Calx Mariae magazine issue 3, Winter 2018

S UG G EST ED D ONAT I ON £ 4 .50 - S EE PAG E 6 3 FOR M ORE D ETA I LS

MARIAE CALX

Rebuilding our Christian civilisation

FOCUS:

YOUNG PEOPLE, VOCATION AND HOLINESS OF LIFE

INCLUDING:

SYNODALITY:

perpetual revolution

BEAUTY: GOD’S MESSENGER

an exclusive interview with Dr Peter Kwasniewski

FALLING IN EUCHARISTIC LOVE reflections by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP S U G G E S T E D D O N AT I O N : £ 4 . 5 0 S E E P. 3 0 F O R D E TA I L S A V O I C E O F T H E FA M I LY P U B L I C AT I O N

ISSUE 3

WINTER 2018

MARIAE CALX

ISSUE 3

WINTER 2018

C ONTENTS 2 From the Editor 3 Decriminalisation of abortion: what does it mean and how to oppose it?

5 Synodality: perpetual revolution

by Liam Gibson 5

11 Prayer of St John Fisher for good bishops 12 Focus: young people, vocation and holiness of life 13 There is only one way to be happy: be holy

by Prof. Roberto de Mattei 17 For my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9)

by Fr Anthony Pillari

12

13

ROME LIFE FORUM 2019

29 Countering the challenges of today’s society as Catholic women

by Virginia Coda Nunziante

1 6 A N D 1 7 M AY, R O M E

CITY OF MAN

VS

23 Restoring the militant spirit - our fundamental duty as faithful Catholic men

by Varro Vooglaid

37 Reflections on the contemplative life

CITY OF GOD

23

29

42 Highlights of Created for Heaven: the mission of young adults in today’s world

GLOBAL ONE WORLD ORDER VS CHRISTENDOM

46 Beauty: God’s messenger interview with Dr Peter Kwasniewski

FOLLOWED

52 Falling in Eucharistic love reflections by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP

BY

THE

ITALIAN

MARCH

FOR

LIFE

ON

18

M AY

56 Lessons from history: a column by Matthew McCusker

S AV E

T H E

D AT E

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58 Holy House of Loreto 60 Litany of Loreto

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

From the Editor

EDITORIAL BOARD Liam Gibson Matthew McCusker John Smeaton John-Henry Westen

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EDITORIAL OFFICE VOICE OF THE FAMILY Unit B, 3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street, SE11 4AB, London, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7820 3148 Email: editor@voiceofthefamily.com www.voiceofthefamily.com/calxmariae DESIGN: Selina Fang PRINTERS: Buxton Press Publication is sponsored by:

Special thanks to: DISCLAIMER: Great care is taken to credit photos and seek permission before publishing. If you have a query regarding copyright, please contact the Editor. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission.

Donations for the continuation of this magazine in print will be gratefully received by Voice of the Family at the address above or online via:

www.voiceofthefamily.com/donate

DECRIMINALISATION OF ABORTION

What does it mean and how to oppose it?

BY L IA M GIB SON

O

n 23 October 2018 Members of Parliament decided by 208 votes to 123 to decriminalise abortion in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Although the bill that was proposed has little chance of becoming law, this vote was hugely significant because it was the second time the House of Commons supported decriminalisation. Abortion advocates are now powerful enough to implement their plans and are only waiting for a suitable opportunity to do so. The government’s Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill, expected in early 2019, will provide just such an opportunity. If in the coming months, the pro-life lobby fails to mobilise sufficient opposition, it seems certain that the UK will enact

one of the most barbaric abortion laws in Europe.

WHAT DOES DECRIMINALISATION MEAN?

To answer this question, it is necessary to explain the current legal situation regarding abortion. Even though there are more than 500 abortions every day in Britain, the Abortion Act 1967 does not authorise abortion on demand. Instead, it creates exceptions to the prohibition set out in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

Any abortion performed beyond the terms of the 1967 Act remains a criminal offence. The vast majority of abortions in Britain are supposedly carried out on mental health grounds, even though medical evidence demonstrates

that it can have a detrimental effect on mental health. Such abortions are almost certainly unlawful and the abortionists could be held criminally liable for them under the 1861 Act. The legislation introduced in the House of Commons on 20 November makes clear the extreme nature of what they propose.

• It would be lawful to perform an abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks.

• It would be virtually impossible to prosecute an unscrupulous doctor who aborts a baby after this time.

• It would be lawful for a woman to procure her own abortion at

© V O I C E O F T H E FA M I LY 2 0 1 8

Calx Mariae seeks to contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation by providing essential coverage and analysis in the areas of life, family and culture. Our aim in producing this magazine is to strengthen our readers in the faith and in their witness to the truth about human life and the family.

ISSN:2517-6455

ur recent youth conference in Rome, which coincided with the youth synod, was wonderful proof of the zeal and fidelity among young Catholics today and a source of great encouragement and hope. After a pilgrimage to the city’s holy sites and a conference addressing vocation, mission and holiness of life, we headed to all night Adoration to pray for the Church and her bishops gathered at the youth synod. A rota was drawn up to cover the night hours from 10pm to 8.30am, when His Eminence Cardinal Burke would celebrate Benediction. When my turn came at 4am, I realised that about ten young men had remained there following Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, standing firm as soldiers at the back of the church, rosary beads running through their fingers in ceaseless rounds. I wondered whether they would stay like this all night. They did. I wondered whether they would make it through Mass – their 12th hour of watching in this act of fidelity, commitment and love. Little did I expect to see two of them emerge from the sacristy at 9am as acolytes, straight as candlesticks themselves, leading the procession to the sanctuary to serve Mass for His Eminence, as attentive as if they’d had a good night’s sleep!

What was moving was not that they went without rest, but their spirit of perseverance, fidelity and love. Many must have thought: if such young men step up to serve the Church, all shall be well after all. Also, in a very beautiful way, everything discussed over the weekend came together in the night watch and service of these young men. The spirit we have in our service of God through our daily activities should be no different from the spirit shown in the work of these acolytes – it must stem from prayer and contemplation, and shed light for everyone around while honouring the Lord.

We are all called to serve God but must discern how best to do that. Our battle on earth is the same, but we have different roles in that battle. Some are generals, some their advisors, some soldiers on the frontline, some guard the camp, and some care for the wounded. However, no-one is meant to be an observer. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification,” says the Apostle. And Our Lord Himself told us to be perfect, as also our heavenly Father is perfect.

How we respond to this call is the most important question we have to work on. And the answer? Our Blessed Mother teaches us the answer: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum – Be it done unto me according to Thy word.

This issue, which focuses on young people, vocation and holiness of life comes at Advent – a time of fresh beginning, filled with expectation and hope for the birth of our Saviour. His Mother, and ours, guides us in the special vocation of our time, that is the defence of the Truth. This vocation is twofold as is her relationship to Christ. Like her we must defend the Truth as a mother defends her child, and like her, submit to the Truth as she submits to Him, who is Truth Himself.

We may never do anything truly extraordinary. But our perseverance in vigilance, keeping watch with Our Lord can be a witness of extraordinary fidelity and love. It is He Who ‘has done great things to me!’ The great thing for us to do is to remain in Adoration before the manger, the cross, the tabernacle, securely tied to Him with the Holy Rosary, a leash that would never allow us to wander far, and always offering our Fiat!

Pro-Life Action

EDITOR Maria Madise

Calx Mariae is published by Voice of the Family, an international coalition of 26 pro-life and pro-family organisations formed in support of Catholic teaching on the family. The following truths are particularly at the heart of Voice of the Family’s work: 99 Marriage, the exclusive, life-long union of one man and one woman, is the foundation of a stable and flourishing society and is the greatest protector of children, born and unborn.

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

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

CAL X M A R IA E

THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, LONDON.

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Pro-Life Action

ANALYSIS

ed for abortion are amongst the most disadvantaged members of the human family. Each Catholic, therefore, has a responsibility to do everything possible to prevent the decriminalisation of abortion.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP THIS HAPPENING?

VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE (C.1700). INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART, INDIANA.

any stage of pregnancy, up to 24 weeks.1 • Concealing the body of a baby who dies before, during or after birth would no longer be a criminal offence. (This provision is currently used to guard against the cover-up of infanticide and could, therefore, make it extremely difficult to prosecute someone who killed a baby born alive.)

Abortion advocates argue that the current law criminalises women. It 4

does not. It criminalises acts of lethal violence directed at unborn children.

Its purpose is also to protect women from the terrible physical and emotional suffering associated with abortion.

The Catechism of the Church maintains that for the followers of Christ the “duty of making oneself a neighbour to others and actively serving them becomes even more urgent when it involves the disadvantaged: ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ (Mt 5:43-44).”2 Unborn children target-

It is essential that the hundreds of MPs who didn’t vote during October’s debate hear from their constituents on the importance of opposing decriminalisation. Anyone who can should make an appointment to see their MP. If that is not possible, write a letter.

Letters are taken more seriously by politicians than emails or telephone calls.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) can help provide information about decriminalisation and how to talk to others about it and encourage them to lobby their MPs. And finally, please pray and ask others to pray. Speak to your parish priest. Ask if he will offer a Mass that we are spared this terrible evil.

On 12 December 1531, the Blessed Mother appeared to St Juan Diego. In the miraculous image she left him, she wears a black ribbon to signify that she is with child. Bearing within her the unborn Son of God, she freed the people of Mexico from human sacrifice and led them to the light of Christ.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Unborn, pray for us!

1.

2.

A draft Bill published by supporters of decriminalisation shortly before the vote on 23 October proposed to make it lawful for a woman to procure her own abortion at any stage of pregnancy, even during birth. Although this provision was removed from the text presented in Parliament 20 November it could re-emerge as an amendment at a later date.

CCC 1932

CAL X M A R IA E

SYNODALITY:

perpetual revolution

BY L IA M GIB SON

“In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous manoeuvres by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.” – Pius VI, Auctorem fidei 17941

E

vents in the Church are moving at such a pace that it may seem barely possible to take on board the repercussions of one innovation when we are confronted with the next. The haste with which Catholic discipline is being modified may give an impression of chaos and confusion but in fact what we are witnessing is the implementation of a well-planned and ruthless revolution inside the Church.

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The aim of this revolution is not to make the Church more liberal but to re-make the Church entirely. Each innovation attempts to shift the focus of the Catholic Faith away from God and onto man. Its aim is to elevate man, making him the master of his own destiny and temporal happiness. The Synod on Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment is merely the latest stage in this revolutionary process. In time,

however, it may prove to have been instrumental in furthering the idea of the perpetual revolution.

Shortly before the Youth Synod opened on 3 October, Pope Francis issued the Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio. This legislation paved the way for the Final Document produced by the Synod of Bishops to become part of “the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor of Peter once 5

ANALYSIS

it has been ratified and promulgated by him”.2 This development has potentially enormous implications for the human governance of the Church. When Paul VI instituted the Synod of Bishops 53 years ago to provide assistance to the pontiff through consultation and collaboration, he made it clear that the pope, as the successor of Peter, “holds a primacy of ordinary power over all the churches.”3 Previously the work of the bishops was regarded merely as advice which the pope could choose to consider when drafting a post-synodal exhortation. Now, however, he will have the option of adopting the final document of the synod instead of writing an exhortation. The prospect of the Final

that both documents are complementary and should be read in continuity so the controversial term could still be introduced to the magisterium in a roundabout way. And it makes other worryingly vague statements. It speaks of “paths of accompaniment in the faith of homosexual people” without making any distinction between pastoral programmes which promote chastity and the lobby groups that campaign for the acceptance of homosexual behaviour. Its assertion that the Church needs “a deeper anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration” of sexuality continues to reflect the view promoted at the Family Synod that the teaching passed down from the Apostles has somehow become outdated and does not fully respond to

Although much of the pro-LGBT language was deleted, the drafting process seems to reflect the sort of horse-trading more normally associated with the UN than the Holy See.

Report of the Youth Synod entering the magisterium makes the concerns surrounding it even more troubling.

While some commentators say that the report was not as bad as it might have been, others warn that the ambiguity it contains could be used to further undermine the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality.

The most striking example of this new magisterial approach is the possibility of the loaded “LGBT” [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] acronym being enshrined in the ordinary magisterium. The acronym does not appear in the 60-page final version of the document as it did in the Instrumentum Laboris. The text, however, insists 6

the complex situations of modern life.

Although much of the pro-LGBT language was deleted, the drafting process seems to reflect the sort of horse-trading more normally associated with the UN than the Holy See. A glancing reference to paragraph 16 of the 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is welcome, but this can do little to address the report’s overall weakness and ambiguity. An examination of this Letter does, however, stand in stark contrast with current attitudes within the Synod. Paragraph 16 states:

ANALYSIS

“The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a “heterosexual” or a “homosexual” and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.”4 A SYNODAL CHURCH

But it is the issue of synodality that is perhaps the most problematic aspect of the final report. Despite gaining the necessary two-thirds majority for approval, it was these paragraphs which faced the greatest opposition. The prominence given to this issue came as a surprise to many, including the bishops at the synod, as it wasn’t included in the Instrumentum Laboris and played little, if any, part in the discussions.5 Why then does it dominate the third part of the Final Document? The unnamed source from the synod quoted

by Edward Pentin in the National Catholic Register may point to the answer:

er responsibility on national episcopal conferences.7 He has repeatedly stressed the need for a synodal Church – a listening Church – but what exactly would that mean? This is what he told Fr Antonio Spadaro SJ, editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, shortly after his election: “... And all the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibilitas in credendo, this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together. [...]

We must walk together: the people, the bishops and the pope. Synodality should be lived at various levels. Maybe it is time to change the methods of the Synod of Bishops, because it seems to me that the current method is not dynamic.”8 The dynamic method the Holy Father appears to have in mind would result in a more egalitarian Church:

“Synodality as a constitutive dimension of the Church, gives us the most appropriate interpretive framework to understand the hierarchical ministry. If we understand as St John Chrysostom said, that the ‘church and synod are synonymous’ because the Church is none other than the ‘walking together of the flock of God on the paths of history to meet Christ the Lord’ we understand well that inside no one can be ‘higher’ than the other.

On the contrary, the Church needs those who ‘lower’ themselves in service to their brothers and sisters along the way.”9 This outlines a scenario where the governance of the Church is shared equally between the pope, the bishops and the laity all on the same level.

No one being higher than the other precludes a leadership role for the hierarchy. In fact, the hierarchy should follow the lead of the laity, listening to them as to the voice of the Holy Spirit

speaking to the synod through the responses to online questionnaires. This certainly is not synodality as St John Chrysostom would have understood it. Rather it would constitute a radical subversion of the Petrine Office and an attack on the Kingship of Christ.

It is not after all the pope who is the head of the hierarchy but God Himself. Levelling the hierarchical order instituted by God would cut off the body of Christ from the head.

It would also directly contradict the dogma on the papacy, which was infallibly defined at the First Vatican Council: “At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, as it has ever been understood by the Catholic Church, are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in His Church, deny that Peter, in his single person, preferably to all the other Apostles, whether taken sep-

“We thought the LGBT issue was the important one [...] but the real issue is this one [synodality], because if that doesn’t pass, they can circle back around and get this introduced locally through synodality.”6 Pope Francis has spoken frequently of his intention to promote what he calls “a sound decentralisation” of papal authority by conferring greatBISHOPS LEAVING FROM THE SYNOD HALL. PHOTO CREDIT: DIANE MONTAGNA, LIFESITENEWS.

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ANALYSIS

The parliamentary process of the synod with debates, committees and bishops voting on doctrine like politicians voting on legislation is undeniable. Unlike a parliament, however, the Synod of Bishops does not publish a record of its debates nor how delegates have voted.

arately or together, was endowed

by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction; or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon Blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through the Church on Peter as her Minister.”10 Once the Holy Father’s responsibility to confirm his brother bishops in the Faith is gone, “the preservation of unity both of communion and of profession of the same faith”11 would become impossible. This kind of synodality, therefore, is not a reform but a revolution opening the Church to heterodox ideas and practices which would be introduced by liberal episcopal conferences. To some extent, this situation has already arisen due to the conflicting interpretations of Amoris Laetitia. It is the perennial teaching of the Church that divorced Catholics who contract a civil marriage without an annulment are living in a state of adultery. They cannot, therefore, be admitted to the sacraments. While bishops in Poland uphold this discipline, across the border in Germany, their brother bishops say it is possible for certain churchgoers in this state to receive the sacraments. This might only prefigure the serious divisions in the Church which are likely to occur.

At the opening of the Synod on the Family in 2015, Pope Francis said 8

that the synod is not a parliament.12 He repeated this statement at the conclusion of the Youth Synod. The parliamentary process of the synod with debates, committees and bishops voting on doctrine like politicians voting on legislation is undeniable. Unlike a parliament, however, the Synod of Bishops does not publish a record of its debates nor how delegates have voted. It seems that democracy is to be imposed on the Church in secret, and whether the faithful want it or not.

Sadly, there is nothing to indicate that any new arrangement will be more transparent or free from the kind of manipulation seen in recent years.13 Despite the fact that the final document could become part of the magisterium, participants of the synod had little opportunity to reflect upon its contents. Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney told Edward Pentin that those who could not speak Italian had to wait to find out what it said through the simultaneous translation. “[I]t was read so fast the translators struggled to keep up, and the fathers could not take notes in their own language,” he said. “So we were not always sure what we were being asked to vote Yes or No to.”14 A LISTENING CHURCH

Episcopalis Communio tells us: “Similarly, the Synod of Bishops must increasingly become a priv-

ANALYSIS

ileged instrument for listening to the People of God: ‘For the Synod Fathers we ask the Holy Spirit first of all for the gift of listening: to listen to God, that with him we may hear the cry of the people; to listen to the people until breathing in the desire to which God calls us.’”15 Despite the public emphasis Pope Francis places on the importance of listening, he has been highly selective about whom he listens to. His record on listening to whistleblowers seems particularly poor. In May 2018 the Pope met with three men from Chile who had spoken out over his appointment of Juan Barros as Bishop of Osorno.16 Francis granted them an audience to apologise for having dismissed credible accusations they brought against Barros for covering-up abuse.

On a visit to Chile a few months earlier he had rejected calls for Barros to resign telling a reporter: “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak. There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”17 The storm of protest his comments provoked forced the pope to back down.

A steadfast denial that a problem exists, despite repeated warnings, also characterises the Holy Father’s handling of the Theodore McCarrick scandal. Although it was widely known that the former Cardinal Archbishop of Washington DC was a sexual predator, Francis apparently allowed him to flout the measures imposed upon him

by Benedict XVI. For months now he has refused to respond to the evidence presented by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that he turned a blind eye to McCarrick’s crimes.

It is not necessary to recount the details of the dubia regarding Amoris

CAL X M A R IA E

Laetitia, which two years on remain unanswered.

In Evangelii Gaudium Francis writes: “Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world. It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory.”18 While he seems to have little genuine interest in addressing the problems in the American Church himself, in what has widely been seen as a display of extremely poor judgement, the Holy Father instructed the US Conference of Catholic Bishops not to discuss a code of conduct for bishops at its 12 November meeting.

At the same time, the Chinese bishops loyal to the Holy See say they have been abandoned by Francis following his agreement with the government of Xi Jinping. Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun, emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, told the Union of Catholic Asian News that the Chinese Church was facing new persecution and the Holy See was helping the Communist Party suppress the underground community. On 1 November he flew to Rome to deliver a letter to Francis in person.

