour in common. No end sought by humanity as a whole in this fallen state. There is indeed a natural unity to man but all who sin put themselves at enmity with this unity and all sin. We are reincorporated into it in so far as we are redeemed and the minority who accept and seek to live by the grace of redemption may form the true human city but insofar as they do they also put themselves at odds with the rest, with the vast bulk of mankind.

First of all Augustine refutes the pagans’ arguments. If the Roman gods would have preserved the city why did they not preserve Troy? The Palladium was only in Rome in the first place because it had to be rescued from Troy and taken to Italy by Aeneus. Virgil himself even helpfully refers to the Trojan’s “vanquished gods”. What use are deities who need to be guarded by their own worshipers? The claim that the Roman dominions would never decrease was refuted long ago in 117 when Hadrian abandoned many of the conquests of Trajan.

What is the temporal happiness for which the pagans claim they impetrate their pantheon, Augustine asks? According to respectable authors it is the life of virtue but the pagan gods showed precious little interest in this.

The myths of the gods imbedded in the images and rites of pagan worship are a catalogue of crimes and abominations. If the Romans of the early

Republic were virtuous it was despite and not because of their “religion”.

Even this was no true virtue but custom animated by pride or a thirst for glory and honour that is: human praise. But Christ is as good as His word. Three times in the Sermon on the Mount He declares of those who simulate virtue for human respect: “Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.” Accordingly, the ancient Romans receive human glory, wide dominion, and the wonder of the ages. But such glory is transitory and as the splendid vices of the Romans faded so did the conquests dry up and the qualified reality of their commonwealth dissipated. Even their own authors treat the Republic as a vanished age by the time of the Incarnation. The pagan philosophers purport to seek happiness in the next life by the worship of their gods but the fables they defend expose these beings for the noxious demons they are while the philosophy itself purged of these fables would lead an honest man to the Church not the heathen temple.

In fact, the republican nostalgists are too generous. Truth be told the republic didn’t perish in the vices of the first century BC – it never existed.

Taking the unimpeachable Roman authority Marcus Tullius Cicero, Augustine defines the people of a republic as “a multitude united in association by a community of interest and a common sense of right (or ius)”. But there can be no ius without iustitia no right without righteousness. Unless it is animated by the perpetual resolve to render unto each that which is his due there can be no republic and to whom is more due than God the creator and sustainer and perfecter of all things?

By refusing to worship the one true God in the manner He has appointed the Romans evacuated their city of justice. But there is only one way of CAL X M A R IA E

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[T]here are two cities, two multitudes united in association by a common agreement on the object of their love.

“Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.”

claiming a right to the godhead; so his followers, in denying the due of the Almighty, usurp the right to all other things. As the Catholic Church is constituted by Christ’s sacrifice so the rebellion of Satan stands behind every alliance of men and angels separate from her. The acceptable worship of Abel manifested the Heavenly City and the rejected offering of Cain the earthly.

“Jerusalem received beginning through Abel, Babylon through Cain”.7 “[T]his is the characteristic of the earthly city, that it worships God or gods who may aid it in reigning victoriously and peacefully on earth not through love of doing good, but through lust of rule. The good use the world that they may enjoy God: the wicked, on the contrary, that they may enjoy the world would fain use God — those of them, at least, who have attained to the belief that He is and takes an interest in human affairs.”8

MINIATURE FROM CITY OF GOD (1480). COËTIVY MASTER. CONVENT OF THE MINIMES, FRANCE

approaching the Living One: through the Cross – the one acceptable sacrifice foreshadowed by Abel and made present daily on the Catholic altar. And so, SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

Augustine concludes: “There is no justice save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ.” As the first of all deceivers rebelled against God by

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?

The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an 25

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apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride: ‘What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.’”9 One of the great instruments in clouding Augustine’s doctrine from later ages is the modern concept of “the state”. Augustine has no place for “the state” in his vision. There is, in the first place, the Republic or City which Cicero correctly defined but which nowhere exists outside the Catholic Church. Secondly there are the multitude of brigandages the earthly confederacies that have no true right to exist but prey upon mankind. Finally, there is the grand confederacy of all those implicated in the rebellion against God. It is in this sense that there are two cities, two multitudes united in association by a common agreement on the object of their love.

“Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.”10 Newman breathes the true doctrine of the great African when he considers the true nature of the so-called state: “Earthly kingdoms are founded, not in justice, but in injustice.

They are created by the sword, by robbery, cruelty, perjury, craft, and fraud. There never was a kingdom, except Christ’s, which was not conceived and born, nurtured and educated, in sin. There never was a state but was committed to acts 26

PORTRAIT OF BL. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1881). SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS. ARUNDEL CASTLE

and maxims which it is its crime to maintain, and its ruin to abandon. What monarchy is there but began in invasion or usurpation?

What revolution has been effected without self-will, violence, or hypocrisy? What popular government but is blown about by every wind, as if it had no conscience and no responsibilities? What dominion of the few but is selfish and unscrupulous? Where is military strength without the passion for war? Where is trade without the love of filthy lucre, which is the root of all evil?”11 The idea of a neutral city has no place in Augustine’s analysis nor should it in ours. It is a mirage – worse than that – a lie designed to win us away from our true loyalty to the city which is above.

Where then does the temporal polity that submits to Christ’s kingship fall

in Augustine’s taxonomy? There seems no place for it.

A few years before the calamity of 410 Augustine became involved in another much more local conflict between Christian and pagan in the city of Calama near to his own see of Hippo. The local pagans were outraged by a recent Imperial law forbidding idolatrous festivals. The pagans celebrated their festival anyway, rioted, killed a number of Christians, destroyed the cathedral and drove the Christians out of the City. A local pagan magistrate, Nectarius, appealed to Augustine to dissuade the authorities from severe reprisals. As it happened Augustine was willing to try to prevent the use of lethal force or torture (of which he disapproved) by the authorities but he would not seek a general clemency that might encourage future outrages of this kind, nor plead on behalf of the property of the offending pagans.

CAL X M A R IA E

CIT Y OF MAN VS CIT Y OF GOD

More fundamentally Augustine rejects Nectarius’s argument (taken from Cicero) that “there is no limit either in measure or in time to the claims which their country has upon the care and service of right-hearted men”. For Augustine there is no value to the service of any temporal city unless and until it is incorporated into the heavenly one.

Or rather, the only true service one can do the temporal city outside the Church is that which furthers this incorporation. Nectarius, imagining that nature has concrete value apart from the question of true worship, falsely supposes Augustine and he could share some perspective on the good for his city.

“These things I have said, [Augustine corrects him] because of your having written that the nearer you come to the end of life, the greater is your desire to leave your country in a safe and flourishing condition.

Away with all these vanities and follies, and let men be converted to the true worship of God, and to chaste and pious manners: then will you see your country flourishing, not in the vain opinion of fools, but in the sound judgment of the wise; when your fatherland here on earth shall have become a portion of that Fatherland into which we are born not by the flesh, but by faith, and in which all the holy and faithful servants of God shall bloom in the eternal summer, when their labours in the winter of time are done.”12 This is the logic from which the institutions of Christendom would grow. The concept of “Church and State” with which we are so familiar in the modern age had no place in the Augustinian centuries. As Pope Boniface VIII defined in 1302 in the SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

“Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal.” There is no salvation for the temporal community other than, as Augustine puts it, “a portion of that Fatherland into which we are born not by the flesh, but by faith”. This is why mediaeval kings and emperors were deemed deposed by the ban of excommunication. Outside the Church they were mere brigands once again. But there is another side to this truth. Just as there is no state, no neutral polity for which Christian and pagan can toil together, so too the concept of the Church which identifies her with the clergy is a distortion that obscures her true nature and the role of the lay faithful. As the last Council observed, “the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives, is so much the duty and responsibility of the laity that it can never be performed properly by others.”13 But that community, once it has been so transformed, is not external to the Church but merely a temporal province of Christ’s kingdom on earth.

Newman again: “…it is only in proportion as things that be are brought into this kingdom, and made subservient to it; it is only as kings and princes, nobles and rulers, men of business and men of letters, the craftsman, and the trader, and the labourer, humble themselves to Christ’s Church, and (in the language of the prophet Isaiah) ‘bow down to her with their faces toward the earth, and lick up the dust of her feet’, that the world becomes living and spiritual, and a fit object of love and a resting-place to the Christian.”14

If man’s end in this world were merely proportionate to his nature then the aptitudes and qualities that fit a man to be a statesman would be virtue simply speaking and the very fact that one man exercised civil authority over another would establish a strong presumption that he was fit to do so and exceeded his subjects in goodness. But the gift of God far exceeds the goods of nature and since the fall there has been a tension between the pursuit of temporal and spiritual goods. The temporal polity is not the visible manifestation of the damned city as the Church is of the elect but it forever tends in this direction. As Pope Gelasius I explained: “Christ, mindful of human frailty, regulated with an excellent disposition what pertained to the salvation of his people. Thus he distinguished between the offices of both powers according to their own proper activities and separate dignities, wanting his people to be saved by healthful humility and not carried away again by human pride, so that Christian emperors would need priests for attaining eternal life, and priests would avail themselves of imperial regulations in the conduct of temporal affairs.”15 In this order of providence the aptitudes necessary for the government of temporal affairs are skills not virtues. It is no more impossible for a man to be a good statesman and a bad man as it is for him to be a good chemist and a bad man. Only in the heavenly city do rank and virtue coincide. In fact, it is worse than that. The temporal commonwealth is precisely the community constituted by the end proportionate to man’s nature and Sa27

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tan’s rebellion consisted precisely in the claim that the absolutely final end is proportionate to the nature of every intellectual creature, that created persons are owed beatitude by God, and should not have to receive it as a gift on God’s terms.16 For all those united by the love of self to the point of contempt for God the very existence of the Church is an affront to the dignity of man, of the intellectual creature.

