Calx Mariae magazine issue 6, Autumn 2019

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MARIAE CALX

Rebuilding our Christian civilisation

FOCUS:

THE ‘AMAZON MISSION’ IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

INCLUDING:

WOMEN AND THE REBUILDING OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with

Bishop Athanasius Schneider

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 6

AU TUMN 2019

E! AT D E TH VE SA

VOICE OF THE FAMILY pilgrimage and formational programme for young adults

ROME, 30 SEPTEMBER  2 OCTOBER 2019

ROME LIFE FORUM 2020 2 0 & 2 1 M AY 2 0 2 0 , R O M E

Opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri

Followed by the Italian March for Life on 23 May in Rome

S AV E T H E D AT E The Forum is open to all those who have leadership roles in the pro-life and pro-family movement or in movements concerned with the defence and diffusion of Catholic moral and social teaching.

MARIAE CALX

ISSUE 6

AU TUMN 2019

Contents 2

From the editor

3

Imposing abortion on Northern Ireland

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FOCUS: The ‘Amazon mission’ in the Catholic Church

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Pan-Amazon Synod: from evangelisation to “intercultural exodus” by José Antonio Ureta

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The Amazon Synod and immigration

by Prof. Roberto de Mattei

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24

Reactions to the Amazon Synod working document

29

Exclusive interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider

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Women and the rebuilding of Christian civilization

by Maria Madise

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Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae

by Fr Linus Clovis

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29

Liturgy and orthodoxy

by Dr Joseph Shaw

53

The Battle of Heavenfield, and its place in English history

by Matthew McCusker

57

St Michael, Glorious Prince of the Heavenly Host

by Liam Gibson

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FROM THE EDITOR

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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

© VOICE OF THE FAMILY 2019

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.

ISSN:2517-6455

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he wild Amazon river, gushing forth uncontrollably, is an appropriate symbol for the forces proposing change in today’s Church. With waves of paganism, syncretism, corruption, all threatening to engulf the Bark of Peter, we may, like the Apostles, feel like shouting out: “Lord, save us, we perish”. (Mt: 8:25) Quoting Pope Francis, the preparatory document for the synod claims that “it is necessary to allow ourselves to be evangelised by them – the inhabitants of the Amazon – and by their cultures”. Yet, in the mission to the Yanomamis in Brazil, for example, not one person has been baptised in 53 years. How can this remote, romanticised land of the “noble savage” be the model of evangelisation for the Christian world? Rather, we urgently need to turn from the Amazon to the Jordan and the baptismal waters, which call the world to conformity with the Church, not the other way around.

The synod working document has prompted unprecedented levels of criticism from well-known defenders of the faith. Cardinals Brandmüller and Burke called it “apostasy”. Archbishop Viganò simply noted that “the figure of Christ is absent.” Excerpts of some of the most important reactions can be found on p. 24. An exclusive interview with Bishop Schneider, on p. 29, also addresses the synod.

A Church with an “Amazonian face” is not a Church with the vultus Christi, the image left by Our Lord on the Veil of Veronica on His way to Calvary. This is the true face of the Church – it is the face of Him, Who, in the words of St Bernard, “has bought the whole of me with the whole of Himself ”.

Veronica, literally “true image” (vera icon), also reminds us to be true to the image in which God has created us, male and female. Amid politically correct proposals for “equality” in the Church, Catholic women today need to remain faithful to their mission in the Church and in the world. “Equality” is not the same as “dignity”. In fact, one can suffer a loss of dignity by pursuing what the world considers equality. I have written more about the role of women in nurturing and guarding Christian civilisation on p. 33.

In the turbulent waters of the Amazon, one may wonder if resistance has any value at all. One year after the “Viganò testimony”, three years after the “dubia”, we may feel that respectful resistance is ignored and therefore meaningless. At the same time, every day brings more discouraging news – the destruction of the John Paul II Institute, the Vatican-approved higher committee to promote the Abu Dhabi declaration, which claims that a “diversity of religions” is “willed

by God” and reports that two thirds of US Catholics no longer believe in the Real Presence. Has resistance not become meaningless?

Certainly not. While the value of faithful resistance is not ours to measure, it is our duty to continue to counter the attacks on the truth of Christ. St Louis de Montfort, the ardent promoter of true devotion to Mary, outlines the ways her children will need to fight in the latter times: “These great souls, full of grace and zeal, shall be chosen to match themselves against the enemies of God, who shall rage on all sides; and they shall be singularly devout to our Blessed Lady, illumined by her light, … they shall fight with one hand and build with the other… By their words and their examples they shall draw the whole world to true devotion to Mary. They shall bring upon them many enemies, but shall also bring many victories and much glory for God alone.”

So we must resist, but we must fight as the children of Mary. Voice of the Family is holding its own event on the eve of the Amazon synod – which everyone can join online. See p. 27 for details and sign up!

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”.

on Northern Ireland

by LIAM GIBSON

PASSAGE OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND (EXECUTIVE FORMATION) ACT 2019

Since 1967, Northern Ireland has been the only part of the United Kingdom where abortion has remained presumptively unlawful. While abortion claims over 500 lives daily in the rest of the UK, opposition from the people of Northern Ireland has prevented all attempts to liberalise the Province’s pro-life laws.

In the closing days of Theresa May’s government, however, Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland introduced fast-track legislation in the House of Commons aimed at postponing assembly elections and extending the time for talks on the restoration of the Stormont Executive. What followed was one of the most shocking abuses of the parliamentary process in modern times as the bill was hijacked

by pro-abortion MPs to legalise abortion and same-sex “marriage” in Northern Ireland. In fact, if implemented, the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act 2019 will cost the lives of tens of thousands more unborn children by ushering into the Province one of the most extreme abortion regimes in Europe. It will also advance the decriminalisation of abortion across the whole of the United Kingdom and may well have far-reaching consequences for the rule of law.

For over 50 years the law in Northern Ireland (primarily sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861) has saved more than 100,000 babies.1 For the last nine years, responsibility for abortion law lay with the Province’s assembly. By seizing control over an issue reserved to Stormont, Westminster

PRO-LIFE ACTION

IMPOSING ABORTION

went back on its commitment to protect devolution, a central principle of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. This agreement is not simply a deal between opposing political factions in Northern Ireland. It is an international treaty which the UK guaranteed to respect. While paying lip service to the restoration of self-government, the use of raw political power to impose abortion and same-sex “marriage” on Northern Ireland has violated the devolution settlement and seriously undermined the Good Friday Agreement.

It now seems that the people of the Province will no longer be permitted to maintain laws which don’t meet with the approval of politicians from England, Scotland and Wales.

The Constitution Committee of the House of Lords had previously warned that the fast-track procedure was unsuitable for Northern Ireland legislation due to the lack of proper scrutiny. In a report published 10 July, the day after MPs voted by 332 to 99 to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland, the committee reiterated this concern saying: The political stalemate in Northern Ireland has led to an absence of a functioning Executive and a democratic deficit. Fast-tracking bills relating to Northern Ireland reduces further the scrutiny these measures should receive. Routinely fast-tracking in this way is unacceptable, unsustainable and should only be used for urgent matters.2 The fast-track procedure allows a government to pass in a matter of days, legislation that would ordinarily take months. Normally, it is not used to deal with contentious issues, such as abortion. However, the inclusion of abortion in this legislation could not have happened without the government allowing its Bill to be hijacked.

When, on 4 July, the Leader of the Commons, Mel Stride, virtually invited amendments on abortion and same-sex marriage, it gave the Speaker the green light to ignore constitutional conventions and select them for debate, even though such matters had no relevance to the scope of the Bill. In the vote that followed each of the 11 MPs from Northern Ireland who take their seats opposed the introduction of abortion to the Province. Regardless of this and despite admitting that the amendments on same-sex marriage and abortion were so poorly drafted that they could not function legally, the government took on the responsibility for redrafting these proposals in a way CAL X M A R IA E

ABORTION IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT The pretext for all this was a report issued last year by the United Nation’s compliance committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.3 This report claimed that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws violated human rights standards. But abortion is not a human right. It is an act of lethal violence directed at an unborn child and is never justified. No UN convention has ever recognised access to abortion as a human right. Nor does a UN committee have the authority to compel a state to change its abortion laws.

The Act received Royal Assent on 24 July, just a little over two weeks after its Second Reading. That such an extreme law was passed so quickly and with such blatant disregard for constitutional conventions marks a worrying development in the UK. When the AU T UMN 2 0 1 9

legislative process becomes nothing more than the arbitrary exercise of political power, the rule of law is abandoned.4 It seems that whatever a majority of politicians is prepared to force through Parliament could now become law even if it is unconstitutional.

This has grave implications for all aspects of Christian life. The current abortion law in Britain will soon be more restrictive than the new regime in Northern Ireland, so decriminalisation could soon be implemented across the whole of the UK. The pro-life movement in Northern Ireland has mobilised to protest against the imposition of the new regime. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has gathered thousands of names for a petition calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to respect the right of the people of Northern Ireland to maintain laws which protect our children from abortion.

If the unconstitutional methods used to enact this law are tolerated then freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and the right to educate children in Christian moral values could quickly come under fire in a society where political might makes right.

Endnotes: 1.

2.

3.

4.

“How the 100,000 figure was estimated and verified” https://bothlivesmatter. org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BLM-STEP-BY-STEP-EXPLANATION-002. pdf [Accessed 23 August 2019].

Constitution Committee, The Legislative Process: The Passage of Bills Through Parliament (24th Report, Session 2017–19, HL Paper 393), para 39, https:// publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldconst/393/39302.htm [Accessed 23 August 2019].

Report of the Inquiry concerning the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland under article 8 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, March 2018.

“But in order that the volition of what is commanded may have the nature of law, it needs to be in accord with some rule of reason. And in this sense is to be understood the saying that the will of the sovereign has the force of law; or otherwise the sovereign’s will would savour of lawlessness rather than of law” Cf. Summa theologica, Ia IIae, q.90, a.1 ad 3.

PRO-LIFE ACTION

that could be implemented. Ministers even met with pro-abortion MPs from the Labour Party to discuss how decriminalisation could be carried out.

Section 9 of the Act strikes down the current law without replacing it with any new legislation. Abortion, therefore, for any reason, will be considered lawful at least until the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.

However, the level of ambiguity surrounding the Act is so great that the upper limit may actually be 28 weeks. There will also be an immediate moratorium on the investigation and prosecution of all abortions.

Self-induced abortions, sex-selective abortions and even an abortion carried out without the consent of the pregnant woman will not be regarded as a criminal offence. After five months without any law on abortion, the Secretary of State will present to Parliament a statutory instrument which will create regulations on how and where abortions can be performed. Until then, in the words of one prominent QC, a state of “legal chaos” will exist. Political instability, in both Belfast and Westminster, however, means that there is a risk that this chaos could last longer than expected.

Only the restoration of devolved government before 22 October can prevent this from happening. At present, that seems unlikely as the Stormont coalition collapsed in 2016 when Sinn Féin pulled out of government. Two of the conditions the party has set for its return is the introduction of abortion and samesex “marriage”. The terms of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act means that the party can achieve these two goals simply by preventing an early return to power-sharing.

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FOCUS

The ‘Amazon mission’ in the Catholic Church

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Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, entitled Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology, will be held in Rome from 6 to 27 October 2019.

What does it mean for us, defenders of life and the family, Catholic men and women living in other parts of the world, not necessarily in Amazonia?

Voice of the Family has followed several synods in recent years. In fact, we were established to assist bishops to uphold the Church’s perennial teaching at the synods on the family (2014-2015). During the course of the two family synods, the youth synod (2018), and during the preparations for the upcoming Pan-Amazon synod, ideas and concepts have consistently been proposed that presuppose that there can be a “new church” and a new concept of society.

At this stage of the so-called synodal process, the vision of this “new church” is that of a decentralised structure that ceases to be universal. Such an “umbrella-church” could enfold a variety of beliefs and pastoral practices which may either confrom to, obscure or contradict the perennial truths the Church has taught universally for two thousand years.

The vision of civil society in these synods seems to reflect a Marxist-inspired, egalitarian and ecologically minded world order. It draws its spiritual foundation from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si by placing care for “our common home” at the centre of our religious and moral life.

At our recent Rome Life Forum, Prof. Roberto de Mattei encapsulated the clear problems with these visions with remarkable precision: “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,

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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.”

This “new religion” needs priests and the upcoming synod also seems to be paving the way for a radical change in holy orders by opening a discussion on the possible end of priestly celibacy as well as the ordination of women to the diaconate.

Revolutionary forces have always sought to attack the Catholic priesthood. Priests, who as alter Christus administer the sacraments and preach the salvific plan of God for humanity, are the enemies of the revolution against God and His order.

An attack on the Catholic priesthood is also an attack on the family and vice versa. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a family to teach faith and morals to its children if the Church does not also teach them.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to raise holy priests for the service of the teaching Church, if families are unable to pass on the faith to their children.

These and similar issues are at the heart of the concerns regarding the upcoming pan-Amazon synod.

This Focus looks at the ideas that underlie the current stage of the synodal process. It examines what they will mean for Catholic family life as well as their implications for our Mother the Church as she shapes the spiritual life of her children striving for heaven.

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PAN-AMAZON SYNOD:

from evangelisation to“intercultural exodus”

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iwxí is the title of a movie1 issued by the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network to pay homage to Brother Vicente Cañas SJ, a Spanish missionary murdered in 1987 J O S É A N TO N I O U R E TA for his intervention in territorial disputes between Indians and newly arrived landowners in the northwest of the state of Mato Grosso in what was then a real Brazilian “wild west”.

Sometime before, in the early 1970’s, Br Cañas (“Kiwxí”, for the Indians) and his colleague, Fr Thomaz Aquino Lisboa SJ (“Yauca”), had maintained their first contacts with two isolated indigenous tribes in that region: the Mÿky and the Enawene Nawe. Imbued with the new post-conciliar missionary paradigm of “inculturation”, the two Jesuits not only learned the tribal dialect but also gradually adopted all the customs of the indigenous people.

The movie begins with a scene filmed in 1985 that shows a ritual dance of the Mÿki in the midst of which a dancing Fr Lisboa stands out, in close up, “dressed” with the attire required for the ceremony. In the next sequence, seated next to a hut, he explains: “All this is filled with spirituality, a deep knowledge of nature, respect for nature. Here we are eating what they eat, sleeping in the same house in which they sleep in the hammock they themselves manufacture, because the faith I have in Christ does not stop me from living the same life the Mÿki are living. For whether I wear this object or not [a rod through the septum of his nose], whether I pierce the nose or ears or not, wear painting or not, that is culture. That is not faith.”

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With his nose piercing and other ritual attire, we could say that Fr Lisboa had, 30 years ago, anticipated the “Amazonian face” which the Synod of Bishops now seeks to give the Church in that “multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious region”.

In fact, the preparatory document of the synod, Instrumentum laboris, states that it is necessary to listen to indigenous peoples in order to build “intercultural” networks, to discover new ways for Church’s pastoral policy in the Amazon to deepen the “inculturation” process and facilitate the “inculturation of the rites” produced by the ancestral wisdom of Amazonian peoples for their celebrations. Moreover, the document continues: “We are called as Church to strengthen the protagonism of the people themselves: we need an intercultural spirituality that will help us to interact with the diversity of peoples and their traditions.”

The Instrumentum laboris emphasises “inculturation” because since the Sixties this word has been the talisman of the transformation of evangelisation from a theological focus to one based on pastoral considerations. The old model that sought to convert native peoples and nurture Christian culture among them was gradually replaced with a missiology aimed at inter-religious dialogue devoid of any intention of proselytisation. One which, conversely, can help to reinforce the pagan identity of those being “evangelised”.

This article will attempt to describe the transformation from the theological to the pastoral model. The first part will address what inculturation meant from the earliest days of evangelisation until the first half of the twentieth century. In the second part, we will see how “inculturation” is understood today.

PART ONE In reality, the problem of relations between Christianity and culture is as old as evangelisation. By strip-

CAL X M A R IA E

ping themselves of the legal obligations of Judaism and by preaching the Good News to the Gentiles, the Apostles categorically affirmed the universality of salvation: “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) While other religions are linked to a culture, Christianity with its supernatural origin and character is directed at all men and radically transcends any purely human content. In this sense, it is totally outside of culture.

Furthermore, Christianity is not a religion of worship or law, but a religion of faith by which man recognises the word of God, submits to it, and enters into an inner communion with his Creator.

However, Christianity is not pure interiority for the essential reason that it is a religion of the Incarnation.

God speaks to us through Jesus Christ, who is true God and true Man, and as such is historically situated.

Upon founding the religion of the New Covenant, He

status, since the bonds of connaturality between the Church and the West are twofold and very tightly knit.

On the one hand, because from the conversion of the barbarians and throughout the Middle Ages the Church was the main inspiration to western culture, permeating it and establishing such a profound symbiosis with it as to forge what was later called Christendom.

On the other hand, because there is a close link between faith and reason (“fides quaerens intellectum”) and since no other civilisation developed rationality as much as western classical culture (which is why the Church assumed and preserved everything that Greek philosophy and Roman law possessed as positive rational values), it became part of her DNA. In his famous speech at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted how the “inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance,

“While other religions are linked to a culture, Christianity with its supernatural

origin and character is directed at all men and radically transcends any purely human content. In this sense, it is totally outside of culture.”

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not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence,

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leaned upon the Old: “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Mt. 5:17) Likewise, in order to continue the work of Christ, the Church had to express herself throughout history with forms and formulas that she did not create out of nothing but elaborated based on the culture that surrounded her, first Jewish, and then Greek-Roman, taking various elements not only from their worship but also their organisation and even thinking.2 She continued doing the same later, when she penetrated other cultures. However, despite having become closely linked with such cultures, the “transcendental” aspect of Christianity always remained a priority, because the meaning of the cultural elements that the Church assumed was radically modified.

