Calx Mariae magazine issue 8, Spring 2020

MARIAE CALX

Rebuilding our Christian civilisation

Protecting FOCUS:

THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDREN: the Christian home at the heart of the decisive battle INCLUDING:

GLOBAL EDUCATION PACT

instrumentalising children as agents of change

Exclusive interview with ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL

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

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MARIAE CALX

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Contents 2 From the editor 3 The global slide toward euthanasia

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5 Global Education Pact instrumentalising children as agents of change

by Maria Madise 15 FOCUS: Protecting the innocence of children the Christian home at the heart of the decisive battle

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18 Why Catholic parents must mobilise in defence of primary educators

by John Smeaton 22 Sex education and the ethics of consent

by Dr. Joseph Shaw 30 The home as a defence against the state

by Lucy Shaw 39 Exclusive interview with Alexander Tschugguel

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48 The final battle between Our Lord and the reign of Satan will be over marriage and the family

by Fr. Linus Clovis 57 A letter from a Benedictine monk 61 Lessons from history: St. Robert Southwell A column by Matthew McCusker

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COVER: MADONNA OF THE INNOCENTS, DOMENICO DI MICHELINO (1417–1491) /

Established in 1410, to care for abandoned babies. Florence’s Ospedale degli Innocenti was an orphanage, a school, and the world’s first children’s hospital.

In 1446, it commissioned this painting to act as its banner. The Innocenti saved an estimated 600,000 children in its 600-year history.

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 2020

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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n 14 May 2020, the wealthy and powerful of this world will gather in Rome to sign the Vatican’s Global Compact on Education which will be implemented through the structures of Catholic education, involving over 70 million children and young people. What exactly is in the pact is yet unknown. But what we do know is what the key figures of the United Nations who have taken an interest in the initiative want the children to learn. We know what is in the working document and what Pope Francis has proposed with regard to education throughout his pontificate. We know the funding principles of some of the prospective partners who would help to provide the estimated $26 billion annual budget for the project. Even if the veil has not yet been lifted from the pact, we are able to connect these dots and predict what children and their families are going to be signed up to (see p.5).

A week later, on 20-21 May, Voice of the Family will hold its annual Rome Life Forum, which this year draws its theme from Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Illius Magistri, on Christian education. (See details on the inside cover.) Pius XI places the most serious responsibility on Christian educators to safeguard the innocence of children, which will foster willful purity in their later life. The theme purity is particularly important for us today, because it is the antidote against every evil we face in the pro-life and pro-family movement – abortion, gender ideology, attacks on marriage, IVF technology, pornography, sex education, and so on.

The concept note for a Vatican workshop preparing for the Global Education Compact quoted UNICEF, saying that “educated girls are likely to marry later...

They are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and more able to participate in decision-making at all levels. Additionally, this...furthers Goals 2 and 3: universal primary education and gender equality”. Under Sustainable Development Goal no. 3, by 2030 UN member states are required to: “ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services” – a term routinely used by UN bodies to radically increase the use of contraception and access to abortion worldwide. When girls are “educated” to delay marriage and protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, does this happen through abstinence or with (abortifacient) contraception? It is scandalous that pontifical institutions should offer a platform for these discussions, especially without presenting a definitive answer. Thus, the moral voice of the universal Church is lent to a global agenda that ridicules purity and sexualizes children.

At Fatima, Our Lady showed the three little shepherds the terrifying vision of hell where the souls of poor sinners go. She revealed that it was sins against purity that lead most souls to hell. Today, a hundred years later, when sins against purity are state policy in the most powerful nations of the world and many Churchmen favour policies and school-based sex education that destroy the innocence of children, our commitment must be to recover the true wisdom of the Church and nurture the natural love of purity in her children. This is the FOCUS of this issue of Calx Mariae (see p.15).

Our Rome Life Forum could not come at a more crucial time. We are at war and purity is both our weapon and our shield. In purity is power and strength.

Purity wins – for we have the promise of Our Lady that in the end her Immaculate Heart will triumph. In the meantime, we must aspire to purity in the whole of life: faith and doctrine, holy orders, monastic life; personal and family life.

Purity is the frontline of the counterrevolution. This is what we will discuss at the Rome Life Forum in May, followed by the Rome March for Life. We invite everyone to come to Rome and join the fight!

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

The following truths are particularly at the heart of Voice of the Family’s work: 9 Marriage, the exclusive, life-long union of one man and one woman, is the foundation of a stable and flourishing society and is the greatest protector of children, born and unborn.

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

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

pro-life action

THE GLOBAL SLIDE TOWARD euthanasia

by LIAM GIBSON

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hen the British Abortion Act was introduced in1967 its supporters insisted that it would not lead to abortion on demand. Every abortion, they said, would have to be approved by two doctors.

Fifty-three years on, over 500 babies are killed in Britain every day by abortion and medical approval is just a bureaucratic formality. Once the taking of innocent human life is made lawful, it becomes acceptable and eventually, it’s regarded as normal. This is also true of the practice of assisted suicide which is spreading across the globe at an alarming pace.

Last November, New Zealand’s Parliament approved the End of Life Choices Act by 69 votes to 51. However, the Act requires a referendum before it can be implemented. Under the legislation, New Zealanders over 18 years of age judged to have less than six months to live would be able to request a lethal dose of drugs. Patients would either take these drugs

themselves or have them administered by a doctor or nurse practitioner. Although the words “grievous and irremediable” (terms which could be applied to people with depression or a serious disability) were dropped from an earlier version of the Act, attempts to introduce other safeguards were rejected.

In the neighbouring jurisdiction of Victoria, Australia, assisted suicide legislation came into effect in June 2019 and yet this law is already facing calls for further liberalisation. Euthanasia advocates now argue that a requirement for one of the two approving physicians to be a specialist in the patient’s condition is unnecessary. They say terminally ill patients in remote locations may have to travel to see a suitably qualified doctor. In December, a law with fewer safeguards and less conscience protection for medical professionals was passed by the government of Western Australia. It’s expected to come into force sometime next

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year. Meanwhile, a draft Bill in Queensland would go further still.1 The proponents of that Bill believe under-18s should also be able to request lethal drugs and people with dementia should be euthanised if they’ve already given their consent in advance.

The same drift toward more and more radical laws seen in Australia is also reflected in the gradual abandonment of restraints in nations where euthanasia has become established. Last year a doctor in the Netherlands was charged with murder after administering a lethal injection to an Alzheimer’s patient while she was held down by her relatives. In February, a Belgium court considered the case of three doctors accused of the unlawful killing of a 38-year-old woman. The woman’s family told the court that while she had psychological problems, she was not suffering from an incurable mental disorder as defined by the law. All the doctors in both cases were exonerated.

Opponents of euthanasia expect the legal precedents set by their acquittal to encourage even greater abuses.

Although procedures still have to be agreed, in February, Swiss officials gave the green light for sick prisoners to obtain assisted suicide. The Conference of Cantonal Departments of Justice and Police made its decision after a child molester serving a life sentence requested help to take his own life.

Later the same month, the German Constitutional Court lifted a ban on the practice of assisted suicide for commercial purposes. The ruling, which is even more radical than the law in the Netherlands stated that: “the self-determined act of ending one’s life is a direct, albeit final, expression of the pursuit of personal autonomy inherent in human dignity.”

Since the European Court of Human Rights often takes its lead from the German court this represents a significant step towards the creation of a so-called human right to die.

As assisted suicide is increasingly viewed as a legitimate medical procedure in many countries, a debate has opened up about how organ donation and euthanasia might be coordinated. Earlier this year the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published an article by a cardiologist lamenting the fact that organs suitable for transplantation were being lost due to the time taken to retrieve them following euthanasia.2 The underlying assumption of this debate is that if a patient wants to die then why not let doctors end his life by taking his organs while they can still be donated to someone who wants to live. Although safeguards are hardly worth the paper they are written 4

on, proponents of this approach argue that existing procedures would be sufficient to prevent vulnerable and terminally ill people being regarded as little more than a potential source of organs.

In 2005 the “right-to-die” lobby in the United Kingdom succeeded in passing the Mental Capacity Act in England and Wales. This allows – and in certain cases compels – doctors to deny food, fluids and reasonable medical treatment to patients who are neither terminally-ill nor in the immediate dying process (i.e. only days to live). This Act enshrined certain pro-euthanasia principles found in the Law Lords’ 1993 Bland judgment and in subsequent similar court cases. Since then, however, they have failed to make the gains seen in other countries. The downward spiral toward euthanasia that is now spreading across the globe means that the pressure to liberalise the law will inevitably lead to renewed attempts to legalise assisted suicide in Britain. At the same time, the slide into more and more radical practices in the countries which have already taken this route should act as a warning to the people of both the UK and New Zealand alike. Experience teaches us that once doctors are allowed to kill their patients, vulnerable people soon find that the right to die has become a duty-to-die.

New Zealand’s euthanasia referendum is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 19 September 2020.

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

Jamie Walker “Euthanasia law a life of its own Legislation of voluntary assisted dying is gaining pace, state by state, nationwide”, The Australian, 31 August 2019 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/euthanasia-law-a-life-of-its-own/ news-story/86c0fdfa059b99893526f65f5a0e7987 Lisa Rosenbaum, M.D. “Altruism in Extremis — The Evolving Ethics of Organ Donation”, xThe New England Journal of Medicine, 6 Feb 2020. https://www.nejm. org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2000048

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GLOBAL EDUCATION PACT

by MARIA MADISE

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n 14 May 2020, representatives of various world religions, international organisations and humanitarian institutions, as well as prominent academic, economic, political and cultural figures will gather in the Vatican to sign the manifesto of the “Global Compact on Education”. Each representative will then undertake to implement and promote the Compact in their own sphere of influence. In launching this initiative Pope Francis calls everyone “to create a global change of mentality through education” and to forge a “new humanism”.1 “Every change,” the Pope said, “calls for an educational process that involves everyone”. Referring to the African proverb “it takes a whole village to educate a child”, the Pope explained that “there is thus a need to create an ‘educational village’, in which all people, according to their respective roles, share the task of forming a network of open, human relationships.”2 Although the details remain obscure, with each statement the Vatican makes about the Global Com-

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pact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it will represent a radical break with the Church’s understanding of education as exemplified by Pius XI's 1929 encyclical Divini illius magistri. There is no indication that the Compact will be concerned with teaching children to know, love and serve God in this world and to be with Him forever in the next. Instead, it seeks to utilise children as agents of global change. While instrumentalising children in this way is objectionable in itself, the partners the Vatican is considering for this initiative make it even more disturbing. Here is what we know so far about Pope Francis’ Global Compact on Education.

WHO IS INVOLVED? The Pope has tasked the Congregation for Catholic Education, a Ministry of the Holy See, which oversees 216,000 Catholic schools with 60 million pupils and 1,750 Catholic universities, with over 11 million students, to co-ordinate and organise the initiative.

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In an interview with Diane Montagna for LifeSiteNews, Archbishop Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, said that “a group of experts” has been working on the manifesto for over a year and that “it has already been well prepared”.3 In the interview, he did not agree to say more about the “experts” than that they come “from various disciplines, of various sensibilities, of various points of view because education is not only a matter of pedagogy in the strict sense.” The Archbishop admitted that the group comprises of representatives of different religions.

At a meeting entitled “Education. The Global Compact”, held at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) on 6-7 February, at the request of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the special advisor to Pope Francis who also played a central role in drafting the UN’s anti-life and anti-family Sustainable Development Goals, introduced his proposals for partners of the Compact to raise a projected $26 billion annual budget for the implementation of the initiative. Diane Montagna reported on LifeSiteNews that his proposals for the “Partners for the Global Pact for Education and a New Fund for Education” include:4 • Donor governments • European Union • Billionaire philanthropists (Bill Gates, USA; Jack Ma, China; and Mukesh Ambani, India) • Islamic Development Bank • UNESCO, UNICEF and other UN Agencies • International Monetary Fund • UN Secretary General’s SGD Advocates • Global Citizens NGO • Youth for the Future European Union The EU’s network of agencies is a major promoter of birth control and gender ideology. World Health Organisation (WHO)/Europe identifies the EU as its “natural partner”.5 It states that “where contraception is available and affordable, abortion should rarely be necessary; when it is necessary, however, it should be accessible and safe”.6 WHO/Europe places contraception and the “right to choose when to have children” at the centre of reproductive health. It fur-

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ther states that achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) which is included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the 2030 Agenda is an “unfinished agenda”.7 The EU’s Youth Strategy, a framework for its youth policy cooperation for 2019-2027, consists of 11 European Youth Goals, including “equality for all genders”: that is, equal opportunities and access to rights need to be ensured for young people of all genders including non-binary and LGBTQI+ young people by, for example, eliminating “stereotypical gender roles” and embracing “diverse gender identities in education systems, family life, the workplace, and other areas of life”.8 Billionaire philanthropists Diane Montagna reported that Sachs claimed to have “recently” spoken with American, Chinese, and Indian billionaires Bill Gates, Jack Ma, and Mukesh Ambani about the project and had visited the Islamic Development Bank.9 She pointed out that Sachs’s announcement of Gates’ potential role as a funding partner for the Education Compact coincided with the release of an annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on 10 February, announcing that “the climate crisis and gender equality” have emerged as priorities for their future philanthropic giving.10 Melinda Gates states in the letter that she wants to focus efforts particularly on gender equality, including “reproductive rights”. “My journey as a public advocate began with family planning,” she writes.

“There are over 200 million women in developing countries who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraceptives.” Since then, she said her foundation, which works closely with Jeffrey Sachs, has stepped up “our commitments to family planning” while also developing “strategies that prioritise gender equality”11.

UNESCO, UNICEF, etc.

UN agencies have a long track record in promoting birth control and anti-life, anti-family sex education.

In January 2018, UNESCO published new technical guidance on “Comprehensive Sexuality Education”,12 despite the objections of UN member states. This guidance aims to promote a global standard for governments, educators, and sexual and reproductive

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“Although some of the seventeen UN Goals may seem laudable, the decision to throw the weight of the Catholic Church behind the narrative of a global crisis requiring global solutions has lent her moral authority to the structures used to promote policies and practices which are antithetical to the teachings of Christ and destructive of innocent human life on a genocidal scale.” health advocates. Stefano Gennarini of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) pointed out that the guidelines recommend helping children as young as five to identify “trusted adults” other than their parents to “help them understand themselves, their feelings and their bodies”. It proposes teaching children from the age of five that gender is a social construct and, from the age of nine, teaching them to “appreciate their own gender identity and demonstrate respect for the gender identity of others”.

These objectives also include telling children about various types of “non-traditional families” and have a heavy emphasis on LGBTI “rights”. The guidelines advise children how to “negotiate” and “be assertive” with a romantic partner, how to “communicate and understand different sexual feelings” and, from the age of nine, that masturbation is not harmful and must be done in private.13 A few months later, C-Fam reported that the UN children’s agency UNICEF has also signed onto the “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education”, and is therefore endorsing a document that calls for children to be able to “describe male and female responses to sexual stimulation”, “summarize key elements of sexual pleasure”, and mocks the idea of abstinence and delaying sexual activity until marriage.

According to UNICEF, abstinence means “deciding when to start having sex and with whom” and it is a “condition” that can be “harmful to young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights”. UNICEF also suggests that five-year-olds should “reflect on how they feel about their biological sex and gender”.14 These are just a few disturbing examples of the activities and projects in conflict with the Church’s teaching that the proposed partners for the Global

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Education Pact potentially reaching to tens of millions of children are engaged in.

In the past years, that causal link between birth control and education has also been explored at events held in the Vatican. At the conference on Biological Extinction in 2017, Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Social Sciences expressed the view that “we know some part but not all of the doctrine of the Church” about fertility and procreation. He went on record by saying: “And the many, many priests say to me that the great solution for the question of procreation is the education of women. Because when you have education, we don’t have children. We don’t have seven children. Maybe we have one children [sic], two children. No more.”15 At the invitation of Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo, many birth control proponents have spoken at the Vatican, including Dr. Jeffrey Sachs who has been a regular guest at the PAS conferences. Sachs has been a vocal advocate for reducing the birth rate of Africa.

In his book The Age of Sustainable Development, published in March 2015, Sachs called for governments to encourage their populations to lower family size by promoting birth control and providing access to free or low-cost contraception and family planning.16 In 2011 he called for the Nigerian government “to work towards attaining a maximum of three children [per family].17 His 2008 book, Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, argued that abortion was a cost-effective way to eliminate “unwanted children” and reduce a country’s total fertility rates “by as much as half a child on average.”18 Dr. Sachs has given around twenty-five talks in the Vatican during the current pontificate. Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of 7

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Sciences, has justified the role increasingly played

by Sachs in Holy See events by insisting that Sachs does not express his pro-abortion opinions on these occasions.19

THE UN SDGS AND THE 2030 AGENDA Most of the proposed partners for the Global Compact on Education are heavily involved in promoting the UN 2030 Agenda. On 25 September 2015, Pope Francis unequivocally endorsed the UN Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the 2030 Agenda.

At the time of its adoption, pro-life leaders objected to the stated targets for Goal 3 and Goal 5 which call for universal access to reproductive health services by 2030. Such terms are widely recognised as euphemisms for abortion and birth control.

Although some of the seventeen Goals may seem laudable, if utopian – such as eradicating poverty and hunger, ensuring good health and education for everyone, everywhere by 2030 – the decision to throw the weight of the Catholic Church behind the narrative of a global crisis requiring global solutions has lent her moral authority to the structures used to promote policies and practices which are antithetical to the teachings of Christ and destructive of innocent human life on a genocidal scale. The UN does not need the Church to explicitly promote its reproductive health strategy. As long as Church leaders approve the overall agenda, others will happily implement it to meet its practical targets.

In September 2019, during an inflight press conference on his return from an apostolic visit to Africa, Pope Francis said that it is our “duty” to “obey international institutions”, such as the United Nations and the European Union.20 Pope Francis has also promoted school-based sex education. During a flight to Rome from Panama, last January, Pope Francis told reporters that bishops did not know what to do about the clerical sex abuse scandal. He said: “We felt the responsibility to give […] catechesis on this problem to the bishops’ conferences”. Significantly, the Pope went on to say: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools”.21 The prospective partners of the Global Compact on Education have demonstrated very clearly what they envisage should be taught to the children in school sex education curriculum. And at least in the

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case of UNESCO, they believe, their idea of comprehensive sexuality education should be made mandatory in schools, and support for education programmes be conditioned on compliance with their guidance.

Instrumentalising children as the “agents of change” to implement the SDGs is also a familiar theme for the pontifical institutions. Already in November 2015, shortly after the adoption of the UN 2030 Agenda, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a workshop to discuss how to use children as “agents of change” to implement environmentalism and “sustainable development”.22 The briefing document for this event said that schools would have to “absorb” the Sustainable Development Goals, the same Sustainable Development Goals that include calls for universal access to “reproductive health”.

The briefing warned against “parents” and “agencies” that “basing themselves on religious principles, oppose scientific evidence to the detriment of children”.

INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS The Instrumentum laboris for the Global Compact on Education is an 18-page document consisting of four sections entitled “the project”, “the context”, “the vision” and “the mission”. In the now-familiar style of recent Vatican documents, it proposes a perpetual journey with ongoing discussions which are not intended to reach a destination or find an answer: “Following what various religious leaders suggested to Pope Francis, it is necessary to focus today on

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educating the questions of our youth, which are a priority compared to providing answers: it is a matter of dedicating time and space to the development of the great questions and wishes that dwell into the hearts of new generations, who from a serene relationship with themselves might fulfil the search for the transcendent.”23 In a world which is increasingly divided between societies which see Catholicism as incompatible with militant secularism and those which are violently hostile to all Christianity, it is difficult to imagine how such an approach could support parents, teachers or catechists struggling to educate children in the faith.