The temporal commonwealth is the object of their hopes and aspirations or their worship indeed. As the Catechism explains: “Every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct. Most societies have formed their institutions in the recognition of a certain preeminence of man over things. Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognised man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer. The Church invites political authorities to measure their judgments and decisions against this inspired truth about God and man: societies not recognising this vision or rejecting it in the name of their independence from God are brought to seek their criteria and goal in themselves or to borrow them from some ideology.

Since they do not admit that one can defend an objective criterion of good and evil, they arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny, as history shows.”17 Contingent factors undoubtedly played a decisive role in the rise of the hereditary principle and the 28

concept of representative democracy in mediaeval Christendom but they both have a fitting place there. For a healthy and natural (or rather supernatural) suspicion must always attend those drawn to temporal statesmanship. It is a worthy and honourable task but, as with the episcopate, just because a man who desires the office of a statesman, desires a noble task does not mean the one who desires it or the desire itself is always or even often noble. It was natural that Christian man during the Augustinian centuries should, while desiring competence in the ministers of temporal power, have placed checks upon these men from those who either did not seek or did not hold such power.

The City of God is the Catholic Church.18 Many among the baptised (all those in mortal sin) are not citizens of that city but no one who is wholly outside her pale belongs to it. Many who lack a living faith will one day enter her gates and some who possess such faith will depart from her before they die. But the Church is a city built upon a hilltop that cannot be hidden.

There are not many ways to heaven.

As the Doctor of Grace warned Nectarius: “[y]ou said that all religions by diverse roads and pathways aspire to that one dwelling-place, I fear lest, perchance, while supposing that the way in which you are now found tends there, you should be somewhat reluctant to embrace the way which alone leads men to heaven.

Observing, however, more carefully the word which you used, I think that it is not presumptuous for me to expound its meaning somewhat differently; for you did not say that all religions by diverse roads and pathways reach heaven, or reveal, or

find, or enter, or secure that blessed land, but by saying in a phrase deliberately weighed and chosen that all religions aspire to it, you have indicated, not the fruition, but the desire of heaven as common to all religions. You have in these words neither shut out the one religion which is true, nor admitted other religions which are false; for certainly the way which brings us to the goal aspires thitherward, but not every way which aspires thitherward brings us to the place wherein all who are brought there are unquestionably blessed. Now we all wish, that is, we aspire, to be blessed; but we cannot all achieve what we wish, that is, we do not all obtain what we aspire to. That man, therefore, obtains heaven who walks in the way which not only aspires thitherward, but actually brings him there, separating himself from others who keep to the ways which aspire heavenward without finally reaching heaven.

For there would be no wandering if men were content to aspire to nothing, or if the truth which men aspire to were obtained … Christ has said, I am the way, [John 14:6] it is in Him that mercy and truth are to be sought: if we seek these in any other way, we must go astray, following a path which aspires to the true goal, but does not lead men there.”19 If there is so stark a gulf between the one and only human community – God’s City – how can we give any loyalty to the latrocinium in which we are born especially in an age when scarcely a temporal polity on earth submits to the Kingship of Christ? Did not St Paul say in the days of Nero “the powers that be are ordained of CAL X M A R IA E

CIT Y OF MAN VS CIT Y OF GOD

The idea of a neutral city has no place in Augustine’s analysis nor should it in ours. It is a mirage – worse than that – a lie designed to win us away from our true loyalty to the city which is above.

SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO. LINE ENGRAVING BY N. DOSSIER AFTER A. DIEU. CREDIT: WELLCOME COLLECTION

God”? Nero was no Christian. How

er than a negative precept) take away

then could he command obedience as

obedience still less the loyalty and love

St Paul assures us he could? A useful

owed by children to those who begot

analogy can be found here, I believe,

them and licences a stranger to baptise

with the authority of parents. Failure

an infant only in the imminent dan-

to baptise one’s children, though a

ger of death. So long as our temporal

grave fault in parents, does not (be-

homeland does not require of us any

cause a failure to meet a positive rath-

violation of natural or divine law (even

SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

while it permits such violations to others) we owe it our obedience. But our estimation of all that true loyalty and love demand of us in its regard cannot but diverge from that of its rulers so long as they remain in the service of the enemy. There will be some overlap, as Our Lord Himself observes: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”20 but the fundamental motivations and intentions remain utterly opposed. If we forget this we do our God, our temporal homeland and ourselves no good service. Indeed, we depart entirely from the service of God. Permit me to close with another, shocking, observation by Bl. John Henry Newman. Shocking especially for those seduced by the siren voices who insist that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.

“Nature is one with nature, grace with grace; the world then witnesses against you by being good friends with you; you could not have got on with the world so well, without surrendering something which was precious and sacred. The world likes you, all but your professed creed; distinguishes you from your creed in its judgment of you, and would fain separate you from it in fact. Men say: ‘These persons are better than their Church; we have not a word to say for their Church; but Catholics are not what they were, they are very much like other men now. Their Creed certainly is bigoted and cruel, but what would you have of them? You cannot expect them to confess this; let them change quietly, no one changes in public, – be satisfied that they are changed. They are as fond of the 29

FOCUS

In this order of providence the aptitudes necessary for the government of temporal affairs are skills not virtues. It is no more impossible for a man to be a good statesman and a bad man as it is for him to be a good chemist and a bad man. Only in the heavenly city do rank and virtue coincide.

Franciscan University of Steubenville, Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen and Senior Scholar in Theology at Exeter College, Oxford.

Endnotes: 1.

Probably in 310. The impression is often given by Lactantius and Eusebius that the vision of the cross occurred soon before the dream of Christ that Constantine had the night before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in October 312 but they never actually say this. On the other hand, we have a pagan account of what seems to be the cross vision (seen by the army as well as Constantine) shortly after Constantine’s final conflict with his father-in-law

world as we are; they take up political objects as warmly; they like their own way just as well; they do not like strictness a whit better; they hate spiritual thraldom, and they are half ashamed of the Pope and his Councils. They hardly believe any miracles now, and are annoyed when their own brethren confess that there are such; they never speak of purgatory; they are sore about images; they avoid the subject of Indulgences; and they will not commit themselves to the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The Catholic doctrines are now mere badges of party. Catholics think for themselves and judge for themselves, just as we do; they are kept in their Church by a point of honour, and a reluctance at seeming to abandon a fallen cause.’ Such is the judgment of the world, and you, my brethren, are shocked to hear it; – but may it not be, that the world knows more about you than you know about yourselves?

‘If ye had been of the world,’ says Christ, ‘the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.’ So speaks Christ of His Apostles. How run His words when applied to you? ‘If ye be of the world, the world will love its own; therefore ye are of the world, 30

and I have not chosen you out of the world, because the world doth love you.’ Do not complain of the world’s imputing to you more than is true; those who live as the world lives give countenance to those who think them of the world, and seem to form but one party with them. In proportion as you put off the yoke of Christ, so does the world by a sort of instinct recognise you, and think well of you accordingly. Its highest compliment is to tell you that you disbelieve. O my brethren, there is an eternal enmity between the world and the Church. The Church declares by the mouth of an Apostle: ‘Whoso will be a friend of the world, becomes an enemy of God;’ and the world retorts, and calls the Church apostate, sorceress, Beelzebub, and Antichrist. She is the image and the mother of the predestinate, and, if you would be found among her children when you die, you must have part in her reproach while you live.”21 Dr Alan Fimister is Assistant Professor of Theology at St John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado and Director of the Dialogos Institute. He is the author of Robert Schuman: Neo-Scholastic Humanism and the Re-Unification of Europe. He taught Theology and Church History at International Theological Institute outside Vienna, was Visiting Professor of History at the Austrian Campus of the

Maximian in 310. R.A.B. Mynors (trans.), XII Pangyrici Latini (Oxford: OUP, 1964) 201-202.

2.

Eusebius of Caesarea, Oration in Praise of Constantine, 3.2. in (E.C. Richardson trans.) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890). PG 20.

3.

Eusebius, Oration, 5.3.

4.

Constantine I, Oration to the Assembly of the Saints, 20 in (E.C. Richardson trans.) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890). PG 20.

5.

M.C. D’Arcy et al., A Monument to Saint Augustine (London: Sheed & Ward, 1930) 37-38.

6.

John Henry Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day (Longmans, Green & Co.: London, 1902) 79-80.

7.

St Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 65, 2 in (J.E. Tweed trans.) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888).

8.

St Augustine, On the City of God, 15.7 in (M. Dods trans.)

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887).

9.

St Augustine, On the City of God, 4.4 in (M. Dods trans.)

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887).

10.