Despite this transcendence of Christianity in relation to all cultures, it can be said that in its relations with the Church, western culture has a particular

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ST MARK PREACHING IN A SQUARE OF ALEXANDRIA IN EGYPT (1504-07), GENTILE BELLINI & GIOVANNI BELLINI, PINACOTECA DI BRERA, MILAN.

“A true missionary effort necessarily introduces in the very bosom of

pagan cultures a conflict from which it is not possible to escape on the pretext of adaptation: revelation illuminates the fundamental deficiencies of pagan conceptions and their practical consequences, and makes a call to conversion.”

“Do not be anxious or persuade those peoples to change their rites and customs, provided they are not openly opposed to [Catholic] religion and morality. Because nothing would be as absurd as introducing into China [the way of life] of France, Spain, Italy or any other European nation. Do not introduce your civilisations into those nations but only your faith, which not only does not despise or contradict people’s rites and customs as long as they are not reprehensible, but on the contrary, seeks to keep and bring them to perfection. … Try therefore not to compare the customs of those nations with those of Europe but rather adapt yourselves to them. Praise everything in them that

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is worthy of admiration. As far as things that do not deserve such praise, although it is true that we should not imitate flatterers, be at least prudent not to overly criticise them. As for really bad customs, try to reject them with your silence more than with your words, using those occasions so that those who are determined to embrace our faith are the first to eliminate them little by little, and by their own accord.”4 This instruction is a model of balance because it leads the missionary to make a judgment about the local culture that he seeks to evangelise in order to incorporate everything that is wholesome or recoverable and gradually reject everything that is unacceptable from the standpoint of faith and morals.

In fact, underlying the instruction are two levels of cultural values. On a superficial level, there are ways of dressing, eating and lodging, artistic styles, forms of treatment, etc. At a deeper level, there are the ways to bury or incinerate the dead, to conceive family life, and to organise social relations, which necessarily embody or convey the religious and moral conceptions of each people. Like it or not, such ancestral choices are either in harmony or clash with the content of Christian revelation, and in the latter case they need to be purified or eventually eliminated altogether.

Hence, a true missionary effort necessarily introduces into the very bosom of pagan cultures a conflict from which it is not possible to escape on the pretext of adaptation: revelation illuminates the fundamental deficiencies of pagan conceptions and their practical consequences, and makes a call to conversion.

Therefore, it would be disloyal to pretend that missionaries in the past did not intend to modify non-Christian cultures in their substance. Through the missionary, the doctrine of the Gospel, the tradition of the Church, and to some extent the world view underlying Catholic dogmas consciously and

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it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe.”

Maintaining this western character, which was originally Latin, the early missionaries who were sent to convert the Saxon barbarians knew nevertheless to adapt to the cultural differences of the populations they wished to evangelise, following the archetype of ad hominem argumentation that was the discourse of St Paul in the Areopagus of Athens. To facilitate the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, for example, St Gregory the Great informed his missionary in England, St Augustine of Canterbury, that he should allow them to keep the gastronomic feasts once celebrated in honour of their idols, but purifying them of idolatry and giving them a Christian content.3 The Church showed the same respect for authentic, or at least corrigible, cultural values of local populations as she evangelised Asian peoples. An eloquent example of this is the instruction that the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith sent in 1659 to the Apostolic Vicars of the Society of Foreign Missions working in the Far East, which recommended:

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voluntarily entered into contact with the values of non-Christian cultures.

It was not a question of changing these cultures on a superficial level, whose elements could largely remain, but of converting on a deeper level. The mission ad gentes explicitly sought a true metanoia of the evangelised peoples, that is, a reconstruction of their base values from the inside. In this way, some positive or neutral cultural values would be revitalised in a Christian sense, while those incompatible with Catholic values should be rejected, according to the famous phrase of St Remigius to Clovis, the first converted Frankish king: “Burn what you had adored and adore what you had burned.”

To a greater or lesser extent, this inner reconstruction ends up reaching the entire culture of a people that converts to Christianity. For every culture is an integrated reality in which all components, superficial and profound, form an organic unity. And since religion (or irreligion, as in modern culture) is the supreme factor of integration of all culture, it turns out that it is not possible to change religion without modifying to some extent all the other elements of the culture of a people that embraces a new faith.

In reality, this incarnation of the faith in the cultural forms of those converted to Christianity is neither done by missionaries nor happens as an imposition of superficial aspects of their culture. It is a gradual and profound process of Christianisation of customs and traditions carried out by the converts themselves in their everyday life. The new Catholic communities – and above all the saints that flourish in them – are those that must forge the Gospel values in the depth of their own culture, creating a living reality that aspires to become a culture at the same time profoundly Catholic and entirely local.5 The Middle Ages was a true paradigm of successful evangelisation and inculturation. Other missionary efforts were more or less successful to the degree they approached that ideal. In Latin America, the evangelisation originally carried out by the Catholic monarchs and the crown of Portugal was largely successful, although the colonisers, and to some extent even the missionaries, were influenced by the evil effects of Renaissance humanism and its materialistic and neo-pagan conception of life.

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In spite of that, thanks to the numerous apparitions of the Blessed Mother, and especially that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the immense majority of native peoples converted to Catholicism, gradually abandoned their superstitions and Christianised their customs. From there a Creole culture emerged very different from European culture but a mixture of the Catholicism of Spain and Portugal in the baroque era combined with the mentality, genius and artistic gifts characteristic of the indigenous people. Latin American culture had its best expression in the saints of the continent, some white Creoles such as St Rose of Lima or the Venerable Mariana de Jesus Torres of Quito, some mestizos, like St Martin of Porres or natives like St Juan Diego.

Another notable example of successful evangelisation and inculturation that respects local values was that of the Philippines.

In all these cases there was a real incarnation of Christianity in the local culture, preserving the plurality of cultures (whose diversity is desired by God) and avoiding any form of cultural “colonialism” while maintaining the substance of the Gospel faith and morals in its integral purity.

Albeit in passing, it is worth mentioning the great improvement in living conditions of the evangelised peoples that resulted from the action of missionaries and European settlers.

The above considerations express with all their nuances the true meaning of the “inculturation” effort the Catholic Church carried out over two thousand years of her missionary work fulfilling the Divine mandate to the Apostles: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Mt. 28:19) We now need to look at the false principles which resulted in this approach being abandoned for the sake of an “interculturality” that led missionaries to dress up as fake Indians, as did the Jesuits Kiwxi and Yauca when they came into contact with the Mÿky and the Enawene Nawe.

PART TWO From the beginning the Church adapted to the cultures of the peoples she successively evangelised preserving and improving everything that was good, beautiful and true, and eliminating everything that CAL X M A R IA E

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OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE (1778), JOSEFUS DE RIBERA ARGOMANIS, MUSEO DE LA BASÍLICA DE GUADALUPE, MEXICO.

was bad, ugly and wrong. This resulted in a culture that was authentically local and profoundly Christian.

How did this authentic inculturation become a dialogue between aboriginal peoples and missionaries who adopted their customs while confirming them in their pagan culture?

One factor was the missionaries’ fear of being branded as fellow travellers of European colonialism. Indeed, under the influence of anti-western or Marxist “decolonisation” movements, a guilt complex about the evangelisation carried out in former colonies began to infiltrate the Catholic Church following the Second World War. At the same time, there was growing public interest in, and enormous sympathy towards, indiginous peoples, whose folklore, lifestyles and dialects seemed threatened by the penetration of technology and modern life. Missionaries were not exempt from this sympathy, which extended to all aspects of their culture, including the most reprehensible ones.

With both fear and with sympathy, the concept of “inculturation” began to suffer a semantic slip in the ecclesial vocabulary. The emerging concept of evangelisation insisted less and less on the missionary vocation of transmitting the faith and more and more on the convenience, or even the obligation, of preserving the integrity of the indigenous culture. From adaptation to the local mentality it became mimicry, then a “conversion” of the missionaries, and of the Church herself, to the (pagan) values of the ancestral culture of the peoples being evangelised.

All missionary congregations and all regions where the Church developed its mission ad gentes (the Far East, Oceania, Indian subcontinent, Africa and the three Americas) were victims of the ideology which substituted pastoral care for theological conversion, but it is the Amazon region, which is the focus of the upcoming synod.

It would be beyond the scope of this article to analyse the semantic slippage of the concept of “inculturation” since the Vatican II decree Ad gentes, passing through the apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi of Paul VI, and the meetings of the Latin American Episcopate in Medellin (1968), Puebla (1979), Santo Domingo (1992) and Aparecida (2007). For this reason, we will study only the most “advanced” expressions of the concept of “inculturation” from the writings

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of the greatest intellectual of the new “missiology”, Fr Paulo Suess, a German priest based in Brazil and one of the consultants of the committee preparing the Pan-Amazon synod (and probably the main drafter of its working document – Instrumentum laboris).

In the chapter titled “The dispute for inculturation” of his book Evangelizar desde los proyectos históricos de los otros: Diez ensayos de misionología (Evangelising from the historical projects of others: ten essays on missiology),6 Fr Suess presents the philosophical premises of the existentialist, subjectivist, and relativistic matrix of the new “paradigm of inculturation” based on “the recognition of the irreducible otherness of others”:7 • “All peoples and social groups have a historical project of life” codified in their respective culture, which defines their identity and creates “a second environment”.

• “For human beings, the perception of reality always goes through a cultural ‘filter’ so that the vision one group has of another hardly coincides with the vision that the group has of itself.”

• “Subjectivity and cultural identity erase any objective, unique and universal mediation of reality”; the “objective vision”, unfettered by the specific angle of each culture, is a mere “utopian horizon that moves history”.

• “Neither the culture of any social group” nor “the culture that occasionally conveys the Gospel” can be “normative for another group”.

Hence, “the full subject of inculturated evangelisation are the respective people who receive the Gospel. The poor, the others, the people are the protagonists of the history of their salvation and of the process of their evangelisation.”

Paraphrasing the Latin formula of the Fourth Lateran Council, according to which salvation is ordinarily found only in the Church, Fr Suess states that “there is no revelation or salvation extra culturam.”8 In this new paradigm, the preaching of a missionary becomes irrelevant because the Church “must experience its metalinguistic irrelevance and lack of language, and must again become capable of speaking a contextual language that is specific to the culture in

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

question”,9 which supposes “a process of divestment, metanoia and kenosis”.10 Evangelisation becomes, then, merely “a catalytic presence” of the missionary “that provokes cultural changes without explicit interference”,11 because “a Gospel ontologically perfect but socio-culturally and historically distant from peoples would become an irrelevant Gospel and a dead letter.”12 Therefore, people accede to the revelation by themselves and not by the preaching of a missionary: “The full subject of inculturated evangelisation is the respective people that receive the Gospel. The poor, the “others”, the peoples are the protagonists of the history of their salvation and of the process of their evangelisation … The interpretation or revelation of Jesus Christ as logos, for example, is an absolutely contextual ‘discovery’ and therefore a cultural and historical one.”13 Contrary to traditional mission, “the Gospel and evangelisers respect otherness and preserve the identity of messages and cultures. Inculturation seeks a respectful proximity in a tone of otherness.”14 Moreover, “evangelising a people means collaborating with the strengthening of their identity and believing in their specific future,”15 otherwise Christianity would become “a secularising force, since – as in the case of an indigenous people that live their religion intimately linked to their culture – it disassociates religion and culture.”16

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The foregoing implies, for the Church, the obligation to preserve the pagan religion of the natives in its integrity: “‘Being Guaraní’ means belonging to the worldview of the Guaraní, since religion in a respective indigenous society, which is monocultural, is always also an expression of that monoculture…. Belonging to the Guaraní people means not only having kinship with the Guaraní people but also belonging to the religion, worldview and social order of the Guaraní.”17 Inculturation becomes, then, an “evangelisation” without the Gospel — because the latter would be “introducing a new, competing, or parallel memory” and one which, moreover, rejoices in recognising pagan gods: “Any intent to replace indigenous religious memory with the memory of Israel would be a new attempt at colonisation. Colonising means not only ‘unmasking’ the ‘false gods’ of others as ‘real demons’, but imposing ‘the best’ someone has as if it were also best for others.”18

“the only rupture the Gospel proposes is breaking with infidelity to their own life projects”,20 since “the project of the Kingdom is at the heart of their projects.”21 “Strictly speaking, evangelisation is to always recover the coherence of the life project of the Other poor, a project always threatened by death structures in the historical conditions in which it is carried out.”22 In this task, as the “Yauca” precedent (Fr Thomaz Aquino Lisboa SJ) shows, the “evangeliser is evangelised, and the evangelised become evangeliser” because the evangelisation process consists “in a dialectic relationship” in which “there are no ‘agents’ facing ‘patients’, nor ‘teachers’ facing ‘pupils’.”23 On the part of the people of God this implies a “cultural exodus” that requires “rethinking old formulas of our faith that have become incomprehensible” and “re-contextualising ritual practices and symbols of faith.” 24In straight talk, such inculturation results in a renunciation by missionaries of their Christian faith

“ Under the influence of anti-western or Marxist ‘decolonisation’ movements, a

What importance, then, do the history of Israel and the life of Jesus, nuclei of Divine Revelation, have for evangelisation? They are a mere source of inspiration: “Clearly, this paradigmatic ‘salvation history’ cannot replace the history of any people, just as the historical culture of Jesus cannot impose itself as a model culture by prevailing over other cultures. Any salvific project structurally incapable of formulating itself from the historical-cultural roots of a people would be in advance an alienating and colonial project and not a salvific or liberating project.”19 This naturally begs the question: If that is so, what role does a missionary play in the midst of an “evangelised” population if he cannot even talk about Christ?

His presence there is reduced to showing “solidarity and bearing witness”, “accompanying in the struggle” against the “colonialist” cultural hegemony of western civilisation and showing the indigenous people that AU T UMN 2 0 1 9

and worship to adopt the superstitions and ancestral idolatrous rituals of their “dialoguing” comrades.

Such a “cultural exodus” is precisely what Raúl Fornet-Betancourt calls for. He is a Cuban philosopher living in Germany, where he has worked as director of the Latin American Department at the Catholic Missio Institute, in the city of Aachen. In his lecture at the Fourth Parliament of the World’s Religions, titled “Towards an Interreligious and Intercultural Theology of Liberation”,25 Fornet deems the inculturation paradigm insufficient, as its language “betrays an awareness of superiority and, with it, of the supposedly obvious right of the Catholic Church (sic) to incarnate the Gospel in different cultures.” That aggressive attitude “supposes dragging cultures - along with their religious traditions - before the tribunal demanding the universalisation of Christianity…to dictate the course that their development must follow.” The basic vision

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guilt complex about the evangelisation carried out in former colonies began to infiltrate the Catholic Church following the Second World War.”

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of inculturation, he continues, “does not lead it to ‘relativize’ its own tradition in the sense of relating it to others on a plane of equality.”

Thus, it would be the case to move “to a culturally polycentric universal Christianity,”26 that is, a configuration of faith “no longer centric but pilgrim” and which is best expressed by the term “interculture”.

According to the Aachen-based Cuban philosopher, interculturality “is not mission but resignation”, an existential attitude of “permanent resignation of the cultural rights we hold as our own” so that “welcoming contexts, free, unoccupied spaces can emerge in us”. This is about “a patient act of renunciation”: “renouncing to sacralise the origins of cultural or religious traditions”; “renouncing to convert the traditions we call our own into a scrupulously established itinerary”; “renouncing to decant identities by distinguishing between what is our own and what is others’”; “renouncing to syncretise differences on the basis of a supposedly stable common ground.”

These fundamental renunciations “can inspire and guide a new transformation of Christianity” that “would change its inculturations into interculturalisations”, remaking Christian identity in a process

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that “continuously reconfigures itself ” and “enables it (Christianity) for a plural exercise of its own memory.”

In this way, “members of different religious communities relearn to confess their religious identity from the transformative experience of the pilgrimage, the exodus, where trans-religious spaces are created.”

This call for a multicultural exodus, launched by Fornet-Betancourt, seems to have been fully approved by the final message of the Latin American Seminar of Bishops and Secretaries of Episcopal Commissions on Pastoral Care for Indigenous Peoples, held in November 2018 in Bogotá, which states: “The fact of recognising and valuing indigenous cultures with their spiritualities and wisdom rooted in the earth’s cosmos, challenges us to review and update our way of evangelising. We want to go a step further from inculturation towards interculturality.”

That call was fully accepted also by the editors of Diálogo Indigenista Misionero, an organ of the National Coordination of the Indigenous Pastoral of the Paraguayan Bishops’ Conference. On the back cover of the December 2013 edition, they published a poem

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We are protagonists in this conglomerate of cultures, encounters and disagreements, alliances and fractures.

Let us configure the future of this mosaic of identities from interculturality, the main challenge in all latitudes. …

Let us live our “intercultural” being by: Promoting cultures instead of rescuing or saving them, respecting and appreciating them, instead of judging and condemning; …

Learning and listening, instead of teaching and overwhelming them.

Let us go to the sacred ground of others with bare feet, hat in hand, and gifts ready to reach out to them.

Let us smell the scent and collect the flowers from fields of other worlds, and let us learn to drink the water of life from other deep wells.

Let us go meet other faces, reflections of our humanity.

Let us open what is ours to what is theirs, in a relationship of equality.27

Consistent with these premises, it is not surprising that the same bulletin reproduced the following passage from the lecture by Fr Bartomeu Meliá, the first person in charge of indigenous pastoral policy in the Paraguayan Bishops’ Conference, during the 2013 Missionary Week: “We asked ourselves this question: To what extent can we practice indigenous religions? Almost all religions have two essential elements: listening to the ‘revealed word’ and communicating with the community (for Indians, dance and chicha) …

Indigenous religions seem strange to us, but that does not remove the challenge of participating in religious spaces; yes, one can practice the indigenous religion without denying one’s own, this even widens our hearts.”28

Born in Santiago, Chile, José Antonio Ureta is a founding member of the Fundación Roma which through its Ación Familia campaign, is one of Chile’s most influential anti-abortion and pro-family organisations. He currently resides in Europe and is a senior researcher for the Société française pour la défense de la Tradition, Famille, Propriété.