“I want to talk to the pope again and hope he will consider again, but this may be the last time,” he said. In his letter he described how the underground church had seen money confiscated, with clergy having relatives disturbed by the authorities, going to jail or even losing their lives for the faith. “But the Holy See does not support them and regards them as trouble, referring to them causing trouble and not supporting unity. This WINTER 2018

is what makes [it] most painful,” said Cardinal Zen.19 Francis’s refusal to listen not only undermines his credibility regarding the cover-up of clerical abuse but it seems to demonstrate that his respect for the discernment of local bishops only extends to the introduction of heterodox practices such as the admission of those in irregular unions to Holy Communion.

While he presents his reforms as “democratic” Pope Francis’s leadership has often been criticised as dictatorial20 and even Soviet.21 Regardless,

however, of the obvious contradictions between the words and actions of the current pontificate, there seems to be little reason to doubt the determination of those who seek to radically “decatholicise” the Church and recreate her as a political entity, in which legislation is passed by majority vote and where representatives are answerable to pressure groups rather than accountable before the Throne of God. This is the face of the revolution that we are witnessing within the Church in the subversion of order and denial of God. As Sandro Magister,

THE LAST JUDGEMENT (C.1450). FRA ANGELICO. GEMÄLDEGALERIE, BERLIN.

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ANALYSIS

“It is not a matter of the danger of only one or another diocese: Any novelty at all assails the Universal Church. Now for a long time, from every side, the judgment of the supreme Apostolic See has not only been awaited but earnestly demanded by unremitting, repeated petitions. God forbid that the voice of Peter ever be silent in that See, where, living and presiding perpetually, he presents the truth of the faith to those in search of it.

A lengthier forbearance in such matters is not safe, because it is almost just as much of a crime to close one’s eyes in such cases, as it is to preach such offences to religion.”23

ENDNOTES: 1.

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Pius VI Auctorem fidei Rome, 28 August 1794; https:// w2.vatican.va/content/pius-vi/it/documents/bolla-auctorem-fidei-28-agosto-1794.html [Accessed 15 November 2018].

Art. 18 Episcopalis Communio, 15 September 2018; http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_constitutions/documents/papa-francesco_costituzione-ap_20180915_episcopalis-communio.html [Accessed 15 November 2018].

Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in The Church Christus Dominus, Pope Paul VI October 28, 1965.

Paragraph 16, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1 October 1986; http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_ homosexual-persons_en.html [Accessed 21 November 2018].

“Well, it wasn’t in the working document, it wasn’t in the general assembly discussions, it wasn’t in the language-group discussions, in wasn’t in the reports from the small groups — it just appeared, as if from nowhere, in the draft final document.” Edward Pentin, Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP, “Synod Reflections From Down Under: Interview With Archbishop Anthony Fisher” National Catholic Register, 1 November 2018; http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/synod-reflections-from-down-under-interview-with-archbishop-anthony-fisher [Accessed 16 November 2018].

Edward Pentin, Draft of Final Document Thrusts Synodality to the Fore National Catholic Register, 25 October 2018; http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/ final-draft-of-document-thrusts-the-issue-of-synodalityto-the-fore [Accessed 15 November 2018].

“Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world. It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory.” Evangelii Gaudium Antonio Spadaro SJ, “A Big Heart Open to God” Thinking Faith, 19 September 2013; http://www.thinkingfaith.org/ articles/20130919_1.htm [Accessed 15 November 2018].

Quoted in “Synod: ‘The only authority is the authority of service’” Vatican Insider, La Stampa 17 October 2015; https://www.lastampa.it/2015/10/17/vaticaninsider/synod-the-only-authority-is-the-authority-of-service-TAfNeKZgZM2jMkvNuwMk6L/pagina.html [Accessed 17 November 2018].

First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus on the the Church of Christ, Chapter 3, 18 July 1870.

Pastor aeternus Chapter III Deborah Castellano Lubov, “Pope Francis: The Synod Is Not a Parliament” Zenit, 5 October 2015; https://zenit. org/articles/pope-francis-the-synod-is-not-a-parliament/ [Accessed 16 November 2018].

Susan E. Wells, “Cardinal Pell: ‘You must stop manipulating this Synod.’” 18 October 2014 Aleteia; https://aleteia. org/2014/10/18/cardinal-pell-you-must-stop-manipulating-this-synod/; [Accessed 16 November 2018].

Edward Pentin see note 4.

Paragraph 6 Episcopalis Communio 15 September 2018; http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ apost_constitutions/documents/papa-francesco_costituzione-ap_20180915_episcopalis-communio.html [Accessed 15 November 2018].

Reuters in Rome, “Pope Francis on Chile sexual abuse scandal: ‘I was part of the problem’” The Guardian, 2 May 2018; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ may/02/pope-francis-chile-sexual-abuse-scandal-partof-problem [Accessed 17 November 2018].

Associated Press in Santiago, “Pope Francis accuses Chilean church sexual abuse victims of slander” The Guardian, 19 January 2018; https://www.theguardian.com/

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

world/2018/jan/19/pope-francis-victims-church-sexual-abuse-slander-chile [Accessed 17 November 2018].

Evangelii Gaudium [16] 24 November 2013.

“Zen presents letter to pope warning him on China” UCA News, 9 November 2018; https://www.ucanews.com/ news/zen-presents-letter-to-pope-warning-him-on-china/83839 [Accessed 17 November 2018].

Steve Skojec “The Dictator of the Vatican” Foreign Policy, 8 April 2016; https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/08/ the-dictator-of-the-vatican-pope-francis-amoris-laetitia-divorce-communion/ [Accessed 17 November 2018].

Christopher Ferrara, “‘The Dictator Pope’ Book Review” Catholic Family News, 4 January 2018; https://www. catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/1/4/the-dictatorpope-book-review-by-chris-ferrara [Accessed 17 November 2018].

Sandro Magister, “From Martini To Bergoglio. Toward a Vatican Council III” Settimo Cello, 12 October 2018; http:// magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/ [Accessed 17 November 2018].

Auctorem fidei, see note 1.

P R AY E R O F S T J O H N F I S H E R F O R G O O D B I S H O P S Lord, according to Thy promise that the Gospel should be preached throughout the whole world, raise up men fit for such work. The Apostles were but soft and yielding clay till they were baked hard by the fire of the Holy Ghost.

So, good Lord, do now in like manner again with Thy Church militant; change and make the soft and slippery earth into hard stone; set in Thy Church strong and mighty pillars that may suffer and endure great labours, watching, poverty, thirst, hunger, cold and heat; which also shall not fear the threatening of princes, persecution, neither death but always persuade and think with themselves to suffer with a good will, slanders, shame, and all kinds of torments, for the glory and laud of Thy Holy Name. By this manner, good Lord, the truth of Thy Gospel shall be preached throughout all the world.

Therefore, merciful Lord, exercise Thy mercy, show it indeed upon Thy Church.

Amen.

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THE LAST SUPPER (C.1495) CUTTING FROM THE HOURS OF PHILIP THE FAIR. BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON.

the veteran Vatican reporter points out, the current agenda remains the vision expressed by the late Carlo Cardinal Martini, the Jesuit Archbishop of Milan who worked tirelessly for the election of a revolutionary pope.

During the Synod on Europe in October 1999, Martini spoke of: “… a Church in a perennial synodal state, listed a series of ‘disciplinary and doctrinal knots’ that had to be addressed collegially, and concluded that for such questions ‘not even a synod could be sufficient’, but that there was a need for ‘a more universal and authoritative collegial instrument’, in essence a new ecumenical council, ready to ‘repeat that experience of communion, of collegiality’ which was Vatican II.”22 Given the attempts to obscure the hierarchical nature of the Church of Christ, the King and Supreme Judge over all creation, and instead, to fuel the perpetual revolution with the idea of decentralised synodality the warning given by Pius VI about the heretical Synod of Pistoia seems as relevant for our time as it was in 1794:

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Yo u n g p e op l e , v o c at i on a n d h ol i n e s s of l i f e

Young people, vocation and holiness of life

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO BE HAPPY: Be holy

BY PROF. ROB ERTO DE MAT T EI

This talk was given at the Voice of the Family conference Created for heaven: the mission of Catholic young adults in today’s world that was held in Rome on 20 October 2018.

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rom 19-21 October around fifty young people gathered from across the world for the Voice of the Family weekend of prayer and formation in Rome entitled Created for Heaven: the mission of Catholic young adults in today’s world.

The weekend, which coincided with the Vatican’s Youth Synod, comprised of formation for a new generation of Catholic leaders, a pilgrimage to holy sites in Rome and forging a fellowship in faith to support one another in upholding Catholic teaching on life and the family in the public square.

We may often ask with Saul on the road to Damascus: “What am I to do, Lord?” (Acts 22:10). Later as St Paul the Apostle instructs us: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” (1Thes 4:3).

But how? What am I to do, Lord? We cannot be misled by taking counsel from those who today are saints in Heaven: “The dignity of the saints is so great because they are not of this world, but ‘of the household of God.’” (St Thomas Aquinas) “All of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be.” (St Francis de Sales) “Holiness does not consist in one exercise or another, but is a disposition of the heart, which renders us humble and little in the hands of God, conscious of our weakness, and

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confident, even daringly confident, in His fatherly goodness.” (St Thérèse of Lisieux) The weekend was an opportunity to consider our vocation as individuals as well as God’s people, Catholic men and women. The programme culminated with all-night Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the Church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini.

This time of prayer with young people was offered, firstly, in gratitude. We can see that Our Lord has not left us orphans, but has willed to remain with us always in the integrity of His Person in the fullness of His humanity and His divinity. There is no other nation so great, the Divine Office of Corpus Christi sings, “as to have its gods so near as our God is present to us”.

Secondly, this Adoration was offered to make reparation and pray for the Church and her bishops at this turbulent time. We know that we are the mystical body of Christ and as members of the same body we must work and fight tirelessly for the healing of the body when it suffers.

This FOCUS contains some of the talks and highlights of this grace-filled weekend with the young adults. Regardless of age and state of life, vocation and pursuit of holiness are ever-relevant topics for the life of a Christian. May the following presentations from the conference illuminate more clearly the path to holiness for each one of us!

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hat to say to the young of today? I can say nothing other than what I tell myself each day: be holy. This is not an abstract question; it is a concrete question that concerns each one of us, man or woman, young or old, nobody is excluded. I need to be convinced of this: I might attain all the fortunes of life – health, wealth, pleasure, honours and power, but if I don’t become holy, my life will have been a failure.

On the other hand, I might experience trials and tribulations of all sorts, I might appear a failure in the eyes of the world, but if I become holy, I will have attained the true and only purpose of my life. Man was created

is calling me to. Following one’s vocation means doing the will of God. Whatever the vocation, it is all about God’s will for us.

Each person has their own specific vocation. What God asks of each soul, represents its vocation, which is the special form Providence wants each person to work and grow in. Every man has a special vocation since each has been wanted and loved by God in a different way. There are no two creatures alike, nor, in the course of history, have there been vocations absolutely alike, seeing as the will of God is different for every creature and every creature that has entered time, from nothingness, is unique. Father Faber dedicates one of his spiritual conferences to this theme: “All men have a special vocation” (Spiritual Conferences, Burn & Oates, London 1906, pp. 375-396). Each man has a specific vocation, different from that of any

Actual grace is the supernatural action that God exercises on us at every moment, through creatures. Creatures are instruments that bring grace. They are the instruments of God for one purpose only: the forming of saints.

to be happy. There is only one way to be happy: be holy. Holiness makes for man’s happiness and the glory of God. But how to be holy? By following my vocation. The vocation which God WINTER 2018

other man, since God loves every one of us with a special love.

What does this special love of God for me consist of ? First of all, God created me, giving my body and soul

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the characteristics and qualities that pleased Him. God did not only create me, He keeps me alive, providing me with the being in which I live. If God ceased even for a second to imbue my being, I would fall into that nothingness from which He brought me forth.

God, after creating us, has not left us to the mercy of chance. “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt. 10:30), and “not a hair of your head will perish” (Lk. 21:18). And if the number and fall of my hair are all calculated – what then, is not going to be calculated in our lives?

“God does not look at us merely in the mass and multitude,” writes Father Faber. “From all eternity God determined to create me not simply a fresh man, not simply the son of my parents, a new inhabitant of my native country, but he resolved to create me such as I am, the me by which I am myself, the me by which other people know me, a different me from any that has ever been cre13

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ated hitherto, and from any that will be created hereafter.

“It was just me, with my individual peculiarities, the size, shape, fashion and way of my particular single, unmated soul, which in the calmness of His eternal predilection drew Him to create me.” (Spiritual Conferences, p. 375) In short, God has traced the laws of my physical, moral and intellectual development along with the laws of my supernatural growth.

How did He do this? Through instruments. What instruments? These

lien, are placed in motion by Him and they do nothing other than what God wants them to do in us. Everything occurs at a given time; it acts on the right point, it produces the movement necessary to exercise a physical, moral or intellectual influence on us. This influence is actual grace. Actual grace is the supernatural action that God exercises on us at every moment, through creatures. Creatures are instruments that bring grace. They are the instruments of God for one purpose only: the forming of saints. Everything that happens, all that one does, St Paul says, everything without exception, contributes to the same work and this work is

Every soul has its vocation, because it has its different function in the Body of the Church. He who has the vocation of marriage, does not have it for himself, but for the Church. He who has a religious vocation, does not have it for himself, but for the Church. instruments are the creatures I meet in my life. The Carthusian, Dom Pollien, invites us to calculate the number of creatures that have been part of the reality of our existence (Cristianesimo vissuto, Edizioni Fiducia, Roma 2017).

The physical influences of time, seasons and climate, the moral influences of relatives, teachers, friends and [even the] enemies we have met along the way; all the books we have read, the words we have heard, the things we have seen, the situations in which we have found ourselves – nothing is by chance, given that there is no such thing as chance – everything has a significance.

These influences, these movements are the work that God performs in us.

All these creatures, explains Dom Pol14

the good of those that the will of God calls to holiness (Rm. 8:28). Nothing fails towards this purpose, everything converges towards this outcome. Actual grace is everywhere and intimately connects the natural and the supernatural. And God proportions the quality of His graces to the needs of our life, according to the designs of His mercy towards us and according to the response we lend to His action.

How do we respond to this uninterrupted action of grace on our souls?

We let God act in our souls, without ever worrying about tomorrow, since, as the Gospel says “sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34).

“Let God act,” said Cardinal Merry del Val.

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“Remember that circumstances which you yourself have not occasioned are God’s messengers. They come a thousand times a day to tell you the different ways in which you may show Him your love.” (Let God Act, Taller Abbey, 1974, p. 2) A religious who lived very close to St John Bosco was asked whether the Saint was ever worried in the midst of his countless works, in his sometimes tumultuous life. The religious replied in this manner: “Don Bosco never, not even a minute before, thought about what he was about to do a minute later.” Don Bosco, who understood the action of grace, always sought to do the will of God in the present moment.

And following this path he fulfilled his vocation.

In Rome, next to the central railway station, stands the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built by Don Bosco just before his death, at the cost of immense sacrifices. The Basilica was solemnly consecrated on 14 May 1887 by the Cardinal Vicar in the presence of numerous civil and religious authorities. On 16 May 1887, Don Bosco himself offered Mass at the altar of Mary, Help of Christians: it was his only celebration in the Church of the Sacred Heart and, as a plaque appended on the centenary of the event commemorates, the Mass was interrupted fifteen times by the sobs of the old priest, who understood the significance of his famous “dream of 9 years”. God showed him the vast panorama of his life and revealed to him how, from his childhood, he had been prepared and led by God to fulfill his earthly mission.

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but for the Church. This vocation, writes Fr Faber, flows directly from our eternal predestination, but is entrusted to the hands of our free will and depends on it: “I clearly belong to a plan, and have a place to fill and a work to do which are all special; and only my speciality, my particular me, can fill this place or do this work.

“This means that I have a tremendous responsibility.

“Responsibility is the definition of life. It is the inseparable characteristic of my position as a creature.

“From this point of view life looks very serious.” (Spiritual Conferences, p. 377) There is no other path that leads man to the holiness which everyone is called to, in order to be happy. Let us go along this path with the help of Our Lady and the Angels. God has placed us near an Angel to guard our vocation. Our Guardian Angel is our vocation perfected; our vocation fulfilled. He is the model for our vocation.

For this we need to pray to him and listen to the words he whispers.

There are vocations for single people; there are vocations for families, which are not only natural ones, but also those spiritual families, with their charisms; there are vocations for the peoples of nations, which Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira spoke of frequently. Each nation has a specific vocation, which is the role that Providence has entrusted to it in history. But we were not only born into a family and a nation. We live inside a historical age.

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for something different. Every historical age has its vocation. The predominant vocation in the first centuries of the Church was the predisposition for martyrdom. Is there a vocation in the 21st century, in which one can find one’s individual vocation?

The vocation for our age is to correspond to the desire of Heaven which Our Lady Herself showed us at Fatima: In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. This is the vocation of those in the cloisters, on the public squares, who, with prayer, penance, words and action, battle for the fulfillment of this promise.

The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is also the triumph of the Church, since the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the very Heart of the Church Itself. This triumph suggests a great battle preceding it. And since this triumph will be social, public

and solemn, this battle will also be social, public and solemn. Today, being saints means fighting this battle, which is fought, first and foremost, holding the sword of truth. It is only upon the truth that the lives of men and nations can be built, and without the truth, a society breaks down and dies. Today, Christian society has to be remade; and to remake it, the prime necessity which is called for, is that of professing and living the truth. When a Christian, with the help of grace, conforms his own life to the principles of the Gospel and fights in defence of the truth, he cannot be hindered by any obstacle.

In his discourse of 21 January 1945 to the Marian Congregations of Rome, Pius XII stated: “The present time calls for fearless Catholics, for whom it is the most natural thing [in the world] to pro-

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The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is also the triumph of the Church, since the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the very Heart of the Church Itself.

This triumph suggests a great battle preceding it.

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architects, stonemasons, blacksmiths, carpenters, bishops, princes, illustrious and unknown personalities all participated, united in the same desire to render glory to God through the stones they raised to Heaven. We are also participating in a great project. Each one of us today is called to build the immense cathedral dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the ruins of the modern world – which is nothing other than Her Reign in souls and society. Our hearts are the stones and our voices proclaim to the world a dream that will come true.

Translated from Italian by Francesca Romana

Roberto de Mattei is a former professor of Modern History and History of Christianity at the European University of Rome. He founded, and oversees, the Lepanto Foundation that operates in Washington and in Rome.

He directs the magazine Radici Cristiane and the Corrispondenza Romana News Agency.

FOR MY POWER IS MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS

(2 COR. 12:9)

BY FR A N T H ON Y PIL L A RI

This talk was addressed to young men in Rome on 20 October 2018.

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hen you become willing to suffer for the sake of unborn children, your witness on their behalf becomes much more powerful.” A prolife leader uttered these words to me many years ago, speaking of those in Operation Rescue.1 Are you willing to suffer arrest and imprisonment, ridicule and hatred, in order to give witness to the Truth of Christ, in order to work for the salvation of souls? What are you willing to suffer, as a man, to help save souls?

Because Christ is calling each one of you to take up arms in the spiritual battle that is raging all around us. So many, many souls do not even know that they are in the midst of a battle; do not know that demons are trying to

to defend souls, to help win souls for Me? Are you willing to suffer, even to the point of losing your life?” “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”2 None of us chose to be born at this time. But God chose you to be born in this time, to live in the midst of this great crisis. God is offering you all the graces necessary to live heroically these years, to take up your role as leaders, as men. And a man can only lead in Christ’s army, whether as a priest, a religious, a head of a family, or a celibate man in the midst of the world - a man can only truly lead if he is willing to imitate Christ in His suffering, if he is willing to lay down his life. Because make no mistake, if you bear faithful witness to the truth of Christ, the world will hate you. As St

IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY. PETERSKIRCHE, VIENNA.

fess their faith openly, through their words and actions, whenever the law of God and the sentiment of Christian honour require it. Real men, upright men, resolute and intrepid! Those who are such merely halfway, the world itself discards, rejects and crushes.”