“fecerunt civitates duas amores duo: terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei: caelestem vero amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui” De civitate Dei, 14, 28 (PL 41, 436). See: Leo XIII, Humanum genus (Rome, 1884) no. 1.

11.

John Henry Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day (Longmans, Green & Co.: London, 1902) 242.

12.

St Augustine, Letter 91, 6.in J.G. Cunningham (trans.)

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887).

13.

Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree on The Apostolate of The Laity Apostolicam Actuositatem (Rome, 1965) no. 13.

14.

John Henry Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day (Longmans, Green & Co.: London, 1902) 106.

15.

St Gelasius I, Tractate IV in B. Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1988) 15. Even our contemporaries dimly sense this need for a non-political higher and universal tribunal capable of striking down temporal laws and executive measures when these diverge from the moral law as witnessed by their futile enthusiasm for judicial supremacy and “human rights” tribunals.

16.

See: Pius X, Pascendi (Rome, 1907) no. 37 and Pius XII, Humani generis (Rome, 1950) no. 26.

17.

St John Paul II, Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) no. 2244.

18.

19.

De civitate Dei, 13, 16.

St Augustine, Letter 104, 4.12 in J.G. Cunningham (trans.)

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 1 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887).

20.

Matthew 7:11 (ESV).

21.

John Henry Newman, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (Longmans, Green & Co.: London, 1906) 165-167.

CAL X M A R IA E

CIT Y OF MAN VS CIT Y OF GOD

FINDING HOPE

in the midst of the revolution

BY JOHN- HE NRY W EST EN

The following talk was delivered at the Rome Life Forum, held at the Angelicum, 16-17 May 2019.

W

e seem to have come to a height of the revolution if not the height of the revolution – the revolution against God. Christian persecution is at an all time high with even the not so Christian friendly BBC reporting this month on a study finding that Christianity faced being “wiped out” from parts of the Middle East. It warned the religion “is at risk of disappearing” in some parts of the world, pointing to figures which claimed Christians in Palestine represent less than 1.5 per cent of the population, while in Iraq they had fallen from 1.5 million before 2003 to less than 120,000. “Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity.”

The secular persecution of the Church is every bit as intolerant in the west with ridicule against Christians being the only acceptable prejudice in the western nations. And the Church is riddled with the crimes of its clergy which have brought its reputation and moral authority to an all-time low in public opinion such that clergy are ashamed or afraid to wear their clerical clothing in public due to the overt hostility coming from passers-by with epithets of pedophile and the like.

But for men and women of faith, the most devastating reality of our day is the crisis of faith in the Church, SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

where many in the hierarchy including the Holy Father himself are gravely confusing the faithful with failure to preach the truth and at times statements both official and unofficial contradicting doctrine.

The dismantling of orthodox liturgy, architecture and music in the 60s and 70s persists and is exacerbated with the dismantling of orthodox doctrine in our day to give us a church which neither looks, sounds, nor feels any more like the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church born of the blood of Christ and the martyrs that followed in His footsteps. The most nefarious plans of the diabolical sects have come to fruition in the most uncanny fashion, not with a bloody persecution but by a seductive slow and deliberate progress which has brought the Catechism’s no. 675 to life warning of a “religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”

As the late Carlo Cardinal Caffarra of blessed memory told us here a short two years ago, reading from the letter he received from the Fatima seer Sr Lucia: “the final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” He said he felt “what Sister Lucia said in those days is being fulfilled in these days of ours,” with the battle in the Church over marriage and the family.

But what did Our Lady reveal in that same message that came via Sr Lucia to Cardinal Caffarra?

JOHN-HENRY WESTEN

“Don’t be afraid, because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.” This battle was known and envisioned in the plan of Our Lord. More importantly your participation in this battle was known and you were and are the chosen instruments of Our Lord and Our Lady in this great battle. As Sr Lucia concluded: “Our Lady has already crushed its head.”

This is exactly where we find our hope as the revolution against God and His Church comes to a fever pitch. It is in Our Lady Herself – as the mystics called Her – the City of God. Why did the greatest saints pray to have lived in these times – the time of the decisive battle between Our Lord and the reign of Satan? Here is what we must do to not only survive but thrive in the struggle which has only started.

As the greatest promoter of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary St 31

Focus

Louis de Montfort wrote about our times:

other ways, this virgin road to Jesus is a path of roses and sweet delights.

“I said that this will happen especially towards the end of the world, and indeed soon, because Almighty God and his holy Mother are to raise up great saints who will surpass in holiness most other saints as much as the cedars of Lebanon tower above little shrubs. …These great souls filled with grace and zeal will be chosen to oppose the enemies of God who are raging on all sides. They will be exceptionally devoted to the Blessed Virgin. Illumined by her light, strengthened by her food, guided by her spirit, supported by her arm, sheltered under her protection, they will fight with one hand and build with the other. With one hand they will give battle, overthrowing and crushing heretics and their heresies, schismatics and their schisms, idolaters and their idolatries, sinners and their wickedness. With the other hand they will build the temple of the true Solomon and the mystical city of God, namely, the Blessed Virgin, who is called by the Fathers of the Church the Temple of Solomon and the City of God. By word and example they will draw all men to a true devotion to her and though this will make many enemies, it will also bring about many victories and much glory to God alone.” (St Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, nos. 47-48)

“But what will they be like, these servants, these slaves, these children of Mary?

Listen to these words of encouragement and comfort from de Montfort: “It is true that on our way we have hard battles to fight and serious obstacles to overcome, but Mary, our Mother and Queen, stays close to her faithful servants. She is always at hand to brighten their darkness, clear away their doubts, strengthen them in their fears, sustain them in their combats and trials. Truly, in comparison with 32

“They will be ministers of the Lord who, like a flaming fire, will enkindle everywhere the fires of divine love.

They will become, in Mary’s powerful hands, like sharp arrows, with which she will transfix her enemies.

“They will be as the children of Levi, thoroughly purified by the fire of great tribulations and closely joined to God. They will carry the gold of love in their heart, the frankincense of prayer in their mind and the myrrh of mortification in their body.

“They will be like thunder-clouds flying through the air at the slightest breath of the Holy Spirit. Attached to nothing, surprised at nothing, troubled at nothing, they will shower down the rain of God’s word and of eternal life. They will thunder against sin, they will storm against the world, they will strike down the devil and his followers and for life and for death, they will pierce through and through with the two-edged sword of God’s word all those against whom they are sent by Almighty God. [...]

“Lastly, we know they will be true disciples of Jesus Christ, imitating his poverty, his humility, his contempt of the world and his love. They will point out the narrow way to God in pure truth according to the holy Gospel, and not according to the maxims of the world.

Their hearts will not be troubled, nor will they show favour to anyone; they will not spare or heed or fear any man, however powerful he may be. They will have the two-edged sword of the word of God in their mouths and the blood-stained standard of the Cross on their shoulders. They will carry the

crucifix in their right hand and the rosary in their left, and the holy names of Jesus and Mary on their heart. The simplicity and self-sacrifice of Jesus will be reflected in their whole behaviour.

“Such are the great men who are to come. By the will of God Mary is to prepare them to extend his rule over the impious and unbelievers. But when and how will this come about? Only God knows. For our part we must yearn and wait for it in silence and in prayer: “I have waited and waited.”

(True Devotion to Mary, nos. 56-57, 59) We have been handed a great gift by the very revolution that sought to destroy the faith. The gift of humility. We can see with our own eyes and painful experience that the enemies arrayed against us are so much more powerful than we that any kind of self-aggrandisement or self-assurance is laughable. Corporations fighting against life and family with unimaginable wealth, power and influence, with the power to spy on us at every moment of every day and use that information for their gain and to our detriment. Imagine then what the spiritual enemies are like whose powers make the human evil genius pale in comparison.

And with even the hierarchy of the Church, the very magisterium of the pope stripped from us as an anchor of surety we are left in our weakest and most vulnerable state. And that is exactly when God fights for us when we put our full trust in Him. We learn in the Magnificat why the Almighty chose Our Lady for His greatest Work. “For He has regarded the humility of His handmaid.” And in Her, with Her and through Her we can do all things for Christ Who is our strength.

And there is not much to do other than to live our Catholic lives the way we know we should with daily Mass, CAL X M A R IA E

daily Rosary and a true devotion to Mary which is an utter reliance on Her for everything and with everything we have.

It’s in the simplicity of total consecration that the secret to the battle lies. In total giving of yourself in recognition of your total weakness and dependence and total trust in the living City of God “where the Blessed Trinity dwells in greater and more divine splendour than anywhere else in the universe, not excluding his dwelling above the cherubim and seraphim.”

In the book of the Apocalypse or Revelations Chapter 11 we read of the two witnesses or two end time prophets who are able to battle against the Anti-Christ. They are able to withstand him until nearly the end when they are slain by him. In verse 10 we learn that after they are killed their bodies lie in the street and the world exchanges gifts celebrating their deaths because they “tormented the people”. But how did they torment?

There is an answer in the book of Wisdom when it mystically describes the reason for the crucifixion of Christ:

“Let us lay traps for the upright man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches us for our sins against the Law, and accuses us of sins against our upbringing. He claims to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. We see him as a reproof to our way of thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down; for his kind of life is not like other people’s, and his ways are quite different. In his opinion we are counterfeit; he avoids our ways as he would filth; he proclaims the final end of the upright as blessed and boasts of having God for his father.” (Wis. 2:12-16) As de Montfort reveals, the key to the City of God is to imitate Her humility.