This article first appeared on: www.panamazonsynodwatch.info ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

The past 60 years have seen a radical transformation in evangelisation. In light of this, the upcoming Synod’s aim of building a Church with an “Amazonian face” means that fears that Catholic communities will be incited to return to the idolatrous practices of indigenous religions are not unjustified.

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21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

La Vida por la Amazonía-Capítulo KIWXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbTnBO5s_vQ According to Pius XII, “The Catholic Church has neither scorned nor rejected the pagan philosophies. Instead, after freeing them from error and all contamination she has perfected and completed them by Christian revelation. So likewise, the Church has graciously made her own the native art and culture which in some countries is so highly developed. She has carefully encouraged them and has brought them to a point of aesthetic perfection that of themselves they probably would never have attained. By no means has she repressed native customs and traditions but has given them a certain religious significance; she has even transformed their feast days and made them serve to commemorate the martyrs and to celebrate mysteries of the faith.” (Evangelii praecones, no. 58, http://w2.vatican. va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_02061951_evangelii-praecones.html).

Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections, University of Regensburg 12 September 2006http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/ speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html Luis Jolicoeur, “El Cristianismo aymara: inculturación o culturización?”, in Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change, serie V, Latin America, vol. 3, p 295.

The above considerations on the relations between Christianity and culture are a summary of some lectures during the 29th Week of Missiology held in Leuven (Belgium) in 1959, reproduced in the volume Mission et cultures non-chrétienne, published by Desclée de Brouwer. The main authors whose thought was summarised are J. Ladrière (“La culture et les cultures”, pp. 11-44), Fr J. Bruls Sam (“L’Attitude de l’Église devant les cultures non-chrétiennes”, pp. 45-57), Fr Segura PB (“L’Initiation, valeur permanente en vue de l’inculturation”, pp. 219-223) and Fr Boritius SCJ (“Le Groupe familiale et ses formes”, pp. 236-253).

Ediciones Aya-Yala, Quito (Ecuador) 1995.

Ibid. p. 150.

Ibid. p. 189.

Ibid. p. 99.

Ibid. p. 112.

Ibid. p. 125.

Ibid. p. 159.

Ibid. p. 189.

Ibid. p. 163.

Ibid. p. 168.

Ibid. p. 174.

Ibid. pp. 179-180.

Ibid. p. 183.

Ibid.

Ibid. p. 200.

Ibid. p. 204.

Ibid. p. 203.

Ibid. p. 176.

Ibid. p. 206.

Interculturalidad y Religión: Para una lectura intercultural de la crisis actual del cristianismo, Ediciones Aya-Yala, 2007.

Phrase by Juan José Tamayo, following a proposal by Johann Baptist Metz.

DIM no. 70, year XXVI, back cover.

Ibid. p. 32.

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titled “Missionaries with an Intercultural Face”, an expression repeated throughout the text as a refrain:

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THE AMAZON SYNOD AND IMMIGRATION The following talk was delivered at the Roman Forum Summer Symposium, in Gardone Riviera, Italy, on 12 July 2019. It is published here with the kind permission of the Director of the Symposium, Dr John Rao. For twenty-seven years the Roman Forum has been a beacon of light for authentic Catholic faith and culture, each year bringing together some of the most insightful Catholic thinkers of our time. This talk by Prof. Roberto de Mattei along with other presentations of the Symposium will soon be published in a book.

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would like to attempt to link two events seemingly unalike: the Synod on the Amazon to be held in the Vatican in October and the landings of immigrants in Lampedusa.

The liaison between these two events is Pope Francis. Pope Francis is the one who has called the Synod on the Amazon and Pope Francis is also the one who defends most insistently the rights of immigrants and proposes himself in Italy as an anti-Salvini.

What do the two matters have in common? The Synod on the Amazon and the migratory invasion are both part of the same world vision, of which these two issues are the expression. This vision of the world is that of Pope Francis.

The Synod on the Amazon will lead to a “rupture” in the Catholic Church: “nothing will be as it was before”. These words were spoken on 2 May 2019

by German Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, in charge of Adveniat, an organisation which provides Catholic relief for Latin America.

This is a clear confirmation that the revolution which is being prepared is linked to the Instrumentum laboris, the draft of the document which will be the focus of the work of the bishops who gather for the Synod in the Vatican from 6-27 October, 2019. No document like this “instrument of work” expresses the “new paradigm” of Pope Francis so clearly, bringing to light many of the theses which were already implicit in his 2015 encyclical Laudato si. The Amazon is not only a physical place, but “a reality full of life and wis-

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dom” (no. 5), which rises to the level of a conceptual paradigm and calls us to a “pastoral, ecological and synodal” conversion (no. 5).

Also Lampedusa, like the Amazon is P R O F. R O B E RTO D E M AT T E I not only a physical place, it is a conceptual paradigm, since the historical trip Pope Bergoglio made in October 2013. During this trip to Lampedusa, Francis launched a message which, in fact, sounded like an order to pull down the frontiers in Italy and Europe and an implicit invitation for thousands of Africans to leave their countries.

This project, this dream hails from the distant past, as I described in my book from the nineties, 19002000 Two dreams follow one another: the construction, the destruction (Fiducia, Rome 1990).

One hundred years ago, the twentieth century opened up in a climate of euphoric confidence in the myths of “science, reason and progress” and in the belief that humanity’s golden age was just about to start. It is the naive choreography of the “Excelsior” dance, which exalts modern civilisation, describing the struggle of two opposing principles, obscurantism and progress.

The philosophy of Hegelian history, the Darwinian evolutionism, the positivism of Comte, the “scientific socialism” of Marx and Engels all merge in a great ideological framework, according to which, after centuries of barbarism, humanity, enlightened by the “light of science and reason”, finally reaches the fullness of its maturity.

A great dream, a great illusion rises to the horizon: the “construction” of modern civilisation, that is, the fulfilment of that revolutionary process that in 1789 had raised Europe from the darkness of ignorance.

The 1917 Communist revolution appears as a historCAL X M A R IA E

ical event bound to bring this process to implementation, negotiating the transition from the “kingdom of necessity” to the “kingdom of freedom”.

It is the era of “construction”: the city represents the great mirage of the century and the social model for building great nations, great states and a single great universal republic. The process for the unification of the human race seems close. The “civilisation of work”, embodied by the large iron and steel plants and smoking chimneys, will be able to defeat poverty and will spread wealth and well-being for every social class. Marxism was judged to be the best ever tool to make this dream come true.

Even those who criticised it were convinced that the society’s transformation process, driven by communism was irreversible. The main reason why the Second Vatican Council did not condemn communism and instead started, with Ostpolitik, a policy of collaboration with it, was the conviction of the irreversibility of socialism and Marxism.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall was not only the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe: it was the failure of modernity, the failure of modern civilisation that was supposed to be built in contrast to Christian civilisation, in the name of the

The architects of this dream are the same as those of construction: the heirs of all the Revolutions, which after centuries of utopias and failures, attempt a final metamorphosis in chaos, the passage of humanity from the new world order to tribalism.

Post-modernity is this: not a “construction” plan, as it had been for the pseudo-civilisation conceived by humanism and the Enlightenment, which afterwards resulted in the totalitarianisms of the 20th century, but a new and different utopia - the deconstruction and tribalisation of Europe.

The rejection of modernity takes on the face of tribalism, of a cult of nature that is embodied in the emblematic figure of the savage.

The dream of building the “novus ordo saeculorum”, emerging at the beginning of the 20th century, was replaced by an opposing dream, that of destruction: the “kingdom of chaos”. The “new world order” is in reality worldwide chaos, which today has the colours of the Amazonia, the happy communist paradise in which indigenous peoples pass on the wisdom of the cult of nature.

From this viewpoint, we can understand the words of one of the “prophets of chaos”, such as Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, who considered immigration “a

principles of the French Revolution and of socialism.

Modernity has unveiled its face - a century of death and collective massacres: two hundred million victims of communism, seventy million victims in two world wars, an even greater number of victims of legalised abortion, widespread on a global scale. The century of great totalitarian buildings and of great political myths has failed. The dream of building modernity is gone.

The creators of thr Revolution, whose ultimate goal is the destruction of the Church and of Christian civilisation, have replaced the “dream of construction” that opened the twentieth century, with a “dream of destruction and chaos” that has opened up the century in which we now live.

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prophetic choice” necessary: in order to understand that “the migratory process in act from the increasingly poor south towards the increasingly rich north is a great ethical and civil opportunity for renewal, to reverse the course of decadent consumerism in act in western Europe.”

From this perspective of “creative destruction”, I made the comment: “It would not be the immigrants that needed to integrate into European civilisation, but the contrary; Europe would need to ‘dis-integrate’ and regenerate thanks to the ethnic groups which occupy it [...]. It is the dream of creative disorder, of a shake-up similar to the one which gave new life to the west at the time

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“ The main reason why the Second Vatican Council did not condemn communism and instead started, with Ostpolitik, a policy of collaboration with it, was the conviction of the irreversibility of socialism and Marxism.”

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of the Barbarian Invasions to generate the poly-cultural society of the future.” (Rorate Coeli, 30 May 2019) I wrote: “The flows of populations are not only an ethnic transplanting, but a toppling of civilisation, a ‘counter-colonisation’, in which migrants are seen as bringers of a hybrid civilisation or mixed race, opposed to the Christian one which built Europe. The destruction of the national states passes thereby through a policy of replacement, whether it be ethnic or cultural. The cultural replacement consists in the negation of any identity rooted in European Christian tradition; the ethnic replacement occurs with the entry of a human mass of immigrants that substitute the European population, decimated by abortion and contraception.

The anti-birth mentality is the biological expression of the cultural and moral suicide of the West.” (Rorate Cæli, 30 May 2019) In an interview with Eugenio Scalfari in La Repubblica, 11 November 2016, Pope Bergoglio endorses the concept of “mixed race”, suggested by Scalfari. And Scalfari, in an editorial from the same newspaper of 17 September 2017, affirms that, according to Pope Francis:

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“In the global society we live in, entire populations are moving to this and that country, and little by little, as time passes, an increasingly integrated sort of ‘mixed race’ will be created. He thinks this is a positive thing, where individuals and families and communities become more and more integrated, the various ethnicities will gradually disappear and a great part of our earth will be inhabited by a population with new spiritual and physical connotations. We will need centuries or even thousands of years for a phenomenon of this kind to happen, but according to the words of the Pope – the tendency is this. It is not without reason he preaches the One God, namely, the One for all people. I am not a believer, but I recognise a logic in Pope Francis’s words: one people and one God. There has never been until now a religious leader who has preached this – his [own] truth to the world.”

The term “mixed race” occurs frequently in Pope Francis’s ministry. On 14 February, 2019, in his intervention at the event of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (FAD) in Rome, Francis met representatives of indigenous populations and, in defining these communities as “a living cry of hope”, he expressed his hope for a “cultural hybridisation”

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among the “so-called civilised populations” and native populations, who “know how to listen to the earth, see the earth and touch the earth”. “Cultural hybridisation”, he explained is the route to follow, by working “to safeguard those who live in the poorest, rural zones of the planet, but richer in wisdom in their coexistence with nature.”

On 19 January 2018, at Puerto Maldonado, in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, Pope Francis while meeting the natives, had said to them: “The treasure that encloses this region” cannot be grasped or understood, without “your wisdom” and “your knowledge”.

The “new paradigm of integral ecology” (no. 56) proposed by the Instrumentum laboris, finds its metaphysical foundation in the indigenous theology of Latin America, a “postmodern” development of liberation theology which was condemned by Pope John Paul II in 1985. In order to understand better his reference to the “wisdom” and “knowledge” of the natives, we need to turn to the work of an author dear to Pope Francis: Leonardo Boff, the theologian who has been most coherent in developing liberation theology into indigenous “eco-theology”. Boff, who was born in 1938, became a Franciscan in 1959 after he had joined the most radical wing of liberation theology. He then abandoned his Franciscan habit and the priesthood in order to go and live with the Marxist activist Marcia Maria Monteiro de Miranda. In 2015 he boasted of having helped Pope Francis write Laudato si.

The Instrumentum laboris again takes up, in many passages, Boff’s slogan that is also the title of one of his books: The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor (Cittadella, Rome 1996). The document affirms that the Church listens to the “cry, of both the people and the earth” (no.18), because in the Amazon “the land is a theological place by which the faith is lived. It is also a unique source of God’s revelation” (no.19).1For Boff, “we need to move from the modern paradigm to the post-modern, global ‘holistic’ paradigm that offers ‘a new dialogue with the universe’ and a new

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form of dialogue with the totality of beings and their relationships.”2 The point of departure of his postmodern, tribalist thinking is the failure of Soviet communism, incapable of realising the Marxist utopia of a society without classes. The only people who historically achieved integral communism are the indigenous peoples of Latin America, who are particularly dense in the Amazon, a territory of about seven million square kilometers, 65% of which is in Brazil, with the remainder divided between eight other South American countries.

The communism of the indigenous peoples is expressed in a conception of the cosmos which includes a conception of society. The indigenist sociology is the consequence of a cosmology according to which there is no difference between people, animals, and plants, but all beings, both living and inanimate, are “citizens of the universe” and bear the same rights. “The new socio-ecological democracy does not only include human beings, but all beings who inhabit the cosmos: it is a “cosmocracy”,3 a new “socio-cosmic pact”.4 “The difference between living beings and ‘inert’ beings is in the degree of thickening of relationships.”5 In place of the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights, there is to be a declaration of the rights of the earth.6 The earth is to be considered as a unity, comprising its physical-chemical structure and the living beings who dwell there. It is understood as “an organic macro-system, a living super-organism”7 and ought to be considered as “the great and generous Pacha Mama (great mother) of the Andean culture, or as a living superorganism, the Gaia of Greek mythology and modern cosmology.”8 “There is no difference between earth and humanity. They form an organic and systemic whole.”9 This cosmovision denies the value of any reality, placing them all in interconnection with each other.

“All beings live in a story of relationships. Outside of relationship nothing exists,” Boff affirms.10 In his philosophical-religious vision, “the universe is made

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“Post-modernity is this: not a ‘construction’ plan, as it had been for the pseudo-civilisation conceived by humanism and the Enlightenment, which afterwards resulted in the totalitarianisms of the 20th century, but a new and different utopia - the deconstruction and tribalisation of Europe.”

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up of an immense story of relationships in such a way that each exists and lives by means of the other, for the other, and with the other; the human being is a node of relations facing in all directions; Divinity itself is revealed as a pan-relational Reality.”11 As for Boff, so also for the Instrumentum laboris: everything is interconnected. The Amazon is the land where “everything is connected” (no. 20); everything is “constitutively related, forming a vital whole” (no.

21). The Church must heed “the Amazon peoples” (no. 7), because these people are able to live in “intercommunication” with the entire cosmos (no. 12). But if everything is relationship and nothing exists outside of itself, the secret of reality is nothingness, because relationship has meaning only as a function of the reality which it connects: relationship cannot connect what does not exist. The pendulum of indigenous cosmology swings between an absolute nihilism and an equally absolute pantheism.

Leonardo Boff seeks to defend himself from the accusation of pantheism, defining himself as “panentheist”. Panentheism (from the Greek πᾶν “everything”, ἐν “in”, θεός “God”) is the theological position which maintains that God is immanent in the universe but at the same time transcends it. The word was first proposed by Karl Christian Frederick Krause (1781-1832), a student of Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. Panentheism denies the existence of a God who creates the universe ex nihilo as something distinct from him, instead proposing a creation that is continual and “processual”.

God is the “self-conscience” of the universe, the universe which as it evolves becomes aware of its own evolution. He [God] “emerges from the global process of the world in evolution and expansion”;12 “he is immanent in the world, participates in its open process, there he reveals himself and enriches himself.”13 Boff refers to Teilhard de Chardin who “saw in the omega point the great force of attraction which calls the universe to reach its supreme height in the theosphere.”14 Boff explains: “We are not talking about placing God and the world each facing each other, as was classically done, but rather of placing God within the process of the world and considering the world within the process of God.”15 “Nature is the result of a long cosmic process. It is cosmogenesis.”16According to Boff, the majority of the peoples of South America

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were predominantly panentheist, as were the ancient cultures of southeast Asia: “The universe in cosmogenesis invites us to live the experience that underlies panentheism: in every slightest manifestation of being, in every movement, in every expression of life, of intelligence and of love, we find ourselves dealing with the mystery of the universe in progress (cosmogenetic process).”17 The religious model closest to the ecotheology of liberation, according to Boff, is pagan polytheism, “with its rich pantheon of divinities populating all of the spaces of nature.”18 Boff accuses Christianity of having “slipped, for reasons that are not always identifiable, into a sorrowful separation between God and nature”, thus depriving nature of its “magic” and “sacramentality”.

“However we want to interpret it, we ought to recognise that the pagans had this extraordinary thing: they could see the presence of the gods in all things.

In the woods, Pan and Sylvan, in the earth Terra Gais Demetra (Mother Earth) or Ceres, in the sun Apollo and Febo and so forth.”19 In fact, primitive man, explains Boff, lived in a “mystical union” with nature.20 He adored as divinity the rocks, the plants, the animals. Witchcraft and shamanism are expressions of this spirituality.