“God and the Church,” writes Dom Pollien in Cristianesimo vissuto, “ask for defenders, but real defenders; those who never shrink back one step; those who know how to be faithful to orders

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And a man can only lead in Christ’s army, whether as a priest, a religious, a head of a family, or a celibate man in the midst of the world - a man can only truly lead if he is willing to imitate Christ in His suffering, if he is willing to lay down his life.

until death; those who are formed in the rigours of discipline, in order to be ready for all the heroisms of the fight.” (p. 162) The French writer Paul Claudel, enunciated this great truth: “Youth was not made for pleasure but for heroism”. The young of the 21st century cannot be attracted by the invitation of compromise with the world, but are asking the Church for a call to heroism. Cristianesimo vissuto means “militant Christianity”. In the Middle Ages, in the course of building a cathedral,

drag them down to hell. And so God turns to you, young men who have at least some awareness of the gravity of what is taking place today in the Church and in the world. And He asks you: “Are you willing to fight for Me, CAL X M A R IA E

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Paul declares: “…all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”3 And for those of you called to be priests, the devil, the prince of this world (cf. Jn 12:31), will hate you with a special intensity. Because you

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will be called, as a priest, to bear courageous witness, in your preaching, in your celebration of the Sacraments, and in your life, to the truth of Christ and the reality of sin.

To take just one example: as a priest, I am called to proclaim to every man, including those ensnared in the sins of homosexual acts, the teaching of Christ, the teaching of the Church: such acts are gravely sinful. Such acts violate the natural moral law; such acts are sins so grave that they cry out to Heaven for vengeance (as Bishop Morlino of Madison Wisconsin recently reiterated). And the world will hate you for proclaiming this truth. As Christ declared: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (Jh. 15:18-20) And the hatred of the world might include not only being ridiculed, sidelined, or caricatured as a bigot, but might well come to include fines, im17

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prisonment or even death. In early 16th century England priests did not expect that in just a few short years they would only be able to celebrate the Sacraments in secret, at the risk of being hung, drawn, and quartered if caught. They did not anticipate that their own bishops would betray the faith, would abandon them. Fathers of families did not anticipate that in just a few years they would only be able to attend the Holy Mass, and to refuse attendance at heretical services, at the risk of crippling fines, of imprisonment, and of the loss of all their possessions. And yet that is exactly what priests and fathers of families faced. But though they did not choose to live in a time calling for heroic witness, God chose them for that time, and God offered them all the graces necessary to be faithful to the Truth that comes from God, faithful until death.

Why did the prince of this world orchestrate such severe punishments for priests caught celebrating the Holy Mass? Because the devil is terri-

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bly afraid of losing a great multitude of souls through the apostolate of a priest. When God calls a young man to take up the spiritual arms of the priesthood, that young man is called forward to kneel before his bishop, who anoints his hands with sacred chrism, praying: “May it please you, O Lord, to consecrate and sanctify these hands by this anointing and our blessing. That whatever they bless may be blessed, and whatever they consecrate may be consecrated in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”4 “Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Masses for the living and the dead.”5 From that moment, the young man’s hands become capable of washing souls with the blood of Christ. No matter where the priest may be, men will always be able to receive from him absolution for their sins. And no matter where the priest may be, every day of his life, his hands will be capable of offering the Holy Sacrifice upon the altar - of rendering present Christ’s redeeming sacrifice of Calvary.

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The greatness of the priesthood is enough to make some young men say: “I would never be capable or worthy of such a vocation. I’m so weak, so imperfect, so sinful.” It is quite true that you are unworthy of being consecrated a priest of Jesus Christ, that you are weak – most likely far weaker than you know – and that you are imperfect and sinful. But whom did Christ choose as His first priests, His first bishops? He chose weak, incapable men who had just shown all of Jerusalem how sinful and cowardly they were. All of Jerusalem knew that Christ’s closest friends, the apostles – except for one – had abandoned Him, had run away and hidden themselves during the Passion.

Peter had even publicly denied that he knew Him. And yet God chose these weak, sinful men to become the foundation of His Church, to be the first men to embrace what the Church has always taught to be a superior state of life.6 As the Church reiterated in the encyclical Sacra Virginitas:

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“This doctrine of the excellence of virginity and of celibacy and of their superiority over the married state was, as we have already said, revealed by our Divine Redeemer and by the Apostle of the Gentiles; so too, it was solemnly defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy council of Trent, and explained in the same way by all the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church.”7 One aspect of this superiority is, at times, overlooked: celibacy is a superior way of life in part because celibacy provides far more assistance for weak, sinful men – assistance in growing in holiness – than the married state. For several years I helped lead a youth group for the spiritual formation of young men. I met with them weekly during the year and then helped lead summer camps lasting from one to three weeks. It was striking to see the difference in the young men during those camps. Their personalities, with their combination of good intentions and inclinations to sin, were essentially the same during the summer camp and during the year. They were the same young men. But when they were at the summer camp, with a schedule that included daily Mass, the rosary, Eucharistic Adoration, and hard work calling for physical sacrifice; when they had the support of priests and other like-minded young men, conferences for spiritual formation, and so forth; they did much better in their struggle to abandon vice and embrace virtue, in their struggle to love Christ with all of their heart, mind and strength.

Whereas back in the world, after a few weeks, they would often fall back into old habits.

When a young man enters the novitiate or seminary, when he is ordained

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But though they did not choose to live in a time calling for heroic witness, God chose them for that time, and God offered them all the graces necessary to be faithful to the Truth that comes from God, faithful until death.

a priest, if he lives faithfully according to what the Church asks of him, he experiences a transformation that is not just the result of a few weeks of a different style of life, in the course of a summer camp, but that is the result of years – of the rest of his life – of receiving the special helps offered by the constant training of a celibate priestly life well-lived.

But the devil is terribly afraid of what even one good priest can do. And so the devil is today trying desperately to obscure this truth, to proclaim – as loudly as he can, using newspapers, TV, the internet – that becoming a celibate, Catholic priest will make you weaker and more prone to sin than if you were to get married. Nothing could be further from the truth! But the devil’s lie might appear convincing because of the current clerical scandals. For several decades the true nature of priestly life has, in many seminaries, not been adequately taught.

Many young men have come through a seminary without receiving the necessary training – you could say without going through the necessary “spiritual boot camp”, without being equipped with the necessary spiritual armour, with the much-needed habits and daily disciplines that priests have embraced for centuries; without the training in how to make sure their souls would receive regular spiritual nourishment throughout their priestly life. And so, many young men then found them-

selves, as priests, quite vulnerable to sin.

Of course, ever since Judas there have been bishops and priests who committed serious sins, and Judas had the best formation possible, the formation given by Our Lord Himself.

So even with the best seminary formation in the world there will always be the possibility of priests choosing to sin. But the seminary formation of these past few decades has left priests vulnerable, without the spiritual armor necessary to protect them in the midst of the world. So it can be good to recall, even very briefly, the immense treasures and helps Our Lord offers His priests through the Church.

In an orthodox seminary formation a young man learns to embrace and cherish the precious treasure of priestly celibacy. As St Paul declares: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided… I say this for your own benefit… to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.”8 If you were engaged to a young woman and you told her: “Sophie, I’m so looking forward to marrying you in three months. I wanted to let you know though, that I’ve decided to also marry Elizabeth, that same day. But 19

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The priest will therefore, to the degree that he lives his time of formation and his priesthood well, experience the hundredfold of blessings — blessing that help him become more and more like Christ — in his thoughts, his emotions, his way of acting, in his entire life.

don’t worry. The fact that I will be married to both of you will not diminish in the slightest my love, attention, and devotion to you.” How would Sophie respond? “You’re crazy! A man is only capable of giving his heart to one wife.

You must be out of your mind if you think that having a second spouse will not greatly harm your love, attention, and devotion to me.” As a man, you can only give your heart to one spouse.

For those of you whom God will call to become priests, you will be called to give your heart to Him alone, to the exclusion of any earthly spouse.

It is difficult to put into words the greatness of the blessings the priest receives by having God alone. The saints and mystics, in attempting to say something of the intimate relationship between the soul of a celibate and his 20

God have used the language of the Song of Songs. They have used poetry and music to give some hint of the blessings God has in store for those who choose Him alone as their portion, yet, in the end, they confess that “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:9) In a healthy marriage, where a man is truly devoted to his spouse, or, to take a different example, where a man has a best friend for many years – perhaps a teenager who spends extended time, over several years, with a best friend – the man is greatly influenced by his spouse, or the teenager by his friend.

Because the man’s spouse or friend occupies a major place in his heart, the spouse or friend has a profound influ-

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ence on his thoughts, his emotions, his way of acting, how he lives his life. If this is the case even in human relationships, how much more so for the man who chooses God alone as his portion; God, who has promised in the Gospel to give a hundredfold in return for whatever we sacrifice for Him? The priest will therefore, to the degree that he lives his time of formation and his priesthood well, experience the hundredfold of blessings – blessing that help him become more and more like Christ – in his thoughts, his emotions, his way of acting, in his entire life.

Even with poor sinners – and I say this as one who, sadly, is still terribly far from fully embracing the gift of the priesthood; as one who is still, unfortunately, in so many ways lukewarm – even with poor sinful men God takes what we offer Him and grants the hundredfold. The Church, as a good mother, knows the weakness of her children and offers us many practical helps and safeguards so that, on a daily basis, we might be strengthened and protected in our priestly life. Though much of these helps have not been sufficiently taught in recent decades, and have therefore, not been truly embraced and put into practice in priestly life, they are still available and are an invaluable help for young men called to become priests.

A priest is called to nourish his spiritual life: • through the daily celebration of the Holy Mass, in which he offers the Holy Sacrifice on behalf of the living and the dead, and leaves aside earthly things in order to be face to face with His God; • through the Divine Office, during which the words of the psalms, prayers of the Church, and readings from Scripture and the saints

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•

• •

•

constantly teach and guide him in his relationship with God; through the daily rosary, in which the priest is brought ever closer to Our Lord and Our Lady; through daily meditation – by spending at least 30 minutes a day in quiet conversation with God – or by making a Holy Hour; through spiritual reading; through regular fasting and Confession – from their days at the seminary priests used to learn the practice of confessing once every 15 days; through his annual retreat: once a year a priest is required to make an annual 5-day retreat. When made well, these five days of silence for more intense prayer and formation help the priest come more fully face to face with his God, in order to be renewed and blessed in ways that only God can grant.

There are many other ways that a priest is strengthened for the spiritual battle. For example, wearing the cassock on a daily basis – so that all who encounter you, whether on the street, in a shop, on the plane, or elsewhere will know that you are a priest – makes it easier for others to seek his help. But even when not in public, for example even when the priest is going about various duties within the rectory, the cassock helps the priest himself remember that he is consecrated to God, that he is called to serve God and His people all throughout his day – that the priesthood is not “a job” but a consecration to God of all that he is, of his entire life. The priest also lives in a presbytery, a place that should be set aside and decorated in such a way as to help the priest remember that he is in the presence of God, normally with a small chapel in the rectory or with WINTER 2018

the church close at hand. The priest also has the fraternal support of other priests striving for holiness. This is true today, even in the midst of the current scandals. The friendship and support of brother priests is very real.

The priest also has the invaluable help of knowing that what he has received – if he has been given in his formation what Christ Himself confided to the Church, what has been safeguarded by her for 2,000 years – that the truths he has been formed in will never change, and cannot change, because they are the truths that God Himself has revealed. They are a firm bedrock upon which his life and apostolate can be built. As St Alphonsus Liguori declares: “From the time of the Apostles down to our own days our Faith has continued unaltered… Ac-

cordingly, the Catholic Church has remained the same in all ages and in all climes. The doctrines she teaches today are the same that were taught and believed in the first ages of the Church.”9 Our Lord gave this solemn command to the apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…”10 St John exhorts us all, but in a particular way the priest: “Let that which you have heard from the beginning abide in you.”(1 Jn 2:24) Or as St Jude writes: “I beseech you, dearly beloved, to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.”(Jude 3) To contend, to fight “for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.”

Such is the great mission to which every priest is called. God turns to

To contend, to fight “for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.” Such is the great mission to which every priest is called.

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May God grant, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, each one of us, as men, to be willing to lay down our lives for Him, to be willing to suffer and sacrifice for the salvation of souls, and for the consolation of Our Lord’s Sacred Heart. And for those of you called to be priests, may the Blessed Virgin be by your side to help you embrace wholeheartedly the incomparable treasure of choosing God alone as your portion, and of becoming an alter Christus.

you, young men who have at least some knowledge of the greatness of our Faith, some awareness of the battle raging all around us, and He asks you: “Are you willing to fight for Me, to defend souls, to help win souls for Me? Are you willing to suffer, even to the point of losing your life?” “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”11 Are you willing to suffer arrest and imprisonment, ridicule and hatred, in order to give witness to the Truth of Christ, in order to work for the salvation of souls? As young men, Christ is calling each one of you, right now, to take up arms in the spiritual battle that is raging around us. So many, many souls do not even know that they are in the midst of a spiritual battle, do not even know that demons are trying to drag them down to hell.

For those of you whom Christ is calling to become His priests, and who accept this call to suffer with Him, you will experience the truth of His words:

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“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”12 God will accomplish much more than the hundredfold through your priestly apostolate: your hands will become capable of absolving souls, of presenting again and again the Holy Sacrifice of Calvary to the Father, of distributing God’s graces, every day of your life, to poor sinners throughout the world. You will discover the truth of His words: “My power is made perfect in weakness.”13 And in your own relationship with God you will discover a treasure that surpasses human understanding: what God grants who choose Him alone as their portion, to the exclusion of any earthly spouse.

Fr Anthony Pillari was born in Agana, Guam (USA). He is currently the chaplain for the Usus Antiquior in the Diocese of Plymouth, UK. He holds degrees in Philosophy from University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Sacred Theology from L’Institut Catholique de Toulouse, France and in Canon Law from the University of Ottawa, Canada.

ENDNOTES: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Operation Rescue, founded in 1986, is a pro-life movement in the United States. A group of people would peacefully sit in front of an abortion clinic, praying and physically blocking the entrance to the clinic for some hours while police would come and carry them away to jail. “Operation rescuers” are willing to spend days in jail and face the consequences of arrest for the sake of preventing innocent children from being killed that morning at an abortion facility, and in the hope that mothers who arrive and see them there might reconsider their decision.

Matt. 16:25.

2 Tim. 3:12.

From the traditional rite of ordination.

Ibid.

Note: a well-established tradition in the Church is that the apostles, after being ordained priests, chose to live celibate lives. See https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7052 Sacra Virginitas, Encyclical Pope Pius XII, March 25th 1954, no. 32.

1 Cor. 7:32–35. New York: National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. St Alphonsus Liguori, The 12 Steps to Holiness and Salvation, Tan Books 2012, pp. 12-13.

Matt. 28:19–20.

Matt. 16:25.

Mk. 10:29–30.

2 Cor. 12:9.

CAL X M A R IA E

RESTORING THE MILITANT SPIRIT–

our fundamental duty as faithful Catholic men

BY VA RRO VOOGL A ID

This talk was addressed to young men in Rome on 20 October 2018.

“How much worse are things to get before men of good will finally decide to take action?” – Jean Ousset

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he purpose of this talk is to emphasise the importance of the militant spirit in the life of Catholic men, to explain its meaning and to call for its restoration by cultivating the virtue of militancy. No virtue among Catholic men has declined more than that of militancy. Today, militancy is not regarded as a virtue, but a vice.

This attitude is un-Catholic and should be rejected. In fact, militancy correctly understood and practised is central to the life of Catholic men. We are always called to fight, although we need to understand the nature of our battles.

Before looking at the virtue of militancy, let us examine some important lessons from history.

THREE CRUCIAL BATTLES

Three of the most remarkable events in history were not just battles on an epic scale: crucially they saved Christendom – not figuratively, but literally.

The first was fought on 19 September 732 between the cities of Tours and Poitiers when Charles Martel led Catholic knights of the Frankish and Burgundian army to victory over the Umayyad Caliphate. By 711, Muslim forces had overrun Iberia and were raiding Frankish territory, looting villages, towns and monasteries, killWINTER 2018

ing men and enslaving women and children. In the previous century, Muslims had shown extreme brutality in conquering vast territories in the Middle East (including the Holy Land) and Northern Africa. Already by the 9th-century victory in the Battle of Tours was regarded as the outcome of divine intervention and it is easy to see why – the army of the Caliphate was at least twice the size of that of the Catholics. Later historians praised Charles Martel as the champion of Christianity, characterising the battle as the decisive turning point in the struggle against Islam and the preservation of Christianity as the religion of Europe.

The Battle Tours helped lay the foundations of the Carolingian Empire and Frankish domination of Europe for the next century. The grandson of Charles Martel, Charlemagne, was crowned Imperator Romanorum by Leo III on Christmas Day, in 800, and is considered the “Father of Europe”.

Charlemagne began the Spanish Reconquista and his victories formed a protective zone against Islam across the Pyrenees, preserving the Catholic Church in that area. Although clashes continued, Islamic forces were not strong enough to attempt another invasion against Europe for 700 years, when they came across the Balkans.

Most historians agree that without a victory at the Battle of Tours, it is likely that there would have been no Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire, and no Papal States.1

VARRO VOOGLAID

The second battle is probably the most glorious battle in the history of Christendom and the greatest naval battle ever fought. The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 and proved to be another major turning point in the conflict between Christendom and Islam. With the emergence of the Ottoman Empire in the late 13th century, this struggle became extremely serious. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Turkish sultan called a jihad against Christians. Soon after, in 1444, Turkish forces gained a major victory at Varna, an important town on the Black Sea. Ten years later Christians lost Constantinople. During the second half of the 16th century, the Ottomans brutally conquered the islands of Cyprus and Crete.

Fighting at Lepanto was so fierce that it is said that by the end of the battle the sea was red with blood for miles around. Christian forces were victorious, but at a great cost: about 8,000 men were lost and even more injured.

When news from the fleet reached Europe, there was much rejoicing, and

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Pius V gave credit to the Blessed Virgin Mary declaring 7 October the Feast of Our Lady of Victory. Lepanto did not bring an end to the Ottoman Empire, but it proved to be a turning point in the Ottoman advance on Europe.

The Turks never again made a major attack on the Mediterranean – Christendom’s southern borders were now safe and one of the two main pathways to conquering Europe was cut off.2 The third battle was fought on 12 September 1683, at the gates of Vienna. Once again the Turks returned to conquer Christendom with an army of over a hundred thousand men. It is said that they could easily have taken the city but wanting to do so with as little destruction as possible they laid siege to it instead. By 11 September the siege had lasted several months and hopes of saving Vienna were fading. Having undermined the city walls large fissures had appeared even before they could be blown up. One final explosion was all that was needed

for the Sultan’s army to march into the city.

As the mines were about to be placed, a red and white flag was spotted on top of the Kahlenberg hill overlooking Vienna. The Polish King, Jan III Sobieski, had arrived with 30,000 Polish, 18,500, Austrian and almost 28,000 German knights who answered the call of Innocent XI to fight the Turks. The enormous battle raged all day but as night drew closer, Sobieski sent in all four of his cavalry units, about 20,000 horsemen. Charging down the Kahlenberg at the head of 3,000 heavily armed “winged” Polish hussars Sobieski stormed into the battle with a deafening noise. Recognising that the final stage of the battle was at hand, the garrison of Vienna opened the city gates and attacked the Turks from the rear. The triumph of the Christians was complete.