“But Mary’s power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. In the eyes of the world they will be little and poor and, like the heel, lowly in the eyes of all, down-trodden and crushed

as is the heel by the other parts of the body.”

Let us cherish our littleness, our total weakness against the forces arrayed against us but our total reliance, dependence and absolute need for God. Let us take the lowest place in the army of Mary. Let us approach Christ always through His most holy Mother. Let us address Our Father in heaven with the words of de Montfort: “Behold not me but behold the Handmaid of the Lord who acts for me and gives me a singular confidence and hope with Thy Majesty.”

John-Henry Westen is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He is the editor of the Catholic magazine Faithful Insight and also the co-founder of Voice of the Family. He and his wife Dianne and their eight children live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIA (C. 1472). DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO. OGNISSANTI, FLORENCE

HIGHLIGHTS

ROME LIFE FORUM

City of man

vs

City of God

GLOBAL ONE WORLD ORDER VS CHRISTENDOM ANGELICUM, ROME, 16-17 MAY 2019

H.E. BISHOP ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER

Video address on the hopelessness of the city of man without God “The reign or city, that is against and without God, leads by its intrinsic logic to the tyranny of egoism, of narcissism, it leads to a society led by the law of the jungle, to a society of cruelty and mercilessness, to a society with no affections, to a society with a continuous spiritual winter, without spring, without flowers, without summer, without fruits, without true joy and beauty. In such a society there is no warmth of a true humanity. A society and a city

34

AU T UMN 2 0 1 8

that is against God and without God is not even capable of having a sense of humour, neither is it capable of mourning.”

“The city of man contains at its root the impulse to totalitarianism, to global totalitarianism which will demand total submission and which will not tolerate the reign of the true king of this world and of humankind, who is the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ.”

CAL X M A R IA E

34

HIGHLIGHTS

“True liberty, true humanity, true social progress of an individual and of the society as a whole is guaranteed only when the will of God the Creator in His Commandments and the will of God in His Revelation in Christ is accepted and observed and when Christ’s kingship over human society is recognised.”

H.E. JĀNIS CARDINAL PUJATS

Video address on topical issues for the family and for society

35

to God, which is a normal behaviour and way of life in this world.”

“It is scandalous and strange that in many countries, the legalisation of ‘same-sex marriage’ is justified by referring to so-called ‘sexual orientation’. It seems that in reality this ‘orientation’ is most often acquired in practice, just like an alcoholic acquires the habit of drinking. Just like every other vice acquired by practice, it is not an orientation but simply a vice.”

“Christ has said: ‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Christ also tells us how to achieve this goal: if you want to enter the Kingdom of God and inherit eternal life, you must keep the Commandments.”

“The Holy Scripture says that every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. This is the difference between God’s requirements and human laws. God’s Commandments first require us to love God more than anything else in our life. And each and every person as ourselves.”

“...at all times there are signals coming either from Heaven or from Hell; but there has never been any signal coming out of nothingness. So, an unbeliever has nowhere to hide from responsibility. But those who believe and follow God’s Commandments, consider life as a service

“God’s Commandments protect the inner freedom of the person. They give him independence from sinful habits that enslave him. There are many people who are spiritually and materially devastated because they serve their vices like slaves.”

AU T UMN 2 0 1 8

CAL X M A R IA E

35

HIGHLIGHTS

“[M]an has flesh and an immortal soul. Concerning human flesh, science and medicine have sufficiently explored it. It does not contain any special secrets. But as far as the human soul and his spiritual life are concerned, it is unique to every man, and everyone keeps it secret. No one can look into another man’s soul. Even the most sophisticated technical devices are unable to hear and to determine a man’s thoughts. The inner life is real, very secret and very rich. A person’s reason and will, his plans and good intentions, his skills and talents, faith and virtues, his relationships with God and men, the unfathomable treasury of his memory – all that is a very rich reality hidden in the depth of every man’s soul. This reality is unique to every person and inimitable. It is a witness to the existence of the human soul. With this spiritual treasure, the person will stand before God at the end of his life. He can also end up in the claws of Satan, depending on how he lived his life.”

H.E. WALTER CARDINAL BRANDMÜLLER

An insight into the pre-history of Humanae vitae “Today … we are confronted with the results of a process of erosion initiated at the 1930 Lambeth Conference which, from the approval of artificial contraception, has led us to the monstrosity of what is today known as procreative medicine, by which man has seated himself on the throne of the Creator.”

“Goethe’s Prometheus said: ‘I am here and I create men in my image …’ These words, written more than two hundred years ago, in fact mirror this notion of self which, today, is driving the protagonists of so-called reproductive medicine to carry out these experiments, through which they sacrilegiously violate the sanctity of human life.

These are interventions - and there are almost no words to describe them – of an almost diabolical monstrosity, today heralded as spectacular breakthroughs … It only remains for for us to wait until these Prometheic figures reach the same destiny as their mythical hero.”

“Humanae Humanae vitae provides an extraordinary example of the workings of the process of parodosis, which means trans-

HIGHLIGHTS

mission of the doctrine of the Church. When the truth of faith is received, adopted and transmitted, what happens is that what is received, when adopted and transmitted, responds with deeper understanding and more precise expression to the needs of the respective present, while continuing to be identical to itself. In all of this, contradiction between yesterday and today is impossible: it is the Holy Spirit who acts in the Church of Jesus Christ to guide this process of paradosis. It is the Holy Spirit who ensures that the faith of the Church develops in the course of time, just as an adult person continues to be identical to the infant it was in the past, an intuition formulated by Vincent of Lérins as early as 430 and elaborated upon

by Blessed John Henry Newman.”

H.E. RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE

Questions and answers; for Cardinal Burke’s presentation on filial piety and national patriotism, please go to p.40

that the definition of the Church’s teaching is that the individuals are not able to find a way of living in their own country. And this is not true of immigrants who are opportunists and in particular in the case of Islam, which by its definition believes itself to be destined to rule the world, coming in large numbers to countries.”

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what has happened, for instance, in Europe, in countries like France and Germany and also here in Italy. And it is also happening in the United States. There is a very interesting book written called No go zones which records places in the United States, where in fact Muslim immigrants set up their own legal order. In other words they resist the legitimate legal authority of the state and so to be opposed to large-scale muslim immigration is in fact a responsible exercise of one’s patriotism. People who are true refugees, who cannot live in their own country – yes, we must receive them and help them in every way, but this is not the case when you have simply a large scale immigration.”

“To resist large-scale Muslim immigration, in my judgement, is to be responsible in the sense of making sure that those who are immigrating to the country remember

AU T UM N

CAL X M A R IA E

37

I N T E RV I E W W I T H D R TAY L O R M A R S H A L L

The infiltration of the Catholic Church AND HOW TO RESTORE ALL THINGS IN CHRIST George, an apostolate for Catholic men and their sons. He and his wife live in Texas with their eight children.

CALX MARIAE: How would you describe your own discovery of Catholic Faith and tradition? What were the key factors and what effect did they have on your formation and work?

W

DR TAYLOR MARSHALL

e had the great pleasure of meeting Dr Taylor Marshall, the President of the New Saint Thomas Institute and author, at the Rome Life Forum and he generously agreed to answer some questions for Calx Mariae.

Dr Taylor Marshall founded the New Saint Thomas Institute in 2013 to provide online theology and philosophy classes to people across the globe. He is the best-selling author of eight books, including The Eternal City: Rome and the origin of Catholic Christianity, Thomas Aquinas in 50 Pages: a layman’s quick guide to Thomism, and The Catholic perspective on Paul. He is also the author of the popular historical fiction Sword and Serpent trilogy about the Roman persecution of the Catholic Church. Dr Marshall’s new book Infiltration: the plot to destroy the Catholic Church from within gives a carefully documented account of how the enemies of Christ have worked to subvert the Catholic Church from within. He produces a popular podcast called The Taylor Marshall Show and founded the Troops of Saint 38

DR TAYLOR MARSHALL: I had been an Anglican priest or cleric and I was plagued with the question about the papacy and Rome as the Mother and Teacher of the faithful. The prophetic centrality of Rome in Daniel, the Gospels, Acts, and the Apocalypse drove me to accept Rome as supreme.

This is the thesis of my early book The Eternal City: Rome and the origin of Catholic Christianity and Rome as the ecclesial destiny of the Kingdom of God is also the backdrop of my fiction trilogy Sword and Serpent. Of course, it is also the focus of my latest book Infiltration: the plot to destroy the Church from within.

CM: You have become well known for challenging the failure of Church leaders to defend authentic Catholic teaching, especially the ambiguous and confusing positions promoted

by Pope Francis. No faithful Catholic wants to be critical of the Pope, so what compelled you to speak out?

TM: I am passionate about the Papacy and Rome. It crushes my heart to see confusion dispensed from Rome.

We should see Our Lord’s mandate to Peter to “confirm thy brethren” (Lk.

22:32) lived out by the Successor of Saint Peter. As in the days of Pope Honorius I, we are again observing, to use the exact words of Pope Leo II, one “who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by profane treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.” (Pope Leo II regarding the deceased Pope Honorius I; Denzinger 563) CM: We frequently hear that the Church has always had bad priests, corrupt bishops and even bad popes so we shouldn’t be concerned by what we see in the Church today. Do you think that there is something unprecedented about what the Church is going through now?

