MARIAE CALX
Rebuilding our Christian civilisation
FOCUS:
CORONAVIRUS IN THE LIGHT OF FATIMA
a tragedy and a source of hope
INCLUDING:
FATIMA: HEAVEN’S ANSWER TO A WORLD IN CRISIS
by
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
THE EUCHARIST: the greatest treasure
of the Church in time of tribulations by
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
LAW AND LIBERTY:
Britain’s response to the pandemic
A V O I C E O F T H E FA M I LY P U B L I C AT I O N
ISSUE 9
SUMMER 2020
MARIAE CALX
ISSUE 9
“Look, My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which
SUMMER 2020
CONTENTS
ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies
2
From the editor
3 A pandemic that defined abortion as “essential” by Maria Madise
and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console Me, and announce in My Name that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with all graces necessary for salvation,
7 Law and liberty: Britain’s response to the pandemic by Matthew McCusker
all those who, on the first Saturdays of five consecutive months, confess,
18 FOCUS Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope
receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary and keep Me company for fifteen minutes meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to Me.”
20 Fatima: Heaven’s answer to a world in crisis by H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
OUR L ADY TO SR . LUCIA OF FATIMA 10 DECEMBER 1925
29 The Eucharist: the greatest treasure of the Church in time of tribulations by H.E. Bishop Athanasius Schneider 35 Reforming our lives according to Our Lady’s call at Fatima by Fr. Linus Clovis 20
29
42 Co-redemption and Marian consecration in the light of the Fatima message by Fr. Serafino M. Lanzetta 49 The judgement of God in history by Prof. Roberto de Mattei 59 Why should we expect a divine intervention today? by John-Henry Westen
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42
68 Rome Life Forum Q&A 75 Schools and home-schooling under lockdown by Dr. Joseph Shaw 77 Lessons from history: Reflecting on Magna Carta today A column by Matthew McCusker 79 A letter from a Benedictine monk
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83 St. Benedict- the father and patron we need by Maria Madise
ISSN:2517-6455
© V O I C E O F T H E FA M I LY 2 0 2 0
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his is a special edition of Calx Mariae, because of its length and the circumstances in which it has been produced. For the past three months, our temporal and spiritual life has been altered as never before. Not only have political leaders ordered the lockdown of nations but spiritual leaders have blocked access to the sacraments in many parts of the world. The full meaning of this is still emerging and questions will continue to arise in the months ahead. Many of these questions were addressed at our online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”, covered fully in the FOCUS section of this edition. Are we experiencing the aftermath of leaving Our Lady’s call made in Fatima unanswered? Do her requests still stand today? Is this a chastisement? What can we do to remedy the situation? In 1917, like now, it was a lovely summer, but the battles of the Somme, Verdun, the Nivelle offensive, and unrestricted submarine warfare had, as historian Warren Carroll put it, made Europe resemble an antechamber of Hell. Benedict XV spoke of the “suicide of civilised Europe” and made his appeal to the Queen of Peace on 5 May: “To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth – from noble temples and tiniest chapels, from royal palaces and mansions of the rich as from the poorest hut – from blood-drenched plains and seas. Let it bear to Her the anguished cry of mothers and wives, the wailing of innocent little ones, the sighs of every generous heart: that Her most tender and benign solicitude may be moved and the peace we ask for be obtained for our agitated world.” Only eight days later, on 13 May, she came. In the fields of Cova da Iria, she gave the three little shepherds instructions to bring about the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, so that a period of peace might be granted to the world. First, prayer, particularly devotion to the Holy Rosary and the Brown Scapular; second, reparation for the sins and outrages perpetrated against God’s grace and blasphemies against the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary; and third, the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart. She warned that if Russia was not consecrated, it would spread its errors throughout the world. The evil of atheistic communism, which first seized power in Russia, still spreads today, not least through the influence of the government of China. This ideological virus, of which COVID-19 could act as a symbolic reminder, has truly infected our society. Abortion, first legalised in communist Russia, is now promoted by the United Nations as “essential healthcare”. The strategic goals of communism include breaking down all standards of morality, by promoting pornography; presenting homosexuality as “normal, natural, healthy”; replacing revealed religion with “social” religion; discrediting the family; encouraging promiscuity and divorce, and “liberating” children from the “negative and suppressive influence of parents”. Lucia, Francesco and Jacinta knew nothing of Russia where the revolution was still a few months away. But Our Lady’s wishes were clear and infinitely dear to them. Three years later, just before her death, Jacinta told Lucia: “We shall never meet again. Pray for me a lot till I go to Heaven, and afterwards, I’ll pray for you. Never tell anybody the secret even if they kill you. Love Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary very much and make many sacrifices for sinners.” She was not quite ten years old, yet she knew how the errors Our Lady warned against are to be overcome. Our Lady predicted all the atrocities borne throughout the last 100 years, and which we continue to bear today. But she gave instructions on how to end these horrors and bring peace to our agitated world. She will keep her promises and it is by striving tirelessly for the fulfilment of her requests that we will help to hasten the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart.
EDITOR Maria Madise EDITORIAL BOARD Liam Gibson Matthew McCusker John Smeaton John-Henry Westen DESIGN & PRODUCTION EDITOR Selina Fang EDITORIAL OFFICE VOICE OF THE FAMILY Unit B, 3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street, SE11 4AB, London, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7820 3148 Email: editor@voiceofthefamily.com www.voiceofthefamily.com/calxmariae PUBLICATION IS SPONSORED BY:
Special thanks to: DISCLAIMER: Great care is taken to credit photos and seek permission before publishing. If you have a query regarding copyright, please contact the Editor. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission. Donations for the continuation of this magazine in print will be gratefully received by Voice of the Family at the address above or online via:
www.voiceofthefamily.com/donate Calx Mariae seeks to contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation by providing features and analysis in the areas of life, family and culture. Our aim in producing this magazine is to strengthen our readers in the faith and in their witness to the truth about human life and the family. Calx Mariae is published by Voice of the Family, an international coalition of 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”.
A PANDEMIC THAT DEFINED abortion AS “ESSENTIAL”
pro-life action
FROM THE EDITOR
by MARIA MADISE
O
n 25 March, António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, launched a $2 billion “global humanitarian response plan” to help “the world’s poorest countries” deal with the coronavirus pandemic.1 He tweeted: “COVID-19 is menacing the whole of humanity – and so the whole of humanity must fight back.” However, Guterres’ plan to “address the needs of the most vulnerable people” designates “sexual and reproductive health” as a strategic priority and makes it a specific objective of the UN’s response.2 Guterres’ policy brief on the impact of COVID-19 on women, published in April, similarly pointed out that: “While early reports reveal more men are dying as a result of COVID-19, the health of women generally is adversely impacted through the reallocation of resources and priorities, including sexual and reproductive health services.”3 The term “sexual and reproductive health” has long been understood by UN agencies and many of the world’s most powerful governments to include contraception and abortion. This is made explicitly clear by the UN Human Rights Commission’s “COVID-19 Guidance”, which states: “[r]esources should not be diverted away from essential sexual and reproductive health services” and describes them as “a life-saving priority and integral to the response, including access to contraception; …safe abortion care; and effective referral pathways…”4 The coronavirus pandemic, therefore, has provided the abortion advocates in the UN with a golden opportunity to promote even greater access to contraception and abortion across the globe. In fact, it seems that the UN health agency, the World Health Organization (WHO) was well prepared to advance its abortion agenda during the COVID-19 lockdown.5
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Dr. Antonella Lavalanet, a medical officer with the WHO’s “Maternal and Perinatal Health & Preventing Unsafe Abortion Team”, revealed at the end of March that the UN authority on global health is working on a statement that would identify abortion as an “essential service” amid the COVID-19 outbreak.6 However, mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs used in chemical abortions, have been on the WHO list of “essential medicines” since, at least, 2007.7 This means access to these must be maintained, as a matter of priority, even if supply chains are damaged, due to something like a pandemic. The WHO 2018 guidance on medical abortion explains that abortion drugs are considered essential in view of situations where access to abortion facilities become restricted: “…many interventions in medical abortion care, particularly those in early pregnancy, can be provided at the primary care level and on an outpatient basis, which further increases access to care. …Given the nature of the medical abortion
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pro-life action
process, it is also possible for individuals to play a role in managing some of the components by themselves, outside of a health-care facility.”8 The document also refers to another WHO guidance document on “Health worker roles in providing safe abortion and post-abortion contraception” (2015), which recommends that women “self-manage” their mifepristone and/or misoprostol medication without direct supervision of a health-care provider, as well as “self-assess” the success of the abortion using pregnancy tests and checklists.9 It might be argued that while it is considered to be the role of the WHO to set health standards for the entire world, none of its guidance is legally binding. But at the time of a global health emergency, it is, nevertheless, inevitable that this body should appear centre stage and governments worldwide will look to it for recommendations and advice when setting the priorities for their healthcare systems. Dr. Lavalanet explained that the WHO was also meeting with advocates who insist that abortion is
an “essential service” among sexual and reproductive health services “in response to governments who are trying to deprioritise these services”. She concluded her report by affirming that “we have seen some countries actually create guidance for this time during COVID using the information from within our guidelines”.10 This rings painfully true in the UK where the government, after the fiasco of publishing three contradictory statements on the issue of home abortions in the course of one week in April, finally yielded to the abortion lobby and authorised women to kill their babies at home without any medical supervision. With this move, the government showed that although it had ordered a lockdown of its nation to save lives threatened by the virus, the crisis had not really helped it to understand the value of human life. In addition to trivialising the killing of unborn children, there is reason to believe that such abortions will heighten physical and psychological risks for women. How can a doctor assess the baby’s age, identify a possible ectopic pregnancy or other med-
A pa n d e m i c t h at d e f i n e d a b ort i on a s e s s e n t i a l
“Today the reality is that in many places, abortion drugs are just a phone call away. Therefore, what indeed is essential is that we work more vigorously than ever before to expose the evil of abortion – in our families, our parishes, among friends, in our schools and in public.” ical conditions over the phone or the internet? The government, therefore, has also demonstrated how little it cares about the families and mothers who, at a time when medical supervision is increasingly impersonalised and help in general may be more difficult to access, make the fatal choice of killing their unborn child in their own home. The UK was by no means the only government to follow the advice of international abortion advocates. In a joint resolution, passed on 17 April, the European Parliament called on member states to: “effectively guarantee safe and timely access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and the necessary healthcare services for all women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially access to contraception, including emergency contraception, and to abortion care…”11 In France, home abortions were already legal in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, but this was extended to nine weeks due to the pandemic. The French government proudly announced that abortion remains an essential medical procedure during the COVID-19 pandemic and doctors should continue to offer them. Doctors and midwives were allowed to prescribe the drugs over the phone or by video consultation.12 In Ireland, where abortion was legalised by popular vote just two years ago, the Department of Health also authorised women to abort their children at home during the COVID-19 emergency, dispensing them of the requirement to visit a doctor to obtain the drugs and recommended opting for a remote consultation by phone or video call instead. While many lamented that in Spain, like in other countries with more severe lockdown measures, access to abortion became harder, the Spanish Association of Clinics Accredited for the Voluntary Termination of
SUMMER 2020
Pregnancy tweeted that its clinics remained open because abortion is part of the country’s national health programme. “It’s an urgent resource which cannot be postponed and should be attended to promptly,” the association said.13 Some EU countries like Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Lithuania seemed to ignore the global advice to prioritise access to abortion, while other countries, such as Estonia, where medical abortion was already quite widespread, seemed to either quietly raise its time limit to the full extent of the abortion law or allow abortion drugs to be administered at home, or both. Early in the outbreak, Canadian authorities declared that abortion remains available as an “essential service” during the pandemic. Women were encouraged to opt for medical abortions for social distancing reasons, although the availability of abortion drugs had to be confirmed with the patient’s local pharmacy before a prescription could be issued over the phone. In the USA, where a number of states moved to deem abortion a non-essential service, several organizations, such as the American Medical Association, and abortion advocacy groups issued statements highly critical of any restrictions. Legal challenges on behalf of abortion providers, including the abortion giant Planned Parenthood (which partners with the WHO via its special Human Reproduction Programme) also managed to stop some of the orders restricting abortion services as non-essential. The glaring hypocrisy revealed by the ongoing trench warfare over whether or not the killing of unborn children is essential, can be summarised in the behaviour of Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York. On 20 March, Cuomo said that his dramatic measures to shut down New York were worth it to save “just one life”, yet abortions in the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics continued. In January last year, 5
the same governor signed into law the Reproductive Health Act which allows the killing of babies throughout pregnancy until birth. These are just some examples that reveal how the abortion lobby works through international institutions and national governments at a time of crisis to pursue its agenda. The result of an ever-increasing attack on the unborn, who are truly the most vulnerable people in the world, is a dehumanised society. Furthermore, a society which considers the killing of unborn children in their mother’s womb to be a right is a barbaric society, but a society which views abortion as a priority at a time of crisis when people are faced with serious choices and sacrifices has something demonic about it. It brings death into the bosom of the family, which by its nature is called to be the sanctuary of life. Although the new regulations promoting home abortion are said to be a temporary response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such emergency measures also have the potential to change the provision of abortion and society’s perception of it in the long-term. As the lockdown restrictions are being lifted in country after country, it remains to be seen, how the abortion industry will react. However, it is difficult to imagine that they would easily let go of the victories they have gained. Today the reality is that in many places, abortion drugs are just a phone call away. Therefore, what indeed is essential is that we work more vigorously than ever before to expose the evil of abortion – in our families, our parishes, among friends, in our schools and in public. No woman who picks up the phone to request abortion drugs is going to hear the truth about the life she carries within her or be told about the consequences of ending that life. We should also consider that the society that misleads its daughters by telling them that it is safe to have an abortion at home, while it is dangerous to go to confession or see a priest, is a society desperately in need of penance. While thousands of people have sadly died due to COVID-19, despite the efforts of governments and dedicated medical personnel, undoubtedly more unborn babies have continued to die with the explicit support of those same governments and the medical profession. We do not have to account to God, as a people, for those who die of natural 6
causes. But we will need to answer for what we did or didn’t do to save the least of His brethren.14 It is the unborn children threatened by abortion who are, in fact, the most vulnerable members of the human family. In the battle to protect their lives, let us never give up, let us never surrender.
Law and liberty
analysis
pro-life action
BRITAIN’S RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC
ENDNOTES: 1.
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Funding the fight against COVID-19 in the world’s poorest countries, UN Department of Global Communications, 25 March 2020; https://www.un.org/en/un-coronavirus-communications-team/funding-fight-against-COVID-19-world%E2%80%99spoorest-countries Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19, United Nations Coordinated Appeal, April-December 2020; https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/Global-Humanitarian-Response-Plan-COVID-19.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2ESmB8EKJj7wJudGmccVIjEWZVpoD7bPdfxeqzz82F2rvH_vOZm7K3sBY UN Policy Brief: The COVID-19 Impact on Women, 9 April 2020; https://www. unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/policy-brief-the-impact-of-COVID-19-on-women-en.pdf?la=en&vs=1406 COVID-19 GUIDANCE, UN Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner, 27 April 2020; https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Events/COVID-19_Guidance.pdf “Pro-abortion World Health Organization has prepared for years to exploit a pandemic”, SPUC, 2 April 2020; https://www.spuc.org.uk/News/ID/384355/ Pro-abortion-World-Health-Organization-has-prepared-for-years-to-exploita-pandemic “COVID-19: What implications for sexual and reproductive health and rights?”, Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 27 March 2020, webinar; http://www. srhm.org/news/covid-19-what-implications-for-sexual-and-reproductive-healthand-rights/ WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, 15th list, March 2007; https://apps.who. int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/70656/a95075_eng.pdf?sequence=1 Medical Management of Abortion, World Health Organization 2018, p. 1-2; https:// www.who.int/reproductivehealth/guideline-medical-abortion-care/en/ Health worker roles in providing safe abortion care and post-abortion contraception, World Health Organization 2015; https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/ publications/unsafe_abortion/abortion-task-shifting/en/ “COVID-19: What implications for sexual and reproductive health and rights?”, Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 27 March 2020, webinar; http://www. srhm.org/news/covid-19-what-implications-for-sexual-and-reproductive-healthand-rights/ European Parliament resolution of 17 April 2020 on EU coordinated action to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences (2020/2616(RSP)); https:// www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2020-0054_EN.html “France extends access to abortions during COVID-19 pandemic”, RFI, 11 April 2020; http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200411-france-extends-access-to-abortions-during-covid-19-pandemic Laura Smith-Spark, “Abortion access thrown into jeopardy by coronavirus pandemic”, CNN, 9 April 2020; https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/coronavirus-abortion-access-intl/index.html “And the king answering shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.” (Mt. 25:40)
b y M AT T H E W M C C U S K E R
S
ince the last edition of Calx Mariae the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged millions of people into a prolonged period of anxiety and distress. Many are mourning the loss of loved ones or fearing for their own wellbeing and for the health of those close to them. Millions worldwide have had their lives disrupted, their businesses and livelihoods destroyed, and their hopes and plans for the future thrown into disarray. As I write this article Britain has been in lockdown for 57 days, with regulations only now beginning to be relaxed. Under the Health Protection Regulations 2020 the English people have effectively been placed under house arrest, prohibited by law from leaving their own homes except on certain very limited grounds. (And almost identical restrictions have been imposed across the UK). A wide range of businesses have been closed down by order of the state. These extraordinary actions – by far the most draconian restrictions on liberty ever seen in our islands – would have been wholly unthinkable to our ancestors, up to just a couple of generations ago. It is therefore important to pause and reflect on the government’s actions in the light of the Church’s teaching on human liberty.
Man was created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27) and consequently possesses the faculties of intellect and will. These confer on man “natural liberty”, the ability “of choosing means fitted for the end proposed.”2 Man has free will, and thus is able to choose between good and evil: “on the use that is made of liberty the highest good and the greatest evil alike depend.”3 Pope Leo XIII taught: “man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another… Therefore, ‘whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.’[Jn. 8:34]” God directs man towards his proper end by a law “implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end”.4 This is the “natural
WHAT IS LIBERTY?
“Liberty”, taught Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical letter Libertas, is “the highest of natural endowments”, which “confers on man this dignity – that he is ‘in the hand of his counsel’[Eccl. 15:14] and has power over his actions.”1 CAL X M A R IA E
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law” which, “is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin”.5 However, as Pope Leo XIII explained in his encyclical letter Immortale Dei:
“In order to fulfil its mission, the state has the authority to compel individuals to perform or refrain from certain acts, by means of ‘ human laws’ which must however conform to the natural and eternal law.”
“Man's natural instinct moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties. Hence, it is divinely ordained that he should lead his life – be it family, or civil – with his fellow men, amongst whom alone his several wants can be adequately supplied.”
and consequently on the health and wellbeing of the nation and (ii) the preservation of our fundamental liberties for future generations. ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE GOVERNMENT’S “LOCKDOWN”
But: “as no society can hold together unless someone be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority”.6 In order to fulfil its mission, the state has the authority to compel individuals to perform or refrain from certain acts, by means of “human laws” which must however conform to the natural and eternal law: “the liberty of those who are in authority does not consist in the power to lay unreasonable and capricious commands upon their subjects, which would equally be criminal and would lead to the ruin of the commonwealth; but the binding force of human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law.”7 The Pope continued: “If, then, by anyone in authority, something be sanctioned out of conformity with the principles of right reason, and consequently hurtful to the commonwealth, such an enactment can have no binding force of law, as being no rule of justice, but certain to lead men away from that good which is the very end of civil society.”8 Man is obliged to disobey or disregard all such invalid laws:
8
POPE LEO XIII, 1903.
“But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man, we become disobedient to God. Thus, an effectual barrier being opposed to tyranny, the authority in the State will not have all its own way, but the interests and rights of all will be safeguarded – the rights of individuals, of domestic society, and of all the members of the commonwealth; all being free to live according to law and right reason; and in this, as We have shown, true liberty really consists.”9 There are certain acts that the state simply cannot command subjects to commit, or refrain from committing; whatever good end it may intend. And a government must not take actions that it knows will have damaging consequences for its citizens, unless it has well founded reasons for believing that the evil it is trying to prevent is grave enough to warrant them. Like a doctor treating a patient, the state must “first do no harm”. These principles are of great importance when considering attempts by governments to greatly restrict the liberty of their citizens, and to forbid morally good acts (e.g. visiting family members, going out to work to provide for one’s dependents and receiving the sacraments) in order to achieve another good end, in this case, the reduction in the number of lives lost to COVID-19. In this analysis, I will consider the impact of present government restrictions on (i) the economy,
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As I write this article the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is warning that Britain is facing a recession “the likes of which we have not seen” and suggests that unemployment may be in “double figures” by the end of the year.10 This is the inevitable result of the lockdown policy adopted on 23 March 2020 – no other outcome could reasonably have been expected. Every single one of us – whatever our stage of life or current employment status – is ultimately dependent on the wealth created by work, both our own labour (past or present) and that of others. When St. Paul said “the charge we gave you on our visit was that the man who refuses to work must be left to starve” (2 Thess. 3:10) he was simply expressing a fundamental truth about human life since the Fall; “thou shalt earn thy bread with the sweat of thy brow” God said to Adam “until thou goest back into the ground from which thou wast taken”. (Gen. 3:19) God has given us a world full of potential, but it is only through work, of whatever genuine kind, that the human race transforms that potential into real wealth, whether that be basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter, or the cultural riches of a civilised society. Man must work when he can, and be supported by the fruits of his labours, and those of others, when he cannot. If a government “shuts down the economy”, it shuts down the creation of wealth. For the last 57 days the government has been pursuing a policy which, whatever end may be primarily intended, will increase poverty in our country. The lockdown, while intended to save lives, is already triggering a domino effect of economic collapse that has the potential to cause misery, distress, anxiety, panic, and a lower standard SUMMER 2020
of living and of healthcare for hundreds of millions worldwide. Assessing the impact of the lockdown on future health and wellbeing is a very difficult task, but some initial studies have suggested the potential scale of the destruction. Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard, predicts that the “economic catastrophe” is “likely to rival or exceed that of any recession in the last 150 years”, potentially leading to a “global depression”.11 A report for the Macro Strategy Partnership, a company that researches global markets, has concluded that “the costs of lockdown, in terms of human lives, may be not one but two orders of magnitude higher than the ‘cost’ of the disease”. And a study by members of the Actuarial Society of South Africa has concluded that the lockdown may lead to 29 times more lives lost than the deaths it seeks to prevent.12 Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, revealed that government sources were discussing a report suggesting that the lockdown could result in up to 150,000 otherwise “avoidable deaths” in the UK.13 In 2016 the Lancet published a study linking 260,000 cancer deaths in 34 countries with the 2008 financial crisis. The deaths were due to reduced public spending on health and a reduction in the number of people who could afford medical insurance. They suggested that worldwide additional cancer deaths may have exceeded 500,000.14 The government took draconian action after a study produced by a team at Imperial College, the findings of which have been strongly challenged by a number of other scientists, suggested that in the worst case scenario, if no government action was taken, up to 500,000 lives could be lost to COVID-19. Yet, as shown above, there are many studies that suggest the consequences of government action could be equally, or more, appalling. Predictions of the consequences
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“For the first time since the Catholic Relief Act of 1791 the public practice of the Catholic faith has been suppressed. And the modern state has the power to enforce its will in a way that no previous persecuting power has possessed.”
of hypothetical events are notoriously unreliable. But any assessment of the legitimacy of the government’s action must take into account not only the lives that may – or may not – have been saved by its policy but also those that may be lost as a result of it. Yet, disturbing as the economic consequences may be, the imposition of wholly unprecedented restrictions on our traditional liberties, should be of even greater concern and will form the focus for the rest of this analysis. END OF ENGLISH LIBERTY? Shortly after the lockdown was imposed, a former Supreme Court judge and noted historian, Jonathan Sumption QC, set out his fears in an interview on BBC Radio 4: “The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the threat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated. That’s what I fear we are seeing now.” He continued: “the real question is: is this serious enough to warrant putting most of our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hardworking people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt, depression, stress, heart attacks, suicides and unbelievable distress, inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable and will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all?”15 Lord Sumption – though he may not know it – is echoing Pope Leo XIII who warned that in a state
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dominated by the ideology of liberalism – such as our own – the true liberty of the individual to obey the natural and eternal law would not long survive: “it follows that [when]… the authority in the State comes from the people only… the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs… With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny. The empire of God over man and civil society once repudiated, it follows that religion, as a public institution, can have no claim to exist, and that everything that belongs to religion will be treated with complete indifference.”16 In 1888 Pope Leo XIII was able to state “the powerful influence of the Church has ever been manifested in the custody and protection of the civil and political liberty of the people.”17 Tragically, that is no longer the case. In England and Wales, the bishops have not only failed to defend the “civil and political liberty of the people”, they have even failed to defend the fundamental liberties of the Church. Under the regulations in force at the time this article is written: • the public celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is forbidden • the rite of baptism is explicitly forbidden • marriage before clergy, or witnesses outside one’s household, is explicitly forbidden • the administration of the sacrament of Confirmation is, in practice, forbidden
CAL X M A R IA E
• the ordination of clergy is, in practice, forbidden • leaving your home to go to confession is, in practice, forbidden. For the first time since the Catholic Relief Act of 1791 the public practice of the Catholic faith has been suppressed. And the modern state has the power to enforce its will in a way that no previous persecuting power has possessed. Furthermore, the regulations specifically permit churches to be used for blood donation, food banks and aid for the homeless, while forbidding their use for the public worship of the Church and the celebration of the sacraments. The government’s regulations constitute a gross insult to God. There couldn’t be a clearer demonstration of the contempt with which our political class holds the Church. Long forgotten is the first clause of Magna Carta: “the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired.” The response of the bishops has been absolute and immediate compliance with virtually no word of public protest. Indeed, as an investigative report published by LifeSiteNews has revealed, the government was advised to close churches even for public prayer by the Bishops’ Conference’s own advisor, James Gough McManus.18 A statement from the Archdiocese of Westminster admitted: “Professor [sic] Jim McManus has spoken with a senior civil servant and it was quite clear they just had not thought through the issues of infection and security of churches and when he made these points clear, they were appalled and agreed they had made a mistake.
the regulations allow an individual to be committed on mental health grounds on the word of a single practitioner? And why does it increase the length of time that people can be detained on those grounds? Is the government simply using the opportunity provided by COVID-19 to increase the power of the state at the expense of the individual? Another worrying phenomenon has been Cabinet ministers appearing to attempt to go beyond the law and impose their own opinions on the British people, using the police as a means of enforcement. For example, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock threatened to ban people from leaving their homes for exercise, despite this being specifically permitted by the regulations. His threat was prompted by people sunbathing and sitting on park benches. Journalist Peter Hitchens pointed out that the Geneva Conventions forbid even occupying powers from engaging in collective punishment. Yet, there is a disturbing silence on the part of most of the media and political class when such statements are made. Lord Sumption, in the interview quoted above, commented on the conduct of many of Britain’s police officers: “the tradition of policing in this country is that policemen are citizens in uniform. They are not members of a disciplined hierarchy operating just at the government's command. Yet in some parts of the country the police have been trying to stop people from doing things like travelling to take ex-
“Keeping churches open sends an utterly inconsistent message and therefore they must be closed for the benefit of others and stopping infection.” The attacks on the liberty of the Church – aided and abetted by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales – are only the worst example of a whole range of measures restricting our freedoms, many of which have little or nothing to do with saving lives from COVID-19. Why, for example, does Schedule 8 of
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THE MAGNA CARTA OF 1215, WRITTEN IN IRON GALL INK ON PARCHMENT IN MEDIEVAL LATIN. THE BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON.
