66 minute read
Law and liberty: Britain’s response to the pandemic
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.
Advertisement
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 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 • 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.
“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 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-
THE MAGNA CARTA OF 1215, WRITTEN IN IRON GALL INK ON PARCHMENT IN MEDIEVAL LATIN. THE BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON.
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”:
“there are still a minority of members of the public who simply do not wish to comply with the restrictions…
“And most of those individuals wanted to argue their case as to why they were doing something within the guidelines.
“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 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.”
and
“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:
GEORGE ORWELL, 1940. 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:
“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 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
“A constitution” he continued:
“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
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.
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. “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 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.
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 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… “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:
“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.”
“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! 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. Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical letter Libertas, promulgated 20 June 1888, No 1. 2. Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, No. 5 3. Ibid. 4. Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, No. 8. 5. Libertas, No. 8. 6. Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical letter Immortale Dei, No. 3. 7. Libertas, No. 10. 8. Ibid. 9. Libertas, No. 13. 10. 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. 11. Kenneth Rogoff, “Mapping the COVID-19 recession”, Project Syndicate, 7 April 2020, [accessed online]. 12. Toby Young “Latest News”, Lockdown Skeptics, 5 May 2020, [accessed online]. 13. Fraser Nelson, “The human cost of the coronavirus lockdown”, The Spectator, 10 April 2020, [accessed online]. 14. “Financial crisis caused 500,000 extra cancer deaths, according to Lancet study”,
The Telegraph, 26 May 2016, [accessed online]. 15. Jonathan Sumption, interview on The World at One, BBC Radio 4, 30 March 2020. 16. Libertas, No.16. 17. Libertas, No.18. 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. 19. “Sunbathing is banned”, The Daily Mail, 6 April 2020, [accessed online]. 20. 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). 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Pope Pius XI, Quadragesima anno, Nos. 79-80. 25. R. R. Reno, “Say ‘No’ to death’s dominion”, First Things, 23 March 2020.
DETAIL OF THE DISPUTATION OF THE HOLY SACRAMENT (1510), FRESCO. RAFFAELLO SANZIO. THE APOSTOLIC PALACE, VATICAN.
Due 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.
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
FATIMA
Heaven’s answer to a world in crisis
by H.E. RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE
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”.
We 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 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 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.
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
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
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 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
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, 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,
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 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.
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 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,
THE THREE CHILDREN OF FATIMA, 1917.
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
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 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 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. 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.
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.
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 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. Cf. Father Connell’s Confraternity Edition New Baltimore Catechism, No. 3 (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1949), pp. 5-7, nos. 3-4. 2. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2180. 3. 2 Pet. 3:13. 4. Cf. Rev. 19:7-9. 5. 2 Pet. 3:13. 6. Rev. 19:7-9. 7. “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]. 8. “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]. 9. “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. 10. 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. 11. “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. 12. “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. 13. Cf. Carmelo de Coimbra, pp. 64-65. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 69. 14. Cf. Jn 19, 26-27. 15. Jn 2, 5. 16. “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. 17. “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. 18. “Oferecei constantemente, ao Altíssimo, orações e sacrifícios.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 37. English translation: Carmelo de Coimbra Eng, p. 46. 19. “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.
The Eucharist
THE GREATEST TREASURE OF THE CHURCH IN TIME OF TRIBULATIONS
by H.E. BISHOP ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER
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”.
We 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 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)
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.
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
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 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