Since this does not seem to be the aim of the initiative, the inevitable question arises, what is its purpose? Is the Compact on Education intended to establish a global structure through which any chosen message could be propagated?

The project In the first part, the document focuses on the need to build peace and overcome conflicts through education. Developing the ideas Pope Francis has already expressed in Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si, “respecting diversity” is identified as the first premise of the new educational covenant, while the idea of a “global village of education” is presented as putting “the human person at the center” and investing “creatively and responsibly in long-term projects” that “train individuals willing to offer themselves in service to the community”.

The context The second part of the document points out that “psychological disaggregation”, mostly due to the pervasiveness of new technologies, is singled out by the Pope in his Message for the Launch of the Global Compact on Education as one of the most urgent educational issues. “The time and space that youths need, to become familiar with their wishes and fears”, are increasingly filled with continuous stimuli and digital interactions.

This is certainly true. However, on this subject, the Instrumentum laboris refers to the syncretist spirituality of the Document on the Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together (the Abu Dhabi declara-

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tion) which speaks of “awakening religious awareness and the need to revive this awareness in the hearts of new generations”. It goes on to explain that: “for believers, it is a matter of awakening in young people, with appropriate timing, the wish to delve into their inner being to know and love God, for nonbelievers to animate a stimulating restlessness about the meaning of things and of their own existence.”

The “context” part of the document also presents the perceived difficulties for our educational action today, which, according to the authors of the Instrumentum laboris, include egolatry, the rift between generations, social inequality, the digital world altering relationships, and fragmented identities and environmental crisis presenting further challenges.

The vision and mission The third part elaborates the theme of fraternity and embracing differences: “For as long as diversity and difference are considered hostile to unity, war will always be on our doorstep, ready to break out in all its destructive power. Hence, the first indispensable step to build a new humanism is to educate people to a new thought, that can reconcile unity and diversity, equality and freedom, identity and otherness.”

Throughout the working document runs “a vision” of “an integral and inclusive education, that is able to engage in patient listening and constructive dialogue”; “an educational vision that can encompass a broad range of life experiences and learning processes”. It is a vision which emphasises social relationships and living together, setting up as an educational goal of making children and young people “who are capable of living in the society and for the society”. Quoting Pope Francis’s message for the World Day of Peace (January 1, 2014), entitled “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace”, it is implied that human relationships even have “salvific” faculties: “We have been created not only to live ‘with others’, but also to live ‘at the service of others’, in a salvific and enriching reciprocity.” The Instrumentum laboris adds: “‘Together’ is the word that saves and achieves everything.”

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analysis

Overall, the document presents a vision of global community, that does not depend on God or His grace, but instead holds out the promise of worldly redemption from a society, whose members may, according to their belief system, take an interest in the transcendent or they may not – it really doesn’t matter.

The value of sharing a good life “together” on earth takes priority over the sacrifices required for eternal life in Heaven.

In this vision, the content of learning seems to have little or no importance. The Instrumentum laboris tells us that the Pope “does not suggest an educational action, nor does he invite us to develop a program”.

Speaking of Pope Francis’s invitation to us “to look for travelling companions on the path of education, rather than suggesting programs to follow”, it seems to confirm that an agreement to work together is unrelated to the subject of our studies or what we aim to achieve: “to establish a covenant among all those who value the uniqueness of each individual through a continuous commitment to formation” – irrespective of what this formation involves. We are also informed that “the choice of words reveals much about the style with which the Pope invites us to undertake this task: for there to be a compact, in fact, there must be two or more people who choose to commit to a common cause. A compact implies choosing to put our strengths at the service of the same project, albeit maintaining our mutual differences. (Post-synodal apostolic exhortation Christus vivit, no.165).”

As one of the “indispensable values to rebuild an educational covenant”, the Instrumentum laboris suggests “the value of the educational relationship”. In the words of Pope Francis, the authors of the Instrumentum laboris reiterate that “while not forgetting that young people look to the words and example of adults, we should also be well aware that they themselves have much to offer, thanks to their enthusiasm and commitment.” This approach seems similar to that denounced as “false” and “unsound” in Pope Pius XI encyclical Divini Illius Magistri on education, where we read: “Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority

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and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education.” (no.60) The Instrumentum laboris also quotes Pope Francis saying that young people have a “thirst for truth, which constantly reminds us of the fact that hope is not utopian and that peace is always a good that can be attained”. Perhaps referring to the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, the Pope, when addressing the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See in January 2020, acknowledged the example of many young people who “have become active in calling the attention of political leaders to the issue of climate change. Care for our common home ought to be a concern of everyone and not the object of ideological conflict between different views of reality or, much less, between generations.”

The only acknowledgement of the role of parents in educating their children is given in a quote from Benedict XVI when they are listed along with teachers and priests as “everyone who have direct educational responsibilities”. There is no mention of fathers or mothers in the document. A quote from Pope Francis acknowledges that “[e]ducation is not limited to school and university classrooms; it is principally ensured by strengthening and reinforcing the primary right of the family to educate, and the right of Churches and social communities to support and assist families in raising their children”. However, the projected $26 billion annual budget for the implementation of the Global Compact does not seem to be intended to provide support for actual families but for institutions.

The mental somersaults performed by the authors of the Instrumentum laboris are surely unparalleled in the history of the Church’s pronouncements on education. We are, for example, exhorted to a “healthy risk-taking” and daring to be restless, exiting from ourselves, which entails “running the risk” of a “faceto-face encounter with others”, “with their physical presence which challenges us”, “with their pain and their pleas”, “with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction”. We are told that “only in this way will passion recover its momentum and become the protagonist of our existence, educating us to conscious and responsible lifestyles”.

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At the end of the working document, after being entrusted with “the mission” to respond to the threefold “courage” of “placing the human person at the centre”, “capitalising our best energies” and “placing ourselves at the service of the society”, we are offered “suggested themes for further reflections”, including: “Mystique” of living together; Village of Education; Fraternity and peace; Egolatry; Positive Internet resources; Education to silence; Throwaway culture; Thoughts of unity; Restlessness in searching; Revolution of tenderness; Ecological Citizenship.

These rather enigmatic phrases can only give us an indication of the goals set for the Education Compact.

Sadly, however, we can see that they are non-doctrinal, non-Christian and wholly unhelpful for Catholic parents struggling to bring up their children in the faith.

NEW HUMANISM AND AUTHENTIC EDUCATION One of the most unsettling aspects of the Global Compact on Education is the ambiguous concept of “new humanism”. Asked by Diane Montagna about this term, Archbishop Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, pointed to Michaelangelo’s creation of Adam.

“In this depiction of the Creation, we see God who gives man strength, liberty, and life but leaves him free. It is an encounter of freedom where there is a presence of God that does not crush man, but frees him. He launches him in his responsibility.

Here we have two very important concepts. The Christian idea is that of Creation, and it is not only Christian. The idea belongs to the three monotheistic religions. Therefore, that is the very important root. The rest comes from it. It’s the centrality of the person. God creates but then withdraws. He leaves man, saying, “Go!”24 The Archbishop seems to wish to soften this deistic view by going on to explain: “God does not withdraw. He is there, but he doesn’t want to replace man. And so, in the moment of Creation – this is particularly Christian because Christianity has its own specific vision – at a certain point, God sees man disoriented, and he sends his Son – the Incarnation. At this point, then, we

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THE CREATION OF ADAM, DETAIL, (C.1508), MICHELANGELO, SISTINE CHAPEL, VATICAN.

find the specifically Christian dimension, where God himself becomes nothing in order to elevate humanity. This is the new humanism. This is the new humanism; that is, it is the humanism that gets back on its feet, resumes the journey of relationship to God, doesn’t cut off this relationship, but strengthens it, and especially – since man is made in the image and likeness of God — this impression of God in the soul of man has to be understood and developed.”

However, such an explanation of “new humanism” seems designed to provide a theoretical platform on which the socio-ecological vision of education can be presented to people of all faiths and none. It deforms the sacred duty of Christian parents and educators of raising citizens for Heaven into a naturalistic anthropocentric approach, which is non-dogmatic and is therefore not Catholic.

In his encyclical on Christian education (Divini Illius Magistri, 1929) Pope Pius XI instructs the faithful to “make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected.”

“In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that

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there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is ‘the way, the truth and the life’, there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.” (no. 7) Discussing the essential aspects of authentic education, Pius XI explains that the mission to educate belongs pre-eminently to the Church. “[H]er mission to educate extends equally to those outside the Fold, seeing that all men are called to enter the kingdom of God and reach eternal salvation.” (no. 26) The Church’s mission of education is in “wonderful agreement with that of the family, for both proceed from God, and in a remarkably similar manner”. “God directly communicates to the family, in the natural order, fecundity, which is the principle of life, and hence also the principle of education to life, together with authority, the principle of order.” (no. 30) He continues: “The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.” (no. 32) The wisdom of the Church in this matter is expressed in Canon Law, can. 1113: “Parents are under a grave obligation to see to the religious and moral education of their children, as well as to their physical and civic training, as far as they can, and moreover to provide for their temporal well-being.”

Through education an individual should establish a solid foundation to form oneself, one’s family, society and all creation in the spirit of Truth. Authentic education assists us to grow in virtues and form the correct hierarchy of values, where material values serve the spiritual, and temporal values serve the eternal.

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CONCLUSION The pontificate of Pope Francis is characterised by dramatic departures from the teaching of the popes who have gone before him. Sadly, there is no reason to expect that the Global Compact on Education will prove to be an exception to this pattern. Rather, in the Marxist undertones of its emphasis on collectiveness and social good, it resembles more the protagonists of socialism than the fathers of the Church.

Addressing the plenary session of the Congregation of Catholic Education on 20 February, Pope Francis himself said that “the educational pact must not be a simple order, it must not be a rehash of the positivisms we have received from an Enlightenment education. It must be revolutionary.”25 The desire of the globalist powers within the UN to gain access to the Church’s 216,000 schools, attended by over 60 million pupils and 1,750 universities, with over 11 million students is easy to understand.

An education system devoid of a Christian ethos has always been the preferred means of spreading secular political ideologies. For them, all education is political. Throughout history, the Church has steadfastly resisted their attempts to win her over. But with Pope Francis’s global education initiative she now seems poised to trade true knowledge of the living God for the empty promise of dialogue and fraternity with the world.

In Divini Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI highlights the dangers of naturalist education stripped of the truth of the gospel. Those who claim to liberate children, he argues, would really make them slaves to sin. In particular, he warns us of the threat such education poses to innocence and holy purity saying: “Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. (no. 65)

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g l ob a l e d u c at i on pa c t

“Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognise the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.” (no. 66) So we could conclude that any meaningful educational work ought to prepare a person “whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason and revelation show him to be”26 to live a fruitful and purposeful life directed towards serving God and neighbour, with the ultimate goal of eternal life in Heaven.

The question remains – how are children to be educated in a society where hedonism and a blatant disregard of Christian standards have become the norm; where fewer and fewer of them grow up in intact families, where birth rates have fallen below replacement levels, where substance abuse and school violence continually rise while every area of modern life has been sexualised? In a world where Christian parenthood is marked by a daily struggle to safeguard their children from the poison which has engulfed so large a portion of the world, the Vatican’s pact with so many of those responsible for spreading that poison represents a betrayal on a global scale.

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https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-urged-to-partner-with-top-population-controllers-on-popes-global- education-pact Thomas D. Williams, “Gates Foundation to Target Climate Change, Gender Inequality”, Breitbart, 10 February 2020, https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2020/02/10/gates-foundation-to-target-climate-change-gender-inequality/ Bill and Melinda Gates, “Why we swing for the fences”, 10 February 2020, https://www.gatesnotes.com/2020-Annual-Letter International technical guidance on sexuality education, UNESCO, 2018, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260770/PDF/260770eng.pdf. multi Stefano Gennarini, “UN Agency Defies General Assembly, Promotes ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’”, Center for Family and Human Rights, 19 January 2018, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/un-agency-defies-general-assembly-promotes-comprehensive-sexuality-education-part-1/ Austin Ruse, “Christians Protest UNICEF for ‘Sexualizing’ Children”, Center for Family and Human Rights, 20 March 2018, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/christians-protest-unicef-sexualizing-children/ Claire Chretien, “Vatican bishop: ‘We don’t know exactly’ what the Church teaches on procreation; ‘education’ will help women have one kid instead of seven”, LifeSiteNews, 9 March 2017, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/catholic-bishopto-population-controller-we-dont-know-exactly-what-the-chur Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Sustainable Development, Kindle Edition, (2015), p. 159.

“Nigeria population: Sachs’ three-baby plan ‘tricky’”, British Broadcasting Corporation, 24 May 2011; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13530649 Jeffrey Sachs, Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Kindle Edition (2011), pp. 189-90.

Diane Montagna, “Speaker tells Vatican conference: Reducing population is best solution to climate ‘crisis’”, LifeSiteNews, 16 November 2017, https://www. lifesitenews.com/news/speaker-tells-vatican-conference-reducing-population-is-best-solution-to-cl Pope Francis’ in-flight press conference: full text, Vatican News, 10 September 2019; https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-09/pope-francis-inflight-press-conference-full-text.html Diane Montagna, “Pope Francis: ‘We must provide sex education in schools’”, LifeSiteNews, 28 January 2019, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-franciswe-must-provide-sex-education-in-schools Children and Sustainable Development: A Challenge for Education, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 13-15 November 2015, http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/events/2015/children.html Global Compact on education, Instrumentum laboris, https://www.lifesitenews. com/news/pope-francis-we-must-provide-sex-education-in-schools Diane Montagna, “Vatican Abp organizing Global Education Pact touts pope’s ‘new humanism’ where God ‘withdraws’”, LifeSiteNews, 25 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archbishop-organizing-vatican-education-pact-touts-popes-new-humanism Courtney Mares, “Pope Francis urges Catholic educators to teach inclusive integral ecology”, Catholic News Agency, 20 February 2020, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-urges-catholic-educators-to-teach-inclusive-integral-ecology-94448 Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (no. 53), 31 December 1929, http://w2.vatican. va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-illius-magistri.html

Global Compact on Education, https://www.educationglobalcompact.org/en/ global-compact-on-education/ Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the Launch of the Global Compact on Education, Vatican, 12 September 2019, https://www.educationglobalcompact. org/en/the-invite-of-pope-francis/ Diane Montagna, “Vatican Abp organizing Global Education Pact touts pope’s ‘new humanism’ where God ‘withdraws’”, LifeSiteNews, 25 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archbishop-organizing-vatican-education-pact-touts-popes-new-humanism Diane Montagna, “Vatican urged to partner with top population controllers on pope’s Global Education Pact”, LifeSiteNews, 14 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-urged-to-partner-with-top-population-controllers-on-popes-global- education-pact World Health Organisation, Regional Office for Europe, http://www.euro.who.int/ en/about-us/partners/the-european-union-and-its-institutions WHO/Europe, Areas of Work, http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/ Life-stages/sexual-and-reproductive-health/areas-of-work/abortion WHO/Europe, Areas of Work, http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/ Life-stages/sexual-and-reproductive-health/areas-of-work/contraception European Union Youth Goals, https://ec.europa.eu/youth/policy/youth-strategy/ youthgoals_en Diane Montagna, “Vatican urged to partner with top population controllers on pope’s Global Education Pact”, LifeSiteNews, 14 February 2020,

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Protecting

THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDREN:

the Christian home at the heart of the decisive battle

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n September 2020, compulsory sex and relationships education is due to be introduced to schools in England. The Catholic Church has consistently recognised parents as the primary educators of their children. The bishops of England and Wales, however, are backing government plans that will end the statutory right of parents to withdraw their children from programmes promoting LGBT ideology and “confidential” access to contraception and abortion.

In response to the abandonment of Catholic parents a new pro-family initiative has been formed by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the Latin Mass Society, the Good Counsel Network, and Catholic Man UK. The Coalition in Defence of Primary Educators is calling on lay Catholics to pray and offer sacrifices to obtain the grace that the bishops of England and Wales will return to the fight and lead the defence of the families in their care.

The group’s inaugural event was a two-day pilgrimage of prayer and discussion for the feast of the Immaculate Conception at the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham. In 1061, Lady Richeldis of Walsingham had a dream in which the Blessed Virgin showed her the Holy House of Nazareth and requested that one like it be built in Walsingham.

Richeldis did this and Our Lady promised that: “Whosoever seeks my help here will not go away empty-handed.” The shrine was to become a place of prayer and pilgrimage ranked fourth in the medieval world after Jerusalem, Compostela and Rome. Throughout its turbulent history, Walsingham, “England’s Nazareth”, has remained a site of devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

Encouraged by the words of Pope Leo XIII, “When England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady will return to England”, and taking as its theme Acts 1:14 which describes the disciples as “perseverantes unianimiter in oratione” (persevering with one mind in prayer) with the Mother of the Lord, the pilgrimage culminated in a Rosary procession, led by fathers of families, some walking barefoot, to the ruins of the ancient priory.

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sexual morality. Just let them get on...and learn for themselves what are vaguely termed ‘certain values, principles and norms.’”

Welcoming pilgrims, John Smeaton, CEO of SPUC, said: “Our procession praying the Rosary to Walsingham Priory will be led by fathers, who have a particular responsibility to defend their families when the innocence of their children is under attack.

“The purpose of our pilgrimage is to ask Our Lady to pray that God will transform the Catholic bishops of England and Wales so that they lead the lay faithful in resisting the British government’s wicked legislation which makes Relationships Education compulsory at primary school and Relationships and Sex Education compulsory at secondary school, including compulsory LGBT relationships at secondary level.” (See p.18)

He described the new sex education legislation, passed by the Westminster Parliament in March 2019, as a completely secular liberal view of human sexuality.

He explained that the programme is to be ‘LGBT inclusive’ and portray homosexual relationships in a positive manner. Although not an absolute in primary schools, it is strongly urged even there. Teenagers will be encouraged to “explore” their developing “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. Marriage is redefined to include “same-sex marriage” and presented as one of a range of relationship types.

Secondary school children are to be provided with comprehensive “non-judgmental” information on contraception and abortion. They will be signposted as to where and how to obtain contraception and abortions without the knowledge of their parents.

Carrying an unborn child to term is presented simply as one of the possible options when pregnant.

“The role of the school, teachers and the state has been greatly expanded into areas up to now considered the rightful and natural territory of parental responsibility. The new compulsory subjects (including Health Education) attempt to cover virtually every aspect of the child’s moral formation, health and well-being. This will further undermine and discourage good, conscientious parenting,” Dr. Rogers said.

The new statutory guidance has been welcomed by the Catholic Education Service, and as Dr. Rogers pointed out, the CES has published at least two

Also addressing the event, Dr. Tom Rogers, SPUC’s education manager, outlined the longstanding cooperation between the Catholic Education Service (CES), with the approval of the bishops, and the secular authorities pushing anti-life and anti-family sex education. This situation, he explained, has worsened under Pope Francis.

In Chapter 7 of Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis calls for sex education to be taught in a way that lets children learn for themselves rather than imposing “absolute and unquestionable truths.” Dr. Rogers pointed out that this approach is actually quite disturbing: “Let’s not tell children that with God there are absolute truths or commandments we need to adhere to – especially when it comes to marriage and

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wrong with them – they have an irrational fear – which is even ‘sinful’. This is the corruption of children,” he said, “this is grooming!”

documents promoting the moral acceptability of homosexuality: Learning to Love (2017), which refers to same-sex relationships as being able to constitute a “powerful” and “an exalted form of love,” equal to that of man and woman, and Made in God’s Image: Challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying in Catholic schools (2017; 2nd ed. 2018).