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ercise in the open country, which are not contrary to the regulations, simply because ministers have said that they would prefer us not to. The police have no power to enforce ministers’ preferences, but only legal regulations which don’t go anything like as far as the government’s guidance… “This is what a police state is like. It’s a state in which the government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority and the police will enforce ministers’ wishes… There is a natural tendency of course, and a strong temptation for the police to lose sight of their real functions and turn themselves from citizens in uniform into glorified school prefects.” Some police forces have used social media to threaten to report parents to social services if their children are found outside the house during lockdown. In other cases, police have illegally entered private property, and in one notorious case a police officer in Lancashire threatened to “make up” false accusations unless a young man complied with his instructions. We have also seen a further development of the disturbing trend by which the police attempt to “educate” the population. In February this year, Mr. Justice Julian Knowles, when ruling against police officers who had visited a man’s workplace to speak to him about allegedly “transphobic” tweets, compared the actions of Humberside police to “a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi”. And he suggested this was the behaviour of “an Orwellian society”. George Orwell came to mind when I first read the following words from Simon Kempton, “Operational Lead for coronavirus at the Police Federation of England and Wales”:
l aw and libert y
Mr. Kempton’s comments seem to me to express essentially the same sentiments as the words of O’Brien in George Orwell’s 1984, spoken during the interrogation and torture of Winston Smith: “We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.”
“We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.” In the end, they are determined that we must love Big Brother. THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION
It’s important to raise our voices in the face of such draconian assaults on our liberties, because our ancient political and legal system, with which freedoms are inextricably connected, is in critical danger. Our ancient unwritten Constitution has developed organically over many centuries and, once severely wounded, it may be impossible to heal. John Henry Newman’s warning, issued during the Crimean war, reminds us that actions that are intended to do good can have unintended harmful consequences:
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1881). SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON.
“No one likes to use a cumbrous, clumsy instrument… it is just possible we may alter our institutions, under the immediate pressure, in order to make them work easier for the object… There are abundant symptoms, on all sides of us, of the presence of a strong temptation to some such temerarious proceeding. Any one, then, who, like myself, is thankful that he is born under the British Constitution, any Catholic who dreads the knout and the tar-barrel, will, for that very reason, look with great jealousy on a state of things which not only doubles prices and taxes, but which may bring about a sudden infringement and an irreparable injury of that remarkable polity, which the world never saw before, or elsewhere, and which it is so pleasant to live under… it would be no consolation to me to be told that the Constitution will last my day, if I know that the next generation, whom I am watching as they come into active life, would fall under a form of government less favourable to the Church.”20 Many have written about the remarkable nature of the English constitution, which Catholic political theorist Joseph de Maistre, called “the most propitious equilibrium of political powers that the world has ever seen”. The words of Newman are particularly apt:
“And most of those individuals wanted to argue their case as to why they were doing something within the guidelines.
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“A constitution” he continued:
and
“there are still a minority of members of the public who simply do not wish to comply with the restrictions…
“What would help perhaps is engaging the public on an emotional level so more of them wanted to comply, not just that they felt they had to comply, but they wanted to comply.”19
may, overturn law and law-makers, as Cromwell did, by the same sword with which he protects them. Acts of Parliament, Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Reform Bill, none of these are the British Constitution. What then is conveyed in that word?” 21
GEORGE ORWELL, 1940.
CAL X M A R IA E
“a Constitution really is not a mere code of laws, as is plain at once; for the very problem is how to confine power within the law, and in order to the maintenance of law. The ruling power can, and SUMMER 2020
“is something more than law; it is the embodiment of special ideas, ideas perhaps which have been held by a race for ages, which are of immemorial usage, which have fixed themselves in its innermost heart, which are in its eyes sacred to it, and have practically the force of eternal truths, whether they be such or not. These ideas are sometimes trivial, and, at first sight, even absurd: sometimes they are superstitious, sometimes they are great or beautiful; but to those to whom they belong they are first principles, watchwords, common property, natural ties, a cause to fight for, an occasion of self-sacrifice. They are the expressions of some or other sentiment, – of loyalty, of order, of duty, of honour, of faith, of justice, of glory. They are the creative and conservative influences of Society; they erect nations into States, and invest States with Constitutions. They inspire and sway, as well as restrain, the ruler of a people, for he himself is but one of that people to which they belong.”22 For our ancestors, our ancient liberties were more precious than life itself, as the war memorials in all our cities, towns and villages should daily remind us. The Englishman was jealous of his liberty and would defend it against all comers: “…an Englishman,” wrote Newman, “likes to take his own matters into his own hands. He stands on his own ground… He can join too with others, and has a turn for organising, but he insists on its being voluntary. He is jealous of no one, except kings and governments, and offensive to no one except their partisans and creatures.”23 Now more than ever we must act to ensure that the old “watchwords” will continue to bind us together as a free people – responsible before God for the right exercise of our natural liberty – and that we resist the
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analysis
HILAIRE BELLOC, 1915.
temptation to hand over the management of our lives to the “partisans and creatures” of the state. How and when did this temptation to servility become so strong? This is a very complex question and cannot be adequately addressed here. But some interesting insights into the process are offered by Hilaire Belloc’s 1911 work The Servile State, in which he posits that the society of his own day – in which a wealthy few exploited the impoverished many – could not last without profound alteration. Three options, he argued, were open to his contemporaries: (i) policies which would lead to the return of a society in which the many, not the few, controlled the means of production, (ii) a collectivist society in which the state controlled the means of production on behalf of all or (iii) a state in which the many remained economically dependent on the few but were preserved from insecurity and poverty by the state and the elite acting together, at the cost of their political freedom. This latter alternative he called “the servile state”. Belloc spent his life working for the first option but recognised that society was moving rapidly towards the third. The second, socialism, was, he asserted, impossible to achieve and would always lead in the end to the “servile state”. Belloc’s book explores how people will surrender freedom in return for security. While he focuses on the insecurity caused by poverty – or the fear of it – his insights are also applicable to our current surrender of political freedom out of fear of disease.
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Towards the close of the book he discusses four “characters” whose actions are responsible for society moving “towards stability by losing its essential character of political freedom”. These characters will be very recognisable to all of us. First, there is the well-meaning politician who pursues a course of action out of misguided compassion. Out of a genuine desire to save lives he gives uncritical support to harmful measures. The second group, “the statisticians”, are more sinister, and they are at the forefront of the present attacks on our liberty. They are those who love state power in and of itself. They long for an “ordered and regular form of society” in which power lies with “public officials who shall order other men about to preserve them from the consequences of their vice, ignorance and folly”. Belloc writes: “Tables, statistics, and exact framework for life – these afford him food that satisfies his moral appetite; the occupation most congenial to him is the ‘running’ of men: as a machine is run.” At present we hear the voice of “the statistician” daily, deciding on our behalf, according to the latest statistical models, how long it will be before we have our basic liberties restored. On their models and theories all depends: whether this or that business will go under, whether this ailing grandmother will ever see her new grandchild, and when the public worship of the Church will be restored. All our lives, all our plans – even who will live and who will die – all depend on their models. This is not freedom, but “the tyranny of experts”. The third character to be considered is “the Practical Man”, that is, he “who depends on his shortness of sight, and is therefore today a powerful factor”. Belloc explains: “twin disabilities… stamp the Practical Man… an inability to define his own first principles and an inability to follow the consequences proceeding from his own action.
CAL X M A R IA E
“Both these disabilities proceed from one simple and deplorable form of impotence, the inability to think. “…The two things intolerable to him as a decent citizen (though a very stupid human being) are insufficiency and insecurity.” Belloc continues: “He ‘takes the world as he finds it’ and the consequence is that whereas men of greater capacity may admit with different degrees of reluctance the general principles of the Servile State, the Practical Man, positively gloats on every new detail in the building up of that form of society. And the destruction of freedom by inches (though he does not see it to be the destruction of freedom) is the one panacea so obvious that he marvels at the doctrinaires who resist or suspect the process.” He concludes: “It has been necessary to waste so much time on this deplorable individual because the circumstances of our generation give him a peculiar power… He is to be found as he never was in any other society before our own, possessed of wealth, and political as never was any such citizen until our time. Of history with all its lessons; of the great schemes of philosophy and religion, of human nature itself he is blank. “The Practical Man left to himself would not produce the Servile State. He would not produce anything but a welter of anarchic restrictions which would lead at last to some kind of revolt. “Unfortunately, he is not left to himself. He is but the ally or flanking party of great forces which he does nothing to oppose, and of particular men, able and prepared for the work of general change, who use him with gratitude and contempt.” We see the “Practical Man” today in those who uncritically support government policy and who pour abuse and ridicule on those who dare to raise legitimate concerns. The “Practical Man” – secure in his own ignorance and pride – attributes bad motives to
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those who, capable of thinking for themselves, raise the alarm about the catastrophic economic impact of the lockdown and its consequences on our fundamental liberties. Belloc’s fourth category is the ordinary people who make up the vast majority of the population. Belloc warned that already in his own day the old English traditions and the memory of true freedom were failing, something he linked to forty years of compulsory education. And now, a century later, and after decades of deliberate indoctrination by the state and the media, very few of our contemporaries have an adequate grasp of what is taking place. The generations that have grown up since the beginnings of the welfare state, which can be dated to the National Insurance Act 1911, and especially those born since its rapid expansion after 1945, have been increasingly protected from “cradle to grave” by a powerful and ever more intrusive state. The state has progressively transferred power away from individuals, families, local communities and the Church. This is in opposition to the Church’s teaching on subsidiarity which was clearly expressed by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quadragesima anno: “it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community... also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them. “The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly.”24 We have now reached the stage where we so instinctively look to the state for direction that we neglect our responsibility to conduct our own affairs. The modern British public has an insatiable appetite for security but, it seems, not much of an appetite for freedom.
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“We have now reached the stage where we so instinctively look to the state for direction that we neglect our responsibility to conduct our own affairs. The modern British public has an insatiable appetite for security but, it seems, not much of an appetite for freedom. ”
MAN WAS MADE FOR LIFE, NOT DEATH
Underlying this appetite for security is a deep-seated nihilism and despair, which leads to regarding natural death as the greatest of evils. In an article in First Things entitled “Say ‘No’ to death’s dominion” its editor R. R. Reno expressed this movingly: “Everything for the sake of physical life? What about justice, beauty, and honor? There are many things more precious than life…” He continues: “There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost. Satan rules a kingdom in which the ultimate power of death is announced morning, noon, and night. But Satan cannot rule directly. God alone has the power of life and death, and thus Satan can only rule indirectly. He must rely on our fear of death.”25 Our reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic contrasts starkly with how our grandparents and great-grandparents responded to the much more deadly Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. R.R Reno writes: “Their reaction was vastly different from ours. They continued to worship, go to musical performances, clash on football fields, and gather with friends. “We tell ourselves a fairy tale about that reaction: Those old-fashioned people were superstitious and ignorant about medical science. They abandoned the weak to the slaughter of the disease for no good reason. We, by contrast, are scientific and pro-active, meeting the threat of disease with much greater intelligence and moral rectitude. We suspend worship and postpone concerts. I’m sure
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we’ll cancel family reunions as well. We know best what is most important – saving lives! “That older generation that endured the Spanish flu, now long gone, was not ill-informed. People in that era were attended by medical professionals who fully understood the spread of disease and methods of quarantine. Unlike us, however, that generation did not want to live under Satan’s rule, not even for a season. They insisted that man was made for life, not death. They bowed their head before the storm of disease and endured its punishing blows, but they otherwise stood firm and continued to work, worship, and play, insisting that fear of death would not govern their societies or their lives. “We, by contrast, are collectively required to cower in fear – fear that we’ll die redoubled by the fear that we’ll cause others to die. We are stripped of whatever courage we might be capable of… “Alexander Solzhenitsyn resolutely rejected the materialist principle of ‘survival at any price’. It strips us of our humanity. This holds true for a judgement about the fate of others as much as it does for ourselves. We must reject the specious moralism that places fear of death at the center of life.” FEAR OF DEATH THE FOUNDATION OF THE “SERVILE STATE”
The fear of death is ushering in the final stages of the “servile state”, which Belloc warned in 1911: “[is] no longer a menace but something in actual existence. It is in process of construction. The first main lines of it are already plotted out; the corner-stone of it is already laid…
CAL X M A R IA E
“They are the admitted foundations of a new order, deliberately planned by a few, confusedly accepted by the many, as the basis upon which a novel and stable society shall arise to replace the unstable and passing phase of capitalism.” More than a century later the process of construction is approaching its completion – it only remains for the windows to be sealed and the doors to be permanently locked. Does any hope remain? Belloc saw only one salvation: the West must return to the Catholic faith. Humanly speaking, this might now seem a distant hope, yet we must always remember that we have no cause for despair. In the sixteenth century, Our Lady of Good Success, knowing what doubts we might experience in our times spoke, at Quito, about the great victory that would conclude the age that would begin “at the end of the nineteenth century”. She said:
Matthew McCusker has a Master’s Degree in History from the University of York, where he specialised in ecclesiastical history. He currently works for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children as General Secretary and Director of Fundraising. He can be contacted at: matthewmccusker@spuc.org.uk. ENDNOTES: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11.
12. 13.
14.
15. 16.
“Unhappy times will come wherein those who should fearlessly defend the rights of the Church will instead, blinded despite the light, give their hand to the Church’s enemies and do their bidding. But when [evil] seems triumphant and when authority abuses its power, committing all manner of injustice and oppressing the weak, their ruin shall be near. They will fall and crash to the ground.” …
17. 18.
19. 20.
21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical letter Libertas, promulgated 20 June 1888, No 1. Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, No. 5 Ibid. Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, No. 8. Libertas, No. 8. Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical letter Immortale Dei, No. 3. Libertas, No. 10. Ibid. Libertas, No. 13. James Tapsfield, “Chancellor Rishi Sunak raises spectre of recession 'the likes of which we have not seen' as he warns over long-term economic 'scarring' from coronavirus - and hints self-employed bailout will end in June”, The Daily Mail, published online 19 May 2020. Kenneth Rogoff, “Mapping the COVID-19 recession”, Project Syndicate, 7 April 2020, [accessed online]. Toby Young “Latest News”, Lockdown Skeptics, 5 May 2020, [accessed online]. Fraser Nelson, “The human cost of the coronavirus lockdown”, The Spectator, 10 April 2020, [accessed online]. “Financial crisis caused 500,000 extra cancer deaths, according to Lancet study”, The Telegraph, 26 May 2016, [accessed online]. Jonathan Sumption, interview on The World at One, BBC Radio 4, 30 March 2020. Libertas, No.16. Libertas, No.18. McManus’s decades of opposition to Catholic teaching are fully documented in the LifeSiteNews report entitled “English bishops’ senior health advisor is a convicted thief and lifelong LGBT activist” which can be found at www.lifesitenews.com. We encourage all our readers to familiarise themselves with the contents of this report. “Sunbathing is banned”, The Daily Mail, 6 April 2020, [accessed online]. John Henry Newman, “Who’s to Blame?”, first published in the Catholic Standard during the Crimean War and re-published in Discussions and Arguments, (London, 1872). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Pope Pius XI, Quadragesima anno, Nos. 79-80. R. R. Reno, “Say ‘No’ to death’s dominion”, First Things, 23 March 2020.
“those whom the merciful love of my Son has destined for this restoration will need great will-power, perseverance, courage, and confidence in God. To try the faith and trust of these just ones, there will be times when all will seem lost and paralyzed. It will then be the happy beginning of the complete restoration.” If all seems lost, take heart, the triumph of Our Lady may be close at hand. At Fatima the Mother of God, the Queen of the whole universe, promised that her “Immaculate Heart will Triumph”. If we are tempted to despair let us embark with new commitment to the path she has set out for us – the Holy Rosary, the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart, and the Consecration of Russia. God will triumph!
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DETAIL OF THE DISPUTATION OF THE HOLY SACRAMENT (1510), FRESCO. RAFFAELLO SANZIO. THE APOSTOLIC PALACE, VATICAN.
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C O R O N AV I R U S I N T H E L I G H T O F FAT I M A
a tragedy and a source of hope
D
ue to the coronavirus pandemic, the seventh annual Rome Life Forum took place online, 20-22 May 2020. These exceptional circumstances turned us, anew, to the message of Fatima, which allows us to view the current events both as a tragedy and a source of hope. Just over a hundred years ago in Fatima, an Angel appeared holding a flaming sword in his left hand, flashing. “It gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’” In Fatima, on the eve of the Communist Revolution, Our Lady predicted that the errors of Russia would spread throughout the world, causing great suffering, unless Russia was consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart. Today, a virus has spread from Communist China and changed our globalised world beyond recognition. Could it be a divine reminder that the call to penance has not been taken seriously? Our Lady showed the three children hell, where the souls of poor sinners go and she told little Jacinta that more sinners go to hell because of sins of impurity than for any other reason.
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Today many of these sins are state policy of the most powerful nations. Abortion and so-called same-sex marriage – two of the four sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance – are enshrined in national constitutions of formerly Christian nations. More children have died worldwide through legal abortion than people killed in all the wars of recorded human history. And throughout the world, countless children are being corrupted by school sex education, often with the endorsement of Catholic bishops. And, we might ask, before they came to an abrupt halt due to the pandemic, how many of the sacrilegious and irreverent Masses, which Catholics today accept with such indifference despite their countless acts of desecration of the body of Christ through the universal practice of Communion in the hand, are really an affront to God that surpasses even the atrocities just mentioned? What would Our Lady say today? We don't know that. But we do know that what she asked in 1917 was a simple request, possible for every Catholic to fulfil and this has not been tried – at least not as a society and not with the devotion that corresponds to the seriousness of the offences. Whether or not the “unprecedented” events that have been our daily reality in the past months – from the lockdown of nations to the suppression
of public Masses by the order of Catholic bishops – amount to a chastisement, is a question we may not be able to answer just yet. But considering the reality of unrepentant sin in today’s world, it would not seem inappropriate to consider it as a chastisement. And by so doing we would be led to render our Blessed Mother the obedience in fulfilling her requests so long overdue. These and some other considerations were addressed in Voice of the Family’s online Rome Life Forum. May the following presentations illuminate ever more clearly how we could respond to the coronavirus crisis in our lives and join the fight to prepare for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
ROME LIFE FORUM ONLINE CONFERENCE, 20-22 MAY 2020
f at i m a : h e av e n ’s a n s w e r t o a w o r l d i n c r i s i s
FATIMA
Heaven’s answer to a world in crisis b y H . E . R AY M O N D L E O C A R D I N A L B U R K E
The following talk was given on 20 May 2020 at the online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”.
W
e are living through most troubled and troubling times. A virus has been, in some way, unleashed, traveling to all parts of the world. It has caused and is causing many to suffer from the associated illness, COVID-19, to a greater or lesser degree. Many have died and are dying, either directly from the illness or from complications of which the illness is a part. In response to the spread of the contagion, many governments have imposed severe restrictions on the movement of their citizens, confining citizens to their homes and closing down the operation of all but essential services. The effect on the economy of families, local communities and nations has been devastating. The origin of the virus remains yet unclear. Reports about its nature and course are conflicting. At present, there is a forceful debate about whether its course will now permit us to resume our daily activities or whether, because of a threat of the resurgence of the contagion, we must continue to live confined to our homes. We receive reports from those who are retained to be experts that are clearly contradictory. There is also a legitimate fear of unscrupulous persons using the health crisis for political and economic ends. A peculiar aspect of the resulting international health crisis, what is called a pandemic, is that the greater body of the healthy are placed under severe restrictions, even regarding their practice of the faith, on the assumption that infection with the virus often remains hidden until it suddenly manifests itself. In a certain way, each of us becomes a possible danger to others. In such a situation, natural human interaction 20
is rendered severely limited. Among some, the situation has led to constant worry about possible infection and the nurture of an illusion that somehow we can create a perfectly sanitary environment in which we will not be threatened by any bacteria or virus or in which by prophylactic measures, including universally imposed vaccination, we will be protected, with certainty, against the coronavirus. With regard to vaccination, it must be clear that it is never morally justified to develop a vaccine through the use of the cell lines of aborted fetuses. The thought of the introduction of such a vaccine into one’s body is rightly abhorrent. At the same time, it must be clear that vaccination itself cannot be imposed, in a totalitarian manner, on citizens. When the State takes on such a practice, it violates the integrity of its citizens. While the State can provide reasonable regulations for the safeguarding of health, it is not the ultimate provider of health. God is. Whatever the State proposes must respect God and His Law. There can be no question that life has become, in many respects, strange. There are those who have wanted to characterize the confinement to home as almost providential, that is, the occasion to make an extended spiritual retreat or to enhance family life. Certainly, we are called to accept whatever suffering comes into our lives, making it, with the help of God’s grace, a source of blessing for ourselves and others. The fact, however, remains that the situation does not correspond to the way in which God has called us to CAL X M A R IA E
live and that, therefore, it constitutes a suffering. We cannot ignore the widespread negative effect of the situation in depression and other mental illnesses, in the abuse of alcohol and drugs, and so forth. While we are called to offer our suffering to God in love of Him and of our neighbor, we certainly do not want to foster it, as if it were a good in itself. It is also clear that individuals and groups with a particular agenda are using the profound suffering, in what regards both the health and the economy of families, local communities and nations, to promote
outside of the Holy Mass. It is particularly tragic to hear the accounts of the faithful dying without the help of their priest or without any member of their family or friends present to assist them, and the accounts of lifelong faithful Catholics being buried without any Funeral Rites whatsoever. In some cases, these tragic circumstances have been dictated by the State and in some cases they have been dictated by the Church, beyond the demands of the regulations of the State or in conformity with regulations of the State, which are in violation of religious freedom.
“While the State can provide reasonable regulations for the safeguarding of health, it is not the ultimate provider of health. God is. Whatever the State proposes must respect God and His Law.”
their agenda, whether it be the advance of a single world government, the promotion of environmental causes, and even radical changes in the practice of the Catholic faith. In the midst of the disorientation and confusion generated by the international health crisis, we must, above all, turn to right reason and to our faith in addressing the crisis for the good of all. From the beginning of the crisis, there has been a failure on the part of the Church as one body to announce clearly the Gospel and to insist on the exercise of her mission, in accord with the Gospel, also in times of international crisis. Individual priests and Bishops have been wise and courageous in finding the means to remain close to God’s flock in their care, especially by bringing the Sacraments to those who are ill and dying, but sadly the general impression among the faithful is that their priests have been taken away from them or have abandoned them. The greater part of the faithful have been denied the Sacraments now for weeks. It is tragic to hear reports of faithful who ask a priest to hear their confession and receive the response that the priests are forbidden to hear confessions, or who ask for Holy Communion and are told that the priests are forbidden to distribute Holy Communion SUMMER 2020
The situation has rightly sustained an intense discussion on the relationship of the Church and the State. In the absence of due respect for the Church and for the religious freedom of her members, the State assumes the authority of God Himself, dictating to the Church regarding the most sacred realities like the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of Penance. If we had any doubt regarding the loss of such respect, it was dispelled by incidents in which civil authorities attempted to prevent a priest offering the Holy Mass from completing the sacred action. From the beginning, there has been a failure to make clear that among all of the necessities of life the principal necessity is communion with God. Yes, we need what is required for our nourishment, health and hygiene, but none of these essential needs can substitute for our most fundamental need: to know, love and serve God. As I was taught long ago, among the first lessons in the Catechism, God made man to know, love and serve Him in this life and thereby to obtain life everlasting with Him in Heaven.1 In the face of an international health crisis, we must turn first to God, asking Him to keep us safe from the contagion and from every other evil. Turning to God, we find the direction and strength to take 21
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whatever human measures are required to protect ourselves, according to the demands of right reason and of the moral law. Otherwise, if we falsely think that the combat against the evil depends totally upon us, we take measures which offend our human dignity and, above all, our right relationship with God. In that regard, the State should be attentive to the religious freedom of the citizens, in order that the help of God may be sought at all times and in all things. To think otherwise is to make the State our god and to think that mere humans, without the help of God, can save us. If there was a lack of respect for our fundamental relationship with God at the beginning of the present international health crisis, there is a similar lack of respect in what is proposed, once the crisis has passed. One hears repeatedly the mantra that our life will never again be the same and that we can never return
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but it must not assume the direction of our lives. Our Lord Jesus Christ remains the King of Heaven and of Earth. We remain created in God’s image and likeness, with the gifts of faith and reason. We remain sons and daughters of God, adopted in God the Son which we can only by the all-wondrous work of His Redemptive Incarnation. We live in God, we receive God’s life into our hearts and souls from the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus, in order to do what is right and just and good for ourselves and for our world. We must return to a life lived in communion with God, using right reason and putting into practice the truths of our Catholic faith. The Sunday Mass obligation, for instance, participates in natural and divine law, the Third Commandment of the Decalogue, which we are obliged to observe, unless, for reasons beyond our control, we are not able to do so.2 During the present crisis, it
“From the beginning, there has been a failure to make clear that among all of the necessities of life the principal necessity is communion with God. Yes, we need what is required for our nourishment, health and hygiene, but none of these essential needs can substitute for our most fundamental need: to know, love and serve God.” to life as we lived it before. It has been suggested, for instance, that the ancient gesture of giving one’s hand to another in friendship and trust must now be forever abandoned. Also, there is a certain movement to insist that now everyone must be vaccinated against the coronavirus COVID-19 and even that a kind of microchip needs to be placed under the skin of every person, so that at any moment he or she can be controlled by the State regarding health and about other matters which we can only imagine. It has also been suggested, even by pastors of the Church, that the present crisis should lead us to consider again whether Sunday Mass is essential to the Christian life or whether Funeral Rites are essential to the practice of our faith. Yes, it is true that the experience of the coronavirus COVID-19 crisis has marked significantly our lives, 22
has been said that Bishops dispense the faithful from the Sunday Mass obligation, but no human has the power to dispense from divine law. If it has been impossible, during the crisis, for the faithful to assist at Holy Mass, then the obligation did not bind them, but the obligation remained. In this regard, I have been concerned about the response of some to the long-term impossibility of access to the Sacraments, who have said that it was actually good to be without the Sacraments, in order to concentrate on the more fundamental relationship with God. Some have expressed a preference for watching the televised Holy Mass in the comfort of their homes. But the Holy Mass is not some human representation. It is Christ Himself Who descends to the altars of our churches and chapels to make sacramentally present the saving fruit of His Passion, CAL X M A R IA E
THE CONFESSION (1838). GIUSEPPE MOLTENI. GALLERIE DI PIAZZA SCALA, MILAN. ATTRIBUTION: FONDAZIONE CARIPLO
Death, Resurrection and Ascension. What on earth could be preferable to the presence of Christ in our midst in the sacramental action! Some pastors have even rebuked the faithful who pleaded for the Sacraments, accusing them of wanting, in selfishness, to risk serious harm to the health of others. No one denies the need to take necessary sanitary precautions, but the desire of the Sacraments, especially of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, is at the heart of our faith. Our relationship with God requires that we leave the confinement of our homes and what we may imagine to be a perfectly protected environment, in order that He, through His onlybegotten Son, can speak to our hearts and nourish them with divine grace. In this regard, even as it is perfectly normal that individuals leave the confinement of their homes to purchase, for instance, food and medicine, it is even more perfectly normal that persons of faith leave the confinement of their homes to pray and to receive the Sacraments. Here, it must be noted that Our Lord has entrusted the sacred realities of His presence with us to the care of our pastors. It is they who have received the grace to safeguard those realities and to provide access to them for the faithful. Their knowledge and experience must always be conformed to the truths of the faith, handed down to us through the unbroken line of Apostolic Tradition. In a time of health crisis, public health experts may make recommendations about how best to protect the health of those who have SUMMER 2020
access to churches and chapels, but it is the Bishops and priests who must implement such recommendations in a manner that respects the divine reality of the faith itself and of the Sacraments. For instance, to suggest that a priest distribute Holy Communion while wearing a mask and plastic gloves, and sanitize his hands at various times after he has consecrated the Sacred Host may, from a medical perspective be the most sanitary practice, but it does not respect the truth that it is Christ Who is giving Himself to us in the Sacred Host. At the same time, the prohibition of receiving the Sacred Host on the tongue and the mandate to receive Holy Communion in the hand, while it may be more sanitary, although that is debated, could only be justified by a grave reason. It is true that historically the Church has used different sacred instruments to give Holy Communion to someone who was highly contagious, but these methods of reception of Holy Communion were not used for the Holy Communion of the faithful, in general. It was not assumed that the priest and the faithful, in general, were all infected, as seems to be the assumption today, and, therefore, could not receive Holy Communion in the most devout manner possible. Medical experts and public health officials can make recommendations to the Church, but it is the Church herself who must decide regarding practices touching upon the most sacred realities of our faith. The coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic has also raised a most serious question for us as citizens of a nation. The role of the People’s Republic of China in the whole international health crisis raises many serious questions. While we as Christians love the Chinese people and want for them what is for their good, we cannot fail to recognize that their government is the embodiment of atheistic materialism or communism. In other words, it is a government which has no respect for God and for His Law. The President of China, Xi Jinping, has made it abundantly clear that the only acceptable religion in China is China. His government is based on the idolatry of the nation, and a number of its laws and practices are in open violation of the most fundamental precepts of the divine law written upon the heart of every man and woman, and articulated in the Decalogue. It is an evil form of government which, for instance, practices forced abortions and openly violates the religious freedom of the people. 23
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It is only right to ask what ethical principles have governed the involvement of the Chinese government in the coronavirus COVID-19 international health crisis. At the same time, it is only right to ask what has been and what is the involvement of national and international public health organizations with the Chinese government in the matter of the virus which has threatened many lives and the very stability of sovereign nations. There is also the serious question of individuals with many billions of dollars at their disposal, who regularly and powerfully sustain an anti-life and anti-family agenda and who are publicly involved in the crisis and exercise a heavy influence on public opinion regarding it. As citizens of a nation, it is our duty to ask these questions and to pursue steadfastly honest answers to them. When I was in elementary and secondary school, the study of what was called civics was taken with great seriousness. It was the study of how the government of one’s nation works to protect the common good, including just relationships with other nations. The goal of the study was to make students, the future of the nation, responsible for the government of their nation. I am told that, for a long time already, civics has not been taught in many schools. If such be the case, how will the students be equipped to be responsible citizens? The exercise of such responsibility is irreplaceable to a stable democratic government. It is also a part of the natural law, in specific, the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue, which teaches us respect for our parents and for those institutions which safeguard and promote family life, ultimately for the nation. The present crisis should lead us to look again at education, a fundamental expression of our culture, and to provide what is lacking in the preparation of students to exercise the fundamental virtue of patriotism. The present crisis has also made clear how dependent many nations are on the People’s Republic of China. Companies which for decades produced the necessary goods of a nation within the nation now produce those goods in China in the interest of economic gain. How many of the goods we use daily bear the label: “Made in China”? The present crisis must lead us to ask why, in our nations, we ourselves are not producing what is necessary for the healthy and strong life of the people of the nation. These are complex 24
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questions which are made all the more urgent by the fact that many nations are, in fact, dependent upon the People’s Republic of China, a government which fully and radically espouses atheistic materialism. My somewhat long reflection should not lead to discouragement but rather to the courageous pursuit of our Catholic identity in Christ alive for us in His holy Church, an identity which by its very definition is for the common good, the good of all peoples. Christ came to save the world, and He calls us to life in the Holy Spirit, in order that we may be His co-workers in His Redemptive mission which continues until He returns at the end of time to establish “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”,3 to inaugurate the Wedding Feast of the Lamb,4 His Wedding Feast, at which we are called to be participants through the grace of Baptism and Confirmation. Our Lord sent His Virgin Mother to Cova da Iria near Fatima in Portugal in 1917, for the precise mission of calling us back to life in Him, to a strong Catholic identity, in the face of the rise and spread of atheistic materialism or communism. In speaking with you today about the critical situation in which we find ourselves, I could not give you better counsel than the Virgin Mother of God gave to us, through the three shepherd children at Cova da Iria: Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and the Servant of God Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart. The appearances of Our Lady of Fatima came at a time when the world was in a terrifying crisis, a crisis which threatened its very future, a crisis which,
“As it is perfectly normal that individuals leave the confinement of their homes to purchase, for instance, food and medicine, it is even more perfectly normal that persons of faith leave the confinement of their homes to pray and to receive the Sacraments.”