“The shaman is one who enters into contact with the cosmic energies, he knows how to control the stream of energy within himself and even only with his presCAL X M A R IA E

The same polytheist and pantheist spirit characterises the Instrumentum laboris, in which we read: “The life of the Amazonian community has not yet been influenced by Western civilisation. This is reflected in the beliefs and rites regarding the action of spirits and the divinity – named in many different ways – with and in the territory, with and in relation to nature. This cosmo-vision is picked up in Francis’s ‘mantra’: ‘everything is connected’ (LS 16, 91, 117, 138, 240).” (no. 25) According to the Vatican document: “The Creator Spirit which fills the universe (cf. Wisdom 1:7) is the Spirit that for centuries has nurtured the spirituality of these peoples even before the proclaiming of the Gospel and spurs them onto accepting it, from the base of their [own] cultures and traditions.” (no. 120) Hence, “we need to grasp what the Spirit of the Lord has taught these peoples over the course of the centuries: faith in God, Father-Mother-Creator; the sense of communion and harmony with the earth; the sense of solidarity with their fellow-man; the project of ‘living well’; the wisdom of a thousand-year old civilisation the elders possess and which has effects on the health, cohabitation, education and cultivation of the land; the relationship with nature and Mother Earth; the capacity of resistance and resilience of the women in particular; the religious rites expressed; the relations with their forbearers; their contemplative stance and sense of gratuity; the celebration and festivity and the sacred sense of the land.” (no. 121)

“A Church with an Amazonian face in its multiple nuances, seeks to be an “outward-bound” Church (cf. EG 20-23), which leaves behind a colonial mono-cultural, clerical and domineering tradition and knows how to discern and adopt without fear, the diverse cultural expressions of the peoples.” (no. 110) Walter Cardinal Brandmüller has affirmed that the Instrumentum laboris “contradicts the binding teaching of the Church on decisive points and thus it ought to be qualified as heretical” and, given that the document places the very fact of divine revelation up for discussion, “we ought also in addition to speak of apostasy.” The Instrumentum laboris, concludes the Cardinal, “constitutes an attack on the foundations of the faith, in a way in which was not thought possible until now. And thus it ought to be rejected with the maximum firmness.”22 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.

The Church, the Instrumentum laboris further affirms, must divest itself of its Roman identity and adopt “an Amazonian face”.

“The Amazonian face of the Church finds its expression in the plurality of its peoples, cultures and ecosystems. This diversity requires an option for an outward-bound and missionary Church, incarnated in all its activities, expressions and languages.” (no. 107)

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13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

Leonardo Boff, The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. For a cosmic ecology, Cittadella, Rome 1996, p. 183.

Ibid., pp. 26-27.

Ibid., p. 234.

Leonardo Boff, Ethos mundial. Um consenso minimo entre os humanos, Letraviva, Brasilia 2000, p. 116.

Leonardo Boff, The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. For a cosmic ecology, Cittadella, Rome 1996, p. 100.

Leonardo Boff, Ethos mundial, pp. 89-90; with reference to La Carta de la tierra: valores y principios para un futuro sostenible, San José, Costa Rica 1999.

Leonardo Boff, Ethos mundial. Um consenso minimo entre os humanos, Letraviva, Brasilia 2000, p. 25.

Leonardo Boff, The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. For a cosmic ecology, Cittadella, Rome 1996, p. 27.

Leonardo Boff, Ethos mundial. Um consenso minimo entre os humanos, Letraviva, Brasilia 2000, p. 27.

Leonardo Boff, The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. For a cosmic ecology, Cittadella, Rome 1996, p. 61.

Ibid., p.45.

Ibid., p. 248.

Ibid., p. 259.

Ibid., p. 253.

Ibid., p. 258.

Ibid., p. 42.

Ibid., p. 269.

Ibid., p. 353.

Ibid., p.355.

Ibid., p. 104.

Ibid., p. 277. https://www.corrispondenzaromana.it/il-cardinale-brandmuller-accusa-di-eresia-e-apostasia-il-sinodo-vaticano- sullamazzonia/

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ence or through gestures, dances, and rites he makes those energies beneficial for human needs in his search for equilibrium with nature and with himself.”21

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REACTIONS to the Amazon Synod working document:

Since the Extraordinary Synod on the Family in October 2014, synods have become the focus of contentious disputes within the Church with “cardinals opposing cardinals, and bishops against other bishops”.1 For over 50 years supporters of change within the Church have never ceased to promote their agenda. But during this pontificate the synodal process has offered a greater opportunity to pursue that change than at any time since the close of the Second Vatican Council. With the Instrumentum laboris for the Synod on the Amazon, this agenda has reached an even more radical phase. No other document issued by the Holy See has attracted such widespread and serious protest within the Church. Critics of the document have spoken of the “removal of the scriptural principle” from the Church’s teaching and even apostasy. 2 What follows is a selection of what we consider as most important reactions to the Instrumentum laboris, presented by some of the most prominent defenders of the perennial teaching of the Church. We hope this is a helpful record to orientate us in the authentic mission and universal teaching of the Catholic Church as we approach the synod on the Amazon.

Walter Cardinal Brandmüller

Extracts from “A critique of the Instrumentum laboris for the Amazon Synod” (LifeSiteNews, 27 June 2019) “It is truly astonishing that, contrary to former assemblies, the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon will deal exclusively with a region of the earth whose population is just half that of Mexico City, that is to say, 4 million. This also raises suspicions regarding the true intentions to be implemented in a hidden way at the October assembly.”

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“Accordingly, the territory — the forests of the Amazon region — even becomes a locus theologicus, a special source of Divine Revelation. These are ‘epiphanic places’ where ‘the reserve of life and wisdom for the planet is manifest, a life and wisdom that speaks of God’ (n. 19). The anti-rational rejection of the ‘western’ culture, which stresses the importance of reason, is characteristic of the Instrumentum laboris. Meanwhile, the subsequent regression from Logos to Mythos is raised to the criterion of what the Instrumentum laboris calls the inculturation of the Church. The result is a natural religion in Christian masquerade.”

“It is impossible to conceal that the ‘synod’ intends, above all, to help implement two most cherished projects that heretofore have never been implemented: namely, the abolition of priestly celibacy and the introduction of a female priesthood – beginning with female deacons. In any event, it is about ‘identifying the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women … in the Church’ (129 a 3).”

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“We are witnessing a new form of the classical Modernism of the early twentieth century. At the time, from a decidedly evolutionist approach, the view was presented that, in accord with the continually higher development of man, higher levels of human consciousness and culture also result, whereby what had been false yesterday can turn out to be true today.”

“Inasmuch as the fact of Divine Revelation is here even being questioned or misunderstood, one must also speak of apostasy.”

“The Instrumentum laboris for the Amazon Synod constitutes an attack on the foundations of the Faith, in a way that has heretofore not been thought possible.

It must therefore be firmly and decidedly rejected.”

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Comments made in the Patrick Coffin Show (13 August 2019) and on LifeSiteNews (19 June 2019) “The document is an apostasy. This cannot become the teaching of the Church, and God willing, the whole business will be stopped.” “... [A]lready a certain Bishop in Germany has announced that, if the Holy Father grants a relaxation of the obligation of perfect continence for the clergy in the Amazon Region, the Bishops of Germany will ask for the same relaxation.” “[T]he Church has understood that, when Our Lord calls someone to the priesthood, he also calls him to perfect continence as an essential expression of the priestly identity with Himself as Head and Shepherd of the flock and with His pastoral charity.”

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Gerhard Cardinal Müller

Extracts from “On the Synodal Process in Germany and the Synod for the Amazon” (LifeSiteNews, 26 July 2019) “As it was already the case with the Family Synods, the ‘German Church’ is claiming hegemony over the Universal Church and proudly and arrogantly praising herself as the trendsetter for a Christianity at peace with modernity... However, this has not been explained – and it is also hard to see for any interested observer– why, in the face of the desolate state of the Church in one’s own country [Germany], they now feel called to be a model for others. They use the neutral and pleasant-sounding expressions ‘wholesome decentralisation’ (Instrumentum laboris no.

126) and ‘de-Romanisation of the Catholic Church’ (earlier, this was called the anti-Roman aversion); but really what they value is the mythology of the Amazon and of western ecological theology over Revelation; as well as the hegemony of their ideologues, over the spiritual authority of the successors of the Apostles in the episcopal office.”

“The synodal process in the realm of the German Bishops’ Conference is now being linked with the Synod for the Amazon. This is done for ecclesial-political reasons and as a leverage for the restructuring of the Universal Church. Additionally, both events have nearly identical protagonists, and they are even financially and organisationally connected by way of the relief agencies of the German Bishops’ Conference. It will not be easy to control this wrecking ball.

Afterwards, nothing is to be anymore as it was, and it has been said that one will not even recognise the Church afterwards.”

“It is striking that both the Instrumentum laboris for the Amazon Synod and the German synodal path do not start with biblical foundations and then orient themselves according to the teaching of the Church developing in Tradition and the definitive doctrinal decisions of the Councils and the Pope. Instead, they

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“It is to be emphatically stated that the Instrumentum laboris contradicts the binding teaching of the Church on decisive points, and is therefore to be qualified as heretical.”

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draw their norms and rules from the putative sociological necessities of the globalised world or from the Amazonian tribe’s traditional forms of organisation.”

“The Magisterium of the Pope and of the bishops has no authority over the substance of the Sacraments (Trent, Decree on Communion under both species, DH 1728; Sacrosanctum Concilium no. 21). Therefore, no synod – with or without the Pope – no ecumenical council, or the Pope alone, if he spoke ex cathedra, could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon. They would stand in contradiction to the defined doctrine of the Church. It would be invalid.”

Robert Cardinal Sarah

Extracts from his book “Le soir approche et dйjа le jour baisse” (transl. by Jeanne Smits, LifeSiteNews, 3 Sept. 2019) “I note with dismay that some people would like to create a new priesthood whittled down to a human scale. If Amazonia lacks priests, I am sure that we will not resolve the situation by ordaining married men, viri probati, who have been called by God not to the priesthood, but to married life so that they may manifest the prefiguration of the Union of Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32). In a missionary impulse, if each diocese of Latin America generously offered a priest for the Amazon, this region would not be treated with such contempt and humiliation through the creation of married priests, as if God were unable to raise in this part of the world generous young people who are willing to give totally their bodies and hearts, all their capacity to love, and all their being in consecrated celibacy.”

1.

2.

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“If by a lack of faith in God and by an effect of pastoral short-sightedness the Synod for the Amazon were to decide on the ordination of viri probati, the fabrication of ministries for women and other such incongruities, the situation would be extremely serious. Would its decisions be ratified on the pretext that they are the emanation of the will of the synod fathers? The Spirit blows where it wants, of course, but it does not contradict itself and does not create confusion and disorder. It is the spirit of wisdom. On the question of celibacy, it has already spoken through the Roman councils and pontiffs.”

“If the Synod for the Amazon took decisions in such a direction, it would definitively break with the tradition of the Latin Church. Who can honestly say that such an experiment, with its risk of adulterating the nature of the priesthood of Christ, would remain limited to the Amazon? Certainly, the idea is to confront emergencies and necessities. But necessity is not God! The current crisis is comparable in its severity to the great haemorrhage of the 1970s, during which thousands of priests left the priesthood. Many of these men no longer believed. But do we still believe in the grace of the priesthood?”

“I want to make an appeal to my brother bishops: do we believe in the omnipotence of God's grace? Do we believe that God calls workers to his vineyard or do we want to replace him because we are convinced that he has abandoned us? Worse still, are we ready to abandon the treasure of priestly celibacy under the pretext that we would no longer believe that he gives us the opportunity to live it to the full today?”

“The people of the Amazon have a deep need for priests who do not just do their work at fixed times before returning to their families to care for their children. They need men who are passionate about Christ, burning with his fire, devoured by the zeal of souls. What would I be today if missionaries had not come to live and die in my village in Guinea? Would I have wanted to be a priest if they had been content with just ordaining one of the men of the village?”

The third message of Our Lady of Akita on October 13, 1973, the anniversary of the final visions and miracle of Fatima, includes the following warning: "The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, and bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their Confreres. The Church and altars will be vandalised. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.” https://olrl.org/prophecy/akita.shtml See the commentary on the Instrumentum laboris by Dom Giulio Meiattini OSB “Promoting a biodegradable Christianity”. The English translation is available at: https://www. lifesitenews.com/news/benedictine-monk-calls-amazon-synod-working-doc-biodegradable-christianity-in-searing-new-critique.

CAL X M A R IA E

RE G IS TE R N O W !

OUR CHURCH - reformed or deformed?

A roundtable discussion to address critical questions for the Church and for the family at the eve of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region.

4 OCTOBER 2019 AT 3-6PM, HOTEL MASSIMO D’AZEGLIO, ROME The roundtable will be held in English, with simultaneous translation into Italian. The discussion will also be live streamed.

PARTICIPANTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE INCLUDE:

RICCARDO CASCIOLI La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Italy

MARCO TOSATTI Stilum Curiae, Italy

PROF. ROBERTO DE MATTEI Corrispondenza Romana, Italy

JOSÉ ANTONIO URETA Tradition Family and Property, France

DR TAYLOR MARSHALL author, USA

MICHAEL VORIS Church Militant, USA

MICHAEL MATT The Remnant, USA

JOHN-HENRY WESTEN LifeSiteNews, Canada

JEANNE SMITS journalist, France

Moderated by: JOHN SMEATON SPUC, UK

SIGN-UP FOR LIVE STREAMING FOR FREE: lifesite.kartra.com/page/RoundTableLaunch

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CAL X M A R IA E

God uses the little ones to keep the true faith and to renew His Church INTERVIEW WITH

Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Bishop Athanasius Schneider O.C.R. is already a familiar figure to readers of Calx Mariae .

His tireless defense of the central truths of the Catholic faith, at this time when they are very much under attack, means that he is internationally known and well loved by the faithful. He is the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan and titular bishop of Celerina. A member of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra, his book “Dominus Est” is a beautiful plea for the worthy administration of Holy Communion. We are very pleased that His Excellency was able to answer some pressing questions ahead of the synod for the

CALX MARIAE: The synod in its modern form was introduced about 50 years ago. Yet, since the Synods on the Family (2014 and 2015), it seems to have become a vehicle for change. How should the synodal process be understood within the current context of the problems within the Church?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: According to the authentic meaning of the Church, the main aim of a Synod consists “in the defence and increment of faith and morals and in the preservation and strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline” (Code of Canon Law, canon 342). All the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council had professed on oath the following: “I condemn, reject, and anathematize

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all things contrary thereto, and all heresies which the Church hath condemned, rejected, and anathematized. This true Catholic faith, outside of which no one can be saved, which I now freely profess and to which I truly adhere, I do so profess and swear to maintain inviolate and with firm constancy with the help of God until the last breath of life”.

It is highly desirable and most topical that the participants of the upcoming Synod for the Amazon region would take to heart the above-mentioned aim of a synod and pronounce on oath the quoted words, used by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Councils and of previous Councils.

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Amazon region in this exclusive interview for Calx Mariae .

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CM: A great deal of concern has been expressed about the Amazon Synod. Its working document, Instrumentum laboris, seems to aspire to an egalitarian and ecologically minded society – a vision which draws its spiritual foundation from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si, proposing that care for “our common home” be at the heart of our religious and moral life. The environment is not an area in which the Church has traditionally issued authoritative teaching, so how do Catholics need to understand the increasing emphasis on the environment in the modern Church?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: In stressing the care for the earth, expressed in the formula “our common home”, the Church in our days deflects from her supernatural mission, from her primary and irreplaceable task to preach the Gospel, to teaching all nations to observe all that Christ has commanded (see Mt. 28:19-20), which is the most urgent task at all times. The Apostles did not yield to the temptation to diminish their supernatural mission in caring for temporal and corporal affairs, as they said: “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. ... But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:2,4) The faithful should say to the Pope and to the bishops of our days: “It is not right that you diminish your dedication to prayer and to the preferential option of preaching the revealed truths of God in order to serve and promote naturalism, environmentalism and materialism!”

CM: Setting aside the environmental movement’s involvement in population control, this ideology has virtually made an idol of the natural world. Many commentators have warned of a danger that the false idea that God positively wills “the diversity of religions” may lead to the synod promoting pantheism or pagan religious practices. Are these concerns justified?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: They are fully justified, as one can discover at various places throughout the text of the Instrumentum laboris a pagan sacralisation of “Mother Earth”. The Instrumentum laboris supports a pagan-like myth in affirming: “The image of life and ‘good living’ as ‘a way to the holy hill’ implies a communion with fellow-pilgrims and with nature as a whole. ... The new paths are based ‘on intercultural relations where diversity does not mean threat, and does not justify hierarchies of power of some over others, but dialogue from different cultural visions,

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of celebration, of interrelationship, and of a revival of hope’.” (no. 18) In another place, the Instrumentum laboris states in a positive manner the following: “The family is where one learns to live in harmony: between peoples, between generations, with nature, in dialogue with the spirits.” (no. 75) CM: The post-Conciliar Church lost much of her missionary zeal but does the Instrumentum laboris reflect an even more fundamental crisis in the Church if its authors believe that she must be evangelised by the non-Christian people of the Amazon?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Since the Second Vatican Council, the so-called interreligious dialogue with the stressing of positive elements of non-Christian religions weakened in a considerable manner the missionary zeal of the Church. Over time this method led in theory and in practice to the erroneous opinion of the positive or divinely willed character of the diversity of religions. As a culmination of this movement one can see the affirmation in the interreligious document of Abu Dhabi from 4 February 2019 that states: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in his wisdom.”