This was one of the most decisive military charges in history and marked the end of the Ottoman conquest of

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Europe. Thereafter, the Turks were gradually pushed out not to return.

Jan III Sobieski is rightfully remembered as the king who saved Europe from the Muslim invasion.

MILITANT SPIRIT AS THE FRUIT OF LOVE

Recalling these battles should help us understand the importance of the militant spirit. Without this spirit, Christendom would have disappeared long ago. It was only through the self-sacrifice of brave and determined men that Christendom has survived.

We should be grateful to the men who suffered and died for the Church and for Christendom. Their sacrifice has allowed us to inherit the world we live in.

We must also realise the error of pacifism, the mindset of so many Christians today. It is not un-Christian to fight, on the contrary, Christians are called to fight the good fight, to be defenders of the Church and of Christendom. But how can the mil-

CAL X M A R IA E

day. If we love the Church, we must be ready to fight her enemies. If she is attacked and we do nothing to defend her, then we have no real love for her.

When we consider the dominant social and political tendencies of the cultural revolution in the West, we have every reason to believe that faithful Christians will soon face persecution and may well be jailed for refusing to abandon what we know to be true.

Laws in both the US and France already threaten with imprisonment pro-life demonstrators who try to con-

Virtue is a stable and good habit of the intellect, the heart and the will. To be virtuous means to possess as one’s second nature such a character that allows one to know intellectually the goods that are worth pursuing in life and then to actually pursue them regardless of the difficulties faced along the way.

attacks. True love is proven in times of difficulty, as the Romans observed, amicus certus in re incertus cernitur – sure friends are discerned in unsure circumstances. Love is ultimately determined when self-sacrifice is called for. Our Lord said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) And He, who sacrificed Himself on the cross is the greatest example of the militant spirit as the fruit of love.

The battles of the past deserve more than our admiration, they should become a source of inspiration, a model to emulate. Their true value is made clear when we realise that we too are called upon to make sacrifices.

We are not called to fight at Tours, Lepanto and Vienna but in a sense, they are not unlike the battles of our

KING SOBIESKI SENDING MESSAGE OF VICTORY TO THE POPE, AFTER THE BATTLE OF VIENNA (1882-1883). JAN MATEJKO. THE VATICAN MUSEUM.

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itant spirit be compatible with the commandment to love? Everything a Christian does should be motivated by love, but this does not conflict with the militant spirit. Rather the militant spirit should be a fruit of love.

Love presupposes sacrifice for the one who is loved. Without sacrifice, there is no true love – only sentimentalism. If a man loves his wife and children, he is ready to defend them.

If he loves a friend, he is ready to fight alongside him. If he loves his country, he must be ready to fight against all

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vince women to keep their children or come too close to abortion facilities. In a growing number of nations, homosexual activists say Catholic teaching on homosexual relations should be regarded as hate speech. Likewise any discrimination on the grounds of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”, is outlawed and business owners can be prosecuted if they refuse to offer their services in a way that violates Christian convictions.

We can expect the scope and intensity of this ideological dictatorship to increase dramatically in the coming years. Similar concerns surround the Islamisation of Europe. As Catholics in the West, we must be prepared to face imprisonment and even martyrdom as Christians already do in Muslim lands. All of this points to the

same conclusion: we must be willing to fight, ready to suffer, to sacrifice ourselves – even our lives. Only then can we call ourselves Catholics. Be gentle, kind and contemplative but prepared to fight. Either we are imbued with fighting spirit or we will become frustrated and end by losing our faith.

Nor can we overlook the importance of a militant spirit in defence of orthodox doctrine. Within the Church, this is the most important fight we face today. If the teachings of the Church are corrupted everything will become corrupt. Fighting her enemies means never compromising with anything that will corrupt true doctrine – not only rejecting errors but fighting against them. This makes life far from comfortable. Being portrayed as rigid and intolerant results in conflict not just with society but with many inside the Church. Yet, carrying this cross is one of the most valuable acts of love we can perform for the Church. This is impossible without a militant spirit.

FROM THE MILITANT SPIRIT TO THE VIRTUE OF MILITANCY

For the Church Militant, the militant spirit is essential and must be rooted in the virtue of militancy (also called combativity). Recognising the need to fight is not enough; we also need the ability to fight. We must, therefore, consider the virtue of militancy.

Virtue is a stable and good habit of the intellect, the heart and the will. Being virtuous means possessing as one’s second nature such a character that allows one to know the goods worth pursuing in life and then to pursue them regardless of difficulties faced along the way. The virtue of militancy enables us to understand the importance and nature of our battles but also to fight them even in the most

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difficult circumstances. For any virtue to be mastered, it must be trained.

Militancy is no exception and must be trained to grow stronger, to become our second nature – that is, the moral character we build through our choices and actions.

Defining the virtue of militancy is not easy, but it gives us the habitual capability of sacrificing ourselves for the ideals we believe to be true. It goes hand in hand with magnanimity and nobility, which are about the longing of the soul for great things and living at the service of high moral ideals.

The virtue of militancy should not be seen in isolation, but rather it is closely linked to many other important virtues. Prudence, for example, allows us to understand the nature of our battles and choose the right strategy, tactics and means of fighting. Faith helps us not to doubt the cause of our fight.

Honour allows us to see our fight as the source of our personal dignity and means of sanctification. Charity enables us to fight against the object of our struggle – that is sin, not the sinner – and prevents militancy from turning into resentment, hatred and brutality. Humility and service allow us to fight not for our own glory, but for the glory of God. Courage and perseverance enable us not only to enter into battles but also to stay engaged regardless of hardships and suffering.

Temperance leads us to focus on the fight by detaching ourselves from material and sensual attractions. Hope saves us from despair.

Central to the virtue of militancy is the sense of duty – the understanding that fighting is not an option, but a responsibility. This is fundamental to the morale of army officers. It is this that obliges military men to service and self-sacrifice, not the commands of their superiors.

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CATHOLICS HAVE BEEN FAR TOO PASSIVE FOR FAR TOO LONG

The militant spirit and the virtue of militancy cannot merely be intellectual they must also be practical – that is, about our own lives. It is wrong to fall into the error of activism, seeing action as the sole means of our fight, and it is just as wrong to adopt pietism or intellectualism, refusing to engage in action and hoping that prayer or endless discussions will solve our problems.

As Pius X said in 1903, “[t]he subtle raising of multiple questions and the most eloquent dissertation of rights and duties matters little, if all this does not end in action.” Or as St Augustine has said: “Pray as though everything depended on God, but work as though everything depended on you.”

The world tries to convince us not to enter into battle. “Do not waste your life fighting for abstract ideals, enjoy the pleasures life has to offer”, is its message. Yet the militant spirit of Catholics should be the exact opposite – “Do not waste your life on the pleasures of this world, fight for ideals that are worth living for.” It is due to the idleness and passivity of Catholics that the Revolution has wrought such destruction and inflicted such heavy wounds in the Mystical Body of Christ.

Few passages have had such an impact on my own understanding of the militant spirit than Lenin’s words about the conditions that made the Communist Revolution possible. “If in 1917 there had existed in Petrograd only some thousands of men who knew what they really wanted, we should never have been able to take over power in Russia,” stated the man whose revolutionary ambitions brought down the Russian monarchy and subjected it along with many other nations to the menace of communism.

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The same idea was expressed by Cardinal Ottaviani, secretary of the Holy Office during the reign of Pius XII: “The frequency and power of crime have blunted Christian sensibility, even, alas[!], among Christians. Not only as men but as Christians, they do not react, do not leap to their feet.

How can they feel themselves to be Christians if they are insensitive to the wounds which are being inflicted on Christianity? Life shows its existence by the sensation of pain, by the vivacity (an expressive word) by which it reacts to a wound, by the promptness and vigour of the reaction. In the midst of rottenness and decomposition there is no reaction.” If these words do not make us realise the critical importance of action as opposed to sterile deliberation, what will?

Jean Ousset wrote in his brilliant book Action (published in the 1960s) that “[t]here is no more subtle and heinous a perversion than a self-satisfied orthodoxy that is indifferent as to whether truth is fruitful or whether evil is triumphant. A wholly cerebral and speculative orthodoxy is not enough” and that “[t]o be really and vitally orthodox, one needs not only intellectual orthodoxy, but also what may be termed orthodoxy of the will.”

That is the core argument presented in the book: if Christians wish to have any hope of stopping the Revolution and the destruction of the Christian moral and social order, then we must restore our militant spirit and engage in action. Ousset criticises the way Christians act, seeing in it fundamental flaws: “Professing concern for order and method, we act chaotically. Canonising zeal and labour, we do little or nothing. Desperately and blindly overcome by passion as soon as we take to action, we nevertheless proclaim that we always wish to be guided CAL X M A R IA E

by reason. And while we never cease prattling about the forces of mind and spirit, in practice we have less confidence in these forces than self-confessed materialists.” Summing it up, he wrote: “We believe that it should be relatively easy to save society, but only on condition that a number of good folks should apply themselves to the action involved, in the necessary manner and with sufficient perseverance.

Our worry is not that it is radically impossible to save society, our worry is that those members of society who are apparently most fitted to work for its salvation will not set about this task, or only half-heartedly.”

A common objection from those who do not want to dedicate themselves to the fight is the view that engaging in battles would not be rational, the overwhelming advantage of the

Revolution means we have no hope.

“If there is no hope of winning, then why fight?” they ask. This was said to Jeanne d’Arc in the 15th century before decisive battles in the Hundred Years’ War. Her response exposes the fundamental error behind this question. “In the name of God, the men at arms will give battle and God will grant them victory.” she said. This is the spirit that triumphed at Lepanto and Vienna. Having gained victory in Lepanto, Don Juan of Austria sent a message to the Senate of Venice, declaring: “Non virtus, non arma, non duces, sed Maria Rosarii victores nos fecit”– “Not power, not arms, not commanders, but Our Lady of the Rosary gave us victory”. Likewise, after the Battle of Vienna, Jan III Sobieski, paraphrasing Julius Caesar, declared: “Veni, vidi, Deus vicit!” – “I came, I saw, God won!”

Each of us has a specific vocation so we are called to fight in different ways and settings but we are all called to fight for truth, goodness and beauty, and against the evil one.

Engaging in battle is meaningful not only if we calculate that victory is more probable than defeat. The duty of soldiers is not to calculate, but to fight. This is also true for us as members of the Church Militant. Each of us has a specific vocation so we are called to fight in different ways and settings but we are all called to fight for truth, goodness and beauty, and against the evil one. Either we follow God’s call to fight or turn a deaf ear to Him. We must understand our vocation, that is, the specific form in which we are called to fight, and then engage in that fight, by preparing ourselves and then grow in holiness through fighting. One thing is certain: there is no dignity, honour or holiness without a readiness to suffer by serving God. Ultimately it is about who we as men want to be. There is no higher mission for a Catholic man than to be a soldier in the army of Christ. So, let us resolve to fight. Let us prepare for the fight in our spirit, in our intellect and in our will. Finally, let us engage in the good fight!

FINAL THOUGHTS

In many ways, the battles we face today are more complicated than the military conflicts of the past. Every man knows what he is called to do when a hostile army invades his country. But what do we do when it is difficult even to understand the nature of the battles – inside the Church, and outside in the realm of philosophy, morals, culture, law, politics and the economy – let alone our role in them?

It requires prayer, contemplation and doctrinal formation to understand the sly and insidious Revolution that does not show itself openly yet seeks to corrupt everything true, beautiful and good.

VARRO VOOGLAID WITH HIS FAMILY

WINTER 2018

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Our battles are predominantly spiritual. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “the battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” This is where our most important battle is fought because it profits us nothing to win the whole world but lose our soul. We must bear in mind that when we fight the forces of evil we cannot succeed if we rely on our own strength. Our only hope is that God works in and through us. However, we must prepare ourselves properly to make this possible. If sin lives in us, we cannot fight sin outside us. This is why the sacraments, prayer and proper spiritual direction are so important.

There is a lot we can learn from the words of the Greek statesman, Demosthenes. When difficulties caused his fellow citizens to lose hope he told them: “Athenians! Certainly, things are going badly and you are in despair. But in this you are wrong! If, after having done all that was necessary to ensure that things should go well, you had still seen them turn out badly, you might have reason to despair. Yet hitherto things have gone badly only because you have not done what was necessary so that they should do otherwise. It is still open to you to do what you have so far not done. Then things will go well. Why, then, should you despair so soon?” Let us bear these words in mind and think about what we can do, firstly to understand the battle, secondly, to prepare ourselves for it, and finally, to engage in fighting for the values, principles and ideals that form our Catholic faith.

We are told by the modern world that the problem with society is excessive masculinity. Nothing could be further from the truth. The meaning of masculinity has been distorted and it is our task to restore it – first of all in ourselves and then in society at large. This 28

restoration begins in the understanding that masculinity is about militancy in the broadest sense. Men, by their nature, are called to be defenders of truth, justice, goodness and other high ideals. To fight against the enemies of the Church in the spirit of love, dedication, perseverance and sacrifice is a vocation we are called to for the greater glory of God, for the salvation of souls and for the sanctification of our own soul. This fight must begin in our soul but it extends to every aspect of our spiritual and social life, with kindness and love, but without sentimentalism, false piety and softness. If we are to be the light of the world we must let the light of God shine, without fear or compromise, without counting the cost, trusting in God and relying on His grace. Fighting goes hand in hand with sacrifice and suffering and this provides us with a simple, but effective test: if we do not suffer, then we are not fighting any serious battles.

The words of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó provide us with an excellent example of the militant spirit in action. Under enormous pressure for speaking out against the corruption in the Church that has caused huge damage, he turned to his fellow bishops asking them to engage in fighting: “You too are faced with a choice.

You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption. You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put off the day of reckoning. You can console yourselves with the falsehood and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then the following day, and so on. On the other hand, you can choose to speak. You can trust Him who told us, ‘the truth will set you free.’ I do not say it will be easy to decide between

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silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice – on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge – you will not regret having made.”

COUNTERING THE CHALLENGES OF TODAY’S SOCIETY AS CATHOLIC WOMEN

Varro Vooglaid is a founding member and the chairman of the board of the Foundation for the Protection of Family and Tradition, an independent organization based in Tallinn, Estonia which defends Christian moral principles in contemporary society. He is a lawyer and a former lecturer on the philosophy of law at the University of Tartu. He is married with seven children.

BY V IRGIN IA CODA N UN ZIA N T E

ENDNOTES 1.

2.

See more at https://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholicarticles/12-things-you-should-know-about-the-battleof-tours/article/395 See more at http://www.aquinasandmore.com/blog/ our-ladys-victory-at-the-battle-of-lepanto/

CAL X M A R IA E

This talk was addressed to young women in Rome on 20 October 2018.

• Thirdly, to counter the challenges that women face in today’s society.

W

1. THE CHURCH AND THE WOMAN. THE CATHOLIC MAGISTERIUM AND THE FEMININE QUESTION.

e are here today to deepen our understanding of the role of a Catholic woman in today’s society, which is a very difficult society, full of pitfalls and dangers. As St Augustine pointed out, we are all confronted with the choice between the City of God and the City of Man. For those who do not believe, this choice is quite obvious because they do not love God. But we, who profess to be believers and Catholics, we are obliged to make a choice and this is not easy, because the society in which we live puts us under great pressure.

Often there are two reactions. The first is to compromise, which means adapting to the world and absorbing its spirit. This often leads, in the long run, to the weakening and loss of faith.

The second is isolation: closed in oneself convinced that by a life of regular prayer, taking care only of one’s own family, living one’s working life in the most Christian way possible, is everything that the Lord can ask for, everything it is possible to do in such a de-Christianised and disastrous society.

I am convinced that for a woman, and above all for a young woman, there is also a third way: that of public witness and of resistance to the modern world and that is what I would like to address in three phases: • Firstly, what the Church has taught about women; • Secondly, how the revolutionary process has used women; WINTER 2018

Nobody in the world, no one in history has done for woman what Christianity has done for her. The moral equality of man and woman is a concept completely alien to antiquity.

From the ancient Christian matrons and the medieval nuns to the modern nuns and mothers of families, Christianity has equated the woman with the man in her essential dignity, giving her an opportunity to fulfil roles that were previously unimaginable. Just read the volume of Régine Pernoud, Women in the Days of the Cathedrals, to understand the role of the women of that era. According to Karl Bartsch, “women in the Middle Ages read more than men”.1 And most of the manuscripts were copied by female hands.

Think of such personalities as Eleonor of Aquitaine, Bianca of Castile, Matilda of Canossa, who stood up to an emperor to defend a pope, but also of holy nuns such as Hildegard of Bingen, Gertrude la Grande, Catherine of Siena, consulted by popes and kings, or figures such as the abbess of Gandersheim, Roswita, who was considered the biggest name in German literature in the 10th century. Not to mention St Joan of Arc, a commander called by Providence to save France.

The new concept of woman was proclaimed by St Peter and by St Paul and was historically realised in Europe thanks to the influence of Christiani-

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ty on its laws and customs, especially thanks to the elevation of marriage to a sacrament.

In European history, the mother represented the quintessence of the family. The word “family” indicates a society, that is a plurality of people. If the figure of the father reflects the authority of God, the mother embodies the goodness and the spirit of sacrifice.

Motherhood represents the ordinary way in which the woman reaches her perfection. St Paul says of the woman: “She will become blessed for motherhood.” “The Christian mother,” wrote Cardinal Mindszenty, “is one of the greatest gifts that Christianity has given to Europe because the mother is, after God Himself, her greatest benefit.”

But motherhood, within marriage, is not the only means for women to fulfil their role. Virginity, an ideal that dates to the beginnings of the Church and given by the example of Mary Most Holy, is not a misunderstanding of the goods of marriage, but constitutes a more perfect state. Pius XII dedicated an encyclical to virginity: 29

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The Sacred Virginity of 25 March, 1954.

In this encyclical he explains that “the sacred virginity and perfect chastity consecrated to the service of God is certainly for the Church, one of the most precious treasures that its Author left as an inheritance. For this reason, the Holy Fathers emphasised that perpetual virginity is an excellent good of an essentially Christian character.”

Virginity is a state that concerns above all those who make the religious choice but, as Pius XII explains, it can also be the vocation of lay people, men and women, living in the world and “by private promise or vow completely abstain from marriage and sexual pleasures, in order to serve their neighbour more freely and to be united with God more easily and more intimately.”

What we must be convinced of is that today, both through marriage and through virginity, a special mission is entrusted to women, especially to the young.

2. HOW THE REVOLUTION USES WOMEN TO ACHIEVE ITS ENDS

There is a project to destroy the Church and Christian civilisation and its existence becomes ever clearer to everyone. The popes have defined this project as the Revolution and indicated its historical phases. This project also uses women, to transform their role and through this transformation, to destroy society.

The Revolution is a centuries-old process of aggression against the Church and the Christian civilisation that already by the end of the nineteenth century understood that it had to take possession of the woman in order to destroy the family, society and, finally, the Church.

A professional revolutionary Vladimir Lenin has an emblematic expression: “The experience of all liberation movements attests that the success of a revolution depends on the degree of participation of women.”

The role of women in the Revolution is little known but terrible. As

Y o u n g pH e oupml a en , v ao e cVai ttFiao oec niun a s nrd e th ro o ls ipne ecsts o f l i f e

pointed out by Prof. Roberto de Mattei at the Rome Life Forum in 2017, in the leaded wagon that in April 1917 brought the professional revolutionaries to Petrograd, along with Lenin, travelled Inessa Armand (1874-1920), a member of the executive committee of the Bolshevik party, founder of the “Zhenotdel”, the “women’s department” of the party. She was a woman who had the absolute trust of Lenin, who was her lover. She died of cholera in 1920 and had the honour of being buried in the “red cemetery” under the walls of the Kremlin, as one of the main protagonists of the Revolution.