If yes, in what way?

TM: It is not unprecedented, because the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople III, in the Thirteenth Session states: “And with these we define that there shall be expelled from the holy Church of God and anathematised Honorius who was some time Pope of Old Rome, because of what we found written by him to [Patriarch] Sergius, that in all respects he followed his view and confirmed his impious doctrines.”

It is possible to have a pope, patriarch, archbishop, bishop, or priest stray in faith and morals. We know however from the Vatican I that a pope may not and can not false publish teaching on faith and morals ex cathedra. This has always been true and remains true to this day.

CAL X M A R IA E

INTERVIE W

CM: Your new book Infiltration presents a disturbing picture of the developments in the Church stretching back over decades. What are the key arguments you make? What prompted you to write it and what do you hope will be its fruit?

TM: My book Infiltration traces the ways in which the Catholic Church was betrayed not from without, but from within. This pattern is observed with Satan before creation and again in the betrayal of Judas. Once again the mid-1800s the Catholic Church was betrayed and infiltrated. I document this long process and trace it up to our current day.

CM: The evidence of the corruption and revolution within the Church, even at the very highest level, is extremely disturbing. What was the most shocking thing you discovered in the course of researching the book?

TM: There are many difficult things captured inside the pages of Infiltration.

The intertwining of the city of Sankt Gallen with Vladimir Lenin, Communism, Aleister Crowley's Gnostic Catholic Church, ritual “sex magick”, the presence of McCarrick there, and the campaign to undermine Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI and elect Pope Francis are especially explosive.

CM: Many people have been shocked by things that Pope Francis has said and done.

Others argue that what is happening is the inevitable result of the errors introduced at the Second Vatican Council and which grew worse during the reign of Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI. What do you think needs to happen to bring about a restoration of the Church on earth?

TM: In the final chapter of Infiltration, I sketch out a means by which to restore all things in Christ through the Catholic Church by observing the restoration movement of Ezra and Nehemiah in SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

Sacred Scripture. I would point readers to that chapter.

CM: As a husband and father of eight as well as an academic, what practical steps do you think ordinary Catholics can take to help bring this authentic restoration about?

TM: We must come to know the incarnate Logos, our Lord Jesus Christ with our heart and with our mind.

We must re-embrace the traditional piety of Catholics: the traditional Latin Mass, the Holy Rosary, fasting, Scripture study, novenas, feast days, prayers before and after meals, Ember days, and an ascetical approach to Vigils, Advent, and Lent. Our Lord Jesus Christ when He was walking the earth said: “Strive to enter by the narrow gate.” If our Catholicism doesn't have the note of striving, we are not doing it correctly. Secondly, we must catechise ourselves and our children with the traditional sources of dogma.

Chief of these is Sacred Scripture. After that the Creeds, the Councils, and the great Catechism of the Council of Trent and the Catechism published by Pope Pius X. Personally, I also believe that every Catholic should be versed in Saint Thomas Aquinas and I invite all to read my brief intro Thomas Aquinas in 50 Pages available for free at my site: taylormarshall.com in order to begin this process. If you’d like to go even deeper, I invite you to take courses at the New Saint Thomas Institute.

steered clear of all sensationalism and omitted information that could not be substantiated. If people would like to begin a formal curriculum of online courses in Catholic Church History, Apologetics, Catholic Philosophy, or Theology, please check out our offerings at the New Saint Thomas Institute by going to www.newsaintthomas.com.

CM: If people want to find out more about your book and the New St Thomas Institute what should they do?

TM: Infiltration is available as hardback and ebook/Kindle. I was able to present the first signed copy to Pope Francis. The reception of the Infiltration has been overwhelmingly positive because the book is footnoted and cited well. It’s not conspiracy theory. I 39

F A I T H O F O U R F AT H E R S

FILIAL PIETY AND NATIONAL PATRIOTISM

as essential virtues of the citizens of heaven at work on earth

BY H. E . R AY MO N D L EO C A R D IN A L B UR K E

The following talk was delivered at the Rome Life Forum, held at the Angelicum, 16-17 May 2019.

O

ur happiness during our earthly pilgrimage and at its destination, eternal life, depends on the conformity of our daily living with the truth, that is, with the good order with which God has created and sustains the world and, in a most particular way, man and woman. Our Lord Who alone is our salvation describes Himself as “the way, and the truth, and the life.”1 He also teaches us that the truth alone will make us free: “If you continue in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”2 He likewise describes His own vocation and mission as obedience to the will of the Father: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.”3 It is the virtue of piety, an integral part of the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit, which expresses our recognition of the truth and our humble obedience before the truth. Louis Bouyer provides a succinct but full description of piety: “The gift of piety, in the Thomistic synthesis of the spiritual life, in the service of charity not only perfects the virtue of religion (seen as the form of justice toward God), but also every practice of the virtue of justice. Just as our duties toward God are raised to the highest per-

40

spective of a supernatural filial relationship, our relationships with others are transfigured in the light of the brotherly fellowship within the divine charity poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom. 5:5; see St Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., Ia-IIae, q. 68, and IIa-IIae, q. 80 ff.). The virtues of filial piety and piety toward fatherland are more special; they are annexes of the virtue of justice, but the influence of the same gift gives them a specifically Christian colouring (ibid., q. 101).”4 Piety is the part of the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit, poured forth into our hearts from the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus, which inspires and strengthens us to live the truth of our being as creatures created in the image and likeness of God to know, love and serve Him in this life, and to be happy forever with Him in the life which is to come.

I now reflect on an essential aspect of our daily life, which pertains to the grace of piety and the practice of the virtue of piety. It has to do with a truth which is called into question in our time. I refer to our relationship with our homeland, which demands of us the practice of that part of piety which is called patriotism. Before the challenges of our time, there are those who propose and work for a single global government, that is, for the elimination of individual national governments, so

H.E. RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE

that all of humanity would be under the control of a single political authority. For those who are convinced that the only way to achieve the common good is the concentration of all government in a single authority, loyalty to one’s homeland or patriotism has become an evil. It is often called nationalism, a term which evokes the evils of a misguided or corrupt national identity, obscuring the truth of our natural identity with a certain land and its culture. Already in July of 2007, the 16th Université de Renaissance Catholique devoted itself to the theme: “Le patriotisme est-il un péché?”5 Given the contemporary somewhat widespread doubt and confusion about the virtue of patriotism, it will be helpful for us to spend some time now reflecting upon what the Christian life demands of us regarding our homeland and its civil government.

The virtue of patriotism reflects excellence in the fulfillment of the demands of the Fourth CommandCAL X M A R IA E

ment of the Decalogue, the first of the last seven commandments which treat our relationships with the world and others, in accord with the primary demands of our relationship with God, which is treated in the first three Commandments. While the Fourth Commandment commands us to honour our father and mother, to show to our parents the piety which flows from the recognition that they have cooperated with God in giving us the gift of human life, it also commands the piety owed to the wider community in which marriage and family are possible and indeed flourish. St Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae teaches us: “I answer that, Man becomes a debtor to other men in various ways, according to their various excellence and the various benefits received from them. On both counts God holds first place, for He is supremely excellent, and is for us the first principle of being and government.

In the second place, the principles of our being and government are our parents and our country, that have given us birth and nourishment. Consequently man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship to one’s parents and one’s country.”6 It is clear from the Angelic Doctor’s exposition that, not only is patriotism not a sin, but it is a requirement of nature itself. The term, worship, when applied to one’s parents and one’s country, as St Thomas makes clear, is distinct from divine worship which is given to God alone. The second sense of worship is analogous and refers to SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

the piety or devotion shown to those who cooperate with God for our good.

Reflecting upon the virtue of patriotism as an integral part of the gift and virtue of piety, in accord with the teaching of the Angelic Doctor, the New Catholic Encyclopedia illustrates how the practice of patriotism is a form of the charity by which we live fully the truth of our being in its relationship with God and with the rest of His Creation. The author of the entry on patriotism writes: “But patriotism as a form of charity, or love, has a more specific object in its actuation than mankind or the human family as such.

According to St Thomas Aquinas, the particular love of one’s fatherland is an important aspect of that preferential form of charity that is called pietas (ST 2a2ae, 101.1). Through piety the person has an obligation of love to God, parents, and fatherland. Each is in some sense a principle of man’s being: God through creation; parents through procreation and education; fatherland through a formation of one’s cultural and historical identity.”7 Patriotism is an aspect of the grace of piety, which in its turn is an essential part of the matter of charity. Christ gives the grace of piety, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in order that we can live the truth of our human nature.

Patriotism as such is a precept of the natural law. We see it reflected, for example, in the story of Aeneas and his father Anchises, as it is recounted by the Roman author Virgil. In fact, Virgil describes the greatness of Aeneas with the adjective, pius. Commenting on the Aeneid of Virgil and,

in particular, on the excellence of the virtue of piety in Aeneas, Anthony Esolen writes: “The name that Virgil gives Aeneas is not Odysseus’ polytropon, the man of shifts and dodges, but the Latin word pius. Aeneas embodies a virtue we hardly recognise in our time: piety, which meant for the Romans a willingness to do your duty by your father and mother, your elders, your household gods, the city and state, and the great gods above.”