Although Pope Francis spoke during the General Audience from 4 April 2019 of the “permissive will of God” regarding the fact of the diversity of religions, he, unfortunately, did not make a reference to the Abu Dhabi document. Furthermore, this document was sent to the Pontifical Universities without a necessary doctrinal clarification note. Therefore, the error that says, that God wants positively the diversity of religions, is daily becoming ever more widely spread within the Church. The error of the Abu Dhabi affirmation finds its logical consequence in the idea, expressed in the Instrumentum laboris, that says, that the Church must be evangelised by the non-Christian people of the Amazon. One can read the following incredible affirmations: “The Amazon – or another indigenous or communal territory – is not only an ubi or a where (a geographical space), but also a quid or a what, a place of meaning for faith. ... Thus territory is a theological place where faith is lived, and also a particular source of God’s revelation: epiphanic places where the reserve of life and wisdom for the planet is manifest, a life and wisdom that speaks of God.” (no.19). Such affirmations come close to apostasy.

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CM: What should we expect from a Church with an "Amazonian face”? What meaning does this expression have?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: The expression “a Church with an Amazonian face” is a code word and a trick to promote within the life of the Church the theological errors and practices, as for example: pagan superstitions as sources of Divine Revelation and alternative pathways for salvation; intercultural dialogue instead of evangelization; postulating worship ministers of either sex within the Church to perform even shamanic rituals; a tribal collectivism that undermines personal uniqueness and freedom; the practical abolition of priestly celibacy.

CM: The shortage of priests in the Amazonian region seems to be the pretext for raising questions about priestly celibacy and the ordination of women to the diaconate or some other ordained ministry. Could such changes be proposed in one region, separately from the universal Church? What do these proposals mean for the Catholic priesthood in the Amazon and in the whole world?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: It is a revealed truth and infallibly taught by the Church in her Ordinary Uni-

versal Magisterium, that the sacrament of ordination is by divine will reserved to men (males). Priestly celibacy with perpetual sexual continence belongs to a tradition, which was established by the Apostles according to the teaching of the Roman Pontiffs and various local synods in the Eastern and Western Church from the first centuries. It is obvious, that the introduction of married and sexually active clergy in the Amazon region, will then naturally, and step by step, become a universal practice in the Latin Church.

CM: The Instrumentum laboris has provoked an unprecedented level of criticism. Do you think this reaction will cause synod officials to reconsider the agenda that has been set for the meeting?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Based on the experience of the Synods on the Family (2014 and 2015) one can assume that this time again there will be applied manipulative methods in order to impose on the participants of the Synod previously established and desired results. Such methods reflect worldliness and are unworthy of a synod, of an assembly of the

PHOTO CREDIT: JOHN ARON

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successors of the Apostles. One must again fear that over time a synod may become a kind of parliament, where strategy and ecclesiastical power of worldly and careerist clerics will win rather than the perennial and unchangeable truth of Christ.

CM: The recent “Declaration of the truths relating to some of the most common errors in the life of the Church of our time” that you signed, makes clear that the development of dogma cannot contradict what has previously been taught. This obviously applies to the teaching on the reception of Holy Communion.

Although structures and disciplines are not dogmatic, wouldn't decentralisation and democratisation, ongoing themes of recent synods, also contradict what the Church has always taught about herself and the Real Presence of Christ?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: In the issues regarding the revealed truths, the constant discipline of the sacraments which touches the essence of the sacraments and dogma itself, the proven apostolic rule of priestly celibacy, the centuries and even millennial old laws and forms of the liturgy of the Holy Mass, there should not be a decentralisation and democratisation. One has to recall the following words of St Irenaeus: “The Church, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet – as if occupying but one house – carefully preserves the Faith of the Apostles. She also believes these truths just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth.

For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe nor hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world.” (Adversus haereses 1,10, 2) CM: Some commentators have described the “Declaration” as a modern syllabus of errors. Do you see any signs that the hierarchy of the Church is coming to understand the real depth of the crisis and may return to its divinely ordained mission to save souls?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: So far very few of the hierarchy of the Church reacted positively to the “Declaration”. I believe that a great part of the bishops is orthodox and they agree in their hearts with the truths described in the “Declaration”, since these are truths which the Magisterium itself taught. Yet, they are living in an atmosphere of a general intimidation 32

and remain in their behaviour, therefore, silent or extremely prudent. On the other side, one has to state the reality that there are bishops in our days, who without blushing undermine, distort and suppress the integrity of the Catholic Faith; whereby they do this for different reasons, as for instance: political correctness, personal comfort and personal advantages, careerism, doctrinal relativism, acceptance of heresy, membership of Freemasonic organizations, and even apostasy.

CM: Prayer is obviously very important but what else should the laity do at this time of crisis? What responsibility does the laity have for the restoration of the Catholic Faith?

BISHOP SCHNEIDER: We should react in deepening our knowledge and convictions in the richness, beauty, solidity and immutability of the Catholic Faith.

Every faithful Catholic should be able to say to a heretical or apostatized priest, bishop or cardinal: “I know my Catholic Faith!”, “I know in Whom I believed.” (2 Tim. 1:12) “I will not allow myself to be confused by you or be deprived of my Catholic Faith, which the Apostles and all the Saints lived. I am ready to die for each dogma of the Catholic Faith, as did innumerable Martyrs.” We should spread good and convincing apologetic theological materials through various printed forms and especially through the mass media and the internet. We should organize specific theological conferences and talks. We should organize pilgrimages of Faith, where we publicly and prayerfully proclaim the truths of the Catholic Faith and do reparation for the sins against the Faith, committed in our days by members of the clergy and even high clergy. We should respectfully, courageously and lovingly admonish those priests and bishops, who distort and betray the Catholic Faith. In the current tremendous crisis within the Church, God uses, I believe, preferentially the ecclesiastical periphery of the little ones in the Church in order to keep the true Faith and to authentically renew His Church. Paraphrasing the words of St Paul, I would say: “God chooses what is foolish in the eyes of unfaithful and worldly bishops to shame them, since they want to be wise in the eyes of this world, but not in the eyes of God; God chooses what is weak in the eyes of unfaithful and worldly bishops to shame them, since they want to be strong in the eyes of this world, but not in the eyes of God; God chooses what is low and despised in the eyes of unfaithful and worldly bishops to shame them, since they want to be strong in the eyes of this world, but not in the eyes of God.” CAL X M A R IA E

Women INTRODUCTION “To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood,” noted Archbishop Fulton Sheen. We can only fathom the full dignity and beauty of Christian civilisation when we consider that its level is none other than the Blessed Virgin.

Today’s world looks even more fallen than after the Fall and wholly unworthy of her. However, we should not forget the perseverance of those who lived between Eve and Mary, ceaselessly imploring God to send a saviour to reopen the gates of Heaven. Their prayer was successful. So we should also pray – and work – for the speedy triumph of the Immaculate Heart.

Mary is our surest and shortest way to Christ. The closer we are to her, the closer we are to Christ. They are so intimately united that St Louis de Montfort claimed: “it were easier to separate the light from the sun, the heat from the fire”. “Nay,” he said “it were easier to separate from Thee all the angels and the saints than the divine Mary, because she loves Thee more ardently and glorifies Thee more perfectly than all the other creatures put together.”1 If she is our true help and comfort, our chief commander and sovereign, we need to know where to find her. With her marvellous assistance, she could be present anywhere, but we can surely find her at the foot of the Cross. The Cross is at the heart of Christian civilisation, of which Mary is the mother and crown.

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Alice von Hildebrand points to the privileged position that has been granted to women in the economy of redemption from the Annunciation to bringing news of the Resurrection.

MARIA MADISE The holy women, in the company of Our Lady, followed and served Christ as He taught, made their way to Pilate’s courtroom, accompanied Him to Calvary and assembled at the foot of the Cross.2 Amid complete despair, when God Himself was dying, woman received her new mission. The Apostles had fled. St John did come back and it was he that the dying Saviour entrusted to His Mother: “Woman, behold thy son.” Her task was not finished, but extended. And with her, each woman, who wants to fulfil her role, must share in her motherhood wrought at the foot of the Cross.

This article will consider how the revolution against Christian civilisation has sought to instrumentalise women and womanhood – so tightly connected to the Cross – and how, consequently, the counter-revolution is dependent on women.

ORDER AND REVOLUTION Revolution is a perpetual attack on God’s order. Recalling the success of the serpent, revolutionaries often

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AND THE REBUILDING OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

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THE CRUCIFIXION (1443 -1445), ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN, KUNSTHISTORISCHES, VIENNA.

and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.”6 In each of the following episodes of the revolution, therefore, the woman is especially tempted to protest against the sentence she received for her first sin: against being subject to the man and making sacrifices for her family.

However, tempting her has become more challenging after Mary’s “Fiat!”. For her pride, Eve was humbled, but through the perfect humility of the Blessed Virgin, the authentic dignity of women is restored.

Eve’s disobedience echoed the rebelling angels’ “non serviam!”. But Mary’s “Fiat!” reconciles the human race with God and forms the troops of the counter-revolution. The gate of Heaven closed behind Eve, while Mary became the gate of Heaven herself. The Fall and Incarnation frame the loss and restoration of order that kaleidoscopically form countless new patterns in Christian history.

Given what happened in the Garden of Eden, we may consider that it follows that love of sacrifice and perseverance are inherent in the female nature. It was through atoning sacrifice that her disobedience was to be redeemed. Until then she was to be completely powerless in healing the wound that she had inflicted on her relationship with God. All she could do was

“The Cross is at the heart of Christian civilisation, of which Mary is the mother and crown.”

Given that the aim of revolution is to destroy the Christian order mothered by Mary, logically, the aim of the counter-revolution is to stop the revolution and to restore authentic Christian civilisation in its beauty, goodness and truth.

In principle, the temptation inciting the woman to co-operate with the revolution derives from God’s command for her. Through the sin of our first parents, the original or natural order, created by God, became fallen. The relationships between man and God, as well as between man and woman, changed dramatically. Man and woman were punished each according to their main domain and privilege in the natural order, which for the woman was giving birth to new life. God said to her: “I will multiply thy sorrows, AU T UMN 2 0 1 9

to persevere in hope for the sacrifice to be offered for her and all her children born in exile. This love of sacrifice, so deep-rooted in women’s nature, is reflected in the words of Edith Stein: “After every encounter in which I realise my inability to influence others directly, I become more intensely conscious of the urgent need for a personal holocaustum.”7 Yet, Mary raised this to a completely new level. Her love of sacrifice was not the love of a sinner hoping for reconciliation, but the love of the mother, completely united with her Son who was the Sacrifice. Eve was sentenced to bring forth her children in sorrow. In her tremendous sorrow under the Cross, Mary became the mother of all and was ordered to love all. Since then every woman is called to take part in the sacrificial

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seek to achieve their goals through the woman. She is a strategic target of the revolution, because of her influence on the family and society.

By “revolution” we mean a movement that aims to destroy a legitimate order and replace it with an illegitimate power or state of things (not order). It is the subversion of the moral order and denial of God. This, in fact, is how “revolution” is defined by Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995), the Brazilian thinker and author of the book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, essential reading for all counter-revolutionaries.3 Dr Plinio explains that all big revolutions in history, whether the Reformation or the French and Communist, as well as any of the more localised and limited forms of revolution, are fruits of the same tree – the denial of God and His order. Thus, revolution has a universal character.4 He also argues, that each “episode” of the revolution contains within it all previous stages.5 The key elements of the Reformation can be seen in the French Revolution, and the key elements of both, the Reformation and French Revolution, in the Communist Revolution and so on. It is no surprise then, that we may identify many Marxist and socialist ideas in the revolution we are witnessing in the Church today.

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motherhood of Mary, be it naturally or spiritually, and raise citizens for Heaven.

Love of sacrifice and perseverance is what the revolution wants to destroy in every single woman and also in a culture. For the revolution, these are intrinsically related, because the woman who can nurture souls, can also nurture the culture.

WOMAN AND REVOLUTIONS How has each episode of the revolution sought to appeal to women and deform their mission? The Reformation and the French Revolution tempted the woman to rebel against her position in society. The Communist revolution turned the rebellion against her position in the family. The sexual revolution incited rebellion against her very womanhood. In the current phase of the revolution we see an attempt to introduce these errors into the Church.

We cannot study these attempts fully in the scope of this article. However, we can consider some of the key elements in these episodes in connection with women, while seeking to strengthen our commitment to Our Lady’s counter-revolutionary army today.

Early progress of the revolution against Christian civilization Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira identifies some of the essential factors in the Protestant revolution as: loss of the love of sacrifice, loss of true devotion to the Cross; the rise of sensuality and the importance of man’s own merits; the rise of natural above the supernatural.8 These were all changes that deeply affected the woman’s mission. Dr Plinio goes on to explain: “Pride begot the spirit of doubt, free examination and naturalistic interpretation of Scripture, and revolt against superiority which wrought ecclesiastical egalitarianism… On the moral plane, the triumph of sensuality was affirmed by the suppression of priestly celibacy and by the introduction of divorce.”9 This first episode of the revolution in the Christian world laid out the plan for destroying the protective walls of Christian morality – enshrined in the commandments and sanctified by the sacraments.

We could make two observations here in connection to the woman. The long term consequence of the growth of pride and sensuality became evident in the later stages of the revolution, especially in the Communist and sexual revolution, when divorce, combined with its allies, contraception and abortion, ensnared 36

women in moral chaos. It took time to reach that point. However, we should not miss the first blow to the sacramental order of marriage, which made all further blows possible.

Secondly, we must consider the inevitable and immediate conflict between these developments and the Blessed Virgin who is a constant reminder of God’s order. From the initial episode of the revolution in the Christian world, statues of Our Lady, her images and devotions had to be violently removed in pursuit of the design that so wholly contradicted her.

Like the Reformation, the French Revolution entered into a direct conflict with the Blessed Virgin. A “Goddess of Reason” was enthroned in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. A temple of Philosophy was erected in the nave and decorated with busts of philosophers.

At its base was an altar dedicated to Reason, and before it a torch of truth. The true Seat of Wisdom was driven from her own cathedral.

According to Dr Plinio, the French Revolution was “the heir of Renaissance neopaganism and Protestantism, with which it had a profound affinity.”10 “The political work of the French Revolution was but the transposition to the sphere of the State of the ‘reform’ the more radical Protestant sects had adopted in the matter of ecclesiastical organization: the revolt against the King corresponding to the revolt against the Pope; the revolt of the common people against the nobles, to the revolt of the ecclesiastical “common people”; the faithful, against the “aristocracy” of the Church, the clergy.”11 Central to the French Revolution was the emergence of the Freemasonic lodges and the role they played in spreading revolutionary ideas. When the permanent instruction of Alta Vendita (Italian high lodge) came to light, it revealed a strategic plan to subvert the Catholic Church. Both Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII ordered this revolutionary document to be made public. Also the letters, which have survived from the members of the lodge, leave no room for doubt of their plan: “Catholicism does not fear a very sharp sword any more than the monarchies feared it. But, these two foundations of Social Order can collapse under CAL X M A R IA E

“It is corruption on a big scale that we have undertaken… a corruption that should one day enable us to lead the Church to its grave. Lately, I heard one of our friends laughing philosophically at our projects saying: ‘To destroy Catholicism, we should do away with women.’ The idea is good in a certain way, but since we cannot get rid of women, let us corrupt them with the Church. ‘Corruptio optimi, pessima.’ The best dagger to strike the Church is corruption.”12 Notably, in the universal corruption of Catholicism, women were considered to have an important role. This programme of corruption was determinedly pursued and in association with the feminist movement in the 1960s, these efforts bore ample fruit.

Showing remarkable continuity with the Masonic letters of the previous century, the magazine L’Humanisme wrote at that time: “The first conquest to be done is the conquest of women. Woman must be freed from the chains of the Church and from the law. […] To break down Catholicism, we must begin by suppressing the dignity of women, we must corrupt them together with the Church. We spread the practice of nudity: first the arms, then the legs, then all the rest. In the end, people will go around naked, or almost, without batting an eyelid. And, once modesty has been removed, the sense of the sacred will be extinguished, the morality will be weakened and faith will die of asphyxiation.”13 Until recently, the Church zealously protected the purity of her daughters. In his address to a group of Catholic girls, Pope Pius XII lamented: “Many women… give in to the tyranny of fashion, be it even immodest, in such a way as to appear not even to suspect what is unbecoming. They have lost the very concept of danger: they have lost the instinct of modesty.”14 AU T UMN 2 0 1 9

Later, he commented on the inherent connection between the morals of an individual and the morals of culture and the nation, so well-known to the enemies of the Church: “It is often said almost with passive resignation that fashions reflect the customs of a people. But it would be more exact and much more useful to say that they express the decision and moral direction that a nation intends to take: either to be shipwrecked in licentiousness or maintain itself at the level to which it has been raised by religion and civilization.”15 Our Lady herself issued warnings against such corruption of her daughters. “Certain fashions are to be introduced which will offend Our Lord very much,” she said in Fatima. “Those who serve God should not follow these fashions. The Church has no fashions. Our Lord is always the same.”

Already much earlier, 1594-1634, in Quito, Ecuador, Our Lady of Good Success had said: “Unbridled passions will give way to a total corruption of customs because Satan will reign through the Masonic sects, targeting the children in particular to ensure general corruption.

“In those times the atmosphere will be saturated with the spirit of impurity which, like a filthy sea, will engulf the streets and public places with incredible license… Innocence will scarcely be found in children, or modesty in women.”16 Communist Revolution The Communist Revolution instrumentalised women with enormous profit. In his article “A Great Beginning” (1919), Vladimir Lenin asserted that “we have far more organising talent among the working and peasant women than we are aware of.”17 And the party vowed that it is principally important to employ these talents in state business and social work. With that manoeuvre, the family was left to be mothered by the state.

The influential Communist women Inessa Armand (1874-1920), a member of the executive committee of the Bolshevik party, also Lenin’s lover, and Aleksandra Kollontai (1872-1952), the first Soviet People’s Commissar for Social Welfare, argued that sexual lib-

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corruption; let us never tire to corrupt them… from the blood of martyrs Christians are born; let us not make martyrs; but, let us popularise vice among the multitudes; may they breathe it through their five senses; may they drink it and be saturated. Make vicious hearts and there will be no more Catholics.