Her name is less known than that of Aleksandra Kollontai (1872-1952), but her influence on Lenin was perhaps greater.2 Inessa Armand and Aleksandra Kollontai publicly advocated free love, in the belief that sexual liberation was a necessary premise for the realisation of a socialist society. On 17 December 1917, a few weeks after the Bolsheviks’ conquest of power,

divorce was introduced; abortion was legalised in 1920 with no restriction (it was the first country in the world where this happened) prostitution and homosexuality were decriminalised in 1922.3 Trotsky wrote in 1923: “The first period of family destruction is still far from being achieved. The disinte-

The Revolution is a centuries-old process of aggression against the Church and the Christian civilisation that already by the end of the nineteenth century understood that it had to take possession of the woman in order to destroy the family, society and finally the Church.

gration process is in full swing.”4 Kollontai wrote, in 1920, in the journal Komunistka: “In place of the individual and egoistic family, a great universal family of workers will develop, in which all the workers, men and women, will above all be comrades. This is what relations between men and women, in the communist society will be like. These new relations will ensure for humanity all the joys of a love unknown in the commercial society, of a love that is free and based on the true social equality of the partners. (…) The red flag of the social revolution which flies above Russia and is now being hoisted aloft in other countries of the world proclaims the approach of the heaven on earth to which humanity has been aspiring for centuries.”5 They were moved by a deep hatred of God and His creation.

EXTRACTED FROM THE GHENT ALTARPIECE (1422). JAN AND HUBERT VAN EYCK. SAINT BAVO CATHEDRAL, GHENT.

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The revolutionary project envisaged a precise strategy based not only on false ideas, such as the absolute equality between the roles of woman and man, but also on the bad tendencies of human nature, wounded by original sin, beginning with female pride. This programme, which was

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planned in the Masonic lodges at the end of the nineteenth century, today, more than a hundred years later, has been fully realised.

The woman left the home and, introduced into the world of work, was immediately indoctrinated by the feminist, socialist, trade unionist mentality. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, in a still patriarchal society, feminists managed to occupy spaces, to found associations, to convey the poison of social claims. A historian of feminism writes: “For many militant women, involvement in associations brought about a mental revolution; for each individual, it was an attestation of existence and meant the acquisition of a social span of time outside the home.”6 It is enough to read books on the history of feminism today to confirm that it was necessary to make women “free”, to make them equal to men and therefore to abolish the laws on paren-

tal authority; claiming new laws like divorce or abortion to liberate women from any control, both of the Church and of an objective moral law.

The premise of this diabolical work was the destruction of the woman’s sense of reserve. Whether a woman has a vocation to marriage, or to virginity, reserve is, in any case, a bulwark, in a sense the very foundation of her virtue.

Reserve “protects the mystery of persons and their love”. Reserve is modesty. Modesty “inspires one’s choice of clothing. It keeps silence and reserve. (…) Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies”.7 The woman was therefore to be freed from this sense of reserve that oppressed her. It was necessary to make her taste “worldly” success, to make her understand that she could “realise herself ” (a very fashionable phrase) outside of the family and make her forget God. It was the subtle return of the serpent’s temptation: you will become like God. And Eve falls once again. And once again the man is dragged to his downfall.

We could recall here how bad the revolution of 1968 was and its deep association with the feminist movements.

The Masonic magazine L’Humanisme wrote at that time: “The first conquest to be done is the conquest of women. Woman must be freed from the chains of the Church and from the law […]. To break down Catholicism, we must begin by suppressing the dignity of women, we must corrupt them together with the Church. We spread the practice of nudity: first the arms, then the legs, then all the rest. In the end, people will go 31

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around naked, or almost, without batting an eyelid. And, once modesty has been removed, the sense of the sacred will be extinguished, the moral will be weakened and faith will die of asphyxiation.”

the role of women. For a deeper examination of this process, I recommend the book Revolution and Counter-Revolution of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.

Pius XII said that “perhaps today the greatest sin in the world is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”

(26 October 1946) The woman begins to lose the sense of sin by losing the sense of reserve.

Already at the beginning of the 1900s, Our Lady at Fatima had said to little Jacinta:

a) What to do today? How should a woman fulfil her role today?

First of all, we cannot accept the process of de-Christianisation of society, because it detracts from the salvation of souls and, above all, from the honour and glory of God. The present hour demands from the woman a Christian spirit capable of resisting and coping with current fashion; capable of reacting to the secularisation of society and the progress of materialism with an increasingly profound supernatural response.

“The sins that bring more souls to hell are the sins of the flesh, certain fashions will be introduced that will greatly offend Our Lord.

Those who serve God should not serve certain fashions. The Church has no fashions. Our Lord is always the same.”

Our Lord is always the same: the moral law does not change, it does not change with the variation of historical periods. Instead, how much has the female attitude changed, how much woman has changed in attitude towards God and towards society.

What followed was a consequence: in the middle of the twentieth century laws on divorce and abortion were introduced all over the world, deeply immodest fashions were propagated, sexual freedom spread. Thereafter we arrived at artificial fertilisation, the legalisation of homosexuality, the spread of gender ideology, euthanasia …

All this is part of the same revolutionary process that goes on and does not stop. We do not have the time to go into the details of its various phases, but it must be clear to all of you that the pivot of this was the revolution in 32

3. WHAT A YOUNG CATHOLIC CAN DO TODAY

Yo u n g p e op l e , v o c at i on a n d h ol i n e s s of l i f e

toms, the restoration of modesty and thus fight against immodest fashions that are among the most powerful means of corruption of souls, publicly fight against unjust laws that mainly corrupt young people, try to change the culture and the dominant mentality. Women must strive to bring society back to God, bringing it back to the Christian spirit and rebuilding its foundations on natural law and Christian principles.

What means do we have at our disposal to do all this? The means are those that have always been pointed out by the Church.

1) Prayer. To meet the demands of today’s struggle, natural forces are insufficient without grace and union with God. God’s help is obtained above all through prayer. Without a life of

Our Lord is always the same: the moral law does not change, it does not change with the variation of historical periods. Instead, how much has the female attitude changed, how much woman has changed in attitude towards God and towards society.

To defend Christian civilisation, women must, first of all, dedicate themselves to the restoration of the family, the living cell of society. The woman, especially if she has made the choice to abstain from having her own family, must safeguard the institution of the family by fighting the currents and the doctrine that threaten the family, and above all, giving it a hierarchical sense, that of conjugal fidelity, and the Christian spirit.

But more generally, to give greater glory to God, the woman will have to contribute to the restoration of cus-

prayer, we cannot do anything. A holy life is lived through prayer, which is a necessary and indispensable means for any apostolate. The feminists, the revolutionary women (like the Russians Armand, Kallontai, the Spanish Dolores Ibarruri, the Polish Rosa Luxemburg) were moved in their action by a deep hatred for God. Catholic women need to have at the centre of their life a deep love for God: both the contemplative life and active apostolate start from this. And love is increased by prayer. The more we love God, the more we hate evil. The more we love CAL X M A R IA E

God, the more we would like to spread His Kingship over souls, over society.

It should be added, that our prayer must, above all, appeal to the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin. If I had to list all the reasons for which we must ask for Her intercession, we should need another conference. I limit myself to the suggestion that you read the works of St Louis Grignion de Montfort to understand better why we owe everything to Her. Here are just two reasons: • Our Lady is the model of every Christian woman, married, virgin, active, contemplative: in Her everything was accomplished to perfection and therefore she remains the example to be imitated in the certainty that the more we imitate Her, the more we will be pleasing to God; • Our Lady appeared in the last century in Fatima to leave us a very strong and dramatic message. You are all well aware of it, but I would like to remind you what Our Lady said: “God wants to establish devotion to my Immaculate Heart in the world.” How can we think of not having recourse to Her, to Her Immaculate Heart, if it is God himself who asked us to do so?

2) Study. To defend the Church, women must carry out a doctrinal apostolate that can be considered a true spiritual motherhood of the utmost importance. To do this you need to prepare yourselves with study, knowing well and intensely the reasons for our faith in order to guard oneself against the mistakes and dangers of the world and help others do the same. Today, the very foundations of Catholic religious instruction have been lost. It is from there that we must start again, studying the Catechism and spreading it. However, one can WINTER 2018

not limit oneself to studying the great truths of the Church, it is necessary to know also what are the main errors that oppose these truths. The Church is experiencing an unprecedented crisis in its history: we need to understand its deep, doctrinal and moral causes if we want our remedies to be effective.

3) Action. Finally, for those who do not have a purely contemplative voca-

True and the Beautiful in a society imbued with selfishness and the pursuit of personal interest; in a world in which the only professed philosophy of life is relativism according to which there are no absolute truths; in a society in which hedonistic culture reigns, according to which the only possible form of happiness is the satisfaction of one’s own pleasure and instincts

CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN (1641–1644). DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ. THE PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID.

tion, action is necessary: ​​action that we must exercise for the good of our neighbour and society. This is a task for every woman today that naturally needs to relate to personal gifts and talents. None of us today is exempt from having to defend the Good, the

We must aspire, we must desire with all our strength to be a legion of Catholic women behind the banner of Christ the King who are committed to rebuilding society from its foundation, defending the social sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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We must aspire, we must desire with all our strength to be a legion of Catholic women behind the banner of Christ the King who are committed to rebuilding society from its foundation, defending the social sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

To be Thy Spouse, O my Jesus, to be a daughter of Carmel, and by my union with Thee to be the mother of souls, should not all this content me? And yet other vocations make themselves felt – I feel called to the Priesthood and to the Apostolate – I would be a Martyr, a Doctor of the Church. I should like to accomplish the most heroic deeds – the spirit of the Crusader burns within me, and I long to die on the field of battle in defence of Holy Church.”

The mission of women, once restricted to the hearth and to charitable and educational works, although still 34

necessary today, also extends, given the new needs, to very important political and social action.

We certainly must not think that this is normal, but today we do not live in normal times and therefore if in a deeply Christian society women would resume their role within families and monasteries, today this is not the case.

Following the example of so many saints, we must be ready to embrace different vocations and missions but have as their sole end to give greater glory to God, to defend the Church and Christian civilisation. b) Purity and fortitude We must rediscover the mainly feminine virtues of purity, of the spirit of sacrifice, self-denial, patience, sweetness. Purity is not weakness or

inexperience but a force that derives from the love of God, from the faith of His presence in us and from Christian pride (we have to be proud of being Catholic).

But we must not forget the very important virtue of fortitude. Today also the virtue of fortitude is necessary, especially for women, to respond to the demands of our faith. Furthermore, it is impossible to preserve purity without self-control and a continuous struggle against the world, against the spirit of evil and against passions. This struggle is the seal of the true Christian and demands from the woman and from the young strength and courage, often to the degree of heroism, like that of the martyrs; it requires a spirit of penance and sacrifice, the fruit of living faith and the condition of self-control. St Teresa of Avila recommended to her nuns: “In courage, you should not be women but strong men … indeed to put fear into the same men.”

Pius XII, in a speech to Catholic women, recalled that what is most asked of women today is purity and fortitude. Purity was the first virtue of Our Lady, he affirms and then recalls the example of St Agnes, quoting St Maximus:

Every woman always has a choice before her: to be Eve or Mary.

I hope that today we leave here being more convinced that we must choose Mary as our model and our safe haven. Convinced that we must fight with love and determination for the cause of God, following the example of many women who have preceded us and whose hidden virtues are only known in Paradise. Convinced that everything could depend on each one of us, knowing well that God does not need anyone, and therefore serving Him in that spirit of profound humility and abandonment to Divine Providence.

I would like to leave you with an example of a courageous and pure woman, chosen by God for a role that she herself did not understand and initially was certain to refuse because she did not feel equal to it: Joan of Arc. St Joan8 is the model of the virgin warrior in whom two virtues, chastity and heroism, are marvellously conjoined. A virgin – writes Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira – to such an extent that she can assume the warrior function of man, fully retaining her femininity.9 “The complete ideal warrior of the Middle Ages, St Joan of Arc, shows the possibility of a new way of holiness for the woman, which is the sanctity that conforms par excellence to the praise that the Gospel addresses to the strong woman.”10

“She looks in the face of those who flatter her, and rejects them; who threaten her, and despises them … She loves her purity so much that neither derisions, nor flames, nor torments, nor her executioners frighten her. (S. Maximi Taurin, Sermo 56 In natali S. Agnetis, Migne, PL 57, 644) (…)

In the bull with which Benedict XV proclaimed her saint, he wrote:

“Fortitude and purity, this is what we ask for, as the two most precious ornaments of the heart, for you to the Immaculate Virgin and the martyr Agnes.”

“Joan always had the habit of often receiving the divine sacraments, observing the prescribed fasts, always attending church, participating every day in the sac-

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rosanct sacrifice of the Mass, reciting fervent prayers in front of the images of Jesus hanging from the cross and the Blessed Virgin.

The days of celebration, while the other girls took rest and gave themselves to the dances, she went to church, bringing candles, which she offered to the most holy Virgin and, by singular devotion to her, she would undertake pilgrimages to the solitary church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Bermont.

She was also transported by such a great love towards God and to the worship due to Him, that in the evening, even when she was in the country, as soon as she heard

the church bell, bent her knees, she raised her mind to God. She distinguished herself by charity towards her neighbour. In fact, she refreshed the sick and willingly gave alms, housed the poor, to whom she willingly gave up her bed, sleeping herself on the ground. God filled these wonderful virtues with glory and honour in a girl of about 12 years, and he began to reveal his intentions.”11 Each of us must appreciate this example: the search for pleasure in God in small things, in small daily duties, in acts of charity towards one’s neighbour. But always ready to be docile

JOAN OF ARC AT THE CORONATION OF CHARLES VII (1854). JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE INGRES. LOUVRE MUSEUM, PARIS.

You may recall the famous text of St Theresa of the Infant Jesus:

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instruments in the hands of God, as was St Joan of Arc: “who, in order to carry out divine orders, abandoned her family, left her female occupations, braced her arms and led the soldiers to the battle: not fearing death threats or the unjust sentence, which condemned her to be burned. Knowing that she was innocent, and not a heretic, witch, apostate and recidivist, surrounded by flames, offered prayers and supplications and repeated that she had done everything by God’s will, until, finding strength in seeing the cross, she gave up her spirit.”12

will, no sacrifice is too great when offered for the glory of God: this must be our compass and only this can give us true and profound joy in this life and eternal happiness in Paradise, which is the ultimate goal for each one of us.

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5.

6.

7.

8.

Virginia Coda Nunziante is the Head of the International Relations Office of the Italian National Research Council, the main research institution in Italy. She is the President of the Italian Association for the Defence of the Family (Associazione Famiglia Domani), active since 1988. She is also the President of the Italian March for Life since its inception in Italy in 2011.

ENDNOTES:

Here too we must be ready, not so much to suffer the stake, as having to suffer scorn, contempt, misunderstanding, and false accusations. Men’s misunderstanding does not matter when we know that we are doing God’s

1.

2.

3.

4.

Cited in R. Pernoud, Rizzoli, Milano 1986, p. 62.

Cf. The Letters to Lenin from Inessa Armand and Aleksandra Kollontai from March 1917 in V. I. Lenin, Opere complete, vol. 35, Editori Runiti, Roma 1952, pp. 210-212.

Cf. Giovanni Codevilla, Dalla Rivoluzione bolscevica alla Federazione Russa, Franco Angeli, Rome 1996.

Leon Trotzkij, Problems of everyday life, Monad Press, New York 1986, p. 37.

9.

10.

11.

12.

First published in Komunistka, No 2, 1920, and in English in The Worker, 1920. Republished in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, translated by Alix Holt (London, Allison & Busby, 1977) https://www.marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm [Accessed 30 November 2018].

Fiorenza Taricone, Dal privato al politico: il salotto della contessa Spalletti Rasponi (From the Private to the Politician: the Parlor of Countess Spalletti Rasponi) (1903-1931), an article.

CCC 2522, 2523.

St Joan of Arc (1412-1431), the peasant of Domrémy, was favoured by heavenly voices who encouraged her to help the French King Charles VII in his work of liberation of France from the English. Arrested by the English she was tried for witchcraft and was burnt at the stake on 30 May, 1431. She was declared blessed by Pius X, 18 April 1909 and proclaimed a saint by Benedict XV on 10 July 1920. The conclusion of the epoch of St Joan of Arc can be known thanks two sources of exceptional historical value: the two processes that concern it.

The first contains the transcription of Joan’s long and numerous interrogations during the last months of her life (February-May 1431). The second contains the depositions of about 120 eyewitnesses throughout her life.

This process, which opened under the authority of Pope Callistus III, ended with a solemn sentence that declared no condemnation (7 July 1456; pp. 604-610) (cf. Procès de Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, 3 vols and Procès en Nullité de la Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, Klincksieck, Paris l960-1989, 5 vols).

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, A Cavalaria, pp. 99-100.

CSN, 14 September 1991.

Benedict XV, Divine Bull, on 16 May 1920.

Ibid.

Next year’s Voice of the Family weekend of prayer and formation for young adults will take place in Rome on 16-20 October 2019.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE EMAIL: youth @ v o ic e of th efa mi l y. c om

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Thy word. - Psalm 119:9

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Reflections on the vocation

to the contemplative life

This letter from an enclosed Carmelite nun was addressed to the young women at the Voice of the Family conference Created for heaven: the mission of Catholic young adults in today’s world. We are very happy to make it available to all!

Dear young people, In the world in which we live, which seems to have completely forgotten the supernatural order, and therefore the existence of God, it is natural to wonder what the contemplative life is, why it exists and whether it is necessary for it to continue to exist. To answer these questions, we must examine history and ask ourselves: why, in the course of 2000 years of Christianity, monks and nuns have withdrawn into solitude, so-called “cloisters” have been built, and these have even become synonyms of the environment for the kind of life that is defined precisely as “claustral”? The contemplative life, which to modern man appears as an escape from the world and its challenges, is really the manifestation of the greatest love that a creature can render to his Creator. This is not an escape from the world, but a total donation to the world by means of the greatest sacrifice. The enclosure is born of the action of the Holy Spirit, thanks to which love is diffused in our hearts: “It is not fear, nor repentance, nor only prudence that the solitudes of the monasteries inhabit. It is the love of God!” said Pope Pius XII. These words are echoed by the words of a fourth-century hermit: “Because of Christ, I remain in these walls.”

To understand the contemplative life, which perhaps may seem an incomprehensible mystery, it is necessary to go back to the origins of monasticism. The first centuries of the Church, as we know, were characterised by the persecutions of the Roman emperors against the Christians who, with their blood, gave the supreme testimony of love. When the persecutions ceased under Emperor Constantine, the most fervent Christians – unable to shed their blood – retired to the deserts to offer God the martyrdom of their life, spent in the solitude of a life of prayer and penance. Contemplative life is born, therefore, as a substitution of the martyrdom of blood and, consequently, as the form of supreme donation to God. Through separation from the world, the monk or nun is the heir of the martyr. The monk is like the martyr not only for his asceticism and for his renunciations, for his heroic perseverance and for his special consecration to the Passion of Christ, but also for his voluntary solitude. Tertullian said that the martyr in prison is like a monk. And the monk in his cell is like a martyr. In the course of history, this aspect of the enclosure understood as voluntary imprisonment became increasingly relevant, assuming ever more precise rules, and in this way became one of the principal means of evangelising Europe. St Benedict, in fact, with his famous rule, spread the Christian faith throughout pagan Europe not with preaching but with the presence of monasteries of

monks, which constituted a living and silent preaching of the Christian faith.