“Children are essentially being instructed by the CES that if they experience negative emotions about ‘homosexuality’ – if they have an aversion to the idea of homosexuality (including homosexual behaviour or advances?) then there is something

The connection between the widespread exploitation of children and the modern education system was also highlighted by Dr. Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society. The rejection of Christian morality, he said, has resulted in the educational establishment promoting the principle of consent as the only justified concern when judging sexual behaviour. (See p.22) Mrs. Lucy Shaw spoke at length about how the role of women in the home has been denigrated by feminism and the social consequences of its attack on family life. (See p.30) The scale and ferocity with which the innocence of children is now assaulted means that, without supernatural help, it will soon become impossible for parents to defend their own families. With the clear understanding that the Christian home itself has become the centre of the decisive battle between Our Lord and the reign of Satan, the“Perseverantes unianimiter in oratione” initiative seeks to implore the Blessed Mother, the mediatrix of all graces, to supply the help so desperately needed to resist these attacks.

If you wish to receive further information on the Coalition in Defence of Primary Educators and its upcoming events, please email John Smeaton at johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk.

Why Catholic parents must mobilise in defence of

PRIMARY EDUCATORS b y J O H N S M E ATO N

Welcome address to the inaugural pilgrimage of the Coalition in Defence of Primary Educators in Walsingham on 7 December 2019.

T

he purpose of our pilgrimage to Walsingham is to ask Our Lady to pray that God will transform the Catholic bishops of England and Wales so that they lead the Catholic faithful in resistance to the British Government’s wicked legislation which makes Relationships Education compulsory at primary school and Relationships and Sex Education compulsory at secondary school, including compulsory LGBT relationships at secondary level.

This is the purpose of our initiative - but I think it’s important to put this purpose into global ecclesiastical context.

Sadly, the bishops of England and Wales have repeatedly welcomed this legislation as Dr. Tom Rogers outlined in his analysis “How Catholic church officials have betrayed parents and children” (published in Calx Mariae, Spring 2019). However, the scandalous reality is that the bishops’ policy is very much in line with papal and Vatican policy, and it’s partly in line with the policy of bishops worldwide as reflected by the 2015 Family Synod.

In the interim report (relatio post discepatationem) of the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 and the preparatory document (instrumentum laboris) of the Ordinary Synod in 2015 there were passages that suggested that homosexual unions, while not equal to marriage, nonetheless have some degree of legitimacy. The synod fathers, bishops from around the world, rejected this

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approach: no such passages are found in the final reports of either synod.

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

This implies: • that “same-sex unions” are one of the “great variety of family situations”, • that “same-sex unions” offer a “certain stability”, • that “same-sex unions” can be “equated” with marriage on some level, if not “simply”.

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

In a lecture entitled “1517, 1717, 1917: Three Revolutions and Fatima”, delivered in Washington in CAL X M A R IA E

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

The sentence, in paragraph 58 of the document, reads: “The family, while maintaining its primary space in education (cf. Gravissimum Educationis, 3), cannot be the only place for teaching sexuality.”

2017, Professor Roberto de Mattei, the distinguished historian, said: “At Fatima, Our Lady showed the three little shepherds the terrifying vision of hell where the souls of poor sinners go, and it was revealed to Jacinta that it was sins against purity that lead most souls to hell. Who could possibly have imagined one hundred years later that the public profession of impurity would have been added to the immense number of impure sins that are committed, under the form of sexual liberation and the introduction of extramatiral unions, even homosexual, into the laws of the most important nations of the West?

“And who could have ever imagined that a pontifical document – Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, issued on 8 April, 2016 – would endorse adultery? The divine and natural law does not admit exceptions. Those who allow the exception destroy the rule. In one of the dubia addressed by the cardinals to the pope we read: “After Amoris laetitia n. 301, is it still possible to affirm that a person who habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of God’s law, as for instance the one that prohibits adultery (cf. Mt. 19:3-9), finds him or herself in an objective situation of grave habitual sin?” The fact that today a doubt of this sort can be presented to the pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith indicates how very grave and deep is the crisis in which the Church is immersed.”

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

In his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (10 January 1890), on the chief duties of Christians as citizens, Pope Leo XIII teaches: “By nature parents have a right to the training of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which by God’s blessing it was begotten. Therefore it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety.”

Pope Leo XIII’s words are given greater weight by virtue of their being cited by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Divini illius magistri on Christian education (31 December 1929). In this encyclical, Pope Pius XI goes on to say: “Another very grave danger is that naturalism which nowadays invades the field of education in that most delicate matter of purity of morals. Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. (no.65)

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“Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.” (no. 66) “In this extremely delicate matter, if, all things considered, some private instruction is found necessary and opportune, from those who hold from God the commission to teach and who have the grace of state, every precaution must be taken. Such precautions are well known in traditional Christian education, and are adequately described by Antoniano [On the Christian Education of Youth, which St. Charles Borromeo ordered to be read in public to parents assembled in their churches] when he says: ‘Such is our misery and inclination to sin, that often in the very things considered to be remedies against sin, we find occasions for and inducements to sin itself. Hence it is of the highest importance that a good father, while discussing with his son a matter so delicate, should be well on his guard and not descend to details, nor refer to the various ways in which this infernal hydra destroys with its poison so large a portion of the world; otherwise it may happen that instead of extinguishing this fire, he unwittingly stirs or kindles it in the simple and tender heart of the child. Speaking generally, during the period of childhood it suffices to employ those remedies which produce the double effect of opening the door to the virtue of purity and closing the door upon vice.’” (no. 67) The teaching of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI was also upheld by Pope Pius XII in an address to French fathers on 18 September 1951. The words of these popes are steeped in Divine Law, in apostolic teaching and the tradition of the Church, and steeped in a sensitive and holy knowledge of the reality of the constant battle between good and evil in the soul of every human being.

Compare this teaching to the position now adopted by the Vatican and Pope Francis: a few months after

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the promulgation of Amoris laetitia, an apostolic exhortation in which Pope Francis called for sex education in educational institutions, the Pontifical Council for the Family published a sex education programme called The Meeting Point at the World Youth Day in Poland in July 2016.

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

Compare the teaching of these three popes to the teaching of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales who in a training document for teachers say that an “exalted form of love exists just as powerfully in relationships between people of the same sex as it does in heterosexual relationships”.

POPE PIUS XI

We must also compare these three popes to the following words from Pope John Paul II in Familiaris consortio, his apostolic exhortation on the family in 1981, which very much fail to convey the full teaching of the Church on the sacred obligations of parents to guard their children from temptation: “Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centres chosen and controlled by them.

In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering

CAL X M A R IA E

protecting the innocence of children

into the same spirit that animates the parents.” (no. 37) What do Catholic parents do when popes disagree on sexuality education?

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

What a blessing it is for parents, then, to hear the words of Christ in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father: for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.” (Mt. 11:25-26) Parents today are not for the most part theological scholars – and they never have been since the time of Christ. However, countless unlearned, but faithful Catholic parents both know and can confidently affirm, without fear of being contradicted by any authority in this world or the next, that God’s commandment “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”, reaffirmed by God the Son during his life on earth, establishes for all time that parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children.

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

In praying for our bishops, let me conclude by recalling once more the teaching of Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri:

in their power, by instructions and catechisms, by word of mouth and written articles widely distributed, to warn Christian parents of their grave obligations. And this should be done not in a merely theoretical and general way, but with practical and specific application to the various responsibilities of parents touching the religious, moral and civil training of their children, and with indication of the methods best adapted to make their training effective, supposing always the influence of their own exemplary lives.” (no. 74) John Smeaton is the Chief Executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). He studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and taught English at a secondary school. He became involved with SPUC, the first pro-life group to be established anywhere in the world, after graduating from Oxford. He became the national director of SPUC in 1996. SPUC has been at the forefront of campaigns not only against abortion but also euthanasia and same-sex “marriage”. John Smeaton is the vice-president of International Right to Life Federation and a co-founder of Voice of the Family. John Smeaton won the John Cardinal O’Connor Pro-Life Award in 2014, awarded by Legatus and the Father Paul Marx Pro-Life Award from Human Life International. He and his wife Josephine have four children and six grandchildren and a great grandchild.

“For the love of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, therefore, we implore pastors of souls, by every means

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Sex education

AND THE ETHICS OF CONSENT

b y D R . J O S E P H S H AW

This talk was given in Walsingham on 7 December 2019 at a pilgrimage in defence of primary educators.

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nce upon a time, there was doctrine in the English law that while the legal character of some actions would be completely changed by the victim’s consent, this was not so with others. Thus, if Adam took away the property of Beatrice, this was theft if Beatrice did not consent, but not theft if Beatrice did consent. On the other hand, if Adam caused Beatrice actual bodily harm, or killed her, it made no difference if Beatrice consented. Adam could wave any kind of signed or sworn declaration by Beatrice, that she wanted him to do what he had done, in front of judge and jury, and they would find him guilty all the same.

Many people will tell us that today we live in a more fortunate age. If Bea is tired of life, or wants to experience being harmed, we are well on our way to her consent being alone enough to make that legally, and indeed morally, permissible. The fast-moving world of bioethics has already gone beyond this rather simple idea. Now patients can be killed without their consent as well as with it, and doctors are increasingly obliged to harm their patients, if the patient should demand it: first in the case of abortion, but soon in that of gender dysphoria, with bodily-integrity disorder, when people want healthy limbs amputated, a little further down the road.

Once you get rid of the traditional prohibition on killing in cases where the victim consents, why, after all, stop there? Why not move on to cases where the victim does not consent to be killed, but where duly authorised people think that it would be a good thing to kill him regardless? This is the direction in which the legal and medical establishment is inclined to go, under the influence of utilitarianism: the theory that we are obliged to bring about the best possible

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outcome. For them, the ultimate goal is bringing about good outcomes, not personal autonomy.

The good outcomes are themselves measured in utilitarian terms, which means in terms of satisfying as many preferences as possible.

The educational establishment, on the other hand, seems content to rest at the intermediate stage of conceptual development: that consent is the key, and consent must be mutual, be outcomes good, bad, or indifferent. This attitude is very much on display from social workers in the now numerous reports of public inquiries into child sex abuse rings. The pattern is that they acknowledge that child victims of abuse were making terrible choices, but this fact didn’t warrant intervention. On the contrary, they saw it as their job to prevent parents from intervening. Consent is everything, outcomes can go hang.

In this presentation I want to explore the way consent is being used here: where it comes from, what it implies, and how it interacts with other aspects of morality, both traditional and progressive, and how it works in practice.

CONSENT AND MORAL SCEPTICISM The first question is where the idea comes from. As I have already indicated, the appeal to consent is a substitute for the prohibitions of traditional morality and law: not to kill, for example, or to restrict sex to marriage. Such prohibitions have long been attacked for restricting our freedom. Before the end of the 18th century William Blake imagined the Garden of Love

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“People who have lost confidence in substantive moral principles are clearly not going to have any confidence in the judgements they generate, and the background information becomes equally irrelevant.

All we have is the reaction of the onlooker, the reader, or the agent.”

spoiled by the building of a chapel, which had “Thou shalt not” written over its locked door: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The problem with the old prohibitions which Blake is concerned about is not that they prevent clever and benevolent doctors and lawyers bringing about the best possible outcomes – the Utilitarian instinct – but rather that they impede self-realisation. We might call this the romantic instinct.

Romantic self-realisation may, of course, involve harm to others, like Gaugin abandoning his wife and five children to pursue his art: it seems probable that Mrs. Gaugin’s self-realisation as a wife and mother was impeded by this action. One way of responding to this difficulty is to insist on mutual consent. If I want to do something, then that is presumptively ok, but if it affects others then I should gain their consent.

In this way it is hoped that a world without the traditional moral prohibitions will not immediately descend into a dystopian nightmare, where the strong exploit the weak. Perhaps consent can become the one and only moral principle: perhaps we can squeeze the whole of morality out of this one idea, in the way that Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, tried to squeeze it out of benevolence, and Immanuel Kant out of rationality.

The concern with consent can in this way be set into the context of the collapse of traditional moral and cultural values. The putatively objective claims about history or English literature taught to our parents and grandparents, such as that the First World War was a just and necessary response to German aggression, or that Shakespeare thought Shylock was a bad person, cannot be taught to our children because, to generalise, academics and schoolteachers have not only lost their confidence in those claims, but more significantly they have lost their confidence in any puSPR I NG 2 0 2 0

tatively objective claims they might put in their place.

Never mind reassessing the causes of the First World War, or rehabilitating Shylock: today there is no true or false interpretation at all, just our own reaction to it.

So they show children a photograph of the trenches of World War I, or a poem or story, and ask them to emote about it. In the same way, children are presented with the prospect of sexual relations, and asked what they feel about it. In each case it is a substitute for an informed judgement based on substantive principles. People who have lost confidence in substantive moral principles are clearly not going to have any confidence in the judgements they generate, and the background information becomes equally irrelevant.

All we have is the reaction of the onlooker, the reader, or the agent. A positive reaction makes whatever is being reacted to good; a negative one makes it bad.

Naturally, what one person thinks is good another person may think is bad, but this is no real contradiction, since we are not dealing with objective judgements, but with free choice.

The modern conception of consent grew up in the context of legal contracts, and in this original context one can lay down some tough criteria. The parties must know what they are doing; they must be of sound mind; they must not be under the influence of drugs or alcohol; they must of a certain age; in some cases we can insist that they have independent legal or financial advice, and in cases of doubt we might even want to see a letter from a psychiatrist affirming a party’s mental capacity. All these things are possible in the context of agreeing to complex financial transactions, or marriage, or major surgery, because generally speaking it is possible to delay the agreement until all the requirements can be satisfied.

Most people won’t have to give or seek consent in this elaborate fashion many times in their lives.

If, on the other hand, consent is going to be the key issue in every day-to-day interaction, it is going

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to have to be a rather watered-down version, or else those interactions are going to become impossible: or perhaps both. If some kind of consent is going to be necessary for Adam to tell the long-suffering Bea an off-colour joke in the lunch break, for example, it is pretty difficult to imagine how that could be arranged.

If consent is going to be the key to whether Adam can touch Bea on the wrist late one evening in a bar after a few drinks, then Adam has a problem.

SOCIAL CONVENTIONS Before moving on, you may be wondering what the alternative to consent as the key to these sorts of interactions might be. The answer is social convention.

There is a wide consensus that some kinds of behaviour are reasonable or unreasonable, polite or rude, or gallant or abusive. If we think of such a consensus as establishing rules of behaviour, this takes a lot of pressure off the concept of consent.

If we can’t rely on these social conventions, my asking for directions, and some yob propositioning a girl at a bus stop, come out as structurally parallel situations. The yob and I have the same difficulty.

It would be impossible for me to gain the stranger’s consent to interrupt his day-dreams without interrupting his day-dreams. In exactly the same way it would

be impossible for the yob to determine whether the girl consents to hearing his crude advances without making her hear them. I labour the point because it is so obvious that one is ok and the other is not, that we can lose sight of what makes it obvious. It is obvious because of social conventions.

Social conventions, like the laws of warfare, apply fundamental moral principles to the complexities of real life. They evolve to meet new situations, and there is extensive mutual influence between such conventions and the law of the land. Even when not expressed in law, they set our expectations and form what we regard as reasonable and unreasonable when a person’s behaviour puts at risk his job or reputation.

They aren’t infallible, of course, and it isn’t always a simple matter to apply them to particular cases, but they are more widely understood and endorsed than the ethical theories academic philosophers pride themselves upon, and they are democratic, in the sense that conventions are always open to criticism, renegotiation, and self-righteous defiance.

Although they need make no claim to absolutism or universality, social conventions have been the victims of moral scepticism just as much as the Ten Commandments: indeed more so, as they tend not to be defended so fiercely by social conservatives. This

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is understandable, but it has been a tactical mistake.

Something intermediate between fundamental moral principles and daily life is absolutely necessary.

For example, telling young people not to break the Sixth Commandment is a wholly inadequate way of preparing them for the dating scene. Telling them to get home by 10pm, what it means, and does not mean, for a man to pay for a girl’s drinks, and what sort of clothing signals sexual availability, are contingent and indeed arbitrary rules, but they are the kinds of

incapable of giving consent. The object of the exercise was to loosen the bonds of traditional moral prohibitions, not to tighten them. They want the individuals under their charge to be able to do whatever they like. Given the limitations on their agency, however, this tends to mean that they want their charges to do whatever they themselves want them to do. Whether that is self-stimulation, or attending climate demonstrations, teachers and social workers can claim that their charges have consented, while ensuring that

“The educational establishment and social services do not want to hear that their charges are incapable of giving consent.

The object of the exercise was to loosen the bonds of traditional moral prohibitions, not to tighten them.”

things we need to know if we are to understand how to obey the Sixth Commandment in our own society.

They are interpretations of the Sixth Commandment, for a highly specific social context, with the force of custom, and they are a major component of culture.

CONSENT AND LIBERATION To return to the new world of the ethics of consent, the idea was that fundamental moral principles and social conventions should be set aside both because of scepticism about their validity, and in the interests of personal freedom. For reasons I have already indicated, gaining consent can be difficult in everyday interactions, and this whole approach has often been ridiculed for bringing in, not romantic libertinism, but its very opposite, a new puritanism: perhaps from now on, critics say, flirtations will have to take place in the presence of a chaperone. Difficulties are particularly acute where alcohol has been consumed, and indeed at a certain point of inebriation it is obvious that a person cannot meaningfully consent to anything.

There are, however, some people who are permanently in a cognitive state in which consent is problematic: namely, the mentally handicapped, and children.

The educational establishment and social services, however, do not want to hear that their charges are

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they are exposed to only one side of any argument.

Even for people with normal adult mental faculties, an artificial information environment of this nature would be enough to undermine the moral significance of such consent.

This weakening of the notion of consent is not consistently applied. The stereotypical undergraduate rugby lad is told that he can do anything if everyone consents, but that a few glasses of wine effectively means that he can’t do anything. School teachers, school nurses, and social workers, on the other hand, are told that they can infer a child’s consent to sexual relations and to abortion on the basis of a decision which falls a lot more than a few glasses of wine short of an adult’s informed consent, because of the immaturity intrinsic to the state of childhood, and because of the deliberate and selective withholding of information. This is to say nothing of social pressures, to which I am going to turn in a moment.

There is also a particular paradox which arises over the teaching of the ethics of consent. As I have explained, the theory of consent has the ambition of taking over large areas of morality, if not the whole of it, and schools set themselves the task of teaching it to children. This requires a critique of any other basis upon which behaviour, especially sexual be25

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haviour, can be criticised or justified. Thus we get the now-notorious Stonewall lesson plans designed to humiliate children who are insufficiently zealous with their accusations of homophobia. These lessons, we can be sure, are acutely uncomfortable experiences for many of the children. Have they consented to these experiences? This is a question which is not asked. It seems legitimate to wonder, however, how the sacred importance of consent can be taught effectively in a class which itself violates the principle of consent.

In this way, we can begin to see a strange alliance between the ethics of consent, and behaviour which is actually abusive. It is to this I wish to discuss next.

CONSENT AND THE ABUSER The replacement of substantive moral principles and social conventions with consent has not brought in quite the liberated idyll that some hoped. The public inquiry into the Oxford sex abuse ring noted, among other things, that the desire among teachers and social workers to avoid value judgements about sexual behaviour created “an environment where it is easier for vulnerable young people/children to be exploited. It also makes it harder for professionals to have the confidence and bravery to be more proactive on prevention and intervention.”1 This was about the sexual exploitation of children by adults. Of equal concern is the abuse of children by each other. In 2017 the BBC revealed that over the previous three years, police in England and Wales received reports of 2,625 sexual offences, including 225 alleged rapes, taking place on school premises.2 This is 23 offenses for every week of school. One can only imagine the number of sexual assaults which were not reported, which in many schools are simply endemic. One piece of research reported: “They lift our skirts up and whistle.