in many and frightening ways, continues, in our day, to threaten the future of man and of the world. It is a crisis which has also infected the life of the Church, not, of course, touching the objective reality of Christ’s life in the Church for our salvation but, rather, obscuring and manipulating the Church from within for purposes alien to her nature and thus poisonous for souls. The immediate manifestation of the crisis was the rise of atheistic materialism or communism in Russia and its spread throughout the world. Atheistic materialism or communism is evil at its root, for it is the abandonment of faith in God and in His plan for our eternal salvation, as He, from the Creation, has written it into nature, and, above all, has inscribed it upon the human heart. It is the abandonment of the Mystery of Faith, an indifference, disregard or even hostility to the supreme reality of the Redemptive Incarnation of God the Son by which He has won for man eternal salvation, the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, of divine grace, so that man can live in communion with God, in accord with His plan for His creation. Christ has won for man the gift of His own life, so that man may attain eternal life, while preparing the world for its transformation, in accord with God’s plan, for the inauguration of “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”.5 Christ is the Eternal Lamb of God, at whose Wedding Feast we are all called to have a place.6 God prepared the messengers of the Virgin of Fatima by three visions of the Angel of Portugal which took place during the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 1916. During the first vision, while telling the shepherd children not to be afraid and assuring them that he was “the Angel of Peace,” he taught them to pray three times with these words:
My God, I believe, I adore, I hope [in] and I love You. I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope [in] and do not love You.7 God’s messenger to the shepherd children was already indicating the way in which the Mother of God would lead the world to deal with the grave crisis of atheistic materialism or communism and its inherent apostasy: the way of faith and prayer, and of penance and reparation. Apostasy is not limited simply to the denial of the faith, but it involves every aspect of the faith. In the words of the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, “[a]postasy is a sin against the faith, since it rejects revealed doctrine; against religion, because it denies to God true worship; against justice, since it tramples underfoot the promises of the Christian.”8 Referring to a modern author who calls apostasy “spiritual suicide,” the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique declares: This “spiritual suicide” is, after the hatred of God, the most grave of sins, for it, more completely and definitively than the faults simply opposed to the moral virtues, separates from God the powers of the human soul, intelligence and will.9 It is clear that apostasy, either explicit or implicit, leads hearts away from the Immaculate Heart of Mary and, thus, from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the only font of our salvation. In that regard, as the Message of Fatima makes clear, the pastors of the Church, who in some way cooperate with apostasy, also by their silence, bear a very heavy burden of responsibility. The most respected studies of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima hold that the third part of the Message or Secret of Fatima has to do with the diabolical forces unleashed upon the world in our time and entering into the very life of the Church, which
THE THREE CHILDREN OF FATIMA, 1917.
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“Recognizing the necessity of a total conversion from atheistic materialism and communism to Christ, the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in accord with her explicit instruction, remains urgent.”
lead souls away from the truth of the faith and, therefore, from the Divine Love flowing from the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus.10 Our Lady of Fatima makes it clear that only the Faith, which places man in the relationship of unity of heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the mediation of her Immaculate Heart, can save man from the material and spiritual chastisements which rebellion against God necessarily brings upon its perpetrators and upon the whole of both society and the Church. She, therefore, urges daily conversion of life for the salvation of souls and the salvation of the world. Referring to the punishments necessarily connected with the grave sins of the time, Our Lady, during her apparition on 13 July 1917, announced the peace which God wants to give to souls and to the world. She teaches us that the peace of God will come to the world through two means: the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the practice of the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturday of the month. Our Lady spoke these words to the shepherd children: To prevent this [the punishment of the world ‘for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father’], I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be
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granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.11 Our Lady indicates the spiritual remedy of the deplorable situation in which the world and the Church find themselves. She also foretold the terrible physical chastisements which would result from the failure to consecrate the agent of the spread of atheistic communism to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her Immaculate Heart and to undertake the regular practice of reparation for so many offenses committed against the immeasurable and unceasing love of God manifested so perfectly in the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus. The consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is more needed today than ever. When we witness how the evil of atheistic materialism, which has its roots in Russia, directs in a radical way the government of the People’s Republic of China, we recognize that the great evil of communism must be healed at its roots through the consecration of Russia, as Our Lady has directed. Recognizing the necessity of a total conversion from atheistic materialism and communism to Christ, the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in accord with her explicit instruction, remains urgent. The Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays represents the heart of a coherent life lived in Christ, a union of hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We have the assurance of Our Lady that her Immaculate Heart will triumph, that the truth and love of her Divine Son will triumph. We are called to be agents of her triumph by our obedience to her maternal counsel. Let us not forget Sister Lucia’s description of the third part of the Secret, in which she quotes “the Angel with a flaming sword” whom she saw at Our Lady’s left side: Pointing to the earth with his right
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hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: “Penance, Penance, Penance!”12 Sister Lucia then describes the martyrdom of those remaining true to Our Lord, of those who are of one heart, in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with His Most Sacred Heart.13 Let us not fail to embrace whatever suffering comes from our faithful witness to Him Who is the true treasure of our hearts, to Him Who is the King of Heaven and of Earth. The reality of the apostasy of faith, manifested in the spread of atheistic materialism in our time, rightly and profoundly frightens us. Our love of Christ and of His Mystical Body, the Church, makes clear to us the gravity of the evil which seeks to rob us of our eternal salvation in Christ. Let us not give way to discouragement but rather remember that the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, assumed into glory, never ceases to beat with love for us, the children whom her Divine Son gave to her, as He was dying upon the Cross.14 With maternal care, she draws our hearts to her glorious Immaculate Heart, in order to take our hearts to the Divine Heart, the Sacred Heart of God the Son Who is the Son of Mary, which has never ceased to beat with love for us and for our world. She instructs us, as she instructed the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast of Cana in their distress: “Do whatever he tells you.”15 Let us, with the help of the Virgin Mother of God, be prepared to accept whatever sacrifice is asked of us, in order to be faithful brothers and sisters of Christ, faithful soldiers
THE WEDDING FEAST AT CANA (1819). JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD. KUNSTHALLE, HAMBURG.
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of Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, steadfast cooperators with His grace. Let us pray daily for the conversion of Russia, and let us take up the way of prayer, penance and reparation, which Our Lady of Fatima teaches us. Let us make our own the prayer taught to the saintly shepherd children by the Angel of Portugal during his first vision: My God, I believe, I adore, I hope [in] and I love You. I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope [in] and do not love You.16 Praying thus, let us not forget the words of the same Angel, God’s messenger to the shepherd children to prepare them for the apparitions of the Mother of God: Pray thus. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.17 Let us never doubt that the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are ever open to receive our prayers and to help us in all of our needs. For our part, let us follow the counsel of the same Angel, given to the shepherd children, during his second apparition: “Offer prayers and sacrifices to the Most High.”18 Let us do, as the Angel went on to instruct the children: Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an action of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country. I am its Guardian Angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission the suffering which the Lord will send you.19 Let us, in imitation of the saintly shepherd children, happily accept suffering for the sake of the forgiveness of sins and the repair of the disorder which sin always introduces into our personal lives and into the world. Let us be realistic about the great evils which beset the world and the Church, and, at the same time, let us be full of hope in the victory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for which we battle each day with the incomparable spiritual armaments of prayer and penance, and of reparation for sins committed.
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widely on Roman Catholic canon law, as well as on the Holy Eucharist, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the sanctity of human life. ENDNOTES: 1.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
DETAIL OF THE SACRED HEART OF AN UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION IN PORTUGAL (C.1750). ENGRAVING BY A. DEBRIE. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON.
I assure you of my daily prayers, asking Our Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, the Fourteen Holy Helpers and Saint Roch, to keep you safe from the evil of the coronavirus COVID-19 and from every other evil. May God bless you and your homes.
12.
13.
14. 15.
H.E. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke serves as the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He attended seminary in La Crosse, Washington, D.C., and Rome, where he was ordained a priest by Pope Paul VI in 1975. He studied Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he received a licentiate in Canon Law in 1982 and a doctorate in Canon Law in 1984. In 1995 Raymond Leo Burke was consecrated a bishop by Pope John Paul II. He served for almost nine years as Bishop of La Crosse, where he founded the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and over four years as Archbishop of St. Louis. From 2008 to 2014 he served as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome. In November 2010 Pope Benedict XVI elevated Raymond Leo Burke to the College of Cardinals and created him Cardinal-Deacon of Sant’Agata dei Goti. Cardinal Burke has written and spoken 28
16.
17.
18.
19.
Cf. Father Connell’s Confraternity Edition New Baltimore Catechism, No. 3 (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1949), pp. 5-7, nos. 3-4. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2180. 2 Pet. 3:13. Cf. Rev. 19:7-9. 2 Pet. 3:13. Rev. 19:7-9. “Meu Deus! Eu creio, adoro, espero e amo-Vos. Peço-Vos perdão para os que não crêem, não adoram, não esperam e Vos não amam.” Carmelo de Coimbra, Um caminho sob o olhar de Maria. Biografia da Irmã Maria Lúcia de Jesus e do Coração Imaculado O.C.D. (Marco de Canaveses: Edições Carmelo, 2013), p. 37. [Hereafter, Carmelo de Coimbra]. English translation: Carmel of Coimbra, A Pathway under the Gaze of Mary: Biography of Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart O.C.D., tr. James A. Colson (Washington, NJ: World Apostolate of Fatima, USA, 2015), p. 46. [Hereafter, Carmelo de Coimbra Eng]. “L’apostasie est un péché contre la foi, puisqu’elle rejette la doctrine révélée ; contre la religion, puisqu’elle refuse à Dieu le culte vrai ; contre la justice, puisqu’elle foule aux pieds les promesses du chrétien.” Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, Tome premier (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903), col. 1604. [Hereafter, DTC]. “Ce « suicide religieux » est, après la haine de Dieu, le plus grave des péchés, parce que plus complètement et plus définitivement que les fautes simplement opposées aux vertus morales, il sépare de Dieu les puissances de l’âme humaine, intelligence et volonté.” DTC, col. 1604. Cf. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, Toute la vérité sur Fatima. Tome 3: Le troisième secret (1942-1960) (Saint-Parres-lès-Vaides [France]: Renaissance Catholique Contre-Réforme Catholique, 1985), p. 552. English translation: Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth about Fatima, Volume Three: The Third Secret (1942-1960), tr. John Collorafi (Buffalo, NY: Immaculate Heart Publications, 1990), pp. 816-817. “Para a impedir, virei pedir a consagração da Rússia a Meu Imaculado Coração e a Comunhão reparadora nos primeiros sábados. Se atenderem a Meus pedidos, a Rússia se converterá e terão paz; se não, espalhará seus erros pelo mundo, promovendo guerras e perseguições à Igreja. Os bons serão martirizados, o Santo Padre terá muito que sofrer, várias nações serão aniquiladas. Por fim, o Meu Imaculado Coração triunfará. O Santo Padre consagrar-Me-á a Russia que se converterá e será concedido ao mundo algum tempo de paz. Em Portugal se conservará sempre o dogma da Fé, etc.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 63. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, pp. 68-69. “O Anjo apontando com a mão direita para a terra, come voz forte disse: Penitência, Penitência, Penitência!” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 64. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 69. Cf. Carmelo de Coimbra, pp. 64-65. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 69. Cf. Jn 19, 26-27. Jn 2, 5. “Meu Deus! Eu creio, adoro, espero e amo-Vos. Peço-Vos perdão para os que não crêem, não adoram, não esperam e Vos não amam.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 37. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 46. “Orai assim. Os Corações de Jesus e Maria estão atentos à vos das vossas súplicas.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 37. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 46. “Oferecei constantemente, ao Altíssimo, orações e sacrifícios.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 37. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 46. “De tudo que puderdes, oferecei a Deus sacrifício em acto de reparação pelos pecados com que Ele é ofendido e súplica pela conversão dos pecadores. Atraí assim, sobre a vossa Pátria, a paz.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 37. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 47.
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The Eucharist
THE GREATEST TREASURE OF THE CHURCH IN TIME OF TRIBULATIONS
b y H . E . B I S H O P AT H A N A S I U S S C H N E I D E R
The following talk was given on 22 May 2020 at the online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”.
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e are witnessing a unique situation: it is for the first time in the history of the Church that the public celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice has been prohibited almost on a worldwide scale. Under the pretext of the COVID-19 epidemic, the inalienable right of Christians to the public celebration of the Holy Mass has been infringed, disproportionately and unjustifiably. In many countries, and especially in predominantly Catholic countries, this prohibition was enforced in such a systematic and brutal way, that it seemed as though the ruthless historical persecutions of the Church were brought back. An atmosphere of the catacombs was created with priests celebrating Holy Mass in secrecy with a group of the faithful. The unbelievable fact was, that in the midst of this worldwide ban of the public Holy Mass, many bishops even before the government banned public worship, issued decrees by which they not only forbade the public celebration of Holy Mass, but of any other sacrament as well. By such anti-pastoral measures those bishops deprived the sheep from the spiritual food and strength which only the sacraments can provide. Instead of good shepherds those bishops converted into rigid public officials. Those bishops revealed themselves to be imbued with a naturalistic view, to care only for the temporal and bodily life, forgetting their primary and irreplaceable task to care for the eternal and spiritual life. They forgot the warning of Our Lord: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Mt. 16:26) Bishops who not only did not care but directly prohibited their faithful access to the
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sacraments, especially to the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance, behaved as fake shepherds, who seek their own advantage. Those bishops, however, provided access to the sacraments for themselves, since they celebrated Holy Mass, they had their own confessor, they could receive the anointing of the sick. The following stirring words of God are doubtless applicable to those bishops who in this tribulation, caused by the sanitary dictatorship, denied their sheep the spiritual food of the sacraments, while feeding themselves with the food of the sacraments: “Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. … Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves.” (Ez. 34:2-10)
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In the time of the plague, which had an incomparably higher mortality rate than the current epidemic of COVID-19, St. Charles Borromeo increased the number of the public celebrations of Holy Mass. Even though he closed the churches for a while, he at the same time ordered that there should be Masses celebrated in many public and open places, such as squares, crossroads, street corners. He obliged the priests to visit the sick and the dying to administer them the sacraments of Penance and of Extreme Unction. He ordered public processions to be held, in which people walked a reasonable distance apart, to make reparation for the sins and invoke Divine Mercy. St. Charles Borromeo did not forget the need to care for temporal needs of the sick, but at the same time his primary concern was the spiritual help of the sacraments, with which the sick had to be strengthened. There are many moving heroic examples from history, where priests consciously accepted the mortal danger of administering the sacraments to people infected with lethal contagious diseases.
t h e e u c h a r i s t, t h e g r e a t e s t t r e a s u r e o f t h e c h u r c h
There is a touching witness from the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church in the 19th century, about the value of the beauty of the liturgy and the zealous administration of the sacraments in the time of the dangerous and highly contagious cholera epidemic in England. The Catholic Church does not recognize these sacraments as valid, but the fact that these ministers placed such importance on pastoral care during an epidemic should be a witness to us now. “The ritual innovations of [which] they were accused were entirely rooted in the desperate pastoral needs they encountered. Sisters of Mercy worked with the clergy of St. Peter’s Plymouth in the cholera epidemics of the late 1840s, and petitioned the parish priest, Fr. George Rundle Prynne, for a celebration of the Eucharist each morning to strengthen them for their work. So began the first daily mass in the Church of England since the Reformation. Similarly, the clergy of St. Saviour’s, Leeds, laid what medicines they had on the altar at each morning’s communion, before carrying them
“Our time is marked by an unprecedented and widespread liturgical and Eucharistic crisis due to the practical negligence of the truth that the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, is the treasure of the altar and of ineffable majesty.”
out to the many dozens of their parishioners who would die of cholera that very day. These slum churches and their priests are far too many to mention, but their audacity and their piety are to be marveled at. The Church of England, at this time, looked upon ritual as a wicked aping of a Papist Church. Vestments were horrific to most, and yet in places such as the mission church of St. George’s in the East, thuribles were swung, genuflecting was encouraged, the sign of the cross was made frequently, devotion to the blessed sacrament was taken for granted. Confessions were heard, holy anointing was practised. Beauty and holiness were to go into the midst of squalor and depression, as a witness to the Catholic faith in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, present and active in his world. And, perhaps most significantly, the sick and dying were to receive this sacramental presence as far as was possible. Deathbed confessions, the oil of unction, even, occasionally, communion from the reserved sacrament became the priests’ weapons against, for example, the appalling East London cholera epidemic of 1866.”1 St. Damien de Veuster is a luminous example of a priest and a shepherd of souls who for the sake of providing the celebration of the Holy Mass and the other sacraments to the abandoned people who were suffering from leprosy at the Molokai island, accepted voluntarily to administer to them the sacraments, living amongst them and, thereby, to expose himself to the deadly disease. Visitors never forgot the sights and sounds of a Sunday Mass at St. Philomena’s Chapel. Fr. Damien stood at the altar. His lepers gathered around him on the altar. They constantly coughed and expectorated. The odour was overpowering. Yet Fr. Damien never once wavered or showed his disgust. His strength came from the Eucharist as he himself wrote: “It is at the foot of the altar that we find the SUMMER 2020
CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION OF SANTISSIMA TRINITÀ DEI PELLEGRINI IN ROME. PHOTO: DON ELVIR TABAKOVIĆ, CAN. REG.
strength we need in our isolation…” It is there that he found for himself and for those he served the support and encouragement, the consolation and the hope that made him “the happiest missionary in the world”, as he called himself. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, had said that the world has few heroes comparable to Fr. Damien of Molokai. Belgium, the native country of St. Damien, has proclaimed him as the greatest man in its history. Our time is marked by an unprecedented and widespread liturgical and Eucharistic crisis due to the practical negligence of the truth that the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, is the treasure of the altar and of ineffable majesty. Therefore the following admonitions of the Council of Trent remain relevant today more than ever: “No other action taken by faithful Christians is so holy and so divine as this tremendous mystery, in which each day that life-giving host, by which we were reconciled with God the Father, is sacrificed by priests to God on the altar, and it is equally clear that you must use every effort and diligence for it to be celebrated with the greatest purity and inner transparency and an outer attitude of devotion and piety.”2 This Divine majesty present in the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, however, is a hidden majesty. Under the Eucharistic species is the hidden God of majesty. St. Peter Julian Eymard, a modern apostle of the Eucharist, spoke notably on the truth of the hidden majesty of Christ in the Eucharistic mystery. He left us admirable reflections such as this: “Jesus, with a veil, covers his power because otherwise, I would be afraid. He covers with a veil his holiness, the sublimity of which would discourage our few virtues. A mother talks to her child in a
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t h e e u c h a r i s t, t h e g r e a t e s t t r e a s u r e o f t h e c h u r c h
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“The current cessation of public Holy Mass and Holy Communion could be understood by the pope and bishops as a divine rebuke for the past fifty years of Eucharistic desecrations and trivializations and, at the same time, as a merciful appeal for an authentic Eucharistic conversion of the entire Church.”
childlike way down to his level. In the same way Jesus makes himself little with the little to elevate them to Himself. Jesus hides his love and warmth. His ardour is such that we would be consumed if we were exposed directly to its flames. The fire is consuming. God is a consuming fire. In this way the hidden Jesus strengthens us against our weaknesses. ... This darkness of the hidden majesty requires of us a very worthy sacrifice, the sacrifice of our intellect. We have to believe even against the testimony of our senses, against the ordinary laws of nature, against our own experience. We have to believe only in the mere word of Jesus Christ. There is only one question: ‘Who is there?’ – ‘It is I,’ replies Jesus Christ. Bow down and worship Him! ... Instead of being a test, this veil becomes an incentive, an encouragement to have a humble and sincere faith. Man wants to penetrate a veiled truth, discover a hidden treasure, conquer a difficulty. Similarly, the faithful soul searches for the Lord in the presence of the Eucharistic veil as Magdalene searched at the tomb. The Eucharist is to the soul what God is to the blessed in heaven: a truth and a beauty ever ancient and ever new, which man does not tire of scrutinizing and contemplating. Just as in this world love lives from happiness and desires, so also the soul is happy and desires happiness through the Eucharist; the soul eats and is still hungry. Only the wisdom and goodness of our Lord could invent the Eucharistic veil.”3 The same saint left us profound reflections about the worship of the Eucharist: “I have loved the beauty of Thy house. (Psalm xxv. 8.) One day a woman, a good adorer, came to Jesus to adore Him. She brought with her an alabaster box full of precious ointment which she poured
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upon His feet to show her love for Him and to pay honour to His Divinity and sacred humanity. ‘To what purpose is this waste?’ said the traitor Judas. ‘This ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.’ But Jesus vindicates His handmaid: ‘What this woman has wrought is a good work. And wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached, this also which she has done shall be told in praise of her.’ This Gospel incident may be applied to the Eucharist. Our Lord is in the Blessed Sacrament to receive from men the same homage He received from those who had the happiness of coming close to Him during His mortal life. He is there to give everybody the opportunity of offering a personal homage to His sacred humanity. Were this the only reason for the Eucharist, it should make us very happy; for the Eucharist enables us as Christians to pay our respects to our Lord in person. “This presence is the justification of public worship as well as the life of it. If you take away the Real Presence, how will you be able to pay to His most sacred humanity the respect and honour which are its due? As Man, our Lord is present only in Heaven and in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Through the Eucharist we can draw near to the living Saviour in person, and see Him and converse with Him. Without this presence, Divine worship becomes an abstraction. Through this presence we go straight to God and approach Him as during His mortal life. How unfortunate it would be if, in order to honour the humanity of Jesus Christ, we were obliged to go back eighteen centuries! That is all very well for the mind, but how pay an outward homage to so distant a past? We would content ourselves with giving thanks for the mysteries without actively participating in them. But with the EuchaCAL X M A R IA E
rist we can actually come and adore Him like the shepherds; we can prostrate ourselves before Him like the Magi; we need no longer regret our not having been present at Bethlehem or on Calvary. “On the day of judgement, we shall have the right to say to Him: ‘We visited Thee not only in the poor but in Thy august Person itself. What wilt Thou give us in return?’ Worldly people will never understand this. ‘Give, and give a lot to the poor,’ they say. ‘But what good is it to give to churches? All this lavish expense on altars is wasted money.’ That is the way to become Protestant. No! The Church wants to have a living worship because she possesses her living Saviour on earth. Is not that worth while? But that is not all. To give to the Eucharistic Jesus is a consolation and a joy, as it is also a need. Yes, we feel the need of seeing and feeling our Lord near us, and of honouring Him with out gifts. If our Lord required of us nothing more than interior homage, He would fail to satisfy one of man’s imperious needs; we cannot love without manifesting that love through outward signs of friendship and affection. “If the sacred linen is clean, if the vestments are neat and in good condition, oh! that is a sign of faith! But if a church is without the proper vestments for the service of our Lord and looks more like a prison than a church, faith is lacking. People give to every form of charity; but beg something for the Most Blessed Sacrament, and they do not know what you are talking about. Is the King then to go in rags while His servants are richly clothed? We have not the right kind of faith, a faith that is practical, a faith that loves; we have only a negative, speculative faith. We are Catholic in name but Protestant in practice.”4
las, offices, and sacred rites. [...] Liturgical worship is the exercise par excellence of all religion.”5 The situation of the public cessation of Holy Mass and sacramental Holy Communion during the COVID-19 epidemic is so unique and serious that one can discover behind all of this a deeper meaning. This event has come almost fifty years after the introduction of Communion in the hand (in 1969) and a radical reform of the rite of Mass (in 1969/1970) with its protestantising elements (Offertory prayers) and its horizontal and instructional style of celebration (freestyle moments, celebration in a closed circle and towards the people). The praxis of Communion in the hand over the past fifty years has led to an unintentional and intentional desecration the Eucharistic Body of Christ on an unprecedented scale. For over fifty years, the Body of Christ had been (mostly unintentionally) trampled by the feet of clergy and laity in Catholic churches around the world. The stealing of sacred Hosts has also been increasing at an alarming rate. The praxis of taking Holy Communion directly with one’s own hands and fingers resembles ever more the gesture of taking common food. In not a few Catholics, the practice of receiving Communion in the hand has weakened faith in the Real Presence, in transubstantiation and in the divine and sublime character of the sacred Host. The Eucharistic presence of Christ has, over time, unconsciously become for these faithful a kind of holy bread or symbol. Now the Lord has intervened and deprived almost all the
St. Peter Julian Eymard said: “In the worship of God, everything is great, everything is divine. ... The Holy Roman liturgy is therefore supremely august and authentic. It comes from Peter, head of the apostles. Each pope kept it and passed it with all respect to the subsequent centuries, knowing how to add in conformity with the needs of faith, piety, and gratitude new formu-
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by an arrogant and undoubtedly Pharisaic clericalism. These little lovers and defenders of the Eucharist will renew the life of the Church in our day and these words of Jesus are rightly and deservedly applied to them: “I bless you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have kept these things hidden to the wise and intelligent and you have revealed them to the little ones.” (Mt. 11: 25) May this truth give us hope and light in the midst of darkness and increase our faith and our love for the Eucharistic Jesus, since when we have the Eucharistic Jesus, we have everything, and nothing will be missed.
faithful of assisting at Holy Mass and sacramentally receiving Holy Communion. The current cessation of public Holy Mass and Holy Communion could be understood by the pope and bishops as a divine rebuke for the past fifty years of Eucharistic desecrations and trivializations and, at the same time, as a merciful appeal for an authentic Eucharistic conversion of the entire Church. May the Holy Spirit touch the heart of the pope and bishops and move them to issue concrete liturgical norms in order that the Eucharistic worship of the entire Church might be purified and oriented again towards the Lord. One could suggest that the pope, together with cardinals and bishops, carry out a public act of reparation in Rome for the sins against the Holy Eucharist, and for the sin of the acts of religious veneration to the Pachamama statues. Once the current tribulation has ended, the pope should issue concrete liturgical norms, in which he invites the entire Church to turn again towards the Lord in the manner of celebration, i.e. celebrant and faithful turned in the same direction during the Eucharistic prayer. The pope should also forbid the practice of Communion in the hand, for the Church cannot continue unpunished to treat the Holy of Holies in the little sacred Host in such a minimalistic and unsafe manner. We must also listen to the voice of the little ones in the Church, that is, the voice of countless faithful, children, young people, fathers and mothers of the family, the elderly, who in the visible manifestation of their respect and love for the Eucharistic Lord have been humiliated and despised in the midst of the Church 34
H.E. Bishop Athanasius Schneider is the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan and titular bishop of Celerina. He is a member of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra. Bishop Schneider was born in Tokmok, Kirghiz SSR in the Soviet Union. In 1973, shortly after making his first Holy Communion by the hand of Bl. Oleksa Zaryckyj, priest and martyr, he left with his family for Germany. He was ordained a priest in 1990. From 1999 he taught Patristics at Mary, Mother of the Church Seminary in Karaganda. In 2006 he was consecrated Bishop and in 2011 he was transferred to the position of auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Astana. He is the General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of Kazakhstan. Bishop Schneider has written a book entitled Dominus est, a plea for the worthy administration of Holy Communion, and addressed a range of critical issues for Catholics today in a book-length interview with Diane Montagna entitled Christus Vincit. ENDNOTES: 1.