From the beginning, monasticism appeared as a powerful method of reform for the Church, thanks to its purity and its detachment from the world. Monastic life testifies to mankind that God exists and

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that His Kingdom, though beginning in this world, is not of this world. It was up to the monks to withdraw from the world, to live there as strangers in order to become, as far as possible for human frailty, citizens of Paradise associated with the Angels of Heaven.

In the twelfth century the contemplative life had such a development that St Peter Damian could say: “It seemed that the whole world became a hermitage.” And this flowering was not an escape from the world, but a confirmation of the apostolic dimension of the contemplative life.

St Aelred told his sister that his heart should be as big as the world: “Bring the whole world together in the depths of your love and here, all together, contemplate the good and the bad, rejoice on one and cry over the other. There you fix your gaze on those who suffer, on those who are oppressed, and suffer with them.” Contemplatives – we read in a rule for hermits – “should lead such a holy life that the whole Church, that is, all the Christian people, can rely on them, feel supported, because they elevate others through their holiness of life

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and their fervent prayers. A contemplative is united to the Church as the anchor to a ship to keep it safe amid waves and storms.”

William of Saint Thierry, a great friend of St Bernard, sings the praises of the enclosure playing on the etymology of the two terms: the cell (which is the place where the nun lives) and Heaven [caelum in Latin]. “The cell,” he writes, “hides the nun from the world and opens Heaven to her.”

“For the cell [cella] and Heaven [caelum] are akin to one another. And what is hidden in the heavens is also hidden in the cells; the same occupation characterises both the one and the other.

And what is this? To dedicate oneself to God, to enjoy God.” The nuns remain in the house of God, in the monastery, in the cell, where they are enclosed in their Paradise which is “an open prison without chains” (St Bernard), while the world for them would be a prison. Separated from the world, they lead a hidden life, knowing that their vocation is not to preach but to pray and keep silence, since they will teach others not by word but by exam-

ple. For according to St Bernard, the nun “must help the earthly Jerusalem to seek the heavenly Jerusalem”.

If religious life – in the broader sense – is an imitation of the life of Our Lord, and all the different forms of religious life imitate a particular aspect of the life of Jesus, the contemplative life imitates Jesus’s hidden life for thirty years, Jesus led into the desert by the Holy Spirit, Jesus in the solitude of the Cross, and finally Jesus in the Eucharist. It is love that urges us to always seek the Lord, to live in solitude with Him, to desire to know Him more every day, to be united to Him in a constant intimacy, collaborating in His Redemption. “You are the collaborators with God Himself and support of the weak and wavering members of his ineffable Body,” wrote St Clare to St Agnes of Prague.

The ultimate goal of a nun is not different from that of other Christians; it is the perfection of charity. It is however – thanks to a special grace of God her specific vocation – as fully understood, the unique excellence of this end, of the greatness, purity and tenderness of God, whom St Francis loved to call “the Beautiful”. She has known “the great love” (Eph 2:4) with which the Father has loved her freely and understood that such love should be preferred to everyone else, love without measure until the total gift of self. The nun could not imagine even for a moment that she no longer loved the one who has loved her so much that He “gave Himself for her”, however, she also desires to respond with a greater love, with the gift of her life. The enclosure is therefore a choice of love, of the supreme love of a creature for her Creator.

If the martyrs testify to their faith not through the word but through death, the nuns do it through the example of their hidden life with Christ. They witness that God exists, that there is a supernatural order of things, for which they live and in which they are consumed in the hidden life that the world despises. And yet, after all, the world understands the preciousness of this life, because, when it wants to persecute the Church, it usually always starts from the destruction of the monasteries: this is

what happened, for example, during the French Revolution. “The monks are lighthouses that shine from above to illuminate those who come towards them from afar,” said St John Chrysostom.

“Standing in the harbour, they invite everyone to share their tranquillity, not allowing anyone who sees them to be shipwrecked or to remain in darkness.”

“Model for the monks are the Angels,” asserted St John Climacus “the model for all men is the monk.”

The first strictly cloistered form of life for women was given by St Clare of Assisi. It is said of her that she was a light which “remained enclosed in secret cloisters, and outside it emitted sparkling rays; it was gathered together in a strict convent, and it was sprinkled upon the entire age; it was guarded within, and it flowed forth outside.” (Bull of canonisation) Three centuries later in Spain, St Teresa of Ávila began the reform of the Discalced Carmelites, promoting solitude and the cloister as the indispensable ascetic means for the sanctification of the nuns and the building up of the Church. One of the main reasons that prompted the Spanish Saint to start the reform was the spread of the Protestant heresy by Luther’s disastrous action. “… at this time,” she wrote, “I received news of the damage and slaughter that the Lutherans had done in France and how much this unfortunate sect was increasing. I felt great pain and I begged the Lord, as I could, to remedy so much evil. It seemed to me that I would give my life a thousand times to save one of the many souls lost there. But, seeing myself as a woman and worthless, unable to be useful in a way I wanted to serve the Lord, being anxious that He has so many enemies and so few friends, I decided to do what little depended on me. […] I thought that (we nuns), all dedicated to prayer for the defenders of the Church, for the preachers and for the theologians who support her, we would help as best we could my Lord, so persecuted by those who have benefited so much; by these traitors appearing to want to crucify him again and that he has no place to lay his head.”

SAINT TERESA OF ÁVILA’S VISION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. PETER PAUL RUBENS.1612-1614. MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN, ROTTERDAM.

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Since the reform of St Teresa, Carmel has generated many holy souls from the silence of its strict enclosure, some raised to the honours of the altars, others – the most numerous – remained unknown but no less important for the life of the Church. From the depths of the cloister, the nuns are the pulsating heart of the Church, as St Thérèse of the Child Jesus said – the angelic Carmelite of Lisieux, known all over the world, and declared by Pius XI “patroness of all missions”; she who at the age of fourteen had wished to leave to evangelise the pagan lands, but then considered it more perfect “to sacrifice all the consolations and satisfactions of the external apostolate” and to choose a cloistered life “to suffer more in the monotony of an austere life and so save more souls”. With this act, Pius XI showed the whole apostolic dimension of the contemplatives, whose prayer embraces the whole world, although their visible apostolate is restricted and unknown.

Young Thérèse of Lisieux possessed the zeal of the apostles, the ardour of the martyrs and the missionaries, who are the different members of the Body of Christ, which is the Church. None of these vocations, however, satisfied her desire to love God, since she could not possess them all at the same time. Then she realised that the Church has a heart, and this heart throbs with love, and this heart gives courage to the martyrs, strength to the missionaries, constancy to the virgins. And she realised that to have all the vocations it was necessary to be that heart, that is, love.

“Then,” she writes, “with great joy and ecstasy of the soul I cried out: O Jesus, my love, I finally found my vocation. My vocation is love. Yes, I found my place in the Church, and you gave me this place, O my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love and in this way I will be everything and my desire will result in reality.”

But to “be love” it was necessary to renounce all that is not God to live only for him, which is Love by essence: this she did by living in the dark solitude of Carmel.

Modern Christianity tends to condemn the contemplative life, considering it a selfish choice

Y o u n g p e o p l e , v o c a tFio oc nu a snd holiness of life

that dismisses the numerous needs of humanity. But this is a 2000-year-old accusation! It is, at a closer look, the accusation of Martha, who worked – mind you! – for the Lord, against her sister Mary, who instead – ecstatic – sat at the feet of the same Lord, listening to His words of eternal life. St Augustine says that, in this episode, the contemplative life – represented by Mary – has found a definite advocate like no other, who is the Lord Himself, who said then and for all the centuries to come: “Mary has chosen the better part that will not be taken from her.”(Lk. 10:42) The contemplative life is the better part, since it is the choice – on earth – of what we will do in Heaven.

Pope Pius XI comments: “Those who lead, for their state, a contemplative and solitary life, to fix the gaze of the spirit with all their strength to the contemplation of the divine mysteries and eternal truths, those it must be proclaimed with certainty, have chosen the better part.”

This “better part” by many spiritual authors is compared to the “search for the Face of God”.

To seek the Face of God means, according to the Scriptures, to try to “see God” – to perceive His presence, to live for Him and with Him in an incessant dialogue of love. The Holy Scriptures are all filled with this desire: “O God, my God, to thee do I watch at break of day. For thee my soul hath thirsted … so in the sanctuary have I come before thee, to see thy power and thy glory.” (Ps. 62) St Augustine comments: “Do you want to fulfil this desire: to see the face of God? Do nothing else.

Fix yourselves only on this end and it alone will suffice … He who loves God says: All that is not He has no sweetness for me. If my Lord wants to give me a gift, He will take away everything and give Himself to me.”

It is only love that nourishes this search for the Face of God. The nun is “the one in love with God” who wants to see His beautiful Face. “Love,” said St Peter Chrysologus, “cannot help but see what it loves. So all the saints valued very little what they had accomplished, if they were not to come to see God.” Love is unifying by definition: it cannot but desire the presence and possession of

the Beloved. Now, this is exactly what contemplation accomplishes: since it is an act of knowledge inspired by love, it allows God to live in a special way in our hearts “as what is known is in the one who knows and what is loved in those who love,” teaches St Thomas. When one loves, it is then impossible to wait for the other life to see the face of the Beloved: one seeks it and finds it in this life through contemplation, which is a simple glance at the beatifying Face of God. Cloistered life is therefore a choice of love, of the most radical love that can be chosen by a human creature. And the model of this choice is the Blessed Virgin, the one whose origin – like all her life – disappear in silence. The Gospel teaches us that she received the Angel’s announcement in the solitude of her house in Nazareth, and throughout her life she kept the words of the Son in the silence of her heart and in her hidden life. And just as the Holy Virgin was not only the physical mother of Christ, but also the spiritual mother of Her members who form the Church, generating them under the Cross, so nuns are called to participate in this unlimited fruitfulness of the Mother of God

and have all men as their children. St Ambrose said that the nuns, even if they do not know the pains of childbirth, have “a most numerous posterity”. And this happens by bringing the grace of God into the hearts of men through prayer and penance. This is the work of contemplative life.

“This life,” wrote a Benedictine monk, “is an instruction, and today perhaps that is what our world needs most. This preaching is the voice of those who say nothing, who speak of God and attract with prayer grace on the world.”

The Imitation of Christ elevates this sublime prayer to God – with which I conclude and which I leave you with for meditation – that, besides being a synthesis of the contemplative life, is a call for every soul to raise the gaze from the earth to Heaven, from the time to eternity and, finally, from man to God: “Therefore, whatever You give me besides Yourself, whatever You reveal to me concerning Yourself, and whatever You promise, is too small and insufficient when I do not see and fully enjoy You alone. For my heart cannot rest or be fully content until, rising above all gifts and every created thing, it rests in You.”

MADONNA OF MERCY. DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO. C.1472. CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS, FLORENCE.

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Highlights

Highlights

ROME, 19-21 OCTOBER 2018

Created for Heaven: the mission of young adults in today’s world

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e have what the entire world needs. Never lose sight that it is a grace, it is an absolute gift from God for you to believe today with everything that is going on. Gratitude is the answer to everything you will ever have to face in your life.

The greatest thing we can do is that which God has called us to, and give our all, nothing less.

Do I feel like a religious? No. I am consumed to love Him, to be what He

wants me to be and to tell the world about Him at every opportunity He gives me. And what he wants to do with this is His business.

‘Be you perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect’…Does perfect mean that we do not sin, that we do not make mistakes? Perfect is wholeness. To be perfect is to be complete, to be whole.

On this side of Heaven we will always have flaws. St Paul begged God to take his infirmity from him. God said no, my grace is sufficient for you. He want-

ed Paul to never lose his dependence on God. ‘My power is made perfect in your weakness.’ Every time you feel incapable, say: ‘Bless you Lord!’ Your failures are the way for you to learn.

The only failure is to give up. Never ever give up.

Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, OSB

Discerning God’s will for our life

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he main question about entering into marriage with someone is whether this person is going to help me and my children get to heaven?

This is the number one most important question when you are selecting your spouse. Your decision to marry is also your decision about sanctity. Your call to marriage, to priesthood or religious life is to discern what is God’s will for your sanctity. He does have a plan for you!

We are all called to die. We all will die.

But we are all called to die to ourselves.

In married life – which is a calling to your sanctity, that is what it primarily is – but it is also a calling for the purpose of marriage and that is for procreation and education or rearing of children, rearing them to God. We are called to procreation and that means openness to life. The first commandment given to men is “be fruitful and multiply”

(Gen 1:28). That is something hardly ever talked about. We often hear it talked about in the negative: don’t use contraception. Actually, the teaching is: be open to life, welcome life, life is a gift.

Sr Lucia, one of the three Fatima children wrote to the late cardinal Caffarra saying that the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be over marriage and the family. This is where the decisive battle lies. Dr Peter Kreeft once asked: Have you ever noticed that almost the whole of the culture war is about one issue?

Abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception, pornography, promiscuity, sex education, divorce, homosexuality, in-vitro fertilisation, embryonic stem cell research are all about the attack on marriage. In the Scripture, St Paul tells us: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to

his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.” But the next line is: “This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church.” So there is this image that God wants to give us of His own relationship with His Church in the relationship of the husband and wife that is to bear fruit in our souls.

It is the relationship between us and Christ. And wouldn’t Satan want to attack that first? Because that is what we are called to – eternal relationship with Christ in Heaven.

John-Henry Westen Truths about Catholic marriage you won’t hear from the pulpit

Highlights

Highlights

“Catholic youth today really want to be told the truth, not a watered-down version of the truth.”

formation in our parishes our schools, our dioceses and also more transparency and authentic leadership.”

not to be married who are involved in ministry, so that they could focus on what the Lord is calling them to.”

“Please protect Catholic tradition, because that is what Our Lord would want. Without following the Lord’s will, what good are we actually going to do? He knows better than we do.”

“Young people today don’t want the Church to be handing us what the world is handing us. We want to have the unique truth that is found only in the Church.”

“We want orthodoxy, we want the Latin Mass, we want religious orders that wear their habits, we want big families.

We want everything that the Church has taught for 2,000 years.”

“Apostles are not politicians or legislators, they shouldn’t sacrifice the truth.”

“There isn’t a crisis of vocations, but there’s a conspiracy against vocations, especially for those who appreciate the Traditional Latin Mass…there is an abundance of young men who love the beauty of the faith as it was before the Second Vatican Council…they’ve been suppressed by their bishops, by those at the Vatican, and by their local clergy, too, who seem to dismantle that vocation.”

“Do not listen to the world, but rather allow the world to listen to Christ.”

“I’d love to see more formation, especially for young adults, to encourage and equip us to stand up for our faith and to not water it down in the hope that it would be more appealing. I think in order to do that we need more

“As a young person striving to get myself and my family to Heaven I am asking you to uphold the truths of the Church and to support young people who are striving to live these truths in their daily lives.”

“As regards stopping celibacy in the priesthood, I would like to urge our Church and her leaders to oppose this.

Even in the first century St Paul tells us in the Scripture that it is better for men

Messages to the world’s bishops from the young adults who attended the conference

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e find the world and the culture in general in a spiralling decline. We observe around us the attacks on life, the attack on the integrity of the family, the attack on the freedom of conscience and at the same time we find the Church herself seemingly in confusion. A culture which has never more needed that the Church speaks strongly and clearly the Truth which is God’s gift to earth in Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet she gives the impression of trying to approach this culture, which is truly a culture of death. This, in my judgement, is really a diabolical situation.

Pope St John Paul II called for a new evangelisation throughout his pontificate and he was always very clear that the new evangelisation had to do not only with the world around, going out to the world to bring the Gospel, but that the Church had to be evangelised

internally again, because the evils of secularism, the evils of relativism had entered into the Church herself.

We need to draw close to Him, to His truth, to get to his love in the sacraments and to live the life of the Church with the greatest possible integrity.

Because of the grave sins of certain leaders of the Church, it’s very difficult for us. It’s a scandal for us, but the only answer to it is our Lord Jesus Christ: His teaching, His sacraments, and His governance of our lives in the Church.

I simply want to encourage you in your love for the Church, and also encourage you to be sensitive to those who are suffering a great deal for this scandal and try to help them to understand that, notwithstanding the great confusion and division which has entered into the life of the Church, the Church remains the holy, mystical Body of

Christ and we are the living branches of Christ who is the vine.

This is one of the great confusions today – the Church appears to show its love for sinful man by justifying his sin, by not being clear about the sin, and thus emptying the redemptive work of Christ of its meaning.

There is never any love that is not on the side of truth.

Our Blessed Mother will always instruct us in this way as she did with the wine stewards at Cana, she takes us always to Our Lord with her instructions: Do what He tells us and He tells you to take up each day the Cross with Him, the Cross of oblation of ourselves in pure and selfless love.

Raymond Cardinal Burke The Universal Vocation: Holiness of Life

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I N T E RV I E W W I T H D R P E T E R KWA S N I E W S K I

BEAUTY: God’s messenger the Opera Omnia of the Angelic Doctor, a Fellow of the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies, and a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center. He has published over 750 articles on Thomistic thought, sacramental and liturgical theology, the history and aesthetics of music, and the social doctrine of the Church.

DR PETER KWASNIEWSKI

Peter Kwasniewski holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Thomas Aquinas College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America. After teaching at the International Theological Institute in Austria and for the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austrian Programme, he joined the founding team of Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming, where he taught theology, philosophy, music, and art history, and directed the choir and schola.

He is now a full-time author, speaker, editor, publisher, and composer.

Dr Kwasniewski has published seven books, including Sacred Choral Works (Corpus Christi Watershed, 2014); Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (Angelico, 2014); Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico, 2017); A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching (Cluny, 2017); and Tradition and Sanity (Angelico, 2018).

Kwasniewski is a scholar of The Aquinas Institute in Green Bay, which is publishing 46

CALX MARIAE: Throughout history, the Church has sought out beautiful music, art, architecture and the finest craftsmanship. Why do these things play a crucial role in Catholic spirituality and formation?

PETER KWASNIEWSKI: The reason is simple: we were made by God as creatures of flesh and blood. We learn through our senses. When God revealed the Law to Moses, He made use of a lofty mountain, lightning, thunder, dark clouds, blood, and stone tablets.

When He commanded the building of the tabernacle, He showed the pattern of it in fine detail, demanding the most expensive materials. When God spoke to Elijah, He first made a lot of noise, and then revealed Himself in a “soft, small voice”. When Our Lord wished to give Himself most intimately to His disciples, He used bread and wine, in the midst of a highly structured religious ritual. We can think of thousands of examples from divine revelation of “theophanies”, that is, the manifestation of God in various signs and

figures. The Jewish liturgy in temple and synagogue continued this pattern, and obviously Christian liturgy did as well, moved above all by the miracle of the Son of God Himself taking on flesh and blood. The Catholic Faith, with the power of the Incarnation behind it, developed the richest and most beautiful culture the world has ever known – but all in the service of pointing beyond itself, to God. CM: What is the purpose of beauty?

Is it in any way practical or functional?

PK: Beauty is God’s first, last, and most effective messenger. We learn that the world is good and orderly because of the beauty of nature, which we only later come to understand intellectually. And just as we come to know God through His divine artistry, we see the inner beauty of the human person most of all in the great works of human art. A painter like Rembrandt helps us to see the immense, almost heartbreaking beauty of an old man or old woman’s face, which we might otherwise rush past or even find ugly.