“They touch girls in corridors, at lunch and at break times,” said a teacher. “And they all seem to think it’s just normal.”3 This particular report was jointly published by a group called UK Feminista, which looks at the phenomenon through the lens of sexism. They focus exclusively, 26

therefore, on the abuse of girls by boys. This is, however, only one facet of the situation. For example, pressure to engage in premature sexual activity is exerted on both girls and boys by members of their own sex and peer group. The broader picture is that telling children that there are no moral rules, that everything is permitted, that the adults in charge will never judge you, and that there are no effective mechanisms of discipline, has not made children into little angels who never hurt each other, or get drawn in to abusive relationships.

Are children not also taught that consent is necessary for actions to be ok? Yes they are, but this important qualification to the moral nihilism of the educational establishment doesn’t seem to be holding back the tide of sexual exploitation.

The fact is, as I have already indicated the official view that consent is necessary for every interaction is completely unworkable, and therefore simply cannot become an established part of children’s social lives, however many lessons on consent they are taught. Furthermore, when sexually abusive children are picked up on their behaviour, they tend to claim that they thought their victim consented. This turns a sexual assault into an unfortunate misunderstanding. Here is another quotation from the same report: “Why didn’t you stop when she was crying?” a teacher asked a 14-year-old perpetrator.

“It’s normal for girls to cry during sex,” he replied.

There is, however, more to say about the effect of the ethics of consent upon the culture of schools, which I want to approach in a slightly different way.

CHILDREN UNDER PRESSURE From time to time I give talks about philosophy in schools, and on one occasion not long ago I arrived at a private school in London to find the headmaster somewhat agitated about my talk. It seems that a previous speaker, a Catholic priest, had caused discomfort among the pupils, and he didn’t want that to happen again. I was able to reassure him that the topic I had prepared didn’t stray into personal morality, so the issue did not really arise, but in the course of our conversation one remark of his struck me: he said that the pupils felt under tremendous pressure. The

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“The entire tenor of modern education – I don’t say, of sex education, but of education in general – is that sexual reserve is irrational, because after all any and all sexual behaviour is ok if it is consensual.”

problem with the earlier talk had been that it increased the feeling of pressure.

What I think he meant was this. Schools are conformist environments. We can all remember peer pressure to dress in certain ways, for example; in some schools there is pressure not to work too hard. This peer pressure may well be counter to various kinds of pressure being applied by teachers and parents. The school conformist likes to think of himself as a rebel.

Now there is pressure to act, sexually, in certain ways, and it can be intense; there is counter-pressure from what we might call the natural sexual reserve of children. What the headmaster was worried about is that I would say something which would make the pupils feel guilty about what they had done or were contemplating doing: that I would increase one side of the pressure, making their dilemma more painful.

Now, the entire tenor of modern education – I don’t say, of sex education, but of education in general – is that sexual reserve is irrational, because after all any and all sexual behaviour is ok if it is consensual.

In other words, it tells children that if they feel bad about sexual activity, their feelings have no objective justification. They are just feelings. In theory, that should make them worthy of respect, but as a matter of fact sexual reserve is not respected.

One obvious way in which it is not respected is pupils’ exposure to sexually explicit material in the classroom. But even aside from that, the constantly reiterated claim that sexual reserve is just a feeling itself fails to respect it, because it actually presents itself to us as a moral intuition: an intuition that some acts are objectively wrong. To respect that moral intuition would imply accepting the possibility, at least for the

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sake of argument, that the intuition is correct. This, however, would be incompatible with the claim fundamental to the ethics of consent, that there are no valid moral prohibitions, and one can do anything if everyone involved consents.

Schools are told, with increasing shrillness, to ensure that pupils are taught to respect every lifestyle choice. “Respect” here does not mean not bullying, or denigrating, or openly criticising, other people for their decisions: it means affirming them, recognising them as good, good because expressive of each agent’s choices, and therefore part of each agent’s self-expression and identity. The approved lesson plans make it clear that to think that another person’s sexual behaviour is potentially susceptible to criticism, on the basis of objective moral principles, is incompatible with respecting such choices.

Recall the headmaster I mentioned who was fretting that a visiting speaker at his school might suggest that some decisions are bad for some reason. Let us imagine he manages to banish such heretical ideas from his school. Children will hear from their teachers that all sorts of lifestyles should be affirmed and celebrated, with a stress on those which children may feel a bit uncomfortable about, with the message that their discomfort is wrong. It is difficult to avoid the implication of these lessons that sexual activity is the basis of pretty well all forms of self-realisation worthy of the name.

This message will be reinforced by the Freudian narrative, long absorbed by popular culture, that sexual abstinence is a mark of immaturity, repression, and even mental illness. It will be further leveraged by their peers in terms of what is grown-up, cool and fun, and what is the opposite of these things.

“In order to establish this brave new world in which we all respect each other’s lifestyle choices, the moral instincts which are common to the major world religions and form the basis of human civilisation and culture, must be torn up by the roots. ”

The implication is that criticising others’ decisions is wrong because the principles underlying such criticism are wrong. If the moral principles are invalid, then not only can we not use them to criticise other people’s decisions, but we can’t use them to criticise our own decisions either. If I am even allowed to believe that there are objective moral principles which guide and limit my own decision making, then I would have to be allowed to believe that those same principles would apply to other people’s actions. That cannot be allowed. It must be conveyed to pupils, instead, that their feelings are just their feelings.

In order to establish this brave new world in which we all respect each other’s lifestyle choices, the moral instincts which are common to the major world religions and form the basis of human civilisation and culture, must be torn up by the roots.

So, where does that leave school children who find themselves under pressure to engage in sexual acts?

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One might think, at this point, that this is not an environment in which children are encouraged to trust their own feelings, and to resist pressure to act against them. But this is only half the story, because it is only half of the children’s feelings. Sexual pressure itself creates feelings: of shame, loneliness, fear, and a desire to fit in and be normal. Those feelings are no less real than feelings of reserve. The difference is the moral basis for the feelings in each case: sexual reserve derives, as we believe, from the instinctive knowledge of the moral law which is common to humanity; the feelings of shame and humiliation arising from being bullied and ostracised for not taking part in the sexual free-for-all of the school community, on the other hand, is an understandable reaction to a highly contingent and artificial environment, a modern British school.

We are not allowed to talk about this difference, however. We are told that there is no moral basis to our feelings, and no way of judging some to be more CAL X M A R IA E

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authentic witnesses of our true nature, than others, unless it is a matter of shedding inhibitions. There is no reason to place the feelings of shame caused by a sexually depraved peer group into a wider context, for example, in which it might not seem quite so valid as a guide to action. Feelings are just feelings.

This is indeed, to repeat my quotation of the report about the Oxford child abuse ring, “an environment where it is easier for vulnerable young people/children to be exploited”. The net result of the competing forms of pressure is that children come to understand that feelings of reserve are barriers to full and normal participation in the school community. Shedding them is a sign of maturity, of coming of age, and the sooner one does that, the better. This is a gift to those adults and peers who wish to engage in the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children.

In the context of abortion, we have of course all heard this before. Women in crisis pregnancies typically have mixed feelings, feelings which point them in different directions. While claiming to respect women’s feelings and validate their decisions, the abortion industry, including its tentacles inside schools, seeks to undermine feelings of moral compunction about abortion, leaving such feelings as financial worries in possession of the field. Anyone who attempts to alleviate the latter kind of feeling, by offering practical advice or financial assistance, is accused of making things more difficult for women. The contest of feelings is not given much of a level playing field.

CONCLUSION I would like to summarise what I have said under two headings.

First, if schools want to stop children abusing each other, or allowing themselves to be abused by adults, they need to stop talking about consent, and talk instead about inappropriate behaviour: behaviour which is inappropriate even if the victim has been pressured and brow-beaten into going along with it.

As repeated court cases and public inquiries have indicated, an exclusive concern with consent places all responsibility on the child victim of abuse. If the victim caves in to what may be intense pressure to acquiesce, if alternatives to going along with abuse seem lacking or unattractive, then it is the victims who are then blamed for any bad outcomes: dropping out

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of school, pregnancy, and so on. To state the obvious, children are no more ready for this kind of responsibility than they are ready to handle their own financial affairs. To place this kind of responsibility on children is, in fact, itself abusive.

Second, if we want to prepare our children for life, not just in school, but in the wider world, memorising the Ten Commandments, while commendable, is insufficient. Going beyond what I have said myself in this paper, the best way of coming to understand the place of sexuality in a complete life is to experience as a child a family life founded on sexual exclusivity and openness to life, a stable and loving environment where Catholic culture and spirituality are able to flourish. This is not a lesson easily learnt from a textbook of moral theology: the Catholic family must be experienced, and it must seep into our bones. If we want to know what we can do about the current crisis, for parents there is always this: to live our vocation more faithfully.

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.

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

3.

Quoted in Norman Wells: Unprotected: How the normalisation of underage sex is exposing children and young people to the risk of sexual exploitation (Family and Youth Concern, 2017).

It’s Just Everywhere: A study on sexism in schools and how to tackle it’ published

by National Education Union and UK Feminista, 2017. https://ukfeminista.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Report-Its-just-everywhere.pdf Blanche Girouard “School sex ordeals”, Standpoint 29 January 2018. https://standpointmag.co.uk/counterpoints-february-2018-blanche-girouard-school-sex-harassment/

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THE HOME AS A DEFENCE against the state

b y LU C Y S H AW

This talk was given in Walsingham on 7 December 2019 at a pilgrimage in defence of primary educators.

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ost of my children are at an age when they would, if they attended schools, be directly affected by the changes to the Personal, Social and Health Education (PHSE) curriculum, but home education will protect them from all but the most indirect effects of them. In a very practical way it is the most certain bulwark against the militant sexualisation of children which is being effected not only through this one subject, but also through many others. However, on its own it is not enough to avoid school. As parents we should be asking ourselves how best we can arm our children for the coming struggle which they in their turn will face, when they emerge from the safety of their homes.

Education is in a state of deepening crisis. Teachers complain that many children start school unable to talk, or not potty trained. Other teachers insist that the point of school is to eradicate the so-called prejudices instilled in children by their parents. The view that many parents are failing so badly at bringing up their children that more unilateral intervention from the state, through schools, is a good thing, is very widely held.

These phenomena have their origin in a common source: the idea that it is the job of schools, not parents, not only to educate but to instil culture and manners. This is not entirely a new idea. Indeed it was an essential part of the post-war evolution of grammar schools into the top tier of a selective school system: children from poor backgrounds were to be given an

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education and culture foreign to their family and background, to enable them to move into a different social class.

The three-tier educational structure of the 1940s has now effectively disappeared, but this well-intentioned educational plan spread the idea, at first applicable to only one group of children, that the job of schools was not to pass on parents’ values, not even to correct those values or place them into a larger context, but systematically to replace those values with completely different ones, as a matter of meritocratic social engineering. Insofar as it was successful, it contributed to the situation often recorded in the popular culture of the 1950s: of parents and adult children who cannot understand each other any more, because the children had not only moved on from the places, pastimes, tastes, and attitudes they grew up with, but could even be ashamed of them.

The notion of schools as value-transplant centres had precedents in the 19th century battles in Italy and France about Church involvement in schools, and even earlier in this country when Catholics were forbidden to be school teachers in penal times. But if schools were expected to teach Protestantism, patriotism, or secularism, it was not so much expected in previous eras that schools would be the primary cultural formators of children: that they would overturn or displace CAL X M A R IA E

the bedtime stories, family relationships, and social attitudes, which children absorb in the home. Perhaps the closest they came was in attempting to suppress local languages and dialects, which caused irreparable damage to authentic local cultures. But even this project was undertaken in the main for prosaic reasons.

In this country at least, up until recently, the good or bad influence of schools, and their partial displacement of parents in the formation of children, operated in the context of many, if not most, parents having some meaningful choice between schools. Such choice is no longer possible.

For years parents have complained about schools ignoring their wishes, and talked about the frustration of trying to effect changes to school ethos and curricula. At the same time the educational establishment has ensured that variation amongst schools in terms

start, the current crisis is a crisis of family life as well as of schools. The influence of schools is paramount today because of the collapse to such a large extent of the family as an institution capable of forming children – even teaching them their native language or potty training them. Schools have been moving into a vacuum where families ought to have been, even if they have contributed to the creation of this vacuum. What we can’t do about schools, we should be able to do about our own families.

I know that many parents feel hopelessly inadequate faced with this challenge. We have been systematically disempowered, over the course of sixty years. But we should take heart. There is no need to persuade this audience of the colossal mess the establishment has made of the job it has wrested from parents. Mental illness among children is spiralling

“We should constantly keep before us a mental image of the education a truly uncompromising Catholic school would provide, and fight as hard as we can to drag what we do have up to that standard. But this particular war shouldn’t be conducted with children on the front line”

of ethos exists only within a narrow band. The result is that at present there are almost no schools to which parents can reasonably delegate their authority and sacrifice their primary influence. This isn’t to say that doing battle with the educational establishment is pointless: on the contrary, we should constantly keep before us a mental image of the education a truly uncompromising Catholic school would provide, and fight as hard as we can to drag what we do have up to that standard. But this particular war shouldn’t be conducted with children on the front line.

The immediate question is how we can form our children in the home in such a way as to rebuild the culture of the Faith strongly enough that they in their turn can pass it on to their own children. We ask this in the context of the historically normal and indeed sane attitude to the role of home and school, which is that values are passed on primarily in the home, and insofar as this occurs outside the home, it should be in accord with the values of the home. As I noted at the

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(according to figures from the NHS 12.8% of children between 5 and 19 have at least one mental disorder). There can be no doubt that this is connected to the relentless diet of a combination of state-sponsored child abuse, in the form of sex education, and the total absence of moral formation; or perhaps I might more fairly say the perversion of moral formation. An upbringing by wild animals would surely be less pernicious than this.

We can go further, though, than simply to argue that the strength of the home school is in the absence of conventional school. Good schools, if we had them, would be good places to play sport and to benefit from teaching from specialists, but contrary to the hopes of some educational theorists, moral education cannot be taught effectively in a school setting. The passing on of values doesn’t take place using books and blackboards (or even interactive whiteboards and iPads).

It is through the daily round, the living of Catholic family life, that this is truly learnt, understood and internalised by children.

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To express this in another way, values can only be passed on effectively when children can see them instantiated. The values modern schools tell us they want to inculcate in our children – tolerance, mutual respect, intellectual curiosity – are values which few schools, if any, actually instantiate: indeed, a more extreme case of “do what I say, not what I do” is difficult to imagine. That is one reason why they fail to inculcate these values. The values of a Catholic home, however – piety, respect and love for family members, purity, love of beauty, orderliness, discipline – are precisely those which even a very imperfect Catholic family can teach by doing. Children who grow up in a household where these values are reflected in family devotions, in meals eaten together, in daily conversation, in care for one another in sickness and injury, in outings and recreations, in the way the home is managed, and what it feels like to live in it, will come to understand and internalise those values.

Sex education in schools is the natural consequence of the handover of responsibility for the moral education of children from their parents to the state. As the state has made more and more aggressive use of this power, so the home as a place where culture and principles are nurtured and fostered in children has

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declined. Our job, as I see it, as parents, is primarily to create homes which support not only education and moral formation but also an understanding of family life and its irreplaceable role in society. For many of us, this means relearning what that role is.

Feminism has won such comprehensive victories in the world we live in that the perceptions of almost everyone have been influenced by it. I have registered the births of all my babies in person, and I always ask to be recorded on their birth certificates as a “Housewife”. I’ve been both amused and annoyed by the tactful sympathy with which this is received by registrars, at least one of whom has helpfully drawn my attention to other, less toxic, alternatives such as “Full-time mother”. I was more scandalised, however, to discover that this attitude is shared by some home schoolers. Indeed, admitting to housewifery as an occupation is as shameful as confessing to relying on benefits. Women’s relinquishment of this title has necessarily entailed relinquishment of the many skills which the housewife traditionally possessed: skills which, looked at from the point of view of the labour market, are in fact similar to the CEO of a small business. Catering, laundering, entertaining, furnishing, repairing, managing the employment of regular or

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occasional employees, buying and selling: some of the jobs mundane, some involving considerable creativity, it is employment of the most varied and demanding kind. The end product, if the work is performed well, isn’t simply a satisfactory financial return, but the creation of a happy, comforting environment for the worker’s own family: a place of refreshment and rest for both the inhabitants and guests.

Doing this well, contrary to the assertions of feminists, is difficult. Doing it well in combination with homeschooling is particularly difficult. However it isn’t a bolt-on which needs to be squeezed in somehow between swimming lessons and French; neither should

home educators have in common, what motivates them when choosing what curriculum to use, is the understanding of the importance of those four things that I have mentioned: purity, beauty, order, and discipline. For any education to succeed, it is essential that it should not be contradicted in word or action by those teaching it. A Catholic school, for example, which makes an attempt to educate children on the Catholic teaching on marriage, but whose teachers are all living lives of open scandal, will make very little headway in impressing its pupils with the importance of taking that teaching seriously. So when we attempt to instil in our children the importance

“Our job is primarily to create homes which support not only education and moral formation but also an understanding of family life and its irreplaceable role in society. For many of us, this means relearning what that role is.”

homeschooling be regarded as a reason for dropping as much of it as possible. The building of a strong and comfortable Christian home is an essential part of our children’s education. When they leave home to enter the final stages of their full-time education, or the workplace, they need to be equipped not only to practise their Faith unwaveringly and defend it in conversation with their colleagues, but also to build their own Christian homes where their own children can be sustained and equipped likewise. A Christian education is one which puts purity, beauty, order, and discipline at the centre of its curriculum. No doubt this is the reason for the widespread attraction of Catholic homeschoolers to the so-called “classical” curriculum which has been developed in America, and which takes as its model the ancient system of grammar, logic and rhetoric, which represents a rigorous and systematic formation, in contrast with the absence of “unschoolers”, who take an entirely childled approach which can result in no education at all, if the child doesn’t ask for one. I’m not immediately interested in arguing the pros and cons of all the different educational approaches on offer. What Catholic SPR I NG 2 0 2 0

of purity, beauty, order and discipline, it is of paramount importance that the environment in which we teach them reflects those things. If the practical reality of home life contradicts the spiritual realities we try to impart; if it is chaotic, dirty, disordered and uncomfortable, we will fail at a fundamental level in passing them on.

Feminism has succeeded so effectively in destroying the housewife, and with her the home skills she possessed, that very few women have received them intact from their mothers and grandmothers. Where housewifely skills have been taught, in general it has been more in the nature of a hobby: the occasional baking of a cake, the fleeting and faddish interest in one craft or another, and not the sustained effort of work and creativity that go into creating a well-kept, well-prepared home. Sometimes, and in my view even worse, fake crafts have replaced genuine crafts to occupy children. Where children in the past might have learnt bobbin lace, for example, they now make friendship bracelets; where they would have been taught darning, and the more advanced skills of embroidery and cutwork, the results of which decorated the homes 33

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“Keeping house is the art of living well, and looked at from a Catholic perspective, it also provides the ordered pattern of our days that can imitate the cloistered life.”

of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, they are now encouraged to play with kits of hama beads.

These fake crafts have no wider application; they do not teach skills, and they cannot be used for anything except the making of childish, ugly and useless objects. They are particularly pernicious because they trivialise the importance of true crafts, which are not and never have been simply a way of entertaining oneself and using up time, but rather are necessary to sustaining a comfortable, elegant and civilised way of life. They have displaced true crafts, many of which are in desperate straits, on the verge of being lost altogether, because so few people retain the skill to practise them and struggle to find people interested in learning them. Creating a home means, among other things, rediscovering these crafts which have slipped through the cracks between the generations, and making them integral to home life.