2. 3.
4.
5.
“What was the Oxford Movement?”, Pusey House, http://www.puseyhouse.org. uk/what-was-the-oxford-movement.html Sess. XXII, Decretum de observandis et vitandis. St. Peter Julian Eymard, The Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 92-94. St. Peter Julian Eymard, The Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 172ff. St. Peter Julian Eymard, Direttorio degli aggregati del Santissimo Sacramento, Ch. II, art. V, n. 1.
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Reforming our lives according to
OUR LADY’S CALL AT FATIMA b y F R . L I N U S C LO V I S
The following talk was given on 22 May 2020 at the online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”. INTRODUCTION
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he Wuhan virus has brought the world to a screeching halt, as lockdowns and curfews are used as means of controlling and checking the pandemic. The opinions and authoritative declarations of experts and analysts, the information and misinformation of numerous news outlets and the rumours, exaggerations and suspicions voiced on social media have each contributed to creating an atmosphere of fear, bordering on panic and hysteria. This fear is experienced worldwide so much so that diverse populations have readily submitted to limitations on freedom, which half a year ago were totally unimaginable let alone conceivable. These include the declaration of states of emergency, the cessation of international travel, and the closure of schools, of colleges, of factories and of stores selling non-essential supplies. Further, practices such as social distancing, enforced wearing of masks, limited internal or zonal travel, and prohibition of social visits or of visits to homes for the elderly have also been employed. This very real fear tactic, as fanned by the media, was consolidated by the closure of the temples of recreation: sports facilities, theatres and restaurants. To persons of faith, it was most surprising that the public exercise of religion was classed as a non-essential activity, as decrees outlawing the congregating of believers were rapidly followed by the total lockdown of their places of worship. For Catholics, whose supernatural instinct would have inclined them to appeal to Divine Mercy, a “great wall” was erected in their face as the Church hierarchy succumbed, without de-
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mur, to governmental pronouncements that placed all churches under “quarantine”. Even more disturbing was the speed with which a caucus of episcopal voices were raised to contradict the faithful’s “sensus fidei” that the pandemic was very likely a divine chastisement. The epitome of this absurdity was realized by the declaration, backed by and packed with pontifical authority, that the pandemic was merely Mother Earth throwing a sissy fit for the decades of terrestrial abuse she had endured from her greedy human children. In her 2000-year history, the Church has faced many such epidemics and pandemics and responded with penitential practices, which were readily and widely implemented while piteous appeals were sent up to heaven through the hands of Her to whom “never was it known that anyone who fled to Her protection, implored Her help or sought Her intercession were left unaided”. The faithful readily embraced the various penitential exercises and disciplines, including fasting, processions, pilgrimages, vigils and above all, reform of life – both personal and public. MASKING THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA
Despite the wide veneration of Our Lady of Fatima, throughout the Catholic world, very few people have fully grasped the message that the Blessed Virgin addressed to the world. Many consider Our Lady’s message to be merely a call to conversion, to penance and, as simply a message of hope. The reason for this resides in the fact that the message has not been greatly publicized and where it has been propagated,
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only a portion of it has been preached or explained. Thus, for example, one would expect a flyer published at the Sanctuary in Fatima to contain the pith of the message. However, one such flyer from the Sanctuary states that: “The Message of Fatima pleads with sinners to stop offending God, to seek pardon for their sins and to amend their lives, as did the prodigal son of the Gospel; it asks the just to pray much and to make sacrifices for sinners so they may not suffer eternal damnation in hell. All are asked by Our Lady to recite Her Rosary every day, to have devotion to Her Immaculate Heart and to receive Holy Communion in Reparation to Her Immaculate Heart on the first Saturday of the month. If people do not do these things, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. Many will be martyred, the Holy Father will suffer greatly and several nations will be annihilated … Our Blessed Mother’s own words assure us of peace and happiness for the entire world, if people do what She requested of them, when She appeared at Fatima in 1917.”
reforming our lives according to our lady ’s call
urdays. If people attend to my request, Russia will be converted, and the world will have peace”. In addition to Her mandate, the Blessed Virgin also stated that “[i]n Portugal, the dogmas of the faith will always be kept and then …” (At this point, the third part of the secret, commonly called “The Third Secret”, begins.) On 10 December 1925, Our Lady appeared with the Child Jesus to Lucia and requested the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays saying, “ … announce in my name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the First Saturday of five consecutive months shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes, while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me”.
Our Lord here was referring to the execution of Louis XVI by the soldiers of the French Revolution, following the century-long failure of the French kings to heed his request for the consecration of France to His Sacred Heart. Thus, Our Lord warns the hierarchy that they would suffer a similar fate as that of the French king. This fate was captured in the vision that was published in L’Osservatore Romano, 2000. Although the explanatory words of the Virgin were lacking, the vision was that of a bishop in white, other bishops, priests, religious and lay people being executed outside a devastated city.
THE NUCLEUS OF THE FATIMA MESSAGE
The essence of the Fatima message is found in the “secret” which Our Lady confided to the children in three parts. On 13 July 1917, she said: “You saw hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people do what I ask, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end.”
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Four years later, on 13 June 1929, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia at Tuy, Spain, along with a vision of the Most Holy Trinity. She told Lucia: “The moment has come in which God asks of the Holy Father to make, and to order, that in union with him, and at the same time, all the Bishops of the world, make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart”, promising to convert Russia as a result of this act. Two years later, in August 1931, Our Lord Himself appeared to Lucia with a warning to the Church’s hierarchy regarding their failure to perform the consecration of Russia which He, Himself, had commanded through the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1929: “Make it known to my ministers, given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of my command, they will follow him into misfortune.”
While all of the above is true, the flyer is nonetheless deceptive because it omits mentioning the great prophecy of how God will bring about the conversion of Russia and restore peace to the world; much more to outline the means by which this peace, as revealed by Our Lady during the 13 July 1917 apparition as part of the “third secret”, will be accomplished.
After warning of the consequences of ignoring Her message, Our Lady promised to return to “ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Sat-
“Despite the good intentions and the consecrations performed by Popes Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II, Heaven’s explicit request for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has not been carried out. ”
CONSEQUENCES OF DISREGARDING THE FATIMA MESSAGE
FROM MINIATURE ALTARPIECE THE FIFTEEN MYSTERIES AND THE VIRGIN OF THE ROSARY (C.1515). NETHERLANDISH PAINTER (POSSIBLY GOSWIJN VAN DER WEYDEN). METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.
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In the July apparition, Our Lady clearly and unequivocally spelt out the consequences of disregarding Her mandate. If Russia is not consecrated, “she will spread her errors throughout the world causing wars and persecution of the Church…”
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THE SITUATION IN RUSSIA
At the time of Our Lady’s appearance in 1929, the Russian revolution was over and Communism was firmly established, with Stalin in power pursuing a war against religion in Russia. Christmas and Easter were replaced with New Year’s Day and May Day respectively, Sunday was abolished and a six-day week was operative in what was now officially known as the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), only state marriages were recognized, and divorce and abortion were legalized. According to Bella Dodd, Stalin had laid and was already implementing plans to infiltrate the Catholic Church. In the aftermath of the Second World War, unbelievable concessions were made to Communist Russia as the Iron Curtain was drawn across many Catholic countries in Europe. The Soviets took full advantage of the situation and, by the 1960’s, the Communist influence extended over much of Africa and South America and stretched across the Middle East through to South East Asia. Although Our Lady’s request was only partially fulfilled, She, nevertheless, obtained significant tokens by which the popes would be encouraged to proceed to full compliance. On 31 October 1942 and on 8 December 1942 Pope Pius XII consecrated the world, but not Russia explicitly, to the Immaculate Heart. This resulted in World War II being shortened. In his Apostolic Letter, Sacro Vergente Anno of 7 July 1952, Pope Pius XII consecrated Russia but without the participation of the bishops. Pope Paul VI on the last day of the Third Session of Vatican II consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary – but there was no mention of Russia. Additionally, the bishops looked on but they did not join in the act of consecration. On 7 June 1981, Pope John Paul II consecrated the world, but not Russia explicitly, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and repeated this act of consecration at Fatima on 13 May 1982. While John Paul’s consecration 37
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of the world to the Immaculate Heart on 25 March 1984 was in union with the world’s bishops, it failed to make Russia the specific object of the consecration. However, this consecration seems to have contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain five years later. Pope John Paul’s last attempt was an entrustment of the world to Mary, in the presence of 1,500 bishops but, again, without any mention of Russia. Thus, despite the good intentions and the consecrations performed by Popes Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II, Heaven’s explicit request for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has not been carried out. THE SITUATION IN THE WEST
In his 1961 Apostolic Constitution, Humanae Salutis, Pope John XXIII wrote of the “rise and growth of a clergy better equipped in learning and virtue, of laity more conscious of its responsibilities…” and of living in one “of the most glorious periods of the Church’s history …which is so vibrant with vitality”. He then pursued plans to summon the Second Vatican Council which he said would be a “new Pentecost” for our times. By 1984, the West had already adopted and embraced Russia’s errors by living in what can only be described as a state of practical atheism. This practical atheism manifested itself in the form of hedonistic materialism, family breakdown, divorce, widespread contraception, and the legal sanctioning of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance, namely abortion and sodomy. These manifestations of atheism are poignantly described in St. Paul’s censure, of “having a form of godliness but denying its power”. (2 Tim. 3:5) Even more devastating, was the degree to which some church leaders actively and knowingly contributed to the aforementioned evils. Almost overnight, the news of the sex abuse scandals, the revelations of financial malfeasance and the consequences of theological dissent overwhelmed the Church. In the words of Paul VI, the smoke of Satan had certainly entered the Temple of God and what was gradually becoming visible was “the apostasy at the top”, which had been spoken of by those who had read the Third Secret. The “Pachamama” incident alone would have been sufficient provocation, one would have thought,
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reforming our lives according to our lady ’s call
for heaven to call the world to repentance by means of this global pandemic, COVID-19. THE SITUATION IN THE CHURCH
Writing in the February 1958 edition of Catolicismo, Brazilian Catholic thinker, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, prophetically asked: “Could one not say that the enemy is stronger than ever, and that the age the Illuminati of days gone by dreamed of is upon us? Are we not indeed in an age of stark and total scientific naturalism that is dominated by materialistic technology? Are we not in the age of a ferociously egalitarian universal republic that has somewhat philanthropic and humanitarian inspiration and from which will be swept all remnants of supernatural religion? Is it not, in fact, communism? Is it not also here that lies the danger by which Western society, supposedly anti-communist, will slip towards the realization of this ‘ideal’? “Yes. And this danger is closer than is usually imagined. However, no one pays attention to a fact of primordial importance: as the world is modelled according to this sinister design, a profound, and immense, and indescribable uneasiness is overwhelming it. Sometimes this uneasiness is unconscious and, even when conscious, is still vague and ill-defined. In any case, no one contests its existence. One would say that humanity is being violently forced into a mould that is not according to its nature and against which all the fibers of its existence writhes and resists.” For the great majority of the world’s population, the origin, cause and purpose of the Wuhan pandemic is uncertain and widely disputed. However, it is certain that the fear generated is sufficient for the uninformed populace to unthinkingly agree to any proposal that seems to offer a plausible relief from this strange pandemic, which originated in Communist China. As such, people are willing to embrace measures that infringe, limit or even suspend or withdraw their civil and human rights. The Wuhan virus has undoubtedly affected the whole world and provoked apocalyptic scenarios from which Catholics, and especially those who are poorly
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catechized, will hardly be immune. Yet, for Catholics who are serious and informed about their faith, this is a grace-filled opportunity. The closure of our churches, even for private prayer and adoration, the cessation of access to all sacraments and the token of Easter virtually celebrated, is a wake-up call showing how easily life in the catacombs may return. While virtual Masses and Spiritual Communions have offered some solace to practicing Catholics, it has also given them an insight of how our house-bound elderly live out their faith. Reflecting on the text “[f]or the time has come for judgement to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17), Archbishop Fulton Sheen explained that before the hand of God strikes the world, it always descends upon the Church first. Likewise, St. John Eudes warned that a sign that God is angry with His people is when He allows them to fall into the hands of evil pastors: “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
THE HOLY MASS LIVE-STREAMED FROM FSSP WARRINGTON ON THE OCTAVE DAY OF EASTER, DURING THE LOCKDOWN IN APRIL 2020.
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visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, ‘Return O ye revolting children ... and I will give you pastors according to My own heart’. (Jer. 3:14,15) Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge upon the people in consequence of sin.” What is wrong with the Church? The answer to that question is found in a mirror. I am what is wrong with the Church. You are what is wrong with the Church. We are what is wrong in the Church. We fail to take God’s call to holiness seriously. According to the polls, the lifestyle of Catholics is indistinguishable from that of the worldlings. In regard to the moral law, Catholics and worldlings hold the same view, if not the practice, of contraception, of divorce, of abortion, of homosexual activity and of gender ideology. Worse of all, is the fact that the Church’s constant and authentic teaching and beliefs on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, on the sacraments, on the Marian dogmas, and on moral issues are either rejected by or unknown to even practicing Catholics. The sense of the “sacred”, which has always been the hallmark of Catholic worship, is lost. It is no longer possible to spend quiet time in prayer after Mass. The current behaviour of church goers coupled with their noise level that follows the recessional hymn matches that which one would expect at a sports event. Christ, if He is still present in the sanctuary, is no longer the focus of worship. The Wuhan pandemic, with the imposed isolation and seizure of our religious liberties, should induce us into self-reflection, which, hopefully, would impel us into lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness. Up until this moment, it is pretty evident that, generally speaking, God is, in reality, a low priority in the lives of people, in our own lives and in that of our family. This reality was generated by a multitude of factors which include, spiritual sloth, time wasting, addiction to technical gadgets, toleration of habitual sin, silence in the face of sin, error and evil, lack of true devotion, and compromises with the world and lack of modesty as evidenced, not only on the High Street but, also, by the casual way many Catholic dress for Mass. This is further compounded by the corybantic pursuit of money, of material possessions, of worldly honour and social recognition.
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REFORMING OUR LIVES
In 1916, the children of Fatima were visited on three occasions by an angel who identified himself in his first apparition as the Angel of Portugal and asked them to pray. In his second apparition, the angel indicated the necessity of sacrifices:
“There are many sacrifices we can offer to God: our weariness, humiliations, disappointments, frustrations, tensions, misunderstandings. All of these, no matter how small, can be turned to our advantage by offering them to God while praying the sacrifice prayer that Our Lady taught, remembering that it is not so much the size of the offering which counts, but the readiness with which it is given.”
“Pray, pray very much, the hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on us. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.” “How?” asked Lucia.
of the offering which counts, but the readiness with which it is given.
“Make a sacrifice of everything you do and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended and in supplication for the conversation of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country.”
CONCLUSION
In the third apparition, the angel emphasized the importance of sacrifice when he taught the children the prayer: “Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly and I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences with which He Himself is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of thee the conversion of poor sinners.” When Our Lady appeared to the children in July 1917, She reinforced what the angel had told them: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” When asked, in 1946, what Our Lady meant by sacrifices, Sister Lucia replied: “By sacrifice, Our Lady meant the faithful fulfilment of one’s daily duty … the rosary is important because we must pray it if we are to fulfil our daily duty … the five First Saturdays Devotion is also 40
THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON.
important because if people make them, they will purge themselves of sin once a month, and renew their purpose to fulfil their daily duty.” She later added, “all that God wishes in the way of mortification is the simple, dutiful performance of one’s everyday tasks, and the acceptance of their difficulty and tedium … many people imagine that penitence means the practice of great austerities and, as they have neither the strength, nor the generosity to undertake such austerities, they are discouraged and fall into a life of indifference and sin.” Our Lord said to me “the sacrifice that each one can make is to do his duty and to obey My law. That is a form of penance I now demand.” There are many sacrifices we can offer to God: our weariness, humiliations, disappointments, frustrations, tensions, misunderstandings, the weather when it is not to our liking. All of these, no matter how small, can be turned to our advantage by offering them to God while praying the sacrifice prayer that Our Lady taught, remembering that it is not so much the size
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The onus of ridding the world of this pandemic rests entirely on us. The Scriptures are replete with examples from which lessons can be learnt. Nineveh repented and was spared from destruction, while Sodom and Gomorrah remained in their sin and were destroyed. The prophet Daniel, recognizing the misfortune of the Babylonian Captivity was the consequence of sin, lamented the fact there was no longer any place to make “offerings, sacrifices and oblation” to God and, instead, begged him to accept humble and contrite hearts. Likewise David, recognizing the enormity of his sin and, there was no sacrifice that could erase it, begged God to accept a humble and contrite heart. Therefore, in order to alleviate the burden imposed by the Wuhan pandemic, we ought first to turn to God with a humble and contrite heart. At Fatima Our Lady gave us the prescription for reforming our lives thus: • • • • • •
Stop offending God; Cultivate a spirit of sacrifice and mortification; Diligently work and duly pray; Pray the Rosary daily; Observe the First Saturday devotions; Consecrate oneself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; • Wear and live the spirit of the Brown Scapular. When God sees the efforts of His people to turn away from their sin, He is always eager to relent and welcome home the prodigal. Our sincere repentance and SUMMER 2020
genuine efforts to change will draw from His merciful Heart the blessing of having “shepherds after His own heart”. (Jer. 3:15) These shepherds will in turn be willing and ready to consecrate Russia in fulfilment of the request made at Fatima. Russia will be converted and God will bless us with an era of peace. If the Lord willed this pandemic to get our attention, it is certainly time to turn from our iniquities, to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness”, (Mt. 6:33) lest we fall into pits of regret. We are living in a terrible hour of chastisement which may, yet, become one of great mercy if we look to Mary, Star of the Sea, to guide us through the tempest. For nearly 200 years, She has shown much compassion for sinful humanity, obtaining for us stupendous miracles, beginning at Rue du Bac with the Miraculous Medal through to the Dance of the Sun at Fatima. Her motherly compassion is inexhaustible and she assures us that the consecration of Russia will be done, that Russia will be converted, that Her Immaculate Heart will triumph and that we will be blessed with an era of peace. 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. Fr. Clovis went on to study canon law in Rome. He was the principal of St. Mary’s College, St. Lucia until 2005. Fr. Clovis has now dedicated his life to promoting the Gospel of Life and 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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CO-REDEMPTION AND MARIAN CONSECRATION
in the light of the Fatima message b y F R . S E R A F I N O M . L A N Z E T TA
Blood that are to be poured out and offered for the salvation of the world. Hence, Mary made one with Christ, is the Co-redemptrix of the human race. With Christ in her womb, with Jesus Christ in her arms, with Christ at Nazareth and in his public life; with Christ, she climbed the hill of Calvary, she suffered and agonised with Him, receiving into her Immaculate Heart the last sufferings of Christ, his last words, his last agony and the last drops of his Blood, in order to offer them to the Father.”1 WHAT IS CO-REDEMPTION?
The following talk was given on 20 May 2020 at the online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”. THE FATIMA MESSAGE: A CALL TO HUMAN CO-REDEMPTION WITH THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
The Fatima message in its entirety is a call to cooperate with Our Lady for the salvation of mankind. This cooperation, that technically can be expressed as “co-redemption”, plays a central role in the whole message, being present since the first apparition of the White Lady on 13 May 1917, during which She asked the three little shepherds if they were ready to offer themselves to God and to bear all sufferings He would send them as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners. The children answered that they were ready. Our Lady, in accepting already the oblation of their will, says that they would have much to suffer, but the grace of God would be their comfort. In the July apparition, Our Lady taught the little shepherds to add a little prayer to accompany the offering of sacrifices to God: “O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” There is also a co-redemptive character of the union of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that shines forth already in the second prayer that the Angel of Peace taught the three shepherds in 1916, so as to prepare the coming of the Lady dressed in white. This prayer is about the adoration of the Most Holy Trinity and the offering of Christ’s precious Body and Blood in reparation for all Eucharistic sacrileges. The prayer ends this way: 42
“And through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners.” Why this reference to Our Lady’s merits, given that the infinite merits of the Heart of Christ are more than sufficient for our salvation? This is a point that Sr. Lucia herself makes in a book authored by her in 1998, “Calls” from the message of Fatima. In it, the seer explains that in the Fatima message the mystery of Our Lady’s Co-redemption is so prominent to be second only to the mystery of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but both inwardly connected. Let us quote only a passage from Sr. Lucia’s explication of the reason why the Angel mentioned the merits of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In it, there is a clear attestation of the fact that only the Heart of Mary is the worthy “place” and the “tabernacle” that keeps the treasure of our salvation: “God began the work of our redemption in the Heart of Mary, given that it was through her ‘fiat’ that the redemption began to come about: ‘And Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.’ (Lk. 1:38) ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ (Jn. 1:14) Thus, in the closest union possible between two human beings, Christ began, with Mary, the work of our salvation. Christ’s heart-beats are those of the heart of Mary, the prayer of Christ is the prayer of Mary, the joys of Christ are the joys of Mary; it was from Mary that Christ received the Body and CAL X M A R IA E
Now we turn to the soteriological mystery of Marian Co-redemption. What is it about and where does it stand out? Our Lady cooperated actively with Christ in carrying out the Redemption of mankind. Her maternal contribution, though subordinate to the one of Christ, was, by the will of God, deemed not only opportune but also necessary in relation to us. As the first Eve had an influential role in the ruin of mankind, so the New Eve, Mary, with Her obedient Fiat to God’s plan of salvation, caused in Christ and with Him the restoration of humankind. The co-redemptive union of Mary with Her Son is made manifest from the Annunciation, when the virginal conception of the divine Word took place, up to Calvary, passing through all the mysteries of Christ’s life, in particular, the Presentation of Jesus in the temple – the dawn of salvation, and the nuptials at Cana, when the “hour” to give us the true wine of salvation is officially inaugurated. But especially on Calvary, at the moment of Jesus’ death, that salvific union is perfectly consummated: Our Lady at the foot of the Cross offered up Her Son to God and with Her Son offered Herself. One sacrifice, one salvific love unto the end, offered on two altars: the body of Christ and the heart of Mary. On Calvary, Mary is the Woman whose hour has come to be delivered, and this is why she suffers the birth pangs of our regenerations (cf. John 16:21, in relation to the Woman of the Apocalypse 12:2, who cries while giving birth, whose symbolism is fully revealed in the Woman of Calvary, John 19:25-27).2 As the true Mother of the living, Our Lady really gives birth to us. On Calvary She generates once again Christ for us as a bloody Redeemer; in Him and for Him She generates us to supernatural life. Her conSUMMER 2020
DETAIL OF ALLEGORY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. GRÉGOIRE HURET (1606-1670). METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.