Christ Himself is “the fairest of the sons of men”, as Scripture says, but He allowed Himself to become “a man of sorrows”, marred beyond belief, to tell us something unforgettable about the invisible Beauty of love, of sacrifice for love. The Church therefore cannot and must not flee from her role of CAL X M A R IA E

introducing mankind to this immortal Lover, both in the beauties that appeal to our senses, and in the deeper mystery that no sense can reach.

CM: What specifically is the role of beauty in the formation of children and young people?

PK: The first thing a baby notices in the world is his mother’s face, which establishes a first and permanent vision of beauty – not necessarily as the world sees it, but because love discloses the truth.

As a child grows in the family, his parents have the serious obligation to train him or her in a love of the beautiful by reading good stories, memorising poetry, putting up good artwork, making art together, and attending liturgy that is outwardly very beautiful, if at all possible. All these things are part of a subtle and pervasive education of taste, sensibility, instinct, and intuition.

When we are brought up with beauty, we have a sense of propriety, respect, nobility, dignity. These things are proto-religious or para-religious attitudes that heavily influence the course of one’s life. Without them, we are much more vulnerable to the winds of false doctrine and shoddy excuses.

dress and speak, what our buildings and vehicles look like, all this is culture, and does, in fact, express a worldview (or perhaps an eclectic mingling of worldviews).

In Europe above all, Catholics developed an extremely rich culture in which even the littlest objects of daily use were decorated beautifully and often with explicit reference to the doctrines of the Faith. In this way, there was a continuum from the cup at home to the chalice on the altar, from the dinner bell to the cathedral bell, from the tablecloth to the houseling

cloth. The images of Our Lady and the saints presided over everything – our familiar companions in this world, but as a reminder that “we have here no abiding city: we seek one that is to come”.

A Catholic culture, then, is what a society inspired by the Faith will produce and cherish: an environment that turns the mind to God gently and frequently, making full use of the high beauties of fine art and the rugged genius of folk art, the impressive pageantry of ceremonial and the stabilising force of rituals. The result is

CM: How would you explain to someone what exactly culture is and what is Catholic culture?

PK: It is not easy to define culture. In a recent lecture I tried my hand at it: culture is “the shared ways in which a society or people is accustomed to expressing, celebrating, and inculcating its vision of reality”. Maybe that’s too broad. Culture is always concerned with the concrete expression of ideas and values. How we eat our food, what we drink and when and why, how we WINTER 2018

SAINT CECILIA (C.1650). ANONYMOUS (ITALY). ŁAZIENKI PALACE, WARSAW.

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a joyful impregnation of the whole of life with the immense reality of God, too great to be limited to any domain or any one expression.

CM: Should there be an overlap in liturgical and popular culture? If yes, in what form? If no, why not?

PK: I think, in fact, it has been a tragedy that high culture and popular culture have parted ways almost completely, and that the liturgy is no longer the driving force of culture, as it had been for well over a thousand years. Today’s “inculturation” is often cheap, random, and secular, because it is not guided by strong and clear thinking rooted in divine revelation and Church tradition.

For example, people try to take contemporary pop music and bring it into the liturgy. This is a giant mistake, because this music is saturated with emotionalism, strongly associated with the liberal anti-culture and its sexual promiscuity. It does exactly the opposite of what church music is supposed to do: raise the mind up to God, purify the heart of disordered affection, discipline the body. Instead of assisting in our assimilation of the Word of God, it rather promotes the secularisation of religion.

But it is possible to do inculturation well. The missionaries of Europe who came to the New World often incorporated external features of the evangelised cultures into music, devotions, and visual arts. For instance, Spanish missionaries in Mexico taught the natives how to compose in the style of Renaissance polyphony, but allowed or even encouraged the addition of native flutes and percussion. The result still sounds ecclesiastical, yet with a Central American flavor to it. (If you are interested in listening to some of 48

it, just look up the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, or SAVAE.) CM: What is our duty as the heirs of Catholic tradition? Do we need to reform, preserve, or recreate?

PK: This is an important question.

Here is what Our Lord Himself teaches us in the parable of the prodigal son.

What we do to, or with, our family inheritance shows what we think of our father and of our entire family. Now, no one can deny that things like Latin, Gregorian chant, and offering Mass ad orientem are central, constitutive, and characteristic treasures of our Catholic patrimony. The liturgical reform suppressed them or marginalised them, acting just like the prodigal son who squandered his family wealth on loose living and ended up impoverished and miserable. The only way out of this bad situation is what the parable shows: conversion, repentance, return, and reestablishment in the house of the father.

The right attitude towards our inheritance is to protect it, preserve it, defend it, and make use of it to the greatest extent possible. To do this, we must know it, and the better we come to know it, the more we will love it. This love, in turn, will inspire new works of beauty in continuity with what has come before. That is the experience of every serious Catholic artist – architect, painter, iconographer, sculptor, composer, poet. Knowing our tradition, we imitate it, emulate it, develop it, and carry it forward into the 21st century. There is no need to seek originality. The only fully original person is God the Father, since He has no origin from anyone else; even the Son is not original, but originated; and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. God Himself teaches us

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that the perfection of all persons after the Father consists in their derivation from another. The creature who tried to be wholly original was Lucifer, of whom Our Lord says that he is “the father of lies” because he “speaks from himself ”. That’s where sheer originality will get you: into hell. And that, of course, is what we see in so many modern artists.

Incidentally, Martin Mosebach has made the observation that the notion of reform makes sense only if one takes the word itself seriously: it is a return to form, a re-forming of that which has lost good form. Reform doesn’t mean loosening up, wandering off, or blowing things up. It means more discipline, more attachment to good models, more self-control, more humility in the service of greatness. That’s the kind of reform that the Church always needs, not the “reform” we have gotten in the past half-century, which should more truthfully be called deformation.

to perceive beauty not as something vague, fluffy, and sentimental, but as the result of labour, craft, rule.

Other important influences at the end of high school included the reading of Plato’s dialogues and Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.

At the time, I felt that Plato, though a pagan, was really “one of us” – a sort of “closet Catholic” – and that to be educated meant to read Plato, and authors like him. All this made me want to go to a college where I could be steeped in the riches of Catholicism that I had begun to taste. That’s why I went to Thomas Aquinas College in California, where I could study the “Great Books”.

Attending TAC introduced me to a world of immense depth and beauty. This included the traditional Latin

Mass, where all that is purest, loftiest, and loveliest in the Catholic Faith comes to roost. I think of that psalm verse: “Even the sparrow finds herself a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young: Thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” (Ps 83:4 [84:3]) The Mass truly was and must once again become the inspiring force of Catholic culture. Certainly for me and my family, it has been the place where we can make a spiritual home, and where we may bring up our young in the peace and fragrance of Christ.

CM: So much of modern culture is ugly, even grotesque, many people have a real hunger for what is beautiful and good. Can you suggest how we may satisfy this hunger?

PK: I strongly believe, as I hinted earlier, that we need to surround ourselves with beauty. I don’t mean in a cluttered or kitschy way, but by suitable decorations, by investing if we can in works of art, by listening to really good music (and by this, I do not mean any particular period, but certainly not pop, rock, rap, techno, or any of that barbaric stuff, which is the musical equivalent of junk food or drugs), and by seeking to understand the greatest art that European and Catholic civilisation has bequeathed to us. I would recommend several practical steps.

First, find the most beautiful celebration of the liturgy you can, and go to it. If it’s in a beautiful church, even better! The liturgy is where most of the fine arts blossomed and where they are meant to be experienced: as offer-

CM: How would you describe your own discovery of Catholic tradition and what effect did it have on your formation and work?

PK: For me, the discovery of Gregorian chant was a huge revelation. I can’t say why I was so fascinated by it at the tender age of 17, but then again, the chant really is mesmerising and haunting in a way that no other music is.

By listening to recordings of the Wiener Hofburgkapelle, I taught myself to read the neumes in an old Graduale Romanum that had been discarded by the Benedictine boys’ school I was attending at the time. I think my study of composition – being introduced to J. S. Bach’s chorales and trying to imitate them in my exercises—also played a role: there is something about this kind of discipline that helps the mind CAL X M A R IA E

RORATE CAELI FROM THE SAN DOMENICO MISSAL (C.1425). FRA ANGELICO. MUSEUM OF SAN MARCO, FLORENCE.

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ings to God, caught up in (and ideally assisting in) the ascending movement of prayer. The liturgy is not just the “source and summit” of the Christian life, it is also – or it has been and should once again be – the source and summit of Christian culture as well.

Second, think about the rooms you are living and working in, and how you might elevate them with prints, watercolors, engravings, etc. It takes time to find works of ‘original’ art, but in the meantime, or supplementally, a good quality giclée reproduction of a Fra Angelico or a Giotto, a Rembrandt or a Vermeer can make a big difference in the ambience, encouraging a more contemplative spirit. (I recommend The Catholic Art Company, which has a fine selection. They don’t sell junk, and they don’t support immoral causes.)

Third, pick a place in your home and make it the “prayer corner”, with icons or holy images, a candle, holy water, rosaries, flowers. This should be a place around which it is natural to gather for morning or evening prayers.

(You can read more about this in David Clayton and Leila Lawler’s The Little Oratory: A Beginner’s Guide to Praying in the Home. Other beautiful customs can develop from this center point; see Mary Reed Newland’s We and Our Children: How to Make a Catholic Home.)

Fourth, acquire some good recordings of sacred and “classical” music, and take time to listen to them, to develop your ear and your soul. (At LifeSiteNews, I’ve written some pertinent articles: “What makes Gregorian chant uniquely itself – with recommended recordings” and “These new recordings of sacred music will transport you to the courts of the King”.)

Fifth, make time for ongoing education. I cannot recommend highly enough the lectures by art historian 50

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Seventh, if we have the means, or if we are in a position to influence people of means, we should try to patronise new works of art that are truly beautiful, and if intended for the Church, truly sacred also. I admire clergy and laity who, when a special occasion is coming in the future, commission a piece of music or a painting for the occasion. Obviously, as a composer myself, I recognise that if Catholics stop asking for and expecting good art for the Church, good artists will starve and disappear. The same can be said of supporting music programmes and the right kind of church restorations (often undoing the damage wrought by postconciliar iconoclasts).

CM: In your new book Tradition and Sanity you make a number of compelling arguments in favour of returning to the traditional liturgy – not for liturgical or aesthetic reasons alone, but also because the way we live the Sacrifice of the Mass lies at the heart of every aspect of our lives. Could you explain this a little?

William Kloss available from The Great Courses: such eye-opening and fascinating explorations of the genius of the greatest artists, who have a special gift for seeing – and thus, for helping us to see – the luminous depths of reality. Obviously, if one can visit a good or great museum, one should do this on a fairly regular basis.

Sixth, at least once a year, go on pilgrimage. The pilgrim, too, gets to enjoy the sights and sounds of the journey and the destination, but he has a higher purpose than the mere tourist.

Aesthetic experience becomes more meaningful when united to the love of God, the practice of religion, and the expression of devotion to a saint and to Our Lord Himself. This is what I loved, by the way, about attending the All Souls Pontifical Requiem Mass at St John Cantius in Chicago this past 2nd November: the choir and orchestra performed Mozart’s Requiem in its authentic liturgical context. Somehow, hearing it in the right place and at the right time made the music even better.

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PK: In keeping with what I was saying earlier about how a grateful son should approach his father’s house and his family patrimony, I would say that worshiping God with the Roman Catholic liturgy in the form in which it organically developed for a period of over 1,500 years is crucial to having (or, for many, to recovering) a stable identity, a profound spirituality, a sound doctrinal foundation, and a compass for the moral life – this, in addition to the obvious literary and artistic merits that the old liturgy has in itself and has inspired for so many centuries.

Given that Catholicism is inherently a religion of tradition, it should strike us as quite troubling that Catholics of today pray in a manner terribly WINTER 2018

different from, and even at odds with, how our ancestors prayed, including the vast majority of saints. Either they were wrong and we are the enlightened ones – or, rather more likely, we have gone off the rails in our quest for modernisation and need to get back on if we would reach our destination safely. Liturgy is not something that each age needs to redesign and recreate in its own image. On the contrary, the vicissitudes of history are to a large extent transcended in a still point, an immovable center, a pole star from which we can always take our bearings. You could apply to the Mass the Carthusian motto: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis,“the Cross is steady while the world is turning”. This, to my mind, is the reason why the old liturgy is winning so many “converts” today. The world is turning at a mad pace, careening out of control, and unfortunately, because of the conciliar prejudice for aggiornamento, the world has pulled the postconciliar liturgy in its wake, like a moon orbiting a planet.

The classic Roman liturgy abides in its grandeur, and seems, perhaps not too surprisingly, more “relevant” to us today than something devised by a committee in the 1960s.

My book goes into all this, but also into the crisis in the papacy and in evangelisation, which I believe are linked with this tragic decision to “re-orient” Catholicism along new lines. This has led not to renewal but to accelerating deformation and irrelevance. Thanks be to God, we see a countermovement gaining strength across the world, and characterised by its opposition, point for point, to the official program. That will be the drama of the next decades: how this massive “civil war” inside the Church plays out under the hand of Divine Providence.

For more information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press, please visit his personal website: www.peterkwasniewski.com

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Fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s

Fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s

Falling in Eucharistic love

BY F R AR MAND D E M A L L ER AY, FS SP

This talk was delivered at ‘Restoring all things in Christ’, a conference organised by the Lumen Fidei Institute and Catholic Voice in Limerick, Ireland on 24 Nov 2018.

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ear friends, why are we here?

We are here because we believe that what our eyes see as bread in the hands of the priest at Holy Mass – is God. Or perhaps we have heard that such is the faith of the Church and even though we are not entirely sure, we are interested to know more about it. Holy Mother Church has always taught that the Holy Eucharist is the very heart and centre of our faith. So it is essential that we have a very clear idea about what we mean when we refer to the Holy Eucharist.

We know that it is one of the seven sacraments, instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ. But while the six other sacraments give us the graces from God, the Holy Eucharist makes truly present the God of graces.

In the Holy Eucharist – that is, God made man – Jesus Christ is really, truly, substantially present with His Body, His Precious Blood, His human Soul and His Divinity under the externals of bread and wine. This occurs by virtue of the Consecration formulas enacted by the priest acting in persona Christi when offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And how can the priest do that? By virtue of the priestly character, an indelible spiritual mark imprinted in his soul through the hands of the bishop at his priestly ordination.

This is, in a nutshell, what the Church believes about the Holy Eu-

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charist. And there are many consequences to that. One of them is that the true, real, substantial presence of the Lord Jesus in the Sacred Host will remain as long as the externals of the bread remain. So if a Host is kept in a tabernacle for, say, one month, the Lord is still there. If for two months – He is still there. Depending, of course, on the weather, the climate, the humidity, the Host may eventually become corrupt and when the Host ceases to be recognisable as bread (speaking of the externals), then the Real Presence ceases as well.

And what about all of us? When we receive Holy Communion, when we receive the Lord Jesus – really, truly, substantially present in the Host – how long does His presence remain then?

The same rule applies. His presence will last for as long as the externals remain, and since our body takes about 15 minutes to digest the Host, so after about 15 minutes the Real Presence is not in us anymore. It does not mean that God is not within us spiritually if we are in a state of grace. He is with us and in us, but He is not in us in that supreme mode of presence which is unsurpassed in the Holy Eucharist.

The Holy Eucharist is the very centre of our faith. It is no secret that over the past decades, there has been an eclipse of faith with regard to the Holy Eucharist in the Catholic Church. Even though the truths I have just summarised are shared by, one would expect, every bishop, priest and member of the laity in this country or anywhere in the Church,

FR ARMAND DE MALLERAY, FSSP

we must admit, that the words used, the gestures or the silences surrounding the handling of the Blessed Sacrament often do not seem to support this faith. The Eucharistic Presence is not expressed or surrounded with the reverence, love and discretion that should help us believe in it.

The problem with the Holy Eucharist, if I may say so, is that by definition we do not see Our Lord under the externals of bread. There have been Eucharistic miracles, of course, in Lanciano in Italy and in other places where, for various reasons, the celebrant or the people have actually seen flesh and blood. But ordinarily, at least in my experience, I do not see anything, but simply bread in my hands. And so, it requires an effort.

It is difficult to believe that what we see as bread is God, literally! And that is why it is so important to surround the Blessed Sacrament with rites of reverence which will then be a sign for our souls, telling them “look, now the priest is genuflecting very slowly” or “only the priest is touching the Sanctissimum, because he has anointed CAL X M A R IA E

hands” or “only this sacred vessel will be used, not a clay vessel” and so on.

All these things together are for the glory of God, but also a service to the souls of the believers, because it shows us what great care is taken by Holy Mother Church, by our priests and the people to handle the Sanctissimum. This all facilitates faith in the reality of the presence of God. Sadly, it also works the other way around. When, gradually, you take away the signs of reverence, you are making it more difficult for people to believe that it is not bread, but God. The modern era is poisoned by a philosophical disease that one could call nominalism. Basically, it says that things do not exist in themselves.

They do not have a reality, an essence in themselves. They are what you say they are. So for instance, MPs in parliament can vote, saying: ‘Well we think that such or such a thing is from now on what we say it is.’ And people will understand it as a new reality from then on. In fact, I am thinking

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of abortion, of course – we see laws against human personhood of little babies being subject to a vote. They were called human beings, and one morning MPs get together and say no, not anymore. From that moment – as a miracle – all these human persons in the womb cease to be persons and they become mere things. This is of course the arrogance and pride of the modern time that does not even admit obvious facts or reality.

However, what we see happening with regard to the pro-life question, sadly, also applies in the sacramental realm and this is, in a way, a variation of Protestantism. People – Christians and sadly even some Catholics – will look at the Host and say: “Well, for me, it is only a symbol of Jesus.”

We have become almost incapable in modern times to admit that things exist in themselves and that they have a nature, which God the Creator has given them. As rational human beings made after the image and likeness of God, we need to decipher the nature

of the gifts that God has given to us – because they tell us in a limited way about God’s perfection.

Either the Eucharist is the Body of Christ or it is not. It has to be one or the other. There is no in-between.

Everybody has to make up their minds.

It is not a matter of opinion. The Lord Jesus Himself instituted the Sacrament to perpetuate His presence amongst us and, since that Sacrament occurs in the context of the Holy Mass, to make us partakers in the offering of the Divine Victim for our salvation.

So, we have to be very serious and real about this. Do we believe that it is God made man, Jesus Christ, in the Blessed Sacrament, present in a sense as real and incarnate as I am before you – or are we perhaps unknowingly contaminated with a purely symbolic interpretation, thinking that it is bread loaded with the faith of the people? Or, that the Eucharist is the gathering of the people of God, and what we celebrate is our union in willing to share

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Fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s

the same bread? You can find many such explanations.

This will not do. The faith of the Church is very clear. Under the externals of bread and wine, it is Jesus Christ, true God and true man – really, truly and substantially present with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. That is what it is. I am not saying that it is easy to understand. What I am saying is, firstly, that it is true. Secondly, it is a gift. It is given to us by God, not in order to make our lives difficult as believers, but to feed us and inspire us.

And thirdly, if we profess ourselves to be Catholics, then we have a duty to relearn this truth, to live accordingly and share it.

There are several aspects in the dogmas of the Holy Eucharist. The first is transubstantiation. The fact that God’s power allows for a change of the inside while the outside remains.

Before the words of Consecration it is bread and looks like bread. After the words of Consecration, it is God and looks like bread. The externals have remained – those of bread, or of wine for the chalice – but the inside has changed. This, as I said earlier, is only possible through the enacting of the divine powers as embedded in the soul of the priest by virtue of his priestly ordination.

Another important aspect is the gradation of the modes of presence.