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eration was a necessary premise for the realisation of a socialist society. Kollontai wrote, in 1920, in the journal Komunistka: “In place of the individual and egoistic family, a great universal family of workers will develop, in which … men and women, will above all be comrades… These new relations will ensure for humanity all the joys of a love unknown in the commercial society, of a love that is free and based on the true social equality of the partners…The red flag of the social revolution which flies above Russia and is now being hoisted aloft in other countries of the world proclaims the approach of the heaven on earth.”18 In 1921 she explained: “The economic subjugation of women in marriage and the family is done away with, and responsibility for the care of the children and their physical and spiritual education is assumed by the social collective. The family teaches and instils egoism thus weakening the ties of the collective and hindering the construction of communism.”19 Nothing like the powerful alliance of Communism and feminism has employed women more ferociously in the destruction of the family. To assume their responsibilities as “talented organisers” they were either to abort their children or hand them over to the Communist educational model that in the words of Kollontai, would “take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of a child.”20 Once the family was out of the way, immorality and liberalism would pave the way to “free love”. Incidentally, sex education in our schools is the fruit of the seeds sown at this stage of the revolution.

Lenin congratulated himself on the progress made with regard to the position of women. He claimed: “In this field, not a single democratic party in the world, not even in the most advanced bourgeois republic, has done in decades so much as a hundredth part of what we did in our very first year in power. We really razed to the ground the infamous laws placing women in a position of inequality.” 21

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The speed of the Bolshevik attack on the true mission of women and the family was remarkable indeed. On 17 December 1917, a few weeks after Bolsheviks seized power, divorce was introduced; in 1920 abortion was legalised without restriction (Soviet Russia was the first country in the world to allow this); in 1922 prostitution and homosexuality were decriminalised.22 In 1923 Leon Trotsky wrote: “The first period of family destruction is still far from being achieved. The disintegration process is in full swing.”23 Communist movements grew out of the French Revolution, which was the heir to the Protestant revolution – and nothing could be more logical, as Dr Plinio explains: “The normal fruit of deism is atheism. Sensuality, revolting against the fragile obstacles of divorce, tends of itself toward free love. Pride, enemy of all superiority, finally had to attack the last inequality, that of wealth. Drunk with dreams of a one-world republic, of the suppression of all ecclesiastical or civil authority, of the abolition of any Church, and of the abolition of the State itself after a transitional dictatorship of the workers, the revolutionary process now brings us the twentieth-century neobarbarian, its most recent and extreme product.”24 On the eve of the Communists’ seizure of power, the Blessed Virgin appeared in Fatima. Her Immaculate Heart desired the Consecration of Russia, to prevent it from spreading its errors throughout the world. But the world had rejected the humble Virgin and enthroned a common woman worker instead.

Sexual revolution In the realm of the family, the sexual revolution was the refinement and globalisation of the Communist revolution. When considering the territories and populations conquered by Communist regimes, we see that at this stage, the revolution had truly built an empire.

Dr Plinio also points out that through its networks and infiltration of every social and professional sphere “the Third Revolution applies with devastating efficacy the tactics of psychological conquest.”25 What the sexual revolution added to the refinement and spread of the revolution was contraception.

In her book Adam and Eve after the Pill, Mary Eberstadt notes, “it may be possible to imagine the Pill

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AU T UMN 2 0 1 9

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

being invented without the sexual revolution that followed, but imagining the sexual revolution without the Pill and other modern contraceptives simply cannot be done.”26 The pill redefined the most elemental human relationships. It is perhaps the single greatest change in the relationship between men and women after the Fall. The individual and social consequences of contraception predicted by Humanae vitae (1968) – including 1) lower moral standards; 2) greater infidelity; 3) less respect for women by men; and 4) coercive use of reproductive technology by governments – are all fully vindicated today.

Nothing has ever done more for woman than Christianity. But nothing has enslaved and harmed women more than “sexual liberation”. There is ample empirical evidence – which Eberstadt presents in her book – that people in faithful married relationships “score better on all kinds of measures of well-being”.

Other data “testifies to the proposition that families headed by a married couple are better off than those headed by a cohabiting couple”.27 Children who grow up with both of their biological parents do better emotionally, financially, educationally, mentally than children who grow up with a single parent.28 Secular research tells us that lifelong, faithful marriage is better for children, better for adults and better for society.

The ideological position that women need to be freed from marriage and their fertility in order to enjoy unrestricted sexual relations, along with its permanent back-up plan, abortion, is a lie that subjects them to a grave injustice. It robs them of their right to be honoured and protected as women.

The sexual revolution suggests that, as a result of continued offences against God, woman “was severely punished in the very domain of her glory – to give life”.29 Only she is no longer suffering in the pain of childbirth, but rather in the fruitless pain of the sacrifice of her children on the altars of the revolution.

The moral blindness of our society has grown to the extent that killing of fifty million unborn children worldwide each year is no longer considered a crime that cries out to heaven. Consequently, millions of women walk the earth wounded to the core – in their femininity, motherhood, and ability to love, to say nothing of those who share in these wounds, even if they also share responsibility for inflicting them.

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THE ANNUNCIATION (C.1525), JOOS VAN CLEVE, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.

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Tradition opposes female ordination, Sacred Scriptures reject it, canon law forbids it, popes throughout history have ruled against it. Christ came to earth as the Son of Man. He established his priesthood in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. Therefore, all ministers ordained to His ministry must be men.

This is not ordered so as to exclude women. On the contrary, Christ bound Himself on earth intimately to one woman, the Blessed Virgin, who would have been most qualified of all women to share in His ordained ministry, if that were part of the divine plan. But the plan for the woman is different. Edith Stein writes:

Revolution in the Church All phases of the revolution share one main target – the Church. At the heart of the revolution is the subversion of God’s order and a desire to institute disorder without God. The revolution will never be satisfied as long as the Holy Catholic Church, the earthly shrine of God-given order, stands strong. It desires to corrupt the Church, as it has corrupted the world. Let us recall the correspondence of the Alta Vendita:

“He formed her so closely after His own image as no other human being before or after; He gave her a place in the Church for all eternity such as has been given to no other human being. And just so, He has called women in all times to the most intimate union with Him: they are to be emissaries of His love, proclaimers of His will to kings and popes, and forerunners of His Kingdom in the hearts of men. To be the Spouse of Christ is the most sublime vocation which has been given, and whoever sees this way open before her will yearn for no other way.”33

“…let us popularise vice among the multitudes… make vicious hearts and there will be no more Catholics… it is corruption on a big scale that we have undertaken...a corruption that should one day enable us to lead the Church to its grave.”

Instead of attacking her directly, the revolution allures her children to take everything it has achieved in the world today – secularisation, divorce, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, gender ideology, and bring these into the Church. And once morality is corrupted, doctrine is corrupted. If she were to accept any of these sins in her children without calling them to repent, all her teachings would wither.

Yet, at this stage of the revolution, even more seems to be under attack than her moral and doctrinal health – namely, the very relationship with her Son which is at the foundation of the salvation of mankind. This brings us to the upcoming Amazon synod.

Concerns about the synod are dominated by proposals to adopt pagan, syncretistic, egalitarian, tribal ideas and practices incompatible with Catholic teaching and the admission of married men to the priesthood. It is the discussion of an official ministry that could be conferred on women that is relevant for us.32

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Marriage is between two parties. One cannot be married to oneself. Women can never carry out a ministry in the person of Christ. Women cannot be ordained deacons either, because all other ranks of ordained ministry are ordered after the ministry of the High Priest. Women’s role is fashioned after that of the Spouse of Christ, the Church, who is the fruitful mother of souls that are borne to Him. The institution of marriage in this world is under continual attack. Today it is fiercely assaulted by the homosexual and transgender agenda. Proposals to ordain women, however, direct these attacks on the supernatural marriage of Christ and His Church.

Words fail to convey the gravity of such a desecration.

However, this shows why churchmen who do not recognise this desecration are incapable of resisting the evil of homosexuality and gender ideology.

Once again, a revolutionary proposal seeking the input of women, is founded on the same premise as the ancient Fall. The serpent suggests we will gain something we are denied, while retaining everything we have now. What was the reality? Eve got the apple, but Paradise was lost. There was no gain to speak of.

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After being tempted to rebel against God, against man, against her family and children, the woman is incited to rebel against her own nature and against womanhood. G.K. Chesterton wrote that the feminist is someone who “dislikes the chief feminine characteristics” and that “feminists want to destroy womanhood”.30 Alice von Hildebrand added, “the new age philosophy of feminism, in waging war on femininity, is in fact waging war on Christianity. For in the divine plan both are intimately linked.”31 Feminism leaves culture without femininity and without the mother, without the queen.

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To fulfil her destiny, to be truly happy, every woman must take Mary as her example. Regardless of her particular role or state in life, if she is to be a joyful counter-revolutionary, she must submit herself wholly to God in everything she does.

Thanks to the merits of the Blessed Virgin, instead of human equality, women are offered a dignity and honour in the Catholic Church unparalleled to what they have received in any other institution. This is rooted in humble service of the handmaid of the Lord.

Her “Fiat!” is the greatest word ever said after Logos.

Her word brought forth the Incarnation of the Word.

CONCLUSION A similar examination of the key episodes of the revolution could be taken through the perspective of men, formation of children and youth, religious life or in a number of other ways. However, women have their own particular, and irreplaceable, role in countering the revolution.

The pure image of feminine nature stands before our eyes in the Immaculata, the Virgin, writes Edith Stein.

“The most pure virgin is the only one safeguarded from every stain of sin. Except for her, no one embodies feminine nature in its original purity. Every other woman has something in herself inherited from Eve, and she must search her way from Eve to Mary. There is a bit of defiance in each woman which does not want to humble itself under any sovereignty. In each, there is something of that desire which reaches for forbidden fruit. And she is hindered by both these tendencies in what we clearly recognise as woman’s work.”34

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“Whether she is a mother in the home, or occupies a place in the limelight of public life, or lives behind quiet cloister walls, she must be a handmaid of the Lord everywhere. So had the Mother of God been in all circumstances of her life, as the Temple virgin enclosed in that hallowed precinct, by her quiet work in Bethlehem and Nazareth, as guide to the apostles and the Christian community after the death of her Son. Were each woman an image of the Mother of God, a Spouse of Christ, an apostle of the divine Heart, then would each fulfil her feminine vocation, no matter what conditions she lived in and what worldly activity absorbed her life.”35 What practical conclusions could we draw?

We should of course share in all the tasks that come with our time to defend and spread the faith, but women today seem to be required specifically to exercise discipline of the senses and focus on the divine. To lead, so to say, a “Eucharistic life” – to love and adore the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as a bride loves her husband. Bridal love of Christ makes His business one’s own, says Edith Stein. And His business is none other than saving souls.

Vigilance is required to maintain purity of mind and body. By the way we look, speak and act we can give witness that He exists. A fact so well hidden today!

We should look and sound Catholic. Our appearance, therefore, should not contradict what we believe. We are in the battle. Soldiers in slippers cannot be taken seriously at wartime. Their uniform, on the other hand, shows their readiness and competence to fight.

Let us look like Catholic women “on duty” at all times.

The Catechism of Perseverance speaking of the first century Rome recalls: “The admirable purity of our ancestors appeared in their exterior. Nothing was more striking than the contrast between Christian and pagan women in this respect.”36 Christian mothers must have special regard to the holiness of their children. “All children have an instinct for the sense of dignity and decorum of their mother,”

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“… the power of Mary over all the devils will especially break out in the latter times, when Satan will lay his snares against her heel; that is to say, her humble slaves and her poor children, whom she will raise up to make war against him. They shall be little and poor in the world’s esteem, and abased before all, like the heel, trodden under-foot and persecuted as the heel is by the other members of the body. But in return for this, they shall be rich in the grace of God, which Mary shall distribute to them abundantly. They shall be great and exalted before God in sanctity, superior to all other creatures by their animated zeal, and leaning so strongly on the divine succour, that, with the humility of their heel, in union with Mary, they shall crush the head of the devil, and cause Jesus Christ to triumph.”37

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ENDNOTES: 1.

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37.

St Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, Saint Benedict Press, Charlotte 2010, p. 30.

Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman, Sapientia Press, Ave Maria 2002, p. 18.

Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), Spring Grove 2008, p. 40.

Ibid., p. 11.

Ibid., p. 4.

Genesis 3:16.

Sister Teresia de Spiritu Sancto, O.C.D., Edith Stein, Sheed and Ward 1952, London and New York, p. 77.

Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, TFP, Spring Grove 2008, pp. 14-16.

Ibid., p. 16.

Ibid., p. 17.

Ibid.

Letter of Vindice to Nubius [pen-names of two leaders of the Italian ‘Alta Vendita’], dated 9August 1838, International Review of Freemasonry, 1928; quoted

by Robert T. Hart in Those Who Serve God Should Not Follow the Fashions, Little Flowers Family Press 2017, p. 6.

Quoted by Virginia Coda Nunziante in Countering the Challenges of Today’s Society as Catholic Women, Voice of the Family 2018; http://voiceofthefamily.com/countering-the-challenges-of-todays-society-as-catholic-women/ Pius XII, Address to a group of Catholic Action girls on 6 Oct. 1940, quoted

by Robert T. Hart in Those Who Serve God Should Not Follow the Fashions, Little Flowers Family Press 2017, p. 5.

Pope Pius XII, Address to a Congress of the “Latin Union of High Fashion”, 8 Nov. 1957; quoted by Robert T. Hart in Those Who Serve God Should Not Follow the Fashions, Little Flowers Family Press 2017, p. 26.

Prophecies of Our Lady of Good Success About Our Times, TFP 2000, https://www. tfp.org/prophecies-of-our-lady-of-good-success-about-our-times/ Vladimir Lenin, A Great Beginning, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists. org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/19.htm Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the Family, first published in Komunistka, No. 2, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm Alexandra Kollontai, Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations, first published in Kommunistka, No. 12, 1921, https://www.marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm Ibid.

Vladimir Lenin, A Great Beginning, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists. org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/19.htm Cf. Givanni Cadevilla, Dalla Rivoluzione bolscevica alla Federazione Russa, Froanco Angeli, Rome 1996; quoted by Prof. Roberto de Mattei, A History of Revolutions and their Consequences for the Family, Voice of the Family 2017, http://voiceofthefamily. com/roberto-de-mattei-a-history-of-revolutions-and-their-effects-on-the-family/ Leon Trotskij, Problems of everyday life, Monad Press, New York 1986, p. 37.

Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, TFP, Spring Grove 2008, p. 18.

Ibid., p. 130.

Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve before the Pill. Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2012, p. 12.

Ibid., p. 25.

Ibid., p. 27-30.

Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman, Sapientia Press, Ave Maria 2002, p. x.

Quoted in ibid., p. 2 and p. 8.

Ibid. p. 32.

Instrumentum laboris, No. 129, a), 3., http://www.sinodoamazonico.va/content/ sinodoamazonico/en/documents/pan-amazon-synod--the-working-documentfor-the-synod-of-bishops.html Edith Stein, Essays on Women, ICS Publications, Washington 2010, p. 84.

Ibid., p. 119.

Ibid., p. 54.

Abbé Gaume, The Catechism of Perseverance, Vol. III, p. 78. Dublin; quoted by Robert T. Hart in Those Who Serve God Should Not Follow the Fashions, Little Flowers Family Press 2017, p. 33.

St Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, Saint Benedict Press, Charlotte 2010, p. 24.

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observed Cardinal Siri. This is why modesty in dress, comportment and speech is necessary not only in public, but also at home. By guarding the innocence of their children, Christian mothers foster wilful purity in their children in later life.

Religious are called to manifest the fidelity of true brides in every detail. These traditions nurture the hidden life in this special and most privileged union.

A bride has more perfect opportunities to offer signs of affection and service to her husband compared to any other.

In all of these roles, interiorly, we must unite ourselves with Our Lady – through the Sacraments, through the Rosary, and through consecrating our entire lives to her.

Since Eve, only one woman has had the right attitude of complete surrender, the attitude of Fiat. Let us seek to imitate that woman.

Let us adopt her attitude to the Truth – protect it as a mother would protect her child and submit to it as she submitted to her Child who was the Truth.

Let us be part of her army under the command of Her Immaculate Heart, turned always to God, while crushing the devil with her heel. We are her little children called to the battle in the way described

by St Louis de Montfort:

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MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIA, GALEAZZO CAMPI (1475–1536), PALA DELLA CHIESA DI SAN GIOVANNI IN CROCE, CREMONA.

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Mater Misericordiae The following talk was delivered at the Rome Life Forum, held at the Angelicum, 16-17 May and organised by Voice of the Family.

T

he best known prayer to Our Lady, after the angelic salutation, is the Hail Holy Queen, where she is also greeted as Mother of Mercy. In both those titles, the humble Virgin of Nazareth is closely associated with her Son, who is the King of kings and yet ever merciful to sinners.

According to Seneca, the greatness of a leader, be it king, queen or president, consists in relieving the plight of the wretched. In this vein, David instructed Solomon about the care he should have for the poor: “For he (the king) delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.” (Ps.72:12-14) While the Davidic kingship, like all human kingships, is a participation in the divine kingship, it is meant, above all, to reflect the divine governance.

The absolute and universal kingship of the triune God is exhibited in His providential care for all that He has made, even feeding the birds of the air who neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and who do not fall to the ground without His knowledge. (Mt. 6:26, 10:29) Great is His love for His creatures, and so great is His love for the human race that God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, at the fullness of time was born of a woman (Gal.4:4) and became man. (Jn.1:14) This man, Jesus Christ, is God because, in what is called the hypostatic union, human nature and the divine nature are united in a single Person, who is God the Son. Jesus then is one divine

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Person who is fully God and fully man and also universal king.

