Reforming our lives according to Our Lady’s call at Fatima

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, 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.

“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.

“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 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.

“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.

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.

DETAIL OF A PAGE FROM ILUSTRAÇÃO PORTUGUESA, 29 OCTOBER 1917, SHOWING THE PEOPLE LOOKING AT THE SUN DURING THE FÁTIMA APPARITIONS .

rome life forum q&a 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?

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.

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

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.

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. 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.

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?

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, 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.

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?

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

SCHOOLS AND under lockdown HOME-SCHOOLING

by DR. JOSEPH SHAW

The 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?

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,

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 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.

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.

Reflecting on MAGNA CARTA TODAY

A column by MATTHEW MCCUSKER

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.

In 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, 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

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.

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 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”

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.”

A LETTER FROM a Benedictine monk

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.

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.