You sometimes hear put on the same level the presence of Christ ‘in His people gathered together’ and the presence of Christ ‘in His Gospel proclaimed’ and – on the same level – the presence of Christ in the Sacred Host. This is a mistake. It is wrong, because there is a hierarchy in the ways of being present. If you listen on your telephone to a voice message left by your wife, it is a way of her being present, which is real, but obviously in a 54

lesser degree. If she comes to meet you and you hear her voice in the corridor but you do not see her yet, that is a higher degree of presence. When she comes into the room and you see each other, this is obviously an even higher degree of presence. The word “presence” allows for a range of degrees. It is not enough to say: Christ is present here or there. We need to qualify that presence. The way God is present in the Sacred Host and in the chalice is supreme and unsurpassed. There will never be a way or means offered to us until the Last Judgement, whereby God will make Himself more present than He is in the Holy Eucharist. It cannot be surpassed and it surpasses every other mode of presence of God.

PHOTO CREDIT: JOHN ARON

Another aspect is concomitance. This is much ignored. It is the simple fact that in the Holy Eucharist it is the Lord Jesus with His Body, His Blood, His Soul, His Divinity. That is, the entirety of Who He is. Although when He died, His Body and Soul were separated, they were reunited at the Resurrection and indeed, in the Holy Eucharist the Lord is as risen. Certainly He still bears the stigmata of His Passion, endured to save us from sin. But He is present as risen. For that motive, in the Holy Host the change is essentially from the substance of the bread to that of the Body of Jesus. But for the Body

Fa i t h of o u r fat h e r s

of Jesus to be a risen body, a body that is alive, it needs – just like your body and mine – blood to circulate in the body, to irrigate it. This is why, in the Host, we also have the Sacred Blood with the flesh of Jesus.

But how do flesh and blood keep together? The soul is what keeps the physical components of our person – the liquid blood and the solid flesh – together. For the same reason, in the Host we need the spiritual form or principle to keep together the Body and Blood, and this is the third component we have in the Host – His human Soul, because the Lord Jesus Christ had a human Soul.

However, the body, blood and soul of a very holy person would not be enough to save us. Imagine that transubstantiation was to the body of St John the Baptist, who was a very holy man! Imagine if we were to receive him in Holy Communion. It would be wonderful and bring many graces to be sure, but he is not God. For our salvation, we need to surrender ourselves to God made man, the only Saviour. This is why, together with the Body, Blood and Soul, we also have the fourth component – the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus, which has been called in, so to speak, at the moment of transubstantiation of the bread into the Body.

The same applies to the transubstantiation of the wine to the Precious Blood. What is transubstantiated, literally, is the substance of the wine into that of the Precious Blood, but for the same reasons the Blood calls to itself at the same moment, so to speak, the Body, the Soul and the Divinity.

Twenty or thirty years ago, every child age seven preparing for First Holy Communion would have known these truths and would have been able to explain them to the parish priest exCAL X M A R IA E

amining him or her before First Holy Communion. And now? With all due respect, I would not be surprised if a lot of what I have explained just now were news to some of us here.

And it is not your fault. You have not been taught. And if you have read it somewhere, you probably have been exposed to a handling of the Blessed Sacrament which contradicts – day in, day out – this truth.

The doctrine of the presence of the components in the Host and also in the chalice is called “concomitance”.

It means “to come together with”. One of the practical applications of this important doctrine is that even though one may receive Holy Communion possibly only under the externals of bread, and not from the chalice, one has still received the Precious Blood.

One has received everything in the Host. I repeat, because I know that many people do not know that: when you receive the Sacred Host, you have received in it the Precious Blood of Jesus with His Soul and Divinity. And the other way around. If somebody is intolerant to gluten, for instance, and suppose he cannot receive the Host itself and would only be able to consume the Precious Blood from the chalice, he or she would have also received the Body of Jesus. This is the doctrine of concomitance, which is very important for its practical applications.

The other practical consequence of the Real Presence is how we handle the Eucharistic fragments. The Host, by its nature, is friable. It can easily break into pieces. In fact, the Holy Mass in the Acts of the Apostles was called ‘fractio panis’, the breaking of bread.

The fact that the Host has fragments is normal. However, what we believe about these fragments will determine how we handle them. In a word, regardless of size, it is God, as long as WINTER 2018

the bare human eye can identify this whitish fragment on the corporal, on the finger or wherever it is. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Magisterium of the Church has constantly reaffirmed that from the consecration Our Lord is really present in the Host and its size does not matter.

The Eucharist occurs in Holy Mass. This is the context in which God has given it to us and this is why, of course, it is a sacrifice. The Sacrifice of the Mass is the unbloody re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross, when He died on Golgotha, on Good Friday, to redeem us from sin. We are children of wrath. We had turned away from God as children of fallen Adam and Eve, and so we need, first of all, to be reconciled with God vertically, so that, as a consequence we may be reconciled with our brethren horizontally.

The reason why more and more priests are becoming interested in the traditional form of the Mass is that this verticality is more explicit. There is a risk in the way the new Mass is very often offered that the vertical dimension is not so obvious. What seems to be prevailing is horizontality, that is, to be a friend to one another. This is also true: Mass is very much about reconciliation and being united in love. But it would be a big mistake if we were to forget that horizontal, that is, brotherly reconciliation is only a consequence and a fruit of the vertical reconciliation, that is, with God first. And this, is only achieved through the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the Cross.

I encourage you to support your pastors in the ever more reverent celebrating of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and to make sure that the true definition of the Holy Eucharist enshrined in that Eucharistic Sacrifice is taught and shared among yourselves,

among your friends and among your children. After all, it is very telling to see that in Fatima, Our Blessed Lady, when she warned us about the crisis to come, had us prepared for this when the Angel gave the Eucharistic catechism to the Children. If you meditate on the apparition of the angel to the children that speak of the Holy Eucharist, you will see that this is the means for recovery, and for victory in Our Lord.

Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP is the author of “Ego Eimi – It is I. Falling in Eucharistic Love”, published by and available from the Lumen Fidei Institute, with a foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. He is currently the rector of St Mary’s Shrine, Warrington. He is also the editor of Dowry, the magazine of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter in the United Kingdom.

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Lessons from history

Lessons from history

LESSONS FROM HISTORY A C O LU M N B Y M AT T H E W M C C U S K E R

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he conversion to the Catholic faith of the Germanic peoples who established themselves amidst the ruins of the western Roman Empire, is one of the most uplifting and inspiring episodes of human history.

The conversion of England stands out amongst them because it was commissioned and directed from Rome, by the pope himself.

The story of how St Gregory the Great became the “Apostle of the English” is very well known. St Bede tells us, in his Ecclesiastical History, of “a tradition of our forefathers”, that Gregory, prior to becoming pope, was walking in the Roman slave market when he was struck by the appearance of a group of slaves and asked about their origin. On being told they were heathens from the island of Britain he expressed his sorrow “that the author of darkness should have men so bright of face in his grip, and that minds devoid of inward grace should bear so graceful an outward form.” He asked the name of their race, and was told “Angli”. “Good” he replied “for they have the faces of angels and such men should be fellow-heirs of the angels in heaven.” “What is the name”, he then asked, “of the kingdom from which they have been brought?” He was told they were from Deira [a kingdom in the area of modern Yorkshire]. “Deira” he replied “De ira! good! snatched from the wrath of Christ and called to his mercy. And what is the name of the king of the land?” “Aella” came the reply. “Alleluia”, replied Gregory,

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“the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts.”

Gregory then went to the pope to request that a mission be sent to Britain to convert the English, and expressed his own willingness to be part of it.

The pope turned down his offer but shortly after his own election as bishop of Rome Gregory made his vision a reality, sending Augustine, the prior of the monastery of St Andrew’s, which he himself had founded, and a group of monks, to England.

In 597 AD, the most important year in English history, the mission of St Augustine landed on the coast of Kent and was welcomed by the king of Kent, Aethelberht, who gave him permission to preach the gospel throughout his kingdom. From Kent the faith spread throughout England and, assisted by the work of Irish missionaries in the north, all the English kingdoms had embraced the faith by the end of the seventh century.

Of St Gregory the Great Bede wrote: “We can and should call him our apostle, for though he held the most important see in the whole world and was head of the Churches which had long been converted to the true faith, yet he made our nation, till then enslaved by idols, into a Church of Christ, so that we may use the apostle’s words about him, ‘If he is not an apostle to others yet at least he is to us, for we are the seal of his apostleship in the Lord.’

(1 Cor. 9:2)”

MATTHEW MCCUSKER

The central role of Gregory in the conversion of England was one of the roots of the devotion felt by the English to Rome for the next millennium. At his trial, in November 1581, St Edmund Campion was able to describe England as – up until that date – “the island of saints, the most devoted child of the See of Peter”.

The devotion of the English Church to Rome during the Anglo-Saxon period manifested itself in the widespread practice of making pilgrimages to Rome, primarily to visit the relics of SS Peter and Paul and the other martyrs whose shrines could be found throughout the city. It was very common for bishops and clergy to make the long and arduous journey to Rome, and a number of archbishops travelled to Rome to receive the pallium from the hands of the pope himself. Northumbrian nobleman St Benedict Biscop made many journeys to Rome, “burning with desire for the blessed apostles”, bringing relics and large quantities of books back to England, and thus furnishing the library at Wearmouth-Jarrow, which CAL X M A R IA E

Bede, the only English doctor of the Church, would later use for his own works. Many kings would also go on pilgrimage, like King Ine of Wessex who, according to Bede: “having reigned thirty-seven years… gave up the kingdom… to younger persons, and went away to Rome, to visit the blessed apostles, at the time when Gregory was pope, being desirous to spend some time of his pilgrimage upon earth in the neighbourhood of the holy place, that he might be more easily received by the saints into heaven.

The same thing, about the same time, was done through the zeal of many of the English nation, noble and ignoble, laity and clergy, men and women.”

Later, King Alfred the Great would travel to Rome with his father twice during childhood, receiving the sacrament of confirmation from Pope Leo IV in 853, at the age of four. So common were high-profile pilgrimages to Rome that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT

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noted an unusual occurrence in 889: “This year no pilgrimage was made to Rome.”

The centrality of the pilgrimage to Rome in the spiritual life of England is encapsulated in the foundation of the monastery of Medhamsted, which was brought to completion by King Wulfhere of Mercia. He wanted it to be an alternative site of pilgrimage for those who couldn’t make the difficult journey to Rome. “Hither I will” he said “that we seek St Peter, all that to Rome cannot go”.

His desire received the confirmation of Pope Agatho in 675AD: “I will and decree, that, whatever man may have made a vow to go to Rome, and cannot perform it, either from infirmity, or for his lord’s need, or from poverty, or from any other necessity of any kind whatever, whereby he cannot come thither, be he of England, or of whatever other island he be, he may come to that minster of Medhamsted, and have the same forgiveness of Christ and St Peter, and of the abbot, and of the monks, that he should have if he went to Rome.”

The town that grew up around the monastery became known as Peterborough.

It is important to note here that the ancient pilgrims were not travelling to Rome primarily to see or venerate the individual person of the reigning pontiff. English pilgrims wanted to end their lives in the vicinity of the relics of St Peter, not of the pope, and it was around the Basilica of St Peter, not around the papal court at the Lateran, that the “English town” in Rome was built up. Bede tells us that King Caedwalla of Wessex was drawn to Rome by the relics of St Peter, “[for] whose

most holy body his pious love had brought him from the utmost bounds of the earth”. Caedwalla was baptised in Rome, took the name of Peter, lived his final days near the apostle’s relics, and was buried within the basilica.

The evidence of this English community gathered around the relics of Peter can still be seen near St Peter’s today. The “borgo” area of Rome, which includes well-known streets like the Borgo Pio, takes its name from the English word “burgh” for town. The hospital of Santo Spiritu has its origins in the English pilgrim’s hospice, the Schola Saxonum, an origin which is reflected in the dedication of neighbouring church, Santo Spirito in Sassia.

If our Anglo-Saxon forbears were to visit the streets of the “borgo” today, perhaps they would be disturbed that amidst all the merchandise bearing the picture and name of the current pope, and his immediate predecessors, there is little evidence of real and vital devotion to St Peter himself. Would they consider that the personality cult of the modern popes has in fact displaced the healthy devotion to St Peter of earlier times?

The lesson our English ancestors can teach us is this: true loyalty to the papacy must be rooted not in devotion to the personality of a particular pope but rather in devotion to St Peter, whose teachings all his successors must faithfully transmit.

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 Director of Fundraising.

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

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Holy House of Loreto

Holy House of Loreto

BY MARIA MADISE

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his Advent we invite you to contemplate a house, which is now in Loreto but used to be in Nazareth. It was the birthplace of Our Lady and the place where the Archangel Gabriel announced that she was chosen by God to be the Mother of the Word Incarnate.

It was also the home of the Holy Family after their return from Egypt and so it was the home for Our Lord until He started His public life. Considering that this was the place for a number of the greatest miracles of human history, it should not be incredible that this house itself was miraculously transported by angels from the Holy Land to Europe, where it has been venerated since its arrival.

However, we may also wish to take a brief look at its journey to see how Divine Providence has arranged its relocation.

The Holy House in Nazareth was a place of worship from the early days of Christianity. In 336 St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, made a pilgrimage to Nazareth and ordered that a basilica be built over the home of the Holy Family.

The basilica was destroyed by Saracens in the 11th century, rebuilt and destroyed again by Muslims in the 13th century, but both times the holy house was found intact under the rubble.

When the crusaders were driven out of the Holy Land in 1291, threatened with destruction by the Turks, the Holy House disappeared.

The house did not go to Loreto directly. On 10 May 1291, it appeared miraculously in Tersatto which is in present-day Croatia. The local population did not know how to explain its

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incredible appearance. As recounted by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, their bishop, who was gravely ill, had prayed to the Virgin Mary that he might be strong enough to see the house for himself, and the Mother of God appeared to him, surrounded by angels, saying: “My son, you have called for me, and here I am. I came to give you succour and to reveal to you the mystery [of the translation of the Holy House] you desire to know.

The holy dwelling is the very house where I was born and raised. It was there that I received the good news brought by the Archangel Gabriel and I conceived the Divine Infant by the operation of the Holy Ghost. It was there that the Word was made flesh.

“After my death, the Apostles consecrated this dwelling, illustrious for its great mysteries, and sought the honour of celebrating the August Sacrifice there. The altar is the very one that the Apostle Peter erected; the crucifix was placed there by the Apostles. The small cedar statue is an image of me made by the Evangelist Luke, who, moved by his

attachment and affection for me, expressed through his art my features as perfectly as possible for a mortal.

“This beloved house, so dear to Heaven, highly honoured for many centuries in Galilee but today deprived of due homage caused by the general decay of the Faith, has been transported from Nazareth to these lands. The author of this great event is God, for whom nothing is impossible.

“For you to bear witness to all that I am telling you now, you will suddenly be cured and return to full health after the long illness you have borne, so that through you all will believe in this miracle.”

In 1294, when the Muslims invaded Albania, the house disappeared again.

According to the local shepherds, it was seen on 10 December being flown by angels over the Adriatic Sea. This time the Holy House landed in a wooded area near Recanati in Italy. As the news spread, thousands flocked there, and many miracles took place at the site.

Twice again the house was moved before coming to rest in the town of Loreto in Italy that is its present location.

The move that was carried out by angels, recognised by popes and sustained by saints was also confirmed by research into historical documentation and archaeological evidence, which confirmed that no human method or technology explain this miraculous translation. Furthermore, detailed research of scientists demonstrated that it would be far more miraculous for human hands to have performed this

THE ANNUNCIATION (C.1450). PETRUS CHRISTUS. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NY.

translation than to consider it to be the work of angels as desired by God for Whom nothing is impossible.

The house itself is a small building made from materials commonly used for simple houses in the Holy Land, but not in Italy. The house in Loreto has no foundations. The walls rest on a plot that was partly field and partly road, which is an indication that it was not built but placed there. The foundations of the Holy House remain in Nazareth. Delegations were sent there in 1292, in 1296, and in 1524.

All three declared that the measurements of the house corresponded to the visible foundations of the house of Nazareth perfectly.

From 1330, virtually all the popes have considered Loreto the greatest shrine of Christendom.

Today a great basilica houses the dwelling of the Holy Family, which is enclosed in a large marble box, com-

missioned by Pope Julius II in 1509. As pilgrims approach the holy house, they read on the threshold: “Hic Verbum caro factum est” – “Here the Word became flesh”. The ancient statue of Our Lady holding the Infant Jesus, known as Our Lady of Loreto, is above the altar in the holy house.

In 1624, Pope Urban VIII established 10 December as the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House of Mary, Mother of God. The evening before, on 9 December, many towns in the area build bonfires in their public squares to light the way for the angels carrying the Holy House to Loreto.

Precisely at midnight church bells are rung to celebrate their arrival.

The Holy House of Nazareth is also known in England in a special way. The shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham was established in 1061 when, according to the Pynson Ballad (c 1485), a local lady called Richeldis

de Faverches prayed that she might undertake some special work in honour of Our Lady. In answer to her prayer, the Blessed Virgin led her in spirit to Nazareth and showed her the house where our Redemption began when she said her “Fiat!”. The Blessed Virgin asked her to build a replica in Walsingham to give witness to the Annunciation for all the ages to come.

Walsingham, England’s Nazareth, became one of the greatest shrines in medieval Christendom and a popular destination for pilgrims, including the crowned heads. It remained a place of devotion throughout penal times and beyond. Today Walsingham attracts thousands of pilgrims each year to pray for the fulfilment of what was revealed by Pope Leo XIII: “When England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady will return to England.”

When in spirit visiting the house of the Holy Family this Advent, let us reflect on the words of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira: “... [L]et us turn our minds to that sacred place and ask Our Lady to give us a greater understanding of, and admiration for, the private life of Our Lord as he lived in that House, obedient to St Joseph and the Blessed Virgin. Then, let us pray that, in imitation of Our Lord, we might have a more profound and intense dependence on Our Lady.”

May this Advent be a time for holiness to grow in our families and may Our Lady herself teach us, as only she can, to love God so that our entire being would be a resounding Fiat!

ENDNOTE 1.

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira “Translation of the Holy House to Loreto December 10” https://www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/j255sd_Loreto_12_10.html (accessed 21 Nov 2018).

OUR LADY OF LORETO

CAL X M A R IA E

WINTER 2018

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saints for our times

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ have mercy on us.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.

God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, pray for us.

Litany of Loreto THE TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO (C.1550). FLEMISH, PROBABLY BRUGES. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

IN HONOUR OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

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Holy Mother of God, Holy Virgin of virgins, Mother of Christ, Mother of divine grace, Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother inviolate, Mother undefiled, Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable, Mother of good counsel, Mother of our Creator, Mother of our Saviour, Virgin most prudent, Virgin most venerable, Virgin most renowned, Virgin most powerful, Virgin most merciful, Virgin most faithful, Mirror of justice, Seat of wisdom, Cause of our joy, Spiritual vessel,

Vessel of honour, pray for us.

Singular vessel of devotion, Tower of David, Tower of ivory, House of gold, Ark of the covenant, Gate of Heaven, Morning star, Health of the sick, Refuge of sinners, Comfort of the afflicted, Help of Christians, Queen of angels, Queen of patriarchs, Queen of apostles, Queen of martyrs, Queen of confessors, Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints, Queen conceived without original sin, Queen assumed into Heaven, Queen of the most holy Rosary, Queen of peace,

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us V: Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God. R: That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord God, that we Thy servants may enjoy perpetual health of mind and body, and by the intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, may be delivered from present sorrow and obtain eternal joy.

Through Christ Our Lord. Amen

CAL X M A R IA E

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