This piety is at once a deeply personal virtue and a powerful force to bring together the generations, allowing the young to take root in the soil of the old and the old to engraft their experiences onto the young, so that we sense that home is a place where the passing day partakes of long ages past and to come.8 Through the grace of Christ, the piety of the pagan world is elevated and perfected to be a response to God, our Creator and Redeemer, who has desired to bring us to life in Christ in the family and in a homeland. In the words of Louis Bouyer, “our relationships with others are transfigured in the light of the brotherly fellowship within the divine charity poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”9 The exposition of the Fourth Commandment in the Catechism of the Council of Trent speaks of the honour due to civil rulers, intimately connected with the honour due to parents and the pastors of the Church. Making reference to St Paul’s teaching in the Letter to the Romans10 and the First Letter to Timothy,11 and to St Peter’s teaching in his First Letter,12 it underlines the truth that the honour given to civil rulers is essentially connected to the honour 41

F A I T H O F O U R F AT H E R S

which we owe, above all, to God. It explains: “For whatever honour we show them [civil rulers] is given to God, since exalted human dignity deserves respect because it is an image of the divine power, and in it we revere the providence of God who has entrusted to men the care of public affairs and who uses them as the instruments of His power.”13

The Christian citizen must frequently fulfill the demands of patriotism today by martyrdom, which is often white but sometimes red. His witness to the truth of the moral law regularly meets with the white martyrdom of indifference, ridicule and persecution, and even, in some circumstance, with the red martyrdom of death.

Patriotism is the recognition of the good order which God has placed in civil society, so that those who govern must respect, first and foremost, God’s law, and so that those who are governed respect the civil community in which the common good is to be safeguarded and promoted.

The Catechism goes on to treat the situation of wicked rulers, reminding us that the honour shown to them is not reverence toward their wrongdoing but rather toward “the authority from God which they possess.”14 At the same time, the Christian citizen must not obey their commands, if they are contrary to the moral law. The Catechism teaches us: “However, should their commands be wicked or unjust, they should not be obeyed, since in such a case they rule not according to their rightful authority, but according to injustice and perversity.”15 In our time, many governments fail to or refuse to recognise that their authority comes from God, and, therefore, make laws which violate directly and grievously the moral law, for example, regarding the respect owed to all human life, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death, regarding the integrity of human sexuality ordered to marriage and the family, and regarding the free 42

MARTYRDOM OF THE TEN THOUSAND (1508). ALBRECHT DÜRER. KUNSTHISTORISCHES, VIENNA

exercise of religion itself. In many societies, there dominates an anti-life, anti-family, and anti-religious culture in open rebellion before the good order with which God has created us.

The practice of the virtue of patriotism thus faces a great challenge: the challenge to show due respect for our homeland and its government, while at the same time refusing to comply with unjust laws. Here it is important to note the witness of numerous faithful

individuals and families who heroically live the faith without compromise in totally secularised cultures. Before evil laws and the pressures of a totally secularised culture, they follow the example of St Peter and the Apostles who, when they were brought before the high priest, demanding that they deny Christ and His teaching, replied: “We must obey God rather than men.”16 The Christian citizen must frequentCAL X M A R IA E

ly fulfill the demands of patriotism today by martyrdom, which is often white but sometimes red. His witness to the truth of the moral law regularly meets with the white martyrdom of indifference, ridicule and persecution, and even, in some circumstance, with the red martyrdom of death.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope St John Paul II on August 15, 1997, in its treatment of the Fourth Commandment, contains a lengthy exposition on the duties of civil authorities and of citizens. It makes clear that the authority which the civil government exercises comes from God and must respect the law which He has written in nature. It declares: “The exercise of authority is measured morally in terms of its divine origin, its reasonable nature and its specific object. No one can command or establish what is contrary to the dignity of persons and the natural law.”17 The Catechism goes on to explain that the exercise of authority in civil society must respect the God-given rights of the individual and, therefore, should safeguard and promote the common good.18 Regarding the duties of citizens, the Catechism of the Catholic Church repeats the constant teaching of the Church which requires that “[t]hose subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God, who has made them stewards of his gifts.”19 It reminds us that “[t] he love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity,”20 specifying the moral obligation “to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country.”21 SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

The Catechism of the Catholic Church then takes up the obligations of “more prosperous nations … , to the extent that they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.”22 Such welcome, as is clear from the text, is not indiscriminate, for it depends on the capacity of nations to accept such refugees from their homelands and on the impossibility of the refugees to find the means to live in their homelands.

The paragraph goes on to specify that “[p]olitical authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.”23 The Catechism further underlines the obligation of immigrants “to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”24 The Catechism then repeats the perennial teaching of the Church regarding a citizen’s obligation in conscience “not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel.”25 It should be noted that the rights of persons in question are those rights inherent to the God-given moral order, not the many so-called rights, for example, the “right” to define life and death, and the “right” to define sexual identity and marriage, which have been invented by man in our time. In accord with the perennial moral teaching, resistance to unjust laws of a state does not permit a refusal to carry out one’s fundamental duties toward the state.26

The Catechism also spells out the moral requirements for a legitimate “[a]rmed resistance to oppression by political authority.”27 Five conditions are given for legitimate armed resistance before an unjust political authority: “1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.”28 Clearly, the Christian citizen is obliged to be steadfastly involved in fostering a just and charitable society. Such engagement may lead, in situations which meet all of the necessary conditions, to the use of resistance, in order to exercise faithfully the virtue of patriotism.

Finally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up the situation of most states in our time, whose philosophical foundations and modus operandi are totally secular, that is, states do not recognise “man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer.”29 Quoting the teaching of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the Catechism indicates that the refusal to recognise and obey an objective order of things leads to a totalitarian state, as history sadly illustrates. The Church, therefore, does not confuse herself with the political community, in accord with Our Lord’s own teaching in the Gospel,30 but exercises her responsibility to be “both the sign and the safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person.”31 In that regard, the Catechism repeats the perennial teaching of the Church, set forth in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes of the Second Vatican Council: “It is part of the Church’s mission ‘to pass judgments even in matters 43

related to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man or the salvation of the soul requires it’.”32 Time does not permit me to deepen further these initial reflections, but I trust that they provide the foundations for addressing the very serious demands of the virtue of patriotism in our time. Patriotism teaches us to recognise our natural condition as members of a family and citizens of a homeland. Our personal identity comes principally from the family but also, and indeed because the family thrives only in wider society, from our homeland. That natural condition defines our rights and duties as a citizen.

It is clear that we and our homelands have responsibilities within the international community, but those responsibilities can only be fulfilled through a sound life in the family and in the homeland. Patriotism, in fact, fosters the virtue of charity which clearly embraces citizens of other nations, recognising and respecting their distinct cultural and historical identity.33 Such charity is fostered by the Church’s exercise of her moral authority, not assuming the role of Caesar but insisting that Caesar obey the divine authority which makes legitimate and just his governance. The divine authority, in accord with the order written upon the human heart, does not make just and legitimate a single global government. In fact, the divine law illumines our minds and hearts to see that such a government would be, by definition, totalitarian, assuming the divine authority over the governance of the world. Not without reason, the sinful pride which inspires the pursuit of a single global government has been likened to the pride of our ancient ancestors, after the Deluge, who thought that they could unite 44

heaven with earth by their forces alone, building the Tower of Babel.34 On the contrary, God meets us and orders our lives for the good in the family and in the homeland.

Thank you for your kind attention.

May God bless you, your families, and your homelands.

and Charles J. Callan (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1923), p. 415. [Catechismus Romanus Eng].

14.

mus Romanus, p. 459. English translation: Catechismus Romanus Eng p. 415.

15.

Jn 14:6.

2.

Jn 8:32.

3.

Jn 4:34.

4.

“Le don de piété, dans la synthèse thomiste de la vie

versitate agant, omnino non sint audiendi.” Catechismus Romanus, p. 460. English translation: Catechismus Romanus Eng, p. 416.

16.

Acts 5:29.

17.

“Auctoritatis exercitium eius origine divina, eius natura rationali et eius obiecto specifico moraliter regulatur. Nemo potest id praecipere vel instituere, quod personarum dignitati et legi naturali est contrarium.” Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), n. 2235. [CCC]. English translation: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 2235. [CCC Eng].

spirituelle, perfectionne au service de la charité non

18.

Cf. CCC, n. 2237.

seulement la vertu de religion, considérée comme la

19.

“[i]lli, qui autoritati sunt subiecti, suos aspiceitn superiores tamquam repraesentantes Dei qui eos ministros Suorum

forme de la justice envers Dieu, mais tout l’exercice de

instituit donorum.” CCC, n. 2238. English translation:

la vertu de justice. Ainsi, comme nos devoirs envers Dieu

CCC Eng, no. 2238.

sont élevés dans la perspective plus ‘élevée d’un rapport filial surnaturel, nos rapports avec autrui se transfigurent

20.

CCC Eng, no. 2239.

térieusr de la charité divine répandue dans nos cœurs par le Saint-Esprit (cf. Rom. 5:5). Voir saint Thomas, Sum.

21.