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“On Calvary, Mary is the Woman whose hour has come to be delivered, and this is why she suffers the birth pangs of our regenerations. As the true Mother of the living, Our Lady really gives birth to us. On Calvary She generates once again Christ for us as a bloody Redeemer; in Him and for Him She generates us to supernatural life.” tribution is made possible by Christ and is offered only in Christ, so as to prepare the cooperation of each one of us in our own salvation. Therefore, as Redemption is the “price” that Christ paid for us (1Pt. 1:18-19), His Blood as of the Lamb of God, so Co-redemption too is a “price” that Mary paid for us: Her maternal sacrifice together with her merits offered up for our salvation. As Immaculate Conception, She was redeemed in a singular manner to become the Co-redeemer in Christ. Her response to God, Her maternal Yes, said on behalf of each one of us, was indeed a gift of grace and raised by grace. It was grace as well that enabled Mary to freely consent to take part personally and actively in the work of our salvation; however, a part that She took with full sacrificial awareness and love for us. The ordinary magisterium of the Church for more than one hundred years has reiterated the doctrine of the active participation of Our Lady in our Redemption. From Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, the teaching of the Church – even when avoiding the technical word “co-redemption/ co-redemptrix” – is clear about the personal and direct contribution of Mary to the work of Redemption.3 In particular, John Paul II has treated this subject extensively.4 One might say that Vatican II does not use the term “coredemptrix” in the document on the Church, Lumen gentium, whose final chapter is entirely dedicated to Our Lady (while it enshrines the title “mediatrix”, see no. 62). This choice would be sufficient to abandon not only the word but also the theology that this word brings about. However, there is an official response from the Theological Commission of Vatican II explaining the reason to avoid the terminology. Though thoroughly true and present in the previous teaching of the popes, some expressions, such
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as co-redemptrix, were omitted for an ecumenical reason, being not easily understood by Protestants.5 With the programmatic discourse of John XXIII, Vatican II opted from the outset for a pastoral and ecumenical approach to the doctrine of faith. Since man’s cooperation with God in the process of justification is one of the main issues with Luther and Protestantism in general – hence denying that faith works through charity and its works (see Gal. 5:6) – the Fathers at the last Council decided not to upset the hope of a new dialogue with the world of the Protestant reform. But interestingly enough, while Vatican II avoided the technical terminology in reference to the unique cooperation of Our Lady in our Redemption, it did not avoid teaching the doctrine as such, qualified as ‘singular cooperation’ of Mary, the one who is the “generous associate and humble handmaid of the Lord” (Lumen gentium no. 61). The same paragraph of the Conciliar document also states:
stood, in keeping with the divine plan, grieving exceedingly with her only begotten Son, uniting herself with a maternal heart with His sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this Victim which she herself had brought forth. Finally, she was given by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross as a mother to His disciple with these words: ‘Woman, behold thy son’.” (Lumen gentium, no. 58) Here we should consider the union of Mary’s heart with Jesus in the offering of the one sacrifice for salvation, and above all the consent that Our Lady gave to the immolation of Her divine Son, so as to contribute personally to the offering of Him, to the salvation of all. This, for instance, reiterates what Leo XIII, in the encyclical Iucunda semper (8 September 1894), had already taught. Successively, Benedict XV, in the encyclical Inter sodalicia (22 May 1918), would almost literally anticipate the text of Lumen gentium, when he says: “Mary suffered and, as it were, nearly died with her suffering Son; for the salvation of mankind she renounced her mother’s rights and, as far as it depended on her, offered her Son to placate divine
justice; so we may well say that she with Christ redeemed mankind.”6 The same tenor of the Mariological discourse is present in Pius IX’s encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (8 May 1928); in Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis (29 June 1943) and in Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation Marialis cultus (2 February 1974, no. 20). This soteriological doctrine shows that there is also a “priestly offering” of Mary at Calvary that can be certainly ascribed to the unique share of Mary in the priesthood of Christ; certainly not as an ordained minister, but in a unique and exclusive manner, as the New Eve and the sorrowful Bride of Christ, literally one flesh with Him. Caro Christi caro Mariae – the flesh of Christ is the flesh of Mary. Therefore, there is also a unique maternal priesthood of Mary to take into consideration in a theological approach to Mary’s participation in our salvation, laid out and summed up by her being Coredemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces.7 As a priest is essentially a mediator between God and man (see Heb. 5:1-5), so and uniquely is Mary, the Mother Mediatrix of all the graces that she contributed to winning for us on Calvary. We owe to Mary what we are – children of God, and what we can be by God’s grace – holy men and women.
“In this singular way, she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Saviour in giving back supernatural life to souls. Wherefore she is our mother in the order of grace.” Moreover, the teaching of Vatican II on this subject is even richer, as the discourse goes on to describe the perfect union that the Mother kept with Her Son up to the supreme offering of Calvary. In a way that ‘reiterates’ the previous teaching of the popes, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church teaches thus: “After this manner the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered her union with her Son unto the cross, where she CAL X M A R IA E
THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS (C.1435). ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN. MUSEO DEL PRADO, MADRID.
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Mother of God who uniquely shares in the mystery of the hypostatic union, i.e., the union of the divine nature with the human one in the only divine Person of Christ. The theological foundation of Marian consecration essentially is the spiritual maternity of Our Lady, whose theological core, once again, is Marian co-redemption: “Woman behold your Son”, and “Son behold your Mother”. (John 19:26-27) Mary is indeed our dear mother since She contributed – as said above – actively to generate us to the new life of the children of God. Our eternal life is a gift from Christ through Mary, obtained by the Blood of Christ and the tears of Mary. Consecration derives from “being made sacred”, set apart, for God and for Our Blessed Mother. But in order to be sacred, namely to belong exclusively to God, one has to be offered up to Him: he has to be
It is opportune to also outline a brief historical excursus about the swap of “consecration” for “entrustment”. For this we have to go back to the years that just preceded the beginning of Vatican II. The word “consecration” begins to present some doubts regarding its correct application to Our Lady only from the ’60s,8 and above all with the revision of the “General Principles” of the Marian Congregations, in which “consecration” was avoided and substituted instead with “permanent commitment”, since “to consecrate oneself ” would express an act of adoration and would, therefore, be rendered only to God. The analogy between Jesus and Mary rooted ultimately in Our Lady’s divine Motherhood, and in Her sharing in the order of the hypostatic union, was ignored. In the Marian Congregation, such an act had to be directed to Christ by the hands of Mary as a confirmation of one’s baptismal consecration. Two Jesuit theologians,
OUR LADY OF MERCY (C.1472), FRESCO. DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO. CHIESA DI OGNISSANTI, FLORENCE.
CONSECRATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
In order to be truly effective in our human response and to take part in Her Co-redemptive role in saving mankind, the White Lady of Fatima asked for the consecration of Russia, and later of all nations and of each single soul to Her Immaculate Heart. This consecration is understandable in the context of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the refuge of salvation, and in the framework of its theology. In the June apparition, Our Lady said to Lucia that Her Heart will be the refuge and the secure way leading the little shepherd to God. In the July apparition, after the vision of hell, where many souls go because no one is ready to pray and sacrifice oneself for them, Our Lady says that she will come again to ask for the consecration of Russia and of the whole world to Her Immaculate Heart (as She did in 1929) and for the practice of the Five First Saturdays of the month (requested in 1925). This was to prevent Russia from spreading the errors of materialism and atheism around the world. Unfortunately, the consecration was delayed and then not made precisely according to Our Lady’s request. This lack of promptness caused de facto an increase of that Marxist ideology, which has thrived even amidst 46
the ruins of collapsed Communist states. Marxism, after 1989, would be transformed into a worldwide petition for an equal society, shaping a new man, made in the likeness of man with his instincts and desires, without even gender-based difference. This is our world today. And when ideologies like this are embraced even within the Church by some of the clergy, it shows the very apex of the crisis of faith in which we are engulfed – a creeping apostasy. But consecration to Our Lady is still necessary and efficacious in its salvific effects on humanity and on each human being. However, it is good that we pay attention to the word “consecration”. In fact, we are nowadays challenged by a choice: should we opt for “consecration” or should we instead choose something less problematic, the easier devotional path of “entrustment”? In order to respond accurately to this, at times unfolding as a sort of Mariological dilemma, we should now move to the next point. WHAT IS MARIAN CONSECRATION?
To set oneself apart for God and analogically (by way of participation from God to Mary) for Our Lady. The question that immediately arises is this: can we consecrate ourselves to a human creature? Yes, we definitely can, because Our Lady is the Immaculate CAL X M A R IA E
“Consecration derives from ‘being made sacred’, set apart, for God and for Our Blessed Mother. But in order to be sacred, namely to belong exclusively to God, one has to be offered up to Him: he has to be sacrificed. Sacrifice, from ‘sacrum facere’ (to make something sacred), is the very root of being made sacred or consecrated.”
sacrificed. Sacrifice, from sacrum facere (to make something sacred), is the very root of being made sacred or consecrated. Perhaps this is the spiritual reason why people and some of the clergy prefer entrustment to consecration. They might wish to choose an easier commitment and to avoid the theology of sacrifice, something that has been sinking into oblivion and makes no more sense, favouring rather a mere pastoral and existential approach to faith. It is not only a matter of a linguistic choice. From a clear coredemptive theology of Our Lady’s contribution to our salvation derives the word “consecration” to Mary; instead, from a shallow consideration of Mary in our salvation, from a minimalist approach to Marian soteriology, derives the wish to opt for entrustment or for its synonyms, such as dedication, affiliation, welcoming, etc. SUMMER 2020
in particular, distinguished themselves in objecting to the Marian consecration as something theologically inaccurate, to be understood only in a metaphorical way: Fr. Juan Alfaro and Fr. Karl Rahner.9 Along this line, we find also the work of a renewed and influential Mariologist, R. Laurentin, with his book of 1991, Retour a Dieu avec Marie. De la sècularisation à la consecration. For the fact that God alone is the One who consecrates, Laurentin concludes that there is no consecration if not that made to God, excluding, in the strict sense, a consecration to Our Lady. This was to cause the choice of a new and more biblical vocabulary to slowly develop. Thus, the way was paved for the word “entrustment”, proposed by the Rector Major of the Salesians in 1984, and later adopted officially also by 47
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John Paul II in his Marian encyclical Redemptoris Mater (1987). More recently, the word “welcome” has been preferred by the Italian Mariologist Stefano De Fiores,10 because of its biblical and therefore more ecumenical connotation. This progressive movement of distancing, in a certain sense, from the term “consecration” becomes, however, rather worrying when it is said that today “it is opportune, or rather, necessary, to use an alternative language, immediately comprehensible in today’s cultures”.11 Our Lady of Fatima asked for “consecration” and not for its substitutes, as, after all, manifested organically by a long development of the doctrine of Marian consecration, from St. John Damascene (†749), the first to write a formula of consecration to Mary with the word anatithemi – to offer oneself as being made sacred) up to John Paul II, who, in the same circumstances, opted for this word exclusively.12
Christian in this world, his being and his operation. This would be propitious to officially gather that special Marian army needed in the latter times, marked by a special presence of Our Mother and Queen. No doubt, this would also prepare the triumph of the Immaculate Heart so dear to each one of us. Let us work together for this.
ONE’S RESPONSE TODAY
ENDNOTES:
What does all this imply on a practical level? Being saved by the sacrificial love of Jesus and Mary, we should always acknowledge this by taking Our Lady into our lives. We should consecrate ourselves to Her. This is the only response a loving child can have for his mother. If consecration leads us to consider carefully that Mary is truly Co-redemptrix, that She had a singular maternal role in our supernatural regeneration, conversely, our consecration to Mary lets us live in full the mystery of Marian Co-redemption, as asked by Our Lady of Fatima. In this way, we can truly respond to Our Lady’s request to offer sacrifices so that many souls might be saved from an easy fall into eternal perdition. This appeal is urgent and for today, for the life within the Church in order to give life to a decadent world. Hell is not closed or empty, as sin is not absent only because forgotten or ignored and supposedly cured by a “mercy-alone” theological approach. There could be a special grace that might bring to fulfilment all our desires to see Our Lady more loved and Her requests heeded, showering us with many other celestial graces: the proclamation of the 5th Marian Dogma, about the soteriological and personal contribution of Our Lady to our salvation. This possible new dogma would, in fact, weld together Co-redemption and consecration as the identity of a
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Fr. Serafino M. Lanzetta is currently resident in the diocese of Portsmouth (UK), where he is priest-in-charge at St. Mary’s, Gosport. In 2004 he gained a license in Theology at the University of the Holy Cross in Rome and in 2006 a doctorate in Theology at the same University. In 2014 Fr. Lanzetta gained the habilitation in Theology with a specialization in Ecclesiology at the Theology Faculty of Lugano (Switzerland). His published works include his post-doctoral habilitation, Vatican II, a Pastoral Council: Hermeneutics of Council Teaching (Gracewing, 2016). 1. 2.
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10. 11.
12.
Sister Lucia, Call from the Message of Fatima (Coimbra: 2000), p.137. On Our Lady’s maternal and coredemptive “birth pangs”, in the light of the Jewish understanding of the “Birth Pangs of the Messiah”, see B. Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish roots of Mary. Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah (New York: Image, 2018), p.132-148. See B.A. Calkins, The Mystery of Mary the Coredemptrix in the Papal Magisterium, in Mark I. Miravalle (ed.), Mary Co-redemptrix: Doctrinal Issues Today (Goleata, CA: Queenship Publishing Company, 2002) p.25-92. Idem., Pope John Paul II’s Ordinary Magisterium on Marian Coredemption: Consistent Teaching and More Recent Perspectives, in Mary at the Foot of the Cross, vol. II: Acts of the Second International Symposium on Marian Coredemption (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2002) p.1-36. See Schemata Constitutionum et Decretorum de quibus disceptabitur in Concilii sessionibus. Series secunda. De Ecclesia et de B. Maria Virgine, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 10 November 1962, p.100. In AAS 10 (1918) 181-182. On this subject I wrote my doctoral thesis in theology: Il sacerdozio di Maria nella teologica cattolica del XX secolo. Analisi storico-teologica (Frigento, AV: Casa Mariana Editrice, 2006). To have a general overview see S. De Fiores, La problematica della consacrazione mariana, in E. Peretto (edited by), La spiritualità mariana: legittimità, natura, articolazione (Rome: Marianum, 1994) p.357-361. Cf. La Civiltà Cattolica, 119/3 (1968) 70. At the origin of this revision, the “Chronicle” of Civiltà Cattolica indicates on the one side the institution of the World Federation of the Marian Congregations (1953) and on the other the Second Vatican Council, along with the work of two Jesuit theologians (cf. Ivi, pp. 69-70): K. Rahner, La consacrazione a Maria nella Congregazione Mariana (Rome: Stella matutina, 1964) e J. Alfaro, Il cristocentrismo della consacrazione a Maria nella C.M. (Rome: Stella matutina, 1962). Cf. S. De Fiores, p.365. Ivi., p.367. De Fiores himself has an evolution in his thought: starting from a sincere defence of the term “consecration” (cf. his article Riflessioni teologiche sulla consacrazione a Maria, in Id., Maria presenza viva del popolo di Dio, Monfortane, Rome 1980, pp. 365-380), he develops a different preference, as “welcome” or “authentic Marian spirituality” (in the afore-quoted article, until the recent dictionary Maria. Nuovissimo Dizionario, vol. 1 (Bologna: Dehoniane, 2006) 395. See A.B. Calkins, Totus Tuus. Pope Saint John Paul II’s Program of Marian Consecration and Entrustment (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate 2017) p.19-73.
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THE JUDGEMENT OF God IN HISTORY b y P R O F. R O B E RTO D E M AT T E I
The following talk was given on 21 May 2020 at the online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”. Terra infecta est ab habitatoribus suis, propter hoc maledictio vastabit terram. – Isaiah 24:6
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n the era of the coronavirus, everyone is talking about all sorts of things, but there are certain topics that remain forbidden, above all in the Catholic world. The primary forbidden topic is that of judgement and divine retribution in history. The fact of this censure is a good reason for us to consider the argument. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS JUSTICE
We begin not in the Old Testament, where there are numerous references to divine chastisements, but with the very words of Our Lord himself who says to us: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Mt. 6:31-33) These words of the Gospel are a programme of life for each of us and they remind us of one of the beatitudes: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Mt. 5:6) The sense of justice is one of the first moral senses of our reason: philosophers define it as the inclination of the will to give to each one his due. The yearning for justice is in the heart of every person. We do not seek only what is true, good, and beautiful, but also what is just. Everyone loves justice and detests injustice. And because the world is full of injustices, and human justice as it is administered by legal courts is always imperfect, we aspire to a perfect justice – a justice that does not exist on earth and may be found only in God.
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The most celebrated trial in history, the trial of Our Lord Jesus Christ, sanctioned the most egregious injustice of all time. But God is infinitely just, because he infallibly gives each person his own justice. The beauty of the universe consists in its order, and that order is the kingdom of justice, because order means putting each thing in its place and justice means giving to each his own: unicuique suum, as is established by Roman law. THE INFINITE JUSTICE OF GOD
The infinite justice of God has its supreme manifestation in two different judgements that await man at the end of his life: the particular judgement, to which every soul is subject at the moment of death, and the universal judgement, to which all men will be subject in body and soul, after the end of the world. This is the faith of the Church: every human being will appear before God at the end of his life to receive either reward or punishment from the Lord and Supreme Judge. For this reason, Sirach says: Memor est judicii mei, sic enim erit et tuum – Remember my judgement if you also want to learn to judge well. (Eccl. 38) Father Garrigou-Lagrange explains that in the particular judgement the soul understands spiritually that it is being judged by God, and in that divine light his conscience pronounces the same divine judgement. “This happens in the first instant in which the soul is separated from the body, for which reason it is true to say that if a person is dead, then that person is also judged. The sentence is definitive and the execution of the sentence is immediate.”1
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“The Message of Fatima opens with the terrifying vision of hell and reminds us that our life on earth is very serious, because it places before us a dramatic choice: heaven or hell, eternal happiness or eternal damnation. According to how we choose, we will be judged at the moment of our death, and the sentence, once it is pronounced, will be unappealable.” The judgement of God is different from that of men. There is the famous case of Raymond Diocres, the esteemed professor of the Sorbonne, who died in 1082. A multitude of people attended his funeral at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, including his student Saint Bruno of Cologne. During the ceremony, a disturbing thing happened which was examined in all of its particulars by the Bollandist scholars. The body of Diocres was laid out in the middle of the central nave of the church, covered only by a simple veil, as was the customary practice at that time. The funeral rites began and proceeded to the point where the priest said the words of the rite: “Answer me: how many iniquities and sins do you have...?” Just then a sepulchral voice spoke from under the funeral veil: “By the just judgement of God I have been accused!” The funeral cloth was immediately taken off the body, but the dead man lay there cold and motionless. The funeral rite, which had been unexpectedly interrupted, was immediately recommenced amid the uproar of the entire congregation. The question was repeated, and the dead man cried out with a voice even louder than before: “By the just judgement of God I have been judged!” The terror of those in attendance reached its peak. Some doctors approached the body and confirmed that he was really dead. Amid the general fright and bewilderment, the ecclesiastical authorities decided to postpone the funeral until the following day. The next day the funeral ceremony was repeated, but this time when they reached the same question in the rite: “Answer me: how many iniquities and sins do you have...? The body sat up under the funeral veil and cried aloud: “By the just judgement of God I have been condemned to hell for ever!”2
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Faced with this terrible testimony, the funeral was stopped. It was decided that the body should not be buried in the common cemetery. On the coffin of the damned man the words were written that he will speak at the moment of the resurrection: Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum; Justo Dei judicio judicatus sum: Justo Dei judicio condemnatus sum. The accusation, the condemnation, the sentence – this is what will await the reprobate on the day of the Universal Judgement. For this reason, Saint Augustine says in The City of God: “all those who necessarily will die ought not to worry so much about how they will die as about the place where they will be forced to go after death.”3 And this place, we should add, is either heaven or hell. The Message of Fatima opens with the terrifying vision of hell and reminds us that our life on earth is very serious, because it places before us a dramatic choice: heaven or hell, eternal happiness or eternal damnation. According to how we choose, we will be judged at the moment of our death, and the sentence, once it is pronounced, will be unappealable. THE UNIVERSAL JUDGEMENT
But there is a second judgement that awaits us after death: the universal judgement. The existence of a universal judgement that will follow the particular judgement is an article of faith. Saint Augustine synthesizes the teaching of the Church in these words: “No one can place in doubt or deny that Jesus Christ, as the Scriptures proclaim, will pronounce the final judgement.”4 It will be the Last Judgement, which no one can escape. In the hour of the Universal Judgement, Jesus Christ, the Man-God, will appear in the heavens, preceded by the Cross and surrounded by hosts of Angels and Saints (Mt. 24:30-31), seated on a throne of majesty. (Mt. 25:30) The role of Judge has been CAL X M A R IA E
given to him by his Father, as Jesus himself reveals to us in the Gospel: “By myself I can do nothing; I judge according to what I hear, and my judgement is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of Him who sent me. (Jn. 5:30) But why is a universal judgement necessary, since God judges every soul immediately after death and the universal judgement will simply confirm the sentence already given in the particular judgement? Isn’t one judgement enough? Saint Thomas responds: “Every man is a person in himself and is at the same time a part of the entire human race; therefore he ought to have a double judgement: one that is particular, after his death, when he will receive according to what he did in life, although not entirely, because he will receive not as regards the body but as regards the soul; but there must also be another judgement in accord with the fact that we are part of the human race: the universal judgement of the entire human race through the separation of the good from the wicked.”5 The Angelic Doctor explains, in another passage, that although the temporal life of man ends with death, it is prolonged in a certain way in the future, because he continues to live in the memory of men, beginning with his children. Furthermore, the life of man continues in the effects of his works. For example, Saint Thomas says: “As a result of the imposture of Arius and other impostors, unbelief will teem until the end of the world; and likewise up to this same point faith will expand thanks to the preaching of the Apostles.”6 The judgement of God thus does not conclude with death but extends to the end of time, because the good influence of the saints and the evil influence of the reprobate extends until the end of time. Saint Benedict, Saint Francis, and Saint Dominic will merit to be repaid for all the good that their work continued to do until the end of the world, while Luther, Voltaire, and Marx will be punished for all the evil that their works have brought about until the end of the world. For this reason, there must be a final judgement, in which everything concerning each man in any way SUMMER 2020
THE LAST JUDGEMENT (C.1430) FROM CRUCIFIXION AND LAST JUDGEMENT DIPTYCH. JAN VAN EYCK. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.
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whatsoever will be perfectly and clearly judged. While in the particular judgement each person will judged above all as regards the rightness of intention with which he has worked, in the universal judgement his works will be judged objectively, above all for the effects that they have had on society. After the immediate judgement before God at the moment of death, it is necessary that there be a public judgement not only before God but also before all men, all the angels, all the saints, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, because, as the Gospel says: “There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed; nothing secret that will not be known.” (Lk. 12:2) It is right that those who have gained Heaven thanks to sufferings and persecutions will be glorified, while the many wicked and perverse people who have led a happy life in the eyes of men will be publicly dishonored. Father Schmaus says that the final judgement will reveal the truth or falsehood of the cultural, scientific, and artistic works of men: the truth or falsehood of the philosophical guidelines, political institutions, and the religious and moral forces that have moved history; the significance of the various sects and heresies, of wars and revolutions.7 The bodies of Arius, Luther, Robespierre and Marx are already dust, but on the day of judgement their books, statues and names will have to be publicly execrated. We add that each man is born and lives within a nation, and his action contributes to transform the nations and peoples in which he lives for good or evil, and these peoples and nations will be judged in their culture, institutions, and laws. For this reason the Gospel says that when the Son of Man comes in his glory “all the nations will be assembled before him. And He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left”. (Mt. 25:31-46) Thus the judgement will not be pronounced only over individual men and individual angels. Nations are also called to fulfill the designs of Divine Providence and therefore must conform themselves to the divine will that rules and governs the universe. At the universal judgement it will be revealed if and how much each people has fulfilled the task assigned to them by God.8
the judgement of god in history
Monsignor Antonio Piolanti writes: “Reasons of wisdom keep secrets over the course of time, but, in the end, time will have to pour out its treasure before the eyes of the universal assembly. All the masks will fall and the happy Phariseeisms will bear the mark of an indelible infamy.”9 The judgement will extend to all of human history, which will be publicly unveiled to the greater glory of God. It will be the triumph of Divine Providence that over the course of history guides the destinies of men and nations in an invisible and impenetrable way. In the presence of this unappealable sentence, everyone gathered in the valley of Jehosaphat will proclaim the great word: Iustus es Domine, et rectum iudicium tuum – You are just, O Lord, and your judgement is right. (Ps. 118:137) The particular judgement and the universal judgement are the two supreme moments in which the judgement of God is manifested over men and nations. This divine judgement is followed by a reward or a punishment. For individual people, the reward or punishment may apply either during their earthly life or in eternity, but for nations, which do not have an eternal life, the reward or punishment can be applied only within the course of history. And because the universal judgement brings history to a close, in that moment Jesus Christ will not condemn the various nations to eternal punishment, but rather he will open the eyes of all humanity that has been gathered together to see how each nation has been rewarded or punished throughout the course of history according to its virtues or its sins. It is important to understand that, both for individual men as well as for nations, the universal judgement is the culminating moment of divine judgement, but God does not limit himself to judging only in that hour: we may say that he judges from the moment of the creation of the universe. At the beginning of the history of the universe, there is a judgement – the judgement made by God against Lucifer and the rebellious angels – just as at the beginning of creation of man there is a judgement made against Adam and Eve. From that time on until the end of time, the judgement of God does not cease to apply to
“The judgement of God does not conclude with death but extends to the end of time, because the good influence of the saints and the evil influence of the reprobate extends until the end of time.” his creatures, because Divine Providence sustains the entire created universe in being and directs it toward its end. All the movements of the physical world, the moral world, and the supernatural world are willed by God, excluding sin, which is caused by the free creature alone. Jesus says that all the hairs of our head have been counted. (Lk. 12:8) Even more so is it true that every one of our actions, even the smallest, is judged by God. But God is not only infinitely just, he is also infinitely merciful,10 and there is no divine judgement that is devoid of mercy, just as there is no expression of divine mercy that is without the most profound justice. Perhaps the most beautiful example of this embrace of justice and mercy is given to us in the great gift of the Sacrament of Penance. In this sacrament, in which the sinner is judged and absolved, the priest, who acts in persona Christi, exercises the judicial power of the Church but also exercises the maternal mercy of God, absolving us of our sins. The justice of God intervenes to reestablish order by means of the penance that the fault merits, and Divine Mercy
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THE CHASTISEMENT OF THE NATIONS
What applies to men also applies to nations. God is not absent from history; he is also always present in it with his immensity, and there is not a point or moment of created time in which he does not manifest his divine justice and mercy over all peoples. All the misfortunes that strike the nations over the course of their history have a significance. Their causes sometimes elude us, but it is certain that the origin of every evil permitted by God lies in the sin of man. Saint Prosper of Aquitaine, a student of Saint Augustine, says that “often the causes of the divine operation remain hidden and only the effects are seen.”11 One thing is certain: whatever the secondary causes may be, God is always the first cause: everything depends on Him. At this point we should ask ourselves in what way God judges and punishes the behavior of various peoples and nations in history. The response of Sacred Scripture, of theologians, and saints is univocal. Tria sunt flagella quibus dominus castigat: war, plague, and famine. With these three scourges, Saint Bernardine of Siena explains,12 God punishes the three principal vices of men – pride, luxury, and avarice: pride, when the soul rebels against God (Rev. 12:7-9), luxury when the body rebels against the soul (Gen. 6:5-7), avarice when created things rebel against man. (Ps. 96:3) War is the punishment for the pride of the peoples, epidemics are the punishment for their luxury, and famine is the punishment for their avarice. THE SIGNS BY WHICH WE CAN KNOW THAT THE JUDGEMENTS OF GOD ARE NEAR
CHRIST THE JUDGE (1447), FRESCO. FRA ANGELICO. CAPPELLA DI SAN BRIZIO, ORVIETO.
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manifests itself by means of the forgiveness of our sins by which God frees from eternal punishments.
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In his Sermons, Saint Bernardine analyses Psalm 118, which says: Tempus faciendi dissipaverunt legem tuam: “It is time for the Lord to act, for they have dispelled your Law”. (Ps. 118:26) In this expression of the Psalmist, Saint Bernardine distinguishes three moments. 53
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This is the hour in which God punishes the sins of pride, luxury, and avarice with the scourges of plague, war, and famine. TEMPUS FACIENDI DOMINE, DISSIPAVERUNT LEGEM TUAM
It is time to act, O Lord, for they have violated your law. Another great saint with a prophetic voice that echoes Saint Bernardine, Saint Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, exclaims in his Fiery Prayer For The Apostles of the Latter Times:
THE TORMENTS OF JOB UNDER A SWIRLING SKY DOMINATED BY GOD (1563). ENGRAVING BY M. VAN HEEMSKERCK. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON.