As man, Jesus is the universal King for three reasons.

First, He is King of creation by virtue of F R L I N U S C LO V I S His Divine Personality (Jn. 1:1; Phil. 2:6), that is, this Person, independent of his nature is king. (Col.1:16-17) Second, by reason of the hypostatic union and His fullness of grace from which we have all received (Jn.1:16), He is the Head of all creation (Eph. 1:22), which receives from Him its ultimate and most august consecration. Christ proclaimed this kingship to Pilate saying that His kingdom was not of this world (Jn.18:36), that it was opposed to the kingdom of Satan and that its citizens partake of the lot of the saints in light. Third, He is king by right of conquest. He subjected all things beneath His feet when, by His humility and His obedience unto death, He gained victory over Satan, over sin and over death.

Mary participates in the kingship of her Son. First, as the Mother of God made man, she shares in the dignity of her Son and hence, connaturally in His universal kingship. Second, the Incarnation of God the Son (Lk. 1:31; Eph. 2:6) places Mary in a unique relationship with each Person of the Blessed Trinity, namely, her election to “the high office and dignity of being the Mother of the Son and, in consequence, the Father’s Daughter of predilection and Temple of the Holy Spirit”. (Lumen gentium, no. 53) Thus, Mary, by her fiat, became the mother of Jesus who, by His hypostatic union and His fullness of grace, is King of

THE GLORIES OF MARY

SALVE REGINA

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the universe from which her queenship arises. Third, Mary, by her close union with Him in His humiliation and suffering, was associated with His victory over sin, Satan and death (Gn. 3:15; Jn. 19:25-27) and so is really and truly associated with Him in His kingship.

(2 Tim. 2:10-12) Mary is therefore associated with Christ’s kingship in a true, even if in a subordinate, manner from which many consequences follow. As universal King, Jesus has power to establish and promulgate the New Law engraved on our hearts (Jer. 31:31-33), to propose doctrine for belief, to give souls sanctifying grace with the accompanying virtues, to judge the living and the dead. Mary participates in this universal kingship as the dispenser of all the graces, which are imprinted in an interior and hidden manner on our minds, in our hearts and on our wills and, which she merited both with and in dependence on Jesus. She also participates in His kingship exteriorly by the fact that whilst on earth she was the exemplar of all the virtues, that she helped to enlighten the Apostles, and that

tification of sinners by grace is the greatest of God’s works both in itself and because it is something done for the unworthy.

The virtue of mercy is found also in Mary, who begot the Author of grace and who, even during her life on earth, unobtrusively distributes grace to others.

Her mission of distributing grace began within days of the Incarnation when, hastening to Zacharias’s house, she greeted Elizabeth, who, filled with the Holy Spirit and recognising the grace given, declared “when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy”. (Lk.1:41) Mary’s merciful intervention at Cana resulted in the grace of Christ’s first miracle and also, in the grace by which the disciples’ faith in Him was confirmed. (Jn. 2:11) The graces obtained from her prayer with the apostles in the Upper Room brought about the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. (Acts. 1:14) The supreme grace of Christ’s incarnation would not have been possible without Mary’s consent, which results in her being inseparably bound up with His redeeming power.

“Mercy is a virtue of the will and, as St Thomas notes, it is the virtue of the powerful and the good who alone are capable of providing assistance to those most in need of mercy. Mercy is found, first and foremost, in God, whose power is most gloriously revealed in sparing and in forgiving repentant sinners.” she continues to enlighten us when, for example, she manifests herself in sanctuaries such as at Guadalupe, at Lourdes and at Fatima. It follows that she does not participate in the royal judicial power of punishing sin, since she is called, in virtue of her mediation of all graces, the Mother of Mercy and not Mother of justice.

Mercy is virtue of the will and, as St Thomas notes, it is the virtue of the powerful and the good who alone are capable of providing assistance to those most in need of mercy. Mercy is found, first and foremost, in God, whose power is most gloriously revealed in sparing and in forgiving repentant sinners. Extrapolating from the Augustinian teaching that it is more glorious for God to draw good out of evil than to create out of nothing, St Thomas held that the jus46

Mary’s universal mediation must always be understood as being subordinate to that of Christ. Christ, since He is the direct bearer and representative of God’s influence on creation, draws the human race closer to the Godhead. Even so, Mary is the only creature, out of all His creation, whom God approached and with whom He united Himself.

Even though the merits Christ won by His sacrificial death on Calvary are superabundant and sufficient in themselves, Mary, by cooperating in Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, became an integral part of that sacrifice. In the words of St Bernard, “there is no doubt that Jesus Christ alone was more than sufficient to redeem us; but it was more becoming that both sexes should cooperate in the reparation of an evil in causing which both had shared.” That is, through CAL X M A R IA E

Mary’s cooperation a comprehensive sacrifice was made for the human race, the merits of which, because she shared in obtaining them, she is able to distribute to poor pitiful sinners.

PRINCIPAL MANIFESTATIONS OF MERCY Four of the titles contained in the Litany of Loreto highlight Mary as the Mother of Mercy who distributes grace to poor sinners: Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comforter of the Afflicted and Help of Christians. These titles highlight Mary as a gracious advocate who turns her eyes of mercy towards those suffering bodily sickness that she may heal their souls, console them in their afflictions and to provide strength for overcoming difficulties.

HEALTH OF THE SICK The many miraculous physical cures obtained through Mary’s intercession declare her to be Health of the Sick but, as with Christ, her true purpose is directed to the healing of spiritual infirmities. Her first and greatest concern will always be to provide remedies for the four spiritual wounds inflicted on us by original sin and by our personal sins: the wounds of concupiscence, of weakness, of ignorance and of malice.

As with cause and effect, there is an intrinsic relationship between sin and suffering. Sin, which seriously wounded human nature, lies at the bottom of all suffering, both physical and spiritual. Its malice is such that it attempted to eliminate God but the

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REFUGE OF SINNERS Of all God’s creatures, Mary is not only the greatest and holiest but also the most approachable, the most gentle and the most helpful. Holiness naturally detests sin because of the injury it inflicts on the soul.

Mary’s holiness qualifies her as the perfect Refuge of Sinners since, having a great desire to bring sinners to repentance, she welcomes them with her Son’s gentleness. She knows that her Son’s sacrifice was the only remedy for sin and its consequences. Sin’s most lethal consequence is that slow slither into a state of brazen self-sufficiency where the conscience is deadened as

THE GLORIES OF MARY

ALLEGORY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (1616), JUAN DE LAS ROELAS, NATIONAL SCULPTURE MUSEUM, VALLADOLID.

very act contrived to do this brought about its own destruction. Although sin can never again crucify the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8), it is still capable of doing unspeakable harm. Hence, we require an intercessor who can apply the graces that will heal the wounds of our sinful desires, of our weakness in the face of temptation, of our nescience of the will of God and of the habit of our rebellion.

Innumerable miraculous icons, statues and images of Mary can be found throughout the world and through many of them she distributes her favours. In so doing she mirrors her Son’s solicitude in restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, wholeness to the crippled and lame, while illustrating her deep and limitless empathy for human misery. Places blessed with Marian apparitions are of particular interest since there invariably she echoes her Son’s call to repentance and to live the Gospel message. (Mt. 4:17) Like her Son, her primary concern is for the salvation of souls.

Her maternal solicitude for sinners finds it acme at Lourdes, where, in 1858, she appeared eighteen times to 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous, with a call to conversion and penitence. Bernadette was asked not only to pray for sinners but also to undertake penitential exercises such as “kissing the ground”, “drinking from the spring and washing in it” and “eating of the grass growing there” for their conversion. She was also told to inform the priests that people should come to the site in procession and that a chapel should be built. On 25 February a spring was discovered where several people were cured after washing in the water.

These cures are indicative of Mary’s desire to bring health to both body and soul.

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“ Suffering makes a soul either bitter or better for the simple reason that pain and affliction are conditioned by love, whether by an exaggerated self-love or by love of God. In the former, pain eats into the heart and poisons the soul, while in the latter, suffering becomes the greatest single means of perfection.” the will is progressively weakened and the intellect darkened. Mary not only frees sinners from the bond of sinful habits by the power of her intercession but she also obtains their reconciliation with God by the merits of her Son. Additionally, she protects them from Satan, and from anything that could lead to fresh falls, while helping them to learn the sweetness of penance.

At her many shrines countless numbers of sinners have been converted and, many condemned criminals owe their last minute conversion to her intercession.

In tears, she appeared to the two children near La Salette in the French Alps, lamenting the region’s violation of the Lord’s Day and the blasphemous use of the Lord’s Name. She complained that she could no longer hold back the hand of her Son: “It is so strong and so heavy that I cannot hold it back any longer.”

However, she did hold it back. Even today, when the sins of the world seem to reach saturation point, she holds back the hand of her Son and manifests herself more than ever as the Refuge of Sinners. David, the repentant sinner, declared that the eyes of the Lord are on the just (Ps. 33:16) but experience has shown that the eyes of His Mother are on both the just and the sinner. Indeed, the eyes of Mary are the eyes of a mother; and a mother not only watches over her child to prevent it from falling but, should it fall, she picks it up, attends to its injuries and comforts it.

COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED Whilst affliction comes in many forms: physical, moral, spiritual, emotional and mental, it is hardest to bear when it appears purposeless and, is compounded if the sufferer feels that the pain must be borne alone. In such cases, despair can quickly set in. Suffering makes a soul either bitter or better for the simple reason that pain and affliction are conditioned by love, whether by an exaggerated self-love or by love of God. In the former, pain eats into the heart and poisons the soul, while in the latter, suffering becomes the greatest single means of perfection.

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Sin is seldom seen as the principal fountain of grief and consequently, sinners have little sorrow for their offences against God. The two thieves crucified with Christ were both guilty, both condemned, both in agony, and initially both blasphemed but, at one point, perhaps on seeing the anguish of Christ’s Mother, one stopped and passed judgement on himself: “We are only paying for what we have done.” (Lk. 23:40-42) By converting worldly sorrow into godly sorrow (2 Cor. 7:10), he entered Paradise, with the Redeemer.

The sixth spiritual work of mercy is “to comfort the afflicted”. Comfort is brought by accompanying the one suffering, by being present, by listening compassionately, by sharing the experience as best one can and by empathising. “Blessed be … the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:4) Even during her life on earth Mary can be seen as the Comforter of the Afflicted. Her presence on Calvary was a consolation to Jesus, especially after the abandonment He felt in the Garden when the Apostles slept. Equally, her presence was an undoubted consolation to the Apostles especially when they gathered around her in prayer. (Acts. 1:14) The Book of Genesis relates that God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. (Gen. 1:16) For those alone at night the latter is often a comfort. Mystically, the sun symbolises Christ, the greater light that rules the just, that is, those who live in the clear day of divine grace. The moon symbolises Mary, the lesser light that rules sinners, that is, those who are in the night of sin and are to be enlightened and brought to the comfort of repentance. According to Innocent III, whoever is in the night of sin, let him cast his eyes on the moon, let him implore Mary.

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“To Thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.”

Since distress is felt in the soul, it is the soul that needs the greatest comfort. By her participation in Christ’s sacrificial death, Mary has been sealed for the labour of comforting souls. She is ever ready to help us and, as a Mother, knows what is best for us, in health and in happiness, in sickness and in sorrow.

There is room in her heart for all the children of God.

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THE ALLEGORY OF THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO (C.1572), PAOLO VERONESE, GALLERIE DELL'ACCADEMIA, VENICE.

HELP OF CHRISTIANS Under the title Help of Christians, Mary’s universal mediation in its practical application extends to the entire work of salvation, from the first grace of conversion to the grace of final perseverance. Help is an effect of love. Since Christ entrusted to Mary all those whom He redeemed, she loves them as her children and helps them in their difficulties and assists them in living a virtuous life.

Two inscriptions in Greek dating from the first centuries of Christianity relate to the Virgin Mary: θεοτοκος (Theotokos, Mother of God) and βοηθεια (Boetheia, the Helper). Many Church Fathers referred to Mary explicitly as “βοηθεια” including St John Chrysostom in 345, Proclus in 476, Sebas of Caesarea in 532 and St John Damascene 749. The oldest prayer addressed directly to Mary, the Sub tuum praesidium, invokes her as Help of Christians. This prayer, with Praesidium translated as “an assistance given in time of war by fresh troops in a strong manner”, was found on a papyrus dating, at the latest, from the end of the third century.

History is replete with stories of Mary’s intervention at critical times in the lives of individuals and nations. She wrought the instant conversion of rabid anti-Catholics, such as Alphonse Ratisbonne (1842) and Bruno Cornacchiola (1947), the conversion of Mexico in the 16th century, the victory of Lepanto in 1571, of Vienna in 1683, the defence of Constantinople against the Saracens in 718, the conquest of the Albigensian heresy by St Dominic and her Rosary, the protection of the Poles against the Swedish army at Jasna Gora 1655, Czestochowa, the graces poured out abundantly by the Miraculous Medal, the Brown Scapular, the Rosary, the calls to conversion at Lourdes, La Salette and Fatima.

The Salve Regina succinctly expresses the universal belief in Mary’s power to assist us in our necessities:

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CONCLUSION Two years before his election as Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla’s warned that

who fears her more then all angels and all men, and in a way, even more than God himself.” (True Devotion to Mary, no. 52)

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. ... We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. ... It is a ... test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilisation with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.”

The triumph of the Immaculate Heart promised at Fatima is the spiritual re-conquest of the entire world. The reign of Mary will see the destruction of sin, its structures and its consequences. In the words of St Louis

The confrontation is now open. The faithful are bewildered by the storm of controversies over sex abuse, over corrupted priests and bishops and cardinals, over Church doctrine, over the current Holy Father himself, and, frightened by the global tempest that rages over matters once seemingly settled but now openly contested: sexuality, gender, family, marriage and the very nature of humanity. The prophet’s lament, are relevant to our times: “There is no truth and no mercy and no knowledge of God on the earth. Blasphemy and lying and homicide and theft and adultery have inundated it ... they break all bounds and murder follows murder” (Hos. 4:1-2).

Yet in the midst of this deluge of evil, Our Lord’s words to Sister Lucia are consoling “it is never too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary”.

The root of the battle is sin and, according to St Louis Marie de Montfort: “God has made an irreconcilable enmity that will last and grow until the end of the world and it is between Mary, his Blessed Mother and the devil. It is between the children and servants of the Virgin and the children and subjects of Lucifer. In fact, the greatest enemy of Satan that God has raised up is Mary, his Blessed Mother, to whom he gave since the beginning of earthly paradise, even though at this point She existed only as a thought in his mind; to whom He gave so much abhorrence to this enemy of God, so much capacity to unmask the evil of this ancient serpent, so much strength to overcome, battle and crush this arrogant monster, 50

“the power of Mary over all the demons will shine particularly in the end times, when Satan will strike at her heel, that is to say, on the humble slaves and poor children of Mary, who are called to battle against the gates of hell.” (Ibid, no. 54) Since the battle is fought in human hearts, the Virgin’s victory and reign will come through the sacrifices of the modern day apostles, the children of Mary, the lovers and adorers of the Eucharist, who have the spirit of surrender that leads to martyrdom for the faith or, at the very least, remain firm in their witness to prayer, sacrifice, love, peace, and truth in this present, difficult hour.

So then, even though “Deep night hath come down on this rough-spoken world, and the banners of darkness are boldly unfurled”, let us not lose heart but, rather remain confident that the eyes of Mary, our most gentle Queen and merciful Mother, are turned towards the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. Let all of us, then, in the tempest-tossed Church, cry out to her saying: “our eyes are on Thee; they look to Thy shining Sweet Star of the Sea.” Ave Maria!

Fr Linus Clovis acquired his PhD in Mathematics from the University of London, following which he started studies for the priesthood at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He was ordained by Pope John Paul II in 1983.

He went on to study canon law in Rome. He is currently the Director of the Secretariat for Family and Life in St Lucia as well as the Spiritual Director and Chairman of Family Life International and of The Caribbean Centre for Family and Human Rights (CARIFAM).

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n a period of theological confusion, it is sometimes said that the liturgy is irrelevant. Why waste time arguing about the liturgy, why focus on trying to improve the liturgy, when fundamental doctrines are being called into question? Let’s not worry about the colour scheme of the deck-chairs when the ship is sinking.

This attitude is a mistake, for a number of reasons.

The liturgy is central to the spiritual lives of Catholics – all Catholics – and if there are problems with it, this will harm souls. It will weaken those strong in faith, and push others over the edge into lapsation and disbelief.

It is also central to our theology. It is theoretically possible to ignore the theological messages the liturgy is sending us, in its texts and in its ceremonies, and this is what heretics and dissidents have done over the centuries. But ordinary Catholics in the pews have no reason to do this, and these messages are absorbed Sunday by Sunday, year by year. If this message is confused, muffled, or incomplete, so will be their understanding of the Faith. This will affect how they behave, how they deal with challenges, and how well they can persevere in the difficult conditions of the modern world.

Arguments about the liturgy, then, are not a distraction from what is important. I can’t, in a short article, open up the argument about every contested liturgical topic, but I have set out some important ideas in a book I have edited, The Case for Liturgical Restoration, which was published by Angelico Press this year. This seeks to explain the rationale of the ancient liturgy, and also what it can offer the Church as a tool of evangelisation.

There is another aspect of the ancient liturgy which is significant for the current crisis. It has not, of course, been specifically adapted for the mid-to-late 20th century, which was the purpose of the liturgical reform. But by the same token, it has the imprint of the

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Church of the distant past. The orations and scripture readings of the Sunday Masses, for example, go back at least as far as the 6th century: we have Pope St Gregory the Great’s Sunday D R J O S E P H S H AW sermons, for example, which relate to the Gospel stories still read today in the Extraordinary Form. The reformed liturgy uses orations which have been drastically re-written, and a completely reorganised lectionary.