How to do that is the biggest challenge facing young families. Most wives and mothers of my generation have few home-making skills. However, although housewifery is in crisis, books about caring for the

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house are booming: it’s no coincidence, of course.

Indeed, seekers after housewifely knowledge are faced with an embarrassment of riches when they visit their local bookshops to find it. I soon found, as I pursued my researches into housekeeping, that there are a variety of approaches to housework, which are often at odds with each other. This phenomenon exemplifies my view that housekeeping should not be taught out of books. Who will teach you how to pick the right book?

Without an understanding of the purpose and end of home-making, it’s easy to pick an approach almost at random, and find yourself worse off than before.

Because there is a right and a wrong way of approaching housework, and a well-ordered approach is learnt without necessarily articulating the philosophy which underpins it, shaping one’s attitudes and reinforcing one’s Christian instincts by creating a home in which those things are reflected and supported. It might seem odd to talk about an anti-Catholic approach to housework. Housework in most people’s minds has been reduced to a list of mundane chores (empty the bins, do the laundry, clean the bathroom): and how can there be a Catholic and an anti-Catholic approach to that? But housekeeping is a great deal more than that, just as running a successful business can’t be reduced to bookkeeping and 9-5. Keeping house is the art of living well, and looked at from a Catholic perspective, it also provides the ordered pattern of our days that can imitate the cloistered life.

I think it’s worth mentioning a housekeeping philosophy I’ve encountered which I consider to be a particularly malign influence on the home, to give you an appreciation of what is at stake in this matter of the importance of housework. This is the Marie Kondo approach, as contained in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. I know lots of people have found this book helpful in de-cluttering their houses and it is true that it is much easier to keep house successfully if you don't

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have tons of rubbish in it. But the author's guiding principle, that you should keep nothing except that which “sparks joy”, is mistaken. There are many reasons for keeping a thing aside from that. For example, you might have an obligation to the person who gave it to you; it might be an heirloom to be guarded and passed on, and not morally yours to dispose of at will; it might be a thing of beauty; it might be a blessed object; it might be a record of the past. She advises her followers to treat the objects they are dealing with as though they are people; to thank them for their service before binning them. In my experience if you start to treat objects like people, you will end by treating people like objects, and this belief has indeed been proved many times by people who have taken the Marie Kondo way of life to its natural conclusion and got rid of their husbands and close friends along with the photo albums and cuddly toys. The other big problem with it is that this book is not about keeping house. It is about emptying your house. So if you find a blouse that is missing a button, Marie Kondo tells you to throw the blouse away. And rather than do the drying up, she wants you to put your draining rack outside until everything is dry enough to put away.

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And you should not store any sheets, keeping only the ones that are actually on the bed.

We live in a society where there is a vacuum where housewifely skills used to be. As a result, people’s homes are in chaos, and they don’t like it. But because feminist principles still hold sway, learning to keeping house is not seen as an acceptable solution to this, and the Marie Kondo thesis is filling that gap.

It’s pernicious for the reasons that I have already mentioned; but also it has created in people’s minds the idea that the ideal house is a minimalist one. Every parent, and in particular homeschoolers, surrounded by mountains of Montessori sensorial materials, Latin textbooks, craft equipment etc., at some point is going to feel the attraction of that minimalist house, with its empty shelves (apparently Marie Kondo herself said that no one should own more than 50 books), its blank surfaces, its one ornament surrounded by a sea of space. But we need to re-order our ideas about the ideal home. We need to fight back against society’s imposition of this false ideal. It is a fake. It is sterile.

It has nothing to do with providing a home, a loving and comfortable home for its occupants. How can a house with no spare sheets ever offer hospitality to an overnight guest? How can a house with no books

35 A YOUNG GIRL MENDING AN ANTIQUE VESTMENT AT GUILD OF ST CLARE SEWING RETREAT 2019

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inform and educate the people inside it? How can this minimalist paradise ever feel like home? Will it not, rather, present the menacing suggestion that family and friends are present only under sufferance, and, should they fail to spark joy, will be out on their ear along with the rest of the family furniture? Furthermore, the destruction of so much that makes up the contents of a normal household means living in a sealed moment of the present, where mementos of the past are not kept and the history of family life is not passed on. We should not punish ourselves for having homes full of books and toys and furniture.

The point of the care of the house is to serve and honour the people who live in it and visit it, to make them comfortable. Chaos is obviously undesirable, leading as it does to waste and discomfort; but so too is a puritanical style of housekeeping that puts the cleanliness of the home above the comfort of its occupants. The Marie Kondo books are one manifestation of this particular trap.

Another approach which I think unhelpful might be called the unrepentantly chaotic mother’s approach. This is a guide to life, not just to housekeeping, which takes a strictly materialistic line. Rather than identifying the most important work, and ordering one’s time accordingly, this approach asks you to work out how much time you are wasting (on the phone, for example, or on social media) and to reduce it by precisely that amount of time you want for other things. This approach turns the Catholic idea that our time belongs to God and we have an almost sacred 36

obligation to make the best use of it on its head. Not only that but it puts self-interest at the centre of the schedule. Time is spent according to the whims and pleasures of the so-called housekeeper, and the needs of the family are given no weight at all.

A Catholic approach to housekeeping and home making would of course avoid these colossal mantraps. Structure, routine and prayer give order and shape to the day. Cleanliness and tidiness are given their due importance, but mess-making activities in the interests of education are freely permitted with no guilt attached. Certain places, such as the parents’ bedroom, are kept tidy and free from mess, toys and dirt at all times; certain times, such as meal times and prayer times, require all family members’ quiet and respectful presence. Above all, the care of the housewife is to provide a loving, serene and comfortable environment for the family, where Christian virtues can be cultivated and practised.

I know that many people assume that families, and large families in particular, live in a state of permanent noise and chaos, at least when everyone is at home.

Certainly many people have told me that it must be chaos in my house. I wouldn’t want to say noise and dirt were unheard-of in my home, but the idea that chaos and noise are inseparable from large family life is wrong and also very corrosive. In that search for the perfect home which most people are engaged in, children are very definitely seen as a hindrance, not a help. But Catholic family life, lived properly, is, for the most part, tranquil, comfortable and happy.

Large families are a witness, everywhere they go, to the traditional Catholic teaching on the family. Our Catholic homes, too, are, or should be, a witness to those Catholic values of order and beauty which are so central to the Faith: a visible contradiction of the ugly, destructive, anti-life ethic of the secularist ideology.

The family is under unprecedented attack, an attack which is growing in strength all the time and to which families are increasingly vulnerable, particularly in the absence of strong leadership from the Church. I am sure you have all seen among your own friends and family the direct effects of this; I know I have. I have a pet theory for which I have no direct evidence at all, that one factor which contributes to family breakdown (not perhaps the decisive, or even one of most important ones, but nevertheless one that weighs in CAL X M A R IA E

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“Large families are a witness, everywhere they go, to the traditional Catholic teaching on the family. Our Catholic homes, too, are, or should be, a witness to those Catholic values of order and beauty which are so central to the Faith: a visible contradiction of the ugly, destructive, anti-life ethic of the secularist ideology.”

the balance) is that people feel dissatisfaction in their family life because of its discomforts. The home is uncomfortable and uncared for, and a place to be avoided. Everyone is looking for a home, particularly adult children of divorce; looking for that place of comfort and rest, and not finding it. The attack on the family is being made on a multiplicity of fronts, and one of those is the physical home itself. Re-establishing the honour of the housewife is an essential part of winning the war against the state’s power grab of parents’ moral authority over their children. It also guarantees the existence of homes where Catholicism can be practised and passed on, where it is visible to all

visitors, a public sign of the beauty and permanence of our beloved Faith.

Lucy Shaw read French and Spanish at Royal Holloway, London University, before completing a Diploma in Food and Wine from Leith’s School of Food and Wine, and more recently the Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery from the Royal School of Needlework, where she is now working for the Diploma.

She is the National Coordinator of the Guild of St. Clare, dedicated to the making and restoration of liturgical vestments, and homeschools eight children.

PHOTO CREDIT: JIM HALE

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Catholic lay people

ALWAYS HAVE THE DUTY TO FIGHT FOR THE TRUTH an interview with

Al e x a n d er Ts c h u g gu e l Calx Mariae recently had the pleasure of meeting Alexander Tschugguel, the young Austrian who, during the October synod on the pan-Amazon region, removed the Pachamama idols from the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina in Rome and threw them into the River Tiber. He later explained, “I saw in those statues and in those idols a break [with] the First Commandment”.

Since then Tschugguel has established the St. Boniface Institute, an organisation of Catholic laymen dedicated to defending and promoting the Church’s traditional teachings. St. Boniface, an 8th-century monk, famously chopped down a sacred oak tree worshipped by German pagans. In recent months, Alexander has given numerous talks and interviews encouraging lay Catholics to take a more active approach to their faith in order to protect the Church from the secular and globalist tendencies which are increasingly being presented as compatible with Catholic teaching.

Alexander was visiting Rome last month, just ahead of the publication of Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Amazon region. We sat down with him to discuss the direction of the Catholic Church in Europe and his current activities.

CALX MARIAE: You entered the Catholic Church when you were 15, an age when many cradle Catholics begin to drift away. At a time when many in the leadership of the Church are sounding more and more Protestant, why should young Protestants today consider converting to the Catholic faith?

ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL: I’m not 15 anymore, so I argue as a 26-yearold Catholic now. However, when we consider the differences between Christianity in general and the one true Catholic Church, the big difference is that the Catholic Church has maintained every part of Christ’s teach-

ing and every part of His Gospel. We did not focus on one part because we thought that was more important than another. We tried to see that when Christ came to earth, nothing he said was unimportant. Yes, of course, there are some things which might not seem so important at first glance. For example, the wedding in Cana was not as important as Christ’s death on the Cross, but the wedding in Cana was part of His whole life preparing for the death on the Cross. So we as Catholics always accepted that every part of Christ’s teaching is important.

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I was a Lutheran before I was Catholic. As Lutherans, we only had two sacraments, Baptism and Confirmation. We did not have Confession, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Orders, Extreme Unction. What is interesting about this, is that Luther, or those who followed Luther, chose only these two [sacraments], because they seemed fitting for their purposes. They wanted to found the national, German-ruled religion which was not dependent on the Roman pope. They wanted to do their own thing. And they managed to do so by just kicking out everything which would connect them to the old Mother Church. Let’s take ordinations as an example. As Catholics, we know that there is a line of succession. Every bishop, every priest knows who ordained him. Their ordination is something which connects every priest to the twelve apostles and to Christ Himself.

Everyone had always understood that there was a cast of priests. So how come this was good for fifteen centuries and then suddenly in the 16th century it was decided that it was no good anymore? There was a political reason behind it – the first reason was to cut the people off from Rome.

I urge all Protestants to see that if they really want to understand the Christian faith, they need to look at things, which Luther forbade them to look at. We have to look at everything that Christ told us. For example, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ told the people that divorce is not possible. He said it. You cannot just ignore this.

Lutherans, or let's say, Evangelicals now, consider Catholics to be anti-Bible. I can prove the opposite.

We are pro-Bible. We just understand that we should follow every part of biblical tradition, and tradition in general, of what Christ said on earth, and not just the parts which seem to fit our modern world.

There is also another aspect of non-Catholic Christianity which is interesting. The Catholic Church is the church of unity and even though the Orthodox, the Lutherans, etc. separated, the Church's teaching did not change. The Catholic way is like the trunk of a tree. It always grows in the same direction. The branches may go somewhere else, but you know what happens to the branch in the end if it is separated from the trunk – it dies. But the tree itself does not die.

It's very interesting to see how the Protestants have a kind of revolutionary thinking that they know better 40

than everyone before them. Luther knew the Bible better than fifteen centuries of saints and teachers – the Augustines, Ambroses, Aquinases and people like them. So I think, this is rather a matter of pride than a matter of really following the commandments given to us by God. We see this also when we take a look at another branch of Protestantism, which will be especially relevant for you in England. When Henry VIII separated from the Church, what were his reasons? We know a few of them and they all had female names. He just could not accept that he had given a promise in marriage that he should keep, he did not want to accept it. And because of this, for centuries now, people have not had the possibility of unity with the Church - only because of one man who before that was even known as Defensor Fidei. This was not defending the faith. And as you know, the British Queen is still called the Defensor Fidei. I think it is an irony of history. It is an injustice.

CM: As Catholics, why do you think it is important to be active in the public square? What are our responsibilities as lay Catholics, particularly today, to defend the faith?

AT: First of all, it’s not only today [we need to be active], but always since Adam and Eve, since, let’s say, the apple moment. Our Lord and Saviour said in the Gospel that if we want to follow Him, we have to deny ourselves and take up our cross. This means the following: we have to, first of all, accept our fallen nature and see that we need God’s help. That’s the reason we pray in the Our Father – that His will would be done and not that our will should be done; we have to deny ourselves and then we should take up our own cross. Many Catholics I know sometimes think: “Oh what terrible times we live in! Wouldn’t it be nice for me if I had been born in another time!”

Well, you were not, because God wants you to live now. So it is important to accept that you should live right now and that God gives you the duties and your own cross to carry. What you need for carrying your cross are the virtues. Nowadays one of the virtues most lacking is courage.

People nowadays are afraid. And why are they afraid? To be afraid is a very normal thing but what we really should be afraid of is ending up in Hell.

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The Church has always told us that if being afraid of Hell is the only reason we do good, it's a good enough reason for us to go to Heaven, because it is right to be afraid of Hell. But if we see that the only thing we really should be afraid of is Hell and everything which pushes us towards Hell – sin, the devil and so on – then we see that we should not be afraid of things like the zeitgeist, the fashion or other people’s opinions.

We have many battlefields right now. There’s the pro-life battlefield, which is actually a very good and rewarding battlefield, because if only one woman who had the idea to abort and after talking to you, after seeing you, without you even knowing it, she decides not to abort – if you save only one child, the whole fight was worth it. That’s wonderful. So the pro-life fight is actually one of the most beautiful fights, even though it's terrible to see if you do not succeed, or if the truth does not succeed. However, the people who want to abort will go ahead and do it if you're not there, but they might change their mind if you are there. So this is a fight we can only win. If people tell you that because of pro-lifers they aborted [their children] it’s a lie. Nobody aborts because of the prolife movement.

Secondly, we have the pro-family fight. If you are pro-life it is very easy to understand that you should protect the child not only before birth, but also after he is born, so we should protect the family. The family is the main cell which holds our society together.

Everything comes out of the family. The family gives you stability, the family gives you education, the family gives you a place where you can hide if something happens to you. The family is really where you are from. Nowadays, of course, many families are broken. And this should not be a sign of hopelessness for the people who now have to suffer because of it.

On the contrary, it should be a sign that they should fight in their own families that this does not happen.

So the pro-family fight is very important, especially because homosexual “marriage” is just a parody of real marriage. This has nothing to do with marriage.

Marriage is not the result of two people wanting to go to bed with each other. That’s not the reason. If it was, then every prostitute would be married to her client. Well, it’s not like this. Love is not your sexual relationship. Love is giving yourself completely for someone else, sacrificing your own life for someone SPR I NG 2 0 2 0

else, it is following Christ’s example and His divine love. This is love. And then God may give you, in addition to that, a marital union that gives joy.

Thirdly, of course, there is a very big fight going on with regard to patriotism. We as Catholics believe that in order to maintain a good Catholic life, there needs to be a state, which cares for the common good. So, there needs to be a system where you live, where you can follow a vocation. For example, if someone is a doctor or another a handyman, and another a thinker in the university – this is only possible if they can rely

ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL SPEAKING AT THE MARCH FOR LIFE IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA, OCTOBER 2019.

on the others to do their work and that something is holding [the society] together. If not, then everyone would have to be the doctor and the farmer and the cook and the carpenter, all together. This is not possible. So, we see that for humans the society, the state is important. But it’s not within the remit of a good state to take away the rights of the people who live in that state. So right now we see exactly this happening.

Instead of sovereign states, we find multilateral organisations, like the EU – and the United Nations which does this across the whole world. You will find this multilateral approach in many party programmes today.

For example, the new Austrian coalition programme says that Austria is too small to solve our problems on our own, which is, of course, a big lie. I know countries which are much smaller than Austria and they tend to manage their country quite well. So this is just a lie. What we see here is the typical result of forgetting 41

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“The only thing that can be universal on earth is the reign of the devil or the reign of Christ the King. The devil could rule the whole world, but we know that he would not win, he would lose. And of course, the reign of Christ Himself could be universal. So the only organisation on earth, if we talk about it as an organisation, which can be universal is the Catholic Church.” your faith and especially the Catholic faith. The only thing that can be universal on earth is the reign of the devil or the reign of Christ the King. The devil could rule the whole world, but we know that he would not win, he would lose. And of course, the reign of Christ Himself could be universal. So the only organisation on earth, if we talk about it as an organisation, which can be universal is the Catholic Church. I would like to recall the words of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary that the only universal organisation is the Catholic Church and out of her universality, she grants that every sovereign country has its sovereign rights. The Church knows how people are, how God created human beings. I think this is very important to understand.

And so we have these three fights, primarily. Of course, there are others. But first, the pro-life fight, then the pro-family fight – I would like to bring them together more because, actually, they are not separate – and then the loss of sovereignty.

There is another problem: the loss of freedom of speech from a Catholic perspective. As Catholics, we have always understood that freedom of speech is not absolute. So for example, if someone wants to speak about how to kill everyone, we can say at a certain point that we are not going to allow him to go on speaking in the marketplace about how to kill everyone else, this is not possible. There is a limit to freedom of speech, and this is for the common good.

But it is only the common good and the faith that limits freedom of speech. Right now we see exactly the opposite. Everything is allowed which is against the common good and religion. So for example, you can criticise the Catholic Church in every possible way.

But if you try to do the same with other religions, then you may face high fines. In Austria, we know many

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CHRIST GLORIFIED IN THE COURT OF HEAVEN, (DETAIL), PROBABLY BY FRA ANGELICO ( C.1395 - 1455), THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.

people who have been fined thousands of Euros, even pensioners who have hardly any money left.

CM: You have spoken about the globalist agenda with open borders in the Church and that the Church must never become an NGO promoting and dealing with these phenomena. What do you mean by this?

AT: “The Church must never become an NGO. Churches and parishes must go out into the public square if we are not to end up as an NGO.” These are the words of Pope Francis on World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013 - part of the famous speech in which he also exhorted young Catholics to “create a stir”.

The strategy to prevent the Church from becoming an NGO appears to include the projects discussed during last year’s Amazon Synod. NGOs are generally large, internationally active, mostly left-wing

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associations like Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Open Society, Gaia-Amazonas Foundation or other organisations that advocate a leftist-liberal interpretation of human rights – no barriers to mass migration or the struggle against “man-made climate change”.

From today’s perspective, it is difficult to say whether there was actually, back in 2013, any threat that could have made the Church indistinguishable from the aforementioned organisations. However, looking at the current strong political engagement of the Holy See, especially since the encyclical Laudato Si, it seems obvious that the Church has moved closer to, rather than distanced itself from, the left-leaning NGOs. Ever since the Amazon Synod, we are hearing more and more about a “New Church” with an “Amazonian face”.

On a superficial level, this Amazonian face is manifesting itself through actual or potential changes in the rites and in many aspects of practical church life.

According to Bishop Kräutler, for example, pagan elements should be integrated into the lives of Catholics in this region. According to media reports, an NGO known as the Gaia-Amazonas Foundation, headed by a German-Colombian, Martin von Hildebrandt, appears to have played a rather prominent role before and during the Amazon Synod.

Von Hildebrandt advocates an idea that has actually existed for decades: that the Amazon region should be removed from Brazilian sovereignty and placed under international administration. Among those promoting this idea were Francois Mitterand, Mikhail Gorbachev, John Major and Al Gore. According to British journalist Edward Pentin, it was feared, in the run-up to the Amazon Synod, that the Church might openly support this political project.