Tempus – the time that the mercy of God gives to people to change their ways. In this space of time God offers sinners the possibility of suspending the sentence, revoking the penalty, remitting the offense, receiving grace. God waits because he desires the conversion of sinners. The time of waiting may be long, but it has a limit. If during this time there is no repentance, punishment is logical and necessary. In the second moment, God prepares punishment for impenitent sinners: a time that is expressed by the words faciendi Domine, which summarise, according to Saint Bernardine, “the bitter revenge and the harsh punishment of God”, if the people do not wish to change their ways.13 The punishment however is an act of the Father’s mercy. He does not wish the eternal death of sinners but their life, and through the scourges he inflicts on them he still tries to obtain their conversion. It is the time in which the axe is placed at the root of the tree: securis ad radicem arboris posita est. (Mt. 3:10) The third moment is when the offense is complete: dissipaverunt legem tuam. It is the hour of taking up the 54
sickle and reaping the harvest, as the angel says in the Book of Revelation: “Use your sickle and reap the harvest, for the time to reap has come, because the earth’s harvest is fully ripe”. (Rev. 14:15) What are the signs that indicate the harvest is ripe? Saint Bernardine lists seven: 1. The existence of many horrendous sins, like in Sodom and Gomorrah 2. The fact that the sin is committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent 3. That these sins are committed by entire people as a whole 4. That this happens in a public and shameless manner 5. That it happens with all the affection of the heart of sinners 6. That the sins are committed with attention and diligence 7. That all of this is done in a continuous and persevering way.14
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“It is time to act, O Lord, they have rejected your law. It is indeed time to fulfill your promise. Your divine commandments are broken, your Gospel is thrown aside, torrents of iniquity flood the whole earth carrying away even your servants. The whole land is desolate, ungodliness reigns supreme, your sanctuary is desecrated and the abomination of desolation has even contaminated the holy place. God of Justice, God of Vengeance, will you let everything, then, go the same way? Will everything come to the same end as Sodom and Gomorrah? Will you never break your silence? Will you tolerate all this for ever?” Saint Louis Marie wrote these words at the beginning of the 18th century. Two centuries later, the Blessed Mother appeared at Fatima to announce that if the world continued to offend God it would be punished through war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and the Holy Father and that “various nations will be annihilated”. But today, one hundred years after the apparitions at Fatima, three hundred years after the death of Saint Louis Marie, has the world ceased offending God? Is the divine law perhaps less transgressed, the Gospel less abandoned, the sanctuary less profaned? Do we not see sins that cry out for vengeance before the face of God such as abortion and sodomy justified, exalted, and protected by the laws of nations? Have we not seen the Pachamama idol welcomed and venerated even within the holy precincts of the Vatican? Should all of this not be judged by God by now? And should not whoever loves God also love and desire the hour of his justice, so as to respect, as on the day of the final judgement: Iustus es Domine, et
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rectum iudicium tuum: You are just, O Lord, and your judgement is right. (Ps. 118:137) WHY THE PEOPLES DO NOT REALIZE THE PUNISHMENTS THAT ARE LOOMING OVER THEM
Among Catholics, whenever an affliction happens to a certain people or nation, there are those who say that they do not know if this is a punishment or a trial. But in contrast to trials that befall individual men, evils that afflict nations are always punishments. It may happen that a virtuous man must suffer much in order to be proven in his patience, as happened to Job. The sufferings that individual men encounter in their lives are not always a punishment; more often they are a trial that prepares them to gain eternal happiness. But in the case of nations, the sufferings due to war, epidemics or earthquakes are always a punishment because nations do not have an eternal existence. To say that a scourge could be “a trial” for a nation does not make any sense. It could be a trial for the individual men of a particular nation, but not for the nation as a whole, because nations receive their punishment in time, not in eternity. The punishments of a nation increase in proportion to the sins of a nation. And in proportion to the increase of their sins, the wicked also increase their rejection of the idea of punishment, as Voltaire did in his blasphemous Poem on the Disaster in Lisbon, written after the terrible earthquake that destroyed the capital of Portugal in 1755. The Church has always responded to the blasphemies of the atheists by recalling that everything that happens depends on God and has a meaning. But when it is the very men of the Church who deny the idea of divine punishment, this means that the punishment is already underway and is irremediable. In the days of the coronavirus outbreak, Archbishop Mario Delpini of Milan even went so far as to say that “it is a pagan idea to think that God sends scourges”. In reality, thinking that God does not send scourges makes someone not a pagan but an atheist. The fact that this is exactly what many bishops throughout the world think means that the Catholic episcopate throughout the world is immersed in atheism. And this is a sign of a divine chastisement that is already under way. Saint Bernardine explains that the more the punishment of God draws near, the less the people who 55
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“To speak of the judgement of God in history and over history is therefore not to speak of death but life, and whoever speaks of divine judgement is not a “prophet of doom” but rather a herald of hope.”
deserve it are aware of it.15 The reason for this blindness of the mind is pride, initium omnis peccati. (Eccl. 10:15) Pride darkens the intellect, prevents it from seeing how near the destruction is, and God desires by this blindness to humiliate the proud. With the help of Saint Bernardine we can also interpret a line from the Book of Psalms that was incorporated by Leo XIII in his Exorcism Against the Rebel Angels: “Veniat illi laqueus quem ignorat, et captio quam abscondit, apprehendat eum et laqueum cadat in ipsum”. (Ps. 34:8) The free translation of this passage could be: “Let the snare come, the trap he is not thinking of. Let the maneuver he is hiding seize him and let him fall into his own snare of death.” Saint Bernardine says that this passage of the Psalms can be interpreted under three aspects. First, from God’s viewpoint: Veniat illi laqueus quem ignorat. The first cause of this ignorance comes from God, who in order to conceal his plans uses epidemics and famines: “laqueus est pestis vel fames et consimilia”,16 says Saint Bernardine: “the snare is plague or famines and similar things”. First of all, God takes away the people’s guides, not only their political and spiritual guides, but also the angels who preside over nations. God then takes away the lumen veritatis, which is a grace like every good that comes from God. Finally, God permits the sinful people to fall into the hands of their own vices, of demons who replace the angels, and of the wicked, who lead them towards the abyss. Et captio quam abscondit, apprehendat eum. Once every guide has been taken away from them and also the light of truth, the impenitent people not only do not change when God announces the chastisement but they actually increase their sins. And this multiplication of sins increases the blindness of the peoples. Et laqueum cadat in ipsum. The sinful people are unaware of the hour of punishment, which comes upon them suddenly and unexpectedly. The maneuvers with which they attempted to destroy the good turn against 56
them. They are not only punished but humiliated. Thus the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: “Upon you shall come a disaster, nor shall you know where it comes from; upon you shall fall a calamity you cannot ward off; upon you shall suddenly come a catastrophe you cannot imagine.” (Is. 47:11) THE FEAR OF GOD AND HUMAN TERROR
When then the chastisement begins, the demon, seeing his plans being upset, spreads the sense of terror among the peoples, the antechamber of despair. The wicked deny the existence of the catastrophe; the good understand that it has arrived, but instead of seizing the opportunity of their rebirth, they are tempted to see in it only the hour of their own ruin. This happens when they refuse to see behind the events the wise hand of God in order to chase after the maneuvers of men. An author dear to the heart of Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, the archdeacon Henri-Marie Boudon writes: “Dieu ne frappe que pour être regardé; et l’on n’arrête les yeux que sur les créatures”17 – “God strikes so as to be contemplated, but instead of turning our gaze to him, we turn it to creatures.” This does not mean that the maneuvers of the revolutionary forces should not be observed, analysed and combated, but never forgetting that the Revolution is always defeated in history by the self-destructive nature it intrinsically possesses in itself, while the Counter-Revolution always wins because of the fruitfulness of the good which it likewise possesses within itself. Atheism is the expulsion of God from every aspect of human activity. The great victory of the enemies of God does not lie in suppressing our lives or restricting our physical liberties, but rather in removing the idea of God from our minds and hearts. All human reasoning and philosophical, historical, and political
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speculation in which God does not hold the first place is false and illusory. Bossuet says that: “Toutes nos pensées qui n'ont pas Dieu pour objet sont du domaine de la mort”18 – “All of our thoughts that do not have God for their object belong to the domain of death.” This is true, and we can also say that all of our thoughts that do have God for their object belong to the domain of life, because Jesus Christ, the Judge and Savior of the human race, is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. (Jn. 14:6) To speak of the judgement of God in history and over history is therefore not to speak of death but life, and whoever speaks of divine judgement is not a “prophet of doom” but rather a herald of hope. Those who today with ever greater force reject the idea of divine punishment are the men of the Church. They reject punishment because they reject the judgement of God, which they replace with the judgement of the world. But the fear of God is born from humility, while the fear of the world is born from pride.
To fear God is the highest wisdom: Timor Domini initium Sapientiae says the Book of Ecclesiastes, which concludes with these words: Deum time, et mandata ejus serva: hoc est enim omnis homo (Eccl. 12, 13) – “Fear God and observe his commandments, because this is everything for man.” Whoever does not fear God replaces the divine commandments with the commandments of the world, for fear of being isolated, censured and persecuted by the world. The fear of the world, which is a consequence of sin, drives men to run away from battle, while the fear of God incites men to fight. A great French author, Ernest Hello, says: “Fearing the name of God means not being afraid of anything.”19 And Hello also reminds us of a word of Sacred Scripture whose depth will never succeed in fully understanding: laetetur cor meum ut timeat nomen tuum (Ps. 85:11) – “my heart rejoices that it may fear your name”. Joy exists only where there is the presence of God, and God cannot be present if the fear of the Lord is not present. The Holy Spirit says that there is nothing greater than the fear of the Lord: Nihil melius est quam timor Domini (Eccl. 23:27); the Holy Spirit calls the fear of the Lord the fountain of life: Timor Domini fons vitae (Prov. 14:27); as well as jubilation and joy: Timor Domini gloria, gloriatio et laetitia et corona exultationis! (Sir. 1:11). It is this fear of God that leads us to recognize the divine hand in the tragic events of our time and to enter into the battle with tranquil courage. THE KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
The Knight, Death and the Devil is a copperplate engraving made by Albrecht Dürer in 1513. The work shows a horseman with a helmet on his head, armed with a sword and lance, riding on a majestic steed, defying death, who shows him an hourglass containing the timespan of life that is fleeting, and the devil, who is depicted as a horned animal holding a halberd. Almost seventy years ago, in an article published in the journal Catolicismo in February 1951, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira used this image to illustrate the clash between the Revolution that cannot go back and the Church that, despite everything, has not managed to triumph. He wrote:
KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL (1513). ALBRECHT DÜRER. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON.
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“War, death and sin are preparing once again to destroy the world, this time in greater proportions than ever. In 1513 the incomparable talent of 57
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Dürer represented them in the form of a knight that is leaving for war, fully dressed in his armour, and accompanied by death and sin, the latter portrayed by a unicorn. Europe, which was even then immersed in the disturbances that preceded the Pseudo-Reform, was heading for the tragic age of the religious, political and social wars that Protestantism triggered off.
ond, third, and fourth horsemen are war, hunger, and death. Who is the first horseman on the white steed? ‘Its rider had a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode forth victorious’ (Rev. 6:2). He is Jesus Christ. The visionary-evangelist did not see only the ruin caused by sin, war, hunger, and death; he also saw first and foremost the victory of Christ. And indeed the path of the Church down the centuries is but a via crucis, but it is also in every age a triumphal march. The Church of Christ, the men of faith of Christian love, are always those who bring light, redemption and peace to humanity that is without hope. Iesus Christus heri et hodie, ipse et in saecula (Heb. 13:8). Christ is your guide, from victory into victory. Follow him.”20
“The next war, without being explicitly and directly a war of religion, will so affect the sacred interests of the Church that a true Catholic cannot fail to see in it mainly the religious aspect. And the devastation that will be unleashed will certainly be incomparably more destructive than those of the past centuries.
Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino
“Who will win? The Church? “The clouds we have before us are not rosy. But they animate us with an unconquerable certainty and that is that not only the Church – which is obvious, given the divine promise – will not disappear, but in our days it will obtain an even greater triumph than that of Lepanto. “How? When? The future belongs to God. Many reasons for sadness and anxiety appear before us, even when we look at some of our brothers in faith. In the heat of the struggle it is possible and even probable that there will be terrible defections. But it is absolutely certain that the Holy Spirit continues to inspire in the Church admirable and indomitable spiritual energies of faith, purity, obedience and dedication, which at the opportune moment will once more cover the Christian name with glory.” Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira concluded his article with the hope that the 20th century would be “not only the century of the great battle, but above all the century of the immense triumph”. We ourselves echo this hope, that extends into the 21st century, our century, the era of the coronavirus and of new tragedies, but also the time of a renewed faith in the promise of Fatima, a faith that we wish to express with the words that Pope Pius XII addressed to Catholic Action in 1948:
Prof. Roberto de Mattei is a former professor of Modern History and History of Christianity in the European University of Rome. He founded and oversees the Lepanto Foundation that operates in Washington and in Rome. He directs the magazine Radici Cristiane and the Corrispondenza Romana News Agency. He is the author of numerous books and publications, which have been translated into various languages. Among his publications is a history of the Second Vatican Council, which is translated into English as The Second Vatican Council - An Unwritten Story. He is married and has five children.
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The following talk was given on 21 May 2020 at the online Rome Life Forum on the theme “Coronavirus in the light of Fatima: a tragedy and a source of hope”.
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n these times of coronavirus it has become for me clear that we are living in the end times, at least as that pertains to the chastisement predicted by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. Today the greatest deprivation of all time has taken place. For the first time in history the greater part of Catholic humanity has been deprived of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
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3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8. 9.
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13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
19. 20.
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, La vita eterna e la profondità dell’anima, Italian translation, Fede e Cultura, Verona 2018, p. 94. Vita del gran patriarca s. Bruno Cartusiano. Dal Surio, & altri ..., Alessandro Zannetti, Roma 1622, vol. 2, p. 125. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, I, 10, 11. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 20, 30. Saint Thomas Aquinas, In IV Sent. 47, 1, 1, ad 1. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 59, art. 5. Michael Schmaus, Le ultime realtà, Italian translation, Edizioni Paoline, Rome, 1960 p. 247. Ibid., p. 248. Antonio Piolanti, Giudizio divino, in Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VI (951), col. 731 (731-732). Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son existence et son nature, Beauchesne, Paris 1950, vol. I, pp. 440-443. Prosper of Aquitaine, De vocatione omnium gentium (La vocazione dei popoli, Città Nuova, Rome 1998, p. 74). Saint Bernardine, Opera omnia, Sermo 46, Feria quinta post dominicam de Passione, in Opera omnia, Ad Claras Aquas, Florence 1950, vol. II, pp. 84-8. Ibid., Sermo XIX, Feria secunda post II dominicam in quadragesima, vol. III, p. 333. Ibid., pp. 337-338. Ibid., pp. 340-350. Ibid., p. 341. Henri-Marie Boudon, La dévotion aux saints Anges, Clovis, Cobdé-sur-Noireau 1985, p. 265. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Oraison funèbre de Henriette-Anne d'Angleterre (1670), in Œuvres complètes, Outhenin-Chalandre fils, Paris 1836, t. II, p. 576. Ernst Hello, L’homme, Librairie Académique Perrin, Paris 1911, p. 102. Pio XII, Discourse of 12 September 1948 to the Youth of Catholic Action, Discorsi e Radiomessaggi, X (1948-1949), p. 212).
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We will never be able to comprehend the gravity of this fully. But in order to appreciate it somewhat, hear the words of St. Alphonsus Ligouri in his Discourses on the Mass and Office. He wrote: “A single Mass gives more honour to God than can ever be given to Him by all the prayers and austerities of the saints, all the labours and fatigues of the Apostles, all the torments of the martyrs, and all the adorations of the Seraphim, and of the Mother of God.” For the last few months, this, the greatest of treasures on earth, the very pearl of great price, has been taken from us. It is a loss beyond comprehension. And as this deprivation continues it brings to mind the apocalyptic warnings of Christ Himself which we read in the Gospel of Matthew.
ENDNOTES:
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“You know, beloved sons, the mysterious horsemen of which the Book of Revelation speaks. The sec-
divine intervention today?
WHY SHOULD WE EXPECT A
“When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that reads let him understand. Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains.” (Mt. 24:15-16) The verse from Daniel which Our Lord references is this: “And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days.” (Daniel 12:11) SOLEMN MASS CELEBRATED AT THE ALTAR OF ST. MICHAEL IN ST. PETER’S BASILICA, VATICAN, ON MICHAELMAS 2019.
SUMMER 2020
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In a conversation with some of my closest friends I mentioned that the removal of the Mass from nearly all the faithful throughout the earth seems like a fulfilment of that prophecy, and I’m praying that it will not last as long as predicted – 1290 days or about three and a half years. It was pointed out to me, however, that of course the Holy Sacrifice has not in fact ceased since priests continue to offer the Mass privately. Nonetheless, it seemed to me that even in the worst of times to come, should all Masses be banned under pain of death, there will always be faithful priests who secretly offer the Holy Sacrifice, happy to risk their lives for doing so. This notion was bolstered by the interpretation of St. Robert Bellarmine in his famous work On The Roman Pontiff, who interprets this passage from the Book of Daniel as saying that “all public ceremonies and sacrifices of religion will cease”. Whereas I do believe the times are apocalyptic, it is certainly not the end of the world for Our Lady of Fatima told us we are first to experience the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the prophesied period of peace that will be given to the world. Recall the words of Our Lady of Fatima: “When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” It is in this sense, I believe many prelates view these times as the end times.
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Why should we e xpect a divine intervention today?
Carlo Cardinal Caffara told us at our Rome Life Forum in 2017 that the decisive battle between Our Lord and the reign of Satan, which was foretold by Our Lady of Fatima to be over “marriage and the family”, is on now – and has been raging since the Church has been thrown into confusion on the subject of marriage and family with Amoris laetitia and the two synods which preceded it. When he was at our Rome Life Forum in 2019, I spoke with the Dutch Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk about his article in which he wrote: “Observing that the bishops and, above all, the Successor of Peter fail to maintain and transmit faithfully and in unity the deposit of faith contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, I cannot help but think of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.” That section of the Catechism – which he quoted says this: “The Church’s ultimate trial before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.” In a follow-up interview with LifeSite’s Paris correspondent Jeanne Smits, Cardinal Eijk explained his reference this way: “I quoted number 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Because there are cardinals who plead for the blessing of homosexual relationships, I referred to this paragraph of the Catechism as a warning. It states that shortly before the Apocalypse, voices will rise within the Church itself, and even among the highest authorities of the Church who will express divergent opinions in relation to Catholic doctrine. I did this as a warning: let us be careful not to find ourselves in this situation.” Cardinal Eijk told me that he had noticed with interest that he was not the only cardinal who referenced this part of the Catechism in describing our times. Gerhard Cardinal Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, issued his “Manifesto of Faith” in February of last year. In that heroic document, His Eminence said that, CAL X M A R IA E
Cardinal Brandmüller made the reference while praising the actions of Alexander Tshugguel and the other young man who threw the Pachamama idols into the Tiber River. “These two courageous ‘Maccabees’ who have removed the ‘abomination of desolation in the holy place’ are the prophets of today,” he said. His Eminence Cardinal Burke whom we heard from yesterday and has graced the Rome Life Forum with his presentations and presence every year since our inception in 2014, said in a 2017 interview with Catholic Herald and I quote: “In the present moment there is confusion and error about the most fundamental teachings of the Church, for example with regard to marriage and the family.” DETAIL OF A MINIATURE FROM APOCALYPSE IN BIBLE HISTORIALE (1411), OF THE ANGEL FROM HEAVEN, AND BABYLON FALLEN WITH DEMONS AND UNCLEAN BIRDS. THE BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON.
“To keep silent about these and the other truths of the Faith and to teach people accordingly is the greatest deception against which the Catechism vigorously warns. It represents the last trial of the Church and leads man to a religious delusion, ‘the price of their apostasy’, it is the fraud of Antichrist.” Cardinal Müller added, “He will deceive those who are lost by all means of injustice, for they have closed themselves to the love of the truth by which they should be saved.” In the lead up to the Amazon synod, Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, who spoke at this Rome Life Forum last year, said: “The frightening question arises whether the protagonists of this synod are not more concerned with the attempt secretly to replace religion as man’s answer to the call of its Creator by a pantheistic natural religion of man – namely, by a new variant of Modernism from the beginning of the 20th century.” “It is difficult not to think of the eschatological texts of the New Testament!” he exclaimed. As the Pachamama scandal broke out during the synod, Cardinal Brandmüller made direct reference to the apocalyptic warnings of Christ, calling the Pachamama idols in the Vatican “the abomination of desolation set up in the holy place”.
He then described the debate in the Church over communion and divorce and remarriage saying, “There is today confusion as to whether there are acts which are intrinsically evil and this, of course, is the foundation of the moral law. When this foundation begins to be questioned within the Church, then the whole order of human life and the order of the Church itself are endangered.” Adding: “So there is a feeling that in today’s world that is based on secularism with a completely anthropocentric approach...the Church itself seems to be confused. In that sense one may have the feeling that the Church gives the appearance of being unwilling to obey the mandates of Our Lord. Then perhaps we have arrived at the End Times.” When the apostles asked Our Lord about the end times, he replied to them as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24. The first sign Christ gives of the time of times was firstly, that the Gospel would be preached over the whole world. And interestingly it was in a homily on 21 February 2001 that Pope St. John Paul II recognized that the Church “has spread to every corner of the globe”. Speaking to a gathering of Cardinals from all over the world the Pope marvelled that there were so many countries and languages represented. “Is this not a sign,” he said, “of the Church’s ability, now that she has spread to
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every corner of the globe, to understand peoples with different traditions and languages, in order to bring to all the message of Christ?” Another sign Our Lord speaks of in Matthew 24:24 is confusion, even of the elect – that is of the faithful, of believers. Never before in Church history, as our eminent Church historian Professor Roberto de Mattei whom we heard from earlier today attests, has there been such confusion among the faithful. Even during the Arian heresy when it seemed all the world was Arian, as many historians have said at least that was only one heresy. Today heresies are legion and the faithful themselves are confused and divided as never before. In these times, the confusion is most grave as it comes from the Pope himself who is supposed to be the chief guardian of the truths of the faith. Pope Francis has caused dreadful confusion with public statements to the press distorting Church teaching about contraception, cohabitation, homosexuality and transgenderism. The Pope’s personal promotion of LGBT activist-clergy, such as Fr. James Martin and Godfried Cardinal Danneels, have caused scandal. But beyond even that are the semi-formal changes that go against the teaching of the Church, such as communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. 1. The Acta Apostolicae Sedis – a guidebook for the world’s bishops – refers to the heretical notion that communion for remarried divorcees not living in continence is possible as ‘authentic magisterium’; 2. The change to the Catechism on the death penalty directly contravening the teaching always held by the Church and spelled out explicitly by Pope Innocent III; 3. The Pope’s allowance for individual bishops to permit Holy Communion for Protestant spouses of Catholic couples; 4. And finally, and most troubling for many listening today is the altering of the Church’s priorities on abortion in Pope Francis’ exhortation Gaudete et exsultate where he teaches the opposite of what Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI taught regarding the pre-eminence of abortion as an issue of moral concern.
Why should we e xpect a divine intervention today?
In his 2018 exhortation, Pope Francis wrote speaking of immigration and abortion: “Some Catholics consider it a secondary issue compared to the ‘grave’ bioethical questions.” The Pope added: “That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian.” He criticised those who “relativise” these issues, “as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend”. More recently we’ve been plagued with confusion over female ordination and optional celibacy for clergy. It is beyond imagination. Recognition of the coronavirus pandemic as a chastisement is only logical from a Catholic perspective. All throughout the Scriptures, the New Testament included, what are today called “natural disasters” are related to God’s displeasure. At Christ’s death there was a horrific earthquake. As we read in Matthew 27:51, “And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.” Jesus Himself warns of Divine punishments. He tells his apostles, as recorded in Luke, chapter 10, to wipe off the dust from their sandals as a testimony to those cities which have rejected His teachings, warning, “I say to you, it shall be more tolerable at that day for
Sodom than for that city.” Again, when Jesus heals the invalid man at the Bethesda pool, as recorded in John 5, he tells him, “Behold you are made well: sin no more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” It is very clear in Scripture that God hates idolatry. When the Israelites turned to idolatry as Moses was away on the mountain with God, God was ready to destroy them all, but Moses pleaded for the people of Israel and appeased God’s wrath. You can read about that in Exodus 32. Cardinal Burke drew attention to idolatry in his comments about the coronavirus as a chastisement. Speaking of coronavirus he said, “[A] person of faith cannot consider the present calamity in which we find ourselves without considering also how distant our popular culture is from God. It is not only indifferent to His presence in our midst but openly rebellious toward Him and the good order with which He has created us and sustains us in being.” He added, “We witness, too, even within the Church, a paganism which worships nature and the earth.” He continued, “There are those within the Church who refer to the earth as our mother, as if we came from the earth, and the earth is our salvation. But we come from the hand of God, Creator of Heaven and Earth.”
LOT'S WIFE LOOKS BACK AT THE FLAMES POURING FROM HEAVEN UPON SODOM; LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS GO ON AHEAD (1583). ENGRAVING BY R. SADELER AFTER M. DE VOS. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON.
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“The new ‘Mass in Time of Pandemic’, was issued in response to popular request during the current coronavirus crisis. But unlike the Traditional Latin Mass, which includes a ‘Votive Mass for the Deliverance from Death in Time of Pestilence’ , the new ‘Mass in Time of Pandemic’ fails to ask for pardon for sins and removes references to the scourge of God’s wrath.”
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It is worth noting that just before this virus broke out, the Pope allowed for idolatry in the Vatican Gardens. The Pachamama idolatry that took place there also SUMMER 2020
included prostration before a statue of the Pachamama. The statue was later processed into St. Peter’s Basilica where the Pope and several Cardinals said prayers before it. This act was condemned by many Cardinals, bishops, priests, and laity all over the world. A letter put out over 100 priests and scholars including the signature of two bishops described the events as follows: • On 4 October, Pope Francis attended an act of idolatrous worship of the pagan goddess Pachamama. (1) • He allowed this worship to take place in the Vatican Gardens, thus desecrating the vicinity of the graves of the martyrs and of the church of the Apostle Peter. • He participated in this act of idolatrous worship by blessing a wooden image of Pachamama. (2) • On 7 October, the idol of Pachamama was placed in front of the main altar at St. Peter’s and then carried in procession to the Synod Hall. Pope Francis said prayers in a ceremony involving this image and then joined in this procession. (3) • When wooden images of this pagan deity were removed from the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, where they had been sacrilegiously placed, and thrown into the Tiber by Catholics outraged by this profanation of the church, Pope Francis, on 25 October, apologised for their removal and another wooden image of Pachamama was returned to the church. (4) Thus, a new profanation was initiated. • On 27 October, in the closing Mass for the synod, he accepted a bowl used in the idolatrous worship of Pachamama and placed it on the altar. (5) Bishop Athanasius Schneider, whom we will have the pleasure of hearing tomorrow at this conference, 63
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Why should we e xpect a divine intervention today?