There is value in seeing things from the perspective of the Age of the Fathers. They have obviously not fallen into modern errors, and if they do not specifically address all our modern concerns, a formation in their thinking is essential if we are to do so. If we find some things in the Fathers and in Scripture uncomfortable, that may be a sign that it is especially important that we hear them. To give just one example, in the context of the modern debate about couples in illicit second unions receiving Holy Communion, it is legitimate to ask if the complete exclusion, from the reformed Lectionary, of St Paul’s warning about sacrilegious communions (1 Cor. 11:27-9) was a good idea. This passage appears in the Traditional Lectionary both on Maundy Thursday and on the feast of Corpus Christi.

Another factor is the attitude one should take, as a Catholic, to the Church of the past. The liturgical reform of the 1960s was unfortunately accompanied by the rise of an embittered polemic directed at the Church’s traditions. The use of Latin, the priest “turning his back on the people”, the silent canon, and other aspects of the ancient liturgy were attacked as “excluding the people”, making real liturgical par-

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ticipation impossible. Those who preferred the older liturgy were described as deluded at best, at worst totem-pole worshippers. These kinds of arguments are still heard today.

The effect of these arguments is to suggest that the Church of the past – at least until Mass began to be offered in the vernacular in 1965 – was not just in need of improvement, but radically mistaken, and even abusive towards the laity, in her most intimate inner life, the liturgy. It follows equally that all the Saints and Popes, all the Fathers and Doctors, had a terrible blind-spot, in tolerating and indeed warmly promoting a liturgy from which the people were able to derive limited spiritual benefit. Almost everything the great theologians and spiritual writers said about the liturgy must be consigned to the dustbin.

The damage this attitude does to the Church cannot be limited to the question of the liturgy. If we don’t want to hear what the Fathers had to say liturgically, why should we pay attention to what they say about doctrine? If the Church of the past has no credibility when speaking about the liturgy, what credibility will she have when speaking about morality?

One of the consequences of this situation is the feeling that Church documents composed before 1962 somehow have less weight than those published after. If Pius XII’s Casti conubii is irrelevant, Paul VI’s Humanae vitae came out of a vacuum. Paul VI had to remind Catholics that they still had to believe in Transubstantiation, in Mysterium fidei,because no-one seemed to think that the Council of Trent was part of the Magisterium any more. Pope John Paul II’s vast output of encyclicals was almost an attempt to reiterate everything, because nothing could be taken for granted.

The teaching of the Church cannot, however, be defended in this way. It has no weight, no authority, if it is merely the personal conclusions of two or three Popes. It is truly the teaching of the Church, only if the Church has always taught it. It must have roots which go back beyond the 1960s, to the Deposit of Faith; it must be attested in every age of the Church.

One way of looking at the movement for the old Mass today is as a movement for the restoration of continuity with the past. If the credibility of the Church of the past is to be restored, the polemic against the ancient liturgy must be rejected, and the 52

Mass of the past must be accorded a place of honour in the Church. Only if this continuity is restored, can we hope to weather the current theological storm.

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.

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and its place in English history A c o l u m n b y M AT T H E W M C C U S K E R

D

uring the last week of June, I walked the Hadrian’s Wall national trail to raise money for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. The 84mile route follows the course of the wall, from Wallsend in the west to Bowness-on-Solway in the east. The wall was constructed between 122-128 AD on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian to defend the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

The walk is certainly a good way to explore the archaeology of the Roman wall, but it is a much richer experience than just that. As well as the extraordinary natural beauty of the route, you also encounter many sites of great historical importance, from every period of British history. For example, not long after I left Newcastle, on the first day of the walk, I unexpectedly came across the site of the battle of Newburn Ford.

This was a battle fought on 28 August 1640 between the forces of King Charles I and the Scottish Covenanters. It was the only battle of the Second Bishops’ War, in which Scottish Presbyterians resisted the establishment of an episcopal hierarchy in Scotland and the introduction of a liturgy closely modelled on that of the Church of England. The king’s forces were defeated and Charles I was forced to recall Parliament after his eleven years of personal rule, triggering the events that would lead to the Civil War two years later.

However, there was one battle site that was not unexpected – in fact, I was looking forward to seeAU T UMN 2 0 1 9

ing it more than any other site, including the wall itself. This was the site of the battle of Heavenfield, at which, in 634, St Oswald, king of Northumbria, defeated Cadwallon, king of Gwynedd. His victory secured the future of Northumbria as a Catholic kingdom in which an English civilisation developed that arguably exceeded anything known in the Europe of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Northumbria of St Bede was secured at Heavenfield. It is one of the most important events in English history and, as it is now almost entirely unknown, I will make it the subject of this column.

Before looking at the battle itself it will be helpful to establish some context. From the mid-fifth century, Germanic peoples had been migrating into post-Roman Britain and carving out new kingdoms. Around the year 550, an Angle warlord named Ida established a foothold in the modern county of Northumberland,

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and over the following decades, his successors established a new kingdom, Bernicia, between the rivers Tyne and Tweed. Around the year 604, his grandson Aethelfrith forcibly united Bernicia with its southern neighbour Deira, uniting all the English north of the Humber and laying the foundations of the kingdom of Northumbria. Aethelfrith was a mighty warrior, successful in battle against most of the peoples of northern and central Britain, but he never succeeded in eliminating his great rival - Edwin, a prince of the Deiran royal house.

In 616 Edwin defeated Aethelfrith in battle and took control of both Bernicia and Deira. Aethelfrith’s queen, Acha, fled with her children and sought sanctuary at the court of Eochaid Bruide, the king of the Scottish (Ulster Irish) kingdom of Dal Riata. She may have fled there because of kinship ties forged by intermarriage between the two royal houses. Her choice had profound consequences, not only on the history of England but on the whole western world, leading, as it ultimately did, to the introduction of Irish learning and spirituality into Northumbria, alongside that brought from Rome by Augustine and his companions of the Roman mission. The union of Roman and Irish would bear much fruit in the new English Christian culture of Northumbria.

Acha fled to Dal Riata with her sons Oswald and Oswiu, each of whom would eventually become kings of Northumbria, and one daughter Aebbe. They were English pagans, arriving in an Irish Christian kingdom. Oswald and Oswiu were baptised and educated at the monastery of Iona, founded a generation earlier

by St Columba. Their sister Aebbe would become a nun – one of the first in English history.

Meanwhile, in Northumbria, King Edwin too was receiving the gospel. In 601, St Gregory the Great had sent a second group of missionaries to support those sent to England under the leadership of St Augustine in 597. In 625 one of these missionaries, St Paulinus, was consecrated a bishop and travelled north to Northumbria, accompanying a princess of the Kentish royal house, who was to marry Edwin. Bede’s account of Edwin’s own conversion in 627 is one of the most beautiful passages of his Ecclesiastical History, and gives us a profound glimpse into the character of our English ancestors:

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“[T]he king… holding a council with the wise men, he asked of every one in particular what he thought of the new doctrine, and the new worship that was preached... [One] of the king's chief men [said]: ‘The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.’ The other elders and king's councillors, by divine inspiration, spoke to the same effect.

“But Coifi [the chief pagan priest] added, that he wished more attentively to hear Paulinus discourse concerning the God whom he preached; which he having by the king's command performed, Coifi, hearing his words, cried out, ‘I have long since been sensible that there was nothing in that which we worshipped; because the more diligently I sought after truth in that worship, the less I found it. But now I freely confess, that such truth evidently appears in this preaching as can confer on us the gifts of life, of salvation, and of eternal happiness. For which reason I advise, O king, that we instantly abjure and set fire to those temples and altars which we have consecrated without reaping any benefit from them.’

“In short, the king publicly gave his licence to Paulinus to preach the Gospel, and renouncing idolatry, declared that he received the faith of Christ: and then he inquired of the high priest who should first profane the altars and temples of their idols, with the enclosures that were about them, he answered, ‘I; for who can more properly than myself destroy those things which I worshipped through ignorance, for an example to all others, CAL X M A R IA E

“King Edwin, therefore, with all the nobility of the nation, and a large number of the common sort, received the faith, and the washing of regeneration, in the eleventh year of his reign, which is the year of the incarnation of our Lord 627, and about one hundred and eighty after the coming of the English into Britain. He was baptised at York, on the holy day of Easter, being the 12th of April, in the church of St. Peter the Apostle, which he himself had built of timber, whilst he was receiving catechesis and instruction in order to receive baptism. In that city also he appointed the see of the bishopric of his instructor and bishop, Paulinus.”

Edwin was thus baptised in the first York Minster, and St Paulinus became the first bishop at York.

For six years the faith flourished and took root in Northumbria. Then, on 12 October 633, King Edwin was killed, along with his son and heir, in battle against a powerful alliance of King Penda of Mercia, a rising pagan English power, and Cadwallon of Gwynedd.

Bede tells us that Cadwallon’s armies ravaged Northumbria: “With bestial cruelty he put all to death by torture and for a long time raged through all their land, meaning to wipe out the whole English nation from the land of Britain. Nor did he pay any respect to the Christian religion which had sprung up among them.”

AU T UMN 2 0 1 9

ST OSWALDS, HEAVENFIELD

Edwin’s successors in Northumbria, who were pagan and hostile to the Church, were unable to defend the land from Cadwallon’s depredations and were both killed in turn. It was now that Oswald, after his long exile among the Scots, took the opportunity not only to restore his family to the throne of Northumbria but also to restore Northumbria to the kingdom of Christ.

Returning from exile, he had to quickly raise an army, for Cadwallon’s forces were occupying much of Northumbria. Cadwallon marched north from York to confront Oswald, who took up a defensive position

by Hadrian’s Wall, a short distance north of Hexham.

Abbot Adomnan of Iona, the biographer of St Columba, recorded that the night before the battle St Columba appeared to St Oswald in a dream: “…the Saxon prince Oswald went forth to fight with Cadwallon, a very valiant king of the Britons.

For as this same King Oswald, after pitching his camp, in readiness for the battle, was sleeping one day on a pillow in his tent, he saw St. Columba in a vision, beaming with angelic brightness, and of figure so majestic that his head seemed to touch the clouds. The blessed man having announced his name to the king, stood in the midst of the camp, and covered it all with his brilliant garment, except at one small distant point; and at the same time he uttered those cheering words which the Lord spoke to Joshua Ben Nun before the passage of the Jordan, after Moses' death, saying, ‘Be strong

LESSONS FROM HISTORY

through the wisdom which has been given me by the true God?’ Then immediately, in contempt of his former superstitions, he desired the king to furnish him with arms and a stallion; and mounting the same, he set out to destroy the idols; for it was not lawful before for the high priest either to carry arms, or to ride on any but a mare. Having, therefore, girt a sword about him, with a spear in his hand, he mounted the king's stallion and proceeded to the idols. The multitude, beholding it, concluded he was distracted; but he lost no time, for as soon as he drew near the temple he profaned the same, casting into it the spear which he held; and rejoicing in the knowledge of the worship of the true God, he commanded his companions to destroy the temple, with all its enclosures, by fire…

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and of a good courage; behold, I shall be with thee,’ etc. Then St. Columba having said these words to the king in the vision, added, ‘March out this following night from your camp to battle, for on this occasion the Lord has granted to me that your foes shall be put to flight, that your enemy Cadwallon shall be delivered into your hands, and that after the battle you shall return in triumph, and have a happy reign.’ The king, awaking at these words, assembled his council and related the vision, at which they were all encouraged; and so the whole people promised that, after their return from the war, they would believe and be baptised, for up to that time all that Saxon land had been wrapt in the darkness of paganism and ignorance, with the exception of King Oswald and the twelve men who had been baptised with him during his exile among the Scots. What more need I say? On the very next night, King Oswald, as he had been directed in the vision, went forth from his camp to battle, and had a much smaller army than the numerous hosts opposed to him, yet he obtained from the Lord, according to His promise, an easy and decisive victory for King Cadwallon was slain, and the conqueror, on his return after the battle, was ever after established by God as the Bretwalda of all Britain.”

Bede gives us his own account of Oswald’s preparations for battle: “The place is shown to this day, and held in much veneration, where Oswald, being about to engage, erected the sign of the holy cross, and on his knees prayed to God that he would assist his worshipers in their great distress. It is further reported, that the cross being made in haste, and the hole dug in which it was to be fixed, the king himself, full of faith, laid hold of it and held it with both his hands, till it was set fast by throwing in the earth and this done, raising his voice, he cried to his army, ‘Let us all kneel, and jointly beseech the true and living God Almighty, in His mercy, to defend us from the haughty and fierce enemy; for He knows that we have undertaken a just war for the safety of our nation.’ All did as he had commanded, and accordingly advancing towards the enemy with the first dawn of day, they obtained the victory, as their faith deserved. In that place of prayer very many miraculous cures are known to

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have been performed, as a token and memorial of the king's faith; for even to this day, many are wont to cut off small chips from the wood of the holy cross, which being put into water, men or cattle drinking thereof, or sprinkled with that water, are immediately restored to health.

“The place in the English tongue is called Heavenfield, or the Heavenly Field, which name it formerly received as a presage of what was afterwards to happen, denoting, that there the heavenly trophy would be erected, the heavenly victory begun, and heavenly miracles be wrought to this day.

The same place is near the wall with which the Romans formerly enclosed the island from sea to sea, to restrain the fury of the barbarous nations, as has been said before.”

It was in this place, near the wall with which the Romans formerly enclosed the island from sea to sea, that I knelt in prayer on 25 June 2019. For many centuries it was a place of pilgrimage. Today there is still a church dedicated to St Oswald on the site, and though the current building dates only from the eighteenth century, its location in a circular enclosure in the midst of the field gives a sense of its antiquity.

The victory of Heavenfield assured not only the re-establishment of the Catholic faith in Northumbria, but also led to a golden age of piety and scholarship, which reached its culmination in Bede and Alcuin, and during which Northumbria, and England, led the world in culture and learning.

Heavenfield was just the beginning of the remarkable reigns of St Oswald (634-642) and his brother Oswiu (642-670). Bede tells the story of their rule in books III and IV of his Ecclesiastical History. St Oswald was to die a martyr at the battle of Maserfield, fought against Penda and pagan Mercia on 5 August 642. His corpse was dismembered and offered

by Penda as a sacrifice to the god Woden. But his arm, which remained incorrupt, was taken back to Northumbria and venerated until it was destroyed at the Reformation. Penda was finally killed in battle

by Oswiu, on 15 November 655 near Leeds, as he attempted another invasion of Northumbria.

St Oswald’s feast day is 5 August.

CAL X M A R IA E

Glorious Prince of the Heavenly Host SAINT MICHAEL ARCHANGEL (1495 - 1500), MASTER OF ZAFRA, MUSEO DEL PRADO, MADRID.

by LIAM GIBSON

N

ormally depicted as a glorious warrior, clad in armour, subduing the devil with his sword or spear, it is impossible to separate St Michael from the weapons he wields in the service of God. Describing Satan’s defeat at the hands of St Michael, St John writes: “There was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven.” (Apocalypse 12:7-8) This conflict at the end of time mirrors the first battle in heaven at the beginning of time.

Even his name – Michael – “Who is like God?” is the war cry with which he led the attack on Lucifer and the rebel angels. It should, therefore, be a great consolation to us in all our earthly battles and struggles, to be able to turn to St Michael for assistance, knowing that his victory over evil is assured!

The most powerful of God’s angelic warriors, he is a most powerful protector of the Church. After all, there could be no better guardian for the Church Militant than the captain of God’s celestial army. He is also the chief of all individual guardian angels who protect each one of us and fight to deliver us from the demons until the last hour of our life on earth.

Of the angels named in scripture we know most about St Michael. Based on these revelations, the Catholic Encyclopaedia lists four offices attributed to him:

• To fight against Satan. (Daniel 10:13 sqq) • To rescue the souls of the faithful from the power of the enemy, especially at the hour of death.

(Daniel 12) • To be the champion of God's people, the people of Israel under the Old Law, the Christians in the New Testament; therefore he was the patron of the Church, and of the orders of knights during the Middle Ages. (Catholic Epistle of St Jude)

SAINTS FOR OUR TIMES

ST MICHAEL

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S AINTS F OR OUR T I M ES

• To call away from earth and present the souls of men for judgement. (Apocalypse 12:7) Having cast the demons out of heaven, St Michael has an important role in exorcisms, casting demons out from the souls of men. In the traditional form of the Confiteor, he is invoked immediately after Our Lady. This reflects the prominence given to St Michael and his power to deliver us from our enemy who “as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour.”(1Pt. 5:8) From 1886, the protection of St Michael was invoked at the end of every Low Mass throughout the world. This well-known prayer was composed by Pope Leo XIII after a vision in his private chapel, which he described to those who accompanied him at the time, “What a horrible picture I was permitted to see!”

In this vision, the Holy Father saw that Satan asked for, and was given, one hundred years to do his work against the Church. The prayer to St Michael, to be

recited by the faithful after each Low Mass, was the Holy Father’s response to his prophetic vision.

The Angel of Peace, who heralded the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, is widely identified as St Michael. And from 1929 the Leonine Prayers after Mass were offered for the conversion of Russia. With the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Mass in 1968, however, this practice was suppressed. It is a sad paradox that Pope Paul VI, who warned that the “smoke of Satan has entered the Church”, was also responsible for ending the regular invocation of St Michael’s protection.

Despite this, St Michael must remain our special patron in the fight against the powers of Hell. Let us never cease to implore St Michael to deliver us from all evil, as we turn to him with confidence, so that he will enable us by his gracious protection to serve God more and more faithfully every day.1 1.

See the Chaplet of St Michael the Archangel https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/ devotions/chaplet-of-st-michael-the-archangel-386

Holy Michael, the Archangel, defend us in the day of battle; be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan and all wicked spirits, who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

SU BS C RI TO D AY !

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