Only after meeting with high-ranking representatives of the Brazilian government did Cardinal Claudio Hummes give the assurance that the Synod would make no statement on this matter.

Regarding the question of immigration from Africa and Asia, Pope Francis has adopted positions much closer to those of the NGOs (and the Merkel government and the German Bishops’ Conference) than to those of his predecessors.

This begs the question, what the Pope could actually have meant by his statement that the Church should not become an NGO. The Church with the SPR I NG 2 0 2 0

“Amazonian face” apparently focuses on propagating leftist “green” climate policy and glorifying pagan practices from South America, while frowning upon missionary activity.

The Pope recently confirmed this, telling Italian schoolchildren that the faith should not be proclaimed in words. But what is a church that no longer preaches, no longer obeys Christ’s command to bring the gospel to all peoples? A church that limits itself to the political and social activities already mentioned? It is, to all intents and purposes, an NGO. The greatest proponents of this “Church with an Amazonian face”, which is increasingly taking on the characteristics of an NGO, seem to be the German bishops. Above all, the deputy chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Franz-Josef Bode, has repeatedly made it clear that the decisions taken at the Amazon Synod should also be implemented in Germany.

The introduction of the synodal path will probably mean that this process will proceed very quickly in Germany. The German church is trying to take on a kind of pioneering role here.

A closer look at these developments will make it pretty obvious that the alleged problems in the Amazon region are only a pretext. The demands for abolishing celibacy and for the consecration of women have been heard in Germany for many decades, much more so than in the Amazon region itself, where – as local surveys, there have shown – most people actually find them incomprehensible.

Catholics represent a minority among Christians in the Amazon region – approximately 80% of Christians there are evangelical Protestants, not least because the Catholic Church there has essentially behaved like an NGO for decades and has neglected the Church’s mission mandate. Also, 80% of those Catholics live in cities with parish structures and an orderly church life. Additionally, several thousand priests from Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, etc. are working in North America. In other words, there would be alternative ways of solving the problem of a possible lack of priests in the few remote Catholic communities.

It seems the Amazon region is meant to serve as an experimental laboratory for liberal-modernist Catholics in the West, especially in Germany. We might well ask ourselves whether the new smile of the church with 43

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the “Amazonian” face is not simply a mask hiding the old face of the German Bishops’ Conference.

The solution to the Church’s crisis in Germany, South America and worldwide is much easier in theory, but much more difficult in practice, than the abolition of celibacy and the ordination of female priests. Much easier because all we need to do is to be faithful to the mission of Christ and the tradition of the Church; much more difficult because it requires every single Catholic to make personal sacrifices and to resist the errors of the current zeitgeist.

Throughout its two-thousand-year history, the Church has faced many challenges and has had to deal with many crises and deviations from the right path. It has only ever been able to renew itself by returning to the true teaching, and this time will be no different. It is for us to decide now how many wrong paths the Church must still go down, how much more must be destroyed before we can find our way back to the truth, to doctrine and tradition.

CM: German bishops have always been revolutionary in the eyes of the rest of the world. You come from Austria but you can speak with an understanding of what is going on there.

German-speaking bishops and theologians – like Karl Rahner, Hans Kung and Joseph Ratzinger - were a driving force for radical upheaval during Vatican II and the 1960s. Today, the German bishops seem to be leading the next stage of the revolution within the Church, why do you think this is the case?

Why Germany?

AT: First of all, we have to see that whenever something or someone in certain countries is particularly attacked by the devil, they normally play a very important role or should play a very good role. So we should first have to put Germany in a little bit of a better light. It was Germany who managed to defend for several hundred years or more the Catholic Church and the faith. There were different problems, but the Holy Roman Empire was led by the Franks and then the Habsburgs and so on and the Habsburgs stayed Catholic even after the Reformation. So, I have to defend the German-speaking area for raising up many great heroes of Catholic history.

In Germany, we always had two tendencies. One tendency was this universal knightly defence of the faith. This is a tendency that, for example, blessed

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Cardinal Clemens August von Galen had, whom we call the Lion of Munster because he really defended the faith during the National Socialist regime in an enormously courageous way. We have many more heroic Catholics – Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, the Schoell siblings and so on. Also in Austria, considering the German-speaking area in general, we had wonderful heroes of their time, like Pater Petrus Pavlicek who was the main fighter against communism in Austria.

He organised big Rosary rallies on the main street of Vienna, joined by 10,000 people, including members of the government.

So even though today, Germany and the Germans are considered leftist, they have a great history of fantastic men and women who defended the faith wherever they could.

Regarding the others, it is very interesting to see that many of the problems come from either Lutheran ideas on the one hand or the 19th-century ideas on the other. We have those who think that being ruled

by Rome is okay, just as long as Rome does not say too much. Right now, of course, the situation is a little bit difficult because Pope Francis pushes synodal thinking.

So the current bishops can say when they adopt the so-called synodal path, well Pope Francis asked us to be synodal, so we are. But for example, under Pope Benedict, even though he was a German, the German bishops were sometimes very opposed to him. As well as German professors, especially at Tübingen and Freiburg. They really attacked him whenever they could. This side came from the Protestant thinking – just wanting to be the master of my own house, which is of course completely against the universal approach of the Catholic Church.

Then we have the 19th century Germans, those who desire German idealism, or a little bit [of] German nationalism too. You could say this is similar to Luther back then, but it is different because it’s already influenced by the French Revolution and everything that happened in France at the end of the 18th [and the] beginning of the 19th century. These Germans think that the Christian values are nice if we talk about them as values, but they consider the universal approach of the Catholic Church wrong because different people have different approaches. So, there are Catholics – not so many left now, but especially

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“The solution to the Church’s crisis in Germany, South America and worldwide is much easier in theory, but much more difficult in practice, than the abolition of celibacy and the ordination of female priests. Much easier because all we need to do is to be faithful to the mission of Christ and the tradition of the Church; much more difficult because it requires every single Catholic to make personal sacrifices and to resist the errors of the current zeitgeist.”

during the time of the Second World War – who said that German Catholicism must be different because Germany is different. And then there is this socialist-communist approach like liberation theologians in South America, which was very much accepted in Germany, especially during the Second Vatican Council and also a little earlier. Karl Rahner and people like him had a zeitgeist approach to the faith and they said we have to adapt everything to the [current] fashion. So it’s interesting to see that all the great sins of the last five hundred years are especially present in Germany. But why are they present? Because everyone is looking at Germany all the time. Right now they are paying. They are a very rich church. So whatever happens there is usually very well produced with lots of publicity, while in other countries, nobody watches [the Church] that closely.

For example, if we talk about Italy, we normally talk about the Vatican. But the Italian Bishops Conference does terrible things. They created the Pachamama prayer. Now, they are the first ones to change the Our Father. Unfortunately, I really think that they are worse in Italy than in Germany, because in Germany at least, they follow a modernist order, it is not good, but it is a kind of order. In Italy, they don’t follow any order, but no one cares about the Italian Bishops Conference, because people just watch what Rome is doing. Germany, on the other hand, was always known for being the centre of, let’s say, Western Europe. I know the French people and maybe the English people won’t like it. However, the English consider themselves somewhat outside of Europe. They are talking about Europeans and us.

And the French people consider themselves mainly

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BLESSED CARDINAL CLEMENS AUGUST VON GALEN

as French. Whereas the Germans up until now, still consider themselves to be at the heart of Europe. So if you talk to Germans, they normally try to act like they have the burden of carrying Europe. This is the reason why everything happening in Germany always has a bigger impact than other countries.

There are good faithful Catholics in Germany. The problem is that nobody is connecting them. Well, we are doing that now and it’s a wonderful thing to see that Germans are waking up and tell us: we are here too, we are traditional, we want to be Catholic. So don’t let yourself get distracted by professional German state leftism which is also working in the Church.

CM: Where will it end?

AT: There are different possibilities of how to stop it.

Either each one of them has a vision and comes back to Catholic teaching and to the truth – that would be a 45

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“Our army is one. So to have an army - and we have a vocation to be ecclesia militans - is also part of the fight, to unite the people, that is what makes us Catholic. We do not fight on our own, we fight together.” very good solution. Or there will be a schism. We don't know what [will happen]. There are many people now talking about the German path. Many of them ask for more than just female ordination. They ask for contraception and divorce, they ask for homosexual “marriages” and so on within the Catholic Church.

Clearly, this will never happen in the Church because the teaching cannot be changed. So yes, there could be a schism. Or what could also happen is that if there was a pope with a different approach, he would call Germany to reason and that will work. Unfortunately, we really cannot say that this would be easy. Right now Germany is like a big barrel of black powder. If the flame comes, it will explode.

But it is our duty to speak the truth so that the bishops might see that the faithful are still faithful and that gives them the possibility to change. This [duty] is really something a layman always has.

46 ACIES ORDINATA IN MUNICH, 18 JANUARY 2020. PHOTO CREDIT: CORRISPONDENZA ROMANA

So we can try to stay in touch with all the wonderful German Catholics who exist. The FSSP has a seminary in [Wigratzbad] Germany, don’t forget that. Don’t forget that there are even traditional schools in Germany. I know that not as many as in France, but they exist. There are Cardinal Müllers and Brandmüllers who come from Germany. Pope Benedict comes from Germany. Many of our friends come from Germany. We have a great pro-family movement there. The problem is that the Germans don’t engage in revolution the way the French do.

The French people go on the streets [and] just burn cars. No German would do that. They normally make their revolution through the law and documents and through having synodal meetings in churches in Frankfurt, which happened in the 19th century too. There were also meetings in churches in Frankfurt. It was a political thing back then. It is a German tradition and

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it is a very bad tradition. However, there are many Germans who understand the situation and are willing to fight. Our only goal is to show them that they are not alone and back them up so that they manage to get through that fight.

CM: Like at the Acies Ordinata1 at which you participated as well and now we see a real resistance with Rosary rallies on the ground, while the synodal path is being discussed?

AT: Exactly. There are two Germanys.

CM: You became famous with a “Catholic action”, by removing an idol from a church and throwing it into the river. Could you just tell us very briefly what are you planning to do next and how do you decide which initiatives and actions to pursue?

AT: Our next big project is a conference on 13 May. On our homepage, there will be a programme as soon as the official registration for the conference starts. At this conference, we will be mainly focusing on the cooperation between the United Nations and the current Catholic leaders – the Holy Father and the Cardinals in charge in the Vatican. We will talk, of course, about this whole mix of green ideology and the Church but our main topic will be the new education meeting, which will be held on 14 May in Rome. So I think we will manage to get people to take a very close look at what’s happening by bringing this whole topic up on 13 May. It is a very good day – it’s the feast of Our Lady of Fatima. We are going to have a wonderful Rosary possession in the end like we had last year when I was not famous for the Pachamama action.

Other plans at the moment involve travelling around Europe mainly and the Western world. I would love to go to other countries as well, but first, we have to start with creating a network in our own areas, like with Germans as I have just described. Our army is one. So to have an army – and we have a vocation to be ecclesia militans – is also part of the fight, to unite the people, that is what makes us Catholic. We do not fight on our own, we fight together. And this is something that is working around the world pretty well now. I think it’s our duty to fight in Europe, which is always a battlefield for those ideologies and there are many people who are ready to fight for this. When the Turks came to Vienna, they wanted to destroy western civilisation – it was the Ottoman Empire back then.

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When they came to Vienna, it took a long time before the Christian powers had the possibility to really fight back. But when we fought back, we destroyed them.

So I think this is just another fight and as always it takes the orthodox people a little bit longer than the leftists because we want to fight for one particular order. The leftist don’t care. They just want to destroy.

Building a house takes more time than destroying it, but as soon as it’s built-up, you can defend it better.

So, that’s what we are doing.

You can find out more about the work of St. Boniface Institute by going to www.boniface-institute.com ENDNOTES: 1.

Acies Ordinata has taken place three times, most recently in Munich, Germany – in the city of the episcopal see of Reinhard Cardinal Marx. The international coalition derives its name from a title reserved for Our Lady who assembles an army of the faithful to defeat her enemies. The Latin phrase “terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata” is applied to Mary in battle and is taken from the Song of Songs canticle (6:3, 6:10). The faithful stood in an orderly manner on the famous Odeonsplatz, like an army, with rosaries in their hands to peacefully but firmly protest against the “synodal path”, initiated by Cardinal Marx and set up to transform the Church from within with regard to the natural law and meaning of the Sacraments. A Rosary rally followed two weeks later, as the inaugural “synodal way” session opened.

A group of lay Catholics, some of whom had been at the Acies Ordinata, held a spontaneous prayer assembly in front of the Frankfurt Cathedral in opposition to the proposed reform agenda of the German “synodal path”.

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The final battle

between Our Lord and the reign of Satan will be over marriage and the family b y F R . L I N U S C LO V I S

This talk was given at the Voice of the Family conference “Handing on the deposit of the Faith – the mission of the Catholic family today”, held at Newman Hall, University Catholic Chaplaincy, Cardiff, 6-8 September 2019.

INTRODUCTION Carlo Cardinal Caffarra (1938-2017), the founding president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, recounted in 2008 that Sister Lucia, the Fatima visionary, had written to him, saying: “Father, a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family.”

The then Fr. Caffarra had written to Sr. Lucia in 1984 asking for prayers to overcome the difficul-

ADAM AND EVE EXPELLED FROM EDEN BY AN ANGEL (1728), ETCHING BY H. WINSTANLEY AFTER G. RENI, WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON.

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ties he was experiencing in operating the pontifical institute established by Pope St. John Paul II three years earlier.

Sr. Lucia’s ominous response, concerning the spiritual battle that would soon engulf the family, ended with a passage full of hope: “And those who will work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation. But do not be afraid, because Our Lady has already crushed his head.”

THE WAR BEGAN IN EDEN Satan’s war against humanity began in the Garden of Eden. His opening salvo was the seductive mendacity with which he led our primordial parents into disregarding God’s prohibition to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “You will not die,” he said, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:4-5) The man’s disobedience resulted in the loss of the grace of original holiness and, immediately, he and the woman experienced the first death, the death of the soul. Additionally, the control their soul’s spiritual faculties had exercised over their bodies was shattered, the harmonious union of man and woman became subject to tensions as lust and domination thenceforth marked their relationship, and their peaceful rapport with creation was ruptured as the visible creation became alien and hostile. The CAL X M A R IA E

second death, the death of the body, would follow in due course. Thus, “through the devil’s envy death entered the world” (Wis. 2:24) and he, together with “the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling” (Jude1:6), became bitter enemies of human fertility. Henceforth, these spirits would focus their energies on corrupting the divine gift of procreation by which the men and women, destined to supplant them on the thrones from which they had been ousted, would be begotten.

riage, ascribing the procreative use of sex to be evil.

This is in stark contrast to the Catholic position which condemns only the misuse of sexuality, namely, the separation of its procreative and unitive aspects. (1 Cor. 6:9-10, Eph. 5:5) The Gospels relate that Our Lord’s response to the Pharisees’ question about the lawfulness of divorce was a declaration of the Creator’s original ideal of marriage as monogamous and indissoluble: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning

“Satan and his fallen angels have waged and continue to wage a bitter war in their perverse attempt to prevent the perpetuation of human flesh, that flesh of which the promised Redeemer Christ was born, that flesh which, like Him, His Mystical Body – the Catholic Church – possesses and, of which its members are nourished in the most holy Eucharist, that human flesh which one day, overcoming death, will resurrect glorious and immortal.”

Consequently, Satan and his fallen angels have waged and continue to wage a bitter war in their perverse attempt to prevent the perpetuation of human flesh, that flesh of which the promised Redeemer (Gen. 3:15) Christ was born, that flesh which, like Him, His Mystical Body – the Catholic Church – possesses and, of which its members are nourished in the most holy Eucharist, that human flesh which one day, overcoming death, will resurrect glorious and immortal. In addition, the demons are hell-bent on preventing the completion of “the number of the elect” (Apoc. 6:11) so that not only would human beings not occupy the thrones they had once occupied but also postpone the hour when they, no longer having the power to harm men, will definitively be “thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where … they will be tormented day and night forever and ever”. (Apoc. 20:11) THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE An integral part of the satanic strategy has been the provocation of numerous heresies over the centuries: Gnosticism, Manichaeism, the Albigenians, the Cathari, the Waldensians, Marxism, etc. – which, in their diverse variants, have committed and continuously commit outrages against the nature of mar-

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made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mt. 19:4-6) Since God Himself is the author of marriage, it is not and can never be a mere human institution despite the many variations found throughout the centuries in different cultures, in social structures and in spiritual attitudes. It is rather a divine institution that, far from being contingent on the subjective and inconsistent whims of men, does participate, in some measure, in the immutability of God Himself, with respect to its nature, its ends and its laws. Thus, inscribed into the very nature of man and woman and endowed with its own proper laws, marriage, ethnological variations notwithstanding, retains common and permanent characteristics so that the “well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.” (GS 47 §1) Genesis affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone” and that the woman, “flesh of his flesh”, whom God had given to the man as a “helpmate” was his counterpart, his equal, his nearest in all things and 49

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more, she represents God from whom comes our help.

(Gen. 2:18-23) Further, the Creator’s plan “from the beginning” was an unbreakable union of their two lives as implied by “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh”, which Christ Himself peremptorily reiterates “So they are no longer two, but one flesh”.

Genesis also affirms that, after creating man, male and female, in his own image, God blessed them with fecundity, saying “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28), so that a man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a family, a divine institution, which, since it pre-existed any public authority, should be recognized by every public authority.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) defines marriage as “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptised persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.” (§1601) According to the Catechism, since marriage is inscribed in human nature, both the married state and the entrance into it are essentially the same for all members of the human race. When, however, the baptised marry there is a substantial difference in that their marriage, signifying the union of Christ and the Church, produces supernatural effects, which are proper to the sacrament.

At the dawn of creation, God commanded all living things to be fruitful and to multiply. For man, however, He established the institution of marriage and with it, married love, which, by its very nature, is ordered to the procreation and education of offspring.

While the offspring of animals require a relatively short period in order to develop and survive as independent individuals, the development of human offspring is remarkably slower and necessarily so, since the immaterial element in human nature requires human development to be both spiritual and material.

The maturation of the potentialities that each human being possessed from conception is the essence of human development, which consists of the affective life, language, and moral conscience. The purpose of education, therefore, is to foster this development by drawing out and developing what is inside. Therefore, 50

in saying that the primary purpose of marriage is the offspring (along with the good of the spouses), it should also be specified that both procreation and education of the offspring are included.

This truly human and spiritual aspect of the education of the child is made possible by the spiritual faculties that the child already has. However, the quality of this education greatly depends on the human and spiritual level of the child’s environment, which is essentially created by the parents. The fundamental element that makes this atmosphere conducive to the child’s education is the true love of the parents

THE HOLY FAMILY WITH A BIRD (C.1650 ), BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO, THE PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID.

and the projection of that true love into the family environment. Not only is the truly human, faithful love of the parents necessary for their child’s genuine human development but it is also integral to the parents’ spiritual growth as the foundation of what is usually called the mutual help and the remedy of concupiscence. Harnessing the appeal of the body and of the instinct, of the power of feeling and of affectivity, of the aspiration of the spirit and of the will, authentic married love, with openness to fertility, aspires to a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive lifelong mutual self-giving. Therefore, fidelity to the unity and indissolubility of marriage is still needed after the children have grown up, or in the case of childless couples.

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“This truly human and spiritual aspect of the education of the child is made possible by the spiritual faculties that the child already has.

However, the quality of this education greatly depends on the human and spiritual level of the child’s environment, which is essentially created by the parents.