CCC Eng, no. 2240.

sont les vertus de piété filiale et de piété envers la patrie, 22.

in sua originis regione nequit invenire.” CCC, n. 2241.

ment chrétienne (Ibid., q. 101).” L. Bouyer, Dictionnaire

English translation: CCC Eng, no. 2241.

théologique (Tournai: Desclée & Co., 1963), p. 530. En23.

versis condicionibus subiicere iuridicis, praesertim obser-

1965), pp. 350-351.

vantiae officiorum emigrantis erga nationem adoptionis.”

Cf. Le patriotisme est-il un péché ? Actes de la XVIe Universi-

CCC, n. 2241. English translation: CCC Eng, no. 2241.

té d’été de Renaissance Catholique, Villepreux, juillet 2007 6.

24.

et ad eius conferre onera.” CCC, n. 2241. English trans-

aliis debitor secundum diversam eorum excellentiam, et

lation: CCC, no. 2241.

diversa beneficia ab eis suscepta. In utroque autem Deus 25.

mentalibus personarum vel doctrinis Evangelii contraria

Secundario vero nostri esse et gubernationis principium sumus. Et ideo post Deum, maxime est homo debitor parentibus et patriae. Unde sicut ad religionem pertinet cultum Deo exhibere, ita secundo gradu ad pietatem pertinet exhibere cultum parentibus et patriae.” ST IIa

sunt.” CCC, n. 2242. English translation: CCC, no. 2242.

26.

Cf. CCC, n. 2242.

27.

“[a]ctio resistendi oppressionis potestatis politicae ad arma.” CCC, n. 2243. English translation: CCC, no. 2243.

28.

exhausti sunt; 3. dummodo ne peiores provocenter inor-

Summa Theologica, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican

dinationes; 4. cum spes fundata habetur prosperi exitus;

Province, Vol. 3 (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics,

5. si impossibile est meliores solutiones rationabiliter

1948), p. 1626.

J. J. Wright, “Patriotism”, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 10 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967), p.

praevidere.” CCC 2243.

29.

Anthony Esolen, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2018), p. xxiii.

9.

Cf. footnote 4.

10.

Rom. 13:1-9.

11.

1 Tm. 2:1-8.

12.

1 Pt. 2:13-14.

13.

“[N]am si quem eis [regibus, principibus, magistratibus, et reliquis, quorum potestati subiicimur] cultum tribuimus,

CCC Eng, no. 2244.

30.

Cf. Mt. 22:15-22; Mk. 12:13-17; and Lk. 20:19-26.

31.

“… simul signum est et tutamentuum transcendentiae personae humanae.” CCC, n. 2245. English translation: CCC Eng, no. 2245. Cf. Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum, Constitutio Pastoralis Gaudium et spes, n. 76.

32.

quando personae iura fundamentalia aut animarum salus

excellens dignitatis gradus, quia divinae potestatis est

id exigant, …».” CCC, n. 2246. English translation: CCC,

instar: in quo etiam Dei providentiam veneramur, qui pubtamquam potestatis suae ministris.” Catechismus Romanus seu Catechismus ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini ad Parochos Pii Quinti Pont. Max. iussu editus, ed. Pedro Rodríguez (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1989), p. 459.

[Catechismus Romanus]. English translation: Catechism

“Ad missionem pertinent Ecclesiae «iudicium morale ferre, etiam de rebus quae ad ordinem politicum respiciunt,

is ad Deum refertur: habet enim venerationem hominum

lici muneris procurationem iis attribuit, quibusque utitur

“… in Deo, Creatore et Redemptore, originem et destinationem hominis.” CCC, n. 2244. English translation:

1102. [NCE].

8.

“… 1. in casu in quo certo, graviter et continuo iura violantur fundamentalia; 2. postquam omnes alii recursus

IIae, q. 101, art. 1. English translation: St Thomas Aquinas,

7.

“… ne praescriptiones auctoritatum civilium sequatur, cum haec praecepta exigentiis ordinis moralis, iuribus funda-

est nobis essendi et gubernationis primum principium. sunt parentes et patria, a quibus et in qua et nati et nutriti

“… cum gratitudine patrimonium observare materiale et spirituale nationis eum accipientis, eius oboedire legibus

“Respondeo dicendum quod homo efficitur diversimode

summum obtinet locum, qui et excellentissimus est, et

“[p]oliticae auctoritates possunt ratione boni communis, cuius suscipiunt munus, exercitium iuris emigrationis di-

Charles Underhill Quinn (New York, NY: Desclee Co., Inc.,

(Issy-les-Moulineaux: Contretemps, 2016).

“[n]ationes ditiores …, in quantum fieri potest, alienigenam, qui securitatem quaerit et opes necessarias pro vita, quas

du même don communique une coloration spécifique-

glish translation: Louis Bouyer, Dictionary of Theology, tr.

“tributorum solutionem, exercitium iuris suffragii, defensionem nationis.” CCC, n. 2240. English translation:

Theol., Ia IIae, q. 68, et IIa IIae, q. 80 ss. Plus particulières annexes de la vertu de justice, mais auxquelles l’influence

“Amor et servitium patriae ex officio oriuntur gratitudinis et ex ordine caritatis.” CCC, n. 2239. English translation:

dans la lumière de notre communion fraternelle à l’in-

5.

“At vero, si quid improbe, si quid inique imperent, cum id non ex potestate, sed ex iniustitia, atque animi per-

Endnotes: 1.

“… sed divinam auctoritatem quae in illis est.” Catechis-

no. 2246.

33.

Cf. NCE, p. 1102.

34.

Cf. Gen 11:1-9; Ted Malloch, “GLOBALISM is the New Tower of Babel,” https://www.thegatewaypundit. com/2019/05/ted-malloch-globalism-is-the-new-tower-of-babel.

of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests, tr. John A. McHugh

CAL X M A R IA E

BEAUT Y OF OUR FAITH

LITURGY, BEAUTY, AND THE WORLD

BY DR J OS E PH S H AW

O

ne of the most famous verses in Scripture is “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only Son.” (John 3:16 was for years graffitied onto a bridge I passed every time I drove from Oxford to London.) But in the same Gospel, Jesus declares: “I pray not for the world.” (John 19:7) In the former text the term “world” evidently refers to the whole of creation; in the latter, it is distinguished from the disciples, as their enemy: it is the spirit of worldliness, the spirit of opposition to the Gospel.

When Luther rejected reason in theology, and Calvin rejected instrumental music in the liturgy, they were distancing themselves from the “world”, but they got the wrong one.

What is “worldly” in a negative sense is not simply what is created, or what is material or fleshly: human flesh was taken up by God in the Incarnation and redeemed. What is worldly is what rejects God, what prioritises lesser goods over greater goods, what ignores salvation to grasp money, or power, or pleasure.

The latter, admittedly, is the dominant theme in the society in which we live. While fleeing “the world” in this sense, nevertheless, Catholics remain aware of the possibility of redeeming created things, and of making use, for good, of human achievements in technology and art.

Worldly goods like money or fame have no intrinsic value; those who seek them for their own sakes are seeking SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

dust and ashes. As Dietrich von Hildebrand pointed out, however, not all created goods are like this. God did not create a worthless bauble: He has filled Creation with things which are genuinely good, a reflection of His own goodness. Beauty is one such good.

Can beauty distract us from God? Certainly it can, but if it did so it would be out of place, and since beauty implies the right ordering of things, this would be a paradox. They say a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place.

Something beautiful in the wrong place, distracting us from something greater, is itself spoiled. If we stuck a postcard of Van Gogh’s sunflowers onto the middle of the Mona Lisa with blu tack, we might hesitate to say that Van Gogh’s masterpiece was ugly, but the overall effect would be an aesthetic disaster. It would be a failure of taste.

We don’t just want any art in any context. It has to be appropriate, and establishing what is appropriate can require difficult judgements. One of the reasons for the neglect of art in the Church since the 1960s has been a reaction against bad art. As von Hildebrand wrote in Trojan Horse in the City of God: “mawkish prayers and hymns distort the religious ethos of the faithful; appealing to centres in man that are far removed from the religious one, they draw him into an atmosphere which obscures and blurs the face of Christ.”

Not all art has this effect, however: the great art of the Church’s history,

DR JOSEPH SHAW

created by men and women who combined piety with artistic skill, does not blur the face of Christ, but reveals it.

As Pope John Paul II wrote in 2003 (Ecclesia in Europa 60): “Nor should we overlook the positive contribution made by the wise use of the cultural treasures of the Church. … artistic beauty, … a sort of echo of the Spirit of God, is a symbol pointing to the mystery, an invitation to seek out the face of God made visible in Jesus of Nazareth.”

It is a sad fact of life that when one thinks of the Church’s “cultural treasures” the phrase suggests a store-room of dusty and neglected artefacts. Despair of their ever being used in their intended liturgical context motivates some to offer fine vestments and sacred vessels for exhibitions like that at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last year, and to propose sacred music for performance in the concert hall.

45

But this, in a different way, threatens to put them into the wrong context.

How does art work when used in the liturgy? After all, it is not essential to it. Hildebrand responded to this observation by saying that it may not be essential for the validity of Mass, but nevertheless:

claim to be ‘existential’, these persons remain very abstract.