“And it is our very sins and especially those of abortion, lust, and sodomy which have drawn down upon us the chastisement of God. So when we – we Christians – who are called by His name repent, God will forgive us and heal our land.”
called the coronavirus pandemic “a divine intervention to chastise and purify the sinful world and also the Church”. Bishop Schneider singled out the Pope’s allowance of the Pachamama idolatry and communion in the hand as drawing down God’s justice. He quoted from the book of Revelation in his remarks. “I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching...that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.” “I am convinced,” Bishop Schneider commented on that scripture passage, “that Christ would repeat the same words to Pope Francis and to the other bishops who allowed the idolatrous veneration of the Pachamama and who implicitly approved sexual relationships outside a valid marriage, by allowing the so-called ‘divorced and remarried’ who are sexually active to receive Holy Communion.” So this coronavirus crisis is a chastisement, it is a wakeup call allowed by God for us to come back to His truth. If God truly didn’t care, He would, as it says in the Scriptures, abandon us to our own lusts, not give us a wake-up call. This time of total separation from the Mass for the greater part of humanity, this isolation, this global fear and awakening to the reality of the frailty of human life is a wake-up call the likes of which the world has never experienced before. Let us take heed and turn ourselves to God. Let us hear the words of Scripture – in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, 64
and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” That’s us – we are called by His name. We are called to humble ourselves, to pray, seek His face, turn from our wicked ways and He promises to hear us from heaven to forgive our sin and heal our land! But are we recognizing the chastisement for what it is and repenting? The answer for the most part today is NO. In fact, we’re doing exactly the opposite. We’re saying no, it’s not God’s wrath, it’s nature’s wrath! Pope Francis has said numerous times that we have the coronavirus thanks to nature being angry with us for not protecting the environment. It is the result, the Pope said, of ‘nature’ throwing a fit because we have failed to address pollution. The Mass promulgated in response to the coronavirus has excised references which would recognize the coronavirus as a chastisement. The Congregation of Divine Worship, invoking the authority delegated to it by Pope Francis, issued a text for a special votive mass for pandemics that departs from ancient liturgical tradition by omitting any reference to divine wrath and chastisement for sins. The new “Mass in Time of Pandemic”, was issued in response to popular request during the current coronavirus crisis. But unlike the Traditional Latin Mass, which includes a “Votive Mass for the Deliverance from Death in Time of Pestilence”, the new “Mass in Time of Pandemic” fails to ask for pardon for sins and removes references to the scourge of God’s wrath. The entrance hymn of the Traditional Latin Mass (last issued in 1962), implores God to “be mindful . . . of Thy covenant and to say to the destroying Angel: Now hold thy hand, and let not the land be made desolate, and destroy not every living soul.” CAL X M A R IA E
However, the new version gives a brief entrance antiphon that merely states, “Truly the Lord has borne our infirmities, and has carried our sorrows.” The special collect or opening prayer of the traditional version states, “O God, who does not want the death of the sinner but that he should repent: welcome with pardon Thy people’s return to Thee: and so long as they are faithful in Thy service, do Thou in Thy clemency withdraw the scourge of Thy wrath. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son…” The new version’s collect instead asks for help, but without reference to sin or punishment. But what will a loving God do when His children refuse to listen to His warnings? Will he just give up? No. He will turn up the heat, so that we will sit up and listen. Just like He did in my life to get me to pay attention to Him, to acknowledge that without Him I could do nothing to defeat the evil in my life. If a global pandemic filled with fear and removal of sacraments is not enough what will come next to awaken us? I don’t know.
DETAIL OF THE LAST JUDGEMENT (C.1430) FROM CRUCIFIXION AND LAST JUDGEMENT DIPTYCH. JAN VAN EYCK. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.
SUMMER 2020
But even before coronavirus we’ve been experiencing another severe punishment that has been afflicting the world for many decades now but more acutely in recent years. In his book The Priest, His Dignity and Obligations, St. John Eudes writes: “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.” While I can’t predict what will come to wake us up beyond coronavirus, I do know what will come when we finally do turn around and repent. As we read again in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” In truth, we – we Catholics – are all guilty of idolatry in some ways – how many times have we given in to lust, to gluttony, to pride, to anger, to laziness, to jealousy, to greed? And it is our very sins and especially those of abortion, lust, and sodomy which have drawn down upon us the chastisement of God. So when we – we Christians – who are called by His name repent, God will forgive us and heal our land. But even more than that. When we fulfill Our Lady’s requests for Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays and the Holy Father responds to the explicit request of Our Lady of Fatima as Cardinal Burke spoke of yesterday to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, we will see the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. That is – a glorious never-before seen peace on earth. A time of great rejoicing and faithfulness is coming and in fact is around the corner. 65
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There is immense hope in this truth, in this promise. And I don’t think we have too long to wait. The only solution to the mess the world and the church find themselves in today is divine intervention. Pope Benedict XVI hoped that such an intervention would happen shortly. “May the seven years which separate us from the centenary of the apparitions hasten the fulfillment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity,” he said in a homily on May 13, 2010. “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete,” he said. The 13 October 1917 Fatima miracle of the dance of the sun was witnessed by 70,000 people with coverage in all the secular papers at the time. It was the most spectacular public miracle of all time. What was it that heaven was trying to communicate with this stupendous event? Our Lady showed the three shepherd children hell. “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” she told them. “To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.” What did Our Lady ask for to bring about the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart? First prayer, most particularly the Holy Rosary and the devotion of the Brown Scapular. Second she called for us to make reparation for the sins and outrages perpetrated against God’s grace and blasphemies against the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Thirdly she asked for consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, both on a personal basis and, publicly, that of Russia by the pope and all the world’s bishops. Our Lady warned that if Russia was not consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart, Russia would spread its errors throughout the world. We have seen atheistic communism spread throughout the world. But most don’t realise that abortion began in Russia and this global atrocity has cost more lives than all wars combined. And as Prof. de Mattei has said the most faithful representation on earth today of atheistic communism is not Russia, but China, from which we have the coronavirus. Our Lady warned specifically that if Russia was not consecrated there would be “wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred,
Why should we e xpect a divine intervention today?
the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.” She predicted the Second World War, and it happened. She predicted “fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much. Woe to women lacking in modesty.” And it happened like never before in the history of the world. She predicted wars, and there have been more wars in the last thirty years than ever before. We have not yet seen whole nations annihilated. Many have said her wish for consecration of Russia was accomplished in 1984 when Pope St. John Paul II entrusted the world to Our Lady. Let’s skip the debate over it and do it again, but this time mentioning Russia specifically, as was requested by Our Lady, as Cardinal Burke has said. “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph,” she promised. “The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, which will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” We await that peace eagerly both in the world and in the Church. But Our Lord warned Sr. Lucia in a vision in 1931, expressing dismay that the Pope would not carry out the consecration of Russia as requested. “Like the King of France, they will repent of it, and they will do it, but it will be late. Russia will already have spread its errors in the world.” He added, “Make it known to My ministers, seeing that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My demand, they will also have to follow him into misfortune.” That warning has a severe implication for our days. The mention of the King of France by Our Lord refers to the request he made of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. On 17 June 1689 He asked her to have the King of France consecrate France to the Sacred Heart. For 100 years the Kings of France failed to make the consecration. On 17 June 1789, 100 years to the day of the request, the King of France was stripped of his legislative authority and four years later he was executed. When are the 100 years up for the request of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia? In 1917 Our Lady said she would return to ask for the consecration, and then appeared only many years later to the only remaining Fatima visionary, Sister Lucia, who was
living in a convent. The Queen of Heaven made her request for consecration of Russia on 13 June 1929. Let us play our part in hastening the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. Let us pray the Rosary, wear the Scapular, make the First Saturdays devotion and request the not yet done explicit consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart. Pray that it may come before 13 June 2029. And in conclusion I would like to quote a too-little-known statement by His Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano which he delivered just prior to Christmas. It was one of the most rousing calls to arms I have ever heard. After stating bluntly the catastrophic situation facing the Church today, he concluded with encouragement.
opposed to the members enlisted in the Enemy’s army. ‘Little ones’ consecrated without any limit whatsoever to the Immaculate, in order to be her heel, the most humiliated and despised part, the most hated by hell, but which together with Her will crush the head of the infernal Monster.
“Now it is our turn. Without equivocation, without letting ourselves be driven out of this Church whose legitimate children we are and in which we have the sacred right to feel at home, without the hateful horde of Christ’s enemies making us feel marginalised, schismatic and excommunicated.
John-Henry Westen the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews, which founded the Rome Life Forum in 2014. He is also the co-founder of Voice of the Family, which has run the Rome Life Forum since 2015. He and his wife Dianne and their eight children live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada. He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organisation Campaign Life Coalition and the host of the John-Henry Westen Show.
“Now it is our turn! The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary – Coredemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces – passes through her ‘little ones’, who are certainly frail and sinners but are absolutely
“The Church is shrouded in the darkness of modernism, but the victory belongs to Our Lord and His Bride. We desire to continue to profess the perennial faith of the Church in the face of the roaring evil that besieges her. We desire to keep vigil with her and with Jesus, in this new Gethsemane of the end times; to pray and do penance in reparation for the many offenses caused to them.” Amen.
DETAIL OF A PAGE FROM ILUSTRAÇÃO PORTUGUESA, 29 OCTOBER 1917, SHOWING THE PEOPLE LOOKING AT THE SUN DURING THE FÁTIMA APPARITIONS .
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Waiting for the triumph of THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY A selection of questions from our viewers to the speakers during the online Rome Life Forum discussing the coronavirus crisis in the light of Fatima.
CHASTISEMENT Can we see in this coronavirus pandemic and the resulting deprivation of Mass a chastisement?
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CARDINAL BURKE: We cannot doubt that the evils which beset us, and it is quite evident in the evil of the COVID-19 pandemic, are the fruit of the disorder which we have introduced into our lives and into the world through sin. They are the fruit of the original sin, the sin of our first parents, which violated the wonderful communion which they had with God by their pride to think that they could become God. In the same way, too, we see so many evils in our world today that are caused by people who think they are God, who think they can determine, for instance, what is or what is not a human life or who think that they can determine what is the relationship between man and woman in marriage, who think that they can reorder the whole world in a way clearly contrary to the plan of God as it is revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures and in the teaching of the Church. (...) We must, as Our Lady asked us at Fatima, engage in a complete conversion of our lives to restore the respect for human life, respect for the integrity of the union of man and woman in marriage and the integrity of the family and the respect for the practice of true religion. If we do that, no matter what else happens in our lives and in our world, things will get better, because we would be living in harmony with God. But if we don’t repent, I don’t see how God can stay his hand from us who would be so rebellious against Him and against His great love for us. All that it requires from us is the opening to His merciful grace and He will not fail to provide us with the graces in abundance to transform our lives and to transform the world.
Is the coronavirus a unique intervention in human history? Or have others been just as dramatic? Do you think that there will be even greater chastisements? PROF. DE MATTEI: No one can deny the dramatic impact the coronavirus has had on a worldwide scale. In this sense, it has certainly been a chastisement, like every catastrophe which has hurt nations. Other chastisements have preceded the coronavirus and others will follow it. In the 20th century, Communism and the two World Wars were a chastisement of mankind. The religious and moral crisis which followed the Second Vatican Council was a chastisement even worse than that of the World Wars. And the pontificate of Pope Francis seems to be the logical consequence of this religious crisis. It is not difficult to foresee other scourges: situations of misery, social revolutions, wars, pandemics worse than the coronavirus. But the thing I fear above all is a situation of even greater confusion within the Church, in which even the best Catholics will risk losing their balance. And he who loses his balance, falls. To resist, that is to stay standing, I believe we must make an effort to raise our gaze to God rather than lose ourselves in the labyrinth of the tactics of men. It will be God, not men, Who will save the Church. We can collaborate by forming an acies ordinata, a Catholic army: small, humble, but faithful and ordered, which distinguishes itself for the integrity of the Faith and the purity of virtue.
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Could it be said then that the pontificate of Pope Francis is in itself, a chastisement from God to a Church that has lost its way for many decades? Are there popes in history who can be compared to Pope Francis or is this papal crisis unprecedented? PROF. DE MATTEI: Sins or public errors of a priest or a bishop are always a chastisement from God, even more so are the sins or errors of a pope. History has known many popes who have caused catastrophes by their behaviour. And in this sense, these popes have been a chastisement for the Church. Everyone, for example, recalls Alexander VI, Pope Borgia, perhaps the most corrupt pope during the time of the Renaissance. But the papal historian, Ludwig von Pastor said that the pontificate of Leo X, the Medici family’s pope, was worse than that of Alexander VI and was a proximate cause of the Protestant Revolution which was certainly a grave chastisement for the Church and Christian Europe. These affirmations should not scandalize us. Von Pastor was a Catholic historian appreciated by Leo XIII and Saint Pius X, but in his History of the Popes, he wrote that the pontificate of Leo X was fatal to the [papal] Roman see because of his worldliness. History and theology tell us that there can be pope-saints like Pius V and Pius X but also catastrophic popes. I hold, with all respect for the office which he holds, that the pontificate of Pope Francis has proven to be a catastrophe for the Church. Who is more to blame for the current crisis, the laity or the clergy? St. John Eudes said that when God is angry with His people, He sends them bad priests as a chastisement, the clergy they deserve. PROF. DE MATTEI: The greater responsibility, in my opinion, is on the part of the clergy. There is a saying that “If the priest is a saint the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless”. Dom Chautard in his book The Soul of the Apostolate, quotes these words of St. Alphonsus: “Good morals and the salvation of the people depend on good pastors. If there is a good pastor, you will soon see devotion flourishing, people frequenting the Sacraments, and honouring the practice of
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DETAIL OF A MINIATURE FROM APOCALYPSE IN BIBLE HISTORIALE (1411), OF THE ANGEL FROM HEAVEN, AND BABYLON FALLEN WITH DEMONS AND UNCLEAN BIRDS. THE BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON.
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mental prayer. Hence the proverb: like pastor, like parish. In the words of Ecclesiasticus: ‘Those who dwell in the state, take after their ruler’. However, we could also say: ‘like priests, like bishops; like bishops, like Pope; like Pope, like Church’.”
FAITH IN THE ERA OF CORONAVIRUS What can we as lay faithful do to make reparation for the great sins within the Church that deserve God’s punishment? How can we spark the growth of a more faithful, stronger Church? BISHOP SCHNEIDER: First we must ask for the grace to have always a contrite heart, go more frequently to Holy Confession, organise Holy Hours, processions of reparation for the great sins within the Church: the sins against the Holy Eucharist, the sins against the First Commandment of God, the sins against the truth of the uniqueness of salvation through Jesus Christ, the sins against the holiness of marriage, the sins against the holiness of the priesthood. The Church will be more faithful and stronger first through a renewed Eucharistic worship of the Holy Mass and of the receiving of Holy Communion, through Eucharistic adoration, through a personal and public witness of the integrity of the Catholic Faith, through a renewed holy clergy, through true and large Catholic families.
the current gesture of receiving Communion in the hand resembles the gesture of taking common food. Unfortunately, the Holy See and the Bishops allow Communion in the hand. From the moment the Holy See forbids Communion in the hand, it would be sinful. We can best evangelise other Catholics about the importance of the Holy Eucharist in giving a concrete personal example of receiving Communion devotedly, recollected, kneeling and on the tongue, remaining after Mass a certain time in thanksgiving, spending time in Eucharistic adoration, spreading sound teaching on the Eucharist from the Magisterium of the Church and the writings and the life of the Saints. I would strongly recommend for instance the writings of Saint Peter Julian Eymard. What do we do if traditional Masses are banned and/or we are forced to receive Holy Communion in the hand? BISHOP SCHNEIDER: The universal law of the Church is still valid, which states that the faithful have the right to receive Communion on the tongue and that this right cannot be denied them. As long as the Holy See did not revoke this universal norm, it cannot be overruled by a Bishops’ Conference or a singular bishop or priest. The faithful must insist upon their right. According to assessments of experts Communion on the tongue is no less hygienic than Communion in the hand. There can be applied hygienic measures to the rite of receiving Communion on the tongue as well.
How can we best convince our family and friends of the sinfulness of Communion in the hand? What would you recommend that would help educate people about the importance of the Holy Eucharist – in charity, not hostility and without becoming self-important?
With some bishops downplaying the need for conversion or criticising it as proselytism and the civic leaders restricting the public practice of the faith during the pandemic, how can the laity defend not only the Faith to non-Catholics but also the mandate to preach the Gospel to Catholics?
BISHOP SCHNEIDER: First one has to say, that Communion in the hand in itself is not sinful. It is allowed by the Church. From the subjective point of view, a person can receive Communion with devotion in the hand. However, now comes the problem. The objective, visible aspect of this form of receiving the Body of Christ is in itself less expressive in sacredness, it is even dangerous because of the real and frequent occasion of the loss of the small Eucharistic fragments. Furthermore,
JOHN-HENRY WESTEN: This time of crisis in the Church and pandemic gives us an amazing opportunity to share the Faith like never before. God permits much evil in the world, but the Faith teaches that He does so because He can bring great good from even the worst and seemingly hopeless situations. Countless people when faced with such calamity turn their hearts to God, many for the first time, some after a long time of rejecting God. And while their
prayers and pleadings for safety may not be realised in this world, they suddenly become more open to a deep change of heart that they know will set them in a direction of being happy, safe and calm and with a loving Father forever in the next. So there’s never been a better time to evangelise. And it’s similar with regard to the crisis in the Church. The truth is that the Catholic Church is in a battle like never before, it’s an internal battle for the soul of the Church and we have never needed reinforcements as we do now. So challenge those who feel called to the Church even slightly to come in now, to join in the battle. I bet some have been waiting for an invitation and a call to fight for truth, beauty and goodness has always been able to rouse hearts into action. With your experience of having gone months and years without the holy sacrifice of the Mass, what advice can you share with those of us who cannot attend Mass? How can we make this a fruitful time instead of a time of bitterness and sadness? Is there a specific Sunday practice for families you would recommend? BISHOP SCHNEIDER: We have to accept this situation from the hands of Divine Providence as a trial, which will bring us a greater spiritual benefit as if we would not have experienced such a situation. This current purifying Divine intervention has the power to show all of us what is truly essential in the Church: The Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ with His Body and Blood and the eternal salvation of immortal souls. This situation forces Catholic families to experience literally the meaning of a domestic church. In the absence of the possibility to assist Holy Mass even on Sundays, Catholic parents should gather their family in their home. They should dedicate a holy hour of prayers to sanctify the Day of the Lord and to unite themselves spiritually with the Holy Masses which are celebrated by priests behind closed doors even in their towns or in their vicinity. Such a Sunday holy hour of a domestic church could be done for instance in the following way: praying the Rosary, reading of the Sunday Gospel, an act of contrition, an act of spiritual communion, a litany, prayer for all who suffer and die, for all who are persecuted, prayer for the pope and the priests, prayer for the end of the current physical and spiritual epidemic.
DETAIL OF THE PENTECOST (C.1740), WITH THE APOSTLES AND THE BLESSED VIRGIN SITTING IN A CIRCLE, THE HOLY SPIRIT APPEARING ABOVE THEM. ENGRAVED BY FRÉDÉRIC HORTHEMELS AFTER GAUDENZIO FERRARI. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK.
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Furthermore, on Sundays parents could gather their children in the afternoon or in the evening and read to them from the lives of the saints, especially stories drawn from times of persecution of the Church. Some have speculated that we will see fewer faithful return to the pews following the pandemic. How do we promote the Sunday obligation after the widespread dispensation and use of streamed liturgies? BISHOP SCHNEIDER: Some people say that we will have a new hunger for the Eucharist after the coronavirus epidemic is passed. It is a common human experience that the prolonged deprivation of an important reality inflames the hearts of people with a longing for it. This applies, of course, to those who really believe and love the Eucharist. Perhaps those Catholics who were so accustomed to the Holy of Holies that they came to consider it as something ordinary and common will experience a spiritual conversion and understand and treat the Holy Eucharist henceforth as extraordinary and sublime. In general, I think that the time of deprivation of Holy Mass and the sacraments will have the function of purifying the wheat and separating it from the weeds, as Holy Scripture says (see Mt. 3:12). The current tribulations teach us and train us to remain always faithful to the Lord and to our holy Faith, according to the words of the Holy Scripture: “The one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mt. 10:22) and “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). And only this matters.
FULFILLING THE REQUESTS OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA While the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart according to her instructions is still waiting to be done, what can we do as individuals and families in our homes to fulfil the requests of Our Lady of Fatima? CARDINAL BURKE: I could not recommend more to you the family Rosary. Our Lady, as you know, at Fatima was always urging the prayer of the Rosary, even as she did in a dramatic way also in her apparitions at Lourdes in the 19th century. So the family Rosary would be a
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most important way to embrace a life of prayer and reparation and then connect with the family Rosary the enthronement of the images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the home. There are beautiful home rituals which a family can employ preparing a few days in advance and then carrying out a great act of devotion in placing the images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the home in order to be reminded constantly that Christ and His Blessed Mother are with us always. And in this way, too, if we consecrate our homes, and by consecrating our homes consecrate our lives, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we will be those living agents of that transformation which Our Lord wishes for the whole world and so I would urge that very much. (...) We need to make our homes an extension of our parish church, in the sense that we live in the home that incomparable grace, which we receive in the Church through Confession and the Holy Eucharist. With the enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the enshrinement of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the home comes the practice which Our Lady herself explicitly asks of us in her apparitions, namely the observance of the First Saturdays of the month. And this would be so important to us, once we have enthroned the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to observe on the Thursday, before the First Friday, a time of reparation for sin, the First Friday, our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, including, if possible the reception of Holy Communion, but then following that, as Our Lady requested explicitly at Fatima, the observance of the First Saturday. And we can be certain that, as the angel told the children, Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother will not fail to hear these supplications, especially as she herself has asked us to do so. And this is something we can all do. We can’t consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. That only the Holy Father can do. But we all can observe the First Saturdays and that will bring a tremendous grace into our lives, but also for our whole world.
What is the best first step for families to take to reform their lives according to Our Lady of Fatima’s call? FR. LANZETTA: The first step for families to respond to Our Lady’s request is to pray together the Holy Rosary. Let us begin with this beautiful prayer being said every day by all members of the family. The Rosary is the best way to respond to Our Lady’s request. It is also a bit penitential because we have to be faithful to this commitment every day. We have to be strong enough to keep going on despite possible distractions. The more we pray the Rosary, the more we appreciate how beautiful it is to be in communion with Our Lady, because we pray these Hail Mary’s in a way to echo the words of the angel coming to bring this great news of the Incarnation of God. And the Rosary is also very important to keep the true faith against all errors circulating. In fact, St. Louis Grignion de Montfort says that heretics normally don’t pray the Hail Mary with the excuse of praying exclusively the Our Father, which is evangelical, the prayer that Jesus taught to His Apostles. But in refusing to pray the Hail Mary, in fact, they refuse to profess the very first mystery of our faith, the Incarnation of the Word. so praying the Rosary is the best way to keep the true faith in these very difficult times. The book I would recommend to appreciate the importance of the message of Fatima and being consecrated to Our Lady is St. Louis Grignion de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary. This is a beautiful book, the very foundation of our Marian devotion. Why should we be consecrated to Our Lady? Is this consecration diminishing the importance of Christ, diminishing the importance of our Baptism? Not at all. Consecration to Our Lady is the best way to live out those vows that we took in the moment of our Baptism. To be in communion with God through Our Lady. To be perfectly configured to Jesus through Our Blessed Mother Mary. FR. CLOVIS: The first thing for families is the Rosary. There should be a daily Rosary in every family. On the very day a couple gets married they should start praying the Rosary together. DETAIL OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN: THE CELEBRATION OF HER IMMACULATE HEART (C.1750). ENGRAVING BY G. PETRINI AFTER J. OLIVIERI. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON.
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We need to remember that God listens to the voices of little children. Our Lord tells us that in the Scriptures. And the angel said as much appearing to the three children. He said: “Pray much, pray very much. The Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy upon you. He will bring peace on your country, because of your prayers.” Children, because of their innocence, are like angels and God listens to them. We should train and ask our children to pray. The family Rosary is important for getting into the habit of prayer. It is easy, it becomes natural, you feel uncomfortable if you have not prayed the Rosary. Little children will do what little children will do. They will make noise, they will cry, they will pull the Rosary, they will break the beads. It doesn’t matter. They will nudge each other, they will even fight, they fall asleep. It does not matter. Pray the Rosary. I am saying that from my own personal experience. One of my earliest memories is the fact that we used to kneel around my grandmother’s bed and we’d say the Rosary. I remember many times getting a tap on the head because I had fallen asleep. It didn’t matter. Once the habit is there, as you grow, you have an instinctive inclination to turn to Our Lady in times of need. The monthly confession is also necessary. Again, as Our Lady said, this way you will renew yourself each month. It is also important to go to confession as a family. That way the children see their parents go to confession and they think nothing strange of it. So you don’t just send the children, go yourself. The miraculous medal is another means by which we can fulfil our duties and also the brown scapular. I think it is also very important if we are to take this first step in reforming our families according to the call of Fatima, to read the lives of the saints. Little children remember stories. The lives of saints are the lives of heroes and all of us want to be heroes, especially children. (...) When they hear of the sacrifices the child saints made, Blessed Alexandrina, for instance, how she spent decades in bed and suffered gladly and willingly, children see that they can do something like that as well. You can use this at the time when they themselves are suffering from an illness. You can tell them to offer up their suffering. This way you are already training them. Also keep close to your angels, ask the angels for help and train your children to do that. 74
Once we have done the consecration to Our Lady according to St. Louis de Montfort, what are the principal means of persevering and constantly renewing the consecration in our lives? Especially when the external circumstances seem to have been affected very little or not at all by our consecration? FR. LANZETTA: The principal means of persevering in our consecration to Our Lady and renewing it is, in fact, to make the Act of Consecration anew every day. So it would be very good to start each single day with a special consecration of yourself to the Blessed Mother Mary with your morning prayers. Repeating this consecration every day gives you a fresh grace to be faithful to that consecration, to carry out that commitment throughout the day, to be faithful to Our Lady, so that you might be faithful to Jesus. In repeating this Marian consecration you also have to be aware that it is important to live in grace. It is an essential requirement in order to comply with Our Lady’s request and will is to keep sanctifying grace habitually. In consecrating yourself to Our Lady, of course, you have that awareness of the call to be co-redeemer with Our Lady. This call can be heeded only if you live in a state of grace. So that consecration helps you to keep sanctifying grace in your soul. That sanctifying grace kept always in your life is the only possible way forward to respond generously to Our Lady’s request. What do you think most hinders the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary? PROF. DE MATTEI: The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a certainty. Our Lady never speaks nonsense and never recants Her promises. She keeps what She has promised. We need to have an unshakable confidence: the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph and we must ask Our Lady for the immense grace of being instruments in this Triumph.
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opinion
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b y D R . J O S E P H S H AW
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he coronavirus epidemic has brought hardship and suffering to many, and inconvenience to everyone. Like many I have scanned the social-media horizon for good news to lighten the gloom – and of course there has been some. I have also relished new sources of amusement. One which I had not expected has been the complaints of members of Britain’s commentariat about – horrors – having to spend time with their children. Young people are the products of their education and environment. One of the really interesting results of the lockdown, and of parents and children being forced to spend time together, is that the effects are by no means all negative. CNN has published a long article on how parents and children who actually spend time with each other, get to know each other and learn to get along.1 One mother told them: “over the course of the past month, …her kids, ages 8, 7 and 4, have become better behaved, kinder to one another and more independent.” How is it that children have become more independent, you might ask, when deprived of the school environment in which they have to operate entirely without parental supervision? How is it that they have become kinder to each other, when deprived of the school environment which, we are endlessly told, is essential for children’s socialisation? SUMMER 2020
CNN notes that all is not well with that supposedly wonderful school environment. “Between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression rose by roughly 60 percent among those ages 14 to 17, and by 47 percent among those ages 12 to 13, according to a 2019 study. Suicides among 10- to 24-year-olds rose 56 percent from 2007 to 2017.” Their explanation is that children at school are often stressed by having too much to do. I won’t say: “by being academically overstretched”, because no one would believe it, but they do have a huge amount of often pointless stuff to do, including shuttling between school and after-school activities. One of the reasons children are so comprehensively time-tabled is to enable both parents to hold down full-time jobs, and we were let into a little secret early in the epidemic,
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that children being at school is necessary to our economy of often poorly-paid women in the workforce, notably in the health sector. Schools are necessary as holding-pens for children whose parents are too busy to look after them. However, the length of the school day is not the only, or the most serious, problem. Schools can be places profoundly unconducive to good mental health, the development of healthy relationships, self-confidence and independence, and intellectual curiosity. One of the most important factors in parents deciding to home-educate their children is bullying, which as children grow older often takes a sexual form. It is a sobering thought that many children who appear to cope with this do so by adapting themselves to it: by making sure they are part of the “in-crowd”; by adopting a cynical attitude to relationships; and by repudiating the most consistently unfashionable accessory of school life, a genuine interest in the subjects being studied. Not all schools are equally bad, but the pattern of ever-lengthening school days, begun and ended in the company of parents equally exhausted and stressed by the demands of work, has an effect on relationships with parents. You can’t know your children, and they can’t know you, if you don’t spend time with them. This is something felt acutely by many parents, and one often sees attempts to make up for it, above all with the concept of “quality time”. I’m sorry to say it, but with time there is no quality without quantity. Your children don’t necessarily want to play with you: they just want you to be around. Children at home during the lockdown have had the chance, as CNN notes, of helping with the cooking; we can add that they will come to appreciate their parents’ knowledge and experience if they get the chance to talk to them, and are perhaps taught by them. If parents and children come to know each other, and be influenced by each other, they will establish connections of shared experiences, shared reactions, and shared values. For most people, having the children in the house all day, and trying to help them engage with lessons which may or may not be beamed in via Zoom from school, is a peculiar experience which is only possible because they themselves are now working from home, or perhaps not working at all. It is not a typical experience of home-educating your children, which 76
starts with being able to choose what, when, and how, the children are to learn. All the same it is a taste of something familiar to home-schoolers: of having responsibility for one’s children all day long. The great, rotten boast of modern education is that, instead of acting on behalf of parents, a school relieves parents of responsibility for educating their children, for which parents are not deemed morally or intellectually fit, on behalf of the all-beneficent state. As well as being destructive of the values and culture passed on within the family, this is also destructive of the relationship between parents and children. A challenge for parents navigating the easing of lockdown will be how to retain some of the advantages of this strange period in all of our lives while gratefully embracing many aspects of returning normality. One lesson may be that you can benefit your child more by spending an evening together chatting, listening to music, reading books, or playing cards, than by arranging extra violin lessons or advanced Mandarin classes. And that your own free time and lack of exhaustion may have more value for them than a foreign holiday you can afford only if you take on more hours at work.