The fundamental element that makes this atmosphere conducive to the child’s education is the true love of the parents and the projection of that true love into the family environment. ” THE GRAND ASSAULT The satanic skirmishes of the post-Eden centuries burst into a full frontal attack on marriage with the sixteenth century Protestant Revolution, which began in 1517. This attack would be reinforced in the following centuries with the rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment, the secret machinations of Freemasonry and the practical implementation of Marxist theories.

The essence of the Protestant Revolution was expressed in terms such as “Sola Scriptura” and “Sola Fide”, which was basically the exaltation of the individual’s subjective faith over the authority of the Church. It was impossible that personal morals and public institutions would be left untouched by this concept. Within fifteen years of the outbreak of the Revolution, marriage, as an institution, was attacked by both Henry VIII who divorced his wife Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn and by Martin Luther who sanctioned the bigamous marriage of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse.

The fracture of Christendom by the Revolution resulted in conflicting views about marriage that slowly, during the Age of the Enlightenment, led to the gradual call for the desacralisation of marriage, even though the general attitude varied from indifference to ridicule. Voltaire’s position was that “God created sex. Priests created marriage.”

The appearance of Freemasonry prepared the way for a further attack on the institution of marriage.

Freemasonry finds its point of origin in the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 in the Goose and Gridiron pub near St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the early days, its membership included many Cath-

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olics and, through the English Catholic and Jacobite diaspora, Freemasonry rapidly spread to continental Europe. However, between Clement XII in 1738 and the promulgation of the first Code of Canon Law in 1917, a total of eight popes wrote explicit condemnations of Freemasonry and all imposed the strictest penalty for membership: automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See. Although the charge of political sedition would eventually appear at the front of the Church’s opposition to Masonic membership, it was not so initially.

What Clement XII described in his original denunciation was not a revolutionary republican society but an organisation spreading and enforcing religious indifferentism, namely, the belief that all religions are of equal worth, and, that in Masonry, all members are united in service to a higher, unifying understanding of virtue. Catholics, as members, would, of necessity, be asked to put their membership of the lodge above their membership of the Church. This meant that the Church’s strict prohibition to Lodge membership was not made from political considerations but out of concern for the care of souls.

In all the various papal condemnations of Freemasonry, what was always the first objection of the Church to the Lodge was the threat it posed to the faith of Catholics and to the freedom of the Church to act in society. Freemasonry was founded on a philosophy of secularism that not only vitiated the teachings of the Church but also undermined her authority on matters of faith and morals and so, in papal condemnations, was repeatedly described as a plot against the faith, both in individuals and in society. In the

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encyclical Humanum genus, Pope Leo XIII described the Masonic agenda as the exclusion of the Church from participation in public affairs and the gradual erosion of her rights as an institutional member of society. During his twenty-five year pontificate, Leo wrote eighty-eight encyclicals, four of which were condemnations of Freemasonry. In these, he outlined, in detail, the Masonic agenda, all of which was fully implemented within a centenary of his death.

Pope Leo XIII specifically referred to the Masonic aim of secularising the state and society. He referenced, in particular, the exclusion of religious education from state schools and the concept of “the State, which [Masonry believes] ought to be absolutely atheistic, having the inalienable right and duty to form the heart and the spirit of its citizens”. He also decried the Masonic desire to remove the Church from any control in or any influence over schools, hospitals, public charities, universities and any other body serving the public good. Also, specifically highlighted, was the Masonic push for the reimagining of marriage as a merely civil contract, for the promotion of divorce, and for support for the legalisation of abortion.

In 1903, Pope Leo was succeeded by Giuseppe Sarto as Pius X, who saw clearly the danger of Freemasonic ideas undermining the Church from within.

He identified this internal attack as “modernism”, a movement that by proposing the “evolution of doctrine” was really the naturalism of Freemasonry with a Catholic veneer. Modernism is in many ways a Trojan horse in that by seeking to reinterpret biblical history, as well as Catholic philosophy, theology and liturgy, through the modern prism of rational science and post-Enlightenment philosophy, it actually dissolves Catholicism by subjecting it to a modern system that had perfunctorily rejected Christianity.

Pope Pius X referred to modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” in that it denied the reality of the supernatural, called for the demythologisation of Sacred Scripture, espoused secularism and universal fraternity, promoted moral relativism and always with the view that in the application of doctrine the “pastoral” must always supersede the “true”. In the 1907 document Lamentabili sane, Pope Pius X condemned 65 modernist propositions and, one year later, issued the encyclical Pascendi, where he described modernism as an enemy striking at the root of the Faith and 52

prescribed the anti-modernist oath for all Catholic bishops, priests and teachers.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of Marxism, both recognised that the natural family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, is the basic cell of society whose existence was a guarantee of order, stability and morality in the society. They, therefore, argued that it was necessary to ideologically attack and subvert the family as an institution, since they deemed it a place of class antagonism characterising it as a system whereby women were exploited by men.

From this, Marxists saw marriage as originating in ancient exercises of force and as continuing to contribute to the exploitation of women. Engels argued that monogamous marriage issued from a “world-historical defeat of the female sex”. Exclusive monogamy, he claimed, “was not in any way the fruit of individual sex love, with which it had nothing whatever to do … [but was based on] economic conditions – on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property”. In his mind, monogamy allowed men to control women and reproduction, thereby facilitating the intergenerational transfer of private property by producing undisputed heirs. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx defined marriage as legalised prostitution and a form of female slavery and argued that abolishing the private family would liberate women from male ownership, ending their status “as mere instruments of production”. Various communist theorists, in seeking effective ways to destroy marriage and the family, called for the liquidation of religion, monogamy, and the ostensibly the male-dominated family and regarded courses on free love, sexual liberation, and Freud’s notion of “polymorphous perversity” as a revolutionary necessity. The Marxist linking of patriarchy and capitalism, and, in particular, its understanding of marriage as an ownership relation ideologically underpinning the capitalist order, has been especially influential in feminist thought, one of whose objectives is the elimination of the distinction between men and women. These pernicious ideas are all at work today in the cultural obsession with sex, the zeal for so-called sex re-assignment, and the insensate proliferation of pronominal “genders”.

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naturally. Specifically, Pope Leo XIII reportedly had a vision where he saw, in ages to come, the seductive powers and ravings of devils against the Church in every land. But, in the moment of greatest distress, St. Michael appeared and cast Satan and his cohorts back into the abyss of hell. It was in this context that he composed the Leonine prayers to be said after every Mass as well as a lengthy exorcism prayer to be used by bishops and priests throughout the world. Some thirty-three years later, the Blessed Virgin appeared to three children at Fatima, in Portugal, a Catholic country then labouring under an oppressive Masonic government. She not only warned the children of the dangers of sin but, also, of the menace posed to the world and to the Church by the errors of Russia. She then specifically asked for the consecration of Russia by the pope and the bishops in union with him and, to validate her requests, worked a stupendous public miracle known as the “dance of the sun”.

Even while the Holy Mother of God was instructing the children, Marxist forces were in the final stages for their 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which became the world’s first constitutionally socialist state.

The full panoply of Marxism was unleashed with all its anti-God and anti-Christian venom and, over the next fifty years, half the world would fall under its influence. In 1960, not only was Russia not consecrated but the reigning pope, John XXIII, opening the Second Vatican Council in 1962, both denigrated those whom he called “the prophets of doom” and declared that the world was getting better, not worse. Within ten years, his successor Paul VI would lament that “through some crack, … the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God. There is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unrest, dissatisfaction, confrontation”, as Catholic theologians, through dissimulation, began to push the limits of rationalism and naturalism.

Within another forty years, the world and the Church would have changed so completely as to be unrecognisable: the family, that fundamental cell of society and of the Church has, at least in the Western world, been destroyed. Throughout the West and once Christian lands, the Freemasonic and Marxist hopes have been realised beyond all expectation with divorce, civil marriage, free love, contraception, abortion, pornography, homosexual “marriage”, designer babies, transgenderism, euthanasia, et al. being blissfully emSPR I NG 2 0 2 0

ALTARPIECE OF ST MICHAEL, CENTRAL PANEL, (C.1510), GERARD DAVID, KUNSTHISTORISCHES, VIENNA.

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sacked; 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.”

This sorry state of things brings to fulfilment the dire 17th century prophecies made by Our Lady of Good Success in Quito, Ecuador:

CARDINAL CARLO CAFFARRA (1938-2017)

braced by the generality of the population. The family is destroyed and, with the contemporary rejection of the natural order, Satan’s victory seems complete.

According to Cardinal Caffarra, there are two specific attacks on the family stemming from abortion and homosexuality. A major blow against the family was delivered when Catholics rejected Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae. In §17 of that encyclical, Paul VI, having foreseen, in terms both general and specific, the negative “consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control”, warned of the potentially deleterious effect to individuals and to society.

Birth control, he specifically predicted, would lead to a general lowering of morality, to men losing respect for women, to government intervention in “the most personal and most private sector of conjugal intimacy” and to a denial that there are any “absolute limits to … a human being’s dominion over his or her body and its functions”. The rest is our story.

The effects of the second blow appear with the widening division among prelates on how to address the issue of divorced and civilly remarried couples receiving Holy Communion. This hearkens back to another approved apparition, that of Our Lady of Akita, Japan, who in 1973 predicted: “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops.

The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…churches and altars

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“Thus I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and shortly after the middle of the 20th century… the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of morals… As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolises the union of Christ with His Church, it will be attacked and deeply profaned. Freemasonry, which will then be in power, will enact iniquitous laws with the aim of doing away with this Sacrament, making it easy for everyone to live in sin and encouraging procreation of illegitimate children born without the blessing of the Church… In this supreme moment of need for the Church, the one who should speak will fall silent.”

The publication of the papal exhortation, Amoris laetitia opened the door to the closet that concealed the divisions that exist among Catholic prelates. In this regard, Cardinal Caffarra pointed out that the problem with Chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia lies in the fact it is objectively unclear since it causes “conflicts of interpretations even among bishops”. He indicated the necessity of seeking continuity of the Magisterium of the past in order to receive clarity in the present since “in matters of Doctrine and Morals, the Magisterium cannot contradict itself ”. Specifically, with regard to the question of the “remarried” divorcees and their access to Holy Communion, the Cardinal makes clear that this cannot be changed and that these couples are still not allowed to receive Holy Communion.

Referring to the previous magisterial teaching of the Church, he asserted that “if the pope would have wanted to change that teaching – it is very clear – he would have the duty, indeed the grave duty, to say so, clearly and explicitly. One cannot change the age-old discipline of the Church with the help of a footnote, and in an uncertain tone”.

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reflection

“Modernism is in many ways a Trojan horse in that by seeking to reinterpret biblical history, as well as Catholic philosophy, theology and liturgy, through the modern prism of rational science and post-Enlightenment philosophy, it actually dissolves Catholicism by subjecting it to a modern system that had perfunctorily rejected Christianity.”

The Cardinal is supported in this position by the teaching of St. Vincent of Lerins who, in defence of orthodoxy in the fifth century, stated that: “True piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to our children; and that it is our duty, not to lead religion whither we would, but rather to follow religion whither it leads; and that it is the part of Christian modesty and gravity not to hand down our own beliefs or observances to those who come after us, but to preserve and keep what we have received from those who went before us.”

HOPE The Catholic Church has, until Pope Francis, been the world’s most consistent and brightest beacon of truth on Christian moral teachings. Many other Christians and even persons of non-Christian faiths have depended on the Catholic Church to promote and defend those Natural Law teachings, which are a necessary foundation for any civilized society. But now, with the Church itself rapidly sliding into self-destructive worldliness and away from its core mandate to preach the gospel in order to save souls, what is one to do?

Where is one to go?

The condition in which marriage finds itself today in the West is simply tragic. Civil laws have changed the definition of marriage because they have eradicated the biological dimension of the human person.

They have separated the biology of generation from the genealogy of the person in much the same way that the unity and procreativity of the marital embrace have been separated. Even more tragic is the condition in which the Church of Christ finds herself,

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a condition that is so aptly described by St. John Eudes in the 17th century: “The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than charity and affection of devoted shepherds … When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, ‘Return O faithless children … and I will give you pastors according to My own heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding’. (Jer. 3:14-15) Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge upon the people in consequence of sin.”

To the Catholic faithful who are confused about the Doctrine of the Faith concerning marriage, Cardinal Caffarra offers simple advice: “Read and meditate upon the Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1601-1666. And when you hear some talk about marriage – even if done by priests, bishops, cardinals – and you then verify that it is not in conformity with the Catechism, do not listen to them. They are the blind leading the blind.”

His advice to the faithful on how to preserve the Catholic Faith in its entirety and raise children to eternal life should perhaps be the thing we should value most: “I will tell you very frankly that I do not see any other place outside the family where the faith

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reflection

which you have to believe and to live can be sufficiently transmitted. Moreover, in Europe during the collapse of the Roman Empire and during the later barbarian invasions, what the Benedictine monasteries then did can likewise be done now by the believing families, in today’s reign of a new spiritual-anthropological barbarism. And thank God that faithful families exist and still resist.

Believing families are the true fortresses. And the future is in the hands of God.” Believing families are indeed the true fortresses and, as such, need to be defended against the assaults of the devil. With encouragement from St. Pius X’s observation that the chief strength of the wicked lies in the cowardice and weakness of good men, believing families should build up the virtue fortitude. The good need to realise that they are not “contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12) As such, the weapons should be spiritual: truth, righteousness, faith, the word of God, prayer and supplication.

Therefore, the perennial teachings of the Church should be proclaimed and lived, the sacraments worthily received and the word of God believed. Prayer, especially the Rosary and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are our most powerful weapons against the “wickedness and snares of the devil”. When Pope Leo saw Rome surrounded by demons he instituted more prayers to the Holy Mother of God and to St. Michael. St. John Bosco, the 19th century founder of the Salesians and a devotee of Our Lady, Help of Christians is well known for his prophetic dreams, his dream of the great ship, being perhaps the best known. The great ship, the Church, in a storm is under attack by other vessels. When all seemed lost, the Sovereign Pontiff anchored the ship to the twin columns rising from the sea. Symbolically, this is nothing other than devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the very flesh of Christ and devotion to the Holy Virgin from whose womb sprung the flesh of Christ and to whom the promise of crushing the head of the ancient serpent has been made. Anchored to these two devotions, believing families must supplement their life of prayer with the scapular and other sacramentals;

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with abstinence; and with prayer and fasting; with novenas and almsgiving, with vigils and with the devotion of the Nine First Fridays and of the Five First Saturdays with the intention of making reparation for sins against the Sacred Hearts.

In regard to the Church, the time in which we live is not greatly different from the time of the Arian crisis in the 4th century, when, in the words of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, “The body of bishops failed in their confession of the Faith. They spoke variously, one against the other; there was nothing, after Nicaea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years.

There were untrustworthy Councils, unfaithful bishops; there was weakness, fear of consequences, misguidance, delusion, hallucination, endless, hopeless, extending into nearly every corner of the Catholic Church. The comparative few who remained faithful were discredited and driven into exile; the rest were either deceivers or deceived.”

Christ was with his Church then and he is with her now. Our times and the future are in the hands of God. At Fatima, the Lady of the Rosary said that she alone can help. May she not despise our prayers in our necessities but rather may she, the glorious and ever-blessed Virgin, make haste to deliver us from all dangers of body and of soul. 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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fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s

Benedictine monk A LETTER FROM A

Calx Mariae is delighted to publish a series of letters from a Benedictine monk discussing the most important virtues and principles in the Rule of St. Benedict – the rule on which the Western monastic tradition was founded and on which Christian civilisation in Europe was built.

In the Prologue of his Rule, St. Benedict, the patron saint of Europe writes: “We have therefore to establish a school of the Lord’s service, in the institution of which we hope we are going to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice or the preservation of charity, do not therefore in fear and terror flee back from the way of salvation of which the beginning cannot but be a narrow entrance.

For it is by progressing in the life of conversion and faith that, with heart enlarged and in ineffable sweetness of love, one runs in the way of God’s commandments, so that never deserting His discipleship but persevering until death in His doctrine within the monastery, we may partake by patience in the suffering of Christ and become worthy inheritors of His kingdom.”

57 SAINT BENEDICT ADMITTING SAINTS INTO THE ORDER, DETAIL, (1409), LORENZO MONACO, THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.

HUMILITY IN THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT Gospel passages speak tenderly of humility: “Unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18:3), or “I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones... Come to Me all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For My yoke is sweet and My burden light.” (Mt. 11:25-30) These words of our Lord inviting us to come to Him are taken up in the Alleluia verse for the Solemnity of All Saints (1 November), and in the Gospel for that Mass we hear the Beatitudes, the first of which proclaims humility as the source of all blessedness: Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum (Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven). (Mt. 5:3) As these same Gospel texts formed St. Benedict and the whole monastic tradition before him, it should not surprise us that the virtue of humility holds a central place in their spiritual teaching. A cursory glance at the tradition shows us how important humility was for the monastic fathers. In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (known in Latin as the Apophthegmata Patrum) we read that Abba Anthony said, “I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, ‘What can get through from such snares?’

Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Humility.’” In The Instructions of Saint Pachomius we read “Above all this, we have been given humility, which watches over all the virtues and is that great holy strength with which God clothed Himself when he came into the world.

Humility is the rampart of the virtues, the treasury of works, the saving armour and the cure for every wound... Humility is least among men, but precious and glorious before God. If we acquire it we shall trample the whole force of the enemy underfoot. (cf.

Lk. 10:19) It is said, “Whom shall I consider, if not the humble and meek?” (Is. 66:2; text 47) In his rule, St. Basil tells us that “Humility is this: that we consider all men better than us according to the Apostle’s definition. (cf. Phil. 2:3) Now we can accomplish it if we are mindful of the Lord who said: Learn from

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me for I am meek and humble in heart (Mt. 11:29), which he often showed and taught in many ways; and we ought to believe Him who has promised: Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Mt. 23:12; Lk. 14:11; Question 62 of the Rule of St. Basil) In the Prologue to the Rule, St. Benedict speaks about humility in verse 29, in which he tells us not to take credit for the gifts of grace that the Lord gives us, nor to grow proud because of our good works. In describing who will be worthy to arrive at the everlasting dwelling of God, he says, “They who fear the Lord, and do not become elated over their good deeds; they judge it is the Lord’s power, not their own, that brings about the good in them. They praise the Lord working in them, and say with the Prophet: “Not to us, Lord, not to us give the glory, but to your name alone.” (Ps. 113:9) In just this way Paul the Apostle refused to take credit for the power of his preaching.

He declared: “By God’s grace I am what I am.” (1 Cor. 15:10) And again he said: “He who boasts should make his boast in the Lord.” (2 Cor. 10:17) St. Benedict next teaches us about humility in chapters 5 and 6, in which obedience and silence are understood as expressions of humility. But the place where St. Benedict most develops his teaching on humility is in chapter 7, in which he sets before us 12 steps that we must climb in order to arrive at the “perfect love of God which casts out fear” (1 Jn. 4:18), and which forms the momentous conclusion to the doctrinal part of the Rule. Indeed, as Dom Delatte points out, this chapter “is justly regarded as the finished expression of monastic spirituality…

They (the 12 steps) describe the most characteristic disposition of the humble soul towards the essential duties and principal circumstances of the supernatural and monastic life…”

St. Benedict highlights the importance of this chapter with a sort of prologue of its own, setting before us a string of scriptural quotations that exhort us to flee from all forms of exaltation, for “every exaltation is a kind of pride”. According to Christ’s own teaching, “whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted”. (Lk. 14:11; 18:14) The psalmist, for his part, says, “Lord, my heart is not exalted; my eyes are not lifted up and I have not walked in the ways of the great nor gone

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after marvels beyond me.” (Ps. 130:2) The next verse of this Psalm in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible that St. Benedict used, reads: “If I had not a humble spirit, but were exalted instead, then you would treat me like a weaned child on its mother’s lap.” For St. Benedict, having an exalted spirit separates us from God in a way similar to how a weaned child is no longer nourished by its mother. We who seek God do not want this separation, but on the contrary, want to live in Him and grow in Him, as St. Basil says, “we ought to revere and love Him with the affection we have for our parents, and cleave to the memory of Him unceasingly, as little children do towards their mothers”. (Rule of St. Basil, Question 2) It is for this reason that we seek to grow in humility.