They forget that authentic beauty contains a specific message of God which lifts up our souls. As Plato said: ‘At the sight of beauty, our souls grow wings.’ [Phaedrus 249d]”

“if it is meant that such things like the beauty of the church, the Liturgy, and the music are trivial, then this accusation is very wrong, for there is a profound relation between the essence of something and its adequate expression. This is especially true of the Holy Mass.”

The beauty of the liturgy serves the message of the liturgy, it does not replace that message with another.

Indeed this is an important criterion of a piece of art’s suitability for use in churches and the liturgy: that it does not interpose values alien to the purpose it serves.

Appropriate art does, however, add something. As a sermon or commentary on the liturgy might quote a text and comment on it, a musical setting gives a certain interpretation of a text, just as a painting of a bible story gives its own spin to the story: the expressions of the characters, who is in the foreground, exactly what moment is chosen. Great Catholic liturgical art

Again: “Those who clamour that the church is no museum and that the really pious man is indifferent to these accidentals only show their blindness to the great role played by adequate (and beautiful) expression. Ultimately, this is a blindness to man’s nature. Although they

PHOTO CREDIT: DON ELVIR TABAKOVIĆ, CAN. REG.

sits alongside our patrimony of theological commentary on the liturgy, as a way to understand it better.

Beauty in the liturgy has an effect not only on those outside the Church, who can be drawn in, but on those who have experienced the liturgy a thousand times. The beautiful expression of the message helps it to enter into us, and transform us.

Dr Joseph Shaw has a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford University, where he also gained a first degree in Politics and Philosophy and a graduate Diploma in Theology. He has published on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion and has edited a forthcoming 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 teaches Philosophy in Oxford University and lives nearby with his wife and eight children.

SAINTS FOR OUR TIMES

What the Cathedral of Orvieto teaches us about

CORPUS CHRISTI

BY MARIA MADISE

I

t should be no wonder to us that a great number of magnificent churches and cathedrals are dedicated to Our Lady. In these sacred buildings, the motherhood of the Blessed Virgin and the holy Catholic Church naturally merge into one for us. But just as it was most fitting for the Blessed Virgin to carry the Word Incarnate in her womb, it is also most fitting for the Church to offer a dwelling place - in the safety within her walls - for Our Lord, truly present in the Sacrament of the altar. The Cathedral of Orvieto, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, was in fact built for this purpose - to provide a suitable home for the corporal of Bolsena that was miraculously adorned with the most Precious Blood of Our Lord.

THE CORPORAL OF BOLSENA Various sources tell us the story of the miracle that happened in 1263 in the town of Bolsena, situated north of Rome. A German priest, Fr Peter of Prague, stopped there, while on his pilgrimage to the Eternal city. He was apparently afflicted with doubt about SUM ME R 2 0 1 9

the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. He struggled to believe that at the words of consecration the bread and wine really became the Body and Blood of Our Saviour. He, of course, knew well what the Church taught and also that the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had solemnly re-affirmed the doctrine of the Church by using the word “transubstantiation”. Yet, Fr Peter had difficulty with believing and he prayed that God would increase his faith.

While in Bolsena, he offered Mass at the church of St Christina. As soon as he had said the words of consecration, the host began to bleed. Blood dripped onto the corporal and on the altar. Fr Peter stopped the Mass and asked to be taken to see Pope Urban IV who was residing at the neighbouring town of Orvieto. The great theolo-

gians St Bonaventure and St Thomas were also there at the time. Pope Urban, having heard Fr Peter’s account of what had happened, ordered a full investigation. After all the facts had been ascertained, the Holy Father declared that a miracle had occurred.

The Eucharistic miracle also related to the visions of St Juliana of Liège, Belgium (1193-1258). St Juliana, a Norbertine nun and mystic, had a series of visions in which she was instructed by Our Lord to work to establish a liturgical feast for the Holy Eucharist, to which she had a great devotion.

In 1246, after many years of trying, she finally convinced some eminent theologians in Liège, including Jacques Pantaleon of Troyes, the archdeacon of Liège at the time and the future Pope Urban IV, that a special

EXPOSITION OF THE MIRACULOUS CORPORAL IN ORVIETO CATHEDRAL

47

SAINTS FOR OUR TIMES

ST THOMAS AQUINAS, THE DEMIDOFF ALTARPIECE (1476). CARLO CRIVELLI. THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON

feast in honour of the Blessed Sacrament should be created.

A year after the Eucharistic miracle in Bolsena, in 1264, Pope Urban instituted the feast of Corpus Christi for the Universal Church to honour the great gift of the Blessed Sacrament.

He commissioned St Thomas Aquinas to compose a special Mass and Office for the feast. This is when St Thomas composed the beloved Eucharistic hymns Panis Angelicus, Pange Lingua, O Salutaris Hostia and Tantum Ergo. The works to erect the great cathedral of Orvieto, a worthy dwelling place for the relics of the miracle, were begun and the cornerstone of the cathedral was laid in 1290. The corporal with the Precious Blood as well as fragments of the miraculous host are kept there to this day.

As is so often the case, science confirms what we know by faith. The notice boards in the cathedral inform us that examinations in the ultraviolet fluorescence light of the linen cloth, measuring 48x50cm (that is stitched on to a cloth of ivory satin, which is in 48

turn nailed along its edges on a wooden tablet) reveal the presence of blood separated into plasma and serum. Further notes remind us that according to St John’s Gospel, blood (plasma) and water (serum) sprung forth from the wound that pierced the side of Our Lord when He died on the Cross for our sins.

Recently, I had the privilege of visiting the Cathedral in Orvieto and also seeing the miraculous corporal exposed - as is the custom at certain times of the liturgical year. The beautiful cathedral and her treasures are most certainly worth a visit, whenever one is in the position to go. However, it is not only the extraordinary remnants of uplifting beauty and devotion of the middle ages that we find on that visit.

Above all, we are truly reminded in the chapel with the blood-stained corporal that a drop of this dried Blood is more important for our life and eternal health than all the blood running in our veins.

CORPUS CHRISTI The feast of Corpus Christi, instituted in response to these marvellous events, remains as one of the most public and proud expressions of Catholic worship today. The Blessed Sacrament carried in a solemn procession through the public streets proclaims to the world, Who is enthroned in our hearts and Who is the true King of Heaven and earth.

Corpus Christi beautifully complements what we celebrate on Holy Thursday nine weeks earlier, when Our Lord instituted the Holy Eucharist the day before He died. In His Sacrifice on Calvary, He died for each one of us once and for all. In His Real Presence in the Sacrament of the altar, He gives us an opportunity to live for Him now and forever.

“He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me: and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me.” (Jn 6:54-56) The Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist helps us to grasp the meaning of “forever” as much as possible in our earthly life. In the Holy Eucharist, Our Lord lives permanently with us as He lived with our ancestors of past ages and will live with all generations that come after us until the end of the world. In the Holy Eucharist Our Lord has invited us to the most intimate and secure union with Him - not only on the feast day or on Sundays but all days, forever: “He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.” (Jn 6:58) CAL X M A R IA E

Therefore, Our Lord has wished to be the food that also unites us to all saints in Heaven. The Council of Trent teaches that the “same Heavenly Bread that we eat now under the sacred veils, we shall feed upon in heaven without veil.” In the Third Nocturn of Corpus Christi, we find the words of St Augustine: “there is the Communion of Saints, where peace and perfect unity are found; therefore Our Lord is leaving us His Body and Blood, chosen for this purpose substances, the unity of which, is composed of several parts, one single loaf made of many grains of wheat; one kind of wine formed from juice mixed with many grapes.”

To quicken our gratitude for the great Sacrament, let us often consider what the Carmelite author Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen wrote in his Divine Intimacy:

“The solemnity of Corpus Domini is not just the simple memorial of a historical event which took place almost two thousand years ago at the Last Supper; rather, it recalls us to the ever-present reality of Jesus always living in our midst. We can say, in truth, that He has not “left us orphans”, but has willed to remain permanently with us, in the integrity of His Person, in the fullness of His humanity and His divinity.

‘There is no other nation so great,’ the Divine Office enthusiastically sings, ‘as to have its gods so near as our God is present to us.’(Roman Breviary)” Catholics truly possess the treasure that surpasses all treasures, for in the Holy Eucharist we have God Himself.

Our wealth does not require any ordinary locks or guards. Our treasure is best safeguarded by our Blessed Moth-

er, the Church. Let us always seek her help to approach worthily Our Lord, since her Immaculate Heart alone can teach us how to love and honour Him well.

“O Lord, my God, my Creator and my Redeemer, I do desire to receive Thee this day, with such affection, reverence, praise and honour, with such gratitude, worthiness and love, with such faith, hope and purity, as Thy most holy Mother, the glorious Virgin Mary, received and desired Thee, when to the Angel who declared unto her glad tidings of the mystery of the Incarnation, she humbly and devoutly answered, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy word.” (The Imitation of Christ, chapter XVII)

CHAPEL OF THE CORPORAL, ORVIETO CATHEDRAL

“It is my pleasure to welcome 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.

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HANDING ON THE DEPOSIT OF THE FAITH

The mission of the Catholic family today 6 - 8 SE P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 N EW M A N HA L L , U N I V E R SI T Y C AT HO L IC C HA P L A I N C Y, C O LUM R D, C A R D I F F, C F 1 0 3 E F

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“He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.” (John 6:58)