Reflecting on
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A c o l u m n b y M AT T H E W M C C U S K E R
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 nine children. ENDNOTES: 1.
“Why some kids are happier right now, and other unexpected effects of quarantine” by Elissa Strauss, CNN, April 27, 2020.
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ONE OF THE FOUR SURVIVING EXEMPLIFICATIONS OF THE MAGNA CARTA OF 1215, WRITTEN IN IRON GALL INK ON PARCHMENT IN MEDIEVAL LATIN. THE BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON.
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n the analysis published earlier in this edition of Calx Mariae I referred on a couple of occasions to Magna Carta, a document that has had an incalculable impact on the development of law and governance not just in England but across the world and through the centuries. The original form of Magna Carta was signed by King John at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. The king was forced to accept its terms by barons indignant at his abuses of power. His obligation to implement it was later annulled by Pope Innocent III on the grounds that his consent was forced. However,
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a modified form was reissued in 1216 by John’s son and heir Henry III and then again in 1217. In order to distinguish the documents from another issued at the same time, it was referred to as magna carta libertatum, “the great charter of liberties”. Over the course of the Middle Ages key clauses of the “Magna Carta” were repeatedly reaffirmed, often during periods of conflict between crown and nobility, and it came to be regarded as one of the foundational documents of the English Constitution. While only clauses 1, 9 and 39 still remain on the statute book, the principles of justice which it expresses have long 77
been considered to express the spirit of English law and government. William Blackstone, in his profoundly influential work Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), identified Magna Carta as the oldest written law in England and one of the foundational documents underlying the “the absolute rights of individuals”, the protection of which Blackstone considered one of the key “objects of the laws of England”. He further explained: “that laws, when prudently framed, are by no means subversive but rather introductive of liberty; for… where there is no law, there is no freedom. But then, on the other hand, that constitution or frame of government, that system of laws, is alone calculated to maintain civil liberty, which leaves the subject entire master of his own conduct, except in those points wherein the public good requires some direction or restraint.” He continued: “The idea and practice of this political or civil liberty flourish in their highest vigour in these kingdoms, where it falls little-short of perfection, and can only be lost or destroyed by the folly or demerits of its owner: the legislature, and of course the laws of England, being peculiarly adapted to the preservation of this inestimable blessing even in the meanest subject. Very different from the modern constitutions of other states, on the continent of Europe, and from the genius of the imperial law; which in general are calculated to vest an arbitrary and despotic power of controlling the actions of the subject in the prince, or in a few grandees. And this spirit of liberty is… deeply implanted in our constitution, and rooted even in our very soil...” In light of current unprecedented restrictions on personal liberty in “these kingdoms” and the growth of ever more “arbitrary and despotic” states over the past century, it may be valuable to remind ourselves of the following key clauses of Magna Carta and reflect on their importance today.
the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs” Clause 20: “For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a villein the implements of his husbandry… None of these fines shall be imposed except by the assessment on oath of reputable men of the neighbourhood.” Clause 38: “in future no official shall place a man upon trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it” Clause 39: “no free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or standing in any way, nor will we proceed against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land” Clause 40: “to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice” Clause 45: “we will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well”
a Benedictine monk A LETTER FROM
Calx Mariae is pleased to publish the second in a series of letters from a Benedictine monk. Each letter discusses one of the most important virtues and principles in the Rule of St. Benedict – the rule on which the Western monastic tradition and Christian civilisation in Europe were founded. In the Prologue of his Rule, St. Benedict, the patron saint of Europe writes: “We have therefore to establish a school of the Lord’s service, in the institution of which we hope we are going to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice or the preservation of charity, do not therefore in fear and terror flee back from the way of salvation of which the beginning cannot but be a narrow entrance. For it is by progressing in the life of conversion and faith that, with heart enlarged and in ineffable sweetness of love, one runs in the way of God’s commandments, so that never deserting His discipleship but persevering until death in His doctrine within the monastery, we may partake by patience in the suffering of Christ and become worthy inheritors of His kingdom.” We began the series in the last issue with consideration of humility in the Rule of St. Benedict. In this edition, we look at the virtue of obedience. May these reflections help us to fulfil the duties of our state in life.
Clause 60: “all these liberties and customs that we have granted shall be observed in our kingdom so far as our own relations with our subjects. Let all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or laymen, observe them similarly in their relations with their own men.” Clause 63: “it is accordingly our wish and command that the English Church shall be free, and that men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fullness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and places for ever.”
Clause 1: “that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired… To all free men of our kingdom we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all 78
fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s
lessons from history
BENEDICT SENDING MAURO TO FRANCE AND PLACIDO TO SICILY (1540). BARTOLOMEO NERONI. FRESCO FROM THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT IN THE GREAT CLOISTER OF THE BENEDICTINE MONASTERY OF MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE IN TUSCANY.
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OBEDIENCE IN THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT
To begin with, it is precisely on Christ’s example of obedience that St. Benedict bases his own teaching. The whole of the Christian life, and all the more so that of the monk, is to conform us to Christ so that we can be sons in the Son, filii in Filio. From the opening words of the Prologue, it is the theme of obedience that establishes the whole tone of the Rule: the whole monastic enterprise is understood precisely as an exercise in obedience to God through the abbot or spiritual father, so that we may return through the toil of obedience to God, from whom we have strayed through the sloth of disobedience. It is for this reason that the monk renounces his own wills (i.e. preferences) from the beginning, in order that he give unwavering soldierly service to Christ, the true King, by means of the most powerful and most admirable weapons of obedience. It is interesting to note that St. Benedict says “wills” in the plural, voluntatibus, not one “will” in the singular. Indeed, as long as we serve anyone other than God, our will is never one but rather is divided among so many objects of desire that it is only with great difficulty that it resolves to focus on just one thing. It thus cannot be at peace, so tormented it is by the multitude of things that present themselves to it, all of which St. John the Apostle reduces to three basic categories: “the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world”. (1 John 2:16) It is through obedience that we fight against these vices, and by gradually overcoming them we thus eliminate the multiplicity of our wills, reducing them to the only one which will give us lasting peace: the will to do the will of God. The whole monastic enterprise tries to do just this, and those in the world, too, are called to serve Christ the true King with the weapons of obedience to His Will. What are these weapons of obedience? One possible answer is that they are the virtues, the four moral or cardinal virtues (prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice), and the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. In future letters, I would like to show how fundamental these virtues are to St. Benedict, but for now, let us return to the topic of obedience. The Prologue continues to develop the theme of obedience, introducing the various good reasons that
should motivate our obedience. First of all, there is the fear of hell: “With his good gifts which are in us, we must obey him at all times that he may never become the angry father who disinherits his sons, nor the dread lord, enraged by our sins, who punishes us forever as worthless servants for refusing to follow him to glory.” Then there is the desire for heaven. God seeks his workman – which we hope is us – and calls out to him, “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” If you hear this and your answer is “I do”, God then directs these words to you: “If you desire true and eternal life, keep your tongue free from vicious talk and your lips from all deceit: turn away from evil and do good; let peace be your quest and aim.” Thus, the second reason for being obedient to God is to go to heaven. But we see that even this is insufficient. The monastic fathers liken those who obey for the first reason, i.e. the fear of hell, to slaves afraid of getting whipped, and those who obey in order to go to heaven to hirelings who simply work for pay. If God is love, as Scripture reveals to us, can such low motives for obeying him suffice?
children of the bondwoman, but of the free: by the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free”. (Gal. 4:26, 31) “Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God”. (1 John 3:1) The third, best, and only enduring reason why we should obey God is simply for His own sake, because He is Goodness itself, because we love Him, because He is our Father and we are His sons. It is to this third state – that of sonship in charity – that St. Benedict wishes to bring us after climbing the first two steps of slavery in fear and servitude in hope of payment. For only then does the Lord say “once you have done this, my eyes will be upon you and my ears will listen for your prayers; and even before you ask me, I will say to you: Here I am. What, dear brothers, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life.” The monastery is the school where we learn to
“But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name.” (John 1:12) “Now the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the son abideth for ever. If therefore the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed”. (John 8:35-36) “But you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father). For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him”. (Rom. 8:15-17) “But that Jerusalem, which is above, is free: which is our mother…So then, brethren, we are not the
THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. ENGRAVING BY B. À BOLSWERT (1580-1633) AFTER P.P. RUBENS. WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON.
obey the Lord in charity, and St. Benedict calls us to persevere in this life-long task of learning to obey until the end of our earthly life. But how do we learn the lessons of obedience? How can we, full of ignorance and sin, know what is pleasing to God? Who will explain the Scriptures to us that we may live as they teach? We thus have need of a human teacher who knows the way and can lead us. St. Benedict himself is one of these teachers through the Rule; but we need also a living teacher who can help us to implement the Rule and obey it one step at a time, and this is the abbot, for as St. Benedict observes, “…there are the cenobites, that is to say, those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot”. (RB 1) The abbot, of course, is there to lead us to God; he has been trained to, and seeks to, listen to God. As our ability to listen to Him is still coarse, unrefined and very weak, we submit ourselves to him out of love for God, as St. Pachomius admirably puts it: “Listen, or submit yourself to someone who can listen.” This is nothing strange or new in Christianity; it is the very logic of the Gospel, and of the Incarnation itself, for “whoever listens to you, listens to me”. (Lk. 10:16) It is for this reason that we should “obey the orders of the abbot unreservedly” and “hate the urgings of selfwill” as obstacles to that obedience. (RB 4) St. Benedict sees obedience as a kind and expression of humility: “The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience, which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all”. (RB 5) As it is a concrete expression of our love for Christ, our obedience should be prompt and “free from any grumbling or any reaction of unwillingness.” It should be rather like the obedience of Christ, who became obedient even to death, as the third step of humility states. The fourth step seems to continue the logic; not just obedient unto death, but even to death on a cross, for our obedience should be given even “under difficult, unfavourable, or even unjust conditions”. In these moments, St. Benedict tells us, the monk must silently embrace suffering in and with his conscience, without seeking to diminish or escape that suffering, for “the faithful must endure everything, even contradiction, for the Lord’s sake, saying in the person of those who suffer, ‘For your sake we are put to death continually; we are regarded as sheep marked for slaughter.’ They are so confident in their expectation of reward
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the world as well to exercise obedience, since it is to God that we give our obedience. Study the Rule, try to follow it. Study the Scriptures, obey what you read. Listen to your family members, be obedient to your spouses and, in general, try to seek not what is better for your selves but what is better for others. Those who have a spiritual director should listen to him and follow his advice. Embrace the occasions for obeying, especially when it goes against your inclinations or preferences. By so doing we draw God’s grace into our souls, which is able to heal us of chronic spiritual illnesses. Finally, there is the authority of the Church. In general this is the case, as Scripture and Tradition teach us, that we should render a filial obedience to the Roman Pontiff, to our Bishops and priests, and to other ecclesiastical Superiors; nor should we neglect to obey the civil laws and authorities. In short, though not in any way bound by the vow of obedience, those in the world shall wholeheartedly and respectfully submit themselves to all lawful authority. The same sources of divine revelation also teach us, however, that even the official representatives of the Church, be he cardinal or even pope, cannot only fall into serious and scandalous sins but even err in their teaching and lead others astray. If and when that happens, we must pray for the shepherd who errs, and not use his misfortune as an occasion to indulge in detraction so as to make ourselves feel righteous. And if ever we are asked by a person of authority, either spiritual or temporal, to believe or to teach or to do something which is contrary to divine revelation and the manifest will of God, we must remember that our faith is that of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and remember what they have told us: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema;” (Gal. 1:8) and “We ought to obey God, rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
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ST. BENEDICT
the father and patron we need
saints for our time
from God that they continue joyfully and say, ‘But in all this we overcome because of him who so greatly loved us’.” (RB 7) But what if the monk doesn’t think he is capable of doing what he has been asked to do? St. Benedict addresses that question in chapter 68. If a monk believes that is the case, and after trying to fulfil the command sees that it does indeed surpass his strength or ability, “he should choose the appropriate moment and explain patiently to his superior the reasons why he cannot perform the task. This he ought to do without pride, obstinacy or refusal. If after the explanation the superior is still determined to hold to his original order, then the junior must recognise that this is best for him. Trusting in God’s help, he must in love obey.” St. Benedict says ex caritate, from the motive of love. We thus see how in his mind, out of love for God we are able to do anything God asks us to do through our legitimate superiors. We might not do it as well as someone else might, or as well as we would like to, but insofar as we are the ones asked to do it, we should obey. One of the last instructions St. Benedict gives us concerning obedience (RB 71) is that it “is a blessing (bonum) to be shown by all, not only to the abbot, but also to one another as brothers, since we know that it is by this way of obedience that we go to God.” Insofar as our brothers are also called to listen to and obey God, they too can be vessels of divine wisdom, and whenever their judgement helps us move closer to God, it is to be followed; indeed, a mark of good zeal (RB 72) is that monks earnestly compete in obedience to one another! Why? Because each one is to pursue, not “what he judges better for himself, but rather what he judges to be better for someone else.” Now I know that for those who do not live in a monastery, and don’t live with a religious superior whom they must obey on a daily basis, implementing this essential element of Benedictine spirituality may seem difficult. But there are plenty of occasions in
by MARIA MADISE
“There was a man of venerable life, blessed by grace, and blessed in name, for he was called ‘Benedictus’ or Bennet: who, from his younger years, carried always the mind of an old man; for his age was inferior to his virtue: all vain pleasure he contemned, and though he were in the world, and might freely have enjoyed such commodities as it yieldeth, yet did he nothing esteem it, nor the vanities thereof.”1 So begins Book II of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I the Great (590-604AD), which is wholly dedicated to the life and miracles of St. Benedict (c. 480-547AD), the Father of Western monasticism and co-patron of Europe. Gregory I was himself a monk before being elected pope and was tenderly devoted to his Holy Father Benedict. He gives a short account of the saint’s life before reporting on a few of the “notable things and acts” which he had learned directly from his disciples. “He was born in the province of Nursia, of honourable parentage, and brought up at Rome in the study of humanity. But for as much as he saw many by reason of such learning to fall to dissolute and lewd life, he drew back his foot, which he had as it were now set forth into the world, lest, entering too far in acquaintance therewith, he likewise might have fallen into that dangerous and godless gulf: wherefore, giving over his book, and forsaking his father’s house and wealth, with a resolute mind only to serve God, he sought for some place, where he might attain to the desire of his holy purpose: and in this sort he departed, instructed with learned ignorance, and furnished with unlearned wisdom.”
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SAINT BENEDICT, DETAIL OF THE FRESCO CRUCIFIXION AND SAINTS (1441) BY FRA ANGELICO. CONVENTO DI SAN MARCO, FLORENCE.
Pope Gregory’s history of the life and miracles of St. Benedict is the main source of the biography of the holy Abbot to this day. In this little portrait of the kind of holiness which built Christian civilisation, let us follow the antiphons of the office of Lauds, drawn from Pope Gregory’s account, for the feast of St. Benedict, 11 July.2 For St. Benedict, the Divine Office was the work of God of which he said: “let nothing be put before the Work of God”. (Nihil operi Dei praeponatur Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 43.) It is fitting therefore that we honour him in the light of what he honoured most.
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Ant 1: The man of God, Benedict, made the sign of the Cross; and the glass containing the deadly drink was broken into pieces, as if a stone had been hurled against it. Pope Gregory tells us that: “…by reason of the great report of his wonderful holy life, his name became very famous. Not far from the place where he remained there was a monastery, the Abbot whereof was dead: whereupon the whole Convent came unto the venerable man Bennet, entreating him very earnestly that he would vouchsafe to take upon him the charge and government of their Abbey: long time he denied them, saying that their manners were divers from his, and therefore that they should never agree together: yet at length, overcome with their entreaty, he gave his consent. Having now taken upon him the charge of the Abbey, he took order that regular life should be observed, so that none of them could, as before they used, through unlawful acts decline from the path of holy conversation, either on the one side or on the other: which the monks perceiving, they fell into a great rage, accusing themselves that ever they desired him to be their Abbot, seeing their crooked conditions could not endure his virtuous kind of government: and therefore when they saw that under him they could not live in unlawful sort, and were loath to leave their former conversation, and found it hard to be enforced with old minds to meditate and think upon new things: and because the life of virtuous men is always grievous to those that be of wicked conditions, some of them began to devise, how they might rid him out of the way: and therefore, taking counsel together, they agreed to poison his wine: which being done, and the glass wherein that wine was, according to the custom, offered to the Abbot to bless, he, putting forth his hand, made the sign of the cross, and straightway the glass, that was holden far off, brake in pieces, as though the sign of the cross had been a stone thrown against it: upon which accident the man of God by and by perceived that the glass had in it the drink of death, which could not endure the sign of life: and therefore rising up, with a mild countenance and quiet mind, he called the monks together, and spake thus unto them: ‘Almighty God have mercy upon you, and forgive you: why have you used me in this manner? Did not I tell you before hand, that our manner of
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living could never agree together? Go your ways, and seek ye out some other father suitable to your own conditions, for I intend not now to stay any longer amongst you.’ When he had thus discharged himself, he returned back to the wilderness which so much he loved, and dwelt alone with himself, in the sight of his Creator, who beholdeth the hearts of all men.” Ant. 2: When he had finished his prayer, he set up three stones to mark the spot; and almighty God supplied water on the rocky heights. According to Pope Gregory: “Amongst the monasteries which he had built in those parts, three of them were situated upon the rocks of a mountain, so that very painful it was for the monks to go down and fetch water, especially because the side of the hill was so steep that there was great fear of danger: and therefore the monks of those Abbeys with one consent came unto the servant of God, Bennet, giving him to understand, how laborious it was for them daily to go down unto the lake for water: and therefore they added, that it was very necessary to have them removed to some other places. The man of God, comforting them with sweet words, caused them to return back again; and the next night, having with him only the little boy Placidus (of whom we spake before), he ascended up to the rock of that mountain, and continued there a long time in prayer; and when he had done, he took three stones, and laid them in the same place for a mark, and so, none of them being privy to that he had done, he returned back to his own Abbey. And the next day, when the foresaid monks came again about their former business, he said thus unto them: ‘Go your way to the rock, and in the place where you find three stones laid one upon another, dig a little hole, for almighty God is able to bring forth water in the top of that mountain, and so to ease you of that great labour which you take in fetching it so far.’ Away they went, and came to the rock of the mountain according to his direction, which they found as it were sweating drops of water, and after they had with a spade made an hollow place, it was straightways filled, and water flowed out so abundantly, that it doth plentifully, even to this day, spring out and run down from the top to the very bottom of that hill.”
Ant 3. After the glorious confessor of the Lord had said a prayer, he gave a blessing; and the stone upon which the ancient enemy had been sitting was raised immediately. “Upon a certain day,” Pope Gregory writes, “when the monks were building up the cells of the same Abbey, there lay a stone which they meant to employ about that business: and when two or three were not able to remove it, they called for more company, but all in vain, for it remained so immovable as though it had grown to the very earth: whereby they plainly perceived that the devil himself did sit upon it, seeing so may men's hands could not so much as once move it: wherefore, finding that their own labours could do nothing, they sent for the man of God, to help them with his prayers against the devil, who hindered the removing of that stone. The holy man came, and after some praying, he gave it his blessing, and then they carried it away so quickly, as though it had been of no weight at all.”
Ant 4. When the soul returned the body of the stripling trembled and, before the eyes of all present, appeared living. Relating the story of this miracle, Pope Gregory states: “Being upon a day gone out with his monks to work in the field, a country man carrying the corpse of his dead son came to the gate of the Abbey, lamenting the loss of his child: and inquiring for holy Bennet, they told him that he was abroad with his monks in the field. Down at the gate he laid the dead body, and with great sorrow of soul ran in haste to seek out the venerable father. At the same time, the man of God was returning homeward from work with his monks: whom so soon as he saw, he [the country man] began to cry out: ‘Give me my son, give me my son!’ The man of God, amazed at these words, stood still, and said: ‘What, have I taken away your son?’ ‘No, no,’ quoth the sorrowful father,’ but he is dead: come for Christ Jesus' sake and restore him to life.’ The servant of God, hearing him speak in that manner, and seeing
HOW BENEDICT HUNTS THE ENEMY ABOVE THE STONE (C.1498). LUCA SIGNORELLI. FRESCO FROM THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT IN THE THE GREAT CLOISTER OF THE BENEDICTINE MONASTERY OF MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE IN TUSCANY. THE DISPOSITION OF THIS SERIES FOLLOWS ST. GREGORY'S ACCOUNT OF BENEDICT'S LIFE.
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According to Pope Gregory: “On a certain day, as venerable Bennet was, in his cell, the foresaid young Placidus, the holy man's monk, went out to take up water at the lake, and putting down his pail carelessly, fell in himself after it, whom the water forthwith carried away from the land so far as one may shoot an arrow. The man of God, being in his cell, by and by knew this, and called in haste for Maurus, saying: ‘Brother Maurus, run as fast as you can, for Placidus, that went to the lake to fetch water, is fallen in, and is carried a good way off.’ A strange thing, and since the time of Peter the Apostle never heard of ! Maurus, craving his father's blessing, and departing in all haste at his commandment, ran to that place upon the water, to which the young lad was carried by force thereof, thinking that he had all that while gone upon the land: and taking fast hold of him by the hair of his head, in all haste he returned back again: and so soon as he was at land, coming to himself he looked behind him, and then knew very well that he had before run
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Ant 5: When Placidus was carried out of the water, he saw above his head the robe of the Abbot, who was rescuing him from the waves.
upon the water: and that which before he durst not have presumed, being now done and past, he both marvelled, and was afraid at that which he had done. Coming back to the father, and telling him what had happened, the venerable man did not attribute this to his own merits, but to the obedience of Maurus: but Maurus on the contrary, said that it was done only upon his commandment, and that he had nothing to do in that miracle, not knowing at that time what he did. But the friendly contention proceeding of mutual humility, the young youth himself that was saved from drowning did determine: for he said that he saw when he was drawn out of the water the Abbot's garment upon his head, affirming that it was he that had delivered him from that great danger.” At the end of his account, Peter, the deacon who accompanied Pope Gregory and appeared as his interlocutor in the dialogues, expresses the thoughts of many readers down through the ages when he exclaims: “Certainly they be wonderful things which you report, and such as may serve for the edification of many: for mine own part, the more that I hear of his miracles, the more do I still desire.” When we consider our duty to recover Catholic Europe, the cradle of Christian civilisation, from the “dangerous and godless gulf ” into which it has fallen, we can draw strength from our holy father St. Benedict who is only too willing to help us, provided we have the obedience and humility to follow his guidance. In the professional world, a demanding project is rarely undertaken without the support of powerful patrons. St. Benedict, the Father of Western Monasticism is our patron in the great work of rebuilding Christian civilisation. Let the exhortation that concludes his Holy Rule always guide our work: “prefer nothing whatever to Christ”!
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his monks upon compassion to solicit the poor man's suit, with great sorrow of mind he said: ‘Away, my good brethren, away: such miracles are not for us to work, but for the blessed Apostles: why will you lay such a burthen upon me, as my weakness cannot bear?’ But the poor man, whom excessive grief enforced, would not give over his petition, but swore that he would never depart, except he did raise up his son. ‘Where is he, then?’ quoth God’s servant. He answered that his body lay at the gate of the Abbey: to which place when the man of God came with his monks, he kneeled down and lay upon the body of the little child, and rising, he held up his hands towards heaven, and said: ‘Behold not, O Lord, my sins, but the faith of this man, that desireth to have his son raised to life, and restore that soul to the body, which thou hast taken away.’ He had scarce spoken these words, and behold the soul returned back again, and therewith the child’s body began to tremble in such sort that all which were present did behold it in strange manner to pant and shake. Then he took it by the hand and gave it to his father, but alive and in health.”
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ENDNOTES: 1.
2.
This and the following extracts are taken from: THE DIALOGUES OF SAINT GREGORY, SURNAMED DIALOGUS AND THE GREAT, POPE OF ROME AND THE FIRST OF THAT NAME. Divided into Four Books, wherein he entreateth of the Lives and Miracles of the Saints in Italy, and of the Eternity of Men’s Souls. Translated into our English Tongue by “P. W.” and printed at Paris in 1608. Re-edited by Edmund G. Gardner in 1911, and again by the Saint Pachomius Library in 1995; http://www.umilta.net/bennet.html St. Benedict’s feast day is traditionally kept on 21 March, when he died in the year 543 or 547. The second feast to honour the translation of his relics is kept on 11 July. For Benedictines, the second feast was often the more solemn, because 21 March always falls in Lent.
From the UK: Please return this form in the pre-paid envelope provided, or send to FREEPOST SPUC From overseas: SPUC, UNIT B, 3 WHITACRE MEWS, STANNARY STREET, SE11 4AB, UK Voice of the Family is a coalition of pro-life and pro-family organisations whose work is undertaken through the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC Pro-Life Ltd), a company registered in England and Wales. Payments are managed by SPUC and used to support the work of Voice of the Family. SPUC will add your name, address and telephone number to our database so that we can contact you by post or telephone about campaigns and opportunities to donate. We will keep your details safe and will not sell, swap or give them away. You can change your preferences anytime by email: dataprotect@spuc.org.uk or call: 020 7091 7091. You can view our privacy policy at spuc.org.uk/privacy-policy. I AM A L S O H A P P Y F O R Y O U T O C O N TA C T M E BY E M A I L
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CAL X M A R IA E
SUMMER 2020
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YOUR COMMENTS: .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................. ..............................................................................................................................................
“It is my pleasure to recommend Voice of the Family’s magazine, Calx Mariae.
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Its title, with its allusion to the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15), should remind us that
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the Holy Virgin’s victory over our ancient enemy is already assured. I hope that its presentation of the beauty of Catholic teaching will contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation. I pray that its content will help all those who read it to draw ever closer to our Blessed Mother at this time of trial for the Church – like St John, those who remain close to her will not abandon the Lord. I would encourage readers to assist this wonderful apostolate with their prayers and generous support.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider,
O.R.C.
THE CHRIST CHILD SWEEPING A BROOD OF REPTILIAN MONSTERS OUT OF THE BELIEVER'S HEART WITH A BROOM (C.1600). ENGRAVING BY A. WIERIX (ANTWERP). FROM COR JESU AMANTI SACRUM NO.10. WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON.
O beatam cordis aedem! Te cui caelum dedit sedem purgat suis manibus.
Animose puer verre, monstra tuo vultu terre, tere tuis pedibus.
“O blessed temple of the heart! Let him to whom heaven has given his abode clean you with his own hands. Spirited boy, sweep away! Frighten the monsters with your look, crush them under your feet.”