The next image St. Benedict uses is that of a ladder, the ladder on which “Jacob in a dream saw angels descending and ascending”. (Gen. 28:12) It is interesting to note here the presence of the angels; we know that the ones who fell did so out of pride and

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THE DREAM OF JACOB (C.1500), NICOLAS DIPRE, MUSÉE DU PETIT PALAIS, PARIS.

those who remained with God did so due to a single act of grateful and humble love towards Him. It is, therefore, by imitating the holy angels in their grateful and humble love towards God that the monk likewise ascends this ladder. Unlike the angels, however, we human beings have bodies, thus the steps we must climb take this into account so that our whole being, body and soul – which meet in the heart – can be humbled, so that the Lord will raise us up to heaven.

The twelve steps that form this ladder are not entirely new. St. John Cassian, in chapter 4 of the Institutes, lists ten indications, or signs, of humility.

St. Benedict has taken these ten “signs” of humility, enriched them with scriptural texts, and called them “steps”. He then added two more steps: one at the beginning (step 1) which summarises much of the material Cassian places before his ten “signs”, and one at the end, in which we are given a thorough description of how a monk manifests humility in his body and outward bearing.

The first step of humility, then, is the fear of God. The term “fear of God” can be understood in two senses. The first sense is fear of punishment. We fear disobeying God because we do not want to suffer the consequences, foremost of which is separation from Him. Hell is the state of eternal separation from Him, and the bitterest torments our puny imaginations can fathom are nothing in comparison with the deep and unending pain this separation causes to the miserable souls of the damned. This kind of fear is good at the beginning of our spiritual life because it trains us to avoid evil and do good, and it can and should be recalled whenever we face a temptation to sin; but it is a slavish fear, and God does not call us to be slaves, but sons. He wants us to know the sweetness of union with Him, and to love Him for His own sake. This love casts out the first kind of fear, the fear of punishment.

The second kind of fear arises precisely from this love, it is the love of a son who fears offending his cherished father, or of the wife who fears hurting her treasured husband. Moreover, in respect to God, this fear is pervaded with a holy reverence and awe that even in heaven animates the souls of all the blessed, for “the fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever”.

(Ps. 18:10) St. Benedict, though he concentrates more on the first kind of fear, he has both kinds in mind

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and wishes that his sons and daughters be filled with both of them so as to grow in humility.

On the foundation of this first step of the fear of God, the remaining 11 steps arise naturally, proceeding from internal to external, from the inmost parts of the heart to the most visible aspects of our outward bearing. We can summarise them as follows: 2. To do God’s will and not our own; 3. To submit in obedience to our superiors, as God’s representatives; 4. To persevere in such obedience even in the most difficult circumstances (i.e. heroic obedience); 5. To confess our wicked thoughts and deeds to the abbot or spiritual father; 6. To be content with the lowest and most menial treatment; 7. To be convinced in one’s heart that one is inferior to others; 8. To follow the common custom and not be singular so as to attract attention to oneself; 9. To observe silence and speak little; 10. To not be prone to laughter; 11. To speak gently, modestly, briefly and reasonably; 12. To manifest humility in one’s physical bearing, with downcast eyes.

Perhaps some of these steps might seem strange or hard to understand, particularly steps 5, 6 and 7. This is understandable given the cultural context in which we live. For this reason, it is important to clarify that for St. Benedict, humility is NOT the same thing as what modern psychology refers to as low self-esteem, or inferiority complex, or shame; St. Benedict’s view of humility is entirely different from these things, for those things are based on some kind of falsehood, whereas humility is based entirely on truth. It is the truth of what we are and of who we are, of who God is, and of the correct relationship between ourselves and God and our neighbour. Pride is the love of one’s own excellence. It is the desire to be the best, the first, the most important, the most loved, the most necessary, and the centre, not only of attention, but of reality itself, and therefore engenders contempt for others. From this evil root of self-love come forth the wicked offspring of the vices: vainglory, which seeks to have one’s excellence recognised and praised by

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creatures (even oneself); envy, which rejoices at a rival’s misfortune or is saddened at his success; anger, which takes delight in vengeance and harm; sadness and acedia, which fail to love God as we should and so lack the good zeal that inspires charitable works; avarice, which treasures material wealth and the ambition of rising to the top; gluttony, which seeks happiness most in the pleasures of food and drink; and lust, which thrives on the excessive love of persons to the extent of offending and disobeying God, whom we should love above all others. It is by confessing thoughts and deeds which manifest these tendencies that one can be convinced of how poorly one has responded to God and His gifts to us. This allows us to be content with the lowest treatment, and to believe in our hearts that others are better than us because perhaps they have responded to God better than we have.

As we can see, pride, and the vices it gives rise to, don’t let us see the truth of who we are, or who God is. It is for this reason that we must counter it with some force, and St. Benedict’s 12 steps of humility do just that, they counter our innate tendency to pride so that we can see ourselves, and the world, aright.

St. Bernard thus defines humility as “that thorough self-examination which makes a man contemptible in his own sight” (humilitas est virtus, qua homo verissima sui congnitione sibi ipse vilescit). This does not mean that we allow others to denigrate our inherent human dignity.

Humility does not ask us to be doormats that invite disrespectful treatment. But it does allow us to say with the Psalmist, “I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than dwell in the tabernacle of sinners”. (Ps 83:11) The goal of this climb of humility, we must remember continually, is charity, the love of God which the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts according to the measure in which we embrace the steepness of the upward climb. It is this love which will enlarge our hearts so that we can run on the path of God’s commandments (Prologue, 49), no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue (RB 7:69-70). It is humility which will allow us to prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may He bring us all together to everlasting life (RB 72:11).

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St Robert Southwell

lessons from history

W I T N E S S O F A M A RT Y R

A c o l u m n b y M AT T H E W M C C U S K E R

O

ne of the great delusions of the modern age is the presumption that human beings today are in some way “better”, more “enlightened”, more “moral” than people in the past, who were were cruel, or ignorant, or incapable of seeing things which are obvious to “modern man”.

This attitude reveals itself in the frequent use of phrases like “in this day and age” or “in the 21st century”, which carry with them the implication that we are living at the peak of human achievement and that, simply by virtue of the calendar date, things must be better now than in the past.

Another way in which this attitude may be revealed is in the misuse of terms such as “medieval” to imply cruelty or brutality. This is truly absurd given that the modern age is by far the most brutal and bloodthirsty period in human history. Neither the almost unimaginable death tolls – military and civilian – of modern warfare, nor the millions of innocent victims of ideologies such as Nazism and Communism, nor repeated genocides across the globe, seem to have the power to shake “modern man” out of his delusional complacency. This is seen most clearly in the case of abortion. Abortion is the world’s leading cause of death. In 2019 there were an estimated 42.4 million abortions worldwide. More than one billion unborn children have been killed by abortion since it was first legalised by the Soviet Union in 1920. Yet “modern man” persists in believing he is uniquely enlightened and uniquely moral.

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Part of the remedy for this delusion is reading and learning about the past, because as soon as anybody begins to truly study the past, with openness to whatever one may find, the unchanging nature of human beings becomes clear.

Human nature is exactly the same now as it has ever been. Every human being shares the same essential form; each individual human being is a separate instantiation of that essential form in matter. Reading the works that previous generations have left us, listen-

ST. ROBERT SOUTHWELL, S.J. (1561-1595)

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lessons from history

ing to the music they have composed, engaging with the art they have created, should help us to grasp this truth, but all too often the same prejudices remain.

For us Catholics too it can sometimes be hard to grasp the full humanity of the saints and martyrs of the past and the way in which they fully shared the same human nature as us. We have very little biographical information about many saints, and this can make it hard for us to see the real man or woman behind the stereotypical image.

John Henry Newman wrote of the way in which the lives of the saints can be often more treatises on certain virtues, than biographies which give us a sense of a real person, and how the action of grace transformed and sanctified them: “An almsgiving here, an instance of meekness there, a severity of penance, a round of religious duties, - all these things humble me, instruct me, improve me; I cannot desire anything better of their kind; but they do not necessarily coalesce into the image of a person. From such works I do but learn to pay devotion to an abstract and typical perfection under a certain particular name; I do not know more of the real Saint who bore it than before… This seems to me, to tell the truth, a sort of pantheistic treatment of the Saints. I ask something more than to stumble upon the disjecta membra of what ought to be a living whole. I take but a secondary interest in books which chop up a Saint into chapters of faith, hope, charity, and the cardinal virtues. They are too scientific to be devotional. They have their great utility, but it is not the utility which they profess. They do not manifest a Saint, they mince him into spiritual lessons.”

Newman commented that this can be avoided when we have surviving writings – particularly personal writings – of a saint.

This is the case with some of the English martyrs whose writings can give us real insights into the operations of grace working to sanctify real men.

There is always a danger that when we think of the martyrs we may have a romanticised idea of what life must have been like as missionary priest and of martyrdom itself.

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ST. EDMUND CAMPION, S.J. (1540-1581)

It is easy to think of the missions as exciting and heroic, but easy to forget how terrible a burden working on the English mission field must have been – the fear, anxiety, stress, strain, sorrow etc of men who spent years working in the knowledge that they could be betrayed and arrested at any moment and handed over to torture and execution. What can seem to us as glorious martyrdom, and entry into eternal bliss – as indeed it was – would not of course have always been seen in that light by the men facing it, men who would not have thought of themselves as saints, but as sinners, weak and humble servants of God, who were liable at any moment to fall into sin, or to fail in their mission as a result of their human weakness.

These men lived with the possibility of an excruciating and degrading end to life hanging over them – an end which presented a temptation for them to fall from grace.

Some of the surviving writings of our martyrs give us an insight into the nature of this ordeal.

St. Edmund Campion expressed the sense of perpetual danger: “I cannot long escape the hands of heretics, the enemy have so many eyes, so many tongues, so many scouts and crafts”. He wrote: “I read letters sometimes myself that in the first front tell news that Campion is taken, which, noised in every place where I come, so filleth my ears with the sound thereof, that fear itself hath taken away all fear.”

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st r obert southwell

On another occasion Campion wrote to the Jesuit’s Superior General, Everard Mercurian, that: “at the writing hereof, the persecution rages most cruelly. The house where I am is sad; no other talk but of death, flight, prison, or spoil of their friends.”

Another Jesuit missionary, Robert Persons, wrote that: “the violence… is most intense and it is of a kind that has not been heard of since the conversion of England. Everywhere there are being dragged to prison, noblemen and those of humble birth, men, women and even children.”

He gives a vivid description of the tension under which Catholics lived: “there comes a hurried knock at the door, like that of a pursuivant; all start up and listen, like deer when they hear the huntsman; we leave our food and commend ourselves to God… If it is nothing, we laugh at our fright.”

And he noted simply that “we never have a single day free from danger.”1 Some of the greatest insights into the interior struggle of English Catholics come from the poetry of St. Robert Southwell, whose verses, circulating in manuscript form, brought courage and consolation to many.

St. Robert Southwell was born in Norfolk in 1561.

His grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell, had been one of Henry VIII’s commissioners for the dissolution of the monasteries and the family had greatly profited from the destruction of England’s religious houses. The family home at Horsham St. Faith was built amidst the ruins of a Benedictine priory. St. Robert’s father, also called Sir Richard Southwell, was a prominent courtier and his mother Bridget Southwell née Copley, had been a childhood companion of Elizabeth I. However, Bridget had remained loyal to the true religion, as had other members of the Copley family, and it was to relatives in the west country that she sent her son Robert to be educated.

In the summer of 1576, aged 14, St. Robert crossed the English Channel to Flanders and became a student SPR I NG 2 0 2 0

at the English College at Douai. This had been established in 1568 by William Allen, and other English exiles, as a centre for educating a new generation of English Catholic priests. The majority of priests who returned to England were formed at Douai, or its sister seminary, the English College founded at Rome in 1579. (Later colleges were established at Valladolid (1589), Seville (1592) and Lisbon (1628).) However, St. Robert Southwell had a different path, in November of 1576 he went to the Jesuit College of Claremont and there, in 1578, asked to be admitted to the Society of Jesus. After being turned down, probably on account of his youth, he went to Rome and there, in 1579, became a Jesuit at the age of 17. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1584.

In July 1586 he arrived in England in the company of Henry Garnet (1553-1606), who was soon to become superior of the English Jesuits, and was to be martyred in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

St. Robert, like his fellow missionaries, before and after him, travelled throughout England in secret saying Mass, celebrating the sacraments, teaching the faith and reconciling men and women to the Church.

The period in which he worked in England was one of the most intense periods of persecution, especially in the years following the failure of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when the Catholic faith became closely associated with treason in government propaganda, and in the minds of many.

The human realities of being a missionary priest at a time of severe persecution comes across strongly in Southwell’s poems – as well as the natural and supernatural virtue that conducted him towards martyrdom. I would like to share a selection of these poems, which I think can help us to have some insight into the sufferings endured by our ancestors, and into the reality of martyrdom – glorious but terrible.

I have taken the text of the poems from St. Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, ed. Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney, but I have modernised the spelling and added modern punctuation to make them more accessible. They are all from the “Waldegrave” manuscript, now kept at Stonyhurst College, of which Davidson and Sweeney write: “Southwell was a priest denied a pulpit; and those under his ministry were a congregation denied a

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lessons from history

church… The poetry collected in the ‘Waldegrave’ manuscript was written to redress that loss, under the guise of (and harnessing the attractive boost of) literary effort. Southwell, knowing that his words would be copied and shared, was fully alert to the possibilities of manuscript circulation between communities in transmitting ‘moral truths, and that covertly uttered to a common good which without mask would not find so free a passage.’”2 If we, mindful of our shared human nature and our fundamental similarity to one another, can try to place ourselves in the position of a young man, living year after year in secret, in disguise, under aliases, and always in imminent danger of capture, torture and death, then these poems will not need further commentary and will enlighten us about the true nature of the heroism and sacrifice of our English martyrs.

LIFE IS BUT LOSS By force I live, in will I wish to die In plaint I pass the length of lingering days Free would my soul from mortal body fly And tread the tracks of death’s desired ways Life is but loss where death is deemed gain And loathed pleasures breed displeasing pain.

Who would not die, to kill all murdering griefs Or who would live in never dying fears Who would not wish his treasure safe from thieves And quiet his heart from pangs, his eyes from tears Death parteth but two ever fighting foes Whose civil strife doth work our endless woes.

Life is a wandering course to doubtful rest As oft a cursed rise to damning leap As happy race to win a heavenly crest None being sure what final fruits to reap And who can like in such a life to dwell Whose ways are strait to heaven, but wide to hell.

Come cruel death, why lingerest thou so long What doth withhold thy dint from fatal stroke Now pressed I am, alas thou dost me wrong To let me live, more anger to provoke Thy right is had when thou has stopped my breath Why shouldst thou stay to work my double death.

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If Saul’s attempt in falling on his blade As lawful were as eth to putt in ure [“As easy to carry out”] If Sampson’s leave a common law were made Of Abel’s lot if all that would were sure Then cruel death thou shouldst the tyrant play With none but such as wished for delay Where life is loved thou ready art to kill And to abridge with sudden pangs their joy Where life is loathed thou wilt not work their will But dost adjourn their death to their annoy To some thou art a fierce unbidden guest But those that crave thy help thou helpest lest Avaunt O viper, I thy spite defy There is a God that over-rules thy force Who can thy weapons to his will apply And shorten or prolong our brittle course I on His mercy not thy might rely To Him I live, for Him I hope to die.

I DIE ALIVE O life, what let’s thee from a quick decease O death, what draws thee from a present prayer My feast is done, my soul would be at ease My grace is said, O death come take away I live but such a life as ever dies I die but such a death as never ends My death to end my dying life denies And life my living death no whit amends Thus still I die yet still I do revive My living death by dying life is fed Grace more than nature keeps my heart alive Whose idle hopes and vain desires are dead Not where I breath but where I love I live Not where I love but where I am I die The life I wish must future glory give The deaths I feel in present dangers lie.

FROM FORTUNES REACH Let fickle fortune run her blindest race I settled have an unremoved mind I scorn to be the game of fancies chase Or fain to show the change of every wind.

Light giddy humours stinted to no rest Still change their choice yet never choose the best.

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st r obert southwell

My choice was guided by foresightful heed It was averred with approving will It shall be followed with performing deed And sealed with vow, till death the chooser kill Yea death though final date of vain desires Ends not my choice which with no time expires To beauty's fading bliss I am no thrall I bury not my thoughts in metal mines I aim not at such fame as feareth fall I seek and find a light that ever shines Whose glorious beams display such heavenly sights As yield my soul the sum of all delights My light to love, my love to life doth guide To life that lives by love and loveth light By love of one to whom all loves are tied By duest debt, and never equalled right.

Eyes light, hearts love, souls truest life He is Consorting in three joys, one perfect bliss.

SCORN NOT THE LEAST Where wards are weak and foes encountering strong Where mightier do assault than do defend The feebler part puts up enforced wrong And silent sees that speech could not amend Yet higher powers must think, though they repine When sun is set, the little stars will shine.

St. Robert Southwell was captured in 1591. He was first imprisoned at the home of the torturer Richard Topcliffe, and then for a month at the Gatehouse prison, where he was repeatedly tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to extract information about his fellow priests. He was then incarcerated for three years in the Tower of London. He suffered martyrdom on 21 February 1595, when he was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. His last words were “in manus tuas Domine”. He hung in the noose for a short time, trying as best he could to make the sign of the cross.

He was 33 years old.

“The bud was opened to let out the rose The chains unloosed, to let the captive go.”

St. Robert Southwell, priest and martyr, pray for us!

Matthew McCusker has a Master’s Degree in History from the University of York, where he specialised in ecclesiastical history.

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

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

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

Quotes from St. Edmund Campion and Robert Persons taken from Alice Hogge, God’s Secret Agents, p.85-86.

St. Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, ed. Peter Davidson & Anne Sweeney, (Manchester, 2007).

While pike doth range, the seely tench doth fly And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by These fleet afloat, while those do fill the dish There is a time even for the worm to creep And suck the dew while all her foes do sleep.

The merlen cannot ever sore on high Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase The tender lark will find a time to fly And fearful hare to run a quiet race.

He that high growth on cedars did bestow Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow.

In Aman’s pomp poor Mardocheus wept Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe The lazar pined while Dives feast was kept Yet he heaven, to hell did Dives go.

We trample grass and prize the flowers of May Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.

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Universal Church vs GLOBALIST CHURCH A roundtable discussion to address critical questions regarding the growing UN influence in the Vatican

22 MAY 2020 AT 3-6PM, HOTEL MASSIMO D’A ZEGLIO, ROME PA R T I C I PA N T S :

Prof. Roberto de Mattei Lepanto Foundation, Italy Dr. Taylor Marshall author, USA Michael Matt The Remnant, USA Steve Mosher Population Research Institute, USA Jeanne Smits journalist, France Alexander Tschugguel St Boniface Institute, Austria Jose Antonio Ureta author, France Moderator: John Smeaton SPUC, UK

W W W. V O I C E O F T H E F A M I L Y. C O M The roundtable discussion will be held in English, with simultaneous translation into Italian.

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“…she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gen 3:15)